I think that the rovers have been exceeding the expectations with a good margin. A few design flaws may have been discovered - like the stuck wheel - but they did provide a lot more data than the mission plans expected.
The experience gained from this mission can be used for upcoming missions. Even if those missions aren't going to Mars they will benefit from this.
And by checking the numbers for GSM only I suspect that you will get even worse figures.
But it is not unusual that large companies do whatever they can to constrict fresh ideas because they see the risk of emerging competitors in addition to possible abuse (in their eyes) of their products.
I can agree that it can cause quite a racket if the FCC ever gets a report of abused radio spectrum.
And what looks like unused may not be unused at all but can actually be used for measurements, alarm systems or even remote detonations so you can't tell that it's unused by sniffing it.
Something like the parking spot right outside your window that's empty when you are at home - that actually is used when you are at work by the maintenance company that happens to have an office in the building you live in.
If he did blog as a representative of the University that is a risk he runs, but if he did blog as a private person on a separate service with a separate mail account related to the blog it's completely independent of where he is employed. In the latter case the first amendment should apply without constraints.
In the first case the university may fall under cases of being a public institution and then it's possible that the emails sent/received for him are public information but then it's up to the legal office to take care of it.
It makes some sense to limit the use of privacy-intruding data, regardless of the collecting agency.
We all know that Google collects data - that's their main business, but what is more disturbing is all those cookies that are used to track us and make statistics from. They are really useful to see if someone likes certain car brands and which type of porn that's preferred. So statistical collectors can probably figure out that there is a 25 year old male who drinks Jack Daniels and Coca Cola, living in Texas who likes Ford Mustang and other American Muscle cars, works at Home Depot and prefers anal sex. All that can be determined by combining a collection of cookies stored in your browser and in turn that will control the ads displayed to you when you are surfing.
And metering of internet traffic also brings up another factor - what if someone targets your site with a DoS attack? That would generate an insane amount of traffic that you may have to pay for.
OK, a helmet may be a good sun shade, better ventilation than a regular hat.
But that aside - hunting meteorites isn't that easy. The easiest way to find them is in terrain where they stand out - like in a desert or in arctic regions. Magnetic detection only works for some meteorites and only in terrain where the ground itself isn't causing problems. In addition to that - most meteorites are small - like the size of a fist.
I foresee a problem here - that can be used to deadlock a lot of businesses since it's not always easy to prove what has been legal and illegal in a foreign country. Chain of evidence may be broken, evidence can be fabricated and bribes used to fake that a supplier for your competitor is running unlicensed software. Then you can get rid of a competitor on home ground on grey accusations.
And your competitors can do the same to you.
The only companies that can protect themselves to a reasonable extent against schemes like this are probably only the Fortune 500 companies. The rest are swept up and executed one way or another and the intellectual properties of the small companies are absorbed into the major corporations.
So the end result will be that it's going to get bad for the US economy because even more stagnation will occur.
Hey - this is slashdot - where we always jump to conclusions without hesitation!
As for the merger - it will be bad for international roaming customers. No competition on the GSM technology means that European visitors to the US will be even more screwed.
Header files are rather useless by themselves, and claiming copyright infringement only because they are referred to when building your binary is counterproductive.
In that case almost every application written is guilty of copyright infringement.
And is it a copyright infringement if you include stuff that is intended to be included when building a binary?
Using a GPS jammer will really screw up GPS based ticket system at public transports, at least in some cities.
The ticket system for the public transport in Gothenburg, Sweden uses GPS to determine how much a trip costs, and in general people lose money on a frequent basis in that system. A great rip-off since they claim that GPS is infallible.
Another limitation for GPS is that it's not that good when you are in polar regions, the precision is not as good as in warmer areas.
However GPS is a great system too - especially if you are going somewhere the first time. A side effect is that it doesn't take into account that roads may be closed and stuff like that so you may sometimes need to take a detour. And having a real paper map works fine as a backup, but even paper maps has their limit since the resolution is often rather crude.
But to some extent we are getting reliant on GPS as a technology - it doesn't have common sense, and it does contain bad or conflicting information from time to time causing delivery trucks ending up in a backroad in a neighbor town and all kind of stuff like that.
However by suspending or expelling them you are sending the completely wrong signals. What these students need is either more education or (horrible thought) they may be right in their statements.
Sometimes adults fails to understand that kids do put the rules that the parents sets to a test now and then, and it's important to act the right way to mark firmly when they are exceeding their bounds. The major problem here is a parenting problem. (Parents and Teachers share a responsibility here).
OK, maybe they have fixed the problem encountered at point 5, or it only appears under some specific circumstances.
As for the other points - Microsoft will of course want you to upgrade to latest IE, and the alternate browser path is still not removing IE6 from the surface of the earth.
1. Microsoft wants to ask a lot of obnoxious and hard to understand questions during installation and initialization of newer versions. 2. People are afraid that upgrades will break something. 3. A lot of web sites - especially company internal web sites are still designed for IE6. 4. A lot of companies are afraid of upgrading from IE6 due to concerns of various kinds and "if it ain't broken, don't fix it". 5. If you do a fresh install of XP SP3 you will have to postpone the installation of IE8 until some patches are installed or you end up with a broken browser - which will be fixed if you uninstall and reinstall, but it may have scared a few.
Don't forget that many major companies still runs XP as primary OS because it works, and it does the job. Some have a procedure of progressively upgrade so new computers are deployed with Win7 and old are kept at XP. And some went into the Windows Vista track full ahead - and got a bunch of problems on the way.
Aside from being an annoying character - some of you wouldn't realize how annoying many thought C3PO were in the first movie...
However - it's important to realize that sometimes you have to have the annoying side characters - they make the experience more real. Even real life is full of annoying people in one form or another.
Then you can look at Jar Jar from another perspective - what he looks like is well within what an alien may look like if we are to encounter them.
Most IT hiring requires experience! Noobs are OK for some stuff but there's no way for any school to train them for what everyone in the real world is looking for ('cuz we all want something different).
Though everyone always told me that unless you went to school you'd never amount to anything and that you'd be a failure forever. No one could ever learn things they needed to know without college! Amassing huge amounts of debt in school I was told always was the most important goal of anyone looking to start a career!
Now you tell me that people want real world experience too?
Let me tell you something, that degree is just important or you'll end up like me. I have years of experience, tons of certifications but since I don't have a degree no one will hire me and I can't get promoted if I do find a job. Yeah people might not have experience once finishing school but as far as corporate politics and HR B.S. go it is the most important part for expanding your career.
I would say that either you are REALLY good at what you do - and you don't need a degree, it may stop you from only a few employers - mostly those who you don't want to work for anyway. The first ten years can be hard, but with 15 years of experience the lack of a degree is only having a marginal impact and after 20 years it's your experience history that counts.
I don't have any student loans at all and have a pretty decent salary, well over the average salary actually.
So if you don't have the level of salary you expect you probably haven't showed good enough skills at your employers and is just an average worker. If you exceed the expectations you may step up in salary. Of course - you may step on some toes - even unintentionally, since by doing things you will invariably always go across someone's agenda. The more you do the more paths you cross.
The backside of exceeding your expectations is that you will also be measured against past achievements at next review.
The role of an Admin is to try to make him/her-self unnecessary, but since new things always arises and some things can't be automated away it will never succeed.
Keep your fingers to the important stuff, and let the users sort out the rest by educating them.
Essentially it may end up being a six stage rocket we are talking about.
For a human transport I think that the following concept is what's needed.
Stage 1 & 2 are to leave Earth. Stage 3 is for the transit phase to Mars. Stage 4 is for the return trip. Stage 5 is for landing. Stage 6 is for departure from Mars to Mars orbit.
At arrival at Mars Stage 3 is discarded, Stage 4 left in orbit and Stage 5&6 are landed, at launch Stage 5 will be used as launch pad for Stage 6. However Stage 3 could still be useful by being placed in an orbital position that's 180 degrees from the Stage 4, in which case it may be an extra relay satellite for communications.
If Stage 5 is correctly designed the fuel tanks may be emptied from remaining fuel and changed to be used as extra space for living and other activities. Stage 5 may also be carrying extra oxygen and water that can be left behind when the return trip is initiated.
A sub-variant is to actually build the mars craft in orbit. This will allow for lighter versions of the Stages 3 and 4 because they won't need to take the load of the upper stages during launch and can be launched to orbit fully fueled. It will also make the event less risky. In this case stages 3 and 4 can be built of multiple smaller components assembled in space. And the weight will also be lower since 3 & 4 won't need to be aerodynamic.
And assembling the craft in space will make it easier to find carrying capacity to earth orbit. A vessel that is to be launched fully assembled from Earth would dwarf the Saturn V rocket.
For a robotic excursion with a return trip there won't be any need for life support, but the return vessel will in that case carry a load of rocks and sand samples.
At arrival at earth Stage 4 needs to take care of braking the return vessel. If done right some acceleration and braking could be done using the Moon.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that the rovers have been exceeding the expectations with a good margin. A few design flaws may have been discovered - like the stuck wheel - but they did provide a lot more data than the mission plans expected.
The experience gained from this mission can be used for upcoming missions. Even if those missions aren't going to Mars they will benefit from this.
And by checking the numbers for GSM only I suspect that you will get even worse figures.
But it is not unusual that large companies do whatever they can to constrict fresh ideas because they see the risk of emerging competitors in addition to possible abuse (in their eyes) of their products.
I think that Java and C# plays in the same division except that Java is a cleaner language than C# which suffers from infections from VB.
But it would be a lot more interesting to see what Gosling comes up with this time.
I can agree that it can cause quite a racket if the FCC ever gets a report of abused radio spectrum.
And what looks like unused may not be unused at all but can actually be used for measurements, alarm systems or even remote detonations so you can't tell that it's unused by sniffing it.
Something like the parking spot right outside your window that's empty when you are at home - that actually is used when you are at work by the maintenance company that happens to have an office in the building you live in.
If he did blog as a representative of the University that is a risk he runs, but if he did blog as a private person on a separate service with a separate mail account related to the blog it's completely independent of where he is employed. In the latter case the first amendment should apply without constraints.
In the first case the university may fall under cases of being a public institution and then it's possible that the emails sent/received for him are public information but then it's up to the legal office to take care of it.
It makes some sense to limit the use of privacy-intruding data, regardless of the collecting agency.
We all know that Google collects data - that's their main business, but what is more disturbing is all those cookies that are used to track us and make statistics from. They are really useful to see if someone likes certain car brands and which type of porn that's preferred. So statistical collectors can probably figure out that there is a 25 year old male who drinks Jack Daniels and Coca Cola, living in Texas who likes Ford Mustang and other American Muscle cars, works at Home Depot and prefers anal sex. All that can be determined by combining a collection of cookies stored in your browser and in turn that will control the ads displayed to you when you are surfing.
And metering of internet traffic also brings up another factor - what if someone targets your site with a DoS attack? That would generate an insane amount of traffic that you may have to pay for.
And what do you need a helmet for?
OK, a helmet may be a good sun shade, better ventilation than a regular hat.
But that aside - hunting meteorites isn't that easy. The easiest way to find them is in terrain where they stand out - like in a desert or in arctic regions. Magnetic detection only works for some meteorites and only in terrain where the ground itself isn't causing problems. In addition to that - most meteorites are small - like the size of a fist.
I foresee a problem here - that can be used to deadlock a lot of businesses since it's not always easy to prove what has been legal and illegal in a foreign country. Chain of evidence may be broken, evidence can be fabricated and bribes used to fake that a supplier for your competitor is running unlicensed software. Then you can get rid of a competitor on home ground on grey accusations.
And your competitors can do the same to you.
The only companies that can protect themselves to a reasonable extent against schemes like this are probably only the Fortune 500 companies. The rest are swept up and executed one way or another and the intellectual properties of the small companies are absorbed into the major corporations.
So the end result will be that it's going to get bad for the US economy because even more stagnation will occur.
That remains to be seen...
I wonder if Hugh Hefner needs those blue pills...
Hey - this is slashdot - where we always jump to conclusions without hesitation!
As for the merger - it will be bad for international roaming customers. No competition on the GSM technology means that European visitors to the US will be even more screwed.
Header files are rather useless by themselves, and claiming copyright infringement only because they are referred to when building your binary is counterproductive.
In that case almost every application written is guilty of copyright infringement.
And is it a copyright infringement if you include stuff that is intended to be included when building a binary?
(Unrelated to parent post)
Using a GPS jammer will really screw up GPS based ticket system at public transports, at least in some cities.
The ticket system for the public transport in Gothenburg, Sweden uses GPS to determine how much a trip costs, and in general people lose money on a frequent basis in that system. A great rip-off since they claim that GPS is infallible.
Another limitation for GPS is that it's not that good when you are in polar regions, the precision is not as good as in warmer areas.
However GPS is a great system too - especially if you are going somewhere the first time. A side effect is that it doesn't take into account that roads may be closed and stuff like that so you may sometimes need to take a detour. And having a real paper map works fine as a backup, but even paper maps has their limit since the resolution is often rather crude.
But to some extent we are getting reliant on GPS as a technology - it doesn't have common sense, and it does contain bad or conflicting information from time to time causing delivery trucks ending up in a backroad in a neighbor town and all kind of stuff like that.
A free pass to drift around on the streets. For some of them that's actually not a punishment.
However by suspending or expelling them you are sending the completely wrong signals. What these students need is either more education or (horrible thought) they may be right in their statements.
Sometimes adults fails to understand that kids do put the rules that the parents sets to a test now and then, and it's important to act the right way to mark firmly when they are exceeding their bounds. The major problem here is a parenting problem. (Parents and Teachers share a responsibility here).
Starts to be the same crap everywhere - not only Germany. Look at the "bastion of freedom" (The United States) again and see how it really is.
Feels like the world of Max Headroom is going to be a paradise utopia soon rather than a dystopia.
Soon we will have blipverts... And stuff like AdBlock Plus will be illegal.
After the damage is done and 200+ persons in the address book already have received the spam.
Plus countless other people. A certificate revocation does take some time.
OK, maybe they have fixed the problem encountered at point 5, or it only appears under some specific circumstances.
As for the other points - Microsoft will of course want you to upgrade to latest IE, and the alternate browser path is still not removing IE6 from the surface of the earth.
There are a few problems around the upgrade:
1. Microsoft wants to ask a lot of obnoxious and hard to understand questions during installation and initialization of newer versions.
2. People are afraid that upgrades will break something.
3. A lot of web sites - especially company internal web sites are still designed for IE6.
4. A lot of companies are afraid of upgrading from IE6 due to concerns of various kinds and "if it ain't broken, don't fix it".
5. If you do a fresh install of XP SP3 you will have to postpone the installation of IE8 until some patches are installed or you end up with a broken browser - which will be fixed if you uninstall and reinstall, but it may have scared a few.
Don't forget that many major companies still runs XP as primary OS because it works, and it does the job. Some have a procedure of progressively upgrade so new computers are deployed with Win7 and old are kept at XP. And some went into the Windows Vista track full ahead - and got a bunch of problems on the way.
Will that be defined as Zoophilia?
Aside from being an annoying character - some of you wouldn't realize how annoying many thought C3PO were in the first movie...
However - it's important to realize that sometimes you have to have the annoying side characters - they make the experience more real. Even real life is full of annoying people in one form or another.
Then you can look at Jar Jar from another perspective - what he looks like is well within what an alien may look like if we are to encounter them.
Most IT hiring requires experience! Noobs are OK for some stuff but there's no way for any school to train them for what everyone in the real world is looking for ('cuz we all want something different).
Though everyone always told me that unless you went to school you'd never amount to anything and that you'd be a failure forever. No one could ever learn things they needed to know without college! Amassing huge amounts of debt in school I was told always was the most important goal of anyone looking to start a career!
Now you tell me that people want real world experience too?
Let me tell you something, that degree is just important or you'll end up like me. I have years of experience, tons of certifications but since I don't have a degree no one will hire me and I can't get promoted if I do find a job. Yeah people might not have experience once finishing school but as far as corporate politics and HR B.S. go it is the most important part for expanding your career.
I would say that either you are REALLY good at what you do - and you don't need a degree, it may stop you from only a few employers - mostly those who you don't want to work for anyway. The first ten years can be hard, but with 15 years of experience the lack of a degree is only having a marginal impact and after 20 years it's your experience history that counts.
I don't have any student loans at all and have a pretty decent salary, well over the average salary actually.
So if you don't have the level of salary you expect you probably haven't showed good enough skills at your employers and is just an average worker. If you exceed the expectations you may step up in salary. Of course - you may step on some toes - even unintentionally, since by doing things you will invariably always go across someone's agenda. The more you do the more paths you cross.
The backside of exceeding your expectations is that you will also be measured against past achievements at next review.
The role of an Admin is to try to make him/her-self unnecessary, but since new things always arises and some things can't be automated away it will never succeed.
Keep your fingers to the important stuff, and let the users sort out the rest by educating them.
I agree to some extent - I always completely disable the recycle bin so all files are deleted when I delete them.
Deleted files shall stay deleted, not being in some kind of disk-hogging limbo.
But on the other hand I come from the *NIX environment where a file removal is final.
Essentially it may end up being a six stage rocket we are talking about.
For a human transport I think that the following concept is what's needed.
Stage 1 & 2 are to leave Earth.
Stage 3 is for the transit phase to Mars.
Stage 4 is for the return trip.
Stage 5 is for landing.
Stage 6 is for departure from Mars to Mars orbit.
At arrival at Mars Stage 3 is discarded, Stage 4 left in orbit and Stage 5&6 are landed, at launch Stage 5 will be used as launch pad for Stage 6. However Stage 3 could still be useful by being placed in an orbital position that's 180 degrees from the Stage 4, in which case it may be an extra relay satellite for communications.
If Stage 5 is correctly designed the fuel tanks may be emptied from remaining fuel and changed to be used as extra space for living and other activities. Stage 5 may also be carrying extra oxygen and water that can be left behind when the return trip is initiated.
A sub-variant is to actually build the mars craft in orbit. This will allow for lighter versions of the Stages 3 and 4 because they won't need to take the load of the upper stages during launch and can be launched to orbit fully fueled. It will also make the event less risky. In this case stages 3 and 4 can be built of multiple smaller components assembled in space. And the weight will also be lower since 3 & 4 won't need to be aerodynamic.
And assembling the craft in space will make it easier to find carrying capacity to earth orbit. A vessel that is to be launched fully assembled from Earth would dwarf the Saturn V rocket.
For a robotic excursion with a return trip there won't be any need for life support, but the return vessel will in that case carry a load of rocks and sand samples.
At arrival at earth Stage 4 needs to take care of braking the return vessel. If done right some acceleration and braking could be done using the Moon.