...but speaking as someone who happens to work down the street from the Johnson Spaceflight Center (for a major aerospace company), I can tell you that while the approach towards recruiting an astronaut is a little unusual, it is what you should expect for a government job nowadays. Gone are the days of NASA going to the Air Force and saying "give us two dozen of your best and brightest who you think might make good astronauts", and it's a major competition.
Just look at the required qualification just to even get your application looked at (and they WILL look at those applications.) Got an IT degree? Disqualified off the bat. Got a degree in astronomy or electrical engineering? You've passed the first qualification. Flown fighter jets? Good! Haven't flown, but been in charge of hard research or development? That'll work. Pass the physical? Think you can fit into the Soyuz spacecraft? Hey, you've got a shot.
Truth is, I expect 95% of the applications to hit the bit bucket within the first pass. Meaning that I fully expect only 400-500 real applications to have to be considered by NASA, the rest not even deserving the postage for a response. As geeky as it might seem to apply, I know I can't meet the minimum requirements listed, so why bother? (I'd have better luck applying for a position in Antarctica, to be honest.)
First off, I have been running a Windows-based system for a number of years now. I am comfortable to a large extent with Windows, and tend to maintain it much more routinely than the average user. I also tend to be heavily security-conscious through the use of anti-virus software and firewalls (both hardware and software related) in order to minimize the exposure of my system to the outside world. From a software standpoint, I only install software that I am familiar with (either through reputation or through work) and do not install a lot of frivolous software such as toolbars and 'system speedup utilities' that ordinary users tend to do with alarming regularity.
This isn't to say that I haven't worked with other operating systems. Over the last 20 years I've worked with MacOS (classic), Mac OS X, SuSE, Red Hat, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, BeOS, Open Solaris, UnixWare, Ubuntu, and probably a half dozen others I can't think of right at the moment. I maintain a bootable version of Fedora on an old PATA drive as a "just in case" device, booting it once a month to get patches and updates... but I don't use it as a primary OS, just a backup OS.
Likely the main reason is that Windows works just well enough that I feel that I can do what I want to do without too much hassle. Yes, I know that there are programs that can come close to the quality of a Windows package, but close isn't good enough in some cases. Yes, I know there's packages like CodeWeavers and Wine that will let you run most Windows software, but they won't let you run *all* Windows software, and the chances are the one package you really need to work is the one that won't under Wine. I do have to give the Apple folks credit for their implementation of Unix with Mac OS X, if I really needed to I can get under the hood and compile the one or two applications that I do like from the Unix/Linux world. But it still wouldn't be enough for me to move 100% away from Windows.
I don't like everything with Windows, much as I don't like everything with Linux or OS X. But at least I can find some value in each OS, they do have their place in the computing world, and for someone like myself, that's perfectly fine.
There has been a competition between the Perth Mint (which is separate from the Royal Australian Mint) and the Royal Canadian Mint for some time now. The RCM held the record for the largest gold coin (which was 100kg in weight), beating the European Austrian Mint's 31kg gold coin. The difference is that the RCM coin was actually sold to at least one buyer, while the Perth Mint's coin is more for show than for actual collecting.
And no doubt the RCM folks are already planning to find some way to top the Perth Mint's coin.
[Disclaimer: I do not work for any of the mint's mentioned, I'm just a collector of coins. I find it hard enough to justify to myself buying a 5oz silver coin, much less something in the 1+kg range.]
To be totally honest, I don't really care that much about mobile payment, or buying anything with my cellphone. I don't plan to do so, and would object if they suddenly decide to try and force such a service on me.
But then again, when I purchased my cellphone and my service, I was purchasing a phone. Which is what I own. I do not have a smartphone, an iPhone, an Android, or any of the recent offerings. I have no interest in being able to read my email wherever I am, could care less about texting, already have an MP3 player, don't want or need a web browser, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook or any other applet on my phone. I want a cellPHONE, to place and receive calls, and that's it.
Just because I work in the computer industry doesn't mean I automatically want every shiny! new toy that comes out. I need a good reason for having anything like that, and since I already have a computer for things I do at home, a netbook for travel, and that's it. If I go out to dinner, I want to enjoy dinner, not respond to people as I see far too many doing today. The same for going to a movie, spending time with friends, or just enjoying myself... I don't want an electronic tether that folks can yank on. If you can't bother to call me voice, then you're not worth responding to at that moment and that's all there is to it.
This (the ability to buy with your cellphone) is just another "feature" that isn't necessary, but the phone companies are going to push it on us whether we want it or not.
When Atlantis went up to the ISS a few months ago, the decision was made to have a smaller than usual crew. Instead of seven astronauts, only four flew up on Atlantis, while the rest of the mission was a resupply job. Officially, close to a year's worth of supplies were taken up to the ISS, giving it the ability to have just what happened occur, the loss of a supply capsule.
Now, this was one of the first failures of a Progress capsule. Considering that the rocket the Russians use has a 98.5% success rate (12 failures out of 799 launches) this is only a temporary setback. As has been noted elsewhere, the likelihood is that the Russians will get another Progress capsule up into orbit soon (there is a scheduled manned launch on 21 September and 29 November, and a Progress resupply on 26 October and 27 December). In addition, we have SpaceX doing a dock with their Dragon capsule, and I wouldn't be surprised if they launch it with supplies as well.
So no, I doubt that despite the sensationalized headlines that the ISS will be abandoned anytime soon.
[Disclaimer: I work for a prime contractor on the ISS, but the statements made are of my own observations.]
It's a security issue. The iPhone and iPad are not exactly stellar when it comes to Enterprise-level security. And you have to remember that the devices do not belong to the end users, it belongs to the company and it should be the company's decision as to what is allowed to be loaded on the device and what isn't.
This is no different than locking down a laptop so that unauthorized software cannot be loaded on the laptop unless it comes from a company-run and provided website/service. I wouldn't want the end users to have the ability to load whatever piece of crudware on their machines, and I don't want to see an iPhone being filled with games and useless applets simply because the end user could do it. It's company hardware, and the company has the right to say what's allowed on their networks and their devices.
Where I work, we (meaning the IT support people) have been dreading the rumblings of having iPhones and iPads approved for use within the company. The biggest fear was that the security folks would try to lock down the devices, and having to listen to people complaining that they couldn't load music and applications, blaming us for the resulting mess. But this would not only help us in being able to remind folks that the devices are company devices, but that instead of having to deal with iTunes on the machine, we'd have a much simpler interface to work with.
From my perspective, this would be a perfect way to go. People get their iPhones, but the company can keep them secured and still provide a limited number of applications (business related) that they can utilize. And we don't have to worry about iTunes and the resulting messes that would make supporting their machines a major hassle.
I have usually been quite prepared for a disaster, consider the number of storms that I have been through. From Hurricane Betsy (1965) and Camille (1969) to more recent storms such as Hurricane Ivan (2004) and Katrina (2005), you learn that being prepared is always the best plan. For example:
Living in northwest Florida, there are not many routes that can take you out of a potential hurricane landfall area. You have Interstate 10 and US 90 and 98 that go east-west, but the only major roads north-south are either past Tallahassee or Mobile. And by major I mean Interstate highways capable of handling some of the traffic levels you can see during an evacuation. For New Orleans and Southeast Louisiana, evacuation routes can (and do) become over-saturated, and you can find yourself going only 80 miles in 12 hours if you wait too long.
If you decide to stick it out, you're better off having already stocked up on supplies, such as water, canned foods and other essentials for surviving the storm. Owning a gas-powered generator means also having some gas stored somewhere safe, to provide power for the absolute essentials (and I'm speaking of power to run the fridge and a fan for cooling, not your computer system here.) Oddly enough, cellphones will become useless as many towers will be damaged or destroyed by the storm, but a land-based line (the plain old telephone) will continue to be available.
Once the storm is over and you're stuck in that time between services being brought back up (power was out for a week during Ivan where I was living previously) you can try to get additional supplies. Some stores will manage to get back operational such as Wal-Mart and Publix, but with only limited offerings to the public. And you will have disaster relief services coming in such as the Red Cross and National Guard, bring in supplies such as bottled/canned water and MREs. Just don't count on them as your sole source of supplies, however.
Unfortunately, you also have to deal with your workplace, and depending on the kind of business they are, you might be required to be back to work within days of the storm passing. In my case, Ivan passed on Wednesday night and Thursday, and I had to be back to work on Monday to help in getting the worksite back up and operational.
I've moved since then to the Texas coastline, which means I still need to take precautions for hurricanes. Can't seem to get away from the Gulf...
The key word there in that article is *could* give residents the chance to see the aurora. If you look at the chart on the Solar Cycle Progression and Prediction webpage (http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/) then you'll notice that the predicted sunspot activity and the actual activity are still very far apart. Additionally, the predicted maximum sunspot number is going to be well below the past two cycles (1991 hitting a sunspot number of 147, and 200/2001 hitting a high of 120. For this cycle, they're predicting a high of only 90 for the sunspot number, a level that hasn't been that low since the 1880's.
So while it is possible that folks south of 45 degrees latitude might see the aurora, it'll have to be courtesy of a really strong CME (coronal mass ejection) aimed in our general direction. Otherwise, it'll probably be a rather boring solar cycle 24.
This is true, but the resolution is not going to be at the same level as the images you see on television or online. NOAA does provide guides for anyone with the equipment to receive the transmissions. Still, it is a fun kind of receiving watching an image appear on the screen one line at a time. (I'm old enough to remember when the transmissions were more like a fax signal, a fax being exactly what was hooked to the receiver to generate the image.)
There is a way to do this, using a Molniya type orbit pattern. Three satellites in a Molniya orbit would give you 24 hour coverage over the high altitudes and polar regions, but in order to use such data you'd need at least two ground stations tracking the satellites constantly. It's just much easier to view the earth from a geosynchronous orbit instead and not worry about polar information so much.
TIROS 1 was one of those major milestones that we take for granted today. With today's coverage via the GOES and POES (Polar Orbiting Environment Satellite, along with the older ESSA and NIMBUS satellite systems from the mid 1960's and 1970's) weather forecasting took a giant step forward from the late 1950's to today. Just as an example, take hurricane forecasting. Back in the 1950's and early 1960's, discovery of a hurricane forming would have been from a ship report in the Gulf of Mexico, reports from the Leeward Islands, or a Hurricane Hunter randomly coming across the storm during routine patrols. Once satellites were added into the mix, the discovery of the storm became easier with increased advance notice for populated areas. What used to be 12 hours warning for an area (New Orleans, Hurricane Betsy 1965) became 35 hours warning (New Orleans/Biloxi, Hurricane Katrina, 2005). This made a significant difference not only in being able forecast the movement of the storms, but also to get the warnings out to evacuate people and save lives.
The weather satellite is perhaps the best example of how our technology has improved our lifestyle overall.
Let me state that at the company I work for, disk encryption is *MANDATORY* for all computer systems, including servers. In addition, encryption is also mandatory for anything being saved to removable media (read thumb drives, portable hard drives, but not CD and DVD media), and that digital rights management is installed for email so that you can protect a message by restricting it to only those recipients and prevent (or at least mitigate) the ability to copy that message.
Admittedly this does make my job of supporting the systems more complicated, as previously if the operating system suffered a failure, I could still access the user's data. Today, the odds of being able to decrypt the drive (yes, there is a procedure for it) and recover data is slim... and if the user didn't install/use the company data backup software that is provided to them, then their data is lost.
But all these requirements are for the company's safety, not necessarily the user's.
They happen any season, though the highest frequency is during the summer months they have been known to happen even in wintertime, and in those cases are even more dangerous (trying to find a grayish-white funnel with grayish-white clouds and white snow covered ground while snowing is extremely difficult). Basically any combining of cold dry air with warm humid air has a potential for creating tornados and funnel-clouds. In winter, such combinations are often what bring on your basic snow storms.
In the south, winter is the most dangerous time when it comes to tornadoes. For example, just from February, 2008, there were 12 killer tornadoes with 59 fatalities. Snow had nothing to do with it, there were your average supercell thunderstorms combined with warm, humid air from the Gulf mixing to create a dangerous situation.
A few additional comments from someone who has lived in both Tornado Alley and Hurricane Central (aka the Gulf Coast):
1. Are tornadoes really that dangerous?
Yes that can be very dangerous, capable of rendering concrete building to rubble in seconds.
Even an EF0 tornado (which is viewed as incredibly weak) can do substantial damage to small buildings, mobile homes, and vehicles.
However they tend to very erratic, they can destroy one house, leave the next door house intact and destroy the one after that.
Part of that is due to the tornado having multiple vortices, where you can have a weak vortex and inside is a much stronger vortex. See Xenia, Ohio, 1974 for an explanation.
2. Why don't people live away from where tornadoes exist?
The United States just happens to have the exact sort of geographic and weather patterns that are very conducive for tornadoes to spawn. Again, see April, 1974 for an extreme (but surprisingly common) example of a tornado outbreak.
3. Are tornadoes all that dangerous?
All tornadoes have the potential of being dangerous. Even if it's in open farmland, or a forest area, a tornado still can cause damage, and even death. (See Iowa, June 2008 and the death of 4 at a Boy Scout Camp)
4. Can they occur at night?
While tornadoes can occur at any hour of the day, there are two general periods of time when tornadoes are more likely. For what is called Tornado Alley (Texas through the Dakotas) the most likely time is in the afternoon hours into the early evening. But for what might be called Dixie Alley (which is the southestern US) the most likely times are from 10pm to 5am in the mornings.
I'm not a meteorologist, but I did for a few years study meteorology with an intent to go into the career field.
I work with Dell hardware every day as part of my job. [The company I work for is about 99% Dell-centric when it comes to desktops and laptops.] As such, I have had to deal with a lot of Dell issues in the past, such as the GX270 motherboard problem (we haven't quite gotten to swapping out all of the system boards, but it's been a fair number), and the previous recalls of batteries from Dell. In the previous recall, it was the C600/C610 notebooks that were affected, not their current generation of systems. But still, there is a question of quality at times. The only good is that we can have a replacement on hand in most cases within 24 hours, if the device failed in some way. With the battery recall, we're being told we have to follow the same instructions if we have 1 battery or 100 batteries to send back, the corporate Dell help line is not allowed to process them specifically for the company.
At least in our case we don't have the sort of issues that the average customer is going through. We have a specific phone number to call for tech support, and I'll at least say this much: the techs I work with over the phone won't ask if we've done X to fix the issue. They know if I'm calling up, I've already done X, Y, and Z and it's dead, Jim.
Understand that Connexion was primarily used by long haul (read overseas) airlines. Companies such as Luftansa provided the service for use on many of their flights. The problem was that almost every US airline company did not want to provide the service, even on coast to coast flights. It was a very hard sell, considering that there was (and still is) a very hard push to get cellphone usage approved for use in flight. Why use a guaranteed connection through Connexion when you could simply fire up your wireless adapter from Sprint and hope that you can get a decent enough connection while flying over western Texas, or the Rockies?
Cost certainly was another reason why it wasn't more widely used, but that excuse doesn't fly (pardon the pun) when you consider most corporate flyers are running on expense accounts, and certainly the cost of connecting up can be covered by those accounts. After all, go to Las Vegas and try to find a free wi-fi spot along the Strip, or stay in the hotel and use their Internet services. You'll pay $9.95 a day (or $49.95 a week) for access (and most places are through the television, not wireless). Yes, I know Las Vegas has a wi-fi grid being developed (such as the free access at the airport), but where the hotels are, they have worked hard to keep those free services from being available to the public.
The NOAA link I give above notes that in 1933 there were 21 named storms. So apparently they were recording and naming them seventy years ago. When exactly is it that you're claiming "we only used to record hurricanes"?
Ok, a little correction. Officially, the National Weather Service did not start naming hurricanes until 1953. Prior to that, from 1950 to 1952, they were named after the phonetic alphabet (able, baker, charlie). During World War II and afterwards, they were unofficially named after girlfriends and/or wives.
The first naming of storms was early in the 20th century by an Australian forecaster, who had a habit of naming them after politicians he disliked. But in the Atlantic, storms between 1900 and 1950 were not named. That's why you have names like "The Labor Day storm" in 1935 or the "New England Express" of 1938.
This is unfortunately true. The reason for this is simple: The network tries to route the call first to the area code where the cell phone was registered. Seeing it listed as 504 (for New Orleans) causes the system to try and go to New Orleans first to see if it can connect. With the existing network in tatters the response back is a failure, which instead of making the call do a search to see where the phone is, gets routed to either a message saying 'all circuits are busy' or 'due to the hurricane in the area, your call cannot be completed.'
I talked with a Cingular tech, and he says that the situation is that they are trying to set up the network to find the phone anywhere, but it may be some time before they have it up and running. I'm sure that other cell phone companies are rushing to do the same, so that they can provide connectivity to those who have fled the area and need to call folks to let them know they're alive and safe.
The problem is that in areas such as New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, networks should be designed to handle a maximum number of connections, if simply for handling emergency information. That, or be able to throw a switch (flip a bit) and limit connectivity to only emergency personnel who have specially registered cell phones. In this way, police, fire and rescue personnel would have the ability to communicate and be able to use the phone networks as a backup to their regular networks.
As you've said, a disaster such as Katrina happens every few years. Would you rather have the capacity available so that when the next Katrina (or Camille, Betsy, Ivan, Andrew, $HURRICANE NAME) strikes, you're able to provide what's needed instead of having to try and figure out how to bring in extra equipment into areas where you can't drive/boat/truck into.
I've been through a number of these storms, and one of the most important things that has to be provided is information. People need to know what's going on, and cell phone companies can help out much more than they're doing now. Things like sending out text messages to subscribers in an area informing them of updates, where they can go for shelter, evacuation routes would be a good start. As the capabilities of the phones increase, the celluar companies need to start providing this information as a public service. Certainly Cingular, T-Mobile, Nextel and Alltel could be doing this right now in the affected areas. It certainly wouldn't hurt, and if it saves a person's life, then that's benefit enough in my mind.
> But it's unsightly, can be costly (suitable areas for wind farms are often near the coast, where land is expensive), and is noisy.
Several of the largest wind farms in the United States are located nowhere near the coast. They're located in Iowa. Mostly in nortwest Iowa, to be precise. One of these is the Buena Vista facility outside of Storm Lake Iowa. It provides enough power for most of Buena Vista county. (I should know, Storm Lake is my home town.)
Sometimes you can be amazed at what is being done in places that you least expect. You wouldn't think Iowa to be the third largest wind power generating state, but it is.
Pardon if the memory cells are a little dusty from Hurricane Ivan, but...
Back when the SF Novel "Pegasus In Flight" (by Anne McCaffrey) came out, in the early part of the book was mentioned a businessman/entrepreneur who privately financed his own space program along with other businessmen. This person had his own airline already, and was looking for new horizons.
Now, I'm fairly certain that this person (who I can't remember the name of) is based on Richard Branson. And equally interesting was the launch system is similar to the White Knight/SpaceShip One vehicle being used.
Coincidence? Maybe. But I wouldn't put it past Mr. Branson that he hasn't read "Pegasus In Flight" and decided to try and make it real. Wouldn't be the first time.
Over the last year there have been several unusual hurricane events. The first recorded hurricane in the Atlantic to occur in April was in 2003, along with the first recorded hurricane in December, both breaking long-standing records. This one however is most unusual because of the weather patterns in that part of the world. While they have most of the necessary conditions (warm water, weather systems) the prevailing winds blow from west to east (as opposed to east to west for the North Atlantic tropics), usually tearing systems that could develop into shreads.
This becomes a problem because unlike areas that are used to hurricanes (US, Carribbean, Pacific, Australia, Madagascar) the Brazilians have no experience with tropical systems, so they have no way of knowing what to expect. Having lived through 16 of them (including Betsy in 1965, Camille in 1969 and Andrew in 1992) all I can say is that anyone living in the potential landfall area might want to consider going inland a ways.
A good site to look at is the Naval Research Labs Monterey hurricane page located here:
http://www.nrlmry.navy.mil/tc_pages/tc_home.html
It lists all of the systems they are following, along with a very good collection of satellite images.
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...but speaking as someone who happens to work down the street from the Johnson Spaceflight Center (for a major aerospace company), I can tell you that while the approach towards recruiting an astronaut is a little unusual, it is what you should expect for a government job nowadays. Gone are the days of NASA going to the Air Force and saying "give us two dozen of your best and brightest who you think might make good astronauts", and it's a major competition.
Just look at the required qualification just to even get your application looked at (and they WILL look at those applications.) Got an IT degree? Disqualified off the bat. Got a degree in astronomy or electrical engineering? You've passed the first qualification. Flown fighter jets? Good! Haven't flown, but been in charge of hard research or development? That'll work. Pass the physical? Think you can fit into the Soyuz spacecraft? Hey, you've got a shot.
Truth is, I expect 95% of the applications to hit the bit bucket within the first pass. Meaning that I fully expect only 400-500 real applications to have to be considered by NASA, the rest not even deserving the postage for a response. As geeky as it might seem to apply, I know I can't meet the minimum requirements listed, so why bother? (I'd have better luck applying for a position in Antarctica, to be honest.)
First off, I have been running a Windows-based system for a number of years now. I am comfortable to a large extent with Windows, and tend to maintain it much more routinely than the average user. I also tend to be heavily security-conscious through the use of anti-virus software and firewalls (both hardware and software related) in order to minimize the exposure of my system to the outside world. From a software standpoint, I only install software that I am familiar with (either through reputation or through work) and do not install a lot of frivolous software such as toolbars and 'system speedup utilities' that ordinary users tend to do with alarming regularity.
This isn't to say that I haven't worked with other operating systems. Over the last 20 years I've worked with MacOS (classic), Mac OS X, SuSE, Red Hat, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, BeOS, Open Solaris, UnixWare, Ubuntu, and probably a half dozen others I can't think of right at the moment. I maintain a bootable version of Fedora on an old PATA drive as a "just in case" device, booting it once a month to get patches and updates... but I don't use it as a primary OS, just a backup OS.
Likely the main reason is that Windows works just well enough that I feel that I can do what I want to do without too much hassle. Yes, I know that there are programs that can come close to the quality of a Windows package, but close isn't good enough in some cases. Yes, I know there's packages like CodeWeavers and Wine that will let you run most Windows software, but they won't let you run *all* Windows software, and the chances are the one package you really need to work is the one that won't under Wine. I do have to give the Apple folks credit for their implementation of Unix with Mac OS X, if I really needed to I can get under the hood and compile the one or two applications that I do like from the Unix/Linux world. But it still wouldn't be enough for me to move 100% away from Windows.
I don't like everything with Windows, much as I don't like everything with Linux or OS X. But at least I can find some value in each OS, they do have their place in the computing world, and for someone like myself, that's perfectly fine.
There has been a competition between the Perth Mint (which is separate from the Royal Australian Mint) and the Royal Canadian Mint for some time now. The RCM held the record for the largest gold coin (which was 100kg in weight), beating the European Austrian Mint's 31kg gold coin. The difference is that the RCM coin was actually sold to at least one buyer, while the Perth Mint's coin is more for show than for actual collecting.
And no doubt the RCM folks are already planning to find some way to top the Perth Mint's coin.
[Disclaimer: I do not work for any of the mint's mentioned, I'm just a collector of coins. I find it hard enough to justify to myself buying a 5oz silver coin, much less something in the 1+kg range.]
To be totally honest, I don't really care that much about mobile payment, or buying anything with my cellphone. I don't plan to do so, and would object if they suddenly decide to try and force such a service on me.
But then again, when I purchased my cellphone and my service, I was purchasing a phone. Which is what I own. I do not have a smartphone, an iPhone, an Android, or any of the recent offerings. I have no interest in being able to read my email wherever I am, could care less about texting, already have an MP3 player, don't want or need a web browser, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook or any other applet on my phone. I want a cellPHONE, to place and receive calls, and that's it.
Just because I work in the computer industry doesn't mean I automatically want every shiny! new toy that comes out. I need a good reason for having anything like that, and since I already have a computer for things I do at home, a netbook for travel, and that's it. If I go out to dinner, I want to enjoy dinner, not respond to people as I see far too many doing today. The same for going to a movie, spending time with friends, or just enjoying myself... I don't want an electronic tether that folks can yank on. If you can't bother to call me voice, then you're not worth responding to at that moment and that's all there is to it.
This (the ability to buy with your cellphone) is just another "feature" that isn't necessary, but the phone companies are going to push it on us whether we want it or not.
A couple of notes here:
When Atlantis went up to the ISS a few months ago, the decision was made to have a smaller than usual crew. Instead of seven astronauts, only four flew up on Atlantis, while the rest of the mission was a resupply job. Officially, close to a year's worth of supplies were taken up to the ISS, giving it the ability to have just what happened occur, the loss of a supply capsule.
Now, this was one of the first failures of a Progress capsule. Considering that the rocket the Russians use has a 98.5% success rate (12 failures out of 799 launches) this is only a temporary setback. As has been noted elsewhere, the likelihood is that the Russians will get another Progress capsule up into orbit soon (there is a scheduled manned launch on 21 September and 29 November, and a Progress resupply on 26 October and 27 December). In addition, we have SpaceX doing a dock with their Dragon capsule, and I wouldn't be surprised if they launch it with supplies as well.
So no, I doubt that despite the sensationalized headlines that the ISS will be abandoned anytime soon.
[Disclaimer: I work for a prime contractor on the ISS, but the statements made are of my own observations.]
It's a security issue. The iPhone and iPad are not exactly stellar when it comes to Enterprise-level security. And you have to remember that the devices do not belong to the end users, it belongs to the company and it should be the company's decision as to what is allowed to be loaded on the device and what isn't.
This is no different than locking down a laptop so that unauthorized software cannot be loaded on the laptop unless it comes from a company-run and provided website/service. I wouldn't want the end users to have the ability to load whatever piece of crudware on their machines, and I don't want to see an iPhone being filled with games and useless applets simply because the end user could do it. It's company hardware, and the company has the right to say what's allowed on their networks and their devices.
Where I work, we (meaning the IT support people) have been dreading the rumblings of having iPhones and iPads approved for use within the company. The biggest fear was that the security folks would try to lock down the devices, and having to listen to people complaining that they couldn't load music and applications, blaming us for the resulting mess. But this would not only help us in being able to remind folks that the devices are company devices, but that instead of having to deal with iTunes on the machine, we'd have a much simpler interface to work with. From my perspective, this would be a perfect way to go. People get their iPhones, but the company can keep them secured and still provide a limited number of applications (business related) that they can utilize. And we don't have to worry about iTunes and the resulting messes that would make supporting their machines a major hassle.
I have usually been quite prepared for a disaster, consider the number of storms that I have been through. From Hurricane Betsy (1965) and Camille (1969) to more recent storms such as Hurricane Ivan (2004) and Katrina (2005), you learn that being prepared is always the best plan. For example:
Living in northwest Florida, there are not many routes that can take you out of a potential hurricane landfall area. You have Interstate 10 and US 90 and 98 that go east-west, but the only major roads north-south are either past Tallahassee or Mobile. And by major I mean Interstate highways capable of handling some of the traffic levels you can see during an evacuation. For New Orleans and Southeast Louisiana, evacuation routes can (and do) become over-saturated, and you can find yourself going only 80 miles in 12 hours if you wait too long.
If you decide to stick it out, you're better off having already stocked up on supplies, such as water, canned foods and other essentials for surviving the storm. Owning a gas-powered generator means also having some gas stored somewhere safe, to provide power for the absolute essentials (and I'm speaking of power to run the fridge and a fan for cooling, not your computer system here.) Oddly enough, cellphones will become useless as many towers will be damaged or destroyed by the storm, but a land-based line (the plain old telephone) will continue to be available.
Once the storm is over and you're stuck in that time between services being brought back up (power was out for a week during Ivan where I was living previously) you can try to get additional supplies. Some stores will manage to get back operational such as Wal-Mart and Publix, but with only limited offerings to the public. And you will have disaster relief services coming in such as the Red Cross and National Guard, bring in supplies such as bottled/canned water and MREs. Just don't count on them as your sole source of supplies, however.
Unfortunately, you also have to deal with your workplace, and depending on the kind of business they are, you might be required to be back to work within days of the storm passing. In my case, Ivan passed on Wednesday night and Thursday, and I had to be back to work on Monday to help in getting the worksite back up and operational.
I've moved since then to the Texas coastline, which means I still need to take precautions for hurricanes. Can't seem to get away from the Gulf...
The key word there in that article is *could* give residents the chance to see the aurora. If you look at the chart on the Solar Cycle Progression and Prediction webpage (http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/) then you'll notice that the predicted sunspot activity and the actual activity are still very far apart. Additionally, the predicted maximum sunspot number is going to be well below the past two cycles (1991 hitting a sunspot number of 147, and 200/2001 hitting a high of 120. For this cycle, they're predicting a high of only 90 for the sunspot number, a level that hasn't been that low since the 1880's.
So while it is possible that folks south of 45 degrees latitude might see the aurora, it'll have to be courtesy of a really strong CME (coronal mass ejection) aimed in our general direction. Otherwise, it'll probably be a rather boring solar cycle 24.
This is true, but the resolution is not going to be at the same level as the images you see on television or online. NOAA does provide guides for anyone with the equipment to receive the transmissions. Still, it is a fun kind of receiving watching an image appear on the screen one line at a time. (I'm old enough to remember when the transmissions were more like a fax signal, a fax being exactly what was hooked to the receiver to generate the image.)
There is a way to do this, using a Molniya type orbit pattern. Three satellites in a Molniya orbit would give you 24 hour coverage over the high altitudes and polar regions, but in order to use such data you'd need at least two ground stations tracking the satellites constantly. It's just much easier to view the earth from a geosynchronous orbit instead and not worry about polar information so much.
TIROS 1 was one of those major milestones that we take for granted today. With today's coverage via the GOES and POES (Polar Orbiting Environment Satellite, along with the older ESSA and NIMBUS satellite systems from the mid 1960's and 1970's) weather forecasting took a giant step forward from the late 1950's to today. Just as an example, take hurricane forecasting. Back in the 1950's and early 1960's, discovery of a hurricane forming would have been from a ship report in the Gulf of Mexico, reports from the Leeward Islands, or a Hurricane Hunter randomly coming across the storm during routine patrols. Once satellites were added into the mix, the discovery of the storm became easier with increased advance notice for populated areas. What used to be 12 hours warning for an area (New Orleans, Hurricane Betsy 1965) became 35 hours warning (New Orleans/Biloxi, Hurricane Katrina, 2005). This made a significant difference not only in being able forecast the movement of the storms, but also to get the warnings out to evacuate people and save lives.
The weather satellite is perhaps the best example of how our technology has improved our lifestyle overall.
Let me state that at the company I work for, disk encryption is *MANDATORY* for all computer systems, including servers. In addition, encryption is also mandatory for anything being saved to removable media (read thumb drives, portable hard drives, but not CD and DVD media), and that digital rights management is installed for email so that you can protect a message by restricting it to only those recipients and prevent (or at least mitigate) the ability to copy that message.
Admittedly this does make my job of supporting the systems more complicated, as previously if the operating system suffered a failure, I could still access the user's data. Today, the odds of being able to decrypt the drive (yes, there is a procedure for it) and recover data is slim... and if the user didn't install/use the company data backup software that is provided to them, then their data is lost.
But all these requirements are for the company's safety, not necessarily the user's.
They happen any season, though the highest frequency is during the summer months they have been known to happen even in wintertime, and in those cases are even more dangerous (trying to find a grayish-white funnel with grayish-white clouds and white snow covered ground while snowing is extremely difficult). Basically any combining of cold dry air with warm humid air has a potential for creating tornados and funnel-clouds. In winter, such combinations are often what bring on your basic snow storms.
In the south, winter is the most dangerous time when it comes to tornadoes. For example, just from February, 2008, there were 12 killer tornadoes with 59 fatalities. Snow had nothing to do with it, there were your average supercell thunderstorms combined with warm, humid air from the Gulf mixing to create a dangerous situation.
A few additional comments from someone who has lived in both Tornado Alley and Hurricane Central (aka the Gulf Coast):
1. Are tornadoes really that dangerous? Yes that can be very dangerous, capable of rendering concrete building to rubble in seconds.
Even an EF0 tornado (which is viewed as incredibly weak) can do substantial damage to small buildings, mobile homes, and vehicles.
However they tend to very erratic, they can destroy one house, leave the next door house intact and destroy the one after that.
Part of that is due to the tornado having multiple vortices, where you can have a weak vortex and inside is a much stronger vortex. See Xenia, Ohio, 1974 for an explanation.
2. Why don't people live away from where tornadoes exist?
The United States just happens to have the exact sort of geographic and weather patterns that are very conducive for tornadoes to spawn. Again, see April, 1974 for an extreme (but surprisingly common) example of a tornado outbreak.
3. Are tornadoes all that dangerous?
All tornadoes have the potential of being dangerous. Even if it's in open farmland, or a forest area, a tornado still can cause damage, and even death. (See Iowa, June 2008 and the death of 4 at a Boy Scout Camp)
4. Can they occur at night?
While tornadoes can occur at any hour of the day, there are two general periods of time when tornadoes are more likely. For what is called Tornado Alley (Texas through the Dakotas) the most likely time is in the afternoon hours into the early evening. But for what might be called Dixie Alley (which is the southestern US) the most likely times are from 10pm to 5am in the mornings.
I'm not a meteorologist, but I did for a few years study meteorology with an intent to go into the career field.
I work with Dell hardware every day as part of my job. [The company I work for is about 99% Dell-centric when it comes to desktops and laptops.] As such, I have had to deal with a lot of Dell issues in the past, such as the GX270 motherboard problem (we haven't quite gotten to swapping out all of the system boards, but it's been a fair number), and the previous recalls of batteries from Dell. In the previous recall, it was the C600/C610 notebooks that were affected, not their current generation of systems. But still, there is a question of quality at times. The only good is that we can have a replacement on hand in most cases within 24 hours, if the device failed in some way. With the battery recall, we're being told we have to follow the same instructions if we have 1 battery or 100 batteries to send back, the corporate Dell help line is not allowed to process them specifically for the company.
At least in our case we don't have the sort of issues that the average customer is going through. We have a specific phone number to call for tech support, and I'll at least say this much: the techs I work with over the phone won't ask if we've done X to fix the issue. They know if I'm calling up, I've already done X, Y, and Z and it's dead, Jim.
Understand that Connexion was primarily used by long haul (read overseas) airlines. Companies such as Luftansa provided the service for use on many of their flights. The problem was that almost every US airline company did not want to provide the service, even on coast to coast flights. It was a very hard sell, considering that there was (and still is) a very hard push to get cellphone usage approved for use in flight. Why use a guaranteed connection through Connexion when you could simply fire up your wireless adapter from Sprint and hope that you can get a decent enough connection while flying over western Texas, or the Rockies?
Cost certainly was another reason why it wasn't more widely used, but that excuse doesn't fly (pardon the pun) when you consider most corporate flyers are running on expense accounts, and certainly the cost of connecting up can be covered by those accounts. After all, go to Las Vegas and try to find a free wi-fi spot along the Strip, or stay in the hotel and use their Internet services. You'll pay $9.95 a day (or $49.95 a week) for access (and most places are through the television, not wireless). Yes, I know Las Vegas has a wi-fi grid being developed (such as the free access at the airport), but where the hotels are, they have worked hard to keep those free services from being available to the public.
The NOAA link I give above notes that in 1933 there were 21 named storms. So apparently they were recording and naming them seventy years ago. When exactly is it that you're claiming "we only used to record hurricanes"?
Ok, a little correction. Officially, the National Weather Service did not start naming hurricanes until 1953. Prior to that, from 1950 to 1952, they were named after the phonetic alphabet (able, baker, charlie). During World War II and afterwards, they were unofficially named after girlfriends and/or wives.
The first naming of storms was early in the 20th century by an Australian forecaster, who had a habit of naming them after politicians he disliked. But in the Atlantic, storms between 1900 and 1950 were not named. That's why you have names like "The Labor Day storm" in 1935 or the "New England Express" of 1938.
This is unfortunately true. The reason for this is simple: The network tries to route the call first to the area code where the cell phone was registered. Seeing it listed as 504 (for New Orleans) causes the system to try and go to New Orleans first to see if it can connect. With the existing network in tatters the response back is a failure, which instead of making the call do a search to see where the phone is, gets routed to either a message saying 'all circuits are busy' or 'due to the hurricane in the area, your call cannot be completed.'
I talked with a Cingular tech, and he says that the situation is that they are trying to set up the network to find the phone anywhere, but it may be some time before they have it up and running. I'm sure that other cell phone companies are rushing to do the same, so that they can provide connectivity to those who have fled the area and need to call folks to let them know they're alive and safe.
The problem is that in areas such as New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, networks should be designed to handle a maximum number of connections, if simply for handling emergency information. That, or be able to throw a switch (flip a bit) and limit connectivity to only emergency personnel who have specially registered cell phones. In this way, police, fire and rescue personnel would have the ability to communicate and be able to use the phone networks as a backup to their regular networks.
As you've said, a disaster such as Katrina happens every few years. Would you rather have the capacity available so that when the next Katrina (or Camille, Betsy, Ivan, Andrew, $HURRICANE NAME) strikes, you're able to provide what's needed instead of having to try and figure out how to bring in extra equipment into areas where you can't drive/boat/truck into.
I've been through a number of these storms, and one of the most important things that has to be provided is information. People need to know what's going on, and cell phone companies can help out much more than they're doing now. Things like sending out text messages to subscribers in an area informing them of updates, where they can go for shelter, evacuation routes would be a good start. As the capabilities of the phones increase, the celluar companies need to start providing this information as a public service. Certainly Cingular, T-Mobile, Nextel and Alltel could be doing this right now in the affected areas. It certainly wouldn't hurt, and if it saves a person's life, then that's benefit enough in my mind.
> But it's unsightly, can be costly (suitable areas for wind farms are often near the coast, where land is expensive), and is noisy.
Several of the largest wind farms in the United States are located nowhere near the coast. They're located in Iowa. Mostly in nortwest Iowa, to be precise. One of these is the Buena Vista facility outside of Storm Lake Iowa. It provides enough power for most of Buena Vista county. (I should know, Storm Lake is my home town.)
Sometimes you can be amazed at what is being done in places that you least expect. You wouldn't think Iowa to be the third largest wind power generating state, but it is.
Pardon if the memory cells are a little dusty from Hurricane Ivan, but...
Back when the SF Novel "Pegasus In Flight" (by Anne McCaffrey) came out, in the early part of the book was mentioned a businessman/entrepreneur who privately financed his own space program along with other businessmen. This person had his own airline already, and was looking for new horizons.
Now, I'm fairly certain that this person (who I can't remember the name of) is based on Richard Branson. And equally interesting was the launch system is similar to the White Knight/SpaceShip One vehicle being used. Coincidence? Maybe. But I wouldn't put it past Mr. Branson that he hasn't read "Pegasus In Flight" and decided to try and make it real. Wouldn't be the first time.
Over the last year there have been several unusual hurricane events. The first recorded hurricane in the Atlantic to occur in April was in 2003, along with the first recorded hurricane in December, both breaking long-standing records. This one however is most unusual because of the weather patterns in that part of the world. While they have most of the necessary conditions (warm water, weather systems) the prevailing winds blow from west to east (as opposed to east to west for the North Atlantic tropics), usually tearing systems that could develop into shreads.
This becomes a problem because unlike areas that are used to hurricanes (US, Carribbean, Pacific, Australia, Madagascar) the Brazilians have no experience with tropical systems, so they have no way of knowing what to expect. Having lived through 16 of them (including Betsy in 1965, Camille in 1969 and Andrew in 1992) all I can say is that anyone living in the potential landfall area might want to consider going inland a ways.
A good site to look at is the Naval Research Labs Monterey hurricane page located here:
http://www.nrlmry.navy.mil/tc_pages/tc_home.html
It lists all of the systems they are following, along with a very good collection of satellite images.