The Space Access Society has a legislative alert, to try to fix the budget on the Senate side, than fix the whole thing in conference.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
How Much Money Would It Take To Launch Free Enterprise Into Space?
Some thoughts from Sam Dinkin over at The Space Review, with a plug for the Kickstarter, which has slowed since the burst last week. About half way to the goal, with a little over half the time left. Spread the word, at Facebook and other places, if you haven’t already.
Climate-Change Communications
The strategy of hyping certainty and a scientific consensus and dismissing decadal variability is a bad move for communicating a very complex, wicked problem such as climate change. Apart from the ‘meaningful’ issue, its an issue of trust – hyping certainty and a premature consensus does not help the issue of public trust in the science.
This new paper is especially interesting in context of the Karl et al paper, that ‘disappears’ the hiatus. I suspect that the main take home message for the public (those paying attention, anyways) is that the data is really really uncertain and there is plenty of opportunity for scientists to ‘cherry pick’ methods to get desired results.
Apart from the issue of how IPCC leaders communicate the science to the public, this paper also has important implications for journalists. The paper has a vindication of sorts for David Rose, who asked hard hitting questions about the pause at the Stockholm press conference.
It’s a good, and necessary first step.
Congress Fiddles With Monster Rockets
…while human spaceflight burns. My latest thoughts on our Congressional space-policy follies, over at PJMedia.
[Afternoon update]
As usual with space pieces, the comments over there are painfully ignorant.
OK, Different Computer Question
I’ve got her machine set up as Windows native, installed on SSD. Her old Windows drive, with her old files, is hooked up to it. She can see it fine from Windows. But while she was using Linux, she’d been writing to an LVM drive, which was originally a backup, but now has some changes on it from the old drive.
I’m running Fedora as a virtual machine, and it seems to be running fine (so far). I’ve attached the old Windows drive to the physical machine, and it shows up in Nautilus and other file managers. But when I try to access it, I get a message that it’s an NTFS drive with problems, and I can only mount it read-only. It suggests I repair.
So, is this caused by the fact that its already mounted and in use by Windows? Seems a little strange, since the virtual machine probably wouldn’t know that. Windows doesn’t have a problem with it. Bigger question: Can/should I try to repair it as an unmounted drive from the virtual machine using e2fsck? That is, does e2fsck repair NTFS drives? And what is the risk if I don’t attempt to back it up first?
Potatoes
It won’t be perfect until they can reduce the glycemic issues. Via @Instapundit.
OS Follies
Sound works fine in Fedora. Sounds works fine in Virtual Windows machine running in Fedora. Boot native into Windows 8.1, and no sound. Windows troubleshooter says there’s no problem. I’ve updated the Realtek drivers. Everything looks great on Windows, except no sound out of the speakers. And of course, Fedora running virtual on Windows doesn’t have sound, either, because it only sees what Windows sees.
She wasn’t happy running Windows as virtual in Fedora, but that seems to be the only way to get sound.
[Friday-afternoon update]
Well, I’ve sort of solved the problem, but it’s still not right. I unplugged from the rear, and re-plugged into the front jack, and RealTek sees it now. For some reason, it’s not seeing line out in the rear, even though it works fine in Linux. So we have sound, but it’s sort of a PITA to have to use the front jack, and keep the door open.
[Bumped]
[Update a while later]
Well, this is apparently not an uncommon problem.
Went to the MSI web site to download the latest RealTek driver, and it doesn’t recognize the hardware. So current MS driver may be the best I can do until they update.
Paul Ehrlich
Razid Khan has a defense of him. But not a very robust one. As I noted to Razid on Twitter, while we are certainly capable of extincting ourselves, it won’t be from resource depletion.
The Power Of Instapundit
His link to the Kickstarter today (plus his generous contribution) put me almost a third of the way to the goal.
OK, well, not sure that Jeff Garzik’s $1000 contribution was a result of that link, but thanks! I’ll try to give money’s worth.
[Friday-morning update]
Got my first $500 contributors overnight, and almost halfway to the goal.
[Afternoon update]
Past the halfway mark, with eleven days to go.
But Will They Do The Dishes?
Chimpanzees would cook if given the chance.