Once news of this leaks out I'm sure the usual bunch of unemployed and unemployable "greens" will show up in their beaten up VW camper vans to "protest" (ie sit around smoking dope with some juvenile placards and shouting insults at the construction workers) and generally cause trouble because they're still stuck in that All Nuclear Is Bad No Matter What 1960s mindset?
"Sorry bud, culture counts, some are better than others,"
True , but I don't think I'd be putting american culture at the top of an aspirational list. As for savages , visit your deep south and listen to what some of those so called "christian" evangelists expouse. They're easily a match for Islamists in evil intent to non believers.
Whoa , you're really firing on all cylinders with that punctuation comeback.
The Alto UI had all the features of a modern GUI - desktop metaphor, windows , icons and a mouse all on a bitmapped display. I'm not entirely sure what else you want? Ok , it had tiled windows not overlays , BFD.
"It's not, however, "a UI that everyone can use."
Right , and I guess no one could use Windows 2, GEM or the original X windows system either? Anyone not mentally retarded could have used the Alto if it had been available at the time.
Sorry , but many many more people at Xerox PARC did that much more and much earlier. Before you start regurgitating the Woz myth verbatim I suggest you go look up some of their achievments in GUIs and man-machine interaction before Apple was even a glint in Woz or Steves eye.
"Con couldn't take the non-inclusion of -CK and plugsched(which would have given users a clean way of using a custom scheduler) and quit kernel development totally. "
So because his patches didn't make it in (probably like 101 other people whose patches didn't make it) he picked up his toys and stomped off. If thats his level of maturity I suspect the kernel dev team is better off without him. No one forced him to do kernel dev , it was his choice, however he gives them impression of expecting everyone to suddenly proclaim him a genius and the saviour of desktop linux and just include his code straight away. Sorry , but the world doesn't work like that.
As you well know , C was not designed as an application development language that could be easily analyised with some tool. It was a drop in for assembler and as such it works pretty well. For the sort of area I work in (network coding) things would be pretty difficult *without* stuff such as pointer aliasing (mapping packet structures onto heap memory for example) and if this means I don't get to use certain tools , well I can live with that if it means my code runs 10x faster than [insert-language-of-the-month]
"One of the biggest, IMO, is that an OS like FreeBSD is a single operating system, not a variety of distributions like Linux, so you can buy a book about BSD, and it's documenting the exact system you're using. None of this stuff about "do this if you're using Debian, or this if it's Mandriva, or..." "
Agreed. Also downloading a "linux" app only to find the damn thing will only work on RedHat 6.4 or Suse 10.1 or whatever because some idiot thought it would be good to rely on some foo.so only shipped with a few distributions. And if you try and find it yourself its a fscking paper chase aruond 101 web sites only to file foo.so requires baa.so and moo.so which are elsewhere.
"Those that work with NDIS wrapper NDIS wrapper installs the drive for you"
If you mean you manually point ndis at the.inf file which gives it enough info to do the rest itself yes. Other than that i'd hardly call the process automatic.
I'm assuming this kit loads a driver which somehow intercepts kernel API request (or whatever , I'm just guessing). What I'm curious about is could this be done on linux/unix / OS/X or is this ability to intercept standard kernel API requests a bad design perculiar to Windows?
"and with some atmosphere you don't have to have a whole pressure suit - easy to approximate here on earth. "
Wrong and wrong. The presence of gas molecules around the suit or your body is utterly irrelevant - the only thing that matters is the pressure differential. At 10 millbars the mars atmosphere is to all intents and purpose a vacuum as far as the human body is concerned.
"You simply can't fathom that operating tools and machinery in a suit of approximately the same level of mobility and flexibility could have any value."
If you had a clue and understood anything I said you'd know the suits WERENT even close to being an approximate of what they'd need on mars.
"Define the implications more clearly than a vague fear that tools will become worthless through some magical Martian effect."
Different weights for tools and people means their whole balance is difference, some tools such as hammers with less weight but the same mass (or the same weight but 3x the mass as on earth) will behave differently because humans are used to a 1:1 ratio for mass:internal mass. Go read up.
"Read "Mars Direct" and get back to us all with critiques of those costs."
Even these fantasists come up with a total of $55 billion. Thats still way beyond anything any private company would cough up. Perhaps you should join this little group in their capsule, you seem to be as divorced from reality as they are.
"Which you can't work outside of on dry land. I guess that would explain though why your ideas were all wet."
People who go outside a submerged submarine have to wear a protection suit in a hostile enviroment. I'd have though the analogy was obvious.he design is based on real space suits, but tailored to the fact there is not an absolute vaccuum nor temperatures as near to absolute zero to contend with.
"What's unrealstic about the suits they use."
They wouldn't last 2 seconds on mars, thats what.
"The design is based on real space suits, but tailored to the fact there is not an absolute vaccuum nor temperatures as near to absolute zero to contend with."
Mars pressure is about 1/100th that of earth. It might not be a vacuum but the pressure is so negligable that as far as the human body is concerned it might as well. Ergo they'd have to wear full pressure suits with all the issues that entails (such as joint manouverability).
"Height, no, weight, yes. Do you often confuse height with weight? "
In 1/3G equipment would not necessarily behave the same.
"If you can't see the monetary potential of forming a colony on Mars, you have an utter lack of vision. But a lot of the funds come from dontation. If commercial ventures can put up space hotels, why not martian colonies?"
Because the costs are so high (100s of billions of dollars) that theres no private organisation or even partnership in existence that could afford it. Once some sort of basic infrastructure is set up on Mars and the major costs have been paid then private organisations can move in but until then it won't happen. If you believe otherwise then I suggest you take time out from watching so many Sci Fi films and learn some simple economics.
"part of what they are doing though is living in the same islotation,"
Why didnt they just ask the Navy - they have these things called submarines.
"and working outside in realistic suits "
You're joking right?
"very solid level of gravity that is comparable"
Its one third G. If you were 1/3 your current height would you think it comparable to what it is now?
"What you don't understand about the Mars people is that the end goal is a private mission to Mars - why wait around for the government? And, they have a reasonable plan for doing so with current technology."
Only governments can afford to spend that sort of money on projects that won't even get close to returning financially on the investment. As for using current technology , it might be able to get humans to mars , but to keep them there alive AND get them back again? I don't think so. Not yet.
"Think of it more as a psychology experiment than a real space experiment. Maybe you won't be so testy then."
The Big Brother TV franchise has been throwing people together in a confined space for years but they didn't dress it up as any kind of space related simulation.
"14+ years and have never seen the need for a goto"
You've obviously never written any heavily nested constructs. Using a goto to jump out of 3 or more levels of nesting is a damn sight neater and easier to follow than using a condition flag test in each loop block or exceptions. They also have other uses such as a loop restart - goto avoids having to have a wrapping loop with a test condition flag.
Suffice to say goto has its place so long as its used correctly. I'm afraid Dijkstra was a bit of a zealot who was more interested in being recognised for his genius rather than thinking the issue through.
"Clearly you don't debug Operating Systems for a living"
Which bit of "Virtualisation I have no doubt is extremely useful in certain applications." didn't you understand? If you're developing OSes for a living I doubt you use bog standard off the shelf kit.
"If you are developing software to be portable"
Developing portable software is simple - its called static linking. Something a lot of idiots calling themselves developers should remember.
Slashdot Mirror
Once news of this leaks out I'm sure the usual bunch of unemployed and unemployable "greens" will show up in their beaten up VW camper vans to "protest" (ie sit around smoking dope with some juvenile placards and shouting insults at the construction workers) and generally cause trouble because they're still stuck in that All Nuclear Is Bad No Matter What 1960s mindset?
"Sorry bud, culture counts, some are better than others,"
True , but I don't think I'd be putting american culture at the top of an aspirational list. As for savages , visit your deep south and listen to what some of those so called "christian" evangelists expouse. They're easily a match for Islamists in evil intent to non believers.
If you think the "modern" computer arrived with the Mac I guess you never tried using a 1984 128K version.
Whoa , you're really firing on all cylinders with that punctuation comeback.
The Alto UI had all the features of a modern GUI - desktop metaphor, windows , icons and a mouse all on a bitmapped display. I'm not entirely sure what else you want? Ok , it had tiled windows not overlays , BFD.
"It's not, however, "a UI that everyone can use."
Right , and I guess no one could use Windows 2, GEM or the original X windows system either? Anyone not mentally retarded could have used the Alto if it had been available at the time.
"Have a nice day, uninformed asshat."
Yeah , whatever.
"I don't even quite understand what you're trying to say"
Shall I draw it in crayon for you?
"Did they make PCs mainstream?"
Wtf has the PC got to do with a technological revolution??? The thing was old tech when IBM brought it out!
"Did they create a UI that everyone can use?"
Yes actually. They invented it you moron. Apple simply used their ideas.
That should have read *no* visionary.
Their hardware was far superior to his many years earlier. Woz was/is a good engineer , but he's visionary either in hardware or software design.
Here we go again with the Woz-n-Steve show with all the mythology about how they revolutionised computers.
Err no , they didn't. At least not from a technological point of view. Xerox PARC did.
Check out this link if you don't believe me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto
That was 1973 , long before Woz had even thought up the prehistoric command line drive Apple I.
Sorry , how great was Woz again?
"focusing on usability"
Sorry , but many many more people at Xerox PARC did that much more and much earlier. Before you start regurgitating the Woz myth verbatim I suggest you go look up some of their achievments in GUIs and man-machine interaction before Apple was even a glint in Woz or Steves eye.
"Con couldn't take the non-inclusion of -CK and plugsched(which would have given users a clean way of using a custom scheduler) and quit kernel development totally. "
So because his patches didn't make it in (probably like 101 other people whose patches didn't make it) he picked up his toys and stomped off. If thats his level of maturity I suspect the kernel dev team is better off without him. No one forced him to do kernel dev , it was his choice, however he gives them impression of expecting everyone to suddenly proclaim him a genius and the saviour of desktop linux and just include his code straight away. Sorry , but the world doesn't work like that.
As you well know , C was not designed as an application development language that could be easily analyised with some tool. It was a drop in for assembler and as such it works pretty well. For the sort of area I work in (network coding) things would be pretty difficult *without* stuff such as pointer aliasing (mapping packet structures onto heap memory for example) and if this means I don't get to use certain tools , well I can live with that if it means my code runs 10x faster than [insert-language-of-the-month]
"Who downloads random packages from the web anymore? "
People who want a package not in the distributions package list you idiot. Who do you think?
"One of the biggest, IMO, is that an OS like FreeBSD is a single operating system, not a variety of distributions like Linux, so you can buy a book about BSD, and it's documenting the exact system you're using. None of this stuff about "do this if you're using Debian, or this if it's Mandriva, or ..." "
Agreed. Also downloading a "linux" app only to find the damn thing will only work on RedHat 6.4 or Suse 10.1 or whatever because some idiot thought it would be good to rely on some foo.so only shipped with a few distributions. And if you try and find it yourself its a fscking paper chase aruond 101 web sites only to file foo.so requires baa.so and moo.so which are elsewhere.
"The only possible better physical experience than HALO, is HALO with sex...but there is that whole windchill/cold temp thing to deal with!"
I guess being a paratrooper you never got much time for good sex then. Unless you good ole boys packed the vaseline for those "quiet" nights.
"Those that work with NDIS wrapper NDIS wrapper installs the drive for you"
.inf file which gives it enough info to do the rest itself yes. Other than that i'd hardly call the process automatic.
If you mean you manually point ndis at the
Read this
http://invisiblethings.org/papers/redpill.html
I'm assuming this kit loads a driver which somehow intercepts kernel API request (or whatever , I'm just guessing). What I'm curious about is could this be done on linux /unix / OS/X or is this ability to intercept standard kernel API requests a bad design perculiar to Windows?
"and with some atmosphere you don't have to have a whole pressure suit - easy to approximate here on earth.
"
Wrong and wrong. The presence of gas molecules around the suit or your body is utterly irrelevant - the only thing that matters is the pressure differential. At 10 millbars the mars atmosphere is to all intents and purpose a vacuum as far as the human body is concerned.
"You simply can't fathom that operating tools and machinery in a suit of approximately the same level of mobility and flexibility could have any value."
If you had a clue and understood anything I said you'd know the suits WERENT even close to being an approximate of what they'd need on mars.
"Define the implications more clearly than a vague fear that tools will become worthless through some magical Martian effect."
Different weights for tools and people means their whole balance is difference, some tools such as hammers with less weight but the same mass (or the same weight but 3x the mass as on earth) will behave differently because humans are used to a 1:1 ratio for mass:internal mass. Go read up.
"Read "Mars Direct" and get back to us all with critiques of those costs."
Even these fantasists come up with a total of $55 billion. Thats still way beyond anything any private company would cough up. Perhaps you should join this little group in their capsule, you seem to be as divorced from reality as they are.
Whats Slashdor? Somewhere that cowards can post endless rubbish?
"Which you can't work outside of on dry land. I guess that would explain though why your ideas were all wet."
People who go outside a submerged submarine have to wear a protection suit in a hostile enviroment. I'd have though the analogy was obvious.he design is based on real space suits, but tailored to the fact there is not an absolute vaccuum nor temperatures as near to absolute zero to contend with.
"What's unrealstic about the suits they use."
They wouldn't last 2 seconds on mars, thats what.
"The design is based on real space suits, but tailored to the fact there is not an absolute vaccuum nor temperatures as near to absolute zero to contend with."
Mars pressure is about 1/100th that of earth. It might not be a vacuum but the pressure is so negligable that as far as the human body is concerned it might as well. Ergo they'd have to wear full pressure suits with all the issues that entails (such as joint manouverability).
"Height, no, weight, yes. Do you often confuse height with weight? "
In 1/3G equipment would not necessarily behave the same.
"If you can't see the monetary potential of forming a colony on Mars, you have an utter lack of vision. But a lot of the funds come from dontation. If commercial ventures can put up space hotels, why not martian colonies?"
Because the costs are so high (100s of billions of dollars) that theres no private organisation or even partnership in existence that could afford it. Once some sort of basic infrastructure is set up on Mars and the major costs have been paid then private organisations can move in but until then it won't happen. If you believe otherwise then I suggest you take time out from watching so many Sci Fi films and learn some simple economics.
"part of what they are doing though is living in the same islotation,"
Why didnt they just ask the Navy - they have these things called submarines.
"and working outside in realistic suits "
You're joking right?
"very solid level of gravity that is comparable"
Its one third G. If you were 1/3 your current height would you think it comparable to what it is now?
"What you don't understand about the Mars people is that the end goal is a private mission to Mars - why wait around for the government? And, they have a reasonable plan for doing so with current technology."
Only governments can afford to spend that sort of money on projects that won't even get close to returning financially on the investment. As for using current technology , it might be able to get humans to mars , but to keep them there alive AND get them back again? I don't think so. Not yet.
"Think of it more as a psychology experiment than a real space experiment. Maybe you won't be so testy then."
The Big Brother TV franchise has been throwing people together in a confined space for years but they didn't dress it up as any kind of space related simulation.
Its a bunch of space nerds wasting their time.
Why?
The gravity is wrong.
The solar radiation is wrong.
The atmospheric pressure is wrong.
The soil chemistry is all wrong.
So what have they proved other than they can sit in a phoney "space base" for 100 days and run around in mickey mouse home made space suits? Nothing.
"14+ years and have never seen the need for a goto"
You've obviously never written any heavily nested constructs. Using a goto to jump out of 3 or more levels of nesting is a damn sight neater and easier to follow than using a condition flag test in each loop block or exceptions. They also have other uses such as a loop restart - goto avoids having to have a wrapping loop with a test condition flag.
Suffice to say goto has its place so long as its used correctly. I'm afraid Dijkstra was a bit of a zealot who was more interested in being recognised for his genius rather than thinking the issue through.
"Clearly you don't debug Operating Systems for a living"
Which bit of "Virtualisation I have no doubt is extremely useful in certain applications." didn't you understand? If you're developing OSes for a living I doubt you use bog standard off the shelf kit.
"If you are developing software to be portable"
Developing portable software is simple - its called static linking. Something a lot of idiots calling themselves developers should remember.