Because it is energetically tough to get to Mercury they are trying to get into with as little fuel expenditure as possible, to send as much payload as possible. Since there is no atmosphere, aerobraking is not possible, and thus they are using gravity assists to help reduce the orbital insertion delta-v to a manageable number. Each flyby speeds up the spacecraft a little, to better match Mercury's orbital velocity, and they decided on 3 of these to get the performance they wanted. There is a synodic period (the orbital beat period) between each such opportunity, so it takes a while to complete three flyby gravity assists.
Could someone please explain why according to the web site the orbit insertion is going to take another pass and another 3 years. Does it really take that long to slow the spacecraft down?
A Macbook nano. $699, 10" screen, dual-core Atom, 2 GB of RAM, 64 GB flash drive, 6-cell removable battery, Airport/Bluetooth, Snow Leopard; no CD/DVD drive.
Many manufacturers already have models similar to this; with subnotebook sales at an all-time high it's only a matter of time before Apple jumps onboard.
You forgot the Apple Mac tax. Add ~$2-300 to the price and you will have a better estimate as to what Apple would charge:)
GMail is not pretty good at sorting spam, it is the worst I've ever seen. Not only does it let tens of spam-emails through every day, it randomly tags one non-spam mail as spam every week. My former spamassassin only let 1-2 spams through a week, and false positives was limited to 1-2 per year. Compared to spamassassin; GMail is horrible. How can it be that bad, when it can compare so many emails and just check for duplicates????
Wow, complete opposite of my experience. Gmail spam filter is fantastic for me. I can't recall a false positive or false negative in a LONG time. Thanks to using gmail I don't have to run a spam filter such as Spam Bayes etc. If one does sneak through, big deal, it's less headache to running my own spam filter.
The argument that space exploration moved to the private sector won't work has flaws.
NASA and it's CONTRACTORS that actually build the ships for NASA have lots of experience gained during the many many failures throughout the 1950s and 1960s. I also would be surprised if these private companies are sharing their knowledge with these start-ups. And lastly, almost all NASA designs are derivatives of the same tried and tested designs, these new small companies are trying out different concepts and ideas which have to go through their trial and failure test cycles.
1) Unique -- Uh, how about the user interface? One can be nit-picky about anything not being "unique." For example, there is nothing unique or original between a Ford and a Mercedes vehicle, I mean they both have wheels, seats, and use gas right? (sarcasm in case you miss it).
2) Battery -- Well, your usage is different. I have never ever purchased a second battery for a cell phone in all the years I have owned a cell phone. Your experience obviously is different. Oh, you do realize you can buy a replacement battery from Apple right?
3) Palm OS does all the same things -- Are you kidding me? That OS is CRAP, wait that would give crap a bad name it's so shitty. If people wanted to use something designed in 1995 have fun. You have got to be kidding trying to compare Palm OS to any of the modern cell OS systems.
Oh, and I don't own an iPhone. Your comments just were too ridiculous to ignore.
Back in the day, when I started using Linux, Mandrake (now Mandriva) was a great distribution that helped newbies like me hit the ground running. But now it seems like Ubuntu has gobbled up that market. Afaict, they don't have much of an "enterprise" market, and they don't have much of a "hacker" market... or am I wrong? What market is Mandriva serving these days?
The foundation is a tax shell and not doing "great things". The foundation makes poor people even more poor. It is used to enforce the monopoly of Microsoft: It gives away free pc's with Windows but included is an expensive support contract with MS. It's not that Bill invented a businessmodel, he used an illegal one (monopoly).
Wrong. It's not a tax shell (btw, you mean shelter not shell) if you give away almost all your wealth. Think before you post.
Fantastic response to the gp's same old complaints.
Thanks for taking the time to type it up. People really need to get some perspective with the whole "MS is evil" and you eloquently explain this point.
Wow, he really comes across bitter. One may dislike Bill and MS, but the foundation Bill started has really done some great things. At least he is doing something with his money AND has made other extremely rich people start to do similar charity activities.
I think while MS has done some awful things, the industry has still moved forward as a whole. Bill saw a business model and moved to make it successful. Stallman's idea has caught on too, just not as well YET as the Microsoft one.
Instead of focusing on criticizing Microsoft how about focus on making open source software that is not "as good" but rather "MUCH BETTER" than closed sourced equivalents? How about make OpenOffice or Koffice not "good enough for most users" to be so awesome that it surpasses MS Office? That's why Firefox caught on, it was significantly better than IE 6 in terms of functionality and SECURITY that it was able to become a contender.
Well, perhaps this is the final verdict? However, in the past the claim was the wood was from logs that were at the bottom of a swamp or something. Also, it was thought to be the chemical treatment. I suspect this is just the latest theory.
If OpenOffice is so good, why do it's advocates always have to say "oh it's just as good" etc? Yet they continue to either ignore or deride the frequent comments made here that it is slow and missing a great deal of the power functionality that a lot of users need. I myself have tried it several times over the years, and compared to my old copy of Office XP and later Office 2003, it just wasn't as functional for my usage.
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Because it is energetically tough to get to Mercury they are trying to get into with as little fuel expenditure as possible, to send as much payload as possible. Since there is no atmosphere, aerobraking is not possible, and thus they are using gravity assists to help reduce the orbital insertion delta-v to a manageable number. Each flyby speeds up the spacecraft a little, to better match Mercury's orbital velocity, and they decided on 3 of these to get the performance they wanted. There is a synodic period (the orbital beat period) between each such opportunity, so it takes a while to complete three flyby gravity assists.
The mission FAQ has more information on this.
Ah, thanks! Very interesting.
Could someone please explain why according to the web site the orbit insertion is going to take another pass and another 3 years. Does it really take that long to slow the spacecraft down?
A Macbook nano. $699, 10" screen, dual-core Atom, 2 GB of RAM, 64 GB flash drive, 6-cell removable battery, Airport/Bluetooth, Snow Leopard; no CD/DVD drive.
Many manufacturers already have models similar to this; with subnotebook sales at an all-time high it's only a matter of time before Apple jumps onboard.
You forgot the Apple Mac tax. Add ~$2-300 to the price and you will have a better estimate as to what Apple would charge :)
GMail is not pretty good at sorting spam, it is the worst I've ever seen. Not only does it let tens of spam-emails through every day, it randomly tags one non-spam mail as spam every week. My former spamassassin only let 1-2 spams through a week, and false positives was limited to 1-2 per year. Compared to spamassassin; GMail is horrible. How can it be that bad, when it can compare so many emails and just check for duplicates????
Wow, complete opposite of my experience. Gmail spam filter is fantastic for me. I can't recall a false positive or false negative in a LONG time. Thanks to using gmail I don't have to run a spam filter such as Spam Bayes etc. If one does sneak through, big deal, it's less headache to running my own spam filter.
Just using task manager in Windows Xp. Shows Firefox.exe with 4 tabs uses 120mb of ram.
Maybe its just an OS X thing...
What? Immoral? Uh no. More like Spyglass had crappy lawyers and/or businessmen representing them in their negotiations with Microsoft.
How do you do this? I have 3 tabs open and Firefox 3 uses 91mb.
Your point about extra memory usage is a good one, just curious how people manage to get Firefox to "use so much much memory."
I agree completely. Without adblock plus, or the several other add-ons I love, I won't switch.
The argument that space exploration moved to the private sector won't work has flaws.
NASA and it's CONTRACTORS that actually build the ships for NASA have lots of experience gained during the many many failures throughout the 1950s and 1960s. I also would be surprised if these private companies are sharing their knowledge with these start-ups. And lastly, almost all NASA designs are derivatives of the same tried and tested designs, these new small companies are trying out different concepts and ideas which have to go through their trial and failure test cycles.
1) Unique -- Uh, how about the user interface? One can be nit-picky about anything not being "unique." For example, there is nothing unique or original between a Ford and a Mercedes vehicle, I mean they both have wheels, seats, and use gas right? (sarcasm in case you miss it).
2) Battery -- Well, your usage is different. I have never ever purchased a second battery for a cell phone in all the years I have owned a cell phone. Your experience obviously is different. Oh, you do realize you can buy a replacement battery from Apple right?
3) Palm OS does all the same things -- Are you kidding me? That OS is CRAP, wait that would give crap a bad name it's so shitty. If people wanted to use something designed in 1995 have fun. You have got to be kidding trying to compare Palm OS to any of the modern cell OS systems.
Oh, and I don't own an iPhone. Your comments just were too ridiculous to ignore.
huh, how is prior comment informative?? No details, nada...
I can answer your question about right mouse clicking. Just enable two finger touch for the touchpad, and that will give you a right mouse button click on the touch pad. Full description here http://leopardtips.blogspot.com/2007/11/how-to-right-click-on-mac.html
Back in the day, when I started using Linux, Mandrake (now Mandriva) was a great distribution that helped newbies like me hit the ground running. But now it seems like Ubuntu has gobbled up that market. Afaict, they don't have much of an "enterprise" market, and they don't have much of a "hacker" market... or am I wrong? What market is Mandriva serving these days?
What's mandriva? :P
The foundation is a tax shell and not doing "great things". The foundation makes poor people even more poor. It is used to enforce the monopoly of Microsoft: It gives away free pc's with Windows but included is an expensive support contract with MS.
It's not that Bill invented a businessmodel, he used an illegal one (monopoly).
Wrong. It's not a tax shell (btw, you mean shelter not shell) if you give away almost all your wealth. Think before you post.
Puh-lease.
Compatability with MS Office isn't what is holding back Open Office etc. from being awesome.
The problem is that Open Office is an inferior product written by people who can't code as well and don't have as clear a vision as the MS developers.
I can see that and I am drunk so I am not sure exactly what your problem is.
What? You think I'm wrong? What does Open Office do better exactly?? What has it ever done better than MS Office?
Exactly.
Fantastic response to the gp's same old complaints.
Thanks for taking the time to type it up. People really need to get some perspective with the whole "MS is evil" and you eloquently explain this point.
Wow, he really comes across bitter. One may dislike Bill and MS, but the foundation Bill started has really done some great things. At least he is doing something with his money AND has made other extremely rich people start to do similar charity activities.
I think while MS has done some awful things, the industry has still moved forward as a whole. Bill saw a business model and moved to make it successful. Stallman's idea has caught on too, just not as well YET as the Microsoft one.
Instead of focusing on criticizing Microsoft how about focus on making open source software that is not "as good" but rather "MUCH BETTER" than closed sourced equivalents? How about make OpenOffice or Koffice not "good enough for most users" to be so awesome that it surpasses MS Office? That's why Firefox caught on, it was significantly better than IE 6 in terms of functionality and SECURITY that it was able to become a contender.
Never mind I was wrong. It was government listening to the solar lobby! Move along, nothing to see here.
My god, what next!? Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!
Yes, it's from ... Ghostbusters!
Well, perhaps this is the final verdict? However, in the past the claim was the wood was from logs that were at the bottom of a swamp or something. Also, it was thought to be the chemical treatment. I suspect this is just the latest theory.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Stradivarius-Violins-Mystery-Solved-41462.shtml
It took me several hours after the starting time to get a download working. Anyone else have similar trouble?
I wonder how high it would have been with more servers!
I just found it felt like a "hog." And as someone said in this topic, try using OpenOffice to write a thesis, it's just not a pleasant experience.
I agree with you though, if one is basically doing basic "text editing" Open office is fine.
Oh and in my defense, the prior post is not off topic as the topic post needlessly inserted comparisons regarding open office.
If OpenOffice is so good, why do it's advocates always have to say "oh it's just as good" etc? Yet they continue to either ignore or deride the frequent comments made here that it is slow and missing a great deal of the power functionality that a lot of users need. I myself have tried it several times over the years, and compared to my old copy of Office XP and later Office 2003, it just wasn't as functional for my usage.
Wow, that's really hot! I get such a charge learning about NASA's projects!
hehe :) Get the puns? :P