Comment Scrubbed... (Score 4, Informative) 37
The launch was scrubbed for today's launch attempt. The countdown displayed on the live feed got down to about 15 minutes or so, and then it was scrubbed.
Comment Re:Will not be built anytime soon (Score 2) 171
And one more reference. The new (well, 8 years since opening) Gotthard Base Tunnel in Switzerland took 7 years to excavate at a cost of about $10 billion USD, The boring machines started from both ends and the middle, otherwise it could have taken 10+ years. And this is a 35.5 mile tunnel, the longest railway tunnel in the world. One crossing the Atlantic would be about 85 times longer than this one.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So, no, this will never be built.
Comment Will not be built anytime soon (Score 5, Interesting) 171
Discovery Channel had a series called "Extreme Engineering" about 10-15 years back and one of the episodes explored this idea, except the tunnel would not be the entire way but be under the surface of the water, tethered to the seafloor so it doesn't surface.
It would take time to get up to speed on the way out and then to slow down on the other end, and would add time onto the total travel time. A 10 minute acceleration to 3000 MPH from 0 would impart about 0.23g on the passengers. A 20 minute acceleration would impart about 0.11g, but would reduce the distance you'll be going at 3000 MPH. That acceleration/deceleration shouldn't be too uncomfortable for passengers ( see https://rechneronline.de/g-acc... ).
The biggest hurdle after the massive cost of construction and maintenance, is what happens if there is an accident with a train going 3000 MPH in a tube that is in vacuum. That is a whole lot of kinetic energy that would need to go somewhere. The over-engineering required to handle just about any kind of accident, not to mention handling a leak somewhere, would be massive and expensive. Have an accident 1500 miles in, under the seafloor (assuming its buried)? Whats the contingency for something like that? Cannot evacuate to the tunnel because its a tube in vacuum. Pressurize the tunnel so passengers can transfer to some other train, and then you'll need to depressurize the tube when done. Could segment the tunnel into chunks that could be pressurized and depressurized in a reasonable time frame, but that adds complexity of airtight doors between segments that need to open/shut as trains pass through, and so forth.
And it won't be built because it will never recoup its cost. How long would it take to recoup the 20+ trillion price tag? How expensive will be the tickets? It will be competing with $1000 airline tickets from New York to London. At $1000 a ticket, that would be 20 billion tickets to make up the $20 trillion cost. Even at $2000 a ticket, that is still 10 billion tickets.
The Channel is about 24 miles long. This would be 120 times longer.
Submission + - One Dead, Two Critically Wounded in Assassination Attempt on Donald Trump 17
theodp writes: Former President Donald Trump was surrounded and rushed off a stage by Secret Service agents at a rally in Butler, PA following an assassination attempt that left one crowd member dead, two other spectators critically wounded, and Trump bloodied by sniper fire that hit his ear (video). The shooter, who opened fire with an AR-15-type semiautomatic rifle from a rooftop several hundred feet from the stage where Trump was speaking, was killed. The release of his identity is pending confirmation by law enforcement.
Submission + - Ken Mattingly, Astronaut Scrubbed From Apollo 13, Is Dead At 87 (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Ken Mattingly, who orbited the moon and commanded a pair of NASA shuttle missions, but who was remembered as well for the flight he didn’t make — the near-disastrous mission of Apollo 13 — died on Tuesday in Arlington, Va. He was 87. His death was confirmed by Cheryl Warner, a NASA spokeswoman. She did not specify the cause or say whether he died at home in Arlington or in a hospital there. Mr. Mattingly, a former Navy jet pilot with a degree in aeronautical engineering, joined NASA in 1966. But his first spaceflight didn’t come until April 1972, when the space agency launched Apollo 16, the next-to-last manned mission to the moon. Piloting the spacecraft’s command module in orbit while holding the rank of lieutenant commander, he took extensive photos of the moon’s terrain and conducted experiments while Cmdr.John W. Youngof the Navy and Lt. Col. Charles M. Duke Jr. of the Air Force, having descended in the lunar lander, collected rock and soil samples from highlands near the crater known as Descartes.
While the three astronauts were en route back to Earth, Commander Mattinglystepped outside the spacecraft— which he had named Casper for the resemblance, as least in a child’s eye, between an astronaut in a bulky spacesuit and the cartoon character Casper the Friendly Ghost. Maneuvering along handrails while connected to the spacecraft by a tether, he retrieved two attached canisters of film with photos of the moon that he had taken from inside the capsule for analysis back on Earth. When the Apollo program ended, Commander Mattingly headed the astronaut support office for the shuttle program, designed to ferry astronauts to and from an eventual Earth-orbiting International Space Station. In the summer of 1982, he commanded the fourth and final Earth-orbiting test flight of the shuttle Columbia, which completed 112 orbits. He was also the commander of the first space shuttle flight conducted for the Department of Defense, a classified January 1985 mission aboard Discovery.
All those achievements came after he had been scrubbed at virtually the last moment from the flight of Apollo 13 in April 1970. He was to have orbited the moon in the command module while Cmdr.James A. LovellJr. of the Navy and Fred W. Haise Jr. explored the lunar surface. But NASA removed Commander Mattingly from the crew in the final days before launching, when blood tests determined that he had recently been exposed to German measles from training with Colonel Duke, the backup lunar module pilot, who in turn had contracted it from his proximity to an infected child at a neighborhood party. Commander Mattingly was the only one of the Apollo 13 crewmen who were found to lack antibodies against the illness. His backup,John L. Swigert Jr., became the command module pilot, leaving Commander Mattingly to watch the progress ofthe flightfrom mission control. [...] After his Apollo and space shuttle flights, Mr. Mattingly continued to work for NASA in the 1980s. He retired from the space agency and the Navy as a rear admiral and went on to work for aerospace companies.
While the three astronauts were en route back to Earth, Commander Mattinglystepped outside the spacecraft— which he had named Casper for the resemblance, as least in a child’s eye, between an astronaut in a bulky spacesuit and the cartoon character Casper the Friendly Ghost. Maneuvering along handrails while connected to the spacecraft by a tether, he retrieved two attached canisters of film with photos of the moon that he had taken from inside the capsule for analysis back on Earth. When the Apollo program ended, Commander Mattingly headed the astronaut support office for the shuttle program, designed to ferry astronauts to and from an eventual Earth-orbiting International Space Station. In the summer of 1982, he commanded the fourth and final Earth-orbiting test flight of the shuttle Columbia, which completed 112 orbits. He was also the commander of the first space shuttle flight conducted for the Department of Defense, a classified January 1985 mission aboard Discovery.
All those achievements came after he had been scrubbed at virtually the last moment from the flight of Apollo 13 in April 1970. He was to have orbited the moon in the command module while Cmdr.James A. LovellJr. of the Navy and Fred W. Haise Jr. explored the lunar surface. But NASA removed Commander Mattingly from the crew in the final days before launching, when blood tests determined that he had recently been exposed to German measles from training with Colonel Duke, the backup lunar module pilot, who in turn had contracted it from his proximity to an infected child at a neighborhood party. Commander Mattingly was the only one of the Apollo 13 crewmen who were found to lack antibodies against the illness. His backup,John L. Swigert Jr., became the command module pilot, leaving Commander Mattingly to watch the progress ofthe flightfrom mission control. [...] After his Apollo and space shuttle flights, Mr. Mattingly continued to work for NASA in the 1980s. He retired from the space agency and the Navy as a rear admiral and went on to work for aerospace companies.
Comment Making a buck off of someone else's work (Score 4, Interesting) 24
Regular user of Terraform and Vagrant here. Not trying to be a troll on the subject of open source. But this change has brought to the surface a couple of thoughts I've had about the whole open source thing for a while now.
I took the time to read the information about the license change on HashiCorp's website. Reading through the FAQ alleviated some of my concerns about the license change.
It seems the biggest change is that the new license will prohibit a competitor from taking, for example, Terraform, free of charge, and package that up and distribute it for a fee, in competition to HashiCorp's own Terraform offering (some of which I'm sure is in the form of paid support and similar).
A “competitive offering” is a product that is sold to third parties, including through paid support arrangements, that significantly overlaps the capabilities of a HashiCorp commercial product. For example, this definition would include hosting or embedding Terraform as part of a solution that is sold competitively against our commercial versions of Terraform. By contrast, products that are not sold or supported on a paid basis are always allowed under the HashiCorp BSL license because they are not considered competitive.
I'm all for open source. I've written some myself years ago. But I don't view open source as freeware. Say I create widgets that I give out for free. I also have a paid support plan that gives you support should something go wrong (businesses often like to have someone to hold to the fire if something goes wrong with a piece of equipment or software or whatever my widget turns out to be).
You can take my widget and do whatever you want with it. You modify it at your own risk. The worst that could happen is you break it and you simply come to me and get a new free widget and go on your way. You can even submit your mods back to me for consideration for inclusion in a future version of my widget.
What I would be less happy about is if someone took my free widget and turned around and started giving them away and selling their own support plans, of which I get no money from. I do want to make money off of my widgets and the paid support plans is part of that. But if someone else who I don't know and have no kind of relationship with starts taking my actual widgets and making money off of them without me being compensated in any way, why would I even make the widgets and give them out for free in the first place?
Those who are unhappy with my views can, of course, take my widget, "fork it" and start their own line of widgets that may or may not continue to share similarities with mine, and do their own thing. And in this case that is what someone has done. Its one of the things that open source allows. Its why we have many software products that are forks of others that have become mostly closed source.
I also read in the FAQ reference above is that code changes made by HashiCorp will eventually be made open source under the MPLv2. It could take up to 4 years (not disagreeing that is a long time in software development terms), which gives HashiCorp a leg up to capitalize on their own changes before the code is made open source. But HashiCorp does need to look after their own financials, as no one works for free.
BSL is an alternative to closed source or open source licensing models. Under BSL, the source code is publicly available. Non-production use of the code is always free, and the licensor can also make an Additional Use Grant allowing production use under specific restrictions. Source code is guaranteed to become open source at a certain point in time. On a specified Change Date, or the fourth anniversary of the first publicly available distribution of the code under the BSL, whichever comes first, the code automatically becomes available under the Change License. Our current Change License for HashiCorp projects is MPL 2.0.
Which is to say, maybe I'm completely missing the whole point here. I often hear people say that open source means free as in free. They can take something that someone else wrote and released under some open source license and turn around and profit off of the work without a thought about the copyright holder. The author probably wrote the software out of the kindness of his heart or something - maybe wanted to do something to make them feel good about themselves contributing something to society, and maybe doesn't care if someone else they don't know monetizes it without receiving any of it in return. Don't know many people who write code for free.
Comment 14,000 employees? (Score 1) 58
Why would such a company need 14,000 employees to begin with? It boggles my mind why Indeed would need that many employees to do what they do, or am I missing something?
I don't know much about their business model except that its a jobs site. Is there anything unique that they do that others like Monster or other resume posting sites do not do?
Comment Cockroaches (Score 1) 74
When you find one cockroach, you know there will be more. You never only find one.
How many you find is the question.
Comment I consider this a successful DR (Score 3, Insightful) 60
Several lives ago we used Spectra Logic tape libraries. So when I started reading the summary, I assumed they would simply recover from backups (be it snapshots, nearline backups, or tape backups) and go on with business, since backup hardware is one of their business specialties.
I have never known any company who has fully tested their disaster recovery by having to rebuild their live systems. Usually its a DR site somewhere, and the recovery will get most things, but there's always the little things here and there that fail.
The fact they were able to recover their data and basically rebuild their network in a month's time and only have a few files that were lost is a disaster recovery that went right.
Disclaimer: I've been a part of backups and DR planning for nearly 30 years.
Comment Scammer Payback (Score 1) 59
The story should have also mentioned the Scammer Payback YouTube channel, who Mark Rober also mentions. I've watched numerous of the Scammer Payback videos and its interesting to not only see how the scammers operate, but how stupid they can be.
Comment Re: Slackware unleashed in 1995 (Score 4, Informative) 117
Drifted away from Slackware at the turn of the century when my new employer was running Debian and I had a Sun Microsystems (running SunOS 4.1.4) workstation as my home machine. Haven't been back since, but its interesting to see it still going.
Its late, I shouldn't be commenting on Slashdot at this time of night.... By "home machine" I mean my primary computer at work.
And I just realized that the younger crowd may not have even been born yet when Slackware started. That was 29 years ago. How time flies.
Still good times though.
Comment Re: Slackware unleashed in 1995 (Score 4, Interesting) 117
Slackware version 1.something was my first, cira October 1994 on a 486DX2 and 16 megabytes of memory and a 520 megabyte hard drive (yes, both of those were measured in megabytes - oh how times have changed)
Downloaded the install over a 14.4 US Robotics Modem.
Ran Slackware for years and even subscribed to their bi-annual snail mail CD distribution (was only going to download the distro once over a modem).
My nightmare story is that one night I wanted to try to install wine. This was when it was still very very very touchy (probably can be touchy today too). I can't remember if I found some packages to install it, or just got the source and built it. When I installed it, I no longer could log in as any user but root. Couldn't figure out why. So I blew away the system, rebuilt, and in the interest of seeing if I could lock myself out again and figure out what was happening, did the wine install again. Got locked out. After doing some more poking around (and maybe one more rebuild), I discovered that / was chmod'ed to 0700. Well, that would lock everyone out but root.
X11 wasn't much of an effort to get running with a simple config. But trying to figure out all of the parameters that would work with the installed graphics card was fun. You hoped that you didn't ruin the card or your CRT monitor while testing out the config to find what worked best.
Drifted away from Slackware at the turn of the century when my new employer was running Debian and I had a Sun Microsystems (running SunOS 4.1.4) workstation as my home machine. Haven't been back since, but its interesting to see it still going.
Good times.
Comment Re:Not only no crowd, pandemic limited show (Score 1) 143
Hosting the Olympics is not about generating monetary profit. It's about national prestige, and putting forth a good image to the rest of the world.
Not about the money?
I read a statement from the head of the IOC saying that the games wouldn't be cancelled because the IOC would lose a ton of money if they did. Seems to me that the main driving force for the Olympics not being cancelled is that if they were, there'd be no return on investment, not just for the IOC, but for those who own the broadcasting rights, advertisements, etc...
Lately it seems to all be about the money.
Submission + - Mars Perserverance Rover's Parachute Contained Secret Message
rufey writes: The 70 foot parachute used to help NASAS's 2020 Mars Perserverance rover land last week had unusual patterns in its nylon fabric. It turns out it was hiding a slogan. Decoded the slogan is “Dare Mighty Things” — a line from President Theodore Roosevelt — which is a mantra at JPL and adorns many of the center’s walls
Systems engineer Ian Clark used a binary code to spell out “Dare Mighty Things” in the orange and white strips of the 70-foot (21-meter) parachute. He also included the GPS coordinates for the mission’s headquarters at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Clark, a crossword hobbyist, came up with the idea two years ago. Engineers wanted an unusual pattern in the nylon fabric to know how the parachute was oriented during descent. Turning it into a secret message was “super fun,” he said Tuesday. Only about six people knew about the encoded message before Thursday’s landing, according to Clark. They waited until the parachute images came back before putting out a teaser during a televised news conference Monday.
Submission + - Changing clocks back or forth 1 hour again 2
rufey writes: Its that time of year again. Millions of people around the world will be adjusting (or have already adjusted) their clocks back or forward one hour, depending on whether you are moving from Summer/Saving time to Standard time or vice versa.
Over the years it is apparent that most people who have spoken about the twice-yearly clock change oppose it. So I ask, why are we still changing clocks in the year 2020?
Over the years it is apparent that most people who have spoken about the twice-yearly clock change oppose it. So I ask, why are we still changing clocks in the year 2020?
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