Stardust was an superb mission considering the nice samples and clear images of Wild2 (almost an afterthought). The related mission Genesis has been out of the news after its hard landing, but apparently many of the samples are in good shape, too.
How are you supposed to trust ANYTHING the Bush Administration does after they admit to starting a war based on false pretenses? They defended the invasion of Iraq SO HARD that they would demonize their opponents and always would deny any wrongdoing was done, until it came out that it was all a lie. It is shameful.
False pretenses? Sadam was a menace to the region and US interests. He murdered 100's of thousands of people. He invaded his neighbors and did unspeakable atrocities on them, including the use of chemical weapons. He flaunted dozens of UN resolutions, broke his Gulf War I surrender agreement, and deeply corrupted the UN oil for food program. No. I'd say he got his just deserts. Hang'em high, I say.
It is unfortunate to say, but this Bush Administration is one of the most corrupt in history. Look at the Abramoff lobbying scandals, FEMA's failure with Katrina,..
Lobbying corruption reflects on the congressional leadership, not President Bush. FEMA's failure? It is pretty well recognised that New Orleans was a disfunctional city. No agency could make that look good. You got him on the debt. Torture of innocent prisoners? The guilty soldiers were convicted, discharged, and jailed. Justice was done.
The answer is simple. The site is run by leftist, God-hating, flag burning, terrorist sympathizing liberals! About 60% of the community (by my calculation) are liberal. Therefore the majority views get promoted by moderation and the minority views suppressed. Look at my sig.
I have to agree. The democrat's treatment of Judge Alito has been deplorable, and their lack of support of the troops in Iraq is downright Un-American.
Then I found myself back with C++ again. First I wrote my own List classes. However I soon realized that STL made available exactly the types of data structures that Perl has. Maps, Lists, Vectors. And since I understood what I was doing in Perl, it was so much easier to catch on with C++.
You should give scheme a try. It has builtin lists, association lists (maps), vectors, tuples, complex numbers, and much more. You'll wonder what all of the fuss about C++ templates and STL is. As for Perl, it is useful to process text files, but I wouldn't use it for much else. The syntax is somewhat baroque and gets in the way.
You would be wise to consider the problems with this fair seeming license. What good is simplicity if a license can be subverted? Those who don't learn history are doomed to repeat it.
Indeed. The Pegasus launch vehicle has been proving this for years. Being hauled to 40,000 ft by a carrier aircraft and having wings to provide lift in the lower atmosphere atmosphere dramatically shrink the size of the launch vehicle. Only program is the idea doesn't scale very well. Pegasus can only carry about 1000 lbs to LEO. There aren't any jets that can carry a much larger vehicle.
I am a little suprised at the naivete of the Mr. Nair's comments. The quote could have come from a NASA administrator back in 1969 when they proposed the Space Shuttle. The idea of reusable, winged launch vehicle has been pretty well discredited, both by the US with the shuttle and by the Russians with Buran.
In his zeal to take a political potshot Zonk has ignored the most recent developments. Don't be deceived. NASA administrator Michael Griffin has reconsidered earlier the earlier decision to scrap Hubble servicing. A shuttle crew will indeed have to risk their lives to extend Hubble's life for a few more years. Relax. There should still be lots of money left over to invest in Iraqi freedom, and to kill Al Qaida.
Ironically, the best reason for replacing coal, the threat of global warming from atmospheric CO2 release, is given short shrift as an "international political issue" in Schmitt's introductory chapter on our energy future. In this and in a bias toward non-governmental solutions, Schmitt's text unfortunately betrays the caution of an incompletely recovered politician.
Having revealed your bias toward government solutions one wonders if you have completely recovered from energy shortage and price fixing schemes of the 1970's?
Zap the soil lying there right on the surface and see what happens. Yes, loose hematite balls.
You don't know what your are talking about. Here is a picture of a Fulgerite. The lighting discharge gives the dendritic tubes cylindrical symetry. They are not spherical. Also the process of annealing does not fractionate hematite from the surrounding rocks. How would a lightning strike do that.
Incidentally, how do you imagine those "particulates flying around in the [wispy] atmosphere" get there -- thundering herds of wildebeest? Towering convection columns? The only plausible force available to loft the mass of those enormous dust storms is itself electrostatic.
Again, a crazy idea. If you are suggesting that dust is levitated into the atmosphere by electrostatic forces? Absurd. Dust enters the atmosphere through saltation. Sand size grains are picked up by wind and impact back to the ground kicking dust into the turbulent boundary layer and suspension. This is great reference on the process.
Fulgurites will not be perfectly spherical like the blueberries, they tend to be flattened shapes. Nor would they be uniformly distributed in the host rock. Also the blueberries were examinied closely enough to see that they are not made of glass like fugerites. They are mostly hematite. I can't say much about lightning conditions on early Mars, except that lightning is less likely to discharge in a thinner atmosphere. But with all of the particulates flying around in the atmosphere I wouldn't be surprised if it occured.
The new study indicates chemical signatures in the bedrock, interpreted...as evidence for widespread, intermittent water at Mars' surface, may have instead been created by the reaction of sulfur-bearing steam vapors moving up through volcanic ash deposits.
The famed 'blueberries' present in the Martian sediments are concretions. On Earth they only form in the presence of water. They are very widespread in the sedimentary layers of Meridiani. The article gives no alternate explanation. Such concretions are not present in the fumurole-altered sediments of Solfatara Crater. That does not mean the Martian sediments are not volcanoclastic in origin, but the case for water immersion is still strong.
I worked in the planetary program in the late-1980's and 1990's when VAX and Sun OS were all you'd see. You used to see a lot of XV! I would have been surprised if Windows had any significant presence. I know scientific computing is a small market, but Sun, DEC, and SGI really gave it away. Scientists loved them.
Yesterday CmdrTaco takes the unusual step of explaining his rationale behind supporting spam submitters and link whores like ScuttleMonkey. He receives a ton of replies expressing dissatisfaction with the practice and suggesting remedies to the problem. What do we get today? 6 more ScuttleMonkey submissions. Am I missing something?
An open patent review program would set up a system on the patent office Web site where visitors could submit search criteria and subscribe to electronic alerts about patent applications in specific areas.
This will only make anti-innovation patent enforcement more efficient. Great for patent holders (and the Patent Office I might add). Lousy for everyone else. I was hoping they would consider rescinding all software patents.
Let, me guess...you happen to think that portage is amazingly slow in doing anything right?
I admire the function of portage greatly. It is the distiguishing feature of Gentoo that makes it a 'living' OS. Its speed is not a huge issue compared to the time taken for compilation. I don't think the design is clean. Portage is not great because it is written in Python. It was not necessary to implement it in something other than C or shell.
You are confused if you think of Python is a shell language. Shells invoke programs and provide variables and control flow for them. That's it. No classes, no inheritance, no cruft. Simple. Great in a base system application context. Great to string together the simple orthogonal programs that have made *nix famous. Python is a kitchen sink OO extension language which can link C libraries. Loaded with syntactic sugar, it has a much wider scope than shell and it is massive overkill. Python is also conceptually unstable. Constant incompatable upgrades are made. Again, most inappropriate for base system glue.
When shell scripts get to a certain level of complexity (I know I've gotten there when I have to turn to my coworkers and ask, "Did I get the quoting right in this script?"), you will save lots of development and maintenance time by using a scripting language with more large program features.
Supporting a program written by people who do not know what they are doing is a challenge regardless of the language used. The point is not germane to this discussion.
I see Python, Perl, and Ruby as the major competitors for that slot. I could go into why I prefer Python to Perl or Ruby, but that would be an unneccesary flame war. I would absolutely respect any distro based on either. But it is nice when you can standardize on one language for complex system level scripts.
A *nix init system written using Perl? You must be on acid.
Sadly the portage system is written in Python, which is my point. Gentoo depends on Python. A simple clean design would have Gentoo consist of a kernel, binutils, compiler stack, init scripts, and portage written in C and depending on the C library only. Instead the portage system pulls in Python for no particular reason. By all means use Python as an application language. Foundational system services should not be written in it.
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Stardust was an superb mission considering the nice samples and clear images of Wild2 (almost an afterthought). The related mission Genesis has been out of the news after its hard landing, but apparently many of the samples are in good shape, too.
How are you supposed to trust ANYTHING the Bush Administration does after they admit to starting a war based on false pretenses? They defended the invasion of Iraq SO HARD that they would demonize their opponents and always would deny any wrongdoing was done, until it came out that it was all a lie. It is shameful.
False pretenses? Sadam was a menace to the region and US interests. He murdered 100's of thousands of people. He invaded his neighbors and did unspeakable atrocities on them, including the use of chemical weapons. He flaunted dozens of UN resolutions, broke his Gulf War I surrender agreement, and deeply corrupted the UN oil for food program. No. I'd say he got his just deserts. Hang'em high, I say.
It is unfortunate to say, but this Bush Administration is one of the most corrupt in history. Look at the Abramoff lobbying scandals, FEMA's failure with Katrina,..
Lobbying corruption reflects on the congressional leadership, not President Bush. FEMA's failure? It is pretty well recognised that New Orleans was a disfunctional city. No agency could make that look good. You got him on the debt. Torture of innocent prisoners? The guilty soldiers were convicted, discharged, and jailed. Justice was done.
Pronounce GNU with a hard G to avoid horrible confusion.
Sorry, I typed an incomplete link. Here is the link what I wanted to show, and how MIT/BSD are not as beneficial as you might think.
The answer is simple. The site is run by leftist, God-hating, flag burning, terrorist sympathizing liberals! About 60% of the community (by my calculation) are liberal. Therefore the majority views get promoted by moderation and the minority views suppressed. Look at my sig.
I have to agree. The democrat's treatment of Judge Alito has been deplorable, and their lack of support of the troops in Iraq is downright Un-American.
Then I found myself back with C++ again. First I wrote my own List classes. However I soon realized that STL made available exactly the types of data structures that Perl has. Maps, Lists, Vectors. And since I understood what I was doing in Perl, it was so much easier to catch on with C++.
You should give scheme a try. It has builtin lists, association lists (maps), vectors, tuples, complex numbers, and much more. You'll wonder what all of the fuss about C++ templates and STL is. As for Perl, it is useful to process text files, but I wouldn't use it for much else. The syntax is somewhat baroque and gets in the way.
You would be wise to consider the problems with this fair seeming license. What good is simplicity if a license can be subverted? Those who don't learn history are doomed to repeat it.
Maybe its better than firing rockets straight up.
Indeed. The Pegasus launch vehicle has been proving this for years. Being hauled to 40,000 ft by a carrier aircraft and having wings to provide lift in the lower atmosphere atmosphere dramatically shrink the size of the launch vehicle. Only program is the idea doesn't scale very well. Pegasus can only carry about 1000 lbs to LEO. There aren't any jets that can carry a much larger vehicle.
I am a little suprised at the naivete of the Mr. Nair's comments. The quote could have come from a NASA administrator back in 1969 when they proposed the Space Shuttle. The idea of reusable, winged launch vehicle has been pretty well discredited, both by the US with the shuttle and by the Russians with Buran.
In his zeal to take a political potshot Zonk has ignored the most recent developments. Don't be deceived. NASA administrator Michael Griffin has reconsidered earlier the earlier decision to scrap Hubble servicing. A shuttle crew will indeed have to risk their lives to extend Hubble's life for a few more years. Relax. There should still be lots of money left over to invest in Iraqi freedom, and to kill Al Qaida.
Ironically, the best reason for replacing coal, the threat of global warming from atmospheric CO2 release, is given short shrift as an "international political issue" in Schmitt's introductory chapter on our energy future. In this and in a bias toward non-governmental solutions, Schmitt's text unfortunately betrays the caution of an incompletely recovered politician.
Having revealed your bias toward government solutions one wonders if you have completely recovered from energy shortage and price fixing schemes of the 1970's?
test test
Zap the soil lying there right on the surface and see what happens. Yes, loose hematite balls.
You don't know what your are talking about. Here is a picture of a Fulgerite. The lighting discharge gives the dendritic tubes cylindrical symetry. They are not spherical. Also the process of annealing does not fractionate hematite from the surrounding rocks. How would a lightning strike do that.
Incidentally, how do you imagine those "particulates flying around in the [wispy] atmosphere" get there -- thundering herds of wildebeest? Towering convection columns? The only plausible force available to loft the mass of those enormous dust storms is itself electrostatic.
Again, a crazy idea. If you are suggesting that dust is levitated into the atmosphere by electrostatic forces? Absurd. Dust enters the atmosphere through saltation. Sand size grains are picked up by wind and impact back to the ground kicking dust into the turbulent boundary layer and suspension. This is great reference on the process.
Fulgurites will not be perfectly spherical like the blueberries, they tend to be flattened shapes. Nor would they be uniformly distributed in the host rock. Also the blueberries were examinied closely enough to see that they are not made of glass like fugerites. They are mostly hematite. I can't say much about lightning conditions on early Mars, except that lightning is less likely to discharge in a thinner atmosphere. But with all of the particulates flying around in the atmosphere I wouldn't be surprised if it occured.
The new study indicates chemical signatures in the bedrock, interpreted...as evidence for widespread, intermittent water at Mars' surface, may have instead been created by the reaction of sulfur-bearing steam vapors moving up through volcanic ash deposits.
The famed 'blueberries' present in the Martian sediments are concretions. On Earth they only form in the presence of water. They are very widespread in the sedimentary layers of Meridiani. The article gives no alternate explanation. Such concretions are not present in the fumurole-altered sediments of Solfatara Crater. That does not mean the Martian sediments are not volcanoclastic in origin, but the case for water immersion is still strong.
I worked in the planetary program in the late-1980's and 1990's when VAX and Sun OS were all you'd see. You used to see a lot of XV! I would have been surprised if Windows had any significant presence. I know scientific computing is a small market, but Sun, DEC, and SGI really gave it away. Scientists loved them.
I think my criticism that there is cronyism in the administration of this site is valid.
Yesterday CmdrTaco takes the unusual step of explaining his rationale behind supporting spam submitters and link whores like ScuttleMonkey. He receives a ton of replies expressing dissatisfaction with the practice and suggesting remedies to the problem. What do we get today? 6 more ScuttleMonkey submissions. Am I missing something?
See this for what I think of your comment. The groupthink on this site never ceases to amaze me.
Here are my recent observations on use of the term "whiner" on this forum.
An open patent review program would set up a system on the patent office Web site where visitors could submit search criteria and subscribe to electronic alerts about patent applications in specific areas.
This will only make anti-innovation patent enforcement more efficient. Great for patent holders (and the Patent Office I might add). Lousy for everyone else. I was hoping they would consider rescinding all software patents.
You stated precisely what I wanted to say. I'd mod you up, but I haven't gotten mod points in years.
Let, me guess...you happen to think that portage is amazingly slow in doing anything right?
I admire the function of portage greatly. It is the distiguishing feature of Gentoo that makes it a 'living' OS. Its speed is not a huge issue compared to the time taken for compilation. I don't think the design is clean. Portage is not great because it is written in Python. It was not necessary to implement it in something other than C or shell.
Do you object to using shell scripts?
You are confused if you think of Python is a shell language. Shells invoke programs and provide variables and control flow for them. That's it. No classes, no inheritance, no cruft. Simple. Great in a base system application context. Great to string together the simple orthogonal programs that have made *nix famous. Python is a kitchen sink OO extension language which can link C libraries. Loaded with syntactic sugar, it has a much wider scope than shell and it is massive overkill. Python is also conceptually unstable. Constant incompatable upgrades are made. Again, most inappropriate for base system glue.
When shell scripts get to a certain level of complexity (I know I've gotten there when I have to turn to my coworkers and ask, "Did I get the quoting right in this script?"), you will save lots of development and maintenance time by using a scripting language with more large program features.
Supporting a program written by people who do not know what they are doing is a challenge regardless of the language used. The point is not germane to this discussion.
I see Python, Perl, and Ruby as the major competitors for that slot. I could go into why I prefer Python to Perl or Ruby, but that would be an unneccesary flame war. I would absolutely respect any distro based on either. But it is nice when you can standardize on one language for complex system level scripts.
A *nix init system written using Perl? You must be on acid.
Sadly the portage system is written in Python, which is my point. Gentoo depends on Python. A simple clean design would have Gentoo consist of a kernel, binutils, compiler stack, init scripts, and portage written in C and depending on the C library only. Instead the portage system pulls in Python for no particular reason. By all means use Python as an application language. Foundational system services should not be written in it.