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X Prize and John Carmack
Anonymous Coward writes "ABC News is running a story ostensibly about the X Prize but in reality they only talk about John Carmack and his teams efforts to win the prize (or at least compete). Quote: 'Some people have commented that I am trying very hard to make aerospace like software, and that's the truth," he says. "If we looked at what we do in software, if we could only compile and test our program once a year, we'd never get anything done. But that's the mode of aerospace.' "
Aerospace like software, eh?
"Crap, the rocket is not ready and the deadline for launch is tomorrow!"
"Bah, launch it anyways and we'll release a patch later!"
Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me
"Effectively, I stopped buying Ferraris and turbo-charging them and started building rocket ships," Carmack says.
Yeah, I hate it when I have to put off buying Ferraris.
Trolling is a art,
Programmer: Ooops, wrong condition on the 'if' statement. I'll just reboot the rocket's computer and test again! ... what rocket?
Flight director (emerging from flaming debris): Errr
Carmack says: Some people have commented that I am trying very hard to make aerospace like software, and that's the truth
Unfortunate analogy?
Some people have commented that I am trying very hard to make aerospace like software, and that's the truth
Gives a whole new meaning to "blue screen of death", doesn't it?
See, it crashes just like my software. We call it the 'blue sky of death' :D
"We have liftoff!" == "Excellent!"
"Our trajectory is acceptable for re-entry"=="Accuracy!"
"Our rocket landed, and it's data storage is still intact"=="Perfect!"
* luckyguesser almost dodged John_Cormack's rocket.
The power of Christ compiles you.
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When he says Aerospace Software, he really means adding net jetpacks to Doom and allowing them to be used outside earth's atmosphere... you guys are interpreting this all wrong!
Pls No Negative Modding!
If he wins, I wonder if the ships' lifecycle will resemble those of his games?
I can see it allready:
1) Carmack devises a ship that excells in performance, but requires very costly componenets in order to deliver on its full functionality.
2) After a years' worth of excellent operational records, other countries license the engine design and build their own ships off of it
3) 2 years after launch a thriving Spaceship MOD community is launching new ships into space every couple of months....
What about the twinkie? - Dr. Peter Venkman, PHD
Somehow, "my software crashed" lacks that ominous feel that "my software crashed" has...
We were building a satellite with upload-code capability, and were facing a deadline, so we ran the numbers.
We had a very slow uplink, maybe 300 baud (packet overhead and protocol turn-around time included). And we had a lot of code. The satellite was visible only for maybe 8 minutes out of every 90 minute orbit, so unless we had ground stations positioned all around the world and synchronized, we were effectively limited to about 30 baud long-term average. And we had a lot of code.
What's worse is we figured that the radiation environment would reset the satellite every so often... this was fine in normal operation, but would kill an upload. It would be almost statistically impossible to upload the entire code without an upset.
So, we all got back to work.
Eventually, we got good code and launched the satellite. Unfortuantly, the rocket flew off-course and was blown up by the range safety officer -- the satellite ended up in the water. Our company also made bouys (functionally, they are similar concept satellites), so the debate was always whether we should load the regular code or the bouy code into the satellites. We didn't try to figure out the code-uplink case for "underwater".
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
"I just hope that they value a quality assurance process more then the typical software engineer. In a game like this you would not be able to release version 2.0."
utter nonsense, there are billions of people on earth, how many of them do you really think will fit in 1.0? If it crashes there's plenty of room for people to go on 2.0.
So, basically, all Carmack has right now is a product that creates a 100-foot crater in the ground every time it launches?
Who does he think he is, John Romero???
Yes, yes, but keep in mind that there is also a non-negligable chance that you'll end up tripping over a cable, falling head first into a bucket of food grade peroxide... thank god the DOOM3 engine is done.
never let John Carmak write systems that peoples lived depend on.
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His name is: Phillip Screwdriver.
A Good Intro to NetBS
I figured they'd just point a rocket launcher at the ground and take off that way...
chuk
hey, why are you reading slashdot??
I'm still waiting for Doom 3 !!