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NASA offers Mars24 "sunclock" app for Mac OS X
updated 02:00 am EST, Mon January 12, 2004
NASA Mars24 \"sunclock\"
NASA's that "purports to be derived from the application used in mission control. It's the only app I know that depends on the new Java3D frameworks, and may be the reason why they were released by Apple." [updated with Maestro info]
Meanwhile readers note that the Mars Rover uses a variation of PowerPC chips: "The computer in each Mars Exploration Rover runs with a 32-bit Rad 6000 microprocessor, a radiation-hardened version of the PowerPC chip used in some models of Macintosh computers, operating at a speed of 20 million instructions per second."
20 million/sec
01/12, 03:49am reply
That's 20MHz :)
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martian CPU hog ?
01/12, 05:16am reply
I tried Mars24 a few days ago and found (according to top) that it was using 60% of CPU.
Michael
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Nope
01/12, 08:15am reply
20 MIPS != 20 MHz
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CPU Hog!
01/12, 08:16am reply
You're not kidding! On my dual 2 GHz G5, Mars24 uses 30% of the CPUs! Not a program to leave on in the background!
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True...but
01/12, 09:54am reply
20MIPS != 20MHz. That's true. Nevertheless, the processor does run at 20MHz. Writing it out as 20 millions instructions per second is just NASA's way of talking to the layman.
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Mars24 is a Java app
01/12, 12:26pm reply
just goes to show you. *shrug*
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I like it...
01/12, 02:03pm reply
It would be cool if you could make it your desktop....but its still cool. ^.^
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yes
01/14, 02:37pm reply
yeah...20 MHZ, but thats what they are looking for probably, they don't want to waste clock cycles, and thus save battery life with this slow speed.
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