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Comment Re:Historical Record... (Score 4, Informative) 127

by Lunatrik (#32468706) Attached to: US Climate Satellite Capabilities In Jeopardy
"Resolution isn't important for science"

Spatial resolution is very important in my field (Land Use/Cover analysis), mostly due to Modifiable Areal Unit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modifiable_areal_unit_problem) / Ecological Fallacy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_fallacy) issues.

That being said, I do agree Spectral resolution is very important as well, and a difference I shouldn't have omitted in my original post. Even radiometric and temporal resolution matters when you get down to it.

Comment Historical Record... (Score 3, Informative) 127

by Lunatrik (#32468530) Attached to: US Climate Satellite Capabilities In Jeopardy
One thing that is frequently overlooked is the importance of comparable satellites through time for long-term environmental monitoring. This makes collaboration with other countries /sensors challenging, as to say Landsat ETM data's ~30m (for example) is comparable to SPOT data's ~10m (again, for example) is quite a stretch. Common tools for taking care of these differences are fraught with problems, and worse still many people don't care about or just ignore these problems during analysis....

Comment Re:Odd choice (Score 1) 256

by Lunatrik (#32341066) Attached to: Amazon Kindle Fails First College Test
I owned an iLiad for a while and, while it was GREAT for reading, its note-taking capabilities were not at all up to snuff for heavy useage. So, yes, while it CAN do it, I certainly wouldn't recommend it - the tech just isn't there. A few of the note-taking issues:

Slow to load sometimes
Had to specially format PDFs to give enough room to write in (a big deal if you read dozens of articles/week!)
Not all articles (in fact, not nearly enough) worked well with the special formatting
Pages are "smaller" than an actual notebook
Highlighting didn't really work

Now, again, the iLiad is a solid product, but I use composition books again now alongside a PRS-300 for leisure reading. I would argue NO solution is adequate yet for digital note taking.

Comment Re:The Sony (Score 3, Informative) 684

by Lunatrik (#31139246) Attached to: It's 2010; What's the Best E-Reader?
I've owned an Illiad and a PRS-300 now, and the PRS-300 wins hands-down for reading books. The Illiad was handy for taking notes, but really just wasn't up to snuff for heavy note-taking, and was generally slower than the PRS. The PRS also wins on price and battery life. And, yes, Calibre is a must with Sony's.
Earth

Submission + - Help Defuse Earth's Nuclear Suicide Vest (nuclearrisk.org) 1

Submitted by __aajbyc7391
__aajbyc7391 writes: While better known for his invention (with Diffie and Merkle) of public key cryptography, Stanford's Martin Hellman these days is focused on seeking ways to jolt society out of its passive acceptance of nuclear weapons. His most recent effort utilizes striking imagery: "If a man wearing a TNT vest were to walk into the room, everyone would head for the exits, even if they knew that the detonator was under the control of Obama or Medvedev," writes Hellman. "Why do we not seek an escape route just because Earth's explosive vest is not directly visible?" In order to build a critical mass of people who recognize the unacceptable risk posed by nuclear weapons, Hellman sees the Internet as essential for spreading the word. That's where Slashdot comes in: if even a small fraction of this community were to answer Hellman's call to action, we would stand a chance to defuse Earth's nuclear suicide vest!

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