IIRC, part of the U.N. Space Treaty makes the launching nation reponsible for any damage caused by a "oops". Rocket launches have to be OK'd by some nation, preferably one that could afford to pay the bill if the rocket slams into something important, hence the reference in the article to insurance. There was another law/rule/regulation set up back in the 80's that gave NASA the duty to check anything going into space that was associated with the USA. It was supposed to "discourage" using ESA rockets. I hope this has changed.
No matter where you launch, local airspace traffic control is needed so you don't bump into an airliner. The FAA is pretty good at that.
A FAA certified passenger rocket would be a lot cheaper to insure, and when you have paying passengers who can afford fleets of lawyers, you WILL have insurance.
Actually about half the sky at any one time is useless to telescopes. (That would be the daylight part of the sky.) Anything comming out of the sun is invisible until it slams into the Earth.
If the meteor is strong enough to survive passing through most of the atmosphere, the shockwave from the air burst would flatten any city in the way.
There are far more small chunks of rock than big ones. We will probably loose a bunch of cities before we even find a "doomsday" asteroid.
Comodity components do not last in "harsh" places. We just expect them to fail. As long as they are under warrenty, we call the supplier for service. As soon as something goes bad when it's off warrenty, it gets tossed and replaced with a new machine. This only applies for those things that can be down for day or so. For the rest, it's the expensive industrial PC's with built in cooling and/or seperate cooled rooms and filtered air.
It all depends an how long the user is willing to go without.
At work, all the PC's are leased. We just finished sending back about 120 PC's that the leasing company had already sold to someplace in Africa. Since these PC's were going outside the company, we have to wipe the hard drives to make sure nothing confidental gets out. I hope the leasing company is selling them with an OS, not just as hardware.
I am sure the cost to the new owners is low, but these machines are off warrenty and most have been pounded on for 3 years in a dirty industrial environment. At least one was constantly out for service/down for repair. I just wonder how long they will run before something breaks and the new owner gets to find out what the local cost for parts *really* is.
After a short period of time, the dress code just sorta goes away. Of course, we once went out for lunch, I took off the famous fish tie (for comfort, don'y ya know.) and it ended up stuffed and mounted on the department bulletin board.
Having the boss win the Ugly Tie award without trying also helped out.
The result of that test was the R2000 program that tries to eliminate air leaks. It works so well that there has to be a forced air exchanger to keep people from passing out.
The cost of solar drops if you eliminate the storage batteries and use the electricity to reduce the size of the utility bill. If this $ savings is less than the interest you could get by leaving the money in the bank, leave it in the bank. Generally, it is less. Since the cost of solar keep slowly dropping, and utility costs keep going up, waiting may make good sence.
Good points. You missed the fact when bugs were found, they got fixed. I've once ended up reading a bugcheck dump to the applications actual developer on a Sunday afternoon and hearing a wisperd "Oh My God!".
Mail you replied to shoud be in the "Sent" folder with a subject of "RE: xxxx".
When crunching through scads of mail it can help to show unread messages only, read them in the preview pane and check them off to "Mark selected as read." The "discussion threads" folder can also come in handy.
As to porting Domino to Linux, yawn. Another server OS. It works the way it is supposed to. Don't use platform specific anything and porting is so much easier. Started on OS/2, went to NT with zero problems. Snuck Linux in but someone needed the spare PC for a presentation, reloaded it, and never brought it back. Sob.
Blackmail would be a better description than battle. AOL gives away CD's. Many CD's.
Bill Gates gets an AOL CD case containing Linux and an open source version of every MS desktop application, and a letter "We will not send these out if...."
The company that I am at leases all our PC's. When the lease is up, we get whatever "high-end" Windows version that is being preloaded at the time.
The training cost problem was solved long ago when the first step of the 6 month investigate-test-deploy cycle was performed by a weekend install of the new upgraded versions on the file sever into what the admin THOUGHT were test directories. (Probably should have used the word test or dev as part of the directory, Oh well.) It was Monday morning before the "mistake" was noticed. Rolling back would have been too disruptive in the middle of the day, so a memo was sent. "Upgrades complete - Here's the new feature list." Since then, computer training consists of "Here's the power switch, have fun. You can pick up a manual at any book store." Yes there are still calls from confused users, but no more than when you got two days off site training on each application. As a plus, there are far fewer run-the-department spreadsheets-from-hell. No one knows how to make them any more.
The last upgrade was from NT 4 to W2K, no problem.
The next upgrade/PC swap should be in late 2003. As the boss said, "It's too early to worry, but keep your eyes open. MS is getting scary."
The key word is PEOPLE. Cats & dogs are not people and are not citizens. Until another law is passed "space" aliens are just animals and, depending on the chosen landing spot, would be treated as an exotic pet - off to the zoo for you!
Of course if the mother ship's size in measured by the mile and came into orbit on a jet of plasma as bright as the sun, ambassador status would be granted fairly quick.:)
more likely an opening for.NET. Automatic registration and billing without the threat of an audit. No more paperwork.
To bad nothing works when Bob with the shovel goes a "little" too deep.
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No matter where you launch, local airspace traffic control is needed so you don't bump into an airliner. The FAA is pretty good at that.
A FAA certified passenger rocket would be a lot cheaper to insure, and when you have paying passengers who can afford fleets of lawyers, you WILL have insurance.
If the meteor is strong enough to survive passing through most of the atmosphere, the shockwave from the air burst would flatten any city in the way.
There are far more small chunks of rock than big ones. We will probably loose a bunch of cities before we even find a "doomsday" asteroid.
It all depends an how long the user is willing to go without.
I am sure the cost to the new owners is low, but these machines are off warrenty and most have been pounded on for 3 years in a dirty industrial environment. At least one was constantly out for service/down for repair. I just wonder how long they will run before something breaks and the new owner gets to find out what the local cost for parts *really* is.
After a short period of time, the dress code just sorta goes away. Of course, we once went out for lunch, I took off the famous fish tie (for comfort, don'y ya know.) and it ended up stuffed and mounted on the department bulletin board.
Having the boss win the Ugly Tie award without trying also helped out.
The cost of solar drops if you eliminate the storage batteries and use the electricity to reduce the size of the utility bill. If this $ savings is less than the interest you could get by leaving the money in the bank, leave it in the bank. Generally, it is less. Since the cost of solar keep slowly dropping, and utility costs keep going up, waiting may make good sence.
You get the support you pay for.
When crunching through scads of mail it can help to show unread messages only, read them in the preview pane and check them off to "Mark selected as read." The "discussion threads" folder can also come in handy.
As to porting Domino to Linux, yawn. Another server OS. It works the way it is supposed to. Don't use platform specific anything and porting is so much easier. Started on OS/2, went to NT with zero problems. Snuck Linux in but someone needed the spare PC for a presentation, reloaded it, and never brought it back. Sob.
Bill Gates gets an AOL CD case containing Linux and an open source version of every MS desktop application, and a letter "We will not send these out if...."
Much better than guns in the street.
The training cost problem was solved long ago when the first step of the 6 month investigate-test-deploy cycle was performed by a weekend install of the new upgraded versions on the file sever into what the admin THOUGHT were test directories. (Probably should have used the word test or dev as part of the directory, Oh well.) It was Monday morning before the "mistake" was noticed. Rolling back would have been too disruptive in the middle of the day, so a memo was sent. "Upgrades complete - Here's the new feature list." Since then, computer training consists of "Here's the power switch, have fun. You can pick up a manual at any book store." Yes there are still calls from confused users, but no more than when you got two days off site training on each application. As a plus, there are far fewer run-the-department spreadsheets-from-hell. No one knows how to make them any more.
The last upgrade was from NT 4 to W2K, no problem. The next upgrade/PC swap should be in late 2003. As the boss said, "It's too early to worry, but keep your eyes open. MS is getting scary."
It will change the ground speed velocity.
The key word is PEOPLE. Cats & dogs are not people and are not citizens. Until another law is passed "space" aliens are just animals and, depending on the chosen landing spot, would be treated as an exotic pet - off to the zoo for you! Of course if the mother ship's size in measured by the mile and came into orbit on a jet of plasma as bright as the sun, ambassador status would be granted fairly quick.:)
more likely an opening for .NET. Automatic registration and billing without the threat of an audit. No more paperwork.
To bad nothing works when Bob with the shovel goes a "little" too deep.