Apart from the fuel issues mentioned by others, there's also another problem with your idea -- by the time you get to the targeted spot, Mars will be somewhere else.
...WebAdapt2me also provides text-to-speach synthesis. Show me a web browser that does all this today. Adaptive software and hardware are quite a bit more complicated that many Slashdot readers realize.
Opera has built-in text-to-speech, and as I described a few messages back, zooms the entire page (text and graphics, and even flash). It does offer a few different text modes, but probably not the variety you described.
In Firefox you can press the Ctrl+'+' key to zoom in and Ctrl+'-' key to zoom out.
I was ecstatic when I read this, but then I went to try it -- and it's only effective on text. Opera does it for everything, including pictures and even flash. I run 1280 on a 17" LCD, but when I want to show stuff to other people, or when I stumble across a small image/flash, I love blowing it up to a reasonable size.
Just last night I wanted to show my wife a picture of a Merkur XR4TI, so she'd understand why it was funny that Prinicpal Skinner on The Simpsons drives one...
Is that marketingspeak? It seems interesting that something one browser does can be called "missing" from all the rest. I would reserve the "missing" tag for features that are found in the majority of browsers but not in some.
No, I didn't mean that it was missing for everybody; just for me. Like grep is missing from Windows -- when I'm at a windows command prompt, sometimes I forget and try to grep (usually followed by me downloading a windows-compiled grep binary;).
Is it just me, or does this sound like functionality that has been available in Opera for some time now?
Keystroke navigation has been present in Mozilla for a long time.
Automatic narration, I'm guessing, is not particularly in high demand -- those who need it in a browser need it everywhere, and already have it from a third-party program.
Magnification...well, whenever I'm not in Opera, I wonder if something is wrong with the keyboard as I repeatedly stab the numpad '+' key, until I remember that it's missing from everything but Opera.
I don't know the numbers, but there may be something to this claim -- although probably not for much longer.
See, any average schmoe will download a few tracks, but it's still too much work to get a whole album. However, copying a CD now only takes a few clicks and a couple minutes, and when done, that average schmoe will play it -- and then maybe say "I'll buy it tomorrow..." "I'll buy it next week..." "Oh, I'm so tired of it, why bother to buy it?".
However, with increasing bandwidth, it becomes easier to download a whole album in a single.rar file.
The solution? Like others say, reasonable pricing, IMO. If for $2 I could download a legal.rar of an album (without DRM), I'd buy constantly. As it stands, I just pay monthly for Sirius satellite radio and don't bother buying albums anymore.
emissions from 2-stroke engines (lawnmowers mostly) actually contribute more to air pollution problems than passenger cars.
Actually, most lawnmowers I see are 4 stroke. The most common 2 stroke engines, I think, are handheld yard equipment -- string trimmers, chainsaws, hedge trimmers, etc.
However, the 4 stroke engines found on mowers and other outdoor power equipment are a major offender. As you say they "haven't even gone after the low-hanging fruit" for emissions.
All that said...my 15hp tractor eats my whole yard in about a half hour, allowing me to do it more often, so the grass clippings are smaller and easier for the lawn to be fertilized by, so I don't have to dump chemicals on it for it to look good, and the chemicals run off and pollute the pretty lake I see out my front windows. Well, in theory -- I just got the tractor, and I mostly wouldn't bother with the chemicals for a nice lawn...just too damned lazy.
My advice: if anything comes of this nanotech effort, NASA should sell the technology to private industry as fast as possible. Get out of the operational side and start developing the next big thing.
From TFA:
a way to use nanotubes to cool the microprocessors in personal computers, a major challenge as CPUs get more and more powerful. This cooling technology has been licensed to a Santa Clara, California, start-up called Nanoconduction, and Intel has even expressed interest, Meyyappan says.
On another note...also from TFA:
A chemical sensor they developed using nanotubes is scheduled to fly a demonstration mission into space aboard a Navy rocket next year. This tiny sensor can detect as little as a few parts per billion of specific chemicals--like toxic gases
If a gas has a few parts per billion concentration, wouldn't it make sense to NOT use the smallest possible thing you can make for detection, so that there's a better chance that those few parts of gas might contact the sensor? Or would the plan be to have a huge array of these nanosensors, effectively making one big, but more acute, sensor? IANA Gas Sensor Engineer...
Okay, yet another piece from TFA:
For example, one recent NIAC grant funded a feasibility study of nanoscale manufacturing--in other words, using vast numbers of microscopic molecular machines to produce any desired object by assembling it atom by atom!
I seem to remember an article a few months back about a machine that did something like this, of which there is already a working prototype.
Anyway, I too am glad to see NASA doing such research.
The cradles usually have their own connectors, so you're not pulling the thing out and unplugging two loose cables that may not reach.
However, I hot-swap internal drives with an IDE to USB adapter (effectively making them external), and if I had SATA drives, I'd probably hot-swap those too. Why accept gratuitous reboots, when I simply want temporary access to different data?
...Microsoft, and they're taking a lot more of a proactive approach to security than the goddamn open source community. Windows has only racked up around 750 exploits in the National Vunerability Database (covered recently on/.), whereas Linux has a shocking 1000+ exploits...
Your logic is questionable. The higher number of exploits registered for Linux shows that a lot more work goes into finding them for Linux than for Windows.
Qualified employee != good employee. Being qualified is simply one piece of what it takes to be a good employee. Not spending all day on slashdot is another piece.
I'll grant you that "fresh out of university" does leave you somewhat more replacable than somebody who's been at it for a few years and has had time to diverge from his peers -- in his qualifications, experience, personality, work ethic, lifestyle (as it affects work), etc.
Is there really a huge power imbalance? I'm not so sure that there always is. While the employee has his own livelihood at stake, said employee (if any good) can find work elsewhere. OTOH, if the employee was any good, that employee is actually quite difficult to replace, and depending on what that employee's job was, he could do some damage on the way out.
As somebody who helps run a growing small business, I can tell you that procuring useful employees (and surviving the interim without them) is the most difficult part. As somebody who once worked in a largish company, I know that for that sort of company, it's almost as difficult, and hugely expensive.
Slashdot Mirror
Apart from the fuel issues mentioned by others, there's also another problem with your idea -- by the time you get to the targeted spot, Mars will be somewhere else.
Just last night I wanted to show my wife a picture of a Merkur XR4TI, so she'd understand why it was funny that Prinicpal Skinner on The Simpsons drives one...
Keystroke navigation has been present in Mozilla for a long time.
Automatic narration, I'm guessing, is not particularly in high demand -- those who need it in a browser need it everywhere, and already have it from a third-party program.
Magnification...well, whenever I'm not in Opera, I wonder if something is wrong with the keyboard as I repeatedly stab the numpad '+' key, until I remember that it's missing from everything but Opera.
I don't know the numbers, but there may be something to this claim -- although probably not for much longer.
.rar file.
.rar of an album (without DRM), I'd buy constantly. As it stands, I just pay monthly for Sirius satellite radio and don't bother buying albums anymore.
See, any average schmoe will download a few tracks, but it's still too much work to get a whole album. However, copying a CD now only takes a few clicks and a couple minutes, and when done, that average schmoe will play it -- and then maybe say "I'll buy it tomorrow..." "I'll buy it next week..." "Oh, I'm so tired of it, why bother to buy it?".
However, with increasing bandwidth, it becomes easier to download a whole album in a single
The solution? Like others say, reasonable pricing, IMO. If for $2 I could download a legal
Don't blame me. I recently got a die-hard IE/OE user to switch to FF/TB. He was tired of paying me my standard rates to come and clean spyware...
However, the 4 stroke engines found on mowers and other outdoor power equipment are a major offender. As you say they "haven't even gone after the low-hanging fruit" for emissions.
All that said...my 15hp tractor eats my whole yard in about a half hour, allowing me to do it more often, so the grass clippings are smaller and easier for the lawn to be fertilized by, so I don't have to dump chemicals on it for it to look good, and the chemicals run off and pollute the pretty lake I see out my front windows. Well, in theory -- I just got the tractor, and I mostly wouldn't bother with the chemicals for a nice lawn...just too damned lazy.
Okay, yet another piece from TFA: I seem to remember an article a few months back about a machine that did something like this, of which there is already a working prototype.
Anyway, I too am glad to see NASA doing such research.
The cradles usually have their own connectors, so you're not pulling the thing out and unplugging two loose cables that may not reach.
However, I hot-swap internal drives with an IDE to USB adapter (effectively making them external), and if I had SATA drives, I'd probably hot-swap those too. Why accept gratuitous reboots, when I simply want temporary access to different data?
Sorry, this patent includes roman numerals and words spelled out in common languages.
Great...thanks a lot. Now I've got the new Clutch song, "10001110101" stuck in my head...
I wonder how much bandwidth you could get out of an ansible...somebody better invent one so we can find out.
Qualified employee != good employee. Being qualified is simply one piece of what it takes to be a good employee. Not spending all day on slashdot is another piece.
I'll grant you that "fresh out of university" does leave you somewhat more replacable than somebody who's been at it for a few years and has had time to diverge from his peers -- in his qualifications, experience, personality, work ethic, lifestyle (as it affects work), etc.
Is there really a huge power imbalance? I'm not so sure that there always is. While the employee has his own livelihood at stake, said employee (if any good) can find work elsewhere. OTOH, if the employee was any good, that employee is actually quite difficult to replace, and depending on what that employee's job was, he could do some damage on the way out.
As somebody who helps run a growing small business, I can tell you that procuring useful employees (and surviving the interim without them) is the most difficult part. As somebody who once worked in a largish company, I know that for that sort of company, it's almost as difficult, and hugely expensive.
I'd rather see criminals personally tracked, then non-criminals vehicles. That might have something to do with my status as a non-criminal, though.
Wouldn't it be more useful to put the thing on the actual criminal? And sensors at the perimeters of all areas where they might go?
...resulting in 100% consolidation?
Heheh...not.
Why is it bad for Earth if we stay? You don't think Earth will survive any crap we throw at it?
I mean, it might become uninhabitable for us, but I doubt we will destroy all terrestrial life forevermore.