Seems like there main problem was that they did not get enough people connected simultaniosly to really put the system under any kind of stress. They should announce the next test on/. - I'm sure they'll get more than 80 users then.
Success of Apple Music Store Proves
Apple Users Will Overpay for Anything
Cupertino, CA - Apple's recent announcement that over 1 million songs had been purchased in the first week of its new music store's existence presents undeniable proof that Apple users will overpay for anything.
It's not just the fact that the data is digital. It's the storage media on which digital data usually gets stored. Magnetic media have a relatively short lifetime. CD/CDR/CDR-W/DVD etc. are not much better.
Then there's the technological barrier as well. To extract data from a piece of paper or a rock, all you need is your eyes. Not so with CDs. An archaeologist 10 000 years from now is going to have a hell of a time to figure out how to read a CD, even if it did last that long.
As for your punch card argument: Yeah sure they're still readable. Do you still know the file/character format? How many punch cards would I need to store one word processor document or one photo?
If our future archaeologist can extract the bits from whatever medium, how is he going to figure out what they mean? A sentence written in a dead language and unknown script will still be hundreds of times easier to decode than an arbitrary stream of bits. Let's say our archaeologist finds out that his stream of bits is word processor document. He doesn't know the file format. He doesn't know what language was used. He doesn't know how bits map to the characters of the language etc. etc.
If the Rosetta stone had the same data on, but instead of characters the data was encoded as a Unicode Word document, it would have been as useless as any other rock. If cavemen left their cave paintings as.jpeg files we would never have figured them out.
Yeah sure the bits can survive, but their meaning... I don't think so.
This is exactly the kind of problem that Danny Hillis and the The Long Now Foundation have been pointing out for years. Digital data doesn't last.
"Science historians can read Galileo's technical correspondence from the 1590s but not Marvin Minsky's from the 1960s."
That's why they started the 10k year library project. A part of this project that interests me especially is the Rosetta Project. It's a "near permanent archive of 1,000 languages". It's still a work in progress, so I hope they succeed. In my eyes it's definitely a worthwhile endeavour.
"I realise that I'm not going on a joyride, this is not just a question of getting into space. We are kick-starting an African space programme. It is not good enough to simply take Russian experiments; we must give South African scientists an opportunity."
"Of course there is a personal reward, but at the same time the trip will do a tremendous amount for South Africa in the international arena. Also the money I'm spending on this project is not disappropriate to the money I have already spent on other people and that I gave away."
No money is being wasted here. Mark will go up as a fully trained astronaut. This does not cost any more or less than sending up any other trained person. Please note that Mark went through full cosmonaut training together with normal prospective cosmonauts. The only difference is of course that he paid for his own training..
From the press release :
[He] will be a fully certified member of the Soyuz crew, responsible for some Soyuz systems during the flight
He is by no means just a space tourist like Dennis Tito was.
The difficulties appear to have been resolved though, and through the magnificent power of over $20 million, a just about anyone can get into space.
True, almost. To avoid the problems that Dennis Tito had with NASA (he's a safety risk because of lack of training etc.), Mark went through a much more rigorous and thorough training program. It has been reported that he could in fact be considered as a fully trained cosmonaut.
Also, this will not be a purely recreational trip. He's hoping to make the trip pay for itself by conducting some experiments in space that could later have some commercial value.
There also seems to be some confusion here at/. about the "Go, Africa go" bit in the post. Mark Shuttleworth is a South African. So am I, so : "Go, Mark go"
In a related article SpaceRef talks about how millionaires are now starting to fund these type of private missions and speculates whether billionaires might fund further space projects
The way I see it, this is definitely a Good Thing. The days of unlimited space program budgets ended with the Cold War, and there aren't enough commercial reasons yet for companies to do space exploration. This has caused lots of space programs to basically grind to a halt
I always thought that if I was mega rich that this would be one of the more interesting ways to spend those millions.
There is a theory that if anyone ever discovers exactly what Perl is for and why it is here, it will immediately disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarrely inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened...
There is yet a third theory which states that both the first two theories were concocted by a wily editor of the Camel Book in order to increase the universal level of uncertainty and paranoia, and so boost sales of the book.
The lesson we learned - if you need to handle complex reports and heavy loads, you must custom code them.
Finally someone who gets it. All reporting tools work nicely on small sets of data with simple relations. When a database gets to a certain level of complexity reporting is difficult - no matter which tool you use. Our Clients have BIG databases with complex relationships in the data. Typically they have hundreds of different reports that has to be created dynamically and gets accessed simultaneously by a lot of users. Try hard coding all that in perl. Over a few years we (i.e. the company I work for) has developed our own reporting tool that can generate (amongst other things) HTML. It's big, it's slow and difficult to use. On numerous occasions management has suggested we use some other reporting tool. It always starts of great - "Wow look at this report I did in five minutes!". But then as soon as you want to do something more complex it's either impossible or just as difficult as with our tool.
Reporting is a difficult thing and it will probably stay that way for a long time.
Censorship is not an effective means of dismantling a meme
I agree 100%. In fact it seems that it usually has the exact opposite effect.
When I was about 15 years old I read Hitler's Mein Kampf. Even then it was almost immediately obvious to me that it was the ravings of a complete lunatic. In fact any rational person would be able to see that most of the book is utter nonsense.
The book is banned in most of Europe. People start wondering what the book actually says. Rumours start floating around that the book makes sense and is full of profound insights - that's why the government banned it in the first place. People who feel the same way are grouping together and discussing this book they have never read. And voila ten new neo-nazis are recruited.
The alternative would of course be to make the book a part of the school curriculum. There it can be discussed with children and they can see for themselves what is wrong with the arguments given in the book. All the mysticism surrounding a book disappears and it just becomes another lesson from history - one that we all know we should not forget.
The first rail gun is of course not from QuakeII or the movie Eraser.
I can remember that my Physics textbook at university had a piece in about rail guns. The idea was to shoot down enemy missiles. Normally you would need another (expensive) missile with a complicated guiding system to intercept a missile. Theoretically you could use a rail gun to accelerate a projectile to such a high speed that the target would not have time to move out of the way while the projectile is in the air. So you can just point the gun straight at the target and fire away.
Movies and video games aside, it will never be practical to have a handheld rail gun. Apart from the portable nuclear reactor that you would need to supply enough energy, the recoil would rip your arms off.
PS. The first handheld rail gun I can remember was in the game Shadow Warrior.
There is one major problem with capitalism - If you sell somebody something that does not need replacement regularly, you lose the opportunity to sell the same thing to them again. That way you are going to run out of customers sooner or later.
That's why the ideal product from a marketing perspective is something that is desirable, but either totally useless or that has a very limited lifespan.
So the strategy that most (especially tech) companies follow is to bring out product A and then bring out product B a short while later which is basically the same product but with extra features that you just can't live without. In fact why did you buy product A in the first place as it clearly does not fulfil the needs of a person living in the modern world. Then a few months later product C comes out etc. ad infinitum.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it must be crack ... 'cause there's nothing that a crack addict won't do for money
Seems like there main problem was that they did not get enough people connected simultaniosly to really put the system under any kind of stress. They should announce the next test on /. - I'm sure they'll get more than 80 users then.
Cupertino, CA - Apple's recent announcement that over 1 million songs had been purchased in the first week of its new music store's existence presents undeniable proof that Apple users will overpay for anything.
More at BBSpot
Point taken, but...
.jpeg files we would never have figured them out.
It's not just the fact that the data is digital. It's the storage media on which digital data usually gets stored. Magnetic media have a relatively short lifetime. CD/CDR/CDR-W/DVD etc. are not much better.
Then there's the technological barrier as well. To extract data from a piece of paper or a rock, all you need is your eyes. Not so with CDs. An archaeologist 10 000 years from now is going to have a hell of a time to figure out how to read a CD, even if it did last that long.
As for your punch card argument: Yeah sure they're still readable. Do you still know the file/character format? How many punch cards would I need to store one word processor document or one photo?
If our future archaeologist can extract the bits from whatever medium, how is he going to figure out what they mean? A sentence written in a dead language and unknown script will still be hundreds of times easier to decode than an arbitrary stream of bits. Let's say our archaeologist finds out that his stream of bits is word processor document. He doesn't know the file format. He doesn't know what language was used. He doesn't know how bits map to the characters of the language etc. etc.
If the Rosetta stone had the same data on, but instead of characters the data was encoded as a Unicode Word document, it would have been as useless as any other rock. If cavemen left their cave paintings as
Yeah sure the bits can survive, but their meaning... I don't think so.
This is exactly the kind of problem that Danny Hillis and the The Long Now Foundation have been pointing out for years. Digital data doesn't last.
"Science historians can read Galileo's technical correspondence from the 1590s but not Marvin Minsky's from the 1960s."
That's why they started the 10k year library project. A part of this project that interests me especially is the Rosetta Project. It's a "near permanent archive of 1,000 languages". It's still a work in progress, so I hope they succeed. In my eyes it's definitely a worthwhile endeavour.
A few quotes :
"I realise that I'm not going on a joyride, this is not just a question of getting into space. We are kick-starting an African space programme. It is not good enough to simply take Russian experiments; we must give South African scientists an opportunity."
"Of course there is a personal reward, but at the same time the trip will do a tremendous amount for South Africa in the international arena. Also the money I'm spending on this project is not disappropriate to the money I have already spent on other people and that I gave away."
No money is being wasted here. Mark will go up as a fully trained astronaut. This does not cost any more or less than sending up any other trained person. Please note that Mark went through full cosmonaut training together with normal prospective cosmonauts. The only difference is of course that he paid for his own training..
From the press release :
[He] will be a fully certified member of the Soyuz crew, responsible for some Soyuz systems during the flight
He is by no means just a space tourist like Dennis Tito was.
The difficulties appear to have been resolved though, and through the magnificent power of over $20 million, a just about anyone can get into space.
True, almost. To avoid the problems that Dennis Tito had with NASA (he's a safety risk because of lack of training etc.), Mark went through a much more rigorous and thorough training program. It has been reported that he could in fact be considered as a fully trained cosmonaut.
Also, this will not be a purely recreational trip. He's hoping to make the trip pay for itself by conducting some experiments in space that could later have some commercial value.
There also seems to be some confusion here at /. about the "Go, Africa go" bit in the post. Mark Shuttleworth is a South African. So am I, so : "Go, Mark go"
If wonder space tourists will also one day be charged per kilo
Guess I'll have to start dieting , just in case...
Wouldn't it be kind of ummm... funny if the funniest joke in the world turns out to be Monty Pythons "Funniest Joke in the World" sketch.
I thought it went :
A seal walks into a club.
In a related article SpaceRef talks about how millionaires are now starting to fund these type of private missions and speculates whether billionaires might fund further space projects
The way I see it, this is definitely a Good Thing. The days of unlimited space program budgets ended with the Cold War, and there aren't enough commercial reasons yet for companies to do space exploration. This has caused lots of space programs to basically grind to a halt
I always thought that if I was mega rich that this would be one of the more interesting ways to spend those millions.
There is a theory that if anyone ever discovers exactly what Perl is for and why it is here, it will immediately disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarrely inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened...
There is yet a third theory which states that both the first two theories were concocted by a wily editor of the Camel Book in order to increase the universal level of uncertainty and paranoia, and so boost sales of the book.
The lesson we learned - if you need to handle complex reports and heavy loads, you must custom code them.
Finally someone who gets it. All reporting tools work nicely on small sets of data with simple relations. When a database gets to a certain level of complexity reporting is difficult - no matter which tool you use.
Our Clients have BIG databases with complex relationships in the data. Typically they have hundreds of different reports that has to be created dynamically and gets accessed simultaneously by a lot of users. Try hard coding all that in perl.
Over a few years we (i.e. the company I work for) has developed our own reporting tool that can generate (amongst other things) HTML. It's big, it's slow and difficult to use. On numerous occasions management has suggested we use some other reporting tool. It always starts of great - "Wow look at this report I did in five minutes!". But then as soon as you want to do something more complex it's either impossible or just as difficult as with our tool.
Reporting is a difficult thing and it will probably stay that way for a long time.
Censorship is not an effective means of dismantling a meme
I agree 100%. In fact it seems that it usually has the exact opposite effect.
When I was about 15 years old I read Hitler's Mein Kampf. Even then it was almost immediately obvious to me that it was the ravings of a complete lunatic. In fact any rational person would be able to see that most of the book is utter nonsense.
The book is banned in most of Europe. People start wondering what the book actually says. Rumours start floating around that the book makes sense and is full of profound insights - that's why the government banned it in the first place. People who feel the same way are grouping together and discussing this book they have never read. And voila ten new neo-nazis are recruited.
The alternative would of course be to make the book a part of the school curriculum. There it can be discussed with children and they can see for themselves what is wrong with the arguments given in the book. All the mysticism surrounding a book disappears and it just becomes another lesson from history - one that we all know we should not forget.
The first rail gun is of course not from QuakeII or the movie Eraser.
I can remember that my Physics textbook at university had a piece in about rail guns. The idea was to shoot down enemy missiles. Normally you would need another (expensive) missile with a complicated guiding system to intercept a missile. Theoretically you could use a rail gun to accelerate a projectile to such a high speed that the target would not have time to move out of the way while the projectile is in the air. So you can just point the gun straight at the target and fire away.
Movies and video games aside, it will never be practical to have a handheld rail gun. Apart from the portable nuclear reactor that you would need to supply enough energy, the recoil would rip your arms off.
PS. The first handheld rail gun I can remember was in the game Shadow Warrior.
There is one major problem with capitalism - If you sell somebody something that does not need replacement regularly, you lose the opportunity to sell the same thing to them again. That way you are going to run out of customers sooner or later.
That's why the ideal product from a marketing perspective is something that is desirable, but either totally useless or that has a very limited lifespan.
So the strategy that most (especially tech) companies follow is to bring out product A and then bring out product B a short while later which is basically the same product but with extra features that you just can't live without. In fact why did you buy product A in the first place as it clearly does not fulfil the needs of a person living in the modern world. Then a few months later product C comes out etc. ad infinitum.
The guys at The Long Now Foundation seem to think that digital media will deteriorate. They have a plan to counter it.