That all progammers ask him for a doubling of salary and a halving of work time. Because you were reading on Slashdot that having free time and enough money is the best way to produce happy, productive employees?
Or suggest that if he wants to grow his business, then he either needs to employ more developers, or give his employees stock in exchange for the crunch,
BTW you should tell him to check out ReWork from 37signals. It makes a good counter argument to "features features features" (or, as I like to think of it: Microsoft vs Apple philisophy - both are evil overlords, but both take a different approach to building their dominions).
Thank you, sir. I'm working on starting my own company, and ReWork looks awesome! I hate all the bloat that companies can get stuck in, and I run into a lot of that at my day job. The question has always been how to avoid it. Looks like that book may help.:) -Taylor
"until the company is profitable" is way too vague to work like that.
Yeah. My boss has told me I'll get a raise "as soon as the company has the money." Through poor management, we aren't making any money, and it's been 3 years since I've had a raise. I'm bailing as soon as I get my shit in order. Which is to say, soon. -Taylor
And who is to say that the iPhone 5 won't be dual core?
Unlikely, really.
First, a good reason to NOT be dual core is battery life - slower is better. iPhone hardware has always lagged the Android models - the original iPhone and iPhone 3G had 412MHz CPUs, while the G1 (same year) had a 524MHz CPU - nearly 25% faster. The iPhone 3GS sported a 624MHz CPU or so (50% faster than iPhone/iPhone 3G), at a time when the Android hotness was 1GHz CPUs (50% faster than iPhone 3GS). The iPhone 4 is supposed to have around an 800MHz CPU, and current gen Androids have 1.2GHz CPUs.
The only thing to come close would be the iPad with its 1GHz processor.
The iPad's also the most likely one to sport a dual core processor - it has the massive battery packs (it's what, 90% battery?) to have decent battery life with dual cores.
If Androids of 2011 get dual core, it'll probably be 2012 at the earliest before Apple releases a dual core A5 chip or something for the iPhone, with the A5 debuting on the second gen iPad first at the absolute earliest. Or maybe it'll be 3rd gen iPad at that point.
Remember, these are mobile devices, and even though I charge mine at the end of the day before I go to sleep, I'd still like to be able to get through the day without lugging extended battery packs.
I don't think any current gen android phones have a 1.2GHz processor, and if there are any oddballs (maybe some models from asia?) it certainly isn't the norm. 1GHz is still the norm for current gen Android phones. I know plenty of 1GHz dual core models were shown off at CES though, and those will come out some time in the first quarter or first half. There may have been some 1.2GHz single core models as well, I don't remember. But none of those are shipping yet, so they can't be called current gen. I am a hardcore android fan, but facts are facts.
Congress required that the new heavy lift vehicle maximize the reuse of space shuttle components as part of its budget battle with President Obama last year
So congress made engineering decisions for NASA. They told NASA to reuse some parts from something else. And does Congress even know if that actually saves money? There have been plenty of times I've been told to develop something and to reuse an existing piece of code, and I've had to disappoint someone by pointing out that reusing their old COBOL EXE does not actually shrink the timeline.:-( In mechanical engineering, I've learned that reusing parts often adds a lot of work.
Maybe that isn't the case here, but Congress should instead have set constraints and let NASA decide how best to implement it. No doubt the new request also tells them what vendors to use, and what state to by them from, and where to eat lunch so that the money gets spread around to their own pet projects.
No, Congress doesn't make engineering decisions. They make budget decisions, i.e., they ensure money get spent in their district by defining what to buy. If Congress made engineering decisions and something went wrong, they might get blamed and that would not be a good thing.
So I'm pretty sure you're being sarcastic, but that's *certainly* an engineering decision.
Is there any recourse for us to fight all these congress people forcing NASA to spend money in some particular state just to get a chunk of the cash? If some senator from Alabama forces NASA to buy stuff from Alabama even if its against the betterment of the project, how can I complain? I can't vote for or against him because I live in California, but I have an interest in how the government spends my money! Do I have to ask my congress person to argue with that congress person? Is that my only recourse?
I'm sick of NASA getting castrated ever 4 years so congress people can look good, arbitrarily spending money on, or cancelling projects based on if it looks good that year.
We MUST have wasted more money on cancelled NASA projects than we've spent on finished projects, at the rate things get cancelled. Does anyone have any data on that? If we could show congress that we've wasted 50% or more of NASA's budget year over year just because they can't fucking agree on anything, maybe that would help? It would certainly make them look bad in the public's eye.
I understand people hate the idea of launching nuclear material above our heads, but the logic that the reactors on these devices should stay in one piece in the event of a disaster seems to put those concerns to rest (for reasonable people). Obviously there are plenty of non-reasonable people who say "OMG nukes!", but is that the only reason?
An unrelated wikipedia page says that some known engine technologies have the potential to get us to Mars in 40 days. Does anyone know if NERVA was one of those? Aside from OMGnukes, what were the downsides to NERVA? The wikipedia page really makes it sound like the whole program was successful, and then we just scrapped it for political reasons!
I'd appreciate leaving "duh our government sux" arguments our of this - I'm very aware of that. -Taylor
$70B? The Apollo project cost about $170B (2005 dollars) and Mars is 150x further away than the moon is.
I was just basing that off of some initial info I got from Robert Zubrin's plan, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Direct which was estimated at $58B in 1996. Obviously he's a quite biased, but I just don't have a good dollar amount.
You could look at the Constellation program, where they estimated $100B through 2020. Assume 2X cost overruns and assume 3X cost increase for it being mars (which is probably too much - mars is 150x farther away, but the highest cost is exiting earth's orbit and exiting mars's orbit, along with life support for several months as opposed to days. But I can't imagine that being more than 2x the entire development cost to add that, compared to getting to the moon). So anyway, take Constellations cost estimates and multiply by 6, and you still have just 9% of the military budget over 10 years. I'd rather have that than another war somewhere.
In the 1960's we made it to the moon in 8 years, when NO ONE has ever been out of earth's orbit before the program started. And we got the men back safely to earth. And we did it several times.
Now, 40 years later, we think it will take 20 years to do a ONE WAY trip to the moon?
Our sense of ambition disappoints me. We should go to Mars and we should bring those people back. They will be heroes and we should not let them die. I understand that some people think its a waste of money, and other people would rather we go one way then don't go at all, but I'd rather we just go, and quit worrying about the cost (well, I mean we shouldn't waste money, obviously - we should do it as economically as is reasonable).
If we took just 5-10% of *one years worth* of our hyperinflated military budget (which would give us $70 billion for the Mars trip. That should be enough.), we could go to Mars and back, in 10 years. So, 1% total from the military budget over 10 years. You think Mars is a waste of money? Our military is a waste of money. Lets take 1% of it and do some inspirational work. -Taylor
Within the last 40 years, nearly all the gains in productivity have gone to the top 1%. The middle class has barely broken even. The poor have gotten poorer. I doubt the top 1% are actually responsible for those productivity gains, in fact I'm pretty sure the rest of us did the lion's share of the work. But we got shafted instead of getting rich, with a tiny minority harvesting all the fruits of our labors.
He says from his AMAZING magical box that lets him talk to anyone in the world instantly, and get nearly any entertainment or media content for FREE, as well as free access to the worlds largest encyclopedia, entire free lectures from Stanford etc, and just about any other information you could possibly ever need.
Yes, the low and middle class are certainly worse off than they were 40 years ago. -Taylor
I don't care if we explore or colonize, as long as we go. We can do so much more science with humans on the ground there. If you watch mars rover documentaries, they spend hours just trying to get to a rock. With humans we can just walk up to it. Much more science could be done.
And I'm sorry, but I hate space luddites. We can go now and we should. Looks like you were born a few centuries too late. In the last century man put his first steps on another celestial body. I wouldn't want to be in any other time. Unless people like you prevent us from going back out there. -Taylor
I know this is going to be a hugely unpopular opinion on Slashdot, but has anyone actually made a decent argument to answer why, instead of how? I've never heard one. People usually just stare at me, when I ask, then say something akin to, "Because it's there." or "You weren't alive when we landed on the moon. You just don't understand." Occasionally I hear something like, "It's an investment in science (or the tech industry)," which is much better than "you just don't get it", but still hardly a winning argument, in my opinion. I'm not against space travel, but I'd like to see some compelling arguments, rather than nerd rage.
And, yes, maybe I would have said the same thing about the European obsession with exploring the New World. So what? What good idea has ever suffered from a little debate?
If you're genuinely curious about some of the reasons, I highly suggest reading Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot. He goes over many reasons why we should keep exploring.
Off the top of my head, there's the extinction argument - one big asteroid impact and we could all be wiped out if we're only on one planet. There's also science. For example, we never knew about global warming until we studied Venus (he discusses that in another book, I think). The scientists responsible for the worldwide end of CFC production first started pushing for the bans after learning of the global warming that causes Venus to be 700 degrees F on the surface. We could learn similarly impressive stuff by studying Mars more closely (we've been studying Earth for a long time, so a lot of the basic stuff is covered. Mars may hold new information that is easy to discover. That may help us back on earth.)
Also, studying Mars can help us advance out space travel capabilities so we can further study even more interesting places, like Europa, Titan, etc that will require large rockets to get to.
Almost all of our science is limited to what is going on on earth. Surely there are physical and chemical phenomena on other planets that simply don't happen here. The more we know about those things, the more we can do for ourselves here. I personally think that science is the path to world peace. The more easily we can provide for people and the higher the minimum standard of living for people becomes in the world, the happier people will be, and the more connected we will all become.
Space exploration also gets more kids interested in science, many of which may decide to study science in college instead of liberal arts or something. The world needs more scientists, so flashy stuff like a Mars landing can go a long way towards encouraging young people to become scientists.
There is no one impressive reason to go to Mars, but many very compelling ones. Though the extinction risk is a big one. If we don't go to Mars, and then get hit with a major asteroid, we'll sure wish we had. -Taylor
XML is only used for arranging visual elements on screen - for layout.
No, XML is a powerful data interchange language too.
Think of the old.INI files. XML can be used like those. Think of RSS feeds. Hardly just "layout". XML is used for those.
I'm not a huge fan of XML for data exchange (I prefer JSON if possible), but it is fairly readable. Check out the wikipedia article for more info.
Ah, yes but I was talking about specifically in android. That Android isn't some frankenstein mixture of XML and Java like the OP sort of implied ("Java, XML and Eclipse sound like a horrible platform for development"), but that the XML is being used just for layout, and is basically being used just like CSS, so its straightforward.
I know XML has other uses and have considered it for a variety of machine readable things I've done, but I think in android they only use it for layout. Actually, I remember now that they use it for storing strings, and some configuration stuff. Really I was just trying to clarify to the OP that all the real coding in Android is Java-based, because he seemed to think it was some horrible mixture of the two. But OP was an idiot. -Taylor
... Java makes everything isolated, horrible to develop to different versions (your old Android phone doesn't have the latest Java? Too bad, you're out of luck) and forcing the use of XML....
You clearly don't know anything about Android development. Android doesn't rely on Java versions... everything is tied to the Android release. When you code, you can select which APIs you want based on which platform you want to develop for. Want to develop for every android phone every made? Select Android 1.5 APIs. Need something extra (a lot was provided in 1.5 though)? Then select 1.6, 2.1, 2.2, or 2.3. Google provides clear charts of user base, so its easy to know what you're in for.
Also, for XML, I'm less familiar, but isn't the whole point of XML that it is a good general purpose markup language? XML is only used for arranging visual elements on screen - for layout. Web developers will be extremely used to this. I'm used to C# and visual studio's graphical drag and drop interface, so the XML part has held me up, but I don't consider myself a real programmer, so I don't fault android just because I didn't get it right away.
You also drag on multi-touch being crappy on Android, but that's bullshit. I have a Nexus One, and even with an inferior touchpanel driver (everyone uses the much better ATMEL chips now) my Nexus One multitouch performs flawlessly for everything except rotation, which the Nexus One's hardware is to blame for - most every phone made in the last 10 months features the better chips that track fingers even if the axes cross.
So clearly, Android isn't what's faulty if you have multitouch issues, since the OS is quite capable of preforming nicely. You claim to have an HTC Android phone, but that doesn't mean much - for all we know you still have the 2 year old G1. It was never designed for multi touch, so I wouldn't be blown away if it wasn't perfect. The Nexus One was the first Android phone to get multi-touch (Google, it seemed, finally got over the litigation fears), and every reasonable android device after the Nexus One has had great multitouch (I've tried quite a few - Incredible, Droid 2, Droid X, Tmobile G2).
Stop spreading FUD. You don't even know what you're talking about. Yes, some android phones can be crappy. That's the nature of a free OS. It does put extra burden on the consumers to pick a good phone, and sometimes that is bad. Apple's idea of "one phone, it's decent" has a lot of value, but there are plenty of people who want a bigger screen, physical keyboard, etc and just can't use the one iDevice jobs has honed. WP7 is great for allowing multiple devices, but just because Microsoft does something good doesn't mean Android has failed or is terrible. Android is a great platform. -Taylor
Since the blog linked in the summary is down, here is the link to the site itself: http://republicanwhip.house.gov/YouCut/ I might be missing something but I don't see anything about the National Science Foundation, never mind being the "first target". The first chosen cut was something called "New Non-Reformed Welfare Program"
They specifically target NSF projects here. They suggest that regular people go through the NSF list of grants and report anything that they think is wasteful. Which will be everything. Regular people have no idea how much science costs or have any capacity to evaluate what is and is not sound science. Its such a fucking scumbag move.
I went to that site and entered my own submission - I told him he's a scumbag motherfucker. Not very gracious, but after watching his video, that's how I felt. I encourage other slashdot users to go there and add their own comments! -Taylor
Nope. The US has a very strong "no first use" policy regarding nuclear weapons...
No we don't. Not for North Korea. In April 2010 we extended our no first use policy for almost everyone, but very specifically excluded Iran and North Korea.
Our policy still indicates that we are very much interested in exhausting all options, and everyone seems to get that Nukes are terrible (though as little as a few years ago Bush had allowed for us to Nuke anyone that might have WMDs, or a towel on their head).
But we specifically excluded NK in our no first use policy. I don't think we'd ever want to be the ones to use them first, but we could. -Taylor
Thanks; that was a good explanation. I think it really is an age/generation gap.
I keep up with my friends via email or IRC (I *do* get IRC because you can have relatively meaningful conversations over IRC, or you can use it Twitter-like just to splat up up interesting URL.)
When I have idle time, I don't like to be communicating, checking Twitter, checking IRC, etc. I like to just do nothing. I seldom get a chance to do that, so zoning out for a bit and disconnecting is very refreshing.
Yeah, I do notice that sometimes I have this weird anxiety about being connected, like I should be reading something on the web, even when I have nothing to read. I get so used to checking the phone, I'll keep checking it, and have this odd anxiety when nothing is there.
Finding a balance is interesting. The connected world offers so much, its easy to get sucked in. When I'm walking through a parking lot, its easy to read my phone and just keep my peripheral vision out to avoid hitting something, but that's stupid. If I catch myself doing that, I make sure I put my phone in my pocket and check out what's going on in the real world. Enjoy the trees and the breeze.
So doing nothing would be nice sometimes. But I do like having twitter there too. I don't *always* want to do nothing. -Taylor
Maybe I'm too old (hey... get off my lawn! Sorry...) but I just don't get the appeal of Twitter. Billions of tweets per day of which maybe 7 aren't banal. Never mind the business model, I just don't get anything about Twitter.
Maybe you are too old. I use Twitter to see what my friends are doing. The old people will say "bah, well I *call* my friends and talk to them, grumble grumble", but I can't call everyone all the time. I have friends that I don't talk to that often, because we run in different circles, but that doesn't mean I don't care about them. If they got a new job or they're having fun on a vacation, I'm happy to know, just the same as if I bumped into them at a party and they told me. It's not highly meaningful discourse, but it's not different from a lot of the interactions we have with people on a daily basis. Only I don't have to live across the street from them to bump into them.
Specifically, I live in Silicon Valley near San Jose, and I have a lot of friends who live in San Francisco. I'm busy, and I work crazy hours, so its nice to just get an idea for what they're up to. Or sometimes they'll share a funny link, and that amuses me. I use twitter on my Android phone, so it's best for idle time - waiting for a computer to reboot, waiting for the microwave, waiting for Starbucks to finish my drink. Just times where I have a few minutes, and I'd otherwise just stare off somewhere. At Starbucks, actually, I normally try to chat with people so as to not be antisocial, but sometimes there's no one to chat with. So I check twitter and find out what my friends are doing.
And often they're talking about plans they have to go to a party, or go to a concert or some cool event, and then I give them a call and might go myself an meet up with them. So I get to go to a party with a friend that I may not have realized was happening, just because of twitter.
So plenty of people don't get twitter, but I'm a real person who gets real use out of it. I may not have explained it perfectly, but all I can say is that it fits in with my lifestyle. I'm a 26 year old techie, your lifestyle may vary and twitter may be useless to you.
But more so than anything, I find it funny how people always feel the need to let people know that they don't understand twitter. -taylor
Didn't this story answer itself with this last line?
Besides, the women I saw at the grocery store last week isn't going to pay this kind of money to yell into a sat phone about her husbands vasectomy. Oh wait, it won't work in the grocery store anyhow. Now that I think about it, all phones should be sat phones.
That's a silly thing to say. I wasn't surprised to see the article be so silly, but more surprised to see someone agree with it.
Normal phones cost between $500 and $700 anyway. I bought my Nexus One last year for $550. I bought my girlfriend a G2 for christmas for $500. I don't want to be locked into a contract, so I pay full price. Plus t-mobile offers cheaper plans if you bring your own phone, so over the contract of 2 years, it pays for itself to pay full price.
Satellite phones used to be many thousands of dollars. Anyone that needs one probably has a financial reason to buy one. So getting one for $799 is a steal. I seriously cannot comprehend who would think a satellite phone is expensive at $799. These are *not* for regular people. These are for governments and drug dealers and ship captains. People who are willing to pay the extra money.
And if anything is expensive, it's not the phone, it's the plans. Its only $25 a month but its $0.65 a minute for voice and $5 per megabyte for data.
The only reason why these fail is that the satellites are just too damned expensive. That's all there is to it. -Taylor
...The problem here is that a random private in Iraq had access to State Department cables from (e.g.) Honduras. Need-to-know-basis isn't a new idea, this was a major FU by the governing security body.
Apparently the reason they did that was that the 9/11 commission said it was *too much* secrecy that left us unable to prevent 9/11. They said that if more people had seen all the little signs, it would have been more likely that someone spoke up. So then the military responded by allowing more people in the military access to that information.
The real problem is that we keep doing a bunch of secret shit in private, and then tell the public "don't worry, everything is fine, the war is going great, things are totally cool." The public knows they were getting smoke blown up their ass, and they wanted the truth. So, they found it. The military is creating a market for the truth by keeping it from us.
In this day and age, if you deprive people of information, they're only going to want it more. The whole method of "damage control" that the US govt has been doing in the middle east is just flat out ineffective. I really wish they would just tell us the fucking truth. Then there'd be nothing interesting in these cables, and a lot fewer people would get away with fucked up behavior. -Taylor
If your PCBs don't have to be overly professional looking, or have too fine of traces, I've heard you can make the toner transfer method consistent and reliable by modifying a laminator to be wide enough to accept a board. You might be able to cut out pieces of tape, stick them on and then spray on some sort of high temperature silicone sealant for solder mask.
Yeah, I've never seen anyone do solder mask that way, and my boards are probably too complex to be made without solder mask, for the most part. I feel like it would be hell to solder some tight pitch QFN components without solder mask. I'm sure it can be done, but I'm not a masochist. I just want some cheap PCBs that are at least close to as good as those made in a real fab. I feel like you could do almost all of it with a laser, but I've only ever seen isolated attempts. And I've never seen a DIY board with a solder mask. That is a real deal breaker for me.
Slashdot Mirror
That all progammers ask him for a doubling of salary and a halving of work time. Because you were reading on Slashdot that having free time and enough money is the best way to produce happy, productive employees?
Or suggest that if he wants to grow his business, then he either needs to employ more developers, or give his employees stock in exchange for the crunch,
BTW you should tell him to check out ReWork from 37signals. It makes a good counter argument to "features features features" (or, as I like to think of it: Microsoft vs Apple philisophy - both are evil overlords, but both take a different approach to building their dominions).
Thank you, sir. I'm working on starting my own company, and ReWork looks awesome! I hate all the bloat that companies can get stuck in, and I run into a lot of that at my day job. The question has always been how to avoid it. Looks like that book may help. :)
-Taylor
"until the company is profitable" is way too vague to work like that.
Yeah. My boss has told me I'll get a raise "as soon as the company has the money." Through poor management, we aren't making any money, and it's been 3 years since I've had a raise. I'm bailing as soon as I get my shit in order. Which is to say, soon.
-Taylor
Unlikely, really.
First, a good reason to NOT be dual core is battery life - slower is better. iPhone hardware has always lagged the Android models - the original iPhone and iPhone 3G had 412MHz CPUs, while the G1 (same year) had a 524MHz CPU - nearly 25% faster. The iPhone 3GS sported a 624MHz CPU or so (50% faster than iPhone/iPhone 3G), at a time when the Android hotness was 1GHz CPUs (50% faster than iPhone 3GS). The iPhone 4 is supposed to have around an 800MHz CPU, and current gen Androids have 1.2GHz CPUs.
The only thing to come close would be the iPad with its 1GHz processor.
The iPad's also the most likely one to sport a dual core processor - it has the massive battery packs (it's what, 90% battery?) to have decent battery life with dual cores.
If Androids of 2011 get dual core, it'll probably be 2012 at the earliest before Apple releases a dual core A5 chip or something for the iPhone, with the A5 debuting on the second gen iPad first at the absolute earliest. Or maybe it'll be 3rd gen iPad at that point.
Remember, these are mobile devices, and even though I charge mine at the end of the day before I go to sleep, I'd still like to be able to get through the day without lugging extended battery packs.
I don't think any current gen android phones have a 1.2GHz processor, and if there are any oddballs (maybe some models from asia?) it certainly isn't the norm. 1GHz is still the norm for current gen Android phones. I know plenty of 1GHz dual core models were shown off at CES though, and those will come out some time in the first quarter or first half. There may have been some 1.2GHz single core models as well, I don't remember. But none of those are shipping yet, so they can't be called current gen. I am a hardcore android fan, but facts are facts.
Congress required that the new heavy lift vehicle maximize the reuse of space shuttle components as part of its budget battle with President Obama last year
So congress made engineering decisions for NASA. They told NASA to reuse some parts from something else. And does Congress even know if that actually saves money? There have been plenty of times I've been told to develop something and to reuse an existing piece of code, and I've had to disappoint someone by pointing out that reusing their old COBOL EXE does not actually shrink the timeline. :-( In mechanical engineering, I've learned that reusing parts often adds a lot of work.
Maybe that isn't the case here, but Congress should instead have set constraints and let NASA decide how best to implement it. No doubt the new request also tells them what vendors to use, and what state to by them from, and where to eat lunch so that the money gets spread around to their own pet projects.
No, Congress doesn't make engineering decisions. They make budget decisions, i.e., they ensure money get spent in their district by defining what to buy. If Congress made engineering decisions and something went wrong, they might get blamed and that would not be a good thing.
So I'm pretty sure you're being sarcastic, but that's *certainly* an engineering decision.
Is there any recourse for us to fight all these congress people forcing NASA to spend money in some particular state just to get a chunk of the cash? If some senator from Alabama forces NASA to buy stuff from Alabama even if its against the betterment of the project, how can I complain? I can't vote for or against him because I live in California, but I have an interest in how the government spends my money! Do I have to ask my congress person to argue with that congress person? Is that my only recourse?
I'm sick of NASA getting castrated ever 4 years so congress people can look good, arbitrarily spending money on, or cancelling projects based on if it looks good that year.
We MUST have wasted more money on cancelled NASA projects than we've spent on finished projects, at the rate things get cancelled. Does anyone have any data on that? If we could show congress that we've wasted 50% or more of NASA's budget year over year just because they can't fucking agree on anything, maybe that would help? It would certainly make them look bad in the public's eye.
-Taylor
This is as good a place as any to ask:
Why did we stop design of the NERVA engines in the 70's? Wikipedia claims that they worked well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA
I understand people hate the idea of launching nuclear material above our heads, but the logic that the reactors on these devices should stay in one piece in the event of a disaster seems to put those concerns to rest (for reasonable people). Obviously there are plenty of non-reasonable people who say "OMG nukes!", but is that the only reason?
An unrelated wikipedia page says that some known engine technologies have the potential to get us to Mars in 40 days. Does anyone know if NERVA was one of those? Aside from OMGnukes, what were the downsides to NERVA? The wikipedia page really makes it sound like the whole program was successful, and then we just scrapped it for political reasons!
I'd appreciate leaving "duh our government sux" arguments our of this - I'm very aware of that.
-Taylor
$70B? The Apollo project cost about $170B (2005 dollars) and Mars is 150x further away than the moon is.
I was just basing that off of some initial info I got from Robert Zubrin's plan, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Direct which was estimated at $58B in 1996. Obviously he's a quite biased, but I just don't have a good dollar amount.
You could look at the Constellation program, where they estimated $100B through 2020. Assume 2X cost overruns and assume 3X cost increase for it being mars (which is probably too much - mars is 150x farther away, but the highest cost is exiting earth's orbit and exiting mars's orbit, along with life support for several months as opposed to days. But I can't imagine that being more than 2x the entire development cost to add that, compared to getting to the moon). So anyway, take Constellations cost estimates and multiply by 6, and you still have just 9% of the military budget over 10 years. I'd rather have that than another war somewhere.
-Taylor
Less than 2% of "hundreds" could still be enough people. We're not sending a bus out there.
-Taylor
In the 1960's we made it to the moon in 8 years, when NO ONE has ever been out of earth's orbit before the program started. And we got the men back safely to earth. And we did it several times.
Now, 40 years later, we think it will take 20 years to do a ONE WAY trip to the moon?
Our sense of ambition disappoints me. We should go to Mars and we should bring those people back. They will be heroes and we should not let them die. I understand that some people think its a waste of money, and other people would rather we go one way then don't go at all, but I'd rather we just go, and quit worrying about the cost (well, I mean we shouldn't waste money, obviously - we should do it as economically as is reasonable).
If we took just 5-10% of *one years worth* of our hyperinflated military budget (which would give us $70 billion for the Mars trip. That should be enough.), we could go to Mars and back, in 10 years. So, 1% total from the military budget over 10 years. You think Mars is a waste of money? Our military is a waste of money. Lets take 1% of it and do some inspirational work.
-Taylor
Within the last 40 years, nearly all the gains in productivity have gone to the top 1%. The middle class has barely broken even. The poor have gotten poorer. I doubt the top 1% are actually responsible for those productivity gains, in fact I'm pretty sure the rest of us did the lion's share of the work. But we got shafted instead of getting rich, with a tiny minority harvesting all the fruits of our labors.
He says from his AMAZING magical box that lets him talk to anyone in the world instantly, and get nearly any entertainment or media content for FREE, as well as free access to the worlds largest encyclopedia, entire free lectures from Stanford etc, and just about any other information you could possibly ever need.
Yes, the low and middle class are certainly worse off than they were 40 years ago.
-Taylor
I don't care if we explore or colonize, as long as we go. We can do so much more science with humans on the ground there. If you watch mars rover documentaries, they spend hours just trying to get to a rock. With humans we can just walk up to it. Much more science could be done.
And I'm sorry, but I hate space luddites. We can go now and we should. Looks like you were born a few centuries too late. In the last century man put his first steps on another celestial body. I wouldn't want to be in any other time. Unless people like you prevent us from going back out there.
-Taylor
I know this is going to be a hugely unpopular opinion on Slashdot, but has anyone actually made a decent argument to answer why, instead of how? I've never heard one. People usually just stare at me, when I ask, then say something akin to, "Because it's there." or "You weren't alive when we landed on the moon. You just don't understand." Occasionally I hear something like, "It's an investment in science (or the tech industry)," which is much better than "you just don't get it", but still hardly a winning argument, in my opinion. I'm not against space travel, but I'd like to see some compelling arguments, rather than nerd rage.
And, yes, maybe I would have said the same thing about the European obsession with exploring the New World. So what? What good idea has ever suffered from a little debate?
If you're genuinely curious about some of the reasons, I highly suggest reading Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot. He goes over many reasons why we should keep exploring.
Off the top of my head, there's the extinction argument - one big asteroid impact and we could all be wiped out if we're only on one planet. There's also science. For example, we never knew about global warming until we studied Venus (he discusses that in another book, I think). The scientists responsible for the worldwide end of CFC production first started pushing for the bans after learning of the global warming that causes Venus to be 700 degrees F on the surface. We could learn similarly impressive stuff by studying Mars more closely (we've been studying Earth for a long time, so a lot of the basic stuff is covered. Mars may hold new information that is easy to discover. That may help us back on earth.)
Also, studying Mars can help us advance out space travel capabilities so we can further study even more interesting places, like Europa, Titan, etc that will require large rockets to get to.
Almost all of our science is limited to what is going on on earth. Surely there are physical and chemical phenomena on other planets that simply don't happen here. The more we know about those things, the more we can do for ourselves here. I personally think that science is the path to world peace. The more easily we can provide for people and the higher the minimum standard of living for people becomes in the world, the happier people will be, and the more connected we will all become.
Space exploration also gets more kids interested in science, many of which may decide to study science in college instead of liberal arts or something. The world needs more scientists, so flashy stuff like a Mars landing can go a long way towards encouraging young people to become scientists.
There is no one impressive reason to go to Mars, but many very compelling ones. Though the extinction risk is a big one. If we don't go to Mars, and then get hit with a major asteroid, we'll sure wish we had.
-Taylor
XML is only used for arranging visual elements on screen - for layout.
No, XML is a powerful data interchange language too.
Think of the old .INI files. XML can be used like those.
Think of RSS feeds. Hardly just "layout". XML is used for those.
I'm not a huge fan of XML for data exchange (I prefer JSON if possible), but it is fairly readable. Check out the wikipedia article for more info.
Ah, yes but I was talking about specifically in android. That Android isn't some frankenstein mixture of XML and Java like the OP sort of implied ("Java, XML and Eclipse sound like a horrible platform for development"), but that the XML is being used just for layout, and is basically being used just like CSS, so its straightforward.
I know XML has other uses and have considered it for a variety of machine readable things I've done, but I think in android they only use it for layout. Actually, I remember now that they use it for storing strings, and some configuration stuff. Really I was just trying to clarify to the OP that all the real coding in Android is Java-based, because he seemed to think it was some horrible mixture of the two. But OP was an idiot.
-Taylor
... Java makes everything isolated, horrible to develop to different versions (your old Android phone doesn't have the latest Java? Too bad, you're out of luck) and forcing the use of XML....
You clearly don't know anything about Android development. Android doesn't rely on Java versions... everything is tied to the Android release. When you code, you can select which APIs you want based on which platform you want to develop for. Want to develop for every android phone every made? Select Android 1.5 APIs. Need something extra (a lot was provided in 1.5 though)? Then select 1.6, 2.1, 2.2, or 2.3. Google provides clear charts of user base, so its easy to know what you're in for.
Also, for XML, I'm less familiar, but isn't the whole point of XML that it is a good general purpose markup language? XML is only used for arranging visual elements on screen - for layout. Web developers will be extremely used to this. I'm used to C# and visual studio's graphical drag and drop interface, so the XML part has held me up, but I don't consider myself a real programmer, so I don't fault android just because I didn't get it right away.
You also drag on multi-touch being crappy on Android, but that's bullshit. I have a Nexus One, and even with an inferior touchpanel driver (everyone uses the much better ATMEL chips now) my Nexus One multitouch performs flawlessly for everything except rotation, which the Nexus One's hardware is to blame for - most every phone made in the last 10 months features the better chips that track fingers even if the axes cross.
So clearly, Android isn't what's faulty if you have multitouch issues, since the OS is quite capable of preforming nicely. You claim to have an HTC Android phone, but that doesn't mean much - for all we know you still have the 2 year old G1. It was never designed for multi touch, so I wouldn't be blown away if it wasn't perfect. The Nexus One was the first Android phone to get multi-touch (Google, it seemed, finally got over the litigation fears), and every reasonable android device after the Nexus One has had great multitouch (I've tried quite a few - Incredible, Droid 2, Droid X, Tmobile G2).
Stop spreading FUD. You don't even know what you're talking about. Yes, some android phones can be crappy. That's the nature of a free OS. It does put extra burden on the consumers to pick a good phone, and sometimes that is bad. Apple's idea of "one phone, it's decent" has a lot of value, but there are plenty of people who want a bigger screen, physical keyboard, etc and just can't use the one iDevice jobs has honed. WP7 is great for allowing multiple devices, but just because Microsoft does something good doesn't mean Android has failed or is terrible. Android is a great platform.
-Taylor
Since the blog linked in the summary is down, here is the link to the site itself: http://republicanwhip.house.gov/YouCut/ I might be missing something but I don't see anything about the National Science Foundation, never mind being the "first target". The first chosen cut was something called "New Non-Reformed Welfare Program"
http://republicanwhip.house.gov/YouCut/Review.htm
They specifically target NSF projects here. They suggest that regular people go through the NSF list of grants and report anything that they think is wasteful. Which will be everything. Regular people have no idea how much science costs or have any capacity to evaluate what is and is not sound science. Its such a fucking scumbag move.
I went to that site and entered my own submission - I told him he's a scumbag motherfucker. Not very gracious, but after watching his video, that's how I felt. I encourage other slashdot users to go there and add their own comments!
-Taylor
Nope. The US has a very strong "no first use" policy regarding nuclear weapons...
No we don't. Not for North Korea. In April 2010 we extended our no first use policy for almost everyone, but very specifically excluded Iran and North Korea.
Our policy still indicates that we are very much interested in exhausting all options, and everyone seems to get that Nukes are terrible (though as little as a few years ago Bush had allowed for us to Nuke anyone that might have WMDs, or a towel on their head).
But we specifically excluded NK in our no first use policy. I don't think we'd ever want to be the ones to use them first, but we could.
-Taylor
...Or I could be talking complete nonsense and am simple unaware of the magnitude of NK's regular levels of crazy.
I get the sense that they're genuinely crazy. But then, I don't know either.
I like delicious and the FF toolbar to manage all of my bookmarks. Can we have some replacement suggestions?
Use Chrome? Sync is built-in, and will only improve as google continues to develop for ChromeOS.
-Taylor
Thanks; that was a good explanation. I think it really is an age/generation gap.
I keep up with my friends via email or IRC (I *do* get IRC because you can have relatively meaningful conversations over IRC, or you can use it Twitter-like just to splat up up interesting URL.)
When I have idle time, I don't like to be communicating, checking Twitter, checking IRC, etc. I like to just do nothing. I seldom get a chance to do that, so zoning out for a bit and disconnecting is very refreshing.
Yeah, I do notice that sometimes I have this weird anxiety about being connected, like I should be reading something on the web, even when I have nothing to read. I get so used to checking the phone, I'll keep checking it, and have this odd anxiety when nothing is there.
Finding a balance is interesting. The connected world offers so much, its easy to get sucked in. When I'm walking through a parking lot, its easy to read my phone and just keep my peripheral vision out to avoid hitting something, but that's stupid. If I catch myself doing that, I make sure I put my phone in my pocket and check out what's going on in the real world. Enjoy the trees and the breeze.
So doing nothing would be nice sometimes. But I do like having twitter there too. I don't *always* want to do nothing.
-Taylor
Maybe I'm too old (hey... get off my lawn! Sorry...) but I just don't get the appeal of Twitter. Billions of tweets per day of which maybe 7 aren't banal. Never mind the business model, I just don't get anything about Twitter.
Maybe you are too old. I use Twitter to see what my friends are doing. The old people will say "bah, well I *call* my friends and talk to them, grumble grumble", but I can't call everyone all the time. I have friends that I don't talk to that often, because we run in different circles, but that doesn't mean I don't care about them. If they got a new job or they're having fun on a vacation, I'm happy to know, just the same as if I bumped into them at a party and they told me. It's not highly meaningful discourse, but it's not different from a lot of the interactions we have with people on a daily basis. Only I don't have to live across the street from them to bump into them.
Specifically, I live in Silicon Valley near San Jose, and I have a lot of friends who live in San Francisco. I'm busy, and I work crazy hours, so its nice to just get an idea for what they're up to. Or sometimes they'll share a funny link, and that amuses me. I use twitter on my Android phone, so it's best for idle time - waiting for a computer to reboot, waiting for the microwave, waiting for Starbucks to finish my drink. Just times where I have a few minutes, and I'd otherwise just stare off somewhere. At Starbucks, actually, I normally try to chat with people so as to not be antisocial, but sometimes there's no one to chat with. So I check twitter and find out what my friends are doing.
And often they're talking about plans they have to go to a party, or go to a concert or some cool event, and then I give them a call and might go myself an meet up with them. So I get to go to a party with a friend that I may not have realized was happening, just because of twitter.
So plenty of people don't get twitter, but I'm a real person who gets real use out of it. I may not have explained it perfectly, but all I can say is that it fits in with my lifestyle. I'm a 26 year old techie, your lifestyle may vary and twitter may be useless to you.
But more so than anything, I find it funny how people always feel the need to let people know that they don't understand twitter.
-taylor
Another company blows all their money on a data center...
In 5 years, the newest fad will arrive, and Twitter will be out of business, or suffer extreme drops in revenue and users.
Don't believe me? How's MySpace these days? Or Gawker? Or one of the other dot-coms that went under after their popularity waned.
Yes. Clearly if Myspace can't make it, no other company can make it and every company that is doing well should just give up.
-Taylor
Yeah. As Louis CK said, "Everything is amazing right now, and nobody's happy".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk
-Taylor
"...especially when it carries a $799 price tag."
Didn't this story answer itself with this last line?
Besides, the women I saw at the grocery store last week isn't going to pay this kind of money to yell into a sat phone about her husbands vasectomy. Oh wait, it won't work in the grocery store anyhow. Now that I think about it, all phones should be sat phones.
That's a silly thing to say. I wasn't surprised to see the article be so silly, but more surprised to see someone agree with it.
Normal phones cost between $500 and $700 anyway. I bought my Nexus One last year for $550. I bought my girlfriend a G2 for christmas for $500. I don't want to be locked into a contract, so I pay full price. Plus t-mobile offers cheaper plans if you bring your own phone, so over the contract of 2 years, it pays for itself to pay full price.
Satellite phones used to be many thousands of dollars. Anyone that needs one probably has a financial reason to buy one. So getting one for $799 is a steal. I seriously cannot comprehend who would think a satellite phone is expensive at $799. These are *not* for regular people. These are for governments and drug dealers and ship captains. People who are willing to pay the extra money.
And if anything is expensive, it's not the phone, it's the plans. Its only $25 a month but its $0.65 a minute for voice and $5 per megabyte for data.
The only reason why these fail is that the satellites are just too damned expensive. That's all there is to it.
-Taylor
1. don't work indoors
2. cost a lot more than cell phones that do work indoors, show real-time video, run apps. etc.
Did I miss anything?
3. Doesn't have Twitter client
Hah, it probably does! It runs windows mobile 6.5. A crappy OS, but it probably still has twitter.
-Taylor
...The problem here is that a random private in Iraq had access to State Department cables from (e.g.) Honduras. Need-to-know-basis isn't a new idea, this was a major FU by the governing security body.
Apparently the reason they did that was that the 9/11 commission said it was *too much* secrecy that left us unable to prevent 9/11. They said that if more people had seen all the little signs, it would have been more likely that someone spoke up. So then the military responded by allowing more people in the military access to that information.
The real problem is that we keep doing a bunch of secret shit in private, and then tell the public "don't worry, everything is fine, the war is going great, things are totally cool." The public knows they were getting smoke blown up their ass, and they wanted the truth. So, they found it. The military is creating a market for the truth by keeping it from us.
In this day and age, if you deprive people of information, they're only going to want it more. The whole method of "damage control" that the US govt has been doing in the middle east is just flat out ineffective. I really wish they would just tell us the fucking truth. Then there'd be nothing interesting in these cables, and a lot fewer people would get away with fucked up behavior.
-Taylor
If your PCBs don't have to be overly professional looking, or have too fine of traces, I've heard you can make the toner transfer method consistent and reliable by modifying a laminator to be wide enough to accept a board. You might be able to cut out pieces of tape, stick them on and then spray on some sort of high temperature silicone sealant for solder mask.
Yeah, I've never seen anyone do solder mask that way, and my boards are probably too complex to be made without solder mask, for the most part. I feel like it would be hell to solder some tight pitch QFN components without solder mask. I'm sure it can be done, but I'm not a masochist. I just want some cheap PCBs that are at least close to as good as those made in a real fab. I feel like you could do almost all of it with a laser, but I've only ever seen isolated attempts. And I've never seen a DIY board with a solder mask. That is a real deal breaker for me.