So you know he's not electable, so what's the point of voting for him? Especially when you end with the line "Good for healthcare; bad for everything else."
The point of voting for him is to get the Iraq war over; to have a president that will engage the public in four years of constitutionally grounded dialog; to have a president that will act with honor and integrity; to have a president that will act to undo the executive orders that the previous ones have inflicted upon us; to have a president that actually acts - presidential. Someone who understands what state's rights are; someone who understands what the commerce clause was for. Someone who will not rubber-stamp continuous federal budget growth. Someone who will replace those currently in the supreme court with constitutionally strong, honorable and hopefully at least a little bit younger people if the opportunity arises.
When I said good for healthcare, bad for everything else, that is pendant upon acts of congress and the senate, not acts of the president. So it would not reflect on the president, it will reflect upon the senate and the congress - only instead of dead silence in the media, as we have now, we'll have a president speaking out as to what is wrong, and who is doing the wrong.
The system is broken. I expect that to be strongly highlighted by the juxtaposition of an honorable president and a dishonorable congress and senate. I don't have to agree with every plank Paul stands for (or any other politician) in order to see that he alone out of the field of current candidates stands for those things that — in the past — actually made the United States a great country.
I think the issue of federal healthcare is both obvious and inevitable. Obvious in that the constitution says that the specific charter of the federal government is to provide for the welfare and tranquility of the citizens. That's part of the first sentence of the constitution. Inevitable in that when a population that cannot afford to obtain healthcare must stand by and watch others receive it and live, longer, healthier lives, you're going to have a continuous, difficult to ignore pressure to reform the tort, insurance, care-giving and drug industries. Paul's position is wrong here, and when you're actually wrong, people can provide the rational and logical arguments why you're wrong. In this case, you can add extremely high pressure emotional and moral arguments as well. Because Paul actually is an honorable man, even though he is a doctor, I remain hopeful that he will eventually see the error of his ways. If not, as I mentioned earlier, the fact remains that a president cannot prevail using legal means against a determined congress and senate in domestic matters. And unlike Bush, Clinton and the rest of the candidates, I have every reason to believe that Paul will behave with honor, according to the law, and without subterfuge. We have his congressional record to examine, and it is that of a man who is precisely who he says he is.
The only other candidate I would even remotely consider voting for is Kucinich. But I think Paul is considerably more electable and would serve the country better by attempting to make us face the fact that what the federal government has become is unconstitutional, consequently illegal, and wholly un-American in nature.
I think the media is doing all it can to hold the man down by ignoring the fact that of the people who know about him, basically some chunks of young people who are active in social networking on the Internet, Paul has roused a degree of support rarely seen in politics. Odds are that if he can get his positions out to the general public, at least the people on the right side of the IQ Gaussian will realize the man actually talks sense. About half of the eligible public doesn't vote in the first place, so winning takes about 25% of the voting population. I think that's possible, although very difficult. It may be m
How can you be so sure that one's political affiliations "will always, always" have an impact on their life? To use such strong words one needs facts, and I am really sorry, but you don't have any.
Because they're looking to collect, and unify, all the information about each citizen. Fact: they're trying to use national ID cards to pin your identity down; Fact: they're trying to use databases to track your biometrics and link them to the cards; Fact: Our affiliations (political and otherwise) are being tracked by both government agencies and by commercial enterprises - and have been for years, just ask those poor bastards in 1950's Hollywood who got hauled up before McCarthy; this is nothing new. Fact: Watching these elections, what do we see but people's college behaviors and affiliations dragged up out of the blue? Hillary roomed with lesbians. Oooo! What about people who are trying to pursue normal lives and suddenly "wikipedia has a FELON as a CFO!", where the hell did that come from, and why is it even relevant? Did she screw up her work? No. Was she even accused of doing anything wrong? No. It's just past behavior being brought up to haunt current life and lock someone into a role they may very well have no part in. You can't be rehabilitated, you're low class and you will STAY low class. You don't think tracking is going on? Called Experian or one of its brethren lately? Seen your FBI file? Are you aware of the no-fly, no-buy, no-bank-account lists, all sans anything even remotely resembling due process? Think your email is private? When's the last time you transacted more than 10 grand at the bank? Do you realize that each of those transactions gets reported to the feds, and yes indeed, TRACKED? Talked to anyone overseas? Think that call wasn't monitored for keywords? Carnivore ring a bell? How about Echelon? Are you one of those clueless folk who think your SSN was used only for your retirement, as promised?
Buddy, the only reason you're "really sorry" is because you've got your head deep in the sand. But I agree, you are one sorry excuse for an informed person. You can fix it, though.
What's even worse, you base your argument upon speculation, which most of the time includes gross oversimplifications of societal matters.
No, I base my arguments upon facts in the record. Current and recent behaviors and data; basically ince3 the early 1900s until today, you can see all manner of problems that are government related. Everything I talked about there is objective fact. There's plenty more where that came from, too.
It is absurd to think that there is one unified entity which works toward a certain goal, and that entity includes everyone that is in charge of anything important for a society.
Yes. Why would you think that? Are you paranoid? It is a very large collection of traitors, bent upon sundering the constitution either knowingly or otherwise. They aren't an "organization", they are an unaffiliated collection of people with similar goals and similar methods. This doesn't make them any easier to deal with, in fact, it makes it considerably more difficult.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot one thing. "Orwell was indeed an optimist." I mean, come on.
You didn't "forget it", you just aren't together enough to see it. With your head as far in the sand as it is, this comes as no surprise. You should read 1984. Carefully. Then look around you and note the low level preparations going on. The camps built by the administration's bully-boys, Haliburton. The executive orders that revoke posse comitatus, you know about that, right? You know how the commerce clause has been mangled to mean "anything that COULD be be interstate comm
A philosophical conflict? How about a conflict of overdramatized, highly unlikely fearmongering juxtaposed against the loss of civil liberties? The latter seems to be the specific problem.
Living freely includes risk. The problem here is that many people have little or no understanding of the freedoms they had, how hard they were fought for and how unusual it is that they had them in the first place. Most troubling is the fact that they had no clue how easy it was to lose them, and now that they have been lost, recovery is much, much more difficult.
As far as I am concerned, when a criminal - be they terrorist, mugger or politician disobeying the constitution - commits an antisocial act, that criminal should be held accountable for that crime. If the crime is large, the accounting should be large. If society can accept that the crime has been atoned for, then the criminal should get a fresh start. If society cannot accept this, then the criminal should be either put to death or imprisoned permanently. In no case should bystanders or citizens not even involved on any level be inconvenienced by actions nominally taken to ameliorate the criminal act. Sure, this approach involves risk. I prefer the risk. We are a better people when we accept risk in exchange for liberty than when we trade liberty for any illusion of safety gained by treating everyone as if they were a potential criminal.
Want change? Vote Ron Paul in the republican nomination.
Assuming he can be elected - which is a stretch - having gotten to the post, he'll be able to end the Iraq war. He'll be able to modify a fair amount of our foreign policy, this is an area that a president has a fair amount of autonomy in. However, with a comprised-as-usual congress and senate, most of the rest of the effect he will be able to have will consist of fireside chats with the public; even vetos will be easily defeated by politicians - on both sides of the aisle - he has little or nothing in common with.
Mind you, I'm voting for Paul, though there are significant planks in his platform I disagree with. This is because overall, he is the most honest and the closest to what I see as the original spirit of the country. However, because of the above, I have absolutely no fear that the area I disagree with him the most on - healthcare - will be in any way affected by his being president. The words "lame duck" don't even begin to describe what I think a Paul presidency would reflect. Good for healthcare; bad for everything else.
The FBI will also retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks so the employers can be notified if employees have brushes with the law.
Orwell was an optimist. The slide into complete loss of privacy, personal liberties, and any chance at atonement for making mistakes, intentional or otherwise, is far more insidious then he ever dreamed — and it is going to be far more complete than he imagined. Our country stands for nothing; we are powerless to change anything; the politicians and their lapdog agencies run rampant. I am ashamed.
From your post:
if you throw tons of non-relevant data in there you've just made your job that much harder.
The data is relevant, don't kid yourself. Your retina print, fingerprints, blood type, genetic details... what tracking these things in this way really means is a profound hardening of classes; felons will always be felons, that time you got caught throwing toilet paper on the courthouse will never, ever come off your record, your political affiliations in college will always, always constrain your future job opportunities and more.
A society that cannot forgive is a society that is lost, as far as I am concerned. A society that marks people specifically so that it can class them has reached the approximate social level of pond scum. There is little - if any - difference between the stars the Jews were forced to wear and a database that marks an individual for an infraction they have long ago atoned for. If the thesis is that one can never atone for an error, mis-step or intentional antisocial act, then it is flawed to begin with.
None of which will stop, or even slow down, this trend. When every liberty is up for trading in return for a claim of improved security, when every freedom is deemed too risky to the body politic, when every over-stated threat causes the public to whimper and keep their children locked inside, the Rubicon has well and truly been crossed. Felons! Terrorists! Pedophiles! Pornography! Drugs! None of these "threats" do a fraction of the damage as the "solutions" America has come to, and is working towards.
At high voltages over long distances AC looses more than DC does.
"loses"
Quite aside from the tortured English, I didn't see how they accounted for the energy required to obtain, for instance, petro. Digging, refining, transporting the material as well as bringing workers and equipment to and fro, etc. For instance, to get gasoline to your car from the filling station, it typically will move in a tanker that spends X amount of fuel doing the moving, then electricity is spent pumping it to your tank, etc. A solar panel, once purchased, just sits there and supplies energy. There's no continually recurring costs the way there are with consumable energy supplies barring outright system failures.
It reminds me of the people who think we are taxed at about 30%. They just have no idea what is really going on, how much of the money they put out actually goes to the feds.
These people are already breaking the law. They know it. Discussing the law probably makes them laugh. Discussing their social status, loss of respect, and the harm they do to their peers is a lot more likely to have some kind of impact (though you'll note I didn't claim enough impact to stop them.) It doesn't help that a very large portion of current law is nonsensical, obsolete, blatantly unconstitutional, and often designed to disadvantage the citizen for the benefit of the large corporation or PAC. It also doesn't help that the GPL is an attempt to use the law to manage the problem.
I'm guessing I don't need a really long exposure to take star photos,
The big question: What ISO will your DR go to? At 1600 ISO, I can take a good star shot in 2 seconds at f1/8, basically a $70 lens. If I let the bright stars overexpose, say 6 seconds, then all kinds of faint detail comes out, like the nebulosity in Orion, even a little bit of the Pleides nebulosity, which is considerably fainter. As your ISO goes down, your time goes up, or your glass has to get faster. I have a freaky-good f/1.2 lens I treated myself to, but I've only had it out shooting stars one night thus far. I'm thinking I can go sub one-second with it, but haven't tested that. Next time! Right now it's socked in overcast, as it has been most nights the last month or so. Sigh.
How much were your big lenses?
The 500mm one is a Phoenix catadioptric (reflex and refractor combo) lens, available on Amazon for about $100. Don't get the kit with the 2x teleconverter, the lens isn't sharp enough (and neither is the teleconverter.) The Sigma catadioptric is better quality, you can find it on EBay, prices range from $100 (but you need to find an adaptor) to $250 or so for the right Canon hookup. Unfortunately, they don't make it any longer. Both lenses are fixed f/8 lenses, and your camera will balk and tell you they are f/0, just shoot aperture priority and the camera will figure out what to do. They're great for lunar shots and for long range wildlife, but they're manual focus and that can be tricky.
Re:Film at 11 - but Fox made it, so...
on
Can Time Slow Down?
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· Score: 2, Funny
...plus, they could have done a 2nd study on sudden stress induced heart failure in the general population. Bonus, eh?
at some point if you're taking your own shots you're going to want to use a telescope.
I'm looking at a Celestron NexStar 8SE GoTo Schmidt Cassegrain, with a T-ring and a prime focus camera adapter. It's my first telescope, so I'm not inclined to go much larger until I have a little experience. In the mean time, my camera is already challenging me.
In astronomy there is an "image" (FITS) file format
I'm familiar with it. I wrote the FITS loader for our image processing software.
Please understand I'm not trying to discourage you from backyard astronomy. I just thought you might be interested in this too.
Understood, and I very much appreciate your comments. I am interested. I'm just interested in what you can do with a bare camera, too. Thanks for all the pointers.
My current camera will go to ISO 3200, and I've got a sharp f/1.2 lens. That gives me a *lot* of room, lightwise. I suspect that as I learn, there's plenty of room for improvement before I reach any limitations of my gear. I'm clearly overexposing the shots by letting the camera decide when it has enough light; the thing is, up on a hill in the winter in Montana, fooling around isn't a great idea, unless you want to be found in the spring, gnawed on by critters. I am sure I'll learn more when the weather is more temperate and I can hang around out there for more than a few minutes.
I do wish you well with your film approach, though. Have any sample shots online?
So far, I've only used 500mm and 600mm lenses on shots of the moon. All the shots of the stars posted so far were done with 50mm and 85mm lenses. The reason is simply practical; at 500 and 600mm, the lenses I am willing to buy tend to be about f/8, which means they don't gather a lot of light. Given that, the exposure time has to be very long, and that means unless you have a tracking mount, you're going to get a bunch of star trails, very faint, if you get anything at all. The portrait lenses I use are 50mm and f/1.8, 85mm f/1.2, and those give me exposures of just a few seconds. I tried some shots with my 100mm macro, which is f/2.8, but it was just a little too slow - tends to make trails at normal exposure levels.
If I shot for very dim exposures and processed them up later, I could go for a faster shutter speed, *but* the problem is then I can't see what I have on the camera's preview, so it's kind like shooting blind with a film camera. I suppose I could alternate... mmm, yeah, have to try that next time. The camera I use is 14 bit and puts all manner of stuff in the image that is very dark.
The other option is to build (or buy) a cheap tracking mount. Like this one. The thing is, that sort of defeats the whole thrill of just pointing the camera at the sky and letting fly, as it were.
...and while the astronomers fiddle with gear you and I can only dream of having access to, take your camera and a tripod outside, and with no more than a portrait lens, you can take shots like these.
Click on the thumbnails for descriptions of the subject matter and the equipment and settings used.
The study was measuring the ability to catch something below the retaining threshold of the sensors in the eye, and therefore, only succeeded in measuring visual acuity over time. It wasn't measuring how perception of time is handled in the mind, nor was it measuring the "think rate" or "clock rate" (and I use that idea only in the loosest possible way) of the mind.
We don't know how the mind works. Until we do, sensory testing isn't going to tell us a great deal about the penultimate performance limitations of the mind itself - just those of the sensory apparatus.
"Right" and "wrong" are moral judgments. You're looking for the word "legal."
I speak both as a musician and as the owner of a literary agency. The problem is that the legal system is corrupt from the very top - the executive branch, the courts, the legislature - and the public knows it. They know the laws are not created for the benefit, or in service of, the citizens at large. Furthermore, the laws that are being created, generally in service of pandering to fear for the purpose of consolidating power, and/or serving the interests of PACs or large corporations, are not reasonable. The citizens are subject to law- and enforcement-based wars against their personal choices, their speech, their liberties, even their ability to travel. Only the dimmest or most deluded citizens are unaware of the status quo.
It is unrealistic to expect people to obey the laws under those circumstances. And sure enough, they are not doing so. There is no legislative fix; a fix by power, that is, a technological fix or some other mechanism by which the public can be forced to comply with the decrees of the legislature, is not presently available, and consequently, every segment of the IP industry - programming, writing, musical and dramatic performance - is suffering a huge hit to its ability to provide gainful employment.
I suspect the congress's recent attempt to declare the Internet a "terrorist weapon" is the beginning of the end of file sharing. For all the freedom-loving hackers out there, remember, all the data has to go through lines owned by large entities that can, and will, do what they are told. The day may be coming very soon when you cannot send encrypted information over the net, and you can't send files at all unless you're a "registered file vendor" or some such horse manure. Don't think they'll let the current state of affairs continue. It affects the corporations; they control the legislature; that snowball is already rolling.
It doesn't take years to gain popularity if you are producing good content.
On the contrary, it may takes years or even never achieve recognition. Just because an artist has done something worthwhile doesn't mean anyone else has noticed. Marketing, social trends, the right people (for instance, if I create a rocking metal track, but the only people who hear it are country fans, it isn't going anywhere quickly.)
PostgreSQL and the language of your choice - there's a front end for just about anything up there. I prefer Python by a huge margin, but I think it's pretty safe to say that for any even moderately common language, there's a front end out there ready for you to use. And PostgreSQL is *fast*.
I've worked with it in OSX and linux; not Windows, but I'm sure there are lots of windows users still around.:-) What you really need for a home library are name, title, genre, your comments, series information, a slot for a cover and back image if you want to take them for that volume (filenames - not data items), location (shelf, room, etc), lent to and date, and ISBN, if the book has one, of course. The commercial programs can use ISBN to look up the book's particulars on Amazon and other places, but as so many of the really good books don't have them, it's kind of a wash.
Takes about ten minutes to set up a database like that.
I have a ginormous amount of books, so I have two problems - one is creating an appropriate space for them, which I have solved, and the other is cataloging.
For organization, I'm simply using PostgreSQL on the house server, which is hugely fast, completely flexible, and allows me to access everything from the web - so I can just drag a laptop in there, or work on any machine in or out of the house. A few lines of Python and bingo, library system. I may clean it up a little and release it, it could be prettier.
I tried Delicious Library (which I do use for my DVD and CD collections) and a couple of other solutions, but for large libraries, they were all too slow.
...do you buy the legitimacy of that approach, even for a moment? Isn't that the same argument as "well, we only blew up his house, your honor, not him. So he's still 'secure in his property.'"
Slashdot Mirror
The point of voting for him is to get the Iraq war over; to have a president that will engage the public in four years of constitutionally grounded dialog; to have a president that will act with honor and integrity; to have a president that will act to undo the executive orders that the previous ones have inflicted upon us; to have a president that actually acts - presidential. Someone who understands what state's rights are; someone who understands what the commerce clause was for. Someone who will not rubber-stamp continuous federal budget growth. Someone who will replace those currently in the supreme court with constitutionally strong, honorable and hopefully at least a little bit younger people if the opportunity arises.
When I said good for healthcare, bad for everything else, that is pendant upon acts of congress and the senate, not acts of the president. So it would not reflect on the president, it will reflect upon the senate and the congress - only instead of dead silence in the media, as we have now, we'll have a president speaking out as to what is wrong, and who is doing the wrong.
The system is broken. I expect that to be strongly highlighted by the juxtaposition of an honorable president and a dishonorable congress and senate. I don't have to agree with every plank Paul stands for (or any other politician) in order to see that he alone out of the field of current candidates stands for those things that — in the past — actually made the United States a great country.
I think the issue of federal healthcare is both obvious and inevitable. Obvious in that the constitution says that the specific charter of the federal government is to provide for the welfare and tranquility of the citizens. That's part of the first sentence of the constitution. Inevitable in that when a population that cannot afford to obtain healthcare must stand by and watch others receive it and live, longer, healthier lives, you're going to have a continuous, difficult to ignore pressure to reform the tort, insurance, care-giving and drug industries. Paul's position is wrong here, and when you're actually wrong, people can provide the rational and logical arguments why you're wrong. In this case, you can add extremely high pressure emotional and moral arguments as well. Because Paul actually is an honorable man, even though he is a doctor, I remain hopeful that he will eventually see the error of his ways. If not, as I mentioned earlier, the fact remains that a president cannot prevail using legal means against a determined congress and senate in domestic matters. And unlike Bush, Clinton and the rest of the candidates, I have every reason to believe that Paul will behave with honor, according to the law, and without subterfuge. We have his congressional record to examine, and it is that of a man who is precisely who he says he is.
The only other candidate I would even remotely consider voting for is Kucinich. But I think Paul is considerably more electable and would serve the country better by attempting to make us face the fact that what the federal government has become is unconstitutional, consequently illegal, and wholly un-American in nature.
I think the media is doing all it can to hold the man down by ignoring the fact that of the people who know about him, basically some chunks of young people who are active in social networking on the Internet, Paul has roused a degree of support rarely seen in politics. Odds are that if he can get his positions out to the general public, at least the people on the right side of the IQ Gaussian will realize the man actually talks sense. About half of the eligible public doesn't vote in the first place, so winning takes about 25% of the voting population. I think that's possible, although very difficult. It may be m
Because they're looking to collect, and unify, all the information about each citizen. Fact: they're trying to use national ID cards to pin your identity down; Fact: they're trying to use databases to track your biometrics and link them to the cards; Fact: Our affiliations (political and otherwise) are being tracked by both government agencies and by commercial enterprises - and have been for years, just ask those poor bastards in 1950's Hollywood who got hauled up before McCarthy; this is nothing new. Fact: Watching these elections, what do we see but people's college behaviors and affiliations dragged up out of the blue? Hillary roomed with lesbians. Oooo! What about people who are trying to pursue normal lives and suddenly "wikipedia has a FELON as a CFO!", where the hell did that come from, and why is it even relevant? Did she screw up her work? No. Was she even accused of doing anything wrong? No. It's just past behavior being brought up to haunt current life and lock someone into a role they may very well have no part in. You can't be rehabilitated, you're low class and you will STAY low class. You don't think tracking is going on? Called Experian or one of its brethren lately? Seen your FBI file? Are you aware of the no-fly, no-buy, no-bank-account lists, all sans anything even remotely resembling due process? Think your email is private? When's the last time you transacted more than 10 grand at the bank? Do you realize that each of those transactions gets reported to the feds, and yes indeed, TRACKED? Talked to anyone overseas? Think that call wasn't monitored for keywords? Carnivore ring a bell? How about Echelon? Are you one of those clueless folk who think your SSN was used only for your retirement, as promised?
Buddy, the only reason you're "really sorry" is because you've got your head deep in the sand. But I agree, you are one sorry excuse for an informed person. You can fix it, though.
No, I base my arguments upon facts in the record. Current and recent behaviors and data; basically ince3 the early 1900s until today, you can see all manner of problems that are government related. Everything I talked about there is objective fact. There's plenty more where that came from, too.
Yes. Why would you think that? Are you paranoid? It is a very large collection of traitors, bent upon sundering the constitution either knowingly or otherwise. They aren't an "organization", they are an unaffiliated collection of people with similar goals and similar methods. This doesn't make them any easier to deal with, in fact, it makes it considerably more difficult.
You didn't "forget it", you just aren't together enough to see it. With your head as far in the sand as it is, this comes as no surprise. You should read 1984. Carefully. Then look around you and note the low level preparations going on. The camps built by the administration's bully-boys, Haliburton. The executive orders that revoke posse comitatus, you know about that, right? You know how the commerce clause has been mangled to mean "anything that COULD be be interstate comm
A philosophical conflict? How about a conflict of overdramatized, highly unlikely fearmongering juxtaposed against the loss of civil liberties? The latter seems to be the specific problem.
Living freely includes risk. The problem here is that many people have little or no understanding of the freedoms they had, how hard they were fought for and how unusual it is that they had them in the first place. Most troubling is the fact that they had no clue how easy it was to lose them, and now that they have been lost, recovery is much, much more difficult.
As far as I am concerned, when a criminal - be they terrorist, mugger or politician disobeying the constitution - commits an antisocial act, that criminal should be held accountable for that crime. If the crime is large, the accounting should be large. If society can accept that the crime has been atoned for, then the criminal should get a fresh start. If society cannot accept this, then the criminal should be either put to death or imprisoned permanently. In no case should bystanders or citizens not even involved on any level be inconvenienced by actions nominally taken to ameliorate the criminal act. Sure, this approach involves risk. I prefer the risk. We are a better people when we accept risk in exchange for liberty than when we trade liberty for any illusion of safety gained by treating everyone as if they were a potential criminal.
Your option three is the only honorable option.
Assuming he can be elected - which is a stretch - having gotten to the post, he'll be able to end the Iraq war. He'll be able to modify a fair amount of our foreign policy, this is an area that a president has a fair amount of autonomy in. However, with a comprised-as-usual congress and senate, most of the rest of the effect he will be able to have will consist of fireside chats with the public; even vetos will be easily defeated by politicians - on both sides of the aisle - he has little or nothing in common with.
Mind you, I'm voting for Paul, though there are significant planks in his platform I disagree with. This is because overall, he is the most honest and the closest to what I see as the original spirit of the country. However, because of the above, I have absolutely no fear that the area I disagree with him the most on - healthcare - will be in any way affected by his being president. The words "lame duck" don't even begin to describe what I think a Paul presidency would reflect. Good for healthcare; bad for everything else.
That doesn't make it right.
From the story:
Orwell was an optimist. The slide into complete loss of privacy, personal liberties, and any chance at atonement for making mistakes, intentional or otherwise, is far more insidious then he ever dreamed — and it is going to be far more complete than he imagined. Our country stands for nothing; we are powerless to change anything; the politicians and their lapdog agencies run rampant. I am ashamed.
From your post:
The data is relevant, don't kid yourself. Your retina print, fingerprints, blood type, genetic details... what tracking these things in this way really means is a profound hardening of classes; felons will always be felons, that time you got caught throwing toilet paper on the courthouse will never, ever come off your record, your political affiliations in college will always, always constrain your future job opportunities and more.
A society that cannot forgive is a society that is lost, as far as I am concerned. A society that marks people specifically so that it can class them has reached the approximate social level of pond scum. There is little - if any - difference between the stars the Jews were forced to wear and a database that marks an individual for an infraction they have long ago atoned for. If the thesis is that one can never atone for an error, mis-step or intentional antisocial act, then it is flawed to begin with.
None of which will stop, or even slow down, this trend. When every liberty is up for trading in return for a claim of improved security, when every freedom is deemed too risky to the body politic, when every over-stated threat causes the public to whimper and keep their children locked inside, the Rubicon has well and truly been crossed. Felons! Terrorists! Pedophiles! Pornography! Drugs! None of these "threats" do a fraction of the damage as the "solutions" America has come to, and is working towards.
Orwell was indeed an optimist.
"loses"
Quite aside from the tortured English, I didn't see how they accounted for the energy required to obtain, for instance, petro. Digging, refining, transporting the material as well as bringing workers and equipment to and fro, etc. For instance, to get gasoline to your car from the filling station, it typically will move in a tanker that spends X amount of fuel doing the moving, then electricity is spent pumping it to your tank, etc. A solar panel, once purchased, just sits there and supplies energy. There's no continually recurring costs the way there are with consumable energy supplies barring outright system failures.
It reminds me of the people who think we are taxed at about 30%. They just have no idea what is really going on, how much of the money they put out actually goes to the feds.
These people are already breaking the law. They know it. Discussing the law probably makes them laugh. Discussing their social status, loss of respect, and the harm they do to their peers is a lot more likely to have some kind of impact (though you'll note I didn't claim enough impact to stop them.) It doesn't help that a very large portion of current law is nonsensical, obsolete, blatantly unconstitutional, and often designed to disadvantage the citizen for the benefit of the large corporation or PAC. It also doesn't help that the GPL is an attempt to use the law to manage the problem.
Experiment that led to ethical nightmares: "Hey, I have an idea... let's elect Bush."
Homophobic much?
Just for you, an aurora.
The big question: What ISO will your DR go to? At 1600 ISO, I can take a good star shot in 2 seconds at f1/8, basically a $70 lens. If I let the bright stars overexpose, say 6 seconds, then all kinds of faint detail comes out, like the nebulosity in Orion, even a little bit of the Pleides nebulosity, which is considerably fainter. As your ISO goes down, your time goes up, or your glass has to get faster. I have a freaky-good f/1.2 lens I treated myself to, but I've only had it out shooting stars one night thus far. I'm thinking I can go sub one-second with it, but haven't tested that. Next time! Right now it's socked in overcast, as it has been most nights the last month or so. Sigh.
The 500mm one is a Phoenix catadioptric (reflex and refractor combo) lens, available on Amazon for about $100. Don't get the kit with the 2x teleconverter, the lens isn't sharp enough (and neither is the teleconverter.) The Sigma catadioptric is better quality, you can find it on EBay, prices range from $100 (but you need to find an adaptor) to $250 or so for the right Canon hookup. Unfortunately, they don't make it any longer. Both lenses are fixed f/8 lenses, and your camera will balk and tell you they are f/0, just shoot aperture priority and the camera will figure out what to do. They're great for lunar shots and for long range wildlife, but they're manual focus and that can be tricky.
I'm looking at a Celestron NexStar 8SE GoTo Schmidt Cassegrain, with a T-ring and a prime focus camera adapter. It's my first telescope, so I'm not inclined to go much larger until I have a little experience. In the mean time, my camera is already challenging me.
I'm familiar with it. I wrote the FITS loader for our image processing software.
Understood, and I very much appreciate your comments. I am interested. I'm just interested in what you can do with a bare camera, too. Thanks for all the pointers.
My current camera will go to ISO 3200, and I've got a sharp f/1.2 lens. That gives me a *lot* of room, lightwise. I suspect that as I learn, there's plenty of room for improvement before I reach any limitations of my gear. I'm clearly overexposing the shots by letting the camera decide when it has enough light; the thing is, up on a hill in the winter in Montana, fooling around isn't a great idea, unless you want to be found in the spring, gnawed on by critters. I am sure I'll learn more when the weather is more temperate and I can hang around out there for more than a few minutes.
I do wish you well with your film approach, though. Have any sample shots online?
So far, I've only used 500mm and 600mm lenses on shots of the moon. All the shots of the stars posted so far were done with 50mm and 85mm lenses. The reason is simply practical; at 500 and 600mm, the lenses I am willing to buy tend to be about f/8, which means they don't gather a lot of light. Given that, the exposure time has to be very long, and that means unless you have a tracking mount, you're going to get a bunch of star trails, very faint, if you get anything at all. The portrait lenses I use are 50mm and f/1.8, 85mm f/1.2, and those give me exposures of just a few seconds. I tried some shots with my 100mm macro, which is f/2.8, but it was just a little too slow - tends to make trails at normal exposure levels.
If I shot for very dim exposures and processed them up later, I could go for a faster shutter speed, *but* the problem is then I can't see what I have on the camera's preview, so it's kind like shooting blind with a film camera. I suppose I could alternate... mmm, yeah, have to try that next time. The camera I use is 14 bit and puts all manner of stuff in the image that is very dark.
The other option is to build (or buy) a cheap tracking mount. Like this one. The thing is, that sort of defeats the whole thrill of just pointing the camera at the sky and letting fly, as it were.
Either is more dignified than the silly little dances I do around the tripod when I get a good shot. :-)
Click on the thumbnails for descriptions of the subject matter and the equipment and settings used.
The night sky is beautiful at every scale.
The study was measuring the ability to catch something below the retaining threshold of the sensors in the eye, and therefore, only succeeded in measuring visual acuity over time. It wasn't measuring how perception of time is handled in the mind, nor was it measuring the "think rate" or "clock rate" (and I use that idea only in the loosest possible way) of the mind.
We don't know how the mind works. Until we do, sensory testing isn't going to tell us a great deal about the penultimate performance limitations of the mind itself - just those of the sensory apparatus.
No, U haz florescence, which is something else entirely.
I speak both as a musician and as the owner of a literary agency. The problem is that the legal system is corrupt from the very top - the executive branch, the courts, the legislature - and the public knows it. They know the laws are not created for the benefit, or in service of, the citizens at large. Furthermore, the laws that are being created, generally in service of pandering to fear for the purpose of consolidating power, and/or serving the interests of PACs or large corporations, are not reasonable. The citizens are subject to law- and enforcement-based wars against their personal choices, their speech, their liberties, even their ability to travel. Only the dimmest or most deluded citizens are unaware of the status quo.
It is unrealistic to expect people to obey the laws under those circumstances. And sure enough, they are not doing so. There is no legislative fix; a fix by power, that is, a technological fix or some other mechanism by which the public can be forced to comply with the decrees of the legislature, is not presently available, and consequently, every segment of the IP industry - programming, writing, musical and dramatic performance - is suffering a huge hit to its ability to provide gainful employment.
I suspect the congress's recent attempt to declare the Internet a "terrorist weapon" is the beginning of the end of file sharing. For all the freedom-loving hackers out there, remember, all the data has to go through lines owned by large entities that can, and will, do what they are told. The day may be coming very soon when you cannot send encrypted information over the net, and you can't send files at all unless you're a "registered file vendor" or some such horse manure. Don't think they'll let the current state of affairs continue. It affects the corporations; they control the legislature; that snowball is already rolling.
On the contrary, it may takes years or even never achieve recognition. Just because an artist has done something worthwhile doesn't mean anyone else has noticed. Marketing, social trends, the right people (for instance, if I create a rocking metal track, but the only people who hear it are country fans, it isn't going anywhere quickly.)
You're confusing "can" with "will."
PostgreSQL and the language of your choice - there's a front end for just about anything up there. I prefer Python by a huge margin, but I think it's pretty safe to say that for any even moderately common language, there's a front end out there ready for you to use. And PostgreSQL is *fast*.
I've worked with it in OSX and linux; not Windows, but I'm sure there are lots of windows users still around. :-) What you really need for a home library are name, title, genre, your comments, series information, a slot for a cover and back image if you want to take them for that volume (filenames - not data items), location (shelf, room, etc), lent to and date, and ISBN, if the book has one, of course. The commercial programs can use ISBN to look up the book's particulars on Amazon and other places, but as so many of the really good books don't have them, it's kind of a wash.
Takes about ten minutes to set up a database like that.
I have a ginormous amount of books, so I have two problems - one is creating an appropriate space for them, which I have solved, and the other is cataloging.
For organization, I'm simply using PostgreSQL on the house server, which is hugely fast, completely flexible, and allows me to access everything from the web - so I can just drag a laptop in there, or work on any machine in or out of the house. A few lines of Python and bingo, library system. I may clean it up a little and release it, it could be prettier.
I tried Delicious Library (which I do use for my DVD and CD collections) and a couple of other solutions, but for large libraries, they were all too slow.