However, the twin Pioneer spacecraft drifted off course (see number 8) by hundreds of thousands of kilometres during their three-decade mission, and NASA eventually lost contact with them.
This seems to imply that NASA lost contact because the spacecraft drifted off-course. AIU, they lost contact because the signals became too weak to be readable (due to distance and/or degradation of the RTG).
The military have been doing this (in a more limited fashion) for years. AFAIK it started with analogue VCRs being coupled to JSTARS radar output. With the VCR, they could track radar contacts (vehicles) over a longer period of time (hours). For this sort of surveillance to be useful, you'd have to have 24/7 overhead coverage, either radar or optical. That's not something they're going to be able to sneak into a non-battlefield area (i.e. the US). Also, JSTARS coverage of the entire US would be prohibitively expensive.
There is an age-related hearing loss at the high end of the spectrum, but it has little to do with being able to hear the difference between an MP3 and the original CD. When encoding to MP3, information is lost across the entire frequency spectrum, making artifacts audible regardless of age.
The upper limit of human hearing (for young people) is around 20 kHz, not 40. "transform that 40khz back to a number of bit per second" is gobbledegook: to be able to do that, you need to know at least the bit depth in addition to the highest frequency to be sampled.
Whether or not an MP3 of a given bitrate is transparent, depends on two things: - the recording method and encoder used, - the complexity of the music involved.
I've done some comparison tests. Using LAME, and some simple music (Norah Jones, IIRC), a 128 kbps MP3 was transparent. In contrast, the 128 kbps MP3s of the Beethoven symphonies that were published last year by the BBC contain clearly audible artefacts, especially in the more complex passages.
The platform isn't an enclosed structure, so there's no pressure buildup. And they need 1.2 million litres of water to protect the platform (and the rest of the launch pad) during the launch. The water absorbs the heat and vibrations. A large fraction of the water is converted to steam in the 20 seconds or so from ignition to clearing the tower.
The only problem with that is keeping the clamshell (and the whole building) from being blasted to smithereens during takeoff. The noise level alone is enough to crumble concrete, add to that the temperature and pressure, and you see why rockets are usually launched in the open. True, missiles are often launched from canisters or silos, but:
1. Smaller missiles often use a cold-gas ejection system. The motor doesn't ignite until the missile is out of the canister. Some systems (e.g. Mk 41 VLS) ignite the missile in the canister. In this case, the canister consists of an inner tube that contains the missile, and a fixed outer tube. When reloading, the inner tube is replaced. This is doable for a missile, not so much for a Shuttle-sized rocket.
2. For larger missiles (ICBMs), a reusable launch site isn't the top priority. Damage to the silo is more acceptable here than for a NASA launch facility.
Not quite. Unlike a rock, this thing can move around. With those wings, they can convert depth changes into forward motion. It seems buoyancy control uses less energy than a propeller, so they've got a very efficient propulsion system. The tradeoff is a low top speed.
1. It's an autonomous vehicle. Most unmanned subs have to be remotely piloted. Many are tethered to their mothership, severely limiting their range and maneuverability.
2. Its range and endurance are nothing short of phenomenal. They've made a quantum leap in efficiency.
3. It may be the cheapest way to get to a depth of 9000 ft.
ISTR reading a story (by Isaac Asimov? ) where humanity was just starting to develop interplanetary space travel. Light speed communications proved a problem because the send-ACK cycle was so long. The solution was the 'mother-in-law' [1] mode, where both ends just keep sending information without waiting for axknowledgement from the other party.
Why, oh why, do people RAR and split an archive, then offer it as one big download anyway ?
The only upside I can see is that when StuffIt decodes the RAR I get to see its 'estimated time to unpack the archive' of 2938757659 hours (an amusing bug, considering that it then takes a few seconds to unpack an archive).
If the sound originates on the seafloor, you presumably need to account for propagation delays. If the sound is generated over a large area, it'll be muddled enough that you won't be able to lock onto a specific phase of the soundwave. Also, TFA doesn't say how regular the sound is. If it's 10 mHz +/- 50%, you've got too much clock drift to be usable.
RTFA. They're not storing energy as heat and then attempting to recover it, they're modulating the energy usage of the cold store to buffer the grid. Cool down the store to -25 C during peak supply hours (which often don't coincide with peak demand), and you can switch off the refrigerator and let the temperature rise to -23 C during off-peak supply hours. This is beneficial regardless of whether the grid is powered by wind, solar or fossil fuel plants; wind power is just the sales pitch.
Nowak's breakdown surely wasn't the trigger for NASA to start thinking about the psychological problems of long-term space missions. Most of the Russian experiments in this area have been with all-male crews, though.
IOW this is more about PopMech finding an excuse to write snigger-worthy story than about NASA uncovering a new possible problem. Whoop-tee-doo.
the gap between rich and poor wouldn't be growing nearly as fast and eliminating the middle class if everyone didn't buy all their wizbang-gottahavits on credit...when it was normal to save for years for a house/car/stuff the gap was much smaller and the middle class was much larger
There are two factors at work here: people buying on credit and working themselves into a hole is one. But the gap is also influenced by the growing difference in income between low-wage and high-wage jobs.
As for all those that think the Apple Corps label has little value today... according to the Billboard Top 200 [billboard.com], a brand new release from Apple Corps is currently at number 22, down from a peak of #4 (not to mention the 6 Beatles albums that have sold 10 million units or more).
But that doesn't mean the brand has any value. Music brands in general are IMO worthless: no-one buys music because it's published by a particular label; people buy music because they like the artist. I couldn't tell you which label published any of my CDs. For most music, people just don't care.
The one exemption I can think of is classical music, where some labels are regarded highly because they publish music of high quality (they invest a lot in hiring the best performers and making a good recording). Classical music is fairly unique: this is a market where you can get the same music in several different performances (and at different price points). This rarely happens with popular music. You just get the original artist and 'muzak' covers, generally.
You could even argue that the only value a label can have is negative. Just ask Sony.
Because a) in many cases it isn't true (the higher end your hardware, the less true it is)
I find that hard to believe. A new OS release that somehow makes old machines slower, and new machines faster? Maybe on new machines you don't notice the slowdown that much.
I can think of one exception: graphics operations being offloaded to the GPU (like Apple has been doing with e.g. Quartz Extreme). Older machines usually have older GPUs that don't support these operations, so they see increased CPU use.
Why not just type yahoo.com in the address bar, and hit Enter? Firefox, at least, will prepend "http://www." and get you to the right page immediately. It doesn't need an 'I'm feeling lucky' search, either.
Interesting. My $15 cable sub gets me about 35 channels. All PAL analogue, though. Getting the same channels digitally (same resolution) will run me about $10/month extra. HDTV isn't an issue yet, with only about 2 channels available in HD res.
I haven't seen a TV commercial in about 8 years: I hardly watch anything live but tape it instead. This has the added bonus of not being shackled to stupid TV schedules. It is more convoluted than downloading, though: I've taken to downloading most of the shows I watch (even though they're broadcast regularly on local channels).
FrameMaker shows that WYSIWYG can be done without the 'reformat the whole document every time you change printers' nonsense. I think part of the problem is that Word likes to use the fonts that have been installed in the printer, instead of the fonts that are present on the local computer. Stupidly, every printer seems to implement their own version of each font. Installing fonts on a printer hasn't been necessary since the bad old days of daisy wheels, but that's inertia for you.
I think monthly fees are ludicrous, and refuse to pay them if there's an alternative. I'd rather use the iTunes model: Pay $2 for an episode or get a season pass for a discount of, say, $30 for a 26 episode season. That way I can check out new shows for cheap and get the shows I like for less.
How much do you pay for your cable subscription? Where I live, cable TV costs $180 a year. At $2 an episode, I'd rack up way more than that, and I only watch one hour of TV a day. $2/ep seems ridiculously high to me, way more than I'd be willing to pay.
If a show's cheap enough to produce, as few as 10,000 people, scattered across the globe, could keep episodes being aired.
You're off by a couple orders of magnitude. Firefly was reported to cost $2 million per episode.
Slashdot Mirror
However, the twin Pioneer spacecraft drifted off course (see number 8) by hundreds of thousands of kilometres during their three-decade mission, and NASA eventually lost contact with them.
This seems to imply that NASA lost contact because the spacecraft drifted off-course. AIU, they lost contact because the signals became too weak to be readable (due to distance and/or degradation of the RTG).
The military have been doing this (in a more limited fashion) for years. AFAIK it started with analogue VCRs being coupled to JSTARS radar output. With the VCR, they could track radar contacts (vehicles) over a longer period of time (hours).
For this sort of surveillance to be useful, you'd have to have 24/7 overhead coverage, either radar or optical. That's not something they're going to be able to sneak into a non-battlefield area (i.e. the US). Also, JSTARS coverage of the entire US would be prohibitively expensive.
To quote Asterix,
Q: "does it rain here often?"
A: "Only when there's no fog"
Over here (.nl) there's some cloud cover ATM, but I'd say it's less than 50%. The national met office reports a good chance at clear skies tonight.
This is modded Insightful?
There is an age-related hearing loss at the high end of the spectrum, but it has little to do with being able to hear the difference between an MP3 and the original CD.
When encoding to MP3, information is lost across the entire frequency spectrum, making artifacts audible regardless of age.
The upper limit of human hearing (for young people) is around 20 kHz, not 40. "transform that 40khz back to a number of bit per second" is gobbledegook: to be able to do that, you need to know at least the bit depth in addition to the highest frequency to be sampled.
Whether or not an MP3 of a given bitrate is transparent, depends on two things:
- the recording method and encoder used,
- the complexity of the music involved.
I've done some comparison tests. Using LAME, and some simple music (Norah Jones, IIRC), a 128 kbps MP3 was transparent. In contrast, the 128 kbps MP3s of the Beethoven symphonies that were published last year by the BBC contain clearly audible artefacts, especially in the more complex passages.
The platform isn't an enclosed structure, so there's no pressure buildup. And they need 1.2 million litres of water to protect the platform (and the rest of the launch pad) during the launch. The water absorbs the heat and vibrations. A large fraction of the water is converted to steam in the 20 seconds or so from ignition to clearing the tower.
The only problem with that is keeping the clamshell (and the whole building) from being blasted to smithereens during takeoff. The noise level alone is enough to crumble concrete, add to that the temperature and pressure, and you see why rockets are usually launched in the open. True, missiles are often launched from canisters or silos, but:
1. Smaller missiles often use a cold-gas ejection system. The motor doesn't ignite until the missile is out of the canister. Some systems (e.g. Mk 41 VLS) ignite the missile in the canister. In this case, the canister consists of an inner tube that contains the missile, and a fixed outer tube. When reloading, the inner tube is replaced. This is doable for a missile, not so much for a Shuttle-sized rocket.
2. For larger missiles (ICBMs), a reusable launch site isn't the top priority. Damage to the silo is more acceptable here than for a NASA launch facility.
Warning about that link: Applausestore are spammy bastards who make it impossible to get off their mailing list.
Not quite. Unlike a rock, this thing can move around. With those wings, they can convert depth changes into forward motion. It seems buoyancy control uses less energy than a propeller, so they've got a very efficient propulsion system. The tradeoff is a low top speed.
1. It's an autonomous vehicle. Most unmanned subs have to be remotely piloted. Many are tethered to their mothership, severely limiting their range and maneuverability.
2. Its range and endurance are nothing short of phenomenal. They've made a quantum leap in efficiency.
3. It may be the cheapest way to get to a depth of 9000 ft.
As in 'they're impenetrable drivel'? Yes.
But I did run Windows 3.0 on a 286 with 2 MB RAM. The RAM was installed on an ISA expansion card. Painful, that was.
ISTR reading a story (by Isaac Asimov? ) where humanity was just starting to develop interplanetary space travel. Light speed communications proved a problem because the send-ACK cycle was so long. The solution was the 'mother-in-law' [1] mode, where both ends just keep sending information without waiting for axknowledgement from the other party.
1: it's been too long so the details are fuzzy
A bit OT, but..
Why, oh why, do people RAR and split an archive, then offer it as one big download anyway ?
The only upside I can see is that when StuffIt decodes the RAR I get to see its 'estimated time to unpack the archive' of 2938757659 hours (an amusing bug, considering that it then takes a few seconds to unpack an archive).
If the sound originates on the seafloor, you presumably need to account for propagation delays. If the sound is generated over a large area, it'll be muddled enough that you won't be able to lock onto a specific phase of the soundwave. Also, TFA doesn't say how regular the sound is. If it's 10 mHz +/- 50%, you've got too much clock drift to be usable.
RTFA. They're not storing energy as heat and then attempting to recover it, they're modulating the energy usage of the cold store to buffer the grid. Cool down the store to -25 C during peak supply hours (which often don't coincide with peak demand), and you can switch off the refrigerator and let the temperature rise to -23 C during off-peak supply hours. This is beneficial regardless of whether the grid is powered by wind, solar or fossil fuel plants; wind power is just the sales pitch.
Nowak's breakdown surely wasn't the trigger for NASA to start thinking about the psychological problems of long-term space missions. Most of the Russian experiments in this area have been with all-male crews, though.
IOW this is more about PopMech finding an excuse to write snigger-worthy story than about NASA uncovering a new possible problem. Whoop-tee-doo.
the gap between rich and poor wouldn't be growing nearly as fast and eliminating the middle class if everyone didn't buy all their wizbang-gottahavits on credit...when it was normal to save for years for a house/car/stuff the gap was much smaller and the middle class was much larger
There are two factors at work here: people buying on credit and working themselves into a hole is one. But the gap is also influenced by the growing difference in income between low-wage and high-wage jobs.
the problem with Wikipedia
As for all those that think the Apple Corps label has little value today... according to the Billboard Top 200 [billboard.com], a brand new release from Apple Corps is currently at number 22, down from a peak of #4 (not to mention the 6 Beatles albums that have sold 10 million units or more).
But that doesn't mean the brand has any value. Music brands in general are IMO worthless: no-one buys music because it's published by a particular label; people buy music because they like the artist. I couldn't tell you which label published any of my CDs. For most music, people just don't care.
The one exemption I can think of is classical music, where some labels are regarded highly because they publish music of high quality (they invest a lot in hiring the best performers and making a good recording). Classical music is fairly unique: this is a market where you can get the same music in several different performances (and at different price points). This rarely happens with popular music. You just get the original artist and 'muzak' covers, generally.
You could even argue that the only value a label can have is negative. Just ask Sony.
Because a) in many cases it isn't true (the higher end your hardware, the less true it is)
I find that hard to believe. A new OS release that somehow makes old machines slower, and new machines faster? Maybe on new machines you don't notice the slowdown that much.
I can think of one exception: graphics operations being offloaded to the GPU (like Apple has been doing with e.g. Quartz Extreme). Older machines usually have older GPUs that don't support these operations, so they see increased CPU use.
Why not just type yahoo.com in the address bar, and hit Enter? Firefox, at least, will prepend "http://www." and get you to the right page immediately. It doesn't need an 'I'm feeling lucky' search, either.
Interesting. My $15 cable sub gets me about 35 channels. All PAL analogue, though. Getting the same channels digitally (same resolution) will run me about $10/month extra. HDTV isn't an issue yet, with only about 2 channels available in HD res.
I haven't seen a TV commercial in about 8 years: I hardly watch anything live but tape it instead. This has the added bonus of not being shackled to stupid TV schedules. It is more convoluted than downloading, though: I've taken to downloading most of the shows I watch (even though they're broadcast regularly on local channels).
FrameMaker shows that WYSIWYG can be done without the 'reformat the whole document every time you change printers' nonsense.
I think part of the problem is that Word likes to use the fonts that have been installed in the printer, instead of the fonts that are present on the local computer. Stupidly, every printer seems to implement their own version of each font. Installing fonts on a printer hasn't been necessary since the bad old days of daisy wheels, but that's inertia for you.
The article was written by an SEO. Who says he doesn't rank them by how easy they are for him to manipulate?
I think monthly fees are ludicrous, and refuse to pay them if there's an alternative. I'd rather use the iTunes model: Pay $2 for an episode or get a season pass for a discount of, say, $30 for a 26 episode season. That way I can check out new shows for cheap and get the shows I like for less.
How much do you pay for your cable subscription? Where I live, cable TV costs $180 a year. At $2 an episode, I'd rack up way more than that, and I only watch one hour of TV a day. $2/ep seems ridiculously high to me, way more than I'd be willing to pay.
If a show's cheap enough to produce, as few as 10,000 people, scattered across the globe, could keep episodes being aired.
You're off by a couple orders of magnitude. Firefly was reported to cost $2 million per episode.