Then boy, are you in luck:

NASA AND INTERNET ARCHIVE LAUNCH CENTRALIZED RESOURCE FOR IMAGES

WASHINGTON -- NASA and Internet Archive, a non-profit digital library based in San Francisco, made available the most comprehensive compilation ever of NASA's vast collection of photographs, historic film and video Thursday. Located at www.nasaimages.org, the Internet site combines for the first time 21 major NASA imagery collections into a single, searchable online resource. A link to the Web site will appear on the www.nasa.gov home page.

The Web site launch is the first step in a five-year partnership that will add millions of images and thousands of hours of video and audio content, with enhanced search and viewing capabilities, and new user features on a continuing basis. Over time, integration of www.nasaimages.org with www.nasa.gov will become more seamless and comprehensive.

"This partnership with Internet Archive enables NASA to provide the American public with access to its vast collection of imagery from one searchable source, unlocking a new treasure trove of discoveries for students, historians, enthusiasts and researchers," said NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale. "This new resource also will enable the agency to digitize and preserve historical content now not available on the Internet for future generations."

How many images are we talking about? Over 100,000 at present. Completely searchable. The homepage is broken down into several categories (Universe, Solar System, Earth, Astronauts) and contains an interactive timeline of the space program going back 50 years. Each search generates a page of thumbnail images - Titan calls up almost 1,500 - leading to photos, animations, audio files, and artist's renderings.

Wow. Just wow.

Damn, and I have work I need to get done this afternoon . . .

Jim Downey

(Via MeFi.)

Amber Case recorded the entire proceeding, which I helped edit.

Where:Monday, July 21, 2008, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM

When: McMenamins Mission Theater

What It’s About: Mark Shuttleworth is both the founder of Ubuntu and the first African to go to space. If these are not enough of a reason for you to attend, I don’t know what else will.

On to the review:

*** BEGIN EVENT NOTATION ***

Tonight, I want to talk to you about two things that I’m most passionate about:

• Space: life and times of an average cosmonaut
• Ubuntu

So, who likes to fly into space? I’m going to talk to you about the life of a cosmonaut. What it’s like to actually fly? I’m delighted with the idea that we’re approaching a transition—after which, it will totally be possible for anyone to fly into space.

It’s a difference to see earth from a distance. Everybody I know who had been there had a profound experience.

So, thanks to all the profit I made from those SSLs [laughs], I found a chance to take on this challenge. Of course, this is a way to make my life potentially shorter—but also potentially more beautiful.

Traveling into space was my answer to the question “What’s the one thing you want to do before you die?”

I went to Russia and lived there for a year to train for the travel. It is an extraordinary place. Very different culturally and socioeconomically. Their language is excellent—I would call it a mixture of testoterone and ballet.

The first thing that I did there is cosmonaut medical testing—which everybody hated. I figured that, if I did this, everybody would take me seriously. Granted, after 2-3 weeks of spending my time in there, I questioned my decision [laughs.] But it was worth it.

The training consisted of many things. I remembered getting into a parabolic flight and was asking “where is the spare parachute?” when they answered “here in Russia, we don’t need any spare chute.” There were also the centrifuge training to condition your body to be able to stay alert, focused and functional during reentry. There were simulation of different processes in the flight. There were also survival training, because, you know, when you are in a vehicle that orbits the earth every 90 minutes, you do want some survival training for different situations that you might encounter. For example, when the suit is inflated, it restricts your blood supply. This was why they spent a lot of time tweaking your suit to make it as comfortable as possible.

And there was the final suit test, where they would inflate your suit, put you in a vacuum chamber, then suck the air out of it.

So there we were, 3 guys from Italy, Russia and South Africa.

There were all these activities that serve as a kind of “tunnel” that takes up you to the launch day.

The very scary day was really the night before the launch. That was when I said to myself, “Look, I have proven that I can do this. Now do I really want to do this?

In the morning of the launch, you went through all this tradition. The real irony of this is that it took 2 hours for guys in surgical suits to suit you up, so that the whole world knows that the suit is indeed sealed, then you would go into a bus, stop in the middle of the way, rip your suit off and take a piss on the bus’ wheels. Everybody did it, because the first cosmonaut did it.

This, by the way, was where all the “good stuff” got into the ISS (International Space Station) [laughs.]

The launch experience
You are in this rocket for 2 hours prior to launch. They would wake you up every now and then to check up various systems, but you actually had nothing to do (and probably a bad sleep the night before,) so most pilots slept. Then you have 2 day to live in this module before you dock in the space station.

Life in the ISS was hectic. The station itself had a very busy schedule. Previously, they had 2 guys doing full-time maintenance jobs before they reduced it. We were very lucky because the shuttle that was scheduled to take the ISS crew back to earth was delayed. So we had 3 guys from our crew and 3 from the station. The atmosphere was very collegial.

Eventually, it’s time to come back. Every cosmonaut knows that all the tragedy in the Russian space program happened at landing-time.

This is partly because the reentry was such a physically intense experience, in comparison with the launch. I remember seeing a bolt, like piece of a nut head floating just outside our window. This bolt goes at 25 times the speed of bullet and could easily blow of a part of a concrete wall. We don’t even have a rail gun that can shoot that fast.

Yet I feel like I can grasp it with my hand.

So, as you entered into the atmosphere, the blackness of space goes into orange-y splash of color. Then you see pieces of metal on your ship’s side literally vaporizing. The sight of molten metal running off the window was really terrible. Also, the Soyuz spins around and around. So you have this intense feeling of physicality as this thing lands.

You’re relieved when, after you finally entered the atmosphere, you have this “WHOOSH.”

All in all, going to space was an extraordinary experience. If I do fly again, I would like to take on more responsibilities, or to take Soyuz to new destinations:

Q&A

Watch you wore at the space station, or was given by other astronauts?
There was a long tradition of giving astronaut watches. We got an AMIGA Omega (more specifically, an Omega Speedmaster Professional, thanks to Todd Kenefsky) on earth, so its time got set to GMT, but the Russian guys gave us something else to wear in the ISS, in which the time pointed to Moscow. So you literally get time-tranitioned the moment you dock to the space station. It was, in fact, the fastest time transition ever [laughs.]

Technologies that were involved in the vehicle?
Soyuz essentially had an 8-bit computer which you have to program in Octo. You have procedure that is essentially a series of number. Now, I can say that, from my days of copying software from BASIC, this is a particularly bad way of controlling. What about checksum? What about double checksum? [Laughs.] This was why we checked each other’s calculations frequently.

But, with this system, you’re basically saying: at this time, you point in this direction, then fire this engine x amount of times.

After 10 days in space, one of the experiment that I was part of was to measure that loss of strength and dexterity. You felt like you lose both very quickly during the trip. You felt a lot weaker. It turned out that your muscle was still as strong as pre-flight. They figured this out by measuring the difference between what you can recruit in your muscle (what your brain can get out) and what your muscle can actually deliver. After 10 days, you lose about 25%. It’s amazing. To actually see recruit weakening, it’ll take longer. Because we actually have people living and working in space, they have found and researched several ways to mitigate this. Granted, dexterity loss will happen, and only one lady ever came back with zero bone loss. But it is about the only way to study human in space, so it’s an essential and important research.

Memorable sights, sounds or smell—pleasant or otherwise?
First of all, you have six guys all cooped up in one pod [laughs.] But the sounds were interesting. My distinct impression of this happened immediately after reinsertion. On that moment, there was a period of silence, then suddenly, there was a series of clock noise, *tick tock tick tock*, that kicked in and cut off. So you went from complete silence to this very domestic sounds. Then there was also the sound of the fan, because the vessel have to create its own air circulation.

What’s funny was that, you were expecting all these things to sound “tech,” yet they didn’t.

The smell. The station was new. They put a lot of work based on their experience with MIR and put them into ISS. On MIR, you have fungus going in the panel. You have to actually open a panel, scrap all the fungus to, you know, find the vodka they were hiding [laughs.]

What’s really interesting was that, during reentry—as soon as we open our mask—there’s this warmed plastic and body... Very distinctive sort of smell.

“Oh shucks, I forgot to bring this on the way up and on the way down” moments?
Soyuz is a very simple vehicle to operate, but one of the key switch is a light switch, which unfortunately looked very similar to other switches. Sure, we pass gazillion tests to locate this button. But it wasn’t very easy to locate when the lights are actually off and it’s actually dark.

On reentry, as I’ve mentioned before, you start with a series of explosive switches. Now, it’s possible to do this process manually using a switch that’s located besides that light switch [laughs.] But it was actually only one of several overrides.

Thoughts on building a space station on the moon that will serve as a waypoint to reach Mars?
The moon is interesting, but I think that we should be going to Mars. There is life on Mars. And that is the single most profound piece of information we can find as a species.

Computer while in space?
The standard laptop at that time were Pentium-166’s [laughs.] So I took a risk and took two relatively modern computers (Pentium III 1 Ghz) into the station. I used them to track heat dissipation and pick up issues with cosmic rays, and they ran with no problem. About two shuttles later, there was a boxful of the same computer that I brought.

I want to go back up there and fix up their IT.

One of the most difficult thing for Crewmember was that there was no private ability to talk with family. Everything has to be monitored and mediated by the control center. In a very cunning move, one cosmonaut installed a piece of VOIP software on the computer, and didn’t tell anybody. There was suddenly a note going around the control center: people’s mood improved so much and crews were happier. Turned out that this was because they had the ability to phone home. The crews used this little ping tool that will give you green, orange and red light. If light is green, you can call.

It’s great, too, because when you call people, they always say “where are you?” [laughs.]

Ecosystem, air you breathe and food you eat. How much is recycled and how much is brought from the earth?
It depends. When we were up there, the water was produced using fuel cell that would fuse hydrogen and oxygen together. We had tons of bags of water. That’s what we were drinking mostly. There’s an air conditioning system and condensation, so you can drink that by putting it through the kettle. So that’s your hot water.

Oxygen is generated from the water. Food is carried up and, despite the general notion, was actually pretty good. There was a competition between the Russian and US crew, on which food gets eaten most often.

Let’s talk about Ubuntu.

After the space trip, I feel that anything that I diverted time to should potentially have a global impact. While I was in Russia, some guys had set themselves up the goal of figuring out how cheaply they can put up computer at schools at a sustainable basis. I read the report and became very intrigued.

The next opportunity came when I was in Cape Town. I was stunned seeing kids using Linux desktop, and using it really productively. So I thought that there was an opportunity to have a global impact by maturing the Linux desktop.

So I ask myself the question: What would move Linux forward in a significant way?

This was 2003. At that time, Linux was really steady. There were two very steady, commercially sustainable companies.

So it struck me as strange that we were only scratching the surface when it comes to free software. We need to find a new way to deliver a free software. And that meant trying to figure out a business model that’s entirely service-based.

I’ve been a Debian developer since 1996. It does a good job. So how could we add to that, and deliver services that Debian didn’t?

So, I thought, we should have a metronome-like, Predictable release schedule.

So we conceived Ubuntu by focusing relentlessly on this piece called delivering. There’ s a real art to the process of delivery.

I had discussion with people from other Linux distros about this. We feel that the process of delivery is a real responsibility.

• For the user: you have the right to expect something robust, secure, stable and tested—regularly.
• For the upstreams (the guy at Apache, GNOME, KDE and Linux kernel): we have to try our very best to deliver their intents to the users.

In free software space, in the very first time, we were able to separate R&D with production cycle. We effectively have allowed people to pick pieces of the ecosystem that are more important to them.

But what’s really missing is the execution piece... The delivery model.

So far, the result is very encouraging. So encouraging that I believe that it will be comercially sustainable without changing our business model.

And the real volume is happening emerging markets like India, China. A lot of them buy computer, but what’s surprising is that, up to 20% of them actually leave Linux on their computer. People are beginning to see Linux as “This thing that I can use,” rather than taking the risk of installing pirated windows on their PCs.

And, by the way, people says that installing Linux is hard? Try installing Windows [laughs.]

So, you see, there’s a real room for Linux and Canonical to thrive.

We aim to broaden the mission by having two spaces:

• Service. This space is a very natural extension for developer to deploy friction-free, rather than having them develop on on CentOS or Fedora. I am very encouraged by increasing interests from serious hard/soft vendors.
• Mobile. I have no doubt that Linux is a platform for future consumer electronic devices. Sure, we all know that iPhone set the benchmark. But we’re not just talking about that. We’re talking about remote controls, refrigerators, and other devices that you can use at home.

  What’s a little less clear is what the stack gets to be. We believe in X86 for consumer electronic. It’s an open enough church, and Intel had strong enough commitment to deliver that. It’s also very closely aligned with GNOME, our primary desktop environment. The very first version of this platform is going to be released sometime this year. It’s fascinating, interesting, though not yet very crystal clear.

The bottom line: we would have an economic model of delivering high quality, free software without taxing it. And that, to me, is a very compelling vision that makes not going to space again worthwhile.

Q & A

OLPC—what’s your interaction to that?
It was an extraordinary success. It has completely change the way how the industry sees low-cost computing. Before OLPC, it was always a question of “How much you can cram in?”

What Negroponte did was turn it upside down.

The classmate PC that Intel produced wouldn’t happen without the OLPC. The entire category of the sub-notebook wouldn’t happen without the OLPC. And regardless of it becoming a de facto platform, I think it’s a profound success.

How do you determine that Linux usage in China was as high as 20%
We looked at analysis of return, in particular at return after one year of ownership. By this time, you would think that people who switched to Windows will do already.

And yet, they don’t.

These number, in China, was close to 20%. It was a surprising data point. This means that a significant people were very happy with Linux. This is the benchmark that we measure ourselves against. It was a surprising number.

Ubuntu Foundation? Canonical registered in the Isle Of Man?
Canonical Limited was registered in the Isle Of Man, a very tax-lenient region—but we’re a global company.

With regard to the first question: we set aside $10 million into the Ubuntu Foundation. We know how much would it cost just to maintain a regular LTS releases. This is a way that I know that, no matter what happens to me and Canonical, we will be able to release and provide support for 5 years. This was the purpose.

Customer characteristics/market segments?
70% of our business is server oriented. Very surprising.
60% of workers based in the US.

What matter most for us is getting other companies to get successful with Ubuntu. There’s no requirement to interface with Ubuntu through Canonical, but doing it through us is a reasonable way to do it.

Gaming possible on Ubuntu? Game developers? Linux as gaming environment?
There are, I think, two critical ingredients for a gaming platform:

• Networking, where Linux is very strong at.
• Graphics, where we’re not as strong.

For gaming on Linux to be successful, we need to focus on casual gamer. I don’t think Linux can compete for a platform for the next Crysis, but we can certainly deliver elements that you need. I wouldn’t be surprised to see handheld gaming with Linux as a platform. Use it as a tool to leveling the playing field. From my perspective, I wold focus on casual gamers. Reach people who are well-paid, smart, and online all the time.

Backstory behind alliteration (Gutsy Gibbon, Hardy Heron, etc.)?
I downloaded all kinds of mailing lists from a bunch of communities, Debian and others. Spent weeks getting seasick in the ocean reading all the messages to try to find people to hire. I finished of in Australia. One guy that I was about to hire talked about calling the release “Worthy Warthog.” I will defend this tradition to the very end, though some people want us to drop the animals [laughs.]

No longer in South Africa?
I want to work globally. Investment in South Africa is very difficult. London is convenient, and it has been quite good to me. I expect to go back to South Africa, but for the moment I’m enjoying seeing the rest of the world from various angles—and attitudes.

Ubuntu sold as boxed products?
Absolutely fine. That’s the nature of the free software ecosystem. You cannot resent somebody else who uses your software in ways that you don’t directly benefit from. I want to see company benefits around the platform. The vision is not to have Canonical “own” it, but to have people deliver it in a lot of different ways and formats. We have some trademark policies, but in a sense, we’re only the custodian of it. We have an amazing community, because everybody feels that he/she has some parts in it. If the shrinkwrapped product gives people—who otherwise hadn’t had the confidence to try free software—to try free software, then that’s great.

Difference between education in South Africa and the US? (Editor’s note: I’m not positive on whether this question was asked verbatim.)
I grew up in a country which was a living nightmare, with institutionalized injustice. So American history was the best way for our teachers to teach us about a system that’s so prone to abuse.

Deal with Microsoft?
I have great respect for Microsoft. I know. This horrifies a lot of people. But we forget that Microsoft made software cheap, accessible and standardized—and in the 80’s, this was the best way to move software forward.

But today, creating free software is the best way. But we still have to win people over, so it’s frustrating to me when Microsoft did something like this: they just signed a deal with South Africa to give out free copies of Windows to use at school.

At one level, it’s frustrating, because it’s a game that’s being played by them. On the other hand, it’s good that kids had access to more technology.

But remember:
Microsoft gives out software because they earn it.
We give out software because we own it.

The amazing thing about free software is that you’re free to explore every one of your interest on; and that, behind every tools, there is a mailing list full of people who are as passionate about the software as you are.

Business Model/Venture Funding?
From past history, I have a VC team in South Africa. People continually express interest in Ubuntu. We haven’t and won’t take VC until we have taken the risk out of the [business] model. Before we take outside money, we need our management team to do the right thing at the right time. It seems like a dangerous thing. This is a reasonable criticism.

But we’ll first establish ourselves as cash-positive. In a very real sense, we will have to choose. Some parts of our operation are already profitable. Some are not. We just choose to have all those parts to have all the grounds covered.

In the next 5 years, we can pick and choose which pieces to turn up and which to turn down to make ours a sustainable business model. We will choose when we become fiscally self-sustaining.

Last question:
When you started off the evening, you said “within our lifetime, space travel will be possible.” A lot of things have changed, things are up and down. What role do you see free software playing in the next 20 years?

In a very real sense, some people thought that software doesn’t matter anymore. To me, this is amazing, because more and more of our lives are actually defined by software. It used to be that software is this thing that you interact in the office. Now, for example, if you look at the iPhone—it’s a pure software experience. Fundamentally, the whole thing is a software experience. The hardware dissolves in the background. Interaction with companies and government becomes possible today, thanks to softwares.

I think that, first, software is profoundly important, and second, it will define how we work.

If so, I think that we need to define how it will shape. And the only way that we could make this happen is with freedom.

*** END EVENT NOTATION ***

Technicality: ☝ ☝ ½
Translation: Half and half. Sure, not everyone knows about Ubuntu and the Linux kernel; but don’t you want to, like, fly into the orbit like Mark Shuttleworth did?

Interestingness: ☝ ☝ ☝ ☝ ☝
Translation: Legion of Tech have outdone themselves again by getting an inspiring character to Portland to share their wisdom for free.

What I Learned From The Event In Six Words:
More inspirations than you can handle.

The only thing surprising about the resolution between Yahoo’s board of directors and activist investor Carl Icahn was that it didn’t happen sooner.

The proxy campaign that Icahn launched nearly three months ago to eliminate Yahoo’s board and replace it with his own cronies at the Aug. 1 shareholder meeting came to an end Monday when the two sides finally agreed to a compromise. Proxy experts say they expected a settlement, which will give Icahn three seats on an expanded 11-member Yahoo (YHOO) board, several weeks ago.

“The end game was fairly obvious. It should have been obvious that the company wasn’t going to pitch a shutout. At the same time, it should have been obvious to Carl that he would be unlikely to get a majority vote,” said Chris Young, the M&A research director of shareholder advisory firm RiskMetrics ISS. “This was a recipe for a settlement.”

Neither side was likely to win without a compromise. Young says Yahoo’s board and Icahn were both preparing for the “nightmare scenario” – a full Yahoo slate or an all-Icahn slate that appealed to few Yahoo investors. Both slates were too extreme for disenchanted shareholders who were unhappy that Yahoo’s current board botched negotiations with Microsoft (MSFT) and wary that Icahn’s directors do not have a Plan B beyond a sale to the software giant.

Young suggests that Icahn would have likely submitted a shortened version of his nine-member slate before the Aug. 1 meeting. Last Friday Bill Miller, a major Yahoo shareholder with Legg Mason, said he would support Yahoo’s incumbent slate, which includes CEO Jerry Yang and chairman Roy Bostock, over Icahn’s. However, Miller also signaled he’d be willing to support Icahn as a board member. “We believe it is appropriate for large shareholders to have representation on corporate boards if they so desire,” Miller said in a statement. Icahn Associates owns a 5% stake, or 68.7 million shares, of Yahoo, making him the third largest institutional shareholder.

A shortened Icahn slate could have spelled trouble for Yahoo’s board. Since 2006, activists have succeeded in winning seats through proxy fight or settlement 80% of the time, according to RiskMetrics. Yahoo is among 40 large-cap companies that have reached a settlement with activists in the past year, and is the third largest behind Kraft Foods (KFT), which settled with Nelson Peltz by adding two Peltz-backed nominees to the board last November and Target (TGT), which reversed its longstanding position to sell off its credit card receivables after activist Bill Ackman started rattling cages.

A settlement that gives Icahn a seat on Yahoo’s board is a “win-win situation,” Young said. “Nobody likes to go to the bitter end. This way, nobody loses face. Everybody can claim victory and address the most important issue – creating shareholder value.”

Send It Somewhere Special

Consider the International Space Station, that marvel of incremental engineering. It has close to 15,000 cubic feet of livable space; 10 modules, or living and working areas; a Canadian robot arm that can repair the station from outside; and the capacity to keep five astronauts (including the occasional wealthy rubbernecking space tourist) in good health for long periods. It has gleaming, underused laboratories; its bathroom is fully repaired; and its exercycle is ready for vigorous mandatory workouts.

The only problem with this $156 billion manifestation of human genius -- a project as large as a football field that has been called the single most expensive thing ever built -- is that it's still going nowhere at a very high rate of speed. And as a scientific research platform, it still has virtually no purpose and is accomplishing nothing.

* * *

Send the ISS somewhere.

The ISS, you see, is already an interplanetary spacecraft -- at least potentially. It's missing a drive system and a steerage module, but those are technicalities. Although it's ungainly in appearance, it's designed to be boosted periodically to a higher altitude by a shuttle, a Russian Soyuz or one of the upcoming new Constellation program Orion spacecraft. It could fairly easily be retrofitted for operations beyond low-Earth orbit. In principle, we could fly it almost anywhere within the inner solar system -- to any place where it could still receive enough solar power to keep all its systems running.

Like I said, interesting. But problematic - the ISS wasn't constructed to provide adequate protection from radiation (the orbit it occupies is within the Earth's protective magnetosphere), and therefore would need to be retrofitted extensively to protect inhabitants on a long-distance voyage. It would likely also need retrofitting to reinforce the many joints where components have been mounted together, since these were not designed to withstand significant stress from propulsion.  I think Mr. Benson may have underestimated these problems and costs.

But it is still an interesting idea.  Unfortunately, it's not original.  Well, not exactly.  Like so many things related to our early exploration in space, something similar was proposed by Arthur C. Clarke over 25 years ago.  Yes, about 15 before construction began on the ISS.   It is a plot point in his novel 2010: Odyssey Two (the book differs significantly from the movie 2010, so you may not have come across it).  In the book, a Chinese space station under construction in LEO surprisingly reveals itself to be an interplanetary craft, and takes off for Jupiter, getting the jump on both the American and Soviet missions planned to investigate the monolith in orbit there.

Just a little factoid for a Sunday morning.

Jim Downey

Buradan download edebilirsiniz: http://apache.bilkent.edu.tr/dist/httpd/binaries/win32/

Daha sonra windows denetim masasına girip yönetimsel araçlar simgesini tıklayıp Hizmetler kısmındaki Word Wide Web Servisini stop(durdur) etmeniz gerekiyor.

Şimdi ilk adımda indirdiğimiz dosyamızı iki kere tıklayarak kurmamız gerekiyor. Kurulumun ilk penceresinde size kullanım koşullarını sunuyor bunu I Accept ile geçebilirsiniz. Eğer kurulumu test amaçlı yapıyorsanız bir sonraki pencerede karşınıza çıkacak kısımları olduğu gibi bırakarak next ile devam edebilirsiniz.

Kullandığınız işletim sistemi Service Pack 2 içeriyor ve firewall açıksa size bu yazılımın engellendiğini belirten bir kutucuk ile uyaracaktır. Bunu Unblock(Engelleme) yi tıklayarak geçebilirsiniz.

Artık internet explorer adres cubuğuna http://localhost/ yazarak denemelerinizi yapabilirsiniz.

Dilerseniz apache yi kurduğunuz dizinin altındaki http.conf dosyasından yayımlamak istediğiniz kök dizini değiştirebilirsiniz.

Kurulum default olarak bu dizine yapılmaktadır: C:/Program Files/Apache Group/Apache2/htdocs

Saygılar.

If you have not seen the ISS pass over before - you are looking for a fairly fast moving bright star-like object. The times and locations given in the above link will guide you.

Analysis: I'm a fan of space research and travel, and I'd like to see more funding and attention go into the American space effort, and with it more American ability to collaborate on international space ventures.

Still, I think there are some lines that shouldn't be crossed, and one of those lines involves rinky-dink tin-cup-passing by the once-revered NASA. I'm late to noticing this, as NASA posted this video on its site last month, but I just came across it, kinda cute admittedly. Buzz Lightyear has finally made it to outer space, aboard the International Space Station. 

I've embedded the rehosted youTube version, but the NASA site itself has other great multimedia stuff.  That way you avoid the sinking realization that you're virally enjoying a clever Walt Disney promotional product tie-in deal with a sadly underfunded federal agency (see also the more lighthearted take here on CNET).

NASA better pay less attention to product placement ads and more to its core constituency: no, not the research community - Congress!  The most significant news of the week for NASA is that it is again drawing the glare of Rep. John Culberson (R-TX), who recently became an Internet hero for battling House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats over use of Twitter and Web 2.0 capabilities as official congressional business tools.  In today's Houston Chronicle, I find this stinging piece, "Culberson taking shots at NASA's bureaucracy":

WASHINGTON — Two days after telling an online town hall meeting that NASA had "failed us miserably" and "wastes a vast amount of money," Houston Rep. John Culberson said Thursday he was weighing legislation to overhaul the structure of the space agency, responsible for about 20,000 jobs in the Houston area.

Culberson, a blunt-spoken conservative from a heavily Republican westside district, said his proposal would slash NASA headquarters' bureaucracy and enable scientists and engineers to rekindle visionary space exploration.

"We need revolutionary change, a complete restructuring," Culberson told the Houston Chronicle. "NASA needs complete freedom to hire and fire based on performance; it needs to be driven by the scientists and the engineers, and it needs to be free of politics as much as possible."

Culberson also said he's "kicking around" an idea to make NASA more like the National Science Foundation, which has a bit more independence than NASA currently does within the federal bureaucracy.   (Want to keep up with Culberson?  Follow him here on Twitter, he's prodigiously tweeting.)

The real battle is going to be over the politics and science of relying on Russian vehicles during the 2010-2015 gap, devoid of any U.S. operational space vehicles whatsoever (bye-bye Shuttle).  This is just heating up...

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Neben der Vorbereitung des Experiments und "Rumspielerei" mit meinem neuen Mac schreibe ich im Moment auch an meinem nächsten Paper. Das macht einerseits Spaß, ich schreibe gerne und habe auch schöne Experimente zum Vorzeigen, denke ich. Andererseits finde ich es wirklich stressig, hier kommt es darauf an, alles richtig zu machen und keine dummen (oder sonstwelche ;)) Fehler einzubauen. Na ja, mir bleibt wohl nichts anderes übrig, als alles so gut zu machen, wie es geht, und trotzdem das Schreiben und Berichten zu genießen.

To skip over the technical jargon that no one will understand (I'm included in that group), basically a really small part on a really big crane overheated and burned a little. Naturally this causes an uproar so we went to investigate. However I did not realize that this really small part was at the top of the really big crane. We took off up this narrow staircase in the corner. It should have been my first indication of the situation when there was a sticker that read "WARNING: Hand Rail is a Pinch Hazard, May Sever Appendage" or something to that effect.

After braving the metal hand rails I found myself standing at the bottom of a series of those access ladders that you always see but think no one ever uses. Sitting beneath those ladders was a yellow safety cone with a blinking red light on top. It seemed pretty safe until an audio warning indicated I was in an area that was a "Personnel Crush Hazard" (that was a direct quote). I then reluctantly climbed up the ladder.

Next came the steel grates of death. Underneath was a floor that was really far away. The steel grates didn't last very long, but it led to the seriously worst ladder of all time.

The next ladder went up to the crane equipment and was covered by a door at the top. A brilliant engineer had it designed so the door opened up onto the walkway so that when you got up you had to step over the opening on the floor and climb around a huge open door to slide through a space 2 inches wide. After tackling this accomplishment I stood quietly on more steel grates hanging on the middle of the floor with crane equipment next to me that was continuing to smell like smoke.

To help Illustrate, I am providing an image captured during this course of events.

The yellow arrow and circle show my hand. This is the approximate location where an imprint of my hand can now be found in the metal hand rail.

The red circle indicates a DANGER sticker. No further comments.

Now I know I am smiling in the picture but this was to confuse the actual engineers up there. No one wants to hire a sissy afraid of ladders.

To finish the story, I scurried (yes scurried) back down to the ground and remained content with poorly lit photo I got out of the situation. As another plus, I get to continue living.

It doesn't really come to a conclusion and doesn't really bring any answers (for me at least), but it does raise a lot of interesting thoughs. I think gaming really is one of those phenomenons that hasn't been properly put into perspective yet, if that's even possible, and this book helps with it. I also liked how it looked into the future of gaming in the end of the book.

There's also a lot of stuff on EVE Online and he makes a good case of how a not-so-restricted virtual sandbox world allows players to create their own content and set their own goals (way beyond high scores and bragging rights), with using Interstellar Starbase Syndicate outpost project (+shareholders project) and Istvaan Shogaatsu's Great Heist as example. Not much news overall for an EVE player like me, but I didn't know that much about ISS and I enjoyed reading about it. Always good to see EVE promoted in a way like this and I hope other MMO developers start to pick it up.

Anyway, it's a good read. I did hope though I could use this book as a "why-I-game" book and point to it when non-gaming friends start to bother me with that question, I don't think it's a good book for that. I also am not sure how much 'fun' this book is for non-gaming people, it might get a bit boring somewhere in the middle.

PS. You can read most of the stuff on Korea in the book here actually, it's very interesting.

Not paparazzi.

Not real stars.

Satellites. In particular, the space station. For the rest of the month (July 2008) the International Space Station (ISS) will be visible for about 45 to 90 minutes after dark or before sunrise.

This article has a number of tips on where to look, what to look for, and links to help you find the ISS.

These are the top stories from the Digg Space category for the week ending Saturday 12th of July 2008:

3 Mystery of the Great Attractor Pulling the Milky Way

To find out what other stories are popular right now, click here.

INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION

 Detalhe da Passagem sobre Cuiabá

Carta Celeste

Carta Detalhada

Passagem no dia 15

Pass Details

Detailed Star Chart

DIA 16 DE JULHO

Pass Details

Detailed Star Chart

dIA 17 DE JULHO

Pass Details

Detailed Star Chart

HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE SOBRE CUIABÁ.MT

There it is. The moon programs of NASA come together in one neat little jpeg! I strongly encourage folks to read up on this program. I want to know as much about this program as possible, but i'm unsure as to which sources are reliable these days. I have read that their astronauts are already training...and that it will occur sometime between 2010 and 2012? Again, if anybody reading this has some viable information on this campaign, please let me know.