The mars schedule

According to Musk.

2018 - 1 red lander on mars.
2020 - 2 more red landers on mars.
2022 - MCT first landing.
2024 - First MCT crew to mars.

Update: Important new data.

MCT designed for 100 mt to surface of mars meaning each ticket is for 1 mt. This should provide each colonist with several hundred kg. of personal property besides their combined body and spacesuit mass  (and some consumables quickly replaced by ISRU.) Assuming a ticket price of $5m and 500 kg. of personal property each colonist arrives with $2.5m in worth.

Clarification: 1mt includes consumables for the trip which would be about 2mt. which does not compute. I'm assuming 8 kg. per day with no recycling. Apparently a bad assumption. I'll have to discover better data.

A pretty flower

Last week.

Identifying the real BLM problem

President of Croatia

Now I understand the supercar!

What prevents us from selling mars by the hectare?

Cutting to the chase... nothing but attitude.

The expense of developing martian real estate is so high (and letting others do it so abhorrent to the control freaks) that the elites have decided nobody should be allowed to do it without their control.

Mars has 14.4 billion hectares of real estate. Musk, in late September, will announce his plan to send people to mars. Nobody owns mars which stifles its development. But a simple attitude change could open the flood gates.

Suppose we set up a trust for one single purpose. We auction off hectares starting at the proposed first human landing site. All that money goes into the trust. From that trust we only buy transportation tickets, payable on delivery of a live human to the surface of mars near enough to connect with an established colony.

This is a win-win-win-win.

win#1. The transportation company sells tickets at a profit competing with others for the lowest possible price.

win#2. The land speculator sees the value of their property appreciate as more colonists arrive.

win#3. Colonists already on mars have a ready made market for their time and materials to be sold to new comers.

win#4. New comers arrive wealthy by virtue of whatever mass allotment for personal property is included in their transportation ticket.

Before new comers leave earth they can contract with existing colonists for eventual trade when they arrive. 100 kg of disposable personal property would be worth its transportation cost alone.

Cost/kg per lander = ($200m / 2000 kg.) or $100k per kg.

Lander ($100k/kg)  x 100 kg, so each colonist arrives a millionaire with a mansion waiting for their arrival and enough resources to follow any individual dream.

It's just attitude that holds us back.

Update: Jim asks, "Who do you envision auctioning off Mars? Who do you envision bidding?"

This is the fundamental problem. Who gets the loot? If not 'me' (whomever me might be) we're just not interested. The trust auctions off mars with all of humanity being the beneficiary. The trust doesn't belong to anyone. It's sole purpose is to buy tickets to mars (or anyplace else a similar trust is set up for using its real estate... but we start with mars.) Who bids? Any person on earth wishing to speculate on the future value of martian real estate. I would also propose the plots to be 40x50 meters for a minimum bid of $1. This provides a minimum of $60b (but in reality much more) at 84% utilization (all property having a minimum frontage of 40 meters on a planetwide road system.) Only individuals could bid on these plots which could then be resold and aggregated in a secondary market. It just requires govt. to acknowledge titles.

I would also recommend (but it's outside the focus of this post)... All governance would be local. A township would be 10x10 km. with each square kilometer choosing a resident as its representative. All laws would sunset after one martian year from the moment of enactment.

It is idiotic to look at it from the perspective of, "I wouldn't pay a dime for a 2000 sq. m. plot of real estate on mars." The only valid perspective is "would others?" Given the govt. support of the validity of title the answer doesn't require an active brain cell because even without it humans have been willing to make similar investments.

Black magic woman

Last week.

Ya gotta hear this guy!

Putin threatening war?

Par for the course

I get WIFI internet for free. I called the only provider for this area because I would like to pay for guaranteed service. They require a credit card. I only use prepaid visa on the net. Had I not told them it was prepaid we probably wouldn't have had an issue. The representative asked her boss who said no.

If I try to use another national provider they just connect me with Frontier, our local monopoly.

I'm wondering if the Americans with disabilities act would have any usefulness. I'm going to talk to a lawyer (who happens to be related to both my partner and the founding family of this town. This makes him a good partner to have.)

The kicker is my free WIFI is provided by this monopoly!

Also there could be damages because they are preventing me from implementing my product.

This should be fun.

None of this prevents me from continuing to write my code. I just need others to test. Working blind isn't that big a deal for me. I used to edit out of state code without a wysiwyg editor (ever code dBase using edlin and a 300 baud modem?)

I also worked for a short time with a literally blind Shearson Lehman BAL programmer in one of the twin towers before they came down in NYC. I could only do my edlin trick because I'd memorized 10,000 lines of dBase code. I really don't know how that blind programmer did it with BAL other than he used a line editor with text to speech software. I never knew how many lines he was working with but my impression was... a lot.

Croatia makes...

...a supercar?

Body count rises

 "If I'm ever found dead, it won't be a suicide."

Haifa Wehbe and others

Last week.

Would you like tires with that?

I have to visit or call mom once a week or she gets a little panicky and comes by. She's too old for that so I usually visit when she's out on her porch around midday. Today the neighbor asked how I was and I told her about being stuck on my project. "You still working on that?" I had shown her an earlier version I'd written last year in a different language. "You should work on a new project." That's when I told her, I could, but it's a bit like making cars. I can make all different types, but then I'd have to ask the title question.

Dad (step-dad) is a Mexican version of Mayberry's Floyd the barber. He shuffles along and his hearing is bad but he works his 3 customers a day at the barber shop. He's got the classic roman nose so mom swears he's an Italian. He loves spaghetti westerns, so whenever some famous Mexican actor (yeah, they have those) comes on the screen, especially if really dark skinned he'll call out to mom, pointing at the screen and say, "Hey, another Italian actor." Then mom will say, "noooo, that's just another dumb Mexican." The whole family here in AZ is Mexican, so that's a big hit with some.

Does Hillary have Parkinsons?

Server blues

I still can't make a connection between my computer at home and my server but all the SQLitening software is working correctly. Server logs show that others can make the connection. I'm pretty sure my own computer has it's port open through the firewall but I'm wondering about my wifi connection? I'm not sure how I'm going to test that?

It's time I canceled my first server contract since I'm not going to be using it. Goddady has two levels of firewall protection. One I have control of, the other I don't but I got the right port opened for me and it's working so i'm going to keep my Godaddy server until I figure out how to get SQLitening working from my home machine.

Also I'm going to reset my first domain back to the Google DNS. I never should have listened to 1and1.com about setting it to their DNS. At the time I was just following their directions since I didn't fully understand how it worked. As McCoy might say, "I'm a computer programmer Jim, not a technician."

Just begging for a fisking...

...this article is.

During a 33-year career...

Why do they always start by trying to prove how unbiased they are when the whole point of the article is to explain their bias?

First he starts with a pure assertion. Hillary is highly qualified and Trump is not and dangerous to boot. (There's your politics of fear Bob.) I can respect that as long as it's backed up with solid evidence. It isn't.

I never saw her bring politics into the Situation Room.

What does that mean? How the hell does he know what her political calculations are? If he's trying to say she's not a political beast, a derisive snort is about the only sensible reply. How about Trump then?...

• "self-aggrandizement" Now there's a rare thing for a politician. /sarc.
• "overreaction to perceived slights" Perceived? He's been attacked with a fury that only a biased media can ignore. So is the writer advocating that America just bend over and take it as we did when the Iranians captured and insulted our sailors and country?
• "decisions based on intuition" A powerful tool for many good people.
• "refusal to change his views based on new information" A lie. Trump chooses which positions he's firm on and has been scolded for those he is not. Even those he is firm on can alter when more facts are brought to bear. Do we want somebody that blows in the wind with every unconfirmed random bit of news?
• "carelessness with the facts" Nevermind that he's usually right if inarticulate.
• "unwillingness to listen to others" Another fat lie. He built his fortune listening to other, but coming to his own conclusions. Ignoring truthful arguments has been the democratic trait. Look up unwillingness to listen and you'll see Obama's picture (with McCain patting him on the shoulder.)
• "lack of respect for the rule of law" Laws often made by people that lack moral principles. These people routinely exempted themselves from the very laws they use as weapons against the American people. Where is the respect for law that keeps Hillary from being behind bars! These are howlers, folks.

[Trump] is already damaging our national security.

How does this pure assertion stand scrutiny? Ever heard of the Clinton foundation? This is way, way, way beyond a howler. This is an ear splitting screamer.

Putin played upon Mr. Trump’s vulnerabilities by complimenting him.

Unlike Hillary, who actually made us vulnerable by not protecting national secrets.

"Putin is a great leader"

Yes, by many standards he is. Acknowledging that doesn't mean he isn't evil as well. A leader is someone who has followers (by any means.) All the evil men of history were great leaders or we'd have never heard of them. Trump will unabashedly negotiate for an American advantage with every world leader. Hillary has already demonstrated treason for which she will never be held account.

In the intelligence business, we would say...

This from an agency that hasn't always demonstrated its allegiance to American interests in recent years.

"undermined security with his call for barring Muslims"

So vetting immigrants now undermines security? Does he work for THAT MONUMENT TO PUBLIC SAFETY, the TSA?

"many Muslim Americans play critical roles in protecting our country"

Great. What does his have to do with vetting immigrants? If you're having trouble coming up with the answer, the answer is absolutely nothing. They are two different groups of people. However, some Americans are also terrorists (but somehow these work related, or nightclub, incidences seem to escape their notice.)

"[I] call it as I see it." 

With a blindness that is so far beyond astounding that it boggles the mind. Every accusation he's thrown at Trump as a possibility is a damning reality a thousand fold with Hillary as far as national security goes.

Update: Upon reflection, I'd have to say this is one of the best articles for choosing Trump over Clinton. Great job, CIA guy.

Sadie says hi, with her hips

Last week.

Plan of action

It's not so simple to get all the pieces together and working to get a thing done. I've paid for three months of server on Godaddy which sets a limit to how long I have to resolve my database access issue. Realistically I give myself 2 weeks but hope to resolve it today or tomorrow. If I can't resolve it in 3 months I will do something else, but not being able to share data severely limits what those else's might be. To be fair, there are applications where the low performance of other shared database solutions would not be a show stopper, but I feel like I am so close. There will still be data security issues, but those are not show stoppers.

So... I've got the SQLitening remote service working on both my local machine and my server. The problem is I haven't been able to get the remote communications working. First thing to do is get the communications working on my machine with itself. Second I will get the server to talk to itself. Once both of those things work, the only thing left as far as I can see is changing the IP address and having the right port open. I don't see how this should take much time at all?

Anyway, that's the plan. My next post about this should be my last on this subject!

I also realize another mistake I made. 1&1.com convinced me to use their DNS servers when I didn't have to. I should have just kept that domain on the Google DNS servers. It may take a few days to get that straightened out but I'm not ready to deal with it at the moment.

Update:

The window service installs and runs both on my machine and on my server. A test program I wrote using my DB and the service works perfectly on my machine and locally on the server. The only thing that doesn't work is to remotely access the DB from my machine to the server. I used a provided batch file to open the correct port on the server and got no errors. Now I just have to hope the developer of SQLitening sees something stupid I've done or left out. I could ask Godaddy to confirm the port is open, but beyond that I'm stuck.

go daddy!

Well I got the SQLitening server running on Godaddy, but I can't connect to it. I've opened the port through the firewall (even turned the firewall off for one test, but no good. I gave this info to the author of SQLitening so perhaps something will come of that.)

I find that outside of it's canned offerings, Godaddy doesn't provide any way to publish a web page from the unmanaged server service they sell. I found a program called tinyweb that should suit me but haven't got it working on the server yet (it works fine on my machine... why all the damned issues?)

It's possible I will go the cookie cutter route for my web page. It doesn't have to go on the server I'm paying for, for that purpose. But none of that matters if I can't get SQLitening functioning completely.

Sometimes you just have to walk away from an issue for a bit.

How many days...

...will it take to fix a few minutes problem? 1&1 customer support is getting a failing grade from me. I will work on getting my three issues fixed or I will cancel my contract...

1. I need SQLite running. This is the primary reason I chose them.
2. I need my webpage to show - not error 403 as it currently does.
3. I need people to be able to download my s/w after issue 2 is fixed.

None of these are major issues and should take about 5 minutes to fix if they did any type of customer service. I am very annoyed.

Trying to use their chat support facility leaves me hanging until finally a page in German is displayed (with no ability to translate.)

Update: To hell with 1&1.com. I just spent an hour on the phone with godaddy sales. They got the last dime on my prepaid visa but now I have an unmanaged server already set up... well, except being unmanaged I have lots of reading to do... but I have RDP access which is the first main hurdle. I'm using my other domain for it..., it's already pointing to my server. it has an error due to the fact that I haven't set up any pages yet, but that's to be expected. I have 3 months to get it working which should only take whatever time I need to read a few things. I'm tempted to set up my windows service right now, but I'm feeling good and don't want to spoil it at the moment. Besides it's 2:30am and I have a 7am appointment. to sleep now!

Obama is not just a traitor

He's a felon.

What a hassle

I've got a domain registered with Google. Another with Godaddy. My cloud server is with 1and1.com  Now I wait a few days to see if my google domain gets propagated by the 1and1 dns.

Meanwhile, I saw Star Trek tonight. Not sure what I think of it, but it had some good geeky stuff. Don't know how the Franklin (warp 4) fits in with Archer's (warp 5) ship?

Now to become more familiar with 1and1.

Update: I'm becoming more comfortable working on my remote cloud server and less comfortable with my local wifi. I now have my firewall giving me access to my SQLitening service, but have to wait until tomorrow to get approval to run the SQLite service (which is the only reason I'm paying for this host out of my pitiful income.)

The good news is what this will enable me to do once I've got the kinks worked out.

Update 2: Looks like the Trekkies are making a big fuss over the Franklin. I guess I wasn't the only one that found it curious.

One reason alone not to elect Hillary

"It's old news," she says.

"For the United States, this settlement saved us billions of dollars that could have been pursued by Iran," Obama said.

Is there any doubt Trump would say "Iran could pursue billions from us 'til hell freezes over and would never get a dime."

I know the answer.

Update: Check out the 8 part series in links on the bottom for the war on truth.

Wednesday is here again

Last week.

I can only conclude...

...that none of the webhosts I've contacted so far wants my business (or speak english.) I will keep trying. They really stink at sales.

Update: My wound care guy gave me the number for an IT guy that works at the power plant and is setting up an ISP here in town. That could work out for both of us during testing. Once I go live I'll need a provider with an uptime record.

More progress on my code.

I feel like I'm swimming in molasses, but it doesn't matter because I am making progress. I'm not what I used to be nor are the tools I'm working with but the potential is there. I'm going to start looking for a host now. My goal is to have a test online by January. In the old days it would have taken me less than a month to get there, but no matter.

One problem I've got is security. While I can encrypt my database this happens on the server end with SQLite, so I'm vulnerable to man in the middle attacks. I don't know how to implement HTTPS or if it would impose an intolerable performance hit? Also, encrypted, I can't do any ranges in a where clause which I need to do a lot of.

I haven't looked into how password protection works in SQLite either. Without that anyone could mess with my data even if encrypted. They'd produce gobblygook, but that's not good for me.

I'll just have to do the best I can.