It doesn't matter if there's no treaty. Iran has frozen assets in the USA which are sufficient to pay the judgement, so it's not necessary to try to grab resources outside US jurisdiction.
The biggest problem is that the administration has to sign off on any lien on the frozen assets before they can be used to pay the judgement. Ironically, the biggest obstacle to Terry Anderson and his family getting their just recompense for Iran's abuses isn't in Tehran, it's in Washington. --
French Revolution: 1789. American Revolution: 1776. USA Constitution (replacing Articles of Confederation): 1789.
American "emperors" since throwing off the monarchy:  0. French emperors since throwing off the monarchy: 2.
FWIW, the model used by the Federalists wasn't entirely European. They used a Native American confederation (the Iroquois, IIRC) as an existence proof that a democratic republic as big as the 13 colonies could be run successfully. Previous to that, the biggest democratic institution had been a city-state. Call it what you like, Jefferson, Madison et al. were breaking new ground with their ideas of a Republic, and it's held up quite well in most places. --
They tried that in the beginning - didn't work. That's when they started doing the "loss leader" thing.
It's not a loss leader, it's an installment payment scheme combined with service. Agreeing up front to another $500 in payments over the next 2 years should tell you something.
Oh, and for those who are having fits because "people are stealing from the company", bullshit. I'm not responsible for someone else's business model
So you'd feel free to slap down $3000 for a new car and default on the loan payments, because "you're not responsible for someone else's business model"? A contract is a contract, and if you sign up for something and decide you don't want it (perhaps because it doesn't meet the advertised specs) the least you should do is "return the unused portion". In this case, it would be the hardware. --
The bottom line is all powerful in a public held company. Netpliance literally *had* to do something about this situation or else the stock holders would likely have filed suit against them.
Yes, but cutting off the hackers wasn't necessary, nor necessarily the most productive move they could have made. They could easily have taken a 2-tier strategy:
Sell at the discounted price with a mandatory service contract, and
Sell at the full hardware-plus-markup price, with no service contract.
Either way, they'd make their money. People could take the pay-over-time terms if they wanted the service, or pay-up-front if they didn't want the service. And hackers would have bought the things in droves. Now relations are going to be more adversarial, and that wasn't necessary. --
So this company that uses some really neat technology (QNX)...
I'm not sure I'd call it a "really neat technology". It's a real-time-capable microkernel with a Unix-like OS layered on top of it, and a lot of graphical and other tools that run over/with that. Aside from being fairly small and relatively fast, it wasn't too much different from Linux (at least, when I was using it). --
All that would only work for artists/recording services who are willing to make their stuff available...
And there's the problem; the big artists are currently under contracts which give the record labels exclusive rights to distribute the work, and the disintermediation inherent in the digital distribution model spells death for the profit margins of the record labels. People might buy just as much music, but the money would be going mostly to the artists. Needless to say, the labels Can't Allow That.
If someone could get such a scheme set up, it would probably languish in obscurity unless and until one band which used it suddenly got popular and started reaping the rewards. All of a sudden, bands whose contracts with labels were expiring would start ditching the labels, or the labels would have to emulate the digital distribution services (with similar contract terms). Either way, game over. --
I thought I read somewhere that Jupiter radiated energy (but scientists werent sure why or how)?
It radiates about twice as much heat as it receives from the Sun, and the source is no mystery at all; it is leftover heat from Jupiter's initial formation. At least one of the outer planets is thought to be radiating heat from the freezing of something (helium?) under the extreme pressures of the planetary core.
So if these planets are eight or more times the size of Jupiter, there likely would be the necessary energy and water to support life.
Mmmmm, no. The whole thing is a huge ball of gas with no surface, no oceans, and convection currents which keep carrying things down to levels where the temperatures cook most anything organic to charcoal. The Sun has plenty of energy, but nothing at all like terrestrial life could form there. These planets wouldn't be a whole lot better. --
. I thinks its just great that/. is paying attention to this story, but how much will the other press and people?
What does it matter how much they dwell on it? This is Slashdot, News for Nerds. If the mainstream media ignore it, it's the general public's loss; why should it be ours too? (I just love the sensawunda I get from these great photos.) --
They don't fuse lithium, it's detectable in their ir-signature. So they won't cook He-3 either.
The outer layers would only be depleted in the elements being fused in the core if the two exchanged matter between them; as long as the convective zone didn't reach down into the places where fusion was going on, you'd expect the surface composition to remain pretty much unchanged by the transmutation going on below.
He-3 can cook with deuterium, but given the probability of having a collision between He-3 and D vs. hydrogen and D, it seems awfully unlikely that it would contribute much to the energy production of a brown dwarf. Once the deuterium was gone, fusing He-3 to He-4 requires another weak interaction, which is unlikely as you noted. --
I received this today, and got permission to post it; the author wishes to remain anonymous. The formatting and font choices are mine - TZ
From my reading of the reports, and assuming they are reasonably credible, this is one of those things that keeps coming up in Government R&D and procurement and we keep trying to fight - the "success is mandatory" syndrome. People here and there - and not rarely, unfortunately - are convinced that it is better to find a way to deem something conforming than to find out what is wrong and fix it.
We (the US Govt as a whole) are gradually doing better at fixing that syndrome in general when it comes to our own management practices (i.e. the conviction that our practices must be good and that we shouldn't find flaws in them) but still doing badly at this one extremely important practice. Why?
Everyone is afraid Congress, the press and the public will think we're doing bad jobs. We are supposedly (and sometimes in fact) working closely with the contractors to improve the chance of conforming goods being delivered, so if they fail, it's our fault. That's a simplistic but very likely reaction in the current environment of Government procurement.
Whenever something fails and it seems to be the fault of an agency, the logical response would be to find out why it failed and dedicate resources to fixing the problem. But the much more probable result is to cut funds to the agency as a penalty, and thus guarantee that it will never be fixed. This is a pervasive and IMO important issue.
It is sometimes hard to identify a contractor as not complying with requirements without accusing them of fraud, if (for instance) they say the item passed tests and your review indicates that it couldn't possibly have, so they either are lying to you about it passing or about even doing the tests. These days, by and large no one wants to call a contractor a crook unless it is absolutely clear and provable and also politically acceptable. Again, the thought is that we are supposed to be working closely with the contractors, so such problems should never arise without our advance knowledge. This is absurd, of course, but it is in fact likely that senior officials or congress members will react this way. This is a very bad environment for buying extremely expensive items or ones that involve human safety.
There is rarely really good understanding of technical problems by the people who have to make decisions about them. This is partly the fault of badly conceived organizations, and partly bad communications on the part of the managers and the technical experts. It is too easy for managers to believe that something is "good enough" and that the technical people who disagree are just too narrowly focused on perfecting their own pet projects. (Because of bad organizations, it is also sometimes the case that the managers never even hear from the technical expert who was willing and able to explain the concerns.)
I see this last one all the time. I have been involved in numerous contract disputes where NO ONE who was actually making decisions on behalf of the government had looked closely at the specification or drawings to see if they made sense, could be followed, and required the contractor to do what the technical "experts" said was required of the item. That is, there is someone telling the procurement person "this item must do such-and-such"; the procurement person tells the contractor "it must do such-and-such"; the contractor says "the specifications don't require that"; the procurement person, who has no training in reading engineering drawing and probably doesn't even understand what the item is for, asks his "expert" to confirm that the item really is required to do such-and-such; and he never realizes that the technical expert doesn't even know for sure what drawings were really provided to the contractor, and is only talking about what such a device is supposed to do in theory.
And it's not going to get better without pain. Most big buying agencies (such as DoD and I believe NASA) have been reduced consistently for years; DoD has been reduced in personnel every year for the past 14. What does this mean?
the bright young people with up-to-date skills are forced out by seniority rules;
the ones who have lots of experience, know what matters and have the seniority and respect that they aren't afraid to identify problems retire; and at the same time,
many of the best of the middle group jump ship early because they are afraid of later reductions and can afford to take the risk because they can get good salaries elsewhere.
So we are left with a few really dedicated people who don't want to give up, but also with a lot of people who will never quit because they couldn't compete on the commercial market.
While a poplar stand will leach chemicals from the soil, most of them will be re-released gaseously as waste products of plant respiration.
In the case of hydrocarbons and the like, this is okay. They don't last very long in the atmosphere, as they get oxidized quickly by hydroxyl ions. This would be a problem for persistent airborne organic toxins like PCB's, but the solution there is simple: don't plant poplars on sites where you have persistent airborne organic toxins. --
OTOH there has also been some really cool stuff done with bacterias that can be used to clean up pollution.
Cool stuff, but why is he focused entirely on trees?
Because trees aren't just trees, they support communities. Some trees secrete substances from their roots which feed fungi, and the fungi swap for things like nitrate; I don't know if poplar is one of the species known to do this, but I doubt that such a successful species would not have its own bag of biological tricks. The same sugars and whatnot can feed bacteria, which attract earthworms, which aerate the soil (incidentally, air is necessary to keep the tree roots from dying), and the air then accelerates aerobic processes for breaking down pollutants.
Trees are pretty good at soaking up energy, carbon and water. This may not seem like a big thing, but put it into context: the purpose of the pollutant-remediation is to soak stuff up. An acre of soil under a black tarp can only support so many kinds of processes, an acre of soil covered with trees can support a lot more. Anything that needs water transpiration, nitrate and phosphate removal, or sugars to feed the bacteria breaking down other things is going to go a lot faster with the support provided by the tree and the interface it provides between solar energy, atmospheric carbon, and the soil and the substances and living things in it. --
As an embedded systems designer I find this hard to believe. All mechanical switches bounce. That is a different kind of bounce, however.
It certainly is. Switch bounce, in this case, would not be important; once the leg touches down, it doesn't matter if the switch bounces and indicates an "off-ground" condition for a millisecond. Its job is already done.
I imagine this "spring bounce" could be just as easily detected and ignored through reprogramming the system in-flight, just as they twiddled with the Mars Explorer firmware.
Easily ignored, certainly. Easily detected, if you test for it. It was the failure to do a system test which led to the false-touchdown-on-leg-deployment going undetected until just before landing. It should have been done before the probe was shipped to Canaveral. There are places you can cut corners; that isn't one of them. --
This should actually be real simple to implement. In your cookie routine, do something like: if (cookie.hostname != address_bar.hostname) return without_setting_the_damn_cookie.
Better yet, something like this: if (cookie.hostname != address_bar.hostname) { add_to_no_image_load_list(cookie.hostname); return without_setting_the_damn_cookie }
This would cause sites which hand you a cookie to be placed on a 'no reference' list, so their ads don't get loaded again. Sites which patronized those banner-ad providers would find their impression revenue dropping off immediately, and would have a strong incentive to switch. If you want a way to play hardball, that's a good one. --
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 11:10:19 -0500 (EST) From: NASANews@hq.nasa.gov To: undisclosed-recipients:; Subject: NASA'S RESPONSE TO UPI'S MARCH 21 MARS POLAR LANDER STORY
Peggy Wilhide Headquarters, Washington, DC March 22, 2000 (Phone: 202/ 358-1898)
Brian Welch Headquarters, Washington, DC (Phone: 202/ 358-1600)
Don Savage Headquarters, Washington, DC (Phone: 202/ 358-1547)
RELEASE: 00-43
NASA'S RESPONSE TO UPI'S MARCH 21 MARS POLAR LANDER STORY
James Oberg of UPI claims that NASA knew there was a problem with the Mars Polar Lander propulsion system prior to the Dec. 3 landing attempt and "withheld this conclusion from the public." NASA categorically denies this charge. Here's what NASA did and what NASA said:
* The Stephenson report, phase 1, was released to the public on November 10, 1999 during a press conference at NASA Headquarters.
* The report made 11 different references to technical issues or concerns involving the propulsion system and the Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) sequence.
* This issue was specifically addressed in the press conference and in "MPL Observation No. 5" and other public recommendations of the Stephenson Phase 1 report. It was entitled, "Cold Firing of Thrusters," and dealt in detail with the catalyst bed issue cited by Mr. Oberg of UPI in his March 21 story, "NASA Knew Mars Polar Lander Doomed."
* Had UPI researched the public documents released on Nov. 10, which have been available online at the NASA Home Page, the reporter would have been able to conclude that NASA did indeed publicly address propulsion issues, and specifically, the propulsion system's "catalyst bed" temperature concern.
* Based on this review, NASA knew about the concerns with the propulsion system, NASA took corrective action, and NASA hid nothing from the public. We made our concerns known in early November.
* Several failure scenarios have been reported in the press over the last few weeks, including the lander legs microswitch issue. Outlets such as the Denver Post, Space Daily, and National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" have covered this angle. There is nothing new in the UPI report relating to this specific issue. The lander legs issue is among the failure modes we are studying.
* Both the Stephenson and Casani (John Casani, retired JPL flight programs head and also director of mission assurance) teams have conducted intensive reviews relating to Mars Polar Lander, and their teams have surfaced no evidence relating to thruster acceptance testing irregularities as alleged by UPI. In fact, members of the review teams are using words like "bunk," "complete nonsense," and "wacko," to describe their reactions to UPI's charge.
Like this UPI story (no link, sorry; I haven't seen this posted anywhere, it came to me by e-mail):
NASA knew Mars Polar Lander doomed United Press International - March 21, 2000 15:01 By James Oberg, UPI Space Writer
HOUSTON, March 21 (UPI) -- The disappearance of NASA's Mars Polar Lander last December was no surprise to space officials, UPI has learned.
Prior to its arrival at Mars, a review board had already identified a fatal design flaw with the braking thrusters that doomed the mission, but NASA withheld this conclusion from the public.
The probe was lost while attempting to land near the martian south pole on December 3. Two small microprobes which had deployed separately also were never heard from again. It was the second expensive setback for American interplanetary exploration in less than three months. On September 23, a companion probe had been destroyed when a navigation error sent it skimming too deeply into the atmosphere of Mars.
Following these failures, NASA commissioned several expert panels to review the accidents and recommend improvements in NASA procedures. A source close to the panel probing the second accident has told UPI that its conclusions are "devastating" to NASA's reputation. Unlike the previous accident, where management errors merely prevented the recognition of other human errors, in this case it was a management misjudgment which caused the fatal flaw in the first place.
"I'm as certain as I can be that the thing blew up," the source concluded.
As explained privately to UPI, the Mars Polar Lander vehicle's braking thrusters had failed acceptance testing during its construction. But rather than begin an expensive and time-consuming redesign, an unnamed space official simply altered the conditions of the testing until the engine passed.
"That happened in middle management," the source told UPI. "It was done unilaterally with no approval up or down the chain of command."
The Mars Polar Lander employed a bank of rocket engines which use hydrazine fuel. The fuel is passed through metal grates which cause it to decompose violently, creating the thrust used by the engines. These metal grates are called "catalyst beds," or "cat beds." Their purpose is to initiate the explosive chemical reaction in the hydrazine.
"They tested the cat bed ignition process at a temperature much higher than it would be in flight," UPI's source said. This was done because when the cat beds were first tested at the low temperatures predicted after the long cruise from Earth to Mars, the ignition failed or was too unstable to be controlled.
So the test conditions were changed in order to certify the engine performance. But the conditions then no longer represented those most likely to occur on the real space flight.
Following the September loss of the first spacecraft due to management errors, NASA had initiated a crash review of the Mars Polar Lander to identify any similar oversights. According to UPI's source, the flaws in the cat bed testing were uncovered only a few days before the landing was to occur on December 3.
By then it was too late to do anything about it.
Garbled rumors of some temperature-related design flaw circulated in the days before the landing attempt. However, as in the September case when space officials possessed terrifying indications of imminent failure even before the arrival at Mars, NASA made no public disclosure of these expectations.
The Mars Polar Lander investigation team has also reportedly identified a second fatal design flaw that would have doomed the probe even if the engines had functioned properly.
The three landing legs of the probe contain small microswitches which are triggered when the legs touch the surface. This signal commands the engines to cease firing.
Post-accident tests have shown that when the legs are initially unfolded during the final descent, springs push them so hard that they "bounce" and trigger the microswitches by accident. As a result, the computer receives what it believes are indications of a successful touchdown, and it shuts off the engines.
Since this false signal actually occurs high in the air, the engine shutdown automatically leads to a free fall and destructive high-speed impact.
Ground testing prior to launch apparently never detected this because each of the tests was performed in isolation from other tests. One team verified that the legs unfolded properly.
Another team verified that the microswitches functioned on landing.
No integrated end-to-end test was performed due to budget and time constraints. But UPI has been privately told that "this has been reproduceable on a regular basis" in post-flight tests.
Perhaps by coincidence, in a safety memo to NASA employees distributed on March 20, NASA administrator Dan Goldin stressed "the importance of adequate testing." Reliability, he said, "requires well-thought-out verification and test activities."
Goldin explicitly described the adverse impact of "our difficulties with recent failures in late stages of development -- such as system integration and testing -- and during mission operations." The memo did not specifically attribute these problems to the Mars failures.
The Mars Polar Lander also deployed two small "penetrator" probes, both called Deep Space 2. They were designed to fall freely through the thin atmosphere, hit the ground at about 200 meters per second (400 miles per hour), and come to rest deep in the soil.
All attempts to pick up radio signals from these probes, relayed via another spacecraft already orbiting Mars, also failed. Reportedly, the review board believes that the probe radio equipment could not have survived the impact.
Alternately, the probes may simply have hit ground too rocky for survival. Engineers also suspected that their batteries, which had been charged before launch almost a year earlier and not checked since then, might not have retained sufficient power.
"Nobody in the know really expected either of the penetrators to work," UPI's primary source said.
Dr. Carl Pilcher, head of NASA's planetary program, talked with space scientists at last week's Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston. While expressing disappointment at the setbacks and skepticism of ambitious flight schedules -- "Our ambition exceeded our grasp," he told the scientists -- he would not discuss the results of the accident investigation.
The conclusions, he did admit, "make sober reading." The investigation was led by Tom Young, a former manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory which runs most of NASA's deep space probes.
"Goldin recently told his managers that the Young report will be the Rogers Commission of space science," Andrew Lawler wrote in the March 10 issue of Science magazine, "referring to the devastating critique delivered by a panel that examined the 1986 Challenger disaster."
And in a March 9 internal memo from JPL director Ed Stone, which UPI has obtained, space workers are warned that "the days ahead may at times be difficult."
According to Lori Garver, NASA's associate administrator for plans, the report on NSA's failures will be reviewed internally and then will be sent to the White House before being released to the public. --
You're supposed to test to the conditions you expect. The whole point of the BBC article is that the conditions of the test were changed to be very different from the conditions under which the braking rockets had to ignite, because the motors consistently failed the tests which simulated the expected conditions. Sending a probe that fails because of some un-foreseen condition is science; sending a probe that fails because of something you knew about before you built it is wasteful. --
If you asked me, I'd tell you geeks mostly agree on this:
"Intellectual property" is rapidly becoming an oxymoron (in the realm of concepts, as opposed to embodiments). Software and business-method patents should be either subjected to a high degree of scrutiny and limited to a very short term, or denied outright.
Even on copyrighted works, "fair use" should not be restricted by any law. Proprietary standards which attempt to prevent fair use of copyrighted works are inherently undemocratic, and should not receive any support; if they are circumvented by technical acumen, tough.
Attempting to apply standards of "decency" to traffic on the Internet is a lost cause. It is a medium which cannot be held to the rules of any one nation, let alone a locality. Germany cannot ban Holocaust denial when US sites are covered by the First Amendment, the US cannot ban explicit photos of 17-yr-olds when France and Denmark have nothing against Traci Lords, and Canada might as well give up its war against "incorrect" books and magazines.
If we want to be heard, there is an avenue for those willing to stand up and be counted. Write the code and put it out there.
Ask Jon Johansen, or the authors of cphack, how well that works nowadays. The people who've bought our government, the MPAA and Mattel, will reach across oceans and into your computer to crush you. You've got to fight back by pushing the pols with lobbyists and money. If we can throw one critical election to an candidate that pays attention to our voice, we'll have power. If we can't make a difference there, we might as well not exist. --
It's time to start building businesses at home over DSL. Start changing the landscape.
You can do that, until someone in Washington decides to nail your viability by, say, changing the tax code.
Think it won't happen? It has happened. The retiring Daniel Patrick Moynihan, for whose seat Hillary and Rudy are now vying, did it to a whole lot of geek businesses back in the 80's. It was incredibly slimy, though clever; if I have this correct, he wrote a change into the tax law such that programmers and engineers (listed by name) were specifically exempted from the "safe harbor" provisions of the tax code which apply to, say, attorneys. Such professionals could not qualify as independent contractors unless they met a laundry list of requirements that the "traditionally" independent professions were not required to meet. This put companies in the position of having to pay employment taxes for their contractors, unless they fired them and hired them back as employees. Lots of engineers lost their deductibility of lots of expenses when they had to become someone's employee.
The point is, Moynihan was able to get away with this because geeks didn't have a lobby to keep his clauses from getting out of committee. The people of the USA lost a lot of freedom in the bargain, because you just aren't as free when you are working for a Fortune 500 company as when you are working for yourself. On the other hand, the government probably finds it a lot easier to deal with (and control) a few big employers than a lot of little ones; look at drug testing for an example of that ugly fact. Anyway, when you come down to it, nothing is going to keep the government off our backs better than a strong lobby (a lobby backed up with energetic, grassroots votes is even better, but YOU GOTTA HAVE A LOBBY!). --
No one wants to hear it, but all security is security through obscurity. It's simply a matter of whether something is obscure enough.
You're confusing two, and possible three, different things:
Secrecy, which is information not available to the "black hats". RSA decryption keys fall into this class (unless you're careless and let them out); the mathematicians appear to all agree that it's very difficult to derive P and Q from M. The secret is protected by the inherent difficulty of the process.
Steganography. The secret is of the existence or non-existence of the data, and is protected by the data's inability to be distinguished from the normal bit stream.
Obscurity, which is information that is not admitted to exist but is easily found. The key-sector read enable scheme for DVD drives falls into this class, as does the "encryption" for Cyber Patrol's blocklist. The information is protected by the Emperor's clothes.
These really are completely different things, and they have to be attacked in different ways. --
I didn't think that it would take long before there would be a story about a filter company using filters for their own agenda.
You haven't been paying attention; stories about filter companies blocking sites which criticize their filters have been going around for a long time. --
Slashdot Mirror
The biggest problem is that the administration has to sign off on any lien on the frozen assets before they can be used to pay the judgement. Ironically, the biggest obstacle to Terry Anderson and his family getting their just recompense for Iran's abuses isn't in Tehran, it's in Washington.
--
American Revolution: 1776.
USA Constitution (replacing Articles of Confederation): 1789.
American "emperors" since throwing off the monarchy:  0.
French emperors since throwing off the monarchy: 2.
FWIW, the model used by the Federalists wasn't entirely European. They used a Native American confederation (the Iroquois, IIRC) as an existence proof that a democratic republic as big as the 13 colonies could be run successfully. Previous to that, the biggest democratic institution had been a city-state. Call it what you like, Jefferson, Madison et al. were breaking new ground with their ideas of a Republic, and it's held up quite well in most places.
--
--
- Sell at the discounted price with a mandatory service contract, and
- Sell at the full hardware-plus-markup price, with no service contract.
Either way, they'd make their money. People could take the pay-over-time terms if they wanted the service, or pay-up-front if they didn't want the service. And hackers would have bought the things in droves. Now relations are going to be more adversarial, and that wasn't necessary.--
--
If someone could get such a scheme set up, it would probably languish in obscurity unless and until one band which used it suddenly got popular and started reaping the rewards. All of a sudden, bands whose contracts with labels were expiring would start ditching the labels, or the labels would have to emulate the digital distribution services (with similar contract terms). Either way, game over.
--
--
At the very least, an inhabited Class M planet would get a number of groups behind an effort to build starships; they'd want to send missionaries.
--
--
He-3 can cook with deuterium, but given the probability of having a collision between He-3 and D vs. hydrogen and D, it seems awfully unlikely that it would contribute much to the energy production of a brown dwarf. Once the deuterium was gone, fusing He-3 to He-4 requires another weak interaction, which is unlikely as you noted.
--
From my reading of the reports, and assuming they are reasonably credible, this is one of those things that keeps coming up in Government R&D and procurement and we keep trying to fight - the "success is mandatory" syndrome. People here and there - and not rarely, unfortunately - are convinced that it is better to find a way to deem something conforming than to find out what is wrong and fix it.
We (the US Govt as a whole) are gradually doing better at fixing that syndrome in general when it comes to our own management practices (i.e. the conviction that our practices must be good and that we shouldn't find flaws in them) but still doing badly at this one extremely important practice. Why?
- Everyone is afraid Congress, the press and the public will think we're doing bad jobs. We are supposedly (and sometimes in fact) working closely with the contractors to improve the chance of conforming goods being delivered, so if they fail, it's our fault. That's a simplistic but very likely reaction in the current environment of Government procurement.
- Whenever something fails and it seems to be the fault of an agency, the logical response would be to find out why it failed and dedicate resources to fixing the problem. But the much more probable result is to cut funds to the agency as a penalty, and thus guarantee that it will never be fixed. This is a pervasive and IMO important issue.
- It is sometimes hard to identify a contractor as not complying with requirements without accusing them of fraud, if (for instance) they say the item passed tests and your review indicates that it couldn't possibly have, so they either are lying to you about it passing or about even doing the tests. These days, by and large no one wants to call a contractor a crook unless it is absolutely clear and provable and also politically acceptable. Again, the thought is that we are supposed to be working closely with the contractors, so such problems should never arise without our advance knowledge. This is absurd, of course, but it is in fact likely that senior officials or congress members will react this way. This is a very bad environment for buying extremely expensive items or ones that involve human safety.
- There is rarely really good understanding of technical problems by the people who have to make decisions about them. This is partly the fault of badly conceived organizations, and partly bad communications on the part of the managers and the technical experts. It is too easy for managers to believe that something is "good enough" and that the technical people who disagree are just too narrowly focused on perfecting their own pet projects. (Because of bad organizations, it is also sometimes the case that the managers never even hear from the technical expert who was willing and able to explain the concerns.)
I see this last one all the time. I have been involved in numerous contract disputes where NO ONE who was actually making decisions on behalf of the government had looked closely at the specification or drawings to see if they made sense, could be followed, and required the contractor to do what the technical "experts" said was required of the item. That is, there is someone telling the procurement person "this item must do such-and-such"; the procurement person tells the contractor "it must do such-and-such"; the contractor says "the specifications don't require that"; the procurement person, who has no training in reading engineering drawing and probably doesn't even understand what the item is for, asks his "expert" to confirm that the item really is required to do such-and-such; and he never realizes that the technical expert doesn't even know for sure what drawings were really provided to the contractor, and is only talking about what such a device is supposed to do in theory.And it's not going to get better without pain. Most big buying agencies (such as DoD and I believe NASA) have been reduced consistently for years; DoD has been reduced in personnel every year for the past 14. What does this mean?
- the bright young people with up-to-date skills are forced out by seniority rules;
- the ones who have lots of experience, know what matters and have the seniority and respect that they aren't afraid to identify problems retire; and at the same time,
- many of the best of the middle group jump ship early because they are afraid of later reductions and can afford to take the risk because they can get good salaries elsewhere.
So we are left with a few really dedicated people who don't want to give up, but also with a lot of people who will never quit because they couldn't compete on the commercial market.Solutions, anyone?
--
--
Trees are pretty good at soaking up energy, carbon and water. This may not seem like a big thing, but put it into context: the purpose of the pollutant-remediation is to soak stuff up. An acre of soil under a black tarp can only support so many kinds of processes, an acre of soil covered with trees can support a lot more. Anything that needs water transpiration, nitrate and phosphate removal, or sugars to feed the bacteria breaking down other things is going to go a lot faster with the support provided by the tree and the interface it provides between solar energy, atmospheric carbon, and the soil and the substances and living things in it.
--
--
if (cookie.hostname != address_bar.hostname)
{
add_to_no_image_load_list(cookie.hostname);
return without_setting_the_damn_cookie
}
This would cause sites which hand you a cookie to be placed on a 'no reference' list, so their ads don't get loaded again. Sites which patronized those banner-ad providers would find their impression revenue dropping off immediately, and would have a strong incentive to switch. If you want a way to play hardball, that's a good one.
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From: NASANews@hq.nasa.gov
To: undisclosed-recipients:
Subject: NASA'S RESPONSE TO UPI'S MARCH 21 MARS POLAR LANDER STORY
Peggy Wilhide
Headquarters, Washington, DC March 22, 2000
(Phone: 202/ 358-1898)
Brian Welch
Headquarters, Washington, DC
(Phone: 202/ 358-1600)
Don Savage
Headquarters, Washington, DC
(Phone: 202/ 358-1547)
RELEASE: 00-43
NASA'S RESPONSE TO UPI'S MARCH 21 MARS POLAR LANDER STORY
James Oberg of UPI claims that NASA knew there was a problem with the Mars Polar Lander propulsion system prior to the Dec. 3 landing attempt and "withheld this conclusion from the public." NASA categorically denies this charge. Here's what NASA did and what NASA said:
* The Stephenson report, phase 1, was released to the public on November 10, 1999 during a press conference at NASA Headquarters.
* The report made 11 different references to technical issues or concerns involving the propulsion system and the Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) sequence.
* This issue was specifically addressed in the press conference and in "MPL Observation No. 5" and other public recommendations of the Stephenson Phase 1 report. It was entitled, "Cold Firing of Thrusters," and dealt in detail with the catalyst bed issue cited by Mr. Oberg of UPI in his March 21 story, "NASA Knew Mars Polar Lander Doomed."
* Had UPI researched the public documents released on Nov. 10, which have been available online at the NASA Home Page, the reporter would have been able to conclude that NASA did indeed publicly address propulsion issues, and specifically, the propulsion system's "catalyst bed" temperature concern.
* Based on this review, NASA knew about the concerns with the propulsion system, NASA took corrective action, and NASA hid nothing from the public. We made our concerns known in early November.
* Several failure scenarios have been reported in the press over the last few weeks, including the lander legs microswitch issue. Outlets such as the Denver Post, Space Daily, and National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" have covered this angle. There is nothing new in the UPI report relating to this specific issue. The lander legs issue is among the failure modes we are studying.
* Both the Stephenson and Casani (John Casani, retired JPL flight programs head and also director of mission assurance) teams have conducted intensive reviews relating to Mars Polar Lander, and their teams have surfaced no evidence relating to thruster acceptance testing irregularities as alleged by UPI. In fact, members of the review teams are using words like "bunk," "complete nonsense," and "wacko," to describe their reactions to UPI's charge.
- end -
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... that the problem was known before the vehicle was ever assembled, let alone launched. That's when it should have been brought out, and fixed.
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... that even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
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NASA knew Mars Polar Lander doomed
United Press International - March 21, 2000 15:01
By James Oberg, UPI Space Writer
HOUSTON, March 21 (UPI) -- The disappearance of NASA's Mars Polar Lander last December was no surprise to space officials, UPI has learned.
Prior to its arrival at Mars, a review board had already identified a fatal design flaw with the braking thrusters that doomed the mission, but NASA withheld this conclusion from the public.
The probe was lost while attempting to land near the martian south pole on December 3. Two small microprobes which had deployed separately also were never heard from again. It was the second expensive setback for American interplanetary exploration in less than three months. On September 23, a companion probe had been destroyed when a navigation error sent it skimming too deeply into the atmosphere of Mars.
Following these failures, NASA commissioned several expert panels to review the accidents and recommend improvements in NASA procedures. A source close to the panel probing the second accident has told UPI that its conclusions are "devastating" to NASA's reputation. Unlike the previous accident, where management errors merely prevented the recognition of other human errors, in this case it was a management misjudgment which caused the fatal flaw in the first place.
"I'm as certain as I can be that the thing blew up," the source concluded.
As explained privately to UPI, the Mars Polar Lander vehicle's braking thrusters had failed acceptance testing during its construction. But rather than begin an expensive and time-consuming redesign, an unnamed space official simply altered the conditions of the testing until the engine passed.
"That happened in middle management," the source told UPI. "It was done unilaterally with no approval up or down the chain of command."
The Mars Polar Lander employed a bank of rocket engines which use hydrazine fuel. The fuel is passed through metal grates which cause it to decompose violently, creating the thrust used by the engines. These metal grates are called "catalyst beds," or "cat beds." Their purpose is to initiate the explosive chemical reaction in the hydrazine.
"They tested the cat bed ignition process at a temperature much higher than it would be in flight," UPI's source said. This was done because when the cat beds were first tested at the low temperatures predicted after the long cruise from Earth to Mars, the ignition failed or was too unstable to be controlled.
So the test conditions were changed in order to certify the engine performance. But the conditions then no longer represented those most likely to occur on the real space flight.
Following the September loss of the first spacecraft due to management errors, NASA had initiated a crash review of the Mars Polar Lander to identify any similar oversights. According to UPI's source, the flaws in the cat bed testing were uncovered only a few days before the landing was to occur on December 3.
By then it was too late to do anything about it.
Garbled rumors of some temperature-related design flaw circulated in the days before the landing attempt. However, as in the September case when space officials possessed terrifying indications of imminent failure even before the arrival at Mars, NASA made no public disclosure of these expectations.
The Mars Polar Lander investigation team has also reportedly identified a second fatal design flaw that would have doomed the probe even if the engines had functioned properly.
The three landing legs of the probe contain small microswitches which are triggered when the legs touch the surface. This signal commands the engines to cease firing.
Post-accident tests have shown that when the legs are initially unfolded during the final descent, springs push them so hard that they "bounce" and trigger the microswitches by accident. As a result, the computer receives what it believes are indications of a successful touchdown, and it shuts off the engines.
Since this false signal actually occurs high in the air, the engine shutdown automatically leads to a free fall and destructive high-speed impact.
Ground testing prior to launch apparently never detected this because each of the tests was performed in isolation from other tests. One team verified that the legs unfolded properly.
Another team verified that the microswitches functioned on landing.
No integrated end-to-end test was performed due to budget and time constraints. But UPI has been privately told that "this has been reproduceable on a regular basis" in post-flight tests.
Perhaps by coincidence, in a safety memo to NASA employees distributed on March 20, NASA administrator Dan Goldin stressed "the importance of adequate testing." Reliability, he said, "requires well-thought-out verification and test activities."
Goldin explicitly described the adverse impact of "our difficulties with recent failures in late stages of development -- such as system integration and testing -- and during mission operations." The memo did not specifically attribute these problems to the Mars failures.
The Mars Polar Lander also deployed two small "penetrator" probes, both called Deep Space 2. They were designed to fall freely through the thin atmosphere, hit the ground at about 200 meters per second (400 miles per hour), and come to rest deep in the soil.
All attempts to pick up radio signals from these probes, relayed via another spacecraft already orbiting Mars, also failed. Reportedly, the review board believes that the probe radio equipment could not have survived the impact.
Alternately, the probes may simply have hit ground too rocky for survival. Engineers also suspected that their batteries, which had been charged before launch almost a year earlier and not checked since then, might not have retained sufficient power.
"Nobody in the know really expected either of the penetrators to work," UPI's primary source said.
Dr. Carl Pilcher, head of NASA's planetary program, talked with space scientists at last week's Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston. While expressing disappointment at the setbacks and skepticism of ambitious flight schedules -- "Our ambition exceeded our grasp," he told the scientists -- he would not discuss the results of the accident investigation.
The conclusions, he did admit, "make sober reading." The investigation was led by Tom Young, a former manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory which runs most of NASA's deep space probes.
"Goldin recently told his managers that the Young report will be the Rogers Commission of space science," Andrew Lawler wrote in the March 10 issue of Science magazine, "referring to the devastating critique delivered by a panel that examined the 1986 Challenger disaster."
And in a March 9 internal memo from JPL director Ed Stone, which UPI has obtained, space workers are warned that "the days ahead may at times be difficult."
According to Lori Garver, NASA's associate administrator for plans, the report on NSA's failures will be reviewed internally and then will be sent to the White House before being released to the public.
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You're supposed to test to the conditions you expect. The whole point of the BBC article is that the conditions of the test were changed to be very different from the conditions under which the braking rockets had to ignite, because the motors consistently failed the tests which simulated the expected conditions. Sending a probe that fails because of some un-foreseen condition is science; sending a probe that fails because of something you knew about before you built it is wasteful.
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Think it won't happen? It has happened. The retiring Daniel Patrick Moynihan, for whose seat Hillary and Rudy are now vying, did it to a whole lot of geek businesses back in the 80's. It was incredibly slimy, though clever; if I have this correct, he wrote a change into the tax law such that programmers and engineers (listed by name) were specifically exempted from the "safe harbor" provisions of the tax code which apply to, say, attorneys. Such professionals could not qualify as independent contractors unless they met a laundry list of requirements that the "traditionally" independent professions were not required to meet. This put companies in the position of having to pay employment taxes for their contractors, unless they fired them and hired them back as employees. Lots of engineers lost their deductibility of lots of expenses when they had to become someone's employee.
The point is, Moynihan was able to get away with this because geeks didn't have a lobby to keep his clauses from getting out of committee. The people of the USA lost a lot of freedom in the bargain, because you just aren't as free when you are working for a Fortune 500 company as when you are working for yourself. On the other hand, the government probably finds it a lot easier to deal with (and control) a few big employers than a lot of little ones; look at drug testing for an example of that ugly fact. Anyway, when you come down to it, nothing is going to keep the government off our backs better than a strong lobby (a lobby backed up with energetic, grassroots votes is even better, but YOU GOTTA HAVE A LOBBY!).
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- Secrecy, which is information not available to the "black hats". RSA decryption keys fall into this class (unless you're careless and let them out); the mathematicians appear to all agree that it's very difficult to derive P and Q from M. The secret is protected by the inherent difficulty of the process.
- Steganography. The secret is of the existence or non-existence of the data, and is protected by the data's inability to be distinguished from the normal bit stream.
- Obscurity, which is information that is not admitted to exist but is easily found. The key-sector read enable scheme for DVD drives falls into this class, as does the "encryption" for Cyber Patrol's blocklist. The information is protected by the Emperor's clothes.
These really are completely different things, and they have to be attacked in different ways.--
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