The stars of a constillation are assigned greek letters in order of their brightness (roughly). So the brightest star in a constillation is alpha. Rho (a little p) is the 17th letter in the greek alphabet so 'rho cas' will be the 17th brightest star in the constalltion cassiopia. Go outside some night, find the big W and see how many of its stars you can see. If you can see more than 17 you can see 'rho cas.'
Rho Cas is magnitude 4.51. The lower the number the brighter the star. Magnitude 1 is a very easily seen star. 2 is pretty easy to see from most locations. Magnitude 3, you're gonna need to be away from a city. Mag 4 you need to be in the country really. Mag 5 you better have binocs or a scope.
BTW: The space station is often mag -1, and can be found with ease using the tools at www.heavens-above.com.
PPS: My advice on getting into astronomy, get some software (skymap.com / starrynight) THEN get some good binocs (tons of astronomy buying guides online) THEN maybe get a scope or ten.
(Then convert your webcam to work on your star-drive scope and hook it to an 802.11b laptop and do some star gazing from your living room)
This is assuming they print entire devices. They will probably print components. Imagine a computer like today's boxen: When the memory fails, your THROW IT AWAY and replace it. When the hard drive fails, you THORW IT AWAY and replace it. This process won't be printing cars, it will print the computer control for your car, and yes, you will throw it away and get a new one if it fails.
My point it is, we already throw things away at the component level which I believe this device will product.
Once we can predict the weather with high accuracy, we will change it... ipso-facto. Once we can make the connection between a butterfly in India causing snow in New England, we will be able to put another butterfly in france to make more snow.
Everyone's always talking about the weather, and no-one's ever doing anything about it.
A very large number of today's students will eventually want a job where they will be expecteed to have a certain level of computer skills. So, while the computers in the class room may not be making math 100 times easier to learn, or exposing the student to life in India, the student will have an impossible time learning to use a computer with out hands on use.
Almost every career can be viewed through this narrow minded window.
Similar reasons can be found for almost any career being short, and statistics can be shown to support that (as well as almost anything you can think of.)
Problems with the current economy shouldn't cause one to abandon a career.
Maybe we're too paranoid. I've seen burn-out, and lemme tell ya, it dosen't need to happen, and most people I've heard complain about it are really NOT burning out.
I dunno who chose these images, but I can come up with at least 10 images that I find much more interesting. And HOW can I find all these wonderfull astronomy images? HERE:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html The "Astronomy Picture of the Day" site. Over 7 years online, never a format change, and never an advertisement.
The site mentioned in the article has the most annoying advertising I have yet to see on the internet.
M@
Re:Doctors PRACTICE.
on
Complications
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
The human body has an amazing ability to heal itself... thus the "take 2 asprin and call me in the morning" advice is often the best.
I'm reading _Common Sense_ on the palm right now, and find this quote interesting in relation to this story:
Could the straggling thoughts of individuals be collected, they would frequently form materials for the wise and able men to improve into useful matter
I refute that the craze is fueled by spam, and propose that the craze is fueling spam. I realize this is difficult to prove or even investigate. Saying that the former is true though could be applied to the viagra craze as well. I imagine the reporters could find a SHRED of evidence that people are motivated to buy one of these R/C cars from a store becuase they got a few spams, but this may be a statistically insignificant event.
Just read this last night in Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, and it really sums up my attitude: "As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously."
This was after being offered a patent on the Franklin Stove. He basically gave the technology away. Same with the lightning rod.
Back in the 90's, Phish made some copies of some studio work that they didn't want people distributing, so they digitally watermarked every copy they gave out. I think it was like 20 copies, so they could tell if someone allowed it to be copied. Funny part is: It worked! I have yet to see copies of that stuff distributed. Seems those who got the copies were afraid it'd be tracked back to them and they would loose the trust of the band or something.
I can envision people discovering the waremarking technology though. You and a friend register and download the same track, then run a binary diff on the files. Should be pretty easy to determine where the watermark is and change it though.
"Not Cheap" does not imply more programmers. You could by a very expensive off the shelf product and customize it. You could pay a firm a TON of money to develop it for you. You could hire the expert in the field, the #1 developer of this type of software, at $500/hr to do it for you. There are many expensive solutions that are not "hire more programmers."
I know excatly what Cliche means, and is excatly the word I meant to use. Please get an identity and repost. Chic and Passe' do not mean what I meant to say, which is why I didn't use them.
Dictionary's are paper... which is cliche. You should have advised me to look it up online.
Saying that you can do everything you can do with a PDA with a pad of paper and a pencil is completely CLICHE. It's more a "status symbol" saying you don't need one, and that you use paper and pencil.
It's going to be very hard getting honost results on any poll about who uses them becuase 'the man' doesn't want that data to become public no matter what it says.
Personally, I use mine for all the stuff they market them for, plus reading eBooks and astronomy stuff. Given time a lot more people will have PDA's than computers, once they replace the need for a computer. They are already as powerful as some sucesful personal computers.
Really, I'm suprised slashdot would stoop to this level. Maybe it's a joke and I didn't get it?
I periodically broadcast all my data to Vega. That way, if I ever have a catastrophic destruction of all the data, I only need to send a faster than light ship towards Vega far enough to recieve the last broadcast. If someone ever gets a sleeping virus into the system... I just send the ship a little futher and get an older backup.
There is a chance that something will happen to the earth that will kill everyone on it. Asteroid/War/Biological being the prime candidates. There is nothing we can do to reduce the probability to zero.
What we CAN do is get a self sustaining colony on another planet. I wish we could come up with a way to convince more people of this, and impress the implications of not doing it.
I would like to see all religious activity funneled into the work needed to make this off-earth colony happen. It's not that I think religion is bad, I just think it is so much more important to preserve our species than to worship a possible creator/creators of it.
Instead of "thou shall not work on the Sabbath" we should have "thou shall work on off-earth colonization on the Sabbath." If the whole of humanity dedicated it's resources to making this happen, it would happen.
Is it me, or is every year the "last chance" for the "best ever." I feel like I'm buying a used car. Last year was great! But they said it wouldn't be good until 2099, or something. Here's the Slashdot Article, so yes go look, yes have a good time, but don't think this is the last time we'll see leonids in our life time.
Did I miss the sarcasm tags on the "slightly boring" comment or something? I think there's a large audience on slashdot who are all very excited about high speed computing. Overclockers aside, I know I hate waiting for a compile.
Latley though, I feel the things I'm waiting for my computer are not a function of how fast the CPU can run, but how poorly the software is written. Can someone can tell me why my windoze machines sometimes block for up to a min when I try to click the "Location" box on the top of the file browser common dialog control? Or the oft-complained about boot time for most everything? Or the time it takes almost any program to load up the first time you load it?
Anyone else think it's time to start over, and not just assume the fater and faster machines can deal with the laziness we program into the systems we build?
This collection of links failed to mention that the #1 computer is an "Earth Simulator." How kewl is that! Reminds me of the book _Earth_ by David Brinn.
My recommendation would be eCommerce and all that revolves around it: Here's some ways to get started:
You'll need to know how to work in a operating system that runs on servers. Maybe install and get used to working with Linux?
If you don't know how webserver's work, now is a good time to install one and play with it, how about Apache?
If you don't understand the scripting languages that make the internet work, learn one, how about PHP?
If you're not at least a little familar with how datbaases work, you should at least know how to get info from a database to a webpage, why not learn some SQL, so install and play with a database, how about mySql?
With a few more basics (security + content management + etc) you're now fairly versed in what you need to develop websites using LAMP (linux + apache + mySql + PHP)
The best part, you don't have to spend a dime to use any of these technologies. They are all free (as in beer). What I really like about all these technologies, is the ammount of documentation and help you can also find for free. Be sure to kick back a little, answer a couple questions after you've found a few thousand answers.
And if you need links to find mroe (alias more mroe) info, you haven't heard of google. (i.e. look for LAMP)
Slashdot Mirror
new name = Sieve Server 2003
M@
The stars of a constillation are assigned greek letters in order of their brightness (roughly). So the brightest star in a constillation is alpha. Rho (a little p) is the 17th letter in the greek alphabet so 'rho cas' will be the 17th brightest star in the constalltion cassiopia. Go outside some night, find the big W and see how many of its stars you can see. If you can see more than 17 you can see 'rho cas.'
.
Rho Cas is magnitude 4.51. The lower the number the brighter the star. Magnitude 1 is a very easily seen star. 2 is pretty easy to see from most locations. Magnitude 3, you're gonna need to be away from a city. Mag 4 you need to be in the country really. Mag 5 you better have binocs or a scope.
BTW: The space station is often mag -1, and can be found with ease using the tools at www.heavens-above.com
PPS: My advice on getting into astronomy, get some software (skymap.com / starrynight) THEN get some good binocs (tons of astronomy buying guides online) THEN maybe get a scope or ten.
(Then convert your webcam to work on your star-drive scope and hook it to an 802.11b laptop and do some star gazing from your living room)
M@
This is assuming they print entire devices. They will probably print components. Imagine a computer like today's boxen: When the memory fails, your THROW IT AWAY and replace it. When the hard drive fails, you THORW IT AWAY and replace it. This process won't be printing cars, it will print the computer control for your car, and yes, you will throw it away and get a new one if it fails.
My point it is, we already throw things away at the component level which I believe this device will product.
M@
Once we can predict the weather with high accuracy, we will change it... ipso-facto. Once we can make the connection between a butterfly in India causing snow in New England, we will be able to put another butterfly in france to make more snow.
Everyone's always talking about the weather, and no-one's ever doing anything about it.
M@
A very large number of today's students will eventually want a job where they will be expecteed to have a certain level of computer skills. So, while the computers in the class room may not be making math 100 times easier to learn, or exposing the student to life in India, the student will have an impossible time learning to use a computer with out hands on use.
M@
Almost every career can be viewed through this narrow minded window.
Similar reasons can be found for almost any career being short, and statistics can be shown to support that (as well as almost anything you can think of.)
Problems with the current economy shouldn't cause one to abandon a career.
Maybe we're too paranoid. I've seen burn-out, and lemme tell ya, it dosen't need to happen, and most people I've heard complain about it are really NOT burning out.
M@
I dunno who chose these images, but I can come up with at least 10 images that I find much more interesting. And HOW can I find all these wonderfull astronomy images? HERE:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
The "Astronomy Picture of the Day" site. Over 7 years online, never a format change, and never an advertisement.
The site mentioned in the article has the most annoying advertising I have yet to see on the internet.
M@
The human body has an amazing ability to heal itself... thus the "take 2 asprin and call me in the morning" advice is often the best.
M@
I'm reading _Common Sense_ on the palm right now, and find this quote interesting in relation to this story:
Could the straggling thoughts of individuals be collected, they would frequently form materials for the wise and able men to improve into useful matter
M@
I refute that the craze is fueled by spam, and propose that the craze is fueling spam. I realize this is difficult to prove or even investigate. Saying that the former is true though could be applied to the viagra craze as well. I imagine the reporters could find a SHRED of evidence that people are motivated to buy one of these R/C cars from a store becuase they got a few spams, but this may be a statistically insignificant event.
M@
Just read this last night in Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, and it really sums up my attitude:
"As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously."
This was after being offered a patent on the Franklin Stove. He basically gave the technology away. Same with the lightning rod.
M@
Back in the 90's, Phish made some copies of some studio work that they didn't want people distributing, so they digitally watermarked every copy they gave out. I think it was like 20 copies, so they could tell if someone allowed it to be copied. Funny part is: It worked! I have yet to see copies of that stuff distributed. Seems those who got the copies were afraid it'd be tracked back to them and they would loose the trust of the band or something.
I can envision people discovering the waremarking technology though. You and a friend register and download the same track, then run a binary diff on the files. Should be pretty easy to determine where the watermark is and change it though.
M@
"Not Cheap" does not imply more programmers. You could by a very expensive off the shelf product and customize it. You could pay a firm a TON of money to develop it for you. You could hire the expert in the field, the #1 developer of this type of software, at $500/hr to do it for you. There are many expensive solutions that are not "hire more programmers."
M@
I know excatly what Cliche means, and is excatly the word I meant to use. Please get an identity and repost. Chic and Passe' do not mean what I meant to say, which is why I didn't use them.
Dictionary's are paper... which is cliche. You should have advised me to look it up online.
M@
Saying that you can do everything you can do with a PDA with a pad of paper and a pencil is completely CLICHE. It's more a "status symbol" saying you don't need one, and that you use paper and pencil.
It's going to be very hard getting honost results on any poll about who uses them becuase 'the man' doesn't want that data to become public no matter what it says.
Personally, I use mine for all the stuff they market them for, plus reading eBooks and astronomy stuff. Given time a lot more people will have PDA's than computers, once they replace the need for a computer. They are already as powerful as some sucesful personal computers.
Really, I'm suprised slashdot would stoop to this level. Maybe it's a joke and I didn't get it?
M@
I periodically broadcast all my data to Vega. That way, if I ever have a catastrophic destruction of all the data, I only need to send a faster than light ship towards Vega far enough to recieve the last broadcast. If someone ever gets a sleeping virus into the system... I just send the ship a little futher and get an older backup.
M@
There is a chance that something will happen to the earth that will kill everyone on it. Asteroid/War/Biological being the prime candidates. There is nothing we can do to reduce the probability to zero.
What we CAN do is get a self sustaining colony on another planet. I wish we could come up with a way to convince more people of this, and impress the implications of not doing it.
I would like to see all religious activity funneled into the work needed to make this off-earth colony happen. It's not that I think religion is bad, I just think it is so much more important to preserve our species than to worship a possible creator/creators of it.
Instead of "thou shall not work on the Sabbath" we should have "thou shall work on off-earth colonization on the Sabbath." If the whole of humanity dedicated it's resources to making this happen, it would happen.
M@
An observatory in Florida can see all but about %10 of the sky. (One in Equadore could see everything)
The big problem is, no-one on this planet can see anything coming from the sun. We could easily get hit on our blind side.
My solution is to get some freaking people on a nother planet. NOW.
M@
Looks to me like someone estimation tool was proven wrong this year. Last year (2001) kicked this year's ass.
My personal data:
2000: 68 per hr
2001: 450 per hr
2002: 93 per hr
M@
Is it me, or is every year the "last chance" for the "best ever." I feel like I'm buying a used car. Last year was great! But they said it wouldn't be good until 2099, or something. Here's the Slashdot Article, so yes go look, yes have a good time, but don't think this is the last time we'll see leonids in our life time.
M@
You got the whole platonic girlfriend/operating system anaology backwards. He want's an operating system that WON'T go down on him every day.
M@
Did I miss the sarcasm tags on the "slightly boring" comment or something? I think there's a large audience on slashdot who are all very excited about high speed computing. Overclockers aside, I know I hate waiting for a compile.
Latley though, I feel the things I'm waiting for my computer are not a function of how fast the CPU can run, but how poorly the software is written. Can someone can tell me why my windoze machines sometimes block for up to a min when I try to click the "Location" box on the top of the file browser common dialog control? Or the oft-complained about boot time for most everything? Or the time it takes almost any program to load up the first time you load it?
Anyone else think it's time to start over, and not just assume the fater and faster machines can deal with the laziness we program into the systems we build?
M@
This collection of links failed to mention that the #1 computer is an "Earth Simulator." How kewl is that! Reminds me of the book _Earth_ by David Brinn.
M@
My recommendation would be eCommerce and all that revolves around it: Here's some ways to get started:
You'll need to know how to work in a operating system that runs on servers. Maybe install and get used to working with Linux?
If you don't know how webserver's work, now is a good time to install one and play with it, how about Apache?
If you don't understand the scripting languages that make the internet work, learn one, how about PHP?
If you're not at least a little familar with how datbaases work, you should at least know how to get info from a database to a webpage, why not learn some SQL, so install and play with a database, how about mySql?
With a few more basics (security + content management + etc) you're now fairly versed in what you need to develop websites using LAMP (linux + apache + mySql + PHP)
The best part, you don't have to spend a dime to use any of these technologies. They are all free (as in beer). What I really like about all these technologies, is the ammount of documentation and help you can also find for free. Be sure to kick back a little, answer a couple questions after you've found a few thousand answers.
And if you need links to find mroe (alias more mroe) info, you haven't heard of google. (i.e. look for LAMP)
M@
How come I can't get Celestia to show the correct phase and ring shadow at the same time, to look the same as this photo?
And: How phreaking kewl is it that we can view recent probe photos and have FREE (as in beer) software to simulate those photos? Wow.
M@