U.S. Billionaire Heads to Space Station

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."

Comments

pFirst!

[donutello]

That's Hungarian for First Post.

Re:pFirst!

[modulo]

Wouldn't that be strPost = "First" ?

Re:pFirst!

[The Terminator]

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

CU

Re:pFirst!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:pFirst!

[tomhudson]

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.

Re:pFirst!

[donutello]

The m_ notation indicates that a variable is a member of the class. Simonyi's version of the Hungarian notation is actually very useful. Indicating the type of a variable is mostly useless because that's something any competent IDE will give you for free. Simonyi's original concept of the Hungarian notation focused more on indicating the meaning of the variable in question, rather than its type.

Re:pFirst!

[tomhudson]

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 ...

Re:pFirst!

[arb]

People who use Hungarian prefixes like that do not understand how Hungarian Notation is meant to work.

There are two major problems with Hungarian Notation:

1. Using prefixes for datatypes, instead of the use or meaning of the variable.
2. Not having a clear style guide with definitions of the allowable prefixes to be used

It wasn't until I read Joel's rant on Hungarian that it finally clicked for me.

Just because some coders' use of Hungarian is bad, doesn't make Hungarian itself a bad thing. It's just like braces - some people insist on getting it wrong and putting their braces at the end of the line. ;^)

Watch the soyuz dock

[chebucto]

Live now!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/player/no l/newsid_6530000/newsid_6539600?redirect=6539637.s tm&news=1&nbram=1&bbram=1&nbwm=1&bbwm=1

If that doesn't work, look for links at bbcnews.com

If he worked at Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Harsh

[cyber-vandal]

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

Re:Harsh

[Rei]

Close. From the statistics gathered by the late, great Steve Kangas:

Year Median Millionaire or Top 1%
1948 5.3% 76.9%
1955 9.1 85.5
1960 12.4 85.5
1965 11.6 66.9
1970 16.1 68.6
1975 20.0 --
1977 -- 35.5
1980 23.7 31.7
1985 24.4 24.9
1989 24.4 26.7

Source: The Reagan Years: Taxes; Info from: "the 1948 figure comes from The Statistical History of the United States, 1976; the figures for 1955 to 1983 come from Alan Lerman of the U.S. Department of the Treasury Office of Tax Analysis. The calculations after 1983 come from Eugene Steuerle and John Bakija, Right Ways and Wrong Ways to Reform Social Security (Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute Press, 1993). Figures from the millionaire column for 1948 to 1970 represent the effective tax rates for those earning $1 million a year and come from the U.S. Treasury Department unpublished data set forth on page 1112 of The Statistical History of the United States, 1976. FICA is not included, but the rates would not be affected by a percentage point. The rates from 1977 onward are for the top 1% of families as computed by the Congressional Budget Office tax simulation model and include all federal taxes. Source: the 1992 Greenbook of the House Ways and Means Committee, p. 1510. The effective rate on millionaires would be close to the rate on the top 1 percent."

I expect to see a lot of people commenting "hey, he was smart, he worked hard, he deserves that money". My response to that is: "Really? Is he a hundred thousand times smarter than the average American? Is he a hundred thousand times harder working than some guy who does hot tar roofing for a living? Really?"

Don't get me wrong; complete wealth redistribution eliminates the incentive to work hard in order to better yourself. But a completely "free", "deregulated" economy leads to situations like the early industrial revolution. The economy inherently becomes polarized, as you need money to make money. This is why we have things like the estate tax and higher rates for the upper class. If the rates were like they used to be back in the 1950s/1960s (our nation's biggest boom time, by the way -- yes, you can't really credit that to the taxes, but it's hard to say that the taxes destroyed the boom), we'd be able to provide full healthcare to every American, full education to every American through grad school, double all government funded research, double all infrastructure projects, and still work toward paying off the national debt.

I think 85% may be a bit extreme, but I'd like to see 65% or so. And I say this as someone who has benefitted greatly from having wealthy parents.

Re:Harsh

[operagost]

I expect to see a lot of people commenting "hey, he was smart, he worked hard, he deserves that money". My response to that is: "Really? Is he a hundred thousand times smarter than the average American? Is he a hundred thousand times harder working than some guy who does hot tar roofing for a living? Really?"

I think it's a bit fallacious to assume that all rewards must be linear. If you believe that, then take away the 1.5x and 2x overtime pay that non-exempt workers get.

If the rates were like they used to be back in the 1950s/1960s (our nation's biggest boom time, by the way -- yes, you can't really credit that to the taxes, but it's hard to say that the taxes destroyed the boom), we'd be able to provide full healthcare to every American, full education to every American through grad school, double all government funded research, double all infrastructure projects, and still work toward paying off the national debt.

You probably think that because you haven't seen the figures that show tax receipts have gone up since GWB's tax cut. They did the same after Reagan's tax cut. Raising taxes on high earners when lowering them is more effective reflects a punitive agenda, rather than a social one.

Re:Harsh

[Rei]

(Slashdot is eating this post for some reason, so I'm splitting it)

For Reagan, I recommend you read more of the referenced link. I'll give a brief excerpt.

---
One of the central tenets of supply-side theory is that tax cuts actually increase overall tax collections. There is something faintly foolish about this assertion -- it's like claiming that you can make trees grow taller by cutting them down. But the supply-siders have their own statistics to quote. "During the Reagan tax-cut era," Rush Limbaugh writes, "IRS collections actually nearly doubled... from $550 billion [sic] to about $991 billion."2 This supply-side deception is as common as it is deplorable; it uses nominal dollars instead of constant dollars, which account for inflation. Here are the total tax collections expressed in both:

Tax Collections (billions)3

Year Nominal Constant (87 dollars)
1980 $517.1 728.1
1981 599.3 766.6
1982 617.8 738.2
1983 600.6 684.3
1984 666.6 730.4
1985 734.1 776.6
1986 769.1 790.0
1987 854.1 854.1
1988 909.0 877.3
1989 990.7 916.2
1990 1031.3 914.1
1991 1054.3 894.7
1992 1090.5 895.1

This chart raises two points. First, it allows you to see that real tax collections actually declined in the two years following Reagan's 1981 tax cuts. (In fact, it took until 1985 to recover the 1981 level.) This is exactly the opposite of what supply-siders had predicted. They excuse it by noting that the 1981 cuts were phased in over three years, delaying entrepreneurial investment. But, according to their theory, accumulating tax cuts should have resulted in accumulating -- not declining -- tax collections. (More)

Re:Harsh

[Rei]

Second, contrary to what Rush implies, real tax collections did not "double" between 1981 and 1989; they grew only 20 percent. This reflects the normal growth that our economy has experienced for centuries, as both our population and productivity have grown. The real question is not whether the tax collections grew, but whether they grew faster than normal under Reaganomics. They did not. The following chart shows the average annual growth of real tax collections under the last 10 presidents. As you can see, Reagan ties for 6th and 7th place:

Average Real Annual Growth of Tax Collections by President4

                              Average
President Annual Growth
Roosevelt 121.3%
Truman 3.7%
Eisenhower 2.4%
Kennedy 4.8%

Re:Harsh

[Rei]

I think it's a bit fallacious to assume that all rewards must be linear. If you believe that, then take away the 1.5x and 2x overtime pay that non-exempt workers get.

You're not talking about 1.5x/2x; you're talking about 100,000x. If anything, when you get up to dollar values like that, I'd say that linear may be too kind. A person who makes 20k/year simply *cannot* be spending their money on luxury; almost all of it needs to go to necessities. On the other end of the spectrum, a person who makes 2M/year simply *cannot* be spending all their money on necessity; even a huge family wouldn't "need" that much. The only exception, in the latter case, is charitable contributions -- and we give deductions for that.

In short, my driving stance is quite simple: tax rates should reflect how much of a "luxury" money is being spent on, with pure necessity being untaxed, and pure luxury being taxed highly. Ideally, this would be done through sales taxes; however, that gets complicated pretty quickly (what's the tax rate for a canned button mushrooms? Fresh button mushrooms? Fresh oyster mushrooms? Fresh truffles?). Bracketted taxes with deductions for charitable contributions are a good way to approximate this. Augmented with sales taxes, it's a winning situation, in my book.

Re:Harsh

[SageMusings]

If this billionaire didn't do anything special, why doesn't everyone do what he does?

The truth is he cannot possibly pull that off today. First Microsoft got wise and started getting stingy with stock. Second, Microsoft stock ain't all that any longer. Third, many (not all) today's coders tackle harder coding problems and see nothing but their normal paycheck.

It's just like Bill Gates: These guys were there at the right time in history. The opportunities they had disappeared when the market matured. As I look around now, I believe the next opportunities are going to require tremendous capital and research, effectively locking out the people with little more than drive and coding knowledge. There will never, can never, be another Bill or Charles.

He's probably introducing some great tech solution

[solevita]

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

Does it piss anyone else off that....

[CyberSnyder]

...while he paid $25 million for his little trip to space, my tax dollars are subsidizing the rest of his trip. Do some damn science instead of being a taxi for the uber-rich. (I know Russia is strapped for cash.)

Re:Does it piss anyone else off that....

[lgarner]

Not at all. First, "While at the space station, Simonyi will be conducting a number of experiments, including measuring radiation levels and studying biological organisms inside the lab."

Second, I don't see anything indicating that the US directly paid for the launch. If the Russians want to collect some money to help pay for this thing, then fine. I don't see why the US doesn't do the same- that could have meant $25million fewer of your tax dollars going into the ISS.

Re:Does it piss anyone else off that....

[tomhudson]

No, it doesn't piss me off at all that "your" tax dollars are helping some billionaire have a good time in space. But, I'm set for life as far as money goes; i'll never have to take a job I don't like. In my experience, people who brag about "working for everything they ever had" are pretty bitter, pissed off and miserable. :)

Fuck you :)

... as opposed to trust fund babies and welfare-for-lifers ... neither of which will ever take a job they don't like ... So, which one are you?

Re:Does it piss anyone else off that....

[CyberSnyder]

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

Lets hope...

[Tavor]

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

Re:Lets hope...

[julesh]

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

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Who cares?

[danpsmith]

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...

Re:Who cares?

[noidentity]

Sure it does; it means that space travel is getting closer to being in reach for the average person. Ten years ago I doubt having a trillion dollars made you any more likely to get into space.

It's a rich man's solar system

[tempestdata]

Not only is it a rich man's world. It is also a rich man's solar system now. Its amazing what money can bring you. He will get to experience something that I most likely never will, and he'll get to do it because he is filthy rich. Does that make him a better man and deserving of this? Most likely the answer to that question is yes. But is it not mildly depressing? Knowing that while you and billions others are scrounging to make ends meet, to buy a home, and in a majority of the cases to put food on the table, there are people who can afford to plunk down $20million + to take a joy ride into space. I don't blame him for it, and I think its his right that he do what he wants with the money he earned. Its just, such an overpowering display of wealth.

Re:It's a rich man's solar system

[haluness]

I think this is common in many areas. Whenever something is new, it is usually upto the rich to buy the thing and try it out.

As time goes by, these things will get cheaper and at one point will hopefully be cheap enough for the ordinary person to buy/try.

So if anything, you were born too early :)

Re:It's a rich man's solar system

[julesh]

Not only is it a rich man's world. It is also a rich man's solar system now. Its amazing what money can bring you. He will get to experience something that I most likely never will, and he'll get to do it because he is filthy rich. Does that make him a better man and deserving of this? Most likely the answer to that question is yes. But is it not mildly depressing? Knowing that while you and billions others are scrounging to make ends meet, to buy a home, and in a majority of the cases to put food on the table, there are people who can afford to plunk down $20million + to take a joy ride into space. I don't blame him for it, and I think its his right that he do what he wants with the money he earned. Its just, such an overpowering display of wealth.

The thing to remember is that rich people paying money for stuff like this now actually helps attract the investment that will eventually bring this kind of thing within the reach of ordinary people. It might cost $20 million now, but in ten years that'll probably be more like $2 million; ten years after that $200,000. And that's the tipping point: the point where significant numbers of people start to be able to afford it as a once-in-a-lifetime expense.

In case of trouble ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... 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

Ahhh, ground control this is Major Simonyi

[presidenteloco]

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)

'It looks like you're trying to fire...

[Channard]

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

Insightful?

[JeanBaptiste]

Not in the least!

There was a time when only the richest of the rich could afford automobiles. Now everyone has them.

Its efforts like this that will eventually drop the price down enough for space travel to be worthwhile for the general populace.

maybe I'm just jealous

Re:Insightful?

[zippthorne]

What makes eating for the general populace worthwhile? Personally, I don't see any real purpose for this, other than mere maintenance of population, and the energy used and pollution generated to make all that food for people to do nothing more than continue to exist seems to significantly decrease any possible worth.

Is mere survival a worthwhile goal for the whole human race?

Alternanative Headline

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Man Expelled from planet for crimes against Humanity.

Re:He's probably introducing some great tech solut

[Rei]

MS Word, in my experience, is more like having your spacecraft decide, "Well, they've used this particular reaction control thruster every time they've pressed a button, so I'm just going to go ahead and fire it off every time before they do anything to save them the time."

Re:+5 Soviet Russia jokes?

[CompMD]

In Soviet Russia, Word launches YOU!

Cue MST3K theme:

[jimbo3123]

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.

Systems Hungarian vs. apps Hungarian

[tepples]

Yup, Mr. lpcszHungarianNotation himself has blasted off into space. There are two kinds of Hungarian notation: "systems Hungarian", which prefixes variable names with low-level data types such as the common lpsz representing "32-bit pointer to string"; and "apps Hungarian", which prefixes variable names with high-level data types such as rw for "row", str for "string", n for "number of", x for "horizontal coordinate", etc. Mr. Simonyi didn't advocate the "systems Hungarian" approach as much as "apps Hungarian". Wikipedia covers the difference.