Doesn't mention features at all. Doesn't even filter by socket type much less manufacturer. I am trying to burn thru the marketing and figure out the fastest CPU to buy that supports virtualization for $X on my motherboard of choice.
I'm thinking an expert system where I tell it "Intel, Socket B, virtualization mandatory, gimme the performance vs price table, and if you must narrow it down, narrow it down to sub-$300 please".
I can probably do this by hand in at most a couple hours of work, which is worth a couple bucks for a website to do it for me.
Specifically I Really Wanna Run KVM or Xen, so if some obscure model simply won't work with the linux/KVM then I'm totally uninterested. For example, I know only certain MBs support USB passthru, so I'm exclusively interested in the CPUs supported by those MBs, furthermore I have to make sure that the virtualization features have not been lasered off.
Don't much care if there exists a chunk of silicon that is faster yet completely unusable for me. Just don't care. Much like my first criteria for a mythtv FE card is "does it work with vdpau" and I have zero interest in a "better" card that does not support vdpau. Marketing wants to "help" me by having the name of the card include the word "sniper", or by placing a picture of a girl in a chainmail bikini on the box, so they're useless (marketing, not the chainmail girl)
Its almost as much of a pain in the ass as buying a car...
'less than one tenth of one percent' of the networks' users
Sony has over 93 million accounts? As far as I know only about 50 million PS3s have been sold, some to upgraders / replacers / theft or fire insurance claims, so there's probably less than 50 million PS3 user accounts. The other 50 million or so accounts are... ?
Does anybody have an idea how the price/performance comparisons change(if in fact they do) from the pure-benchmark ones given in TFAs, if the buyer requires that all the relevant virtualization features be enabled?
If I were to set up a business to do this, to cut thru the incredibly frustrating marketing from both chip manufacturers in exchange for a small cut of the price, would I currently have any competition?
The point of a confuse-opoly like CPUs or american cellphone contracts is to screw over the buyer by confusing them. Aside from screwing over the buyers, it also creates a business opportunity for someone to intermediate themselves while un-screw-up-ing the marketplace.
The general class of idea is something like a CPU buyers expert system. One UI idea is something like a graph titled "Intel-based Virtualization CPUs" with price as Y axis and performance as X axis and click on the datapoint to order a CPU.
I'm envisioning my price mark up to be about equivalent to buying me a beer at the bar (plenty of people would answer your question for free, if you'd buy me a beer at the next computer conference / bar / whatever, but my magic web site is 24x7 and accessible everywhere)
As with many businesses, it seems too obvious, that there must be multiple competitors. But apparently their marketing sucks so bad I've never heard of them.
Of course, if the generator was based on a public/private key system instead of block cipher (ie, encrypting the time stamp using the private key), then there would be no need for the private 'seed' to be stored anywhere outside of the security token. The number would be a digitally signed timestamp.
Check the patent situation for the reason why you can't do that.
Companies (generally) don't do snake oil accidentally...
The only alternative is if Opera can patent the ideas.
What about the kindle? Their "invention" is basically the kindle experimental web browser. Pull up/., use the side buttons to scroll thru distinct pages... I've seen it demoed but not used it.
Basically its a e-ink simulator for LCD screens.
Note that I'm a "page up page down" reader. smooth scrolling extensively on a ipad makes me literally seasick because everything in my field of vision is moving but my inner ear disagrees. I would love a "page up page down" button for an ipad. Supposedly flicking the screen works... about 60% of the time... too frustrating to use.
Will IT slap you on the back and buy you a beer if you install a GIT repo "hub" like gitolite, or take you out back and shoot you?
Thats pretty much a universal 'take you out back and shoot you' response, unless of course you talk to them about it first.
You don't start fucking around on someones network without talking to them first. When you are at work its not YOUR PC or YOUR NETWORK or anything of YOURS, its THEIRS, and you should be respectful of the fact that you don't know everything going on and you clearly are not a system admin so you know even less about whats going on with their systems.
I've heard there are places like that, but everywhere I have worked, there has always been a "engineering network" or "dev net" or whatever with the IT guys firewalling it off from their stuff pretending that lan was as toxic as the internet, no open ports, no static nat, no access across the fw at all either direction without some sort of ticket or project being filed. I'm guessing a place that is so backwards they don't even have a VCS system, might not have something as advanced as a physically separate "dev net". Also I worked at one financial vertical integrator that had multiple "customer service" nets where an entire customer site could be replicated by customer service for customer service purposes using a mainframe and VM/MVS images (pretty much like vmware now, except it was the very early 90s and token ring was everywhere). And there was the nagios powered place that had a firewalled off "burn in net" where nagios pinged the heck out of the entire/27 and logged all changes and anyone from any dept could plug anything into it (with the idea that if the gadget stopped responding to pings during 24 hours, then it failed burn in testing), so we had everything from ITs desktops burning in, to outside plant UPS monitors burning in.
Most "real" IT departments already have an extensively firewalled "test net" for their own purposes... Given a possibly infected laptop you don't stick it on the main lan, but on a special little highly monitored "test net", possibly with no access other than to the internet for software patches and updates. The concept of a nearly identical "test net" for the devs is not going to be a huge conceptual leap for them. Then again as above, the kind of place that hasn't discovered VCS probably takes laptops infected with the modern equivalent of "sql slammer" and drops them right into the database cluster LAN....
I'm hot for a 3d printer because I want to print foundry patterns. They are a PITA to make by hand, its agonizing when one breaks while ramming the sand around it, getting the sprue placement, draft allowance, and shrinkage factor correct is a struggle, and the only way to share foundry patterns involves UPS and shipping costs. On the other hand, if I could just print up some internet dude's perfectly optimized pattern... Doesn't help with cores, and things like shake mean the ideal shared pattern is probably going to be bigger than it technically has to be...
So there is a place for a 3d printer in a machine shop or even a rocket makers machine shop. In a standard issue hipsters living room next to the Steve Jobs shrine, eh I donno about all that.
Yes before "circle sharing" was added to G+ people used to just circle everyone in one of Uncle Leo's posts. I would imagine you've been circled by at least some people after that.
It would be bad because only a couple extremely well financed and large organizations could bribe the ump by reprogramming it, instead of the current system where anybody with cash can do it. Essentially, interference with a free market is gonna screw it up. I'm not sure why anyone other than the mob will benefit from this change.
It could do "strike" "ball" but they will still need a human there anyway to enforce other rules "wait a second, that isn't an approved kind of bat" "the catcher called the batter a n-word to distract him during the pitch, mandatory walk" or "the batter intentionally spit upon the catcher, ejection from game" or whatever other obscure rules they have.
Historically rotary engines had huge pollution issues. Plenty of HC output, not just from leaky oil seals. Rotaries have a market position problem... turbine engines have much better power to weight ratios (although horrible idling losses).
so there will be calls for a new space station to give this next generation "shuttle" a reason for existing.
Funny you should mention the OPSEK... built partially out of parts of the ISS. What happens if the russian repo man tries to remove "their" parts of the ISS to install them on the OPSEK and "we" aren't ready to deorbit the ISS? This will be interesting...
You forgot to mention your ticketing system, or whatever it is you use to track bugs and customer requests. Negative points if that is "nothing at all" or "the salesman promises the customer whatever they want to hear". Positive points if its some kind of request tracker... you know, like that Request Tracker system...
Other places use, essentially, manual ticketing by to do lists. Or a use Excel as the corporate standard DBMS and store their bugs in a spreadsheet. Some places use email, not as crazy as it sounds. A "workflow management" system using Lotus Notes will cause horrific pain, but is technically usable.
I've never even heard of places using formal project planning systems like microsoft project and GNATT charts and all that, but I suppose it could theoretically happen.
I would stay away from GIT and other system popular in the blogosphere and go with SVN as it is tried and true
We ran from svn fast as we could because its dying... git has taken over, like it or not. Your quote sounds like something fresh outta 2006, but that was a long time ago.
All git pullers have essentially a full backup of the repo. All pullers are what other VCS would call a hub. With SVN you need a backup and availability strategy for the SVN hub, if the hub is down you're dead in the water, but not with GIT. With GIT you still need offsite offline backups, etc, but level of admin work is much lower.
Worst case scenario, post tornado or whatever, bootstrapping is easier with GIT than SVN.
Never forget if you're going to admin something, to admin it correctly. Even if you're a "dev". There's a lot more than just "apt-get install" you also need to backup, have a disaster recovery plan / strategy, monitoring...
Assuming its a software shop... I've never worked in one, but I have some decades doing dev work as basically a tool maker at a couple places. The guy's description sounds like a lot of embedded places I've worked where "things just kinda got out of hand" after starting as such simple little projects.
One minute you're basically writing a one page web cgi front end for "grep" and it seems like next thing you know, you're creating a giant data warehouse and statistical analysis system, wtf?
56 posts so far and no one asked why? This is the crucial question.
1) They hired you specifically because YOU know good dev practices and management wants to model everything after you, or at least after your former employer. Well, golden boy, stay put and rake in the cash. Should be easy to angle into a management job assuming you want that. Maybe the boss thinks he's getting a promotion and is trying to put you as his protege.
2) They started so small they didn't need those things. Now they're big, so they hired a guy from a big time operator. Sounds like it won't be too tough to convince them the new big guy comes with a new big VCS or a new big testing system.
3) They're planning on selling / getting out of the field and just need to keep you around until the sale or bankruptcy is final, or they're completely bonkers insane. Run like hell
Also you have to factor in the change difficulty level. Is your team... just you? Then what the heck does the boss care what your VCS is, just roll one out. Is your team also fed up old timers who know better? or is your team all clueless noobs? Will IT slap you on the back and buy you a beer if you install a GIT repo "hub" like gitolite, or take you out back and shoot you? How bout management?
How did you test this stuff? both mechanically, electrically, etc? Big homemade wind tunnel, or did you freeze the electronics in dry ice to see what happens, or ?
Also if you intend to have the landing within 3 miles, like this guy did, the balloons would have to climb darn near supersonic to get up there before they drift sideways too far.
Also the gyrostabilizers or whatever to launch it when its pointed perfectly up are going to be very complicated / heavy / expensive.
Finally you have to limit the rocket design to tolerate / survive getting tangled in balloon lines.
balloon launching just kinda sucks as an engineering design, when its so much simpler to just make a larger rocket.
Tripoli or NAR for YOUR sanctioning / certfication body, and in comparison you'd recommend to a noob to start with Tripoli or NAR? Or is the experience with both groups so similar its kinda like miller lite vs bud lite (gotta look at the label to tell them apart)
The pictures on his web site show an APRS transmitter.
That means somewhere out there is a findu.com link to lookat it... assuming at altitude he was within range of an igate, which even at altitude might be a challenge in the middle of nowhere. Anyone have the link at findu.com?
I looked at your website pictures; clean shop (cleaner than mine, anyway); Curious what type of equipment you used to build it... I see a bridgeport-style knee milling machine, a large unidentifiable lathe with a quick change toolpost. Chinese or classic American heavy iron? Nice smoke off the carbide (carbide, unlike HSS, can be pushed hard enough to make the cutting oil burn without wearing the cutting edge) Looks like all manual machines, no CNC? TIG welding the aluminum or ? Did you CAD it all up or build as you get parts? Is something like this rocket light enough to manhandle around the shop or are their engine cranes involved, or a custom cradle of sorts?
When people ask what you do in your spare time. How do you answer them without their eyes glazing over? Or worse listening to you intently then asking you join their Militia or just reporting you to the FBI?
Closely related, you must work with the BATF at these levels; I know that personally from my much smaller work decades ago back when a "G" size engine was a big deal... Anyway, the BATF is famous for trying to run an undercover op of gun smuggling that is so big that they "took over" the entire market such that all illegal gun traffic came from the BATF itself. The reason for bringing this up, is I wonder if the BATF guys ever tried to entrap you or lure you into a conspiracy WRT to storage and use of rocket propellant? At least, that you can report publicly.
Also from talking to balloon guys, the speed limit would not be applicable on the way down, and the altitude at which they "cut back in" is high enough that long distance reception is still pretty easy (its not like they cut out at 1000 feet AGL). I have not heard of any GPS engine/module that required power cycling when limits were exceeded, soft fail...
How has the relationship with the ATF and other government agencies affected amateur rocketry since 9/11?
Thats pretty well documented, with them F-ing around for about a decade until the courts told them to cut it out just a year or two ago. Much better now.
I'd be interested in his personal experiences with the BATFE.
Every action does not need to have a direct evolutionary benefit. For example humans still have sex long after they have lost their reproductive ability.
Not seeing the logic there of no direct benefit, or not seeing any proof that it provides a net no benefit. Can't do it long distance so sex means the partners stick together. Keeping parents around and together and thinking about kids, even if they can't have more kids, clearly increases offspring (and offspring of offspring) survival rate... If you postulate the maternal instinct would keep ma around, then ma keeps pa around, and pa drags home the occasional wolly mammoth for the (grand)kids to eat, its pretty hard to argue the grandkids would be better off without the wise old hunter..
Or just tribal cohesion. Old hunters and old gathers obviously are the most experienced in their craft, not a huge jump to assume they'd be the best at their craft, and you need some "lure" to get them to hang around the young idiots and keep the fools alive until the fools are the wise old people... The traditional brains vs brawn teamwork is not necessarily the only possible partnership. The old guy who can bag a mammoth whenever he wants or the old lady who knows all the hidden berry bushes don't technically need the rest of the tribe, but if they pair up, at least the old couple has something fun to do around the campfire at night.
Slashdot Mirror
Here you go http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/434?vs=363.
Doesn't mention features at all. Doesn't even filter by socket type much less manufacturer. I am trying to burn thru the marketing and figure out the fastest CPU to buy that supports virtualization for $X on my motherboard of choice.
I'm thinking an expert system where I tell it "Intel, Socket B, virtualization mandatory, gimme the performance vs price table, and if you must narrow it down, narrow it down to sub-$300 please".
I can probably do this by hand in at most a couple hours of work, which is worth a couple bucks for a website to do it for me.
Specifically I Really Wanna Run KVM or Xen, so if some obscure model simply won't work with the linux/KVM then I'm totally uninterested. For example, I know only certain MBs support USB passthru, so I'm exclusively interested in the CPUs supported by those MBs, furthermore I have to make sure that the virtualization features have not been lasered off.
Don't much care if there exists a chunk of silicon that is faster yet completely unusable for me. Just don't care. Much like my first criteria for a mythtv FE card is "does it work with vdpau" and I have zero interest in a "better" card that does not support vdpau. Marketing wants to "help" me by having the name of the card include the word "sniper", or by placing a picture of a girl in a chainmail bikini on the box, so they're useless (marketing, not the chainmail girl)
Its almost as much of a pain in the ass as buying a car...
"Sony suspended 93,000 user accounts
'less than one tenth of one percent' of the networks' users
Sony has over 93 million accounts? ... ?
As far as I know only about 50 million PS3s have been sold, some to upgraders / replacers / theft or fire insurance claims, so there's probably less than 50 million PS3 user accounts.
The other 50 million or so accounts are
Does anybody have an idea how the price/performance comparisons change(if in fact they do) from the pure-benchmark ones given in TFAs, if the buyer requires that all the relevant virtualization features be enabled?
If I were to set up a business to do this, to cut thru the incredibly frustrating marketing from both chip manufacturers in exchange for a small cut of the price, would I currently have any competition?
The point of a confuse-opoly like CPUs or american cellphone contracts is to screw over the buyer by confusing them. Aside from screwing over the buyers, it also creates a business opportunity for someone to intermediate themselves while un-screw-up-ing the marketplace.
The general class of idea is something like a CPU buyers expert system. One UI idea is something like a graph titled "Intel-based Virtualization CPUs" with price as Y axis and performance as X axis and click on the datapoint to order a CPU.
I'm envisioning my price mark up to be about equivalent to buying me a beer at the bar (plenty of people would answer your question for free, if you'd buy me a beer at the next computer conference / bar / whatever, but my magic web site is 24x7 and accessible everywhere)
As with many businesses, it seems too obvious, that there must be multiple competitors. But apparently their marketing sucks so bad I've never heard of them.
Of course, if the generator was based on a public/private key system instead of block cipher (ie, encrypting the time stamp using the private key), then there would be no need for the private 'seed' to be stored anywhere outside of the security token. The number would be a digitally signed timestamp.
Check the patent situation for the reason why you can't do that.
Companies (generally) don't do snake oil accidentally...
The only alternative is if Opera can patent the ideas.
What about the kindle? Their "invention" is basically the kindle experimental web browser. Pull up /., use the side buttons to scroll thru distinct pages... I've seen it demoed but not used it.
Basically its a e-ink simulator for LCD screens.
Note that I'm a "page up page down" reader. smooth scrolling extensively on a ipad makes me literally seasick because everything in my field of vision is moving but my inner ear disagrees. I would love a "page up page down" button for an ipad. Supposedly flicking the screen works ... about 60% of the time... too frustrating to use.
Will IT slap you on the back and buy you a beer if you install a GIT repo "hub" like gitolite, or take you out back and shoot you?
Thats pretty much a universal 'take you out back and shoot you' response, unless of course you talk to them about it first.
You don't start fucking around on someones network without talking to them first. When you are at work its not YOUR PC or YOUR NETWORK or anything of YOURS, its THEIRS, and you should be respectful of the fact that you don't know everything going on and you clearly are not a system admin so you know even less about whats going on with their systems.
I've heard there are places like that, but everywhere I have worked, there has always been a "engineering network" or "dev net" or whatever with the IT guys firewalling it off from their stuff pretending that lan was as toxic as the internet, no open ports, no static nat, no access across the fw at all either direction without some sort of ticket or project being filed. I'm guessing a place that is so backwards they don't even have a VCS system, might not have something as advanced as a physically separate "dev net". Also I worked at one financial vertical integrator that had multiple "customer service" nets where an entire customer site could be replicated by customer service for customer service purposes using a mainframe and VM/MVS images (pretty much like vmware now, except it was the very early 90s and token ring was everywhere). And there was the nagios powered place that had a firewalled off "burn in net" where nagios pinged the heck out of the entire /27 and logged all changes and anyone from any dept could plug anything into it (with the idea that if the gadget stopped responding to pings during 24 hours, then it failed burn in testing), so we had everything from ITs desktops burning in, to outside plant UPS monitors burning in.
Most "real" IT departments already have an extensively firewalled "test net" for their own purposes... Given a possibly infected laptop you don't stick it on the main lan, but on a special little highly monitored "test net", possibly with no access other than to the internet for software patches and updates. The concept of a nearly identical "test net" for the devs is not going to be a huge conceptual leap for them. Then again as above, the kind of place that hasn't discovered VCS probably takes laptops infected with the modern equivalent of "sql slammer" and drops them right into the database cluster LAN....
I'm hot for a 3d printer because I want to print foundry patterns. They are a PITA to make by hand, its agonizing when one breaks while ramming the sand around it, getting the sprue placement, draft allowance, and shrinkage factor correct is a struggle, and the only way to share foundry patterns involves UPS and shipping costs. On the other hand, if I could just print up some internet dude's perfectly optimized pattern... Doesn't help with cores, and things like shake mean the ideal shared pattern is probably going to be bigger than it technically has to be...
So there is a place for a 3d printer in a machine shop or even a rocket makers machine shop. In a standard issue hipsters living room next to the Steve Jobs shrine, eh I donno about all that.
Yes before "circle sharing" was added to G+ people used to just circle everyone in one of Uncle Leo's posts. I would imagine you've been circled by at least some people after that.
do you think it would be good for the game?
It would be bad because only a couple extremely well financed and large organizations could bribe the ump by reprogramming it, instead of the current system where anybody with cash can do it. Essentially, interference with a free market is gonna screw it up. I'm not sure why anyone other than the mob will benefit from this change.
It could do "strike" "ball" but they will still need a human there anyway to enforce other rules "wait a second, that isn't an approved kind of bat" "the catcher called the batter a n-word to distract him during the pitch, mandatory walk" or "the batter intentionally spit upon the catcher, ejection from game" or whatever other obscure rules they have.
Historically rotary engines had huge pollution issues. Plenty of HC output, not just from leaky oil seals. ... turbine engines have much better power to weight ratios (although horrible idling losses).
Rotaries have a market position problem
so there will be calls for a new space station to give this next generation "shuttle" a reason for existing.
Funny you should mention the OPSEK... built partially out of parts of the ISS. What happens if the russian repo man tries to remove "their" parts of the ISS to install them on the OPSEK and "we" aren't ready to deorbit the ISS? This will be interesting...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPSEK
You forgot to mention your ticketing system, or whatever it is you use to track bugs and customer requests. Negative points if that is "nothing at all" or "the salesman promises the customer whatever they want to hear". Positive points if its some kind of request tracker ... you know, like that Request Tracker system...
Other places use, essentially, manual ticketing by to do lists. Or a use Excel as the corporate standard DBMS and store their bugs in a spreadsheet. Some places use email, not as crazy as it sounds. A "workflow management" system using Lotus Notes will cause horrific pain, but is technically usable.
I've never even heard of places using formal project planning systems like microsoft project and GNATT charts and all that, but I suppose it could theoretically happen.
I would stay away from GIT and other system popular in the blogosphere and go with SVN as it is tried and true
We ran from svn fast as we could because its dying... git has taken over, like it or not. Your quote sounds like something fresh outta 2006, but that was a long time ago.
All git pullers have essentially a full backup of the repo. All pullers are what other VCS would call a hub. With SVN you need a backup and availability strategy for the SVN hub, if the hub is down you're dead in the water, but not with GIT. With GIT you still need offsite offline backups, etc, but level of admin work is much lower.
Worst case scenario, post tornado or whatever, bootstrapping is easier with GIT than SVN.
Never forget if you're going to admin something, to admin it correctly. Even if you're a "dev". There's a lot more than just "apt-get install" you also need to backup, have a disaster recovery plan / strategy, monitoring...
It is unusual for a software shop
Assuming its a software shop... I've never worked in one, but I have some decades doing dev work as basically a tool maker at a couple places. The guy's description sounds like a lot of embedded places I've worked where "things just kinda got out of hand" after starting as such simple little projects.
One minute you're basically writing a one page web cgi front end for "grep" and it seems like next thing you know, you're creating a giant data warehouse and statistical analysis system, wtf?
56 posts so far and no one asked why? This is the crucial question.
1) They hired you specifically because YOU know good dev practices and management wants to model everything after you, or at least after your former employer. Well, golden boy, stay put and rake in the cash. Should be easy to angle into a management job assuming you want that. Maybe the boss thinks he's getting a promotion and is trying to put you as his protege.
2) They started so small they didn't need those things. Now they're big, so they hired a guy from a big time operator. Sounds like it won't be too tough to convince them the new big guy comes with a new big VCS or a new big testing system.
3) They're planning on selling / getting out of the field and just need to keep you around until the sale or bankruptcy is final, or they're completely bonkers insane. Run like hell
Also you have to factor in the change difficulty level. Is your team... just you? Then what the heck does the boss care what your VCS is, just roll one out. Is your team also fed up old timers who know better? or is your team all clueless noobs? Will IT slap you on the back and buy you a beer if you install a GIT repo "hub" like gitolite, or take you out back and shoot you? How bout management?
How did you test this stuff? both mechanically, electrically, etc? Big homemade wind tunnel, or did you freeze the electronics in dry ice to see what happens, or ?
Also if you intend to have the landing within 3 miles, like this guy did, the balloons would have to climb darn near supersonic to get up there before they drift sideways too far.
Also the gyrostabilizers or whatever to launch it when its pointed perfectly up are going to be very complicated / heavy / expensive.
Finally you have to limit the rocket design to tolerate / survive getting tangled in balloon lines.
balloon launching just kinda sucks as an engineering design, when its so much simpler to just make a larger rocket.
Did you use integrated all in one design software, or a buncha spreadsheets, or a buncha equations in octave/matlab/mathematica, or paper -n- pencil?
In light of above answer, complete this sentence: My project would have been easier for me if the computer/technical/nerdy guys on /. "did this" ...
Inappropriate answer would be "DDOS the BATF" or "launch cowboy neal" I guess I'm expecting software development ideas.
Tripoli or NAR for YOUR sanctioning / certfication body, and in comparison you'd recommend to a noob to start with Tripoli or NAR? Or is the experience with both groups so similar its kinda like miller lite vs bud lite (gotta look at the label to tell them apart)
The pictures on his web site show an APRS transmitter.
That means somewhere out there is a findu.com link to lookat it... assuming at altitude he was within range of an igate, which even at altitude might be a challenge in the middle of nowhere. Anyone have the link at findu.com?
I looked at your website pictures; clean shop (cleaner than mine, anyway); Curious what type of equipment you used to build it... I see a bridgeport-style knee milling machine, a large unidentifiable lathe with a quick change toolpost. Chinese or classic American heavy iron? Nice smoke off the carbide (carbide, unlike HSS, can be pushed hard enough to make the cutting oil burn without wearing the cutting edge) Looks like all manual machines, no CNC? TIG welding the aluminum or ? Did you CAD it all up or build as you get parts? Is something like this rocket light enough to manhandle around the shop or are their engine cranes involved, or a custom cradle of sorts?
When people ask what you do in your spare time. How do you answer them without their eyes glazing over? Or worse listening to you intently then asking you join their Militia or just reporting you to the FBI?
Closely related, you must work with the BATF at these levels; I know that personally from my much smaller work decades ago back when a "G" size engine was a big deal... Anyway, the BATF is famous for trying to run an undercover op of gun smuggling that is so big that they "took over" the entire market such that all illegal gun traffic came from the BATF itself. The reason for bringing this up, is I wonder if the BATF guys ever tried to entrap you or lure you into a conspiracy WRT to storage and use of rocket propellant? At least, that you can report publicly.
Also from talking to balloon guys, the speed limit would not be applicable on the way down, and the altitude at which they "cut back in" is high enough that long distance reception is still pretty easy (its not like they cut out at 1000 feet AGL). I have not heard of any GPS engine/module that required power cycling when limits were exceeded, soft fail...
How has the relationship with the ATF and other government agencies affected amateur rocketry since 9/11?
Thats pretty well documented, with them F-ing around for about a decade until the courts told them to cut it out just a year or two ago. Much better now.
I'd be interested in his personal experiences with the BATFE.
Every action does not need to have a direct evolutionary benefit. For example humans still have sex long after they have lost their reproductive ability.
Not seeing the logic there of no direct benefit, or not seeing any proof that it provides a net no benefit. Can't do it long distance so sex means the partners stick together. Keeping parents around and together and thinking about kids, even if they can't have more kids, clearly increases offspring (and offspring of offspring) survival rate... If you postulate the maternal instinct would keep ma around, then ma keeps pa around, and pa drags home the occasional wolly mammoth for the (grand)kids to eat, its pretty hard to argue the grandkids would be better off without the wise old hunter..
Or just tribal cohesion. Old hunters and old gathers obviously are the most experienced in their craft, not a huge jump to assume they'd be the best at their craft, and you need some "lure" to get them to hang around the young idiots and keep the fools alive until the fools are the wise old people... The traditional brains vs brawn teamwork is not necessarily the only possible partnership. The old guy who can bag a mammoth whenever he wants or the old lady who knows all the hidden berry bushes don't technically need the rest of the tribe, but if they pair up, at least the old couple has something fun to do around the campfire at night.