The firewire boxes are a special order item in my market with a significant lead time (I guess to comply with the FCC). They don't even stock them at the local office, so 99.99999% of customers don't have them. --AND-- from what i've read, the firewire output only works for unencrypted channels in my market (so you can't record any of the premium digital cable channels).
it should have no effect on our relations. WE should apologize for egging Georgia on./ Those cowards staged a missile attack on a city in the middle of the fucking night. After 10+ years of peace. fuck Georgia, they got what they deserved.
EXACTLY! I've been shocked by the abysmal coverage we've been getting from the major news outlets in the US! I felt sorry for the Georgians until I did some of my own research.
This is a simple story FULL of douchebaggery on all sides...
Background: - Russia has bad bad bad history with Georgians
- The South Ossetians have wanted to split from Georgia for 10+ years now via several democratic votes, and identify themselves with the Russians (use the same currency, etc.).
- Russia is sympathetic to South Ossetia, and again, HATES GEORGIA.
- Russia has tactical incentive to stop Georgia from joining/bringing NATO into Russia's backyard. They are looking for an excuse to mess Georgia's shit up, and it's no secret.
- Russia has been flexing its war muscle for the past year or two after having run into some petro dollars.
- Georgia doesn't want to let South Ossetia break away, and there has been sporadic fighting in the region related to this fact.
- AGAIN, Russians hate hate hate the Georgians, and are kind of partial to the South Ossetians.
What happened:
- Georgia KNOWS that Russia is amassing troops on the border (big time), and is just looking for an excuse.
- Georgia KNOWS that Russian peacekeepers are in South Ossetia.
- Georgia is counting on the fact that its western ties will keep Russia out... maybe even hoping that we will intervene on their behalf if they start shit.
- Georgia sucker punches South Ossetia in the middle of the night with heavy weaponry (probably supplied by us or our allies). Kills 1500+ civilians, and about a dozen Russian Peacekeepers. (keep in mind that 1,500 civilians is a significant percentage of all South Ossetians, making this a borderline genocidal act)
- Georgia acts all surprised when Russia completely tank fucks them the next day. They act even more surprised when Russia doesn't stop at repelling their attack on South Ossetia and keeps messing their junk up.
- The USA airlifts Georgian troops from Iraq into the theater of combat to fight AGAINST the Russians (SERIOUSLY! WTF GUYS? Let's mind our own business. If you were a Russian, how would you feel about the USA right now?)
and the media reports "Russia invades Georgia"
Bullshit.
The worst part is that if Georgia had actually made it into NATO, we could have very well gotten ourselves tangled up in WWIII here.
Nope... you can make dielectric thin film filters with some pretty bitchin extinctions...
Can anyone think of a what to (ab)use the interlacing on a CCD? I'm thinking along the lines the way corduroy pants end up looking odd in digital pcs.
Nope... good thought, but there's no way.
Any transparent LCDs out there that could alter the image such as making a '0' into an '8'? Such a system could be disabled from inside the vehicle?
Yes... of course... But nothing that would even be remotely legal... and, if you are going to blatantly ignore the law, then why not just use a marker, or completely attempt to forge/steal your plate?
How about old-school? My jeep is stained w/ mud already, why not add some to the license plate? )Besides the laws prohibiting this naturally.
Yeah... that will obviously work, but AFAIK obscuring your plate is a violation that can get you pulled over.
You mean, aside from the fact that the included driver is rarely the latest, fully-featured driver from nvidia, and doesn't include the nvidia control panel utility... Ever try to configure dual monitors with your driver?
or, how about the fact that it doesn't really support older branches of nvidia video cards all that well?
or, how about the fact that this magical "tickbox" you speak of doesn't exist in every distro. (I assume you are referring to ubuntu, which is NOT synonymous with "linux".) Even in ubuntu, this mystical checkbox of yours is a relatively new thing, grasshopper.
If you are going to go the easy route, you may as well promote envy instead of some tickbox that is pretty much only good for getting novices to the eyecandy quicker.
(answer to your actual question at the very end, because you MUST read the first part)
BUY AN XBOX. SERIOUSLY! I picked one up for $50 a while back... most entertaining $50 I've spent! There are a TON of great coop and 2 player games for xbox. Much more than for PS2 or gamecube IMHO. It's also ridiculously easy to mod via software alone, especially for a CS major. Games are cheap (often $10), and that ng thing that we are sworn not to talk about has dozens of xbox games posted a week.
Some of my favorite COOP games were Halo 1, Halo 2 (better), The Warriors, Razes hell (it's impossible, so cheat a little and it becomes a REALLY great game), Justice League Heroes, Destroy all Humans 2, both Time Splitters (second one is better), the Conflict Denied series (last one is best)... and there are DOZENS more! (and hundreds of 2+ player non-coop games)
If you are willing to skirt the law a bit, the Xbox Big Ass Emulator Disc DVD's 1,2,3a,3b have all of the MAME, Atari, Genesis, Nintendo, Snes, Neo Geo, Gamebody, etc. etc. games that were ever released.
As for native (non-emulator) PC, 2 players, one screen, two joysticks... Let's see.. Marvel Ultimate Alliance was really good (and looks way better than the console version). Rise of Apocalypse was mediocre. The teenage mutant ninja turtles games were ok (the last one was actually quite a bit of fun). There's a recent 2 player spiderman game that was pretty monotonous... That's really about it as far as I can remember.
The thing is that Java is extraordinarily similar to C++. If you are a competent C++ programmer, you can learn Java in an afternoon (or less). If you are a competent Java programmer, it will take you a little bit longer to learn C++. At least a few days by my estimation.
In fact, when I was an undergrad, our CS department transitioned from C++ to Java. I did about 30 minutes of reading on the internet, and was up and running in java. There was a document called something like java for C++ programmers, which had a list of about 20 language differences that you needed to be aware of. The rest was just poking around in the java SDK documentation to figure out the standard classes that ship with java.
Despite this relatively easy transition between java/c++, I am still a HUGE advocate of teaching C++ (and perhaps even a separate class specifically on C). It's hands down the most versatile language out there for most things, and a HUGE stepping stone in easily learning any other practical language. In fact, I see no real advantage in teaching Java over C++.
I do a lot of development in python, bash, php, and matlab, but still see C++ code on a monthly basis. In my field it's particularly useful for interfacing with hardware. My colleagues without a similar C++ background (but who are very competent programmers in other languages) just throw up their hands at the first sign of C++.
You assume (incorrectly) that the only way to be compromised is through an explicit action, like double clicking on an e-mail attachment called pictures.exe
Well PC graphics hardware is usually about a generation or two ahead by the time a console actually hits the market. However, even if you don't take that into account, cards that are roughly equivalent to what was top of the line when the latest generation of consoles was released now only cost ~$129(8800gs) - $190(8800gt512)
You DON'T NEED the current bling $500 card to play the latest games! Most computer games (that aren't just a lame console port) still look way better than their console counterparts, even with the detail settings cranked way down.
I was hopeful in this regard about 5 years ago - but after all this time, nobody has managed to produce a TFT display that displays accurate colors while ALSO providing reaction times that are OK for gaming & video... I had the same feeling about the early panels, but the Dell 3007WFP-HC is simply amazing... gets closer to all of your mentioned benchmarks (color, contrast, response times, viewing angles, etc.) than anything I've used before. I have also been very satisfied with the 2001FP, especially given the price. I only have 1 CRT left at this point, and it's a secondary monitor.
FAIL for failing to understand how DNS works... Your statement is only true if you are running a caching server. No reason why bind can't do its own lookup. You lose out on the cache benefits of a larger DNS server, but don't have to rely on anything other than the roots.
Unfortunately, in my experience, astronomers know next to nothing about optics, optical engineering, and lens design... It would be the equivalent of consulting a chiropractor about how to fix your house's plumbing problems...
Adaptive optics are not that new. (BTW, they are also used in LASIK, I think.)
As far as optics goes, they are relatively brand spankin new (especially the MEMS based solutions). To my knowledge no space-qualified AO systems exist. It's not out of the realm of possibility that the military has developed this tech in the past decade or so, but I really really doubt it. There are several REALLY tough technical problems with integrating these into a space based system... but much more importantly, they offer very little benefit for the effort in space-based surveillance imaging. Aberrations far from the primary really just don't bother image quality that much. Unlike a ground telescope, AO would offer virtually no benefit for a well designed surveillance satellite. The countless billions of dollars in R&D necessary to get a space-based AO system working would be much better spent on things like the mechanical engineering, mirror manufacturing, metrology, etc. etc. You'd get WAY more image quality for the dollar. Anyone advising the military on this topic would have certainly known this.
On the other hand, I'd be willing to bet a nice chunk of money that military sats have used active optics with deployable primaries (think JWST-like) for many years.
The two areas where AO has made a HUGE difference is in retinal imaging, and ground-based astronomy. AFAIK, the control used in current LASIK is a simple tip-tilt mirror. I guess one could technically call it AO, but I would probably refer to it as a realtime LOS correction. It's MUCH easier in every aspect than full AO.
The objective is to estimate wavefront distortion along the viewing path caused by "atmosphere." These distortions are compensated for by a deformable mirror (and usually a tip-tilt mirror).
Yup, the idea is to measure the wavefront distortion along something close to the viewing path, and then apply that shape to a deformable mirror.
But I do not believe that you can do better than what is predicted assuming diffraction limited optics... I will have to pull out my Tyson book to check.
Don't bother, it's not true.. You can't beat the diffraction limit with adaptive optics alone.
There are algorithms that use blind deconvolution to "back out" a less blurry image, but (I think) it is a statistical method requiring several frames and an estimation of the point spread function of the system.
Deconvolution is a very tricky problem. Blind deconvolution is even trickier, and works very poorly in my (limited) experience. (btw. you can start most blind deconvolution algorithms with a random array of numbers as an estimate for the PSF, and they'll still get somewhere... this is why it's called blind deconvolution. Ideally, no prior estimate for the PSF or object is required)
Anyway, an integral part of any current AO system is a wavefront sensor (usually a shack-hartmann or pyramid, primarily depending on the nationality of your chief sponsors). If you know the wavefront, you don't have to estimate the PSF. Besides, if you have an AO system, you definitely want to use the AO to correct the wavefront before taking your image. Even if you knew the PSF perfectly, you would never be able to deconvolve the image after the fact as well as you could correct it with AO. This fundamentally has to do with the information lost by passing the image through a system with a suppressed MTF (especially when you allow for noise).
An adaptive optics system effectively moves the PSF closer to the diffraction limited size, but not smaller.
Yup, which is why you can't beat the diffraction limit with AO. If you had a perfect wavefront sensor, wavefront reconstructor, control theory, perfect adaptive mirror with infinite degrees of freedom/bandwidth, etc. etc. you would be able to perfectly correct the system, thereby making it diffraction limited... never any better.
Agree on everything except the battery. My x40 gets about 6 hours on the extended battery. I paid $400 for the laptop on e-bay a year ago, and it really outspecs the $400 4GB eee. Faster cpu, bluetooth, larger screen, 10x the storage, double the ram, and is built like a tank. Best of all, as one of the smallest ultraportables, it's only a teeny bit larger/heavier than the eee.
They're basing these ideas on a new telescope on the fact that other worlds hosting life would be hosting life that requires the same needs as our own to survive. I think these smart scientists are forgetting a very simple fact. We're creating these telescopes to find ALIEN life. They are called aliens because they are alien!!! And as anyone knows (or at least can imagine) when your looking for nothing but quartz, that diamond in the ruff doesn't shine so bright.... Nobody is forgetting that fact. It's just that we are playing the odds. So far, 100% of life we know has the same basic set of requirements (with some very good fundamental bio/chem/phys reasons for those requirements). 0% of life we know are your hypothetical rock creatures... It only makes sense to look for the former.
Furthermore, we are only focusing on what is possible. Since you cannot define a set of criteria measurable with our current technology for locating a "rock creature" or some other exotic intelligence, there is no way to even start a search for them!
Dark current is the signal detected from the ambient blackbody radiation around the sensor. This includes the radiation off the detector itself. It is so ridiculously small compared to the scales we are talking about here that it is not even worth mentioning.
Statements such as these are often made by paranoid conspiracy nuts and dutifully repeated by people that have no absolutely no clue about how science works. There are some things money just can't buy today... A quantum computer entails decades worth of research in physics, chemistry, materials research, etc. etc. It's not really a task possible by a secret group of people working separately from the main academic community.
If there is anything that you should have learned from reading all of those articles about quantum computing, is that it's friggin HARD. Any quantum device complicated enough to even be remotely useful in breaking encryption is many decades away. This is because it will take centuries of man hours and armies of graduate students in multiple fields to crack this nut. There still need to be tens of thousands of PhD's written on related topics before you can even dream of starting construction.
In order to have a secret working quantum computer, the US government would have had to have been actively working on the technology since long before traditional silicon computing took hold... hell, long before the idea of quantum computing for decryption even tickled our imaginations. They would have had to independently train a clandestine army of engineers and physicists that far outclassed our brightest minds in academia. These people would have had to replicate ALL of our modern advances decades earlier (which, btw. is not apparent from any other military technology). The resources required for a project like this are simply staggaring, and I estimate that the financial costs would have EASILY been in the trillions of dollars.
We certainly do spend enormous amounts of capital on military R&D in the USA, and there are many important technologies where the military is years ahead of commercial efforts. However from numerous projects that have bee declassified over the years, this advantage usually only involves the effective weaponization / improvement of currently existing/proven technologies. The military is only ahead in the little details of practical implementations, and not the fundamental scientific principles. In short, claiming the existence of some secret quantum computer is akin to claiming the US military had Joint Strike Fighters before the Wright brothers even made their first flight.
O... the government can break it. It's just that the DOJ doesn't have access to the computers required to do so. Nor does it want to spend the money on buying a multi-billion dollar computer if it doesn't need to. ? What leads you to this conclusion? There's absolutely NOTHING to indicate that strong encryption can be defeated by ANYONE on the planet at this moment.
Yeah. (YOU) > (PEOPLE WORKING ON THIS)... Read more about it. You pre-compensate the beam with an estimate of the atmospheric turbulence it will travel through. It's a REALLY tough problem, but has been demonstrated in practice.
Can someone in the know reconcile this statement: What is the difference between the TMT and the HET with regards to "adaptive optics" and being able to negate the effects of atmospheric turbulence in real time (which the HET can do)? It is all a question of scale. Correcting a 30m telescope is harder than correcting for a 9m telescope (larger pupil = more atmospheric aberration over it = higher resolution requirements on your wavefront sensor, and more degrees of freedom on your deformable mirrors). There is also the question of the level of correction. Neither telescope can correct all turbulence from all conjugates and angles perfectly in realtime. The scale of the residual is what ultimately determines the performance of your system. (In fact, there are a few effects dealing with the angular separation of the laser guide star and the edge of your telescope pupil that make correction for larger telescopes intrinsically more challenging). In short, the adaptive optics required to correct a 30meter telescope are quite a bit "harder" than those required for a 10m telescope, and the technologies being developed for the TMT are really pushing the envelope of current AO technology.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's stop the namecalling.
The firewire boxes are a special order item in my market with a significant lead time (I guess to comply with the FCC). They don't even stock them at the local office, so 99.99999% of customers don't have them. --AND-- from what i've read, the firewire output only works for unencrypted channels in my market (so you can't record any of the premium digital cable channels).
it should have no effect on our relations. WE should apologize for egging Georgia on./ Those cowards staged a missile attack on a city in the middle of the fucking night. After 10+ years of peace. fuck Georgia, they got what they deserved.
EXACTLY! I've been shocked by the abysmal coverage we've been getting from the major news outlets in the US! I felt sorry for the Georgians until I did some of my own research.
This is a simple story FULL of douchebaggery on all sides...
Background:
- Russia has bad bad bad history with Georgians
- The South Ossetians have wanted to split from Georgia for 10+ years now via several democratic votes, and identify themselves with the Russians (use the same currency, etc.).
- Russia is sympathetic to South Ossetia, and again, HATES GEORGIA.
- Russia has tactical incentive to stop Georgia from joining/bringing NATO into Russia's backyard. They are looking for an excuse to mess Georgia's shit up, and it's no secret.
- Russia has been flexing its war muscle for the past year or two after having run into some petro dollars.
- Georgia doesn't want to let South Ossetia break away, and there has been sporadic fighting in the region related to this fact.
- AGAIN, Russians hate hate hate the Georgians, and are kind of partial to the South Ossetians.
What happened:
- Georgia KNOWS that Russia is amassing troops on the border (big time), and is just looking for an excuse.
- Georgia KNOWS that Russian peacekeepers are in South Ossetia.
- Georgia is counting on the fact that its western ties will keep Russia out... maybe even hoping that we will intervene on their behalf if they start shit.
- Georgia sucker punches South Ossetia in the middle of the night with heavy weaponry (probably supplied by us or our allies). Kills 1500+ civilians, and about a dozen Russian Peacekeepers. (keep in mind that 1,500 civilians is a significant percentage of all South Ossetians, making this a borderline genocidal act)
- Georgia acts all surprised when Russia completely tank fucks them the next day. They act even more surprised when Russia doesn't stop at repelling their attack on South Ossetia and keeps messing their junk up.
- The USA airlifts Georgian troops from Iraq into the theater of combat to fight AGAINST the Russians (SERIOUSLY! WTF GUYS? Let's mind our own business. If you were a Russian, how would you feel about the USA right now?)
and the media reports "Russia invades Georgia"
Bullshit.
The worst part is that if Georgia had actually made it into NATO, we could have very well gotten ourselves tangled up in WWIII here.
p.S. if you need it in pictures :
here
VERY good point. /me scratches head.
Stronger LEDs?
Nope... you can make dielectric thin film filters with some pretty bitchin extinctions...
Can anyone think of a what to (ab)use the interlacing on a CCD? I'm thinking along the lines the way corduroy pants end up looking odd in digital pcs.
Nope... good thought, but there's no way.
Any transparent LCDs out there that could alter the image such as making a '0' into an '8'? Such a system could be disabled from inside the vehicle?
Yes... of course... But nothing that would even be remotely legal... and, if you are going to blatantly ignore the law, then why not just use a marker, or completely attempt to forge/steal your plate?
How about old-school? My jeep is stained w/ mud already, why not add some to the license plate? )Besides the laws prohibiting this naturally.
Yeah... that will obviously work, but AFAIK obscuring your plate is a violation that can get you pulled over.
Do NOT pass go... It's also easy to put a better IR filter on a camera...
You mean, aside from the fact that the included driver is rarely the latest, fully-featured driver from nvidia, and doesn't include the nvidia control panel utility... Ever try to configure dual monitors with your driver? or, how about the fact that it doesn't really support older branches of nvidia video cards all that well? or, how about the fact that this magical "tickbox" you speak of doesn't exist in every distro. (I assume you are referring to ubuntu, which is NOT synonymous with "linux".) Even in ubuntu, this mystical checkbox of yours is a relatively new thing, grasshopper. If you are going to go the easy route, you may as well promote envy instead of some tickbox that is pretty much only good for getting novices to the eyecandy quicker.
Front end for a myth box... most laptops have one or more video outputs, are quiet, small, and energy efficient!
(answer to your actual question at the very end, because you MUST read the first part)
BUY AN XBOX. SERIOUSLY! I picked one up for $50 a while back... most entertaining $50 I've spent! There are a TON of great coop and 2 player games for xbox. Much more than for PS2 or gamecube IMHO. It's also ridiculously easy to mod via software alone, especially for a CS major. Games are cheap (often $10), and that ng thing that we are sworn not to talk about has dozens of xbox games posted a week.
Some of my favorite COOP games were Halo 1, Halo 2 (better), The Warriors, Razes hell (it's impossible, so cheat a little and it becomes a REALLY great game), Justice League Heroes, Destroy all Humans 2, both Time Splitters (second one is better), the Conflict Denied series (last one is best)... and there are DOZENS more! (and hundreds of 2+ player non-coop games)
If you are willing to skirt the law a bit, the Xbox Big Ass Emulator Disc DVD's 1,2,3a,3b have all of the MAME, Atari, Genesis, Nintendo, Snes, Neo Geo, Gamebody, etc. etc. games that were ever released.
As for native (non-emulator) PC, 2 players, one screen, two joysticks... Let's see.. Marvel Ultimate Alliance was really good (and looks way better than the console version). Rise of Apocalypse was mediocre. The teenage mutant ninja turtles games were ok (the last one was actually quite a bit of fun). There's a recent 2 player spiderman game that was pretty monotonous... That's really about it as far as I can remember.
The thing is that Java is extraordinarily similar to C++. If you are a competent C++ programmer, you can learn Java in an afternoon (or less). If you are a competent Java programmer, it will take you a little bit longer to learn C++. At least a few days by my estimation.
In fact, when I was an undergrad, our CS department transitioned from C++ to Java. I did about 30 minutes of reading on the internet, and was up and running in java. There was a document called something like java for C++ programmers, which had a list of about 20 language differences that you needed to be aware of. The rest was just poking around in the java SDK documentation to figure out the standard classes that ship with java.
Despite this relatively easy transition between java/c++, I am still a HUGE advocate of teaching C++ (and perhaps even a separate class specifically on C). It's hands down the most versatile language out there for most things, and a HUGE stepping stone in easily learning any other practical language. In fact, I see no real advantage in teaching Java over C++.
I do a lot of development in python, bash, php, and matlab, but still see C++ code on a monthly basis. In my field it's particularly useful for interfacing with hardware. My colleagues without a similar C++ background (but who are very competent programmers in other languages) just throw up their hands at the first sign of C++.
You assume (incorrectly) that the only way to be compromised is through an explicit action, like double clicking on an e-mail attachment called pictures.exe
It's from all of those hormones in our drinking water!
Well PC graphics hardware is usually about a generation or two ahead by the time a console actually hits the market. However, even if you don't take that into account, cards that are roughly equivalent to what was top of the line when the latest generation of consoles was released now only cost ~$129(8800gs) - $190(8800gt512)
You DON'T NEED the current bling $500 card to play the latest games! Most computer games (that aren't just a lame console port) still look way better than their console counterparts, even with the detail settings cranked way down.
FAIL for failing to understand how DNS works... Your statement is only true if you are running a caching server. No reason why bind can't do its own lookup. You lose out on the cache benefits of a larger DNS server, but don't have to rely on anything other than the roots.
NYC actually has very strict gun laws... much stricter gun laws than the rest of the state of NY...
Unfortunately, in my experience, astronomers know next to nothing about optics, optical engineering, and lens design... It would be the equivalent of consulting a chiropractor about how to fix your house's plumbing problems...
Adaptive optics are not that new. (BTW, they are also used in LASIK, I think.)
As far as optics goes, they are relatively brand spankin new (especially the MEMS based solutions). To my knowledge no space-qualified AO systems exist. It's not out of the realm of possibility that the military has developed this tech in the past decade or so, but I really really doubt it. There are several REALLY tough technical problems with integrating these into a space based system... but much more importantly, they offer very little benefit for the effort in space-based surveillance imaging. Aberrations far from the primary really just don't bother image quality that much. Unlike a ground telescope, AO would offer virtually no benefit for a well designed surveillance satellite. The countless billions of dollars in R&D necessary to get a space-based AO system working would be much better spent on things like the mechanical engineering, mirror manufacturing, metrology, etc. etc. You'd get WAY more image quality for the dollar. Anyone advising the military on this topic would have certainly known this.
On the other hand, I'd be willing to bet a nice chunk of money that military sats have used active optics with deployable primaries (think JWST-like) for many years.
The two areas where AO has made a HUGE difference is in retinal imaging, and ground-based astronomy. AFAIK, the control used in current LASIK is a simple tip-tilt mirror. I guess one could technically call it AO, but I would probably refer to it as a realtime LOS correction. It's MUCH easier in every aspect than full AO.
The objective is to estimate wavefront distortion along the viewing path caused by "atmosphere." These distortions are compensated for by a deformable mirror (and usually a tip-tilt mirror).
Yup, the idea is to measure the wavefront distortion along something close to the viewing path, and then apply that shape to a deformable mirror.
But I do not believe that you can do better than what is predicted assuming diffraction limited optics... I will have to pull out my Tyson book to check.
Don't bother, it's not true.. You can't beat the diffraction limit with adaptive optics alone.
There are algorithms that use blind deconvolution to "back out" a less blurry image, but (I think) it is a statistical method requiring several frames and an estimation of the point spread function of the system.
Deconvolution is a very tricky problem. Blind deconvolution is even trickier, and works very poorly in my (limited) experience. (btw. you can start most blind deconvolution algorithms with a random array of numbers as an estimate for the PSF, and they'll still get somewhere... this is why it's called blind deconvolution. Ideally, no prior estimate for the PSF or object is required)
Anyway, an integral part of any current AO system is a wavefront sensor (usually a shack-hartmann or pyramid, primarily depending on the nationality of your chief sponsors). If you know the wavefront, you don't have to estimate the PSF. Besides, if you have an AO system, you definitely want to use the AO to correct the wavefront before taking your image. Even if you knew the PSF perfectly, you would never be able to deconvolve the image after the fact as well as you could correct it with AO. This fundamentally has to do with the information lost by passing the image through a system with a suppressed MTF (especially when you allow for noise).
An adaptive optics system effectively moves the PSF closer to the diffraction limited size, but not smaller.
Yup, which is why you can't beat the diffraction limit with AO. If you had a perfect wavefront sensor, wavefront reconstructor, control theory, perfect adaptive mirror with infinite degrees of freedom/bandwidth, etc. etc. you would be able to perfectly correct the system, thereby making it diffraction limited... never any better.
If AO has strong resea
..and what fuels this wonderful "rate" of technology, if not people investing millions into multi-year (i.e. DIFFICULT) projects.
If we stopped investing millions into projects like these, your cell phone in 2014 would look exactly the same as it does today.
Agree on everything except the battery. My x40 gets about 6 hours on the extended battery. I paid $400 for the laptop on e-bay a year ago, and it really outspecs the $400 4GB eee. Faster cpu, bluetooth, larger screen, 10x the storage, double the ram, and is built like a tank. Best of all, as one of the smallest ultraportables, it's only a teeny bit larger/heavier than the eee.
Stopped reading after this sentence...
"My advice to these people? Save up for just a little longer and buy something for at least $450 that runs Windows Vista..."
Furthermore, we are only focusing on what is possible. Since you cannot define a set of criteria measurable with our current technology for locating a "rock creature" or some other exotic intelligence, there is no way to even start a search for them!
Dark current is the signal detected from the ambient blackbody radiation around the sensor. This includes the radiation off the detector itself. It is so ridiculously small compared to the scales we are talking about here that it is not even worth mentioning.
Statements such as these are often made by paranoid conspiracy nuts and dutifully repeated by people that have no absolutely no clue about how science works. There are some things money just can't buy today... A quantum computer entails decades worth of research in physics, chemistry, materials research, etc. etc. It's not really a task possible by a secret group of people working separately from the main academic community.
If there is anything that you should have learned from reading all of those articles about quantum computing, is that it's friggin HARD. Any quantum device complicated enough to even be remotely useful in breaking encryption is many decades away. This is because it will take centuries of man hours and armies of graduate students in multiple fields to crack this nut. There still need to be tens of thousands of PhD's written on related topics before you can even dream of starting construction.
In order to have a secret working quantum computer, the US government would have had to have been actively working on the technology since long before traditional silicon computing took hold... hell, long before the idea of quantum computing for decryption even tickled our imaginations. They would have had to independently train a clandestine army of engineers and physicists that far outclassed our brightest minds in academia. These people would have had to replicate ALL of our modern advances decades earlier (which, btw. is not apparent from any other military technology). The resources required for a project like this are simply staggaring, and I estimate that the financial costs would have EASILY been in the trillions of dollars.
We certainly do spend enormous amounts of capital on military R&D in the USA, and there are many important technologies where the military is years ahead of commercial efforts. However from numerous projects that have bee declassified over the years, this advantage usually only involves the effective weaponization / improvement of currently existing/proven technologies. The military is only ahead in the little details of practical implementations, and not the fundamental scientific principles. In short, claiming the existence of some secret quantum computer is akin to claiming the US military had Joint Strike Fighters before the Wright brothers even made their first flight.
Yeah. (YOU) > (PEOPLE WORKING ON THIS)... Read more about it. You pre-compensate the beam with an estimate of the atmospheric turbulence it will travel through. It's a REALLY tough problem, but has been demonstrated in practice.
What is the difference between the TMT and the HET with regards to "adaptive optics" and being able to negate the effects of atmospheric turbulence in real time (which the HET can do)? It is all a question of scale. Correcting a 30m telescope is harder than correcting for a 9m telescope (larger pupil = more atmospheric aberration over it = higher resolution requirements on your wavefront sensor, and more degrees of freedom on your deformable mirrors). There is also the question of the level of correction. Neither telescope can correct all turbulence from all conjugates and angles perfectly in realtime. The scale of the residual is what ultimately determines the performance of your system. (In fact, there are a few effects dealing with the angular separation of the laser guide star and the edge of your telescope pupil that make correction for larger telescopes intrinsically more challenging). In short, the adaptive optics required to correct a 30meter telescope are quite a bit "harder" than those required for a 10m telescope, and the technologies being developed for the TMT are really pushing the envelope of current AO technology.