Just to be clear, the computers onboard the spacecraft are programmed in assembly language--3 types of computers on each spacecraft, so 3 assembly languages.
The original ground system was mostly written in Fortran. Mission control (i.e., the thing you see on TV!) ran on IBM 360 mainframes. Offline analysis/design/development activities (e.g., developing observation sequences for planetary encounters) ran on Univac 1108 mainframes. Circa 1990, after Voyager 2's flyby of Neptune, the project began moving off the mainframes onto Unix workstations and the original Fortran software was largely replaced by new software written in C and other languages.
Made me remember the quote by Reinhold Niebuhr: "Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It is when we are unsure that we are doubly sure."
Lawyer here. Just very quickly, (i) a CEO's blog post itself is not legally binding on the company by nature, but it is a reflection of a corporate decision (typically the Board of Directors)behind the post. An action of this nature can only be challenged in court by the shareholders or dissenting board members in certain cases. (ii) a legal patent holder has every right of disposal over the patent, including the act of revoking it. (iii)I did not look for precedents for this but if a different company would re-issue Tesla's designs on their own name and tried to sue Tesla (i.e. trolling), I have serious doubts concerning not only on whether such revoked patents can be re-issued in somebody elses name but also, assuming thats possible, any judge or court would award any penalties to the original patent author in such lawsuit.
the link seemed to work when I pasted it. I originally oasted the link you shared, but HN immediately pronounced it as [dead]. The below seems to be working for me. Sorry for the fuss.
Indeed. It's more like..."You know those two things you know about? I've combined them into a third thing that will tickle your recognition engine with the absolute minimum effort on my part!"
It's kind of like those "parody" movies that satirize pop culture, except they don't really, they just...present it. And expect you to laugh, because Hey! I recognize that!
And yes, each one of these was a big setback for democracy. It was not my claim that military coups are good for democracy.
But which would you rather have, a big setback and then a chance to rebuild a democracy, or a takeover by a party bent on eliminating democracy and the multiparty system, and turning the country into a permanent, hereditary, sham "democracy" in the style of Syria?
Not only is that hacking, it is also witchcraft, which is punishable by being burnt on a stake. Not to mention the heresy calling for immediate excommunication, the hacker at hand here should be ashamed of him/herself for the ever terrible deed that (s)he had committed.
I guess they don't see themselves as the community sees an all round and productive IT company. They had and do still have an abundance of market penetration (considering the business world in Europe and Asia and so on). They couldn't (maybe didn't) kill the desktop by replacing it with surface. They really could have, and the whole business world may be on tablets today, but they didn't do it. (and please don't tell me that the business world are on tablets today, tablets are still accessories to laptop and desktop computers)
I understand if anybody says "hey! MS is not a company as you or others would prescribe to be and you don't get what surface is and what it is for!" Maybe that's true. But they had lots of chances of coming back as a competitive, innovative actor and they keep grounding their chances with products like Windows 8. Last month, may father, who is an author and do not get along well with any computer called me and said: "I just could not work with this Windows 8." To note, he barely learned to cope with the old fashioned windows interface. Loading a considerable amount of cognitive load to consumers upon whom your market penetration depends does not seem like good idea. It at least is not "innovation".
We will see what the concept will be like in 5 to 10 years or so, when the planned obsolescence time of the currently available MS running hardware (and software for that matter) comes. But to replace things like Word, Excel? Quite possible, but difficult. When those can be replaced, I think we will see whether the company stands over a house of cards or not.
