The administration could fix it, or at least ameliorate it, but it would take some leadership from the president and attorney general, something that’s been in short supply.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
NASA’s Technical Report Server
Has Frank Wolf shut it down?
As the emailer who sent me the link notes, “I understand the need for an ITAR review, however, what we have so far is a blanket ban, with no prescription in place for when and how this issue will be resolved. In the meantime NASA’s vast archive of technical information, so vital to the commercial and private sector has vanished in a single day.”
So where in the days of sequester is NASA going to find the funds to review the data and get it back on line? Just more ITAR madness that has cost the US space industry billions over the past decade and a half.
[Thursday morning update]
More over at NASA Watch.
[Bumped]
“Pay Now Or Pray Later”
Green Energy In The Red
Remember how if we didn’t let Obama hand out taxpayer money to his cronies like Solyndra, we’d be buying our solar panels from China? Well:
The world’s top-selling producer of solar panels has defaulted on a $541 million bond payment. The Chinese firm Suntech hasn’t posted a profit since the first quarter of 2011 and has been relying on the government of Wuxi, the city where it is headquartered, to stay solvent. But as more bills come due, this renewable energy producer is looking less and less sustainable.
Just shocking. If you’re an economic ignoramus, anyway.
A Supersonic Boom Box
Answering the important questions.
Environmental Legal Reform
..based on conservative principles.
Columbia’s Lessons
Jeff Foust has an article at today’s issue of The Space Review on the recent meeting to remember the failure on the tenth anniversary, with a lot of discussion of the topics of my book.
Order Now
The book is up at Amazon
[Late afternoon update]
OK, they’ve got the cover up now, and the reviews look good. I just told them to take them off the web site.
Facebook for My Book
Amazon Advantage
So, I’ve been trying to set up a page for my book at Amazon. So far, color me very unimpressed.
The Advantage site has a form to fill out with book description, author bio, and three reviews. It very clearly states:
You don’t need to use HTML to fill out the edit boxes below – just type normally. However, if you’d like to use advanced formatting, you may use HTML to indicate breaks, boldface or italics.
<P> = a paragraph break <BR> = a line break
<b> </b> = boldface <i> </i> = italics.
Example: The <b>quick</b> brown fox <i>jumped over</i> the lazy dog.<BR>
Well, I kind of like paragraphs. Call me crazy, but that’s just how I roll. So I put in some <p>s, and bolded the names of the reviewers.
When I saved my work, it didn’t display the HTML properly, instead showing the code. Moreover, it had removed the second two reviews, and attributed the first one to the second reviewer.
I scratched my head, and went back int to edit, reinserting the other two reviews, and straightening out the reviewer names. I hit “View” and got exactly the same thing. HTML still in the code, no graf breaks, and the second two reviews disappeared, with the wrong reviewer name on the first.
I send a complaint to Amazon (via a web form, so I have no record of it, unless I had the foresight to copy it somewhere, which I didn’t). Here is the response:
Dear Vendor,
I apologize for the inconvenience caused.
Please be informed that when you update any information using update item content and then click submit button, everything will get disappear. However please be informed that the same will appear on the website in 5-7 days.
I request you to update the information without using HTML tags.
As you have the limit to add only 3 reviews, I request you to write back to us with the reviews that you wish to add and we will do the needful.
Thank you for selling with Amazon,
Sowjanya Reddy T.
Member Services
Amazon.com Advantage
So, they can’t show me what the page is actually going to look like until it goes live, and despite the fact that they clearly invite me to use HTML, they then request that I not do so. Which means that I can’t do so much as break paragraphs.
I’m kind of gobsmacked. I mean, this is fricking’ Amazon.