You're making the faulty assumption that the folks in Congress actually want a reasonable approach.
Based on their track record, I'm just going to go ahead and say they don't like reasonable. If they do, then they suck too much at implementing it to ever expect them to get this one right.
We already do that when we build satellites. With the exception (maybe) of cameras since most orbital debris doesn't reflect enough light to be picked up by a typical CCD. But the rest, inertial sensors, IR sensors, Star trackers. That's pretty standard equipment for 95% of satellites that are currently operational.
WTF? The google Lunar X-prize was first announced back in September of 2007. I can name a few companies right off the top of my head that have been working on getting there since then. Interorbital Systems is the first one that comes to mind (though I think they got axed from the roster due to wanting to use hypergolics or something like that). Astrobotics has been working on this for awhile as have Odyssey Moon, White Label Space...The list has been up on Wikipedia for well over a year now. How the hell did this make it to the front page of Slashdot?
Oh! I see! The foundation simply down selected for the final *official* roster. The prize isn't anything new at all. The actual news is that the final competing team roster has been settled. As usual, the summary and TFA completely gloss over the actual new development to ramble on about something that isn't particularly new to anyone that has been paying attention to the commercial space market (or slashdot) for the last few years. And, of course, they don't list the final roster. Here's the actual news portion of this story.
It seems like most of us Americans are also content to trust our eternal souls and moral decisions to an imaginary sky fairy with an epic beard.
But on a more serious, and less inflammatory note, this probably has to do with the very high incidence rate of folks in the U.S. getting their financial accounts cracked. Anyone who has had to frack about with their bank or credit agency regarding X many thousands of dollars being debited from their account due to some mysterious "hacker" that stole their identity is probably pretty suspicious of putting any important personal data on the internet period.
3G qualifies as broadband? That's news to me. That 3G is the same 3G I use for a data plan on my phone right? The data plan that restricts me to less than 5 GB per month before I get throttled down to lower speeds? Sure, that 3G connection may work great for a smartphone, where I check my e-mail a few times a day and might even stream Pandora once or twice, but it's not going to work for general home use.
Anyone who routinely updates/downloads software over the internet will violate their cap. Anyone who wants to establish and maintain their own web server will violate a 3G cap. Anyone who wants to telecommute to work, and handle the large datasets/documentation material that they need to for their job is going to violate their 5 GB cap in a week, much less a month.
Don't kid yourself. 3G is about as broadband as a creek is a viable water supply for a city. It's inadequate for anything but semi-regular use on phones.
This doesn't seem like much of an innovation/invention at all. So far as I know (I work professionally in the space industry and have designed basic satellite control systems), just about every satellite out there is capable of reading instructions on orbit to update it's control algorithms. Usually, satellites are loaded with a certain set of "flight modes" which are just certain chunks of control code that get executed continuously for a given phase of the mission (launch mode, deployment mode, operation mode, safety mode, etc.). For any given mission, the flight controllers may pass a software update to an operational satellite (if one is necessary) via it's primary communications link (usually through TDRSS or something similar, though, sometimes through on-board omni antennae for small changes). These code updates may include a new set of instructions to be enacted given a particular sensor input (for instance, if you spacecraft starts getting hotter on one side than simulations generally predicted, you might increase a spin rate to increase shadow time of that side, or something). So, satellites already accept software updates from ground stations that can read instructions. The only difference is, the instructions sent are usually in a pretty low-level code (hell, I think binary bit code is the standard format). So, the only news here is that some folks developed a high level scripting language that could be used on a satellite, if the satellite came with the appropriate interpreter/compiler loaded onto it's controller computer. Of course, that increases the complexity and cost of your on board systems as well, as it means having to carry more overhead flight code.
I went to look at the Sysbrain project to see if I was missing something. It can be found here. It doesn't look like anything other than a project to add a top-end framework on top of the already high MATLAB language. This allows controllers to make commands in an "English like format" known as sEnglish. But frankly, I think that's a disadvantage on resource-constrained systems like a satellite. The more processing you have to do to interpret that English-like language, the more chips and processing power you need in your computer. This puts a heavier load on your power budget and, all-in-all, drives up the cost of the spacecraft. So, I am really having a hard time seeing an advantage of this system. I suppose if your controller ground crew were made up of a bunch of dimwits that didn't learn the proper instruction sets for their spacecraft you might want them to have a nice, English-like set to learn. But honestly, the folks working as spacecraft controllers right now are intelligent enough to keep using the less resource intensive methods already in place.
This seems like a solution looking for a problem.
On the bright side, the platform used to test this system shown in the Gizmag article reflects a very similar design that I am working on to develop some of my own spacecraft control code. So it's nice to see that something I've been designing in theory can work in practice. But the focal point of the article doesn't seem that impressive to me.
GLADOS is my early morning wake up call. I set her to my alarm. It's nice to be embraced by the soothing synthetic voice of my mechanical matriarch every morning before facing the chilling reality of the world outside.....
Well they had Maemo 2 years ago and, quite frankly, it kicks ass. If they had stuck with that, they would have a product right now that could compete. But instead they dropped it for MeeGo, which, had they dumped resources into it back in 2009, they could have had right now. Instead, they dropped a product they had (a very popular product they had), waffled about a product they wanted to have, and, finally, sold out (in a very literal sense) to Microsoft. If you want to discuss technical merits, I would happily take the technical merits of the Maemo OS up against the Windows Mobile 7 platform any day. But, at that point, we'd be talking about a product that was dropped for, apparently, no good reason. So it's kind of a wasted debate.
I think all of the ire about this Nokia decision doesn't come purely as a function of this final decision. I think a lot of nerds just see this as the final coffin nail in Nokia's bleak future after a long series of poor decisions. All the pent up rage from past decisions is just being vented again. It's not conspiracy theory, just feelings of exasperation and betrayal of a loyal customer base that is fed up with getting burned by a company they invested so much money and time in.
Meh, your neighbors down here in the south (The U.S.) could probably buy up your potash, as we seem completely intent on shutting down all of our own mines of the stuff. (Mostly because the neighbors think is smells bad, from what I can gather).
Seriously China? Canada? What the hell did Canada ever do to you? What valuable information could they possibly have that you couldn't get by your regular, scheduled attacks on U.S. networks? Canada is like the cool, friendly kid in class, that everyone likes, and isn't a douchebag to anyone. Picking on them is like taking a piss on a puppy. You've just demonstrated yourselves to be a bunch of wankers, China.
Meh, that's one thing I'll have to disagree with Jon Stewart on. I don't think Baracknophobia is an irrational fear of hope. I am pretty sure it's an irrational fear of change. Even in my home state (California) where we are supposed to be progressive and forward thinking (by stereotype), people seem to consistently keep things as close to the status quo as possible. Hell, I even have a coworker whose personal motto is, "Change is bad."
I don't think it's the hope that scares people, but rather, the thought of change.
Someone who modded an existing piece of hardware or software...
I guess you missed that part of his post? Either way, good job at coming off like an arrogant douche in the fine/. tradition of not reading something in detail. =P
Well at least they're trying to do something, rather than just shaking their head in disbelief and complaining on the internet.;)
Honestly, I agree with your assessment. They are idealistic, full of piss and vinegar, and their arguments/positions hold about as much weight as a Down feather. But I have to hand it to them, at least they are trying to rock the boat, rather than just accepting a sinking ship as lost.
You probably ought to at least post her name if you are promoting for her. Not everyone can access YouTube when they browse Slashdot, and having an artist name to write down would give them the opportunity to go look her up via their own means.
Thanks for the link, but at $0.04 to a nickel for these paper guys, I could buy 20 to 25 of them for every silicon accelerometer I bought from digikey. That matters.;)
Or, more accurately, he was building on a badly thought out, semi-politically incorrect joke with and even more poorly thought out, even more politically incorrect jest.
Grow a sense of humor. The kind of comment he made isn't worth getting your panties in a bunch, whether you're Muslim or not.
Oddly enough, I am having more and more folks ask me if I can teach them how to use Linux as an OS desktop these days. Folks seem to be pretty pissed off at Apple and MS. Just a trend I noticed.
You know, it's too bad that the average, God fearing, America loving, violence glorifying redneck didn't care enough about nuance to pay attention to the Church of Scientology. It would be fun to see the Church of Scientology try to play one of its smear campaigns/depowering operations against a group like the Westboro Baptist church. The ensuing holy war would be a thing of song and poem. Hell, they could probably make an MMO out of it.
Slashdot Mirror
You're making the faulty assumption that the folks in Congress actually want a reasonable approach.
Based on their track record, I'm just going to go ahead and say they don't like reasonable. If they do, then they suck too much at implementing it to ever expect them to get this one right.
We already do that when we build satellites. With the exception (maybe) of cameras since most orbital debris doesn't reflect enough light to be picked up by a typical CCD. But the rest, inertial sensors, IR sensors, Star trackers. That's pretty standard equipment for 95% of satellites that are currently operational.
WTF? The google Lunar X-prize was first announced back in September of 2007. I can name a few companies right off the top of my head that have been working on getting there since then. Interorbital Systems is the first one that comes to mind (though I think they got axed from the roster due to wanting to use hypergolics or something like that). Astrobotics has been working on this for awhile as have Odyssey Moon, White Label Space...The list has been up on Wikipedia for well over a year now. How the hell did this make it to the front page of Slashdot?
*Scans Official X-Prize Website*
Oh! I see! The foundation simply down selected for the final *official* roster. The prize isn't anything new at all. The actual news is that the final competing team roster has been settled. As usual, the summary and TFA completely gloss over the actual new development to ramble on about something that isn't particularly new to anyone that has been paying attention to the commercial space market (or slashdot) for the last few years. And, of course, they don't list the final roster. Here's the actual news portion of this story.
It seems like most of us Americans are also content to trust our eternal souls and moral decisions to an imaginary sky fairy with an epic beard.
But on a more serious, and less inflammatory note, this probably has to do with the very high incidence rate of folks in the U.S. getting their financial accounts cracked. Anyone who has had to frack about with their bank or credit agency regarding X many thousands of dollars being debited from their account due to some mysterious "hacker" that stole their identity is probably pretty suspicious of putting any important personal data on the internet period.
3G qualifies as broadband? That's news to me. That 3G is the same 3G I use for a data plan on my phone right? The data plan that restricts me to less than 5 GB per month before I get throttled down to lower speeds? Sure, that 3G connection may work great for a smartphone, where I check my e-mail a few times a day and might even stream Pandora once or twice, but it's not going to work for general home use.
Anyone who routinely updates/downloads software over the internet will violate their cap. Anyone who wants to establish and maintain their own web server will violate a 3G cap. Anyone who wants to telecommute to work, and handle the large datasets/documentation material that they need to for their job is going to violate their 5 GB cap in a week, much less a month.
Don't kid yourself. 3G is about as broadband as a creek is a viable water supply for a city. It's inadequate for anything but semi-regular use on phones.
This doesn't seem like much of an innovation/invention at all. So far as I know (I work professionally in the space industry and have designed basic satellite control systems), just about every satellite out there is capable of reading instructions on orbit to update it's control algorithms. Usually, satellites are loaded with a certain set of "flight modes" which are just certain chunks of control code that get executed continuously for a given phase of the mission (launch mode, deployment mode, operation mode, safety mode, etc.). For any given mission, the flight controllers may pass a software update to an operational satellite (if one is necessary) via it's primary communications link (usually through TDRSS or something similar, though, sometimes through on-board omni antennae for small changes). These code updates may include a new set of instructions to be enacted given a particular sensor input (for instance, if you spacecraft starts getting hotter on one side than simulations generally predicted, you might increase a spin rate to increase shadow time of that side, or something). So, satellites already accept software updates from ground stations that can read instructions. The only difference is, the instructions sent are usually in a pretty low-level code (hell, I think binary bit code is the standard format). So, the only news here is that some folks developed a high level scripting language that could be used on a satellite, if the satellite came with the appropriate interpreter/compiler loaded onto it's controller computer. Of course, that increases the complexity and cost of your on board systems as well, as it means having to carry more overhead flight code.
I went to look at the Sysbrain project to see if I was missing something. It can be found here. It doesn't look like anything other than a project to add a top-end framework on top of the already high MATLAB language. This allows controllers to make commands in an "English like format" known as sEnglish. But frankly, I think that's a disadvantage on resource-constrained systems like a satellite. The more processing you have to do to interpret that English-like language, the more chips and processing power you need in your computer. This puts a heavier load on your power budget and, all-in-all, drives up the cost of the spacecraft. So, I am really having a hard time seeing an advantage of this system. I suppose if your controller ground crew were made up of a bunch of dimwits that didn't learn the proper instruction sets for their spacecraft you might want them to have a nice, English-like set to learn. But honestly, the folks working as spacecraft controllers right now are intelligent enough to keep using the less resource intensive methods already in place.
This seems like a solution looking for a problem.
On the bright side, the platform used to test this system shown in the Gizmag article reflects a very similar design that I am working on to develop some of my own spacecraft control code. So it's nice to see that something I've been designing in theory can work in practice. But the focal point of the article doesn't seem that impressive to me.
GLADOS is my early morning wake up call. I set her to my alarm. It's nice to be embraced by the soothing synthetic voice of my mechanical matriarch every morning before facing the chilling reality of the world outside.....
They need a product RIGHT NOW this very minute
Well they had Maemo 2 years ago and, quite frankly, it kicks ass. If they had stuck with that, they would have a product right now that could compete. But instead they dropped it for MeeGo, which, had they dumped resources into it back in 2009, they could have had right now. Instead, they dropped a product they had (a very popular product they had), waffled about a product they wanted to have, and, finally, sold out (in a very literal sense) to Microsoft. If you want to discuss technical merits, I would happily take the technical merits of the Maemo OS up against the Windows Mobile 7 platform any day. But, at that point, we'd be talking about a product that was dropped for, apparently, no good reason. So it's kind of a wasted debate.
I think all of the ire about this Nokia decision doesn't come purely as a function of this final decision. I think a lot of nerds just see this as the final coffin nail in Nokia's bleak future after a long series of poor decisions. All the pent up rage from past decisions is just being vented again. It's not conspiracy theory, just feelings of exasperation and betrayal of a loyal customer base that is fed up with getting burned by a company they invested so much money and time in.
Meh, your neighbors down here in the south (The U.S.) could probably buy up your potash, as we seem completely intent on shutting down all of our own mines of the stuff. (Mostly because the neighbors think is smells bad, from what I can gather).
Seriously China? Canada? What the hell did Canada ever do to you? What valuable information could they possibly have that you couldn't get by your regular, scheduled attacks on U.S. networks? Canada is like the cool, friendly kid in class, that everyone likes, and isn't a douchebag to anyone. Picking on them is like taking a piss on a puppy. You've just demonstrated yourselves to be a bunch of wankers, China.
Meh, that's one thing I'll have to disagree with Jon Stewart on. I don't think Baracknophobia is an irrational fear of hope. I am pretty sure it's an irrational fear of change. Even in my home state (California) where we are supposed to be progressive and forward thinking (by stereotype), people seem to consistently keep things as close to the status quo as possible. Hell, I even have a coworker whose personal motto is, "Change is bad."
I don't think it's the hope that scares people, but rather, the thought of change.
What company was it? If you don't mind my asking....
Even better: JPL's Comet images gallery and NASA's crater image gallery of pictures captured by this mission.
Someone who modded an existing piece of hardware or software...
I guess you missed that part of his post? Either way, good job at coming off like an arrogant douche in the fine /. tradition of not reading something in detail. =P
Well at least they're trying to do something, rather than just shaking their head in disbelief and complaining on the internet. ;)
Honestly, I agree with your assessment. They are idealistic, full of piss and vinegar, and their arguments/positions hold about as much weight as a Down feather. But I have to hand it to them, at least they are trying to rock the boat, rather than just accepting a sinking ship as lost.
You probably ought to at least post her name if you are promoting for her. Not everyone can access YouTube when they browse Slashdot, and having an artist name to write down would give them the opportunity to go look her up via their own means.
Some control surfaces and a few paper PID chips.
Thanks for the link, but at $0.04 to a nickel for these paper guys, I could buy 20 to 25 of them for every silicon accelerometer I bought from digikey. That matters. ;)
...he was belittling Muslims in particular.
Or, more accurately, he was building on a badly thought out, semi-politically incorrect joke with and even more poorly thought out, even more politically incorrect jest.
Grow a sense of humor. The kind of comment he made isn't worth getting your panties in a bunch, whether you're Muslim or not.
On the other hand, if they can be mass produced and marketed, they could be great for hardware hackers and hobbyists.
You obviously haven't compiled and run any Debian apps on an N900 before... ;)
Oddly enough, I am having more and more folks ask me if I can teach them how to use Linux as an OS desktop these days. Folks seem to be pretty pissed off at Apple and MS. Just a trend I noticed.
That'll be the expansion pack: Holy Wars: Songs of the Jihad.
Let me be the first to say:
Thank you Intel!!!!!
You know, it's too bad that the average, God fearing, America loving, violence glorifying redneck didn't care enough about nuance to pay attention to the Church of Scientology. It would be fun to see the Church of Scientology try to play one of its smear campaigns/depowering operations against a group like the Westboro Baptist church. The ensuing holy war would be a thing of song and poem. Hell, they could probably make an MMO out of it.