....for the first privately-funded manned orbital spacecraft.
And guess who's in the lead to win that prize: you guess it, none other than Burt Rutan and his group at Scaled Composites. You're forgetting that Scaled Composites did development work for both the McDonnell-Douglas Delta Clipper and Lockheed Venture Star programs. Though these programs were not complete successes it has given Scaled Composites valuable learning experience in building real spacecraft, and that experience gives them a huge advantage in winning the US$50 million prize. Besides, given Paul Allen's financial resources, Allen could easily part with the US$150-US$200 million needed to develop the so-called TierTwo project that will lead to a privately-funded manned orbital spacecraft.:-)
....I think if Apple had continued to insist that the I/O interface stay IEEE-1394, sales of the device would have stayed relatively low because it's only on higher-end desktop computers on the PC side that you have standard IEEE-1394 connections.
But Apple wisely knew if they wanted sales of the iPod to take off they needed both Windows support and the use of a more common I/O interface, so the newer iPod models now sport USB 2.0 connections, which most new computers have nowadays.
However, if you're talking keyboards and mouse pointers, Microsoft is a huge player in this market. Why do you think one of the most popular keyboards around is the Microsoft Natural Elite keyboard?
Alas, people are forgetting that making chemical weapons is not as hard as people think.
For example, the World War I generation poison gases such as mustard gas and phosgene could be made fairly easily with small, easily concealable chemical plants if you have the right chemical ingredients. Given Iraq's petroleum industry, such knowledge is well within their reach.
More modern nerve gases such as Tabun (GA), Sarin (GB) and Soman (GD) do require more sophisticate production methods, but given that a Japanese religious cult did make Sarin on a homemade still tells me that the Iraqis could make these nerve gases using small production facilities given their petrochemical knowledge (after all, nerve gases are closely related to insecticides and herbicides).
There was much fear that the Iraqi government may have passed on knowledge on how to make chemical weapons using small chemical plants to various terrorist organizations, and terrorists would have used them to disperse the gas in a crowded area or a ventilation intake of a large building with pretty gruesome results.
Two, on a per capita basis (or national basis, for that matter), the US emits MUCH more carbon than China and India.
Alas, that is changing as the economies of China and India are rapidly growing, and as a result the CO2 output per person in these countries increasing rapidly, too. Besides, both China and India have other serious pollution problems with uncontrolled smokestack emissions and serious water pollution problems from factories and untreated sewage water.
That's why we need to kibosh the Kyoto Protocol and start all over again with a treaty that reduces all pollution output on a per person basis on a worldwide basis.
I looked at the map of the proposed locations of the wind farm and I think we can forget about putting one between the mainland and Martha's Vineyard/Nantucket Island.
That location will make it a serious navigation hazard for both boats and airplanes travelling between the mainland and the two islands. The better solution is to put the wind farm further out to sea, not only alleviating the navigation hazard problem but also eliminate the noise problem from all those generators in operation.
The Sun is by far the biggest influence on the Earth's climate, no contest. Scientists have noted substantial weather changes at various spots around the world based on the sunspot cycle, with records going back at least back to the time of the invention of the refractor lens telescope by Galileo.
One thing that has been studied was the so-called Maunder minimum, a period during the 17th and 18th centuries when NO sunspots were observed on the Sun. That was the period when the Thames River through London regularly froze over in winter and even the canals of Venice occasionally froze over! With the near-regular 11-year sunspot cycle, no wonder why the Earth has been heating up in the last 250 years.
Besides, all we need is one major volcanic eruption and all bets are off in regards to climatic conditions. If we have a massive eruption that spews over 3.5 cubic kilometers of ash into the atmosphere (there are many volcanoes capable of spewing out that much ash), the planet's atmosphere could cool over one degree Celsius and there will be quite dramatic effects on the climate.
The Kyoto Protocol does NOTHING to correct the serious pollution problems that are plaguing the two most populous countries in the world, namely China and India. If the Kyoto Protocol had said something about reducing CO2 output on a truly global per person basis with no exceptions for any countries, then there would have been far more support for the treaty in the USA.
Your contention that those sheep living New York, LA, and Chicago are more susceptible to charismatic bullshit-spinners than the good citizens of Bum's Rush, Alabama simply isn't supported by any evidence.
Then explain the two most corrupt political machines in American history: the Tammany Society (Tammany Hall) in New York City and the machine run by the late Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago. Now you know why the Founding Fathers put in the Electoral College and the equal representation for the US Senate?
I think what people don't realize is that the US agricultural economy is probably the best in the world, no contest. There are very few countries that come even close to the mind-boggling variety of agricultural products the US makes.
As such, we need to protect the rights of the rural sector, because if we ditch the Electoral College the result is that our US economy will be determined by the whim of a few highly-populated states--not a good idea!
However, the big problem with parliamentary republics is that you can have serious factionalism with frequently unpleasant consequences. Just look at how stable the government in Italy is historically since World War II.
Try this in the USA and the result will be dissolving of Congress on almost a yearly basis, given how factionalized the US population is politically. The only reason why the Labour and Conservative parties dominate in the UK is that both parties have a very long history of being dominant parties, and as such you have a pretty good chance of elections going on the normal mandated five-year cycle.
I'm not sure if you can consider the Wright brothers "amateurs." They were already highly-accomplished mechanics who did things like building actual wind tunnels to test their designs for a flying machine.
In my humble opinion, I think the Feds pushed the wrong solution in the US v. Microsoft case.
Why didn't the Feds push for separating sales of the operating system from the hardware? By pricing the operating system as a separate cost item it would have actually enhanced competition for the operating system market on x86-compatible PC's, and it would have encouraged the FreeBSD and Linux crowd to develop their operating systems much faster because there would be a truly healthy competition of what operating system you want install on your computer.
Alas, if you look at the implosion of the dot-com companies, that process began right at the US v. Microsoft judgement in the Spring of 2000.
That was the move that essentially sent the economy of Silicon Valley (Santa Clara County and the southern end of San Mateo and Alameda counties in California) into an economic tailspin that the area only has partially recovered from.
In your case, the best solution is to upgrade the RAM first, then upgrade the graphics card to a mid-range AGP 4x/8x model. The upgrade in RAM can make significant differences in system speedup especially if you keep multiple programs open.
By the way, you may want to check about upgrading the BIOS on your motherboard to the latest one available from ASUS, since you will need an updated BIOS for the system to recognize a hard drive above 120 GB in size natively.
An Athlon XP 1600+ should be fast enough to use a DVD burner, especially if you upgrade the RAM to 1 GB.
....It will be extremely unlikely that Playboy magazine will do a centerfold shoot with a digital camera, even with the latest Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II.
Playboy has a tradition of using view cameras with photographic plates to do such shots, and given the extremely high resolution of photographic plates used on view cameras, such a camera is necessary for pictures that are sometimes is printed at the equivalent size of four pages at the page size Playboy uses!
That's about 300 mm/pixel, or just a hair under one feet in resolution, based on the estimates from the HiRISE team. But given Mars' very thin atmosphere and the fact Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter could orbit Mars from lower orbit compared to what Ikonos does now orbiting the Earth, we could in theory see resolutions far better than 300 mm/pixel once MRO has optimized its orbit over Mars.
Actually, I've heard that the imaging satellites that were launched after Ikonos are not capable of resolving down to 80 cm resolution since they have better optics than the Ikonos cameras.
Given the fact that the current Keyhole satellites use essentially a modified version of same technology used on the Hubble Space Telescope, my guess is that our current spy satellites can resolve down to about 4-5 cm (around 2 inches) resolution from a 300 km orbit. At that resolution, you could make out the larger markings on vehicles pretty easily.
Just wait for Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
on
Making Tracks on Mars
·
· Score: 5, Informative
If you think the images from Mars Global Surveyor look awesome, the images from the upcoming Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter should be nothing short of AWESOME.
Given that MRO will likely use a modified version of the same camera system used on the Ikonos imaging satellite (Ikonos can resolve down to 100 cm resolution from a 300 km orbit through Earth's thick atmosphere), the combination of the lower orbit and the very thin atmosphere on Mars means there are estimates that the MRO cameras could resolve objects as small as 150 millimeters across in the visual light spectrum! At that resolution, MRO could finally put to bed the controversy about the anomalous features on the Cydonia plain of Mars that some people claim are not natural features of that plain.
1. DNG--being a true open format specification--means DNG uncompressed image files could conceivably be read by a GPL image processing software such as GIMP, so it would be very easy to write an update for GIMP with full DNG support.
2. You're forgetting most of the world's serious digital image processing working is done on Photoshop, the de facto standard for such work. Simplifying processing of uncompressed image files would make the work of professional photographers a LOT easier.
Rutan could build such a space vehicle.
on
After the X Prize
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The reason is simple: Burt Rutan has extensive experience building things that could be applied to a real spacecraft.
Remember the Delta Clipper? Or the aborted X-33 project? They may not be complete successes but it gave Scaled Composites the learning experience that could lead to a cheap reusable Low Earth Orbit space vehicle.
By the way, there is an easy way to do this: launch it on top of a modified 747-200B. Given the large number of 747-200B's that have been retired in the last 3-4 years Scaled Composites could cobble parts from several such 747's and build a launch plane with a powerful rocket engine in the back of the plane, which will allow it to fly steep climbs up to 50,000 feet. Mounted on the top of this modified 747-200B would be a small lifting-body type space vehicle with a small fuel tank beneath that will provide enough fuel to reach LEO with a load equivalent of 6-7 astronauts aboard.
The launch profile would go something like this:
1. The 747 with the space vehicle on the back takes off like a regular 747.
2. Once it reaches 28,000 to 30,000 feet, the rocket engine on the 747 is fired, allowing the 747 to climb at a 45-50 degree angle up to 50,000 feet.
3. At around 52,000 feet, the space vehicle with its attached fuel tank is launched as the 747 approaches the top of its climb.
4. While the 747 falls away, the space vehicle's own rocket engine will use the fuel from the attached fuel tank to reach LEO, jettisoning the tank when it reaches orbit.
5. The space vehicle will return to Earth in a Space Shuttle-style re-entry and land on a conventional runway.
There were serious studies during the 1980's for such a concept by (I believe) Boeing, and if any that could make this concept become reality at a reasonable cost it is Scaled Composites.
Since, CF card storage is still expensive, I don't think OEMs will be adopting this format anytime soon.
I have to disagree on that. Have you been to Costco lately and priced the cost of 512 MB flash memory cards in Compact Flash and SD formats? They are already dropping under US$100 per memory card and will likely drop much further within a year. Given that we'll probably see 1 GB CF/SD cards going under US$100 within a year, they have arrived just in time for widespread adoption of the DNG file format on digital SLR's and higher-end point and shoot digital still cameras.
And for one good reason: Adobe Photoshop is pretty the de facto standard for still image processing software used by most everyone (whether on Macintoshes or PC's). As such, it would sure make image processing of uncompressed image files vastly easier to start with not having to deal with multiple RAW formats like Photoshop has to do now.
I wouldn't be surprised that all the Japanese digital still camera manufacturers start offering DNG file support within the next 18 months. And because the DNG specification is an open spec, don't be surprised that within a year some programmer will upgrade GIMP under GPL so it can read DNG image files.
By the way, given the rapidly falling prices on 512 MB flash memory cards in Compact Flash, SD and xD formats, I wouldn't be surprised that higher-end point and shoot digital still cameras will offer DNG support (it's obvious that digital SLR's will get DNG support).
Plus there is one more thing: Peter Jackson will NOT try to do another version of the three films with even longer cuts than the Extended Editions; he already understands the controversy caused by George Lucas making all those changes to the the original three Star Wars films and don't want a repeat.
Expect a release of all three Extended Editions in a box set some time in 2005.
Slashdot Mirror
....for the first privately-funded manned orbital spacecraft.
:-)
And guess who's in the lead to win that prize: you guess it, none other than Burt Rutan and his group at Scaled Composites. You're forgetting that Scaled Composites did development work for both the McDonnell-Douglas Delta Clipper and Lockheed Venture Star programs. Though these programs were not complete successes it has given Scaled Composites valuable learning experience in building real spacecraft, and that experience gives them a huge advantage in winning the US$50 million prize. Besides, given Paul Allen's financial resources, Allen could easily part with the US$150-US$200 million needed to develop the so-called TierTwo project that will lead to a privately-funded manned orbital spacecraft.
....I think if Apple had continued to insist that the I/O interface stay IEEE-1394, sales of the device would have stayed relatively low because it's only on higher-end desktop computers on the PC side that you have standard IEEE-1394 connections.
But Apple wisely knew if they wanted sales of the iPod to take off they needed both Windows support and the use of a more common I/O interface, so the newer iPod models now sport USB 2.0 connections, which most new computers have nowadays.
M$ peripherals, not so much.
However, if you're talking keyboards and mouse pointers, Microsoft is a huge player in this market. Why do you think one of the most popular keyboards around is the Microsoft Natural Elite keyboard?
Look, many want /. to be discussing issues in regards to technology, not turn into another forum for the all-too-fashionable Bush-bashing.
It's small wonder why the phrase "One way to start a fight is to start discussing religion and politics" is so true nowadays. (sigh)
Alas, people are forgetting that making chemical weapons is not as hard as people think.
For example, the World War I generation poison gases such as mustard gas and phosgene could be made fairly easily with small, easily concealable chemical plants if you have the right chemical ingredients. Given Iraq's petroleum industry, such knowledge is well within their reach.
More modern nerve gases such as Tabun (GA), Sarin (GB) and Soman (GD) do require more sophisticate production methods, but given that a Japanese religious cult did make Sarin on a homemade still tells me that the Iraqis could make these nerve gases using small production facilities given their petrochemical knowledge (after all, nerve gases are closely related to insecticides and herbicides).
There was much fear that the Iraqi government may have passed on knowledge on how to make chemical weapons using small chemical plants to various terrorist organizations, and terrorists would have used them to disperse the gas in a crowded area or a ventilation intake of a large building with pretty gruesome results.
Two, on a per capita basis (or national basis, for that matter), the US emits MUCH more carbon than China and India.
Alas, that is changing as the economies of China and India are rapidly growing, and as a result the CO2 output per person in these countries increasing rapidly, too. Besides, both China and India have other serious pollution problems with uncontrolled smokestack emissions and serious water pollution problems from factories and untreated sewage water.
That's why we need to kibosh the Kyoto Protocol and start all over again with a treaty that reduces all pollution output on a per person basis on a worldwide basis.
I looked at the map of the proposed locations of the wind farm and I think we can forget about putting one between the mainland and Martha's Vineyard/Nantucket Island.
That location will make it a serious navigation hazard for both boats and airplanes travelling between the mainland and the two islands. The better solution is to put the wind farm further out to sea, not only alleviating the navigation hazard problem but also eliminate the noise problem from all those generators in operation.
The Sun is by far the biggest influence on the Earth's climate, no contest. Scientists have noted substantial weather changes at various spots around the world based on the sunspot cycle, with records going back at least back to the time of the invention of the refractor lens telescope by Galileo.
One thing that has been studied was the so-called Maunder minimum, a period during the 17th and 18th centuries when NO sunspots were observed on the Sun. That was the period when the Thames River through London regularly froze over in winter and even the canals of Venice occasionally froze over! With the near-regular 11-year sunspot cycle, no wonder why the Earth has been heating up in the last 250 years.
Besides, all we need is one major volcanic eruption and all bets are off in regards to climatic conditions. If we have a massive eruption that spews over 3.5 cubic kilometers of ash into the atmosphere (there are many volcanoes capable of spewing out that much ash), the planet's atmosphere could cool over one degree Celsius and there will be quite dramatic effects on the climate.
And with good reason, too.
The Kyoto Protocol does NOTHING to correct the serious pollution problems that are plaguing the two most populous countries in the world, namely China and India. If the Kyoto Protocol had said something about reducing CO2 output on a truly global per person basis with no exceptions for any countries, then there would have been far more support for the treaty in the USA.
Your contention that those sheep living New York, LA, and Chicago are more susceptible to charismatic bullshit-spinners than the good citizens of Bum's Rush, Alabama simply isn't supported by any evidence.
Then explain the two most corrupt political machines in American history: the Tammany Society (Tammany Hall) in New York City and the machine run by the late Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago. Now you know why the Founding Fathers put in the Electoral College and the equal representation for the US Senate?
I think what people don't realize is that the US agricultural economy is probably the best in the world, no contest. There are very few countries that come even close to the mind-boggling variety of agricultural products the US makes.
As such, we need to protect the rights of the rural sector, because if we ditch the Electoral College the result is that our US economy will be determined by the whim of a few highly-populated states--not a good idea!
However, the big problem with parliamentary republics is that you can have serious factionalism with frequently unpleasant consequences. Just look at how stable the government in Italy is historically since World War II.
Try this in the USA and the result will be dissolving of Congress on almost a yearly basis, given how factionalized the US population is politically. The only reason why the Labour and Conservative parties dominate in the UK is that both parties have a very long history of being dominant parties, and as such you have a pretty good chance of elections going on the normal mandated five-year cycle.
I'm not sure if you can consider the Wright brothers "amateurs." They were already highly-accomplished mechanics who did things like building actual wind tunnels to test their designs for a flying machine.
In my humble opinion, I think the Feds pushed the wrong solution in the US v. Microsoft case.
Why didn't the Feds push for separating sales of the operating system from the hardware? By pricing the operating system as a separate cost item it would have actually enhanced competition for the operating system market on x86-compatible PC's, and it would have encouraged the FreeBSD and Linux crowd to develop their operating systems much faster because there would be a truly healthy competition of what operating system you want install on your computer.
Alas, if you look at the implosion of the dot-com companies, that process began right at the US v. Microsoft judgement in the Spring of 2000.
That was the move that essentially sent the economy of Silicon Valley (Santa Clara County and the southern end of San Mateo and Alameda counties in California) into an economic tailspin that the area only has partially recovered from.
In your case, the best solution is to upgrade the RAM first, then upgrade the graphics card to a mid-range AGP 4x/8x model. The upgrade in RAM can make significant differences in system speedup especially if you keep multiple programs open.
By the way, you may want to check about upgrading the BIOS on your motherboard to the latest one available from ASUS, since you will need an updated BIOS for the system to recognize a hard drive above 120 GB in size natively.
An Athlon XP 1600+ should be fast enough to use a DVD burner, especially if you upgrade the RAM to 1 GB.
....It will be extremely unlikely that Playboy magazine will do a centerfold shoot with a digital camera, even with the latest Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II.
Playboy has a tradition of using view cameras with photographic plates to do such shots, and given the extremely high resolution of photographic plates used on view cameras, such a camera is necessary for pictures that are sometimes is printed at the equivalent size of four pages at the page size Playboy uses!
That's about 300 mm/pixel, or just a hair under one feet in resolution, based on the estimates from the HiRISE team. But given Mars' very thin atmosphere and the fact Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter could orbit Mars from lower orbit compared to what Ikonos does now orbiting the Earth, we could in theory see resolutions far better than 300 mm/pixel once MRO has optimized its orbit over Mars.
Actually, I've heard that the imaging satellites that were launched after Ikonos are not capable of resolving down to 80 cm resolution since they have better optics than the Ikonos cameras.
Given the fact that the current Keyhole satellites use essentially a modified version of same technology used on the Hubble Space Telescope, my guess is that our current spy satellites can resolve down to about 4-5 cm (around 2 inches) resolution from a 300 km orbit. At that resolution, you could make out the larger markings on vehicles pretty easily.
If you think the images from Mars Global Surveyor look awesome, the images from the upcoming Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter should be nothing short of AWESOME.
Given that MRO will likely use a modified version of the same camera system used on the Ikonos imaging satellite (Ikonos can resolve down to 100 cm resolution from a 300 km orbit through Earth's thick atmosphere), the combination of the lower orbit and the very thin atmosphere on Mars means there are estimates that the MRO cameras could resolve objects as small as 150 millimeters across in the visual light spectrum! At that resolution, MRO could finally put to bed the controversy about the anomalous features on the Cydonia plain of Mars that some people claim are not natural features of that plain.
1. DNG--being a true open format specification--means DNG uncompressed image files could conceivably be read by a GPL image processing software such as GIMP, so it would be very easy to write an update for GIMP with full DNG support.
2. You're forgetting most of the world's serious digital image processing working is done on Photoshop, the de facto standard for such work. Simplifying processing of uncompressed image files would make the work of professional photographers a LOT easier.
The reason is simple: Burt Rutan has extensive experience building things that could be applied to a real spacecraft.
Remember the Delta Clipper? Or the aborted X-33 project? They may not be complete successes but it gave Scaled Composites the learning experience that could lead to a cheap reusable Low Earth Orbit space vehicle.
By the way, there is an easy way to do this: launch it on top of a modified 747-200B. Given the large number of 747-200B's that have been retired in the last 3-4 years Scaled Composites could cobble parts from several such 747's and build a launch plane with a powerful rocket engine in the back of the plane, which will allow it to fly steep climbs up to 50,000 feet. Mounted on the top of this modified 747-200B would be a small lifting-body type space vehicle with a small fuel tank beneath that will provide enough fuel to reach LEO with a load equivalent of 6-7 astronauts aboard.
The launch profile would go something like this:
1. The 747 with the space vehicle on the back takes off like a regular 747.
2. Once it reaches 28,000 to 30,000 feet, the rocket engine on the 747 is fired, allowing the 747 to climb at a 45-50 degree angle up to 50,000 feet.
3. At around 52,000 feet, the space vehicle with its attached fuel tank is launched as the 747 approaches the top of its climb.
4. While the 747 falls away, the space vehicle's own rocket engine will use the fuel from the attached fuel tank to reach LEO, jettisoning the tank when it reaches orbit.
5. The space vehicle will return to Earth in a Space Shuttle-style re-entry and land on a conventional runway.
There were serious studies during the 1980's for such a concept by (I believe) Boeing, and if any that could make this concept become reality at a reasonable cost it is Scaled Composites.
Since, CF card storage is still expensive, I don't think OEMs will be adopting this format anytime soon.
I have to disagree on that. Have you been to Costco lately and priced the cost of 512 MB flash memory cards in Compact Flash and SD formats? They are already dropping under US$100 per memory card and will likely drop much further within a year. Given that we'll probably see 1 GB CF/SD cards going under US$100 within a year, they have arrived just in time for widespread adoption of the DNG file format on digital SLR's and higher-end point and shoot digital still cameras.
And for one good reason: Adobe Photoshop is pretty the de facto standard for still image processing software used by most everyone (whether on Macintoshes or PC's). As such, it would sure make image processing of uncompressed image files vastly easier to start with not having to deal with multiple RAW formats like Photoshop has to do now.
I wouldn't be surprised that all the Japanese digital still camera manufacturers start offering DNG file support within the next 18 months. And because the DNG specification is an open spec, don't be surprised that within a year some programmer will upgrade GIMP under GPL so it can read DNG image files.
By the way, given the rapidly falling prices on 512 MB flash memory cards in Compact Flash, SD and xD formats, I wouldn't be surprised that higher-end point and shoot digital still cameras will offer DNG support (it's obvious that digital SLR's will get DNG support).
Plus there is one more thing: Peter Jackson will NOT try to do another version of the three films with even longer cuts than the Extended Editions; he already understands the controversy caused by George Lucas making all those changes to the the original three Star Wars films and don't want a repeat.
Expect a release of all three Extended Editions in a box set some time in 2005.