That's pretty easy. The facility was in Ukraine, and was pawned to the Ukrainian government in exchange for a loan. The Ukrainian government has been pretty poor about the upkeep, and the original orbiter was lost during a hanger collapse. The test vehicles were considered scrap and have been known to show up in several locations.
For example, Gorky Park in Moscow managed to snag one of the test vehicles as an attraction. If you ever go there, you can walk through the shuttle and take a 3D ride.
Interestingly enough, in many ways it is superior to the US space shuttle - for example if could do everything automated - including the landing.
This is true. The Russians has NASA's 10+ years of experience behind them when they were working on the Buran. As such, they avoided several points which made the shuttle such a difficult craft. A few items:
- The Buran had no launch engines. All lift power was provided by the Energia it was strapped to.
- The Buran had more advanced computers with real-time control abilities instead of the "key in the program" design of the shuttle.
- The Buran stack was lighter due to the single-booster design.
- The complexity lost in the single-booster design meant that turn-around times would have been far faster than the shuttle.
- Future versions of the design would have made the Energia booster able to fly back to Earth and be reused.
All of this did come at a price, however. IIRC, the Russian program was about twice as expensive in R&D as the US program. As for the aerodynamics, my understanding is that the Russians did have stolen shuttle specs as a reference. Even if they didn't, they still had a large collection of photographs from which they could divine the areo-shell design. As a result, the Buran was nearly an exact aerodynamic copy of the space shuttle.
And for anyone who thinks that may have been a coincidence, think again. There was no need for the Russians to have built a large cargo craft. They already had excellent cargo boosters, so they could have built a man rated vehicle for much less. They built the Buran to compete with the shuttle on every point, but did it in such a way as to show that Russian design was "better".
That being said, I'd love to see the Energia program revitalized. With those rockets, we could have cut the costs of ISS construction several fold!
90% of what people did was the same stuff people did with CeeFax. Remember, Compuserve was per minute, so people were encouraged to get quick updates. Obviously, things like being able to schedule airline reservations were a big bonus over CeeFax.
Dude, you've got serious issues. If you browse at -1 and pay attention to the time-stamps, you'll find that I was the first person to make the comment.
Funny thing, that. I couldn't get *functional* terminal software with ZModem support until nearly the time I switched over to the Internet. If I downloaded a new terminal program from a BBS, it would invariably be too old, and running ZModem.exe as an external program never seemed to work right. I think I finally found a terminal program with built-in ZModem support, but man was it ever difficult to find!
Hmm... I'd forgotten how hard it was to get software before the Internet.
Same for Wisconsin. Our drivers licenses actually have magnetic strips on the back (for some reason or another) and they're still able to produce them right at the facilities.
Add a line to the spec that the software "must be Macintosh compatible". The requirement will sound legit, and the Microsofties won't get their way.:-)
Simple, I copied and pasted from a UK post!;-) Actually, you can use the Windows Character Mapper to input it (U+00A3), or you can type Alt+0163 on Windows and Alt+3 on the Macintosh. I have no idea how you do it on Linux, and I'm nowhere near such a machine at the moment.
Just for fun, let's see how many characters Slashdot will accept:
You usually have to ask for true basic cable. When I was in California, they were always trying to sell me the next package up when all I wanted was the local channels. (I had no reception and wanted to watch Star Trek.) The next level up was only $14.95, but didn't include all that much. (Cartoon Network, though!) To get channels like the Sci-Fi channel, I had to go up to the range of ~$25/mo.
Now I'm in an apartment building in the midwest that includes cable as part of the rent. Life is good.:-)
Yep. These days thinking about terms like Baud, Kermit, XModem, Acoustic Coupler, Carrier Signals, Parity Bits, Hardware Flow Control, etc, etc, etc all seem as ancient as terms like Superheterodyne, Dynamo, Diode, and Vacuum Tubes. We just take those concepts for granted any more.
I guess that tech is always more exciting when it's in its prime.
Re:Ceefax is cool but dated....
on
Ceefax Turns 30
·
· Score: 1
so we have to press "down down down select down select right right right" instead.
You're doing it wrong. You have to press "up", "up", "down", "down", "left", "right", "left", "right", "a", "b", "select", "start"!
What do you guys pay for basic cable? How many watchable channels do you get?
You actually have to differentiate basic cable from public broadcasting. Your average television viewer will have about 5 channels or more available at no cost when he plugs in his TV. (NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, and PBS stations.) These networks are paid for by advertising only, save for PBS which runs with public funds.
Now *basic* cable tends to be the same as the public channels for about $8.00/mo ($96.00/yr), but tends to include a few extra channels as a bonus. i.e. UPN, C-SPAN, etc. Anything above that is more expensive, but tends to contain at least 25-50 available channels. You can usually get this level of service for about $14.95/mo. Things really start getting expensive when you add premium channels like HBO.
BTW, don't think that I was trying to poke at the UK tax on TVs. I have no issue with it. I only included it in my post because I figured that someone would decide to correct me if I didn't. Seems I can't win either way.:-/
They were bought out by AOL, upgraded to be fully Gooey compliant, then integrated into the AOL user-base. Now they exist only as a website with some news info. It's painful to look at, really.
The same fate befell Prodigy, GoNetworks, and anyone else who DARED compete with AOL.:-(
Re:Teletext never really popular in the USA....
on
Ceefax Turns 30
·
· Score: 1
I'm not really sure if the phone rates had anything to do with BBS proliferation. CeeFax was popular in the days when computers cost $3000 + $500 for a modem, and BBSes where long distance calls for 95% of the population.
I'm guessing that the real reason has to do with the US's decentralized broadcast networks. When all the networks are owned and operated by the government, it's pretty easy to ensure that they conform. But in the US, we had tons of stations out in the country that survived on a shoestring budget. They probably saw little value in operating and maintaining Teletext services, so it never quite caught on.
And since the cities tended to be the few places where Compuserve calls were local and BBSes existed, there was no incentive deploy the systems there.
It's actually called teletext just about everywhere. CeeFax is simply an example of a teletext service. According to Wikipedia, CeeFax (a.k.a. Teledata) was first, and was followed closely by ORACLE. Other services came later.
Personally, I find this story very interesting. I had heard about teletext from one of those old Usborne books as a kid, but I'd never actually SEEN it. I'd always assumed that it was one of those little known services that really didn't go anywhere. It seems I was wrong.:-)
That's pretty cool! Here in the U.S., we had to pay per minute for contemporary services on Compuserve. With prices as high as $0.20 per minute, it's no wonder that Compuserve was primarily reserved for businesses! But to have hundreds of pages of text information pushed to your television set at no (excluding television tax) cost? That's amazing!
Of course, the proliferation of U.S. BBSes started in the mid to late 80's and gained momentum right up until the Internet became popular in the mid-90's. Which makes me wonder. Is there a telnet machine somewhere where we can access the CeeFax info? It would be interesting to see what they're pushing over the airwaves.
Ah memories. Sometimes I wonder if the tech of the 80's wasn't cooler than the tech we have today. Sure, we have Gooey interfaces and full color graphics, but what's that compared to the thrill of interfacing systems over a modem, cursing at natural language interfaces, designing BBS screens in TheDraw, and wowing at the amount of info that's (unknown to the general populace) being pushed over massive research networks and dial-up nodes? (3 days for an email? That's speedy, man!) Or maybe I'm just nostalgic.:-)
Dude, if that lock breaks, YOU DON'T DIE. Or more to the point, no one else dies. If you knowingly used a substandard beam in your home, and a guest of yours got killed when it fell on them, then I'd happily haul your ass in front of a judge.
Using Windows as a controller for medical machines, air traffic controllers, or vehicle drive-by-wire computers IS criminal. Thankfully, most medical companies are smart enough to only use windows for the interface and database. The actual machine control is still handled by an embedded real time OS.
Slashdot Mirror
That's pretty easy. The facility was in Ukraine, and was pawned to the Ukrainian government in exchange for a loan. The Ukrainian government has been pretty poor about the upkeep, and the original orbiter was lost during a hanger collapse. The test vehicles were considered scrap and have been known to show up in several locations.
For example, Gorky Park in Moscow managed to snag one of the test vehicles as an attraction. If you ever go there, you can walk through the shuttle and take a 3D ride.
Interestingly enough, in many ways it is superior to the US space shuttle - for example if could do everything automated - including the landing.
This is true. The Russians has NASA's 10+ years of experience behind them when they were working on the Buran. As such, they avoided several points which made the shuttle such a difficult craft. A few items:
- The Buran had no launch engines. All lift power was provided by the Energia it was strapped to.
- The Buran had more advanced computers with real-time control abilities instead of the "key in the program" design of the shuttle.
- The Buran stack was lighter due to the single-booster design.
- The complexity lost in the single-booster design meant that turn-around times would have been far faster than the shuttle.
- Future versions of the design would have made the Energia booster able to fly back to Earth and be reused.
All of this did come at a price, however. IIRC, the Russian program was about twice as expensive in R&D as the US program. As for the aerodynamics, my understanding is that the Russians did have stolen shuttle specs as a reference. Even if they didn't, they still had a large collection of photographs from which they could divine the areo-shell design. As a result, the Buran was nearly an exact aerodynamic copy of the space shuttle.
And for anyone who thinks that may have been a coincidence, think again. There was no need for the Russians to have built a large cargo craft. They already had excellent cargo boosters, so they could have built a man rated vehicle for much less. They built the Buran to compete with the shuttle on every point, but did it in such a way as to show that Russian design was "better".
That being said, I'd love to see the Energia program revitalized. With those rockets, we could have cut the costs of ISS construction several fold!
Sun?
NFS, OpenOffice, GNOME?
90% of what people did was the same stuff people did with CeeFax. Remember, Compuserve was per minute, so people were encouraged to get quick updates. Obviously, things like being able to schedule airline reservations were a big bonus over CeeFax.
In the words of Neo: Whoa.
:-)
An AC apologizing? Now I've seen everything.
Dude, you've got serious issues. If you browse at -1 and pay attention to the time-stamps, you'll find that I was the first person to make the comment.
Quick, someone say something funny!
Does it come with a magnifying glass?
Better than using the Social Security card, I guess. I pray to God that the SSN != National ID law will never, ever, ever get repealed.
Ummm, hello!? Zmodem!!!
Funny thing, that. I couldn't get *functional* terminal software with ZModem support until nearly the time I switched over to the Internet. If I downloaded a new terminal program from a BBS, it would invariably be too old, and running ZModem.exe as an external program never seemed to work right. I think I finally found a terminal program with built-in ZModem support, but man was it ever difficult to find!
Hmm... I'd forgotten how hard it was to get software before the Internet.
Interesting, but on my keyboard Alt-163 gives an accented u (ú).
:-)
You forgot the '0'. Alt-0163 gives £ while Alt-163 gives ú.
(For those who can't figure it out, you have to type the numbers in the keypad. Sorry laptop users!)
Same for Wisconsin. Our drivers licenses actually have magnetic strips on the back (for some reason or another) and they're still able to produce them right at the facilities.
Add a line to the spec that the software "must be Macintosh compatible". The requirement will sound legit, and the Microsofties won't get their way. :-)
Why worry about it?
We already use Satellite and land lines for digital broadcasts. Why do we need to convert the regular airwaves?
That, and they have pee bladders built into the space suits.
We don't watch soccer.
What, like this?
;-) Actually, you can use the Windows Character Mapper to input it (U+00A3), or you can type Alt+0163 on Windows and Alt+3 on the Macintosh. I have no idea how you do it on Linux, and I'm nowhere near such a machine at the moment.
£15
Simple, I copied and pasted from a UK post!
Just for fun, let's see how many characters Slashdot will accept:
£15
22 (cents)
To infinity and beyond!(TM)
Yo Quiero, Taco Bell!
3000¥
© 2001 All ® reserved
Hmm... not all that many it seems. Some of the characters work, some of them don't, and some are just invisible.
You usually have to ask for true basic cable. When I was in California, they were always trying to sell me the next package up when all I wanted was the local channels. (I had no reception and wanted to watch Star Trek.) The next level up was only $14.95, but didn't include all that much. (Cartoon Network, though!) To get channels like the Sci-Fi channel, I had to go up to the range of ~$25/mo.
:-)
Now I'm in an apartment building in the midwest that includes cable as part of the rent. Life is good.
Yep. These days thinking about terms like Baud, Kermit, XModem, Acoustic Coupler, Carrier Signals, Parity Bits, Hardware Flow Control, etc, etc, etc all seem as ancient as terms like Superheterodyne, Dynamo, Diode, and Vacuum Tubes. We just take those concepts for granted any more.
I guess that tech is always more exciting when it's in its prime.
so we have to press "down down down select down select right right right" instead.
You're doing it wrong. You have to press "up", "up", "down", "down", "left", "right", "left", "right", "a", "b", "select", "start"!
Ermm... what were we talking about again?
What do you guys pay for basic cable? How many watchable channels do you get?
:-/
You actually have to differentiate basic cable from public broadcasting. Your average television viewer will have about 5 channels or more available at no cost when he plugs in his TV. (NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, and PBS stations.) These networks are paid for by advertising only, save for PBS which runs with public funds.
Now *basic* cable tends to be the same as the public channels for about $8.00/mo ($96.00/yr), but tends to include a few extra channels as a bonus. i.e. UPN, C-SPAN, etc. Anything above that is more expensive, but tends to contain at least 25-50 available channels. You can usually get this level of service for about $14.95/mo. Things really start getting expensive when you add premium channels like HBO.
BTW, don't think that I was trying to poke at the UK tax on TVs. I have no issue with it. I only included it in my post because I figured that someone would decide to correct me if I didn't. Seems I can't win either way.
And where is Compu$erve, nowadays????
:-(
They were bought out by AOL, upgraded to be fully Gooey compliant, then integrated into the AOL user-base. Now they exist only as a website with some news info. It's painful to look at, really.
The same fate befell Prodigy, GoNetworks, and anyone else who DARED compete with AOL.
I'm not really sure if the phone rates had anything to do with BBS proliferation. CeeFax was popular in the days when computers cost $3000 + $500 for a modem, and BBSes where long distance calls for 95% of the population.
I'm guessing that the real reason has to do with the US's decentralized broadcast networks. When all the networks are owned and operated by the government, it's pretty easy to ensure that they conform. But in the US, we had tons of stations out in the country that survived on a shoestring budget. They probably saw little value in operating and maintaining Teletext services, so it never quite caught on.
And since the cities tended to be the few places where Compuserve calls were local and BBSes existed, there was no incentive deploy the systems there.
It's actually called teletext just about everywhere. CeeFax is simply an example of a teletext service. According to Wikipedia, CeeFax (a.k.a. Teledata) was first, and was followed closely by ORACLE. Other services came later.
:-)
Personally, I find this story very interesting. I had heard about teletext from one of those old Usborne books as a kid, but I'd never actually SEEN it. I'd always assumed that it was one of those little known services that really didn't go anywhere. It seems I was wrong.
That's pretty cool! Here in the U.S., we had to pay per minute for contemporary services on Compuserve. With prices as high as $0.20 per minute, it's no wonder that Compuserve was primarily reserved for businesses! But to have hundreds of pages of text information pushed to your television set at no (excluding television tax) cost? That's amazing!
:-)
Of course, the proliferation of U.S. BBSes started in the mid to late 80's and gained momentum right up until the Internet became popular in the mid-90's. Which makes me wonder. Is there a telnet machine somewhere where we can access the CeeFax info? It would be interesting to see what they're pushing over the airwaves.
Ah memories. Sometimes I wonder if the tech of the 80's wasn't cooler than the tech we have today. Sure, we have Gooey interfaces and full color graphics, but what's that compared to the thrill of interfacing systems over a modem, cursing at natural language interfaces, designing BBS screens in TheDraw, and wowing at the amount of info that's (unknown to the general populace) being pushed over massive research networks and dial-up nodes? (3 days for an email? That's speedy, man!) Or maybe I'm just nostalgic.
Dude, if that lock breaks, YOU DON'T DIE. Or more to the point, no one else dies. If you knowingly used a substandard beam in your home, and a guest of yours got killed when it fell on them, then I'd happily haul your ass in front of a judge.
Using Windows as a controller for medical machines, air traffic controllers, or vehicle drive-by-wire computers IS criminal. Thankfully, most medical companies are smart enough to only use windows for the interface and database. The actual machine control is still handled by an embedded real time OS.