A number of times in recent weeks a bright, unblinking light has appeared in the night sky of the nation's capital: a spaceship. Longer than a football field, weighing 654,000 pounds, the spaceship moved swiftly across the heavens and vanished.
Fortunately, it was one of ours.
The international space station is by far the largest spacecraft ever built by earthlings. Circling the Earth every 90 minutes, it often passes over North America and is visible from the ground when night has fallen but the station, up high, is still bathed in sunlight.
After more than a decade of construction, it is nearing completion and finally has a full crew of six astronauts. The last components should be installed by the end of next year.
And then?
"In the first quarter of 2016, we'll prep and de-orbit the spacecraft," says NASA's space station program manager, Michael T. Suffredini.
That's a polite way of saying that NASA will make the space station fall back into the atmosphere, where it will turn into a fireball and then crash into the Pacific Ocean. It'll be a controlled reentry, to ensure that it doesn't take out a major city. But it'll be destroyed as surely as a Lego palace obliterated by the sweeping arm of a suddenly bored kid.
This, at least, is NASA's plan, pending a change in policy. There's no long-term funding on the books for international space station operations beyond 2015.
Suffredini raised some eyebrows when, at a public hearing last month, he declared flatly that the plan is to de-orbit the station in 2016. He addressed his comments to a panel chaired by former aerospace executive Norman Augustine that is charged by the Obama administration with reviewing the entire human spaceflight program. Everything is on the table -- missions, goals, rocket design. And right there in the mix is this big, fancy space laboratory circling the Earth from 220 miles up.
The cost of the station is both a liability and, paradoxically, a virtue. A figure commonly associated with the ISS is that it will ultimately cost the United States and its international partners about $100 billion. That may add to the political pressure to keep the space laboratory intact and in orbit rather than seeing it plunging back to Earth so soon after completion.
"If we've spent a hundred billion dollars, I don't think we want to shut it down in 2015," Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) told Augustine's committee.
Suffredini agrees.
"My opinion is it would be a travesty to de-orbit this thing," he said. "If we get rid of this darned thing in 2015, we're going to cede our leadership in human exploration."
NASA has a strategy built on President George W. Bush's Vision for Space Exploration, of which a return to the moon is the next great leap. The space station's defenders say it can provide essential research on long-duration spaceflight.
Suffredini argues that any long-term exploration of the universe requires an initial step of learning how to survive in space. The best place to do that is close to the Earth, he said. The space station sticks to low Earth orbit. "It's also teaching us how to work together as a world, as a planet," he said.
Although there is no official lobbying going on to extend the mission, NASA is conducting a thorough review of the station to see what it would take to certify it as operational through the late 2020s, Suffredini said. Even in the vacuum of space, things break down, get old, wear out.
Critics have long derided the orbiting laboratory as a boondoggle. Originally called Space Station Freedom during the Reagan years, it became the international space station when the United States lured Russia into a partnership in 1993, agreeing to alter the orbit of the station to make it pass over the Russian-run space complex in Kazakhstan. That agreement helped keep Russian scientists and engineers employed at a time when the United States feared they would become rogue agents in a chaotic world.
The rap on the space station has always been that it was built primarily to give the space shuttle somewhere to go. Now, with the shuttle being retired at the end of 2010, the station is on the spot. U.S. astronauts will be able to reach the station only by getting rides on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft.
The station has repeatedly been hit with budget cuts and design modifications. Much of its science funding was cut earlier this decade. A centrifuge had been planned as a crucial scientific component of the station, but it didn't survive the budget axe. Until the end of May, the station had a crew of three, barely enough for housekeeping.
NASA officials say there will be important science performed on the station in the years ahead. The last flight of the space shuttle will install on the station a physics experiment called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which will search for dark matter and antimatter.
But a prominent critic of human spaceflight, physicist Robert L. Park of the University of Maryland, said putting astronauts on the space station is akin to "flagpole-sitting." He argues that the station fundamentally lacks a mission.
Gentler criticism comes from David Leckrone, senior project scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope, who thinks the station is underutilized. He fears that NASA measures the station's value solely in terms of how it might advance the long-term "Exploration" agenda of returning to the moon, with basic science research as an afterthought.
"Whether it was a great investment or not to begin with, having made that investment, I think it's imperative for the United States to extract value -- real, honest-to-God scientific value -- out of that investment," Leckrone said.
Park has a different suggestion: "Give it to China. Let them support the damn thing."
Internationalized Domain Names (IDN), an Internet Domain name made up of non-ASCII characters, may be a rare sight but as Malaysians we should not be left behind the availability of technologies. Last week, the .my Domain Registry and the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commissions (SKMM) announced in the Forum on Internationalized Domain Name that they will be working on a 1-year trial for Jawi, Chinese and Tamil script-based IDN. This means that users will now have more options when registering for a .my domain name when it is successfully implemented in early 2011. By then, Malaysia won't be only known as a multiracial country whereby its residents are multilingual; but our domain names will be too.
"The capability to support Jawi, Chinese and Tamil will certainly help promote our larger objectives, which is to bring domain name technologies closer to the people of Malaysia and give them the option to appeal more directly to their target Internet audiences using a more ‘native' touch," -- Puan Shariya Haniz Zulkifli, Director of .my DOMAIN REGISTRY
During the trial period, registrations will be accepted through a .my Domain Registry IDN test bed system (.idn.my) which will be removed before the official launch. Using the forum, the SKMM hopes to discuss the problems that may arise with using IDN locally. You can email idn@domainregistry.my for further enquiries.
It began last few weeks after I returned from KL, when my laptop crashed when it did some 3D. The frequency become more and more often, so last week I abandoned it at home for at least 3 days. It's really too hot when idling.
I am talking about Joybook S73G that come with Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 and ATI Radeon Mobility X1600. Its a powerful combination but a pair of heat pipes that joined them NOT COOL at all.
Why did they design the cooler with its processor and GPU sharing the same heat sink/cooler. Either one or both components will be shortlived. 2 years old, enough?
Now, it looks like the GPU (Ati Radeon Mobility X1600) damaged and the screen has artifacts or random white grain shown on the screen at idle. As long as you load a 3D program, the driver will be restarted. Sometimes it will be just a pause or a blink. Worth case = Application CRASH and reboot. Look honey, snow on the window!
Nichlateoh still on vacation at Sipadan Island. When he's back on 11 July then I'll be able to get the 3M thermal conductive pad from him to reduce the heat.
Too late cause its already damaged. At least to hold it for a few months?
I wish to grab a laptop that suits my need. At least 2Ghz dual core processor with VT, good GPU and hi-res monitor for my multimedia jobs. The rest can be upgraded.
Really need a good laptop. My desktop is a nuclear power reactor. Its super powerful and HOT and power hungry. At full load, may reach 700+Watts. Normal usage floats around 300-400Watts. Not good for electric bill.
MSI, Asus or Dell. Hmm it won't be cheap but need to hold on. Wait after the big Day.
Hmm tough year eh.
Already 2AM lets get some zzz
*Ouch* the small bump on my forehead still there. OK ... just keep rubbing it ...
One Markup Language to rule them all … and in the darkness bind them.
The Web is a living, evolving beast, and it seems certain that the future will hold more interaction with our everyday activities than it did in the past.
The mechanics for these interactions to happen are falling in place virtually every day, but a new standard is on the horizon to tie these ends together and make our lives - and the lives of browser makers - more fluid and transparent with its support
.
That standard is HTML 5, the latest in a series of markup languages that rule the world wide web with a velvet glove. The first draft of HTML 5 appeared on January 22, 2008, and it has been under revision ever since.
But while it may be a wonderful time for the propeller-heads to celebrate a new standard for all things online, how does it help the average computer user?
Since a detailed discussion of changes would probably exceed both the space here and the patience of the average curious user, we will focus on some of the major changes, and how that will make our online experience better. Ben Galbraith, co-director of developer tools at Mozilla, agrees as he states:
“HTML 5 features like Canvas, local storage, and Web Workers let us do more in the browser than ever before,”
One of the most exciting changes for the end user is the encapsulation of Canvas within the language.
Canvas gives web designers a rich API to use for 2d drawing. No longer confined to images and boxes, the web artist can use the entire page as an expression of content and design rich interfaces that previously were practical only with third party add ons such as Flash and Silverlight.
It could be argued that Canvas may lessen our dependence on the plugins, at least in name. For example, Google has developed the Google bridge which maps Canvas to both Silverlight and Flash. In doing so, however, it relegates the plugins to a much lower chain in the overall visibility to the end user, something that both Adobe and Microsoft no doubt wish to maintain, if indeed they are even present in future incarnations of HTML5 browsers. It could be conjectured that this could be one of the reasons that Microsoft, while endorsing and supporting HTML 5 in general, has not in the past supported Canvas as part of the standard.
Another aspect f the evolving HTML 5 standard is the inclusion of local storage.
While our dependence on being interconnected will no doubt continue to grow, having a connection at all times, is not always possible. For this reason, the local storage api can be used to allow a web application to function until connectivity is restored. Indeed, with the spread of web applications, this storage, in its current incarnation referred to as DOM storage, is a requirement now and has been broken out of its HTML5 roots in order to streamline its real world implementation.
Modern browsers are starting to implement this HTML5 feature, and the current model of text based key and value storage is expected to grow into a universal structured data storage as the standard matures. This would greatly expand the usefulness of web applications, and in this author’s opinion it could single handedly make the current model of patching desktop programs obsolete as it would automatically update itself as a connection was restored. Exciting indeed.
HTML 5 also supports Drag and Drop.
This could be used to allow the user to drag files from the web browser to their local storage (or personal online storage, as such as the case may be) for long term keeping. it could also be used to trash files and launching applications, such as video programs. This aspect, while bringing a common user interface to the standard, really seems to bring a browser based operating system a bit closer to reality.
I know that there are naysayers whenever a browser based OS is mentioned, but the Google Chrome OS is under development. However, that is another discussion.
Any discussion on HTML 5 and its advantages would need to include at least a mention of Cross-Document Messaging.
Part of the standard that is already present in the latest browsers (in limited form), Cross-Document Messaging allows for the inclusion of multiple web source objects in a single fluid user page. Imagine gadgets and iFrame objects that are in communication with the rest of the functioning page directly through the browser, not with a backend requirement. This allows web developers greater flexibility in incorporating web components into their design, and even allows the potential of greater end user customization.
While there is much more to the HTML 5 discussion, the last aspect we will discuss at this time is the concept of Web Workers.
This allows for browser based activities to offload some of the processing overhead to background activities, allowing for smoother operation and a better user experience.
HTML 5 is mapping our way into the future, but its final draft is not complete yet. One school of thought puts it W3C Candidate Recommendation stage around 2012, some even later. But the important thing to note is that the standard will be, and is being, implemented in stages. Safari, Internet Explorer 8, and Firefox 3.5 have some of the standard already implemented, with more being planned in future releases.
Microsoft’s hesitation to support some of the APIs (notably Canvas and Web Workers) is probably not going to be a factor this stage of the game, especially since Google and a few other web heavyweights are throwing strong support on those same key features.
The one thing that does seem to be certain is that HTML 5, in its piecemeal appearance on the web, is going to be the de facto standard long before it is officially released. And that fact is already serving the end users with a better online experience today as well as tomorrow.
Simple and loves making friends. A sportbike owner - quite fast, spends a lot for computer but casual gamer. Internet is the ultimate source for information. Self-employed in multimedia and programming too. Self belief, effort, skill and good team are crucial for success.
