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Microsoft's Charles Simonyi to be 1st Nerd in Space

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thu Oct 26, 2006 10:51 PM
from the flying-high dept.
Space Microsoft Science
Richard L. James writes "The BBC are reporting that Hungarian-born Charles Simonyi, a 58-year old Microsoft billionaire software engineer is set to become the first 'nerd in space' on board the Soyuz TMA-10 when the spacecraft launches on Thursday 09th March 2007. Charles oversaw the development of Multiplan, Word, and Excel among many other achievements. He has launched a website detailing the 3 goals he wishes to achieve on the trip: advance civilian spaceflight, assist space station research, and involve kids in space sciences. Jó szerencse pölö Charles!"
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  • First nerd??? (Score:5, Informative)

    by the_humeister (922869) on Thursday October 26 2006, @10:52PM (#16604522)
    I thought Mark Shuttleworth claimed that title (the Ubuntu guy)?

    • Re:First nerd??? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by stefanlasiewski (63134) <slashdot&stefanco,com> on Thursday October 26 2006, @11:07PM (#16604662) Homepage Journal
      Many scientists have been in space. Some of them probably consider themselves 'nerds'.

      Maybe I'm out of the loop with modern lingo, but 'nerd' doesn't necessarily have anything to do with computers.
      [ Parent ]

    • Re:First nerd??? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Bruce Perens (3872) * <.moc.snerep. .ta. .ecurb.> on Friday October 27 2006, @12:40AM (#16605370) Homepage Journal
      Uh-huh. If we are counting people who got rich by being geeks, unlike the very many scientists who have been to space, pretty much all space tourists belong on the list. Dennis Tito was an engineer and his investment consulting business included quantitive analysis. If we are scoring operating systems, Shuttleworth was a Debian user while building Thawte.

      Bruce

      [ Parent ]

    • Re:First nerd??? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 27 2006, @02:50AM (#16606038)
      As always Microsoft coming late and saying they are First.
      [ Parent ]

    • Great. more Hungarian Notation? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Chapter80 (926879) on Friday October 27 2006, @08:17AM (#16607884)
      I can't wait to see what personSimonyi does to the spacecraftSoyuzTMA-10 conventionNamingConvention.
      [ Parent ]

      • Nerd card revoked........ (Score:4, Informative)

        by CptnHarlock (136449) on Friday October 27 2006, @04:45AM (#16606522) Homepage
        The grammar nazi allready bashed you for the spelling so I'll take the second round.. :)

        Sputnic [sic] wasn't a dog. It was the first satelite [wikipedia.org] launched into space. Sputnik means satelite but also companion, or even better "co-traveller" in russian. Laika [wikipedia.org] was the first dog (living creature [not counting bacteria and the like clinging to the insides of satelites]) in space.

        Back on subject, this here Charles is definitely not the first geek/nerd in space. It's a joke to try and take the title just because he's got som media dweebs to back his claim. All true geeks/nerds know the truth anyway.. :P

        Cheers!..
        [ Parent ]

  • Yuri Gagarin (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Airconditioning (639167) on Thursday October 26 2006, @10:53PM (#16604534) Journal
    Wouldn't he qualify as first geek in space? I mean, the Russians didn't send a painter up did they?

    • Re:Yuri Gagarin (Score:5, Informative)

      by roystgnr (4015) <roystgnrNO@SPAMticam.utexas.edu> on Thursday October 26 2006, @11:02PM (#16604622) Homepage
      Wouldn't he qualify as first geek in space?

      No; he's not even the first geek in space this fall. [wikipedia.org]

      According to The Fine Article, the "first nerd in space" moniker is actually Dr. Simonyi's speculation about himself, not just the mistake of some clueless reporter - in fact the reporter mentioned three previous nerdy space tourists. My mind boggles - surely before deciding to spend millions of dollars on this trip, Dr. Simonyi thought to learn a little about his predecessors?
      [ Parent ]

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Amazing Quantum Man (458715)
      \i{I mean, the Russians didn't send a painter up did they?}

      Back on Vokhshod I. Alexei Leonov.

  • first nerd in space? (Score:5, Funny)

    by motank (867244) on Thursday October 26 2006, @10:54PM (#16604548)
    yeah, cos everyone that's gone to space so far has been a football jock right?

    • Re:first nerd in space? (Score:5, Informative)

      by kfg (145172) on Friday October 27 2006, @12:04AM (#16605150)
      Well, the first couple of batches were fighter jocks, actually, hard men with extensive combat experience; but that didn't preclude them from being geeks/nerds as well.

      The first American in space, Alan Shepard, had a Bachelor of Science from Annapolis.

      Or take the first two men on the moon (please). Neil Armstrong had a Bachelor of Science from Purdue and a Master of Aeronautical Engineering from USC (and had been accepted at MIT). Buzz Aldrin majored in Science at West Point and eventually earned a PhD from MIT.

      Jocks with slide rules. It happens.

      KFG
      [ Parent ]

  • go nerds (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 26 2006, @10:56PM (#16604556)
    Nerdy? Well can he quote the Holy Grail and make you ROTFLOL?

  • His first question to the Russians (Score:5, Funny)

    by edwardpickman (965122) on Thursday October 26 2006, @10:56PM (#16604564)
    "Okay this'll get me laid, right?"

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by PsychicX (866028)
      According to his Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] article, he is dating Martha Stewart.

      Clearly women are not a focus of his life.

  • science nerd (Score:5, Informative)

    by arun_s (877518) on Thursday October 26 2006, @10:56PM (#16604566) Homepage Journal
    Microsoft bashing aside, this is the guy who's founded the Charles Simonyi Chair in the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford. Richard Dawkins is the current head. I guess that qualifies him pretty much as a (science) nerd.
    He still didn't have to put up a Flash 9 only website, though.

    • Re:science nerd (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Protonk (599901) on Thursday October 26 2006, @11:42PM (#16604988)
      No, this is the guy who donated enough money to have a tenured position named after him. The real prevailing factors here are money and some sufficient amount of respectability--Oxford wasn't waiting around for Ghandi, but the chair wasn't to be named after Pauli Shore.

      [ Parent ]

  • they read my mind (Score:5, Funny)

    by rifftide (679288) on Thursday October 26 2006, @10:56PM (#16604568)
    I've often thought, whoever came up with this convention for naming variables ought to be shut in a Russian spacecraft and sent far, far away.

  • Termination (Score:5, Funny)

    by joe_n_bloe (244407) on Thursday October 26 2006, @11:05PM (#16604646) Homepage
    Being fired is one thing ... but being fired into space?

  • Bullshit. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Alex Belits (437) * on Thursday October 26 2006, @11:09PM (#16604688) Homepage
    I am sure, in nearly half a century of manned space flight there were many cosmonauts/astronauts that are nerdier than some rich Microsoft guy.

  • Jó szerencse pölö Charles = ? (Score:5, Informative)

    by A beautiful mind (821714) on Thursday October 26 2006, @11:11PM (#16604706)
    Jó szerencse == Good luck pölö == ??? (it could be póló, which means tshirt or a phonetic version of pl, meaning "for example" but I haven't the slightest idea what did they mean to write)

    by a native hungarian in the early morning (so if I missed something obvious, it's early!).

  • breaking barriers (Score:4, Funny)

    by qw0ntum (831414) on Thursday October 26 2006, @11:14PM (#16604748) Journal
    I for one am glad we're finally breaking the nerd in space barrier. I mean, it's not like we've ever seen a molecular biologist or astrophysicist go into space. No, they are far too nerdy for something like that.

  • FYI (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Geoffreyerffoeg (729040) on Thursday October 26 2006, @11:15PM (#16604760)
    Charles Simonyi is the Hungarian in Hungarian notation (you know, m_lpszUsrTxt and the like).

    To be entirely fair to him, it wasn't intended to make variable names inscrutable, it applied to a language with weak type checking and few real types, and it still has valid uses today [joelonsoftware.com] if you use it to mark information about the type of data instead of the "type" of variable.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Procyon101 (61366)
      There are many problems with it though. First, there is absolutely no enforcement of such typing, which means that if the "type" changes in the future, you have documentation in your code that is linked to the code itself and much more difficult to change

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by syousef (465911)
      Charles Simonyi is the Hungarian in Hungarian notation (you know, m_lpszUsrTxt and the like).

      All in favour of shooting this guy off into space?

      The I's have it. Motion carried.

  • Oh come on Charles... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hvnarsana (995157) on Thursday October 26 2006, @11:15PM (#16604768) Homepage
    .. do you really really think that to achieve either/or of the 3 goals you need to spend a truckload (or 10) of cash to go into space? Why not use the money to advocate better education, books, and a series of talks by prominent astronauts or the like? I find this to be a colossal waste of finances and time, which could be better utilized.

  • 1st Nerd?!?! What a crock! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cascadefx (174894) * <.moc.liamtoh. .ta. .ztoborcitsalp.> on Thursday October 26 2006, @11:17PM (#16604784) Journal
    I guess the submitter (I hope it wasn't the editor's) didn't realize that a heck of a lot of physicists and astronomers and other hard core scientists have been to space way before Charles Simonyi. If his point was that he was the first somewhat famous computer geek to make it into space, he would be wrong again. Simonyi was beaten to the punch years ago by Mark Shuttleworth of Thawte and Ubunutu Linux [ubuntu.com] fame.

  • sz_Hmm... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 26 2006, @11:41PM (#16604986)
    sz_I p_guess u_congratulations sz_are m_in p_order.

  • Jó szerencse pölö means ... (Score:3, Funny)

    by nuzak (959558) on Friday October 27 2006, @12:03AM (#16605146)
    "My hovercraft is full of eels"?

  • He'll have a new job up there (Score:5, Informative)

    by cyclone96 (129449) on Friday October 27 2006, @12:15AM (#16605226)
    I work for NASA supporting the Space Station, and the irony of a Microsoft guy going up is pretty amusing.

    The crew has a network of laptops running WinXP to do non-critical support tasks, chiefly email. While they work pretty well and generally can be maintained from Houston, the crew does spend a fair amount of time keeping them working. You can often hear tales of woe with the network interspersed with operational discussions on the space to ground audio.

    For example, this is from the September 8, 2006 ISS status report posted at http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=21998 [spaceref.com]

    Jeff's attempts yesterday to set up an Outlook email account for Soyuz taxi crewmember Anousheh Ansari were not successful. This is a repeat of a problem seen with previous email accounts for Soyuz taxi crewmembers. Plans are in work to give the SFP (Space Flight Participant) a regular ISS email account.

    I have the feeling that he is going to be jokingly dubbed the "new on-site IT support" by the commander as soon as he arrives.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Johnny Mnemonic (176043)
      Off-topic, but joking aside, I'm sorry to hear that much time is spent on such tasks. If I paid $20M to get to space, I wouldn't want to spend 30 minutes futzing with an email account; time is money, and not at an inexpensive rate.

      Why don't they use simp

  • Uh, whaa? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anubis350 (772791) on Friday October 27 2006, @12:20AM (#16605254)
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but isnt every Astronaut a nerd? How about any number of non-astro-scientists that I'm sure have been in space doing research?

  • That's lpszCharles lpszSimonyi, (Score:3, Funny)

    by melted (227442) on Friday October 27 2006, @12:53AM (#16605448) Homepage
    That's lpszCharles lpszSimonyi, thank you very much.

  • Harrison Schmitt (Score:5, Informative)

    by RichardtheSmith (157470) on Friday October 27 2006, @01:18AM (#16605592)
    This guy was really the first nerd in space...

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Schmitt [wikipedia.org]

    He was a geologist from Cal Tech who got to check out lunar geology
    up close up close and personal on the Apollo 17 mission.

    That's *very* nerdy, in a *very* cool kind of way. :)

  • could you guys fix the hungarian text in the post? (Score:5, Informative)

    by darkeye (199616) on Friday October 27 2006, @01:40AM (#16605700)
    "Jó szerencse pölö Charles!" just doesn't make any sense. If you wanted to right: "Good luck, Charles!", you would say: "Jó szerencsét, Charles!". BTW, you'd rather say: "Jó szerencsét, Károly!" - as the name Charles is Károly in Hungarian. And yes, his original name is Simonyi Károly, written in this order as per the Hungarian custom of naming.

    I just wonder how the "pölö" part came into the sentence - as it's not a word in our language. The closest I can think of that it's the pronounciation of the abbreviation "pl.", which is short for "például" - meaning: "for example". I guess you guys asked someone: "How do I say Good Luck in Hungarian?", and the answer might have been: "Jó szerencse, pl." meaning: "For example: Jó szerencsét".

    Ákos
    a native Hungarian (speaker)

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by AJWM (19027)
        but our first ones were fighter pilots, aka fighter jocks.

        Actually they were aerospace engineers and test pilots. They may have also been fighter jocks (although some flew other types of aircraft) since that's about the only way to rack up time on high pe

          • Re:Sooo..... (Score:4, Insightful)

            by hachete (473378) on Friday October 27 2006, @06:36AM (#16606950) Homepage Journal
            Read the Right Stuff. The scientists running the first missions wanted "Spam in a Can" - monkeys would have done them, and probably would have performed better than the astronauts. However, lowering the entry qualifications *so* low meant obvious problems in recruitment, with too many people flying. So the "obvious" pick was amongst fighter pilots and aerospace test pilots. the latter soon realised they were overly qualified (as both pilots and geeks) to run a mercury or an apollo rig but that got out-balanced by the inherent dangers of the missions. The tests they took to become astronauts could easily have been done by, oh, weight-lifters, long-distance runners etc. However, there's not much glory attached to sending runners into space ...

            The Soviets went through a similar process.

            The shuttle changes things again, but I would dispute that you need to be a fighter-jock to control it. A bomber or transport or even an airline pilot would be equally, if not better adapted, to deal with the shuttle controls. If they had kept the X15 program going, then that truly was a fighter-jocks dream aircraft and we'd've had returnable aircraft flying today rather than the flying brick of a shuttle.
            [ Parent ]

    • Re:He invented Hungarian Notation (Score:5, Funny)

      by yo_tuco (795102) on Thursday October 26 2006, @11:40PM (#16604968)
      "Why it's a good idea to embed the type of a variable in its name has forever been lost on me."

      szBeats szMe. szBut szMaybe szHis usHungarian szRoots szHad szSomething szTo szDo szWith szIt?
      [ Parent ]
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