Spaceflightnow.com had an article posted about a week ago that had to do with the Augustine commissions initial presentation of the report to once of the congressional science committees. You can read it here. There are some interesting remarks made by some of the committee members in that particular article. Specifically, the Arizona representative quoted near the end of the article seems particularly condescending and, well, f***ing stupid.
I can understand that Congress doesn't want to scrap a current project that has some momentum behind it. Aerospace projects take quite awhile to develop, especially the ones that break atmosphere. That being said, if they really do want to get the Constellation program back on its feet, they should fund it. If they are going to play God with their checkbooks though and hold the space program ransom in the name of national interest, screw them. If they won't fund the program properly then it is just going to die slowly and be a money sink until then. If there is anything that NASA's "faster, better, cheaper" space program showed us, it was that space projects that aren't developed properly die gloriously (for reference, that was the program that produced the Mars orbiter which smashed into the surface of Mars due to one subcontractor using metric measurements and one using SI measurements). If Congress refuses to fund the Constellation program properly, you can be guaranteed that shit is going to explode at some point.
If Congress is unwilling to consider alternative missions, you can be guaranteed that manned exploration of space will stagnate in America's government funded agencies.
If Congress doesn't listen to the experts because their hubris has gotten the best of them, you can be guaranteed that the interests of science will no longer be served in this country.
I would be curious to know what reference frame they are hoping to use to generate these paths. I suppose it makes the most sense to do the mapping in a sun centered system but even then things are going to be changing a lot. The primary problem with trying to map the gravitational current paths between the LaGrange points of celestial bodies seems like it would be a time issue. The planets do not stay in the same orientation with respect to each other throughout any given amount of time. They are constantly shifting with respect to one another. As such, the gravitational current paths that the article discusses are also morphing and changing.
I would think that the best way to make use of gravitational currents would be to consider it as a design option for a particular mission and factor it into various trade studies against fuel and what not. This would allow the designers to decide if a particular mission would benefit from the current paths that exist at that particular mission time. Otherwise, collecting and aggregating all of the data to map these tubes for any particular orientation of the solar system seems like a very large task. I wouldn't particularly be interested in sifting through that data as a job. I feel sorry for the grad students that get that project as their theses.
Of course, if they are only planning on mapping the LaGrange orientations with respect to Sun-body systems the task would be greatly simplified. Limiting the task to the gravitational perturbations between the 8 planets + Pluto and the Sun would greatly reduce the orientation permutations needed to be taken into account. Approached from that regard, local LaGrange systems (e.g. the Jovian moons wrt to Jupiter proper) could be modeled separately and, thus, a series of local maps could be made for various moon-planet orientations at different times.
The task being described is certainly no walk in the park and I wish the article had more details relating to the scope of the project and the approach being taken. Drawing 'maps' for space is a very difficult problem because things don't hold still in space. There are very few inertial points of reference with respect to any given field of scope which can be mapped against.
I'm sorry but I fail to see how the topic mentioned in the article (yes I read it, no I am not new here) has to do with schools succumbing to the 'make everybody equal mindset.' Granted, the program is an attempt to educate kids through the use of video games. But just because video games are very popular amongst kids doesn't mean there is some connection between this program and trying to make every single kid equal. I would assert, however, that implementing a program like this. which gives kids more freedom in how to learn (different choices in video games, different approaches to problem solving, etc.). would probably help those kids with superior intelligence and problem solving skills shine more.
Forgive me if I am treading on your lawn but frankly, the school system as it stands now is a broken piece of shit (which you seem to agree with). Currently we stuff kids into a room, unload an unending string of partially garbled speech at them (through teachers that can hardly make sense of their own thoughts), and expect them to absorb it all like a sponge. Then we ask them to barf the crap they just heard back onto papers in an automaton fashion so that they can be rewarded with a pat on the head in the form of good grades. It's ridiculous, stifling, and completely fails to teach children how to learn (it succeeds very well in teaching them to accept what they are told though).
The program described in the article, while it may end up failing or may end up succeeding (I don't know which), is at least an attempt to break free of that massively screwed system. It puts the children in a technologically immersed learning environment (that alone should pay off in an ever-increasingly technologically linked world) and gives them the opportunity to approach education in a way that makes sense to them (with guidance from their teachers). This not only gives them a chance to try new things in a safe environment (last I checked kids don't get hurt from video games), but it also gives them a chance to approach problems and knowledge by a means that works for them. That freedom and that freedom alone makes this program worth observing and not just dismissing out of hand.
Furthermore, it appears that the games and programs kids will use to do their schoolwork vary from fun games to practical computer programs such as Adobe flash. As the article and summary both point out, these will give them a tech saviness that is lacking in kids these days. It gives them a chance to approach what are normally boring things for young kids (ancient Babylonian poetry) through a fun and creative medium (develop your own graphic novel) which could give them an intimate knowledge of something that most kids would just sleep through in normal school.
Don't get me wrong, I am as embittered as anyone that my own education was a patterned succession of memorizing crap right up until college, but that doesn't mean that I am going to slam any alternative education model that comes along just because I feel like it. Frankly, this idea is one worth pursuing if for no other reason to see if it works or not. If it doesn't, hopefully a better program will come along that will. Until then however, I have to say that I think this program deserves a little more inspection than, "What Crap."
First your state develops that absurd vehicle mileage tax system that was discussed yesterday and now your attorney general is trying to copyright a guide to your lawbooks? I thought we Californians were supposed to have the worst vehicle (overbearing emission standards) and copyright (Hollywood's home) laws on the books.
Stop making us look bad by making yourselves look worse. Give us back our position as Number 1 state in "Most Legislation Founded on Dumbfuckery!" Sheesh....
That depends, have you been paying attention to all the Orwellian crap going on in various societies these days? The line between paranoia and skepticism, after all, is really just a matter of perspective unique to an individiual...
(Though for the record I must say, I would be surprised if an insurance company would spend the time and money digging up a kid's elementary school health records).
Start colonizing other bodies in the solar system to increase the resources we have access to as well as the space we have to spread across. Develop new materials and processes that allow conversion and development of resources from one or two highly abundant base resources....
Just because you can't think of a means to solve the problem (I would call it a progress but that's subjective) of an expanding species doesn't mean no one else can. Just sayin'....
all of this makes for delicious copy, and much of the gnashing of teeth seems to be centered on the fact that the gaming press continues to fall for the contrived controversy to give the company exactly what it wants: coverage.
Submitter and the editor didn't actually see the ironic thing here?
FTFA:
No matter how upset a few groups may get, this has been a successful way to market the game; we're very much aware we're falling into the trap ourselves. The question is a simple one: are we sinking to EA's level, or is it the other way around?
But you know, no need to read the article on slashdot or anything...
Hmmm, I hadn't heard of that. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I will be certain to talk to my congress critters about it after doing a bit of googling =)
In the mean time, I'm working to make Ares I as safe as possible with smart sensors and abort logic. If it gets canned, we'll have to do the same thing with the next rocket... and the one after that, too, and....
I am an enthusiastic supporter of nuclear power for many reasons (the least of which is not its potential capability to move mankind into the space). However, no matter how excited and supportive the government or the populace become of nuclear energy there is one huge barrier that it faces. Due to the terror of nuclear energy generated in past decades, there are miles of legal hurdles, red tape, and bureaucratic BS festivals to go through before anything nuclear can be approved and implemented. Unless both federal and state litigators are willing to ease up some of the legal garbage surrounding nuclear facilities, it will remain an incredibly expensive (and unnecessarily so) solution to energy problems.
I hope the folks planning to establish new nuclear facilities hire a damn good group of lawyers. They are probably going to need it.
What's depressing about those events, from stricter copyright and anti-terror laws cutting away our freedoms to economic downturn and politicians spinning 'solutions' to it that are none but make just them and their cronies richer, is that you sit there, you know it's going to hit the wall and you're utterly helpless against the collective ignorance that allows it to happen. It's like watching a train ablaze on fire running at full speed and without a conductor straight for a cliff with people singing inside.
Alright, I am sorry if this ends up being offensive to somebody but I am sick of some nihilistic bullshit excuse being used incessantly to defend an attitude of complacency. The whole idea that, "we can't do anything about anything" is precisely the attitude that the powers that be want to instill in every man, woman, and child so that they just give up before making a fucking ruckus in the place. Frankly, I call bullshit. You, like me, and like every other human being on the planet have a lot more power to change things than we give ourselves credit for. Every day that you wake up and leave your house (I know this is slashdot but you do leave sometimes right?) you interact with people. Sure, a lot of those people are stupid, naive, ignorant, whatever. That doesn't mean, however, that they are incapable of being inspired. We champions of cynicism here on slashdot waste our days deriding those who are not of a 'nerdy' mindset for being too stupid or ignorant. Rather than bemoan them and lock ourselves away in our virtual white towers why don't we get out and teach them something? Do you really think that's impossible?
If you spent an hour every other day talking to someone 'dumber, less aware, or more naive' than you, over time, their powers of brainwashed stubbornness crammed into their lives by mainstream media and such would begin to crumble. You want people to be more aware of abuses of power by the government? Go talk to them about it in Starbucks. Don't sit on a street corner with a sign...just strike up a conversation and amiably start to explain to them what you DO know that they DO NOT. Bait them with things they are interested in such as the inability to play their DVD collection after building it up for 5 years. Do whatever it takes, just don't be some snarky douche about it. If your a total wanker you won't come off any better than the BSing politicians and CEO's that we have all become numb to listening to.
If we, the self-proclaimed intelligent of the world, spent more time talking to a group of 5, less-intelligent friends and less time pissing about how stupid they are on the internet, the resulting explosion of awareness would follow an exponential trend. Supposedly Ghandi once said something along the lines of, "Be the change you want to see." Well then go be the change that you want to see. Use your intelligence for the powers of good. Use your knowledge of the government to smart off to cops when they give you crap. Don't do it enough to ruin your own life. Don't do it enough to get thrown in jail for eternity, but make their lives more difficult. And if you do push it to far, use your molded powers of obsessive google searching to learn something about the legal system and fight their dark powers of coercion with your light powers of rationality. Make sure you do it in front of a friend so that they can see being intelligent really CAN help you function in this society (just not in the ways we are 'supposed to'). If you are sick of crappy intellectual property laws, go write a book or record a song or something else creative, release it under an open license, and show your friends how the world has access to something you created. The simple fact of the matter is that, with the advent of the internet, we all have the ability to touch and inspire and change more people than ever before. Even some intelligent blog written on a stupid site like myspace might inspire 1 or 2 of your friends to go pick up a new book for the fi
I know it was a joke, so WHOOOSH me if you must, but in the interest of pedantry I feel the burning need to correct you. Space is only cold and dark when you are in the shadow of some other body (planet, asteroid, whatever). If you happen to be outside the shadow of a body, then you can forget cold, and you can forget dark. Keeping electronics functioning on satellites when there is blistering, unfiltered solar radiation hitting your spacecraft is no easy task. In other words, 'cold and dark' only describes a very small number of relative orientations an object may have to the sun.
You're thinking in a far too limited context. It's not that the mouse is ahead. It's that the cat is(?n't) alive/dead and, thus, can(?'t) chase the mouse any longer. This, of course, assumes that the mouse is immune to poison. Perhaps he spent the last 20 years building up an immunity.....
Not to undermine the work of the researchers but this makes sense from a theoretical standpoint in terms of evolution. Humans as social creatures that reproduce sexually. It makes sense that, over the years, those individual genes that allowed humans to learn to flinch away from social stigmatization and learn from sexual/romantic rejection would survive more generations than those that didn't as, such genes would produce more socially acceptable creatures. For the human species, being socially acceptable is an instinctual desire as we tend towards the safety in numbers lifestyle. Loners, stragglers, and folks that never learned that rejection is a *bad* thing would/could have been picked off by predators easier and such. Hopefully, of course, that doesn't mean that slashdotters will start dying off anytime soon.
All jokes aside, though, I think I would have been more surprised to have learned that heartbreak and social rejection does not cause some kind of negative reinforcement within the human psyche. It is, of course, still interesting research.
It appears that they use a variety of instruments to map the moon. Namely, they use a laser altimeter to map the topography while using a neutron detector to map various chemical compositions such as ice, and an instrument to pickup ultraviolet light to study possible ice deposits in shadows. These are mentioned in the wikipedia article here . I imagine a more in depth discussion could probably be found somewhere on NASA's own site (www.nasa.gov). I will leave the scouring of that webpage to you.
As a general note, quite a few probes and satellites use radar for both communication and imagery/mapping data. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) instruments, for instance are used on spacecraft such as Venus Express. There are also quite a few earth-imaging sats that use SAR instruments. These instruments are usually mounted on the earth facing (nadir) side of the spacecraft. They are either affixed directly to the ''bottom" or they are mounted on a side facing the bottom. The same thing goes for optical cameras that image on the visible spectrum. Finally, communications dishes must be designed to operate A) on a different frequency and B) in a different direction. Usually comm dishes will point out an opposite side from imaging instruments. They can also be mounted to the respective 'top' of the satellite if they are talking to a middle-man communications satellite rather than the ground directly. (This can be a nice choice if constant throughput is a requirement as sat's in GEO can focus data to a very specific location at any time of the day and can see a very large footprint on the earth.
In other words, radar can be used for both 'imaging' and communications on one platform as long as the designers are intelligent enough (and they usually are) to realize that such an option has very specific configuration and frequency constraints. This is what keeps us aerospace engineers employed. We have to think of these things when other folk don't =)
The government has made it abundantly clear that it understands and cares little for scientific progress. It doesn't matter whether you lean left, right, or upside-down, the fact of the matter is that neither Congress, nor recent Presidents, have serious desires to see progress made in scientific realms for purely progressive reasons. As other slashdotters have pointed out numerous times, there is an enormous list of spin-off benefits that come from manned-exploration of space. Not only that, but direct benefits such as a progression of the human species beyond its own world are a payoff in and of themselves. Politicians don't care. If something won't result directly in votes, money, or power for politicians, then there is little chance that thing, be it a movement, a field, or an ideology, will get any serious backing from the legislative or executive branches.
This can also be seen in the Green movement, for example. Rather than fund or seriously investigate truly sustainable energy sources such as breeder reactors and fusion research, the government wants to hop on a trendy bandwagon (votes) that involves the more inefficient methods of solar and wind energy production and the costly subsidization of corn-based bio-fuels (money). We can, and should, therefore kiss off serious government spending towards goals like space exploration. True development and innovation will come in this field through privately funded space organizations and governments of other countries.
Companies like Bigelow Aerospace will work to make space accessible to the civilian population. Companies like Orbital and SpaceX will continue to try to reduce the cost/kg to LEO until space is affordable and accessible. Universities will continue to inspire engineering and science students to work on space-related projects just for the sake of doing 'something totally awesome' such as the Cubesat project. This will, in turn, provide a place of invention and learning. Other governments such as Japan, Russia, the UK, and the EU in general will lobby harder to have more say and dabbling in international space endeavors such as the ISS. Slowly, unfortunately, I think we will see NASA start to sputter and stagnate over the next few decades.
All I have to say to NASA is, "Thank you for all of the inspiration and hard work you put into paving the road to space for us." That organization put decades of hard work and research into opening up a whole new universe (literally) to us as a species. NASA, at its height, embodied the peak of the American 'can-do' spirit and gumption. It very much did make heroes of many dreamers and it should forever be remembered as an organization that truly inspired and captured the minds and dreams of thousands of people. The human race owes NASA a great debt for this and this alone. Sadly, however, I fear this organization is going to lose much of its former glory under the suffocating chokehold of egoistic and, frankly, stupid politicians.
1. Being able to "take a textbook home" without having to carry it will almost certainly lead to more at-home study and better students
Not to mention the students will have fewer back problems. My body still refuses to stand straight comfortably since I spent my entire age 5 - age 18 range carrying around a 40-50 lb backpack stuffed with textbooks from 4-6 classes just so I could get my homework done.
Inspirations aside, the Chrome ball is a powerful image on its own. It's no accident that it resembles an eyeball, signifying knowledge and insight.
It's funny, I look at it and see Hal 9000 and skynet bundled together in a deviously delightful, 'Simon Says' resemblance that slips it unwittingly past the fears and vigilance of even the most skeptic late 80's and early 90's children. Signifying knowledge and insight is a simply a crafty way of claiming it is 'All Seeing' without the growing number of web conspiracy theorists sinking their teeth into the new Illuminati search engine overlords. I, for one, feel resistance to welcome them, to don my tinfoil hat and hide under the covers until the shining light of Tom Hank's charming humility and powerful wisdom saves us all from the far-reaching tendrils of our thoroughly beta tested overlords...but....but...the temptation is too great...I
...just....
..have to know....
...more useless factoids....
Google! Here we come with open hearts and willing minds. We shall smight that devious aggressor Bing in thine honor!
All hail our knowledgeable and insightful self-evolved, self-aware search OS Chrome!!!
I've thought a lot about this and I think that there may be a somewhat different way to approach the task of developing cognitive AI. I should comment that I am neither a neuroscientist or a computer scientist, but I am a thinker. I tend to approach problems from a systems level design perspective and something that dawned on me is that no one seems to take into account levels of intelligence existence when trying to model AI (the exception to this that I have found is Rodney Brooke's demonstration of a bug brain in a robot). Consider the following for a moment.
So far, some of the things we know(ish) about existence is that entities tend to exist at varying levels of magnitude. That is, if you take a system, you can break it down into smaller and smaller components, or build multiple objects at a particular level into more complex systems. This is demonstrated in physics through the two fields of study of Quantum physics, and Astrophysics (though I would think it more appropriate to use a term like macro-physics). So far, it doesn't seem like anyone has applied this levels-theory to intelligence on a large scope. We tend to look at neurons and synapses and neurotransmitters and the chemical and sometimes even quantum interactions that occur in such. However, we don't seem to look outside the brain.
We know that quarks, gluons, bosons, and all those other quantum -ons out there make up matter-energy somehow. We know that matter-energy creates particles and atoms. We know atoms combine into molecules, and, in turn, molecules form into complex chemical structures (organic or non-organic, whichever). These structures form more complex structures and compounds and so on. From these small levels we somehow find everything we have observed in the universe to exist (unless you are Schrodinger). Perhaps, each of these tiers of existence is an intelligent entity in and of itself (we kind of need to stretch the definition of intelligence for this one). In other words, perhaps quarks function the way they do because it, 'makes sense' to them. And thus, they combine into particles. Perhaps atoms have an 'intelligence' like motive behind their interactions (we can call these the laws of chemistry if we want) and, thus, create molecules. Perhaps each of these tiers of existence progressively builds into a more complex 'society' of the lesser, individual parts which then goes on to follow its own motive and 'intelligent' forces.
Extrapolate a trend like this and you could start to see how something like a complex human system is capable. We are the sum of our parts. Our bodies could be a 'society' of molecules, each interacting the way it knows how to based on its own 'intelligence' forces. We see this when we look at something like intestinal flora colonies controlling the health of an individual, or immune system cells functioning to defend a human in order to preserve their own existence. If this idea (and that's all it is) has any credit to it, we could start to see that humans exist merely as a 'society' of our respective parts. We don't really recognize these lesser parts as intelligent creatures because, compared to our own cognition, they aren't. However, perhaps this trend goes beyond the development of humans. Look at something like the internet, or human society. Here we are, individuals, working to preserve our own existence. To do this, we have created more complex structures, entities, that go beyond the reach of one mere human. We created alliances to ensure employment to earn money to trade for food to keep our individual selves fed and living. But perhaps the social entities we have created (corporations, religious organizations, governments, complex technologies) are, in and of themselves, just the next level of complexity of intelligent structure.
Folks often complain about how a government or a corporation is not in the hands of 'one' person and therefore cannot be held responsible. Did it ever dawn on anyone that this could be because corporations have 'evolved' to a state of
Regarding new passports, I just received mine in the past couple weeks. No tin foil or any other RFID protection came with the document. It specifically says within the passport not to expose it to things like microwaves or water as the delicate circuitry inside could be damaged and invalidated. In other words, new passports seem to printed with explicit instructions on how to get your ID stolen. Thankfully, Thinkgeek has a solution. You can buy RF blocking sleeves for passports on that site. You can probably find them elsewhere, as well, if you use google....but really, who has the time for that anymore?
Slashdot Mirror
Spaceflightnow.com had an article posted about a week ago that had to do with the Augustine commissions initial presentation of the report to once of the congressional science committees. You can read it here. There are some interesting remarks made by some of the committee members in that particular article. Specifically, the Arizona representative quoted near the end of the article seems particularly condescending and, well, f***ing stupid.
I can understand that Congress doesn't want to scrap a current project that has some momentum behind it. Aerospace projects take quite awhile to develop, especially the ones that break atmosphere. That being said, if they really do want to get the Constellation program back on its feet, they should fund it. If they are going to play God with their checkbooks though and hold the space program ransom in the name of national interest, screw them. If they won't fund the program properly then it is just going to die slowly and be a money sink until then. If there is anything that NASA's "faster, better, cheaper" space program showed us, it was that space projects that aren't developed properly die gloriously (for reference, that was the program that produced the Mars orbiter which smashed into the surface of Mars due to one subcontractor using metric measurements and one using SI measurements). If Congress refuses to fund the Constellation program properly, you can be guaranteed that shit is going to explode at some point.
If Congress is unwilling to consider alternative missions, you can be guaranteed that manned exploration of space will stagnate in America's government funded agencies.
If Congress doesn't listen to the experts because their hubris has gotten the best of them, you can be guaranteed that the interests of science will no longer be served in this country.
"Use Condoms....seriously."
I would be curious to know what reference frame they are hoping to use to generate these paths. I suppose it makes the most sense to do the mapping in a sun centered system but even then things are going to be changing a lot. The primary problem with trying to map the gravitational current paths between the LaGrange points of celestial bodies seems like it would be a time issue. The planets do not stay in the same orientation with respect to each other throughout any given amount of time. They are constantly shifting with respect to one another. As such, the gravitational current paths that the article discusses are also morphing and changing.
I would think that the best way to make use of gravitational currents would be to consider it as a design option for a particular mission and factor it into various trade studies against fuel and what not. This would allow the designers to decide if a particular mission would benefit from the current paths that exist at that particular mission time. Otherwise, collecting and aggregating all of the data to map these tubes for any particular orientation of the solar system seems like a very large task. I wouldn't particularly be interested in sifting through that data as a job. I feel sorry for the grad students that get that project as their theses.
Of course, if they are only planning on mapping the LaGrange orientations with respect to Sun-body systems the task would be greatly simplified. Limiting the task to the gravitational perturbations between the 8 planets + Pluto and the Sun would greatly reduce the orientation permutations needed to be taken into account. Approached from that regard, local LaGrange systems (e.g. the Jovian moons wrt to Jupiter proper) could be modeled separately and, thus, a series of local maps could be made for various moon-planet orientations at different times.
The task being described is certainly no walk in the park and I wish the article had more details relating to the scope of the project and the approach being taken. Drawing 'maps' for space is a very difficult problem because things don't hold still in space. There are very few inertial points of reference with respect to any given field of scope which can be mapped against.
Good luck to the team though...
I'm sorry but I fail to see how the topic mentioned in the article (yes I read it, no I am not new here) has to do with schools succumbing to the 'make everybody equal mindset.' Granted, the program is an attempt to educate kids through the use of video games. But just because video games are very popular amongst kids doesn't mean there is some connection between this program and trying to make every single kid equal. I would assert, however, that implementing a program like this. which gives kids more freedom in how to learn (different choices in video games, different approaches to problem solving, etc.). would probably help those kids with superior intelligence and problem solving skills shine more.
Forgive me if I am treading on your lawn but frankly, the school system as it stands now is a broken piece of shit (which you seem to agree with). Currently we stuff kids into a room, unload an unending string of partially garbled speech at them (through teachers that can hardly make sense of their own thoughts), and expect them to absorb it all like a sponge. Then we ask them to barf the crap they just heard back onto papers in an automaton fashion so that they can be rewarded with a pat on the head in the form of good grades. It's ridiculous, stifling, and completely fails to teach children how to learn (it succeeds very well in teaching them to accept what they are told though).
The program described in the article, while it may end up failing or may end up succeeding (I don't know which), is at least an attempt to break free of that massively screwed system. It puts the children in a technologically immersed learning environment (that alone should pay off in an ever-increasingly technologically linked world) and gives them the opportunity to approach education in a way that makes sense to them (with guidance from their teachers). This not only gives them a chance to try new things in a safe environment (last I checked kids don't get hurt from video games), but it also gives them a chance to approach problems and knowledge by a means that works for them. That freedom and that freedom alone makes this program worth observing and not just dismissing out of hand.
Furthermore, it appears that the games and programs kids will use to do their schoolwork vary from fun games to practical computer programs such as Adobe flash. As the article and summary both point out, these will give them a tech saviness that is lacking in kids these days. It gives them a chance to approach what are normally boring things for young kids (ancient Babylonian poetry) through a fun and creative medium (develop your own graphic novel) which could give them an intimate knowledge of something that most kids would just sleep through in normal school.
Don't get me wrong, I am as embittered as anyone that my own education was a patterned succession of memorizing crap right up until college, but that doesn't mean that I am going to slam any alternative education model that comes along just because I feel like it. Frankly, this idea is one worth pursuing if for no other reason to see if it works or not. If it doesn't, hopefully a better program will come along that will. Until then however, I have to say that I think this program deserves a little more inspection than, "What Crap."
First your state develops that absurd vehicle mileage tax system that was discussed yesterday and now your attorney general is trying to copyright a guide to your lawbooks? I thought we Californians were supposed to have the worst vehicle (overbearing emission standards) and copyright (Hollywood's home) laws on the books.
Stop making us look bad by making yourselves look worse. Give us back our position as Number 1 state in "Most Legislation Founded on Dumbfuckery!" Sheesh....
Is thisntest desing in such away
Is your title designed in such a way that could falsify your hopes of being taken seriously?
....
Yes.
That depends, have you been paying attention to all the Orwellian crap going on in various societies these days? The line between paranoia and skepticism, after all, is really just a matter of perspective unique to an individiual...
(Though for the record I must say, I would be surprised if an insurance company would spend the time and money digging up a kid's elementary school health records).
With a wingspan of up to three metres and weighing 18kg, the female was twice as big as the largest living eagle, the Steller's sea eagle.
So it's late and I don't have my trusty TI-89, can anyone calculate the maximum airspeed of this beast? ... Unladen of course =)
I can't see it being a problem really, unless there is an African variant....
Start colonizing other bodies in the solar system to increase the resources we have access to as well as the space we have to spread across. Develop new materials and processes that allow conversion and development of resources from one or two highly abundant base resources....
Just because you can't think of a means to solve the problem (I would call it a progress but that's subjective) of an expanding species doesn't mean no one else can. Just sayin'....
all of this makes for delicious copy, and much of the gnashing of teeth seems to be centered on the fact that the gaming press continues to fall for the contrived controversy to give the company exactly what it wants: coverage.
Submitter and the editor didn't actually see the ironic thing here?
FTFA:
No matter how upset a few groups may get, this has been a successful way to market the game; we're very much aware we're falling into the trap ourselves. The question is a simple one: are we sinking to EA's level, or is it the other way around?
But you know, no need to read the article on slashdot or anything...
Hmmm, I hadn't heard of that. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I will be certain to talk to my congress critters about it after doing a bit of googling =)
In the mean time, I'm working to make Ares I as safe as possible with smart sensors and abort logic. If it gets canned, we'll have to do the same thing with the next rocket... and the one after that, too, and....
Thank you for that =)
I am an enthusiastic supporter of nuclear power for many reasons (the least of which is not its potential capability to move mankind into the space). However, no matter how excited and supportive the government or the populace become of nuclear energy there is one huge barrier that it faces. Due to the terror of nuclear energy generated in past decades, there are miles of legal hurdles, red tape, and bureaucratic BS festivals to go through before anything nuclear can be approved and implemented. Unless both federal and state litigators are willing to ease up some of the legal garbage surrounding nuclear facilities, it will remain an incredibly expensive (and unnecessarily so) solution to energy problems.
I hope the folks planning to establish new nuclear facilities hire a damn good group of lawyers. They are probably going to need it.
What's depressing about those events, from stricter copyright and anti-terror laws cutting away our freedoms to economic downturn and politicians spinning 'solutions' to it that are none but make just them and their cronies richer, is that you sit there, you know it's going to hit the wall and you're utterly helpless against the collective ignorance that allows it to happen. It's like watching a train ablaze on fire running at full speed and without a conductor straight for a cliff with people singing inside.
Alright, I am sorry if this ends up being offensive to somebody but I am sick of some nihilistic bullshit excuse being used incessantly to defend an attitude of complacency. The whole idea that, "we can't do anything about anything" is precisely the attitude that the powers that be want to instill in every man, woman, and child so that they just give up before making a fucking ruckus in the place. Frankly, I call bullshit. You, like me, and like every other human being on the planet have a lot more power to change things than we give ourselves credit for. Every day that you wake up and leave your house (I know this is slashdot but you do leave sometimes right?) you interact with people. Sure, a lot of those people are stupid, naive, ignorant, whatever. That doesn't mean, however, that they are incapable of being inspired. We champions of cynicism here on slashdot waste our days deriding those who are not of a 'nerdy' mindset for being too stupid or ignorant. Rather than bemoan them and lock ourselves away in our virtual white towers why don't we get out and teach them something? Do you really think that's impossible?
If you spent an hour every other day talking to someone 'dumber, less aware, or more naive' than you, over time, their powers of brainwashed stubbornness crammed into their lives by mainstream media and such would begin to crumble. You want people to be more aware of abuses of power by the government? Go talk to them about it in Starbucks. Don't sit on a street corner with a sign...just strike up a conversation and amiably start to explain to them what you DO know that they DO NOT. Bait them with things they are interested in such as the inability to play their DVD collection after building it up for 5 years. Do whatever it takes, just don't be some snarky douche about it. If your a total wanker you won't come off any better than the BSing politicians and CEO's that we have all become numb to listening to.
If we, the self-proclaimed intelligent of the world, spent more time talking to a group of 5, less-intelligent friends and less time pissing about how stupid they are on the internet, the resulting explosion of awareness would follow an exponential trend. Supposedly Ghandi once said something along the lines of, "Be the change you want to see." Well then go be the change that you want to see. Use your intelligence for the powers of good. Use your knowledge of the government to smart off to cops when they give you crap. Don't do it enough to ruin your own life. Don't do it enough to get thrown in jail for eternity, but make their lives more difficult. And if you do push it to far, use your molded powers of obsessive google searching to learn something about the legal system and fight their dark powers of coercion with your light powers of rationality. Make sure you do it in front of a friend so that they can see being intelligent really CAN help you function in this society (just not in the ways we are 'supposed to'). If you are sick of crappy intellectual property laws, go write a book or record a song or something else creative, release it under an open license, and show your friends how the world has access to something you created. The simple fact of the matter is that, with the advent of the internet, we all have the ability to touch and inspire and change more people than ever before. Even some intelligent blog written on a stupid site like myspace might inspire 1 or 2 of your friends to go pick up a new book for the fi
I know it was a joke, so WHOOOSH me if you must, but in the interest of pedantry I feel the burning need to correct you. Space is only cold and dark when you are in the shadow of some other body (planet, asteroid, whatever). If you happen to be outside the shadow of a body, then you can forget cold, and you can forget dark. Keeping electronics functioning on satellites when there is blistering, unfiltered solar radiation hitting your spacecraft is no easy task. In other words, 'cold and dark' only describes a very small number of relative orientations an object may have to the sun.
Cheers.
You're thinking in a far too limited context. It's not that the mouse is ahead. It's that the cat is(?n't) alive/dead and, thus, can(?'t) chase the mouse any longer. This, of course, assumes that the mouse is immune to poison. Perhaps he spent the last 20 years building up an immunity.....
Not to undermine the work of the researchers but this makes sense from a theoretical standpoint in terms of evolution. Humans as social creatures that reproduce sexually. It makes sense that, over the years, those individual genes that allowed humans to learn to flinch away from social stigmatization and learn from sexual/romantic rejection would survive more generations than those that didn't as, such genes would produce more socially acceptable creatures. For the human species, being socially acceptable is an instinctual desire as we tend towards the safety in numbers lifestyle. Loners, stragglers, and folks that never learned that rejection is a *bad* thing would/could have been picked off by predators easier and such. Hopefully, of course, that doesn't mean that slashdotters will start dying off anytime soon.
All jokes aside, though, I think I would have been more surprised to have learned that heartbreak and social rejection does not cause some kind of negative reinforcement within the human psyche. It is, of course, still interesting research.
It appears that they use a variety of instruments to map the moon. Namely, they use a laser altimeter to map the topography while using a neutron detector to map various chemical compositions such as ice, and an instrument to pickup ultraviolet light to study possible ice deposits in shadows. These are mentioned in the wikipedia article here . I imagine a more in depth discussion could probably be found somewhere on NASA's own site (www.nasa.gov). I will leave the scouring of that webpage to you.
As a general note, quite a few probes and satellites use radar for both communication and imagery/mapping data. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) instruments, for instance are used on spacecraft such as Venus Express. There are also quite a few earth-imaging sats that use SAR instruments. These instruments are usually mounted on the earth facing (nadir) side of the spacecraft. They are either affixed directly to the ''bottom" or they are mounted on a side facing the bottom. The same thing goes for optical cameras that image on the visible spectrum. Finally, communications dishes must be designed to operate A) on a different frequency and B) in a different direction. Usually comm dishes will point out an opposite side from imaging instruments. They can also be mounted to the respective 'top' of the satellite if they are talking to a middle-man communications satellite rather than the ground directly. (This can be a nice choice if constant throughput is a requirement as sat's in GEO can focus data to a very specific location at any time of the day and can see a very large footprint on the earth.
In other words, radar can be used for both 'imaging' and communications on one platform as long as the designers are intelligent enough (and they usually are) to realize that such an option has very specific configuration and frequency constraints. This is what keeps us aerospace engineers employed. We have to think of these things when other folk don't =)
Cheers.
The next step, of course, is to code the tweets in such a way that they aren't so suspicious
And people said that perl obfuscation, poetry, and golf tournaments didn't have any practical application. Ha!
The government has made it abundantly clear that it understands and cares little for scientific progress. It doesn't matter whether you lean left, right, or upside-down, the fact of the matter is that neither Congress, nor recent Presidents, have serious desires to see progress made in scientific realms for purely progressive reasons. As other slashdotters have pointed out numerous times, there is an enormous list of spin-off benefits that come from manned-exploration of space. Not only that, but direct benefits such as a progression of the human species beyond its own world are a payoff in and of themselves. Politicians don't care. If something won't result directly in votes, money, or power for politicians, then there is little chance that thing, be it a movement, a field, or an ideology, will get any serious backing from the legislative or executive branches.
This can also be seen in the Green movement, for example. Rather than fund or seriously investigate truly sustainable energy sources such as breeder reactors and fusion research, the government wants to hop on a trendy bandwagon (votes) that involves the more inefficient methods of solar and wind energy production and the costly subsidization of corn-based bio-fuels (money). We can, and should, therefore kiss off serious government spending towards goals like space exploration. True development and innovation will come in this field through privately funded space organizations and governments of other countries.
Companies like Bigelow Aerospace will work to make space accessible to the civilian population. Companies like Orbital and SpaceX will continue to try to reduce the cost/kg to LEO until space is affordable and accessible. Universities will continue to inspire engineering and science students to work on space-related projects just for the sake of doing 'something totally awesome' such as the Cubesat project. This will, in turn, provide a place of invention and learning. Other governments such as Japan, Russia, the UK, and the EU in general will lobby harder to have more say and dabbling in international space endeavors such as the ISS. Slowly, unfortunately, I think we will see NASA start to sputter and stagnate over the next few decades.
All I have to say to NASA is, "Thank you for all of the inspiration and hard work you put into paving the road to space for us." That organization put decades of hard work and research into opening up a whole new universe (literally) to us as a species. NASA, at its height, embodied the peak of the American 'can-do' spirit and gumption. It very much did make heroes of many dreamers and it should forever be remembered as an organization that truly inspired and captured the minds and dreams of thousands of people. The human race owes NASA a great debt for this and this alone. Sadly, however, I fear this organization is going to lose much of its former glory under the suffocating chokehold of egoistic and, frankly, stupid politicians.
1. Being able to "take a textbook home" without having to carry it will almost certainly lead to more at-home study and better students
Not to mention the students will have fewer back problems. My body still refuses to stand straight comfortably since I spent my entire age 5 - age 18 range carrying around a 40-50 lb backpack stuffed with textbooks from 4-6 classes just so I could get my homework done.
Inspirations aside, the Chrome ball is a powerful image on its own. It's no accident that it resembles an eyeball, signifying knowledge and insight.
It's funny, I look at it and see Hal 9000 and skynet bundled together in a deviously delightful, 'Simon Says' resemblance that slips it unwittingly past the fears and vigilance of even the most skeptic late 80's and early 90's children. Signifying knowledge and insight is a simply a crafty way of claiming it is 'All Seeing' without the growing number of web conspiracy theorists sinking their teeth into the new Illuminati search engine overlords. I, for one, feel resistance to welcome them, to don my tinfoil hat and hide under the covers until the shining light of Tom Hank's charming humility and powerful wisdom saves us all from the far-reaching tendrils of our thoroughly beta tested overlords...but....but...the temptation is too great...I
...just....
..have to know....
...more useless factoids....
Google! Here we come with open hearts and willing minds. We shall smight that devious aggressor Bing in thine honor!
All hail our knowledgeable and insightful self-evolved, self-aware search OS Chrome!!!
I've thought a lot about this and I think that there may be a somewhat different way to approach the task of developing cognitive AI. I should comment that I am neither a neuroscientist or a computer scientist, but I am a thinker. I tend to approach problems from a systems level design perspective and something that dawned on me is that no one seems to take into account levels of intelligence existence when trying to model AI (the exception to this that I have found is Rodney Brooke's demonstration of a bug brain in a robot). Consider the following for a moment.
So far, some of the things we know(ish) about existence is that entities tend to exist at varying levels of magnitude. That is, if you take a system, you can break it down into smaller and smaller components, or build multiple objects at a particular level into more complex systems. This is demonstrated in physics through the two fields of study of Quantum physics, and Astrophysics (though I would think it more appropriate to use a term like macro-physics). So far, it doesn't seem like anyone has applied this levels-theory to intelligence on a large scope. We tend to look at neurons and synapses and neurotransmitters and the chemical and sometimes even quantum interactions that occur in such. However, we don't seem to look outside the brain.
We know that quarks, gluons, bosons, and all those other quantum -ons out there make up matter-energy somehow. We know that matter-energy creates particles and atoms. We know atoms combine into molecules, and, in turn, molecules form into complex chemical structures (organic or non-organic, whichever). These structures form more complex structures and compounds and so on. From these small levels we somehow find everything we have observed in the universe to exist (unless you are Schrodinger). Perhaps, each of these tiers of existence is an intelligent entity in and of itself (we kind of need to stretch the definition of intelligence for this one). In other words, perhaps quarks function the way they do because it, 'makes sense' to them. And thus, they combine into particles. Perhaps atoms have an 'intelligence' like motive behind their interactions (we can call these the laws of chemistry if we want) and, thus, create molecules. Perhaps each of these tiers of existence progressively builds into a more complex 'society' of the lesser, individual parts which then goes on to follow its own motive and 'intelligent' forces.
Extrapolate a trend like this and you could start to see how something like a complex human system is capable. We are the sum of our parts. Our bodies could be a 'society' of molecules, each interacting the way it knows how to based on its own 'intelligence' forces. We see this when we look at something like intestinal flora colonies controlling the health of an individual, or immune system cells functioning to defend a human in order to preserve their own existence. If this idea (and that's all it is) has any credit to it, we could start to see that humans exist merely as a 'society' of our respective parts. We don't really recognize these lesser parts as intelligent creatures because, compared to our own cognition, they aren't. However, perhaps this trend goes beyond the development of humans. Look at something like the internet, or human society. Here we are, individuals, working to preserve our own existence. To do this, we have created more complex structures, entities, that go beyond the reach of one mere human. We created alliances to ensure employment to earn money to trade for food to keep our individual selves fed and living. But perhaps the social entities we have created (corporations, religious organizations, governments, complex technologies) are, in and of themselves, just the next level of complexity of intelligent structure.
Folks often complain about how a government or a corporation is not in the hands of 'one' person and therefore cannot be held responsible. Did it ever dawn on anyone that this could be because corporations have 'evolved' to a state of
Regarding new passports, I just received mine in the past couple weeks. No tin foil or any other RFID protection came with the document. It specifically says within the passport not to expose it to things like microwaves or water as the delicate circuitry inside could be damaged and invalidated. In other words, new passports seem to printed with explicit instructions on how to get your ID stolen. Thankfully, Thinkgeek has a solution. You can buy RF blocking sleeves for passports on that site. You can probably find them elsewhere, as well, if you use google....but really, who has the time for that anymore?
...Or even more concerning and probable:
"Registered Sex Offender - Type 1"