Waiting for the day when an object database or something like it is at the heart of a modern popular OS.
That is basically what Smalltalk was (except not that popular). When Apple went to Xerox they copied the look and made it popular, but they didn't really understand the implementation at the time.
I am also a NASA engineer that thinks it's best to let Ares go.
NASA did a lot of research and science before the Constellation program sucked all the funds from everything else NASA does, and Constellation is still at least 3 billion dollars per year short of what it needs to actually get built. I don't see any of these senators proposing the borrowing or tax increases needed to realistically implement a manned return to the moon, so the chances of it happening are approximately zero. Meanwhile, it's killing all of NASA's other missions.
Given that, it make sense to restore the balance back toward research and technology development and try to get cheaper commercial access to LEO going until we have the technology (fuel depots, electric propulsion) required to affordably go farther.
My Dad's first calculator cost $300 and it took a full pack of AA's and it had glow-y red numbers inside tiny light bulbs or vacuum tubes or something.
And it was the most exciting thing in the world! If there had been an internet back then, there would have been feverish discussion and hardware hacks and all kinds of 'boy' chatter regarding it and other devices competing for the same market.
We mostly talked in person back then, but it was just as exciting.
But nobody talks about pocket calculators much these days. We've solved them. They're done. They work perfectly...
Why can't I find one as good at being a calculator as my nearly 30 year old HP-15c?
Sure, scientists and such are clever and will try to figure out how to continue to expand the sciences, even without financial support systems of the past, but the demand in aeronautics will continue to diminish, fewer experts will get involved, and any incentives to stay will simply go away.
This budget restores funding to the science and technology development programs that Constellation cannibalized when it was under-funded. Aeronautics gets a 15% increase, for instance.
The truth is, there's no great plan, instead these cuts are politically motivated...
NASA's budget was increased, not cut.
Constellation was a huge unfunded mandate. It sucked all the funds from everything else NASA did. The Augustine report that studied future options for NASA said it would take 3 billion additional dollars per year to implement the program, and it gave several better options for NASA in the unlikely case that the $3 billion was available (but it isn't).
I see these changes as being common sense, not politically motivated. No politician of any party would want to borrow the money required to see Constellation through.
[Space X] already won the re-supply contract (pending some litigation) and their capsule is designed to carry people to space. We should cancel government funded efforts and instead contract it all out.
You are contradicting yourself.
Government funded efforts are already contracted out. NASA doesn't actually build rockets. They contract it out to Boeing, or Lockmart, or both (United Space Alliance), or now, Space X.
"Go private" really means that the government stops supplying space money altogether, and allows the free market to decide if space is worth it. Is that what you want?
"Microgravity" is the correct term for the background acceleration levels present on the International Space Station, and is commonly used by researchers who care about the exact levels of disturbance on their experiments (even researchers on the Vomit Comet).
Gravity gradients and small disturbances (hard drive motors, astronauts bumping the walls, etc.) make the broad spectrum acceleration noise floor on the ISS about 10 micro-Gs. Peaks caused by refrigerator pumps, maneuvering jets, Soyuz and Shuttle dockings, etc. are much higher.
MS might have decided they're not interested in this kind of market. It does not push any sales of any other products of their line.
Traditionally, it has pushed DirectX, and their operating systems. It doesn't work well under Wine or in a virtual machine, so you need a "real" Windows install to run it.
Like some other people here have said, without MSFS, I have no longer have any need to boot into Windows.
Having the capsule mounted on top of the fuel tanks also tends to add extra safety. And because of the relatively low weight of these capsules, you can afford to stick extra safety equipment on them.
Yes, the capsule designs have a Launch Abort System. It's the thing that looks like a tower at the top of the stack. It is a rocket motor that can yank the capsule away from the rest of the system if something goes terribly wrong.
In the future your persistent connection (e.g the ssh connection) will be running on a server not on the iphone. The display might be on the iphone but the ssh session you are monitoring won't be on the iphone. You can stop and start this display app, just like it were a VNC connection or a unix "Screen" connection without affecting the ssh operation.
Am I living in the future? How is this different than using my n800 to ssh into my server, start screen, disconnect after starting some long running task, and reconnect periodically with ssh and screen to pick up right where I left off? Or, as you say, just use VNC.
No background app on the portable device is necessary. Is there something about the iPhone that makes this intentionally impossible?
I filled out the survey. It was all very routine: where have you lived, who were your previous employers, etc, until the end.
In order to submit the survey (and keep your job), you have to agree to the "release": "I Authorize any investigator... to obtain any information relating to my activities... regardless of any previous agreement to the contrary".
This is new, and completely uncalled for. The purpose of HSPD12 is supposedly to improve the badging process to prevent identity theft. Someone decided it would be a good idea to attached an unlimited fishing expedition.
Truthfully, I think that it would be better to let the kindergarteners play with blocks, color with crayons, and generally let them act like little kids.
This is exactly right. Let them build with their hands and socialize for a few years.
After a few more years, when they are ready to move from blocks to a computer, try Scratch
Let's say that kids want to learn how to write software for this platform. Will the tools available be even comparable to what they would expect with any "real environment?"
It comes with Python and PyGTK, with Squeak eToys for younger kids. To me, that seems like a good way for kids to actually learn. What else would you suggest for kids to start with?
It seems far better than the rows and rows of Dell/Windows computers at my kid's middle school where they learn "real world" skills like "typing" and "powerpoint". You are correct that the way US K-12 classrooms use their computers is a waste. That's why this is trying to do something different.
There hasn't been any commercial research done in the ISS at all.
Mostly true, but most fundamental science research on the ground is not commercial either. There is a big difference between basic research and technology development.
Mostly astronomy, using the ISS as a platform, and life sciences, which is really only of interest if you're flying astronauts.
Not true. ISS is a terrible platform for astronomy. What astronomy was done there?
The 4 major research areas on ISS were fluid physics, combustion physics, materials science, and life science.
None of the "zero-G crystals" and such ever amounted to anything that couldn't be done much cheaper down here.
Not true. All approved ISS research was stuff that could not be done at all on the ground. If microgravity was not a requirement, it didn't fly.
A lot of people, myself included, find considerable irony in all the posturing about innovation and accusations of copying ideas from these two, when the basic metaphor underlying their desktops is well known to originate elsewhere.
Alan Kay, the head of the PARC research group in question, seems to agree with you. Here's what he said in the first sentences of his "Early History of Smalltalk" paper:
"Most ideas come from previous ideas. The sixties, particularly in the ARPA community, gave rise to a host of notions about "human-computer symbiosis" through interactive time-shared computers, graphics screens and pointing devices...."
Kay does not claim to have invented all this stuff; his contribution was recognizing good things when he saw them and combining them into a working system.
Software patents reject the obvious truth of "Most ideas come from previous ideas" and prevent inovators from doing what Xerox PARC did.
... they used them onboard for several years but I have no idea what they use now
They still use them on ISS. They are still black, ugly, and heavy, but they are also "space rated". My impression is that "space rated" in this case means that someone has gone through it with a tube of epoxy making sure nothing will vibrate loose.
Seriously, word I've heard is that NASA's budget will rise for 2005-2006 unless Congress doesn't go with Bush on this one.
Yes, the budget went up slightly, but most of NASA's existing work has been canceled as part of Bush's "Vision For Space Exploration". Almost everything having to do with actual scientific research (like pesky environmental studies) has been axed. Four NASA centers are preparing for massive layoffs (e.g., 40% reduction in people over the next 1.5 years), and the "final report" of the center closure committee has not yet been released. Under the "Vision", NASA will only work on things that won't be accomplished for a few decades, if they get funded, and nobody actually believes that the hundreds of billions of dollars that a moonbase would cost are going to appear out of nowhere.
There is more than one way to kill a popular government program.
Slashdot Mirror
...You in no way want a semi truck that accelerates like that, you want something that can have an enormous amount of TORQUE...
F=ma. Acceleration is directly proportional to torque.
Waiting for the day when an object database or something like it is at the heart of a modern popular OS.
That is basically what Smalltalk was (except not that popular). When Apple went to Xerox they copied the look and made it popular, but they didn't really understand the implementation at the time.
Apple's '677 patent is exactly about a rectangle with rounded corners.
Read it yourself:
http://www.google.com/patents/USD618677
Does Skim work well on the small MacBook Air, or is the resolution too low?
There might be a problem when they arrive which means they have to leave almost immediately...
The 26 month phasing of the Earth/Mars orbits pretty much rules out leaving immediately.
Check out Homebrew: http://github.com/mxcl/homebrew
I find it much less obnoxious than Fink and DarwinPorts.
I'll support Solar Power sometime after the manufacturers of Photovoltaics start powering their factories with Photovoltaics.
It was done a few decades ago, before the oil companies bought the PV manufacturers.
http://www.green-energy-news.com/arch/nrgs2010/20100020.html
I am also a NASA engineer that thinks it's best to let Ares go.
NASA did a lot of research and science before the Constellation program sucked all the funds from everything else NASA does, and Constellation is still at least 3 billion dollars per year short of what it needs to actually get built. I don't see any of these senators proposing the borrowing or tax increases needed to realistically implement a manned return to the moon, so the chances of it happening are approximately zero. Meanwhile, it's killing all of NASA's other missions.
Given that, it make sense to restore the balance back toward research and technology development and try to get cheaper commercial access to LEO going until we have the technology (fuel depots, electric propulsion) required to affordably go farther.
My Dad's first calculator cost $300 and it took a full pack of AA's and it had glow-y red numbers inside tiny light bulbs or vacuum tubes or something.
Those were Nixie Tubes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixie_tube
And it was the most exciting thing in the world! If there had been an internet back then, there would have been feverish discussion and hardware hacks and all kinds of 'boy' chatter regarding it and other devices competing for the same market.
We mostly talked in person back then, but it was just as exciting.
But nobody talks about pocket calculators much these days. We've solved them. They're done. They work perfectly...
Why can't I find one as good at being a calculator as my nearly 30 year old HP-15c?
Sure, scientists and such are clever and will try to figure out how to continue to expand the sciences, even without financial support systems of the past, but the demand in aeronautics will continue to diminish, fewer experts will get involved, and any incentives to stay will simply go away.
This budget restores funding to the science and technology development programs that Constellation cannibalized when it was under-funded. Aeronautics gets a 15% increase, for instance.
The truth is, there's no great plan, instead these cuts are politically motivated...
NASA's budget was increased, not cut.
Constellation was a huge unfunded mandate. It sucked all the funds from everything else NASA did. The Augustine report that studied future options for NASA said it would take 3 billion additional dollars per year to implement the program, and it gave several better options for NASA in the unlikely case that the $3 billion was available (but it isn't).
I see these changes as being common sense, not politically motivated. No politician of any party would want to borrow the money required to see Constellation through.
[Space X] already won the re-supply contract (pending some litigation) and their capsule is designed to carry people to space. We should cancel government funded efforts and instead contract it all out.
You are contradicting yourself.
Government funded efforts are already contracted out. NASA doesn't actually build rockets. They contract it out to Boeing, or Lockmart, or both (United Space Alliance), or now, Space X.
"Go private" really means that the government stops supplying space money altogether, and allows the free market to decide if space is worth it. Is that what you want?
"Microgravity" is the correct term for the background acceleration levels present on the International Space Station, and is commonly used by researchers who care about the exact levels of disturbance on their experiments (even researchers on the Vomit Comet).
Gravity gradients and small disturbances (hard drive motors, astronauts bumping the walls, etc.) make the broad spectrum acceleration noise floor on the ISS about 10 micro-Gs. Peaks caused by refrigerator pumps, maneuvering jets, Soyuz and Shuttle dockings, etc. are much higher.
More information is at NASA Principal Investigator Microgravity Services: http://microgravity.grc.nasa.gov/MSD/MSD_htmls/pims_products.html
MS might have decided they're not interested in this kind of market. It does not push any sales of any other products of their line.
Traditionally, it has pushed DirectX, and their operating systems. It doesn't work well under Wine or in a virtual machine, so you need a "real" Windows install to run it.
Like some other people here have said, without MSFS, I have no longer have any need to boot into Windows.
Having the capsule mounted on top of the fuel tanks also tends to add extra safety. And because of the relatively low weight of these capsules, you can afford to stick extra safety equipment on them.
Yes, the capsule designs have a Launch Abort System. It's the thing that looks like a tower at the top of the stack. It is a rocket motor that can yank the capsule away from the rest of the system if something goes terribly wrong.
The problem is that despite of decades of effort, they still haven't figured out how to get nonzero thrust out of solid-state rocket engines.
We have, but thrust is currently too low for manned missions, For example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_thruster
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoplasmadynamic_thruster
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_specific_impulse_magnetoplasma_rocket
In the future your persistent connection (e.g the ssh connection) will be running on a server not on the iphone. The display might be on the iphone but the ssh session you are monitoring won't be on the iphone. You can stop and start this display app, just like it were a VNC connection or a unix "Screen" connection without affecting the ssh operation.
Am I living in the future? How is this different than using my n800 to ssh into my server, start screen, disconnect after starting some long running task, and reconnect periodically with ssh and screen to pick up right where I left off? Or, as you say, just use VNC.
No background app on the portable device is necessary. Is there something about the iPhone that makes this intentionally impossible?
I filled out the survey. It was all very routine: where have you lived, who were your previous employers, etc, until the end.
... to obtain any information relating to my activities ... regardless of any previous agreement to the contrary".
In order to submit the survey (and keep your job), you have to agree to the "release": "I Authorize any investigator
This is new, and completely uncalled for. The purpose of HSPD12 is supposedly to improve the badging process to prevent identity theft. Someone decided it would be a good idea to attached an unlimited fishing expedition.
... trying to impose a manned trip to Mars on NASA without a huge funding increase is going to wreak havoc with NASA's science programs.
Better look again, they are already gone.
Truthfully, I think that it would be better to let the kindergarteners play with blocks, color with crayons, and generally let them act like little kids.
This is exactly right. Let them build with their hands and socialize for a few years.
After a few more years, when they are ready to move from blocks to a computer, try Scratch
Let's say that kids want to learn how to write software for this platform. Will the tools available be even comparable to what they would expect with any "real environment?"
It comes with Python and PyGTK, with Squeak eToys for younger kids. To me, that seems like a good way for kids to actually learn. What else would you suggest for kids to start with?
It seems far better than the rows and rows of Dell/Windows computers at my kid's middle school where they learn "real world" skills like "typing" and "powerpoint". You are correct that the way US K-12 classrooms use their computers is a waste. That's why this is trying to do something different.
This is probably the most accurate and intelligent post about the ISS I've ever seen on Slashdot. Bravo!
There hasn't been any commercial research done in the ISS at all.
Mostly true, but most fundamental science research on the ground is not commercial either. There is a big difference between basic research and technology development.
Mostly astronomy, using the ISS as a platform, and life sciences, which is really only of interest if you're flying astronauts.
Not true. ISS is a terrible platform for astronomy. What astronomy was done there?
The 4 major research areas on ISS were fluid physics, combustion physics, materials science, and life science.
None of the "zero-G crystals" and such ever amounted to anything that couldn't be done much cheaper down here.
Not true. All approved ISS research was stuff that could not be done at all on the ground. If microgravity was not a requirement, it didn't fly.
A lot of people, myself included, find considerable irony in all the posturing about innovation and accusations of copying ideas from these two, when the basic metaphor underlying their desktops is well known to originate elsewhere.
..."
Alan Kay, the head of the PARC research group in question, seems to agree with you. Here's what he said in the first sentences of his "Early History of Smalltalk" paper:
"Most ideas come from previous ideas. The sixties, particularly in the ARPA community, gave rise to a host of notions about "human-computer symbiosis" through interactive time-shared computers, graphics screens and pointing devices.
Kay does not claim to have invented all this stuff; his contribution was recognizing good things when he saw them and combining them into a working system.
Software patents reject the obvious truth of "Most ideas come from previous ideas" and prevent inovators from doing what Xerox PARC did.
... they used them onboard for several years but I have no idea what they use now
They still use them on ISS. They are still black, ugly, and heavy, but they are also "space rated". My impression is that "space rated" in this case means that someone has gone through it with a tube of epoxy making sure nothing will vibrate loose.
Seriously, word I've heard is that NASA's budget will rise for 2005-2006 unless Congress doesn't go with Bush on this one.
Yes, the budget went up slightly, but most of NASA's existing work has been canceled as part of Bush's "Vision For Space Exploration". Almost everything having to do with actual scientific research (like pesky environmental studies) has been axed. Four NASA centers are preparing for massive layoffs (e.g., 40% reduction in people over the next 1.5 years), and the "final report" of the center closure committee has not yet been released. Under the "Vision", NASA will only work on things that won't be accomplished for a few decades, if they get funded, and nobody actually believes that the hundreds of billions of dollars that a moonbase would cost are going to appear out of nowhere.
There is more than one way to kill a popular government program.