Slashdot Mirror
John Carmack's Test Liftoff a Success
brainstyle writes "Space.com is reporting that John Carmack of Armadillo Aerospace (and who apparently has some game design hobby) has had a successful launch of the prototype of its entry in the X-Prize. From the article: 'I had tried several algorithms on the simulator before settling on this one, and it behaved exactly the same in reality, which is always a pleasant surprise.'"
Thanks to simulation we can all tweak ideas without blowing up prototypes.
I think you'll find Armadillo Aerospace blew up a lot of prototypes.
Is this the reason we still haven't seem Doom 3 yet?
And, they aren't that far away. They've got the big rocket that carries three people built; they are just very - and appropriately - cautious. They are extensively testing all the algorithms and principles on the smaller rocket first. The main thing they think will take over 5 months is getting permission to make the shot.
I play Nerd-Folk!
Theres probably no direct realtionship between the two. He's obviously a very bright guy with a proven history of being able to solve problems, often using imaginative solutions.
For myself I think many real world programming tasks are broadly quite similar, gather requirements, design, code, test. I'm sure many of us have coded for disparate industries in our time writing complex apps for telecoms, financials etc without fully understanding the entirety of the low down nitty gritty. The key is being able to understand enough to translate what the domain experts tell you into functional code. Obviously experience helps this process as ofen you have a fair idea what will work and what wont. Then its pretty much an incremental process as with many other disciplines. You determine the problems, break them down and either solve them or work around them. For the most part basic intelligence and problem solving skills are more probably important than 'pure' coding skills.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
For all practical purposes, you have the right to bear arms provided that those arms will not seriously impede the government when they decide to get rid of you.
Note, this is not what the founders intended, but they didn't forsee a gargantuan standing army and our modern militarized police forces.
Please note, I am a firm believer in the right to bear arms, but unless you also have the small, weak government envisioned by the Founding Fathers it is not a useful check on tyranny. (As the modern United States of America should prove to any doubters.)
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
I went and looked at his post history. His posts almost all +5, and on inspection I saw that they deserved it.
John Carmack has the "inside scoop" on a lot of issues we talk about on Slashdot, as he knows the people and technology we talk about, and is able to give a different perspective on it than a lot of us would. His posts containing his viewpoints and stories have a lot of stuff that is indeed interesting and insightful, much more so than the average Slashdot post. The posts where he is talking about his personal observations of Steve Jobs, or his rocket experiments, for example, is information that most Slashdotters would be unable to provide.
Please note, I am a firm believer in the right to bear arms, but unless you also have the small, weak government envisioned by the Founding Fathers it is not a useful check on tyranny. (As the modern United States of America should prove to any doubters.)
I don't think this is entirely true. While it may not have been envisioned by the framers, even with a very powerful military, weapons in the hands of the people can help keep politicians in line, somewhat. The reason for this is that one person, with a gun, and enough drive to kill a politician, is probably going to get the job done. If the politician has done enough things to piss more than one person off, to the point of wanting to kill them, then that politician should probably be very sure he has a current will. To me, the idea of revolt being the prime deterent to tyrany has shifted to the threat of being killed by one determined person with a gun. Even in recent history the president, arguably the most protected person in office, was shot (Regan). Granted the shot wasn't fatal, but it was still life threatening.
Also, this type of argument assumes a couple of things:
1. The revolt isn't started in the military. If this were to happen, things would just get messy, quick.
2. The revolt is not on a massive country wide scale. For this, look at Vietnam. Its very clear that the US had a very clear technological advantage. However, the US military was fighting the whole penesula. People from both North and South Vietnam didn't want the US forces there, or at best didn't care. Identifying the enemy was very difficult. Also, the Vietnimesse were very determined to push the US out, they would take huge losses and not let up. I tend to think that the same could happen in the US, if the government got bad enough. Granted, the likelyhood of it actually happeneing is very low. But, if enough people are willing to fight and die for something, they can overcome a technologicly superior force.
3. Consider who the military would be killing, US citizens. If the revolt is a popular revolt, the US government would absolutly cripple itself by putting the revolt down. Also, this always begs the question of how the soldiers in the military would react to having to kill US citizens. Though, the military does do a good job of keeping its soldiers from thinking about such things.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.