ack

i dont ever post my real name anywhere,

A lesson on humor: You should have signed your post with a name. Even if it's not your real name.

"Those who would sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither"
-Benjamin Franklin

Despite being a "developers" conference, I'm calling it. 30" OLED displays. You heard it here first.

All those Simoleans I created with debug.exe...

Sometimes, a fixed width is more effective than full width.
Sometimes, a fixed width is cleaner than full width.
Sometimes, a fixed width is more graceful than full width.

There are very few hard-and-fast rules in web design. Always designing to full width is not one of them.

Shame you couldn't spell out "In my opinion." Abbreviations = lazy typing = unimpressive.

But I need coffee!

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6jluj_le-cafe-oldelaf-english-subtitles_music

Although I almost completely agree with you, I have one piece of anecdotal evidence. I own a first generation MacBook Air (thank you, craigslist!), and it chokes pretty hard on YouTube videos.

Granted, I don't use it to browse YouTube... I use it to be a mobile programming terminal that is as pleasing to the eye as it is enjoyable to use. But there you go: years after YouTube was out, the MBA came out and sucked at playing its videos, especially the new "HD" ones. I'm told the second generation of MacBook Airs have fixed this.

How about a similar venture already on Twitter inspired by that very Wired article? Stories in exactly 126 characters.

What about entire stories?

Poor wording in the article... 47% of those surveyed were correct if you accept a rough approximation of the exact number... which happens to be 70-71%

Yeah. I didn't explain quite correctly. GSE would refer to all equipment that remains on the ground but is still at-hand before and during the mission. This would encompass not only support electronics and interface mockups but also the brassboard units (as you call them).

It depends on the project, but space projects - even small payloads aboard larger craft - are invariably built in sets. Unfortunately, you usually can't just launch one of the "spares" because they're not actually spares. They are identical units that are tested near (or beyond) the point of failure to predict lifetime of the one flight unit. These are called qualification units, or "Qual Units." Occasionally, you'll also have one or two ground-based units (ground-support equipment, or GSEs) that mimic the project's function but aren't necessarily built with space in mind... for example, expensive weight-saving milling operations have been omitted or cheaper wiring (PVC) may have replaced expensive space-worthy wiring (Teflon).

For space missions, once something is launched, all design is done. That's a very expensive component: the engineers' time to conceive and design. All that remains now for OCO is to determine the cause of failure, design a way to avoid it, and send the already-made drawings off to the shop again.

The marginal cost is materials + machine shop time + assembly time + testing (not insignificant) + launch costs.

Of course, it would have been cheaper to make the two flight units together initially... machining expenses plummet when increasing the quantity of parts in a batch. Truth be told, there are probably a few OCO's hanging out at NASA now, though they've been tested (think big vibration tests) near the point of failure.

Nobody has ever found anything worth manufacturing in space.

Ever heard of this little thing called the Halting Problem? It applies to real life as well as mathematical endeavors.