I'm sorry, I wasn't clear. They are mounds. They *look* like depressions because of the direction of the light.

Boy, that skycrane really splattered itself across the landscape. Of course, after safely dropping Curiosity off, that was the skycrane's job — to quickly get far away. Well done.

I'm in the Midwest, but I lived most of my life on the East coast. So they may be a regional thing.

Huh. I have never seen any of those. The structures for storing road salt, that I thought you were talking about, look like this. (More sombrero than bowling pin.)

Wow. The processing artifacts in that color image are crazy. I've been in the image analyst position, I can hear the conversation now:

They look like depressions because the light is coming from the south. Our brains want light to come from 'up', so when it's not (because the sun often isn't in the north) we get optical illusions.

Those are usually salt dumps. Highway departments buy road salt in the summer when it's cheap, and store it in conical buildings designed to keep it dry and easily accessible.

Bonus #3: "Doctor Who on Holiday", a mash-up of the Doctor's theme with "Doctorin' the TARDIS", Green Day's "Holiday", and a few other gems. It's a track from the seminal mash-up album 'American Edit', created by Dean Grey.

To clarify — the target area size is on the Curiosity website. The 2.32 km distance I heard in the broadcast last night. I could be mistaken about what they were referring to, but it looks about right going by that map. I haven't seen an official accuracy statement.

The target area was 7 km x 10 km. They were 2.32 km off of the center point.

When the parachute is deployed the lander is going 405 meters per second (about Mach 2). When the parachute is separated from the skycrane the lander is going 80 meters per second). So it was going between 80-405 meters per second in that image. Each HiRISE scene takes about 20 seconds to collect. The HiRISE team…

Because it wasn't that apps data. The cloud allows one badly-behaving app to screw around with your entire life's data store, while giving the false impression that you're safely backed up because some professional is maintaining the cloud.

There were only two cameras able to get pictures of the landing.

I think the point is that if you're not using the cloud you will never have these problems.

In the movie, he was wearing two.

I'll check out Sketchbook — thank you!

If you'll forgive my butting in, that's easy. An editor shows off their work by showing off their artists and writers. :)

I'm not Joe, but I use a Cintiq for hours on end. Most of the heat comes from the back of the tablet. If you hold it in one hand while drawing with the other you might get uncomfortable, but if it's on a desk or canted at an angle (it does have a sturdy prop leg built-in) you never notice the warmth. My drawing…

What software do you use to draw? Vector or raster?

"Nor did the candles shed any light on whale widows who, as Hoare writes, would sit alone in their houses "smoking opium and employing plaster dildos known as ‘he's at homes.'" "