It is a simple question of dispersion in the atmosphere. Take telescopes for instance...Ground-based telescopes can seldom provide resolution better than 1.0 arc-seconds while the Hubble's resolution is about 10 times better, or 0.1 arc-seconds. Not just because its a good camera but because it is up where it doesnt have to deal with the atmosphere.
And the cameras on the MGS do not rely on a good lens as much as they do rely on the electronics. It uses a linear array CCD which will scan the night sky one line at a time (much like a CRT actually). And it is not limited to the visible region of the spectrum. UV and near infrared have way too much information to give than just an optical picture.
Most the pics released finally are almost always digitally enhanced and represented in the visible region of the spectrum. The kids these days will not be fired up about astronomy if all they see is an output of wavelets in an array.
This is infact tougher than it seems. Both satellites are on a polar orbit and at different speeds. And the camera on the MGS rotates as it takes pictures over this. Pretty awesome for the sheer mathematical probabilites involved
For sheer probabilites, imagine the Voyager out there in the beyond. It would be nothing short of a miracle to be spotted by a satellite from another planet.
Unless of course it bumps into the dear old gluttonous friend of ours from Trall!!
Overclocking on the Pentium I was fun. CPU speeds were still far far away from the GHz levels and in school, it had amazing brag value. Never matter that the recursion programs we wrote in TurboC (it was way back... I was a kid) never seemed to compile any faster.
Overclocked my HP Athlon 2.2GHz upto 2.5 Ghz. Noteable difference? Well, super pi http://www.computerbase.de/downloads/software/benc hmarks/super_pi/did calculate PI to 512K decimals in 49 seconds (It was 52 seconds earlier). Didnt make much of a difference to anything else that I use. (Am an MBA now... what i use is powerpoint and outlook... I sold out!!)
The fact remains that overclocking is not a performance enhancement... the results are just incremental, but they do give the kicks. Very zen!
Remember the "Turbo" button on the machines those days?
In the pharma industry, there has been the maximum churn in patent laws with companies and countries breaking patents for reasons ranging from a social obligation to just plain reluctance to comply with patents.
For instance the WTO agreement provides a temporary mechanism for countries to break patent monopolies on medicines for export to poor countries that lack sufficient local manufacturing capacity.
But how really can the tech companies here break a patent just because they wont pay? I can only see it happenning if they can convincing show that they were working on the same technologies for Wifi. And this can only be done if they form a "consortium" and show how all their R&D together put together amounts to the same patent!
Yes computing power for everyone... Salvation for the yearning masses on the other end of the digital divide. Ppl can now just wait for the friendly neighbourhood flying web server/chopper running bluetooth and then as far as 30 feet away can some/.ing done via any bluetooth device!
And yes... you can finally send those naughty bluetooth msgs to the cheerleader next door without hiding in the trash just to stay in range
Firstly, all of us might have our opinions on M$s capabilities but the fact remains (as pointed out in the allusion to the RedHat network) that it definitely makes good business sense to develop an Antivirus software and bundle it with the desktop. And it has its synergies as far as updating the comp is concerned as well with just one update site working for my machine (As long as they dont come up with bloatware SPs for the extended suite of s/ws)
The problem is that everytime M$ has attempted increasing the width of its product protfolio viz unzip built into the shell, the windows firewall and so on, the functionality has always been frustratingly limited. (Probably the fear of more anti-trust suits coming its way or probably because they knew that with previous versions, they neednt have bothered as windows flew off the shelves)
Now they are in a situation where users need a compelling reason to upgrage from XP/2K!!
And frankly Bill and his army should concentrate more on making sure that the multitude of bugs are ironed out in design rather than writing quick-fixes for them after release. Manufacturing went thro the phase of expensive monitoring and fixing of defects before they realized that the most efficient way to go is Six Sigma their processes. Make sure that the defects are so extremely minute that every SP might now actually be a feature improvement rather than a quick-fix!! For a change let users actually want a Service Pack rather than dread the thought of its release.
PS: Forgive the comparison between manufacturing and programming, but the underlying philosophy still stands.
Great! More apple apps on Windows along the lines of quicktime and itunes. Longhorn is coming along in bytes and pieces (if we take Gates' word for it).
Am gonna put my last pennies to good use by buying shares of RAM manufactures. Mark my words, with all the ppl rushing to upgrade, there's explosive growth there!
Innovation is the key here, but what amazes me is M$s reluctance to even "copy" a good idea that is out there.
Let us take product improvements as simple as tabbed browsing, offline messages; beats me as to why it takes Gates and team so long to come up with features that are already available in competing products.
The friendly neighbourhood store will be more than inconvenienced to see a well intentioned guide horse walking right in. Talk about shelf space or the lack of it thereof.
An easily startled guide horse... well talk about collateral damange!!
Sample instructions:
1. Please keep your horses away from the grocery section
2. Keep your supermarket clean. Poop bags available for all horse owners.
Phew... imagine the look on the martians faces when they land on this planet
Adoption by the existing programs does not really amount to much. No one will change the world by writing just a plug-in for another program.
If there is an open architecture for documents which is seamlessly convertible to and from doc/pdf et all, then we have a winner! I should be able to convert existing files to a new format in addition to just creating files in a fancy new format. Then again it should be snappy to convert my.open.source files to.doc.
Lofty as the idea of a constantly evolving online text might be, the academia is one eccentric bunch. Editing the text to add supplementary material and say changing a few heading is fine. But profs use different notations for even quantities as basic as heat in thermodynamics. Anyone spare a thought for the poor TA who manually goes thro the whole book replacing the 'H' Heat with a 'Q'.
No find and replace tool has been made that can get around that one!
Slashdot Mirror
It is a simple question of dispersion in the atmosphere. Take telescopes for instance ...Ground-based telescopes can seldom provide resolution better than 1.0 arc-seconds while the Hubble's resolution is about 10 times better, or 0.1 arc-seconds. Not just because its a good camera but because it is up where it doesnt have to deal with the atmosphere.
And the cameras on the MGS do not rely on a good lens as much as they do rely on the electronics. It uses a linear array CCD which will scan the night sky one line at a time (much like a CRT actually). And it is not limited to the visible region of the spectrum. UV and near infrared have way too much information to give than just an optical picture.
Most the pics released finally are almost always digitally enhanced and represented in the visible region of the spectrum. The kids these days will not be fired up about astronomy if all they see is an output of wavelets in an array.
This is infact tougher than it seems. Both satellites are on a polar orbit and at different speeds. And the camera on the MGS rotates as it takes pictures over this. Pretty awesome for the sheer mathematical probabilites involved
For sheer probabilites, imagine the Voyager out there in the beyond. It would be nothing short of a miracle to be spotted by a satellite from another planet.
Unless of course it bumps into the dear old gluttonous friend of ours from Trall!!
Overclocking on the Pentium I was fun. CPU speeds were still far far away from the GHz levels and in school, it had amazing brag value. Never matter that the recursion programs we wrote in TurboC (it was way back ... I was a kid) never seemed to compile any faster.
c hmarks/super_pi/did calculate PI to 512K decimals in 49 seconds (It was 52 seconds earlier). Didnt make much of a difference to anything else that I use. (Am an MBA now ... what i use is powerpoint and outlook ... I sold out!!)
... the results are just incremental, but they do give the kicks. Very zen!
Overclocked my HP Athlon 2.2GHz upto 2.5 Ghz. Noteable difference? Well, super pi http://www.computerbase.de/downloads/software/ben
The fact remains that overclocking is not a performance enhancement
Remember the "Turbo" button on the machines those days?
In the pharma industry, there has been the maximum churn in patent laws with companies and countries breaking patents for reasons ranging from a social obligation to just plain reluctance to comply with patents.
For instance the WTO agreement provides a temporary mechanism for countries to break patent monopolies on medicines for export to poor countries that lack sufficient local manufacturing capacity.
But how really can the tech companies here break a patent just because they wont pay? I can only see it happenning if they can convincing show that they were working on the same technologies for Wifi. And this can only be done if they form a "consortium" and show how all their R&D together put together amounts to the same patent!
And voila!
Yes computing power for everyone ... Salvation for the yearning masses on the other end of the digital divide. Ppl can now just wait for the friendly neighbourhood flying web server/chopper running bluetooth and then as far as 30 feet away can some /.ing done via any bluetooth device!
... you can finally send those naughty bluetooth msgs to the cheerleader next door without hiding in the trash just to stay in range
And yes
The world just got better!
Firstly, all of us might have our opinions on M$s capabilities but the fact remains (as pointed out in the allusion to the RedHat network) that it definitely makes good business sense to develop an Antivirus software and bundle it with the desktop. And it has its synergies as far as updating the comp is concerned as well with just one update site working for my machine (As long as they dont come up with bloatware SPs for the extended suite of s/ws)
The problem is that everytime M$ has attempted increasing the width of its product protfolio viz unzip built into the shell, the windows firewall and so on, the functionality has always been frustratingly limited. (Probably the fear of more anti-trust suits coming its way or probably because they knew that with previous versions, they neednt have bothered as windows flew off the shelves)
Now they are in a situation where users need a compelling reason to upgrage from XP/2K!!
And frankly Bill and his army should concentrate more on making sure that the multitude of bugs are ironed out in design rather than writing quick-fixes for them after release. Manufacturing went thro the phase of expensive monitoring and fixing of defects before they realized that the most efficient way to go is Six Sigma their processes. Make sure that the defects are so extremely minute that every SP might now actually be a feature improvement rather than a quick-fix!! For a change let users actually want a Service Pack rather than dread the thought of its release.
PS: Forgive the comparison between manufacturing and programming, but the underlying philosophy still stands.
Spent 3 months doing this for free ....
And then ask for company funding in the very next FAQ. Hmm...have to wait till tomorrow for the grand unveiling then (if there is one)
Reminds me of a post a couple of days back when they got linux to load on a Gameboy.
... that is progress!
Would really like to see a psp running a gameboy emulator running linux. Wrap that with wine and guess what, we'll have quake on a PSP.
Wowie
Great! More apple apps on Windows along the lines of quicktime and itunes. Longhorn is coming along in bytes and pieces (if we take Gates' word for it).
Am gonna put my last pennies to good use by buying shares of RAM manufactures. Mark my words, with all the ppl rushing to upgrade, there's explosive growth there!
Innovation is the key here, but what amazes me is M$s reluctance to even "copy" a good idea that is out there.
Let us take product improvements as simple as tabbed browsing, offline messages; beats me as to why it takes Gates and team so long to come up with features that are already available in competing products.
The friendly neighbourhood store will be more than inconvenienced to see a well intentioned guide horse walking right in. Talk about shelf space or the lack of it thereof. An easily startled guide horse ... well talk about collateral damange!!
Sample instructions:
1. Please keep your horses away from the grocery section
2. Keep your supermarket clean. Poop bags available for all horse owners.
Phew ... imagine the look on the martians faces when they land on this planet
Adoption by the existing programs does not really amount to much. No one will change the world by writing just a plug-in for another program.
.open.source files to .doc.
... I have heard of HTML
If there is an open architecture for documents which is seamlessly convertible to and from doc/pdf et all, then we have a winner! I should be able to convert existing files to a new format in addition to just creating files in a fancy new format. Then again it should be snappy to convert my
And yes
Lofty as the idea of a constantly evolving online text might be, the academia is one eccentric bunch. Editing the text to add supplementary material and say changing a few heading is fine. But profs use different notations for even quantities as basic as heat in thermodynamics. Anyone spare a thought for the poor TA who manually goes thro the whole book replacing the 'H' Heat with a 'Q'.
No find and replace tool has been made that can get around that one!