Too bad orbital tracking didn't give enough warning for Iridium to get their bird out of the way. I guess no one is cross checking the orbits of all satellites? I know it is done for the shuttle and space station. (The space station *has* maneuvered to keep away from space junk.)
(Replying to my own post) I have the book in front of me now. Prescription for Disaster is by Joseph J. Trento. My copy is marked "NASA HEADQUARTERS LIBRARY Washington, DC", and contains the business card of a NASA "Manager, Reliability and Quality Assurance" inside.
I bought a copy of the book Prescription for Disaster at a second-hand store. This book details the mistakes and mind-set that led to the Challenger Accident. This book should be required reading at NASA, since those who don't remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
GOOD NEWS: My copy had markings showing it had once belonged to the NASA library.
BAD NEWS: it had been discarded to a thrift store before the Columbia accident, where some of the same mistakes were repeated.
I bought a copy of the book Prescription for Disaster at a second-hand store. This book details the mistakes and mind-set that led to the Challenger Accident. This book should be required reading at NASA, since those who don't remember the past are condemned to repeat it. GOOD NEWS: My copy had markings showing it had once belonged to the NASA library.
BAD NEWS: it had been discarded to a thrift store before the Columbia accident, where some of the same mistakes were repeated.
Yes. The trick is defining the workweek to begin/end at noon on Friday. That way, you still have 40 hours per workweek.
Also, I do like 9/80 at my company. It is consistently cited as one of employee's favorite benefits. It is one less round trip per fortnight, so saves gas & travel time. The days do get a bit long for us older folks, but you young guys should have no problem.
And not just the professional astronomers. There are many amateur astronomers or would-be amateurs, if only they could see some more stars. Light pollution affects more than just astronomers.
Most places in US are now grossly over-lit with poorly designed fixtures. Good lighting design produces less glare, puts the light where we need it, saves energy, and protects helpless animals. (There, don't you feel better.)
Also, note that astronomers prefer the monochromatic lights, because they can block that wavelength easily with a filter at the telescope.
Yes, and it will land in the Magic Kingdom, Walt Disney World, FL.
(Anybody remember the space-junk-will-hit-Disney-World rumor that went around? Was it Skylab? Something like that. )
pixelpusher220, you have it just right. DST is energy-saving theater. It makes folks feeeeel good by fiddling with their clocks. But evidence for energy savings is unconvincing. And in states like Arizona and Florida, you want people coming home in the later evening when it's not so hot.
I've seen a demo of this from
http://www.adapt4.com/ .
This is something they and others have been working on for quite a while.
In their demo, their box can see and avoid other services with or without cooperation from them.
IMHO, there is a lot of hype, but there is lots of potential -- much of the spectrum is vastly underutilized. It is reserved for users who use it only occasionally.
For a while now, I thought a good solution to the captcha problem would be to ask the user to select the "beautiful" image out of a group of faces. I supposed that this was something that couldn't be automated, but apparently that has been solved. Still, it could be extended by asking the user to identify the photo of the "kitten", or the "cute" one, etc.
Now that we have that settled... I want to thank Coke and NBC for showing Sunday's Olympic Basketball match between China and USA with minimal commercials. Good job. Have a coke. The opening ceremony was another matter, however, which was disgracefully and disrespectfully chopped up with commercials every couple of minutes.
I have looked at this... the only dealers are in California. And, technically the Triac is a motorcycle. It does appear to have excellent range. I don't believe it has air conditioning. Here in Florida, that's one of my requirements before I will consider any car.
It seems no electric car is truly available now. Everybody is talking about concept cars, limited production runs, cars that are only available in limited geographic areas and vehicles available to fleets only, and they are promised for 2010. For the Tesla, which is ahead of most, even if you have the 100 K$ burning a hole in your pocket, you better hope you are already on the waiting list, and located in California, or your chances are slim-to-none of getting one. I'm hoping Mercedes will make the electric version of the smart car available in the US. Eventually. Sigh.
- Looking for an Electric Car Before the Gas Price Surge
They'll like the teenage protagonist of the Foundation trilogy. Also, my son loved some of the Asimov robot short stories, even when he was so young I had to read them to him.
Yes, yes, yes. Same answer for someone looking to digitize almost any popular-culture stuff. I get people asking the best way to digitize their favorite vinyl LP record albums. And the usual answer is, it isn't worth your time. Someone has already done it somewhere, and done a better job, and you can get their result for cheap or free. Just buy the CD, download the file, etc. Search very hard before you decide to do it yourself.
Similarly, the best way to restore a faded, scratched, folded family photo? Ask around the family and see if you can find a better copy! That can give much better results than all the Photoshop trickery in the world. I've seen it work.
What is actually truly annoying is all those "mail not received" and "blocked by our spam filter" emails that are out there. Yes. Amazing that TFA doesn't mention "backscatter", "bounceback" or "blowback" spam as a major reason that you may not receive a notice that your mail was not delivered. Many of the more enlightened operators of mail servers have configured them to silently drop messages that cannot be delivered, because otherwise, they are just doubling the number of spam messages flying around, by sending the responses to some innocent person.
See: http://www.backscatterer.org/?target=backscatter
I actually worked on the range safety computer displays back c. 1990. The displays showed the rocket trajectory in 2D plan view and vertical view, with pre-calculated limit lines. Generally, if the rocket went outside the limits, it was to be destroyed. Basic telemetry was provided so the RSO could see if the rocket's engines were still functioning normally. And, post-Challenger, we added a debris data page so it would be easier to find parts of rockets that exploded.
Again, for the shuttle, the destruct units blow the solid rockets and the external tank, but not the orbiter itself -- not that it would matter unless they had already separated from the orbiter somehow.
And I remember that "Flight Termination Unit" in the picture with the 4 red switches. Those buttons with the paper bezel look like some cheesy add-on since then.
I agree with posters who said that this is nothing new -- the range facilities, including range safety, are used for all launches from the cape, manned or unmanned.
...And they've got RF measurement vans that I assume patrol for interfering signals, malicious or otherwise.
I heard that one day the electronics firm (~30 miles from the cape) where I worked got a call:
"Are your antenna guys testing something on XXX MHz?."
"Yes..."
"Well knock it off, we're trying to launch a rocket here, and you're on the destruct frequency."
Thanks for the info guys -- but nothing I can go out and buy in my area yet. The smart EV is only available in Europe, but only as a trial, and not available to the public even there. That's the one that comes closest to what I had in mind -- it's even available as convertible, which is a plus. The range is a bit short, but probably usable. The price of the gas version is cheap enough, but they haven't said what the price of the electric is.
I don't want to hear any more about MPG. That's the wrong question. If it uses gasoline, that's a problem -- not a feature. How about it car makers? Where is my plug-in electric car? I'm ready to buy a plug-in electric car with, say, 100 mile range. That would satisfy over 90% of my trips. For longer trips, you could rent a car and still come out ahead, but we're a three-car family anyway. Maybe a plug-in hybrid could be okay, but those are pretty sparse too.
I do live in Florida, so it does have to have an air conditioner, and achieve the range with the air conditioner turned on.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes! The audio A2DP Bluetooth profile has been such an obvious omission. Car stereos and headphones are ready and waiting for iPhone to catch up here.
That they would smooth the ride more than conventional shock-absorbers is bullshit.
Take a look at this demo and see if you still think it's bullshit.
That comment was moderated insightful?!
Too bad orbital tracking didn't give enough warning for Iridium to get their bird out of the way. I guess no one is cross checking the orbits of all satellites? I know it is done for the shuttle and space station. (The space station *has* maneuvered to keep away from space junk.)
Think your company doesn't have any weird machine names? Try this (from inside the firewall).
nslookup
ls -t A yourdomain.com
This will display the whole list. Interesting?
Naming our embedded "target" machines: Saddam, Fidel, Baghdad, Tripoli, Iran, Iraq
I bought a copy of the book Prescription for Disaster at a second-hand store. This book details the mistakes and mind-set that led to the Challenger Accident. This book should be required reading at NASA, since those who don't remember the past are condemned to repeat it. GOOD NEWS: My copy had markings showing it had once belonged to the NASA library. BAD NEWS: it had been discarded to a thrift store before the Columbia accident, where some of the same mistakes were repeated.
I bought a copy of the book Prescription for Disaster at a second-hand store. This book details the mistakes and mind-set that led to the Challenger Accident. This book should be required reading at NASA, since those who don't remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
GOOD NEWS: My copy had markings showing it had once belonged to the NASA library.
BAD NEWS: it had been discarded to a thrift store before the Columbia accident, where some of the same mistakes were repeated.
Yes. The trick is defining the workweek to begin/end at noon on Friday. That way, you still have 40 hours per workweek.
Also, I do like 9/80 at my company. It is consistently cited as one of employee's favorite benefits. It is one less round trip per fortnight, so saves gas & travel time. The days do get a bit long for us older folks, but you young guys should have no problem.
True story -- a guy bought a white Cadillac at a car auction lit by LPS lights. When he got up the next morning, the damn thing was pink!
And not just the professional astronomers. There are many amateur astronomers or would-be amateurs, if only they could see some more stars. Light pollution affects more than just astronomers.
See http://www.darksky.org/ for guidelines for new lighting installations.
Most places in US are now grossly over-lit with poorly designed fixtures. Good lighting design produces less glare, puts the light where we need it, saves energy, and protects helpless animals. (There, don't you feel better.)
Also, note that astronomers prefer the monochromatic lights, because they can block that wavelength easily with a filter at the telescope.
Yes, and it will land in the Magic Kingdom, Walt Disney World, FL. (Anybody remember the space-junk-will-hit-Disney-World rumor that went around? Was it Skylab? Something like that. )
pixelpusher220, you have it just right. DST is energy-saving theater. It makes folks feeeeel good by fiddling with their clocks. But evidence for energy savings is unconvincing. And in states like Arizona and Florida, you want people coming home in the later evening when it's not so hot.
I've seen a demo of this from http://www.adapt4.com/ . This is something they and others have been working on for quite a while. In their demo, their box can see and avoid other services with or without cooperation from them. IMHO, there is a lot of hype, but there is lots of potential -- much of the spectrum is vastly underutilized. It is reserved for users who use it only occasionally.
For a while now, I thought a good solution to the captcha problem would be to ask the user to select the "beautiful" image out of a group of faces. I supposed that this was something that couldn't be automated, but apparently that has been solved. Still, it could be extended by asking the user to identify the photo of the "kitten", or the "cute" one, etc.
Now that we have that settled... I want to thank Coke and NBC for showing Sunday's Olympic Basketball match between China and USA with minimal commercials. Good job. Have a coke. The opening ceremony was another matter, however, which was disgracefully and disrespectfully chopped up with commercials every couple of minutes.
The Russians are too late to burn Georgia,USA, the Yankees got there first.
Nao means brain in Chinese. Seriously.
I have looked at this... the only dealers are in California. And, technically the Triac is a motorcycle. It does appear to have excellent range. I don't believe it has air conditioning. Here in Florida, that's one of my requirements before I will consider any car.
It seems no electric car is truly available now. Everybody is talking about concept cars, limited production runs, cars that are only available in limited geographic areas and vehicles available to fleets only, and they are promised for 2010. For the Tesla, which is ahead of most, even if you have the 100 K$ burning a hole in your pocket, you better hope you are already on the waiting list, and located in California, or your chances are slim-to-none of getting one. I'm hoping Mercedes will make the electric version of the smart car available in the US. Eventually. Sigh.
- Looking for an Electric Car Before the Gas Price Surge
They'll like the teenage protagonist of the Foundation trilogy. Also, my son loved some of the Asimov robot short stories, even when he was so young I had to read them to him.
Similarly, the best way to restore a faded, scratched, folded family photo? Ask around the family and see if you can find a better copy! That can give much better results than all the Photoshop trickery in the world. I've seen it work.
See: http://www.backscatterer.org/?target=backscatter
Again, for the shuttle, the destruct units blow the solid rockets and the external tank, but not the orbiter itself -- not that it would matter unless they had already separated from the orbiter somehow.
And I remember that "Flight Termination Unit" in the picture with the 4 red switches. Those buttons with the paper bezel look like some cheesy add-on since then.
I agree with posters who said that this is nothing new -- the range facilities, including range safety, are used for all launches from the cape, manned or unmanned.
I heard that one day the electronics firm (~30 miles from the cape) where I worked got a call:"Are your antenna guys testing something on XXX MHz?."
"Yes..."
"Well knock it off, we're trying to launch a rocket here, and you're on the destruct frequency."
Thanks for the info guys -- but nothing I can go out and buy in my area yet. The smart EV is only available in Europe, but only as a trial, and not available to the public even there. That's the one that comes closest to what I had in mind -- it's even available as convertible, which is a plus. The range is a bit short, but probably usable. The price of the gas version is cheap enough, but they haven't said what the price of the electric is.
I don't want to hear any more about MPG. That's the wrong question. If it uses gasoline, that's a problem -- not a feature. How about it car makers? Where is my plug-in electric car? I'm ready to buy a plug-in electric car with, say, 100 mile range. That would satisfy over 90% of my trips. For longer trips, you could rent a car and still come out ahead, but we're a three-car family anyway. Maybe a plug-in hybrid could be okay, but those are pretty sparse too. I do live in Florida, so it does have to have an air conditioner, and achieve the range with the air conditioner turned on.