Both, really. Some basic equations of angular momentum conservation are all you need to measure what you'd expect this effect to amount to. As for measurement, it is possible to measure both the Earth's rotation and the distance to the moon to an extremely precise degree (these measurements agree with what you'd expect from theory rather well). In the United States, the US Naval Observatory maintains a precise measurement of the Earth's rotation. This regular slow-down of the Earth's rotation is what is mostly responsible for the need for leap seconds.
With the case of the moon, the Earth's rotation is slowed down enough such that on average, the day is lengthened by 15 microseconds every year. At the same time, the moon gets 38 mm further from the Earth over the same period. This is a result of the two bodies being tidally locked (i.e., having synchronized rotations such that one side of the moon is always facing the Earth).
I agree. Digital previews of present-day digital cameras are far far from being any good in comparison to the response of a true through the lens optical preview that an SLR offers (even that of the highest quality electronic viewfinders available-- e.g., the KonicaMinolta A2). I do think that someday, LCD previews will have the quality to rival a true optical viewfinder.
As for interchangable lenses, an SLR system is not meant to be the most practical all-in-one solution. On the other hand, the versatility of an SLR system is simply impossible to match with a point and shoot camera. Why? simple physics... the optical quality of fixed focal lenses is impossible to beat with zoom lenses. On the other hand, I do agree that the practicality of a small, all-in-one camera far outweighs the quality and versatility of an SLR for 95% of the people out there. But, for the other 5%, the interchangable lens camera (both SLR and rangefinder) will always exist.
It would actually be both technically easy and (compared to SLRs) cheap to provide fast lenses which offered low depth of field creative options on non-SLR digital cameras, but the market doesn't seem to want them.
Well, its not quite that simple. Its hard to make the aperture of the lens much larger than the focal length of the lens . Aperture size is usually designated as f/n where f = focal length and n = some number typically larger than 1 (in rare cases equal to 1). In the case of point and shoot cameras, the sensor size is so small that lenses have to be of very small focal lengths to provide the same field of view as 35 mm cameras. Since f is small, no matter how small n is, f/n is generally going to be a lot smaller than that for a 35mm SLR lens (which are the most common lenses also used in dSLRs). This is the primary reason that its harder to make lenses with large aperture for point and shoot cameras. The only real solution is to make p&s cameras with very large sensors. This in turn would make them much more expensive.
Are they still informally making PII's and I just missed it?
The Intel engineers who worked on the PII project realized that the weekend parties where they were getting together at to build more were having a toll on their families...
I downloaded the update for HL2 DM over steam last night around midnight and after it said everything was done, I tried to launch the game, but nothing would happen. Then I tried running HL2 and CS:S, neither would run anymore (tried restarting steam, rebooting machine, etc.). Then I headed on over to the steam forum and noticed that I wasn't the only one having the problem. Was this simply a matter of steam secretly continuing to download the game even though it told me it was done? Or was it some major bug they didn't find? I realize that whatever the problem was, it was fixed just a few hours later, but it seems like even if it was still updating the game, it shouldn't have any bearing on your ability to play other games.
That same demo at MacWorld showed off how this game would use the amazing technology of that newfangled graphics card, the "GeForce3". Presumably, this was a card that would run the game flawlessly when it was released:-p
I've owned a Canon Digital Rebel (EOS 300D) for a little over 3 months now and have acquired approximately 7GB of photos in that time (not counting RAW images). This is purely a hobby. I'm sure other amateur photographers will agree with me that 60GB isn't really overkill, even just for photos, let alone for both photos and music.
Web ?= positive invention
on
Happy 50th Cern!
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· Score: 4, Funny
Other particle physicists may be able to back me up on this, but trying to explain what we do to one's relatives/friends is not the easiest thing to do. What's even worse is when the inevitable question of "what is it good for?" comes up. So, usually, I give the usual bit about how many spin-off technologies result from HEP including things like, what else, but the WWW.
I was rather taken aback when a few weeks ago, this response got me an earful of "The WEB!?? You guys are responsible for that PORN-FILLED WASTELAND!???"
The number of people killed by nuclear power rate in the dozens (most at Chernobyl)
umm... that's if you believe the official Soviet Death toll as released shortly after the accident happened. This number remains at 31 and takes into account only the lives lost immediately following the accident. While estimates of the true death count vary, most sources agree that its well in the thousands (I've seen some counts as high as 30,000) over the course of the decade following the accident. While I agree that coal-fired plants aren't the healthiest things in the world, the cost of this one accident is in lives for decades following the accident. The land surrounding the Chernobyl power plant will remain a ghost town for decades if not centuries to come.
While I agree with Mr. Yuvchenko that *if* safety is made the most important priority, Nuclear fission is a very efficient and relatively clean source of power, its simply not right to write off nuclear accidents as being miniscule compared to damage caused by fossil fuels.
Its not just you... yahoo has a tendancy to show "related" news pictures (in this case, a picture from a recent story in the "Technology" category) next to stories that don't have pictures of their own.
I'm in the control room of one of the detectors at Fermilab where there's a fairly intense storm going on. About 20 minutes ago, a particularly large lightning strike caused the protons and the antiprotons circling the accelerator to alter their orbits enough that we had to shut down parts of the detector while we waited for the beam to settle.
by pure coincidence I opened my browser to/. while waiting for the voltages to come back up and I see this story up at the top.
I have to agree on this one. Although, I think the blame is on the system as a whole than on individual teachers. Secondary school education in the United States (input from non-US/.'ers could be interesting on this point too) has a certain pattern when it comes to science education. For the most part, curriculums don't change for decades: start every year by giving a laundry list version of the scientific method, give a dry lecture on the theory, do some labs, take some tests. The "MTV era" has really changed kids, nowadays, it takes a lot more to hold their interest, and I think the way science education is presented needs to change accordingly.
The new "Fast Shaders Engine" (as we call it here) has been measured at providing as much as a 60% performance increase on some configurations.
That alone (if true) will make this worth the time of download (or however else they choose to distrubute this). Is it just me, or did Halo PC have terrible performance? On an AthlonXP 2500, 512MB RAM and Radeon 9500 pro, I get much better frame rates with Far Cry running at 1024x768 than I do with Halo running at 800x600 (both on mediumish detail settings).
Obviously if this method of propulsion is used in aircraft that are anything but proof-of-concept, they'll have to take off on their own power. However most of these experimental aircraft are dropped from the belly of an aircraft already at altitude, even manned aircraft like the X-1 and X-15 (both rocket-powered, dropped from a B-29 and B-52 respectively). For the most part, getting the aircraft to the needed altiude on its own would require too much fuel (making the need to design a much bigger aircraft, etc.).
Actually, "Alpha Centauri" is not a physical star, but system of stars that appears to be one from Earth. There are three stars in the system, of which the one called Proxima Centauri is the closest to us .
I agree, but in that sense, having a model that really gives you the sense of scale that the solar system is provides for a great educational tool. Hearing the number 93 million miles (150 million km) doesn't really instill a sense of scale since we on Earth don't really have things we can relate that kind of distance to.
Of course, on the scale of this model, the closest star (other than the Sun) to us, Proxima Centurai, would be located four times the distance to the Moon.
...on Galbraith's site is about National Geographic's first ever all digital shoot here. My favorite part was about how the photographer exposed "only" 200 rolls worth of pictures by using digital!
The difference is that a navy ship does not get attacked by hundreds if not thousands of missles coming in from near-orbital altitudes (thus at very high speeds) that also will break up into multiple targets each not long before they strike. I guess you can say that still is a question of scale, but they are on pretty far opposite ends of that scale then.
One has to only look at the Matrix sequels and the Star Wars prequels to see sloppy filmmaking can get (in terms of quality) when you have something guaranteed to be a box office success...
Of course, Groening's inferences about the South Park movie gives me hope as that definitely was a succesful big-screen transition...
There are thousands of computers at Fermilab, the vast majority which are desktop workstations running linux (logins are through Kerberos). Being your typical office computers sitting on a desk, they are connected to the internet via fairly high bandwidth. As we know, the WWW was invented in order for high-energy physicists to share data throughout the world, so not only does it not make sense for these machines to be cut off from the internet, it is an essential part of scientific research. Any machine that actually controls an aspect of an experiment (connected to any sort of particle accelerator or detector) is not likely to be connected to the internet.
So, yes, physicists and other scientists do depend on flawed technology, mostly because its the easiest way to be able to keep connected when you're dealing with large collaborations stretched across the world. The downside may be the occasional kid (wrongfully) taking advantage of a desktop machine attached to a T1 line. Where security is more vital, it is present. But its simply impossible to insure that everyone's desktop machine is secure or not.
Well, I'm glad that our moderators are clever enough to figure out that "Steve Jobs's Blog" here is a joke and in return have modded this parent up to "Informative" as a joke of their own.
(hint: at the bottom of the page it says "jusonemorething.com. A Parody.")
Slashdot Mirror
Both, really. Some basic equations of angular momentum conservation are all you need to measure what you'd expect this effect to amount to. As for measurement, it is possible to measure both the Earth's rotation and the distance to the moon to an extremely precise degree (these measurements agree with what you'd expect from theory rather well). In the United States, the US Naval Observatory maintains a precise measurement of the Earth's rotation. This regular slow-down of the Earth's rotation is what is mostly responsible for the need for leap seconds.
With the case of the moon, the Earth's rotation is slowed down enough such that on average, the day is lengthened by 15 microseconds every year. At the same time, the moon gets 38 mm further from the Earth over the same period. This is a result of the two bodies being tidally locked (i.e., having synchronized rotations such that one side of the moon is always facing the Earth).
As for interchangable lenses, an SLR system is not meant to be the most practical all-in-one solution. On the other hand, the versatility of an SLR system is simply impossible to match with a point and shoot camera. Why? simple physics... the optical quality of fixed focal lenses is impossible to beat with zoom lenses. On the other hand, I do agree that the practicality of a small, all-in-one camera far outweighs the quality and versatility of an SLR for 95% of the people out there. But, for the other 5%, the interchangable lens camera (both SLR and rangefinder) will always exist.
It would actually be both technically easy and (compared to SLRs) cheap to provide fast lenses which offered low depth of field creative options on non-SLR digital cameras, but the market doesn't seem to want them.
Well, its not quite that simple. Its hard to make the aperture of the lens much larger than the focal length of the lens . Aperture size is usually designated as f/n where f = focal length and n = some number typically larger than 1 (in rare cases equal to 1). In the case of point and shoot cameras, the sensor size is so small that lenses have to be of very small focal lengths to provide the same field of view as 35 mm cameras. Since f is small, no matter how small n is, f/n is generally going to be a lot smaller than that for a 35mm SLR lens (which are the most common lenses also used in dSLRs). This is the primary reason that its harder to make lenses with large aperture for point and shoot cameras. The only real solution is to make p&s cameras with very large sensors. This in turn would make them much more expensive.
The Intel engineers who worked on the PII project realized that the weekend parties where they were getting together at to build more were having a toll on their families...
I downloaded the update for HL2 DM over steam last night around midnight and after it said everything was done, I tried to launch the game, but nothing would happen. Then I tried running HL2 and CS:S, neither would run anymore (tried restarting steam, rebooting machine, etc.). Then I headed on over to the steam forum and noticed that I wasn't the only one having the problem. Was this simply a matter of steam secretly continuing to download the game even though it told me it was done? Or was it some major bug they didn't find? I realize that whatever the problem was, it was fixed just a few hours later, but it seems like even if it was still updating the game, it shouldn't have any bearing on your ability to play other games.
That same demo at MacWorld showed off how this game would use the amazing technology of that newfangled graphics card, the "GeForce3". Presumably, this was a card that would run the game flawlessly when it was released :-p
I've owned a Canon Digital Rebel (EOS 300D) for a little over 3 months now and have acquired approximately 7GB of photos in that time (not counting RAW images). This is purely a hobby. I'm sure other amateur photographers will agree with me that 60GB isn't really overkill, even just for photos, let alone for both photos and music.
I was rather taken aback when a few weeks ago, this response got me an earful of "The WEB!?? You guys are responsible for that PORN-FILLED WASTELAND!???"
I guess I'll stick to saying, "I work in a lab."
umm... that's if you believe the official Soviet Death toll as released shortly after the accident happened. This number remains at 31 and takes into account only the lives lost immediately following the accident. While estimates of the true death count vary, most sources agree that its well in the thousands (I've seen some counts as high as 30,000) over the course of the decade following the accident. While I agree that coal-fired plants aren't the healthiest things in the world, the cost of this one accident is in lives for decades following the accident. The land surrounding the Chernobyl power plant will remain a ghost town for decades if not centuries to come.
While I agree with Mr. Yuvchenko that *if* safety is made the most important priority, Nuclear fission is a very efficient and relatively clean source of power, its simply not right to write off nuclear accidents as being miniscule compared to damage caused by fossil fuels.
Its not just you... yahoo has a tendancy to show "related" news pictures (in this case, a picture from a recent story in the "Technology" category) next to stories that don't have pictures of their own.
by pure coincidence I opened my browser to /. while waiting for the voltages to come back up and I see this story up at the top.
Which was nearly 50 years ago.
I have to agree on this one. Although, I think the blame is on the system as a whole than on individual teachers. Secondary school education in the United States (input from non-US /.'ers could be interesting on this point too) has a certain pattern when it comes to science education. For the most part, curriculums don't change for decades: start every year by giving a laundry list version of the scientific method, give a dry lecture on the theory, do some labs, take some tests. The "MTV era" has really changed kids, nowadays, it takes a lot more to hold their interest, and I think the way science education is presented needs to change accordingly.
That alone (if true) will make this worth the time of download (or however else they choose to distrubute this). Is it just me, or did Halo PC have terrible performance? On an AthlonXP 2500, 512MB RAM and Radeon 9500 pro, I get much better frame rates with Far Cry running at 1024x768 than I do with Halo running at 800x600 (both on mediumish detail settings).
Obviously if this method of propulsion is used in aircraft that are anything but proof-of-concept, they'll have to take off on their own power. However most of these experimental aircraft are dropped from the belly of an aircraft already at altitude, even manned aircraft like the X-1 and X-15 (both rocket-powered, dropped from a B-29 and B-52 respectively). For the most part, getting the aircraft to the needed altiude on its own would require too much fuel (making the need to design a much bigger aircraft, etc.).
Actually, "Alpha Centauri" is not a physical star, but system of stars that appears to be one from Earth. There are three stars in the system, of which the one called Proxima Centauri is the closest to us .
Of course, on the scale of this model, the closest star (other than the Sun) to us, Proxima Centurai, would be located four times the distance to the Moon.
...on Galbraith's site is about National Geographic's first ever all digital shoot here. My favorite part was about how the photographer exposed "only" 200 rolls worth of pictures by using digital!
The difference is that a navy ship does not get attacked by hundreds if not thousands of missles coming in from near-orbital altitudes (thus at very high speeds) that also will break up into multiple targets each not long before they strike. I guess you can say that still is a question of scale, but they are on pretty far opposite ends of that scale then.
Of course, Groening's inferences about the South Park movie gives me hope as that definitely was a succesful big-screen transition...
There are thousands of computers at Fermilab, the vast majority which are desktop workstations running linux (logins are through Kerberos). Being your typical office computers sitting on a desk, they are connected to the internet via fairly high bandwidth. As we know, the WWW was invented in order for high-energy physicists to share data throughout the world, so not only does it not make sense for these machines to be cut off from the internet, it is an essential part of scientific research. Any machine that actually controls an aspect of an experiment (connected to any sort of particle accelerator or detector) is not likely to be connected to the internet.
So, yes, physicists and other scientists do depend on flawed technology, mostly because its the easiest way to be able to keep connected when you're dealing with large collaborations stretched across the world. The downside may be the occasional kid (wrongfully) taking advantage of a desktop machine attached to a T1 line. Where security is more vital, it is present. But its simply impossible to insure that everyone's desktop machine is secure or not.
(hint: at the bottom of the page it says "jusonemorething.com. A Parody.")
...first, dancing robots and now singing computers.
I for one welcome our new non-Douglas Adams reading moderators...