You can actually buy cocaine from pharmaceutical companies.
Well, not *you* specifically. But research chemists can get it, it's just another compound. It requires an inordinate amount of paperwork for some reason though. And a few checks (no, not the cash kind, background checks, proposed use,etc). And you're going to have to keep it under lock and key.
The reason the international dateline is spurious, in this case, is because I highly doubt there was an onboard time adjust. It was more likely an error in the navigation computer which didn't include an exception for going from 179 59'59.99" W to 180, and then to 179 59'59.99" E.
To further back your suspicion, note that the date line isn't a straight line on the globe. It zigs and zags around various continents. In certain places it would be off the 180 deg longitude by a fair bit, which , while not particularly hard to code in, seems unlikely. So I vote for the W/E wraparound issue as well.
....Convincing a few of them to use a mouse was painful.....they refused to let me rewrite it because I would require a mouse.
And good for them, too. A mouse is a distraction for data entry work. Taking your hand off the home keys to grab the mouse, move a pointer, click , and reposition your hands back on the keys seriously disrupts a typists "flow" and is extremely aggravating to some people. You might not mind it when you're clicking about prototyping your UI, but ask the person that has to repeat that action 1200 times a day if they mind. They'll often have a different opinion.
e) Say, "Meh. So what?" and go on to live a public life and create enough "good" evidence that would make such claims laughable?
Makes me wonder sometimes that maybe a bit of introspection after things such as this wouldn't be such a bad thing. "You know, I am a bit of an ass sometimes. Maybe I should try to be a better person, so I don't have to sue all and sundry over the snarky comments they make."
Never mind - from a bit of online searching of some old archives, it would appear that Hubble's limit of focus is about 10000km -> infinity without adjustment. The range of adjustment needed to make in-focus observations of the ground is pretty small however (12mm or so), so it's quite possible that it could be done.
But why you would do that when there are no doubt perfectly good spysats out there with better resolution, I don't know.
The optics on Spitzer, like Hubble, aren't focused that close.
Isn't there a point where the depth-of-field and resolving power sort of meet? That is, something at 10m and something at 10km are both pretty much at the same focus for my 38mm camera lens if I have a reasonable aperture. Setting it down to f/16, I can get pretty sharp shots from about 1m to infinity.
For Hubble/Spitzer however, the difference between something 20m away and 100km away is (probably!) quite obvious, but the difference between 100km and 100ly would be pretty minimal, no?
It's been like that for a few years now - it hasn't increased any. I suspect that it took a couple of knocks while spinning early in it's life - the kids used to kick it a lot.
Some stats from my MythTV box. Note the poweron hours and the number of powercycles.
This is in a box that is pretty much on 24/7, unventilated except for the power supply fan.
My original drive, 5 years old now:
smartctl version 5.33 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-4 Bruce Allen Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION === Device Model: WDC WD800JB-00ETA0 Serial Number: WD-WMAHL3065403 Firmware Version: 77.07W77 User Capacity: 80,026,361,856 bytes Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show] ATA Version is: 6 ATA Standard is: Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated Local Time is: Wed Feb 21 13:45:40 2007 EST SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability. SMART support is: Enabled
smartctl version 5.33 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-4 Bruce Allen Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION === Device Model: WDC WD2000JB-00GVA0 Serial Number: WD-WMAL71580378 Firmware Version: 08.02D08 User Capacity: 200,049,647,616 bytes Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show] ATA Version is: 6 ATA Standard is: Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated Local Time is: Wed Feb 21 13:46:06 2007 EST SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability. SMART support is: Enabled
would be to explode a deeply placed high explosive device, in the range of kilotons.
Except for that tedious problem of obtaining, placing and detonating a few thousand tons of HE in the right spot deep down inside a mud volcano that is busily spewing mud upwards.
But that's just a minor engineering problem, isn't it?
I must be getting old. Once upon a time, I drooled over a P90 and how much faster it was compared to my DX2-66. Now, it's just a feeble wave of the index finger and a sarcastic, "Processors are getting incrementally faster? woo-hoo."
Get a hold of the Russian Mafia, enquire if there is any cracks for the software you're interested in. If you can buy a crack, it's not secure enough.
If you cannot source a crack, put a $5k bounty on it and use the product while blackhats do the work. Discard product immediately once blackhats come up with a solution. Do pay the blackhats/Mafia - consider the $5k money well spent, and it saves an awful lot of trouble later on.
If they were smart, they'd still be crooks, just at large.
Smart crooks are not identified - you hear very little about them apart from statements such as, "Police are appealing for help from the general public to help catch a criminal who did X."
You could live in a country that will supply you with free (not Free) software downloadable from the Tax Office website, which walks you through the whole process, step by step, asking reasonably easy questions with decent, context sensitive online help to boot.
Then after establishing your bona-fides with them using details from a previous tax cheque/bill that was mailed to you, it all gets submitted online to them, with the option of a direct transfer into a bank account of your choice once it's been processed.
Beats the hell out of paper or the $70-$100 that tax people charge these days for a basic return.
Typical life is about 3000 cycles if you use 25% of their capacity per cycle. If you use 100% of their capacity, life is about 300-500 cycles.
So you buy the biggest battery bank you can afford, and then draw the least amount of power possible. This gets expensive rather quickly, so you have to try and find a sweet spot.
There are alternative battery technologies - Nickel-Iron are pretty much indestructible and generally last indefinitely, but they are terribly inefficient compared to Lead-acid - 65% compared to 95%. When you're powering a system from terribly expensive solar cells, inefficiency in storage is not good.
Without electric drive, it would be (damn near) impossible.
Hardly damn near impossible. Speed is immaterial. It's about torque output of each engine on the track, and that can be balanced relatively easily to a few percent.
Coal trains have been routinely running here for 30 years with 3 locos at the front and two remote-controlled ones in the middle, with about 140 wagons and a net carrying capacity of about 10,000 tons. They're all electric now, but in the dark ages before electrification, they were pure diesel, not diesel-electric.
If he is using electric heat, there will of course be no savings BUT THERE WILL BE NO LOSS EITHER
Unless he's using a reverse-cycle A/C system with a COP greater than 1. Which is pretty much all of them.
For the guy further up that wondered if there really is much difference regarding the extra heat of incandescent bulbs - there is. Especially the halogen types. Air-conditioner installers need to take this extra heat into effect - a dozen 50 watt halogens in a large room is like having a small 500 watt bar heater running continuously.
And that type of discussion leads into the most efficient bulb for the situation. Builders, take note - 60 degree halogen bulbs are not for general room illumination, you need a stack of them to light a room evenly.
I have 4 x 15W R80 compact fluorescent downlights in my loungeroom. Their output easily exceeds the 4 x 75W incandescents that were there originally. At 18 months of age and about 7000 hours use, they now take about 30 seconds to get to full brightness, and know what? I don't care. I turn them on when we get up... they stay on all day and finally are turned off when we go to bed.
Keep an eye on cheese. No,no, not ordinary cheese. Cheese by itself is pretty interesting, granted. But there's something better - I'm talking about cheese over the internet.
It's going to be bigger than tulips.
Mark my words, in twelve months time your world will be changed beyond recognition because of internet-cheese.
There's already a guy who's done that - the demise of one of the viking landers was because of a firmware update that accidentally overwrote a critical program section.
From my post in the viking 30th anniversary thread.
Funny, all the NASA references these days seem to edit that little bit of info out, and merely say that it was shut off due to impending battery failure. Other sources - and my memory suggest otherwise.
Ah! Here's a reference from the RISKS digest Volume 3, Issue 60 - 1986. (A digest that is still running today, and is a highly insightful window into how technology screwups mess with daily life.)
Ground control lost contact with Viking 1, apparently due to a software change transmitted to the lander that was accidentally overlaid upon some mission-critical software already in the lander's computer. (Bruce Smith, "JPL Tries to Revive Link with Viking 1", @ux(Aviation Week and Space Technology), April 4, 1983, Volume 118(14), page 16.)
AllOfMP3 gives their required amount as required by Russian law to the Russian equivalent of the RIAA, who then is supposed to distribute it to all the needy artists under their wing. While the method is considered a loophole as such, it's still perfectly legal under Russian law.
And I believe the Record Industry Association of America is just a little bit out of it's jurisdiction here. Hence the stupid filing in an American court. Try that kind of scare tactic in Russia and as people have already mentioned, AllOfMP3 would simply pay the local mafia a small sum to make the problem.... disappear.
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You can actually buy cocaine from pharmaceutical companies.
Well, not *you* specifically. But research chemists can get it, it's just another compound. It requires an inordinate amount of paperwork for some reason though. And a few checks (no, not the cash kind, background checks, proposed use,etc). And you're going to have to keep it under lock and key.
But apart from that, yeah, you can get it.
The reason the international dateline is spurious, in this case, is because I highly doubt there was an onboard time adjust. It was more likely an error in the navigation computer which didn't include an exception for going from 179 59'59.99" W to 180, and then to 179 59'59.99" E.
To further back your suspicion, note that the date line isn't a straight line on the globe. It zigs and zags around various continents. In certain places it would be off the 180 deg longitude by a fair bit, which , while not particularly hard to code in, seems unlikely. So I vote for the W/E wraparound issue as well.
I've heard of a software glitch causing a crash before, but this is ridiculous.
Not really - read the Risks-Forum Digest, especially the earlier years, and you'll find that software quite often causes physical harm.
....Convincing a few of them to use a mouse was painful.....they refused to let me rewrite it because I would require a mouse.
And good for them, too. A mouse is a distraction for data entry work. Taking your hand off the home keys to grab the mouse, move a pointer, click , and reposition your hands back on the keys seriously disrupts a typists "flow" and is extremely aggravating to some people. You might not mind it when you're clicking about prototyping your UI, but ask the person that has to repeat that action 1200 times a day if they mind. They'll often have a different opinion.
e) Say, "Meh. So what?" and go on to live a public life and create enough "good" evidence that would make such claims laughable?
Makes me wonder sometimes that maybe a bit of introspection after things such as this wouldn't be such a bad thing.
"You know, I am a bit of an ass sometimes. Maybe I should try to be a better person, so I don't have to sue all and sundry over the snarky comments they make."
Never mind - from a bit of online searching of some old archives, it would appear that Hubble's limit of focus is about 10000km -> infinity without adjustment. The range of adjustment needed to make in-focus observations of the ground is pretty small however (12mm or so), so it's quite possible that it could be done.
But why you would do that when there are no doubt perfectly good spysats out there with better resolution, I don't know.
The optics on Spitzer, like Hubble, aren't focused that close.
Isn't there a point where the depth-of-field and resolving power sort of meet?
That is, something at 10m and something at 10km are both pretty much at the same focus for my 38mm camera lens if I have a reasonable aperture. Setting it down to f/16, I can get pretty sharp shots from about 1m to infinity.
For Hubble/Spitzer however, the difference between something 20m away and 100km away is (probably!) quite obvious, but the difference between 100km and 100ly would be pretty minimal, no?
And besides, look at those pointy knees. She's way below my standards.
It's been like that for a few years now - it hasn't increased any. I suspect that it took a couple of knocks while spinning early in it's life - the kids used to kick it a lot.
This is in a box that is pretty much on 24/7, unventilated except for the power supply fan.
My original drive, 5 years old now:
My "New" drive, 3 years old now:
By the way, the sun doesn't have a fixed 5000deg temperature.
I'll add to this - sunlight in the southern hemisphere is also "harsher" (bluer) than in the northern, due to the lack of airborne pollutants.
This was quite noticeable to early filmmakers and photographers and some research was done on it, but for the life of me I can't google it now.
would be to explode a deeply placed high explosive device, in the range of kilotons.
Except for that tedious problem of obtaining, placing and detonating a few thousand tons of HE in the right spot deep down inside a mud volcano that is busily spewing mud upwards.
But that's just a minor engineering problem, isn't it?
My .sig says it all, really.
I must be getting old. Once upon a time, I drooled over a P90 and how much faster it was compared to my DX2-66.
Now, it's just a feeble wave of the index finger and a sarcastic, "Processors are getting incrementally faster? woo-hoo."
Get a hold of the Russian Mafia, enquire if there is any cracks for the software you're interested in.
If you can buy a crack, it's not secure enough.
If you cannot source a crack, put a $5k bounty on it and use the product while blackhats do the work. Discard product immediately once blackhats come up with a solution. Do pay the blackhats/Mafia - consider the $5k money well spent, and it saves an awful lot of trouble later on.
If they were smart, they'd still be crooks, just at large.
Smart crooks are not identified - you hear very little about them apart from statements such as, "Police are appealing for help from the general public to help catch a criminal who did X."
You could live in a country that will supply you with free (not Free) software downloadable from the Tax Office website, which walks you through the whole process, step by step, asking reasonably easy questions with decent, context sensitive online help to boot.
Then after establishing your bona-fides with them using details from a previous tax cheque/bill that was mailed to you, it all gets submitted online to them, with the option of a direct transfer into a bank account of your choice once it's been processed.
Beats the hell out of paper or the $70-$100 that tax people charge these days for a basic return.
No. Lead-Acid batteries do not last forever.
Typical life is about 3000 cycles if you use 25% of their capacity per cycle.
If you use 100% of their capacity, life is about 300-500 cycles.
So you buy the biggest battery bank you can afford, and then draw the least amount of power possible. This gets expensive rather quickly, so you have to try and find a sweet spot.
There are alternative battery technologies - Nickel-Iron are pretty much indestructible and generally last indefinitely, but they are terribly inefficient compared to Lead-acid - 65% compared to 95%. When you're powering a system from terribly expensive solar cells, inefficiency in storage is not good.
It's life - just not as we know it.
I dunno - is there any US computers actually completely made in the US?
Anyway for a more global comparison, 80 Australian CS lab computers have a processing power roughly equivalent to a Nintendo64.
Without electric drive, it would be (damn near) impossible.
Hardly damn near impossible. Speed is immaterial. It's about torque output of each engine on the track, and that can be balanced relatively easily to a few percent.
Coal trains have been routinely running here for 30 years with 3 locos at the front and two remote-controlled ones in the middle, with about 140 wagons and a net carrying capacity of about 10,000 tons. They're all electric now, but in the dark ages before electrification, they were pure diesel, not diesel-electric.
Is that post of yours poetry? It almost could be, you know.
If he is using electric heat, there will of course be no savings BUT THERE WILL BE NO LOSS EITHER
Unless he's using a reverse-cycle A/C system with a COP greater than 1. Which is pretty much all of them.
For the guy further up that wondered if there really is much difference regarding the extra heat of incandescent bulbs - there is. Especially the halogen types. Air-conditioner installers need to take this extra heat into effect - a dozen 50 watt halogens in a large room is like having a small 500 watt bar heater running continuously.
And that type of discussion leads into the most efficient bulb for the situation. Builders, take note - 60 degree halogen bulbs are not for general room illumination, you need a stack of them to light a room evenly.
I have 4 x 15W R80 compact fluorescent downlights in my loungeroom. Their output easily exceeds the 4 x 75W incandescents that were there originally. At 18 months of age and about 7000 hours use, they now take about 30 seconds to get to full brightness, and know what? I don't care. I turn them on when we get up... they stay on all day and finally are turned off when we go to bed.
I really need to put a skylight in that room.....
Keep an eye on cheese. No,no, not ordinary cheese. Cheese by itself is pretty interesting, granted. But there's something better - I'm talking about cheese over the internet.
It's going to be bigger than tulips.
Mark my words, in twelve months time your world will be changed beyond recognition because of internet-cheese.
From my post in the viking 30th anniversary thread. Funny, all the NASA references these days seem to edit that little bit of info out, and merely say that it was shut off due to impending battery failure. Other sources - and my memory suggest otherwise.
Ah! Here's a reference from the RISKS digest Volume 3, Issue 60 - 1986. (A digest that is still running today, and is a highly insightful window into how technology screwups mess with daily life.)
Ground control lost contact with Viking 1, apparently due to a
software change transmitted to the lander that was accidentally
overlaid upon some mission-critical software already in the lander's
computer. (Bruce Smith, "JPL Tries to Revive Link with Viking 1",
@ux(Aviation Week and Space Technology), April 4, 1983, Volume
118(14), page 16.)
AllOfMP3 gives their required amount as required by Russian law to the Russian equivalent of the RIAA, who then is supposed to distribute it to all the needy artists under their wing. While the method is considered a loophole as such, it's still perfectly legal under Russian law.
And I believe the Record Industry Association of America is just a little bit out of it's jurisdiction here. Hence the stupid filing in an American court. Try that kind of scare tactic in Russia and as people have already mentioned, AllOfMP3 would simply pay the local mafia a small sum to make the problem.... disappear.