It is already known there that are enough stray particles in space that a craft moving at relativistic speeds would need a good deal of shielding against them
True, but this spacecraft was sent close to a comet. This environment, like the rings of saturn, is a well known hazardous environment. Normal deep space, as you would find during a cruise to mars or venus is totally empty by comparison.
why aren't 'we' using the absolute best tech. we can find for space travel?
Because manned space travel is in decline. There is no cold war to justify it. The trickle of money for space tourism is the only real long term hope.
And the development of nuclear rockets will require that a barrier of investment and risk be crossed before they work correctly. In short, money will be spent and people will die during development. Nobody wants to do it now.
According to some of my back of the envelope calculations based upon New Horizons' estimated top speed after a Jupiter assist and the current position and speed of Voyager I, in 26 years New Horizons will surpass Voyager I as the most distant human made object.
Thanks for doing that. I didn't have an envelope handy.
Besides budgetary issues, the only reason I could imagine for not using an ion engine is reliability. Maybe the final decision came down to going with what was cheaper and more reliable.
You really need a power supply with a high power/mass ratio to power an ion drive. Outside the orbit of mars this means using a real nuclear reactor (not an RTG) which automatically gives you 1-2 tonnes of extra mass.
And if you are going to put a reactor on the spacecraft you might as well build a real nuclear rocket.
The messenger mission to mercury really could have used an ion drive and a solar sail to boot. I think that was a missed opportunity.
Simple, easy, flaw (which I'm sure you've already thought of) -- human error.
Also if you are employed to dig holes in the ground by far the easiest way to find out who owns a pipe or cable is to break it and wait for somebody to complain.
A couple of years ago I accidently left the flash turned off on my digital camera. The pictures were hopelessly smeared, but I took a closer look in gimp one day when I was looking for interesting images for a web page background. You should try it. CCD does not smear like film. The results can be very interesting.
Also, they only use code that they can look at. No blogs of code (like Linux or FreeBSD) are allowed. That's because if you can't inspect them, the NSA or an attacker might have put some bad code in there. It is because of things like this that Theo De Raadt won a prize from Stallman for his contributions to free software.
RMS, author of the famously bloated emacs, doesn't give out awards for writing tight code. That award was for campaigning for free OSS drivers for hardware.
having the US control 90% of the internet's technology is exactly the type of monoculture that is decried on the desktop
Speaking as an Australian I would have to say that google is about the most unamerican american website which I use. Their regionalised sites make a lot of effort to satisfy local needs. The purist search only approach makes google world centric, not US centric.
By comparison, slashdot is very US centric. Probably because of the human factor in article selection and design.
Sometimes one must do some reimplementation in order to make improvements
OK but where would google be now if they had started as a US Government project? It would be a kind of portal for government and allied services, not a true search engine.
records were accessed by a unique ID in the URL. Change the Unique ID, see a different record.
Same as the GST hacking problem here in.au in 1999. The person who pointed this out to the tax office got charged with hacking because he tried out a few alternative URL's
I asked this question about my MP3 player. I wanted to run NetBSD on it. Apparently cheap CPU's intended for embedded applications dont have an MMU so they can't run any serious OS.
Incidently I think this postcard idea will take off if japanese schoolgirls start finding.... uses for them. That was the case with camera phones, which everybody else thought was a stupid idea at the time.
According to the project web page you can expect 10-20Kbit/sec of traffic, which works out to 6 gigabytes per month of traffic. It doesn't say which direction but I suspect NTP would be pretty symetrical so this would triple the inbound volume to my co-lo.
Thats a lot of volume for me, so I don't see how I could contribute a server.
Its a shame that they can't include a dynamic DNS hack into the system. My home system has heaps of volume at a fixed price, but it is on a dynamic IP.
If the file timestamps are wrong, then make may do unnecessary compiles
Tell me about it. In 1999 the operational site which we get our time sync from used their test network (the one connected to our development site) for Y2K testing. We had half a gig of incorrectly date stamped sources. Not a pretty sight.
This article reminds me of a short story I once read by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. I think it's from his book Palm Sunday.
Yes, I read that one in (I think) the second Dangerous Visions collection. I wonder what he was driving at with the obvious dig at Arthur Clarke?
I hope there's a foot of lead included in that shielding somewhere. To me that would seem the most vital shielding they could provide.
I think they should build huge space ships with clusters of geodesic domes attached to them with artificial gravity pointing inwards and send it into orbit around Saturn. One member of the crew should be a homicidal environmentalist maniac with a talent for programming with a soldering iron. There should also be a crew of robots who are actually more intelligent and better trained than the human crew, which, now that I mention it, invalidates most of the above ideas, but any way.....
Slashdot Mirror
True, but this spacecraft was sent close to a comet. This environment, like the rings of saturn, is a well known hazardous environment. Normal deep space, as you would find during a cruise to mars or venus is totally empty by comparison.
...you have a whole 50 seconds for them to take the page in as it loads.
This article has been around so many times I have now thought of something to post against it.
Because manned space travel is in decline. There is no cold war to justify it. The trickle of money for space tourism is the only real long term hope.
And the development of nuclear rockets will require that a barrier of investment and risk be crossed before they work correctly. In short, money will be spent and people will die during development. Nobody wants to do it now.
The first word macro virus came from Microsoft.
Thanks for doing that. I didn't have an envelope handy.
You really need a power supply with a high power/mass ratio to power an ion drive. Outside the orbit of mars this means using a real nuclear reactor (not an RTG) which automatically gives you 1-2 tonnes of extra mass.
And if you are going to put a reactor on the spacecraft you might as well build a real nuclear rocket.
The messenger mission to mercury really could have used an ion drive and a solar sail to boot. I think that was a missed opportunity.
How about the EU? Are powers of arrest extended to other EU countries now?
Also if you are employed to dig holes in the ground by far the easiest way to find out who owns a pipe or cable is to break it and wait for somebody to complain.
Much easier than making a phone call.
A couple of years ago I accidently left the flash turned off on my digital camera. The pictures were hopelessly smeared, but I took a closer look in gimp one day when I was looking for interesting images for a web page background. You should try it. CCD does not smear like film. The results can be very interesting.
RMS, author of the famously bloated emacs, doesn't give out awards for writing tight code. That award was for campaigning for free OSS drivers for hardware.
Speaking as an Australian I would have to say that google is about the most unamerican american website which I use. Their regionalised sites make a lot of effort to satisfy local needs. The purist search only approach makes google world centric, not US centric.
By comparison, slashdot is very US centric. Probably because of the human factor in article selection and design.
OK but where would google be now if they had started as a US Government project? It would be a kind of portal for government and allied services, not a true search engine.
He presented it as a report of a security problem, and in doing so, had to admit to testing (exploiting) it.
Not that you will see any of them around here...
History is loaded with great countries which don't exist anymore.
Seeing that a major builder of GPS clients is owned by one of the companies building Galileo I would say you are right about that.
Same as the GST hacking problem here in .au in 1999. The person who pointed this out to the tax office got charged with hacking because he tried out a few alternative URL's
Thats the kind of treatment you normally have to pay big money for....
Also I have always wanted to ask you about your sig. Does it mean that Linux is not for this time?
I asked this question about my MP3 player. I wanted to run NetBSD on it. Apparently cheap CPU's intended for embedded applications dont have an MMU so they can't run any serious OS.
Incidently I think this postcard idea will take off if japanese schoolgirls start finding.... uses for them. That was the case with camera phones, which everybody else thought was a stupid idea at the time.
According to the project web page you can expect 10-20Kbit/sec of traffic, which works out to 6 gigabytes per month of traffic. It doesn't say which direction but I suspect NTP would be pretty symetrical so this would triple the inbound volume to my co-lo.
Thats a lot of volume for me, so I don't see how I could contribute a server.
Its a shame that they can't include a dynamic DNS hack into the system. My home system has heaps of volume at a fixed price, but it is on a dynamic IP.
Here in FC3 it is the pool.ntp.org servers.
I believe Ubuntu sets the default to an ubuntu project server.Yes
Does anyone know if these distros use traffic to their servers to track installed base?I assumed this was the case with Ubuntu. But I don't really know.
Tell me about it. In 1999 the operational site which we get our time sync from used their test network (the one connected to our development site) for Y2K testing. We had half a gig of incorrectly date stamped sources. Not a pretty sight.
Exactly. Two weeks in jail == stupidity tax.
Yes, I read that one in (I think) the second Dangerous Visions collection. I wonder what he was driving at with the obvious dig at Arthur Clarke?
I hope there's a foot of lead included in that shielding somewhere. To me that would seem the most vital shielding they could provide.I think they should build huge space ships with clusters of geodesic domes attached to them with artificial gravity pointing inwards and send it into orbit around Saturn. One member of the crew should be a homicidal environmentalist maniac with a talent for programming with a soldering iron. There should also be a crew of robots who are actually more intelligent and better trained than the human crew, which, now that I mention it, invalidates most of the above ideas, but any way.....
Ummm, because they might throw rocks at us?