First: The purpose is not to retrieve it, but to reestablish comms and put it in orbit around the earth. It is currently in solar orbit, and the current orbit was planned so that such a capture would be feasible in the future, and that future is now.
Second: I think it would be really cool if one actually could bring it down to earth in one piece. There may also be some scientific insight to be gained from this - mainly how the probe has stood up to the environment of space, far outside the protection of Earth's magnetosphere.
Finally, it's a satellite, not a sentient being. It doesn't harbour any dreams of floating around in space forever, far from the oppressive commands of human engineers, basking in an infinite quietness only broken by periodic transmissions from it's tracking beacon. It's just a computer (or really, a sequencer), a really old one, which happens to be in space and connected to some instruments and a rocket engine. It wouldn't care if you took a dump on it's creaky old solar panels.
Yeah. Boo hoo glassholes and NSA is all we hear. What about a cool tech article of how the NSA actually manages to capture and store as much information as Snowden claims they are doing? Even if it would be 90% speculation, that would be a nice read...
Yeah, biggest change is that today they're attached to the ethernet port instead of needing their own cable system, and has access to the company phonebook via LDAP etc. They have also become quite complicated - when I got the phone on my desk, it came with a little folder instructing me how to install the operating system. That think literally has more buttons than my laptop...
... and because they are very nice tools when writing. Mine has a plastic handle, cost somewhere between 10 and 20 € and does not look like much, but it does help making my handwriting somewhat legible, and enables me to keep writing for a while without fatigue.
Sure you can get super-expensive fancy fontain pens which are 90% status symbols - as you can with phones, cars, clothes, and practically everything else - but that doesn't mean that all fountain pens are just status symbols.
So does the university and research institute i'm working for. RAM upgrades, HDD swaps / adds, GFX card upgrades (we're doing some CAD and 3D visualization) are pretty common. Then IT will install it for you (usually takes 30 minutes), or just give you the parts if you're able to install them yourself (saves them time, saves me having to stop working and shutdown the computer at some random time during my day).
An added bonus is that unless swapping the HDD, you get the same software setup as before, just with better performance. We generally run Linux (RHEL & Scientific Linux), so activation isn't a problem...
Exactly. My officemate works with 3D-printed metal parts (waveguides and RF loads), and some of the pieces on her desk are pretty nice. I've also seen RF cavities partially fabricated using 3D printing (and partially by turning).
In many cases, part of the reason for using 3D printing is that you can easily create shapes which are hard to make using traditional manufacturing techniques. This especially means shapes with complex voids.
I suspect it's still pretty common to upgrade RAM and harddisk. Maybe many user's doesn't do it themselves, but ask their son / granddaughter / son-in-law / friendly neighbourhood geek why their computer is so slow - which often responds to upgrading the RAM. Similar when a HDD fails - you, or a friend, or the shop will repair it by swapping out the HDD.
And most of these things are really easy in most of todays laptops - when my mother in law was complaining about exactly this, I ordered up the RAM it needed and showed her how to install it when it showed up in the mail. She managed just fine (one screw to open the cover, pop out the old board and click in the new. We did't bother with the board sitting below the keyboard).
Similar when the HDD of my Dell Latitude failed - they sent me a new HDD in a box with a small paper slip instructing me to turn it off, remove battery and charger, undo the one screw holding the HDD and it's cover in place, slide out the old one, slide in the new one, and replace the cover + screw. Apparently Dell tought it to be easy enough for all their customers to manage.
I never seen a school where the teacher isn't allowed to talk to the kids, including talking quite sternly. Quite often it's more than enough to just say no, as long as the intervention is timely and consequent. If it's a bit more serious, take them out of class & discuss it there for 5 minutes - that often "cools down" a situation, but is of course often hard to do if you're teaching alone...
A big part in gaining the respect of the kids is to respect them, i.e. have clear rules of what is OK and what isn't, and then apply those rules consequently (but not blindly). Don't waste kids time with crap or talking down to them, the energy and concentration they put into a class is usually proportional to what the teacher puts into it.
Next up would be moving them around, i.e. putting the bully in front of the class and keeping an extra eye on him/her (doubly so if it's a girl, they tend to be just as bad when it comes to picking on others, but better at avoiding getting caught...), and braking up subgroups in the class with bad interactions.
Then comes restricting movement during breaks, i.e. demanding that the bully stay in only one part of the area normally available to the kids during breaks, or stay together with the teacher who is supervising the break. That has the effect of allowing the bullied to walk free, while the bully is kept away from his "friends". A bonus effect from this is that the bullying kid may talk to that teacher once he/she figures out that he/she isn't going anywhere fun anyway that break (or any break for the next two days) - sometimes they reveal a root cause, such as problems at home / general insecurity / bad friends etc.. Use that information wisely, and discuss it with them - be someone they can thrust.
Then of course is to talk to the parents, calling a special meeting if neccessary. That scares most kids quite well - it often leads to consequences such as denied access to gaming systems, no internet at home, no friends over etc..
Escalate to management if neccessary, they should bring in the school councelor, and in really bad cases, have a talk with child services and bring them in on the case if it turns out it is needed - they can do more than just putting the kid in foster care which is really the very last option.
Where did you go to school / teach where none of these options where available? FYI, I've taught kids from ~10 - 16 years old, and TA'ed students at BSc, Master and PhD level, and also taught high school teachers 2-3x my age. However, most of the time I got by using the advice in paragraph #2:)
Exactly. You'll get more jobs both due to local manufacture and local repairs. Many of these jobs will have relatively light education requirements, which is probably a good thing.
One could also try making the tax percentages more progressive (as in tax percentage increasing as income is increasing), maybe increase the minimum salary from which any tax is levied, and include a few basic things such as health insurance, emergency responce (firefighting and ambulance), and proper education in the tax bill. That could even out some of the social inequality caused by increasing the prices of comodities.
I guess this is the law we're talking about? (thanks to AC below!): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... The article states that "For 2013, the maximum exclusion is $97,600". I happen to live near Geneva atm. (working at CERN), and the city is full of high-earners - including a quite a few resident Americans*. Maybe it's they are the one making a fuzz - apparently a bunch of them didn't do it for 50 years, and suddenly got a monster bill, which I think would be deducted directly from their accounts. Swiss banks aren't what they used to be...
I guess we also have to file tax returns for a couple of years after leaving, but not for life. The "fee for renouncing your citizenship" is also a big WTF:/
*) Which I guess also explain why we have a american-english-speaking bible-thumping far-right FM radio station. Big WTF when I found it:P
That's a serious WTF - the bullies even know that they can do their shit right in front of a teacher, and get away with it. Plus probably much worse things when not in front of a teacher.
To be honest, the one which should be charged here is the teacher.
Isn't that true for a lot of what's wrong with US laws? Someone payed to get it the way it is, either directly (campagin contributions) or indirectly (lobbying or giving cushy jobs to the politicians who voted for them when they leave politics). That's usually called corruption.
Yeah, pretty much the same here. You logon to their secure web portal, and fill all the forms online. For most people, everything is pre-filled, and you just have to OK it, which can even be done via SMS. Personally I have a more complicated setup involving income and accounts abroad + special tax exemptions, but even then I spend much less time than the Americans I know.
The fact that the taxes also include health insurance is also nice...
By the way, is it true that the US will tax a citizen living abroad based on a salary earned and spent abroad - i.e. if you moved to somewhere in the EU in your 20s, learned the language, got a job and basically setup your life here, you still have to pay US taxes on top of what you pay where you live, unless you renounce your citizenship?
Slashdot Mirror
First: The purpose is not to retrieve it, but to reestablish comms and put it in orbit around the earth. It is currently in solar orbit, and the current orbit was planned so that such a capture would be feasible in the future, and that future is now.
Second: I think it would be really cool if one actually could bring it down to earth in one piece. There may also be some scientific insight to be gained from this - mainly how the probe has stood up to the environment of space, far outside the protection of Earth's magnetosphere.
Finally, it's a satellite, not a sentient being. It doesn't harbour any dreams of floating around in space forever, far from the oppressive commands of human engineers, basking in an infinite quietness only broken by periodic transmissions from it's tracking beacon. It's just a computer (or really, a sequencer), a really old one, which happens to be in space and connected to some instruments and a rocket engine. It wouldn't care if you took a dump on it's creaky old solar panels.
You have a very different standard of "absolutely no doubt" than do I.
Other than that, I'm sure Tom Clancy would have digged your story.
Yeah. Boo hoo glassholes and NSA is all we hear. What about a cool tech article of how the NSA actually manages to capture and store as much information as Snowden claims they are doing? Even if it would be 90% speculation, that would be a nice read...
Yeah, biggest change is that today they're attached to the ethernet port instead of needing their own cable system, and has access to the company phonebook via LDAP etc. They have also become quite complicated - when I got the phone on my desk, it came with a little folder instructing me how to install the operating system. That think literally has more buttons than my laptop...
... and because they are very nice tools when writing. Mine has a plastic handle, cost somewhere between 10 and 20 € and does not look like much, but it does help making my handwriting somewhat legible, and enables me to keep writing for a while without fatigue.
Sure you can get super-expensive fancy fontain pens which are 90% status symbols - as you can with phones, cars, clothes, and practically everything else - but that doesn't mean that all fountain pens are just status symbols.
So does the university and research institute i'm working for. RAM upgrades, HDD swaps / adds, GFX card upgrades (we're doing some CAD and 3D visualization) are pretty common. Then IT will install it for you (usually takes 30 minutes), or just give you the parts if you're able to install them yourself (saves them time, saves me having to stop working and shutdown the computer at some random time during my day).
An added bonus is that unless swapping the HDD, you get the same software setup as before, just with better performance. We generally run Linux (RHEL & Scientific Linux), so activation isn't a problem...
Exactly. My officemate works with 3D-printed metal parts (waveguides and RF loads), and some of the pieces on her desk are pretty nice. I've also seen RF cavities partially fabricated using 3D printing (and partially by turning).
In many cases, part of the reason for using 3D printing is that you can easily create shapes which are hard to make using traditional manufacturing techniques. This especially means shapes with complex voids.
Link?
What on earth has Atheism to do with this piece of terminology?
Even the article you link to, states that the word is used by both groups to self-identify.
I suspect it's still pretty common to upgrade RAM and harddisk. Maybe many user's doesn't do it themselves, but ask their son / granddaughter / son-in-law / friendly neighbourhood geek why their computer is so slow - which often responds to upgrading the RAM. Similar when a HDD fails - you, or a friend, or the shop will repair it by swapping out the HDD.
And most of these things are really easy in most of todays laptops - when my mother in law was complaining about exactly this, I ordered up the RAM it needed and showed her how to install it when it showed up in the mail. She managed just fine (one screw to open the cover, pop out the old board and click in the new. We did't bother with the board sitting below the keyboard).
Similar when the HDD of my Dell Latitude failed - they sent me a new HDD in a box with a small paper slip instructing me to turn it off, remove battery and charger, undo the one screw holding the HDD and it's cover in place, slide out the old one, slide in the new one, and replace the cover + screw. Apparently Dell tought it to be easy enough for all their customers to manage.
Nah, I could very well imagine getting a decently spec'ed Android with dual or maybe even triple SIM. And a extra-high capacity battery.
Except in this case, there where plenty of sanctions - they even sent the police.
I never seen a school where the teacher isn't allowed to talk to the kids, including talking quite sternly. Quite often it's more than enough to just say no, as long as the intervention is timely and consequent. If it's a bit more serious, take them out of class & discuss it there for 5 minutes - that often "cools down" a situation, but is of course often hard to do if you're teaching alone...
A big part in gaining the respect of the kids is to respect them, i.e. have clear rules of what is OK and what isn't, and then apply those rules consequently (but not blindly). Don't waste kids time with crap or talking down to them, the energy and concentration they put into a class is usually proportional to what the teacher puts into it.
Next up would be moving them around, i.e. putting the bully in front of the class and keeping an extra eye on him/her (doubly so if it's a girl, they tend to be just as bad when it comes to picking on others, but better at avoiding getting caught...), and braking up subgroups in the class with bad interactions.
Then comes restricting movement during breaks, i.e. demanding that the bully stay in only one part of the area normally available to the kids during breaks, or stay together with the teacher who is supervising the break. That has the effect of allowing the bullied to walk free, while the bully is kept away from his "friends". A bonus effect from this is that the bullying kid may talk to that teacher once he/she figures out that he/she isn't going anywhere fun anyway that break (or any break for the next two days) - sometimes they reveal a root cause, such as problems at home / general insecurity / bad friends etc.. Use that information wisely, and discuss it with them - be someone they can thrust.
Then of course is to talk to the parents, calling a special meeting if neccessary. That scares most kids quite well - it often leads to consequences such as denied access to gaming systems, no internet at home, no friends over etc..
Escalate to management if neccessary, they should bring in the school councelor, and in really bad cases, have a talk with child services and bring them in on the case if it turns out it is needed - they can do more than just putting the kid in foster care which is really the very last option.
Where did you go to school / teach where none of these options where available? FYI, I've taught kids from ~10 - 16 years old, and TA'ed students at BSc, Master and PhD level, and also taught high school teachers 2-3x my age. However, most of the time I got by using the advice in paragraph #2 :)
What would you define as meaningfull actions in this situation?
Exactly. You'll get more jobs both due to local manufacture and local repairs. Many of these jobs will have relatively light education requirements, which is probably a good thing.
One could also try making the tax percentages more progressive (as in tax percentage increasing as income is increasing), maybe increase the minimum salary from which any tax is levied, and include a few basic things such as health insurance, emergency responce (firefighting and ambulance), and proper education in the tax bill. That could even out some of the social inequality caused by increasing the prices of comodities.
I guess this is the law we're talking about? (thanks to AC below!):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The article states that "For 2013, the maximum exclusion is $97,600". I happen to live near Geneva atm. (working at CERN), and the city is full of high-earners - including a quite a few resident Americans*. Maybe it's they are the one making a fuzz - apparently a bunch of them didn't do it for 50 years, and suddenly got a monster bill, which I think would be deducted directly from their accounts. Swiss banks aren't what they used to be...
I guess we also have to file tax returns for a couple of years after leaving, but not for life. The "fee for renouncing your citizenship" is also a big WTF :/
*) Which I guess also explain why we have a american-english-speaking bible-thumping far-right FM radio station. Big WTF when I found it :P
That's a serious WTF - the bullies even know that they can do their shit right in front of a teacher, and get away with it. Plus probably much worse things when not in front of a teacher.
To be honest, the one which should be charged here is the teacher.
Additionally, a homemade bomb have a pretty good chance of blowing up its builder. The guns most people have access to (not home made), not so much.
Isn't that true for a lot of what's wrong with US laws? Someone payed to get it the way it is, either directly (campagin contributions) or indirectly (lobbying or giving cushy jobs to the politicians who voted for them when they leave politics). That's usually called corruption.
Yeah, pretty much the same here. You logon to their secure web portal, and fill all the forms online. For most people, everything is pre-filled, and you just have to OK it, which can even be done via SMS. Personally I have a more complicated setup involving income and accounts abroad + special tax exemptions, but even then I spend much less time than the Americans I know.
The fact that the taxes also include health insurance is also nice...
By the way, is it true that the US will tax a citizen living abroad based on a salary earned and spent abroad - i.e. if you moved to somewhere in the EU in your 20s, learned the language, got a job and basically setup your life here, you still have to pay US taxes on top of what you pay where you live, unless you renounce your citizenship?
It's becomming more and more clear that he's an actual supervillan. Does he have a white cat?
I fail to see what court precedent has to do with this discussion...
(And maybe I should stop feeding the trolls :/ )
Maybe you just know the wrong type of women - the type who wants to stay at home and in the kitchen "because that's what you're supposed to do".
But sticking ones head into the sand and denying there is a problem isn't exactly a solution either.