Oh yeah. Novell had to be the last company I thought SCO would sue. How can anyone really feel good about working for these guys? Granted, jobs in IT are harder to come by as of late, but I would be absolutely embarrassed to say "I work for SCO"....... They are less and less a tech company every day and more and more a front for litigious action that appears to pump up their stock and dump shares as quickly as possible given the SEC filings over the past little while. Come on now, these guys split off from Novell via Noorda who almost ran Novell into the ground after fightin' it out with Microsoft and tried under the guise of Caldera to sell (rather unsuccessfully) a Linux distro, almost killing another company yet again. Darl McBride then thought "I know what let's do, let's build a business model based upon legal action. Hell, we don't need no stinkin' IT product. We've got lawyers.
Well, they got the dimensions down to around the Apple Cube's size, but it is still lacking in aesthetics. For instance, one could never put this thing on your desk with its back facing to someone else if you place any value on style. I mean check this out. The Apple cube had a completely smooth appearance with connections to the display coming discretely out of the underside of the case. Oh, and it is silent. Cooling a P4 chip is going to require some fans on this baby, but I guess its all about tradeoffs. For a PC case though, this is not that bad for small form factors.
BTW: two fixes are already avilable for this virus:
Free, but worth thousands more: FreeBSD, Linux, and more... Pricey, but worth every penny: Mac OS X
We have moved most of our lab machines from Windows to OS X in the past few months and the time I have spent having to patch, test patches, roll back updates due to problems with Windows has been reduced drastically. I can't mention how successful this migration/switch has been in terms of productivity gains, peace of mind, etc... With OS X, you plug stuff in and it works.
Its true that OS X costs more money than say Linux installed on our previous machines, but OS X is a true desktop OS that allows one to keep all of their UNIX apps as well as provides the slickest desktop OS around allowing for use of popular apps such as Office (yes, Microsoft Office for OS X is actually quite nice, so stop your whining), Photoshop, Filemaker etc... while allowing for our compute intensive work on scientific apps as well.
Yes, but that HMO still feels the natural competitive pressure from other HMOs to ensure they keep costs as low as possible. That doesn't forbid them from hiring high-salary execs, but it does keep those high salaries from being higher than they are...
Actually, if you examine the statistics, HMO's have decidedly not decreased the cost of medicine. In reality all they have done is created a new layer of middle management and moved the money that previously was going to physicians, hospitals, nurses and technicians to managers. Do this little experiment: Go down to your local HMO hospital and look in the parking lot. I will betcha that most of the nice hardware does not belong to the physicians. Rather, it belongs to the managment, particularly in HMO's that are vertically organized and provide the insurance as well as the health care delivery.
If insurance is also providing the care, how do you think that works? Its a business, and businesses are in business to make money, not to be generous and provide the best possible health care. Therefore, they will reduce the money they spend and the effort they make to provide health care in order to maximize profits.
The irony is, most health insurance-issuing companies are non-profits because for-profits cannot possibly make a profit when there are non-profits providing the same service and health insurance is something good for society to have in existance.
Ask yourself just what non-profit means though. All it is in reality is a tax classification. For instance, the largest HMO in our area is classified as non-profit, but the principals of that organization have S-class Benz's as company cars and make high six figure salaries. Non-profit does not mean lower costs of healthcare.
If even the existing medical-records systems could be ported to Linux, that'd eliminate $200 from the cost of each computer in the doctor's office, and that'd be a savings that'd add up over time... and just think what'd happen if the interchange between care providers and insurance companies happened over open source protocols...
Open source does not necessarily mean Linux. But don't sweat it because Microsoft cannot seem to get their head around this either. I am really referring to an open source infrastructure that can be plugged into regardless of platform. The infrastructure can still be a profit making center for specific companies, but the idea is that it provides a mechanism for efficient distribution of information in a clean, secure manner that reduces the cost for government and healthcare for all participants.
Are Open Source platforms the only economically viable alternative? Maybe not, but collaboration will have to occur if we want to build the systems to save our lives."
And while we are at it.....in addition to city management and taxation for those issues, if we want to reduce the cost of medicine, an open source alternative to the current software with open standards is the way to go for medical health care, health insurance and billing. How much of our current medical system is devoted to billing, reimbursement and trying to transfer and manage data? It's a lot.
A standard open source health care database and form that is managed by the federal government that can be accessed by hospitals, insurance companies, states and individuals is the way through the nightmare that has become managed care. It could even tie into other open source government databases discussed in this article to improve the documentation of medical emergencies which may result in a further reduction of costs to governments and private citizens while also increasing the quality of care.
learly, something monumental must be going on in the world of computing for these technology titans simultaneously to discover something that is so profound and yet so hard to name.'"
Absolutely. But I don't see large scale distributed computing or "utility computing" working in the public domain for more than a few conceptually cohesive projects (think SETI and Folding@home for publicly available projects). On the other hand individual companies could certainly take advantage of this concept for internal projects while harnessing the computing power that many of them already have in abundance. The problem is bringing all of this computing power (desktop systems) together easily and without hassle. Software like Pooch and Xgrid are decidedly the way to go here allowing companies to harness space CPU cycles for anything from rendering to bioinformatics to modeling airflow or turbulence. For instance, how many computers are at organizations like Lockheed Martin? Or Genentech? Or at most Universities?
MS isn't admitting that it's a violation of the consent decree they signed to get the DoJ to drop the anti-trust suit against them, but threats to take them to court over it are what prompted the move."
So,........without turning this whole thing into an anti-Microsoft rant, (I fear this will happen) we hear this kind of thing again and again from Microsoft. Microsoft violates (again) the terms of the anti-trust trial and says "ooops, my mistake." and agrees to change its behavior (barely). How do they keep getting away with it? I don't really have an answer for it but, they appear to have a somewhat schizophrenic relationship with their potential markets.
The issue here is manifold: 1) Microsoft is a monopoly (not necessarily bad), 2) Microsoft leverages that monopoly against other markets (bad). The problem is that they really can't help themselves because their shareholders (disclaimer: I own some Microsoft stock) demand greater returns on their investment and they really don't know how to do anything differently. Microsoft is maturing and recently has paid out dividends (about time), but they seem to be continuously stumbling over their own feet in various markets. Microsoft has some smart folks there (including a few friends of mine), but as a whole the company has the appearance of a bunch of malicious geeks who are smart, but are not very creative, resulting in a desperate desire to be cool and seen as cool. This could be a result of marketing management keeping the programmers etc... under control, but Microsoft as a whole lacks that essence of coolness that gives them an edge. Therefore the predatory nature of the monopoly as they gobble up every concept that could be seen as giving Microsoft some degree of edge. It also might be that they are so big, they really don't have the ability to move very quickly or be objective in their analysis of markets. I would bet that if they broke themselves into a number of different companies (that even had the possibility of competing with each other), they would be much more competitive and would prove a much better return on investment.
Come on Bill, how would you like to be the principal of five or six big companies? One company can only get you so far you know.....?:-)
That's why I uuencode my images, take them to a machine shop, and punch them out on mylar tape! Sure, I needed to fill the garage to store a dozen images, but I know they're going to last!
You should have placed a disclaimer in front of that. I was holding coffee when I read that.........yes, it was funny, but the coffee stain on my chair from my laughter is not.:-)
It was geek heaven: guns and gadgets; fear and loathing from mere groundbased mortals, snobbery and FUD. A great way of life, and good training ground for a BOFH attitude.
Cool. We are using the next generation of technologies (remote sensing and satellite imagery tech.) you were using (film based SLAR) to do neuroscience research. When I was an undergrad, I was actually the subject of a recruitment effort when the KH-12 and KH-13 series of satellites were going up to replace the SR-71. I never upped, but you guys had the real thrills. I would have sat behind a computer screen for hours/day doing analysis (actually, much of what I do now), but you guys were peeps that actually got shot at. More power to you man!
(Note: I'm just in a snarky mood - my sarcasm should be taken as playful, not mean.)
Fair enough.:-)
While you're right about the storage medium problem to a degree, you've forgotten about... printers.
Yes, but how many people are printing those photos out on acid free, non-fading, archival ink?!!?
Also, I would expect that businesses will build over the years specically for regaining data from old, unused formats of media, etc, for those who don't migrate/backup their data to more modern mediums as time progresses.
To date, this has not necessarily been the case. There are unbelievable amounts of data that have been lost because we no longer have the hardware required to read tape reels in many cases. What about floppy disks? (you know this big assed 8.5in floppy disks that I had with my TRS-80 Model II?) I have not seen one of those drives for years.
As for your first paragraph, you are strictly talking about a level of detail, of resolution - that's it. There's nothing magical about film that gives it the qualities you're implying it has, it's just that the film and photo paper used for the photo you refer to had really fine grain, and the picture was (we assume) taken with good focus and exposure. There is nothing magic about the chemicals of photography - it's all a matter of resoulution (or Megapixels, for the unwashed masses).
Yes, but silver grains can deliver microscopic levels of detail that I don't think will be available for another decade in commonly available CCDs. True, Cannon makes an 11 Megapixel camera that approaches 35mm in some ways, but this is not even close to the resolution that I am talking about. The beauty of the photos I have is that my grandfather had a skilled photographer and an interpreter with him whenever he wanted and had access to proper film and film development resources (not common in WWII), so the quality of the images and the detail in them is quite nice.
The real point here is that while one can argue that current digital tech isn't as fine-grained as high quality film tech, that's not an inherant property, it's just the way it is for now. Since the industry is obviously leaning in the digital direction (with good reason!), it can only be a matter of time before film will be completely surpassed in quality by digital.
Such as GPS or EXIF data, which, if it had been available back then, would allow to you place your ancestor within a meter of wherever the photo was taken. Yep, studying those old negatives for hours really has us beat, today.
You certainly have a point, but your glib response betrays your ignorance. GPS or EXIF would allow me to place where, but not always when. Additionally, annotation of images is not always possible, especially when there is additional information in the image that might not be apparent from first glance. An example: One of the images I have is my grandfather in an automobile somewhere in Italy. Examining the guy next to him revealed information on his name tag and rank with enhancement of his face to reveal his identity. (one Gen. James H. Doolittle)
You are right that it will be a long, long time before real photographers use digital. But I believe that we are only a few years before the bulk of consumer photography is digital.
I am actually a "real" photographer who has embraced digital photography due to its convenience and cost issues. I was raised on standard B&W and color film photography in 35mm and large format photography and have a passion for those formats as well. But digital does have its place in semi-pro and pro shooting. In fact, a recent National Geographic article on flight was shot entirely with digital cameras and Apple Powerbook computers.
It might not be all bad. Digital photographs have the potential to last in pristine condition forever (as long as you keep copying them to new media). Also since they're so cheap to take and store we might have many more photographs for our historical record. With some advanced image processing image searching and sorting could be great tools to historians as well.
You are right about this to some extent. The problem with media and digital storage is that history is proving that digital media has a much shorter lifespan than other forms of record keeping such as paper and photographic records. CDs are not good for 75-100 years as advertised in many cases. This is why standards are so important and open source of those standards so that there are as many possible copies of data in open formats that do not disappear over time.
Film still has the ability to store information that digital formats will take years to catch up to. For instance, my grandfather was in the OSS in WWII and had a collection of photographs he gave to me after he passed away. Going to the film (and even the prints), I am able to apply some image forensics pull out detail that would never be possible with digital images. There are street names, ID numbers on planes and names on nametags that I have been able to pull out to date photographs and identify individuals that has been a tremendous advantage in reconstructing his career with the Service. Through this analysis, I have been able to place him in places that history has labeled as occupied territory at time, identify other folks that he worked with etc....
Also, digital photography while convenient has archival issues just like traditional silver based photography and one has to wonder if we are going to have the same historical record 50, 60 or 100 years from now that we currently have.
Because the surface air temperature is never above freezing (usually between -40 to -60 degrees.)
But how many water molecules do you need for ice crystal formation? Also atmospheric pressures are low indicating much liquid water would sublimate rather quickly. However if there were just a few water molecules interspersed relatively uniformly amongst the dust particles you might not get ice formation per se. Rather you might get an extra degree of molecular bonding allowing for a cohesiveness of fine grained particles?
because as far as we can tell water cant exist in a liquid state on mars.
Ah, but how much water is the question. Certainly atmospheric pressures would indicate that large volumes of water may not be possible unless they were seeping or somehow otherwise protected from atmospheric effects. So, a correlative question might also be, how much water would be required for particle wetting to provide enough cohesiveness? I don't really know and my background is not in materials science but if the dust particles were small enough, perhaps a few water molecules could provide enough van der walls forces to hold the material together enough to resemble mud?
An ongoing intrigue is already developing - a scientist reckoned that some of the soil around the airbag'looks like mud, but it can't be mud'."
In a bioengineering course I took once we were playing around with various materials prior to creating various cements and I found that many very fine grained ultra dry powders exhibited qualities one might presume were qualities exhibited in mud. Specifically, the appearance of folding up in waves like there were some bonding force holding things together when pushed. Applying various degrees of static charges to the materials appeared to amplify these effects allowing for clumping as well.
I am curious though as to why they dont think it could be mud if they are indeed suspicious of water being present?
Is this a matter of intent or technological limitations? I mean is it possible to get a room nice and bright and white using only LED lighting?
I don't imagine that there could be too many technical considerations other than cost. Right now I have some LED ultra bright white lights for biking back and forth from work and they are amazingly bright. I also have seen a couple of show cars with LED lighting whose output was truly blinding, so I cannot imagine that it would be impossible. Especially if one were to use proper diffuser design and lens systems with ultra-bright LEDs, I am sure one could properly light a living space.
So, its funny but iTunes spun up Nightclubbing by Iggy Pop as soon as I clicked on the link to the sight, because that is exactly what this looks like to me. If I were single and 18-23 again perhaps I might think this was cool, but come on now. I was really hoping that by clicking on the link I was going to see real LED lights (perhaps spectrally tuned to the wavelength of sunlight) that could really light a house. I don't think we are that far away from other applications like automobile headlights and real replacement sources for household lighting, but this is not quite there. This to me is more like mood lighting or decorative lighting rather than household lighting.
Also, it appears that the apartment is not lit entirely by LEDs as ACDC lighting systems are providing cold cathode lighting as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh yeah. Novell had to be the last company I thought SCO would sue. How can anyone really feel good about working for these guys? Granted, jobs in IT are harder to come by as of late, but I would be absolutely embarrassed to say "I work for SCO"....... They are less and less a tech company every day and more and more a front for litigious action that appears to pump up their stock and dump shares as quickly as possible given the SEC filings over the past little while. Come on now, these guys split off from Novell via Noorda who almost ran Novell into the ground after fightin' it out with Microsoft and tried under the guise of Caldera to sell (rather unsuccessfully) a Linux distro, almost killing another company yet again. Darl McBride then thought "I know what let's do, let's build a business model based upon legal action. Hell, we don't need no stinkin' IT product. We've got lawyers .
Another one here, just in case.
:-)
In case of what? This workstation hosting the image is running OS X.
The ESA site appears to be getting quite slow. A mirror of the large image of Valles Marineris is here.
Well, they got the dimensions down to around the Apple Cube's size, but it is still lacking in aesthetics. For instance, one could never put this thing on your desk with its back facing to someone else if you place any value on style. I mean check this out. The Apple cube had a completely smooth appearance with connections to the display coming discretely out of the underside of the case. Oh, and it is silent. Cooling a P4 chip is going to require some fans on this baby, but I guess its all about tradeoffs. For a PC case though, this is not that bad for small form factors.
BTW: two fixes are already avilable for this virus:
Free, but worth thousands more: FreeBSD, Linux, and more...
Pricey, but worth every penny: Mac OS X
We have moved most of our lab machines from Windows to OS X in the past few months and the time I have spent having to patch, test patches, roll back updates due to problems with Windows has been reduced drastically. I can't mention how successful this migration/switch has been in terms of productivity gains, peace of mind, etc... With OS X, you plug stuff in and it works.
Its true that OS X costs more money than say Linux installed on our previous machines, but OS X is a true desktop OS that allows one to keep all of their UNIX apps as well as provides the slickest desktop OS around allowing for use of popular apps such as Office (yes, Microsoft Office for OS X is actually quite nice, so stop your whining), Photoshop, Filemaker etc... while allowing for our compute intensive work on scientific apps as well.
How many times has Slashdot been approached by law enforcement agencies to obtain access to records or postings?
Yes, but that HMO still feels the natural competitive pressure from other HMOs to ensure they keep costs as low as possible. That doesn't forbid them from hiring high-salary execs, but it does keep those high salaries from being higher than they are...
Actually, if you examine the statistics, HMO's have decidedly not decreased the cost of medicine. In reality all they have done is created a new layer of middle management and moved the money that previously was going to physicians, hospitals, nurses and technicians to managers. Do this little experiment: Go down to your local HMO hospital and look in the parking lot. I will betcha that most of the nice hardware does not belong to the physicians. Rather, it belongs to the managment, particularly in HMO's that are vertically organized and provide the insurance as well as the health care delivery.
If insurance is also providing the care, how do you think that works? Its a business, and businesses are in business to make money, not to be generous and provide the best possible health care. Therefore, they will reduce the money they spend and the effort they make to provide health care in order to maximize profits.
The irony is, most health insurance-issuing companies are non-profits because for-profits cannot possibly make a profit when there are non-profits providing the same service and health insurance is something good for society to have in existance.
Ask yourself just what non-profit means though. All it is in reality is a tax classification. For instance, the largest HMO in our area is classified as non-profit, but the principals of that organization have S-class Benz's as company cars and make high six figure salaries. Non-profit does not mean lower costs of healthcare.
If even the existing medical-records systems could be ported to Linux, that'd eliminate $200 from the cost of each computer in the doctor's office, and that'd be a savings that'd add up over time... and just think what'd happen if the interchange between care providers and insurance companies happened over open source protocols...
Open source does not necessarily mean Linux. But don't sweat it because Microsoft cannot seem to get their head around this either. I am really referring to an open source infrastructure that can be plugged into regardless of platform. The infrastructure can still be a profit making center for specific companies, but the idea is that it provides a mechanism for efficient distribution of information in a clean, secure manner that reduces the cost for government and healthcare for all participants.
Are Open Source platforms the only economically viable alternative? Maybe not, but collaboration will have to occur if we want to build the systems to save our lives."
And while we are at it.....in addition to city management and taxation for those issues, if we want to reduce the cost of medicine, an open source alternative to the current software with open standards is the way to go for medical health care, health insurance and billing. How much of our current medical system is devoted to billing, reimbursement and trying to transfer and manage data? It's a lot.
A standard open source health care database and form that is managed by the federal government that can be accessed by hospitals, insurance companies, states and individuals is the way through the nightmare that has become managed care. It could even tie into other open source government databases discussed in this article to improve the documentation of medical emergencies which may result in a further reduction of costs to governments and private citizens while also increasing the quality of care.
learly, something monumental must be going on in the world of computing for these technology titans simultaneously to discover something that is so profound and yet so hard to name.'"
Absolutely. But I don't see large scale distributed computing or "utility computing" working in the public domain for more than a few conceptually cohesive projects (think SETI and Folding@home for publicly available projects). On the other hand individual companies could certainly take advantage of this concept for internal projects while harnessing the computing power that many of them already have in abundance. The problem is bringing all of this computing power (desktop systems) together easily and without hassle. Software like Pooch and Xgrid are decidedly the way to go here allowing companies to harness space CPU cycles for anything from rendering to bioinformatics to modeling airflow or turbulence. For instance, how many computers are at organizations like Lockheed Martin? Or Genentech? Or at most Universities?
MS isn't admitting that it's a violation of the consent decree they signed to get the DoJ to drop the anti-trust suit against them, but threats to take them to court over it are what prompted the move."
........without turning this whole thing into an anti-Microsoft rant, (I fear this will happen) we hear this kind of thing again and again from Microsoft. Microsoft violates (again) the terms of the anti-trust trial and says "ooops, my mistake." and agrees to change its behavior (barely). How do they keep getting away with it? I don't really have an answer for it but, they appear to have a somewhat schizophrenic relationship with their potential markets.
:-)
So,
The issue here is manifold: 1) Microsoft is a monopoly (not necessarily bad), 2) Microsoft leverages that monopoly against other markets (bad). The problem is that they really can't help themselves because their shareholders (disclaimer: I own some Microsoft stock) demand greater returns on their investment and they really don't know how to do anything differently. Microsoft is maturing and recently has paid out dividends (about time), but they seem to be continuously stumbling over their own feet in various markets. Microsoft has some smart folks there (including a few friends of mine), but as a whole the company has the appearance of a bunch of malicious geeks who are smart, but are not very creative, resulting in a desperate desire to be cool and seen as cool. This could be a result of marketing management keeping the programmers etc... under control, but Microsoft as a whole lacks that essence of coolness that gives them an edge. Therefore the predatory nature of the monopoly as they gobble up every concept that could be seen as giving Microsoft some degree of edge. It also might be that they are so big, they really don't have the ability to move very quickly or be objective in their analysis of markets. I would bet that if they broke themselves into a number of different companies (that even had the possibility of competing with each other), they would be much more competitive and would prove a much better return on investment.
Come on Bill, how would you like to be the principal of five or six big companies? One company can only get you so far you know.....?
That's why I uuencode my images, take them to a machine shop, and punch them out on mylar tape! Sure, I needed to fill the garage to store a dozen images, but I know they're going to last!
:-)
You should have placed a disclaimer in front of that. I was holding coffee when I read that.........yes, it was funny, but the coffee stain on my chair from my laughter is not.
It was geek heaven: guns and gadgets; fear and loathing from mere groundbased mortals, snobbery and FUD. A great way of life, and good training ground for a BOFH attitude.
Cool. We are using the next generation of technologies (remote sensing and satellite imagery tech.) you were using (film based SLAR) to do neuroscience research. When I was an undergrad, I was actually the subject of a recruitment effort when the KH-12 and KH-13 series of satellites were going up to replace the SR-71. I never upped, but you guys had the real thrills. I would have sat behind a computer screen for hours/day doing analysis (actually, much of what I do now), but you guys were peeps that actually got shot at. More power to you man!
(Note: I'm just in a snarky mood - my sarcasm should be taken as playful, not mean.)
:-)
Fair enough.
While you're right about the storage medium problem to a degree, you've forgotten about... printers.
Yes, but how many people are printing those photos out on acid free, non-fading, archival ink?!!?
Also, I would expect that businesses will build over the years specically for regaining data from old, unused formats of media, etc, for those who don't migrate/backup their data to more modern mediums as time progresses.
To date, this has not necessarily been the case. There are unbelievable amounts of data that have been lost because we no longer have the hardware required to read tape reels in many cases. What about floppy disks? (you know this big assed 8.5in floppy disks that I had with my TRS-80 Model II?) I have not seen one of those drives for years.
As for your first paragraph, you are strictly talking about a level of detail, of resolution - that's it. There's nothing magical about film that gives it the qualities you're implying it has, it's just that the film and photo paper used for the photo you refer to had really fine grain, and the picture was (we assume) taken with good focus and exposure. There is nothing magic about the chemicals of photography - it's all a matter of resoulution (or Megapixels, for the unwashed masses).
Yes, but silver grains can deliver microscopic levels of detail that I don't think will be available for another decade in commonly available CCDs. True, Cannon makes an 11 Megapixel camera that approaches 35mm in some ways, but this is not even close to the resolution that I am talking about. The beauty of the photos I have is that my grandfather had a skilled photographer and an interpreter with him whenever he wanted and had access to proper film and film development resources (not common in WWII), so the quality of the images and the detail in them is quite nice.
The real point here is that while one can argue that current digital tech isn't as fine-grained as high quality film tech, that's not an inherant property, it's just the way it is for now. Since the industry is obviously leaning in the digital direction (with good reason!), it can only be a matter of time before film will be completely surpassed in quality by digital.
Point taken.
Such as GPS or EXIF data, which, if it had been available back then, would allow to you place your ancestor within a meter of wherever the photo was taken. Yep, studying those old negatives for hours really has us beat, today.
You certainly have a point, but your glib response betrays your ignorance. GPS or EXIF would allow me to place where, but not always when. Additionally, annotation of images is not always possible, especially when there is additional information in the image that might not be apparent from first glance. An example: One of the images I have is my grandfather in an automobile somewhere in Italy. Examining the guy next to him revealed information on his name tag and rank with enhancement of his face to reveal his identity. (one Gen. James H. Doolittle)
You are right that it will be a long, long time before real photographers use digital. But I believe that we are only a few years before the bulk of consumer photography is digital.
I am actually a "real" photographer who has embraced digital photography due to its convenience and cost issues. I was raised on standard B&W and color film photography in 35mm and large format photography and have a passion for those formats as well. But digital does have its place in semi-pro and pro shooting. In fact, a recent National Geographic article on flight was shot entirely with digital cameras and Apple Powerbook computers.
It might not be all bad. Digital photographs have the potential to last in pristine condition forever (as long as you keep copying them to new media). Also since they're so cheap to take and store we might have many more photographs for our historical record. With some advanced image processing image searching and sorting could be great tools to historians as well.
You are right about this to some extent. The problem with media and digital storage is that history is proving that digital media has a much shorter lifespan than other forms of record keeping such as paper and photographic records. CDs are not good for 75-100 years as advertised in many cases. This is why standards are so important and open source of those standards so that there are as many possible copies of data in open formats that do not disappear over time.
Film still has the ability to store information that digital formats will take years to catch up to. For instance, my grandfather was in the OSS in WWII and had a collection of photographs he gave to me after he passed away. Going to the film (and even the prints), I am able to apply some image forensics pull out detail that would never be possible with digital images. There are street names, ID numbers on planes and names on nametags that I have been able to pull out to date photographs and identify individuals that has been a tremendous advantage in reconstructing his career with the Service. Through this analysis, I have been able to place him in places that history has labeled as occupied territory at time, identify other folks that he worked with etc....
Also, digital photography while convenient has archival issues just like traditional silver based photography and one has to wonder if we are going to have the same historical record 50, 60 or 100 years from now that we currently have.
Because the surface air temperature is never above freezing (usually between -40 to -60 degrees.)
But how many water molecules do you need for ice crystal formation? Also atmospheric pressures are low indicating much liquid water would sublimate rather quickly. However if there were just a few water molecules interspersed relatively uniformly amongst the dust particles you might not get ice formation per se. Rather you might get an extra degree of molecular bonding allowing for a cohesiveness of fine grained particles?
because as far as we can tell water cant exist in a liquid state on mars.
Ah, but how much water is the question. Certainly atmospheric pressures would indicate that large volumes of water may not be possible unless they were seeping or somehow otherwise protected from atmospheric effects. So, a correlative question might also be, how much water would be required for particle wetting to provide enough cohesiveness? I don't really know and my background is not in materials science but if the dust particles were small enough, perhaps a few water molecules could provide enough van der walls forces to hold the material together enough to resemble mud?
An ongoing intrigue is already developing - a scientist reckoned that some of the soil around the airbag'looks like mud, but it can't be mud'."
In a bioengineering course I took once we were playing around with various materials prior to creating various cements and I found that many very fine grained ultra dry powders exhibited qualities one might presume were qualities exhibited in mud. Specifically, the appearance of folding up in waves like there were some bonding force holding things together when pushed. Applying various degrees of static charges to the materials appeared to amplify these effects allowing for clumping as well.
I am curious though as to why they dont think it could be mud if they are indeed suspicious of water being present?
Is this a matter of intent or technological limitations? I mean is it possible to get a room nice and bright and white using only LED lighting?
I don't imagine that there could be too many technical considerations other than cost. Right now I have some LED ultra bright white lights for biking back and forth from work and they are amazingly bright. I also have seen a couple of show cars with LED lighting whose output was truly blinding, so I cannot imagine that it would be impossible. Especially if one were to use proper diffuser design and lens systems with ultra-bright LEDs, I am sure one could properly light a living space.
as soon as I clicked on the link to the sight
Aaarrgh! For those spelling/grammar nazis out there, I've been writing vision research grants all day, so sight should be site. Forgive me.
So, its funny but iTunes spun up Nightclubbing by Iggy Pop as soon as I clicked on the link to the sight, because that is exactly what this looks like to me. If I were single and 18-23 again perhaps I might think this was cool, but come on now. I was really hoping that by clicking on the link I was going to see real LED lights (perhaps spectrally tuned to the wavelength of sunlight) that could really light a house. I don't think we are that far away from other applications like automobile headlights and real replacement sources for household lighting, but this is not quite there. This to me is more like mood lighting or decorative lighting rather than household lighting.
Also, it appears that the apartment is not lit entirely by LEDs as ACDC lighting systems are providing cold cathode lighting as well.
Hey now, just because you cant afford your own "undisclosed location" dont be player hating our VP.
:-)
Actually, we have our own little "undisclosed location" just down the road from our VP's "undisclosed location" in Jackson Wyoming.