Slashdot Mirror
Macs In Space II
MasterOfDisaster writes: "Some nut is planning to make a global wireless network using apple's Power Macintosh G4 Cubes. Here's the story." We ran a story about this guy last year, but this one has a bit more detail and he's progressed further in his plans.
What you could do with a beowolf....oh, nevermind.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Sounds like well-planned marketing scam.
... no Trip to Tobago this year, I'll buy me self a Mac G4 Cube!"
...why not!
Mac has fallen from the sky (look at the stock price) and now we the executives have dreamed up a funky story and found a geek to talk about it.
And the expected response is?
(after reading this article)
"Sorry honey, change of plans
But hey
Posted by Nr9:
since when is the OS "responsible" for that. its good to have protected memory, but OSes rarely crash on their own. if the application is coded correctly, the box won't crash. its ultimately the applciations responsibility in not crashing.
No temperature in space, its a vacuum...read the article above where they talk about it
What about Cooling? #17
Posted by Nr9:
why would it crash when it runs out of memory
From the original article posted last year...
"Apple Computer has agreed to provide hardware and technical support to SkyCorp for this venture."
So other than modifcation costs, hardware costs are not a factor. Also...
However, the primary purpose of the satellite mission is not to place a Web server in orbit but to test SkyCorp's satellite assembly technology. The company is developing technologies to assemble satellites in orbit that would be as fully-functional as existing satellites, but at a small fraction of the mass and cost.
Wingo believes it would be possible to build a satellite constellation of the type proposed by satellite communications firm Teledesic for less than 10 percent of Teledesic's cost, which has been estimated to be at least $9 billion.
Sound to me like the guys's sticking to technology he knows and attempting to bring down the costs of launching and maintaining a large-scale satellite communications network. I wish him success. Also, I wonder if he could get a few bucks from Apple for the It would be a great ad gimmick.
Yeah, that's all we need is more space debris!
On a serious note:
It will be interesting to see how these webservers are going to handle connections from earth and to see what type of bandwidth they can handle, collectively.
One problem I see is that the satellites, er, MACs, I assume, are going to be put into LEO (Low Earth Orbit) to maximize the data throughput. The disadvantage of LEO is that one satellite will only have about a 10-15 minute (sometimes less) "talk-time" to a single spot on earth, since they are not geostationary.
Seeing how there will be such short time for one to communicate to a single satellite, they will have to devise a scheme to pass a user onto the next visible satellite when the one they're on goes over the horizon. This may prove to be the simple part!
For those of us who run multi-server web sites, we know the problem with passing a user from one server to the next and maintaining "persistance". By persistance I mean applications that need to be started and finished on the same webserver -- shopping carts, credit card authorizations, etc, etc. If they plan to offer high-end web services such as these on the satellites, they will have to come up with a pretty sophisticated load-balancing scheme that will allow them to keep persistant connections persistant.
Cheers,
Dan
My first thought when I asw this was that it was a publicity stunt by Apple - like that ad for Last Action Hero on the Space Shuttle. We all know how well *that* one worked.
I mean, really; this could be kind of near as a proof-of-concept thing, but this guy's career will be pretty much over if it doesn't work out. I really hope that Apple is paying him enough that he can retire comfortably....
doing! He is just a Pro Mac goon trying to place his little biased reality in space. Neither Mac or Wintel are viable for this from a reliability standpoint. Also, at 150lbs, this is not a little satellite at all. 20lbs or less is the target for getting a free lift into space. This guy thinks NASA is going to piggyback him for 10mill?! 150lbs almost equals another astronaut. I pity the poor clueless VC who just lost half his trust on hairbrained dotcoms, only to step smack into Mr. Wizard here with his radiation proof, thermal proof, magic "Macellites".
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
Comment removed based on user account deletion
One reason could be simply that PPC chips run cooler - can you imagine the size of the heatsink on a P4 to cool it by radiating only?
It'd probably weigh more than the machine...
When I were your age, all round here were fields...
You suck Rob.
Iridium satellites and Mars probes seem to have been stupid ideas too, how much loss would this be if it chokes? :)
My only technical worry is "what about debris and radiation?"
Upgrade to NetBSD, of course.
he wants an astronaut to hurl a specially modified G4 MacIntosh Cube computer into orbit
Will his pockets be deep enough when one of these things careens into one of AT&T's satellites?
Dancin Santa
Well, NASA seems to have enough faith that it will work that they are going to put it up there and assemble it in space for him. I doubt they would be willing to do that if they didn't think it might work. Im sure they have better things to do than assemble and set into orbit computers that they think will fail.
Time for some tasty Shiner Bock!
Macs are too user friendly to be put into space, if we want to make the aliens elite and smarter we need to launch a x86 machine running linux with kernel 2.4 and let them tinker with that. That way when we finally get in touch with the aliens we will be able to communicate through a common os.
What about linux though? You don't have to use ms on pc hardware.
Not sure if this is what the "nut" was thinking of when he said it performed better, but apparently the later Intel processors (post-486) have big problems with cosmic rays - flipped bits, missed instructions, etc. This is one of the reasons why NASA relies on older machines still.
I adblock all animated gifs.
Blessed be the prime numbered slashdotters
cmon' mod this guy up! This is funny. What else is a mac good for in the vacuum of space--loaded with MacOS?
USE LINUX PPC DAMNIT!
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Geez... I think I would feel better running windows 2000, serously.
Unless they are using OSx, I can't imagine that they really believe it's any more reliable than your average 1-2 week lifespan uptime. Also, whats to protect the vital comunication systems if a single process freaks out and crashes the entire system? Wouldn't be such a big problem with any modern OS.
*sigh*
I am not sure it is that unrealistic to cover most of the United States or greater Europe w/500+ satelites at the right orbit level. (15 minutes of coverage is bullshit, depends on the altitude of the satelite and it's orbital rotation
Anyway, lots of very interesting inovations come from 'wacky people' with 'wacky ideas'
--------------------
Would you like a Python based alternative to PHP/ASP/JSP?
so that's who's buying G4 Cubes. i was wondering which 50 people bought them, as it certainly wasn't anybody i know.
people have been wondering what the target market was for these things: do you think Apple had this in mind all along? i guess this would account for the astronomical pricing ;)
- j
Really the thing is little more then a FlashROM, an off-brand x86 and of course Lucent's Orinoco PC-Card. The code running it is exemplarily, folks have found lots of goodies in it and Apple's put out several revs. of improvements, but not a PPC to be found.
Since the article talks about flying boxes with MacOS on PowerPC's then clearly the existing AirPort base-station technology is NOT the subject. There'd be nothing in common with either the hardware or the code. It'd be easier to start with a BSD underpinning (MacOS X) or something like Sustainable Software's products (MacOS >X.)
Thus, moderators, please bring down those postings that refer to flying AirPorts.
BTW, a good (though dated) AirPort technology link is http://www.msrl.com/airport-gold
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
He is refering to a bug in previous versions of MacOS that was persistant for a few years. Everytime you opened a window you would permanently lose 1k of memory to a memory leak, if I recall. I don't think it's been that way for a few years now, though.
Sigs are awesome huh?
Of course that is true for most Operating systems. Even Windows will run for months if you don't touch it. Err... well, now that they fixed that 47 day bug.
Sigs are awesome huh?
"What makes the Mac unstable has nothing to do with the OS and eveything to do with the applications it runs. "
That's absolutely true, and it's what most *nix guys mean when they say those OS's aren't stable.
Excuses don't help, an OS has no reason to go down short of hardware failure. Ever.
Sigs are awesome huh?
That was a troll? Hardly. It was funny. No I'm not being biased against Apple, it would have been funny no matter what system was being ragged on.
Time to go refresh in metamod until I can right this injustice.
Sigs are awesome huh?
Putting a Mac in space is like using a new Volkswagon Beetle as a spaceship. It's cute, but really out of place. Now don't get me wrong, there are lots of good reasons for people to use a Mac, and I have nothing against them except their way-too-high prices, but... for this kind of thing you have to be a "Believer" to sign on, and the Mac following is better at that than any other bunch.
After all, they're SUPERCOMPUTERs, right?
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Only a couple hundred degrees, actually; and the lack of air means you get no convective cooling. On the other hand, if you could manage some kind of a half-shell casing that kept your hot stuff shaded from the sun but exposed to space in the right wavelengths while shielding from trash and hard radiation, you should get enough radiative heat loss - it's fourth power of temperature, after all - to make do :)
What exactly are the satellites going to do?
Quoth the article:
he plans to build a 544-satellite constellation to provide earthbound Web hosting and e-mail.
and
The orbiting Apples would use a modified version of the Apple Airport wireless-data device to transmit information to users here on terra firma.
It looks like the Macs aren't going to be the web/mail servers (*earthbound* hosting) - all they're going to do is manage radio signals?
Even if there were, how much participation would NASA have to have before they got veto powers?
the quietest beowulf cluster in the world (or off of it!) of course, the vacuum of space helps :)
------
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
It seems to me that someone can't let the Mac vs. PC war end.
Someone contact AOL/Time Warner, Microsoft, or some other capitalist company and buy out this guys technology!!
I would like to see something good happen for Apple, after all Steve Jobs returning and the iMac did the company some justice this year, this however is like a slap in the face if you ask me. His idea will never fly... liTTerally
Firestone Tires Spoof
360 degrees of Karma
Just what we need, molten hunks of plastic falling to earth.
While I'm no expert, things in space suffer extreme temperature changes. Can the components hold up to that? And what about power...he'll have to have specially-designed solar panels. And propulsion...where is he going to put the propellant? Not to mention radiation...those macs will be crashing left and right. Its amazing that any idiot can be covered by a bored news media.
//m
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
I really don't see what the hype is about. This seems like a poor idea and a gross waste of funds.
---
seumas.com
Maybe he should look into using Linux as the OS - he definately isn't going to want to have to figure out a way to reboot the Mac when it runs out of memory.
Ground Control, "When you move your hand over the button it should light up."
Project Reboot, "It's lit up."
Ground Control, "Hit the button when it lights up."
Joseph Elwell.
Than again... NASA is practically panhandling for any funding they can get their hands on, and publicity to boot.
What's next, millionare vacations on the ISS? Oh, wait...
--
actually cooling in space is a big problem - you have heat input from direct exposure from the sun and from internal sources - but you can only radiate excess heat on the side away from the sun - no cool convective air flows to take heat away - keeping electronics and batteries cool enough to operate safely is a big worry
The air trapped in the hardrive will exert a constant pressure on the seals holding it in, increasing the chance of hard drive failure.
Have you ever noticed a little hole on the top cover of your hard drive with a BO NOT COVER label next to it? That's a vent hole. Air goes in and out through it (heavily filtered, of course). It's the air that allows the heads to float a teensy-weensy distance above the platters while they're spinning (and dragging air around with them). Remember the Landing Zone parameter on old MFM hard drives? That's where the heads would go before the drive stopped spinning so that once they did stop, the heads would stop floating and slide to a halt on the surface.
Where the hell am I going with all this, you ask? Vacuum of space == no air in drive == heads can't float == hard drive doesn't work. Period. That's why satellites don't have hard drives (they also don't need them).
--
Let's just remember that cubes come without fans and are prone to cracking. They'll all melt before the sun ever has a chance to do any damage.
For some reason I can just envision a Bird of Prey equipped with a 8.6 Linux Kernel decloacking next to one of these things and making waste of it... "Space Garbage!"
Or just send up some more of them. You'll have to do something like that anyway, they won't last forever.
Three quick notes:
1) s/BO/DO
2) The concept of heads floating on a thin cushion of air above the platters is the cornerstone of Winchester hard disk design. This is why the surface of the heads is carefully designed with a contour that promotes the correct "ride height" or "float height" (I can't remember which term is used). IBM's technical documents state the proper float height for their drives.
If you wanted a hard-drive-like thing in a satellite, you might get away with a solid-state hard drive (rad-hardened, of course... if such a version exists at all).
--
Um, pardon my ignorance, but what *is* standard military voltage?
I wish people looked at their hard drives before they say something incorrect. All hard drives have a filtered breather hole.
Instead of trying to make a disk drive perfectly sealed, disc drive companies make the drive breath from a well filtered breather hole. This is because when drive run and heat up the air expands and wants to push air out, then get turned off and the air wants to come back in. Better to filter air in one spot then get contaminated air from misc. leak points.
Until the cost of _launching_ becomes much cheaper it still looks silly from a business perspective.
;).
He's talking about hundreds of satellites. That's a few billion USD worth of launching there.
You have to keep launching replacement satellites too. With 544 satellites and a 15 year lifespan you'll need to launch 3 satellites a month.
Unless costs go down, it'll fail for the same reasons Iridium failed. Iridium didn't really fail because they charged high. Iridium failed because it was a no-win situation.
If you charge less you'll go bust. Because your satellites won't have capacity to support enough customers to keep you operating at that price. If you charge more, you don't get enough customers.
The Iridium people thought they would have enough customers willing to pay really high prices. But they were very wrong. GSM roaming was good enough for most. Those that go where normal cellphones don't reach probably don't want to be contacted by cellphone
How is the Mac Cube's convection cooling going to work in zero-g?
DCMonkey
To be viable what you need are not cheaper satellites.
What you need are cheaper space vehicles, and cheaper launches.
Once it's about USD50K-100K per launch, such schemes no longer sound ridiculous.
This guy is out of his mind if he thinks MacOS is any order more stable than Win32. I sure as hell wouldn't stake the success of a system like this on a desktop operating system. Did it ever occur to him to use an operating system like QNX or even BSD/Linux if he's really got to have the Cubes? The theory behind his madness sounds straight-forward enough, but something just doesnt seem right about having so much faith in MacOS for this kind of project.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
Researcher Dennis Wingo says there's a cheaper, simpler way to set up a network of wireless-data satellites: Girdle the globe with Apple's Cubes
What part of that didn't you understand? And no, he didn't say he'd use OS9, but it does say Mac OS. I agree that he'll probably use Darwin (more probably the whole OSX) because if he claims that Windows crashes a lot, he doesn't use classic Mac OSs very often.
MyopicProwls
MyopicProwls
My homepage
When was the last time you saw a 150lb
;)
G4 mac cube? Sheesh.
Anyway... This may not be as farfetched as everyone might think.
The point is... If he can get it to fly (pun intended)
They're CHEAP! With enough backups in orbit..
it should work.
Now.. as far as it actually being able to handle the traffic that he's thinking of... that
remains to be seen.. but I don't think he's going
to have as many problems as most people think he
will.
A LOT of research has been done on shielding and
materials to withstand that kind of environment.
I'm curious to watch the progress on this one
Friends don't let friends buy Compaq's. (Dell/Gateway... same same) You want a good computer? Build it yourself.
The solar radiation will degrade the hard drive and RAM to the point of unusability. Long term solar radiation studies have shown that that extended exposure in orbit subjects electronics to solar storms and other destructive environments that harm non-shielded systems.
There are also the issues of microgravity and vacuum. Metals behave differently in orbit. Several communications satellites have failed because of the growth of zinc solenoids in the spacecraft in orbit. Plastics will outgas, changing their structure. The air trapped in the hardrive will exert a constant pressure on the seals holding it in, increasing the chance of hard drive failure. All the rules are different in space.
The temperature differential between the light and dark sides of the satellite are approx. 200 F. With all that thermal stress, all components will be mechanically stressed.
While I applaud this guys gung-ho spirit, I think he underestimates the harsh environment of space.
-----
nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
Sure, a 500mhz box is capable right now, but what happens when these systems need to be upgraded? Are they going to launch 544 missions to each little box and upgrade it? And how are they going to keep all the little screws from flying around in space?
---
seumas.com
Besides, the business model is bogus. Iridum couldn't make it doing phones, what makes him think that he can make money with data-only transmissions competing with DSL, CableModems and GSM/PCS technology?
Oh yea, then there's the latency issue since you are sending your signals further, making it unacceptable for playing games... Anyway, there's no real North American or Europe market that can support him. Maybe in more remote places lacking current infrastructure it would make sense, but can they pay the cost of all those mini-sats at 120lb a pop???
- Mike
NASA lost their credibility when they wasted millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours because they forgot about the metric system.
---
seumas.com
Dissenter
Dissenter
"There is no knowledge that is not power."
this is true.
At high altitudes (>10,000 feet), driving cars becomes hazardous, because there isn't enough air to adequately cool normal brakes. This, coupled with steep downhills. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Cool Beans! Well at least the Geeks in Space will have something to play with... too bad arent any games written for it :-P
<em>Rubbish. You cannot "lock a Mac down harder than a UNIX box". They can both be locked down to any degree desired. </em>
The trick is to get it watertight out of the box. OpenBSD's probably the closest, but starts to wander away from the mark when you add functionality. There's a quicker return on investment with with Mac servers if you're security conscious. You know how much a Unux security guru costs?
<em>And sure you can run a Mac with no software and no extensions, but you can't do anything with it. </em>
In my extensions folder, there are 206 items. (Most of them shared libraries Lotus Notes barfed all over my system.) Do I need an audio CD driver on a server? No. Do I need ColorPicker or ColorSync on a server? No. Do I need MacInTalk? No. Do I need finderpop? No. Ditto for control strips, control panels, any font that didn't come with the OS, etc. Five minutes worth of work gets you one stable Mac server.
What makes the Mac unstable has nothing to do with the OS and eveything to do with the applications it runs. Protected memory systems (like Unix) are more forgiving of buggy code...if the Gimp dies a horrible death, it won't take the kernal with it. On the other hand, the Mac will reboot if the program/thread isn't coded to exit gracefully on error.
This means the Mac is only as stable as its applications. This is a problem when you are running enormous and complex applications, like popular web browsers, office productivity suites, or desktop publishing programs.
Running small RealBasic apps and garden variety networking software tied together with a few Applescripts will likely keep running forever without a reboot.
OTOH, cruising slashdot with Netscape while photoshopping Steve Jobs sodomizing Tux while "working" on sales pitch in Microsoft Word will probably have you cursing up a storm and rebooting once every couple days. (If you used iCab and Nisus and Canvas instead of NS and Word and Photoshop, you'd probably think those singing the "Macs are unstable" chorus are a bunch of idiots who don't know what they're talking about.)
So, ironically, where the Mac is supposed to shine the brightest, as a desktop workstation, it is at it's least stable. As a server, it does all right. Better than NT/2000, at any rate, and probably as good as the BSDs. (My personal favorite younickses. Got an OpenBSD box running an intensive PHP-heavy site on an antiquated Sun workstation. I'm impressed with how well it holds up.)
SoupIsGood Food
Yeah, but he's certainly not going to just take a cube up in a shuttle and heave it out the cargo bay (although that was my first mental image -- I like the idea of hundreds of little cubes orbitting the earth). I think he's planning on starting with the guts of a cube (which are very small, lightweight, cool-running, etc.) and building it into his 120lb satelite.
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
keep me sane. I mean.. if the majority of
the population will post such drivel.. I feel
safer knowing that no one else is going to beat
me at the projects I'm working on.
I like this guy's thinking.. It jives with mine
on a certain level.
Keep being morons (this goes to 89% of the population
of the earth) 'cause yer just gonna be paying
my company in the future.
Friends don't let friends buy Compaq's. (Dell/Gateway... same same) You want a good computer? Build it yourself.
Hey, my mom is buying a cube. It's the perfect computer for her -- it's small, quiet, completely unobtrusive. So they're a bit pricey -- but they're not that expensive, and she's really not comparison shopping just based on price. There really isn't anything else out there in its niche (it's probably just a smaller niche than Apple estimated).
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
No, because once society (magically) decides that our future is in space, we'll (again, magically) have all the data and experience we need to start building huge stations and inter-planetary craft.
Oh, you mean that's NOT how it works?!
</sarcasm>
--
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
As far as I know, convection cooling doesn't work in zero G. Why choose the G4 cube as opposed to the mini-tower? There aren't really any advantages, heck you can't even upgrade the G4 cube due to space (sic) considerations.
How would these systems handle the huge swings in temperature? I think that the temperature extremes these things would go through in space are beyond the tested tolerances for most consumer hardware..
--
There is a reason that most of the computers sent into space are not normal boxes. The radiation and magnetism present in space nessecitates that a good portion of the bits in the commands be dedicated to error correction and parity. A cube, even with that strong, yet usually flawed casing, will not be able to function in space without excessive shielding, which will defeat the main purpose of the cube: it will not be pretty. Remember that ham sateliete that went up, and the PC on it crashed? Well, a Macintosh, in my experience, will not even run at normal terran altitudes, I doubt it will work in vacuum.
As far as I'm concerned, the eyes of hurricanes have been a private playground for a government chosen elite for far too long. I think I'll take my next vacation in one...
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
I think the decision to use apple cubes was based on displacement and weight... right now it costs something like $10k/lb to eject something into space, and a shuttle isn't exactly a 5 bedroom hotel... they've got those things stuffed fuller'n a thanksgiving turkey w/ stuffing coming out it's arse!
they should stick with the current design...
-----
so i says to mable, i says
studying the effect of weightlessness on hamster's mating habits, or the growth of a tomato plant. Really pathetic.
Thats not pathetic. Thats pragmatic. Welcome to the 21st Century. We will be in space this century. We will be building closed ecosystems.
:-)
NASA contracted with the people who made the mistake and they should have verified the work.
---
seumas.com
Agreed: an OS that lets an app crash it is a sorry OS.
- A.P.
--
* CmdrTaco is an idiot.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
because with intelegent people you have to make consecions
anyone remember the ''hack a mac" contest a while
back? It seems to me that macs floating in space
running webserver software and "a modified version of the Apple Airport wireless-data device"
to serv hundreds (maybe thousands) of computers, people might be tempted to hack into these off-the-shelf-orbital-sattelite-systems. just think, a
WorldWide Wireless Warez (WWWW) network I think
that companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars on proprietary sattelites so Joe Shmuck
can't download a TCP/IP flooder from his AOL account and shut down a global sattelite system.
just a thought.
I still stand by then "no temperature in space", "space has no temperature" is the same thing just phrased differently (though I just saw your point: mine is a little ambiguous). Radiation is not temperature as temperature is a measure of how much thermal energy is stored in a mass.
Solar wind wouldn't give you a vector I think, but it would give you a wind chill effect :) (mind you negligable due to it's sparsity).
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Now you can get your Mac in an all NEW color! "Space fungus green"
There is no
I dig big dreams as much as the next guy, but this guy doesn't even make sense. Trust me on this. You may have a great idea, but don't go down in flames defending this whacko. Only TWO countries and NO corporations have ever successfully launched manned spacecraft. Why? Because space is HARD! We aren't on Mars,or driving buggies around the moon because it takes the best of every technology, and a thousand people to keep a ship in orbit in the right place. There is no easy way in to space, andthis guy is just crowing for dollars. He'll bilk some VC for money, and remain employed for another few years. He might even get ONE bird in the air. Unfortunately, it will lose gyros and everything the first time the Mac crashes.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
Do any of you read for comprehension? --Rick
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
Bla ck Lab Linux
I grew up on the Mac and UNIX
Travis
`ø,,ø!
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Much less a brand new G4.. sounds too crackpot to me.
-
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What is also really corny is the justification of saving money by using off-the-shelf hardware. Umm, most of the costs will stem from putting the bird up in space, so you better spend what it takes to make sure it'll work. He better not be planning on a banner ad revenue model.
But isn't the purpose of the Doomsday machine lost if you keep it a secret!
geeze, we all know that space is the only natural environment where P4's won't overheat, so i would have thought a P4 would have been their first choice.
>MS prone to crash?
I've been supporting Windows NT 4.0 and MacOS (Appleshare) servers for two years now, and I can tell you Mac's are no better then Windows, actually worse as file servers. After fiddling about you can get a stable Windows NT server configuration that won't bugger up except for a hardware failure, or some idiot administrator decides to install a whole heap of client beta software on the production server (happened).
Contrast with the Mac servers, where it is standard practise to purchase a 'MacCoach' with the server, due to constant unexplained reboots (On a bare minimum server configuration).
BTW. A MacCoach is a hardware device that connects to the ADB keyboard port, when it fails to get a response from the driver software in a specified time period, it sends a reset command (bit rusty, umm, Cmd, option, Backspace). However we still had to go and power cycle them occasionally becasue they froze in a point where the keyboard reset wouldn't work.
In real terms, the difference between a $2000 computer and a $2500 computer on a $10M project is negligible. Moreover, the article didn't say whether or not he'd be using macos, and regardless, the computer comes with an os. TTBOMK, you can't buy one os-less.
>That is pretty scary, MacOS is about as stable >as PC with 50 ISA cards.
Ouch.
What happens when the Macs pass behind the earth and the sun. To make this short. Can a G4 cube servive the vast changes in temp as it goes from -400F to over 300F.
Yes, it is MacOS X Server -- I think the MacCentral interview confirms this. And, of course, there are cooling problems to deal with because convection isn't there to help.
Another thing that has me concerned is that the guy is proposing just throwing it from the space station. In addition to resulting in a rather imprecise orbit, there's always the chance that it will hit the space station when it returns. While this isn't as bad as hitting an object orbiting in the oppsite direction (with impact speed = 2X orbital speed), an object that size could still do some damage to the space station.
I think this guy has an interesting idea, but as far as implementation goes, he's a kook.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
My Redhat 6.2 box at work with all name-brand hardware (from motherboard up; It's got three 3com NICs, an intel CPU, a supermicro board, et cetera) kernel panics about once a week. My win2k box at home never goes down except when I have a power failure (it's not on a UPS at the moment.)
I maintain that most PC instabilities are hardware-related. You're right that windows doesn't give you enough information.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Something that has to be as reliable and stable as long as a satellite does really couldn't have an OS as we perceive on. Most of the work would be done in pure hardware, all pre-wired and set, with very little use of software, since a bug in hardware means that someone just screwed up in manufacturing and won't have a job in a day or two, but if it works at the start, it'll probably work pretty damn well for a while. Hell, maybe Apple is just paying him to put a big 'G4' logo on the front.
Yes, using actual G4 Cubes is rather silly; there's a lot of hardware going to waste (the video card, for instance), and money, because Cubes are colossally overpriced. But for a lightweight space computer, the *concept* of a G4 and Cube makes a lot of sense.
We can assume they're writing some custom code for whatever the box is doing up there, which means they can use Altivec, which means some very impressive performance, if they need it. G4's in themselves are small and cool-running, and perform very well, if Altivec enhancemnent is being used.
It might have made more sense to use some custom designed G4 hardware boards, but it still makes a lot more sense than using a Pentium III, for god's sake.
Uh... oops. I mean, um... go, Apple! Yeah! Woo!
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
People have been saying apple was going to die since 1980, and it hasn't happened yet. And everytime something bad happens at apple, and all the 'apples gonna die' people say THIS IS IT apple turns around and surprises everyone. So I'm not too worried about apple dying right away. If I were the investor in that project, however, I'd be a bit worried about macos stability. Linux-ppc would really probably be a better choice.
___
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
Its scary what venture capital can produce..
This guy is probably spending some of each of our money which we have invested in mutual funds.
Linux would be a better choice, Windows would even be a better choice. What happens if this takes off and Apple dies?
RAM is a rather critical and highly-stressed component of computer systems, these days. In afterthought, it's not surprising that the RAM socket is a source of many failures.
`ø,,ø!
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Aren't G4 Cubes supposed to cool thanks to a chimney-like mechanism? How does one do that in a vacuum (or use a fan, for that matter)?
I wonder which one will crash first, the Mir or the Mac? I hope they send up plenty of paper clips.
Note that SuSE does not function on the G4 Cube
Don't call me back. Give me a call back. Bye. So yeah. But bye our, well, but alright we are on a shirt this chill.
NASA did not make such a mistake...a private contractor did. NASA has plenty of things to go against it without making up false ones.
'tis a crap link.
Wouldn't that be the developer of the applications fault?
No, it would not be. The App is not responsible for keeping the box up. Thats what the OS is for
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Why does a satellite costs as much as it does. You can build a device with the same functionality for less.
The problems is that it is a lot harder to replace a part that breaks down. That's why you don't want to use a Mac(or other end(l)user hardware). If a Mac or a PC for that matter was built with the same requirements for the MTBF as a satellite the price of the hardware would skyrocket(pun intended). The test required for each circut and chip would make it impossible to sell today.
So go ahead and launch your Mac into space, just don't me to go and fix it. well maybe I would like to but who's gonna pay.
--------
after READING the article, (wot a concept!) I start to see a method to his madness.
.).
Nowhere does it say that a Mac cube will be used. Nowhere does it say that MacOS 9 will be used.
It's a 120 lb satellite, not engineered to withstand launch stresses, because it will be assembled in orbit. Many of the parts are off the shelf - including probably not more than a motherboard and CPU of a macintosh (much cheaper than designing a controller) - which will probably THINK it's running an Airport - but I'm betting it will be fooled into thinking that it's running airport when it's running some higher-powered device (airport range = 150 feet on disputed radio bandwidth (in France)), (his satellite range, altitude of 120 miles plus azimuth. .
In fact, I bet it will run Darwin, probably without a hard-drive, (probably some sheilded flash RAM device instead), and probably with lots of custom software (like TiVo runs Linux). (I'm guessing Darwin because it would be much easier to run the transceiver as Airport that way than trying to hack together something with Linux - BSD is supposedly more reliable than Linux anyway, but I digress and risk a flamewar).
Cooling will be an issue, and so might radiation, but a PPC chip will give him some pretty good computing power without worring about heat as much as with SOME OTHER solutions.
Of course, part of the 120 lbs will probably be gyros, solar panels, the transmitter and amplifier,
but the main gimmick here, is that he's using off the shelf parts, and assembling them in orbit, in an attempt to reduce costs. (in other words, he probably plans on all devices being launched from ISS or Shuttle, assembled in orbit). Yeah, the labor of assembling in orbit is probably LOTS higher, but you end up reducing the overall weight by bunches, by not having to design solar-panel deployment systems, shrouds, and shock-resistant innards.
If he's planning on spending $10 million on the first device (instead of hundreds of millions for standard communications satellites), it sounds like a worthy project to me (*cough* irridium)
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Okay, this sounds like an alright idead. I like the fact that he is planning to assemble the satellite in space. Kudos on that part.
But, what happens when they realize that the 500mhz G4 cannot cope with the, what looks like, will be an increasing amount of computing power needed. Replace the whole thing? Great....
good idea I guess, to save money in the short run, but might cause alot of problems in the future, leading to that gap between the 10^6 and the 10^7 dollar range =)
http://www.ricochet.com
"We'll need 2000 crickets, 4 cans of Easy Cheese, and the fluid from 18 glowsticks for this plan to work...." - ph0n1c
----------------
I am Moldy.
bugger, I didn't see any comments when I started entering mine
gotta learn to type faster...
The article says that they will save "big bucks" by using apple cubes. Doesn't Apple hardware cost more than Intel based hardware? And why do they chose to use Mac OS? The article says that the Macintosh II performed very well in space before in the 90's. Are they trying to tell me that someone Apple's silicon chips handle a gravityless environment better than Intel hardware?
Why would any sane human being use a desktop operating system in something like this? The machine will be routing data, no more, so why not use a stripped down *nix? Low cost is one of his objectives, too, isn't it?
"But, dude, it's got antialiased text! And 3D acceleration!"
This does not make sense, putting stuff up in space is extremely expensive, therefore the lighter the better. It would actually be cheaper buying a smaller lighter PPC controller board and preloading it. DVD drives in space? I don't think so. And are those 7400's able to stand the radiation up in space?
I don't think so. Off the shelf components will not survive the temperature and radiation extremes. A solar storm would kill them all, and shielding them is not too easy.
I am a man, not a toy.
This guy wants to use Mac OS because MS anything is "prone to crash" Well I have seen a few of those frowny Mac faces in my time, this guy is looney to think his Mac Server isn't prone to crash. He should use a *nix and be done with it.
___________
I don't care what it looks like, it WORKS doesn't it!?!
----------------
I am Moldy.
Macs, when used as stone stock simple servers, tend to be fairly reliable, with uptimes on the order of years for some older (Pre-PowerPC) systems I'm personally aware of.
Macs become unstable when you dump a crapload of extensions, control panels, fonts, third party software, plugins for third party software, plugins for plugins for third party software, and, well, you get the drift.
Clear the cruft out of the system folder, use only proven, reliable third party software and damn little of it, and the lowly and much maligned Mac can keep cranking the bits month after month with the younicks big boys. Figure in some scheduled downtime every so often for a pre-emptive reboot, and it will be spiffy for as long as they're up there.
Why bother putting up with three minutes downtime out of a week? Security. You can lock a mac down harder than a Unix or windows box. Simplicity. Configuring these bad boys will be a breeze. Plus, tools like RealBasic and Applescript make coding applications and scripts painless and powerful...without sacrificing reliability.
Put anything that says "Netscape" or "Quark" on there, and the mission is doooooooomed!
Just 'cuz the consensus has it that Macs are inherently unreliable, doesn't mean it's neccesarily true, or that the "unreliability" is a liability to steep to be surmounted. Question consensus, and do a little thinking and research for yourself.
SoupIsGood Food
----------------
I am Moldy.
This is just what I'am looking for my laptop. I would pad 40-50 bucks a month for 128k(or better) wireless conection BTW Whats wrong with using Iridum for this?
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
"The computers performed well enough to convince Wingo that using the Mac OS to power telecommunications applications in satellites could save big bucks."
That is pretty scary, MacOS is about as stable as PC with 50 ISA cards.
Will all that worry over stray cosmic rays finally be vindicated?
Dancin Santa