Your math... It hurts my head. It won't be at 30Hz, it'll be at 60Hz, just that the left eye's 60Hz are out of phase with the right eye's 60Hz. Cinema's framerate is at 29.97Hz, whether it's 2D or 3D, as they broadcast both images at the same time, BUT a cinema projector will fire the image 3 times (typically) per frame so the light doesn't (appear to) flicker.
A "Classic" XBox was no more than a PC with a PIII Celeron 733 processor and a NVidia GeForce 3 GPU, running a modified Windows 2000 kernel. However, the 360 is a whole 'nother kettle of fish, being based on a triple-core (6 thread) PowerPC architecture, with ATi graphics and Hardware Hypervisor systems. The 360 truly was cutting edge at the time, more so even than the PS3.
The PS3 came out later, used a single core PowerPC base, but added 3 specialist FPUs (SPUs) (The "Cell Architecture" they so touted), with NVidia graphics (Around GeForce 6800 level) but gave the CPU->GPU link tiny bandwidth, and no bandwidth at all from GPU to system RAM, essentially gimping the system, as the SPUs have to be used to do any serious work, because offloading to the GPU is so painfully slow.
The Wii was a beefed-up Gamecube, which itself was a highly clocked single-core, single-thread PowerPC, single-thread ARM9 co-processor (With native Java capability) and ATi graphics.
And what of MS Kinect, which broke new ground in interaction? As for mobile OS, what bout Zune (The predecessor to Windows Phone 7, which is ground-breaking in it's own right)? And, of course, MS Office, which (love it or hate it) has become the de-facto standard in office software.
Glossy screens reflect ambient light back at the same angle at which it hits the screen, which means when there is light shining on them they're next to useless. However, when there isn't direct light, they allow for much deeper blacks and higher contrast.
Matte screens, on the other hand, scatter ambient light and reflect it back at all angles, thus diminishing the amount of light. So when there's a light shining on them, you can still see the image on-screen. But this also means that all ambient light is reflected back, no matter the direction of the light as it hits the screen, leading to much weaker blacks and less contrast.
While consumers love the non-reflective nature of matte screens, they prefer the higher contrast and darker black level of a glossy screen much more, and are typically willing to sacrifice occasional reflections for better picture quality.
I do note, however, that there is a kind of glass that's (almost) entirely non-reflective. Head down to your local picture framing place (Michaels, for certain, has it) and take a look. Quite why this glass/coating isn't in use on LCD screens right now, I have no idea.
However, there may be a new option on the horizon: Japanese scientists have manufactured a "screen" for projectors that only reflects light beamed on it from a certain angle. So if you have a projector on the floor pointing up, it'll reflect the projector's light out into the room, but not the light from the overhead fluorescent tubes.
In theory, you could partially clamp the artery into a U-shaped device to make a peristaltic generator (the opposite of a peristaltic pump), but that would impede blood flow and could have potentially dangerous consequences. It would also "wear" on the artery walls, which could cause leaks and the like. But it *is* another option.
As it happens, yes. I have a Debian box running MythTV acting as DVR and NAS for my home network. And the same thing happens on linux - Try to run apt-get from a regular user (without sudo, or without sudo privileges) and you get an error message, as intended. My point still stands - Microsoft is not at fault for shortcomings in other people's products, or for security measures you yourself have implemented. Though I guess this is/., and Microsoft-bashing is pretty much par for the course here.
Ya see, I run my XP box as user. The Admin account is used only for Admin. Now, in my user mode, the Java and Adobe update icons show up in the tray and when I click on them, after a while of them doing their thing, I get the "You have to have administrative privileges to perform this update." Can I do a "Run as" on those updates? Nope. Gotta log-off and log back on as the admin. "Switch User"? Turned it off for performance reasons.
So, let me get this straight, you have enabled a high(er) security policy, and are now complaining when the higher security policy you have implemented gets in the way of something you want to do. Let's try looking at this another way:
Stupid lock makers! I installed deadbolts in my doors for security, but when I'm outside and I see I've left a light on I have to unlock my doors again to turn that light off! Can I do a "teleport into the room"? Nope. Gotta walk to the door and unlock it! X10? Didn't get the wireless option for performance reasons
It's the same kind of argument you're trying here. Some might say that the Java updater should change it's prompt if you don't have administrative rights (and/or change it's behaviour, so it doesn't bother downloading an update you can't install), but that is STILL not Microsoft fault. And, in fact, in Vista and 7, with UAC, have enabled you to do exactly as you intend, and given that XP's support is being sunset shortly, it would behoove you to update. And, for reference, Windows 7 with Aero disabled has comparable (or better) performance than Windows XP. Oh, and you CAN do a RunAs, you just need to do it from Windows - The "Update notifier" applications don't have that capability, but if you find where it downloaded the installer to, you can install it using RunAs from there.
Then in Admin mode, gotta re-download all of the updates again and then do the install.
Because it's a completely different user, and for security reasons one user's programs can't access another user's area
So, what if your customers, or least the people using those machines, don't have admin access?
You find someone (your IT manager, or the person who implemented the higher security policy) who does have admin access.
And no, you shouldn't have to be an admin to install a fucking document viewer.
Why the hell not? Software is software, no matter what it does. Your "Fucking document viewer" might have any number of other functions, including formatting the entire system if it so desires, not to mention adding files to the system (DLL/COM components/Default associations) and making all kinds of changes. The OS has no idea what a program is and what it does, just that it's something new and therefore needs approval. Or do you want an "Evil" bit to be set in programs. Just how well do you think that would work?
You complain about grain, yet look at the LotR Blu-Ray release - The "Noise reduction" was cranked up so high on that, every character and scene looks waxy and plasticy, and hair is smeared into a mess. And don't tell me it was the transfer, as there was a HD release on PPV Satellite that was MUCH better. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1237167
For simple half-duplex systems like gaming, more lag is not really noticeable.
The only practical difference between gaming VOIP and Skype is having to hit a push-to-talk button. Latency issues like people stepping on each other crop up in gaming VOIP in much the same way that they pop up in high-latency cell phone or Skype conversations.
Not really. You're not (typically) having a back-and-forth conversation while gaming, just announcing your information and clearing the channel. So there is little difference, conversationally speaking, if your burst is delayed by half a second or so. It's not a conversation, it's a series of announcements. With noticeable lag in a phone call, however, you'll find yourself (and the caller/callee) tripping over each other's sentence beginnings as you both play the "no, after you" as the lag causes you (and your train of thought) to be interrupted. Add to that the highly distracting nature of hearing your own words back after a half-second delay (try it, it's very confusing and distracting) that a lack of echo cancellation can cause, and you have a recipe for conversational disaster.
As mentioned, it's needed for VoIP systems. With a full-duplex system, more than 150ms of lag is audible and noticeably uncomfortable, breaking the flow of conversation (As the apparent lag is doubled in a "conversation", with the delay at each end adding cumulatively). For simple half-duplex systems like gaming, more lag is not really noticeable.
XBMC is no longer (Officially) on the XBox, it has had a Linux branch for a long time now, and now also has OSX and Windows versions. It's also the codebase that Boxee and Plex were forked from. I'd suggest you take a look at it, as it's truly an awesome media center.
Given that neither wife knew about the other, this is definitely not polygamy. Polygamy is defined as "a marriage which includes more than two partners", and as the "partners" were in separate, distinct, relationships, this does not count.
What we have here is a clear-cut case of Bigamy on the man's part. Nothing unusual about that, as there have been many cases over the years.
Then it's not Polygamy, it's Bigamy. Polygamy would be both wives living in the same house as a merged family. Bigamy is marrying someone without getting divorced from your previous spouse.
They did this in Series 7. It didn't really work too well. Part of why it works is the interplay between the audience and the actors. At the very least, the audience's laughter often ended up getting muted as there wasn't enough space left for it.
That's exactly right. Just like it's GM's fault that the cup of coffee I put in a cupholder in my car spilled on my pants when I stomped on the gas pedal (To use one of the oh-so-popular car analogies that I understand is mandatory on this site).
Is it Mozilla's fault that you can install an add-on? No. Is it Microsoft's fault that they didn't ask before installing the add-on in question? Yes! Is it Mozilla's fault that the add-on is not uninstallable from within Firefox? No (MS put the add-on in question in a folder that a regular user doesn't have write-access to without Admin privileges).
Just as video games makers are not liable for the actions of modders, Mozilla is not responsible for the actions of MS.
Isn't it ironic, that the feature that you are so hateful of in Firefox (The awesomebar) is a lesser version of Chrome's "Omnibox", that not only searches your history and bookmarks (Something that you espouse so much hate over) but the web as well. Yet you don't seem to mind Chrome's history/bookmark/web search bar near so much as you do FireFox's history/bookmark bar.
I was looking at the photos and was thinking about the wing size. "That's because they fly very fast because they re-enter the asmosphere really fast." But then I thought "why do they need to re-enter that fast? Surely they could use the atmosphere to slow themselves down, and enter at a much slower, cooler and more relaxed pace." Then I thought "well maybe the gravity has a fair amount of time to act on the craft before the atmosphere really begins, therefore giving plenty of opportunity for speed, well before a viable way to slow down"
Am I right? Does someone have a better explaination?
When the shuttle de-orbits, it fires it's engines in the opposite direction to it's orbit's travel to slow it's forward velocity, which is several magnitudes faster than ground speed (17239.2MPH for the ISS). At this point, the shuttle's inertia stops counteracting the pull of gravity, and the shuttle starts "Falling", like swinging a bucket full of water around on a string, then slowing down the rotation.
Given that there is no atmosphere at this height, the shuttle can accelerate (at 9.81m/s^2) to speeds well in excess of "terminal velocity" as there is no drag to slow it. It typically hits the atmosphere (80 miles up) after 30 minutes of freefall, travelling at speeds of at least twice the speed of sound.
The orbiter then uses it's aerodynamic profile to control its descent, making a series of sharply banking turns to brake it's speed as it descends through the atmosphere, the friction of the air moving against the underside of the orbiter heating the heatproof ceramic tiles up to white hot.
So, here's the answer to you question is "Because gravity has been pulling them down for half an hour before they even hit the atmosphere". In theory, they could use retro thrusters to brake their descent before they hit the atmosphere (Like the Apollo missions did with their lunar landers), but as that would take immense amounts of fuel (close to that required for blast-off) it would make the orbiter's payload capacity virtually nil. Therefore it is easier for them to take the descent into the atmosphere with the best high-speed aerodynamics they can, using the friction of wind resistance to slough off the excess speed, trading it for heat that can be dealt with as they aerodynamically slow their descent and approach the ground at a safe speed.
Hacking means taking a (usually integrated circuit or code based) product that was designed for, built for, tested for, and meant for use A, and modifying it or its inputs or its outputs for use B. Cracking is bypassing a security system, by means of hacking, for the purpose of hacking or some other purpose.
By these definitions, the Kinect was hacked. If the internal Xbox algorithms had been found and used or if someone had augmented the Kinect to cheat in a game, then that would probably be bypassing security systems (I don't know the specific internals of the Xbox) and that would be cracking.
The Kinect wasn't hacked, either. What it does is create a RGB+D image, along with providing a 4-microphone array and a few other ancillary functions. This has not been changed, it's inputs (The images/sounds it captures) and it's outputs (Video, Depth Map, Audio, Accelerometer data) have not changed either. All that has happened is that someone has written a driver for the device by observing the data. If they had opened the unit and read and decompiled the firmware off the ASIC, or decompiled a firmware update, then sure, that's hacking. Observing the (unencrypted) data flow? Not hacking. Replaying the data back to the device? Not hacking.
Is it "Hacking" a printer to write a driver for it, without touching or modifying the printer itself in any way? How about a serial modem? How about any other device out there?
If they had, for example, opened up the device and used a JTAG header to get the data from it, or installed different firmware on it's ASIC to export the data in a different format, then I would be all for your definition of "Hacking". As it is, they've written a driver for an "Unknown device". The proof of this is that you can go and buy a Kinect raw from the store, plug it in fresh out of the box with no modifications whatsoever, and it works perfectly. And that a Kinect thus used can be transferred back to an XBox 360, where it will continue to work as if nothing has changed.
The tl;dr version: Circuit bending a Speak'n'spell? Hacking. Jailbreaking a phone? Hacking. Installing Linux on a consumer router? Hacking. Writing a device driver? Not hacking.
Unfortunately, not possible. Each Kinect projects a pattern of IR dots for the depth camera to pick up. If you have 2 Kinects looking at the same scene, the dot patterns will interfere, causing much mayhem and bad data. It may be possible to "Switch" between Kinects so only one has it's IR projector working at once, but thus far the technique to enable that has not been found (And may not exist - chances are the IR projector is simply wired directly into v+/v-)
As has been mentioned a few times earlier, there are several reasons.
You need a (very large) spinning area for the correct amount of inertial force to create a gravitic effect. On a station as small as the ISS, having a rotating section (Which would need to rotate pretty fast for the necessary G forces) would induce a very pronounced "Coriolis effect", which would have the astronauts within constantly throwing up and uncomfortable (at the very least).
The interface between the rotating and non-rotating sections would be extremely difficult to make and keep secure. Any mechanical failure would lead to rapid destruction of the entire station, as the several tonnes of rotating mass will maintain it's inertia and rip itself, and the station, apart against the seized bearings or other failed part.
Given that well over three quarters of the experimentation on the ISS is related to behavior of items in microgravity, to remove that microgravity would remove most of the incentive to study anything on-board.
Spinning an area of the ship like that would create a gyroscopic effect, which could severely destabilize the ISS' orbit without constant correction, which would use large amounts of fuel.
Having just one spinning section would also, by the friction in the interface parts, cause the stationary section to begin turning with the spinning section. Or, if the spinning section is spinning against the stationary section, a counter-rotation in the "stationary" section. The "Fix" to this would be to have two "Spinning" sections, which counter-rotate, but this would mean there would have to be massive upgrades to in-between sections to handle the torque, and of course, twice the potential problems.
Or, they could put the astronauts in small spandex suits and swap them out every few months to recover. It's not as if staying on the ISS is a permanent position (yet), after all.
What's wrong with measuring weight in stones? You convert ounces to pounds when they get large, why not use the next step up?
Thus, rather than being "100lbs soaking wet", you'd be a "7 stone 2 pound (Or '7 stone 2') weakling".
There's therefore 8 stones to a hundredweight, and 20 hundredweight to a ton. Rather than keeping it all in pounds and having 2240 pounds to a ton.
Though the need to remember all these "Magic numbers", which I was always taught is bad in programming, never sat right with me at all. Probably why I prefer metric.
Slashdot Mirror
Not even close. Wolfenstein 3D was "Ray Casted".
Your math... It hurts my head. It won't be at 30Hz, it'll be at 60Hz, just that the left eye's 60Hz are out of phase with the right eye's 60Hz. Cinema's framerate is at 29.97Hz, whether it's 2D or 3D, as they broadcast both images at the same time, BUT a cinema projector will fire the image 3 times (typically) per frame so the light doesn't (appear to) flicker.
Not any more, you're not.
They seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time semi-clothed in blue-lit rooms spreading "Decon Gel" on each other...
A "Classic" XBox was no more than a PC with a PIII Celeron 733 processor and a NVidia GeForce 3 GPU, running a modified Windows 2000 kernel. However, the 360 is a whole 'nother kettle of fish, being based on a triple-core (6 thread) PowerPC architecture, with ATi graphics and Hardware Hypervisor systems. The 360 truly was cutting edge at the time, more so even than the PS3.
The PS3 came out later, used a single core PowerPC base, but added 3 specialist FPUs (SPUs) (The "Cell Architecture" they so touted), with NVidia graphics (Around GeForce 6800 level) but gave the CPU->GPU link tiny bandwidth, and no bandwidth at all from GPU to system RAM, essentially gimping the system, as the SPUs have to be used to do any serious work, because offloading to the GPU is so painfully slow.
The Wii was a beefed-up Gamecube, which itself was a highly clocked single-core, single-thread PowerPC, single-thread ARM9 co-processor (With native Java capability) and ATi graphics.
And what of MS Kinect, which broke new ground in interaction? As for mobile OS, what bout Zune (The predecessor to Windows Phone 7, which is ground-breaking in it's own right)? And, of course, MS Office, which (love it or hate it) has become the de-facto standard in office software.
Glossy screens reflect ambient light back at the same angle at which it hits the screen, which means when there is light shining on them they're next to useless. However, when there isn't direct light, they allow for much deeper blacks and higher contrast.
Matte screens, on the other hand, scatter ambient light and reflect it back at all angles, thus diminishing the amount of light. So when there's a light shining on them, you can still see the image on-screen. But this also means that all ambient light is reflected back, no matter the direction of the light as it hits the screen, leading to much weaker blacks and less contrast.
While consumers love the non-reflective nature of matte screens, they prefer the higher contrast and darker black level of a glossy screen much more, and are typically willing to sacrifice occasional reflections for better picture quality.
I do note, however, that there is a kind of glass that's (almost) entirely non-reflective. Head down to your local picture framing place (Michaels, for certain, has it) and take a look. Quite why this glass/coating isn't in use on LCD screens right now, I have no idea.
However, there may be a new option on the horizon: Japanese scientists have manufactured a "screen" for projectors that only reflects light beamed on it from a certain angle. So if you have a projector on the floor pointing up, it'll reflect the projector's light out into the room, but not the light from the overhead fluorescent tubes.
In theory, you could partially clamp the artery into a U-shaped device to make a peristaltic generator (the opposite of a peristaltic pump), but that would impede blood flow and could have potentially dangerous consequences. It would also "wear" on the artery walls, which could cause leaks and the like. But it *is* another option.
So they're iterating the version number by 1 instead of 0.1 like Apple do with OSX. Big whup!
As it happens, yes. I have a Debian box running MythTV acting as DVR and NAS for my home network. And the same thing happens on linux - Try to run apt-get from a regular user (without sudo, or without sudo privileges) and you get an error message, as intended. My point still stands - Microsoft is not at fault for shortcomings in other people's products, or for security measures you yourself have implemented. Though I guess this is /., and Microsoft-bashing is pretty much par for the course here.
Ya see, I run my XP box as user. The Admin account is used only for Admin. Now, in my user mode, the Java and Adobe update icons show up in the tray and when I click on them, after a while of them doing their thing, I get the "You have to have administrative privileges to perform this update." Can I do a "Run as" on those updates? Nope. Gotta log-off and log back on as the admin. "Switch User"? Turned it off for performance reasons.
So, let me get this straight, you have enabled a high(er) security policy, and are now complaining when the higher security policy you have implemented gets in the way of something you want to do. Let's try looking at this another way:
It's the same kind of argument you're trying here. Some might say that the Java updater should change it's prompt if you don't have administrative rights (and/or change it's behaviour, so it doesn't bother downloading an update you can't install), but that is STILL not Microsoft fault. And, in fact, in Vista and 7, with UAC, have enabled you to do exactly as you intend, and given that XP's support is being sunset shortly, it would behoove you to update. And, for reference, Windows 7 with Aero disabled has comparable (or better) performance than Windows XP. Oh, and you CAN do a RunAs, you just need to do it from Windows - The "Update notifier" applications don't have that capability, but if you find where it downloaded the installer to, you can install it using RunAs from there.
Then in Admin mode, gotta re-download all of the updates again and then do the install.
Because it's a completely different user, and for security reasons one user's programs can't access another user's area
So, what if your customers, or least the people using those machines, don't have admin access?
You find someone (your IT manager, or the person who implemented the higher security policy) who does have admin access.
And no, you shouldn't have to be an admin to install a fucking document viewer.
Why the hell not? Software is software, no matter what it does. Your "Fucking document viewer" might have any number of other functions, including formatting the entire system if it so desires, not to mention adding files to the system (DLL/COM components/Default associations) and making all kinds of changes. The OS has no idea what a program is and what it does, just that it's something new and therefore needs approval. Or do you want an "Evil" bit to be set in programs. Just how well do you think that would work?
You complain about grain, yet look at the LotR Blu-Ray release - The "Noise reduction" was cranked up so high on that, every character and scene looks waxy and plasticy, and hair is smeared into a mess. And don't tell me it was the transfer, as there was a HD release on PPV Satellite that was MUCH better. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1237167
For simple half-duplex systems like gaming, more lag is not really noticeable.
The only practical difference between gaming VOIP and Skype is having to hit a push-to-talk button. Latency issues like people stepping on each other crop up in gaming VOIP in much the same way that they pop up in high-latency cell phone or Skype conversations.
Not really. You're not (typically) having a back-and-forth conversation while gaming, just announcing your information and clearing the channel. So there is little difference, conversationally speaking, if your burst is delayed by half a second or so. It's not a conversation, it's a series of announcements. With noticeable lag in a phone call, however, you'll find yourself (and the caller/callee) tripping over each other's sentence beginnings as you both play the "no, after you" as the lag causes you (and your train of thought) to be interrupted. Add to that the highly distracting nature of hearing your own words back after a half-second delay (try it, it's very confusing and distracting) that a lack of echo cancellation can cause, and you have a recipe for conversational disaster.
As mentioned, it's needed for VoIP systems. With a full-duplex system, more than 150ms of lag is audible and noticeably uncomfortable, breaking the flow of conversation (As the apparent lag is doubled in a "conversation", with the delay at each end adding cumulatively). For simple half-duplex systems like gaming, more lag is not really noticeable.
XBMC is no longer (Officially) on the XBox, it has had a Linux branch for a long time now, and now also has OSX and Windows versions. It's also the codebase that Boxee and Plex were forked from. I'd suggest you take a look at it, as it's truly an awesome media center.
Given that neither wife knew about the other, this is definitely not polygamy. Polygamy is defined as "a marriage which includes more than two partners", and as the "partners" were in separate, distinct, relationships, this does not count.
What we have here is a clear-cut case of Bigamy on the man's part. Nothing unusual about that, as there have been many cases over the years.
Then it's not Polygamy, it's Bigamy. Polygamy would be both wives living in the same house as a merged family. Bigamy is marrying someone without getting divorced from your previous spouse.
They did this in Series 7. It didn't really work too well. Part of why it works is the interplay between the audience and the actors. At the very least, the audience's laughter often ended up getting muted as there wasn't enough space left for it.
Which, ironically, has been called the "World-Wide Fund for Nature" for quite some time now: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/World_Wide_Fund_for_Nature
That's exactly right. Just like it's GM's fault that the cup of coffee I put in a cupholder in my car spilled on my pants when I stomped on the gas pedal (To use one of the oh-so-popular car analogies that I understand is mandatory on this site).
Is it Mozilla's fault that you can install an add-on? No. Is it Microsoft's fault that they didn't ask before installing the add-on in question? Yes! Is it Mozilla's fault that the add-on is not uninstallable from within Firefox? No (MS put the add-on in question in a folder that a regular user doesn't have write-access to without Admin privileges).
Just as video games makers are not liable for the actions of modders, Mozilla is not responsible for the actions of MS.
Isn't it ironic, that the feature that you are so hateful of in Firefox (The awesomebar) is a lesser version of Chrome's "Omnibox", that not only searches your history and bookmarks (Something that you espouse so much hate over) but the web as well. Yet you don't seem to mind Chrome's history/bookmark/web search bar near so much as you do FireFox's history/bookmark bar.
I was looking at the photos and was thinking about the wing size. "That's because they fly very fast because they re-enter the asmosphere really fast." But then I thought "why do they need to re-enter that fast? Surely they could use the atmosphere to slow themselves down, and enter at a much slower, cooler and more relaxed pace." Then I thought "well maybe the gravity has a fair amount of time to act on the craft before the atmosphere really begins, therefore giving plenty of opportunity for speed, well before a viable way to slow down"
Am I right? Does someone have a better explaination?
Here's a link with the basics: Nasa's Landing 101
When the shuttle de-orbits, it fires it's engines in the opposite direction to it's orbit's travel to slow it's forward velocity, which is several magnitudes faster than ground speed (17239.2MPH for the ISS). At this point, the shuttle's inertia stops counteracting the pull of gravity, and the shuttle starts "Falling", like swinging a bucket full of water around on a string, then slowing down the rotation.
Given that there is no atmosphere at this height, the shuttle can accelerate (at 9.81m/s^2) to speeds well in excess of "terminal velocity" as there is no drag to slow it. It typically hits the atmosphere (80 miles up) after 30 minutes of freefall, travelling at speeds of at least twice the speed of sound.
The orbiter then uses it's aerodynamic profile to control its descent, making a series of sharply banking turns to brake it's speed as it descends through the atmosphere, the friction of the air moving against the underside of the orbiter heating the heatproof ceramic tiles up to white hot.
So, here's the answer to you question is "Because gravity has been pulling them down for half an hour before they even hit the atmosphere". In theory, they could use retro thrusters to brake their descent before they hit the atmosphere (Like the Apollo missions did with their lunar landers), but as that would take immense amounts of fuel (close to that required for blast-off) it would make the orbiter's payload capacity virtually nil. Therefore it is easier for them to take the descent into the atmosphere with the best high-speed aerodynamics they can, using the friction of wind resistance to slough off the excess speed, trading it for heat that can be dealt with as they aerodynamically slow their descent and approach the ground at a safe speed.
Hacking means taking a (usually integrated circuit or code based) product that was designed for, built for, tested for, and meant for use A, and modifying it or its inputs or its outputs for use B. Cracking is bypassing a security system, by means of hacking, for the purpose of hacking or some other purpose.
By these definitions, the Kinect was hacked. If the internal Xbox algorithms had been found and used or if someone had augmented the Kinect to cheat in a game, then that would probably be bypassing security systems (I don't know the specific internals of the Xbox) and that would be cracking.
The Kinect wasn't hacked, either. What it does is create a RGB+D image, along with providing a 4-microphone array and a few other ancillary functions. This has not been changed, it's inputs (The images/sounds it captures) and it's outputs (Video, Depth Map, Audio, Accelerometer data) have not changed either. All that has happened is that someone has written a driver for the device by observing the data. If they had opened the unit and read and decompiled the firmware off the ASIC, or decompiled a firmware update, then sure, that's hacking. Observing the (unencrypted) data flow? Not hacking. Replaying the data back to the device? Not hacking.
Is it "Hacking" a printer to write a driver for it, without touching or modifying the printer itself in any way? How about a serial modem? How about any other device out there?
If they had, for example, opened up the device and used a JTAG header to get the data from it, or installed different firmware on it's ASIC to export the data in a different format, then I would be all for your definition of "Hacking". As it is, they've written a driver for an "Unknown device". The proof of this is that you can go and buy a Kinect raw from the store, plug it in fresh out of the box with no modifications whatsoever, and it works perfectly. And that a Kinect thus used can be transferred back to an XBox 360, where it will continue to work as if nothing has changed.
The tl;dr version: Circuit bending a Speak'n'spell? Hacking. Jailbreaking a phone? Hacking. Installing Linux on a consumer router? Hacking. Writing a device driver? Not hacking.
Unfortunately, not possible. Each Kinect projects a pattern of IR dots for the depth camera to pick up. If you have 2 Kinects looking at the same scene, the dot patterns will interfere, causing much mayhem and bad data. It may be possible to "Switch" between Kinects so only one has it's IR projector working at once, but thus far the technique to enable that has not been found (And may not exist - chances are the IR projector is simply wired directly into v+/v-)
As has been mentioned a few times earlier, there are several reasons.
Or, they could put the astronauts in small spandex suits and swap them out every few months to recover. It's not as if staying on the ISS is a permanent position (yet), after all.
What's wrong with measuring weight in stones? You convert ounces to pounds when they get large, why not use the next step up?
Thus, rather than being "100lbs soaking wet", you'd be a "7 stone 2 pound (Or '7 stone 2') weakling".
There's therefore 8 stones to a hundredweight, and 20 hundredweight to a ton. Rather than keeping it all in pounds and having 2240 pounds to a ton.
Though the need to remember all these "Magic numbers", which I was always taught is bad in programming, never sat right with me at all. Probably why I prefer metric.