1) The amount of useful data produced by Hubble is worthless compared to newer infrared space telescopes. Virtually nothing is being learned from these visible light images of the edge of the universe compared to infrared and X-ray images from newer telescopes. Before saving Hubble became a political agenda, even Earth based telescopes had already surpassed it with newer optics and image processing.
2) Too many people have to die to fix it. That may fly in the hyper-layoff, humans-are-liabilities mentality of Silicon Valley but not when those piles of bodies are shutting down the space program for years at a time.
They should outsource substantial amounts of the work to India. India has a 10 year lead in nuclear technology for building nuclear powered ion engines, a 10 year lead in information technology for the computer systems, and is right next door to the largest manufacturer in the world.
If it can't be built in China it can't be built. The US can assume a testing role to verify finished products as they come from India and China.
Already pay 50% income tax to survive in the US. Of course, it's broken up into FICA, state, federal, healthcare, and life insurance to make you feel good.
It seems to be cheaper than cable. Cable goes up 5% every year and daytime reception is non-existent as they're constantly taking down the network to reconfigure individual tenants. Of course, most mortals live in north facing apartments so we can't have satellite and don't have much flexibility in dish positioning.
The right answer for 99% of programmers is to become a contractor. People have been becoming contractors since time began yet for whatever reason this is now a big deal. In 1999, most of the programmers out there were contractors.
As a contractor you're satisfying all the reasons the authors give for starting their own "businesses" and it's a lot less of an initial risk.
The last 3 years have seen no IPO's, no startups, and no "move to killer apps", yet the largest decline ever in wages. There isn't one new product since the outsourcing wave which shows any signs of being even remotely revolutionary from what was around in 1999. How can outsourcing boost killer apps if the largest outsourcing wave in history has yielded absolutely nothing?
There is no evidence to support the suger coating outcome. The wholesale price of a computer game written in India is exactly the same as a computer game written in the US. The wholesale price of a circular saw made in China is exactly the same as the price of a circular saw made in the USA. In 1998 the Palm Pilot, engineered in the US, was $300. Today the a IPaq, engineered in India, is $600. Where's the offshoring discount?
Saying cheaper laber boosts economic growth is an absolute lie. The simple answer is the right answer. Corporate executives are making more money because they're worth more money. Programmers are making $11,000 because programming is only worth $11,000.
Instead of sugar coating it, no-one's ever said the reality: the fair market price for programmers is somewhere between $11,000 and $20,000 a year. It's as simple as that. Programmers do something which just isn't worth much, like basketweaving.
The higher wages some people knew in the 20th century were due to some things the democrats did in the 1900's like minimum wage. Like any social program, the labor laws were completely useless in the long term. Corporations would eventually move the labor to somewhere without minimum wage.
The government can create as many laws and social programs as it wants to. The long term is always dictated by the fair market price.
The problem with starting a company is that you need to have more than one person involved, otherwise you're just a contractor. Most programmers become contractors when they're unemployed and call themselves companies for legal reasons but in reality you won't see many programmers corralling each other into a real company.
Forget exploring Mars. Let's spend more time covering Michael Jackson. In other news, the European picture looks like a TV commercial. Is there any way to get the original image without the 3D doctoring and the airbrushing?
"It's not good enough to succeed. Everyone else must fail" Words of wisdom from Larry Ellison and the reason why, when Beagle 2 crashed and desintegrated in a miserable flaming disaster we celebrated Christmas.
Day job: Years of development, professional management, no product
Night job: Years of development, managed by programmers, thousands of users
Software is not what the US is going to be doing if the programmers are eliminated. Most of the successful software in my experience comes from programmers who manage themselves, not recruited managers. Japan, India, and China have this mentality but not the U.S. Marc Andreesen had in interesting quote,
"For me, you are much better off having a founding technologist run things if you want a long-term strategy."
Too bad all the founding technologists are being eliminated.
China: 1) build spaceships 2) launch humans 3) launch humans to Mars
US: 1) build space ships 2) hire venture capitalists 3) hire managers to impress venture capitalists 4) hire managers to impress managers 5) rebuild space ship different way to impress managers 6) file chapter 11 and close
It's still a long way from where I can write a 3D email on it in an hour. There's still nothing in the simplified user interface that says "animate human face", no record button for capturing 3D from a 3D TV. The characters in the screenshots still look like computer graphics and not the lifelike characters you see in a photograph.
Hooray for Linux being dropped by the corporations and returning to the people. Now the individual programmer won't get sued when their software crashes. Now bug ridden features won't get pushed into the distributions to boost investor relations. Now X11 won't have to look like Win.
It would probably be best if they scrapped the space plane entirely and focused instead on a beefed up shuttle. They could boost the engines to lift more redundant equipment and heavier shielding. The space plane is really whimpy.
This is a ripe story for a weblog which covers.net more than any other framework. Funny how no-one ever questions whether the.net we've been getting told to learn or face certain doom might be canned and never heard from again by its owner.
The Alpha was extremely hard to install because of the rarity of precompiled internet downloads for it and the lack of optimization in gcc. Once you tracked down the packages and got things ported to Compaq C it was far superior to any Intel chip.
Is there a map of the universe showing our position relative to the soccer ball and significant galaxies? Some day we'll know the location of every object that exists.
The real answer is somewhere in between XP and formal architecture. You need practical experimentation and you need design together to finish anything. A purely extreme programming environment would go around in circles without heading to a goal. A purely architectural environment would never get a practical solution.
If you've got $5 million for an acre of land in an area of the world which gets sunlight you might get the same amount of power as 1 square foot of expensive solar panel. The real story was on 9/30 in EE Times.
>they hope to use nanotechnology to produce cells >with lower efficiencies -- about 10 percent rather >15 to 20 percent -- while reducing manufacturing >costs
Nanotechnology of course means organic chemistry in a time when nanotechnology sounds better. It would probably be cheaper just to make solar panels using Chinese laborers instead of fullerene and copper.
Slashdot Mirror
1) The amount of useful data produced by Hubble is worthless compared to newer infrared space telescopes. Virtually nothing is being learned from these visible light images of the edge of the universe compared to infrared and X-ray images from newer telescopes. Before saving Hubble became a political agenda, even Earth based telescopes had already surpassed it with newer optics and image processing.
2) Too many people have to die to fix it. That may fly in the hyper-layoff, humans-are-liabilities mentality of Silicon Valley but not when those piles of bodies are shutting down the space program for years at a time.
Someday some bright Indian is going to supply DVD's of this software so we don't need to keep swapping CD's.
They should outsource substantial amounts of the work to India. India has a 10 year lead in nuclear technology for building nuclear powered ion engines, a 10 year lead in information technology for the computer systems, and is right next door to the largest manufacturer in the world.
If it can't be built in China it can't be built. The US can assume a testing role to verify finished products as they come from India and China.
When you take it in rupees, consider this:
The average American earns nothing because they're all unemployed.
Rent for dumpy 2 bedroom house in silicon valley:
90,000 RS
Food/Utilities:
10,000 RS
Cost of car:
used: 300000(min) new: 675,000(min) RS
Cost of gas:
37 / lit in summer 20 / lit in winter
DSL connection + land line:
3600 RS
Eating out:
900/meal RS
Air tickets to india:
50000(one way) RS
There's a sucker - or rather - immigrant born every minute.
Already pay 50% income tax to survive in the US. Of course, it's broken up into FICA, state, federal, healthcare, and life insurance to make you feel good.
Being 2 years later than Australia's 2002 hypersonic flight, it's more of a formality.
It seems to be cheaper than cable. Cable goes up 5% every year and daytime reception is non-existent as they're constantly taking down the network to reconfigure individual tenants. Of course, most mortals live in north facing apartments so we can't have satellite and don't have much flexibility in dish positioning.
The right answer for 99% of programmers is to become a contractor. People have been becoming contractors since time began yet for whatever reason this is now a big deal. In 1999, most of the programmers out there were contractors.
As a contractor you're satisfying all the reasons the authors give for starting their own "businesses" and it's a lot less of an initial risk.
The last 3 years have seen no IPO's, no startups, and no "move to killer apps", yet the largest decline ever in wages. There isn't one new product since the outsourcing wave which shows any signs of being even remotely revolutionary from what was around in 1999. How can outsourcing boost killer apps if the largest outsourcing wave in history has yielded absolutely nothing?
There is no evidence to support the suger coating outcome. The wholesale price of a computer game written in India is exactly the same as a computer game written in the US. The wholesale price of a circular saw made in China is exactly the same as the price of a circular saw made in the USA. In 1998 the Palm Pilot, engineered in the US, was $300. Today the a IPaq, engineered in India, is $600. Where's the offshoring discount?
Saying cheaper laber boosts economic growth is an absolute lie. The simple answer is the right answer. Corporate executives are making more money because they're worth more money. Programmers are making $11,000 because programming is only worth $11,000.
Instead of sugar coating it, no-one's ever said the reality: the fair market price for programmers is somewhere between $11,000 and $20,000 a year. It's as simple as that. Programmers do something which just isn't worth much, like basketweaving.
The higher wages some people knew in the 20th century were due to some things the democrats did in the 1900's like minimum wage. Like any social program, the labor laws were completely useless in the long term. Corporations would eventually move the labor to somewhere without minimum wage.
The government can create as many laws and social programs as it wants to. The long term is always dictated by the fair market price.
The problem with starting a company is that you need to have more than one person involved, otherwise you're just a contractor. Most programmers become contractors when they're unemployed and call themselves companies for legal reasons but in reality you won't see many programmers corralling each other into a real company.
Forget exploring Mars. Let's spend more time covering Michael Jackson. In other news, the European picture looks like a TV commercial. Is there any way to get the original image without the 3D doctoring and the airbrushing?
"It's not good enough to succeed. Everyone else must fail" Words of wisdom from Larry Ellison and the reason why, when Beagle 2 crashed and desintegrated in a miserable flaming disaster we celebrated Christmas.
Day job: Years of development, professional management, no product
Night job: Years of development, managed by programmers, thousands of users
Software is not what the US is going to be doing if the programmers are eliminated. Most of the successful software in my experience comes from programmers who manage themselves, not recruited managers. Japan, India, and China have this mentality but not the U.S. Marc Andreesen had in interesting quote,
"For me, you are much better off having a founding technologist run things if you want a long-term strategy."
Too bad all the founding technologists are being eliminated.
The fair market price for a programmer is $20,000. Time to face it.
China:
1) build spaceships
2) launch humans
3) launch humans to Mars
US:
1) build space ships
2) hire venture capitalists
3) hire managers to impress venture capitalists
4) hire managers to impress managers
5) rebuild space ship different way to impress managers
6) file chapter 11 and close
It's still a long way from where I can write a 3D email on it in an hour. There's still nothing in the simplified user interface that says "animate human face", no record button for capturing 3D from a 3D TV. The characters in the screenshots still look like computer graphics and not the lifelike characters you see in a photograph.
Hooray for Linux being dropped by the corporations and returning to the people. Now the individual programmer won't get sued when their software crashes. Now bug ridden features won't get pushed into the distributions to boost investor relations. Now X11 won't have to look like Win.
Be aware that those 10,000 jobs are in the IBM India research center.
It would probably be best if they scrapped the space plane entirely and focused instead on a beefed up shuttle. They could boost the engines to lift more redundant equipment and heavier shielding. The space plane is really whimpy.
This is a ripe story for a weblog which covers .net more than any other framework. Funny how no-one ever questions whether the .net we've been getting told to learn or face certain doom might be canned and never heard from again by its owner.
The Alpha was extremely hard to install because of the rarity of precompiled internet downloads for it and the lack of optimization in gcc. Once you tracked down the packages and got things ported to Compaq C it was far superior to any Intel chip.
Is there a map of the universe showing our position relative to the soccer ball and significant galaxies? Some day we'll know the location of every object that exists.
The real answer is somewhere in between XP and formal architecture. You need practical experimentation and you need design together to finish anything. A purely extreme programming environment would go around in circles without heading to a goal. A purely architectural environment would never get a practical solution.
If you've got $5 million for an acre of land in an area of the world which gets sunlight you might get the same amount of power as 1 square foot of expensive solar panel. The real story was on 9/30 in EE Times.
>they hope to use nanotechnology to produce cells
>with lower efficiencies -- about 10 percent rather
>15 to 20 percent -- while reducing manufacturing
>costs
Nanotechnology of course means organic chemistry in a time when nanotechnology sounds better. It would probably be cheaper just to make solar panels using Chinese laborers instead of fullerene and copper.