366:1 includes management and combined positions. Public sector (at least city, county, school, state) tends to have more systems and less techs. My shop is a public sector shop.
Our personnel: 1 manager/DBA/server admin/network admin (combined position) 2 FTE tech support on staff now 1 open tech support position (open since September, and open from Feb-August prior to that)
Our biggest problem is we can't pay nearly what a corporate environment can offer, even though there tends to be far more individual responsibility in our positions. If I chose to work in a corporate environment, I could easily be making twice my current salary with my experience, education, and knowledge. But then I'd be bound by constraints the education field doesn't have.
The job situation in our area is also the reverse of the rest of the U.S., if you want a job (even one that can pay 6 figures), you just need to have a pulse, pass a drug test, and be willing to work on an oil drilling rig. They even have tech related jobs that pay in that range.
We run a software/hardware management system and centralized imaging system. It saves us a lot of time/hassle, but still can't take the place of one or two people, especially a higher-level server/network admin or DBA.
When we compare to other schools our size and larger in our state, those schools tend to have a better ratio of systems:techs.
I couldn't agree more. The IAU has the authority to make this decision, but if the OP is correct, and only 10% of the IAU voted, that isn't even a quorum.
Two things really bothered me about this decision, and neither of them are the decision that Pluto is not a planet, but have to do with the way the decision was made.
1) When asked about applying this definition to other stars and their
potential planets, the committee that proposed this definition said that
the definition on the table only applies to our solar system.
2) One of the delegates said, "We would really look like idiots if we
came out of this meeting without some type of decision." (I don't know
who to attribute this to, but I heard the scientist's voice on NPR).
Another interesting tidbit is that the original defintion, as suggested
by the committee, had the unintended consequence of removeing Neptune
from the definition of a planet (it hasn't fully cleared its
neighborhood, i.e. Pluto), so they added an addendum to the definition.
My thought is the IAU does look like idiots, for doing 1, and making
statement 2. All they have done is muddy the waters again. They
haven't come up with a definition that will be applicable to all bodies
orbiting any star (even though there are bound to be exceptions). The
addendum to make Neptune a planet under this new definition again shows
that they really didn't think this through like they should have before
submitting the definition.
If they were to act more like scientists than media-coverage hungry
people (the "we would look like idiots" comment), they might have
actually come up with a definition that didn't need an addendum to
include a large gas giant, and one that would be applicable to extra-solar planet hunters...
Another interesting tidbit is that most of the scientists in the "Pluto shouldn't be a planet" camp also had competing missions for which they wanted funding that might instead go toward a Pluto mission of some sort.
It's going to cost a lot of money to wire up all of those small towns around America, especially in the areas outside of the coastal parts of America. It'll cost a hell of a lot of money to wire up places like Montana or the Dakotas where the population is spread so thin.
I live 5 miles out of a city of population ~15,000 in the Dakotas, and I have 1 Meg DSL for under $30/month. Granted I can't get cable TV, hence no cable broadband for me...
Most of those smaller towns have better broadband coverage than larger cities like Minneapolis. Heck, my population 15,000 town has dark fiber all over the place, just waiting to be utilized. I also know of several small towns (pop < 10,000) that have lit fiber to the premises.
Although I do agree that this proposal is nothing but a political stunt that can only do more harm than good (like most political stunts).
This is also a Hybrid solar eclipse, the path of which runs through Panama. It starts out Annular over the ocean, goes to total over the ocean, and resumes annular through Panama. So parts of the Americas will also see an annular eclipse.
This is a relatively rare event, the next of which will occurr on Nov. 3, 2013.
There are several groups webcasting this event from Panama.
I would suggest that you read some books on this subject to become better informed. "The Secret of Apollo" by Stephen Johnson is an excellent book on Systems Management, the design of ICBMs and the Apollo program.
Another good book on the subject of the failures of FBC (of which I believe Genesis was a part of) is one by Howard McCurdy "Faster, Better, Cheaper: Low-Cost Innovation in the U.S. Space Program"
Why does NASA use "one off" designs for all of its work (eg, the Space Shuttle, space probes, etc)?
Of corse NASA uses "one off" designs for most of their probes. Do you know of any "Mars probe widget making device" that ANY company has made? Think about it for a second, NASA does R&D/Science. You may be able to build a generic chassis, but tradeoffs must be made when designing any space application. All spacecraft have different power requirements, mass requirements, science requirements, etc. Unless you were swarming Mars with 500 ANTS type probes, chances are you're going to do a one-time design.
Several of NASA's endeavours have been one design, many craft including: the Satrun V, MER, and the Space Shuttle (after a fashion, internals were upgraded with better technology when Endeavor came along).
The DOD's GPS constellation is another example of one design, many off the line. Simply because they needed ~30 satellites the same, thereby decreasing the cost by creating a manufacturing line.
And NASA doesn't balance cost and safety. First, they don't practice even the most rudimentary of cost controls. Namely, NASA still uses "cost plus" as the basis of most of its contracts.
Of course they balance cost and safety, otherwise the agency would have been abolished long ago. Your argument that they still use "cost plus" doesn't hold water because of the reality of the situation. The Air Force has been using this system for years. Cost Plus is a necessity when working in a R&D area. You don't know exactly how much a design is going to cost, you can give a ball-park figure for the design (Cost), but it may take some extra time to complete because of various requirements that weren't made clear (Plus). In general, all Gov't contracts that are Cost Plus will put a limit on the Plus. No company would design a new craft (air or space) on a rigidly fixed budget, simply because it is extremely difficult to give a cost estimate and be right-on. Cost Plus helps to ensure that companies desiging/building the product will still make a profit, except in certain circumstances, and that's why companies are in business.
In addition to that, they use the Systems Management approach which controls the costs as best as possible. To make a change after the design is approved, the engineer must justify the change, and balance the change versus the cost of implementation and the time it would require to implement.
Second, NASA has come up with elaborate safety measures and procedures that were routinely bypassed by those who supposedly were performing the inspections.
No, the vast majority of bypassers were managers. Take Challenger. The main reason this accident occurred is because managers at Thiokol pushed the Mute button on the phone during a teleconference with Marshall Space Flight Center during the Flight Readiness Review (FRR). Marshall didn't hear the Thiokol Engineers' reasoning behind making the claim that it was too cold to launch. They just heard the Engineers saying "No-go", a pause, and the Managers saying "Go".
If you go back farther, the problem can also be traced to normilazation of the error state. O-Rings had been burning through since the first shuttle launch, but is was never a problem because the 2nd O-Ring always held. The Thiokol Engineers had data stating that as the temperature got colder, there was more O-Ring erosion. But there wasn't any data saying what the coldest temperature should be. It can also be traced to a roll-reversal because of Marshall managers/engin
In order to send people, we would need to know that there are in-situ resources the crews could use. It would be far too expensive to send all of their consumables with them. Water provides many useful products: direct consumption, Oxygen to breathe, fuel for return, Power for fuel cells, etc...Same situation for the Hydrogen discovered on the Lunar Poles by Lunar Prospecter
We know from Odyssey that there is hydrogen in the subsurface (at most a couple of meters from the surface), and it has been proposed that there is permafrost on Mars. If there's a brine of liquid water, it makes the job of extraction much easier.
As for radiation...Dirt makes a good radiation shield (a couple of meters piled on structures would do), so does water.
What's really interesting is the question of where did the water come from? If it's in the highlands near Olympus Mons, then it had to be pushed into the surrounding strata somehow (and the most likely scenario was a "warmer, wetter" period early in Mars's history i.e. Large Liquid Ocean).
This will probably be discussed at this year's LPSC.
Slashdot Mirror
366:1 includes management and combined positions. Public sector (at least city, county, school, state) tends to have more systems and less techs. My shop is a public sector shop.
Our system/facility counts:
~1100 desktops/laptops
~45 network switches
~10 physical servers
~10 virtual servers
4 storage systems
1 managed wireless system
7 schools, 4 admin buildings, ~2300 students, ~500 teachers/staff
Our personnel:
1 manager/DBA/server admin/network admin (combined position)
2 FTE tech support on staff now
1 open tech support position (open since September, and open from Feb-August prior to that)
Our biggest problem is we can't pay nearly what a corporate environment can offer, even though there tends to be far more individual responsibility in our positions. If I chose to work in a corporate environment, I could easily be making twice my current salary with my experience, education, and knowledge. But then I'd be bound by constraints the education field doesn't have.
The job situation in our area is also the reverse of the rest of the U.S., if you want a job (even one that can pay 6 figures), you just need to have a pulse, pass a drug test, and be willing to work on an oil drilling rig. They even have tech related jobs that pay in that range.
We run a software/hardware management system and centralized imaging system. It saves us a lot of time/hassle, but still can't take the place of one or two people, especially a higher-level server/network admin or DBA.
When we compare to other schools our size and larger in our state, those schools tend to have a better ratio of systems:techs.
I couldn't agree more. The IAU has the authority to make this decision, but if the OP is correct, and only 10% of the IAU voted, that isn't even a quorum.
Two things really bothered me about this decision, and neither of them are the decision that Pluto is not a planet, but have to do with the way the decision was made.
1) When asked about applying this definition to other stars and their potential planets, the committee that proposed this definition said that the definition on the table only applies to our solar system.
2) One of the delegates said, "We would really look like idiots if we came out of this meeting without some type of decision." (I don't know who to attribute this to, but I heard the scientist's voice on NPR).
Another interesting tidbit is that the original defintion, as suggested by the committee, had the unintended consequence of removeing Neptune from the definition of a planet (it hasn't fully cleared its neighborhood, i.e. Pluto), so they added an addendum to the definition.
My thought is the IAU does look like idiots, for doing 1, and making statement 2. All they have done is muddy the waters again. They haven't come up with a definition that will be applicable to all bodies orbiting any star (even though there are bound to be exceptions). The addendum to make Neptune a planet under this new definition again shows that they really didn't think this through like they should have before submitting the definition.
If they were to act more like scientists than media-coverage hungry people (the "we would look like idiots" comment), they might have actually come up with a definition that didn't need an addendum to include a large gas giant, and one that would be applicable to extra-solar planet hunters...
Another interesting tidbit is that most of the scientists in the "Pluto shouldn't be a planet" camp also had competing missions for which they wanted funding that might instead go toward a Pluto mission of some sort.
Most of those smaller towns have better broadband coverage than larger cities like Minneapolis. Heck, my population 15,000 town has dark fiber all over the place, just waiting to be utilized. I also know of several small towns (pop < 10,000) that have lit fiber to the premises.
Although I do agree that this proposal is nothing but a political stunt that can only do more harm than good (like most political stunts).
Just to be clear...
0 05/HSE2005.html
http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/SEmono/HSE2
This is also a Hybrid solar eclipse, the path of which runs through Panama. It starts out Annular over the ocean, goes to total over the ocean, and resumes annular through Panama. So parts of the Americas will also see an annular eclipse.
This is a relatively rare event, the next of which will occurr on Nov. 3, 2013.
There are several groups webcasting this event from Panama.
I would suggest that you read some books on this subject to become better informed. "The Secret of Apollo" by Stephen Johnson is an excellent book on Systems Management, the design of ICBMs and the Apollo program.
Another good book on the subject of the failures of FBC (of which I believe Genesis was a part of) is one by Howard McCurdy "Faster, Better, Cheaper: Low-Cost Innovation in the U.S. Space Program"
Why does NASA use "one off" designs for all of its work (eg, the Space Shuttle, space probes, etc)?
Of corse NASA uses "one off" designs for most of their probes. Do you know of any "Mars probe widget making device" that ANY company has made? Think about it for a second, NASA does R&D/Science. You may be able to build a generic chassis, but tradeoffs must be made when designing any space application. All spacecraft have different power requirements, mass requirements, science requirements, etc. Unless you were swarming Mars with 500 ANTS type probes, chances are you're going to do a one-time design.
Several of NASA's endeavours have been one design, many craft including: the Satrun V, MER, and the Space Shuttle (after a fashion, internals were upgraded with better technology when Endeavor came along).
The DOD's GPS constellation is another example of one design, many off the line. Simply because they needed ~30 satellites the same, thereby decreasing the cost by creating a manufacturing line.
And NASA doesn't balance cost and safety. First, they don't practice even the most rudimentary of cost controls. Namely, NASA still uses "cost plus" as the basis of most of its contracts.
Of course they balance cost and safety, otherwise the agency would have been abolished long ago. Your argument that they still use "cost plus" doesn't hold water because of the reality of the situation. The Air Force has been using this system for years. Cost Plus is a necessity when working in a R&D area. You don't know exactly how much a design is going to cost, you can give a ball-park figure for the design (Cost), but it may take some extra time to complete because of various requirements that weren't made clear (Plus). In general, all Gov't contracts that are Cost Plus will put a limit on the Plus. No company would design a new craft (air or space) on a rigidly fixed budget, simply because it is extremely difficult to give a cost estimate and be right-on. Cost Plus helps to ensure that companies desiging/building the product will still make a profit, except in certain circumstances, and that's why companies are in business.
In addition to that, they use the Systems Management approach which controls the costs as best as possible. To make a change after the design is approved, the engineer must justify the change, and balance the change versus the cost of implementation and the time it would require to implement.
Second, NASA has come up with elaborate safety measures and procedures that were routinely bypassed by those who supposedly were performing the inspections.
No, the vast majority of bypassers were managers. Take Challenger. The main reason this accident occurred is because managers at Thiokol pushed the Mute button on the phone during a teleconference with Marshall Space Flight Center during the Flight Readiness Review (FRR). Marshall didn't hear the Thiokol Engineers' reasoning behind making the claim that it was too cold to launch. They just heard the Engineers saying "No-go", a pause, and the Managers saying "Go".
If you go back farther, the problem can also be traced to normilazation of the error state. O-Rings had been burning through since the first shuttle launch, but is was never a problem because the 2nd O-Ring always held. The Thiokol Engineers had data stating that as the temperature got colder, there was more O-Ring erosion. But there wasn't any data saying what the coldest temperature should be. It can also be traced to a roll-reversal because of Marshall managers/engin
In order to send people, we would need to know that there are in-situ resources the crews could use. It would be far too expensive to send all of their consumables with them. Water provides many useful products: direct consumption, Oxygen to breathe, fuel for return, Power for fuel cells, etc...Same situation for the Hydrogen discovered on the Lunar Poles by Lunar Prospecter
We know from Odyssey that there is hydrogen in the subsurface (at most a couple of meters from the surface), and it has been proposed that there is permafrost on Mars. If there's a brine of liquid water, it makes the job of extraction much easier.
As for radiation...Dirt makes a good radiation shield (a couple of meters piled on structures would do), so does water.
What's really interesting is the question of where did the water come from? If it's in the highlands near Olympus Mons, then it had to be pushed into the surrounding strata somehow (and the most likely scenario was a "warmer, wetter" period early in Mars's history i.e. Large Liquid Ocean).
This will probably be discussed at this year's LPSC.