What part of this are you not understanding? The ISS does the science right? They need humans up there to follow instructions and do the busy work because putting robotic arms up there would be just too hard (or something). Basically anyone can do it.. you don't need to be a fighter pilot or a superman, you just have to have the training. So who gets the training? The hand picked military man? Or the guy who shows up and says "I'll pay you $30 million if you teach me how to do it". Kinda a no brainer.. you send the guy who is offering to pay you rather than the guy who is demanding a pay check. Duh.
5 years ago people were willing to pay $200k for a ride on SpaceShipOne.. there was a line of them out the door. They refused. Today, people have had 5 years to think about it and they're asking "Gee, what do I get for my $200k?" and now they're not really interested anymore. That's how you kill a market.. gobble up all the capital so you can make the only product, hype the hell out of the product, then not be ready when people come banging on your door. VG have openly said that people are no longer interested in their flights. Even if they were to fly next year (and I doubt they will fly for many years yet), there's likely to be less customers than they need to turn a profit.
"People" understood nothing. There's still people *today* talking about Virgin Galactic like they're going to be doing orbital flight. In any case, the whole "Bigger Faster Better" aspect of SpaceShipTwo was a long time coming.. most people who put down their money thought they were going to get a flight on a vehicle identical to SpaceShipOne. Of course, since then the buzz has started to die off and crazy Will Whitehorn has been talking up the alternate uses for White Knight 2 should SpaceShipTwo never fly - which is great if you're trying to attract investors, but terrible if you want to stem the tide of people asking for their deposits back.
The spaceflight participants are trained to do the same job as the cosmonauts do. Why do you care if the trained monkey is a Russian government employee or a person who has paid for his own seat? Energia is a private corporation who provide human launch services to the Russian government (and soon the US government), if they want to sell the extra soyuz seat to the highest bidder, what concern of yours is it?
Typical deadshit Slashdot answer. Why is this stuff so hard for you drooling morons to understand? Non-obviousness is *just one criteria* and it's not even the most important one. Novelty is the most important. Ya know, no-one has ever done it before. You know why no-one ever did one-click before? Because it is a stupid idea. Hey guys, here's a great idea, let's store credit card numbers in our database and when the user comes back automatically log them in and make it so even an accidental mouse click can result in a purchase! What a great idea! The fact that so people rejected this idea as unworkable and wrong is the reason why Amazon was able to DO IT FIRST and that's what makes it patentable. Just because you don't like the patent system - did I mention how much I hate patents? - doesn't mean you should deliberately make yourself ignorant of it.
And that's how you do it folks. Take a product that people are already climbing over themselves to pay deposits on, and then hype it some more, and back up that hype with an unrealistic schedule. When you go one year over that schedule, people might forgive you. When you go two years over people start wondering what the hell is taking so long. When you go three years over.. well, hello Duke Nukem Forever, can I have my deposit back please?
We're still decades (centuries? maybe, if there's roadblocks) away from being able to create a sense organ for radio and training an animal to follow commands received via it. Of course, then someone will want the communication to two way so you can see through the bug's eyes, etc. Before you know it you've equipped a social insect with a massive evolutionary advantage which it uses to form the most fearsome hive mind, flies into space and takes over the galaxy. Gah, then we have to flight bugs in space, eww.
So presumably you're not interested in space.. Jeff Foust goes to just about every space conference there is and reports via twitter on what he sees there. You'll find stuff there that a wider audience might not appreciate. As I can't go to these conferences myself, it's invaluable, I don't have to wait for the winds to decide that something Jeff sees is worthy of turning into one of his fantastic articles.
Of course, this is just one way people use twitter.. call them the "stuff I thought was interesting" posters.. kinda like reddit or digg, but the opt-in nature makes the feeds more intimate. There are indeed people on twitter who go on about everything that happens in their day, or mix up their personal stuff, that I don't care about, with their professional stuff, which I dont - or visa-versa. Mostly I just unfollow such people.. occasionally I've managed to convince them that they shouldn't "cross the streams". http://twitter.com/focusfusion for example started out tweeting about her difficulties getting a driver's license and other personally crap.. she eventually got the message that we follow her to hear about the project she's reporting on, and she can go make a separate personal feed for the rest.
There's value in there, it just takes some experimentation to fine tune who you follow to get the kind of feed you want. twitter is basically the RSS revolution that never happened, rebranded.
Huh? Maybe you just follow the wrong people. For example, Jeff Foust has no problem saying interesting things daily. It's not hard, search for people who have interesting things to say, follow them, if they stray into stupidity, unfollow them.
There will be PC/Mac clients? Browser plugins even? Why didn't you say so, all of a sudden I give a shit.
Word of advice: don't get blinded by the US market. They don't spend nearly as much on games as other parts of the world.. and they don't have the greatest broadband. Other than the fact that you're white, is there a reason why you're not rolling out in Korea first?
Slashdot Mirror
Go research that and come back when you realize how much of an idiot you are.
Oh, and enjoy the fact that you can't delete your comment.
What part of this are you not understanding? The ISS does the science right? They need humans up there to follow instructions and do the busy work because putting robotic arms up there would be just too hard (or something). Basically anyone can do it.. you don't need to be a fighter pilot or a superman, you just have to have the training. So who gets the training? The hand picked military man? Or the guy who shows up and says "I'll pay you $30 million if you teach me how to do it". Kinda a no brainer.. you send the guy who is offering to pay you rather than the guy who is demanding a pay check. Duh.
5 years ago people were willing to pay $200k for a ride on SpaceShipOne.. there was a line of them out the door. They refused. Today, people have had 5 years to think about it and they're asking "Gee, what do I get for my $200k?" and now they're not really interested anymore. That's how you kill a market.. gobble up all the capital so you can make the only product, hype the hell out of the product, then not be ready when people come banging on your door. VG have openly said that people are no longer interested in their flights. Even if they were to fly next year (and I doubt they will fly for many years yet), there's likely to be less customers than they need to turn a profit.
"People" understood nothing. There's still people *today* talking about Virgin Galactic like they're going to be doing orbital flight. In any case, the whole "Bigger Faster Better" aspect of SpaceShipTwo was a long time coming.. most people who put down their money thought they were going to get a flight on a vehicle identical to SpaceShipOne. Of course, since then the buzz has started to die off and crazy Will Whitehorn has been talking up the alternate uses for White Knight 2 should SpaceShipTwo never fly - which is great if you're trying to attract investors, but terrible if you want to stem the tide of people asking for their deposits back.
The spaceflight participants are trained to do the same job as the cosmonauts do. Why do you care if the trained monkey is a Russian government employee or a person who has paid for his own seat? Energia is a private corporation who provide human launch services to the Russian government (and soon the US government), if they want to sell the extra soyuz seat to the highest bidder, what concern of yours is it?
Typical deadshit Slashdot answer. Why is this stuff so hard for you drooling morons to understand? Non-obviousness is *just one criteria* and it's not even the most important one. Novelty is the most important. Ya know, no-one has ever done it before. You know why no-one ever did one-click before? Because it is a stupid idea. Hey guys, here's a great idea, let's store credit card numbers in our database and when the user comes back automatically log them in and make it so even an accidental mouse click can result in a purchase! What a great idea! The fact that so people rejected this idea as unworkable and wrong is the reason why Amazon was able to DO IT FIRST and that's what makes it patentable. Just because you don't like the patent system - did I mention how much I hate patents? - doesn't mean you should deliberately make yourself ignorant of it.
And that's how you do it folks. Take a product that people are already climbing over themselves to pay deposits on, and then hype it some more, and back up that hype with an unrealistic schedule. When you go one year over that schedule, people might forgive you. When you go two years over people start wondering what the hell is taking so long. When you go three years over.. well, hello Duke Nukem Forever, can I have my deposit back please?
Way to frame the problem to get the answer you wanted. How about this:
Problem: people don't buy enough shit on the Internet.
Solution: make it easier for returning users to buy shit.
Reason it's non-obvious: NO-ONE DID IT BEFORE.
Umm.. are you completely unaware of legal process.. oh wait, you're an idiot on Slashdot, of course you are.
You're missing that you can sue anyone for anything and they have to show up, no matter how stupid the claims.
Thankfully some courts don't like this stuff and hand out stiff penalties for it.
We're still decades (centuries? maybe, if there's roadblocks) away from being able to create a sense organ for radio and training an animal to follow commands received via it. Of course, then someone will want the communication to two way so you can see through the bug's eyes, etc. Before you know it you've equipped a social insect with a massive evolutionary advantage which it uses to form the most fearsome hive mind, flies into space and takes over the galaxy. Gah, then we have to flight bugs in space, eww.
My sig was actually played at a competition level. :)
So presumably you're not interested in space.. Jeff Foust goes to just about every space conference there is and reports via twitter on what he sees there. You'll find stuff there that a wider audience might not appreciate. As I can't go to these conferences myself, it's invaluable, I don't have to wait for the winds to decide that something Jeff sees is worthy of turning into one of his fantastic articles.
Of course, this is just one way people use twitter.. call them the "stuff I thought was interesting" posters.. kinda like reddit or digg, but the opt-in nature makes the feeds more intimate. There are indeed people on twitter who go on about everything that happens in their day, or mix up their personal stuff, that I don't care about, with their professional stuff, which I dont - or visa-versa. Mostly I just unfollow such people.. occasionally I've managed to convince them that they shouldn't "cross the streams". http://twitter.com/focusfusion for example started out tweeting about her difficulties getting a driver's license and other personally crap.. she eventually got the message that we follow her to hear about the project she's reporting on, and she can go make a separate personal feed for the rest.
There's value in there, it just takes some experimentation to fine tune who you follow to get the kind of feed you want. twitter is basically the RSS revolution that never happened, rebranded.
Yeah, all the java love is a bit sickening.
Huh? Maybe you just follow the wrong people. For example, Jeff Foust has no problem saying interesting things daily. It's not hard, search for people who have interesting things to say, follow them, if they stray into stupidity, unfollow them.
Follow interesting people, unfollow the morons.. Why is this so hard to understand?
So to put it in my original terms: it's because they're white. Hint: hire an adviser.
There will be PC/Mac clients? Browser plugins even? Why didn't you say so, all of a sudden I give a shit.
Word of advice: don't get blinded by the US market. They don't spend nearly as much on games as other parts of the world.. and they don't have the greatest broadband. Other than the fact that you're white, is there a reason why you're not rolling out in Korea first?
If NASA could manage to secure funding for that for Mars they should be able to manage it for the moon.
There ya go, fixed that for ya.
I think Windows 7 is a marked improvement over XP
How?
(I have been using it fulltime since the beta),
Why?
Yeah, Slashdot is full of nerds who are easy to get riled up. The value of pi is precisely 3!!
huh? I said I hadn't installed it on my computer.. not that I hadn't used it. It's called a test lab, that's what its for..
My opinion? Another OS where Microsoft changes shit just so they can say they have a new product.
Yes, because I'm a well known Mac lover.
So what part of "target audience" did you miss? I really doubt Microsoft is interested in advertising to you.
you're an early adopter, nothing you say matters.
Anyone who installs a Microsoft beta is immediately ruled out of the "opinion worth listening to" category.