In other words, you prefer ignorance - your mind is made up, facts need not intrude into your world.
Um, no, those would be your words. My cynicism comes from seeing both ends of the aerospace and construction contract process over a period of several decades. If I tend to entertain suspicions about government contracts, it is because I've seen how easily abuses of the system happen. While you could be correct about the RFP process for SRBs, I do not get my "facts" from unknown people on Slashdot (although I have no idea why I'm so suspicious), and I would still suspect more was involved than you think in any case.
If you think the procurement process is clean, I suggest you google on "Duke Cunningham". Then ask yourself how a few million in bribes got translated into multi-million dollar federal contracts. When you answer that one, first ask yourself why the people who paid the bribes are not going to jail with Cunningham. Second, ask yourself why the people who awarded the contracts aren't going to jail (there's a good reason why). It doesn't have to be that blatant either; there are plenty of piddling little power and payback games that go on with contract awards.
If I were a head of a corp, I'd be looking to relocate right now until some of your very broken laws, including patent law, are changed.
If you were the head of a large US corporation, you would be enjoying the ability to loot the company and shareholders. The last thing you would do is try to relocate to someplace with sane laws and reasonable CEO compensation.
Usually when NASA puts out a RFP, it includes it's research data (and/or a general design) as well as the specifications, the contractor then proposes a specific design. NASA analyses the competing designs and chooses among them. (Contrary to popular belief, price is only one of many, many criteria used by the goverment to evaluate proposals.)
Yes, I've been involved in several responses to RFPs. I'm aware of how it works. There are also single-source requisitions which are not so clear.
Many people parrot things that they don't understand the meaning of because it agrees with their biases.
I suppose I could be parroting the suspicions of the media about the deal. With my well-earned cynicism, I follow the smoke-and-fire model whenever politics and money are involved.
Sadly, the decision to award the contract to Morton Thiokol was made on sound engineering (and penny pinching) grounds. At the time the contract was awarded, there was essentially no experience with big monolithic solids, and a fairly large base of experience with large segmented solids.
You lost me. If there was no experience in the field, then why should Morton Thiokol have been chosen over any geographically closer competitor, with the resultant transportation and assembly problems? Just low bidder? Or a political plum, as I implied?
All of these issues were addressed in designs -- that were thrown out due to being too expensive.
I'm not sure what your argument is. As I said, pick one or two design goals - expense was one of those. You can't have them all. The Shuttle was designed in the 70's. I'd guess that most Slashdot denizens can't remember a time when the Shuttle wasn't flying, and a good portion weren't even born when the first shuttle launched, although most have perfect hindsight on the subject.
Just for comparison, it was over 30 years between Kitty Hawk and the DC-3. It was about 20 years between the first manned Mercury mission and the Shuttle. I would say the Shuttle was a much greater advancement compared to the DC-3, IMHO.
Yes, the current design was good -- I admire it -- but it should have been much better.
In a perfect world there would be no need for tradeoffs, and you would have been the project lead engineer in charge of the Shuttle's design, the director of NASA, the president of the US, and the Speaker of the House. Unfortunately, it didn't happen that way, but we got that brick to fly anyway.:)
The Shuttle was and is a great idea, but the execution was flawed due to too much pennypinching during the design phase.
I'm not sure design was the real problem. As usual, when government money is involved, engineering loses out to politics. The history of the Shuttle might have been far different if Morton Thiokol (who had a huge logistical disadvantage) hadn't been awarded a certain contract.
Too many people, inside and outside of NASA, made conflicting claims about the Shuttle. Depending on who you listen to, it was supposed to be reusable, cheap, dependable, long-lived, have fast turnaround, be a science platform, be a space truck, etc. Well, pick one or two if you're a realist. I'm amazed that it performed as well as it did at so many tasks and think the basic design was fairly good.
The Shuttle is already being wound down. It is the US government that determines where NASA spends its funds. If you don't like how the funds are being earmarked, talk to your congresscritter. Even if the President has a Mars fixation, it is Congress that holds the purse strings and passes the budget.
That really is a Playstation grill! The green things look just like the leech creatures from Extermination. We probably don't want to know where the other pieces came from.
Of course, their supply situation is still 100% better than the PS3.
Just like the PS2, the US launch for the PS3 will most likely be in the fall to get the holiday sales. That could also depress sales of Xbox 360 games (and consoles) while people wait to see what games the PS3 has lined up. I'll be more interested in seeing the price of the PS3 at launch. If MS drops the price on the 360 as the PS3 arrives, it could make the 360 a tempting buy - especially if there are some good games available by then.
Not exactly thousands, and while it's a lot of money, it's a tiny drop in the ocean for MS. They also do have Unix products (eg Services for Unix), so perhaps they were just covering their arses for that? They're probably getting pretty sick of being sued...
If MS were tired of being sued, they'd stop the abusive business tactics that get them sued. Of course there is nothing unusual about MS buying licenses from SCO:
IBM gives MS a hand-up by buying first PC OS
MS bites the IBM hand that feeds it with OS2 charade
MS buys UNIX license and technology from the "old" SCO
Old SCO spins off dying UNIX stuff
IBM bites back by pushing Linux as alternative OS to customers
Abandoned UNIX stuff attracts vermin like bad cheese, and eventually the new SCO lurches into the light
New moldy SCO sues IBM and demands protection money from everyone in sight
MS, which is really afraid of tiny companies and overworking their legal department, buys even more UNIX licenses from the new SCO to protect themselves
Sun, which is also in competition with IBM and has produced a UNIX variant for many years, also buys a multi-million-dollar UNIX license from the new moldy SCO
Yeah, I can see how that could happen. Nothing suspicious there. Everyone just move along . . .
I think the point here is that many of the missions were ISS supply/building missions. Even if you (and I) want to ignore the media frenzy over safety, what do you do when Congress won't agree to spend the money to provide the ISS components? Launch an empty shuttle? For what? I think NASA has done fairly well (with the Shuttle program) considering how it has been hamstrung by Congress.
Yes, I think we're generally on the same page, but there are a couple of memes that come up (and push my hot buttons) every time there is discussion of the Shuttle on Slashdot: "The Shuttle was a failure", or "The Shuttle failed to meet its objectives". Either of these ignores the facts that Congress controls NASA's budget (and operations), not NASA and that the Shuttle was/is an experiment. Considering the Shuttle's 100+ missions and the ISS, one's definition of "failure" would have to be pretty narrow (and, believe me, I've had those arguments with a couple of people here).
When NASA did try to do some advanced work, there were screams from Congress about budget overruns. Consider how difficult it is to manage a project that spans several decades while having your outlay limited to one year at a time and having that budget changed and reallocated every year. Then consider that due to bickering in the federal government, sometimes you don't have funds allocated at all until the fiscal year is half over, which leaves only a few months to let contracts and get the needed work done.
As far as cost-savings go, IIRC, that was a possible benefit, and I'm not sure what one would compare the shuttles to in the 80's - a bunch of Saturn Vs with disposable cargo modules and crew capsules that couldn't return anything? And at least one of the designs for the next generation reuses quite a bit from the current Shuttle program.
I guess the differences between air combat and space flight make the numbers deceiving, since the shuttles were supposed to be a work-horse, and expectation they never fully lived up to. I guess the space shuttle is more like the XB-70, a Mach 3 heavy bomber prototype built in the 60's: technologically very impressive, but ultimately the wrong approach.
Whose expectations? The shuttles had an optimistic schedule that was hyped by some political appointees, when in reality they were experimental craft. There was nothing like it that had flown before. We learned a lot from the shuttles about how things really work in space and reusability. Anybody else recall watching the capture of the Hubble? The Shuttle has been a learning vehicle, not just a space vehicle.
When bad things happened in a very dangerous occupation, we got media hysteria and political grandstanding. Look at all the lives and ships lost during normal early American trade. Our ancestors would be unable to understand our timid response to expected losses and even trivial damage in a hostile environment. I wouldn't call the Shuttle the "wrong approach." It was the approach we chose to test first. We could have chosen to try nothing new, and we would have learned nothing new.
The Spring release is for Japan, which would follow the same pattern Sony used with the PS2: Spring in Japan, then October/November for North American and Europe in time for the Christmas spending frenzy.
I doubt that Best Buy will be involved or concerned for some months yet.
Have you ever considered that you might be spending way too much time here? It was news to me. Of course I have a life and a job and family and friends and a local bar, so maybe my priorities are all screwed up, and I should really be spending my time combing Slashdot for dupes.
I'm starting to consider the opinon that voting should be an essay question as of late.
Voting should be yes/no up/down and able to be verified through a manual recount. The essay question should be given to those people who are supposed to protect the process. The first question is: Why do you oppose a paper trail so that disputed vote totals can be recounted? The second question is: Has someone from Diebold or Sequoia Systems sent a "representative" to "help" you "understand" why you don't need a paper trail, and what is their name and affiliation?
Wow. I always though Canada was supposed to be the better half of North America. I have a little trouble with your numbers, since I don't think there is anywhere in the US where 95% of 14-year-olds are doing coke and having sex. If the problem is so widespread in Canada, I'd agree there is a real problem with parental supervision. Since I grew up with some friends from Canada, it seems hard to believe that things could be that lax.
Hookers are trash and they should not be defended. Instead, we should all throw pennies at them until they get off the drugs and get a real respectable career.
Well, let's take an honest prostitute who gets a hundred bucks for screwing one guy, leaves him happy, and admits it. Compare that to someone with a "respectable career" like Carly Fiorina who screws several thousand employees, leaves them out of work, bankrupt, and miserable. I'm gonna have to give my support to the honest prostitute instead of the dishonest corporate whore.
One day we can only hope, as it was just 50 years ago, being promiscuous will no longer be popular and we will see long-term marriage grow in numbers and people treating each other with compassion instead of as competition or a prize.
Sure, but I think it's more like respect than "compassion".
P.s. Maybe people would be nicer to prostitutes if they were FREE
Talk to the (your) hand. Prostitution, by definition, is free as in libre but not as in beer - you pay for it. FREE (as in beer) sex may have more of a price tag than you want to pay once you've had it. Think about it.
Slashdot Mirror
In other words, you prefer ignorance - your mind is made up, facts need not intrude into your world.
Um, no, those would be your words. My cynicism comes from seeing both ends of the aerospace and construction contract process over a period of several decades. If I tend to entertain suspicions about government contracts, it is because I've seen how easily abuses of the system happen. While you could be correct about the RFP process for SRBs, I do not get my "facts" from unknown people on Slashdot (although I have no idea why I'm so suspicious), and I would still suspect more was involved than you think in any case.
If you think the procurement process is clean, I suggest you google on "Duke Cunningham". Then ask yourself how a few million in bribes got translated into multi-million dollar federal contracts. When you answer that one, first ask yourself why the people who paid the bribes are not going to jail with Cunningham. Second, ask yourself why the people who awarded the contracts aren't going to jail (there's a good reason why). It doesn't have to be that blatant either; there are plenty of piddling little power and payback games that go on with contract awards.
If I were a head of a corp, I'd be looking to relocate right now until some of your very broken laws, including patent law, are changed.
If you were the head of a large US corporation, you would be enjoying the ability to loot the company and shareholders. The last thing you would do is try to relocate to someplace with sane laws and reasonable CEO compensation.
Ah, the Shakespearian solution. :)
Usually when NASA puts out a RFP, it includes it's research data (and/or a general design) as well as the specifications, the contractor then proposes a specific design. NASA analyses the competing designs and chooses among them. (Contrary to popular belief, price is only one of many, many criteria used by the goverment to evaluate proposals.)
Yes, I've been involved in several responses to RFPs. I'm aware of how it works. There are also single-source requisitions which are not so clear.
Many people parrot things that they don't understand the meaning of because it agrees with their biases.
I suppose I could be parroting the suspicions of the media about the deal. With my well-earned cynicism, I follow the smoke-and-fire model whenever politics and money are involved.
Sadly, the decision to award the contract to Morton Thiokol was made on sound engineering (and penny pinching) grounds. At the time the contract was awarded, there was essentially no experience with big monolithic solids, and a fairly large base of experience with large segmented solids.
You lost me. If there was no experience in the field, then why should Morton Thiokol have been chosen over any geographically closer competitor, with the resultant transportation and assembly problems? Just low bidder? Or a political plum, as I implied?
All of these issues were addressed in designs -- that were thrown out due to being too expensive.
I'm not sure what your argument is. As I said, pick one or two design goals - expense was one of those. You can't have them all. The Shuttle was designed in the 70's. I'd guess that most Slashdot denizens can't remember a time when the Shuttle wasn't flying, and a good portion weren't even born when the first shuttle launched, although most have perfect hindsight on the subject.
Just for comparison, it was over 30 years between Kitty Hawk and the DC-3. It was about 20 years between the first manned Mercury mission and the Shuttle. I would say the Shuttle was a much greater advancement compared to the DC-3, IMHO.
Yes, the current design was good -- I admire it -- but it should have been much better.
In a perfect world there would be no need for tradeoffs, and you would have been the project lead engineer in charge of the Shuttle's design, the director of NASA, the president of the US, and the Speaker of the House. Unfortunately, it didn't happen that way, but we got that brick to fly anyway. :)
The Shuttle was and is a great idea, but the execution was flawed due to too much pennypinching during the design phase.
I'm not sure design was the real problem. As usual, when government money is involved, engineering loses out to politics. The history of the Shuttle might have been far different if Morton Thiokol (who had a huge logistical disadvantage) hadn't been awarded a certain contract.
Too many people, inside and outside of NASA, made conflicting claims about the Shuttle. Depending on who you listen to, it was supposed to be reusable, cheap, dependable, long-lived, have fast turnaround, be a science platform, be a space truck, etc. Well, pick one or two if you're a realist. I'm amazed that it performed as well as it did at so many tasks and think the basic design was fairly good.
The Shuttle is already being wound down. It is the US government that determines where NASA spends its funds. If you don't like how the funds are being earmarked, talk to your congresscritter. Even if the President has a Mars fixation, it is Congress that holds the purse strings and passes the budget.
That really is a Playstation grill! The green things look just like the leech creatures from Extermination. We probably don't want to know where the other pieces came from.
Of course, their supply situation is still 100% better than the PS3.
Just like the PS2, the US launch for the PS3 will most likely be in the fall to get the holiday sales. That could also depress sales of Xbox 360 games (and consoles) while people wait to see what games the PS3 has lined up. I'll be more interested in seeing the price of the PS3 at launch. If MS drops the price on the 360 as the PS3 arrives, it could make the 360 a tempting buy - especially if there are some good games available by then.
At least Ubisoft used "&" instead of "and", so it wasn't a total ripoff. :)
This is the 'piercing of the corporate veil' that we've been waiting for.
I thought the corporate veil we had been looking to pierce was the one between SCO and Canopy and their various money laundering schemes.
Not exactly thousands, and while it's a lot of money, it's a tiny drop in the ocean for MS. They also do have Unix products (eg Services for Unix), so perhaps they were just covering their arses for that? They're probably getting pretty sick of being sued...
If MS were tired of being sued, they'd stop the abusive business tactics that get them sued. Of course there is nothing unusual about MS buying licenses from SCO:
- IBM gives MS a hand-up by buying first PC OS
- MS bites the IBM hand that feeds it with OS2 charade
- MS buys UNIX license and technology from the "old" SCO
- Old SCO spins off dying UNIX stuff
- IBM bites back by pushing Linux as alternative OS to customers
- Abandoned UNIX stuff attracts vermin like bad cheese, and eventually the new SCO lurches into the light
- New moldy SCO sues IBM and demands protection money from everyone in sight
- MS, which is really afraid of tiny companies and overworking their legal department, buys even more UNIX licenses from the new SCO to protect themselves
- Sun, which is also in competition with IBM and has produced a UNIX variant for many years, also buys a multi-million-dollar UNIX license from the new moldy SCO
Yeah, I can see how that could happen. Nothing suspicious there. Everyone just move along . . .Not to mention, Bill and Darl could be friends or have some other legitimate relationship - like business partners.
Absolutely, except for the friends part, and you misspelled "illegitimate". :)
Unless you want to go to brown alert...
No, that didn't work, and Brownie resigned from public office. Now, you'll need a Chertoff alert when, er, stuff happens.
I think the point here is that many of the missions were ISS supply/building missions. Even if you (and I) want to ignore the media frenzy over safety, what do you do when Congress won't agree to spend the money to provide the ISS components? Launch an empty shuttle? For what? I think NASA has done fairly well (with the Shuttle program) considering how it has been hamstrung by Congress.
Yes, I think we're generally on the same page, but there are a couple of memes that come up (and push my hot buttons) every time there is discussion of the Shuttle on Slashdot: "The Shuttle was a failure", or "The Shuttle failed to meet its objectives". Either of these ignores the facts that Congress controls NASA's budget (and operations), not NASA and that the Shuttle was/is an experiment. Considering the Shuttle's 100+ missions and the ISS, one's definition of "failure" would have to be pretty narrow (and, believe me, I've had those arguments with a couple of people here).
When NASA did try to do some advanced work, there were screams from Congress about budget overruns. Consider how difficult it is to manage a project that spans several decades while having your outlay limited to one year at a time and having that budget changed and reallocated every year. Then consider that due to bickering in the federal government, sometimes you don't have funds allocated at all until the fiscal year is half over, which leaves only a few months to let contracts and get the needed work done.
As far as cost-savings go, IIRC, that was a possible benefit, and I'm not sure what one would compare the shuttles to in the 80's - a bunch of Saturn Vs with disposable cargo modules and crew capsules that couldn't return anything? And at least one of the designs for the next generation reuses quite a bit from the current Shuttle program.
I guess the differences between air combat and space flight make the numbers deceiving, since the shuttles were supposed to be a work-horse, and expectation they never fully lived up to. I guess the space shuttle is more like the XB-70, a Mach 3 heavy bomber prototype built in the 60's: technologically very impressive, but ultimately the wrong approach.
Whose expectations? The shuttles had an optimistic schedule that was hyped by some political appointees, when in reality they were experimental craft. There was nothing like it that had flown before. We learned a lot from the shuttles about how things really work in space and reusability. Anybody else recall watching the capture of the Hubble? The Shuttle has been a learning vehicle, not just a space vehicle.
When bad things happened in a very dangerous occupation, we got media hysteria and political grandstanding. Look at all the lives and ships lost during normal early American trade. Our ancestors would be unable to understand our timid response to expected losses and even trivial damage in a hostile environment. I wouldn't call the Shuttle the "wrong approach." It was the approach we chose to test first. We could have chosen to try nothing new, and we would have learned nothing new.
The Spring release is for Japan, which would follow the same pattern Sony used with the PS2: Spring in Japan, then October/November for North American and Europe in time for the Christmas spending frenzy.
I doubt that Best Buy will be involved or concerned for some months yet.
It was after dinner and before sex. So your life is measured by Friday nights? Sad. Or perhaps you're just really young?
Have you ever considered that you might be spending way too much time here? It was news to me. Of course I have a life and a job and family and friends and a local bar, so maybe my priorities are all screwed up, and I should really be spending my time combing Slashdot for dupes.
I'm starting to consider the opinon that voting should be an essay question as of late.
Voting should be yes/no up/down and able to be verified through a manual recount. The essay question should be given to those people who are supposed to protect the process. The first question is: Why do you oppose a paper trail so that disputed vote totals can be recounted? The second question is: Has someone from Diebold or Sequoia Systems sent a "representative" to "help" you "understand" why you don't need a paper trail, and what is their name and affiliation?
Wow. I always though Canada was supposed to be the better half of North America. I have a little trouble with your numbers, since I don't think there is anywhere in the US where 95% of 14-year-olds are doing coke and having sex. If the problem is so widespread in Canada, I'd agree there is a real problem with parental supervision. Since I grew up with some friends from Canada, it seems hard to believe that things could be that lax.
Hookers are trash and they should not be defended. Instead, we should all throw pennies at them until they get off the drugs and get a real respectable career.
Well, let's take an honest prostitute who gets a hundred bucks for screwing one guy, leaves him happy, and admits it. Compare that to someone with a "respectable career" like Carly Fiorina who screws several thousand employees, leaves them out of work, bankrupt, and miserable. I'm gonna have to give my support to the honest prostitute instead of the dishonest corporate whore.
One day we can only hope, as it was just 50 years ago, being promiscuous will no longer be popular and we will see long-term marriage grow in numbers and people treating each other with compassion instead of as competition or a prize.
Sure, but I think it's more like respect than "compassion".
You've gotta love it. One moderator couldn't understand it and thought it was an attack on the GPL. :)
P.s. Maybe people would be nicer to prostitutes if they were FREE
Talk to the (your) hand. Prostitution, by definition, is free as in libre but not as in beer - you pay for it. FREE (as in beer) sex may have more of a price tag than you want to pay once you've had it. Think about it.