So I was cruising slashdot this morning when I found that Windows Vista Beta 1 is out. I’ve already seen bit torrents out there for it. Lousy stinkin weirdos need to get a life.. It’s just an OS–an OS I probably won’t get until at least SP 1. A revamp of Windows can only mean more swiss-cheesedness in Windows, and I would definitely love to avoid that. Good luck to the torrent-mongers–I hope they’re not hax0red too badly 😛

The shuttles have been grounded again *le sigh* I do hope they fly again. If there’s one thing that I don’t want ended it’s manned space exploration. Sure, before colonization of anything within this solar system (or without) we need to explore planets quite thoroughly with robotic craft–but that shouldn’t mean that we let our space legs grow stagnant.

Somehow, I think private industry really is going to take the reins quite soon. I think NASA will eventually take a role similar to that of the FCC–purely administrative. Contractors won’t be building craft for NASA, but they’ll be building them for their own use with NASA oversight. All they need, I guess, is the incentive–whether it be mining, tourism or R&D. For now, NASA is pretty much showing them the way to do it all.. Which is, I think, what the point of NASA may have been all along. The X Prize, for instance, was intended to be a jumpstarter for the birth of this new era of exploration.. A way to begin to really push forward with private space efforts. Or so a geek can hope 🙂