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Hackers Forced Announcement of 10th Planet Find
JCY2K writes "According to The Inquirer, hackers gained access to the secure server where the data about the new planet was being held and threatened to reveal it. Evidently the discoverers have been withholding this information from the public since 2003 while they waited for full analysis."
That information wants to be set free.
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while they waited for full analysis
So, waiting for a full analysis is a bad thing now?
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
crazy alien theorists were disproved about the government hiding information about alien life forms, through them hiding information about the tenth planet
This sig is o Unfunny o Funny
Reportedly, it was green and smiling. No word yet from the Real Hitchiker's Guide, which was revealed only hours ago.
Hack the planet?
Long signatures suck.
So all of you smarty pants UFO deniers what do you think of that!!! Just wait until I hack into the USAF computers and force them reveal the truth likewise.
When will corporations ever learn? Obscuring the knowledge of the 10th planet will not keep us safe from their eventual attempt to take over Earth.
The summary misspells "confirmed observations" as "withholding this information".
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
I guess their "secure website" wasn't up to snuff... BTW, what the heck is a boffin?
--alop
Wasn't this the planet X we heard about?
Seriously, they were sitting on the data for a reason. And as this data doesn't affect anybody on a day to day basis, I can see why they'd want to hold off on the announcement until they could give real numbers.
This is of course assuming the story isn't bullshit. I seem to remember one scientist saying he had a bet with another that he'd discover a 10th planet by the end of last year.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I traced through the friendly articles, and I'm not sure where the Sunday Independent got the info that a hacker "forced" them to announce their findings. Brown isn't quoted as saying anything about a hacker, and they didn't source that info.
Of course, what's even stupider is how both the Independent and, to an even stupider degree, the Inquirer make it sound all ominous and elitist that the scientists didn't release the info as soon as they found it. Like, maybe they didn't want to risk the media flaming them for prematurely announcing a tenth planet if they had to recant part of their data?
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Damn those Hackers. Who are they and how can they be stopped?
This past year they were not responsible for things such as millions of private records being given out by various credit card companies, banking institutions and what not. They were also not responsible for vast majority of copyright infringment, ie theft, ie grand larceny, ie murder in the first.
I am sick and tired of Hackers.
ooh... Hersch just wrote to tell me about the new Cialis prices... gotta go...
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
What else is sceince & government keeping from us, untill they have finished studying it.
paul reinheimer
Instead they had to announce the discovery of a planet they don't even know the diameter of.
Right now it is looking to be bigger than Pluto.
And for my contribution to the inevitable 'Asteroid', 'Minor Planet', 'Planet' argument, I'm tending to the viewpoint that any body in space that is spherical under its own gravity is a planet. Even if it has been flung from its parent solar system into deep space.
Yes, that means the Moon is a Planet.
Planets include Gas Giants, Ice Bodies, Rocky Planets, and so on.
Actually "xena" is just the "working title" of the planet/planetoid. An official name has yet to be announced.
There are 'planetoids' that are bigger than pluto that are considered simple KBO even though some consider them to be planets.
I think Pluto is only considered a planet because it was grandfathered into the current (confusing and not entirely adhered to) rules on what is and isn't a planet.
Odds are, this will just be classified as another KBO.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
The domains of Pure Science has been hacked. Is nothing sacred anymore?
That's nothing! According to the Weekly World News, Batboy has been secretly in communication with the denizens of Planet X since early 2000!
The find should further stuff up modern astrologers - they still have not got the hang of Uranus.
Well, I hadn't noticed their probes yet, I didn't think someone would go the distance to get to know me inside outI'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Shouldn't that be '... hackers gained access to the unsecured server ...'?
In other news, Microsoft Windows users are now covered under the Americans with Disabilties Act...
Shouldn't that be the not-so-secure server?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
not Patrick Fitzgerald.
To a nail, every person with a hammer looks like a problem.
"wh3R r w3 901n'? Pl4N37 10! WH3n r W3 901n'? r34L 500N!"
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
The people involved in this should be banned from using public equipment due to their clear lack of ethics!
No, they should be commended for not rushing out their findings until they had been properly analyzed and validated. The public doesn't track or care about retracted or falsified scientific studies, so to come out with unchecked data would end up confusing most people if the conclusion made based on that data was proven to be incorrect. And it's not like this was some big discovery that was actually going to change the average person's life... they aren't sitting on the cure for cancer or something.
That hacker who went in look for UFOs doesn't seem so crazy now does he? If they're hiding whole planets surely a few space ships/bases/fleets would be simple.
I like muppets.
Can you blame them for holding back on announcing the discovery? After all, it would be very embarassing to the astronomer community to retract such an important discovery, like the chemists did with Ununoctium.
It'll have a moon called Hercules.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Solar System, the KBOs 'Buffy', 'Angel', 'Willow' and 'Spike' are soon going to clash.
I quite like Xena as a name though. Better than Xanthros or Xerces or Xybots.
This new planet will be discovered to be the home of Cold Fusion.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
it is "temporarily named" 2003 UB313
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
Meanwhile, Renee O'Connor is desparately hoping that it has a moon...
"It felt almost as good as stealing cars from grandma." -- Margaret Thatcher, probably.
And if the scientists made the announcement before properly analyzing the data, and it turned out to be a false positive, the backlash from the bad press could very well cause them to lose their funding.
There's a big difference between "withholding information" and "scientific rigor"
From a BBC article: The object was first observed on 21 October 2003, but the team did not see it move in the sky until looking at the same area 15 months later on 8 January 2005.
Congratulations and Thank You to the Astronomers/Researchers involved with this discovery. Thank You for discovering something and then waiting for a full peer review and analysis before presenting your data to the public. WAAAAY too much today that process does not occur, because of bad scientists, and gives a bad name to good science and scientists.
Fuck you to the hackers who feel that something like this needed to be public without review. If it was 'revealed' and then found to be false, nobody would have remembered some script kiddie illegally, immorally, and unethically published the data before it was reviewed. Everyone would have jumped on the Astronomers/Researchers and science in general like a bunch of ignorant cattle (like they always do) and the true facts would have been buried in the mess.
teach me not to preview my comments :)
l anet.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/29/science/29cnd-p
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
You lack a basic understanding of how the scientific process works. Confirmation of an observation, analysis of the resulting data, peer reviewing of those data, and replication of the original observation ALL ensure the accuracy of the scientific find.
Ban them!?! The scientists were clearly planning on releasing their discovery but were forced to do it prematurely. They were abiding by scientific principles.
The Inquirer article is actually just rehashing what the South African Sunday Independant reported. That publication seems to have more credibility (or at least didn't make any Uranus jokes... was that a joke?)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There are 'planetoids' that are bigger than pluto that are considered simple KBO even though some consider them to be planets.
Really, name one.
You cannot, as this is the first KBO discovered that is larger than Pluto.
SteveM
I think they should send every bit of data they collect each day to all of the world's major newspapers, myself. And shame on the publishers if they don't publish it all without knowing what, if anything, it all might mean.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
This way, when the researchers get a chance to get more data and then decide that it's actually a comet, asteroid, or an object in the Kuiper belt and make an announcement to such an effect, the public will condemn them for releasing their initial findings too soon!
Yay!
...
Oh wait, that sucks.
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
A missile target by IP address, why don't you go and mess with the air force...
Look behind you...
now there is a reliable news site. NOT.
I have been involved in events which The Inquirer covered and they not only got the facts wrong, they mangled the facts into out-and-out-lie to push their own warped idea of how things are or should be.
Not only are you completely wrong, but you are a fucking idiot too.
Science needs rigorous review, no matter what. You don't have a right to a fucking thing until it is properly reviewed.
People exactly like you are what leads to the bad public image of science by ignorant non-scientists.
The link to the original South African Sunday Independant article.
What in the world is a "boffin"?
Science isn't a magic process by which great discoveries spontaneously occur. It is a tedious process of observation, theory, and trial & error attempts to validate either. Reporting an unconfimed observation to the public, especially one as prone to media hype as this one, could spell academic suicide for the scientists involved should it turn out to be false.
Support the peaceful, freedom loving natives of Planet Freedonia! WORKERS OF THE TENTH WORLD UNITE! you have nothing to lose but your (err icy incasement?) Must be pretty cold up there.....
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
It's on this page. But, yeah, it wasn't really hacking, it was just using Google well.
Like, maybe they didn't want to risk the media flaming them for prematurely announcing a tenth planet if they had to recant part of their data?
Also, the computers they use for analysis didn't see it because it moves so slowly. They found it on reanalysis a year and a half after they imaged it. They weren't actually sitting on the discovery for two years - just since January.
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
The Niburu of Planet X are coming back to enslave us all! This explains the dead NASA astronaut found in the desert. It was a cover-up all along. Be prepared for the return of the Niburu. Every man-woman and child will have to unite to fight against the mighty power of the Niburu!
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
By 'impressive enough' do you perhaps mean ... 'enough evidence to be sure that the planet is real'?
... which for you seems to mean 'releasing scientific data before it has been properly verified'.
... I have a great Cold Fusion device I'd like to sell you.
Perhaps by releasing the data sooner, we are meeting your requirement of 'full disclosure'
Keeping in line with the way you feel the world should think
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
That was a National Lampoon cover, not a Mad cover.
--- question = 0xFF;
Seriously, I've seen less biased articles from the RIAA's anti-piracy campaigns. The reason Brown held onto the information was so he could get all the data before making an announcement. He wanted to be able to say, "New object is 2.73 times as large as Pluto," not "New object is probably bigger than Pluto." Is the existence of another Kupier Belt object really going to affect anyone? It's not like this was cancer research.
This claim has been extensively discussed in the Minor Planet Mailing List, in particular in this thread, where the "hacker" tells the whole story.
Bah! My horoscope was beaten to a pulp when NASA shot Deep Impact into Tempel 1. now they are withholding info that will be of immense importance in my future. I'll sue their asses!
- Henrik
- when the Shadows descend -
We all know it had to do with the fact that the scientists neglected to update their routers...
So it orbits around the sun yelling war cries and throwing a chakram at everything that moves?
The whisper in your ghost.
The keys are close together.
Generally in about an hour it wants out. Is that what you ment?
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
"This method of using intrusions to force 'full disclosure' by scientists is interesting, and begs why this information can be kept out of the public eye, where it would benefit the scientific community at large, and is instead held back to bolster the reputations of those who make the initial discovery."
If you release an announcement before you're finished with your research or due diligence, you expose yourself and your institution to controversy.
When you're making a claim as ostentatious as a discovery of a 10th planet, you might not want to put your name on it before you are satisfied that you're ready to stake your career on the paper.
Also, you're going to expose yourself to other people usurping your work.
And what if it's a different type of research? What if you're in the process of doing patent searches or negotiating something of that nature?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Hey, Xena was hot.
And don't forget the actress playing Xena (Lucy Lawless) has the power of flight.
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It is called FULL SCIENTIFIC REVIEW.
WTF? You sound like a completely ignorant and arrogant baffoon. You need to learn respect kid.
You don't the right to a damn thing before it is fully scientifically reviewed. And you do not have a Ph.D, so your life and career does not ride on completely accurate and fully reviewed scientific discovery and achievement. Therefore, you should only deal with the things you are qualified to speak about and deal with. Your arrogance is unfounded.
Hey, Firefly has plenty of names to offer up ;)
;) I'd love a planet called, say, Yosafbridge, but that's just me. ;)
Ariel, Bellerophon, Londinium, Osiris, Greenleaf, Sunflower, Sihnon, Boros, Beaumonde, Whimsy, Cairo, Trident, Newhall, Hudzen, Lister, Islington, Rune-Ring, Nevada, Gecko, Leon, Persephone, Silverstri, Hera, Wolf, Waterloo, Whitechapel, Athens, Higgens' Moon, Three Hills, Ita, Whitefall, Georgia, Joe's Rock, Anniversary, Ezra, Beylix, Ember, Banyon, Paquin, St. Albans, Avatar, Penal Moon (Dyton Colony), Santo, Gower Moon, Taipei, Knightsbridge, Shadow, Honeymoon, Boxer, Xin Shanghai, Silverhold Colonies, Dakota, Jaingyin, New Hall, Bernadette, Archer's Moon, New Melbourne, New Canaan, Cervantes, Triumph, Hunan, Seven Sisters Belt, Verbena, Walden, Oberon
And that's just planets and moons
"It felt almost as good as stealing cars from grandma." -- Margaret Thatcher, probably.
Republican.
Astronomers and other scientists are usually allow each other to analyze data for a year before publication. Then you are supposed to share with anyone who asks. You risk not getting future grants if you peeve off too many of your fellow scientists.
Usually the problem is the other way around- people rush to publication. With so many eyes looking out there, a comet or asteroid may be seen by many others before long. Theres even a place to send a "telegram" to give you priority and naming rights. Plus it gets confirmation. There may be phenomena that is transient enough that it is important for others to know about it before it changes.
Lets say it's this planet mentioned before. Now, I want to remind sedna.
mercury
venus
earth
mars
jupiter
saturn
uranus
neptune
pluto
sedna
planetX
or sedna is not a planet (just like pluto )
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
For a scientist, the respect of your peers is one of the most valuable assests that you have. It almost sounds like gta2 but no one will want to work with you or take your work seriously if they think your work is a joke.
Could the hackers find something better to do with their time? A lot of money and time goes into making systems secure and obviously in this case there needs to be more invested. The problem is that it is time and money scientist do not have.
Cheers, A.
At least that's better than "Rupert".
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Is there really a problem with not releasing immediately? The linked article is very biased to suggest there is, but it seems like quite a naive attitude to me.
They wanted to know more information first, and it's not exactly a piece of information critical to safety or people's future. It was always their risk that their discovery might have been overshadowed by someone else discovering it, but it was their risk to take.
It's common practice for researchers to hold off presenting something for many reasons, including wanting to have something extra to report or that they want to make sure that they understand what they have. It's also common for astronomers to make announcements that are prematurely mis-interpreted by the media... and right now there a thousands of news reports around the world speculating about the planet/asteroid argument all over again.
Please, that is so 2002.
Ask the Whitehouse and No. 10 Downing Street.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
No, they should be commended for not rushing out their findings until they had been properly analyzed and validated.
I think an announcement of the possibility of a tenth planet, larger than Pluto, would be quite newsworthy, myself. And although I am no astronomer, it occurs to me that the data could have been shared and therefore processed within two years. The discoverers still get primary credit, right? Why sit on this for so long?
So, this is a "just" or noble thing to do? Interesting.
What about if a scientist had instead "discovered" that there was an asteriod hurtling torward our pale blue dot? What if that scientist, much like this one, hadn't yet confirmed that the asteriod would hit us, but it was going to be close. And what if there was absolutely nothing we could do about it either way?
That same hacker discovers this information and leaks it to the media. Knowing the media they would scare the crap out of basically everybody with a TV, radio, or newspaper. It might even cause widespread panic.
Now lets suppose that during that panic lots of people are hurt, and some die.
Was it still a justified action on the part of the hacker?
I think, regardless of the outcome of the asteriod flight, it was not. If the asteriod hit us and millions died, the few that were killed died before they would have otherwise. If the asteriod missed us, they likely died far before they would have otherwise.
Because this hacker decided he knew better than the scientist and took matters into his own hands, people died.
An arbitary example, perhaps... but apparently so is the opinion of many of those people on this forum saying that what the hacker did was "good".
Of course they had the right. I don't know how it works for terrestrial based projects, but in space missions, a team wins a contract with NASA to fly an experiment on a spacecraft. The gist of the contract is: We will put your experiment on our spacecraft. We will give you money to operate in and maintain it. In return, you will release all data to the public after a certain period of time (typically 6 months). I imagine the terms are similar in essence, if not in detail, for research done from Earth.
This gives scientists good reasons (funding, prestige, and first crack at the data) to come up with interesting instrument proposals and in return, we (the human race) eventually get all the data.
Regardless of this contract, it always behooves a scientist to cautiously verify their observations and conclusions. Look up Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann as a hard example of what happens when scientists jump the gun on making discoveries public.
So what did the hackers blackmail him with, pictures of Uranus? I find it hard to believe they were 'forced' to release anything, despite the claims...
Computers are useless...They can only give you answers. -Pablo Picasso
Don't put your secrets on the web. Even if it's encrypted/secure/firewalled. If it's not connected to the net, it's not at as much risk.
...scientists had coined the name `Persephone' for the newly discovered planet, but the hackers forced them to change the name to `Rupert'.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Function: noun
:)
Etymology: origin unknown
chiefly British : a scientific expert; especially : one involved in technological research
So it's a prettier word for "geek"
From the NASA press release:
Brown, Trujillo and Rabinowitz first photographed the new planet with the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope on October 31, 2003. However, the object was so far away that its motion was not detected until they reanalyzed the data in January of this year. In the last seven months, the scientists have been studying the planet to better estimate its size and its motions.
They first suspected they had a planet in January of this year. In October 2003, all they had was a star-like object in a photographic image. If they'd announced that as a possible planet, we'd be getting about 100,000 such announcements per day from astronomers.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Oh, the panic that would have ensued had it been prematurely announced that there was a 10th planet...
Hey, wait, wasn't this the umpteenth tenth planet that's been discovered? We keep hearing about a new one every few years. So far, order has been kept in the streets.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Dear 10th Planet,
After carefully reviewing your application to join the United Federation of Planets, we have determined that you are inelligible to join. We based this decision on the fact that we would have to re-write one-too many episodes. While we could do this with a time jaunt, we realize our viewers are sick and tired of time skipping ever since it was abused on Enterprise.
Sincerely Yours,
Admiral J.T.K.
P.S. Go to PriceLine where you can name your own price!
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
'stupider' ain't proper usage.
Speak for yourself, AC.
If it really were hackers and they got their information in this way, then I very much doubt they revealed it for the good of the public. I suspect they would do it to inflate their egos and prestige, which isn't something to be respected for.
Interesting. Dictionary.com does return a result for "stupider" and doesn't even say it's nonstandard usage. Not checking your sources, then, looks stupider than the grandparent's use of the word to begin with. While you go over there to look it up, how about using this link to get there.
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
The astronomer who made the discovery has more details on this website. It wasn't discovered 2 years ago, just around Christmas of 2004. And it sounds like he and his team had already released some initial abstracts to a scientific audience (so they weren't hiding anything).
I think an announcement of the possibility of a tenth planet, larger than Pluto, would be quite newsworthy,
The press would have reported this using the following headlines:
Astronomer Claims 10th Planet Found
10th Planet Found?
New Planet Discovered
Because this sells advertisements. MAYBE, they would have commented about the fact that this was a preliminary discovery in the body of the article. All that said, if you read the astronomer's material on the website and the articles published by the press you see how horid their reporting actually is.
Releasing this information wouldn't have been a bad thing per se, but the original post I responded to specifically attacked them for NOT releasing the information, calling their behavior unethical. My position is that they did not act unethically.
"Should they really have the right to keep the information secret until they've had the opportunity to make time-critical observations and gain all the information they require"
Well, yes.
Scientist recieve funding to collect and analyze data.
Rushing a pile of shit out the door to satisfy some nerd living in his mom's basement is not the scientific way.
Data collection, data analysis, peer review, and publication takes time.
The next round of funding will be based on publications from the data collected.
One piss poor "discovery" rushed to press is a career ending mistake.
Saying the scientist are with holding information is an arrogant statement. Their careers depend on publishing the data, once it's been looked at carefully.
How big is the diameter of this planet ???
I imagine the scientist would have liked to have had this information, plus a first approximation of the composition of the new planet before going public.
The group who wrote the grant application to get the funding to aquire the data has every right to that data, and it's analysis until they publish it. Then it become public and benefits everyone. This group of scientists have already shown, to a board of reviewers, they have the insights, equipment, and experience to do the analysis, and that is why they are being funded to do the research.
Says you, dipshit.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
they aren't sitting on the cure for cancer or something. ... sure?
Are you
Wasn't this the planet X we heard about?
No, Planet X is a comet, Planet Y is being kept on ice at Gitmo as a suspected alien planet [which has oil on it, along with vinegar].
This is Planet Z. Let's send the B-52's to attack it!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Scroll to the bottom of this page to read what Michael Brown (the professor who co-discovered 2003UB313) has to say about the alleged "hacking."
This is a bad day for people that think of the internet of a place to connect computers to work.
I KNEW I wasn't crazy. I was arguing with a friend that I had heard about this several years ago and he insisted that I was FOS.
All scientific information should be heralded and released the community without due diligence. And we should immediately begin basing public policy on it. There's no harm.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
Uh, except it wasn't a script kiddie, it was some guy using google.
feh. stuff.
If you look at the bottom of this page, you get a very interesting account from the view of the scientists who have done a lot of work on it. The so-called "hacking" sounds much less nefarius than in the article.
I couldn't tell if you were experimenting with poor-man's cryogenics or looking for the orange sherbet.
The point isn't that chaos would have ensued. It's that this was reported as major headline and average people don't read the articles in much detail, let alone keep up with a particular scientific issue for any exteneded period of time. The end-result of this type of reporting is that the average person becomes confused: are there 9 or 10... or did I just hear about 11 planets? Also, by seeing a large amount of pre-tested scientific speculation trumpeted as a big find they may begin to question the validity of science... if 9 out 10 science stories are proven to be bogus (assuming reporting prior to validation and thorough testing) then science in general is just a shot in the dark and is equal to any other form of speculation, Scientology, Greek Mythology, or whatever else is the thought of the day. The point is science is supposed to provide tested facts and reasoned theories, more testing is a good thing when the knowledge itself brings little value to the average person.
Yeah Just like I BET George Noory will say IT'S WORMWOOD or PLANET X! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE! :D
George just cracks me up.
Gorkman
No, American.
Ever been to Japan? You'll see shops with racks of goods sitting out on the street, no one guarding them. When people there find a wallet, they generally turn it in at the closest police station.
You can park your motorcycle on a street in tokyo, with the keys in it, and chances are real good it'll be there when you get back. Try that in NYC.
It's purely cultural. Japanese are taught empathy from a small age - how would I feel if I lost my wallet, or someone stole my bike. The social stigma of being a thief is worse to them than anything the courts are going to hand down. In America, it just makes you a real bad-ass and cool.
They also recognize a society is made up of individuals, and its strengths and weaknesses are about those individuals.
Americans turn to the government to fix all problems. I was watching the news the other day, and the story line was something akin to "Is the government doing all it can to protect us against the heat wave?" Yeah, there's a heat wave. Fix it with laws, government!
It's not a democrat or republican thing. Americans need the government to do everything for them these days, they need a law for everything. We believe that people won't obstain from an action because it's socially unacceptable, no, it has to be against the law. We have this "it's OK if you don't get caught" mentality.
This post isnt pro-Japan or anti-America, it's just a huge difference between the cultures that I noticed.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Cripes, no hacking was involved, someone googled for a keyaord thatwas mentioned at a talk and found their observation logs about the object.
I am waiting for the TERRORIST story next on how the TERRORISTS are attacking middle america by lighting bags of poop and ringing doorbells.
I can understand a bit of talking up a story to sell it but this National Enquirer style of reporting is mind blowing.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
That should leave you feeling good and sterilized.
And it's not like this was some big discovery that was actually going to change the average person's life... they aren't sitting on the cure for cancer or something.
Hell, even if they (or any other researcher) were sitting on a cure for cancer, they would have to analyse and test and be damned sure of the discovery because getting it wrong could a. wreck their careers b. kill people (possibly through unforseen side effects, etc) or c. not work at all.
I've been reading the threads and there seem to be two camps: the "they're bad people for withholding this information, information wants to be free" camp and the "well, they're just trying to confirm what they think they know" camp. I fall on the side of the latter camp. If anyone was unethical, it was the "hackers" who threatened to go public with incomplete information.
This 'Hacker Theory' has been alleged by Brown et al., however AFAIK the Caltech team has yet to produce any evidence substantiating their claim. There was significant discussion on the MPML that the so-called 'hacker' may in fact have been one or more members accessing publically-available pointing data after the Spanish team led by Ortiz discovered 2003 EL61.
Others believed that Brown, through Colleagues at the MPC were accusing Ortiz directly, which outraged many list members. At this point, a spokesman from the MPC has denied this to the list in a rather sincere-sounding way, however. For now, the individual to whom Brown was referring remains a mystery.
Wow, you know, I have to wonder how I missed this event! Anyone know what caused it - Hollywood special effect run amok? mega-volcano? Explosion of methane built up from the decomposing, rotting wreckage of the copyright mafia's business models, honesty and decency?
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Remember not long ago when some scientists reported the "color of the universe"? that they claimed it was sort of a pale mauve or something? Lots of hype and excitement, only to be thrown into rank confusion when they came back a few days later and said "oops, sorry, it's really pretty much just straight white." The whole story got mangled, and soon dropped with a "um, ok, uh ..." attitude.
And that was just identifying a color.
Showed that it makes sense for scientists to get a better handle on what they've found (which is not necessarily obviously clear) before telling the public, which tends to grab onto nifty ideas - even if dramatically wrong.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
It would have been released, free as in speach style, when they were done analysing the data. That's how government funding works. They have cash for a certain number of years, and renewed funding depends on publications from the data collected in the previous round of funding. One bad publication, and you won't be getting more funding. The information would have been free, but now it's been taken hostage by a googler and forced to stand in front of a firing squad, without the scientist saying "our data is bullet proof, fire away"
The word of the day is pedantic.
Thank you.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
I thought they saw a deviation in Pluto's orbit already, which suggested another planet would've been influencing it but just haven't observed the planet yet.
Wasn't this the same way they discovered Pluto?
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
I work at the CDF collaboration at Fermilab, owned and operated by US DOE (yes, that means public) funds. The DOE requires that any analysis (yes, I said requires) be thoroughly reviewed by all members of the collaboration. This is a process called "blessing" the analysis. Since there are over 700 collaborators, this can take quite a while. However, if you think this is unethical, and think it would be far better to publish raw, unanalysed data, well, write a letter to the government. If you think that access to this data is a right granted by being a taxpayer, complain to the government that owns said equipment. Because if those telescopes are anything like our accelerator, that government doesn't allow them to do anything as abysmally stupid as releasing results that haven't been carefully considered.
You sir, are a fool, and have no idea how the scientific community operates on a daily basis, nor how it should operate. Do us all a favor, and next time there is an article relating to science, keep your mouth firmly shut. Better yet, buy yourself a muzzle. Wear it.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
Is there any backup source?
Why would the guy come out and admit it when the hacker threatened to... do it.... for.... him.
This whole story just smells of bull sh*t.
mod grand-parent down, his reactionary statement say's very little when you read this. Mod parent up most definately.
Promote Charity on Myspace, Show Your Colours!
I was a National Geographic space article junkie when I was in grade school (mid 70s) and knew my textbook was wrong when it claimed Jupiter had only 12 moons, but my teacher would not accept any answer other than what was in the book.
next thing you know, you'll want time for peer review so people can look at the data, verify the methods, analyze it themselves, and agree it's scientifically sound ...
...
geesh, it's not like it was going to be published in some scientific paper or something
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[darn, where is that sarcasm key, gotta be here somewhere]
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-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/03/14/planet.di scovery/
I don't know if that's the same 10th "planet", but it was given the name of Sedna but was said to be smaller than Pluto (as opposed to 1.5x).
It was actually called an "object", as the definition of planet is a matter of some controversy.
Oh come now, all scientists, especially those from Harvard, know that manually modifying a URL, or clicking a link that connects you to a different server than the server that gave you the link, is vile hacking and must be punished.
Unless, of course, the planet is heading RIGHT TOWARDS PLANET EARTH!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
The Dead Sea Scrolls didn't want to be free; they were doing a fantastic job hiding.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
What if the findings were announced prematurely and then found wrong? Do you want children to be taught there are 10 planets, and a month later to be told "we goofed, there are 9"?
you don't go public until you accumulate sufficient evidence.
So are we still talking about Quaoraror?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
All it is is goatse. It's not like it's something all of use here haven't seen before.
It has to be officially designated as a planet by the International Astronomical Union before it can be called a planet. Considering that it is bigger than Pluto, and there may (read: almost definantly) be more bodies in the Kupier belt that are bigger than Pluto, I think it might be safe to say that Pluto has just as much of a chance of having it's planatary status removed, as 2003-UB313 has of becoming an official planet. The International Astronomical Union is going to have to announce some sort of definition as to what does and does not qualify as a planet, so that we can avoid these confusions in the future.
--The universe will not be altered by forum threads, even those which are very wry. --Tycho Brahe (Penny Arcade)
So what did the hackers blackmail him with, pictures of Uranus?
I realize it's unpopular to RTFA, but even the link to TFA says " threatened to reveal it" - the hackers threatened to reveal the data, so the scientists pre-empted them.
"Russian astrologist who says NASA has altered her horoscope by crashing a spacecraft into a comet is suing the U.S. space agency for damages of $300 million, local media has reported."
She is now suing God for damages related to His creation of this extra planet.
Tag lost or not installed.
And rightfully so. Prematurely releasing a discovery of this magnitude would be very bad scientific procedure.
Not like we are going there any time soon.
It's basically the whole MIB scenario. They told us the truth by making it into a hit comedy.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Is it me, or is this the 3rd 10th planet people have found? I could've sworn it was named "Vega"...
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
If scientists notified the public every time there is a possibility of there being Planet X somewhere there would be 100 announcements each day and then 100 retractments a couple hours later 99% of the time. The computers that look for objects spit out these 100 objects each day and a person looks at most of them and says that they are just minor camera issues or some small asteroid or comet most of the time. Most of this would not interest the public at all.
Furthermore, I attend Caltech, have taken Planetary Science class from Mike Brown, and my girlfriend is doing Astrophysics research into searching for more planets and she told me that someone looked up telescope records to figure out where Mike Brown has been looking when so that they can reconstruct the orbit and find the object. It doesn't sound that improbable, and I can't imagine someone here at Caltech in the Planetary Science or Astrophysics Departments making it up.
Now that I've written this, I checked his site at the bottom and it confirms what I said is possible, though maybe no one bothered to actually try it.
"Nine planets faithfully keep
in orbit With the probable tenth, the universe expands length..." -Mathmatics
If I found another planet of course I'd want full credit for myself and everyone else on the project. For something this big I'd also want enough proof to ensure I don't look like an idiot if it turns out to not be a planet, just a large asteroid or planetary fragment. Two years, big deal, if this 'planet' is really 3 times as far from the sun then two earth years is only a day or two for it. Even with the release the press still manages to screw things up, I've read it's size is between 70% and 150% that of Pluto. Back to the only two years thing, FDA drug testing takes longer than two years as does the decision to make and eventual release of Window Vista. It's been at least two years since the announcement of longhord and will probably be at least another two years until it's eventual release. This is NOT a government cover up, it's two independent groups of credible scientists who want to fully test their theory that there's another chunk of rock out there large enough to be considered a planet.
If it's released too early and not sufficently confirmed them we'll have another myth to be tested on Mythbusters or Penn&Teller: BullSh*T! just the usual media frenzy, people claiming hoax and conspiracy theorists claiming it's a plot to cover up to the UFO's home planet/base in this galaxy.
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
You mean in his garbage file?
/sig
Does anyone else remember reading about Planet X, which had been detected because of its periodic blocking of light from nearby stars, around 1990? What about the other Pluto-sized Kuiper belt objects under discussion for the past three years? This announcement seems strangely out of context.
But it's not is it? Do you really think that researchers from Caltech would keep quiet for so long about something so serious if it were?
First, the existence of a tenth planet is not time critical. A tenth planet has been postulated to exist for many years, but without corraboration from direct observations. Moreover, fame and fortune are not made from this type of discovery.
Second, the paranoia of "Who knows what else could be kept back from the scientific community until its observer deems it 'impressive' enough to release" is BS. Any ethical scientist will publish data once they are convinced they know what they are talking about. It is rare that a discovery in any science is made by a single research group. New publications are always a race against some other group publishing first and your data becoming irrelevent.
Third, a full analysis is what the Cold Fusion or the Polywater folks should have done before they announced these great discoveries and destroyed their reputations as researchers.
Raw data shouldn't be released without a distinct understanding of its meaning. It's the difference between saying 'Dihydrogen monoxide will kill you' and 'You can drown in water.'
The question was not "does Saddam have WMD?". The question was "does he *still* have WMD?". Syria said he did, Russia said he did, Germany said he did, it was not just the US. Actually not just the Republicans that is, some Democrats said he still had them as well.
Saddam was supposed to get rid of them under UN supervision, he did not do so. Furthermore he impeded UN teams try to determine if they were really gone. He wanted people to think he still had them believing it added to his clout and/or security. He guessed wrong.
That said, the question of what to do about the situation, going to war or not, is a different subject. Believing that Sadaam had WMD was a quite reasonable and prudent thing to believe. Believing that there was an imminent threat is something else and I expect that it will be decades before we know is the war in Iraq helped or hurt the war on terror.
What idiot modded this offtopic? "Rupert" is the name of the 10th planet in Douglas Adams's Mostly Harmless (well, the actual name is Persephone, but everyone calls it Rupert for reasons which it's best not to go in to here). The only way this could be modded negative is if there were a "-1 Blindingly obvious" mod.
Let's see what's wrong here:
First, the Inquirer credits the Jo'burg Sunday Telegraph. But, if they'd read all the way to the end of the piece, they'd have noticed it was a "SAPA-AP" story. That means the Telegraph bought the sotry from the South African Press Association, who in turn got it from Associated Press. Since, however, the Inquirer has no standing as a reputable news journal, there's no reason to assume anyone on their staff would have half a clue.
Second, the whining that these researchers deliberately withheld their data from the public is inexcusable. It was preliminary unconfirmed data that belonged to the researchers, not the public. The public has no more right to see it than they do to see my checkbook.
Like Slashdot, the Inquirer is in the business of making money by playing to the juvenile emotions of people who believe everything belongs to everybody.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
The New Scientist reports:
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
They *thought* they could find a 9th planet based on the orbital perturbations of Neptune's orbit, but they actually found pluto by accident - Pluto is too small and too far from Neptune to perturb its orbit.
Clear, Dark Skies
People don't insist on it being... The universe does. If humans were all dead, nature would still have information weather that would be in it's DNA or some bird making a nest in an ordered fashion.
The only force in the universe that negates entropy is information. Weather this is DNA information, human, or machine processedinformation.
Information can be applied to uniformity of matter or energy or the creation of uniformity in a sense into ordered patters. This can be groves for 0 and 1's on a CD or it can be electrons stored in RAM.
This is opposed to the theory that everything in the universe eventually goes into chaos and becomes less uniform.
But from this billions of years of chaos sprung life by chance (lets not start an evolution of Intelligent Design debate) and through life things started to put things back into order.
Although information doesn't lead always directly to the uniformity of matter is can lead to the manipulation of physical matter... Say human knowhow can lead to build a uniform block of a perfect cube of uranium.
Considering the chances of actually coming across a perfect cube in the universe without intelligent life involed is very very very small so we must consider information to be the key role into organizing matter.
Humans only think they want information because it's inherit in being a living organism. All creatures have some type of information and would eventually evolve to take advantage of that informtion (or they could just go extinct because they failed to do so).
Point being... The universe has information weather we choose to like it or not.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Because the researchers weren't teaching kids.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor
The analysis they'd need to do to prove that this object orbits the sun, and get some idea of the orbit, is to get both a parallax and a proper motion.
Parallax is the apparent motion of a nearby object relative to distant ones, caused by the Earth's orbit around the sun (i.e. because our viewpoint location is changing.) To get a parallax, you need to observe its position at several times of the year, so this inherently takes at least about 6 months. The size of the parallax is inversely proportional to the distance (so for a solar system object it will be very large.) (Incidentally, the definition of a parsec is the distance to an object with a parallax of one second of arc.)
Proper motion is the apparent motion of an object relative to distance ones due to the object's own straight-line motion through space. Again, it takes time to measure proper motion - you have to wait long enough for the object to move appreciably. In this case, the period between 2003 and now should easily suffice - except that you need to disentangle the effect of parallax, so you can't do this until you have a parallax measurement (or reimage at the same time of year as your previous image.)
Proper motion is an angular measurement. Combined with the distance, we can calculate its true velocity perpendicular to our line of sight.
They might also have taken a third measurement, the Doppler shift. This requires taking a spectrum, which for such a dim object would require a very large telescope, if it is possible at all. The Doppler shift gives the velocity parallel to the line of sight.
Those three measurements (parallax (hence distance), proper motion and doppler shift) suffice to completely determine the orbit. In practice, after such a short period of observation, the measurements will have low precision and the orbit known imprecisely. This imprecision will decrease with time and more observations. This is why we every so often get an object on possible Earth collision orbit (initial orbit determination has large error bars, which cannot preclude a collision) which then later is announced not to be a danger afterall (precision has improved.) To get a really good orbit, we want to observe the object through an appreciable fraction of its orbit. From memory, the orbit for this object is about 600 years, so this will take a long time.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
I wish I had mod points right now. Kudos for the awesome hacker reference.
I don't see how hackers could possibly have forced the announcement of the existence of a 10th planet. Hasn't the theory of additional celestial bodies been common knowledge for a very long time? I remember learning about planets in our solar system beyond Pluto 20 years ago when I was in elementary school!
Considering the argument, I agree with everyone; concurrently, all readings of the (King James) Bible, the United States Constitution and old issues of phrack magazine will now be charged a 10.00 reading fee whenever read. Please send me money, the ideas listed are now owned by Keaster. Please send the funds to: Keaster Island P.O. Box Holy Crap Get a Life Island Seriously, Relax 20702
So they witheld some info for a few years, so what? its not like its gonna affect my life in any way seriously. Personally i couldnt give a crap if theyd discovered a new Earth. As far as im concerned let people withold pointless secrets from each other when they dont have to! when the people that need your help to develop a new habitat on another planet cos earth is out of resources you just deny u knew about the other planet and call the other guy crazy, Then all humans die because they cant work as a team and help each other survive.
Hackers... revealing... information?
Oh no! Planet X has a security hole!!!
*jumps out the window*
"Eat a bag of dicks."
It's obvious that objects don't have desires. The poster was merely using some colorful speech. Other examples of non-factual satements that you'd be quick to contradict and look like a prick for doing so:
"It's hot as hell out here!"
"I'm so hungry, I could eat a horse!"
"Slashdot is food for thought."
What I'm waiting for is to see the astrologer's reactions to all this...
Quoth the server, "404."
You mean Karl Rove wouldn't have leaked it? Have you been reading the news?
By that measure, "7bDgew24FV3%4lbBså^r!" is as valid as "To be or not to be...". Yes, they are both transmitted pieces of information. They even carry the same length. The first one is complete rubbish, however. This, by the way, is consistent with Shannon's Information Theory.
The problem is that the first piece of information is completely useless whereas the second is an excerpt from the world's best known play.
Not all information is important, we cannot always learn anything from information, and also, I need more sleep.
Apart from that, as others have replied, information does not seek anywhere by itself. The position, speed, spin and size of a rock does not opine to stardom.
It's not even as if the scientists censored the information - they were just following a (very important) tradition of rechecking results, making more tests and generally learning more before going out into the public and shouting "Oo, look at us, we found number ten!". A scientist's job is not that of sensationalism but learning about the universe, checking the results, then sharing his findings.
I think Brown, etc. made an inappropriate decision to withhold this information. I hope CalTech is embarrassed by this episode. I believe this contributes to the "What is a planet?" debate and whets the public's interest in astronomy. Greater interest in astronomy and interesting new discoveries might lead to increases in NASA's budget; why delay this two years?
Publicity. Stunt.
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
Hey, you guys are getting annoyed at scientists not jumping the gun and releasing this early. Aren't you the same people who are still pissed that MicroSchlock released Windoes 95 with roughly 2000 known bugs?? /. readers = schizophrenic or just forgetful??
No, in the absence of any measures, information ceases to exist.
Is that in itself not a form of freedom? It would seem to uphold the previous point. Someone once contained information; in the absense of an attempt to maintain containment the information generally goes "free", which means it is no longer bounded by the original holder.
As for things falling to the ground; they are actually attracting each other if you want to get all anal about it. I'm sure someone else could be even more anal still but what is the point when it's completely off-topic and is no longer a valid metaphor?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Am I the only one who remembers hearing about Planet X, a planet possibly larger than pluto, years ago? WTF? Whoever was in charge of keeping it a secret wasn't doing a very good job.
We don't want to know about your hobbies. Thanks.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Really? I work in cancer research and would be interested to hear about this cure for cancer...BTW, there won't be one cure for cancer, but rather multiple cures for different kinds and degrees, but I digress.
Mike Brown, a member of the team that discovered this object, has the following page on the definition of a planet: http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/sedna/#What%20i s%20the%20definition%20of%20a%20planet?
According to his preferred definition neither the new object nor Pluto are planets.
Of course, what's even stupider is how both the Independent and, to an even stupider degree, the Inquirer make it sound all ominous and elitist that the scientists didn't release the info as soon as they found it. Like, maybe they didn't want to risk the media flaming them for prematurely announcing a tenth planet if they had to recant part of their data?
Couldn't they have at least told people "hey, look at this, isn't it cool?" Or did they do that?
Listen. Kid, I know you saw the Movie Hackers when you were 12. So did I. However, that movie was not awesome, nor are any references to it.
The only thing that even slightly, marginally, redeems that movie, that moves that movie one angstrom away from the 'garbage file,' is Angelina Jolie.
Christ Kid, what are you doing here? You do know that Hackers wasn't even realistic, right?
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
Uh, if you look at this site the worst the guy alleges is that somebody looked like they were planning on peeking at his planet with a telescope.
He published his code-name for the planet. Somebody did a search for that name and found some publicly-available telescope logs that had that name in it. (One might think that the reason those logs are publicly available is since the public pays for them at least in part.)
Then somebody did some calculations on a website to figure out where the planet was now, presumably to take a look at it.
At no point did anybody claim discovery of the planet, hold the investigator at ransom, threaten to release data, etc.
Essentially the astronomer in question is probably highly paranoid and considers it unethical for anybody else to peek at "his" planet.
Of course they would. Any research institution with half a brain would shut up and call every government they could - that way at least there's a chance of deflecting the thing, or else launching a "all-or-nothing-colony" endevour. I mean, c'mon, just imagine the world-wide panic if it were announced. There'd be no way we could save ourselves, the proles would all be running round getting wasted...
Programming is an Art. I am an Artist. Does that mean I get to wear a daft hat?
I've been waiting for you, what took so long?
-pyrrho
You know, I think the appeal of that movie is the unintended campiness of it. Of course it wasn't realistic. It was the epitome of all the Hollywood BS cliches about computers and "hacking." I think that the references are awesome in a sarcastic, tongue in cheek way.
Sleep is futile.
now define sentient and you're all done.
-pyrrho
These quotes make perfect sense if you assume that the NY Trade Center attacks were carried out by an Iraqi-sponsored group. I mean, we all assume that Al Qaeda was behind the attacks on 2001-09-11, but, hey, it wouldn't be the first time that they've taken credit for stuff that they haven't done.
If the hackers had released the info on the plantet, the scientists could have simply said there was no planet, just a high altitude weather balloon!!!
It's true that the information was available without breaking into any sites. It's also true that sometimes I don't lock the door to my house. I hope that people don't think it's therefore OK to come in and take my stuff.
No sir if you don't lock your door I won't be the one coming in to take your stuff but you can bet on it if you keep it unlocked long enough, someone will go in. What the hell is wrong with you, if you don't want people to see your photos, don't upload them to your blogs..
More training, you need..
>You for discovering something and then waiting for a full peer review and analysis before presenting your data to the public.
They weren't waiting for peer review, they were waiting for another telescope for a more precise size. Sounds like they wanted their announcement to be more dramatic. The peer review would come later.
>Fuck you to the hackers who feel that something like this needed to be public without review.
If it came from an anonoymous email/message on the Internet, how does this hurt the astronomers/researchers? I remember when Fermat's Last Therom was proved there was alot of rumors about it beforehand. I don't think that Wiles ever complained about this.
>If it was 'revealed' and then found to be false,
You will never be sure if its false or not, peer review doesn't automatically make it "TRUE". Alot of bad science has been peer reviewed and published.
>some script kiddie illegally, immorally, and unethically published the data before it was reviewed.
The person used publically available information, nothing was illegal.
It's true that the information was available without breaking into any sites.
>the true facts would have been buried in the mess.
Thats pretty ironic since the "hackers" were just trying to get the true facts out there.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
As someone who has actually done research, there is a good reason why scientist hold things back. Often times when you make a discovery, you do it in a half-assed sort of way. You are poking around for something and find it. Now, before you go running to the press, you want to conduct another experiment to make confirm what you actually have. Why? Because if scientist started shouting each time they 'found' something, there would be far too much noise in this world. I recall on experiment I worked on while I was at a nanotechnology company. I had a solid half of a dozen moments where I thought "Holy shit! I found it!" Each time though, I tempered my excitement and performed another experiment to try and confirm what I thought I had.
Of those half of a dozen times where I got excited, only one of them was the true "Eureka!" moment. One time it was simply a defect in the instrument I was using. Another time a part had become defective and had muddled my results. Another time everything looked awesome for the first part of my analysis, but when I did the second part it was clear that there was a problem.
This is not rare. This happens all the time in scientific study. You think you find something, and it turns out to be nothing. You hold back telling the world and having people try and replicate what you did until you yourself know what you did and are sure that you did it right. Only then do you release it to the world. It saves you looking like an idiot when you release promising results a dozen times only to withdraw them, it saves your fellow scientist dozens of false starts, and it save Slashdot from stupid head lines like CANCER IS CURED SCIENTIST SAY, when in fact someone managed to kill a specific type of cancer in a test tube.
These scientist did the right thing. They held back their announcement which was sure to be butchered by the press until such time as they had confirmed their discovery.
...really a secure server if someone hacked it?
My other Sig is
they haven't printed a hard copy yet! I know this because of the hackers!
Let' say the "hacker" reveals some notion. The "cattle" listen to what they hear and react as they please, regardless of the accuracy of the notion. If they like it, they'll praise the scientist..just to blame him/her two minutes later for something else they don't like.
...either a scientific authority or a political or a religious one..always some benevolent AUTHORITY.
It seems to me you still belong to the cattle you so much dislike and in particular to the malevolent subset of them because
1. you completely disregard the fact even peer-reviewed notions can be found, after intellectually honest peer-review, false. In other words it seems that you believe peer-review is always better then no peer-review, as if peer-review was something ameliorative by itself..while it can be done dishonestly and erroneously as much as everything else can.
2. you blame the hackers for revealing information still not reviewed AS IF that single action was the cause of confusion in the cattle..but that's flatly false because
3. cattle more often the not can't tell peer-reviewed material from articles of faith. They believe and hope that there are authorities that will always tell them "the truth"
The best way to say "thank you" to intellectually honest scientist is to become one, just saying "thanks" doesn't help a bit.
Additionally it seems to me you're just reacting in a way most people was conditioned to..just blame the bad guy..and we'll tell you who the bad guy is, you needn't understand by yourself if they're really bad or not..WE SAY IT IS therefore IT IS.
Dude, you still belong to the herd you hate so much and you still don't realize it.
So, who's fault is it that all the astrology charts are wrong now?
I blame that stooopid scientist for saying that he found a new planet. What a dork. Jeeez.
Meta mod these people some smackdown please.
Doc, on most of this kind of stuff on with you. But I challenge you to point out which rule of grammar is violated by the 2nd amendment. If you want to say that the amendment doesn't clearly spell out what we can and can not do with guns, well, you're probably right. But there's nothing grammatically wrong with the sentence of interest.
I'll spare you the part about how "a well-regulated militia" != "the National Guard".
Sean
Hmmm, is what these guys did the work of crackers or hackers? I thought "hackers" were the "ethical", trustworth (even if at armslength) guys/girls, and "crackers" he "bad guys" who busted into your box and did nasty things or retrieved information with intent to bribe, extort, embarrass, run out of business, steal money or info, and so on...
Now, as far as people who hoard or hide information of unprecedented and interesting value, why hide it, when they already KNOW the damned source (the planet) exists?
I have not yet RTFA, but if they have had some 2 years of hard evidence, then why continue hiding it? It's almost as if they might be scientists who "found "god"" but didn't want to reopen the Galileo/Copernicus, et al story of repression, oppression, house arrests, burnings at the stakes, accusations of witchcraft/witcher/sorcery and so on.
OTOH, maybe it's not a planet. It could be an ET or even a US hidden base. THAT'S IT: Pioneer and manifest destiny at work, except they didn't want to spring the news on us until the "aliens" were nuked, knived, batoned, microwaved and locked up... and THEN put thru the "shake n' bake" and Easy-Bake oven...
Actually, I hope they finally find life (well, rather quickly a planet's beings find us) from a planet that is far more enlightened than us but which has no compunction about "whipping our asses into planetary shape". I most certainly hope Earthlings are not the founders of any Federation or UFP or such. We need the moral, ethical, and other sorts of competition or pressure, and we SURE as hell don't deserve to escapade or forage beyond the Moon until we clean up our act down here. We have far too much warfare, pestilence, famine, social malaise, and political corruption and need to be "smacked down" a number of times to simulate and eventually effect are "real, hard, lasting moral reset" button.
I realize NASA has brought back information and manufacturing processes or advances and helped us learn a lot more than we could in 1G, but, dammit, too many other things can be done with that kind of money so we don't have to keep mortgaging our and our kids' futures on mostly-hoarded knowledge, or amassing information that can't be harvested in near-term with planet-enhancing results. Enough of the nation-superiority complexes.
ET, are you listening. Come and get us... Or, just keep initiating mission-failures that confound and befuddle the "experts". Maybe we'll end up diverting boondogle budgets to diminish hunger and deliver the food and medicines directly to those who need it, and bypass corrupt regimes' administrators.
Nah, these are HYUMANS I'm talking about. It'll be another 500 years before even SOME of the vestiges of the past 400 finally are washed out of the gene pool...
Deplorable?
Hmmm anti-script-word image happens to be... "deplore", hehehhe
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3511678. stm
Why is everyone talking about this like it's news; it's history!
To anybody out there with mod points, can you please do Slashdot a favor and check the context of the message before modding a message as Offtopic? I was attempting to do people a favor by warning them ahead of time that the parent message contained a link that was not appropriate.
My lame blog.
Thanks.
10th planet Sunday July 31, @09:01PM Rejected
It's curious that a rumor of a hacker is more interesting than the planet itself.
Shihar,d =12228868.
I read your comment here: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=146002&ci
"What people don't realize is that often times the people that make the technology and the people that build the technology are two very different people."
That's an observation I had myself. (Patents allow to set up specialized research companies which are separated from the production industry.) I'd like to discuss this topic with you, per email. I don't know your email adress, if you could contact me at: mg20163 AT sgh.waw.pl
Fight Frist Psoting!
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