Exactly. I'm the grandparent poster and I can only see this ending with one outcome (based on a lot of experience). Because the submitter is begrudgingly doing this and feels that the client is asking for the wrong thing (nevermind that they've clearly expressed their reasoning for their requirements), he's going to do a half-assed job and come back with something along the lines of "Well, it would've worked better if you had used a web-based interface." If anyone from the client company is reading this, I'd suggest finding someone else to do the job.
Yup, the writer of TFA displays IT/techie zealotry and elitism at it's very finest. It's interesting that right near this story on the front page at the moment is this story which ends with the question "Should software 'just work', or are users too lazy?".
Am I the only one that has had a good experience with Paypal?
No, you aren't. Like any service - from Slashdot to your local quick-e-mart, Paypal has unsatisfied users. Those unsatisfied with Paypal however are *extremely* vocal.
Thats because in the modern culture the elderly are cut off from the social mainstream. (This is changing as the boomers age.) But in earlier eras - this was not true.
That's the soft and fuzzy feel good theory promoted by sociologists. But what we see in the real world is parents taking care of their children (which makes sense, because they are active enough to teach and oversee).
If by "in the real world," you mean, "in industrialized countries in the past 50 years." Not the best time-frame if you want to make claims about evolution.
If that had been what I meant - you'd have a point. But since it wasn't, it's a strawman of your own creation.
The assumption that being an elder automagically provides them with 'wisdom' is equally unfounded.
It's not an assumption that age will produce wisdom, but that it alone can.
That too, that age alone can produce wisdom, is also an assumption.
It's moderated funny - but it's the stone cold brutal truth. And space fanboi and alt.space (NewSpace) communities have been doing all they can for decades to ignore it.
*yawn*. If this was pre DC-X, I'd be impressed. But startup space companies building toy demonstrators are about as common nowadays as startup dotcoms with toy websites were a decade ago.
All the companies you mentioned have an interest in keeping space flight and expensive, government-only prospect. [snippage...] those companies in themselves are part of the military-industrial complex and have no interest in making cheap consumer goods.
This is nothing but tinfoil hat nonsense created by the space fanboi crowd to explain why a magic wand hasn't been waved and provided them with masturbatory fantasies.
The reality those companies have every incentive to chase profit making opportunities... But that's the catch, its quite unclear that building cheap rockets (which means building rockets by the metric buttload) will be profitable. It costs from tens of millions to hundreds of millions to develop a new rocket and to build out the manufacturing, support, and launch infrastructure - and prospects for a return on that investment are, to put it very mildly, bleak to nonexistent. The markets simply don't exist.
But you could also say that the elders, by helping taking care of the village children and teaching their wisdom can still be usefull to the community,
That's the soft and fuzzy feel good theory promoted by sociologists. But what we see in the real world is parents taking care of their children (which makes sense, because they are active enough to teach and oversee). The assumption that being an elder automagically provides them with 'wisdom' is equally unfounded.
You do realize that ( at least to my knowledge ) just about all Starbucks are franchises.
Incorrect. Only a small fraction of Starbucks locations are franchises. (And those franchises are only held by 'master concessionaire' I.E. large food service organizations at airports, ballparks, etc... etc...). Local 'neighborhood' Starbucks are company owned.
Apples and oranges. The OP didn't adress what could be accomplished sooner or cheaper - he made the false claim that robotic exploration was better and faster. Manned is more expensive, no arguement there, but you get far more bang for your buck.
the 3 month mission went 3 YEARS, these rovers are showing everyone who is paying attention that the information age driven robotic exploration, moving forward at moores law speed, is the obvious choice over still stuck in the 60's manned space exploration.
Let's put it simply and bluntly;
What these two rovers have accomplished in three years could be accomplished by a pair of field geologists in about three weeks. Robotic exploration isn't even in the same ballpark as human exploration.
"If you want to switch just for the sake of switching, then really, you should be fired."
No one wants to waste time and money switching for the sake of switching.
Nonsense. We routinely see (here on Slashdot) folks advocating switching for what, in the end, amounts to political, philosophical, or religious reasons. They don't care about costs - all they care is that 'Linus is the l33t and Micro$oft is shit and everyone should thereforr run Linux'.
having... navigation equipment with directions and road conditions will set car companies apart from their competitors in the future.
Umm... most people here that want in-car navigation systems are already considering buying them. In Denmark there are tons of adverts for them all over the place, including a huge billboard not far from my home. If Bill Gates want to get Microsoft navigation systems as the standard, they better hurry up because they aren't innovating but just following in the others' footsteps (as usual).
You are haring off into apples and oranges territory here.
People are buying aftermarket Nav systems because very few new cars have them, and almost no cars older than a couple of years have them. From Microsoft's point of view those systems are irrelevant - and they are correct. Why? Because cars of the near future will increasingly come equipped with nav systems - the market for aftermarket systems will gradually fade and eventually all but disappear. Thus, to become 'standard' one does not compete in the aftermarket category - but in the OEM category.
Which, of course, is exactly how Windows, Explorer and Office became predominant.
What we have here is an excellent example of why Windows is just *not* trusted for "critical systems". Even Ford is showing their lack of trust in Windows by relegating it to non-critical vehicle operations, regardless of how well it is advertised to work.
Not to interrupt your reflexive slam here; but so what?
I guess embedded vehicle control systems are just too important to be trusted to Windows.
I wouldn't trust Fedora Core with an embedded vehicle control system either.
Not every OS is suitable for every purpose. Even Linux (the desktop kind you can DL off the net or buy in the store [1]) isn't suitable for hard realtime uses. OTOH, an OS designed for hard realtime isn't suitable for a desktop. Being 'not trusted for critical uses' is nothing more or less than an attribute of a particular OS, not a bug or a failure. Without being able to discern between attributes and failures, it would make as much sense to slam the Space Shuttles OS for not being able to run Pine as it does to slam Windows for not being trusted for use as a critical system controller. There is simply no such thing as a 'one size fits all' OS.
[1] I specify this because yes, there are various special purpose Linux distros available - including ones for hard and soft realtime. To call them all 'Linux' and set them as a group in comparison to Windows is somewhat misleading.
A friend of mine notes that it seems that what defines what a vegan/vegetarian won't eat is whether or not is has cute babies.
This isn't exactly limited to vegetarians. Most people in the US would think you were barbaric if you were to eat a cat or a dog, even though they're perfectly happy to eat a pig or a chicken.
I think that's more cultural than anything else. While the issue of what to eat or not eat for vegetarians does arise, the question of whether to eat a cat or a dog simply never does.
I can't wait till they can clone meat without that unnecessary nervous system, what will those vegans say then?
Hard to say. I still can't get one to say they're sorry for the painful, premature demise of the countless earthworms that are tilled to death so that vegans can have their Thanksgiving Tofurkey. Won't someone think of the collateral damage to the helpless invertebrates?
A friend of mine notes that it seems that what defines what a vegan/vegetarian won't eat is whether or not is has cute babies.
(Note: This applies to the style of vegan/vegetarian living in the West, where it's primarily a [political|personal style|fad|social] statement. It does not apply to those who live that lifestyle for religious or who must for health reasons.)
They don't care because it's been a while since NASA has really done anything interesting. It's tough to get excited about space exploration when it's a handful of people riding up and down in a vehicle that's older than most young people's cars, and doing incomprehensible/boring stuff when they get there.
Space exploration was exciting when it meant putting people on the moon; the public has lost interest when it just means sending people up to LEO over and over again, and the people in question aren't them.
And that's the core of the problem - generations of media exposure have created an impression in the public mind that science and exploration are only useful when they are Exciting and Dangerous and Ground Breaking. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Let's take the popular calendar example, and a scientific endeavor a little off the beaten path of public knowledge/interest - understanding the geology and geography of the continental United States. The Lewis & Clark expedition get a great deal of coverage, every school child learns about them. Yet, if you 'map' the history of the geological and geographical exploration of the US to date onto a calendar - I'd say everything up to the return of the Corps of Discovery to St. Louis happens by about 2PM on January 1st.
Yet, the work accomplished since then is going to be (to the general public) 'incomprehensible, boring, and doing the same old stuff again and again'.
A friend of mine works for NOAA, the ship he is assigned to mostly maps ocean currents. Quite important work actually as the currents move considerable heat about the planet, as well as pollutants and nutrients. But the day-to-day work is dull, dull, dull. Go to a spot, drop a bouy or tow a set of sensors, record the data and haul it back - then off to another spot to do it again. Day after day, year after year. Dull, dull, dull.
Ben Franklin and Matthew Maury are in the history books and taught in school - while my friends ship will be lucky to get a footnote in a scientific paper that a few hundred specialists will read.
Space exploration was exciting when it meant putting people on the moon; the public has lost interest when it just means sending people up to LEO over and over again, and the people in question aren't them.
That happens mostly because, as I said above, because a false expectation has arisen in the public mind. When someone has seen Star Wars or Indiana Jones, the workaday reality of science and exploration pales by comparison. NASA hasn't helped the situation much with it's constant ham-handed stream of ever more ludicrous 'firsts' generated by the PAO.
I suspect that if we put a person on Mars, you would see an immediate renewed interest in space exploration.
I suspect that if that happens, the arc of public attention would follow the same path it did in the Apollo era. About the time the exciting and preliminary stuff is done, and the real work starts, public interest will drop to essentially zero.
The rockets that are flying are still 60's tech, mostly military derivations at at that.
The rockets flying today are based on/derived from 60's military tech in roughly the same way that a 2006 Corvette is based on/derived from the Corvettes of the 1960's - I.E. only in the vaguest of ways.
When it comes to space launches, no nation beats Russia on cost, reliability and efficiency.
Nor, except on cost, does Russia beat any other nation. Their LOV [loss of vehicle] rate hovers right around 1% - the same as the US and the EU.
One thing still bothers me...why haven't the US or EU nations been successful on this front? There are huge sums of money to be made but the Russians still beat us (the USA) in this game. Why?
No, there aren't really huge sums of money to be made - as the current launch market is a few dozen a year (in a good year). (I.E. it's an easily saturated market.) To compete in that market, for a return of a few million a launch, costs somewhere in the range of hundreds of millions.
It's interesting that the attempt against Regan that injured Brady gets so much notoriety but the two attempts against Ford are never talked about.
I know/. skews young, so it's possible you may not remember Reagan getting shot.
It's not just that/. skews young, but that Ford's lame duck presidency is largely forgotten - and what did happen during his watch is vastly overwhelmed by the issue of his pardon of Richard Nixon.
That's the thing: unlike Ford, he actually got shot, as did Brady and a Secret Service guy, Tim McCarthy. Missed killing Reagan by about an inch. We had to wait in suspense to see if he would survive or not. So, yeah, that stands out in people's memories. (I was 11 when it happened.)
That's the thing - you are too young to remember the attempts on Ford's life. It has nothing to do with the fact that Reagan was hit (and nearly killed) and everything to do with your age. I was 11 in 1974 - and plainly remember both attempts, which were widely covered in the media at the time. The attempt on Reagan's life is also remembered more because it occurred in the post-CNN world and was captured on a widely aired videotape.
Disclaimer: I've been a printer, a publisher, and a bookseller at various points of my career. I'm not making this stuff up, but am speaking from experience.
This suggests to me that the problem doesn't actually exist.
Or it could be necessary the copyright holders simply refuse to put their works in PoD.
That's quite possible - because it will cost money to get them ready for the PoD machine, money that is extremely unlikely to be recouped. Any given book will almost certainly have to be reformatted - which isn't cheap if done professionally. If it's not done professionally, then the book ends up unattractive. (I.E. Project Gutenberg, or many, many small/vanity presses.) For a publisher, there is also the legal problem that they might not own the rights to redistribute in a new format - which means incurring costs in obtaining those rights. It's not as simple as many seem to think.
Keep in mind that outside of the collectors market, the demand for out of print books is (on an individual book basis) very low (1) - and the demand outside of that market is currently easily satisified by visiting your local used and rare bookstore, or sites like bookfinder.com or Amazon. Thus, from Day One, the PoD operator is competing in a mature and heavily populated marketplace - and he's competing at a disadvantage because of his high startup and capital costs.
In the end these POD machines keep failing in the marketplace because they don't effectively fill any niche. (As I said, a solution in search of a problem.) Its not an Evil Conspiracy - its simple economics.
(1) Yes, I know about the Long Tail theory - but that theory applies to markets, it breaks down somewhat when you move from that theoretical application to the actual dollars-and-cents application of the individual physical item.
Books generally go out of print for a reason - because the demand for them sinks below a profitable level and/or interest in them drops to near zero.
Which is *exactly* where POD shows its most promise. Without the costs of shipping and stocking the item, things that were not profitable before can become profitable.
In some alternate reality where the costs of shipping and stocking are the only costs involved - sure. The problem is, in the real world, things are not so simple.
Certainly. I'll be the last person to debate that fact. But that doesn't change the fact that a cost analysis that doesn't have hard numbers isn't a cost analysis. Words mean things.
Numbers are not required for a good analysis.
Again, something I won't debate. But if you don't have numbers to compare, and you don't have costs - then you don't have a cost analysis. Words mean things.
Computer types get upset when marketdroids and journalists misuse the terminology of their field - but you seem to think that they (computer types) should get a pass when they misuse the terms of someone elses field. Sorry, but in my book... no.
I find it fascinating that you keep reiterating how god this guy is (but in a somewhat different field).
So I'll cut him some slack in not using the phrase in a strictly MBA manner, and read it more as, "Well, it is about costs, and it is an analysis, at least in Webster sense 1."
Writers that I follow, that are very good and knowledgeable, get cut less slack - I hold them to the standards they have displayed in the past. Especially when then start wandering afield - because that's the first sign of a writer who is starting to trade on reputation rather than knowledge.
Anyway, I'm not saying you're wrong--just that I have a different take on it. I'd hate to see anyone discount the work based on what, to me, is semantics.
That's just the thing - it's not just semantics. As I said, words mean things, and abusing those meanings is not a good sign in someone trying to get a point across.
I love the blatant hypocrisy shown in the replies to date. The Slashdot Hivemind is always getting all wound up about how parents are responsible for their children, etc... etc... But when a tool that can be useful to that end is proposed... It's instantly the worst child rearing tool since the Iron Maiden.
Slashdot Mirror
Yup, the writer of TFA displays IT/techie zealotry and elitism at it's very finest. It's interesting that right near this story on the front page at the moment is this story which ends with the question "Should software 'just work', or are users too lazy?".
No, you aren't. Like any service - from Slashdot to your local quick-e-mart, Paypal has unsatisfied users. Those unsatisfied with Paypal however are *extremely* vocal.
Thats because in the modern culture the elderly are cut off from the social mainstream. (This is changing as the boomers age.) But in earlier eras - this was not true.
If by "in the real world," you mean, "in industrialized countries in the past 50 years." Not the best time-frame if you want to make claims about evolution.
If that had been what I meant - you'd have a point. But since it wasn't, it's a strawman of your own creation.
That too, that age alone can produce wisdom, is also an assumption.
It's moderated funny - but it's the stone cold brutal truth. And space fanboi and alt.space (NewSpace) communities have been doing all they can for decades to ignore it.
*yawn*. If this was pre DC-X, I'd be impressed. But startup space companies building toy demonstrators are about as common nowadays as startup dotcoms with toy websites were a decade ago.
This is nothing but tinfoil hat nonsense created by the space fanboi crowd to explain why a magic wand hasn't been waved and provided them with masturbatory fantasies.
The reality those companies have every incentive to chase profit making opportunities... But that's the catch, its quite unclear that building cheap rockets (which means building rockets by the metric buttload) will be profitable. It costs from tens of millions to hundreds of millions to develop a new rocket and to build out the manufacturing, support, and launch infrastructure - and prospects for a return on that investment are, to put it very mildly, bleak to nonexistent. The markets simply don't exist.
That's the soft and fuzzy feel good theory promoted by sociologists. But what we see in the real world is parents taking care of their children (which makes sense, because they are active enough to teach and oversee). The assumption that being an elder automagically provides them with 'wisdom' is equally unfounded.
Incorrect. Only a small fraction of Starbucks locations are franchises. (And those franchises are only held by 'master concessionaire' I.E. large food service organizations at airports, ballparks, etc... etc...). Local 'neighborhood' Starbucks are company owned.
Apples and oranges. The OP didn't adress what could be accomplished sooner or cheaper - he made the false claim that robotic exploration was better and faster. Manned is more expensive, no arguement there, but you get far more bang for your buck.
Let's put it simply and bluntly;
What these two rovers have accomplished in three years could be accomplished by a pair of field geologists in about three weeks. Robotic exploration isn't even in the same ballpark as human exploration.
Nonsense. We routinely see (here on Slashdot) folks advocating switching for what, in the end, amounts to political, philosophical, or religious reasons. They don't care about costs - all they care is that 'Linus is the l33t and Micro$oft is shit and everyone should thereforr run Linux'.
You are haring off into apples and oranges territory here.
People are buying aftermarket Nav systems because very few new cars have them, and almost no cars older than a couple of years have them. From Microsoft's point of view those systems are irrelevant - and they are correct. Why? Because cars of the near future will increasingly come equipped with nav systems - the market for aftermarket systems will gradually fade and eventually all but disappear. Thus, to become 'standard' one does not compete in the aftermarket category - but in the OEM category.
Which, of course, is exactly how Windows, Explorer and Office became predominant.
Not to interrupt your reflexive slam here; but so what?
I wouldn't trust Fedora Core with an embedded vehicle control system either.
Not every OS is suitable for every purpose. Even Linux (the desktop kind you can DL off the net or buy in the store [1]) isn't suitable for hard realtime uses. OTOH, an OS designed for hard realtime isn't suitable for a desktop. Being 'not trusted for critical uses' is nothing more or less than an attribute of a particular OS, not a bug or a failure. Without being able to discern between attributes and failures, it would make as much sense to slam the Space Shuttles OS for not being able to run Pine as it does to slam Windows for not being trusted for use as a critical system controller. There is simply no such thing as a 'one size fits all' OS.
[1] I specify this because yes, there are various special purpose Linux distros available - including ones for hard and soft realtime. To call them all 'Linux' and set them as a group in comparison to Windows is somewhat misleading.
I think that's more cultural than anything else. While the issue of what to eat or not eat for vegetarians does arise, the question of whether to eat a cat or a dog simply never does.
A friend of mine notes that it seems that what defines what a vegan/vegetarian won't eat is whether or not is has cute babies.
(Note: This applies to the style of vegan/vegetarian living in the West, where it's primarily a [political|personal style|fad|social] statement. It does not apply to those who live that lifestyle for religious or who must for health reasons.)
And that's the core of the problem - generations of media exposure have created an impression in the public mind that science and exploration are only useful when they are Exciting and Dangerous and Ground Breaking. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Let's take the popular calendar example, and a scientific endeavor a little off the beaten path of public knowledge/interest - understanding the geology and geography of the continental United States. The Lewis & Clark expedition get a great deal of coverage, every school child learns about them. Yet, if you 'map' the history of the geological and geographical exploration of the US to date onto a calendar - I'd say everything up to the return of the Corps of Discovery to St. Louis happens by about 2PM on January 1st.
Yet, the work accomplished since then is going to be (to the general public) 'incomprehensible, boring, and doing the same old stuff again and again'.
A friend of mine works for NOAA, the ship he is assigned to mostly maps ocean currents. Quite important work actually as the currents move considerable heat about the planet, as well as pollutants and nutrients. But the day-to-day work is dull, dull, dull. Go to a spot, drop a bouy or tow a set of sensors, record the data and haul it back - then off to another spot to do it again. Day after day, year after year. Dull, dull, dull.
Ben Franklin and Matthew Maury are in the history books and taught in school - while my friends ship will be lucky to get a footnote in a scientific paper that a few hundred specialists will read.
That happens mostly because, as I said above, because a false expectation has arisen in the public mind. When someone has seen Star Wars or Indiana Jones, the workaday reality of science and exploration pales by comparison. NASA hasn't helped the situation much with it's constant ham-handed stream of ever more ludicrous 'firsts' generated by the PAO.
I suspect that if that happens, the arc of public attention would follow the same path it did in the Apollo era. About the time the exciting and preliminary stuff is done, and the real work starts, public interest will drop to essentially zero.
The rockets flying today are based on/derived from 60's military tech in roughly the same way that a 2006 Corvette is based on/derived from the Corvettes of the 1960's - I.E. only in the vaguest of ways.
Nor, except on cost, does Russia beat any other nation. Their LOV [loss of vehicle] rate hovers right around 1% - the same as the US and the EU.
No, there aren't really huge sums of money to be made - as the current launch market is a few dozen a year (in a good year). (I.E. it's an easily saturated market.) To compete in that market, for a return of a few million a launch, costs somewhere in the range of hundreds of millions.
It's not just that
That's the thing - you are too young to remember the attempts on Ford's life. It has nothing to do with the fact that Reagan was hit (and nearly killed) and everything to do with your age. I was 11 in 1974 - and plainly remember both attempts, which were widely covered in the media at the time. The attempt on Reagan's life is also remembered more because it occurred in the post-CNN world and was captured on a widely aired videotape.
That's quite possible - because it will cost money to get them ready for the PoD machine, money that is extremely unlikely to be recouped. Any given book will almost certainly have to be reformatted - which isn't cheap if done professionally. If it's not done professionally, then the book ends up unattractive. (I.E. Project Gutenberg, or many, many small/vanity presses.) For a publisher, there is also the legal problem that they might not own the rights to redistribute in a new format - which means incurring costs in obtaining those rights. It's not as simple as many seem to think.
Keep in mind that outside of the collectors market, the demand for out of print books is (on an individual book basis) very low (1) - and the demand outside of that market is currently easily satisified by visiting your local used and rare bookstore, or sites like bookfinder.com or Amazon. Thus, from Day One, the PoD operator is competing in a mature and heavily populated marketplace - and he's competing at a disadvantage because of his high startup and capital costs.
In the end these POD machines keep failing in the marketplace because they don't effectively fill any niche. (As I said, a solution in search of a problem.) Its not an Evil Conspiracy - its simple economics.
(1) Yes, I know about the Long Tail theory - but that theory applies to markets, it breaks down somewhat when you move from that theoretical application to the actual dollars-and-cents application of the individual physical item.
In some alternate reality where the costs of shipping and stocking are the only costs involved - sure. The problem is, in the real world, things are not so simple.
Certainly. I'll be the last person to debate that fact. But that doesn't change the fact that a cost analysis that doesn't have hard numbers isn't a cost analysis. Words mean things.
Again, something I won't debate. But if you don't have numbers to compare, and you don't have costs - then you don't have a cost analysis. Words mean things.
Computer types get upset when marketdroids and journalists misuse the terminology of their field - but you seem to think that they (computer types) should get a pass when they misuse the terms of someone elses field. Sorry, but in my book... no.
Writers that I follow, that are very good and knowledgeable, get cut less slack - I hold them to the standards they have displayed in the past. Especially when then start wandering afield - because that's the first sign of a writer who is starting to trade on reputation rather than knowledge.
That's just the thing - it's not just semantics. As I said, words mean things, and abusing those meanings is not a good sign in someone trying to get a point across.
I love the blatant hypocrisy shown in the replies to date. The Slashdot Hivemind is always getting all wound up about how parents are responsible for their children, etc... etc... But when a tool that can be useful to that end is proposed... It's instantly the worst child rearing tool since the Iron Maiden.