Live there?? Why would anyone want to give up the relative paradise of Earth for a barren, barely habitable Mars? Certainly nobody who could afford to live on Mars would WANT to live on Mars. Also, whatever resources might be spent on making Mars habitable woudl most certinaly be better spent keeping Earth habitable. Sorry, but terraforming Mars is an utterly ridiculous idea to even entertain at this point in human history.
I don't get it. Why would we want to terraform Mars? There was some implication in the article that Mars would be useful for supporting Earth's overpopulation, but is that realistic? Even if you made Mars habitable, wouldn't the cost of terraforming and transplanting millions (or billions!) of people far outweigh the costs of finding ways of supporting the same people here? Besides, the people suffering the most from overpopulation here on Earth can't afford a sandwich, much less a ticket to Mars. So what is the point?
Seems to me that Mars is much more valuable as a source of scientific data (in its pristine state) and potentially mineral resources. I'm with the scientists that are outraged at the idea of terraforming Mars. All "ethical" arguements asside, it seems like a big waste of time.
For sure, NetWare has the best file permissions structure as well as integration with the Directory. Another thing I like about Netware is that you could always add "namespaces" to your server filesystem without reformatting or anything. You could add Long (OS/2), Mac, Unix (NFS), etc so you could store permissions and file metadata from OS's other than DOS/Windows.
I know that was #2 of yoru plan. You said your plan is based on technology we have today. Where is it? Where are these nuclear powered space planes?
Pegasus launch solution. It shows that the concept is highly workable.
"highly workable" is a long way from "developed and proven."
Nuclear Thermal Rockets are 40 year old, well understood beasts.
And hydrogen fuel cells are a 100 year old technology. Why am I still driving an internal combustion engine powered car?
[Why would you assume that?] Because that's what my plan called for.
So not only is your plan based on technology we don't have working, but it is also based on infrastructure that we don't have. Kinda like sci-fi, eh?
Here is my plan to get to Mars. Assuming we have matter teleportation technology, we can just send one side of a teleporter to Mars like the latest Mars rover. And then we can just teleport everything back and forth. It is technology we have today... sorta. I mean, weren't they able to teleport a photon in some lab?
Look, my plan is based around building a Mars mission in a roundabout fashion. By building the infrastructure first, we can not only reduce risk, but we can make great strides toward building a space economy.
If all we wanted was to go to Mars, we could simply construct heavy lifter craft to get the prep-work cargo and the Mars craft into space and toward Mars. Nothing to it.
So, you'd just leave the astronauts there?
Honestly. Unfortunately, we'd also repeat the mistakes of Apollo. By creating a super-expensive mission with zero economic return, we'd manage to get there, come back, then state that it's too expensive and stay home.
It IS too expensive.. and we WILL stay home.. for now.
Honestly, downplaying and grossly underestimating the technical and logistical hurdles of getting to Mars and back is no way to get your plan implemented or taken seriously. As far as I can tell, you're just another techno-junky with his head in the clouds.
Pretty much. The Mars version of the space plane would need modifications in order to fly (and land) on Mars.
Where's the Earth version?
For one, its landing gear would need to be designed to be a bit more like the large wheels on tractors than the small wheels we use on runways today. Retro-thrusters would be needed for braking as parachutes wouldn't be able to grab much air at slow speeds. And of course, large wings would be required to keep aloft at subsonic speeds.
Wow, a spaceplane constructed in LEO (a factory AND space dock?) that is designed to fly in an atmosphere never flown in before. That is pretty impressive considering that we dont' even have a spaceplace that has proved capable of flying in and out of Earth's gravitational pull.
How do you test this Mars spaceplane? How many lost spaceplanes/astronauts have you factored into your grand Mars plan?
And I didn't touch upon logistics because I could be here until sometime next week typing up my post.
You didn't touch upon the logistics because that is where the real costs and undeveloped technologies would show up. You just tossed a few tech buzzwords together, attached arbitrary prices, and called it a complete estimate.
. But if we're assuming that the ability to construct and launch ships in LEO already exists, then a plan costs far less money than from-earth launch systems.
Why would you assume that? THe construction and design of a space factory and dock would have to be factored into the cost of getting to Mars. So would the development of spaceplanes. There is so much that needs to be developed before we can even think about going to Mars. The technology is not here today, my friend. You're living in a sci-fi fantasy. All this stuff you are talking about has yet to be developed and put into production. Some of it may be on the drawingboard, but that doesn't count as "here".
Another reason why I didn't touch upon the logistics is because they've already been done to death. Most logistics estimates show relatively low cost for the prep-work. Depending on how you configure the mission, much of the prep-work could be carried with your craft instead, or sent years in advance.
How can you estimate the logistics for yet-to-be-developed technologies? Has anybody actually used nuclear rockets? Has anybody actually flown a spaceplane in and out of Earth orbit (forget about mars)?
I could have sworn I mentioned the use of one of those cool spaceplanes as a lander vehicle. Oh wait, I did.
And land where, exactly? Martian Interplantetary Airport? We can barely get a probe to the surface of Mars, and you want to fly a spaceplane there and get it back with current technology for under $100 billion? Give me a break.
The actual logistics are not something I touched upon,
Which is why your estimate is so laughably low.
Zubrin had a very cheap method for making rocket fuel once you get there. Not to mention that a nuclear rocket can be fueled by just about any gas. Send some compressors with them, and they could create their own rocket fuel out of CO2. Actually, it would probably be best to use the reactor to break it into O2 instead, but that's a minor issue.
Make sure the astronauts don't bring more than 2 carryon bags and your plan is sound, I'm sure.
Instead of observing asteroids, let's mine em. That way, if we get a rogue one headed for earth, we'll have plenty of mining equipment up there that can land on the bugger while it's still a ways away, and strip it of enough mass to divert it or make it a non-threat.
Hey! Yeah! Maybe we can send Bruce Willis and a bunch of oil riggers to drive around the asteroid in a dune buggy on steroids setting nuclear charges.... Oh, wait, they did that in a (really bad) movie already.
I can't believe you got modded up as "Insightful."
Never confuse our nature with our history. I have never seriously considered killing another person. It don't know about you, but it isn't in my nature.
You seem to have overlooked the very significant problem of getting people OFF of Mars once you get them there. Not a single person can leave mars until launch facilities are constructed. And before that you need long-term life support. Who in their right mind is going to volunteer to be stranded on Mars? How do you reliably support them? This is where the big costs come in. A trillion dollars doesn't sound like it is too far off the mark to me. I mean, once you factor in all the research required to manuver and survive on Mars. I think you are totally oversimplifying the whole endevour. Your "less than 100 billion dollars" figure is totally meaningless.
People often tout Windows as "it's so easy my dead grandmother can do it" but I've learned in my years of sysadmining that Windows takes quite a bit of general knowledge to get working great, and once you do, you will have no problems.
General knowledge... and a whole lot of voodoo!
-matthew
Kernel 2.6 and KDE 3.2.1, from what I hear is a good step forward in GUI responsiveness and performance which, is one of the big drawbacks for linux on the desktop.
Really? I always found Linux desktops to be far more responsive than Windows. Especially when running stuff in the background. Even with Windows 2000 and XP, I still get a lot of "hourglasses" that prevent me from interacting with any application which is totally unacceptable. And don't even get me started on the unresonsiveness of Mac OS X. IMO, kernel 2.6 is merely icing on the cake. There are a lot of drawbacks to Linux on the desktop, but responsiveness and performance are not of them.
Perhaps your problems with Linux respnosiveness on the desktop were related to older kernels not enabling IDE DMA by default. Always make sure you use hdparm to optimize IDE parameters. Personally, I tend to use SCSI on my Linux desktop machines which that is even better for responsiveness and IDE DMA.
I humbly suggest that you take a look at the Java2D source and get a clue before you go around spouting nonsense like this. Java does indeed take advantage of hardware acceleration built into the video driver, and can even use OpenGL for its 2D rendering.
Then explain why Java GUI applications/applets are are so notoriously unresponsive, slow to redraw, and ugly on all platforms. Maybe your SWING application is different, but somehow I doubt it. Java has no place on my desktop.
There is a high proportion of posts here (when I'm writing this, at least) highlighting the difficulties of upgrading the kernel to 2.6.4. Surely, until there's an easy and foolproof way of doing this, the up-take of linux as a desktop OS is going to be slower. Whether microsoft do a better job in windows is debatable, but the bottom line is, it takes 30 minutes to install a service pack (which can change any functionality in windows, so it's a comparable procedure), and after the upgrade, 99.9% of machines function fine.
Like Debian GNU/Linux 'apt-get upgrade'? Any good modern Linux distribution does include a smooth OS update path. But upgrading from kernel 2.4.x to kernel 2.6.x is not something most people are going to want to do. It is not the equivilent of a "service pack." It is much more akin to an OS upgrade. Few expect that to go without a hitch... even on Windows.
It's things like this that puts "normal" people and companies off using Linux on the desktop. To linux guys and developers it's not a big deal, but imagine if you were some granny somewhere - it'd scare the pants off you and if something went wrong, nigh-on impossible to fix.
So when Windows breaks, Granny is capable of fixing it? Give me a break. She's lucky if she is able to format her harddrive and resinstall without a hitch.
Dude, you really need to install Linux some time. If you think the NT CMD interface is powerful, try a bash shell (and associated tools). The things you can do with find/cut/grep/sort/etc are amazing. And don't fall for that Cygwin crap. The tools might be there, but if the OS isn't designed to be manipulated by them, they are not very useful.
all I want to say is that you can't trust filters 100%
it does not matter much to people who use e-mail to forward chain letters if they miss some message - but there are also people who run business which depends on e-mail (hey I don't mean on spammers):) and they can't let themselves to miss it.
I'd say I run about the same risk of accidentially deleting a non-spam message in a fenzy of spam deleting. You can't trust yourself 100% either. Alls I can say is that I love my Bayesian filter.:-P
Re:i stopped reading after i ran into this...
on
Postfix
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· Score: 1
I can think of several reasons that MacOS might be needed as a server... Largeish publishing house using Quark Express comes to mind... it was only released for OSX, what, 6 months ago? For most corperations of any size, that's moving pretty quick.
As if using MacOS 9 for a server wasn't bad enough, now you are suggesting that someone might want to run Quark on it (the server)???? That's no way to run a network.
-matthew
Re:Postfix doesn't require a book
on
Postfix
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· Score: 4, Insightful
A book can't hurt. Postfix can do a lot more than what a stock main.cf suggests.
I find this to be very annoying as well. If you can set up virtual desktops, then it can live in its own desktop. But most Win32 users don't have virtual desktops.
Their loss, then.
And here's the deal: if you obnoxious Linux zealots keep responding to points like this with "d00d install linux u l00s3r" and comments about how stupid windows users are, you will continue to miss the point that Linux will survive by gaining mindshare and marketshare, and this will not happen if the majority of Win32 people (yes there are lots of them that don't love Win32, but they like to be productive) have the idea that "wow, the OSS tools on Linux are really hard to use". And that's the impression people get. I would think that if they go to the effort of building and releasing binaries on Win32, they could add some MDI support so people could actually find the product useable without burning through their ALT and TAB keys. My left hand is sore after ever GIMP session on my Win32 box, and I feel like I spend half my time minimizing/restoring windows to try to find the right ones. This is a problem, period. Many solutions, but a good one would be to support MDI, like nearly every other windows app in the world.
Why do so many people assume that Linux based free software developers necessarily WANT to attract a broad Win32 user base? Linux already HAS mindshare and marketshare... more than anyone could ever have hoped for.. more than enough to sustain it's existence and progress. Stop thinking like a capitalist for one second. GIMP was ported to Windows mostly because it was relatively easy to do... not because they wanted to gain marketshare or mindshare.
Furthermore, if you Win32 users want to complain that GIMP doesn't support MDI, well, fuck you. *nix users have virtual desktops by default and THAT is the target audience. Most *nux/GIMP users love the GIMP. Many even feel it is superior to Photoshop. Consider youself lucky that GIMP runs on Windows at all, you ungrateful bastard!
Sorry, but that *is* awkward. Just turn off HTML and/or don't run Outlook and you wont' have to jump through hoops like that. Bottom line is that you shouldn't have to fear opening an email... no matter who it is from. Hell, I don't even have to worry about clicking on attachments. Sometimes I really pitty you Windows/Outlook users.
It's as if they expect the computer to be a fucking telepath with a mind-boggling good AI.
It is as if computer users are Girlfriends From Hell(tm). If I was a computer, I would have broken up with users a long time ago... particularly if I had mind-bogglingly good AI.
did you not read, I sometimes do read unknown email, meaning, I personally filter it, I don't use a refuse all unknown white list. And if I saw, the subject said, In response to Slashdot, or something else that I was aware I was posting to, or investigating, then I read it with HTML turned off, but if it's from my buddies I read it with HTMl on, if it's from my mom or any girl for that matter, I turn HTML off. lol know your email sender, and adjust accordingly.
All that just to avoid getting a virus or malicious HTML? What an awkward way to use email.
You could just simply not view messages from people you don't know. This would solve the majority of problems. I mean if I don't know you, I don't read mail from you, I mean their are times when I take the chance, but lets face it, how often do random people email your personal account?
I get the occasional email from strangers or people I don't normally communicate with via email. For instance, someone from Usenet or a mailing list might email me. I'd hate to miss any one of those. I think it is reasonable to tell people not to open strange attachments, but it isn't reasonable to suggest that people don't even open an email from a stranger. That is just paranoid and unnecessary with reasonable measures taken. Turning off the stupid HTML "feature," don't open strange attachments, run a Bayseian SPAM filter,and everything should be just fine.
Windows Update depends on ActiveX to determine which updates a user already has.Many virus-scanning websites need to be able to read and (and when cleaning, write to) every file on the system, so they need ActiveX too.
Maybe it is time the world gave up on these mega-web-applications. Why can't Microsoft write a damn standalone Windows UPdate application that doesn't use a browser.... like Apple does on OS X? Why does everything need to be web based these days? Sandbox the damn ActiveX crap, restrict user privilges by default, tighten Explorer security settings BY DEFAULT, and ship a standalone app for everything that you can. If Microsoft wants to improve security, they are ultimately going to have to stand up to users and say, "You know what? We will only trade so much security for convenience. Deal with it."
Slashdot Mirror
Live there?? Why would anyone want to give up the relative paradise of Earth for a barren, barely habitable Mars? Certainly nobody who could afford to live on Mars would WANT to live on Mars. Also, whatever resources might be spent on making Mars habitable woudl most certinaly be better spent keeping Earth habitable. Sorry, but terraforming Mars is an utterly ridiculous idea to even entertain at this point in human history.
Seems to me that Mars is much more valuable as a source of scientific data (in its pristine state) and potentially mineral resources. I'm with the scientists that are outraged at the idea of terraforming Mars. All "ethical" arguements asside, it seems like a big waste of time.
-Matthew
For sure, NetWare has the best file permissions structure as well as integration with the Directory.
Another thing I like about Netware is that you could always add "namespaces" to your server filesystem without reformatting or anything. You could add Long (OS/2), Mac, Unix (NFS), etc so you could store permissions and file metadata from OS's other than DOS/Windows.
-matthew
That was point #2 of my plan. Read much?
I know that was #2 of yoru plan. You said your plan is based on technology we have today. Where is it? Where are these nuclear powered space planes?
Pegasus launch solution. It shows that the concept is highly workable.
"highly workable" is a long way from "developed and proven."
Nuclear Thermal Rockets are 40 year old, well understood beasts.
And hydrogen fuel cells are a 100 year old technology. Why am I still driving an internal combustion engine powered car?
[Why would you assume that?] Because that's what my plan called for.
So not only is your plan based on technology we don't have working, but it is also based on infrastructure that we don't have. Kinda like sci-fi, eh?
Here is my plan to get to Mars. Assuming we have matter teleportation technology, we can just send one side of a teleporter to Mars like the latest Mars rover. And then we can just teleport everything back and forth. It is technology we have today... sorta. I mean, weren't they able to teleport a photon in some lab?
Look, my plan is based around building a Mars mission in a roundabout fashion. By building the infrastructure first, we can not only reduce risk, but we can make great strides toward building a space economy. If all we wanted was to go to Mars, we could simply construct heavy lifter craft to get the prep-work cargo and the Mars craft into space and toward Mars. Nothing to it.
So, you'd just leave the astronauts there?
Honestly. Unfortunately, we'd also repeat the mistakes of Apollo. By creating a super-expensive mission with zero economic return, we'd manage to get there, come back, then state that it's too expensive and stay home.
It IS too expensive.. and we WILL stay home.. for now.
Honestly, downplaying and grossly underestimating the technical and logistical hurdles of getting to Mars and back is no way to get your plan implemented or taken seriously. As far as I can tell, you're just another techno-junky with his head in the clouds.
-matthew
Where's the Earth version?
For one, its landing gear would need to be designed to be a bit more like the large wheels on tractors than the small wheels we use on runways today. Retro-thrusters would be needed for braking as parachutes wouldn't be able to grab much air at slow speeds. And of course, large wings would be required to keep aloft at subsonic speeds.
Wow, a spaceplane constructed in LEO (a factory AND space dock?) that is designed to fly in an atmosphere never flown in before. That is pretty impressive considering that we dont' even have a spaceplace that has proved capable of flying in and out of Earth's gravitational pull.
How do you test this Mars spaceplane? How many lost spaceplanes/astronauts have you factored into your grand Mars plan?
And I didn't touch upon logistics because I could be here until sometime next week typing up my post.
You didn't touch upon the logistics because that is where the real costs and undeveloped technologies would show up. You just tossed a few tech buzzwords together, attached arbitrary prices, and called it a complete estimate.
. But if we're assuming that the ability to construct and launch ships in LEO already exists, then a plan costs far less money than from-earth launch systems.
Why would you assume that? THe construction and design of a space factory and dock would have to be factored into the cost of getting to Mars. So would the development of spaceplanes. There is so much that needs to be developed before we can even think about going to Mars. The technology is not here today, my friend. You're living in a sci-fi fantasy. All this stuff you are talking about has yet to be developed and put into production. Some of it may be on the drawingboard, but that doesn't count as "here".
Another reason why I didn't touch upon the logistics is because they've already been done to death. Most logistics estimates show relatively low cost for the prep-work. Depending on how you configure the mission, much of the prep-work could be carried with your craft instead, or sent years in advance.
How can you estimate the logistics for yet-to-be-developed technologies? Has anybody actually used nuclear rockets? Has anybody actually flown a spaceplane in and out of Earth orbit (forget about mars)?
-matthew
Bush doesn't intend to fund the project anyway, so what does it matter? It's just a red herring. $1 trillion is just a good a number as any.
And land where, exactly? Martian Interplantetary Airport? We can barely get a probe to the surface of Mars, and you want to fly a spaceplane there and get it back with current technology for under $100 billion? Give me a break.
The actual logistics are not something I touched upon,
Which is why your estimate is so laughably low.
Zubrin had a very cheap method for making rocket fuel once you get there. Not to mention that a nuclear rocket can be fueled by just about any gas. Send some compressors with them, and they could create their own rocket fuel out of CO2. Actually, it would probably be best to use the reactor to break it into O2 instead, but that's a minor issue.
Make sure the astronauts don't bring more than 2 carryon bags and your plan is sound, I'm sure.
-matthew
-matthew
Hey! Yeah! Maybe we can send Bruce Willis and a bunch of oil riggers to drive around the asteroid in a dune buggy on steroids setting nuclear charges.... Oh, wait, they did that in a (really bad) movie already.
I can't believe you got modded up as "Insightful."
-matthew
-matthew
-matthew
General knowledge... and a whole lot of voodoo! -matthew
Really? I always found Linux desktops to be far more responsive than Windows. Especially when running stuff in the background. Even with Windows 2000 and XP, I still get a lot of "hourglasses" that prevent me from interacting with any application which is totally unacceptable. And don't even get me started on the unresonsiveness of Mac OS X. IMO, kernel 2.6 is merely icing on the cake. There are a lot of drawbacks to Linux on the desktop, but responsiveness and performance are not of them.
Perhaps your problems with Linux respnosiveness on the desktop were related to older kernels not enabling IDE DMA by default. Always make sure you use hdparm to optimize IDE parameters. Personally, I tend to use SCSI on my Linux desktop machines which that is even better for responsiveness and IDE DMA.
-matthew
Then explain why Java GUI applications/applets are are so notoriously unresponsive, slow to redraw, and ugly on all platforms. Maybe your SWING application is different, but somehow I doubt it. Java has no place on my desktop.
-matthew
Like Debian GNU/Linux 'apt-get upgrade'? Any good modern Linux distribution does include a smooth OS update path. But upgrading from kernel 2.4.x to kernel 2.6.x is not something most people are going to want to do. It is not the equivilent of a "service pack." It is much more akin to an OS upgrade. Few expect that to go without a hitch... even on Windows.
It's things like this that puts "normal" people and companies off using Linux on the desktop. To linux guys and developers it's not a big deal, but imagine if you were some granny somewhere - it'd scare the pants off you and if something went wrong, nigh-on impossible to fix.
So when Windows breaks, Granny is capable of fixing it? Give me a break. She's lucky if she is able to format her harddrive and resinstall without a hitch.
-matthew
-matthew
I'd say I run about the same risk of accidentially deleting a non-spam message in a fenzy of spam deleting. You can't trust yourself 100% either. Alls I can say is that I love my Bayesian filter. :-P
As if using MacOS 9 for a server wasn't bad enough, now you are suggesting that someone might want to run Quark on it (the server)???? That's no way to run a network.
-matthew
A book can't hurt. Postfix can do a lot more than what a stock main.cf suggests.
Their loss, then.
And here's the deal: if you obnoxious Linux zealots keep responding to points like this with "d00d install linux u l00s3r" and comments about how stupid windows users are, you will continue to miss the point that Linux will survive by gaining mindshare and marketshare, and this will not happen if the majority of Win32 people (yes there are lots of them that don't love Win32, but they like to be productive) have the idea that "wow, the OSS tools on Linux are really hard to use". And that's the impression people get. I would think that if they go to the effort of building and releasing binaries on Win32, they could add some MDI support so people could actually find the product useable without burning through their ALT and TAB keys. My left hand is sore after ever GIMP session on my Win32 box, and I feel like I spend half my time minimizing/restoring windows to try to find the right ones. This is a problem, period. Many solutions, but a good one would be to support MDI, like nearly every other windows app in the world.
Why do so many people assume that Linux based free software developers necessarily WANT to attract a broad Win32 user base? Linux already HAS mindshare and marketshare... more than anyone could ever have hoped for.. more than enough to sustain it's existence and progress. Stop thinking like a capitalist for one second. GIMP was ported to Windows mostly because it was relatively easy to do... not because they wanted to gain marketshare or mindshare.
Furthermore, if you Win32 users want to complain that GIMP doesn't support MDI, well, fuck you. *nix users have virtual desktops by default and THAT is the target audience. Most *nux/GIMP users love the GIMP. Many even feel it is superior to Photoshop. Consider youself lucky that GIMP runs on Windows at all, you ungrateful bastard!
-matthew
Linux: Expect less. Get more.
Yeah, I'm smug. Sue me.
matthew
It is as if computer users are Girlfriends From Hell(tm). If I was a computer, I would have broken up with users a long time ago... particularly if I had mind-bogglingly good AI.
-matthew
All that just to avoid getting a virus or malicious HTML? What an awkward way to use email.
I get the occasional email from strangers or people I don't normally communicate with via email. For instance, someone from Usenet or a mailing list might email me. I'd hate to miss any one of those. I think it is reasonable to tell people not to open strange attachments, but it isn't reasonable to suggest that people don't even open an email from a stranger. That is just paranoid and unnecessary with reasonable measures taken. Turning off the stupid HTML "feature," don't open strange attachments, run a Bayseian SPAM filter,and everything should be just fine.
-matthew
Maybe it is time the world gave up on these mega-web-applications. Why can't Microsoft write a damn standalone Windows UPdate application that doesn't use a browser.... like Apple does on OS X? Why does everything need to be web based these days? Sandbox the damn ActiveX crap, restrict user privilges by default, tighten Explorer security settings BY DEFAULT, and ship a standalone app for everything that you can. If Microsoft wants to improve security, they are ultimately going to have to stand up to users and say, "You know what? We will only trade so much security for convenience. Deal with it."
-matthew