This is true. However, if you consider that this is the LAST thing that Microsoft needs right now, in the light of the recent developments in the Anti-Trust lawsuit, I'm not really sure what to believe. If this didn't come from ZD, I could easily see this as reverse-FUD aimed at making MS look like big olde monopolizers.
That web page is maintained by Joshua Chamas, and originated in some discussions that began on the mod_perl mailing list. A page related to it was featured on Slashdot a month or two ago.
I'm by no means an expert, but here's my very rudimentary understanding of the situation:
Most CPU cycles spent on CGI stuff are not so much spent on crunching the data as they are moving the data around and communicating with the webserver. For this reason, things like PHP, ASP, mod_perl, and custom written Apache modules have been developed to plug directly into the webserver's guts. This avoids the overhead associated with forking a separate process to do the computations, opening a pipe to communicate between the webserver & the CGI process and the general cost of loading another program.
However, if you've got a webpage that needs to do something like compute Pi to the 10,000th digit every time a user hits it, then the CGI overhead will be dwarfed by the computing power required to generate the page. For this, it would make more sense to write an Apache module in C.
Why not write everything as a C Apache module?
Because writing a Perl Apache module isn't significantly slower, although it is significantly easier, more expedient, has better database connectivity and is less painful to maintain. But then again, I'm a professional mod_perl programmer, so maybe I'm a bit biased.:)
I do Sybase & Perl development all day. I'd scream if they took away my isql. I have yet to see a GUI tool that really would help me program better. There are some nice GUI admin tools, and I'm working on writing one msyelf, but for development, all I want is a command line I can barf SQL onto.
I later got to thinking about this and talked about it with some friends.
We decided that the liftoff from the moon was fairly uncertain for a couple reasons. First, the fuel they had to use to escape the moon's gravity and get into orbit again was the same fuel they'd used in trying to land. As I recall, they were running fairly low on fuel durin landing, which is why it was almost aborted, since they almost wouldn't have enough to get back. Second, the rocket engines had been completely turned off for several hours. Getting them re-ignited was probably a little tricky piece of engineering, since most rocket engines are made to turn on, burn and turn off, without consideration for re-ignition. I seem to recall once seeing a TV documentary about the moon landing where Buzz or Neil was saying how relieved he was when the engines started again. So apparantly they had a twinge of doubt as well.
Hummm... I wonder if they dusted off this speach in case Nixon had to go on TV during the Apollo 13 incident.
Why did NASA prepare specifically for the event that the lander module might not lift off from the moon?
Were there reasons to believe that it might not function as planned, any more than other components of the entire mission? It seems to me that a more likely event would have been a malfunction during landing causing a crash, or a re-entry/spashdown accident of some sort. If one is going go to the trouble of preparing for a specific disaster scenario, one is usually going to prepare for the most likely disaster.
Is there something inherent to the design of the lander that raised some uncertainty about its abiliy to lift off from the moon?
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This is true. However, if you consider that this is the LAST thing that Microsoft needs right now, in the light of the recent developments in the Anti-Trust lawsuit, I'm not really sure what to believe. If this didn't come from ZD, I could easily see this as reverse-FUD aimed at making MS look like big olde monopolizers.
http://www.chamas.com/hello_world.html
That web page is maintained by Joshua Chamas, and originated in some discussions that began on the mod_perl mailing list. A page related to it was featured on Slashdot a month or two ago.
I'm by no means an expert, but here's my very rudimentary understanding of the situation:
Most CPU cycles spent on CGI stuff are not so much spent on crunching the data as they are moving the data around and communicating with the webserver. For this reason, things like PHP, ASP, mod_perl, and custom written Apache modules have been developed to plug directly into the webserver's guts. This avoids the overhead associated with forking a separate process to do the computations, opening a pipe to communicate between the webserver & the CGI process and the general cost of loading another program.
However, if you've got a webpage that needs to do something like compute Pi to the 10,000th digit every time a user hits it, then the CGI overhead will be dwarfed by the computing power required to generate the page. For this, it would make more sense to write an Apache module in C.
Why not write everything as a C Apache module?
Because writing a Perl Apache module isn't significantly slower, although it is significantly easier, more expedient, has better database connectivity and is less painful to maintain. But then again, I'm a professional mod_perl programmer, so maybe I'm a bit biased.
Amen, bother!
I do Sybase & Perl development all day. I'd scream if they took away my isql. I have yet to see a GUI tool that really would help me program better. There are some nice GUI admin tools, and I'm working on writing one msyelf, but for development, all I want is a command line I can barf SQL onto.
I later got to thinking about this and talked about it with some friends.
We decided that the liftoff from the moon was fairly uncertain for a couple reasons. First, the fuel they had to use to escape the moon's gravity and get into orbit again was the same fuel they'd used in trying to land. As I recall, they were running fairly low on fuel durin landing, which is why it was almost aborted, since they almost wouldn't have enough to get back. Second, the rocket engines had been completely turned off for several hours. Getting them re-ignited was probably a little tricky piece of engineering, since most rocket engines are made to turn on, burn and turn off, without consideration for re-ignition. I seem to recall once seeing a TV documentary about the moon landing where Buzz or Neil was saying how relieved he was when the engines started again. So apparantly they had a twinge of doubt as well.
Hummm... I wonder if they dusted off this speach in case Nixon had to go on TV during the Apollo 13 incident.
Why did NASA prepare specifically for the event that the lander module might not lift off from the moon?
Were there reasons to believe that it might not function as planned, any more than other components of the entire mission? It seems to me that a more likely event would have been a malfunction during landing causing a crash, or a re-entry/spashdown accident of some sort. If one is going go to the trouble of preparing for a specific disaster scenario, one is usually going to prepare for the most likely disaster.
Is there something inherent to the design of the lander that raised some uncertainty about its abiliy to lift off from the moon?