The new frigate was supposed to be a master of all trades...
Gotcha, nobody who has ever seen combat spec'd the thing. Politicians are the used car salesmen of military hardware.
Sounds like the F35 to me... Jack of all trades, master of none and a nightmare of last second engineering changes because more doesn't work than does the first time out.
It's the integration and fielding that's difficult.
I've always thought that the really hard part of any complex system deployment was the integration work. It's often overlooked and under planned in the original project plan and when it is planned, the inevitable sliding to the right of the schedule causes integration to get squeezed into impossible schedules. I've worked integration efforts where the original unlikely to succeed 6 month schedule got compressed into two weeks.
I'm guessing the schedule slipped to far right, management wanted their bonus so it got fielded before it was going to work, so failure came as no surprise to the system integrators. Of course it failed acceptance, it failed our tests too.
If you are actively maintaining it, it is outdated as soon as some programmer checks something new into what ever you use for source code management, which if you are Apple, likely happens multiple times a day for the development streams. Even a small group of developers doing agile (the right way) will be committing changes multiple times a day... Apple does releases every few months on average, so any code is out of date every quarter or so...
The question is really how long ago this code was actually in use.... Yesterday? last year? The year before?
Yes. But probably not the purpose its name implies. When you can't outline PROVABLE facts about FOOD, because only DRUGS (FDA approved) can treat illness and disease. That's why if you get Scurvy, they will PRESCRIBE vitamin C, but if you say Citrus Fruits, strawberry's can kiwis can cure scurvy, you're breaking the law turning food into drugs.
Once you realize this, then it all makes better sense.
LOL.. I guess you don't like the FDA at all then.. But in this case, we are not dealing with food are we?
Now if you are one of those people upset with the FDA because they take a dim view of medical claims made by supplement makers, I point out that we didn't have the FDA for a good part of our existence, and during that time literally ANYBODY could create some "medication" that cured everything from baldness and hoof rot to your wife's hair color and sell bottles of turpentine mixed with wood alcohol and tar on the street corners (and many people did). As long as you got out of town before folks got sick and moved faster than the rumor mill, you could make good money. The FDA fixed all that, thankfully. Yes they get a bit overbearing on this supplement thing at time, but I can see the FDA's point too. You simply CANNOT be allowed to make medical claims for things which are not licensed as drugs when you are selling them, or all the snake oil sales people would be free to ply their trade on the gullible again.
The FDA also deals with food safety and distribution issues and licensing actual drugs (prescription and over the counter) sold in this country. I think they are a necessary evil.
Yea, which is why I consider this a bit heavy handed by the FDC, they are side stepping the normal process here. Not that I would support legalization efforts, I don't, I just don't like the way the FDC is taking advantage of the perception of an opioid problem for something that really isn't an opioid derived from the usual sources.
Where I get your position....I'm not sure I agree.
It seems to me that the FDA has a purpose and if something being sold openly in stores is killing folks, they might just have the responsibility to respond. I think they see this as a matter of public safety, and I think they have at least some justification for this. They've restricted other products for less, even if those being killed are being stupid and using more than recommended to get high...
Now calling something an opioid that's not actually derived from similar sources as opium does seem a bit heavy handed, because that puts this substance on a path to be made illegal to posses or use. It may act in similar ways as opium, however it's not actually opium...
Then their answer doesn't work for you. I'm not defending or attacking them, I was just answering the question of what the ethical justification might be for this work.
Look, I'm no fan of currencies like BitCoin and I routinely make fun of those who think it's a sure bet as an investment, but claiming that most crypto currencies are heading to the great bit bucket in the sky is just as unsupportable. Some will, but I'm pretty sure most of the currently popular ones won't.
Crypto fulfills a need as a medium of exchange. I don't think this need will abate any time soon, in fact, I believe that it's use is being driven by economic conditions in various countries world wide. Countries like Venezuela where local currency inflation is out of sight have seen a boom in crypto for a reason, it's more stable than the local currency, even though the government is taking regulatory steps to curb it's use it's growing. I don't see this changing any time soon, despite what the big banks say.
Crypto is here to stay. I may not think it's a good investment medium, but I'm not stupid enough to think it's all heading to/dev/null any time soon because as a method of exchange it fills a need.
Again... I think you are wrong on this one. Tuna has 100X more mercury than Pollack now and we eat that with few limitations. So the amount of mercury goes up by double in Pollack, no big deal. It's a smaller fish, doesn't live as long and I believe doesn't consume other fish so the bio-amplification of mercury in it is not as bad of an issue. I don't see the mercury getting airborne and I don't see it making it into common fisheries food chains in significant enough amounts to matter.
Personally, I'd be more worried about mercury exposure from other sources like used neon lamps we've all been using of late instead of incandescent light bulbs and the effluent that comes from all those land fills these energy efficient light bulbs end up in. But even then, here in the USA this exposure is pretty limited unless you work in specific industrial or waste disposal fields.
So you are wrong on St Helens... Care to go for double or nothing?
And you absolutely do eat fish from the Arctic; the Alaska pollack fishery is in the largest in the world.
So, please describe HOW these fish will consume mercury laced food from this possible source? Also, care to guess how little this is likely to affect Pollack? At this point the mercury content of this fish is exceedingly low, being 100X less than Tuna. So unless you can invent a way this affects their food chain, I'm guessing you are just guessing and don't really know.
Volcanos are the largest natural source of mercury in the atmosphere and often create huge spikes. So take a look at this: https://toxics.usgs.gov/pubs/F...
St Helens is the large spike around 1989... This from some ice cores looked at by the USGS....
We survived Mount St Helens just fine and it doubled atmospheric mercury exposure world wide by throwing it into the air. I'm thinking this stuff won't be all that airborne, being in the thawing ground and not thrown into the air.
Have any other possible routes here? As I see this, the issue will be it getting into the food chain, and given there isn't much from the Artic in the human food chain, I'm thinking we are going to be fine. In other words, this won't be an issue, at least not a serious one. So this is scare mongering.
Where does all that mercury actually GO when it's released? To the bottom of the ocean where it get's covered by silt perhaps? Unless you are making the case that this makes it into the food chain or environmental exposure is going to rise in non artic locations where human exposure will be enough to reach harmful levels, why all the alarm?
We've know that heavy metal levels in heavily polluted waters tend to mediate as time moves on. This stuff gets buried under silt and gets isolated from the environment. Sure, it's not great, but it's also not something that doesn't fix itself once you stop releasing the problem substances. In this case, release in the artic is a problem how? How much food do we get from artic sources? Not much we cannot do without.
Nobody risks a satellite (which almost always is much more expensive than the rocket that launches it) on the very first launch of a new rocket. Well, at least not if the company that builds that rocket says that this is a test launch and has a good chance of not succeeding. Spending millions and millions of dollars on satellites just to see them go down in flames is not a wise move.
Who was saying we should spend tens of millions of dollars on a satellite? I'm talking about experimental payloads conceived of and built by students and/or hobbyists for educational experiences at the high school and college levels. Something to stimulate interest in STEM careers, while giving Space-X some positive PR. You'd give the students a standard interface weight and size requirement to build within and provide a simple payload interface that accepted a pile of these experiments and could deliver them to LEO and disperse them. Nothing complex, except for any data communications required to get experiment results back.
Also, Why not launch a real satellite or two? Apart from not being able to get payload insurance, if Space-X only required payment upon successful launch and gave you a huge discount for your risk, somebody might take their chances and should Space-X actually succeed they might recoup some of their launch costs. Satellites *can* be reasonably inexpensive depending on your requirements and if you stick with common off the shelf components from the satellite builders they wouldn't have to cost all that much, compared to the launch cost savings.
So... The democrats will get their memo released? What's the issue now?
It's clear though "who started it" if you think about it. Why is pretty clear too. The question I have is "Is this a good idea?"
Remember what this whole side show is about... The idea that Trump colluded with the Russians to win the election. I'm thinking that that whole thing is looking like a political witch hunt now. The warrants where obtained base on some bogus information which was developed as opposition research by the DNC/Hillary campaign. Without this dossier, there would have been no FISA warrants, or so many including McCabe at the FBI who signed off on the applications say.
PLEAS tell me you see how this might not be a good thing... Using opposition research from one party to investigate the other... Surely if the shoe was on the other foot you'd be upset. IF Trump had paid Russian sources for information on Hillary, which the FBI used to justify FISA warrants to spy on her campaign, you'd be coming unglued. I think Trump and the republicans are being pretty measured about this while the democrats have been trying to stop all this coming out. I ask you, why is that?
He would have to sterilize the car so well that there wouldn't be much left of it.
I think there is very little chance that a Tesla would survive entry into Mar's atmosphere in big enough pieces to be a risk. It's not like we've not arrived there carrying microbes already.. I'm sure we have.
So I'm gonna bitch about the super rich. There's no shortage of useful things to send up on a rocket, but we're gonna waste a launch on a dumb stunt by a rich guy.
I'm with you in a way. There are a lot of useful scientific payloads that SpaceX could fly on this test that could foster public interest in STEM disciplines, create good will for the company and provide valuable educational experiences for College and High School students. Can you imagine a nation wide science fair where students and hobbyists could conceive, design, build and actually launch experimental payloads into LEO?
Launching a car just doesn't seem to do this justice.
They did say it would have a dummy in the driver's seat.... So I'm not sure how to answer your first question..;) Might be just Sir Isaac Newton driving...
I would assume the "auto pilot" would be engaged at some point, unless they are relying on Newton alone.
Shesh.. I'm just pointing out that this issue is highly partisan.
I'm also pointing out that it seems to me that the democrats have a serious issue with credibility on this one, but I don't see that as a partisan observation. They basically lied about the memo's contents, invoking "national security concerns" and exposure of techniques and methods. This memo didn't do this in the least. Strike one for credibility. They have harped on the memo as being partisan, but who doesn't understand that? Problem is there is zero partisanship in the memo, unless assaulting the 4th amendment is somehow a partisan issue. It's not. Strike two. Finally, they are attacking the author unfairly for partisan sounding reason. Strike three.
Your mileage obviously varies... But hey.. It's a partisan thing.
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The new frigate was supposed to be a master of all trades...
Gotcha, nobody who has ever seen combat spec'd the thing. Politicians are the used car salesmen of military hardware.
Sounds like the F35 to me... Jack of all trades, master of none and a nightmare of last second engineering changes because more doesn't work than does the first time out.
Perhaps most inexcusable, the ship doesn't even float right. It has a permanent list to starboard.
Seems to me it's floating right.
LOL... Why yes... Yes it is.
My guess is that it turns all right too..
It's the integration and fielding that's difficult.
I've always thought that the really hard part of any complex system deployment was the integration work. It's often overlooked and under planned in the original project plan and when it is planned, the inevitable sliding to the right of the schedule causes integration to get squeezed into impossible schedules. I've worked integration efforts where the original unlikely to succeed 6 month schedule got compressed into two weeks.
I'm guessing the schedule slipped to far right, management wanted their bonus so it got fielded before it was going to work, so failure came as no surprise to the system integrators. Of course it failed acceptance, it failed our tests too.
If you are actively maintaining it, it is outdated as soon as some programmer checks something new into what ever you use for source code management, which if you are Apple, likely happens multiple times a day for the development streams. Even a small group of developers doing agile (the right way) will be committing changes multiple times a day... Apple does releases every few months on average, so any code is out of date every quarter or so...
The question is really how long ago this code was actually in use.... Yesterday? last year? The year before?
FDA has a purpose
Yes. But probably not the purpose its name implies. When you can't outline PROVABLE facts about FOOD, because only DRUGS (FDA approved) can treat illness and disease. That's why if you get Scurvy, they will PRESCRIBE vitamin C, but if you say Citrus Fruits, strawberry's can kiwis can cure scurvy, you're breaking the law turning food into drugs.
Once you realize this, then it all makes better sense.
LOL.. I guess you don't like the FDA at all then.. But in this case, we are not dealing with food are we?
Now if you are one of those people upset with the FDA because they take a dim view of medical claims made by supplement makers, I point out that we didn't have the FDA for a good part of our existence, and during that time literally ANYBODY could create some "medication" that cured everything from baldness and hoof rot to your wife's hair color and sell bottles of turpentine mixed with wood alcohol and tar on the street corners (and many people did). As long as you got out of town before folks got sick and moved faster than the rumor mill, you could make good money. The FDA fixed all that, thankfully. Yes they get a bit overbearing on this supplement thing at time, but I can see the FDA's point too. You simply CANNOT be allowed to make medical claims for things which are not licensed as drugs when you are selling them, or all the snake oil sales people would be free to ply their trade on the gullible again.
The FDA also deals with food safety and distribution issues and licensing actual drugs (prescription and over the counter) sold in this country. I think they are a necessary evil.
Yea, which is why I consider this a bit heavy handed by the FDC, they are side stepping the normal process here. Not that I would support legalization efforts, I don't, I just don't like the way the FDC is taking advantage of the perception of an opioid problem for something that really isn't an opioid derived from the usual sources.
Where I get your position....I'm not sure I agree.
It seems to me that the FDA has a purpose and if something being sold openly in stores is killing folks, they might just have the responsibility to respond. I think they see this as a matter of public safety, and I think they have at least some justification for this. They've restricted other products for less, even if those being killed are being stupid and using more than recommended to get high...
Now calling something an opioid that's not actually derived from similar sources as opium does seem a bit heavy handed, because that puts this substance on a path to be made illegal to posses or use. It may act in similar ways as opium, however it's not actually opium...
Then their answer doesn't work for you. I'm not defending or attacking them, I was just answering the question of what the ethical justification might be for this work.
And this is ethical because...?????
They do claim to only sell their uncovered secrets to a "select group of countries and not repressive" ones.
provides exploits to ... the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
That's how they answer this ethics question. Which may or may not work for you.
Look, I'm no fan of currencies like BitCoin and I routinely make fun of those who think it's a sure bet as an investment, but claiming that most crypto currencies are heading to the great bit bucket in the sky is just as unsupportable. Some will, but I'm pretty sure most of the currently popular ones won't.
Crypto fulfills a need as a medium of exchange. I don't think this need will abate any time soon, in fact, I believe that it's use is being driven by economic conditions in various countries world wide. Countries like Venezuela where local currency inflation is out of sight have seen a boom in crypto for a reason, it's more stable than the local currency, even though the government is taking regulatory steps to curb it's use it's growing. I don't see this changing any time soon, despite what the big banks say.
Crypto is here to stay. I may not think it's a good investment medium, but I'm not stupid enough to think it's all heading to /dev/null any time soon because as a method of exchange it fills a need.
Again... I think you are wrong on this one. Tuna has 100X more mercury than Pollack now and we eat that with few limitations. So the amount of mercury goes up by double in Pollack, no big deal. It's a smaller fish, doesn't live as long and I believe doesn't consume other fish so the bio-amplification of mercury in it is not as bad of an issue. I don't see the mercury getting airborne and I don't see it making it into common fisheries food chains in significant enough amounts to matter.
Personally, I'd be more worried about mercury exposure from other sources like used neon lamps we've all been using of late instead of incandescent light bulbs and the effluent that comes from all those land fills these energy efficient light bulbs end up in. But even then, here in the USA this exposure is pretty limited unless you work in specific industrial or waste disposal fields.
I'm seeing on Fox News that the 2nd stage fired successfully putting a Tesla roadster towards Mars..
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2018/02/06/spacex-falcon-heavy-rocket-launches-successfully.html
Any confirmation from other sources yet?
It's like they know what they are doing or something over there at Space-X.. Time to make some money!
So you are wrong on St Helens... Care to go for double or nothing?
And you absolutely do eat fish from the Arctic; the Alaska pollack fishery is in the largest in the world.
So, please describe HOW these fish will consume mercury laced food from this possible source? Also, care to guess how little this is likely to affect Pollack? At this point the mercury content of this fish is exceedingly low, being 100X less than Tuna. So unless you can invent a way this affects their food chain, I'm guessing you are just guessing and don't really know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Sorry, type-o correction that spike is 1980... not 1989...
Volcanos are the largest natural source of mercury in the atmosphere and often create huge spikes. So take a look at this: https://toxics.usgs.gov/pubs/F...
St Helens is the large spike around 1989... This from some ice cores looked at by the USGS....
We survived Mount St Helens just fine and it doubled atmospheric mercury exposure world wide by throwing it into the air. I'm thinking this stuff won't be all that airborne, being in the thawing ground and not thrown into the air.
Have any other possible routes here? As I see this, the issue will be it getting into the food chain, and given there isn't much from the Artic in the human food chain, I'm thinking we are going to be fine. In other words, this won't be an issue, at least not a serious one. So this is scare mongering.
Again! It's true I swear this time I'm right!
Give me a break.. This is stupid on it's face..
Where does all that mercury actually GO when it's released? To the bottom of the ocean where it get's covered by silt perhaps? Unless you are making the case that this makes it into the food chain or environmental exposure is going to rise in non artic locations where human exposure will be enough to reach harmful levels, why all the alarm?
We've know that heavy metal levels in heavily polluted waters tend to mediate as time moves on. This stuff gets buried under silt and gets isolated from the environment. Sure, it's not great, but it's also not something that doesn't fix itself once you stop releasing the problem substances. In this case, release in the artic is a problem how? How much food do we get from artic sources? Not much we cannot do without.
Nobody risks a satellite (which almost always is much more expensive than the rocket that launches it) on the very first launch of a new rocket. Well, at least not if the company that builds that rocket says that this is a test launch and has a good chance of not succeeding. Spending millions and millions of dollars on satellites just to see them go down in flames is not a wise move.
Who was saying we should spend tens of millions of dollars on a satellite? I'm talking about experimental payloads conceived of and built by students and/or hobbyists for educational experiences at the high school and college levels. Something to stimulate interest in STEM careers, while giving Space-X some positive PR. You'd give the students a standard interface weight and size requirement to build within and provide a simple payload interface that accepted a pile of these experiments and could deliver them to LEO and disperse them. Nothing complex, except for any data communications required to get experiment results back.
Also, Why not launch a real satellite or two? Apart from not being able to get payload insurance, if Space-X only required payment upon successful launch and gave you a huge discount for your risk, somebody might take their chances and should Space-X actually succeed they might recoup some of their launch costs. Satellites *can* be reasonably inexpensive depending on your requirements and if you stick with common off the shelf components from the satellite builders they wouldn't have to cost all that much, compared to the launch cost savings.
So... The democrats will get their memo released? What's the issue now?
It's clear though "who started it" if you think about it. Why is pretty clear too. The question I have is "Is this a good idea?"
Remember what this whole side show is about... The idea that Trump colluded with the Russians to win the election. I'm thinking that that whole thing is looking like a political witch hunt now. The warrants where obtained base on some bogus information which was developed as opposition research by the DNC/Hillary campaign. Without this dossier, there would have been no FISA warrants, or so many including McCabe at the FBI who signed off on the applications say.
PLEAS tell me you see how this might not be a good thing... Using opposition research from one party to investigate the other... Surely if the shoe was on the other foot you'd be upset. IF Trump had paid Russian sources for information on Hillary, which the FBI used to justify FISA warrants to spy on her campaign, you'd be coming unglued. I think Trump and the republicans are being pretty measured about this while the democrats have been trying to stop all this coming out. I ask you, why is that?
That joke is over done.... But the whole movie was over done..
He would have to sterilize the car so well that there wouldn't be much left of it.
I think there is very little chance that a Tesla would survive entry into Mar's atmosphere in big enough pieces to be a risk. It's not like we've not arrived there carrying microbes already.. I'm sure we have.
So I'm gonna bitch about the super rich. There's no shortage of useful things to send up on a rocket, but we're gonna waste a launch on a dumb stunt by a rich guy.
I'm with you in a way. There are a lot of useful scientific payloads that SpaceX could fly on this test that could foster public interest in STEM disciplines, create good will for the company and provide valuable educational experiences for College and High School students. Can you imagine a nation wide science fair where students and hobbyists could conceive, design, build and actually launch experimental payloads into LEO?
Launching a car just doesn't seem to do this justice.
Will Musk be in it?
Will it "drive" itself?
They did say it would have a dummy in the driver's seat.... So I'm not sure how to answer your first question.. ;) Might be just Sir Isaac Newton driving...
I would assume the "auto pilot" would be engaged at some point, unless they are relying on Newton alone.
Shesh.. I'm just pointing out that this issue is highly partisan.
I'm also pointing out that it seems to me that the democrats have a serious issue with credibility on this one, but I don't see that as a partisan observation. They basically lied about the memo's contents, invoking "national security concerns" and exposure of techniques and methods. This memo didn't do this in the least. Strike one for credibility. They have harped on the memo as being partisan, but who doesn't understand that? Problem is there is zero partisanship in the memo, unless assaulting the 4th amendment is somehow a partisan issue. It's not. Strike two. Finally, they are attacking the author unfairly for partisan sounding reason. Strike three.
Your mileage obviously varies... But hey.. It's a partisan thing.