As far as encryption goes, for god's sake don't rely on anything the manufacturers ship. That stuff is meant to protect you from your average luser seeing files, not anybody who is honestly interested. Use Blowfish or Twofish for proper 2 way encryption.
If you must use encryption - choose a program that's compatible with Windows and Xnix, and keep a copy of the program (for both OS's) in a self extracting file on the same media as your data.
All neat stuff, all very valuable - but in a scanned form of absolutely zero legal validity.
The real answer isn't techno-wizardry and gadgetry - it's organization and clear thinking. All of my important documents are on paper, in ziplocs, and under lock and key in fire-resistant storage. (And unlike the NYT article implies - I'll have the presence of mind to grab the papers before departing. OTOH, unlike the average citizen I'm trained to keep my head on in a life threatening emergency courtesy of Uncle Sam's Canoe Club.)
After all these (and many more...) I am not surprised at all that some certain space agency's probe failed to reach Mars because of one team using the metric system and the other team using the imperial system.
The problem is - no agency outside of fiction has lost a probe because of any problem with conversion. The *reality* is that the certain space agency lost the probe because management failed to budget for analysis of the navigation data. Then, when presented with evidence of problems, they refused to believe they existed.
Copying the engineering profession does not mean that suddenly all the problems associated with software will disappear. Engineering systems are frequently late and over-budget. I can name a few hi-profile examples: the Millennium Dome (UK), the Jubilee Underground Line extension (London), the "wobbly" bridge (London), the Sydney Opera House. The first 3 were "vanilla" projects - there was no real excuse for failure.
The problem is in your 4th (and undiscussed) example, the Sydney Opera House, wasn't really an engineering process. An artiste generated a set of wonderful drawings - and they were accepted as the goal *before* anyone actually asked if they were practical within the envisioned budget. A closer metaphor for software development within real world engineering you couldn't find.
What I think he is really trying to fight is what the Agile Movement calls Big Design Up Front. BDUF recognizes that customers will never see how a software application will transform their business and will invariably change their minds. Dwight D. Eisenhower summed it up as "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."
It's a nice quote - but the discussions on the linked page seem to indicate to me that the writers thereof Simply Don't Get It.
Military planning (in its highest form) doesn't have as goal actually producing any plans, recipies, checklists, or anything else that an untrained mind would recognize as a method of getting things done. What it does produce is a clearly articulated goal(or set of goals), a system for determining the relative prioritie(s) of the lesser included activities, and systematic methodology for determining the values of tradeoffs between various methodologies and priorities. Once this is done you can then create the detailed plan from the top down, but the actual execution can be handled from the bottom up.
Set in the Civil War, Keaton is a locomotive engineer too small to make it into the Confederate army, so he helps out any way he can
A minor correction here: Keaton's character tries to enlist, but as an engineer, he is desperately needed right where he is. The movie is based on the Anderson raid, "The Great Locomotive Chase."
My grandfather faced the same dilemma in WWII. A railroad dispatcher by trade, he twice tried to enlist, the second time travelling from Georgia to California in order to do so, both times he was caught and his enlistment stopped. After the second time he was told he could spend the war doing his job, or making big rocks into little ones...
Re:Confusing the transitory with the long-lasting?
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Google Ant
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· Score: 2, Informative
In the long run, this little stunt will probably harm Dr. Fisher's reputation more than it will help Google's.
Ah - the wonders of slashdot, anyone without knowledge can post and get ranked insightful.
The reality is that there are [dozens|hundreds|thousands?] of the types of joke/pun names scattered across the taxonomy tree. In the long run, this will be forgotten and no one's reputation besmirched.
Back in the days when most people lived on farms and made most of the things they used by themselves, we all lived in rather squalid conditions. Let's hear it for specialization!
Right. I prefer L. Long's philosophy;
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
I'm an astronomer, and I haven't heard of a single thing useful having been produced by the ISS.
It's unsurprising you haven't heard anything - because there is no astronomy research being done there.
The other problem is this: The ISS is still under construction. Would you whine that $BIG_FANCY_TELESCOPE wasn't producing science when the mirror wasn't even installed yet?
I'm not a scientist, and it seems weird to me that they would stop spending money on something that still works and gone someplace nothing else has. It just seems wasteful. And it's not like they can justify it by saying they'll have a replacement there tomorrow, either, since they won't.
The problem is that their is only so much bandwidth available on the DSN - priorities must be allocated between a lot of different users and probes.
I also thought it was weird that they had to authorize more spending when the rovers were still working past their estimated useful life. You've got a remote control car on fucking Mars that still works and somebody wants to just switch it off? It reminds me of rich kids who throw out good toys simply because they're bored with them.
When the original budget was written, there was only enough money included to run for the expected lifetime - so they had to go back for more. A budget isn't a blank check - and there is only so much money to go around. (Spare me the Iraq war rants please.)
I guess the space program has become just like any other corporate entity -- if it can't show glossy, short-term results that look good in:15 on the evening news, it's "not viable." Yay. Another triumph of modern civilization.
Has now become? It's been like that since Day Zero.
The sad thing is, these days you find some info on wikipedia and do a google search to find a site that will verify/refute that information, and all you get are wikipedia mirrors:(
Equally, the 'pedia prefers the contents of webpages as sources (because they cab be googled), over the contents of $75.00 reference books that are in the hands of a few.
Actually, Wikipedia *doesn't* have this problem, en masse. From a traditional computer security theoretical standpoint, Wikis are appalling. In real life, it seems that they do generally work. Maybe over time, they'll take some tweaking (as the content stabilizes), but the "it's prone to horrible malicious attacks" argument lacks a bit when you consider that it actually works.
The growing problem at the 'pedia (and largely unnoticed to date) isn't malicious attacks, but what I call 'ignorance attacks'.
Malicious attacks are actively defended against. A large portion of the userbase (but a proportion that is decreasing over time) actively watches for new articles, large numbers of edits by contributors who are not logged in, check controversial articles regularly, etc... etc...
On the other hand, the single IP that makes a few minor edits and then gets bored almost always 'gets away', because he doesn't trip the flags of the watchers. In the pages I maintain - I have to revert or remove these minor (and incorrect) edits from one of more on almost a daily basis and I am seemingly the only one watching these far our of the mainstream articles. (I've left some of the crap edits in place for days to see if anyone else wanders by and fixes it. 90% of the time, nobody does.) Wandering among random pages - I find the same pattern.
While the walls of the 'pedia are stoutly defended - meanwhile rats are gnawing away at the grain store and the cats are few and overworked.
Well, no kidding. There's no incentive, at this point in time, for anyone other than MPAA/RIAA/BSA type organizations to launch a campaign to undermine BitTorrent.There's also no incentive for virii/trojan etc.. authors to create their 'masterpieces'... Yet they do.
One suspects that the torrent poisoners may be asshats rather than MPAA/RIAA.
Now for a real shock, let's compare how many times each has flown. The total is 850 for Soyuz and 113 for Shuttle, but that's going back before the Shuttle existed. I wasn't able to find how many Soyuz launches since 1981, but I'll be it's at least twice as many.
The Soyuz booster has flown 850 times, while the Soyuz [manned] spacecraft has flown only 93 times. Despite that, the failure rate of the booster is not significantly different than any other - something like one part in one thousand better last time I looked. (I.E. 99.00% versus 99.10%) You can't blame it on problems early in the program either - the last booster failure was only a dozen or so launches back - in 2003.
Are you joking? The last Soviet space fatilities were in 1971 - that's right, 10 years before the first Shuttle launch. In other words, for the period when both existed, the Shuttle has had 14 fatalities while the Soyuz has had 0.
Ah yes - the 'a problem must be fatal to be a real problem' fallacy. Challenger and Columbia proved how wrong that assumption is.
The fact is, Soyuz has a history of accidents, incidents, and near misses across it's entire history.
You see, apparently you can't get the point that Soyuz would have hard time in failing critically
Except of course for all the times it has failed critically.
And Soyuz survived even reentry facing 180 degrees in the opposite direction, heatshield in the back.
No it didn't. The orbital compartment seperated allowing the reentry compartment to assume it's normal heatshield forward position. (When the orbital compartment seperated - paint inside the re-entry compartment was already starting to burn. Another few seconds and it would have been all over.)
You are right - there is no further point in discussion. You are a clueless idiot who has no idea what he's talking about. Your statement above about the TM-5 accident proves you drooling fanboy rather than someone with a clue.
I define "accident" as a catastrophic failure, not as missing a/some mission objective(s).
That's an emotional definition, not an engineering one. Even so, let's look at the record: Soyuz-1 and -11, both fatal. Two catastrophic failures of the booster. The nearly fatal re-entry on TM-5... That's 5 catastrophic failures on 93 flights. That's not a pretty picture.
Now I know, while a system is a sum of its components the unique combination of its components will lead to uniquenesses in the system, but having the additional flight time on those components gains experiance and system use time.
That experience has given the Russians no advantage. Both the Soyuz booster and the Soyuz spacecraft (which are different craft despite the name) have a failure rate that has remained steady over time, rather than decreasing. Additionally, the failure rate is not significantly different than any non Russian booster or craft.
The Russians also have much higher flight rates in general. Shooting rockets isn't a special event to them it is the status quo.
Which explains why the Russian booster sucess rate is around 99.1%, and the American booster sucess rate is around 99.00%. That's a difference of one part in one thousand - statistically insignificant. (And the Soyuz spacecraft has flown only 93 times - compared to 113 times for the Shuttle, despite the Soyuz flying for over a decade longer. You can't really count Progress in the Soyuz statistics, as they are significantly different - especially as Progress does not re-enter, which historically is where most of the Soyuz accidents and incidents occur.)
'm not knocking the shuttle - it was a good piece of hardware, and honestly the two accidents that occured were due to management errors. But the Soyuz system is a good system with a lot of merits and is honestly where we should have went post-Apollo (and is where we are going with the CEV).
The problem is, the Soyuz isn't a system that's any better than the Shuttle. Period. It has an ongoing record of significant problems, many of which have come close to killing the crew.
As for your critique of Soyuz.....all Soyuz are not created equal. There have been many varients of what is called "Soyuz." Are you claiming the track record of the earlier, far less advanced Soyuz should be counted against more modern versions? They are, basically, very different craft with the same name.
Even if you look at the two latest versions, the TM (1986-2002) and the TMA (2002-present) you find the same track record. (In fact some of the worst accidents occured in the TM series.) Even if you constrain your comparison to just the latest mark, the TMA, you find serious incidents on three out of the six flights to date.
The simple fact is this: The Soyuz is not the paragon of spacecraft that it's widely believed to be.
In terms of the number of fatal accidents per flight, Soyuz has about the same level of safety as Shuttle.
The difference is that Soyuz continutes to improve, so that recent flights are safer than earlier flights.
If you make the emotional arguement and only consider fatal accidents, then yes - Soyuz has gotten better over time. When you examine the *engineering* you find an ongoing pattern of accidents and incidents, a disturbingly large number of which have avoided being fatal only the the grace of $DIETY.
Shuttle safety is at best remaining the same over time, and I think the reason is complacency on the part of NASA.
25 flights to the first accident, 87 to the second. You do the math.
Of course it doesn't help that the Shuttle is a huge monolithic vehicle, where changing one component requires changes to many other components.
Except of course for all the components they've changed without changing any other components at all... (The main computers have been upgraded, by simply dropping in the new ones. The SSME's have been upgraded three times, the new ones were installed and a few lines of code changed. Etc... Etc...)
By comparison capsule based systems (Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Soyuz) have better defined interfaces between the launch vehicle and the spacecraft. As a result they accomodate evolutionary changes with less overall redesign.
Ah - so except for the many evolutionary changes the Shuttle has gone through without substantial redesign, it can't make any evolutionary changes without overall redesign.
For example, the Shuttle is on the third or fourth (depending on how you count) major rev of the ET, none of which required any changes to the SRB's or the Orbiter. The Shuttle is on the second rev of SRB's - with no changes to the Orbiter or ET. The Shuttle is on it's fourth version of SSME's - needing nothing more than changing a few lines of code, etc.. etc.. (Darn, it seems interface definition and control actually does work.)
I see there's no point in discussing with you... you have some interesting concept about the meaning of word "significant"...
I define 'significant' in this instance to mean 'likely to cause loss of mission and/or crew', I.E. an engineering definition, not the emotional one of 'kills crew'. The former solidly covers the reliability and safety spectrum (the two are not the same), while the latter is meaningless.
OK, to put it clearly: STATISTICS CAN PROVE ANYTHING, AND EVERYTHING FAILS SOMETIMES; THE POINT IS: HOW IT FAILS.
Yes, how it fails is of interest. However, there is more to situation than the black and white emotional argument of "kills/doesn't kill" - both Shuttle losses plainly show that.
Prior to Challenger, there were ongoing O-ring failures. Prior to Columbia, there were ongoing foam shedding problems. By your definitions, niether ongoing problem was significant, because niether killed - until they did. Equally, the ongoing problems with Soyuz indicate a deeper problem - one that will kill.
The difference is in the trends. Both Soyuz accidents happened early in the life cycle and were addressed.
Both Soyuz accidents? I can think of over ten right off the top of my head - all of them pretty evenly scattered across the life of the program to date.
Oh, right - like most uninformed people you seem to think that accidents are only important if you kill people. That's an emotional arguement, not an engineering one.
They havent had an accident in how many years?
It's been three years since the failure of the flight control computer on TMA-1. (A failure the Russians have yet to comment or provide a report on.) It's been two years since the docking incident on TMA-2. (Recontacted ISS after undocking. The Russians haven't provided a report or comment on this one either.) It's been just over eighteen months since the uncommanded pyro activation on TMA-4. (And like TMA -1 and -2, the Russians are busily pretending it never happened.)
That's a very valid metric that is completely in Soyuz favor.
It's an emotional argument, not a metric. The metrics pretty clearly state that Soyuz safety and reliability are little better than the Shuttles in some areas, and far worse in others.
There are other factors that leave the ball in the Soyuz court as well. Cost is a huge one.
Care to state those other factors? (Cost is a red herring - Soyuz is cheaper, yes. However the differences in performance are astronomical - I.E. apples and oranges.)
Remind me please...how many of these accidents turned out to be catastrophic?
From an engineering point of view, whether they turned out to be catastrophic or not is meaningless. From an emotional point of view it's different of course.
Besides what you're describing about Soyuz is just rubbish really
No, it's stone cold facts.
those are either things that happened to early versions
No, it's things that have happened pretty regularly across the entire history of the program. The last significant landing incident was TMA-1 in 2002. The last significant docking problem was TMA-3 in 2003. TMA-5 had a pyro fire accidentally during pre-launch processing in 2004.
or, in case of landing hazards, not related to Soyuz itself at all, beeing just fairly probable outcome of choosing such landing place as central Asia...
Landing hundreds of miles off course (as Soyuz has done multiple times) is a feature of faulty management and/or hardware - not landing site selection.
Check your stats with what is really Soyuz now/recently: TMA/TM
TM is old news - flying from 1986 to 2002. None the less, it had numerous problems. The TMA is current version - it's only flown six times, yet has had problems on 3 of those flights.
Soyuz has been successfully sending stuff into space for an awful long time and as far as we know has a very impressive safety record.
Maybe so far as the fanboy knows that's true. But to those who have actually studied the issue - the Soyuz's safety record is stunningly *unimpressive*. It's killed two crews, it's had two launch aborts, 4 mission aborts, and something like 20+ reentry/landing accidents or incidents. (And over half of those 20 missed killing a crew only by the grace of $DIETY.) It's accomplished all this in 93 flights - compared to the Shuttles 113.
Slashdot Mirror
All neat stuff, all very valuable - but in a scanned form of absolutely zero legal validity.
The real answer isn't techno-wizardry and gadgetry - it's organization and clear thinking. All of my important documents are on paper, in ziplocs, and under lock and key in fire-resistant storage. (And unlike the NYT article implies - I'll have the presence of mind to grab the papers before departing. OTOH, unlike the average citizen I'm trained to keep my head on in a life threatening emergency courtesy of Uncle Sam's Canoe Club.)
Military planning (in its highest form) doesn't have as goal actually producing any plans, recipies, checklists, or anything else that an untrained mind would recognize as a method of getting things done. What it does produce is a clearly articulated goal(or set of goals), a system for determining the relative prioritie(s) of the lesser included activities, and systematic methodology for determining the values of tradeoffs between various methodologies and priorities. Once this is done you can then create the detailed plan from the top down, but the actual execution can be handled from the bottom up.
The reality is that there are [dozens|hundreds|thousands?] of the types of joke/pun names scattered across the taxonomy tree. In the long run, this will be forgotten and no one's reputation besmirched.
The other problem is this: The ISS is still under construction. Would you whine that $BIG_FANCY_TELESCOPE wasn't producing science when the mirror wasn't even installed yet?
Malicious attacks are actively defended against. A large portion of the userbase (but a proportion that is decreasing over time) actively watches for new articles, large numbers of edits by contributors who are not logged in, check controversial articles regularly, etc... etc...
On the other hand, the single IP that makes a few minor edits and then gets bored almost always 'gets away', because he doesn't trip the flags of the watchers. In the pages I maintain - I have to revert or remove these minor (and incorrect) edits from one of more on almost a daily basis and I am seemingly the only one watching these far our of the mainstream articles. (I've left some of the crap edits in place for days to see if anyone else wanders by and fixes it. 90% of the time, nobody does.) Wandering among random pages - I find the same pattern.
While the walls of the 'pedia are stoutly defended - meanwhile rats are gnawing away at the grain store and the cats are few and overworked.
The fact is, Soyuz has a history of accidents, incidents, and near misses across it's entire history.
You are right - there is no further point in discussion. You are a clueless idiot who has no idea what he's talking about. Your statement above about the TM-5 accident proves you drooling fanboy rather than someone with a clue.
The simple fact is this: The Soyuz is not the paragon of spacecraft that it's widely believed to be.
For example, the Shuttle is on the third or fourth (depending on how you count) major rev of the ET, none of which required any changes to the SRB's or the Orbiter. The Shuttle is on the second rev of SRB's - with no changes to the Orbiter or ET. The Shuttle is on it's fourth version of SSME's - needing nothing more than changing a few lines of code, etc.. etc.. (Darn, it seems interface definition and control actually does work.)
Prior to Challenger, there were ongoing O-ring failures. Prior to Columbia, there were ongoing foam shedding problems. By your definitions, niether ongoing problem was significant, because niether killed - until they did. Equally, the ongoing problems with Soyuz indicate a deeper problem - one that will kill.
Oh, right - like most uninformed people you seem to think that accidents are only important if you kill people. That's an emotional arguement, not an engineering one.
It's been three years since the failure of the flight control computer on TMA-1. (A failure the Russians have yet to comment or provide a report on.) It's been two years since the docking incident on TMA-2. (Recontacted ISS after undocking. The Russians haven't provided a report or comment on this one either.) It's been just over eighteen months since the uncommanded pyro activation on TMA-4. (And like TMA -1 and -2, the Russians are busily pretending it never happened.)It's an emotional argument, not a metric. The metrics pretty clearly state that Soyuz safety and reliability are little better than the Shuttles in some areas, and far worse in others.Care to state those other factors? (Cost is a red herring - Soyuz is cheaper, yes. However the differences in performance are astronomical - I.E. apples and oranges.)