We are a species of sapient monkey. True.
But do our descendants have to be?
The further we go, the larger the Human diaspora, the more likely that a local cosmological event will NOT kill all of humanity.
Right now we are gone if the Earth get's hit by a big chunk of ice from the Oort Cloud, or a wayward NEO.
Get 500 breeding-age humans off this rock, and we are unlikely to go extinct without a major Solar event (far less likely).
Send out the slow-boats and you've increased our chances immeasurably, down to the chances of a star in the immediate neighborhood going Nova.
Perfect the Alcubierre Warp Drive, and the chances of Human extinction begin to approach Zero.
Well, Until such time as man has evolved so far as to no longer be classified as a sapient monkey.
The primary reason to go to the moon?
Spaceport for the Belt
Transshipment in and out of the Earths Gravity Well is immensely expensive, compared to the same on the moon, and it can be used as a construction platform more easily than null-g.
The Belt is where the real prize lies though. Five time the entire Earth's Mining Output of Iron (as well as many times that amount of rarer metals like iridium) in a single nickel-iron asteroid. And it could be mined in a matter of weeks or months with a parabolic mirror and some rockets for spin.
That's where the money is, and where there is money, there will be people.
If we can get the Bureaucrats out of the way.
Science? Science is a good beni. But more, useful science is done in the closed labs of major corporations than in government-funded research. You would be amazed at how much (U.S.)Government grant money is spent on such things as determining how the cleanlyness habits of Chinese Hookers affects STD spread, instead of things like High-energy physics and deep-space telescopes.
IBM has made more discoveries in quantum physics than Los Alamos.
Because IBM makes a profit on them.
Let's hope that Virgin Galactic does the same to NASA.
NASA should be a regulatory agency, just like the FAA. But when you give regulation to a "competitor-in-the-field," amazingly, no-one else meets the regulatory requirements to compete. (offtopic/ Think of that when they talk about a "public insurance plan" too. \offtopic)
Poor Author C. I wish he had lived to see his 2001 visions come to life. . .
I presently work in an Air Operations Center responsible for both military operations, disaster recovery, and search and rescue in the continental United States.
This system is integral to the search and rescue portion of that mission; specifically, it is used to track civilian transponders such as those used on civilian aircraft, watercraft, and as rented by many national parks to hikers.
You can't get more clean and air conditioned than the server room(s) which this system sits in, nor an operations floor that the clients which connect to it sit in.
And Yet: We are lucky to get a single 9 out of the thing.
You ever here the saying that if you put a thousand monkeys in a room with a thousand typewriters for a thousand years you will get the collected works of Shakespeare eventually? Well, the common joke among us is that this system, was 5 monkeys on emacs terminals for about 5 minutes. It's that bad.
and I know that almost no-one will read this, a week after the story was posted, c'est la vie
1. IT personnel are rarely armed, with the exception of Mobile Comm in the field, in a hot warzone.
2. Find me a "downright evil" military individual and I will do my damnedest to get him/her out from "among" us, as will my entire chain of command.
a. I want name and rank. "Some guy I heard about" and "This email forwarded to me says" don't count.
3. The term is "Unlawful order". It doesn't matter who tells you to, shooting someone that is not shooting back is most definitely one of them.
I do have to agree, I can't stand the people that retire and yet don't clean out their desk because they are back the next week in civvies. No matter how much I may like the individual, I cannot stand the practice, as it encourages the most inefficient "downsizing" imaginable.
True, The Civilian is probably not making $120,000.
However, the Defense Contractor that hired him for $80,000 is getting $120,000 for doing so (and providing his health insurance and, well, that's about it.)
Do Programmers HAVE to sign and swear in order to program? no.
However, considering the quality of some of the software that the military has to use, it would be VERY useful to have trained programmers rotating into and out of positions where they are using it in the field, and than updating and maintaining the software. We are presently forced to maintain a piece of Search and Rescue software for tracking downed (civilian) pilots that, if every piece of network infrastructure works perfectly, manages to stay stable and usable less than 90% of the time. In an industry where four 9s is considered standard, a piece of lifesaving software with only one is unacceptable - and they can't even open bidding for it's replacement for another year.
And as a Air Force Network Administrator who continually has to struggle to pass his Physical Readiness Test, I have no pity about your preference for coding in your shorts and flip-flops
The problem you are both referring to is called "The Lowest Bidder
it goes like this:
1)Open call for Bids- the Lowest bid that claims to solve the problem/provide the required wins.
2)Everyone underbids, in order to win the contract
3)When they have the contract in hand, they feel no compunction about going over-budget, because the US Government will happily pay.
By the way, When they bid on the contract, they are bidding on "this is how much we think it will cost and this is how much profit we are willing to take." Even if the cost goes runaway, the contract states that they still get their profit.
Military = Protection of US interests abroad (Projection of Power, Police actions, and Trade Route Protection)
As an aside, the rise of Piracy in the South China Sea and Indian Oceans came about when the Soviet Union Collapsed (thus removing their ships from trade route protection) and the US Navy began downsizing in response (Remove a large portion of the US Navy from Trade Route Protection).
Piracy will always be a problem unless there is someone willing to expend the resources to protect the trade routes. In the 19th Century it was Britain, and in the 20th, it was the USA.
NIPR isn't any more secure than your home PC: and it doesn't have to be.
The only security considerations done on NIPR is Virus control so that the users can get their work done, and attack analysis, to see what the enemy/troublemakers are up to.
Nothing important is put on the unclassified military network, NIPR.
If you WERE putting something important on it, I suggest you go run and hide now.
- however, primarily these are client machines, and the forms of attack that military systems endure are, if not OS-independent (ddos, etc), then perpetrated by individuals who will adapt for whichever OS is being run (espionage, etc).
Moving from Windows to another OS would provide relatively little additional security for client machines while incurring a HUGE cost in user re-training.
Servers, on the other hand, are, ummmm. . .
Let's just say the server world is a LITTLE different from the client world.
I think it's less trolling, and just a reasonable expectation taking into account past history (from the past 3 weeks) that she will either a) have a Tax issue or b) have lobbying (or lobby-like) ties to the industry she will be regulating. As Cyber-Security Czar is unlikely to regulate an industry, that leaves us with a).
Except for the fact that CO2 is a very poor Greenhouse gas (how's the weather by the way? Love that Global warming, don't you?). A far, far superior greenhouse gas is even more common, and when CO2 gets filtered out, it get's replaced with this gas.
Noone mentions it though. Why?
Because the Gas which is four to eight times more efficient at reflecting sunlight out into space is O2.
Oxygen
Here's an idea - Let's ban the release of Oxygen into the atmosphere! Maybe get some of the green-peacers out of there boats and start them on burning down forests!/sarcasm
If government had done its job well in the years prior to 2001, we wouldn't have a had a 9/11, and none of the consequences of that day, including the DHS, would have occurred.
Before giving the government a new job, don't just think twice, think three, four, twenty times. If you still think it's a good idea, you still probably shouldn't.
Every job, like airport security, that can be done by a private company, will be done better by a private company than the government will.
If you give a government bureaucrat power, it will be abused and expanded.
The Best that can be hoped for is for government to do a very few jobs, poorly.
no matter who is in the White House, no matter who is on Capitol Hill, change happens in Washington very, very slowly.
This point is what gives me hope for the next four years. Change is slow, So "the One" shouldn't be able to do Too Much damage. I hope.
As for Revolution, As much as I dislike the sleazy bastard, I will gladly stand between you and he, for he was the duly elected President of the United States, which I have sworn to protect and Defend, in full accordance with the Constitution of the United States, which I have also sworn to protect and defend.
If Slashdot was predominantly Libertarian, why did it whole-heartedly support a politician who ran on a platform of the largest expansion of the federal government since FDR? As opposed to the first Fiscal Conservative the Republicans had nominated in living memory (An ancient, worn-out, stiff-necked, and lackluster fiscal conservative, but a fiscal conservative nevertheless).
Or are you saying that/. ignored what the man was saying himself, in favor of what the media was spinning?
Easy. When Bush requested the legally required permission for federal troops and assistance to cross into Louisiana from the Louisiana Governor, She said no.
What was he supposed to do, Fly to Baton Rouge and bully her into making a decision that she felt was unnecessary?
I would go to bed too, knowing that I may have to declare a national emergency tomorrow to pull some ignoramus' butt out of the fire because she felt she didn't need federal help. Get a good night's sleep, or try to, to better be able to deal with the shit-storm coming my way.
Slashdot Mirror
We are a species of sapient monkey. True.
But do our descendants have to be?
The further we go, the larger the Human diaspora, the more likely that a local cosmological event will NOT kill all of humanity.
Right now we are gone if the Earth get's hit by a big chunk of ice from the Oort Cloud, or a wayward NEO.
Get 500 breeding-age humans off this rock, and we are unlikely to go extinct without a major Solar event (far less likely).
Send out the slow-boats and you've increased our chances immeasurably, down to the chances of a star in the immediate neighborhood going Nova.
Perfect the Alcubierre Warp Drive, and the chances of Human extinction begin to approach Zero.
Well, Until such time as man has evolved so far as to no longer be classified as a sapient monkey.
The primary reason to go to the moon?
Spaceport for the Belt
Transshipment in and out of the Earths Gravity Well is immensely expensive, compared to the same on the moon, and it can be used as a construction platform more easily than null-g.
The Belt is where the real prize lies though.
Five time the entire Earth's Mining Output of Iron (as well as many times that amount of rarer metals like iridium) in a single nickel-iron asteroid. And it could be mined in a matter of weeks or months with a parabolic mirror and some rockets for spin.
That's where the money is, and where there is money, there will be people.
If we can get the Bureaucrats out of the way.
Science? Science is a good beni. But more, useful science is done in the closed labs of major corporations than in government-funded research. You would be amazed at how much (U.S.)Government grant money is spent on such things as determining how the cleanlyness habits of Chinese Hookers affects STD spread, instead of things like High-energy physics and deep-space telescopes.
IBM has made more discoveries in quantum physics than Los Alamos.
Because IBM makes a profit on them.
Let's hope that Virgin Galactic does the same to NASA.
You want Firefly? First you need FireNASA.
http://www.spacefuture.com/vehicles/how_the_west_wasnt_won_nafa.shtml
NASA should be a regulatory agency, just like the FAA. But when you give regulation to a "competitor-in-the-field," amazingly, no-one else meets the regulatory requirements to compete.
(offtopic/ Think of that when they talk about a "public insurance plan" too. \offtopic)
Poor Author C. I wish he had lived to see his 2001 visions come to life. . .
You can't get more clean and air conditioned than the server room(s) which this system sits in, nor an operations floor that the clients which connect to it sit in.
And Yet: We are lucky to get a single 9 out of the thing.
You ever here the saying that if you put a thousand monkeys in a room with a thousand typewriters for a thousand years you will get the collected works of Shakespeare eventually? Well, the common joke among us is that this system, was 5 monkeys on emacs terminals for about 5 minutes. It's that bad.
and I know that almost no-one will read this, a week after the story was posted, c'est la vie
2. Find me a "downright evil" military individual and I will do my damnedest to get him/her out from "among" us, as will my entire chain of command.
a. I want name and rank. "Some guy I heard about" and "This email forwarded to me says" don't count.
3. The term is "Unlawful order". It doesn't matter who tells you to, shooting someone that is not shooting back is most definitely one of them.
I do have to agree, I can't stand the people that retire and yet don't clean out their desk because they are back the next week in civvies. No matter how much I may like the individual, I cannot stand the practice, as it encourages the most inefficient "downsizing" imaginable.
However, the Defense Contractor that hired him for $80,000 is getting $120,000 for doing so (and providing his health insurance and, well, that's about it.)
Do Programmers HAVE to sign and swear in order to program? no.
However, considering the quality of some of the software that the military has to use, it would be VERY useful to have trained programmers rotating into and out of positions where they are using it in the field, and than updating and maintaining the software. We are presently forced to maintain a piece of Search and Rescue software for tracking downed (civilian) pilots that, if every piece of network infrastructure works perfectly, manages to stay stable and usable less than 90% of the time. In an industry where four 9s is considered standard, a piece of lifesaving software with only one is unacceptable - and they can't even open bidding for it's replacement for another year.
And as a Air Force Network Administrator who continually has to struggle to pass his Physical Readiness Test, I have no pity about your preference for coding in your shorts and flip-flops
Don't you love how Washington thinks?
Actually the problem was the autoplay on USB keys re-infecting machines every time the virus was wiped out.
Autoplay is supposed to be disabled on all Military machines but it appears that some unit's IT departments were. . . Lax.
The problem you are both referring to is called "The Lowest Bidder
it goes like this:
1)Open call for Bids- the Lowest bid that claims to solve the problem/provide the required wins.
2)Everyone underbids, in order to win the contract
3)When they have the contract in hand, they feel no compunction about going over-budget, because the US Government will happily pay.
By the way, When they bid on the contract, they are bidding on "this is how much we think it will cost and this is how much profit we are willing to take." Even if the cost goes runaway, the contract states that they still get their profit.
Don't you wish all contracts we like that?
No?
You are just having a bad day.
Militia (National Guard) = Homeland defense, disaster recovery & relief, Search & Rescue.
Military = Protection of US interests abroad (Projection of Power, Police actions, and Trade Route Protection)
As an aside, the rise of Piracy in the South China Sea and Indian Oceans came about when the Soviet Union Collapsed (thus removing their ships from trade route protection) and the US Navy began downsizing in response (Remove a large portion of the US Navy from Trade Route Protection).
Piracy will always be a problem unless there is someone willing to expend the resources to protect the trade routes. In the 19th Century it was Britain, and in the 20th, it was the USA.
NIPR isn't any more secure than your home PC: and it doesn't have to be.
The only security considerations done on NIPR is Virus control so that the users can get their work done, and attack analysis, to see what the enemy/troublemakers are up to.
Nothing important is put on the unclassified military network, NIPR.
If you WERE putting something important on it, I suggest you go run and hide now.
Yes, it is a lot.
- however, primarily these are client machines, and the forms of attack that military systems endure are, if not OS-independent (ddos, etc), then perpetrated by individuals who will adapt for whichever OS is being run (espionage, etc).
Moving from Windows to another OS would provide relatively little additional security for client machines while incurring a HUGE cost in user re-training.
Servers, on the other hand, are, ummmm. . . Let's just say the server world is a LITTLE different from the client world.
I think it's less trolling, and just a reasonable expectation taking into account past history (from the past 3 weeks) that she will either a) have a Tax issue or b) have lobbying (or lobby-like) ties to the industry she will be regulating. As Cyber-Security Czar is unlikely to regulate an industry, that leaves us with a).
RIAA should be prosecuted for perjury and contempt of Congress.
That would require a Justice Department which is not on the RIAA's Payroll.
Don't ya love that CHANGE?
Noone mentions it though. Why? Because the Gas which is four to eight times more efficient at reflecting sunlight out into space is O2.
Oxygen
Here's an idea - Let's ban the release of Oxygen into the atmosphere! Maybe get some of the green-peacers out of there boats and start them on burning down forests! /sarcasm
2) Seek counseling.
If government had done its job well in the years prior to 2001, we wouldn't have a had a 9/11, and none of the consequences of that day, including the DHS, would have occurred.
Fixed it for you.
The instant you post your question, it will be modded down so far by his disciples, you may not be able to find it yourself.
You talkin' bout Ron Paul?
I said
(An ancient, worn-out, stiff-necked, and lackluster fiscal conservative, but a fiscal conservative nevertheless)
I didn't say
Looney toon
Every job, like airport security, that can be done by a private company, will be done better by a private company than the government will.
If you give a government bureaucrat power, it will be abused and expanded.
The Best that can be hoped for is for government to do a very few jobs, poorly.
Change!
Is not synonymous with improvement.
no matter who is in the White House, no matter who is on Capitol Hill, change happens in Washington very, very slowly.
This point is what gives me hope for the next four years. Change is slow, So "the One" shouldn't be able to do Too Much damage. I hope.
As for Revolution, As much as I dislike the sleazy bastard, I will gladly stand between you and he, for he was the duly elected President of the United States, which I have sworn to protect and Defend, in full accordance with the Constitution of the United States, which I have also sworn to protect and defend.
You may want to read the thing sometime.
If Slashdot was predominantly Libertarian, why did it whole-heartedly support a politician who ran on a platform of the largest expansion of the federal government since FDR? As opposed to the first Fiscal Conservative the Republicans had nominated in living memory (An ancient, worn-out, stiff-necked, and lackluster fiscal conservative, but a fiscal conservative nevertheless). Or are you saying that /. ignored what the man was saying himself, in favor of what the media was spinning?
Easy. When Bush requested the legally required permission for federal troops and assistance to cross into Louisiana from the Louisiana Governor, She said no. What was he supposed to do, Fly to Baton Rouge and bully her into making a decision that she felt was unnecessary? I would go to bed too, knowing that I may have to declare a national emergency tomorrow to pull some ignoramus' butt out of the fire because she felt she didn't need federal help. Get a good night's sleep, or try to, to better be able to deal with the shit-storm coming my way.