If you're looking for something ultra-light, go with XFCE with gtk+ applications. Perhaps it'll squeeze a few more months or years out of those computers.
Seconded, I use Kubuntu Jaunty, which I moved to from Ubuntu Jaunty (Gnome).
The single problem I have with it is the lack of a wide selection of good widgets for the toolbars. It is a limiting factor, because least Gnome has that down pat. I do like to know when my (limited) laptop is running out of memory.
That being said, I'm happy with it, and I have no intentions of going back to Gnome, even for my old, heavily customized UI.
Technology brings us many things, but we lose things in the process. Take for example, before TV, people were much more social.
By removing an actual place to vote, the mental association of a "voting place" is removed. That doesn't mean that e-voting is bad, it just means that there's a ways to go before it works as well as paper voting does.
The best cure for this "problem" is to link e-voting with traditionally paper voting locations. Smooth transitions are best, and not transitions that are all or nothing.
Mental inertia is a force to be understood and accounted for, not shrugged off.
Alternatives to Apple's store are looking better and better. Sure, the company-branded software will be there, but being able to compete(!) gives Google a significant incentive to provide continually more functionality in its own software.
Comparing Apple(s) to (google) Oranges isn't always easy though... mostly because the gphones haven't been made publicly available. Time will tell, and it's my opinion that Google is going about this in a fairly well thought out manner.
The Mac had a one-button mouse, it's perfectly possible.
I'm going to expect that controls will be less than enlightened though, one button or two. Some of them are not going to fit well to the hand, and others will be counter-intuitive.
I'm putting my money on the social and convenience convergence, and not games.
Set-top boxes? Perhaps so, but I don't see it as the way that the industry must go. . Take for example: the Wii. It does something specific very well, and it does it fairly cheaply too. There is nothing wrong with the idea that you can chain up devices to be able to do things. Except, perhaps, for people who live under rocks, because apparently they haven't ever seen a VCR and a DVD player hooked up with a TV. . The convergence of technology in products can be counter-productive, especially in things that people pour significant amounts of money into. It also makes it that much easier for marketing to muck up a good design. . Convergence is a luxury, but it's not necessarily a recipe for success. I -want- to be able to abandon the old or faulty hardware. I want to be able to take something out of the set-up I have for my entertainment center, and not feel lobotomized. And furthermore, I don't want to have to deal with jumping through hoops for the corporation just to be able to do something as simple as playing a game. (and you -know- that Comcast will nickel and dime you). . Gaming boxes combined with say... cable boxes... yes, it could work. Would I buy it? No. A cable box goes out of date fairly slowly than people think, whereas who here still uses their old Gamecube? You're raising the hardware's bottom line and the rent of the device only to get it outdated in a few years. . And speaking of which, I seriously doubt that good customer service for faulty devices will be part of their planning, but it -will- happen. The product of this thinking is cheap designs that don't compare well with the competition.
It's been said that good marketers sell products, products don't sell themselves... but I think this is an exception to that rule.
A product has to be able to sell itself to the minds of people taking a second look at something new. To me, name like "Bing" is... well, we'll say that it's about as inspired as a rock in a cave. Yes, there was Bing Crosby, but I always knew him as Crosby, Bing was hardly in my vocabulary.
What I use and show others reflects on me and my businesses. I'm not going to print off a page off that engine, just so that I can get snarky comments about me trying to bring back the old shows. I'll stick with Google, TYVM.
WIFI in airports would mean different things to different people: it would give the serious businessman a chance to catch up on his work, it would give the budget traveler free entertainment, and it would give the average person something to ease the boredom.
Eat a big meal beforehand, and a big meal after the fact, and maybe - just maybe splurge on a small snack between long connecting flights. $10 for a meal is a bit much for fast food.
Boredom is by far harder to cure (especially in a fast-paced society) than a hungry tummy. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has skipped a meal just because.
I can think of a good list of reasons why 2D platform games were (and to an extent, still are) great.
Firstly, I'd say replayability. The best-looking game of the time was just another game once you finished it. Most games of the time opted for difficulty settings, which provided a sense of replayability without significant design challenges (adding more monsters is easy). I myself became burnt out on those, because they got repetitive and nothing was new beyond a plot twist at the end; I enjoy the lengthy, involving games.
Secondly, I'd say that the designers of the time cared about the human factor. Yes, they paid attention to precision control, which is something I miss these days. They made doing that instantaneous joystick yoga both fun and challenging! They also made it easy to understand the game mechanics. The KISS principle does work!
Thirdly, I'd say that the designers of the time enjoyed level creation. It was how you created the game to maximize the enjoyment and involvement of the player that mattered. Yes, better graphics matter, but when it comes at the expense of bettering that involvement, it becomes increasingly less excellent.
Fourthly, Gameplay designers (call them level designers, or UI designers, or whatever) should go back to using their little kids to test them on. I sincerely doubt that Pac-man was made by a jaded, mind-in-the-rut designer, just as I doubt that the Sid Meyer franchises (which I thoroughly enjoyed) was an exercise in doing the next "good enough" thing.
Fifthly, it wasn't the designers who disappointed us, it was us who disappointed the designers in accepting the stupid titles out there as "okay". Once it was lucrative to just manufacture the next good enough thing, the truly unique titles almost vanished. Perhaps we shrugged off those oldies in the name of "growing up", but isn't gaming about enjoying the kid in all of us?
The old designers created things that stood out. Perhaps the fact that there wasn't that much out there helped. Aside from that, though, they created things that you could put your mind to, and as a player become engaged in that world. Even if it wasn't quite as unique as the next title, it was still enjoyable. How many us have played Solitaire? It wasn't at all unique, but it was engaging and easy to sneak between tasks.
Compromised can mean various things, according to the context. Flexible English is wonderful, isn't it?
In the mental context of a person who deals with valuable data (like criminal scenes and such), compromised data is missing data. And what would you know, the FBI and the US Marshal's offices both deal with valuable data.
In the mental context of say... a spy, compromised data is known (copied) data. The FBI isn't a spy agency, and the US Marshal's office isn't either, even if they can be secretive.
I personally would opt to use the word 'compromised' in a manner that would give people the closest idea to the truth, and not in a vague manner that could be the next misunderstanding.
Granted I'm biased because I've seen a lot of spy and police movies... but what do you know, even government agents could use an English lesson!
Cannibalism, although culturally repugnant to us, is fact of carnivorous history. Dogs eat their own, mice eat their own, fish eat their own, and sharks eat their own; is it so surprising that our ancestors ate their neighbors when food was scarce?
Furthermore, consider the existence (or eradication as proof thereof) of cannibalistic societies: they didn't just randomly choose to eat what they do/did, they were taught to do so by someone.
There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
- Ed Howdershelt
Face it, even our own Supreme Court has been neglecting the people, almost always to the favor of the White House, and where does it stop? I'm not a fan of violence, nor am I saying it's something we should resort to easily, but it is heard.
Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes...Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.
- Thomas Jefferson
This is a touchy subject for some, but it's still worth thinking about: did the lack of one tool keep a determined person from doing anything? Where we don't have guns, we have knives. (look at the UK), and where we don't have a mind for violence, culture comes in to play first.
The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic
According to a post on the Yahoo developer forums:
2005 winner used only 80 cores and achieved it in 435 seconds. So with 800 cores what 2007 winner achieved is 297 seconds ?
Its not only number of cores its how the logic to use parallel nodes properly to do a particular task is important.
Hadoop won with 1820 cores (910 nodes w/ 2 cores each) at 209 seconds.
I'm all for better sorting algorithms, but eventually the cost of parallelizing something overtakes the profit made. That being said, Hadoop's internal filesystem made to be redundant, which is an important feature whenever you're dealing with large amounts of data.
Hadoop uses Google's MapReduce, by the way, whereas the competition didn't. It's nice to see MapReduce being used in a more public eye.
While better sorting algorithms -do- matter, I have to say that maintenance and running costs also matter.
I'd also like to see how a compatible C version of this software compares with the Java version. However, as I see it, the Java overhead seems fairly limited; sorting code is wonderfully repetitive, and I'd expect that it's already been optimized a fair amount.
By the way, the number of nodes and the hardware in the nodes for this Hadoop cluster is -optimized- for this contest.
Is there any theoretical upper limit on the resolving power of a reflecting telescope? For example, would a kilometer mirror necessarily be better than a 100-meter mirror? Would a 100-kilometer mirror necessarily be better than a 10-kilometer mirror?
Telescopes have no theoretical upper limit in design, however in practice it's very different.
The wavelength of visible light is between 0.7um and 0.4um. A mirror that is made to have no less than that much surface irregularity is very difficult to make, but it can be done.
The larger a mirror is, the more surface area you have to manufacture. A single flaw or error in manufacture could render an entire mirror either useless or of inferior quality.
I'm also absolutely sure that there is a limit to how much you'd want a mirror to be made due to temperature expansion/contraction. Temperature can be controlled, but that requires an accurate cooling system.
Telescope making is an art, and even the telescope-maker giants have a very difficult time trying to push the limits (innovation in those places is another topic entirely).
In the spirit of a friendly discussion, I'll reply.
Common optical designs typically suffer from optical coma (where rays of light end up in unintended places). This 30-meter telescope is designed to eliminate that, however typical classical Cassegrains do suffer from this.
Secondly, there's the issue of spherical aberration, where light near the edges of the optics becomes blurred. This is preventable by design as well.
There is yet another issue of optical -quality-, which is purely dependent on the manufacturing process and type of glass used. Even the "best" optics available in non-military markets suffer from minute cracks in the glass surface. This is preventable mostly by perfecting the manufacturing process itself, but is also dependent on having a good design.
Developing perfect optics is very difficult beyond sizes of 8 inches. It's simply beyond the technical know-how of most mirror fabrication facilities to even make a flat mirror that is perfect, yet alone a mirror that isn't flat.
My original comment stated that a long tube design reduces ambient light. Even the very large telescopes suffer from this, and that itself is the primary reason why locations that are "light pollution" free are highly sought after. However, not many very large telescopes are designed to remedy this problem, but are rather designed to magnify beyond it.
Having too much faith in optics that are poorly made will only get you so far, and designs that cannot be accurate within one wavelength (of light) can't magnify to their heart's content.
(disclaimer, I don't know how well these optics are made.)
Not trying to be nasty, it's just that nearly everything you wrote is either wrong, misleading, or half-right but mis-applied, and to the wrong thing.
I do not see how I am misleading anyone, or misapplying what I just stated. Your post may be half flamebait, but people can always know more about astronomy.
My father is an optical designer/astronomer, and I grew up around many different designs that actually do work.
Why is a long telescope important? Well, once you eliminate the tube sag, it has certain properties.
This design almost eliminates ambient light (think of looking at the moon through fog compared to looking at the moon on a clear night in the mountains).
Because of this, even "tiny" 6-inch long-tube designs can match or exceed 24" or better telescopes in detail and quality. The design is out of fashion with the general public mostly because of portability and ease of use.
The design of this telescope in specific almost TRIPLES the effective length of the telescope, making the ambient light-reducing qualities much more enhanced.
Something like this would be able to look at ultra-distant objects with excellent image quality, putting spy satellite image quality to shame.
I have one caveat with this design though, I'm not very fond of the Cassegrain system because the quality of the optics is often sacrificed in the process of creating them.
Heat (demagnetizes the data)
Humidity (makes parts fail faster)
Dust (makes parts fail faster)
Static Electricity (no special explanation)
Vibrations (makes parts fail faster, depending of the direction of the vibration)
Wear and Tear of connecting/disconnecting
Don't just use an old shoe box. Use non-static bags and a humidity absorber, cushion the box you do use, and make sure you handle them with care (the connectors aren't exactly heavy duty).
External hard drives solve several problems: the wear and tear is reduced, but you'd have to find a completely airtight product to protect from humidity and such.
IMHO, you should buy an external hard drive bay, with the option to have about a terabyte of data.
After all, the less you move it around, the fewer problems there are. Just maintain it (clean the vents, make sure the fan is working), keep it connected to the computer, and you're golden.
The hassle of dealing with broken parts is MUCH more expensive than just putting a little bit of money into a hard drive bay. Consider getting one of those external bays that let you mount internal hard drives (duplicate if you need to, but 1 TB should be enough) and make sure the PSU doesn't give you dirty power.
Didn't the European Parliament just rule that this sort of thing was illegal?
A harsh ban is illegal? Sure, that makes sense; but I don't think that's the point that this group of companies is trying to make.
They are simply whining because there's money involved; and people often listen to whiners, don't they? "Ask and you shall receive."
The fact that they're allied on "facts" that are more fiction says to me that someone's just stirring the pot.
50% was a very early "guesstimate" for file sharing "losses". It may be proved to be false, but it ignores the mathematical world of statistics.
Just watch: if they get their way, even the newspaper that's printed will be DRM'ed so you can't photocopy it.
The "victims" of what's called "piracy" get FREE advertising and product demos from people who only want something that works for them. That's a population segment that isn't completely covered by their lazy or ineffective marketing.
They should be looking at this as a PR opportunity rather than whining because other people can't grow up. What bothers me is the "you're stupid, so I'll act stupider" mentality. It never ends!
And now that the dead horse is beat, I say "neigh" to it all.
Slashdot Mirror
Gnome is a bit leaner, that's true
If you're looking for something ultra-light, go with XFCE with gtk+ applications. Perhaps it'll squeeze a few more months or years out of those computers.
Seconded, I use Kubuntu Jaunty, which I moved to from Ubuntu Jaunty (Gnome).
The single problem I have with it is the lack of a wide selection of good widgets for the toolbars. It is a limiting factor, because least Gnome has that down pat. I do like to know when my (limited) laptop is running out of memory.
That being said, I'm happy with it, and I have no intentions of going back to Gnome, even for my old, heavily customized UI.
After all, it has to be better than MS-DOS!
Microsoft Office may be worth $98 (what? only $98?), but what about OOo?
Oh wait, OOo has more XML compatibility. Perhaps it's worth more than MS Office? /sarcasm
Technology brings us many things, but we lose things in the process. Take for example, before TV, people were much more social.
By removing an actual place to vote, the mental association of a "voting place" is removed. That doesn't mean that e-voting is bad, it just means that there's a ways to go before it works as well as paper voting does.
The best cure for this "problem" is to link e-voting with traditionally paper voting locations. Smooth transitions are best, and not transitions that are all or nothing.
Mental inertia is a force to be understood and accounted for, not shrugged off.
Alternatives to Apple's store are looking better and better. Sure, the company-branded software will be there, but being able to compete(!) gives Google a significant incentive to provide continually more functionality in its own software.
Comparing Apple(s) to (google) Oranges isn't always easy though... mostly because the gphones haven't been made publicly available. Time will tell, and it's my opinion that Google is going about this in a fairly well thought out manner.
The Mac had a one-button mouse, it's perfectly possible.
I'm going to expect that controls will be less than enlightened though, one button or two. Some of them are not going to fit well to the hand, and others will be counter-intuitive.
I'm putting my money on the social and convenience convergence, and not games.
Set-top boxes? Perhaps so, but I don't see it as the way that the industry must go.
.
Take for example: the Wii. It does something specific very well, and it does it fairly cheaply too. There is nothing wrong with the idea that you can chain up devices to be able to do things. Except, perhaps, for people who live under rocks, because apparently they haven't ever seen a VCR and a DVD player hooked up with a TV.
.
The convergence of technology in products can be counter-productive, especially in things that people pour significant amounts of money into. It also makes it that much easier for marketing to muck up a good design.
.
Convergence is a luxury, but it's not necessarily a recipe for success. I -want- to be able to abandon the old or faulty hardware. I want to be able to take something out of the set-up I have for my entertainment center, and not feel lobotomized. And furthermore, I don't want to have to deal with jumping through hoops for the corporation just to be able to do something as simple as playing a game. (and you -know- that Comcast will nickel and dime you).
.
Gaming boxes combined with say... cable boxes... yes, it could work. Would I buy it? No. A cable box goes out of date fairly slowly than people think, whereas who here still uses their old Gamecube? You're raising the hardware's bottom line and the rent of the device only to get it outdated in a few years.
.
And speaking of which, I seriously doubt that good customer service for faulty devices will be part of their planning, but it -will- happen. The product of this thinking is cheap designs that don't compare well with the competition.
Some girls would dig this, but where's the liability clause for in-office harassment?
Cue a new cold war information protection policy! Dibs on the grey goo defense!
It's been said that good marketers sell products, products don't sell themselves... but I think this is an exception to that rule. A product has to be able to sell itself to the minds of people taking a second look at something new. To me, name like "Bing" is... well, we'll say that it's about as inspired as a rock in a cave. Yes, there was Bing Crosby, but I always knew him as Crosby, Bing was hardly in my vocabulary. What I use and show others reflects on me and my businesses. I'm not going to print off a page off that engine, just so that I can get snarky comments about me trying to bring back the old shows. I'll stick with Google, TYVM.
Flashing will totally take on a whole new meaning soon...
And /. will be pleased.
WIFI in airports would mean different things to different people: it would give the serious businessman a chance to catch up on his work, it would give the budget traveler free entertainment, and it would give the average person something to ease the boredom.
Eat a big meal beforehand, and a big meal after the fact, and maybe - just maybe splurge on a small snack between long connecting flights. $10 for a meal is a bit much for fast food.
Boredom is by far harder to cure (especially in a fast-paced society) than a hungry tummy. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has skipped a meal just because.
How many of us use truly random passwords?
Consider the dictionary attack, combined with numbers, symbols and other words, and it's really not quite so random.
I can think of a good list of reasons why 2D platform games were (and to an extent, still are) great.
Firstly, I'd say replayability. The best-looking game of the time was just another game once you finished it. Most games of the time opted for difficulty settings, which provided a sense of replayability without significant design challenges (adding more monsters is easy). I myself became burnt out on those, because they got repetitive and nothing was new beyond a plot twist at the end; I enjoy the lengthy, involving games.
Secondly, I'd say that the designers of the time cared about the human factor. Yes, they paid attention to precision control, which is something I miss these days. They made doing that instantaneous joystick yoga both fun and challenging! They also made it easy to understand the game mechanics. The KISS principle does work!
Thirdly, I'd say that the designers of the time enjoyed level creation. It was how you created the game to maximize the enjoyment and involvement of the player that mattered. Yes, better graphics matter, but when it comes at the expense of bettering that involvement, it becomes increasingly less excellent.
Fourthly, Gameplay designers (call them level designers, or UI designers, or whatever) should go back to using their little kids to test them on. I sincerely doubt that Pac-man was made by a jaded, mind-in-the-rut designer, just as I doubt that the Sid Meyer franchises (which I thoroughly enjoyed) was an exercise in doing the next "good enough" thing.
Fifthly, it wasn't the designers who disappointed us, it was us who disappointed the designers in accepting the stupid titles out there as "okay". Once it was lucrative to just manufacture the next good enough thing, the truly unique titles almost vanished. Perhaps we shrugged off those oldies in the name of "growing up", but isn't gaming about enjoying the kid in all of us?
The old designers created things that stood out. Perhaps the fact that there wasn't that much out there helped. Aside from that, though, they created things that you could put your mind to, and as a player become engaged in that world. Even if it wasn't quite as unique as the next title, it was still enjoyable. How many us have played Solitaire? It wasn't at all unique, but it was engaging and easy to sneak between tasks.
Compromised data isn't always copied data; sometimes it's missing data.
To someone who forgot some of the meaning of their college English lessons, they may have also forgotten there's a difference between the two.
Compromised can mean various things, according to the context. Flexible English is wonderful, isn't it?
In the mental context of a person who deals with valuable data (like criminal scenes and such), compromised data is missing data. And what would you know, the FBI and the US Marshal's offices both deal with valuable data.
In the mental context of say... a spy, compromised data is known (copied) data. The FBI isn't a spy agency, and the US Marshal's office isn't either, even if they can be secretive.
I personally would opt to use the word 'compromised' in a manner that would give people the closest idea to the truth, and not in a vague manner that could be the next misunderstanding.
Granted I'm biased because I've seen a lot of spy and police movies... but what do you know, even government agents could use an English lesson!
Cannibalism, although culturally repugnant to us, is fact of carnivorous history. Dogs eat their own, mice eat their own, fish eat their own, and sharks eat their own; is it so surprising that our ancestors ate their neighbors when food was scarce?
Furthermore, consider the existence (or eradication as proof thereof) of cannibalistic societies: they didn't just randomly choose to eat what they do/did, they were taught to do so by someone.
There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. - Ed Howdershelt
Face it, even our own Supreme Court has been neglecting the people, almost always to the favor of the White House, and where does it stop? I'm not a fan of violence, nor am I saying it's something we should resort to easily, but it is heard.
Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes...Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. - Thomas Jefferson
This is a touchy subject for some, but it's still worth thinking about: did the lack of one tool keep a determined person from doing anything? Where we don't have guns, we have knives. (look at the UK), and where we don't have a mind for violence, culture comes in to play first.
The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic
2005 winner used only 80 cores and achieved it in 435 seconds. So with 800 cores what 2007 winner achieved is 297 seconds ?
Its not only number of cores its how the logic to use parallel nodes properly to do a particular task is important.
Hadoop won with 1820 cores (910 nodes w/ 2 cores each) at 209 seconds.
I'm all for better sorting algorithms, but eventually the cost of parallelizing something overtakes the profit made. That being said, Hadoop's internal filesystem made to be redundant, which is an important feature whenever you're dealing with large amounts of data.
Hadoop uses Google's MapReduce, by the way, whereas the competition didn't. It's nice to see MapReduce being used in a more public eye.
While better sorting algorithms -do- matter, I have to say that maintenance and running costs also matter.
I'd also like to see how a compatible C version of this software compares with the Java version. However, as I see it, the Java overhead seems fairly limited; sorting code is wonderfully repetitive, and I'd expect that it's already been optimized a fair amount.
By the way, the number of nodes and the hardware in the nodes for this Hadoop cluster is -optimized- for this contest.
Is there any theoretical upper limit on the resolving power of a reflecting telescope? For example, would a kilometer mirror necessarily be better than a 100-meter mirror? Would a 100-kilometer mirror necessarily be better than a 10-kilometer mirror?
Telescopes have no theoretical upper limit in design, however in practice it's very different.
The wavelength of visible light is between 0.7um and 0.4um. A mirror that is made to have no less than that much surface irregularity is very difficult to make, but it can be done.
The larger a mirror is, the more surface area you have to manufacture. A single flaw or error in manufacture could render an entire mirror either useless or of inferior quality.
I'm also absolutely sure that there is a limit to how much you'd want a mirror to be made due to temperature expansion/contraction. Temperature can be controlled, but that requires an accurate cooling system.
Telescope making is an art, and even the telescope-maker giants have a very difficult time trying to push the limits (innovation in those places is another topic entirely).
In the spirit of a friendly discussion, I'll reply.
Common optical designs typically suffer from optical coma (where rays of light end up in unintended places). This 30-meter telescope is designed to eliminate that, however typical classical Cassegrains do suffer from this.
Secondly, there's the issue of spherical aberration, where light near the edges of the optics becomes blurred. This is preventable by design as well.
There is yet another issue of optical -quality-, which is purely dependent on the manufacturing process and type of glass used. Even the "best" optics available in non-military markets suffer from minute cracks in the glass surface. This is preventable mostly by perfecting the manufacturing process itself, but is also dependent on having a good design.
Developing perfect optics is very difficult beyond sizes of 8 inches. It's simply beyond the technical know-how of most mirror fabrication facilities to even make a flat mirror that is perfect, yet alone a mirror that isn't flat.
My original comment stated that a long tube design reduces ambient light. Even the very large telescopes suffer from this, and that itself is the primary reason why locations that are "light pollution" free are highly sought after. However, not many very large telescopes are designed to remedy this problem, but are rather designed to magnify beyond it.
Having too much faith in optics that are poorly made will only get you so far, and designs that cannot be accurate within one wavelength (of light) can't magnify to their heart's content. (disclaimer, I don't know how well these optics are made.)
Not trying to be nasty, it's just that nearly everything you wrote is either wrong, misleading, or half-right but mis-applied, and to the wrong thing.
I do not see how I am misleading anyone, or misapplying what I just stated. Your post may be half flamebait, but people can always know more about astronomy.
This telescope design has a lot of promise.
My father is an optical designer/astronomer, and I grew up around many different designs that actually do work.
Why is a long telescope important? Well, once you eliminate the tube sag, it has certain properties.
This design almost eliminates ambient light (think of looking at the moon through fog compared to looking at the moon on a clear night in the mountains).
Because of this, even "tiny" 6-inch long-tube designs can match or exceed 24" or better telescopes in detail and quality. The design is out of fashion with the general public mostly because of portability and ease of use.
The design of this telescope in specific almost TRIPLES the effective length of the telescope, making the ambient light-reducing qualities much more enhanced.
Something like this would be able to look at ultra-distant objects with excellent image quality, putting spy satellite image quality to shame.
I have one caveat with this design though, I'm not very fond of the Cassegrain system because the quality of the optics is often sacrificed in the process of creating them.
The things to protect internal hard drives from:
Heat (demagnetizes the data) Humidity (makes parts fail faster) Dust (makes parts fail faster) Static Electricity (no special explanation) Vibrations (makes parts fail faster, depending of the direction of the vibration) Wear and Tear of connecting/disconnecting
Don't just use an old shoe box. Use non-static bags and a humidity absorber, cushion the box you do use, and make sure you handle them with care (the connectors aren't exactly heavy duty).
External hard drives solve several problems: the wear and tear is reduced, but you'd have to find a completely airtight product to protect from humidity and such.
IMHO, you should buy an external hard drive bay, with the option to have about a terabyte of data.
After all, the less you move it around, the fewer problems there are. Just maintain it (clean the vents, make sure the fan is working), keep it connected to the computer, and you're golden.
The hassle of dealing with broken parts is MUCH more expensive than just putting a little bit of money into a hard drive bay. Consider getting one of those external bays that let you mount internal hard drives (duplicate if you need to, but 1 TB should be enough) and make sure the PSU doesn't give you dirty power.
Didn't the European Parliament just rule that this sort of thing was illegal?
A harsh ban is illegal? Sure, that makes sense; but I don't think that's the point that this group of companies is trying to make.
They are simply whining because there's money involved; and people often listen to whiners, don't they? "Ask and you shall receive."
The fact that they're allied on "facts" that are more fiction says to me that someone's just stirring the pot.
50% was a very early "guesstimate" for file sharing "losses". It may be proved to be false, but it ignores the mathematical world of statistics.
Just watch: if they get their way, even the newspaper that's printed will be DRM'ed so you can't photocopy it.
The "victims" of what's called "piracy" get FREE advertising and product demos from people who only want something that works for them. That's a population segment that isn't completely covered by their lazy or ineffective marketing.
They should be looking at this as a PR opportunity rather than whining because other people can't grow up. What bothers me is the "you're stupid, so I'll act stupider" mentality. It never ends!
And now that the dead horse is beat, I say "neigh" to it all.