Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward 26124 publicly visible posts • joined 31 Dec 2009
The book (IIRC) about the incident - claimed that some engineers who had also worked on spy sats suggested they call their friends and have one take a look, but they weren't authorised to request it and the managers who were authorised weren't cleared to know about the sats.
But the suggestion in the book was that the managers were using this as a deniable get-out = We didn't know about the spy sat capability because we weren't cleared.
The internal culture was to ensure that management didn't know there was a problem - the whole purpose of the layers of management in politics/military is to ensure that everyone at the top has deniability.
An inquiry that shows there were technical failings is OK = "it's rocket science, these brave astronauts, risks for their country etc etc". It's preferable (for the managers) than "discovering" that there was a problem at the time and then having astronauts who the public know are definitely going to die live on national television
That was one of the opinions/rumours/conspiracies going around at the time, after management vetoed imaging it with spy satelites or a space walk.
If they (and the public) knew there was damage there would have to be a rescue mission.
The orbiter couldn't reach the ISS and getting the second shuttle ready in time and a rescue was tricky.
So they didn't want the bad publicity of having a crew in space that were definitely going to die - on national television. It would have been the end of manned space flight, or at least their careers.
Yes, then all you have to rely on is sympathetic police more interested in a fruitless pursuit of an untraceable international gang than just nicking you. Followed by a trial in which a a judge and jury both understand the technology and believe a child pornographer is innocent until proven guilty - in spite of what the home secretary says.
It think you might mean "Western Union" rather than "Western Digital"
Most of the make "money from home" jobs you see advertised are for forwarding stolen goods or cash. You get the stuff delivered to you from amazon on a stolen credit card and forward it onto another person - you are the one the police trace. Same with wire transfers of dodgy money
The military importance of Trafalgar has been re-assessed somewhat since Nelson's day.
Napoleon had already withdrawn his invasion army from France and sent it toward the invasion of Austria 5days before the battle - although the news hadn't reach the British fleet.
The major strategic effect of Trafalgar was actually on the Spanish rather than the French.
They lost many more ships and officers and never managed to rebuild - 1805 marked the end of Spain as any sort of power in Europe. The French fleet was back upto strength and arguably better equipped and better led within a generation.
"The history of the country where you are applying for a citizenship is a core value".
It is indeed:
0-9Bn years, mostly hanging around as Hydrogen and Helium
9-13Bn years, collapsed into ball of rock, got hot, cooled down
13-13.6Bn years, split off from rest of single giant continent somewhere south of the equator and headed north in search of weather worth complaining about. Eventually crashed into Scotland which had left Canada for same reason
13.6 - 13.6001 Bn years, ice retreats finally cutting off rest of world.
The main thing I had to learn for my canadian citizenship was the captial of each province/territory.
So if the natives (well not actually the natives of course - just the last lot of immigrants with a more direct attitude to citizenship) ever need any help I'm ready and waiting to tell them that Charlottetown is the capital of PEI
The way TFS is integrated into VS is a pain, you need to fire up the whole environment to check a file and the 5min freeze when it can't contact the great TFS server in the cloud
The lock/checkout/write protect model of TFS is completely broken, especially when it doesn't auto checkout some config files and you find yourself changing settings in some property box and have them quietly forgotton when you close it.
If you need 3-way track changes in Word or you have an Excel file that auto links to Project or some other homemade ERP system - then get office pro.
But nobody needs to spend 399 quid to write their homework or do a few expenses spreadsheets.
As to upgrades, exactly what do you need to type into a document in 2013 that you didn't need to type in 2000, or 1995? How much would your business suffer if you couldn't adjust the radius of the terminators of the underline lines - or whatever new "feature" they have managed to squeeze into the new release
Not fraud - but part of that "not making any profits" was buying $1.5Bn of securities, which they presumably hope to sell for a profit at some point
It's just like saying, we made $1.5Bn but bought $1.5Bn worth of gold - therefore we didn't make any profit (and don't pay any tax) but we do own $1.5Bn worth of gold.
>As if that were a good thing
Paying a dividend says "we think we would be better returning this money to our share holders so they can invest it - in another company", not paying a dividend says "we think we can use this money to grow our business and it's share price"
And how many of the tablets were $75 Android 2.3 machines from Walmart rather than iPads
I suspect that tablets outsold laptops at christmas for pretty much the same reason that kid's bikes outsold cars - it doesn't mean the whole world is going to start cycling to work.
There was a similar problem in the 50/60s in the USA. Anybody who could translate secret Russian messages was obviously a commie and so couldn't have clearance to see secret Russian messages.
Even the BBC used to blacklist reporters who spoke Russian/Chinese -as potential security risks. In one famous case, including an historian with a PhD in medieval chinese
There is no question of national interests interfering in a commercial Airline's business !
It just happens that no US airline, in receipt of lots of US government aid, chooses to fly Airbus.
And there was no link between BA choosing to buy some Airbusses and getting more landing slots in CDG.
The main reason for Airbus building the A380 is to stop airlines having to buy Boeing if they need a 400+ seat plane.
" is it pressurized, "
Generally the whole of the inside of the fuselage is pressurised.
It's very difficult to make a tube where the bit the passengers are in is pressurised but a thin floor away is a cargo hold that isn't. The exception is some planes where you want to open the cargo bay doors in flight - for those special deliveries.
The airlines themselves don't seem to understand this and used to tell you not to put certain items in the checked baggage because they might be damaged by the lack of pressure.
The only difference is that the cargo hold isn't heated (except for the bits you put pets or sleeping crew in)
"Who did the inspectors who qualified the 787 work for?"
It's standard in any safety critical industry - and it' the only way to do it.
If the inspectors from the FAA/CAA were directly inspecting the plane - they would have to know more about the design of aircraft in general and the 787 in detail than the Boeing engineers themselves.
Instead the inspectors are checking Boeing's procedures and methodology - just as our ISO auditors do to us.
They don't read through our code with a deep understanding of our business logic - they look at our history of tests, bugs, resolutions, plans etc - and assume we didn't make it all up.
Boeing have certainly gone very quite on all the statements they made about carbon fiber planes when an American Airlines pilot tried to do a handbrake turn in an Airbus A300 and broke the tail off.
Ironically this is also the only Airbus model that has direct Boeing-style controls that allowed the pilot to break it - rather than a computer that would have stopped him
It's a very good sign of the FAA attitude.
The NTSB was created because the FAA used to be in charge of investigating air accidents AND promoting air travel - which led to all their accident reports concluding it was a one-in-a-million act of god that could never happen again.
More recently the FAA have got into trouble for giving US airlines an easy ride on safety violations because it would cost American jobs. Then there was the statement by some US politician that anyone criticising a company as vital to US defense as Boeing was at least a traitor and probably a terrorist.
Of course unless Britain wants to be thought of as an axis of evil/supporter of terrorism it will wish to get alongside the forces of Righteousness and implement these rules itself.
After all we bravely fought Europe for the right to have 1 year warranties rather than 2 - having locked phones is a fundamental sign of Freedom(tm)
>Being responsible for aids being spread
Apart from banning condoms, and refusing to cooperate with health and medical aid programs that supply condoms in areas with high levels of AIDS.
The Vatican's Council for the Family made an official announcement that condoms do not prevent AIDS and that AIDS virus can pass through condoms.
It's not just a question of "people on a watchlist" worrying.
Lots of us have rules about what medium we can use for certain communications. Anyone who works for a public listed company, files patents, works with patient data or defense contracts has these rules.
If there is a secret NSA back door that probably only effects the bad guys - although if i were BAe or Airbus I wouldn't be using skype anymore.
But if the data is also "passed to our partners for marketing purposes" - then the lawyers will decide that a skype call is the equivalent of publishing it. So I can't use it for anything work related. The point is that I need an official statement to wave at the lawyers.
