On XP they also had the advantage that they weren't changing fundamental elements of the APIs or the security model. Most XP apps will not run happily on VISTA. You may be able to get them to work if you're an expert (i.e., you know things about "shims" and "restricted administrator access") but for the vast majority of people switching to VISTA will be more painful than switching to Mac. Only apps that are written specifically for VISTA have any chance of working. Microsoft can't release the OS until all the major software vendors are onboard. All the major software vendors can't declare their software VISTA-ready until Microsoft gives them the final release candidate. If one of the major software vendors finds they just can't get their shit to work they have to ask Microsoft for a hack, and if there's enough of those hacks Microsoft has to put out another release candidate.
So what you want to see is an compilation of immature academic technologies into a mature stable production system. Why not just wish for a gold house?
I remember once someone, who will remain nameless cause he got shitty as me last time I mentioned his name, told me about this great idea they had for the Ubuntu Linux CD. As many people probably know, when you put the install CD in the drive under Windows it currently autoplays and gives you the opportunity to install a number of Open Source apps. He had this great idea (I think) to give people the opportunity to run the live image from the live CD under coLinux. I believe he ran into problems because setting up the network driver is not entirely automatic. It's a good idea he had. It's a shame he never followed up on it.
Money actually has to change hands dude. You can't be busted for asking someone how much they would accept for sex.. there's this thing called freedom of speech.
I think a better analogy is the police trying to catch car theives by leaving unlocked cars with tracking devices and cameras in them on dark streets. They even call them "honey trap cars" or "bait cars". Quite a number of these cases have been thrown out because of entrapment concerns.
Unfortunately Australia, like the UK, does not require there to be a complaintant to push charges on someone. The Crown could prosecute these two for sexual assault and win. They won't, because it's a big waste of time, but they could.
launching a shuttle, with a crew of 7 and plenty of cargo space
And therein lies the problem. Ask any experienced rocket specialist today if it was a good idea to make the Shuttle a seven seater or to have all that cargo space and they'll tell that it wasn't a good idea back when they designed the thing. People and cargo are two completely different things. Sending low-mass humans up on the same vehicle as high-mass cargo is just dumb.
Apples and Oranges. Commerical entities are supposed to care about making money. If there's any justice in the world someone will beat Virgin Galactic to the punch and they'll lose a shitload of market share.
Fact of the matter is, none of us know why SS1 was retired, except Rutan that is. My guess is he got a nice fat signing bonus with Virgin Galactic and part of the agreement was that he wouldn't steal their thunder. Legislation probably had something to do with it too. It's not easy jumping through all that red tape to take on passengers.
As for SS2 possibly being orbital.. no. It's not likely. We're probably talking 20 more years until anyone but the russians start offering orbital flights.
according to Virgin Galactic, the number of people who have expressed interest in taking a suborbital spaceflight with them is in the tens of thousands, while 100 "Founders" have already paid the estimated $200,000 ticket price to secure a place at the front of the line.
Two years ago the X-Prize was won. Since then, no-one has had the opportunity to buy a suborbital flight. The vehicle that won the X-Prize is hanging in the Smithsonian. The spinoff of that vehicle (Virgin Galactic) won't be opening its doors for 4 more years. It would appear that the only people with the means to make suborbital space tourism a reality no longer have the motivation to do it as fast as possible. Maybe this just means other groups will have time to play catch up, but when you consider that suborbital is just the first step of many in commercial space flight, you gotta wonder when, if ever, we'll get our turn.
I think Richard Branson is an inspiration to all. But, and you knew there was a 'but', this venture is taking a very long time. Some of you may think 8 years is a reasonable amount of time to go from winning the X-Prize to offering rides to paying customers, but compare this to every other Virgin branded venture. Branson is renouned for entering existing markets quickly and offering superior service. The Virgin interest in suborbital flights is more similar to Branson's ballooning exploits than it is to his business exploits. I just wish people weren't resting on their laurels waiting for Branson.
Go read The Personal Software Process. It's full of helpful, common sense suggestions that every programmer should know. Then go read The Team Software Process, which is a simple forward thinking way of getting programmers to work well together in teams. Then get really really depressed because no matter how hard you try at stuff like this, the software industry is so random and unpredictable that common sense is not all that common.
Here's another famous one. The operating system sits between the brain and the body of every person in this society and regulates all actions.
As for the danger of entrusting too much power to the bureaucrat-god, the Friendly AI people have an answer to that too. They refer to their god as a "Sysop" and claim that it would simply be created without any tendency to abuse power. You can read about it here, search for Sysop. I believe that this is naivety to an absolute extreme. It shows that the geeks who think up this stuff, and eventually will build them, have little to no actual contact with society and the conflict that is a fundamental part of it. The fundamental idea is that conflict is unnecessary and that dealing with it is just an annoyance. Whereas I've come to believe that conflict is the most important part about society. How individuals deal with conflict is a direct reflection of our civialization. To not deal with conflict at all is to not have any civialization.
An otherwise smart and intelligent programmer friend of mine once suggested that if we could experience the minds of others directly we'd never have any arguments. I decided not to argue with him about whether or not this is the case and simply asked him why he thought a society without argument was an ideal to strive for. He tried to explain and it quickly came apparent that he found any form of argument daunting. To him, argument was all about misunderstanding. I eventually explained to him that there is another form of argument which holds as its base goal the search for truth, and that disagreement is the seed that grows into truth. This really blew his mind and as I look back I can see that our conversation that day was a major turning point in his life.
Then, of course, there's all the people I talk to on Slashdot. All too often I run into people who believe the only rights they have are those that are granted by their government. They believe that their have no warrent to defend themselves or their rights - that's the job of the police. It really shocks me and I wonder where the hell these people are being brought up.
Oh, and for the record, I'm an Australian.. but if I was an American I'd certainly consider moving to NH.
Slashdot Mirror
Calling a tether a rope is like calling the space shuttle a glider. Oh wait, they do that too.
All astronauts are tethered to the station on spacewalks, there was never any risk. This is just stupid sensationalism, as usual.
Ha! No-one knows how to develop software. No-one has ever known how to develop software.
If NTFS was even mildly documented that'd be an option.
On XP they also had the advantage that they weren't changing fundamental elements of the APIs or the security model. Most XP apps will not run happily on VISTA. You may be able to get them to work if you're an expert (i.e., you know things about "shims" and "restricted administrator access") but for the vast majority of people switching to VISTA will be more painful than switching to Mac. Only apps that are written specifically for VISTA have any chance of working. Microsoft can't release the OS until all the major software vendors are onboard. All the major software vendors can't declare their software VISTA-ready until Microsoft gives them the final release candidate. If one of the major software vendors finds they just can't get their shit to work they have to ask Microsoft for a hack, and if there's enough of those hacks Microsoft has to put out another release candidate.
So what you want to see is an compilation of immature academic technologies into a mature stable production system. Why not just wish for a gold house?
Maybe you should go back to grammar school. Neither of your two examples were using 'texting' as a verb.
'texting' is no more a verb than 'running'. They're both adverbs of 'do'.
I go running.
I was running.
I will go running.
That is not to say that 'text' is not a verb. It is, just like 'run' is a verb.
I run.
I text.
Thanks you, and good night.
I remember once someone, who will remain nameless cause he got shitty as me last time I mentioned his name, told me about this great idea they had for the Ubuntu Linux CD. As many people probably know, when you put the install CD in the drive under Windows it currently autoplays and gives you the opportunity to install a number of Open Source apps. He had this great idea (I think) to give people the opportunity to run the live image from the live CD under coLinux. I believe he ran into problems because setting up the network driver is not entirely automatic. It's a good idea he had. It's a shame he never followed up on it.
Money actually has to change hands dude. You can't be busted for asking someone how much they would accept for sex.. there's this thing called freedom of speech.
False.
I think a better analogy is the police trying to catch car theives by leaving unlocked cars with tracking devices and cameras in them on dark streets. They even call them "honey trap cars" or "bait cars". Quite a number of these cases have been thrown out because of entrapment concerns.
No. See. If you ask the cop how much and she says "for you, $20", that's entrapment.
I'm sorry, but have you even heard of entrapment?
Ya gotta wonder, if it's just a honeypot then how can you be charged for breaking into it?
Unfortunately Australia, like the UK, does not require there to be a complaintant to push charges on someone. The Crown could prosecute these two for sexual assault and win. They won't, because it's a big waste of time, but they could.
launching a shuttle, with a crew of 7 and plenty of cargo space
And therein lies the problem. Ask any experienced rocket specialist today if it was a good idea to make the Shuttle a seven seater or to have all that cargo space and they'll tell that it wasn't a good idea back when they designed the thing. People and cargo are two completely different things. Sending low-mass humans up on the same vehicle as high-mass cargo is just dumb.
There aint none.
Apples and Oranges. Commerical entities are supposed to care about making money. If there's any justice in the world someone will beat Virgin Galactic to the punch and they'll lose a shitload of market share.
Fact of the matter is, none of us know why SS1 was retired, except Rutan that is. My guess is he got a nice fat signing bonus with Virgin Galactic and part of the agreement was that he wouldn't steal their thunder. Legislation probably had something to do with it too. It's not easy jumping through all that red tape to take on passengers.
As for SS2 possibly being orbital.. no. It's not likely. We're probably talking 20 more years until anyone but the russians start offering orbital flights.
I would have thought Return of the Jedi taught you that you can't just build the same superweapon twice.
according to Virgin Galactic, the number of people who have expressed interest in taking a suborbital spaceflight with them is in the tens of thousands, while 100 "Founders" have already paid the estimated $200,000 ticket price to secure a place at the front of the line.
from The Space Review. So yes, I think there's a market.
Two years ago the X-Prize was won. Since then, no-one has had the opportunity to buy a suborbital flight. The vehicle that won the X-Prize is hanging in the Smithsonian. The spinoff of that vehicle (Virgin Galactic) won't be opening its doors for 4 more years. It would appear that the only people with the means to make suborbital space tourism a reality no longer have the motivation to do it as fast as possible. Maybe this just means other groups will have time to play catch up, but when you consider that suborbital is just the first step of many in commercial space flight, you gotta wonder when, if ever, we'll get our turn.
I think Richard Branson is an inspiration to all. But, and you knew there was a 'but', this venture is taking a very long time. Some of you may think 8 years is a reasonable amount of time to go from winning the X-Prize to offering rides to paying customers, but compare this to every other Virgin branded venture. Branson is renouned for entering existing markets quickly and offering superior service. The Virgin interest in suborbital flights is more similar to Branson's ballooning exploits than it is to his business exploits. I just wish people weren't resting on their laurels waiting for Branson.
Go read The Personal Software Process. It's full of helpful, common sense suggestions that every programmer should know. Then go read The Team Software Process, which is a simple forward thinking way of getting programmers to work well together in teams. Then get really really depressed because no matter how hard you try at stuff like this, the software industry is so random and unpredictable that common sense is not all that common.
Here's another famous one. The operating system sits between the brain and the body of every person in this society and regulates all actions.
As for the danger of entrusting too much power to the bureaucrat-god, the Friendly AI people have an answer to that too. They refer to their god as a "Sysop" and claim that it would simply be created without any tendency to abuse power. You can read about it here, search for Sysop. I believe that this is naivety to an absolute extreme. It shows that the geeks who think up this stuff, and eventually will build them, have little to no actual contact with society and the conflict that is a fundamental part of it. The fundamental idea is that conflict is unnecessary and that dealing with it is just an annoyance. Whereas I've come to believe that conflict is the most important part about society. How individuals deal with conflict is a direct reflection of our civialization. To not deal with conflict at all is to not have any civialization.
An otherwise smart and intelligent programmer friend of mine once suggested that if we could experience the minds of others directly we'd never have any arguments. I decided not to argue with him about whether or not this is the case and simply asked him why he thought a society without argument was an ideal to strive for. He tried to explain and it quickly came apparent that he found any form of argument daunting. To him, argument was all about misunderstanding. I eventually explained to him that there is another form of argument which holds as its base goal the search for truth, and that disagreement is the seed that grows into truth. This really blew his mind and as I look back I can see that our conversation that day was a major turning point in his life.
Then, of course, there's all the people I talk to on Slashdot. All too often I run into people who believe the only rights they have are those that are granted by their government. They believe that their have no warrent to defend themselves or their rights - that's the job of the police. It really shocks me and I wonder where the hell these people are being brought up.
Oh, and for the record, I'm an Australian.. but if I was an American I'd certainly consider moving to NH.