Yet, I'd say a large fraction of all the managers at all the companies I've worked at have this issue. I think it's one of the things wrong with, at least, US businesses... the prevailing mindset that the most important and irreplaceable people in the company are the managers.
It even extends to the point where if a technical person becomes very good at project management, organization, and has people skills, they are sort of expected to become a manager or group lead. This makes about as much sense as expecting a very talented CPA to suddenly become a lawyer.
Another good point to remember is that ID is not of one mind.... back when they were deciding on their next product (Wolfenstein or Q4 or whatever) Hollenshead fired a few people loyal to Carmack as retribution for losing that argument. It's entirely possible that this guy thinks things are going one way and Carmack is going the other without telling him.
When you get right down to it, having everyone in the world know the greatness of your company is entirely due to one man who is not you has got to suck:)
That I remember anyway was Linus Torvalds, because he didn't want people to use Linux 0.2 - 0.9 as production-ready, yet everyone knew it was at least as good as the "production" software everyone else was selling. Better than minix.
It started a (not good) trend... there were already too many excuses and justifications available to sell or publish bad software (including open source) and now there are more. How many freshmeat project web pages include the text "This software is beta" which the programmers include as a cop-out for mediocre or poorly written code? It's your own fault if it breaks, because it's beta.
Open Source software in general is too mediocre in quality. The thrill of release and accolades from users come from making the software in the first place and releasing it, not from the longer and more boring work of making it easy to use, bug free, or keeping it stable enough for production.
This is a major problem with the gift economy of free software... it's too easy for the gift givers to receive praise for giving us something worthless. It also dilutes the praise for those who truly deliver a valuable gift that may not look as shiny as some of the fool's gold projects out there.
For a long, long time Linux has needed a binary driver interface. The need to maintain a driver and fix bugs over multiple kernel versions (even minor revisions) plus the need to open source (for the most part) that driver have long been major reasons that hardware vendors have been unwilling to support Linux.
The ability for a vendor to create a single version of their driver that they don't need to open source (of course, there are benefits for them and us if they do, and they still can) and to support that single version will spur manufacturer support, which will make many Linux users very happy. Too much decent hardware is sitting idle or isn't fully used because the only driver available for it is an early beta written by a college student five years ago who no longer uses computers at all. Don't get me wrong, there are some excellent driver writers in the open source community. But, they generally write drivers for hardware they have themselves and only on a volunteer basis. Drivers should be the responsibility of the hardware vendor, who should either provide them on disk or in firmware.
With regards to stability, the thing that made pre-certification windows drivers unstable was the lack of proper segmentation and preemptive multitasking in early windows versions, not the fact that they were binary drivers. If the binary API is written correctly (as I suspect it would be by the very talented Linux kernel developers) then isolation of faulty binary drivers will be taken into account. Perhaps they can even be user space binary drivers.
With more manufacturers (who know all the bugs/quirks in their hardware) getting more users (many people trying to break it) to use their software drivers, the overall quality of Linux drivers will improve tremendously, to the benefit of all Linux users.
To those of you suggesting that this is a way for vendors to use closed source software instead of open source, you're absolutely right. For the most part, these are vendors who won't release open source drivers for Linux at all. Wishful thinking about them being forced to open source their drivers or face the wrath of the Linux masses is just that, wishful thinking. I personally will continue to buy from vendors who support openness in their documentation and drivers, but if it's closed source or no support, I pick closed source.
One more thing... to those of you opposing this because of closed source concerns... are you opposing it because closed source software is inherently evil (it's not) or because you see any compromise on this issue as the "other team" "winning" and therefore "your team" must be "losing" and you hate losing?
... that the best measure of opposition to their new theory isn't the correctness of the old theory it replaces, but rather the degree to which other scientists have invested themselves in the old theory, be it intellectually, emotionally, or reputation wise.
This is why I didn't go into anthropology (other than the money sucked)... the only time a new theory in anthro is accepted is after the major proponents of the old theory die off, and I didn't want to be part of such a backward profession. Unfortunately, I'm starting to realize that humans in general do the same thing in all areas of life... political parties, office politics, professional football... we all seem to want to be part of a "winning team" because of the emotional boost we get when "we" win something.
I'm almost certain there's a biological reason for this, but I won't investigate further because there's no way to change current anthropological theory anyway.
Interesting point of view. How do you back up this statement? I believe most people refer to the original Arpanet as the genesis of the Internet, which is why they believe americans invented it. You have a different view?
I am not sure whether to laugh or cry at the "we invented it, therefore it's ours" posts here.
The Internet is nothing more than an agreement to interoperate between networks. The only centrally controllable resource, the DNS system, is only de facto controlled by the US government. The current DNS root servers could be abandoned by the rest of the world easily, if the US pisses them off enough.
The US can't control the Internet any more than it can control what "good music" is. It's not something that can be controlled. Any attempt to influence it simply reflects badly on the US as a country, and works against our global interests in the long term.
This doctrine being spoken of makes obvious the fact that most of the current US administration and lawmakers are still living in the (mid) 20th century.
Unfortunately, they've been holding back development of our country for years (since post world war 2, when a global war made them believe in their own moral superiority) in the name of what they believe is right. Fortunately, they'll start dying of old age in droves soon.
I just hope they don't irreconciliably damage international relations before then.
Erik
PS: Taco, for the love of all that's holy start using Kupu or FCKeditor, or something besides these damned textareas.
Yeah, I guess I meant to encompass that with the statement about "Immediately dominate the market". If a technology is orders of magnitude better, it usually will immediately dominate.
Erik
The poster of this article assumes that the technically superior solution will rise to the top. In fact, the administratively superior solution will... this means that if companies spend millions of dollars preparing a standard and products for market, they won't switch to something else automatically even if it's obviously better.
The reality of the situation is that if the new solution is exactly what it's sold to be (unlikely) then it probably will eventually break into the market, but even if it's made into a useable product immediately its use will be overshadowed by the well advertised and enthusiastically sold solution that the vendors are pushing instead. Vendors really don't care what's superior unless they're picking technologies from a menu and they have no interest in any of them (positive or negative). Vendors care about money, and if they've already spent some on one technology, they won't switch unless it's obvious that another technology will immediately dominate the market (VERY, VERY rarely does this happen).
Take off the rose colored glasses, people. Technically superior solutions MAY eventually win out over poorer ones if all else is equal, but all else NEVER is equal.
Plus, it's unlikely that this "breakthrough" is anything but some ambitious people trying to sell something inferior as if it's the solution to All Our Problems (tm).
So what? That still doesn't make it possible to mass produce them. Mass production requires an assembly line - and there isn't one for these rovers. (Among other problems.)
Assembly lines can be created. Of course there's not one already... what would they have been doing for the last few years?
The problem with this delusional fantasy is that the plans still exist. (They aren't much good as many of the components, materials, and processes are obsolesent or obsolete - but they do still exist.)
Not really, no. The pretty paper plans that show big sketches of rocket parts are there, but the assembly drawings and such are missing or incomplete. NASA essentially buried them when the shuttle program was being debated in order to remove that as a competitor. I don't think it's possible to duplicate a J-5 engine for example without going and pulling measurements off of a still existing "tourist attraction" model.
Also, "delusional fantasy"? Don't you think that's a little over the top for a discussion of NASA?
Currently they are scattered on other researh projects or working on engineering the next generation of rovers.
Hmm... so earlier you stated that NASA could not build more rovers because the team that built them was scattered, and now you've apparently located them. I hope you didn't have to look to hard =)
So what? Mars and Earth have atmosphere - the Moon doesn't.
Hence my comment on vacuum cementing. I don't doubt other minor changes will be required, but a full redesign... no. That's just wasteful, and is a thinly veiled attempt for NASA to keep the tax dollars coming in.
MER is already electricity limited - and the higher insolation on the Moon won't make that much difference.
It won't? Mars insolation is about 590 watts/sq meter and the moon is about 1370 watts/sq. meter. That's a hell of a difference. Bear in mind that I'm not saying the exact model of solar cell used on mars will magically pick up the slack on the moon, but solar cells don't require a ton of design changes to swap. Remember too that no atmosphere means no conduction of heat away, which will help temperature somewhat.
And each improvement and tweak means an expensive review and requalification process. It's not as simple as you seem to think.
I suggested in another post that the "expensive/extensive review and requalification process" is a big part of what's wrong with NASA, and the US Government for that matter. That's another thing that has to change. There's a difference between review for the sake of good engineering process and review for the sake of satisfying bean counters. I deal with that pain every day.
About as much as it's been swayed by the pictures coming back from Mars - Little to none. (Not to mention the fact that all the pictures would be pretty repetitive. Also, the areas of the Moon the rovers can reach has essentially zero geologic interest.)
Quote from the web site about the rovers: "Early this week, the hit count passed the world population, which the U.S. census estimated Thursday morning at more than 6.3 billion people.". Yep, lack of interest there. The rovers can reach pretty much ANY area of the moon if they're dropped on it. Ease of communications and lots of available power permit that. I don't think you or anyone else can successfully argue that the areas we can get to on the moon with rovers have "zero geological interest". Have a look at the paperwork required to do tests on a single one of the apollo moon rocks sometime. There's even a ton of "geological interest" in those.
The launchers are already well tested.
No, they're not. You can't use a LEO launch vehicle to reach the moon. Probably one of the proposed designs made of shuttle boosters would work though, and that also could be mass produced.
ROTFLMAO. That translates to "don't confuse me with facts and I hate to th
Because there isn't an assembly line, and never was. The build and design team has been scattered for a couple of years now.
But the plans still exist. Unless NASA pulled another Apollo and destroyed them for political reasons. This actually shows another weakness of the NASA dinosaur. Any reasonably successful corporation would know that preserving the knowledge of that team is critical to future operations, and would attempt to retain the employees, ensure they had kept good records of their work, and in general done everything possible to "remember" how everything was done. With NASA the SOP seems to be "thanks for the great work, maybe we'll see you again sometime".
The two MER rovers are optimized for use on Mars - they are useless to rove other worlds without what amounts to a complete redesign. They are also highly optimized for a specific geologic mission - again, an extensive (and expensive) redesign and requalification would be needed to use them for another mission.
Not true. If I recall correctly, they were tested in earth gravity and earth atmosphere prior to embarkation for Mars. The thermal swing on the moon is wider (colder) but given the extra power available due to sunlight an electric heater could be fitted. Vacuum cementing might be an issue too, that's the only thing that might need a re-work. Of course the tools would need something of a redesign for new science missions, but they would be useful in their current form for studying moon geology in some ways. Ideally, the new rovers would have other tools that could be fitted in the same space, and a modular approach could be taken. An extensive redesign is not needed, and requalification could be abbreviated due to our now extensive operational knowledge.
...terrain is too rough. (Where they are on Mars is actually pretty benign.) Another major limit is the capacity of the DSN (Deep Space Network), you'd have to spend billions upgrading it, building new dishes, etc... before you could operate more than a couple of them. (Or cancel every other probe.)
Regarding the terrain and additional rovers for Mars, see my other post on this subject. Even limited to the equator, we could put a couple thousand probes on Mars and not see everything. We're also not limited to keeping exactly the same design... some improvements could be made, things tweaked, that might allow wider exploration. For the moon we wouldn't need to use the DSN at all. It wouldn't be terribly hard or expensive using current technology to build three to six dish systems capable of keeping the moon in view 24/7 with enough power and sensitivity to communicate with moon rovers. The various scientist sites around the country and world could use the Internet for rover communications and control.
All of this also doesn't consider the benefits of bulk production of rovers on earth. How much would public opinion of science and space exploration be swayed by seeing multiple moon launches on the TV at night, and pictures coming back from the moon? How much would we benefit from the practice we'd gain by learning to operate small vehicles in moon terrain, and continually refining and launch testing our space vehicles?
My original statement remains valid, even through the numerous "See here sonny, you don't understand engineering" posts in this thread. The existing rover design is well proven, and with minimal changes it could be re-used again and again.
I consider it criminal to discard such a useful piece of technology because of institutional stupidity. NASA is probably beyond fixing in this respect, and it should be completely dismantled into smaller organizations that are less politicized.
I'm not suggesting that building a ton of rovers would be cheaper... rather, they would be more successful cheaper and faster than an extensive program to get humans back on the moon using totally new technology.
How much of a long term benefit would having 40-60 rovers on the moon in one spot be, to test construction techniques and oxygen extraction? Sure, the design might not be optimal for moon vs. mars, but a working design is worth a lot over a "perfect" one. Send a pile of rovers we control from earth, build a moon base, and land the humans once the walls are up and the beer is cold.
NASA seems to be getting the right idea as far as launch vehicles... big cluster rockets that haul weight to orbit using off the shelf (off the shuttle) technology. Use one of those to land 10 rovers at a time on the moon (technically, use one to launch a spacecraft capable of carrying 10 rovers to the moon and crashing them there).
Here's a good idea: It should be possible to make a pile of money by building a single rover that will last a few months on the moon, and building a (privately funded) launch vehicle good enough to crash it there. Publicity aside (which is considerable $$), you'll be able to lease time on the rover to scientists, and eventually fund more missions including the tests above. A 1.2 light second delay earth to moon means telepresence is feasible.
Actually, forget I said all of the above... I'm gonna start working on this =)
Except that you're completely wrong. The Spirit/Opportunity rover design is a direct descendant from the Pathfinder design. And not only the rover, but the entire landing craft too (which practically didn't change from Pathfinder).
I wouldn't say completely wrong, but I concede that the design is an evolution of Pathfinder. The concept of the lander was the same, but the scale was different, and I have no doubt some changes happened if only to accommodate this.
Because it would be pointless. The design is made to operate within a very tight equatorial band. Any more "tropical" and the solar panels won't get enough power on a daily basis. Forget polar exploration entirely. The sensors onboard the rovers, while a significant step up from Pathfinder, have pretty well reached their limits. Why should we spend several million dollars to just collect additional data points?
Mars' circumferance at the equator is about 13,200 miles. So you're arguing that two slow driving rovers have found out everything there is to know? 200+ rovers couldn't cover all that. As for data points, ask any scientist trying to prove something and he'll say he'd like more data points to work with. The only reason scientists stop gathering data is when they run out of money to do so, and have to produce some results. I don't know what you mean by "reached their limits" for the sensors. They are still functioning, generating data, and just need more things to look at. I'm sure sensors manufactured more recently would work better, longer, and be cheaper.
Also, talking about Mars' equator doesn't take into account the moon, which has enough sunlight on the bright side to run the rovers anywhere. This is the same moon we're talking about establishing a permanent base on soon, FYI.
And, finally, as for mass production... uh... no. The rovers were never designed to be mass produced. There are parts with such fine tolerances that it's not reasonable to mass produce them.
Right, just like MEMS parts couldn't be mass produced to start with. You're also assuming that manufacturing technology hasn't advanced any since the rover parts were produced before launch. Mass production just takes time and design.
Could you? Sure. But you'll spend more on setting up and fine tuning the process than you would in creating a couple of custom-made rovers.
If you're just going to produce two, sure. That's why you produce several hundred, and a few hundred more to put in storage for later modification and use. Look up "economy of scale" sometime.
And it's pointless when you can be assured that you're not going to be making more than a few of a particular model. You don't think that race cars are made via mass production, or that the concept cars all the automakers produce are, do you?
Read my original post. I'm suggesting that we DO make more than a few. That's the whole idea. Besides, are you really saying that "mass production is pointless when you're not going to be making more than a few of a particular model"? Paging captain obvious...
Have you ever worked in a mass production environment? On the pre-implementation end? How long do you think it takes GM, Boeing, Intel, or anyone else in the business to setup an entirely new line? It's not as simple as you seem to think.
Since this isn't (hopefully) one of those discussions where we whip out our genitals to see whose are bigger, my personal qualifications don't matter. Since you ask, however, yes I have worked in manufacturing (working there now, in a high tech environment) and I know that retooling costs are only prohibitive when you cannot reuse a large fraction of existing tooling, like in a semiconductor fab when a process change happens. Completely new technology requires new equipment. Given that these rovers are built mostly with off the shelf technology, they don't require completely new tooling. There are probably manufacturers who would produce the needed parts on existing lines for a tidy profit.
I used to work at USPS doing IT stuff. They had reached the second stage of government evolution, where not only was preserving their existence their first priority, but the second priority was preventing anyone else from doing their job, third priority was preserving the dignity and pensions of the high school educated managers (Union shop too) and serving the customers was somewhere down around 4th place.
I consider my experience there to have been considerably more damaging to me professionally and emotionally than being groped by my former kung fu teacher.
Dust won't matter anywhere near as much as on mars. There's no wind to blow it off, but since the moon is very much closer than mars, there's quite a bit more power available anyway... enough to either ignore the dust problem, or enough to run extra systems that clean the solar panels.
They don't cost $100 a pop, but they don't need to cost several hundred million. The economics of mass production work at almost any scale, hence the reason why the industrial revolution happened.
It's true that operations and launching cost a lot more than development over time. So why not save the development cost and put that money toward operations? Also, can you argue that mass production of identical units wouldn't cut operations costs over time as their quirks are worked out, and problems corrected, and optimization of process and program for cheap launches done?
You can "roll up" lessons learned using any normal engineering change process. New versions with the fixes could be mass produced, but NASA never considers doing that. Rather, they start from scratch every time. Re-inventing the wheel over and over...
Note that my saying they could be controlled from anywhere means they should be controlled by anyone. Rather, I mean that the bottleneck of communication and control is removed on the moon as opposed to working via an orbiting satellite on mars, and sitting in a big government building 24 hours a day. Why not pass control for each rover among 3 scientists at 3 sites for 11-12 hours each? Follow the Sun.
So, why aren't we applauding these things louder, and mass producing twenty or thirty more? They're a raging success, a proven concept, and surely cheaper than developing a completely new exploration system for other worlds. We should take the plans and use them to build an army of rovers for mars, then put an equal number on the moon... we could explore the moon from laboratories, universities, offices and homes on earth directly.
Oh, that's right... NASA's main purpose isn't exploration or science, it's to preserve its own existence. New projects mean new money, and old sucesses are only good for arguing for more funding for new toys.
It's sad that MMORPG game owners and admins do this, but frankly they can't not do it. They have to put on a facade of being fair, enforcing the rules, and generally do everything they can to present the idea that their game permits on-line freedom, fun, and in general is a less restrictive version of reality, an escape from our daily stress.
But, they can't really make a virtual world work right. They have to use a "wild card" method of ensuring the world remains sane. Construction of a virtual world with a self regulating economy, lack of exploits, a working justice and corrections system, enforcement of laws protecting citizens are all beyond the capabilities, or perhaps the ambition, of the world designers. Wherever their model of a world breaks down, they have to include a human representative running around with duct tape to magically "fix" problems. To keep their business model going they pay these people, who have no formal qualifications (ever see "Paladin" in someone's resume?) as little as they legally can.
In reality, your life in an on-line game is considerably more monitored and considerably less free than your real life. How many of us would care to live in a country where there are no police, murder is discouraged but not usually punished, you can be convicted legally without trial and arguing about any of this will get you disintegrated?
Add to this ugly world the fact that the only authority of any kind that's real and present is "masters" who walk around observing what they want when they want (no privacy), change reality at will(you have less/more possessions or money, you are green instead of caucasian, your spouse is spontaneously sent across the world to live with a strange orc for a month), judge you or not as they like, and have the authority to kill you and destroy your body with all possessions arbitrarily.
Oh yes, and these same people aren't chosen by some god nor elected by the population, rather they are the only people who could be found who would do those jobs for the tiny reward the gods of this world would offer, and some of them aren't all that happy about it. The ones that are happy with absolute power as a reward in itself are even worse.
Always remember that in on-line RPGs, whatever amount of time and money and effort the authors make to convince you the game is fun and completely immersive, they're spending 3 or 4 times as much to hide the ugly truth behind the curtain - that it's not a real or even a working world, it's just a poor imitation of one that lets you pretend to be someone else. The GMs are poorly paid puppeteers with the responsibility to do anything necessary in their subjective, poorly trained and educated view to keep the world working and preserve the illusion of "freedom". It's a world with no justice, no rights, and no hope of change. And you're paying for it.
In online RPGs, we are all slaves.
Erik
PS: Some people condense this to "It's just a game" but that carries overtones of a lack of commitment to the (very cool) concept of a virtual fantasy world. It's probably more accurate to say "It's not a real world". As if riding around on Griffons weren't enough of a hint.
Both of you need to RTFM. The reason Slashdot allows only certain HTML tags is so posts don't end up looking like suicide notes with blink tags.
FckEditor and Kupu both allow limitations on what buttons and styles are available, so Taco or whoever can pick what tags they want available in messages. Heck, we might even end up with MORE tags available if they decide to permit a subset of options for each tag. Gigantic HTML text is obnoxious, but they might allow two sizes only, say one for text and one for titles or emphasis.
They get more control, we get less pain and better looking posts. I think many people don't know HTML well enough to do more than insert <P> here and there, or don't care to run through preview 5-6 times to make sure their post doesn't look stupid.
Manual entry of HTML tags in a text box is kind of like writing a thesis paper using vi... it'll get done, but you consider not writing it at all long before you're done.
Get Kupu! http://kupu.oscom.org/ , or Fckeditor http://www.fckeditor.net/ , or any of the Javascript text box replacements. I don't write emails with a telegraph key, and I don't build PNG images with MS paint. Replace these awful text boxes with something less painless.
A face lift and interface switch is great, but really some of these features need to step into the new century.
We already have devices that sterilize inert medical instruments quite efficiently-way more efficiently than waving a tiny beam across their entire surface area. It may have a niche for sterilizing items that are temperature sensitive (and not overly sensitive to highly reactive charged particles). But it clearly won't be a "miracle beam" that can kill bacteria in a wound while leaving healthy tissue unaffected.
I dunno about other applications, but if they can make this efficiently clean larger areas, my employer would probably employ them for the rest of their lives to do nothing but make these things. You see, we make medical devices, implants. They have to be made carefully for a bazillion reasons, but each added bit of care drives up the cost. A big engineering constraint on their design is the fact that they must be able to withstand heat, fully assembled, for long enough to be permanently sterilized. If you can sterilize them cold, not only can you make designing them easier, but you can use a whole set of materials that actually works BETTER than what we use now... we just couldn't use them before because they couldn't be sterilized.
So despite what you may think about cold sterilization not being an improvement, it is. A big one.
The point I'm making here is that secession would likely be the start of a second civil war, which if the government keeps going the way it's going is actually a possibility... either that or armed revolt and the forcible removal of the current government from power, and the introduction of a reformed constitution.
Put more simply, I am saying that despite what the ignorant and apathetic may believe, what the government is doing is wrong (everything from the patriot act to pork spending to ruby ridge to "executive privilege") and sooner or later if they don't stop and reform, the general citizenry is going to stop them.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable"... how much change has there really been in our government in the last 20 years, regardless of which party gets elected? How about the last 40 years?
The reason the federal government is going to be excepted from this removal of services is that the people making the decision to permit this consider the government to be above the law.
For those of you wondering how RIM could offend their shareholders by doing this, they're not offending. RIM is a Canadian company that makes most of its revenue in the US, so this will hurt them a lot, but they'll still be able to continue selling elsewhere. Effectively, this ruling is going to force them to sell other countries harder, since they apparently are refusing the give in to extortion from this IP company. Plus, as long as they can still sell to the Fed, they will, since it does make them money.
(Obviously, the NTP folks don't want to stop BlackBerries from working - they want to cause enough pain that RIM will pay them a huge amount of money for doing next to nothing... since this hasn't happened yet, one can assume RIM is still holding out)
One more thing of note about this case... RIM claims that the patent shouldn't apply to them because the computers at the top of their equipment pyramid are in Canada, not the US. If the devices themselves don't infringe, this means the US is ignoring the fact that IT'S A SEPARATE DAMNED COUNTRY and acting like it owns the world.
I'm something like a seventh generation American... last night I was looking at my Grandfather's World War I records and wondering why he went over the top for this country. I can only conclude that something is different in the US from then to now.
I'd make a joke about this, but I can't joke about it any more. Instead, I'm going to do some legal research into precedents for secession from the US (for my state, MN) and I'm going to look into purchasing a Garand rifle from the Civilian Marksmanship Program. The Federal Government is beyond control, and leaving the union to help it collapse under its own weight may be the only way to stop it.
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Yet, I'd say a large fraction of all the managers at all the companies I've worked at have this issue. I think it's one of the things wrong with, at least, US businesses... the prevailing mindset that the most important and irreplaceable people in the company are the managers.
It even extends to the point where if a technical person becomes very good at project management, organization, and has people skills, they are sort of expected to become a manager or group lead. This makes about as much sense as expecting a very talented CPA to suddenly become a lawyer.
Erik
Another good point to remember is that ID is not of one mind.... back when they were deciding on their next product (Wolfenstein or Q4 or whatever) Hollenshead fired a few people loyal to Carmack as retribution for losing that argument. It's entirely possible that this guy thinks things are going one way and Carmack is going the other without telling him.
:)
When you get right down to it, having everyone in the world know the greatness of your company is entirely due to one man who is not you has got to suck
Erik
That I remember anyway was Linus Torvalds, because he didn't want people to use Linux 0.2 - 0.9 as production-ready, yet everyone knew it was at least as good as the "production" software everyone else was selling. Better than minix.
It started a (not good) trend... there were already too many excuses and justifications available to sell or publish bad software (including open source) and now there are more. How many freshmeat project web pages include the text "This software is beta" which the programmers include as a cop-out for mediocre or poorly written code? It's your own fault if it breaks, because it's beta.
Open Source software in general is too mediocre in quality. The thrill of release and accolades from users come from making the software in the first place and releasing it, not from the longer and more boring work of making it easy to use, bug free, or keeping it stable enough for production.
This is a major problem with the gift economy of free software... it's too easy for the gift givers to receive praise for giving us something worthless. It also dilutes the praise for those who truly deliver a valuable gift that may not look as shiny as some of the fool's gold projects out there.
Erik
PS: Taco, get Kupu
For a long, long time Linux has needed a binary driver interface. The need to maintain a driver and fix bugs over multiple kernel versions (even minor revisions) plus the need to open source (for the most part) that driver have long been major reasons that hardware vendors have been unwilling to support Linux.
The ability for a vendor to create a single version of their driver that they don't need to open source (of course, there are benefits for them and us if they do, and they still can) and to support that single version will spur manufacturer support, which will make many Linux users very happy. Too much decent hardware is sitting idle or isn't fully used because the only driver available for it is an early beta written by a college student five years ago who no longer uses computers at all. Don't get me wrong, there are some excellent driver writers in the open source community. But, they generally write drivers for hardware they have themselves and only on a volunteer basis. Drivers should be the responsibility of the hardware vendor, who should either provide them on disk or in firmware.
With regards to stability, the thing that made pre-certification windows drivers unstable was the lack of proper segmentation and preemptive multitasking in early windows versions, not the fact that they were binary drivers. If the binary API is written correctly (as I suspect it would be by the very talented Linux kernel developers) then isolation of faulty binary drivers will be taken into account. Perhaps they can even be user space binary drivers.
With more manufacturers (who know all the bugs/quirks in their hardware) getting more users (many people trying to break it) to use their software drivers, the overall quality of Linux drivers will improve tremendously, to the benefit of all Linux users.
To those of you suggesting that this is a way for vendors to use closed source software instead of open source, you're absolutely right. For the most part, these are vendors who won't release open source drivers for Linux at all. Wishful thinking about them being forced to open source their drivers or face the wrath of the Linux masses is just that, wishful thinking. I personally will continue to buy from vendors who support openness in their documentation and drivers, but if it's closed source or no support, I pick closed source.
One more thing... to those of you opposing this because of closed source concerns... are you opposing it because closed source software is inherently evil (it's not) or because you see any compromise on this issue as the "other team" "winning" and therefore "your team" must be "losing" and you hate losing?
Erik
PS: Taco, get Kupu.
This is why I didn't go into anthropology (other than the money sucked)... the only time a new theory in anthro is accepted is after the major proponents of the old theory die off, and I didn't want to be part of such a backward profession. Unfortunately, I'm starting to realize that humans in general do the same thing in all areas of life... political parties, office politics, professional football... we all seem to want to be part of a "winning team" because of the emotional boost we get when "we" win something.
I'm almost certain there's a biological reason for this, but I won't investigate further because there's no way to change current anthropological theory anyway.
Erik
Interesting point of view. How do you back up this statement? I believe most people refer to the original Arpanet as the genesis of the Internet, which is why they believe americans invented it. You have a different view?
Erik
I am not sure whether to laugh or cry at the "we invented it, therefore it's ours" posts here.
The Internet is nothing more than an agreement to interoperate between networks. The only centrally controllable resource, the DNS system, is only de facto controlled by the US government. The current DNS root servers could be abandoned by the rest of the world easily, if the US pisses them off enough.
The US can't control the Internet any more than it can control what "good music" is. It's not something that can be controlled. Any attempt to influence it simply reflects badly on the US as a country, and works against our global interests in the long term.
This doctrine being spoken of makes obvious the fact that most of the current US administration and lawmakers are still living in the (mid) 20th century.
Unfortunately, they've been holding back development of our country for years (since post world war 2, when a global war made them believe in their own moral superiority) in the name of what they believe is right. Fortunately, they'll start dying of old age in droves soon.
I just hope they don't irreconciliably damage international relations before then.
Erik
PS: Taco, for the love of all that's holy start using Kupu or FCKeditor, or something besides these damned textareas.
Yeah, I guess I meant to encompass that with the statement about "Immediately dominate the market". If a technology is orders of magnitude better, it usually will immediately dominate. Erik
The reality of the situation is that if the new solution is exactly what it's sold to be (unlikely) then it probably will eventually break into the market, but even if it's made into a useable product immediately its use will be overshadowed by the well advertised and enthusiastically sold solution that the vendors are pushing instead. Vendors really don't care what's superior unless they're picking technologies from a menu and they have no interest in any of them (positive or negative). Vendors care about money, and if they've already spent some on one technology, they won't switch unless it's obvious that another technology will immediately dominate the market (VERY, VERY rarely does this happen).
Take off the rose colored glasses, people. Technically superior solutions MAY eventually win out over poorer ones if all else is equal, but all else NEVER is equal.
Plus, it's unlikely that this "breakthrough" is anything but some ambitious people trying to sell something inferior as if it's the solution to All Our Problems (tm).
Erik
Assembly lines can be created. Of course there's not one already... what would they have been doing for the last few years?
The problem with this delusional fantasy is that the plans still exist. (They aren't much good as many of the components, materials, and processes are obsolesent or obsolete - but they do still exist.)
Not really, no. The pretty paper plans that show big sketches of rocket parts are there, but the assembly drawings and such are missing or incomplete. NASA essentially buried them when the shuttle program was being debated in order to remove that as a competitor. I don't think it's possible to duplicate a J-5 engine for example without going and pulling measurements off of a still existing "tourist attraction" model.
Also, "delusional fantasy"? Don't you think that's a little over the top for a discussion of NASA?
Currently they are scattered on other researh projects or working on engineering the next generation of rovers.
Hmm... so earlier you stated that NASA could not build more rovers because the team that built them was scattered, and now you've apparently located them. I hope you didn't have to look to hard =)
So what? Mars and Earth have atmosphere - the Moon doesn't.
Hence my comment on vacuum cementing. I don't doubt other minor changes will be required, but a full redesign... no. That's just wasteful, and is a thinly veiled attempt for NASA to keep the tax dollars coming in.
MER is already electricity limited - and the higher insolation on the Moon won't make that much difference.
It won't? Mars insolation is about 590 watts/sq meter and the moon is about 1370 watts/sq. meter. That's a hell of a difference. Bear in mind that I'm not saying the exact model of solar cell used on mars will magically pick up the slack on the moon, but solar cells don't require a ton of design changes to swap. Remember too that no atmosphere means no conduction of heat away, which will help temperature somewhat.
And each improvement and tweak means an expensive review and requalification process. It's not as simple as you seem to think.
I suggested in another post that the "expensive/extensive review and requalification process" is a big part of what's wrong with NASA, and the US Government for that matter. That's another thing that has to change. There's a difference between review for the sake of good engineering process and review for the sake of satisfying bean counters. I deal with that pain every day.
About as much as it's been swayed by the pictures coming back from Mars - Little to none. (Not to mention the fact that all the pictures would be pretty repetitive. Also, the areas of the Moon the rovers can reach has essentially zero geologic interest.)
Quote from the web site about the rovers: "Early this week, the hit count passed the world population, which the U.S. census estimated Thursday morning at more than 6.3 billion people.". Yep, lack of interest there. The rovers can reach pretty much ANY area of the moon if they're dropped on it. Ease of communications and lots of available power permit that. I don't think you or anyone else can successfully argue that the areas we can get to on the moon with rovers have "zero geological interest". Have a look at the paperwork required to do tests on a single one of the apollo moon rocks sometime. There's even a ton of "geological interest" in those.
The launchers are already well tested.
No, they're not. You can't use a LEO launch vehicle to reach the moon. Probably one of the proposed designs made of shuttle boosters would work though, and that also could be mass produced.
ROTFLMAO. That translates to "don't confuse me with facts and I hate to th
But the plans still exist. Unless NASA pulled another Apollo and destroyed them for political reasons. This actually shows another weakness of the NASA dinosaur. Any reasonably successful corporation would know that preserving the knowledge of that team is critical to future operations, and would attempt to retain the employees, ensure they had kept good records of their work, and in general done everything possible to "remember" how everything was done. With NASA the SOP seems to be "thanks for the great work, maybe we'll see you again sometime".
The two MER rovers are optimized for use on Mars - they are useless to rove other worlds without what amounts to a complete redesign. They are also highly optimized for a specific geologic mission - again, an extensive (and expensive) redesign and requalification would be needed to use them for another mission.
Not true. If I recall correctly, they were tested in earth gravity and earth atmosphere prior to embarkation for Mars. The thermal swing on the moon is wider (colder) but given the extra power available due to sunlight an electric heater could be fitted. Vacuum cementing might be an issue too, that's the only thing that might need a re-work. Of course the tools would need something of a redesign for new science missions, but they would be useful in their current form for studying moon geology in some ways. Ideally, the new rovers would have other tools that could be fitted in the same space, and a modular approach could be taken. An extensive redesign is not needed, and requalification could be abbreviated due to our now extensive operational knowledge.
Regarding the terrain and additional rovers for Mars, see my other post on this subject. Even limited to the equator, we could put a couple thousand probes on Mars and not see everything. We're also not limited to keeping exactly the same design... some improvements could be made, things tweaked, that might allow wider exploration. For the moon we wouldn't need to use the DSN at all. It wouldn't be terribly hard or expensive using current technology to build three to six dish systems capable of keeping the moon in view 24/7 with enough power and sensitivity to communicate with moon rovers. The various scientist sites around the country and world could use the Internet for rover communications and control.
All of this also doesn't consider the benefits of bulk production of rovers on earth. How much would public opinion of science and space exploration be swayed by seeing multiple moon launches on the TV at night, and pictures coming back from the moon? How much would we benefit from the practice we'd gain by learning to operate small vehicles in moon terrain, and continually refining and launch testing our space vehicles?
My original statement remains valid, even through the numerous "See here sonny, you don't understand engineering" posts in this thread. The existing rover design is well proven, and with minimal changes it could be re-used again and again.
I consider it criminal to discard such a useful piece of technology because of institutional stupidity. NASA is probably beyond fixing in this respect, and it should be completely dismantled into smaller organizations that are less politicized.
Erik
How much of a long term benefit would having 40-60 rovers on the moon in one spot be, to test construction techniques and oxygen extraction? Sure, the design might not be optimal for moon vs. mars, but a working design is worth a lot over a "perfect" one. Send a pile of rovers we control from earth, build a moon base, and land the humans once the walls are up and the beer is cold.
NASA seems to be getting the right idea as far as launch vehicles... big cluster rockets that haul weight to orbit using off the shelf (off the shuttle) technology. Use one of those to land 10 rovers at a time on the moon (technically, use one to launch a spacecraft capable of carrying 10 rovers to the moon and crashing them there).
Here's a good idea: It should be possible to make a pile of money by building a single rover that will last a few months on the moon, and building a (privately funded) launch vehicle good enough to crash it there. Publicity aside (which is considerable $$), you'll be able to lease time on the rover to scientists, and eventually fund more missions including the tests above. A 1.2 light second delay earth to moon means telepresence is feasible.
Actually, forget I said all of the above... I'm gonna start working on this =)
Erik
I wouldn't say completely wrong, but I concede that the design is an evolution of Pathfinder. The concept of the lander was the same, but the scale was different, and I have no doubt some changes happened if only to accommodate this.
Because it would be pointless. The design is made to operate within a very tight equatorial band. Any more "tropical" and the solar panels won't get enough power on a daily basis. Forget polar exploration entirely. The sensors onboard the rovers, while a significant step up from Pathfinder, have pretty well reached their limits. Why should we spend several million dollars to just collect additional data points?
Mars' circumferance at the equator is about 13,200 miles. So you're arguing that two slow driving rovers have found out everything there is to know? 200+ rovers couldn't cover all that. As for data points, ask any scientist trying to prove something and he'll say he'd like more data points to work with. The only reason scientists stop gathering data is when they run out of money to do so, and have to produce some results. I don't know what you mean by "reached their limits" for the sensors. They are still functioning, generating data, and just need more things to look at. I'm sure sensors manufactured more recently would work better, longer, and be cheaper.
Also, talking about Mars' equator doesn't take into account the moon, which has enough sunlight on the bright side to run the rovers anywhere. This is the same moon we're talking about establishing a permanent base on soon, FYI.
And, finally, as for mass production... uh... no. The rovers were never designed to be mass produced. There are parts with such fine tolerances that it's not reasonable to mass produce them.
Right, just like MEMS parts couldn't be mass produced to start with. You're also assuming that manufacturing technology hasn't advanced any since the rover parts were produced before launch. Mass production just takes time and design.
Could you? Sure. But you'll spend more on setting up and fine tuning the process than you would in creating a couple of custom-made rovers.
If you're just going to produce two, sure. That's why you produce several hundred, and a few hundred more to put in storage for later modification and use. Look up "economy of scale" sometime.
And it's pointless when you can be assured that you're not going to be making more than a few of a particular model. You don't think that race cars are made via mass production, or that the concept cars all the automakers produce are, do you?
Read my original post. I'm suggesting that we DO make more than a few. That's the whole idea. Besides, are you really saying that "mass production is pointless when you're not going to be making more than a few of a particular model"? Paging captain obvious...
Have you ever worked in a mass production environment? On the pre-implementation end? How long do you think it takes GM, Boeing, Intel, or anyone else in the business to setup an entirely new line? It's not as simple as you seem to think.
Since this isn't (hopefully) one of those discussions where we whip out our genitals to see whose are bigger, my personal qualifications don't matter. Since you ask, however, yes I have worked in manufacturing (working there now, in a high tech environment) and I know that retooling costs are only prohibitive when you cannot reuse a large fraction of existing tooling, like in a semiconductor fab when a process change happens. Completely new technology requires new equipment. Given that these rovers are built mostly with off the shelf technology, they don't require completely new tooling. There are probably manufacturers who would produce the needed parts on existing lines for a tidy profit.
Erik
I used to work at USPS doing IT stuff. They had reached the second stage of government evolution, where not only was preserving their existence their first priority, but the second priority was preventing anyone else from doing their job, third priority was preserving the dignity and pensions of the high school educated managers (Union shop too) and serving the customers was somewhere down around 4th place.
I consider my experience there to have been considerably more damaging to me professionally and emotionally than being groped by my former kung fu teacher.
Dust won't matter anywhere near as much as on mars. There's no wind to blow it off, but since the moon is very much closer than mars, there's quite a bit more power available anyway... enough to either ignore the dust problem, or enough to run extra systems that clean the solar panels.
It's true that operations and launching cost a lot more than development over time. So why not save the development cost and put that money toward operations? Also, can you argue that mass production of identical units wouldn't cut operations costs over time as their quirks are worked out, and problems corrected, and optimization of process and program for cheap launches done?
Note that my saying they could be controlled from anywhere means they should be controlled by anyone. Rather, I mean that the bottleneck of communication and control is removed on the moon as opposed to working via an orbiting satellite on mars, and sitting in a big government building 24 hours a day. Why not pass control for each rover among 3 scientists at 3 sites for 11-12 hours each? Follow the Sun.
Oh, that's right... NASA's main purpose isn't exploration or science, it's to preserve its own existence. New projects mean new money, and old sucesses are only good for arguing for more funding for new toys.
Erik
In reality, your life in an on-line game is considerably more monitored and considerably less free than your real life. How many of us would care to live in a country where there are no police, murder is discouraged but not usually punished, you can be convicted legally without trial and arguing about any of this will get you disintegrated?
Add to this ugly world the fact that the only authority of any kind that's real and present is "masters" who walk around observing what they want when they want (no privacy), change reality at will(you have less/more possessions or money, you are green instead of caucasian, your spouse is spontaneously sent across the world to live with a strange orc for a month), judge you or not as they like, and have the authority to kill you and destroy your body with all possessions arbitrarily.
Oh yes, and these same people aren't chosen by some god nor elected by the population, rather they are the only people who could be found who would do those jobs for the tiny reward the gods of this world would offer, and some of them aren't all that happy about it. The ones that are happy with absolute power as a reward in itself are even worse.
Always remember that in on-line RPGs, whatever amount of time and money and effort the authors make to convince you the game is fun and completely immersive, they're spending 3 or 4 times as much to hide the ugly truth behind the curtain - that it's not a real or even a working world, it's just a poor imitation of one that lets you pretend to be someone else. The GMs are poorly paid puppeteers with the responsibility to do anything necessary in their subjective, poorly trained and educated view to keep the world working and preserve the illusion of "freedom". It's a world with no justice, no rights, and no hope of change. And you're paying for it.
In online RPGs, we are all slaves.
Erik
PS: Some people condense this to "It's just a game" but that carries overtones of a lack of commitment to the (very cool) concept of a virtual fantasy world. It's probably more accurate to say "It's not a real world". As if riding around on Griffons weren't enough of a hint.
Both of you need to RTFM. The reason Slashdot allows only certain HTML tags is so posts don't end up looking like suicide notes with blink tags.
FckEditor and Kupu both allow limitations on what buttons and styles are available, so Taco or whoever can pick what tags they want available in messages. Heck, we might even end up with MORE tags available if they decide to permit a subset of options for each tag. Gigantic HTML text is obnoxious, but they might allow two sizes only, say one for text and one for titles or emphasis.
They get more control, we get less pain and better looking posts. I think many people don't know HTML well enough to do more than insert <P> here and there, or don't care to run through preview 5-6 times to make sure their post doesn't look stupid.
Manual entry of HTML tags in a text box is kind of like writing a thesis paper using vi... it'll get done, but you consider not writing it at all long before you're done.
Erik
Get Kupu! http://kupu.oscom.org/ , or Fckeditor http://www.fckeditor.net/ , or any of the Javascript text box replacements. I don't write emails with a telegraph key, and I don't build PNG images with MS paint. Replace these awful text boxes with something less painless.
A face lift and interface switch is great, but really some of these features need to step into the new century.
Erik
We already have devices that sterilize inert medical instruments quite efficiently-way more efficiently than waving a tiny beam across their entire surface area. It may have a niche for sterilizing items that are temperature sensitive (and not overly sensitive to highly reactive charged particles). But it clearly won't be a "miracle beam" that can kill bacteria in a wound while leaving healthy tissue unaffected.
I dunno about other applications, but if they can make this efficiently clean larger areas, my employer would probably employ them for the rest of their lives to do nothing but make these things. You see, we make medical devices, implants. They have to be made carefully for a bazillion reasons, but each added bit of care drives up the cost. A big engineering constraint on their design is the fact that they must be able to withstand heat, fully assembled, for long enough to be permanently sterilized. If you can sterilize them cold, not only can you make designing them easier, but you can use a whole set of materials that actually works BETTER than what we use now... we just couldn't use them before because they couldn't be sterilized.
So despite what you may think about cold sterilization not being an improvement, it is. A big one.
Erik
PS: Malda, get Kupu.
By showing up on their doorsteps armed, and telling them what to do.
I know that, that's what I mean.
The point I'm making here is that secession would likely be the start of a second civil war, which if the government keeps going the way it's going is actually a possibility... either that or armed revolt and the forcible removal of the current government from power, and the introduction of a reformed constitution.
Put more simply, I am saying that despite what the ignorant and apathetic may believe, what the government is doing is wrong (everything from the patriot act to pork spending to ruby ridge to "executive privilege") and sooner or later if they don't stop and reform, the general citizenry is going to stop them.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable"... how much change has there really been in our government in the last 20 years, regardless of which party gets elected? How about the last 40 years?
Erik
For those of you wondering how RIM could offend their shareholders by doing this, they're not offending. RIM is a Canadian company that makes most of its revenue in the US, so this will hurt them a lot, but they'll still be able to continue selling elsewhere. Effectively, this ruling is going to force them to sell other countries harder, since they apparently are refusing the give in to extortion from this IP company. Plus, as long as they can still sell to the Fed, they will, since it does make them money.
(Obviously, the NTP folks don't want to stop BlackBerries from working - they want to cause enough pain that RIM will pay them a huge amount of money for doing next to nothing... since this hasn't happened yet, one can assume RIM is still holding out)
One more thing of note about this case... RIM claims that the patent shouldn't apply to them because the computers at the top of their equipment pyramid are in Canada, not the US. If the devices themselves don't infringe, this means the US is ignoring the fact that IT'S A SEPARATE DAMNED COUNTRY and acting like it owns the world.
I'm something like a seventh generation American... last night I was looking at my Grandfather's World War I records and wondering why he went over the top for this country. I can only conclude that something is different in the US from then to now.
I'd make a joke about this, but I can't joke about it any more. Instead, I'm going to do some legal research into precedents for secession from the US (for my state, MN) and I'm going to look into purchasing a Garand rifle from the Civilian Marksmanship Program. The Federal Government is beyond control, and leaving the union to help it collapse under its own weight may be the only way to stop it.
Erik
soap jury ballot ammo