Yeah, that's the type of attitude that makes the music & movie industry so scared of piracy. Here they come up with a better way to "rent" videos (which is how it should be marketed), and the response is to claim a right to copy them?
That's the type of comment that that industry executives love to trot out when explaining why they shouldn't allow DVD copying software to be sold, and why the DCMA needs to be toughened.
David Nelsons of the world, unite!
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Databases and Privacy
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Well, this appears to confirms everyone's worst suspicions about these so-called watch lists. They are ineffective. They tend to brand people as suspects for no real reason, and this allegation sticks even in light of evidence to the contrary. No one involved in accusing these fliers has any real interest in making sure it doesn't happen again, or trying to help this customer, who is, after all, a potential terrorist who might blow up your plane.
The concept of these watch lists is inane. 19 people have hijacked planes in this country in the last 25 years. There have probably been 5 billion passenger flights in that time. If even 1% of 1% (1/10,000) of these are incorrectly flagged, that's 500,000 false accuation for every hijacker, assuming that they every bad guy is on the list. After 10,000 people are incorrectly flagged, how closely will these rules be followed?
The problem isn't the existence of the system; a good system could work well and get buy in from the public. A bad system will only serve to alienate people, and it will eventually stop working as no one believes it any more. So you will end up needlessly harrassing innocent people, but since 90% of these "incidents" will be treated as an annoyance, it's doubtful that they'll catch a hijacker anyways. Instead, it will only serve to hassle those who express anti-government views, and those who share their names.
This is in regards to the so-called anti-SPAM bill being written by Billy Tauzin, here.
I believe that this is a terrible bill that will only lead to increase in the amount of unsolicited commercial email received by internet users. The bill will legitimaze the mass sending of unsolicted commercial email, and puts the burden on the consumer to "opt-out" of receiving these unwanted messages from hundreds or thousands of different organizations. For example, I could be required to opt-out of receiving these emails from dozens of subsidiaries. Further, this weak federal legislation will pre-empt state laws, and prevent consumers from seeking compensation against unsavory spammers.
I believe that strong anti-spam legislation should be enacted, but the bill being written by Rep. Tauzin will only make the problem of unsolicited commercial email worse.
Here's the sad part. Let's say he sends ten millions spams a day. Then, for the sake of easy math, assume he makes $100/day. This works out to "earnings" of 1 cent for every 1000 emails he sends. This is very interesting.
First of all, how much does it cost to deal with spam? I bet someone has numbers, I bet the cost/ spam is much higher. But, consider this. Assume filters catch 90% of all spam, Then lets say it takes 1 second to delete the spam. At that rate, one person deletes 3600 spams an hour, or 36,000 total, including the filtered spam. So it would take 1 person 300 hours to handle this much spam. At a rate of $10/hour, this guy wastes $3000 of people's money for every $100 he makes. And he's providing a service? Parasite or leech is mor like it.
But it gets better. If he only makes 1 penny for every 1000 emails, that means we don't need a tax of anything approaching 1 cent per email. It could be 1 cent for every 100 emails, and spammers would no longer find it economically feasible. Of course, the infrastructure of the net has to change to allow this, but charging even $1 for a thousand emails would not bother legitmate email marketing messages (opt-in stuff), or regular folk. The solution to the SPAM problem is simple, as soon as the inherent trust in the system goes away.
It will happen as soon as a country without any satellites develops the ability to launch them and use them as weapons. Because if a space war ever starts, basically everything gets taken out. I'm sure the US is working on electromagnetic weapons and defenses, maybe even lasers? But, if someone comes up with a good kinectic satellite weapon, all bets are off.
Anyways, the coutries that could do something like this (US, Russia, China) will not, because they have too much too lose. Although the US uses satellites more extensively than anyone else, so we're probably at the greatest risk.
Yeah, but Challenger had nothing to do with it being a plane design instead of a capsule; it was a launch failure that was related to a problem with the solids. And shuttle's death toll is higher because the program was a mess pre-Challenger, and there are 7 on board instead of 1-3. Even Columbia was largely a launch problem, although little noticed until re-entry. Of course, if the TPS of the capsule/ shuttle is not exposed at lift-off, then it can't be damaged.
And yeah, capsules are probably safer, although less versatile. Doesn't mean the approach of a space place should be abandoned. It has a lot of advantages. And note Soyuz is not perfect, as have been 2 re-entry failures, out of about 200, although that number may be off. But it's a similar rate compared to the shuttle re-entry experience.
It's actually a clever piece of work. Basically, software has to make calculations in order to provide a "soft" entry, 5 Gs approximately. If there is an error, the module goes into a ballistic entry mode, and it is more like 7-8 Gs, rougher but survivable.
On (nearly) every manned spacecraft ever flown, every system has a hot-backup that kicks in if the first one fails. The exceptions are systems for which it is basically impractical to have a backup-- can't really have redundant heat shields, as the weight is too much. But for electronics and software, this is standard. This story would have gone practically unnoticed if Soyuz had notified Star City that they were doing a "ballistic" entry, in which case they would have been located much sooner.
This landing showed that the Soyuz has a robust design; if Endeavour enters the atmosphere at the wrong angle, could it recover? What if the flight landing computer failed? NASA has a lot of these things covered; for many problems it is probably more robust than Soyuz, for others it is less robust. Soyuz has the advantage of much more flight experience; I doubt that it's a coincidence that this anomaly happened on a flight with a newly upgraded Soyuz.
Private enterprise does play a large role in the US space program. Iridium, DirecTV, Globalstar, Quickbird, etc are commercial satellites/ satellite constellations launched by american space program (though DirecTV may may launched abroad, not sure). Boeing and Lockheed run their own launch businesses, launching these satellites and others, including those from Eutelsat, etc.
In short, there is plenty of private industry involved in the US space program. The government (Air Force) has helped pay for the development of the launch vehicles, but they certainly don't pay for the launches.
Oh, I've read the SpaceDaily series, and he had the most detailed look at the investigation that I've seen, and I've seen lots of them. LA Times has had really good coverage too. But the Space Daily guy has an agenda, not that he tries to hide it; he doesn't try to present opinion as fact, but one could read his opinion as fact if one is not careful. Spaceflight Now! has extensive, uninspired coverage, and Space.com seems more interested in unmanned space (SETI, Mars rovers, Hubble).
Complex systems fail in complex ways, and that's what happened here. NASA couldn't establish margins for foam impacts, so since there were no major problems, they got comfortable with it. If NASA had examined all the possibilities of foam coming off, what it could hit, etc., they may have given the issue the attention it deserved.
I think from day one the TPS and the Solids were the two systems that had the greatest potential for causing catastrophic failure, b/c there is no fail safe. Those systems should therefore be better understood than everything else, and better margins should be established. But the STS is the most succesful launch vehicle the US has ever designed, much better than Titan, Atlas or even Delta II. Post challenger, it has flown about 90 times succesfully, which is a good record. It should be better.
Post-Challenger, NASA didn't just fix the immediate problem, they re-examined the whole program. The same thing will happen now. My guess is they'll get 90% of the way there, and start flying to ISS again, and after another 2 years they'll do the last 10% and get back to Hubble, etc. At that point, hopefully the Shuttle will have gone from 95% reliable to 99% reliable to 99.9% reliable, and maybe they'll decide they can improve on the basic design, greatly improve the electronics and build a few more. Or scrap the shuttle altogether, or build a radically new shuttle. But those decisions shouldn't be made until the current shuttles are fixed.
That's interesting. But it's not true. The NASA budget is $15 billion/ year. This includes things that have nothing to do with the space program per se, such as ground based telescopes, outreach, educational grants, etc. The budges for the manned space program is about $4 billion, IIRC. The unmanned NASA program is probably less than $1 billion, for things like Mars Rovers, SIRTF, etc.
However, the US space budget is much higher. The Air Force runs a very large space program, launcing a half-dozen satellites a year, many costing $1 billion +. A GPS satellite is a bargain at $50 million, double that for launch costs on a Delta II. NRO satellites are bigger, more expensive and generally launch on Titans (soon Atlas V and Delta IV). I bet the military space program has a bigger budget than NASA's space program, yet no one complains about those costs! The military program has obviously done better than NASA recently, but they've had their share of failures, too. Initially, all US satellites were going to launch on the shuttle, but that changed after Challenger.
(Addressing other posts) The marginal cost of a shuttle flight is nowhere near half a billion dollars. Those numbers always encompass total program costs, including development and engineering, which are a sunk cost. OTOH, each shuttle has a finite lifespan and definite maintenance costs, so the real cost is more than $40 million/ flight, but not $400 million.
Anyone else follow this story as it was breaking last night? I flipped on Google news, and the headlines were "Soyuz returns to earth," and then I went to Spaceflight Now! to read the details, and I saw that the Soyuz had not been located, and radio contact was not established after landing, Boy, did my heart sink! I turned on CNN, and a few minutes later they reported that Soyuz had been found.Phew!
As to the whole Shuttle vs. Soyuz thing, they have different purposes. Shuttle (post Challenger) is a very reliable vehicle, and its recent failure is unfortunate, but by no means invalidates the approach. A lack of imagination probably contributed to this; things which were not possible 20-30 years ago were not considered now even though they became available (e.g., high rez photography of space objects). Of course, ignoring the problem of the foam hitting the shuttle was not very smart; the Shuttle should probably have an outside agency come in every 5 years and do a top-to-bottom type review, and some of these problems would go away.
It's a shame that more shuttles aren't built due to lack of funds; the basic design is sound, most of the development is done, and the cost for one is probably comparable to a B2, and is more important to our national security. Maybe the Air Force will say as much, devote some of their funds to a Shuttle 2.0 (Columbia is 1.0, Challenger and Atlantis 1.1, and Endeavour is 1.2). Same basic design, improve the materials, electronics and apply lessons learned. But it probably won't happen; hopefully Delta IV and Atlas V heavy prove reliable enough to launch the Orbital Space Plane and reduce our reliance on the Shuttle and Soyuz.
I think this may have been overlooked so far. A lot of people I know (e.g, me) have a Mac at home and a PC at work. So I can't share my iTunes collection from my home Mac with my PC at work. However, if they make iTunes for PCs, then I will be able! Plus, browse for tunes when on a non-Mac, and buy them too. I think iTunes for Windows is a big plus for those of use with one foot in the Mac world, and the other foot in the PC world.
Their sample size is plenty big enough; they usually survey less than 1000 for opinion polls.
The question of whether they are valid is a different issue. If it's a random survey of all their messages, then that's what they are measuring, But that is probably not representative of all the spam. For example, maybe only a certain class of users (read: geeks) forwards the spam to the FTC. Or maybe people only forward the most egregious examples of spam. Or maybe the FTC sample is from one day's use, and they got lots of duplicates.
Fact is, 1000 is a large enough sample size, whether it's valid depends wholly on the validity of the sample pool
This doesn't bother me at all; it just brings the internet to the same level as the telephone system. As long as they need a court-order to tap it (in the US), I think this is a fine idea.
Yeah, someone else could break in, too. Someone else could tape your phone as well. As long as there's a judge who has to sign off on it, I'm fine with this; getting ridding of the bad aspects the Patriot Act and DMCA should be the priority, then we won't need the paranoia over obvious solutions like the one Cisco has put forward.
Sorry, I mis-typed. I meant to say that there aren't other software projects called Firebird, or at least popular ones. I figured there'd be a bunch, but there aren't.
As for not getting a trademark, well, that's the way it goes. Open source still lives in the world controlled by governments, not in a world controlled by those willing to resort to DoS attacks in the name of justice. For that, I'm grateful.
This looks really good. There are a lot of intersting developments in space lately. My take on all of this (with redundant links):
Well, sounds like someone might actually build a spacecraft. Scaled Composites has designed a sub-orbital spacecraft launched from the belly of the plane. It is in testing now. They're trying to win the $10 million X-prize, by builing a re-usable spacecraft that can send three people to space (100km) and return them safely. Looks like a neat design, and these guys are for real. Passengers would have a 5-minute micro-gravity environment during the flight. Sounds really cool. Space.com has an excellent write-up.
In other news, the Columbia investigation continues, and Space Daily has a real good (but long) write-up.
But NASA soldiers on. They have 2 Mars missions scheduled for this summer, plus the launch of SIRTF (infra-red telescope), which was recently delayed. Check out Spaceflight Now for details, and the best space coverage, in general.
Oh hell, almost missed this one. Apparently, the founder of PayPal is trying to get into the "microsatellite" launch business, although 1000 pounds is a bit bigger than micro. The company, SpaceX, is based in El Segundo. But, I think these guys are biting off more than they can chew, essentially trying to compete with Boeing, Lockheed, and everyone else. I think Scaled Composites is for real, though; they might pull it off.
Well, it doesn't look like there are other software projects titled "Pheonix." Did you guys ever get a trademark? Right now, I'm assuming no. That would have gone a long way, b/c AOL legal would have found out about it. Which is why things like trademark exist. Because if you did trademark it, AOL never would have approved the name.
The reason the Trademark office exists is to avoid situations like this. But failing to secure the trademark, you made it inevitable that eventually, someone would use the name.
The immature reaction only hurt the cause, since Mozilla took reasonable measures to check for usage. Their resposibility went only as far as checking trademark. To respond like your community is uncalled for, since Mozilla made good-faith efforts to choose a new name. The fact that they missed you has mostly to do w/ the fact that you didn't trademark it.
Fair enough, but here's the problem. The voice-mail box owner (nee: victim) never accepted the charges. The only reason collect-calls can exist is that they rely on the callee (is that a word) to explicitly accept the charges. It seems to me that the flaw is AT&T's, as they do NOT have a system which reliably determines whether the person accepts the charges.
Maybe the box-owners whould secure their systems better, but the basic flaw in the system is that AT&T cannot determine whether a person really accepts the charges. AT&T could solve this in oh-so-many ways (use operators, choose a different script, ask the person to repeat a random phrase, etc.) that would cost AT&T very little money... but, of course, AT&T would lose this business!
Here's my bet for what AT&T does, once sufficient uproar ensues: they'll plug their security holes, and they'll extend a one-time credit as a "courtesy" to their customers. They'll book this as an expense, and keep the bogus calls as revenue, this way they'll show top-line growth! A year later, they'll decide to re-characterize that income to show it as a one-time expense, so it won't hurt their earnings comparisons going forward.
My advice to the consumers: don't pay the bill. Write a letter and have your lawyer, stating why you will not pay the bill. There is no legal reason why the victim should be obliged to pay. The biggest joke is AT&T offering a 30% "discount," when there gross margins are probably in excess of 90% for these collect calls.
Don't pay the bill. Call a lawyer, write your congressman, and tell AT&T you WILL NOT pay, and ignore the collection agency. They have no right to engage in a shakedown like this; AT&T is reaping huge profits from the scam victims. This scam costs AT&T almost no money, yet they are reaping giant rewards. Seems like AT&T is the one running the scam.
1) Some catalogs weigh MUCH more than 4 ounces, such as Ikea
2) Yeah, it's cheaper to send 150@$0.248 than 140 at $0.268. It's more expensive to send 141 @ $0.268 than 140, even more to send 142, even more to send 143...; it's cheaper to send 150 @$0.248 than 149 @ $0.268. It costs more to send 151, even more to send 152, etc. Trust me, the catalog companies are aware of this. I'm sure they do crazy things like sending double copies to people if it puts them over the line. But the idea that, on average, sending an additional piece of mail saves them money makes no sense. Only in the rarest of cases (it's the 150th piece, and the manager was too stupid to send Ms. Jones a second copy) would this one additional catalog save on mailing costs (to say nothing of printing costs).
An ability to perform simple math does not demonstrate any ability to understand difficult math concepts. See, simple math is realizing that sending 150 pieces costs less than sending 149. The important part, which you've ignored, is this: catalogs cost money to print & mail; only the rare piece of mail puts you over the limit to lower the rate; the person sending the catalogs can also perform simple math; even if they can't perform simple math, on average, that additional piece of mail will cost between $0.248 and $0.268.
But it's a good straw man argument, so you might as well stick with it.
Um, fractions of a cent to send a catalog? Cheaping than sending a letter? Is that for real? Go to a store and find the cheapest catalog-sized book. Bet it costs about $6, figure $3 cost to the retailer, so the actual printing process is probably on the order of a dollar or two.
As far as the cost of sending it, it is NOT cheaper to send a catalog than it is to send a letter. It costs per ounce, and for that, the catalog companies are required to do more work for less service. If there is too much mail, they'll hold the catalog for a later date. Not many catalogs in the mail in the 1-2 weeks before x-mas for a good reason. They're all pre-sorted, etc.
I don't know how much it actually costs to send a catlog, but you clearly have no clue. The cost to send the catalog for may be 1/20 or 1/100 the cost per page than to send & print a letter, but it's more expensive to send a whole catalog than it is to send a letter. And trying to argue that one particular piece of junk mail you've subscribed someone to will lower their cost shows a fundamental mis-understanding of math concepts. There is exactly ONE letter that will lower the rate; all the other adds to the cost. So no, by lying and subscribing to a random magazine or catalog for someone you don't like, you aren't saving that magazin/ catalog company any money.
And it's not cheap to send a letter. Companies now deduct $2 or more from bills if you choose all-electronic. The short of it is, by requesting hundreds of catalogs for someone who doesn't want them, you're costing each one of those companies a few bucks. If 1000 people do this, it gets to be a real cost. If a million people do this, you've done real harm to the economy and the environment.
I occasionally read a NewsFactor article by accident. They define silly. They are usually speculation couched as fact, and prove little except that if you pay Yahoo! enough, they will carry your stories on their news site.
Charles Lindberg was a Nazi & fascist sympathizer; anything he reported back from Germany was either consiously or subconsiously tainted by that. I'm sure once the US entered the war he patriotically backed the U.S.
BUt Charles Lindberg was a Nazi sympathizer. His comments could be easily dismissed from the day he made them.
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Yeah, that's the type of attitude that makes the music & movie industry so scared of piracy. Here they come up with a better way to "rent" videos (which is how it should be marketed), and the response is to claim a right to copy them?
That's the type of comment that that industry executives love to trot out when explaining why they shouldn't allow DVD copying software to be sold, and why the DCMA needs to be toughened.
Well, this appears to confirms everyone's worst suspicions about these so-called watch lists. They are ineffective. They tend to brand people as suspects for no real reason, and this allegation sticks even in light of evidence to the contrary. No one involved in accusing these fliers has any real interest in making sure it doesn't happen again, or trying to help this customer, who is, after all, a potential terrorist who might blow up your plane.
The concept of these watch lists is inane. 19 people have hijacked planes in this country in the last 25 years. There have probably been 5 billion passenger flights in that time. If even 1% of 1% (1/10,000) of these are incorrectly flagged, that's 500,000 false accuation for every hijacker, assuming that they every bad guy is on the list. After 10,000 people are incorrectly flagged, how closely will these rules be followed?
The problem isn't the existence of the system; a good system could work well and get buy in from the public. A bad system will only serve to alienate people, and it will eventually stop working as no one believes it any more. So you will end up needlessly harrassing innocent people, but since 90% of these "incidents" will be treated as an annoyance, it's doubtful that they'll catch a hijacker anyways. Instead, it will only serve to hassle those who express anti-government views, and those who share their names.
This is what I wrote:
This is in regards to the so-called anti-SPAM bill being written by Billy Tauzin, here.
I believe that this is a terrible bill that will only lead to increase in the amount of unsolicited commercial email received by internet users. The bill will legitimaze the mass sending of unsolicted commercial email, and puts the burden on the consumer to "opt-out" of receiving these unwanted messages from hundreds or thousands of different organizations. For example, I could be required to opt-out of receiving these emails from dozens of subsidiaries. Further, this weak federal legislation will pre-empt state laws, and prevent consumers from seeking compensation against unsavory spammers.
I believe that strong anti-spam legislation should be enacted, but the bill being written by Rep. Tauzin will only make the problem of unsolicited commercial email worse.
Here's the sad part. Let's say he sends ten millions spams a day. Then, for the sake of easy math, assume he makes $100/day. This works out to "earnings" of 1 cent for every 1000 emails he sends. This is very interesting.
First of all, how much does it cost to deal with spam? I bet someone has numbers, I bet the cost/ spam is much higher. But, consider this. Assume filters catch 90% of all spam, Then lets say it takes 1 second to delete the spam. At that rate, one person deletes 3600 spams an hour, or 36,000 total, including the filtered spam. So it would take 1 person 300 hours to handle this much spam. At a rate of $10/hour, this guy wastes $3000 of people's money for every $100 he makes. And he's providing a service? Parasite or leech is mor like it.
But it gets better. If he only makes 1 penny for every 1000 emails, that means we don't need a tax of anything approaching 1 cent per email. It could be 1 cent for every 100 emails, and spammers would no longer find it economically feasible. Of course, the infrastructure of the net has to change to allow this, but charging even $1 for a thousand emails would not bother legitmate email marketing messages (opt-in stuff), or regular folk. The solution to the SPAM problem is simple, as soon as the inherent trust in the system goes away.
It will happen as soon as a country without any satellites develops the ability to launch them and use them as weapons. Because if a space war ever starts, basically everything gets taken out. I'm sure the US is working on electromagnetic weapons and defenses, maybe even lasers? But, if someone comes up with a good kinectic satellite weapon, all bets are off.
Anyways, the coutries that could do something like this (US, Russia, China) will not, because they have too much too lose. Although the US uses satellites more extensively than anyone else, so we're probably at the greatest risk.
Yeah, but Challenger had nothing to do with it being a plane design instead of a capsule; it was a launch failure that was related to a problem with the solids. And shuttle's death toll is higher because the program was a mess pre-Challenger, and there are 7 on board instead of 1-3. Even Columbia was largely a launch problem, although little noticed until re-entry. Of course, if the TPS of the capsule/ shuttle is not exposed at lift-off, then it can't be damaged.
And yeah, capsules are probably safer, although less versatile. Doesn't mean the approach of a space place should be abandoned. It has a lot of advantages. And note Soyuz is not perfect, as have been 2 re-entry failures, out of about 200, although that number may be off. But it's a similar rate compared to the shuttle re-entry experience.
It's actually a clever piece of work. Basically, software has to make calculations in order to provide a "soft" entry, 5 Gs approximately. If there is an error, the module goes into a ballistic entry mode, and it is more like 7-8 Gs, rougher but survivable.
On (nearly) every manned spacecraft ever flown, every system has a hot-backup that kicks in if the first one fails. The exceptions are systems for which it is basically impractical to have a backup-- can't really have redundant heat shields, as the weight is too much. But for electronics and software, this is standard. This story would have gone practically unnoticed if Soyuz had notified Star City that they were doing a "ballistic" entry, in which case they would have been located much sooner.
This landing showed that the Soyuz has a robust design; if Endeavour enters the atmosphere at the wrong angle, could it recover? What if the flight landing computer failed? NASA has a lot of these things covered; for many problems it is probably more robust than Soyuz, for others it is less robust. Soyuz has the advantage of much more flight experience; I doubt that it's a coincidence that this anomaly happened on a flight with a newly upgraded Soyuz.
Private enterprise does play a large role in the US space program. Iridium, DirecTV, Globalstar, Quickbird, etc are commercial satellites/ satellite constellations launched by american space program (though DirecTV may may launched abroad, not sure). Boeing and Lockheed run their own launch businesses, launching these satellites and others, including those from Eutelsat, etc.
In short, there is plenty of private industry involved in the US space program. The government (Air Force) has helped pay for the development of the launch vehicles, but they certainly don't pay for the launches.
Oh, I've read the SpaceDaily series, and he had the most detailed look at the investigation that I've seen, and I've seen lots of them. LA Times has had really good coverage too. But the Space Daily guy has an agenda, not that he tries to hide it; he doesn't try to present opinion as fact, but one could read his opinion as fact if one is not careful. Spaceflight Now! has extensive, uninspired coverage, and Space.com seems more interested in unmanned space (SETI, Mars rovers, Hubble).
Complex systems fail in complex ways, and that's what happened here. NASA couldn't establish margins for foam impacts, so since there were no major problems, they got comfortable with it. If NASA had examined all the possibilities of foam coming off, what it could hit, etc., they may have given the issue the attention it deserved.
I think from day one the TPS and the Solids were the two systems that had the greatest potential for causing catastrophic failure, b/c there is no fail safe. Those systems should therefore be better understood than everything else, and better margins should be established. But the STS is the most succesful launch vehicle the US has ever designed, much better than Titan, Atlas or even Delta II. Post challenger, it has flown about 90 times succesfully, which is a good record. It should be better.
Post-Challenger, NASA didn't just fix the immediate problem, they re-examined the whole program. The same thing will happen now. My guess is they'll get 90% of the way there, and start flying to ISS again, and after another 2 years they'll do the last 10% and get back to Hubble, etc. At that point, hopefully the Shuttle will have gone from 95% reliable to 99% reliable to 99.9% reliable, and maybe they'll decide they can improve on the basic design, greatly improve the electronics and build a few more. Or scrap the shuttle altogether, or build a radically new shuttle. But those decisions shouldn't be made until the current shuttles are fixed.
No doubt, I was just pointing out that there' more to it than just comparing the size of the respective agency's budgets.
That's interesting. But it's not true. The NASA budget is $15 billion/ year. This includes things that have nothing to do with the space program per se, such as ground based telescopes, outreach, educational grants, etc. The budges for the manned space program is about $4 billion, IIRC. The unmanned NASA program is probably less than $1 billion, for things like Mars Rovers, SIRTF, etc.
However, the US space budget is much higher. The Air Force runs a very large space program, launcing a half-dozen satellites a year, many costing $1 billion +. A GPS satellite is a bargain at $50 million, double that for launch costs on a Delta II. NRO satellites are bigger, more expensive and generally launch on Titans (soon Atlas V and Delta IV). I bet the military space program has a bigger budget than NASA's space program, yet no one complains about those costs! The military program has obviously done better than NASA recently, but they've had their share of failures, too. Initially, all US satellites were going to launch on the shuttle, but that changed after Challenger.
(Addressing other posts) The marginal cost of a shuttle flight is nowhere near half a billion dollars. Those numbers always encompass total program costs, including development and engineering, which are a sunk cost. OTOH, each shuttle has a finite lifespan and definite maintenance costs, so the real cost is more than $40 million/ flight, but not $400 million.
Anyone else follow this story as it was breaking last night? I flipped on Google news, and the headlines were "Soyuz returns to earth," and then I went to Spaceflight Now! to read the details, and I saw that the Soyuz had not been located, and radio contact was not established after landing, Boy, did my heart sink! I turned on CNN, and a few minutes later they reported that Soyuz had been found.Phew!
As to the whole Shuttle vs. Soyuz thing, they have different purposes. Shuttle (post Challenger) is a very reliable vehicle, and its recent failure is unfortunate, but by no means invalidates the approach. A lack of imagination probably contributed to this; things which were not possible 20-30 years ago were not considered now even though they became available (e.g., high rez photography of space objects). Of course, ignoring the problem of the foam hitting the shuttle was not very smart; the Shuttle should probably have an outside agency come in every 5 years and do a top-to-bottom type review, and some of these problems would go away.
It's a shame that more shuttles aren't built due to lack of funds; the basic design is sound, most of the development is done, and the cost for one is probably comparable to a B2, and is more important to our national security. Maybe the Air Force will say as much, devote some of their funds to a Shuttle 2.0 (Columbia is 1.0, Challenger and Atlantis 1.1, and Endeavour is 1.2). Same basic design, improve the materials, electronics and apply lessons learned. But it probably won't happen; hopefully Delta IV and Atlas V heavy prove reliable enough to launch the Orbital Space Plane and reduce our reliance on the Shuttle and Soyuz.
I think this may have been overlooked so far. A lot of people I know (e.g, me) have a Mac at home and a PC at work. So I can't share my iTunes collection from my home Mac with my PC at work. However, if they make iTunes for PCs, then I will be able! Plus, browse for tunes when on a non-Mac, and buy them too. I think iTunes for Windows is a big plus for those of use with one foot in the Mac world, and the other foot in the PC world.
Not as good as you think. I'm an engineer. :)
Their sample size is plenty big enough; they usually survey less than 1000 for opinion polls.
The question of whether they are valid is a different issue. If it's a random survey of all their messages, then that's what they are measuring, But that is probably not representative of all the spam. For example, maybe only a certain class of users (read: geeks) forwards the spam to the FTC. Or maybe people only forward the most egregious examples of spam. Or maybe the FTC sample is from one day's use, and they got lots of duplicates.
Fact is, 1000 is a large enough sample size, whether it's valid depends wholly on the validity of the sample pool
This doesn't bother me at all; it just brings the internet to the same level as the telephone system. As long as they need a court-order to tap it (in the US), I think this is a fine idea.
Yeah, someone else could break in, too. Someone else could tape your phone as well. As long as there's a judge who has to sign off on it, I'm fine with this; getting ridding of the bad aspects the Patriot Act and DMCA should be the priority, then we won't need the paranoia over obvious solutions like the one Cisco has put forward.
Yeah, I think the NYTimes would want to get paid before they let Slashdot host their content. My guess is, the NY Times can handle the load.
Sorry, I mis-typed. I meant to say that there aren't other software projects called Firebird, or at least popular ones. I figured there'd be a bunch, but there aren't.
As for not getting a trademark, well, that's the way it goes. Open source still lives in the world controlled by governments, not in a world controlled by those willing to resort to DoS attacks in the name of justice. For that, I'm grateful.
Well, sounds like someone might actually build a spacecraft. Scaled Composites has designed a sub-orbital spacecraft launched from the belly of the plane. It is in testing now. They're trying to win the $10 million X-prize, by builing a re-usable spacecraft that can send three people to space (100km) and return them safely. Looks like a neat design, and these guys are for real. Passengers would have a 5-minute micro-gravity environment during the flight. Sounds really cool. Space.com has an excellent write-up.
In other news, the Columbia investigation continues, and Space Daily has a real good (but long) write-up.
But NASA soldiers on. They have 2 Mars missions scheduled for this summer, plus the launch of SIRTF (infra-red telescope), which was recently delayed. Check out Spaceflight Now for details, and the best space coverage, in general.
Oh hell, almost missed this one. Apparently, the founder of PayPal is trying to get into the "microsatellite" launch business, although 1000 pounds is a bit bigger than micro. The company, SpaceX, is based in El Segundo. But, I think these guys are biting off more than they can chew, essentially trying to compete with Boeing, Lockheed, and everyone else. I think Scaled Composites is for real, though; they might pull it off.
Well, it doesn't look like there are other software projects titled "Pheonix." Did you guys ever get a trademark? Right now, I'm assuming no. That would have gone a long way, b/c AOL legal would have found out about it. Which is why things like trademark exist. Because if you did trademark it, AOL never would have approved the name.
The reason the Trademark office exists is to avoid situations like this. But failing to secure the trademark, you made it inevitable that eventually, someone would use the name.
The immature reaction only hurt the cause, since Mozilla took reasonable measures to check for usage. Their resposibility went only as far as checking trademark. To respond like your community is uncalled for, since Mozilla made good-faith efforts to choose a new name. The fact that they missed you has mostly to do w/ the fact that you didn't trademark it.
Fair enough, but here's the problem. The voice-mail box owner (nee: victim) never accepted the charges. The only reason collect-calls can exist is that they rely on the callee (is that a word) to explicitly accept the charges. It seems to me that the flaw is AT&T's, as they do NOT have a system which reliably determines whether the person accepts the charges.
Maybe the box-owners whould secure their systems better, but the basic flaw in the system is that AT&T cannot determine whether a person really accepts the charges. AT&T could solve this in oh-so-many ways (use operators, choose a different script, ask the person to repeat a random phrase, etc.) that would cost AT&T very little money... but, of course, AT&T would lose this business!
Here's my bet for what AT&T does, once sufficient uproar ensues: they'll plug their security holes, and they'll extend a one-time credit as a "courtesy" to their customers. They'll book this as an expense, and keep the bogus calls as revenue, this way they'll show top-line growth! A year later, they'll decide to re-characterize that income to show it as a one-time expense, so it won't hurt their earnings comparisons going forward.
My advice to the consumers: don't pay the bill. Write a letter and have your lawyer, stating why you will not pay the bill. There is no legal reason why the victim should be obliged to pay. The biggest joke is AT&T offering a 30% "discount," when there gross margins are probably in excess of 90% for these collect calls.
Don't pay the bill. Call a lawyer, write your congressman, and tell AT&T you WILL NOT pay, and ignore the collection agency. They have no right to engage in a shakedown like this; AT&T is reaping huge profits from the scam victims. This scam costs AT&T almost no money, yet they are reaping giant rewards. Seems like AT&T is the one running the scam.
1) Some catalogs weigh MUCH more than 4 ounces, such as Ikea
...; it's cheaper to send 150 @$0.248 than 149 @ $0.268. It costs more to send 151, even more to send 152, etc. Trust me, the catalog companies are aware of this. I'm sure they do crazy things like sending double copies to people if it puts them over the line. But the idea that, on average, sending an additional piece of mail saves them money makes no sense. Only in the rarest of cases (it's the 150th piece, and the manager was too stupid to send Ms. Jones a second copy) would this one additional catalog save on mailing costs (to say nothing of printing costs).
2) Yeah, it's cheaper to send 150@$0.248 than 140 at $0.268. It's more expensive to send 141 @ $0.268 than 140, even more to send 142, even more to send 143
An ability to perform simple math does not demonstrate any ability to understand difficult math concepts. See, simple math is realizing that sending 150 pieces costs less than sending 149. The important part, which you've ignored, is this: catalogs cost money to print & mail; only the rare piece of mail puts you over the limit to lower the rate; the person sending the catalogs can also perform simple math; even if they can't perform simple math, on average, that additional piece of mail will cost between $0.248 and $0.268.
But it's a good straw man argument, so you might as well stick with it.
Um, fractions of a cent to send a catalog? Cheaping than sending a letter? Is that for real? Go to a store and find the cheapest catalog-sized book. Bet it costs about $6, figure $3 cost to the retailer, so the actual printing process is probably on the order of a dollar or two.
As far as the cost of sending it, it is NOT cheaper to send a catalog than it is to send a letter. It costs per ounce, and for that, the catalog companies are required to do more work for less service. If there is too much mail, they'll hold the catalog for a later date. Not many catalogs in the mail in the 1-2 weeks before x-mas for a good reason. They're all pre-sorted, etc.
I don't know how much it actually costs to send a catlog, but you clearly have no clue. The cost to send the catalog for may be 1/20 or 1/100 the cost per page than to send & print a letter, but it's more expensive to send a whole catalog than it is to send a letter. And trying to argue that one particular piece of junk mail you've subscribed someone to will lower their cost shows a fundamental mis-understanding of math concepts. There is exactly ONE letter that will lower the rate; all the other adds to the cost. So no, by lying and subscribing to a random magazine or catalog for someone you don't like, you aren't saving that magazin/ catalog company any money.
And it's not cheap to send a letter. Companies now deduct $2 or more from bills if you choose all-electronic. The short of it is, by requesting hundreds of catalogs for someone who doesn't want them, you're costing each one of those companies a few bucks. If 1000 people do this, it gets to be a real cost. If a million people do this, you've done real harm to the economy and the environment.
I occasionally read a NewsFactor article by accident. They define silly. They are usually speculation couched as fact, and prove little except that if you pay Yahoo! enough, they will carry your stories on their news site.
Charles Lindberg was a Nazi & fascist sympathizer; anything he reported back from Germany was either consiously or subconsiously tainted by that. I'm sure once the US entered the war he patriotically backed the U.S.
BUt Charles Lindberg was a Nazi sympathizer. His comments could be easily dismissed from the day he made them.