Actually, the Sojourner robot DID have a cheap
Motorola radio modem for comms to the larger
lander - that was a big part of NASA's "smaller,
cheaper, faster" thing...re-use of standard parts.
However, I agree with all your other points.
Some others...
* What is the probability of the Hab module, the
Sojourner and the Russian sample return mission
all being within convenient walking distance of
the crashed mars transfer craft?
* Why the heck would you program AMEE with
techniques for killing humans? She can sense
your detailed anatomy - and has been programmed
with complex strategies of geurilla warfare
but nobody taught her "Killing Crew == Bad" ?
* But by far the worst gaffe is the lack of
spectroscopy. Why didn't they know the
up-to-the-minute distribution of O2 in the
martian atmosphere?
* Why would an unmanned Russian probe have
a voice synthesiser and a cute control panel
on it? (I liked the bear in the spacesuit
though!)
Well, for all that, there are worse ways to
spend $4 and a couple of hours - the popcorn
was *great*. Picking holes in the movie is
an entertainment in it's own right.
If *I* were building a freeware combat flight sim,
I would start with the (amazing) 'FlightGear' non-combat flightsim (www.flightgear.org) and add in the weaponry. It has all the *hard* parts of a simulator down cold.
Someone with intelligence and math, art and music skills should be a natural games programmer. My son (who is not autistic - but who has the same range of interests) started at age 7yrs to make 3D models, paint images and such for the 3D games I write. He's now 9 and is already getting into programming.
Perhaps 5 is a little young for programming - but packages like GIMP, Xpaint, Blender and AC3D are well within the abilities of a 5 year old...and if he can make the artwork and you can bring them to life, then that's a special kind of magic between parent and child.
If you can program (or learn) then you and he can form a lasting bond as collaborators in this way.
That's certainly worked well for my son and I. You can see the results at http://tuxaqfh.sourceforge.net and http://tuxkart.sourceforge.net
I have had times (especially when debugging) when I run dry of ideas. Several years ago I was advised to do code walkthroughs with a colleague. You both sit down in front of the screen and you go through the files explaining how it all works. This works quite well - but it can be boring for the other person.
Initially, we thought that the other person would need to make helpful comments and ask questions - but it turns out that it doesn't matter if they just sit there. The very act of explaining it to someone is all that it takes.
This prompted us to wonder if you really needed a fully qualified programmer to explain things to. Would a secretary be enough? What about a trained dog? What about a cardboard cutout dog?
We never did try that (you feel kinda silly explaining your code to a cardboard cutout dog) - but people would often say "Would you mind coming over to my cube and being a Cardboard cutout dog for me?"
Some time ago I told this story to a friend and he told me that they'd come to the exact same conclusion at their organization - but they ended up using an inflatable sex doll as the 'entity' to explain their code to!:-)
Anyway - I think that explaining your code somehow allows you to see all the little uglinesses that just staring at the screen didn't show up. It works for me - but YMMV.
The NPR broadcast about this pointed out that the codes are almost certainly one-time codebook encoded. Since one time codebooks are mathematically unbreakable without having the correct code book, trying to decode these broadcasts seems like a monumental waste of effort.
Sure - remove the copyrighted stuff - keep the links and other comments.
Make it clear in your acknowledgement that you are doing so since Microsoft so *kindly* pointed them out as copyright violations and NOT because of any DMCA reasons.
If they think they can make you pull the rest of the stuff then it's a freedom of speech issue that your lawyers can have fun with.
Back when floppy disks were 8 inches across, I wrote a little CP/M-like OS for our Intellec MDS. While writing the disk formatter, I'd be testing it a dozen times a day and got *fatally* used to typing 'Y' when it asked if I *really* wanted to do it. To prevent myself from making that mistake again, when asking whether you wanted to format the disk or not, it would say:
"If you wish to reformat this disk, please tell me the Capital of Paraguay:"
...or any of a dozen other capital cities of hard-to-remember places.
:-)
Oh - and BTW - there is a BIG difference between formatting and erasing. Erasing is a merely a side-effect of re-formatting.
Erasing is not a side-effect of first time formatting because an unformatted disk (by definition) contains no files.
Also, you can certainly erase all the files on a disk and not have reformatted it.
As for whether 'formatting' is the best word for this operation - well, there is no word in the English language that means whatever it is you are doing to the disk, so either a new word had to be coined - or an old word recycled. I can't think of a better word than 'formatting'.
The ratio of dead tree to useful information is very poor in a newspaper.
1) Dump all the adverts - I don't read any of them They are a ecological nightmare.
2) Since your information is appearing a whole day later than the online information - you'd better cover matters in great depth and target my interests.
I'm a British Citizen - and I was invited to come to the US - I didn't ask to come. The large defense company I work for couldn't find anyone in the US to do the job I do. Not at any money. I have an unusual skill set - and I'm very good at what I do.
So, I negotiated a good salary - and flew over with my family, having been told that my Green Card would take between a year and eighteen months to arrive. That seemed pretty reasonable.
To start with, my job was stimulating - but jobs change. Now, I find my work is stifling to my creativity and I need a change.
I've been waiting for SIX YEARS for my Green Card - and as far as I can tell, it's still about a year away. I strongly suspect that my employer has deliberately dragged it's heels to string out the process.
Meanwhile, I'm stuck in the same job - I can't get promoted - the company cannot change my job title because that would put the application process right back to square one.
I'm still working for the exact same salary that I had the day I came here. My company has no incentive to give me a pay rise (even though they rate me 'exemplary' in my annual reviews) - because they KNOW I can't change jobs.
I could go back home to England - but I have a house, two cars and my son (who was just three years old when we arrived) has now turned nine. He has (necessarily) been brought up as an American kid so he would fit in with US schools - and it would be grossly unfair to force him to change.
This is why they call it 'GreenCard Jail'.
The situation won't improve because Green Card prisoners don't have a vote - so there is little incentive for government to put money into fixing the problem.
What is happening to me right now is (in effect) slavery. A slave who has enough to eat, a comfortable place to stay - and even a nice car - is still a slave. This is a matter of freedom - not pay.
Whilst I applaud any company who's ready to spend substantial wads of cash on OpenSource development, I really think that competitions are the wrong way to go about it:
It encourages secrecy and non-cooperation between the various people working on projects like this. That transforms the usual model for OpenSource development from web-based cooperation into commercial competition.
It doesn't encourage the best people to do the work because they'll say to themselves "I could work for six months on this - and then lose the competition and get nothing". Since they have already fostered a competitive model, that's a bad thing.
The wording of the competition seems to prohibit developers from doing the rational thing which is to start with the best parts of the existing autoconf/make system and just fix whatever is perceived to be broken. Even worse, the people who might have been working on improving those projects are now dragged off to start again from scratch.
Putting money into OpenSource teams has to be done with great care since it can often result in serious internal debates about who contributed most and who deserves what share of the money.
It would have been much better if this company had hired a good programmer for a year or two and had them work on 'fixing' whatever it is that they dislike in autoconf/make.
Failing that, break the money up into $20k 'grants' and offer them to people who are already working in the right direction.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh yeah...and
* What destroyed the Hab module (we never
found out). "Nematodes"?
* How come they didn't check telemetry
from the Hab module earlier?
Actually, the Sojourner robot DID have a cheap
:-)
Motorola radio modem for comms to the larger
lander - that was a big part of NASA's "smaller,
cheaper, faster" thing...re-use of standard parts.
However, I agree with all your other points.
Some others...
* What is the probability of the Hab module, the
Sojourner and the Russian sample return mission
all being within convenient walking distance of
the crashed mars transfer craft?
* Why the heck would you program AMEE with
techniques for killing humans? She can sense
your detailed anatomy - and has been programmed
with complex strategies of geurilla warfare
but nobody taught her "Killing Crew == Bad" ?
* But by far the worst gaffe is the lack of
spectroscopy. Why didn't they know the
up-to-the-minute distribution of O2 in the
martian atmosphere?
* Why would an unmanned Russian probe have
a voice synthesiser and a cute control panel
on it? (I liked the bear in the spacesuit
though!)
Well, for all that, there are worse ways to
spend $4 and a couple of hours - the popcorn
was *great*. Picking holes in the movie is
an entertainment in it's own right.
1 Million Dollars to keep the UV explorer up there = $0.01 per person per annum.
Cost of a shuttle flight = $0.30 to $0.50.
It helps to keep things in perspective.
Erm - TuxRacer actually has environment mapped ice - and the snow certainly *looks* bumpmapped.
And the hybrid Parrot/Tux idea has also been
done before - it's the mascot of 'PrettyPoly',
a 3D modeller.
http://prettypoly.sourceforge.net
There *is* a MarioKart64 clone for Linux, it's here: http://tuxkart.sourceforge.net
If *I* were building a freeware combat flight sim,
I would start with the (amazing) 'FlightGear' non-combat flightsim (www.flightgear.org) and add in the weaponry. It has all the *hard* parts of a simulator down cold.
Someone with intelligence and math, art and music skills should be a natural games programmer. My son (who is not autistic - but who has the same range of interests) started at age 7yrs to make 3D models, paint images and such for the 3D games I write. He's now 9 and is already getting into programming.
Perhaps 5 is a little young for programming - but packages like GIMP, Xpaint, Blender and AC3D are well within the abilities of a 5 year old...and if he can make the artwork and you can bring them to life, then that's a special kind of magic between parent and child.
If you can program (or learn) then you and he can form a lasting bond as collaborators in this way.
That's certainly worked well for my son and I. You can see the results at http://tuxaqfh.sourceforge.net and http://tuxkart.sourceforge.net
Initially, we thought that the other person would need to make helpful comments and ask questions - but it turns out that it doesn't matter if they just sit there. The very act of explaining it to someone is all that it takes.
This prompted us to wonder if you really needed a fully qualified programmer to explain things to. Would a secretary be enough? What about a trained dog? What about a cardboard cutout dog?
We never did try that (you feel kinda silly explaining your code to a cardboard cutout dog) - but people would often say "Would you mind coming over to my cube and being a Cardboard cutout dog for me?"
Some time ago I told this story to a friend and he told me that they'd come to the exact same conclusion at their organization - but they ended up using an inflatable sex doll as the 'entity' to explain their code to! :-)
Anyway - I think that explaining your code somehow allows you to see all the little uglinesses that just staring at the screen didn't show up. It works for me - but YMMV.
Good luck!
The NPR broadcast about this pointed out that
the codes are almost certainly one-time codebook
encoded. Since one time codebooks are mathematically unbreakable without having the
correct code book, trying to decode these broadcasts seems like a monumental waste of
effort.
Make it clear in your acknowledgement that you are doing so since Microsoft so *kindly* pointed them out as copyright violations and NOT because of any DMCA reasons.
If they think they can make you pull the rest of the stuff then it's a freedom of speech issue that your lawyers can have fun with.
"If you wish to reformat this disk, please tell me the Capital of Paraguay:"
Oh - and BTW - there is a BIG difference between formatting and erasing. Erasing is a merely a side-effect of re-formatting.
Erasing is not a side-effect of first time formatting because an unformatted disk (by definition) contains no files.
Also, you can certainly erase all the files on a disk and not have reformatted it.
As for whether 'formatting' is the best word for this operation - well, there is no word in the English language that means whatever it is you are doing to the disk, so either a new word had to be coined - or an old word recycled. I can't think of a better word than 'formatting'.
The ratio of dead tree to useful information
is very poor in a newspaper.
1) Dump all the adverts - I don't read any of them
They are a ecological nightmare.
2) Since your information is appearing a whole
day later than the online information - you'd
better cover matters in great depth and target
my interests.
I read Scientific American - nothing else.
The prize goes to a person drawn randomly from the people proposing the most popular name.
Since this doesn't reward inventiveness, it's gotta be SuSiE or some alternative spelling and/or capitalization thereof.
I'm a British Citizen - and I was invited to come to the US - I didn't ask to come. The large defense company I work for couldn't find anyone in the US to do the job I do. Not at any money. I have an unusual skill set - and I'm very good at what I do.
So, I negotiated a good salary - and flew over with my family, having been told that my Green Card would take between a year and eighteen months to arrive. That seemed pretty reasonable.
To start with, my job was stimulating - but jobs change. Now, I find my work is stifling to my creativity and I need a change.
I've been waiting for SIX YEARS for my Green Card - and as far as I can tell, it's still about a year away. I strongly suspect that my employer has deliberately dragged it's heels to string out the process.
Meanwhile, I'm stuck in the same job - I can't get promoted - the company cannot change my job title because that would put the application process right back to square one.
I'm still working for the exact same salary that I had the day I came here. My company has no incentive to give me a pay rise (even though they rate me 'exemplary' in my annual reviews) - because they KNOW I can't change jobs.
I could go back home to England - but I have a house, two cars and my son (who was just three years old when we arrived) has now turned nine. He has (necessarily) been brought up as an American kid so he would fit in with US schools - and it would be grossly unfair to force him to change.
This is why they call it 'GreenCard Jail'.
The situation won't improve because Green Card
prisoners don't have a vote - so there is little incentive for government to put money into fixing the problem.
What is happening to me right now is (in effect) slavery. A slave who has enough to eat, a comfortable place to stay - and even a nice car - is still a slave. This is a matter of freedom - not pay.
That's it - I'm stuffing my anonymous postings
through BabelFish a couple of times...that'll
sort out their analysers!
- It encourages secrecy and non-cooperation between the various people working on projects like this. That transforms the usual model for OpenSource development from web-based cooperation into commercial competition.
- It doesn't encourage the best people to do the work because they'll say to themselves "I could work for six months on this - and then lose the competition and get nothing". Since they have already fostered a competitive model, that's a bad thing.
- The wording of the competition seems to prohibit developers from doing the rational thing which is to start with the best parts of the existing autoconf/make system and just fix whatever is perceived to be broken. Even worse, the people who might have been working on improving those projects are now dragged off to start again from scratch.
- Putting money into OpenSource teams has to be done with great care since it can often result in serious internal debates about who contributed most and who deserves what share of the money.
It would have been much better if this company had hired a good programmer for a year or two and had them work on 'fixing' whatever it is that they dislike in autoconf/make.Failing that, break the money up into $20k 'grants' and offer them to people who are already working in the right direction.
This competition is A Bad Thing.