Category: Web Services

Brian Graf:

This is tough to take. Challenger was my generation’s JFK. I had not watched a launch since until this most recent one. I had an awful feeling that something was going to go wrong so I tuned in. I was relieved when it went up without incident. Now this happens. I’m overwhelmed with sadness.

ABC News:

NASA didn’t immediately declare the crew dead; however, the U.S. flag next to its countdown clock was lowered to half-staff.

VOANews:

President Bush is returning to the White House after briefings on the apparent in-flight breakup of the space shuttle Columbia.

MSNBC:

Family members of the shuttle crew, which included the first even Israeli astronaut, were gathered on the landing strip to greet their loved ones when news of the mishap emerged. NASA officials quickly huddled the relatives into a shuttle and kept them in seclusion at the Kennedy Space Center.

Clemens Vasters:

Transcribing from TV news: The space shuttle Columbia on mission STS-107 apparently broke up on earth athmosphere reentry. Contact was lost at 1500CET, 0800CST over Texas, scheduled landing time was 0916EST at Kennedy Space Center. The space shuttle is presumed to have disintegrated at 200000 feet and 6 times the speed of sound. People in Texas are advised to report any findings of debris to local authorities and not to go near them due to the toxic propellant used in the shuttle.

CNN, MSNBC

Sad, sad news.  Here’s the roundup from news.google.com.

Yahoo News:

The shuttle was carrying the first Israeli astronaut and six Americans, and authorities had feared it would be a terrorist target.

[…]

There were reports of debris seen falling.

Washington Post:

NASA declared an emergency after losing communication with space shuttle Columbia as the ship soared over Texas several minutes before its expected landing time Saturday morning.

[…]

Gary Hunziker in Plano said he saw the shuttle flying overhead. “I could see two bright objects flying off each side of it,” he told The Associated Press. “I just assumed they were chase jets.”

[…]

On launch day, a piece of insulating foam on the external fuel tank came off during liftoff and was believed to have struck the left wing of the shuttle.

Sky News:

The spacecraft was due for a sheduled landing at 2.16 GMT. There are unconfirmed reports that “multiple tails” or vapour trails were seen coming from the craft as it was descending over the US.

Space.com:

The space shuttle Columbia is missing and presumed lost.

Search and rescue crews have been dispatched to the Dallas/Fort Worth area of Texas. NBC News is reporting a large explosion over Dallas, Texas. Video of Columbia’s descent over Texas shows multiple trails of debris reentering the atmosphere.

Mission Control in Houston last made contact with the Orbiter as it reentered Earth’s atmosphere at about 207,000 feet over Texas at about 9 a.m. EST, about 16 minutes prior to its scheduled landing at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. Columbia was scheduled to land at 9:16 a.m. EST.

Tracking systems at the Kennedy Space Center did not acquire Columbia as it was scheduled to approach the Florida coast.

We will next update this box as soon as more information becomes available.

— Roger Guillemette, SPACE.com correspondent for the Cape Canaveral Bureau

More from Space.com:

Columbia was carrying a crew of seven astronauts: commander Rick Husband, pilot Willie McCool and mission specialists Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, Mike Anderson, David Brown and Israeli payload specialist Ilan Ramon.

The Miami Herald:

NASA’s oldest shuttle, Columbia was inaugurated in flight on April 12, 1981, and had flown 27 times in space.

Forbes:

The accident was the first of its kind in the history of 42 years of space flight. NASA has never lost a spacecraft while on approach for landing. But the accident did occur only days after the 17th anniversary of the explosion of the shuttle Challenger in 1986.

CNN:

Slashdot was a good source for information on 9/11, I’m sure it will be news-rich today.

Dave Winer is also covering the news:

Glenn Reynolds has a link to Spaceflight Now, which provides a real-time chronology of events.

Other webloggers are also covering events and news:

• Cockeyed Absurdist
• nf0
• Matthew Langham

Ed Cone reflects on the tragedy:

For me, at least, the death of astronauts and the loss of a spacecraft feels very different than military casualities or the crash of a passenger plane.

Sorry about the flood of news, I think it’s a coping mechanism.

Russ wants a QWERTY phone keyboards.

I want DVORAK.

Ug.  Red Bull tastes disgusting.

But at 3 for $5, I had to buy some.

CNet:

A proposed method for sharing information between systems linked on the Internet promises to speed collaborative applications by up to 10 times the current rates.

The protocol, developed by Jonghun Park, a professor at Pennsylvania State University’s School of Information Sciences and Technology, is based on an algorithm that lets it use parallel instead of serial methods to process requests. Such a method boosts the efficiency of how resources are shared over the Internet. The new protocol is called Order-based Deadlock Prevention Protocol with Parallel Requests.

Mark Pilgrim works too much.

[H]ard|OCP:

SUNNYVALE, CA-JANUARY 31, 2003-AMD (NYSE:AMD) today announced that the worldwide introduction of its next-generation, 64-bit AMD Opteron(tm) processor for servers and workstations will take place on April 22 in New York City. AMD plans to follow up with the introduction of the AMD Athlon(tm) 64 processor for the desktop and mobile markets in September 2003.

They also announced the release of some new XP chips:

AMD also announced today that it will introduce the AMD Athlon XP processor 3000+ on February 10 and the AMD Athlon XP processor 3200+ in mid-2003. These processors, based on the core code-named “Barton,” feature additional integrated cache memory for industry-leading performance.

I’ll take two Opterons to go, please.

Mac Central:

Id Software co-founder and the programmer behind the forthcoming game Doom III John Carmack recently updated his .plan files with his musings on the latest graphics hardware from rivals ATI Technologies Inc. and Nvidia Corp. Carmack doesn’t come out solidly in favor of either technology, but he weighs the pros and cons of each.

It seems to me that you’d be well off going with either high end card, though I’m not personally going to pay $400 for one.  When I get a GeForce FX Lite or equivalent for under $200, I’ll buy one.

Infoworld:

According to OMG officials, the specification is intended to boost interoperability between CORBA and Web services applications.

Long live in-classroom weblogging!

From the navel-gazing dept:

I’ve jumped from the 40-somethingth Matt on Google to the twenty-somethingth Matt (23rd!) on Google.

I’m suprised that nobody else has mentioned the most recent google shift.  I swear I don’t look myself up every day.  Really!

James Robertson:

I’m building client tools for posting to the blog, and for editing existing items already posted. On top of that, I will be teaching a Smalltalk class – I use Squeak with 8-10 year olds. They have a blast, and there’s no way I could get anywhere using something like Java with this age group.

I remember the good old days (possibly different than your good old days) when Pascal was the only thing available (besides Logo) to teach basic programming principles.  Nowadays I’d make the argument that Python might be well suited to take over this role.  For an example, check out the Python in Education SIG at python.org.

I don’t have any experience in Smalltalk to comment on how well it might be used in education.  However, if you can make it stick with a group of 8-10 year olds, you’ve got to be doing something right.

I upgraded to Groove 2.5 this morning.  Thanks go out to Paresh Suthar for mentioning it.

Here’s another reason why I love Kuro5hin:

Dumpster diving, rather than the physical diving implied by its name, is actually more along the lines of fishing – it is as relaxed or competitive as desired, follows many seasonal trends and localizations, is an excellent social activity, and may just leave you with something interesting or tasty. Dumpster diving consists largely of rummaging about through others’ trash. It at once allows you to challenge and take advantage of the fact that people as a whole are very, very wasteful. And while poking through your neighbor’s trash this very moment would be a perfectly acceptable, if perhaps somewhat awkward, dive, there is a fair amount to know in order to keep the diving experience safe, enjoyable, and fruitful. For many, the thought of going anywhere near a smelly dumpster, let alone touching, wearing, or eating something from inside of it, is revolting. If you find yourself with interests duly piqued and revulsion to a minimum, then read on for a guide to the excellent world of dumpster diving.

And a quick note to Chris Heilman: I believe that it’s pronounced Kuroshin, as if the ‘5’ were a l33t ‘s’.  Beware, though, I have heard it referred to as Kuro-five-in.  Congrats on 365 of 101-365!

Earlier today, Slashdot pointed to How to be a Programmer: A Short, Comprehensive and Personal Summary.  It’s well written and makes a lot of sense.

This CNet headline just about sums it up:

AOL loses Ted Turner and $99 billion.

File that under ‘O’ for ‘Oops!’

Dane Carlson points to the full text of the State of the Union.

Kevin Mitnick was on the Kojo Nnamdi show this afternoon on WAMU.  I’ve got two words after hearing the interview/Q&A session:

Social Engineering.

Sam Ruby:

InfoWorld: The Internet owes much of its success to a core infrastructure that is free and commoditized. The Apache Axis project’s gift to the world is a powerful, high-performance, open-source Web services stack.

Go Axis!