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Moon

Submission + - Space Elevator idea - rev 2.0 - why not twist the concept a bit (spaceelevator.com) 1

bmullan writes: ""I am aware of many people having looked at implementation of a "Space Elevator" concept tied to the Earth and reaching to a counter-balanced, geo-synchronized base station in orbit.

However, the earth's gravity and especially atmospheric conditions create huge engineering problems.

WHAT IF... the concept were done from the Moon's perspective?

There are estimates of enormous mineral deposits on the Moon. There is NO atmosphere and less gravity. If a Space Elevator were anchored to the Moon and extended 3/4 of the way to Earth then minerals could be mined there, shipped up via the Space Elevator, picked up at the end-point way-station by earth launched spacecraft/barges which then deliver the minerals to Earth.

This would save enormous amounts of time/fuel etc and provide Earth with a vast new repository of mineral wealth that could eleviate alot of Environmental destruction here on Earth where we all live?

Has anyone thought of this approach?"

Space

Submission + - Space Elevator idea - rev 2.0 (spaceelevator.com)

bmullan writes: "I am aware of many people having looked at implementation of a "Space Elevator" concept tied to the Earth and reaching to a counter-balanced, geo-synchronized base station in orbit. However, the earth's gravity and especially atmospheric conditions create huge engineering problems.
      WHAT IF... the concept were done from the Moon's perspective? There are estimates of enormous mineral deposits on the Moon. There is NO atmosphere and less gravity. If a Space Elevator were anchored to the Moon and extended 3/4 of the way to Earth then minerals could be mined there, shipped up via the Space Elevator, picked up at the end-point way-station by earth launched spacecraft/barges which then deliver the minerals to Earth. This would save enormous amounts of time/fuel etc and provide Earth with a vast new repository of mineral wealth that could eleviate alot of Environmental destruction here on Earth where we all live?
      I just sent this idea to Elon Musk since he seems to think out of the box to see what he thinks."

Comment I can top orig post - Just don't drive to Canada (Score 3, Informative) 545

Hahaha... this made me laugh.
My father-in-law had undergone a medical treatment for colon cancer where they implanted a dozen small pellets of radioactive material around his tumor.

Well he & his wife drove to Canada on a trip and crossing the border INTO Canada was no problem.

However, upon trying to re-enter the U.S. at the Border some radioactive detection system went off, an automatic barrier went up in front of their car and soon a dozen armed police were surrounding their car.

Needless to say a 78 yr old man and his wife were a bit shaken by the experience and my father-in-law was questioned for an hour and their car searched/scanned before they were permitted to continue.

I am grateful that our Border can detect this kind of stuff down to the microscopic levels because a terrorist would certainly have more on them than what was in my relative's butt...

Good thing my father-in-law is a totally funny guy and his retelling of the incident had me in stitches for hours.

Comment Re:We're NOT talking (Score 1) 315

Documentation always suffers for most software and x2go is no different I guess.
x2go's website has been both in migration to a new site, a new platform all while the x2go server/client architecture has been under a rocketing development of new features & capabilites in the past 12 months or so.
Best advice is to join either the x2go user or x2go dev mailer's until the new website gets more updates.
- x2go-user@lists.berlios.de
https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/x2go-user
- x2go-dev@lists.berlios.de
https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/x2go-dev

Comment meetings fail because... (Score 1) 445

in my experience usually meetings fail for basic fundamental reasons...
1) no agenda
2) no agenda sent in advance so people can come prepared to speak to and understand issue(s) and goal of meeting
3) due to #2 most of the meeting becomes a learning session of Q&A to understand the issues at hand
4) no review of previous meeting action items -or- progress to complete them so the wheels start spinning
5) meeting minutes aren't recorded by someone
6) action items aren't put into meeting minutes
goto #1

It really is like Dilbert.

Submission + - Shipwreck hunters make unusual find (cnn.com)

bmullan writes: "salvage team in Baltic Sea finds a mysterious round disk on the Sea floor. Its diameter is bigger than the length or width of a Boeing 747. It has rigid tail more than 400 meters long. They are going to do another dive and get more closeup pictures. But the crew in the interview is describing the circular disk is huge."

Comment Re:Unity (Score 5, Informative) 277

From Intel's AppUP website here is a writeup/guide about how to create a multi-boot environment on the Atom based ExoPC

http://appdeveloper.intel.com/en-us/blog/2011/07/07/creating-multi-boot-exopc-tablet

This shows how to multiboot Ubuntu, Windows, MeeGo on the ExoPC.

NOTE: the ExoPC is exactly the same h/w as the European WeTab tablet. BOTH are made by a subsidiary of ASUS.

Comment Re:Unity (Score 5, Informative) 277

I have an ExoPC which is ATOM N450 based. Being Atom cpu Ubuntu 11.10 installed easily and required NO chroot.

I've looked for quite a while and as far as my searching has found there are no ARM based linux for tablets out there "yet".

Ubuntu 12.04 (april 2012) is going to support OMAP4 ARM devices. Tegra2 cpu included so alot of the current flock of ARM Tegra 2 Tablets should be able to run it and any derivatives (mint etc) when that is released next spring.

There's also been alot of work by Canonical/Ubuntu and others that you can find at www.linaro.org

Comment Re:I am planning to move to NC (Score 1) 1167

I'd like to know how many of these sponsors have EVER had a job where they were expected to
- work 4-5 weeks or more straight with no breaks
- consistently be on-call 24x7x365
- sleep in their office or cube and eat takeout for days

All this will do is make it even easier to put even more pressure on people. Even some IT person making $75k-125K/year needs time off, time with their families/kids.

Take away any restraints and Corporations will just flog their mule-workers to death until they get sick, quit or get divorced instead of hiring more people (which would be a good thing for employment in the U.S.).

Then the corporation will just outsource the job to some 3rd world person that will work like that... and in this economy sending even more jobs overseas really helps the U.S.A. ! NOT !

I wonder if ANY of those Senators bothered to even talk to IT workers about their lives and work environments.

Comment cloudstack (Score 1) 17

cloudstack is a cloud orchestration toolset/api that supports multi-tenant cloud provisioning & services. it appears to be a fairly complete architecture but is also in a transitional phase as they try to implement support for further cloud hypervisor environments.
They are contributing to OpenStack and from what I understand will include OpenStack as an component of CloudStack's future development.
Here's a good writeup & summary:
http://cloudstack.org/blog/cloudstack-the-best-kept-secret-in-cloud-computing.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+open-source-cloud-computing+(CloudStack%3A+Head+in+the+Clouds)&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher
Android

Submission + - Android - Tablets aren't Cell Phones

bmullan writes: "Tablets aren't Cell Phones so why do they have basically the same Android OS ?"

Android's design makes sense for Cell phones.
People typically don't want just anyone picking up their cell phone and installing apps (free or Paid)... or changing the setup.

However, Tablets are fast becoming an alternative to Netbooks and Laptops and as such I think there should be a Tablet Specific Android build that supports
  • admin acct
  • login screen

There are many use cases for Tablets where creation of Multiple Separate User Accounts very much make sense.

  • Schools — grades K-12, where tablets are just left in the classroom & students come in and pick one to use, login, do work, logout
  • Home — Parents & kids could share a tablet(s)
  • Each user would only be able to modify their OWN environment
    Each user could have access to different applications setups

"

Comment Office 365 ... they'll have to start paying people (Score 1) 219

Microsoft is so far behind in cloud/virtualization that they'll have to start paying people to use 365. What's the old saying... "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me" The "cloud" has very rapidly evolved and Open Source is a gigantic force there. Look at AWS EC2 and just check how many AMI's are linux based...

My search shows of ALL AMI's on EC2

-- only 820 are Windows
-- 5,762 are Linux (ubuntu, debian, redhat, centos etc)

Since AWS is by far the largest IaaS Public Cloud ... what does that tell you about what's being adopted in "cloud"

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