One of the problems with our space programs, one of the problems it's had since the beginning, is that we haven't been building an infrastructure that would give us ongoing access to space at a reasonable price. We haven't been building our capabilities so that we'll be able to do important things like exploit the resources of the solar system. We just do stunts, usually to distract people from some political problem
I believe we need to go back to the Moon and then on to Mars, but not as one-shot deals. We need a moon base so we can get resources from the moon. There is plenty of oxygen, Silicon and aluminum which could be used to help supply our expansion into space. The oxygen is needed for air. The aluminum can be used to build structures. The silicon can be used to create solar cells.
It also seems likely that the Moon has water trapped in deep dark craters and crevices at the poles. A base on the moon dedicated to extracting that water would be able to provide that vital resource to space settlements. The water could be decomposed into hydrogen and oxygen to supply fuel for space operations and missions to Mars.
If you really want to impress me, then develop the technologies to mine asteroids. A single average nickle-iron asteroid could supply the world's need for iron for up to five years. It could also supply plenty of material for building space stations and factories.
The resources in space could help solve many of the problems we have on our tiny planet. It's time we stopped grandstanding and started focusing on a well thought out plan for securing those resources and exploiting them.
It's hard to predict the future...
on
McVoy Strikes Back
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· Score: 3, Insightful
... but I'll give it a shot. I think that there is plenty of room in the world for both OSS and commercial software. FOSS will continue to develop free alternatives to commercial products. One of the things that drives people to create FOSS is the wish to have an alternative to commercial software. That is a good thing.
Commercial software has a niche, as well. Sometimes you need a pile of money to develop a new idea. In order to get that money, you usually have to promise some kind of return to investors. So you need to make profits. That's cool too. I don't mind paying money for things like games and innovative applications. I want software engineers to live comfortably since I'm married to one.
Down the road, I think we'll see that OSS will takeover the common applications. It will be used for the OS, obviously, basic productivity applications, software to run governments and schools, voting machines, security applications, all the kinds of applications where it makes little sense to duplicate effort and where budget constraints are tight. There will continue to be commercial applications that introduce new ideas, but eventually, those will also find their way into FOSS, as they should.
Attacks on either system are silly. Just as it makes sense to have competition in products, it also makes sense to have competition between ideas. You can't have a good democracy if everyone has to march in lockstep. We should all welcome new ideas that move us forward, regardless of where they come from.
Because they didn't want the Mir to land in the middle of some city, possibly yours, breaking your house into little bits and costing untold amounts of damage. Mir wasn't worth salvaging. It was falling apart. So the Russians were just going to abandon it.
IIRC the Russian government was in such bad shape at the time that they couldn't afford to pay the engineers needed to make a controlled reentry. The US has been propping up the Russian space program for some time as one way of helping them rebuild their economy. Without a good economy, it's likely that Russia will wind up with another totalitarian government.
Paying for the safe disposal of Mir was one of the better uses of our tax dollars.
Actually, the USPTO is supposed to apply a standard that demands that a patent be for something that is not obvious to someone appropriately trained and familiar with the technology.
If you read the patent, it could be interpreted as something innovative, until you start looking at the examples of how it's meant to be used. All of those concepts are obvious and have prior art associated with them. I think the patent examiner should have insisted on some example applications that were not rehashes of technology that is decades old, since that might make clear what is actually being patented and thus narrow the scope enough that the patent would be enforcable and reasonable.
You are right, that was a silly thing for me to say.
Still, because of the secrecy, there was obviously no public outcry over the deaths of those pilots at the time. When a project is so secret that family members aren't told when a love one dies, what can they do?
I have no reason to believe, like this woman did, that the stealth bomber project was pushed ahead too quickly, but I also don't have anyway to know that she is wrong. Secrecy has been used to cover up quite a few embarassing things in the past. I don't think human nature has changed in that regard.
Then it's likely that every time you get an update, it will make any competing anti-virus product stop working. Some of us still remember the old rhyme: The code's not done till WordPerfect won't run.
If MS eliminates all other anti-virus vendors then we are put in an interesting situation. We have all heard the rumors that some AV companies have made deals with some spyware vendors and with the government to ignore programs that the vendors don't want scrubbed from your computer and that the government uses when investigating criminals. If there is only one vendor of AV software on Windows, there is only one company anyone has to negotiate with to keep their software from showing up as a virus.
On the other hand, I believe that the security of the computer is fundmentally the job of the operating system. So the software designer in me says that's where it should go. It should be a loadable module of the OS and it should be layered so that it doesn't just look for signatures but for suspicious behavior. It should check the logs for bad behavior, etc.
Finally, I simply will never fully trust any software that is built from sources that I can't inspect. I dont' care if it's the OS or the anti-virus software. I don't believe in security by obscurity. I want to be able to make sure that my AV software isn't excluding some malware because of a little money changing hands. My computer is MY property. If the government want's to know what's on it, I think they should bring a warrant, not plant programs on it.
While I recognize the value of "wiretaps" in law enforcement, I think that establishing a back door through which the government can load malware onto your computer will quickly turn into a backdoor that any hacker can and will use. Whatever technique they come up with, someone will figure it out, steal it, or buy it from some under-paid government worker. It will only leave all of our computers open... kind of like they are now.
I strongly suspect that Microsoft is going to try to dominate the AV market and use that domination to push their "Trusted Computer Model," where, effectively, MS owns your computer and controls what you can and cannot do with it.
All of this reinforces my commitment to never buy another MS Operating System. I only use Windows now because I love computer games and computer game manufacturers have not, for the most part, embraced the Linux market. I wish they'd hurry up and start porting.
But a big part of that is supplying what the users need. I think all three sides of this discussion could learn a thing or two by listening to the others.
You don't get involved in an open source project to write crappy code. You get involved in order to fix a problem that bugs you, show off your coding skills, or do a little good for the community. One of the benefits of coding for open source is that you really can take the time to get it right.
Businesses often fail to pursue excellence in coding because they believe that by taking shortcuts they save money. That's almost always wrong. One of the reasons that Netscape got beat by IE was (and I know I'll get beaten for saying this) that IE was written in a modular way that allowed it to be used more flexibly than Netscape. The IE code was better planned and executed. The developers who joined the Mozilla project took the original Netscape code and hammered on it for a long time to produce the successful browser that we now have. Even so, it was bloated and in need of a lot of trimming. So the Firefox project fixed those problems and now Netscape is based on the Firefox core rather than the original Mozilla core. (Sharing is a good thing.)
Apparently Apple believes that by taking short cuts they save money because the FOSS community will come in behind their engineers and clean up the code for them the way they did for Netscape. Why shouldn't Apple take advantage of the same mechanism?
What happens too often in corporations and is apparently happening in this part of Apple, is that they have forgotten that they are dealing with people. The FOSS crowd seems to have more than it's fair share of idealists, and they dont' like being taken advantage of. Hopefully Apple has figured this out by now and is working on a plan to mend fences. Otherwise it might be very hard for them to get help from the community in the future. It would be a shame for OS/X to fail because of foolish management mistakes on the Safari side.
Open Source can learn a lot from what Appled did, though, even if we don't like how it turned out. Appled focused on fixing things that were causing problems for their customers. They also focused on becoming standards compliant. A lot of FOSS projects come up short in that area. What gets attention is whatever is cool to code or bugging a particular developer. Not enough of the FOSS projects have any real central focus.
Listen, learn, and move on. The best thing that could come out of this whole mess is a good discussion on how FOSS and regular software companies can work together to mutual benefit. Perhaps we need some kind of template agreement that makes responsibilities clear so that the companies involved don't make bad assumptions like the ones Apple seems to have made.
Frankly, I think it's funny that people feel so threatened by gays that they have to find ways to persecute them. Get a clue, gay guys don't want to marry you! You are in NO DANGER! Trust Me!
The state has no vested interest in who you spend your life with. The only reason to outlaw gay and lesbian marriage is as a way to try to impose your religion on others.
Is your faith in your religion and your God so low that you feel that coercion and persecution are the only ways in which you can spread your ideas?
I have friends who are gay and lesbian and I can see no reason why they should be prevented from being married. Frankly they get along better than a lot of married couples.
Who you chose to spend your life with. Who you make a part of your family. These kinds of decisions are about the most personal and important decisions that anyone can make. I can think of only a very few reasons why the state should get involved in such decisions and those reasons involve incest and abuse. In cases of adults who are mutually conscenting, the state should stay out of it.
Odd that nobody seems to raise holy hell over dead military test pilots who have over the years died while testing military hardware. Nobody ever hears of them.
Actually, you are exactly right. There are a number of American test pilots who died testing the stealth bombers and fighters. I talked to one woman who didn't find out what happened to her son until five years after she was told he had died in an "accident." He was a test pilot that flew one of the first set of B2 bombers. He flew even though the previous couple of test flights had crashed. At least that's the story I heard. I don't know if a proper investigation into the causes of those accidents was performed.
The fact that people are willing to accept risks does not automatically make it all right to put them into danger. We have a responsibility to insist that our government and our businesses exercise due diligence in it's efforts to develop new equipment.
That doesn't mean that we should refuse to accept the fact that we are dealing with dangerous things and that there will be deaths. It just means that we should continue to insist on competent investigations and believable answers when accidents occur.
Space at any cost doesn't get us what we need. Space as a viable place to do business and develop new products without worrying about things blowing up, that's what we need.
Not to mention the sillyness of "mining water on the moon". Teh moon doesn't have water, it has some rock that's not completely anhydrous. It would take more energy to extract that water than to launch it from Earth.
Actually there is evidence that there is water ice in dark crevices and craters that are permanently dark near the north and south poles of the Moon. It's quite possible that the water trapped in these locations is enough to make it much easier to colonize space.
The point is that once you've set up the facilities in a permanent orbit that circles both the Earth and Moon, you can reuse them. So elements like life support and living quarters are left in place in the same orbit, to be used over and over again.
That way, while it's true you'd have to exert just as much energy to transfer people to the MoonBus as it would take to transfer them to the Moon, you wouldn't have to boost as much in the way of life support systems or other ancillary systems, because those would already be in orbit.
The MoonBus could also be constructed so that it provides artificial gravity through counter-rotating tori. Since it's mass matters very little, except for the initial boost into the orbit, you could keep adding shielding so you would not have to worry about solar flares hurting anyone on their way to or from the Moon.
This is not a one-shot deal. It's meant to provide a long lasting platform that will make it easy to move people back and forth from the Moon in support of a permanent colony.
I think the sensible way to travel between the Earth and the Moon is to set up a space station, we'll call it the MoonBus, that flies a figure-eight orbit between the Earth and Moon. (It could use ion-engines and solar panels to keep it on the unstable orbit.)
By building a stable platform in the Earth-Moon orbit, we could provide safe and comfortable transportation. Once the station is in place, it would require only a minimal amount of fuel to get people to the station and from the station to the Moon. Over time, we could continue to add to the station itself, building our capabilities.
I got this idea from a book that Buzz Aldrin published a number of years ago. In his book, he proposed a somewhat similar scheme for moving people between Earth and Mars. Once the fixed assets are in place, the cost for moving additional people goes way down.
The main point is that we need to be building our capabilities for doing things in space, not reducing them. We need to establish goals that help us develop a space industry that might help reignite our economy. We shouldn't be giving over the exploration of space to the Chinese or anyone else.
Since we face some unknown risk of extinction from asteroids, perhaps we should have a set of prizes designed to develop an ability to move asteroids. Why not set up prizes for things like building structures in space? For establishing a mining base for water on the Moon? For creating a simple habitat that makes a figure-eight path around the Earth and Moon?
Not so. If it were, there would be far less support for Open Source projects. Fortunately, as FOSS has demonstrated, large numbers of human beings are quite capable of being motivated by interesting problems and the knowledge that thier work will benefit everyone else.
Be cynical if you like, but every day you use Linux or Open Office; every day you see a website served by Apache; know that it's because some people value contribution to society enough to donate their time and creative energies.
> if our planet becomes uninhabitable for humans, it will be self-inflicted and there are far simpler ways of preventing that than space flight.
Resources in space might be necessary to meet the challenges we face over the next century or two. The resources available in just the Near Earth Asteroids are, if you'll pardon the pun, astronomical. A typical large type M asteroid might have as much as a 150 billion dollars worth of platinum and enough iron to replace all the mining done on Earth for five years. With the resources in the asteroids, we could build enormous structures in space without having to lift mass off the Earth. If fusion is ever to be a real power source, it's likely that we'll need the helium-three that is available in large quantities on the Moon, and almost non-existent on Earth.
Moving power production and dirty industries to space might be a way to continue to improve the standard of lving for humanity as a whole, without destroying our environment.
The threat of a catastophe that is purely natural is also real, even if the probability is low. Asteroid 2004 MN4 seems likely to come very close, if not actually hit, Earth in 2035 and 2036, depending on how it's course is affected by it's close pass in 2029. Though it's not a dinosaur killer, it's big enough to do serious damage. Many of the readers of slashdot will be alive when that happens. There is also a tiny, but real chance that a super-caldera, such as the one in yellowstone might erupt, which would be devistating for the entire planet. It's risky to have all our eggs in one basket.
You shouldn't discount what might be learned by moving into space. Being forced to create and maintain balanced ecologies will give us great insights into how the Earth works and how to better manage it.
The Earth is not naturally hospitable to human beings. There are plenty if records of dramatic changes that have taken place that would have wiped out human beings like they did most other species.
The knowledge we gain from science is itself worth the investment, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't constantly be looking for ways to use what we learn to deal with our current and future needs.
The attitude from the pro-evolution side so far has been "we don't want to discuss it, and we can't believe you want to hold a debate about it"
There is a reason that scientists take that stance, it's because there is overwhelming evidence all around us that evolution happens and that it is one of the dominant forces in nature. Go read Darwin, Dawkins, or any of the other brilliant men who have described evolution and debunked the various attempts to claim that it is somehow inadequate to explain our universe.
It is a shame that so many people want to belittle the wonder of the universe. Though I am an athiest, I don't see how an understanding and acknowledgement of evolution in any way conflicts with the idea that there is some supreme being. All it does is call into question the Bible as a historically accurate document that carries the authority of God.
This kind of foolishness is not harmless. It teaches our children to accept things, not on the basis of their own critical thinking, but simply on the word of someone in authority. Theocracies and Kingdoms work well when people never question, just obey. Democracies don't. If we want a good government that works for all of us, instead of just those who have power and money, we have to constantly question the motives of those we have put in positions of authority.
The first place to start, as George Orwell would tell you, is by questioning people who want to change the definition of words in the language for political purposes. (I recommend the novel 1984 by George Orwell, to anyone who doesn't understand that comment.)
One of the problems is that water can also be a greenhouse gas, so hydrogen might not be such a wonderful idea as a replacement for gasoline. It might make more sense to work on developing better battery technology so that electricity generated by pebble-bed nuclear reactors can be used to power automobiles directly. Both areas need more research.
We'll never get there with Bush's plan. Be patient and I'll explain why I think so.
The current administration is spending money at a rate that should make everyone in the country want to start burying cash in jam jars. The price of oil is rising and will continue to rise. Our current leadership, in both parties, forgets that oil will eventually run out and that unless we find alternative ways to fuel our vehicles, we'll pay the price in rampant inflation. Our SUV culture is already using more gasoline than can be refined. The rising cost of oil is causing inflation, which is logical since transportation is a significant cost for almost any business. The Fed is raising interest rates to try to slow inflation, but that won't work, because this isn't some emotional reaction, it's tied to an actual fundemental force in the economy, rising fuel prices. The rising interest rates are having an effect though, they are putting the brakes on what little economic recovery we were having.
If we keep doing stupid things like this, we're going to wind up in very bad shape and we'll drag the whole world's economy down with us. At that point, very few people will understand why it's so important to continue a manned space program. There will be tremendous pressure on Congress to rein in spending on everything but domestic spending.
What we should be doing is working hard to find economical energy replacements. We should also be aggressively funding space exploration, devleoping the technologies that private companies could use to exploit space. There are resources available in space that could make a difference to every person on this planet. A single large iron-nickel asteroid has enough iron to replace the iron production of the whole planet for five years.
The Moon has large amounts of Helium-three, an isotope of Helium that may be key to producing fusion power. That isotope is extraordinarily rare on Earth. China is already planning to set up a base on the Moon to mine the isotope. A sensible idea since they have little in the way of oil and coal will contribute to the green house warming problems we already face.
Using the resources from the Moon and Near Earth Asteroids, NEAs, we could easily build our capability to explore the rest of the solar system. It seems likely that there is water on the Moon near the north pole. Once we got a base set up on the north rim of Peary Crater and started mining Helium-three, I doubt we'd need to put any more money into the effort. I expect it would be funding itself and paying a hefty return.
We need to stop listening to sweet sounding platitudes from our elected officials and demanding that if they propose lofty goals that they then govern in a manner that will make it possible for us to reach them. That isn't happening now.
My primary hope for our chances of exploiting space no longer rests in our government at all. It rests in the hands of individual like Burt Rutan, Ms. Ansari, and Sir Richard Branson, business people and dreamers who, like me, grew up dreaming that we'd already be in space by now.
Nuclear Energy has its place. It would be far better if we had fusion reactors, but we don't. If we don't reduce carbon emissions, immediately, we are in danger of severely altering our environment for thousands of years, if not permanently.
Nuclear works. There are designs that are far safer than the ones which have had accidents. Thorium can be converted into fissionable material in pebble-bed reactors, greatly extending the time during which fission will provide us with power.
There is no one single approach that will fix our problems. We can't afford to rule out any viable approach based on emotion. We need to look carefully at the benefits and risks of each option and pick the ones that will rapidly reduce our production of carbon emissions.
Though nuclear waste is a problem, it is one that can be localized. The change of climate for the entire Earth for thousands of years will kill far more people and species than any botched nuclear waste storage.
Firefox is still under active development. It's not surprising that occasionally a new bug, including ones that compromise security will be introduced. IE, on the other hand, has been unchanged, asside from bug fixes. All development work on IE was stopped until Firefox forced their hand. I don't think there have yet been any new releases of IE since Service Pack 2, which put 6.0.2900.2180 out in the world.
So, I wouldn't be surprised if more new security problems were located in Firefox in the recent past than in IE during the same time period. That doesn't imply that there are fewer problems in IE than in Firefox, just that fewer were found in a given time period.
Which means.... practically nothing. The relevant information would be total numbers of security problems over the total number of lines of code or some similar metric, if you want to discuss the quality of the code.
If you want to know which browser is the most secure, you should look at the total number of security bugs known to exist and the severity of those bugs.
For my money, Firefox is the only browser that I trust. I run IE only when I have no choice and when that happens I send an email to the manager of the site telling them why I won't visit again.
Microsoft abandoned good engineering practices in order to grab at market share. As a result, they crippled both their browser and their operating system.
It's simple, make sure that each requirement that is stated in your design document meets the testablility test. If you can't think of a simple way to test the requirement, than it isn't properly defined.
Along with this simple idea, the person who is specifying the system has to be willing to put in the time to make sure all requirements are testable. You also have to have a good programming manager, one who will make sure each new requirement is checked for testability and that all changes are checked to make sure they don't mess things up.
With this combination of factors, I was able to reduce the number of errors discovered after release in one system from over 400 (taking 4 months to fix) to 4, which took three days to fix.
Make note of the tests you envisage for each requirement. Ideally, this should be done by a very sharp-eyed QA Analyst.
Finally, build code reviews into your schedule. That way you have a good chance of meeting your deadlines. The code reviews not only find many bugs, they are also good places for mentoring members of the programming team who have less expertise.
for leading any committee that has anything to do with copyright, doesn't mean that I don't respect copyright myself. Read the posts! While there are people that post here that steal music and software, I'm not one of them. That probably goes for at least half the people who read slashdot.
There are lots of things in this country that deperately need fixing. The bottom line of the music and motion picture industries is not one of them. Both industries are doing booming business at a time when many people have given up looking for work. Senator Hatch might make better use of his time trying to find ways to keep jobs in the U.S.
At a time when the economy has been in an extended slump, it's not surprising that CD stores, especially small ones, are having hard times. All small retailors suffer during bad economic times. (And don't talk to me about recovery until the jobs being created aren't all at McDonald's.) The success of huge discount retailors like Walmart also plays a role in the decline of CD stores. It's hard to compete with a company that gets huge volume discounts. While we're at it, look at all the other new venues at which you can purchase CDs, including the Internet, bookstores, and even groceries.
In fact, when you look at how broad the retailing of CDs has become, it's hard to believe that piracy is really playing such a large role. More than one study has shown that he people that are most heavily involved in pirating music, are also the ones who buy the most music. So, go ahead *IAA, prosecute your best customers!
The reason I oppose the appointment of someone like Senator Hatch to head anything that has to do with copyright and patent law is that he has never shown any inclination to listen to anyone other than the billionaires who are trying to increase their profits. Hatch reacts with outrage at the actions of file sharers, but can't seem to see that the actions of the *IAA are just as bad. Fair Use is part of the law, too. Taking away our Fair Use rights arguably has a much larger impact on the public than any amount of file sharing does on the *IAA companies.
Fair Use doctrine says that I should be able to make copies of copywritten material for my own personal use. The *IAA want to make it impossible for me to do so, ostensibly to protect them from evil file sharers. Most people don't share files, but many of them want to make up CD compilations of their favorite songs. All media has a limited lifespan. I should be able to make backups so that if my CD gets left in the sun, I can still listen to the music that I've licensed. The *IAA wants to force me to buy a new copy anytime my copy is ruined. If the DRM nonsense goes the way it looks like it will go, I'd have to replace my entire music collection if I got a new computer or if my hard drive went bad. This isn't about protection against piracy. It's about forcing the consumer to repurchase the same product over and over again.
The big crooks here are the *IAA and the people behind them, not the file sharers. That doesn't make file sharing legal, right, or reasonable, but we do need to keep things in perspective.
Like it or not, what is happening in the courts affects the technology world more and more all the time. I think that it's important to have the broader picture.
Rather than having a 20 year patent, how about 5 years instead.
It can take a significant amount of time to bring a patented idea to the marketplace. If the patent duration was shortened, it's possible that it would no longer provide any benefit to many industries where it takes a long time to move a new idea into production.
Another possibility is to have different durations for patents in different industries, but I fear that way lies madness. You would have all kinds of accusations of favoritism and eventually you'd have to go back to a single duration for all patents.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, it would have been an even better post if I'd spelled the title correctly. I should have been: "But will we ever be able to go back again?"
Thanks for not dinging me on it.
One of the problems with our space programs, one of the problems it's had since the beginning, is that we haven't been building an infrastructure that would give us ongoing access to space at a reasonable price. We haven't been building our capabilities so that we'll be able to do important things like exploit the resources of the solar system. We just do stunts, usually to distract people from some political problem
I believe we need to go back to the Moon and then on to Mars, but not as one-shot deals. We need a moon base so we can get resources from the moon. There is plenty of oxygen, Silicon and aluminum which could be used to help supply our expansion into space. The oxygen is needed for air. The aluminum can be used to build structures. The silicon can be used to create solar cells.
It also seems likely that the Moon has water trapped in deep dark craters and crevices at the poles. A base on the moon dedicated to extracting that water would be able to provide that vital resource to space settlements. The water could be decomposed into hydrogen and oxygen to supply fuel for space operations and missions to Mars.
If you really want to impress me, then develop the technologies to mine asteroids. A single average nickle-iron asteroid could supply the world's need for iron for up to five years. It could also supply plenty of material for building space stations and factories.
The resources in space could help solve many of the problems we have on our tiny planet. It's time we stopped grandstanding and started focusing on a well thought out plan for securing those resources and exploiting them.
... but I'll give it a shot. I think that there is plenty of room in the world for both OSS and commercial software. FOSS will continue to develop free alternatives to commercial products. One of the things that drives people to create FOSS is the wish to have an alternative to commercial software. That is a good thing.
Commercial software has a niche, as well. Sometimes you need a pile of money to develop a new idea. In order to get that money, you usually have to promise some kind of return to investors. So you need to make profits. That's cool too. I don't mind paying money for things like games and innovative applications. I want software engineers to live comfortably since I'm married to one.
Down the road, I think we'll see that OSS will takeover the common applications. It will be used for the OS, obviously, basic productivity applications, software to run governments and schools, voting machines, security applications, all the kinds of applications where it makes little sense to duplicate effort and where budget constraints are tight. There will continue to be commercial applications that introduce new ideas, but eventually, those will also find their way into FOSS, as they should.
Attacks on either system are silly. Just as it makes sense to have competition in products, it also makes sense to have competition between ideas. You can't have a good democracy if everyone has to march in lockstep. We should all welcome new ideas that move us forward, regardless of where they come from.
Because they didn't want the Mir to land in the middle of some city, possibly yours, breaking your house into little bits and costing untold amounts of damage. Mir wasn't worth salvaging. It was falling apart. So the Russians were just going to abandon it.
IIRC the Russian government was in such bad shape at the time that they couldn't afford to pay the engineers needed to make a controlled reentry. The US has been propping up the Russian space program for some time as one way of helping them rebuild their economy. Without a good economy, it's likely that Russia will wind up with another totalitarian government.
Paying for the safe disposal of Mir was one of the better uses of our tax dollars.
Actually, the USPTO is supposed to apply a standard that demands that a patent be for something that is not obvious to someone appropriately trained and familiar with the technology.
If you read the patent, it could be interpreted as something innovative, until you start looking at the examples of how it's meant to be used. All of those concepts are obvious and have prior art associated with them. I think the patent examiner should have insisted on some example applications that were not rehashes of technology that is decades old, since that might make clear what is actually being patented and thus narrow the scope enough that the patent would be enforcable and reasonable.
You are right, that was a silly thing for me to say.
Still, because of the secrecy, there was obviously no public outcry over the deaths of those pilots at the time. When a project is so secret that family members aren't told when a love one dies, what can they do?
I have no reason to believe, like this woman did, that the stealth bomber project was pushed ahead too quickly, but I also don't have anyway to know that she is wrong. Secrecy has been used to cover up quite a few embarassing things in the past. I don't think human nature has changed in that regard.
Then it's likely that every time you get an update, it will make any competing anti-virus product stop working. Some of us still remember the old rhyme: The code's not done till WordPerfect won't run.
If MS eliminates all other anti-virus vendors then we are put in an interesting situation. We have all heard the rumors that some AV companies have made deals with some spyware vendors and with the government to ignore programs that the vendors don't want scrubbed from your computer and that the government uses when investigating criminals. If there is only one vendor of AV software on Windows, there is only one company anyone has to negotiate with to keep their software from showing up as a virus.
On the other hand, I believe that the security of the computer is fundmentally the job of the operating system. So the software designer in me says that's where it should go. It should be a loadable module of the OS and it should be layered so that it doesn't just look for signatures but for suspicious behavior. It should check the logs for bad behavior, etc.
Finally, I simply will never fully trust any software that is built from sources that I can't inspect. I dont' care if it's the OS or the anti-virus software. I don't believe in security by obscurity. I want to be able to make sure that my AV software isn't excluding some malware because of a little money changing hands. My computer is MY property. If the government want's to know what's on it, I think they should bring a warrant, not plant programs on it.
While I recognize the value of "wiretaps" in law enforcement, I think that establishing a back door through which the government can load malware onto your computer will quickly turn into a backdoor that any hacker can and will use. Whatever technique they come up with, someone will figure it out, steal it, or buy it from some under-paid government worker. It will only leave all of our computers open... kind of like they are now.
I strongly suspect that Microsoft is going to try to dominate the AV market and use that domination to push their "Trusted Computer Model," where, effectively, MS owns your computer and controls what you can and cannot do with it.
All of this reinforces my commitment to never buy another MS Operating System. I only use Windows now because I love computer games and computer game manufacturers have not, for the most part, embraced the Linux market. I wish they'd hurry up and start porting.
But a big part of that is supplying what the users need. I think all three sides of this discussion could learn a thing or two by listening to the others.
You don't get involved in an open source project to write crappy code. You get involved in order to fix a problem that bugs you, show off your coding skills, or do a little good for the community. One of the benefits of coding for open source is that you really can take the time to get it right.
Businesses often fail to pursue excellence in coding because they believe that by taking shortcuts they save money. That's almost always wrong. One of the reasons that Netscape got beat by IE was (and I know I'll get beaten for saying this) that IE was written in a modular way that allowed it to be used more flexibly than Netscape. The IE code was better planned and executed. The developers who joined the Mozilla project took the original Netscape code and hammered on it for a long time to produce the successful browser that we now have. Even so, it was bloated and in need of a lot of trimming. So the Firefox project fixed those problems and now Netscape is based on the Firefox core rather than the original Mozilla core. (Sharing is a good thing.)
Apparently Apple believes that by taking short cuts they save money because the FOSS community will come in behind their engineers and clean up the code for them the way they did for Netscape. Why shouldn't Apple take advantage of the same mechanism?
What happens too often in corporations and is apparently happening in this part of Apple, is that they have forgotten that they are dealing with people. The FOSS crowd seems to have more than it's fair share of idealists, and they dont' like being taken advantage of. Hopefully Apple has figured this out by now and is working on a plan to mend fences. Otherwise it might be very hard for them to get help from the community in the future. It would be a shame for OS/X to fail because of foolish management mistakes on the Safari side.
Open Source can learn a lot from what Appled did, though, even if we don't like how it turned out. Appled focused on fixing things that were causing problems for their customers. They also focused on becoming standards compliant. A lot of FOSS projects come up short in that area. What gets attention is whatever is cool to code or bugging a particular developer. Not enough of the FOSS projects have any real central focus.
Listen, learn, and move on. The best thing that could come out of this whole mess is a good discussion on how FOSS and regular software companies can work together to mutual benefit. Perhaps we need some kind of template agreement that makes responsibilities clear so that the companies involved don't make bad assumptions like the ones Apple seems to have made.
Frankly, I think it's funny that people feel so threatened by gays that they have to find ways to persecute them. Get a clue, gay guys don't want to marry you! You are in NO DANGER! Trust Me!
The state has no vested interest in who you spend your life with. The only reason to outlaw gay and lesbian marriage is as a way to try to impose your religion on others.
Is your faith in your religion and your God so low that you feel that coercion and persecution are the only ways in which you can spread your ideas?
I have friends who are gay and lesbian and I can see no reason why they should be prevented from being married. Frankly they get along better than a lot of married couples.
Who you chose to spend your life with. Who you make a part of your family. These kinds of decisions are about the most personal and important decisions that anyone can make. I can think of only a very few reasons why the state should get involved in such decisions and those reasons involve incest and abuse. In cases of adults who are mutually conscenting, the state should stay out of it.
Odd that nobody seems to raise holy hell over dead military test pilots who have over the years died while testing military hardware. Nobody ever hears of them.
Actually, you are exactly right. There are a number of American test pilots who died testing the stealth bombers and fighters. I talked to one woman who didn't find out what happened to her son until five years after she was told he had died in an "accident." He was a test pilot that flew one of the first set of B2 bombers. He flew even though the previous couple of test flights had crashed. At least that's the story I heard. I don't know if a proper investigation into the causes of those accidents was performed.
The fact that people are willing to accept risks does not automatically make it all right to put them into danger. We have a responsibility to insist that our government and our businesses exercise due diligence in it's efforts to develop new equipment.
That doesn't mean that we should refuse to accept the fact that we are dealing with dangerous things and that there will be deaths. It just means that we should continue to insist on competent investigations and believable answers when accidents occur.
Space at any cost doesn't get us what we need. Space as a viable place to do business and develop new products without worrying about things blowing up, that's what we need.
Not to mention the sillyness of "mining water on the moon". Teh moon doesn't have water, it has some rock that's not completely anhydrous. It would take more energy to extract that water than to launch it from Earth.
Actually there is evidence that there is water ice in dark crevices and craters that are permanently dark near the north and south poles of the Moon. It's quite possible that the water trapped in these locations is enough to make it much easier to colonize space.
Look at http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/ice/ice_moon. html
The point is that once you've set up the facilities in a permanent orbit that circles both the Earth and Moon, you can reuse them. So elements like life support and living quarters are left in place in the same orbit, to be used over and over again.
That way, while it's true you'd have to exert just as much energy to transfer people to the MoonBus as it would take to transfer them to the Moon, you wouldn't have to boost as much in the way of life support systems or other ancillary systems, because those would already be in orbit.
The MoonBus could also be constructed so that it provides artificial gravity through counter-rotating tori. Since it's mass matters very little, except for the initial boost into the orbit, you could keep adding shielding so you would not have to worry about solar flares hurting anyone on their way to or from the Moon.
This is not a one-shot deal. It's meant to provide a long lasting platform that will make it easy to move people back and forth from the Moon in support of a permanent colony.
I think the sensible way to travel between the Earth and the Moon is to set up a space station, we'll call it the MoonBus, that flies a figure-eight orbit between the Earth and Moon. (It could use ion-engines and solar panels to keep it on the unstable orbit.)
By building a stable platform in the Earth-Moon orbit, we could provide safe and comfortable transportation. Once the station is in place, it would require only a minimal amount of fuel to get people to the station and from the station to the Moon. Over time, we could continue to add to the station itself, building our capabilities.
I got this idea from a book that Buzz Aldrin published a number of years ago. In his book, he proposed a somewhat similar scheme for moving people between Earth and Mars. Once the fixed assets are in place, the cost for moving additional people goes way down.
The main point is that we need to be building our capabilities for doing things in space, not reducing them. We need to establish goals that help us develop a space industry that might help reignite our economy. We shouldn't be giving over the exploration of space to the Chinese or anyone else.
Since we face some unknown risk of extinction from asteroids, perhaps we should have a set of prizes designed to develop an ability to move asteroids. Why not set up prizes for things like building structures in space? For establishing a mining base for water on the Moon? For creating a simple habitat that makes a figure-eight path around the Earth and Moon?
Not so. If it were, there would be far less support for Open Source projects. Fortunately, as FOSS has demonstrated, large numbers of human beings are quite capable of being motivated by interesting problems and the knowledge that thier work will benefit everyone else.
Be cynical if you like, but every day you use Linux or Open Office; every day you see a website served by Apache; know that it's because some people value contribution to society enough to donate their time and creative energies.
Resources in space might be necessary to meet the challenges we face over the next century or two. The resources available in just the Near Earth Asteroids are, if you'll pardon the pun, astronomical. A typical large type M asteroid might have as much as a 150 billion dollars worth of platinum and enough iron to replace all the mining done on Earth for five years. With the resources in the asteroids, we could build enormous structures in space without having to lift mass off the Earth. If fusion is ever to be a real power source, it's likely that we'll need the helium-three that is available in large quantities on the Moon, and almost non-existent on Earth.
Moving power production and dirty industries to space might be a way to continue to improve the standard of lving for humanity as a whole, without destroying our environment.
The threat of a catastophe that is purely natural is also real, even if the probability is low. Asteroid 2004 MN4 seems likely to come very close, if not actually hit, Earth in 2035 and 2036, depending on how it's course is affected by it's close pass in 2029. Though it's not a dinosaur killer, it's big enough to do serious damage. Many of the readers of slashdot will be alive when that happens. There is also a tiny, but real chance that a super-caldera, such as the one in yellowstone might erupt, which would be devistating for the entire planet. It's risky to have all our eggs in one basket.
You shouldn't discount what might be learned by moving into space. Being forced to create and maintain balanced ecologies will give us great insights into how the Earth works and how to better manage it.
The Earth is not naturally hospitable to human beings. There are plenty if records of dramatic changes that have taken place that would have wiped out human beings like they did most other species.
The knowledge we gain from science is itself worth the investment, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't constantly be looking for ways to use what we learn to deal with our current and future needs.
The attitude from the pro-evolution side so far has been "we don't want to discuss it, and we can't believe you want to hold a debate about it"
There is a reason that scientists take that stance, it's because there is overwhelming evidence all around us that evolution happens and that it is one of the dominant forces in nature. Go read Darwin, Dawkins, or any of the other brilliant men who have described evolution and debunked the various attempts to claim that it is somehow inadequate to explain our universe.
It is a shame that so many people want to belittle the wonder of the universe. Though I am an athiest, I don't see how an understanding and acknowledgement of evolution in any way conflicts with the idea that there is some supreme being. All it does is call into question the Bible as a historically accurate document that carries the authority of God.
This kind of foolishness is not harmless. It teaches our children to accept things, not on the basis of their own critical thinking, but simply on the word of someone in authority. Theocracies and Kingdoms work well when people never question, just obey. Democracies don't. If we want a good government that works for all of us, instead of just those who have power and money, we have to constantly question the motives of those we have put in positions of authority.
The first place to start, as George Orwell would tell you, is by questioning people who want to change the definition of words in the language for political purposes. (I recommend the novel 1984 by George Orwell, to anyone who doesn't understand that comment.)
One of the problems is that water can also be a greenhouse gas, so hydrogen might not be such a wonderful idea as a replacement for gasoline. It might make more sense to work on developing better battery technology so that electricity generated by pebble-bed nuclear reactors can be used to power automobiles directly. Both areas need more research.
We'll never get there with Bush's plan. Be patient and I'll explain why I think so.
The current administration is spending money at a rate that should make everyone in the country want to start burying cash in jam jars. The price of oil is rising and will continue to rise. Our current leadership, in both parties, forgets that oil will eventually run out and that unless we find alternative ways to fuel our vehicles, we'll pay the price in rampant inflation. Our SUV culture is already using more gasoline than can be refined. The rising cost of oil is causing inflation, which is logical since transportation is a significant cost for almost any business. The Fed is raising interest rates to try to slow inflation, but that won't work, because this isn't some emotional reaction, it's tied to an actual fundemental force in the economy, rising fuel prices. The rising interest rates are having an effect though, they are putting the brakes on what little economic recovery we were having.
If we keep doing stupid things like this, we're going to wind up in very bad shape and we'll drag the whole world's economy down with us. At that point, very few people will understand why it's so important to continue a manned space program. There will be tremendous pressure on Congress to rein in spending on everything but domestic spending.
What we should be doing is working hard to find economical energy replacements. We should also be aggressively funding space exploration, devleoping the technologies that private companies could use to exploit space. There are resources available in space that could make a difference to every person on this planet. A single large iron-nickel asteroid has enough iron to replace the iron production of the whole planet for five years.
The Moon has large amounts of Helium-three, an isotope of Helium that may be key to producing fusion power. That isotope is extraordinarily rare on Earth. China is already planning to set up a base on the Moon to mine the isotope. A sensible idea since they have little in the way of oil and coal will contribute to the green house warming problems we already face.
Using the resources from the Moon and Near Earth Asteroids, NEAs, we could easily build our capability to explore the rest of the solar system. It seems likely that there is water on the Moon near the north pole. Once we got a base set up on the north rim of Peary Crater and started mining Helium-three, I doubt we'd need to put any more money into the effort. I expect it would be funding itself and paying a hefty return.
We need to stop listening to sweet sounding platitudes from our elected officials and demanding that if they propose lofty goals that they then govern in a manner that will make it possible for us to reach them. That isn't happening now.
My primary hope for our chances of exploiting space no longer rests in our government at all. It rests in the hands of individual like Burt Rutan, Ms. Ansari, and Sir Richard Branson, business people and dreamers who, like me, grew up dreaming that we'd already be in space by now.
Nuclear Energy has its place. It would be far better if we had fusion reactors, but we don't. If we don't reduce carbon emissions, immediately, we are in danger of severely altering our environment for thousands of years, if not permanently.
Nuclear works. There are designs that are far safer than the ones which have had accidents. Thorium can be converted into fissionable material in pebble-bed reactors, greatly extending the time during which fission will provide us with power.
There is no one single approach that will fix our problems. We can't afford to rule out any viable approach based on emotion. We need to look carefully at the benefits and risks of each option and pick the ones that will rapidly reduce our production of carbon emissions.
Though nuclear waste is a problem, it is one that can be localized. The change of climate for the entire Earth for thousands of years will kill far more people and species than any botched nuclear waste storage.
Great idea, just add a rider to the bill that states that AccuWeather and The Weather Channel and other such entities have to pay for NOAA's budget.
Firefox is still under active development. It's not surprising that occasionally a new bug, including ones that compromise security will be introduced. IE, on the other hand, has been unchanged, asside from bug fixes. All development work on IE was stopped until Firefox forced their hand. I don't think there have yet been any new releases of IE since Service Pack 2, which put 6.0.2900.2180 out in the world.
So, I wouldn't be surprised if more new security problems were located in Firefox in the recent past than in IE during the same time period. That doesn't imply that there are fewer problems in IE than in Firefox, just that fewer were found in a given time period.
Which means.... practically nothing. The relevant information would be total numbers of security problems over the total number of lines of code or some similar metric, if you want to discuss the quality of the code.
If you want to know which browser is the most secure, you should look at the total number of security bugs known to exist and the severity of those bugs.
For my money, Firefox is the only browser that I trust. I run IE only when I have no choice and when that happens I send an email to the manager of the site telling them why I won't visit again.
Microsoft abandoned good engineering practices in order to grab at market share. As a result, they crippled both their browser and their operating system.
It's simple, make sure that each requirement that is stated in your design document meets the testablility test. If you can't think of a simple way to test the requirement, than it isn't properly defined.
Along with this simple idea, the person who is specifying the system has to be willing to put in the time to make sure all requirements are testable. You also have to have a good programming manager, one who will make sure each new requirement is checked for testability and that all changes are checked to make sure they don't mess things up.
With this combination of factors, I was able to reduce the number of errors discovered after release in one system from over 400 (taking 4 months to fix) to 4, which took three days to fix.
Make note of the tests you envisage for each requirement. Ideally, this should be done by a very sharp-eyed QA Analyst.
Finally, build code reviews into your schedule. That way you have a good chance of meeting your deadlines. The code reviews not only find many bugs, they are also good places for mentoring members of the programming team who have less expertise.
Hopefully, some of this is useful to you.
There are lots of things in this country that deperately need fixing. The bottom line of the music and motion picture industries is not one of them. Both industries are doing booming business at a time when many people have given up looking for work. Senator Hatch might make better use of his time trying to find ways to keep jobs in the U.S.
At a time when the economy has been in an extended slump, it's not surprising that CD stores, especially small ones, are having hard times. All small retailors suffer during bad economic times. (And don't talk to me about recovery until the jobs being created aren't all at McDonald's.) The success of huge discount retailors like Walmart also plays a role in the decline of CD stores. It's hard to compete with a company that gets huge volume discounts. While we're at it, look at all the other new venues at which you can purchase CDs, including the Internet, bookstores, and even groceries.
In fact, when you look at how broad the retailing of CDs has become, it's hard to believe that piracy is really playing such a large role. More than one study has shown that he people that are most heavily involved in pirating music, are also the ones who buy the most music. So, go ahead *IAA, prosecute your best customers!
The reason I oppose the appointment of someone like Senator Hatch to head anything that has to do with copyright and patent law is that he has never shown any inclination to listen to anyone other than the billionaires who are trying to increase their profits. Hatch reacts with outrage at the actions of file sharers, but can't seem to see that the actions of the *IAA are just as bad. Fair Use is part of the law, too. Taking away our Fair Use rights arguably has a much larger impact on the public than any amount of file sharing does on the *IAA companies.
Fair Use doctrine says that I should be able to make copies of copywritten material for my own personal use. The *IAA want to make it impossible for me to do so, ostensibly to protect them from evil file sharers. Most people don't share files, but many of them want to make up CD compilations of their favorite songs. All media has a limited lifespan. I should be able to make backups so that if my CD gets left in the sun, I can still listen to the music that I've licensed. The *IAA wants to force me to buy a new copy anytime my copy is ruined. If the DRM nonsense goes the way it looks like it will go, I'd have to replace my entire music collection if I got a new computer or if my hard drive went bad. This isn't about protection against piracy. It's about forcing the consumer to repurchase the same product over and over again.
The big crooks here are the *IAA and the people behind them, not the file sharers. That doesn't make file sharing legal, right, or reasonable, but we do need to keep things in perspective.
Like it or not, what is happening in the courts affects the technology world more and more all the time. I think that it's important to have the broader picture.
Rather than having a 20 year patent, how about 5 years instead.
It can take a significant amount of time to bring a patented idea to the marketplace. If the patent duration was shortened, it's possible that it would no longer provide any benefit to many industries where it takes a long time to move a new idea into production.
Another possibility is to have different durations for patents in different industries, but I fear that way lies madness. You would have all kinds of accusations of favoritism and eventually you'd have to go back to a single duration for all patents.