From http://www.newspacejournal.com/2013/02/21/new-insights-on-that-private-crewed-mars-mission/:

This publication obtained a copy of the paper Tito et al. plan to present at the conference, discussing a crewed free-return Mars mission that would fly by Mars, but not go into orbit around the planet or land on it. This 501-day mission would launch in January 2018, using a modified SpaceX Dragon spacecraft launched on a Falcon Heavy rocket. According to the paper, existing environmental control and life support system (ECLSS) technologies would allow such a spacecraft to support two people for the mission, although in Spartan condition. âoeCrew comfort is limited to survival needs only. For example, sponge baths are acceptable, with no need for showers,â the paper states.

The IEEE Aerospace Conference is in March -- next month. That's pretty interesting timing.

I respectfully disagree. I've been to four LISA conferences (sysadmin conference run by USENIX) since 2006, and I see very little that is comparable; there are the various LOPSA conferences (LOPSA-EAST, Cascadia IT Conference), but they're simply not at LISA's scale. Want to hang out with a thousand other sysadmins? Get training from Ted T'so on recovering borked disks? See what Google is up to -- or the small IT shop at the university down the coast with 1/20000th the budget? There's simply nothing else out there that matches it.

As for the rest of the conferences, all I know is the summaries I've read in ;login: and the material that I've watched/listened to on their website. (And btw, HUGE kudos to USENIX to opening access to their proceedings, talks and papers.) But at the very least, they make damned interesting reading, and have made me very curious about things that are going on outside my narrow focus.

I don't have the breadth of experience you do; I concentrate on system administration because I love it, and I've been doing it less than ten years. I'm definitely an interested amateur (at best) when it comes to topics like security, or file systems, or OS design. But I'm always surprised how much of USENIX conference material touches on areas of interest or direct relevance to me, and at the very least browsing their papers is a wonderful introduction to some research and work I'd miss otherwise. I'm sure (with the exception of LISA) there are more focused conferences, or better known ones (DefCon is one that springs to mind). But I can't agree that USENIX is "past its sell date".

(And in passing, thanks very kindly for all the work you've done for the Open Source/Free Software community. Kinda boggles my mind that I'm debating you...)

Ha...I recognize the panel on the tape drive here:

http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/#/all/18

I wasn't around then, but I've been reading up on him and all the rest of the Apollo astronauts since. I'm filled with wonder every time I think about it.

Thank you for everything, sir. I hope your eternity is a pleasant one.

Well put. Fare well, Mr. Armstrong.

This post is rife with ignorance and false statements that I don't have time to dispute.

I will mention this: Human nature is all we have. I suppose perhaps the poster thinks he is some super-being, but he isn't. The errors of human nature are magnified by governents, which shield those in political power from the consequences of their actions.

Statements like "human nature is no longer good enough" are merely soundbytes with no meaningful prescriptions.

Why does he need to disclose he is a shareholder when publicizing a lie the CEO told about his resume? Either the CEO does or does not have the CS degree.

If a major shareholder wants him gone that much, it seems like a good idea that he should be gone.

Hypothetically, in American football, a player carrying the ball could put it on the ball (fumble it) and then kick it to a team-mate. For the reasons you mentioned, it wouldn't be very effective, nor a good idea.