Slashdot Mirror
Recomputing the Sky
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has unveiled the largest and clearest image of the night sky ever assembled. This so-called 'TeraPixel' sky map was generated with the help of some of Microsoft's latest HPC and parallel software assets. Quoting: 'Compared to the old sky image, the TeraPixel version is much more refined. With all the artifacts, seams and inconsistencies processed away, it looks like a true unified image of the sky above. It's like going from Super Mario Brothers on 1985-era Nintendo consoles to Halo 2 on Xbox 360s.'" You can view the image at Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope site — it requires the Silverlight plugin for Windows or Mac. No word at the site about Linux or whether Moonlight works there.
Very clear!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
It's like going from Super Mario Brothers on 1985-era Nintendo consoles to Halo 2 on Xbox 360s
Oh, I see what you did there. Here, let me try:
It's like going from gaming on Windows 1.0 in 1985 to 1985-era Nintendo consoles
Or what about
It's like going from a red ring of death on an XBox console to Gran Turismo 3 on a Playstation 2
Oh and I also enjoy that you used your Space Act Agreement with NASA to "make planetary images and data available via the Internet to the public" and also promote the download and installation of silvercrap. Can't do something for the public without advertising and pushing proprietary software on people, can we? I hope Google gets the chance to do this with HTML5.
My work here is dung.
So this looks like a really cool thing that MS did, so I'm going to wait in wide eyed anticipation at how the slashdot community is going to trash it because it's from Microsoft and not Google (or at least be more overly critical of it). I do hope I'm wrong though.
A libertarian shat on my carpet once. Claimed the free market would sort it out. -Ford Prefect(8777)
Nope. Doesn't work.
Slagborr
With all the artifacts, seams and inconsistencies processed away
It seems the seams are gone. Excellent! I'll have to see how this compares to Google Sky. I'll bet I'll still prefer NASA's closeups from their Picture of the Day Gallery, though.
Free Martian Whores!
Holy Butt Swipes Steve !!
'Compared to the old sky image, the TeraPixel version is much more refined.
This makes one remind of an old practice of theirs: Embrace, Extend and Extinguish...
Scary!
Is the project set to be completed in 2012, by any chance?
It's like going from Super Mario Brothers on 1985-era Nintendo consoles to Halo 2 on Xbox 360s
Classy, they just had to get that one in there. Of course Halo 2 isn't seamless on the 360, you can't use its online features and it doesn't work in wide screen format.
Are there normal image files we can download? I'm not installing Silverlight just to see pictures...
I was reading the post, like all others, amazed that Microsoft can do something actually interesting for us geeks. Then reading the silverlight part has been like a bomb. Muahahaha... Microsoft, you breaks me up.
At least, make a canvas based version, or something COMPATIBLE with other stuff? /golfclap
-Woof woof woof!
You can view the image at Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope site — it requires the Silverlight plugin for Windows or Mac.
These two statements appear to contradict each other.
If it requires Silverlight, then I can't view it, because I don't want that cock on my computer.
every other day, news from microsoft. none of them relate to o/ses. so what ? ms has dropped its core business ?
Read radical news here
You mean the sky it gets a whole lot easier, starts holding your hard and tells you which stars to look at?
Or can we now look at the old night sky on our mobile phones using emulators, now that the new night sky is filled with nerd-raging teenaged frat boys?
Alright, I'll ask what everyone is thinking:
According to TFA, one of the major bottlenecks was just copying files:
Just transferring the final 1,025 files (802 GB total) off the cluster took 2.5 hours using a 1 Gbps link.
They must have been using Vista Explorer pre SP-1 to do the file copy.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Blue Sky of Death
rewriting history since 2109
Exactly, its so boring, been done, throwing cpu time at a project just feels very dull propaganda. ..."
"look we have big boxes now and they are powerful
Thinking back to the Simpsons AABF02
No, no. To attract the top grads, we'll need to host a computing stunt. A picture that showcases our cutting- edge technology.
A "sky map", sir?
[gasps] Yes, brilliant! That's just the kind of far-out gimmick we need.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
They want you to install Silverlight to view it.
Sorry to be the dick-ish correctionist, but isn't the proper analogy, at least Halo 3 on 360? Halo 2 was an Xbox 1 game from 2004.
And yes, Grizzly Adams did have a beard.
GP said "gaming on Windows 1.0" and what games were those?
Reversi. Even Solitaire wasn't around until Windows 3.
They will be the first company to throw a chair at the moon.
Reply to That ||
Well, the image is really cool, I'll give it that.
The "Quotes" from TFS are all from the author of TFA. If you want to see what the real description of the work, best look here http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/terapixel/default.aspx
There's still some artifacts left though, have a look near (seriously overexposed) Sirius for a ghost of the telescope pupil (the thing that looks like an alien solar sail) (Constellations -> Canis Major)
Would a kind soul with silverlight installed view it, make screen captures in jpg and upload it for everyone to see?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
it's pretty trivial to make a Silverlight interface to pan and zoom around a giant image like this.
Yet Google managed to pull off Google Maps in JavaScript.
Please select your response from the following /.-approved categories (check all that apply):
This project sucks because...
[ ] Microsoft is evil
[ ] They totally stole this idea from
[ ] They've never done ANYTHING original or noteworthy
[ ] EVERYTHING they do is about hurting consumers
[ ] did this 100 times better 10 years ago
[ ] Microsoft killed my family and made me watch
Ask me about my sig!
every other day, news from microsoft. none of them relate to o/ses. so what ? ms has dropped its core business ?
After the over saturation of articles back when Windows 7 came out, I am glad to have the opportunity to read about anything else.
Fortunately, my aversion to Silverlight has so far only kept me away from a couple microsoft sites and some video site. I think it might have been something on MSNBC. Notice a pattern? Does anyone but Microsoft actually use Silverlight?
Can we cover the outside of commercial airliners with cheap cameras, use computers to stitch the panoramas together, and then give passengers a zoomable, pannable picture of the sky and ground to look at?
only thing that comes to mind is discourse with clippy as he asks, "Its looks like you're rendering a terapixel image of the earths night sky. Would you like to use a template?"
Good people go to bed earlier.
It's like going from Super Mario Brothers on 1985-era Nintendo consoles to Halo 2 on Xbox 360s
So it's worse?
Oh crud. I hate Microsoft, but this is kinda cool.
Wonder if it'll work under Wine?
That would make a pretty sweet wallpaper.
It's core business these past 5 years has been it's Office products. But the OS is still next in line.
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Anything that saves me from walking outside and looking up at the sky and being around nature is progress!
For real - that's pretty cool. No digs, no anti-MS stuff. I think it's great.
In their hearts I think most anti-MS people on slashdot already acknowledge the fact that they've been out-eviled recently. The day of MS as the root of all IT nastiness has come and gone. They just need to say it out loud.
Halo 2 was released for the original Xbox. Halo 3 was the first in the series released on the xbox 360.
To be fair, Apple also has pretty much forgotten about OS X and that they have a Mac Pro line -- which hasn't been updated in 15+ months. Pro users of desktop OSes must be an endangered species.
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Microsoft really should call it Microsoft Sky .NET.
(You know you really want to.)
Sadly with all the light pollution this is the closest most people in urban areas will ever get to seeing the night sky.
Interesting until I saw it required Silverlight. Microsoft is getting really desperate trying to find a way to push Silverlight, so they throw a lot of money into research or science but bada-bing the requirement is you must use their software. It's not altruism when the planned result is sales of your product, it's an investment.
I already have Flash and that's bad enough, thank you, I don't need two companies competing for who can screw me the hardest.
every other day, news from microsoft. none of them relate to o/ses. so what ? ms has dropped its core business ?
Win7 is still selling really well - how's that for news? But it's the boring kind of news that geeks aren't bothered about, so you don't hear much about it here.
Oh, and did you miss the recent Win7 / Win2008 R2 SP1 beta?
And it's just a tad too early for news on the next major release, given that it has only been a year since the last RTM. Give it some time to cook.
Please make sure you only buy products labled "Rolls for Sure(TM)" to avoid compatibility issues. That way when we abandon "Rolls For Sure" after a year, you know without a doubt you will need to rebuy all of your previous wheels.
oh gee. 'win 7 is still selling well'. that is news. so, this is an innovation. also, sp1 beta, is another innovation ! its just great ! apparently ms havent forgotten its core business ...
Read radical news here
Seriously, what exactly do you expect? A major OS release every year?
apparently ms havent forgotten its core business
That's right, it's a business. The success of a business is defined by how much money it's making, not by how quickly you change your product...
For people interested in this sort of thing you should check out Celestia! Yes, it is open source. http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
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No matter how thin you slice it, its still baloney.
yeah and what they have done with their o/s up to this point has been successful. there are no problems or complaints at all.
Read radical news here
I'm sure there are plenty of tickets in the bug tracker (though I haven't seen it), but can you show me an OS for which there are no known issues? Need I link to a couple of favorite bugs on Launchpad (in some cases, surviving 3-4 major releases) to make a point?
As a side note, the whole point of service packs is to address problems. But you were talking about innovation before, and insisted that it has nothing to do with that...
So I repeat the question: what exactly do you expect from Microsoft with respect to Windows in this case?
oh gee. for a second, i thought the 'anything has issues' bullshit might not come my way. but, even you, have done it.
i dont have the time to make a list of how disastrous microsoft oses have been compared to others in the past 5 years. all is in slashdot, and probably, you already know a lot of them. so spare me the effort.
Read radical news here
oh gee. for a second, i thought the 'anything has issues' bullshit might not come my way. but, even you, have done it.
I can't do any better so long as you persist at claiming that something is wrong with Windows 7 without specifying what exactly it is, sorry. A reply to a vague accusation is inevitably going to be just as vague. I would be happy to discuss specific issues
i dont have the time to make a list of how disastrous microsoft oses have been compared to others in the past 5 years. all is in slashdot, and probably, you already know a lot of them. so spare me the effort.
See, the problem is that all that is on Slashdot in practice are a lot of posts like yours which basically boil down to "Windows sucks" without telling why. And almost every time I ask what exactly the person is unhappy about, they can't coherently explain it. Many actually run Linux or OS X, and have last seen Windows in 2K (or even 9x) days. Many parrot the same old claims about "flawed security model", but, again, when asked about what the flaws are, cannot explain, or tell things which are factually incorrect and trivially disprovable. In very few cases I've actually got meaningful and informative responses that specifically explain the issues - I can quite literally count such responses over 7 years I've been on Slashdot on my hands.
About the only exception to this was the early (pre-SP) Vista period, where the OS was indeed seriously messed up. Though again most people have took the very real symptoms, and came up with some quite insane conspiracy theories to explain them (like the aforementioned DRM, or huge parts of OS rewritten in managed etc). In any case, this isn't 2007 anymore, so when we're talking about Windows, it's Win7 now, not Vista.
So, please. If you want to continue a meaningful discussion over technical matters, please do so by being more explicit about what your issues with Windows are, and why do you believe it to be so inferior compared to competing products (don't forget to specify who those are, by the way - 'cause I've already seen some people bring up iPad there, for example!). If this is strictly about ethical issues of Microsoft corporate behavior and business model, I can definitely understand that, but then you should clearly say so.
let me see. lack of innovation ? facelift, bells and whistles instead of usability ? how about innovating in them, instead of a skymap ? you are aware that putting out an os which works as best as only your earlier os, without providing any noticeable functionality. oh, of course, other than complying with drm and whatnot support demands from private interests ....
Read radical news here
let me see. lack of innovation ? facelift, bells and whistles instead of usability ?
So Win7 was not more usable than Vista or XP, in your opinion?
Also, where do you draw the line between "bells & whistles" and "usability" (because I suspect that's what your claim of "no usability improvements" is based on)?
Astronomy! Now brought to you by needlessly proprietary corporate software. Get your Microsoft-branded asteroid today!
Help me fix my brother's injured butt!