... thin clients worked out so well the last 50 times they became a corporate fad.

I feel like if they had attempted the rescue with so many corners cut for expediency, they would have most likely lost 2 shuttles instead of one.

Maybe, maybe not. TFA makes it sound like it was feasible because of the launch schedule for Atlantis . In any case, I think this kind of "what we could have done" review could be useful in making safety plans for future missions.

It lists some that have succeeded and some that haven't, but doesn't really get into what might distinguish distros in the first group from those in the second. To be fair, I'm not sure there's any way to do this. With any new type of product, there are usually a bunch of small players at first, and then it gets narrowed down to a few big ones with a few others coming and going around the fringes. Very often this process is kind of mysterious and there's no obvious reason why the ones that succeed and persist do so. (The people running successful companies, or OSS projects, or what-have-you, will of course tell themselves it's because they have special knowledge that others lack. They're almost always fooling themselves.) In any case, I suspect that the Linux distro world is fairly mature at this point, with the Red Hat and Debian families pretty well entrenched.

>It's probably because it has such a limited amount of chrome; it's all content, no gloss.

Yep. Looks great, delivers the goods.

I'm doing my part by putting a reference to |. in my SoylentNews .sig (hopefully in a humorous, non-spammy way). |. also ran a story when Soylent launched--I'm not sure if they've returned the favor. I'd really like to see both sites thrive.

That is all. :)

We should all do our best to keep both sites going. Soylent definitely has more traffic, but there's no reason they can't co-exist.

much smile

Maybe we can train people to RTFA? A doge can dream ...

That is, let's face it, a pretty low bar.

Yeah, that seems like a good idea.

>I like the colours and layout. Reminds me of the old slashdot just with a different pallete.

Yes. It's gorgeous, it loads instantly, and it renders perfectly in any engine. This of all things should never change (and I'd love it if Pipecode became a standard for discussion sites). Theming would be neat, but shouldn't be a particularly high priority, IMO.

Points 1 and 2 have already been covered so here's what I have on the others:

3. A working user page, moderation, signature lines, and a method for quoting other than the old Usenet '>' standard. And the volume of people, of course. No particular person (there are plenty of /.ers I'd love to see over here, several I really wouldn't, and a whole bunch of whom I have no particular opinion) but just the critical mass needed to keep a discussion board going. I've done my best to help by putting a reference to |. into my SoylentNews .sig--are there any other reasonably non-spammy ways people can think of to get the word out?

4. So far, the balance of stories on the front page has been about right, IMO: a fair helping of both computer-specific and general-interest science and engineering. Let's keep that up, if we can. Most of my submissions will probably be science-oriented since that's what I do for a living; but as a bioinformaticist, I always have one foot in the IT world and I like knowing what's going on there whether or not it's relevant to my work. As with the best of old /., it's the comments that make the difference.

>I'm more concerned with how the stage as a whole will deal with multiple cycles through the transonic re-entry regime and with landing system.

Yeah. That. The engines are tough--they have to be--but I can easily envision a scenario where perfectly good engines rip themselves out of an overstressed airframe (spaceframe?) that developed some kind of undectable fatigue over the course of multiple launches.

>Full reusability (i.e. including the 2nd stage), probably is waiting till the next generation.

Ah, I guess I missed that part. Well, that makes sense, I guess.

>Your comment has inspired a theory: In OpenOffice Calc I can close this large panel of icons down easily. In MS Office I can't. Perhaps this simple ability to be able to remove the parts of the interface makes it more appealing.

Yep. I'm pretty sure that's it.

Making a reusable crew transport vehicle like the Dreamcatcher (or, for that matter, what the Shuttle was originally supposed to be) is "easy" enough, for certain values of that word. Making a heavy-lift system that's fully reusable ... isn't. Full reusability is a great long-term goal, but maybe that's something for the next generation?

Well, yeah--the decision to put that option in is one of the few times I can think of recently where the people in charge of UI (don't get me started on "UX") have actually listened to their users. I just wish it happened more often, and that there weren't so many boneheaded, arbitrary changes in the first place.

Yeah, letting things in a bit at a time seems like a good idea. Figure out what the "abuse threshhold" is and stop just short of it, if possible. ;)

... but I like choice even more. I really wish interface designers (or their bosses) would get this through their heads: when people are used to doing something a certain way, don't force them to do it a different way, unless it's absolutely necessary for the application to function. If you come up with a new way that you think is better, great, make it an option or even set it as the default--but always offer your users a choice of switching back to the behavior they're used to, preferably without jumping through a lot of hoops, or you will accomplish nothing good.

I think that was always kind of implied.

Okay, I went and commented on a story in the pipe. :) I assume that's basically how we upvote at the moment ...

... but I really wish interface designers would realize that taking choice away is a bad thing . If your users have become accustomed to doing something one way and you want to encourage them to do it another way, fine. Change the default settings or whatever. But you should almost always leave them the option of using the methods they're accustomed to. The one exception I can think of to this is when leaving the old interface in place will truly, fundamentally break the application--and really, how often does that actually happen?

I was kind of wondering that myself. Soylent's really taking off, but I'd sure like to see |. continue. Linux and BSD, if you will.

Cool, glad to hear it.

Agreed. It's gorgeous. Any plans to release "Pipecode" at some point?

Now that is a fine post, right there.