onet - Slashdot User

Comment Shared effort between US and Europe (Score 1) 127

by onet on Saturday June 05, 2010 @04:56PM (#32470882) Attached to: US Climate Satellite Capabilities In Jeopardy

There is an agreement between ESA/EUMETSAT on the European side and NASA/NOAA on the American side that the burden of Earth observation is shared.

For operational polar satellites, Europe takes care of the morning orbits and the US does the afternoon orbits. Both sides share (or intend to share) all data in Near Real Time (NRT).

Also sensors/instruments are exchanged and mounted on platforms (read: satellites) from the other partner in the agreement. This can mean that a sensor built in the US can be flown on a European satellite.

Nowadays the aim at space agencies/operators is to avoid duplication of sensors and share what there already is. In this way a reduction in funding for Earth observation can be achieved. However, it should not drop below the minimum required to keep your end of the agreement and also needs to be enough to keep the knowledge 'current'.

Comment Re:Demand alone isn't going to cut it ... (Score 1) 355

by onet on Saturday January 03, 2009 @02:42PM (#26312971) Attached to: Linux In 2009 — Recession vs. GNU

FOSS is not demand-driven unfortunately, ...

If you interact with the developers and submit feature requests, or even better, pay someone to contribute to the project to implement your needs then FOSS actually is demand-driven.

Submission + - Geekanomics: US car loans default 50% over foreign (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Tuesday August 14, 2007 @04:01PM

coondoggie writes: "Researchers today said customers that take auto loans on "American cars should have significantly higher interest rates to compensate for higher default risk," than customers who buy Japanese or European cars. Loans secured for European cars and Japanese cars are 50% and 56%, respectively, less likely to default than loans on American cars. In a forthcoming book, Brent Ambrose, professor of real estate at The Pennsylvania State University's Smeal College of Business, and his co-authors find that the probability that borrowers will default on their auto loans is affected by the type of car that is financed. The authors looked at the performance of 6,996 auto loans from January 1998 to March 2003. Some other interesting findings in the research include: Loans for GM Saturns had default hazards 22 times higher than the default hazard of Toyotas. Loans for Mazdas were six times more likely to default than loans for Toyotas. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/18416"

Scientists Offer 'Overwhelming' Evidence Terran Life Began in Space 556

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday August 14, 2007 @02:22PM from the we-are-all-made-of-stardust dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Using data from recent comet-probing space missions, British scientists are reporting today that the odds of life starting on Earth rather than inside a comet are one trillion trillion (10 to the power of 24) to one against. That is, we're not originally from around here. Radiation in comets could keep water in liquid form for millions of years, they say, which along with the clay and organic molecules found on-board would provide an ideal incubator. 'Professor Wickramasinghe said: "The findings of the comet missions, which surprised many, strengthen the argument for panspermia. We now have a mechanism for how it could have happened. All the necessary elements - clay, organic molecules and water - are there. The longer time scale and the greater mass of comets make it overwhelmingly more likely that life began in space than on earth."'" jamie points out that the author of this paper has many 'fringe' theories. Your mileage may vary.

Submission + - How to handle Shared Account Password Management

Submitted by muirhejs on Tuesday August 14, 2007 @01:34PM

muirhejs writes: Shared account passwords are necessary in most enterprise environments. Root is one example, main database accounts are others. For production support teams, this seems to be an increasingly challenging area to be accountable enough to pass auditing (Sarbanes-Oxley, etc.) yet provide the system administrators the access necessary to do their jobs. One way to attempt strike the balance is by putting the root account in a "breakglass" type system and providing partial sudo access to the administrators. Various related/interesting technologies seem to be available such as the Enterprise Password Safe, Password Auto Repository, BoKS, and others. What recommendations does the Slashdot community have to handle this sensitive issue?

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