There are some of those here (mostly associated with the military base here), but Tucson overall is a pretty liberal city. Phoenix, on the other hand...
Seems like steganography in images posted to Flickr would be a lot safer. (And, yes, there are ways to work around jpeg compression being applied to the images by a third party, if you know the quantization matrix in advance.)
I'm in Tucson for graduate school and have been here for five years. Pretty much every native Tucsonan is tired of the various metastases that have come off of the primary tumor in southern California. For my part I'm about ready to start stabbing the LA-types with sharp pointy cacti.
Things *used* to be done on a sane budget, until everything became a nest of private contractors trying to get their hands in the pie.
I'm from Huntsville, AL. My neighbors growing up came over from Germany with von Braun. My high school English teacher was retired from NASA, but he was the guy who designed the Lunar Rover. No fancy expensive components here -- he bolted the top end of a lawn chair to the thing for a seat.
When things became untenable for the Jews in Germany during the 1930's, people like Einstein chose the US as a place to emigrate to. Of all the countries that some of the world's top scientists could have fled to, they came to the USA.
*That* sort of results -- building that sort of country.
"Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
Seriously -- people have no doubt died that would have otherwise have lived if they had access to GPS with their cell phones. I've been lost in the mountains at night before (my fault, I know -- the trail was damaged by fire, and I missed a turn), and being able to get GPS data off of my phone would have been a hell of a lot easier than what I wound up doing to get out. I wasn't in any danger, but there are a lot of cases much worse than mine.
This sort of thing pisses me off -- people who design features into products and then intentionally disable them. Whatever happened to trying to design things that are the most useful for the least cost?
Sounds like a joke, but it's not -- the world is more likely to look favorably on a country that uses its wealth for cultural progress like significant science. (
Ironically spending $10 billion on the space program would contribute *far* more to US national security than an extra $10 billion to the military.
The EP-1 (or any of the micro 4/3 cameras) apparently do *very* well in low light, especially if you can get reasonably fast old manual focus lenses for them. (Or the new Panasonic 20/1.7.)
The thing has the same size sensor as a DSLR, and seems to have a better-tuned JPEG noise reduction algorithm than the "full-size" Olympus bodies; apparently they have a new magic algorithm, and the E-P1 is the first camera to get it.
Is there a way to enable block storage mode on Canon DSLR's?
Seriously, this is a royal PITA. My father is only semi-computer-literate and has a Canon 350D. The hoops he has to jump through in order to get the pictures off of that thing are *insane* -- it literally takes an hour to copy an 8GB CF card, and if he messes up one step in the process he has to start over. (It still takes me forever, but I just let the transfer run in the background).
You could just use a card reader, but the camera craps the pictures into 234897234 different folders -- and he's nowhere near good enough with computers to be able to deal with that.
Meanwhile, I can plug my (also old) Olympus camera into my computer, select "Mass storage" from the menu that appears on the camera, and it's just like a thumbdrive -- with all the pictures in one directory, no funny stuff necessary.
Apparently the modern Canons *still* don't have USB mass storage mode. (Well, not the affordable ones anyway.)
The Canon lens-to-camera communication protocol has been reverse-engineered for a while. Manufacturers like Sigma and Tamron are making (very good) lenses compatible with Canon (and everyone else's) bodies.
There are also small-ish DSLR's and DSLR-likes that are a far cry from the full-frame beasties. See Olympus E-620 (a small DSLR), or any of the Micro Four-Thirds cameras.
You can have good image quality and optics along with small these days.
I don't think you mean "perfect blackbody", since that's an object that ABSORBS all radiation incident on it -- which is exactly what you don't want to do.
After the ascent stage you're dealing with a vehicle designed to survive reentry. Somehow I doubt you're going to do much damage to it with a teeny little laser.
Frequency doublers aren't 100% efficient, are they? In a high-power but compact laser, would the heat deposited in the frequency doubler be enough to cause damage?
The effective range of weapons like this is a few hundred miles at most: any more and atmospheric effects disperse the beam too much to do any damage.
ICBM's are also only vulnerable in boost phase; the warhead itself is hardened against reentry, compared to which these lasers are like flashlights. So in order for this to be useful as a defense against ICBM's, you've got to get your huge plane within a few hundred miles of the enemy's ICBM launch site and keep it there on the off chance that they try to launch an ICBM at you. Oh, and somehow you've got to do this without getting your expensive (and big and slow) laser-toting plane shot down.
Weapons like this actually make an ICBM strike *more* likely against the US. If conventional war were to break out between the US and a country like China, with neither party really wanting a nuclear escalation but reserving their nukes as a deterrent, they'd be afraid that if they lost the ability to effectively shoot down aircraft over their territory they'd also lose the ability to launch ICBM's in case of escalation. So, at the first sign of the US gaining air superiority, they'd go ahead and launch ICBM's.
Slashdot Mirror
Conservative xenophobes?
There are some of those here (mostly associated with the military base here), but Tucson overall is a pretty liberal city. Phoenix, on the other hand...
Seems like steganography in images posted to Flickr would be a lot safer. (And, yes, there are ways to work around jpeg compression being applied to the images by a third party, if you know the quantization matrix in advance.)
The early Christians were subversives who wanted a kinder world.
These days it is the atheists who are the subversives wanting a kinder world.
Those are fascists; there's a difference.
Mod parent the hell up.
I'm in Tucson for graduate school and have been here for five years. Pretty much every native Tucsonan is tired of the various metastases that have come off of the primary tumor in southern California. For my part I'm about ready to start stabbing the LA-types with sharp pointy cacti.
Things *used* to be done on a sane budget, until everything became a nest of private contractors trying to get their hands in the pie.
I'm from Huntsville, AL. My neighbors growing up came over from Germany with von Braun. My high school English teacher was retired from NASA, but he was the guy who designed the Lunar Rover. No fancy expensive components here -- he bolted the top end of a lawn chair to the thing for a seat.
When things became untenable for the Jews in Germany during the 1930's, people like Einstein chose the US as a place to emigrate to. Of all the countries that some of the world's top scientists could have fled to, they came to the USA.
*That* sort of results -- building that sort of country.
I'd add to that:
"Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
It's down half the time anyway; how would we notice?
So why can't I, the user, access this data?
Seriously -- people have no doubt died that would have otherwise have lived if they had access to GPS with their cell phones. I've been lost in the mountains at night before (my fault, I know -- the trail was damaged by fire, and I missed a turn), and being able to get GPS data off of my phone would have been a hell of a lot easier than what I wound up doing to get out. I wasn't in any danger, but there are a lot of cases much worse than mine.
This sort of thing pisses me off -- people who design features into products and then intentionally disable them. Whatever happened to trying to design things that are the most useful for the least cost?
Sounds like a joke, but it's not -- the world is more likely to look favorably on a country that uses its wealth for cultural progress like significant science. (
Ironically spending $10 billion on the space program would contribute *far* more to US national security than an extra $10 billion to the military.
Any member of the opposite sex impressed by a $5k gadget doesn't count as "fit" in my book.
The EP-1 (or any of the micro 4/3 cameras) apparently do *very* well in low light, especially if you can get reasonably fast old manual focus lenses for them. (Or the new Panasonic 20/1.7.)
The thing has the same size sensor as a DSLR, and seems to have a better-tuned JPEG noise reduction algorithm than the "full-size" Olympus bodies; apparently they have a new magic algorithm, and the E-P1 is the first camera to get it.
They have SD cards that themselves speak wifi now. No dice if your camera uses CF (or some mutant format like xD or Memory Stick), of course.
Is there a way to enable block storage mode on Canon DSLR's?
Seriously, this is a royal PITA. My father is only semi-computer-literate and has a Canon 350D. The hoops he has to jump through in order to get the pictures off of that thing are *insane* -- it literally takes an hour to copy an 8GB CF card, and if he messes up one step in the process he has to start over. (It still takes me forever, but I just let the transfer run in the background).
You could just use a card reader, but the camera craps the pictures into 234897234 different folders -- and he's nowhere near good enough with computers to be able to deal with that.
Meanwhile, I can plug my (also old) Olympus camera into my computer, select "Mass storage" from the menu that appears on the camera, and it's just like a thumbdrive -- with all the pictures in one directory, no funny stuff necessary.
Apparently the modern Canons *still* don't have USB mass storage mode. (Well, not the affordable ones anyway.)
The Canon lens-to-camera communication protocol has been reverse-engineered for a while. Manufacturers like Sigma and Tamron are making (very good) lenses compatible with Canon (and everyone else's) bodies.
Then you want something like the Panasonic LX3.
There are also small-ish DSLR's and DSLR-likes that are a far cry from the full-frame beasties. See Olympus E-620 (a small DSLR), or any of the Micro Four-Thirds cameras.
You can have good image quality and optics along with small these days.
"Using a US cell phone is a total ripoff"
FTFY.
Pirate it.
Piracy is not theft.
If you want to say "a legal copy", then sure.
I don't think you mean "perfect blackbody", since that's an object that ABSORBS all radiation incident on it -- which is exactly what you don't want to do.
After the ascent stage you're dealing with a vehicle designed to survive reentry. Somehow I doubt you're going to do much damage to it with a teeny little laser.
Not quite -- see 1/r^2.
Frequency doublers aren't 100% efficient, are they? In a high-power but compact laser, would the heat deposited in the frequency doubler be enough to cause damage?
The effective range of weapons like this is a few hundred miles at most: any more and atmospheric effects disperse the beam too much to do any damage.
ICBM's are also only vulnerable in boost phase; the warhead itself is hardened against reentry, compared to which these lasers are like flashlights. So in order for this to be useful as a defense against ICBM's, you've got to get your huge plane within a few hundred miles of the enemy's ICBM launch site and keep it there on the off chance that they try to launch an ICBM at you. Oh, and somehow you've got to do this without getting your expensive (and big and slow) laser-toting plane shot down.
Weapons like this actually make an ICBM strike *more* likely against the US. If conventional war were to break out between the US and a country like China, with neither party really wanting a nuclear escalation but reserving their nukes as a deterrent, they'd be afraid that if they lost the ability to effectively shoot down aircraft over their territory they'd also lose the ability to launch ICBM's in case of escalation. So, at the first sign of the US gaining air superiority, they'd go ahead and launch ICBM's.
I was thinking of photo editing in Picasa + Lightroom. It's not as compute-intensive as gaming, but there's an awful lot of data to push around.