>Really? You speak for "we"? Interesting. Arrogance >aside, please describe one single thing that will make >money from space.
I'm sure they asked the backers of all the colonial expeditions to the New World the same question. They came hoping to find gold. Instead they found everything else that made America wealthy.
Who knows what will be found in space that will be worth money. Hell, just the REAL ESTATE will be worth money, once people can reliably get there and back.
>Hmm, that's right, the few things that do make money >from space don't involve people in space: >communications satellites and recon satellites.
These are things that we know of TODAY that make money.
The rest of your post is just a complaint about the limitations of man's abilities TODAY. You speak as if they will never be overcome. Maybe they won't. But unless we TRY, they certainly won't be.
But all of this is beside my point, which is, man explores not for "no particular reason", but for a very specific reason - personal gain. Assuming we figure out how, man will go forth into space for the same reasons he has gone anywhere - looking for the greener grass on the other side of the fence.
>I pity you. > >Not only do you have a view of humanity that is culturally >naive and bordering on shallow but you compound the >problem by being incorrect.
Man does not explore for "no particular reason". Man explores for personal gain.
We are going into space to make money. What it is that is going to make us money is as unknown to us as the wealth of America was known to Christopher Columbus. But we know that there is a high likelihood that something worth some money is going to be found.
There is a post above yours that says in order to launch an Apollo-type mission with lasers it would take all the power of the Hoover dam and then some, plus they would have to burn much longer than the 70 milliseconds or so they currently do.
As these things get cheaper and cheaper, maybe so. But then again, maybe not.
For years I have always purchased my own engineering calculators. I'm glad they are my personal property.
A few years ago I purchased my own 3D mouse for CAD work. I am glad I own it, also. They are so cheap that I can't imagine operating CAD software without one, regardless of whether the company would pay for one or not.
Computers may be approaching that cost level.
BUT
The problem is that computers must interface with the corporate network. They are going to want to control what software is on it, security settings, and the like. So you might own the hardware, but you may not have much control over it.
>In other words you blame GT because you couldn't hack it there. >That's why GT grads can demand more $$ in the workforce.
Not at all. Obviously Georgia Tech graduates are superior to others because they are smart enough to learn the material on their own.
I wasn't. I needed someone to teach me the material. I suspect most people go to school to be taught material. Georgia Tech is seemed to me to be a place where you went certification of the knowledge you acquired on your own.
I blame Georgia Tech for not actually teaching core material.
Now maybe this is by intent - maybe the idea is to weed out everyone who isn't smart enough to learn the core material on their own. But it sure makes me wonder what you're paying for to go to school there. Reputation, I guess.
I believe the field should be called "Algorithm Development".
It is called "Computer Science" because it was computers that allowed the useful embodiment of many algorithms. But the reality is (often literally, during coursework), that the platform, hardware or software, is largely irrelevant to the mathematical development of algorithms.
Today, as the article notes, anything related to using computers is often labeled "Computer Science". Rather than trying to get the rest of the world to stop using a term that is actually somewhat intuitive, I think CS should change its label to something that is actually a more intuitive description for itself.
At Georgia Tech, the core classes of Calculus, Physics, Chemistry, and some others were taught in auditoriums with over 200 people in them. There was no opportunity to ask questions during lecture - it just would not be practical or fair. Consequently lectures were about as useful as watching the MIT free course ware you can now watch online for free. You went to lecture 3 days a week, and then went to a session 2 days a week with a teacher assistant, who was a graduate student doing this as a requirement for their own course work. They might be interested in doing it, or they might not. They might speak English well, or they might not. This is where the bulk of actual teaching went on though.
After about 2 years as a traditional student at GT, I failed out, and spent the rest of my time as a non-traditional student at 6 other colleges and universities while working and completing my degree.
>After 9 years of hunting Bin Laden.. Assange is safe from the US for a while!
No useful purpose would be solved in capturing Bin Laden. It would probably cause calls for the "war on terror" to be over, and that would make lots of military spending go away. Can't have that. No, it is far far better to have that boogey man out there as an excuse to carry on.
Assange, on the other hand, is nothing but a loose cannon bringing public embarrassment to people in power.
I'm not a big fan of the "OK government secrets" thing.
I'm pretty convinced that just about every thing that the government tries to keep secret is because it is a morally bad thing that they would be ashamed of if it was made public.
Sure, there are technological secrets, but most of the secrets that they are up in arms about are behavioral secrets.
Personally, think that every government secret that can be outed should be outed, and the people doing the outing should be held harmless. Allow the government to keep its secrets as best it may, but there should be no retribution when they drop the ball and the secret gets out.
For years we have heard "If you have nothing to hide, you should have nothing to worry about" aimed at private citizens. Well what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
If the damn thing was just a computer, who would care about a fucking "app store"???
I don't go buy my PC based on writes software for it. Is this like 1975 when the hardware was thrown in for free to get you locked into their software?
Slashdot Mirror
That's pretty amazing. You are making not quite double my salary in Engineering.
Is it worth it?
>Trust me, you say you want all that, but once you get it, you'll be adding on more criteria such as something that is light and easy to carry around.
Anything would almost certainly be lighter than my bookbag full of books and notebooks.
>You can go onto eBay and buy something like what you say you want for less than $300 in the form of an XP tablet.
I will go and look into this.
Here's what I want:
I want an electronic device approximately 8.5 x 11 inches in size that I can write on with a stylus just like writing on paper.
I need to be able to store some PDF versions of textbooks on it also.
This device would give me one single thing to carry all my college text books and notebooks on.
I want this device to cost no more than $300.
>Really? You speak for "we"? Interesting. Arrogance
>aside, please describe one single thing that will make
>money from space.
I'm sure they asked the backers of all the colonial expeditions to the New World the same question. They came hoping to find gold. Instead they found everything else that made America wealthy.
Who knows what will be found in space that will be worth money. Hell, just the REAL ESTATE will be worth money, once people can reliably get there and back.
>Hmm, that's right, the few things that do make money
>from space don't involve people in space:
>communications satellites and recon satellites.
These are things that we know of TODAY that make money.
The rest of your post is just a complaint about the limitations of man's abilities TODAY. You speak as if they will never be overcome. Maybe they won't. But unless we TRY, they certainly won't be.
But all of this is beside my point, which is, man explores not for "no particular reason", but for a very specific reason - personal gain. Assuming we figure out how, man will go forth into space for the same reasons he has gone anywhere - looking for the greener grass on the other side of the fence.
>I pity you.
>
>Not only do you have a view of humanity that is culturally
>naive and bordering on shallow but you compound the
>problem by being incorrect.
I think you need to study some history then.
Man does not explore for "no particular reason". Man explores for personal gain.
We are going into space to make money. What it is that is going to make us money is as unknown to us as the wealth of America was known to Christopher Columbus. But we know that there is a high likelihood that something worth some money is going to be found.
And hell, it just might be fun.
There is a post above yours that says in order to launch an Apollo-type mission with lasers it would take all the power of the Hoover dam and then some, plus they would have to burn much longer than the 70 milliseconds or so they currently do.
As these things get cheaper and cheaper, maybe so. But then again, maybe not.
For years I have always purchased my own engineering calculators. I'm glad they are my personal property.
A few years ago I purchased my own 3D mouse for CAD work. I am glad I own it, also. They are so cheap that I can't imagine operating CAD software without one, regardless of whether the company would pay for one or not.
Computers may be approaching that cost level.
BUT
The problem is that computers must interface with the corporate network. They are going to want to control what software is on it, security settings, and the like. So you might own the hardware, but you may not have much control over it.
Plastic has the virtue of being non-conductive, but my guess is that such a tiny part made in plastic could be problematic in terms of strength.
I thought it was a pretty clear question:
Why would you buy a product where you have no control over what software you are allowed to run on it? It mystifies me.
I don't understand why people would buy closed computing products where you can't run whatever you want to run on them.
I buy the hardware. After that, I should be able to run whatever software I can buy that runs on it.
Who buys these things? They need to get off my lawn.
>What you describe is called being a Math Major.
In fact, when you're done with a BSCS you are very close to a math major.
But a lot of CS is about applied mathematics - how to use mathematics to efficiently solve computational problems.
>"computational science" or even "computational mathematics."
I like both of these better than my name. Good job.
>In other words you blame GT because you couldn't hack it there.
>That's why GT grads can demand more $$ in the workforce.
Not at all. Obviously Georgia Tech graduates are superior to others because they are smart enough to learn the material on their own.
I wasn't. I needed someone to teach me the material. I suspect most people go to school to be taught material. Georgia Tech is seemed to me to be a place where you went certification of the knowledge you acquired on your own.
I blame Georgia Tech for not actually teaching core material.
Now maybe this is by intent - maybe the idea is to weed out everyone who isn't smart enough to learn the core material on their own. But it sure makes me wonder what you're paying for to go to school there. Reputation, I guess.
I hold a BS in Computer Science.
I believe the field should be called "Algorithm Development".
It is called "Computer Science" because it was computers that allowed the useful embodiment of many algorithms. But the reality is (often literally, during coursework), that the platform, hardware or software, is largely irrelevant to the mathematical development of algorithms.
Today, as the article notes, anything related to using computers is often labeled "Computer Science". Rather than trying to get the rest of the world to stop using a term that is actually somewhat intuitive, I think CS should change its label to something that is actually a more intuitive description for itself.
At Georgia Tech, the core classes of Calculus, Physics, Chemistry, and some others were taught in auditoriums with over 200 people in them. There was no opportunity to ask questions during lecture - it just would not be practical or fair. Consequently lectures were about as useful as watching the MIT free course ware you can now watch online for free. You went to lecture 3 days a week, and then went to a session 2 days a week with a teacher assistant, who was a graduate student doing this as a requirement for their own course work. They might be interested in doing it, or they might not. They might speak English well, or they might not. This is where the bulk of actual teaching went on though.
After about 2 years as a traditional student at GT, I failed out, and spent the rest of my time as a non-traditional student at 6 other colleges and universities while working and completing my degree.
I rent web space from ipower.com, and route all my email through it.
>After 9 years of hunting Bin Laden.. Assange is safe from the US for a while!
No useful purpose would be solved in capturing Bin Laden. It would probably cause calls for the "war on terror" to be over, and that would make lots of military spending go away. Can't have that. No, it is far far better to have that boogey man out there as an excuse to carry on.
Assange, on the other hand, is nothing but a loose cannon bringing public embarrassment to people in power.
His ass is toast.
Here is a kid with developing engineering an entrepreneurial spirit, and you are poo-pooing it.
I'm not a big fan of the "OK government secrets" thing.
I'm pretty convinced that just about every thing that the government tries to keep secret is because it is a morally bad thing that they would be ashamed of if it was made public.
Sure, there are technological secrets, but most of the secrets that they are up in arms about are behavioral secrets.
Personally, think that every government secret that can be outed should be outed, and the people doing the outing should be held harmless. Allow the government to keep its secrets as best it may, but there should be no retribution when they drop the ball and the secret gets out.
For years we have heard "If you have nothing to hide, you should have nothing to worry about" aimed at private citizens. Well what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
What I want to know about these tablets is: Can I write on them with a stylus and get results like writing in a notebook?
If the damn thing was just a computer, who would care about a fucking "app store"???
I don't go buy my PC based on writes software for it. Is this like 1975 when the hardware was thrown in for free to get you locked into their software?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_navigation_system
But you don't obtain a velocity without having accelerated.
Physics 101 indeed.
Do you only engage in communications that are "well supported arguments"?
You must be a blast at parties.