I have to agree. I know Lucas' is trying to build things to give positive role models for the kids of today. But as noted by JohnKatz in http://features.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/05/ 25/0125219 , alot of kids these days are looking towards another direction for hero's to follow.
Our unchanged Episodes IV-VI are just fine the way they are. Maybe touch them up, but don't dress them up. They still mean as much today as they did when we all saw them the first 7 times. They really aren't broken, George, please don't try to fix them.
If there's a need to change the orginal works, why don't we just start over and re-film them with current actors, perhaps even be less confusing for the kids that Lucas' is trying to focus on?
No, no, no...not an Urban Legend that you get the odd product off the line. I'm talking about something developed to compete against big business, like the Tucker, that gets muscled out, by hook and by crook. Surely you won't try to convince us that Tucker's automobile didn't really exist?
Well, being an ex-IBMer, I have a little room to talk about them. I like -alot- of things they do. But, as stated, their biggest problem is they need better marketers. OS/2 would still be competitive today, I suspect, had IBM been able to market it properly.
I'll be curious to see if it takes off. It certainly -sounds- like a nice idea. However, just as many fuel saving engines may have been quietly put away in dusty little closets in the back of some big-manufacturer's back room, also may these plays get put away until someone starts asking where they went.
Alot of manufacturers are giving away these low-end ink-jet printers with their computers. How many HP home PC's can you buy that -don't- come with a free HP ink-jet printer? Honestly? So..how about this: Get your free printer, then go back to the store the next day and return it. Even if you get store credit for it, maybe you'd be better off?
It'd be amazing how quickly spam would be reduced if there were penalties in place that cost per-email for what we all know is simply foolishenss. And one has to ask oneself, just how much of my time would I get back, if I didn't have to trudge through, think about, or just plain take time to delete what -might- be spam?
And more than that, how easy does it become to lose track of those things that -are- important, when you're swimming in a sea of spam?
Please, correct me if I'm wrong...but hasn't Australia been in the market practice of charging per megabyte because of limited bandwidth to the country as a whole? I was under the impression that there had been limits and quotas on data throughput for some time.
This isn't to say that throughput shouldn't be unlimited, but is it a new idea that home users will have data limits?
Back on subject -- I have to say that $7/month for someone who owns their own modem is an expensive proposition for support. But, it seems to me, that the 10% of AT&T's users who own their own modems, are likely the 10% that work in the IT field, for the most part, wouldn't you think? Those who are a bit more savvy at hardware, own their own modem. Not a universal truth, but a generalization.
It seems silly to me to effectively penalize those 10% who are not likely the morons needing help on the local end, and who call only when the problem is outside their local network edge. I suppose I'll just be thankful I'm not on AT&T.:-/
It seems not so surprising that IBM would flock to new and "exciting" technologies and improvements like this one. One can only wish that such forward thinking would shake-down through the rest of their organization.
The geeks in the back rooms, and the engineers in the streets certainly see the benefits from this new technology. Perhaps someday the slimmer, sleeker, more lithe and less middle-management IBM will show itself and we'll see this sort of stuff rolling downhill more quickly.
In the past, IBM has been near the forefront of going after new improvements. They sometimes just can't market their way out of a wet paper bag. Often sad, but true.
I suspect there are technical issues they can work out with more manned missions to the Moon, however, there are a number of others they can only really scratch the surface of. How do you answer issues like bone density being lost, or muscle mass being lost?
It would really suck to be the first man to walk on Mars, get there, and step out on the surface, only to find your legs break under your own weight because they've become so weak after the long trip there.
While going to Antartica would likely be more cost effective, and likely more feasible, let's face it...for a geek, it's just not as cool; and for the general public, it's not quite as awe-inspiring.
While NEAR may not be designed to shut down, the mission profile ( http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/mission/near/ near_traj.html ) tends to indicate that it does have some form of hibernation mode that it can be placed into, as well as heating elements to tend to sensitive electronic packages.
There might be a little more info out there about the specifications of operations for NEAR, but this is what I could find in a couple of quick searches.
Actually, most of the stuff we sent to the Moon wasn't designed to come back on after we turned it off. And at the time, it was still sending back lots of data, and we couldn't store or process it all. So the decision was made to turn it off. Without a remote 'on' switch, they're just junk up there, till someone goes and physically gets it.
As for their worth...I'm guessing that we could wholly rebuild and reproduce all of the equipment up there from parts "off the shelf" like we did for the Mars mission, and do so for less than 1/4th the cost of sending someone to the Moon to pick up our parts there, even if it's a robot.
Actually, if you read the whole article on http://space.com/ you'll find that they allude to the fact that they were maneuvering the craft. But, you are right, it was never built to land on the surface.
The fact that it did make a 3-point landing, and continued to function, sending data back for two weeks, until they sent the command for the unit to go into a "hibernation" mode, could lead you to believe that it's in pretty good condition. Then again, it might have cracked a battery, and been leaking all this time, and so nothing will happen when they try to restart it.
Re:NASA shuts things off, Homer says D'oh!
on
Resurrecting NEAR
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· Score: 1
As was noted, Technology has marched on. Hopefully, after all this tomfoolery, we'll have learned that even on the shoestring they call a budget at NASA, they'll keep in mind just this situation for all current and future experiments. Of course, we'll also equip all our new experiments with the latest and greatest of sensory equipment, which means even -more- data.
Nonetheless, I can only hope that we learn from all the finger pointing, and simple mistakes we've made. It's perhaps the best we can hope for at the moment.
Re:Batteries, Clock Crystals, and Panels, oh my!
on
Resurrecting NEAR
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· Score: 1
According to the article over on http://space.com/ it's not actually "dead" but was purposefully put into "hibernation" mode. I would presume that there's some sort of keep-alive going on there, to avoid total system failure.
Well, that presumes that it's not running a windows based OS, but NASA isn't known for crazy things like that.
I suspect that there's some sort of time limit on the electronics packages. However, it's probably more dependent on the fact that it's not be whacked by a handful of micrometeors since we put it into hibernation mode. Something like that could definitely make it a lost cause, real quick.
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I have to agree. I know Lucas' is trying to build things to give positive role models for the kids of today. But as noted by JohnKatz in http://features.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/05/ 25/0125219 , alot of kids these days are looking towards another direction for hero's to follow.
Our unchanged Episodes IV-VI are just fine the way they are. Maybe touch them up, but don't dress them up. They still mean as much today as they did when we all saw them the first 7 times. They really aren't broken, George, please don't try to fix them.
If there's a need to change the orginal works, why don't we just start over and re-film them with current actors, perhaps even be less confusing for the kids that Lucas' is trying to focus on?
No, no, no...not an Urban Legend that you get the odd product off the line. I'm talking about something developed to compete against big business, like the Tucker, that gets muscled out, by hook and by crook. Surely you won't try to convince us that Tucker's automobile didn't really exist?
Well, being an ex-IBMer, I have a little room to talk about them. I like -alot- of things they do. But, as stated, their biggest problem is they need better marketers. OS/2 would still be competitive today, I suspect, had IBM been able to market it properly.
I'll be curious to see if it takes off. It certainly -sounds- like a nice idea. However, just as many fuel saving engines may have been quietly put away in dusty little closets in the back of some big-manufacturer's back room, also may these plays get put away until someone starts asking where they went.
Alot of manufacturers are giving away these low-end ink-jet printers with their computers. How many HP home PC's can you buy that -don't- come with a free HP ink-jet printer? Honestly? So..how about this: Get your free printer, then go back to the store the next day and return it. Even if you get store credit for it, maybe you'd be better off?
It'd be amazing how quickly spam would be reduced if there were penalties in place that cost per-email for what we all know is simply foolishenss. And one has to ask oneself, just how much of my time would I get back, if I didn't have to trudge through, think about, or just plain take time to delete what -might- be spam?
And more than that, how easy does it become to lose track of those things that -are- important, when you're swimming in a sea of spam?
I'll be interesting to see how this turns out.
Please, correct me if I'm wrong...but hasn't Australia been in the market practice of charging per megabyte because of limited bandwidth to the country as a whole? I was under the impression that there had been limits and quotas on data throughput for some time.
:-/
This isn't to say that throughput shouldn't be unlimited, but is it a new idea that home users will have data limits?
Back on subject -- I have to say that $7/month for someone who owns their own modem is an expensive proposition for support. But, it seems to me, that the 10% of AT&T's users who own their own modems, are likely the 10% that work in the IT field, for the most part, wouldn't you think? Those who are a bit more savvy at hardware, own their own modem. Not a universal truth, but a generalization.
It seems silly to me to effectively penalize those 10% who are not likely the morons needing help on the local end, and who call only when the problem is outside their local network edge. I suppose I'll just be thankful I'm not on AT&T.
It seems not so surprising that IBM would flock to new and "exciting" technologies and improvements like this one. One can only wish that such forward thinking would shake-down through the rest of their organization.
The geeks in the back rooms, and the engineers in the streets certainly see the benefits from this new technology. Perhaps someday the slimmer, sleeker, more lithe and less middle-management IBM will show itself and we'll see this sort of stuff rolling downhill more quickly.
In the past, IBM has been near the forefront of going after new improvements. They sometimes just can't market their way out of a wet paper bag. Often sad, but true.
I suspect there are technical issues they can work out with more manned missions to the Moon, however, there are a number of others they can only really scratch the surface of. How do you answer issues like bone density being lost, or muscle mass being lost?
It would really suck to be the first man to walk on Mars, get there, and step out on the surface, only to find your legs break under your own weight because they've become so weak after the long trip there.
While going to Antartica would likely be more cost effective, and likely more feasible, let's face it...for a geek, it's just not as cool; and for the general public, it's not quite as awe-inspiring.
While NEAR may not be designed to shut down, the mission profile ( http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/mission/near/ near_traj.html ) tends to indicate that it does have some form of hibernation mode that it can be placed into, as well as heating elements to tend to sensitive electronic packages.
There might be a little more info out there about the specifications of operations for NEAR, but this is what I could find in a couple of quick searches.
Actually, most of the stuff we sent to the Moon wasn't designed to come back on after we turned it off. And at the time, it was still sending back lots of data, and we couldn't store or process it all. So the decision was made to turn it off. Without a remote 'on' switch, they're just junk up there, till someone goes and physically gets it.
As for their worth...I'm guessing that we could wholly rebuild and reproduce all of the equipment up there from parts "off the shelf" like we did for the Mars mission, and do so for less than 1/4th the cost of sending someone to the Moon to pick up our parts there, even if it's a robot.
Actually, if you read the whole article on http://space.com/ you'll find that they allude to the fact that they were maneuvering the craft. But, you are right, it was never built to land on the surface.
The fact that it did make a 3-point landing, and continued to function, sending data back for two weeks, until they sent the command for the unit to go into a "hibernation" mode, could lead you to believe that it's in pretty good condition. Then again, it might have cracked a battery, and been leaking all this time, and so nothing will happen when they try to restart it.
As was noted, Technology has marched on. Hopefully, after all this tomfoolery, we'll have learned that even on the shoestring they call a budget at NASA, they'll keep in mind just this situation for all current and future experiments. Of course, we'll also equip all our new experiments with the latest and greatest of sensory equipment, which means even -more- data.
Nonetheless, I can only hope that we learn from all the finger pointing, and simple mistakes we've made. It's perhaps the best we can hope for at the moment.
According to the article over on http://space.com/ it's not actually "dead" but was purposefully put into "hibernation" mode. I would presume that there's some sort of keep-alive going on there, to avoid total system failure. Well, that presumes that it's not running a windows based OS, but NASA isn't known for crazy things like that.
I suspect that there's some sort of time limit on the electronics packages. However, it's probably more dependent on the fact that it's not be whacked by a handful of micrometeors since we put it into hibernation mode. Something like that could definitely make it a lost cause, real quick.