The same thing can be done using already existing systems, like, say, posting a comment on the blog website
So every time somebody makes a post in response to a post I've made, I have to assume that they're also going to take the time to comment in my blog about it?
Ever since LiveJournal got big and popular, a number of companies have been offering to buy LiveJournal. I suppose it was inevitable, but the more I talked to everybody, the less interested I became in selling. With a few exceptions, nobody seemed to "get it", and people's ideas for LiveJournal's future were generally lame. I started to realize that selling LiveJournal would mean killing LiveJournal, so I didn't. Then one day Six Apart contacts us, we start talking, and here we are. I know you may not necessarily trust me when I say they're a cool company, but I'd ask at least that you give them a chance before you start rioting in the streets. I have a lot of confidence that this union will produce cool things.
Ben and Mena, the founders of Six Apart, have built a great company and hand-picked a lot of great people. Over the past couple months I've come to know their executive team really well, and they're people I feel confident taking over control of my baby. They've already shown that they'll defer to me on issues of community, fearful of doing anything that'd upset people. As for the rest of the team, I've only started meeting them all, but my mouth hit the floor when I saw some of the latest stuff they have in the works.
If you want to run for the hills and backup your journal and move to another service, feel free, but hopefully you'll be back in 6 months when we've proven ourselves.
Perhaps we'll see livejournal being touted as a more "personal" free solution, with Movable Type touted as the more "professional" solution. I figure we'll see greater interoperability between the two, allowing LJ'ers to easily add Movable Type blogs to their friends list, and vice versa. Overall, this would lead to a greater incentive to choose LJ/MT instead of, say, Blogger.
I think that just means people have spyware installed on their computers which are inserting banner ads. I remember the same thing happened with my old roommate and google.
Here's an interesting blog post by Mena, President of Six Apart. I thought the following quote was interesting in the context of the typical "bloggerz sux0r" threads you see on slashdot:
I believe that LiveJournal has, unfortunately, received a bum rap because many have considered the postings on LiveJournal to be trivial. It's sort of like a vicious circle: Journalists make fun of webloggers saying that they only post about their cats, webloggers make fun of LiveJournalers saying that they only post about high school angst and LiveJournalers make fun of webloggers saying that they are SUV-driving yuppies who think they have something important to say (and I'm generalizing). The fact is, webloggers and LiveJournalers are in essence doing the same thing: they are posting their thoughts to people who are important to them. For some webloggers, it's 100,000 people, for others it is 10. For LiveJournalers, it may be 30 people, it may be 3 (or a combination of some number).
TrackBack is a damned handy system, which lets you see which other blogs have linked to a particular post that you've made. It's seen in many of the more "professional" blogs, and it's a great tool for finding out about commentary on your posts. I was actually thinking of ditching LiveJournal for a service which supported TrackBack, but I guess I'll now be able to stick around.
I heartily advise that CS majors also take at least a few courses in neuroscience and psychology. Programming is all well and good, but there's nothing quite as exciting as understanding the computer in your own head. Psych courses come in handy when it comes to dealing with other people and understanding yourself. There's also plenty of exciting opportunities in neuroscience and cognitive science for computer models of brain systems.
But we need to stop using this half-developmentally-funded 1st-generation flying experiment.
Yup. I really wish that shuttle recovery funds would have been spent instead on making sure that the CEV is the best it can be.
BTW, before anyone says "Private industry should make it, not NASA!", private industry *does* make spacecraft. Boeing, Lockheed, etc, are prime contractors for NASA, and do most of the work. If you want *small* private industry, well, they first need to actually develop real spacecraft. They're working on it, but they're still far away.
The problem isn't that companies like Boeing and Lockheed are large. The problem is that they're mostly isolated from competitive market forces and subsist almost entirely off massive government contracts, giving them no real reason to become more efficient or less costly. Plus, NASA has a tendency to be overly specific in their design requirements, so that NASA in effect ends up making a lot of design decisions before the company has found out what would actually work best.
Cost-plus contracting makes me twitch uncontrollably. I really wish NASA would be more like a customer and simply provide demand for craft which can achieve the functions they want. They could help out on the design/supply side only where their expertise is asked for, rather than trying to keep their grip on the entire process.
I'd say that the current state of the art could dramatically decrease the number of people needed to control a robot (from several dozen to a handful), with a slight decrease in reliability. This decrease in reliability can be compensated for by have an increased number of relatively inexpensive rovers. Current research could the efficiency of robots even more.
Also, although the environment is certainly a little different from that of Mars, we did have a robot which was able to explore for hundreds of kilometers (mostly autonomously) in the antarctic and Atacama Desert. This was back in the late 90s.
It's as though those behind Wikipedia believe there is no real truth.
What makes you think that? I'm an active Wikipedian myself, and would argue that Wikipedia tries to stick solely to truth or what can be verified by other sources. In many cases, this is as simple as listing certain facts. In cases where the issues are more subjective, Wikipedia cites claims made by others (e.g. "global warming will cause problems" vs. "many scientists claim that global warming will cause problems, while other scientists disagree").
A slightly more economical alternative is MindRover, a "3D strategy/programming game" where you program robots and have them battle each other and solve mazes in a 3D world. It has a native Linux port, too!
If the spirit rover can last for a year on Mars, why do we need to send astronauts (naughts?)?
To pave the way for our civilization to eventually enter space, perhaps including you and me. Granted, things like the ISS haven't really done much to advance a permanent human presence in space, and the moon landings were primarily useful from a PR perspective. However, having something like a permanent, largely self-sustaining lunar or martian base would go a long way towards turning humanity into a spacefaring species.
Although, I do not particularly relish my life, there are those that claim that they enjoy my presence and to have me remove myself would cause them undue emotional distress. So, while what you say is true, other people seem to think they'd miss me being alive.
But according to your logic, if those people who care about you were also killed, then it'd be ok?
The costs of going to mars are expensive for many reasons; none of them are because nuclear power is banned in space. It isn't.
It isn't banned, but I recall chatting with a JPL guy who was telling me that the launch of any RTG requires presidential approval. This apparently leads to a massive amount of paperwork and bureaucratic complexity, which causes costs to be much higher.
I can't find it right now, but I recall reading about a poll where respondents initially responded rather ambivalently to space funding. However, after they were told what the actual funding levels were as a percentage of federal expenditures, their support for increased funding jumped dramatically.
This month's issue of Wired has a cover article on Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, which will be using SpaceShipTwo to run a commercial spaceflight service.
Some interesting quotes:
But look at the upside. The total price tag [of Virgin Galactic] is half the cost of a single Airbus A340-600 - and Virgin Atlantic ordered 26 of those last summer. In return, Branson gets bragging rights to one of the cooler breakthroughs of the early 21st century, with rocket-powered marketing opportunities that could fuel excitement - and sales - in his entire 200-company holding group....
SpaceShipOne's "shuttlecock" design adds an extra measure of safety. When the craft reaches its airless apogee, it hinges (feathers, in pilotspeak) into a broad V shape that automatically brakes the descent. "It lets you take an averagely competent pilot - like me - and throw anything you can think of at him, and still have everyone aboard get away safely," Tai explains. "The space shuttle does that with all sorts of fantastically complex systems. Burt's brilliance is that his ship uses smart design and the laws of physics. Which are, in fact, the only ways you can be truly drop-dead safe."...
Why stop there? "I hope we'll get to the moon in my lifetime. The first baby born there - what country will it be a citizen of? Maybe we can put a Virgin bank in space, or maybe a Virgin tax haven. We could pay for all our people to go up there just by depositing their money." Now, that's adventure capitalism!
The simple fact is that going into space gives Branson a chance to do what a lot of massively successful guys wish they could do: grab the wheel of history and tug. Opening the final frontier to private citizens will ensure Branson's place in the human saga. And if that means fleets of Virgin spaceships soaring through the inky void, serving sip-packs of Virgin Cola on the way to the latest Virgin Clubhouse, so be it. "Space is virgin territory," Branson says, trying out a prospective marketing line and shooting another grin. "Is that 21st-century enough for you?"
Take part in building fullsize SpaceShipOne mockup
on
More SpaceShipTwo Details
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
STUDENTS AND YOUNG PROFESSIONALS WANTED FOR THE CHANCE OF A LIFETIME
The X PRIZE Foundation is issuing out a call to arms for those interested in getting their hands dirty to further the cause of private spaceflight. In a tribute to the majesty of SpaceShipOne, the X PRIZE Foundation will be creating several full-size mockups of the historic private spacecraft to be used as early as this summer for outreach and education.
We are offering 10 students and young professionals the chance of a lifetime to come to the World's First Inland Spaceport at Mojave, California, to build multiple full-scale mockups of the SpaceShipOne.
This amazing opportunity is only open mainly for students and young professionals as an educational project. We are also looking for a project lead with experience in composites and/or fiberglass lay-up to oversee the project to completion.
Working at Scaled Composites' facilities, this team will dive in and get their hands dirty as they learn the spaceship building business.
Using the original tooling and methods employed in fabricating the actual spaceship, this will be an opportunity unlike any other. The project will take off in mid-January 2005 and continue throughout the spring semester. This highly competitive program could count for academic credit and will provide students and young professionals with the outstanding experience of working with composites, fiberglass lay-up and other processes associated with the building of a spaceship.
"This is an extraordinary educational opportunity to actually build a copy of SpaceShipOne using Burt Rutan's original tooling," said Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, CEO and Chairman of the X PRIZE Foundation. "The folks who get chosen for this project will work within the Scaled Composites facility and have the opportunity of a lifetime. In fact, I hope to get out to Mojave to participate when I can as well."
Project timeline: Mid January - Mid May Location: Mojave, CA Compensation: N/A Other: Physical work required - must be able to lift more than 40lbs Security: Background check will be performed Transportation: You must provide your own transportation
Individuals who wish to be a part of this project should send a resume and cover letter describing why you would like to participate to:
Brooke Owens, Director of Team Relations & Special Projects at brooke@xprize.org. Deadline for application is January 10, 2005, however, we will fill available slots on a rolling basis so please apply as soon as possible. Interested parties should be advised that this opportunity is unpaid, but rich in opportunity.
Coincidentally, when I was home for the holidays I saw an article about this in the Orlando Sentinel:
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/nationworld/ or l-asectsunamiham01010105jan01,1,2331864.story
It needs a free reg, or bugmenot.com
It's really amazing what they did. Here's a snippet from the article:
And with most telephone lines down and cell phones scarce, the ham-radio club's efforts proved invaluable as the scope of the disaster increased day after day.
The first messages were to let people on the Indian mainland know that those on the island were safe and unharmed.
A young waiter at Harpole's hotel asked them to get word to his mother in Hyderabad, India, that he was alive and well.
"We found a ham-radio operator on the mainland, gave the mother's telephone number," Harpole said. Within five minutes a ham operator in Hyderabad called the waiter's mother and relayed the message.
"He told us the mother was crying with joy," he said.
Harpole's group cheered and clapped. Word spread quickly across the island, and their work went on for hours and hours.
When Indian government officials learned of the hamradio operators, they relayed messages for official requests for medicines, water and blankets. Several of the radio operators headed south to Nicobar.
Slashdot Mirror
The same thing can be done using already existing systems, like, say, posting a comment on the blog website
So every time somebody makes a post in response to a post I've made, I have to assume that they're also going to take the time to comment in my blog about it?
or checking referrer logs.
I can do this on LiveJournal?
From Brad's post:
Ever since LiveJournal got big and popular, a number of companies have been offering to buy LiveJournal. I suppose it was inevitable, but the more I talked to everybody, the less interested I became in selling. With a few exceptions, nobody seemed to "get it", and people's ideas for LiveJournal's future were generally lame. I started to realize that selling LiveJournal would mean killing LiveJournal, so I didn't. Then one day Six Apart contacts us, we start talking, and here we are. I know you may not necessarily trust me when I say they're a cool company, but I'd ask at least that you give them a chance before you start rioting in the streets. I have a lot of confidence that this union will produce cool things.
Ben and Mena, the founders of Six Apart, have built a great company and hand-picked a lot of great people. Over the past couple months I've come to know their executive team really well, and they're people I feel confident taking over control of my baby. They've already shown that they'll defer to me on issues of community, fearful of doing anything that'd upset people. As for the rest of the team, I've only started meeting them all, but my mouth hit the floor when I saw some of the latest stuff they have in the works.
If you want to run for the hills and backup your journal and move to another service, feel free, but hopefully you'll be back in 6 months when we've proven ourselves.
Perhaps we'll see livejournal being touted as a more "personal" free solution, with Movable Type touted as the more "professional" solution. I figure we'll see greater interoperability between the two, allowing LJ'ers to easily add Movable Type blogs to their friends list, and vice versa. Overall, this would lead to a greater incentive to choose LJ/MT instead of, say, Blogger.
I think that just means people have spyware installed on their computers which are inserting banner ads. I remember the same thing happened with my old roommate and google.
Here's an interesting blog post by Mena, President of Six Apart. I thought the following quote was interesting in the context of the typical "bloggerz sux0r" threads you see on slashdot:
I believe that LiveJournal has, unfortunately, received a bum rap because many have considered the postings on LiveJournal to be trivial. It's sort of like a vicious circle: Journalists make fun of webloggers saying that they only post about their cats, webloggers make fun of LiveJournalers saying that they only post about high school angst and LiveJournalers make fun of webloggers saying that they are SUV-driving yuppies who think they have something important to say (and I'm generalizing). The fact is, webloggers and LiveJournalers are in essence doing the same thing: they are posting their thoughts to people who are important to them. For some webloggers, it's 100,000 people, for others it is 10. For LiveJournalers, it may be 30 people, it may be 3 (or a combination of some number).
TrackBack is a damned handy system, which lets you see which other blogs have linked to a particular post that you've made. It's seen in many of the more "professional" blogs, and it's a great tool for finding out about commentary on your posts. I was actually thinking of ditching LiveJournal for a service which supported TrackBack, but I guess I'll now be able to stick around.
I wonder how the police would react if somebody mounted a Wi-Fi camera on a remote-control blimp, helicopter, or airplane, in order to give live aerial coverage of a protest. Would they end up shooting it down or something?
I heartily advise that CS majors also take at least a few courses in neuroscience and psychology. Programming is all well and good, but there's nothing quite as exciting as understanding the computer in your own head. Psych courses come in handy when it comes to dealing with other people and understanding yourself. There's also plenty of exciting opportunities in neuroscience and cognitive science for computer models of brain systems.
Singapore and Hong Kong are reasonably close to being economically libertarian, although they're behind somewhat on the civil liberties end of things.
You make a good argument for why this supposed product should have TV-out.
But we need to stop using this half-developmentally-funded 1st-generation flying experiment.
Yup. I really wish that shuttle recovery funds would have been spent instead on making sure that the CEV is the best it can be.
BTW, before anyone says "Private industry should make it, not NASA!", private industry *does* make spacecraft. Boeing, Lockheed, etc, are prime contractors for NASA, and do most of the work. If you want *small* private industry, well, they first need to actually develop real spacecraft. They're working on it, but they're still far away.
The problem isn't that companies like Boeing and Lockheed are large. The problem is that they're mostly isolated from competitive market forces and subsist almost entirely off massive government contracts, giving them no real reason to become more efficient or less costly. Plus, NASA has a tendency to be overly specific in their design requirements, so that NASA in effect ends up making a lot of design decisions before the company has found out what would actually work best.
Cost-plus contracting makes me twitch uncontrollably. I really wish NASA would be more like a customer and simply provide demand for craft which can achieve the functions they want. They could help out on the design/supply side only where their expertise is asked for, rather than trying to keep their grip on the entire process.
I'd say that the current state of the art could dramatically decrease the number of people needed to control a robot (from several dozen to a handful), with a slight decrease in reliability. This decrease in reliability can be compensated for by have an increased number of relatively inexpensive rovers. Current research could the efficiency of robots even more.
Also, although the environment is certainly a little different from that of Mars, we did have a robot which was able to explore for hundreds of kilometers (mostly autonomously) in the antarctic and Atacama Desert. This was back in the late 90s.
It's as though those behind Wikipedia believe there is no real truth.
What makes you think that? I'm an active Wikipedian myself, and would argue that Wikipedia tries to stick solely to truth or what can be verified by other sources. In many cases, this is as simple as listing certain facts. In cases where the issues are more subjective, Wikipedia cites claims made by others (e.g. "global warming will cause problems" vs. "many scientists claim that global warming will cause problems, while other scientists disagree").
A slightly more economical alternative is MindRover, a "3D strategy/programming game" where you program robots and have them battle each other and solve mazes in a 3D world. It has a native Linux port, too!
If the spirit rover can last for a year on Mars, why do we need to send astronauts (naughts?)?
To pave the way for our civilization to eventually enter space, perhaps including you and me. Granted, things like the ISS haven't really done much to advance a permanent human presence in space, and the moon landings were primarily useful from a PR perspective. However, having something like a permanent, largely self-sustaining lunar or martian base would go a long way towards turning humanity into a spacefaring species.
We have not had much success with exploring volcanoes or driving across the desert with robots how can you claim we can make this huge leap.
This is actually an active area of research. Check out the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute's Mars Autonomy Project.
Although, I do not particularly relish my life, there are those that claim that they enjoy my presence and to have me remove myself would cause them undue emotional distress. So, while what you say is true, other people seem to think they'd miss me being alive.
But according to your logic, if those people who care about you were also killed, then it'd be ok?
The costs of going to mars are expensive for many reasons; none of them are because nuclear power is banned in space. It isn't.
It isn't banned, but I recall chatting with a JPL guy who was telling me that the launch of any RTG requires presidential approval. This apparently leads to a massive amount of paperwork and bureaucratic complexity, which causes costs to be much higher.
I can't find it right now, but I recall reading about a poll where respondents initially responded rather ambivalently to space funding. However, after they were told what the actual funding levels were as a percentage of federal expenditures, their support for increased funding jumped dramatically.
Ever been to Disney World?
This month's issue of Wired has a cover article on Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, which will be using SpaceShipTwo to run a commercial spaceflight service.
...
...
Some interesting quotes:
But look at the upside. The total price tag [of Virgin Galactic] is half the cost of a single Airbus A340-600 - and Virgin Atlantic ordered 26 of those last summer. In return, Branson gets bragging rights to one of the cooler breakthroughs of the early 21st century, with rocket-powered marketing opportunities that could fuel excitement - and sales - in his entire 200-company holding group.
SpaceShipOne's "shuttlecock" design adds an extra measure of safety. When the craft reaches its airless apogee, it hinges (feathers, in pilotspeak) into a broad V shape that automatically brakes the descent. "It lets you take an averagely competent pilot - like me - and throw anything you can think of at him, and still have everyone aboard get away safely," Tai explains. "The space shuttle does that with all sorts of fantastically complex systems. Burt's brilliance is that his ship uses smart design and the laws of physics. Which are, in fact, the only ways you can be truly drop-dead safe."
Why stop there? "I hope we'll get to the moon in my lifetime. The first baby born there - what country will it be a citizen of? Maybe we can put a Virgin bank in space, or maybe a Virgin tax haven. We could pay for all our people to go up there just by depositing their money." Now, that's adventure capitalism!
The simple fact is that going into space gives Branson a chance to do what a lot of massively successful guys wish they could do: grab the wheel of history and tug. Opening the final frontier to private citizens will ensure Branson's place in the human saga. And if that means fleets of Virgin spaceships soaring through the inky void, serving sip-packs of Virgin Cola on the way to the latest Virgin Clubhouse, so be it. "Space is virgin territory," Branson says, trying out a prospective marketing line and shooting another grin. "Is that 21st-century enough for you?"
I saw this over on X Prize Space Race News, and figured it might be of interest:
STUDENTS AND YOUNG PROFESSIONALS WANTED FOR THE CHANCE OF A LIFETIME
The X PRIZE Foundation is issuing out a call to arms for those interested in getting their hands dirty to further the cause of private spaceflight. In a tribute to the majesty of SpaceShipOne, the X PRIZE Foundation will be creating several full-size mockups of the historic private spacecraft to be used as early as this summer for outreach and education.
We are offering 10 students and young professionals the chance of a lifetime to come to the World's First Inland Spaceport at Mojave, California, to build multiple full-scale mockups of the SpaceShipOne.
This amazing opportunity is only open mainly for students and young professionals as an educational project. We are also looking for a project lead with experience in composites and/or fiberglass lay-up to oversee the project to completion.
Working at Scaled Composites' facilities, this team will dive in and get their hands dirty as they learn the spaceship building business.
Using the original tooling and methods employed in fabricating the actual spaceship, this will be an opportunity unlike any other. The project will take off in mid-January 2005 and continue throughout the spring semester. This highly competitive program could count for academic credit and will provide students and young professionals with the outstanding experience of working with composites, fiberglass lay-up and other processes associated with the building of a spaceship.
"This is an extraordinary educational opportunity to actually build a copy of SpaceShipOne using Burt Rutan's original tooling," said Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, CEO and Chairman of the X PRIZE Foundation. "The folks who get chosen for this project will work within the Scaled Composites facility and have the opportunity of a lifetime. In fact, I hope to get out to Mojave to participate when I can as well."
Project timeline: Mid January - Mid May
Location: Mojave, CA
Compensation: N/A
Other: Physical work required - must be able to lift more than 40lbs
Security: Background check will be performed
Transportation: You must provide your own transportation
Individuals who wish to be a part of this project should send a resume and cover letter describing why you would like to participate to:
Brooke Owens, Director of Team Relations & Special Projects at brooke@xprize.org. Deadline for application is January 10, 2005, however, we will fill available slots on a rolling basis so please apply as soon as possible. Interested parties should be advised that this opportunity is unpaid, but rich in opportunity.
That, and there's that whole "seeing Earth from space" thing, which is supposed to be a very profound experience.
Anyways, X-Prize head Peter Diamandis's new company Zero G is now offering a weightless flight with 15 parabolas for $3000 - $4000 a ticket.
Hum. The ways of slashdot editors are mysterious indeed.
Coincidentally, when I was home for the holidays I saw an article about this in the Orlando Sentinel:
/ or l-asectsunamiham01010105jan01,1,2331864.story
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/nationworld
It needs a free reg, or bugmenot.com
It's really amazing what they did. Here's a snippet from the article:
And with most telephone lines down and cell phones scarce, the ham-radio club's efforts proved invaluable as the scope of the disaster increased day after day.
The first messages were to let people on the Indian mainland know that those on the island were safe and unharmed.
A young waiter at Harpole's hotel asked them to get word to his mother in Hyderabad, India, that he was alive and well.
"We found a ham-radio operator on the mainland, gave the mother's telephone number," Harpole said. Within five minutes a ham operator in Hyderabad called the waiter's mother and relayed the message.
"He told us the mother was crying with joy," he said.
Harpole's group cheered and clapped. Word spread quickly across the island, and their work went on for hours and hours.
When Indian government officials learned of the hamradio operators, they relayed messages for official requests for medicines, water and blankets. Several of the radio operators headed south to Nicobar.