This "surveying" of boundaries by my government has traditionally been the first step in the staking of claims and the erection of fences and walls. When does the landgrab start? I want to plan my flag on a choice piece of real-estate. *g*
So, I have a question. Why is it that when scientists talk about exploring the edges of the solar system, they insist in sending probes "out past Pluto"? On the one hand, I understand why we do so - our solar system does lie (primarily) in a plane, so it's natural to think that way.
But I argue it'd be easier to explore phenomina at the edges of our solar system by going in the third dimension - orthogonal to the plane of the solar system. After all, the Sun isn't just radiating in a 2-d plane. Or am I wrong in my assumption about how solar winds radiate?
Any scientifically sound reason why this is a bad idea?
Or are we doomed to continue think as Khan did/does/will? *grynn*
I agree with the gist of your comment, rsmith-mac. But, note Emacs' legacy lies in the Unix workstation world, not with PCs. I know that these days, with *nixs running on low-cost PC-class hardware, one wouldn't necessarily make a distinction. But back in the day, when one required expensive workstation-class machines to run Unix, it wasn't the case. The Unix workstation class legacy of Emacs is apparent when reading documentation that speaks of short-cuts using a "meta" key combination.
Personally, I hadn't used emacs in years until I found cause to just recently. A few months ago, in fact. Fired up it up under OS X to get reacquainted with Lisp (talk about old school, huh?). It was like meeting up with an old, long-lost friend. An old, complex, powerful friend with lots of quirks and an eccentric way of communicating. It is the ultimate extendable editor, and it works great for Lisp development.
And I *am* digging it, and trying to remember which long-forgotten IDE wooed me away from Emacs oh so many years ago. But then again, my appreciation for Emacs probably has to do with my history with it, and the fact that I have a real good reason to use it now. If one doesn't require the power, though, I can see why one would not want to deal the Emacs interface. I'm not expecting to throw away any of the other editors I use (yet), and in fact pulled down TextWrangler for a look see.
Anyways, in these days of the lickable, clickable GUI, I think you'd be hard pressed to find many computer users, either of the Mac or PC variety, comfortable using command-line/keyboard centric editors like Emacs (or...dare I say it...vi).
Present company of/.ers excepted, of course. *grynn*
Odd already are that the laptop you are typign on was not manufactured by IBM, but by some contract manufacturer in Asia. IBM has been divesting itself of PC and laptop manufacturing facilities for quite a while now.
In fact, if one actually read the article, one would see that point being made in...oh...about the thirteenth paragraph. One would also realize that, inspite of the headline and/. synopsis, it's not an actual "sale" of the PC unit. IBM is forming a joint venture with Lenovo, which means that IBM will continue to be involved in the PCs and Thinkpad business for at least a few years.
Have you used/are you a user of any of these implementations, jaoswald? If so, what are your impressions? Have you used any for any "serious" software development and deployment efforts?
I've been futzing around with Lisp for the first time in about 12 years. Downloaded the personal edition of Lispworks, which has a nice looking IDE and dev tools, IMHO, and OpenMCL.
It's not technically complex. It's politically complex.
The problem all nuclear powered designs have is the fact that they are nuclear powered. It's hard to convince J. Q. Public that it's okay to launch any kind of nuclear reactor design into space, especially when said material is being launched via highly combustible chemical rockets. No one would want to be in charge of the cost-benefit of making the design and launch decisions the first time a launch like that goes bad.
Ion thruster designs have an Isp that start at 3500, and can potentially go much higher. Nuclear thermal designs have an Isp ranging from 825 to 925. By comparison chemical reaction rockets have low specific impulses, ranging from 150-450.
What rolls down stairs and over the chairs and into your neighbor's dog? It fits on your back, It's good for a snack, Everyone knows it's log. It's log, it's log. It's big, it's heavy, it's wood. It's log, it's log. It's better than bad, it's good.
"Where am I?" "What am I doing here?" "Who are you?"
Where did I see this plot device before? Oh, yeah! It was in Season 1 of RvB. Seems like the folks at Rooster Teeth need some new blood on their writing staff. Seems they could do a better job of just jumping right into the action with fully developed characters, instead of leading us down familiar territory.
Well, if someone stupid enough to try to play H2 on XBoxLive with a pirated copy, I imagine it'll be pretty easy to find out who they are. I assume each factory-stamped copy is tagged. When suspicious activity associated with a single tag start showing up (simultaneous log-ons, etc.), I'm sure flags will be raised, and the MS ninja legal team will be deployed, Tuttle-like, to take out the perpetrators.
And anyone stupid enough to play H2 on XBL before the official release is sure to get some scrutiny.
You claim the criteria used to determine that the Wright brothers achieved "flight" was arbitrary. Yet your criteria is equally arbitrary, and ludicrious if taken literally. By your criteria, anyone piloting a Piper Cub for a day of fun would not be flying!
I understand the jist of your argument, though. I've heard it said many times that the Wright Flyer (Kitty Hawk was the location in North Carolina where the flight took place) really made what amounted to short hops across the ground. The first attempt was 3 1/2 sec and ended with a stall and crash. Most people know about the second attempt, the official "success" in 1903 that lasted only 12 sec and 120 ft. But what has been largely forgotten is that the Wright brothers made three more flights that day, each longer the previous. The last lasted 59 seconds, and ended 852 ft from the start. The four consecutives was far better than what anyone else was able to achieve to that date.
Is that noteworthy? I'd argue yes. You may argue no. But, what is not arguable is that the Wright brothers were not one-trick ponies. They followed the Wright Flyer with further improvements and innovations, including the first circular flight, in 1904, and the first "practical" airplane, in 1905. No one else was even close to matching their 24 1/2 controlled flight at Huffman Prarie in 1905.
Your argument that the Wright brother's contribution to the aviation industry reveals in incredible lack of knowledge on the subject on your part. I don't know of any early pioneers that contributed as much to developing viable human powered flight, and the aviation industry in general, over a sustained period of time as they did, both in terms of R&D of actual working airplanes, and in the development of the aviation industry. They pioneered the military use of the airplane, the commercial use of the airplane, and stunt and competition flying.
To say, as another poster argues, that their technology doesn't "scale" and thereby marginalizing the work they did also demonstrates an incredible ignorance of how new technologies and industries develop. There isn't a single category of invention that sprang from the inventor's mind perfect in it's initial incarnation. By that argument Goddard contributed nothing to the space industry because his rockets never even came close to getting to space.
Enough diatribe from me. If you want to get educated about the subject, there are plenty of resources you can read. Two that pop up via Google are
http://www.wam.umd.edu/~stwright/WrBr/taleplane.ht ml and
http://www.nasm.si.edu/wrightbrothers/
I'd also suggest that you read Henry Petroski's excellent book "The Evolution of Useful Things" for an easy read about how design and invention evolves over time.
Interesting about how good a year 1903 was for transportation. The Wright brothers, Ford, and Harley-Davidson all had significant milestones that year...
I'm thinking the space equivalent to the dot-com investment of the 90's won't happen for five reasons.
For one, the initial investment required to develop a meaningful space-based business is significantly higher than that for a software/Web-based business. VCs are a lot tighter with their money these days. They are typically only entertaining large investments in the biotech industy, with has a lot more mature private sector component than the space industry.
Second, it's was relatively easy for an entrepreneur to sell the idea of an internet-based business by just pointing to an analog in an existing brick-and-mortar industry and saying a variation of, "We'll do what they're doing, but we'll do it more efficiently." It's hard to see how this sort of argument applies to the nascent private space-industry.
Third, the Internet bubble was partly fueled by a relatively large population of software development expertise. Training software developer, and developing actual software, is significantly easier and cheaper than doing almost *anything* related to space travel. Certainly cheaper than doing anything related to cutting-edge, industry transforming space engineering R&D.
Fourth, the VC's, and the rest of the investment community, are relatively savvy wrt software, computers, telecom, and related businesses (or, at least they *think* they are). It was easy for a VC to do some "due diligence" and a gut check and decide to commit some dollars to an internet-based business. As a group, they are not at all savvy wrt space. The majority of VCs/early stage investors are not nearly as cutting edge, forward thinking, or even smart as they'd have the general public believe. It'll take a lot more than one success by one group for the bulk of the early stage institutional investors to start licking their chops.
The fifth reason I don't think there will be 90's style spike in investment for space travel is that, as cool as SpaceShipOne is, it doesn't fundamentally alter the economics of space travel. None of the XPrize contenders that I know off were working on fit that criteria. The internet was so compelling to investors because they could see that it did improve operational efficiencies for a large number of industries, even if the investors didn't know *how* those efficiencies would be manifested. SpaceShipOne does seem to incrementally improve the space travel equation by executing a low-cost composite-based variation of the Orbital Sciences/Pegasus rocket. But I'm pretty sure that it's does not match up as a transformative technology that the internet was.
The one group where there might be a pick-up in interest is the private investors like Paul Allen and Carmack. I'd also think that their might be a pick up in investments in the institutions (universities and labs) that are doing fundamental research in novel space technology. I wouldn't be surprised if those institutions start mining their patents and papers to see if they can "monetize" them via spin-offs, start-ups and/or licensing.
Nah. I'd say that large scale early-stage investment in space is several decades off, barring the development of some technology that fundamentally changes the economics of space travel.
I dunno. I never could get into this series of comic books. X-men, Spiderman, Hulk, The West Coast Avengers...I liked almost every other Marvel series better than F4. Two of the four team members (Reed and Sue Richards) had lame superpowers and the plots seemed kinda hokey and dated.
Johnny was alright. And Ben Grimm/Thing was good in his own series...esp those times he faced off with The Hulk.
Starting a company that doesn't need to scale up to mint Brink truckloads of money is also one of my dreams. It wouldn't have to be 10 or fewer people, in my case, but I would like to keep the numbers low, so that I can keep the quality of personnel high.
The one corporate archetype that I've found that could realize Paul's (and my) dream is the model that ARM follows. ARM is the intellectual property company that focuses on R&D behind the ARM family of RISC microprocessors. The trick is that they generate all their revenue from licensing fees and royalties from partners (like Intel), who take the R&D that ARM does and incorporates it into their own offerings (like StrongARM). ARM, while >10 employees, is miniscule when compared to it's competitors in the microprocessor space. And insanely profitable. ARM's is a fascinating story, and should be a case study for anyone who wants to see how a tenacious and dedicated team of really smart people can create a successful business in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds.
Licensing of IP is one of the few formulaic ways that I've seen where one can accomplish big money while maintaining a small core team.
I think that if Google's leadership were to try such a thing, they'd be more interested in positioning Google to create an entirely Web-based desktop that is platform agnostic, than a traditional OS.
During the dotcom era, there was a company out of Maryland (sorry, can't remember the name...WorldOS, maybe?) trying to do this very thing. And there was the Network of Workstations project, that was started at UC-Berkeley (1996 to 1998).
Why would Google write an OS specific to any one hardware architecture, when, as we all know, "The network is the computer"?
Slashdot Mirror
This "surveying" of boundaries by my government has traditionally been the first step in the staking of claims and the erection of fences and walls. When does the landgrab start? I want to plan my flag on a choice piece of real-estate. *g*
So, I have a question. Why is it that when scientists talk about exploring the edges of the solar system, they insist in sending probes "out past Pluto"? On the one hand, I understand why we do so - our solar system does lie (primarily) in a plane, so it's natural to think that way.
But I argue it'd be easier to explore phenomina at the edges of our solar system by going in the third dimension - orthogonal to the plane of the solar system. After all, the Sun isn't just radiating in a 2-d plane. Or am I wrong in my assumption about how solar winds radiate?
Any scientifically sound reason why this is a bad idea?
Or are we doomed to continue think as Khan did/does/will? *grynn*
Based on how I imagine this system is architected, the question should be...
"Do you have any cache to spare?"
*grynn*
Years ago, I watched a television show where proto-humans ate dinosaurs in the form of brontoburgers and giant slabs of ribs.
They also had foot powered cars, and cameras with woodpecker-like dinosaurs carving images into stone tablets.
What would happen indeed? If Apple were to go bust, where would Microsoft and the rest of the computer industry look to for the Next Big Idea?
After all, to steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from Apple is research. *g*
Yeah? So, what's Wilson Mizner gonna do about it? Not a GD thing, that's what!
*GRYNN*
I agree with the gist of your comment, rsmith-mac. But, note Emacs' legacy lies in the Unix workstation world, not with PCs. I know that these days, with *nixs running on low-cost PC-class hardware, one wouldn't necessarily make a distinction. But back in the day, when one required expensive workstation-class machines to run Unix, it wasn't the case. The Unix workstation class legacy of Emacs is apparent when reading documentation that speaks of short-cuts using a "meta" key combination.
/.ers excepted, of course. *grynn*
Personally, I hadn't used emacs in years until I found cause to just recently. A few months ago, in fact. Fired up it up under OS X to get reacquainted with Lisp (talk about old school, huh?). It was like meeting up with an old, long-lost friend. An old, complex, powerful friend with lots of quirks and an eccentric way of communicating. It is the ultimate extendable editor, and it works great for Lisp development.
And I *am* digging it, and trying to remember which long-forgotten IDE wooed me away from Emacs oh so many years ago. But then again, my appreciation for Emacs probably has to do with my history with it, and the fact that I have a real good reason to use it now. If one doesn't require the power, though, I can see why one would not want to deal the Emacs interface. I'm not expecting to throw away any of the other editors I use (yet), and in fact pulled down TextWrangler for a look see.
Anyways, in these days of the lickable, clickable GUI, I think you'd be hard pressed to find many computer users, either of the Mac or PC variety, comfortable using command-line/keyboard centric editors like Emacs (or...dare I say it...vi).
Present company of
Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO).
Or, perhaps, a related technology like gene therapy.
Didn't I see this movie in the 80s? "Weird Science"?
Odd already are that the laptop you are typign on was not manufactured by IBM, but by some contract manufacturer in Asia. IBM has been divesting itself of PC and laptop manufacturing facilities for quite a while now.
/. synopsis, it's not an actual "sale" of the PC unit. IBM is forming a joint venture with Lenovo, which means that IBM will continue to be involved in the PCs and Thinkpad business for at least a few years.
In fact, if one actually read the article, one would see that point being made in...oh...about the thirteenth paragraph. One would also realize that, inspite of the headline and
...when the generation raised on "text messaging" hits the work force.
Back in my day, we had to write complete sentences! In pen! On paper! Going uphill! Both ways! In the snow! And, we LIKED it!
Have you used/are you a user of any of these implementations, jaoswald? If so, what are your impressions? Have you used any for any "serious" software development and deployment efforts?
I've been futzing around with Lisp for the first time in about 12 years. Downloaded the personal edition of Lispworks, which has a nice looking IDE and dev tools, IMHO, and OpenMCL.
Thanks in advance for the feedback.
It's not technically complex. It's politically complex.
The problem all nuclear powered designs have is the fact that they are nuclear powered. It's hard to convince J. Q. Public that it's okay to launch any kind of nuclear reactor design into space, especially when said material is being launched via highly combustible chemical rockets. No one would want to be in charge of the cost-benefit of making the design and launch decisions the first time a launch like that goes bad.
Ion thruster designs have an Isp that start at 3500, and can potentially go much higher. Nuclear thermal designs have an Isp ranging from 825 to 925. By comparison chemical reaction rockets have low specific impulses, ranging from 150-450.
What rolls down stairs
and over the chairs
and into your neighbor's dog?
It fits on your back,
It's good for a snack,
Everyone knows it's log.
It's log, it's log.
It's big, it's heavy, it's wood.
It's log, it's log.
It's better than bad, it's good.
BEST TOY, EVER!
That, or Happy Fun Ball.
"Where am I?" "What am I doing here?" "Who are you?"
Where did I see this plot device before? Oh, yeah! It was in Season 1 of RvB. Seems like the folks at Rooster Teeth need some new blood on their writing staff. Seems they could do a better job of just jumping right into the action with fully developed characters, instead of leading us down familiar territory.
Well, if someone stupid enough to try to play H2 on XBoxLive with a pirated copy, I imagine it'll be pretty easy to find out who they are. I assume each factory-stamped copy is tagged. When suspicious activity associated with a single tag start showing up (simultaneous log-ons, etc.), I'm sure flags will be raised, and the MS ninja legal team will be deployed, Tuttle-like, to take out the perpetrators.
And anyone stupid enough to play H2 on XBL before the official release is sure to get some scrutiny.
Hmm...I see what you mean...now. DOH!
I didn't follow the thread to the parent to realize that the Wright bros reference was a sarcastic response. Apologies to "kippy".
You claim the criteria used to determine that the Wright brothers achieved "flight" was arbitrary. Yet your criteria is equally arbitrary, and ludicrious if taken literally. By your criteria, anyone piloting a Piper Cub for a day of fun would not be flying!
t ml
I understand the jist of your argument, though. I've heard it said many times that the Wright Flyer (Kitty Hawk was the location in North Carolina where the flight took place) really made what amounted to short hops across the ground. The first attempt was 3 1/2 sec and ended with a stall and crash. Most people know about the second attempt, the official "success" in 1903 that lasted only 12 sec and 120 ft. But what has been largely forgotten is that the Wright brothers made three more flights that day, each longer the previous. The last lasted 59 seconds, and ended 852 ft from the start. The four consecutives was far better than what anyone else was able to achieve to that date.
Is that noteworthy? I'd argue yes. You may argue no. But, what is not arguable is that the Wright brothers were not one-trick ponies. They followed the Wright Flyer with further improvements and innovations, including the first circular flight, in 1904, and the first "practical" airplane, in 1905. No one else was even close to matching their 24 1/2 controlled flight at Huffman Prarie in 1905.
Your argument that the Wright brother's contribution to the aviation industry reveals in incredible lack of knowledge on the subject on your part. I don't know of any early pioneers that contributed as much to developing viable human powered flight, and the aviation industry in general, over a sustained period of time as they did, both in terms of R&D of actual working airplanes, and in the development of the aviation industry. They pioneered the military use of the airplane, the commercial use of the airplane, and stunt and competition flying.
To say, as another poster argues, that their technology doesn't "scale" and thereby marginalizing the work they did also demonstrates an incredible ignorance of how new technologies and industries develop. There isn't a single category of invention that sprang from the inventor's mind perfect in it's initial incarnation. By that argument Goddard contributed nothing to the space industry because his rockets never even came close to getting to space.
Enough diatribe from me. If you want to get educated about the subject, there are plenty of resources you can read. Two that pop up via Google are
http://www.wam.umd.edu/~stwright/WrBr/taleplane.h
and
http://www.nasm.si.edu/wrightbrothers/
I'd also suggest that you read Henry Petroski's excellent book "The Evolution of Useful Things" for an easy read about how design and invention evolves over time.
Interesting about how good a year 1903 was for transportation. The Wright brothers, Ford, and Harley-Davidson all had significant milestones that year...
I'm definitely interested in scoring some zero-G space nooky. My mom did say that I should wait and make sure my first time is special.
And, hopefully there will be room for two in that capsule, so that it can be even MORE special!
*JOY*
I'm thinking the space equivalent to the dot-com investment of the 90's won't happen for five reasons.
For one, the initial investment required to develop a meaningful space-based business is significantly higher than that for a software/Web-based business. VCs are a lot tighter with their money these days. They are typically only entertaining large investments in the biotech industy, with has a lot more mature private sector component than the space industry.
Second, it's was relatively easy for an entrepreneur to sell the idea of an internet-based business by just pointing to an analog in an existing brick-and-mortar industry and saying a variation of, "We'll do what they're doing, but we'll do it more efficiently." It's hard to see how this sort of argument applies to the nascent private space-industry.
Third, the Internet bubble was partly fueled by a relatively large population of software development expertise. Training software developer, and developing actual software, is significantly easier and cheaper than doing almost *anything* related to space travel. Certainly cheaper than doing anything related to cutting-edge, industry transforming space engineering R&D.
Fourth, the VC's, and the rest of the investment community, are relatively savvy wrt software, computers, telecom, and related businesses (or, at least they *think* they are). It was easy for a VC to do some "due diligence" and a gut check and decide to commit some dollars to an internet-based business. As a group, they are not at all savvy wrt space. The majority of VCs/early stage investors are not nearly as cutting edge, forward thinking, or even smart as they'd have the general public believe. It'll take a lot more than one success by one group for the bulk of the early stage institutional investors to start licking their chops.
The fifth reason I don't think there will be 90's style spike in investment for space travel is that, as cool as SpaceShipOne is, it doesn't fundamentally alter the economics of space travel. None of the XPrize contenders that I know off were working on fit that criteria. The internet was so compelling to investors because they could see that it did improve operational efficiencies for a large number of industries, even if the investors didn't know *how* those efficiencies would be manifested. SpaceShipOne does seem to incrementally improve the space travel equation by executing a low-cost composite-based variation of the Orbital Sciences/Pegasus rocket. But I'm pretty sure that it's does not match up as a transformative technology that the internet was.
The one group where there might be a pick-up in interest is the private investors like Paul Allen and Carmack. I'd also think that their might be a pick up in investments in the institutions (universities and labs) that are doing fundamental research in novel space technology. I wouldn't be surprised if those institutions start mining their patents and papers to see if they can "monetize" them via spin-offs, start-ups and/or licensing.
Nah. I'd say that large scale early-stage investment in space is several decades off, barring the development of some technology that fundamentally changes the economics of space travel.
I dunno. I never could get into this series of comic books. X-men, Spiderman, Hulk, The West Coast Avengers...I liked almost every other Marvel series better than F4. Two of the four team members (Reed and Sue Richards) had lame superpowers and the plots seemed kinda hokey and dated.
Johnny was alright. And Ben Grimm/Thing was good in his own series...esp those times he faced off with The Hulk.
"IT'S CLOBBERING TIME!!!"
Starting a company that doesn't need to scale up to mint Brink truckloads of money is also one of my dreams. It wouldn't have to be 10 or fewer people, in my case, but I would like to keep the numbers low, so that I can keep the quality of personnel high.
The one corporate archetype that I've found that could realize Paul's (and my) dream is the model that ARM follows. ARM is the intellectual property company that focuses on R&D behind the ARM family of RISC microprocessors. The trick is that they generate all their revenue from licensing fees and royalties from partners (like Intel), who take the R&D that ARM does and incorporates it into their own offerings (like StrongARM). ARM, while >10 employees, is miniscule when compared to it's competitors in the microprocessor space. And insanely profitable. ARM's is a fascinating story, and should be a case study for anyone who wants to see how a tenacious and dedicated team of really smart people can create a successful business in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds.
Licensing of IP is one of the few formulaic ways that I've seen where one can accomplish big money while maintaining a small core team.
Now that's a headline I'd get excited about.
I'd love a pair of sapphire-lensed sunglasses.
LMAO!
Sorry! I had to laugh. I read your comment, which was okay, AFAIC.
Then, I read your sig.
"You should be ashamed."..."Attack people, not ideas."
PRICELESS!!!
I think that if Google's leadership were to try such a thing, they'd be more interested in positioning Google to create an entirely Web-based desktop that is platform agnostic, than a traditional OS.
During the dotcom era, there was a company out of Maryland (sorry, can't remember the name...WorldOS, maybe?) trying to do this very thing. And there was the Network of Workstations project, that was started at UC-Berkeley (1996 to 1998).
Why would Google write an OS specific to any one hardware architecture, when, as we all know, "The network is the computer"?
I've seen some real lousy movies, but Cool World is the only big screen production that I've ever walked out on.