Category Archives: Technology and Society

VirtualBox Problem

I’m trying to set up Fedora as a virtual machine on a Windows 8.1 host. I want to attach the physical boot disk to the machine with a vdmk file. But when I try to add the drive, it tells me I have a permissions problem on the file. The file has full rights for System, Admin and user. Anyone know what the problem might be?

Kickstarter Progress

Well, that was a nice bump. John Walker just kicked in a grand. That puts me over 10% of the goal on the first full day. Not sure how many more of those I’ll get, though.

[Update a while later]

I’ve gotten a couple emails wondering if there’s some way to contribute anonymously. Unfortunately, I don’t think Kickstarter allows that. I can understand how there would be a lot of people who’d like to support it, but would suffer repercussions if they did so publicly. However, if I get funded, I’d be happy to take more money under the table for equivalent rewards, and just keep track of it myself, instead of Kickstarter. That would have the additional advantage of eliminating the take from the middle man (7-8%).

Space Access Update

The latest version is out, describing the current hijinks in Congress:

Full-throttle political support for full-funding Commercial Crew at the requested $1.24 billion is a top (if not the top) political priority for this year. Down-selecting to one vendor to save money over the next two years would add multiple unacceptable program risks and lead to long-term monopoly pricing. Successful flight before the end of 2017 already apparently involves optimistic assumptions about not needing the full $300 million in NASA-required-extras contingency funding. NASA says that any shortfall from the $1.24 billion level this year risks further program delays, and our look at the numbers seems to bear that out.

Yes, as Bolden said a few weeks ago, they can’t accelerate it with more money, but they can delay with less, and they seem determined to do so.

[Early evening update]

OK, here‘s an even more recent update.