One third has chosen to use Microsoft.NET, building pages in C#/ASP.NET connecting to SQL Server.
I would expect students with an M$IT pedigree to have better taste. It proves that any sampling of programmers, even at an elite institution, will have some percentage of lamers.
Believe it or not, I worked in NASA's planetary program (Voyager Uranus, Galileo) in grad school.
I have also worked for Hughes Space & Com on commercial satellites. I certainly value scientific missions. Hubble in particular is a spectacular example of international cooperation. Cassini will be awesome.
Before you dismiss the lunar missions as a polical stunt check out the many mission reports that NASA has published. I flip through them occasionally consider them a treasure.
My original point was just that the national focus and risk taking of Apollo was created by polical forces that don't seem to be at work today. Regards.
That is a COMPLETELY misleading analysis. The amount of resources (Ie. money) spent is drastically different. If USA, and its partners, spent the same amount on ISS as the moon projects, then you may have a point. But as it stands now, you can't claim that the ISS isn't working out when no one, including USA, is really spending much on it.
I don't think so. I have read that Apollo cost about $50G adjusted for inflation. We are spending about that much (maybe a little less) on ISS. Regardless, the cold war competition gave the space program a desperate, singular purpose that today's program does not have.
I am a big fan of NASA. Despite the criticism they have received about Columbia, they have done an awesome job launching 100 perfect shuttles in a row. The planetary and astronomy programs are great. But NASA's mandate is weak and it shows
in their results
Yes, because we know the US has absolutely no history of oppression itself. And the US never, ever, violates human rights (*cough* guantanamo *cough*).
Europe chafs at the idea of having it's access to GPS denied every time the US get in a war with someone. If anything the US is being a bad ally by insisting on the ability to cut off Europe's access to a positioning system.
I don't know the details of how GPS was restricted during Gulf War II. Was it out for long? Where?
The civilian "spin" is not a crock. The US has a larger military than the Europe and China combined and both of them have many more civilian uses for a positioning system than military uses.
Nuclear power has legitimate civilian uses as well. The fact is there will be 2 positioning systems that will likely be opposed in the event of wartime. Having the Chinese aboard will be all the more provocative.
Furthermore the idea of "cheap" precision guided bombs is a bit silly. It takes a hell of alot more than unfettered access to an accurate positioning system to build a precision guided weapon. The technology for cruise missiles is a closely held secret of the US military, and most "smart weapons" are guided not by GPS but by laser marking.
The Chinese weapons programs will be greatly assisted by Galileo. To deny that is silly. The Chinese regime is totalitarian and has uncertain intentions with regard to the US. For the US to deny that is silly.
Iran and North Korea would hardly be helped by access to a positioning system because they don't even have missles with enough range to make such access usefull.
North Korea buzzed a missle over Japan not long ago and apparently have a missle that can reach Guam. I am continually amazed at the willingness of some to play down the growing threat posed by North Korea and Iran.
This is why I made my earlier joke about "ally" meaning "lackey", or "bitch" in American English. The US does not seem to consider someone an ally if they have even the possibility of doing anything counter to the will of the US. True alliance is an agreement of partners not of masters and slaves.
Hrm, maybe because it'd be seen as an act of war, and at least three of the contributing countries have enough operational nuclear warheads to turn America into a small and insignificant pile of radioactive dust?
There are acts of war and acts of nuclear war. I doubt seriously that the US locally disabling Galileo will be seen as an act of nuclear war. Apparently French and Russian GPS equipment was commonly used by the Iraqi regime to disrupt GPS. All that led to was a GPS-jammer guided bomb up the Iraqi user's kazoo! As for an attack on America, we can spread enough nuclear misery around to make that scenario seem unlikely.
But stick to the topic at hand. How is the EU's decision to build it's own positioning system un-ally like behavior?
Europe already has access to GPS for navigation and precision weapons. But it chafs at the idea of relying an American military system. So be it. But the civilian spin given to Galileo is a crock. Galileo will enable such Chinese and others to develop cheap precision guided bombs. History tells us that such weapons will proliferate to the Iranians and North Koreans as well. That is the problem. So the US has to take counter-measures (against our allies)and be capable of disrupting Galileo during wartime.
Why must nations always get involved and turn space exploration into an Us vs. Them contest?
Good question. Fear and paranoia drove the US to the greatest technical achievement of the millenium with the moon landings. Since then it has been all hugs and kisses with the Russians in the space station and no progress! I'll take the competition, and progress.
Like most of these people Bezos set aside a large block of stock for himself and his cronies when Amazon went public. The public's irrational demand for the stock inflates his shares values. The wealth transfer is real.
It's just more targets for our (The USA's) antisat weapons program.
It is interesting that China is aligned with Europe on this one. It is likely that the U.S. will have to develop jamming equipment and weapons to be used against a system deployed by our supposed NATO allies. It is the start of a new arms race initiated by the Europeans.
Re:While I remain unemployed.....since January.
on
Tech Rich Get Richer
·
· Score: 1
I've sent out 1001 resumes and received but one job offer...in Indiana (UGH!)!
I stayed unemployed in the Boston area for a year. The lifestyle and physical location mean little it you have no career. I took a great job in Kansas City.
Because in the past, it was Media tycoons, publishers, industrialists, bankers who got rich. It often took them their entire lives, their childrens lives. It was 'old money'. Now, it seems many on this list managed to go from zero to super rich in a matter of a few years. Look at Bill Gates. He hasn't always been rich, now he has more money than anybody.
Its the efficiency of the stock market my friend! Most of the billionaires listed were minted in a few hours on the day of their IPO's.
How else to you explain a charlatan like Bezos?
The investments you make through your 401K are just transfer payments to these crooks. Don't think for a second that you are "putting your money to work." Buy a business or bonds to do that.
Astronomers have been so horrified by press scares over asteroids that they are toning down the scale they use to rate the threat posed in an attempt to discourage journalists from covering potential collisions.
How disengenuous. For years astronomers have whipped up a frenzy about the latest asteroid encounter, presumably to compete for funding with the other "natural disaster" sciences of climatology and volcanology. The amount of funding they is proportional to how much fear they can produce in the the public. slashdot.org dutifully assists by publishing these stories.
So people, before you start flaming, ponder over the fact that a law for hiring outside employees doesn't exist because there hasn't ever been a need for it. Now with the outsourcing, it may not be too long before the government comes up with an H-1 like plan.
Another apologist for our poorer trading partners who grow by taking advantage of the U.S. The fact remains that America has an asymetric economic and trade relationship with the rest of the world and it and the American worker suffers. You don't care about the worker? You think he retrain and find a new job? Maybe so. But these people are citizens and have a vote. Over the long term large numbers of these people will force government policies to shift radically, to everyone's disadvantage. To prevent such upheaval it would be polically expedient for our government to get rid of H-1B's during the economic downturn.
I would caution anybody who reads interested in space to be wary of spacedaily.com. It is very biased against the U.S. in general and for European space (oxymoron?). It is also
littered with environmental political pablum.
I prefer spaceflightnow.com.
Amen to LISP/Scheme macros. Java and C++ have reimplemented so many other Lisp ideas you wonder why attention never turned to the preprocessor. After 15+ years of C++/Java and OO we would still all be better off programming in Lisp.
Take a look at the Shuttle stack and what do you see? A fragile spaceplane sitting on the back of a huge propellant tank between two massive solid rocket boosters. The Shuttle has to sit right in the middle of all the turmoil of launch because we once believed it would be cheaper to bring back those engines and rebuild them than to build new ones. That has not proved to be the case -- far from it -- but it has left us with a crew sitting in the most vulnerable position possible in terms of design. Simply put, had that spaceplane been on top of the stack, the destruction of Challenger and Columbia wouldn't have occurred. The CAIB ignored this flawed design and that makes their conclusions suspect: no amount of inspections or condemning another NASA generation to worry over this thing will solve it.
Pundits have claimed that the parallel launch configuration of the orbiter and external tank are a design flaw. Hog wash. The size of the orbiter precludes an inline configuration.
If you want to fly "spam in a can" on top of a larger rockets then welcome back to 1960!
Now that a major risk of known to be debris strike, to avert it why not have the shuttle ascend right side up? The shuttle currently flies upside down for two (lousy) historical reasons: to simplify the manuver for RTLS abort, and a for line of sight radio link with the ground and antennae on the nose of the orbiter. There are no groundstations down range anymore. RTLS will not be made any more insanely risky than it already is by having the orbiter stack roll 180 degrees to an RTLS attitude. The shuttle already rolls to heads up after 5 minutes of flight in order to acquire the TDRS satellite for tracking and communications. Doing so in flight through the lower atmosphere
should have added benefits. Tank debris will tend to fall away from the orbiter instead of into it. The lift provided by the orbiter wings should improve performance.
"If we looked at what we do in software, if we could only compile and test our program once a year, we'd never get anything done. But that's the mode of aerospace.' "
Aerospace is traditionally less tolerable to crashes than software and I'd say that is a good thing.
Slashdot Mirror
I would expect students with an M$IT pedigree to have better taste. It proves that any sampling of programmers, even at an elite institution, will have some percentage of lamers.
Believe it or not, I worked in NASA's planetary program (Voyager Uranus, Galileo) in grad school. I have also worked for Hughes Space & Com on commercial satellites. I certainly value scientific missions. Hubble in particular is a spectacular example of international cooperation. Cassini will be awesome.
Before you dismiss the lunar missions as a polical stunt check out the many mission reports that NASA has published. I flip through them occasionally consider them a treasure.
My original point was just that the national focus and risk taking of Apollo was created by polical forces that don't seem to be at work today. Regards.
I don't think so. I have read that Apollo cost about $50G adjusted for inflation. We are spending about that much (maybe a little less) on ISS. Regardless, the cold war competition gave the space program a desperate, singular purpose that today's program does not have.
I am a big fan of NASA. Despite the criticism they have received about Columbia, they have done an awesome job launching 100 perfect shuttles in a row. The planetary and astronomy programs are great. But NASA's mandate is weak and it shows in their results
Happily the Supreme Court put a stop to the fix! Go GDubya
Are there still survivors there?
Er.. We already lost Germany. I think Fiji still likes us though.
Sir, I am enjoying this thread.
Europe chafs at the idea of having it's access to GPS denied every time the US get in a war with someone. If anything the US is being a bad ally by insisting on the ability to cut off Europe's access to a positioning system.I don't know the details of how GPS was restricted during Gulf War II. Was it out for long? Where?
The civilian "spin" is not a crock. The US has a larger military than the Europe and China combined and both of them have many more civilian uses for a positioning system than military uses.Nuclear power has legitimate civilian uses as well. The fact is there will be 2 positioning systems that will likely be opposed in the event of wartime. Having the Chinese aboard will be all the more provocative.
Furthermore the idea of "cheap" precision guided bombs is a bit silly. It takes a hell of alot more than unfettered access to an accurate positioning system to build a precision guided weapon. The technology for cruise missiles is a closely held secret of the US military, and most "smart weapons" are guided not by GPS but by laser marking.The Chinese weapons programs will be greatly assisted by Galileo. To deny that is silly. The Chinese regime is totalitarian and has uncertain intentions with regard to the US. For the US to deny that is silly.
Iran and North Korea would hardly be helped by access to a positioning system because they don't even have missles with enough range to make such access usefull.North Korea buzzed a missle over Japan not long ago and apparently have a missle that can reach Guam. I am continually amazed at the willingness of some to play down the growing threat posed by North Korea and Iran.
This is why I made my earlier joke about "ally" meaning "lackey", or "bitch" in American English. The US does not seem to consider someone an ally if they have even the possibility of doing anything counter to the will of the US. True alliance is an agreement of partners not of masters and slaves.Amen, brother. I'm going home to my bitch...
There are acts of war and acts of nuclear war. I doubt seriously that the US locally disabling Galileo will be seen as an act of nuclear war. Apparently French and Russian GPS equipment was commonly used by the Iraqi regime to disrupt GPS. All that led to was a GPS-jammer guided bomb up the Iraqi user's kazoo! As for an attack on America, we can spread enough nuclear misery around to make that scenario seem unlikely.
Europe already has access to GPS for navigation and precision weapons. But it chafs at the idea of relying an American military system. So be it. But the civilian spin given to Galileo is a crock. Galileo will enable such Chinese and others to develop cheap precision guided bombs. History tells us that such weapons will proliferate to the Iranians and North Koreans as well. That is the problem. So the US has to take counter-measures (against our allies)and be capable of disrupting Galileo during wartime.
Good question. Fear and paranoia drove the US to the greatest technical achievement of the millenium with the moon landings. Since then it has been all hugs and kisses with the Russians in the space station and no progress! I'll take the competition, and progress.
Dear Slashdot,
Don't you think it is ironic that I have to scroll through Microsoft adds to read anti-Microsoft rants on your comments page. Ah capitalism.
Like most of these people Bezos set aside a large block of stock for himself and his cronies when Amazon went public. The public's irrational demand for the stock inflates his shares values. The wealth transfer is real.
It is interesting that China is aligned with Europe on this one. It is likely that the U.S. will have to develop jamming equipment and weapons to be used against a system deployed by our supposed NATO allies. It is the start of a new arms race initiated by the Europeans.
I stayed unemployed in the Boston area for a year. The lifestyle and physical location mean little it you have no career. I took a great job in Kansas City.
Its the efficiency of the stock market my friend! Most of the billionaires listed were minted in a few hours on the day of their IPO's. How else to you explain a charlatan like Bezos? The investments you make through your 401K are just transfer payments to these crooks. Don't think for a second that you are "putting your money to work." Buy a business or bonds to do that.
How disengenuous. For years astronomers have whipped up a frenzy about the latest asteroid encounter, presumably to compete for funding with the other "natural disaster" sciences of climatology and volcanology. The amount of funding they is proportional to how much fear they can produce in the the public. slashdot.org dutifully assists by publishing these stories.
How about Emacs.NET?
Another apologist for our poorer trading partners who grow by taking advantage of the U.S. The fact remains that America has an asymetric economic and trade relationship with the rest of the world and it and the American worker suffers. You don't care about the worker? You think he retrain and find a new job? Maybe so. But these people are citizens and have a vote. Over the long term large numbers of these people will force government policies to shift radically, to everyone's disadvantage. To prevent such upheaval it would be polically expedient for our government to get rid of H-1B's during the economic downturn.
Here is a summary of the arguments made whenever the subject of Hiroshima comes up:
Repeat until bored
I would caution anybody who reads interested in space to be wary of spacedaily.com. It is very biased against the U.S. in general and for European space (oxymoron?). It is also littered with environmental political pablum. I prefer spaceflightnow.com.
And spelling too.
Amen to LISP/Scheme macros. Java and C++ have reimplemented so many other Lisp ideas you wonder why attention never turned to the preprocessor. After 15+ years of C++/Java and OO we would still all be better off programming in Lisp.
At 1600+ mph a chuck of foam fell down 10' from the bipod to the the orbiter wing.
Pundits have claimed that the parallel launch configuration of the orbiter and external tank are a design flaw. Hog wash. The size of the orbiter precludes an inline configuration. If you want to fly "spam in a can" on top of a larger rockets then welcome back to 1960!
Now that a major risk of known to be debris strike, to avert it why not have the shuttle ascend right side up? The shuttle currently flies upside down for two (lousy) historical reasons: to simplify the manuver for RTLS abort, and a for line of sight radio link with the ground and antennae on the nose of the orbiter. There are no groundstations down range anymore. RTLS will not be made any more insanely risky than it already is by having the orbiter stack roll 180 degrees to an RTLS attitude. The shuttle already rolls to heads up after 5 minutes of flight in order to acquire the TDRS satellite for tracking and communications. Doing so in flight through the lower atmosphere should have added benefits. Tank debris will tend to fall away from the orbiter instead of into it. The lift provided by the orbiter wings should improve performance.
Aerospace is traditionally less tolerable to crashes than software and I'd say that is a good thing.