Cows are _not_ "an economically feasible meat source." At least, not in the volumes that we evil Americans are gobbling them up - there is a reason all the rain forests are disappearing. From an economic and ecological standpoint, it takes far more space and energy to get a beef burger than, say, a few chicken nuggets.
"if you would have walked down the streets of any European city in the early 1400's saying that the world was round, you would have been unanimously pronounced as factually wrong"
It has been well known that the earth is round (really spherical, but whatever) ever since the ancient greeks, perhaps earlier. Columbus sailing to the New World had absolutely nothing to do with showing the earth was round - everyone knew it was, Columbus just did his math wrong and thought it was much smaller around than it is.
The idea that Columbus showed the European world that the earth is round originates from a wonderful smear campaign (against the English? Spanish?) that used the journey as an opportunity to claim "those other stupid people didn't even know the earth was round!" The propaganda was so good (and our school systems so poor) that it is now taken as fact that nobody knew the earth was round before Columbus showed it was. He didn't even do so, just showed you could sail west and hit a continent you weren't expecting (though he did believe he had sailed to India, wasn't really the brightest guy all around).
This being slashdot, post has an error - the planet in question is not 2AU away, rather the other planet in the system is. Quoth the aricle:
"the planet had to form inside the orbit of the larger planet in the system, which orbits the star about twice as far as Earth is from the Sun."
The article is a little short on info, but states of the discovered plane "It completes its tight orbit in less than 10 days" so we can assume it is much closer to the sun.
The electorates are not "hand picked delegates" - they are elected officials. Every state elects their own electors, so the populace can decide who will decide for them. The popular election basically just tells the electors how the people want them to vote... it holds no real power, except in those states where the electorate is legally required to follow the popular vote.
Part of the problem is, most people have no idea how the electoral college works, let alone who their electors are...
Quick note: Morrowind did not have randomly generated characters, or randomly generated dungeons, or randomly generated quests. Daggerfall did, with an immense game world - for Morrowind they scaled the world back quite a bit in order to be able to hand design everything.
Morrowind was all done ahead of time, with every little thing placed there specifically. Now, you could complain that they did not put enough thought into many of the NPCs, and failed to flesh most of them out properly, and you might have a point. But that would be due to lack of time/resources/whatever during development, not due to bad random generatedness.
Slight clarification, after re-reading the link I just posted:
The Americans used pretty standard television technology for their cameras. The Russians developed a slightly different technology - still based on the 'cathode/anode tube thingy' idea, but with more sensitive equipment and a pan-n-scan technique for sending photos back. The cathode tube thingy (Photoelectron Multiplier Tube) would scan across the photo film, so that the entire image could be scanned a piece at a time, and with better clarity.
Read the above link for more info, it's pretty cool stuff. The site has quite a bit of interesting information on the Russian space program, including some enhanced and reprocessed images of Venus (previously seen on/.)
Check out the cameras used on Russian probes. They used a film camera, then 'standard' television technology to scan the picture and send it back. Not sure what the Americans used, but was probably pretty similar.
do you really expect 1M pixels raw pictures to weight 7MB?
Why yes, I do.
Assuming the 7MB image is the raw output of the CCD, that gives 56 bits per pixel brightness. That is, each grayscale bit has 56 bits worth of information.
Not that I'm saying that's what is actually going on, just that you shouldn't expect a multi-million dollar camera to stick with 8-bits per pixel. In order to get as much information as possible (including being able to use various filters to their full effect) you would want as many bits per pixel as possible. Probably one reason the CCD elements on the camera are bigger than consumer models - more light, more differentiation between different states, and more information gained.
The indictment represents the first time the government has charged that using the Internet for recruitment, fund-raising, and other purposes constitutes aid under a law that makes it illegal to provide "material support or resources" for terrorist activity. Hussayen's lawyer, David Nevin, said he believes "there is substantial question about the constitutionality of this charge," contending that operating websites falls within Hussayen's First Amendment rights. Nevin denied that Hussayen has raised money for jihad or posted calls for violence. Hussayen is accused of moderating an Arabic-language e-mail group that posted instructions on how to train at a terrorist camp and issued an "urgent appeal" to Muslims in the military last February to provide information for use in selecting terror targets.
He is not accused of posting these instructions, or even agreeing with them. They just accuse him of moderating them - did he mod them up or down?
As others have mentioned, just because someone posts something on a website you manage does not mean you are supporting them. (Slashdot example, if I posted here how to build a bomb and stuff it down GW's pants, doesn't mean CmdrTaco is a terrorist.)
Uh, this is the same resolution as the currenct MSG. From the article:
"Normally it can resolve features only down to about 3 feet (1 meter) per pixel, not good enough to discern a typical landing craft from its surroundings."
They got the additional resolution needed to see the landers by using a funkey trick, something about pitching the spacecraft at a faster speed... not very well explained in the article. But it gives a single-dimension resolution of ~20 inches/pixel.
The MSG actually only has a resolution of 1.5 meters/pixel, if the information here is correct. So The Mars Recon Orbiter camera will be a bit of an improvement, if they use the same resolution-enhancing trick. But it will only make the dot a little bigger... I doubt it will be able to confirm that the dot actually is a lander. Although, the HiRISE will have a 1-2 ft/pixel resolution at near-infrared. This could be be enough to almost make out something...
From the article: "It would be extremely difficult to find a lander for which the location is uncertain"
So basically they are saying if they know exactly where the lander is, they can point to it on a picture of mars. The only real news is the picture has enough resolution you can see the dot that is the lander. Of course, if they are wrong, it might be that dot over there... or maybe that one... or...
That said, this is pretty damn cool. Hopefully the next mission will have even better resolution cameras, and we can get a better view.
Against my better judgement (and the advice of Chollings), I have decided to bite the troll-bait and attempt to shed some light into your whitewashed mind.
First off, just because someone cites sources does not mean they have proof - or even that they looked at the sources they cite. One of the favorite tactics of the hate/fear/stupidity mongerers is to sprinkle their literature with references to other 'reliable' works. Half the time the references are not valid, and the other half they actually refute what is claimed! So check references, don't just rely on their presence.
Second, and the reason I felt the need to speak up, is your claim that capitalism has no failings. Go read a history book. Specifically look at the late 19th, early twentieth century, where capitalism created rich industrial barons using the lower classes as virtual slave labor. Some people gained a lot of wealth, as you say, but they did not have to work hard at all to keep it - they had their monopolies (government condoned, at first, but not government supported) and had no worries that someone else would rise up and challenge them. When you own all the oil production in the country, you don't have to worry about competitors. And it makes it very difficult for someone else to come along with 'innovation' unless they are already part of the privileged class - otherwise they are working in the factory 16 hours a day like everyone else. It has been shown that a pure capitalism society makes the rich rich, and the poor are the ones who 'have to work very hard'.
Not that I agree with our current system of corporate welfare, or even with the amount of socialism in our current system, but to claim that capitalism has no failings is flat out idiotic.
He only caused the seperation of church and state indirectly. He was the Head of the Church of England, as were all monarchs after him. But half the new monarchs (such as Mary) were Catholic, and didn't like the new Anglicans. The other half were Anglicans, and didn't like Catholics - so they kept killing each other. This caused quite a few people to flee the country for the Americas, where they thought it would be a good idea if the state didn't persecute based on religion - or even have anything to do with religion.
So you get a paper printout of your votes, and put it in a locked box to be counted. This is a great idea! Especially since it is exactly how things work with a plain paper ballot, no computers necessary. Pen on paper, paper in box. Scantron paper, and manually confirm if needed.
So why does everyone feel the need to introduce complex machines (computers) into this simple operation?
From a source of unknown and possibly questionable repute:
However, C was (and is) still highly useful and well worth keeping around, so a sort of extended C language was developed. This language was essentially "C and then some", or C-plus (C+). As the concepts of object-oriented programming continued to develop, C+ had to be upgraded, and became C++.
So I'm not the only one who was mistaken.
But with a little more research we find out Ch is C+. Not what I was thinking of, but interesting in its own way.
There is also a Small C+ sublanguage for developing on the Z88 portable computer. I haven't been able to find anything specifially about Small C+, but it seems to just be C with support for the proper address size on the Z88.
Of course, none of this is really what I thought I was talking about. After spending a bit of time trying to vindicate myself, it looks like what I remember as C+ is actually a set of headers to implement object oriented-ness in C. This project is a little bit newer than I thought, but is probably what my brain was triggering on.
Ok, so I was wrong about C++ being derived from C+. But I was careful not to explicitly say it was, as I wasn't sure anyway...;)
I have been unable to find any hard evidence of C+, except for a brief mention in wikipedia:
History of the Name "C++" This name is credited to Rick Mascitti (mid-1983) and was first used in December 1983. Earlier, during the research period, the developing language had been referred to as "C with Classes". The final name stems from C's "++" operator (which increments the value of a variable) and a common naming convention of using "+" to indicate an enhanced computer program, for example: "Wikipedia+". According to Stroustrup: "the name signifies the evolutionary nature of the changes from C". C+ had earlier named an unrelated program. While most C code consists of valid C++, C does not form a subset of C++.
Maybe you young-uns don't remember it (ok, I hardly do) but there _was_ a C+ language. Hence the C++, it extended on C+, which extended on C.
I don't remember everything that the language had, or didn't. But it is valid. Unless, of course, you just put it on your resume to look good - nobody ever uses it anymore, or even really did when it was current. It was superceded by C++ pretty quickly.
While you may be right from a practical standpoint, what with copyright extensions every time something is about to expire, we have this thing called the United States Constitution:
"Section 8. The Congress shall have power... To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries"
Notice the phrase "limited times" You might want to point this out to your congressman.
Unless you pay to see it, under the assumption that you will pay again to see it again. I assume that the act of purchasing the ticket institutes a legal agreement with the movie folks - You pay for one viewing, and a viewing only, with no rights to record. Same thing as going to a baseball game - they tell you not to record anything, they own all rights to dissemination (sp?).
Slashdot Mirror
Wolverine?
Short, scrappy canuk (~5 ft, if I recall)... somehow, Hugh Jackman is just a little too tall (6+ feet? come on).
Uh, no.
Cows are _not_ "an economically feasible meat source." At least, not in the volumes that we evil Americans are gobbling them up - there is a reason all the rain forests are disappearing. From an economic and ecological standpoint, it takes far more space and energy to get a beef burger than, say, a few chicken nuggets.
You're saying:
It has been well known that the earth is round (really spherical, but whatever) ever since the ancient greeks, perhaps earlier. Columbus sailing to the New World had absolutely nothing to do with showing the earth was round - everyone knew it was, Columbus just did his math wrong and thought it was much smaller around than it is.
The idea that Columbus showed the European world that the earth is round originates from a wonderful smear campaign (against the English? Spanish?) that used the journey as an opportunity to claim "those other stupid people didn't even know the earth was round!" The propaganda was so good (and our school systems so poor) that it is now taken as fact that nobody knew the earth was round before Columbus showed it was. He didn't even do so, just showed you could sail west and hit a continent you weren't expecting (though he did believe he had sailed to India, wasn't really the brightest guy all around).
Btw, I know this is all off-topic, but so what.
Hrm, someone has been stealing my 't's...
The article is a little short on info, but states of the discovered plane "It completes its tight orbit in less than 10 days" so we can assume it is much closer to the sun.
The electorates are not "hand picked delegates" - they are elected officials. Every state elects their own electors, so the populace can decide who will decide for them. The popular election basically just tells the electors how the people want them to vote... it holds no real power, except in those states where the electorate is legally required to follow the popular vote.
Part of the problem is, most people have no idea how the electoral college works, let alone who their electors are...
Quick note: Morrowind did not have randomly generated characters, or randomly generated dungeons, or randomly generated quests. Daggerfall did, with an immense game world - for Morrowind they scaled the world back quite a bit in order to be able to hand design everything.
Morrowind was all done ahead of time, with every little thing placed there specifically. Now, you could complain that they did not put enough thought into many of the NPCs, and failed to flesh most of them out properly, and you might have a point. But that would be due to lack of time/resources/whatever during development, not due to bad random generatedness.
800-850 millihertz?
I know MS products are inferior, etc, etc, but I could swear the XBox was at least as fast as an 8086 (4.4 MHz, or 4,400,000 mHz).
Or wait, did you mean 800 MHz? Oh, ok...
Insightful? I say Funny.
/. previous, the cameras on the lander are strictly black and white - colors are gained by (wait for it) using filters!
As has been discussed on
Slight clarification, after re-reading the link I just posted:
/.)
The Americans used pretty standard television technology for their cameras. The Russians developed a slightly different technology - still based on the 'cathode/anode tube thingy' idea, but with more sensitive equipment and a pan-n-scan technique for sending photos back. The cathode tube thingy (Photoelectron Multiplier Tube) would scan across the photo film, so that the entire image could be scanned a piece at a time, and with better clarity.
Read the above link for more info, it's pretty cool stuff. The site has quite a bit of interesting information on the Russian space program, including some enhanced and reprocessed images of Venus (previously seen on
Not urban legend.
Check out the cameras used on Russian probes. They used a film camera, then 'standard' television technology to scan the picture and send it back. Not sure what the Americans used, but was probably pretty similar.
do you really expect 1M pixels raw pictures to weight 7MB?
Why yes, I do.
Assuming the 7MB image is the raw output of the CCD, that gives 56 bits per pixel brightness. That is, each grayscale bit has 56 bits worth of information.
Not that I'm saying that's what is actually going on, just that you shouldn't expect a multi-million dollar camera to stick with 8-bits per pixel. In order to get as much information as possible (including being able to use various filters to their full effect) you would want as many bits per pixel as possible. Probably one reason the CCD elements on the camera are bigger than consumer models - more light, more differentiation between different states, and more information gained.
*sigh*
From the article text from your post:
The indictment represents the first time the government has charged that using the Internet for recruitment, fund-raising, and other purposes constitutes aid under a law that makes it illegal to provide "material support or resources" for terrorist activity. Hussayen's lawyer, David Nevin, said he believes "there is substantial question about the constitutionality of this charge," contending that operating websites falls within Hussayen's First Amendment rights. Nevin denied that Hussayen has raised money for jihad or posted calls for violence. Hussayen is accused of moderating an Arabic-language e-mail group that posted instructions on how to train at a terrorist camp and issued an "urgent appeal" to Muslims in the military last February to provide information for use in selecting terror targets.
He is not accused of posting these instructions, or even agreeing with them. They just accuse him of moderating them - did he mod them up or down?
As others have mentioned, just because someone posts something on a website you manage does not mean you are supporting them. (Slashdot example, if I posted here how to build a bomb and stuff it down GW's pants, doesn't mean CmdrTaco is a terrorist.)
True, but the JPL images webpage has a couple pictures of the color calibrator while _on_ mars, clearly showing the blue and green.
So the images are clearly color-doctored. Whether this is part of some grand martian conspiracy I leave as an exercise to the reader...
Err, that's MGS, Mars Global Surveyor. We aren't sending any food additives to Mars, yet...
Uh, this is the same resolution as the currenct MSG. From the article:
"Normally it can resolve features only down to about 3 feet (1 meter) per pixel, not good enough to discern a typical landing craft from its surroundings."
They got the additional resolution needed to see the landers by using a funkey trick, something about pitching the spacecraft at a faster speed... not very well explained in the article. But it gives a single-dimension resolution of ~20 inches/pixel.
The MSG actually only has a resolution of 1.5 meters/pixel, if the information here is correct. So The Mars Recon Orbiter camera will be a bit of an improvement, if they use the same resolution-enhancing trick. But it will only make the dot a little bigger... I doubt it will be able to confirm that the dot actually is a lander. Although, the HiRISE will have a 1-2 ft/pixel resolution at near-infrared. This could be be enough to almost make out something...
From the article:
"It would be extremely difficult to find a lander for which the location is uncertain"
So basically they are saying if they know exactly where the lander is, they can point to it on a picture of mars. The only real news is the picture has enough resolution you can see the dot that is the lander. Of course, if they are wrong, it might be that dot over there... or maybe that one... or...
That said, this is pretty damn cool. Hopefully the next mission will have even better resolution cameras, and we can get a better view.
Against my better judgement (and the advice of Chollings), I have decided to bite the troll-bait and attempt to shed some light into your whitewashed mind.
First off, just because someone cites sources does not mean they have proof - or even that they looked at the sources they cite. One of the favorite tactics of the hate/fear/stupidity mongerers is to sprinkle their literature with references to other 'reliable' works. Half the time the references are not valid, and the other half they actually refute what is claimed! So check references, don't just rely on their presence.
Second, and the reason I felt the need to speak up, is your claim that capitalism has no failings. Go read a history book. Specifically look at the late 19th, early twentieth century, where capitalism created rich industrial barons using the lower classes as virtual slave labor. Some people gained a lot of wealth, as you say, but they did not have to work hard at all to keep it - they had their monopolies (government condoned, at first, but not government supported) and had no worries that someone else would rise up and challenge them. When you own all the oil production in the country, you don't have to worry about competitors. And it makes it very difficult for someone else to come along with 'innovation' unless they are already part of the privileged class - otherwise they are working in the factory 16 hours a day like everyone else. It has been shown that a pure capitalism society makes the rich rich, and the poor are the ones who 'have to work very hard'.
Not that I agree with our current system of corporate welfare, or even with the amount of socialism in our current system, but to claim that capitalism has no failings is flat out idiotic.
Speaking of (off topic) inaccuracies:
Henry VIII remarried, multiple times.
He only caused the seperation of church and state indirectly. He was the Head of the Church of England, as were all monarchs after him. But half the new monarchs (such as Mary) were Catholic, and didn't like the new Anglicans. The other half were Anglicans, and didn't like Catholics - so they kept killing each other. This caused quite a few people to flee the country for the Americas, where they thought it would be a good idea if the state didn't persecute based on religion - or even have anything to do with religion.
So you get a paper printout of your votes, and put it in a locked box to be counted. This is a great idea! Especially since it is exactly how things work with a plain paper ballot, no computers necessary. Pen on paper, paper in box. Scantron paper, and manually confirm if needed.
So why does everyone feel the need to introduce complex machines (computers) into this simple operation?
From a source of unknown and possibly questionable repute:
However, C was (and is) still highly useful and well worth keeping around, so a sort of extended C language was developed. This language was essentially "C and then some", or C-plus (C+). As the concepts of object-oriented programming continued to develop, C+ had to be upgraded, and became C++.
So I'm not the only one who was mistaken.
But with a little more research we find out Ch is C+. Not what I was thinking of, but interesting in its own way.
There is also a Small C+ sublanguage for developing on the Z88 portable computer. I haven't been able to find anything specifially about Small C+, but it seems to just be C with support for the proper address size on the Z88.
Of course, none of this is really what I thought I was talking about.
After spending a bit of time trying to vindicate myself, it looks like what I remember as C+ is actually a set of headers to implement object oriented-ness in C. This project is a little bit newer than I thought, but is probably what my brain was triggering on.
Ok, so I was wrong about C++ being derived from C+. But I was careful not to explicitly say it was, as I wasn't sure anyway... ;)
I have been unable to find any hard evidence of C+, except for a brief mention in wikipedia:
History of the Name "C++"
This name is credited to Rick Mascitti (mid-1983) and was first used in December 1983. Earlier, during the research period, the developing language had been referred to as "C with Classes". The final name stems from C's "++" operator (which increments the value of a variable) and a common naming convention of using "+" to indicate an enhanced computer program, for example: "Wikipedia+". According to Stroustrup: "the name signifies the evolutionary nature of the changes from C". C+ had earlier named an unrelated program. While most C code consists of valid C++, C does not form a subset of C++.
Maybe you young-uns don't remember it (ok, I hardly do) but there _was_ a C+ language. Hence the C++, it extended on C+, which extended on C.
I don't remember everything that the language had, or didn't. But it is valid. Unless, of course, you just put it on your resume to look good - nobody ever uses it anymore, or even really did when it was current. It was superceded by C++ pretty quickly.
While you may be right from a practical standpoint, what with copyright extensions every time something is about to expire, we have this thing called the United States Constitution:
"Section 8. The Congress shall have power...
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries"
Notice the phrase "limited times"
You might want to point this out to your congressman.
Unless you pay to see it, under the assumption that you will pay again to see it again. I assume that the act of purchasing the ticket institutes a legal agreement with the movie folks - You pay for one viewing, and a viewing only, with no rights to record.
Same thing as going to a baseball game - they tell you not to record anything, they own all rights to dissemination (sp?).