Recomputing the Sky 205
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has unveiled the largest and clearest image of the night sky ever assembled. This so-called 'TeraPixel' sky map was generated with the help of some of Microsoft's latest HPC and parallel software assets. Quoting: 'Compared to the old sky image, the TeraPixel version is much more refined. With all the artifacts, seams and inconsistencies processed away, it looks like a true unified image of the sky above. It's like going from Super Mario Brothers on 1985-era Nintendo consoles to Halo 2 on Xbox 360s.'" You can view the image at Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope site — it requires the Silverlight plugin for Windows or Mac. No word at the site about Linux or whether Moonlight works there.
Even Baking Ads Into Their Analogies (Score:5, Interesting)
It's like going from Super Mario Brothers on 1985-era Nintendo consoles to Halo 2 on Xbox 360s
Oh, I see what you did there. Here, let me try:
It's like going from gaming on Windows 1.0 in 1985 to 1985-era Nintendo consoles
Or what about
It's like going from a red ring of death on an XBox console to Gran Turismo 3 on a Playstation 2
Oh and I also enjoy that you used your Space Act Agreement with NASA to "make planetary images and data available via the Internet to the public" and also promote the download and installation of silvercrap. Can't do something for the public without advertising and pushing proprietary software on people, can we? I hope Google gets the chance to do this with HTML5.
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Besides, I'd rather play Super Mario Brothers (even on 1985 era equipment) than Halo 2 any day.
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It's not much of an ad considering Halo 2 is an older original Xbox game that you can pickup used for ~10 USD.
Also: http://www.google.com/sky/ [google.com]
Reversi (Score:2)
GP said "gaming on Windows 1.0" and what games were those?
Reversi. Even Solitaire wasn't around until Windows 3.
Getting ready for the MS bash (Score:4, Insightful)
So this looks like a really cool thing that MS did, so I'm going to wait in wide eyed anticipation at how the slashdot community is going to trash it because it's from Microsoft and not Google (or at least be more overly critical of it). I do hope I'm wrong though.
Re:Getting ready for the MS bash (Score:5, Informative)
They should have done it with JavaScript and JPEGs instead of using Silverlight, which doesn't work on my Linux.
Good enough as first bashing? .-)
Re:Getting ready for the MS bash (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, that'll work, though I'm sure Miguel is probably working on fixing that right now. ;)
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Sorry for the flamebait mod. I actually thought this was quite funny. My computer sucks. Posting to undo the mod...
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You at least give a viable reason for disliking Silverlight. Most of the commenters just seem to hate it because it's Silverlight. Why they don't make a Linux version of it is beyond me, they really ought to.
Now to play devil's advocate: I don't see why Silverlight garners so much more hate than Flash around here. Both are pushed using the same tactics and neither is really open. Flash has just been around longer.
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I have to say, I dislike them both equally. Flash because it has been around too long. Silverlight because it is really just flash again when the entire idea should have been replaced.
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Statement of fact is not necessarily bashing. There is a difference between legitimate criticism and bashing. So no, that's not nearly good enough.
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Pretty weak to be honest.
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It is a cool thing, yes. It is, however, NOT cool that it requires Silverlight to view. There's no reason it should require that.
Re:Getting ready for the MS bash (Score:5, Insightful)
Playing devil's advocate -- it's pretty trivial to make a Silverlight interface to pan and zoom around a giant image like this. It's less trivial to do the same thing with, say, JavaScript or Flash.
This is one of the handful of things that Silverlight does really well.
Because of that, I wouldn't be surprised if this project was less a "We've got this cool thing, what Microsoft technology can we push with it?" and more "What's a thing we could do that would really show off a strength of Silverlight?"
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Playing devil's advocate -- it's pretty trivial to make a Silverlight interface to pan and zoom around a giant image like this. It's less trivial to do the same thing with, say, JavaScript or Flash.
Only until someone writes a Javascript library that does it. Then it becomes trivially easy to do it in Javascript.
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Google Maps (Score:3, Interesting)
it's pretty trivial to make a Silverlight interface to pan and zoom around a giant image like this.
Yet Google managed to pull off Google Maps in JavaScript.
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With the resources of Google. Pretend your the engineer tasked with making this. "Hey, boss, we can spend 3x the time writing in in Javascript so its compatible with all browsers or use our inhouse Silverlight tech to get it done faster. What should we do?"
Of course, they didn't have this conversation. It went: "build this in silverlight and let me know when its done."
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Except, now that the idea of doing it in Javascipt is out, anyone can figure it out. The math's simple. The database is easy to set up. Any undergrad CS major should be able to cobblestone it together as a project within a week or two.
Now setting it up to make sure it can handle a /. DDOS may be another matter...
Re:Google Maps (Score:4, Insightful)
There's some latency as the site fetches images and scales images. Overall works pretty well.
Bing:
The site asks me to download and install Silverlight.exe which doesn't work on my operating system.
Perhaps I'm not as easily impressed as you?
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Playing devil's advocate -- it's pretty trivial to make a Silverlight interface to pan and zoom around a giant image like this. It's less trivial to do the same thing with, say, JavaScript or Flash.
(looks down at arrow, ctrl, +, and - keys)
Uhh... you need extra software to do what now?
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To deliver 800 GB worth of stitched-together composite images to users in a fashion that doesn’t result in them dying of old age before they can identify and zoom in on a portion worth seeing up-close?
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http://maps.google.com/ [google.com]
http://moon.google.com/ [google.com]
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From “arrow, ctrl, +, and - keys”, I get the impression he thinks you just give them a massive JPEG and let their browser handle the panning and zooming rather than using “extra software” such as a Javascript app or a Silverlight or Flash object.
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Meaning that they have already got a library for this build in? Or is it something that you can only do because Silverlight has [please insert silverlight exclusive technology here]?
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Meaning that they have already got a library for this build in?
Essentially, yeah -- this kind of zooming is a built-in function of Silverlight. They call it Deep Zoom and here's [microsoft.com] a bit of an article about it with some code/markup examples linked if you're curious.
Here's [hardrock.com] another interesting example of the concept in action -- obviously you'd need Silverlight or Moonlight to view it.
None of this is anything you couldn't do with another technology -- it's just that Silverlight makes it fast/easy to throw toget
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Playing devil's advocate -- it's pretty trivial to make a Silverlight interface to pan and zoom around a giant image like this. It's less trivial to do the same thing with, say, JavaScript or Flash.
I'm just not sure it's true. ImageScope provides a workable flash interface to allow you to view 10,000 MPixel images just fine. It's not all that hard whatever you're writing it in. Pyramid tiled images make writing a front end pretty easy to be honest. I think the good work they've done is the image processing at the back end to get this data into nice shape in the first place.
Re:Getting ready for the MS bash (Score:5, Insightful)
Playing devil's advocate -- it's pretty trivial to make a Silverlight interface to pan and zoom around a giant image like this. It's less trivial to do the same thing with, say, JavaScript or Flash.
Actually you're trolling more than playing devil's advocate. There's a sh*tload of zoom & pan-enabled image viewing libraries, both in JS and Flash, all using tiles just like Silverlight -- try to google some.
And for that matter it's trivial to DIY from scratch using canvas, which of course IE conveniently doesn't support, but that problem was solved too long ago. OpenLayers [openlayers.org], which you might have seen at work at OpenStreetMap [openstreetmap.org], includes a VML rendering backend, besides canvas and SVG.
The really funny part about your "advocating" is that MS has an Ajax library that does exactly the same thing as its Silverlight counterpart: http://www.seadragon.com/developer/ajax/ [seadragon.com]
Re:Getting ready for the MS bash (Score:5, Insightful)
20 years of watching these people operate points me to these kinds of conclusions.
LoB
Re:Getting ready for the MS bash (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope you're wrong too :-)
Oh wait... the source material from the SDSS (Sloan Digital Sky Survey) runs the hardware with the help of... drum roll... Linux (ref page 24 [sdss.org])
BAM!
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I see already the bashing because they don't support competitor platforms. I guess that's fair enough, but - can I get Google's Sky Maps on my non-Android phone (Symbian)? Or where are the calls to run on Linux phones there, such as Maemo? Everytime we get a "For the Iphone" app, do we get versions for other platforms (even when they're not written by Apple)?
And at least MS can say they're writing something that's supported by 90+% of the market, which obviously doesn't apply for Iphones or Android, and the
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You shouldn't harp on Android or iPhone when silverlight cannot be run on any existing Windows Mobile phones. As far as i can tell, only one phone (S60) can run silverlight and it's made by Nokia.
List of phones/browsers/os support: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silverlight#Operating_systems_and_web_browsers [wikipedia.org]
Most applications cannot run cross-OS, but the web is supposed to be os neutral. In many cases a program can be made to work with multiple OSs but there's no way a program can run on everything. The web
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So this looks like a really cool thing that MS did, so I'm going to wait in wide eyed anticipation at how the slashdot community is going to trash it because it's from Microsoft and not Google (or at least be more overly critical of it). I do hope I'm wrong though.
Hope, huh? Niiice, juuuiiiicy! :) ).
Speaking of my hopes, I had hoped for years to see a better OS from MS, and more fair play towards FOSS (and I must admit that MS mimicked them quite swell lately). The coolness of the sky (seen in silverlight) doesn't bring me any benefits, thus the efficiency of this coolness... well... is sooo cool is that's close to 0K. (how's that for a trashing
To be fair: I'm equally happy I'm living in a "year of Linux on desktop" for quite a some years - looks like a "perpetual
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I'm very happy that they've helped make something like a better image of the sky available. What I don't like is Microsoft's habit of taking something like that and packaging it up in bullshit proprietary formats that you can only access if you abuse their shit software. Yeah, I think I got that right. I don't like Microsoft's software, I don't like their business tactics, and I don't like their insistence that everyone use their software. I'll use their software when I think it's right for the job. Right n
Re:Getting ready for the MS bash (Score:4, Interesting)
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I agree this is really awesome. Microsoft has done some revolutionary things in the past, like giving away the TCP/IP stack Internet Explorer 4.0 for free
If "giving away" a TCP/IP stack is your idea of revolutionary, I'd like to point out that (A) TCP/IP stacks have an integral part of every workstation-class operation system since the early 1980s and (B) you're not giving Microsoft enough credit (at least sufficiently early credit), since TCP/IP for Windows for Workgroups (3.11) came out in mid-1994, coi
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* Internet Explorer is a browser, not a TCP/IP stack.
* There were several stacks before, but Winsock was the first common stack for windows. It predates IE4 by two years, and is not the work of Microsoft.
* MS should have implemented proper networking from the get-go, and arguably already in their DOS offerings, instead of peddling their proprietary crap on top of what they always, and short-sightedly, looked at as jus
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MSIEv3 was such a gigantic piece of refuse that Netscape dominated the market and all were quite happy with that. MSIEv4 was sufficiently acceptable and insidiously integrated/prom
Moonlight 3.0.40818.0 on Linux here (Score:4, Informative)
Nope. Doesn't work.
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Well, I haven't got Linux installed on my netbook yet, but even so I still won't be able to use it; I'm not installing Silverlight, Moonlight, or anything except maybe Bud Light.
Re:Moonlight 3.0.40818.0 on Linux here (Score:5, Insightful)
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Bud Light, the very worst example of American beer, the very worst in the world ever
Clearly you've never had the displeasure of drinking Natty Ice (Natural Light Ice) or Beast Ice (Milwaukee's Best Ice). Actually Beast in general is just awful but both of those will make Bud Light seem like beer of the gods.
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You need to put quotes around "american" as well as "beer"; AB is now owned by Europeans (and see another poster's comment). [slashdot.org]
Actually, my favorite beer is Killian's, my favorite American beer is Sam Adams. Sadly, in most bars here you're stuck with AB and Miller products, and in the rest of them you pay twice as much for imports as you do for "domestics", and more for "american" beers as you do in the dives I drink at, which have a more interesting clientelle [slashdot.org] anyway.
Seems... (Score:5, Informative)
With all the artifacts, seams and inconsistencies processed away
It seems the seams are gone. Excellent! I'll have to see how this compares to Google Sky. I'll bet I'll still prefer NASA's closeups from their Picture of the Day Gallery, [nasa.gov] though.
From Nintendo to MS (Score:2, Funny)
It's like going from Super Mario Brothers on 1985-era Nintendo consoles to Halo 2 on Xbox 360s
Classy, they just had to get that one in there. Of course Halo 2 isn't seamless on the 360, you can't use its online features and it doesn't work in wide screen format.
I can view the image? (Score:3, Insightful)
You can view the image at Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope site — it requires the Silverlight plugin for Windows or Mac.
These two statements appear to contradict each other.
If it requires Silverlight, then I can't view it, because I don't want that cock on my computer.
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The problem is, if you're running Windows, uninstalling something sometimes doesn't completely uninstall it (unlike Linux, on which Silverlight won't run but when you uninstall something it's gone; I don't know about Mac but I would guess that they're not like MS, nobody is). And I'm not going to run Ghost just to use Silverlight, which AFAIK isn't used by anyone but MS. Hell, Flash is bad enough, I don't need two of them.
So, o/s business is pretty much past tense now ? (Score:2)
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"look we have big boxes now and they are powerful
Thinking back to the Simpsons AABF02
No, no. To attract the top grads, we'll need to host a computing stunt. A picture that showcases our cutting- edge technology.
A "sky map", sir?
[gasps] Yes, brilliant! That's just the kind of far-out gimmick we need.
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every other day, news from microsoft. none of them relate to o/ses. so what ? ms has dropped its core business ?
After the over saturation of articles back when Windows 7 came out, I am glad to have the opportunity to read about anything else.
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If mixing metaphors were illegal... (Score:3, Interesting)
You mean the sky it gets a whole lot easier, starts holding your hard and tells you which stars to look at?
Or can we now look at the old night sky on our mobile phones using emulators, now that the new night sky is filled with nerd-raging teenaged frat boys?
Re:If mixing metaphors were illegal... (Score:5, Funny)
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No it means you can no longer collect stars. That is a security vulnaribility that was solved in HALO.
It's interesting where a lot of the time went (Score:4, Funny)
According to TFA, one of the major bottlenecks was just copying files:
Just transferring the final 1,025 files (802 GB total) off the cluster took 2.5 hours using a 1 Gbps link.
They must have been using Vista Explorer pre SP-1 to do the file copy.
Re:It's interesting where a lot of the time went (Score:5, Insightful)
They must have been using Vista Explorer pre SP-1 to do the file copy.
Hmm? Transferring 802 GB over a 1 Gbps link is going to take 1.78 hours as a bare minimum and assuming you lose some time on the overhead and don’t necessarily have 100% of the network’s bandwidth available to you the whole time, 2.5 hours doesn’t seem terribly long.
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Sorry, I guess slashdot ate the <joke> tags there. It might have helped
BSOD (Score:4, Funny)
Blue Sky of Death
Halo 2 on Xbox 360? (Score:3, Informative)
And yes, Grizzly Adams did have a beard.
Cool, but still some artifacts. (Score:2)
Well, the image is really cool, I'll give it that.
The "Quotes" from TFS are all from the author of TFA. If you want to see what the real description of the work, best look here http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/terapixel/default.aspx [microsoft.com]
There's still some artifacts left though, have a look near (seriously overexposed) Sirius for a ghost of the telescope pupil (the thing that looks like an alien solar sail) (Constellations -> Canis Major)
Any cross ports? (Score:2)
Why This Sucks (Score:5, Funny)
Please select your response from the following /.-approved categories (check all that apply):
This project sucks because...
[ ] Microsoft is evil
[ ] They totally stole this idea from
[ ] They've never done ANYTHING original or noteworthy
[ ] EVERYTHING they do is about hurting consumers
[ ] did this 100 times better 10 years ago
[ ] Microsoft killed my family and made me watch
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Cognitive dissonance (Score:2)
Oh crud. I hate Microsoft, but this is kinda cool.
Wonder if it'll work under Wine?
Ah, sweet basement!!! (Score:2)
Anything that saves me from walking outside and looking up at the sky and being around nature is progress!
This... is really cool. (Score:2)
In their hearts I think most anti-MS people on slashdot already acknowledge the fact that they've been out-eviled recently. The day of MS as the root of all IT nastiness has come and gone. They just need to say it out loud.
Re:Beware... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Beware... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's FOX's job.
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You're probably not living anywhere near a large city, are you? I mean, the night sky is probably there somewhere near those very faint dots I can see when there are no clouds.
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LoB
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Is the project set to be completed in 2012, by any chance?
Coincidentally, that's my retiremnt date. I hope I'm not a replicant, and if I am, I hope I never meet Harrison Ford!
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Yes, trolling slashdot nerds to install silverlight to view the image out of uncontrollable curiousity.
Someone at M$ is now chuckling while you sell your soul clicking "install silverlight plugin": trolled hard.
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Not a chance in hell...
*sigh*
Guess I’ll just have to be satisfied with the images from TFA:
Image before/after integrating images from mosaic [hpcwire.com]
Screenshot viewing horsehead nebula [hpcwire.com]
Re:It's now clear where M$ is headed to! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's now clear where M$ is headed to! (Score:5, Funny)
Because Microsoft insists on re-inventing the wheel so that they can force people to use Microsoft(TM) wheels.
Re:It's now clear where M$ is headed to! (Score:4, Funny)
Because Microsoft insists on re-inventing the wheel so that they can force people to use Microsoft(TM) wheels.
You mean Microsoft(TM) Wheel(R) Series 7, which will go end of support next month, don't you?
Rolls For Sure (TM) (Score:3, Funny)
Please make sure you only buy products labled "Rolls for Sure(TM)" to avoid compatibility issues. That way when we abandon "Rolls For Sure" after a year, you know without a doubt you will need to rebuy all of your previous wheels.
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Yeah let's use Adobe(TM) wheels instead. They're much much better.
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It's not even distributed by MS. That's even worse than Flash.
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My initial reaction to seeing mention of silverlight was "well damn..." If I were running Windows, I still would not install silverlight. So now I am here seeking to find if anyone has ripped the data accessible through silverlight and converted it or made it available in some other way.
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If I need a browser I run Chrome.
If I need to see the sky, I open my eyes!
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If I need to see the sky, I open my eyes, diet for 2 years so I'm light enough to stand, have a bath to clean off the years of accumulated feces, sweat, filth and dead skin that have accumulated on my body, scrape the grime off the window of my mom's basement only to realise it's been boarded up, try to open the door only to realise it's locked, email the cops to get them to unlock my mom's basement, receive no response, manage to break down the door using improvised explosives fashioned out of dried feces and cleaning products, find out that sometime in the last decade my mom's house has been abducted by aliens and the being now feeding me through the laundry chute is actually a robotic maid, open the door and realise I'm flying through space, but the view is way more awesome than this M$ shit!
FTFY
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Actually, I was about to click until I read the silverlight thing. I can wait. Or I could get my coworker to install it.. hmm.
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Yes, trolling slashdot nerds to install silverlight to view the image out of uncontrollable curiousity.
Someone at M$ is now chuckling while you sell your soul clicking "install silverlight plugin": trolled hard.
It already worked on me when Microsoft put a series of Richard Feynman lectures online. Alas, Moonlight is too "advanced [angryflower.com]" to load the app. T_T
And I'm not getting trolled all the way into installing a MS operating system!
first company to..... (Score:2)
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I believe he meant normal image files of this “TeraPixel sky map”, not just any picture of the sky in general.
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Weren't they behind this whole 'reconstruct a 3D world from a lot of 2D pictures found on Google' a while ago as well ?
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yeah, it's certainly not for use in science / research / serious stuff. It's possible that's the thing is so stupid big that there isn't a good way to view the data. But without access to the actual images, it's an "ooo neato" click-through type deal.
Would be neat to map the image onto a room floorplan and print the image out on a plotter as wallpaper. Or somehow import the image into kstars?
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To be fair, Silverlight runs on OS X as well. Between that and Windows, that covers probably around 98% of the world's desktops, which isn't too bad.
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No, it just means space isn't actually fun anymore, it's all serious and "realistic" now.