NASA's control room flooded with Macs during Mars Curiosity landing

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  • Reply 41 of 138

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Neo42 View Post


    25 people and 5 macbooks?  Got yourself an AI article.



    learn how to count...

  • Reply 42 of 138
    ochymingochyming Posts: 474member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Neo42 View Post


    25 people and 5 macbooks?  Got yourself an AI article.



     


    I counted more than 5.


    But hey watch any Astronomy related documentary you will find those NASA youngsters engineers and scientists DO use Mac.

  • Reply 43 of 138
    ewanewan Posts: 36member


    No wonder NASA is suffering, they are spending 90% of their funding on Macs. What a waste of money, a PC would be more productive.

  • Reply 44 of 138
    macrulezmacrulez Posts: 2,455member


    deleted

  • Reply 45 of 138
    slurpyslurpy Posts: 5,384member


    BUT BUT BUT I THOUGHT MACS WERE TOYS NOT MEANT FOR REAL WORK THATS WHAT EVERYONE IN ALL THE COMMENT SECTIONS OF ALL THE TECH SITES TELL ME!!

  • Reply 46 of 138

    Quote:


     


     


    Quote:


    Originally Posted by d4rkriver View Post





    When Chick-fil-A COO, Dan Cathy, was asked about the Curiosity rover's seemingly successful Martian landing, he said, "Those scientists would learn more exploring the Bible than some decoration God hung in the sky."



     


     


    Originally Posted by Gatorguy View Post

     


    Seriously?




     


    The best part is, even though he didn't say it, he was thinking it.
  • Reply 47 of 138
    gazoobeegazoobee Posts: 3,754member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by ascii View Post


    Yay the Mac! Not that Apple will give a stuff, they don't care about people using their products for serious work, they only want to sell you more rock songs.



     


    What a childish thing to say.  

  • Reply 48 of 138
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,213member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by MacRulez View Post


    Ah, yes, thanks.


     


    I'm still curious which of those SolipsismX thinks uses Android, or any other means by which such a comparison might make sense....



    FWIW he also mentioned Raspberry Pi, which will support Android 4.x. Perhaps that will give him cheap enough hardware to give it a spin.  :)


    http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2012/08/06/more-android-and-linux-support-for-raspberry-pi/


     


    EDIT: OOPS! That was you that mentioned the Pi, not Soli. Sorry!

  • Reply 49 of 138
    gazoobeegazoobee Posts: 3,754member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Ewan View Post


    No wonder NASA is suffering, they are spending 90% of their funding on Macs. What a waste of money, a PC would be more productive.



     


    I know you're just a troll, but in fact NASA is a very cost effective and efficient operation, much more so than any part of the military for instance.  


     


    The only reason NASA is "suffering" is because their budgets are constantly being cut back in favour of more bombs and guns for the military.  Their entire budget is a faction of a fraction of almost nothing relative to the rest of the economy and only die-hard conservatives and tea party idiots believe that crap about NASA "wasting" money.  


     


    It's propaganda, not reality. 

  • Reply 50 of 138
    macrulezmacrulez Posts: 2,455member


    deleted

  • Reply 51 of 138
    neo42neo42 Posts: 287member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by s4bones View Post


    learn how to count...



     


    Wait what numbering system are you using?  I use decimal.  I am going right off the first picture.. you know the one showing 5 macbooks.  Is the 25 number wrong?  It was approximate.  If you want me to count the people on the other side of the glass then it's probably closer to 30?  So yeah I guess you're right.  30 people, 5 macbooks.

  • Reply 52 of 138
    slurpyslurpy Posts: 5,384member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by agramonte View Post


    Great picture for the next time some idiot thinks an iPad with Mickey Mouse iOS is a computer. This is what you can do with an Apple computer and a real OS.



     


    Grow the **** up. Yes. because NASA is not using iPads to land a car on mars 150 million miles away it's not a 'real computer', because thats what real computers need to do. Do you honestly know the definition of a computer? What's that magical, concrete thing that separates an iPad from a computer? The iPad is more powerful than many personal computers from a few years ago. It has a ton of real productivity apps. It's a computer whether you like it or not. What about in a few years, when it's 10x as powerful as it is now and the software is even more mature? Will it still be 'not a computer' then, because it has a touchscreen? Can't believe people bring up this bullshit point. 

  • Reply 53 of 138
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Ewan View Post


    No wonder NASA is suffering, they are spending 90% of their funding on Macs. What a waste of money, a PC would be more productive.



    I'd be willing to bet every one of those Macs are BYOD, so apparently the individual scientists disagree with your assessment. Besides, costs less, does not equal more productive, not to mention that at least one of the Macs pictured probably has Windows installed as well as OS X. That is unless they are using Parallels to run a VM of Linux, which could also be a likely configuration considering NASA uses a lot of Linux.


     


    And 5 Macs (possibly more) out of a group of 25 scientists does actually deserve an AI article as the percentage is much greater than that of the general population. So why do scientists prefer Macs more than the general population. I could speculate but...

  • Reply 54 of 138
    macrulezmacrulez Posts: 2,455member


    deleted

  • Reply 55 of 138
    gazoobeegazoobee Posts: 3,754member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by mstone View Post


    That one Sikh guy in the room must be having some mixed emotions 



     


    Could you explain this or is it just some random bigoted remark?  That is to say are you an actual bigot or are you just posting *seemingly* bigoted remarks cause you think it's funny if someone reacts to it?  Either way it's pretty childish, and kinda comes form the same headspace, no?

  • Reply 56 of 138
    macrulez wrote: »
    If I'm reading that chart correctly, the 256MB bot was Opportunity, in 2004.

    Curiosity sports 2 GB RAM.

    Neither used Android, or even Linux, nor even iOS, so I'm not sure what the comparison is about.

    FWIW, you can run a full-blown Linux install on the Raspberry Pi, which, like the rover Opportunity, has only 256 MB RAM.

    For myself, the more interesting spec in that link was the clock speed of the embedded systems:  Curiosity runs at only 200 MHz, and Opportunity at only 20 MHz.  That's some lean, green engineering.

    You call that lean? Doesn't the Voyager space probe use a 1Mhz 8-bit CPU? And they're still going, long after the manufacturer warranty expired.
  • Reply 57 of 138
    gazoobeegazoobee Posts: 3,754member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Neo42 View Post


    25 people and 5 macbooks?  Got yourself an AI article.



     


    I count at least nine Macs out of only about 15 people actually sitting down and doing work with computers. 

  • Reply 58 of 138
    neo42neo42 Posts: 287member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Ochyming View Post


     


    I counted more than 5.


    But hey watch any Astronomy related documentary you will find those NASA youngsters engineers and scientists DO use Mac.



     


    image


     


    I use a Mac, but not sure what the relevance even is here.  Besides, I can't count.  Someone help me find the rest of the macs.  Do I need more Kool-Aid?

  • Reply 59 of 138
    slurpyslurpy Posts: 5,384member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Ewan View Post


    No wonder NASA is suffering, they are spending 90% of their funding on Macs. What a waste of money, a PC would be more productive.



     


    Yeah, this mission cost 2.5+ billion dollars, yet '90% of their funding' is spent on Macs. If they bought, oh lets say, 500 Macs that would be... 0.002% or so of that Mission's budget. Any more brilliant insights from you? Maybe you should send NASA an email, you obviously have done more research in the 3 seconds it took you to post that about the subject than they have, as a message board troll you clearly know better than the minds that work at NASA.


     


    If there were no macs in that photo, you would be trolling and drooling in glee about how its evidence that Macs are toys. Glad you found a different angle, the 'NASA must be incompetent because they buy macs' angle. Well done. 

  • Reply 60 of 138

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Ochyming View Post


    Those are ?personal? computers not NASA ones certainly, a government agency buying Macs, NO WAY!





    Actually NASA lets their engineers have a choice between a windows machine and an Apple machine. At least in JSC the apple machines are running Snow Leopard

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