I'd be willing to bet that SpaceX will put anything into orbit that you ask them to, as long as you've got the paperwork in order. Satellites? Check. ISS cargo and crew? Check. Space tourists? Why not?

Think of it this way: It's hard to push a car, even though there is very little friction in its wheels. Zero gravity doesn't mean zero mass, it just means you don't have to counter gravity.

Is it too much to ask, though, that women feel it socially acceptable to ask men out? Gender equality goes both ways. I'm tired of finding out after it's too late that someone was actually into me, and I find it crass to ask out every woman I meet in the hopes of scoring a date.

Perhaps one day when we have more experience we will be willing to launch a vehicle directly into its target orbit - One hour from the launch pad to being in sight of the ISS should certainly be possible. However, in this circumstance, caution is the ruler of the day. This will be SpaceX's first ever attempt at an orbital rendezvous. There's nothing on board that is using consumables to survive, there's plenty of time to slow down and get things right while remotely piloting a never-before-flown spacecraft into an incredibly expensive space station with several people on board.

Modern DSP techniques can implement a brick wall filter with a phase response anywhere from linear phase (equal pre and post ringing) and minimum phase (100% post-ringing). You can even do maximum phase (100% pre-ringing) if you're crazy.

> even home recording is laughed at (technically) if you are not using 24/96

This is mostly home recordists one-upping each other. Actual professionals in the audio industry, especially people working on gigantic projects like movies where halving your DSP/CPU/HDD needs is a direct benefit of 48k over 96k, recognize that there are very very few actual audible benefits to 96k over 48k.

PCM audio was originally recorded on video tape, and you needed to be able to record it in both PAL and NTSC standards. So the fact that the number is highly composite is largely a consequence of having to be divisible by both 50 and 60. More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/44.1_kHz

Actually, modern delta-sigma A/D converters are capable of near-brickwall lowpass performance at nyquist.

Dumb, dumb, dumb. An ideal sample rate upconversion results in something that *is* identical to the source. Mathematically. It's like re-encoding a 64kbps MP3 to 192kbps. If anything you are going to *lose* quality due to inherent errors in the process.

What makes you think that whatever you're hearing has anything to do with that one specific variable (the sample rate) and nothing to do with any of the millions of other other variables (microphone selection and placement, preamps, mixers, A/D converters, processing, your D/A converter, amplifier and speaker system) inherent to the process of recorded music?

Typically, when a single person experiences reality in a way that the majority of people don't, we consider them delusional, yes.

If you want to not be considered delusional, pass a double-blind ABX test where A is a direct feed from an analog signal source and B is the same source being run through an A/D and D/A conversion at 44.1/16bit.

I know 99%ers who are anarchists and I know 99%ers who are communists... You're ignoring the over-arching theme of the movement, which is that the type of concentrated power we have in our political system, where folks with money can de-facto buy laws in their favor, is unjust. Just because folks disagree on the exact way in which it should be reformed doesn't mean that the idea that it should be reformed is invalid.

Given the fact that a significant portion of the human race can't even agree about providing a national infrastructure for healing sick people without placing them into massive personal debt, I have absolutely no faith that our civilization will ever be able to agree to the kind of coordinated worldwide effort that would be required to colonize space. The human race *will* go extinct, and personally, I'm not even sure that that's a such a bad thing.

You can't automate soldered-through component assembly. SMD can be automated, and is therefore vastly cheaper to do. That's the attraction.

American TV has been 60hz since it was invented, even when interlacing meant that the "complete" frame was only refreshed 30 times a second, each interlaced field is a distinct temporal sample, giving 60Hz motion. The new 720p standard (used by FOX and ABC networks over the air, plus FSN, ESPN, and many others over cable/satellite) is 60Hz progressive, and 1080 is 60hz interlaced.

Put away the pitchfork, he was talking about the mandatory military service in South Korea, he was not expressing the opinion that military service should be mandatory.