This has been done to death in a variety of places. An RTG was not used for many reasons such as mass and availability, balanced off against the science experiments that both probes carried. Rosetta was always slated to do most of the experiments, and the landing of Philae was always an unpredictable event (I've read that a matching set of harpoons kept on Earth for the last 10 years in a vacuum also failed to fire).
But think about it. Add an RTG, which adds mass, which means less science overall, possibly to the point of not including a lander. Not only that, you need to oversize the RTG so that when 10 years of zooming around the solar system are up, that it still has enough juice to do the work you want.
The people who designed Rosetta/Philae are rocket scientists, and I am not second guessing their choices. What they have already achieved is phenomenal, and the science has only just started.
I'd say that on the short term morality is a hindrance. But even if your morally questionable decisions don't cause your startup to implode, would you really want to be part of the kind of company it would become?
Or in the words of Groucho Marx
I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.
Heck, we're not permitted to take pictures of servers in the data center.
I once worked on project in the US that used a bunch of Polish engineers. At the time certain computers were prohibited exports to behind the iron curtain (and this was well before the wall came down). Of course our project used such a particular mini-computer (I think it was a VAX) for doing some compiling that these Polish engineers needed. To assuage the US export control restrictions, this computer was put in a sealed cabinet that the Polish engineers couldn't access.
A short time later one of the engineers was visiting the Smithsonian, and saw that same model computer on display. So he took a photograph of it, printed it out and stuck it to the front of the cabinet at work!
Right, but you generally DO need a reason to deny them unemployment compensation -- they have to be fired for cause and the rules are quite strict.
I'm not denying that.. I was trying to point out that in the words of the OP I was replying to that the states allow companies to be even more "fascist" than what he was implying.
Phone support techs in faraway lands read scripted lines like "your modem is at end-of-life".
Well I had Comcast inject HTML into my http stream in order to tell me that my DOCSIS 2 modem was not going to be supported and that I needed to upgrade. I got a pop-up appearing when I viewed a non-comcast website, telling me that I had to upgrade (and yes I have a screen cap of that popup)
I believe that they were really hinting that I needed to update my perfectly fine DOCSIS 2 modem to a DOCSIS 3 modem purely for their benefit and were using text like
Your modem will no longer be able to operate on comcast's network
Even though their website says that DOCSIS 2 modems work.
I assume my email transits the internet in the clear regardless how I send it so I am having a hard time getting angry about this.
For a previous job I was working onsite in a different country to my home office. For what ever reason my boss had pissed me off, so when he said he was going to email details of a salary increase I decided to yank his chain and played the "email isn't secret, and anyone could intercept it" card just to see what hoops he would jump through in order to "securely" send me this "sensitive" data.
His solution was to send me two emails. The first email had a password protected zip file that mentioned that the salary details were inside. The second email stated that the password for the zip file was "the company name backwards". Both emails of course being sent from the company domain. Given how brain-dead his solution was I concluded that I had got my monies worth from that stunt.
In a survey published last year by software vendor ThreatTrack Security, 40% of tech support employees said they'd been called in to remove malware from the computer or other device of a senior executive, specifically malware that came from infected porn sites.
Would you care to revise your opinion of corporate executives?
You don't need to maintain dancers' license records to check someone's age.
So who is doing the checking? The strip club doesn't care who dances as long as money comes in. At least with licensing you can have some sort of auditing.
You can perform background checks without the need for a government issued license.
So who is performing this background check? If not the government, then the strip club? Because if the girl is bringing in money the strip club isn't going to care.
Seriously: who or what interest does the state imagine it is "protecting" with this license? It isn't there for practical purposes, it's there for the purposes of intimidation and control.
How about keeping underage girls out of strip clubs? That would be something reasonable to achieve?
The issue is why in the bloody hell is the government licensing dancers? There is no reason to do that other than they want to collect some extra fees from people. There is no professional service being offered that a license would effect. The purpose of licensing professionals is to ensure that the person meets some basic requirements. Unless they are going to try and require a minimum cup size or dancing ability, there isn't anything to license here.
So you'd be happy if the strip clubs were filled with sexy, nubile but underage girls?
Recently I tried the BBC Fuel Price Calculator, which for where I am at $2.55/Gallon indicates that the only place I can get gas cheaper is either Nigeria or Venezuela.
Perhaps there is a glimmer of hope for the Australian squatters after all.
Hey I am not going to deny any of the past genocide or current treatment now and I am ashamed of that aspect of Oz. On the other hand I still feel pride in where I was borne.
The sad thing is that even given such eulogies we still have people like Andrew Bolt.
Slashdot Mirror
This has been done to death in a variety of places. An RTG was not used for many reasons such as mass and availability, balanced off against the science experiments that both probes carried. Rosetta was always slated to do most of the experiments, and the landing of Philae was always an unpredictable event (I've read that a matching set of harpoons kept on Earth for the last 10 years in a vacuum also failed to fire).
But think about it. Add an RTG, which adds mass, which means less science overall, possibly to the point of not including a lander. Not only that, you need to oversize the RTG so that when 10 years of zooming around the solar system are up, that it still has enough juice to do the work you want.
The people who designed Rosetta/Philae are rocket scientists, and I am not second guessing their choices. What they have already achieved is phenomenal, and the science has only just started.
I'd say that on the short term morality is a hindrance. But even if your morally questionable decisions don't cause your startup to implode, would you really want to be part of the kind of company it would become?
Or in the words of Groucho Marx
I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.
I thought this might be another Haselton story.
Instead it's a diceverticement
This is a Lobster story that is not a dicevertisment!
Has /. been sold to someone else and I didn't know about it?
Heck, we're not permitted to take pictures of servers in the data center.
I once worked on project in the US that used a bunch of Polish engineers. At the time certain computers were prohibited exports to behind the iron curtain (and this was well before the wall came down). Of course our project used such a particular mini-computer (I think it was a VAX) for doing some compiling that these Polish engineers needed. To assuage the US export control restrictions, this computer was put in a sealed cabinet that the Polish engineers couldn't access.
A short time later one of the engineers was visiting the Smithsonian, and saw that same model computer on display. So he took a photograph of it, printed it out and stuck it to the front of the cabinet at work!
Right, but you generally DO need a reason to deny them unemployment compensation -- they have to be fired for cause and the rules are quite strict.
I'm not denying that .. I was trying to point out that in the words of the OP I was replying to that the states allow companies to be even more "fascist" than what he was implying.
That would actually be the opposite. You're thinking states with at-will employment.
Yeah .. my oops
It sounds pretty fascist to shitcan someone like that
In a right to work state in the US, you do not need a reason to be fired. (I'm skipping around protected classes here for simplicity)
It is nice to pick international system units, however it would be better to do it right. This should be km/h, not kph.
Do you mean units of km/h like TFA uses?
Phone support techs in faraway lands read scripted lines like "your modem is at end-of-life".
Well I had Comcast inject HTML into my http stream in order to tell me that my DOCSIS 2 modem was not going to be supported and that I needed to upgrade. I got a pop-up appearing when I viewed a non-comcast website, telling me that I had to upgrade (and yes I have a screen cap of that popup)
I believe that they were really hinting that I needed to update my perfectly fine DOCSIS 2 modem to a DOCSIS 3 modem purely for their benefit and were using text like
Your modem will no longer be able to operate on comcast's network
Even though their website says that DOCSIS 2 modems work.
That is going to make for a very large and weird collection of skills.
I assume my email transits the internet in the clear regardless how I send it so I am having a hard time getting angry about this.
For a previous job I was working onsite in a different country to my home office. For what ever reason my boss had pissed me off, so when he said he was going to email details of a salary increase I decided to yank his chain and played the "email isn't secret, and anyone could intercept it" card just to see what hoops he would jump through in order to "securely" send me this "sensitive" data.
His solution was to send me two emails. The first email had a password protected zip file that mentioned that the salary details were inside. The second email stated that the password for the zip file was "the company name backwards". Both emails of course being sent from the company domain. Given how brain-dead his solution was I concluded that I had got my monies worth from that stunt.
...and Martin would have been killed my old age before he ever finished the final novel.
No way .. I've got my money on "heart attack"
I fell for the dicevertisment again
Any corporate executive traveling will have encrypted communications from their company as a matter of course.
This post is nothing but a weak attempt at Kaspersky marketing.
I just read this on the weekend: The icky part of tech support: Porn and other NSFW surprises
Which has a wonderful bit of text in it:
In a survey published last year by software vendor ThreatTrack Security, 40% of tech support employees said they'd been called in to remove malware from the computer or other device of a senior executive, specifically malware that came from infected porn sites.
Would you care to revise your opinion of corporate executives?
If you really cared, you could store a key of some kind to validate the certificate.
Congratulations .. you just invented licensing with a central authority!
But I will give you that the hash technique would be useful for anonymous validation licenses.
If there's any question about their age, they present the certificate.
And how do you validate the certificate if there is no record of its existence?
They are going to care if the girl is underage, aren't they?
Nope .. douchebag strip club owner near me is now in jail for using underage dancers.
You don't need to maintain dancers' license records to check someone's age.
So who is doing the checking? The strip club doesn't care who dances as long as money comes in. At least with licensing you can have some sort of auditing.
You can perform background checks without the need for a government issued license.
So who is performing this background check? If not the government, then the strip club? Because if the girl is bringing in money the strip club isn't going to care.
Seriously: who or what interest does the state imagine it is "protecting" with this license? It isn't there for practical purposes, it's there for the purposes of intimidation and control.
How about keeping underage girls out of strip clubs? That would be something reasonable to achieve?
The issue is why in the bloody hell is the government licensing dancers? There is no reason to do that other than they want to collect some extra fees from people. There is no professional service being offered that a license would effect. The purpose of licensing professionals is to ensure that the person meets some basic requirements. Unless they are going to try and require a minimum cup size or dancing ability, there isn't anything to license here.
So you'd be happy if the strip clubs were filled with sexy, nubile but underage girls?
Recently I tried the BBC Fuel Price Calculator, which for where I am at $2.55/Gallon indicates that the only place I can get gas cheaper is either Nigeria or Venezuela.
Thanks for that .. I just ordered a copy
Perhaps there is a glimmer of hope for the Australian squatters after all.
Hey I am not going to deny any of the past genocide or current treatment now and I am ashamed of that aspect of Oz. On the other hand I still feel pride in where I was borne.
The sad thing is that even given such eulogies we still have people like Andrew Bolt.