The definition of "man rated" is notoriously vague.
Example: There was a set of standards in place for the in-development Ares launchers to meet to be rated for human spaceflight. Unfortunately it turned out the launcher could not meet the standard. Of course with a big in-house launcher program on which NASA's future depends, failure to meet the human-rating standard was not an option.
Comm relay and suchlike are very capably handled by commercial ventures already. There's little reason for NASA to be in that game, and lots of new stuff they could be doing instead.
A reasonable question. The shuttle is not the right design for that. It is expensive to build, is the wrong shape to stack well, and has lots of mass devoted to winged landing. It's also rated for about three weeks in orbit tops; beyond that it'll run out of many consumables and you'll have to start wondering if the tires will still hold air and suchlike.
But! If one had a design for an orbital habitat module suitably sized for launch on a cheap mass produced rocket - 20 tons to LEO is probably about right - and the capability to robotically assemble and supply them in orbit, one could in principle build an arbitrarily large modular orbital habitat. As big as budgets allow, anyway. The crew can ride up in different flights. And if one had an orbital fuel depot and robotic refueling capability, one could in principle push such a habitat somewhere beyond earth orbit.
Cool, huh?
That's the kind of capability NASA had been planning to develop before the senate fucked it up today.
"That's fine and all, but the fact is that the STS systems are already developed and in production"
No, the STS systems are developed and were in production. It's no longer the case that they are in production. The launches remaining will be flown with parts on hand.
NASA was directed to close down the project several years ago and has faithfully executed its orders to do so. Now the supply chain is broken and scattered. (Staff fired, tooling scrapped, etc etc.) There is no reviving it without costs approaching well within a magnitude the development of a new system. The time to revive the shuttle (if ever there was one) passed no later than a year after Bush first killed it.
Plus, as has been discussed somewhere the Senators evidently were not around to hear, the Shuttle program is dead. It's been dead as a program for about five years. Production lines are closed, staff fired, supplier contracts ended. Anything beyond the one additional mission that parts exist for would be hugely expensive, as the production would need to be started up again from scratch. (Consequently, that last one won't have any rescue shuttle on standby.)
My second thought was "I wonder how they're going to handle security and authentication?" Which rather took the shine off my first thought, I'm afraid.
It's a darn shame the studio has not made that available for purchase by any means at all. I'm told it's a rather good pilot and (based on the strength of the talents' other work) I would cheerfully pay five bucks to find out for myself. But it's as far as I know it is only available via piracy.
In the next version of Windows Microsoft really should drop Win32 entirely from the main branch, relegating it to an included (and preconfigured) win32 virtual machine. They already have all the tools in place to make this sort of clean break with the past, and it's high time they do so.
Crime is what legislators, prosecutors, lawyers, juries, and judges decide it is.* My guess is that Manning will be convicted of something and sent to jail**, regardless of how much of a public service he may have done.
[*: This is a description, not a judgement. There are rare instances in which we are lucky enough to have that process align well with Right and Wrong, but I am by no means claiming such luck is commonplace.] [**: And if he does not end up in jail, the notion that this is all an anti-wikileaks disinformation operation will look a lot more likely to be correct.]
Imagine imagine yourself reading the NYT archive from the 1920s and finding "flivver" or "flapper". Now imagine someone in a hundred years reading the archive of the now-current NYT and finding "tweet". Same deal.
He's may be too uptight* about it, but his idea is not completely without merit.
The drives are not cheap, it's true. (The standard is open enough and the hardware common enough that I question the need for a shelf-spare for disaster recovery, but you still have a point.) This can be mitigated somewhat with older generation drives, though; it's a rare small business or municipality which can't fit a full server backup on LTO3, and an LTO3 drive plus a few tapes can be had for around a grand last I checked.
The bigger thing, though, is that tape cartridges are a simple system that a non-technical user can operate day in and day out indefinitely. That's a big deal for organizations without dedicated IT staff, and that's worth some extra up-front costs.
While the offsite replication to ZFS you speak of is awesome, it's not the sort of thing these organizations are going to be able to set up and manage very well on their own.
Home users and really small businesses - less than five users, say - are admittedly another kettle of fish.
Tape is vastly superior in price/performance* for archival and offsite backup of data. To anything. Maybe someday that'll change, but not soon.
[*: LTO-5 holds 1.6TB uncompressed for 15-30 years in a $100 cartridge the approximate size and weight of a paperback book**.] [**: Okay, the weight of a Steven King paperback. Still.]
The clergy examined one of these methods, which the authors term "religious impotence" -- the decision that religion can't actually address the issue at hand properly. The study found that "regardless of whether the information presented confirmed or contradicted [the subjects'] existing beliefs, all of them came away from the reading with their beliefs strengthened."
Hey, I never claimed it made sense, only that's what the client is doing. We've quoted them the most barebones terminal server addition we're willing to support, but they're still holding out for... I dunno, a miracle? Positive cashflow? An ounce of sense?
Long ago, at one customer, the desktops grew weak. So they hit upon the idea of using a Windows terminal server to prop up their aging desktops. By gum, that worked so well that they replaced their desktops with thin clients throughout over the next year. Now, a few years after that, their terminal server handles everything from Solidworks viewers to web browsers and it's sagging under the load... and out of warranty to boot. Time to get a new server... only the economy has hurt their business terribly and they currently can't afford one.
In short, they're screwed. Too tied to Windows to easily jump platforms, too tied to thinstations to easily return to the desktop environment, and too broke to maintain it.
I am in such a habit of silencing such things that I hadn't even noticed. But you're right, it was silent without me doing anything about it. (Of course, for me that's a feature, but YMMV.)
Slashdot Mirror
Downwind faster than the solar wind!
Wait! That's it!
Turn that old G5 tower into a very stylish handgun safe!
The definition of "man rated" is notoriously vague.
Example: There was a set of standards in place for the in-development Ares launchers to meet to be rated for human spaceflight. Unfortunately it turned out the launcher could not meet the standard. Of course with a big in-house launcher program on which NASA's future depends, failure to meet the human-rating standard was not an option.
So in 2008, they changed the standard.
Is this a recipe for success?
Comm relay and suchlike are very capably handled by commercial ventures already. There's little reason for NASA to be in that game, and lots of new stuff they could be doing instead.
A reasonable question. The shuttle is not the right design for that. It is expensive to build, is the wrong shape to stack well, and has lots of mass devoted to winged landing. It's also rated for about three weeks in orbit tops; beyond that it'll run out of many consumables and you'll have to start wondering if the tires will still hold air and suchlike.
But! If one had a design for an orbital habitat module suitably sized for launch on a cheap mass produced rocket - 20 tons to LEO is probably about right - and the capability to robotically assemble and supply them in orbit, one could in principle build an arbitrarily large modular orbital habitat. As big as budgets allow, anyway. The crew can ride up in different flights. And if one had an orbital fuel depot and robotic refueling capability, one could in principle push such a habitat somewhere beyond earth orbit.
Cool, huh?
That's the kind of capability NASA had been planning to develop before the senate fucked it up today.
"That's fine and all, but the fact is that the STS systems are already developed and in production"
No, the STS systems are developed and were in production. It's no longer the case that they are in production. The launches remaining will be flown with parts on hand.
NASA was directed to close down the project several years ago and has faithfully executed its orders to do so. Now the supply chain is broken and scattered. (Staff fired, tooling scrapped, etc etc.) There is no reviving it without costs approaching well within a magnitude the development of a new system. The time to revive the shuttle (if ever there was one) passed no later than a year after Bush first killed it.
Plus, as has been discussed somewhere the Senators evidently were not around to hear, the Shuttle program is dead. It's been dead as a program for about five years. Production lines are closed, staff fired, supplier contracts ended. Anything beyond the one additional mission that parts exist for would be hugely expensive, as the production would need to be started up again from scratch. (Consequently, that last one won't have any rescue shuttle on standby.)
The Porklauncher.
That was my first thought as well.
My second thought was "I wonder how they're going to handle security and authentication?" Which rather took the shine off my first thought, I'm afraid.
It's a darn shame the studio has not made that available for purchase by any means at all. I'm told it's a rather good pilot and (based on the strength of the talents' other work) I would cheerfully pay five bucks to find out for myself. But it's as far as I know it is only available via piracy.
In the next version of Windows Microsoft really should drop Win32 entirely from the main branch, relegating it to an included (and preconfigured) win32 virtual machine. They already have all the tools in place to make this sort of clean break with the past, and it's high time they do so.
Crime is what legislators, prosecutors, lawyers, juries, and judges decide it is.* My guess is that Manning will be convicted of something and sent to jail**, regardless of how much of a public service he may have done.
[*: This is a description, not a judgement. There are rare instances in which we are lucky enough to have that process align well with Right and Wrong, but I am by no means claiming such luck is commonplace.]
[**: And if he does not end up in jail, the notion that this is all an anti-wikileaks disinformation operation will look a lot more likely to be correct.]
Which is an important caution to keep in mind when committing this particular variety of crime. :-)
Imagine imagine imagine me using preview!
Imagine the ability to edit comments! Imagine the ability to post a second one immediately!
Imagine imagine yourself reading the NYT archive from the 1920s and finding "flivver" or "flapper". Now imagine someone in a hundred years reading the archive of the now-current NYT and finding "tweet". Same deal.
He's may be too uptight* about it, but his idea is not completely without merit.
[*: 40 years ago?]
The drives are not cheap, it's true. (The standard is open enough and the hardware common enough that I question the need for a shelf-spare for disaster recovery, but you still have a point.) This can be mitigated somewhat with older generation drives, though; it's a rare small business or municipality which can't fit a full server backup on LTO3, and an LTO3 drive plus a few tapes can be had for around a grand last I checked.
The bigger thing, though, is that tape cartridges are a simple system that a non-technical user can operate day in and day out indefinitely. That's a big deal for organizations without dedicated IT staff, and that's worth some extra up-front costs.
While the offsite replication to ZFS you speak of is awesome, it's not the sort of thing these organizations are going to be able to set up and manage very well on their own.
Home users and really small businesses - less than five users, say - are admittedly another kettle of fish.
Tape is vastly superior in price/performance* for archival and offsite backup of data. To anything. Maybe someday that'll change, but not soon.
[*: LTO-5 holds 1.6TB uncompressed for 15-30 years in a $100 cartridge the approximate size and weight of a paperback book**.]
[**: Okay, the weight of a Steven King paperback. Still.]
Confidentiality? Check! ... Can I borrow a pen?
Integrity? Check!
Availability?
The clergy examined one of these methods, which the authors term "religious impotence" -- the decision that religion can't actually address the issue at hand properly. The study found that "regardless of whether the information presented confirmed or contradicted [the subjects'] existing beliefs, all of them came away from the reading with their beliefs strengthened."
Oops! Wrong article. NM.
Yeah, that was a shock to find. Just the viewer, but still the viewer workload is not so different from the workload of the full software.
You'd think they'd be willing to do that, wouldn't you?
But no. Some customers are just determined to kill themselves off.
Hey, I never claimed it made sense, only that's what the client is doing. We've quoted them the most barebones terminal server addition we're willing to support, but they're still holding out for ... I dunno, a miracle? Positive cashflow? An ounce of sense?
Long ago, at one customer, the desktops grew weak. So they hit upon the idea of using a Windows terminal server to prop up their aging desktops. By gum, that worked so well that they replaced their desktops with thin clients throughout over the next year. Now, a few years after that, their terminal server handles everything from Solidworks viewers to web browsers and it's sagging under the load... and out of warranty to boot. Time to get a new server... only the economy has hurt their business terribly and they currently can't afford one.
In short, they're screwed. Too tied to Windows to easily jump platforms, too tied to thinstations to easily return to the desktop environment, and too broke to maintain it.
In general, any security tool configured to trust a subdomain of a trusted domain would be vulnerable to this attack.
See also "Trusted Sites" in IE.
Hah! Good catch.
I am in such a habit of silencing such things that I hadn't even noticed. But you're right, it was silent without me doing anything about it. (Of course, for me that's a feature, but YMMV.)