That's one (rather short-sighted) opinion. On the other hand, there's many of us who think that NASA is quite possibly one of the most important parts of the US government in the long-term.
"The NASA budget for 2010 has been announced, up 5% on 2009. Human space flight plans to be reviewed."
I'm quite glad to hear that this review of NASA's spaceflight plans is occurring, and from what I've read seems to be quite good at minimizing outside/political/industry influence and making sure that the recommendations will truly be the best ones possible. The only problem is that NASA and/or the administration might end up ignoring those recommendations for political reasons (e.g. making sure jobs remain in particular congressional districts).
Evidence has recently been leaked that the NASA's ESAS study which settled on the homebuilt Ares I (based on then-Administrator Mike Griffin's pet design) over the already-existing commercial EELV rockets was deeply flawed. Basically, the flawed 60-day ESAS study (often relied on by certain NASA officials to defend their plans) had a number of major problems:
Exceptions given in the ground rules and assumptions on maximum dynamic pressures to In-line SRM based crew launch concepts that weren't given to any other vehicles (without the exception, all of the five-segment Stick concepts would've been ruled out from the start).
Unrealistically assuming a fixed LAS mass regardless of first stage characteristics (like T/W, max-Q, and whether you can shut them down or not).
Inaccurate dry mass numbers for existing EELV upper stages (just as some of the guys on NASASpaceflight.com had been saying for years now).
As things currently stand, the Ares I has been running into major problems, many believe it to have fundamental design flaws, and projected development costs are running into the $30-$50 billion range. Meanwhile, a couple weeks ago a NASA-commissioned independent study confirmed that the commercial EELVs would be able to fulfill NASA's needs of transporting NASA's orbital and lunar spacecraft, with estimated costs of a few billion dollars (about an order of magnitude less than the Ares program). That's to say nothing of SpaceX and COTS-D, which could do the job for around $1.5 billion dollars of development costs.
NASA administrator Mike Griffin blamed the White House, and the previous Bush administration, saying funding for Ares V and other projects fell from $4bn through 2015 to just $500m.
It doesn't mention it in the summary, but people need to keep in mind that figure's only for the Ares V, which is supposed to be building on the Ares I. The GAO (which is certainly historically better in its cost estimates than NASA) has estimated that the Ares I and Orion capsule will cost more along the lines of $40-50 billion.
For comparison, funding SpaceX to finish developing commercial crew transport to the space station would cost $500 million. SpaceX would need to have a 100x cost overrun to cost as much as the Ares program.
While I personally think space-based solar power is quite cool, unfortunately I'm not so sure the numbers quite work out for any time in the near future. My suspicion is that this announcement is primarily for PR reasons, and PG&E has no plans of actually following through. Some analysis from aerospace engineer (and space advocate) Rand Simberg:
I just canâ(TM)t see how. Unless there are going to be many satellites, the system has to be in GEO to provide baseload power to any given region on earth. They talk about putting up a 200 MW system with âoefour or fiveâ âoeheavy liftâ launches (where this is apparently defined as 25 tons).
Suppose the conversion efficiency of the cells is a generous 30%, the DC-MW conversion is 90%, the transmission efficiency is 90% and the MW-AC conversion efficiency is 90% (generous numbers all, I think). That gives an overall efficiency of 22% from sunlight to the grid. The solar constant in space is 1.4kW/m2, so that means you need 650,000 square meters of panels to deliver 200 MW to the grid. Suppose you can build the cells (including necessary structure to maintain stiffness) for half a kilo per square meter. That means that just for the solar panels alone, you have a payload of 325 metric tons. Generously assuming that their payload of 25 tons is to GEO (if itâ(TM)s to LEO, itâ(TM)s probably less than ten tons in GEO), that would require over a dozen launches for the solar panels alone.
That doesnâ(TM)t include the mass of the conversion electronics, basic satellite housekeeping systems (attitude control, etc.) and the transmitting antenna, which has to be huge to get that much power that distance at a safe power density.
So even ignoring the other issues (e.g. regulatory, safety studies, etc.) that Clark mentions, I think this is completely bogus until I see their numbers. And probably even then.
This is repeated pretty often, but actually it was the Germans, French, Italians, Chinese, Egyptians, and several other countries. The US sold some dual-use equipment like advanced computers.
1959 â" August 17 USSR and Iraq wrote an agreement about building an atomic power station. 1968 â" a Soviet supplied IRT-2000 research reactor together with a number of other facilities that could be used for radioisotope production was built close to Baghdad.[7][8] 1975 â" Saddam Hussein arrived in Moscow in April. He asked about building an advanced model of an atomic power station. Moscow would approve, but only if the station was regulated by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Iraq refused.[citation needed] After 6 months Paris agreed to sell 72 kg of 93% Uranium[9] and built the atomic power station without International Atomic Energy Agency control at a price of $3 billion. In the early 1970s, Saddam Hussein ordered the creation of a clandestine nuclear weapons program.[10] Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs were assisted by a wide variety of firms and governments in the 1970s and 1980s.[11][12][13][14][15] As part of Project 922, German firms such as Karl Kobe helped build Iraqi chemical weapons facilities such as laboratories, bunkers, an administrative building, and first production buildings in the early 1980s under the cover of a pesticide plant. Other German firms sent 1,027 tons of precursors of mustard gas, sarin, tabun, and tear gasses in all. This work allowed Iraq to produce 150 tons of mustard agent and 60 tons of Tabun in 1983 and 1984 respectively, continuing throughout the decade. Five other German firms supplied equipment to manufacture botulin toxin and mycotoxin for germ warfare. In 1988, German engineers presented centrifuge data that helped Iraq expand its nuclear weapons program. Laboratory equipment and other information was provided, involving many German engineers. All told, 52% of Iraq's international chemical weapon equipment was of German origin. The State Establishment for Pesticide Production (SEPP) ordered culture media and incubators from Germany's Water Engineering Trading.[16] France built Iraqâ(TM)s Osirak nuclear reactor in the late 1970s. Israel claimed that Iraq was getting close to building nuclear weapons, and successfully destroyed the reactors in 1981. Later, a French company built a turnkey factory which helped make nuclear fuel. France also provided glass-lined reactors, tanks, vessels, and columns used for the production of chemical weapons. Around 21% of Iraqâ(TM)s international chemical weapon equipment was French. Strains of dual-use biological material also helped advance Iraqâ(TM)s biological warfare program. Italy gave Iraq plutonium extraction facilities that advanced Iraqâ(TM)s nuclear weapon program. 75,000 shells and rockets designed for chemical weapon use also came from Italy. Between 1979 and 1982 Italy gave depleted, natural, and low-enriched uranium. Swiss companies aided in Iraqâ(TM)s nuclear weapons development in the form of specialized presses, milling machines, grinding machines, electrical discharge machines, and equipment for processing uranium to nuclear weapon grade. Brazil secretly aided the Iraqi nuclear weapon program by supplying natural uranium dioxide between 1981 and 1982 without notifying the IAEA. About 100 tons of mustard gas also came from Brazil. The United States exported $500 million of dual use exports to Iraq that were approved by the Commerce department. Among them were advanced computers, some of which were used in Iraqâ(TM)s nuclear program. The non-profit American Type Culture Collection and the Centers for Disease Control sold or sent biological samples to Iraq under Saddam Husse
The critical part is the US Government committed a coup to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in April 2002, installing a dictator.
You cannot trust the information of the organization who tried removing the Democratically elected leader of a country outright.
An interesting bit of trivia: Hugo Chavez himself led a military coup attempt back in 1992 against Venezuela's democratically-elected government, killing 14 people:
Chavez isn't exactly a trustworthy source himself when it comes to standing up for democracy.
It's also worth noting that there's no evidence whatsoever (besides Chavez's fear-mongering and attention-whoring) that the US orchestrated the 2002 coup attempt. Of course, that doesn't prevent the conspiracy theorists at Daily Kos, etc. from accepting Chavez's fear-mongering as irrefutable truth.
As someone else pointed out in a previous thread on this subject, serious organizations, especially ones with government connections, don't like to name things after people who are still alive.
You see, if you name it after a person who has lived out their life, you can evaluate their entire life and make sure that they haven't done anything that you wouldn't want to be associated with. However, someone who is still alive might very well do something in the future (kill someone in a drunk driving accident, get caught with child pornography, shoot their wife, etc) that no one wants to be associated with.
One sumo wrestler found another way to melt off the pounds. Konishiki, whom fans call ``the Dump Truck'' and who was the all- time heaviest competitor at more than 600 pounds, underwent gastric bypass surgery last month.
The only reason I see why we don't build an MP3 player into a pair of headphones is because the industry has moved away from the big earphones to the tiny ear buds, at least for MP3 players.
I'm not sure if this is what you meant, but there's actually a large selection of MP3 players built into headphones, sunglasses, etc.
What happened? Very simply, human error. Google flags search results with the message "This site may harm your computer" if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously. We do this to protect our users against visiting sites that could harm their computers. We work with a non-profit called StopBadware.org to get our list of URLs. StopBadware carefully researches each consumer complaint to decide fairly whether that URL belongs on the list. Since each case needs to be individually researched, this list is maintained by humans, not algorithms.
We periodically receive updates to that list and received one such update to release on the site this morning. Unfortunately (and here's the human error), the URL of '/' was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and '/' expands to all URLs. Fortunately, our on-call site reliability team found the problem quickly and reverted the file. Since we push these updates in a staggered and rolling fashion, the errors began appearing between 6:27 a.m. and 6:40 a.m. and began disappearing between 7:10 and 7:25 a.m., so the duration of the problem for any particular user was approximately 40 minutes.
Which really gets to the point of the matter. Our national reaction to the loss of a shuttle crew, viewed by the proverbial anthropologistâ(TM)s Martian (or perhaps better yet, a Vulcan), would seem irrational. After all, we risk, and lose, people in all kinds of endeavors, every day. We send soldiers out to brave IEDs and RPGs in Iraq. We watch firefighters go into burning buildings. Even in more mundane, relatively safe activities, people die â" in mines, in construction, in commercial fishing. Why is it that we get so upset when we lose astronauts, who are ostensibly exploring the final frontier, arguably as dangerous a job as they come? One Internet wag has noted that, âoe...to judge by the fuss that gets made when a few of them die, astronauts clearly are priceless national assets â" exactly the sort of people you should not be risking in an experimental-class vehicle.â
What upset people so much about the deaths in Columbia, I think, was not that they died, but that they died in such a seemingly trivial yet expensive pursuit. They werenâ(TM)t exploring the universeâ"they were boring a multi-hundred-thousand-mile-long hole in the vacuum a couple hundred miles above the planet, with childrenâ(TM)s science-fair experiments. We were upset because space isnâ(TM)t important, and we considered the astronautsâ(TM) lives more important than the mission. If they had been exploring another hostile, alien planet, and died, we would have been saddened, but not shocked â" it happens in the movies all the time. If they had been on a mission to divert an asteroid, preventing it from hitting the planet (a la the movie Armageddon, albeit with more correspondence to the reality of physics), we would have mourned, but also been inured to their loss as true national heroes in the service of their country (and planet). It would be recognized that what they were doing was of national importance, just as is the job of every soldier and Marine in Iraq and Afghanistan.
What those who criticize Dr. Griffinâ(TM)s decision to move forward with the launch are implicitly saying is that the astronautsâ(TM) lives, and the vehicle, arenâ(TM)t worth the mission, and that they have, in fact, infinite value relative to it. Every month that we delay the return to flight costs hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, with an army of shuttle technicians sitting around, their skills getting rusty (which brings its own risks). Moreover, no matter how much more time and money is spent in trying to reduce the risk, âoesafeâ will always be a relative, not an absolute term. If completing the station, if finishing this particular mission, is worth anything, itâ(TM)s worth doing sooner, rather than later, so we can sooner free up the resources for more adventurous activities that are (or at least should be) perceived as being worth the risk of life. Paul Dietz, a frequent commenter to my blog, has noted that if we really wanted to indicate national seriousness about opening up the space frontier, we would, starting right now, with great fanfare, set up a dedicated national cemetery for those who would be expected to lose their lives in that long-term endeavor, and provide it with lots of acreage.
Those who fear to risk the lives of willing, volunteer astronauts are really saying that there is nothing to be done in space that is worth the risk. This is, of course, a symptom of the fact that even with the announcement of the presidentâ(TM)s new policy two and a half years ago, we still have never really had a national debate, or decided what weâ(TM)re trying to accomplish on the high frontier. Until we do, decisions will continue to be driven by pork, politics, and emotion that have little to do with actual
Atrocity Archive by Charles Stross is obviously written by someone who knows computers and most of all sysadms very well.
An interesting bit of trivia is that Charles Stross has a slashdot account with a 4-digit user number. I actually could've sworn that he had a 3-digit number, but I can't seem to find it. You can read one of his books Accelerando for free under a Creative Commons license. If anything some of his writing can be a little -too- geeky, and I imagine non-geeks have difficulty grokking it.
The latest major news I can find is the announcement of a $5 million contract with Orion Propulsion back in May 2008 to have them develop the attitude control system for the Sundancer.
That is when SpaceX will go live with crew capability
I'm not sure if this is what you're getting at, but one of the limitations (if not the primary limitation) on the crew size is the lack of escape vehicle capacity. One possible option being looked at is to use on of SpaceX's Dragon capsules as a long-term crew escape vehicle docked to the ISS, which would allow for a higher crew capacity.
Bigelow has yet to demonstrate that they can put someone in orbit (using any vehicle) or that there will be a livable space station up there when they do.
Regarding the first issue, that's not what Bigelow is working on. Even if the Atlas V and SpaceX Dragon aren't ready in time, my understanding is that Bigelow is designing their docking interfaces to work with multiple different types of spacecraft. The reason the Russians are giving for not taking crew to the ISS is the lack of availability of room there; if there were another destination, I see no reason for them to decline if the price is high enough.
Since NASA wasn't doing anything with the TransHab technology, it was purchased several years ago by Bigelow Aerospace, a company that's using the modules to create a commercial space station. They launched their prototype habitat modules into orbit in 2006 and 2007, and both are still streaming images and video to the surface. They'll be launching the first human-rated module of their space station in 2011 on a SpaceX Falcon 9, and will start launching their larger components and linking them together in 2012.
Once the station's up and running, they're planning on renting out time on the modules for manufacturing, microgravity research, and space tourism. They're also in talks with Lockheed Martin to use their Atlas V vehicle for more economical manned travel to orbit.
The Palestinians are doing that as well and are being demonized for using human shields.
Actually, they're demonized for using shields because they use human shields. Unless you have another name for booby-trapping an entire school with explosives, packing it full of people, firing rockets from the school, and then running to the media when a retaliatory strike sets off your booby-traps and kills everyone inside.
Slashdot Mirror
It will move to some other online venue. Maybe slashdot (shudder). I can practically see the ads now...
"Male seeking... anything."
m4g?
That's one (rather short-sighted) opinion. On the other hand, there's many of us who think that NASA is quite possibly one of the most important parts of the US government in the long-term.
"The NASA budget for 2010 has been announced, up 5% on 2009. Human space flight plans to be reviewed."
I'm quite glad to hear that this review of NASA's spaceflight plans is occurring, and from what I've read seems to be quite good at minimizing outside/political/industry influence and making sure that the recommendations will truly be the best ones possible. The only problem is that NASA and/or the administration might end up ignoring those recommendations for political reasons (e.g. making sure jobs remain in particular congressional districts).
Evidence has recently been leaked that the NASA's ESAS study which settled on the homebuilt Ares I (based on then-Administrator Mike Griffin's pet design) over the already-existing commercial EELV rockets was deeply flawed. Basically, the flawed 60-day ESAS study (often relied on by certain NASA officials to defend their plans) had a number of major problems:
(from Selenian Boondocks, with parts of the leaked study available on Wikileaks )
As things currently stand, the Ares I has been running into major problems, many believe it to have fundamental design flaws, and projected development costs are running into the $30-$50 billion range. Meanwhile, a couple weeks ago a NASA-commissioned independent study confirmed that the commercial EELVs would be able to fulfill NASA's needs of transporting NASA's orbital and lunar spacecraft, with estimated costs of a few billion dollars (about an order of magnitude less than the Ares program). That's to say nothing of SpaceX and COTS-D, which could do the job for around $1.5 billion dollars of development costs.
NASA administrator Mike Griffin blamed the White House, and the previous Bush administration, saying funding for Ares V and other projects fell from $4bn through 2015 to just $500m.
It doesn't mention it in the summary, but people need to keep in mind that figure's only for the Ares V, which is supposed to be building on the Ares I. The GAO (which is certainly historically better in its cost estimates than NASA) has estimated that the Ares I and Orion capsule will cost more along the lines of $40-50 billion.
For comparison, funding SpaceX to finish developing commercial crew transport to the space station would cost $500 million. SpaceX would need to have a 100x cost overrun to cost as much as the Ares program.
While I personally think space-based solar power is quite cool, unfortunately I'm not so sure the numbers quite work out for any time in the near future. My suspicion is that this announcement is primarily for PR reasons, and PG&E has no plans of actually following through. Some analysis from aerospace engineer (and space advocate) Rand Simberg:
http://www.transterrestrial.com/?p=18069
I just canâ(TM)t see how. Unless there are going to be many satellites, the system has to be in GEO to provide baseload power to any given region on earth. They talk about putting up a 200 MW system with âoefour or fiveâ âoeheavy liftâ launches (where this is apparently defined as 25 tons).
Suppose the conversion efficiency of the cells is a generous 30%, the DC-MW conversion is 90%, the transmission efficiency is 90% and the MW-AC conversion efficiency is 90% (generous numbers all, I think). That gives an overall efficiency of 22% from sunlight to the grid. The solar constant in space is 1.4kW/m2, so that means you need 650,000 square meters of panels to deliver 200 MW to the grid. Suppose you can build the cells (including necessary structure to maintain stiffness) for half a kilo per square meter. That means that just for the solar panels alone, you have a payload of 325 metric tons. Generously assuming that their payload of 25 tons is to GEO (if itâ(TM)s to LEO, itâ(TM)s probably less than ten tons in GEO), that would require over a dozen launches for the solar panels alone.
That doesnâ(TM)t include the mass of the conversion electronics, basic satellite housekeeping systems (attitude control, etc.) and the transmitting antenna, which has to be huge to get that much power that distance at a safe power density.
So even ignoring the other issues (e.g. regulatory, safety studies, etc.) that Clark mentions, I think this is completely bogus until I see their numbers. And probably even then.
We sold them to him.
This is repeated pretty often, but actually it was the Germans, French, Italians, Chinese, Egyptians, and several other countries. The US sold some dual-use equipment like advanced computers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction#Program_development_1960s_-_1980s
1959 â" August 17 USSR and Iraq wrote an agreement about building an atomic power station.
1968 â" a Soviet supplied IRT-2000 research reactor together with a number of other facilities that could be used for radioisotope production was built close to Baghdad.[7][8]
1975 â" Saddam Hussein arrived in Moscow in April. He asked about building an advanced model of an atomic power station. Moscow would approve, but only if the station was regulated by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Iraq refused.[citation needed]
After 6 months Paris agreed to sell 72 kg of 93% Uranium[9] and built the atomic power station without International Atomic Energy Agency control at a price of $3 billion.
In the early 1970s, Saddam Hussein ordered the creation of a clandestine nuclear weapons program.[10] Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs were assisted by a wide variety of firms and governments in the 1970s and 1980s.[11][12][13][14][15] As part of Project 922, German firms such as Karl Kobe helped build Iraqi chemical weapons facilities such as laboratories, bunkers, an administrative building, and first production buildings in the early 1980s under the cover of a pesticide plant. Other German firms sent 1,027 tons of precursors of mustard gas, sarin, tabun, and tear gasses in all. This work allowed Iraq to produce 150 tons of mustard agent and 60 tons of Tabun in 1983 and 1984 respectively, continuing throughout the decade. Five other German firms supplied equipment to manufacture botulin toxin and mycotoxin for germ warfare. In 1988, German engineers presented centrifuge data that helped Iraq expand its nuclear weapons program. Laboratory equipment and other information was provided, involving many German engineers. All told, 52% of Iraq's international chemical weapon equipment was of German origin. The State Establishment for Pesticide Production (SEPP) ordered culture media and incubators from Germany's Water Engineering Trading.[16]
France built Iraqâ(TM)s Osirak nuclear reactor in the late 1970s. Israel claimed that Iraq was getting close to building nuclear weapons, and successfully destroyed the reactors in 1981. Later, a French company built a turnkey factory which helped make nuclear fuel. France also provided glass-lined reactors, tanks, vessels, and columns used for the production of chemical weapons. Around 21% of Iraqâ(TM)s international chemical weapon equipment was French. Strains of dual-use biological material also helped advance Iraqâ(TM)s biological warfare program.
Italy gave Iraq plutonium extraction facilities that advanced Iraqâ(TM)s nuclear weapon program. 75,000 shells and rockets designed for chemical weapon use also came from Italy. Between 1979 and 1982 Italy gave depleted, natural, and low-enriched uranium. Swiss companies aided in Iraqâ(TM)s nuclear weapons development in the form of specialized presses, milling machines, grinding machines, electrical discharge machines, and equipment for processing uranium to nuclear weapon grade. Brazil secretly aided the Iraqi nuclear weapon program by supplying natural uranium dioxide between 1981 and 1982 without notifying the IAEA. About 100 tons of mustard gas also came from Brazil.
The United States exported $500 million of dual use exports to Iraq that were approved by the Commerce department. Among them were advanced computers, some of which were used in Iraqâ(TM)s nuclear program. The non-profit American Type Culture Collection and the Centers for Disease Control sold or sent biological samples to Iraq under Saddam Husse
This passage from the link you gave (regarding Chavez teaching an adult literacy class) is hilariously ironic:
[Chavez] then plowed on with the lesson.
"What does writing allow you to do?" he asked, hovering
over an elderly man's desk.
The man bent over a booklet and read aloud, haltingly, ...
"Writing allows you to express ideas with your own
words."
Chavez drew back and beamed.
"Correct! 100 points for Victor," he said.
As someone who has researched image processing I know what the score it.
That is a nice website with great example, but the only examples you ever show to anyone are the ones that work well...
Sure, but filters like HQ2X/HQ3X have also been built into video game emulators like ZSNES for many years now, and they work quite well.
The critical part is the US Government committed a coup to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in April 2002, installing a dictator.
You cannot trust the information of the organization who tried removing the Democratically elected leader of a country outright.
An interesting bit of trivia: Hugo Chavez himself led a military coup attempt back in 1992 against Venezuela's democratically-elected government, killing 14 people:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Venezuelan_coup_d'&%23169;tat_attempts
After an extended period of popular dissatisfaction and economic decline under the neoliberal administration of Carlos Andrés Pérez,[1] ChÃvez made extensive preparations for a military-civilian coup d'état.[3] Initially planned for December, ChÃvez delayed the MBR-200 coup until the early twilight hours of February 4, 1992. On that date, five army units under ChÃvez's command barreled into urban Caracas with the mission of assaulting and overwhelming key military and communications installations throughout the city, including the Miraflores presidential palace, the defense ministry, La Carlota military airport, and the Military Museum. ChÃvez's ultimate goal was to intercept and take custody of Pérez before he returned to Miraflores from an overseas trip.
Chavez isn't exactly a trustworthy source himself when it comes to standing up for democracy.
It's also worth noting that there's no evidence whatsoever (besides Chavez's fear-mongering and attention-whoring) that the US orchestrated the 2002 coup attempt. Of course, that doesn't prevent the conspiracy theorists at Daily Kos, etc. from accepting Chavez's fear-mongering as irrefutable truth.
As someone else pointed out in a previous thread on this subject, serious organizations, especially ones with government connections, don't like to name things after people who are still alive.
You see, if you name it after a person who has lived out their life, you can evaluate their entire life and make sure that they haven't done anything that you wouldn't want to be associated with. However, someone who is still alive might very well do something in the future (kill someone in a drunk driving accident, get caught with child pornography, shoot their wife, etc) that no one wants to be associated with.
Of course, not everybody follows that advice:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Stevens_Anchorage_International_Airport
One word to disprove your post: Sumo
Not quite:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aTcgvBD7ty.0&refer=home
One sumo wrestler found another way to melt off the pounds. Konishiki, whom fans call ``the Dump Truck'' and who was the all- time heaviest competitor at more than 600 pounds, underwent gastric bypass surgery last month.
The only reason I see why we don't build an MP3 player into a pair of headphones is because the industry has moved away from the big earphones to the tiny ear buds, at least for MP3 players.
I'm not sure if this is what you meant, but there's actually a large selection of MP3 players built into headphones, sunglasses, etc.
http://www.google.com/products?q=headphones+built-in+mp3+player
You don't believe the DHS should fund deception-related research?
For future reference, the list so far:
People who haven't withdrawn, but have had major issues:
Will Vivek Kundra be next on the list?
Here's the explanation from Google's official blog:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/this-site-may-harm-your-computer-on.html
What happened? Very simply, human error. Google flags search results with the message "This site may harm your computer" if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously. We do this to protect our users against visiting sites that could harm their computers. We work with a non-profit called StopBadware.org to get our list of URLs. StopBadware carefully researches each consumer complaint to decide fairly whether that URL belongs on the list. Since each case needs to be individually researched, this list is maintained by humans, not algorithms.
We periodically receive updates to that list and received one such update to release on the site this morning. Unfortunately (and here's the human error), the URL of '/' was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and '/' expands to all URLs. Fortunately, our on-call site reliability team found the problem quickly and reverted the file. Since we push these updates in a staggered and rolling fashion, the errors began appearing between 6:27 a.m. and 6:40 a.m. and began disappearing between 7:10 and 7:25 a.m., so the duration of the problem for any particular user was approximately 40 minutes.
This quote from a piece by aerospace engineer Rand Simberg from a couple years ago lays out the issue well, I think:
http://www.transterrestrial.com/?p=15913
Which really gets to the point of the matter. Our national reaction to the loss of a shuttle crew, viewed by the proverbial anthropologistâ(TM)s Martian (or perhaps better yet, a Vulcan), would seem irrational. After all, we risk, and lose, people in all kinds of endeavors, every day. We send soldiers out to brave IEDs and RPGs in Iraq. We watch firefighters go into burning buildings. Even in more mundane, relatively safe activities, people die â" in mines, in construction, in commercial fishing. Why is it that we get so upset when we lose astronauts, who are ostensibly exploring the final frontier, arguably as dangerous a job as they come? One Internet wag has noted that, âoe...to judge by the fuss that gets made when a few of them die, astronauts clearly are priceless national assets â" exactly the sort of people you should not be risking in an experimental-class vehicle.â
What upset people so much about the deaths in Columbia, I think, was not that they died, but that they died in such a seemingly trivial yet expensive pursuit. They werenâ(TM)t exploring the universeâ"they were boring a multi-hundred-thousand-mile-long hole in the vacuum a couple hundred miles above the planet, with childrenâ(TM)s science-fair experiments. We were upset because space isnâ(TM)t important, and we considered the astronautsâ(TM) lives more important than the mission. If they had been exploring another hostile, alien planet, and died, we would have been saddened, but not shocked â" it happens in the movies all the time. If they had been on a mission to divert an asteroid, preventing it from hitting the planet (a la the movie Armageddon, albeit with more correspondence to the reality of physics), we would have mourned, but also been inured to their loss as true national heroes in the service of their country (and planet). It would be recognized that what they were doing was of national importance, just as is the job of every soldier and Marine in Iraq and Afghanistan.
What those who criticize Dr. Griffinâ(TM)s decision to move forward with the launch are implicitly saying is that the astronautsâ(TM) lives, and the vehicle, arenâ(TM)t worth the mission, and that they have, in fact, infinite value relative to it. Every month that we delay the return to flight costs hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, with an army of shuttle technicians sitting around, their skills getting rusty (which brings its own risks). Moreover, no matter how much more time and money is spent in trying to reduce the risk, âoesafeâ will always be a relative, not an absolute term. If completing the station, if finishing this particular mission, is worth anything, itâ(TM)s worth doing sooner, rather than later, so we can sooner free up the resources for more adventurous activities that are (or at least should be) perceived as being worth the risk of life. Paul Dietz, a frequent commenter to my blog, has noted that if we really wanted to indicate national seriousness about opening up the space frontier, we would, starting right now, with great fanfare, set up a dedicated national cemetery for those who would be expected to lose their lives in that long-term endeavor, and provide it with lots of acreage.
Those who fear to risk the lives of willing, volunteer astronauts are really saying that there is nothing to be done in space that is worth the risk. This is, of course, a symptom of the fact that even with the announcement of the presidentâ(TM)s new policy two and a half years ago, we still have never really had a national debate, or decided what weâ(TM)re trying to accomplish on the high frontier. Until we do, decisions will continue to be driven by pork, politics, and emotion that have little to do with actual
Atrocity Archive by Charles Stross is obviously written by someone who knows computers and most of all sysadms very well.
An interesting bit of trivia is that Charles Stross has a slashdot account with a 4-digit user number. I actually could've sworn that he had a 3-digit number, but I can't seem to find it. You can read one of his books Accelerando for free under a Creative Commons license. If anything some of his writing can be a little -too- geeky, and I imagine non-geeks have difficulty grokking it.
Good point. It looks like they've been pretty quiet in the past year. Here's a summary of activity on Bigelow Aerospace from the past year:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_qdr=y&q=bigelow++site:www.hobbyspace.com
The latest major news I can find is the announcement of a $5 million contract with Orion Propulsion back in May 2008 to have them develop the attitude control system for the Sundancer.
Yeah, apparently the Sundancer will be launched with a Soyuz-type docking mechanism on one end, and a new NASA-developed mechanism on the other.
That is when SpaceX will go live with crew capability
I'm not sure if this is what you're getting at, but one of the limitations (if not the primary limitation) on the crew size is the lack of escape vehicle capacity. One possible option being looked at is to use on of SpaceX's Dragon capsules as a long-term crew escape vehicle docked to the ISS, which would allow for a higher crew capacity.
Bigelow has yet to demonstrate that they can put someone in orbit (using any vehicle) or that there will be a livable space station up there when they do.
Regarding the first issue, that's not what Bigelow is working on. Even if the Atlas V and SpaceX Dragon aren't ready in time, my understanding is that Bigelow is designing their docking interfaces to work with multiple different types of spacecraft. The reason the Russians are giving for not taking crew to the ISS is the lack of availability of room there; if there were another destination, I see no reason for them to decline if the price is high enough.
Sending someone suborbital isn't quite the same as a multi-day orbital trip to the ISS.
Sure, although it looks like the private multi-day trips to commercial space stations will start in 2011 or 2012:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigelow_Aerospace
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundancer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BA_330
Since NASA wasn't doing anything with the TransHab technology, it was purchased several years ago by Bigelow Aerospace, a company that's using the modules to create a commercial space station. They launched their prototype habitat modules into orbit in 2006 and 2007, and both are still streaming images and video to the surface. They'll be launching the first human-rated module of their space station in 2011 on a SpaceX Falcon 9, and will start launching their larger components and linking them together in 2012.
Once the station's up and running, they're planning on renting out time on the modules for manufacturing, microgravity research, and space tourism. They're also in talks with Lockheed Martin to use their Atlas V vehicle for more economical manned travel to orbit.
The Palestinians are doing that as well and are being demonized for using human shields.
Actually, they're demonized for using shields because they use human shields. Unless you have another name for booby-trapping an entire school with explosives, packing it full of people, firing rockets from the school, and then running to the media when a retaliatory strike sets off your booby-traps and kills everyone inside.
Then of course, there's the part where the virtual protesters call for death to all virtual juice, eventually succeeding in virtually eliminating all the juice.