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Comment Re:Congress is happy (Score 2, Insightful) 143

This is bigger than you realize, yes nasa did it in 1964 in what is essentially a lewis & clark type exploration project, the mercury / gemini / apollo series of flights. This is different than 1964 its akin to the opening up of the railway systems in the east that eventually lead to the transcontinental railway. Spacex is just the first company to get there under their own steam. Yes they have government contract, but they developed their own medium lift vehicle powerful enough to launch a man rated space craft into orbit. that is the Dragon space capsule. They did it all in house at a fraction of the cost of the defunct Aries & constellation projects. The dragon now needs to go through a full vetting process to get it man rated but even then it will take 3 years, that will still beat the first full up test flight of the Aries by 3 years[nasa's best guess]. The best part of this is it was done privately for a fraction of what the public sectors failed attempts cost. The Republicans, well, they are just upset the Democrats killed Aries thats why they are kvetching on this, I say if Elon wants to win this hands down, press to get the dragon man rated in 18 months. As there are plans to get the Constellation project restarted already afoot

Comment the Right Direction, but is it far enough? (Score 1) 455

By the time Ares I/Orion program was cancelled earlier this year, the schedule had already slipped five years to 2017 & a full development would have cost another $50 billion. Further, the cost per flight, with estimated overhead, was figured to be at least $1.5 billion each this compared to the $1 billion each for a Shuttle flight, this while lifting only four people to Shuttle's seven & little or no cargo. Cancellation was therefore a matter of time & thankfully the president had the political guts to do the right thing for once. The problem that you see in the media is the claim there is no immediate replacement. The reality is there is a civilian alternative being pushed & it is the same replacement the president looked at when he went to pad 41 at Cape Canaveral launch station & looked at the flight ready vehicle from Spacex, owned by Elon Musk. According to the media the replacement is years away, the reality is the media missing this story. The replacement, is the first flight ready articles of 2 pieces of equipment the Spacex Falcon 9 medium Launch vehicle which on its maiden flight, is already mated to the Dragon Spacecraft. The two items are already at the Cape awaiting the final sign off by the Air Force range safety office & by NASA. That's all that is keeping it on the ground, not a pie in the sky development program that hasn't started yet, this one is 75% complete at this point, that means we have the hardware development mostly complete, all that is needed is permission to launch to prove its viability. Then obviously it will need a series of flights to work off the knee cards if you will & get it man rated, yes that will take years. But not that many years. if you don't believe me, go here & research it yourself; http://www.spacex.com/updates.php
Music

Submission + - Music Industry Attacks Papers For Free Prince CD (guardian.co.uk)

im just cannonfodder writes: The music retailers are seething at the mouth, as the artist formally known as prince, cuts a deal with Sunday newspapers and at his uk concert venues to give away his new album Planet Earth for FREE.

i love this quote from sony "the UK arm of Sony BMG had withdrawn from Prince's global deal" and i thought the media companies were fighting for the artists rights so when an artist wants to give away their music for free, sony run a mile!

"It's all about giving music for the masses and he believes in spreading the music he produces to as many people as possible,"

The Internet

Submission + - Counting to 1 million. Live on the Internet (millioncount.com)

Steffen Tengesdal writes: "Leveraging the power of the internet to raise money for a charity is nothing new, but this is definitely an odd (or unique?) way to do it. Jeremy Harper of Birmingham, Alabama is counting to 1 million, live, on the the web at http://www.millioncount.com/. He started nearly two weeks ago and is up to about 153,000 at the time of this submission. The goal? Raise money for http://www.pushamerica.org/, which helps people with disabilities.

Jeremy's employer has voluntarily let him take 3-4 months off to complete this project. So is it stupid? Depends on who you ask. There are literally many thousands on the site at all times and bandwidth has been an issue. By the end of 1 week he was using up about 50GB of transfer. I rode (bicycled) across the country with Jeremy 10 years ago for the same charity, so I support the effort and where the money is going. Without that history, I'd probably think he was a bit crazy for taking on something like this."

Censorship

Submission + - Exxon's Brute Squad Hacks the Yes Men (infoshop.org)

tom_evil writes: One day after the Yes Men made a joke announcement that ExxonMobil plans to turn billions of climate-change victims into a brand-new fuel called Vivoleum, the Yes Men's upstream internet service provider shut down Vivoleum.com and cut off the Yes Men's email service, in reaction to a complaint whose source they will not identify. "Since parody is protected under US law, Exxon must think that people seeing the site will think Vivoleum's a real Exxon product, not just a parody," said Yes Man Mike Bonanno. "Exxon's policies do already contribute to 150,000 climate-change related deaths each year," added Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum. "So maybe it really is credible. What a resource!" [In addition,] the Yes Men are desperately in need of a sysadmin. The position is unpaid at the moment, but it shouldn't take much time for someone who knows Debian Linux very well.
GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - GPLv3 license marks GNU's decline (thejemreport.com)

daemonical writes:
I've no doubt that this is the beginning of the end for GNU, and it will prove the strength of the larger free software world. The Free Software Foundation has dumped a load of restrictions on us with GPLv3 and told us that restrictions lead to freedom and that it is good for us. That's a little too Bush administration-like for me. In fact I fully expect someone, somewhere, to claim that I "hate freedom" for speaking out about this abysmal license — that would make the irony complete.

Jem Report

Windows

Submission + - Installing Vista: My Personal Hell (msdn.com)

daemonical writes: I wanted to install Vista at home, so I picked up my copy of Vista Ultimate at the company store and took it home. I've installed Windows on machines for over a decade, and I have no fear. I did make a full backup of my XP install, and I added a new drive so I could install Vista side-by-side and check it out without blowing away my XP install, just in case. My machine is a Dell Dimension 370 with 1G of RAM, pretty standard except I added a new SATA drive for Vista itself and I have an additional DVD drive (for region 2 discs). Its not a state-of-the-art-2007 machine, but it is reasonable and until very recently I was using an identical machine at work (with more RAM and disc) for all my development. Andy Pennels Blog (Microsoft)
Portables (Apple)

Submission + - Why iPhone Flipping Will Fail

An anonymous reader writes: The press has reported how many of the customers on line last night for the iPhone had nothing more in mind than to look to make a quick buck reselling the units. The joke may be on them as MP3 Newswire points out. For there to a market amenable to this there has to be more than a great demand. There has to be a finite supply of an item. With concert tickets there is always a finite supply for a given night. Flipping a Playstation 3 was briefly profitable, because while Sony would over time make as many units as the market called for, there was a finite supply available for those who wanted it in time for Christmas. The Apple iPhone has no such time restraints, therefore on a theoretical level they have an infinite supply. The first wave of iPhones may sell out, but the great majority of consumers can wait until the supply catches up.
The Courts

RIAA Wants Agreements to Stay Secret 196

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA is opposing Ms. Lindor's request for discovery into the agreements among the record company competitors by which they have agreed to settle and prosecute their cases together, by which she seeks to support her Fourth Affirmative Defense (pdf) alleging that 'The plaintiffs, who are competitors, are a cartel acting collusively in violation of the antitrust laws and of public policy, by tying their copyrights to each other, collusively litigating and settling all cases together, and by entering into an unlawful agreement among themselves to prosecute and to dispose of all cases in accordance with a uniform agreement, and through common lawyers, thus overreaching the bounds and scope of whatever copyrights they might have. ...As such, they are guilty of misuse of their copyrights.'"
Censorship

Submission + - Germany Demands Changes to The Darkness (gamesindustry.biz) 1

HaymarketRiot writes: "GamesIndustry.biz is reporting that German officials have demanded several changes to Take-Two's new dark shooter. 'Nazi symbols, a finishing move and several mechanics relating to "Darklings" have had to be removed in order to satisfy the board's demands. The finishing move — a CGI sequence showing a human heart being ripped out — must be replaced by a yellowish-green-fog "soul absorption" instead.' Are these warranted changes, or just another instance of authorities overstepping their bounds?"

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