Having worked as a contractor for Goddard Space Flight Center years ago on a few projects, I can assure you that SpaceX's way of doing business is completely different than the old school space business. Coming from NASA, which trickles down to Boeing and Lockheed, the standard mentality is do everything at least twice, and usually triple checking all of that. New processes are frowned upon and twenty year old technology is still considered new, potentially even unproven. It is a frustrating way to work for a lot of people because it moves so slow. However, it is fairly safe and effective.

Now, enter SpaceX. I suspect they have a lot of the old NASA engineers, so they have the experience to cut corners. However, they've designed the thing intentionally to tolerate failures - they stuck 9 engines on the rocket. And you definitely want to tolerate failures, however, it does lead to mistakes. Look what happens though when one engine fails - the extra burn time meant the Orbcomm secondary payload on the last mission failed and never made it into orbit. That wasn't highly publicized, but it was a partial failure.

Now, what we're going to run into the standard cost/benefit of the extra work that goes into Boeing rockets. Is it worth it? Well, I suspect once you start sticking people on the top of the rockets the tolerance for failure goes down. Personally, I love what SpaceX is doing and I think a lot of the stuff is cutting edge. It is the direction we need to be headed, and I personally think the risks are worth it.

Better - Faster - Cheaper

You only get two.

See my other reply for more details. But specifically:

1. We don't really have a home phone. My wife and I only have cell phones. However, we are required to have an analog telephone line because we have Internet service at home. We don't use it, but the rural telephone co-op ONLY sells their Internet service bundled with phone service. Let me repeat that - it's not possible to purchase unbundled DSL here. They are not an ILEC, so someone like Covad has no access to the local loop. Since they have a monopoly, they can require that and further, because phone service is regulated by the FCC and by providing it, the rural telephone co-op gets USF funds. I think they get like $50 a month from the USF just for providing phone service to our house that we don't use. That's on top of the $45 a month we pay for the PHONE service. So technically I could hook up an analog phone in the house, but I don't want to deal with another phone number in my life, there's no reason for it.

Realistically, there are no other Internet providers here. Satellite is too slow, we use too much data for our 3G cell service. We don't have cable. So our service at home is super expensive compared to elsewhere, but it is pretty good. Their pricing is super weird, so at work we have relatively inexpensive service for what we're getting.

2. Regarding at work, see my other reply. We can't port our numbers to another provider, and that's a problem. Switching numbers is a pain in the ass, but it's something we'll likely contemplate in the next year as we both clean up our published numbers (we used to have over 50 published numbers, I think we're down to about 10 now.) Setting up call forwarding on 50 numbers for a few years would be really expensive, but for 10 numbers it becomes feasible.

There's some things I don't understand, but this is my take:

1. I have no idea why some Google Voice calls don't terminate. Something at the IXC / ILEC level probably comes into play and I don't understand how IXC's work here and what the relationship really is between our co-op and the ILEC (originally US West). My guess would be they're small and without much depth.
2. Regarding, "If you have a pipe", do you mean us or the carriers? The reason we're not tunneling SIP is we have a traditional PBX (actually 4 of them interconnected with VOIP trunks internally and all sharing a PRI and some analog CO trunks for outbound). So we can't terminate SIP directly. Furthermore, because our local telco is a rural telephone co-op, and like I mentioned, exempt from the 1996 Telecommunications Act, * we have no number portability *. At all. Anywhere. So all of our published telephone numbers, which are very important for our business, would have to be ripped and replaced. (Not quite as bad as it seems because we could pay for call forwarding and probably still save some money, but still.. it's a pain in the ass.)

Regarding why our rural telephone co-op doesn't tunnel SIP to providers with cheap/best fees. Well, I don't know. Heck, maybe they even have started doing that. I suspect they don't though. It's also possible that there are things that come into play with the Universal Service Fund and FCC regs that give them extremely low-priced connections to big providers, so much so that perhaps SIP providers would be even more expensive. That's just speculation.

3. Regarding "peering", in the telco world tradionally that's an IXC function carried out at the ILEC level. Like I said, I don't really know how that works here.

However, peering on the data side is actually pretty cool and I do know how that works. A while back, all of the rural telephone co-ops in Montana got together and formed Vision.net . They pooled their resources and Vision.net acts as the ISP for those co-ops. So they're the ones that peer with the big pipes to the outside world. I believe all of those services are unregulated, so one of the side effects is our rural telephone co-op requires any unregulated data service to be purchased with regulated phone service - then the co-op gets USF money for providing a line to the customer, which they couldn't do otherwise. Anyway, here's a service map for our state: http://www.vision.net/network-services/transport-services/transport-services-map

I live in southwest Montana and we're serviced by a rural telephone co-op. I work in Big Sky, Montana, and you might recognize that name because it's one of the biggest ski resorts in the country. This problem didn't really exist three years ago and has increased significantly in just the past year. For those of you unfamiliar with rural telephone co-ops, here's a smattering of what it's like.. because it's QUITE different than dealing with carriers or even your local CLEC:

1. Rural telephone co-ops are exempt from the 1995 Telecommunications Act. That means all sorts of things, one of which was they were until very recently exempt from providing E911 service. (This is something your local PSAP probably takes for granted. We're about 15 years behind the times.)
2. We can't call a lot of Google Voice numbers. I'm not sure why. Possibly it's because the local co-op has a problem with their dial plan settings, that happens. However, some Google Voice numbers do work. It's just weird.
3. There's a lot of companies that provide hosted toll free numbers and provide both ACD-like services as well as collecting ANI so you can run all kinds of nice reports. We use services like that and increasingly we've run into a lot of problems because sometimes they outright can't transfer calls to our local DID's. Typically those kind of companies use cheapo LD carriers, but they also usually have a few PRI's with major carriers like AT&T. We usually have to request they change their default routing to use one of those carriers instead.
4. On the flipside, we have surprisingly good Internet service. Three years ago we put in a 50x5Mbps connection and this year we augmented it with a 26x1. All of that service costs us $500 a month. That's not as spectacular of a deal as it was 3 years ago, but considering where we are, it's pretty impressive. At home, I've got fiber to our house - not bad for a community of 838 people.

With the Mars Odyssey dying a slow death, NASA is desperately going to need a new craft just to act as a communications relay. Outfit one of these things with the comm equipment and send it to Mars. Put some (flight-rated) commodity image processing onboard and we get a nice set up for better imaging of Mars.

Of course, there's probably a million things that would be problematic with all that, not the least of which is the thing probably isn't rated for flying that far and might need a special delivery craft to get it there. However, as far as size goes, it should have more than enough capacity on the power side and on the internal space to handle a mission that far.

I'm getting really sick of the quality of "Ask Slashdot" submissions. Things really seem to have gone downhill in the past year in this category. This is a retarded question that quite a few 8th graders could answer. In other words, your apps probably work fine and for the very few that don't, run a VM. Why you're still on XP is beyond me.

You can still buy Itanium chips? Holy crap. Are they found on the same aisle of the department store as the iceboxes and cotton gins?

Two comments -

1. If you're going to use Wine, go purchase Codeweaver's Crossover version. It's much better than the standard Wine. Plus, you can get a warm fuzzy feeling you're paying to support open source. PlayOnLinux is an option too.

2. However, do expose your children to Windows. It's what they're going to learn in school and possibly what they'll need in the workplace. (Oh, I'm sure some people would like to point out why I'm wrong, people have been predicting the demise of Windows for decades. It's still the de facto standard.)

Finally, just go download something like MIcrosoft Security Essentials or Avast for your antivirus. They're free and work.

If enhancing your career is your goal, I'm not entirely sure reading books is going to do it for ya. It's not like you can leave a copy of "The Question Behind the Question" on your desk and your boss is suddenly going to think, 'Hey, I need to promote that guy.' Ain't gonna happen. So here's some specific career enhancing techniques:

1. Quit your job and get a different one. Oh, I know that's easier said than done, and you probably have some nice benefits you've accumulated by now. The sad fact is, that is the quickest way to a management level and on to a C-level if that's your goal. If you look around and you rarely see people promoted within your company, guess what - you're not going to get promoted. That means it's time to pad your resume (yes, stretch the truth to the breaking point so it's obvious you've managed people) and apply for management jobs elsewhere. If you get offered a job, negotiate a higher salary and better benefits.

2. Learn accounting and marketing. Try to get on the job experience in both of those areas working with those individuals. Accounting is important to understand if you want to become a manager because budgeting comes into play and you can do some creative GL accounting within your department to get what you need accomplished. Marketing is important to get experience in because that's where all the Cool Kids work. Knowing the Cool Kids and hanging out with them will get you bonus points with management.

3. Kiss people's asses. Or, at least grace your boss's desk with a decent bottle wine or a six pack if he did something you appreciate. In an earlier time this was a concept called "courtesy".

4. Take some classes outside of work. On a basic level, look for one of those seminars held on weekends at hotels in your area, specifically a class in negotiation. We all negotiate every day of our lives and it is immensely helpful to understand when and how to do it properly. If anything, it'll help your marriage. Maybe it's worth taking a management class as well. Here's some Fred Pryor seminars in your area: http://www.fredpryor.com/site/default.aspx

5. See the above about learning accounting and marketing. Maybe you could take a class at a local community college.

6. Ask your boss for a promotion. Surprisingly enough, it could be that simple. Don't wait for an opening to appear, just go directly to your manager or his manager (if you know him well) and ask. Maybe your company never knew you were interested in a promotion. Maybe they just thought you're happy doing what you're doing. If there isn't a job open, it's completely possible they've been thinking of creating a new job and just didn't have the right person available to do it, nor did they think they could hire the person externally. Maybe that guy is you.

7. Finally, if you just want to read some books, I liked Jack Welch's autobiography. I also liked "Good to Great". I'm reading Keith Richard's biography right now, "Life"; pretty much a textbook for what not to do to your body.

My background is telecom and I have a lot of experience in that. My recommendation is to go with a hosted solution.

DO NOT INSTALL ASTERISK YOURSELF AND THINK YOU'RE GETTING A PHONE SYSTEM FOR FREE. You'll just waste time having to configure hardware, software, and dumb things like tuning analog POTS lines or wonking around with dial plans or something that you probably have no idea how to do.

Ok, back to the hosted idea. Let's compare the big costs with a traditional PBX and a hosted PBX:

1. Phones - you're really not going to avoid this cost. Budget $200 per phone set and be happy if you come in less. Remember, cheap phones are cheap for a reason. Spend the money and get a handset with a nice weight to it and a speakerphone that works well. If you get a traditional PBX like the Avaya system you looked at, there's a good chance you're looking at purchasing proprietary phones. If it's hosted, I recommend Polycom. Whether you have hosted or a traditional PBX, this will be one of your biggest costs.

2. The PBX itself will be a big cost. Avoid this by not buying one and going with a hosted solution.

3. The maintenance/service contract is the third huge cost, regardless of whether you go with hosted or traditional PBX. You're really not avoiding it with a hosted solution, in fact it might even be slightly more expensive, but you're paying for it month to month.

Since you can probably start small and grow into most hosted solutions, switch your conference phone over first and make everyone use it. You'll find out quickly if the call quality will work or if people have complaints.

Quality of service will be an issue with a hosted solution, so make sure you have bandwidth and if you need to set up real QoS on your router, know how to do that.

Carpentry isn't that hard. A skill saw, table saw, drill/driver and some scrap wood will get you a long way. A friend with those tools who can help you is even better. Otherwise, just give it a try and see what you come up with. A 2x4 will set you back a whopping $3 at Home Depot. This ain't rocket surgery.

Thank you Motorola.

Have you considered just paying a bookkeeping service to do payroll for you? As a small business owner, I recommend doing that. It's especially true if you need to do anything like garnishments. I think you'll find the cost to have them do just your payroll is a no brainer.

Second, depending on your business structure, what you most likely need to generate out of your financial software is a P&L - profit and loss statement. When it comes tax time, your tax person should be able to use that regardless of which system it came from. Most accountants know how to work with Quickbooks though, and if you use Quickbooks you can just do a simple export and hand that file over to them. You'll get the best tax analysis that way.

I think if you have a simple business, then you probably have a lot of options. If your business is planning on expanding rapidly with lots of complicated accounting or inventory management or job costing or a myriad of other things, you really might want to consider Quickbooks.

See this article from LWN in 2009 on the state of open source accounting systems. It's probably not that out of date: http://lwn.net/Articles/314577/

Microsoft is betting the style and usability of their new interface is a vast improvement over the UI they've developed over the past 17 years using QA and focus groups. Given their past track record in style and their repeated mistakes at usability changes (Microsoft Bob, anyone?) I predict Win8 will be DOA.

I'm not switching, you're not switching, none of us are switching until we're not completely freaked out about having to handle multiple calls from Laura in Accounting because she can't figure out how to get a picture of her cat as her screensaver. I'm already weeping for the day I have to support my wife's coworker's deranged uncle's brand new Acer laptop with Win8 and can't figure out how to get his multifunction printer to scan a document directly to his iLoveAccordiansAndUnicorns.blogspot.com web page.

And to add to that, they were Honda Wins, 110cc - about the largest bike you can legally own without some kind of special license.