I am curious, don't you guys have laws regulating how an election is performed? Where I come from there is no way in hell an unauditable machine would be let anywhere near the voting process. This should be an open and shut case. If it is not, then you need new election laws and you need them badly.
With five gyrosocopes in operation on the station, it stands to reason that the backups are already up there. No need for a warehouse full of extras down here.
What using three DLP devices gets them is a brighter image, which allows them to project onto a huge screen. Consumer DLP projectors use a wheel with red, green, and blue filters on it.
Three panels does not get you any more brightness. The panels do not emit light, the lamp does. The purpose of a three panel setup is to avoid the catastrophic flickering of the wheel alternative.
I went shopping for an LCD projector, and the salesman asked me why I did not want DLP instead. I told him I could not afford any DLP that is good enough for me, but after some nagging I agreed to let him show me some $8000 Yamaha one-panel DLP. It was the WORST projector experience I have ever had. Sure, the resolution and contrast were better than on the LCD I was considering, but after 30 seconds I noticed the bright flashes of separated R, G and B whenever I moved my eyes from one side of the screen to the other, and after that I could not concentrate on anything else.
You don't have ANY idea how people solved this problem before the age of cellphones, do you? Give the babysitter phonenumbers to the places you are going to.
I don't remember why NASA went with the solid boosters.
Solid boosters are generally considered more reliable (fewer moving parts). Supposedly NASA determined that the lower risk of power loss with a solid booster would outweigh the additional abort flexibility of a liquid booster.
Of course, we know today that this particular solid booster design has caused more trouble than the liquid main engines, but taking all NASA programs into account we find that liquid engines have had their fair share of failures.
Perhaps when NASA learns some fiscal responsibility then we'll get our mission to Mars from them. And it's quite possible the wonderous big budgets of Apollo aren't EVER coming back.
Speaking of wonderous, the entire Apollo program cost $20 billion during its 14 years. That's a huge amount. To be precise, it's so huge that it's almost 6% of what the US military costs in one year.
Yes, I have heard about inflation, and while I am too lazy to compensate for it in my calculations I am willing to assume that maybe one year of Apollo costs 2% of the annual military budget instead of 0.5% as the figures above would suggest.
One idea that springs to mind is that maybe one could take a really tiny amount of money away from the military and do something as grand as Apollo. (Like go to Mars? Going there with 21st century technology should not be a lot more expensive than going to the moon with sixties technology.)
Now I am not a psychic, so I can't foresee the future. Maybe those 2% more stealth bombers and 2% heavier bomb payloads dropped on a Red Cross warehouse in Kabul is really exactly what America needs to save itself from terrorism. Or maybe it's not?
I'd say that explains why about 2% of region coded DVDs are region coded. Tell me why my Star Trek the original series DVDs need to be coded to region 1.
If a signal is observed two or more times, and it's not RFI or a test signal, the SETI@home team will ask another group to take a look. This other group will be using different telescopes, receivers, computers, etc. This will hopefully rule out a bug in our equipment or our computer code
Need you still wonder why the same Work Unit is processed by 2 or 3 machines?
Didn't think so.
Wrong. Learn, before you speak.
"If a signal is observed two or more times" means "if a signal is observed two or more times in different work units". Sending out identical work units to different computers serves a purpose, but it has nothing to do with what you quoted. It merely detects tampering or miscalculations on an individual computer, and either way it's hard to justify more than 100% redundancy.
To identify a scientifically interesting signal you have to demonstrate repeatability. You have to find it two (or five) times in the same spot. That is what the FAQ refers to.
If five people see the Abominable Snowman in a photograph you have taken, that doesn't really count as five sightings, does it?
Saturn is about 340 pixels wide in the high-resolution version of this picture. With an equatorial radius of 60268 km this translates into a pixel width of 177 km on the surface of Saturn.
Oops! 340 pixels is actually the diameter while 60268 km is the radius. So the pixel width turns out to be 354 km, and the corresponding resolution on the lunar surface would be 110 meters. Luckily, the conclusion is the same.
Please forgive my ignorance, but if we can get such a 'clear' image of saturn from the ground, how come we can't photograph the lunar landing sites?
Saturn is about 340 pixels wide in the high-resolution version of this picture. With an equatorial radius of 60268 km this translates into a pixel width of 177 km on the surface of Saturn.
The picture was taken from a distance 1209 million km, or 3215 times the surface-to-surface distance from the Earth to the Moon.
177 km divided by 3215 is 55 meters, and that is why you can't point this telescope at the moon and photograph the descent stage of a lunar lander. Actually the resolution could theoretically be a little better if the photograph was taken att shorter wavelengths, but still not good enough to catch man-made equipment on the moon.
DVDs don't need PAL to NTSC convertors. The whole point is that they don't conform to any type of picture standard other than aspect ratio.
...and of course frame rate. Even though the signal on the DVD is neither in NTSC nor PAL formats, the DVDs are made for either NTSC or PAL. The fact that the frame rate is the only thing that really separates the two types makes it an even bigger scandal that some players can't output both NTSC and PAL from any type of disc.
Any decent DVD player (all Pioneers, and probably 90% of the rest of them) will be able to convert between PAL and NTSC (the 90% figure is a wild guess, but it SHOULD be 90%+ since the electronics to do this cost less than the cardboard box the player comes in). However, in the Pioneer case and many others, this results in a 50 Hz "almost NTSC" signal from PAL, or a 60 Hz "almost PAL" signal from NTSC. The frequency stays, but the color system is converted.
When trying to watch this slightly off-standard signal on a pre-1970 TV, the picture will get squeezed or stretched vertically. However, when you watch it on a modern $100+ TV, the picture will come out just right.
On the other hand, it's equally fair to wonder whether the US wants a diplomatic incident? But I have a hard time justifying that one in these times. Isn't terrorism a good enough evil for the 21st century?
Of course it is, but you need to find a steady flow of new enemies to keep the bombings going, otherwise Bush's popularity would drop.
The distance from the Earth's centre to the centre of the Moon is about 384400 km. Subtract one Moon radius (1737 km) and one Earth radius (6378 km) and Hubble's orbital altitude (very rougly 500 km), and we get a minimum distance between Hubble and the lunar surface of 375800 km.
The planetary camera has a pixel width of 0.046 arcseconds. Let d be the width of one pixel on the lunar surface.
Then d = 375800*tan(0.046")km = 0.084km = 84m, and that is why nobody has tried to use Hubble to photograph the descent stage of the lunar lander.
The reflector left on the surface by Apollo 11 has already been used for various experiments. If those experiments did not convince you, neither will this one.
As the basic rule, all measurements are metric this time. Some of the mechanical components are in US measurements simply because the aerospace industry has always made them that way and a special order of metric components would be much more expensive. However, every time a US measurement is used it is explicitly accompanied by it's metric conversion in the spacecraft's documentation.
Maybe NASA doesn't broadcast this as big news simply because it is not news. The water ice at the poles of Mars has been known since like forever, and the fact that Odyssey has spotted it only means that the spacecraft's instruments seem to be functional.
The TOS discs are not widescreen. I don't know about what they are advertised as being, but I bought them and watched them and all of them were full frame.
Most of the similar proposals I have seen includes an optic fibre link past the horizon to a relay station in view of the Earth. A satellite link would not be ideal, since the radio communication would mess up the observations. Anyway, the satellite solution would probably not be any cheaper than a cable, because:
The observatory would be in a permanently shadowed crater near a pole, not in the "middle" of the far side, so it's not like they would need a cable a thousand miles long. This would give access to stable temperatures to preserve the construction materials for a long time, as well as permanently illuminated solar panels on the crater rim.
So the near side of the moon will be close to the site, and the cable will be short. With todays technology and resources the cable is of course more expensive than a satellite, but if the problems of actually putting the observatory there are solved, then the additional cost for the cable would be quite reasonable.
It was a hoax. The screenshots of the supposed hit contained different signals on top of the same background noise, courtesy of cut and paste.
Besides, both the frequency and the location were made public, so if you think it's real you can just point a radio telescope there and see for yourself. Several people did and found nothing.
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I am curious, don't you guys have laws regulating how an election is performed? Where I come from there is no way in hell an unauditable machine would be let anywhere near the voting process. This should be an open and shut case. If it is not, then you need new election laws and you need them badly.
Umm, travelling 100,000 lightyears in 30,000 years fits the definition of FTL pretty well.
If he is so smart, why does he say "nukular" instead of "nuclear"?
All those "broken CD" copy prevention schemes are simply a method of migrating away from a computer literate fan base!
With five gyrosocopes in operation on the station, it stands to reason that the backups are already up there. No need for a warehouse full of extras down here.
What using three DLP devices gets them is a brighter image, which allows them to project onto a huge screen. Consumer DLP projectors use a wheel with red, green, and blue filters on it.
Three panels does not get you any more brightness. The panels do not emit light, the lamp does. The purpose of a three panel setup is to avoid the catastrophic flickering of the wheel alternative.
I went shopping for an LCD projector, and the salesman asked me why I did not want DLP instead. I told him I could not afford any DLP that is good enough for me, but after some nagging I agreed to let him show me some $8000 Yamaha one-panel DLP. It was the WORST projector experience I have ever had. Sure, the resolution and contrast were better than on the LCD I was considering, but after 30 seconds I noticed the bright flashes of separated R, G and B whenever I moved my eyes from one side of the screen to the other, and after that I could not concentrate on anything else.
You don't have ANY idea how people solved this problem before the age of cellphones, do you? Give the babysitter phonenumbers to the places you are going to.
I guess that's why cc:s have expiration dates.
I don't remember why NASA went with the solid boosters.
Solid boosters are generally considered more reliable (fewer moving parts). Supposedly NASA determined that the lower risk of power loss with a solid booster would outweigh the additional abort flexibility of a liquid booster.
Of course, we know today that this particular solid booster design has caused more trouble than the liquid main engines, but taking all NASA programs into account we find that liquid engines have had their fair share of failures.
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Tune: "Jingle Bells"
1. I. B. M., Happy men, smiling all the way.
Oh what fun it is to sell our products night and day.
I. B. M., Watson men, partners of T. J.
In his service to mankind-that's why we are so gay.
Speaking of wonderous, the entire Apollo program cost $20 billion during its 14 years. That's a huge amount. To be precise, it's so huge that it's almost 6% of what the US military costs in one year.
Yes, I have heard about inflation, and while I am too lazy to compensate for it in my calculations I am willing to assume that maybe one year of Apollo costs 2% of the annual military budget instead of 0.5% as the figures above would suggest.
One idea that springs to mind is that maybe one could take a really tiny amount of money away from the military and do something as grand as Apollo. (Like go to Mars? Going there with 21st century technology should not be a lot more expensive than going to the moon with sixties technology.)
Now I am not a psychic, so I can't foresee the future. Maybe those 2% more stealth bombers and 2% heavier bomb payloads dropped on a Red Cross warehouse in Kabul is really exactly what America needs to save itself from terrorism. Or maybe it's not?
I'd say that explains why about 2% of region coded DVDs are region coded. Tell me why my Star Trek the original series DVDs need to be coded to region 1.
Wrong. Learn, before you speak.
"If a signal is observed two or more times" means "if a signal is observed two or more times in different work units". Sending out identical work units to different computers serves a purpose, but it has nothing to do with what you quoted. It merely detects tampering or miscalculations on an individual computer, and either way it's hard to justify more than 100% redundancy.
To identify a scientifically interesting signal you have to demonstrate repeatability. You have to find it two (or five) times in the same spot. That is what the FAQ refers to.
If five people see the Abominable Snowman in a photograph you have taken, that doesn't really count as five sightings, does it?
Oops! 340 pixels is actually the diameter while 60268 km is the radius. So the pixel width turns out to be 354 km, and the corresponding resolution on the lunar surface would be 110 meters. Luckily, the conclusion is the same.
Saturn is about 340 pixels wide in the high-resolution version of this picture. With an equatorial radius of 60268 km this translates into a pixel width of 177 km on the surface of Saturn.
The picture was taken from a distance 1209 million km, or 3215 times the surface-to-surface distance from the Earth to the Moon.
177 km divided by 3215 is 55 meters, and that is why you can't point this telescope at the moon and photograph the descent stage of a lunar lander. Actually the resolution could theoretically be a little better if the photograph was taken att shorter wavelengths, but still not good enough to catch man-made equipment on the moon.
DVDs don't need PAL to NTSC convertors. The whole point is that they don't conform to any type of picture standard other than aspect ratio.
...and of course frame rate. Even though the signal on the DVD is neither in NTSC nor PAL formats, the DVDs are made for either NTSC or PAL. The fact that the frame rate is the only thing that really separates the two types makes it an even bigger scandal that some players can't output both NTSC and PAL from any type of disc.
Any decent DVD player (all Pioneers, and probably 90% of the rest of them) will be able to convert between PAL and NTSC (the 90% figure is a wild guess, but it SHOULD be 90%+ since the electronics to do this cost less than the cardboard box the player comes in). However, in the Pioneer case and many others, this results in a 50 Hz "almost NTSC" signal from PAL, or a 60 Hz "almost PAL" signal from NTSC. The frequency stays, but the color system is converted.
When trying to watch this slightly off-standard signal on a pre-1970 TV, the picture will get squeezed or stretched vertically. However, when you watch it on a modern $100+ TV, the picture will come out just right.
On the other hand, it's equally fair to wonder whether the US wants a diplomatic incident? But I have a hard time justifying that one in these times. Isn't terrorism a good enough evil for the 21st century?
Of course it is, but you need to find a steady flow of new enemies to keep the bombings going, otherwise Bush's popularity would drop.
About Hubble, let's do the math:
The distance from the Earth's centre to the centre of the Moon is about 384400 km. Subtract one Moon radius (1737 km) and one Earth radius (6378 km) and Hubble's orbital altitude (very rougly 500 km), and we get a minimum distance between Hubble and the lunar surface of 375800 km.
The planetary camera has a pixel width of 0.046 arcseconds. Let d be the width of one pixel on the lunar surface.
Then d = 375800*tan(0.046")km = 0.084km = 84m, and that is why nobody has tried to use Hubble to photograph the descent stage of the lunar lander.
The reflector left on the surface by Apollo 11 has already been used for various experiments. If those experiments did not convince you, neither will this one.
As the basic rule, all measurements are metric this time. Some of the mechanical components are in US measurements simply because the aerospace industry has always made them that way and a special order of metric components would be much more expensive. However, every time a US measurement is used it is explicitly accompanied by it's metric conversion in the spacecraft's documentation.
Maybe NASA doesn't broadcast this as big news simply because it is not news. The water ice at the poles of Mars has been known since like forever, and the fact that Odyssey has spotted it only means that the spacecraft's instruments seem to be functional.
The TOS discs are not widescreen. I don't know about what they are advertised as being, but I bought them and watched them and all of them were full frame.
Most of the similar proposals I have seen includes an optic fibre link past the horizon to a relay station in view of the Earth. A satellite link would not be ideal, since the radio communication would mess up the observations. Anyway, the satellite solution would probably not be any cheaper than a cable, because:
The observatory would be in a permanently shadowed crater near a pole, not in the "middle" of the far side, so it's not like they would need a cable a thousand miles long. This would give access to stable temperatures to preserve the construction materials for a long time, as well as permanently illuminated solar panels on the crater rim.
So the near side of the moon will be close to the site, and the cable will be short. With todays technology and resources the cable is of course more expensive than a satellite, but if the problems of actually putting the observatory there are solved, then the additional cost for the cable would be quite reasonable.
It was a hoax. The screenshots of the supposed hit contained different signals on top of the same background noise, courtesy of cut and paste.
Besides, both the frequency and the location were made public, so if you think it's real you can just point a radio telescope there and see for yourself. Several people did and found nothing.