U.S. Billionaire Heads to Space Station 208
TurnAround writes "According to an International Business Times article, a Russian rocket carrying the American billionaire who helped develop Microsoft Word roared into the night skies over Kazakhstan Saturday, sending Charles Simonyi and two cosmonauts soaring into orbit on a two-day journey to the international space station.
Climbing on a column of smoke and fire into the clouds over the bleak steppes, the Soyuz TMA-10 capsule lifted off at 11:31 p.m. local time, casting an orange glow over the Baikonur cosmodrome and dozens of officials and well-wishers watching from about a mile away."
pFirst! (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
CU
Re: (Score:2)
Yup, Mr. lpcszHungarianNotation himself has blasted off into space. They should leave him up there. Ha ha, just kidding.
Grrr....
Systems Hungarian vs. apps Hungarian (Score:5, Informative)
Re:pFirst! (Score:4, Funny)
Hungarian notation has one very special use - it helps weed out the weenies when you're looking for system programmers.
Its the same for people who do crap like LPCSTR ... hey, you stupid bozos, that's a throw-back to 16-bit Windows 3x. It doesn't belong in 32-bit code on a flat-memory architecture where an int and a long are the same. And it certainly doesn't belong in code for a server for BSD.
And those who insist on "m_uiWhatever" ... hey, f*cktards, what's with the "m_" - its a variable, so of course its in memory. And when you realize that you should have changed Whatever to be signed so that you can catch over/underflows, hope you remember to change all your variable names ... again.
Real programmers don't do hungarian. Ever.
Re: (Score:2)
There, fixed that for you...
Re:pFirst! (Score:5, Funny)
To be honest, I think "programmers" are objects, not reals (not even ints) ...
Then again, some of them don't really have any methods, so I guess they're just empty structs, no class.
Of course, it depends on how you #define things in the first place ... you can always assert() whatever you need to ...
Re:pFirst! (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
That's what a good online thesaurus, with synonyms, is for. If you have to resort to hunNotation, you haven't spent enough time picking the right variable name, which means you're probably missing an essential part of the problem.
Picking the right name is for some variables can be tough! But the extra time pays off in code that's more expressive and self-document
Re: (Score:2)
cbStr - # of bytes in Str (cb = count of bytes)
cMRU - # of items in the MRU (c = count)
pFoo - pointer to Foo
m_Foo - member variable Foo
fEnabled - flag indicating whether something is enabled or not
In each of these cases, you could achieve the same effect by using words, e.g. strSize, MRUCount, FooPointer, FooMember, isEnabled, etc. but this gets unwieldy when the subject is itself a complex name. A consistently used adjective scheme like Hungarian notation can do wonde
Re: (Score:2)
And I've seen people use cb as a prefix for combobox, c as a prefix for character, m_ as a memory variable (as opposed to one retrieved from a table), and f as a prefix for floats. About the only one that has ANY consistency is p for pointer.
hunPrefixing isn't consistent; I gave it up a decade ago because it wastes more time than it saves.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
There are two major problems with Hungarian Notation:
It wasn't until I read Joel's rant [joelonsoftware.com] on Hungarian that it finally clicked for me.
Just because some coders' use of Hungarian is bad, doesn't make Hungarian itself a bad thing. It's just like braces
Re: (Score:2)
That is true today, but development tools were cruder when Hungarian notation came into being, and sometimes you just want to spread a printout over the floor anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
We had this argument at work ... for those who use it to indicate a member of a class, its also redundant - simple scoping rules, and how its used, make this obvious. Anyone who needs more than that really should go bace to Visual Basic.
And its really funny when people use it BOTH ways ... and inconsistently ... (sometimes because they've copied code off the web).
Ditto for "C" in front of a class. Totally unneeded.
Re: (Score:2)
Not if you're using interface/implementation separation. CFoo is a class that implements interface IFoo. Alternatives would include the style used by the "Design Patterns" book, which would have had ConcreteFoo as an implementation of AbstractFoo, but prefix letters seem better to me in this case.
Re: (Score:2)
I've seen it used/abused both ways.
Simple conventions:
Use and understand proper scoping rules, keep a thesaurus handy for helping pick expressive variable, function and class names, and you won't have any problems, your code will be readable, and you won't have to retype when you change the type of a variable.
The KISS formula works.
Re: (Score:2)
You can abuse anything (though I've never heard of anyone even refer to anything as a "memory" variable, much less use "m_" to mean anything but "member").
There are any number of sets of simple conventions, and arguing ones own is obviously superior is kind of silly. Your conventions sound perfectly reasonable, though what do you mean by an "instance" if not a variable?
My own conventions are a bit different, because I like StuffInCamelCase and not stuff_with_underscores_in_it. Since function names don't c
Re: (Score:2)
Re:pFirst! (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Quoth the sibling:
Or read Joel Spolsky's lucid explanation and examples [joelonsoftware.com] of Hungarian Notation the way it was meant to be.
Re: (Score:2)
In sovRussia, you head to ssInternational? (or at least achieve a PARCing orbit?)
Watch the soyuz dock (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/player/n
If that doesn't work, look for links at bbcnews.com
Re: (Score:2)
If he worked at Microsoft (Score:3, Funny)
Harsh (Score:5, Funny)
In case of trouble ... (Score:2, Funny)
* is finest teknolgy in former Soviet Russia
Re:Harsh (Score:5, Insightful)
Year Median Millionaire or Top 1%
1948 5.3% 76.9%
1955 9.1 85.5
1960 12.4 85.5
1965 11.6 66.9
1970 16.1 68.6
1975 20.0 --
1977 -- 35.5
1980 23.7 31.7
1985 24.4 24.9
1989 24.4 26.7
Source: The Reagan Years: Taxes [huppi.com]; Info from: "the 1948 figure comes from The Statistical History of the United States, 1976; the figures for 1955 to 1983 come from Alan Lerman of the U.S. Department of the Treasury Office of Tax Analysis. The calculations after 1983 come from Eugene Steuerle and John Bakija, Right Ways and Wrong Ways to Reform Social Security (Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute Press, 1993). Figures from the millionaire column for 1948 to 1970 represent the effective tax rates for those earning $1 million a year and come from the U.S. Treasury Department unpublished data set forth on page 1112 of The Statistical History of the United States, 1976. FICA is not included, but the rates would not be affected by a percentage point. The rates from 1977 onward are for the top 1% of families as computed by the Congressional Budget Office tax simulation model and include all federal taxes. Source: the 1992 Greenbook of the House Ways and Means Committee, p. 1510. The effective rate on millionaires would be close to the rate on the top 1 percent."
I expect to see a lot of people commenting "hey, he was smart, he worked hard, he deserves that money". My response to that is: "Really? Is he a hundred thousand times smarter than the average American? Is he a hundred thousand times harder working than some guy who does hot tar roofing for a living? Really?"
Don't get me wrong; complete wealth redistribution eliminates the incentive to work hard in order to better yourself. But a completely "free", "deregulated" economy leads to situations like the early industrial revolution. The economy inherently becomes polarized, as you need money to make money. This is why we have things like the estate tax and higher rates for the upper class. If the rates were like they used to be back in the 1950s/1960s (our nation's biggest boom time, by the way -- yes, you can't really credit that to the taxes, but it's hard to say that the taxes destroyed the boom), we'd be able to provide full healthcare to every American, full education to every American through grad school, double all government funded research, double all infrastructure projects, and still work toward paying off the national debt.
I think 85% may be a bit extreme, but I'd like to see 65% or so. And I say this as someone who has benefitted greatly from having wealthy parents.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it's a bit fallacious to assume that all rewards must be linear. If you believe that, then take away the 1.5x and 2x overtime pay that non-exempt workers get.
Re:Harsh (Score:4, Informative)
For Reagan, I recommend you read more of the referenced link. I'll give a brief excerpt.
---
One of the central tenets of supply-side theory is that tax cuts actually increase overall tax collections. There is something faintly foolish about this assertion -- it's like claiming that you can make trees grow taller by cutting them down. But the supply-siders have their own statistics to quote. "During the Reagan tax-cut era," Rush Limbaugh writes, "IRS collections actually nearly doubled... from $550 billion [sic] to about $991 billion."2 This supply-side deception is as common as it is deplorable; it uses nominal dollars instead of constant dollars, which account for inflation. Here are the total tax collections expressed in both:
Tax Collections (billions)3
Year Nominal Constant (87 dollars)
1980 $517.1 728.1
1981 599.3 766.6
1982 617.8 738.2
1983 600.6 684.3
1984 666.6 730.4
1985 734.1 776.6
1986 769.1 790.0
1987 854.1 854.1
1988 909.0 877.3
1989 990.7 916.2
1990 1031.3 914.1
1991 1054.3 894.7
1992 1090.5 895.1
This chart raises two points. First, it allows you to see that real tax collections actually declined in the two years following Reagan's 1981 tax cuts. (In fact, it took until 1985 to recover the 1981 level.) This is exactly the opposite of what supply-siders had predicted. They excuse it by noting that the 1981 cuts were phased in over three years, delaying entrepreneurial investment. But, according to their theory, accumulating tax cuts should have resulted in accumulating -- not declining -- tax collections. (More)
Optimum Tax Rate (Score:2)
If taxes are too low it's bad for everyone rich and poor because the government doesn't have enough money for needed services. If the tax rate is too high it's bad for everyone rich and poor because it destroys too much of the motivation to work. Somewhere in between there is an optimum tax rate. If taxes are way too high then cutting tax
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Harsh (Score:5, Interesting)
You're not talking about 1.5x/2x; you're talking about 100,000x. If anything, when you get up to dollar values like that, I'd say that linear may be too kind. A person who makes 20k/year simply *cannot* be spending their money on luxury; almost all of it needs to go to necessities. On the other end of the spectrum, a person who makes 2M/year simply *cannot* be spending all their money on necessity; even a huge family wouldn't "need" that much. The only exception, in the latter case, is charitable contributions -- and we give deductions for that.
In short, my driving stance is quite simple: tax rates should reflect how much of a "luxury" money is being spent on, with pure necessity being untaxed, and pure luxury being taxed highly. Ideally, this would be done through sales taxes; however, that gets complicated pretty quickly (what's the tax rate for a canned button mushrooms? Fresh button mushrooms? Fresh oyster mushrooms? Fresh truffles?). Bracketted taxes with deductions for charitable contributions are a good way to approximate this. Augmented with sales taxes, it's a winning situation, in my book.
Re: (Score:2)
---
One of the central tenets of supply-side theory is that tax cuts actually increase overall tax collections. There is something faintly foolish about this assertion -- it's like claiming that you can make trees grow taller by cutting them down. But the supply-siders have their own statistics to quote. "During the Reagan tax-cut era," Rush Limbaugh writes, "IRS collections actually nearly doubled... from $550 billion [
Re: (Score:2)
---
One of the central tenets of supply-side theory is that tax cuts actually increase overall tax collections. There is something faintly foolish about this assertion -- it's like claiming that you can make trees grow taller by cutting them down. But the supply-siders have their own statistics to quote. "During the Reagan tax-cut era," Rush Limbaugh writes, "IRS collections actually nearly doubled... from $550 billion [
Re: (Score:2)
---
One of the central tenets of supply-side theory is that tax cuts actually increase overall tax collections. There is something faintly foolish about this assertion -- it's like claiming that you can make trees grow taller by cutting them down. But the supply-siders have their own statistics to quote. "During the Reagan tax-cut era," Rush Limbaugh writes, "IRS collections actually nearly doubled... from $550 billion [
Re: (Score:2)
His software made billions of dollars. Can you say that about a roof tarrer? If this billionaire didn't do anything special, why doesn't everyone do what he does?
Is an American programmer several times
Re:Harsh (Score:5, Insightful)
The truth is he cannot possibly pull that off today. First Microsoft got wise and started getting stingy with stock. Second, Microsoft stock ain't all that any longer. Third, many (not all) today's coders tackle harder coding problems and see nothing but their normal paycheck.
It's just like Bill Gates: These guys were there at the right time in history. The opportunities they had disappeared when the market matured. As I look around now, I believe the next opportunities are going to require tremendous capital and research, effectively locking out the people with little more than drive and coding knowledge. There will never, can never, be another Bill or Charles.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I think not.
He's probably introducing some great tech solution (Score:5, Funny)
Re:He's probably introducing some great tech solut (Score:2)
*turns off the atmospheric regulation equipment, engine, and anything else active*
"I see you are trying to go to the space station, would you like help with that?"
*crash*
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Does it piss anyone else off that.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Does it piss anyone else off that.... (Score:5, Informative)
Second, I don't see anything indicating that the US directly paid for the launch. If the Russians want to collect some money to help pay for this thing, then fine. I don't see why the US doesn't do the same- that could have meant $25million fewer of your tax dollars going into the ISS.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't see anything in his post indicating that he's a U.S. citizen, either.
Your tax dollars funded the 25m too! (Score:2)
Not one bit. (Score:2)
War or no war NASA is never going to get anywhere until it does something that can generate votes. Until the polticians will only keep it around for the local jobs it creates and to bash the other party for not funding science enough
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
You sound supremely unmotiviated. I enjoyed working my way through college - and it was something I found to be at least as educational as anything I learned in school. And unlike you, I wasn't living at home or mooching off my parents or living off the fat of the land while I was in college.
Sorry, but you're probably not my type, and vice versa :-)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Anonymous Coward == troll living in mom's basement (not getting laid).
Because obviously if said troll was getting some they would be far too happy and busy to post on
-nB
Re: (Score:2)
-nB
Lets hope... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Lets hope... (Score:5, Funny)
Who cares? (Score:2, Insightful)
Does this matter? Not in the slightest.
Insightful? (Score:3, Insightful)
There was a time when only the richest of the rich could afford automobiles. Now everyone has them.
Its efforts like this that will eventually drop the price down enough for space travel to be worthwhile for the general populace.
maybe I'm just jealous
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Is mere survival a worthwhile goal for the whole human race?
A better way to spend the money (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
This is significant, he's the guy who is responsible for MS Word and he's off the earth. This is obviously a big victory for computer users everywhere, now if we can just keep him there...
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
It's a rich man's solar system (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's a rich man's solar system (Score:5, Interesting)
As time goes by, these things will get cheaper and at one point will hopefully be cheap enough for the ordinary person to buy/try.
So if anything, you were born too early
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Sell soul to windows for space trip? (Score:2)
I think not.
I use a Mac and my soul is intact thankyouvery much. I don't need to go to space.
OSX completes me.
Re: (Score:2)
The money is being reaped back into the program, and $25M is a metric assload of cash for a Soviet government program in today's Russian economy. The money, quite possibly, made this trip possible (or at least helped make it possible.) For about $25k, you can take a few rides in one of several MiG/Su (Russian jet fighters) - a lot of the money goes towards the gas and maintenance of the jets, of
Re: (Score:2)
The richest and most powerful have always had it better, being bitter about it isn't going to change anything. Today's luxury is tomorrow's commodity.
Re: (Score:2)
Big business likes big government because big government has the power to regulate and legislate in favor of big business. This means that effective regulatio
Re: (Score:2)
Ahhh, ground control this is Major Simonyi (Score:5, Funny)
We're experiencing loss of document format stability up here....
We just changed from the small platform to the larger one.
I don't understand what happened to the document.
I'm pulling off the access panel now. Seems to be a whole ratsnest of old embedded
OLE objects in there. Christ that's some ugly HTML.
Sproing! What the hell just happened to my paragraph format?? Oh my god, we have a backward compatibility failure!
Somebody open the hatch, quick! Open it! what do you mean there are two different opening standards!
Ahhhhhhhh!, We're losing all design integrity here. There are so many buttons. Don't know which ones to push......
Mayday, Mayday,
(Sure hope I land on my money pile. Oh, Sh***t)
Word is shutting down... (Score:2)
Power will be restored once you hit the ground.
'It looks like you're trying to fire... (Score:3, Funny)
Wait -- this could be a really good thing (Score:2)
Do you suppose it would be possible to leave him there?
Soyuz has just docked with ISS (Score:2)
2 hours from now and they'll have the airlocks released.
Alternanative Headline (Score:3, Funny)
Ubuntu2 (Score:2)
Planet Earth is Blue (Score:2)
Hmm, has the ISS screens turned blue yet?
Do we charge him rent? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That'd be lpszCharles lpszSimonyi, thankyouverymuc (Score:2)
OK by me (Score:2)
Voluntarily. Paying to do it. Explains a lot about Word.
Cue MST3K theme: (Score:2, Funny)
The worst we can find.
(la la la)
He'll have to sit and watch them all
Then We'll monitor his mind.
(la la la)
Now keep in mind Charles can't control
Where the movies begin or end
(la la la)
Because he used those special parts
To make his Clippy friends.
Re: (Score:2)
Wish I had mod points.
Is this the new billionaire fad? (Score:2)
C'mon guys - Word is a small part of his story (Score:2)
This is the same guy who started up Microsoft's applications business - so i'm sure Multiplan and Excel have a lot of influence from him too. He was featured in "Programmers at Work" by Susan Lammers years ago. I think the only other guy tat Microsoft o get to the same technical "level" as Simonyi was David N Cutler, who led Windows NT after arriving from Digital (also the lead for RSX-11M, a lot of VAX/VMS, VAX PL/1, the MicroVAX-I and Mica at DE
No gift shop on ISS. (Score:2)
There's no place to spend your money... in space. [slashdot.org]
IN SOVIET RUSSIA (Score:2)
Chairs + Windows in space??? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I never heard of Richard Brodie until he started promoting himself at the World Series of Poker, main event.
Re: (Score:2)
Anything that will help local small businesses will be of great help. Figure out ways to make your local economy resilient to recession, including food supply, shifting labor to other businesses when local industry slows down, etc. Things that will help local small- and medium-scale agriculture and food production. Promote cuisine that deemphasizes meat because it is wasteful of resources, because cows produce a lot of greenhouse gases and huge amounts of other waste, and becaus
Re: (Score:2)
Of course. What did you expect? A puzzling remark.
any reason they must be the ones I follow?
The only reason would be if you agree with them, which I gather is not the case. Here's something more general and possibly less ideological:
Write to your state and federal congressional representatives at least once a quarter or so. Let them know what you would like them to do or how you would like them to vote on at least one issue or specific piece of legislation.
P
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Read Joel Spolsky's explanation [joelonsoftware.com] of how it all went wrong, and how Hungarian Notation can actually be a good thing.