What I mean is could someone set up a directional transmitter in just the right way so that reflections coming off the place make it look like its a few hundred metres to the north or south and thereby cause a collision?
"What if a supernova goes off some hundred light years away,"
If that happens the people on mars will have even less of a chance than everyone on earth because of the thin atmosphere.
"If we make it our long-term goal to establish a permanent colony on Mars, at least we'll have a backup of humanity in case disaster should strike."
How will a colony that depends on earth for survival be any sort of backup? You talk about terraforming but that will literally take thousands of years if it can be made to work at all. Sure, there'll be some spinoff tech as there always is with these things but the returns won't even come close to matching up to the outlay.
Terraforming mars would cost trillions if not more - with that sort of money spent on earth today we could probably come up with far better tech in the short term than any mars trip will give rise to.
The medieval explorers usually had a fairly good idea that if they found new land there would at least be something to eat, wood to fix the boat and if they were lucky someone to trade with. And failing that there was always fish in the sea to eat plus they didn't have to take their own air.
So humans go to mars - carrying everything. And do what? Sure, exploring is fun for a while but theres notalot to see and then what? Current rocket technologies are woefully inadequate - far worse in comparison to a sailing ship on the ocean - for any sort of exchange of people or goods from earth to mars. So other than doing some scientific research which in 20 years will probably be able to be done just as well by robot - whats the point until we develop faster space drives?
"Yeah, the server may be impressive by some people's standards, but it's going to be outclassed by newer / faster machines."
I don't think anyone would disagree with that, but simply keeping some of these machines away from the scrap heap is a service to IT since its our heritage. Its no different to keeping vintage cars running. Sure , you wouldn't use them to go down to the supermarket every week in and even the best old V8 will be left for dead by a modern hot hatchback , but thats not the point - they represent an era we lived in an which will never come again and some parts of it need to be preserved for posterity. Imagine if all old castles had been demolished and all steam engines sent for scrap?
"Ultimately, it is cool, but it's either going to become an unhealthy obsession or a thing on your shelf."
You could say the same about someone collecting old china or silverware or paintings. There's nothing inherently wrong with just looking at something instead of using it.
Not everything in the past that is remembered as being good is a delusion. A lot of kit WAS built better a decade or 2 ago. For example you'd be lucky if a laptop built today lasts 5 years before a problem develops but I've seen plenty of old IBM/Dell/Compaq kit from the 90s still working.
You can do pretty much what you want with the system as it stands so I'm not sure what's to be gained by taking it to pieces and reprogramming it. Sure its fun for a while seeing how it works, but this isn't a cheap device and if all you want is a general purpose controller running linux buy a raspberry pi. Why wreck an expensive bit of equipment to get the same result?
"There was a time when programs were written in text editors."
Yeah , 5 minutes ago when I finished updating some code.
Plenty of unix C/C++/script/python coders still use vi and emacs. Just because IDEs rule the roost in Windows and Java development, don't assume every coder users or even requires them.
If he did it at home then firing him is a flagrant abuse of the departments power. If he did it at work then its a flagrant abuse of his position and he deserved to be fired. Anyone know which?
"Both apps are capable of highly complicated things,"
Ok, so what - apart from editing - can they do better than other tools? Programming? No thanks, i'll stick to python and C++. Games? Don't make me laugh.
"It's almost a complete work environment. In a typical emacs session you can have multiple windows, buffers, frames open for editing multiple files, running shells, interpreters, build scripts, info sessions, etc all running at the same time."
I'm sure that was useful in 1980 before X Windows came along. But when I can have a dozen xterms open on my screen why on earth would I bother doing it all inside an editor?
"I think Perl's biggest problem is it's liberal use of $ % @ etc operators in variable names. I like them. They're there for good, cool reasons;"
No they're not. There is no good reason for having to tell the interpreter the type of the variable once its been created. It should already know. Its just pointless noise that doesn't need to be there and reduces readability. The reason shell script does it is because it needs to know if its a variable or program name, perl doesn't have that restriction.
Is this serious? Its a fscking editor for gods sake. Is there a "vi community"? Who the hell cares enough to even bother? Or perhaps I'm misguided and there are thousands of people out there who find editors the most fascinating programs ever written. Is there an "ls" or "rm" community just out of interest?
... would be for body fur/hair to re-emerge? I wonder why this didn't happen? Ok , obviously they're wearing clothes and had fire but if you're STILL cold even with that assistence then surely having more body hair would help you keep warmer? Yet the asian peoples including those in siberia are LESS hairy than other races. Strange.
"The lack of it integrating shiny new features may be one of the factors contributing to this."
Nah , IMO its because people only used Perl because there was no alternative for problems that required a scripted solution that couldn't be done with shell or awk and where C/C++ would be overkill. Now we have Python which is what most people would consider a "proper" language rather than the rather messy line noise that is Perl.
"The fact is that Python today is taking over where Perl would have dominated in the past. "
And the reason for that is that python has equivalent functionality to perl (unless you really need to compose an entire program in 1 line of regexp and a loop), can also be used for quick-n-dirty tasks but is actually readable and structured and while its OO system isn't perfect its a damn site better than the nailed on dogs dinner that is Perls.
There's small scale balance within ecosystems and then there's the large scale balance of the entire fucking planets climate. And sure , ice ages happen - the last one helped pushed the neanderthals to extinction and cleared modern humans out of northern europe for 10K years. Perhaps not something to be quite so hand wavingly dismissive about.
If we fuck up the climate the earth will survive - but we probably won't and certainly not civilisation as we know it.
The signpost is funny but the site itself is very interesting to visit if you're a techie. They've got a working telephone exchange down there and a lot of old computers to play about it amongst other things. Its no longer owned or run by the govt btw, a family now runs it as a tourist attraction. The only not so good thing is the cafe so bring your own drinks unless you like watery coffee and stale buns.
Anything the government of the day does wrt defense that the bien pensant liberal left bed wetters at The Guardian don't agree with automatically has a "secret" label slapped on it to give it that slightly edgy X-Files feel to make all their baby boomer social worker / meeja luvvie readers get all self righteous.
Slashdot Mirror
Thats the cleverest post I've read in a long time on here. Nice one :o)
Except with normal radar you know roughly when and what to expect at the receiver. Using background RF you don't.
What I mean is could someone set up a directional transmitter in just the right way so that reflections coming off the place make it look like its a few hundred metres to the north or south and thereby cause a collision?
"What if a supernova goes off some hundred light years away,"
If that happens the people on mars will have even less of a chance than everyone on earth because of the thin atmosphere.
"If we make it our long-term goal to establish a permanent colony on Mars, at least we'll have a backup of humanity in case disaster should strike."
How will a colony that depends on earth for survival be any sort of backup? You talk about terraforming but that will literally take thousands of years if it can be made to work at all. Sure, there'll be some spinoff tech as there always is with these things but the returns won't even come close to matching up to the outlay.
Terraforming mars would cost trillions if not more - with that sort of money spent on earth today we could probably come up with far better tech in the short term than any mars trip will give rise to.
The medieval explorers usually had a fairly good idea that if they found new land there would at least be something to eat, wood to fix the boat and if they were lucky someone to trade with. And failing that there was always fish in the sea to eat plus they didn't have to take their own air.
So humans go to mars - carrying everything. And do what? Sure, exploring is fun for a while but theres notalot to see and then what? Current rocket technologies are woefully inadequate - far worse in comparison to a sailing ship on the ocean - for any sort of exchange of people or goods from earth to mars. So other than doing some scientific research which in 20 years will probably be able to be done just as well by robot - whats the point until we develop faster space drives?
"Yeah, the server may be impressive by some people's standards, but it's going to be outclassed by newer / faster machines."
I don't think anyone would disagree with that, but simply keeping some of these machines away from the scrap heap is a service to IT since its our heritage. Its no different to keeping vintage cars running. Sure , you wouldn't use them to go down to the supermarket every week in and even the best old V8 will be left for dead by a modern hot hatchback , but thats not the point - they represent an era we lived in an which will never come again and some parts of it need to be preserved for posterity. Imagine if all old castles had been demolished and all steam engines sent for scrap?
"Ultimately, it is cool, but it's either going to become an unhealthy obsession or a thing on your shelf."
You could say the same about someone collecting old china or silverware or paintings. There's nothing inherently wrong with just looking at something instead of using it.
>a delusion of a good time past.
Not everything in the past that is remembered as being good is a delusion. A lot of kit WAS built better a decade or 2 ago. For example you'd be lucky if a laptop built today lasts 5 years before a problem develops but I've seen plenty of old IBM/Dell/Compaq kit from the 90s still working.
You can do pretty much what you want with the system as it stands so I'm not sure what's to be gained by taking it to pieces and reprogramming it. Sure its fun for a while seeing how it works, but this isn't a cheap device and if all you want is a general purpose controller running linux buy a raspberry pi. Why wreck an expensive bit of equipment to get the same result?
Pity they didn't tell him this while Jacko was still his owner. Would have helped him with those late night "visits"....
"I don't know anyone who just uses vi anymore either. Most use vim"
I think its fair to say that "vi" and "vim" are interchangable names these days and have been for about a decade.
"There was a time when programs were written in text editors."
Yeah , 5 minutes ago when I finished updating some code.
Plenty of unix C/C++/script/python coders still use vi and emacs. Just because IDEs rule the roost in Windows and Java development, don't assume every coder users or even requires them.
If he did it at home then firing him is a flagrant abuse of the departments power. If he did it at work then its a flagrant abuse of his position and he deserved to be fired. Anyone know which?
"When I can have a dozen ttys open on virtual consoles, why on earth would I bother doing it all inside X?"
Umm, so you can see them all at the same time.
"if I run a shell inside Emacs, then I have all the editing commands of Emacs at my fingertips."
Newsflash - most shells have had vi and emacs style line editing commands built in for decades.
"Both apps are capable of highly complicated things,"
Ok, so what - apart from editing - can they do better than other tools? Programming? No thanks, i'll stick to python and C++. Games? Don't make me laugh.
So what exactly?
"It's almost a complete work environment. In a typical emacs session you can have multiple windows, buffers, frames open for editing multiple files, running shells, interpreters, build scripts, info sessions, etc all running at the same time."
I'm sure that was useful in 1980 before X Windows came along. But when I can have a dozen xterms open on my screen why on earth would I bother doing it all inside an editor?
"I think Perl's biggest problem is it's liberal use of $ % @ etc operators in variable names. I like them. They're there for good, cool reasons;"
No they're not. There is no good reason for having to tell the interpreter the type of the variable once its been created. It should already know. Its just pointless noise that doesn't need to be there and reduces readability. The reason shell script does it is because it needs to know if its a variable or program name, perl doesn't have that restriction.
Is this serious? Its a fscking editor for gods sake. Is there a "vi community"? Who the hell cares enough to even bother? Or perhaps I'm misguided and there are thousands of people out there who find editors the most fascinating programs ever written. Is there an "ls" or "rm" community just out of interest?
... would be for body fur/hair to re-emerge? I wonder why this didn't happen? Ok , obviously they're wearing clothes and had fire but if you're STILL cold even with that assistence then surely having more body hair would help you keep warmer? Yet the asian peoples including those in siberia are LESS hairy than other races. Strange.
"The lack of it integrating shiny new features may be one of the factors contributing to this."
Nah , IMO its because people only used Perl because there was no alternative for problems that required a scripted solution that couldn't be done with shell or awk and where C/C++ would be overkill. Now we have Python which is what most people would consider a "proper" language rather than the rather messy line noise that is Perl.
"The fact is that Python today is taking over where Perl would have dominated in the past. "
And the reason for that is that python has equivalent functionality to perl (unless you really need to compose an entire program in 1 line of regexp and a loop), can also be used for quick-n-dirty tasks but is actually readable and structured and while its OO system isn't perfect its a damn site better than the nailed on dogs dinner that is Perls.
There's small scale balance within ecosystems and then there's the large scale balance of the entire fucking planets climate. And sure , ice ages happen - the last one helped pushed the neanderthals to extinction and cleared modern humans out of northern europe for 10K years. Perhaps not something to be quite so hand wavingly dismissive about.
If we fuck up the climate the earth will survive - but we probably won't and certainly not civilisation as we know it.
Unfortunately tipping the balance is all that is required to mess it up.
"that you feel the need to specify that it's the "liberal left""
You're obviously not aware of the politics of The Guardian are you. Its the liberal left bible.
"(as opposed to...?),"
People who can think for themselves and don't blindly follow some out of date right-on ideology.
"you think the media industry is largely stocked with baby boomers,"
Get some glasses, you missed the slash.
"If you're going to go off on one at least make your pejoratives self-consistent."
If you're going to post an indignant reply at least get your facts straight first.
The signpost is funny but the site itself is very interesting to visit if you're a techie. They've got a working telephone exchange down there and a lot of old computers to play about it amongst other things. Its no longer owned or run by the govt btw, a family now runs it as a tourist attraction. The only not so good thing is the cafe so bring your own drinks unless you like watery coffee and stale buns.
Anything the government of the day does wrt defense that the bien pensant liberal left bed wetters at The Guardian don't agree with automatically has a "secret" label slapped on it to give it that slightly edgy X-Files feel to make all their baby boomer social worker / meeja luvvie readers get all self righteous.