Why not just use induction to recharge batteries while flying by? Adding the smarts and morphing tech just to land doesn't seem worth the effort. Moving a conductor thru a magnetic field (like those surrounding power lines) will generate electric current. Just fly close to the lines and use that to recharge the batts.
I work on simulators used to train astronauts, most recently, the network comm simulator. "starting encryption" with 20+ year old equipment that has no built-in encryption is a very big deal. (Yes, most of it is digital). It's not just a switch to flip - it would cost tens of millions. Consider that technology today and as predicted for the next 20-30 years, most forms of encryption provide time, not secrecy.
Plus, it would require a change in the simulators that simulate the equipment. We've never even been asked to estimate the cost of such a change, which would happen in the early "what if" part of management's planning.
No, NASA has NOT started encrypting...wait, let me qualify that: NASA has not started encrypting MANNED space flight telemetry. I have no personal knowledge of other areas.
And just for the record, NOTHING I post on./, including this, should be construed as any kind of official statement from NASA or my employer. Facts I express are rumors unless you check them yourself, opinions expressed are just that, and not from NASA or my employer, hell, I may not even agree with'em if I stop and rethink it.
> Over the years, NASA has employed directly and thru contractors at least 100,000 people, probably many more. Kids are hired right out of college, sometimes, to work in mission control for manned and unmanned missions, or to help design/build flight equipment. Honest, we're just folks, like any working in any other industry.
> Working on publicly acknowledged unmanned projects like Viking did not require a security clearance. Secret stuff is done by the DOD, which has its own people (the military), rockets, launch pads, and money.
> For the most part, NASA's telemetry has always been unencrypted, so anyone (including other gov'ts) can point a radio antenna at the right part of the sky and find out what NASA's up to.
> Aliens, artifacts, or other wierdness found out there would be worth kilobucks to ANYONE with credible NASA-related evidence.
For one of these NASA conspiracy theories to be correct and NOT be common knowledge, ALL of the following must happen:
> Somehow, NASA/Gov't or someone manages to clamp a lid on the secret as it happens, with a live, unencrypted telemetry stream.
> NO ONE outside NASA notices the sudden increase in secrecy/security and the simultaneous drop off in NASA's normally wide-open public relations communications. By the way, the NASA channel lets the cameras roll *unattended* thruout most missions. Somehow, the secret doesn't escape thru these vectors, either.
> Over 100,000 people who have no special motivation to secrecy are NEVER TEMPTED to sell the big story to a publication.
> NOT ONE publication gets even a whiff at the time the secret happens. Ever notice how it's always years later when the "theory" is first published?
I'll tell you fer sure: If I had proof of NASA encounters with LGM, I'd sell it for a few kilobucks. Almost any normal person would.
Here's my challenge to ANYONE out there who thinks there's some kinda NASA conspiracy, any kind: COME WORK AT NASA AND FIND THE PROOF.
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Obviously, this little detail has been bypassed. Federal Govt has been ignoring this amendment and doing wuddeverdahell it wants for more than a century.
Briefly put: Any telescope powerful to resolve images of the landers (and there are at at leasta few) would be overwhelmed by the brightness, thus damaging the device. This can of course be designed for, but then you'd be designing a telescope that had only one real purpose - to debunk the theories of wackos who probably wouldn't accept the proof anyway.
Oh and you'd probly havta put it in orbit to avoid overwhelmingly uncorrectable atmospheric blurring, putting it back in NASA's lap to prove the wackos wrong, and the wackos are already not listening to NASA.
And I find these "theories" high larious. One building I worked in (35) had an annex that was used as a history office to store very old (Apollo-era) records, photos, etc.
I've seen what NASA actually stores, not just what's released. And these conspiracy theories (especially the 'moon landing hoax' theory) are incredibly giggliferous.
To rebliberate & emphatraumatize my post:
It was created by the CIA at the start of the cold war by doctoring all the photos, artwork and literature in all the books and museums of the world.
That there is NO MOON AT ALL. It was created by the CIA at the start of the cold war by doctoring all the photos, artwork and literature in all the books and museums of the world. Anyone who declaimed the hoax was locked up as psycho, cuz, obviously, since all the books showed pikchoors, and artwork from centuries past showed the moon, anyone who claimed it was a fake was nuts.
Doing this enabled the US to focus resources on missle development and the plan to economically destroy the USSR. That thing you see in the sky is just a big holographic movie - have you noticed that it loops on a 28-day cycle?
"You don't decide how big to build the bridge by counting the number of people swimming the river."
Cuz once the bridge is up, hundreds more who couldn't swim the distance will want to cross.
...evaluate consumers' reactions to a new product or to an advertising campaign All this time, I thought marketing people didn't give a damn WHAT our reactions were to their campaigns. Oh, wait, I get it - smiles mean 'FAIL'. They'll look for the concerto of facial actions that make up complex expressions like confusion, fear, and disgust.
Eventually, it'll be a protocol war. As fast as the **AA sues over some protocol or app, everyone will switch to a newer, harder to detect/break/poison protocol or app. It'll be like copy protection - the monopolists roll out a new "unbreakable" tech, the real people roll out a break for it a few days later.
But it'll be reversed: the monopolists roll out a new litigation tech battlefront, and the real people roll out a new tech before the first lawsuit goes on the docket.
Like the copy protection wars, the monopolists simply can't fight their side of the battles as fast as the real people. And they're vastly outnumbered.
From Google's privacy policy: If Google becomes involved in a merger, acquisition, or any form of sale of some or all of its assets, we will provide notice before personal information is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.
Notice it doesn't say you'll have the option of EVER having google destroy your data at your request, nor does it say the policy won't change without your consent.
The privacy policy of data in hospitals, doctor's offices, etc, is LAW, not corporate whim.
I'm not defending, I'm showing why it's such a trap. Evil Empire, Inc could hairball a competitor very easily with this license. Doing so would not even result in any risk to any Evil Empire's products. But it would prevent their target (Small Guy,LLC) from using any of Evil Empire's products while litigation was underway.
That's NOT a vote of approval, that's an example of how Evil software patents can get. And I think MS knows it. I seriously doubt that MS gave the job of writing an OS license to the new hire in the legal department, and told him/her "just make it short and sweet". I expect this bit of prose had MS's highest and most devious lawyers crafting the biggest bite-per-byte they could.
If you read the RFC for HTML buttons, etc, you'll find that purchasing things on the click of a button isn't just obvious, it's one of the often-used examples of what buttons are for. Buttons are there so the user can initiate an action that does something for them.
User thinks "Buy that". GUI and database go kachunk kachunk kachunk. In the programmer's view, ANY button click will call many functions, almost every time.
Where does the programmer stop calling functions? Why, when the app has done everything needed to accomplish what the user asked for.
What's unobvious is stopping in order to force the user to push buttons unnecessarily.
The license reads "This license governs USE of the accompanying software. If you USE the software, you accept this license. If you do not accept the license, do not USE the software."
This limits non-copyright rights by tying usage to acceptance of the copyright and patent right parts of the license. I wouldn't use it for that reason alone.
Here's an example: Ms-PL Product A is a flower shop management tool. OL (Other License) Product B is my solely-developed tool that controls plastic forming robots in my flowerpot factory. There's no code commonality between them, including no shared patent technology.
I don't add ANYTHING AT ALL to product A, but I use it and sell it to my customers. MS finds a way to apply product B's patented tech to product A. So MS steals product B's patented tech, and adds it to product A. I sue MS for infringing Product B's patents. MS automatically has the right to countersue me for ALL of MS's patents in product A and any A-derived product, including legal MS patents I'm otherwise in compliance with. I can't just stick to the pre-infringement version of product A; I must use a version of product A that has NO MS technology in it either, or not use product A at all. This allows MS to shut down competitors whose only "violation" against MS's legal patents is a dispute over the competitor's patents in other products.
This multiplies the patent snarl that's already threatening the industry.
Furthermore,"2. Grant of Rights
(B) Patent Grant-... each contributor grants you a...license..to... use, sell, offer for sale,...contribution in the software or derivative works of the contribution in the software. ....
3. Conditions and Limitations
(B) If you bring a patent claim against any contributor over patents that you claim are infringed by the software, your patent license from such contributor to the software ends automatically."
It also seems to mean that anywhere a patent goes, this license applies. If MS takes its legally patented tech from product A and adds it to product C, then the patent snarl described above will also deprive you of product C. A few carefully crafted patents, spread around like paint, and MS destroys all competitors once and for all.
I read a sci fi story back in the early 70's about how we've not discovered ET yet cuz the entire solar system has been quarantined to prevent humans from becoming an epidemic. They scratched one world to save the galaxy.
http://www.cybertriallawyer.com/copyright-infringement:
"Copyright law protects original creative works, excluding purely functional work."
Well, that settles it. If they sued me for posting their threat, I'd motion for summary judgement. And court costs, since obviously they already know it's specious.
From TFP:
claim 1: preseting checkboxes according to previous state or user preferences, etc.
Claim 2: Click and drag across the checkboxes toggles them. It doesn't say Toggle to a specific state (i.e., the state of the first box in the drag).
Claim 3: Click and drag again, but this time, toggle to the state of the first box.
Claim 4: "XOR" click and drag.
Claim 5: Some gibberish about interaction between drags when clicking and dragging more than once.
Claim 6: Describes standard gui events for a checkbox; is generic enough it describes both X and Windows.
Claim 7: Adds "drag" to the idea of checkbox events, and tying 'drag' to toggling the checkbox.
Claim 8: Seems to repeat earlier claims; don't see a diff other than way it's expressed.
Claim 9: Store "prev" state of checkbox, toggle or not to the state opposite the first check box's state.
Claims 10-15: using a computer to do this, and storing 'preferences' on disk. This is just a 'game level reset' function, narrowed down to the concept of a single set of checkboxes rather than the whole game level. Also includes 'logging' to log the click-and-drag events that occur.
A very long time ago, I did this in Visual Basic on a user desktop app. Yup, it's a bogus patent.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder if I can modify my old deer stand into a decoy power tower...hmmmmmmmm......
Why not just use induction to recharge batteries while flying by? Adding the smarts and morphing tech just to land doesn't seem worth the effort. Moving a conductor thru a magnetic field (like those surrounding power lines) will generate electric current. Just fly close to the lines and use that to recharge the batts.
I work on simulators used to train astronauts, most recently, the network comm simulator. "starting encryption" with 20+ year old equipment that has no built-in encryption is a very big deal. (Yes, most of it is digital). It's not just a switch to flip - it would cost tens of millions. Consider that technology today and as predicted for the next 20-30 years, most forms of encryption provide time, not secrecy. ./, including this, should be construed as any kind of official statement from NASA or my employer. Facts I express are rumors unless you check them yourself, opinions expressed are just that, and not from NASA or my employer, hell, I may not even agree with'em if I stop and rethink it.
Plus, it would require a change in the simulators that simulate the equipment. We've never even been asked to estimate the cost of such a change, which would happen in the early "what if" part of management's planning.
No, NASA has NOT started encrypting...wait, let me qualify that: NASA has not started encrypting MANNED space flight telemetry. I have no personal knowledge of other areas.
And just for the record, NOTHING I post on
> Over the years, NASA has employed directly and thru contractors at least 100,000 people, probably many more. Kids are hired right out of college, sometimes, to work in mission control for manned and unmanned missions, or to help design/build flight equipment. Honest, we're just folks, like any working in any other industry.
> Working on publicly acknowledged unmanned projects like Viking did not require a security clearance. Secret stuff is done by the DOD, which has its own people (the military), rockets, launch pads, and money.
> For the most part, NASA's telemetry has always been unencrypted, so anyone (including other gov'ts) can point a radio antenna at the right part of the sky and find out what NASA's up to.
> Aliens, artifacts, or other wierdness found out there would be worth kilobucks to ANYONE with credible NASA-related evidence.
For one of these NASA conspiracy theories to be correct and NOT be common knowledge, ALL of the following must happen:
> Somehow, NASA/Gov't or someone manages to clamp a lid on the secret as it happens, with a live, unencrypted telemetry stream.
> NO ONE outside NASA notices the sudden increase in secrecy/security and the simultaneous drop off in NASA's normally wide-open public relations communications. By the way, the NASA channel lets the cameras roll *unattended* thruout most missions. Somehow, the secret doesn't escape thru these vectors, either.
> Over 100,000 people who have no special motivation to secrecy are NEVER TEMPTED to sell the big story to a publication.
> NOT ONE publication gets even a whiff at the time the secret happens. Ever notice how it's always years later when the "theory" is first published?
I'll tell you fer sure: If I had proof of NASA encounters with LGM, I'd sell it for a few kilobucks. Almost any normal person would.
Here's my challenge to ANYONE out there who thinks there's some kinda NASA conspiracy, any kind: COME WORK AT NASA AND FIND THE PROOF.
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Obviously, this little detail has been bypassed. Federal Govt has been ignoring this amendment and doing wuddeverdahell it wants for more than a century.
Briefly put: Any telescope powerful to resolve images of the landers (and there are at at leasta few) would be overwhelmed by the brightness, thus damaging the device. This can of course be designed for, but then you'd be designing a telescope that had only one real purpose - to debunk the theories of wackos who probably wouldn't accept the proof anyway.
Oh and you'd probly havta put it in orbit to avoid overwhelmingly uncorrectable atmospheric blurring, putting it back in NASA's lap to prove the wackos wrong, and the wackos are already not listening to NASA.
And I find these "theories" high larious.
One building I worked in (35) had an annex that was used as a history office to store very old (Apollo-era) records, photos, etc.
I've seen what NASA actually stores, not just what's released. And these conspiracy theories (especially the 'moon landing hoax' theory) are incredibly giggliferous.
That there is NO MOON AT ALL. It was created by the CIA at the start of the cold war by doctoring all the photos, artwork and literature in all the books and museums of the world. Anyone who declaimed the hoax was locked up as psycho, cuz, obviously, since all the books showed pikchoors, and artwork from centuries past showed the moon, anyone who claimed it was a fake was nuts.
Doing this enabled the US to focus resources on missle development and the plan to economically destroy the USSR. That thing you see in the sky is just a big holographic movie - have you noticed that it loops on a 28-day cycle?
Just use a lava lamp or a camera with the lens cap on.
"You don't decide how big to build the bridge by counting the number of people swimming the river."
Cuz once the bridge is up, hundreds more who couldn't swim the distance will want to cross.
...evaluate consumers' reactions to a new product or to an advertising campaign
All this time, I thought marketing people didn't give a damn WHAT our reactions were to their campaigns.
Oh, wait, I get it - smiles mean 'FAIL'. They'll look for the concerto of facial actions that make up complex expressions like confusion, fear, and disgust.
I sit corrected. :)
Eventually, it'll be a protocol war. As fast as the **AA sues over some protocol or app, everyone will switch to a newer, harder to detect/break/poison protocol or app. It'll be like copy protection - the monopolists roll out a new "unbreakable" tech, the real people roll out a break for it a few days later.
But it'll be reversed: the monopolists roll out a new litigation tech battlefront, and the real people roll out a new tech before the first lawsuit goes on the docket.
Like the copy protection wars, the monopolists simply can't fight their side of the battles as fast as the real people. And they're vastly outnumbered.
From Google's privacy policy:
If Google becomes involved in a merger, acquisition, or any form of sale of some or all of its assets, we will provide notice before personal information is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.
Notice it doesn't say you'll have the option of EVER having google destroy your data at your request, nor does it say the policy won't change without your consent.
The privacy policy of data in hospitals, doctor's offices, etc, is LAW, not corporate whim.
I'm not defending, I'm showing why it's such a trap. Evil Empire, Inc could hairball a competitor very easily with this license. Doing so would not even result in any risk to any Evil Empire's products. But it would prevent their target (Small Guy,LLC) from using any of Evil Empire's products while litigation was underway. That's NOT a vote of approval, that's an example of how Evil software patents can get. And I think MS knows it. I seriously doubt that MS gave the job of writing an OS license to the new hire in the legal department, and told him/her "just make it short and sweet". I expect this bit of prose had MS's highest and most devious lawyers crafting the biggest bite-per-byte they could.
If you read the RFC for HTML buttons, etc, you'll find that purchasing things on the click of a button isn't just obvious, it's one of the often-used examples of what buttons are for. Buttons are there so the user can initiate an action that does something for them.
User thinks "Buy that". GUI and database go kachunk kachunk kachunk.
In the programmer's view, ANY button click will call many functions, almost every time.
Where does the programmer stop calling functions? Why, when the app has done everything needed to accomplish what the user asked for.
What's unobvious is stopping in order to force the user to push buttons unnecessarily.
The license reads "This license governs USE of the accompanying software. If you USE the software, you accept this license. If you do not accept the license, do not USE the software." ... use, sell, offer for sale, ...contribution in the software or derivative works of the contribution in the software.
....
3. Conditions and Limitations
(B) If you bring a patent claim against any contributor over patents that you claim are infringed by the software, your patent license from such contributor to the software ends automatically."
This limits non-copyright rights by tying usage to acceptance of the copyright and patent right parts of the license. I wouldn't use it for that reason alone.
Here's an example: Ms-PL Product A is a flower shop management tool. OL (Other License) Product B is my solely-developed tool that controls plastic forming robots in my flowerpot factory. There's no code commonality between them, including no shared patent technology.
I don't add ANYTHING AT ALL to product A, but I use it and sell it to my customers. MS finds a way to apply product B's patented tech to product A. So MS steals product B's patented tech, and adds it to product A. I sue MS for infringing Product B's patents. MS automatically has the right to countersue me for ALL of MS's patents in product A and any A-derived product, including legal MS patents I'm otherwise in compliance with. I can't just stick to the pre-infringement version of product A; I must use a version of product A that has NO MS technology in it either, or not use product A at all.
This allows MS to shut down competitors whose only "violation" against MS's legal patents is a dispute over the competitor's patents in other products. This multiplies the patent snarl that's already threatening the industry.
Furthermore,"2. Grant of Rights (B) Patent Grant-... each contributor grants you a...license..to
It also seems to mean that anywhere a patent goes, this license applies.
If MS takes its legally patented tech from product A and adds it to product C, then the patent snarl described above will also deprive you of product C. A few carefully crafted patents, spread around like paint, and MS destroys all competitors once and for all.
I read a sci fi story back in the early 70's about how we've not discovered ET yet cuz the entire solar system has been quarantined to prevent humans from becoming an epidemic. They scratched one world to save the galaxy.
http://www.cybertriallawyer.com/copyright-infringement: "Copyright law protects original creative works, excluding purely functional work."
Well, that settles it. If they sued me for posting their threat, I'd motion for summary judgement. And court costs, since obviously they already know it's specious.
I think that would be the employee roster.
From TFP:
claim 1: preseting checkboxes according to previous state or user preferences, etc.
Claim 2: Click and drag across the checkboxes toggles them. It doesn't say Toggle to a specific state (i.e., the state of the first box in the drag).
Claim 3: Click and drag again, but this time, toggle to the state of the first box.
Claim 4: "XOR" click and drag.
Claim 5: Some gibberish about interaction between drags when clicking and dragging more than once.
Claim 6: Describes standard gui events for a checkbox; is generic enough it describes both X and Windows.
Claim 7: Adds "drag" to the idea of checkbox events, and tying 'drag' to toggling the checkbox.
Claim 8: Seems to repeat earlier claims; don't see a diff other than way it's expressed.
Claim 9: Store "prev" state of checkbox, toggle or not to the state opposite the first check box's state.
Claims 10-15: using a computer to do this, and storing 'preferences' on disk. This is just a 'game level reset' function, narrowed down to the concept of a single set of checkboxes rather than the whole game level. Also includes 'logging' to log the click-and-drag events that occur.
A very long time ago, I did this in Visual Basic on a user desktop app. Yup, it's a bogus patent.
*Sigh*. You're right, of course.
usation determines definage.
"Your uninformedness is showing."
That's not even a word
It's a perfectly cromulent word. You just need to get an embiggened dictionary.