I don't think the Shuttle is terrible It just should have been replaced. It has been flying for about 30 years now. Building a more modern Shuttle. I would would really like to see that. The X-33 was supposed to be a shuttle replacement but it got canned for what I think where not good reasons. Also you don't want to boost the shuttle farther. What you want is a space tug that takes payloads higher. That was supposed to be part of the shuttle program but it got canceled.
Actually the SSME are still some of the most advanced liquid fueled engines flying today. The ET uses ALLI alloy and also very advanced and the SRB are the most powerful solid fuel boosters ever flown. Throw in the fact that the Shuttle probably has the most hypersonic flight time of any vehicle and you have a really treasure trove of useful information. Yes the Shuttle was too expensive per flight but really is a technological marvel an one that has produced a lot very useful knowledge.
There are C++ bindings for GTK. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gtkmm Also the GTK library is used in a large number of popular programs. I have to say that I just don't find KDE desktop as useful and Gnome. KDE IMHO is just way to fiddly while the Gnome desktop really does just seem to work. To me people are really forgetting exactly what a desktop is for. It is to launch applications and to manage files. When it get to that level KDE just tries to do to much and is to complex. Oh and I am not a low end user I just understand that is a lot harder to make a good simple UI than it is to make complex UI.
I wouldn't dismiss the idea of an ARM desktop or even server CPU in the future. Right now we have reached a point where CPUs are really powerful enough for just about normal PC task. The tasks that could still use more power are those that traditionally where done on Workstations and Gaming. Just how many average users need a quad core today? Not many because you see people buying a lot more Notebooks and Netbooks than Desktops. The one bottle neck for the average users is HD video. nVidia and Broadcom have shown that it is better to move that off the CPU and put it on a dedicated GPU or just a decoder. So in pure usability which is better a Tegra2, OMap4, or an Atom? Odds are the ARM solutions will be cheaper, faster, and use less power. The one gotcha is software but I think Apple has shown that if you do right people will flock to develop on a new platform and people will buy new software if it is cheap enough. If I could get cheap ARM motherboards with an OMap or Tegra 2 with PCIe slots and SATA ports I would buy several of them today. At my office we have a NAS running an Intel CPU, two firewall Routers boxes, email Server, phone server, database server, and a intranet/CVS server. They all run Linux and we don't run to visualize them because of security and redundancy. Each of those servers except the phone server could be replaced by an ARM based system. Our database server which supports around 50 users is running on an old PIII 600Mhz system with only 512MB of ram. I am sure that a Tegra2 like system with a Gig or more of RAM would run it just fine and use less power as well.
Makes sense. Apple Supports the Kernel on ARM and Intel publicly and was maintaining support for the Power line in Leopard so some development must have been on going. I think Apple is too smart to get so lazy as to not spend at least a little effort in keeping OS X portable. And if OS X is going to be Portable the most likely targets are ARM, Power, and Intel. Frankly I wouldn't be shocked if Apple also had an Itantium version in house just in case that system ever makes it into the mainstream. I don't think Intel has given up on the Itantium yet. Let's face it some day we will have to move off the X86 ISA so keeping you options open is just smart.
Yea you would think the would have an N900 wouldn't you? He has sold out his own birth Nation! How dare he! Naw it is just a phone and the Nexus one is a pretty nice one at that.
No I don't agree. As a lot of people have said these older Macs are most likely being used for simple web surfing. Gnome and KDE are both very usable GUIs, Nothing too odd or hard about clicking on an icon or picking a program from a menu. Object Orientation? I don't see that much difference between OS X and any other OS from a users point of view with Object orientation. Plug and Play? on an older G3 Mac? Probably not a lot better than on Linux., DIspaly PDF? for websurfing and Email????
I have XP, 7 and Linux at home and I have started to work with OS X at my office for development. OS X has some "Nice" features but it isn't that much better then the other OSs I have worked on. It is very well thought out and has some nice touches but really it is just an OS with a GUI.
But hasn't that always been the way things worked. Frankly I feel doing this on planet is about as stupid as above ground nuclear testing. This is why we need a space program. Doing this kind of research on say the moon seems like a much better plan than anywhere on earth. If not there maybe one of the dry valley's in the Antarctic.
Humm. Well maybe then we can force Microsoft to "recall" all their older operating systems and fix them for free. I would say that IE6, Windows 95, 98, and ME are all unsafe at any speed.
On server yes. Without a doubt. On a desktop even if a certain task isn't you are probably running multiple programs in the background that can use the other cores. Honestly programmers really need to start thinking about how to use these new CPUs. A good example is where I work our major product does a timed backup of any open document every few minutes. It can produce a noticeable blip now and then. In the next version we may just make a copy of the document in RAM and then write the backup in a tread from that copy. On a modern multicore system the end user will never notice it.
I liked the directors cut but the version that went to the theaters had some real issues. 1. They cut the scene where Paul must fight to join the Fremen tribe. That was a pivotal point in the book. 2. The weirding thing is just a terrible addition. It violated many of the premises of the book. I agree that the rest of it was great but those two flaws meant that it really wasn't Dune.
I mentioned QNX because Harman Kardon bought them and use them in their systems. You see I could see Tom Tom making deals to provide software for Cars instead of selling standalone devices. That being said I don't see a lot wrong with Sync from what I hear.
Where we disagree is in ARM performance. I don't see it as subpar. I would love to see a Tegra 2 or OMAP 4 compared to an Atom. I think they could actually outperform the Atom. I don't see Windows XP going ARM because it would loose it's software base. You would have less software available than Linux does.
Very simple you stated that users don't like the iPhone OS. Well some people do not but a huge numbers of people do and it has changed the mobile phone market. I can tell you that a lot more people don't like WinMO than iPhoneOS. Frankly a lot more WinMo users hate WinMo. Most are stuck because of some app they must have and are hopping that WinMO7 doesn't suck. Taskmanager? I have not needed on on my iPod Touch. Now on my Android phone I do. I will not get an iPhone because of AT&T. But a phone shouldn't need a task manager. The Cut and past is now and yes it dumb to leave it out. All you other complaints have nothing to do with the OS. No keyboard, removable battery, or camera are or where all hardware choices. They do have a camera and a real GPS now BTW. Not being able to install whatever you want is more a cultural issue. Apple offers a walled garden of apps. You have one place to look for them and only one place you have to market if your a developer. It is a choice that frankly really seems to have worked well for the users and the developers for the most part. But again that has nothing to do with the OS. Just about the only problem I have with the iPhone OS is the lack of multitasking. Which I do find really frustrating. The Palm OS does a great card with multitasking the the UI is every bit as good as the iPhone OS. WinMo reminds me of Linux back before Gnome and KDE. Yes it works and you can do anything you want with it but it is just an ugly mess. The difference is that Linux was more stable.
Actually I did some work with Linux on an XScale CPU a while back. It actually ran X pretty well and didn't need to be all that stripped down to work. I wouldn't run Gnome on it or KDE but the code I wrote using GTK performed well. On the new A8 and A9 cores I think Linux will preform very close to what you see on the desktop. I wouldn't run OO.org on it but as a whole I think the Linux stack will do just fine. The truth is that a lot of Linux software will just take a recompile to run just fine on an ARM. I think that Linux will have a real advantage in software applications over WinCE on a Netbook. WinMo right now is just about where the old PalmOS was two years ago. In deep trouble. I wouldn't say that Microsoft is unmatched in automobile navigation. QNX and others have a big users base. Linux has really lagged there because no big company has pushed it. It is a shame and I hope that maybe TomTom will start pushing it and start making deals with the car makers.
Maybe. Honestly the only software that I have to boot into Windows for is FSX, Left4Dead, and SolidWorks. For the stuff I do at home the vast majority of it is done on Linux or my Cell. I think the resistance to moving to a new platform is going down day by day. There will probably always be people that must have Windows but that number can drop very fast. For my wife the only programs she must have Windows for are Photoshop Elements and Lightroom. She does use GIMP and she loves it but there are somethings that Elements does better. If Adobe ported Elements and Lightroom the only time she would need Windows is for Tax time.
Wow... I don't think that expanding the Cache and ram on the ARM would hurt Linux or OS/X at all. ARM doesn't make chips. So yes Microsoft could buy the right to make ARM CPUs and make their own flavor of ARM just like Apple, nVidia, TI, and Marvell have. I think your fears are a bit miss placed at this point. Also since Microsoft has been floundering in the Mobile market for years I don't their is all that much to fear from them.
"and an OS so crippled that users don't even like it when it's on a *phone*." Many million people disagree with you on that statment.
If the iPad doesn't offer some kind of multitasking I think it struggle. But frankly the iPhone OS is actually really well liked by the vast majority of it's users.
True but WinCE sucks as WinMo is in deep trouble. Windows Mobile is really at the "also" ran level in the Cell Phone market. Do you see any ads for WinMo phones? Not really. IPhone, Android, BlackBerry, and Palm are all way ahead of Microsoft in mind share. If Microsoft is going to be anything else but a footnote in the Phone market WinMo7 better be out tomorrow and be mind blowing. Frankly I think Microsoft is loosing it's halo. Xbox360 has had a huge struggle with hardware failures. WinMo is old and clunky, Vista left a really bad taste in peoples mouth, Office is facing competition from Google Docs and OpenOffice, and Play For Sure failed publicly. Microsoft does have a hit with Windows7 and Sync is very good but the list of fails and disasters from Microsoft is actually pretty dang large now.
I would say that Microsoft in every market except the desktop is now in a put up or shut up situation. The problem is that I don't think Microsoft knows it. I wonder if they feel that Android and iPhone are just passing fads.
No I did know that. I even know that Google is planning on dropping gears because the next version of HTML is going to support gears like operations. I just don't think that it is going to replace apps. Even with a fast connection I and many people would just rather use native apps. Also JavaScript is still just not as fast as native code even with a JIT. Also web development actually makes it harder for small developers and even harder for FOSS developers. With a Webapp I have to supply a server architecture that will support how ever many users decide to use my app. If my servers are slow then my app will be slow. All that costs money. It gets worse if you go with FOSS because you can not just toss your project on a website and have people download it. Some how you must pay for a server to run the server side of your app. I just don't see people writing apps that do any heavy DSP or image processing using JavaScript. You are not going to write GIMP, Vorbis Ogg, Shazzam, Audicity, or any number of other apps in Javascript. Web apps by nature are limited. Sure they can try and expose more and more functionality by expanding it and adding more built in functions but you will then be left at the mercy of the vendor and face a huge issue with platform fragmentation.
Also I have heard of race conditions happening when trying to sync Google Docs using gears. I would be careful with multiuser docs.
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I don't think the Shuttle is terrible It just should have been replaced. It has been flying for about 30 years now.
Building a more modern Shuttle. I would would really like to see that. The X-33 was supposed to be a shuttle replacement but it got canned for what I think where not good reasons.
Also you don't want to boost the shuttle farther. What you want is a space tug that takes payloads higher. That was supposed to be part of the shuttle program but it got canceled.
Actually the SSME are still some of the most advanced liquid fueled engines flying today. The ET uses ALLI alloy and also very advanced and the SRB are the most powerful solid fuel boosters ever flown.
Throw in the fact that the Shuttle probably has the most hypersonic flight time of any vehicle and you have a really treasure trove of useful information.
Yes the Shuttle was too expensive per flight but really is a technological marvel an one that has produced a lot very useful knowledge.
There are C++ bindings for GTK. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gtkmm
Also the GTK library is used in a large number of popular programs.
I have to say that I just don't find KDE desktop as useful and Gnome.
KDE IMHO is just way to fiddly while the Gnome desktop really does just seem to work.
To me people are really forgetting exactly what a desktop is for. It is to launch applications and to manage files.
When it get to that level KDE just tries to do to much and is to complex.
Oh and I am not a low end user I just understand that is a lot harder to make a good simple UI than it is to make complex UI.
I wouldn't dismiss the idea of an ARM desktop or even server CPU in the future.
Right now we have reached a point where CPUs are really powerful enough for just about normal PC task.
The tasks that could still use more power are those that traditionally where done on Workstations and Gaming.
Just how many average users need a quad core today? Not many because you see people buying a lot more Notebooks and Netbooks than Desktops.
The one bottle neck for the average users is HD video. nVidia and Broadcom have shown that it is better to move that off the CPU and put it on a dedicated GPU or just a decoder.
So in pure usability which is better a Tegra2, OMap4, or an Atom? Odds are the ARM solutions will be cheaper, faster, and use less power.
The one gotcha is software but I think Apple has shown that if you do right people will flock to develop on a new platform and people will buy new software if it is cheap enough.
If I could get cheap ARM motherboards with an OMap or Tegra 2 with PCIe slots and SATA ports I would buy several of them today.
At my office we have a NAS running an Intel CPU, two firewall Routers boxes, email Server, phone server, database server, and a intranet/CVS server. They all run Linux and we don't run to visualize them because of security and redundancy.
Each of those servers except the phone server could be replaced by an ARM based system.
Our database server which supports around 50 users is running on an old PIII 600Mhz system with only 512MB of ram. I am sure that a Tegra2 like system with a Gig or more of RAM would run it just fine and use less power as well.
Makes sense. Apple Supports the Kernel on ARM and Intel publicly and was maintaining support for the Power line in Leopard so some development must have been on going.
I think Apple is too smart to get so lazy as to not spend at least a little effort in keeping OS X portable. And if OS X is going to be Portable the most likely targets are ARM, Power, and Intel. Frankly I wouldn't be shocked if Apple also had an Itantium version in house just in case that system ever makes it into the mainstream.
I don't think Intel has given up on the Itantium yet. Let's face it some day we will have to move off the X86 ISA so keeping you options open is just smart.
Why can't we get a -4 terrible metaphor tag?
But it is a Nokia that runs Linux....
Never mind..
Yea you would think the would have an N900 wouldn't you?
He has sold out his own birth Nation! How dare he!
Naw it is just a phone and the Nexus one is a pretty nice one at that.
No I don't agree.
As a lot of people have said these older Macs are most likely being used for simple web surfing.
Gnome and KDE are both very usable GUIs, Nothing too odd or hard about clicking on an icon or picking a program from a menu.
Object Orientation? I don't see that much difference between OS X and any other OS from a users point of view with Object orientation. Plug and Play? on an older G3 Mac? Probably not a lot better than on Linux., DIspaly PDF? for websurfing and Email????
I have XP, 7 and Linux at home and I have started to work with OS X at my office for development.
OS X has some "Nice" features but it isn't that much better then the other OSs I have worked on. It is very well thought out and has some nice touches but really it is just an OS with a GUI.
Well I don't think we could destroy all life on this earth. Even with salted nukes some life would still remain.
I agree that this is a huge "What could possible go wrong" idea.
That is why I said if they are going to do this it needs to be off planet.
But hasn't that always been the way things worked.
Frankly I feel doing this on planet is about as stupid as above ground nuclear testing.
This is why we need a space program. Doing this kind of research on say the moon seems like a much better plan than anywhere on earth.
If not there maybe one of the dry valley's in the Antarctic.
Well this is just fine.
Microsoft should now open the SDK and open the XBox protocols so somebody else can take over support for their games.
Humm. Well maybe then we can force Microsoft to "recall" all their older operating systems and fix them for free.
I would say that IE6, Windows 95, 98, and ME are all unsafe at any speed.
On server yes. Without a doubt.
On a desktop even if a certain task isn't you are probably running multiple programs in the background that can use the other cores.
Honestly programmers really need to start thinking about how to use these new CPUs.
A good example is where I work our major product does a timed backup of any open document every few minutes.
It can produce a noticeable blip now and then.
In the next version we may just make a copy of the document in RAM and then write the backup in a tread from that copy. On a modern multicore system the end user will never notice it.
I liked the directors cut but the version that went to the theaters had some real issues.
1. They cut the scene where Paul must fight to join the Fremen tribe. That was a pivotal point in the book.
2. The weirding thing is just a terrible addition. It violated many of the premises of the book.
I agree that the rest of it was great but those two flaws meant that it really wasn't Dune.
Actually the Directors cut of the Lynch movie was pretty good. I would say that only problems was that it was butchered in editing.
I mentioned QNX because Harman Kardon bought them and use them in their systems.
You see I could see Tom Tom making deals to provide software for Cars instead of selling standalone devices. That being said I don't see a lot wrong with Sync from what I hear.
Where we disagree is in ARM performance. I don't see it as subpar. I would love to see a Tegra 2 or OMAP 4 compared to an Atom. I think they could actually outperform the Atom. I don't see Windows XP going ARM because it would loose it's software base. You would have less software available than Linux does.
Very simple you stated that users don't like the iPhone OS.
Well some people do not but a huge numbers of people do and it has changed the mobile phone market.
I can tell you that a lot more people don't like WinMO than iPhoneOS. Frankly a lot more WinMo users hate WinMo. Most are stuck because of some app they must have and are hopping that WinMO7 doesn't suck.
Taskmanager? I have not needed on on my iPod Touch. Now on my Android phone I do. I will not get an iPhone because of AT&T. But a phone shouldn't need a task manager.
The Cut and past is now and yes it dumb to leave it out.
All you other complaints have nothing to do with the OS.
No keyboard, removable battery, or camera are or where all hardware choices.
They do have a camera and a real GPS now BTW.
Not being able to install whatever you want is more a cultural issue. Apple offers a walled garden of apps. You have one place to look for them and only one place you have to market if your a developer.
It is a choice that frankly really seems to have worked well for the users and the developers for the most part.
But again that has nothing to do with the OS.
Just about the only problem I have with the iPhone OS is the lack of multitasking. Which I do find really frustrating.
The Palm OS does a great card with multitasking the the UI is every bit as good as the iPhone OS.
WinMo reminds me of Linux back before Gnome and KDE. Yes it works and you can do anything you want with it but it is just an ugly mess. The difference is that Linux was more stable.
Actually I did some work with Linux on an XScale CPU a while back. It actually ran X pretty well and didn't need to be all that stripped down to work. I wouldn't run Gnome on it or KDE but the code I wrote using GTK performed well. On the new A8 and A9 cores I think Linux will preform very close to what you see on the desktop.
I wouldn't run OO.org on it but as a whole I think the Linux stack will do just fine.
The truth is that a lot of Linux software will just take a recompile to run just fine on an ARM. I think that Linux will have a real advantage in software applications over WinCE on a Netbook.
WinMo right now is just about where the old PalmOS was two years ago. In deep trouble.
I wouldn't say that Microsoft is unmatched in automobile navigation. QNX and others have a big users base. Linux has really lagged there because no big company has pushed it. It is a shame and I hope that maybe TomTom will start pushing it and start making deals with the car makers.
Maybe. Honestly the only software that I have to boot into Windows for is FSX, Left4Dead, and SolidWorks.
For the stuff I do at home the vast majority of it is done on Linux or my Cell.
I think the resistance to moving to a new platform is going down day by day. There will probably always be people that must have Windows but that number can drop very fast.
For my wife the only programs she must have Windows for are Photoshop Elements and Lightroom. She does use GIMP and she loves it but there are somethings that Elements does better. If Adobe ported Elements and Lightroom the only time she would need Windows is for Tax time.
Wow...
I don't think that expanding the Cache and ram on the ARM would hurt Linux or OS/X at all.
ARM doesn't make chips. So yes Microsoft could buy the right to make ARM CPUs and make their own flavor of ARM just like Apple, nVidia, TI, and Marvell have.
I think your fears are a bit miss placed at this point. Also since Microsoft has been floundering in the Mobile market for years I don't their is all that much to fear from them.
"and an OS so crippled that users don't even like it when it's on a *phone*."
Many million people disagree with you on that statment.
If the iPad doesn't offer some kind of multitasking I think it struggle. But frankly the iPhone OS is actually really well liked by the vast majority of it's users.
True but WinCE sucks as WinMo is in deep trouble.
Windows Mobile is really at the "also" ran level in the Cell Phone market.
Do you see any ads for WinMo phones? Not really. IPhone, Android, BlackBerry, and Palm are all way ahead of Microsoft in mind share.
If Microsoft is going to be anything else but a footnote in the Phone market WinMo7 better be out tomorrow and be mind blowing.
Frankly I think Microsoft is loosing it's halo. Xbox360 has had a huge struggle with hardware failures. WinMo is old and clunky, Vista left a really bad taste in peoples mouth, Office is facing competition from Google Docs and OpenOffice, and Play For Sure failed publicly.
Microsoft does have a hit with Windows7 and Sync is very good but the list of fails and disasters from Microsoft is actually pretty dang large now.
I would say that Microsoft in every market except the desktop is now in a put up or shut up situation. The problem is that I don't think Microsoft knows it. I wonder if they feel that Android and iPhone are just passing fads.
No I did know that. I even know that Google is planning on dropping gears because the next version of HTML is going to support gears like operations.
I just don't think that it is going to replace apps. Even with a fast connection I and many people would just rather use native apps. Also JavaScript is still just not as fast as native code even with a JIT.
Also web development actually makes it harder for small developers and even harder for FOSS developers.
With a Webapp I have to supply a server architecture that will support how ever many users decide to use my app. If my servers are slow then my app will be slow. All that costs money.
It gets worse if you go with FOSS because you can not just toss your project on a website and have people download it. Some how you must pay for a server to run the server side of your app.
I just don't see people writing apps that do any heavy DSP or image processing using JavaScript.
You are not going to write GIMP, Vorbis Ogg, Shazzam, Audicity, or any number of other apps in Javascript.
Web apps by nature are limited. Sure they can try and expose more and more functionality by expanding it and adding more built in functions but you will then be left at the mercy of the vendor and face a huge issue with platform fragmentation.
Also I have heard of race conditions happening when trying to sync Google Docs using gears. I would be careful with multiuser docs.
No I was there. As I said actually seeing it with your own eyes is some how different than seeing it on TV.