The movie industry were inspired by the Connection Machine series of supercomputers. Every processor in the computer had a LED that lit up when it was in use, and since there were thousands of processors, there were thousands and thousands of lights.
Hollywood's fascination with blinkenlights goes back much, much further than that - back into the 1950's at least. That fascination is also based on reality, as computers of that era did in fact have tons of blinkenlights on the front panels and control consoles to display information about what the computer was doing and for use in troubleshooting.
America was founded on piracy of intellectual property, after all, starting with textiles, and extending to many engineering marvels.
So what? A goodly chunk of America's economy was once based on slavery - including both chattel bondage and debt bondage. Even beyond that, when the country was founded the franchise was limited to a minority of citizens.
Since they are thing we had when the country was founded, shall we roll back the laws that have corrected those abuses as well?
The laws are to protect the citizens. The citizens do not want strong copyright punishments. That is what the big media corporations want.
Wrong again. This citizen wants strong copyright punishments - because he believes in copyright law and intellectual property. Many Slashdoters don't want such protection because they (mistakenly) assume their percieved (I.E. self assumed and created out of thin air) rights trump everyone elses rights.
That's all well and dandy for those pirates who actually make money off of piracy- but that's a small percentage of the pirates out there. The grand majority are either making use of what used to be considered fair use: Mix CDs and tapes for friends, backups of media purchased legally, copies for educational use, etc.
Of the three things listed - only one has ever been considered (under the law) to be fair use. To wit: making backup copies. (C'mon, handing out mix tapes? That's distribution - that's distribution, which is about as blatant as copyright infringement comes.)
When I was in high school, we received the same warning for a drill as for the real thing. No one panicked, but no one was sure whether it was real or fake. Let me reiterate, high school. This was monumentally poor judgement by the teachers and the administration (I cannot imagine this was done without some administator knowing something.)
No - it's actually correct to use the same warning for a drill and the real thing. The idea is that the drill teaches your proper reflexes and actions - and when the real thing happens there is no questioning or panic.
Maps, and thus Sat Navs, are "best effort" systems. I regularly go hiking (as in, camping out away from cities, electricity and broadband) using maps where aerial photography was done in 1965, and the last field revision was in 1973.
Apples and oranges. Your hiking maps have nothing at all to do with the issue at hand.
As an example, Google Maps shows roads in Deception Bay, Queensland to be about 20 metres off where the satellite photos claim they are - which is right, the overlay or the photo?
Actually - probably neither, it's good odds that the fault lies with Google Maps. The coordinate conversion algorithm they use to combine the road database and the imagery is (to put it mildly) somewhat flawed. (I find it fascinating that you automagically assume the underlying datasets are 'broken' and that the algorithm merging the two (and by extension the creators thereof) is without error.) Coordinate conversion and location control between multiple datasets is (in cartography) a Hard Problem - one Google doesn't appear to attempted to have adressed at all.
You haven't checked and double checked very carefully then. Here is the post in question. I'll quote it in full and highlight the word unmarked;
I work for a company that makes software that is used for navigation, and there are a good amount of tech support calls complaining about how the "program sent us down an unmarked dirt road!" They don't seem to realize that they drove themselves down the dirt road, on the suggestion of a computer. I think we've all seen our GPS's be off by a bit, some people are missing the fact that nothing is perfect, especially not a box with a tiny screen.
Errors in a huge data set like a road navigation database are inevitable and it's simply unrealistic to expect full enough testing to guarantee that there are no bugs like this.
Actually errors in the source data (the digital road dataset the GPS companies buy from goverment sources) are exceedingly rare. (Think 'one mispelled word in the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica' rare.) There is no need for the road navigation software creator to do any testing - the software simply needs to be told to ignore certain classes of road. (And the classes of road are very plainly marked in the dataset.)
Plus, most GPS navigators are built on top of a static data set. These data are going to get out of date quickly as construction and floods, etc, occur.
Construction and floods don't make a dirt road appear in the road navigation database as useable for navigation - only the the people translating the data from the source to the navigation database can do that.
So, yeah, the manufacturer should fix bugs like these when they come available, but they should not take responsibility for someone doing something stupid.
You don't appear to understand the issue. This isn't a bug - it's poor design and implementation. Routes like this don't appear in the software by accident, it requires a conscious decision on that part of the designer of the routing algorithm.
Maybe I missed something but I didn't see "unmarked" mentioned anywhere.
You missed something - as it's right in the post I was replying to.
GPS units can't just make up or auto-detect roads, their maps come from other sources and are keyed in by individuals sitting in a desk somewhere, not people looking at the roads. Perhaps they do check some roads, but I very, very much doubt they go and look at every road to see what kind of road it is. If a map gives no indication that a particular road is dirt, the guy in a desk won't have any way to know.
Very few maps fail to mark the type of road(s) they are mapping - there's a different symbology for each. It's a very poor map indeed that fails to mark the difference between a dirt road and a paved road.
I work for a company that makes software that is used for navigation, and there are a good amount of tech support calls complaining about how the "program sent us down an unmarked dirt road!" They don't seem to realize that they drove themselves down the dirt road, on the suggestion of a computer.
Right - and the person/company that writes software stupid enough to include such routes bears none of blame? Bovine exhaust. I know it's popular on Slashdot to blame the sheeple - but this isn't a case of using a hair dryer in the shower. It's a case of poorly designed and implemented software. These navigation units market themselves not as providing 'suggestions' but as providing 'directions'. Failing to supply what is advertised is the direct fault of the developer and manufacturer.
I think we've all seen our GPS's be off by a bit, some people are missing the fact that nothing is perfect, especially not a box with a tiny screen.
This has nothing to do with the GPS being 'off by a bit' - to direct someone down an unmarked dirt road takes a little more than that.
Yup - and that's one factor that keeps companies from implementing telecommuting, there are too many jobs you simple can't do remotely. If only a few get to do it, the rest feel disenfranshised and morale can plummet.
Anecdote time: My wife is an accountant - at one job all she did was review reports for completeness and correctness, and either forward them to the client or kick them back to the staff. (Essentially QA work.) Since the reports were already on the computer, it seemed to her boss that allowing her to telecommute (after working in the office for a couple of years) was an ideal solution to reducing the overcrowded conditions in the office. Within days of her starting - the level of hostility from her coworkers rose to incredible heights, because she was 'at home' rather than 'at the office'. In the end she had to quit, as the boss wouldn't let her return to the office or adress the issue, and the hostility of her coworkers made it impossible for her to do her work. (Within a month of starting - all three of the telecommuters had quit because of this.)
A lot of meetings are a complete waste of time, especially ones that are regularly scheduled.
I would agree with this, except for one occasion I remember we were on a very tight schedule for the final delivery of a project. The project manager introduced something we called 'Daily Prayers'.
Yep. When I was in the Navy, every day in port the division (all seven of us) met for about ten minutes to go over the days schedules for the division, department, and ship - and those were absolutely invaluable in getting everyone on the same page and going in the same direction. The complex interdependencies of the weapons system among itself, and with the ship, absolutely demanded that. (Yeah verily, Morning Quarters can suck badly if done wrong - but done right there is no substitute.)
The foam will not come apart as easy if it was painted. They figured that out during the testing. the paint film reduces turbulance and also provides a bit of surface adhesion that can make up for errors on surface adhesion.
Do you have a cite for that? Because I've been following the Shuttle programs for thirty odd years - and I've never heard of that. In fact, I've discussed the issue with NASA employees (in the Shuttle program) and they categorically deny that the paint adds any strength to the foam.
In all seriousness this is an interesting issue I've never heard about before. You'd think the media would be all over this as an actual new space story,
It's not a 'new' space story - not if you are actually familiar with the state-of-the-art, as opposed to feeding at the teat of the mass media. It's a well known issue - NASA was studying it as far back as Skylab. Heck, Michael Collins (yes that Michael Collins) used it as a plot point in his book Mission to Mars back in 1990!
Slasdot is obsessed with MS, everything they do or say is subjected to unending speculation here, albeit negative. Outside of Slashdot I dont know a soul who really gives a rats ass what MS do and would never in a million years even consider discussing MS in the sort of emotive language used here.
Precisely. Slashdot is stuck in emotional adolesence - with Microsoft cast as the [adult|enemy].
ET-124 (the external tank currently attached to Atlantis) is going to fly - period, as there aren't any spare tanks in the pipeline. With a limited number of flights left on the manifest, and a hard end-of-life deadline for the Orbiters, the contracts for the ET and it's components are already being allowed to expire. (Not to mention the need to start converting the Michoud facility from producing the ET over to producing the Porklauncher V.)
Thus, the question isn't which tank will be used to fly STS-117, but rather where ET-124 can be inserted into the sequence with the least impact on schedule, budget, and safety. (I know that many folks think the last should be the absolute overriding priority - but NASA has to live in the real world, not a fantasy one.)
The only real option is to repair ET-124, as shipping it back to Michoud for a complete replacement of its foam on the forward ogive isn't in the cards due to expense and schedule impact. Unstacking Atlantis and swapping ET-124 for a different tank doesn't make the repairs any easier, and increases the risk of damaging the various parts of the stack during handling. (The last is an important consideration, and one not often realized by the armchair astronaut. Every time you break (or make) a connection, or hoist something into the air, you risk damaging it.) It also potentially effects the schedule for two flights, STS-117 and whichever flight 'donates' the tank.
Thus it breaks down as follows; Rework is not in the cards due to the vast expense and schedule impact. Since there is no option to not fly ET-124, where is the best place to repair it? Repairing it at the Cape seems the best option - as you avoid the risks and expense of transporting to and from Michoud. (The repairs will be done by the same people in any instance.) If the repair is done at the Cape - it doesn't make any sense to destack the Orbiter, as doing so will not make the repair easier and increases the risk of damage to system components during handling. Equally, since -117 can be rescheduled as a unit, and other flights moved as a unit, it makes sense to retain the stack and avoid the nasty complexity of swapping hardware between flights.
The OLPC project is trying to make the world a better place, not make the United States more dominant.
What a truly disturbing point of view - helping a child in Uruguay (in some unspecified way) 'makes the world a better place', but helping a child in Compton (in some unspecified way) 'makes the United States more dominant'. Even worse, you probably don't even realize how racist that sounds.
This is the same arguement made for putting computers in schools here in the US - and it hasn't exactly worked out real well. Why do you expect it to be different in the Third World?
I find it disturbing that such focus is put on third world children when a significant number of children in the U.S. and other developed countries do not have access to a similiar device or good educational opportunities. It's a shared failure of Western governments and projects such as the OLPC to favor others over their own for the sake of political correctness and what I can only describe as some sort of institutional guilt over priviliege combined with well-intentioned, but nonetheless clueless, naivete.
The term you are looking for is "White Man's Burden", it's one of the most subtle and damaging forms of racism there is - but it has the advantage of being culturally accepted, indeed almost encouraged. It's why Madonna is adopting a baby from (IIRC) Benin, rather than Compton. It's why white couples (in the US) adopt a Chinese or Korean baby. It's why churches send missionaries and doctors into poorer regions of the Third World - but not into Appalachia or the 'hood.
The new telescope is named after an administrator. An important job, and done very well by the sounds of it, but it's not super-science.
Ask any space historian to name the five people most responsible for the sucess NASA in the 60's and especially of the Apollo Project - and James Webb will almost certainly be on that list. Other candidates for that list are; Rocco Petrone, Chris Kraft, Joe Shea, Werhner Vonbraun, Maxime Faget, Robert Gilruth, George Low, George Mueller, General Sam Phillips, Dr. Farouk El-Baz, John Houbolt... And probably another dozen people most folks have never heard of. (I'd be willing to bet that the general public would only recognize one of those names - and I suspect the average Slashgeek wouldn't do much better.)
In 100 years time (heck, even today) who's name will we know?
Does it really matter? One can make vast contributions - and still be almost unknown to the general public. (Consider Admiral Charles Lockwood.)
Slashdot Mirror
Not by individuals, and certainly not of an entire work, nor for distribtion.
I have no need of reading a FAQ - as I've actually studied fair use, which you blatantly have not.
Any such claim is a product of your own imagination, as I made no such. The remainder of your reply is equally nonsensical.
Hollywood's fascination with blinkenlights goes back much, much further than that - back into the 1950's at least. That fascination is also based on reality, as computers of that era did in fact have tons of blinkenlights on the front panels and control consoles to display information about what the computer was doing and for use in troubleshooting.
So what? A goodly chunk of America's economy was once based on slavery - including both chattel bondage and debt bondage. Even beyond that, when the country was founded the franchise was limited to a minority of citizens.
Since they are thing we had when the country was founded, shall we roll back the laws that have corrected those abuses as well?
Wrong again. This citizen wants strong copyright punishments - because he believes in copyright law and intellectual property. Many Slashdoters don't want such protection because they (mistakenly) assume their percieved (I.E. self assumed and created out of thin air) rights trump everyone elses rights.
Of the three things listed - only one has ever been considered (under the law) to be fair use. To wit: making backup copies. (C'mon, handing out mix tapes? That's distribution - that's distribution, which is about as blatant as copyright infringement comes.)
No - it's actually correct to use the same warning for a drill and the real thing. The idea is that the drill teaches your proper reflexes and actions - and when the real thing happens there is no questioning or panic.
Apples and oranges. Your hiking maps have nothing at all to do with the issue at hand.
Actually - probably neither, it's good odds that the fault lies with Google Maps. The coordinate conversion algorithm they use to combine the road database and the imagery is (to put it mildly) somewhat flawed. (I find it fascinating that you automagically assume the underlying datasets are 'broken' and that the algorithm merging the two (and by extension the creators thereof) is without error.) Coordinate conversion and location control between multiple datasets is (in cartography) a Hard Problem - one Google doesn't appear to attempted to have adressed at all.
You haven't checked and double checked very carefully then. Here is the post in question. I'll quote it in full and highlight the word unmarked;
I work for a company that makes software that is used for navigation, and there are a good amount of tech support calls complaining about how the "program sent us down an unmarked dirt road!" They don't seem to realize that they drove themselves down the dirt road, on the suggestion of a computer. I think we've all seen our GPS's be off by a bit, some people are missing the fact that nothing is perfect, especially not a box with a tiny screen.
Actually errors in the source data (the digital road dataset the GPS companies buy from goverment sources) are exceedingly rare. (Think 'one mispelled word in the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica' rare.) There is no need for the road navigation software creator to do any testing - the software simply needs to be told to ignore certain classes of road. (And the classes of road are very plainly marked in the dataset.)
Construction and floods don't make a dirt road appear in the road navigation database as useable for navigation - only the the people translating the data from the source to the navigation database can do that.
You don't appear to understand the issue. This isn't a bug - it's poor design and implementation. Routes like this don't appear in the software by accident, it requires a conscious decision on that part of the designer of the routing algorithm.
When I read the article summary - I thought almost exactly the same thing. Anime tends to show emotion through the eyes.
You missed something - as it's right in the post I was replying to.
Very few maps fail to mark the type of road(s) they are mapping - there's a different symbology for each. It's a very poor map indeed that fails to mark the difference between a dirt road and a paved road.
Right - and the person/company that writes software stupid enough to include such routes bears none of blame? Bovine exhaust. I know it's popular on Slashdot to blame the sheeple - but this isn't a case of using a hair dryer in the shower. It's a case of poorly designed and implemented software. These navigation units market themselves not as providing 'suggestions' but as providing 'directions'. Failing to supply what is advertised is the direct fault of the developer and manufacturer.
This has nothing to do with the GPS being 'off by a bit' - to direct someone down an unmarked dirt road takes a little more than that.
Yup - and that's one factor that keeps companies from implementing telecommuting, there are too many jobs you simple can't do remotely. If only a few get to do it, the rest feel disenfranshised and morale can plummet.
Anecdote time: My wife is an accountant - at one job all she did was review reports for completeness and correctness, and either forward them to the client or kick them back to the staff. (Essentially QA work.) Since the reports were already on the computer, it seemed to her boss that allowing her to telecommute (after working in the office for a couple of years) was an ideal solution to reducing the overcrowded conditions in the office. Within days of her starting - the level of hostility from her coworkers rose to incredible heights, because she was 'at home' rather than 'at the office'. In the end she had to quit, as the boss wouldn't let her return to the office or adress the issue, and the hostility of her coworkers made it impossible for her to do her work. (Within a month of starting - all three of the telecommuters had quit because of this.)
Yep. When I was in the Navy, every day in port the division (all seven of us) met for about ten minutes to go over the days schedules for the division, department, and ship - and those were absolutely invaluable in getting everyone on the same page and going in the same direction. The complex interdependencies of the weapons system among itself, and with the ship, absolutely demanded that. (Yeah verily, Morning Quarters can suck badly if done wrong - but done right there is no substitute.)
Do you have a cite for that? Because I've been following the Shuttle programs for thirty odd years - and I've never heard of that. In fact, I've discussed the issue with NASA employees (in the Shuttle program) and they categorically deny that the paint adds any strength to the foam.
It's not a 'new' space story - not if you are actually familiar with the state-of-the-art, as opposed to feeding at the teat of the mass media. It's a well known issue - NASA was studying it as far back as Skylab. Heck, Michael Collins (yes that Michael Collins) used it as a plot point in his book Mission to Mars back in 1990!
Precisely. Slashdot is stuck in emotional adolesence - with Microsoft cast as the [adult|enemy].
What's racist is your _original_ comment. Your subsequent comments are nothing more than handwaving attempts to divert attention from your racism.
ET-124 (the external tank currently attached to Atlantis) is going to fly - period, as there aren't any spare tanks in the pipeline. With a limited number of flights left on the manifest, and a hard end-of-life deadline for the Orbiters, the contracts for the ET and it's components are already being allowed to expire. (Not to mention the need to start converting the Michoud facility from producing the ET over to producing the Porklauncher V.)
Thus, the question isn't which tank will be used to fly STS-117, but rather where ET-124 can be inserted into the sequence with the least impact on schedule, budget, and safety. (I know that many folks think the last should be the absolute overriding priority - but NASA has to live in the real world, not a fantasy one.)
The only real option is to repair ET-124, as shipping it back to Michoud for a complete replacement of its foam on the forward ogive isn't in the cards due to expense and schedule impact. Unstacking Atlantis and swapping ET-124 for a different tank doesn't make the repairs any easier, and increases the risk of damaging the various parts of the stack during handling. (The last is an important consideration, and one not often realized by the armchair astronaut. Every time you break (or make) a connection, or hoist something into the air, you risk damaging it.) It also potentially effects the schedule for two flights, STS-117 and whichever flight 'donates' the tank.
Thus it breaks down as follows; Rework is not in the cards due to the vast expense and schedule impact. Since there is no option to not fly ET-124, where is the best place to repair it? Repairing it at the Cape seems the best option - as you avoid the risks and expense of transporting to and from Michoud. (The repairs will be done by the same people in any instance.) If the repair is done at the Cape - it doesn't make any sense to destack the Orbiter, as doing so will not make the repair easier and increases the risk of damage to system components during handling. Equally, since -117 can be rescheduled as a unit, and other flights moved as a unit, it makes sense to retain the stack and avoid the nasty complexity of swapping hardware between flights.
I suppose being a thrifty racist is better than being a spendthrift racist - but it doesn't change the nature of the base metal.
What a truly disturbing point of view - helping a child in Uruguay (in some unspecified way) 'makes the world a better place', but helping a child in Compton (in some unspecified way) 'makes the United States more dominant'. Even worse, you probably don't even realize how racist that sounds.
This is the same arguement made for putting computers in schools here in the US - and it hasn't exactly worked out real well. Why do you expect it to be different in the Third World?
The term you are looking for is "White Man's Burden", it's one of the most subtle and damaging forms of racism there is - but it has the advantage of being culturally accepted, indeed almost encouraged. It's why Madonna is adopting a baby from (IIRC) Benin, rather than Compton. It's why white couples (in the US) adopt a Chinese or Korean baby. It's why churches send missionaries and doctors into poorer regions of the Third World - but not into Appalachia or the 'hood.
Ask any space historian to name the five people most responsible for the sucess NASA in the 60's and especially of the Apollo Project - and James Webb will almost certainly be on that list. Other candidates for that list are; Rocco Petrone, Chris Kraft, Joe Shea, Werhner Vonbraun, Maxime Faget, Robert Gilruth, George Low, George Mueller, General Sam Phillips, Dr. Farouk El-Baz, John Houbolt... And probably another dozen people most folks have never heard of. (I'd be willing to bet that the general public would only recognize one of those names - and I suspect the average Slashgeek wouldn't do much better.)
Does it really matter? One can make vast contributions - and still be almost unknown to the general public. (Consider Admiral Charles Lockwood.)