I think it's just that there is probably no other good spreadsheet package around. I tried using StarOffice for writing one of my papers that had a lot of charts in it, but I was just disgusted by how you have to coerce the thing into making even a simple chart. Also embedding of a chart in a text document was just plain buggy and crude. It took me hours to do something that would take minutes in Excel and in the end I had to settle for less than perfect charts. I know that there are other spreadsheets around (like the Corel or Lotus one) but they are also closed source commercial products. Also Excel is probably the best one around, even if it's by Microsoft, etc. I don't blame Star (yet), because I was using a beta, but they are very far from the object embedding that Office does. I liked their equation editor though...
Well, You get up a nuclear power plant there, use it to produce aluminum by electrolysis. Then, also using the power plant, decompose water ice into hydrogen and oxygen. So now you have aluminum, hydrogen and oxygen. You make yourself a rocket from these and you shoot back to earth whatever materials you want as the payload of the rocket. And since you don't have to escape a lot of gravity at launch, the rocket would be able to bring ridiculous amounts of material to Earth. Also note that since the temperature is so low there, your power plant will operate at an insane efficiency, that can never be achieved on Earth (it's all in the delta T of the Carnot cycle).
The Arecibo telescope is owned by Cornell University and was built about 30 years ago. NASA has spent practically no money on those pictures, because the telescope would still be there even if the images were not made. So shut up, troll.
We have not had RADAR pictures. Hubble was recently aimed at the asteroid 4 Vesta , which is by far the most interesting main belt asteroid. You can easily find the pictures, just type "Vesta asteroid" in google. It was also done by Cornell scientists.
The Earth Sun stable Lagrange points (L4, L5) are too far and there is no practical use in putting a satellite there. It would also be really expensive. You would need to escape Earth orbit which means a big rocket booster. Also those points are too far and you would need big antennas to receive signal. Also a big amplifier if you are to transmit signal to the satellite. In other words, geostationary orbit is the best thing to do. Also, you don't need atmosphere protection for hard drives in space. It is almost space vacuum inside hard drives anyway. You do need radiation protection and possibly thermal control. Also, if you are in an Earth Sun Lagrange point, your communication latency to Earth would be several minutes.
Plastics are made from petroleum so they fit together with the petroleum products entry. Or with the high performance materials. Still petroleum was ranked pretty low. It's more important than just gasoline for cars.
Naaah, I would put opposable thumbs higher than that. Without them you wouldn't be able to hold two sticks to make fire. Or at least it would have been much harder.
Yeah, we used a constant called mu for the relationship between period and semimajor axis, where mu is defined as some combination of the mass of the large body and G. It's part of a "per unit mass" system of measurements they use for rocket propulsion and satellite orbits. I had forgotten the exact definition of mu hence this stupid post.
I don't want to sound as an MS zealot or something but Windows already has a component object model now, so you probably mean "the future" of Linux. I would say that COM is one of the few things MS has gotten about right. It makes it really easy to develop apps for Windows (even crappy ones, I know). I've actually embedded a web browser inside a technical drawing application just to see what happens (right next to the stuff you draw too!) and it only took about 2 lines of VB (I hate VB).
But then again the nature of an orbit depends only on the distance between two bodies and not their masses. Equal areas in equal times anyone? You can calculate the distance 4.215e7 (from the center of earth) by just using the third law of Kepler which gives you the relationaship between T and R (period and distance from body). Just set T to 24 hours and you can compute R. Of course this assumes that Earth is a lot massive than the satellite, which it is. The accuracy you get should be enough to position your satellite to within nanometers (or better) from the correct orbital altitude. In practice this is not done of course, satellites are positioned in more or less the exact orbit and small engine burns from time to time are used to adjust the orbit. Also what the previous poster said about needing 3 Geostationary sats to cover all of Earth -- it is true, but you get very lousy coverage of the areas around the poles. That is why sometimes they put satellites in geosynchronous orbit and their ground track is more or less a straight vertical line.
Rocket technology has practically not advanced since the 60s. Same with aerospace in general. The F-14, F-15, F-16 and F-117 fighters were all started during the 60s and are still the front line jets. Sure they have more high tech electronics and software on board nowadays but probes still crash (Mars orbiter, lander anyone?). Going to orbit is still donre using brute force and this is probably not going to change any time soon. Nuclear engines are supposed to deliver much better efficiency, but people will cry foul if anyone tried a launch. But then again nuclear boosters are also 60s tech. As is the SR-71 -- the fastest plane and a lot of other cool stuff.
Re:how good is the human eye?
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Carmack Speaks
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· Score: 1
I thought that there is thing (three-blade shutter) similar to a fan that rotates in front of the film and each frame is covered and then shown by the shutter three times. At least that's what they told me in my graphics class a few weeks ago...
Re:how good is the human eye?
on
Carmack Speaks
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· Score: 2
Human perception depends on the overall conditions. So if it is very dark in your room your visual acuity is less than when the room you are in is very well lit. In a dark room you can probably not see flicker above something like 50 Hertz. In a well lit room you need a refresh of about 75 Hz. And by the way movies do refresh at 24 fps, but you don't see flicker because each frame is displayed 3 times, thus achieving an effective refresh rate of 72 fps. TV refreshes at 30fps, but since the frame is created in two passes (interlacing) the effective refresh rate is 60 fps. In general if you refresh above 85 fps, you can be confident that most people will not see flicker under most lighting conditions.
I have Time Warner cable and it's the same for me. You can use it under anything that has a DHCP client software on it. It works with the default installs for Linux (the ones I've tried at least). They don't even change my IP for months because I never turn off the computer. The only problem is the upstream speed is capped at 64KB/sec so uploading stuff is slow.
Yeah, the naval version used 4 wheels, but it was more difficult to crack back then. Now, it's all the same. It's the same technology, but the the number of iterations after which a sequence would repeat is larger (26x25x25x25) instead of 26x25x25 for three wheels.
I completely agree. I was pissed about this too and was gonna post about it, but moderators don't like it (negative score, etc). This story was on CNN like 2 days ago. There are other stories that show up on Slashdot a week after I see them on CNN. Well, I guess we just have to live with it... since we have no control over Slashdot.
There are many Enigmas left. There were only 3 of this *particular* type left. I think they were naval ones. Some collector in California has 22 Enigmas (different type) as someone mentioned in a previous article about this.
For a small applet, the java 2 virtual machine takes about 20 megs under NT, with a default maximum of 64. I don't think Netscape 6 preloads a java 2 virtual machine, because I would then expect it to take much more than the 26 megs it curently reports on my NT machine. Oh yeah, and IE starts 10 times faster than NS6 (my machine is 128 MB RAM, P2).
I'm sure that they'll make you sign a waiver of your rights to sue. For example when you go for a simple vaccination you have to sign a statement that you realize being vaccinated may result in death in rare cases and you/your relatives will not sue the person who administers the vaccine in such cases. At least they make you sign in this country (US), I think not in other countries, because people are not as sue-happy as in the US.
From what I've heard (say from my parents) they say that White Sun of the Desert is the best Russian movie ever made. It's kind of funny and there is no communist propaganda in it (apart from superficial stuff). It also has some deeper meaning, etc. Me personally, I like the Russian movie Kin Dza Dza, which involves wooden spaceships, and an alien language having only two words (Ku and Kyu IIRC). Yeah, and I'm not Russian, but I speak the language.
Yeah but I like it because it's so big. With today's technology it would probably be cheaper than that. I know it would still be too expensive and that is why it will probably never happen. But Zubrin doesn't do THAT much done either. It would take 30 years to accomplish with NASA's current budget yeah, but just imagine if the DoD fianaced it. Not that this would ever happen.
By the way the USSR failed basically because the US managed to bankrupt them by making them spend more and more money competing with the US. The USSR is basically a poor country with less resources than the US had at their disposal, so it's no wonder that the US won the cold war. The last straw was apparently SDI that Reagan has announced and the Russians had no resources to compete. Also, some former Russian politicians have said that they couldn't compete with the US in everything so they chose a few areas where they could compete (like Mir space station). Disclosure: My country used to be "communist" and USSR's puppet.
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I think it's just that there is probably no other good spreadsheet package around. I tried using StarOffice for writing one of my papers that had a lot of charts in it, but I was just disgusted by how you have to coerce the thing into making even a simple chart. Also embedding of a chart in a text document was just plain buggy and crude. It took me hours to do something that would take minutes in Excel and in the end I had to settle for less than perfect charts. I know that there are other spreadsheets around (like the Corel or Lotus one) but they are also closed source commercial products. Also Excel is probably the best one around, even if it's by Microsoft, etc. I don't blame Star (yet), because I was using a beta, but they are very far from the object embedding that Office does. I liked their equation editor though...
Well, You get up a nuclear power plant there, use it to produce aluminum by electrolysis. Then, also using the power plant, decompose water ice into hydrogen and oxygen. So now you have aluminum, hydrogen and oxygen. You make yourself a rocket from these and you shoot back to earth whatever materials you want as the payload of the rocket. And since you don't have to escape a lot of gravity at launch, the rocket would be able to bring ridiculous amounts of material to Earth. Also note that since the temperature is so low there, your power plant will operate at an insane efficiency, that can never be achieved on Earth (it's all in the delta T of the Carnot cycle).
The Arecibo telescope is owned by Cornell University and was built about 30 years ago. NASA has spent practically no money on those pictures, because the telescope would still be there even if the images were not made. So shut up, troll.
We have not had RADAR pictures. Hubble was recently aimed at the asteroid 4 Vesta , which is by far the most interesting main belt asteroid. You can easily find the pictures, just type "Vesta asteroid" in google. It was also done by Cornell scientists.
The Earth Sun stable Lagrange points (L4, L5) are too far and there is no practical use in putting a satellite there. It would also be really expensive. You would need to escape Earth orbit which means a big rocket booster. Also those points are too far and you would need big antennas to receive signal. Also a big amplifier if you are to transmit signal to the satellite. In other words, geostationary orbit is the best thing to do. Also, you don't need atmosphere protection for hard drives in space. It is almost space vacuum inside hard drives anyway. You do need radiation protection and possibly thermal control. Also, if you are in an Earth Sun Lagrange point, your communication latency to Earth would be several minutes.
Plastics are made from petroleum so they fit together with the petroleum products entry. Or with the high performance materials. Still petroleum was ranked pretty low. It's more important than just gasoline for cars.
Naaah, I would put opposable thumbs higher than that. Without them you wouldn't be able to hold two sticks to make fire. Or at least it would have been much harder.
Yeah, we used a constant called mu for the relationship between period and semimajor axis, where mu is defined as some combination of the mass of the large body and G. It's part of a "per unit mass" system of measurements they use for rocket propulsion and satellite orbits. I had forgotten the exact definition of mu hence this stupid post.
I don't want to sound as an MS zealot or something but Windows already has a component object model now, so you probably mean "the future" of Linux. I would say that COM is one of the few things MS has gotten about right. It makes it really easy to develop apps for Windows (even crappy ones, I know). I've actually embedded a web browser inside a technical drawing application just to see what happens (right next to the stuff you draw too!) and it only took about 2 lines of VB (I hate VB).
But then again the nature of an orbit depends only on the distance between two bodies and not their masses. Equal areas in equal times anyone? You can calculate the distance 4.215e7 (from the center of earth) by just using the third law of Kepler which gives you the relationaship between T and R (period and distance from body). Just set T to 24 hours and you can compute R.
Of course this assumes that Earth is a lot massive than the satellite, which it is. The accuracy you get should be enough to position your satellite to within nanometers (or better) from the correct orbital altitude. In practice this is not done of course, satellites are positioned in more or less the exact orbit and small engine burns from time to time are used to adjust the orbit. Also what the previous poster said about needing 3 Geostationary sats to cover all of Earth -- it is true, but you get very lousy coverage of the areas around the poles. That is why sometimes they put satellites in geosynchronous orbit and their ground track is more or less a straight vertical line.
Isn't that called the Find-S algorithm?
Rocket technology has practically not advanced since the 60s. Same with aerospace in general. The F-14, F-15, F-16 and F-117 fighters were all started during the 60s and are still the front line jets. Sure they have more high tech electronics and software on board nowadays but probes still crash (Mars orbiter, lander anyone?). Going to orbit is still donre using brute force and this is probably not going to change any time soon. Nuclear engines are supposed to deliver much better efficiency, but people will cry foul if anyone tried a launch. But then again nuclear boosters are also 60s tech. As is the SR-71 -- the fastest plane and a lot of other cool stuff.
I thought that there is thing (three-blade shutter) similar to a fan that rotates in front of the film and each frame is covered and then shown by the shutter three times. At least that's what they told me in my graphics class a few weeks ago...
Human perception depends on the overall conditions. So if it is very dark in your room your visual acuity is less than when the room you are in is very well lit. In a dark room you can probably not see flicker above something like 50 Hertz. In a well lit room you need a refresh of about 75 Hz. And by the way movies do refresh at 24 fps, but you don't see flicker because each frame is displayed 3 times, thus achieving an effective refresh rate of 72 fps. TV refreshes at 30fps, but since the frame is created in two passes (interlacing) the effective refresh rate is 60 fps. In general if you refresh above 85 fps, you can be confident that most people will not see flicker under most lighting conditions.
I have Time Warner cable and it's the same for me. You can use it under anything that has a DHCP client software on it. It works with the default installs for Linux (the ones I've tried at least). They don't even change my IP for months because I never turn off the computer. The only problem is the upstream speed is capped at 64KB/sec so uploading stuff is slow.
Yeah, the naval version used 4 wheels, but it was more difficult to crack back then. Now, it's all the same. It's the same technology, but the the number of iterations after which a sequence would repeat is larger (26x25x25x25) instead of 26x25x25 for three wheels.
I completely agree. I was pissed about this too and was gonna post about it, but moderators don't like it (negative score, etc). This story was on CNN like 2 days ago. There are other stories that show up on Slashdot a week after I see them on CNN. Well, I guess we just have to live with it... since we have no control over Slashdot.
There are many Enigmas left. There were only 3 of this *particular* type left. I think they were naval ones. Some collector in California has 22 Enigmas (different type) as someone mentioned in a previous article about this.
I just saw this one today on a bumper sticker! It was on a car parked near the geological sciences department at my uni. so that probably explains it.
For a small applet, the java 2 virtual machine takes about 20 megs under NT, with a default maximum of 64. I don't think Netscape 6 preloads a java 2 virtual machine, because I would then expect it to take much more than the 26 megs it curently reports on my NT machine. Oh yeah, and IE starts 10 times faster than NS6 (my machine is 128 MB RAM, P2).
I'm sure that they'll make you sign a waiver of your rights to sue. For example when you go for a simple vaccination you have to sign a statement that you realize being vaccinated may result in death in rare cases and you/your relatives will not sue the person who administers the vaccine in such cases. At least they make you sign in this country (US), I think not in other countries, because people are not as sue-happy as in the US.
From what I've heard (say from my parents) they say that White Sun of the Desert is the best Russian movie ever made. It's kind of funny and there is no communist propaganda in it (apart from superficial stuff). It also has some deeper meaning, etc. Me personally, I like the Russian movie Kin Dza Dza, which involves wooden spaceships, and an alien language having only two words (Ku and Kyu IIRC). Yeah, and I'm not Russian, but I speak the language.
Iridium built 77 satellites but then launched 66. Hence the name, Iridium is element number 77. Somehow Dysprosium (66) doesn't sound as good.
Yeah but I like it because it's so big. With today's technology it would probably be cheaper than that. I know it would still be too expensive and that is why it will probably never happen. But Zubrin doesn't do THAT much done either. It would take 30 years to accomplish with NASA's current budget yeah, but just imagine if the DoD fianaced it. Not that this would ever happen.
By the way the USSR failed basically because the US managed to bankrupt them by making them spend more and more money competing with the US. The USSR is basically a poor country with less resources than the US had at their disposal, so it's no wonder that the US won the cold war. The last straw was apparently SDI that Reagan has announced and the Russians had no resources to compete. Also, some former Russian politicians have said that they couldn't compete with the US in everything so they chose a few areas where they could compete (like Mir space station). Disclosure: My country used to be "communist" and USSR's puppet.