True: Greenspan's flawed religious ideology for the God of the Invisible Hand was probably much more harmful than the physical terror attack that happened on 9/11 - but Greenspan's rate cut was a predictable over-reaction to the economic hiccup caused by 9/11. Guess who has a degree in economics? Osama bin Laden. Guess what his stated goal was in the attack (as a public goal - prior to the 9/11 attack being carried out)? It was to carry out a large-scale terror attack, knock the US economy off balance, cause us to overreact, toppling the entire system.
Not bad, eh?
Of course, those of us who were paying attention at the time looked at what Greenspan was doing, (not to mention that the rate cuts were also abused to finance the war. . . all borrowed money, btw) - and saying: "duh!".
At the end of the day, the basics of OOP come from Discrete Math. Discrete Math is not a concept for beginning programmers.
I don't think there's really an easy "single language" solution to getting people familiar and comfortable with the basic ideas of variables, flow control, and hell, file systems, interpreters, etc. It's a LOT to swallow at first to tell someone about state machines, abstract data types (let alone data types), inheritance, etc.
I somewhat agree that the traditional progression is probably not an idea solution, but the best practical one: LOGO or BASIC -> C -> assembler -> perl or javascript or ruby or python -> java or c++ - but in parallel, they've got to be learning about their Discrete Math, set theory, state machines, data structures, hardware architecture, networking, distributed systems, relational theory and databases, etc.
In short, there's no shortcut to swallowing all of Computer Science. I think that the reason so many different languages exist in the first place is each addresses a different subset of needs.
While it's compelling to want to not have to learn all these tools, that's like an auto mechanic wanting to do everything with a screwdriver, and never wanting to learn how to use a ratchet wrench, sockets, torque wrench, torx, volt meter, ODB, vacuum meter, (etc).
It's really complicated stuff for most people, and takes a lot of time to learn.
I got this same diatribe a couple of years ago from a manager at [big_defense_contractor] who was trying to stroke the ego of some purchasing guy in the AF, who wanted to go all gung-ho with MS products.
I don't know what finally became of that project (because I went to work on a different one), but I do know that the government auditing agency was going to be MITRE.org, and the guy in charge of that was an absolutely fanatical pro-linux/unix jihadist. I figured that the DD-250 event would be an exercise in a massive platform-holy-war arms-race.
There are fanatics on both sides, and neither are very constructive to the end of delivering "best of breed" systems to customers. (*cough* windowssucks *cough*) - at the end of the day, most folks who opt for linux/opensource, in my experience, are trying to run away from dealing with licensing/activation issues, and how they create headaches for engineering process and configuration management. Pretty simple, really. Software can be free, or expensive, but when you drive TCO up because you're paranoid that your legitimate paying customers are pirates. . . well, you just deserve to lose them.
Even the term "WMD" vastly overstates their destructiveness.
There is no comparison to the effect of a blast from a modern thermonuclear device.
Chemical weapons are scary to be sure. But there is no good way to effectively distribute them over a wide range without using a massive barrage, like hundreds of artillery pieces, or several squadrons of bombers.
Yes - lots and lots of people would die, and assets (buildings/land) will be contaminated - invoking a costly cleanup effort, or lingering hazards, but this is NOTHING compared to the widespread devastation of a thermonuclear blast.
Biological weapons are similarly very difficult to actually use, in practice - with anthrax being the only (known) variant that presents a lingering, persistent hazard (those spores are HARD to eliminate). Again; distribution becomes a very difficult problem to solve without a large-scale deployment effort. Deaths are easily mitigated via medical treatment in the case of anthrax. Some of the more exotic ones pose a hazard to the attackers (smallpox, etc.)
In any case - again, we're talking orders of magnitude of difference in impact versus thermonuclear weapons.
To hang the "WMD" label on botnets is a complete FARCE. Can the technique be a very effective prelude to a physical attack by disrupting Command and Control function of the target? Yes it can. Could a botnet paralyze a defender's economy, causing a domestic distraction from external defense activities (ie. riot suppression, etc.) making the defender more vulnerable to a physical attack? Sure. Can a botnet kill anybody? Not directly - no.
Note: Corrupt lying politicians have always, and continue to be a far greater threat than any tool of destruction ever devised.
Speed limits are NOT set like that. At least in my town. Speed limits are set in proportion to the real estate value of the houses on that street.
>$200k is 45 mph. $200,000 - $500,000 = 35 mph. $500,000 - $750,000 = 25 mph. (higher end of that range gets public funds for speed bumps). $750,000 and up usually 10mph, private roads, security guard and gate at the subdivision entrance.
And if you can find a house less than $150k in California - you're probably talking about either next to train tracks, or on a 55mph highway.
Despite the fact that talking on a cell phone may cause my death, and the death of others. . .
It's DAMN CONVENIENT to talk on the phone while you're driving. It's multitasking. It's taking advantage of otherwise "dead time" where you would otherwise be accomplishing nothing other than steering your car, going from point a to point b.
You fill this dead time with something productive - relating to other people. Why wait until you get home to talk to your mom on the phone, then risk a potentially deadly conflict with your wife - jealous that you're taking up HER time to talk with your mother?
That said: if you look at cell phone coverage maps - cell phone coverage is HIGHLY correlated to highway maps. Towers are in populated areas, and along highways, giving motorists coverage. There are very few major roads that do not provide solid coverage through otherwise remote areas.
(this is also where power/electricity to run the equipment is most accessible in most cases).
I'm not speaking as an advocate of cellphone driving. . . I'm just pointing out that this problem is far more complicated than simply the moral dilemma of "talking on the phone while driving is irresponsible".
Clearly there is a need for this - it's a problem that needs to be solved. I believe that there's no obvious solution to this problem - (maybe self-driving cars?) - and that just like speeding and drunk-driving, people will continue to talk or text while driving, they'll pay the fines when they're caught, and the behavior will just plain continue.
Hell - people still murder even though there are still jail sentences or capital punishment.
nobody's going to buy that garbage, because there is NOBODY who can force a guy to make his house payments when he's lost his job and has no savings, and an average of $13k credit card debt.
Even when this guy is one of the lucky few to get a new job, or find a buyer for his upside-down property; that security is worthless.
These MBS derivatives are only as good as the job market, and incomes have been steadily dropping for middle-class earners for 30 years.
Whoever thought these MBS's were good investments were either smoking crack, or knew that their institution's size would intimidate the government into bailing them out when the MBS's failed - and either way, they got their bonuses for the original early performance of MBS's so they can float away on their golden parachutes anyway.
In other words - the bailout just encourages more bad behavior. But anyone who had been paying attention knows this already.
The real fix for our broken economy is to realize that 2/3 of the economy is CONSUMER SPENDING. Consumers ain't gonna spend what they don't have. To fix the economy, wages must go up. Across the board.
Until the fatcats realize this - the US will continue it's downward spiral towards becoming the next American Banana Republic.
Bust some CEO heads. Put the scammers in jail. Frogmarch them out of their skyscrapers on national television.
Hold them accountable for their astronomical bonuses and golden parachutes.
Allow shareholders more voice on executive compensation (and other largess).
When people who work their asses off for pocket change see this happening, they'll be much more likely to trust that the capitalist system is not just a crooked casino rigged to keep them in perpetual debt slavery.
Almost everything at this point is either managed code with garbage collection built in, or there are toolsets you can use to manage memory for you.
And this is the difference between a programmer, and a software engineer, who has the versatility to write everything from microcode for new hardware, J2EE applications, or administrative automation scripts. Incidentally - I don't think you get that breadth of skill right out of any 4-year program right now.
In fact, it took 5 years before Ford began to introduce his famous large-scale manufacturing techniques, to bring down costs - and leading to introduction of the first affordable model, the Model T.
Musk's approach, I think, is similar to other silicon valley startups, in that he tried to attract the attention of wealthy investors, by giving them a product THEY want - and that was supposed to spur the investment needed to get the mass-production going.
Although - I think the $60k price point for the S is still out of reach for most Americans, and very much targets the luxury market.
I think that this is a result of Musk's analysis of the availability of components for his cars - even if they could come up with a $20K model, they likely would not be able to find enough manufacturing capacity for the batteries they'd need - with Toyota and others dominating the mass-market.
Musk's end-game is likely the typical silicon valley startup scenario: get sold to a bigger player.
Whoever buys a mature Tesla, is going to OWN the 21st century automotive market.
Confiscating your profits that place you over the middle-class does not mean you can't be taxed at a higher bracket, unless the tax is so high that it knocks you back to the middle class. That's just redistribution of wealth
Confiscation of wealth of one person, and directly giving it to another person is redistribution of wealth.
Taxation of wealth - even in a wildly progressive scheme, so that that capital is invested in public infrastructure, is NOT redistribution of wealth. ALL of the taxpayers can then use that public infrastructure; and I daresay, we can see what huge generation of wealth these following public infrastructure investments CREATED: The Interstate Highway System. The Internet. Public Education. Law Enforcement System.
I'd also point out that the wealthy make far greater use (and benefit MORE) from these public infrastructure investments than do your average poor (or even middle-class) individual - if you measure of benefit is income (or even wealth-creation).
Anyway - the point is pretty evident to those who aren't trying to avoid accepting it. The point is - calling progressive taxation "redistribution of wealth" is an absurd distortion of truth.
The Grover Norquists of the world can stop paying taxes when they (and their business interests) stop using my highway system, my Internet, and my educated and trained labor force. And they can eat my shorts, as well. Without benefit of FDA inspection beforehand.
Effing blame Adobe - (bitches!) who whined and moaned when Apple came out with OS X, because Apple was asking ISV's to port everything to Cocoa - and Adobe said "waaaaah!" - so Apple delayed OS X for what was it, a YEAR? to come up with Carbon.
And the existence of this separate API became a crutch for lazy ISV's like Adobe to lean on (while they leeched away from the Mac platform towards Windows ANYWAY!).
Carbon was a nice transition API, but it deserved to die, along with Classic, years ago.
Oh no - I don't excuse Apple from leaning on the Carbon crutch either. In fact - it's appalling that they still rely on it for the bulk of their freaking file-system editor (Finder). That's supposed to be the main thing that ESTABLISHES the OS's consistency in UI behavior. And it just reinforces the silliness that the Parent Poster is complaining about.
But it's still Adobe's fault. If Adobe had put on their big-boy pants and ported to Cocoa, Apple would not have put so much effort into Carbon, and Carbon would be dead by now, and the world would be a much better place.
For me, most of the bottleneck to restarting is logging back in.
I can boot to the login screen fairly quickly; about 15-20 seconds. It's logging in and initializing my explorer session that takes 2-3 minutes these days.
Well, to be fair, OnStar costs me what, like $50 a month? And only functions where there's cell phone coverage? How much would these JPL guys cost me? And they can fix my car from 7 million miles away?
And when the day comes when the U.S. can no longer get credit for the great national credit card and can no longer afford those growing interest payments, the collapse that will follow will make the current crisis look like a financial paradise.
What day will that be?
I see no end to creditor's willingness to keep printing more and more $ for the US. Our spending is now at "Ludicrous Speed" - and the lending (at least at that level) is happily keeping up, with no thought in anybody's head as to whether there's a limit or ceiling somewhere.
I don't see it happening, until the world's banking intelligencia come up with an entirely different non-growth-based economic model. Which would clearly be against their own self-interests.
Not stating pro or con. Just the facts as they appear.
Well, I had read about the fear of issues with dust settling on the solar cells; I figured they should have used the same mechanism that NASCAR uses to clear the lenses of the car-cams. A clear, celluloid cover over the cells, which can be rolled-up off of a spool on either side of the cells, and a brush along the top of the spool. Every time dust collects on the cells, the spool winds out a new clear celluloid cover, the dusty bit is brushed off, and rolled up. Next time, the motor rolls the opposite direction.
Oh well, maybe the next rover will have something like this.
Slashdot Mirror
The current financial crisis can even be traced back to 9/11.
9/11 => 2001-2002 recession => 2003 interest rate OVERCORRECTION => 2004-2006 Housing Market BOOM and fraudulent overinvestment (and underwriting) in MBS's => 2007 Housing Market decline => 2008 Financial Market IMPLOSION.
True: Greenspan's flawed religious ideology for the God of the Invisible Hand was probably much more harmful than the physical terror attack that happened on 9/11 - but Greenspan's rate cut was a predictable over-reaction to the economic hiccup caused by 9/11. Guess who has a degree in economics? Osama bin Laden. Guess what his stated goal was in the attack (as a public goal - prior to the 9/11 attack being carried out)? It was to carry out a large-scale terror attack, knock the US economy off balance, cause us to overreact, toppling the entire system.
Not bad, eh?
Of course, those of us who were paying attention at the time looked at what Greenspan was doing, (not to mention that the rate cuts were also abused to finance the war. . . all borrowed money, btw) - and saying: "duh!".
At the end of the day, the basics of OOP come from Discrete Math. Discrete Math is not a concept for beginning programmers.
I don't think there's really an easy "single language" solution to getting people familiar and comfortable with the basic ideas of variables, flow control, and hell, file systems, interpreters, etc. It's a LOT to swallow at first to tell someone about state machines, abstract data types (let alone data types), inheritance, etc.
I somewhat agree that the traditional progression is probably not an idea solution, but the best practical one: LOGO or BASIC -> C -> assembler -> perl or javascript or ruby or python -> java or c++ - but in parallel, they've got to be learning about their Discrete Math, set theory, state machines, data structures, hardware architecture, networking, distributed systems, relational theory and databases, etc.
In short, there's no shortcut to swallowing all of Computer Science. I think that the reason so many different languages exist in the first place is each addresses a different subset of needs.
While it's compelling to want to not have to learn all these tools, that's like an auto mechanic wanting to do everything with a screwdriver, and never wanting to learn how to use a ratchet wrench, sockets, torque wrench, torx, volt meter, ODB, vacuum meter, (etc).
It's really complicated stuff for most people, and takes a lot of time to learn.
What a great day, both a Platform religious flamewar, and a Language flamewar in a single day! How great is that?
I love you guys. Keep those inline ads coming!
I got this same diatribe a couple of years ago from a manager at [big_defense_contractor] who was trying to stroke the ego of some purchasing guy in the AF, who wanted to go all gung-ho with MS products.
I don't know what finally became of that project (because I went to work on a different one), but I do know that the government auditing agency was going to be MITRE.org, and the guy in charge of that was an absolutely fanatical pro-linux/unix jihadist. I figured that the DD-250 event would be an exercise in a massive platform-holy-war arms-race.
There are fanatics on both sides, and neither are very constructive to the end of delivering "best of breed" systems to customers. (*cough* windowssucks *cough*) - at the end of the day, most folks who opt for linux/opensource, in my experience, are trying to run away from dealing with licensing/activation issues, and how they create headaches for engineering process and configuration management. Pretty simple, really. Software can be free, or expensive, but when you drive TCO up because you're paranoid that your legitimate paying customers are pirates. . . well, you just deserve to lose them.
How many Libraries of Congress BIG is it?
Or is it some multiple of Volkswagens?
Even the term "WMD" vastly overstates their destructiveness.
There is no comparison to the effect of a blast from a modern thermonuclear device.
Chemical weapons are scary to be sure. But there is no good way to effectively distribute them over a wide range without using a massive barrage, like hundreds of artillery pieces, or several squadrons of bombers.
Yes - lots and lots of people would die, and assets (buildings/land) will be contaminated - invoking a costly cleanup effort, or lingering hazards, but this is NOTHING compared to the widespread devastation of a thermonuclear blast.
Biological weapons are similarly very difficult to actually use, in practice - with anthrax being the only (known) variant that presents a lingering, persistent hazard (those spores are HARD to eliminate). Again; distribution becomes a very difficult problem to solve without a large-scale deployment effort. Deaths are easily mitigated via medical treatment in the case of anthrax. Some of the more exotic ones pose a hazard to the attackers (smallpox, etc.)
In any case - again, we're talking orders of magnitude of difference in impact versus thermonuclear weapons.
To hang the "WMD" label on botnets is a complete FARCE. Can the technique be a very effective prelude to a physical attack by disrupting Command and Control function of the target? Yes it can. Could a botnet paralyze a defender's economy, causing a domestic distraction from external defense activities (ie. riot suppression, etc.) making the defender more vulnerable to a physical attack? Sure. Can a botnet kill anybody? Not directly - no.
Note: Corrupt lying politicians have always, and continue to be a far greater threat than any tool of destruction ever devised.
Yay! Missing ball = Free Testosterone treatments!
Speed limits are NOT set like that. At least in my town. Speed limits are set in proportion to the real estate value of the houses on that street.
>$200k is 45 mph.
$200,000 - $500,000 = 35 mph.
$500,000 - $750,000 = 25 mph.
(higher end of that range gets public funds for speed bumps).
$750,000 and up usually 10mph, private roads, security guard and gate at the subdivision entrance.
And if you can find a house less than $150k in California - you're probably talking about either next to train tracks, or on a 55mph highway.
I'll say this.
Despite the fact that talking on a cell phone may cause my death, and the death of others. . .
It's DAMN CONVENIENT to talk on the phone while you're driving. It's multitasking. It's taking advantage of otherwise "dead time" where you would otherwise be accomplishing nothing other than steering your car, going from point a to point b.
You fill this dead time with something productive - relating to other people. Why wait until you get home to talk to your mom on the phone, then risk a potentially deadly conflict with your wife - jealous that you're taking up HER time to talk with your mother?
That said: if you look at cell phone coverage maps - cell phone coverage is HIGHLY correlated to highway maps. Towers are in populated areas, and along highways, giving motorists coverage. There are very few major roads that do not provide solid coverage through otherwise remote areas.
(this is also where power/electricity to run the equipment is most accessible in most cases).
I'm not speaking as an advocate of cellphone driving. . . I'm just pointing out that this problem is far more complicated than simply the moral dilemma of "talking on the phone while driving is irresponsible".
Clearly there is a need for this - it's a problem that needs to be solved. I believe that there's no obvious solution to this problem - (maybe self-driving cars?) - and that just like speeding and drunk-driving, people will continue to talk or text while driving, they'll pay the fines when they're caught, and the behavior will just plain continue.
Hell - people still murder even though there are still jail sentences or capital punishment.
. . . nice. I just wish that I had been through A SINGLE code review in my entire career, where everyone didn't fall asleep. Just ONE!
. . . and FoxNews would still lie about it all.
Nerds ARE in power.
Obama played D&D as a teen, and collects comic books. His favorite is Spider Man (Peter Parker was a Science major).
Oh, and Obama just put his government web site under the Creative Commons license.
I hope he can fix that utterly broken White House email backup and archiving system. It's been broken since the Bush 41 administration.
nobody's going to buy that garbage, because there is NOBODY who can force a guy to make his house payments when he's lost his job and has no savings, and an average of $13k credit card debt.
Even when this guy is one of the lucky few to get a new job, or find a buyer for his upside-down property; that security is worthless.
These MBS derivatives are only as good as the job market, and incomes have been steadily dropping for middle-class earners for 30 years.
Whoever thought these MBS's were good investments were either smoking crack, or knew that their institution's size would intimidate the government into bailing them out when the MBS's failed - and either way, they got their bonuses for the original early performance of MBS's so they can float away on their golden parachutes anyway.
In other words - the bailout just encourages more bad behavior. But anyone who had been paying attention knows this already.
The real fix for our broken economy is to realize that 2/3 of the economy is CONSUMER SPENDING.
Consumers ain't gonna spend what they don't have.
To fix the economy, wages must go up. Across the board.
Until the fatcats realize this - the US will continue it's downward spiral towards becoming the next American Banana Republic.
Way #1 to restore faith in the capitalist system:
Bust some CEO heads.
Put the scammers in jail.
Frogmarch them out of their skyscrapers on national television.
Hold them accountable for their astronomical bonuses and golden parachutes.
Allow shareholders more voice on executive compensation (and other largess).
When people who work their asses off for pocket change see this happening, they'll be much more likely to trust that the capitalist system is not just a crooked casino rigged to keep them in perpetual debt slavery.
Almost everything at this point is either managed code with garbage collection built in, or there are toolsets you can use to manage memory for you.
And this is the difference between a programmer, and a software engineer, who has the versatility to write everything from microcode for new hardware, J2EE applications, or administrative automation scripts. Incidentally - I don't think you get that breadth of skill right out of any 4-year program right now.
. . . plus a tax credit for verifiable commute miles. duh.
That's baloney.
Ford did NOT start with a cheap mass produced car. Ford began with a very expensive, hand-built model, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Motor_Company#History
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_T
In fact, it took 5 years before Ford began to introduce his famous large-scale manufacturing techniques, to bring down costs - and leading to introduction of the first affordable model, the Model T.
Musk's approach, I think, is similar to other silicon valley startups, in that he tried to attract the attention of wealthy investors, by giving them a product THEY want - and that was supposed to spur the investment needed to get the mass-production going.
Although - I think the $60k price point for the S is still out of reach for most Americans, and very much targets the luxury market.
I think that this is a result of Musk's analysis of the availability of components for his cars - even if they could come up with a $20K model, they likely would not be able to find enough manufacturing capacity for the batteries they'd need - with Toyota and others dominating the mass-market.
Musk's end-game is likely the typical silicon valley startup scenario: get sold to a bigger player.
Whoever buys a mature Tesla, is going to OWN the 21st century automotive market.
Confiscating your profits that place you over the middle-class does not mean you can't be taxed at a higher bracket, unless the tax is so high that it knocks you back to the middle class. That's just redistribution of wealth
Confiscation of wealth of one person, and directly giving it to another person is redistribution of wealth.
Taxation of wealth - even in a wildly progressive scheme, so that that capital is invested in public infrastructure, is NOT redistribution of wealth. ALL of the taxpayers can then use that public infrastructure; and I daresay, we can see what huge generation of wealth these following public infrastructure investments CREATED:
The Interstate Highway System.
The Internet.
Public Education.
Law Enforcement System.
I'd also point out that the wealthy make far greater use (and benefit MORE) from these public infrastructure investments than do your average poor (or even middle-class) individual - if you measure of benefit is income (or even wealth-creation).
Anyway - the point is pretty evident to those who aren't trying to avoid accepting it. The point is - calling progressive taxation "redistribution of wealth" is an absurd distortion of truth.
The Grover Norquists of the world can stop paying taxes when they (and their business interests) stop using my highway system, my Internet, and my educated and trained labor force. And they can eat my shorts, as well. Without benefit of FDA inspection beforehand.
Whose fault is this (wacky behavior)?
Adobe.
Effing blame Adobe - (bitches!) who whined and moaned when Apple came out with OS X, because Apple was asking ISV's to port everything to Cocoa - and Adobe said "waaaaah!" - so Apple delayed OS X for what was it, a YEAR? to come up with Carbon.
And the existence of this separate API became a crutch for lazy ISV's like Adobe to lean on (while they leeched away from the Mac platform towards Windows ANYWAY!).
Carbon was a nice transition API, but it deserved to die, along with Classic, years ago.
Oh no - I don't excuse Apple from leaning on the Carbon crutch either. In fact - it's appalling that they still rely on it for the bulk of their freaking file-system editor (Finder). That's supposed to be the main thing that ESTABLISHES the OS's consistency in UI behavior. And it just reinforces the silliness that the Parent Poster is complaining about.
But it's still Adobe's fault. If Adobe had put on their big-boy pants and ported to Cocoa, Apple would not have put so much effort into Carbon, and Carbon would be dead by now, and the world would be a much better place.
Anyone for a C++/ObjectiveC religious flamewar?
For me, most of the bottleneck to restarting is logging back in.
I can boot to the login screen fairly quickly; about 15-20 seconds. It's logging in and initializing my explorer session that takes 2-3 minutes these days.
Well, to be fair, OnStar costs me what, like $50 a month? And only functions where there's cell phone coverage? How much would these JPL guys cost me? And they can fix my car from 7 million miles away?
Correction (or rather, elaboration):
It's still going 5 years later, in a harsh alien climate that makes Antarctica look like Tahiti.
Um - POST antitrust trial COLLUSION? between two monopolists?
I've got an idea! Let's do nothing, twiddle our thumbs, and pray to the great Free Market God of the Invisible Hand to fix it!
And when the day comes when the U.S. can no longer get credit for the great national credit card and can no longer afford those growing interest payments, the collapse that will follow will make the current crisis look like a financial paradise.
What day will that be?
I see no end to creditor's willingness to keep printing more and more $ for the US. Our spending is now at "Ludicrous Speed" - and the lending (at least at that level) is happily keeping up, with no thought in anybody's head as to whether there's a limit or ceiling somewhere.
I don't see it happening, until the world's banking intelligencia come up with an entirely different non-growth-based economic model. Which would clearly be against their own self-interests.
Not stating pro or con. Just the facts as they appear.
Well, I had read about the fear of issues with dust settling on the solar cells; I figured they should have used the same mechanism that NASCAR uses to clear the lenses of the car-cams. A clear, celluloid cover over the cells, which can be rolled-up off of a spool on either side of the cells, and a brush along the top of the spool. Every time dust collects on the cells, the spool winds out a new clear celluloid cover, the dusty bit is brushed off, and rolled up. Next time, the motor rolls the opposite direction.
Oh well, maybe the next rover will have something like this.