Slashdot Mirror
RadioShack To Co-Sponsor Lunar Mission
IntelliTubbie writes: "In an
'unorthodox form of brand sponsorship,'
RadioShack is teaming up with LunaCorp, a Virginia-based space exploration startup. The goal: put a robotic rover on the moon featuring the
RadioShack
logo. Artist's renderings of the monstrosity can be seen at
LunaCorp's web site.
We're one step closer to the eerie predictions in 'Fight Club': The IBM Stellar Sphere. Planet Starbucks. Yikes."
Unfortunately the robot will be powered by a TRS-80 ModelII, requiring 14 extra tons of propellant (grin). More coverage can be found at Yahoo! and
discovery.com;
CMU is creating the
H2O-seeking robot
for the mission. (More.)
And on a related note for anyone interested in going to the moon in the relatively near future, MrScience writes: "I just received a link for this job in my mailbox from Guru.com, a pretty decent headhunter website. They are looking for a Financial Analyst to evaluate the NASA Academy, and "The end result will be a recommendation that the program either *is* or *is not* beneficial, and the specific reasons to justify such a conclusion. This report will then go before the NASA Administrator to justify the existence (or removal) of the program." I grew up dreaming of going to this, who wouldn't after seeing SpaceCamp?" Pound foolish, anyone?
But the downside was they showed us that damn movie about fifteen frickin' times -- as if they knew the stuff we were doing was fun but nothing like that, so every time there was a slow moment they'd plop us down in front of a TV / VCR and play it again. It was actually the first thing we did upon arrival [great first impression guys], and several more times over the week. Ek...
It's funny this has come up here today, I was just thinking about the camp & the movie this morning for the first time in a couple of years, it seems. I was thinkng of renting it again to see how well the movie has aged -- hopefully it has done better than, say, "Top Gun" :). The IMDB page notes that a bunch of would-one-day-be-famous actors were in it, so it might be interesting to see that... ho hum, probably won't worry about it...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Oh come on now, let's be Realistic. :-)
I hope Realistic isn't just a Canadian Radio Shack brand or I'll look pretty foolish. I guess for the Americans I can always do:
Oh come on now, let's be Optimustic.
P.S. Anybody with Model 4 stuff to sell, drop me a line.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
They are obviously in need of more backers, with a lot more money. How likely do you think a backing from Microsoft is?
Microsoft claim moon
Reuters
In a surprise move today, Microsoft has launched a capsule that supposedly contains the source code for all Windows products towards the moon. In reaching the moon, the source can then claim itself an soverign entity, with no governmental or terriestrial ties. Claiming problems with bandwidth, the source only repeats over and over 'I am a thinking entity. You need me for Age of Empires.' People around the world are stunned at this new innovation from Microsoft.
It's expected that the legal and marketing abilities of the probe are highly advanced, enabling it to buy companies remotely and sue people for making parody web pages. Other companies are very interested in buying this technology, but when they show interest are immediately bought by Microsoft.
Bill Gates was unavailable for comment, but Steve Ballmer stated unequivocally 'Microsoft is bigger than the Earth, we're intergalatic now. We're bigger than Jesus. You could never be as 31337 as us.' The statement then degenerated into a series of 'uNF's and 'jajajaja's.
--
Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
There are two ways to get research done: let a monopolistic behemoth bribe some academicians to work for them, so that the corporation can patent their ideas. Bell Labs, Microsoft Research, IBM. This is very expensive, because first you pay for the research when you buy their products, then you really pay for their research when you buy the exorbitantly priced patented product. The other way to get research done is to pay a smart kid to go to grad school. This is how all but a handful of the major advances in CS have been accomplished, and why they were all public domain until the patent-craze started a few years ago. (The other reason most advances are public domain is that patented ideas are quickly superceded by public ones.)
I don't see such a stark dichotomy. A lot of really cool technologies have been invented by corporations. A lot have also been invented by government researchers.
It's hard to know what the world would be like without those government researchers because the government sticks it's thumb in every pie, so it's not surprising that it comes up with a few plums. The fact that with enough money the government can invent things doesn't prove that the private sector couldn't have done the same.
I find it hard to believe that TCP/IP or its equivalent wouldn't exist now without the government. It might have taken a few more years for the technology to become available to make it profitable, but it's not that hard of a problem, and there's plenty of profit in it. You're dead wrong about nothing significant coming out of corporations. I believe that Unix, ethernet, GUI's, most modern programming languages, firewire, USB, IDE, SCSI, and probably dozens of other innovations have come out of the private sector. Many of these were developed almost entirely by private corporations, and most of them are open standards today. The simple fact is that competitive forces give an advantage to companies that use open standards rather than closed ones. Observe the Linux bandwagon. I'd also argue that's why the largely inferior PC platform beat out the Mac in the marketplace: it ran on commodity hardware and didn't have a single monolithic company stifling innovation as with Apple.
As for patents, that's an issue of bad patent law and special-interest pandering by the government, not a problem with the free market. And even if the internet had been patented in 1970, it would be in the public domain in 1984 (I think) and so it would be an open standard for the use of anyone today. The same is true of many other innovations: their inventors get monopoly profits on them for a few years, and then they pass into the public domain where they benefit the public at large. It may very well be that patents should be for shorter time periods, but that's again a problem with government policy rather than capitalism per se.
In addition, corporations tend to take interesting technologies and make them useful. Arpanet might have been cool tech, but it wasn't useful to the masses until the Netscapes and Microsofts of the world that made it readily available to the masses.
As for the space program improving specific products, I see this as simply a reflection of the enourmous amounts of money spent rather than on any intrinsic superiority of government financing. Had the government not spent that money the private sector may very well have invented things that were just as good if not better than the things NASA invented. Or maybe it wouldn't have been, but the fact that good things came from NASA programs doesn't prove that that was the best use for the money.
I am all for companies partnering up and moving forward like this. NASA has a joint venture thing going on with Dreamtime as discussed in last weeks slashback . Why shouldn't corporations do this to? If NASA's ever dwindling federal budget is preventing this type of lunar exploration then they will need to do commercially exploitive things like this as well. RadioShack partnering up with LunaCorp for this type of mission could be a great thing if handled correctly. Every program that NASA has put together has benefited us as a civilization directly and indirectly with new technologies. No need to list them here as most /.er's probably know of atleast 3 (not including TANG) off the top of thier heads. Unfortunately, i fear that this venture will lead to tons on IP trademarks/patents designed to benefit a select few pockets. I am not against making a buck or two but there has to be some benefit to all of US (read civilization as a whole not just the already deep pockets of corporations). I wonder what thier take on the technology involved is. Hopefully, the science aquired on this mission won't go the route of some of the companies involved in the human genome project. Commercial space ventures are an inevitable event that needs some form of government supervision/regulation before it gets out of hand. What bothers me about this venture is that a) LunaCorp is a privately owned corporation b) RadioShack is a publicly owned corporation c) Buzz Aldrin is now a (albeit heroic) civilian d) It would appear that NASA is out of the loop on this deal. I did not see a mention of NASA's involvement in this anywhere on the LunaCorp site even though there are several shameless plugs for Carnegie-Mellon. Rather conspicuous, no? If you are curious go check out The Artemis Project. The Artemis folks have carefully thought out most of the issues and thier plan seems cogent for the most part. IAAMOAC - so are you
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
At least your friendly Radio Smack Salesman tried to help. Last time I entered the store, my salesman who was quick to find me and ask if I needed any help in what I was looking for immediately threw his arms up in dispair and exclaimed, "I'm a business student!"
Business must be really good for them to stay in business.
It's a bad way to run a country, but I think it would be interesting to see what people would enter. I think that putting together a web voting booth to track that kind of information would have to be done very completely (IE, make sure that the people can only spend what they have to, make sure they're aware what cutting the money would mean) and maybe they'd bitch a little less about what they pay in taxes.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Radio Shack used to be a good place to shop for novelty items and parts back in the 70's when ham radio, science and technology was all the rave back then. Then I remember Mr. Tandy must have kicked the bucket and no longer was featured in his little fireside chats in the catalogs. He must have been the inspiration, because in my opinion the whole chain went downhill from there.
As a former radio shack employee (1 year ago), let me take a moment to comment on just how ridiculous radio shack's priorities are. They spend god knows how much money on this promotional space launch, while all the store computers still don't have something as basic as a CD-ROM. Most of the cellular phone credit checks and activations (at least in the southeast region) still have to be written down manually on a form and called in to the service provider's already overburdened and undermanned customer support. Thus, the time spent on cell phone activation and credit was ususally 15-20 minutes longer than it had to be. Just one more example, Radio shack used to have their POS Terminals at the counter running as terminals of a SCO unix server in the back. Well, Radio shack replaced the dumb terminal system with Windows 95 computers whose POS application that has almost no GUI functionality at all. It has all the ease of use drawbacks of a text based dumb terminal with all the instability of windows 95. Then, there's the server for those computers in the back running (or rather, crawling along with) windows NT at on a machine with (I believe)32MB/120mhz. Radio Shack claims to be the technology superstore, but they don't have the slightest idea about how to use computers effectively in a business environment
Anyone who is bothered by the spectre of filthy lucre driving mankind forward is welcome to try building a spaceship out of the spare change they find behind the couch. As for me, I will cheer on any corporation that puts its money behind mans' advancement. Go, Radio Shack! (But you still make crappy computers)
Lunar robot fails
Transmits crappy images...
Quite "Realistic"
I'm all for anything that advances space research, just as long as the companies backing the missions don't try to attach any strings to the missions.
Seeing as how a corporate government seems to be the wave of the future, it makes it that much more important to vote with your dollars. Support companies you believe in.
Seeing as how the real government still has lots of guns and missiles. Vote.
Seeing as how we're on only one of what now seems to be millions of planets, support space research.
--
+&x
sponsored a gourmet chefs contest?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
It's near the very beginning, where the camera is pulling out from within the trash can in the Narrator's office. He also mentions the "Microsoft Galaxy." (If you have a chance to grab the DVD, do it; it's packed full of extras on a separate disk. Plus, the film rocks.)
On a side note, while "Species II" was truly one of the worst movies of the '90s, it does open with a funny scene of a spaceship approaching Mars in preparation for the first landing n the planet....and as the ship moves across the screen we see that the side is completely covered in billboards and logos. Sadly, the film went waaaaaay downhill from there...but that's another story.
Glad you're feeling better, BTW.
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
would they use any parts from radio shack?
they shouldn't forget to give radio shack their zip code, phone number, and they probably should join the battery of the month club.
There's room on the moon for both public and commercial interests.
If you read the LunaCorp History and Mission statement, these corporate bastards are planning to set up a robot infrastructure that will benefit corporate interests only, i.e. using the moon as a place to launch rockets as delivery vehicles or setting up some kind of ridiculous theme-park or Mattel tie-in with their robots...
Why would this only benefit corporate interests? Personally, I'd be taxing the hell out of them in the process. The government can make a buck on this, which will hopefully be put back into space research.
This is not about logo placement... What one should ask is why should we be allowing these few people with corporate interests to use the moon simply for profitable purposes... I mean, why spend money on space exploration anyway, when there are so many CORPORATE evils on this planet right now???!!!
Yeah, and while we're at it, why feed the starving children in zimbabwe when there's starving children here now?
There are any number of reasons to get a firmer toehold in space. Some of them are humanitarian, like the research that can be done that way. I expect that in order to create good PR, companies with orbital whatevers will be glad to provide some space on their platforms or craft or what have you for scientific exploration. Sure, it's $10,000 a pound, so you want to make it nice and light, but that makes them look like heroes.
Some other reasons are purely commercial, but will result in a better life for many of us, kind of like Teflon, Velcro, Bakelite, or Kevlar, let alone Nylon. All of those inventions (which coincidentally are all plastics, unless I forget my teflon history) were created solely for profit, but they enrich our lives. Velcro ended up being quite handy around hospitals. Who even knows how many lives kevlar armor has saved? Bakelite has the characteristic of being non-flammable, which has been pretty handy for electrical devices for quite some time now.
By extension, there are some things which should be easier to do in space, like Foam Steel, which I'm looking forward to. I don't much care if the government or a private interest makes those things happen, so long as someone does. Having the materials be available for a high price is better than not having them available at all.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Since most Americans have an aversion to giving up any up their "hard earned" pay to taxes, this may be the wave of the futuer. Let corporations fund these missions so they can deduct it from as a tax write-off. I'm all for anything that advances space research, just as long as the companies backing the missions don't try to attach any strings to the missions.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
Please read the articles if you haven't already.
;)
This isn't like the sole purpose of this "monstrosity" it to gain advertising for Radio Shack. Radio Shack is helping fund a commercial company for their projects. When you think about it, this is a good idea.
Commercialization, unfortunately, is one of the best ways to continue funding space research etc. Personally, I think some of the major advances in space technology will come from the commercial sector, as they have the potential to have a very large budget (as well as actually make money off their work some day). Radio Shack is donating a lot of money for this company's research. Why is it so wrong they want to be acknowledged for that? Why would Radio Shack fund them if they can't put their logo on it? Or brag about being it's sponsor? No corporate sponsor is going to donate a large sum of money totally anonymously.
And if logos are so bad anyhow, why don't we get rid of all the NASA ones on the space shuttles? God forbid that they advertise...
Peace,
DranoK
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
Shh! Nobody knows I'm gay!
Seems like "space mission" is now one of the options available on the "500 Electronic Projects" lab.
"Wilson! WHY IS THE SHUTTLE LAUNCH NOT ON SCHEDULE?"
"We've lost all the little white wires on the shag rug in the living room, sir."
Or worse, try going into Radio Shack for an ablation shield and having one of the three things happen...
1) They don't have any parts, but would you like to buy a "Genesis" brand Stereo for twice the cost of other brands? (conspiratorial wink) They've got Sony guts, you know".
2) Mall security shows up and demands to know which hacker group you're with. Radio Shack throws the FBI switch in a panic, worried that they've got another Mitnick on their hands.
3) The damn thing takes AA batteries, and that's the only bin of batteries that's empty.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
Early this week RadioShack has announced plans to open five new locations on the moon. The new stores will be selling components to astronauts needing repairs and any visiting extra-terrestrial customers.
RadioShack feels that a location on the moon will better serve interplanetary visitors who may not wish to expend the resources involved in making an earth landing.
A RadioShack spokesman was quoted as saying, "Our interplanetary customers are having too difficult a time both in getting through customs and in finding a suitable method of payment. These new locations will more easily serve these customers by offering our products for purchase in several of the galactic currencies."
The spokesman was unable to comment if Elvis really went home, or if Shaq was really from another planet.
--
Eric is chisled like a Greek Godess
marotti.com
You mean, it's all "Moon robots for Hitler"? ;-)
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Also, the PC was created by IBM, the big bad wolf before Microsoft came along. Apple was created by Jobs and Woz, a pair of nice college dropouts, while IBM has been ruled by MBAs even before Business Administration schools issued Masters degrees. Yet, Apple computers have an expensive closed technology, while the PC is the closest thing we have today to "Free (as speech) Hardware".
When the IBM management thought they had made a mistake in opening their technology, they tried to go back to a closed specification, with the PS/2 series. That was their real mistake: IBM never fully recovered from the PS/2 fiasco. It seems that they have finally learned their lesson now and are supporting Linux for all their products, even the 390 series mainframes.
T minus three
T minus two
T minus one
To the moon, Alice!
And much more closed than a 360, which came with circuit (discrete transistors!) schematic diagrams and operating system source code.
I'm all for openness in technology, but I do think patents have a fundamental reason to exist. If you are the first to come up with a creative idea, you have the right to reap its benefits. Only thing is, the US Patent Office seems to be ready to concede patents based on the size of the soliciting organization, instead of original thinking.
How about patents for living beings? They have existed for thousands of years, but the USPO gives patents to companies who send researchers to interview people (read indians, natives, aborigines, etc) who have been using those plants or animals for centuries. Where is the justice in granting a patent to someone whose only job was asking the tribe shaman about a herb and forwarding the answer to the USPO?
I'd feel sorry for RadioShack, if I didn't hate them as a company. This website doesn't give me much confidence in LunaCorp's rover-building abilities. I smell extortion (or at least fraud), and judging by the quality of their products, RadioShack is stupid enough to deserve it.
For example, the page "comparing Mars Polar Lander to IceBreaker" has a picture of Mars Pathfinder on the surface of Mars (anyone who follows NASA, even just through NY Times headlines, knows MPL crashed a long time ago, and that the one that landed was Pathfinder), and would have an artist's rendition of their mission if they'd got the URL of the graphic right. And no text whatsoever to redeem them. Ouch.
Hmmmm... Just looked at their site again... I wouldn't be surprised if the entire company was just one artist that made all those renditions. There's hardly a complete sentence anywhere. Their only products seem to be educational CD-ROMs - mebbe Radio Shack execs saw this, got confused, and offered the guy millions of dollars if he'd build them a space probe. The projected cost of the mission is $130mill.
(I really don't like RadioShack, in case you haven't noticed.)
I just looked at more pages of this site, and realized that Slashdot (and especially the guy who suggested that this be posted) should be very, very embarrassed. Good reference to Fight Club, tho. Just saw it. Great movie.
Ramble on!
mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
Check out Project Upper/Mute, an all-around awesome compiler fra
When are congress[wo]men going to remeber their history?! Everything is being privatized now, as a continuing legacy of Reagan's "dismantling government" platform. Certainly, government is being dismantled, but somehow it isn't getting any cheaper.
There are two ways to get research done: let a monopolistic behemoth bribe some academicians to work for them, so that the corporation can patent their ideas. Bell Labs, Microsoft Research, IBM. This is very expensive, because first you pay for the research when you buy their products, then you really pay for their research when you buy the exorbitantly priced patented product. The other way to get research done is to pay a smart kid to go to grad school. This is how all but a handful of the major advances in CS have been accomplished, and why they were all public domain until the patent-craze started a few years ago. (The other reason most advances are public domain is that patented ideas are quickly superceded by public ones.)
So, in the short term, I can see why it's tempting to think that Radio Shack and Lunacorp going to the moon is a good thing. We all want to see the space program continue, but NASA is so underfunded that all they can do is send the shuttle up and down, up and down.... But most of the technological advances that make 2000 different from 1960 were invented or improved by the space program--rubber, plastic, microprocessors, tennis shoes, etc.
I doubt these bozos are going to come up with anything comparable to the inventions of the space-race geniuses, but some corporation like them could. And unless the government starts filling in the gaps Reagan left behind, the next great advances will all be patented by corporations which could get unimaginably big and powerful, and patents will become as effectively permanent as copyrights today.
Believe me, this is not the solution. The next ARPANET will not be invented by RadioShack.
Daddy, I want a Radio Shack moon lander for Christmas!!!
Next thing you know, you will be able to buy weapons grade plutonium from Home Depot. (They already sell everything else you need to make a bomb.)
What's next in the joint venture of the suits and the whitecoats?
ALL HAIL BRAK!!!
That was my very first computer, bought by my dad in 1980 (model II). 16K of memory (upgraded from 4K), 2Mhz Z80 (no 8080s, baby), 40x16 char screen, upper case characters only (my dad was too cheap to buy the upgrade), 80x48 pixel B&W graphics, Incredibly unreliable cassette-tape storage. We later got the 5 1/4" floppy drive; 135K/floppy, about 80K left with bootable TRSDOS on it. Even back in those days, it seemed pretty skimpy though. :)
Trivia 1: A one-second time delay loop in BASIC was "for i = 0 to 500:next i"
Trivia 2: The command line editor used 'vi' keys. Who says Bill Gates didn't know anything about Unix?
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Where does Jamie get this prejudice from? Is a brand label from a company I know to be fairly ethical so bad, especially considering that this lander may not be possible without them. Live video from the moon, wow this is very exciting.
/. readers have no patience with crass-commercialism like the inflated prices of cheap goods *cough* Stabucks, but this is a venture that will be beneficial to consumers and has nothing to do with shameless marketing and shoddy products, they aren't planning on projecting commercials down to Earth.
Horrendus? The lander is just about the finest looking space vehicle I've seen in a long time, especially with its retro 50's styling.
The less people who think space if just for elitist academics and big government the better off we are. Most
Whatver lands on the moon will have some symbol on it, be it a NASA globe or a radioshack R, just because MS is evil doesn't mean you should be projecting your ignorant prejudice on this product.
Let corporations have the moon; there isn't a government on Earth that seems to want anything to do with it. You'd think polar ice and martian microbes would be enough to spark a little more public interest, but I suppose everybody's much more worried this year about how to save the Ponzi Security system.
What are you afraid of? Are Radio Shack sponsored rovers going to cause traffic problems between our thriving lunar cities? Are their communications frequencies overlapping important bands that the NASA Lunar Observatory uses? Are their rocket landings going to disturb the aluminum refineries and the ice mining operations?
I know, I know, it's a corporation on the moon, so it must be a horrible thing for humanity. I just happen to think having nobody on the moon, three decades after Apollo, is worse.
So I hope they get all the financing they need, send as many rockets as they want up there, and bring back video from any place they can drive a rover. I particularly hope they drive by all the old Apollo sites; maybe seeing an overturned American flag through the eyes of a Radio Shack toy will wake up a few people.
They have cheap components for just about everything
Including night-vision goggles and Minuteman guidance systems.
.sig: Now legally binding!