I have a home network with 6 Macs of various types and three solid home-built PCs running XP. Everything (for now) seems to work great. Why in the world should I spend any money at all for Vista?
Just wondering.
This article has good descriptions of the types of stuff being thrown out. Also a picure that shows just how bad the problem is. Trash is stored all over the ISS, reducing the room for real work and making non-trash hard to find!
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2006-06 -26-clutter-iss_x.htm
Source: USA Today 6/27/2006 2:57 PM ET
Awesome description of a launch.
Three miles is as close as anyone can get except a few NASA/contractors who can watch from the Vehicle Assembly Building (1 mile away). If the vehicle were to explode on the pad and you were outside at the VAB, you'd toast. Literally. At three miles you have a good chance of survival. At five miles you'll be OK. Launch range safety is always a top consideration. Nevertheless, it is not perfect. Statistics, models, and ultimately judgement. The Canaveral Air Force base is in charge of range safety. FYI, the area between the Base and the town of Canaveral is not a totally safe area according to information I've seen (I work for NASA). Depending on the winds, toxic fumes from an accident could drift in that direction (south). My recommendation is that if you don't have a pass, get as close to the KSC visitor center (west of the launch pads) as you can.
This appears to be based only on projected images. Its a quick and fun idea you can do in your own basement, but is no where near the level of sophistication of the "superlens" or "plasmonic coating" physics which are based on new materials research.
About a year ago Physical Review Letters published an article by Andrea Alu, Nader Engheta on the topic of the use of "plasmonic covers" to reduce the total scattering cross section of objects, in effect rendering them invisible.
There is not enough information in the Guardian article to judge whether the approaches to transparency are similar or not. It is definitely interesting to note that there are at least these two fairly mature theoretical research/engineering projects underway.
Who has not had a dream of having the power of invisibility? Such a power could be fun, useful, and dangerous. If it were invented, how would people use it? How would governments use it? Although the research is early stage and there are practical bugs for implementation, the science and general engineering are good and it is only a matter of time before such a device is demonstrated.
Here are additional references on the nanoplasmonic research:
Wrong. I work for JPL and am very familiar with these layoffs and the overall NASA situation. No NASA Centers are hiring. Some have more work to do than they have civil service employees. This work is being offered to those NASA Centers with "uncovered workforce". For the purposes of this workload management among the Centers, NASA is excluding JPL, that is, unstaffed work at other NASA Centers is not being offered to JPL. As a reminder, JPL is a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) managed by Caltech (all staff at JPL are employees of Caltech). The NASA exercise appears to be limited to Civil Service staff only. See http://www.nasawatch.com/ for more information on the situation at JPL and other NASA Centers.
California has specific laws on the books which protect the intellectual property you may create on your own time, independently of any resources from your employer. I'm sorry I can't give you a link, but I know this to be true because employers in CA are required to give you a copy of the law on your first day of work. Nevertheless, many companies try to intimidate prospective employees. Any claim they might make would fall out in court. I don't know about other states.
The Spirit ops team has made progress in establishing the ability to command the spacecraft, though perhaps only intermittently, and we've established the ability to determine some aspects of the vehicle state. However we do not yet have control of the vehicle, nor do we have an understanding of the vehicle behavior. The immediate goals are to recover control of the vehicle's power state.
We lost communication with Pathfinder - the lander - not Sojourner. No one knows the fate of the rover. In the event of loss of communications, it was programmed to circle around the lander until comm was restored. It could have done that for a very long time. It would be very interesting to revisit that site, but it would me mostly for historic curiousity.
The next major Mars rover mission, Mars Science Laboratory scheduled for launch in '09, may have RTGs as a power source. There is also a solar power option under study.
If you look at some of the high res images you can see circular marks. There is one fairly close to the lander that is clear in one image. I was told today that these marks are from the bags.
I will suggest this to our office of public engagement, which is handling the content on the web site. Because everyone is so busy right now, I think it will be hard to get that going. There is also the issue of what information has been cleared for general release, but questions like those above are probably fair. Another factoid. We're into billions of hits on the http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html website, and use is increasing rapidly.
The post by angusr is essentially correct. The longevity is dominated by a combination of environmental and engineering factors.
The basic mission is planned for 90 days. The atmosphere at Gusev is considerably less dusty than we expected, and the vehicle is performing very well. This leads to the conclusion the Spirit's longevity could be substantially longer. But anything could happen. It is also good to remember that we have not started to drive around yet, and that introduces more uncertainty. Nevertheless, we're considering plans for the possibility that an extended mission could go as long as 200 days. But let's keep expectations in check. If we go 90 days, it will be a huge scientific and engineering achievement.
Here is a good source to get more info on RFID:
http://www.aimglobal.org/technologies/rfid/
Or just use Google.
My company is investigating RFID for tracking property - a lot gets "lost" every year.
We've learned there are many types of tags and devices; active and passive. Some can store up to 1MB of data. Can be read at high speed (e.g., the guy with the stolen laptop speeding out the gate).
The company is talking about putting them on badges with readers in every conference room - automatic attendance list. Many other possibilities + and - as you can imagine. Would not be surprised to see RFID show up in driver licenses, credit cards, etc.
Some types can be interrogated at quite a distance too - many meters at least.
I admit having the "rice" size tracker installed in my 7 month old Whippet. Includes name, health, ownership info, and so forth in case he gets away. I recently helped a dog who was struck by a car near our house. No tag on a collar, no "rice" rfid - impossible to locate the owners. We ultimately got the dog to a vet emergency room and made it comfortable and out of pain before it died. With the chip - the owners could have been called in time to be there.
Like most technology, there are "good" apps and "bad" apps. Much depends on your value system.
We all know that "the street finds its own use for technology" (Wm. Gibson)
Personally, I am extremely worried about personal privacy in this "homeland security" era. RFID is just a small piece of the picture.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a home network with 6 Macs of various types and three solid home-built PCs running XP. Everything (for now) seems to work great. Why in the world should I spend any money at all for Vista? Just wondering.
This article has good descriptions of the types of stuff being thrown out. Also a picure that shows just how bad the problem is. Trash is stored all over the ISS, reducing the room for real work and making non-trash hard to find! http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2006-06 -26-clutter-iss_x.htm
Source: USA Today 6/27/2006 2:57 PM ET
Awesome description of a launch. Three miles is as close as anyone can get except a few NASA/contractors who can watch from the Vehicle Assembly Building (1 mile away). If the vehicle were to explode on the pad and you were outside at the VAB, you'd toast. Literally. At three miles you have a good chance of survival. At five miles you'll be OK. Launch range safety is always a top consideration. Nevertheless, it is not perfect. Statistics, models, and ultimately judgement. The Canaveral Air Force base is in charge of range safety. FYI, the area between the Base and the town of Canaveral is not a totally safe area according to information I've seen (I work for NASA). Depending on the winds, toxic fumes from an accident could drift in that direction (south). My recommendation is that if you don't have a pass, get as close to the KSC visitor center (west of the launch pads) as you can.
This appears to be based only on projected images. Its a quick and fun idea you can do in your own basement, but is no where near the level of sophistication of the "superlens" or "plasmonic coating" physics which are based on new materials research.
Condensed Matter, abstract cond-mat/0502336: Achieving Transparency with Plasmonic Coatings
There is not enough information in the Guardian article to judge whether the approaches to transparency are similar or not. It is definitely interesting to note that there are at least these two fairly mature theoretical research/engineering projects underway.
Who has not had a dream of having the power of invisibility? Such a power could be fun, useful, and dangerous. If it were invented, how would people use it? How would governments use it? Although the research is early stage and there are practical bugs for implementation, the science and general engineering are good and it is only a matter of time before such a device is demonstrated.
Here are additional references on the nanoplasmonic research:
PDF: Nanofocusing_in_Tapered_Plasmonic_Waveguides
Wrong. I work for JPL and am very familiar with these layoffs and the overall NASA situation. No NASA Centers are hiring. Some have more work to do than they have civil service employees. This work is being offered to those NASA Centers with "uncovered workforce". For the purposes of this workload management among the Centers, NASA is excluding JPL, that is, unstaffed work at other NASA Centers is not being offered to JPL. As a reminder, JPL is a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) managed by Caltech (all staff at JPL are employees of Caltech). The NASA exercise appears to be limited to Civil Service staff only. See http://www.nasawatch.com/ for more information on the situation at JPL and other NASA Centers.
California has specific laws on the books which protect the intellectual property you may create on your own time, independently of any resources from your employer. I'm sorry I can't give you a link, but I know this to be true because employers in CA are required to give you a copy of the law on your first day of work. Nevertheless, many companies try to intimidate prospective employees. Any claim they might make would fall out in court. I don't know about other states.
The Spirit ops team has made progress in establishing the ability to command the spacecraft, though perhaps only intermittently, and we've established the ability to determine some aspects of the vehicle state. However we do not yet have control of the vehicle, nor do we have an understanding of the vehicle behavior. The immediate goals are to recover control of the vehicle's power state.
We lost communication with Pathfinder - the lander - not Sojourner. No one knows the fate of the rover. In the event of loss of communications, it was programmed to circle around the lander until comm was restored. It could have done that for a very long time. It would be very interesting to revisit that site, but it would me mostly for historic curiousity. The next major Mars rover mission, Mars Science Laboratory scheduled for launch in '09, may have RTGs as a power source. There is also a solar power option under study.
If you look at some of the high res images you can see circular marks. There is one fairly close to the lander that is clear in one image. I was told today that these marks are from the bags.
I will suggest this to our office of public engagement, which is handling the content on the web site. Because everyone is so busy right now, I think it will be hard to get that going. There is also the issue of what information has been cleared for general release, but questions like those above are probably fair. Another factoid. We're into billions of hits on the http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html website, and use is increasing rapidly.
The post by angusr is essentially correct. The longevity is dominated by a combination of environmental and engineering factors.
The basic mission is planned for 90 days. The atmosphere at Gusev is considerably less dusty than we expected, and the vehicle is performing very well. This leads to the conclusion the Spirit's longevity could be substantially longer. But anything could happen. It is also good to remember that we have not started to drive around yet, and that introduces more uncertainty. Nevertheless, we're considering plans for the possibility that an extended mission could go as long as 200 days. But let's keep expectations in check. If we go 90 days, it will be a huge scientific and engineering achievement.
Here is a good source to get more info on RFID: http://www.aimglobal.org/technologies/rfid/ Or just use Google. My company is investigating RFID for tracking property - a lot gets "lost" every year. We've learned there are many types of tags and devices; active and passive. Some can store up to 1MB of data. Can be read at high speed (e.g., the guy with the stolen laptop speeding out the gate). The company is talking about putting them on badges with readers in every conference room - automatic attendance list. Many other possibilities + and - as you can imagine. Would not be surprised to see RFID show up in driver licenses, credit cards, etc. Some types can be interrogated at quite a distance too - many meters at least. I admit having the "rice" size tracker installed in my 7 month old Whippet. Includes name, health, ownership info, and so forth in case he gets away. I recently helped a dog who was struck by a car near our house. No tag on a collar, no "rice" rfid - impossible to locate the owners. We ultimately got the dog to a vet emergency room and made it comfortable and out of pain before it died. With the chip - the owners could have been called in time to be there. Like most technology, there are "good" apps and "bad" apps. Much depends on your value system. We all know that "the street finds its own use for technology" (Wm. Gibson) Personally, I am extremely worried about personal privacy in this "homeland security" era. RFID is just a small piece of the picture.