I however have never heard of strange creatures in the surroundings of chernobyl...? Not taking in account the misformed children from people who where working in the plant during the blast,... or where very close. They however where misformed and did not become radioactive themselves.
"The BBC reports that wildlife has reappeared in the Chernobyl region even with high levels of radiation. Populations of animals both common and rare have increased substantially and there are tantalizing reports of bear footprints and confirmed reports of large colonies of wild boars and wolves. These animals are radioactive but otherwise healthy. A large number of animals died initially due to problems like destroyed thyroid glands but their offspring seem to be physically healthy. Experiments have shown the DNA strands have undergone considerable mutation but such mutations have not impacted crucial functions like reproduction. It is remarkable that such a phenomenon has occurred contrary to common assumptions about nuclear waste. The article includes some controversial statements recommending disposal of nuclear waste in tropical forests to keep forest land away from greedy developers and farmers"
Just the other night we had more DVDs to watch than TVs and players.
I've got an interesting problem along those lines as well. For the past 6 years, I haven't owned a TV or DVD player. Just a VCR. I watch DVDs on my Computer and I have an analog TV Tuner card so I can watch TV on it as well.
With this technology, I won't be able to watch DVDs unless I buy an external player.
In this case, IF the judge issued an order to pull the domain registration and believed that he had the jurisdiction to do so (depends on the judge, depends on the answere given) then Tucows would be in Contempt of Court for not following the order. If the judge issued the order to the US subsidiary to pull the domain registration (remember the Brazilian(?) Google was ordered to supply data that only the US Google is supposed have?), and if the judge decided to hold them responsible, then it could be done. Dam, there's a few too many unknowns here. I think if the registrations were made through the US Tucows, then this might be more of a possibility. If through the Canadian, I'm not so sure, but it depends on how obtuse the judge would have to be to hold a subsidiary responsible for a parent corp actions/inaction.(So far, the judge has just been following the law as I understand it and has not been an idiot)
As this is civil, you are probably right, nothing would probably happen with going to such great lengths.
(Witness SCOTUS's response to the Connecticut eminent-domain thing. For some reason, everyone decided it was SCOTUS at fault. The real problem was a vague phrase in the constitution, an out of control local government, and state and Federal legislatures who'd failed to impose legal limits. But everyone blamed the judges.)
The judge needs to follow the law, even when it's unpopular.
Reminds me of the Dread Scott v. Sandford case. I think it was Chief Justice Taney who was a die hard abolitionist (anti-slavery) but sided with the majority as, while he didn't believe in slavery, he believed the constitution and laws pertaining to the case supported it. Which, turned out to be a severe blow to the abolitionit movement.
Probably not. It really depends on what kind of leverage the Federal court has over Canadian companies that have branches that trade in the US concerning transactions that aren't made involving the US business. I'm not convinced it has any.
To Shorten my typing:
Tucows Canada = Parent Corp shall be call CT
Tucows USA = Child Corp shall be called UT
The US Courts would not have any direct leverage over CT. However, I believe that as they are doing business in the US through UT, then the UT would at least be subject to US rulings. As such, if CT does not comply with a court order, life could be made very difficult for UT.
Also, as CT does business inderectly through UT, this kind of relationship has in the past been interpreted (in multiple countries I believe, not just the US) as CT doing business in the US and thus falling under US Jurisdiction. This would most likelye be the line of reasoning used to make life difficult for UT. Also, if CT does anything with a US Financial organization or company, the company they are working with could theorectically be ordered to either freeze assets (in the case of a financial institution) or be prohibited from doing business with CT.
In a nutshell, if you want to make sure you are not subject to a countries law, make sure that you have no connections in any way shape or form to that country. Any subsidiaries you have can be used as leverage against the parent corp. The US is not the only country that has done this.
What SpamHaus really needs to do is see if they can appeal the court ruling. Also, any apps that point to SpamHaus.com need to be repointed to SpamHaus.co.uk.
On a side note, a few years ago before I ever heard of SpamHaus, I made an email address called either SpamHaus@(MyIsp.com) or SpamHause@(MyIsp.com). Interestingly enough, a few websites wouldn't take it for account registration.
I'm guessing this block is happening in the YIM servers and not in the client (would be harder with all the 3rd party clients out there).
It would also be harder as this would probably require a client update. As most people don't always run the most recent version...
More interesting is, if this is being run on the server side, then they are scanning every single message that goes through their servers. I wonder what else they are scanning for?
Meanwhile all the other content on dozens of satellite channels looks like crap by comparison. Most of it is 4:3 with the black stripes or I can zoom it and lose content. Some of it is letterboxed so I can zoom in to a wide screen format but the resolution is so horrible it's barely watchable.
If you really want it to look decent, buy an external upconverter. It will resample the SD to HD. It will still be slightly blurry, but should be noticeably better than the upconverter in the TV you are using.
You really think a bit of light reflecting off the Earth is going to be more disruptive than 14 straight days of sunlight?
I seem to recal that several ground based telescopes can work in daylight. Not as well, but they do. Eitherway, the 14 days of light would be worth it for the 14 days of near perfect darkness that would be experienced.
And then there's the inconveniently thick slab of radio-wave-blocking rock between the telescope and the scientists who want to use it to look at things.
Actually, that's a bonus for Radio Telescopes. Which one could also put there. Although, the best setup for a radio telescope would probably be a free floating one with so support structure, just wires with a very small amount of spin on them to keep them apart. Imagine a radiotelescope tens of kilometers in diameter.
In a way you are asking two different questions here, due to the technical difficulties involved with a TV station playback. So, lets put it this way then:
Do you require Frame Accurate playback? The reason that the profesional solutions you briefly mentioned are expensive and require their own storage are that they Garuntee frame accurate playback, no droped frames and everything else needed to playback everything flawlessly. One thing to remember about that, though. So long as you only keep the current days video on the server, you can stick with a video server with under 1/4 terrabyte of storage space (12Mbps vid+aud=~128GB) and have a seperate NAS for the next days video that just gets moved onto the video server throughout the day as what has already been played gets deleted.
The main problem with most consumer video playback I have seen is that it is not frame accurate. Even on a decent computer, most video programs don't run at exactly the framerate of the video using consumer playback programs. Also, unlike the profesional hardware, the consumer programs don't pre-buffer the next file for playback so that there is a delay between the end of one file and the beginning of the next.
We're also going to need to know what kind of outputs you want. Analog? What kind? SDI? HD-SDI What does your video router handle? Theoretically you could use a VGA/DVI output to a VGA/DVI-SDI adapter, if that's what you use. You'd also need to run it through a frame sync, but that's pretty standard for most stations anyway. Most likely you will not want to use the video card ouput of a PC, VGA/DVI/S-Video due to the need for then having a consumer program play it out.
For proffesional level playout you're going to want a card with hardware playback. SkyMicro and ViewCast make some playback cards that will run under linux that it looks like you could use. I'm just listing them as an example that showed up after a quick googling. These capture/playback cards are essentially going to become the heart of your system if you want something resembling a cheap profesional system.
So, as I said. It depends on how high end a system you want. However, it looks like it is possible to get a decent one going. One thing to remember, and I state it as habit, trial test whatever cards you are looking at before buying. Some of these cards can run to $2000 a piece and you're probably going to want redundancy.
Ah, but the most kick ass telescope would be one located on the far side of the moon. No earth light to interefere and, to quote a book "This place has no atmosphere". With the 1/6th gravity, the mirrors could be much larger as well.
Actually, the identical twins problem has occured before. Fortunately, the other twin has had an airtight alibi for where they were at the time of a crime. Sometimes they other twin happens to be in jail, sometimes out of state, but so far the case of which twin did it has not actually been a problem just yet.
You mean the DNA tests for the past few decades havent been 100% ?!?
The DNA can be a match and still not come from the suspect. All DNA is based on statistics.
Marker A is in 0.25% of the population, Marker B is in 0.01%, C is in 0.3% and D is in 0.01% and E is in 1/3. That means that if someone has ABCDE they are 1 in 400,000. Granted, those aren't exactly real numbers and the tests can use over 10 different markers, but it gives you an idea of how the system works. Currently, it is impossible to say DNA X deffinitely came from suspect Y. It is possible to say that there is a Z% chance, though. That is how the system actually works.
I'm reminded of a case in which a paternity test said that a guy was the father when he had never had sex with the mother. Then there is the mother who was not the biological mother of the child she gave birth to (and no invitro or egg donation was involved).
For example, in games like Empire Earth, and Age of Mythology, about 1/3rd of the way through a game you run out of wood, because in those games, forests dont grow back.
While I agree with most other stuff you say, this I disagree with. Forests are 'renewable' as you can plant more. I seem to recal that there is more treeland now in the US than there was 100 years ago. The smart logging companies have been replanting forest areas so they will still have more trees to cut down. These games need to wise up and allow one to plant trees. Pines can grow quite tall in 20-40 years. (I say looking at the 50' trees across from me)
Giving money to a home-owner's association sounds to me like paying someone rent to live in a house you own.
In my area, the HOA takes care of Trash, the neighborhood entrances (Fence, sign, grass) and a few other things. So, we really don't mind paying a little money to the HOA every year. People who serve on the HOA are all volunteers, no salaries to pay.
Shoe is of course correct in his opinion here. A playthrough will show much more than a highlight reel. The problem is that there is a fundamental difference between a normal playthrough and a 100% playthrough, and I'm not sure Senator Brownback, nor any other ledguslators, know what that difference is.
Even this does not show all the problems that can occur. More or less summing up the Penny Arcade rant on it, how does one play through a game where there are a dozen possible ways to encounter the same thing? All dependent on choices made throughout the entire game? (Fable for instance) Or, as is possibly called for, reviewing any and all content in the game, regardless of if the publisher released it or not? (i.e. Fan created nude patch) or if a fan changes the code to access something the publisher locked away so it would not be part of the game? (hot coffee).
The first one would require drastically more time than a few people to play through the game, as one would concievably have to make every possible choice in the game each time and branch it off and try both ways for the entire game. The second would require locking down games to prohibit user created content (nigh impossible) and the third, the easiest of the three, requires a user with a high degree of programing knowledge, not joe sixpack or johny blowemup.
Chances are that the machine will fail prior to the RTG stopping. The Voyager probes have been running for 30 years, but they are in a vacuum. Chances of any mechanical piece of equipment running for that long wihtout maintenance are quite low. Actually, if we built it in such a way that the RTG could be removeable, it could be re-used in later missions if it was extracted and placed in new robots, thus saving weight and money, or used for say, powering any manned missions. Actually, I think these RTGs could also help on the moon, as it is in shadow for half the time.
I've never heard of a hardware port called TCP, and Google is no help (it wants to talk about TCP/IP). Care to enlighten me?
You haven't? Gee. You must be really new to computers then TCP is what TCP/IP sits on. Several companies actually use this for direct communication over RJ-45 connectors and CAT5 cable. Some are for high end video applications as well, but that requires some expensive high end hardware. They don't bother using TCP/IP as that just adds an extra layer of complexity onto the TCP layer. Perhaps you should read up a bit more about networking?
If we were to get an abundant power source now, we would yet again face the problem of global warming, this time not by greenhouse effect alone, but thru thermal pollution.
Depends on how fast the heat was dissipated out into space. If it dissipated fast enough, there would be little net gain. Isn't it CO2 (among others) that holds in the heat? Reduce the insulation and more heat goes out into space resulting in a cooler climate.
I think that's the greatest failing in the system; that it's likely impossible to find a system that actually solves the problems of one without introducing a whole host of problems that are equally shatty...
Reminds me of some quotes.
"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." ~ Winston Churchill
"Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried." ~ Winston Churchill
Great. What are the arguments against the use of a RTG then? If there isn't any "real" damage aven locally why does it seem to such a big issue?
As the other guy said, an irrational fear of nuclear. I remember hearing that during one of the nuclear launches in the 70's, there were people protesting saying that NASA was going to kill them all by launching a nuclear powered Satelite/Probe (I can't remeber which). They protested at the launch holding up there babies holding signs "You're going to kill me." Launch went off without a hitch.
Nuclear power and weapons detonation has released far less radiation than Coal and Fossil fuels in the past 60 years (Coal contains small ammounts of Uranium). If anything, they should be protesting Coal, not nuclear.
Would it result in more radiation than an "open air" nuclear explosion test? What does it compare to?
A Radioisotope Thermal Generator (RTG) basically using nonfisile radioactive material as a heat source to create electricity. This is what has powered the two Voyager probes for the past 30 years. The amount of readiation released is effectively zero. An open air nuclear explosion releases several kilograms worth of fisile material into the atmosphere.
Oh, and as to the dangers of RTGs in case of a launch accident. We've actually launched radioactive material on a rocket where the rocket exploded partway into the flight. The nuclear material was recovered inside it's intact casing and reused on a later mission.
For firewire it mainly comes down to no direct experience with it. I haven't had a peripheral yet that used it so I have no idea how good it is. I know it was designed for realtime video. However, without the experience of having used it I won't recomend it. I have direct experience with the Audigy cards, hence why I recomend it instead.
Related to this. I generally don't trust external general purpose connections. This is mostly due to USB, PCMCIA and TCP experience.
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I however have never heard of strange creatures in the surroundings of chernobyl...? Not taking in account the misformed children from people who where working in the plant during the blast,... or where very close. They however where misformed and did not become radioactive themselves.
2 0/2318242
Old Article on this:
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/
"The BBC reports that wildlife has reappeared in the Chernobyl region even with high levels of radiation. Populations of animals both common and rare have increased substantially and there are tantalizing reports of bear footprints and confirmed reports of large colonies of wild boars and wolves. These animals are radioactive but otherwise healthy. A large number of animals died initially due to problems like destroyed thyroid glands but their offspring seem to be physically healthy. Experiments have shown the DNA strands have undergone considerable mutation but such mutations have not impacted crucial functions like reproduction. It is remarkable that such a phenomenon has occurred contrary to common assumptions about nuclear waste. The article includes some controversial statements recommending disposal of nuclear waste in tropical forests to keep forest land away from greedy developers and farmers"
Just the other night we had more DVDs to watch than TVs and players.
I've got an interesting problem along those lines as well. For the past 6 years, I haven't owned a TV or DVD player. Just a VCR. I watch DVDs on my Computer and I have an analog TV Tuner card so I can watch TV on it as well.
With this technology, I won't be able to watch DVDs unless I buy an external player.
In this case, IF the judge issued an order to pull the domain registration and believed that he had the jurisdiction to do so (depends on the judge, depends on the answere given) then Tucows would be in Contempt of Court for not following the order. If the judge issued the order to the US subsidiary to pull the domain registration (remember the Brazilian(?) Google was ordered to supply data that only the US Google is supposed have?), and if the judge decided to hold them responsible, then it could be done. Dam, there's a few too many unknowns here. I think if the registrations were made through the US Tucows, then this might be more of a possibility. If through the Canadian, I'm not so sure, but it depends on how obtuse the judge would have to be to hold a subsidiary responsible for a parent corp actions/inaction.(So far, the judge has just been following the law as I understand it and has not been an idiot)
As this is civil, you are probably right, nothing would probably happen with going to such great lengths.
(Witness SCOTUS's response to the Connecticut eminent-domain thing. For some reason, everyone decided it was SCOTUS at fault. The real problem was a vague phrase in the constitution, an out of control local government, and state and Federal legislatures who'd failed to impose legal limits. But everyone blamed the judges.)
The judge needs to follow the law, even when it's unpopular.
Reminds me of the Dread Scott v. Sandford case. I think it was Chief Justice Taney who was a die hard abolitionist (anti-slavery) but sided with the majority as, while he didn't believe in slavery, he believed the constitution and laws pertaining to the case supported it. Which, turned out to be a severe blow to the abolitionit movement.
Probably not. It really depends on what kind of leverage the Federal court has over Canadian companies that have branches that trade in the US concerning transactions that aren't made involving the US business. I'm not convinced it has any.
To Shorten my typing: Tucows Canada = Parent Corp shall be call CT
Tucows USA = Child Corp shall be called UT
The US Courts would not have any direct leverage over CT. However, I believe that as they are doing business in the US through UT, then the UT would at least be subject to US rulings. As such, if CT does not comply with a court order, life could be made very difficult for UT.
Also, as CT does business inderectly through UT, this kind of relationship has in the past been interpreted (in multiple countries I believe, not just the US) as CT doing business in the US and thus falling under US Jurisdiction. This would most likelye be the line of reasoning used to make life difficult for UT. Also, if CT does anything with a US Financial organization or company, the company they are working with could theorectically be ordered to either freeze assets (in the case of a financial institution) or be prohibited from doing business with CT.
In a nutshell, if you want to make sure you are not subject to a countries law, make sure that you have no connections in any way shape or form to that country. Any subsidiaries you have can be used as leverage against the parent corp. The US is not the only country that has done this.
What SpamHaus really needs to do is see if they can appeal the court ruling. Also, any apps that point to SpamHaus.com need to be repointed to SpamHaus.co.uk.
On a side note, a few years ago before I ever heard of SpamHaus, I made an email address called either SpamHaus@(MyIsp.com) or SpamHause@(MyIsp.com). Interestingly enough, a few websites wouldn't take it for account registration.
I'm guessing this block is happening in the YIM servers and not in the client (would be harder with all the 3rd party clients out there).
It would also be harder as this would probably require a client update. As most people don't always run the most recent version...
More interesting is, if this is being run on the server side, then they are scanning every single message that goes through their servers. I wonder what else they are scanning for?
Meanwhile all the other content on dozens of satellite channels looks like crap by comparison. Most of it is 4:3 with the black stripes or I can zoom it and lose content. Some of it is letterboxed so I can zoom in to a wide screen format but the resolution is so horrible it's barely watchable.
If you really want it to look decent, buy an external upconverter. It will resample the SD to HD. It will still be slightly blurry, but should be noticeably better than the upconverter in the TV you are using.
You really think a bit of light reflecting off the Earth is going to be more disruptive than 14 straight days of sunlight?
I seem to recal that several ground based telescopes can work in daylight. Not as well, but they do. Eitherway, the 14 days of light would be worth it for the 14 days of near perfect darkness that would be experienced.
And then there's the inconveniently thick slab of radio-wave-blocking rock between the telescope and the scientists who want to use it to look at things.
Actually, that's a bonus for Radio Telescopes. Which one could also put there. Although, the best setup for a radio telescope would probably be a free floating one with so support structure, just wires with a very small amount of spin on them to keep them apart. Imagine a radiotelescope tens of kilometers in diameter.
In a way you are asking two different questions here, due to the technical difficulties involved with a TV station playback. So, lets put it this way then:
Do you require Frame Accurate playback? The reason that the profesional solutions you briefly mentioned are expensive and require their own storage are that they Garuntee frame accurate playback, no droped frames and everything else needed to playback everything flawlessly. One thing to remember about that, though. So long as you only keep the current days video on the server, you can stick with a video server with under 1/4 terrabyte of storage space (12Mbps vid+aud=~128GB) and have a seperate NAS for the next days video that just gets moved onto the video server throughout the day as what has already been played gets deleted.
The main problem with most consumer video playback I have seen is that it is not frame accurate. Even on a decent computer, most video programs don't run at exactly the framerate of the video using consumer playback programs. Also, unlike the profesional hardware, the consumer programs don't pre-buffer the next file for playback so that there is a delay between the end of one file and the beginning of the next.
We're also going to need to know what kind of outputs you want. Analog? What kind? SDI? HD-SDI What does your video router handle? Theoretically you could use a VGA/DVI output to a VGA/DVI-SDI adapter, if that's what you use. You'd also need to run it through a frame sync, but that's pretty standard for most stations anyway. Most likely you will not want to use the video card ouput of a PC, VGA/DVI/S-Video due to the need for then having a consumer program play it out.
For proffesional level playout you're going to want a card with hardware playback. SkyMicro and ViewCast make some playback cards that will run under linux that it looks like you could use. I'm just listing them as an example that showed up after a quick googling. These capture/playback cards are essentially going to become the heart of your system if you want something resembling a cheap profesional system.
So, as I said. It depends on how high end a system you want. However, it looks like it is possible to get a decent one going. One thing to remember, and I state it as habit, trial test whatever cards you are looking at before buying. Some of these cards can run to $2000 a piece and you're probably going to want redundancy.
Ah, but the most kick ass telescope would be one located on the far side of the moon. No earth light to interefere and, to quote a book "This place has no atmosphere". With the 1/6th gravity, the mirrors could be much larger as well.
Actually, the identical twins problem has occured before. Fortunately, the other twin has had an airtight alibi for where they were at the time of a crime. Sometimes they other twin happens to be in jail, sometimes out of state, but so far the case of which twin did it has not actually been a problem just yet.
You mean the DNA tests for the past few decades havent been 100% ?!?
The DNA can be a match and still not come from the suspect. All DNA is based on statistics.
Marker A is in 0.25% of the population, Marker B is in 0.01%, C is in 0.3% and D is in 0.01% and E is in 1/3. That means that if someone has ABCDE they are 1 in 400,000. Granted, those aren't exactly real numbers and the tests can use over 10 different markers, but it gives you an idea of how the system works. Currently, it is impossible to say DNA X deffinitely came from suspect Y. It is possible to say that there is a Z% chance, though. That is how the system actually works.
I'm reminded of a case in which a paternity test said that a guy was the father when he had never had sex with the mother. Then there is the mother who was not the biological mother of the child she gave birth to (and no invitro or egg donation was involved).
Now, any Brits here want to say the obligatory "Damn Yanks?"
I thought only we Southerners said that? And trust me, you have never heard "Damn Yankess" until you've heard it from someone from Mississippi.
For example, in games like Empire Earth, and Age of Mythology, about 1/3rd of the way through a game you run out of wood, because in those games, forests dont grow back.
While I agree with most other stuff you say, this I disagree with. Forests are 'renewable' as you can plant more. I seem to recal that there is more treeland now in the US than there was 100 years ago. The smart logging companies have been replanting forest areas so they will still have more trees to cut down. These games need to wise up and allow one to plant trees. Pines can grow quite tall in 20-40 years. (I say looking at the 50' trees across from me)
Giving money to a home-owner's association sounds to me like paying someone rent to live in a house you own.
In my area, the HOA takes care of Trash, the neighborhood entrances (Fence, sign, grass) and a few other things. So, we really don't mind paying a little money to the HOA every year. People who serve on the HOA are all volunteers, no salaries to pay.
Shoe is of course correct in his opinion here. A playthrough will show much more than a highlight reel. The problem is that there is a fundamental difference between a normal playthrough and a 100% playthrough, and I'm not sure Senator Brownback, nor any other ledguslators, know what that difference is.
Even this does not show all the problems that can occur. More or less summing up the Penny Arcade rant on it, how does one play through a game where there are a dozen possible ways to encounter the same thing? All dependent on choices made throughout the entire game? (Fable for instance) Or, as is possibly called for, reviewing any and all content in the game, regardless of if the publisher released it or not? (i.e. Fan created nude patch) or if a fan changes the code to access something the publisher locked away so it would not be part of the game? (hot coffee).
The first one would require drastically more time than a few people to play through the game, as one would concievably have to make every possible choice in the game each time and branch it off and try both ways for the entire game. The second would require locking down games to prohibit user created content (nigh impossible) and the third, the easiest of the three, requires a user with a high degree of programing knowledge, not joe sixpack or johny blowemup.
Show support for the least amount of government necessary. That's about what it comes down to.
Chances are that the machine will fail prior to the RTG stopping. The Voyager probes have been running for 30 years, but they are in a vacuum. Chances of any mechanical piece of equipment running for that long wihtout maintenance are quite low. Actually, if we built it in such a way that the RTG could be removeable, it could be re-used in later missions if it was extracted and placed in new robots, thus saving weight and money, or used for say, powering any manned missions. Actually, I think these RTGs could also help on the moon, as it is in shadow for half the time.
I've never heard of a hardware port called TCP, and Google is no help (it wants to talk about TCP/IP). Care to enlighten me?
You haven't? Gee. You must be really new to computers then TCP is what TCP/IP sits on. Several companies actually use this for direct communication over RJ-45 connectors and CAT5 cable. Some are for high end video applications as well, but that requires some expensive high end hardware. They don't bother using TCP/IP as that just adds an extra layer of complexity onto the TCP layer. Perhaps you should read up a bit more about networking?
If we were to get an abundant power source now, we would yet again face the problem of global warming, this time not by greenhouse effect alone, but thru thermal pollution.
Depends on how fast the heat was dissipated out into space. If it dissipated fast enough, there would be little net gain. Isn't it CO2 (among others) that holds in the heat? Reduce the insulation and more heat goes out into space resulting in a cooler climate.
I think that's the greatest failing in the system; that it's likely impossible to find a system that actually solves the problems of one without introducing a whole host of problems that are equally shatty...
Reminds me of some quotes.
"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." ~ Winston Churchill
"Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried." ~ Winston Churchill
Great. What are the arguments against the use of a RTG then? If there isn't any "real" damage aven locally why does it seem to such a big issue?
As the other guy said, an irrational fear of nuclear. I remember hearing that during one of the nuclear launches in the 70's, there were people protesting saying that NASA was going to kill them all by launching a nuclear powered Satelite/Probe (I can't remeber which). They protested at the launch holding up there babies holding signs "You're going to kill me." Launch went off without a hitch.
Nuclear power and weapons detonation has released far less radiation than Coal and Fossil fuels in the past 60 years (Coal contains small ammounts of Uranium). If anything, they should be protesting Coal, not nuclear.
Would it result in more radiation than an "open air" nuclear explosion test? What does it compare to?
A Radioisotope Thermal Generator (RTG) basically using nonfisile radioactive material as a heat source to create electricity. This is what has powered the two Voyager probes for the past 30 years. The amount of readiation released is effectively zero. An open air nuclear explosion releases several kilograms worth of fisile material into the atmosphere.
Oh, and as to the dangers of RTGs in case of a launch accident. We've actually launched radioactive material on a rocket where the rocket exploded partway into the flight. The nuclear material was recovered inside it's intact casing and reused on a later mission.
There is zero danger involved here.
'what's wrong with continuing to build solar rovers that we need a nuclear one?
Solar powered rovers can't
1) Operate in shadow for long
2) Supply enough power if you want more insturments
3) Work through the martian winter
For firewire it mainly comes down to no direct experience with it. I haven't had a peripheral yet that used it so I have no idea how good it is. I know it was designed for realtime video. However, without the experience of having used it I won't recomend it. I have direct experience with the Audigy cards, hence why I recomend it instead.
Related to this. I generally don't trust external general purpose connections. This is mostly due to USB, PCMCIA and TCP experience.