Just one thing additional thing I learned from that document: It seems that all existing video is film of CRT screens displaying a live feed of the broadcast signals. So we have the scan conversion, which was lossy, and then the broadcast 60i (or 50i) to film (more lossage and noise), and then film - digital video (as little loss as possible). No wonder the video looks so horrid!
The problem was not the lines, which, as you note, is roughly equivalent to broadcast TV's. The problem was that the vision from the moon was slow scan - i.e. 10 frames per second (see http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/news_events/apollo11/ - a very good tale of the technical side of getting the signals back from the moon). The only way they had of converting that to the 50i or 60i signals of broadcast TV was a converter that basically consisted of a camera pointed at a long-phosphor CRT - although it was a single box containing both parts. If you want to know the details, check the article. Also, http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/news_events/apollo11/Parkes_Apollo11_TV_quality.html contains two pictures that compare a photograph taken from a SSTV display in '69, and the same frame from existing broadcast TV archives. Clearly shows why we want to find the original, unconverted recordings!
That said, I am ready to be disappointed: The news release seems to suggest that all they are releasing is filtered and cleaned up recordings of the broadcast TV - the originals are still lost, and, i greatly fear, have been mislabeled and subsequently destroyed in a 'clean up'.
Well, it certainly was news to me that Bugatti had made the Veyron in a softtop. And the news that they had done so without extra weight, or too much flexing is somewhat unbelievable. Seems that I have been somewhat out-of-date, but it's not a year. It was revealed last August.
I got a good laugh at "They don't understand the vastness of" the postage stamps you guys call "cattle ranches" over there. Australia introduced NLIS a few years ago now, and it is going well. And we have cattle stations larger than Texas.
Yes, I hope that the FDA acts quickly on redefining 'Homeopathic' as dilutions over a certain level (1ppm perhpas, the chemical equivalents of 3C) before one of these companies actually kills someone directly.
Homeopathic remedies (which I prefer to call homeopathetic...), as others have stated, are diluted until there is a low to zero probability of them containing 1 molecule of substance.
This is stated to be a 1:100 dilution, which is 1% active ingredient: a significant concentration of a proven active (and detremental) ingredient. There use of homeopathic labels (2X, which means 2 dilutions of 1: 10) was done simply to avoid FDA attention, and they are likely to get into deep trouble because of it.
Of course, the main reason that the Australian domains don't suffer much cybersquatting is that it costs ~$50-$120 a year to have one. Add to that the issue of dealing, even indirectly, with [company name redacted], and you have the reason why most Australians have.com domains.
One thing I do not understand is why Spinrite does not write to another drive! If Steve Gibson would add that feature, most of us would use no other tool for data recovery.
I certainly would not, even though I do not reformat hard drives while there are any other alternatives. (I don't think I ever have, apart from when the customer walks in and says "reformat this for me.")
Hard disk drives dying on the operating table, or power supplies failing and zapping the drive controllers, are just too common for me to take liability for the data.
Number 1 was a HDMI cable for 56 cents. Here be no Monsters!
A few clicks down was a high quality, 50-foot cat6 cable for seven bucks.
I thought it was.. appropriate. Mind you, I can think of places where that very nice looking network cable would fit in well - I can imagine paying $50 if I wanted something to look really good. But $500? I'll pimp my own, thanks.
I prefer to remember the positions of the pairs: blue in the center, orange (or green) either side, green (or orange) on the left, brown on the right. Alternate colour/white/colour/white across the plug.
It just reminds you always the importance of the pairs.
That is also how I arrange them: Get the pairs in the right place, then sort out the polarities. The alternative - untwisting the pairs into a loose collection of wires and resorting them by colour - seems an easy way to make a mistake to me.
Most Australian ISPs offer you options if you do go over. Internode has a reasonable option of buying a data pack, at $2.50/GB, which is quite reasonable considering the high cost of backhaul from Australia. Other ISPs allow you the choice of shaping to 64Kb or 128Kb when you go over, or allowing them to invoice, at $5/GB to $10/GB. (Telstra is the outlier, and charge ~$150/GB, but no one who knows computers uses Telstra)
It is melting them with visible light energy. Visible light is just the same as infa-red light when it comes to heating things up. It's just that it's also useful with seeing things as well.
International pipes - Fat connections between one point and another - is something that private enterprise can make a good short-term business case for. Companies are building links right now, and will continue to do so, especially if there is demand for them. Connections to individual houses are expensive, and with returns and risks that turn private companies away. So governments take it on.
They don't outrightly oppose socialised health care, for instance.
Oh, but they did once. Do you recall why one of the Private Health Insurance companies is called "Medibank/Private/"? It is because a previous Labor government set up socialized health care as "Medibank", and the following Liberal government killed it. The following Labor government reinstated it as "Medicare", and I believe the Liberal/National coalition lost a few elections with a platform including abolishing Medicare before they got the idea!
FTTN means that fibre runs to a box in each suburb, where it connects to the existing copper network. It is half the job, and destroys the existing *DSLn network. You replace the Telstra monopoly with yours. FTTP (or FTTH) puts fibre to your doorstep, and leaves the copper there as a second option. Redundancy for those that need uptime, competition for all.
Remember that Telstra will still have its copper local loop as competition - the FTTN proposal would have cut this - so at the least there will be two competitors for basic access. City folks will have cable as the third. The more I think of this, the more I like it.
While I freely admit that this is way out of left field, this isn't as far fetched as it may seem. May I present for your enjoyment: The Betamax decision. It is the decision that allowed us to own a VCR, and it hinged on whether making a recording of live tv for personal use was "fair use". Let's put it up agains those 4 rules: 1. Amount of work used: fail. Users recorded the whole program. 2. Impact on sales: fail. A strong argument exists that it reduces demand for sales of that video to people who may have already recorded it. 3. Transformative: Fail. Total fail. 4. Type of work: Fail. TV programs aren't dictionaries or encyclopedeas. Most TV programs are fictional dramas. So, under the four rules, there is no way recording live tv could be fair use. But the court decided that it was. So personal use recording was called fair use, the VCR was allowed, the copyright owners lost. Incedentally, it meant that the VCR became widespread, and the copyright owners made squillions selling videos, but that's beside the point (or highly relevant!)
So, a court deciding against all 'reason' that what everybody does is fair has a precedent - so his suggestion is not as strange as it may seem!
You think that the machinations of what is either the number 1 or number 2 name in the open source world is of narrow interest? If an executive knows the name of any Open source project, it will be either Linux, MySQL, Openoffice or apache. Now, while I think that MySQL fading away, and leaving PostgreSQL as the leading database would be a Good Thing, MySQL is still of great importance, and it's fracturing under Sun's (Mis)Management is one of the most important things happening in IT right now.
One action that is often mistaken for attempted intimidation is the aborted overtake attempt. It takes a lot to accelerate a fully loaded truck from 80 to 100 km/h to overtake. So a truck will begin this maneuver on the corner before a straight. They will fall back somewhat, and then begin accellerating. If the road turns out to be clear, they will pull out and pass. If not, then they will take their foot off the gas, and let the exhaust brake (you know, that loud "BURRRRR" sound) to slow them down. As they were trying to pass, they will often end up fairly close to the back of the slower vehicle, before falling back again to get ready for the next opportunity. You can see how this is seen as intimidating, but it is a standard, safe and required technique.
Yes, there is a linear increase in the danger involved in having a crash, all the way from 10km/hr up. But most crashes are not caused by speed. They are caused by failure to give way - and the only way you could write that off to speed is by pointing out that the vehicle should have been stopped (ie speed=0) at the time. Another major cause of accidents is fatigue. Fatigue crashes are proportional to time spent driving. Speed = time * distance says that higher speeds mean less time driving. I agree that we need speed limits, and they need to be enforced. But they also need to be fixed at a rate where there is actual danger: 100km/h for well-used, 2-lane highways, yes; but quiet or divided highways could safely be used at 140 or above. (our speed limits were set - when, the 1960s? The concept of a 1960's vehicle at 100km/h is frightening!) Mind you, there is a big safety dividend when all traffic on a road is at the same speed. This could be a good reason to limit speeds to what the average driver feels safe at. It is also a very good reason to scrap laws that limit towing, heavy vehicles and learner/provisional drivers to lower speeds!
Slashdot Mirror
Just one thing additional thing I learned from that document: It seems that all existing video is film of CRT screens displaying a live feed of the broadcast signals. So we have the scan conversion, which was lossy, and then the broadcast 60i (or 50i) to film (more lossage and noise), and then film - digital video (as little loss as possible). No wonder the video looks so horrid!
The problem was not the lines, which, as you note, is roughly equivalent to broadcast TV's.
The problem was that the vision from the moon was slow scan - i.e. 10 frames per second (see http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/news_events/apollo11/ - a very good tale of the technical side of getting the signals back from the moon). The only way they had of converting that to the 50i or 60i signals of broadcast TV was a converter that basically consisted of a camera pointed at a long-phosphor CRT - although it was a single box containing both parts. If you want to know the details, check the article.
Also, http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/news_events/apollo11/Parkes_Apollo11_TV_quality.html contains two pictures that compare a photograph taken from a SSTV display in '69, and the same frame from existing broadcast TV archives. Clearly shows why we want to find the original, unconverted recordings!
That said, I am ready to be disappointed: The news release seems to suggest that all they are releasing is filtered and cleaned up recordings of the broadcast TV - the originals are still lost, and, i greatly fear, have been mislabeled and subsequently destroyed in a 'clean up'.
Well, it certainly was news to me that Bugatti had made the Veyron in a softtop. And the news that they had done so without extra weight, or too much flexing is somewhat unbelievable.
Seems that I have been somewhat out-of-date, but it's not a year. It was revealed last August.
I got a good laugh at "They don't understand the vastness of" the postage stamps you guys call "cattle ranches" over there.
Australia introduced NLIS a few years ago now, and it is going well. And we have cattle stations larger than Texas.
You ninja'd my comment!
Yes, I hope that the FDA acts quickly on redefining 'Homeopathic' as dilutions over a certain level (1ppm perhpas, the chemical equivalents of 3C) before one of these companies actually kills someone directly.
Homeopathic remedies (which I prefer to call homeopathetic...), as others have stated, are diluted until there is a low to zero probability of them containing 1 molecule of substance.
This is stated to be a 1:100 dilution, which is 1% active ingredient: a significant concentration of a proven active (and detremental) ingredient.
There use of homeopathic labels (2X, which means 2 dilutions of 1: 10) was done simply to avoid FDA attention, and they are likely to get into deep trouble because of it.
Of course, the main reason that the Australian domains don't suffer much cybersquatting is that it costs ~$50-$120 a year to have one. Add to that the issue of dealing, even indirectly, with [company name redacted], and you have the reason why most Australians have .com domains.
One thing I do not understand is why Spinrite does not write to another drive! If Steve Gibson would add that feature, most of us would use no other tool for data recovery.
You would never get a technician to sign it.
I certainly would not, even though I do not reformat hard drives while there are any other alternatives. (I don't think I ever have, apart from when the customer walks in and says "reformat this for me.")
Hard disk drives dying on the operating table, or power supplies failing and zapping the drive controllers, are just too common for me to take liability for the data.
Number 1 was a HDMI cable for 56 cents. Here be no Monsters!
A few clicks down was a high quality, 50-foot cat6 cable for seven bucks.
I thought it was.. appropriate. Mind you, I can think of places where that very nice looking network cable would fit in well - I can imagine paying $50 if I wanted something to look really good. But $500? I'll pimp my own, thanks.
I prefer to remember the positions of the pairs: blue in the center, orange (or green) either side, green (or orange) on the left, brown on the right. Alternate colour/white/colour/white across the plug.
It just reminds you always the importance of the pairs.
That is also how I arrange them: Get the pairs in the right place, then sort out the polarities. The alternative - untwisting the pairs into a loose collection of wires and resorting them by colour - seems an easy way to make a mistake to me.
....then fake the receipt for the materials, pocket the cash, and return the removed 'unsafe' cables! BOFHed like a pro.
Most Australian ISPs offer you options if you do go over.
Internode has a reasonable option of buying a data pack, at $2.50/GB, which is quite reasonable considering the high cost of backhaul from Australia. Other ISPs allow you the choice of shaping to 64Kb or 128Kb when you go over, or allowing them to invoice, at $5/GB to $10/GB. (Telstra is the outlier, and charge ~$150/GB, but no one who knows computers uses Telstra)
Also worth noticing: the linked Ebay pages suffer from the same disease.
It is melting them with visible light energy. Visible light is just the same as infa-red light when it comes to heating things up. It's just that it's also useful with seeing things as well.
International pipes - Fat connections between one point and another - is something that private enterprise can make a good short-term business case for. Companies are building links right now, and will continue to do so, especially if there is demand for them.
Connections to individual houses are expensive, and with returns and risks that turn private companies away. So governments take it on.
They don't outrightly oppose socialised health care, for instance.
Oh, but they did once. Do you recall why one of the Private Health Insurance companies is called "Medibank /Private/"? It is because a previous Labor government set up socialized health care as "Medibank", and the following Liberal government killed it.
The following Labor government reinstated it as "Medicare", and I believe the Liberal/National coalition lost a few elections with a platform including abolishing Medicare before they got the idea!
FTTN means that fibre runs to a box in each suburb, where it connects to the existing copper network. It is half the job, and destroys the existing *DSLn network. You replace the Telstra monopoly with yours.
FTTP (or FTTH) puts fibre to your doorstep, and leaves the copper there as a second option. Redundancy for those that need uptime, competition for all.
Remember that Telstra will still have its copper local loop as competition - the FTTN proposal would have cut this - so at the least there will be two competitors for basic access. City folks will have cable as the third.
The more I think of this, the more I like it.
Because a whole bunch of different cables drop by Guam on there way elsewhere. Lovely little point for the Pacific to connect to itself.
While I freely admit that this is way out of left field, this isn't as far fetched as it may seem.
May I present for your enjoyment: The Betamax decision. It is the decision that allowed us to own a VCR, and it hinged on whether making a recording of live tv for personal use was "fair use".
Let's put it up agains those 4 rules:
1. Amount of work used: fail. Users recorded the whole program.
2. Impact on sales: fail. A strong argument exists that it reduces demand for sales of that video to people who may have already recorded it.
3. Transformative: Fail. Total fail.
4. Type of work: Fail. TV programs aren't dictionaries or encyclopedeas. Most TV programs are fictional dramas.
So, under the four rules, there is no way recording live tv could be fair use. But the court decided that it was. So personal use recording was called fair use, the VCR was allowed, the copyright owners lost. Incedentally, it meant that the VCR became widespread, and the copyright owners made squillions selling videos, but that's beside the point (or highly relevant!)
So, a court deciding against all 'reason' that what everybody does is fair has a precedent - so his suggestion is not as strange as it may seem!
You think that the machinations of what is either the number 1 or number 2 name in the open source world is of narrow interest?
If an executive knows the name of any Open source project, it will be either Linux, MySQL, Openoffice or apache.
Now, while I think that MySQL fading away, and leaving PostgreSQL as the leading database would be a Good Thing, MySQL is still of great importance, and it's fracturing under Sun's (Mis)Management is one of the most important things happening in IT right now.
Your signature does _not_ match your quoting of Red Dwarf.
One action that is often mistaken for attempted intimidation is the aborted overtake attempt.
It takes a lot to accelerate a fully loaded truck from 80 to 100 km/h to overtake. So a truck will begin this maneuver on the corner before a straight. They will fall back somewhat, and then begin accellerating. If the road turns out to be clear, they will pull out and pass.
If not, then they will take their foot off the gas, and let the exhaust brake (you know, that loud "BURRRRR" sound) to slow them down. As they were trying to pass, they will often end up fairly close to the back of the slower vehicle, before falling back again to get ready for the next opportunity.
You can see how this is seen as intimidating, but it is a standard, safe and required technique.
Yes, there is a linear increase in the danger involved in having a crash, all the way from 10km/hr up.
But most crashes are not caused by speed. They are caused by failure to give way - and the only way you could write that off to speed is by pointing out that the vehicle should have been stopped (ie speed=0) at the time.
Another major cause of accidents is fatigue. Fatigue crashes are proportional to time spent driving. Speed = time * distance says that higher speeds mean less time driving.
I agree that we need speed limits, and they need to be enforced. But they also need to be fixed at a rate where there is actual danger: 100km/h for well-used, 2-lane highways, yes; but quiet or divided highways could safely be used at 140 or above. (our speed limits were set - when, the 1960s? The concept of a 1960's vehicle at 100km/h is frightening!)
Mind you, there is a big safety dividend when all traffic on a road is at the same speed. This could be a good reason to limit speeds to what the average driver feels safe at. It is also a very good reason to scrap laws that limit towing, heavy vehicles and learner/provisional drivers to lower speeds!