Good question; that's what I thought when I saw the pic. Just off the top of my head, maybe at that range the disc of the earth doesn't cover enough angular area to fully eclipse the sun?
On a slightly different note, does anyone else think the design looks a bit unprotected? I mean, one bit of space dust (not Space Dust) and bits of the mirror etc. are history...
Even better: Paint 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 on the roof of your house. Build a large structure/plant trees/mow grass/make crop circle with the same information...
Different aircraft types -- a Boeing 747 vs an Airbus say -- may well touch down in different spots because of the different geometry of the aircraft, but -- until they introduced dither in the system -- all 747s would touch down on each other's skid marks.
I'm pretty sure this is an "urban myth". Approach speeds vary significantly because of aircraft mass - this alone would change where the actual touchdown was.
If you ran ten autolands under identical conditions in the same aircraft, there would be quite a spread: no need to introduce any dithering. Anyway, the last piece of evidence is that autolands are generally more restrictive in terms of landing performance (mass, temperature, wind, etc.) than manual ones on the same runway. If the accuracy could be guaranteed it would give a *commercial advantage*, something manufacturers would charge for and airlines would pay...
I say this having flown older and the latest generation of autoland equipped jets - they've come a long way but there is still some to go. I did two autolands last week on a 777, both great but quite different in the way they were flown by the autopilot. You could program the automatics to land in almost exactly the same place every time but it would be akin to a landing on an aircraft carrier: not much fun for the passengers!
At the exact moment I pulled up the/. main page and read the headline on 'n', the 'software update' window appeared over it and asked if I wanted to install the fix to the Airport Extreme drivers. Spooky!
Yes but NASA is going to have to build a nuclear dump next to the base now...
Re:Stop smoking crack naysayers
on
Water From Wind
·
· Score: 1
I think you're right there; the problem I see is that the dewpoints in very dry areas that need this kind of technology (like the Australian Outback) are often close to or below zero Celsius. To cool air from +30C to 0C or below will take some doing and most importantly will make the the water vapour deposit as ice... which you'll have to quickly scrape off the blades and keep safe before it sublimes away again.
Global Bio-Tech Inc. announced today a newly patented DNA fragment which adds the capability for Caff-X(TM) production to any living cell; the code is introduced by the GBT synthetic Transcripto-Mat(R) retrovirus into the target organism. Caff-X(TM) is GBT's caffeine substitute, having 10x the effect of the natural product and able to whiten teeth at the same time. GBT's shares are up $2.34 in early trading.
is a wideband power converter on my phone/laptop/camera, etc. that takes all the stray EM radiation that everyone else is leaking into the environment and uses it to charge my devices, thus saving me money...
Maybe with an optional tinfoil hat plus charger lead that tops up my batteries at the same time as keeping the thought police out of my head.;)
Also, how many of you are inconvenienced NOW by the lack of 3rd party software on the iPhone?
This device doesn't go on sale for at least six months, by which time Apple, Inc. will have assessed the reaction from the technorati and the everyday potential users; this may give extra leverage to Apple in their dealings with the network companies. Also, it's another six months of progress in the field of storage technology and processor power consumption. I would not be at all surprised to see a 16+GB iPhone with some sort of SDK in the latter half of this year, possibly at a lower price point than the $499-$599 it's slated at.
I see this as an excellent chance for Apple to get feedback on the iPhone and for potential users to provide it...
With GPS for worldwide updating and integrating the output from the SMS system while GPS is unavailable, your device should know where it is to a resolution of a few feet wherever you take it. Should see some interesting applications...
...And if I scan this printed document in at 300 * 300 * 10 * 8 @256 colours, I can contain all that information in 7.2MiB. Wow! I've compressed GIGABYTES down to a few megs, with NO LOSS!
I'm rather dubious about the maths but I'll leave that to the experts.
From a simplistic point-of-view, if you could print a sheet of paper using an ordinary inkjet with that amount of information encoded on it, then logically that information has also been held in the printer RAM. Certainly my printer does not contain 29GB or whatever...
I think the whole point of being governed by atheists is that the decison making process would be based much more on reason and logic, not dogma and blind belief. "God told me to do it" would no longer be a valid excuse for invading another country (or anything else, for that matter).
I'm not saying that people shouldn't be allowed to have religious beliefs - simply that those beliefs have no part to play in rational goverment. If interest rates were set by someone who admitted that they followed the advice of a 6' invisible pink bunny in this respect, they wouldn't last long in the job. (or maybe they would...)
There will come a day when those who do questionable things "in the name of God" or Allah or Shiva or whatever, will realise that it is they themselves who act out of their own free wills and the responsibility for those deeds is theirs alone.
If agents inevitably start relying on the computer that's where the problem lies.
Exactly. If you've ever swapped bar codes around for the supermarket checkout, you'll see the truth there. Bar of soap 29.99 BEEP Bottle of champagne 0.99 BEEP Bread 39.99 BEEP...
Ah but they DID fill in the questionnaires - unfortunately the postmen can't make it back past the event horizons. Maybe they should start examining the Hawking Radiation for replies...
I just watched the linked demo and I have to agree. I think the main reason that so few home users back up their data is that it is so much HASSLE to do so; let's not even talk about recovery...
IMHO something that you only have to interact with when you want to get the item(s) back is a great advance on what has gone before. The interface is a good prototype but I suspect it will have been replaced by something slightly less "snazzy" by the time 10.5 comes out.
It's all very well to say that you could do this before in other OSs but the level of technical understanding (and patience) required put it in the "re-write the kernel" difficulty bracket for a majority of home users.
Maybe modern OSs in their default state have become too permissive in terms of resource allocation? One process really shouldn't be allowed to bring the whole system to its knees in terms of swapping; what happened to "No, you CAN'T have any more memory - you've got far too much as it is..."
It rather defeats the object of a multi-tasking OS if one task can effectively bring everything to a standstill.
I thought that about recovery too... however, I also think that the lunar repository or whatever will be much more prone to annihilation by asteroids/plagues/aliens, etc. than the Earth itself.
He could do the unexpected and ask Apple if they will help him. If he's willing to act as a product evangelist for them now, they might overlook his previous complaint. It would certainly boost their karma...
Just a guess, but I wonder if you could defeat it by shooting 3 RPGs from 3 different directions at it? Can it act that quickly against all of them?
What, like 3 DVDs all coming in from different angles: Diablo II from the front, DOOM 3 from the rear and a sneak attack from The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion over the top?
Slashdot Mirror
Good question; that's what I thought when I saw the pic. Just off the top of my head, maybe at that range the disc of the earth doesn't cover enough angular area to fully eclipse the sun?
On a slightly different note, does anyone else think the design looks a bit unprotected? I mean, one bit of space dust (not Space Dust) and bits of the mirror etc. are history...
Even better: Paint 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 on the roof of your house. Build a large structure/plant trees/mow grass/make crop circle with the same information...
Different aircraft types -- a Boeing 747 vs an Airbus say -- may well touch down in different spots because of the different geometry of the aircraft, but -- until they introduced dither in the system -- all 747s would touch down on each other's skid marks.
I'm pretty sure this is an "urban myth". Approach speeds vary significantly because of aircraft mass - this alone would change where the actual touchdown was.
If you ran ten autolands under identical conditions in the same aircraft, there would be quite a spread: no need to introduce any dithering. Anyway, the last piece of evidence is that autolands are generally more restrictive in terms of landing performance (mass, temperature, wind, etc.) than manual ones on the same runway. If the accuracy could be guaranteed it would give a *commercial advantage*, something manufacturers would charge for and airlines would pay...
I say this having flown older and the latest generation of autoland equipped jets - they've come a long way but there is still some to go. I did two autolands last week on a 777, both great but quite different in the way they were flown by the autopilot. You could program the automatics to land in almost exactly the same place every time but it would be akin to a landing on an aircraft carrier: not much fun for the passengers!
I think I can confirm the Slashdot effect:
/. main page and read the headline on 'n', the 'software update' window appeared over it and asked if I wanted to install the fix to the Airport Extreme drivers. Spooky!
At the exact moment I pulled up the
Yes but NASA is going to have to build a nuclear dump next to the base now...
I think you're right there; the problem I see is that the dewpoints in very dry areas that need this kind of technology (like the Australian Outback) are often close to or below zero Celsius. To cool air from +30C to 0C or below will take some doing and most importantly will make the the water vapour deposit as ice... which you'll have to quickly scrape off the blades and keep safe before it sublimes away again.
In related news:
Global Bio-Tech Inc. announced today a newly patented DNA fragment which adds the capability for Caff-X(TM) production to any living cell; the code is introduced by the GBT synthetic Transcripto-Mat(R) retrovirus into the target organism. Caff-X(TM) is GBT's caffeine substitute, having 10x the effect of the natural product and able to whiten teeth at the same time. GBT's shares are up $2.34 in early trading.
is a wideband power converter on my phone/laptop/camera, etc. that takes all the stray EM radiation that everyone else is leaking into the environment and uses it to charge my devices, thus saving me money...
;)
Maybe with an optional tinfoil hat plus charger lead that tops up my batteries at the same time as keeping the thought police out of my head.
Also, how many of you are inconvenienced NOW by the lack of 3rd party software on the iPhone?
This device doesn't go on sale for at least six months, by which time Apple, Inc. will have assessed the reaction from the technorati and the everyday potential users; this may give extra leverage to Apple in their dealings with the network companies. Also, it's another six months of progress in the field of storage technology and processor power consumption. I would not be at all surprised to see a 16+GB iPhone with some sort of SDK in the latter half of this year, possibly at a lower price point than the $499-$599 it's slated at.
I see this as an excellent chance for Apple to get feedback on the iPhone and for potential users to provide it...
That link to the USPTO has the trademark as "IPHONE" whereas Apple's is the "iPhone": is that a significant difference?
The only question I have left is why SeaWorld would need a laser in first place.
Sharks!
With GPS for worldwide updating and integrating the output from the SMS system while GPS is unavailable, your device should know where it is to a resolution of a few feet wherever you take it. Should see some interesting applications...
...And if I scan this printed document in at 300 * 300 * 10 * 8 @256 colours, I can contain all that information in 7.2MiB. Wow! I've compressed GIGABYTES down to a few megs, with NO LOSS!
I'm rather dubious about the maths but I'll leave that to the experts.
From a simplistic point-of-view, if you could print a sheet of paper using an ordinary inkjet with that amount of information encoded on it, then logically that information has also been held in the printer RAM. Certainly my printer does not contain 29GB or whatever...
I think the whole point of being governed by atheists is that the decison making process would be based much more on reason and logic, not dogma and blind belief. "God told me to do it" would no longer be a valid excuse for invading another country (or anything else, for that matter).
I'm not saying that people shouldn't be allowed to have religious beliefs - simply that those beliefs have no part to play in rational goverment. If interest rates were set by someone who admitted that they followed the advice of a 6' invisible pink bunny in this respect, they wouldn't last long in the job. (or maybe they would...)
There will come a day when those who do questionable things "in the name of God" or Allah or Shiva or whatever, will realise that it is they themselves who act out of their own free wills and the responsibility for those deeds is theirs alone.
If agents inevitably start relying on the computer that's where the problem lies.
Exactly. If you've ever swapped bar codes around for the supermarket checkout, you'll see the truth there. Bar of soap 29.99 BEEP Bottle of champagne 0.99 BEEP Bread 39.99 BEEP...
Most importantly, what does it taste like eaten raw?
"...freezing my ass off and barely able to type with my cold, stiff hands."
UNDEAD!
Ah but they DID fill in the questionnaires - unfortunately the postmen can't make it back past the event horizons. Maybe they should start examining the Hawking Radiation for replies...
That's nothing. I've had my gas supplied over the Internet for years now...
(Seriously, I do have electricity from the gas company and vice-versa)
I just watched the linked demo and I have to agree. I think the main reason that so few home users back up their data is that it is so much HASSLE to do so; let's not even talk about recovery...
IMHO something that you only have to interact with when you want to get the item(s) back is a great advance on what has gone before. The interface is a good prototype but I suspect it will have been replaced by something slightly less "snazzy" by the time 10.5 comes out.
It's all very well to say that you could do this before in other OSs but the level of technical understanding (and patience) required put it in the "re-write the kernel" difficulty bracket for a majority of home users.
Maybe modern OSs in their default state have become too permissive in terms of resource allocation? One process really shouldn't be allowed to bring the whole system to its knees in terms of swapping; what happened to "No, you CAN'T have any more memory - you've got far too much as it is..."
It rather defeats the object of a multi-tasking OS if one task can effectively bring everything to a standstill.
I thought that about recovery too... however, I also think that the lunar repository or whatever will be much more prone to annihilation by asteroids/plagues/aliens, etc. than the Earth itself.
He could do the unexpected and ask Apple if they will help him. If he's willing to act as a product evangelist for them now, they might overlook his previous complaint. It would certainly boost their karma...
Just a guess, but I wonder if you could defeat it by shooting 3 RPGs from 3 different directions at it? Can it act that quickly against all of them?
What, like 3 DVDs all coming in from different angles: Diablo II from the front, DOOM 3 from the rear and a sneak attack from The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion over the top?