I've got news: atoms are not 2 dimensional. I can't help but think any publication that prints this stuff isn't worth the paper it's no longer printed on.

Now that's good thinking.

Dude. Did you see the poster's name who you were responding to? 'nuff said.

You could have gone with the short answer: "no".

While it is true that there seem to be 11 launch capable countries, now, that has not been the case for decades. And certainly not the "China, India, Japan and a dozen other..." that you claimed.

Rocket science continues to be as hard as rocket science.

AI: "how many rocket launch failures have there been in the past year"
In 2024, there were 8 orbital launch failures out of 259 attempts. This resulted in a failure rate of 3%, which is lower than the previous year's 6%.

Pissing on a company whose first attempt was not a complete success says more about you than it does about that company.

A dozen other countries? For decades? Really? Care to name 'em?

I'm not up on my AI jargon. How should I feel about 20 tokens/second? What does that mean to me as some kind of user?

I'm pretty sure we could just ask an AI if the codebase is safe. I can't think of any downside to that.

It's not. But it's relatively rare in the MMO universe.

I'm told that WoW permadeath servers are super cool. Very dedicated players that are actually helpful and communicative - as those that are not those things get weeded out pretty quick.

Never tried it, myself.

You're not wrong except for a couple of assumptions:
* Satellites are not going to get smaller/more efficient - meaning less cost per satellite.
* They're going to keep launching on falcons

I'm pretty sure that the goal is to move to starship as a launch vehicle - which is supposed to be even more efficient.

Elon is a nutter. And this would be an obvious conflict of interest. But I don't think Starlink is financially unviable.

With all the recent Mars talk, I decided to look up our bet:
https://science.slashdot.org/c...

I proposed not making it by 2027. You accepted "by the end of 2027." That's not what I said, but I'll tell you what: I'll double down on what you said.
$2 if SpaceX lands successfully on Mars by the end of 2027. I'm hoping to lose this bet, but I'm guessing I'll be $2 richer come 1/1/2028.

kurt@CircleW.org

Sorry - you basically said that I need experience to understand what you're talking about. Right? "This means getting experience, not trading a one or the paragraph blurb." "You need years to go from not knowing anything about methodologies beyond thinking there is only Agile and waterfall." Yeah - that's what you said.

"Why would I care how old you are or if you have a github account? (or check linkedin, I guess)"

With age comes experience? The point is not that I have a github or linkedin or /. account. The point is how very very old they are, how much crap is in them, how old the crap is, etc.

And a final point for the both of us - from Mark Twain!
Never argue with an idiot.

I mean... dude. Did you not glance at my /. user id? I don't hide my identity - did you not look me up on github or linkedin?

It's hardly possible that I have not been around the block.

The only real likelihood left is that I'm super dumb.

I dunno. I look at that list and squint just a little and they pretty much fall into the two camps - waterfall or agile. I just don't see the variations as all that meaningful.

It is entirely possible that I am more slacker than zealot.

As far as "doing it right requires a lot of work, time, and expertise" - I guess that's true from one perspective. I prefer the one where you show people what they asked for, ask why that's not what they actually want, and try to get from A to B (once you figure out where B actually is). I think that trying to make the folks that ask for software experts on that subject is usually time poorly spent.

In short, sketching some crappy software is pretty easy - it's a sketch, but it's pretty easy to bang out! It's very different than an architectural sketch of your new bathroom. People mostly know what a bathroom is for and how they are going to use it - ideally looking at a sketch is going to be useful. But it's virtually impossible to physically implement a sketch of the new bathroom and let the end user (hah!) take it for a spin.

I guess it's been my experience that software requirements are virtually never well known. Most people that want software written don't know what they want, why they want it, or what software can actually do (or not do) [easily]. Most "well specified" software I've been asked to write ends up with software that nobody actually wants, needs, or is willing to use. But if you work with folks to discover what problems they need to solve you can get to writing software that will make their jobs easier or way more productive.

What's your alternative? Waterfall?
I mean - I guess there are some things taht waterfall is appropriate for. I'm not sure what those are - but I suppose there is something.

I guess I think most software management issues are exactly that: management issues.