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Transportation

ISS Can Now Watch Sea Traffic From Space 89

gyrogeerloose writes "During its last mission, astronauts from the Space Shuttle Atlantis installed an Automatic Identification System antenna on the outside of the International Space Station that will allow astronauts aboard the ISS to monitor signals from the AIS transmitters mandated to be installed on most large ocean-going craft. Although these VHF signals can be monitored from the Earth's surface, their horizontal range is generally limited to about 75 km (46 mi), leaving large areas of the ocean unwatched. However, the signals easily reach the 400 km (250 mi) orbit of the ISS. The European Space Agency sees this experiment as a test platform for a future AIS-monitoring fleet of satellites that will eventually provide worldwide coverage of sea traffic."

Comment Re:Decentralized gaming IS the ancient remnant (Score 2, Interesting) 162

That is until Borderlands came out. This game is a wretched reminder of the 'bad old days'. I spent hours scouring forums and search engines, fiddling with my router, and trying to set it up so that I could host a game for my friend. No dice. Even setting my computer as the DMZ host didn't help. The only way myself and another friend were able to play was through a third friend who didn't have any issues.

For what it's worth, most people are playing Borderlands online now using GameRanger for exactly this reason, because it eliminates all these problems. Gearbox has unofficially recommended it as a solution as well.

Comment Translation: Positive publicity ONLY, please! (Score 3, Insightful) 80

If you are a potential fit for a particular test group, we'll send you an invitation email, asking you to run a detailed Performance Test on your network connection and your computer configuration.

So they can counter their critics by saying they had a positive public beta, yet with a carefully controlled group, to ensure pesky real-world situations don't damage their hype for gaining investors.

Comment Re:CLucene (Score 1) 62

CLucene is faster, and uses less memory, from what is basically a direct port. The README includes some benchmarks:

There are 250 HTML files under $JAVA_HOME/docs/api/java/util for about
6108kb of HTML text.
org.apache.lucene.demo.IndexFiles with java and gcj:
on mac os x 10.3.1 (panther) powerbook g4 1ghz 1gb:
        . running with java 1.4.1_01-99 : 20379 ms
        . running with gcj 3.3.2 -O2 : 17842 ms
        . running clucene 0.8.9's demo : 9930 ms

I recently did some more tests and came up with these rough tests:
663mb (797 files) of Guttenberg texts
on a Pentium 4 running Windows XP with 1 GB of RAM. Indexing max 100,000 fields
à Jlucene: 646453ms. peak mem usage ~72mb, avg ~14mb ram
à Clucene: 232141. peak mem usage ~60, avg ~4mb ram

Searching indexing using 10,000 single word queries
à Jlucene: ~60078ms and used ~13mb ram
à Clucene: ~48359ms and used ~4.2mb ram

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