Category Archives: Tech

How Big Is That Planet In The Window?

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Been doing a little star gazing lately (no not on E!), and found this helpful guide to planets apparent size. The chart breaks down how much magnification it would take to make each planet appear the same size as the moon to the naked eye. These numbers are “best case” since they are when the planet is in opposition to Earth (closest in relative orbits).

Mercury 250x
Venus 75x
Mars 100x (ave)
Jupiter 40x
Saturn 100x
Uranus 500x
Neptune 750x
Pluto 400x (just to be visible)

RC Cars Military Style

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So what if you were a marine and needed to take a peek around a wall without giving that sniper a free shot?  How do you know if the next room is clear of IEDs?

What if you had brought a 1 lb dumbbell that could solve both problems?  Call it the smartbell, the recon scout is just over a pound… but the little beauties ability to transmit video back to a soldier safely up to 300 ft away makes it worth its weight in gold.  Even with the transmitter the kit tops out at 3 lbs, allowing these to be easily deployed with ground troops.

Give this thing an energy weapon and let the terrorist video games begin!

F-35 – Joint Strike Fighter

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The future of western fighter jets is almost here. The Joint Strike Fighter is a fighter family developed for the Air Force, Navy & Marines. The fact that 70-80% of the 3 variants is the same allows the tax payer a savings of 20-25% per plane. Which can get to be significant as it will eventually replace a large portion of the planes in service (4000 or so).

The Air Force and Navy models are very similar with the exception of the necessary changes for carrier landing. The Marine variant however has a sweet vertical take-off and landing ability. All 3 have the latest in stealth and electronic intel gathering technology. Not to mention the serious payload of weapons they can carry internally. Carrying the weapons internally reduces drag and therefore increases range; It also reduces the radar signature of the plane. Everything from bunker busters to cruise missiles to conventional missiles can be carried stealthily to targets at super sonic speeds (something previous stealth bombers lacked).

All in all, it looks pretty sweet and should be put into full service in the next 4-5 years.

Blu-ray or HD-DVD?

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Neither. (Yet)

Technologically, they are close enough that it doesn’t matter which one wins the "format war" but there are reasons not to jump on the bandwagon just yet.

1) There is a reasonable chance that one will win and the other will die so that should give a consumer pause.

2) There is also a possiblity that neither will win. Some "experts" think video on demand and internet downloaded movies will take over all DVD formats before the new ones become viable. They’re wrong. Just remember these experts have been talking about video on demand since the cable modem was invented – back then it was just a few years away… They are also wrong that customers don’t want to own things. For the same reason the "renting software" concept is going to fail, people don’t trust big companies to hold all their possessions for them. Because their is nothing to stop them from deciding "oh this month viewing your movies costs twice as much".

If a movie service could replace owning DVDs it already would have. Think about how many people live within walking distance of a Blockbuster? And how many of those people still own DVDs? Exactly. Video demand might kill Blockbuster, but it’s not going to off personal movie collections.
3) There is a STRONG possiblity that this won’t take meaningful hold on industry any time soon. I remember back in 1996 when people wondered if they should even buy a regular (non-HD) TV since it was about to be obsolete. Let’s see, 10 years later we have like 1/3 of TV being sold are HD or "HD ready" (I talking all TVs not just the big ones where HD sets have overtaken their 4:3 ratio brothren). Not to mention all HD programming out there. There aren’t nearly enough HD channels available yet and even fewer channels that actually broadcast fully in HD. So keep that in mind as you are considering the need for an HD-DVD player (or Blu-ray).

There actually have been higher picture quality DVDs around for while, but most people that are movie collectors haven’t even heard about them. What you didn’t go replace your entire collection with Ultra DVDs? You didn’t even need a different player. Hmm. Now the counter point to this is that progressive scan DVD players were adopted quite quickly. This was largely due to the fact that once you’ve dropped three large on a plasma, a few dimes on a new player is less than the sales tax.

4) Price. Price. Price. A HD-DVD player will set you back $400 and a Blu-ray player $600 – even more if you buy them at a local retailer. Now if you’re going the Blu-ray route I would suggest the PS3 since it also costs $600 and includes a gaming console with your Blu-ray disk player. ;) If you aren’t getting the PS3 I would recommend waiting until next year when players supporting both formats will be out and by next Christmas the prices should be a lot closer to the sweet spot of sub-$300.

So the long and short of it is, if you can help it, don’t pull the trigger on a new DVD setup for another year. By then there might enough hi-def movies out to actually justify it, though I don’t expect fully conversion to the new formats until Christmas 08.