Kermit Alive and Well on the Space Station

An Ominous Cow Erred writes "Spacedaily.com reports on the use of the fantastic Kermit "program" being used to communicate with devices on the international space station. While the article's author doesn't seem to have a quite perfect grasp on what Kermit is (and effuses about how Kermit is being used to help war-torn Bosnia and advance AIDS research) it brought a smile to my face to imagine the old protocol from my BBS days (which was scorned in favor of Zmodem) being used on the greatest technological achievement of humankind."

sheeesssh...

[grub]

Kermit Alive and Well on the Space Station

This place is starting to sound like the Weekly World News [weeklyworldnews.com].
"Archie disappears, Veronica suspect! Gopher dug the hole far aWAIS!"

Anyone else here

[IANAL(BIAILS)]

Immediatly have the image of a large green frog floating around in the weightlessness?

da-da, da-da-da-da... bwaaah

[Anonymous Coward]

hi-ho, kermit thee frog here, and welcome to thee ISS.

wait huh?

[buddha42]

it brought a smile to my face to imagine the old protocol from my BBS days ... being used on the greatest technological achievement of humankind."

Weren't you using it to download porn back then too?

Re:Anyone else here

[kalidasa]

Nope. We all had the image of an old file transfer protocol. After all, this IS Slashdot.

Re:sheeesssh...

[John Zebedee]

I don't know whether to be saddened or amused by a /. reader having the WWN bookmarked.

Frogs in Spaaaace

[Cosmik]

In space, no-one can hear you croak.

Mental Picture

[TWX]

<ghostly announcer voice>

MUPPETS...

IN...

SPACE...

</ghostly announcer voice>

Life imitating art ?

[Space cowboy]

PIIIIIIIIIIGGGSSS IIIINNN SPAAAaaaccccceeeeee.....

Come on, did *no-one* else think of that muppets sketch ?

Simon

Kermit

[tds67]

While the article's author doesn't seem to have a quite perfect grasp on what Kermit is...

It can be hard when grasping Kermit...just ask Miss Piggy.

Re:Anyone else here

[jeffkjo1]

Ditto, I'm thinking, "What did, did Dr. Evil kidnap him and he wants us to give into his demands or the muppet gets shot out an airlock!?!?!"

Hold on, let me download the article.

[karmaflux]

rz\r


rz\r

rz\r

man screw this

^Z^Z^Z^Z^Z^Z^Z^Z

dsgkh$#@^%@26 3421lj __ 34 NO CARRIER

Re:The line of Kermits

[AKAImBatman]

But somehow, I can't imagine Kermit Longhorn as a species... :-)

That's because it goes by the nickname: "Horny Toad".

Re:transfer protocols comma that suck

[Jondor]

Which was the only reason why anybody would use it. To upload a compiler and the zmodem sources..
Argh!

It's a program, it's a protocol

[Theatetus]

Man:It's a flyswatter!

Woman:It's a spatula!

Man:It's a flyswatter!

Woman:It's a spatula!

Man:It's a flyswatter!

Woman:It's a spatula!

Announcer:Wait! You're both right!

jerkcity on kermit's uses

[StandardDeviant]

jerkcity (webcomic) on kermit's uses [jerkcity.com]

It's Official

[DogIsMyCoprocessor]

Spacecraft confirms it. The Kermit protocol is dying ...

Kermit is Dying

[DarkHelmet]

Fact: Kermit is dying

It is common knowledge that Kermit is dying. Everyone knows that ever hapless Kermit is mired in an irrecoverable and mortifying tangle of fatal trouble. It is perhaps anybody's guess as to which Kermit is the worst off of an admittedly suffering Kermit community. The numbers continue to decline for Windows but Kermit may be hurting the most. Look at the numbers. The erosion of user base for Kermit continues in a head spinning downward spiral.

All major marketing surveys show that Kermit has steadily declined in market share. Kermit is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Kermit is to survive at all it will be among hobbyist dilettante dabblers. In truth, for all practical purposes Kermit is already dead. It is a dead man walking.

Fact: Kermit is dying

(Inspired by a Win98 / FreeBSD Troll)

Re:Zmodem rules.

[plover]

Jeebuz, man, give it a rest.

Kermit is dead. Zmodem is dead. The argument died ten years ago! Get over it!

It's not pinin', it's passed on! This protocol is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet its maker! It's a stiff! Bereft of value, it rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed it to the Space Station it'd be pushing up the daisies! Its CPU usage is now zero! It's off the box! It's kicked the bucket, it's shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!!

THIS IS AN EX-PROTOCOL!!

Sheesh, if you want an argument to die around here, you've got to complain 'til you're blue in the face.

Re:Anyone else here

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. We all had the image of an old file transfer protocol

Yeah, I never did figure out why a puppet frog would be named after a transfer protocol

Greatest technological acheivement

[demachina]

... being used on the greatest technological achievement of humankind.

You mean they are running it on Linux??? No, that couldn't be it. You couldn't possibly be referring to the ISS could you? If so exactly what about the ISS is a great achievement other than they managing to spend staggering sums to accomplish nothing. The ISS is in a close race with the war in Iraq in that category.

The greatest technological acheivement of humans?

[couch_potato]

being used on the greatest technological achievement of humankind

Now, am I the only one who thinks the space station is not the greatest technological achievement of humankind? To me, the greatest invention is obvious: the Thermos cup. It keeps hot stuff hot, and it keeps cold stuff cold. But how does it know the difference??

Re:kermit v zmodem

[theantix]

"kermit is far more robust, can interoperate with various different systems of different character encoding, had adaptive retransmission, and can perform just as well as kermit under the right circumstances."

I would be pretty concerned if it didn't perform as well as itself...

Re:Anyone else here

[NanoGator]

"Ditto, I'm thinking, "What did, did Dr. Evil kidnap him and he wants us to give into his demands or the muppet gets shot out an airlock!?!?!"

Do you know what happens to a frog when it's exposed to the cold vaccuum of outer space? The same thing that happens to everything else.

*Straight face.*

Re:The greatest technological acheivement of human

[Hayzeus]

You are incorrect. The true genius of man shines through in that late 20th century innovation: cheese in a aerosol can.

It's all that separates us from the apes.

Re:It's a program, it's a protocol

[autiger]

But if you use it for one, you don't want to use it for the other.

Kermit Longhorn, The Species

[TWX]

"But somehow, I can't imagine Kermit Longhorn as a species... :-)"

Oh really? [blacksatin.net]

Re:Zmodem rules.

[Snoopy77]

THIS IS AN EX-PROTOCOL!!

There is nothing inherently wrong with the X protocol, simply XFree's implementation of it mmmkay!

Sorry, just a knee jerk reaction.

Re:Anyone else here

[NanoGator]

"Immediatly have the image of a large green frog floating around in the weightlessness?"

I did but oddly enough, he still had wires attached to his hands.

Re:da-da, da-da-da-da... bwaaah

[da3dAlus]

and today's show is brought to you by the number "zero" and the letter "g".

Re:kermit v zmodem

[sir_cello]

I'm an engineer and that's gives me two things:

(a) an above average quota for dyslexic spelling mistakes and grammatical errors;
(b) the experience of strange and non-deterministic software that doesn't always perform as well as itself.

(in fact, I did mean to say "as well as zmodem")

Next time I'll ask my imaginary friend to proof read my work. Honestly, my code is less buggy than my writing.

Re:Anyone else here

[wo1verin3]

>> Do you know what happens to a frog when it's
>> exposed to the cold vaccuum of outer space?

This happens [comcast.net].

Re:Anyone else here

[randyest]

OT, but you reminded me of this, and I must share:

What did Kermit The Frog say when Jim Henson died?





wait for it . . .





Nothing.

Re:LeechZmodem, icezmodem, superzmodem, etc

[bmwm3nut]

you could also get easy fake upload credits too. i had a 2400 bps modem that had built in compression, so i'd always pkzip my uploads with no compression. that way, the modem could do the work and then when the bbs got it, they'd give me the credits on the zip file size which was pretty big. also helped to include a rather large text file of all 0's in the zip file too. ah, the good ol' days.

Re:LeechZmodem, icezmodem, superzmodem, etc

[kyletinsley]

LeechZmodem.
It was a mutation of the Zmodem transfer protocol that never sent an acknowledgment packet at the end of a transfer, allowing you to download an entire file, yet signal to the bulletin board system that you'd never received the complete file. End result: your file credits don't change.
I doubt NASA cares, though.

"Yeah, ISS, this is Houston. We're not letting you download any more course correction data until you upload some more space porn! You keep forgetting that you have a 5:1 ratio to maintain..."

"And if you try that 'uploading of duplicate files' crap again, we'll revoke all of your existing credits!"

Re:Zmodem rules.

[poot_rootbeer]

Kermit is dead. Zmodem is dead.

Is it?

I don't know if you've heard or not, but there's a rumor that Kermit's Alive and Well on the Space Station...

Just goes to show you...

[raehl]

How far one Mr. Kermit thee Frog will go to get away from one Ms. Piggy.

Re:transfer protocols comma that suck

[lonb]

I like that... "shipped with" -- back when I ran a BBS, I didn't even know that there was such a concept as giving money for software. I thought "paying for software" meant getting warez in less than 0-3 days.

wow

[aminorex]

> the old protocol from my BBS days (which was
> scorned in favor of Zmodem) being used on
> the greatest technological achievement of
> humankind."

Cool. Kermit is being used to distribute
The Return of the King? Who woulda thunk it!

Re:and don't forget...

[aminorex]

nonono, it goes...

in space, no one can hear your modem scream

Re:That's an interesting bulk licensing scheme...

[aminorex]

> cendant recently put in one of four PMS systems at every hotel

Cool. Now I know where to send my wife when
the moon is full.

They did it for weight dumbass

[bl8n8r]

They are very concerned about weight requirements on the shuttle/orbiter missions. The less bytes a computer program takes up, the less the overall weight of the spacecraft. I heard they had initally run the system on win2k, but would have needed an extra fuel tank to get it off the launching pad, and there was insufficient bandwidth way up there to keep up with the security updates, so this is why they opted for lighter-weight protocols and applications.