I believe the rovers are using 1.1 megapixel cameras. They are wide-spectrum radiation-hardened cameras with 9 interchangeable filters that were dropped and bounced around on the martian surface some ten times before use. Add the fact that they were spec'd out and sourced 3 years ago, before the "low cost" digicam revolution, and the fact that the rovers can only uplink at 10KBps for part of a day, which kind of limits the size of pictures they can take. Anyway, the rovers are movable and with their microscopes and moveable arms and what-not, they can get close to objects they wish to view, largely negating the resolution problems of their 1MP camera.
While it'd be nice to have one 70MP panoramic shot (per week), it's not really scientifically interesting - especially compared with the boatload of microphotographs and stuff they're getting now.
And surely lens resolution and atmospheric effects would play a part in reducing the cameras effective resolution? I would also think that chromatic aberration (where various wavelengths focus at slightly different places) would be an issue at these resolutions. Of course, I Am Not An Optical Engineer, so I don't know.
You don't look to the past to see if someone is doing something right now
Countries, like people , tend to exhibit an observable pattern of behaviour over time. For example: I am a petty thief. I have been picked up by the police and charged on minor offences before. A spate of petty theft breaks out in my neighbourhood. The police will, in most cases, have their list of "usual suspects" to go through. Would it be considered far-fetched for a detective to suspect that perhaps I am doing the petty theft? Of course not! I might be completely innocent, but my past behaviour indicates that I might be worth further scrutiny.
I bow to your 'leet spelling skills and I am suitably humbled:-) But, anyway, I was going for the correct word usage there, not spelling. Though I have no idea how that "t" got in there, really! I'll blame my $5 keyboard and leave it at that.....
The hazard's from naturally-occuring elements such as Uranium in the coal. Uranium is only present in coal in minute amounts... approximately 1 - 3 parts per million, Thorium is about double that. This seems to be fuck-all, until you burn a 1000 million tons of coal a year (total for the US, year 2000) and end up with a thousand tons of uranium and thorium in your atmosphere and the local surrounds of your power plants.
An interesting article I just found, by searching for "radioactive coal" is here
It's not that far-fetched - I've a photo (a real, chemical photo, offline,sorry) of a set of treads burnt into the bitumen around the rails on a railway crossing.
I got it from a safety course I went to from the rail company about working around electric locomotives. It was from some sort of army vehicle that tried to cross under a set of overhead traction wires that oops! had an antenna a little bit too tall. That was just 25kV.
You may feel safe, but any strong "local" (100m radius) strike will likely induce enough current in the front end of your wi-fi card to fry it regardless.
Windows: "The application encountered a problem and has to close. We apologise for the incovenience."
Linux : "happy meal: Aieee, transceiver MIF write bolixed"
Now come on, admit it. You'd use windows more if it gave out error messages like that. Even a simple "Ooops. We fucked up that last write operation rather badly. Sorry". Phrases like that just seem to convey a bit more feeling and sincerity than the dry corporate psuedo-regret that windows serves out.
To me, that would look like you are somewhat inflexible and unable to cope with last-minute changes or pressure. And the fact that you are unwilling to wait it out for something that your interviewer has to deal with that might *just* possibly be more important than your interview suggests that you value yourself a little too highly;-) Of course, the polite thing to do would have your interviewer come back after a minute or so and explain the situation.
Anyhow, the comments I have made were strictly light-hearted as I've seen them happen... the wrong address thing to me personally. The other, was when a trainee manager was being interviewed and the managing director gave him some paperwork, went to "deal with stuff" and then suddenly realised she was late for a flight and ran off! I wander past about an hour later and this poor bugger's still in the office, wandering around aimlessly. Our conversation went like: Me : "Hey, need a hand in here?" Him: "No, just waiting for X to return" Me: (pause) "Er, she's not coming back" Him: "No, no, she said she'd be back in a tick" Me: "Er, she's on a flight to Sydney" Him: (crestfallen) "oh."
Still, he got the job... must've been a sucker for punishment.
Give them a wrong address for the company. Nothing too misleading , such as a different town, just be a few streets out.
People who then show up at your office are obviously good at solving simple technical problems.
People who make it to the interview on time get bonus points.
For fun, give them some paperwork to fill out at the end of the interview and say "I just have to duck out and check on something - back in a tick". Leave and time how long it takes for them to wander out of the office in search of someone... 15 minutes to half an hour's a pretty good baseline.
extends for several hundred kilometers outside my town in any direction - once you're more than 20k's outside of town, you might as well turn your phone off. This is from Telstra, Australia's largest telco, who claim to cover 95+% of the population.
My phone has no reception where I work either... but that's because I work 700m underground in a lead mine, so I'll forgive them on that part:-)
This limited warranty does not cover damages due to external causes, including accident, problems with electrical power, usage not in accordance with product instructions, misuse, neglect, alteration, repair, improper installation, or improper testing.
I'll wager somewhere in the installation instructions it says "Use a genuine Intel fan".
Intel Sales Rep: Ohhhh, you used a different fan than the one that came with the unit? Sorry , no warranty! Thank you for shopping with Intel!
And there's also a little "tyre placard
that's either stuck inside the glovebox, or on near the drivers door hinge (so you see it when you open the door). Manufacturers are quite specific about what tyres you should put on your car. Of course, one of the main reasons is safety - for example if you put a lower speed rating tyre on your car than what the tyre placard says, it's illegal (for obvious reasons).
Abstract: We show that, in the context of Moore's Law, overall productivity can be increased for large enough computations by `slacking' or waiting for some period of time before purchasing a computer and beginning the calculation.
According to Moore's Law, the computational power available at a particular price doubles every 18 months. Therefore it is conceivable that for sufficiently large numerical calculations and fixed budgets, computing power will improve quickly enough that the calculation will finish faster if we wait until the available computing power is sufficiently better and start the calculation then.
I particularly like their unit of measure : "slacktitude"
The bulk of which, apart from amateur stuff , happens to be copyrighted.
And I prefer the silky smooth skin and perfect ass of a copyrighted image to the free skanky ho' with the bum pimples and 50 pounds of extra cellulite (shivers)
There are plenty of drop-in alternatives for R-12 (freon). Two off the top of my head are FR12 and Isecon 49. Both can be used in an R12 system with no effort on the technician's part. This course of action is often a lot easier than a conversion to R134A, which often requires makor component change to reach the same sort of power as the older R12 system did.
FR-12 and Isecon 49 , whilst not quite as cheap as R134A, are both a hell of a lot cheaper than R12 is/was and should cost you less than 50 bucks for the amount of gas you need to operate the A/C in your car.
Don't believe their bullshit about "a whole new system" - these gases are designed to go into old systems and closely match the temperatures/pressures of R12. Most vehicles when converting only require you to change the drier and vac out, then recharge with the new gas. If your system already needs repair, then the vac out and drier should have already been included in the quote and you can simply ask them to fill it with FR12 instead of hideously rare-and-expensive R12.
while the chemical reaction in a battery could be highly temperature sensitive, it isnt. Wrong.
Which is why starter batteries have a little number called "CCA" - Cold Crankng Amps? This is the amount of current it can supply at a certain voltage at -18 deg C. I can easily get 50% more than that figure when at room temperature with my battery tester.
The electrochemical reaction in pretty much any type of cell is limited by many factors, including temperature.
Slashdot Mirror
0.000005 Megapixel
er, 5 pixel?
I believe the rovers are using 1.1 megapixel cameras. They are wide-spectrum radiation-hardened cameras with 9 interchangeable filters that were dropped and bounced around on the martian surface some ten times before use. Add the fact that they were spec'd out and sourced 3 years ago, before the "low cost" digicam revolution, and the fact that the rovers can only uplink at 10KBps for part of a day, which kind of limits the size of pictures they can take.
Anyway, the rovers are movable and with their microscopes and moveable arms and what-not, they can get close to objects they wish to view, largely negating the resolution problems of their 1MP camera.
While it'd be nice to have one 70MP panoramic shot (per week), it's not really scientifically interesting - especially compared with the boatload of microphotographs and stuff they're getting now.
And surely lens resolution and atmospheric effects would play a part in reducing the cameras effective resolution? I would also think that chromatic aberration (where various wavelengths focus at slightly different places) would be an issue at these resolutions. Of course, I Am Not An Optical Engineer, so I don't know.
not if he has two :-)
That would be "Score:7 ,informative"
You don't look to the past to see if someone is doing something right now
:
Countries, like people , tend to exhibit an observable pattern of behaviour over time. For example
I am a petty thief. I have been picked up by the police and charged on minor offences before. A spate of petty theft breaks out in my neighbourhood.
The police will, in most cases, have their list of "usual suspects" to go through.
Would it be considered far-fetched for a detective to suspect that perhaps I am doing the petty theft? Of course not!
I might be completely innocent, but my past behaviour indicates that I might be worth further scrutiny.
This same rationale applies to countries as well.
I bow to your 'leet spelling skills and I am suitably humbled :-)
But, anyway, I was going for the correct word usage there, not spelling. Though I have no idea how that "t" got in there, really! I'll blame my $5 keyboard and leave it at that.....
polite, friendly and competent
er, pick any two.
The following is only antidotal, but...
(cough) that's Anectdotal.
Unless you think your following statement is countering some effect of a poison... wait, maybe it is. Er, carry on
Carbon-14 is not really a hazard.
The hazard's from naturally-occuring elements such as Uranium in the coal. Uranium is only present in coal in minute amounts... approximately 1 - 3 parts per million, Thorium is about double that. This seems to be fuck-all, until you burn a 1000 million tons of coal a year (total for the US, year 2000) and end up with a thousand tons of uranium and thorium in your atmosphere and the local surrounds of your power plants.
An interesting article I just found, by searching for "radioactive coal" is here
It depends upon the average mass of known stars, for all I know , 50% of them could be below 1.4 suns.
*Then* it would be a "roughly equal" chance of it being a black hole.
It's not that far-fetched - I've a photo (a real, chemical photo, offline,sorry) of a set of treads burnt into the bitumen around the rails on a railway crossing.
I got it from a safety course I went to from the rail company about working around electric locomotives. It was from some sort of army vehicle that tried to cross under a set of overhead traction wires that oops! had an antenna a little bit too tall. That was just 25kV.
You may feel safe, but any strong "local" (100m radius) strike will likely induce enough current in the front end of your wi-fi card to fry it regardless.
Windows: "The application encountered a problem and has to close. We apologise for the incovenience."
Linux : "happy meal: Aieee, transceiver MIF write bolixed"
Now come on, admit it. You'd use windows more if it gave out error messages like that. Even a simple "Ooops. We fucked up that last write operation rather badly. Sorry". Phrases like that just seem to convey a bit more feeling and sincerity than the dry corporate psuedo-regret that windows serves out.
Imagine Windows Server 2003 easter eggs allowing admin level login!
:-)
That's not an easter egg, that's a backdoor
There is a difference ya know.
(ObMicrosoftBash)
Though microsoft'd probably say it's an "Enhanced End-User Experience"
(/ObMicrosoftBash)
All of the ISP's I've been with over the last 5 years have had their own stratum 3 NTP servers.
Their NTP server is often listed on their webpages under configuration information, but often a simple ntp or time.ISP.Domain will point to it.
Hell , 2 hops to an atomic clock is fine for me, I just want my MythTV guide to be accurate to the minute.....
Well, good for you :-)
;-) Of course, the polite thing to do would have your interviewer come back after a minute or so and explain the situation.
:
To me, that would look like you are somewhat inflexible and unable to cope with last-minute changes or pressure.
And the fact that you are unwilling to wait it out for something that your interviewer has to deal with that might *just* possibly be more important than your interview suggests that you value yourself a little too highly
Anyhow, the comments I have made were strictly light-hearted as I've seen them happen... the wrong address thing to me personally. The other, was when a trainee manager was being interviewed and the managing director gave him some paperwork, went to "deal with stuff" and then suddenly realised she was late for a flight and ran off! I wander past about an hour later and this poor bugger's still in the office, wandering around aimlessly. Our conversation went like
Me : "Hey, need a hand in here?"
Him: "No, just waiting for X to return"
Me: (pause) "Er, she's not coming back"
Him: "No, no, she said she'd be back in a tick"
Me: "Er, she's on a flight to Sydney"
Him: (crestfallen) "oh."
Still, he got the job... must've been a sucker for punishment.
Merde!
;-)
Sorry, it's the only french word I know
Give them a wrong address for the company.
Nothing too misleading , such as a different town, just be a few streets out.
People who then show up at your office are obviously good at solving simple technical problems.
People who make it to the interview on time get bonus points.
For fun, give them some paperwork to fill out at the end of the interview and say "I just have to duck out and check on something - back in a tick".
Leave and time how long it takes for them to wander out of the office in search of someone... 15 minutes to half an hour's a pretty good baseline.
I heard someone play "flight of the bumblebee" on a piano once - holy crap, I thought it was going to fly apart!
extends for several hundred kilometers outside my town in any direction - once you're more than 20k's outside of town, you might as well turn your phone off. This is from Telstra, Australia's largest telco, who claim to cover 95+% of the population.
:-)
My phone has no reception where I work either... but that's because I work 700m underground in a lead mine, so I'll forgive them on that part
This limited warranty does not cover damages due to external causes, including accident, problems with
electrical power, usage not in accordance with product instructions, misuse, neglect, alteration, repair,
improper installation, or improper testing.
I'll wager somewhere in the installation instructions it says "Use a genuine Intel fan".
Intel Sales Rep: Ohhhh, you used a different fan than the one that came with the unit? Sorry , no warranty! Thank you for shopping with Intel!
And there's also a little "tyre placard
that's either stuck inside the glovebox, or on near the drivers door hinge (so you see it when you open the door). Manufacturers are quite specific about what tyres you should put on your car. Of course, one of the main reasons is safety - for example if you put a lower speed rating tyre on your car than what the tyre placard says, it's illegal (for obvious reasons).
Someone begs to differ:
:
The Effects of Moore's Law and Slacking on Large Computations
Abstract
We show that, in the context of Moore's Law, overall productivity can be increased for large enough computations by `slacking' or waiting for some period of time before purchasing a computer and beginning the calculation.
According to Moore's Law, the computational power available at a particular price doubles every 18 months. Therefore it is conceivable that for sufficiently large numerical calculations and fixed budgets, computing power will improve quickly enough that the calculation will finish faster if we wait until the available computing power is sufficiently better and start the calculation then.
I particularly like their unit of measure : "slacktitude"
The bulk of which, apart from amateur stuff , happens to be copyrighted.
And I prefer the silky smooth skin and perfect ass of a copyrighted image to the free skanky ho' with the bum pimples and 50 pounds of extra cellulite (shivers)
Regarding your A/C
:-)
- You are getting ripped off.
There are plenty of drop-in alternatives for R-12 (freon). Two off the top of my head are FR12 and Isecon 49. Both can be used in an R12 system with no effort on the technician's part. This course of action is often a lot easier than a conversion to R134A, which often requires makor component change to reach the same sort of power as the older R12 system did.
FR-12 and Isecon 49 , whilst not quite as cheap as R134A, are both a hell of a lot cheaper than R12 is/was and should cost you less than 50 bucks for the amount of gas you need to operate the A/C in your car.
Don't believe their bullshit about "a whole new system" - these gases are designed to go into old systems and closely match the temperatures/pressures of R12. Most vehicles when converting only require you to change the drier and vac out, then recharge with the new gas. If your system already needs repair, then the vac out and drier should have already been included in the quote and you can simply ask them to fill it with FR12 instead of hideously rare-and-expensive R12.
Just so you know
while the chemical reaction in a battery could be highly temperature sensitive, it isnt.
Wrong.
Which is why starter batteries have a little number called "CCA" - Cold Crankng Amps? This is the amount of current it can supply at a certain voltage at -18 deg C. I can easily get 50% more than that figure when at room temperature with my battery tester.
The electrochemical reaction in pretty much any type of cell is limited by many factors, including temperature.