Devil in the details
on
Broadband Blimps
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I'm surprised that the website has errors that I would associate with a low tech operation. Under STRATELLITE SPECS is mention of "ship's engines", but they in fact must be electric motors (correctly described a few lines earlier). Also it has "duel envelopes"--would that be fought with dual derringers?
The most damning error is in consideration of dimensions v.s. displacement on the same webpage. Given that length x height x width = cubic feet (displacement), or L x H x W = D, and the website gives us everything except for width (W), then we have:
( L x H ) x W = D
W = D / ( L x H )
W = 1.3 million / ( 245 x 145 ) = 1300000 / 35525
W = 36.6
Imagine, if you will, an object 245 long by 145 high by 37 feet wide. Indeed "it is not a balloon or a blimp"; to me it sounds like a giant lighter-than-air GARAGE DOOR!
The same calculations with a guessed width of 370 feet provides for almost 13 million cubic feet displacement. Maybe somebody more cynical than I can calculate if 1.3 or 13 million cubic feet of helium are required to lift 3000 lbs at 65000 feet.
In the mean time, I'll hold my investment money for use with a operation that can get the details straight.
Whatever version of xfree86 that came with Red Hat Linux 7.2 had transparency in the xterm it came with. It was very cool to have green characters floating over the black and white picture of astronauts exploring the moon.
Unfortunately the transparency was either 0% or 100%, not "graduated", so the Apple patent is indeed different. Also the xterm transparency was fixed: Visual changes in windows under the focus window did not change. In effect a fixed image of what was under the focus window when the window was moved/opened was used for the background image of the xterm session window.
Mentioned elsewhere in this discussion is Trillian. What makes this prior art IMHO is that it supports setting transparency in steps, so 100% is totally visible, 10% is a ghost-like near invisibility, with something like 90% being a cool effect that you'd actually want to try. (Transparency settings in Trillian 2.012 are under "advanced options" for some reason.)
The high energy blather at the EMarketersAmerica.Org website (as mirrored here includes this tidbit:
And, most importantly we create jobs!
Which, I suppose is true: I work for a medium sized University, and 4 of our 40+ employees in Info Services work at least part time on fighting spam. Of course we all overworked, so there would be other things for them to do.
But what about the tens of thousands of dollars we spend to keep our email systems able to store a dozen T-bytes of spam? That's important for the economy too, right?
Sort of like how criminals help the economy by necessatating prisons, hand cuffs, bullets for themselves and the police, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
The most damning error is in consideration of dimensions v.s. displacement on the same webpage. Given that length x height x width = cubic feet (displacement), or L x H x W = D, and the website gives us everything except for width (W), then we have:
( L x H ) x W = D
W = D / ( L x H )
W = 1.3 million / ( 245 x 145 ) = 1300000 / 35525
W = 36.6
Imagine, if you will, an object 245 long by 145 high by 37 feet wide. Indeed "it is not a balloon or a blimp"; to me it sounds like a giant lighter-than-air GARAGE DOOR!
The same calculations with a guessed width of 370 feet provides for almost 13 million cubic feet displacement. Maybe somebody more cynical than I can calculate if 1.3 or 13 million cubic feet of helium are required to lift 3000 lbs at 65000 feet.
In the mean time, I'll hold my investment money for use with a operation that can get the details straight.
Unfortunately the transparency was either 0% or 100%, not "graduated", so the Apple patent is indeed different. Also the xterm transparency was fixed: Visual changes in windows under the focus window did not change. In effect a fixed image of what was under the focus window when the window was moved/opened was used for the background image of the xterm session window.
Mentioned elsewhere in this discussion is Trillian. What makes this prior art IMHO is that it supports setting transparency in steps, so 100% is totally visible, 10% is a ghost-like near invisibility, with something like 90% being a cool effect that you'd actually want to try. (Transparency settings in Trillian 2.012 are under "advanced options" for some reason.)
And, most importantly we create jobs!
Which, I suppose is true: I work for a medium sized University, and 4 of our 40+ employees in Info Services work at least part time on fighting spam. Of course we all overworked, so there would be other things for them to do.
But what about the tens of thousands of dollars we spend to keep our email systems able to store a dozen T-bytes of spam? That's important for the economy too, right?
Sort of like how criminals help the economy by necessatating prisons, hand cuffs, bullets for themselves and the police, etc.
Yeah, that's the ticket.