I'm now seriously considering replacing my current vehicle with an electric one because then the EPA regulations won't destroy my engine by changing the fuel formula. Hmm, maybe that's part of what they're thinking... Nah.

The lander itself was ready to go, as was everything except the seismometer. That seismometer was being built by the French space agency (CNES), and they couldn't get it through final testing due to a vacuum leak in time to get it delivered in time to install, test, and launch.

"NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, will redesign, build and conduct qualifications of the new vacuum enclosure for the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS), the component that failed in December." - http://www.nasa.gov/press-rele...

So, it's already been given to a different organization.

Full disclosure - I work on the lander. We busted our asses for over 2 years to get this thing ready, only to be thwarted by CNES.

I was going to comment that the Droid Maxx is a good option if you're on Verizon. I have one, and it's been a great workhorse. Unfortunately it's a non-removable battery, it's already about 2 years old, there's no expandable memory, and you're stuck with Verizon for S/W updates (worst part). Also if you don't get the developer version, the boot loader is locked. If you're OK with all of that, I'd say go for this one. It should be relatively cheap by now.

I'd guess that the satellite's solar powered and in the event of a "safety mode" it's programmed to point the solar arrays fully at the sun while ground operators figure out what's going on.

You're seeing the PR side of the mission, of course they're going to use imperial units because that's what non-scientific folks expect. The GRAIL mission used SI units during development and does do for mission operations. See http://moon.mit.edu/design.html for more info.

Another expense might be making the GRAIL orbiters dual-string (duplicate almost everything on a single orbiter, two main computers, two batteries, etc). According to http://moon.mit.edu/spacecraft.html GRAIL is single-string because that matches the mission reliability requirements.

Also - I was on the GRAIL development team and I'm currently working GRAIL mission operations, so I'd also be employed for a little while longer if we repeated this experiment at Mars.

Any change in humidity with that move? That could definitely contribute to static electricity build-up.

As OP explicitly said C++, I have to wonder, are they looking for an Object Oriented type of framework? If so, GLUT doesn't fit the bill, it's a pure C, function callback oriented framework. It could be used in an OO like manner, but it isn't OO itself.

The only OO framework I've found for use with OpenGL is FLTK, but my experience with OpenGL is quite limited. What other OO frameworks are available and worth the effort to learn?

We're already on our way (or will be in 2011, I hope). See http://juno.wisc.edu/

Definitely not true. A stroke victim that goes to the wrong hospital (handling a stroke requires a special set of equipment and skills that not every hospital has) will have to wait for EMS to transport them to the right hospital. Now they've got the time it takes to transport them to the wrong hospital as well as the time it takes to transport them again to the right hospital working against them.

Citation? I've been in a couple automobile accidents and EMS was present within a few minutes. All depends on where you live.

Interesting, don't know if it's done or how EMS responds to this.

Yes, I know how expensive an ambulance ride is. It's all absurdly priced, but I guess you avoid the whole billing issue if you die before you even get there. This approach does come with its own set of drawbacks...

It's all a calculated risk, one way or the other. Most people don't understand all of the reasons for taking the ambulance, and so make this decision without all of the info.

Fair enough. Perhaps I should have said call 911 instead of an ambulance. Still might not address your point, and unfortunately I don't know the answer to your question...

This is definitely something to consider if you have the choice on where to live (I recognize that a number of people don't have that choice). I still picked a rural area.

Until the hospital is fined/sued for violating the patient's rights under HIPPA by leaving their medical records our for all to see...

I'll readily admit that storing the records in a computer isn't much safer, but it's less visible to most people.

If you had no idea what's going on, you call an ambulance; you do NOT drive someone to the hospital yourself. Here's why:
- You don't know if whatever is happening is going to get worse and if it does, you don't have the equipment on hand to deal with it.
- Not all hospitals are equal. The closest hospital may not be equipped to handle your emergency. My wife used to work in one such hospital and people have died because someone drove them in instead of calling an ambulance. Hospitals are rated by what kind of emergencies they can handle; some don't have a <insert specialist here> on call 24 hours a day...
- You don't know the current wait time at the hospital, the EMTs in the ambulance do.
- You can't communicate with the hospital to let them know what's coming, the EMTs in the ambulance can.

I could be wrong, (and I don't know much about mailman) but...

The lock being left behind is generally a file that mailman has created in the file system. Once the file is created, the kernel has no business deleting it. It should close the file and reclaim the file handle when mailman closes, but it shouldn't delete the file. Ideally, mailman would create the file in a section of the file system that is cleared on reboot (/tmp?), so this wouldn't be a problem...