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User: MikeM

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  1. Re:Instead of hype. . . on TransOrbital: The Commercial Race To The Moon · · Score: 1

    TransOrbital is an ASI affiliate organization. The
    plans for the TO mission mentioned here were developed by ASI originally.... So yes, you are
    correct, ASI did this years ago. And TO is how
    ASI is actually doing it....

  2. Re:Something I've been wondering... on The Atlas of Middle Earth · · Score: 1

    I suggest reading them in the order they came out:
    Hobbit, LOTR and then the Silmarillion. The reason is that its an onion skin. The Hobbit is a quick read and it sets some of the character development done in the latter books. The events aren't chronological but the character development is. The Hobbit introduces you to Frodo. The LOTR introduces you to his time and the time after. The Silmarillion introduces you to his worlds history and mythology.

  3. Re:How can a corporation infringe on your rights? on Is The U.S. No Longer The Choice For Freedom? · · Score: 1

    Sure, but that's a case of the government not protecting the rights of its citizens the way the constitution intended. I.e. the Constitutional concept of 'intellectual property' was very limited (never more than one patent a year and then for something fundamental like the wheel).

    I.e. you blame all corporations when the guilt belongs with the government for not protecting your rights (you do NOT have the right to healthcare, free software, free (beer) anything). Remove the ability for the government to enact laws like this at all and corporations and/or individuals have no power to infringe on your rights.

    A government that protected your freedoms would not allow anyone, no matter how much money/lack of conscience they may have to infringe on your inallienable rights.

    Freedom means that everyone is free, not just the ones you agree with. That means that someone else can do things like charge $20 for a CD or require you to sign a contract in order to use their software. If you want the government to enforce drakonian rules about what corporations (or any other aggregation of human beings) can or can't do then you aren't really talking about freedom, your part of the problem: Freedom for me but not for thee.

  4. How can a corporation infringe on your rights? on Is The U.S. No Longer The Choice For Freedom? · · Score: 2

    How can a corporation infringe on your rights unless the government gives them that right?

    I see this anti-corporate stuff on slashdot all the time and I simply don't get it. Unless the _government_ explicitly gives someone the ability to infringe on your rights, any corporation can only act just like any other individual.

    Now, if you believe in positive rights (such as the right to be fed or the right to healthcare) then you are part of the problem with freedom in the US.

  5. To paraphrase Mel in The Patriot: on The Perils Of E-Voting · · Score: 1

    To paraphrase Mel in The Patriot:

    Why would I want to trade 535 tyrants in Washington for millions of them a network's length away?

  6. Re:Gun Registration? on Gun Sales Halted By FBI Computer Glitch · · Score: 1

    >Can't imagine the framers of the US constitution
    >sitting around saying, hey we had better give
    >them the chance to shoot us if we get a bit
    >uppity.

    Actually, that's the exact reason they put it in
    there. Yes it was for the militia but the
    militia's job was as the final check on a
    tyrranical federal government or invading army.
    So yes, it was to shoot them if they got a bit
    uppity...

  7. Re:Got Spam from TO on Wednesday on A For-Profit Trip To The Moon · · Score: 3

    >Strela is Russian for, I believe, "arrow." Their
    >hand-held Stinger-oid missiles (SA 7, I think,
    >though I don't recall) were called by the same
    >name.

    >Either they've been up to something and
    >slapped an old name on it, or somehow these
    >people are planning to use very short range
    >surface-to-air missiles to loft their payloads.

    The Strela is a new launcher based on bits and
    pieces of Russian RS18 ICBMs (SS-19 Stiletto
    by NATO classification). See here for more
    info:http://www.spaceandtech.com/spacedata/elvs/ strela_sum.shtml

    >What else are they not telling us?

    Nothing. Russians just reuse hardware names...

    >Which no one will see, unless the ad is huge (on
    >the order of several miles across).

    Trailblaser has a camera and it takes pictures of
    the ads as it takes pictures of the moon. No one ever said you actually see the ads from Earth.

    >Earthrise 2001: A defining video image for the
    >New Millennium

    >As if the December 1968 shot by Apollo 8
    >wasn't good enough. How the heck does a
    >"video image" (I guess these people have
    >never heard of "pictures") define a whole
    >millennium?

    It actually isn't, unless you personally consider handheld 8mm camera to be better than HDTV?

    >An atlas of the entire lunar surface for
    >students & planetary scientists

    >These already exist. The only thing they can
    >possibly add is more accuracy and smaller >resolutions.

    That's the main point. The detail of Clementine et al wasn't good enough since that wasn't what they were actually designed for. Clementine was a test of a DOD satellite, not a real lunar probe.

    >Low-altitude, high-speed video, for Hollywood >science-fiction movies footage

    >Equivalent or better quality can be produced in
    >any decent computer imaging lab. They're
    >starting to reach (read, grope) for anything
    >that could be useful here.

    You just don't like people do you? Anyway, ask
    any film expert, they'll tell you they prefer
    real shots to generated ones. Everyone who saw
    Apollo 13 knew that the launch sequence was
    faked...

    >"Look honey, my message got routed via a >satellite over Copernicus!" Yawn.

    Sounds pretty exciting and interesting to me. I guess your just not part of the target audience.

    >What are they hiding from us? This can't
    >possibly succeed as-stated.

    I'm afraid it is. They're not hiding anything. But I suspect my say so isn't going to convince you....

  8. Opensource space mission.... on A For-Profit Trip To The Moon · · Score: 1

    Before you get your panties in a wad you need some background information. Transorbital is a spinoff of the Artemis Project (www.asi.org) which is a close approximation of an open source space mission as you can probably get.

    ASI's job is to formulate business plans and technical details in an open way. Once they reach a high enough level of detail/believability they are spun off into companies who take the ideas and run with them.

    The main document of the Artemis Society is the Artemis Databook which is a compendium of our notes and links and documents on how to build a full base near Mare Anguus. You should check it out if your the least bit interested in space.

    You can find a list of all of the ASI related companies and organization here:
    http://www.asi.org/adb/10/companyindex.html

    You can join here:
    http://www.asi.org/adb/06/05/asi_member.html

  9. Re:Huh !!! on A For-Profit Trip To The Moon · · Score: 1

    The _image_ on the 8.5x11 sheet of paper is shrunk down very small and etched onto a nickel disk. The business card is sent pasted to the inside of the orbiter _as is_.

  10. Re:What ever happened to the Artemis Project? on A For-Profit Trip To The Moon · · Score: 1

    Transorbital is a spinoff of the Artemis Society which what handles the Artemis Project. If you look at
    http://www.transorbital.net/whowearehome.html you'll see the relationship.

    The Artemis Society can be found at www.asi.org. Greg Bennett is also still head of ASI in addition to running Bigelow Aerospace (http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/).

  11. Re:Sounds cool, but is this wise? on A For-Profit Trip To The Moon · · Score: 1

    > 1.

    Most of the tourist companies are based in jurisdictions with reasonable tort law. Note that
    this means that they're not based in the U.S.

    > 2.

    Most emphatically and 100% YES!!!! Space is
    big enough for Microsoft to claim entire worlds if it wants to.

    > 3.

    Most rocket fuels are synthetic... a few use
    Kerosene but its a fairly small amount compared to what other industries use.

  12. Re:trash on A For-Profit Trip To The Moon · · Score: 1

    I'm buying one. I'm an Artemis member and it gives
    me the ability to support the mission in a
    for profit way and its just way cool. Plus
    its pretty cheap advertising for a small business

  13. Futuristic Potato Farmers? on First Pix From New Dune Miniseries · · Score: 2

    Why does everyone in those pictures look like a futuristic potato farmer? Its almost as if sometime in the 22nd century everyone decided that drab, brown and baggy was how the future was supposed to look. Hell, even the lady with the scepter looks like she just got finished digging up some roots.

    Give these poor people some style! Where's the royalty? Where's the sleek, efficiency of a Fremen stillsuit? The ones in there look like leftovers from the local Salvation Army.

    -MM

  14. Re:Site searches on CNN on Common Name Resolution Protocol · · Score: 1

    One fundamental point of CNRP is that names are inherently non-unique. I.e. where currently only one entity can have foo.com, CNRP allows any number of entities to all have the name "foo".

    One of the main points of the goals draft is that there is no such thing as a "private namespace". I.e. RealNames may provide a CNRP service that contains tradenames but that doesn't mean they end up 'owning' those tradenames. They own their database but that's it. Anyone else can come along and setup a similar database if they have the data to put in it.

  15. Re:It already exists on CNN on Common Name Resolution Protocol · · Score: 1

    dammit...I forgot to login. That last AC
    post was from me....bad formatting and all...

  16. One more thing on CNN on Common Name Resolution Protocol · · Score: 1

    If you _like_ entering URLs and your brain is geared for remembering thing, then you're more
    than likely not the intended user base. In much the same was that backbone router people tend to think about and use IP addresses more than they do domain-names, URLs will probably be used by us geeks more often than not.

    When you think of who might get the most use out of CNRP think about your grandmother, your parents or your boss.

  17. Comments from one of the authors on CNN on Common Name Resolution Protocol · · Score: 1

    Several misconceptions here:

    1) This isn't LDAP and isn't related to X.500 (regarldess of the two using the term 'common-name').

    2) CNRP based names are unstructured, flat (probably Unicode) strings. I.e. no-hierarchy. You can put slashes in the names but they won't mean anything to the protocol.

    3) A given name can be accompanied by one or more 'contexts'. A context qualifies the name by giving the query some kind of scope. Two examples of
    common contexts are locale (give me names that are valid only for this geographic region) and topic (give me names that are related to computing as opposed to agriculture).

    4) CNRP names are not unique. This means that two entities can both use the same name (assuming you aren't using trademarks and then that just an issue for courts to decide). I.e. remember the 'pokey.org' thing? Well in that case both the kid and the cartoon character can have the same common-name of 'pokey'. Both would appear as a result if the provided contexts also matched.

    5) You can get involved! The intent is that this should be an IETF working group (that's still pending). If you want to get involved then join the mailing list and do so. You can find the list archive and subscription details at:
    http://lists.internic.net/archives/cnrp-ietf.htm l

  18. Re:no RFC, no Internet Standard on CNN on Common Name Resolution Protocol · · Score: 1

    Its not even a working group yet! Ghees, give us some time to actually get the work done! ;-)

  19. Re:URNs? on CNN on Common Name Resolution Protocol · · Score: 1

    URNs don't replace URLs and were never really mean to. A Uniform Resource Name (RFC2141) is meant as a way to give a resource a persistent identifier that can be used to for things like looking up the resource at a latter date after your current location identifier has gone out of date.

    URNs, URLs, and common-names all occupy different niches within an over all structure of Internet naming and addressing.

  20. Re:It already exists on CNN on Common Name Resolution Protocol · · Score: 1

    The main difference is that if I'm looking for "1996 Budget Report" and I ask Altavista I'm going to get everything that even mentions it. CNRP databases _should_ only list those names that are actually bound to a resource, not those that simply mention the resource.

  21. Re:Security? on CNN on Common Name Resolution Protocol · · Score: 1

    Unless XWZ allows employees from ABC to enter common-names into their database it isn't a problem. CNRP servers are expected to be organized somewhat like DNS servers in that the local intranet has one that serves names just for that intranet.

  22. Re:Perhaps a blessing for other languages? on CNN on Common Name Resolution Protocol · · Score: 1

    Yep. i18n is a basic requirement for CNRP. There are some issues of encoding and matching that need
    to be ironed out but CNRP itself won't really care since those are server side issues.

  23. Re:think about search engines on CNN on Common Name Resolution Protocol · · Score: 1

    Correct!

    There is also one feature of this that differentiates it from general search engines: intent. I.e. if I search for "1996 Budget" in Altavista or any search engine I'm going to get not only the documemt I wanted but also any document that also mentions it. CNRP would only return the document that was specficially meant to be bound with that common-name.

  24. Re:Reality Check on CNN on Common Name Resolution Protocol · · Score: 1

    Nope and Nope. ;-)

    1) CNRP is not based on LDAP. The fact that the DIT uses the term CN is really just an acronym
    conflict. CNRP isn't based on LDAP or X.500 at all. One particular reason is that CNRP deals only in flat spaces. I.e. common-names are meant to be unstructured flat strings.

    2) it is aimed at the Internet in general but, like DNS, it can and should be used at each organizational level to allow for the existence of local names. We fully expect global CNRP services to be offered by the likes of RealNames, AOL, etc.

  25. Re:Who was the author? on CNN on Common Name Resolution Protocol · · Score: 1

    I'm one of the co-authors. Yes I work for NSI and yes the other co-author works for RealNames. But the idea of human friendly names has been kicked around since '92. If you can find them read some of the old URI disucssion lists where we talked started talking about the addons that were needed for URLs to be really useful.