Not exactly the same...
on
X-43A Hits Mach 7
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
http://www.mech.uq.edu.au/hyper/hyshot/: As the spent motor and its attached payload falls back to Earth, they gather speed, and the trajectory is designed so that between 35km and 23km, they are travelling at Mach 7.6
http://www.uq.edu.au/news/index.phtml?article=3469: The recent HyShot(TM) launch was designed to take the scramjet engine to a speed of Mach 7.6 (or more than seven times the speed of sound) for the experiment, using a Terrier Orion rocket. The rocket and payload reached an altitude of 314km before the rocket was configured to fly in a new trajectory pointing the payload back down to earth.
HyShot was simply free-falling to earth in order to reach Mach 7.6 so the engine could be ignited. It achieved that speed regardless of whether or not the scramjet fired. The X-43 was flying horizontally, and was actually powered by the scramjet engine during a controlled flight.
So there is a difference between what was accomplished. The distinction is that HyShot achieved combustion, while the X-43 was the first scramjet powered craft to be flown.
For quite a while they had little to no competition; now they are seeing some real threats on the horizon
Right, and the beauty of this is that the competition that open source gives Microsoft cannot be competed against in an underhanded way. Specifically, Microsoft cannot bankrupt, buy out or otherwise blackmail Open Source products as they can (and do) commercial companies that compete against them.
So the only way Microsoft can deal with this threat is to truly compete and try and make their products better, which in the long run is good for the consumer. However they still cannot possibly compete with the cost of Open Source products.
If I were a Microsoft executive I certainly would be very concerned, as I'm sure they are regardless of what public front they portait.
If these RFID devices are designed to be disabled (as the current RF security tags are), then it should be an easy matter to disable thousands of tags at a pop.
The current RF security tags (RF, not magnetic or accoustic tags) work via a passive or sympathetic action. The security sensors at the store exits transmit a low power RF signal. The RF tag receives this signal, which is converted to a weak electrical charge, which in turn powers a small transmitter. If the security scanner detects a signal on the RF tag's output frequency then it sounds the alarm. To disable a tag, a signal is broadcast at the same frequency as the "input" frequency of the RF tag, except the signal strength is so strong it burns up the tag (or more specifically burns out a specific fuse-like weak link in the tag).
So my point is that RFID tags also have to be powered externally by an RF signal - they are the same as RF security tags except their output signal is modulated to include static data. If someone had equipment set up, say in their vehicle, to broadcast at a few hundred watts (or perhaps thousands of watts in a short burst), they could potentially burn out quite a few tags in the store.
I'm somewhat surprised no one is doing this currently with the RF security tags.
It's not about bragging rights, its about raw power. These processors are RISC, and do not even have floating point capability, so raw MIPS is very important. Pocket PCs can emulate everything from NES to PS1 to GBA at or about full speed. So it is not a stretch to think that consumers will be comparing the power of this device to other PDAs on the market.
Yes, a streamlined OS / GUI that is snappy even on a slow processor is a good thing, but that does nothing for performance outside of the basic PIM type functionality.
I would say not, especially in this case. According to Internet Security Software:
certain ISS products were targeted with a malicious worm based on a known vulnerability. All ISS products have had protection in place prior to the vulnerability being publicly disclosed and prior to a worm being developed in the wild.
So in other words, the ones that are being hit by this worm didn't patch their software. Of course this still reflects very poorly on ISS for a number of reasons, which would almost certainly hurt their sales.
All a spammer has to do is send spam on the behalf of companies that are not their customers and there would be no way to know which merchants should be prosecuted. Spammers muddy the water as much as possible - that is their entire means of survival.
A number of years ago (when I was reading PG texts extensively) an idea hit me for a format that would suite PG very well. The idea is to have a second meta data file that describes the.txt file. Such a beast may already exist, but here are a few points regarding such a format:
The system would accompany completely original, unaltered PG txts.
The meta data file would contain a checksum of the txt file, so the reader software would know if the file has been altered or mismatched.
The meta data would include bibliographic data.
The meta data would contain actual text formatting (for example, "turn on italics at character 12,345").
The couplets (meta data + txt) could then be run through converters to produce pdf or html, or be used in readers that understand the format natively.
Anyway my idea was to simply enhance the existing system (plain text), not replace it. Obviously this would require the creation of a WYSIWYG editor, but the formatting involved would be fairly basic and could be extended as needed. A library this extensive would warrant a format custom designed for it, as opposed to trying to drive a square peg into a round hole using existing formats (pdf, html, etc, which would introduce a whole new set of compromises).
CNN says they've found it, eh? From the CNN article:
photographic images of the area where Beagle 2 was to have come down show four bright spots, dubbed a "string of pearls" by scientists, which may be the remains of the probe.
However, Richter told a conference at the Royal Society in London Monday, the pictures were "nothing conclusive whatsoever."
Professor Colin Pillinger, the British scientist in charge of the Beagle 2 project, told the conference he doubted the image was the probe and was more likely to be "system noise" -- an error on the image.
Dan East
Re:Has the atmosphere DRASTICALLY changed in 20 yr
on
Beagle 2 Failure Theories
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
We can't accurately predict the atmosphere (weather) here on earth, even with dozens of satellites, hundreds of radar stations, and thousands of automated stations that monitor localized atmospheric conditions. How do you expect ESA to predict the weather on Beagle 2's landing day using 20 year old data?
If you'll remember, NASA adjusted the Rover's landing parameters immediately before landing, forcing the parachute to deploy sooner to compensate for lower atmospheric density. That very well may have saved the mission, because the chute still deployed at a lower altitude than expected.
Either Beagle 2's landing sequence was such that it could not be tweaked en route, or ESA overlooked the opportunity to make such an adjustment.
A final note. Many have suggested that spacecraft, such as the Mars Rovers, use nuclear power instead of solar power to vastly increase their operational lives. One of the main excuses I've seen to NOT use such power (besides the lobbying of tree-huggers) is to purposefully limit the mission lifetime, so resources can quickly be shifted to new science. However the 3 recent landings (Rovers and Beagle 2) have shown we do need to keep track of the weather on Mars a bit closer. If the rovers had a nuclear power source then once they broke down (as in not able to drive around or operate the arm), they could become fixed position weather stations. The data provided could aid in adjusting future landings, which could potentially save hundreds of millions of dollars.
Both the CNN article you referenced, as well as the articles in the story, state that the "string of pearls" is probably not the rover, and was most likely caused by cosmic radiation interfering with the camera.
Dubbed the "string of pearls", this could be the lander, perhaps entangled in its parachute. But it is more likely that the "pearls" were produced by noise in the camera, perhaps caused by cosmic rays.
I have used PayPal for 3 years now as my primary method of payment from purchasers of my software (DEXplor). In fact, it is my preferred method of payment. Why? For starters, my total fee per sale ($13.95 retail) is only 6% (3.5% + $0.35). That is cheaper than anything else available to me as a small-time independent developer. Online stores (Handango, PocketGear) charge a whopping 30%. Even eSellerate (which I also highly recommend) charges 10%.
Next, I have a PayPal Visa card that I can use to directly access the money in my PayPal account immediately after a sale, without any additional fees (even if the account is overdrawn). I find that incredibly useful. It also tends to keep my PayPal balance low (most I've ever had in there at a time was still sub-$200). That is good, in that if PayPal freezes my account I have little to lose, but bad because it is too easy to access the funds.:)
After thousands of sales I have only had one charge-back because the CC was reported stolen after the sale. My account was never closed or frozen. The money was just debited out of my account.
I'm sure others have horror stories, however as a software developer I really have nothing to lose. After all, the software licenses I sell are virtual, and are of small dollar amounts. Heck, if someone really wanted to get a license illegally they could just hunt down the cracked version of my program and save themselves the larger repercussions of credit card fraud.
So I guess what I'm trying to get at is PayPal may have its problems, specifically when dealing with actual merchandise of high dollar amounts, but for ISVs it is a very good method of processing payments. After reading this story I will just make sure I never keep large sums of money in my account (which, unfortunately, has never been a problem in the past). It would also be wise to set up a checking account specifically for use just with the PayPal account, to eliminate the risk of tying up any external funds because of PayPal issues.
Perhaps the reason Microdrives fell out of favor wasn't just the price point. With the exception of raw data transfer speed, solid state Flash memory is superior in every way. Portable devices are battery constrained, subjected to extraordinarily rough treatment and great temperature extremes. Flash memory is many times better than MicroDrive in all those critical areas.
Finally, Microdrives are fading away because flash memory capacities have been increasing as their cost decreases (in addition to the hardware advantages). All we are seeing here with the iPod Microdrives is a temporary reduction in cost-per-byte over flash memory. This artificial bubble will not last, and flash memory will (continue to) dominate in the long run.
The tool at HP tracks the spread of "infection", or more specifically, the number of blogs that contain a specific url. Why would it be surprising that many blogs would contain the same urls at around the same time? For example, an announcement is made that the Mars Rovers have found strong evidence that parts of mars were saturated with water. I would expect many bloggers to comment on that, and post a url to Nasa/JPL or Space Flight Now. So we need an HP tool to verify this type of blogging behavior?
I wasn't referring to the articles referenced in the story. I was referring to the Slashdot story itself:
"CNN is reporting that engineers will upload a software hack to decrease the recent power drain plaguing the rover Opportunity. The hack works by reducing the power supply to a poorly functioning switch." p3tersen writes "Opportunity has photographed a blue martian sunset (it's blue because of the optical scattering properties of dust in the martian atmosphere). In other news, the rovers are beginning to experience power supply problems due to the accumulation of dust on their solar panels."
The State Farm Danger Index is determined by the number of crashes at various intersections, how many of those crashes involved injury and the severity of those crashes. It is adjusted to account for the percentage of vehicles insured by State Farm in areas where the intersections are located.
I would surmise there are hundreds if not thousands of intersections in the US that could qualify as the "most dangerous in the country". The intersections in this Top Ten List simply indicate which geographic areas State Farm is dominating.
Pocket PC and Windows CE devices have been emulating PS1, GBA / GB, NES, Genesis, MAME, and many other consoles for a number of years now. Even PS1 runs incredibly fast due to the coding talent and dedication put in by various developers.
While this may be news for this specific platform and OS, emulating NES is very old hat when it comes to the world of PDAs in general.
Wouldn't OCR be more difficult in Japanese than english? With english many letters are required to create a single word, thus if individual letters are not properly recognized they can still be determined by their context within both the word and the entire sentence.
In Japanese there are fewer symbols per word, many more symbols to choose from, and symbols that contain much more detail.
So I would think OCR in Japanese would be many times more difficult than OCR in english.
Finally, you now have a phone that is only useful for scanning Japanese. If it acted like a real scanner then it would be useful for any language.
I did read the article, and my comments are completely accurate. Unfortunately you must not have made it to the 3rd paragraph, and neither did the mods that modded you up and me down.
The problem was discovered after launch. The first few fixes made the problem worse by stressing the filesystem even further.
It doesn't matter that they were trying to fix the problem. THAT WAS NOT MY POINT. The problem should have been identified and fixed before the craft was launched.
Yes, they may have taken "around" 100000 pictures. Does that mean they sequentially stored every picture in an actual rover file system? I get the impression they were only testing the cameras or the capture software, not the holistic system.
Did they first simulate filling the filesystem with files generated during the actual trip to mars? Apparently not, because the system would have failed if they had actually put the rover software through a launch to end of mission simulation here on earth when the software was developed.
...would have been to have "fixed" the problem before the hardware left earth. This "bug" (or more accurately, known limitation of the filesystem) should have been discovered here on earth if the rover had been properly tested.
The only real bug was the inability of the system to properly handle running out of file entries (or more specifically, consuming too much RAM as the number of file entries increased). However the software should have never have stressed the filesystem to that degree in the first place.
I have a hunch what we're seeing, especially in the case of the WSJ, is that people that previously subscribed to the print version of the paper are migrating to the online content for convenience.
The real question is can they attract new customers to pay for online content, as opposed to shifting existing customers from one type of media to another.
Slashdot Mirror
Since using spreadsheets is often only one step away from PowerPoint mastery, I thought it worthy of submission.
Did you forget that PowerPoint Makes You Dumb?
Dan East
http://www.mech.uq.edu.au/hyper/hyshot/:
9 :
As the spent motor and its attached payload falls back to Earth, they gather speed, and the trajectory is designed so that between 35km and 23km, they are travelling at Mach 7.6
http://www.uq.edu.au/news/index.phtml?article=346
The recent HyShot(TM) launch was designed to take the scramjet engine to a speed of Mach 7.6 (or more than seven times the speed of sound) for the experiment, using a Terrier Orion rocket. The rocket and payload reached an altitude of 314km before the rocket was configured to fly in a new trajectory pointing the payload back down to earth.
HyShot was simply free-falling to earth in order to reach Mach 7.6 so the engine could be ignited. It achieved that speed regardless of whether or not the scramjet fired. The X-43 was flying horizontally, and was actually powered by the scramjet engine during a controlled flight.
So there is a difference between what was accomplished. The distinction is that HyShot achieved combustion, while the X-43 was the first scramjet powered craft to be flown.
Dan East
For quite a while they had little to no competition; now they are seeing some real threats on the horizon
Right, and the beauty of this is that the competition that open source gives Microsoft cannot be competed against in an underhanded way. Specifically, Microsoft cannot bankrupt, buy out or otherwise blackmail Open Source products as they can (and do) commercial companies that compete against them.
So the only way Microsoft can deal with this threat is to truly compete and try and make their products better, which in the long run is good for the consumer. However they still cannot possibly compete with the cost of Open Source products.
If I were a Microsoft executive I certainly would be very concerned, as I'm sure they are regardless of what public front they portait.
Dan East
If these RFID devices are designed to be disabled (as the current RF security tags are), then it should be an easy matter to disable thousands of tags at a pop.
The current RF security tags (RF, not magnetic or accoustic tags) work via a passive or sympathetic action. The security sensors at the store exits transmit a low power RF signal. The RF tag receives this signal, which is converted to a weak electrical charge, which in turn powers a small transmitter. If the security scanner detects a signal on the RF tag's output frequency then it sounds the alarm. To disable a tag, a signal is broadcast at the same frequency as the "input" frequency of the RF tag, except the signal strength is so strong it burns up the tag (or more specifically burns out a specific fuse-like weak link in the tag).
So my point is that RFID tags also have to be powered externally by an RF signal - they are the same as RF security tags except their output signal is modulated to include static data. If someone had equipment set up, say in their vehicle, to broadcast at a few hundred watts (or perhaps thousands of watts in a short burst), they could potentially burn out quite a few tags in the store.
I'm somewhat surprised no one is doing this currently with the RF security tags.
Dan East
It's not about bragging rights, its about raw power. These processors are RISC, and do not even have floating point capability, so raw MIPS is very important. Pocket PCs can emulate everything from NES to PS1 to GBA at or about full speed. So it is not a stretch to think that consumers will be comparing the power of this device to other PDAs on the market.
Yes, a streamlined OS / GUI that is snappy even on a slow processor is a good thing, but that does nothing for performance outside of the basic PIM type functionality.
Dan East
I would say not, especially in this case. According to Internet Security Software:
certain ISS products were targeted with a malicious worm based on a known vulnerability. All ISS products have had protection in place prior to the vulnerability being publicly disclosed and prior to a worm being developed in the wild.
So in other words, the ones that are being hit by this worm didn't patch their software. Of course this still reflects very poorly on ISS for a number of reasons, which would almost certainly hurt their sales.
Dan East
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=97313&cid=8317 030
All a spammer has to do is send spam on the behalf of companies that are not their customers and there would be no way to know which merchants should be prosecuted. Spammers muddy the water as much as possible - that is their entire means of survival.
Dan East
Anyway my idea was to simply enhance the existing system (plain text), not replace it. Obviously this would require the creation of a WYSIWYG editor, but the formatting involved would be fairly basic and could be extended as needed. A library this extensive would warrant a format custom designed for it, as opposed to trying to drive a square peg into a round hole using existing formats (pdf, html, etc, which would introduce a whole new set of compromises).
Dan East
CNN says they've found it, eh? From the CNN article:
photographic images of the area where Beagle 2 was to have come down show four bright spots, dubbed a "string of pearls" by scientists, which may be the remains of the probe.
However, Richter told a conference at the Royal Society in London Monday, the pictures were "nothing conclusive whatsoever."
Professor Colin Pillinger, the British scientist in charge of the Beagle 2 project, told the conference he doubted the image was the probe and was more likely to be "system noise" -- an error on the image.
Dan East
We can't accurately predict the atmosphere (weather) here on earth, even with dozens of satellites, hundreds of radar stations, and thousands of automated stations that monitor localized atmospheric conditions. How do you expect ESA to predict the weather on Beagle 2's landing day using 20 year old data?
If you'll remember, NASA adjusted the Rover's landing parameters immediately before landing, forcing the parachute to deploy sooner to compensate for lower atmospheric density. That very well may have saved the mission, because the chute still deployed at a lower altitude than expected.
Either Beagle 2's landing sequence was such that it could not be tweaked en route, or ESA overlooked the opportunity to make such an adjustment.
A final note. Many have suggested that spacecraft, such as the Mars Rovers, use nuclear power instead of solar power to vastly increase their operational lives. One of the main excuses I've seen to NOT use such power (besides the lobbying of tree-huggers) is to purposefully limit the mission lifetime, so resources can quickly be shifted to new science. However the 3 recent landings (Rovers and Beagle 2) have shown we do need to keep track of the weather on Mars a bit closer. If the rovers had a nuclear power source then once they broke down (as in not able to drive around or operate the arm), they could become fixed position weather stations. The data provided could aid in adjusting future landings, which could potentially save hundreds of millions of dollars.
Dan East
Both the CNN article you referenced, as well as the articles in the story, state that the "string of pearls" is probably not the rover, and was most likely caused by cosmic radiation interfering with the camera.
Dubbed the "string of pearls", this could be the lander, perhaps entangled in its parachute. But it is more likely that the "pearls" were produced by noise in the camera, perhaps caused by cosmic rays.
Dan East
I have used PayPal for 3 years now as my primary method of payment from purchasers of my software (DEXplor). In fact, it is my preferred method of payment. Why? For starters, my total fee per sale ($13.95 retail) is only 6% (3.5% + $0.35). That is cheaper than anything else available to me as a small-time independent developer. Online stores (Handango, PocketGear) charge a whopping 30%. Even eSellerate (which I also highly recommend) charges 10%.
:)
Next, I have a PayPal Visa card that I can use to directly access the money in my PayPal account immediately after a sale, without any additional fees (even if the account is overdrawn). I find that incredibly useful. It also tends to keep my PayPal balance low (most I've ever had in there at a time was still sub-$200). That is good, in that if PayPal freezes my account I have little to lose, but bad because it is too easy to access the funds.
After thousands of sales I have only had one charge-back because the CC was reported stolen after the sale. My account was never closed or frozen. The money was just debited out of my account.
I'm sure others have horror stories, however as a software developer I really have nothing to lose. After all, the software licenses I sell are virtual, and are of small dollar amounts. Heck, if someone really wanted to get a license illegally they could just hunt down the cracked version of my program and save themselves the larger repercussions of credit card fraud.
So I guess what I'm trying to get at is PayPal may have its problems, specifically when dealing with actual merchandise of high dollar amounts, but for ISVs it is a very good method of processing payments. After reading this story I will just make sure I never keep large sums of money in my account (which, unfortunately, has never been a problem in the past). It would also be wise to set up a checking account specifically for use just with the PayPal account, to eliminate the risk of tying up any external funds because of PayPal issues.
Dan East
Perhaps the reason Microdrives fell out of favor wasn't just the price point. With the exception of raw data transfer speed, solid state Flash memory is superior in every way. Portable devices are battery constrained, subjected to extraordinarily rough treatment and great temperature extremes. Flash memory is many times better than MicroDrive in all those critical areas.
Finally, Microdrives are fading away because flash memory capacities have been increasing as their cost decreases (in addition to the hardware advantages). All we are seeing here with the iPod Microdrives is a temporary reduction in cost-per-byte over flash memory. This artificial bubble will not last, and flash memory will (continue to) dominate in the long run.
Dan East
The tool at HP tracks the spread of "infection", or more specifically, the number of blogs that contain a specific url. Why would it be surprising that many blogs would contain the same urls at around the same time? For example, an announcement is made that the Mars Rovers have found strong evidence that parts of mars were saturated with water. I would expect many bloggers to comment on that, and post a url to Nasa/JPL or Space Flight Now. So we need an HP tool to verify this type of blogging behavior?
Dan East
I wasn't referring to the articles referenced in the story. I was referring to the Slashdot story itself:
"CNN is reporting that engineers will upload a software hack to decrease the recent power drain plaguing the rover Opportunity. The hack works by reducing the power supply to a poorly functioning switch." p3tersen writes "Opportunity has photographed a blue martian sunset (it's blue because of the optical scattering properties of dust in the martian atmosphere). In other news, the rovers are beginning to experience power supply problems due to the accumulation of dust on their solar panels."
Dan East
The blurb fails to mention that seasonal changes on mars are resulting in less sunlight per sol. That is one of the main power issues.
Dan East
The State Farm Danger Index is determined by the number of crashes at various intersections, how many of those crashes involved injury and the severity of those crashes. It is adjusted to account for the percentage of vehicles insured by State Farm in areas where the intersections are located.
I would surmise there are hundreds if not thousands of intersections in the US that could qualify as the "most dangerous in the country". The intersections in this Top Ten List simply indicate which geographic areas State Farm is dominating.
Dan East
Pocket PC and Windows CE devices have been emulating PS1, GBA / GB, NES, Genesis, MAME, and many other consoles for a number of years now. Even PS1 runs incredibly fast due to the coding talent and dedication put in by various developers.
While this may be news for this specific platform and OS, emulating NES is very old hat when it comes to the world of PDAs in general.
Dan East
This make anyone else think of Stephen King's The Stand?
Yep, when I read this article the first thing that came to mind was an old black women with psychic powers living in the middle of a corn field.
While we're talking fiction, 28 Days Later also comes to mind.
Dan East
Wouldn't OCR be more difficult in Japanese than english? With english many letters are required to create a single word, thus if individual letters are not properly recognized they can still be determined by their context within both the word and the entire sentence.
In Japanese there are fewer symbols per word, many more symbols to choose from, and symbols that contain much more detail.
So I would think OCR in Japanese would be many times more difficult than OCR in english.
Finally, you now have a phone that is only useful for scanning Japanese. If it acted like a real scanner then it would be useful for any language.
Dan East
I did read the article, and my comments are completely accurate. Unfortunately you must not have made it to the 3rd paragraph, and neither did the mods that modded you up and me down.
The problem was discovered after launch. The first few fixes made the problem worse by stressing the filesystem even further.
It doesn't matter that they were trying to fix the problem. THAT WAS NOT MY POINT. The problem should have been identified and fixed before the craft was launched.
Yes, they may have taken "around" 100000 pictures. Does that mean they sequentially stored every picture in an actual rover file system? I get the impression they were only testing the cameras or the capture software, not the holistic system.
Did they first simulate filling the filesystem with files generated during the actual trip to mars? Apparently not, because the system would have failed if they had actually put the rover software through a launch to end of mission simulation here on earth when the software was developed.
Dan East
...would have been to have "fixed" the problem before the hardware left earth. This "bug" (or more accurately, known limitation of the filesystem) should have been discovered here on earth if the rover had been properly tested.
The only real bug was the inability of the system to properly handle running out of file entries (or more specifically, consuming too much RAM as the number of file entries increased). However the software should have never have stressed the filesystem to that degree in the first place.
Dan East
I have a hunch what we're seeing, especially in the case of the WSJ, is that people that previously subscribed to the print version of the paper are migrating to the online content for convenience.
The real question is can they attract new customers to pay for online content, as opposed to shifting existing customers from one type of media to another.
Dan East
...the keyless entry transmitter to my Ford Explorer transmits at 314.925 MHz.
Dan East
430 MHz is safely in the middle of the Amateur Radio 70 cm band (420-450 MHz), so they should be transmitting at that frequency.
Dan East