You're totally right. People complain about the NASA budget, but they don't realize how insignificant it is compared to other things. We've spent (and continue to spend) far more on killing people (or the
threat of) in other countries.

NASA's budget is less than 0.4% of the federal budget. The bank bailout was more than has ever been spent on NASA.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

That's funny that you express that there's no reason to put people on Mars, but you quote Carl Sagan in your tagline.

I ran across this a few days ago.

http://io9.com/5932534/carl-sa...

Maybe you're there because we've recognized we have to carefully move small asteroids around to avert the possibility of one impacting the Earth with catastrophic consequences, and, while we're up in near-Earth space, it's only a hop, skip and a jump to Mars. Or, maybe we're on Mars because we recognize that if there are human communities on many worlds, the chances of us being rendered extinct by some catastrophe on one world is much less. Or maybe we're on Mars because of the magnificent science that can be done there - the gates of the wonder world are opening in our time. Maybe we're on Mars because we have to be, because there's a deep nomadic impulse built into us by the evolutionary process, we come after all, from hunter gatherers, and for 99.9% of our tenure on Earth we've been wanderers. And, the next place to wander to, is Mars. But whatever the reason you're on Mars is, I'm glad you're there. And I wish I was with you.

I have one thing to say. Hurry the fuck up.

When I was a kid, there was so much "by the year 2000". Space stations. Moon bases. Mars colonies. Mining asteroids. Deep space missions. Fleets of spacecraft. Hypersonic travel around the earth.

The only thing resembling a real space ship has been retired. 1960s tech is back as the best thing anyone can come up with, and it's totally owned by the Russians.

I am impressed by probes. They are cool toys. But they can't replace a person standing there, making decisions. Asking "what if..." We learn from being and doing. The rover we have on Mars now has a mostly busted wheel. A wheel that a human could have riveted a patch over in a few minutes. Or maybe some duct tape. You know, what the Apollo astronauts did, because they were there. Where humans can improvise, and grab a roll of tape.

If we hadn't given up on the space race, maybe we'd have most of those things. So we slacked for 20 years, lets get back on track.

Ah. Well, that's one of many. You'll also find "a person who chops wood", and the occasional uses of "a low quality writer" and "a taxi driver" Those last two are usually hacks, not hackers, but I've heard them referred to both ways.

Check your dictionary. Lots of things have two or more meanings.

Among readers here, the preferred IT meaning is roughly "an expert who uses his knowledge to do things requiring extraordinary skills." It's not "the kid who tricked you into giving him your Facebook password."

I'm curious, are you just a confused child, or a troll?

Well.. I count myself as one of the manual focus crowd, as well as anyone who uses anything but a point & shoot camera. As you said, it's the focus point gets you. The "bird in flight" photo you describe is a great example. Are you managing to keep the bird on the auto-focus point (or the majority of points for multipoint focus)? While you're tracking it? Including when you press the shutter?

I've seen a lot of photos like that, and they do a wonderful job of some very pretty well focused cloud photos, with a blurry spot in the foreground.

Most people will mangle the bird in flight on an auto camera because the shutter speed was too long and the photographer's tracking wasn't perfect (and the bird did something silly like flap it's wings). Most of the point and shoot I've used refocus when you actually shoot, so there's an extra second while it adjusts, while the bird disappears from your view. Most of those either focus on the clouds, some tree on the horizon, or tall grass in the foreground.

Manual focus, you can set the focus with the bird on the ground. Your effective ISO (for most decent DSLR) and shutter speed were already set. If you use manual focus cameras, you intuitively readjust while you're shooting, so a change in distance isn't a big deal.

This camera actually looks pretty cool, since it will compensate for that. "damned close" becomes "perfect +- a good bit". Did I want the birds wingtip or his eye to be focused? I can look at the options later. :)

I'm annoyed more than anything, when I only have a point & shoot (like at an amusement park, or other places that I don't want to carry gear), and the perfectly framed snapshot (heh) ends up focusing on the wrong thing, is hopelessly blurred, or just took too long to auto-adjust before actually taking the shot.

Like, if you're taking a photo of your kids on a roller coaster. You snap when they come into view. It adjusts and takes the photo either as a blur of the last car, or a perfectly focused and exposed shot of the tracks. "Ya kids, I saw you rolling down *those* tracks!".

I'll admit, sometimes I do get lazy, and leave everything on auto. When I want the good picture, I switch to manual.

In your "bird in flight" example, sure, if the camera is set to all auto, I'll track and shoot, and hope it comes out. If I see the bird getting ready to fly, I'll take the time to get the good shot.

Focus is a horrible problem to solve.

"real" photographers don't use auto-focus, because you're almost guaranteed that it will focus on the wrong thing. When I'm taking point-and-shoot pictures with pocket camera, I have to be careful, and hope that nothing distracts the camera. When I'm doing serious photography with my nicer cameras, it stays in manual mode.

Unfortunately, this camera looks cool, but it would be relegated to use like my nice DSLRs are. I bring them with me when I'm doing a shoot. It's silly to carry it with me everywhere. I did for quite a while, but eventually it became too much trouble, and I realized i was taking snapshots with my phone more than the DSLR. Eventually, it was more like thief bait, because it just sat in the back seat of my car waiting to be used.

I'd love to give this iiium (lllum? lilum? ilium?) a test drive. I'll let my friends know, if they happen to win the lottery, I'd like one to be delivered in my new Bugatti Veyron (I hope my newly rich friends will be generous).

An African or European Volkswagen Beetle?

Sorry, I should have been clearer. I just meant viruses or bacteria in general. Not anything passed from the urine.

Nah, that's too thin, even by Budweiser standards. Maybe for Bud DietXTRAlite(tm).

1,505,144.03 cubic cubits. 57.575 nominal volume "Olympic size" swimming pools. 4,750,000 bushels. 25,313,380 imperial pints. 0.00000000000020300 Pacific Oceans. I hope that clarifies things. :)

... and just like urine in the water, it would take a lot of poison to have any impact on the supply.

Viruses or bacteria that are chlorine resistant, on the other hand, could be a nasty problem.

Ok, lets play the "whose resume is longer and thicker". You start.

Oh... your AC. So yours is nil.

Ya, I pretty much wrote off the story when I saw "hydroponic lights". Unless someone has invented a lightbulb that spews water from it, they're just writing a news story with keywords to try to make a buck.

I've gone through this at a few places now. Besides resistance from the users ("we only know how to use Outlook!"), is migrating from Outlook to another solution ranges somewhere between unlikely to impossible. For someone like me, I only have 3 or 4 appointments scheduled, and the other few hundred are meetings I was invited to. :)

You can have the best plan, with the best business reasons, but when a senior executive tells the CEO that he can't switch, you'll frequently find that it will veto the migration.

Here's a real-world example. I was Director of IT for the company. The CEO told me specifically to get rid of Exchange, because the upgrade costs were too high. We were literally a couple weeks from switching. The Director of Sales went to the CEO and demanded that we keep Exchange, or he would walk.

Funny thing about the sales department. He didn't manage to sell anything, and he couldn't retain the customers. The accounting staff ended up doing all the customer retention. That guy cost us more money than he made. IT, on the other hand, brought costs down, and improved the customer experience.

The only thing that sales brought to us were headaches, and very pretty forward looking reports, that pretty much consisted of a graph showing our sales history, and a line going up at a 45 degree angle showing our future revenue. Every few months, he had to update the graph, so it showed our revenue losses, and had a new starting point for his upward line. I don't think he had a grasp of the concept of forecasting.