Comment Re:Neat (Score 3, Insightful) 121
You do realize that despite the resemblance, this thing is not actually a Space Station. It's a space vehicle designed for interplanetary travel.
Comment Re:Most important launch in decades (Score 4, Informative) 190
ATK's Rockets that are used for shuttle launches are called "Reusable Solid Rocket Motors"
Kind of an oxymoron there considering they are lost into the ocean and gone forever - reusable?
See this page for pictures of NASA ships doing the impossible: towing recovered solid rocket boosters back to Kennedy Space Center.
Comment Re:First Priority (Score 0) 66
What a bunch of losers! NASA is spending my tax dollars on crap that relies on M$ Silverlight.
Comment Re:If we could only get the gov't out of the way.. (Score 4, Insightful) 206
There was no money in the internet either until the 1990s. I guess building it before then was a waste of time and money.
And who was developing the Internet until the 1990's? The government. Specifically, DARPA and NSF. And a bunch of universities, probably funded by government grants.
Comment Re:$500M/80K = how much? (Score 3, Informative) 299
Sounds like Rosa Martinez might be getting back more than $870/mo worth. Even going all the way back to 1996, that's an average of about $40,000/mo per person.
What are you smoking? $500 million, divided by 80,000 people is an average of $6250 per person, total. Assuming they were all getting $870 per month, they were being paid for an average of a little over 7 months.
Comment Re:The 2nd edition will use an unsigned byte count (Score 1) 145
They must already be using an "unsigned byte" (or some larger integer)... 10000000b is -128 if you were using a signed byte.
Journal Journal: OWL, a new channel for science fiction and fantasy
Other Worlds and Lands, or OWL, is a new channel devoted to science fiction and fantasy. It's just getting off the ground, but we've got forums, and periodic live chats, for getting suggestions and feedback from the public.
Comment Re:OpenBSD? (Score 1) 219
but isn't it all about the userspace, which is pretty much the same?
In general, you're correct. Apache (on, say, NetBSD)is generally as secure as Apache (on Linux). However, OpenBSD has reviewed a lot of the ported applications, and so Apache (on OpenBSD) should be better than other versions of Apache. That review may be done by other operating systems (e.g. the RedHat/Fedora version of Apache, if you get the RPM), but OpenBSD is famous for it.
Comment Re:Screwed? (Score 1) 586
I suspect neither of those would be desirable if you consider yourself a Web Intelligent Designer.
Comment Re:Sounds like a great industrial espionage device (Score 1) 464
If he's running ArpWatch he'll get an email each time an "unfamiliar" (i.e. new) MAC address is seen.
Comment Flatland (Score 5, Informative) 630
Flatland by Edwin Abbott Abbott. Higher-dimensional math packaged as a parody about Victorian culture. :)
*** Ponder
Comment Re:In other news... (Score 2, Informative) 238
Sorry, SMTP (e-mail) uses TCP (almost always port 25). Perhaps you mean SNMP (network management)? A typical home router doesn't normally use SNMP, but more expensive ones (Cisco, etc.) do.
Rewriting a Software Product After Quitting a Job? 604
hi_caramba_2008 writes "We are a bunch of good friends at a large software company. The product we work on is under-budgeted and over-hyped by the sales drones. The code quality sucks, and management keeps pulling in different direction. Discussing this among ourselves, we talked about leaving the company and rebuilding the code from scratch over a few months. We are not taking any code with us. We are not taking customer lists (we probably will aim at different customers anyway). The code architecture will also be different — hosted vs. stand-alone, different modules and APIs. But at the feature level, we will imitate this product. Can we be sued for IP infringement, theft, or whatever? Are workers allowed to imitate the product they were working on? We know we have to deal with the non-compete clause in our employment contracts, but in our state this clause has been very difficult to enforce. We are more concerned with other IP legal aspects."
Second Snag This Week Could Delay LHC for Weeks 160
sciencehabit writes "After a transformer failure earlier this week, the Large Hadron Collider has hit another snag — and this one is much more serious. As Science reports, 'At least one of the LHC's more than 1700 superconducting magnets failed, springing a leak and spewing helium gas into the subterranean tunnel that houses the collider ... How long [repairs take] will depend in part on how much of the LHC must be warmed to room temperature for servicing. If it's only a short section, the repair could be relatively quick. But the machine is built in octants, and if workers have to heat and cool an entire octant, then the cooling alone would take several weeks."
Reader Simmeh contributes coverage from the BBC. We recently discussed the transformer malfunction at the LHC, which was a smaller problem and has already been fixed. Update - 9/20 at 12:52 by SS: CNN reports that the LHC will be out of commission for two months.
IAU Names Fifth Dwarf Planet Haumea 94
Kligat writes "The International Astronomical Union has renamed the dwarf planet Haumea and its two moons Hi'iaka and Namaka, after the Hawaiian fertility goddess, the patron goddess of Hawaii, and a water spirit. The cigar-shaped body is speculated to have resulted from its short rotational period of only four hours. Holding up the reclassification of the body as a dwarf planet was a dispute over its discovery between the groups of José Luis Ortiz Moreno and Michael E. Brown."
