Not wasting my time trying to build something that's already been built. If they would have taken existing technology they probably could have cut down their development time.
Want to fly around the world in a solar powered plane? Fine, that's all well and good. No one else has a manned flight around the world in a solar powered plane. But, it's just not that impressive. I've spent the last seven years shooting for the stars, but I've not run and told every Tom, Dick and Bjorn about it when I reach a small step. Come back in 2012 when you've actually flown around the world in a solar powered plane. Until then, you're just tooting your own horn.
I'm sure we are. That's not really the issue here. The title came across (at first) as sounding as if this was another (false) claim of making the first ever solar powered flight.
Even so, the submission is little more than a shill for the company. It's neither impressive or nerdy and really doesn't matter. Seven years for their maiden test flight and now no more big demos until 2012? Puh-lease. I could have lived my entire life without hearing about this. Now if it was, as someone else suggested in another thread, a flight with a dozen people even just 500 miles, that would be impressive.
There is, but I left of Centurion and Helios because I couldn't get any dates or flight data from my source. I'm sure a little more checking on that would have provided that information (and thank you for the link) but I felt it was beyond the scope of what I was going at.
There's a Business Insider article where the author makes the claim for "first solar-powered flight" without any caveat of it being first for that plane/company. I sent him a polite email informing him of his error with a request for correction that has gone ignored. I might email his ombudsman next.
This represents the first solar-powered flights ever. Not the plane in this article.
I guess we've forgotten:
Sunrise II - November 4, 1974
Gossamer Penguin - May 18, 1980 (solar powered flight), August 7, 1980 (solar-powered public demo)
Solar Challenger - July 7, 1981 (cross-Channel flight)
Pathfinder - September 11, 1995 (reached record altitude of 50,500ft); April (or sometime later, article doesn't say) 1997 (set new record for both prop and solar powered planes with altitude of 71,530ft)
Pathfinder-Plus - August 6, 1998 (set new altitude record for prop and solar plane: 80,201 ft)
From the article:
After seven years in the making, the Solar Impulse made its first real flight this morning from an airbase in Switzerland. The solar-powered plane got up to 5,500 ft in altitude and performed test maneuvers in order to see if the plane handled as well as simulations predicted.
Really? And this is impressive how? Seven years to reinvent existing technology? Puh-lease.
How many cubicle farms are going to put high end graphics cards on their workstations? If I were a responsible IT Manager, I would only allow the minimum needed to run the OS (office apps and most specialty software should not need more than that). From a cost perspective, that would be responsible. Running a high end graphics card just to assist in running this monstrosity would be irresponsible at best.
My mom is running ~.5GB RAM on her XP system and it's not nearly enough. What I have is barely enough. To have another app laying up in ram running through each instruction of any program I opened at 20 times/second...no. That's not happening on either system.
That has to add a lot of overhead to the already running process and to what benefit? If it's reading the code "as many as 20 times per second" that is going to add tons of CPU and RAM usage to the system that just isn't needed. F/OSS ftw!
I don't use either GNOME or KDE. The original argument, which you quote, is irrelevant in my case. I'm the one (along with more than a few others) with the issues installing Amarok because of all its dependencies; I already have gtk libs installed for apps like GIMP, Firefox, and a couple of other apps. I also already have a good deal of Qt installed. Installing the kde crude will just fill up my hard drive needlessly (not considering I can't even install half of them because of issues between mDNSResponder and avahi-libdns).
My issue that really killed VLC for me as anything other than a DVD player is that I spent about two hours editing the ID3 tags on about two dozen mp3s (I had to go back to where I downloaded them from and make sure I tagged the files correctly). The edits, after I hit save metadata, seemed to take. I close VLC, open it the next day and load those same files. No updated ID3 info was loaded. I looked. It was like I had done nothing.
And yeah, VLC actually sounds worse to me with the equalizer (granted my speakers are crap and I'm accessing my built-in sound card without the driver apparently).
I would, though. I've got about 2.5 GB of space left out of a 40GB drive (most given to/usr (about 30GB or so), 3GB given to swap, the rest to various parts of the fs.
My problem is disk space. I'm currently only running a 40GB hard drive (my old one died and I just haven't had the money until recently to get a bigger one).
Used it before. I don't care for Rhythmbox (won't load at the moment, I'm having issues with an upgrade I did to the jpeg library, going to be spending a long time fixing this, for that reason I'm completely halting new software installs after today).
Slashdot Mirror
Those wacky Japanese are at it again, I see.
First beer and panties in vending machines, then anatomically correct androids, and now this? Poor, deprived people.
Not wasting my time trying to build something that's already been built. If they would have taken existing technology they probably could have cut down their development time.
Want to fly around the world in a solar powered plane? Fine, that's all well and good. No one else has a manned flight around the world in a solar powered plane. But, it's just not that impressive. I've spent the last seven years shooting for the stars, but I've not run and told every Tom, Dick and Bjorn about it when I reach a small step. Come back in 2012 when you've actually flown around the world in a solar powered plane. Until then, you're just tooting your own horn.
It's not even the first one this millennium. Business Insider had an article about one last year.
http://www.businessinsider.com/solar-plane-finally-flies-2009-12
The author of that article is clearly ignorant of NASA's achievements since 1974.
According to this site
http://solar-flight.com/
They are already working on a two-seater that appears to take off under its own power.
So the only thing the Swiss having going for them is making a 'round the world flight in 2012 (please, keep any end-of-days comments to yourselves).
From what I read, yes.
My mistake, but the title of the submission could have been worded better.
Either way, we seem to have forgotten the early history of solar flight.
I'm sure we are. That's not really the issue here. The title came across (at first) as sounding as if this was another (false) claim of making the first ever solar powered flight.
Even so, the submission is little more than a shill for the company. It's neither impressive or nerdy and really doesn't matter. Seven years for their maiden test flight and now no more big demos until 2012? Puh-lease. I could have lived my entire life without hearing about this. Now if it was, as someone else suggested in another thread, a flight with a dozen people even just 500 miles, that would be impressive.
There is, but I left of Centurion and Helios because I couldn't get any dates or flight data from my source. I'm sure a little more checking on that would have provided that information (and thank you for the link) but I felt it was beyond the scope of what I was going at.
There's a Business Insider article where the author makes the claim for "first solar-powered flight" without any caveat of it being first for that plane/company. I sent him a polite email informing him of his error with a request for correction that has gone ignored. I might email his ombudsman next.
This represents the first solar-powered flights ever. Not the plane in this article.
I guess we've forgotten:
From the article:
Really? And this is impressive how? Seven years to reinvent existing technology? Puh-lease.
Considering the astronaut has already been in space for two days now....
*drool*
oh. I stand corrected. Onward toward licensing!
Don't thank me. I'm in the process of saving up for a $2k+ DIY box with 16GB of RAM. :p
How many cubicle farms are going to put high end graphics cards on their workstations? If I were a responsible IT Manager, I would only allow the minimum needed to run the OS (office apps and most specialty software should not need more than that). From a cost perspective, that would be responsible. Running a high end graphics card just to assist in running this monstrosity would be irresponsible at best.
My mom is running ~.5GB RAM on her XP system and it's not nearly enough. What I have is barely enough. To have another app laying up in ram running through each instruction of any program I opened at 20 times/second...no. That's not happening on either system.
Ham radio ftw!
I'm considering getting my ham operators license, though first I would like to purchase the equipment.
my own is about 8 years old (though still pretty beefy IMO, PIV 2.4GHz, 1.5GB ram, does the job)
):
That has to add a lot of overhead to the already running process and to what benefit? If it's reading the code "as many as 20 times per second" that is going to add tons of CPU and RAM usage to the system that just isn't needed. F/OSS ftw!
I don't use either GNOME or KDE. The original argument, which you quote, is irrelevant in my case. I'm the one (along with more than a few others) with the issues installing Amarok because of all its dependencies; I already have gtk libs installed for apps like GIMP, Firefox, and a couple of other apps. I also already have a good deal of Qt installed. Installing the kde crude will just fill up my hard drive needlessly (not considering I can't even install half of them because of issues between mDNSResponder and avahi-libdns).
How in the world?
My issue that really killed VLC for me as anything other than a DVD player is that I spent about two hours editing the ID3 tags on about two dozen mp3s (I had to go back to where I downloaded them from and make sure I tagged the files correctly). The edits, after I hit save metadata, seemed to take. I close VLC, open it the next day and load those same files. No updated ID3 info was loaded. I looked. It was like I had done nothing.
And yeah, VLC actually sounds worse to me with the equalizer (granted my speakers are crap and I'm accessing my built-in sound card without the driver apparently).
the moderators are fickle. I had one comment go from +5 interesting all the way to -1 flamebait in the span of a week.
I would, though. I've got about 2.5 GB of space left out of a 40GB drive (most given to /usr (about 30GB or so), 3GB given to swap, the rest to various parts of the fs.
I switched to WindowMaker years ago.
My problem is disk space. I'm currently only running a 40GB hard drive (my old one died and I just haven't had the money until recently to get a bigger one).
Used it before. I don't care for Rhythmbox (won't load at the moment, I'm having issues with an upgrade I did to the jpeg library, going to be spending a long time fixing this, for that reason I'm completely halting new software installs after today).