If it's true, it's actually not a huge deal. I could mean that life spontaneously started on both Earth and Mars (Panspermia). But it's probably more likely (Occam's razor and such) that life started on either Earth or Mars and was transported via meteor to the other planet.
I would be very cool if life on Earth actually started on Mars, but it's not clear to me how we could prove which came first.
-S
I drove over to the Canaveral National Seashore for this launch. The position of the sun made it very hazy from where I was. This shot is geotagged if you're so inclined to see exactly where it was taken. I didn't see that sonic boom wave and no one I was with made any mention of it either. That's really spectacular.
FWIW, I really love this photo of the launch which was taken by a guy in the same spot where I was. It captures the Atlas V flying past the sun which I thought was perfect given the nature of this mission.
In the Nevada desert? State owned property? Then I doubt they have a legal leg to stand on. However, if it's on private property, then they can probably stipulate what gets done with the photos. Stupid? Yes. Legal? Maybe.
Photographers, print this out and carry it with you at all times: http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm. It was written by lawyers who do actually know a thing or two about photography and the law.
I was going to just mod you up, but I figured your post would soon be at 5 anyway. (if not, mod parent up!)
Yes, you're absolutely right. Lots of bad physics and a completely incorrect conclusion in that article. If there is an improvement in the thermal interface, the heatsink should get HOTTER. All of the heat goes somewhere. That's the first law of thermodynamics... conservation of energy.
You can break it down to a thermal resistance model which is functionally equivalent to an electrical resistance model. Difference in temperature is the "voltage" that drives the flow of heat (current). The heat (current) is a fixed value. The resistances are the various materials the heat has to flow through to get to the air. It can take many parallel and series paths to get out and you can build a resistance network to calculate heat flow through each "path". One way is through the IC leads, into the board, and eventually to the air... or the most direct path is through the heat spreader, through the thermal interface material, into the heatsink and eventually to the air. If the heatsink reads a lower temperature, that means less heat is flowing through the heatsink and that heat is taking a more difficult path to get out and thus the IC junction temperature is HIGHER. That's BAD.
So yes, the math doesn't add up. The thermal interface between the IC and the heatsink should be spread so thin that the thermal resistance across it is almost negligible. Thermal grease is only there generally because it's it's much higher conductivity than air and if you don't have it, all you have is air in all of the little surface imperfections of the heatsink and heat slug on the IC. Adding solid particles to the grease only serves to hold the heatsink and IC heat slug further apart, so even if it's great conductivity, it's generally the wrong thing to do.
It's time for telcos to stop being telcos and start being wireless data providers. Selling bits instead of services is fundamental to net neutrality. I know that breaks their business models, but too bad. On the iPhone, they already sell apps that use some amount of bandwidth. They shouldn't get to pick and choose the ones that affect their outdated business model. If they just sold bits and bandwidth independent of what kind of data is being carried on them, then this wouldn't be an issue and that's how it SHOULD be.
I know this isn't going to change overnight, but I fully support the FCC looking into this. It's nice to know that under the new administration they're taking a pro-consumer stance instead of pro-business stance.
These ridiculous caps are all about cable companies protecting their becoming-outdated business model. Right now, they charge for content (HBO, various extra channel packages, etc.). Customers getting high quality video (for some definitions of high quality) from places like Hulu is eventually going to eat up the cable monopoly cash cow that Time Warner Cable currently enjoys. So how do they stop it and protect their outdated business model? Caps. Insanely low transfer caps that all but eliminate high amounts of streaming video and that protect their cable company business.
If there's a reason the gov't should step in and put a stop to low transfer caps, it's this.
I yanked my photos off and I won't be putting up any more. Facebook is a reasonable place to stay in touch with friends as long as you have your privacy settings locked down, but other than that... forget it. Their backpedaling is just ridiculous. Want to make a statement? Then change the policy. Or give at least an opt-out for "No, I do not wish to grant Facebook any rights to my copyrighted materials". They can say "well, that's not really what we mean" all they want. The policy is pretty clear... post a photo or video on Facebook and they claim they can do whatever they want with it now and forever.
The advent of DVD was a huge time for consumer electronics. And Circuit City tried to hijack it with their own pay-as-you-go scheme called DIVX ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX_(Digital_Video_Express) ), not to be confused with the video codec DiVX. To put it mildly, it pissed off legions of die-hard gadget junkies... you know, the ones who advise their friends and family about technology purchases. The way the company handled that left a bad taste in the mouths of the customers they needed most...the ones who actually buy the high-tech gizmos.
Thankfully DIVX failed, but I never forgave Circuit City for that and I never spent another cent in their stores and neither did many of my friends and family because of it. I'm not alone.
The reason I don't like this is because of First Sale Doctrine. I should be able to sell these files the same way I'd sell a CD (ie, not keeping a copy). So if I sell them, and delete them, and the person I sell them to decides it's a good idea to Pirate Bay them, now what? My email address is all over the place and I did nothing illegal. Great.
So while I support Apple for going DRM free, for the time being I'll continue to buy from Amazon because they do none of this nonsense. See http://blog.wired.com/music/2007/09/some-of-amazons.html "there is no information on the tracks that identifies the customer".
So until I have a very quick and easy way of removing that info from the iTunes tracks, I won't be buying from there.
Exactly. I was interested in this game and I surely would have bought it had I not learned of the DRM issues. Thank goodness for all of the outcry and press on this otherwise I might have fallen into the trap. I'm not much of a gamer, but the reviews of this game made we want to get it (the complaints hard-core gamers had of it actually made it appeal to me). I like how Will Wright's games are about "playing" rather than "winning".
But the DRM issue made me reconsider. I surely wasn't going to just buy it and install it. I'm just fundamentally opposed to buying things that would prevent me from exercising first sale doctrine. To me, I had two options. Buy it but download the non-crippled pirated version or do nothing. I've decided to do nothing. Buying it would give them $ and they won't learn. Instead, they don't get $50 from me.
EA has done nothing to prevent piracy and by doing this they lowered the intrinsic value of the game and pissed off would-be paying customers. Nicely done, EA. This issue is costing them millions. Good.
Is P2P even all that relevant when a 1TB USB HDD costs about a hundred fifty bucks? Load drive with songs/movies/media/whatever, walk 10 ft to dorm door next to yours, select all, copy, paste, wash, rinse, repeat.
Just stop trying to pretend that it can be stopped or traced. Stop writing worthless laws to try and curtail it. It's too late. It's too easy and too widespread and P2P isn't really that much of a factor when such massive amounts of data can be transferred so quickly and cheaply by actually picking up a hard drive and carrying it to your buddy's place. It's only a matter of time before multi-terabytes of storage are on a tiny memory stick for twenty bucks. Then what?
Artists and media companies need to start offering value again (like the awesome new Paul Westerberg album available at the DRM-free Amazon MP3 store for $0.49). Like it or not, the ease of copying (illegal as it may be) has caused the value of media to plummet. The more artists (like Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, and Paul Westerberg) realize that and adjust accordingly, the better off they'll be. Instead the **AA will continue to be in the pockets of lawmakers for more continued (albeit unsuccessful) attempts to put the toothpaste back in the tube.
I know others have said this as well, but I have a 7 year old boy and he's been absolutely loves watching The Universe on The History Channel with me. After having watched almost all of the episodes over the past two seasons, he can converse far more intelligently about cosmology than most adults can.
When in the car, we also listen to the Astronomy Cast podcast. Dr. Pamela Gay does a great job of getting the science across in an informative and entertaining way without dumbing it down too much for us non professional physicists and astronomers.
Yes, a lot of it is over his head (heck, a lot of it is over my head), but he asks very intelligent questions about time, space, where everything came from, and where it's all headed, so I highly recommend those two sources.
We've tried watching reruns of Cosmos. It was an absolutely groundbreaking and stunning show 28 years ago. But by today's standards, the graphics are weak and some of the science is dated. It's amazing how much we as a species have learned about the universe we live in in that short amount of time.
If it is a government sponsored attack, then it's really not very smart. It just serves to bring attention to the issue, not bury it.
Poking at big news bureaus like this doesn't make them back down. It makes them more resolute in their reporting and possibly (probably) more biased against your cause.
The stupidity of some corporate lawyers never ceases to astound me. Surely someone must have told them that for whatever good they hope to get out of such an action, the harm could be far far worse. And as with all corporate actions of mondo ignoramo, the news will be spread far and wide. It's on/. and if it isn't already, it'll be on the front page of digg. Then ars and gizmodo and a thousand other sites.
Now what exactly did Creative have to gain by doing this? Maybe somewhere an unhappy customer who installed these drivers, and for whatever reason, they didn't work or broke something, and that ignorant but well meaning customer blames Creative. Instead what they get is legions of geeks pledging to never knowingly purchase any Creative product ever again. They get a soiled reputation. And finally, they loose the happy customers who were happy only because this guy rewrote the drivers.
If they had half a brain, they would have quietly hired him for a very handsome sum of money. If they didn't try then they deserve whatever backlash they get.
When was the last time you heard Bill Belichick (or really just about any of the New England players for that matter) thank Jesus Christ for their victories? Never, that's when.
If there is a god, trust me... (s)he doesn't give a crap about whether you win the football game or not. You win because of how you prepare and what you do on the field, not because your deity of choice made the other team miss a field goal.
There's some comments in this Time Magazine article.
Some choice ones...
"This feels like yet another death knell," emailed an A&R executive at a major European label. "If the best band in the world doesn't want a part of us, I'm not sure what's left for this business."
"That's the interesting part of all this," says a producer who works primarily with American rap artists. "Radiohead is the best band in the world; if you can pay whatever you want for music by the best band in the world, why would you pay $13 dollars or $.99 cents for music by somebody less talented? Once you open that door and start giving music away legally, I'm not sure there's any going back." Translation: "If this works, it's time to panic."
Slashdot Mirror
If it's true, it's actually not a huge deal. I could mean that life spontaneously started on both Earth and Mars (Panspermia). But it's probably more likely (Occam's razor and such) that life started on either Earth or Mars and was transported via meteor to the other planet. I would be very cool if life on Earth actually started on Mars, but it's not clear to me how we could prove which came first. -S
I drove over to the Canaveral National Seashore for this launch. The position of the sun made it very hazy from where I was. This shot is geotagged if you're so inclined to see exactly where it was taken. I didn't see that sonic boom wave and no one I was with made any mention of it either. That's really spectacular.
FWIW, I really love this photo of the launch which was taken by a guy in the same spot where I was. It captures the Atlas V flying past the sun which I thought was perfect given the nature of this mission.
-S
IANAL, but....
In the Nevada desert? State owned property? Then I doubt they have a legal leg to stand on. However, if it's on private property, then they can probably stipulate what gets done with the photos. Stupid? Yes. Legal? Maybe.
Photographers, print this out and carry it with you at all times: http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm. It was written by lawyers who do actually know a thing or two about photography and the law.
-S
FLAC and a nice pdf. That's all I want.
>I wonder what a DDoS would do to it ...
Blue face of death?
I was going to just mod you up, but I figured your post would soon be at 5 anyway. (if not, mod parent up!)
Yes, you're absolutely right. Lots of bad physics and a completely incorrect conclusion in that article. If there is an improvement in the thermal interface, the heatsink should get HOTTER. All of the heat goes somewhere. That's the first law of thermodynamics... conservation of energy.
You can break it down to a thermal resistance model which is functionally equivalent to an electrical resistance model. Difference in temperature is the "voltage" that drives the flow of heat (current). The heat (current) is a fixed value. The resistances are the various materials the heat has to flow through to get to the air. It can take many parallel and series paths to get out and you can build a resistance network to calculate heat flow through each "path". One way is through the IC leads, into the board, and eventually to the air... or the most direct path is through the heat spreader, through the thermal interface material, into the heatsink and eventually to the air. If the heatsink reads a lower temperature, that means less heat is flowing through the heatsink and that heat is taking a more difficult path to get out and thus the IC junction temperature is HIGHER. That's BAD.
So yes, the math doesn't add up. The thermal interface between the IC and the heatsink should be spread so thin that the thermal resistance across it is almost negligible. Thermal grease is only there generally because it's it's much higher conductivity than air and if you don't have it, all you have is air in all of the little surface imperfections of the heatsink and heat slug on the IC. Adding solid particles to the grease only serves to hold the heatsink and IC heat slug further apart, so even if it's great conductivity, it's generally the wrong thing to do.
-S
It's time for telcos to stop being telcos and start being wireless data providers. Selling bits instead of services is fundamental to net neutrality. I know that breaks their business models, but too bad. On the iPhone, they already sell apps that use some amount of bandwidth. They shouldn't get to pick and choose the ones that affect their outdated business model. If they just sold bits and bandwidth independent of what kind of data is being carried on them, then this wouldn't be an issue and that's how it SHOULD be.
I know this isn't going to change overnight, but I fully support the FCC looking into this. It's nice to know that under the new administration they're taking a pro-consumer stance instead of pro-business stance.
-S
OK, what am I missing here? 0.5nm is 16 times smaller than 8nm. On a 2D platter, that's 256 times more dense, not 1000 times more dense.
-S
These ridiculous caps are all about cable companies protecting their becoming-outdated business model. Right now, they charge for content (HBO, various extra channel packages, etc.). Customers getting high quality video (for some definitions of high quality) from places like Hulu is eventually going to eat up the cable monopoly cash cow that Time Warner Cable currently enjoys. So how do they stop it and protect their outdated business model? Caps. Insanely low transfer caps that all but eliminate high amounts of streaming video and that protect their cable company business.
If there's a reason the gov't should step in and put a stop to low transfer caps, it's this.
-S
I yanked my photos off and I won't be putting up any more. Facebook is a reasonable place to stay in touch with friends as long as you have your privacy settings locked down, but other than that... forget it. Their backpedaling is just ridiculous. Want to make a statement? Then change the policy. Or give at least an opt-out for "No, I do not wish to grant Facebook any rights to my copyrighted materials". They can say "well, that's not really what we mean" all they want. The policy is pretty clear... post a photo or video on Facebook and they claim they can do whatever they want with it now and forever.
This is a pretty reasonable review of the various policies of social media sites. http://amandafrench.net/2009/02/16/facebook-terms-of-service-compared/
I'll continue to post my images to flickr (lower resolution of course)... but certainly not to Facebook any longer.
-S
The advent of DVD was a huge time for consumer electronics. And Circuit City tried to hijack it with their own pay-as-you-go scheme called DIVX ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX_(Digital_Video_Express) ), not to be confused with the video codec DiVX. To put it mildly, it pissed off legions of die-hard gadget junkies... you know, the ones who advise their friends and family about technology purchases. The way the company handled that left a bad taste in the mouths of the customers they needed most...the ones who actually buy the high-tech gizmos.
Thankfully DIVX failed, but I never forgave Circuit City for that and I never spent another cent in their stores and neither did many of my friends and family because of it. I'm not alone.
-S
The reason I don't like this is because of First Sale Doctrine. I should be able to sell these files the same way I'd sell a CD (ie, not keeping a copy). So if I sell them, and delete them, and the person I sell them to decides it's a good idea to Pirate Bay them, now what? My email address is all over the place and I did nothing illegal. Great.
So while I support Apple for going DRM free, for the time being I'll continue to buy from Amazon because they do none of this nonsense. See http://blog.wired.com/music/2007/09/some-of-amazons.html "there is no information on the tracks that identifies the customer".
So until I have a very quick and easy way of removing that info from the iTunes tracks, I won't be buying from there.
-S
Nope. Everything's fine here in New Ampst
"The ground impact without parachute protection generated a very large instantaneous G event."
Yes. Very large. Free fall from 100,000 ft will generally do that.
-S
Hey! You stole my line (kinda).
(see sig)
Exactly. I was interested in this game and I surely would have bought it had I not learned of the DRM issues. Thank goodness for all of the outcry and press on this otherwise I might have fallen into the trap. I'm not much of a gamer, but the reviews of this game made we want to get it (the complaints hard-core gamers had of it actually made it appeal to me). I like how Will Wright's games are about "playing" rather than "winning".
But the DRM issue made me reconsider. I surely wasn't going to just buy it and install it. I'm just fundamentally opposed to buying things that would prevent me from exercising first sale doctrine. To me, I had two options. Buy it but download the non-crippled pirated version or do nothing. I've decided to do nothing. Buying it would give them $ and they won't learn. Instead, they don't get $50 from me.
EA has done nothing to prevent piracy and by doing this they lowered the intrinsic value of the game and pissed off would-be paying customers. Nicely done, EA. This issue is costing them millions. Good.
-S
Is P2P even all that relevant when a 1TB USB HDD costs about a hundred fifty bucks? Load drive with songs/movies/media/whatever, walk 10 ft to dorm door next to yours, select all, copy, paste, wash, rinse, repeat.
Just stop trying to pretend that it can be stopped or traced. Stop writing worthless laws to try and curtail it. It's too late. It's too easy and too widespread and P2P isn't really that much of a factor when such massive amounts of data can be transferred so quickly and cheaply by actually picking up a hard drive and carrying it to your buddy's place. It's only a matter of time before multi-terabytes of storage are on a tiny memory stick for twenty bucks. Then what?
Artists and media companies need to start offering value again (like the awesome new Paul Westerberg album available at the DRM-free Amazon MP3 store for $0.49). Like it or not, the ease of copying (illegal as it may be) has caused the value of media to plummet. The more artists (like Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, and Paul Westerberg) realize that and adjust accordingly, the better off they'll be. Instead the **AA will continue to be in the pockets of lawmakers for more continued (albeit unsuccessful) attempts to put the toothpaste back in the tube.
-S
I've never heard of BuckCherry...
You haven't missed much.
-S
I know others have said this as well, but I have a 7 year old boy and he's been absolutely loves watching The Universe on The History Channel with me. After having watched almost all of the episodes over the past two seasons, he can converse far more intelligently about cosmology than most adults can.
When in the car, we also listen to the Astronomy Cast podcast. Dr. Pamela Gay does a great job of getting the science across in an informative and entertaining way without dumbing it down too much for us non professional physicists and astronomers.
Yes, a lot of it is over his head (heck, a lot of it is over my head), but he asks very intelligent questions about time, space, where everything came from, and where it's all headed, so I highly recommend those two sources.
We've tried watching reruns of Cosmos. It was an absolutely groundbreaking and stunning show 28 years ago. But by today's standards, the graphics are weak and some of the science is dated. It's amazing how much we as a species have learned about the universe we live in in that short amount of time.
-S
If it is a government sponsored attack, then it's really not very smart. It just serves to bring attention to the issue, not bury it.
Poking at big news bureaus like this doesn't make them back down. It makes them more resolute in their reporting and possibly (probably) more biased against your cause.
-S
Yes, and being on the front page of Slashdot is a very effective way to remedy the situation.
The stupidity of some corporate lawyers never ceases to astound me. Surely someone must have told them that for whatever good they hope to get out of such an action, the harm could be far far worse. And as with all corporate actions of mondo ignoramo, the news will be spread far and wide. It's on /. and if it isn't already, it'll be on the front page of digg. Then ars and gizmodo and a thousand other sites.
Now what exactly did Creative have to gain by doing this? Maybe somewhere an unhappy customer who installed these drivers, and for whatever reason, they didn't work or broke something, and that ignorant but well meaning customer blames Creative. Instead what they get is legions of geeks pledging to never knowingly purchase any Creative product ever again. They get a soiled reputation. And finally, they loose the happy customers who were happy only because this guy rewrote the drivers.
If they had half a brain, they would have quietly hired him for a very handsome sum of money. If they didn't try then they deserve whatever backlash they get.
-S
Reason #472 that I love the Patriots.
When was the last time you heard Bill Belichick (or really just about any of the New England players for that matter) thank Jesus Christ for their victories? Never, that's when.
If there is a god, trust me... (s)he doesn't give a crap about whether you win the football game or not. You win because of how you prepare and what you do on the field, not because your deity of choice made the other team miss a field goal.
-S
-S
When in Google Earth, it's easy to shut off the new sat images and check. The old sat images aren't very clear at all, so sometimes it's hard to tell.
That said, what about this object... a wing? It doesn't seem to be there in the old sat images.
3817'31.59"N 11920'12.93"W
I've been searching for hours and other than the best things other people have posted, that's the most interesting that I've seen.