In the article it says that in the 70's and 80's the tapes had been erased to record other missions. The VHS dupe had apparently happened sometime in the 80s as well. In other words, they got lucky.
It does bring into question what the point is of having an "archive" if you are deciding to take the media in the archive and overwrite it. It seems like somebody going into the Louvre and saying "I need to paint a new masterpiece, I'll just take this old Mona Lisa canvas and paint over it."
A good pool makes everybody faster, and that matters for swimmers of any age. All major meets use qualifying times to determine whether you qualify to even swim the meet, let alone where you will get placed. If you are able to swim in a better pool than your competitor from San Francisco, then you might qualify for the big meet while they do not. Basically, there is not a level playing field, so if you get to swim your big meets in a better pool, you have an edge.
It isn't like football or basketball or any sport that has brackets. Every time you swim in a meet your times may be compared to the rest of the world, even if you are in a middle school club team.
I have no idea what the premium was, but judging by the overall cost excesses I am guessing that they paid quite a lot...
I do understand it though, having gone to two schools with brand new natotoriums... If I were going to build a new competition pool, I would want to take advantage of as much of the best technology I could budget. These people just happened to have an insane budget.
You can rest assured that the high school students will use the pool for classes, the team will use it for practices, the local club and masters teams will use it for their practices, the other schools in the region and the state will use it for major swim meets, college swim teams will rent it out for winter training trips....
If you think the only people that use a nice pool at a school are the students of that school, you're being shortsighted.
And tomorrow's olympians have to go to school somewhere. I am sure there are a lot of very elite young swimmers in that high school's area, and if they start feeding into swimming powerhouses like Stanford, then people will actually pick up and move just to live in the area in which the school is located. I've seen it happen before.. It will make property values go up too, as a side bonus.
I know you're joking, but there is actually a lot of research in swimming pool design. About a decade ago when I was in college, we had a brand new state of the art pool. It featured some things like a vacuum suction system for the gutters (to reduce wake reflecting from the walls) and a very specific depth and grade of the bottom so that the wave reflections from the bottom of the pool would tend to help propel a swimmer along.
This may seem like nothing, but swimming is a sport of hundredths of a second, so every little bit counts. There have been quite a few changes since I was swimming competitively- swimmers no longer wear tiny speedos, starting blocks are shaped differently so that the "track" starts are more effective.. there are lots of little things like this that help the latest generation of swimmers go a couple fractions of a second faster than the last.
I wonder if a company like Eizo that makes high end monitors for medical purposes and professional image editing would buy out the technology. They already seem to have some success at selling relatively small LCD monitors at extremely high prices due to their color accuracy and brightness, so maybe this technology would be another step in the right direction for them. My understanding is that the expensive technology Eizo uses doesn't actually fare well on moving pictures, so this CRT-type thing might be significantly better, assuming that the color gamut is similar to their current offerings......
I found the article actually pretty fascinating, but it is a bit of a narrative about this particular doctor's quest to bring his research into the public eye.
Also, who knew GQ had such a fantastic catalog of their back-issues? I think I might have to read their stuff more often. I know it's very un-slashdot of me, but whatever.
Just for your information, if you want to use the wireless internet on a cruise ship the "proper" way you have to be on the ship's manifest and register a unique login.. At least for the entire Royal Carribean/Celebrity/Azamara fleet, you'd have to register again every cruise. That is, unless you use the crew wi-fi, which only has coverage in the lower parts of the ship..
In any case, I doubt you'd have much luck with mooching the wireless signal from a cruise ship, unless you hacked it. Also, barring hacking, the price is still in the 40-70 cents/minute range and it's pretty slow.
"Stupidity" is correct. Isn't 185 pounds equal to $350?
Even if I was a complete luddite, before I spent that kind of money I'd either (a) buy a brand new computer for the same price or (b) Do nothing and live with the virus. But I guess "a fool and his money are soon parted" still applies even today.
185 pounds is more like $280. The Pound and the Euro haven't been doing all that well lately... And the Canadian dollar and US dollar are almost equal again.
Who ever said you couldn't buy Photoshop by itself? It costs about $700, but it's a lot less than the full creative suite.
Try looking at amazon next time.
Also note that the military is perfectly happy to release videos when it serves to promote a positive view of the conflict. I remember in Gulf War 1 there was a new video of a smart bomb blowing up a building every day.. They wanted to make it look like everything was a surgical strike, that all the bombs hit exactly where they were meant to, etc..
This video is just giving some time to the opposite viewpoint. Not exactly EQUAL time, but it's a start.
Actually, I am pretty sure techniques like this were used to identify child pornographers. Police would get their hands on an offending image, use tools like this to remove the pornographic parts, and end up with an image that could be sent out to help identify the hotel in which the photos were taken, or whatever.
isnt the way with the software companies these days ? fill a software with innumerable features even professionals will rarely use, and ask $60-100 for 20 to 30 functions/features that people will use, because you also put there 180 or so ones that noone will use.
that's why software is being pirated. noone wants to shell out $60 for 200 functions 20 of which they will use from time to time.
Especially when photoshop costs $600.
Although, I'm actually likely to purchase is (and lightroom) pretty soon. I have a good job, I do tons of photography, and the cost of the combo is on par with what it cost in the film days to get a darkroom set up.
I'm probably also going to set up a darkroom, but I'm not sure which one is going to come first.
I remember reading about folks at Carnegie Mellon building this tool a few years ago.. Sure enough, there's a slashdot article.
I suppose the photoshop tool only pulls from material in the photo you're editing, and not from outside sources.. so it's a bit different. But the goals/results are pretty similar, it seems.
Having a smaller sensor causes a variety of optical restrictions for creating lenses and taking photos. For instance, making a wide angle lens for a small sensor can be difficult because of the extremely short focal lengths involved. Also, with the relatively short focal lengths to obtain the same framing of an image, it's EXTREMELY difficult to get a shallow depth of field with a small sensor. For macro work it's great, because you can focus up close and still have a fair bit of depth to your image, but for things like portrait work, it's problematic.
It doesn't matter if the tiny sensor is 200 megapixels and the large sensor is only 5, often the more pleasing image will come from the larger sensor. Why do you think products like This one exist, and are able to command such a high price? Sure, there's a lot of resolution there, but it's the sensor size, and the compatibility with fantastic glass that sell it.
If this technology could be used to make larger sensors more affordable, that would be quite exciting for the professional and pro-sumer photographers out there. Right now the largest sensors that are in an affordable price range for normal humans are the full-frame 35mm style, and even those are pretty pricey. When you get into the medium format backs, one can expect to spend a similar amount to a new sedan... or in some cases, a new sportscar. As far as I know, they haven't even built a sensor that's large enough to be called "Large format" that's marketable- all the large format digital backs are scanners, as far as I know.
Larger sensors do more than reduce noise and increase low-light sensitivity- they also reduce depth of field, which is something that often separates the amateur photos from the ones taken by the pros. Of course, a cheaper sensor isn't going to reduce the cost of the glass, but maybe somebody else can figure that one out!
I remember maybe a year ago that aptera showed off their prototype which they rated at "330mpg." It's a plug-in hybrid that looks like it's straight out of a sci-fi movie, but it's still pretty cool and has the same drive concept as the Volt here.
http://www.aptera.com/index.php
The folks who publich sheet music for musicians to buy in music stores sell music.
Actually, buying sheet music often only gives you rights for personal use. If you wanted to actually perform the music in question you'd need to pay additional royalties. Make sure to read the small print on the back...
On the aptera site they had a graph of fuel economy vs. how far you drive between charges. If you only drive 50 miles between charges, you shouldn't ever have to go to the gasoline motor. If you drive 120 miles between charges, it's more like 300MPG.
Granted, the electricity is still coming from somewhere (most likely a coal power plant where I live) but it's still more efficient and cheaper to go off the electric energy.
Slashdot Mirror
In the article it says that in the 70's and 80's the tapes had been erased to record other missions. The VHS dupe had apparently happened sometime in the 80s as well. In other words, they got lucky.
It does bring into question what the point is of having an "archive" if you are deciding to take the media in the archive and overwrite it. It seems like somebody going into the Louvre and saying "I need to paint a new masterpiece, I'll just take this old Mona Lisa canvas and paint over it."
A good pool makes everybody faster, and that matters for swimmers of any age. All major meets use qualifying times to determine whether you qualify to even swim the meet, let alone where you will get placed. If you are able to swim in a better pool than your competitor from San Francisco, then you might qualify for the big meet while they do not. Basically, there is not a level playing field, so if you get to swim your big meets in a better pool, you have an edge.
It isn't like football or basketball or any sport that has brackets. Every time you swim in a meet your times may be compared to the rest of the world, even if you are in a middle school club team.
I have no idea what the premium was, but judging by the overall cost excesses I am guessing that they paid quite a lot...
I do understand it though, having gone to two schools with brand new natotoriums... If I were going to build a new competition pool, I would want to take advantage of as much of the best technology I could budget. These people just happened to have an insane budget.
You can rest assured that the high school students will use the pool for classes, the team will use it for practices, the local club and masters teams will use it for their practices, the other schools in the region and the state will use it for major swim meets, college swim teams will rent it out for winter training trips....
If you think the only people that use a nice pool at a school are the students of that school, you're being shortsighted.
They didn't spend $500 million on just the pool.
And tomorrow's olympians have to go to school somewhere. I am sure there are a lot of very elite young swimmers in that high school's area, and if they start feeding into swimming powerhouses like Stanford, then people will actually pick up and move just to live in the area in which the school is located. I've seen it happen before.. It will make property values go up too, as a side bonus.
I know you're joking, but there is actually a lot of research in swimming pool design. About a decade ago when I was in college, we had a brand new state of the art pool. It featured some things like a vacuum suction system for the gutters (to reduce wake reflecting from the walls) and a very specific depth and grade of the bottom so that the wave reflections from the bottom of the pool would tend to help propel a swimmer along.
This may seem like nothing, but swimming is a sport of hundredths of a second, so every little bit counts. There have been quite a few changes since I was swimming competitively- swimmers no longer wear tiny speedos, starting blocks are shaped differently so that the "track" starts are more effective.. there are lots of little things like this that help the latest generation of swimmers go a couple fractions of a second faster than the last.
I wonder if a company like Eizo that makes high end monitors for medical purposes and professional image editing would buy out the technology. They already seem to have some success at selling relatively small LCD monitors at extremely high prices due to their color accuracy and brightness, so maybe this technology would be another step in the right direction for them. My understanding is that the expensive technology Eizo uses doesn't actually fare well on moving pictures, so this CRT-type thing might be significantly better, assuming that the color gamut is similar to their current offerings......
The October 2009 issue of GQ had a major article about this. Click to read it here.
I found the article actually pretty fascinating, but it is a bit of a narrative about this particular doctor's quest to bring his research into the public eye.
Also, who knew GQ had such a fantastic catalog of their back-issues? I think I might have to read their stuff more often. I know it's very un-slashdot of me, but whatever.
Would be nice if the summary even hinted at what the ridiculous claim actually WAS...
Namely, that we'll be able to reverse engineer the human brain in the next 10 years.
You can't easily slip a $1 coin into a stripper's g-string.
Just for your information, if you want to use the wireless internet on a cruise ship the "proper" way you have to be on the ship's manifest and register a unique login.. At least for the entire Royal Carribean/Celebrity/Azamara fleet, you'd have to register again every cruise. That is, unless you use the crew wi-fi, which only has coverage in the lower parts of the ship..
In any case, I doubt you'd have much luck with mooching the wireless signal from a cruise ship, unless you hacked it. Also, barring hacking, the price is still in the 40-70 cents/minute range and it's pretty slow.
"Stupidity" is correct. Isn't 185 pounds equal to $350?
Even if I was a complete luddite, before I spent that kind of money I'd either (a) buy a brand new computer for the same price or (b) Do nothing and live with the virus. But I guess "a fool and his money are soon parted" still applies even today.
185 pounds is more like $280. The Pound and the Euro haven't been doing all that well lately... And the Canadian dollar and US dollar are almost equal again.
Who ever said you couldn't buy Photoshop by itself? It costs about $700, but it's a lot less than the full creative suite.
Try looking at amazon next time.
Thanks for killing the productivity of my entire office with that link..
:)
"Hey, if you move your browser window around look what it does!!"
What fun.
Also note that the military is perfectly happy to release videos when it serves to promote a positive view of the conflict. I remember in Gulf War 1 there was a new video of a smart bomb blowing up a building every day.. They wanted to make it look like everything was a surgical strike, that all the bombs hit exactly where they were meant to, etc..
This video is just giving some time to the opposite viewpoint. Not exactly EQUAL time, but it's a start.
Actually, I am pretty sure techniques like this were used to identify child pornographers. Police would get their hands on an offending image, use tools like this to remove the pornographic parts, and end up with an image that could be sent out to help identify the hotel in which the photos were taken, or whatever.
isnt the way with the software companies these days ? fill a software with innumerable features even professionals will rarely use, and ask $60-100 for 20 to 30 functions/features that people will use, because you also put there 180 or so ones that noone will use.
that's why software is being pirated. noone wants to shell out $60 for 200 functions 20 of which they will use from time to time.
Especially when photoshop costs $600.
Although, I'm actually likely to purchase is (and lightroom) pretty soon. I have a good job, I do tons of photography, and the cost of the combo is on par with what it cost in the film days to get a darkroom set up.
I'm probably also going to set up a darkroom, but I'm not sure which one is going to come first.
I remember reading about folks at Carnegie Mellon building this tool a few years ago.. Sure enough, there's a slashdot article.
I suppose the photoshop tool only pulls from material in the photo you're editing, and not from outside sources.. so it's a bit different. But the goals/results are pretty similar, it seems.
You misunderstand me, I think.
Having a smaller sensor causes a variety of optical restrictions for creating lenses and taking photos. For instance, making a wide angle lens for a small sensor can be difficult because of the extremely short focal lengths involved. Also, with the relatively short focal lengths to obtain the same framing of an image, it's EXTREMELY difficult to get a shallow depth of field with a small sensor. For macro work it's great, because you can focus up close and still have a fair bit of depth to your image, but for things like portrait work, it's problematic.
It doesn't matter if the tiny sensor is 200 megapixels and the large sensor is only 5, often the more pleasing image will come from the larger sensor. Why do you think products like This one exist, and are able to command such a high price? Sure, there's a lot of resolution there, but it's the sensor size, and the compatibility with fantastic glass that sell it.
If this technology could be used to make larger sensors more affordable, that would be quite exciting for the professional and pro-sumer photographers out there. Right now the largest sensors that are in an affordable price range for normal humans are the full-frame 35mm style, and even those are pretty pricey. When you get into the medium format backs, one can expect to spend a similar amount to a new sedan... or in some cases, a new sportscar. As far as I know, they haven't even built a sensor that's large enough to be called "Large format" that's marketable- all the large format digital backs are scanners, as far as I know.
Larger sensors do more than reduce noise and increase low-light sensitivity- they also reduce depth of field, which is something that often separates the amateur photos from the ones taken by the pros. Of course, a cheaper sensor isn't going to reduce the cost of the glass, but maybe somebody else can figure that one out!
Stupid question- are bytes really 10 bits when talking hard drive capacity?
Is that some sort of checksum going on, or did the way computers store numbers change while I wasn't looking?
I remember maybe a year ago that aptera showed off their prototype which they rated at "330mpg." It's a plug-in hybrid that looks like it's straight out of a sci-fi movie, but it's still pretty cool and has the same drive concept as the Volt here. http://www.aptera.com/index.php
The folks who publich sheet music for musicians to buy in music stores sell music.
Actually, buying sheet music often only gives you rights for personal use. If you wanted to actually perform the music in question you'd need to pay additional royalties. Make sure to read the small print on the back...
I happen to have a friend named Matt Hazard. He's a former marine, and pretty close to an action hero to begin with. Just look at his awesome shades.
On the aptera site they had a graph of fuel economy vs. how far you drive between charges. If you only drive 50 miles between charges, you shouldn't ever have to go to the gasoline motor. If you drive 120 miles between charges, it's more like 300MPG. Granted, the electricity is still coming from somewhere (most likely a coal power plant where I live) but it's still more efficient and cheaper to go off the electric energy.