I just wondered if anyone noticed that this news story is exactly the same as the one/. posted under the heading, Slow Light = Fast Computing, on January 19?
It looks like an interesting product. The most useful feature for me would be the ability to synchronize files easily between all my devices. I do have to wonder what would happen if malicious programs were shared through a tube? Sally wants to share a file that has a virus, so it instantly updates all the computers attached to the Tube. I suppose virus scanning software would work, but that wasn't covered in the demonstration.
AC: "Those aren't trinitron style monitors though. They use a shadow mask. True Trinitron monitors have the little wires that cross the screen."
ViewSonic began making monitors with Trinitron technology as soon as the patent expired. That used to be common knowledge, about 5 years ago. Here, they even name it:
"By incorporating the latest flat FD Trinitron® CRT, new fast performing video circuitry, and stringent quality processes during manufacturing, the Nokia FlatAG(TM) technology ensures the best possible image performance, color stability and user comfort available today."
Unfortunately, it appears that the 445pro is out-of-production, and it appears that most places don't make Trinitron-type monitors (which is odd, because when the patent expired, everyone jumped on that bandwagon).
Apparently, Sony still makes several monitors based on Trinitron technology, but many of them cost more than $1000 (US). Even so, I noticed that Amazon has what looks like a great deal on a Sony Trinitron 24" monitor.
Everyone *was* using the same system. The guy who did the conversion had no reason to convert to pounds, instead of kilograms. And, what is more, if all the equipment had been working in the first place, it would never have happened.
"Scientists have devised numerous possible explanations, including mini black holes left over from the Big Bang, but have had little success in producing working examples." Really? Hmm...
"Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics and the Humboldt University, both in Berlin, have used underwater electrical discharges to generate luminous plasma clouds resembling ball lightning that last for nearly half a second and are up to 20 centimetres across."
I saw this story about 2 days ago. It wasn't very impressive to me at the time, and still isn't. For one thing, all we know of the insurgent's use of Google Earth is that a suspected terrorist shelter had printouts and coordinates written on it. Someone assumes this means terrorists are using Google Earth to plan attacks. Maybe so, but what are they going to do? Plot in the coordinates in a cruise missile? What piece of equipment do terrorists have that use coordinates? So, the terrorists' mortor fire is becoming more accurate; after 4 years of shelling the same targets, wouldn't one expect as much? And, yes, the maps on Google Earth are a few years old. Many of the buildings where I live, even entire apartment complexes, were not built yet in the Google Earth photos.
Maps, whether Google Earth's or not, are useful for planning attacks in other ways. Maps can communicate where to meet, where to plant bombs, where convoys will travel, etc. But, Google probably does not have the only maps of Iraq that Iraqis can get. What are we supposed to do? Ban all maps from civilians?
"after Bush is impeached (?), will Cheney pardon him?"
No one pardoned Johnson, and he was the guy who got us deeply into Vietnam. Nixon got us out of Vietnam, and his pardon was for actions that had nothing to do with Vietnam.
Frosty Piss: "This is a great example of non-news being used in an attempt to stir up some Patents Suck shit here."
You could take that view of the story, but I always perk up my ears when I heard anything on this technology. I have been waiting for it to be commercialized for about 15 years. I saw this particularly story, though, a week or 2 ago, maybe longer.
lenne: "There is also the 'Gimli Glider,' an which ran out of fuel because of the fuel was calculated in pounds instead of liters."
That's a great simplification of what happened. It leaves out the fact that the fuel gauge did not work, so the flight crew had to calculate how much fuel was loaded. But, the flight crew could not simply measure the volume of fuel loaded. No, they first had to take a sounding of the depth of fuel in centimeters, convert that to volume in liters, then to weight in kilograms. Now, a mistake could easily have been made at any of those conversions; it just happened that on the last conversion, someone converted to pounds instead of kilograms. As far as examples of problems caused by converting between standard and metric systems, this one is not the best.
I laugh every time I watch John Fitzgibbon in that clip firmly state, "From now on, none of its 767s will be allowed to leave the airport unless all of its fuel gauges and measuring systems are working."
The difference appears to be that this prototype only applies power to the section of the sheet on which the device is placed, instead of to the entire device. Supposedly, this results in a greater amount of power able to reach the device being charged. I am wondering how much of an improvement in performance this really is?
I read a news story last year--I think it was in the "Dallas Morning News"--that was about the need for more lunar simulant, but it mentioned a researcher at the University of Texas at Dallas. I actually made a few trips to UTD to talk with this guy. I considered for a while the possibility of starting a small company to produce lunar simulant, but I eventually decided that it is out of my means.
I was tired of my old music club (BMG Music, a real club, not a file-sharing network), so I looked around the Web for a replacement. My Music Inc was highly recommended by a certain Website, iComparer, so I decided to give them a try. iComparer even noted that My Music Inc offers a money back guarantee.
I attempted to pay my membership fee using my credit card, but the My Music Inc website had disabled the link; I could not specify the card type, and attempts to submit the card returned a message saying that an error had occurred, please try an alternate payment method. So, I elected to use PayPal. My Music Inc. actually uses ClickBank to transfer money from PayPal.
I was extremely displeased to find that My Music Inc offers nothing more than a collection of share/freeware and instructions for sharing media files. I asked for a refund through the My Music Inc refund form. Then, I heard nothing for a week. I attempted to contact ClickBank, but I still could not get a reply. So, I filed a complaint with PayPal. Still nothing. After another week, I asked PayPal to arbitrate. Within a few hours, they sent me a reply that my claim was declined, because,
'As stated in our User Agreement, the claims process only applies to the shipment of goods. It does not apply to complaints about the attributes or quality of goods received. Therefore, we are unable to reverse this transaction or issue a refund.'
The PayPal e-mail noted, though, that,
'PayPal does not tolerate fraud or illegal activities. Your complaint has been noted in the record of the PayPal user you reported. If we find this user has violated our policies, we will investigate and take appropriate action. If this occurs, you may be contacted in the future about the status of this complaint.'
This is not the first time that PayPal has rejected my claim. In fact, of the 3 times that I have complained, they have always rejected my claim. So, as you might imagine, I am annoyed with them. Of course, I am much, much more annoyed with My Music Inc, iComparer and ClickBank.
What you call vision actually is wishful thinking. Your statement of what you find hard to believe is really an Argument from Incredulity. As for reality springing from science fiction, you should carefully consider that virtually everything that became real after science fiction speculated on it were put in the fiction by the author who researched what scientists found promising. Even at that, most of the ideas in science fiction are nonsense, when taken at face value. But, because of wishful thinking and romantic detachment from reality, some people like to think that science fiction is a modern day prophet of what will be. Even some of the science fiction authors don't like that perspective; they are writing to illustrate a point, not to predict the future.
Noteably, every extra-solar planet discovered so far is so inhospitable to life that it would be difficult for anything to survive on them even briefly. Pure chance suggests that if billions of planets do orbit sun-like stars, at least one of them might have a climate suitable for life. That does not mean it would have life, though. A point of fact, we do not know of any mechanism that would allow life to arise spontaneously. We are only guessing that life on Earth arose spontaneously, simply because we have no other physically likely explanation for our existance. So, any talk of the probability of non-Earth life is foolishness; every bit of evidence of any type that we have found so far suggests that the probability is zero. It isn't even close.
Spinning liquids to form mirrors works on Earth because Earth's gravity acts perpendicular to the plane of spin. We would need some way of replicating those two forces in space. All the methods I know about would cost more than simply launching a solid mirror.
A method of putting cheap mirrors into space that I proposed to my physics mentor a few decades ago is to use inflatable mirrors. He brushed off the idea at the time. Now, though, NASA has research on the general concept:
Heir Of The Mess: Why do highly instinctive creatures need memory to survive?
Because environmental conditions that are unique to each generation of animal cannot be solved by instinct.
Heir Of The Mess: Ants probably don't have much memory, but their programming enables them to function effectively, as well as enabling the group to act as a whole.
Ants need good memory to find their way back home from food. No, not all ants simply follow a chemical trail.
"Biologist Thomas Collett of the University of Sussex in England and his colleagues trained wood ants to walk along a wall to test if the insects also use visual clues.
"Like honeybees, ants stick to familiar routes but are flexible in choosing between routes.
"When ants were placed in a Y-shaped maze with a walls on each side, unfed ants also learned to choose the food path."
The term, "Dark Ages" is generally shunned by historians as it calls up inaccurate stereotypes.
"This concept of a 'Dark Age' was created by Italian humanists and was originally intended as a sweeping criticism of the character of Late Latin literature.... Most modern historians dismiss the notion that the era was a 'Dark Age' by pointing out that this idea was based on ignorance of the period combined with popular stereotypes: many previous authors would simply assume that the era was a dismal time of violence and stagnation and use this assumption to prove itself.
"In Britain and the United States, the phrase 'Dark Ages' has occasionally been used by professionals, with severe qualification, as a term of periodization. This usage is intended as non-judgmental and simply means the relative lack of written record, 'silent' as much as 'dark.'"
The Roman Empire collapsed at least partially as a consequence of Romans using barbarians (ancestors of France and Germany) to fill their menial jobs, particularly in the military and government services. The reason that 410 A.D. is sometimes considered the start of the Dark Ages is that year the barbarians (Vandals, Visigoths, etc.) destroyed the City of Rome.
At some point in the 5th Century, the rule of Western Roman Emperors over the Western Roman Empire generally is believed to have ended, with the result of the general breakup of the Western Roman Empire. Or not:
"The traditional date of the fall of the Roman Empire is September 4, 476 when Romulus Augustus, the Emperor of the Western Roman Empire was deposed. However, many historians question this date, and use other benchmarks to describe the 'Fall.' Why the Empire fell seems to be relevant to every new generation, and a seemingly endless supply of theories are discussed on why it happened, or indeed if it happened at all."
The history of the Dark Ages is not as simple as religion versus science. The people who coined the term, "medieval," that is, the humanists, were not necessarily a religious force, but they were opposed to intellectual rigor. As a consequence, scientific inquiry under the humanists declined. (see "EVALUATIONS OF MEDIEVAL CULTURE: The Renaissance View of the Middle Ages," Macquarie University http://www.humanities.mq.edu.au/Ockham/x5201.html )
The previous poster is quite correct that the reason that we have this scientific document today is that some monk wrote over it. You should not fault the monk for that; in the 19th Century, many European explorers were just as happy to burn piles of papyrus documents that lay strewn all about in the trash, so they could smell the odor, losing for us uncountable history in the process. The monk's re-use of the writing surface was standard practice for all sorts of writing uses for thousands of years, because writing materials were expensive. I recall that some of the great early modern European astronomers wrote their observations on a piece of wood, which they sanded down when they were finished, so they could re-use the board.
"if you really were as innocent as you claim, you would have taken your chance before a jury."
That's an arrogant thing to say. If you have the choice between a small chance of severe punishment on one hand and much less severe punishment on the other, most people would opt for the less-severe punishment. Why gamble? Why do so many companies, for example, settle out of court? Is it because they are really guilty, and this is an easy way out? I know that is not always the case. Sometimes, the risk is simply not worth the principle.
I went over to my shiny new Dell e510 and retook the test. I got exactly the same score the second time; 50 milliseconds. Again, I kept confusing up and down.
I heard the clicking noise a few times, too, but I assume that is due to defects in my computer, or my Internet connection. Sometimes, signals get cut off along the way, you know, and that's the sort of thing you hear when they do.
The computer I used for this test tends to do a core dump if I download a lot of data at one time (e.g., large photo files, streaming video, switching between too many Web browser windows in too short a time, etc.).
I got 50 milliseconds on the test. That's a bit odd, considering that sometimes, I can tell shapes of objects from the sounds I hear from them. I will say that most of my mistakes on the test came from a sort of auditory dislexia; I confused up and down. I could hear the difference, I just was confused about the direction.
Slashdot Mirror
I just wondered if anyone noticed that this news story is exactly the same as the one /. posted under the heading, Slow Light = Fast Computing, on January 19?
It looks like an interesting product. The most useful feature for me would be the ability to synchronize files easily between all my devices. I do have to wonder what would happen if malicious programs were shared through a tube? Sally wants to share a file that has a virus, so it instantly updates all the computers attached to the Tube. I suppose virus scanning software would work, but that wasn't covered in the demonstration.
VPN does not perform automatic synchronization. Tubes is supposed to do so.
AC: "Those aren't trinitron style monitors though. They use a shadow mask. True Trinitron monitors have the little wires that cross the screen."
ViewSonic began making monitors with Trinitron technology as soon as the patent expired. That used to be common knowledge, about 5 years ago. Here, they even name it:
"By incorporating the latest flat FD Trinitron® CRT, new fast performing video circuitry, and stringent quality processes during manufacturing, the Nokia FlatAG(TM) technology ensures the best possible image performance, color stability and user comfort available today."
ViewSonic: 445pro
Unfortunately, it appears that the 445pro is out-of-production, and it appears that most places don't make Trinitron-type monitors (which is odd, because when the patent expired, everyone jumped on that bandwagon).
Apparently, Sony still makes several monitors based on Trinitron technology, but many of them cost more than $1000 (US). Even so, I noticed that Amazon has what looks like a great deal on a Sony Trinitron 24" monitor.
Everyone *was* using the same system. The guy who did the conversion had no reason to convert to pounds, instead of kilograms. And, what is more, if all the equipment had been working in the first place, it would never have happened.
"if I could find someone who still made Trinitron style monitors (say 22" or larger) I would buy one in a heartbeat."
That is very large for CRTs. ViewSonic still sells CRT monitors, but only up to 21".
ViewSonic CRT Monitors
The largest CRT that I could find from any manufacturer is only 22". I'm using a 19" monitor at home.
"Scientists have devised numerous possible explanations, including mini black holes left over from the Big Bang, but have had little success in producing working examples." Really? Hmm...
"Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics and the Humboldt University, both in Berlin, have used underwater electrical discharges to generate luminous plasma clouds resembling ball lightning that last for nearly half a second and are up to 20 centimetres across."
Physicists create great balls of fire 07 June 2006
"Now, however, researchers in Israel have built a system that can create lightning balls in the lab."
Great balls of lightning 9 February 2006
I saw this story about 2 days ago. It wasn't very impressive to me at the time, and still isn't. For one thing, all we know of the insurgent's use of Google Earth is that a suspected terrorist shelter had printouts and coordinates written on it. Someone assumes this means terrorists are using Google Earth to plan attacks. Maybe so, but what are they going to do? Plot in the coordinates in a cruise missile? What piece of equipment do terrorists have that use coordinates? So, the terrorists' mortor fire is becoming more accurate; after 4 years of shelling the same targets, wouldn't one expect as much? And, yes, the maps on Google Earth are a few years old. Many of the buildings where I live, even entire apartment complexes, were not built yet in the Google Earth photos.
Maps, whether Google Earth's or not, are useful for planning attacks in other ways. Maps can communicate where to meet, where to plant bombs, where convoys will travel, etc. But, Google probably does not have the only maps of Iraq that Iraqis can get. What are we supposed to do? Ban all maps from civilians?
"after Bush is impeached (?), will Cheney pardon him?"
No one pardoned Johnson, and he was the guy who got us deeply into Vietnam. Nixon got us out of Vietnam, and his pardon was for actions that had nothing to do with Vietnam.
Frosty Piss: "This is a great example of non-news being used in an attempt to stir up some Patents Suck shit here."
You could take that view of the story, but I always perk up my ears when I heard anything on this technology. I have been waiting for it to be commercialized for about 15 years. I saw this particularly story, though, a week or 2 ago, maybe longer.
lenne: "There is also the 'Gimli Glider,' an which ran out of fuel because of the fuel was calculated in pounds instead of liters."
That's a great simplification of what happened. It leaves out the fact that the fuel gauge did not work, so the flight crew had to calculate how much fuel was loaded. But, the flight crew could not simply measure the volume of fuel loaded. No, they first had to take a sounding of the depth of fuel in centimeters, convert that to volume in liters, then to weight in kilograms. Now, a mistake could easily have been made at any of those conversions; it just happened that on the last conversion, someone converted to pounds instead of kilograms. As far as examples of problems caused by converting between standard and metric systems, this one is not the best.
I laugh every time I watch John Fitzgibbon in that clip firmly state, "From now on, none of its 767s will be allowed to leave the airport unless all of its fuel gauges and measuring systems are working."
And, if we come back in a few months, will that little speck be in the same place, or is it endlessly circling Sojourner?
MyHair: "Wasn't there some Mars craft that is hurtling aimlessly in space now?"
There are several Mars probes that match that description, but you are probably thinking of the billion-dollar Mars Observer, which was lost in 1993.
FYI, more than half of the missions launched to Mars have failed. Many of those failures continued sailing on through space.
The difference appears to be that this prototype only applies power to the section of the sheet on which the device is placed, instead of to the entire device. Supposedly, this results in a greater amount of power able to reach the device being charged. I am wondering how much of an improvement in performance this really is?
I read a news story last year--I think it was in the "Dallas Morning News"--that was about the need for more lunar simulant, but it mentioned a researcher at the University of Texas at Dallas. I actually made a few trips to UTD to talk with this guy. I considered for a while the possibility of starting a small company to produce lunar simulant, but I eventually decided that it is out of my means.
I was tired of my old music club (BMG Music, a real club, not a file-sharing network), so I looked around the Web for a replacement. My Music Inc was highly recommended by a certain Website, iComparer, so I decided to give them a try. iComparer even noted that My Music Inc offers a money back guarantee.
I attempted to pay my membership fee using my credit card, but the My Music Inc website had disabled the link; I could not specify the card type, and attempts to submit the card returned a message saying that an error had occurred, please try an alternate payment method. So, I elected to use PayPal. My Music Inc. actually uses ClickBank to transfer money from PayPal.
I was extremely displeased to find that My Music Inc offers nothing more than a collection of share/freeware and instructions for sharing media files. I asked for a refund through the My Music Inc refund form. Then, I heard nothing for a week. I attempted to contact ClickBank, but I still could not get a reply. So, I filed a complaint with PayPal. Still nothing. After another week, I asked PayPal to arbitrate. Within a few hours, they sent me a reply that my claim was declined, because,
'As stated in our User Agreement, the claims process only applies to the shipment of goods. It does not apply to complaints about the attributes or quality of goods received. Therefore, we are unable to reverse this transaction or issue a refund.'
The PayPal e-mail noted, though, that,
'PayPal does not tolerate fraud or illegal activities. Your complaint has been noted in the record of the PayPal user you reported. If we find this user has violated our policies, we will investigate and take appropriate action. If this occurs, you may be contacted in the future about the status of this complaint.'
This is not the first time that PayPal has rejected my claim. In fact, of the 3 times that I have complained, they have always rejected my claim. So, as you might imagine, I am annoyed with them. Of course, I am much, much more annoyed with My Music Inc, iComparer and ClickBank.
BTW, I own eBay stock. Business is business.
What you call vision actually is wishful thinking. Your statement of what you find hard to believe is really an Argument from Incredulity. As for reality springing from science fiction, you should carefully consider that virtually everything that became real after science fiction speculated on it were put in the fiction by the author who researched what scientists found promising. Even at that, most of the ideas in science fiction are nonsense, when taken at face value. But, because of wishful thinking and romantic detachment from reality, some people like to think that science fiction is a modern day prophet of what will be. Even some of the science fiction authors don't like that perspective; they are writing to illustrate a point, not to predict the future.
Noteably, every extra-solar planet discovered so far is so inhospitable to life that it would be difficult for anything to survive on them even briefly. Pure chance suggests that if billions of planets do orbit sun-like stars, at least one of them might have a climate suitable for life. That does not mean it would have life, though. A point of fact, we do not know of any mechanism that would allow life to arise spontaneously. We are only guessing that life on Earth arose spontaneously, simply because we have no other physically likely explanation for our existance. So, any talk of the probability of non-Earth life is foolishness; every bit of evidence of any type that we have found so far suggests that the probability is zero. It isn't even close.
Spinning liquids to form mirrors works on Earth because Earth's gravity acts perpendicular to the plane of spin. We would need some way of replicating those two forces in space. All the methods I know about would cost more than simply launching a solid mirror.
A method of putting cheap mirrors into space that I proposed to my physics mentor a few decades ago is to use inflatable mirrors. He brushed off the idea at the time. Now, though, NASA has research on the general concept:
NASA Tech: Parabolic Membrane-Thickness Variation for Inflatable Mirror
A Google search for inflatable mirrors turns up many more results.
I must have missed when someone on this thread supported the idea of nuclear winter with a peer-reviewed scientific article.
Heir Of The Mess: Why do highly instinctive creatures need memory to survive?
1 6/ants-051117.htmlCBC: Empty stomach, visual memory guides ants to food
Because environmental conditions that are unique to each generation of animal cannot be solved by instinct.
Heir Of The Mess: Ants probably don't have much memory, but their programming enables them to function effectively, as well as enabling the group to act as a whole.
Ants need good memory to find their way back home from food. No, not all ants simply follow a chemical trail.
"Biologist Thomas Collett of the University of Sussex in England and his colleagues trained wood ants to walk along a wall to test if the insects also use visual clues.
"Like honeybees, ants stick to familiar routes but are flexible in choosing between routes.
"When ants were placed in a Y-shaped maze with a walls on each side, unfed ants also learned to choose the food path."
http://www.cbc.ca/story/science/national/2005/11/
The term, "Dark Ages" is generally shunned by historians as it calls up inaccurate stereotypes.
... Most modern historians dismiss the notion that the era was a 'Dark Age' by pointing out that this idea was based on ignorance of the period combined with popular stereotypes: many previous authors would simply assume that the era was a dismal time of violence and stagnation and use this assumption to prove itself.
_ Empire
"This concept of a 'Dark Age' was created by Italian humanists and was originally intended as a sweeping criticism of the character of Late Latin literature.
"In Britain and the United States, the phrase 'Dark Ages' has occasionally been used by professionals, with severe qualification, as a term of periodization. This usage is intended as non-judgmental and simply means the relative lack of written record, 'silent' as much as 'dark.'"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages
The Roman Empire collapsed at least partially as a consequence of Romans using barbarians (ancestors of France and Germany) to fill their menial jobs, particularly in the military and government services. The reason that 410 A.D. is sometimes considered the start of the Dark Ages is that year the barbarians (Vandals, Visigoths, etc.) destroyed the City of Rome.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Middle_Ages
At some point in the 5th Century, the rule of Western Roman Emperors over the Western Roman Empire generally is believed to have ended, with the result of the general breakup of the Western Roman Empire. Or not:
"The traditional date of the fall of the Roman Empire is September 4, 476 when Romulus Augustus, the Emperor of the Western Roman Empire was deposed. However, many historians question this date, and use other benchmarks to describe the 'Fall.' Why the Empire fell seems to be relevant to every new generation, and a seemingly endless supply of theories are discussed on why it happened, or indeed if it happened at all."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_Roman
The history of the Dark Ages is not as simple as religion versus science. The people who coined the term, "medieval," that is, the humanists, were not necessarily a religious force, but they were opposed to intellectual rigor. As a consequence, scientific inquiry under the humanists declined. (see "EVALUATIONS OF MEDIEVAL CULTURE: The Renaissance View of the Middle Ages," Macquarie University http://www.humanities.mq.edu.au/Ockham/x5201.html )
The previous poster is quite correct that the reason that we have this scientific document today is that some monk wrote over it. You should not fault the monk for that; in the 19th Century, many European explorers were just as happy to burn piles of papyrus documents that lay strewn all about in the trash, so they could smell the odor, losing for us uncountable history in the process. The monk's re-use of the writing surface was standard practice for all sorts of writing uses for thousands of years, because writing materials were expensive. I recall that some of the great early modern European astronomers wrote their observations on a piece of wood, which they sanded down when they were finished, so they could re-use the board.
"if you really were as innocent as you claim, you would have taken your chance before a jury."
That's an arrogant thing to say. If you have the choice between a small chance of severe punishment on one hand and much less severe punishment on the other, most people would opt for the less-severe punishment. Why gamble? Why do so many companies, for example, settle out of court? Is it because they are really guilty, and this is an easy way out? I know that is not always the case. Sometimes, the risk is simply not worth the principle.
I went over to my shiny new Dell e510 and retook the test. I got exactly the same score the second time; 50 milliseconds. Again, I kept confusing up and down.
I heard the clicking noise a few times, too, but I assume that is due to defects in my computer, or my Internet connection. Sometimes, signals get cut off along the way, you know, and that's the sort of thing you hear when they do.
The computer I used for this test tends to do a core dump if I download a lot of data at one time (e.g., large photo files, streaming video, switching between too many Web browser windows in too short a time, etc.).
I got 50 milliseconds on the test. That's a bit odd, considering that sometimes, I can tell shapes of objects from the sounds I hear from them. I will say that most of my mistakes on the test came from a sort of auditory dislexia; I confused up and down. I could hear the difference, I just was confused about the direction.
And the head of NASA reports directly to the President.
If I'm not mistaken, NASA reports directly to the Vice-President.