Park one or more shuttles in orbit for those types of missions. When needed, fly a crew over on a spaceplane. If a shuttle needs extensive overhaul or modification, fly it down, or drive it to spacedock and shoot up the necessary parts and crew.
listen to the thing and be reassured. the result in my opinion can only be loosely described as music, and is not only unpleasant, but to my ear sounds nothing like the music it purportedly replicates (unless maybe there's lots of static and noise and talk on some of those 20 stations).
on the other hand, be reassured in another way: this noise is actually more interesting than much of the cookie-cutter product being generated by the industry today.
Does anyone think it will look THAT much bigger and brighter subtending 25.1 seconds this year than it did in Jun 2001 subtending 20.5 seconds?
Yes. Isn't that a huge difference... about 50% change in area for a disk? Yes it should look a lot bigger and brighter. Imagine if your monitor just got 25% wider and taller.
And it may be a once-in-a-lifetime chance... the weather here (on the east coast usa) is unusually clear right now, and so's the weather on mars, apparently. That's really great luck, with mars as big as it's going to be in my lifetime. It's not even likely that conditions will be this good the next 5 times mars is almost-this-big.
The history of computing and IT is full of chicken-egg situations. Some worked out sooner and some later. Many had to do with hardware capabilities vs. applications, or economics (PC's were once too expensive for home use, but they were expensive in part because there wasn't much of a market, etc.). As more people use small devices to surf (happening already), compliant sites will see more visits, and more sites will become compliant to compete for the squinched eyeball. Just one easy-to-use standards-compliant web developement tool will take us around the corner where even clueless hacks can produce a "beautiful XHTML/CSS coded" page. Kudos to Opera for at least implementing a quick small-screen preview in their standard browser.
they seem to get the latest, highest capacity models, various brands.
NiMH working great for my dad's digital camera and lousy for my Visor. Opposite is true for disposable alkaline. Go figure. Maybe NiMH is good for sporadic high current draw, alkaline better for trickling and low-current apps? Anyone?
I second the recommendation. I bought an i550 several months ago, to replace my b&w Canon BJ-200 (still running). You pay more for the printer, but less on ink (one color at a time, and there are many 3rd-party options--no 1st hand experience yet because i've hardly made a dent in the ink supply). Separate print head is readily available if/when you need it. Both USB and parallel (but no cables!). I love it: it turns itself on and off; almost too many output options; print preview (optional); crisp text; folds up to keep dust out. Good customer service (one cartridge got damaged during shipping, one email via support-web form and Canon emailed me later that day to say they'd snail me a new cartridge, and they did). As flimsy outside as a typical consumer inkjet, but it feels like it's built around a solid, heavy chassis. Real quiet, but give it a sturdy base--the fully loaded print head whipping back and forth made my cheap workstation shake and the monitor jiggle until i re-positioned the printer at a diagonal; finally moved it to a bookshelf.
I've used it only under Windows, for the newest Canons under Linux you might have to make do with older-model drivers for a while, but i hear they work. For photos, you may have to fiddle some to find the right color settings for your taste--it was a bit "cool" out of the box.
Distilled water. The cheap white paste stuff does dry out, and leaves you a lumpy surface that you need to clean off if you want to switch heatsinks. But distilled water and paper towels and air drying have always worked fine for me (or spit-wipe-blow if i'm in a hurry!).
Pure H20 is also great for dissolving out coffee and soda in keyboard guts, too. For really bad messes, you can soak and rinse--it's the best way to thoroughly de-soda circuit boards, for example. (Obviously, dissasemble first!) No mess, no fumes, no grease, no residue. Just make sure everything's dry before you reassemble--let dry overnight, turn over, repeat. Use a hair dryer to speed things up or to make doubly sure. WD40 any mechanical bits.
This sounds like what you seek: a NASA educational site with graded tutorials, games, projects on aerodynamics theory and application, on using the internet and on scientific method and experiments. I really enjoyed one class' research on aerodynamics in sports like tennis. Emphasizes activities, with stuff for kids and educators.
This site is an unfortunately isolated part of the larger http://avkids.com/
I'm sure NASA has lots of other kid-oriented websites.
Call us what we are: "Hackers" (as in people who troubleshoot and solve problems, find new ways to do things better, teach computers to do new things, etc.), and recognize the most challenging and rewarding part of the job.
Sorry, I should have looked before I leaped into the xBSD licensing swamp.
Hooray! Even the BIOS can be a bloated hog GUI!
on
Legacy-Free PCs
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· Score: 1
"For example, it can provide a full mouse-driven graphical interface for controlling the low-level hardware functions that today can only be controlled by hitting a special key at startup and entering a limited, arcane, and text-only "BIOS Setup" routine."
You mean that "special key" only some of us have? That "text-only" display that only works on a few exotic monitors? That "limited" "arcane" routine that condenses hardware settings into a few screenfuls that don't need to be scrolled--under that pitifully easy to navigate single-level menu?
"EFI isn't space-constrained because its data resides in a special reserved area of the hard drive. This means that far more engineers will be able to do more creative things with PC hardware than is now possible."
Sometimes it twists the other way, too, like the internet becoming a public conduit for slashdotters all over the world to trash the agency that funded it's development (DARPA). The interstate highway system was also DoD funded.
And sometimes the military takes advantage of privately developed technology and adapts it to improve weapons systems and training (e.g. PC's, laptops, war sims).
Look, as long as military money is going somewhere, isn't it a thousand million times better that it goes to an open source free software project than to a more lethal bullet or some TIA code that no one can ever see?
(Can any lawyers here tell us whether military use of OpenBSD would be bound by GPL? Is our next tank's source code going to be available for download?)
Also, I'm pretty sure the military didn't conceive or order this "oil grab". They're just stuck doing the dirty work. I'm not saying that makes them the good guys or the bad guys, but they're not THOSE bad guys.
The interesting thing here is that it's impossible to say how far the boy is from the tank. Given the compressing effect of the telephoto lens, the boy could be fifty feet from the tank, or fifty yards away aiming a rock at another boy just off the frame.
"Pictures and video have alway been held in higher standing for thier direct integrity."
They shouldn't be. Retouching aside, all photographs editorialize: by including or excluding elements and context (both space and time), distorting perspective, and otherwise presenting an isolated instant from a specific point of view. Even simple choices like using black and white or color film, telephoto or wideangle lens, distort reality and affect how the event is perceived.
We should be even more vigilant against this kind of manipulation, whether or not it is intentional, because it happens on a more visceral and gestalt level than mere words.
Obvious example: if instead of the picture in question, the LA Times had run a picture of a pile of burnt corpses, it would have set a different tone for the day's news before we even started reading the stories. Subtle example: i saw a TV correspondent report in from a Washington briefing room with the American flag dominating the background of the frame, a la Presidential speeches. This was an editorial decision that implies things beyond the scope of mere reporting.
Re:Timeline to be released in 2003
on
Prey
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· Score: 1
I read Timeline last year, and I remember thinking that it seemed written for the screen. Not as good as Andromeda Strain, but not bad -- it gave M.C. a chance to shine as a history buff, and I thought there was a neat end-run around the problem of transporting matter back in time, though I don't know if it was an original idea. Can't remember a single character, but I appreciated the rather entertaining gloss of some quantum-theory notions.
This might be a little off-topic, but when we were looking for a one-stop host/registrar, there seemed to be quite a few low-cost options for the minimal space/bandwidth we needed at the time, but the service agreements were a cause for concern. At the time, I found few agreements that didn't imply that the provider owned at least some rights to the domain name, and only one that explicitly affirmed our sole ownership (buydomains a.k.a. domaindiscover a.k.a. tierranet). That was the difference for us.
A highly readable introduction to extremophiles, courtesy of Nova and the enthusiastic and funny Dr. Diana Northrup, is at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/caves/extremophiles.h tml
Northrup studies deep-cave ecosystems with little or no solar-based energy (carbon). Her SLIME (subsurface life in mineral environments) team page is at http://www.i-pi.com/~diana/slime/
"The Archaea are extremophiles and other unusual microbes that are so different from bacteria that Carl Woese of the University of Illinois assigned them their own domain on the tree of life, along with Bacteria (organisms with no nucleus) and Eukarya (organisms, including humans, with nuclei)." -- from the Nova page.
Slashdot Mirror
Park one or more shuttles in orbit for those types of missions. When needed, fly a crew over on a spaceplane. If a shuttle needs extensive overhaul or modification, fly it down, or drive it to spacedock and shoot up the necessary parts and crew.
listen to the thing and be reassured. the result in my opinion can only be loosely described as music, and is not only unpleasant, but to my ear sounds nothing like the music it purportedly replicates (unless maybe there's lots of static and noise and talk on some of those 20 stations).
on the other hand, be reassured in another way: this noise is actually more interesting than much of the cookie-cutter product being generated by the industry today.
If she can replace the universal remote control, you've got a sale!
Does anyone think it will look THAT much bigger and brighter subtending 25.1 seconds this year than it did in Jun 2001 subtending 20.5 seconds?
Yes. Isn't that a huge difference... about 50% change in area for a disk? Yes it should look a lot bigger and brighter. Imagine if your monitor just got 25% wider and taller.
And it may be a once-in-a-lifetime chance... the weather here (on the east coast usa) is unusually clear right now, and so's the weather on mars, apparently. That's really great luck, with mars as big as it's going to be in my lifetime. It's not even likely that conditions will be this good the next 5 times mars is almost-this-big.
The history of computing and IT is full of chicken-egg situations. Some worked out sooner and some later. Many had to do with hardware capabilities vs. applications, or economics (PC's were once too expensive for home use, but they were expensive in part because there wasn't much of a market, etc.). As more people use small devices to surf (happening already), compliant sites will see more visits, and more sites will become compliant to compete for the squinched eyeball. Just one easy-to-use standards-compliant web developement tool will take us around the corner where even clueless hacks can produce a "beautiful XHTML/CSS coded" page. Kudos to Opera for at least implementing a quick small-screen preview in their standard browser.
http://thomas-distributing.com/
they seem to get the latest, highest capacity models, various brands.
NiMH working great for my dad's digital camera and lousy for my Visor. Opposite is true for disposable alkaline. Go figure. Maybe NiMH is good for sporadic high current draw, alkaline better for trickling and low-current apps? Anyone?
I second the recommendation. I bought an i550 several months ago, to replace my b&w Canon BJ-200 (still running). You pay more for the printer, but less on ink (one color at a time, and there are many 3rd-party options--no 1st hand experience yet because i've hardly made a dent in the ink supply). Separate print head is readily available if/when you need it. Both USB and parallel (but no cables!). I love it: it turns itself on and off; almost too many output options; print preview (optional); crisp text; folds up to keep dust out. Good customer service (one cartridge got damaged during shipping, one email via support-web form and Canon emailed me later that day to say they'd snail me a new cartridge, and they did). As flimsy outside as a typical consumer inkjet, but it feels like it's built around a solid, heavy chassis. Real quiet, but give it a sturdy base--the fully loaded print head whipping back and forth made my cheap workstation shake and the monitor jiggle until i re-positioned the printer at a diagonal; finally moved it to a bookshelf.
I've used it only under Windows, for the newest Canons under Linux you might have to make do with older-model drivers for a while, but i hear they work. For photos, you may have to fiddle some to find the right color settings for your taste--it was a bit "cool" out of the box.
Distilled water. The cheap white paste stuff does dry out, and leaves you a lumpy surface that you need to clean off if you want to switch heatsinks. But distilled water and paper towels and air drying have always worked fine for me (or spit-wipe-blow if i'm in a hurry!).
Pure H20 is also great for dissolving out coffee and soda in keyboard guts, too. For really bad messes, you can soak and rinse--it's the best way to thoroughly de-soda circuit boards, for example. (Obviously, dissasemble first!) No mess, no fumes, no grease, no residue. Just make sure everything's dry before you reassemble--let dry overnight, turn over, repeat. Use a hair dryer to speed things up or to make doubly sure. WD40 any mechanical bits.
http://wings.avkids.com/
This sounds like what you seek: a NASA educational site with graded tutorials, games, projects on aerodynamics theory and application, on using the internet and on scientific method and experiments. I really enjoyed one class' research on aerodynamics in sports like tennis. Emphasizes activities, with stuff for kids and educators.
This site is an unfortunately isolated part of the larger http://avkids.com/
I'm sure NASA has lots of other kid-oriented websites.
Call us what we are: "Hackers" (as in people who troubleshoot and solve problems, find new ways to do things better, teach computers to do new things, etc.), and recognize the most challenging and rewarding part of the job.
"This is Joe, our senior Hacker."
No? Oh, all right, then, how about "Technomage"?
Sorry, I should have looked before I leaped into the xBSD licensing swamp.
"For example, it can provide a full mouse-driven graphical interface for controlling the low-level hardware functions that today can only be controlled by hitting a special key at startup and entering a limited, arcane, and text-only "BIOS Setup" routine."
You mean that "special key" only some of us have? That "text-only" display that only works on a few exotic monitors? That "limited" "arcane" routine that condenses hardware settings into a few screenfuls that don't need to be scrolled--under that pitifully easy to navigate single-level menu?
"EFI isn't space-constrained because its data resides in a special reserved area of the hard drive. This means that far more engineers will be able to do more creative things with PC hardware than is now possible."
Can't wait...
Sometimes it twists the other way, too, like the internet becoming a public conduit for slashdotters all over the world to trash the agency that funded it's development (DARPA). The interstate highway system was also DoD funded.
And sometimes the military takes advantage of privately developed technology and adapts it to improve weapons systems and training (e.g. PC's, laptops, war sims).
Look, as long as military money is going somewhere, isn't it a thousand million times better that it goes to an open source free software project than to a more lethal bullet or some TIA code that no one can ever see?
(Can any lawyers here tell us whether military use of OpenBSD would be bound by GPL? Is our next tank's source code going to be available for download?)
Also, I'm pretty sure the military didn't conceive or order this "oil grab". They're just stuck doing the dirty work. I'm not saying that makes them the good guys or the bad guys, but they're not THOSE bad guys.
The interesting thing here is that it's impossible to say how far the boy is from the tank. Given the compressing effect of the telephoto lens, the boy could be fifty feet from the tank, or fifty yards away aiming a rock at another boy just off the frame.
"Pictures and video have alway been held in higher standing for thier direct integrity."
They shouldn't be. Retouching aside, all photographs editorialize: by including or excluding elements and context (both space and time), distorting perspective, and otherwise presenting an isolated instant from a specific point of view. Even simple choices like using black and white or color film, telephoto or wideangle lens, distort reality and affect how the event is perceived.
We should be even more vigilant against this kind of manipulation, whether or not it is intentional, because it happens on a more visceral and gestalt level than mere words.
Obvious example: if instead of the picture in question, the LA Times had run a picture of a pile of burnt corpses, it would have set a different tone for the day's news before we even started reading the stories. Subtle example: i saw a TV correspondent report in from a Washington briefing room with the American flag dominating the background of the frame, a la Presidential speeches. This was an editorial decision that implies things beyond the scope of mere reporting.
I read Timeline last year, and I remember thinking that it seemed written for the screen. Not as good as Andromeda Strain, but not bad -- it gave M.C. a chance to shine as a history buff, and I thought there was a neat end-run around the problem of transporting matter back in time, though I don't know if it was an original idea. Can't remember a single character, but I appreciated the rather entertaining gloss of some quantum-theory notions.
This might be a little off-topic, but when we were looking for a one-stop host/registrar, there seemed to be quite a few low-cost options for the minimal space/bandwidth we needed at the time, but the service agreements were a cause for concern. At the time, I found few agreements that didn't imply that the provider owned at least some rights to the domain name, and only one that explicitly affirmed our sole ownership (buydomains a.k.a. domaindiscover a.k.a. tierranet). That was the difference for us.
D-, the Canterbury tales are in verse, not prose
A highly readable introduction to extremophiles, courtesy of Nova and the enthusiastic and funny Dr. Diana Northrup, is at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/caves/extremophiles.h tml
Northrup studies deep-cave ecosystems with little or no solar-based energy (carbon). Her SLIME (subsurface life in mineral environments) team page is at http://www.i-pi.com/~diana/slime/
"The Archaea are extremophiles and other unusual microbes that are so different from bacteria that Carl Woese of the University of Illinois assigned them their own domain on the tree of life, along with Bacteria (organisms with no nucleus) and Eukarya (organisms, including humans, with nuclei)." -- from the Nova page.