For sure. NASA and the Russian equivalent have been the pioneers in space exploration. No questions about that.

Nonetheless, after the Cold War fueled space race fizzled out.. and it has been a couple of decades now, hardly anyone is doing anything worthwhile as far as space exploration is concerned. You will probably admit that we have regressed more than we have made progress. With this in light, it is creditable that an underfunded organization like ISRO got this funded and successfully executed.

And let's also face the face that India is still a terribly poor country. The pursuit of science is indeed part of its value system that probably that fact alone caused ISRO to survive all these years. And ISRO has also been releasing satellites since 1975 (Aryabhata), although they only got launch capability fairly recently (1993). And admittedly, the state of the art wasn't that evolved in 1975 either.

For sure, this is only a "proof of concept" kind of a launch, but the thing is - it now sets some new benchmarks in terms of cost, capability, scale of ambition, and execution. You can push something to Mars in 75 mil. That is pretty frickin sweet. And if you are going to talk about hype and hyperbole, look at the media coverage and hype that SpaceX and Virgin Galactic has been getting. Why begrudge ISRO their moment in the spotlight?

Yes, but mostly no. What you say would be valid if firstly, research details (and the real nitty gritty details) would be shared freely - like open source. And to my (admittedly limited) knowledge, it is not. Yes, scientific papers and research is shared, but this is largely an engineering problem, not a scientific problem. And everyone pretty much needs to figure out the engineering challenges by themselves.

What you say would also be true (as is true in the high tech industry, for example) if sufficient people changed jobs back and forth between organizations like NASA and ISRO. To my knowledge, ISRO works on a shoestring budget and is a fairly insular work environment. Hardly any scientists or engineers quit a NASA job to join ISRO. I could be wrong though, but I would be very very surprised if there was indeed a reverse brain drain.

If anything, the brain drain consists of India's best and brightest relocating to the US after having studied in the near-free subsidized taxpayer funded colleges and universities in India. They typically go to the US to do their masters and PhD and then some of them join NASA.

ISRO is actually a fairly old and mature organization. India's scientific programs, especially in the high-tech space (and especially rocketry) suffered enormously because of high-tech blockade enforced by the US. The blockade was to the extent that even simple multi-core computers were banned from being exported to India. (That's why India tried to design its own supercomputer back in the day - the Param).

I know it may sound like I am being hyperbolic about ISRO but they actually deserve double credit for all the sh*t they had to put up with, and still managed to set ridiculous goals like this, and then achieving it, and that too on a shoestring budget and being able to retain their talent that gets paid Indian govt salaries. Trust me, that is not much. Forget about Indian pride etc. What is worth understanding is how organizations like this continue to succeed in the face of such big challenges.

+1. The key to long term success is being hardnosed about failures/setbacks/sub-optimal jobs, having long term focus, and putting yourself in a position where you can demonstrate your value and skills. But most of all, it is being pragmatic in the short term while being optimistic in the long term.

Having long term focus means picturing yourself on what you would consider a fulfilling job, and how exactly you see yourself and your job. Say, in 10 years. By focus, I mean take up a low paying job if necessary, as long as it is aligned to your long term goals. Good Example: Joining a company with a core focus on quality programming, but as a junior developer instead of a senior developer or lead or whatever else you might be expecting.
Bad Example: Joining the IT department (cost center) of say, a big manufacturing company. Might pay well in the short term, but will eventually be a dead-end for you.

Being hard-nosed means continue trying. Obviously, fine tuning or tweaking your strategy and where/how you are applying. By far, the easiest way to get into a company is through referrals. So can any of your buddies help you out? They get to make decent money through referral bonuses too. Also, is your location preference dragging you down? Again, in a long enough time-frame, say, 15 years from now, you will barely remember the extra 3 months (or 6 months or whatever) you put in during your initial struggling phase. So why bother getting demoralized by it now?

Lastly, don't get desperate to find a job. Your job and your company is as good as your boss. Use the interview process to figure out how much you like your future boss. If you boss isn't even interviewing you (rare, but happens), you probably don't want to work in that company to begin with.

And please remember - an extra 3-6 months of job hunting is way way better than making a mistake. Typically, from my experience, people take 2-3 years on average to fix a mistake (bad job, bad boss, bad company, bad growth opportunities).

If you are looking for an even bigger performance jump, upgrade to pci-e based ssd. Works very very well for databases and for certain types of workloads. Fusion-io, Intel, and dell sell enterprise versions, but many other vendors are rapidly getting into this segment as well.

The question to ask is - if what you say is true, then why do studios record in these higher bitrate and higher bit depth formats? If they record in analog, they will again record the music in a high bandwidth medium like reel tape.

Then the second question is - if studios record in these high bandwidth formats, why can we not listen to music in the same format as well?

A decade ago, record companies would compress the music because storage and bandwidth was expensive.
However, with current tech and internet speeds, that should not be an excuse.

Heck, video content providers are able to stream high quality videos that consume a magnitude higher levels of bandwidth and storage space. There is absolutely no excuse why audio fidelity of source music should be needlessly compressed or butchered nowadays. And I really don't care if it is needless data. All I am asking is to give me the same file that the studio uses.

Most of these online shops are not really an ecosystem. And that is really the problem.

Everyone keeps getting into the endless audiophile debates. You have one camp that disses everything that has the audiophile and calls it snake oil. Then you have the audiophiles that go into objective vs subjectives debates, and what not. Then you have the tech folks (and we have plenty) who want to correct everyone else and go into Nyquist/Shannon, signal processing, even harmonics, DAC internals, ESS Sabre chips, oversampling, and what not.

The real tragedy in all this is that we *still* don't have a good "ecosystem" that lets people download or stream studio quality music *with enough choice*, and be able to play back the music with sufficient fidelity that respects the quality of the source music.

This doesn't exist. Period. Instead you have this massively screwed up system where you either have esoteric knowledge of audio playback, audio components, internal workings, be able to differentiate between various capacitor types, analog circuitry, DAC chips, speaker drivers. Then be able to differentiate bullshit from fact, spend a ton of money with failed experiments swapping out audio components. Even then, the main battle remains. Hunt around or ask around for source music that is well mastered or well recorded. And guess what - most of the music will not even be in the genre you like or artists you like. Then figure out how/where you can legally download or purchase this music.

So all power to Pono and Neil Young's initiative if they are truly able to pull off this ecosystem. If they can let people access and listen to studio quality music and listen to it "at near studio quality" - that is nothing short of a revolution.

I find it funny that so many people like you are jumping up and down trying to come up with reasons why whatsapp sucks. Have you even used the app for starters? Why don't you try and figure out why the damn thing is so popular instead? As it is, Slashdot seems to be filled with posters who want to show their cleverness and prove why anything innovative is either done wrong, or how someone else has done something vaguely similar, or why it should never have been built in the first place.

At least greybeards like you don't need to get into this as well.

Whatsapp is successful because it is by far the best user experience you can find in any app. It does not require a login, is as lightweight as it gets, works very very well even in dog slow internet connections or in underpowered phones or even old feature phones, and messages get sent super fast and very reliably. It allows you to share text, images, and videos to a single person or to a group of people.

It just works. Very very well. It is the Google of messaging. From what I hear, the developers focus more on obsessing on the minutest of details and making sure any new feature works reliably, instead of getting into a rat race of introducing a new feature every sprint or every month. And that is what the competition does. They make creaky bloated software, and try to fix lack of usage by making their software even more creaky by introducing more features.

It is ironic that except for search and maybe email, even the mighty Google does not get this simple concept. Try using their chat, hangout, plus apps for example. The user experience is pathetic.

Would she not be happy that her husband is trying to steer clear of single mothers?

Do you read before you go to sleep?
Do you read on a train or a bus?
Do you read a few pages at a time?
Do you like to read a story end to end in one sitting?
Do you carry your book in a handbag or a manpurse?
Do you carry your book in your pocket?

Maybe some of what I said may not make sense.
However, we need to think deeper about why reading books are becoming more and more unpopular. We also need to think deeper as to why libraries are becoming more unpopular or are trying to do other things (besides being a place where people can read and borrow books).

Don't be so quick to judge and say "that makes no sense". I wasn't trying to be prescriptive in terms of saying exactly how we should redesign libraries. However, I do find it surprising that so little effort is made to keep evolving books and libraries according to how and why and when people are reading books. Books and libraries should fit into people's lifestyles, not the other way around. Yes, sure e-book lending etc has taken off, and libraries have become more of social centers, but that is only a couple of steps in this direction.

For example, I have often found it an utter shame when I have found myself lugging a book in my hand when it will not fit in my pocket, especially on crowded trains and buses. I have also often been frustrated when I have stayed up late consecutively for several nights and finished 2 parts of a trilogy only to discover that the third part hasn't even been published yet.

Libraries are so often categorized on Victorian assumptions that we are there to do serious stuff - academic pursuits, seeking knowledge, a scholarship, research and such claptrap. Nobody feels, emotes, thinks, imagines, or dreams that way. And nobody reads books that way either.

Books should be categorized on emotions, imagination, our interests and passions, our quirks, our pursuits and hobbies. Books should also be categorized on *how* we read a book, not always on *what* we read.

I really don't subscribe to the standard answers of finding technology answers to these kind of problems. Technology only helps us solve some problems better. But we first need to know what the problem is, and how we want to solve it in the first place.

The problem is that libraries are not aligned with how people think and feel. Libraries are instead aligned with how a certain people once thought that people should think and feel. Which is bollocks.

On a slightly related note, there is a very nice Microsoft Research paper on password theft and bank fraud, and who actually gets affected.
I will admit that most of what I actually thought of this subject was quite wrong.

Linkage: http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/161829/EverythingWeKnow.pdf

+5 Insightful.

Forming packs and hunting people is old sport too. There's a reason they call this activity a witch-hunt.

Along with the pack violence mentality that persists in us humans, what amazes me is our capacity for double standards.
There's a special sort of viciousness that we reserve for others, when we observe a trait in them - that we despise in ourselves.

Yes, agree 100%. Leave ASAP.

The other way to think about this is - any organization is only as good as your boss. If she or he is is veritable shite, the organization is as well. You are not only wasting your time, you are doing the equivalent of hanging out with a bunch of dicey "friends" who might go do something illegal when they are tanked up.