A "_____"port is a transportation and commercial node - but there's no transport or commerce of note taking places at these "space"ports... just glorified amusement park rides. They're being built (with tax dollars) for no purpose other than allowing airport mangers and commissions and various state officials to brag about having a "space"port.
Is heavily micromanaged by one gatekeeper - under those specific and unusual circumstances, whether or not the team is assembled in one place is largely irrelevant.
Yes, you can do this to some extent with technology, but it's not as good as getting a bunch of people together physically.
Unless the team was deeply dysfunctional to start with - I have yet to see an environment where getting people together in one room to interact wasn't vastly more productive than trying to do so virtually. Though the slashdot demographic is virulently misanthropic, they're off on the left hand tail of the bell curve in that respect.
That said, I've been a full-time teleworker for 7 years. It works for me because I have a well-defined area of responsibility, I worked in person with almost everyone I deal with prior to moving away, and I can communicate effectively by voice/text (not everyone can do this effectively when not physically present).
I had a friend who successfully telecommuted for about five years... and then things started going to hell. The main cause was normal turnover at the office, slowly but surely he was no longer dealing with the people he'd dealt with before moving to another coast... but with complete strangers to who he was just a voice on the telephone. They didn't really think of him as fellow employee, just a cipher who coughed up blobs of code on demand. He's working in an office now, and actually much happier than he was telecommuting.
Maintenance data is far more than a 'tickbox on a marketing sheet', it's the absolute bedrock for efficiently operating a large fleet of... well, anything. Cars, trucks, planes, etc. That airlines and airframe manufacturers can and do collect and analyze tons of maintenance and operational data is a large part of why air travel is so safe and (relatively) cheap.
Let's face it. The reason people drag all of their worldly possessions with them as carry-on is because we don't trust the baggage handlers to not destroy/steal/lose our stuff. I see this every time I fly.
Nope. Until airlines starting charging for baggage a few years back, finding room in the overhead bins was generally pretty easy outside of major business travel routes or high travel volume destinations/times.
Oh, and charging people for checked bags is making the problem worse, not better. What is it about the airline industry that has made every decision maker involved utterly stupid?
Expedia, Travelocity, Kayak... all the tools that let people chose to fly United instead of Delta because tickets on United are $2 cheaper. Airlines have been in an ongoing price war ever since deregulation in the 70's....and people insist on getting 60's level service at 2013 level prices.
One of the problems with running a business in the US is that Americans, in general, are cheap bastards. Nor is this new... the chain discount places have been exploiting this since the early 20th century.
An armed drone strike is the functional equivalent of launching a manned jet strike.
Yes.. and no. It's also the functional equivalent of a SWAT trooper with an automatic weapon.
this is one point we need to make sure stays absolutely clear. If you wouldn't hit it with an F-15 on US Soil, you shouldn't use a drone to do it.
No. Your point only holds because you've falsely defined one means of delivering ordinance on target as wrong because of gross physical similarities to another means - while ignoring other, equally valid but less colorful equivalencies.
The issue at hand isn't *how* someone is attacked - but who holds the legal authority to authorize the attack and process under the law by which he receives that authority.
I think that explains it pretty well. A few weeks before the Iraq war started, the world saw the largest coordinated protest in history across hundreds of cities, with millions upon millions of people calling for peace. The end result: Nothing. The largest action of its kind in human history, and it did absolutely nothing.
Nobody with any brains expected anything to happen.
Fast forward to protests held during Obama's tenure, the Occupy Wall Street movement. This time it wasn't a single day, but weeks, and months, of protest camps across hundreds of cities. The end result: ? How many bankers have been arrested? How many laws have changed? What impact has it had aside from a media sideshow?
If anything, the Occupy protestors were even more clueless than the anti-war protesters - they didn't even have a coherent agenda, let alone a coherent plan.
Protests don't fix problems or stop wars - anyone who has made even the most cursory study of history should be capable of recognizing that. Action makes changes - at the ballot box, in the places you choose to spend your money, etc... etc... But pretty much anyone under the age of forty or fifty has been raised in a culture where taking a stand is thought as unseemly - "raising consciousness" and "highlighting the plight" and "bringing attention to" and other no risk see-and-be-seen puppet shows are what are rewarded socially.
Can anyone name a single protest in the past 20 years that has actually caused a change? Thats why people aren't protesting now.
Oh, sure they're protesting - from the safety of their keyboards. They're twitting and liking and forwarding... that's even easier than protesting and gives the same faux feeling of "accomplishing" something. (They're also voting for the same rascals - because they're of the 'right' party... and then wondering why things don't change.)
*sigh* Don't make your inability to write simple English my fault. You either effed up, or are lazy - either way, man up and take responsibility for your own actions.
And no, there isn't enough salt in 'food' (which covers a wide variety of things - more ignorance on your part) to supply all the salt a body needs. That's why mankind has sought supplemental sources throughout history.
One of my basic insights of life: When someone is running around screaming "emergency", a lot of the time they simply want people to shut down the smart part of their brain and do something they otherwise wouldn't.
And the tin-foil hat and conspiracy types are no less prone to that. Outrage spreads fast on the 'net, and stopping to think leaves you behind the herd.
I'm actually surprised it was only under 1k since there are so many google account holders.
Me too. Every time one of these Google transparency articles is published, all the tinfoil hat types come out of the woodwork screaming and hollering about Big Brother... but when you actually run the numbers and look at context, they're anything but impressive. 10,000 FBI requests? I'd be worried about Big Brother too. But a thousand (or less) - that's less than I'd expect just from normal investigations. (The FBI investigate a lot of cases per annum.)
Make no mistake, these numbers are going to go nowhere but up... But a large part of that increase will simply be a reflection of reality - more and more people are putting more and more of their lives online, and the justice system is catching up with that.
It's no different than any other remote site science expedition. Great effort is made to ensure that Antarctic stations are supplied with consumables, oceanographic vessels come home when then they run low/out, etc... etc... Even fixed installations like LHC have ongoing logistics needs, like an on-site cryogenic plant to ensure a steady flow.
Logistics (and it's handmaiden, maintenance) are something all scientific equipment needs to deal with. Space isn't special.
Google does not sell personal information to third parties.
Not directly, no. But via cookies and ad hits, they let third parties infer personal information... So why Google's hands appear clean, they're not the innocent bystander they'd like to be seen as.
I know this is the internets and being a dick is sort of 'operators license' but that was a rather harsh reply to a question that isn't a bad one.
And you're about to get an even harsher one - because you've managed the difficult task of not only being more ignorant on the topic than the OP, but lacking in sufficient reading comprehension, mathematical ability, and simple reasoning ability. You just re-iterate his mistakes (and then add a few of your own), without showing any sign of even trying to comprehend my reply to him.
It's reasonable to ask why we're working on interplanetary manned flights, when one might suggest that it's a better investment of effort (and we gain valuable knowledge about long-term zero-g effects, space construction, and a host of lessons useful to long-duration space trips) to build spacedocks, ie spacecraft construction facilities near Earth.
It's only reasonable to ask if you also believe it's reasonable to ask why it's not legal to own unicorns or why cars have wheels and not Flintsone style rollers... I.E. it's only reasonable if you're completely and utterly clueless.
Now, no, LEO is not a solution, but L5 would be.
Yes - one difficult and expensive place isn't a solution... but an even *more* difficult and expensive place is.
The first voyage to the new world wasn't in a canoe (well, not on purpose anyway). We made that trip in large, long range vessels, compared to what we were used to sailing at the time.
Um, no. The first voyages to the new world (both by the Vikings and by Columbus) were made by vessels that were more or less generally like those in use for shorter voyages, Columbus' in particular were on the small side (much larger vessels existed) - and all were second or third hand (I.E. used) rather than purpose built.
And (his fundamental point) is that it's STUPID to loft vessels of that size/scope/capability (or significant pieces thereof) out of our gravity well.
Hello, McFly! Even if you boost it in pieces, it still needs to be boosted into orbit and then onwards to Mars. It doesn't matter if it's broken down into pieces - the mass remains the same. Breaking down into pieces *increases* complexity (and hence cost).
So that the cost of engineering out as much mass as possible to allow you to do everything in a single launch is, bizarrely, cheaper than launching a bunch of heavier-but-simpler-&-cheaper parts to assemble in orbit.
Generally cost scales only weakly with mass, but scales very strongly with complexity. The real cost of objects on orbit isn't the heavy parts - it's all the lightweight parts (all the parts that actually do the work) and all the interconnections between them. The thing is, those lightweight parts don't really get any cheaper with weight limits removed, nor does the costs of integration... Performance costs money.
Another issue is that spacecraft must be extraordinarily reliable, and reliability always adds to your costs. Nor does cheap launch take away the need for reliability - downtime for a GEO comsat costs the same regardless of launch costs. (And even if you have a cheap comsat on a cheap launcher ready for immediate launch - it takes days-to-weeks to get one on station and checked out...) Mars probes only have a launch opportunity once every eighteen months. LEO stations still mustn't endanger or kill their crews...
Everyone wants more mass because it does make design easier, but it's not at all clear how much more mass significantly drops the cost on orbit. What really drops costs is assembly line construction and commodity quantity/quality construction...
I never completely understood the need of launching massive ships from Earth whenever we want to leave it. Whenever we wanted to travel the seas, we did not build a massive caravel inland then painstakingly dragged it all the way to the coast. We reasoned it made more sense to build it in a dry dock, that way it only requires a tiny push to get it into the ocean.
I can't tell if you're actually that stupid or if you're pretending to be stupid to make a point. I mean seriously, you can't grasp the difference between a shipyard (dry dock) that you workers can walk to and needs no especial support - and LEO where everything comes with a launch price cost tagged onto it?
Wouldn't anyone at NASA think that making a "Space Dock" made sense?. Make a bunch of tiny trips to lower earth orbit and build the ship there, so you can make a larger ships to travel further. Mass would not be such a big issue (granted, fuel would be), but at least the escape velocity problem would be non-existent.
No, space docks don't make any sense - they don't save you any money, in fact they cost you *more* because of the need to support your assembly on orbit. Mass is still a big issue because you have to pay to boost it. Escape velocity is still a problem, because you still need to boost the fuel to LEO and the mass of your spacecraft beyond LEO.
Yes, eventually we're going to have to face the on-orbit assembly issue, but we're a long way from that. We're still in the 'canoe' phase - which you *can* build inland and carry to the water.
That sounds impressive. But rarely is even the largest of outrageous executive bonuses more than say,.000001 or.000002% of the companies value. So, how exactly is 'saving' the shareholder a fraction of a penny per share 'protecting' them?
From TFS: then triggers the melting of a set of joints that hold it together, making the product unusable without some carpentry skills Um... you make it sound like carpentry skills are rare and unusual. They're pretty common actually.
There's no longer such a thing as a childhood. Anything you do or say practically from birth will be recorded and used against you.
What planet did you grow up on? It's been like that for decades... if not forever. The only difference today is that it's recorded in a database rather than people's fallible memories.
Most people don't publish their real DOB or their SSN and learning disabilities on their FB page.
Do you even use Facebook? Pretty much everyone under forty or so uses their real DOB. So far as disabilities go, people practically brag about them routinely - when they aren't blaming every failure in their lives on them. (OK, these are self-diagnosed disabilities...)
Slashdot Mirror
A "_____"port is a transportation and commercial node - but there's no transport or commerce of note taking places at these "space"ports... just glorified amusement park rides. They're being built (with tax dollars) for no purpose other than allowing airport mangers and commissions and various state officials to brag about having a "space"port.
The contest is called the Google Lunar X Prize - and was announced back in 2007.
Is heavily micromanaged by one gatekeeper - under those specific and unusual circumstances, whether or not the team is assembled in one place is largely irrelevant.
Unless the team was deeply dysfunctional to start with - I have yet to see an environment where getting people together in one room to interact wasn't vastly more productive than trying to do so virtually. Though the slashdot demographic is virulently misanthropic, they're off on the left hand tail of the bell curve in that respect.
I had a friend who successfully telecommuted for about five years... and then things started going to hell. The main cause was normal turnover at the office, slowly but surely he was no longer dealing with the people he'd dealt with before moving to another coast... but with complete strangers to who he was just a voice on the telephone. They didn't really think of him as fellow employee, just a cipher who coughed up blobs of code on demand. He's working in an office now, and actually much happier than he was telecommuting.
Maintenance data is far more than a 'tickbox on a marketing sheet', it's the absolute bedrock for efficiently operating a large fleet of... well, anything. Cars, trucks, planes, etc. That airlines and airframe manufacturers can and do collect and analyze tons of maintenance and operational data is a large part of why air travel is so safe and (relatively) cheap.
According to Wikipedia, it's mined. The "stuff you've encountered" is going to be a vanishingly small sample...
I've never heard of anyone in the re-enactment community trying to navigate with one... It would be rather dodgy at best.
But calcite isn't exactly rare, so there's no need to create it.
Nope. Until airlines starting charging for baggage a few years back, finding room in the overhead bins was generally pretty easy outside of major business travel routes or high travel volume destinations/times.
Expedia, Travelocity, Kayak... all the tools that let people chose to fly United instead of Delta because tickets on United are $2 cheaper. Airlines have been in an ongoing price war ever since deregulation in the 70's....and people insist on getting 60's level service at 2013 level prices.
One of the problems with running a business in the US is that Americans, in general, are cheap bastards. Nor is this new... the chain discount places have been exploiting this since the early 20th century.
Yes.. and no. It's also the functional equivalent of a SWAT trooper with an automatic weapon.
No. Your point only holds because you've falsely defined one means of delivering ordinance on target as wrong because of gross physical similarities to another means - while ignoring other, equally valid but less colorful equivalencies.
The issue at hand isn't *how* someone is attacked - but who holds the legal authority to authorize the attack and process under the law by which he receives that authority.
Nobody with any brains expected anything to happen.
If anything, the Occupy protestors were even more clueless than the anti-war protesters - they didn't even have a coherent agenda, let alone a coherent plan.
Protests don't fix problems or stop wars - anyone who has made even the most cursory study of history should be capable of recognizing that. Action makes changes - at the ballot box, in the places you choose to spend your money, etc... etc... But pretty much anyone under the age of forty or fifty has been raised in a culture where taking a stand is thought as unseemly - "raising consciousness" and "highlighting the plight" and "bringing attention to" and other no risk see-and-be-seen puppet shows are what are rewarded socially.
Oh, sure they're protesting - from the safety of their keyboards. They're twitting and liking and forwarding... that's even easier than protesting and gives the same faux feeling of "accomplishing" something. (They're also voting for the same rascals - because they're of the 'right' party... and then wondering why things don't change.)
LOL! Good one!
*sigh* Don't make your inability to write simple English my fault. You either effed up, or are lazy - either way, man up and take responsibility for your own actions.
And no, there isn't enough salt in 'food' (which covers a wide variety of things - more ignorance on your part) to supply all the salt a body needs. That's why mankind has sought supplemental sources throughout history.
So, you're a zombie then? Because if you don't have salt in your diet, you're dead.
And the tin-foil hat and conspiracy types are no less prone to that. Outrage spreads fast on the 'net, and stopping to think leaves you behind the herd.
Me too. Every time one of these Google transparency articles is published, all the tinfoil hat types come out of the woodwork screaming and hollering about Big Brother... but when you actually run the numbers and look at context, they're anything but impressive. 10,000 FBI requests? I'd be worried about Big Brother too. But a thousand (or less) - that's less than I'd expect just from normal investigations. (The FBI investigate a lot of cases per annum.)
Make no mistake, these numbers are going to go nowhere but up... But a large part of that increase will simply be a reflection of reality - more and more people are putting more and more of their lives online, and the justice system is catching up with that.
It's no different than any other remote site science expedition. Great effort is made to ensure that Antarctic stations are supplied with consumables, oceanographic vessels come home when then they run low/out, etc... etc... Even fixed installations like LHC have ongoing logistics needs, like an on-site cryogenic plant to ensure a steady flow.
Logistics (and it's handmaiden, maintenance) are something all scientific equipment needs to deal with. Space isn't special.
This. Is. Slashdot! We don't confuse arguments in these parts by introducing facts that contradict our biases and opinions.
Not directly, no. But via cookies and ad hits, they let third parties infer personal information... So why Google's hands appear clean, they're not the innocent bystander they'd like to be seen as.
And you're about to get an even harsher one - because you've managed the difficult task of not only being more ignorant on the topic than the OP, but lacking in sufficient reading comprehension, mathematical ability, and simple reasoning ability. You just re-iterate his mistakes (and then add a few of your own), without showing any sign of even trying to comprehend my reply to him.
It's only reasonable to ask if you also believe it's reasonable to ask why it's not legal to own unicorns or why cars have wheels and not Flintsone style rollers... I.E. it's only reasonable if you're completely and utterly clueless.
Yes - one difficult and expensive place isn't a solution... but an even *more* difficult and expensive place is.
Um, no. The first voyages to the new world (both by the Vikings and by Columbus) were made by vessels that were more or less generally like those in use for shorter voyages, Columbus' in particular were on the small side (much larger vessels existed) - and all were second or third hand (I.E. used) rather than purpose built.
Hello, McFly! Even if you boost it in pieces, it still needs to be boosted into orbit and then onwards to Mars. It doesn't matter if it's broken down into pieces - the mass remains the same. Breaking down into pieces *increases* complexity (and hence cost).
Generally cost scales only weakly with mass, but scales very strongly with complexity. The real cost of objects on orbit isn't the heavy parts - it's all the lightweight parts (all the parts that actually do the work) and all the interconnections between them. The thing is, those lightweight parts don't really get any cheaper with weight limits removed, nor does the costs of integration... Performance costs money.
Another issue is that spacecraft must be extraordinarily reliable, and reliability always adds to your costs. Nor does cheap launch take away the need for reliability - downtime for a GEO comsat costs the same regardless of launch costs. (And even if you have a cheap comsat on a cheap launcher ready for immediate launch - it takes days-to-weeks to get one on station and checked out...) Mars probes only have a launch opportunity once every eighteen months. LEO stations still mustn't endanger or kill their crews...
Everyone wants more mass because it does make design easier, but it's not at all clear how much more mass significantly drops the cost on orbit. What really drops costs is assembly line construction and commodity quantity/quality construction...
I can't tell if you're actually that stupid or if you're pretending to be stupid to make a point. I mean seriously, you can't grasp the difference between a shipyard (dry dock) that you workers can walk to and needs no especial support - and LEO where everything comes with a launch price cost tagged onto it?
No, space docks don't make any sense - they don't save you any money, in fact they cost you *more* because of the need to support your assembly on orbit. Mass is still a big issue because you have to pay to boost it. Escape velocity is still a problem, because you still need to boost the fuel to LEO and the mass of your spacecraft beyond LEO.
Yes, eventually we're going to have to face the on-orbit assembly issue, but we're a long way from that. We're still in the 'canoe' phase - which you *can* build inland and carry to the water.
That sounds impressive. But rarely is even the largest of outrageous executive bonuses more than say, .000001 or .000002% of the companies value. So, how exactly is 'saving' the shareholder a fraction of a penny per share 'protecting' them?
From TFS: then triggers the melting of a set of joints that hold it together, making the product unusable without some carpentry skills
Um... you make it sound like carpentry skills are rare and unusual. They're pretty common actually.
What planet did you grow up on? It's been like that for decades... if not forever. The only difference today is that it's recorded in a database rather than people's fallible memories.
Do you even use Facebook? Pretty much everyone under forty or so uses their real DOB. So far as disabilities go, people practically brag about them routinely - when they aren't blaming every failure in their lives on them. (OK, these are self-diagnosed disabilities...)
You're right about the SSN though.