Scene: A wispy cloud scuds across the sunny blue sky. Not much happening, and the cloud is hardly even black.
Chicken Little: The sky is falling! The Sky is falling!
The Penguin DictatorNo, not really. It might fall, but it's very, very unlikely. So calm down!
Chicken Little: I strongly disagree.
The sky is falling! And because you do not understand the problem we're all going to die!
The Penguin Dictator:Listen here. It's almost certainly not going to fall, and I need to worry about real problems!
Chicken Little: (Runs screaming to the nearest coffeehouse with free wireless, where he types incessently:) The sky is falling! The Sky is falling! Tell Slashdot! Tell Tom's Hardware! Tell Cnet! Tell Linux Business News!
The Penguin Dictator: Sigh. (And then he gets back to work. He looks up at the audience) They just do not get it, do they?
The Windows Dark Lord: (Rubs hands together) Excellent, MOST excellent. (Yelling) Bring me my marketing minion!
Marketing Minion: (being drug in by a bald guy yelling at him) Yes, O Master!?
The Windows Dark Lord:Tell all the peasants that the sky is raining huge chunks of fire and dung! Tell everyone, tell them now! And have our independent consultants work on this day and night, night and day! Make sure that they independently tell everyone that they can easily avoid falminf chunks of sky dung if they stand behind our Windows! And RAISE the price!
Some Guy At Some House In Some City Somewhere: "Wow, that was easy. Let me send this up to the Penguin Dictator. No sky ever fell, and that cloud is easily blown away. Nothing happening here, move along."
The Penguin Dictator "Well that was easy. Include this patch in the next day's weather update!"
Marketing Minion: Press Release!!! Millions killed by falling flaming sky chunks of burning dung with brain eating worms who eat children!!! Run for your lives!!!!
Laura Didio, munching a do-nut"If you would hide behind Windows, the sky would stop falling! Your children would be safer and the world a better place." (looks at stoick ticker, says to self) 'Excellent. MOST excellent. Bring me a donut!'
The Penguin Dictator "Sigh. Why didn't I just keep Sky 0.7a for myself? Why the bother, wy the bother?"
EPILOGUE: No one was ever hurt by the piece of sky that never fell, and Chicken Little kept looking upward for another cloud to rant about.
This is not exactly new technology, it's just that Macrovision is trying to monetize it. Of course, who's going to protest the patent?
But then again, it is Macrovision, and Macrovision has a long and sordid history of injecting 'security' technologies that do much more harm than good, and at the end of the day are bypassable except by the painfully incompetent. Even the painfully incompetent were able to find the filter for the original Macrovision videotape "protection" -- and this before the internet had been commercialized. At the end of the day, it just annoyed more than hurt folks who were pursuing "novel" uses of content.
Look at this way: Adobe uses Macrovision's SafeCast to protect Photoshop CS and now CS2. It does not take too much looking around to find 1) the applications and 2) numerous ways to get around it.
At the end of the day, Macrovision is a slow, old cat, and the mice they chase are not only faster, they are smarter too.
Nikon has not asserted any ownership of your images. This outcry has come from the general bitching that everyone has with the encryption issue. Everyone's falsely concluding that just because something is encrypted in the file that that means that Nikon owns your image. How absurd is that! My guess is that there's more than just white balance that is encrypted in the file.
Yes, let's get the facts straight:
1. Nikon has obfusticated some of the data I produce with their camera.
2. Nikon tells me this is for my own good.
3. Nikon has restrictions on it's SDK such that despite your assertations it is not for the asking, otherwise Bibble and Capture One would have licensed them. And as an end user, even in Japanese-English I am not a "bona fide" developer. I am a person who diddles with writing their own software for their own purposes.
4. Under DMCA provisions, it is illegal for to reverse engineer the data I produce with the camera.
5. Nikon sells a product called Capture, that performs extremely poorly and essentially cripples a computer from doing anything but run Capture while it is in batch operation.
I never said Nikon owns my image per se, but instead they own the key to my white balance data, which is carefully set by me when I am out shooting. Since I use the Preset WB, why would I want anything but "as shot" -- after all, using an ExpoDisc, I set it correctly in the field.
In other words, MY DATA is the white balance information. It is as integral to the photograph as the image itself. Nikon is telling me that I cannot easily or freely access my data. They say that they have the key and I cannot have it.
While you are correct about disk cameras and to a degree APS cameras, my comment is based upon SLRs and now DSLRs.
It's been so long since I used an Instamatic-style camera I often overlook the the low end of the market.:-)
Certainly even the D50 would not be the 'low-end' of Nikon's digital line...it's aimed at the entry market for folks transitioning to DSLRs. I can guarantee you that the target for my camera, the D2X, is the pro market.
Speaking as a Nikon D2X owner (the new $5,000 12 Megapixel Nikon DSLR):
Nikon released a statement late last week regarding the "encryption" (not technically encryption, but instead, obfustication) of the RAW format (NEF) photo data taken with a D2X camera:
Nikon's Statement of NEF Formats
As a proprietary format, Nikon secures NEF's structure and processing through various technologies. Securing this structure is intended for the photographer's benefit, and dedicated to ensuring faithful reproduction of the photographer's creative intentions through consistent performance and rendition of the images. [emphasis was added by me] Discussions propagated on the internet suggesting otherwise are misinformed about the unique structure of NEF.
Nikon: You Are Wrong. Period. And do not insult me by lying.
Update: Nikon has removed this statement from their web site.
The thing that galls me about Nikon's statement is that Nikon is essentially telling me that I need to use their processing solution, or one that they approve, or not use the NEF format at all.
They can wax poetic in PR legalese all they want, but at the end of the day, all I am reading is that Nikon is saying that my data is for me to use as they see fit. No, Nikon, it is not.
A camera is an instrument to take a photograph, and that's all. Now, however, the coming of age of digital has married irrevocably cameras and software. Without software, a digital camera is absolutely useless. It produces nothing tangible, and to make that photograph anything more than a small image on the LCD screen on the back of the camera, you simply must have software.
That said, if the images are now aetherial bits, do they not still belong to us, the photographers, or our assignees?
I think the answer to that is yes. They certainly would if they were film images. And has any camera manufacturer ever mandated what film processing methods must be used with photographs taken with their camera? No. It would have been insane for one to even try.
And this is insane now.
As such, I think that the SDK should be freely available to anyone who asks for it, and at the very least, to any owner of a Nikon digital camera. Why should I not be allowed to write my own software? Because Nikon says that I can't, as I am not a 'bona fide' developer? Do I need to be one, to write applications to fiddle with my own images?
No. The data are mine.
Let me use a real world example: I photograph a lot of panoramics. I use Panorama Tools a great deal of the time to stitch those programs together. Now then, PTools does not have an embedded interface for NEF files, especially D2X NEF files. Let's say that I wanted to open my NEF files and input them programmatically into Panorama Tools. With this press release, Nikon is telling me that I cannot have the information to do the task I want to do. In other words, sod off, pay us to play.
This whole issue reminds me much of Gillette, the razor company, when their mantra was "sell the razor cheap and the blades at a high price." Instead this time, it is "sell the camera high and continue to reach into their pockets to allow the photographer to use his/her pictures. Use our software, or someone we like, or do not use your data as you see fit."
Worst of all, this has been enabled by the US government, what with the asinine provision of the Digital Milleneum Copyright Act. The DCMA makes it illegal to reverse engineer encrypted files. Bottom line is that one can argue that NEF files are not encrypted, but in reality, they are, because the data are obfusticated...and without Nikon's blessing, one risks enormous civil fines and prison to bypass Nikon's methods.
I hope at the end of the day Nikon is punished severely by the marketplace for this. I truly hope that Canon makes a point to point out in their marketing that not only do they not charge for their RAW conversion tools but that developers can get the information they need to extend the capabilities of Canon cameras.
That sounds severe, but the only thing Nikon will understand is a beat-down from their potential customers. And this time, Nikon deserves a black eye.
Think of the progression in the trilogy, "Lord of the Rings" -- the main character, Frodo Baggins, starts as an ingenue, takes on the task, and at the end, once he realizes the true power of the Ring, decides that he will keep it for himself. Of course, there is a twist of fate and a happy ending, but one thing was for certain: Frodo was seduced by the power the Ring offered.
The same thing will likely happen to Google, though the term 'evil' may a bit overused. Google is a public company now, and like all public companies, they have a responsibility to maximize shareholder value. If the directors of the company will not do this, the board has a responsibility to put in place people who will.
That said, Google will become more like Microsoft and more like Adobe over time. They will try to protect their market share, they will try to prevent the entry of others into their market space that they perceive as a threat. And, given the world's propensity to pull for the "little guy" Google will in turn be perceived (rightly or wrongly) as a bully, a bad guy and therefore -- evil.
This is a natural progression for successful startups. Microsoft did not begin as a huge monolith, it was a small company that one could send an e-mail to the founders and usually get a reply. It was also a decent company from a service standpoint. They grew, their market grew and the service got a lot less personal and the stakes got a whole lot bigger. Thirty years later, they are thought of as a James Bond villain.
All I can say about a Canon camera is "you better not drop it."
I have had several cameras from both manufacturers, and both have their charms and their curses. To say, however, that Nikons digitals are not very good is extremely uninformed and probably spoken by someone who has not used a Nikon camera.
Further, it is inane to compare later models of any manufacturer to the previous models of another one. When the D100 came out, it was a very good prosumer camera. Sure, Canon came out with better cameras later...and so did Nikon!
As for the D2X, the new flagship camera, professionals are saying that the Nikon is a match for the EOS IDs Mark II. Spare me the relatively ignorant statement that the Canon has more MP (16) than the D2x (12), and I will spare you the science of most lenses not having the resolution to support much more than 12MP in any case.
Full frame is not really all that important, save for the very few that need exceptionally tight control over their depth of field. Of course, there are digital solutions for that as well, and at the end of the day, the D2X is every bit as good a picture taker as the new EOS, plus it is more ergonomic, has a larger LCD, mounts more lenses and is $3000+ cheaper to boot!
Both are exceptional cameras, and both belong in the hands of professionals or at least very well healed amateurs. Both groups are likely to put lenses that are good enough to match the bodies beneath them, both are likely to take exceptional photographs when used properly.
Canon makes great cameras, but at the end of the day, if I can save $3000 on a very similar and sometimes better camera that is easier to use and is probably more robust to the daily abuse I will expose it to as a professional photographer, then that company will get my check, and that company is Nikon.
As for the whole ACR controversy, I could care less as I have Nikon Capture anyway.
I am a D2X owner, and use Nikon Capture because it does a better job with.NEF files than does Adobe PS CS's RAW converter.
I also used NC with my D100, even though PS CS could open those files, because the Nikon Capture program did a better job.
Where Adobe's tool is better is the chromatic abberation tool, and more easily adjusted settings. However, with CS2, those changes are easy enough with or without the conversion.
I do think Nikon is being silly, but then again, Nikon Capture *is* an ostensible Photoshop competitor, but even as such, it does have a DDE pipeline to Photoshop as it has an "Open with Photoshop" menu selection.
There are two must-have upgrade reasons to get PS CS 2:
1. 64-bit for performance and file size 2. To add your camera if you have a new one.
The first, 64-bit, is noticably missing from PS CS 2. Adobe is saying that CS2 will "prepare for 64-bit" -- whatever that means -- but that it is still a 32-bit app.
The second, is to add support for new cameras that have come out that were not included in the last RAW plug-in. The new Nikon D2X is notably in the list.
Dear Mr. Schwartz,
Apparently you have not read your own literature. I refer you to the web page at
http://www.sun.com/2004-0803/feature/
In which you state:
"3.Aug.04--Customers who want the stability and security of the Solaris Operating System and the flexibility to also use Linux applications won't have to wait much longer. The forthcoming Solaris 10 Operating System (OS) will include a remarkable new feature that allows customers to run Linux applications unchanged on the Solaris OS.
By enabling this functionality, code-named Project Janus, administrators can create an environment for running a range of Linux applications at near-native speeds. Sun is offering Project Janus as an optional kernel service of the Solaris OS, enabling administrators to run Linux applications in a new and unique way on x86 platforms. In keeping with Sun's long-standing support of industry standards, Project Janus is designed for compliance with the Linux Standard Base specification.
Ergo, if your version of *Nix was as compatible as you claim, there is no issue at all.
Thanks for taking the time to write, and while I have your attention, how are efforts to open Java for improvements by the open source community coming?
If you look at the likes of Britney Spears, Christina Aguillerra and the like, it would follow that the systems the music industry is using to pick out the 'hist of tommorow' like skin, and lots of it.
You're right, and they have a Mir trainer or mock-up inside that's quite cool.
Another great space stop is the Smithsonian. Last time I saw some of the stuff there, it was on leaving the pad down at KSC. That and the 1903 Flyer make the trip to DC worth the time and money.
Convair/Ehricke Nova design using standard tank/engine modules of 4.9 m diameter in both first and second stages; 4 F-1 engine/modules in first stage, 4 J-2 engine/modules in second stage. LEO Payload: 68,000 kg. to: 556 km Orbit. Payload: 27,000 kg. to a: escape trajectory. Liftoff Thrust: 2,721,480 kgf. Liftoff Thrust: 26,688.60 kN. Total Mass: 1,866,600 kg. Core Diameter: 9.80 m. Total Length: 78.00 m.
Nova -A Specifications.
he Nova was to be our Manned Mars exploration lifting body. It would be powerful enough to lift the "landing party" and ALL of their supporting equipment, out of the Terrestrial gravity well. One must remember that at this point in time, rockets were blowing up with apalling frequency on or near the launch site, so designing these spacecraft took an incredible leap of faith. In most cases, these designs are based on then-existing technologies, such as the F-1 liquid-fueled rocket engine, or the J-2 second stage liquid fueled rocket engine. Some avant guarde technology was envisioned, though - note solid-rocket boosters on some of the larger NASA design variants of the Nova.
Also notable is the presence of several nuclear powered rockets. Nuclear power for rocket design was abandoned because it was felt that technology would not support the development of such a craft until certain base technologies became viable. The primary technology necessary was related to the development of a safe containment capability that would house the nuclear reactor and requisite material, and keep it safe from ANY damage imaginable - and some of the unimaginable ! Such technology is still beyond our capabilities.
Note the Aerospike design at the very bottom image - Martin Marietta Advanced Designs - anotated R10R-2, with 424 K thrust. The aerospike is a timeless design that gets dusted off and retried every time the technologies are deemed to have advanced sufficiently far enough. Does it look familiar ? Like the inlet to a high-speed jet engine (ala SR-71) ? The aerospike had its contibutions to both technologies !
Here's some inglorious snaps of the Kennedy Space Center preservation of the Saturn V that I did back in the "bad old days" of using only a 3MP digital.
To say the least, it is an awesome job that they did. In Huntsville, there are two Saturn V's, albeit one erect, the other on it's side. Both are outside. I have photos of those too, and will put them on my site tonight. Check back if you are interested.
The quote at the bottom of the article is telling:
"It is not a matter of if--it is a matter of when. As long as I have the technology in my living room to watch it for myself, I can modify the system to extract the video. They can make it hard, but they can't make it impossible."
How true. In other words, a lock only keeps an honest man honest, a thief will find a way to pick the lock and steal what you have.
Seemingly ever since there have been personal computers, there have been one form or another of copy protection. Usage such as backup copies (critical in the floppy days, nearly as much so with CDs and DVDs) have always been looked down upon by the content providers, and at the end of the day, all of the barricades that they have thrown at the user have eventually been thwarted and bypassed. Now comes HD-DVD and the same principle. I suppose some never learn from the past.
Working against the encryption is the simple fact that on the average, computers get more and more powerful (for a given price point), and that their encryption must remain a relative constant due to compatibility. That said, it is only a matter of time before the encryption is overwhelmed and utterly defeated. This will happen again, always has, and always will. One only has to look at the DirecTV versus the signal pirates to see that. Coupled with human nature, that is, to show and share a "dirty little secret" -- disaster for the encryption advocate. After all, are theyu going to disable dozens of models of players, and disable their own market in the process, not to mention alienating the hell out of their customers? No, no and no.
The key to copy protection is to make the content affordable enough to make the inconvenience of counter-enryption not worth doing. They (the collective they) never seem to get that, and they always seem dumbfounded that their elaborate measures are made to look foolish. Perhaps with realistic pricing, enhanced value they would find that most people find it easier to be honest, and not bother with cloning over-priced half-rate films and music. After all, that's their only realistic choice, but the one that they dread making the most.
I feel lucky that I was able to see every Saturn launch in person, the I's the V's even the Skylab and SATP. They were maginificent birds, powerful and mighty. To see one in person was to know the most awesome machine ever built in the history of humanity.
I cite Ford and Carter because even then we had *some* of the momentum from the Apollo days, and with a little push, the engineers and technicians would have come back and had us on Mars by 1990, or 2000 at the latest. Some may scoff at that now, but simple fact is that they would have scoffed at Kennedy in 1961 on the onset of the moon effort. With Nova in service, Mars could have been had. As it is now, we cannot even launch a single astronaut into LEO with American hardware. That's something Mercury could do, but not us in 2004.
If we started to design a new capsule today, it would be at least eight years before it was man-rated and into regular service. But don't believe me, look at NASA's own studies. Even Burt Rutan says that designing and fabricating an orbital spacecraft is no simple task.
So your assertation of "merely design[ing] a new capsule to put on top of the rocket" is specious at best. There is no "mere" when it comes to designing, testing and deploying space hardware. You could use the shuttle as an example of that. The idea of "kludging" a Soyuz on top of an American launch platform is entirely ignorant, it would require nearly the same design considerations as an all-new platform...not to mention the cost of purchasing the latter from the Russians, and for each launch.
If we were to do that, it would probably be better to dust off and update the Apollo capsules and mate them to Saturn I-Bs for LEO. The V is far too big a beast for orbital missions only...not to mention the $3+ BILLION/US a copy it would cost to construct and operate one.
In these times, the budget requires us to make use of what we have now. The point of the shuttle being the only man-capable AMERICAN spacecraft available stands, because it is a stone cold fact.
Finally, I am no fan of the Shuttle. It was a compromise from the beginning and not what NASA wanted. Nixon required military adaptations to the proposed program such that it made it a vehicle that NASA essentially had forced down their throats. It should have been replaced after Challenger, as the Shuttle is the only American launch system in our space history to use solids on a man-rated platform. It cost the lives of the Challenger 78, and the aforementioned compromnises were essentially the problem with Columbia.
Instead, we should embark on a smaller re-usable spacecraft program that was indeed meant to ferry humans and small loads of cargo back and forth to orbit and leave the heavy lifting to expendable vehicles, one where the EVs have a 45-odd year history of success.
Good points. Unfortuntely, there are no launchable S-Vs, no infrastructure, and not even many engineers familiar with the system left to build or launch one. In short, Nixon, Ford and Carter were fools for throwing away the best launch system the world has ever seen.
Think of what may have been if Von Braun had been allowed to proceed with Nova. It made the Saturn V look like a bottle rocket.
For one thing, the Space Shuttle is the only American man-rated launch system in service (well, nearly in service) today. The last one has not been used since the Apollo-Soyuz joint mission, and there is no tooling or production facilities to build an Apollo-style capsule or launch vehicle to carry it aloft.
Secondly, there are still missions that require both heavy lifting and human beings. For example, if NASA were to choose to repair the HST using a non-robotic mission, it would be the Shuttle that carried the repairmen aloft.
IIRC, IBM recently partnered with Novell/SuSe, and that alone would make a pretty convincing case to look at that particular distro, in either a SOHO or Enterprise environement. Coupled with IBM's services group, server hardware products the SuSe's enterprise class distro is a robust a complete product. And, IBM, after all has one of the largest services group in the industry.
Me, I switched away from Red Hat when they did away with their RHL9 support some time ago. I have never looked back and see no reason whatsoever to look at the OS's that Sun touts as "the choices" in their blog-vertisements.
I feel so sorry for the poor -- they won't be able to receive TV after the analog signals are no longer on the air. Right. Drive through the poorest part of West Virginia and count the DirecTV dishes. Better be able to count high -- real high.
Even though it is another country, I vividly remember a bus trip through the Yucatan in Mexico. Those people are poor -- their houses were often nothing more than mud and straw, and they had nothing. Nothing, that is, except for the ubiquitous satellite dish.
Most of the country already receives it's television through digital means -- be it cable or sattelite, you almost always end up going through "a TV box" to get your programs. While it is not 85% (yet) it is most. Thus, the market has already spoken for those calling for it to do so.
HDTV is making inroads, and is quickly reaching critical mass. Most all major network programming is in HDTV, and this year, finally Fox has joined the fray. Given a few years, it is reasonable to assume that HDTV will be the defacto standard. In my town (Ralwigh NC) we get 19 HD channels on cable. Four OTA. Again, the market is speaking.
The only ones left out are the Luddites who do not want to replace their gear and want to receive their signal over the air. And since they are in the minority, why are we catering to them? Why not set a date and only mandate that a D->A converter be available for sale?
Having a television is not an entitlement, after all. If everyone else can have their taxes reduced by the government gaining income from spectrum lease, the quicker the better. Then, some of the money we all now send to Washington could be spent in our communities and spur on the economy of those areas.
The F/OSS world is built largely on trust. We could debate contracts, indemnification and other legal instruments all day, but at the end of that day, Linux and other major F/OSS project circle right back to trust.
Bruce Perens would do well to remember all that IBM has done for Linux, from a technical standpoint, to a marketing one, finally to a legal one. Had SCO chosen a smaller company, say a Red Hat, they would have had a far better chance of winning their lawsuit - because lawsuits come bak to money, and with Microsoft's filthy lucre in their vaults, SCO would have had more than Red Hat and thus a better chance in court. Instead, it was IBM that committed the resources, legal, financial and corporate, to keep Linux alive.
That said, their intention is clear -- IBM wants Linux to succeed and to become a major player in at least the data center. It has, and with the numerous and important contributions to the kernel and other ancillary tools, Linux is now close to being the equal of the evolved UNIx's -- Solaris, for example. Without IBM, would Linux be much more than a small server or hobbyist's tool?
IBM's word is good enough for me for now. Sure, I would love to see their promise etched in stone, but their word has been good before, we should believe it good now.
Finally, about their reservation of their right to sue, if they need: let's not forget that IBM also makes closed source software. They should preserve the right, should they need to use it, to prevent a competitor or even business ally from contribution of proprietary code to the Linux base. After all, even though IBM is a great friend of Linux and open source generally, they also need to preserve other revenue streams. All that they said was that they would do just that, and that's not a bad thing in my view.
Thanks, IBM, for saying you wouldn't hammer Linux with your wide portfolio. I hope it puts pressure on other companies to do the same. Microsoft would do well to follow suit -- they have benefitted from OSS whether they want to admit it or not, and they should not try to kill what has fed them either.
"Rock star"? Neil certainly was not that. He was (and is) an exceptionally gifted engineer and pilot, and a man who did the job the best he could. He was also an humble man, as evidenced by his lack of visibility in the years after Apollo 11.
Neil was a brilliant man doing a tough, dangerous job. He did so cooly and with professionalism. That's why he was America's best civilian test pilot prior to his stint in NASA. That's also why he was the best choice to lead Apollo 11 into the rare air where the great explorers are.
Few people today realize the danger and risk that was involved in the moon missions. Think of this: look at how far technology, from it's most basic levels of materials science and mathematics have evolved *since* 1969. The Saturn V was arguably the most powerful machine built in all of recorded human history (that was not a bomb) and to this day, no launch vehicle has ever matched it's sheer lifting capaibility. It had the power of a small atomic weapon, and three men would climb on top and strap their butts to it. All with less computing power than your car.
They did it, and they did it with bravery. Not the kind of foolish bravery associated with a glory hound, but the kind of quiet bravery that marks a true HERO in every sense of the world.
I was there, and I said goodbye to Apollo 11 from five miles away as she lifted into the skies of a sunny Florida morning. I knew one of the men on the machine, and I had four family members who had important jobs that got them to the moon and back safely.
I am proud of them all, and they all had their roles. Aldrin may have been seeking glory, that is for history to decide. Nevertheless, the best choice was Armstrong, and as a result, his name belongs with Columbus, Erikkson and other great explorers who opened the doorway for all humanity to place that none had been before.
Perhaps it will take a century or more for history to truly appreciate the scope of that they did.
I have not digitized all that I can find as of yet, but my family and I are working on a project to put all of my Grandfather's and (after him) my Father's papers and photographs from Cape Kennedy through the Apollo effort as well as Mercury and Gemini.
http://www.ausoleil.org/exhibits/vlpinson
A little background:
My Grandfather, V.L. Pinson, was Chief Telemetry Officer as well as MIS Manager for Cape Kennedy in the 1960's, not to mention duties he performed in the 1950's at ABMA (Army Ballastic Missile Agency) in Huntsville, and White Sands prior to that. While it is very incomplete, mainly because he died in 1988, we're continue to work on this and those interested in some of the minutae of space history might enjoy reading through some of the peronal effects of someone who was there.
PS: I saw Apollo 11 launch in 1969. We lived in Titusville, and saw the launch from the Bennett Causeway. Dad had a better view: As Missile Commander in charge of astronaut safety, he was in a foreward blockhouse about one kilometer from the launch itself. He and his team were there to provide rescue services for the astronauts had something gone wrong and Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins had needed to escape the launch vehicle.
As it was, Apollo 11 broke windows in my house, which was 6.5 nautical miles from the launch pad. Most Saturn V launches did.
It was a great thing going to sleep at night by light of a floodlit missile that was pointed at the moon. Even better was going fishing as a young child with my Grandfather's buddies -- Debus, Armstrong, Grissom, Scott Carpenter, a few others.
Slashdot Mirror
Scene: A wispy cloud scuds across the sunny blue sky. Not much happening, and the cloud is hardly even black.
Chicken Little: The sky is falling! The Sky is falling!
The Penguin DictatorNo, not really. It might fall, but it's very, very unlikely. So calm down!
Chicken Little: I strongly disagree. The sky is falling! And because you do not understand the problem we're all going to die!
The Penguin Dictator:Listen here. It's almost certainly not going to fall, and I need to worry about real problems!
Chicken Little: (Runs screaming to the nearest coffeehouse with free wireless, where he types incessently:) The sky is falling! The Sky is falling! Tell Slashdot! Tell Tom's Hardware! Tell Cnet! Tell Linux Business News!
The Penguin Dictator: Sigh. (And then he gets back to work. He looks up at the audience) They just do not get it, do they?
The Windows Dark Lord: (Rubs hands together) Excellent, MOST excellent. (Yelling) Bring me my marketing minion!
Marketing Minion: (being drug in by a bald guy yelling at him) Yes, O Master!?
The Windows Dark Lord:Tell all the peasants that the sky is raining huge chunks of fire and dung! Tell everyone, tell them now! And have our independent consultants work on this day and night, night and day! Make sure that they independently tell everyone that they can easily avoid falminf chunks of sky dung if they stand behind our Windows! And RAISE the price!
Some Guy At Some House In Some City Somewhere: "Wow, that was easy. Let me send this up to the Penguin Dictator. No sky ever fell, and that cloud is easily blown away. Nothing happening here, move along."
The Penguin Dictator "Well that was easy. Include this patch in the next day's weather update!" Marketing Minion: Press Release!!! Millions killed by falling flaming sky chunks of burning dung with brain eating worms who eat children!!! Run for your lives!!!!
Laura Didio, munching a do-nut"If you would hide behind Windows, the sky would stop falling! Your children would be safer and the world a better place." (looks at stoick ticker, says to self) 'Excellent. MOST excellent. Bring me a donut!'
The Penguin Dictator "Sigh. Why didn't I just keep Sky 0.7a for myself? Why the bother, wy the bother?"
EPILOGUE: No one was ever hurt by the piece of sky that never fell, and Chicken Little kept looking upward for another cloud to rant about.
The End.
This is not exactly new technology, it's just that Macrovision is trying to monetize it. Of course, who's going to protest the patent?
But then again, it is Macrovision, and Macrovision has a long and sordid history of injecting 'security' technologies that do much more harm than good, and at the end of the day are bypassable except by the painfully incompetent. Even the painfully incompetent were able to find the filter for the original Macrovision videotape "protection" -- and this before the internet had been commercialized. At the end of the day, it just annoyed more than hurt folks who were pursuing "novel" uses of content.
Look at this way: Adobe uses Macrovision's SafeCast to protect Photoshop CS and now CS2. It does not take too much looking around to find 1) the applications and 2) numerous ways to get around it.
At the end of the day, Macrovision is a slow, old cat, and the mice they chase are not only faster, they are smarter too.
Nikon has not asserted any ownership of your images. This outcry has come from the general bitching that everyone has with the encryption issue. Everyone's falsely concluding that just because something is encrypted in the file that that means that Nikon owns your image. How absurd is that! My guess is that there's more than just white balance that is encrypted in the file.
Yes, let's get the facts straight:
1. Nikon has obfusticated some of the data I produce with their camera.
2. Nikon tells me this is for my own good.
3. Nikon has restrictions on it's SDK such that despite your assertations it is not for the asking, otherwise Bibble and Capture One would have licensed them. And as an end user, even in Japanese-English I am not a "bona fide" developer. I am a person who diddles with writing their own software for their own purposes.
4. Under DMCA provisions, it is illegal for to reverse engineer the data I produce with the camera.
5. Nikon sells a product called Capture, that performs extremely poorly and essentially cripples a computer from doing anything but run Capture while it is in batch operation.
I never said Nikon owns my image per se, but instead they own the key to my white balance data, which is carefully set by me when I am out shooting. Since I use the Preset WB, why would I want anything but "as shot" -- after all, using an ExpoDisc, I set it correctly in the field.
In other words, MY DATA is the white balance information. It is as integral to the photograph as the image itself. Nikon is telling me that I cannot easily or freely access my data. They say that they have the key and I cannot have it.
While you are correct about disk cameras and to a degree APS cameras, my comment is based upon SLRs and now DSLRs.
:-)
It's been so long since I used an Instamatic-style camera I often overlook the the low end of the market.
Certainly even the D50 would not be the 'low-end' of Nikon's digital line...it's aimed at the entry market for folks transitioning to DSLRs. I can guarantee you that the target for my camera, the D2X, is the pro market.
Nikon released a statement late last week regarding the "encryption" (not technically encryption, but instead, obfustication) of the RAW format (NEF) photo data taken with a D2X camera:
Nikon: You Are Wrong. Period. And do not insult me by lying.Update: Nikon has removed this statement from their web site.
The thing that galls me about Nikon's statement is that Nikon is essentially telling me that I need to use their processing solution, or one that they approve, or not use the NEF format at all.
They can wax poetic in PR legalese all they want, but at the end of the day, all I am reading is that Nikon is saying that my data is for me to use as they see fit. No, Nikon, it is not.
A camera is an instrument to take a photograph, and that's all. Now, however, the coming of age of digital has married irrevocably cameras and software. Without software, a digital camera is absolutely useless. It produces nothing tangible, and to make that photograph anything more than a small image on the LCD screen on the back of the camera, you simply must have software.
That said, if the images are now aetherial bits, do they not still belong to us, the photographers, or our assignees?
I think the answer to that is yes. They certainly would if they were film images. And has any camera manufacturer ever mandated what film processing methods must be used with photographs taken with their camera? No. It would have been insane for one to even try.
And this is insane now.
As such, I think that the SDK should be freely available to anyone who asks for it, and at the very least, to any owner of a Nikon digital camera. Why should I not be allowed to write my own software? Because Nikon says that I can't, as I am not a 'bona fide' developer? Do I need to be one, to write applications to fiddle with my own images?
No. The data are mine.
Let me use a real world example: I photograph a lot of panoramics. I use Panorama Tools a great deal of the time to stitch those programs together. Now then, PTools does not have an embedded interface for NEF files, especially D2X NEF files. Let's say that I wanted to open my NEF files and input them programmatically into Panorama Tools. With this press release, Nikon is telling me that I cannot have the information to do the task I want to do. In other words, sod off, pay us to play.
This whole issue reminds me much of Gillette, the razor company, when their mantra was "sell the razor cheap and the blades at a high price." Instead this time, it is "sell the camera high and continue to reach into their pockets to allow the photographer to use his/her pictures. Use our software, or someone we like, or do not use your data as you see fit."
Worst of all, this has been enabled by the US government, what with the asinine provision of the Digital Milleneum Copyright Act. The DCMA makes it illegal to reverse engineer encrypted files. Bottom line is that one can argue that NEF files are not encrypted, but in reality, they are, because the data are obfusticated...and without Nikon's blessing, one risks enormous civil fines and prison to bypass Nikon's methods.
I hope at the end of the day Nikon is punished severely by the marketplace for this. I truly hope that Canon makes a point to point out in their marketing that not only do they not charge for their RAW conversion tools but that developers can get the information they need to extend the capabilities of Canon cameras.
That sounds severe, but the only thing Nikon will understand is a beat-down from their potential customers. And this time, Nikon deserves a black eye.
Think of the progression in the trilogy, "Lord of the Rings" -- the main character, Frodo Baggins, starts as an ingenue, takes on the task, and at the end, once he realizes the true power of the Ring, decides that he will keep it for himself. Of course, there is a twist of fate and a happy ending, but one thing was for certain: Frodo was seduced by the power the Ring offered.
The same thing will likely happen to Google, though the term 'evil' may a bit overused. Google is a public company now, and like all public companies, they have a responsibility to maximize shareholder value. If the directors of the company will not do this, the board has a responsibility to put in place people who will.
That said, Google will become more like Microsoft and more like Adobe over time. They will try to protect their market share, they will try to prevent the entry of others into their market space that they perceive as a threat. And, given the world's propensity to pull for the "little guy" Google will in turn be perceived (rightly or wrongly) as a bully, a bad guy and therefore -- evil.
This is a natural progression for successful startups. Microsoft did not begin as a huge monolith, it was a small company that one could send an e-mail to the founders and usually get a reply. It was also a decent company from a service standpoint. They grew, their market grew and the service got a lot less personal and the stakes got a whole lot bigger. Thirty years later, they are thought of as a James Bond villain.
All I can say about a Canon camera is "you better not drop it."
I have had several cameras from both manufacturers, and both have their charms and their curses. To say, however, that Nikons digitals are not very good is extremely uninformed and probably spoken by someone who has not used a Nikon camera.
Further, it is inane to compare later models of any manufacturer to the previous models of another one. When the D100 came out, it was a very good prosumer camera. Sure, Canon came out with better cameras later...and so did Nikon!
As for the D2X, the new flagship camera, professionals are saying that the Nikon is a match for the EOS IDs Mark II. Spare me the relatively ignorant statement that the Canon has more MP (16) than the D2x (12), and I will spare you the science of most lenses not having the resolution to support much more than 12MP in any case.
Full frame is not really all that important, save for the very few that need exceptionally tight control over their depth of field. Of course, there are digital solutions for that as well, and at the end of the day, the D2X is every bit as good a picture taker as the new EOS, plus it is more ergonomic, has a larger LCD, mounts more lenses and is $3000+ cheaper to boot!
Both are exceptional cameras, and both belong in the hands of professionals or at least very well healed amateurs. Both groups are likely to put lenses that are good enough to match the bodies beneath them, both are likely to take exceptional photographs when used properly.
Canon makes great cameras, but at the end of the day, if I can save $3000 on a very similar and sometimes better camera that is easier to use and is probably more robust to the daily abuse I will expose it to as a professional photographer, then that company will get my check, and that company is Nikon.
As for the whole ACR controversy, I could care less as I have Nikon Capture anyway.
I am a D2X owner, and use Nikon Capture because it does a better job with .NEF files than does Adobe PS CS's RAW converter.
I also used NC with my D100, even though PS CS could open those files, because the Nikon Capture program did a better job.
Where Adobe's tool is better is the chromatic abberation tool, and more easily adjusted settings. However, with CS2, those changes are easy enough with or without the conversion.
I do think Nikon is being silly, but then again, Nikon Capture *is* an ostensible Photoshop competitor, but even as such, it does have a DDE pipeline to Photoshop as it has an "Open with Photoshop" menu selection.
There are two must-have upgrade reasons to get PS CS 2:
1. 64-bit for performance and file size
2. To add your camera if you have a new one.
The first, 64-bit, is noticably missing from PS CS 2. Adobe is saying that CS2 will "prepare for 64-bit" -- whatever that means -- but that it is still a 32-bit app.
The second, is to add support for new cameras that have come out that were not included in the last RAW plug-in. The new Nikon D2X is notably in the list.
Apparently you have not read your own literature. I refer you to the web page at
http://www.sun.com/2004-0803/feature/
In which you state:
"3.Aug.04--Customers who want the stability and security of the Solaris Operating System and the flexibility to also use Linux applications won't have to wait much longer. The forthcoming Solaris 10 Operating System (OS) will include a remarkable new feature that allows customers to run Linux applications unchanged on the Solaris OS. By enabling this functionality, code-named Project Janus, administrators can create an environment for running a range of Linux applications at near-native speeds. Sun is offering Project Janus as an optional kernel service of the Solaris OS, enabling administrators to run Linux applications in a new and unique way on x86 platforms. In keeping with Sun's long-standing support of industry standards, Project Janus is designed for compliance with the Linux Standard Base specification.
Ergo, if your version of *Nix was as compatible as you claim, there is no issue at all.
Thanks for taking the time to write, and while I have your attention, how are efforts to open Java for improvements by the open source community coming?
Signed,
IBM
If you look at the likes of Britney Spears, Christina Aguillerra and the like, it would follow that the systems the music industry is using to pick out the 'hist of tommorow' like skin, and lots of it.
You're right, and they have a Mir trainer or mock-up inside that's quite cool.
Another great space stop is the Smithsonian. Last time I saw some of the stuff there, it was on leaving the pad down at KSC. That and the 1903 Flyer make the trip to DC worth the time and money.
Nova -A Specifications.
he Nova was to be our Manned Mars exploration lifting body. It would be powerful enough to lift the "landing party" and ALL of their supporting equipment, out of the Terrestrial gravity well. One must remember that at this point in time, rockets were blowing up with apalling frequency on or near the launch site, so designing these spacecraft took an incredible leap of faith. In most cases, these designs are based on then-existing technologies, such as the F-1 liquid-fueled rocket engine, or the J-2 second stage liquid fueled rocket engine. Some avant guarde technology was envisioned, though - note solid-rocket boosters on some of the larger NASA design variants of the Nova.
Also notable is the presence of several nuclear powered rockets. Nuclear power for rocket design was abandoned because it was felt that technology would not support the development of such a craft until certain base technologies became viable. The primary technology necessary was related to the development of a safe containment capability that would house the nuclear reactor and requisite material, and keep it safe from ANY damage imaginable - and some of the unimaginable ! Such technology is still beyond our capabilities.
Note the Aerospike design at the very bottom image - Martin Marietta Advanced Designs - anotated R10R-2, with 424 K thrust. The aerospike is a timeless design that gets dusted off and retried every time the technologies are deemed to have advanced sufficiently far enough. Does it look familiar ? Like the inlet to a high-speed jet engine (ala SR-71) ? The aerospike had its contibutions to both technologies !
Nova - Project Overview
Here's some inglorious snaps of the Kennedy Space Center preservation of the Saturn V that I did back in the "bad old days" of using only a 3MP digital.
To say the least, it is an awesome job that they did. In Huntsville, there are two Saturn V's, albeit one erect, the other on it's side. Both are outside. I have photos of those too, and will put them on my site tonight. Check back if you are interested.
"It is not a matter of if--it is a matter of when. As long as I have the technology in my living room to watch it for myself, I can modify the system to extract the video. They can make it hard, but they can't make it impossible."
How true. In other words, a lock only keeps an honest man honest, a thief will find a way to pick the lock and steal what you have.
Seemingly ever since there have been personal computers, there have been one form or another of copy protection. Usage such as backup copies (critical in the floppy days, nearly as much so with CDs and DVDs) have always been looked down upon by the content providers, and at the end of the day, all of the barricades that they have thrown at the user have eventually been thwarted and bypassed. Now comes HD-DVD and the same principle. I suppose some never learn from the past.
Working against the encryption is the simple fact that on the average, computers get more and more powerful (for a given price point), and that their encryption must remain a relative constant due to compatibility. That said, it is only a matter of time before the encryption is overwhelmed and utterly defeated. This will happen again, always has, and always will. One only has to look at the DirecTV versus the signal pirates to see that. Coupled with human nature, that is, to show and share a "dirty little secret" -- disaster for the encryption advocate. After all, are theyu going to disable dozens of models of players, and disable their own market in the process, not to mention alienating the hell out of their customers? No, no and no.
The key to copy protection is to make the content affordable enough to make the inconvenience of counter-enryption not worth doing. They (the collective they) never seem to get that, and they always seem dumbfounded that their elaborate measures are made to look foolish. Perhaps with realistic pricing, enhanced value they would find that most people find it easier to be honest, and not bother with cloning over-priced half-rate films and music. After all, that's their only realistic choice, but the one that they dread making the most.
Your grasp of the history is 100% correct.
I feel lucky that I was able to see every Saturn launch in person, the I's the V's even the Skylab and SATP. They were maginificent birds, powerful and mighty. To see one in person was to know the most awesome machine ever built in the history of humanity.
I cite Ford and Carter because even then we had *some* of the momentum from the Apollo days, and with a little push, the engineers and technicians would have come back and had us on Mars by 1990, or 2000 at the latest. Some may scoff at that now, but simple fact is that they would have scoffed at Kennedy in 1961 on the onset of the moon effort. With Nova in service, Mars could have been had. As it is now, we cannot even launch a single astronaut into LEO with American hardware. That's something Mercury could do, but not us in 2004.
Pitiful.
If we started to design a new capsule today, it would be at least eight years before it was man-rated and into regular service. But don't believe me, look at NASA's own studies. Even Burt Rutan says that designing and fabricating an orbital spacecraft is no simple task.
So your assertation of "merely design[ing] a new capsule to put on top of the rocket" is specious at best. There is no "mere" when it comes to designing, testing and deploying space hardware. You could use the shuttle as an example of that. The idea of "kludging" a Soyuz on top of an American launch platform is entirely ignorant, it would require nearly the same design considerations as an all-new platform...not to mention the cost of purchasing the latter from the Russians, and for each launch.
If we were to do that, it would probably be better to dust off and update the Apollo capsules and mate them to Saturn I-Bs for LEO. The V is far too big a beast for orbital missions only...not to mention the $3+ BILLION/US a copy it would cost to construct and operate one.
In these times, the budget requires us to make use of what we have now. The point of the shuttle being the only man-capable AMERICAN spacecraft available stands, because it is a stone cold fact.
Finally, I am no fan of the Shuttle. It was a compromise from the beginning and not what NASA wanted. Nixon required military adaptations to the proposed program such that it made it a vehicle that NASA essentially had forced down their throats. It should have been replaced after Challenger, as the Shuttle is the only American launch system in our space history to use solids on a man-rated platform. It cost the lives of the Challenger 78, and the aforementioned compromnises were essentially the problem with Columbia.
Instead, we should embark on a smaller re-usable spacecraft program that was indeed meant to ferry humans and small loads of cargo back and forth to orbit and leave the heavy lifting to expendable vehicles, one where the EVs have a 45-odd year history of success.
You have got to be seriously kidding yourself if you think any manned space flight is not placing the lives of the crew on the line.
Good points. Unfortuntely, there are no launchable S-Vs, no infrastructure, and not even many engineers familiar with the system left to build or launch one. In short, Nixon, Ford and Carter were fools for throwing away the best launch system the world has ever seen.
Think of what may have been if Von Braun had been allowed to proceed with Nova. It made the Saturn V look like a bottle rocket.
For one thing, the Space Shuttle is the only American man-rated launch system in service (well, nearly in service) today. The last one has not been used since the Apollo-Soyuz joint mission, and there is no tooling or production facilities to build an Apollo-style capsule or launch vehicle to carry it aloft.
Secondly, there are still missions that require both heavy lifting and human beings. For example, if NASA were to choose to repair the HST using a non-robotic mission, it would be the Shuttle that carried the repairmen aloft.
IIRC, IBM recently partnered with Novell/SuSe, and that alone would make a pretty convincing case to look at that particular distro, in either a SOHO or Enterprise environement. Coupled with IBM's services group, server hardware products the SuSe's enterprise class distro is a robust a complete product. And, IBM, after all has one of the largest services group in the industry.
Me, I switched away from Red Hat when they did away with their RHL9 support some time ago. I have never looked back and see no reason whatsoever to look at the OS's that Sun touts as "the choices" in their blog-vertisements.
I feel so sorry for the poor -- they won't be able to receive TV after the analog signals are no longer on the air. Right. Drive through the poorest part of West Virginia and count the DirecTV dishes. Better be able to count high -- real high.
Even though it is another country, I vividly remember a bus trip through the Yucatan in Mexico. Those people are poor -- their houses were often nothing more than mud and straw, and they had nothing. Nothing, that is, except for the ubiquitous satellite dish.
Most of the country already receives it's television through digital means -- be it cable or sattelite, you almost always end up going through "a TV box" to get your programs. While it is not 85% (yet) it is most. Thus, the market has already spoken for those calling for it to do so.
HDTV is making inroads, and is quickly reaching critical mass. Most all major network programming is in HDTV, and this year, finally Fox has joined the fray. Given a few years, it is reasonable to assume that HDTV will be the defacto standard. In my town (Ralwigh NC) we get 19 HD channels on cable. Four OTA. Again, the market is speaking.
The only ones left out are the Luddites who do not want to replace their gear and want to receive their signal over the air. And since they are in the minority, why are we catering to them? Why not set a date and only mandate that a D->A converter be available for sale?
Having a television is not an entitlement, after all. If everyone else can have their taxes reduced by the government gaining income from spectrum lease, the quicker the better. Then, some of the money we all now send to Washington could be spent in our communities and spur on the economy of those areas.
The F/OSS world is built largely on trust. We could debate contracts, indemnification and other legal instruments all day, but at the end of that day, Linux and other major F/OSS project circle right back to trust.
Bruce Perens would do well to remember all that IBM has done for Linux, from a technical standpoint, to a marketing one, finally to a legal one. Had SCO chosen a smaller company, say a Red Hat, they would have had a far better chance of winning their lawsuit - because lawsuits come bak to money, and with Microsoft's filthy lucre in their vaults, SCO would have had more than Red Hat and thus a better chance in court. Instead, it was IBM that committed the resources, legal, financial and corporate, to keep Linux alive.
That said, their intention is clear -- IBM wants Linux to succeed and to become a major player in at least the data center. It has, and with the numerous and important contributions to the kernel and other ancillary tools, Linux is now close to being the equal of the evolved UNIx's -- Solaris, for example. Without IBM, would Linux be much more than a small server or hobbyist's tool?
IBM's word is good enough for me for now. Sure, I would love to see their promise etched in stone, but their word has been good before, we should believe it good now.
Finally, about their reservation of their right to sue, if they need: let's not forget that IBM also makes closed source software. They should preserve the right, should they need to use it, to prevent a competitor or even business ally from contribution of proprietary code to the Linux base. After all, even though IBM is a great friend of Linux and open source generally, they also need to preserve other revenue streams. All that they said was that they would do just that, and that's not a bad thing in my view.
Thanks, IBM, for saying you wouldn't hammer Linux with your wide portfolio. I hope it puts pressure on other companies to do the same. Microsoft would do well to follow suit -- they have benefitted from OSS whether they want to admit it or not, and they should not try to kill what has fed them either.
I knew Neil Armstrong, albeit as a young child.
"Rock star"? Neil certainly was not that. He was (and is) an exceptionally gifted engineer and pilot, and a man who did the job the best he could. He was also an humble man, as evidenced by his lack of visibility in the years after Apollo 11.
Neil was a brilliant man doing a tough, dangerous job. He did so cooly and with professionalism. That's why he was America's best civilian test pilot prior to his stint in NASA. That's also why he was the best choice to lead Apollo 11 into the rare air where the great explorers are.
Few people today realize the danger and risk that was involved in the moon missions. Think of this: look at how far technology, from it's most basic levels of materials science and mathematics have evolved *since* 1969. The Saturn V was arguably the most powerful machine built in all of recorded human history (that was not a bomb) and to this day, no launch vehicle has ever matched it's sheer lifting capaibility. It had the power of a small atomic weapon, and three men would climb on top and strap their butts to it. All with less computing power than your car.
They did it, and they did it with bravery. Not the kind of foolish bravery associated with a glory hound, but the kind of quiet bravery that marks a true HERO in every sense of the world.
I was there, and I said goodbye to Apollo 11 from five miles away as she lifted into the skies of a sunny Florida morning. I knew one of the men on the machine, and I had four family members who had important jobs that got them to the moon and back safely.
I am proud of them all, and they all had their roles. Aldrin may have been seeking glory, that is for history to decide. Nevertheless, the best choice was Armstrong, and as a result, his name belongs with Columbus, Erikkson and other great explorers who opened the doorway for all humanity to place that none had been before.
Perhaps it will take a century or more for history to truly appreciate the scope of that they did.
I have not digitized all that I can find as of yet, but my family and I are working on a project to put all of my Grandfather's and (after him) my Father's papers and photographs from Cape Kennedy through the Apollo effort as well as Mercury and Gemini.
http://www.ausoleil.org/exhibits/vlpinson
A little background:
My Grandfather, V.L. Pinson, was Chief Telemetry Officer as well as MIS Manager for Cape Kennedy in the 1960's, not to mention duties he performed in the 1950's at ABMA (Army Ballastic Missile Agency) in Huntsville, and White Sands prior to that. While it is very incomplete, mainly because he died in 1988, we're continue to work on this and those interested in some of the minutae of space history might enjoy reading through some of the peronal effects of someone who was there.
PS: I saw Apollo 11 launch in 1969. We lived in Titusville, and saw the launch from the Bennett Causeway. Dad had a better view: As Missile Commander in charge of astronaut safety, he was in a foreward blockhouse about one kilometer from the launch itself. He and his team were there to provide rescue services for the astronauts had something gone wrong and Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins had needed to escape the launch vehicle.
As it was, Apollo 11 broke windows in my house, which was 6.5 nautical miles from the launch pad. Most Saturn V launches did.
It was a great thing going to sleep at night by light of a floodlit missile that was pointed at the moon. Even better was going fishing as a young child with my Grandfather's buddies -- Debus, Armstrong, Grissom, Scott Carpenter, a few others.
You had to be there.