Because of all the coloring issues surrounding the Martian photographs, could someone please clarify whether we would actually see a blue sky when the sun set?
The sky would be red as normal, but sometimes there would be a halo of blue sky surrounding the sun. Only sometimes because it depends on the amount of dust in the air. The Pathfinder mission saw sunsets with and without the halo. The halo may also happen during the daytime. There have been no colour pictures of the sun when it's high in the Mars sky.
I remember seeing a program on BBC once that tried to show what sunrise would look like on the different planets. Pritty cool stuff!
Re:The whole solar thing...
on
Mars Rovers Update
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Why did NASA stray from 'nuclear' batteries, like they've used with the Pioneer, Galileo, Voyager and Cassini missions? Those could power a rover for years.
Most likely because the batteries would out-last the rover itself. It's a complex machine in a hostile environment- something will fairly soon. The solar panels will probably still be operating well after the rovers themselves have failed.
I am no license guru, what part of the GPL license did SCO violate?
By publically saying tha the GPL is invalid, they effectivly have announced that they do not agree to the terms of the GPL. They have no right to distribute any GPL licenses software at all.
Re:Photos are Archived Here
on
Borg Cube Case
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· Score: 5, Informative
Oh why not... here's another mirror of just the main picture. I've reduced the JPEG quality a bit aswell.
Yes. Because we all know that every nation that does bad things is probably only doing it beacuase the US probably did it first. So it's the United States' fault.
No. Every country has it's bad politicians. The attack on the WTC give the bad ones *everywhere* a good excuse to start pushing these crazy laws and views on there respective country.
Nevermind that you insult the British people by basically calling them lap-dogs of the United States
The current government is. The people are not. The majority of them are smart enougth to make there own minds up.
Young people today! The internet isn't the only way a virus can spread. But it's certainly the fastest way.
The ISP would have to much work todo anyway. Imagine scanning for every known file transmission protocol. Some of these newer ones use encryption and it would be illegal in many countries for the ISP to be scanning that. Even scanning data in the clear is on a fine line.
If you look at Mars from Earth then the majority of the time you will see a cresent.
Only two planets ever show a cresent as viewed from Earth. Mecury and Venus. From Earth, you never ever see much of the night side of Mars. You may see the morning or night terminator plus a little bit of shadow. Not enough to do a proper study.
Here is about as much of the night side of Mars you'll ever see from Earth.
There probably is some lightning in the dust storms, but nowhere near the scale we get here on Earth. Although large, the dust storms are still very thin.
From what I can tell none of the probes are looking, but I'd say if it was a common phenomenon then it would have been detected already.
It would look the same as it does on Earth (far away from any light polution).
The stars would not twinkle as much, Earth would probably be a very bright planet and Jupiter would look bigger and brighter. Mars moons are very small and fairly close to the planet so you'd rarly see them.
What if it turns the antenna the wrong way and looses connectivity? What if it gets hit by lightning? What if it falls in a hole? (go Beagle!)
There is a low gain omni-directional antenna that can be used as backup. Infact I think they use it most of the time for commands and just use the high-gain for data transfer back to Earth. Which makes sense, they never need to send large amounts of data to the rover.
No lightning has ever been detected on Mars. Tho it's not impossible, it is very very unlikely. No proper observations of the night side of Mars has been done tho, so they may just be missing it.
They had no control over what the rover was sending them. If I remember correctly they started getting unrequested engineering data. Perhaps they 'discovered' the logs with the problem among that data.
I would imagine that the people who put together that system know it inside out. They have to!!
Digital Cameras have started to conform to a particular standard whose name temporarily escapes me
Ahh yes good point. There are about three or standards for USB storage but the situation there is definitly improving.
I often wonder why companies choose to make there hardware talk in some proprietary protocol. Would it not make more sense to use an already established one, that way they'd have automatic support from all modern OS's and much less development costs. In the office here we have two digital cameras, one is a Fuji Finepix and it works on all the computers without any drivers. Even my Linux box! The other I can't remember the brand. They choose to make there own drivers and so far we've only been able to get it working in Windows 98. It's as buggy as hell! Guess which one we use most. And USB modems.. don't get me started on them!!
will offer the same functionality as standard wired USB devices
Oh great... lots of non-standard devices that only work in Windows.
USB could have been good. There where standards for common types of hardware. Apart from keyboards and mice, I don't think any of the standards where ever really supported. And I've even started to find non-standard keyboards and mice!
You seem to be confused. A hack is a very different thing from a crash.
An application should never be able to crash the OS. If it does, then the OS is indeed unstable. Linux will hold up to a lot more punishment than Windows can at the moment. It's not perfect, but what is. And yes, a lot of programs that I run on my Linux box crash. But I don't blame Linux. When my computer completly locks up then I might blame the OS. I get a LOT more complete crashs on Windows. (Or worse, random reboots!)
A hack (or crack) has little to do with the OS. However the OS does determine what level of control a cracker could gain. For example, crack into a program running on Windows and you could easily bring down the machine. But crack into a program running on SE Linux and you'd be lucky to do anything beyond mess with that one program.
Strange how they always seem to be trying to make video phones. What practical advantage does it have over ordinary audio-only phones? If anything, I'd say normal phones are easier to use!
Interesting idea. Perhaps a better way than the experimental probes on the failed Mars Polar Lander mission. There where two probes designed to smash into the surface at high speed and take a sample a few meters down.
If they want to make it easiest then they should submit code to the Linux kernel. That way the next version of almost every Linux would support that hardware straight away automatically.
Slashdot Mirror
Because of all the coloring issues surrounding the Martian photographs, could someone please clarify whether we would actually see a blue sky when the sun set?
The sky would be red as normal, but sometimes there would be a halo of blue sky surrounding the sun. Only sometimes because it depends on the amount of dust in the air. The Pathfinder mission saw sunsets with and without the halo. The halo may also happen during the daytime. There have been no colour pictures of the sun when it's high in the Mars sky.
I remember seeing a program on BBC once that tried to show what sunrise would look like on the different planets. Pritty cool stuff!
Why did NASA stray from 'nuclear' batteries, like they've used with the Pioneer, Galileo, Voyager and Cassini missions? Those could power a rover for years.
Most likely because the batteries would out-last the rover itself. It's a complex machine in a hostile environment- something will fairly soon. The solar panels will probably still be operating well after the rovers themselves have failed.
*writes 100 times on a blackboard*: I must always use the preview button.
I am no license guru, what part of the GPL license did SCO violate?
By publically saying tha the GPL is invalid, they effectivly have announced that they do not agree to the terms of the GPL. They have no right to distribute any GPL licenses software at all.
Oh why not... here's another mirror of just the main picture. I've reduced the JPEG quality a bit aswell.
"We think it is due to our patented time-traveling module," quips Steve Balmer.
It's true! I was copying a file over the LAN the other day, and IE said it had -8342563246 seconds to go!
Microsoft Time (C)(R)(TM)
Where do you want to go yesterday?
Now I'm wondering how I can timeshift even more
If you keep this up you'll end up like Wesley Crusher when he left for those 'other plains of existence'.
And did he wrap up warm? NO!
using Microsoft's DRM technology
Phew, for a second there I thought they where going to restrict the content.
Yes. Because we all know that every nation that does bad things is probably only doing it beacuase the US probably did it first. So it's the United States' fault.
No. Every country has it's bad politicians. The attack on the WTC give the bad ones *everywhere* a good excuse to start pushing these crazy laws and views on there respective country.
Nevermind that you insult the British people by basically calling them lap-dogs of the United States
The current government is. The people are not. The majority of them are smart enougth to make there own minds up.
Young people today! The internet isn't the only way a virus can spread. But it's certainly the fastest way.
The ISP would have to much work todo anyway. Imagine scanning for every known file transmission protocol. Some of these newer ones use encryption and it would be illegal in many countries for the ISP to be scanning that. Even scanning data in the clear is on a fine line.
If you look at Mars from Earth then the majority of the time you will see a cresent.
Only two planets ever show a cresent as viewed from Earth. Mecury and Venus. From Earth, you never ever see much of the night side of Mars. You may see the morning or night terminator plus a little bit of shadow. Not enough to do a proper study.
Here is about as much of the night side of Mars you'll ever see from Earth.
Here is one page on the subject.
There probably is some lightning in the dust storms, but nowhere near the scale we get here on Earth. Although large, the dust storms are still very thin.
From what I can tell none of the probes are looking, but I'd say if it was a common phenomenon then it would have been detected already.
It would look the same as it does on Earth (far away from any light polution).
The stars would not twinkle as much, Earth would probably be a very bright planet and Jupiter would look bigger and brighter. Mars moons are very small and fairly close to the planet so you'd rarly see them.
Thanks! Makes sense now.
It's a really neat trick!
What if it turns the antenna the wrong way and looses connectivity? What if it gets hit by lightning? What if it falls in a hole? (go Beagle!)
:)
There is a low gain omni-directional antenna that can be used as backup. Infact I think they use it most of the time for commands and just use the high-gain for data transfer back to Earth. Which makes sense, they never need to send large amounts of data to the rover.
No lightning has ever been detected on Mars. Tho it's not impossible, it is very very unlikely. No proper observations of the night side of Mars has been done tho, so they may just be missing it.
And Opportunity did fall into a hole
Yea but how do you stop it rebooting if the risky job works? If you kill sleep (hehe) it'll reboot.
(IANA*G - I am not a *nix guru)
They had no control over what the rover was sending them. If I remember correctly they started getting unrequested engineering data. Perhaps they 'discovered' the logs with the problem among that data.
I would imagine that the people who put together that system know it inside out. They have to!!
Digital Cameras have started to conform to a particular standard whose name temporarily escapes me
;-)
Ahh yes good point. There are about three or standards for USB storage but the situation there is definitly improving.
I often wonder why companies choose to make there hardware talk in some proprietary protocol. Would it not make more sense to use an already established one, that way they'd have automatic support from all modern OS's and much less development costs. In the office here we have two digital cameras, one is a Fuji Finepix and it works on all the computers without any drivers. Even my Linux box! The other I can't remember the brand. They choose to make there own drivers and so far we've only been able to get it working in Windows 98. It's as buggy as hell! Guess which one we use most. And USB modems.. don't get me started on them!!
Ah well, I'm just a user... what do I know
-End rant
will offer the same functionality as standard wired USB devices
... lots of non-standard devices that only work in Windows.
Oh great
USB could have been good. There where standards for common types of hardware. Apart from keyboards and mice, I don't think any of the standards where ever really supported. And I've even started to find non-standard keyboards and mice!
Give me PS/2 anyday.
Can anyone think of anything I've missed? Especially in the "man-made" section.
Hundreds of people suddenly degaussing there monitors after reading a Slashdot poll?
You seem to be confused. A hack is a very different thing from a crash.
An application should never be able to crash the OS. If it does, then the OS is indeed unstable. Linux will hold up to a lot more punishment than Windows can at the moment. It's not perfect, but what is. And yes, a lot of programs that I run on my Linux box crash. But I don't blame Linux. When my computer completly locks up then I might blame the OS. I get a LOT more complete crashs on Windows. (Or worse, random reboots!)
A hack (or crack) has little to do with the OS. However the OS does determine what level of control a cracker could gain. For example, crack into a program running on Windows and you could easily bring down the machine. But crack into a program running on SE Linux and you'd be lucky to do anything beyond mess with that one program.
Strange how they always seem to be trying to make video phones. What practical advantage does it have over ordinary audio-only phones? If anything, I'd say normal phones are easier to use!
Interesting idea. Perhaps a better way than the experimental probes on the failed Mars Polar Lander mission. There where two probes designed to smash into the surface at high speed and take a sample a few meters down.
:)
Your idea would probably be easier
For a second there I thought that said 'Breen on Mars'.
Got me worried!
If they want to make it easiest then they should submit code to the Linux kernel. That way the next version of almost every Linux would support that hardware straight away automatically.