Well, then in the sense of "serious" you describe, I guess I do take my atheism seriously. I describe my attitude as not serious, because periodically someone hears I'm an atheist and tells me I'm wrong and I don't get offended (I may become less interested in their opinions). Yet when I hear someone beleives in some particular God, I avoid saying they are wrong, because they tend to get offended. It seems to be a problem to say someone is wrong about their religious beliefs, despite the fact that, whatever your religion, most of the world thinks you are wrong. Point being, I know atheists who are chronically excited about the fact they are atheists, and eager to tell other people they are wrong. I am not generally one of them, so that's why I say I'm not serious. I do actually like discussing it sometimes, but I tend to stick to anonymous strangers on the internet, because if they get offended I don't care (nothing personal).
"I certainly don't go around making remarks to the effect that those who do believe are ok, as long as they don't really act like they do."
Hmmm, apply the silly example test of (adult) belief in Santa Claus, and I conclude: It's fine to act like you believe, but those who really do believe are not OK. I don't see how that changes if instead of Santa it's Thor, Vishnu, or Jehovah. It's only more so.
I don't; just doesn't seem worth getting excited about. If I were going to spend any time being "serious" about not believing in things, where would it end? Do you "take seriously" your lack of belief in Thor, Vishnu, Zeus or the Easter Bunny?
Your proof of your reading comprehension doesn't even get off the ground:
"Okay so this paragraph in summary says dice rolls aren't random enough! "
No, it does not say that. Not even once. You fail. It says "[I] have always received numerous complaints that the dice are not random enough." That is not the same thing as saying the rolls are not, in fact, random enough. The difference is significant and relevant. Scores of people have read the article, and understood why he built the machine and why he thinks it is cool. You have read the article, and apparently do not understand these things. I'm not sure why you think more detailed analysis will convince people this is due to your superior comprehension.
"I've just proven my point and shown that I know what I'm talking about! "
Any time you have to end a post with a sentence like that, you may be sure it isn't true.
"In enforcing their precious NDA, hasn't Palm just turned off the entire community and made their NDA moot?"
The point of an NDA is not generally any fear of or potential beef with the person who signed it. Rather, if some third party steals your trade secret, and you want to sue them for doing so, you must establish that the information they stole was actually a trade secret. One condition of establishing that is showing that you were actually trying to protect the information from disclosure; e.g. by requiring and enforcing NDAs from anyone you shared the information with.
So even if you don't think someone is going to steal your info, you have a significant interest in having them sign an NDA, and in enforcing it, so you can use that against other people who might steal your secrets.
Anyway, what community? Some guys who hadn't done (or even had the chance to do) anything but sign an NDA and immediately twittering in violation of it? They're no value to Palm so far, and have made themselves a liability.
"I dunno, I was pretty impressed with the math example."
You were pretty impressed with an example generated by Wolfram? From my own experience, and what I've heard from others, it's obviously frightening complex and sophisticated, and produces very impressive Wolfram-run demos. But when someone else tries to use it to produce some significant piece of information they actually want, it fails miserably.
"As with Google, you have to learn to speak its language. Try 'Hitler birth date', or just 'Hitler'. For the current time, enter 'now'. Or for more information, e.g. 'time in ouagadougou'."
NOT "as with Google". Put any of the original posters questions into Google as he wrote them, and you get the answer. Put them in in any reasonable fashion, and you get the answer.
Nah, that doesn't work either. How often do lying people insist they are telling the truth even after he makes the accusation? Or perhaps more on point, how often do truthful people say "Yeah, OK, you got me" while slowly edging away from the guy...
Learn to spell "correlated". Then figure out if an interesting correlation in what men rate as attractive in a picture of a stranger is the ultimate final definition of female beauty. After that, consider talking to a girl.
Please tell me what I'm misunderstanding or misrepresenting:
You think a sample return mission to Mars is "basically impossible" because of some conditions the don't apply to the Moon (where such missions have been done), and that these conditions can only be overcome by a human. These are conditions that NASA planners who have designed (and scheduled, before the challenger disaster threw them off) a sample return mission to Mars somehow overlooked.
Looking at your statements so far and taking them at face value, I really can't see what I'm distorting there so I would be genuinely fascinated to hear what these conditions are.
I suspect what is actually going on is that you had no idea sample return missions had been conducted to the moon and planned for mars. That's OK. It's fine to day dream about space exploration without much background knowledge. But you might not want to get offended if people disagree with your uninformed speculation.
My own knowledge of the state and difficulty of space exploration suggests to me that your Martian colony idea is not likely to be possible in our lifetimes for a cost of less than all the money in the world. I believe my knowledge of the state and difficulty of space exploration exceeds yours to a significant degree, and I will continue to believe that until you explain the magic conditions that make sample return missions to Mars "basically impossible".
"Taking less than a day to walk 100 meters is a good start"
How about I just land the next one 100 meters away? "Walking" is not the objective. Getting there is. Probes can get to Mars now, humans cannot.
"If you don't have the mental faculties to think of anything else, then we may as well end this conversation."
I cannot think of a scientific objective achievable by one human mission not achievable by a series of 60 probe missions. Clearly, neither can you. I don't think it's because we are both stupid.
"You're comparing launching a remote probe off of the moons surface to launching one from the Martian surface?"
Right, because you haven't implied the moon missions suggest a mars mission is feasible. It is my impression that the success of sample return missions to the Moon implies they might be possible for Mars. Certainly NASA thinks they are possible, they have such a mission scheduled. Probes have gone to Mars and collected samples. I'm not clear why you think the presence of humans would make launching them back to earth easier. Please explain.
"You know, you could have just written 'yes, I was wrong, probes won't help us get to Mars'"
I would have been wrong if I said probes would help us get to Mars. Or if I had somehow implied I thought our getting to Mars should be an objective in the first place. Sorry if there was any confusion there.
"That's a load of crap. We stopped funding manned missions decades ago."
I don't even know how to respond. What are you talking about? Manned space exploration is the largest part of NASA's operations budget, and always has been. There are astronauts up there now fixing the Hubble. BTW, an excellent use of manned missions: maintenance on remote probes stationed in LEO; it's easy enough to get there that using a human is worth it for a short trip. Maybe you're only counting "lander" missions? It's hard to keep track, when you mock me for thinking sample-return missions to the moon are relevant. Anyway, I'm counting results of all missions beyond the atmosphere, and remotes win by a landslide.
"we had accomplished plenty with manned missions, and practically nothing via remote."
If your objective is a manned mission, yes. Mine is not. Mine is scientific results. Remotes have vastly outstripped manned, and I see nothing manned has produced that could not have been done cheaper by remotes. If you disagree, an example would be helpful.
"No, that's not what I said. Being clever has nothing to do with it."
You don't want to send humans for their cleverness? WTF? Getting a humans adaptable intelligent brain as close to the problem as possible would obviously be wonderful, I wouldn't argue that. My whole point is that the downsides of their physical needs is too great. You want to send humans because their bodies are so much better adapted to Mars than a purpose-built probe? I don't understand what advantage you think the enormous weight of a human is worth if it isn't his brain.
It comes down to this: You give one program some money and you get some results. You give another program a hundred times as much money and don't get results and the proponents say "we'd get much better results if only you'd give us a lot more money." Call me crazy, but I just want to give the first program more money and tell the other guys to go back to writing Buck Rodgers fan fiction.
"On the other hand, starting a series like this does seem to make a kind of promise to the readers that it will (at least eventually) be finished."
It will never be finished. Look at the projected length of the series when each book was published: it has grown by 2 books every single time. It has never gotten as close to finished as it was when he hadn't started yet.
He has repeatedly offered assurances the next book was almost done.
The problem appears to be that he really likes planning out plots. He came up with a nice tight plot outline for a trilogy, but as he was writing it, he's not interested in just going through with his original plan. So for every book he writes, the projected length of the series gets 2 books longer.
Whatever. What might have been an iconic pillar of modern fantasy will not be because he'll with it unfinished. It's his own art that is damaged by his failure, and you quite rightly point out Martin doesn't owe us anything. He promised some stuff, but it wasn't written in blood or anything, and nobody paying attention has believed him for a while.
It is unreasonable for fans to think Martin owes them something. It is not unreasonable for them to be disappointed, nor for them to tell him where he can stick his umpteenth tie-in product.
"When Bush suggested launching new missions to the moon and mars, the NASA estimate for the entire effort came out to $120 billion."
People with more expertise than me have called that estimate ridiculous, but for the sake of argument, let's go with it.
"The Mars Rover missions cost something like a billion each."
No, about a billion total, for both rovers over four years of operations on Mars. Roughly the cost of a single shuttle flight to the IIS so some astronauts can skim the edge of the atmosphere for a few days.
"Even if they only stayed there for a couple days the astronauts could gather more data than a dozen rover missions"
I'm not sure why you think so. When the astronauts went to the moon, is it your impression they so much as turned over a rock without discussing it with earth-bound controllers? Also, by your numbers, it's not a dozen, it's 5 dozen. What do you imagine them doing that 60 remote probes could not? Keeping in mind that every one of those probes will be designed and deployed by a team of humans every bit as clever as your astronaut. A team that knows what the previous 50 probes encountered, and has plenty of time to consider it from the comfort of Earth, with no distracting other tasks like staying alive on Mars.
"AND they could bring back samples for earth-side analysis - something which is essentially impossible with probes."
Are the rest of your comments based on the same expert knowledge of space exploration as this one? The Soviets completed successful sample return missions to the moon via remote probes 3 times in the 1970s. NASA's Genesis and Stardust missions returned samples of the solar wind and comet debris from far farther away than manned missions have ever traveled. NASA has plans for a Martian sample return mission (real plans, not GW Bush make beleive) which will certainly happen long before we contemplate sneding a manned mission.
I certainly endorse a sample-return mission. Almost everything we learned about the moon from Apollo was thanks to the samples brought back so they could be analyzed on Earth. Because it's much easier to have humans do their work on Earth. The astronauts weren't doing any lab work up there.
"How did we get to the moon? By building better telescopes and studying it in detail from the ground? Or by developing rockets?"
By developing rockets. On Earth. Nothing about how to get to the moon was learned by astronauts on the moon (obviously).
"'If they are better for the job, where are they?' Waiting for the funding, mainly."
Human space flight has many times as much funding as unmanned exploration, and much less to show for it. It is simply much less cost effective. I don't understand why you think the current wild imbalance in cost effectiveness will not just scale up to larger funding levels. Apparently you think it will completely reverse itself.
"You're arguing that manned Mars missions haven't accomplished anything, so we shouldn't fund manned missions."
I'm arguing that we have funded manned missions extensively, and accomplished very little. We have funded remote missions and accomplished much more for much less money.
I dislike calling it "robotic" exploration. It's not robots doing the exploring, it's humans. Humans, as you note, are quite clever. They can figure out better ways to get things done. Remote probes are one of those ways. I assume you wouldn't object if a martian explorer used a shovel to collect a sample instead of his hands so he can stay inside the life-supporting environment of his suit. Why can't a martian explorer design a really clever shovel that let's him do his shoveling from inside the much nicer life support environment we call Earth?
You argue people are so clever we must send them. Why doesn't that cleverness count when they design tools to do the job a faster, cheaper, better way?
If humans on Mars can do more than humans on earth controlling probes on Mars, tell them to get on with it.
You seem to be saying, humans on mars can do more than humans controlling probes, if you ignore the difficulty and expense of getting them there and keeping them alive and operating. In space exploration, getting there and staying alive and operating is the whole problem. Everything else is pointlessly trivial by comparison.
"While unmanned probes will always be an extremely important part of space exploration, it's silly to suggest that they can replace manned missions."
I suggest they not only can, but have. It is not clear to me manned missions will ever achieve what remote probes are doing now. e.g. years of operation on mars.
"the big clincher is that manned missions are an absolute necessity if we plan on establishing colonies on other planets or moons, or if we want to start exploiting the vast resources of the asteroid belt."
We could argue just how far in the future colonies on other planets are, if feasible ever, or what vast resources you imagine some incredibly hard to get to rocks represent. But in any case it seems clear to me that these goals are best advanced today by gaining as much knowledge of other planets as we can. Which exploration by remote probe is doing a great job of, and manned exploration isn't even seriously contemplating making any progress on at all.
They have vastly more money, and just as much time. If they are better for the job, where are they? Saying manned exploration is better if you ignore the drawbacks of manned exploration is just dumb.
Who do you think designed, built, launched, and now drives the rovers.
"Our unmanned rovers have given us a lot of valuable scientific data"
Yes, they sure have! Humans who explore using mechanical probes have been fabulously successful. Humans who explore by sending other humans? Not so much. Thousands of times the budget, and they can't keep their toilet running in LEO. Drop them and give me a thousand times as many mechanical probes; can you imagine the improvement in scientific results for the money?
"technology such as ion rockets seems very promising."
For moving mechanical probes to the far reaches of the solar system, absolutely! For moving anything with the mass to contain a human life-support? Um, no. The thrust level is too low by a factor of roughly... something ending in "illion".
Well, while it sounds simple in press reports, you don't really design something to last 90 days exactly.
You make some estimates and design something such that you think it has (for example) a 95% chance of lasting 90 days. You don't want to send the thing to Mars without being pretty sure it's going to last for the length of time you've decided will make it worth sending.
But if it has a 95% chance of lasting 90 days, how long does it have a 50% chance of lasting? Probably years. "How long can you say it will last with a high degree of confidence?" is a very different question than "What's your best guess?"
The durability of the rovers, while impressive, is not as completely shocking as it might first seem.
Because Wifi devices, as a side effect of being designed to handle some amount of interference on the band, wind up causing less meaningful interference on the band. Other devices tend to cause more interference. Notably, stuff like baby monitors, which are designed to be cheap, and don't care if they pick up some interference, so they just blast out whatever comes in the microphone, and the receiver picks up whatever is on the band.
If he had used GPL, the other guy would have to offer the source for download somewhere, but otherwise could do exactly the same thing. Also, thanks to Apple, that source would not actually let others use the app for free; they'd still have to pay the other guy to get it on their iPhone.
If you don't want others using your code, don't release the source.
Yes. That is the deal with the iPhone, and various other products, some from Apple. Vast numbers of people don't care, and buy the products knowing this. Some people don't like it and don't buy them. Some people continue to profess utter mystification, and claim a bizzare mental deficiency that prevents them from comprehending that this is in fact the deal.
I don't have an iPhone, but I'm guessing people who do bought one because it does stuff they want to do (or it's just shiny) and these positives outweigh the amount they care that Apple denies them access to purely theoretical software; that amount of caring being "diddly-squat".
I mean, come on. Feel free to say you hate Apples business model here. But if you really can't figure out why other people don't care I'm not sure your opinion should cary much weight. It's not rocket science.
"I'm claiming that, in general and on the average, most FOSS projects getting a lot of corporate support are GPL."
It is my impression that you are wrong. I'm not "claiming" anything, as I don't have any rigorous way to measure any more than you do.
"Projects that are BSD/MIT licensed and get lots of corporate support tend to be projects where an essential part of the project is that it have interfaces that can be accessed by other programs using ANY (or just about any) license. I could go into the reasons why I believe this pattern has developed, but those are arguable, where this particular assertion is observable."
I agree, but I believe this is the vast majority of projects.
"The obvious alternative scenario where Sun/etc. has to write 100% of the code instead of only 5-10% but locking all of it from the community"
So if (A) I write some code and Sun takes it and adds 5-10% that it doesn't share, I (and the community) have got all my code. If (B) I write some code, and don't let Sun have it, so they write a lot more code they don't share, I (and a smaller community) have all my code.
I get how (B) is worse for Sun, but I don't particularly care about screwing Sun just for the hell of it. I don't get how (A) is worse for me.
"obviously, the BSD license says other people can harm you with your own code"
Nope. I've got my code right here, they haven't and can't take it.
"Fine. I'll even agree, you are wonderful and happily co-operate. But you are not everyone"
I have not claimed to be everyone.
" and your initial argument was that BSD is 'better' because you can cooperate with the community using it, but not using the GPL."
I never said BSD was better than GPL. I would in no way make such a generic statement. BSD is better for me, obviously. Is it a better choice for some particular code author? That's the interesting question. If you're not making the decision on purely philosophical grounds, I suggest it is a question of whether you think you will get more contributions by trying to compel them from people like Sun, or by allowing them from people like me. Is your project something that companies like Sun will be so desperate to use they will contribute to it under the GPL rather than just writing their own from scratch? If so, definitely go GPL, Linus. But for many people, allowing contributions from people like me might be more worthwhile than attempting to compel them from SUN. Honestly, I'm not trying to argue for one license or the other, just sharing my experience, and encouraging people to consider the real effects of their license choice.
Sorry to deny you the flamebait. In case that's what you're after, I could point out that the LGPL really sucks. It's a hassle to use, and easy to circumvent.
I'm sorry if my comments came across as an "anti-GPL rant". That certainly wasn't my intent. I don't refuse to use any GPL software out of any philosophical hatred; I think people who license their software under the GPL are making a nice contribution to their fellow man, and I commend them for it. I politely decline to use GPL source code because I am unwilling to abide by the terms of the license.
"There are *not* any useful reusable library-like GPL packages."
Oh, I very much doubt that. I know of a number of very smart people who release code under the GPL out of philosophical conviction. They know making it GPL will reduce the number of users, and they don't care. Or they care more about making it GPL.
I'm simply encouraging people to consider what their actual goal is in choosing a license. Some people choose GPL because they don't want anyone using their code in something closed. Some people choose GPL because they want to encourage others to contribute to their project. I'm suggesting the latter may be making an understandible error in thinking contributions will be more likely under GPL than BSD, which has not been my personal experience.
I'm not trying to flame about any problem, as I don't see a problem, and am not upset about it. I'm trying to share my perception of a situation that strikes me as non-obvious.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, then in the sense of "serious" you describe, I guess I do take my atheism seriously. I describe my attitude as not serious, because periodically someone hears I'm an atheist and tells me I'm wrong and I don't get offended (I may become less interested in their opinions). Yet when I hear someone beleives in some particular God, I avoid saying they are wrong, because they tend to get offended. It seems to be a problem to say someone is wrong about their religious beliefs, despite the fact that, whatever your religion, most of the world thinks you are wrong. Point being, I know atheists who are chronically excited about the fact they are atheists, and eager to tell other people they are wrong. I am not generally one of them, so that's why I say I'm not serious. I do actually like discussing it sometimes, but I tend to stick to anonymous strangers on the internet, because if they get offended I don't care (nothing personal).
"I certainly don't go around making remarks to the effect that those who do believe are ok, as long as they don't really act like they do."
Hmmm, apply the silly example test of (adult) belief in Santa Claus, and I conclude: It's fine to act like you believe, but those who really do believe are not OK. I don't see how that changes if instead of Santa it's Thor, Vishnu, or Jehovah.
It's only more so.
I
I don't; just doesn't seem worth getting excited about. If I were going to spend any time being "serious" about not believing in things, where would it end? Do you "take seriously" your lack of belief in Thor, Vishnu, Zeus or the Easter Bunny?
Your proof of your reading comprehension doesn't even get off the ground:
"Okay so this paragraph in summary says dice rolls aren't random enough! "
No, it does not say that. Not even once. You fail. It says "[I] have always received numerous complaints that the dice are not random enough." That is not the same thing as saying the rolls are not, in fact, random enough. The difference is significant and relevant. Scores of people have read the article, and understood why he built the machine and why he thinks it is cool. You have read the article, and apparently do not understand these things. I'm not sure why you think more detailed analysis will convince people this is due to your superior comprehension.
"I've just proven my point and shown that I know what I'm talking about! "
Any time you have to end a post with a sentence like that, you may be sure it isn't true.
"In enforcing their precious NDA, hasn't Palm just turned off the entire community and made their NDA moot?"
The point of an NDA is not generally any fear of or potential beef with the person who signed it. Rather, if some third party steals your trade secret, and you want to sue them for doing so, you must establish that the information they stole was actually a trade secret. One condition of establishing that is showing that you were actually trying to protect the information from disclosure; e.g. by requiring and enforcing NDAs from anyone you shared the information with.
So even if you don't think someone is going to steal your info, you have a significant interest in having them sign an NDA, and in enforcing it, so you can use that against other people who might steal your secrets.
Anyway, what community? Some guys who hadn't done (or even had the chance to do) anything but sign an NDA and immediately twittering in violation of it? They're no value to Palm so far, and have made themselves a liability.
"Heck yes it is, for creatures with a faster reproductive cycle than humans."
Yet, the topic is humans.
"I dunno, I was pretty impressed with the math example."
You were pretty impressed with an example generated by Wolfram? From my own experience, and what I've heard from others, it's obviously frightening complex and sophisticated, and produces very impressive Wolfram-run demos. But when someone else tries to use it to produce some significant piece of information they actually want, it fails miserably.
"As with Google, you have to learn to speak its language. Try 'Hitler birth date', or just 'Hitler'. For the current time, enter 'now'. Or for more information, e.g. 'time in ouagadougou'."
NOT "as with Google". Put any of the original posters questions into Google as he wrote them, and you get the answer. Put them in in any reasonable fashion, and you get the answer.
Nah, that doesn't work either. How often do lying people insist they are telling the truth even after he makes the accusation? Or perhaps more on point, how often do truthful people say "Yeah, OK, you got me" while slowly edging away from the guy...
Learn to spell "correlated". Then figure out if an interesting correlation in what men rate as attractive in a picture of a stranger is the ultimate final definition of female beauty. After that, consider talking to a girl.
Please tell me what I'm misunderstanding or misrepresenting:
You think a sample return mission to Mars is "basically impossible" because of some conditions the don't apply to the Moon (where such missions have been done), and that these conditions can only be overcome by a human. These are conditions that NASA planners who have designed (and scheduled, before the challenger disaster threw them off) a sample return mission to Mars somehow overlooked.
Looking at your statements so far and taking them at face value, I really can't see what I'm distorting there so I would be genuinely fascinated to hear what these conditions are.
I suspect what is actually going on is that you had no idea sample return missions had been conducted to the moon and planned for mars. That's OK. It's fine to day dream about space exploration without much background knowledge. But you might not want to get offended if people disagree with your uninformed speculation.
My own knowledge of the state and difficulty of space exploration suggests to me that your Martian colony idea is not likely to be possible in our lifetimes for a cost of less than all the money in the world. I believe my knowledge of the state and difficulty of space exploration exceeds yours to a significant degree, and I will continue to believe that until you explain the magic conditions that make sample return missions to Mars "basically impossible".
"Taking less than a day to walk 100 meters is a good start"
How about I just land the next one 100 meters away? "Walking" is not the objective. Getting there is. Probes can get to Mars now, humans cannot.
"If you don't have the mental faculties to think of anything else, then we may as well end this conversation."
I cannot think of a scientific objective achievable by one human mission not achievable by a series of 60 probe missions. Clearly, neither can you. I don't think it's because we are both stupid.
"You're comparing launching a remote probe off of the moons surface to launching one from the Martian surface?"
Right, because you haven't implied the moon missions suggest a mars mission is feasible. It is my impression that the success of sample return missions to the Moon implies they might be possible for Mars. Certainly NASA thinks they are possible, they have such a mission scheduled. Probes have gone to Mars and collected samples. I'm not clear why you think the presence of humans would make launching them back to earth easier. Please explain.
"You know, you could have just written 'yes, I was wrong, probes won't help us get to Mars'"
I would have been wrong if I said probes would help us get to Mars. Or if I had somehow implied I thought our getting to Mars should be an objective in the first place. Sorry if there was any confusion there.
"That's a load of crap. We stopped funding manned missions decades ago."
I don't even know how to respond. What are you talking about? Manned space exploration is the largest part of NASA's operations budget, and always has been. There are astronauts up there now fixing the Hubble. BTW, an excellent use of manned missions: maintenance on remote probes stationed in LEO; it's easy enough to get there that using a human is worth it for a short trip. Maybe you're only counting "lander" missions? It's hard to keep track, when you mock me for thinking sample-return missions to the moon are relevant. Anyway, I'm counting results of all missions beyond the atmosphere, and remotes win by a landslide.
"we had accomplished plenty with manned missions, and practically nothing via remote."
If your objective is a manned mission, yes. Mine is not. Mine is scientific results. Remotes have vastly outstripped manned, and I see nothing manned has produced that could not have been done cheaper by remotes. If you disagree, an example would be helpful.
"No, that's not what I said. Being clever has nothing to do with it."
You don't want to send humans for their cleverness? WTF? Getting a humans adaptable intelligent brain as close to the problem as possible would obviously be wonderful, I wouldn't argue that. My whole point is that the downsides of their physical needs is too great. You want to send humans because their bodies are so much better adapted to Mars than a purpose-built probe? I don't understand what advantage you think the enormous weight of a human is worth if it isn't his brain.
It comes down to this: You give one program some money and you get some results. You give another program a hundred times as much money and don't get results and the proponents say "we'd get much better results if only you'd give us a lot more money." Call me crazy, but I just want to give the first program more money and tell the other guys to go back to writing Buck Rodgers fan fiction.
"Are you sure you'd be happy with it if it came prematurely?"
Not possible. We've reached and passed the time where it should have ended.
"On the other hand, starting a series like this does seem to make a kind of promise to the readers that it will (at least eventually) be finished."
It will never be finished. Look at the projected length of the series when each book was published: it has grown by 2 books every single time. It has never gotten as close to finished as it was when he hadn't started yet.
He has repeatedly offered assurances the next book was almost done.
The problem appears to be that he really likes planning out plots. He came up with a nice tight plot outline for a trilogy, but as he was writing it, he's not interested in just going through with his original plan. So for every book he writes, the projected length of the series gets 2 books longer.
Whatever. What might have been an iconic pillar of modern fantasy will not be because he'll with it unfinished. It's his own art that is damaged by his failure, and you quite rightly point out Martin doesn't owe us anything. He promised some stuff, but it wasn't written in blood or anything, and nobody paying attention has believed him for a while.
It is unreasonable for fans to think Martin owes them something. It is not unreasonable for them to be disappointed, nor for them to tell him where he can stick his umpteenth tie-in product.
"When Bush suggested launching new missions to the moon and mars, the NASA estimate for the entire effort came out to $120 billion."
People with more expertise than me have called that estimate ridiculous, but for the sake of argument, let's go with it.
"The Mars Rover missions cost something like a billion each."
No, about a billion total, for both rovers over four years of operations on Mars. Roughly the cost of a single shuttle flight to the IIS so some astronauts can skim the edge of the atmosphere for a few days.
"Even if they only stayed there for a couple days the astronauts could gather more data than a dozen rover missions"
I'm not sure why you think so. When the astronauts went to the moon, is it your impression they so much as turned over a rock without discussing it with earth-bound controllers? Also, by your numbers, it's not a dozen, it's 5 dozen. What do you imagine them doing that 60 remote probes could not? Keeping in mind that every one of those probes will be designed and deployed by a team of humans every bit as clever as your astronaut. A team that knows what the previous 50 probes encountered, and has plenty of time to consider it from the comfort of Earth, with no distracting other tasks like staying alive on Mars.
"AND they could bring back samples for earth-side analysis - something which is essentially impossible with probes."
Are the rest of your comments based on the same expert knowledge of space exploration as this one? The Soviets completed successful sample return missions to the moon via remote probes 3 times in the 1970s. NASA's Genesis and Stardust missions returned samples of the solar wind and comet debris from far farther away than manned missions have ever traveled. NASA has plans for a Martian sample return mission (real plans, not GW Bush make beleive) which will certainly happen long before we contemplate sneding a manned mission.
I certainly endorse a sample-return mission. Almost everything we learned about the moon from Apollo was thanks to the samples brought back so they could be analyzed on Earth. Because it's much easier to have humans do their work on Earth. The astronauts weren't doing any lab work up there.
"How did we get to the moon? By building better telescopes and studying it in detail from the ground? Or by developing rockets?"
By developing rockets. On Earth. Nothing about how to get to the moon was learned by astronauts on the moon (obviously).
"'If they are better for the job, where are they?'
Waiting for the funding, mainly."
Human space flight has many times as much funding as unmanned exploration, and much less to show for it. It is simply much less cost effective. I don't understand why you think the current wild imbalance in cost effectiveness will not just scale up to larger funding levels. Apparently you think it will completely reverse itself.
"You're arguing that manned Mars missions haven't accomplished anything, so we shouldn't fund manned missions."
I'm arguing that we have funded manned missions extensively, and accomplished very little. We have funded remote missions and accomplished much more for much less money.
I dislike calling it "robotic" exploration. It's not robots doing the exploring, it's humans. Humans, as you note, are quite clever. They can figure out better ways to get things done. Remote probes are one of those ways. I assume you wouldn't object if a martian explorer used a shovel to collect a sample instead of his hands so he can stay inside the life-supporting environment of his suit. Why can't a martian explorer design a really clever shovel that let's him do his shoveling from inside the much nicer life support environment we call Earth?
You argue people are so clever we must send them. Why doesn't that cleverness count when they design tools to do the job a faster, cheaper, better way?
If humans on Mars can do more than humans on earth controlling probes on Mars, tell them to get on with it.
You seem to be saying, humans on mars can do more than humans controlling probes, if you ignore the difficulty and expense of getting them there and keeping them alive and operating. In space exploration, getting there and staying alive and operating is the whole problem. Everything else is pointlessly trivial by comparison.
"While unmanned probes will always be an extremely important part of space exploration, it's silly to suggest that they can replace manned missions."
I suggest they not only can, but have. It is not clear to me manned missions will ever achieve what remote probes are doing now. e.g. years of operation on mars.
"the big clincher is that manned missions are an absolute necessity if we plan on establishing colonies on other planets or moons, or if we want to start exploiting the vast resources of the asteroid belt."
We could argue just how far in the future colonies on other planets are, if feasible ever, or what vast resources you imagine some incredibly hard to get to rocks represent. But in any case it seems clear to me that these goals are best advanced today by gaining as much knowledge of other planets as we can. Which exploration by remote probe is doing a great job of, and manned exploration isn't even seriously contemplating making any progress on at all.
They have vastly more money, and just as much time. If they are better for the job, where are they? Saying manned exploration is better if you ignore the drawbacks of manned exploration is just dumb.
"Let's get some real people up there!"
Who do you think designed, built, launched, and now drives the rovers.
"Our unmanned rovers have given us a lot of valuable scientific data"
Yes, they sure have! Humans who explore using mechanical probes have been fabulously successful. Humans who explore by sending other humans? Not so much. Thousands of times the budget, and they can't keep their toilet running in LEO. Drop them and give me a thousand times as many mechanical probes; can you imagine the improvement in scientific results for the money?
"technology such as ion rockets seems very promising."
For moving mechanical probes to the far reaches of the solar system, absolutely! For moving anything with the mass to contain a human life-support? Um, no. The thrust level is too low by a factor of roughly... something ending in "illion".
Well, while it sounds simple in press reports, you don't really design something to last 90 days exactly.
You make some estimates and design something such that you think it has (for example) a 95% chance of lasting 90 days. You don't want to send the thing to Mars without being pretty sure it's going to last for the length of time you've decided will make it worth sending.
But if it has a 95% chance of lasting 90 days, how long does it have a 50% chance of lasting? Probably years. "How long can you say it will last with a high degree of confidence?" is a very different question than "What's your best guess?"
The durability of the rovers, while impressive, is not as completely shocking as it might first seem.
Because Wifi devices, as a side effect of being designed to handle some amount of interference on the band, wind up causing less meaningful interference on the band.
Other devices tend to cause more interference. Notably, stuff like baby monitors, which are designed to be cheap, and don't care if they pick up some interference, so they just blast out whatever comes in the microphone, and the receiver picks up whatever is on the band.
If he had used GPL, the other guy would have to offer the source for download somewhere, but otherwise could do exactly the same thing. Also, thanks to Apple, that source would not actually let others use the app for free; they'd still have to pay the other guy to get it on their iPhone.
If you don't want others using your code, don't release the source.
Yes. That is the deal with the iPhone, and various other products, some from Apple. Vast numbers of people don't care, and buy the products knowing this. Some people don't like it and don't buy them. Some people continue to profess utter mystification, and claim a bizzare mental deficiency that prevents them from comprehending that this is in fact the deal.
I don't have an iPhone, but I'm guessing people who do bought one because it does stuff they want to do (or it's just shiny) and these positives outweigh the amount they care that Apple denies them access to purely theoretical software; that amount of caring being "diddly-squat".
I mean, come on. Feel free to say you hate Apples business model here. But if you really can't figure out why other people don't care I'm not sure your opinion should cary much weight. It's not rocket science.
"I'm claiming that, in general and on the average, most FOSS projects getting a lot of corporate support are GPL."
It is my impression that you are wrong. I'm not "claiming" anything, as I don't have any rigorous way to measure any more than you do.
"Projects that are BSD/MIT licensed and get lots of corporate support tend to be projects where an essential part of the project is that it have interfaces that can be accessed by other programs using ANY (or just about any) license. I could go into the reasons why I believe this pattern has developed, but those are arguable, where this particular assertion is observable."
I agree, but I believe this is the vast majority of projects.
"The obvious alternative scenario where Sun/etc. has to write 100% of the code instead of only 5-10% but locking all of it from the community"
So if (A) I write some code and Sun takes it and adds 5-10% that it doesn't share, I (and the community) have got all my code. If (B) I write some code, and don't let Sun have it, so they write a lot more code they don't share, I (and a smaller community) have all my code.
I get how (B) is worse for Sun, but I don't particularly care about screwing Sun just for the hell of it. I don't get how (A) is worse for me.
"obviously, the BSD license says other people can harm you with your own code"
Nope. I've got my code right here, they haven't and can't take it.
"Fine. I'll even agree, you are wonderful and happily co-operate. But you are not everyone"
I have not claimed to be everyone.
" and your initial argument was that BSD is 'better' because you can cooperate with the community using it, but not using the GPL."
I never said BSD was better than GPL. I would in no way make such a generic statement. BSD is better for me, obviously. Is it a better choice for some particular code author? That's the interesting question. If you're not making the decision on purely philosophical grounds, I suggest it is a question of whether you think you will get more contributions by trying to compel them from people like Sun, or by allowing them from people like me. Is your project something that companies like Sun will be so desperate to use they will contribute to it under the GPL rather than just writing their own from scratch? If so, definitely go GPL, Linus. But for many people, allowing contributions from people like me might be more worthwhile than attempting to compel them from SUN. Honestly, I'm not trying to argue for one license or the other, just sharing my experience, and encouraging people to consider the real effects of their license choice.
Sorry to deny you the flamebait. In case that's what you're after, I could point out that the LGPL really sucks. It's a hassle to use, and easy to circumvent.
"There was exactly 1 test vote on cloture this session."
Upon further research, you are just entirely talking shit.
http://www.obama.senate.gov/pagelayout/reference/cloture_motions/111.htm
Nineteen != "exactly 1"
Senate rules do not produce a count of filibusters Reid doesn't think can be broken.
I'm sorry if my comments came across as an "anti-GPL rant". That certainly wasn't my intent. I don't refuse to use any GPL software out of any philosophical hatred; I think people who license their software under the GPL are making a nice contribution to their fellow man, and I commend them for it. I politely decline to use GPL source code because I am unwilling to abide by the terms of the license.
"There are *not* any useful reusable library-like GPL packages."
Oh, I very much doubt that. I know of a number of very smart people who release code under the GPL out of philosophical conviction. They know making it GPL will reduce the number of users, and they don't care. Or they care more about making it GPL.
I'm simply encouraging people to consider what their actual goal is in choosing a license. Some people choose GPL because they don't want anyone using their code in something closed. Some people choose GPL because they want to encourage others to contribute to their project. I'm suggesting the latter may be making an understandible error in thinking contributions will be more likely under GPL than BSD, which has not been my personal experience.
I'm not trying to flame about any problem, as I don't see a problem, and am not upset about it. I'm trying to share my perception of a situation that strikes me as non-obvious.