> Slander is when you call somebody a cock-sucking shit-eater, and you have proof. Libel is when you call somebody a cock-sucking shit-eater, and you don't.
Thanks for proving their point, nitwit. Slander is spoken defamation, without proof. Libel is written defamation, without proof. You can't get into legal troubles for defaming someone using provable facts.
> Um, the line for "child porn," at least in The States, is drawn thusly: You can talk about it all you like. You just can't do it. You can draw it or make 3d art of it. But you can't take real pictures.
Incorrect. In the U.S., fictional accounts, descriptions, faked photos and even photos of adults made up to look underage are all illegal. So, no, you can't make 3d art of it. Cartoon depictions of child porn and written stories have sent people to prison.
OK, then let me throw you a different spin. If I write a story (a completely fictional story, that is) of someone going to the local kindergarten, grabbing a child, and gruesomely murdering that child, I haven't committed a crime. I can distribute that story on line, and the authorities will not come knocking.
Now, if I change that story only a bit, so that the character now commits a sexual act against the child, but does not murder the child, the mere posession of the story is a criminal offense. If I put the story on a back shelf and never tell anyone it's there, but somehow the authorities find out about it, I can be incarcerated for more than a decade.
Can you tell me why there's a punishment for a fictional depiction of child rape, but no punishment for a fictional depiction of child murder? Not so obvious any more, is it?
> Were I to have children, I wouldn't think twice about whether or not I'd want the streets they walked along to be monitored.
Until you found out that even police officers can be kidnappers, and that such a person would be a significantly greater threat. The fear that opponents have of these systems is that it makes abuse much easier, and safeguarding against abuse much harder. Nobody has anything to fear from the honest watchdogs, but they're not the ones that worry us.
> Here's where the bean counters get involved. A player-oriented decision would be to make a high-level expansion, realize that you will only sell it to half the playerbase, and make it a no-holds-barred high-level expansion. Instead, they try to add low-level features to market to the LCD so that the majority of the playerbase will buy it.
The problem is that, in the market that these games live in, the bean counters must be involved. SOE cannot afford to issue a major expansion that only caters to (and will only be purchased by) a fraction of their player base. While this makes it rather difficult to issue a proper expansion, it's economically required by the business model. Saying they should just pick a segment and cater to that segment would be suicidal.
That said, they have tried to release expansions targetted to certain segments, with stuff put in for the rest. Planes of Power was virtually all for high end characters, with one VERY important and game-changing low-end addition (the Plane of Knowledge, which virtually eliminated the market for porters and made spell acquisition much simpler). I take that as an example of a well done expansion, that targetted one group but didn't leave everyone else out in the cold, and people who were not of a sufficient level to enter the experience areas still went out and bought it for access to the PoK. Then came the Legacy of Ykesha, which was also meant to be a high end expansion with some low end content and benefits. I take this as an example of a badly done expansion, because the "try to please" reach was much broader in LoY than it was in PoP. Since the high end content wasn't high enough to draw people out of the Planes of Power zones, the low end zones were still too high for the weekend gamers, and extra bank space wasn't sufficient to drive people to buy it if they didn't also want the zone content, not many felt the need to buy it.
So, in short, I don't think that trying to please a broad segment of the gamer base is a bad idea, and in fact it's necessary to the survival of the game. When it's done well, it really works, and I disagree that it can only be done well by focusing on small portions of the player base.
> The Soviets stole Canadian software to control the operations of the pipeline. The Americans added a trojan horse to the software.
Not precisely true. The Americans sold technology to the Canadians, but wouldn't sell it to the Soviets. Soviet agents posed as Canadian defense contractors to get purchasing rights. The Americans knew they were doing it, and fed poisoned devices to those agents. The agents took the tech home to Russia and BOOM!
> Manny who bitch-gripe about the cost of a CD or renting a DVD are the same people who don't think twice about plunking down $2.50 - $3.50 for a cup of fancy coffee.
That's not relevant, because it's not the cost, it's the cost-to-value, which is very different. In the case of Flexplay, you could get the same value (a movie that you could only watch for a short time) for less money elsewhere, and the "don't have to return it" value wasn't worth the exstra cost to most people, so it died from the competition.
There's no way Columbia could have rendezvoused with the ISS. It didn't have the fuel to reach it. The better slim-to-none possibility would have been leaving them in orbit and sending up a REMO (resupply module) to give them supplies and possibly a wing repair kit, and battery power. It's still very unlikely they'd have been saved, but it's better than the absolute failure of trying to reach the ISS.
> Assuming that the valid-key-generating hash is not shipped as part of the product, why would hackers crack the hundred-gazillions hash of which some work rather than the tens-of-millions hash which the company used to generate actual valid keys?
Because the hash the company uses is the hundred-gazillions hash. See, it works on two levels. The company creates a key generator that can make a hundred gazillion keys. It runs it one hundred million times, and actually creates a hundred million keys out of the possible hundred gazillion. It then uses only those hundred million for valid keys. So, when the hacker breaks the hash, he gets a hundred gazillion key generator, and generates a key. However, if the hacker's one-in-hundred-gazillion key doesn't match one of the hundred million actual keys the comapny generated, then the company rejects it as a hacked key. That means that even if the hash is broken, someone has only a hundred-million per hundred-gazillion chance of generating a vaild key.
> I know that the best thing to do is to call a lawyer, but I find it quite unsettling to think that when I'm creating something and giving it away to the world for free, I would need to pay a price to protect my work?
You have to pay for locks on your doors as well. That's the price you pay, unless you don't want to prevent your work's misuse. Besides, if this is a big company, you could always tell them you don't want any money, but you do want them to cover the legal costs you incurred notifying them. Virtually every company will agree to that, if you don't want other money.
> IF YOU GIVE STUFF AWAY FOR FREE, AND IT'S GANKED, YOU HAVE NO RECOURSE.
Notwithstanding that this statement is patently false (pun intended), he didn't give it away. He licensed it for use without royalty, so long as the terms of the license are adhered to. If they're not adhering to the license agreement (the GPL), then they have no right to use the work, with or without royalty. So, he does indeed have legal recourse.
So shut up. And turn of caps lock while you're doing it.
> I don't advocate shooting people except as a last resort, but if I catch some sob breaking into my car, stealing something off my property, or otherwise violating my person or property, we'll get that fixed immediately one way or another. If the thief (or whatever) wants to back down and act right nobody has to be hurt. If not he may leave wearing more holes than he came with.
What about the grey areas? What happens if he doesn't back down, but fails to back down dangerously? Let me give you an example. You come out of the store to see a fellow leaning in the window of your car. You yell, and he stands up with your (briefcase/toolbox/laptop case) in his hand, and runs away at high speed (and let's assume that you can't give pursuit for whatever reason). Now what? If you shoot him, you can't possibly reasonably argue that he posed an imminent threat to your life or limb, and you've reduced it to killing someone for petty theft (and endangering life and property in your line of fire across the parking lot). See, the idea of "defending your property" is far too black-and-white for most people, and it's situations like this one that lead me to believe that the limitation on the use of deadly force is necessary because too many people seem to think that any level of force they can muster is reasonable for any situation they encounter. My example of shooting someone in traffic is hyperbole, but it also demonstrates an excessive response to a real-world situation.
> Yeah, god forbid people actually be able to protect their own property...Legal or not, I can assure you that anyone caught stealing anything from me would be shot on site. And while I may end up in jail (or not...IANAL) I would be in the right.
You would end up in jail, and you'd belong there. The death penalty for stealing? I'm sure you'd consider it fair when someone puts a bullet in your wife for cutting him off in traffic.
> You state that my proposed construction method would be much more expensive than the current ISS method. I would argue that the costs would me much more predictable and managable. Go look up the numbers for the ISS initial projected cost and the final cost. Compare where the project was supposed to be now (11 people living on board) and the surrent state of things (3 people on board, usually). Compared to the stated goals, ISS is a failure and a waste of money.
I am aware you argue that costs for a different design would be more predictable and manageable. The part that confuses me is why you think that. What difference would a change in vessel design have on unexpected costs? Are you to imply that all of the unexpected costs spring solely from inadequate design, and that your design will somehow be free of any inadequacies? Most of the problems with the ISS reaching stated goals have been political. I'm not sure how you come to the conclusion that a different blueprint would have fixed that.
> As for the sensors, I don't understand why you keep saying things like "...sensing units and pressure maintenance units are not tied together...". I never stated that these units are or should be tied together.
Um, then reconcile this to your statemnt in the same paragraph that "In my layout, the problems are taken care of in an automated fasion..." please. If they shouldn't be tied together, how does one automate the response of the pressure maintenance units to what happens in the sensor units?
> The redundant monitoring sensors should be separate and isolated from the control sensors, which should in turn be separate and isolated from the gas flow sensors and the tank pressure sensors.
All of these systems are separate and isolated at the present time.
> Your wriring seems to indicate you can only forsee two failure scenareos: slow insignificant leak, and catastrophic breach causing instant death. There are more scenareos between those two that the system you define can not handle in a manner that would preserve life and the mission.
Actually, there isn't much room for scenarios between the extremes here. There are two general conditions in a pressure hull: failure that's fast enough that humans can't realistically react to it, and failure that's slow enough that they can. The current system assumes that any failure that's severe enough that a human can't fix it in real time is going to be too fast for the pressure maintenance system to compensate for. If the vessel is leaking so fast that the crew can't move themselves to a safe spot and seal off, dumping the reserve tanks at full open won't be sufficient to save them. Therefore, automating the system introduces complexity that doesn't add any real degree of safety, and it was therefore left out. Also, remember that Mission Control on the ground handles much of this stuff, so in a dire emergency they could react to the breach as well.
> As for plate on frame not being very good for pressure vessels: that's essentially what the space station is right now. It's just more of a foil than a plate.
Incorrect. It's a pressure vessel, held to other pressure vessels by trusses and the joiner seals. Your design as you describe it is used in buildings on Earth, where there's very little pressure differential from the inside to the outside. A pressure vessel with skin is more like a submarine, where an inside "tank" is mounted inside a body frame, and panels are attached to the outside. The panels don't take pressure, just protect from impact. The fact that it's made from thin aluminum is because it's not efficient weight-wise to make it from anything heavier. A heavier pressure vessel skin doesn't add a significant amount of structural integrity over other designs.
> The "plates" in a more standardized construction would not have to be solid metal. We have these wonderful composite materials like carbon fiber, fiberglass
> If my house were going to be orbiting 300+ miles above the planet in negligible atmosphere, with millions of pieces of debris around it (some tracked, some not), each piece travelling at thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of miles per hour, with no way or instantly isolating broken compartments, no way ot instant escape, and no way for rescue/re-supply on anything shorter than a one week timetable, then yes; I would opt for a much smaller, much sturdier, much more monitorable contruction scheme with girder frames, thick walls, etc. While plate on frame contruction could be slower and more expensive to build, I think it is more reliable and stronger than the docked aluminum can approach they are using now.
Plate on frame isn't a very useful design for pressure vessels, but I'll assume you mean housing pressure vessels in a girder frame and shielding it with the plates. In that case, my comparison to your house applies. To make a shield capable of stopping a piece of debris large enough to disable the current station, you'd need to make it from steel and make it at least an inch thick. That would require the weight of the current station to increase by a factor of about twenty (and that's just for the skin; girder frames would add even more weight). Again, considering the change in cost would mostly be determined by the cost of transport, you've just made the station twenty times more expensive, in a political climate where it's getting tough to find funding for it as it is. Your design specification makes it very, very safe, but too expensive to do. A big, heavy duty station that never gets built isn't much use, just like making a house with three foot concrete walls that would cost over a million dollars wouldn't sell. As for risk, if you're not willing to accept more risk in a space station than in your house, then you're probably not cut out to be an astronaut.
> As for the whole pressurization dezign... simply flow rate sensors would keep track of the amount og gas stored in reserves, you could in fact use a system of three independent and monitorable sensors as I stated and it would be just as functional and problems would be more quickly and reliably isolated.
The system they use uses redundant pressure monitors, and is designed to throw different triggers if one sensor trips as opposed to multiple sensors. However, as I stated before, the pressure sensing units and pressure maintenance units are not tied together, because there are no situations where you'd want the pressure maintenance unit to change its behavior autonomously and not notify an operator or Mission Control. Since every change in that unit represents some sort of problem, it's designed to require human intervention to change it. In other words, it's always better to have the pressure fall off a few millibars than have the pressure maintenance unit change without a human's direct intervention, because only a problem of some kind will necessitate that change, and you want to be sure the humans know about the presence of a problem. This isn't like a fire suppression unit, where fast reaction time is essential. Any failure severe enough to prevent the occupants from triggering changes to the pressure maintenance unit (like a major hull breach) is going to be too severe for the system to handle anyway.
> Sun is white, and marsian dust clouds are transparent enough - they don't change the lign frequency, they just reflect a fraction of % of the light adding a VERY SMALL AMOUNT of red.
Atmospheric physics would tell you that it's subtracting the blue, not adding the red, but realistically, the part of this that I must question is your comment about Martian dust clouds being nearly transparent. Why on Earth (pun intended) would you say that when there are large segments of time where we can't see the ground from orbit (or from Earth) because of the dust clouds? The stuff flying around in the Martian atmosphere is not transparent. One of the Viking landers was blinded for the duration of a dust storm during its tenure, in fact.
> Plus in mountains I was in the middle of a big red smoke cloud from military signalling grenade. All our equipment was still in the original color, just a LITTLE BIT changed.
Wow, a military signalling grenade that produced a seven-mile-thick cloud? Just a little bit changed from ten feet of smoke would seem to extend to noticeably changed from ten miles of dust, no? Remember that the white sunlight has to pass through the entire atmosphere, bounce off the probe, and then run up to the camera. That's a very large volume of (what passes on Mars for) air. Wildfires on the Pacific coast of the U.S. were sufficient to turn the sky red in eastern Pennsylvania. I personally saw it, and the sky was indeed rust colored, rather similar to the sky in those photographs. More importantly, though, everything in my immediate vicinity took on a russet cast. Therefore I must conclude that you are still mistaken in thinking that those photos are improperly colored.
> My guess is that black and white takes less bandwidth and processing power.
Your guess is correct. The BW camera is a navigation camera (remember, this device is a rover) so it can transmit more frames per second because they're low-res, BW images. More frames means faster reaction to navigation hazards. The high-res color cameras are there for the "real" pictures.
> You theory of red-dust-in-the-air cannot explain why all equipment we see is in red? Don't tell me that it's all painted red in NASA specially for Mars.
Here's an experiment: put a white sheet of paper on a table. Turn on a red light. What color does the paper look? Does it turn whiter if you get closer to it?
If the atmosphere is reddish, all the light coming through it is reddish, and under reddish light, everything looks, well, reddish.
> For me all those pictures are a fake in terms of color.
Well, "for you" isn't the measurement they used, apparently.
> The report so far is, as you stated, that an alarm was raised because the sensors have shown a steady decrease in cabin pressure over a few days. Apparently the sensors that regulate the pressure don't see the pressure decrease, or the pressure would not be decreasing. (ie: if the regulators detected low pressure, they would compensate with more gas and the pressure would remain stable). If the monitoring sensors see a decrease and the regulating sensors don't, then there's a malfunction. Whether that malfunction is in the regulator or monitoring sensors must be determined. Either way ISS is not working well and someone needs to figure out what is wrong and why.
This is an incorrect understanding of the pressure system. When the monitoring sensors go out of safe range, they respond by reporting the fault to Mission Control, so that a human being can begin assessment. The pressure regulators run out reserves by a measured formula. The systems aren't tied together, and that's by design. Any pressure hull "sweats" a certain small amount of gas by its nature, and that decrease can be calculated and compensated by the regulation system. Any more than that rate is considered a leak, and the regulators are not supposed to compensate. There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, is there is a leak, Mission Control must be alerted to the leak. If the regulation system simply geared up to maintain pressure, they'd run through their carefully rationed reserves faster than usual, with no way of realizing that they're bleeding air. In the extreme, they'd realize there's a problem only when the low reserve alarm signaled, and by then their options are very limited. Secondly, if a pressure sensor malfunctions, it throws a false alarm, and the station personnel can verify this and fix the sensor. If it was tied to the regulator, the regulator would gear up erroneously, hyperpressurizing the station.
The systems are funtioning completely as designed. The only failure is a pressure leak, and the system provided proper alert to that situation. As designed, the sensor system is meant to alert Mission Control of a potential problem, and then it's up to the humans to take over and assess.
> Of course, a pressure leak is quite plausible given the hodge-podge nature of assembly and the relatively thin skin of the ISS. I personally don't consider tying a few tin cans together to be a space station. When they get around to welding girders and fastening skins like a standard building, then we'll talk about having a space station (IMO).
Then you should be aware that you have a very extreme view of design durability. Would you be willing to pay the extra money to have the walls of your house made from three feet of structural concrete, with perfect valve seals for every window and door? It's very fun to think about having a gargantuan, heavy duty station in orbit, but that's unreasonably expensive. Remember that the biggest material cost for building a space station is transport to the site, so girders are not the best design by a long shot (for those wondering, pipe frames built into trusses are, which is what they use, mostly).
> So out of curiosity: how do you look for a leak on a space station? If following smoke (which is nothing else but colored gas), or drink is considered stupid, how do you do it?
Well, just for completeness, the reason why you don't use smoke or liquid is really the same: settling. Smoke is particulate, and the particles (in zero-G) float until they stick to something, and that's bad in a system not hardened against that sort of pollution. The same is true of loose liquid, which can easily drift into circuitry and cause grief. Using Dr. Pepper is tremendously dumb, because it's sugary and therefore will cause a horrendous mess in a zero-G environment. The concept in the movie was that the leak was so fast that it was urgent to find it and it was strong enough to suction liquids, which the current ISS leak is not. The current method for finding slow leaks in spacecraft is with sound-sensing equipment that listens for the escaping air. If I recall correctly, they don't have high sensitivity equipment on ISS, so they're using stethoscopes.
> What I meant is that the actual problem should be alerted. They've got a reported lowering of pressure. If its a leak, they should automatically know that, not have to guess and cross-check to see if it really is, or its a sensore error.
Maybe you'll want to reread that and go through the steps, because it seems that you're answering your own request. The report on lowering pressure came from pressure sensors in the station that moved out of safe range. How exactly do you propose they tell whether it's a leak or a sensor malfunction without a cross-check of the sensors? In a different way, how do you propose they detect a leak unless it's with pressure sensors?
The system threw an alert because a sensor moved out of safe range. There's nothing wrong with setting up a system that way, and simply having one of the station astronauts verify the sensor alarm to ensure it's not a false alarm.
Slashdot Mirror
> Slander is when you call somebody a cock-sucking shit-eater, and you have proof. Libel is when you call somebody a cock-sucking shit-eater, and you don't.
Thanks for proving their point, nitwit. Slander is spoken defamation, without proof. Libel is written defamation, without proof. You can't get into legal troubles for defaming someone using provable facts.
Now shoo!
Virg
Here you go:
Username: bogususername
Password: boguspassword
Simple.
Virg
> Um, the line for "child porn," at least in The States, is drawn thusly: You can talk about it all you like. You just can't do it. You can draw it or make 3d art of it. But you can't take real pictures.
Incorrect. In the U.S., fictional accounts, descriptions, faked photos and even photos of adults made up to look underage are all illegal. So, no, you can't make 3d art of it. Cartoon depictions of child porn and written stories have sent people to prison.
Virg
OK, then let me throw you a different spin. If I write a story (a completely fictional story, that is) of someone going to the local kindergarten, grabbing a child, and gruesomely murdering that child, I haven't committed a crime. I can distribute that story on line, and the authorities will not come knocking.
Now, if I change that story only a bit, so that the character now commits a sexual act against the child, but does not murder the child, the mere posession of the story is a criminal offense. If I put the story on a back shelf and never tell anyone it's there, but somehow the authorities find out about it, I can be incarcerated for more than a decade.
Can you tell me why there's a punishment for a fictional depiction of child rape, but no punishment for a fictional depiction of child murder? Not so obvious any more, is it?
Virg
> Were I to have children, I wouldn't think twice about whether or not I'd want the streets they walked along to be monitored.
Until you found out that even police officers can be kidnappers, and that such a person would be a significantly greater threat. The fear that opponents have of these systems is that it makes abuse much easier, and safeguarding against abuse much harder. Nobody has anything to fear from the honest watchdogs, but they're not the ones that worry us.
Virg
> My husband, and the majority of my friends, would find it shocking that I "hate" them based on their 43rd chromosome.
You mean they all have Down's Syndrome? I suspect you mean "differing 42nd chromosome."
Virg
> Here's where the bean counters get involved. A player-oriented decision would be to make a high-level expansion, realize that you will only sell it to half the playerbase, and make it a no-holds-barred high-level expansion. Instead, they try to add low-level features to market to the LCD so that the majority of the playerbase will buy it.
The problem is that, in the market that these games live in, the bean counters must be involved. SOE cannot afford to issue a major expansion that only caters to (and will only be purchased by) a fraction of their player base. While this makes it rather difficult to issue a proper expansion, it's economically required by the business model. Saying they should just pick a segment and cater to that segment would be suicidal.
That said, they have tried to release expansions targetted to certain segments, with stuff put in for the rest. Planes of Power was virtually all for high end characters, with one VERY important and game-changing low-end addition (the Plane of Knowledge, which virtually eliminated the market for porters and made spell acquisition much simpler). I take that as an example of a well done expansion, that targetted one group but didn't leave everyone else out in the cold, and people who were not of a sufficient level to enter the experience areas still went out and bought it for access to the PoK. Then came the Legacy of Ykesha, which was also meant to be a high end expansion with some low end content and benefits. I take this as an example of a badly done expansion, because the "try to please" reach was much broader in LoY than it was in PoP. Since the high end content wasn't high enough to draw people out of the Planes of Power zones, the low end zones were still too high for the weekend gamers, and extra bank space wasn't sufficient to drive people to buy it if they didn't also want the zone content, not many felt the need to buy it.
So, in short, I don't think that trying to please a broad segment of the gamer base is a bad idea, and in fact it's necessary to the survival of the game. When it's done well, it really works, and I disagree that it can only be done well by focusing on small portions of the player base.
Virg
> The Soviets stole Canadian software to control the operations of the pipeline. The Americans added a trojan horse to the software.
Not precisely true. The Americans sold technology to the Canadians, but wouldn't sell it to the Soviets. Soviet agents posed as Canadian defense contractors to get purchasing rights. The Americans knew they were doing it, and fed poisoned devices to those agents. The agents took the tech home to Russia and BOOM!
Virg
> Manny who bitch-gripe about the cost of a CD or renting a DVD are the same people who don't think twice about plunking down $2.50 - $3.50 for a cup of fancy coffee.
That's not relevant, because it's not the cost, it's the cost-to-value, which is very different. In the case of Flexplay, you could get the same value (a movie that you could only watch for a short time) for less money elsewhere, and the "don't have to return it" value wasn't worth the exstra cost to most people, so it died from the competition.
Virg
There's no way Columbia could have rendezvoused with the ISS. It didn't have the fuel to reach it. The better slim-to-none possibility would have been leaving them in orbit and sending up a REMO (resupply module) to give them supplies and possibly a wing repair kit, and battery power. It's still very unlikely they'd have been saved, but it's better than the absolute failure of trying to reach the ISS.
Virg
> Assuming that the valid-key-generating hash is not shipped as part of the product, why would hackers crack the hundred-gazillions hash of which some work rather than the tens-of-millions hash which the company used to generate actual valid keys?
Because the hash the company uses is the hundred-gazillions hash. See, it works on two levels. The company creates a key generator that can make a hundred gazillion keys. It runs it one hundred million times, and actually creates a hundred million keys out of the possible hundred gazillion. It then uses only those hundred million for valid keys. So, when the hacker breaks the hash, he gets a hundred gazillion key generator, and generates a key. However, if the hacker's one-in-hundred-gazillion key doesn't match one of the hundred million actual keys the comapny generated, then the company rejects it as a hacked key. That means that even if the hash is broken, someone has only a hundred-million per hundred-gazillion chance of generating a vaild key.
Virg
> I know that the best thing to do is to call a lawyer, but I find it quite unsettling to think that when I'm creating something and giving it away to the world for free, I would need to pay a price to protect my work?
You have to pay for locks on your doors as well. That's the price you pay, unless you don't want to prevent your work's misuse. Besides, if this is a big company, you could always tell them you don't want any money, but you do want them to cover the legal costs you incurred notifying them. Virtually every company will agree to that, if you don't want other money.
Virg
> IF YOU GIVE STUFF AWAY FOR FREE, AND IT'S GANKED, YOU HAVE NO RECOURSE.
Notwithstanding that this statement is patently false (pun intended), he didn't give it away. He licensed it for use without royalty, so long as the terms of the license are adhered to. If they're not adhering to the license agreement (the GPL), then they have no right to use the work, with or without royalty. So, he does indeed have legal recourse.
So shut up. And turn of caps lock while you're doing it.
Virg
> What are the damages you claim when you give away your software for free?
Punitive damages, for using your code without your permission to use it in the way they did.
Virg
A scenario:
Canny Monk Negotiator: Give us supplies at a huge discount, and we'll say prayers for you.
Toner Dealer: [silence]
Canny Monk Negotiator: OK, if you don't help us out, you'll be going straight to Hell.
Toner Dealer: I sell toner for a living. Hell holds nothing fearful for me.
Canny Monk Negotiator: Give us a good deal, and you can write off the balance from your taxes.
Toner Dealer: You're a very canny negotiator. Where do we ship it?
Simple. And of course the toner dealer gets the toner from his sweatshop. What's your point?
Virg
> I don't advocate shooting people except as a last resort, but if I catch some sob breaking into my car, stealing something off my property, or otherwise violating my person or property, we'll get that fixed immediately one way or another. If the thief (or whatever) wants to back down and act right nobody has to be hurt. If not he may leave wearing more holes than he came with.
What about the grey areas? What happens if he doesn't back down, but fails to back down dangerously? Let me give you an example. You come out of the store to see a fellow leaning in the window of your car. You yell, and he stands up with your (briefcase/toolbox/laptop case) in his hand, and runs away at high speed (and let's assume that you can't give pursuit for whatever reason). Now what? If you shoot him, you can't possibly reasonably argue that he posed an imminent threat to your life or limb, and you've reduced it to killing someone for petty theft (and endangering life and property in your line of fire across the parking lot). See, the idea of "defending your property" is far too black-and-white for most people, and it's situations like this one that lead me to believe that the limitation on the use of deadly force is necessary because too many people seem to think that any level of force they can muster is reasonable for any situation they encounter. My example of shooting someone in traffic is hyperbole, but it also demonstrates an excessive response to a real-world situation.
Virg
> Yeah, god forbid people actually be able to protect their own property...Legal or not, I can assure you that anyone caught stealing anything from me would be shot on site. And while I may end up in jail (or not...IANAL) I would be in the right.
You would end up in jail, and you'd belong there. The death penalty for stealing? I'm sure you'd consider it fair when someone puts a bullet in your wife for cutting him off in traffic.
Go away until you can grow up a little.
Virg
> You state that my proposed construction method would be much more expensive than the current ISS method. I would argue that the costs would me much more predictable and managable. Go look up the numbers for the ISS initial projected cost and the final cost. Compare where the project was supposed to be now (11 people living on board) and the surrent state of things (3 people on board, usually). Compared to the stated goals, ISS is a failure and a waste of money.
I am aware you argue that costs for a different design would be more predictable and manageable. The part that confuses me is why you think that. What difference would a change in vessel design have on unexpected costs? Are you to imply that all of the unexpected costs spring solely from inadequate design, and that your design will somehow be free of any inadequacies? Most of the problems with the ISS reaching stated goals have been political. I'm not sure how you come to the conclusion that a different blueprint would have fixed that.
> As for the sensors, I don't understand why you keep saying things like "...sensing units and pressure maintenance units are not tied together...". I never stated that these units are or should be tied together.
Um, then reconcile this to your statemnt in the same paragraph that "In my layout, the problems are taken care of in an automated fasion..." please. If they shouldn't be tied together, how does one automate the response of the pressure maintenance units to what happens in the sensor units?
> The redundant monitoring sensors should be separate and isolated from the control sensors, which should in turn be separate and isolated from the gas flow sensors and the tank pressure sensors.
All of these systems are separate and isolated at the present time.
> Your wriring seems to indicate you can only forsee two failure scenareos: slow insignificant leak, and catastrophic breach causing instant death. There are more scenareos between those two that the system you define can not handle in a manner that would preserve life and the mission.
Actually, there isn't much room for scenarios between the extremes here. There are two general conditions in a pressure hull: failure that's fast enough that humans can't realistically react to it, and failure that's slow enough that they can. The current system assumes that any failure that's severe enough that a human can't fix it in real time is going to be too fast for the pressure maintenance system to compensate for. If the vessel is leaking so fast that the crew can't move themselves to a safe spot and seal off, dumping the reserve tanks at full open won't be sufficient to save them. Therefore, automating the system introduces complexity that doesn't add any real degree of safety, and it was therefore left out. Also, remember that Mission Control on the ground handles much of this stuff, so in a dire emergency they could react to the breach as well.
> As for plate on frame not being very good for pressure vessels: that's essentially what the space station is right now. It's just more of a foil than a plate.
Incorrect. It's a pressure vessel, held to other pressure vessels by trusses and the joiner seals. Your design as you describe it is used in buildings on Earth, where there's very little pressure differential from the inside to the outside. A pressure vessel with skin is more like a submarine, where an inside "tank" is mounted inside a body frame, and panels are attached to the outside. The panels don't take pressure, just protect from impact. The fact that it's made from thin aluminum is because it's not efficient weight-wise to make it from anything heavier. A heavier pressure vessel skin doesn't add a significant amount of structural integrity over other designs.
> The "plates" in a more standardized construction would not have to be solid metal. We have these wonderful composite materials like carbon fiber, fiberglass
> If my house were going to be orbiting 300+ miles above the planet in negligible atmosphere, with millions of pieces of debris around it (some tracked, some not), each piece travelling at thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of miles per hour, with no way or instantly isolating broken compartments, no way ot instant escape, and no way for rescue/re-supply on anything shorter than a one week timetable, then yes; I would opt for a much smaller, much sturdier, much more monitorable contruction scheme with girder frames, thick walls, etc. While plate on frame contruction could be slower and more expensive to build, I think it is more reliable and stronger than the docked aluminum can approach they are using now.
Plate on frame isn't a very useful design for pressure vessels, but I'll assume you mean housing pressure vessels in a girder frame and shielding it with the plates. In that case, my comparison to your house applies. To make a shield capable of stopping a piece of debris large enough to disable the current station, you'd need to make it from steel and make it at least an inch thick. That would require the weight of the current station to increase by a factor of about twenty (and that's just for the skin; girder frames would add even more weight). Again, considering the change in cost would mostly be determined by the cost of transport, you've just made the station twenty times more expensive, in a political climate where it's getting tough to find funding for it as it is. Your design specification makes it very, very safe, but too expensive to do. A big, heavy duty station that never gets built isn't much use, just like making a house with three foot concrete walls that would cost over a million dollars wouldn't sell. As for risk, if you're not willing to accept more risk in a space station than in your house, then you're probably not cut out to be an astronaut.
> As for the whole pressurization dezign... simply flow rate sensors would keep track of the amount og gas stored in reserves, you could in fact use a system of three independent and monitorable sensors as I stated and it would be just as functional and problems would be more quickly and reliably isolated.
The system they use uses redundant pressure monitors, and is designed to throw different triggers if one sensor trips as opposed to multiple sensors. However, as I stated before, the pressure sensing units and pressure maintenance units are not tied together, because there are no situations where you'd want the pressure maintenance unit to change its behavior autonomously and not notify an operator or Mission Control. Since every change in that unit represents some sort of problem, it's designed to require human intervention to change it. In other words, it's always better to have the pressure fall off a few millibars than have the pressure maintenance unit change without a human's direct intervention, because only a problem of some kind will necessitate that change, and you want to be sure the humans know about the presence of a problem. This isn't like a fire suppression unit, where fast reaction time is essential. Any failure severe enough to prevent the occupants from triggering changes to the pressure maintenance unit (like a major hull breach) is going to be too severe for the system to handle anyway.
Virg
> Sun is white, and marsian dust clouds are transparent enough - they don't change the lign frequency, they just reflect a fraction of % of the light adding a VERY SMALL AMOUNT of red.
Atmospheric physics would tell you that it's subtracting the blue, not adding the red, but realistically, the part of this that I must question is your comment about Martian dust clouds being nearly transparent. Why on Earth (pun intended) would you say that when there are large segments of time where we can't see the ground from orbit (or from Earth) because of the dust clouds? The stuff flying around in the Martian atmosphere is not transparent. One of the Viking landers was blinded for the duration of a dust storm during its tenure, in fact.
> Plus in mountains I was in the middle of a big red smoke cloud from military signalling grenade. All our equipment was still in the original color, just a LITTLE BIT changed.
Wow, a military signalling grenade that produced a seven-mile-thick cloud? Just a little bit changed from ten feet of smoke would seem to extend to noticeably changed from ten miles of dust, no? Remember that the white sunlight has to pass through the entire atmosphere, bounce off the probe, and then run up to the camera. That's a very large volume of (what passes on Mars for) air. Wildfires on the Pacific coast of the U.S. were sufficient to turn the sky red in eastern Pennsylvania. I personally saw it, and the sky was indeed rust colored, rather similar to the sky in those photographs. More importantly, though, everything in my immediate vicinity took on a russet cast. Therefore I must conclude that you are still mistaken in thinking that those photos are improperly colored.
Virg
> My guess is that black and white takes less bandwidth and processing power.
Your guess is correct. The BW camera is a navigation camera (remember, this device is a rover) so it can transmit more frames per second because they're low-res, BW images. More frames means faster reaction to navigation hazards. The high-res color cameras are there for the "real" pictures.
Virg
> You theory of red-dust-in-the-air cannot explain why all equipment we see is in red? Don't tell me that it's all painted red in NASA specially for Mars.
Here's an experiment: put a white sheet of paper on a table. Turn on a red light. What color does the paper look? Does it turn whiter if you get closer to it?
If the atmosphere is reddish, all the light coming through it is reddish, and under reddish light, everything looks, well, reddish.
> For me all those pictures are a fake in terms of color.
Well, "for you" isn't the measurement they used, apparently.
Virg
> The report so far is, as you stated, that an alarm was raised because the sensors have shown a steady decrease in cabin pressure over a few days. Apparently the sensors that regulate the pressure don't see the pressure decrease, or the pressure would not be decreasing. (ie: if the regulators detected low pressure, they would compensate with more gas and the pressure would remain stable). If the monitoring sensors see a decrease and the regulating sensors don't, then there's a malfunction. Whether that malfunction is in the regulator or monitoring sensors must be determined. Either way ISS is not working well and someone needs to figure out what is wrong and why.
This is an incorrect understanding of the pressure system. When the monitoring sensors go out of safe range, they respond by reporting the fault to Mission Control, so that a human being can begin assessment. The pressure regulators run out reserves by a measured formula. The systems aren't tied together, and that's by design. Any pressure hull "sweats" a certain small amount of gas by its nature, and that decrease can be calculated and compensated by the regulation system. Any more than that rate is considered a leak, and the regulators are not supposed to compensate. There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, is there is a leak, Mission Control must be alerted to the leak. If the regulation system simply geared up to maintain pressure, they'd run through their carefully rationed reserves faster than usual, with no way of realizing that they're bleeding air. In the extreme, they'd realize there's a problem only when the low reserve alarm signaled, and by then their options are very limited. Secondly, if a pressure sensor malfunctions, it throws a false alarm, and the station personnel can verify this and fix the sensor. If it was tied to the regulator, the regulator would gear up erroneously, hyperpressurizing the station.
The systems are funtioning completely as designed. The only failure is a pressure leak, and the system provided proper alert to that situation. As designed, the sensor system is meant to alert Mission Control of a potential problem, and then it's up to the humans to take over and assess.
> Of course, a pressure leak is quite plausible given the hodge-podge nature of assembly and the relatively thin skin of the ISS. I personally don't consider tying a few tin cans together to be a space station. When they get around to welding girders and fastening skins like a standard building, then we'll talk about having a space station (IMO).
Then you should be aware that you have a very extreme view of design durability. Would you be willing to pay the extra money to have the walls of your house made from three feet of structural concrete, with perfect valve seals for every window and door? It's very fun to think about having a gargantuan, heavy duty station in orbit, but that's unreasonably expensive. Remember that the biggest material cost for building a space station is transport to the site, so girders are not the best design by a long shot (for those wondering, pipe frames built into trusses are, which is what they use, mostly).
Virg
> So out of curiosity: how do you look for a leak on a space station? If following smoke (which is nothing else but colored gas), or drink is considered stupid, how do you do it?
Well, just for completeness, the reason why you don't use smoke or liquid is really the same: settling. Smoke is particulate, and the particles (in zero-G) float until they stick to something, and that's bad in a system not hardened against that sort of pollution. The same is true of loose liquid, which can easily drift into circuitry and cause grief. Using Dr. Pepper is tremendously dumb, because it's sugary and therefore will cause a horrendous mess in a zero-G environment. The concept in the movie was that the leak was so fast that it was urgent to find it and it was strong enough to suction liquids, which the current ISS leak is not. The current method for finding slow leaks in spacecraft is with sound-sensing equipment that listens for the escaping air. If I recall correctly, they don't have high sensitivity equipment on ISS, so they're using stethoscopes.
Virg
> What I meant is that the actual problem should be alerted. They've got a reported lowering of pressure. If its a leak, they should automatically know that, not have to guess and cross-check to see if it really is, or its a sensore error.
Maybe you'll want to reread that and go through the steps, because it seems that you're answering your own request. The report on lowering pressure came from pressure sensors in the station that moved out of safe range. How exactly do you propose they tell whether it's a leak or a sensor malfunction without a cross-check of the sensors? In a different way, how do you propose they detect a leak unless it's with pressure sensors?
The system threw an alert because a sensor moved out of safe range. There's nothing wrong with setting up a system that way, and simply having one of the station astronauts verify the sensor alarm to ensure it's not a false alarm.
Virg