Satellite Imagery at Home
by
Yupnik
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
If you like playing around with satellite images from Microsoft's Terraserver, try USAPhotoMaps. This (Windows only) software will download multiple images from Terraserver and stitch them together seamlessly. You can also switch between photo images and USGS topo map images.
Spy on you your neighbors. Check out the 6 pixels representing the car you owned 5 years ago. Really cool.
Correct. Saddam probably moved them to other countries, like say, Syria. Good thing we'll be bombing them next.
Your willingness to belive an obvious lie is stunning. I'm as happy as anyone to see Saddam's reign over, but he did not have WMD, had no connection to Bin Laden (or to any international terrorisim, beyond funds for PLO bombers families), and was not planning to suddenly rise up and destroy the U.S.
P.S. The 9/11 bomers all came from Saudi Arabia.
-- "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
It's a good point, (the NYT article discusses total real-time surveillence, and this is not sensible with satellites, unless you have a large, maybe 1km, pixel size) but you're missing some key details.
First of all, a lot of these images are shot of hostile territory, and we can't fly over them. Think N. Korea, China, Russia, etc.
Second, if 1mm pixel resolution existed, why would you use it to shoot an area 200km x 200km? If you needed that much detail, you'd zoom in. If you wanted an overview, you'd zoom out. What technology you'd use doesn't affect that.
If you used a plane to shoot a 200km x 200km area at 1mm resolution, it'd take up just as much space, although bandwidth is more abundant at the lower altitudes. Even with that, at 3 bytes/ pixel * 200km * 200km * 1,000,000 mm/km *1,000,000 mm/km * 1 pixel/mm^2, that's a big number, 120,000 Terabytes! So you could use 240 500TB cartridges to take these pictures at a 1mm resolution. That amount of data of unwieldy at any altitude!
Finally, as far as using satellite photos of pedestrian locations (LAX, Washington DC, etc) that we could image using airplanes, I think it's more a matter of cost and convenience. For one-time site surveys, an airplane is clearly the way to go. But for sites that need to be re-imaged daily (highway and building construction, coastal erosion, etc), satellite imaging is probably both easier and cheaper.
Re:Military Might
by
lawpoop
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The U.S. is fortunate to have a population large enough to have a volunteer/recruited miliatary.
Small European countries are not in a simliar situation. Finland, for example, has no choice but to require every male of age (and healthy enough) to serve for 2 years. If the US and Russia fought, they would be ground zero. There simply aren't enough people to defend their country without mandatory conscription.
So it works out that basically every male has experince with rifles and camping out in Lappland, so that if the time came, Finland might stand a chance at coming out whole.
-- Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
too many secrets
by
darkitecture
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"or possibly because the government isn't ready to revel the information"
I can't remember who said it exactly (any fellow slashdotters out there who can help me out with that?) but in reply to some conspiracy nut who was ranting and raving about how the US Government didn't have the right to keep secrets from him, he said words to the effect of, "The US Government isn't in the habit of keeping secrets from it's people. They keep secrets from enemies of the state. Now if only the US population could keep their mouths shut and not tell anyone else who might be an enemy, then we wouldn't care less".
Now I know I winged that quote immensely... but you get the "oeuvre"... the basic "mise-en-scene"... *ahem*... Thank you The West Wing.
Re:Military Might
by
Durendal
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Scale is one of the huge advantages the USA enjoys. It helps us economically as well obviously. Smaller countries certainly have to make different choices. It is all in the Math.
I am an American and I have enourmous respect for Finland's performance in WW2.
Finland was in one of the hardest positions of WW2. Forced to ally with Germany or become a Soviet republic. Finns danced with the devil and came out with an independent nation.
Slashdot Mirror
If you like playing around with satellite images from Microsoft's Terraserver, try USAPhotoMaps. This (Windows only) software will download multiple images from Terraserver and stitch them together seamlessly. You can also switch between photo images and USGS topo map images.
Spy on you your neighbors. Check out the 6 pixels representing the car you owned 5 years ago. Really cool.
Your willingness to belive an obvious lie is stunning. I'm as happy as anyone to see Saddam's reign over, but he did not have WMD, had no connection to Bin Laden (or to any international terrorisim, beyond funds for PLO bombers families), and was not planning to suddenly rise up and destroy the U.S.
P.S. The 9/11 bomers all came from Saudi Arabia.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
It's a good point, (the NYT article discusses total real-time surveillence, and this is not sensible with satellites, unless you have a large, maybe 1km, pixel size) but you're missing some key details.
First of all, a lot of these images are shot of hostile territory, and we can't fly over them. Think N. Korea, China, Russia, etc.
Second, if 1mm pixel resolution existed, why would you use it to shoot an area 200km x 200km? If you needed that much detail, you'd zoom in. If you wanted an overview, you'd zoom out. What technology you'd use doesn't affect that.
If you used a plane to shoot a 200km x 200km area at 1mm resolution, it'd take up just as much space, although bandwidth is more abundant at the lower altitudes. Even with that, at 3 bytes/ pixel * 200km * 200km * 1,000,000 mm/km *1,000,000 mm/km * 1 pixel/mm^2, that's a big number, 120,000 Terabytes! So you could use 240 500TB cartridges to take these pictures at a 1mm resolution. That amount of data of unwieldy at any altitude!
Finally, as far as using satellite photos of pedestrian locations (LAX, Washington DC, etc) that we could image using airplanes, I think it's more a matter of cost and convenience. For one-time site surveys, an airplane is clearly the way to go. But for sites that need to be re-imaged daily (highway and building construction, coastal erosion, etc), satellite imaging is probably both easier and cheaper.
Small European countries are not in a simliar situation. Finland, for example, has no choice but to require every male of age (and healthy enough) to serve for 2 years. If the US and Russia fought, they would be ground zero. There simply aren't enough people to defend their country without mandatory conscription.
So it works out that basically every male has experince with rifles and camping out in Lappland, so that if the time came, Finland might stand a chance at coming out whole.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
"or possibly because the government isn't ready to revel the information"
I can't remember who said it exactly (any fellow slashdotters out there who can help me out with that?) but in reply to some conspiracy nut who was ranting and raving about how the US Government didn't have the right to keep secrets from him, he said words to the effect of, "The US Government isn't in the habit of keeping secrets from it's people. They keep secrets from enemies of the state. Now if only the US population could keep their mouths shut and not tell anyone else who might be an enemy, then we wouldn't care less".
Now I know I winged that quote immensely... but you get the "oeuvre"... the basic "mise-en-scene"... *ahem*... Thank you The West Wing.
Scale is one of the huge advantages the USA enjoys. It helps us economically as well obviously. Smaller countries certainly have to make different choices. It is all in the Math.
I am an American and I have enourmous respect for Finland's performance in WW2. Finland was in one of the hardest positions of WW2. Forced to ally with Germany or become a Soviet republic. Finns danced with the devil and came out with an independent nation.