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U.S. Billionaire Heads to Space Station

Posted by samzenpus on from the now-that's-an-expensive-hotel dept.

TurnAround writes "According to an International Business Times article, a Russian rocket carrying the American billionaire who helped develop Microsoft Word roared into the night skies over Kazakhstan Saturday, sending Charles Simonyi and two cosmonauts soaring into orbit on a two-day journey to the international space station. Climbing on a column of smoke and fire into the clouds over the bleak steppes, the Soyuz TMA-10 capsule lifted off at 11:31 p.m. local time, casting an orange glow over the Baikonur cosmodrome and dozens of officials and well-wishers watching from about a mile away."

18 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. pFirst! by donutello · · Score: 4, Funny

    That's Hungarian for First Post.

    --
    Mmmm.. Donuts
    1. Re:pFirst! by modulo · · Score: 2, Funny

      Wouldn't that be strPost = "First" ?

      --

      ...but the language is MUMPS, which I will not utter here

    2. Re:pFirst! by The+Terminator · · Score: 3, Funny

      Is this the guy who is responsible for the braindead Hungarian Notation (beginning every variable name with its type)?

      CU

    3. Re:pFirst! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      I've always said that they ought blast the asshole who came up with Hungarian notation into space. This is the first of my many insightful suggestions that society has taken me up on.

    4. Re:pFirst! by tomhudson · · Score: 3, Funny

      Hungarian notation has one very special use - it helps weed out the weenies when you're looking for system programmers.

      Its the same for people who do crap like LPCSTR ... hey, you stupid bozos, that's a throw-back to 16-bit Windows 3x. It doesn't belong in 32-bit code on a flat-memory architecture where an int and a long are the same. And it certainly doesn't belong in code for a server for BSD.

      And those who insist on "m_uiWhatever" ... hey, f*cktards, what's with the "m_" - its a variable, so of course its in memory. And when you realize that you should have changed Whatever to be signed so that you can catch over/underflows, hope you remember to change all your variable names ... again.

      Real programmers don't do hungarian. Ever.

    5. Re:pFirst! by tomhudson · · Score: 4, Funny

      To be honest, I think "programmers" are objects, not reals (not even ints) ...

      Then again, some of them don't really have any methods, so I guess they're just empty structs, no class.

      Of course, it depends on how you #define things in the first place ... you can always assert() whatever you need to ...

  2. If he worked at Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Why didn't he just sit in a chair and have Steve Ballmer launch him into orbit?

  3. Harsh by cyber-vandal · · Score: 5, Funny

    Word drives me insane sometimes but surely firing him into space for it was a bit OTT.

  4. He's probably introducing some great tech solution by solevita · · Score: 4, Funny

    "I see you are trying to blast into space, would you like help with that?"

  5. Lets hope... by Tavor · · Score: 3, Funny

    that the Soyuz doesn't suck up a ton of memory; crash and burn...

    --
    Windows has detected an undetectable error.
    1. Re:Lets hope... by julesh · · Score: 5, Funny

      Would we get to autorecover a version of Simonyi at age 8?

  6. In case of trouble ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    ... Simonyi had a special Help* button installed. When pressed, Captain Clipsky, will pop up and say "I see you are up creek without paddle. Would you like me to make "help" scream sound for you? [blink,blink]".

    * is finest teknolgy in former Soviet Russia

  7. Ahhh, ground control this is Major Simonyi by presidenteloco · · Score: 5, Funny


    We're experiencing loss of document format stability up here....

    We just changed from the small platform to the larger one.

    I don't understand what happened to the document.

    I'm pulling off the access panel now. Seems to be a whole ratsnest of old embedded
    OLE objects in there. Christ that's some ugly HTML.

    Sproing! What the hell just happened to my paragraph format?? Oh my god, we have a backward compatibility failure!

    Somebody open the hatch, quick! Open it! what do you mean there are two different opening standards!

    Ahhhhhhhh!, We're losing all design integrity here. There are so many buttons. Don't know which ones to push......
    Mayday, Mayday,

    (Sure hope I land on my money pile. Oh, Sh***t)

    --

    Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
  8. 'It looks like you're trying to fire... by Channard · · Score: 2, Funny

    .. your secondary rocket boosters. Would you like help with that?'

  9. Alternanative Headline by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · · Score: 2, Funny

    Man Expelled from planet for crimes against Humanity.

    --
    Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
  10. Re:Who cares? by danpsmith · · Score: 2, Funny

    Hey, I know, let's celebrate some billionaire who can afford to take a trip to space! How fucking quaint. Does this matter? Not in the slightest.

    This is significant, he's the guy who is responsible for MS Word and he's off the earth. This is obviously a big victory for computer users everywhere, now if we can just keep him there...

    --
    Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
  11. Cue MST3K theme: by jimbo3123 · · Score: 2, Funny

    We'll send him cheesy movies.
    The worst we can find.
    (la la la)

    He'll have to sit and watch them all
    Then We'll monitor his mind.
    (la la la)

    Now keep in mind Charles can't control
    Where the movies begin or end
    (la la la)

    Because he used those special parts
    To make his Clippy friends.

    --
    There should be a moderation category "Dumbest Comment EVER"
  12. Re:Does it piss anyone else off that.... by CyberSnyder · · Score: 2, Funny

    Anonymous Coward == troll living in mom's basement. I wouldn't worry about him.