The SpaceX Dragon capsule has been successfully grabbed by the International Space Station, marking the first time a private American space flight has run a supply mission to the orbiting platform. The crew of the ISS snatched Dragon out of orbit ahead of schedule, using the space station’s robotic arm to guide the capsule in after its careful approach.
via Dragon captured: SpaceX’s first ISS supply mission is a success – SlashGear.
Working under a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), Hoskins and Research Fellow David Huson have been developing a 3D ceramic printing process that can build very finely detailed, complex structures to industrial specifications and standards. The process works by depositing a layer of wet ceramic material layer by layer. As each layer is printed, the printer table drops, a layer of powder is deposited to support the object, and the process repeats.
via Ancient Egyptian faience may be key to printing 3D ceramics.
It isn’t actually a ceramic, but rather a paste made of quartz or sand, calcite lime and a mixture of alkalis. Because of this, it can be applied directly to wet clay. When the pottery is fired, the paste turns into a brilliant blue-green glaze reminiscent of lapis lazuli, which the Egyptians used faience as a substitute for.
Tomlinson’s eyes fell on @, poised above “P” on his Model 33 teletype. “I was mostly looking for a symbol that wasn’t used much,” he told Smithsonian. “And there weren’t a lot of options—an exclamation point or a comma. I could have used an equal sign, but that wouldn’t have made much sense.” Tomlinson chose @—“probably saving it from going the way of the ‘cent’ sign on computer keyboards,” he says. Using his naming system, he sent himself an e-mail, which traveled from one teletype in his room, through Arpanet, and back to a different teletype in his room.
via The Accidental History of the @ Symbol | Science & Nature | Smithsonian Magazine.
The bang (!) was also used back then for email.
Up Close With the Space Shuttle Enterprise.
From: Up close with the Enterprise shuttle at the Intrepid Museum
This shuttle, OV-101, never made it to orbit but was used in-atmosphere for testing purposes. At one time it was considered for a retrofit — adding engines and a heatshield so that it would be able to make it to space and back — but NASA opted to build Challenger instead. So while it’s not exactly the crown jewel of US space flight history it’s still an impressive piece of work and something that it is extremely inspiring to be in the presence of.
Amazon’s entry into publishing’s traditional casino is a sideshow. More worrisome, at least over the long term, is the success of Amazon’s Kindle Single program, an effort to encourage writers to make an end run around publishers, not only of books but of magazines as well. That program offers writers a chance to publish original e-book essays of no more than 30,000 words (authors agree to a bargain-basement price of no more than $2.99 in exchange for a 70 percent royalty and no advance).
via The Amazon Effect | The Nation.
This article is very long winded but makes a good history reference for amazon.
At 9:56 a.m. EDT, space station flight engineer Don Pettit reached out with a 58-foot robotic arm and grabbed the unmanned capsule, which was “free drifting” beneath the $100-billion station at 17,000 miles an hour, roughly 250 miles above northwest Australia.
via SpaceX Dragon: Space station astronauts capture Dragon capsule, making history – chicagotribune.com.
“Once again SpaceX has done it. They have become the first private company to successfully launch their own spacecraft and get it captured by the International Space Station’s robotic arm,” said NASA commentator Josh Byerly.
The reason for this is that HyperCard is an echo of a different world. One where the distinction between the “use” and “programming” of a computer has been weakened and awaits near-total erasure. A world where the personal computer is a mind-amplifier, and not merely an expensive video telephone. A world in which Apple’s walled garden aesthetic has no place.
What you may not know is that Steve Jobs killed far greater things than HyperCard. He was almost certainly behind the death of SK8. And the Lisp Machine version of the Newton. And we may never learn what else. And Mr. Jobs had a perfectly logical reason to prune the Apple tree thus. He returned the company to its original vision: the personal computer as a consumer appliance, a black box enforcing a very traditional relationship between the vendor and the purchaser.
HyperCard is an application program created by Bill Atkinson for Apple Computer, Inc. that was among the first successful hypermedia systems before the World Wide Web. It combines database capabilities with a graphical, flexible, user-modifiable interface.[1] HyperCard also features HyperTalk, written by Dan Winkler, a programming language for manipulating data and the user interface. Some HyperCard users employed it as a programming system for Rapid Application Development of applications and databases.
HyperCard was originally released in 1987 for $49.95, and was included with all new Macs sold at the time.[2] It was withdrawn from sale in March 2004, although by then it had not been updated for many years.