I'm just surprised that using the slingshot effect on the Mars Orbiter didn't result in an event horizon opening up and sending the satellite to a distant part of the universe
Absolutely they don't NEED to be.
I'm suggesting that concepts such as "mail client, calendar, fax, RSS reader and weather reports" don't need to be separate entities.
In fact, if you smash them all together into one big entity, you can sell it for $109.99 and LOTS of people will buy it.
So we agree that because those things don't HAVE to be separate, systemd combines all of them together, into one package that does everything. We also agree that:
> 1. It appears that the Microsoft tradition is big monolithic packages that do everything.
Ergo, system fits the Microsoft tradition, the Microsoft way of doing things. That way certainly isn't impossible - Microsoft has made billions of dollars doing it that way. Unix traditionally does things a different way.
There is a difference between a low-level tool and a high-level product. You could say that it is not "UNIX-like" to put together a bunch of individual components into a single program (monolith?) - why doesn't everyone use awk, sed, grep etc do their text processing? The reason why people build higher level products out of low level components is to make life easier.
I don't particularly see any problem with Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc. See, even google does it with Google Docs...so it must be right
I don't know if you have ever used ZFS -- if you have you would know what I mean. Having had to deal with migrating thousands of LUNs from one Storage array to another (via host-side migration - Veritas Volume Manager), i can tell you the ease of use and simplicity of a product that is not "Disk and LVM and Filesystem" (aka ZFS which is pool, vdev and volume) is a lot simpler. I have to just replace disks at the pool level, not have to worry about timing the mirroring and detachment of the mirrors (of disks from 2 separate Storage arrays) such that it doesn't kill performance of my 20TB DWH running on the box. Or wanting to accelerate things using the L2 ARC capabilities, etc.
So... what you are saying, if I'm getting you right, is that Indian mission sent a Tata Nano to Mars, whereas NASA sent a Chevy Suburban...?
More like India sent a digital camera from 1993 and we sent one made today. It's the level of sophistication of the probe, what it was designed to do, etc. India is NOT at the same place that the U.S. as far as space travel and rocket capability, folks. Stop projecting! It's great that they got there, and yes, they did build ehitr probe using information from what came before in the U.S. (hindsight and all), but they are still in the early stages of their space program and this (comparatively) small victory is big for them.
you think that the disparity of technology is that great? I don't think so. Technology generation-wise, the two might be a couple years apart (at most 5 years, though I doubt that).
That was part of the equation. There is an article out there (nbcnews or somewhere) that they break down the project costs and satellite launch cost for ISRO was around 6-7M and for NASA it was ~100M.
To be more precise, I'm suggesting that NASA et al might be able to generate a revenue stream (like ISRO does via Antrix - that in part funds their future research) by launching satellites etc for other non-space capable nations. Word is that Israel, Algeria, etc are clients of Antrix.
That might very well be the case. But there might be other nations willing to do that. So, could NASA or other space agencies be able to remain competitive with ISRO/Antrix towards that end? Should they even care? Who knows? Does it make sense for space agencies to try and get more self-sufficient in today's cash-tight world of recessions and double-dip economies? May be it does. For that will make continuing space research more sound (and budgets etc won't be in hands of Governments that can use it towards earning election-time brownie points)...
Looks like SpaceX is already making plans to do launches for as low as $66M...that indicates that there is a market for this.
That is a valid point. However, we have to see whether NASA can manage to send the "$5000 car" at the same cost or lower than ISRO. Odds are that the "$500,000 Truck" is going to be way out of reach for ISRO in the next 5 years or so. However, the future might hold more opportunities. Just like SpaceX, there might be entrepreneurial opportunities in India now to provide competition to Antrix (the commercial wing of ISRO) at a purely privatized or a private/public undertaking capacity.
Prices being driven down while not compromising quality is a good thing.
The University system in Ancient India was forcibly decimated as a result of Islamic invasions. There are accounts of students and teachers at Nalanda being killed in the thousands and the great library razed to the ground. The library burnt for 3 months, according to historical records.
Again, there's a body of books on the historical development of higher education and nowhere in published literature on the subject have I found an opinion that the ancient schools of India, China, or Middle East should be called universities on their own merit (as opposed to how laymen call them). If you can point me to a scholarly source, either monographs or journal papers, that would corroborate your claim, I will be very thankful for that. I've posted one reference below. I'll be glad to look for some more.
That's because you've studied a very euro-centric view of history.
Not your fault...that's how things were in the 20th century (and have carried forward into the 21st century as well). When the current crop of "academics" croak, then we might see some realism as far as history is concerned. If one read history per Western academics, nothing happened in asia save the fueling of Western adventurism, materialism (business, science, technology, etc) and a need to educate the heathen in the ways of the Christian god!
Don't know if this counts...I don't have the patience to try and find this out. We studied about it in Indian history (in India)...so it is common knowledge for Indians who studied in India.
http://whc.unesco.org/en/tenta...
Nalanda is one of the most ancient international centers of education and learning equivalent to modern universities, with a very rich library. An inscribed seal written "Sri-Nalandamahavihariy-Arya-Bhikshu-Sanghasya" identifies the site as Nalanda Mahavihara.
Nalanda has a very ancient history and goes back to the days of Mahavira and Buddha in sixth and fifth centuries B.C. Many references in the Pâli Buddhist literature mention about Nâlandâ. It is said that in course of his journeys Buddha often halted at this place. It is also the place of birth and nirvana of Sariputra, one of the famous disciples of Buddha.
The place rose into prominence in 5th Century A.D. as a great monastic-cum-educational institution for oriental art and learning in the whole Buddhist world, attracting students from like Hiuen Tsang and I-Tsing from China and other distant countries. The galaxy of luminaries associated with it includes Nagarjuna, Aryadeva, Vasubandhu, Dharmapala, Suvishnu, Asanga, Silabhadra, Dharmakirti, Shantarakshita. Another important mention in history, is that around second century, Suvishnu built one hundred and eight temples at Nalanda to prevent the decline of the Hînayâna and Mahâyâna schools of Buddhism.
Various subjects like theology, sabda-vidyâ grammar, hetu-vidyâ (logic), astronomy, metaphysics, chikitsâ-vidyâ medicine and philosophy were taught here. The accounts of pilgrim state that Nâlandâ was bustling with literary activities.
Nâlandâ had now acquired a celebrity spread all over the east as a centre of Buddhist theology and educational activities. This is evident from the fact that within a short period of thirty years following Hiuen Tsang's departure, no less than eleven Chinese and Korean travelers are known to have visited Nalanda.
Life lead by Nalanda monks is regarded as the ideal to be followed by the Buddhist all over the world. This celebrity status persisted through ages. It is also attributed that a detailed history of Nalanda would be the history of Mahayanist Buddhism.
The institution was maintained by the revenue collected from the villages bestowed specifically for the purpose by the contemporary rulers as evident from inscriptions. Royal patronage was therefore the key note of the prosperity and efficiency of Nâlandâ.
Just like the word "madrasa" can be used very broadly in Arabic to refer to many kinds of schools, even those have been reformed along the organizational and legal lines of a European-style university. And? Again, universitas was a kind of medieval European institution, and much later, one specific type of it later spread across the world. I'm sorry for your poor grasp of language logic and history, but if word X currently happens to be used in India to describe an institution of type Y that exists in India today, and a thousand years ago it was used in the same place to describe a different type of institution Z that existed in India a thousand years ago, that doesn't suddenly mean that institutions of type Y coexisted with institutions of type Z a thousand years ago. That only means the name was later co-opted for a purpose. But later language changes don't retroactively reshape historical facts. There's a lot of books you can read on the history of higher education, and they happen to be quite unanimous on the subject.
Are you generally this obtuse or is it a "special" effort for this topic? I suppose it is the latter.
Don't be anachronistic when it comes to comparing historical data with present time. Just because the term "Y" was used to refer to institutions that taught "AB&C" in the 16th century in Europe, doesn't mean the same term "Y" is used to refer to institutions that teach the same subjects now. More likely "AB&C" have been replaced with "DE&F".
It is not a question of co-existence of "Y" and "Z" (though in the alphabet they are grouped chronologically one after another). It is a question of whether "Y" now in the West can be used to refer to "Z" in the East of a time past.
What was being taught in "Z" institutions in India around 400BCE? Philosophy, Mathematics and Medicine (including surgery) [You should read up on that before you proceed to lecture us on the difference between a school and a university]
People traveled from various neighboring countries to study at these institutions. So, they functioned very much like the universities of today (far more than the "universities" of medieval Europe.
3. Do you disagree with the statement that ZFS is a volume manager, a filesystem, a raid-like redundancy system, and a few other other things as well? In other words, that it's a big, monolithic package tat does many things. Do you disagree with that?
I'm suggesting that concepts such as "volume manager", "filesystem" and "raid-like redundancy system" don't need to be separate entities. The concepts such as "filesystem" and "volume" etc exist to conform to a 20th century vocabulary. And it's not that revolutionary any more. Companies like EMC, Netapp etc went that route too...thereby simplifying things like HSM etc at a "pool of disks" level.
Why is this considered "boasting"? Why can't it be considered emphatic celebration of a scientific/engineering achievement. Being the nerds that we Indians are in general, it is not that uncharacteristic of us to do so.
Better that than "boast" about being the world champions in Baseball or American football
All seems condemned in the long run to approximate a state akin to Gaussian noise. -- James Martin
