This is actually a good point. To be pedantic though, I should say that the sun is still as bright as it always is at dusk, it is just that at dusk, the sun's light has to pass through more atmosphere to reach your eyes. So more of the light is scattered away making the sun look less bright.
That seems plausible, but you'd never get any "expert" to admit this was true. You have to understand that even a small percentage of the light from the sun is brighter than all but the brightest terrestrial light sources you are likely to look directly into.
Plus, you can never underestimate the intelligence of the dumbest member of your audience, especially when (with the Internet) that audience can be global. I suppose it's possible that there's a conspiracy among astronomers to perpetuate the idea that solar eclipse sunlight is more dangerous because it makes it even more likely that people won't look at the sun and hurt their eyes, thereby reducing their ability to appreciate astronomy (hee hee).
This is funny. I got a degree in astronomy and did a few years of volunteer work at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. I'm always amazed at how often this question is asked. I remember as a kid being deathly afraid to look up during an eclipse thinking that there were some evil death rays that only came out during an eclipse that would turn me into a zombie or something [I think that was a bad movie I saw once...]
The answer is no, the sun is no worse for your eyes during an eclipse, it's just that most people (Galileo excluded) aren't stupid enough to look at the sun when the moon's not partially in front of it so there's no need to warn them on a daily basis.
obligitory warning: Oh and by the way...please don't try to prove me wrong (or right) by looking at the sun today or any other day. It ain't good for your eyes.
You act as if open source development "for fun" is completely separate from how programmers earn money. It's not. Sure, I don't make any money putzing around with Apache in my spare time, but you better believe I'm a more skilled developer (in all areas, not just in Apache) because I took that time. My employer and potential employers see this added skill and (hopefully) they are willing to pay for it. I might even beat you out for a job;-)
I think the discussion of the article (not to mention the article itself) has ignored what I consider to be a fatal flaw that applies to all software development. I've come to believe over the past few years that developing software is an activity that simply doesn't scale. The level of complexity involved in gathering and fulfilling user requirements grows much faster that our ability to manage it, especially when those requirements are expected to be fulfilled very quickly. Fred Brooks talked about the problem 30 (!) years ago for god's sake and we still try to ignore it.
All forms of software developers (Open Source as well as proprietary ones) must confront this problem. The open source solution is to acknowledge it face on and rely on the hordes of eager developers out there with ready access to the code to fix whatever problems they individually face. The proprietary folks manage the complexity through compromise. They sacrifice flexibility and (sometimes) they release buggy code and thereby reduce their users' expectations.
I don't know if the open source approach will ultimately scale either (I have my doubts), but I think it's only a matter of time before the proprietary approach is forced to acknowledge its inherent unscalability. People will eventually begin to demand of their software the same level of quality that they demand from all the other products they consume and when they do, they will stop paying for the crappy stuff.
Regardless of what happens, though, there will always be a need for people that can surf all this complexity and still (miraculously perhaps) produce software that meets narrowly defined, specific needs. Open Source developers are those people. They shall not lack the funds they need for sugar laden foodstuffs and caffeinated beverages because their skills are not easily transferrable. Those skills are earned through hard work. That is what motivates me to particiate in Open Source development. There is nothing like the feeling of knowing that you are the only friggin person at your jobsite that knows how to fix a problem and there's also nothing more motivating than your envy of the other guy that knows more that you do.
For god's sake, it's only US$40!!! That's the cost of 2 cds. A week's worth or caffeine. After food, drink and ticket price, one trip to see SW:AOTC with a date. OK, 2 trips sans date for most of us. For my money, the ability to easily turn off all the Flash and pop-up ad crap is worth it. Besides, if you don't pay, you get a single ad at the top of the browser which you can mentally tune out after about a week. It's also somewhat faster than mozilla in my experience. It is well worth your consideration.
Yoo-hoo! guys! The article is about Opera, not IE or Mozilla.
I just downloaded Opera again after about 2 years of not looking at it. It looks pretty good. The article berates the mouse gestures, but I thought they were pretty cool. But the greatest feature of all (not even mentioned in the article for some odd reason) is File|Quick Preferences|Refuse pop-up windows. I know you can do it in Mozilla too, but right off the File menu? Thank you Opera!
I prefer to think of my programming job as a nice, quite cul de sac, away from the hustle and bustle of regular working life. There are advantages to dead ends, you know.
The short answer is yes. As a practical matter, telescope mirrors are small enough that there isn't much difference between a spherical mirror and a parabolic. What you do test the focus of your mirror on an optical bench as you grind it. You grind and test, grind and test until the focus is where you want it. You end up with a parabola.
The main problem with mass produced scopes is that the alignment of the mirror in the tube is hit or miss and they don't provide any way for you to adjust it yourself to make it better. It doesn't matter how well shaped your mirror is if it doesn't focus to the right spot.
I don't care how sophisticated the manufacturing processes are, a mass built telescope will never be as good as what you can build yourself (with the right equipment). It takes many hours to grind a mirror and many more hours to align it properly and the big manufacturers just can't justify taking the time to do it right; it's too expensive.
It's a shame that this is such a crappy book review because I rather liked the books. They really are worth reading. There's a more in depth review on salon. The review is just for The Amber Spyglass, but it talks about the whole trilogy.
I understand that vendor-sponsored certification programs have higher industry recognition, but my point is that I think this is a Bad Thing. If everyone has a Microsoft certification (for example), that encourages them all to solve every problem they encounter by forcing it into a Microsoft shaped box. Microsoft knows this, that's why they offer certification programs, but it may not always be the best option for your customer. Only by encouraging vendor-neutral certification like IEEE's and the two you mentioned (thanks!), do we begin to reverse this trend.
The article forgot an important new certification now being offered by the IEEE Computer Society. You can now become a Certified Software Development Professional (CSDP). This is a certification from a professional society, not a company trying to sell (hard|soft)ware and it has serious, vendor-neutral requirements. You have to account for 9000 hours of software development experience (close to 5 years!) and you have to agree to a code of ethics. This is the kind of certification that will make people take the software development industry seriously. Check it out. I'm working on mine now.
Lotus Notes mail has a cool password generator. I converted it to Javascript once and use it for all my passwords:
I can't post it here because it won't go past the lameness filter, but you can find it here.
It produces nonsense passwords, but they are easy to remember because they come out like pseudo-words. e.g. jenzog72, or slocrip16. It's about the only thing useful I ever got out of Notes.
Add some nifty new features to Win-MONO, so everyone wants a copy of this enhanced-.NET thing.
Start dumping large quantities of Win-MONO enhancements on the world, till there are a thousand million billion versions.
People associate.NET with Incompatible Mess.
People move away from.NET
Nice plan! Problem comes with item 4. In order to "dump" your enhancements, you'd need someplace to dump them. Microsoft had their monopoly of the desktop. Microsoft can successfully spread FUD because the press lap up everything they say. Nobody cares about your FUD if you're not one of the big boys.
This is absolutely true. It's just Republican strategizeing. This author doesn't care about the SSSCA any more than as a political tool to zing the Democratic supporters.
Violation of copyright is illegal. Unlimited distribution without permission of the copyright holder (not "owner") is illegal. But for music you've made, or music you've purchased, ripping, mixing, and burning are entirely legal for your personal use. Not only does common sense say so. So does the law and quite a number of federal courts.
This is true, and I think the Intellectual Property (IP) holding companies know this, but they don't really care. If they simply cut off all access to their IP, it will be up to the content consumers (i.e. y'all and me) and hardware manufacturers (e.g. Apple) to seek remedy via the courts or whatever. The former has shown a complete lack of interest in doing anything to fight them and the hardware manufacturers will be happy to sell us new hardware that circumvents (either "illegally" or via some sort of legal partnership) the protection.
I'm a little wary of the so-called "pre-cautionary principle" myself. It's all about the economics of being cautious. However, something I found interesting about the rebuttal essays in Scientific American was the argument from ignorance.
The best science we have about climate change says that anything between A and Z could happen (well maybe A through M), but Lomborg interprets the data to say that A or B will happen. Since we can live with A or B, everything is fine. Scientists aren't taking the opposite conclusion, they just aren't as willing to accept such a narrow interpretation. Scientist take a classically conservative [I'm talking the dictionary definition, not the political definition] view of their subjects. The error bars are always wide to begin with. They are not easily swayed by people who want to narrow them. That is as it should be.
In the face of our ignorance about our environment [biological, economic, social, whatever], a conservative approach is called for. It's called hedging your bets.
Slashdot Mirror
This is actually a good point. To be pedantic though, I should say that the sun is still as bright as it always is at dusk, it is just that at dusk, the sun's light has to pass through more atmosphere to reach your eyes. So more of the light is scattered away making the sun look less bright.
That seems plausible, but you'd never get any "expert" to admit this was true. You have to understand that even a small percentage of the light from the sun is brighter than all but the brightest terrestrial light sources you are likely to look directly into.
Plus, you can never underestimate the intelligence of the dumbest member of your audience, especially when (with the Internet) that audience can be global. I suppose it's possible that there's a conspiracy among astronomers to perpetuate the idea that solar eclipse sunlight is more dangerous because it makes it even more likely that people won't look at the sun and hurt their eyes, thereby reducing their ability to appreciate astronomy (hee hee).
Ok, so maybe that's a little paranoid.
This is funny. I got a degree in astronomy and did a few years of volunteer work at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. I'm always amazed at how often this question is asked. I remember as a kid being deathly afraid to look up during an eclipse thinking that there were some evil death rays that only came out during an eclipse that would turn me into a zombie or something [I think that was a bad movie I saw once...]
The answer is no, the sun is no worse for your eyes during an eclipse, it's just that most people (Galileo excluded) aren't stupid enough to look at the sun when the moon's not partially in front of it so there's no need to warn them on a daily basis.
obligitory warning: Oh and by the way...please don't try to prove me wrong (or right) by looking at the sun today or any other day. It ain't good for your eyes.
I always post this, but the best eclipse web site is at http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/eclipse.html
You act as if open source development "for fun" is completely separate from how programmers earn money. It's not. Sure, I don't make any money putzing around with Apache in my spare time, but you better believe I'm a more skilled developer (in all areas, not just in Apache) because I took that time. My employer and potential employers see this added skill and (hopefully) they are willing to pay for it. I might even beat you out for a job ;-)
I think the discussion of the article (not to mention the article itself) has ignored what I consider to be a fatal flaw that applies to all software development. I've come to believe over the past few years that developing software is an activity that simply doesn't scale. The level of complexity involved in gathering and fulfilling user requirements grows much faster that our ability to manage it, especially when those requirements are expected to be fulfilled very quickly. Fred Brooks talked about the problem 30 (!) years ago for god's sake and we still try to ignore it.
All forms of software developers (Open Source as well as proprietary ones) must confront this problem. The open source solution is to acknowledge it face on and rely on the hordes of eager developers out there with ready access to the code to fix whatever problems they individually face. The proprietary folks manage the complexity through compromise. They sacrifice flexibility and (sometimes) they release buggy code and thereby reduce their users' expectations.
I don't know if the open source approach will ultimately scale either (I have my doubts), but I think it's only a matter of time before the proprietary approach is forced to acknowledge its inherent unscalability. People will eventually begin to demand of their software the same level of quality that they demand from all the other products they consume and when they do, they will stop paying for the crappy stuff.
Regardless of what happens, though, there will always be a need for people that can surf all this complexity and still (miraculously perhaps) produce software that meets narrowly defined, specific needs. Open Source developers are those people. They shall not lack the funds they need for sugar laden foodstuffs and caffeinated beverages because their skills are not easily transferrable. Those skills are earned through hard work. That is what motivates me to particiate in Open Source development. There is nothing like the feeling of knowing that you are the only friggin person at your jobsite that knows how to fix a problem and there's also nothing more motivating than your envy of the other guy that knows more that you do.
For god's sake, it's only US$40!!! That's the cost of 2 cds. A week's worth or caffeine. After food, drink and ticket price, one trip to see SW:AOTC with a date. OK, 2 trips sans date for most of us. For my money, the ability to easily turn off all the Flash and pop-up ad crap is worth it. Besides, if you don't pay, you get a single ad at the top of the browser which you can mentally tune out after about a week. It's also somewhat faster than mozilla in my experience. It is well worth your consideration.
Yoo-hoo! guys! The article is about Opera, not IE or Mozilla.
I just downloaded Opera again after about 2 years of not looking at it. It looks pretty good. The article berates the mouse gestures, but I thought they were pretty cool. But the greatest feature of all (not even mentioned in the article for some odd reason) is File|Quick Preferences|Refuse pop-up windows. I know you can do it in Mozilla too, but right off the File menu? Thank you Opera!
If you want a neat mapped interface to the Web, look at antarcti.ca. It was created by Tim Bray, one of the original editors of the XML specification.
Cap'n! Mah brrrain canna take the strrain much longarr!
I prefer to think of my programming job as a nice, quite cul de sac, away from the hustle and bustle of regular working life. There are advantages to dead ends, you know.
I think you already are.
The short answer is yes. As a practical matter, telescope mirrors are small enough that there isn't much difference between a spherical mirror and a parabolic. What you do test the focus of your mirror on an optical bench as you grind it. You grind and test, grind and test until the focus is where you want it. You end up with a parabola.
The main problem with mass produced scopes is that the alignment of the mirror in the tube is hit or miss and they don't provide any way for you to adjust it yourself to make it better. It doesn't matter how well shaped your mirror is if it doesn't focus to the right spot.
I don't care how sophisticated the manufacturing processes are, a mass built telescope will never be as good as what you can build yourself (with the right equipment). It takes many hours to grind a mirror and many more hours to align it properly and the big manufacturers just can't justify taking the time to do it right; it's too expensive.
No teeth marks.
It's a shame that this is such a crappy book review because I rather liked the books. They really are worth reading. There's a more in depth review on salon. The review is just for The Amber Spyglass, but it talks about the whole trilogy.
I understand that vendor-sponsored certification programs have higher industry recognition, but my point is that I think this is a Bad Thing. If everyone has a Microsoft certification (for example), that encourages them all to solve every problem they encounter by forcing it into a Microsoft shaped box. Microsoft knows this, that's why they offer certification programs, but it may not always be the best option for your customer. Only by encouraging vendor-neutral certification like IEEE's and the two you mentioned (thanks!), do we begin to reverse this trend.
The article forgot an important new certification now being offered by the IEEE Computer Society. You can now become a Certified Software Development Professional (CSDP). This is a certification from a professional society, not a company trying to sell (hard|soft)ware and it has serious, vendor-neutral requirements. You have to account for 9000 hours of software development experience (close to 5 years!) and you have to agree to a code of ethics. This is the kind of certification that will make people take the software development industry seriously. Check it out. I'm working on mine now.
Lotus Notes mail has a cool password generator. I converted it to Javascript once and use it for all my passwords:
I can't post it here because it won't go past the lameness filter, but you can find it here.
It produces nonsense passwords, but they are easy to remember because they come out like pseudo-words. e.g. jenzog72, or slocrip16. It's about the only thing useful I ever got out of Notes.
This has nothing to do with the article, but the online poll at the bottom of the article is hilarious:
Should websites stop running online polls because they are unscientific? Options: Yes, No, Don't Care
There's a better article about this in the Seattle Times at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/13 4418970_software12m.html
Nice plan! Problem comes with item 4. In order to "dump" your enhancements, you'd need someplace to dump them. Microsoft had their monopoly of the desktop. Microsoft can successfully spread FUD because the press lap up everything they say. Nobody cares about your FUD if you're not one of the big boys.
This is absolutely true. It's just Republican strategizeing. This author doesn't care about the SSSCA any more than as a political tool to zing the Democratic supporters.
This is true, and I think the Intellectual Property (IP) holding companies know this, but they don't really care. If they simply cut off all access to their IP, it will be up to the content consumers (i.e. y'all and me) and hardware manufacturers (e.g. Apple) to seek remedy via the courts or whatever. The former has shown a complete lack of interest in doing anything to fight them and the hardware manufacturers will be happy to sell us new hardware that circumvents (either "illegally" or via some sort of legal partnership) the protection.
No matter what, we are screwed.
I'm a little wary of the so-called "pre-cautionary principle" myself. It's all about the economics of being cautious. However, something I found interesting about the rebuttal essays in Scientific American was the argument from ignorance.
The best science we have about climate change says that anything between A and Z could happen (well maybe A through M), but Lomborg interprets the data to say that A or B will happen. Since we can live with A or B, everything is fine. Scientists aren't taking the opposite conclusion, they just aren't as willing to accept such a narrow interpretation. Scientist take a classically conservative [I'm talking the dictionary definition, not the political definition] view of their subjects. The error bars are always wide to begin with. They are not easily swayed by people who want to narrow them. That is as it should be.
In the face of our ignorance about our environment [biological, economic, social, whatever], a conservative approach is called for. It's called hedging your bets.