Well, the RAD750 is a hardened VME chassis, and, having worked with them in the past, a fully loaded VME can weigh 50 - 75 pounds, and that's not including any sort of I/O channel boards or shielding. If you can get the guts of an Android phone into orbit, or more likely, a cluster of them, for less than ten pounds, including shielding, you've saved yourself quite a bit on the mass budget. Considering that many spacecraft have multiple redundant computers, that mass savings could translate to the ability to launch a couple microsatellites, or to be able to carry additional instrumentation or propellant.
Image size. I used to work with a real time Linux kernel called Red Hawk, made by Concurrent Computer Corporation, which was a layer that ran over Red Hat. Try as we might, we couldn't get the install image own below 500 MB, and that was without a GUI. Some of the smallest Android distributions are less than 100 MB, and they include a fully featured GUI. Also, Android is optimized to run in low power situations, on slower processors, rather than the quad core, multiprocessor systems we were running Red Hawk on.
Regardless, the kernel is massively extensible, and throwing out the UI, you've got a great system for which to do development, plus, it's free. Many of the newer real-time OS systems are based on Linux, but they're very heavy. Some RTOS development could make Android into a great embedded, real-time OS.
But you're missing the point...Android is a very extensible system that's not only low cost, but full featured, and you can build all sorts of new capabilities into it. Also, the guts of cell phones are extremely small and powerful, as well as cheap, and can be placed in a hardened container to protect them from environmental conditions (vacuum, thermal, radiation). Further, since they're so small, you can pack dozens of them onto a spacecraft, in multiple, independent, and redundant packages, such that if one, two, or three fail, you could have ten more to back them up. My Nexus 4 weighs 139 grams with battery. Packing ten of them into a package, with interconnects, might account for 10 kilos, including a radiation shield. My guess is that you'd be able to implement all associated infrastructure of many mission packages for far less mass budget than you would with a traditional spaceflight certified computer package, like the RAD750, which costs $200,000, and runs at 200 MHz.
I'm...not sure what you're asking. Yes, the CISSP is a difficult exam. Yes, they do require us to get it. Yes, it requires a significant investment in professional experience, as well as significant classroom study. No, they don't pay for the exam prep materials or training classes, unless they already have them. Most people pass things around after they're done with them, so with each person buying random stuff, at some point, the entire office is likely to have used it to study for an exam.
Nah, this place isn't likely to dump any money into training materials. They're certain that the materials they provide are adequate for anyone to attain the certs they seek, even if they are 'a little old'.
I'll just claim it as a write-off on my taxes next year, as an unreimbursed business expense.
Many companies do this as part of their educational reimbursement policy. My previous company would pay $15,000 per year for you to go to grad school, but wouldn't reimburse anything for industry certifications, unless they deemed it necessary to send you for them. In the seven years I worked there, as a sys admin/engineer, I went to three classes, and was only asked to get one cert, Security+, as it was required to meet DoD Directive 8570. My new company pays only up to $3000/year for school, but you can use that for an industry certification. That said, most companies (the two I've worked for, included) require that you stay there for a year after the last disbursement, otherwise, you have to pay a pro-rated amount back to the company.
My company has a very small library of books, and a decent amount of training material on a shared drive for the site, yet a lot of the books and materials are several years old. I'm studying for Server+ right now, and the most recent book they have is from 2004. I recently tried to get the site director to purchase some new training books, but was told that they'd 'maybe' be able to get the books in six months. Otherwise, I could purchase the books myself, and they'd 'maybe' be able to reimburse me in six to eight months. They do allow you to read and study during downtime, which is nice, but I've done quite a bit of studying on my own time, too. Once it comes time for the exam, they do reimburse you for the cost of the exam, provided you pass it and attain the certificate.
That said, my company uses its employee's credentials to bid on contracts, so it behooves them to encourage us to get CompTIA, GIAC, CISSP, or EC-Council certified, so that they're able to bid higher amounts with better qualified workers. They even tie certifications to our yearly performance evals, requiring that we attain one cert, yearly, to meet our professional development goal, and two to exceed it. We get a small bump in pay for the certs, as well. A Server+ cert might get us $250/year, while a CISSP could get us $1000, and Certified Ethical Hacker might be $2000, however, the pay bumps are only done every six months, and from what I hear, it can be even longer than that.
My previous company placed ZERO emphasis on professional training or certification, other than Security+, and an OS cert to meet DoD 8570 certification requirements.
My opinion on this? I shelled out a couple hundred bucks for training materials for Server+, Linux+, and CISSP, simply because their training materials are very old. They also don't send people to training classes, even for something like the CISSP, which is a fairly difficult exam. If they're going to bid on contracts and REQUIRE me to hit certain training goals, there should be money put aside, yearly, for the office to attain those certs. I don't mind putting out the money for the exams, then being reimbursed, but at least get me adequate training materials, and send me to one class per year.
The F-22 hasn't been flown because we haven't been involved in a conflict where air superiority was a requirement of the mission. If/when that happens, like in a conflict with Russia, China, Iran, or...who knows, Germany could go all batshit crazy again and start invading other countries, the F-22 will be used.
As for the F-35, it's not flying combat sorties yet, because it's still in the testing phase. In another couple years, once it's ready, it will more than fulfill the roles it's intended to fulfill.
In theory, it would be great to be able to preview the pictures in a larger format, but I just think it would be clumsy as hell to try to do, in practice.
Frankly, the only times I see people using them, it's tourists that want to look hip with their iPad, or idiot teenage girls taking selfies in the bathroom mirror with duck lips.
Same here! I picked a 32 gigger up during the firesale, and although WebOS was abysmally bad, a couple months of waiting turned up a CM port, which will hopefully be on Jelly Bean, soon, and a decent tab that I can use for sitting on the couch. For $150, that's totally worth it. This thing? Not so much.
Do people, other than iFans, actually take pictures with their tablets? I've never done it with my TouchPad (running CM9), and I don't know anyone else with a non-Apple tablet that actually uses them for pictures, especially since phones are much easier to maneuver, and typically have much better cameras.
Right, but if your aircraft is stealthy enough, like the F-22 and F-35, as well the B-2, you don't worry about environmental emissions. The radar cross sections of the aircraft are rather small, and environmental emissions are so erratic in nature, that a radar system likely won't be able to piece together enough returns from the Raptor/JSF to even know it's there.
I don't work on the F-22, or for the Air Force, whatsoever, but I can read Wikipedia...
"The AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile, or AMRAAM (pronounced "am-ram"), is a modern beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile (BVRAAM) capable of all-weather day-and-night operations. Designed with the same form-and-fit factors as the previous generation of semiactive guided Sparrow missiles, it is a fire-and-forget missile with active guidance." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-120_AMRAAM
I think the point I'm more trying to make is that the two world wars, while HUGELY costly in terms of human life, on all sides, including civilians, was completely immersive. They were also fought under circumstances far different than recent wars, with an attacking army (the Allieds) repulsing an invading army (Axis Powers), while the attackers had the support of the people being oppressed, especially in France, Poland, etc. Most of the world is so polarized, nowadays, and indoctrinated to hate anything that's different than their lifestyle, that it's unlikely any indigenous civilians would be supportive of an invading force, even if it were ostensibly to defend the civilians against an oppressive dictator, a la, Saddam Hussein, Ghaddafi Duck, Mubarak, et al.
While the F-14's original intended role was fleet air defense and air superiority, it was adapted in the 90s to carry the LANTIRN pod, which allowed it to perform the ground attack role. So, maybe research before making asinine comments?
That is how radar works, but the weapons that the F-22 carries are not dependent upon illumination from their source aircraft, because they have active homing devices and can direct themselves to destroy incoming aircraft without pilot intervention. The F-22 only needs to use the passive radar array to utilize the radiation being emitted from other radar sites to determine range, altitude, and bearing, then fire the missile, which handles the intercept and terminal homing on its own.
The military doesn't use components that originate in China, and has specific guidelines for where componentry can originate, given very strict information assurance controls, as well as anti-tamper controls. Sure, there are likely some low end semiconductors that come from China, transistors, capacitors, and the like, but if World War II taught us anything, it's that the US can quickly, and efficiently, ramp up its industrial production, even after a decade of decline, due to recession/depression.
Personally, I don't think most of those in Congress deserve a clearance, and only those on the Armed Services committees should have one. But hey, that's just my opinion.
You're obviously a troll, but I'll bite - people given US security clearances have a VERY intensive background check done on them, as well as their friends. It includes inquisitions into their criminal record, their financials, as well as a thorough investigation into their associations, friends, and activities. These types of people are not the types that sell out their nation for a couple hundred bucks, regardless of what Hollywood wants you to believe.
That said, I personally disagree with the decoupling of civilians from enemy aggressors, as well as the focus on eliminating collateral damage. Sure, it makes you look nice in the papers, but if you're going to war with someone, it should be all-out war. Bring everybody in, decimate the aggressors, and be done with it. I'm tired of this line that we need to make sure that we're sensitive to the people that live there, when any one of them could strap a bomb on and kill twenty American soldiers.
Also, while I was and am a supporter of what the US did in Iraq, both from a 'remove Saddam' and 'build a relatively healthy, friendly nation,' I've become wholly unsupportive of our action in Afghanistan. We're just spinning our wheels in a country where we'll never be able to implement a healthy government, spending a metric crapload of money on people that will never support us, and overextending our active duty military (and reservists) such that we're now going to furlough them or lay them off, further reducing our expeditionary capabilities.
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Well, the RAD750 is a hardened VME chassis, and, having worked with them in the past, a fully loaded VME can weigh 50 - 75 pounds, and that's not including any sort of I/O channel boards or shielding. If you can get the guts of an Android phone into orbit, or more likely, a cluster of them, for less than ten pounds, including shielding, you've saved yourself quite a bit on the mass budget. Considering that many spacecraft have multiple redundant computers, that mass savings could translate to the ability to launch a couple microsatellites, or to be able to carry additional instrumentation or propellant.
Image size. I used to work with a real time Linux kernel called Red Hawk, made by Concurrent Computer Corporation, which was a layer that ran over Red Hat. Try as we might, we couldn't get the install image own below 500 MB, and that was without a GUI. Some of the smallest Android distributions are less than 100 MB, and they include a fully featured GUI. Also, Android is optimized to run in low power situations, on slower processors, rather than the quad core, multiprocessor systems we were running Red Hawk on.
Regardless, the kernel is massively extensible, and throwing out the UI, you've got a great system for which to do development, plus, it's free. Many of the newer real-time OS systems are based on Linux, but they're very heavy. Some RTOS development could make Android into a great embedded, real-time OS.
But you're missing the point...Android is a very extensible system that's not only low cost, but full featured, and you can build all sorts of new capabilities into it. Also, the guts of cell phones are extremely small and powerful, as well as cheap, and can be placed in a hardened container to protect them from environmental conditions (vacuum, thermal, radiation). Further, since they're so small, you can pack dozens of them onto a spacecraft, in multiple, independent, and redundant packages, such that if one, two, or three fail, you could have ten more to back them up. My Nexus 4 weighs 139 grams with battery. Packing ten of them into a package, with interconnects, might account for 10 kilos, including a radiation shield. My guess is that you'd be able to implement all associated infrastructure of many mission packages for far less mass budget than you would with a traditional spaceflight certified computer package, like the RAD750, which costs $200,000, and runs at 200 MHz.
I'm...not sure what you're asking. Yes, the CISSP is a difficult exam. Yes, they do require us to get it. Yes, it requires a significant investment in professional experience, as well as significant classroom study. No, they don't pay for the exam prep materials or training classes, unless they already have them. Most people pass things around after they're done with them, so with each person buying random stuff, at some point, the entire office is likely to have used it to study for an exam.
Nah, this place isn't likely to dump any money into training materials. They're certain that the materials they provide are adequate for anyone to attain the certs they seek, even if they are 'a little old'.
I'll just claim it as a write-off on my taxes next year, as an unreimbursed business expense.
Many companies do this as part of their educational reimbursement policy. My previous company would pay $15,000 per year for you to go to grad school, but wouldn't reimburse anything for industry certifications, unless they deemed it necessary to send you for them. In the seven years I worked there, as a sys admin/engineer, I went to three classes, and was only asked to get one cert, Security+, as it was required to meet DoD Directive 8570. My new company pays only up to $3000/year for school, but you can use that for an industry certification. That said, most companies (the two I've worked for, included) require that you stay there for a year after the last disbursement, otherwise, you have to pay a pro-rated amount back to the company.
My company has a very small library of books, and a decent amount of training material on a shared drive for the site, yet a lot of the books and materials are several years old. I'm studying for Server+ right now, and the most recent book they have is from 2004. I recently tried to get the site director to purchase some new training books, but was told that they'd 'maybe' be able to get the books in six months. Otherwise, I could purchase the books myself, and they'd 'maybe' be able to reimburse me in six to eight months. They do allow you to read and study during downtime, which is nice, but I've done quite a bit of studying on my own time, too. Once it comes time for the exam, they do reimburse you for the cost of the exam, provided you pass it and attain the certificate.
That said, my company uses its employee's credentials to bid on contracts, so it behooves them to encourage us to get CompTIA, GIAC, CISSP, or EC-Council certified, so that they're able to bid higher amounts with better qualified workers. They even tie certifications to our yearly performance evals, requiring that we attain one cert, yearly, to meet our professional development goal, and two to exceed it. We get a small bump in pay for the certs, as well. A Server+ cert might get us $250/year, while a CISSP could get us $1000, and Certified Ethical Hacker might be $2000, however, the pay bumps are only done every six months, and from what I hear, it can be even longer than that.
My previous company placed ZERO emphasis on professional training or certification, other than Security+, and an OS cert to meet DoD 8570 certification requirements.
My opinion on this? I shelled out a couple hundred bucks for training materials for Server+, Linux+, and CISSP, simply because their training materials are very old. They also don't send people to training classes, even for something like the CISSP, which is a fairly difficult exam. If they're going to bid on contracts and REQUIRE me to hit certain training goals, there should be money put aside, yearly, for the office to attain those certs. I don't mind putting out the money for the exams, then being reimbursed, but at least get me adequate training materials, and send me to one class per year.
You have no idea how badly I wish I had mod points right now!
Someone please mod this up!!!
Thank you! Someone who understands requirements derivation!
That's not the F-35s fault, that's the fault of the armed services that decided to buy one aircraft platform that would do basically everything.
The F-22 hasn't been flown because we haven't been involved in a conflict where air superiority was a requirement of the mission. If/when that happens, like in a conflict with Russia, China, Iran, or...who knows, Germany could go all batshit crazy again and start invading other countries, the F-22 will be used.
As for the F-35, it's not flying combat sorties yet, because it's still in the testing phase. In another couple years, once it's ready, it will more than fulfill the roles it's intended to fulfill.
In theory, it would be great to be able to preview the pictures in a larger format, but I just think it would be clumsy as hell to try to do, in practice.
Frankly, the only times I see people using them, it's tourists that want to look hip with their iPad, or idiot teenage girls taking selfies in the bathroom mirror with duck lips.
Same here! I picked a 32 gigger up during the firesale, and although WebOS was abysmally bad, a couple months of waiting turned up a CM port, which will hopefully be on Jelly Bean, soon, and a decent tab that I can use for sitting on the couch. For $150, that's totally worth it. This thing? Not so much.
Do people, other than iFans, actually take pictures with their tablets? I've never done it with my TouchPad (running CM9), and I don't know anyone else with a non-Apple tablet that actually uses them for pictures, especially since phones are much easier to maneuver, and typically have much better cameras.
Right, but if your aircraft is stealthy enough, like the F-22 and F-35, as well the B-2, you don't worry about environmental emissions. The radar cross sections of the aircraft are rather small, and environmental emissions are so erratic in nature, that a radar system likely won't be able to piece together enough returns from the Raptor/JSF to even know it's there.
I don't work on the F-22, or for the Air Force, whatsoever, but I can read Wikipedia...
"The AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile, or AMRAAM (pronounced "am-ram"), is a modern beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile (BVRAAM) capable of all-weather day-and-night operations. Designed with the same form-and-fit factors as the previous generation of semiactive guided Sparrow missiles, it is a fire-and-forget missile with active guidance." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-120_AMRAAM
I think the point I'm more trying to make is that the two world wars, while HUGELY costly in terms of human life, on all sides, including civilians, was completely immersive. They were also fought under circumstances far different than recent wars, with an attacking army (the Allieds) repulsing an invading army (Axis Powers), while the attackers had the support of the people being oppressed, especially in France, Poland, etc. Most of the world is so polarized, nowadays, and indoctrinated to hate anything that's different than their lifestyle, that it's unlikely any indigenous civilians would be supportive of an invading force, even if it were ostensibly to defend the civilians against an oppressive dictator, a la, Saddam Hussein, Ghaddafi Duck, Mubarak, et al.
While the F-14's original intended role was fleet air defense and air superiority, it was adapted in the 90s to carry the LANTIRN pod, which allowed it to perform the ground attack role. So, maybe research before making asinine comments?
That is how radar works, but the weapons that the F-22 carries are not dependent upon illumination from their source aircraft, because they have active homing devices and can direct themselves to destroy incoming aircraft without pilot intervention. The F-22 only needs to use the passive radar array to utilize the radiation being emitted from other radar sites to determine range, altitude, and bearing, then fire the missile, which handles the intercept and terminal homing on its own.
The military doesn't use components that originate in China, and has specific guidelines for where componentry can originate, given very strict information assurance controls, as well as anti-tamper controls. Sure, there are likely some low end semiconductors that come from China, transistors, capacitors, and the like, but if World War II taught us anything, it's that the US can quickly, and efficiently, ramp up its industrial production, even after a decade of decline, due to recession/depression.
Personally, I don't think most of those in Congress deserve a clearance, and only those on the Armed Services committees should have one. But hey, that's just my opinion.
You're obviously a troll, but I'll bite - people given US security clearances have a VERY intensive background check done on them, as well as their friends. It includes inquisitions into their criminal record, their financials, as well as a thorough investigation into their associations, friends, and activities. These types of people are not the types that sell out their nation for a couple hundred bucks, regardless of what Hollywood wants you to believe.
What's a moran?
I don't disagree with you there, at all.
That said, I personally disagree with the decoupling of civilians from enemy aggressors, as well as the focus on eliminating collateral damage. Sure, it makes you look nice in the papers, but if you're going to war with someone, it should be all-out war. Bring everybody in, decimate the aggressors, and be done with it. I'm tired of this line that we need to make sure that we're sensitive to the people that live there, when any one of them could strap a bomb on and kill twenty American soldiers.
Also, while I was and am a supporter of what the US did in Iraq, both from a 'remove Saddam' and 'build a relatively healthy, friendly nation,' I've become wholly unsupportive of our action in Afghanistan. We're just spinning our wheels in a country where we'll never be able to implement a healthy government, spending a metric crapload of money on people that will never support us, and overextending our active duty military (and reservists) such that we're now going to furlough them or lay them off, further reducing our expeditionary capabilities.