It's only an order of magnitude faster than Verizon's offering if there are less than 10 people using it. Wireless spectrum is a shared medium, FTTP is not. Yes, it all gets shared at the internet uplink anyway, but that's beside the point.
Looking into it a bit more closely, I have discovered that the 32% figure of ownership I read about actually refers to their percentage of votes, not percentage of shares. So yes, if you take everyone else out of the equation, it would be possible for someone to do a hostile takeover.
However, together with the CEO Eric Schmidt and a few others, they still own 55% of the company's votes, so Hypothetical-monopolist would need to buy at least some shares off one of Google's top dogs to get into a position for a hostile takeover. Not gonna happen, I don't think.
While I agree that shorting SCO right now, if it were possible, wouldn't be the greatest idea, the people who shorted SCO at $24 are happy.
Both traditional investment and short selling have limits. Speaking both technically and practically there are limits to high high a stock can go. There is only so much market share available before you have to start dealing with anti-trust legislation and market saturation. Things get increasingly difficult the bigger you get. For this reason, stocks rarely go above certain values.
Conversely, there is a lower limit to stock price for shorting a stock, $0, but that doesn't mean your gain is limited. If I decided to risk big and short SCO for a million dollars, confident that SCO will be out of business real soon now and then they do go bankrupt, I just made a million dollars. It doesn't matter if they were trading at $0.01 or $1,000,000 per share when I bought them, I still made a million dollars.
Sometimes your strategy is good. Sometimes it is bad. There are few absolutes in investment.
and 51% accumulation would mean a hostile takeover.
No. Sergey Brin and Larry Page have Class B shares with 10 votes per share, and they own a third of the company.
This means that, assuming you want to have to get as few Class Bs as possible, you would need to own 100% of the Class A shares, along with 40% of the Class B shares, which are not for sale, I might add.
Sorry, guy, I think you're wrong. One person does make a difference, it just doesn't happen instantly. The red sea does not part, angels do not descend and sing. It takes blood, sweat, tears, effort, persistance and sacrifice. The instant-gratification mentality that pervades society isn't going to get you anywhere.
RMS is one person, he has made a difference. The Apache group were just a few people, they have made a difference. But you don't have to be them to make a difference. Look at Linux's slow progress. It isn't happening because Linus or RMS or anyone else is working super hard to get things done. I don't deny that there are people working hard on Linux at the moment, but that's not why it's becoming a force to be reckoned with, that's not why more commercial software than ever before is being developed for it. It's because of one person at a time switching sides, and adding their small voice to the movement. Even if they never actively do a thing, all it takes is one person to see their Linux desktop, or see their count in an access log, and they've made a difference.
It'll take time, but if you support indy music, you'll be a part of killing the RIAA by death of a thousand cuts. It won't happen tomorrow, and you won't be the person who tips the balance, but that doesn't mean you don't matter.
Yes, the idea is to simply unleash these upon train tracks with absolutely no scheduling, training, or signalling equipment, without giving any thought to the scenario you describe.
You forget the important fact that as the drive DENSITY increases, so does the amount of data read per revolution of the platters. Bigger drive, faster transfer rate. Unless you're talking about limits on things like ATA, but those are being replaced and upgraded as needed.
Actually, hosting companies are the only ones who are really screwed with this deal. Everyone else is great. It has nothing to do with being big or small. ISPs win, end-users win, people who run their own domains win, it's only the hosting companies who have headaches. Don't think I'm insensitive to your plight, I work for a hosting company too.:P
The typical solution I've heard to this dilemma is that your FROM address must be the one given to you by your ISP. It is the Reply-To should be your destination address. I think this is the 'proper' way to do things and will probably add some accountability to email, but I agree that it's going to be like pulling teeth to get people to actually do this. Sucks sucks sucks. But for the greater good, I think.
Well, speaking as someone from their neighbor to the north, 'sliding towards fascism' is a little excessive, but the general opinion around here is that the USA is going to hell in a handbasket, and I'd be surprised if Kerry is able to slow the process down, much less stop it. I much prefer my friendly, non-threatening socialist nation at the moment. I know a lot of people who are actually afraid to travel to, or through, the states nowadays. It doesn't take a lot of fear for one's own safety to make it more convenient to just stay within Canada, and besides the border guards are worse than airport security.
As long as our (morally correct, in my estimation) stance on mad cow, softwood lumber, Israel and Iraq doesn't get us termed "Canada: The New Reds!" I'll be happy.
I dunno, I didn't really think TSW was that terrible, myself. Obviously 'terrible' was how it did at the box office, but the movie itself wasn't bad. The story was too spiritual for the North American market to really accept it, and I think that's what killed it. If they had released it in Japan (did they?) I suspect it would've done much better over there, but they're not a big enough market to make a dent.
I know that if the story had been different, I would've been able to recommend it wholeheartedly to my parents, grandparents, and some of my friends. The graphics were (and still are) groundbreaking. Truly the state of the art in CG. ILM, Pixar, they don't do anything close to that -- admittedly they also don't spend that much per film.
Anyway, I hope FF:TSW is remembered for the huge leap forward in computer generated films that it is. Yes, I even bought the DVD.
Well, you're right on the first count at least. Intel would oppose it. AMD, on the other hand, might cave in like they did with Palladium. IBM is marginal in the PC market these days. When Microsoft says "Jump", Dell asks "How high?" and HP/Compaq could be bought off.
But they're not the people they really have to convince. The people they have to convince are the motherboard manufacturers. Do you think that they could convince Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, or one of the other big motherboard manufacturers, to come out with a motherboard that is "Windows Longhorn compatible" while their competitors don't have one? In an industry where the primary differentiating characteristic is cost, the desire to get a monopoly on a platform that makes up such a large segment of the market -- even if it's temporary -- is irresistable. And once they've cleared that hurdle, it's all downhill from there.
It is plausible, however unlikely. RMS is insightful enough to actually look down the road and see that someday, if we don't have 'x', we might be really fucked. That's what makes him different from people like you who can't (or don't) imagine things beyond a few years from now. Yes he's a control freak and he does want the source for everything. You have failed to provide any reason why this is a bad thing, and RMS has provided numerous and extensive reasoning for why it's a good and important thing.
So basically, Nvidia's cards can cut a few corners, with minimum, if any, visual impact, while ATi's cards can't
I could say the same thing about the slightly jpg compressed images coming out of a cheap digital camera, vs. the RAW images on my EOS 300D and by your logic it would make my camera the worse of the two -- it takes up more memory card space and is slower to save images.
I want high-precision in the graphics renderer, always. Maybe lower precision isn't noticable when you're fragging some guy, but I've seen what poor precision can do to a complex, very deep OpenGL rendering, because I write OpenGL code at work. Personally I buy ATI cards because they have always been the image quality leader. Nevermind that they were the first to make 2xFSAA feasable (to which Nvidia responded with Quinqunx or whatever that horrible name was, which was -surprise surprise- a faster, lower-quality 2xFSAA) but their cards have always produced better images in my opinion.
Nvidia has always gone for fast rendering, which is also an admirable goal, and lots of people love them for it, and that's great for them... but it's not what I want. I like the way ATI does things.
This is a frighteningly common problem among people who require secondary care. If system administrators routinely refer to users as "lusers", you can begin to imagine the mental state of some home-care "professionals" after they've been spoon-feeding, giving sponge baths and getting drooled on for years. I'm not trying to make excuses for them, I think it's absolutely despicable, a vicious and sadistic crime, but it certainly does happen and that may be one of several reasons that incites it. It doesn't help that most of the people getting abused are unable to defend themselves or call out for help.
Which brings me to my second point: How in the world would Stephen Hawking manage to beat someone up? Last I checked he wasn't able to move his arms or legs, or even his head or mouth for the most part.
The more small-guy submarine patents that try to torpedo the buy guys, the better. Even better yet if they succeed. It increases the likelihood of the big guys eventually getting together and lobbying against software patents in general.
Of course they'll probably try to make it to their advantage anyway.
I'm also sorry that you have to deal with a guy like that. You say he shouldn't be flying, and I agree wholeheartedly with that. I disagree that stricter regulations are the proper approach to keep people like him from flying.
Have you reported him to the FAA for not keeping up on his aircraft maintenance? I'm not American, but I know a guy who works for Transport Canada they investigate ALL such reports. You allude to being a pilot later in your post, and as a pilot you must at least have some idea how strict the regulations regarding aircraft maintenance are? If not, go spend some time chatting with your local flying club's AM. The mechanics will tell you exactly how strict of a standard their work is held to. Losing your license when you're a hobbyist pilot is annoying. Losing your license when you're a career AM is a bit more significant, nevermind that no one honest will want to hire you ever again even if you do get a new license.
when flying I know the other pilots are not going to be total assholes and do a last minute cut-me-off when I am on approach or are tailgaiting me in a holding pattern.. and if the FAA is the cause of that then I am happy they are there.
I don't know if the conditions are different in the states, but it doesn't matter how relaxed the regulations are for becoming a pilot here in Canada (our Recreational license is only a little stricter than this Sport-pilot license), if ground controllers saw or caught wind of someone pulling any of the above shit, I guarantee that they would come down like a ton of bricks on that pilot, and he or she would not be leaving the airport with their pilot's license.
Pre-screening out people who "might" not be excellent pilots is unfair to everyone. I'm a proponent of "judge by actions, not by statistics".
As usual, enforcement of existing rules is the answer, not more regulation.
No, IA32 machines will give way to AMD64 machines. IA64 died with Itanium.
Additionally, LSB 2.0 sets out specifications for AMD64 ports. However, it is still in public review, and is not the current standard. This is a problem for Debian, which has (up until now) always gone out of their way to do things "by the book".
A significant amount of ammonia in the atmosphere that has not been broken down by solar radiation would signify that it is being generated on the planet currently. The only two methods we know of that would produce enough ammonia to be detected are active vulcanism, specifically an active volcano somewhere, which we have never seen, or microbial life. I suspect the original poster is more excited about the latter possibility.
You can't blame publishers for putting their effort towards where most of their revenue comes from.
I can and do. I realize this is a free market economy and that profit is supposedly the only motivator, but when the idea of a free market economy was developed, it was postulated that the desire for more profit would lead consistently to the development of better products. In the console market, million dollar marketing campaigns, vendor lock-in, and loss leader hardware sales have done much to circumvent that. As a result we get lowest-common-denominator drivel designed to appeal to everyone in general and no one in particular. In any other industry that may fly, but in the entertainment industry it will draw accusations of being a sellout and having sold your soul for profits, and rightly so in my opinion. Entertainment that is purposely diluted down to appeal to everyone is simply not very satisfying.
There is a market for appealing to people in particular. It's a smaller market, but it there is still money to be made. Unfortunately, due to the high development cost of software nowadays, there isn't *enough* money to be made to pay for development costs. Hint: Not every game needs 2 hours of storyboarding and FMVs to advance the plot.
Anyway, my main gripe is that publishers are pricing themselves out of the PC market, and I believe it's quite intentional. A console is subsidized by licensing fees on the games. A PC is paid for in full by the gamer, games have zero licensing costs. Yet the price of a new release console game is often *less* than, or at least equal to, the price of a new release PC game. "Priced at what the market will bear"? Bullshit, if the market was bearing the price of PC games, people would not be increasingly buying into the much cheaper consoles.
What would I like from it? How about having it designed for PC not for X-Box. *slaps Warren Spector*
Yeah, right. That'll never happen. It's so much easier to implement DRM and copy-protection and other garbage on a console, it's no wonder everyone is not-so-subtly trying to elbow the PC out of the way. We might as well forget that we once had the ability to do things like take screenshots from games without having a copyright notice splattered on them. (If you think I'm being facetious, try taking a screenshot in Final Fantasy XI)
I guess that probably wouldn't be as relevant to the submitter then. I knew it improved image quality, but I also knew it wasn't a perfect catch-all solution.
Thanks for pointing out what exactly why it's done.
There are two solutions to this problem. The first, is to cool your sensor like you asked. A peltier cooler in between the sensor and the heatsink is the only way to do this. A heatsink will reduce you to ambient temperature at best. If you want to go below that, you need a peltier cooler at least, or something much more exotic like a compressor-based refrigeration unit, evaporative cooler, or liquid nitrogen cooling.
Finally, you could simply use a sensor that isn't so noisy. All the digital SLR cameras nowadays use CMOS sensor technology, because it's bigger than CCD primarily, but it also has a lot less noise since it isn't crammed into such a small space.
Another approach often used by astronomers is to take the noisy CCD, do an exposure of a given length, then cover it so no light can reach it, and take another exposure of the same length to create a "dark frame" that contains nothing but noise. The noise in both images will be approximately equal, and can be subtracted out using photoshop or similar software, resulting in a very clean image.
Slashdot Mirror
It's only an order of magnitude faster than Verizon's offering if there are less than 10 people using it. Wireless spectrum is a shared medium, FTTP is not. Yes, it all gets shared at the internet uplink anyway, but that's beside the point.
Looking into it a bit more closely, I have discovered that the 32% figure of ownership I read about actually refers to their percentage of votes, not percentage of shares. So yes, if you take everyone else out of the equation, it would be possible for someone to do a hostile takeover.
However, together with the CEO Eric Schmidt and a few others, they still own 55% of the company's votes, so Hypothetical-monopolist would need to buy at least some shares off one of Google's top dogs to get into a position for a hostile takeover. Not gonna happen, I don't think.
While I agree that shorting SCO right now, if it were possible, wouldn't be the greatest idea, the people who shorted SCO at $24 are happy.
Both traditional investment and short selling have limits. Speaking both technically and practically there are limits to high high a stock can go. There is only so much market share available before you have to start dealing with anti-trust legislation and market saturation. Things get increasingly difficult the bigger you get. For this reason, stocks rarely go above certain values.
Conversely, there is a lower limit to stock price for shorting a stock, $0, but that doesn't mean your gain is limited. If I decided to risk big and short SCO for a million dollars, confident that SCO will be out of business real soon now and then they do go bankrupt, I just made a million dollars. It doesn't matter if they were trading at $0.01 or $1,000,000 per share when I bought them, I still made a million dollars.
Sometimes your strategy is good. Sometimes it is bad. There are few absolutes in investment.
and 51% accumulation would mean a hostile takeover.
No. Sergey Brin and Larry Page have Class B shares with 10 votes per share, and they own a third of the company.
This means that, assuming you want to have to get as few Class Bs as possible, you would need to own 100% of the Class A shares, along with 40% of the Class B shares, which are not for sale, I might add.
Good luck on that hostile takeover.
one person does not make a difference
Sorry, guy, I think you're wrong. One person does make a difference, it just doesn't happen instantly. The red sea does not part, angels do not descend and sing. It takes blood, sweat, tears, effort, persistance and sacrifice. The instant-gratification mentality that pervades society isn't going to get you anywhere.
RMS is one person, he has made a difference. The Apache group were just a few people, they have made a difference. But you don't have to be them to make a difference. Look at Linux's slow progress. It isn't happening because Linus or RMS or anyone else is working super hard to get things done. I don't deny that there are people working hard on Linux at the moment, but that's not why it's becoming a force to be reckoned with, that's not why more commercial software than ever before is being developed for it. It's because of one person at a time switching sides, and adding their small voice to the movement. Even if they never actively do a thing, all it takes is one person to see their Linux desktop, or see their count in an access log, and they've made a difference.
It'll take time, but if you support indy music, you'll be a part of killing the RIAA by death of a thousand cuts. It won't happen tomorrow, and you won't be the person who tips the balance, but that doesn't mean you don't matter.
Yes, the idea is to simply unleash these upon train tracks with absolutely no scheduling, training, or signalling equipment, without giving any thought to the scenario you describe.
Or not. One of the two.
You forget the important fact that as the drive DENSITY increases, so does the amount of data read per revolution of the platters. Bigger drive, faster transfer rate. Unless you're talking about limits on things like ATA, but those are being replaced and upgraded as needed.
Actually, hosting companies are the only ones who are really screwed with this deal. Everyone else is great. It has nothing to do with being big or small. ISPs win, end-users win, people who run their own domains win, it's only the hosting companies who have headaches. Don't think I'm insensitive to your plight, I work for a hosting company too. :P
The typical solution I've heard to this dilemma is that your FROM address must be the one given to you by your ISP. It is the Reply-To should be your destination address. I think this is the 'proper' way to do things and will probably add some accountability to email, but I agree that it's going to be like pulling teeth to get people to actually do this. Sucks sucks sucks. But for the greater good, I think.
Well, speaking as someone from their neighbor to the north, 'sliding towards fascism' is a little excessive, but the general opinion around here is that the USA is going to hell in a handbasket, and I'd be surprised if Kerry is able to slow the process down, much less stop it. I much prefer my friendly, non-threatening socialist nation at the moment. I know a lot of people who are actually afraid to travel to, or through, the states nowadays. It doesn't take a lot of fear for one's own safety to make it more convenient to just stay within Canada, and besides the border guards are worse than airport security.
As long as our (morally correct, in my estimation) stance on mad cow, softwood lumber, Israel and Iraq doesn't get us termed "Canada: The New Reds!" I'll be happy.
I dunno, I didn't really think TSW was that terrible, myself. Obviously 'terrible' was how it did at the box office, but the movie itself wasn't bad. The story was too spiritual for the North American market to really accept it, and I think that's what killed it. If they had released it in Japan (did they?) I suspect it would've done much better over there, but they're not a big enough market to make a dent.
I know that if the story had been different, I would've been able to recommend it wholeheartedly to my parents, grandparents, and some of my friends. The graphics were (and still are) groundbreaking. Truly the state of the art in CG. ILM, Pixar, they don't do anything close to that -- admittedly they also don't spend that much per film.
Anyway, I hope FF:TSW is remembered for the huge leap forward in computer generated films that it is. Yes, I even bought the DVD.
Intel, IBM, Dell and HP
Well, you're right on the first count at least. Intel would oppose it. AMD, on the other hand, might cave in like they did with Palladium. IBM is marginal in the PC market these days. When Microsoft says "Jump", Dell asks "How high?" and HP/Compaq could be bought off.
But they're not the people they really have to convince. The people they have to convince are the motherboard manufacturers. Do you think that they could convince Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, or one of the other big motherboard manufacturers, to come out with a motherboard that is "Windows Longhorn compatible" while their competitors don't have one? In an industry where the primary differentiating characteristic is cost, the desire to get a monopoly on a platform that makes up such a large segment of the market -- even if it's temporary -- is irresistable. And once they've cleared that hurdle, it's all downhill from there.
It is plausible, however unlikely. RMS is insightful enough to actually look down the road and see that someday, if we don't have 'x', we might be really fucked. That's what makes him different from people like you who can't (or don't) imagine things beyond a few years from now. Yes he's a control freak and he does want the source for everything. You have failed to provide any reason why this is a bad thing, and RMS has provided numerous and extensive reasoning for why it's a good and important thing.
So basically, Nvidia's cards can cut a few corners, with minimum, if any, visual impact, while ATi's cards can't
I could say the same thing about the slightly jpg compressed images coming out of a cheap digital camera, vs. the RAW images on my EOS 300D and by your logic it would make my camera the worse of the two -- it takes up more memory card space and is slower to save images.
I want high-precision in the graphics renderer, always. Maybe lower precision isn't noticable when you're fragging some guy, but I've seen what poor precision can do to a complex, very deep OpenGL rendering, because I write OpenGL code at work. Personally I buy ATI cards because they have always been the image quality leader. Nevermind that they were the first to make 2xFSAA feasable (to which Nvidia responded with Quinqunx or whatever that horrible name was, which was -surprise surprise- a faster, lower-quality 2xFSAA) but their cards have always produced better images in my opinion.
Nvidia has always gone for fast rendering, which is also an admirable goal, and lots of people love them for it, and that's great for them... but it's not what I want. I like the way ATI does things.
*shrug*
Uh, I don't think so. If I remember correctly, the allegations were that HE was being abused by his wife.
This is a frighteningly common problem among people who require secondary care. If system administrators routinely refer to users as "lusers", you can begin to imagine the mental state of some home-care "professionals" after they've been spoon-feeding, giving sponge baths and getting drooled on for years. I'm not trying to make excuses for them, I think it's absolutely despicable, a vicious and sadistic crime, but it certainly does happen and that may be one of several reasons that incites it. It doesn't help that most of the people getting abused are unable to defend themselves or call out for help.
Which brings me to my second point: How in the world would Stephen Hawking manage to beat someone up? Last I checked he wasn't able to move his arms or legs, or even his head or mouth for the most part.
After you get the source, you are free to do whatever you want with it.
Tell that to the people who have had their websites shut down for posting the source.
It is a total lack of understanding of the GPL that makes you THINK there is a problem.
It is a total lack of understanding of THIS CASE that makes YOU think there isn't a problem.
Why would you buy something from a shitty megacorp like Sony when it's public domain?
Copyright expired on most classical music a couple centuries ago.
You don't have to login to read the content here.
Small but important distinction.
The more small-guy submarine patents that try to torpedo the buy guys, the better. Even better yet if they succeed. It increases the likelihood of the big guys eventually getting together and lobbying against software patents in general.
Of course they'll probably try to make it to their advantage anyway.
Sorry, but I disagree.
I'm also sorry that you have to deal with a guy like that. You say he shouldn't be flying, and I agree wholeheartedly with that. I disagree that stricter regulations are the proper approach to keep people like him from flying.
Have you reported him to the FAA for not keeping up on his aircraft maintenance? I'm not American, but I know a guy who works for Transport Canada they investigate ALL such reports. You allude to being a pilot later in your post, and as a pilot you must at least have some idea how strict the regulations regarding aircraft maintenance are? If not, go spend some time chatting with your local flying club's AM. The mechanics will tell you exactly how strict of a standard their work is held to. Losing your license when you're a hobbyist pilot is annoying. Losing your license when you're a career AM is a bit more significant, nevermind that no one honest will want to hire you ever again even if you do get a new license.
when flying I know the other pilots are not going to be total assholes and do a last minute cut-me-off when I am on approach or are tailgaiting me in a holding pattern.. and if the FAA is the cause of that then I am happy they are there.
I don't know if the conditions are different in the states, but it doesn't matter how relaxed the regulations are for becoming a pilot here in Canada (our Recreational license is only a little stricter than this Sport-pilot license), if ground controllers saw or caught wind of someone pulling any of the above shit, I guarantee that they would come down like a ton of bricks on that pilot, and he or she would not be leaving the airport with their pilot's license.
Pre-screening out people who "might" not be excellent pilots is unfair to everyone. I'm a proponent of "judge by actions, not by statistics".
As usual, enforcement of existing rules is the answer, not more regulation.
In case you thought it was a typo or spelling error:
vulcanism (vl-)
n.
1. Volcanic force or activity.
2. The phenomena associated with volcanic activity.
I'm not always the brightest lightbulb in the box, but I am careful about the words I use.
No, IA32 machines will give way to AMD64 machines. IA64 died with Itanium.
Additionally, LSB 2.0 sets out specifications for AMD64 ports. However, it is still in public review, and is not the current standard. This is a problem for Debian, which has (up until now) always gone out of their way to do things "by the book".
A significant amount of ammonia in the atmosphere that has not been broken down by solar radiation would signify that it is being generated on the planet currently. The only two methods we know of that would produce enough ammonia to be detected are active vulcanism, specifically an active volcano somewhere, which we have never seen, or microbial life. I suspect the original poster is more excited about the latter possibility.
You can't blame publishers for putting their effort towards where most of their revenue comes from.
I can and do. I realize this is a free market economy and that profit is supposedly the only motivator, but when the idea of a free market economy was developed, it was postulated that the desire for more profit would lead consistently to the development of better products. In the console market, million dollar marketing campaigns, vendor lock-in, and loss leader hardware sales have done much to circumvent that. As a result we get lowest-common-denominator drivel designed to appeal to everyone in general and no one in particular. In any other industry that may fly, but in the entertainment industry it will draw accusations of being a sellout and having sold your soul for profits, and rightly so in my opinion. Entertainment that is purposely diluted down to appeal to everyone is simply not very satisfying.
There is a market for appealing to people in particular. It's a smaller market, but it there is still money to be made. Unfortunately, due to the high development cost of software nowadays, there isn't *enough* money to be made to pay for development costs. Hint: Not every game needs 2 hours of storyboarding and FMVs to advance the plot.
Anyway, my main gripe is that publishers are pricing themselves out of the PC market, and I believe it's quite intentional. A console is subsidized by licensing fees on the games. A PC is paid for in full by the gamer, games have zero licensing costs. Yet the price of a new release console game is often *less* than, or at least equal to, the price of a new release PC game. "Priced at what the market will bear"? Bullshit, if the market was bearing the price of PC games, people would not be increasingly buying into the much cheaper consoles.
What would I like from it? How about having it designed for PC not for X-Box. *slaps Warren Spector*
Yeah, right. That'll never happen. It's so much easier to implement DRM and copy-protection and other garbage on a console, it's no wonder everyone is not-so-subtly trying to elbow the PC out of the way. We might as well forget that we once had the ability to do things like take screenshots from games without having a copyright notice splattered on them. (If you think I'm being facetious, try taking a screenshot in Final Fantasy XI)
I guess that probably wouldn't be as relevant to the submitter then. I knew it improved image quality, but I also knew it wasn't a perfect catch-all solution.
Thanks for pointing out what exactly why it's done.
But I will try:
There are two solutions to this problem. The first, is to cool your sensor like you asked. A peltier cooler in between the sensor and the heatsink is the only way to do this. A heatsink will reduce you to ambient temperature at best. If you want to go below that, you need a peltier cooler at least, or something much more exotic like a compressor-based refrigeration unit, evaporative cooler, or liquid nitrogen cooling.
Alternately, you could use a CCD with a cooler already built in, such as those from Santa Barbara Instrument Group.
Finally, you could simply use a sensor that isn't so noisy. All the digital SLR cameras nowadays use CMOS sensor technology, because it's bigger than CCD primarily, but it also has a lot less noise since it isn't crammed into such a small space.
Another approach often used by astronomers is to take the noisy CCD, do an exposure of a given length, then cover it so no light can reach it, and take another exposure of the same length to create a "dark frame" that contains nothing but noise. The noise in both images will be approximately equal, and can be subtracted out using photoshop or similar software, resulting in a very clean image.