Yes, R&D verification that was inefficient, and probably led to massive overbuilding and wasted cost in the fabrication and construction of the assemblies involved with Apollo.
Massively computed FE makes things cheaper and safer. It would be lunacy to even think about doing hand calcs for a multi-million DOF dynamics problem. The analysts that do this work in various manufacturing fields certainly have the mathematics capability to do what was done during Apollo, but they do things better now by leveraging the tools at their disposal.
A great deal of what NASA and, specifically, the research labs that support it, use are proprietary, internal-only packages. For classified work, they can't share data with 3rd party developers for bug fixing, so they reinvent the wheel in-house. Much of that may be derived from open source packages like Salome, but you'll probably never find that information publicly.
The commercial contractors will all use major MCAD packages like CATIA, NX, Nastran, etc.
What do you mean you can get across Spain, France and Germany at speed (a pretty large area).
The US is more than six times bigger than these three countries combined. All of Western Europe is nowhere close to as big as the US. You have to think about building a connected rail system, from scratch, in an area the size of all of Europe, including Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and parts of Russia. It can be done, but it's a humongous project.
McDonald's tastes "awesome"?! The fries are quite good, but the rest is utter shit. I mean I can see some people saying 'it tastes fine' - but "awesome"? You need to get out more - your tongue has been shellacked with HFCS. I am not a vegan and enjoy many foods, including some of the 'fast' variety.
And Subway is terrible. They use extremely low-quality, pre-sliced meat. Baking up some previously-frozen dough doesn't make up for that. I have a friend who is a meat inspector, and she won't eat there. 'Nuff said.
He's right - it's marketing. They know their market - cheap - and they sell to it hard.
Unrelated IMHO - Japanese cars do have great long-term quality, but they've always lacked the feel of their German counterparts. Completely sterile. They are cars for non-car people. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Since when is M$ bashing flamebait on slashdot? Are you new here?
And just because most of us can maintain a windows box doesn't mean we like it - my mechanic maintains my old Land Rover, but it certainly induces headaches.
I wonder if that's 20% of unit sales, or 20% or revenue. If the things are 3x more than a DVD, they would still only represent a small fraction of unit sales.
I think you're wasting your keystrokes. Clearly this guy isn't going to listen to a word of what you say - he's convinced that somehow UI design is an 'art' that only the blessed can conceive. He probably hates software engineering system design strategies and thinks ad-hoc programming gives better results.
We make a software product that's used by engineers the world over. When we screw up, ignore our usability folks, and introduce some UIism that slows a common workflow down, Boeing|GM|Nokia|whomever notices in short-order. It costs them a lot of money in lost efficiency, and it is usually something that could've been designed better by us. No question of 'individual preferences' - intuitiveness and dexterity in UI design can be deterministically measured.
Face it; most tech people are drones that want a laundry list of features. Someday maybe the usability thing will become dogma in CS school. (and no, I don't think Apple always gets it right, but at least they're trying)
it is just inadequite and that is the purpose of the lack of adoption.
I assume you mean 'reason for the lack of adoption'? Not being a grammar nazi, just making sure I understand you.
Assuming this is what you meant, I have to disagree. As small as the number of AppleTVs sold have been, I'd be willing to bet that it's greater than the number of XBox owners using their 360s as media servers. Most 360 and PS3 guys I know use it solely for what it's best at - playing games.
My 'ahead of its time' comment was somewhat misinterpreted - I'm not necessarily saying it's the best product on the market - I like Apple's ease of use and was just drawn to it - but I am saying that the market at large isn't ready for media servers in general. Only 28 percent of cable subscribers use even a DVR at this point - 9 years after Tivo's debut. It's going to be some time before a good solution presents itself that the public at large is willing to consume, and is probably dependent on the as-yet-unavailable universality of digital media. 'Still can't buy most movies through iTunes and its competitors.
Are you kidding me? Maybe the AutoCAD market is mainly on Windows, but I'm talking about real heavy-duty, $100k a seat CAD - Catia, ProE, NX, and I-deas. A heavy majority is *not* on Windows.
I can't tell you what the current split is between Linux and Win32 in MCAD, but I can assure you that most of the industry is still on proprietary Unix iron - mostly Solaris, IBM and HP.
And all of these players (Dassault, UGS, PTC, and other big players in FEA) release their platforms simultaneously.
Who do you consider big names? Dassault did about twice Autodesk's 2006 revenue.
This was my point. People had been recording digitally since before Tivo, they were just the first ones to make it easy and do it well. Again, Apple isn't perfect, but I do believe it's ahead of its time in terms of usability.
Sorry, no it isn't. It's a cheap pile of crap.
"Even the hackers" gave up on it? Why should I care? That's exactly what I want to avoid. I don't care how slow the hardware is for hacking support; it plays the media I ask it to play (ripped music and movies or purchased) and it's really easy to use. I write software for a living. I don't like to tinker with software and hardware at home, and I make enough money that I don't have to.
And cheap crap? I find this quite a funny statement that you'd say this and tout the 360, considering how many 360 owners are on their 3rd and 4th box. Sorry, I don't like Microsoft's idea of 'quality'. I just want an appliance that works.
Didn't realize there was a Tivo equivalent, though - might have to check that out.
AppleTV is ahead of its time - Apple and others will eventually have a mainstream media box that makes sense to more people. Perhaps when online movie downloads are more prevalent.
I have one - and love it. I'm not an Apple cultist, our house is a 'blended family' of O/Ss. The AppleTV has been great - most of our music is on it (about 300 CDs worth, plus downloads), some movies, our photos, etc. It's tied to our main TV and the whole-house audio, so it's really pretty ideal.
And no doubt something better will be there in a couple of years - they're just dipping their toes right now, as are XBox, PS3, etc. By the time a solution of Tivo proportion is ready, I'll have gotten my $300 worth out of AppleTV.
he commercial heavy-hitters like...specialist software like CAD that set the Windows world apart from the Linux world. Many of the consumers of big MCAD/CAM/CAE packages are flocking to Linux. Commodity hardware prices, Unix performance.
Most 'heavy-hitter' commercial MCAD packages port to Linux. As a matter of fact, many numerical analysis packages recommend that analysts dual-boot their computers if they prefer running Windows day-to-day - when they run a solve, boot up Linux and get a huge performance increase. It's extraordinary - Windows is just a pathetic resource hog. I can't believe Adobe hasn't gone to Linux yet.
A bit of a non sequitur - I completely agree that the compiler should pad with 0s at least as an option - but I must say that the compiler can be a time critical application. Certainly not real-time, but slow compiles can be a pain.
We have about 600 developers working on our primary product. Nightly compiles can top 40,000, individual developer projects can easily generate 1000s of compiles. Yes, dependency management is an important aspect of our development and it saves more time than anything, but there are common scenarios where we need to complete a large number of compiles. So multiply a compiler inefficiency by 600, and add to your favorite pointy-headed power point presentation on development cost...
Roughly $20 million a year in operating cost - 70% of which paid 90 employees. That's 155k (salary and benes) an employee - pretty average for a tech operation I'd imagine.
The rest they've accrued into $70+ million in assets.
Mozilla Foundation does much more than just develop Firefox - RTFA.
I'm sure I could do it for about 250-500k
Wow, you could develop, test, and host downloads for a software product with a multi-million user-base for 250k? You, sir, are fresh out of college or full of shit.
Open most European and most professional cookbooks, and you'll see ingredients listed by mass instead of volume - for non-liquids. The 'cup of flour' thing is a uniquely American idiocy, AFAIK.
The Methuselah tree *is* the oldest known organism - it is a specific bristlecone pine.
The parent was slightly wrong about 'highest recorded temperature', which is El Azizia as you implied, but Death Valley has the highest norm temperature on record.
If you're going to shoot people down for bragging, at least be precise, please.;-)
I respect the Engineering curriculum, but it bothers me that engineers often don't recognize that they are crossing fields when they become software developers
I don't see this as any different than what most developers do - if you have a degree in comp sci/engineering, do you recognize that you're crossing fields when you write software for the medical field? Should all developers have two degrees - one in comp eng, and one in whatever field they're going to write software for?
I write scientific computing software - analysis software for the mechanical engineering field, specifically. We have people like me, with a computer eng bse, and people like the guy sitting next to me, who has a PhD in aerospace eng. I've learned *a lot* on the job about numerical techniques for finite element analysis - something I'd not been exposed to at all in school - and he's learned *a lot* about software architecture. Frankly, given he has about a decade more experience than me, his knowledge about software design trumps mine.
Given a strong background in mathematics and engineering, I don't think it's unreasonable to become interdisciplinary in a specific field given a software background, or vice-versa. And I do think most engineers respect the crossover - quite a few I know have gone back and done grad work in comp sci/software engineering. Conversely, I might go back and do a mechE. But I'm not sure grad school could teach me more than my neighbors have. (sure it could, I'm just saying)
BTW - I've become quite competent at material science.;-)
There's one precedent I can name - the Atari 2600. The day my parents bought the Atari, they stayed up until sunrise playing breakout. They bought probably 15 games for that system, and never bought another console - until the Wii.
Hobo, I've read most of your comments on this thread and am intrigued enough to comment.
I'll preface this by saying I was raised Catholic, but am no longer a religious person. Not for any reason specific to Catholicism or any other organized religion, but my beliefs have just drifted elsewhere.
I was educated in Catholic schools for 13 years, and I never witnessed abuse and none - so far - has been uncovered in the schools I attended or my former parish.
Our family has had numerous encounters with church leaders in births, deaths, marriages, and divorces. Never have we been charged what would be considered and exorbidant fee by a priest or other church official. Yes, fees are charged as parishes must survive - and in modest communities churches *barely* make enough to survive.
Indulgences were banned by the Council of Trent some time ago. People do not pay to lessen their time in purgatory. I've never heard of someone paying for reconciliation, nor communinion. Marriages and funerals are usually indulgent affairs, and a small fee is expected. If you can't afford it (and you're not having an extravagent wedding), you won't pay. Take a look at the enrollment of an average Catholic highschool sometime - you might be shocked at the number of students that pay no ($0) tuition.
It's interesting that you say, and what bothers me most, in one post that the church should 'listen to scripture', and allow priests to marry, and this would somehow alleviate the child abuse problem. But in another post you say they're a business and they do whatever makes them popular and makes people give them money. Let's face it - these are contradictory statements if ever there were any. The church is famous for sticking to its guns, no matter the marketing woes it might endure. The church has been bleeding members for years, particularly in America. Imagine if it allowed priests to marry and women to be ordained, condoms to be used, and it rejected the idea of original sin - these four things would probably lead to millions of returned worshipers and billions in revenue - so why don't they?
They don't because the church maintains its dogma regardless of the popular desire of the masses. Again, I do not believe what Catholics believe, but I do greatly admire the organization for its steadfast refusal to submit just for popularity's sake.
The church's work in Africa is unmatched, from what I've seen (firsthand). In Central and South America, and Eastern Europe, it is beacon of hope in lives of millions that live in misery.
That being said, there certainly is abuse, corruption, and foul play in the church. As is there in *any* large organization, and every culture. That does not mean that the organization itself is evil or invalid - it simply suffers from common human weakness. If you tend to think that in all large organizations the evil outweighs the good, you sir are a pessimist. I'll keep to my optimism, and keep it based on my experience with hundreds of good women and men who work for the church.
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Yes, R&D verification that was inefficient, and probably led to massive overbuilding and wasted cost in the fabrication and construction of the assemblies involved with Apollo.
Massively computed FE makes things cheaper and safer. It would be lunacy to even think about doing hand calcs for a multi-million DOF dynamics problem. The analysts that do this work in various manufacturing fields certainly have the mathematics capability to do what was done during Apollo, but they do things better now by leveraging the tools at their disposal.
A great deal of what NASA and, specifically, the research labs that support it, use are proprietary, internal-only packages. For classified work, they can't share data with 3rd party developers for bug fixing, so they reinvent the wheel in-house. Much of that may be derived from open source packages like Salome, but you'll probably never find that information publicly.
The commercial contractors will all use major MCAD packages like CATIA, NX, Nastran, etc.
What do you mean you can get across Spain, France and Germany at speed (a pretty large area).
The US is more than six times bigger than these three countries combined. All of Western Europe is nowhere close to as big as the US. You have to think about building a connected rail system, from scratch, in an area the size of all of Europe, including Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and parts of Russia. It can be done, but it's a humongous project.
McDonald's tastes "awesome"?! The fries are quite good, but the rest is utter shit. I mean I can see some people saying 'it tastes fine' - but "awesome"? You need to get out more - your tongue has been shellacked with HFCS. I am not a vegan and enjoy many foods, including some of the 'fast' variety.
And Subway is terrible. They use extremely low-quality, pre-sliced meat. Baking up some previously-frozen dough doesn't make up for that. I have a friend who is a meat inspector, and she won't eat there. 'Nuff said.
He's right - it's marketing. They know their market - cheap - and they sell to it hard.
Unrelated IMHO - Japanese cars do have great long-term quality, but they've always lacked the feel of their German counterparts. Completely sterile. They are cars for non-car people. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Since when is M$ bashing flamebait on slashdot? Are you new here?
And just because most of us can maintain a windows box doesn't mean we like it - my mechanic maintains my old Land Rover, but it certainly induces headaches.
Fair point.
Sue the companies that charge you so much for something which costs next to nothing.,
Sue a company because I don't like the pricing on its voluntary plan?
I wonder if that's 20% of unit sales, or 20% or revenue. If the things are 3x more than a DVD, they would still only represent a small fraction of unit sales.
I think you're wasting your keystrokes. Clearly this guy isn't going to listen to a word of what you say - he's convinced that somehow UI design is an 'art' that only the blessed can conceive. He probably hates software engineering system design strategies and thinks ad-hoc programming gives better results.
We make a software product that's used by engineers the world over. When we screw up, ignore our usability folks, and introduce some UIism that slows a common workflow down, Boeing|GM|Nokia|whomever notices in short-order. It costs them a lot of money in lost efficiency, and it is usually something that could've been designed better by us. No question of 'individual preferences' - intuitiveness and dexterity in UI design can be deterministically measured.
Face it; most tech people are drones that want a laundry list of features. Someday maybe the usability thing will become dogma in CS school. (and no, I don't think Apple always gets it right, but at least they're trying)
I assume you mean 'reason for the lack of adoption'? Not being a grammar nazi, just making sure I understand you.
Assuming this is what you meant, I have to disagree. As small as the number of AppleTVs sold have been, I'd be willing to bet that it's greater than the number of XBox owners using their 360s as media servers. Most 360 and PS3 guys I know use it solely for what it's best at - playing games.
My 'ahead of its time' comment was somewhat misinterpreted - I'm not necessarily saying it's the best product on the market - I like Apple's ease of use and was just drawn to it - but I am saying that the market at large isn't ready for media servers in general. Only 28 percent of cable subscribers use even a DVR at this point - 9 years after Tivo's debut. It's going to be some time before a good solution presents itself that the public at large is willing to consume, and is probably dependent on the as-yet-unavailable universality of digital media. 'Still can't buy most movies through iTunes and its competitors.
Are you kidding me? Maybe the AutoCAD market is mainly on Windows, but I'm talking about real heavy-duty, $100k a seat CAD - Catia, ProE, NX, and I-deas. A heavy majority is *not* on Windows.
I can't tell you what the current split is between Linux and Win32 in MCAD, but I can assure you that most of the industry is still on proprietary Unix iron - mostly Solaris, IBM and HP.
And all of these players (Dassault, UGS, PTC, and other big players in FEA) release their platforms simultaneously.
Who do you consider big names? Dassault did about twice Autodesk's 2006 revenue.
Ooh - cool, thanks for the heads-up. I didn't realize Tivo had a good solution. I'll check it out.
Sorry, no it isn't. It's a cheap pile of crap.This was my point. People had been recording digitally since before Tivo, they were just the first ones to make it easy and do it well. Again, Apple isn't perfect, but I do believe it's ahead of its time in terms of usability.
"Even the hackers" gave up on it? Why should I care? That's exactly what I want to avoid. I don't care how slow the hardware is for hacking support; it plays the media I ask it to play (ripped music and movies or purchased) and it's really easy to use. I write software for a living. I don't like to tinker with software and hardware at home, and I make enough money that I don't have to.
And cheap crap? I find this quite a funny statement that you'd say this and tout the 360, considering how many 360 owners are on their 3rd and 4th box. Sorry, I don't like Microsoft's idea of 'quality'. I just want an appliance that works.
Didn't realize there was a Tivo equivalent, though - might have to check that out.
AppleTV is ahead of its time - Apple and others will eventually have a mainstream media box that makes sense to more people. Perhaps when online movie downloads are more prevalent.
I have one - and love it. I'm not an Apple cultist, our house is a 'blended family' of O/Ss. The AppleTV has been great - most of our music is on it (about 300 CDs worth, plus downloads), some movies, our photos, etc. It's tied to our main TV and the whole-house audio, so it's really pretty ideal.
And no doubt something better will be there in a couple of years - they're just dipping their toes right now, as are XBox, PS3, etc. By the time a solution of Tivo proportion is ready, I'll have gotten my $300 worth out of AppleTV.
Most 'heavy-hitter' commercial MCAD packages port to Linux. As a matter of fact, many numerical analysis packages recommend that analysts dual-boot their computers if they prefer running Windows day-to-day - when they run a solve, boot up Linux and get a huge performance increase. It's extraordinary - Windows is just a pathetic resource hog. I can't believe Adobe hasn't gone to Linux yet.
A bit of a non sequitur - I completely agree that the compiler should pad with 0s at least as an option - but I must say that the compiler can be a time critical application. Certainly not real-time, but slow compiles can be a pain.
We have about 600 developers working on our primary product. Nightly compiles can top 40,000, individual developer projects can easily generate 1000s of compiles. Yes, dependency management is an important aspect of our development and it saves more time than anything, but there are common scenarios where we need to complete a large number of compiles. So multiply a compiler inefficiency by 600, and add to your favorite pointy-headed power point presentation on development cost...
No.
Roughly $20 million a year in operating cost - 70% of which paid 90 employees. That's 155k (salary and benes) an employee - pretty average for a tech operation I'd imagine.
The rest they've accrued into $70+ million in assets.
Mozilla Foundation does much more than just develop Firefox - RTFA.
I'm sure I could do it for about 250-500k
Wow, you could develop, test, and host downloads for a software product with a multi-million user-base for 250k? You, sir, are fresh out of college or full of shit.
Open most European and most professional cookbooks, and you'll see ingredients listed by mass instead of volume - for non-liquids. The 'cup of flour' thing is a uniquely American idiocy, AFAIK.
Um, kind of.
;-)
The Methuselah tree *is* the oldest known organism - it is a specific bristlecone pine.
The parent was slightly wrong about 'highest recorded temperature', which is El Azizia as you implied, but Death Valley has the highest norm temperature on record.
If you're going to shoot people down for bragging, at least be precise, please.
Frodo was 33 (coming of age for a hobbit) at the start, and 50 at the end (barely mid-life). Ian Holm doesn't look 30 even if I squint.
I don't think Wood was a particularly bad choice visually, I just don't think he did a great acting job (or perhaps he wasn't directed well).
They can *bill* me.
I don't see this as any different than what most developers do - if you have a degree in comp sci/engineering, do you recognize that you're crossing fields when you write software for the medical field? Should all developers have two degrees - one in comp eng, and one in whatever field they're going to write software for?
I write scientific computing software - analysis software for the mechanical engineering field, specifically. We have people like me, with a computer eng bse, and people like the guy sitting next to me, who has a PhD in aerospace eng. I've learned *a lot* on the job about numerical techniques for finite element analysis - something I'd not been exposed to at all in school - and he's learned *a lot* about software architecture. Frankly, given he has about a decade more experience than me, his knowledge about software design trumps mine.
Given a strong background in mathematics and engineering, I don't think it's unreasonable to become interdisciplinary in a specific field given a software background, or vice-versa. And I do think most engineers respect the crossover - quite a few I know have gone back and done grad work in comp sci/software engineering. Conversely, I might go back and do a mechE. But I'm not sure grad school could teach me more than my neighbors have. (sure it could, I'm just saying)
BTW - I've become quite competent at material science.
There's one precedent I can name - the Atari 2600. The day my parents bought the Atari, they stayed up until sunrise playing breakout. They bought probably 15 games for that system, and never bought another console - until the Wii.
Hobo, I've read most of your comments on this thread and am intrigued enough to comment.
I'll preface this by saying I was raised Catholic, but am no longer a religious person. Not for any reason specific to Catholicism or any other organized religion, but my beliefs have just drifted elsewhere.
I was educated in Catholic schools for 13 years, and I never witnessed abuse and none - so far - has been uncovered in the schools I attended or my former parish.
Our family has had numerous encounters with church leaders in births, deaths, marriages, and divorces. Never have we been charged what would be considered and exorbidant fee by a priest or other church official. Yes, fees are charged as parishes must survive - and in modest communities churches *barely* make enough to survive.
Indulgences were banned by the Council of Trent some time ago. People do not pay to lessen their time in purgatory. I've never heard of someone paying for reconciliation, nor communinion. Marriages and funerals are usually indulgent affairs, and a small fee is expected. If you can't afford it (and you're not having an extravagent wedding), you won't pay. Take a look at the enrollment of an average Catholic highschool sometime - you might be shocked at the number of students that pay no ($0) tuition.
It's interesting that you say, and what bothers me most, in one post that the church should 'listen to scripture', and allow priests to marry, and this would somehow alleviate the child abuse problem. But in another post you say they're a business and they do whatever makes them popular and makes people give them money. Let's face it - these are contradictory statements if ever there were any. The church is famous for sticking to its guns, no matter the marketing woes it might endure. The church has been bleeding members for years, particularly in America. Imagine if it allowed priests to marry and women to be ordained, condoms to be used, and it rejected the idea of original sin - these four things would probably lead to millions of returned worshipers and billions in revenue - so why don't they?
They don't because the church maintains its dogma regardless of the popular desire of the masses. Again, I do not believe what Catholics believe, but I do greatly admire the organization for its steadfast refusal to submit just for popularity's sake.
The church's work in Africa is unmatched, from what I've seen (firsthand). In Central and South America, and Eastern Europe, it is beacon of hope in lives of millions that live in misery.
That being said, there certainly is abuse, corruption, and foul play in the church. As is there in *any* large organization, and every culture. That does not mean that the organization itself is evil or invalid - it simply suffers from common human weakness. If you tend to think that in all large organizations the evil outweighs the good, you sir are a pessimist. I'll keep to my optimism, and keep it based on my experience with hundreds of good women and men who work for the church.
OP was responding to this part of the story summary:
"Cons: HDTV only"
He's saying that the Apple TV will support *normal def* with component, it already supports 720P out-of-the-box.