Clearly, this panel was stacked with government bureaucrats, obviously biased against upstanding American businesses. The fact that commercial space has been 90% vaporware for the past three decades had nothing to do with it. And God forbid anyone suggest that for-profit organizations would cut corners for the sake of making more money.
And certainly corporate capture of NASA had nothing to do with today's announcement. Perish the thought.
Um. The electromagnetic signal that can be sent from a satellite to an OnStar-equipped vehicle is certainly not any form of an electromagnetic pulse. It's a radio signal encoded with a command telling a microprocessor to disable power to the ignition.
Oh, and obligatory: correlation does not imply causation
If playing videogames causes you to be inside and thus not get sunlight, and not getting sunlight causes one to get rickets, then there is a causation here.
If fearmongering about UV exposure causes one to be inside, so that one chooses to play more videogames than soccer, then there is indeed a causation here, but not the one you're assuming.
Hint: People far too often find a proximal cause and mistake it for the root cause.
Egad, that sucks. God forbid they get even five minutes of private browsing or email time.
I guess they'll have continue to do what I was forced to do as a young nerd in summer camp, with no access to news stands from which to lift a copy of Juggs or Club, nor even the sight of any actual females to commit to short-term visual memory: sketch my own porn.
Considering the overwhelming demand for hi-bandwidth satcom links these days, far in excess of the supply, it's statistically certain that there's someone who wants that Ku-band frequency slot at that time and who is willing to pay for it.
I don't doubt for a second that NASA beancounters aren't billing that opportunity cost to whatever JSC account pays for astronaut porn^H^H^H^Hexpenses.
It's not transmission efficiency so much as conversion efficiency, and overall system cost. IR is about equivalent to microwave, and getting better, whereas microwave is essentially mature.
Microwave comes to mind first because back in the 1950's and 60's when these ideas were first proposed, microwave was the best tech, but not any longer.
Conversion efficiency. Lifetime. Environmental suitability. Potential for technology insertion and incremental improvements.
The magnetron, while efficient at converting electrical power to microwave, is being surpassed by the VECSEL solid-state IR laser in efficiency. Both are about 70-75% efficient, but magnetrons are a rather old, very mature technology whereas solid state lasers are still maturing. Magnetrons are at their limit; solid-state lasers still have room for improvement.
And solid state devices can more easily be made to have a long service lifetime and to tolerate being shaken nearly to death on top of a rocket than magnetrons can. These are satellite applications, so reliability, service life and ruggedness are very important requirements.
For conversion back to electrons, I'm not so sure of that trade, but I trust they factored that in. IR is quite suitable mainly because a microwave transducers have some fundamental drawbacks. A microwave receiver is a bolometer, or bolometer array, which works best when incident power is focused on a nonlinear element, so some sort of refractive "lens" element will be needed, most likely an array of refractive concentrators. In the infrared, however, photovoltaic cells can be distributed over a wide area - and again, they are a maturing technology that is getting cheaper and more efficient with time... all in all I'm not surprised they chose IR.
Congratulations, the West was so focused on preventing communist totalitarians from taking over the world we've let capitalists move in and fill the niche.
The One World Government is here. But it's not a communist state, it's a kleptocracy.
(Hey, but at least we have Avatar and deep fried butter to distract us.)
That's certainly what people fear most: getting caught wearing glasses while watching porn.
It's more like getting caught because one is wearing glasses.
Some of us must remain as vigilant as possible while "watching porn," and find it essential that "watching porn" require the minimum amount of potentially incriminating paraphernalia as possible.
You're getting close to the real reason that some (most? all?) people can detect a difference between 30 and 60 fps -- it's the artifacts of motion.
These folks are not claiming that their eyes can discern the difference in angular rates across the field of view in that regime of framerates. But they are picking up on visual cues that are a combined effect of object motion and eye tracking.
To understand this, first consider an immobile eye: as an object moves rapidly across the field of view, there is a perceived blur due to a finite integration time at the retinal cells. In low framerate systems this "exposure time blur" can be simply modeled by producing blur for objects in each frame in proportion to their rate of movement across the field of view. And it creates a reasonably accurate illusion as long as the eye is stationary.
However, as soon as the viewer's eye moves to try to track the object, the illusion is broken. The mind expects to register the object visually with more clarity, but there is none -- detail has been removed by the motion blur effect. Higher framerate systems are more robust in this regard, but no system moves fast enough to account for rapid eye tracking.
This is why some people are adamant that 30 fps (or even 60 fps) is not good enough, and vociferously deny "scientific" claims that they cannot discern framerate improvements beyond 30 fps. Because they can; they are detecting the tracking blur errors.
It's not that they can detect the actual frame rate, but their eye/brain coordination is perhaps better, or at least their brains expect more clarity when tracking moving objects - even if its just scenery motion. I would expect that for trained eyes (e.g., experienced videogamers) this effect is noticeable right up to the performance limit of the LCD/phosphor/plasma display in use.
I think you're confusing the art of programming with the engineering of software systems. The minds that are good at one are generally not good at the other, and training for one often comes at the expense of the other. Very few are good at both, though I have worked with such people.
The former requires an intimate understanding of the science and mathematics underlying problems to be solved, whether they are actuarial algorithms for life insurance or physical engines for FPS video games. Physics and math are the foundation upon which the necessary intuitive, creative leaps can be made to solve problems in a robust, elegant manner. Turning the crank on an existing process isn't good enough.
The latter is fundamentally systems engineering: identifying and quantifying assumptions, risks, and resource limits; chunking problems and deriving requirements; and lots and lots of bookkeeping and documentation. The bookkeeping and documentation parts are the kinds of things that many physicists and electrical engineers have to be cajoled and browbeaten into. Software engineering can seem very, very tedious to a creative mind.
Now, which did the GP mean? I think the former. But I think you are talking about the latter, and you are both correct.
I'm giving up mod privileges in this thread to spread some love for Peter F. Hamilton's books, mentioned in passing by TFA.
From the Night's Dawn trilogy to the Void series (still only two books long, but promising a third), he's got at least eight novels that somehow manage to weave together hard SF with space opera in a way that works. While his writing does have some less desirable aspects (wordy, prosaic, and travelogue-y in places), one thing he does well is invent and describe weapons and combat. From the first marines vs. possessed combat scene in Reality Dysfunction, I was hooked. And he continues to please in this regard.
Also, lots of love, too for Niven and Pournelle in The Mote in God's Eye and The Gripping Hand, and other novels (Footfall?) for making the most use of real physics to depict space battles that don't resemble pewpewflashgordon WWII dogfighting in space operas of yore.
It makes sense when you consider it was written by a tech journalist for a computer trade magazine. Apparently, understanding basic science is no longer a prerequisite for reporting on it.
And shame on the editors, too, for not catching it. It's pretty damn obvious that telescopes don't bathe anything, especially not the entire cosmos.
I'm convinced that most adults, especially those who claim the mantle of "protecting the children" forget what it's like to be a child.
I mean, come on. Don't you guys remember the ribald jokes told as early as the first grade, and the whole fascination with that mysterious, taboo subject that nobody who talked about it really understood, and nobody who understood it talked about it?
I am a parent of a five year old, and I'm far more concerned about advertisements and commercials than I am worried that he'll overhear a reference to boobies or weiners. Exposure to "adult subjects?" Please. Like you never told a joke about headlights or train tunnels when you were six, or sung the "Miss Lucy" song.
And as for chat rooms and other "predator" hangouts, well, that's another level of threat... one that the media has a whole other set of objectivity problems with. (And common sense and involvement with your child is all it takes to manage that threat.)
Obviously, it's not likely they will enforce the AUP in an egregiously Draconian manner, but I for one would prefer having the outlandish bits *implied* rather than expressly stated.
They don't want it implied. They want it explicit. Because, they want to eliminate their liability.
Verizon doesn't intend to monitor your internet habits and cut you off if you regale us with stories of hot grits and Natalie Portman. But what they do intend to do is threaten you with disconnection anytime someone complains to them about your behavior. If someone complains to them that you didn't play nice on the internet, they are explicitly reserving the right to terminate your service by specifically including provisions that give them the legal right to disconnect you for anything they can anticipate will evoke complaints. If they receive a complaint that you posted a loldog to a lolcats thread -BOOM- they can d/c you for viloation of the AUP, and don't have to worry about paying a lawyer to defend such heavyhandedness. You have no grounds to litigate -- you violated their AUP.
In other words, it's there to allow them to protect themselves from third parties, not to actively regulate your behavior as a subscriber.
Yeah, this is fascinating stuff, especially as I'm reading Quicksilver right now, in which are depicted "plausible recreations" of some early Society experiments in optics, chemistry, physics, and physiology, including a rather gruesome account of the live dissection of a dog.
Stephenson also breathes some life and character into historical figures associated with the Royal Society, not the least of whom are Newton and Leibniz. Worth a read if you have any interest in the history of science.
I was under the impression that Canadians liked paying taxes.
That's because Canadians like having a government that provides them with basic services and infrastructure, pays more than lip service to the welfare of its citizens, and does it without running up a leviathan of debt.
Slashdot Mirror
Gee - this is encouraging. Just a week ago, an expert panel warned NASA not to outsource manned space to commercial entities.
Clearly, this panel was stacked with government bureaucrats, obviously biased against upstanding American businesses. The fact that commercial space has been 90% vaporware for the past three decades had nothing to do with it. And God forbid anyone suggest that for-profit organizations would cut corners for the sake of making more money.
And certainly corporate capture of NASA had nothing to do with today's announcement. Perish the thought.
/sarcasm
Um. The electromagnetic signal that can be sent from a satellite to an OnStar-equipped vehicle is certainly not any form of an electromagnetic pulse. It's a radio signal encoded with a command telling a microprocessor to disable power to the ignition.
Who writes this mess?
Oh, and obligatory: correlation does not imply causation
If playing videogames causes you to be inside and thus not get sunlight, and not getting sunlight causes one to get rickets, then there is a causation here.
If fearmongering about UV exposure causes one to be inside, so that one chooses to play more videogames than soccer, then there is indeed a causation here, but not the one you're assuming.
Hint: People far too often find a proximal cause and mistake it for the root cause.
Egad, that sucks. God forbid they get even five minutes of private browsing or email time.
I guess they'll have continue to do what I was forced to do as a young nerd in summer camp, with no access to news stands from which to lift a copy of Juggs or Club, nor even the sight of any actual females to commit to short-term visual memory: sketch my own porn.
Considering the overwhelming demand for hi-bandwidth satcom links these days, far in excess of the supply, it's statistically certain that there's someone who wants that Ku-band frequency slot at that time and who is willing to pay for it.
I don't doubt for a second that NASA beancounters aren't billing that opportunity cost to whatever JSC account pays for astronaut porn^H^H^H^Hexpenses.
As in, "I built a working model of a Wankel Engine in high school?"
Wow. That is win.
How 'bout this, "I had a Wankel when I was a teenage boy?"
Hrm... Not so much.
Man that would be one expensive pr0n habit.
300 Megabit/sec Single Access (Ku band) TDRSS service was priced at USD$180 per minute in 1997. Adjusting for inflation, that would be over $240 in 2009, not accounting for likely price increases due to the growth in demand for satellite communications bandwidth during the GWOT.
I won't even mention the rather odious web content filtering that NASA uses these days...
The new tab now appears to the right of the current tab when you right click on a link and select "Open Link in New Tab."
I just discovered that after about 5 seconds of "Hey, where'd my new tab go??"
There are large windows in the atmospheric infrared absorption spectrum suitable for transmitting IR signals and power.
It's not transmission efficiency so much as conversion efficiency, and overall system cost. IR is about equivalent to microwave, and getting better, whereas microwave is essentially mature.
Microwave comes to mind first because back in the 1950's and 60's when these ideas were first proposed, microwave was the best tech, but not any longer.
Why use lasers?
Conversion efficiency. Lifetime. Environmental suitability. Potential for technology insertion and incremental improvements.
The magnetron, while efficient at converting electrical power to microwave, is being surpassed by the VECSEL solid-state IR laser in efficiency. Both are about 70-75% efficient, but magnetrons are a rather old, very mature technology whereas solid state lasers are still maturing. Magnetrons are at their limit; solid-state lasers still have room for improvement.
And solid state devices can more easily be made to have a long service lifetime and to tolerate being shaken nearly to death on top of a rocket than magnetrons can. These are satellite applications, so reliability, service life and ruggedness are very important requirements.
For conversion back to electrons, I'm not so sure of that trade, but I trust they factored that in. IR is quite suitable mainly because a microwave transducers have some fundamental drawbacks. A microwave receiver is a bolometer, or bolometer array, which works best when incident power is focused on a nonlinear element, so some sort of refractive "lens" element will be needed, most likely an array of refractive concentrators. In the infrared, however, photovoltaic cells can be distributed over a wide area - and again, they are a maturing technology that is getting cheaper and more efficient with time... all in all I'm not surprised they chose IR.
... doesn't mean they were wrong.
Congratulations, the West was so focused on preventing communist totalitarians from taking over the world we've let capitalists move in and fill the niche.
The One World Government is here. But it's not a communist state, it's a kleptocracy.
(Hey, but at least we have Avatar and deep fried butter to distract us.)
Sounds analogous to my geriatric, incontinent cat.
It's more like getting caught because one is wearing glasses.
Some of us must remain as vigilant as possible while "watching porn," and find it essential that "watching porn" require the minimum amount of potentially incriminating paraphernalia as possible.
Yeah, it sucks, but wattayagonnado?
(Score:6, Funny) That is one of the funniest *on-topic* things I've read on /. in a long time. Grats, dude.
You're getting close to the real reason that some (most? all?) people can detect a difference between 30 and 60 fps -- it's the artifacts of motion.
These folks are not claiming that their eyes can discern the difference in angular rates across the field of view in that regime of framerates. But they are picking up on visual cues that are a combined effect of object motion and eye tracking.
To understand this, first consider an immobile eye: as an object moves rapidly across the field of view, there is a perceived blur due to a finite integration time at the retinal cells. In low framerate systems this "exposure time blur" can be simply modeled by producing blur for objects in each frame in proportion to their rate of movement across the field of view. And it creates a reasonably accurate illusion as long as the eye is stationary.
However, as soon as the viewer's eye moves to try to track the object, the illusion is broken. The mind expects to register the object visually with more clarity, but there is none -- detail has been removed by the motion blur effect. Higher framerate systems are more robust in this regard, but no system moves fast enough to account for rapid eye tracking.
This is why some people are adamant that 30 fps (or even 60 fps) is not good enough, and vociferously deny "scientific" claims that they cannot discern framerate improvements beyond 30 fps. Because they can; they are detecting the tracking blur errors.
It's not that they can detect the actual frame rate, but their eye/brain coordination is perhaps better, or at least their brains expect more clarity when tracking moving objects - even if its just scenery motion. I would expect that for trained eyes (e.g., experienced videogamers) this effect is noticeable right up to the performance limit of the LCD/phosphor/plasma display in use.
I think you're confusing the art of programming with the engineering of software systems. The minds that are good at one are generally not good at the other, and training for one often comes at the expense of the other. Very few are good at both, though I have worked with such people. The former requires an intimate understanding of the science and mathematics underlying problems to be solved, whether they are actuarial algorithms for life insurance or physical engines for FPS video games. Physics and math are the foundation upon which the necessary intuitive, creative leaps can be made to solve problems in a robust, elegant manner. Turning the crank on an existing process isn't good enough. The latter is fundamentally systems engineering: identifying and quantifying assumptions, risks, and resource limits; chunking problems and deriving requirements; and lots and lots of bookkeeping and documentation. The bookkeeping and documentation parts are the kinds of things that many physicists and electrical engineers have to be cajoled and browbeaten into. Software engineering can seem very, very tedious to a creative mind. Now, which did the GP mean? I think the former. But I think you are talking about the latter, and you are both correct.
Well, it *was* published by Bob Guccioni. (Which means if it were still in print, it'd be full of urinating female robots by now...)
I'm giving up mod privileges in this thread to spread some love for Peter F. Hamilton's books, mentioned in passing by TFA.
From the Night's Dawn trilogy to the Void series (still only two books long, but promising a third), he's got at least eight novels that somehow manage to weave together hard SF with space opera in a way that works. While his writing does have some less desirable aspects (wordy, prosaic, and travelogue-y in places), one thing he does well is invent and describe weapons and combat. From the first marines vs. possessed combat scene in Reality Dysfunction, I was hooked. And he continues to please in this regard.
Also, lots of love, too for Niven and Pournelle in The Mote in God's Eye and The Gripping Hand, and other novels (Footfall?) for making the most use of real physics to depict space battles that don't resemble pewpewflashgordon WWII dogfighting in space operas of yore.
It makes sense when you consider it was written by a tech journalist for a computer trade magazine. Apparently, understanding basic science is no longer a prerequisite for reporting on it.
And shame on the editors, too, for not catching it. It's pretty damn obvious that telescopes don't bathe anything, especially not the entire cosmos.
I'm convinced that most adults, especially those who claim the mantle of "protecting the children" forget what it's like to be a child.
I mean, come on. Don't you guys remember the ribald jokes told as early as the first grade, and the whole fascination with that mysterious, taboo subject that nobody who talked about it really understood, and nobody who understood it talked about it?
I am a parent of a five year old, and I'm far more concerned about advertisements and commercials than I am worried that he'll overhear a reference to boobies or weiners. Exposure to "adult subjects?" Please. Like you never told a joke about headlights or train tunnels when you were six, or sung the "Miss Lucy" song.
And as for chat rooms and other "predator" hangouts, well, that's another level of threat... one that the media has a whole other set of objectivity problems with. (And common sense and involvement with your child is all it takes to manage that threat.)
They don't want it implied. They want it explicit. Because, they want to eliminate their liability.
Verizon doesn't intend to monitor your internet habits and cut you off if you regale us with stories of hot grits and Natalie Portman. But what they do intend to do is threaten you with disconnection anytime someone complains to them about your behavior. If someone complains to them that you didn't play nice on the internet, they are explicitly reserving the right to terminate your service by specifically including provisions that give them the legal right to disconnect you for anything they can anticipate will evoke complaints. If they receive a complaint that you posted a loldog to a lolcats thread -BOOM- they can d/c you for viloation of the AUP, and don't have to worry about paying a lawyer to defend such heavyhandedness. You have no grounds to litigate -- you violated their AUP.
In other words, it's there to allow them to protect themselves from third parties, not to actively regulate your behavior as a subscriber.
Yeah, this is fascinating stuff, especially as I'm reading Quicksilver right now, in which are depicted "plausible recreations" of some early Society experiments in optics, chemistry, physics, and physiology, including a rather gruesome account of the live dissection of a dog.
Stephenson also breathes some life and character into historical figures associated with the Royal Society, not the least of whom are Newton and Leibniz. Worth a read if you have any interest in the history of science.
No, but my wife does, and she told me this joke.
It is a necessary step for the ultimate merger of YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook.
The resulting company would, of course, be called YouTwitFace.
I was under the impression that Canadians liked paying taxes.
That's because Canadians like having a government that provides them with basic services and infrastructure, pays more than lip service to the welfare of its citizens, and does it without running up a leviathan of debt.