Yup - interesting fact I heard - DS-1 flew closer to the asteroid than any craft has flown by an object without landing. Or so the news said.
Another cool thing - I never realized it was a semi-autonomous probe, I knew it was testing new tech, but I didn't know AI was one of them. This little probe is basically piloting itself and NASA is talking about releasing a flock of them to all explore the solar system.
You have a good point about social programs - most of these programs actually are based on programs began in the 30's and were an attempt to pull America out of a depression. And for some reason the government is still pumping obscene amounts of money into them and ignoring exploration, both physical and technological.
Except, that is, whenever they take credit for the advances of scientists they've never even met and probably cut the salary of in yet another round of partisan budget fighting.
Don't worry, people like you are *well* represented in Congress and have seen to it that NASA is dying though ever more and more restrictive budget cuts.
Oh, and they're not looking for evidence of life - they're looking for water and mapping out other resources so that they can improve the life on Earth. But I'm not even going to detail the benefits man could reap from going to the moon - it's kinda obvious you (and tons of other/.'ers) are just going to reply and say it's all a waste of money.
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds" - Einstein
Excuse me, I have to go found the Save The Earth From SETI@Home group - after all, within five or ten decades, SETI@Home might produce a measurable amount of CO2. And you know, it's not like we have plants and shrubs to absorb any of that!
Seriously though - what are people afraid of: adding CO2 to the air or discovering something not like them?
Am I the only one sick of seeing this argument used against SETI@Home? This is totally STUPID. My computers would run the same hours with or without SETI@Home on them. I also don't think that I'm pulling *that* much electricity to make a large impact on the atmosphere - and my area uses hydroelectric power anywayz.
I think it's funny though when people hear this argument and then use it to advocate d.net.
From the article: "Currently we are working on manufacturing and volume," said Bob Sprague, manager of Xerox PARC's Document Hardware Lab. "It won't be on the market in the next year."
From Hemos's post: "They're expecting about a year of figuring out the best process and such, but look for it in on the market early next year. Excellent."
Not only does that conflict with the article (the article makes me think it won't be on the market for June 99 - June 2000 for sure and probably much later) but Hemos's statement that "it will be on the markey early next year" (which makes me think January 2000) conflicts with his estimate of "they're expecting about a year to figure out..." which makes me think it'll be out June 2000 or soon thereafter.
Also, I noticed quite a few posts claiming this technology was stolen - in the article it discusses the technology developed ten years ago at Xerox this is based on.
Yeah, Hemos seems to be having some problems today...either not enough sleep or too much alcohol...or both?:) He went back and fixed most of the other errors, hopefully he'll fix this story too.
The SETI@Home announcement link is wrong
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SETI@home & RC5
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The link should be http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/tech_news.html which takes you to the announcements. The link Hemos posted is to the main page of the SETI@Home site which just carries a 1 line explanation.
If you read the actual announcements, you'll see it was only one day when the same 2 days worth of work units (actually not even two complete days, just 115 work units from 2 different days) were being sent, then the project moved to about 30k units, which were all that were avaible at the time. Now several months worth of data is avaible. They go into detail as to problems they have had and their solutions on this page, it's rather interesting...
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/tech_news.html
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SETI@home & RC5
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· Score: 1
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/tech_news.html is the actual announcement, if you follow the link to SETI@Home that for some reason Hemos posted as the actual link to the announcement you can then click the "Technical News Reports" link that is right there on the first part of the page just a few lines below the line you read. It's not that hard to find.:) They posted on that page on June 4th when they first discovered they were sending the same 115 units (an OS bug, they claim) and fixed it so that they were all of the units they had at that time, 31415 total. Yesterday they posted an announcement stating that the work unit pipeline is fully operational, so we should see even more units being sent.
I fear you totally missed the point of my comment. I'm not denying that the cheating could've been done by Linux/Unix people. I'm saying that the vast majority of Linux/Unix did NOT cheat. So his statement would be like me seeing one white person steal something and then saying "Well, I'm not going to name any names, but you know white people love to steal, it's the white mentality." Another key point to my post was that the "hacking" mentality that Slashdot promotes is NOT the urge to cheat, but the urge to learn, to tinker with things, etc. This is the crux of the hacker/cracker issue, keep up with the posts on Slashdot and you'll see what I mean. Just today there was a story posted about it. I'm also not asking that he detail exactly what happened - I don't care. Much of your post doesn't seem at all to be in reply to mine - why did you post it as a reply???
From the wired article... --- "I don't want to name names," he said, "But it's fair to say the Unix and Linux crowds are causing most of the headaches. It seems to be the hacker mentality." --- "Fair to say"? Hah! I don't think that is anywhere near fair to say. Before reading this portion of the article, I had planned on posting in defense of SETI@home, it seems basically they suffered from a massive/. effect. However, he (project director David Anderson) states in the paragraph before the one I quoted about *some* members of the teams had cheated. Then in this paragraph he makes it sound like the entire Unix/Linux userbase has a "hacker mentality" that somehow equates to a desire to cheat. I certainly will discontinue running the client until they fix these problems so we're not all wasting our cpu cycles and even after the bugs are fixed, in light of the attitude of SETI@Home expressed through the project director, I may never run it.
While I realize universities have been running *NIX for ages, most high schools and such don't. I was talking to the computer science teacher at my school recently and basically the one reason the district has been slow to adopt Linux (even though the current alternative is some crippled windows 3.1 compiler for the CS classes which doesn't include alot of core functionality needed for the class) is because of the lack of support. Maybe now that big names are getting into the Linux support business more schools will stop letting these petty problems stand in the way of what is best solution for the school and the students...
Taken straight from the article: "We see Linux as a server phenomena right now more than as a desktop phenomena," and then several paragraphs later - "No one runs large, million-hits-per-day Web sites on Linux" So he thinks it's a server phenomena but can't handle a million hits per day? This doesn't make sense to me. It's like saying "IBM is an awesome company...nobody uses any IBM equipment or software for anything spectacular."
There's been alot of talk about/.'ing their server, but why don't we use the/. effect on their comment form - fill out the form, and in the "What could be improved?" box put something like this:
"Drop the Hacker line. It's just spreading the misrepresentation of the word hacker. Some of your gear isn't all that bad, but as long as it's under this label I won't buy it or anything else from your company."
Be truthful on all the info on the form so that they get the point and don't just erase all the responses dismissing them as we've so quickly dismissed "script kiddies".
Someone pointed out that/.'ing them will just give them more hits and they will be able to sell more banner ads - go direct to the comment form at http://www.kipling.com/fun/guestbook.html
While I don't have a very high opinon of Sierra, cuz of things like Outpost, etc, I must say that I was suprised by their handling of the Outpost fiasco: they _mailed_ me, _without_ me having to say a thing or even know about the opportunity an apology letter and upgrade disks, and I recently played the game again just out of curiosity (I don't think I ever played the patched version after I got it) and most everything promised was there. That's the only time I've had a company actually follow up on a"free product update" or even inform me of a product update just cuz I sent in the registration card...
Hrm, hey look everyone, this OS stopped our new superboat dead in the water...let's tow it back to base and act like nothing ever happened! (several months later) Hrm, ya know, maybe we should rethink that whole OS thing...
I like the way that the first few posters on an article suddenly become a means for measuring "the/. readers" - a good majority of slashdot readers never even read the comments on the articles, and even if you're just speaking of the minority that do post (which would be the/. posters or similar) you can't expect to judge that entire group by the first few posts to an article!
Slashdot Mirror
Yup - interesting fact I heard - DS-1 flew closer to the asteroid than any craft has flown by an object without landing. Or so the news said.
Another cool thing - I never realized it was a semi-autonomous probe, I knew it was testing new tech, but I didn't know AI was one of them. This little probe is basically piloting itself and NASA is talking about releasing a flock of them to all explore the solar system.
You have a good point about social programs - most of these programs actually are based on programs began in the 30's and were an attempt to pull America out of a depression. And for some reason the government is still pumping obscene amounts of money into them and ignoring exploration, both physical and technological.
Except, that is, whenever they take credit for the advances of scientists they've never even met and probably cut the salary of in yet another round of partisan budget fighting.
Don't worry, people like you are *well* represented in Congress and have seen to it that NASA is dying though ever more and more restrictive budget cuts.
/.'ers) are just going to reply and say it's all a waste of money.
Oh, and they're not looking for evidence of life - they're looking for water and mapping out other resources so that they can improve the life on Earth. But I'm not even going to detail the benefits man could reap from going to the moon - it's kinda obvious you (and tons of other
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds" - Einstein
30 watts? *gasp*
Excuse me, I have to go found the Save The Earth From SETI@Home group - after all, within five or ten decades, SETI@Home might produce a measurable amount of CO2. And you know, it's not like we have plants and shrubs to absorb any of that!
Seriously though - what are people afraid of: adding CO2 to the air or discovering something not like them?
Am I the only one sick of seeing this argument used against SETI@Home? This is totally STUPID. My computers would run the same hours with or without SETI@Home on them. I also don't think that I'm pulling *that* much electricity to make a large impact on the atmosphere - and my area uses hydroelectric power anywayz.
I think it's funny though when people hear this argument and then use it to advocate d.net.
From the article: "Currently we are working on manufacturing and volume," said Bob Sprague, manager of Xerox PARC's Document Hardware Lab. "It won't be on the market in the next year."
From Hemos's post: "They're expecting about a year of figuring out the best process and such, but look for it in on the market early next year. Excellent."
Not only does that conflict with the article (the article makes me think it won't be on the market for June 99 - June 2000 for sure and probably much later) but Hemos's statement that "it will be on the markey early next year" (which makes me think January 2000) conflicts with his estimate of "they're expecting about a year to figure out..." which makes me think it'll be out June 2000 or soon thereafter.
Also, I noticed quite a few posts claiming this technology was stolen - in the article it discusses the technology developed ten years ago at Xerox this is based on.
Yeah, Hemos seems to be having some problems today...either not enough sleep or too much alcohol...or both? :) He went back and fixed most of the other errors, hopefully he'll fix this story too.
The link should be http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/tech_news.html which takes you to the announcements. The link Hemos posted is to the main page of the SETI@Home site which just carries a 1 line explanation.
If you read the actual announcements, you'll see it was only one day when the same 2 days worth of work units (actually not even two complete days, just 115 work units from 2 different days) were being sent, then the project moved to about 30k units, which were all that were avaible at the time. Now several months worth of data is avaible. They go into detail as to problems they have had and their solutions on this page, it's rather interesting...
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/tech_news.html is the actual announcement, if you follow the link to SETI@Home that for some reason Hemos posted as the actual link to the announcement you can then click the "Technical News Reports" link that is right there on the first part of the page just a few lines below the line you read. It's not that hard to find. :) They posted on that page on June 4th when they first discovered they were sending the same 115 units (an OS bug, they claim) and fixed it so that they were all of the units they had at that time, 31415 total. Yesterday they posted an announcement stating that the work unit pipeline is fully operational, so we should see even more units being sent.
I fear you totally missed the point of my comment.
I'm not denying that the cheating could've been done by Linux/Unix people. I'm saying that the vast majority of Linux/Unix did NOT cheat.
So his statement would be like me seeing one white person steal something and then saying "Well, I'm not going to name any names, but you know white people love to steal, it's the white mentality."
Another key point to my post was that the "hacking" mentality that Slashdot promotes is NOT the urge to cheat, but the urge to learn, to tinker with things, etc. This is the crux of the hacker/cracker issue, keep up with the posts on Slashdot and you'll see what I mean. Just today there was a story posted about it.
I'm also not asking that he detail exactly what happened - I don't care. Much of your post doesn't seem at all to be in reply to mine - why did you post it as a reply???
From the wired article... /. effect. However, he (project director David Anderson) states in the paragraph before the one I quoted about *some* members of the teams had cheated. Then in this paragraph he makes it sound like the entire Unix/Linux userbase has a "hacker mentality" that somehow equates to a desire to cheat.
---
"I don't want to name names," he said, "But it's fair to say the Unix and Linux crowds are causing most of the headaches. It seems to be the hacker mentality."
---
"Fair to say"? Hah! I don't think that is anywhere near fair to say. Before reading this portion of the article, I had planned on posting in defense of SETI@home, it seems basically they suffered from a massive
I certainly will discontinue running the client until they fix these problems so we're not all wasting our cpu cycles and even after the bugs are fixed, in light of the attitude of SETI@Home expressed through the project director, I may never run it.
While I realize universities have been running *NIX for ages, most high schools and such don't. I was talking to the computer science teacher at my school recently and basically the one reason the district has been slow to adopt Linux (even though the current alternative is some crippled windows 3.1 compiler for the CS classes which doesn't include alot of core functionality needed for the class) is because of the lack of support. Maybe now that big names are getting into the Linux support business more schools will stop letting these petty problems stand in the way of what is best solution for the school and the students...
Taken straight from the article: "We see Linux as a server phenomena right now more than as a desktop phenomena," and then several paragraphs later - "No one runs large, million-hits-per-day Web sites on Linux" So he thinks it's a server phenomena but can't handle a million hits per day? This doesn't make sense to me. It's like saying "IBM is an awesome company...nobody uses any IBM equipment or software for anything spectacular."
There's been alot of talk about /.'ing their server, but why don't we use the /. effect on their comment form - fill out the form, and in the "What could be improved?" box put something like this:
/.'ing them will just give them more hits and they will be able to sell more banner ads - go direct to the comment form at http://www.kipling.com/fun/guestbook.html
"Drop the Hacker line. It's just spreading the misrepresentation of the word hacker. Some of your gear isn't all that bad, but as long as it's under this label I won't buy it or anything else from your company."
Be truthful on all the info on the form so that they get the point and don't just erase all the responses dismissing them as we've so quickly dismissed "script kiddies".
Someone pointed out that
Just an idea...
While I don't have a very high opinon of Sierra, cuz of things like Outpost, etc, I must say that I was suprised by their handling of the Outpost fiasco: they _mailed_ me, _without_ me having to say a thing or even know about the opportunity an apology letter and upgrade disks, and I recently played the game again just out of curiosity (I don't think I ever played the patched version after I got it) and most everything promised was there. That's the only time I've had a company actually follow up on a"free product update" or even inform me of a product update just cuz I sent in the registration card...
Hrm, hey look everyone, this OS stopped our new superboat dead in the water...let's tow it back to base and act like nothing ever happened! (several months later) Hrm, ya know, maybe we should rethink that whole OS thing...
Can we say *DUH!*
...that someone actually patented such a device or that apparently it has actually been advertised in mainstream print...
What next? No, forget that I asked that, the answer would probably scare me...
I like the way that the first few posters on an article suddenly become a means for measuring "the /. readers" - a good majority of slashdot readers never even read the comments on the articles, and even if you're just speaking of the minority that do post (which would be the /. posters or similar) you can't expect to judge that entire group by the first few posts to an article!