Satellites are designed for a given period of operation that takes into account our best predictions of space weather. Shielding and circuitry hardware selections are made as a result of those solar activity models. Increased solar activity is not going to turn any satellites into expensive junk, unless the satellites were designed as expensive junk in the first place, in which case, they probably aren't operating in the manner they are supposed to be, if at all.
Yep, colonizing other, more than likely uninhibited bodies of rock in space is the moral, legal, social, and political equivalent of invading a neighboring country. That makes so much sense, I can't think of a reason that nobody else has thought of it before you.
Oh, I know why, perhaps it's because that is one of the single most asinine equivalencies I have ever heard drawn in the history of stupid commentary. Don't try to equate space travel with Nazi-like ambitions of world domination. That's just fucking stupid.
We can't seem to get our own affairs in order here in Europe. What makes you think we won't have infighting and mutiny in an intercontinental ship? Within a six month trek to the final destination, there might not be anyone left alive by that time!
We're the most innovative of all cultures as we know them. But, in one form or another we still fling poo. Some things never change regardless of where events take place.
.....I wonder if there were folk saying this about the journeys to the America's a few hundred years back.
But of all that stuff, how much of it is touted on nearly every maker blog as, "I used the _____ board and the ___ to make these pretty lights glow in my project?"
How much of it is open source? So if you want, you can buy all the components from the local bits and pieces store and solder the board together yourself?
How much of it quickly, simply, and easily installs onto Linux, Macs, and PCs with almost no trouble? (Hell, I can't even get most my desktop hardware to do that one).
How much of it is used by a growing community of amateurs that know next to jack-shit about EE but somehow managed to make their pink unicorn shirt vibrate?
How much of the documentation for all that stuff is available for free on the internet? And easily found with a simple 3 word Google search?
Don't get me wrong, a lot of microcontrollers (including Basic Stamps and PICs) have a lot going for them. And all of them have dedicated communities. But I think the point about this article was that Arduino lends itself to people who don't know much, if anything, about electronics. And, even more importantly, those people have a habit about blogging or writing or even facebooking their latest projects since they consider themselves artists, rather than engineers.
I cut my teeth on microcontrollers with Arduino and I have a bachelor's in aero engineering. The reason I picked Arduino was because, after about 15 minutes of Google searching, I found more Arduino related stuff than anything else. As someone more interested in orbital mechanics and control systems engineering than in learning the ins and outs of EE and bare metal programming, that kind of environment appealed to me immediately. Granted, at some point in the future, I'll start to upgrade to more complex microcontroller boards. But for now, I want to be able to take the ideas I learned in school and build something with them almost immediately. I don't want to have to take another two courses in binary logic and analog-digital conversion hardware to make some motors spin based on the sensor readings from a rangefinder and an accelerometer.
Arduino does a great job at advertising itself as, "Easy to get started and expandable from there." That's appealing, very appealing.
It seems there is now a push for stronger controls and monitoring for technology exports 'that would provide a national strategy to prevent the use of American technology from being used by human rights abusers.'"
Fuck monitoring and controlling exports! I want want a push for stronger controls on and monitoring of human rights abusers here in America. Ever heard of the NSA you hypocritical fuckwit Congress-critters? Or is it okay because they import their equipment from China? So as long as American technology isn't being used to spy on American citizens, it's all fine and dandy? Fucking assholes.
The more I pay attention to all the news surrounding wikileaks the more I realize that the only people who get air time anymore are drama queens. On the one side, we have Assange acting like a pissed off idealistic teenager (not necessarily a bad thing) making comments about how it is his duty to end two wars in the world. In another corner, we have the dumbshit media pundits in America calling for his head on a platter without even having a crime to charge him for. Then there is the Swedish legal system, which is dumping money and time into investigating rape charges that are spurious at best, but more like a downright "he says she says" game from prom night. Then there are all the other wikileaks employees, or volunteers, or whatever, that have to compete with Assange's ego, like this guy who swiped a bunch of data and intends to use it to start his own project ("I don't like your secret club anymore! I'm starting my own!")
Hell, the only folk who seem to act rationally when it comes to this issue are the folks in the Middle East that read a few cables relevant to their lives and said, "Fuck it, it's time to change things for the better!"
I mean, seriously, look at this shitfest. This is something straight out of Freddy Prinze Junior movie, complete with all of the hyperbolic, dramatic characters. And yet, these are the people delivering our news, getting voted into the leadership roles of our society, and generally steering the direction this world moves in.
What The Fuck? Why do we tolerate this kind of bullshit? Maybe I am just clinging to a pipe dream, hoping to one day see our world led by people with some god damned sense and humility, but this has gotten ridiculous.
I don't know. Maybe there are some other countries out there where these issues are less glaring (or nonexistant?), but here in the States, I am afraid we've turned world politics into a fucking high school based reality T.V. show. It makes me nauseous. Maybe we really should just vote the retard beauty queen Sarah Palin into office already and get it all over with.
Meh, mod this crap down, I followed a link to her blog post and read it myself. I'll admit, she lacked tact in that she posted some pretty poor taste humor. But she wasn't actually insulting any of her students directly.
Yeah, reading the blog post myself, now, I have to say I think the summary is a bit sensationalist. She didn't describe any particular kid as dim or lazy or anything. It seemed more like she was just trying to make some bad jokes about, "What teachers really think." It's not like she was actually attacking any particular students or posting these specific comments in a format linked to specific individuals.
Like you said, it seems like she was just venting from teacher burnout. Maybe she should have had more tact, but honestly, the comments list is a bit funny.
Okay. I get it. Parents should take an active role in educating their children. That makes sense Ms. Munroe.
But you are also responsible for those students' educations to some extent. If they are frightfully dim, less intelligent than they appear, and so on, isn't it sort of your job to help them with that? So they suck at abstract reasoning? Teach them how to reason better. So they can't do well in mathematics? Find a better way to teach mathematics. So they are petty and dramatic? Well they are only kids, at least they have that excuse. You, however, are supposed to be a responsible adult. Insulting children on the internet is just a bit petty don't you think? Maybe they are simply learning from example.
Of course, you can only do so much. And I can understand how that could be frustrating. However, the rest of us professionals have to deal with frustrating shit in our jobs every day as well. The difference is, we don't necessarily go home to insult our coworkers on the internet after a bad day. So, yes, children should be smarter. Rather than bitch about that, how's about you do your damned job and help them along that path?
Sincerely,
An Adult
If anything, it sounds like Ms. Munroe was insulting her own teaching abilities more than anything.
Also, it's a land locked town, so I doubt anything having to do with ships would have any bearing on most of the bar patrons. Now, getting punched in the face, direct relevance.
So what do we learn kids? Don't talk about the skeezy shit you do to anyone: friend, family, coworker, or other. If you do bad shit, keep it to yourself.
At the small town bars I used to hang out in we had a saying, "Loose lips get hit."
It would appear that the hammer of justice follows a similar rule of thumb.
Yeah, I'm aware of the hazard posed by microscopic bits of crap. I was more amused by the idea of wrenches floating around in space. I realize it was a phrase of expression, but it made me giggle.
Interestingly enough, Tonga is also the location that Interorbital Systems decided would serve best for their launch site because the country was so friendly to the idea of developing the space industry. Each time I hear about it I learn a little bit more about this interesting little country.
Oh please, if the DHS really did seize the Google domain name, that would wake America up from it's pop-culture induced stupidity coma. So many folks that access the internet daily rely on Google it's not even funny. If the DHS seized the Google domains, that means gmail would be down, the search engine would be down, YouTube would probably be affected negatively, Google books would be down, Google image search, etc. etc. etc. That type of content probably accounts for more than half the activity of Americans on the internet. Add to that the fact that some business actually use Gmail and Google Docs for official business, and you have a recipe for disaster.
If, all of the sudden, Americans woke up one day and found Google (mind you, Amazon, Facebook, and a few other web presences would have a similar effect) gone, they would go into a frothing mad rage. As soon as one person pointed a finger at Hollywood or the DHS, you'd have a God damned holy war on your hands. We Americans are certainly passive little government lap dogs as long as we have a steady soma dose of useless crap pumped into our veins via T.V. and the internet. But if you cut off that IV, you will learn really quick like just how much rage a bunch of pissed off house wives that can no longer access their lolcats pictures can generate.
It's sad really. We spend tens of thousands of dollars to get every bit of this "junk" onto orbit, and the best thing we can come up to do with it is rope it in and burn it up in the atmosphere. If we could undertake a major push into developing infrastructure on orbit, all of this space debris would be a potential gold mine of recyclable materials. We could capture spent Centaur and other upper vehicle stages, refuel them, and use them for one off moon shots. We could capture the free-floating thermal blankets and staple them back onto spacecraft being built in space. If only we would invest in the future to utilize past mistakes, rather than scold ourselves in penitence and try to back peddle.
Each kg of matter on orbit is worth, at minimum, ~$2000 USD. And here we are, roping it up and letting it burn. Space junk could be a jobs program. Instead it's become a disposal project.
Unless we just start burning liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen in our rockets, like the Delta IV Heavy and such. At that point, we're more likely to start burning our oceans.
Yeah, we know, for all the data entry, heavy computer use/coding jobs an interface like the Minority Report one is stupid and inefficient. But at least it's a step in the right direction. For those of you that have been posting about how nice it is to sit in an office chair and click a mouse all day, I have to ask what kind of ecstasy you're popping to make that a pleasant experience.
I fucking hate the typical cubicle set up. It makes my lower back hurt after 5 hours. My shoulders constantly ache from being crouched over a tiny POS keyboard. My right hand is significantly fatigued by the end of the day, whereas my left elbow is killing me from leaning my weight on it constantly. Sitting on my ass all day puts enough pressure on my prostate (okay, I have a bony ass) that I wonder if it might have negative effects on the libido. Squinting at monitors that blast my face with bright white backgrounds all day makes me hate the color white.
When it comes down to it, the typical cubie setup is a completely shit arrangement to be stuck in for 8 hours on end. So to fix it, we have to get up every hour and stretch or walk about for 5 minutes. We pay for massages and chiropractic adjustments to fix our strained backs. And don't even get me started on the amount of tension we hold in our jaws. What TI is proposing, here, is an interface that could let you stand up for a period, then sit down for a period. It could use an 'on-screen,' split keyboard for when you need to type in info. It would be capable of projecting onto a cubicle wall, so I wouldn't be tethered to a monitor on a desktop. It will be clunky and a PITA for the first generation or two, but give it some time and some prototypes and we could really be working our way towards a useful engineering interface that frees us from the ergonomic hell that is the cubicle lifestyle. Personally I'd like to see more research go into this field.
I know a lot of engineers that wet themselves when they watched the first Iron Man where Tony Stark designs an exoskeleton using a 3-D holographic touch interface. That was damn cool and you know it. If projects like the one TI is proposing get us closer to that kind of modeling interface little by little, I'm all for it. Bring it on TI!
Slashdot Mirror
Satellites are designed for a given period of operation that takes into account our best predictions of space weather. Shielding and circuitry hardware selections are made as a result of those solar activity models. Increased solar activity is not going to turn any satellites into expensive junk, unless the satellites were designed as expensive junk in the first place, in which case, they probably aren't operating in the manner they are supposed to be, if at all.
You haven't been visiting the right towns in the United States if you don't think we've discovered that ourselves. ;)
Yep, colonizing other, more than likely uninhibited bodies of rock in space is the moral, legal, social, and political equivalent of invading a neighboring country. That makes so much sense, I can't think of a reason that nobody else has thought of it before you.
Oh, I know why, perhaps it's because that is one of the single most asinine equivalencies I have ever heard drawn in the history of stupid commentary. Don't try to equate space travel with Nazi-like ambitions of world domination. That's just fucking stupid.
We can't seem to get our own affairs in order here in Europe. What makes you think we won't have infighting and mutiny in an intercontinental ship? Within a six month trek to the final destination, there might not be anyone left alive by that time!
.....I wonder if there were folk saying this about the journeys to the America's a few hundred years back.
We're the most innovative of all cultures as we know them. But, in one form or another we still fling poo. Some things never change regardless of where events take place.
But of all that stuff, how much of it is touted on nearly every maker blog as, "I used the _____ board and the ___ to make these pretty lights glow in my project?"
How much of it is open source? So if you want, you can buy all the components from the local bits and pieces store and solder the board together yourself?
How much of it quickly, simply, and easily installs onto Linux, Macs, and PCs with almost no trouble? (Hell, I can't even get most my desktop hardware to do that one).
How much of it is used by a growing community of amateurs that know next to jack-shit about EE but somehow managed to make their pink unicorn shirt vibrate?
How much of the documentation for all that stuff is available for free on the internet? And easily found with a simple 3 word Google search?
Don't get me wrong, a lot of microcontrollers (including Basic Stamps and PICs) have a lot going for them. And all of them have dedicated communities. But I think the point about this article was that Arduino lends itself to people who don't know much, if anything, about electronics. And, even more importantly, those people have a habit about blogging or writing or even facebooking their latest projects since they consider themselves artists, rather than engineers.
I cut my teeth on microcontrollers with Arduino and I have a bachelor's in aero engineering. The reason I picked Arduino was because, after about 15 minutes of Google searching, I found more Arduino related stuff than anything else. As someone more interested in orbital mechanics and control systems engineering than in learning the ins and outs of EE and bare metal programming, that kind of environment appealed to me immediately. Granted, at some point in the future, I'll start to upgrade to more complex microcontroller boards. But for now, I want to be able to take the ideas I learned in school and build something with them almost immediately. I don't want to have to take another two courses in binary logic and analog-digital conversion hardware to make some motors spin based on the sensor readings from a rangefinder and an accelerometer.
Arduino does a great job at advertising itself as, "Easy to get started and expandable from there." That's appealing, very appealing.
It seems there is now a push for stronger controls and monitoring for technology exports 'that would provide a national strategy to prevent the use of American technology from being used by human rights abusers.'"
Fuck monitoring and controlling exports! I want want a push for stronger controls on and monitoring of human rights abusers here in America. Ever heard of the NSA you hypocritical fuckwit Congress-critters? Or is it okay because they import their equipment from China? So as long as American technology isn't being used to spy on American citizens, it's all fine and dandy? Fucking assholes.
The more I pay attention to all the news surrounding wikileaks the more I realize that the only people who get air time anymore are drama queens. On the one side, we have Assange acting like a pissed off idealistic teenager (not necessarily a bad thing) making comments about how it is his duty to end two wars in the world. In another corner, we have the dumbshit media pundits in America calling for his head on a platter without even having a crime to charge him for. Then there is the Swedish legal system, which is dumping money and time into investigating rape charges that are spurious at best, but more like a downright "he says she says" game from prom night. Then there are all the other wikileaks employees, or volunteers, or whatever, that have to compete with Assange's ego, like this guy who swiped a bunch of data and intends to use it to start his own project ("I don't like your secret club anymore! I'm starting my own!")
Hell, the only folk who seem to act rationally when it comes to this issue are the folks in the Middle East that read a few cables relevant to their lives and said, "Fuck it, it's time to change things for the better!"
I mean, seriously, look at this shitfest. This is something straight out of Freddy Prinze Junior movie, complete with all of the hyperbolic, dramatic characters. And yet, these are the people delivering our news, getting voted into the leadership roles of our society, and generally steering the direction this world moves in.
What The Fuck? Why do we tolerate this kind of bullshit? Maybe I am just clinging to a pipe dream, hoping to one day see our world led by people with some god damned sense and humility, but this has gotten ridiculous.
I don't know. Maybe there are some other countries out there where these issues are less glaring (or nonexistant?), but here in the States, I am afraid we've turned world politics into a fucking high school based reality T.V. show. It makes me nauseous. Maybe we really should just vote the retard beauty queen Sarah Palin into office already and get it all over with.
What USB port issues? I've been using my N900 for almost 6 months now and I haven't had a single problem with the USB port....
Meh, mod this crap down, I followed a link to her blog post and read it myself. I'll admit, she lacked tact in that she posted some pretty poor taste humor. But she wasn't actually insulting any of her students directly.
Yeah, reading the blog post myself, now, I have to say I think the summary is a bit sensationalist. She didn't describe any particular kid as dim or lazy or anything. It seemed more like she was just trying to make some bad jokes about, "What teachers really think." It's not like she was actually attacking any particular students or posting these specific comments in a format linked to specific individuals.
Like you said, it seems like she was just venting from teacher burnout. Maybe she should have had more tact, but honestly, the comments list is a bit funny.
Hey now, that shoe came on to me! I swear!
Dear Ms. Munroe,
Okay. I get it. Parents should take an active role in educating their children. That makes sense Ms. Munroe.
But you are also responsible for those students' educations to some extent. If they are frightfully dim, less intelligent than they appear, and so on, isn't it sort of your job to help them with that? So they suck at abstract reasoning? Teach them how to reason better. So they can't do well in mathematics? Find a better way to teach mathematics. So they are petty and dramatic? Well they are only kids, at least they have that excuse. You, however, are supposed to be a responsible adult. Insulting children on the internet is just a bit petty don't you think? Maybe they are simply learning from example.
Of course, you can only do so much. And I can understand how that could be frustrating. However, the rest of us professionals have to deal with frustrating shit in our jobs every day as well. The difference is, we don't necessarily go home to insult our coworkers on the internet after a bad day. So, yes, children should be smarter. Rather than bitch about that, how's about you do your damned job and help them along that path?
Sincerely,
An Adult
If anything, it sounds like Ms. Munroe was insulting her own teaching abilities more than anything.
Also, it's a land locked town, so I doubt anything having to do with ships would have any bearing on most of the bar patrons. Now, getting punched in the face, direct relevance.
It is a small town. We manage to fuck up/modify everything we can get our dirty little hands on.
So what do we learn kids? Don't talk about the skeezy shit you do to anyone: friend, family, coworker, or other. If you do bad shit, keep it to yourself.
At the small town bars I used to hang out in we had a saying, "Loose lips get hit."
It would appear that the hammer of justice follows a similar rule of thumb.
Hey now, we call those "forward thinkers" out here!
Yeah, I'm aware of the hazard posed by microscopic bits of crap. I was more amused by the idea of wrenches floating around in space. I realize it was a phrase of expression, but it made me giggle.
Interestingly enough, Tonga is also the location that Interorbital Systems decided would serve best for their launch site because the country was so friendly to the idea of developing the space industry. Each time I hear about it I learn a little bit more about this interesting little country.
Oh please, if the DHS really did seize the Google domain name, that would wake America up from it's pop-culture induced stupidity coma. So many folks that access the internet daily rely on Google it's not even funny. If the DHS seized the Google domains, that means gmail would be down, the search engine would be down, YouTube would probably be affected negatively, Google books would be down, Google image search, etc. etc. etc. That type of content probably accounts for more than half the activity of Americans on the internet. Add to that the fact that some business actually use Gmail and Google Docs for official business, and you have a recipe for disaster.
If, all of the sudden, Americans woke up one day and found Google (mind you, Amazon, Facebook, and a few other web presences would have a similar effect) gone, they would go into a frothing mad rage. As soon as one person pointed a finger at Hollywood or the DHS, you'd have a God damned holy war on your hands. We Americans are certainly passive little government lap dogs as long as we have a steady soma dose of useless crap pumped into our veins via T.V. and the internet. But if you cut off that IV, you will learn really quick like just how much rage a bunch of pissed off house wives that can no longer access their lolcats pictures can generate.
I'm curious, just how many wrenches do you think there are in uncontrolled orbits around Earth? And how do you think they got there?
It's sad really. We spend tens of thousands of dollars to get every bit of this "junk" onto orbit, and the best thing we can come up to do with it is rope it in and burn it up in the atmosphere. If we could undertake a major push into developing infrastructure on orbit, all of this space debris would be a potential gold mine of recyclable materials. We could capture spent Centaur and other upper vehicle stages, refuel them, and use them for one off moon shots. We could capture the free-floating thermal blankets and staple them back onto spacecraft being built in space. If only we would invest in the future to utilize past mistakes, rather than scold ourselves in penitence and try to back peddle.
Each kg of matter on orbit is worth, at minimum, ~$2000 USD. And here we are, roping it up and letting it burn. Space junk could be a jobs program. Instead it's become a disposal project.
Have fun dealing with some of the premier assholes of the U.S. space industry.
On the other hand, I suppose ATK can't really lobby Astrium the way the lobby the U.S. Congress....
Unless we just start burning liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen in our rockets, like the Delta IV Heavy and such. At that point, we're more likely to start burning our oceans.
Yeah, we know, for all the data entry, heavy computer use/coding jobs an interface like the Minority Report one is stupid and inefficient. But at least it's a step in the right direction. For those of you that have been posting about how nice it is to sit in an office chair and click a mouse all day, I have to ask what kind of ecstasy you're popping to make that a pleasant experience.
I fucking hate the typical cubicle set up. It makes my lower back hurt after 5 hours. My shoulders constantly ache from being crouched over a tiny POS keyboard. My right hand is significantly fatigued by the end of the day, whereas my left elbow is killing me from leaning my weight on it constantly. Sitting on my ass all day puts enough pressure on my prostate (okay, I have a bony ass) that I wonder if it might have negative effects on the libido. Squinting at monitors that blast my face with bright white backgrounds all day makes me hate the color white.
When it comes down to it, the typical cubie setup is a completely shit arrangement to be stuck in for 8 hours on end. So to fix it, we have to get up every hour and stretch or walk about for 5 minutes. We pay for massages and chiropractic adjustments to fix our strained backs. And don't even get me started on the amount of tension we hold in our jaws. What TI is proposing, here, is an interface that could let you stand up for a period, then sit down for a period. It could use an 'on-screen,' split keyboard for when you need to type in info. It would be capable of projecting onto a cubicle wall, so I wouldn't be tethered to a monitor on a desktop. It will be clunky and a PITA for the first generation or two, but give it some time and some prototypes and we could really be working our way towards a useful engineering interface that frees us from the ergonomic hell that is the cubicle lifestyle. Personally I'd like to see more research go into this field.
I know a lot of engineers that wet themselves when they watched the first Iron Man where Tony Stark designs an exoskeleton using a 3-D holographic touch interface. That was damn cool and you know it. If projects like the one TI is proposing get us closer to that kind of modeling interface little by little, I'm all for it. Bring it on TI!
Very well said.