V - - - ger reaches the edge of our solar system

[W.11]

besides all technological aspects of these two space crafts and also the message that is carried by them there is an informative story that it's well worth sharing :


The Pale Blue Dot

In 1989 both Voyager spacecraft had passed Neptune and Pluto. Carl Sagan wanted one last picture of Earth from "a hundred thousand times" as far away than the famous shots of Earth taken by astronauts from the moon during the Apollo series.

The result is stunning. In Sagan's words, "Because of the reflection of sunlight off the spacecraft, the Earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light, as if there were some special significance to this small world. But it's just an accident of geometry and optics. The Sun emits its radiation equitably in all directions. Had the picture been taken a little earlier or a little later there would have been no sunbeam highlighting the Earth.

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

"The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

"Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

"The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand."

Carl Sagan

such an unbelievable picture

a pale blue dot!!

 

[TruthSeeker]

And let me guess your company.
Bell Labs
or
IBM

No! My company invented the laser printer, the internet protocols, the mouse, pulldown menus, icons, etc. at our Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). I was working in our company's western New York research facility at the time.

 

[Developereo]

No! My company invented the laser printer, the internet protocols, the mouse, pulldown menus, icons, etc. at our Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). I was working in our company's western New York research facility at the time.

That company name used to be a synonym for photocopying (like 'google' is now for searching on the web).

 

[TruthSeeker]

That company name used to be a synonym for photocopying (like 'google' is now for searching on the web).

Still is used as a synonym for copying bu folks of my generation. Anyway, in the early 1970's Xerox developed most of the basics of the modern internet and pc at its laboratories in Palo Alto, CA, Webster, NY and Ebina, Japan. Scientists, such as myself, were given prototype computers named "ALTOS" which ran programs basically like Microsoft Windows. I could collaborate with my colleagues in Palo Alto and Japan by sharing documents and e-mails. We could also access anyone's laser printer within the Company and print out a document for a colleague at their site. At the time Xerox owned 10% of Apple Corporation as a second round venture capital investor. The computer science laboratory director at PARC gave Steve Jobs a complete tour of the Xerox research going on in ~ 1978. It was the first time that Jobs had ever seen a graphical user interface with on-screen icons, pull down menus and a mouse as well as a keyboard. Xerox came out with a product called "Lisa" that incorporated all of these features but had a price point of $5,000 in 1980. Jobs/Apple came out shortly thereafter with a far slower offering, with most of the same basic capabilities, with a price point of ~ $1000, the Apple MacIntosh. The Mac sold, the $5,000 Lisa didn't. The rest is history. Also, Xerox sold its 10% share in Apple in the late 1970's ......

 

[Developereo]

Still is used as a synonym for copying bu folks of my generation. Anyway, in the early 1970's Xerox developed most of the basics of the modern internet and pc at its laboratories in Palo Alto, CA, Webster, NY and Ebina, Japan. Scientists, such as myself, were given prototype computers named "ALTOS" which ran programs basically like Microsoft Windows. I could collaborate with my colleagues in Palo Alto and Japan by sharing documents and e-mails. We could also access anyone's laser printer within the Company and print out a document for a colleague at their site. At the time Xerox owned 10% of Apple Corporation as a second round venture capital investor. The computer science laboratory director at PARC gave Steve Jobs a complete tour of the Xerox research going on in ~ 1978. It was the first time that Jobs had ever seen a graphical user interface with on-screen icons, pull down menus and a mouse as well as a keyboard. Xerox came out with a product called "Lisa" that incorporated all of these features but had a price point of $5,000 in 1980. Jobs/Apple came out shortly thereafter with a far slower offering, with most of the same basic capabilities, with a price point of ~ $1000, the Apple MacIntosh. The Mac sold, the $5,000 Lisa didn't. The rest is history. Also, Xerox sold its 10% share in Apple in the late 1970's ......

Xerox had some serious brainpower, like IBM and AT&T, but it just goes to show that first-mover advantage doesn't always pan out and the skills needed for innovation are not the same as ones for productization. As much as I love and admire Apple's minimalist aesthetics, I always considered Apple's strength to be psychology and sociology rather than technology per se. Building a cult requires those kinds of skills.

 

[TruthSeeker]

Xerox had some serious brainpower, like IBM and AT&T, but it just goes to show that first-mover advantage doesn't always pan out and the skills needed for innovation are not the same as ones for productization. As much as I love and admire Apple's minimalist aesthetics, I always considered Apple's strength to be psychology and sociology rather than technology per se. Building a cult requires those kinds of skills.

I worked on a joint project with Apple for about a year in 1991. We were jointly developing a printer with Xerox supplying the electronic marking guts, Apple the software, and a Japanese company the printer mechanical and electronic hardware. It was to be marketed by both Apple and Xerox, with small cosmetic differentiation features. Apple pulled out before we were done to spend all its resources on software, closing down most of its peripheral development teams. Anyway EVERY decision on the product went through Apple's "human factors" department. They were responsible for the "look and feel" of the product from a user's perspective. The product wasn't "done" until they signed off that it had enough "Apple feel".

 

[Bond]

"But still 'they' now do not have manned spaceship launching capability so it is inferior to us"- Martian...

Who do you think "they" is????