I think your comment is spot on! Too many times I have seen IT start thinking seriously about backup after the first of five 4-year-old drives fail :-(

One point often missed is that the book was published *after* the movie. Whatever else, the surprise ending made everyone want to read the book! Clarke made a number of comments in letters to me about 2001 & 2010 - I will now have to dig them out and re-read them :-)

Well said Joanne! See my comments posted separately.

RIP Dr. Jerry E. Pournelle As someone who has known Dr. P. for over 25 years and worked with him in several areas, here are some facts and personal opinions that may be easily overlooked, even by loyal fans of his Byte column, books and collaborations. First, he was deeply patriotic with a practical outlook based on a lifetime of real-world experience. This included creating and heading the Citizen's Advisory Council on National Space Policy (CACNSP) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... as well as doing human factors work during the Apollo era. Second, in bringing together a large group of talented visionaries (and there was a time when the country was not so deeply politically divided) the Council was able to "work both sides of the isle" in Congress to move space law forward to create an environment where companies such as Blue Origin, Space X and others could exist. https://www.jerrypournelle.com... (Dr.P. did recount to me one of his meetings with Newt Gingrich in the kitchen at Chaos Manor.) Third, His running "day journal" was one of the first, if not the first, daily blogs. https://www.jerrypournelle.com... Fourth, his work on BIX, the Byte information exchange, was an early forum with thousands of daily hits. This is where I first met Dr.P. and became a co-moderator with him to help with his workload. I was later invited to assist with some column reviews and eventually membership in the CACNSP Fifth, Dr. P. did tend to be loud. Part of this was his personality and part of it was a hearing loss due rather loud artillery during his service to the country. Six, Dr. P. always called it as he saw it, which offended some and delighted most. His struggle with alcoholism he did win in time, those who call him friend forgive him, those who don't tend to crucify him. Seventh, The DC-X was a pivotal demonstration that rocket-powered vehicles can (and should) be reusable. Up until those tests at White Sands, of which I attended many times (sometimes in Jerry's place when he could not attend), were a testament to Pournelle, General Graham, MaxHunter and many others. The combination of DC-X, space law changes and Internet billionaires led to where we are now - we just wanted things to happen about 20 years sooner! Eighth, Pournelle told me that the day the strategic defense initiative was announced Roddenberry called him and said "I know what you are trying to do, you are trying to bankrupt the Soviet Union!" And Dr. P. responded, "Gene you have the equation right but the sign wrong, you are supposed to like it!" In summary, like him or not, Dr. Pournelle worked with many to help end the war with the Soviet Union, enlighten millions of people on personal computers and the Internet, create space travel that is reliable and affordable, envision a future of limitless opportunities and even do one of the screenplays for a Planet of the Apes movie :-) bix: david42 aka: lagunastarman

Clearly, the Developer is at fault. He should never have accepted to work at such a screwed up company; a dumb CTO (who blame shifts), poor security, no offsite backups, bad HR, terrible policies. ... When you start your first job you are expected to know EVERYTHING about what you are getting into on the first day of your first job ... yeah, right! My serous advice is for this guy to get a lawyer and sue the hell out of the company!!! I know IT Directors that have transferred from one career to another and not been granted admin access for 6 months - even after extensive background checks. In this case, the one most innocent is the brand new, new hire.

Max Hunter's RITA Reuseable Interplanetary Transport Approach now evolves to ITS Interplanetary Transport System. I like it. Glad the groundwork done in the '90's has enabled Musk and others to soon propel us out of the well :-)

While things never go smoothly or resources shared wisely, we are on the verge of affordable mass human access to outer space. This means access to huge amounts of raw material and energy. And, lots of places to go and things to do! Details can be debated, timelines may shift a bit. But, the process has begun...

Amongst so many other accomplishments, Dr. Max Hunter outlined Reusable supply chain concepts for earth-moon, earth-asteroid and earth-asteriod systems. If we are lucky, in the next 10-20 years do we may get this by cleverly mixing what SpaceX, ULA and SLS are doing. (Obviously, some methods are more cost effective than others.) Eric Berger just wrote an excellent article on the realities of SLS in ArsTechnia. We already know the successes of commercial crew, SpaceX, etc.

Looks like the yummy snack of the 90's got stale in the 2000's and is becoming too moldy to swallow. Shame there are no alternatives... Oh wait, Linux, Android, ios, assembly languages, RTOS, etc.

In my lecture series, I demonstrate how the Internet, affordable space access and Telepresence combine to allow solar energy farms to be built in orbit, at L points and on the moon - by people on earth remote controlling androids and robots.

Space Treaty says in part: ... "Such exploration and use shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries ..." Communist: Individuals mean nothing and only governments decide allocation of resources. Space has limitless resources, hence it must not be touched - it would erode the power of governments. Capitalist: exploration and use will create limitless resources, benefiting all mankind in a free market economy by reducing costs, pollution and poverty. Personal Opinion: Making the whole universe off-limits to individual use is a long term impossibility unless every individual is enslaved.

The Diaspar Virtual Reality Network started selling "Fallen Angels" by permission of Baen Books in June 1, 1992. The price was $1.00 a copy and the first copy sold was to someone in New Zealand - making it an international sale!

When I first met him at The Planetary Society in the early 90's I dis-agreed - even though I developed a Lunar Tele-operations Model. I still disagree. This month I will present in Pisa, Italy my updated presentation that I gave at a Mensa national annual gathering ten years ago. Simply put, it is both necessary and sufficient that humans will do interstellar travel, regardless of cost. The cost of not doing so is extinction.

well said :-) (as someone who has written more than a million lines of code that ran an entire manufacturing operation with 1200 employees, 5 locations and $350 million in sales a year, I find the examples given as dead on target) (and, as someone who has built entire municipal wireless communications systems used by every city agency, in normal and emergency situations, I find the examples given as dead on target) As an Android developer, I see apps that crash all the time, even critical things like Gmail from Google. But, I see some app developers, like Robert Chou, that write important, complex apps that work reliably all the time. I see back end systems that go down if the wind blows the wrong way. The last back end system I wrote 14 months ago has gone down zero times due to software issues and only once due to someone unplugging a switch in a data center. It is not so much about YOUNG VERSUS OLD, its about after 10-20 years of getting up in the middle of the night to fix something, you finally learn to do it right the first time and get a good nights sleep :-)

With balancing on rocket engines you get practice for landing and taking off from Mars repeatedly, if you have an orbiting "gas station" Besides, who wants to do an EVA to repack parachutes? Check out Max Hunter's RITA* concept from the 1960's if you want to see where SpaceX (and soon everyone else) is headed. *Reusable Interplanetary Transport Approach