Give a man a mountain, and he'll try to climb it. Show a man the stars, and he'll try to reach them.
It might not bring any immediate benefits, but it's human nature to do these things. And it can bring a nation a lot pride and faith in itself. If they are not striving for something like this it would just turn elsewhere.. like war or something equally unpleasant. Like "Pop Idol".
Don't sell the Canadian space agency short, they are doing some pritty cool stuff at the moment.
Not on the scale of NASA, ESA et all. But they are doing something! More than what the UK is doing anyway. Beagle 2 being the big exception, but that was largly private.
But compression usually suggests that the data is being made smaller, taking up less room. That's not true for audio sampling since there was nothing digital before the sampling process. You can't say that analogue audio has any 'size' or amount of data. Only when it's sampled and encoded to PCM data can it have size, and can be compressed. Sampling does cause extra noise, no matter how well it works, but I don't see that as being compression.
In the audio world compression means something totally different from the digital world? I often hear of FM broadcasts being 'compressed'.
Guess I've been in the computer world to long to realise how things work before they become digital:).
What's wrong with just plain old simple PCM? It's not like they are short of storage space on DVD. The only reason I buy CDs at the moment is because it's not compressed, I can encode it into my format of choice - whatever that may be.
But I suppose that's part of the reason, they don't want people ripping the music. And this is most likely why the format will fail. What's the point of buying music if you can't listen to it on your portable player?
No it isn't, and I wish people wouldn't keep bring that up. Any decent media player can play multiple formats, getting support for Ogg in a program is really really simple and free. MP3 and Ogg can and do co-exist quite happly.
The same can't be said for BETA and VHS which are very different physically. There may have been a device that can play both, but I bet it cost a small fortune. It isn't easy to do. And this is why BETA failed.
Ogg is everywhere, still a small percentage but that's fine. It dosen't need to replace MP3.
It does not have much at all, 16Mb. It dosen't dump it to hard-drive, I think it keeps the memory chips powered up. If I leave the laptop for a few weeks without powering it up, when I do it'll start from scratch.
It takes a few minutes to boot, but I rarly reboot the machine. It's hybernation mode works perfectly. I press the power button, and a second or two later I have a desktop.
It is an ancient machine, and I'm really suprised that more modern machines have problems doing this.
Nor is there module capable of 'grabbing' the telescope, and has no airlock so even if they did they wouldn't be able to leave the module.
It *could* be used as a rescue pod if the shuttle did sustain damage on launch. Perhaps they should take one up with them? Or keep one prepared on the ground, if the shuttle is unable to launch then send up the rescue pod.
The picture of the fossil [enterprisemission.com] featured on RCH's site recently is one of the most incredible pictures I've ever seen
It looks like part of a rock. There are billions of them on Mars, some of them have really weird patterns... But that's not my issue with that page...
He writes about and shows images of the so-called 'Blueberries'. This picture caught my eye because it's clearly from the Microscopic Imager. Here is the original from NASA's website. This camera cannot see colour, yet in the image there are very blue spheres and the rock has white and yellowish parts. The description of the image is very vague: "a carefully composited color version of this same image, created by another Enterprise associate, Jill England". Carefully composited? How? The Microscopic Imager does have a single orange filter to produce a near-colour image, but there is no way it could produce the kind of colour that picture has. Even so, that filter was not used here. They couldn't have used the colour from a Pancam image as it could never get to exactly the same angle (notice the sphere under the rock is coloured). Here is what the Pancam can see. The only explication I can think of is that the colour in there image is fake.
Second, as has been discussed many many times recently: The colour images are only an approximation of what a human would see. The filters used by both rovers are not suited for making true-colour images. The Pancan image they have here has not had it's colour calibrated. Infact the filters used to take the image are definitly not ideal for making colour images, the one used to produce blue has too high a frequency. Infact, without calibration and using a blue filter closer to what humans can see the spheres actually appear green. Both however are incorrect, as seen in the properly calibrated calibrated image I mentioned above. The spheres actually seem to be a dark grey.
You know, for the longest time I thought Hoagland's website was a joke - kind of like Villain Supply. I didn't think he actually took it seriously. He really does seem to believe what he writes, enough to go onto the radio.
Slashdot Mirror
Or, just to be backwards.. use XviD. Also free and also great.
They are not putting people into space at the moment. The Russians are the only ones doing that, and briefly the Chinese.
The Shuttle probably won't fly again until next year.
*cue seaQuest theme*
Funny, I was just thinking about that show today. Was wondering when they'd release it on DVD.
Give a man a mountain, and he'll try to climb it. Show a man the stars, and he'll try to reach them.
.. like war or something equally unpleasant. Like "Pop Idol".
It might not bring any immediate benefits, but it's human nature to do these things. And it can bring a nation a lot pride and faith in itself. If they are not striving for something like this it would just turn elsewhere
Don't sell the Canadian space agency short, they are doing some pritty cool stuff at the moment.
Not on the scale of NASA, ESA et all. But they are doing something! More than what the UK is doing anyway. Beagle 2 being the big exception, but that was largly private.
the plan could cost as much as $1 trillion
Yea, but what the reporter failed to mention was that this is Canadian dollars.
The whole mission will actually only cost $9.99. With a few subsidies...
OK, you've almost got me convinced.
:).
But compression usually suggests that the data is being made smaller, taking up less room. That's not true for audio sampling since there was nothing digital before the sampling process. You can't say that analogue audio has any 'size' or amount of data. Only when it's sampled and encoded to PCM data can it have size, and can be compressed. Sampling does cause extra noise, no matter how well it works, but I don't see that as being compression.
In the audio world compression means something totally different from the digital world? I often hear of FM broadcasts being 'compressed'.
Guess I've been in the computer world to long to realise how things work before they become digital
I'd say it's encoded, but not compressed.
What's wrong with just plain old simple PCM? It's not like they are short of storage space on DVD. The only reason I buy CDs at the moment is because it's not compressed, I can encode it into my format of choice - whatever that may be.
But I suppose that's part of the reason, they don't want people ripping the music. And this is most likely why the format will fail. What's the point of buying music if you can't listen to it on your portable player?
I think it's being used in more places than you'd think. You just can't tell from the outside.
This is the old VHS/BETA debate again
No it isn't, and I wish people wouldn't keep bring that up. Any decent media player can play multiple formats, getting support for Ogg in a program is really really simple and free. MP3 and Ogg can and do co-exist quite happly.
The same can't be said for BETA and VHS which are very different physically. There may have been a device that can play both, but I bet it cost a small fortune. It isn't easy to do. And this is why BETA failed.
Ogg is everywhere, still a small percentage but that's fine. It dosen't need to replace MP3.
It does not have much at all, 16Mb. It dosen't dump it to hard-drive, I think it keeps the memory chips powered up. If I leave the laptop for a few weeks without powering it up, when I do it'll start from scratch.
It takes a few minutes to boot, but I rarly reboot the machine. It's hybernation mode works perfectly. I press the power button, and a second or two later I have a desktop.
It is an ancient machine, and I'm really suprised that more modern machines have problems doing this.
Ahh... ulster bank... I remember them...
I don't think it's the OS that's the problem, it's just that bank is a big pile of steaming crap.
They wouldn't have to use any transparency.
CowboyNeal is ready!
Yea, but is Slashdot?
Seems the idea site to have support for IPv6. Last time I checked (late last year) Slashdot didn't do IPv6.
Heck, they still use GIFs...
Hmmm.. your right.
Yep, but MPEG2 is 24-bit and that's what format the TV channels I watch use.
And I know for a fact that the TV signal only contains 32-bit colour.
Oopps.. that's some fact. It's actually 24-bit colour.
Move along.. nothing to see here... It's just too early in the morning for it to be too early in the morning.
The human eye can see the equivalent of about 512-bit color
.. 'off'. For lack of a better term.
Are you sure? Even when watching movies on TV, the visual effects often look
And I know for a fact that the TV signal only contains 32-bit colour.
Nor is there module capable of 'grabbing' the telescope, and has no airlock so even if they did they wouldn't be able to leave the module.
It *could* be used as a rescue pod if the shuttle did sustain damage on launch. Perhaps they should take one up with them? Or keep one prepared on the ground, if the shuttle is unable to launch then send up the rescue pod.
The large version is Here! I haven't got it yet.. so go easy :p
The picture of the fossil [enterprisemission.com] featured on RCH's site recently is one of the most incredible pictures I've ever seen
It looks like part of a rock. There are billions of them on Mars, some of them have really weird patterns... But that's not my issue with that page...
He writes about and shows images of the so-called 'Blueberries'. This picture caught my eye because it's clearly from the Microscopic Imager. Here is the original from NASA's website. This camera cannot see colour, yet in the image there are very blue spheres and the rock has white and yellowish parts. The description of the image is very vague: "a carefully composited color version of this same image, created by another Enterprise associate, Jill England". Carefully composited? How? The Microscopic Imager does have a single orange filter to produce a near-colour image, but there is no way it could produce the kind of colour that picture has. Even so, that filter was not used here. They couldn't have used the colour from a Pancam image as it could never get to exactly the same angle (notice the sphere under the rock is coloured). Here is what the Pancam can see. The only explication I can think of is that the colour in there image is fake.
Second, as has been discussed many many times recently: The colour images are only an approximation of what a human would see. The filters used by both rovers are not suited for making true-colour images. The Pancan image they have here has not had it's colour calibrated. Infact the filters used to take the image are definitly not ideal for making colour images, the one used to produce blue has too high a frequency. Infact, without calibration and using a blue filter closer to what humans can see the spheres actually appear green. Both however are incorrect, as seen in the properly calibrated calibrated image I mentioned above. The spheres actually seem to be a dark grey.
You know, for the longest time I thought Hoagland's website was a joke - kind of like Villain Supply. I didn't think he actually took it seriously. He really does seem to believe what he writes, enough to go onto the radio.
It's really quite sad.
Most laptops have a hibernation mode. Using that, my 486 laptop can be up and running in 1 second.
Sure it takes a while after that, but hey it's ancient...