I was a very faithful Xandros Linux user for 4.5 years. I bought all four releases, including Deluxe versions when available. I felt stabbed in the back by the Xandros decision to sign on to the Microsoft FUD wagon. The next day, I switched to PCLinuxOS and it's very nice. I should have upgraded to PCLinuxOS anyway, but it took the Xandros betrayal to get me to switch. PCLinuxOS rocks!
I made an ultraviolent video about my rapidly changed opinion of Xandros. Hopefully, it's funny and makes a good point.
I can very much see the EU perspective, not wanting a global navigation system based on the free, popular, ubiquitous, and well established US military GPS system. But, I have a question. What's the difference between using the existing GPS system that can be degraded or made unavailable based on perceived US security threats, and using a new EU system that the US military will jam based on perceived US security threats?
I suspect the difference is several billion euros for the development of the new Gallileo satellite navigation system, and several billion dollars for the US Department of Defense to develop and deploy the technology to jam it. Jamming a low power signal such as the signal used for global satellite based navigation is very easy. The $1B price tag reflects the fact that the US DoD doesn't order a box of paperclips without turning it into a billion dollar military program with plenty of pork for every congressional district.
Try to remember.... If you build it, they will jam it.
I agree in principle with the EU position, but in the real world, the Gallileo navigation system will add little useful capability, and will be mostly another standard. Gee, I love standards. We should have at least ten satellite global positioning standards. That would be a big help.
On the plus side, 1 cm accuracy would be cool for some odd applications like earthquake prediction. The current GPS system has 1 cm accuracy, but only when augmented by ground based transmitters in a small local area.
Thanks for the interesting link. From the FTC Operation Spam Zombie page:
"identify computers that are sending atypical amounts of email, and take steps to determine if the computer is acting as a spam zombie"
That is by far the most useful bit of advice to prevent a flood of spam from zombie Windows spambots. It was also my primary recommendation in my previous post. Unfortunately, most ISPs aren't following that advice. I think it's a case where it's a lot easier to prevent spam at the source, but that aids other ISPs (your competition). ISPs are therefore only motivated to install incoming spam filters, and only then after a lot of complaints from their customers.
Blocking port 25 will be a temporary fix, at best. As long as a PC has the ability to send legitimate email, it has the ability to send spam.
I hate government regulation, especially where the internet is concerned, but I hate spam even more. ISPs should be required to block spam being sent from their customer's PCs, rather than the internet self policing action that results in an entire IP block being blacklisted. The blacklisting should only kick in for ISPs that do not block outgoing spam, as these would be renegade spam ISPs.
My ISP is InsightBB. When I first signed up for their service, they only supported a Windows PC with no router or firewall, directly connected to their high speed cable service. It was a perfect recipe for spam and malware. I wrote to them explaining my concern. They blew it off. A year later, when the very problems I predicted caused a lot of grief for InsightBB and their customers, they changed their policies. Why can nobody see the obvious security holes and fix them BEFORE they're a problem? I can only assume some pointy headed bosses are making technical decisions instead of having technical people making technical decisions.
BTW, I interpretted the FTC's request to ISPs to identify problems with their customer's computers and help them remove the problematic software as a recommendation for ISPs to encourage their customers to install Linux instead of Windows, or get a Mac.
SPEWS does not wait for spam to happen. They list IP blocks which have been repeated sources for spam.
80% of spam in the US is sent by Windows PCs that have been infected by an Outlook worm and converted into a zombie spambot. So an idiot customer at my cable ISP shares an IP block with me and his Windows spambot causes my email to be blocked? That's fair.
This is not a hypothetical situation. It's happened to me a couple of times before when my entire IP block was blacklisted. Because of a single spambot, 128 people have problems sending mail for a couple of weeks. It's a big pain.
A Windows spambot with a cable ISP connection can send A LOT of spam. High bandwidth providers need to run software that detects spam (an outgoing spam filter) and shut down a user before a huge volume of spam can be sent. But the ISPs have largely taken the attitude that sending spam is not their problem.
It's your job to make sure that your kid wears a helmet... It's your job to make sure your kid doesn't stick a fork in the electrical outlet...
I was a kid before kids wore bike helmets. When I was 13, I'd be gone for five hours, biking in three states, talking to winos under the bridge, and flying down steep hills at 35 MPH with no thought of my fragile unprotected skull. When I returned home:
Mom: "What have you been doing all day?"
Me: "Riding my bike."
Mom: "Dinner's almost ready."
I think she believed I was biking around the block in our middle class suburban neighborhood for five hours.
A couple of years later, I bent the tines on two forks and pushed them (individually!) into a 120 VAC electrical outlet. Then, I tossed a pad of steel wool onto the fork handles from across the room. It was a great shot - truly a zen moment. There was a bright flash of light and a sharp electrical crack. The lights went out and the air was filled with the pungent aroma of iron oxide and Brillo detergent.
It's all good fun. Life is risk. What's the point if it isn't fun?
The problem with warning labels is they're all so uniformative. I want to see a warning label on a bottle of ammonia that describes in detail what chemicals should not be mixed with ammonia, what proportions they should not be mixed, and what processes should not be used to avoid producing explosives such as ammonium tri-iodine. "Warning - Coffee is hot" How much fun can you have with that?
I've been running QuickBooks Pro 2000 under Linux, using CrossOver (the commercial version of Wine). It's ugly, but it works. The user interface is messed up but the data integrity seems fine.
I've fought a lot of battles with Intuit's copy protection scheme which seems to be designed to force users to upgrade, even if their current version meets all their needs.
It's particularly bad when I'm compelled to buy an upgrade to the latest version of QB that doesn't work under Linux. Of course, they refuse to provide any native Linux support. They have a huge captive herd of Windows cows, and they want to keep all their cows in the DRM pen.
Intuit got a lot of bad press when they released a version of TurboTax three years ago that installed a ton of adware crap and was generally as invasive as spyware. It shows the kind of company they really are. They view customers as profit resources to be managed.
Intuit's copy protection scheme makes it impossible to sell used copies of QuickBooks (or, apparently upgrade your computer). It also allows Intuit to decide when it's time to force their customers to pay for another upgrade.
They've definitely alienated enough of us that we're just chomping at the bit to switch to any reasonable alternative. Unfortunately, it's notoriously difficult to escape from proprietary data formats. I've tried to compell the makers of CrossOver to fully support QuickBooks, including signing up to pay money for the improved support. I keep telling them that QuickBooks is the application that is keeping a lot of small businesses locked into Windows because there are already good alternatives for all the other big Windows apps, but nobody is going to enter all their accounting data again. It's massive. But the rossOver guys would apparently rather support Internet Explorer or Word running under Linux, even though Mozilla/Firefox and OpenOffice are better native Linux alternatives. Where are the alternatives to QuickBooks? Once your data is in their format, you're hosed.
I was pleased last year to see that GnuCash, the open source version of Quicken, has added enough small business features to allow many small businesses to use it for all their accounting. I'd definitely start with GnuCash if I were starting a small business today. There is enough demand that I'm hoping to see someone develop a data import routine to allow me to move my company data from QuickBooks to GnuCash soon. QB is the only proprietary software my small business uses. We were Massachusetts compliant, five years before the deadline! I'm looking forward to being free of QuickBooks.
The difference is that my DVDs were "lost" on the return path. In other words, they are probably being held at Netflix to keep me from receiving another DVD so soon. The lost DVDs were found exactly one week later, when their rules allow them to be reported as lost.
They've never so much as batted an eye when the post office ate a DVD.
Yeah, I had that happen once too. And two other times when it seemed to be missing but finally turned up. Either way, wait a week before they allow it to be reported as missing, and you aren't receiving a replacement movie during that time.
Another evil Netflix trick is when I'm watching a TV series. The allegedly ship Disc 1 of 6, 2 of 6 and 3 of 6. But disc one doesn't appear. I'm sitting there for several days with discs 2 and 3 and can't watch them out of sequence.
I sometimes wonder if they don't have a VP in charge of slowing down customer rentals with an entire department of evil weasel henchpersons.
But even with these issues, it's still a good service. Anyone know if the competition has the same deal without the weaseliness?
I've been a Netflix subscriber for about a year. At first they were great. Three movies, one day to return them and a day to ship them. I could watch about five movies a week. Then, Netflix realized postage was eating them alive and announced they were going to increase their price from something like $20/mo to $22/mo. The same week, Amazon and Blockbuster both introduced their services for something like $18/mo. Netflix immediately retracted their cost increase and announced a price matching reduction, and THAT'S when they started the big slowdown that made sure that I received at most three movies a week, assuming no USPS holidays. The policy of "as many as you want as long as it isn't more than 3/week" is cheesy weasely. They should just be honest and charge a flat rate per movie, or offer a flat monthly rate for a service not to exceed X DVDs per month, and get back to shipping without an artificial delay. I don't expect them to lose money, but as customers, we should inundate them with emails, calls and letters demanding they deal honestly and treat us with some common decency instead of lying. I know that's what marketing people do, but we shouldn't let them get away with it.
Around the same time they started emailing to ask me when I received a DVD. I always told them a day later than the actual day I received the DVD to try to beat their scheduled delay BS, but I don't think it worked.
Still, three movies a week is not too bad. Any more and my productivity would suffer. It's about $1.70 per DVD. My local library charges $1 per day, but they don't have many titles and I have to go there to get them. Netflix is a MUCH better deal. I like the convenience of internet browsing, wide selection, deep stocking (seldom a wait if I want a title), and delivery and pickup at my mailbox.
It takes me 30-60 minutes to get a movie at Blockbuster, and I average a movie a minute browsing online at Netflix. I don't know why it's so much more efficient, but it is. That's the real value of Netflix. There are over 100 movies in my queue and it's on autopilot. Whenever I want something special, clicky clicky, top of the queue, here it comes.
I can see why they'd consider online movie distribution a competing technology, and why they'll probably try to be first into that market as well. It's the only way I can see it being more convenient than their current DVD service. Of course downloaded movies will be horribly encumbered with Digital RESTRICTIONS Management. I have a couple of friends who are building significant DVD collections by ripping Netflix movies.
The point I disagree with is the idea that boot strapping tech is ever going to get you to a system that uses scramjets.
The Australians built a nice scramjet. I'd bet they had a reasonably small budget, certainly less than NASA would spend, and maybe in line with what a well funded company would budget. Once there is a small revenue stream from volume space applications such as space tourism, biomedical (drug producing bacteria grow much better in microgravity), and industrial manufacturing in microgravity (perfect bearings, as an example), then a company will be very willing to develop scramjet technology. But that isn't really necessary. I'm not saying there is no place for large government agencies like NASA. They can still fulfill a vital role in developing new technology. But commercial ventures will be cheaper at actually going to space, and probably much cheaper at developing or at least commercializing technology.
I feel we should avoid using the shuttle for anything other than moving people back and forth from space
Well, there's a problem with that. The shuttle has almost lost its human-safe rating. So far, there is a 2% chance of death on shuttle missions. Prior to any real history, the NASA administrators "calculated" the safety factor by starting with the result they considered to be acceptable risk, one in 10,000. They worked backward from there, picking the series of probabilities that produced the desired result. In the absence of data, they made up data. After five missions, they considered it safe. They may have fooled congress, some of the general public and probably even themselves, but the engineers and astronauts had a much more realistic understanding. They would generally quote numbers more like one in 100 or one in 1000 when asked about the odds of catastrophic failure. We now know the real number is more like one in 50. The bogus one in 10,000 number kept many needed safety improvements off the design table. After the second loss of an orbiter and all crew, they have finally made the safety improvements that were always needed, including less flying debris at takeoff and the ability to inspect and repair heat shielding tiles in orbit. But there are still a lot of critical systems. The shuttle is simply too complex. It's the most complicated device ever built by humans. There are a lot of parts to malfunction. I'd guess that with the recent safety improvements, it's now more in line with the 1/100 to 1/1000 estimates that were being made earlier, but still nowhere near the desired 1/10,000 chances peviously quoted by NASA administrators. But I still wouldn't consider it an acceptable risk given what is possible. The reason the Hubble Space Telescope isn't being repaired is that the mission is considered unsafe because there is no space station lifeboat capability when servicing the high orbit HST using the shuttle. I think the shuttle would be better suited to a minimal crew and hauling heavy equipment to the ISS. I certainly don't think it's safe enough to press into service for hauling a lot of peaople. But a bigger consideration is that it's WAY to expensive for either mission. There are much safer and much less expensive technologies for launching humans or freight.
But rockets only get so cheap.
The limiting factor is fuel. With a two stage design, with a large plane carrying a rocket up to 50,000 feet, a lot of the energy is generated by consuming atmospheric oxygen and the speeds in the dense atmosphere are low so there is less drag and less need for heavy structure to sustain flight loads. This is a fairly energy efficient method to get to space. With all reusable hardware, the launch costs can approach fuel cost, assuming the hardware is used many times before retiring. This is a lot like the airline cost model. The fuel is MUCH cheaper than the current launch costs. Most of the money
I agree with your statements about savings that more than offset some added mass, for example, not having to haul a lot of oxygen saves on the direct mass that needs to be accelerated, and saves again because the lowered mass requires less structure. This is all pointing in the direction I was trying to describe, where less is more.
What I'd argue against at this step is complexity. With the commercialization of space, we are starting over. The idea is not to develop a lot of great (and expensive) technology at first. The idea is to build simple and reliable (safe and easy to maintain) launch systems. As the cost comes down, the volume goes up, experience is gained, and incremental improvements can be made as the markets open up and the costs are justified. It's the "pay as you go" system of bootstrapping technology.
I do agree that a scramjet has a lot to offer, and, barring the space elevator, will be the best way to boost stuff into space. Rather than several separate systems, I think it'll turn out to be one versatile propulsion system. At low altitudes, air is dense, so there is plenty of oxygen to breathe and airspeeds will be low to reduce drag. A variable speed compressor stage can be used to gather the required air. At higher altitudes, the velocity increases and ram air can provide the needed compression (ramjet). At higher altitudes, onboard oxygen will be needed. But the same engine could provide thrust at all stages of the flight, with different induction systems. A computer would automatically change compressor speeds, deploy a ram air scoop, and provide supplementary or primary oxygen to keep the engine happy.
Once we have one that works...
Australia successfully tested a scramjet, and NASA has had two successful tests, with the second passing Mach 10, I believe. We're well along the way.
But first, we need cheap and safe access to space, and that's going to be simple, even if it does burn a bit more fuel in the process, like a single stage to orbit. A two stage system using an air launched rocket seems to offer the best combination of efficiency and existing technology.
It's true that nobody wants to send that much stuff into orbit at the current rate of $35,000 per kilogram. That's the Ariane price (which may halve soon, now that their new heavy lift Ariane 5 has had it's first successful launch). The existing Ariane cost is about 11% of what the shuttle costs to operate ($54M vs. $500M).
The space launch market is currently soft. There isn't much demand, but not because there isn't much desire, they've simply priced themselves out of business for volume applications.
I don't think a large jet, followed by a scramjet, followed by a rocket, then ion drive to geostationary orbit is the answer. We need simpler solutions, not more stages, more complexity, and more stuff to go wrong. There is a basic equipment weight for each stage, so you end up carrying so much weight in different types of engines that there is little cargo capability remaining. Ion engines have a lot of promise for planetary missions. Add nuclear power and we could send probes to the nearest stars, although technology may impove enough that we pass them with faster ships in the near future.
I mean let's say you could send people into LEO for 3 days at 300k vs. 2 million per person do you really think all that many more people would go on the trip?
Oh hell yeah. Tito and Shuttleworth already paid Russia $20M each for a few days in orbit. There are a lot of people pre-signed for a sub-orbital flight on the successor to SS1 at about $200K each, and that would only be a few minutes of weightlessness and no orbiting. You could see most of southern California and some of the Pacific Ocean, which is a nice view, but not as nice as sitting in high orbit and watching the planet pass beneath you every 45 minutes. The tourist dollars are definitely there. That's what I meant by "volume applications", at least initially. Just as barnstorming paid the way in the early days of aviation, and we now have scheduled commercial service, air freight, and many other aviation industries, space tourism will pay the way until other space industries are born. After the short sub-orbital flights, there will be hotels in orbit. Zero g sex will pay for a lot of space development - heh heh. The potential for space development seems much greater to me than aviation.
It's a chicken and egg scenario. There are volume applications, but not at the current price. The numbers do work. With appropriate technology, the price can come WAY down to where it needs to be. Then, space flight will be a common event. But this would never happen if left to governments. Fortunately, it's no longer just the governments. The prices will come down, and I'm going to fulfill a lifelong dream and take a flight.
You dont happen to mean the disturbance caused to the US do you?
I said "world", and that's what I meant.
I was surprised at the international news coverage and the intense emotional response of so many people in the world to the death of Princess Diana. I don't know why it was such a big deal, but it clearly was, at least in the western world but certainly not just in the US or UK.
The significance of the death of Princess Diana, the destruction of the World Trade Center towers, and the Asian tsunami is not to be found in the number of people who died. In this application, it is significant in the emotional attention or disturbance it caused in the world. The death of Princess Diana was not personally significant to me, but a lot of people were very upset by it, albeit not many Slashdotters.
There is another very bizarre phenomenon being studied at Princeton that is related and apparently shares a lot of the same hardware. The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research project was started to study the human machine interface, and quickly determined that humans, individually and collectively, can have a small influence on truly random events. The effect doesn't extend to pseudorandom events such as a PC's "random" number generator, which is actually deterministic. The magnitude of the effect varies with the individual(s) involved, but is on the order of one in ten thousand. However, this small result is statistically proved beyond any reasonable doubt. The experiments have been widely replicated by different researchers using different random events (Johnson noise in resistors, balls falling through a long sequence of pegs ala pachinko, etc.) Even more bizarre is the way the effect is not limited by time or space. People from the other side of the world have influenced random events, and if my memory is correct, random events in sealed experiments have been altered by human efforts in the future and the past.
I think this seems to be too widespread to be a hoax. There is apparently too much independent verification to dismiss it, regardless of how little correlation it has with our belief about how the universe works. The effect may be small, but any significantly valid effect is a huge step in advancing our understanding of the universe and consciousness. I think we'll need a better understanding of quantum physics to fully appreciate what is really happening. My personal favorite crackpot theory is that our brains operate at different levels, all the way down to quantum effects at the lowest levels.
It's probably too early to use this effect in any meaningful engineering devices, but I can't help myself. I want to buy some commercial time on a TV station that is broadcast at the same time as the live lotto drawing that's broadcast on a competing station. Then, I'd run a commercial that flashes "LOTTO" and a sequencial string of my lottery numbers, in high contrast, with each appearing for a tenth of a second. It'd look weird enough that people would watch to see what the heck it is, and the 100 ms strobing numbers would feed straight into their subconscious minds. Maybe I'd take a tip from subliminal advertisers and mix in words like "DEATH" or "SEX", or graphic images, to pump up the emotional level.
The SS1 hardware was built specifically to win the Ansari X Prize. The X Prize was designed to kickstart private space development, mostly via the surprisingly lucrative space tourist market. SS1 has everything to do with getting to space. It can easily lift three adults past the 100 km altitude that defines the arbitrary beginning of space. Scaled Composites is at work developing the next generation version that flies a similar mission. It still isn't a low earth orbit, but it is a little higher, a few minutes longer in zero g space, and it carries more paying tourists to improve the profit margin.
Now, the important part. The custom avionics, ground control, and especially the hybrid engine are all reuseable for all types of space development, not just the suborbital tourist flights. Scale up the engine and fly up to an orbiting space hotel. Of course, reentry is a major issue and there are numerous problems to solve there, but material science has come a long way since the late 1970s when the shuttle was designed. I have no doubt that Scaled or a similar small and entrepreneurial company can devise a much less expensive and much safer reusable orbital vehicle than the shuttle.
Yes, the SS1 was only the first small step in the burgeoning realm of privately funded space flight, but it's essential to crawl before we walk and walk before we run. With entrepreneurs competing in this arena, and supporting technology well beyond that required to accomplish the task because NASA essentially worked to stifle privately funded space development for a couple of decades, we will see rapid progress. Within a decade, the private space programs will have surpassed the bureaucratic versions in every important aspect (except cost, of course). We are in a position that is almost identical to the barnstorming days of early aviation. Progress will be rapid.
The space elevator you mention is an interesting idea, but there are numerous major technical issues to be resolved. Who could afford a meter thick carbon fiber cable that is a few hundred kilometers long? And let's not even consider what a target that would be for terrorists.
Your post also strongly implies that no good comes from "pork"
I think pork largely exists for its own reason, and any spinoffs or technological developments that occur are the result of determination at the bottom of the organizational structure, instead of any desire for science at the top of the org chart. Where the big decisions are made, in congress and among their cohorts at the upper echelon of NASA, I think the important part is how much money is spent, and which congressional districts get the pork diner with all the trimmings. What I was trying to convey is this. If you're trying to accomplish a scientific or technological goal, a bureaucracy is probably only slightly more effective than throwing suitcases full of money into rush hour traffic and hoping someone will magically develop your project for you. Bureaucracies are very inefficient. Free markets are very efficient. I'm not saying that no good comes from pork. I'm saying that relatively little good comes from pork when compared with much less money spent in the entrepreneurial market.
public (specifically, democratic) is crucial for doing those things that private enterprise can't or won't do.
I think the best way to accomplish our space related goals would be a very small public organization that set the goals and proided funding for science missions by awarding merit based competitive contracts, with all the work done in the private sector. Write the proposal and hold their feet to the fire. None of this ridiculous military bidding where it's common to have 1X and 2X cost overruns. You submitted a bid and got the contract, now deliver. We could spend the same amount on space exploration we are now and we'd get 10X the return on our investment. All I'm saying is, spend the pork wisely. At least get some good results as you prop up a local economy.
It costs NASA about $500 million to fly one mission on the shuttle, and that is only the direct operating cost. The development costs were enormous, and were paid twenty years ago. After twenty years, this should be a mature technology, but they've flown so few missions, a little over a hundred, that they're scrapping the program late in the test phase. Contrast this with SpaceShipOne. Scaled Composites spent about $30 million dollars to completely develop their space flight hardware and fly three missions into space. Granted, there is a lot of difference between a suborbital flight and the high earth orbit the shuttle can achieve, but it still seems like the Scaled Composites approach is orders of magnitude more cost effective than NASA. If NASA had to recreate their Redstone program, even after all their experience, $30 million would just about pay for their paper clips.
You're right in saying that the successful commercial ventures are not going to have lofty goals. They'll concentrate on the bottom line and compete to offer the best services at the best prices. Where science wins is on the cost end. A university astronomy department can build a satellite to study cosmic microwave background radiation and try to learn about the origin of the universe, but it does them no good if NASA only accepts one external science package a year to fill a payload. It's not likely that a university will get a 50 million dollar grant to pay for a commercial launch when they're competing with DoD spy satellites for low volume launch capabilities. But, when space is commercialized, launching your satellite might cost 50 thousand dollars in a commodity space launch market, and scientists can have a few bake sales and maybe get a small grant and fly their hardware.
Free markets work. It's only a problem when monopolies are allowed to squeeze everyone else out through unfair competition.
That's a really good analogy. But, while I can understand that bureaucracy has put NASA in the business of selling pork to congress instead of space exploration and development, I can't see what the financial incentive would be for Microsoft to sell such crappy high priced software. To me, it seems to epitomize the criticisms of US products. There is a lot of focus on fluff like the sodding talking paper clip, and no attention at all to the important stuff like stability and security. How does THAT make money for Microsoft? Maybe, when you're the monopoly, what customers want (or even need) just isn't that important? Just like it doesn't matter if a ride into space costs half a billion dollars if you're the only game in town. I think the sun is setting on both of these monopolies.
I'd say we're entering phase 3 now, as demonstrated by SpaceShipOne. It's simple, cheap, and reliable technology.
Yes, there is still a long way to go in the development of space with access to all, but we have the barnstorming age of aviation as a very applicable model. Now that free enterprise is involved, progress will be extremely rapid, especially given the fact that space development is an artificially stunted market. Ironically, our NASA mentality kept us from pursuing space. They did great things the first decade, and for the last three decades have been a major impediment to the natural commercial access to space.
I find it to be amazing that 95% of NASA can be so talented, intelligent and motiated, and the organization can be so completely ruined and its effects minimalized by the 5% who are plugged into the funding and end up calling the shots based on the political process. When the entire organization exists to spend money, the science is often an unintended result, at least from the perspective of the people who are writing the checks and setting policy.
NASA is now too political to be anything but a festering mound of poot. I feel sorry for the many technical people who are trying to do good work in that environment. I couldn't do it. Hopefully, the best and the brightest will get a good job in the new commercial space ventures that are popping up and can finally have their dreams realized.
You are laboring under the practical geek perspective. You definitely aren't seeing it from the congressional perspective. Their job is not to do as much science while spending as little money as possible. That would be practical. They're political. Their job is to spend as many tax dollars as possible, in their own districts. So, they make deals. I'll vote for your pork if you vote for my pork. Taxpayers vote for the biggest pork politicians, and the cycle repeats.
The only cure is to stop voting for more pork, and I don't see that happening. As a nation, we're far too short sighted and self interested.
So, if congress is the boss because it controls the purse strings, how do you think NASA will behave? Just like any employee, they quickly realize the boss's goal and agenda and make it their own. So, the people who manage NASA are not in the business of cost effective space exploration. In fact, quite the opposite. They're in the business of spending tax dollars in several congressional districts.
And that's why we need private space exploration and development, and we finally have it. Many companies now see the possibility and they have the vision and motivation to do what NASA couldn't.
It's sad that NASA did so much in the early years and then the political process ruined it late in the Apollo era. Despite some very bright scientists, engineers and astronauts, they just can't help being a government bureaucracy. Why? As usual, it has everything to do with the movement of little green pieces of paper. Lots of little green pieces of paper.
My point is, I can generally control where I leave my fingerprints. I have no control over some grocery store with no concern for my personal data, running some cheese ball Windows IIS server software and the next release of something like the Slammer worm, my fingerprint data is released to who knows who.
Grocery stores do not need to keep a computer file on me containing my name, phone number, date of birth, social security number, address, credit card number, and MY FINGERPRINT DATA.
I just do not trust any computer system to be 100% unbreakable at all times
I had my eBay password compromised when an online service I was using to snipe bids was hit with the Slammer Worm. I was lucky. A lot of people who trusted Windows IIS servers became victims of identity theft and had big credit card bills and a lot of hassle to straighten out the mess and get on with their lives in the wake of Slammer and similar Windows security exploits.
The latter opens the possibility for their systems to be broken into (internally or externally) and lots of credit card info stolen.
I'd be more concerned about my fingerprint data being stolen. I can get a new credit card if one is compromised.
I thought it was bad when almost everybody volunteered to get a grocery store club card and surrender their privacy for a reduction in the newly jacked up prices. Finger print biometrics at the grocery store? What's next? Am I going to be forced to give a DNA sample to buy Mt Dew and Fritos?
Slashdot Mirror
If someone did that to my Ubuntu PC, I'd boil it in bleach and expose it to some virus killing UV light for a day or two.
I made an ultraviolent video about my rapidly changed opinion of Xandros. Hopefully, it's funny and makes a good point.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8TjLIYxP1A
I suspect the difference is several billion euros for the development of the new Gallileo satellite navigation system, and several billion dollars for the US Department of Defense to develop and deploy the technology to jam it. Jamming a low power signal such as the signal used for global satellite based navigation is very easy. The $1B price tag reflects the fact that the US DoD doesn't order a box of paperclips without turning it into a billion dollar military program with plenty of pork for every congressional district.
Try to remember.... If you build it, they will jam it.
I agree in principle with the EU position, but in the real world, the Gallileo navigation system will add little useful capability, and will be mostly another standard. Gee, I love standards. We should have at least ten satellite global positioning standards. That would be a big help.
On the plus side, 1 cm accuracy would be cool for some odd applications like earthquake prediction. The current GPS system has 1 cm accuracy, but only when augmented by ground based transmitters in a small local area.
Thanks for the interesting link. From the FTC Operation Spam Zombie page: That is by far the most useful bit of advice to prevent a flood of spam from zombie Windows spambots. It was also my primary recommendation in my previous post. Unfortunately, most ISPs aren't following that advice. I think it's a case where it's a lot easier to prevent spam at the source, but that aids other ISPs (your competition). ISPs are therefore only motivated to install incoming spam filters, and only then after a lot of complaints from their customers.
Blocking port 25 will be a temporary fix, at best. As long as a PC has the ability to send legitimate email, it has the ability to send spam.
I hate government regulation, especially where the internet is concerned, but I hate spam even more. ISPs should be required to block spam being sent from their customer's PCs, rather than the internet self policing action that results in an entire IP block being blacklisted. The blacklisting should only kick in for ISPs that do not block outgoing spam, as these would be renegade spam ISPs.
My ISP is InsightBB. When I first signed up for their service, they only supported a Windows PC with no router or firewall, directly connected to their high speed cable service. It was a perfect recipe for spam and malware. I wrote to them explaining my concern. They blew it off. A year later, when the very problems I predicted caused a lot of grief for InsightBB and their customers, they changed their policies. Why can nobody see the obvious security holes and fix them BEFORE they're a problem? I can only assume some pointy headed bosses are making technical decisions instead of having technical people making technical decisions.
BTW, I interpretted the FTC's request to ISPs to identify problems with their customer's computers and help them remove the problematic software as a recommendation for ISPs to encourage their customers to install Linux instead of Windows, or get a Mac.
This is not a hypothetical situation. It's happened to me a couple of times before when my entire IP block was blacklisted. Because of a single spambot, 128 people have problems sending mail for a couple of weeks. It's a big pain.
A Windows spambot with a cable ISP connection can send A LOT of spam. High bandwidth providers need to run software that detects spam (an outgoing spam filter) and shut down a user before a huge volume of spam can be sent. But the ISPs have largely taken the attitude that sending spam is not their problem.
I was a kid before kids wore bike helmets. When I was 13, I'd be gone for five hours, biking in three states, talking to winos under the bridge, and flying down steep hills at 35 MPH with no thought of my fragile unprotected skull. When I returned home:
Mom: "What have you been doing all day?"
Me: "Riding my bike."
Mom: "Dinner's almost ready."
I think she believed I was biking around the block in our middle class suburban neighborhood for five hours.
A couple of years later, I bent the tines on two forks and pushed them (individually!) into a 120 VAC electrical outlet. Then, I tossed a pad of steel wool onto the fork handles from across the room. It was a great shot - truly a zen moment. There was a bright flash of light and a sharp electrical crack. The lights went out and the air was filled with the pungent aroma of iron oxide and Brillo detergent.
It's all good fun. Life is risk. What's the point if it isn't fun?
The problem with warning labels is they're all so uniformative. I want to see a warning label on a bottle of ammonia that describes in detail what chemicals should not be mixed with ammonia, what proportions they should not be mixed, and what processes should not be used to avoid producing explosives such as ammonium tri-iodine. "Warning - Coffee is hot" How much fun can you have with that?
I've been running QuickBooks Pro 2000 under Linux, using CrossOver (the commercial version of Wine). It's ugly, but it works. The user interface is messed up but the data integrity seems fine.
I've fought a lot of battles with Intuit's copy protection scheme which seems to be designed to force users to upgrade, even if their current version meets all their needs.
It's particularly bad when I'm compelled to buy an upgrade to the latest version of QB that doesn't work under Linux. Of course, they refuse to provide any native Linux support. They have a huge captive herd of Windows cows, and they want to keep all their cows in the DRM pen.
Intuit got a lot of bad press when they released a version of TurboTax three years ago that installed a ton of adware crap and was generally as invasive as spyware. It shows the kind of company they really are. They view customers as profit resources to be managed.
Intuit's copy protection scheme makes it impossible to sell used copies of QuickBooks (or, apparently upgrade your computer). It also allows Intuit to decide when it's time to force their customers to pay for another upgrade.
They've definitely alienated enough of us that we're just chomping at the bit to switch to any reasonable alternative. Unfortunately, it's notoriously difficult to escape from proprietary data formats. I've tried to compell the makers of CrossOver to fully support QuickBooks, including signing up to pay money for the improved support. I keep telling them that QuickBooks is the application that is keeping a lot of small businesses locked into Windows because there are already good alternatives for all the other big Windows apps, but nobody is going to enter all their accounting data again. It's massive. But the rossOver guys would apparently rather support Internet Explorer or Word running under Linux, even though Mozilla/Firefox and OpenOffice are better native Linux alternatives. Where are the alternatives to QuickBooks? Once your data is in their format, you're hosed.
I was pleased last year to see that GnuCash, the open source version of Quicken, has added enough small business features to allow many small businesses to use it for all their accounting. I'd definitely start with GnuCash if I were starting a small business today. There is enough demand that I'm hoping to see someone develop a data import routine to allow me to move my company data from QuickBooks to GnuCash soon. QB is the only proprietary software my small business uses. We were Massachusetts compliant, five years before the deadline! I'm looking forward to being free of QuickBooks.
The difference is that my DVDs were "lost" on the return path. In other words, they are probably being held at Netflix to keep me from receiving another DVD so soon. The lost DVDs were found exactly one week later, when their rules allow them to be reported as lost.
Yeah, I had that happen once too. And two other times when it seemed to be missing but finally turned up. Either way, wait a week before they allow it to be reported as missing, and you aren't receiving a replacement movie during that time.
Another evil Netflix trick is when I'm watching a TV series. The allegedly ship Disc 1 of 6, 2 of 6 and 3 of 6. But disc one doesn't appear. I'm sitting there for several days with discs 2 and 3 and can't watch them out of sequence.
I sometimes wonder if they don't have a VP in charge of slowing down customer rentals with an entire department of evil weasel henchpersons.
But even with these issues, it's still a good service. Anyone know if the competition has the same deal without the weaseliness?
I've been a Netflix subscriber for about a year. At first they were great. Three movies, one day to return them and a day to ship them. I could watch about five movies a week. Then, Netflix realized postage was eating them alive and announced they were going to increase their price from something like $20/mo to $22/mo. The same week, Amazon and Blockbuster both introduced their services for something like $18/mo. Netflix immediately retracted their cost increase and announced a price matching reduction, and THAT'S when they started the big slowdown that made sure that I received at most three movies a week, assuming no USPS holidays. The policy of "as many as you want as long as it isn't more than 3/week" is cheesy weasely. They should just be honest and charge a flat rate per movie, or offer a flat monthly rate for a service not to exceed X DVDs per month, and get back to shipping without an artificial delay. I don't expect them to lose money, but as customers, we should inundate them with emails, calls and letters demanding they deal honestly and treat us with some common decency instead of lying. I know that's what marketing people do, but we shouldn't let them get away with it.
Around the same time they started emailing to ask me when I received a DVD. I always told them a day later than the actual day I received the DVD to try to beat their scheduled delay BS, but I don't think it worked.
Still, three movies a week is not too bad. Any more and my productivity would suffer. It's about $1.70 per DVD. My local library charges $1 per day, but they don't have many titles and I have to go there to get them. Netflix is a MUCH better deal. I like the convenience of internet browsing, wide selection, deep stocking (seldom a wait if I want a title), and delivery and pickup at my mailbox.
It takes me 30-60 minutes to get a movie at Blockbuster, and I average a movie a minute browsing online at Netflix. I don't know why it's so much more efficient, but it is. That's the real value of Netflix. There are over 100 movies in my queue and it's on autopilot. Whenever I want something special, clicky clicky, top of the queue, here it comes.
I can see why they'd consider online movie distribution a competing technology, and why they'll probably try to be first into that market as well. It's the only way I can see it being more convenient than their current DVD service. Of course downloaded movies will be horribly encumbered with Digital RESTRICTIONS Management. I have a couple of friends who are building significant DVD collections by ripping Netflix movies.
The Australians built a nice scramjet. I'd bet they had a reasonably small budget, certainly less than NASA would spend, and maybe in line with what a well funded company would budget. Once there is a small revenue stream from volume space applications such as space tourism, biomedical (drug producing bacteria grow much better in microgravity), and industrial manufacturing in microgravity (perfect bearings, as an example), then a company will be very willing to develop scramjet technology. But that isn't really necessary. I'm not saying there is no place for large government agencies like NASA. They can still fulfill a vital role in developing new technology. But commercial ventures will be cheaper at actually going to space, and probably much cheaper at developing or at least commercializing technology.
Well, there's a problem with that. The shuttle has almost lost its human-safe rating. So far, there is a 2% chance of death on shuttle missions. Prior to any real history, the NASA administrators "calculated" the safety factor by starting with the result they considered to be acceptable risk, one in 10,000. They worked backward from there, picking the series of probabilities that produced the desired result. In the absence of data, they made up data. After five missions, they considered it safe. They may have fooled congress, some of the general public and probably even themselves, but the engineers and astronauts had a much more realistic understanding. They would generally quote numbers more like one in 100 or one in 1000 when asked about the odds of catastrophic failure. We now know the real number is more like one in 50. The bogus one in 10,000 number kept many needed safety improvements off the design table. After the second loss of an orbiter and all crew, they have finally made the safety improvements that were always needed, including less flying debris at takeoff and the ability to inspect and repair heat shielding tiles in orbit. But there are still a lot of critical systems. The shuttle is simply too complex. It's the most complicated device ever built by humans. There are a lot of parts to malfunction. I'd guess that with the recent safety improvements, it's now more in line with the 1/100 to 1/1000 estimates that were being made earlier, but still nowhere near the desired 1/10,000 chances peviously quoted by NASA administrators. But I still wouldn't consider it an acceptable risk given what is possible. The reason the Hubble Space Telescope isn't being repaired is that the mission is considered unsafe because there is no space station lifeboat capability when servicing the high orbit HST using the shuttle. I think the shuttle would be better suited to a minimal crew and hauling heavy equipment to the ISS. I certainly don't think it's safe enough to press into service for hauling a lot of peaople. But a bigger consideration is that it's WAY to expensive for either mission. There are much safer and much less expensive technologies for launching humans or freight.
The limiting factor is fuel. With a two stage design, with a large plane carrying a rocket up to 50,000 feet, a lot of the energy is generated by consuming atmospheric oxygen and the speeds in the dense atmosphere are low so there is less drag and less need for heavy structure to sustain flight loads. This is a fairly energy efficient method to get to space. With all reusable hardware, the launch costs can approach fuel cost, assuming the hardware is used many times before retiring. This is a lot like the airline cost model. The fuel is MUCH cheaper than the current launch costs. Most of the money
What I'd argue against at this step is complexity. With the commercialization of space, we are starting over. The idea is not to develop a lot of great (and expensive) technology at first. The idea is to build simple and reliable (safe and easy to maintain) launch systems. As the cost comes down, the volume goes up, experience is gained, and incremental improvements can be made as the markets open up and the costs are justified. It's the "pay as you go" system of bootstrapping technology.
I do agree that a scramjet has a lot to offer, and, barring the space elevator, will be the best way to boost stuff into space. Rather than several separate systems, I think it'll turn out to be one versatile propulsion system. At low altitudes, air is dense, so there is plenty of oxygen to breathe and airspeeds will be low to reduce drag. A variable speed compressor stage can be used to gather the required air. At higher altitudes, the velocity increases and ram air can provide the needed compression (ramjet). At higher altitudes, onboard oxygen will be needed. But the same engine could provide thrust at all stages of the flight, with different induction systems. A computer would automatically change compressor speeds, deploy a ram air scoop, and provide supplementary or primary oxygen to keep the engine happy.
Australia successfully tested a scramjet, and NASA has had two successful tests, with the second passing Mach 10, I believe. We're well along the way.
But first, we need cheap and safe access to space, and that's going to be simple, even if it does burn a bit more fuel in the process, like a single stage to orbit. A two stage system using an air launched rocket seems to offer the best combination of efficiency and existing technology.
It's true that nobody wants to send that much stuff into orbit at the current rate of $35,000 per kilogram. That's the Ariane price (which may halve soon, now that their new heavy lift Ariane 5 has had it's first successful launch). The existing Ariane cost is about 11% of what the shuttle costs to operate ($54M vs. $500M).
The space launch market is currently soft. There isn't much demand, but not because there isn't much desire, they've simply priced themselves out of business for volume applications.
I don't think a large jet, followed by a scramjet, followed by a rocket, then ion drive to geostationary orbit is the answer. We need simpler solutions, not more stages, more complexity, and more stuff to go wrong. There is a basic equipment weight for each stage, so you end up carrying so much weight in different types of engines that there is little cargo capability remaining. Ion engines have a lot of promise for planetary missions. Add nuclear power and we could send probes to the nearest stars, although technology may impove enough that we pass them with faster ships in the near future.
Oh hell yeah. Tito and Shuttleworth already paid Russia $20M each for a few days in orbit. There are a lot of people pre-signed for a sub-orbital flight on the successor to SS1 at about $200K each, and that would only be a few minutes of weightlessness and no orbiting. You could see most of southern California and some of the Pacific Ocean, which is a nice view, but not as nice as sitting in high orbit and watching the planet pass beneath you every 45 minutes. The tourist dollars are definitely there. That's what I meant by "volume applications", at least initially. Just as barnstorming paid the way in the early days of aviation, and we now have scheduled commercial service, air freight, and many other aviation industries, space tourism will pay the way until other space industries are born. After the short sub-orbital flights, there will be hotels in orbit. Zero g sex will pay for a lot of space development - heh heh. The potential for space development seems much greater to me than aviation.
It's a chicken and egg scenario. There are volume applications, but not at the current price. The numbers do work. With appropriate technology, the price can come WAY down to where it needs to be. Then, space flight will be a common event. But this would never happen if left to governments. Fortunately, it's no longer just the governments. The prices will come down, and I'm going to fulfill a lifelong dream and take a flight.
I said "world", and that's what I meant.
I was surprised at the international news coverage and the intense emotional response of so many people in the world to the death of Princess Diana. I don't know why it was such a big deal, but it clearly was, at least in the western world but certainly not just in the US or UK.
There is another very bizarre phenomenon being studied at Princeton that is related and apparently shares a lot of the same hardware. The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research project was started to study the human machine interface, and quickly determined that humans, individually and collectively, can have a small influence on truly random events. The effect doesn't extend to pseudorandom events such as a PC's "random" number generator, which is actually deterministic. The magnitude of the effect varies with the individual(s) involved, but is on the order of one in ten thousand. However, this small result is statistically proved beyond any reasonable doubt. The experiments have been widely replicated by different researchers using different random events (Johnson noise in resistors, balls falling through a long sequence of pegs ala pachinko, etc.) Even more bizarre is the way the effect is not limited by time or space. People from the other side of the world have influenced random events, and if my memory is correct, random events in sealed experiments have been altered by human efforts in the future and the past.
I think this seems to be too widespread to be a hoax. There is apparently too much independent verification to dismiss it, regardless of how little correlation it has with our belief about how the universe works. The effect may be small, but any significantly valid effect is a huge step in advancing our understanding of the universe and consciousness. I think we'll need a better understanding of quantum physics to fully appreciate what is really happening. My personal favorite crackpot theory is that our brains operate at different levels, all the way down to quantum effects at the lowest levels.
It's probably too early to use this effect in any meaningful engineering devices, but I can't help myself. I want to buy some commercial time on a TV station that is broadcast at the same time as the live lotto drawing that's broadcast on a competing station. Then, I'd run a commercial that flashes "LOTTO" and a sequencial string of my lottery numbers, in high contrast, with each appearing for a tenth of a second. It'd look weird enough that people would watch to see what the heck it is, and the 100 ms strobing numbers would feed straight into their subconscious minds. Maybe I'd take a tip from subliminal advertisers and mix in words like "DEATH" or "SEX", or graphic images, to pump up the emotional level.
Now, the important part. The custom avionics, ground control, and especially the hybrid engine are all reuseable for all types of space development, not just the suborbital tourist flights. Scale up the engine and fly up to an orbiting space hotel. Of course, reentry is a major issue and there are numerous problems to solve there, but material science has come a long way since the late 1970s when the shuttle was designed. I have no doubt that Scaled or a similar small and entrepreneurial company can devise a much less expensive and much safer reusable orbital vehicle than the shuttle.
Yes, the SS1 was only the first small step in the burgeoning realm of privately funded space flight, but it's essential to crawl before we walk and walk before we run. With entrepreneurs competing in this arena, and supporting technology well beyond that required to accomplish the task because NASA essentially worked to stifle privately funded space development for a couple of decades, we will see rapid progress. Within a decade, the private space programs will have surpassed the bureaucratic versions in every important aspect (except cost, of course). We are in a position that is almost identical to the barnstorming days of early aviation. Progress will be rapid.
The space elevator you mention is an interesting idea, but there are numerous major technical issues to be resolved. Who could afford a meter thick carbon fiber cable that is a few hundred kilometers long? And let's not even consider what a target that would be for terrorists.
Your post is highly unbalanced.
Hey, so's the author.
Your post also strongly implies that no good comes from "pork"
I think pork largely exists for its own reason, and any spinoffs or technological developments that occur are the result of determination at the bottom of the organizational structure, instead of any desire for science at the top of the org chart. Where the big decisions are made, in congress and among their cohorts at the upper echelon of NASA, I think the important part is how much money is spent, and which congressional districts get the pork diner with all the trimmings. What I was trying to convey is this. If you're trying to accomplish a scientific or technological goal, a bureaucracy is probably only slightly more effective than throwing suitcases full of money into rush hour traffic and hoping someone will magically develop your project for you. Bureaucracies are very inefficient. Free markets are very efficient. I'm not saying that no good comes from pork. I'm saying that relatively little good comes from pork when compared with much less money spent in the entrepreneurial market.
public (specifically, democratic) is crucial for doing those things that private enterprise can't or won't do.
I think the best way to accomplish our space related goals would be a very small public organization that set the goals and proided funding for science missions by awarding merit based competitive contracts, with all the work done in the private sector. Write the proposal and hold their feet to the fire. None of this ridiculous military bidding where it's common to have 1X and 2X cost overruns. You submitted a bid and got the contract, now deliver. We could spend the same amount on space exploration we are now and we'd get 10X the return on our investment. All I'm saying is, spend the pork wisely. At least get some good results as you prop up a local economy.
It costs NASA about $500 million to fly one mission on the shuttle, and that is only the direct operating cost. The development costs were enormous, and were paid twenty years ago. After twenty years, this should be a mature technology, but they've flown so few missions, a little over a hundred, that they're scrapping the program late in the test phase. Contrast this with SpaceShipOne. Scaled Composites spent about $30 million dollars to completely develop their space flight hardware and fly three missions into space. Granted, there is a lot of difference between a suborbital flight and the high earth orbit the shuttle can achieve, but it still seems like the Scaled Composites approach is orders of magnitude more cost effective than NASA. If NASA had to recreate their Redstone program, even after all their experience, $30 million would just about pay for their paper clips.
Free markets work. It's only a problem when monopolies are allowed to squeeze everyone else out through unfair competition.
That's a really good analogy. But, while I can understand that bureaucracy has put NASA in the business of selling pork to congress instead of space exploration and development, I can't see what the financial incentive would be for Microsoft to sell such crappy high priced software. To me, it seems to epitomize the criticisms of US products. There is a lot of focus on fluff like the sodding talking paper clip, and no attention at all to the important stuff like stability and security. How does THAT make money for Microsoft? Maybe, when you're the monopoly, what customers want (or even need) just isn't that important? Just like it doesn't matter if a ride into space costs half a billion dollars if you're the only game in town. I think the sun is setting on both of these monopolies.
I'd say we're entering phase 3 now, as demonstrated by SpaceShipOne. It's simple, cheap, and reliable technology.
Yes, there is still a long way to go in the development of space with access to all, but we have the barnstorming age of aviation as a very applicable model. Now that free enterprise is involved, progress will be extremely rapid, especially given the fact that space development is an artificially stunted market. Ironically, our NASA mentality kept us from pursuing space. They did great things the first decade, and for the last three decades have been a major impediment to the natural commercial access to space.
I find it to be amazing that 95% of NASA can be so talented, intelligent and motiated, and the organization can be so completely ruined and its effects minimalized by the 5% who are plugged into the funding and end up calling the shots based on the political process. When the entire organization exists to spend money, the science is often an unintended result, at least from the perspective of the people who are writing the checks and setting policy.
NASA is now too political to be anything but a festering mound of poot. I feel sorry for the many technical people who are trying to do good work in that environment. I couldn't do it. Hopefully, the best and the brightest will get a good job in the new commercial space ventures that are popping up and can finally have their dreams realized.
The only cure is to stop voting for more pork, and I don't see that happening. As a nation, we're far too short sighted and self interested.
So, if congress is the boss because it controls the purse strings, how do you think NASA will behave? Just like any employee, they quickly realize the boss's goal and agenda and make it their own. So, the people who manage NASA are not in the business of cost effective space exploration. In fact, quite the opposite. They're in the business of spending tax dollars in several congressional districts.
And that's why we need private space exploration and development, and we finally have it. Many companies now see the possibility and they have the vision and motivation to do what NASA couldn't.
It's sad that NASA did so much in the early years and then the political process ruined it late in the Apollo era. Despite some very bright scientists, engineers and astronauts, they just can't help being a government bureaucracy. Why? As usual, it has everything to do with the movement of little green pieces of paper. Lots of little green pieces of paper.
Huh?
My point is, I can generally control where I leave my fingerprints. I have no control over some grocery store with no concern for my personal data, running some cheese ball Windows IIS server software and the next release of something like the Slammer worm, my fingerprint data is released to who knows who.
Grocery stores do not need to keep a computer file on me containing my name, phone number, date of birth, social security number, address, credit card number, and MY FINGERPRINT DATA.
Can this concept be any clearer?
I had my eBay password compromised when an online service I was using to snipe bids was hit with the Slammer Worm. I was lucky. A lot of people who trusted Windows IIS servers became victims of identity theft and had big credit card bills and a lot of hassle to straighten out the mess and get on with their lives in the wake of Slammer and similar Windows security exploits.
I'd be more concerned about my fingerprint data being stolen. I can get a new credit card if one is compromised.
I thought it was bad when almost everybody volunteered to get a grocery store club card and surrender their privacy for a reduction in the newly jacked up prices. Finger print biometrics at the grocery store? What's next? Am I going to be forced to give a DNA sample to buy Mt Dew and Fritos?