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Moon

Golden Spike Working On Private Moon Flights 121

Posted by samzenpus from the one-of-these-days dept.
medcalf writes "NBC reports that Alan Stern's Golden Spike Company is planning commercial trips to the Moon. From the article: 'A group of space veterans and big-name backers today took the wraps off the Golden Spike Company, a commercial space venture that aims to send paying passengers to the moon and back at an estimated price of $1.4 billion or more for two. The venture would rely on private funding, and it's not clear when the first lunar flight would be launched — but the idea reportedly has clearance from NASA, which abandoned its own back-to-the-moon plan three and a half years ago. Golden Spike's announcement came on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 17, the last manned moonshot. Backers of the plan, including former NASA executive Alan Stern and former Apollo flight director Gerry Griffin, were to discuss the company's strategy at a National Press Club briefing at 2 p.m. ET, but some of the details were laid out in a news release issued before the briefing. "A key element that makes our business achievable and compelling is Golden Spike's team of nationally and internationally known experts in human and robotic spaceflight, planetary and lunar science, exploration, venture capital formation, and public outreach," Stern said in the news release.'"

Comment This happened to me (Score 2) 443

by SavSoul (#41027597) Attached to: Joyent Drops Lifetime Account Holders
I was involved in a similar situation where I had free rentals for life with a purchase of a VCR. They had a pitiful movie selection but it was still a good deal. Eventually, they decided to drop the rental portion of the business and effectively said too bad. A quick lawsuit later I had my full purchase price back in my hands. Not a lawyer but it was about 2 hour total to file in small claims and prove my membership and lifetime certificate.

Comment Device Control (Score 1) 96

by SavSoul (#36924900) Attached to: Microsoft Exposes Locations of PCs and Phones
It would be nice if devices had the ability to limit the GPS accuracy for all applications. Something that would allow them to return circular (Spherical?) regions that are defined to fall on a LAT/LON boundry so it doesn't place you in the center of the circle. Have the lowest region be exact LAT/LON, then 100 meters, 1km, 10km, 100km and off. This would only be helpful if the device itself did it to prevent companies with no common sense from doing this.

Comment Re:awful, awful awful awful (Score 1) 293

by SavSoul (#35387168) Attached to: Google Cars Drive Themselves, In Traffic
The difference is a person can tell if they are feeling well and will not have a mass failure all at once (occasionally heart attacks or strokes cause driving issues but out of millions of drivers the numbers are low) The question is can the computer handle when it has a sudden reboot because of a overheating device or a short circuit across the main bus. Even if it can't you would have to weigh potential total failure of the computer system with how many drunks and poor drivers (those who cause unintended accidents due to incompetence.) there are on the road and find out which is the net positive. I am guessing the computer will do a better job even if the failure rate was fairly high. It is way to much to ask that everyone takes a precision driving course and actually pays attention and acts responsibly so your theory about the computer doing better sounds accurate.
Mars

New Mars Rover Rolls For the First Time 100

Posted by Soulskill from the keep-them-doggies-rollin dept.
wooferhound writes "Like proud parents savoring their baby's very first steps, mission team members gathered in a gallery above a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to watch the Mars Curiosity rover roll for the first time. Engineers and technicians wore bunny suits while guiding Curiosity through its first steps, or more precisely, its first roll on the clean room floor. The rover moved forward and backward about 1 meter (3.3 feet). Mars Science Laboratory (aka Curiosity) is scheduled to launch in fall 2011 and land on the Red Planet in August 2012. Curiosity is the largest rover ever sent to Mars. It will carry 10 instruments that will help search an intriguing region of the Red Planet for two things: environments where life might have existed, and the capacity of those environments to preserve evidence of past life."
Security

Fannie Mae Worker Indicted For Malicious Script 325

Posted by Soulskill from the good-thing-their-engineers-bailed-them-out dept.
dfdashh writes "A former Fannie Mae contractor has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Baltimore, MD for computer intrusion. He attempted to propagate a malicious script throughout the company's 4,000 servers. The DC Examiner has details of the incident: 'Had this malicious script executed, [Fannie Mae] engineers expect it would have caused millions of dollars of damage and reduced if not shutdown operations at [Fannie Mae] for at least one week. ... The virus was set to execute at 9 a.m. Jan. 31, first disabling Fannie Mae's computer monitoring system and then cutting all access to the company's 4,000 servers, Nye wrote. Anyone trying to log in would receive a message saying "Server Graveyard." From there, the virus would wipe out all Fannie Mae data, replacing it with zeros, Nye wrote. Finally, the virus would shut down the servers.'"

Comment Stability (Score 1) 225

by SavSoul (#10460035) Attached to: Will VoIP Kill the PBX?
Until my internet connection is stable enough to stay up for years at a time I will not trust my line to 911 and other services replaced. We had Vonage and its just fine, works like a charm, until as usual the internet connection goes down. This seems to happen about once ever month where im at. The phone since I was old enough to use it has never been off.

24/7/365

There is never a maintenance window with your phone even a planned one.

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