No... They paid for part of the spaceport so he'd build it where they live and so that those multi-millionaires would come to spend their money where they live
That statement assumes that multi-millionaires will spend any remotely-significant amount of their money in town. What is more likely is that they will fly into the spaceport via private jet, stay in luxury accomodations at the spaceport, get blasted into space, land, and fly home via their private jet.
It is extremely likely that Virgin will structure things such that payment for all of this will take place in such a manner that New Mexico and (ironically) the county, will not see a dime in sales tax.
He was going to build it anyway, and he was almost certainly not going to build it in New Mexico without any incentive to do so.
You and I both have little idea if that statement is true, but it's irrelevant nonetheless: my point is that the people of the county in question will most likely be better off if Branson hadn't built the spaceport (in their county), or hadn't received a dime from them.
You're right, it was pretty stupid of the residents not to vote for Branson to give them a 3rd of his net worth. Or hey, they should have voted to end the Iraq War and have all the defense spending sent to them. Then they'd all be rich and their problems would be over!
That's an invalid straw man argument.
Yeah, I know, trickle down sucks, but it's what they're dealing with. I'm sure they'd feel so much smarter watching the space port be built somewhere else and having the money of these tourists come in somewhere else while their own economy continues to go down the shitter.
"Trickle down" doesn't exist. It's bullshit made up by an actor who played President to justify to poor people why he was handing rich people and corporations tax cuts.
Irregardless, you're also again relying on the completely speculative argument that "if a spaceport is built, it will benefit the county." That seems very dubious, given the scale just tipped $50,000,000 out of their favor, and all Branson has committed to doing is leasing some facilities and land.
But you know New Mexico is large and sparsely populated. I wouldn't be too concerned about the property values driving out locals. Those engineers will need houses, they'll need food, the rich tourists will need lodging, that's all jobs and money coming into the community.
The engineers will built very expensive homes in the nicest places (which is where people are usually already living), close to the spaceport. When Joe Engineer offers a big lump of cash to a hesitant (or greedy) potential seller and the deal closes, guess what happens to the property values for land around where Joe Engineer now lives? It goes up. And guess what happens to property taxes? They go up. My parents have a close friend who is 80 and has lived in my hometown for half her life, working much of it tirelessly as a volunteer- and she can't afford the property taxes on the modest home and small parcel of land she owns, because the valuation by the town has tripled based on sale prices of homes around her and in the rest of the town.
Back to NM...some landlords will cash out, kicking out tenants, who will now be looking for places to live- further bumping up demand for remaining property or rentals. The engineers will not want to live next to run-down houses or trailer homes owned by the locals, and they'll start pushing their towns to "do something" about it; suddenly Joe Trailerpark finds himself slapped with a $100 fine for having his Camaro on cinderblocks and $50 for not mowing his lawn. The restaurants and grocery stores will realize their customers can pay more for a gallon of milk and a dozen eggs, or a gallon of gas for that luxury SUV- and because their workers have been priced out of living in/near town, they have to look harder for people to staff the registers, or pay more. Etc.
A few people may eventually make it out there, but at great cost and nothing that can be called "colonization" or "humanity's escape from cataclysm."
Bravo. I think in one sentence you just summed up ~50 years of space "exploration."
The best part of it? The people who have made out like bandits (telecommunications/entertainment companies, defense contractors which "do" everything NASA needs done and built all the satellites lofted into space and the missiles that thankfully haven't been) are liable to be the only ones to do so.
Why? Orbital junk. Pretty soon, we will be trapped by the trash floating around the planet, and the "backup plan" for humanity (ie colonizing other planets) will be impossible.
Right around the same time the environment undergoes rapid, cataclysmic changes...
Dona Ana County is a relatively poor and bleak swathe of desert in southern New Mexico with fewer than 200,000 residents. But voters passed a 0.25% increase in the local sales tax to help contribute to the cost of building Spaceport America. Sir Richard Branson has signed a long-term lease with the state of New Mexico to make the new spaceport the headquarters of his Virgin Galactic space tourism business.
Let me put the numbers in proportion for you: if Branson took one third of his net worth (percentage-wise, not too out of line with what the residents of the county just did for his little corporate venture) and divided it amongst ALL the people of the county, he would effectively raise the median income by 50%.
I'm sure in such a poor county that the level of education can't be that great, but seriously- how could people so poor be so stupid as to think this was something in their favor? As The Great American Job Scam points out, corporations are routinely handed millions upon millions of dollars by state governments, with the promise of creating X number of jobs which will NEVER come even remotely close to putting that much money in wages?
How many jobs will this spaceport actually bring in that residents in the county within commuting distance will be qualified for? And don't they realize that the spaceport will bring in a lot of much higher paid people (engineers, technical staff, etc), who will drive property values through the roof as they snap up land for McMansions? Cue the trickle down economics comments.
what can we the public do to get our elected representatives to take the great domain name ripoff seriously
Stop buying domain names. 90% of the people (who aren't domain squatters) who have them, don't need them.
Seriously. It used to be that people used (gasp) hostnames under domain names, and subdirectories under those.
I know people who have three domain names for different kinds of personal websites; one domain name has their "video blog", another has their homepage, a third has their "buisness"(hobby.)
Realistically, there should be quotas- individuals aren't really the problem, but cap them at perhaps a dozen domains, globally. Corporations? Maybe a few dozen, tops.
Or, perhaps an exponential pricing curve based on the global number of domains you have registered; individuals won't need more than a couple for almost any reason I can think of, and companies which are making money using domain names can afford to pay quite a bit more.
DNS will be faster, domain name squatting will cease to be a problem, etc.
Both Sun and Rackable have rolled out prototypes of container-based 'data center in a box' products, and Hamilton notes that large generators are also available in trailers."
This strikes me an awful lot like a white elephant- it's not terribly hard to stuff a bunch of computers and an air conditioner/heating system into a shipping container with (physical) shock isolation. For Sun, it sounds like they didn't do much more than install water blocks in their servers ("cyclonic cooling", my ass.)
More laughs:
It's not completely plug-n-play, however. The "data center in a box" requires chilled water to support the cooling system, in addition to Internet connectivity and appropriate power infrastructure. Markoff's story notes that the prototype "sits in a container case adjacent to a Sun office building here (Menlo, Park, Calif.), connected to two large fire hoses for water cooling and 500 kilowatts of redundant power."
500kW (which at 220V is over 2,000 amps- which is a HUGE hookup) of power is probably just for the computers. Figure at least some sizable chunk of that for cooling...
Power, cooling, security...this seems rife with problems...
You're quite wrong; Mr. Piquepaille provides a very useful service. His summaries are of great use to busy people like myself, who wish to stay up-to-date with recent developments, but who do not have the time to read lengthy articles. He gets us the information we need in a swift and efficient manner.
And you sound very suspiciously like Roland (or CNET) astroturfing from an anonymous account. Who are you?
Re:Why does everyone hate Roland Piquepaille?
on
The Virtual Teacher
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· Score: 5, Informative
I know that a lot of people here at Slashdot have a burning hatred for Roland Piquepaille. But I find it confusing. The articles he submits are always very interesting, especially for those of us interested in science. They're the epitome of "news for nerds".
The problem is that he submits interesting articles which are linked via his blog. So we read a blog story about a blog story about something interesting.
He forces slashdotters to go through his site (racking up hits and advertising dollars) to read the actual interesting content...
P.S. The submitter's name seems familiar. Where have I heard it before?
Roland submits dozens upon dozens of stories to Slashdot. "Vacuous" is pretty accurate; I've repeatedly heard Slashdotters ask for the ability to filter his crap like we used to be able to filter Jon Katz.
The primary difference is that while Katz was batshit insane and overimpressed with himself, Roland simply states the obvious and inane in his "article", and then submits it to slashdot. He regularly does little more than quote sections of the article and supply obvious commentary...and watches the hit counts roll in.
There are two remarkable facts: one, that there isn't better content in the submission queue, and two: I don't think I've ever seen comments posted supporting him. Hilariously, on the rare occasion he does post, he's moderated down so fast, he must be on the level of the GNAA people in terms of Karma.
Since hits support Roland, I'd suggest slashdotters tag his stuff "boycottroland"
They cannot get it together to create a train infrastructure that works efficiently and affordably. Most of them barely go faster than 55 MILES per hour.
Bullshit. The Metroliner from Boston to DC (all the way down to VA) and back runs at 120MPH where possible (only 30MPH short of the Acela.) The Acela only runs at top speed for a stretch or two from Boston to Providence and Providence to CT, I think. That and the reduced number of stops reduce travel time from Boston to DC by an hour.
It is the parts where they have to slow down to a huge degree that kill the average speed; my GPS unit calculated an average of about 90MPH. When we approached New Rochelle in NY, we spent a good 10-15 minutes doing only about 20MPH. Sad.
I'm convinced the problem is not a matter of money (they could make more money by running more trains- every time I've been on the train, it's been PACKED- one time, they had people sitting on their luggage in the aisles), but dated thinking with regards to how trains are dispatched/controlled/routed.
How come a sovereign country, like the UK, is extraditing one of its own citizen -- regardless of his crimes -- to another country to be tried there?
It is not regardless of his crimes but because of them, and extraditing people for committing crimes not on foreign soil has been done for centuries. Otherwise, we'd end up with people committing crimes and then hopping the next plane back to their home country.
If you're going to hop on a plane and travel elsewhere, it is your personal responsibility to make sure you adhere to local laws (just like as a citizen who lives in MA, if I go to NJ, I have to abide by NJ laws- and if I break a NJ law, NJ has the right to request I be extradited to appear in NJ to answer criminal charges- or arrest me if they find me on NJ soil.) Most governments prepare guides to visiting a particular country, with regards to respecting customs/manners, any safety concerns- but also things to watch out for that could get you into a lot of trouble.
Similarly, if you're going to go hacking into government computers as a foreign country with which your home country has friendly diplomatic relations, you should not be in the least bit surprised if you find your ass on a plane in handcuffs to appear in your own defense at a criminal trial.
I also find it really hysterical to hear a UK citizen get uptight about one's rights, considering you're the most "surveilled" people in the world...
I'm hired to come up with new ideas. Paid who knows how much $$. So rather than do any actual work, I'm going to let the internet schmucks do it for me! I just have to pick which ideas are best.
Laugh as you might, but this is almost exactly what Venture Capital firms do. People beat on their door with business ideas, they pick the most profitable, dump some money in with ludicrously favorable (for them) terms, and see what happens.
One might say, "ah, but people benefit from VC money; here, people just get a magazine subscription." Well, I'd argue that the benefit to the idea-holder is about on par, comparing the two...
It'll also publish multiple sites (say, your/sharepoint, your/cacti, your/owa, and your/intranet sites) using path rules on the same IP address - one point of entry (or multiple points, with an array of ISA boxes), with a collection of disparate apps in your WAN / DMZ behind it
In other words, something Apache has done for more than half a decade?
Camera raw formats save the actual output from the image sensor, before applying the numerous algorithms needed to massage the data into RGB format
In 99.9999% of the cameras on the market, the image is digitized in RGB format; there are three sensors wells per pixel with R, G, and B pigmented filters over them, and an aliasing filter above the sensor spreads the light from one area across the three CCD or CMOS sensor "wells." The best sensors use tiny, super-precise micro-lenses to do this. The bad ones simply diffuse the light over a wide enough area to cover the 3 color sensors. Image quality obviously suffers, as the blur also extends three "columns", not just three 'rows'. Microlens aliasing filters only spread the light in one direction.
The processing applied usually consists of thermal noise compensation using a small masked area of the sensor, "noise reduction" (ie, various half-assed blurring algorithms), white balance, contrast/brightness adjustments, saturation and "sharpening", downsampling (the better cameras have 10-12 bit A-to-D converters; all of the dSLRs do) and then JPEG compression. It is quite common for non-pro/non-"prosumer" cameras to add quite a bit of artificial sharpening and boost contrast to make photos that "look good".
I don't know where you're getting that statement from. Everybody dissatisfied with JPG - which I can only imagine stems from the fact that it is lossy compression - is either using: (PNG, GIF, EXR.)
You don't understand what "raw" images are used for. They're used PURELY in the acquisition phase. There isn't a (non-webcam/hideously-dumbed down) camera in the world that records to GIF, I don't know of a single camera on the market that records to PNG, and EXR is a very specialized format used mostly in "film" (ie movie production.) No still digital cameras on the market record to it.
'RAW' isn't used by anybody. 'RAW' does not exist. 'RAW' is a collective name for a shitload of formats by a smaller shitload of digital camera companies.
No, it's not. RAW = Canon's "raw" image format. "Raw" image formats are produced by many higher-end digital cameras. I'm sorry you don't understand the distinction between RAW and raw, but it does make it painfully obvious this isn't your area of expertise. It is mine: I've shot RAW images on my Canon dSLR for fun and profit for several years now. I shoot exclusively in RAW format because of the extra bit depth which makes adjustments much more 'transparent' (a level adjustment won't cause as much problems wit 10-12 bit data as it will with 8 bit, and you also have no compression artifacts.) I archive everything in the original Canon RAW format.
Your characterization that "raw" formats are used by a "shitload of smaller digital camera companies" is also completely wrong. Canon's RAW and Nikons's NEF are by far the largest, most commonly used "raw" formats. Phase1 is probably up there with their digital camera backs. I'm now guessing, but Fuji is probably next (Fuji dSLRs were very popular a few years back, in part because the Fuji SuperCCD was superior to almost everything else on the market at the time), followed by Panasonic/Leica, followed by Pentax.
Many point-and-shoot consumer cameras these days are incapable of shooting in a RAW mode; it's left to the "prosumer" models by most manufacturers.
And it is never "RAW".. it is never raw data.. it's compressed, stored integratedly or separately, encrypted or not (SONY, among other) and contains a bunch of camera data.
It most certainly is raw image sensor data; that's the whole point. "Raw" camera formats all use LOSSLESS compression. Yes, all of them contain incredibly useful EXIF-like data in them. This is not, despite your rant, a negative to anyone I know. Few manufacturers encrypt the data; Nikon encrypts the white balance info on one or two models (which happen to be the several-thousand-dollar professional digital SLR bodies.)
In most cameras (certainly the Canons and Nikons), it is, in fact, "raw"; it represents the closest you can get to the original sensor data, with little or no processing (on Canon cameras, I believe they don't even do thermal noise subtraction prior to writing the RAW file; the file even contains the "dead" area of the sensor used for such compensation), and anywhere from 10 to 12 bits per channel precision. No white balance, brightness/contrast, gamma, or sharpening adjustments are applied before the data is recorded.
Wow. Now her life is completely destroyed. Way to go, guys. Presuming she doesn't go to jail or a mental institution, you couldn't have found somewhere for her to work at NASA, given how big NASA is? Or waited until she was proven guilty, at the least?
Especially since it's your training program that caused the breakdown in the first place, most likely?
Talk about getting tossed out an airlock. NASA could have taken the high road on this one, and it's pretty obvious they took the easiest-for-them road. Circle the wagons, protect the budget.
Sends a real clear message to the other astronauts/candidates, though.
The Wii motion sensor (if its lag is improved), well-adapted, would produce an excellent motion sensor much more responsive and better than current technology.
Current technology ALREADY DOES, and it does it precisely enough to allow THREE STOPS OF SLOWER EXPOSURE SPEED. I have a lens in my camera bag made a couple years ago that has MEMS sensors in it.
Just because you first heard about MEMS in the Wii remote's sesors doesn't mean the military, commercial, and consumer electronics sectors haven't been using the technology for years in accelerometers (or accelerometers dedicated to orientation-sensing), gyroscopes, pressure/temperature/humidity sensors, etc. Remote control helicopter autopilot systems, UAVs, missiles, etc use inertial nav units (of varying complexity) made up of accelerometer/gyro MEMS sensors. MEMS technology accelerometers are in almost every car on the road with airbags. MEMS is used to make orientation sensors (using gravity). Pressure sensors in laundry machines. They're everywhere.
The arrogance on this site never ceases to amaze me, especially since most posters seem to have a very narrow personal knowledge base.
Application of this could be interesting especially in places when a little bit of lag does not hurt anything. I have a hobby of photography and a good digital image stabilizer is would be the best thing since sliced bread.
Please stop spreading the myth that "digital image stabilization" is a valid technology. It's nothing but snake oil by digital camera companies desperate to compete in a flooded market, and an attempt to trick consumers who don't know better (and screw with the results presented by "product selectors".)
REAL image stabilization uses a servoed prism inside the lens; the image is optically stabilized by sensing movement and adjusting the prism to correct. Current systems from Canon can compensate between 2 and 3 stops; dunno about Nikon's, but it is probably about the same. The systems work gloriously well, though they only compensate for movement of the LENS, not movement of the subject. A slow exposure will still be a slow exposure; if the subject is waving, their hand is going to be blurry. There's no substitute for light, sensor sensitivity (and low noise at high sensitivity), and maximum aperture (how "fast" the lens is. Smaller f-stop numbers are wider, and hence faster.)
FAKE "image stabilization", which Olympus (among others) are pushing- it only cranks up the sensitivity of the sensor to shorten exposure time. This only results in shorter exposures- and a LOT more noise, especially since most consumer cameras have tiny little sensors (the smaller each sensor pixel, the less light it collects, and the more it needs to be electrically amplified.) You can do this on *any* digital camera with adjustable ISO!
The sunset clause kicked in and it has rightfully expired. But what amazes, and impresses, me most is that a number of MPs chose not to vote. Abstained. Their reasoning [www.cbc.ca]: *politcal spin garbage snipped* A good day for all Canadians.
The move was purely selfish: the MPs knew that if there was any sort of terrorist attack in Canada or involving Canada (ie, Canadian citizens attacking the US, or terrorists using Canada to get to the US, etc) and they had voted against the legislation- their political careers were over. If they voted for it, they wouldn't get re-elected.
The whole point of being elected is to represent the populace that chose you. Not participating in a vote defeats that. Nevermind the political climate appears such that your representatives appear to place their own jobs in front of, well, doing their jobs. Either through intimidation, or pure self interest. That's not something to be proud of at all.
countermeasures: use longer ident numbers when programming the things.
Or do what the devices already do: have at least a second's worth of delay between them, log invalid access attempts, and have the reader beep each time a card's signal is detected.
Slashdotters tend to be very arrogant about this sort of stuff. Did it occur to you that most of these concerns are obvious, and are both understood by security professionals and have been addressed to some degree?
Example: even if you can clone the card, at most datacenters (for example) you need a keycard AND either a biometric scan or keycode.
Keycards aren't the ultimate security control and never were. Hell, I don't even need a keycard to get to my desk at work; I just walk by with everyone else from the shuttle bus, hop in the elevator at the same time, etc. You don't need to clone cards when you can piggyback off people who have 'em. Of course, I'm recorded on at least 2-3 security cameras entering the building, so if I were not supposed to be there, they'd be able to prove it was me.
their entire blogging intent is 20% inform the public (which seems to be, in turn, about 1% of the blogs out there, since there's so much rehashing), and 80% trying to make a living off of their blog
Uh, I think 20% is inflated even as an estimate of the number of people *trying* to make *any* money off their blog.
The number of people who successfully *live* off their blog is probably in the realm of a single-digit percentage, if that.
were the law otherwise, it would have an 'obvious chilling effect' on blogger speech.
The actual lawsuit has little to do with bloggers, which is nicely glossed over by (surprise) the blogger "reporting" on this. In fact, the word "blog" doesn't appear anywhere in the entire PDF, and the assertation that this "Reaffirms Immunity of Bloggers from Suits Brought Against Commenters" is almost complete hyperbole on the part of the blogger. The court's opinion seems aimed at mailing lists and web boards, and could also apply to cases like Myspace's big "Oops" with their spyware-laden advertising friends. Good luck arguing the finer points of who's the content provider of what with that one. Anyway....
Some Devil's Advocate comments:
If a reporter writes, "Bill Smith bonks goats" and the paper prints it (and doesn't retract it), how is that different from some goofball writing "Bill Smith bonks goats" and the website owner not taking it down when informed of the error? Granted, one is an employee (sometimes), but in both situations, the owner/operator has the technical capability to edit, fact check, etc. Volume isn't really an excuse; newspapers could easily say the same thing. "Gee, we have so many reporters, we can't be expected to keep tabs on each one."
Another example: a streaker runs past a TV camera that's live. Guess what? The streaker gets arrested, but the TV station could be fined by the FCC; the FCC can't say "well, shucks, we can't really stop people from doing that sort of thing, it's live!"; the FCC turns around and says "We don't care, make sure it doesn't happen again"; data, most TV isn't live; it's run off a delay loop, and someone's got their hand over a Big Red Button that cuts the feed. This became very popular after a California TV station "accidentally" broadcast a guy blowing his brains out (I believe after a highway chase).
I'm tired of all this. Bloggers seem like the little naive children of the media; chiefly, they seem shocked and amazed that you can't ignore centuries of common law: you say something and it damages another party, you could be held liable in a civil suit for said damages. Anonymity isn't anything new or special; in fact, in the 1700's anonymously published papers were part of our nation's founding.
The F-22 has a fly-by-wire control system. If there really were a crash of ALL on-board computer systems, communication and navigation would not have been the most immediate concerns!
The fly-by-wire system is most likely very isolated; it has only two jobs to do: keep the plane stable, and translate pilot input. It doesn't need to know the timezone, or even the time of day; it really only needs to know measured data, and pilot or naviation system commands.
I haven't seen the cockpit, but hopefully there is a real compass and an independent radio system in the plane. Even then, pilots should be trained enough to use the sun for navigation and have backup "real" maps...
Google's online productivity suite (Google Apps) has already replaced Microsoft products at more than 100,000 small to medium enterprises.
Uh, replaced? I seriously doubt that 100,000 companies are now exclusively using Google Apps. I seriously doubt that 100,000 companies even deployed Google Apps company-wide. I'd be astounded if that statistic was anything more than someone looking at the weblogs for Google Apps, seeing 100,000 unique.com domains, and concluding they had 100,000 companies using their product. It's probably one or two people at each company, logging in from work to their gmail account, and working on their resume in Google Apps.
Check out this cheesy bit of spin:
Additionally, it's been deployed for serious work-related projects at two of the largest companies in the world.
That's a relief. The industry was worried it was being used for managing the office football pool.
The new technology includes reusable paper which can be printed and erased dozens of times and has the potential to revolutionize printing
I spent several hellish months working at an advertising company with a boatload of medium-sized digital copiers, some b&w, some color. All were made by Xerox. Guess what they were doing, almost constantly? Jamming. Xerox liked to blame our paper, claiming it wasn't "consistent enough", and the magical solution was to buy Xerox paper. We refused, and simply pestered the shit out of their support people (fixed price support contract), calling them every time a printer started jamming regularly, if they were not on-site already to fix one of the other printers (they broke/crashed regularly.)
How is this relevant, you wonder? Well, the first lesson with laser printers is to never re-use paper in any laser printer. The slightest dirt scratches the imaging drum, a crease or wrinkle causes a misfeed or jam, and so on; you don't want to know how much damage a single paper clip can cause in a 35-40ppm digital copier, either. Inkjets are fine in this regard, but the complex paper feeding mechanisms in laser printers/copiers don't really like anything but pristine paper. The slightest thing like, say, the rubber on pickup/feed rollers getting a little too hard with age or less sticky and....
Oh, and the high-speed (20+PPM) printers have to slow down as the paper gets thicker. Dramatically. This fancy paper is probably thicker.
If they can't build a printer that can handle "fresh out of the box" copier paper, how do they expect to be able to handle paper that's been even *slightly* used once, much less five times? Other problems: staples; people who want to write on pieces of paper; finger oil/coffee spills. Etc. Now you have to stock two kinds of paper, your printer has half the effective paper capacity since it now stores two types, and users have to decide on usage prior to printing ("do I want to save this for more than 16 hours? Do I want to write on it?"), have the proper drivers installed, etc. I had enough trouble getting people to print duplex to save paper- and most of the time, people didn't bother to set up the proper printer driver, or even call us to do so.
PS:Despite the issues with newer (last 2-3 years) Xerox printers, where the profit seems to come from service contracts- if you have lots of little personal-sized printers, do yourself a favor and replace them with a MUCH smaller quantity of small/medium-size workgroup network printers. The supplies are cheaper per page and you'll have to stock fewer *kinds* of supplies as well, the supplies (like drums/toner cartridges) last longer, they're designed to be more serviceable, they're usually faster...and they're not built-to-a-price as badly as the "personal" units (HP 1100, anyone?:-)
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No... They paid for part of the spaceport so he'd build it where they live and so that those multi-millionaires would come to spend their money where they live
That statement assumes that multi-millionaires will spend any remotely-significant amount of their money in town. What is more likely is that they will fly into the spaceport via private jet, stay in luxury accomodations at the spaceport, get blasted into space, land, and fly home via their private jet.
It is extremely likely that Virgin will structure things such that payment for all of this will take place in such a manner that New Mexico and (ironically) the county, will not see a dime in sales tax.
He was going to build it anyway, and he was almost certainly not going to build it in New Mexico without any incentive to do so.
You and I both have little idea if that statement is true, but it's irrelevant nonetheless: my point is that the people of the county in question will most likely be better off if Branson hadn't built the spaceport (in their county), or hadn't received a dime from them.
You're right, it was pretty stupid of the residents not to vote for Branson to give them a 3rd of his net worth. Or hey, they should have voted to end the Iraq War and have all the defense spending sent to them. Then they'd all be rich and their problems would be over!
That's an invalid straw man argument.
Yeah, I know, trickle down sucks, but it's what they're dealing with. I'm sure they'd feel so much smarter watching the space port be built somewhere else and having the money of these tourists come in somewhere else while their own economy continues to go down the shitter.
"Trickle down" doesn't exist. It's bullshit made up by an actor who played President to justify to poor people why he was handing rich people and corporations tax cuts.
Irregardless, you're also again relying on the completely speculative argument that "if a spaceport is built, it will benefit the county." That seems very dubious, given the scale just tipped $50,000,000 out of their favor, and all Branson has committed to doing is leasing some facilities and land.
But you know New Mexico is large and sparsely populated. I wouldn't be too concerned about the property values driving out locals. Those engineers will need houses, they'll need food, the rich tourists will need lodging, that's all jobs and money coming into the community.
The engineers will built very expensive homes in the nicest places (which is where people are usually already living), close to the spaceport. When Joe Engineer offers a big lump of cash to a hesitant (or greedy) potential seller and the deal closes, guess what happens to the property values for land around where Joe Engineer now lives? It goes up. And guess what happens to property taxes? They go up. My parents have a close friend who is 80 and has lived in my hometown for half her life, working much of it tirelessly as a volunteer- and she can't afford the property taxes on the modest home and small parcel of land she owns, because the valuation by the town has tripled based on sale prices of homes around her and in the rest of the town.
Back to NM...some landlords will cash out, kicking out tenants, who will now be looking for places to live- further bumping up demand for remaining property or rentals. The engineers will not want to live next to run-down houses or trailer homes owned by the locals, and they'll start pushing their towns to "do something" about it; suddenly Joe Trailerpark finds himself slapped with a $100 fine for having his Camaro on cinderblocks and $50 for not mowing his lawn. The restaurants and grocery stores will realize their customers can pay more for a gallon of milk and a dozen eggs, or a gallon of gas for that luxury SUV- and because their workers have been priced out of living in/near town, they have to look harder for people to staff the registers, or pay more. Etc.
A few people may eventually make it out there, but at great cost and nothing that can be called "colonization" or "humanity's escape from cataclysm."
Bravo. I think in one sentence you just summed up ~50 years of space "exploration."
The best part of it? The people who have made out like bandits (telecommunications/entertainment companies, defense contractors which "do" everything NASA needs done and built all the satellites lofted into space and the missiles that thankfully haven't been) are liable to be the only ones to do so.
Why? Orbital junk. Pretty soon, we will be trapped by the trash floating around the planet, and the "backup plan" for humanity (ie colonizing other planets) will be impossible.
Right around the same time the environment undergoes rapid, cataclysmic changes...
Dona Ana County is a relatively poor and bleak swathe of desert in southern New Mexico with fewer than 200,000 residents. But voters passed a 0.25% increase in the local sales tax to help contribute to the cost of building Spaceport America. Sir Richard Branson has signed a long-term lease with the state of New Mexico to make the new spaceport the headquarters of his Virgin Galactic space tourism business.
Ah, cue the great lie that tax incentives to draw corporations "create" jobs.
Let's think about how absurd this is: a man worth about $7.8BN (which represents about 11% of New Mexico's GDP) just got one quarter of his spaceport paid for by people who make on average $29-33k, so that people with multi-million-dollar net worths can blast themselves into space?
Let me put the numbers in proportion for you: if Branson took one third of his net worth (percentage-wise, not too out of line with what the residents of the county just did for his little corporate venture) and divided it amongst ALL the people of the county, he would effectively raise the median income by 50%.
I'm sure in such a poor county that the level of education can't be that great, but seriously- how could people so poor be so stupid as to think this was something in their favor? As The Great American Job Scam points out, corporations are routinely handed millions upon millions of dollars by state governments, with the promise of creating X number of jobs which will NEVER come even remotely close to putting that much money in wages?
How many jobs will this spaceport actually bring in that residents in the county within commuting distance will be qualified for? And don't they realize that the spaceport will bring in a lot of much higher paid people (engineers, technical staff, etc), who will drive property values through the roof as they snap up land for McMansions? Cue the trickle down economics comments.
what can we the public do to get our elected representatives to take the great domain name ripoff seriously
Stop buying domain names. 90% of the people (who aren't domain squatters) who have them, don't need them.
Seriously. It used to be that people used (gasp) hostnames under domain names, and subdirectories under those.
I know people who have three domain names for different kinds of personal websites; one domain name has their "video blog", another has their homepage, a third has their "buisness"(hobby.)
Realistically, there should be quotas- individuals aren't really the problem, but cap them at perhaps a dozen domains, globally. Corporations? Maybe a few dozen, tops.
Or, perhaps an exponential pricing curve based on the global number of domains you have registered; individuals won't need more than a couple for almost any reason I can think of, and companies which are making money using domain names can afford to pay quite a bit more.
DNS will be faster, domain name squatting will cease to be a problem, etc.
Both Sun and Rackable have rolled out prototypes of container-based 'data center in a box' products, and Hamilton notes that large generators are also available in trailers."
This strikes me an awful lot like a white elephant- it's not terribly hard to stuff a bunch of computers and an air conditioner/heating system into a shipping container with (physical) shock isolation. For Sun, it sounds like they didn't do much more than install water blocks in their servers ("cyclonic cooling", my ass.)
More laughs:
It's not completely plug-n-play, however. The "data center in a box" requires chilled water to support the cooling system, in addition to Internet connectivity and appropriate power infrastructure. Markoff's story notes that the prototype "sits in a container case adjacent to a Sun office building here (Menlo, Park, Calif.), connected to two large fire hoses for water cooling and 500 kilowatts of redundant power."
500kW (which at 220V is over 2,000 amps- which is a HUGE hookup) of power is probably just for the computers. Figure at least some sizable chunk of that for cooling...
Power, cooling, security...this seems rife with problems...
You're quite wrong; Mr. Piquepaille provides a very useful service. His summaries are of great use to busy people like myself, who wish to stay up-to-date with recent developments, but who do not have the time to read lengthy articles. He gets us the information we need in a swift and efficient manner.
And you sound very suspiciously like Roland (or CNET) astroturfing from an anonymous account. Who are you?
I know that a lot of people here at Slashdot have a burning hatred for Roland Piquepaille. But I find it confusing. The articles he submits are always very interesting, especially for those of us interested in science. They're the epitome of "news for nerds".
The problem is that he submits interesting articles which are linked via his blog. So we read a blog story about a blog story about something interesting.
He forces slashdotters to go through his site (racking up hits and advertising dollars) to read the actual interesting content...
P.S. The submitter's name seems familiar. Where have I heard it before?
Roland submits dozens upon dozens of stories to Slashdot. "Vacuous" is pretty accurate; I've repeatedly heard Slashdotters ask for the ability to filter his crap like we used to be able to filter Jon Katz.
The primary difference is that while Katz was batshit insane and overimpressed with himself, Roland simply states the obvious and inane in his "article", and then submits it to slashdot. He regularly does little more than quote sections of the article and supply obvious commentary...and watches the hit counts roll in.
There are two remarkable facts: one, that there isn't better content in the submission queue, and two: I don't think I've ever seen comments posted supporting him. Hilariously, on the rare occasion he does post, he's moderated down so fast, he must be on the level of the GNAA people in terms of Karma.
Since hits support Roland, I'd suggest slashdotters tag his stuff "boycottroland"
They cannot get it together to create a train infrastructure that works efficiently and affordably. Most of them barely go faster than 55 MILES per hour.
Bullshit. The Metroliner from Boston to DC (all the way down to VA) and back runs at 120MPH where possible (only 30MPH short of the Acela.) The Acela only runs at top speed for a stretch or two from Boston to Providence and Providence to CT, I think. That and the reduced number of stops reduce travel time from Boston to DC by an hour.
It is the parts where they have to slow down to a huge degree that kill the average speed; my GPS unit calculated an average of about 90MPH. When we approached New Rochelle in NY, we spent a good 10-15 minutes doing only about 20MPH. Sad.
I'm convinced the problem is not a matter of money (they could make more money by running more trains- every time I've been on the train, it's been PACKED- one time, they had people sitting on their luggage in the aisles), but dated thinking with regards to how trains are dispatched/controlled/routed.
Does anyone think, for just a millisecond, that the USA would do the same? Extradite one of its own citizen to be tried in the UK?
You mean like this US citizen, who was extradited to South Korea to answer murder charges, where they have the death penalty? http://seoul.usembassy.gov/december_24_2002.html
That took 5 seconds of googling to find, FYI.
How come a sovereign country, like the UK, is extraditing one of its own citizen -- regardless of his crimes -- to another country to be tried there?
It is not regardless of his crimes but because of them, and extraditing people for committing crimes not on foreign soil has been done for centuries. Otherwise, we'd end up with people committing crimes and then hopping the next plane back to their home country.
If you're going to hop on a plane and travel elsewhere, it is your personal responsibility to make sure you adhere to local laws (just like as a citizen who lives in MA, if I go to NJ, I have to abide by NJ laws- and if I break a NJ law, NJ has the right to request I be extradited to appear in NJ to answer criminal charges- or arrest me if they find me on NJ soil.) Most governments prepare guides to visiting a particular country, with regards to respecting customs/manners, any safety concerns- but also things to watch out for that could get you into a lot of trouble.
Similarly, if you're going to go hacking into government computers as a foreign country with which your home country has friendly diplomatic relations, you should not be in the least bit surprised if you find your ass on a plane in handcuffs to appear in your own defense at a criminal trial.
I also find it really hysterical to hear a UK citizen get uptight about one's rights, considering you're the most "surveilled" people in the world...
I'm hired to come up with new ideas. Paid who knows how much $$. So rather than do any actual work, I'm going to let the internet schmucks do it for me! I just have to pick which ideas are best.
Laugh as you might, but this is almost exactly what Venture Capital firms do. People beat on their door with business ideas, they pick the most profitable, dump some money in with ludicrously favorable (for them) terms, and see what happens.
One might say, "ah, but people benefit from VC money; here, people just get a magazine subscription." Well, I'd argue that the benefit to the idea-holder is about on par, comparing the two...
It'll also publish multiple sites (say, your /sharepoint, your /cacti, your /owa, and your /intranet sites) using path rules on the same IP address - one point of entry (or multiple points, with an array of ISA boxes), with a collection of disparate apps in your WAN / DMZ behind it
In other words, something Apache has done for more than half a decade?
Camera raw formats save the actual output from the image sensor, before applying the numerous algorithms needed to massage the data into RGB format
In 99.9999% of the cameras on the market, the image is digitized in RGB format; there are three sensors wells per pixel with R, G, and B pigmented filters over them, and an aliasing filter above the sensor spreads the light from one area across the three CCD or CMOS sensor "wells." The best sensors use tiny, super-precise micro-lenses to do this. The bad ones simply diffuse the light over a wide enough area to cover the 3 color sensors. Image quality obviously suffers, as the blur also extends three "columns", not just three 'rows'. Microlens aliasing filters only spread the light in one direction.
The processing applied usually consists of thermal noise compensation using a small masked area of the sensor, "noise reduction" (ie, various half-assed blurring algorithms), white balance, contrast/brightness adjustments, saturation and "sharpening", downsampling (the better cameras have 10-12 bit A-to-D converters; all of the dSLRs do) and then JPEG compression. It is quite common for non-pro/non-"prosumer" cameras to add quite a bit of artificial sharpening and boost contrast to make photos that "look good".
I don't know where you're getting that statement from. Everybody dissatisfied with JPG - which I can only imagine stems from the fact that it is lossy compression - is either using: (PNG, GIF, EXR.)
You don't understand what "raw" images are used for. They're used PURELY in the acquisition phase. There isn't a (non-webcam/hideously-dumbed down) camera in the world that records to GIF, I don't know of a single camera on the market that records to PNG, and EXR is a very specialized format used mostly in "film" (ie movie production.) No still digital cameras on the market record to it.
'RAW' isn't used by anybody. 'RAW' does not exist. 'RAW' is a collective name for a shitload of formats by a smaller shitload of digital camera companies.
No, it's not. RAW = Canon's "raw" image format. "Raw" image formats are produced by many higher-end digital cameras. I'm sorry you don't understand the distinction between RAW and raw, but it does make it painfully obvious this isn't your area of expertise. It is mine: I've shot RAW images on my Canon dSLR for fun and profit for several years now. I shoot exclusively in RAW format because of the extra bit depth which makes adjustments much more 'transparent' (a level adjustment won't cause as much problems wit 10-12 bit data as it will with 8 bit, and you also have no compression artifacts.) I archive everything in the original Canon RAW format.
Your characterization that "raw" formats are used by a "shitload of smaller digital camera companies" is also completely wrong. Canon's RAW and Nikons's NEF are by far the largest, most commonly used "raw" formats. Phase1 is probably up there with their digital camera backs. I'm now guessing, but Fuji is probably next (Fuji dSLRs were very popular a few years back, in part because the Fuji SuperCCD was superior to almost everything else on the market at the time), followed by Panasonic/Leica, followed by Pentax.
Many point-and-shoot consumer cameras these days are incapable of shooting in a RAW mode; it's left to the "prosumer" models by most manufacturers.
And it is never "RAW".. it is never raw data.. it's compressed, stored integratedly or separately, encrypted or not (SONY, among other) and contains a bunch of camera data.
It most certainly is raw image sensor data; that's the whole point. "Raw" camera formats all use LOSSLESS compression. Yes, all of them contain incredibly useful EXIF-like data in them. This is not, despite your rant, a negative to anyone I know. Few manufacturers encrypt the data; Nikon encrypts the white balance info on one or two models (which happen to be the several-thousand-dollar professional digital SLR bodies.)
In most cameras (certainly the Canons and Nikons), it is, in fact, "raw"; it represents the closest you can get to the original sensor data, with little or no processing (on Canon cameras, I believe they don't even do thermal noise subtraction prior to writing the RAW file; the file even contains the "dead" area of the sensor used for such compensation), and anywhere from 10 to 12 bits per channel precision. No white balance, brightness/contrast, gamma, or sharpening adjustments are applied before the data is recorded.
Wow. Now her life is completely destroyed. Way to go, guys. Presuming she doesn't go to jail or a mental institution, you couldn't have found somewhere for her to work at NASA, given how big NASA is? Or waited until she was proven guilty, at the least?
Especially since it's your training program that caused the breakdown in the first place, most likely?
Talk about getting tossed out an airlock. NASA could have taken the high road on this one, and it's pretty obvious they took the easiest-for-them road. Circle the wagons, protect the budget.
Sends a real clear message to the other astronauts/candidates, though.
The Wii motion sensor (if its lag is improved), well-adapted, would produce an excellent motion sensor much more responsive and better than current technology.
Current technology ALREADY DOES, and it does it precisely enough to allow THREE STOPS OF SLOWER EXPOSURE SPEED. I have a lens in my camera bag made a couple years ago that has MEMS sensors in it.
Just because you first heard about MEMS in the Wii remote's sesors doesn't mean the military, commercial, and consumer electronics sectors haven't been using the technology for years in accelerometers (or accelerometers dedicated to orientation-sensing), gyroscopes, pressure/temperature/humidity sensors, etc. Remote control helicopter autopilot systems, UAVs, missiles, etc use inertial nav units (of varying complexity) made up of accelerometer/gyro MEMS sensors. MEMS technology accelerometers are in almost every car on the road with airbags. MEMS is used to make orientation sensors (using gravity). Pressure sensors in laundry machines. They're everywhere.
The arrogance on this site never ceases to amaze me, especially since most posters seem to have a very narrow personal knowledge base.
Application of this could be interesting especially in places when a little bit of lag does not hurt anything. I have a hobby of photography and a good digital image stabilizer is would be the best thing since sliced bread.
Please stop spreading the myth that "digital image stabilization" is a valid technology. It's nothing but snake oil by digital camera companies desperate to compete in a flooded market, and an attempt to trick consumers who don't know better (and screw with the results presented by "product selectors".)
REAL image stabilization uses a servoed prism inside the lens; the image is optically stabilized by sensing movement and adjusting the prism to correct. Current systems from Canon can compensate between 2 and 3 stops; dunno about Nikon's, but it is probably about the same. The systems work gloriously well, though they only compensate for movement of the LENS, not movement of the subject. A slow exposure will still be a slow exposure; if the subject is waving, their hand is going to be blurry. There's no substitute for light, sensor sensitivity (and low noise at high sensitivity), and maximum aperture (how "fast" the lens is. Smaller f-stop numbers are wider, and hence faster.)
FAKE "image stabilization", which Olympus (among others) are pushing- it only cranks up the sensitivity of the sensor to shorten exposure time. This only results in shorter exposures- and a LOT more noise, especially since most consumer cameras have tiny little sensors (the smaller each sensor pixel, the less light it collects, and the more it needs to be electrically amplified.) You can do this on *any* digital camera with adjustable ISO!
The sunset clause kicked in and it has rightfully expired. But what amazes, and impresses, me most is that a number of MPs chose not to vote. Abstained. Their reasoning [www.cbc.ca]: *politcal spin garbage snipped* A good day for all Canadians.
The move was purely selfish: the MPs knew that if there was any sort of terrorist attack in Canada or involving Canada (ie, Canadian citizens attacking the US, or terrorists using Canada to get to the US, etc) and they had voted against the legislation- their political careers were over. If they voted for it, they wouldn't get re-elected.
The whole point of being elected is to represent the populace that chose you. Not participating in a vote defeats that. Nevermind the political climate appears such that your representatives appear to place their own jobs in front of, well, doing their jobs. Either through intimidation, or pure self interest. That's not something to be proud of at all.
countermeasures: use longer ident numbers when programming the things.
Or do what the devices already do: have at least a second's worth of delay between them, log invalid access attempts, and have the reader beep each time a card's signal is detected.
Slashdotters tend to be very arrogant about this sort of stuff. Did it occur to you that most of these concerns are obvious, and are both understood by security professionals and have been addressed to some degree?
Example: even if you can clone the card, at most datacenters (for example) you need a keycard AND either a biometric scan or keycode.
Keycards aren't the ultimate security control and never were. Hell, I don't even need a keycard to get to my desk at work; I just walk by with everyone else from the shuttle bus, hop in the elevator at the same time, etc. You don't need to clone cards when you can piggyback off people who have 'em. Of course, I'm recorded on at least 2-3 security cameras entering the building, so if I were not supposed to be there, they'd be able to prove it was me.
their entire blogging intent is 20% inform the public (which seems to be, in turn, about 1% of the blogs out there, since there's so much rehashing), and 80% trying to make a living off of their blog
Uh, I think 20% is inflated even as an estimate of the number of people *trying* to make *any* money off their blog.
The number of people who successfully *live* off their blog is probably in the realm of a single-digit percentage, if that.
were the law otherwise, it would have an 'obvious chilling effect' on blogger speech.
The actual lawsuit has little to do with bloggers, which is nicely glossed over by (surprise) the blogger "reporting" on this. In fact, the word "blog" doesn't appear anywhere in the entire PDF, and the assertation that this "Reaffirms Immunity of Bloggers from Suits Brought Against Commenters" is almost complete hyperbole on the part of the blogger. The court's opinion seems aimed at mailing lists and web boards, and could also apply to cases like Myspace's big "Oops" with their spyware-laden advertising friends. Good luck arguing the finer points of who's the content provider of what with that one. Anyway....
Some Devil's Advocate comments:
If a reporter writes, "Bill Smith bonks goats" and the paper prints it (and doesn't retract it), how is that different from some goofball writing "Bill Smith bonks goats" and the website owner not taking it down when informed of the error? Granted, one is an employee (sometimes), but in both situations, the owner/operator has the technical capability to edit, fact check, etc. Volume isn't really an excuse; newspapers could easily say the same thing. "Gee, we have so many reporters, we can't be expected to keep tabs on each one."
Another example: a streaker runs past a TV camera that's live. Guess what? The streaker gets arrested, but the TV station could be fined by the FCC; the FCC can't say "well, shucks, we can't really stop people from doing that sort of thing, it's live!"; the FCC turns around and says "We don't care, make sure it doesn't happen again"; data, most TV isn't live; it's run off a delay loop, and someone's got their hand over a Big Red Button that cuts the feed. This became very popular after a California TV station "accidentally" broadcast a guy blowing his brains out (I believe after a highway chase).
I'm tired of all this. Bloggers seem like the little naive children of the media; chiefly, they seem shocked and amazed that you can't ignore centuries of common law: you say something and it damages another party, you could be held liable in a civil suit for said damages. Anonymity isn't anything new or special; in fact, in the 1700's anonymously published papers were part of our nation's founding.
The F-22 has a fly-by-wire control system. If there really were a crash of ALL on-board computer systems, communication and navigation would not have been the most immediate concerns!
The fly-by-wire system is most likely very isolated; it has only two jobs to do: keep the plane stable, and translate pilot input. It doesn't need to know the timezone, or even the time of day; it really only needs to know measured data, and pilot or naviation system commands.
I haven't seen the cockpit, but hopefully there is a real compass and an independent radio system in the plane. Even then, pilots should be trained enough to use the sun for navigation and have backup "real" maps...
Google Apps seems like a really great idea for Universities. We spend SO much money on MS Office and related products.
Umm...why didn't you install OpenOffice?
Google's online productivity suite (Google Apps) has already replaced Microsoft products at more than 100,000 small to medium enterprises.
Uh, replaced? I seriously doubt that 100,000 companies are now exclusively using Google Apps. I seriously doubt that 100,000 companies even deployed Google Apps company-wide. I'd be astounded if that statistic was anything more than someone looking at the weblogs for Google Apps, seeing 100,000 unique .com domains, and concluding they had 100,000 companies using their product. It's probably one or two people at each company, logging in from work to their gmail account, and working on their resume in Google Apps.
Check out this cheesy bit of spin:
Additionally, it's been deployed for serious work-related projects at two of the largest companies in the world.
That's a relief. The industry was worried it was being used for managing the office football pool.
The new technology includes reusable paper which can be printed and erased dozens of times and has the potential to revolutionize printing
I spent several hellish months working at an advertising company with a boatload of medium-sized digital copiers, some b&w, some color. All were made by Xerox. Guess what they were doing, almost constantly? Jamming. Xerox liked to blame our paper, claiming it wasn't "consistent enough", and the magical solution was to buy Xerox paper. We refused, and simply pestered the shit out of their support people (fixed price support contract), calling them every time a printer started jamming regularly, if they were not on-site already to fix one of the other printers (they broke/crashed regularly.)
How is this relevant, you wonder? Well, the first lesson with laser printers is to never re-use paper in any laser printer. The slightest dirt scratches the imaging drum, a crease or wrinkle causes a misfeed or jam, and so on; you don't want to know how much damage a single paper clip can cause in a 35-40ppm digital copier, either. Inkjets are fine in this regard, but the complex paper feeding mechanisms in laser printers/copiers don't really like anything but pristine paper. The slightest thing like, say, the rubber on pickup/feed rollers getting a little too hard with age or less sticky and....
Oh, and the high-speed (20+PPM) printers have to slow down as the paper gets thicker. Dramatically. This fancy paper is probably thicker.
If they can't build a printer that can handle "fresh out of the box" copier paper, how do they expect to be able to handle paper that's been even *slightly* used once, much less five times? Other problems: staples; people who want to write on pieces of paper; finger oil/coffee spills. Etc. Now you have to stock two kinds of paper, your printer has half the effective paper capacity since it now stores two types, and users have to decide on usage prior to printing ("do I want to save this for more than 16 hours? Do I want to write on it?"), have the proper drivers installed, etc. I had enough trouble getting people to print duplex to save paper- and most of the time, people didn't bother to set up the proper printer driver, or even call us to do so.
PS:Despite the issues with newer (last 2-3 years) Xerox printers, where the profit seems to come from service contracts- if you have lots of little personal-sized printers, do yourself a favor and replace them with a MUCH smaller quantity of small/medium-size workgroup network printers. The supplies are cheaper per page and you'll have to stock fewer *kinds* of supplies as well, the supplies (like drums/toner cartridges) last longer, they're designed to be more serviceable, they're usually faster...and they're not built-to-a-price as badly as the "personal" units (HP 1100, anyone? :-)