The shuttle was def pre-Windows, but the first part of the ISS was launched in 1998. Numerous more modern modules with computerized systems have been added since then. So it is likely that there may be some Windows "infestations" onboard, in addition to the carbon life forms infesting the ISS.
From Wikipedia: The ISS is equipped with approximately 100 IBM and Lenovo ThinkPad model A31 and T61P laptop computers. Each computer is a commercial off-the-shelf purchase which is then modified for safety and operation including updates to connectors, cooling and power to accommodate the station's 28V DC power system and weightless environment. Heat generated by the laptops doesn't rise, but stagnates surrounding the laptop, so additional forced ventilation is required. Laptops aboard the ISS are connected to the station's wireless LAN via Wi-Fi and are connected to the ground at 3 Mbit/s up and 10 Mbit/s down, comparable to home DSL connection speeds.
...As far as the space station, goes, all Linux is doing is the back office/logistics stuff. Nothing to do with life support, etc. Remember that side was designed way before Windows became available.
According to the article, the R2 humanoid robot will also be running Linux, that adds a lot of variables. I also think today's life support systems are augmented with regular desktop systems, on top of embedded systems, on top of manual controls. I think that the only electronics used in the original life support systems were indicator lights. Today's systems are a lot more complex, but I also think they're designed to work in total loss of power (for at least life support) and therefor are more mechanical in nature.
I never said smart people are motivated by money, I said they would like to be rewarded, most likely in money... need to pay for a roof over your head, utilities, transportation, medical insurance, food, clothes... the necessities of living in a community, plus any other responsibilities you accept and/or get as you progress in life... I'm thankful that there's people who will help other people and not expect some kind of reward... The world will be a better place if there were more people like that.
Some expect a reward in the hereafter. What people do and what they want are all rather mysterious. A lot of smart people have no common sense. Others will do anything for adventure, to relieve boredom. Some are loyal to lost causes.
So now you take on Maslow's Hierarcy.... it is rather idealistic and imperfect, doesn't deal with the unconscious mind.
I'd love for the world to be a better place. I even try to be part of the solution rather than one of the problems. Nothfing wrong with that.
Ok my 12hr shift is over... I'm glad more community members joined the chatter... I think it's an interesting way of meeting ppl even if you pull a couple of chains here and there.... didn't mean any harm with it, just wanted to stirr up some small debate. But Nasa getting into Linux is a milestone; one of those historical things that you'll see in the future. I understand that a combination of these and other technologies will benefit science alot. Today Linux, maybe later on Humanizing the space shuttle, and space station with sattlelight radio, TV, and Internet... why not Astronauts are ppl too, after a long day of scientific research and experiments with a nice dose of galactic radiation, the Astronaut can relax, keeping high moral and sanity.... were not in the 50s when such things were not available or allowed... just something to think about...
Do check out the scifi movie "Dark Star" from 1974: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT5vz65f860
It kind of plays on the idea of what happens to astronaughts facing the infinite boredom of space travel.
Having the internet in space might be nice, but when replies to your tweets and forum posts take months and years to come back that is going to be a bit of a drag:)
4. The dark side of computing is always trying to hack the OS that is most available as their first choice. Why bother looking for machines that are either very hard to hack or very few in number, when MS makes it so easy?
Linux is great but Windows can be just as robust and reliable as any OS. It is surprising how few people are aware of Windows Embedded (XPe?) that can be tailored to requirements and features such things as "HORM" (Hibernate Once Resume Many) for rapid boot-up and "EWF" (Enhanced Write Filtering) where you have full control of what is written to disk. Embedded is granular and can be stripped down to suit requirements.
A few years back the company I worked for started on an embedded project, using Windows CE at the time I believe. All they wanted was to build PowerPC (I think it was) device with three DSL ports on it and a few extra goodies. They never did get past the bugs in CE that stopped it working reliably. That project got restarted with VxWorks from WindRiver. That sort of worked until you hit problems with their C++ compiler and they never did fix show stopping issues in their implementation of OSPF.
When I arrived, we soon saw that WindRivers compiler was GCC and the user land on VxWorks was mostly open source stuff (like OSPF). Boom we moved the whole show over to Linux. It has been used reliably in thousands of installations since and is still being expanded on. It's also been migrated to ARM without any hiccups.
This kind of story has been played out all around the industry.
MS, WindRiver and others had their chance. They blew it.
The reason we are not aware of Windows Embedded (XPe?) (Yes even you can't remember what it's called today:)) is that we have no need for it. We no longer want to be shackled to a single supplier of a closed system over which we have no control at all.
@Heater: Just to avoid any misunderstanding, CE is not the same as XPe or the new Windows 8 Embedded. I know you know this but others might not read it that way.
All I know is that I've shipped some 400+ machine-tools that run on anything from W98 to XPe + our own ISR that closes many (12+) CNC servo-loops, each with a 500uS update. HMI and non-realtime code was developed RAPIDLY in VB. Stability of the OS has never been an issue for us.
Our non-Windows competitors, who had "full control over their OS" (whatever that means), were left in the dust and were forced to switch to Windows.
We have recently switched to Android for other reasons.
Yes I'm sure things have moved on since my CE story. Still, as the years rolled by since then I have seen Windows error dialogs, desktops and blue screens turning up on: Passenger information systems at the bus station. The same at the railway station, Crashed cash dispensers. For a while it seemed everywhere I went there was a crashed Windows embedded system. Just last week there was some kind of Windows error dialog on the middle of the screen on a games machine in a restaurant I visited.
All anecdotes I know, and may be I'm hyper-sensitized to this.
Anyway, the bottom line for me is not that Windows is better or worse than Linux or any other technical comparisons. Or that VB is better than Qt or whatever.
It's not even a question of monetary cost.
No. I just think it's insane for the world to base it's computing infrastructure on a single supplier, a company of questionable character, in a foreign country to most of us, and totally out of our control or influence. If there is any reasonable way to avoid that I will take it and encourage others to do so as well.
Yes I'm sure things have moved on since my CE story. Still, as the years rolled by since then I have seen Windows error dialogs, desktops and blue screens turning up on: Passenger information systems at the bus station. The same at the railway station, Crashed cash dispensers. For a while it seemed everywhere I went there was a crashed Windows embedded system. Just last week there was some kind of Windows error dialog on the middle of the screen on a games machine in a restaurant I visited.
My wife and I were in a Pei Wei restaurant last week and one of the large 'menu' boards at the entrance kept re-booting... BIOS display, then XP splash screen, then BOIS, XP splash screen, ...
I was at an extremely swank wedding dinner in Taiwan last... a big turn out of a few hundred people and $100 USD plus per plate feast.
The ballroom was round with a domed ceiling and about 8 big flat screens rotating through pictures of the bridge and groom.
But the one thing I found very absurd was that before things got started, and whenever someone had to change things - all the screens would come up with a nice big Windows Desktop page. You would think after 30 or so years of development for multi-media applications and multiple feeds, the OS to the operator would be a different display than the feed that goes out to the viewers.
But that's Windows in Asia... even if it is possible, nobody knows how or if it is available.
When are commercial displays to the public going to avoid feeding BIOS and all the other gobbly-gook? Linux does offer a lot of levels of flexibility. Why not have the public feed off until something they should be seeing is ready to display? That would be very sensible programing... and sell a lot more dedicated display uses.
I wonder if it's to stop commercial use of the application (powerpoint)?
G-force the visualiser for PC would show the splash screen for this very reason unless you bought a commercial playing licence, I wonder if you got in touch with microsoft they could give you a patch to turn off the splash screen.....at a price!
A year or so ago, when I first started using Windows 7, I felt that eMeticSoft had finally pulled their heads out and got Windows to work the way normal people expect it to, but in the past couple of weeks I've had three different computers running Windfroze 7 go into some sort of schizophrenic spasm. My "favourite" moment was when the IT guy, sneering and scoffing at my ignorance, got on his own computer in an effort to show me what to do... only to have his own computer (Windreck 7) lock up and take for..... ev...... er to reboot, update, configure updates, do not remove power while updating.......for..... ev...... er....
So I'm worried: has eMeticSoft given up working with Windreck 7 because they're now pouring so many resources into their latest fiasco-in-the-making, Window 8?
I don't know. As far as a I can tell there is only one user interface for Windows. So whatever you put up facing the public will also show your dirty laundry when it goes tits up.
ElectricAye,
Never heard of eMeticSoft before. But how can they be expected to make Windows work better than the rest of us? They as an application provider for Windows are suffering at the whims of MS like everyone else.
Are you guys still going on that Windows thing, you guys are too funny. Please play the Imperial March while you read this; you will realize that Windows is the father of all OS's, and you will give in to corporate bureaucracy, and you will not blame lack of user understanding, shotty hardware: due to low budgets, low/non maintenance equipment, and your your gonna like it.:nerd:
PS; I also own a Windows Phone 8, and I use Excel, PowerPoint, and Word on it... And yes my ringtone is The Imperial March. Help me, I will make an app for the Boebot and make it beep to it...
In some other context I may have gotten the joke. But as it happens, and being a bit slow today, I dumped eMeticSoft into Google and got: http://www.emicsoft.net/
No, Peter.. no; We just Owned the mistake... Once you own the mistake it goes away... away from the cloud, the internet, history... it just goes away. That's the rule, it just never gets talked about any more like oil spills, exploding SUV tires, and whatnot... Sound Wave just pressed the erased button on his cassette thing were that cyber panther/cugar docks in... its too late for that...
I don't know. As far as a I can tell there is only one user interface for Windows. So whatever you put up facing the public will also show your dirty laundry when it goes tits up.
ElectricAye,
Never heard of eMeticSoft before. But how can they be expected to make Windows work better than the rest of us? They as an application provider for Windows are suffering at the whims of MS like everyone else.
Hmm, I really could see not valid reason the makers of emetrol would be branching out into windows apps. Seems that when some windows uninstall product, the visual really does remind one of a computer blowing chunks after a hard night of ......
Interesting you should mention BST. A closed source, binary only blob of code. Sure if the environment it needs to run in changes it stops working. Should the OS be beholden to such binary blobs for ever? I think not. Given the source I'm sure we could recompile BST in one minute and it would run just fine.
By the way, what if I wanted to run BST on my ARM computers? Like Rasperry Pi or Android devices. Of course I cannot. The problem is with BST not the OS.
Interesting you should mention BST. A closed source, binary only blob of code. Sure if the environment it needs to run in changes it stops working. Should the OS be beholden to such binary blobs for ever? I think not. Given the source I'm sure we could recompile BST in one minute and it would run just fine.
By the way, what if I wanted to run BST on my ARM computers? Like Rasperry Pi or Android devices. Of course I cannot. The problem is with BST not the OS.
I was referring more to all of the strange incantations like below that seem to always be required to do much of anything on Linux.
$ dpkg --add-architecture i386 # As suggested in the links above.
$ apt-get install ia32-libs
$ apt-get install ia32-libs-gtk
I like to use what works best for whatever I'm doing at the time, so I use both Linux and Windows as needed, I may even be adding some OS/X to the party soon.
No, Peter.. no; We just Owned the mistake... Once you own the mistake it goes away... away from the cloud, the internet, history... it just goes away. That's the rule, it just never gets talked about any more like oil spills, exploding SUV tires, and whatnot... Sound Wave just pressed the erased button on his cassette thing were that cyber panther/cugar docks in... its too late for that...
OK now you are not making any sense .... Kinda like the lyrics in a REM song ...
I was referring more to all of the strange incantations....
Yeah, I know what you mean.
However all operating systems have those. Or even not operating systems. This weekend I was asked "Why does my FarmVille hang all the time?" Turned out there were two different Flash player plugins enabled in the browser that were fighting with each other.
I like to use what works best for whatever I'm doing at the time,
You know. I really cannot argue against that. We all have to "get stuff done". If I could use MS products and then discard them like tissues that would be fine. If I start to find myself stuck in a long term relationship, that is not so good.
Why did they just completely jump over Apple... I was expecting Apple before Linux.... I mean.Apple is bullet proof or something.... Just kidding but they did jump over it...
Um... If you look beyond the surface of apple what technology is it employing for its kernel ;x
Comments
From Wikipedia: The ISS is equipped with approximately 100 IBM and Lenovo ThinkPad model A31 and T61P laptop computers. Each computer is a commercial off-the-shelf purchase which is then modified for safety and operation including updates to connectors, cooling and power to accommodate the station's 28V DC power system and weightless environment. Heat generated by the laptops doesn't rise, but stagnates surrounding the laptop, so additional forced ventilation is required. Laptops aboard the ISS are connected to the station's wireless LAN via Wi-Fi and are connected to the ground at 3 Mbit/s up and 10 Mbit/s down, comparable to home DSL connection speeds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station#Communications_and_computers
According to the article, the R2 humanoid robot will also be running Linux, that adds a lot of variables. I also think today's life support systems are augmented with regular desktop systems, on top of embedded systems, on top of manual controls. I think that the only electronics used in the original life support systems were indicator lights. Today's systems are a lot more complex, but I also think they're designed to work in total loss of power (for at least life support) and therefor are more mechanical in nature.
Some expect a reward in the hereafter. What people do and what they want are all rather mysterious. A lot of smart people have no common sense. Others will do anything for adventure, to relieve boredom. Some are loyal to lost causes.
So now you take on Maslow's Hierarcy.... it is rather idealistic and imperfect, doesn't deal with the unconscious mind.
I'd love for the world to be a better place. I even try to be part of the solution rather than one of the problems. Nothfing wrong with that.
Do check out the scifi movie "Dark Star" from 1974: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT5vz65f860
It kind of plays on the idea of what happens to astronaughts facing the infinite boredom of space travel.
Having the internet in space might be nice, but when replies to your tweets and forum posts take months and years to come back that is going to be a bit of a drag:)
Linux is great but Windows can be just as robust and reliable as any OS. It is surprising how few people are aware of Windows Embedded (XPe?) that can be tailored to requirements and features such things as "HORM" (Hibernate Once Resume Many) for rapid boot-up and "EWF" (Enhanced Write Filtering) where you have full control of what is written to disk. Embedded is granular and can be stripped down to suit requirements.
Mickster
When I arrived, we soon saw that WindRivers compiler was GCC and the user land on VxWorks was mostly open source stuff (like OSPF). Boom we moved the whole show over to Linux. It has been used reliably in thousands of installations since and is still being expanded on. It's also been migrated to ARM without any hiccups.
This kind of story has been played out all around the industry.
MS, WindRiver and others had their chance. They blew it.
The reason we are not aware of Windows Embedded (XPe?) (Yes even you can't remember what it's called today:)) is that we have no need for it. We no longer want to be shackled to a single supplier of a closed system over which we have no control at all.
All I know is that I've shipped some 400+ machine-tools that run on anything from W98 to XPe + our own ISR that closes many (12+) CNC servo-loops, each with a 500uS update. HMI and non-realtime code was developed RAPIDLY in VB. Stability of the OS has never been an issue for us.
Our non-Windows competitors, who had "full control over their OS" (whatever that means), were left in the dust and were forced to switch to Windows.
We have recently switched to Android for other reasons.
Mickster
All anecdotes I know, and may be I'm hyper-sensitized to this.
Anyway, the bottom line for me is not that Windows is better or worse than Linux or any other technical comparisons. Or that VB is better than Qt or whatever.
It's not even a question of monetary cost.
No. I just think it's insane for the world to base it's computing infrastructure on a single supplier, a company of questionable character, in a foreign country to most of us, and totally out of our control or influence. If there is any reasonable way to avoid that I will take it and encourage others to do so as well.
My wife and I were in a Pei Wei restaurant last week and one of the large 'menu' boards at the entrance kept re-booting... BIOS display, then XP splash screen, then BOIS, XP splash screen, ...
It kept up the whole time we were there.
The ballroom was round with a domed ceiling and about 8 big flat screens rotating through pictures of the bridge and groom.
But the one thing I found very absurd was that before things got started, and whenever someone had to change things - all the screens would come up with a nice big Windows Desktop page. You would think after 30 or so years of development for multi-media applications and multiple feeds, the OS to the operator would be a different display than the feed that goes out to the viewers.
But that's Windows in Asia... even if it is possible, nobody knows how or if it is available.
When are commercial displays to the public going to avoid feeding BIOS and all the other gobbly-gook? Linux does offer a lot of levels of flexibility. Why not have the public feed off until something they should be seeing is ready to display? That would be very sensible programing... and sell a lot more dedicated display uses.
G-force the visualiser for PC would show the splash screen for this very reason unless you bought a commercial playing licence, I wonder if you got in touch with microsoft they could give you a patch to turn off the splash screen.....at a price!
So I'm worried: has eMeticSoft given up working with Windreck 7 because they're now pouring so many resources into their latest fiasco-in-the-making, Window 8?
I don't know. As far as a I can tell there is only one user interface for Windows. So whatever you put up facing the public will also show your dirty laundry when it goes tits up.
ElectricAye,
Never heard of eMeticSoft before. But how can they be expected to make Windows work better than the rest of us? They as an application provider for Windows are suffering at the whims of MS like everyone else.
PS; I also own a Windows Phone 8, and I use Excel, PowerPoint, and Word on it... And yes my ringtone is The Imperial March. Help me, I will make an app for the Boebot and make it beep to it...
Sorry, Heater. It was my poor attempt at making a joke out of the name MicroSoft.
An emetic is a chemical you give to patients to make them vomit.
In some other context I may have gotten the joke. But as it happens, and being a bit slow today, I dumped eMeticSoft into Google and got: http://www.emicsoft.net/
@Mike4421, I suspect it's too late.
@Heater, your other thread:
http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php/147094-Is-BST-dead
Doesn't exactly help sing the praises of Linux.
It seems all OS'es can have their issues.
C.W.
Interesting you should mention BST. A closed source, binary only blob of code. Sure if the environment it needs to run in changes it stops working. Should the OS be beholden to such binary blobs for ever? I think not. Given the source I'm sure we could recompile BST in one minute and it would run just fine.
By the way, what if I wanted to run BST on my ARM computers? Like Rasperry Pi or Android devices. Of course I cannot. The problem is with BST not the OS.
I was referring more to all of the strange incantations like below that seem to always be required to do much of anything on Linux.
I like to use what works best for whatever I'm doing at the time, so I use both Linux and Windows as needed, I may even be adding some OS/X to the party soon.
C.W.
OK now you are not making any sense .... Kinda like the lyrics in a REM song ...
However all operating systems have those. Or even not operating systems. This weekend I was asked "Why does my FarmVille hang all the time?" Turned out there were two different Flash player plugins enabled in the browser that were fighting with each other.
Do you know how to fix that ?
You know. I really cannot argue against that. We all have to "get stuff done". If I could use MS products and then discard them like tissues that would be fine. If I start to find myself stuck in a long term relationship, that is not so good.
Um... If you look beyond the surface of apple what technology is it employing for its kernel ;x