Besides the fact that the terran computational calendar's time of day is often in sync with UTC and that TC can account for UTC's IERS issued leap seconds, it has little else to do with UTC and a lot to do with the 1977 TAI redefinition (TAI = International Atomic Clock).
Yes and no. TC timekeeping is kept in sync with the Earth's rotation, as evidenced by its use of leap days, thus it is kept in sync with UTC (which is also synced to Earth's rotation). The difference is that leap seconds are held until the 13th Luna, rather than dispersed throughout the year.
... but we all know that's it's adoption on any grand scale any time soon is unrealistic. But... I'm not convinced that grandscale adoption is really it's true purpose.
The more I look at it, the more I like it. However, I do see a few issues:
- The terms month and mini-month should be abandoned in favour of the Luna. "Month" has too much cultural baggage. Lunas should not be named.
- Choosing the winter solstice as the start of the year. I can understand wanting to sync with an orbital event, but astronomy (and astrology before that) settled on the vernal equinox as the zero point long ago.
- Choosing a start point of the year that is not aligned with Jan 01. Most civic calendars start with this date. The 1977 TAI/UTC redefinition was coordinated with this instant.
- Nothing new, really. We already have accumulated seconds time standards. We already have time standards adjusted for the Earth's rotation. We already have notations of a base instant plus offset. The only advantages I see to TC is fixed length Lunas, and the seconds field never exceeding 59.
By the way, the TC website is broken. Try entering 2014-01-01 0:0:0 into the converter. It flips to 2013.
I think they should split the industry into signal providers and signal carriers, much like some places have split power generation and power carriers. Companies should not have a defacto monopoly just because they sit at the cable head.
True, but at least any terran computational date configuration is an unambiguous instant in time.
While that may be true, the converse isn't: An unambiguous instant in time can have an number terran date configurations. now= yesterday with a datemod of 86400, for example.
TC is cute and all, but it's just another way of writing UTC. I'll stick to ISO 8601, thanks.
Today, the government space "market" is mostly for PR value and political patronage.
"Why" doesn't matter. Maybe it is national pride. Maybe it is the opportunity to conduct experiments at the finest microgravity research facility in the solar system. "Why" doesn't matter. What matters is that governments and private citizens are willing to pay someone to ferry them into space. SpaceX thinks they can do it cheaper than the competition. Maybe they're right. Maybe they're wrong. Only time will tell.
Apparently the Dragon capsule can remain docked for as much as 210 days... as long as a Soyuz. One of the many videos I was watching today said that the Dragon could be in orbit for two years.
Hundreds of people from dozens of countries and private companies have found some reason for spending the millions upon millions of dollars needed to get into space. So, clearly there is a market. Denying the facts is lunacy, but go ahead if it makes you feel better.
One of the nice things about the Soyuz design is that it will passively self-orient. Even if it starts re-entry backwards, the drag will pivot the craft into a heat-shield first orientation.
I'm saying there are plenty of other customers other than the US government, and plenty of reasons other than satellite launches that private space corporations can cater to. NASA is not the only game in town.
The harsh fact is that, aside from satellite launches, there is pretty much no reason for any other entity to go into space.
Yeah, I guess that would explain why there has been at least one person in orbit every year since the last moon shot, and why the ISS has been continuously occupied for nearly 14 years.
As far as commercial flight goes, unlike the shuttle, anyone with the money can buy a launch from SpaceX. They're not restricted to government launches.
Proof: even though we can add numbers far faster and cheaper today, space is still as dead as ever. And so it shall be.
Wrong. There's far, far more life in space now than there was when we went to the moon. The ISS has been continuously occupied for almost 14 years. Mir was inhabited for 12, and Salyut and Apollo/Soyuz before that. In fact, since the Apollo program ended, there has not been a year gone by that hasn't had someone in space.
And that's only people. Heaven knows how many plants and animals and microorganisms have been in, or are even now, in orbit. Space has been brimming with life ever since Neil's bootprint.
Weird, 30 minutes ago that comment had a moderation, now it has none. Does that happen often or only to posts that go against the Holy Orthodoxy Of The Species' True Destiny In Space, Amen?
Or it could be that the Slashdot servers are out of sync.
Not even close. Filling sodas is a portion of one person's work, not a friggin' position. Furthermore, most fast food eateries just give you a cup and you fill it yourself. This is how these things get so over exaggerated.
The drink filler machine is at the drive-through station, not at the walk-in counter. It's there so you don't wind up getting the orange soda that the car in front of you ordered.
Are you implying that there may be 50% less "organic" additives to my burger after the robot revolution? Or am I going to have to worry about having oil spit into my burger? I'm not sure which is more disgusting...
By then, it may be completely unburger anyways.
Just looking at the basic "augments" like prescription glasses and hearing aids there's tons of personal adjustment. I very much doubt you'll be able to find "one size fits all" cybernetics.
True. But consider the revolutions in 3D printing and CAD/CAM technologies. What was once an arduous and expensive process (a well manufactured one-off part) is no longer a pricey pipe dream. Prescription lenses are a good example. They are no longer simply off the shelf "one size fits all" lenses, but are custom ground.
As manufacturing gets better, we'll begin to see adaptive augments. Hearing aids, for example, already can be customer tuned. We'll not see "one size fits all" cybernetics, but individual and highly customizable cybernetics.
Proper astronomers, like proper programmers, have their own coffee pots. This is doubly true for astronomers who happen to be programmers. What's a coffee line?
A coffee line is an unbroken succession of heredity in coffee plants. Did you think it was merely a coincidence that the Arecibo observatory was placed in the coffee growing region of Puerto Rico?
Slashdot Mirror
Besides the fact that the terran computational calendar's time of day is often in sync with UTC and that TC can account for UTC's IERS issued leap seconds, it has little else to do with UTC and a lot to do with the 1977 TAI redefinition (TAI = International Atomic Clock).
Yes and no. TC timekeeping is kept in sync with the Earth's rotation, as evidenced by its use of leap days, thus it is kept in sync with UTC (which is also synced to Earth's rotation). The difference is that leap seconds are held until the 13th Luna, rather than dispersed throughout the year.
... but we all know that's it's adoption on any grand scale any time soon is unrealistic. But... I'm not convinced that grandscale adoption is really it's true purpose.
The more I look at it, the more I like it. However, I do see a few issues:
- The terms month and mini-month should be abandoned in favour of the Luna. "Month" has too much cultural baggage. Lunas should not be named.
- Choosing the winter solstice as the start of the year. I can understand wanting to sync with an orbital event, but astronomy (and astrology before that) settled on the vernal equinox as the zero point long ago.
- Choosing a start point of the year that is not aligned with Jan 01. Most civic calendars start with this date. The 1977 TAI/UTC redefinition was coordinated with this instant.
- Nothing new, really. We already have accumulated seconds time standards. We already have time standards adjusted for the Earth's rotation. We already have notations of a base instant plus offset. The only advantages I see to TC is fixed length Lunas, and the seconds field never exceeding 59.
By the way, the TC website is broken. Try entering 2014-01-01 0:0:0 into the converter. It flips to 2013.
I think they should split the industry into signal providers and signal carriers, much like some places have split power generation and power carriers. Companies should not have a defacto monopoly just because they sit at the cable head.
Welcome to XXI century...
Dude! It's the 21st century. Nobody uses roman numerals anymore.
True, but at least any terran computational date configuration is an unambiguous instant in time.
While that may be true, the converse isn't: An unambiguous instant in time can have an number terran date configurations. now= yesterday with a datemod of 86400, for example.
TC is cute and all, but it's just another way of writing UTC. I'll stick to ISO 8601, thanks.
I like 10 months. December can be the tenth month again.
The even numbered months have 36 days, the old months have 37.
In a leap year December has 37.
36 or 37 days? Are you crazy? I've already got too much month at the end of my money.
On a venn diagram there is no intersection between "speak Klingon at parties" and "friends"...
Ah! So that's why none of my friends can speak Klingon. It's mathematically impossible for them!
Pentium 75 with 5 gigs of ram, ????
Must have been one of the early Pentiums.
Today, the government space "market" is mostly for PR value and political patronage.
"Why" doesn't matter. Maybe it is national pride. Maybe it is the opportunity to conduct experiments at the finest microgravity research facility in the solar system. "Why" doesn't matter. What matters is that governments and private citizens are willing to pay someone to ferry them into space. SpaceX thinks they can do it cheaper than the competition. Maybe they're right. Maybe they're wrong. Only time will tell.
Apparently the Dragon capsule can remain docked for as much as 210 days... as long as a Soyuz. One of the many videos I was watching today said that the Dragon could be in orbit for two years.
Hundreds of people from dozens of countries and private companies have found some reason for spending the millions upon millions of dollars needed to get into space. So, clearly there is a market. Denying the facts is lunacy, but go ahead if it makes you feel better.
One of the nice things about the Soyuz design is that it will passively self-orient. Even if it starts re-entry backwards, the drag will pivot the craft into a heat-shield first orientation.
I'm saying there are plenty of other customers other than the US government, and plenty of reasons other than satellite launches that private space corporations can cater to. NASA is not the only game in town.
Seven crew means it can be used as an escape capsule for the ISS.
Well, for seven of them, anyway. There have been times when there have been a dozen people aboard the ISS.
Must be ancient Greece (they hadn't invented blue yet).
So their Windex was green?
The harsh fact is that, aside from satellite launches, there is pretty much no reason for any other entity to go into space.
Yeah, I guess that would explain why there has been at least one person in orbit every year since the last moon shot, and why the ISS has been continuously occupied for nearly 14 years.
As far as commercial flight goes, unlike the shuttle, anyone with the money can buy a launch from SpaceX. They're not restricted to government launches.
Proof: even though we can add numbers far faster and cheaper today, space is still as dead as ever. And so it shall be.
Wrong. There's far, far more life in space now than there was when we went to the moon. The ISS has been continuously occupied for almost 14 years. Mir was inhabited for 12, and Salyut and Apollo/Soyuz before that. In fact, since the Apollo program ended, there has not been a year gone by that hasn't had someone in space.
And that's only people. Heaven knows how many plants and animals and microorganisms have been in, or are even now, in orbit. Space has been brimming with life ever since Neil's bootprint.
Weird, 30 minutes ago that comment had a moderation, now it has none. Does that happen often or only to posts that go against the Holy Orthodoxy Of The Species' True Destiny In Space, Amen?
Or it could be that the Slashdot servers are out of sync.
"No man will run a mile in under a second" There, I said something that can't be done, by you logic it must be possible because...physics.
Every astronaut that uses the treadmill on the ISS runs over 4.5 miles every second.
Of course, the real issue is how do you maintain a continuous 1G thrust for years at a time.
We will be alive when we have computers writing their own code.
We've had LISP for a long time now.
Not even close. Filling sodas is a portion of one person's work, not a friggin' position. Furthermore, most fast food eateries just give you a cup and you fill it yourself. This is how these things get so over exaggerated.
The drink filler machine is at the drive-through station, not at the walk-in counter. It's there so you don't wind up getting the orange soda that the car in front of you ordered.
Are you implying that there may be 50% less "organic" additives to my burger after the robot revolution? Or am I going to have to worry about having oil spit into my burger? I'm not sure which is more disgusting... By then, it may be completely unburger anyways.
By then???
...the robot fingers that can type 500wpm...
Type? How quaint!
Just looking at the basic "augments" like prescription glasses and hearing aids there's tons of personal adjustment. I very much doubt you'll be able to find "one size fits all" cybernetics.
True. But consider the revolutions in 3D printing and CAD/CAM technologies. What was once an arduous and expensive process (a well manufactured one-off part) is no longer a pricey pipe dream. Prescription lenses are a good example. They are no longer simply off the shelf "one size fits all" lenses, but are custom ground. As manufacturing gets better, we'll begin to see adaptive augments. Hearing aids, for example, already can be customer tuned. We'll not see "one size fits all" cybernetics, but individual and highly customizable cybernetics.
Proper astronomers, like proper programmers, have their own coffee pots. This is doubly true for astronomers who happen to be programmers. What's a coffee line?
A coffee line is an unbroken succession of heredity in coffee plants. Did you think it was merely a coincidence that the Arecibo observatory was placed in the coffee growing region of Puerto Rico?