No, we're bankrupt due to tax cuts, wars and bailouts. But yeah, let's keep reducing our government's income while its expenses increase. That's always been a recipe for prosperity. =p
'We live in a world that is incredibly frightening for a growing portion of the population because"... they are largely ignorant of science, technology, politics, economic, history, strategy and other cultures. Of course it's frightening to them, they don't have the information necessary to understand anything that's going on. Sheesh.
Good, China cornering the market on rare earth metals will make it highly profitable to mine asteroids for the same. With the profits we can build a true spacefaring civilization and improve condition on Earth.
http://www.tricitiesnet.com/donsastronomy/mining.html
Hey man, I loved the Amiga as much as anybody. We had an A1000 in 1986 and got an A3000 thereafter. Fine computers, if they had had Apple's marketing acumen, they might have ruled the world. However, it really is time to let go now. Mac OS X is superior in just about every respect, and the hardware is lightyears beyond what CBM had. Emulators are great for nostalgia, we'll always have Nuclear War.
Actually no, I'm an applications and server guy. I had to learn networks because our network guys were incompetent. However, if your applications get to such a bad state that they need to be restarted due to a loss of network connectivity, they're badly written. And if the applications guys don't know about the sensitivity of their apps to network outages, and aren't actively monitoring their servers for interrupted services, then they don't know their applications very well either.
In any case, if Step 3 causes the problems you mentioned, then we go on to Step 4 and the problem is solved, one way or another.
Step 1)
Make a formal request for the test lab. Make it as detailed as possible. Explain the impact to business if various components fail. Make a plain-language executive summary calling out risks.
step 2) Once the request is denied, make sure you have a paper trail of the rejection
step 3) If possible test network changes on the production equipment at 2am so that impact on users will be less
step 4) Once the inevitable failure occurs, haul out the paper trail and get the bean counter fired.
Repeat until test lab is approved.
Note, step 4 may get you fired instead. Business decisions are somewhat nondeterministic.
Ask him if foam earplugs (nonmusical, just noise-dampening) are acceptable. I know music helps achieve flow state, but even the reduction in noise level might help somewhat. This is a good test also, if he says no to foam earplugs then you know it wasn't really about the music. And it may penetrate his pointy-haired mind that the surrounding noise level is really a problem.
It's a little late now. All transmissions of significant power that are not reflected by the ionosphere have been going into space for over a century. The only difference with Arecibo is that it's directional and concentrated.
The Sojourner rover was a completely different design. The evidence is in the factor of 22 that the planned design lifetime was wrong, and the six funding extension requests. The fact that luck and clever workarounds were needed is what makes it exploration. Not being able to completely predict the environment being explored is not a design limitation. A design limitation is, e.g. "The Plutonium in the Radioisotope Thermal Generators of Pioneer 10 will decay to the point that there is insufficient power to transmit an intelligible signal within 30 years." "The Rover's battery was only rated for 40 charge/discharge cycles which was determined by groundside testing."
Guys, the 90-day planned lifespan of the rovers was pure politics. Congress wouldn't have gone for, "Yeah, we're gonna need funding for the next 5 years." if told so up-front. At the same time, it wouldn't have made sense to allocate that money from the beginning since there was a non-zero chance that the rovers might auger in, like the Mars Polar Lander did, and that none of that funding for surface ops would be needed after all. So they built the rovers, said "Well, if we get 90 days out of them, we can declare Mission Accomplished." and went with it. Since they were solar-powered there's no particular reason that they would last only that long. 90 days was a classic case of "underpromise and overdeliver." If there had been some sort of catastrophic design flaw and they failed after only 30 days they could have claimed to have succeeded with 1/3 of the mission objectives, etc.
"Can't do anything about" Um, no. Try, haven't seriously tried to do anything about. There are several significant technologies that we could use to clean up the junk if we cared, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_broom. It's just cheaper to schedule things and waste propellant maneuvering. Furthermore, the mirrors won't be in Earth orbit, they'll be in a heliocentric orbit because they have to stay between the Earth and the Sun. Your argument about "things don't stay in perfect orbits" is true, therefore there will need to be tenders or station-keeping thrusters for the cloud. Personally I like the idea of a single-piece parasol instead of trillions of mirrors but the guy who came up with the cloud theory figures it's cheaper to make tons of small launches via railgun or gas cannon. It also has the political advantage of spreading out the cost over a long period of time to avoid sticker shock.
Heck, the same is true of orbital settlements. Why are we wasting money flying them up and down? FInd volunteers willing to emigrate permanently and then support them cheaply with automated supply launches. Work on reducing the amount of supplies needed to launch by building greenhouses, etc.
Are they any less doomed here on Earth? Or do you have some immortality serum you've been keeping hushed up? People die anywhere and everywhere. At least on Mars it'd be a historic first as opposed to on Earth among millions every day.
Slashdot Mirror
No, we're bankrupt due to tax cuts, wars and bailouts. But yeah, let's keep reducing our government's income while its expenses increase. That's always been a recipe for prosperity. =p
Er, sorry pigiron, that was meant to be a top-level reply to the article. I clicked the wrong button, thus proving my point.
'We live in a world that is incredibly frightening for a growing portion of the population because"... they are largely ignorant of science, technology, politics, economic, history, strategy and other cultures. Of course it's frightening to them, they don't have the information necessary to understand anything that's going on. Sheesh.
This piece of art reminds me of The Bottle Imp by Robert Louis Stevenson. In that story, the bottle had to be resold for less than you paid for it. Similar concept though http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/rlstevenson/bl-rlst-bot.htm
Mining asteroids virtually while riding in a craft that can't even reach the Belt. bwahahaha.
The power to tax is the power to destroy!--John Marshall =p
Certainly, heard of VirtualBox? http://www.virtualbox.org/
Good, China cornering the market on rare earth metals will make it highly profitable to mine asteroids for the same. With the profits we can build a true spacefaring civilization and improve condition on Earth. http://www.tricitiesnet.com/donsastronomy/mining.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_tense
Hey man, I loved the Amiga as much as anybody. We had an A1000 in 1986 and got an A3000 thereafter. Fine computers, if they had had Apple's marketing acumen, they might have ruled the world. However, it really is time to let go now. Mac OS X is superior in just about every respect, and the hardware is lightyears beyond what CBM had. Emulators are great for nostalgia, we'll always have Nuclear War.
I like my 37" 1080p Westinghouse LCD
Actually no, I'm an applications and server guy. I had to learn networks because our network guys were incompetent. However, if your applications get to such a bad state that they need to be restarted due to a loss of network connectivity, they're badly written. And if the applications guys don't know about the sensitivity of their apps to network outages, and aren't actively monitoring their servers for interrupted services, then they don't know their applications very well either. In any case, if Step 3 causes the problems you mentioned, then we go on to Step 4 and the problem is solved, one way or another.
Are we in the same business? No one ever notices IT when things go well.
Step 1) Make a formal request for the test lab. Make it as detailed as possible. Explain the impact to business if various components fail. Make a plain-language executive summary calling out risks. step 2) Once the request is denied, make sure you have a paper trail of the rejection step 3) If possible test network changes on the production equipment at 2am so that impact on users will be less step 4) Once the inevitable failure occurs, haul out the paper trail and get the bean counter fired. Repeat until test lab is approved. Note, step 4 may get you fired instead. Business decisions are somewhat nondeterministic.
Hey now, hams *are* the Slashdot community.
73 es CUL
Ask him if foam earplugs (nonmusical, just noise-dampening) are acceptable. I know music helps achieve flow state, but even the reduction in noise level might help somewhat. This is a good test also, if he says no to foam earplugs then you know it wasn't really about the music. And it may penetrate his pointy-haired mind that the surrounding noise level is really a problem.
It's a little late now. All transmissions of significant power that are not reflected by the ionosphere have been going into space for over a century. The only difference with Arecibo is that it's directional and concentrated.
If you don't know how to "queue awkward silence", you must not be much of a developer. Use a FIFO man!
The Sojourner rover was a completely different design. The evidence is in the factor of 22 that the planned design lifetime was wrong, and the six funding extension requests. The fact that luck and clever workarounds were needed is what makes it exploration. Not being able to completely predict the environment being explored is not a design limitation. A design limitation is, e.g. "The Plutonium in the Radioisotope Thermal Generators of Pioneer 10 will decay to the point that there is insufficient power to transmit an intelligible signal within 30 years." "The Rover's battery was only rated for 40 charge/discharge cycles which was determined by groundside testing."
Guys, the 90-day planned lifespan of the rovers was pure politics. Congress wouldn't have gone for, "Yeah, we're gonna need funding for the next 5 years." if told so up-front. At the same time, it wouldn't have made sense to allocate that money from the beginning since there was a non-zero chance that the rovers might auger in, like the Mars Polar Lander did, and that none of that funding for surface ops would be needed after all. So they built the rovers, said "Well, if we get 90 days out of them, we can declare Mission Accomplished." and went with it. Since they were solar-powered there's no particular reason that they would last only that long. 90 days was a classic case of "underpromise and overdeliver." If there had been some sort of catastrophic design flaw and they failed after only 30 days they could have claimed to have succeeded with 1/3 of the mission objectives, etc.
"Can't do anything about" Um, no. Try, haven't seriously tried to do anything about. There are several significant technologies that we could use to clean up the junk if we cared, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_broom. It's just cheaper to schedule things and waste propellant maneuvering. Furthermore, the mirrors won't be in Earth orbit, they'll be in a heliocentric orbit because they have to stay between the Earth and the Sun. Your argument about "things don't stay in perfect orbits" is true, therefore there will need to be tenders or station-keeping thrusters for the cloud. Personally I like the idea of a single-piece parasol instead of trillions of mirrors but the guy who came up with the cloud theory figures it's cheaper to make tons of small launches via railgun or gas cannon. It also has the political advantage of spreading out the cost over a long period of time to avoid sticker shock.
If we can launch them, what makes you think we can't control and/or dispose of them?
Heck, the same is true of orbital settlements. Why are we wasting money flying them up and down? FInd volunteers willing to emigrate permanently and then support them cheaply with automated supply launches. Work on reducing the amount of supplies needed to launch by building greenhouses, etc.
Are they any less doomed here on Earth? Or do you have some immortality serum you've been keeping hushed up? People die anywhere and everywhere. At least on Mars it'd be a historic first as opposed to on Earth among millions every day.
Good news, you don't have to be subject to those principles of government! http://travel.state.gov/law/citizenship/citizenship_776.html