You're exactly right: the ISS was dreamed up in a time when NASA thought "private industry" would find all sorts of things to do in space, so they would fork over money and have it done in their station.
By the time everyone figured out there was basically nothing of scientific value that needed the whole space station, NASA was already committed. What they should have done is said "oops, actually could we just please have all the space station money and use it for something else?" -- but that's understandably hard to do, because it would make them look incompetent. What they went with insted is the "let's cook up some thin stories to justify this monstrosity; they only need to be good enough to fool some senators."
It kills me that we have already spent enough NASA money on this to fund the Pathfinder mission 200+ times over. That's when NASA was at their best (in science, bargain-hunting and self-promotion).
The space station is now operational, but we don't hear anything about it because nothing is happening there. And there won't be, even when all the parts are attached! Sure, they'll act like all kinds of neato science things need the space station, but for any experiment they do, ask yourself whether the same thing could have been done in an independently-launched, self-contained experimental satelite, which would have been much cheaper. Most things, like growing crystals and perfect vaccuum research, will require independent satellites anyway, because of the vibration caused by motors and centrifuges on the ISS, and because the ISS will inevitably leak a little bit, so it will be surrounded by a cloud of gas. Any studies on physiological effects of weightlessness would just duplicate what was done on the MIR... and let's see... what else was there supposed to be?
My first reaction to the ISS is that though it's useless, it's still cool, just because it's a SPACE STATION, and I always hoped we'd have a nice one. But it's not innocent like that: Not only does the ISS draw money from much more interesting and budget-constrained experiments; it also makes NASA look like bumbling fools when in 2005 a panel concludes (correctly) that we basically didn't learn anything on the ISS that experiments costing 1/10 as much could have told us. In the next budget, NASA's funding request will get lauged at. NASA's epitaph will curse the ISS, and that's why it sucks.
Dear Spy Hunter, you are absolutely right. Nanotech is an incredibly charming concept, and we easily get charmed out of forgetting simple laws of physics. One we remember them, we see there's no way to build a general assembler like Drexler and all the nano-cultists envision.
It's a shame; I'd love to see one--but it's time to get used to the idea that it's just not gonna happen.
Fine, but I don't know of another lab at MIT who would do this, and the project has Media Lab stench all over it (pointlessness and gee-whizzity).
I'll believe you if you have evidence that it's NOT them, but that would be sad, because I don't want to believe that the rest of MIT sold out to the media.
Jezus, I think it's about time to consider the attitude "I don't give a shit what those sellouts at the Media Lab are doing now."
Instead of researching the difficult and unglamorous stuff which will result in the next wave of technological progress, they're playing with parrots, training their dogs over the internet, and making cutesy robots which have no use beyond getting Omni magazine and dumbed-down "isn't-science-neat"-type shows to give them publicity. Maybe this results in grants... but I can't imagine MIT alums would be so dumb as to think this is the sort of work that deserves their funding. But I worry that I am overestimating their wisdom, probably because of the mystique of MIT. The Media Lab is now the "Let the Media Stroke our Egos" lab.
Now think how you would react if you read that work like this had instead been done at SUNY Bingamton or some other or the University of Kentucky (two decent schools). Like every other sane person, you would think they're just wanking. The only reason why we don't think that of the Media Lab is because we think "oh, it's MIT, so there must be something important behind this that they don't explain in their media relations." I hate to tell you this, but there isn't.
Mind you, I'm not saying we shouldn't allow these self-righteous wankers to do their work. Self-righteous wanking is something I think should and must live on in academia. What I oppose is treating these wankers as anything but what they are, as though they had a halo around them.
Yeah, I've seen the benchmarks. An 800 MHz Itanium is trounced by a 133 MHz Pentium when it comes to running x86 code. This hardly passes for backward compatibility.
1. Desktop users don't want Linux because the spellcheckers suck.
2. Linux developers are wasting their energy on desktop-oriented software, like office suites.
I wonder why it never occured to the guy that maybe if more developers "wasted their time" fixing up a good open source spellchecker, his employee would have never needed a Windows partition.
Good point about rippinng with cdparanoia. There is a Windows equivalent: Exact Audio Copy.
Maybe it's a sign my ear/audio gear isn't first rate, but I have no hope of distinguishing a 256 Kbps LAME mp3 from the uncompressed WAV. With my big stereo speakers, I often can't even hear the artefacts on a 192 Kbps mp3 when I use my big speakers, even when they're up loud.
I find this totally acceptable, and will not replace LAME as my primary encoder unless I get indistinguishability at a lower bitrate.
Notice that I'm not saying any 256 Kbps mp3 will sound just like the original--only those encoded on a recent LAME beta. If you can reliably distinguish a 256Lame from the original in a double-blind test, I'll be impressed. Please describe the song and your gear.
If you really care which format sounds best and want your listening tests to be taken seriously, do them right. (I worry many people don't really care about the sound, and want to just take this topic as an opportunity to plug the format which they favor for political reasons.)
But if you do care about the actual sound, rip some tracks you like from different types of albums. Then, cut out one part of the.WAV file and encode it using different MP3 encoders and different bitrates. (Or, if you want to save time, use only LAME for MP3, because there's a near-consensus that it gets the best sound. Don't forget to try VBR.) Then encode it in OGG format, also at various bitrates.
Now, the important step:
Decode the OGGs/MP3s back to a.WAV file, and make sure you name your files so you know which is which. Now, ask your roommate to burn all these.WAV files on a CD in an order that will not be revealed to you. Also burn the WAV that never went through compression/decompression (see if you can identify it by sound). Now, get your best pair of headphones, go to your stereo with a pad of paper, play the tracks over and over, and take notes on which track sounds the best.
Only after you've decided which tracks sound the best can you ask your roommate which tracks were encoded with which method.
This is not hard to do, and absolutely necessary if you want anyone to take your opinion about encoder quality seriously.
spork
He's not a freaking entertainer, get over it!
on
Torvalds Tells All
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I think Slashdot people forget that life is not a big race for mod points and Karma. Sure, if you had done that interview, you would have waxed philosophical about the crappy networking layer in NT, and the fabulous features Linux will have in 10 years.
In the hours that it took you to compose enough bullshit to reach the Karma cap, Linus probably answers hundreds of emails, merges some patches, does some testing, etc. He does not, and should not involve himself in every Slashdot-style controversy. That doesn't mean he's a worse person than the average karma whore, but sounds like Slashdot is disappointed he's not trying to become one.
Perhaps the obvious fact he has something better to do hits a bit too close to home among the Slashdot crowd.
I honestly doubt that terrorist organizations would go through all the trouble of sending off people to get educated if physics, having them build a supercluster and compose simulation software, throw up and test some designs, etc. Much more likely, they'll buy finished bombs, or they'll at least buy pre-tested blueprints.
This might be different in for a country like Iraq who already have many educated physicists, and they have a realistic chance of actually doing all this work from scratch. Of course, the IEEE is doing random inspections there all the time, but maybe they could "disguise" their number-crunching supercomputer as a 256 separate workstation terminals for all the government clerks who write email. By night, thought, it's Linuxtime.
You're right about the missing material, but I'm sure someone somewhere will be willing to sell 10kg of it... (the more people we bomb, the more likely that seems).
This isn't about sports--it's about geeks building cool things. Imagine that instead of some hired jock pedaling the thing, there was instead a hamster. That would clearly not be a sport, and it's not a big difference, believe me.
Which makes me think a bit... Why not try and build the ultimate hamster-powered vehicle?
My roommate went 81 MPH on his rollerblades, tucked close behind a truck to avoid air resistance. He did this on a very steep stretch of freeway in San Luis Obispo, CA. The police found out about it through the local paper, and they thought it was cool. I miss that place...
spork
Re:What are you gonna do with it?
on
Webpads, Anyone?
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· Score: 1
Rather than hooking this thing up to a network and to a good amp/speakers, wouldn't it be easier to just turn on your stereo?
Now, if the thing were an ueber-remote, that might be interesting. With a nice interface, it could be your home media device. I can imagine commands like "play ???.mp3, bedroom 2, volume 4" but I wouldn't want the webpad to actually do the playing. Rather, it would instruct my music server to execute command and route the sound output into the system I specified. Then, I could control the features of that system itself, like the volume.
So I agree with you that the thing isn't very useful unless you're sitting around the house, but when you are, why not just go to your computer? Are you so lazy you can't drag your butt to your desk? And when you're on the web, are you sure you're not going to need to type something? (Say, on Slashdot.) It will be such a pain to compose even a short post with that stupid palm-style pen that you would have been better off having walked to your desk. And, may I add, $600 richer!
It's non-volitile memory is a whopping 32MB, which is less than my camera. I just don't see how this will be useful. If a part of that runs the OS, how many MP3s can you store? One?
Unless you think it's cool to sit at Starbucks and check your email. I don't think it's very cool to even enter a Starbucks, unless you really need to pee.
I bet you HP and many other tech companies have people who called the government telling them they should bomb "enemy" computers because they are "weapons systems." With this cluster, we see this justification could apply to any computer whatsoever.
Then, the US gets tired of bombing, and HP sells them new machines. Soon thereafter, we decide their new "good" dictator is just as bad as their old "bad" dictator, and the cycle begins again.
I think this is a fair comparison: everyone knows that OpenOffice is even less efficient than OXP with memory, so people whine about how slowly it runs on their machines. Well, you can get 8 Gigabytes of ram for the price of MS Office. You'll need less than 1/100th of that to achieve performance parity.
I like that the characters finally have a measure of humanity. They're occasionally noble, often shortsighted, easily amused and excited, sometimes brave, usually susceptible to blind
predjudice, quarrelsome, hypocritical, and driven by baser instincts they usually dont try to understand. This is a return to the happier days of TOS when (wo)men were (wo)men and
even when Kirk would give a sanctimonious speech about his / Federation ideals at the end of an episode, you could hardly forget that he spent the bulk of the episode violating
almost every single one of the Federation's sacred beliefs and rules. That sort of willful inconsistency and hypocrisy is typical of almost every human who has held any sort of real
power. That is how people would really act, not as the insufferable, always correct robot that was Picard / Janeway.
Umm, fool, did you stop to consider these people weren't in a van doing bonghits? They were in the first freaking starship ever built by humans, quite possibly the most expensive device terrestrial taxpayers ever funded.
Do you really think this is how they should have been behaving? Do you think this should go on in the bridge of an aricraft carrier? Capitain says: I know what my mission was, but I've got issues, you know, so I'll just violate orders and go chasing after something against the better judgement of experts, yes, into uncharted and probably hostile waters, but things might turn out OK and dammit, we have to try.
I hope episode two begins with a dishonorable discharge for the whole crew, and then maybe we can start again.
Jesus, back in my day, it was a geek's patriotic duty to bitch about plotholes and stupid, stupid, idiotic, moronic, ridiculous scripts.
What's so awful about this isn't the wooden acting, the gratuitous sexual tension with an unreceptive hot chick and the crappy crew...
It's instead the signal from the producers that they are prepared to dumb down Gene Rodenberry's baby by about two orders of magnitude. The real geeks among you surely saw the Simpsons episode with Poochie the dog. Here too, we see a boardroom-scripted "market-tested" series of "themes" that certain surveys revealed to be engaging to today's viewers (like Poochie was supposed to be).
The last thing we geeks need is a sci-fi show for the lowest common denominator. Looks like we got one anyway. Enjoy your death trap, ladies!
I don't understand how you shitheads could keep repeating this drivel. Do you realize that the P4 can't even fit in a standard ATX case? What power supply do you have on your P4? I hope it's not under 300W.
Apart from this, your sig makes it clear you are a complete idiot.
1. It's not a virtue pay Rambus money.
2. DDR makes most apps run faster than Rambus on the P4.
3. What CPU heavy applications do you use on a regular basis which have full SSE support?
4. Commitment to Open Source from Intel, not AMD? Don't make me laugh! Oops, too late... thinking of Wintel.
I guess there will always be people like you, eager to spread FUD which has repeatedly shown to be erroneous. P4 FUDsters inevitably retreat to "reliability" because that's the only thing that doesn't get measured in benchmarking tests. (On every significant thing that has been measured, you lose.) So why are you so damn sure about this? Or are you just repeating this because yo mama told you to buy Intel, or because you heard this in church? Maybe you're hoping for a miraculous share price recovery... I wouldn't...
Slashdot Mirror
By the time everyone figured out there was basically nothing of scientific value that needed the whole space station, NASA was already committed. What they should have done is said "oops, actually could we just please have all the space station money and use it for something else?" -- but that's understandably hard to do, because it would make them look incompetent. What they went with insted is the "let's cook up some thin stories to justify this monstrosity; they only need to be good enough to fool some senators."
It kills me that we have already spent enough NASA money on this to fund the Pathfinder mission 200+ times over. That's when NASA was at their best (in science, bargain-hunting and self-promotion).
The space station is now operational, but we don't hear anything about it because nothing is happening there. And there won't be, even when all the parts are attached! Sure, they'll act like all kinds of neato science things need the space station, but for any experiment they do, ask yourself whether the same thing could have been done in an independently-launched, self-contained experimental satelite, which would have been much cheaper. Most things, like growing crystals and perfect vaccuum research, will require independent satellites anyway, because of the vibration caused by motors and centrifuges on the ISS, and because the ISS will inevitably leak a little bit, so it will be surrounded by a cloud of gas. Any studies on physiological effects of weightlessness would just duplicate what was done on the MIR... and let's see... what else was there supposed to be?
My first reaction to the ISS is that though it's useless, it's still cool, just because it's a SPACE STATION, and I always hoped we'd have a nice one. But it's not innocent like that: Not only does the ISS draw money from much more interesting and budget-constrained experiments; it also makes NASA look like bumbling fools when in 2005 a panel concludes (correctly) that we basically didn't learn anything on the ISS that experiments costing 1/10 as much could have told us. In the next budget, NASA's funding request will get lauged at. NASA's epitaph will curse the ISS, and that's why it sucks.
Well, I'm glad that somebody here on Slashdot has some sense! Now I only wish I had mod points for the parent post, which should be Insightful +5.
You actually understate the matter: It's almost certain that general assemblers are inconsistent with the laws of physics. Tough luck.
It's a shame; I'd love to see one--but it's time to get used to the idea that it's just not gonna happen.
spork
I'll believe you if you have evidence that it's NOT them, but that would be sad, because I don't want to believe that the rest of MIT sold out to the media.
Instead of researching the difficult and unglamorous stuff which will result in the next wave of technological progress, they're playing with parrots, training their dogs over the internet, and making cutesy robots which have no use beyond getting Omni magazine and dumbed-down "isn't-science-neat"-type shows to give them publicity. Maybe this results in grants... but I can't imagine MIT alums would be so dumb as to think this is the sort of work that deserves their funding. But I worry that I am overestimating their wisdom, probably because of the mystique of MIT. The Media Lab is now the "Let the Media Stroke our Egos" lab.
Now think how you would react if you read that work like this had instead been done at SUNY Bingamton or some other or the University of Kentucky (two decent schools). Like every other sane person, you would think they're just wanking. The only reason why we don't think that of the Media Lab is because we think "oh, it's MIT, so there must be something important behind this that they don't explain in their media relations." I hate to tell you this, but there isn't.
Mind you, I'm not saying we shouldn't allow these self-righteous wankers to do their work. Self-righteous wanking is something I think should and must live on in academia. What I oppose is treating these wankers as anything but what they are, as though they had a halo around them.
spork
Umm, they were kidding. Most people get it even if they don't write "nudge nudge, wink wink."
Yeah, I've seen the benchmarks. An 800 MHz Itanium is trounced by a 133 MHz Pentium when it comes to running x86 code. This hardly passes for backward compatibility.
2. Linux developers are wasting their energy on desktop-oriented software, like office suites.
I wonder why it never occured to the guy that maybe if more developers "wasted their time" fixing up a good open source spellchecker, his employee would have never needed a Windows partition.
Maybe it's a sign my ear/audio gear isn't first rate, but I have no hope of distinguishing a 256 Kbps LAME mp3 from the uncompressed WAV. With my big stereo speakers, I often can't even hear the artefacts on a 192 Kbps mp3 when I use my big speakers, even when they're up loud.
I find this totally acceptable, and will not replace LAME as my primary encoder unless I get indistinguishability at a lower bitrate.
Notice that I'm not saying any 256 Kbps mp3 will sound just like the original--only those encoded on a recent LAME beta. If you can reliably distinguish a 256Lame from the original in a double-blind test, I'll be impressed. Please describe the song and your gear.
spork
But if you do care about the actual sound, rip some tracks you like from different types of albums. Then, cut out one part of the .WAV file and encode it using different MP3 encoders and different bitrates. (Or, if you want to save time, use only LAME for MP3, because there's a near-consensus that it gets the best sound. Don't forget to try VBR.) Then encode it in OGG format, also at various bitrates.
Now, the important step:
Decode the OGGs/MP3s back to a .WAV file, and make sure you name your files so you know which is which. Now, ask your roommate to burn all these .WAV files on a CD in an order that will not be revealed to you. Also burn the WAV that never went through compression/decompression (see if you can identify it by sound). Now, get your best pair of headphones, go to your stereo with a pad of paper, play the tracks over and over, and take notes on which track sounds the best.
Only after you've decided which tracks sound the best can you ask your roommate which tracks were encoded with which method.
This is not hard to do, and absolutely necessary if you want anyone to take your opinion about encoder quality seriously.
spork
In the hours that it took you to compose enough bullshit to reach the Karma cap, Linus probably answers hundreds of emails, merges some patches, does some testing, etc. He does not, and should not involve himself in every Slashdot-style controversy. That doesn't mean he's a worse person than the average karma whore, but sounds like Slashdot is disappointed he's not trying to become one.
Perhaps the obvious fact he has something better to do hits a bit too close to home among the Slashdot crowd.
After reading about the bandwidth heaven that is Sweden, I'm shocked he'd actually want to leave! US girlfriend, maybe? She's not worth it, trust me!
This might be different in for a country like Iraq who already have many educated physicists, and they have a realistic chance of actually doing all this work from scratch. Of course, the IEEE is doing random inspections there all the time, but maybe they could "disguise" their number-crunching supercomputer as a 256 separate workstation terminals for all the government clerks who write email. By night, thought, it's Linuxtime.
You're right about the missing material, but I'm sure someone somewhere will be willing to sell 10kg of it... (the more people we bomb, the more likely that seems).
spork
Which makes me think a bit... Why not try and build the ultimate hamster-powered vehicle?
spork
spork
Now, if the thing were an ueber-remote, that might be interesting. With a nice interface, it could be your home media device. I can imagine commands like "play ???.mp3, bedroom 2, volume 4" but I wouldn't want the webpad to actually do the playing. Rather, it would instruct my music server to execute command and route the sound output into the system I specified. Then, I could control the features of that system itself, like the volume.
So I agree with you that the thing isn't very useful unless you're sitting around the house, but when you are, why not just go to your computer? Are you so lazy you can't drag your butt to your desk? And when you're on the web, are you sure you're not going to need to type something? (Say, on Slashdot.) It will be such a pain to compose even a short post with that stupid palm-style pen that you would have been better off having walked to your desk. And, may I add, $600 richer!
Unless you think it's cool to sit at Starbucks and check your email. I don't think it's very cool to even enter a Starbucks, unless you really need to pee.
Then, the US gets tired of bombing, and HP sells them new machines. Soon thereafter, we decide their new "good" dictator is just as bad as their old "bad" dictator, and the cycle begins again.
I think this is a fair comparison: everyone knows that OpenOffice is even less efficient than OXP with memory, so people whine about how slowly it runs on their machines. Well, you can get 8 Gigabytes of ram for the price of MS Office. You'll need less than 1/100th of that to achieve performance parity.
Umm, fool, did you stop to consider these people weren't in a van doing bonghits? They were in the first freaking starship ever built by humans, quite possibly the most expensive device terrestrial taxpayers ever funded.
Do you really think this is how they should have been behaving? Do you think this should go on in the bridge of an aricraft carrier? Capitain says: I know what my mission was, but I've got issues, you know, so I'll just violate orders and go chasing after something against the better judgement of experts, yes, into uncharted and probably hostile waters, but things might turn out OK and dammit, we have to try.
I hope episode two begins with a dishonorable discharge for the whole crew, and then maybe we can start again.
What's so awful about this isn't the wooden acting, the gratuitous sexual tension with an unreceptive hot chick and the crappy crew...
It's instead the signal from the producers that they are prepared to dumb down Gene Rodenberry's baby by about two orders of magnitude. The real geeks among you surely saw the Simpsons episode with Poochie the dog. Here too, we see a boardroom-scripted "market-tested" series of "themes" that certain surveys revealed to be engaging to today's viewers (like Poochie was supposed to be).
The last thing we geeks need is a sci-fi show for the lowest common denominator. Looks like we got one anyway. Enjoy your death trap, ladies!
spork
Apart from this, your sig makes it clear you are a complete idiot.
Companies don't do good. They're run by dirty, immoral capitalists. Despite this, some do well.
2. DDR makes most apps run faster than Rambus on the P4.
3. What CPU heavy applications do you use on a regular basis which have full SSE support?
4. Commitment to Open Source from Intel, not AMD? Don't make me laugh! Oops, too late... thinking of Wintel.
I guess there will always be people like you, eager to spread FUD which has repeatedly shown to be erroneous. P4 FUDsters inevitably retreat to "reliability" because that's the only thing that doesn't get measured in benchmarking tests. (On every significant thing that has been measured, you lose.) So why are you so damn sure about this? Or are you just repeating this because yo mama told you to buy Intel, or because you heard this in church? Maybe you're hoping for a miraculous share price recovery... I wouldn't...