The mark of the beast isn't about RFID specifically, but about the subjugation of men and rebellion against God.
I like this point. Think about it this way: one of the potentials for RFID technology is a way to allow people to charge/pay for things. Instead of swiping a card, they just wave their finger/hand in front of the reader much like people wave their Exxon Mobile speedpass to pay for gas or the toll road (I think Chase and perhaps other banks are using a similar technology already in their credit cards).
Think about it--why should I carry 8 or 9 credit cards around with me (not to mention all of these grocery store/book store "membership" cards so they don't fleece me for normal purchases) if I could have a single chip that did that for me (I could just push a button for which card to use)? Then, I don't have to worry about the things being stolen, either!
What I find most interesting about this is that it not only puts a "mark" on people, but it also ties in nicely with one of the enemey's best weapons--materialism. Now, we rebel against God and convert to worshipping money...
But, then again, I'm just an unthinking/ignorant religious freak, so obviously I'm completely wrong and you shouldn't even be wasting your time reading this, let alone replying to it.
The LDD tool is pretty cool, but I wish it would allow you to print build instructions like those that come with other LEGO kits. It would also be nice if you could modify the build instructions--currently, it seems that the build instructions are created according to how the model was built. If you move a part around late in the design, it keeps the original time the part was added, which may mask parts that were placed in their final position before the piece was moved.
However, NASA tried to shoehorn most space transportation needs into ONE VEHICLE.
I think it's incorrect to say that NASA was the only organization responsible for the requirements for and eventual design of the shuttle--the US Air Force played a significant role in defining what the shuttle should be able to do, therefore driving many design decisions. The Air Force simply realized early on that the shuttle wasn't a feasible solution for them, especially given the fall of communist Russia. They left NASA hanging on to the (now horribly disfigured and) only remaining US manned space vehicle.
The article is kinda skimpy on details for those of us who are visual-type people, so here is a link to an image comparing a PCMCIA card to the two ExpressCard forms.
It's been some time (~5 years for me), but I can recall people at my alma mater begging us to develop applications for and just generally load the heck out of our I2 bandwidth. This was in a presentation to the student staff of the university computer labs and help desk. Maybe that was before they had a real (research) use for all that bandwidth, I dunno...
I bet the budget hit won't be significant --at least not due to engineering infrastructure. As an interplanetary mission (with some tricky orbital mechanics to boot), things have already been very thoroughly documented to mitigate the risk of losing knowledge about the system as time progresses. Engineering staff will (still) be busy in the first month or two following launch, then will move off onto other projects. Thus, a boom or a bust in the industry will have little to no effect on the engineering costs associated with this slip.
There's simply not enough work to keep the engineers busy while the bird flys to Mercury--automated data processing as well as monitoring by Operatins staff will take over the job of monitoring health and safety. If problems occur, then the engineers are brought back only long enough to deal with the problems. This has doubtlessly been the plan all along.
Where the cost really goes up, though, is in Mission Operations. Antenna time, operations staff, etc will eat some of the budget. I bet that's fairly trivial, though, compared to your scenario of a 'marching army'. I wonder how MESSENGER's doing in terms of budget reserves (these 'little' dollar signs NASA forces you to hedge)...
It saddens me greatly that they failed to consider the
Shakespeare Programming Language
(/. story
here
)
worthy of inclusion in their performance tests. *sniff*
Granted, since SPL eventually becomes C, the C scores would apply, but still...
First, note that spacecraft (S/C) are rotated from vertical to horizontal positions very very slowly For smaller S/C, hand-cranked carts are used, but from the pictures, I think this one used a motor, which may have taken longer to "adjust" when the techs noted the problem (the S/C slipping from the plate before the fall).
In the photo you see on the linked page, the turn-over cart is the large white structure located on the far right of the picture. The large ring is the base where the 24 missing bolts should have been. This interfaces with (most likely, I'm guessing here) the S/C launch vehicle adapter ring, which is probably the slightly flared chrome-colored cylinder at the base of the S/C (again, on the right of the picture).
You can't tell from the picture posted, but I've seen pictures that show the ring is (only) roughly 5-10 degrees from horizontal. The ring itself, when horizontal is about 3 feet above the floor. Doubtless, what happened is that, as the plate (and therefore S/C) was rotated, the S/C started to slip off of the plate, striking the turn-over cart and then rotating over into its fatal dive.
This is similar to how other S/C are handled, at least in my experience. It is also interesting to note that some physical S/C moves are videotaped and have significant quality assurance checkoffs. This may be limited to lifts (think crane), and vibration tests, and not "simple" turn-over maneuvers, and I'd bet this isn't the first time this turn-over cart was used, nor the first time this S/C was turned. I wonder if there are videos floating around? I'd sure as heck find it interesting to see the turn-over procedure and see where they checked off the step saying "check bolts".
This reminds me of a decent book I read about a year ago, called
To Engineer is Human
. It discusses the role engineering failures play in our many engineering successes.
Interesting read, though the author tends to drone on and on a bit. He makes some great points, though, not the lest of which is that (gasp!) engineers are not perfect, and thus, failures will happen. And guess what--most of the time, we learn from those failures!
I respectfully disagree. Sure, it's dangerous, but how many of the Mars probes that we've lost would've been had we had (wo)men on them? Sure, they'd cost more and take longer to develop, but I bed we'd learn a whole lot more in the process.
This is one of my favorite quotes (and email sigs), from one in the biz (granted, some time ago, but I think the quote is no less relevant now than back then...and will be for some time).
"Man is the best computer we can put aboard
a spacecraft... and the only one that can
be mass produced with unskilled labor."
--Wernher von Braun
That is true, but are you really willing to trust M$ with installing new software onto your machine? What if _their_ machine is the one that's been infected/cracked?
Sure, the automatic notification is great, but that automatic install feature starts to look really really bad two hours after all x-hundred of your corporate machines have been turned into porn spammers by a malicious individual/group, and M$ shuts down the auto-update server. Oops.
But, then, we all know how secure M$ is--we don't have to worry about thier machines being cracked/infected!
Open Source Version of Ximian Connector?
on
Opengroupware
·
· Score: 1
So, I'm a bit confused.
Is this going to be an application that does the same job as Ximian Connector?
If so, I wonder what Ximian thinks about that, as it seems to me that Connector is Ximian's primary product (and possibly source of revenue).
This is really a neat project. Makes me think of all the times when our managers are breathing fire down our necks and demanding to know what we've been doing all the time.
Take this project, make it generic for any (C, for now, then extending to other languages) code, add in CVS/RCS/[insert your CM tool here] hooks, then slap a 20-30 MB MPEG on the boss' desktop when he goes off.::)
Seriously, though, I think this could be a useful tool in evaluating complexity (risk) in a large project or just for managment of the software development in general. "Geez--looks like this corner is really dynamic. What's going on there?" or "Wow. This group over here hasn't been touched in ages. Are we falling behind here?" The CM tool hooks are the most blazingly obvious needs in my mind for such a project to work--it's the best way to get a time history of the development.
Yes, there is a "spaceport" in Oklahoma. Kinda like the Quartz Mountains (near Lawton, OK) are "mountains".
Don't get me wrong--I'm an Okie and am glad to see that my home state is trying to do this. I work in this field, and would like nothing better than to work back at home (my hometown and most of my family are not far from Burns Flat--in fact, I have several good friends who still live there), but the reality is that Oklahoma will never be able to provide the things that are required to establish and support a true, working spaceport (assuming, of course, that such a thing ever does really come into existance). Let me elaborate:
1) A (commercaial) spaceport requires political and financial support from the state.
Oklahoma is going a long way to do this, with the creation of a state Authority and the passage of certain tax relief measures, but there is no way that the (relatively) tiny state of Oklahoma can compete with other states that have equally feasible spaceport sites. Rember, equally feasible is very subjective when it comes to political and financial clout.
2) A spaceport requires a strong source of technically skilled labor and the means of supporting said labor.
Oklahoma and especially the Burns Flat region has plenty of skilled labor, although with the attrition of families from the area since the closure of the Clinton-Sherman Airbase has and continues to seriously cut into this resource. However, the kind of skilled labor that Oklahoma has is not unique to Oklahoma. Further, Oklahoma's skilled labor source does not include one of the most important--Aerospace Engineers. In fact, there is only one state university that even has an Aerospace Engineering school--and they would have closed that down a couple of years ago without direct and personal invervention from the university president. Yet further, the state of Oklahoma and Western Oklahoma cannot support the needs of a highly technical work force. For example, these people (in general) require certain forms of entertainment that are simply not availble in the region. Let me put it this way: given a choice and with no personal bias (no family or emotional ties, for example), would people with these skills rather live in the middle of laid-back westerna Oklahoma, far from the big theaters, fancy restaurants, and amusement parks (not to mention the large bookstores--my own personal addiction) of other competative areas (say, in the region near Dallas). And don't forget major airports (hint: OKC is not one)!
I'm pretty sure I could go on and on, but I think this is enough to show that for Oklahoma to be a viable option for a company looking to create a "spaceport", the state and region have a long way to go. Again, I would LOVE for that to happen--I could work at Burns Flat and live in the farm house my grandparents built only 15 minutes from there. But, IMHO, it's just not feasible.
Personally, and I know I'll probably get flamed to hell and back, I use Microsoft Money and find it workes quite well for managing my many investments, mortgage, 401K, and my checking account. I've never used Quicken, but I bet the two are comparable in features if not in performance or asthetics. I also have never tried wine (sounds like a lot of hassle, plus I dual-boot with Win2K), and thus have never tried Money under wine.
When I first tried GnuCash, I found it was able to do the majority of the things I do in Money, though not necessarially quite as user-friendly. Two major things that I found I was unable to do in GnuCash, however, were internet updates for my various investments (Mutual Funds, 401K, etc). I also tend to use a lot of the reports and graphing features in Money. GnuCash's capabilities in this respect were limited.
One thing that Money doesn't do, though, which I find to be a pain and would like GnuCash to be able to do is updating the prices (value) of US Savings Bonds using interest rate info from the 'Net.
And, just because I'm just in a flame-fishing mood today, I have to say that I tend to be very resistant to moving to a new program in general. Moving to a new program and losing any functionality (that I use at all) is not going to happen. Moving to a new program whose asthetics are (IMHO) much less pleasing and whose functionality is less is definitely not going to happen. UNLESS, that is, the new program has some additional functionality which weighs in more heavily, of course.
Launching from sea also has the (very attractive) benefit of being able to place a satellite into a low-inclination orbit without using any on-board systems (i.e. fuel on the spacecraft). With other launch platforms (i.e. land-based launch sites, the lowest possible inclination orbit which can be maintained from that site is equal to the launch site latitude. With a mobile platform, you can achieve a wide variety of inclinations with a single launch setup.
Thus, though the spacecraft will most likely still have to have some form of attitude control system (thrusters, torque rods, etc), added weight (and therefore cost) and complexity won't be wasted just to get the spacecraft to a lower-inclination orbit. This maneuver, by the way is very expensive in terms of how much fuel you have to spend for each degree of inclination change.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought the Pegasus rocket by Orbital Sciences Corporation was the first privately funded launch vehicle? Or does corporate money not count?
I like this point. Think about it this way: one of the potentials for RFID technology is a way to allow people to charge/pay for things. Instead of swiping a card, they just wave their finger/hand in front of the reader much like people wave their Exxon Mobile speedpass to pay for gas or the toll road (I think Chase and perhaps other banks are using a similar technology already in their credit cards).
Think about it--why should I carry 8 or 9 credit cards around with me (not to mention all of these grocery store/book store "membership" cards so they don't fleece me for normal purchases) if I could have a single chip that did that for me (I could just push a button for which card to use)? Then, I don't have to worry about the things being stolen, either!
What I find most interesting about this is that it not only puts a "mark" on people, but it also ties in nicely with one of the enemey's best weapons--materialism. Now, we rebel against God and convert to worshipping money...
But, then again, I'm just an unthinking/ignorant religious freak, so obviously I'm completely wrong and you shouldn't even be wasting your time reading this, let alone replying to it.
I found the link on a similar story on Geek.com:
_ tix_files
http://brickwiki.zapto.org/index.php/Category:LDD
The LDD tool is pretty cool, but I wish it would allow you to print build instructions like those that come with other LEGO kits. It would also be nice if you could modify the build instructions--currently, it seems that the build instructions are created according to how the model was built. If you move a part around late in the design, it keeps the original time the part was added, which may mask parts that were placed in their final position before the piece was moved.
Still, all in all, a fun product!
I think it's incorrect to say that NASA was the only organization responsible for the requirements for and eventual design of the shuttle--the US Air Force played a significant role in defining what the shuttle should be able to do, therefore driving many design decisions. The Air Force simply realized early on that the shuttle wasn't a feasible solution for them, especially given the fall of communist Russia. They left NASA hanging on to the (now horribly disfigured and) only remaining US manned space vehicle.
The article is kinda skimpy on details for those of us who are visual-type people, so here is a link to an image comparing a PCMCIA card to the two ExpressCard forms.
Enjoy!
It's been some time (~5 years for me), but I can recall people at my alma mater begging us to develop applications for and just generally load the heck out of our I2 bandwidth. This was in a presentation to the student staff of the university computer labs and help desk. Maybe that was before they had a real (research) use for all that bandwidth, I dunno...
I bet the budget hit won't be significant --at least not due to engineering infrastructure. As an interplanetary mission (with some tricky orbital mechanics to boot), things have already been very thoroughly documented to mitigate the risk of losing knowledge about the system as time progresses. Engineering staff will (still) be busy in the first month or two following launch, then will move off onto other projects. Thus, a boom or a bust in the industry will have little to no effect on the engineering costs associated with this slip.
There's simply not enough work to keep the engineers busy while the bird flys to Mercury--automated data processing as well as monitoring by Operatins staff will take over the job of monitoring health and safety. If problems occur, then the engineers are brought back only long enough to deal with the problems. This has doubtlessly been the plan all along.
Where the cost really goes up, though, is in Mission Operations. Antenna time, operations staff, etc will eat some of the budget. I bet that's fairly trivial, though, compared to your scenario of a 'marching army'. I wonder how MESSENGER's doing in terms of budget reserves (these 'little' dollar signs NASA forces you to hedge)...
It saddens me greatly that they failed to consider the Shakespeare Programming Language (/. story here ) worthy of inclusion in their performance tests. *sniff*
Granted, since SPL eventually becomes C, the C scores would apply, but still...
I'll give it a go.
First, note that spacecraft (S/C) are rotated from vertical to horizontal positions very very slowly For smaller S/C, hand-cranked carts are used, but from the pictures, I think this one used a motor, which may have taken longer to "adjust" when the techs noted the problem (the S/C slipping from the plate before the fall).
In the photo you see on the linked page, the turn-over cart is the large white structure located on the far right of the picture. The large ring is the base where the 24 missing bolts should have been. This interfaces with (most likely, I'm guessing here) the S/C launch vehicle adapter ring, which is probably the slightly flared chrome-colored cylinder at the base of the S/C (again, on the right of the picture).
You can't tell from the picture posted, but I've seen pictures that show the ring is (only) roughly 5-10 degrees from horizontal. The ring itself, when horizontal is about 3 feet above the floor. Doubtless, what happened is that, as the plate (and therefore S/C) was rotated, the S/C started to slip off of the plate, striking the turn-over cart and then rotating over into its fatal dive.
This is similar to how other S/C are handled, at least in my experience. It is also interesting to note that some physical S/C moves are videotaped and have significant quality assurance checkoffs. This may be limited to lifts (think crane), and vibration tests, and not "simple" turn-over maneuvers, and I'd bet this isn't the first time this turn-over cart was used, nor the first time this S/C was turned. I wonder if there are videos floating around? I'd sure as heck find it interesting to see the turn-over procedure and see where they checked off the step saying "check bolts".
This reminds me of a decent book I read about a year ago, called To Engineer is Human . It discusses the role engineering failures play in our many engineering successes.
Interesting read, though the author tends to drone on and on a bit. He makes some great points, though, not the lest of which is that (gasp!) engineers are not perfect, and thus, failures will happen. And guess what--most of the time, we learn from those failures!
If they could make a orbital version of 'Survivor' or 'Big Brother' a weekly episode it might pay for itself.
Dude! That's hilarious! I think you're on to something there! Quick, get FOX on the line...
I wonder how long it will take until we get to that (sad) state of affairs (pun intended)?
I respectfully disagree. Sure, it's dangerous, but how many of the Mars probes that we've lost would've been had we had (wo)men on them? Sure, they'd cost more and take longer to develop, but I bed we'd learn a whole lot more in the process.
This is one of my favorite quotes (and email sigs), from one in the biz (granted, some time ago, but I think the quote is no less relevant now than back then...and will be for some time).
"Man is the best computer we can put aboard
a spacecraft... and the only one that can
be mass produced with unskilled labor."
--Wernher von Braun
That is true, but are you really willing to trust M$ with installing new software onto your machine? What if _their_ machine is the one that's been infected/cracked?
Sure, the automatic notification is great, but that automatic install feature starts to look really really bad two hours after all x-hundred of your corporate machines have been turned into porn spammers by a malicious individual/group, and M$ shuts down the auto-update server. Oops.
But, then, we all know how secure M$ is--we don't have to worry about thier machines being cracked/infected!
So, I'm a bit confused.
Is this going to be an application that does the same job as Ximian Connector?
If so, I wonder what Ximian thinks about that, as it seems to me that Connector is Ximian's primary product (and possibly source of revenue).
This is really a neat project. Makes me think of all the times when our managers are breathing fire down our necks and demanding to know what we've been doing all the time.
::)
Take this project, make it generic for any (C, for now, then extending to other languages) code, add in CVS/RCS/[insert your CM tool here] hooks, then slap a 20-30 MB MPEG on the boss' desktop when he goes off.
Seriously, though, I think this could be a useful tool in evaluating complexity (risk) in a large project or just for managment of the software development in general. "Geez--looks like this corner is really dynamic. What's going on there?" or "Wow. This group over here hasn't been touched in ages. Are we falling behind here?" The CM tool hooks are the most blazingly obvious needs in my mind for such a project to work--it's the best way to get a time history of the development.
Yes, there is a "spaceport" in Oklahoma. Kinda like the Quartz Mountains (near Lawton, OK) are "mountains".
Don't get me wrong--I'm an Okie and am glad to see that my home state is trying to do this. I work in this field, and would like nothing better than to work back at home (my hometown and most of my family are not far from Burns Flat--in fact, I have several good friends who still live there), but the reality is that Oklahoma will never be able to provide the things that are required to establish and support a true, working spaceport (assuming, of course, that such a thing ever does really come into existance). Let me elaborate:
1) A (commercaial) spaceport requires political and financial support from the state.
Oklahoma is going a long way to do this, with the creation of a state Authority and the passage of certain tax relief measures, but there is no way that the (relatively) tiny state of Oklahoma can compete with other states that have equally feasible spaceport sites. Rember, equally feasible is very subjective when it comes to political and financial clout.
2) A spaceport requires a strong source of technically skilled labor and the means of supporting said labor.
Oklahoma and especially the Burns Flat region has plenty of skilled labor, although with the attrition of families from the area since the closure of the Clinton-Sherman Airbase has and continues to seriously cut into this resource. However, the kind of skilled labor that Oklahoma has is not unique to Oklahoma. Further, Oklahoma's skilled labor source does not include one of the most important--Aerospace Engineers. In fact, there is only one state university that even has an Aerospace Engineering school--and they would have closed that down a couple of years ago without direct and personal invervention from the university president. Yet further, the state of Oklahoma and Western Oklahoma cannot support the needs of a highly technical work force. For example, these people (in general) require certain forms of entertainment that are simply not availble in the region. Let me put it this way: given a choice and with no personal bias (no family or emotional ties, for example), would people with these skills rather live in the middle of laid-back westerna Oklahoma, far from the big theaters, fancy restaurants, and amusement parks (not to mention the large bookstores--my own personal addiction) of other competative areas (say, in the region near Dallas). And don't forget major airports (hint: OKC is not one)!
I'm pretty sure I could go on and on, but I think this is enough to show that for Oklahoma to be a viable option for a company looking to create a "spaceport", the state and region have a long way to go. Again, I would LOVE for that to happen--I could work at Burns Flat and live in the farm house my grandparents built only 15 minutes from there. But, IMHO, it's just not feasible.
Personally, and I know I'll probably get flamed to hell and back, I use Microsoft Money and find it workes quite well for managing my many investments, mortgage, 401K, and my checking account. I've never used Quicken, but I bet the two are comparable in features if not in performance or asthetics. I also have never tried wine (sounds like a lot of hassle, plus I dual-boot with Win2K), and thus have never tried Money under wine.
When I first tried GnuCash, I found it was able to do the majority of the things I do in Money, though not necessarially quite as user-friendly. Two major things that I found I was unable to do in GnuCash, however, were internet updates for my various investments (Mutual Funds, 401K, etc). I also tend to use a lot of the reports and graphing features in Money. GnuCash's capabilities in this respect were limited.
One thing that Money doesn't do, though, which I find to be a pain and would like GnuCash to be able to do is updating the prices (value) of US Savings Bonds using interest rate info from the 'Net.
And, just because I'm just in a flame-fishing mood today, I have to say that I tend to be very resistant to moving to a new program in general. Moving to a new program and losing any functionality (that I use at all) is not going to happen. Moving to a new program whose asthetics are (IMHO) much less pleasing and whose functionality is less is definitely not going to happen. UNLESS, that is, the new program has some additional functionality which weighs in more heavily, of course.
Just my $0.02...
Umm...and how is this different from Linux?
Launching from sea also has the (very attractive) benefit of being able to place a satellite into a low-inclination orbit without using any on-board systems (i.e. fuel on the spacecraft). With other launch platforms (i.e. land-based launch sites, the lowest possible inclination orbit which can be maintained from that site is equal to the launch site latitude. With a mobile platform, you can achieve a wide variety of inclinations with a single launch setup.
Thus, though the spacecraft will most likely still have to have some form of attitude control system (thrusters, torque rods, etc), added weight (and therefore cost) and complexity won't be wasted just to get the spacecraft to a lower-inclination orbit. This maneuver, by the way is very expensive in terms of how much fuel you have to spend for each degree of inclination change.