...it's the Chinese people's fight. If Google goes in and strongarms the Chinese into accepting freedom of speech, it'll be an American company forcing an American right. If the Chinese people, instead, are given the a glimpse of freedom, but have to fight themselves to get the whole thing, it'll be Chinese people forcing an inalienable Chinese right. You can't force a people to be free if they don't understand what oppression is. If the Chinese people have to fight, fight against their own government, their own rules, their own culture, to be free, it'll stick.
I've never actually used FW 800, but then again, my camera syncs via USB, and I'm not a pro photo or video guy, so the only time I even used FW 400 was for my 3G iPod. As for a modem, I haven't used one of these in like 5 or 6 years - for most people it'll be okay, though those few travelers who go into areas without broadband wired or wireless (there are still places like this, somewhere, I think), they could find a USB modem, or maybe someone will come up with an Express Card modem, though that seems unlikely.
WWW:TNG comes out a year after WWW 4: The VRML Homepage...then for a few years WWW:TNG and WWW 5 and WWW6 coexist about a century apart, before WWW: Generations comes along and uses a comes along and brings them together.
...this will definitely get the FCC involved more heavily in regulating Internet providers. The "information service" loophole they've been using to get away with less regulation won't hold up much longer if things like this kick up. The Internet is quickly becoming one of those pieces of infrastructure vital to the public good, just like electricity , phone service, etc, especially when cable, phone and Internet access are now (or soon will be) virtually one service. States may have been deregulating the traditional utilities recently, but I could see something like this swinging the pendulum to the other side.
TFA called the satellite a "demonstrator," though I misread that to mean just a test sat to see if the technologies work at all. That's probably true in some respects, but your point about spectrum reservation seems to be the key to this sat being up there right now.
GPS could get faster positioning if receivers made proper use of the second frequency, the one the military just recently opened. I don't think many commercial receivers are using it yet.
You're right though about millimeter accuracy needing hours - that's what technologies like differential GPS and much better use of computers is helping to reduce. The hard part of positioning is "finding the integers" (quick version - if you have a carrier wave that has digital signals laid on top of it, you will at any time receive X number of "complete" signals and some fraction of another. Knowing how long the wavelength of the carrier is, you know you are X wavelengths plus that fraction of another wavelength from the signal origin. Assuming you know where the sat is that sent the signal [source of error, but small movements in sat orbits _usually_ don't produce errors that are too huge], you can then guess where you are, plus or minus some number of wavelengths. Now, if you're receiving signals from at least 3 sats, and in GPS there are usually 6 or 8 visible, you can use those 6 or 8 fractions of a wavelength to determine the various X's, the integer number of wavelengths you are from each sat.)
If you can find these integers more quickly, and there are competing methods to do this in research now, your high resolution position can be found much more quickly.
Ground towers are being used to obtain better (and much faster) accuracy levels (dGPS, or differential GPS, uses two or more GPS measurements, with at least one being a ground station with a fairly stable and very accurate location fix to compare using other range finding technology to a more mobile receiver). Using this and a couple other new technologies (mostly better algorithms for error finding), positioning is getting much better and much faster.
But yes, we are starting to reach the limits of physics. The wavelength of the signal will always limit the accuracy of the positioning, and it's not exactly safe to go to very high frequencies that would allow significant improvements. (nor is it easily possible to move into a better range, what with spectrum crowding and such).
One thing that is often overlooked, too, is that the size of the vehicle holding the receiver sometimes makes insane amounts of accuracy just ridiculous. If your car knew where it was to the nearest nanometer, what good would that be when your tires can't move at a precise enough amount to take advantage of this. Even automated "smart roads" should only require centimeter accuracy and not allow vehicles to get within a decimeter of each, for instance. Autonomus landing in poor weather might need millimeter accuracy, especially in altitude, but not much further. That's why a lot of the research now seems to be in systems like WAAS that can provide positioning that isn't necessarily more accurate than the centimeter or few millimeter level that has been reached, but provides more robust measurements, both to interference and errors, and faster calculation.
...that having one satellite in orbit does little if anything for you, even if it is just a test sat. You need multiple satellites to do any real navigation, since only with multiple fixes can you eliminate errors in tracking, not to mention what you get when the satellite is on the other side of the world. This is a good sign, but it's just a test sat, and only one, so let's not get too excited just yet. Jules Verne (another ESA project, for the ISS) has been due for a long time, and was late even before Columbia.
Also, while Galileo receivers in general may be more accurate than, say, the GPS receiver in your PDA, high-grade GPS receivers used in military and commerical research applications can get centimeter or finer resolution - and that's with the current generation of GPS sats. There are two new, next-generation GPS sats in orbit now, with the entire constellation to be replaced over the next few years. These new sats promised even better performance. Plus, the signal of GPS that was previously military-only was recently (past two or three years) opened for civilian use, so given time to produce new receivers, I don't think you'll see great accuracy differences between GPS and Galileo (unless of course the DoD decides we can't have GPS, but I think that's more the point here anyhow).
You definitely have something there with housing. Here (Chicago) housing has been running away like there's money everywhere to be plunked down for moderately nice housing in moderately poor neighborhoods - redevelopment or not, new neighborhoods are going to be hard to fill with mid-luxury ($1 million+ single family homes, or $500k condos). While like precious metals and unlike stocks, housing will always be there, I can definitely see a drop in pricing coming very quickly and very hard. The worst part about this, though, isn't some direct effect, but the way it decimates the worth and spending ability of the middle to lower-upper class, groups that seem to have really bought into the housing boom. When condo owners everywhere suddenly have much larger interest payments and no one to take the condo they bought instead of rented off their hands, the ripple effect could be big.
Of course, we could always say that no big meltdown will ever happen again now that various protections are in place, but hey, if we knew the causes of all "surprise" disasters and had protections, there would never be disasters. There are never any safe bets in my book, just safer ones. The further along we go without a giant correction, I agree, precious metals are definitely safer.
Maybe, but one thing bothers me about the current state of the US economy, most specifically the stock market. Post-9/11, there was a huge drop which took close to a year to recover from as fears of terrorism subsided only to meet fears of corporate corruption. Since then, though, unless there is a real commodity movement (especially oil), the market seems to be ignoring the usual political and economic indicators. The market has generally ignored the war in Iraq, and wouldn't have cared about Hurricanes Katrina or Rita if they hadn't hit oil production directly (when Hurricane Wilma moved toward Florida, the market stopped caring about it), even though Katrina especially will incur a huge extra debt on the US government. Earnings problems are affecting individual stocks, but unemployment, GDP growth, etc., don't see to be, at least not as widely or as much as one might expect. It seems like the usual predictors for investor irrationality just aren't working any more - the market exists almost oblivious to or even in spite of world events.
It's not the RIAA I worry about anymore, it's the MPAA (movie guys). At least with music the case is generally that there's good music out there we want to hear but can't seem to get it in a usable, portable format for multiple device consumption. With movies, we don't even want to see most of them, so their blaming things on piracy will just get worse when no one goes to see movies again in 2006.
Actually, the article suggests they will update the current G4-based models...
"Apple has said it will start selling Intel-based computers by the middle of this year. But many analysts have said for months they expect an earlier introduction of some Macintosh models, particularly ones using the older G4 processor."
Meh, I have a Powerbook G4 and I still can't get the bloody thing to talk back to me through the USB mouse I plugged in to it, so you can just keep your transparent aluminum.
If you go to urge.com, you see just a "coming soon" graphic. It's marked copyright "MTV Networks", no mention of M$, but the really great part - the bookmark icon is the Netscape logo...
This is hardly new, and I'm not just talking about the fact that loud stuff hurts your ears. I'm talking earbuds - they are far from new. Everyone remember the amazing earbuds that shipped with the original Game Boy (for those younger than like 16, the really old gray one that was, like, thick as four iPods and as long as two side by side or more)? I just love how we (meaning society) like to blame things like this on whatever is new, when the same thing was plenty available in the past. And, no, the iPod has not sold more than the Game Boy...
Well, presumably you could leave the engine on while playing and the battery won't run out, ever! (as long as you have gas that is, but that stuff is cheap these days, right?)
Slashdot Mirror
...it's the Chinese people's fight. If Google goes in and strongarms the Chinese into accepting freedom of speech, it'll be an American company forcing an American right. If the Chinese people, instead, are given the a glimpse of freedom, but have to fight themselves to get the whole thing, it'll be Chinese people forcing an inalienable Chinese right. You can't force a people to be free if they don't understand what oppression is. If the Chinese people have to fight, fight against their own government, their own rules, their own culture, to be free, it'll stick.
I've never actually used FW 800, but then again, my camera syncs via USB, and I'm not a pro photo or video guy, so the only time I even used FW 400 was for my 3G iPod. As for a modem, I haven't used one of these in like 5 or 6 years - for most people it'll be okay, though those few travelers who go into areas without broadband wired or wireless (there are still places like this, somewhere, I think), they could find a USB modem, or maybe someone will come up with an Express Card modem, though that seems unlikely.
Next week. 2014. 2015. April 6, 2063 (with a little help for their faulty logic).
WWW:TNG comes out a year after WWW 4: The VRML Homepage...then for a few years WWW:TNG and WWW 5 and WWW6 coexist about a century apart, before WWW: Generations comes along and uses a comes along and brings them together.
...this will definitely get the FCC involved more heavily in regulating Internet providers. The "information service" loophole they've been using to get away with less regulation won't hold up much longer if things like this kick up. The Internet is quickly becoming one of those pieces of infrastructure vital to the public good, just like electricity , phone service, etc, especially when cable, phone and Internet access are now (or soon will be) virtually one service. States may have been deregulating the traditional utilities recently, but I could see something like this swinging the pendulum to the other side.
TFA called the satellite a "demonstrator," though I misread that to mean just a test sat to see if the technologies work at all. That's probably true in some respects, but your point about spectrum reservation seems to be the key to this sat being up there right now.
GPS could get faster positioning if receivers made proper use of the second frequency, the one the military just recently opened. I don't think many commercial receivers are using it yet.
You're right though about millimeter accuracy needing hours - that's what technologies like differential GPS and much better use of computers is helping to reduce. The hard part of positioning is "finding the integers" (quick version - if you have a carrier wave that has digital signals laid on top of it, you will at any time receive X number of "complete" signals and some fraction of another. Knowing how long the wavelength of the carrier is, you know you are X wavelengths plus that fraction of another wavelength from the signal origin. Assuming you know where the sat is that sent the signal [source of error, but small movements in sat orbits _usually_ don't produce errors that are too huge], you can then guess where you are, plus or minus some number of wavelengths. Now, if you're receiving signals from at least 3 sats, and in GPS there are usually 6 or 8 visible, you can use those 6 or 8 fractions of a wavelength to determine the various X's, the integer number of wavelengths you are from each sat.)
If you can find these integers more quickly, and there are competing methods to do this in research now, your high resolution position can be found much more quickly.
Ground towers are being used to obtain better (and much faster) accuracy levels (dGPS, or differential GPS, uses two or more GPS measurements, with at least one being a ground station with a fairly stable and very accurate location fix to compare using other range finding technology to a more mobile receiver). Using this and a couple other new technologies (mostly better algorithms for error finding), positioning is getting much better and much faster.
But yes, we are starting to reach the limits of physics. The wavelength of the signal will always limit the accuracy of the positioning, and it's not exactly safe to go to very high frequencies that would allow significant improvements. (nor is it easily possible to move into a better range, what with spectrum crowding and such).
One thing that is often overlooked, too, is that the size of the vehicle holding the receiver sometimes makes insane amounts of accuracy just ridiculous. If your car knew where it was to the nearest nanometer, what good would that be when your tires can't move at a precise enough amount to take advantage of this. Even automated "smart roads" should only require centimeter accuracy and not allow vehicles to get within a decimeter of each, for instance. Autonomus landing in poor weather might need millimeter accuracy, especially in altitude, but not much further. That's why a lot of the research now seems to be in systems like WAAS that can provide positioning that isn't necessarily more accurate than the centimeter or few millimeter level that has been reached, but provides more robust measurements, both to interference and errors, and faster calculation.
...that having one satellite in orbit does little if anything for you, even if it is just a test sat. You need multiple satellites to do any real navigation, since only with multiple fixes can you eliminate errors in tracking, not to mention what you get when the satellite is on the other side of the world. This is a good sign, but it's just a test sat, and only one, so let's not get too excited just yet. Jules Verne (another ESA project, for the ISS) has been due for a long time, and was late even before Columbia.
Also, while Galileo receivers in general may be more accurate than, say, the GPS receiver in your PDA, high-grade GPS receivers used in military and commerical research applications can get centimeter or finer resolution - and that's with the current generation of GPS sats. There are two new, next-generation GPS sats in orbit now, with the entire constellation to be replaced over the next few years. These new sats promised even better performance. Plus, the signal of GPS that was previously military-only was recently (past two or three years) opened for civilian use, so given time to produce new receivers, I don't think you'll see great accuracy differences between GPS and Galileo (unless of course the DoD decides we can't have GPS, but I think that's more the point here anyhow).
Something like that, it's been quite a while for me as well. I was just curious if anyone would see the connection, so used "swordfight" generically.
"Old Spanish guys might try to swordfight your windmill."
If you don't get the refenece, well, this is Slashdot, and it's a literary reference, so I won't be surprised.
You definitely have something there with housing. Here (Chicago) housing has been running away like there's money everywhere to be plunked down for moderately nice housing in moderately poor neighborhoods - redevelopment or not, new neighborhoods are going to be hard to fill with mid-luxury ($1 million+ single family homes, or $500k condos). While like precious metals and unlike stocks, housing will always be there, I can definitely see a drop in pricing coming very quickly and very hard. The worst part about this, though, isn't some direct effect, but the way it decimates the worth and spending ability of the middle to lower-upper class, groups that seem to have really bought into the housing boom. When condo owners everywhere suddenly have much larger interest payments and no one to take the condo they bought instead of rented off their hands, the ripple effect could be big.
Of course, we could always say that no big meltdown will ever happen again now that various protections are in place, but hey, if we knew the causes of all "surprise" disasters and had protections, there would never be disasters. There are never any safe bets in my book, just safer ones. The further along we go without a giant correction, I agree, precious metals are definitely safer.
Maybe, but one thing bothers me about the current state of the US economy, most specifically the stock market. Post-9/11, there was a huge drop which took close to a year to recover from as fears of terrorism subsided only to meet fears of corporate corruption. Since then, though, unless there is a real commodity movement (especially oil), the market seems to be ignoring the usual political and economic indicators. The market has generally ignored the war in Iraq, and wouldn't have cared about Hurricanes Katrina or Rita if they hadn't hit oil production directly (when Hurricane Wilma moved toward Florida, the market stopped caring about it), even though Katrina especially will incur a huge extra debt on the US government. Earnings problems are affecting individual stocks, but unemployment, GDP growth, etc., don't see to be, at least not as widely or as much as one might expect. It seems like the usual predictors for investor irrationality just aren't working any more - the market exists almost oblivious to or even in spite of world events.
It's not the RIAA I worry about anymore, it's the MPAA (movie guys). At least with music the case is generally that there's good music out there we want to hear but can't seem to get it in a usable, portable format for multiple device consumption. With movies, we don't even want to see most of them, so their blaming things on piracy will just get worse when no one goes to see movies again in 2006.
Actually, the article suggests they will update the current G4-based models... "Apple has said it will start selling Intel-based computers by the middle of this year. But many analysts have said for months they expect an earlier introduction of some Macintosh models, particularly ones using the older G4 processor."
Wow, what a waste of a domain registration fee.
There's a story? What? I thought this was a comment-on-a-random-often-poorly-worded-paragraph site. ;)
You both linked to a site that prohibits leeching, so we can't see the image when we click on your links.
Meh, I have a Powerbook G4 and I still can't get the bloody thing to talk back to me through the USB mouse I plugged in to it, so you can just keep your transparent aluminum.
If you go to urge.com, you see just a "coming soon" graphic. It's marked copyright "MTV Networks", no mention of M$, but the really great part - the bookmark icon is the Netscape logo...
Every time I see the word "House" with the capital H I think of the U.S. House...and when reading this, chuckle each time.
In other news, Slashdot readers have yet to determine where the "comment eruption" of useless information by Anonymous Coward comes from.
This is hardly new, and I'm not just talking about the fact that loud stuff hurts your ears. I'm talking earbuds - they are far from new. Everyone remember the amazing earbuds that shipped with the original Game Boy (for those younger than like 16, the really old gray one that was, like, thick as four iPods and as long as two side by side or more)? I just love how we (meaning society) like to blame things like this on whatever is new, when the same thing was plenty available in the past. And, no, the iPod has not sold more than the Game Boy...
Well, presumably you could leave the engine on while playing and the battery won't run out, ever! (as long as you have gas that is, but that stuff is cheap these days, right?)
Not that it would stop them, but remember that the Recording Industry Association of AMERICA has little sway in Australia...