And it's funny to talk about "support nightmares" when you're bitching that their solution is basically hosed.
Trust me. I've supported some pretty wonky iterations of software. It's always a BAD IDEA to hack things like you're suggesting. Inevitably, someone's system is misconfigured, or the vendor releases a new version that works differently, or something. You're just asking for trouble.
As an example, I used to distribute a Java program in an executable JAR. As long as they had Java installed, a shortcut to the JAR should work fine, right?
Wrong.
It turns out that there's a popular program called PowerArchiver. PowerArchiver is a nasty little program that switches the default program for JAR files to itself. (Because everyone wants to extract JAR files, dontchaknow./sarcasm) This required that I send these people an installer patch that would change the shortcut to force the program to run in Java.
I learned my lesson. Future revisions distributed an EXE file of my own design that would search the registry for a Java installation, and even download a new JVM for the user if they were out of date. Once the Java installation was found, the program would execute it directly on the installed program. This has worked extremely well, and has gained me several accolades from customers who love how smooth the new version installs and works.
So the take-away lesson is: Good software engineering requires that we always plan for the worst. Especially when we don't know what that "worst" might be.
Maybe they are being too tricky and actually trying to generate a DOC instead of just sending HTML with the Word MIME type.
They are trying to produce Word files rather than HTML documents. Trying to do what you suggest would create a support nightmare, especially across programs other than Office. As I said in my original post, they're most likely using POI to do the writing. The format converter is probably custom, though.
There are two things I feel bolster this position:
1. Writing a PDF currently gives a "java.io.IOException". So we know they're using Java. This makes POI a logical choice for Word documents.
2. Images don'r seem to save. Last time I used POI, this was an issue in their API. You could extract existing images, but you couldn't create new ones.
Ok, so they're still in the early stages of knocking this stuff out. But it *is* being standardized by the W3C. Any browsers that want to remain compliant should get in gear and start implementing it.
Then again, the W3C loves to standardize everything, so I suppose it shouldn't come as any real surprise.:-)
Oh, so then you're *not* one of the 33% of adult gamers who put in more than 10 hours a week?
Nope, I'm not. I'm far too busy with other personal pursuits.:-)
Then again, I was always that way. I loved video games much more as a kid, but my VG time just didn't compare to my programming, reading, and personal study time.
if you're going to complain when I tell you it's time to put the game on pause, you're just not going to get to play again for quite a while.
That's more or less what we do as well. The problem with using only that technique is that they tend to become lethargic if they play video games for too long. Then they don't perform very well even *if* they leave the game when they're told. As a result, we tend to limit them to less than an hour on weekdays, and then allow them to take turns on the Gameboy on the weekends.
Firefox is much more Ajax-friendly, and it has been much easier to prototype for it. Also, some of our code requires XUL, which is Firefox-only; we're having to devise work-arounds for other browsers, and those aren't ready yet.
(Emphasis mine.)
So either you're trolling, or you're not very bright. Next time keep in mind that, "fools rush in where Angels fear to tread."
If you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you. The menus and toolbars are dead giveaways. They're native XUL components. He may have used CSS techniques to make them expose them through HTML (it's a bit hard to check with the site slashdotted), but it's definitely XUL.
That is because Ajax, which the Word Processor is based on, has to be "tweaked" for each web browser in order to work.
No it doesn't. If you code to W3C standards, the only browser that usually requires significant tweaking is Internet Explorer. The reason why IE has to be tweaked is because it doesn't support the standards. (Hello? Microsoft? I'm still waiting on DOM2 Events! *sigh*)
Thankfully, the design of Javascript means that you can patch the webbrowser for your session. It's a little tricky, but it's quite doable to add DOM2 Events support to IE on the fly. And if Microsoft ever fixes their browser, your extensions will automatically deactive. It's actually a pretty cool way of doing things. Especially when compared to the User String checking that we web programmers used to have to do.
As someone else noted, this is basically a Wordpad type replacement.
Yeah. That would be me.
only after writing a modified version for those browsers and have the web site detect the browser type and load the correct Ajax script
In this case, Michael is going to have to rewrite nearly his entire application to make it work on other browsers. His choice of XUL over HTML/XHTML has sealed that fate. On the other hand, XUL means that he was able to write this app within a few weeks, then invent a story about "smokey bar rooms" and "mystery technologies" that took two years to develop. Sure Michael, sure.
He is effectively correct. Microsoft came up with the Rich Text Editing component, and Mozilla added (mostly) compatible support. The only thing he is using that didn't originate at Microsoft is XUL for the layout instead of HTML. Of course, that means that he's going to screw himself out of a lot of cusomters that prefers Opera, Safari, Konqueror, or (Lord help us) Internet Explorer.
See that arrow on the toolbar that circles around toward the left? That's Undo. I think it's also in the edit menu, but the app seems to be broken (read: Slashdotted) at the moment.
Oh, and how about supporting some browsers that have passed the Acid2 tests and are standards compliant....you know, Opera (9), Safari, Konqueror...
Acid2 doesn't matter in this case, for the same reason why Opera and KHTML won't be supported: This is a XUL application. The upside to using XUL is that Robertson might have spent all of last week developing it by himself, and you'd never know. XUL makes the application look like a real Windows/Linux/Mac app. The downside is that it's a Mozilla-specific language intended to make it easy to develop applications on the Mozilla platform. Mozilla is trying to get it standardized, but I don't know how much that will help as long as the XPCOM library remains Mozilla specific.
I'm guessing that's because their server is Slashdotted. The only way to convert a file from HTML is to upload it to the server, convert it, then send it back to the client. If the server is a little busy at the moment... well...
On top of everything, I just realized that this is a XUL application. i.e. It's not going to run in anything but Mozilla-based browsers. Still, you've got to love the spin:
ajaxWrite is a streamlined word processor, comparable to Microsoft Word. To keep the program lean, we left out some obscure advanced features
Apparently, spell checkers, word counts, arbitrary font sizes, find (there's a menu item, but it's disabled), and hyperlinks are all "obscure advanced features". Here, let me fix that for you, Mike:
ajaxWrite is a streamlined word processor, comparable to Microsoft Wordpad.
Not if he doesn't learn a lot more about the DOM, and fast.
I was all ready to complement the AjaxWrite team on having finally delivered the first online wordprocessor with full font-sizing abilities. Then I realized something: There are only 7 font sizes. The same 7 that are supported by every rich text editor in existance. Why only seven? Because those seven are built into the rich text editing component that's included with Mozilla and IE. If you want to allow arbitray font sizes, you have to delve down into the DOM and start some complex tweaking.
All AjaxWrite has done is hide these facts by assigning standard font sizes. Anyone with the right info could replicate this "feat" pretty easily.
Sorry, nothing to see here.
The bright side is that his app supports the Microsoft DOC format. How well it supports it is an open question, but he probably is using a library like POI to do the heavy lifting. Nothing wrong with that, but also nothing ground-breaking. I imagine that many users will drop this tool as soon as they realize they can't properly match font sizes.
Let's check back next week and see if his next attempt is more interesting.
We gaming adults spend a lot of time and effort getting our kids out and about, having them do things that don't involve a video display, because we know otherwise they'd do nothing but play video games all frickin' day.
Preach it, brother.
Because that's what we'd do, if given a chance.
Speak for yourself. I get easily bored with many modern games, and actually spend very little time playing the classics. My wife and I try to keep our kids from playing video games for too long because they've shown that their behavior is negatively impacted. ("Waaahh! I don't want to eat dinner/go to the park/do my schoolwork, I want to play Mario!") Therefore, we limit them.
If you were building a spacecraft today and you had to go out and buy engines for it, what could you buy? Chemical or ion.
Actually, you'd buy nothing since that is pretty much what's available on the open market. You might be able to subcontract Rocketdyne to build you engines based on an existing design, but that's about as close as you can get.
The others you indicated range from will-be-off-the-shelf-tomorrow through never-tested-outside-a-lab to might-be-possible.
Many of the engines have undergone extensive testing. Nuclear Thermal Rockets, as an example, have reached flight readiness several times in their history. The engines are ready, the missions are not.
Like I said, we're not cruising around the solar system Jetsons style because we've had a lapse in the engineering.
The only reason why we're not cruising around the solar system is because we've had a lapse in politics. After the resounding success of the Saturn V program, Nixon told NASA that he was shutting it down. They were to pick a single vehicle for the future and stick with it. NASA chose the Space Shuttle (since it seemed like a good idea at the time), but politics inevitably screwed that up as well.
NASA lost Von Braun and many other excellent engineers in protest during this scale-back of operations.
I have no idea what you're trying to get at. Mr. Martin was pretty clear that if you pay for 1.5MBits, the FCC will enforce that you get 1.5MBits. If the provider tries to filter you down to less based on QoS (no matter which side of the network you're on), he's going to slap them with a hefty fine. Period, end of story.
We haven't seen a boom in space because we're lacking new propulsion
This is a commonly repeated urban legend. The truth is that we have propulsion methods pouring out of our ears; many of which are far better choices for manned flight than Ion engines.
The biggest problem has been the $500,000,000 that gets sunk into every shuttle flight. It eats up the money that's useful for better space craft. The next biggest problem is the ISS. It eats up money without accomplishing its original goal. (To be a launching pad to the moon. Unfortunately, it's in the wrong orbit.) The last big problem has been NASA and the governmetn's insistence on pie-in-the-sky technologies (*cough* Space Shuttle, X-33, NASP, etc.) rather than building on the infrastructure already in place.
Why do people do this? Sun provided a publicly available text to speech service as a cute little marketing gimmick. Thanks to the efforts of these yahoos, however, Sun has moved the service inside the grid so that it is only available to subscribers. Cool things that could have been done with this free service (Sun suggests making blogs into podcasts) now can only be done by GridEngine subscribers.
And what have these self-righteous "hackers" proved? Abso-fracking-lutely nothing. Sun's Grid was never in danger, and they had no problem moving the service.
So thank you very much for spoiling things for everyone. I hope you "hackers" enjoyed it.
I think this line refutes your interpretation. If specifically says companies can pay for proferential treatment.
Only if you consider the fact that a large company pays more money for an OC3 than you do for your DSL to be "preferential treatment." Because that is what Martin is referring to. He specifically states that the FCC will make sure that customers "get what they pay for.
As another poster pointed out, the blogger is wrong here. The FCC has said the following:
In a question-and-answer period in front of the keynote audience, Martin said that "I do think the commission has the authority necessary" to enforce network neutrality violations, noting that the FCC had in fact done so in the case last year involving Madison River's blocking of Vonage's VoIP service.
"We've already demonstrated we'll take action if necessary," Martin said.
In other words, the FCC doesn't want to see the "tiered internet" design, and will slap fines on anyone who tried it. Where the confusion comes in is in this part of his speech:
However, Martin also added that he supports network operators' desires to offer different levels of broadband service at different speeds, and at different pricing -- a so-called "tiered" Internet service structure that opponents say could give a market advantage to deep-pocket companies who can afford to pay service providers for preferential treatment.
While Martin said that consumers who don't pay for higher levels of Internet service shouldn't expect to get higher levels of performance, he did say in a following press conference that "the commission needs to make sure" that there are fair-trade ways to ensure that consumers "get what they are purchasing."
What he's saying is that the FCC is fine with a broadband provider selling you a 6Mbit line at a higher cost than a 2MBit line, as long as you get what you're paying for. The AT&T plan may have resulted in you getting less bandwidth than you paid for if you failed to pay their extortion fees.
Remember how all the SciFi shows of the 60's thought that we'd be cruising the solar system (perhaps even the stars!) by the year 2000? The Jupiter II optimistically took off in 1999, and Star Trek contained several references to "Eugenics Wars" and "early space travellers" that were supposed to have happened by now.
What do we actually have? The same space shuttle that's been flying since the late 70's, and updates to the same rockets that have existed throughout the history of the space program.
Technology does progress at an exponential rate. The only problem is that the focus of technology moves. Computers have already gone through several booms of massive technology increase, and are now very stable creations. There's just as good of a chance that they'll continue to update in a more linear fashion (ala automobiles) as there is that they'll experience exponential increases in technological sophistication. I personally find it more likely that technology will begin to focus on improving other areas for the time being, and allow computers to remain stable for the time being.
So be careful not to severely overestimate while you're attempting to avoid underestimation.
The proposed bigger model, the Falcon 9-S5, is comparable to the modern Atlas V.
With three primary differences:
1. The 9-S is intended to carry up to 23% more cargo to LEO. 2. The 9-S will be man-rated with full "engine-out" features. 3. The 9-S is intended to be somewhat reusable, thus helping keep the costs down.
These sorts of features are a BIG DEAL in the rocket industry.
About 2x the price the new guys claim, but then, the Atlas is a proven product.
Tis' true. That's why we're all holding our breath to see if Musk delivers.
But the commercial launch market has collapsed. Iridium is done, and nobody wants to launch that many sats again.
I don't know where you get this idea. There have been healthy numbers of sats going up in recent years to support all kinds of network infratructures. Here's a list of past and planned launches. Looks pretty healthy to me.
You may be thinking of the slowdown in the market caused by the loss of the Challenger. With the Shuttle out of commission, the market suddenly realized that it had no other way to get to space. Thus the commercial launch business was forced to retool to build rockets like the Delta and Atlas. Russian rockets also became popular, especially after Boeing and Lockheed started buying them up.
In any case, Musk is aiming for manned space travel. The commercial launches are a side business to help support that goal. He wants to go to Mars.
POVRay has already runs on Solaris 10 on x86-64 hardware.
That wasn't my concern. Even if binaries didn't exist for Solaris x64, I'm fairly certain that I could coax the software into compiling. My real concern was whether or not it had been ported to conform to the DRMAA spec. (The standard grid computing API supported by N1.) As it turns out, there are several research versions of POVRay that support DRMAA. So the work is more or less done.
Soooooo not using an interpreted or JiT'd language when you have to pay $1 per CPU hour....
Perhaps not JITted code, but for long running processes, a modern mixed-mode JVM like hotspot can kick the pants off a similar C/C++ program. So using the latest Java VM may actually save you money by executing your code as efficiently as possible. You can probably get pretty close with a static compiler by optimizing specifically for the machines that Sun uses, but it would be hard to beat out a runtime JVM that knows the current execution path of the code.
Does gcj work on solaris/Opteron?
It should work. But you'll be running with 32 bit instructions, which will probably slow you down considerably.
My mistake. I thought he was making up script kiddie names. A quick Google search has disavowed me of that notion. Of course, you still need to harvest those passwords from somewhere...
Slashdot Mirror
And how are you going to support embedded images?
/sarcasm) This required that I send these people an installer patch that would change the shortcut to force the program to run in Java.
And it's funny to talk about "support nightmares" when you're bitching that their solution is basically hosed.
Trust me. I've supported some pretty wonky iterations of software. It's always a BAD IDEA to hack things like you're suggesting. Inevitably, someone's system is misconfigured, or the vendor releases a new version that works differently, or something. You're just asking for trouble.
As an example, I used to distribute a Java program in an executable JAR. As long as they had Java installed, a shortcut to the JAR should work fine, right?
Wrong.
It turns out that there's a popular program called PowerArchiver. PowerArchiver is a nasty little program that switches the default program for JAR files to itself. (Because everyone wants to extract JAR files, dontchaknow.
I learned my lesson. Future revisions distributed an EXE file of my own design that would search the registry for a Java installation, and even download a new JVM for the user if they were out of date. Once the Java installation was found, the program would execute it directly on the installed program. This has worked extremely well, and has gained me several accolades from customers who love how smooth the new version installs and works.
So the take-away lesson is: Good software engineering requires that we always plan for the worst. Especially when we don't know what that "worst" might be.
Maybe they are being too tricky and actually trying to generate a DOC instead of just sending HTML with the Word MIME type.
They are trying to produce Word files rather than HTML documents. Trying to do what you suggest would create a support nightmare, especially across programs other than Office. As I said in my original post, they're most likely using POI to do the writing. The format converter is probably custom, though.
There are two things I feel bolster this position:
1. Writing a PDF currently gives a "java.io.IOException". So we know they're using Java. This makes POI a logical choice for Word documents.
2. Images don'r seem to save. Last time I used POI, this was an issue in their API. You could extract existing images, but you couldn't create new ones.
"Ajax" (or rather, XMLHttpRequest) is not a W3C standard.
:-)
Wanna bet?
Ok, so they're still in the early stages of knocking this stuff out. But it *is* being standardized by the W3C. Any browsers that want to remain compliant should get in gear and start implementing it.
Then again, the W3C loves to standardize everything, so I suppose it shouldn't come as any real surprise.
Oh, so then you're *not* one of the 33% of adult gamers who put in more than 10 hours a week?
:-)
Nope, I'm not. I'm far too busy with other personal pursuits.
Then again, I was always that way. I loved video games much more as a kid, but my VG time just didn't compare to my programming, reading, and personal study time.
if you're going to complain when I tell you it's time to put the game on pause, you're just not going to get to play again for quite a while.
That's more or less what we do as well. The problem with using only that technique is that they tend to become lethargic if they play video games for too long. Then they don't perform very well even *if* they leave the game when they're told. As a result, we tend to limit them to less than an hour on weekdays, and then allow them to take turns on the Gameboy on the weekends.
*Ahem* From ajaxbrian on their forum:
(Emphasis mine.)
So either you're trolling, or you're not very bright. Next time keep in mind that, "fools rush in where Angels fear to tread."
If you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you. The menus and toolbars are dead giveaways. They're native XUL components. He may have used CSS techniques to make them expose them through HTML (it's a bit hard to check with the site slashdotted), but it's definitely XUL.
That is because Ajax, which the Word Processor is based on, has to be "tweaked" for each web browser in order to work.
No it doesn't. If you code to W3C standards, the only browser that usually requires significant tweaking is Internet Explorer. The reason why IE has to be tweaked is because it doesn't support the standards. (Hello? Microsoft? I'm still waiting on DOM2 Events! *sigh*)
Thankfully, the design of Javascript means that you can patch the webbrowser for your session. It's a little tricky, but it's quite doable to add DOM2 Events support to IE on the fly. And if Microsoft ever fixes their browser, your extensions will automatically deactive. It's actually a pretty cool way of doing things. Especially when compared to the User String checking that we web programmers used to have to do.
As someone else noted, this is basically a Wordpad type replacement.
Yeah. That would be me.
only after writing a modified version for those browsers and have the web site detect the browser type and load the correct Ajax script
In this case, Michael is going to have to rewrite nearly his entire application to make it work on other browsers. His choice of XUL over HTML/XHTML has sealed that fate. On the other hand, XUL means that he was able to write this app within a few weeks, then invent a story about "smokey bar rooms" and "mystery technologies" that took two years to develop. Sure Michael, sure.
He is effectively correct. Microsoft came up with the Rich Text Editing component, and Mozilla added (mostly) compatible support. The only thing he is using that didn't originate at Microsoft is XUL for the layout instead of HTML. Of course, that means that he's going to screw himself out of a lot of cusomters that prefers Opera, Safari, Konqueror, or (Lord help us) Internet Explorer.
Undo
See that arrow on the toolbar that circles around toward the left? That's Undo. I think it's also in the edit menu, but the app seems to be broken (read: Slashdotted) at the moment.
Oh, and how about supporting some browsers that have passed the Acid2 tests and are standards compliant....you know, Opera (9), Safari, Konqueror...
Acid2 doesn't matter in this case, for the same reason why Opera and KHTML won't be supported: This is a XUL application. The upside to using XUL is that Robertson might have spent all of last week developing it by himself, and you'd never know. XUL makes the application look like a real Windows/Linux/Mac app. The downside is that it's a Mozilla-specific language intended to make it easy to develop applications on the Mozilla platform. Mozilla is trying to get it standardized, but I don't know how much that will help as long as the XPCOM library remains Mozilla specific.
but I could not get it to save, at all.
I'm guessing that's because their server is Slashdotted. The only way to convert a file from HTML is to upload it to the server, convert it, then send it back to the client. If the server is a little busy at the moment... well...
Me thinks he needs to buy time on the Sun Grid Engine.
Yet the web has always been lacking in the interface. This application is an amazing glimpse of things to come.
Sorry dada, but you need to get out more.
Apparently, spell checkers, word counts, arbitrary font sizes, find (there's a menu item, but it's disabled), and hyperlinks are all "obscure advanced features". Here, let me fix that for you, Mike:
See? Much better. =D
AjaxWrite to "Compete" with MS Word
Not if he doesn't learn a lot more about the DOM, and fast.
I was all ready to complement the AjaxWrite team on having finally delivered the first online wordprocessor with full font-sizing abilities. Then I realized something: There are only 7 font sizes. The same 7 that are supported by every rich text editor in existance. Why only seven? Because those seven are built into the rich text editing component that's included with Mozilla and IE. If you want to allow arbitray font sizes, you have to delve down into the DOM and start some complex tweaking.
All AjaxWrite has done is hide these facts by assigning standard font sizes. Anyone with the right info could replicate this "feat" pretty easily.
Sorry, nothing to see here.
The bright side is that his app supports the Microsoft DOC format. How well it supports it is an open question, but he probably is using a library like POI to do the heavy lifting. Nothing wrong with that, but also nothing ground-breaking. I imagine that many users will drop this tool as soon as they realize they can't properly match font sizes.
Let's check back next week and see if his next attempt is more interesting.
We gaming adults spend a lot of time and effort getting our kids out and about, having them do things that don't involve a video display, because we know otherwise they'd do nothing but play video games all frickin' day.
Preach it, brother.
Because that's what we'd do, if given a chance.
Speak for yourself. I get easily bored with many modern games, and actually spend very little time playing the classics. My wife and I try to keep our kids from playing video games for too long because they've shown that their behavior is negatively impacted. ("Waaahh! I don't want to eat dinner/go to the park/do my schoolwork, I want to play Mario!") Therefore, we limit them.
If you were building a spacecraft today and you had to go out and buy engines for it, what could you buy? Chemical or ion.
Actually, you'd buy nothing since that is pretty much what's available on the open market. You might be able to subcontract Rocketdyne to build you engines based on an existing design, but that's about as close as you can get.
The others you indicated range from will-be-off-the-shelf-tomorrow through never-tested-outside-a-lab to might-be-possible.
Many of the engines have undergone extensive testing. Nuclear Thermal Rockets, as an example, have reached flight readiness several times in their history. The engines are ready, the missions are not.
Like I said, we're not cruising around the solar system Jetsons style because we've had a lapse in the engineering.
The only reason why we're not cruising around the solar system is because we've had a lapse in politics. After the resounding success of the Saturn V program, Nixon told NASA that he was shutting it down. They were to pick a single vehicle for the future and stick with it. NASA chose the Space Shuttle (since it seemed like a good idea at the time), but politics inevitably screwed that up as well.
NASA lost Von Braun and many other excellent engineers in protest during this scale-back of operations.
I have no idea what you're trying to get at. Mr. Martin was pretty clear that if you pay for 1.5MBits, the FCC will enforce that you get 1.5MBits. If the provider tries to filter you down to less based on QoS (no matter which side of the network you're on), he's going to slap them with a hefty fine. Period, end of story.
We haven't seen a boom in space because we're lacking new propulsion
This is a commonly repeated urban legend. The truth is that we have propulsion methods pouring out of our ears; many of which are far better choices for manned flight than Ion engines.
The biggest problem has been the $500,000,000 that gets sunk into every shuttle flight. It eats up the money that's useful for better space craft. The next biggest problem is the ISS. It eats up money without accomplishing its original goal. (To be a launching pad to the moon. Unfortunately, it's in the wrong orbit.) The last big problem has been NASA and the governmetn's insistence on pie-in-the-sky technologies (*cough* Space Shuttle, X-33, NASP, etc.) rather than building on the infrastructure already in place.
Why do people do this? Sun provided a publicly available text to speech service as a cute little marketing gimmick. Thanks to the efforts of these yahoos, however, Sun has moved the service inside the grid so that it is only available to subscribers. Cool things that could have been done with this free service (Sun suggests making blogs into podcasts) now can only be done by GridEngine subscribers.
And what have these self-righteous "hackers" proved? Abso-fracking-lutely nothing. Sun's Grid was never in danger, and they had no problem moving the service.
So thank you very much for spoiling things for everyone. I hope you "hackers" enjoyed it.
I think this line refutes your interpretation. If specifically says companies can pay for proferential treatment.
Only if you consider the fact that a large company pays more money for an OC3 than you do for your DSL to be "preferential treatment." Because that is what Martin is referring to. He specifically states that the FCC will make sure that customers "get what they pay for.
In other words, the FCC doesn't want to see the "tiered internet" design, and will slap fines on anyone who tried it. Where the confusion comes in is in this part of his speech:
What he's saying is that the FCC is fine with a broadband provider selling you a 6Mbit line at a higher cost than a 2MBit line, as long as you get what you're paying for. The AT&T plan may have resulted in you getting less bandwidth than you paid for if you failed to pay their extortion fees.
Remember how all the SciFi shows of the 60's thought that we'd be cruising the solar system (perhaps even the stars!) by the year 2000? The Jupiter II optimistically took off in 1999, and Star Trek contained several references to "Eugenics Wars" and "early space travellers" that were supposed to have happened by now.
What do we actually have? The same space shuttle that's been flying since the late 70's, and updates to the same rockets that have existed throughout the history of the space program.
Technology does progress at an exponential rate. The only problem is that the focus of technology moves. Computers have already gone through several booms of massive technology increase, and are now very stable creations. There's just as good of a chance that they'll continue to update in a more linear fashion (ala automobiles) as there is that they'll experience exponential increases in technological sophistication. I personally find it more likely that technology will begin to focus on improving other areas for the time being, and allow computers to remain stable for the time being.
So be careful not to severely overestimate while you're attempting to avoid underestimation.
The proposed bigger model, the Falcon 9-S5, is comparable to the modern Atlas V.
With three primary differences:
1. The 9-S is intended to carry up to 23% more cargo to LEO.
2. The 9-S will be man-rated with full "engine-out" features.
3. The 9-S is intended to be somewhat reusable, thus helping keep the costs down.
These sorts of features are a BIG DEAL in the rocket industry.
About 2x the price the new guys claim, but then, the Atlas is a proven product.
Tis' true. That's why we're all holding our breath to see if Musk delivers.
But the commercial launch market has collapsed. Iridium is done, and nobody wants to launch that many sats again.
I don't know where you get this idea. There have been healthy numbers of sats going up in recent years to support all kinds of network infratructures. Here's a list of past and planned launches. Looks pretty healthy to me.
You may be thinking of the slowdown in the market caused by the loss of the Challenger. With the Shuttle out of commission, the market suddenly realized that it had no other way to get to space. Thus the commercial launch business was forced to retool to build rockets like the Delta and Atlas. Russian rockets also became popular, especially after Boeing and Lockheed started buying them up.
In any case, Musk is aiming for manned space travel. The commercial launches are a side business to help support that goal. He wants to go to Mars.
POVRay has already runs on Solaris 10 on x86-64 hardware.
That wasn't my concern. Even if binaries didn't exist for Solaris x64, I'm fairly certain that I could coax the software into compiling. My real concern was whether or not it had been ported to conform to the DRMAA spec. (The standard grid computing API supported by N1.) As it turns out, there are several research versions of POVRay that support DRMAA. So the work is more or less done.
Soooooo not using an interpreted or JiT'd language when you have to pay $1 per CPU hour....
Perhaps not JITted code, but for long running processes, a modern mixed-mode JVM like hotspot can kick the pants off a similar C/C++ program. So using the latest Java VM may actually save you money by executing your code as efficiently as possible. You can probably get pretty close with a static compiler by optimizing specifically for the machines that Sun uses, but it would be hard to beat out a runtime JVM that knows the current execution path of the code.
Does gcj work on solaris/Opteron?
It should work. But you'll be running with 32 bit instructions, which will probably slow you down considerably.
My mistake. I thought he was making up script kiddie names. A quick Google search has disavowed me of that notion. Of course, you still need to harvest those passwords from somewhere...