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Comment Re:That's a good thing. (Score 0) 133

t. Diode laser powered weapons are now up to 10KW (big array of 10W or so diodes), and can shoot down small rockets and artillery shells in demos. Current thinking is that, at 50KW-100KW, they'll be militarily useful.

For reference, a standard round from an M4 rifle has about 1.5-1.65kW of kinetic energy upon leaving the barrel.

And the army already uses the M4 for shooting down small rockets and artillery shells?

(The M4 is not a rifle. It's a carbine. If you want a rifle,the M16 is readily available.)

Comment Re:Not sure what the "secrecy" fuss is (Score 2) 222

, at which point all the elements of the treaty will be public and heavily debated down to the last comma.

unless the treaty is subject to the fast track negotiating authority. Furthermore, it is is quite difficult to negotiate a treaty if if it is known that that ratifying bodies plan to make substantive changes after the conclusion of negotiations.

Better to debate before the treaty is signed-- and that cannot happen unless the negotiations are transparent.

Comment Re:This is what happens (Score 5, Funny) 101

Hacker: Who else is in this department?
Sir Humphrey: Well briefly, sir, I am the Permanent Under Secretary of State, known as the Permanent Secretary. Woolley here is your Principal Private Secretary. I too have a Principal Private Secretary and he is the Principal Private Secretary to the Permanent Secretary. Directly responsible to me are ten Deputy Secretaries, 87 Under Secretaries and 219 Assistant Secretaries. Directly responsible to the Principal Private Secretaries are plain Private Secretaries, and the Prime Minister will be appointing two Parliamentary Under-Secretaries and you will be appointing your own Parliamentary Private Secretary.
Hacker: Can they all type?
Sir Humphrey: None of us can type. Mrs Mackay types: she's the secretary.

Comment Re:Blur (Score 1) 215

Hmm-- crop factor for a 2/3 inch sensor is 3.6, so a 35mm lens on a 2/3 would roughly be equivalent to 125 mm-- short telephoto, good for headshots from say 6-7 feet away.
Using Depth of Field Master
an f/2/ 125mm lens, at 6 ft, has a depth of field of 0.08 ft. (Canon5D Mark III)
an f/2 35 mm, lens, at 6 ft has a depth of field of 0.28 ft (Fujifilm X10, though it's actually limited to 28mm @ f/2.8)

So if you want razor thin depth of field, best go with full frame or larger, assuming that the lenses are available-- 200 mm f2 lens can be had, but they are rather expensive.

Comment Re:Blur (Score 5, Interesting) 215

Depth of field is an artistic tool used by photographers to direct the viewer's gaze. It has a reputation for being a mark of a pro photographer because

The larger the camera's format, the shallower the depth of field for a given aperture. Depth of field control is extremely difficult on a cell phone camera.
More expensive pro lenses, such as the "Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II Lens " ($2396) lens have wider apertures than a (sort of, kind of) similar consumer lens such as the "Nikon 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED AF-S DX" ($159)

However. there are photographers, such as Ansel Adams who used "camera movements" to maximize depth of field, as well as photo journalists who consider deep depths of field to be an important tool for objectivity and for telling narratives.

A pro photographer uses depth of field as a compositional element. A game's graphics engine would have to be programmed to use depth of field to direct the player's gaze to fit the narrative.. A constant shallowness is likely to interfere with game play.

(Back in the old days, fog was used to obscure draw distance limitations. It sometimes looked decent, but in real life, piloting an aircraft through dense fog is harder than piloting through clear skies...)

Comment Re:Unisys Binary Translation (Score 1) 113

...and there's a good reason that Avie Tevanian went with "fat binaries" instead of TenDRA style ANDF or IR, and there's a good reason we (at Apple) extended it to Intel systems, rather than continuing on with Rosetta (though, to be fair, there isn't really a technical reason for the death of Classic or Rosetta, other than a broken build and archival process, really).

Why didn't they fix the broken build and archival process? Or is "fuck it, it's too old" deeply engrained in Apple's corporate culture?

Comment Re:Only 5000 bucks? (Score 2) 62

According to the wikipedia page-- which doesn't appear to free from errors, Casio's high speed exlims date from 2008 (Pro EX-F1) and later. Moreover, the resolution at high speeds is significantly reduced-- 336*96 @ 1200 fps for one model, 224*64 @ 1000 fps for another.

This camera also degrades video: but manages 866*720@1000, 640*480 @1849, and for the gimickry obsessed, 192*96 @ 17791.

Comment Re:pure rubbish (Score 1) 394

"normal draw is less than 140 watts, put it in standby and get 15 watts"

That's less than 500, but still an order of magnitude more than a set top box should need! IIRC power supply ratings on Apple TV and Roku box are both under 10 watts, real usage is probably 3-5. Add a WD green or similar hard drive (6-8W) and a couple of tuners and encoding ASICS and it still shouldn't break 20 watts at full load.

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