Hm, yes. I admit to have overlooked that part. In most cases, graphs that stack colours are cumulative, so I
assumed it here as well - and assumed wrong. Also, the proportionality actually is in the areas, not
the radii. But all this in fact makes my point: This graph cannot be understood without additional information.
The histogram that is shown as comparison at the bottom of the article is simple and easy to understand without
further knowledge about projections or areas or common vertices. And still delivers the message perfectly well.
I'm just going to comment on the graph itself, without connection to the person:
Presenting this kind of data - abolute numbers and their breakdown into individual contributors,
for consecutive, identical intervals of time - in a polar graph as some kind of piechart is a very bad idea.
Piecharts are good to represent relative parts of a whole, by segmenting a circle. That's it. As soon as a radial
component is included (as is the case here - it even is the main component), they become at least misleading, and I'd call it useless.
What does the radial dimension mean? Is it linear (I presume it is - but how can I be sure?)? Are we supposed to interpret
the sizes of the areas? Note that the exact same radial length leads to a much larger area on the outside of the graph than
at its center. And we tend to see areas, not lengths. Imagine the order of subnumbers switched: The area of the orange parts
("death from battlewounds") would grow considerably, while the blue area ("death from disease") would shrink quite a bit, thereby
of course reducing the point this graph tries to make. This point is actually a perfectly valid one - but trying to "sex it up"
with a misleading graph is a bad idea. Also, the segments themselves are unnecessary and don't contribute to the information:
We know months are roughly the same length each. No information gained here.
This graph is actually a very good example how not to do it. The unambiguous, easy to interpret graph to use here is a simple histogram.
I was going to rant about the painfully wrong use of an apostrophe on a plural in the title.
Until I realised what is meant is a singular: Grandma is...
Just to help all those out that had an equal amount of trouble to parse that sentence...
Exactly. The main problem the civil aviation in the USA has isn't a lack of airspace, but clogged airport aprons.
Parick Smith, the salon.com airline captain columnist, has just written about it again.
Nice commentabout the usefulness of opening military corridors for civil aviation around thanksgiving: "It will have roughly the same effect as, say, organizing a group prayer or rubbing a plastic airplane for good luck."
Promises promises that this is going to make everything better (faster, cheaper, smaller). I'd settle
for even one of those benefits if it were significant, but wonder if I'll ever see any of them.
You very likely are sitting near the perfact example for "all three". Compare the cumputer you are using now to the
one 10-15 years ago.
No mechanical parts. It's probably more reliable, and surely needs less maintenance.
Also, it might be tricky to move a 40cm x 40cm detector array around at 100Hz without
introducing jitter or tilt.
On a smaller level, societies where people own guns are usually more peaceful ones.
[[citation needed]]
Just as anecdotal evidence against it: The USA's murder rate vs. France, Germany, the skandinavian countries,...
pretty much every country where gun ownership is heavily regulated.
Atmospheric drag affects surface area of an object, not the number of atoms per unit of volume.
Yup, the force depends on the cross-section parallel to the flight path.
But the deceleration depends on force per mass (F/m, remember?), and
a small, compact object will experience less deceleration than a large "airy"
one of equal mass.
A compact toolbag packs way more punch than a solar panel of equal cross-section,
so yes, density - more precisely: "area density" perpendicular to the velocity - matters.
Throw a pea. Then, throw a sheet of paper... - both weigh roughly the same.
That's BTW also why uranium ammunition is so popular with the military.
The ISS' orbit decreases by about 4km per month. If we consider reentry at ~75km (completely arbitrary,
and probably quite a bit off), the ISS itself would come down in about five to six years, give or take. The toolbag
has a higher density than the ISS, so the deceleration by atmospheric drag should be a bit lower. That puts the time to reentry
in the order of magnitude of very roughly ten years.
I know I'm not. I've calculated stuff like this before.
The velocity relative to the ISS is a few metres per second at the most.
You'd be surprised how difficult it is to catch up even in those orders of magnitude.
Orbital maneuvering is hard, and very unintutive. NASA had to learn this the hard way:
The early rendez-vous missions assumed it would be possible to fly manual visual approaches once the
target is in sight. Didn't work. Maneuvering out-of-plane is also energetically very expensive.
Because it got a single impulse it will keep coming back once an orbit.
True, the orbits intersect in space. But not in time, due to different excentricity.
The shuttle/ISS will not be at the section point the next time the bag comes along.
I don't think catching it with the shuttle on this mission is impossible.
If the orbital periods have a common integer multiple (unlikely), they could wait and try a very risky
catch-the-bag EVA (exactly one chance) - but they will probably run out of time, air and other
supplies before this would be possible even then.
Simple: when the shuttle's done at the station, detach and intercept the bag in orbit. Voila, $100k saved.
Not a chance. That bag doesn't just float somewhere around the station, it is on an orbital trajectory of its own -
by now probably quite far from the ISS in fact. And unless Heidemarie aimed very carefully, it isn't even in the same
orbital plane. The shuttle doesn't carry enough fuel to do plane transfer maneuvers (that's the main reason why timing is
important when launching), and even if it did, it would take a hell of a lot of maneuvering to do a full orbital
realignment - which would probably cost more in fuel alone than those $100k.
Stop the addition of stupid and ineffective disclaimers.
Often times, those disclaimers are required by law. Most people don't add them for fun or to make themselves feel important.
I don't know about the situation in the USA, but in most parts of the world, this is exactly the reason.
"Because everybody else does it" is another.
In multiple european countries, those disclaimers are entirely worthless, and even in some cases came back
to bite those using them in court by proving that the sender was aware that some piece of information might
end up in the wrong place.
Disclaimers don't replace common sense or encryption.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_Federal_Republic_of_Germany [...]
It's scary really. I said only a few days ago that I would never visit or stop over in Germany.
Yes, totally scary. Excerpt from the above link: "According to the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index, however, Germany is currently ranked 20th in the world in terms of press freedom."
Germany serves as a reminder of what will happen to a country if you vote far-left too long.
Uhhh... what?
The head of state (and the chancellor) are from what is considered the center right. Far-left parties
never were in power. And last I checked, Germany was doing a lot better in this financial meltdown than
the US (which doesn't mean they are doing incredibly well, just a lot better).
The buildings themselves probably weren't (there are some surviving richly-coloured - i.e. non-faded - murals
depicting buildings in the classical "mediterranean" colour scheme), as bright, monochromatic piant was rather
expensive (ground semi-precious stones aren't cheap) - the statues however were, and we can indeed detect very
faint remnants of different pigments on them today. Last I heared it is still debated what pigment stands
for what colour though, but "bright" is consensus amongst scholars by now.
I recall a google bot malfunctioning once before. To wit: Google's automated search engine's crawlers brought a news story from December 10, 2002 that detailed United Airline's file for bankruptcy to the top of its listing and confused a large amount of UAL shareholders, causing them to sell their shares and drop the value of UAL significantly.
Slashdot Mirror
Hm, yes. I admit to have overlooked that part. In most cases, graphs that stack colours are cumulative, so I
assumed it here as well - and assumed wrong. Also, the proportionality actually is in the areas, not
the radii. But all this in fact makes my point: This graph cannot be understood without additional information.
The histogram that is shown as comparison at the bottom of the article is simple and easy to understand without
further knowledge about projections or areas or common vertices. And still delivers the message perfectly well.
I'm just going to comment on the graph itself, without connection to the person:
Presenting this kind of data - abolute numbers and their breakdown into individual contributors,
for consecutive, identical intervals of time - in a polar graph as some kind of piechart is a very bad idea.
Piecharts are good to represent relative parts of a whole, by segmenting a circle. That's it. As soon as a radial
component is included (as is the case here - it even is the main component), they become at least misleading, and I'd call it useless.
What does the radial dimension mean? Is it linear (I presume it is - but how can I be sure?)? Are we supposed to interpret
the sizes of the areas? Note that the exact same radial length leads to a much larger area on the outside of the graph than
at its center. And we tend to see areas, not lengths. Imagine the order of subnumbers switched: The area of the orange parts
("death from battlewounds") would grow considerably, while the blue area ("death from disease") would shrink quite a bit, thereby
of course reducing the point this graph tries to make. This point is actually a perfectly valid one - but trying to "sex it up"
with a misleading graph is a bad idea. Also, the segments themselves are unnecessary and don't contribute to the information:
We know months are roughly the same length each. No information gained here.
This graph is actually a very good example how not to do it. The unambiguous, easy to interpret graph to use here is a simple histogram.
[Pixar] has yet to release a single film that is anything less than brilliant.
Cars. Not better than "decent".
I was going to rant about the painfully wrong use of an apostrophe on a plural in the title. ...
Until I realised what is meant is a singular: Grandma is
Just to help all those out that had an equal amount of trouble to parse that sentence...
Exactly. The main problem the civil aviation in the USA has isn't a lack of airspace, but clogged airport aprons.
Parick Smith, the salon.com airline captain columnist, has just written about it again.
Nice commentabout the usefulness of opening military corridors for civil aviation around thanksgiving:
"It will have roughly the same effect as, say, organizing a group prayer or rubbing a plastic airplane for good luck."
Promises promises that this is going to make everything better (faster, cheaper, smaller). I'd settle
for even one of those benefits if it were significant, but wonder if I'll ever see any of them.
You very likely are sitting near the perfact example for "all three". Compare the cumputer you are using now to the
one 10-15 years ago.
No mechanical parts. It's probably more reliable, and surely needs less maintenance.
Also, it might be tricky to move a 40cm x 40cm detector array around at 100Hz without
introducing jitter or tilt.
...turning an impact into a near miss.
I'd rather prefer it would nearly hit than nearly miss...
On a smaller level, societies where people own guns are usually more peaceful ones.
[[citation needed]]
...
Just as anecdotal evidence against it: The USA's murder rate vs. France, Germany, the skandinavian countries,
pretty much every country where gun ownership is heavily regulated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homicide_rate
There is no seek time when accessing a flash drive.
I came across an additional amateur video from farther away after submitting the story:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=i9n6rYoSGNQ
SpaceX' video unfortunately lacks the proper amount of bass
to really give a sense of the sheer power shown.
I'm sorry, did you really mean to say "density"?
I did.
Atmospheric drag affects surface area of an object, not the number of atoms per unit of volume.
Yup, the force depends on the cross-section parallel to the flight path.
But the deceleration depends on force per mass (F/m, remember?), and
a small, compact object will experience less deceleration than a large "airy"
one of equal mass.
A compact toolbag packs way more punch than a solar panel of equal cross-section,
so yes, density - more precisely: "area density" perpendicular to the velocity - matters.
Throw a pea. Then, throw a sheet of paper... - both weigh roughly the same.
That's BTW also why uranium ammunition is so popular with the military.
The ISS' orbit decreases by about 4km per month. If we consider reentry at ~75km (completely arbitrary,
and probably quite a bit off), the ISS itself would come down in about five to six years, give or take. The toolbag
has a higher density than the ISS, so the deceleration by atmospheric drag should be a bit lower. That puts the time to reentry
in the order of magnitude of very roughly ten years.
I think you are wrong.
I know I'm not. I've calculated stuff like this before.
The velocity relative to the ISS is a few metres per second at the most.
You'd be surprised how difficult it is to catch up even in those orders of magnitude.
Orbital maneuvering is hard, and very unintutive. NASA had to learn this the hard way:
The early rendez-vous missions assumed it would be possible to fly manual visual approaches once the
target is in sight. Didn't work. Maneuvering out-of-plane is also energetically very expensive.
Because it got a single impulse it will keep coming back once an orbit.
True, the orbits intersect in space. But not in time, due to different excentricity.
The shuttle/ISS will not be at the section point the next time the bag comes along.
I don't think catching it with the shuttle on this mission is impossible.
If the orbital periods have a common integer multiple (unlikely), they could wait and try a very risky
catch-the-bag EVA (exactly one chance) - but they will probably run out of time, air and other
supplies before this would be possible even then.
Just accept it: It's impossible.
I actually think picking it up is a good idea.
So do I. In theory.
But let me be clearer: They can't.
Technically impossible with what is currently up there.
It would require its own mission.
Simple: when the shuttle's done at the station, detach and intercept the bag in orbit. Voila, $100k saved.
Not a chance. That bag doesn't just float somewhere around the station, it is on an orbital trajectory of its own -
by now probably quite far from the ISS in fact. And unless Heidemarie aimed very carefully, it isn't even in the same
orbital plane. The shuttle doesn't carry enough fuel to do plane transfer maneuvers (that's the main reason why timing is important when launching), and even if it did, it would take a hell of a lot of maneuvering to do a full orbital
realignment - which would probably cost more in fuel alone than those $100k.
Stop the addition of stupid and ineffective disclaimers.
Often times, those disclaimers are required by law. Most people don't add them for fun or to make themselves feel important.
I don't know about the situation in the USA, but in most parts of the world, this is exactly the reason.
"Because everybody else does it" is another.
In multiple european countries, those disclaimers are entirely worthless, and even in some cases came back
to bite those using them in court by proving that the sender was aware that some piece of information might
end up in the wrong place.
Disclaimers don't replace common sense or encryption.
There's no way Windows should be running a ship of war.
Well, Windows does:
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/1998/07/13987
The three branches of government aren't the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria?
EO*: "I've never heard of them. I don't even like blondes. What? Ohhhh... branches"
*:elected official
So basically it costs money to get EAL verified, and the farther up the scale you go, the more money it costs to run the testing.
Is Scientology somehow involved in this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_Federal_Republic_of_Germany [...]
It's scary really. I said only a few days ago that I would never visit or stop over in Germany.
Yes, totally scary. Excerpt from the above link: "According to the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index, however, Germany is currently ranked 20th in the world in terms of press freedom."
I had a look at that list
A couple of entries (completly biased and handpicked), just to put this into perspective:
Germany serves as a reminder of what will happen to a country if you vote far-left too long.
Uhhh... what?
The head of state (and the chancellor) are from what is considered the center right. Far-left parties
never were in power. And last I checked, Germany was doing a lot better in this financial meltdown than
the US (which doesn't mean they are doing incredibly well, just a lot better).
The buildings themselves probably weren't (there are some surviving richly-coloured - i.e. non-faded - murals
depicting buildings in the classical "mediterranean" colour scheme), as bright, monochromatic piant was rather
expensive (ground semi-precious stones aren't cheap) - the statues however were, and we can indeed detect very
faint remnants of different pigments on them today. Last I heared it is still debated what pigment stands
for what colour though, but "bright" is consensus amongst scholars by now.
I recall a google bot malfunctioning once before. To wit: Google's automated search engine's crawlers brought a news story from December 10, 2002 that detailed United Airline's file for bankruptcy to the top of its listing and confused a large amount of UAL shareholders, causing them to sell their shares and drop the value of UAL significantly.
That was a malfunctioning newspaper editor: He featured an old article on the front page with a new publication date. ./ BTW: http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/09/10/203233.shtml
It made
...during development Firebird was known as Phoenix.
I forget what the reason for the first change was...
The BIOS vendor.