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Submission + - Apollo 11 Had a Hidden Hero: Software (wsj.com)

Outatime writes: Monday's Wall Street Journal includes a special Apollo 11 feature; of particular interest to many Slashdot nerds is the piece on the pioneering computer hardware and software that took three astronauts, and landed two, on the moon.

From the article:

[On July 20, 1969,] the lives of two astronauts, the efforts of more than 300,000 technicians, the labor of eight years at a cost of $25 billion, and the pride of a nation depended on a few lines of pioneering computer code. Humans had never risked so much on zeros and ones. Yet they decided to trust the machine and the binary two-digit code, and Armstrong and Mr. Aldrin reaped the glory as the first people to walk on the moon.

Comment Re:Ugly UI (Score 1) 191

Ugh. I used them for a year or two. Sure, it was easy signing up...but when I had multiple domains to renew every year I had to uncheck a dozen "option packages" on 4 different pages just to renew a domain. Transferring out to another registrar is even more of a pain. Despite following the exact steps required Godaddy still denied the transfer saying I had not responded.

I made sure to tell them the sole reason for my transferring my business to another registrar was solely based on their annoying website. I'd gladly pay their outrageous fees for things such as WHOIS privacy if only their website offered a basic, functional, non ad-ridden UI for managing my domains.

I sincerely hope one of two things happens: Either nobody buys them and they go out of business; or another decent company buys their assets and flushes the brand down the toilet. I know--I can dream.

Comment Re:buy compatible cartridges (Score 1) 970

The ink cartrides that come with the printeres are never 100% full, they are only about 25% full. It's just starter ink, to get you to buy more in.

What's worse is I have an inkjet printer sitting around that is about a year and a half old. I didn't use it much and the estimated ink levels were still at 3/4. One by one as the 1 year mark hit my printer began telling me the cartridges were expired. I ignored the warnings until finally the printer simply refused to print until I replaced them. I was so angry over this that I ended up buying a cheap laser printer on sale; and an extra high yield toner cartridge for less than the cost of replacement ink. I still use the inkjet once in a while; I replaced the OEM ink with aftermarket ones which as you can imagine were less than half full.

Comment Re:Not "analog" (Score 1) 399

I'll agree to being confused. Thanks for being more useful than the other commenter and providing some helpful information.

Here's the definition I'm using, from dictionary.com:

"adj. of or pertaining to a mechanism that represents data by measurement of a continuous physical variable, as voltage or pressure."

It's easy for me to see how a video cassette fit this definition, as it is a record of voltage. I can believe that film also fits the definition but I'm not a chemist. What's the continuous physical variable recorded on film?

Comment Not "analog" (Score 1) 399

Not "analog," but optical. Film is storing the actual picture, not an electromagnetic representation on magnetic tape. It should be noted that all that is not digital is not necessarily "analog."

Comment ehh.. (Score 5, Interesting) 554

The article starts out saying Blu-Ray will be superseded within 5 years and then goes on to talk about OLED technology with absolutely no mention of what might supersede blu-ray?

That's what I get for actually RTFA though; a few paragraphs loosely related with no actual technical information.

Comment The Bible is... (Score 1) 725

A book I am in the process of reading is the Christian Bible. I guess it would be considered a collection of books, of various genres: nonfiction (history), a "manual" (instructions for daily living), poetry, mystery (in the "mysterious" sense, not the "whodunit" sense), and a lot more. Quite a lot of variety.

New Apple Campaign Target PC Flaws 819

sodul writes"Apple just started a new campaign to emphasize the advantages of Mac versus a regular tasteless PC. The ads represent a young cool looking man (Mac) and a white collar in his 40's (not cool, PC). In one of the ads the PC repeat itself several times because it had to reboot. In an other one (and maybe the most aggressive of all) PC is sick because of a virus, while Mac is healthy. You can watch the new spots on Apple's site "

Google Pages Reviewed 164

Tam Hanna writes "We got access to a Google Pages review account. Get the full scoop on what Google Pages can do." The gist of it is that "Google Pages Is Not For You." It's for your mom ;)

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