Notes may be a good platform for custom applications/databases, but a good e-mail client it isn't. At least not for SMTP mail: no access to SMTP headers, lousy nonstandard quoting, weird 'trash can' concept, etc.
And why should the government pay to keep people working in jobs that have become obsolete, when the same people could do useful work elsewhere? It's not as if a Nasa engineer will be out of a job for long.
But there is the small matter of the link between Shuttle and earth being wireless, and thus easy to hack. Easier now than ever, thanks to using IP instead of a weirdass NASA-only protocol you'd have to reverse-engineer before being able to break in.
They have good reason not to use bleeding-edge technology, similar to the military still using 486 and early Pentium processors in things like the F-22.
The electronics are probably radiation-hardened, and tested up the wazoo (if not mathematically proven correct) before being allowed in the Shuttle. This is what makes the space program so expensive.
And Nasa isn't the 'bureau of trailblazing technology'. They used to be, because the things they did weren't possible with then-current technology. Today, you don't need to 'invent the wheel' to go into space anymore, it's been done.
Monitoring !=remote control. I don't expect NASA to abandon their established standards for the Shuttle control programs (what was it, zero bugs in the last few releases?), but this would be useful to cheaply link earthbound scientists to their orbiting experiments (think Webcams).
I'd certainly hope our computers will be rid of @#$% filename extensions before we have practical applications of teleportation. Although from the current state of it (with even Apple regressing into the Middle Ages of Metadata), chances are slim.
The point the original poster was trying to make is that CPU speed is the bottleneck in only a minority of current uses for computers.
And if CPU usage causes your audio to clip, then the software and/or the audio interface sucks. If Digidesign could run 48 channels of AD conversion on a Mac IIci without clipping or dropping samples, then surely your current system should be able to do this.
Right. He compares using Windows XP for a year to using eight versions of OS X over that same year. Well, duh. If you upgrade your OS, you've got to expect some changes. Windows has an advantage here in that XP is basically =NT4.2, a mature OS that has seen little change over the past few years.
Good point. The question is then, why is speed such a low priority when the #1 argument to buy a new PC is that 'it's faster', and the #1 comparison statistic (useless or not) is the processor speed?
Could it be that there's also an element of laziness on the programmers' part? I expect it to be easier to write an application that expects to run on one processor (you don't need to worry about dividing tasks over multiple processors to optimize performance) than a multi-processing app.
And, who really tries to optimize performance today? IMO many programmers expect Moore's Law to take care of the performance increase (relative to the previous release of their program). I rarely see a version n+1 of an application that's faster than version n was on the same hardware.
Uh, since when is Star Trek real? Large commercial ships (where manpower savings are crucial) are run with crews of around 30 (e.g., 500 kton oil tankers).
A warship has more functions than going from A to B. You need a number of people to control the weapons (up to 30 a shift for the CIC in large ships), and more to maintain the weapons and their support systems.
How, indeed, when only one of those systems runs the OS I want (OS X)? The 'build your own' option may be free but it won't do me any good. Comparing a Mac with a BYO PC is pointless.
About two years ago, BBC's Jeremy Clarkson had a talk show with a segment on 'cooking'. It included nuking stuff in the microwave (CD's, etc.), making pickles glow, and one or two potato guns. Great fun.
I don't think this really is about letting the captain command from anywhere. It was mentioned in the article, but most of the article talks about automating the monitoring of the ship's systems: using a computer to listen to a bunch of sensors, rather than having a crewman 'sense' manually by patrolling the systems and checking readouts. This is entirely different from controlling the main functions (weapons and propulsion) of the ship.
These days, a captain would spend most of his time (at least when the ship is in action/at war) in the Combat Information Center. There, he's surrounded by 5-30 specialists, who each have a console with 2x21" screens and two radio channels (one in each ear). These people supply all the information the Captain needs to deploy his ship.
There's no way you can do this with a laptop, as some posters have suggested.
Yep. From Jobs' speech at the 2002 Grammy awards, If you legally acquire music, you need to have the right to manage it on all other devices that you own,
Except that 'traditional' Navy computers, including their OSes have been designed to fail gracefully, unlike Windows NT where it's "OnError Goto Hell".
Things like distributed processing (where a program can run on any of the dozens of processors in a ship's network, and be shifted around if a processor fails) and multiple network links aren't unusual.
The database overflow fried the LAN, and crashed a number of 'remote terminals'. All things that should be protected by the OS.
Slashdot Mirror
Notes may be a good platform for custom applications/databases, but a good e-mail client it isn't. At least not for SMTP mail: no access to SMTP headers, lousy nonstandard quoting, weird 'trash can' concept, etc.
Already being done, sort of. Although the launch doesn't seem to have occurred yet.
Why would this be bad for Linux?
And why should the government pay to keep people working in jobs that have become obsolete, when the same people could do useful work elsewhere? It's not as if a Nasa engineer will be out of a job for long.
But there is the small matter of the link between Shuttle and earth being wireless, and thus easy to hack. Easier now than ever, thanks to using IP instead of a weirdass NASA-only protocol you'd have to reverse-engineer before being able to break in.
They have good reason not to use bleeding-edge technology, similar to the military still using 486 and early Pentium processors in things like the F-22.
The electronics are probably radiation-hardened, and tested up the wazoo (if not mathematically proven correct) before being allowed in the Shuttle. This is what makes the space program so expensive.
And Nasa isn't the 'bureau of trailblazing technology'. They used to be, because the things they did weren't possible with then-current technology. Today, you don't need to 'invent the wheel' to go into space anymore, it's been done.
Monitoring !=remote control. I don't expect NASA to abandon their established standards for the Shuttle control programs (what was it, zero bugs in the last few releases?), but this would be useful to cheaply link earthbound scientists to their orbiting experiments (think Webcams).
perhaps a .mpr file
I'd certainly hope our computers will be rid of @#$% filename extensions before we have practical applications of teleportation. Although from the current state of it (with even Apple regressing into the Middle Ages of Metadata), chances are slim.
The point the original poster was trying to make is that CPU speed is the bottleneck in only a minority of current uses for computers.
And if CPU usage causes your audio to clip, then the software and/or the audio interface sucks. If Digidesign could run 48 channels of AD conversion on a Mac IIci without clipping or dropping samples, then surely your current system should be able to do this.
Right. He compares using Windows XP for a year to using eight versions of OS X over that same year. Well, duh. If you upgrade your OS, you've got to expect some changes. Windows has an advantage here in that XP is basically =NT4.2, a mature OS that has seen little change over the past few years.
Good point. The question is then, why is speed such a low priority when the #1 argument to buy a new PC is that 'it's faster', and the #1 comparison statistic (useless or not) is the processor speed?
the potato masher ?
Could it be that there's also an element of laziness on the programmers' part? I expect it to be easier to write an application that expects to run on one processor (you don't need to worry about dividing tasks over multiple processors to optimize performance) than a multi-processing app.
And, who really tries to optimize performance today? IMO many programmers expect Moore's Law to take care of the performance increase (relative to the previous release of their program). I rarely see a version n+1 of an application that's faster than version n was on the same hardware.
Uh, since when is Star Trek real? Large commercial ships (where manpower savings are crucial) are run with crews of around 30 (e.g., 500 kton oil tankers).
A warship has more functions than going from A to B. You need a number of people to control the weapons (up to 30 a shift for the CIC in large ships), and more to maintain the weapons and their support systems.
How do you think current boat engines are cooled? (hint: with water). Already, most of a boat engine's energy ends up heating the surrounding water.
How, indeed, when only one of those systems runs the OS I want (OS X)? The 'build your own' option may be free but it won't do me any good. Comparing a Mac with a BYO PC is pointless.
This is already being done. But instead of homing in on puny 802.11 signals, the missiles home in on radar emissions (typically several hundred kW).
No. Bismarck's rudders were damaged, making it easier to find, and harder to maneuver (to defend against air raids).
About two years ago, BBC's Jeremy Clarkson had a talk show with a segment on 'cooking'. It included nuking stuff in the microwave (CD's, etc.), making pickles glow, and one or two potato guns. Great fun.
Nah, trademarks are usually upheld on a per-market basis only. So you can't use the *0* convention for cars, but other products are OK.
I don't think this really is about letting the captain command from anywhere. It was mentioned in the article, but most of the article talks about automating the monitoring of the ship's systems: using a computer to listen to a bunch of sensors, rather than having a crewman 'sense' manually by patrolling the systems and checking readouts. This is entirely different from controlling the main functions (weapons and propulsion) of the ship.
These days, a captain would spend most of his time (at least when the ship is in action/at war) in the Combat Information Center. There, he's surrounded by 5-30 specialists, who each have a console with 2x21" screens and two radio channels (one in each ear). These people supply all the information the Captain needs to deploy his ship.
There's no way you can do this with a laptop, as some posters have suggested.
Peugeot's claims were good enough to dissuade Porsche from calling the 356's successor the 901.
Can patterns of names be trademarked?
Peugeot trademarked the [0-9]0[0-9] number pattern, IIRC.
All your ship are belong to us!
Yep. From Jobs' speech at the 2002 Grammy awards, If you legally acquire music, you need to have the right to manage it on all other devices that you own,
Except that 'traditional' Navy computers, including their OSes have been designed to fail gracefully, unlike Windows NT where it's "OnError Goto Hell".
Things like distributed processing (where a program can run on any of the dozens of processors in a ship's network, and be shifted around if a processor fails) and multiple network links aren't unusual.
The database overflow fried the LAN, and crashed a number of 'remote terminals'. All things that should be protected by the OS.