What does physical human presence on a spacecraft do that can't be done by remotely controlled or autonomous robotics?

Clean solar panels. http://articles.latimes.com/2008/nov/12/science/sci-rover12

Enjoy,

The new version of my NullProgNix comes out next month too.

Features:

No WGA Everyone is a thief because its free and they cant be caught. We don't care.
No Secure Audio Path We hold the electron path between the users CPU and soundcard as sacred.
No Secure Video Path We don't care what you watch.
The license Manager (CACL) checker doesn't do anything when you hook a printer up without a CACL We don't care how many connections your computer has.
To make Windows users at home Cron will launch a desktop/menu scrambler once a day. Bonus, it launches a Fibonacci sequence four hours a day to make your computer sluggish.

For $0 USD, the additional Family pack includes nothing you cant download from the repositories.
On Sale today, you can have the nullProgNix distribution for $0 USD. For an additional $0 USD you can choose the KDE/XFCE experience.

Enjoy.

Doesn't exist in Visual Studio anymore without some tweaks. If your program targets multiple platforms beyond Microsoft your in for a few headaches.

I wonder if Martin Heller used the VS10 compiler for cross platform Wx/Gtk/Qt development (Check Audacity out). I (or someone) should do this in a future slasdot review.

The OpenWatcom, g++, and Intel compilers are a much better solution if your targeting multiple platforms (ARM, Mac, Power5, Mainframes, cellphones etc.) I use VS6 and GCC, but your mileage may vary.

I appreciate the fact that Microsoft is pushing for VS studio C#/.Net acceptance. As of today, that solution is just as slow and portable as Java is/was ten years ago. For some strange reason I refuse to write a program that takes twenty to thirty megabytes of RAM to run when it should only take two. Why? Because that RAM belongs to the user and the other programs they may be running, not me. Waste not, want not. If you can do it faster and for less RAM in a different language then you owe your users to do so.

And no, I've never written a C/C++ program that was un-secure (yet), thanks for asking. And yes, I like C#/Java programming, I just have deployment issues that I've never recovered from.

My opinion or experiences may not be yours.

Enjoy,

Two things:

1. People don't buy operating systems, they buy applications. Yet another OS is not interesting.

2. Handhelds and netbooks are getting more powerful with every new product. At some point, they can run Windows without sacrificing the "user experience." Small fast OS' have a fleeting advantage.
 

1) By your logic the Mac/Amiga/Atari platforms won in the 80/90s because they all had more applications. IBM/MSDOS had dick at the time but consumers still bought them. More recently, the PS3/XBox should have beat the Wii because there were more titles. Neither beat the Wii in sales.

2) Microsoft Windows is all about dis-enabling the "user" experience. Why do you think there is a secure DRM pathway for sound and video in Vista/Windows 7 ? It wasn't because they wanted you to have the "full" user experience.

The fact is, neither you or I can predict consumer choices when a product is presented. Linux is now cheaper and "good enough", just like Microsoft was in the early 90s. Both Dell and HP are releasing new Linux netbook lines for some reason other than you dissing them. Maybe the marketing/Sales department knows something you don't.

Enjoy,

As to the article in question, I can't think of any good reason why memcpy(3C) would be considered unsafe, since it specifies the amount of memory to copy. Sure, you could use it to copy outside the bounds of dst, but that's just calling it incorrectly. It's not like sprintf(3C) where you could easily accidentally write outside the bounds of the string.

Agreed. I'll bet real money the Microsoft kernel developers will not be held to this standard either. Why would they want to waste cycles moving local fixed length structures/data blocks around.

Enjoy,

Nothing built into XP, Vista, or Group Policy supports time-of-day power management. Many cases the user never wants their PC to sleep/hibernate from 9-5, but after 7 it's fair game. Microsoft doesn't address such a situation. It's either all-or-nothing.

I blame you, the user.

Let me introduce you to the AT http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb490866.aspx and SHUTDOWN http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb491003.aspx COMMANDS, they have been around since Windows 2000.

This PRO Microsoft post sent to you from a computer running Linux.
Enjoy,

In any case, the market standardized on its own in response to consumer demand for interchangeable parts.
No it didn't. the market standardized on PC clones around 1994/95 to 1998 because Apple (Mac) was too expensive and everyone wanted on the internet. Apple dropped the Apple ][ line in 1990 and both Atari(ST) and Commodore(C128/Amiga) went Tango Uniform because of management mis-management. Compaq, Dell, NEC, Packard Bell, Gateway etc. killed off Tandy with their PC price points being lower. Consumers only had two choices to get on the internet in 1994, Apple and PC clones. Guess which one was cheaper.

Regular consumer users don't care about standardized hardware, ask any laptop/netbook owner. Out of necessity, I just bought my wife a eMachines desktop computer that doesn't accept any hardware from her old computer other than the keyboard, mouse, and speakers. I guess that would be zero demand for interchangeable parts on my part.

The government had nothing to do with it.
Your right. Thats the way it should be.

Enjoy,

This is a typical case where pure laissez-faire capitalism can go against the best interests of the consumer. It reminds me of the personal computer industry of the early 1980s, dominated by proprietary, overpriced, non-interoperable components

Um, no. The industry was new and every company had a different approach as to how a personal computer should work (I/O, memory, bus etc). Overpriced, hardly, the C64 is still the single best selling computer model of all time. Apple components worked in Apple computers, Commodore components worked in Commodore computers etc. My Epson dot matrix worked with all the different models and I'm pretty sure the power cables were interchangeable too. For future reference, proprietary companies don't supply users with internal schematics, ROM routines, and instructions on how to modify/enhance their products (Apple, Sinclair, and Commodore did).

IBM moved in with its PC and blew the field wide open, paving the way for today's mix-and-match technology.
From the company that brought us Microsoft, the PS/2, and Micro Channel. Talk about proprietary.

You can thank Compaq (now HP) for the open standard of todays PC "Clone" market.

Enjoy,

Microsoft, always has been and always will be a slimmy bunch of bastards.
What IBM did though was completely devious and underhanded and showed a complete lack of respect for a working relationship.

What disturbs me the most, is IBM. Microsoft has always bought/borrowed/copied from the development efforts of others. IBM historically has always been vicious to competitors but bends over backwards for partners. While Microsoft may sell a lot of Xbox units, Sony sells other devices beyond PS3s. For IBM to treat Sony this way is unheard of. I'm still curious as to what Toshiba thinks of Microsoft getting free development off of their R&D.

I'm glad the IBM engineers wrote about it.

Enjoy,

From the article:
How Sony inadvertently helped a competitor and lost position in the videogame market.

Read here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123069467545545011.html

Enjoy,

Microsoft created the Run command

Your being silly, Wozniak invented the RUN command.

Microsoft created PEEK() and POKE().

Enjoy,

* Ubuntu 8.10 with EXT3 filesystem boots in 31.8 seconds (on the AMD Sempron system);
* Ubuntu 9.04 Alpha (Build 20090112.1) with EXT3 filesystem boots in 28.3 seconds (on the AMD Sempron system);
* Ubuntu 9.04 Alpha (Build 20090112.1) with EXT4 filesystem boots in 23.1 seconds (on the AMD Sempron system).

* Ubuntu 8.10 with EXT3 filesystem boots in 26.8 seconds (on the Intel Core 2 Duo system);
* Ubuntu 9.04 Alpha (Build 20090112.1) with EXT3 filesystem boots in 24.5 seconds (on the Intel Core 2 Duo system);
* Ubuntu 9.04 Alpha (Build 20090112.1) with EXT4 filesystem boots in 21.4 seconds (on the Intel Core 2 Duo system)!

I would say this is a testament on how bloated Gnome is getting.

XUbuntu 8.10 on my work Athlon 2400 boots to desktop 20 seconds. On my home Pentium IV system it boots in about 15 (Both ext3).

I bet if the Gnome team were to rethink the design of some of those services they could shave off 10 seconds easily.

My opinion,
Enjoy,

NASA was formed to explore space as a peaceful endeavor, not as a conquest.

Bullshit. Your confusing your Federation/Starfleet history with NASA.

NASA was created because Sputnik scared the shit out of everyone.
http://history.nasa.gov/sputnik/index.html

  The Sputnik launch also led directly to the creation of National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). In July 1958, Congress passed the National Aeronautics and Space Act (commonly called the "Space Act"), which created NASA as of October 1, 1958 from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and other government agencies.

Enjoy,

it is 100% flawless under windows in IE and almost unplayable in Ubuntu for any combination of browser and JDK that I have tried

Your doing something wrong. What I dont know (Make sure your using the SUN JVM instead of the default OpenJDK). My twelve year old plays the premium Runescape every day under Ubuntu+Firefox, no problems and its much faster than the windows machine.

Enjoy,