"I'm surprised the Soviets were not the first with a weather sat."
You don't know how close the space race really was.
A weather sat with a better camera is a spy sat. We were heavily into that as soon as possible, earlier than the Soviets (1959 with Corona and the USSR with Zenit in 1962). A launch of a weather or science satellite also looks the same as a spy satellite. And indeed, the first launches of spy satellites were announced as "Discoverer" science missions.
Interestingly, Yuri Gagarin's capsule was actually the first spy satellite hull. The Soviets sacrificed the first hull to get Yuri in the air, and the second one became the first Zenit spy sat. They were able to accomplish this because in the Soviet system, the whole thing went up and came back, camera and all, for reloading for film. Sending up a delicate (and heavy) camera and bringing it back in one piece is pretty similar to getting a human up and back. The tests with dogs like Laika and the rest were to ensure that they could get the cameras back in one piece just as well as getting a human back.
The US Corona system didn't lend itself to dual use like the Zenit system did - it only ejected film packs to be returned by parachute and retrieved in mid air. There was no need to bring the whole apparatus back.
Eisenhower was excoriated in the press for Sputnik, but declassified docs showed that he was already on the ball by the time the Soviets launched. Since he couldn't say anything about actual spy satellites, he couldn't fend off the press.
Eisenhower also benefited from Sputnik dispelling the notion of "airspace" beyond the Earth's atmosphere - that national borders didn't extend to infinity.
It's all interesting stuff.
Weather sats were a side benefit to the whole cold-war spy business.
As much as geohot can try to make up for his massive fuckup,
Oh please. For years the question was "so when is the PS3 going to be hacked?" You people cheered him on when he came out with his hack. Now you guys are mad at *him* because *Sony* is taking one of its toys away. Shouldn't you be directing your anger at Sony?
You know what? I think geohot should not even bother trying to fix it. No good deed goes unpunished. No, I'm not related to him. I don't even own a gaming console. But this name calling and blame-gaming is annoying.
I thought about that after I posted and read further and then you replied before I could reply, but I have a "yeah but..."
Yeah, but...
1. There has only been one case prosecuted, and the result was "not guilty." 2. The "victim" has to have led a chaste life for it to be a crime. 3. It's inducement. If the inducement is unsuccessful, there was no crime (see 1) 4. If it's mutual, i.e., no inducement, there is no crime.
The likelihood of being charged and convicted is between slim and slimmer.
It's also not statutory rape. It's a different law, and the penalties are a big giveaway as to its importance (max 3 years, max $1000 fine).
How far have we drifted from "news for nerds, stuff that matters."
This isn't news. It doesn't fucking matter.
In other actual news:
There have been two suicide bombings in Moscow's metro this Monday morning rush hour. All 4 of the Rio Tinto executives on trial in China have been found guilty of bribery, with a 30 year possible maximum sentence.
What makes me rage about this whole thing is somehow the "solution" is to cave into the drive manufacturers, instead of holding them up to standards. That's a pretty sad state of affairs. And since you can't possibly wrap your head around consumer fraud I'm done arguing about it.
Actually, you don't and here's why: disk is also commonly called "magnetic memory" and a 1:1 match in disk units to RAM makes sense and why it's always been powers of 2 instead of powers of 10. Even with old big iron that counted memory as "words" meant that disk space was counted in consistent units.
So now that you want to map disk space as powers of 10 instead of powers of two, how do you now reconcile RAM? Eh? Now we have to make RAM in powers of 10 instead of powers of 2? I'll give you a choice: 4 true (base 2) GB of RAM or 4 "salesman" (base 10) GB of RAM at the same price. Which one will you buy?
Your confusion and lack of understanding is not everyone else's problem. Learn the technology and learn the real vocabulary or get out. Your doctor doesn't refer to your rectum as "the shitter" and your mechanic doesn't call a differential "the thing in the back with the gears."
Your entire argument revolves around "hurr I don't understand base 2." That's an argument from ignorance and easily disregarded.
You seem to think that a bug in an operating system that misreports the size of storage devices is somehow fraud on the part of the device manufacturers.
You seem intent on rewriting history. Either you're an astroturfer or you're simply not old enough to remember the 1990s.
Hard drives had always been marketed in multiples of binary megabytes.
Then came along drive manufacturers that put in big numbers the size of the drive in "megabytes" with *little numbers* hidden in a corner of the box defining the size as a decimal multiple instead of a power of two. Thus if you bought an 8GB drive from a manufacturer that labeled it as a power of ten, and compared it to a drive that was labeled in powers of two, suddenly the latter drive was "smaller" when it really wasn't.
This first happened in the 1990's and I think it was Maxtor, but don't hold me to it because I haven't looked it up.
Seagate wasn't the first, but they were the first to be sued and lose:
The case is centered around the difference between a gigabyte at 1,000,000,000 bytes and a binary gigabyte at 1,073,741,824 bytes. This difference has been known for years and is common among all hard drive manufacturers. Hard drive manufacturers measure and advertise their GBs in base10 while most operating systems, including all versions of Windows and MacOS, measure their GBs in base2 the binary number system consisting of 1s and 0s that resides at the ground level of all computer functioning.
Megabyte for megabyte the difference is completely negligible, but with both Seagate and Western Digital joining Hitachi in the 1TB hard drive market, that minor size difference can add up quickly (just over 68.5GB on a 1TB drive; theres just under a 7% discrepancy between a base10 GB and a base2 GB)
It's never been a bug in the OS. The OS has always been reporting the size correctly. The solution was not to change the definition in the direction of the fraud, but rather to hold the manufacturers to the correct standard.
This entire thing is because of fraud upon the ignorant consumer, and to spin it any other way means you're either a sucker or you're one of the spinners.
the whole Yelp crew sounds like they've been taking private bullshitting lessons from Darl McBride
Without even knowing the technical stuff behind yelp, this is exactly what sets off my bullshit meter. Ever since I've heard about yelp, I've never found anything redeeming about it.
To go off on your tangent, the jury restarts deliberation on Tuesday. It should be interesting to see how they handle "copyright must be transfered in writing."
You are talking about an RF device in a computer. EE people and radio amateurs have no problem distinguishing RF devices measured on the Decimal numbering system and computing devices, which are base 2.
Your lack of understanding is not everyone else's problem.
This brouhaha is all because of crooked drive manufacturers corrupting the vocabulary. This is not about confusion caused by honest mistakes by people, this is because of outright fraud perpetrated upon the public and the "solution" is to change in the direction of the fraud? Fuck that.
Anyone who pushes the KiB MiB GiB TiB convention should be forced to say "kibibyte, mebibyte, gibibyte, tibibyte" to a group of 10 year olds, and then endure the ridicule.
It would have been better if KiB meant 1000 and KB remained 1024. Not only would it have been backwards compatible with decades of history behind it (the argument about 36/39 bit words and such is specious) but it would have rightly labeled "salesman megabytes" as mebibytes, or "maybe bytes"
"I bet your Linux install isn't a 10 year old operating system"
Yes, but a 2.4 kernel (10 years old) can run all userspace programs that the 2.6 kernel can. And I likely suspect that the 2.2 and 2.0 kernels wouldn't have problems, though I don't feel like firing up a VM to find out. I think the only kernels that would have problems would be the ones that only ran a.out instead of ELF, and you have to go back 15 years (prior to 1.2) to do that.
Sure is butthurt Windows fanboys in here.
Maybe Windows would get more respect from the users of other OSes if Microsoft didn't pull its dirty tricks. Your much worshiped corporate bosses have stepped on a lot of toes, so don't expect hugs and kisses.
Excess water vapor in the atmosphere quickly precipitates out as rain or snow.
Water vapor is a greenhouse gas. This is a fact known by everyone who has even glanced at a list of greenhouse gases. It's also very effective.
Adding water vapor to the atmosphere increases the amount of heat the atmosphere can hold.
As you raise the temperature of the atmosphere (because you've added to the heat trapping ability of the atmosphere) you can evaporate more water.
Tell me where this is wrong.
I'll wait right here.
As for snow and rain, how much do you like your floods and blizzards?
Going down this road, I can see where this can cause an ice age. Taken too far, this can create a runaway greenhouse effect to the point where the oceans give up enough water to the air to where it becomes a dark-and-stormy-night for a thousand years because we've increased the cloud cover (increased albedo) enough to start global snowstorms. Indeed, this might explain the global temperature curves that describe the "hot planet, cold planet" cycles because the transitions are not gradual. I'd like to see more research into this.
And we haven't even discussed the ecological effects of reflecting sunlight from the oceans or the effects of oxygenating the ocean. This is a *bad idea* by a kookjob who has not looked even once at the unintended consequences of what he's proposed.
He says the bubbles would slow down evaporation in lakes and streams (i.e., where he's not using the system). This is only because he's increased overall humidity from the evaporation of the ocean with his bubble toy.
Ever see bubbles burst with fast film? They create droplets which increases surface area. Evaporation is dependent upon surface area, temperature, vapor pressure, and barometric pressure. Increase any of these and you increase the amount of water vapor in the air. Doing this over a large area increases the surface area for evaporation to happen by a large amount
It's like you people have forgotten the most basic physics.
And yes, he's a kook. Only a nutjob would come up with something as ridiculous as this.
It would also increase evaporation and thusly the amount of water vapor in the air. Water vapor is more effective than CO2 at increasing global warming.
Have you thought of that? No? Didn't *think* so!
He also says that energy is not a limiting factor. He's a kook.
This is late, but: OK. It had some annoyances, but all in all it was usable. But now there is the abomination called Dolphin.
Dolphin, out of the box, is ugly. I guess so that it shows you nearly all of its features and panels. You fold these up and put them away and leave yourself with a nice clean interface. Then you drag out the features you need when you need them. Dolphin *really* can get out of your way if you tell it to.
Only people who have never used Dolphin say "omgwtfbbq" when presented with the default window.
So here's a question:
When you're exposing a user to a new feature, do you keep it rolled up and only let the user enable it or do you enable it and expect the user to put it away when not needed?
New Math presented me with set theory in elementary school.
Symbolic logic is not a mystery to me. Indeed, I aced a logic course where over half the people dropped it like a hot rock in the first week.
However, arithmetic with pencil and paper is like pulling teeth for me. I hate it with a passion. Learning how to do square roots in 7'th grade by pencil and paper was torture. Thank Glub for calculators.
So yes, your professor is entirely correct. Teaching set theory preps students for boolean algebra and all that happy nonsense. There are trade-offs, though.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, we all know how Scientific American's "50, 100, and 150 Years Ago" page detracts from the credibility of the magazine.
Crikes.
I put it to you that there are much less worthy articles on this site that actually do detract from Slashdot's credibility.
--
BMO
"And who knows what the soviets did,"
We know all about their early Zenit spy sats. I suggest that less sensitive things like weather satellites are easier to research.
We all know it's popular these days to beat up on the US even when it's not justified. Like what you just did.
--
BMO
"I'm surprised the Soviets were not the first with a weather sat."
You don't know how close the space race really was.
A weather sat with a better camera is a spy sat. We were heavily into that as soon as possible, earlier than the Soviets (1959 with Corona and the USSR with Zenit in 1962). A launch of a weather or science satellite also looks the same as a spy satellite. And indeed, the first launches of spy satellites were announced as "Discoverer" science missions.
Interestingly, Yuri Gagarin's capsule was actually the first spy satellite hull. The Soviets sacrificed the first hull to get Yuri in the air, and the second one became the first Zenit spy sat. They were able to accomplish this because in the Soviet system, the whole thing went up and came back, camera and all, for reloading for film. Sending up a delicate (and heavy) camera and bringing it back in one piece is pretty similar to getting a human up and back. The tests with dogs like Laika and the rest were to ensure that they could get the cameras back in one piece just as well as getting a human back.
The US Corona system didn't lend itself to dual use like the Zenit system did - it only ejected film packs to be returned by parachute and retrieved in mid air. There was no need to bring the whole apparatus back.
Eisenhower was excoriated in the press for Sputnik, but declassified docs showed that he was already on the ball by the time the Soviets launched. Since he couldn't say anything about actual spy satellites, he couldn't fend off the press.
Eisenhower also benefited from Sputnik dispelling the notion of "airspace" beyond the Earth's atmosphere - that national borders didn't extend to infinity.
It's all interesting stuff.
Weather sats were a side benefit to the whole cold-war spy business.
--
BMO
"It is extraordinary that this action has cost £200,000 to establish the meaning of a few words."
Right. If you offend some person or group, you can be bankrupted.
--
BMO
As much as geohot can try to make up for his massive fuckup,
Oh please. For years the question was "so when is the PS3 going to be hacked?" You people cheered him on when he came out with his hack. Now you guys are mad at *him* because *Sony* is taking one of its toys away. Shouldn't you be directing your anger at Sony?
You know what? I think geohot should not even bother trying to fix it. No good deed goes unpunished. No, I'm not related to him. I don't even own a gaming console. But this name calling and blame-gaming is annoying.
--
BMO
Goddamnit, I can't type.
--
BMO
As someone here in the States, I have to say that I hope the Canadians tell everyone to piss off.
Seriously, what's the EU going to do? Invade?
Present the digitus impudicus.
--
BMO
I thought about that after I posted and read further and then you replied before I could reply, but I have a "yeah but..."
Yeah, but...
1. There has only been one case prosecuted, and the result was "not guilty."
2. The "victim" has to have led a chaste life for it to be a crime.
3. It's inducement. If the inducement is unsuccessful, there was no crime (see 1)
4. If it's mutual, i.e., no inducement, there is no crime.
The likelihood of being charged and convicted is between slim and slimmer.
It's also not statutory rape. It's a different law, and the penalties are a big giveaway as to its importance (max 3 years, max $1000 fine).
--
BMO
Age of consent is 18? Did you even read the first line of the law?
It's 16.
But since Phoebe was 15, they're both screwed.
--
BMO
How far have we drifted from "news for nerds, stuff that matters."
This isn't news.
It doesn't fucking matter.
In other actual news:
There have been two suicide bombings in Moscow's metro this Monday morning rush hour.
All 4 of the Rio Tinto executives on trial in China have been found guilty of bribery, with a 30 year possible maximum sentence.
--
BMO
What makes me rage about this whole thing is somehow the "solution" is to cave into the drive manufacturers, instead of holding them up to standards. That's a pretty sad state of affairs. And since you can't possibly wrap your head around consumer fraud I'm done arguing about it.
--
BMO
understanding what prefixes actually mean
Actually, you don't and here's why: disk is also commonly called "magnetic memory" and a 1:1 match in disk units to RAM makes sense and why it's always been powers of 2 instead of powers of 10. Even with old big iron that counted memory as "words" meant that disk space was counted in consistent units.
So now that you want to map disk space as powers of 10 instead of powers of two, how do you now reconcile RAM? Eh? Now we have to make RAM in powers of 10 instead of powers of 2? I'll give you a choice: 4 true (base 2) GB of RAM or 4 "salesman" (base 10) GB of RAM at the same price. Which one will you buy?
Your confusion and lack of understanding is not everyone else's problem. Learn the technology and learn the real vocabulary or get out. Your doctor doesn't refer to your rectum as "the shitter" and your mechanic doesn't call a differential "the thing in the back with the gears."
Your entire argument revolves around "hurr I don't understand base 2." That's an argument from ignorance and easily disregarded.
"cranky old man"
Whatever.
--
BMO
You seem to think that a bug in an operating system that misreports the size of storage devices is somehow fraud on the part of the device manufacturers.
You seem intent on rewriting history. Either you're an astroturfer or you're simply not old enough to remember the 1990s.
Hard drives had always been marketed in multiples of binary megabytes.
Then came along drive manufacturers that put in big numbers the size of the drive in "megabytes" with *little numbers* hidden in a corner of the box defining the size as a decimal multiple instead of a power of two. Thus if you bought an 8GB drive from a manufacturer that labeled it as a power of ten, and compared it to a drive that was labeled in powers of two, suddenly the latter drive was "smaller" when it really wasn't.
This first happened in the 1990's and I think it was Maxtor, but don't hold me to it because I haven't looked it up.
Seagate wasn't the first, but they were the first to be sued and lose:
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2007/10/26/seagate_lawsuit_concludes_settlement_announced/1
It's never been a bug in the OS. The OS has always been reporting the size correctly. The solution was not to change the definition in the direction of the fraud, but rather to hold the manufacturers to the correct standard.
This entire thing is because of fraud upon the ignorant consumer, and to spin it any other way means you're either a sucker or you're one of the spinners.
You pick.
--
BMO
the whole Yelp crew sounds like they've been taking private bullshitting lessons from Darl McBride
Without even knowing the technical stuff behind yelp, this is exactly what sets off my bullshit meter. Ever since I've heard about yelp, I've never found anything redeeming about it.
To go off on your tangent, the jury restarts deliberation on Tuesday. It should be interesting to see how they handle "copyright must be transfered in writing."
--
BMO
Did you see my argument about fraud? No? Learn to read.
Your confusion is _not_ my problem.
--
BMO
You are talking about an RF device in a computer. EE people and radio amateurs have no problem distinguishing RF devices measured on the Decimal numbering system and computing devices, which are base 2.
Your lack of understanding is not everyone else's problem.
This brouhaha is all because of crooked drive manufacturers corrupting the vocabulary. This is not about confusion caused by honest mistakes by people, this is because of outright fraud perpetrated upon the public and the "solution" is to change in the direction of the fraud? Fuck that.
Anyone who pushes the KiB MiB GiB TiB convention should be forced to say "kibibyte, mebibyte, gibibyte, tibibyte" to a group of 10 year olds, and then endure the ridicule.
--
BMO
It would have been better if KiB meant 1000 and KB remained 1024. Not only would it have been backwards compatible with decades of history behind it (the argument about 36/39 bit words and such is specious) but it would have rightly labeled "salesman megabytes" as mebibytes, or "maybe bytes"
That would have been fine by me.
--
BMO
"Saying "they certainly suck less than they used to" is most assuredly damning with faint praise... but it's the truth."
The "it sucks less" reasoning has been the case since the upgrade from DOS 1.0 to 1.1
--
BMO
"I bet your Linux install isn't a 10 year old operating system"
Yes, but a 2.4 kernel (10 years old) can run all userspace programs that the 2.6 kernel can. And I likely suspect that the 2.2 and 2.0 kernels wouldn't have problems, though I don't feel like firing up a VM to find out. I think the only kernels that would have problems would be the ones that only ran a.out instead of ELF, and you have to go back 15 years (prior to 1.2) to do that.
Sure is butthurt Windows fanboys in here.
Maybe Windows would get more respect from the users of other OSes if Microsoft didn't pull its dirty tricks. Your much worshiped corporate bosses have stepped on a lot of toes, so don't expect hugs and kisses.
--
BMO
Just so you know, there are currently more trees in New England than before the settlement of the English.
The English settlers wouldn't have had a chance had it not been for the people living here hadn't had already cleared the land.
--
BMO
Excess water vapor in the atmosphere quickly precipitates out as rain or snow.
Water vapor is a greenhouse gas. This is a fact known by everyone who has even glanced at a list of greenhouse gases. It's also very effective.
Adding water vapor to the atmosphere increases the amount of heat the atmosphere can hold.
As you raise the temperature of the atmosphere (because you've added to the heat trapping ability of the atmosphere) you can evaporate more water.
Tell me where this is wrong.
I'll wait right here.
As for snow and rain, how much do you like your floods and blizzards?
Going down this road, I can see where this can cause an ice age. Taken too far, this can create a runaway greenhouse effect to the point where the oceans give up enough water to the air to where it becomes a dark-and-stormy-night for a thousand years because we've increased the cloud cover (increased albedo) enough to start global snowstorms. Indeed, this might explain the global temperature curves that describe the "hot planet, cold planet" cycles because the transitions are not gradual. I'd like to see more research into this.
And we haven't even discussed the ecological effects of reflecting sunlight from the oceans or the effects of oxygenating the ocean. This is a *bad idea* by a kookjob who has not looked even once at the unintended consequences of what he's proposed.
No. Just no. This is a bad idea from all sides.
--
BMO
I read the article.
He says the bubbles would slow down evaporation in lakes and streams (i.e., where he's not using the system). This is only because he's increased overall humidity from the evaporation of the ocean with his bubble toy.
Ever see bubbles burst with fast film? They create droplets which increases surface area. Evaporation is dependent upon surface area, temperature, vapor pressure, and barometric pressure. Increase any of these and you increase the amount of water vapor in the air. Doing this over a large area increases the surface area for evaporation to happen by a large amount
It's like you people have forgotten the most basic physics.
And yes, he's a kook. Only a nutjob would come up with something as ridiculous as this.
--
BMO
It would also increase evaporation and thusly the amount of water vapor in the air. Water vapor is more effective than CO2 at increasing global warming.
Have you thought of that? No? Didn't *think* so!
He also says that energy is not a limiting factor. He's a kook.
--
BMO
This is late, but:
OK. It had some annoyances, but all in all it was usable. But now there is the abomination called Dolphin.
Dolphin, out of the box, is ugly. I guess so that it shows you nearly all of its features and panels. You fold these up and put them away and leave yourself with a nice clean interface. Then you drag out the features you need when you need them. Dolphin *really* can get out of your way if you tell it to.
Only people who have never used Dolphin say "omgwtfbbq" when presented with the default window.
So here's a question:
When you're exposing a user to a new feature, do you keep it rolled up and only let the user enable it or do you enable it and expect the user to put it away when not needed?
I can see arguments for both.
--
BMO
Hello. I was a victim of New Math.
New Math presented me with set theory in elementary school.
Symbolic logic is not a mystery to me. Indeed, I aced a logic course where over half the people dropped it like a hot rock in the first week.
However, arithmetic with pencil and paper is like pulling teeth for me. I hate it with a passion. Learning how to do square roots in 7'th grade by pencil and paper was torture. Thank Glub for calculators.
So yes, your professor is entirely correct. Teaching set theory preps students for boolean algebra and all that happy nonsense. There are trade-offs, though.
--
BMO