Posts by Flocke Kroes 4552 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Oct 2007
... Ernie put his name and address where his mouth is:
"If a judge and jury of our peers finds us guilty of any offense, we will of course accept the punishment with good grace and apologise to anyone who can be defined as a victim."
Go on Ernie, make a statement to the police about what you did, sign it and let's see if the crown prosecution service decides to take it further. Although it is really tempting to advocate mob justice for those who insight it on others the result is innocent bystanders caught in the cross fire. This is Ernie's opportunity to show his true commitment to ideals by accepting any possible legal consequences for his actions.
They have not demanded. They are not seeing. Some/all of the records are not private.
They have asked some companies to preserve records in case it turns out they are evidence of a crime. Some/all of the records were generated with the expectation and desire (at the time) that they would become public. It is a bit late to now say "I want evidence of my crimes that I deliberately posted on the internet deleted."
First up: the copyright to new source code either belongs to the programmer or to the person/company that hired him/her. In some jurisdictions that initial ownership can be transferred. In others ownership remains with the programmer/client permanently but a permanent license to distribute can be granted.
These days, contributing to a libre software project usually requires a legal document that grants distribution under the project's license and that the person making the contribution has undisputed right to grant that license.
Going back in time to before this litigation, many projects - including the Linux kernel - did not make the effort to ensure that contributions came with a cast iron license. It was theoretically possible to nick code from an employer and offer it to a GPL project without permission from the owner. The distributors of the project would then be in legal trouble.
Something similar actually happened: The solver code from OpenOffice's spread sheet was contributed with a valid license from the author. The author then changed his mind. In theory the code could have been kept because it came with a valid licence but it was removed anyway to avoid any possibility of litigation.
Some projects require transfer of copyright ownership with contributions. This creates a single point capable of changing the license or starting litigation against someone distributing without following the requirements of the license. The Linux kernel does not require such transfer. Some of it belongs to individuals, other bits belong to organisations. Although individual contributions can be made under a different (GPL compatible) license, it would be a nightmare to change the overall license as that would require permission from every contributor - even the dead ones. Individual contributors could in theory sue distributors who do not follow the license requirements - but only for distribution of the contributor's parts of the kernel.
This ancient case used to be covered thoroughly on Groklaw - until personal threats against PJ made that too dangerous. The case starts with Caldera/TSG/... doing a thorough job of delaying making any kind of clear accusation followed by demands for an enormous amount of discovery materials then more delays to read through the discovery materials. Eventually Darl had no choice but to make a verifiable/falsifiable complaint. I cannot remember that far back to what the complaint was but I do remember the refutation:
IBM wrote some design documentation for some features.
Some IBM staff used the documentation to code the features into AIX.
Some other IBM staff used the documentation to code the features into Linux.
Darl claimed to own Unix (rubbish - if it belonged to anyone that would have been Novell at the time)
Darl claimed that anything added to IBM's AIX was his because of his fake claim to Unix.
Darl claimed ownership of the completely different code in Linux because of the fake claim to the code that was not in Unix.
Darl was not a completely clueless idiot. He convinced David Boies of Boies Schiller Flexner to fight this through the courts and all the appeals up to SCOTUS for a percentage of the profits. Boies quickly worked out be had been scammed and dumped all the work on a junior colleague. BSF also sent bills for expenses back to TSG. TSG payed those bills by collecting Novell's royalties (as TSG were contracted to do) and not sending any of the money to Novell (contract required sending 100% and Novell would send commission back). Just before an expensive ruling against TSG could land, TSG declared bankruptcy. Effectively, Darl gets replaced by a court appointed trustee with a far better understanding of nuisance litigation. The trustee promptly spent all of Novell's revenue on legal firms to ensure that TSG's creditors never got any money and dragged this rubbish on for years at the expense of IBM and BSF.
There never was any valid claim. TSG had no standing to sue (that would have been Novell and they instructed TSG to end the litigation). With the help of the bankruptcy court this has effectively become Tax Payers vs IBM and even IBM does not have the funding to win that one no matter how daft the accusations.
[IBM were not the only defendant. There were other claims of ownership to code in the Linux kernel including code created by Caldera and contributed by them to the Linux Kernel with a GPL license. The code was removed shortly after this became an issue - no one was using it anyway.]
Only got dragged there once. There were no maps but no chance of getting lost. The only possible route was boustrophedon with no short cuts. The choices were to turn back before the half way point, walk the entire length or smash through a partition wall (my preferred choice if the fire alarm sounded). This was a long time ago so hopefully a fire safety officer expressed my feelings on the layout and made them do something about it.
Branson needed investors ticket buyers to fund Virgin Galactic and has a long history of publicity stunts (much better at diverting attention away from why he is rich than Bezos). Virgin Orbit has made two successful launches to orbit (January and June of this year) and this has just about made it into mainstream news. There is some coverage on space focused sites but there is far more enthusiasm for rockets that land (or almost land). It gets covered in investor news because that lot are desperate to throw money at the next SpaceX. (SpaceX is a private company and that places a legal limit on the number of investors.)
Bezos is downright secretive about any the lack of progress made on New Glenn. Space enthusiasts used to search hard for any scrap of news about another big rocket landing. It turns out Jeff put two tortoises on the Blue Origin Coat of Arms for a very good reason. He made an effort to put New Shepard in the news now that he is ready to sell tickets. This showed that news about Jeff generates lots of engagement - people expressing their hatred for how he got rich. Blue suing to stop Artemis after being stomped by the GAO caused a media explosion. Every publication wanted ad-revenue from providing a place for people to express their feelings.
Small launch is thoroughly overshadowed by medium rockets landing and big rockets exploding. If Peter Beck wants to make mainstream news he will have to whip a billion wage slaves while cheating on taxes.
Citation for 16 flights so far and the seventeenth NET 2021-08-25. Multiple sub-orbital payloads on flights 10, 11, 12 and 13. People on flight 16. I did not count a pad abort test of the crew capsule. With a bit of a stretch you could call that "flight 0" and get seventeen flights to date.
Starship cannot launch on the 3rd. The Environmental Impact Study has not been published. After publication Blue the public has thirty days to comment then those comments must be reviewed before SpaceX can get FAA approval to launch. The other speed bump is that the big tower is not licensed for use as a launch tower. The day after I said this did not matter because it is an integration tower Musk announced that Starship will get its propellant from the tower and not from the launch stand (through the booster) as hinted in previous tweets.
Musk has expressed his poor opinion of the regulations that he says are holding back space flight. He has thanked the FAA doing doing the best they can within the regulations and their budget. Please, please Elon - do not tweet something stupid. Some journalists are looking hard for a confrontation between Musk and the FAA because that would be far mare controversial than Musk vs regulations.
[Bob: Bezos has sent commercial payloads to space and back with New Sheppard. He has contracts to put things in orbit with New Glenn - which is a real achievement considering New Glenn is at least a year away from its first launch. Jeff has spent a large amount of time and money making Blue into a big disappointment for space enthusiasts and thoroughly deserves sarcastic posts from us commentards but we can do that while still being accurate.]
... is a standard prefix to a marketing lie. The people who do not know are supposed to shut up to hide their ignorance. Next time you could try "Your neighbours have already signed up...", "Limited time offer..." , "All inclusive price" or "The pea is under one of these three shells".
If I thought there was any danger of Blue providing similar services to SpaceX at a remotely competitive price I would be begging US tax payers to look deep into their wallets for some investment money because it paid off so well last time.
Please check it out: add up every cent SpaceX got from the US government then for each US government payload SpaceX launched subtract what the cheapest competitor would have charged. US tax payers have been saved hundreds of millions by their investment in SpaceX.
If you want another joke, try NASA payments for the Artemis Human Landing Systems. Blue got more money to research their proposal than SpaceX did - including the first $300M SpaceX recently got for their progress while the GAO was investigating Blue's complaints.
I could mention that the air fare you are misquoting actually involved "comparable to business class" or that as you are a genius physicist who can see how easy it is to implement hyperloop - but haven't because you are too busy. Instead I will just respond to the time scales thing with: "Where are my engine, Jeff?"
... you need a revenue stream. SpaceX used good margins because their competition was old space. Going forward they have Starlink, Space Force, NASA and most commercial launches that are US friendly. That leaves: Space Force and NASA second source for assured access to space. Kuiper (because Jeff will not buy launches from Elon). China, Europe?, India? and others that want or need access to space independent of the USA. Behind the cushions on Jeff's sofa. Also (scraping the bottom of the barrel) OneWeb (signed a deal with Boeing who will not buy launches from Elon).
Rocket Lab have a real chance. Jeff is currently flushing Blue's chance down the toilet which leaves a niche for a third US launch provider likely Vox Space (=Virgin Orbit) or Astra. ULA are hamstrung by the "Do not compete with SLS or spend any more than the minimum on R&D" requirements of its parents. China is investing real money at competing with SpaceX but will not get there in 5 years. The other revenue streams barely have their mouths moving let alone their money.
I am sure any future rating of Blue's management by NASA will be accurate and backed by evidence to prevent a successful appeal to the GAO. On the other hand, adding a few tons to the payload requirement would cause no problems for Starship but would rule out New Glenn...
I have no problem with you being angry with Jeff for your perfectly valid reasons but in this case that anger is not helping. Blue Origin was not treated unfairly.
They lost the bid by offering less, charging more, asking for money before showing achievement, trying to retain ownership of information NASA would be legally required to make public and not paying attention when NASA's very public budget was way too small for BO's proposal by itself - let alone as a second selected proposal. In hindsight NASA's evaluation of BO's management was rather generous ("Where are my engines, Jeff?"). A "Why NASA shouldn't pick BO" infographic would show that why BO only scored "Acceptable" in the technical category (same as SpaceX).
Spaceport America cost New Mexico tax payers about $200M. The space port started before Virgin Galactic got involved but did not get serious funding until VG promised to make it their head quarters. The exterior was completed in 2011. Revenue from VG was $2.7M up to November 2014. VG completed their interior work in 2019. They might start paying regular fees in 2022.
It would be unfair to call all $200M a handout to VG because Spaceport America has found other tenants but VG were supposed to be the anchor tenant.
Virgin Galactic, Virgin Orbit, Vox Space
Galactic sold hundreds of tickets years ago but I cannot find a date for the next launch (2022?). Orbit has put NASA payloads in orbit. Vox (subsidiary of Orbit) has a contract for 3 US military launches. Small satellite launch is a difficult market to get into. Getting to orbit and getting contracts are both huge hurdles that few have or will successfully leap despite the large number of companies trying. I am not sure if there is a pea, but if there is I would not bet on it being under the Galactic shell unless they can show regular progress on their backlog of potential space tourists.
(VG: $450,000. BO: $(will announce at some point). Various Vomit Comets: ~$5000. Axiom (Crew Dragon): ~$55M + ISS air, food and water bills)
Standard tactic: negotiate a cross licensing agreement, grant yourself a perpetual license then sell to a troll. The troll is not restricted by the cross licensing agreement and as they do not do anything useful at all they are immune from retaliatory patent litigation - even in Texas.
First use tarot cards to anticipate the need for a hole in the Soyuz capsule. Next drill a hole (using laser eyes?) without making a noise and cover it up before the drop in pressure is noticed. Carry the capsule back to Earth and replace the cover with filler. This step must be done on Earth so the filler will not be pushed out by the pressure difference before it dries. (Laser eyes wont help here because of thermal contraction during cooling.) Carry the capsule back and dock it with ISS before anyone notices it was gone.
Thermal cycling is going to take some time to release the filler so this gives Supergirl time to develop deep vein thrombosis, go mad with worry and forget she can fly back to Earth without a capsule any time she wants. By carefully timing the decomposition of the filler she can get a cast iron alibi for herself and her colleagues. She just has to arrange for the bung to fail and the pressure sensors cause an alarm while she is being watched working in the American side of the station.
At this point the wheels fall off her cunning plan: the hole does not get her an emergency ride back to Earth.
If Rogozin needs to come up with a distraction from Nauka he should come up with a story with fewer plot holes - or simply leave the job to Boeing.
Which floor would you like (1)(2)...(36)?
Please enjoy the adverts and count the number of times "Meatabix" is mentioned...
Good news! The lift is here. Please enter the correct "Meatabix" count to open the doors.
Enjoy you journey to floor (X) and pay attention to the adverts - there will be a test...
Before the first launch, parts were tested for each phase of the mission but not tested for a complete mission - each phase one after the other in real time. This time, parts have been tested for the full duration of the mission. What Boeing tried to avoid saying was that the parts were not connected to each other and performed the full duration tests independently.
The type of problem to expect is one that only shows up when everything is connected.
Buy health insurance from companies that develop vaccines.
At present we have pharma trying to extract the the maximum profit from drugs and health insurance fanning the fire so your choices are cripplingly expensive insurance, cripplingly expensive medical treatment or crippling diseases.
This has to be turned around so that the companies trying to profit from treatments have to balance that against the cost of insurance payouts for sick leave. I say companies for a reason: a monopoly or cartel is just as bad as what we have now.
When I was working in Brazil the client took me to a restaurant. On arrival there were two stunning young ladies whose only job was to open the front doors for customers. The service and the meal were excellent and the prices similar to a good restaurant back home. The entire time I felt uncomfortable about the huge gap in wealth between me and the majority of the locals that I met (and I never when anywhere near the really poor parts of the city). It must take a really special kind of character to remain a billionaire.
For one LEO satellite, Starship is far too big but really good for putting up constellations. Starship is just about big enough to put an ordinary satellite in geosynchronous transfer orbit. The reuse hardware trashes payload mass to high energy orbits - until refuelling in LEO becomes operational.
The size starts to make sense for a return trip to Mars. Setting up the propellant factory on Mars needed to get back would benefit from something significantly bigger. Musk has a vague plan for a rocket the same height as Starship but twice the diameter that fits the bill but would need 4 time the propellant to get back. The current "small" Starship would be a better choice for Mars' first exports: Mars rocks, NASA astronauts and second hand raptor engines.
That said I am sure Musk is quite pleased that the requirements and available technology made Starship 7.5% taller than a Saturn V. (Recent manufacturing improvements made Booster number 4 1m shorter than the 70m normally quoted and he was pleased as a teenager by that number.)
Sending SLS/Orion to the International Space Station would be a waste of time and money because F9/Crew Dragon can get there and back for under a tenth of the price and Boeing can make at most one SLS per year.
I think you mean the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway (Lunar Gateway/Gateway/LOP-G/Deep Space Gateway/DSG).
The fun will come if Artemis 1 (uncrewed test flight of SLS/Orion around the moon and back) does not go according to plan. Congress will probably authorise funding Boeing for a do-over and will be ecstatic about the extra year of delay because it will give Boeing some time to build LOP-G before it becomes obvious that SLS+Orion+HLS Starship do not need it for a return trip to the Moon.
The other (remote) possibility is Falcon Heavy + Crew Dragon replacing SLS + Orion. The original design of Crew Dragon was to be able to do this. When it became clear that NASA would not man-rate Falcon Heavy (because of the extra separation event for the side boosters), Crew Dragon got simplified by removing the Moon from the requirements. The obvious missing bits are deep space communications and the endurance of the life support systems. (The heat shield is good for a single return from the Moon but probably not reuse.)
Getting to the Moon with a Crew Starship and an HLS Starship would be even cheaper but I do not see NASA approving the return journey any time soon.
The tower gets some controversy so the details will matter. SpaceX got all the required building permits to build a tall tower. They do not have FAA approval to use the tower as a launch tower. The latter comes from a statement from an FAA official. This statement got Chinese whispered across the internet so you will find plenty of fact free comments about lack of planning permission / building control.
The tower does not supply propellants to Starship or the Super Heavy booster. SpaceX call it an integration tower as it will be used to stack rockets. This may well be a sufficient distinction for legal weasels. Superheavy will get propellants from the launch platform (completely separate from the tower). Starship will get propellants through the booster.
The plan is that the tower will catch falling boosters. I have no idea what the FAA will say about that but something similar has happened before. There was an experimental aircraft that landed by flipping up vertically and docking with a tower.
Various organisations award astronaut wings with different criteria. The FAA recently updated theirs (pdf). NASA started with a ≥100km requirement (legal definition of space). The USAF went for ≥50miles (well over the altitude where blood boils at body temperature). NASA (and other US institutions) switched to match to USAF. Orbit is not required.
The new FAA criteria differentiate between employee paid to go to space and tourist paying to go to space. As the FAA is all about aviation safety, a major contribution in that field can replace the employee criterion so Wally Funk qualifies from her lifetime of aviation experience even though she was a guest (half way between employee and tourist?). Jeff might qualify because of New Sheppard and I think he should qualify if New Glenn is successful. VG pilots pass as crew+employees. Branson probably passes because Virgin Orbit (Vox Space?) puts payloads in orbit.
Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic avoid the criteria for the customers by awarding their own flavour of astronaut wings.
more than 99% of users aren't going to do that because they want to use the full functionality of the web
Not sure you have found the right 99%. How about:
A) 99% of users do not know disabling javascript is still possible.
B) 99% of users do not know how much better many sites work with javascript disabled.
C) 99% of users do not know when a site shows an almost blank page with "javascript required" there will often be other sites that are more useful and work fine without javascript.
I am fairly sure I still have is wrong:
A) 99% of users do not know how to bookmark a link, use a web search instead and arrive at a scam/scalper site half the time.
B) 99% of users do not know that it is possible to configure a browser at all let alone why they would want to.
C) 99% of users do not know how to change the default browser and end up with the one provided by the most dishonest ad-seller. (dishonest can apply to ad or seller)
I am glad Microsoft have taken half a step towards sanity. I am glad a few of the 99% will still get some option to configure their browser towards security without making the all effort that the other 1% need to make.
I tried to find the propellants used by Nauka and the closest I could get was it is a descendant of the TKS spacecraft. That used unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine and dinitrogen tetroxide. 252ppm of UDMH will kill half a rat in 4 hours. I could not find a figure for NTO but I think it is deadly at a few parts per billion.
Space craft designers make sure everything to do with these propellants is outside the pressure hull so someone would have to put on a space suit, go outside and dismantle Nauka to find a ball valve. There are probably several buttons that could be pressed to turn of the thrusters from inside Nauka. At the time the hatch was closed and so that a leak or poor docking seal would show up as a drop in pressure.
The Russians already landed stuff on Venus. Chris Beck from Rocket Lab has plans to send stuff there and has working orbital rockets with a viable path to re-use.
Jeff's big dream is to eventually move Earth's industry to space in giant orbital colonies. That is original and ambitious even compared to his savings account. Blue Origin got off to a slow but sane start with New Glenn until Jeff hired a new management team made of ex-Aerojet Rocketdyne employees (the ones who lost the Vulcan engines contract to Blue's previous management). Blue then switched to old-space strategy: lobby for government funds and ever lasting contracts with a promise to spread the pork to every state.
On the day I gave up on Jeff ever delivering things to orbit there were rumours that he is actually taking a step in the right direction: a stainless steel re-usable stage 2 to go on top of New Glenn made by a team unrestricted by the new old-space management.
SpaceX, Rocket Lab and Virgin Orbit already have working orbital rockets. I expect Astra will have soon and that ULA will get Vulcan to orbit before New Glenn but I now pencil in Blue ahead of Estes and with the staying power to survive the inevitable blood bath when investors work out there are more aspirational launch providers than payload manufacturers.
To be fair, the Orion capsule (the bit that takes astronauts most of the way to the moon and back) has had two successful tests of its launch about system, has gone to orbit (with help from a Delta IV Heavy) and returned to Earth safely (in 2014). Its worst problem is that bits of it are dying of old age waiting for SLS.
Before laughing too hard it is remotely possible that one day Orion capsules will launch on SLS rockets. Perhaps some of the younger commentards here will still be alive if this happens and can recommend Roscosmos for their proven ability to recover from issues with antique space hardware.
On the way to the ISS they could not initially use the main engines because of gasses in the propellant lines. Fixing this was hindered by communications hardware problems and because they can only communicate when Nauka is over a ground station. By the time communications were re-established the tank pressure was too high to use the main engines and they had to use the smaller ones instead.
Overall, an excellent recovery by the operations team. They presciently used far more propellant than initially planned which proved useful when dealing with the unexpected thruster firing after docking.
The failure modes are going to be different. Windows will probably fail with something like "Upgrading to Windows XXX requires more modern hardware". Linux on PC could still fail from CMOS battery expiry but PC hardware might follow Pi's example: time from the network and configuration from flash. In that case the system will die in unpredictable ways from flash bitrot.
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