I know very little about it, but I looked up DSA-394 and links therein, and it seems it was just a DoS in the worst case on Debian, but it contains "Assigned (20030714)". Does that mean it was known on 14. july? In that case, it too three months?
Not at all. I know a few people there, and they're thinking is that as long as there is more than one browser, there's is always going to be a market (or niche, whatever) for Opera. They have always welcomed the competition by Mozilla and Konqi. Real competition is good, but the malicious attacks by MS are bad. So, we're in this together.
Most of the things you write are very interesting, and highly accurate, but it is not the whole story. I very much agree that Kepler did a more fundamental breakthrough than Copernicus, and the stuff you write about Columbus is also completely correct. After having studied some history of astronomy (I'm really a cosmologist), I feel there are similarities between the thinking around late 1500-ties and early 1600. I would love to really elaborate on this some day, because it is a worthy subject, but since this is/. I'll just ramble...:-)
I think it was Galileo who wrote to one of his associates that he admired and labored to emulate the resolution of men like Copernicus who could, ignoring the input of their senses, contradict these senses in describing how things OUGHT to behave according to ideal laws.
It may indeed have been Galileo, and while I haven't read this particular quote, it may well be genuine. But, I would dispute that there were any major emphasis on observations pre-Brahe. If you read J.L.E Dreyer, he gives this extensive treatment, and you'll find a sentence which pretty much concludes it all "nowhere is the poor state of observations in the middle ages better illustrated".
In fact, I think you overestimate the importance of Plato. After Kepler had struggled for years with his Platonic solids and failed miserably, Brahe told him "young man, it doesn't matter how you think the world should behave, because it doesn't. You have to consult the merciless answers of Nature".
If this contradicts or just supplement what you say, is up to you to decide, for it was another late 1500 idea that clearly had to do with ideals that gained strength: The necessity of "physics". It was insufficient to just predict how planets would move. To really understand it, you would have to understand why and how, IOW, physics. They very much tried, as is evident from the construction of "Theorica Orbiums", especially in the 1580. I've studied a few of them, they have one in the science museum in Florence, but the barbarians of some curators are not aware of it: They've tucked it away an misclassified it as an armillary sphere! Arrrrgh! I find this the most interesting instrument of the Renaissance and they misclassified it!
Well, the intention of "Theorica Orbiums" was to show by making a brass instrument how the planets could move, mechanically, and thereby show that it was solid physics behind.
But at that time, most who were thinking about allready realized that Ptolemy violated pretty much all the laws of contemporary physics (that is, Aristotelian physics, mostly, but Plato's ideas also had influence here), with his epicycles and equants. And with Brahe's observations of comets, I think most realized that there was no physics, there was no way you could understand how and why the planets moved the way they do within the framework they had.
I guess that when you're saying that Plato's ideas was a catalyst, well, you could be right, but only in the sense that it made people understand that you could not understand the planetary motions, and that Ptolemy had no sound physical basis either. And I believe it was a little late to have any very important influence.
But for some, many were quite content with accurate, mathematical predictions, notably, Erasmus Reinhold. But my basic idea, the thing I think really set off the revolution, was the void that resulted from having no good physics.
But since this is/., I'm not going to justify it with a lot of detail, but mention that Kepler very early tried to come up with an idea for action-at-a-distance, he suggested magnetic interactions, inspired by Gilbert's "De Magnete" from 1600.
But, there you have it: We're seeing some of the things happening in mathematical physics today. Many really don't care if their mathematical theories have a sound, physical basis, as long as it gives the right answers. It is a
Before somebody who really doesn't know the issues jump on you, let me just make a minor qualification: Adaptive optics can produce better images than space-based telescopes, such as Hubble, better resolution (because of longer baselines), better seeing, and so on, in spite of the atmosphere. But technically, you are correct, Hubble is extremely useful also in situations where you're not really that dependent of image quality, because it gives you a priori knowledge of things like background level (something that's hard to know due to light pollution) or extremely accurate astrometry, which is important because adaptive optics may introduce distortions allthough the seeing seems better, so you need some hefty statistics to figure out, instead of just snap a couple of Hubble pictures.
I worked on a project where we used telescopes with a primary mirror ranging from 2.5 m (that I operated) down to 60 cm (!), and we could do that becuase of the exceptionally good astrometry done by a couple of Hubble snapshots. I wasn't involved in the reduction of the data, but I think the 60 cm data was rather worthless, but you get the idea, it saves us a lot...
So, HST is really valuable, and if it dies, it'll leave a void which would set astronomy back a lot.
Hm, actually when I hear about broadband-over-powergrid stories, we have been hearing about tests and "we're soon online" stories for years now, my first reaction is "yep, sure, wake me up if this stuff actually works without RFI problems". Those things are designed to do AC in the a few tens of Hz range, not in the MHz range.
But if I understand this stuff correctly, it seems like they are actually relying on the radiation as a carrier... Huh? Rather than looking upon RFI as a problem, they seem to be exploiting it... Well, that's a way of looking at it I haven't thought about before... Can that really work?
AFAIK, the box it's running on is a four-CPU solaris box with a 1Gbits/s pipe. My old homepage is on the same server. But then, it could be interesting to see if it can withstand/.ing when everybody loads the pics.
If people use banner blockers, we'll notice right away, and be able to tell exactly how it is effecting our ads, and that will be reflected very quickly in what we are willing to pay to show banners, which will in turn very quickly be reflected in what the ad companies will pay websites for banner space.
Excellent, I say! I'll be the first to cheer it along when the ad market implodes.
OK, so when I use a site that I like, there are banners for products I may or may not need. If I'm not going to buy them, I couldn't care less, but if it was actually a product I wanted, then they've been wasting.01 or whatever on showing me the ad, making the product I buy more expensive by the amount they paid for the ad I saw, and for all the other ads that no-one clicked on. I'd rather have the product cheaper, thank you.
This is what I do when I block ads at sites I like: I drop them an e-mail saying: "Hi! I like your site, it is well programmed and contains useful information. I am however, blocking your ads, because I find it annoying. I would, however, like to pay you for the content if you can find a reasonable way for me to pay".
What I hope to achieve is that they see that the whole ad-market is unsustainable, it is going to implode, and that it'll be a Good Thing[tm], and at the same time, encourage them to find other ways of letting the customer pay for their services.
I mean, why can't I just pay them the.01 directly, rather than through some ads that make products I need more expensive? Seems like a no-brainer to me...
Then, there's the problem: How do you get information about your products out to prospective customers? One would think that it was the primary reason for having ads at all, but sometimes I start to doubt that... Marketdroids seems like strange creatures... Also, often, marketing says nothing at all about the actual product.
So, instead, I'd like a database, a semantic web application or whatever, where I can compare products in a good way, read objective information about a product's capabilities, benchmarks, indendent reviews, etc.
So, there's a three-step-plan: Kill ads, pay directly by micropayments, get good product information.
Well, perhaps they understand by "consumers" really mindless sheep who'll buy anything that's thrown at them, and that we don't really count as "consumers" since we may actually evaluate the products before we buy them.... So, no ads are targetted at us. Which isn't that bad, when you think about it...:-)
I can see the value of particle physics, is is astrophysics I question. Sure, build new particle accelerators and fusion reactors--but what good does it do anyone to know about stars trillions of light years away?
To me, the two are completely inseparable. It's not the stars that we're doing this for (and besides, it's not even stars that are studied), it is the underlying physics. Astrophysical objects provide unique conditions to study certain phenomena that cannot be understood in a laboratory, at least not in foreseeable future. Take for example the sun: There we have fusion going on, but we still haven't a way to have a controlled and sustained fusion reaction going on here on earth. If you stop study the sun, don't even think about building fusion reactors. Then, there are also objects where the conditions are so extreme, it is really were you test theories, Active Galactic Nuclei, for example. And one of my favorites: Gravitational Radiation, there's no hope of studying that in a laboratory in foreseeable future, at least not on the scale planned by LISA. In fact, many of the theories in particle physics can be studied more carefully, and cheaper in astrophysical objects.
I think our engineering needs to catch up to our physics.
That's a very interesting perspective! I must admit I haven't been thinking along those lines before.
It could be that you're right, that we could go along developing technology based on todays basic knowledge for many decades.
However, curiousity and creativity aren't resources that you can use just by making political choices. I think it wouldn't work, because people like me would be deeply, deeply frustrated if not allowed to work on the fundamental questions that interest them. There is allready a lot of frustration, I can tell you that. I think that probably, all the creativity that goes into basic research would be pretty much wasted, very little of it would go into engineering.
I really think that the main challenge in science policy is to allow as many as possible to work on topics they themselves find interesting. That's really not easy, but it is the best way to get science and technology output.
Well, perhaps I should shut up, since I'm not even USian, but with the influence that a superpower has on the world, and since I'm an astronomer (and I think NASA is doing a great service to astronomy), and a user of HST data, I'd like to hear a US president take it more seriously, so here goes:
Perhaps Dean should step up and grab the opportunity right now: I would have said something like, "I'm a scientists, and I know the value of funding science well", then show that the plan Bush has proposed does not imply adequate funding, by pulling out a graph showing what kind of budget NASA had in the Apollo days compared to what is proposed by Bush. Then he could say something like "this is an investment, and it is an investment that has not only put Americans on the moon, but also made our universities the best in the world. But like all investments, you do it when you've got money. Now we don't. So, let us fix the economy first, then launch a program where all of humanity gets together to work towards a common goal, to put a human on Mars. Meanwhile we should focus on goals that are scientifically sound, and ditching HST is not".
If planned ahead, well, you might yes. Perhaps they could have installed something to do that on a servicing mission. But it is not "corrections", these things are failing as in go boom. It's been a problem with many satellites, IIRC, it happened to SOHO too. It's not a trivial problem.
Huh, I managed to submit a comment without intending to... Whoops. Anyway:
A few years ago, it was a book called "The end of science", I think the author's name was John Horgan, or something. I read it.
It has been said that he argued that the end of science was near because most things are allready known, but I think that's a misinterpretation of his point. I think you're touching on his point: That it will be increasingly difficult to argue why we should investing huge and increasing amounts of money into finding smaller and smaller insights.
The problem is, it is indeed very difficult to explain. I think I can explain why you're wrong, but it'll take me a whole book to do it, and you probably wouldn't read it anyway....:-)
The very short version of a core argument is that the reason why astrophysics (and particle physics ) is so important, is that without them, you're not going to get any technological advances after a few decades. Every insight that has after a while become technology in everybody's hands has a history beginning in astrophysics or "atomic" physics (insert epoch-dependent understanding of "atomic").
I could also write a book on why I think Horgan's wrong, and that has to do with scientists are starting to put more thought into how to test hypotheses.
Then, the problem is that neither politicians, nor the general public, nor CEOs has any clue, where the next breakthrough will be. In fact, not even the scientists who do it has. They're just working on something they find interesting, and all of a sudden, it turns out to be something of value. That's the way it has always been.
I'm afraid what we're seeing is what Horgan predicted. Trying to explain it to Bush is an exercise in futility, so what we're seeing is the beginning of the end of science. (not that I really believe it is, but that's another discussion).
But, then, going to Mars is probably quite easy. It can probably be done with the current understanding. It can probably be done by throwing money at it and just do it. But I doubt it will bring any huge insights.
That's not to say we shouldn't do it. But I think it should be done as a project that involves all of humanity, a project that all of humanity feels is theirs. It is more of a humanity-get-together-party than a scientific venture.
Hm, can you prove that humanity is really in a pressed situation? The population growth is not likely to be very bad, flatten out at about 10G. The earth has enough resources, we just need to distribute them evenly. It's a social and political problem, not a scientific and technological one, as far as I can see.
Besides, it's always been the forefront of science that's driven the rest.
It's not really the orbit, that's just a small problem. It's mainly the gyros, they are failing, and when they are gone, you can't point the telescope reliably at an object. That's why you need people up there to do the job...
OK, after reading up a bit, it seems that there may be something in this. However, Jonathan, I hope you realize that my skepticism is healthy with all the trolls running around slashdot...:-)
Cool! I'd be interested in hearing why they're not releasing their own software under e.g. the GPL? It seems that LEGO would be perfect to release it, since they have solid community allready, the free software allready exceeds their own software in quality and comprehensiveness, and they make money primarily from hardware, not software (which is one of ESR's cases where he thinks there is nothing to loose by opening up). And most of all, it seems to fit extremely well with their philosophy, open building blocks, no constraints.
Do you think you could bring in the argument and hear their thoughts?
Hm, there are no publications by anybody by that name in cond-mat on Arxiv.org and no hits for color gas(s) condensate. I don't know much of the research in that field, but I had the impression from friends in the quark-gluon field that they had enough to work on before understanding condensates... I'd like some links before I take anything in the parent post at face value...
I'd much rather keep my money and let private firms start making big leaps in space exploration.
That's probably because you have never been anywhere near a real space program. I'm an astrophysicist and I'm Norwegian, still I recognize their great contributions to advancements.
How do you expect private enterprises to do some serious science and exploration? Private enterprises wants to get paid you know! That's what companies are for. There's mining, of course, lots of enterprises could make use of that. But that would turn the other suitable planets and moons in the solar system into junkyards, and screw it up just like we did with our own planet. I for one, don't want to see that happening.
Perhaps you can find similar ways to fund a private space program, but they will just be small change compared to the enormous costs. It all boils down to that you have to get most of it tax-funded. Private companies can do parts of it, the parts they do best, but it is still tax money.
Astrophysicists world-wide strongly depend on the work NASA is doing, and contributing back to the community. Perhaps most americans don't realize it, and that's bad of course, but I really can't put the blame on anybody but yourself: NASA has a really good outreach-program, and they even feel compelled to design missions with outreach in mind (compare the design of ESA's XMM to NASA's Chandra, at least people in NASA blames the design of Chandra on the fact that NASA has to keep an eye on outreach in everything they do).
With private companies, do you really think that things like NASA Astrophysics Data System would be open? Nope, it would have been closed, complete with DRM and the like. What a wonderful world that would be!
I know a lot of people working in NASA, both fresh-outs and mission Science Operation Coordinators, and it's being done a lot of really good work in NASA, and I really doubt it could have been done any better.
Furthermore, NASA is not only into the "space exploration" that's about just popping in and out of our atmosphere, around our tiny planet. It is also into some really fundamental science, like cosmology. That's the kind of research that expands the forefronts of science, I can understand why people don't recognize it, because it is so very far ahead, but it is nevertheless the driving force for any subsequent technology: Without Bohr's speculations on the nature of atoms, you would have no semiconductors and no computer for you!
I've never seen NASA actually kill off any private ventures, but I have seen a few kill themselves due to incompetence and or a "1) blah 2) ??? 3) profit!" business plan. And it may well be that others will "kill" themselves in the true sense of the word...
That being said, I'm not impressed with Bush in this matter either. The US needs to fix the economy, stop wars, transfer the defense budget into space exploration, free NASA from the hands of the DoD, and then let scientists decide what to do and how.
But the traditional spam arms race is done and Bayesian and statistical filters have won.
I get the same statistics as you with my SA install, most of it is given a BAYES_99 score. Unfortunately, many don't train their own filters, and this is rather effective against them. But that's not the only reason why I think it is too early to declare the war as won.
There are ways to poison Bayes-filters that are better than this, and that may well be effective. If you sit down and think about it, I'm sure you can think of something too. I'm not going to write them, because it will be too easy for spammers to implement. Fortunately, spammers are stupid, and that buys us some time, but we still need more options.
If you choose to misappropriate my copyrighted work, it is a copyright violation and has nothing to do with the GPL or the public domain.
Indeed. That's why I wrote that it is a copyright infringement regardless of GPL in my original post.
Swedish law, at least, places very few restrictions on signing over copyright, but that is unimportant.
OK, I thought it was similar to Norwegian law, but I may be wrong here.
The GPL is not about signing over copyright, it is merely a license to use, extend and redistribute copyrighted work.
Have you ever contributed code to other projects? I know I have, and my three-line patches doesn't have my name on it nor my copyright notice. My name is in a Contributors file, but that's common courtesy, not required by the license. I'd argue that a lot of the code in free software is like that. And then, the problem is: If I go to court and say "I didn't know what I was doing when I sent this patch, I had beer with a few guys that seemed so nice, and they got me drunk and made me do it", what happens?
The crucial distinction, as far as I understand it is that a US court would probably say "tough, you had been using free software, benefitted from it, and knew what it was about", whereas a Norwegian court would say "Yes, they put you under undue pressure, made you sign away inalienable rights. They have to remove your code. So ordered".
Removing a few lines here and there would be a minor annoyance, but the problem is that it can, in principle happen to major libraries, such as Qt. Again, not that I think it would, but imagine the FUD if M$ started pushing this idea.
Slashdot Mirror
I know very little about it, but I looked up DSA-394 and links therein, and it seems it was just a DoS in the worst case on Debian, but it contains "Assigned (20030714)". Does that mean it was known on 14. july? In that case, it too three months?
Yes, you! You're using security through obscurity, and you haven't understood how web crawlers work. RTFFAQ.
Not at all. I know a few people there, and they're thinking is that as long as there is more than one browser, there's is always going to be a market (or niche, whatever) for Opera. They have always welcomed the competition by Mozilla and Konqi. Real competition is good, but the malicious attacks by MS are bad. So, we're in this together.
It may indeed have been Galileo, and while I haven't read this particular quote, it may well be genuine. But, I would dispute that there were any major emphasis on observations pre-Brahe. If you read J.L.E Dreyer, he gives this extensive treatment, and you'll find a sentence which pretty much concludes it all "nowhere is the poor state of observations in the middle ages better illustrated".
In fact, I think you overestimate the importance of Plato. After Kepler had struggled for years with his Platonic solids and failed miserably, Brahe told him "young man, it doesn't matter how you think the world should behave, because it doesn't. You have to consult the merciless answers of Nature".
If this contradicts or just supplement what you say, is up to you to decide, for it was another late 1500 idea that clearly had to do with ideals that gained strength: The necessity of "physics". It was insufficient to just predict how planets would move. To really understand it, you would have to understand why and how, IOW, physics. They very much tried, as is evident from the construction of "Theorica Orbiums", especially in the 1580. I've studied a few of them, they have one in the science museum in Florence, but the barbarians of some curators are not aware of it: They've tucked it away an misclassified it as an armillary sphere! Arrrrgh! I find this the most interesting instrument of the Renaissance and they misclassified it!
Well, the intention of "Theorica Orbiums" was to show by making a brass instrument how the planets could move, mechanically, and thereby show that it was solid physics behind.
But at that time, most who were thinking about allready realized that Ptolemy violated pretty much all the laws of contemporary physics (that is, Aristotelian physics, mostly, but Plato's ideas also had influence here), with his epicycles and equants. And with Brahe's observations of comets, I think most realized that there was no physics, there was no way you could understand how and why the planets moved the way they do within the framework they had.
I guess that when you're saying that Plato's ideas was a catalyst, well, you could be right, but only in the sense that it made people understand that you could not understand the planetary motions, and that Ptolemy had no sound physical basis either. And I believe it was a little late to have any very important influence.
But for some, many were quite content with accurate, mathematical predictions, notably, Erasmus Reinhold. But my basic idea, the thing I think really set off the revolution, was the void that resulted from having no good physics.
But since this is /., I'm not going to justify it with a lot of detail, but mention that Kepler very early tried to come up with an idea for action-at-a-distance, he suggested magnetic interactions, inspired by Gilbert's "De Magnete" from 1600.
But, there you have it: We're seeing some of the things happening in mathematical physics today. Many really don't care if their mathematical theories have a sound, physical basis, as long as it gives the right answers. It is a
I worked on a project where we used telescopes with a primary mirror ranging from 2.5 m (that I operated) down to 60 cm (!), and we could do that becuase of the exceptionally good astrometry done by a couple of Hubble snapshots. I wasn't involved in the reduction of the data, but I think the 60 cm data was rather worthless, but you get the idea, it saves us a lot...
So, HST is really valuable, and if it dies, it'll leave a void which would set astronomy back a lot.
But if I understand this stuff correctly, it seems like they are actually relying on the radiation as a carrier... Huh? Rather than looking upon RFI as a problem, they seem to be exploiting it... Well, that's a way of looking at it I haven't thought about before... Can that really work?
Are anybody maintaining 2.2 now...? It doesn't seem to have been anything released on kernel.org since 2.2.25 and Alan went back to studying.
AFAIK, the box it's running on is a four-CPU solaris box with a 1Gbits/s pipe. My old homepage is on the same server. But then, it could be interesting to see if it can withstand /.ing when everybody loads the pics.
Excellent, I say! I'll be the first to cheer it along when the ad market implodes.
OK, so when I use a site that I like, there are banners for products I may or may not need. If I'm not going to buy them, I couldn't care less, but if it was actually a product I wanted, then they've been wasting .01 or whatever on showing me the ad, making the product I buy more expensive by the amount they paid for the ad I saw, and for all the other ads that no-one clicked on. I'd rather have the product cheaper, thank you.
This is what I do when I block ads at sites I like: I drop them an e-mail saying: "Hi! I like your site, it is well programmed and contains useful information. I am however, blocking your ads, because I find it annoying. I would, however, like to pay you for the content if you can find a reasonable way for me to pay".
What I hope to achieve is that they see that the whole ad-market is unsustainable, it is going to implode, and that it'll be a Good Thing[tm], and at the same time, encourage them to find other ways of letting the customer pay for their services.
I mean, why can't I just pay them the .01 directly, rather than through some ads that make products I need more expensive? Seems like a no-brainer to me...
Then, there's the problem: How do you get information about your products out to prospective customers? One would think that it was the primary reason for having ads at all, but sometimes I start to doubt that... Marketdroids seems like strange creatures... Also, often, marketing says nothing at all about the actual product.
So, instead, I'd like a database, a semantic web application or whatever, where I can compare products in a good way, read objective information about a product's capabilities, benchmarks, indendent reviews, etc.
So, there's a three-step-plan: Kill ads, pay directly by micropayments, get good product information.
Well, perhaps they understand by "consumers" really mindless sheep who'll buy anything that's thrown at them, and that we don't really count as "consumers" since we may actually evaluate the products before we buy them.... So, no ads are targetted at us. Which isn't that bad, when you think about it... :-)
To me, the two are completely inseparable. It's not the stars that we're doing this for (and besides, it's not even stars that are studied), it is the underlying physics. Astrophysical objects provide unique conditions to study certain phenomena that cannot be understood in a laboratory, at least not in foreseeable future. Take for example the sun: There we have fusion going on, but we still haven't a way to have a controlled and sustained fusion reaction going on here on earth. If you stop study the sun, don't even think about building fusion reactors. Then, there are also objects where the conditions are so extreme, it is really were you test theories, Active Galactic Nuclei, for example. And one of my favorites: Gravitational Radiation, there's no hope of studying that in a laboratory in foreseeable future, at least not on the scale planned by LISA. In fact, many of the theories in particle physics can be studied more carefully, and cheaper in astrophysical objects.
That's a very interesting perspective! I must admit I haven't been thinking along those lines before.
It could be that you're right, that we could go along developing technology based on todays basic knowledge for many decades.
However, curiousity and creativity aren't resources that you can use just by making political choices. I think it wouldn't work, because people like me would be deeply, deeply frustrated if not allowed to work on the fundamental questions that interest them. There is allready a lot of frustration, I can tell you that. I think that probably, all the creativity that goes into basic research would be pretty much wasted, very little of it would go into engineering.
I really think that the main challenge in science policy is to allow as many as possible to work on topics they themselves find interesting. That's really not easy, but it is the best way to get science and technology output.
Perhaps Dean should step up and grab the opportunity right now: I would have said something like, "I'm a scientists, and I know the value of funding science well", then show that the plan Bush has proposed does not imply adequate funding, by pulling out a graph showing what kind of budget NASA had in the Apollo days compared to what is proposed by Bush. Then he could say something like "this is an investment, and it is an investment that has not only put Americans on the moon, but also made our universities the best in the world. But like all investments, you do it when you've got money. Now we don't. So, let us fix the economy first, then launch a program where all of humanity gets together to work towards a common goal, to put a human on Mars. Meanwhile we should focus on goals that are scientifically sound, and ditching HST is not".
Well, that's what I think, anyway... :-)
If planned ahead, well, you might yes. Perhaps they could have installed something to do that on a servicing mission. But it is not "corrections", these things are failing as in go boom. It's been a problem with many satellites, IIRC, it happened to SOHO too. It's not a trivial problem.
A few years ago, it was a book called "The end of science", I think the author's name was John Horgan, or something. I read it.
It has been said that he argued that the end of science was near because most things are allready known, but I think that's a misinterpretation of his point. I think you're touching on his point: That it will be increasingly difficult to argue why we should investing huge and increasing amounts of money into finding smaller and smaller insights.
The problem is, it is indeed very difficult to explain. I think I can explain why you're wrong, but it'll take me a whole book to do it, and you probably wouldn't read it anyway.... :-)
The very short version of a core argument is that the reason why astrophysics (and particle physics ) is so important, is that without them, you're not going to get any technological advances after a few decades. Every insight that has after a while become technology in everybody's hands has a history beginning in astrophysics or "atomic" physics (insert epoch-dependent understanding of "atomic").
I could also write a book on why I think Horgan's wrong, and that has to do with scientists are starting to put more thought into how to test hypotheses.
Then, the problem is that neither politicians, nor the general public, nor CEOs has any clue, where the next breakthrough will be. In fact, not even the scientists who do it has. They're just working on something they find interesting, and all of a sudden, it turns out to be something of value. That's the way it has always been.
I'm afraid what we're seeing is what Horgan predicted. Trying to explain it to Bush is an exercise in futility, so what we're seeing is the beginning of the end of science. (not that I really believe it is, but that's another discussion).
But, then, going to Mars is probably quite easy. It can probably be done with the current understanding. It can probably be done by throwing money at it and just do it. But I doubt it will bring any huge insights.
That's not to say we shouldn't do it. But I think it should be done as a project that involves all of humanity, a project that all of humanity feels is theirs. It is more of a humanity-get-together-party than a scientific venture.
A few years ago, it was a book called "T
Besides, it's always been the forefront of science that's driven the rest.
Disclaimer: I'm a cosmologist.
It's not really the orbit, that's just a small problem. It's mainly the gyros, they are failing, and when they are gone, you can't point the telescope reliably at an object. That's why you need people up there to do the job...
OK, after reading up a bit, it seems that there may be something in this. However, Jonathan, I hope you realize that my skepticism is healthy with all the trolls running around slashdot... :-)
OT: Your sig:
I tend to prefer another Dane here:
Do you think you could bring in the argument and hear their thoughts?
Hm, there are no publications by anybody by that name in cond-mat on Arxiv.org and no hits for color gas(s) condensate. I don't know much of the research in that field, but I had the impression from friends in the quark-gluon field that they had enough to work on before understanding condensates... I'd like some links before I take anything in the parent post at face value...
That's probably because you have never been anywhere near a real space program. I'm an astrophysicist and I'm Norwegian, still I recognize their great contributions to advancements.
How do you expect private enterprises to do some serious science and exploration? Private enterprises wants to get paid you know! That's what companies are for. There's mining, of course, lots of enterprises could make use of that. But that would turn the other suitable planets and moons in the solar system into junkyards, and screw it up just like we did with our own planet. I for one, don't want to see that happening.
Perhaps you can find similar ways to fund a private space program, but they will just be small change compared to the enormous costs. It all boils down to that you have to get most of it tax-funded. Private companies can do parts of it, the parts they do best, but it is still tax money.
Astrophysicists world-wide strongly depend on the work NASA is doing, and contributing back to the community. Perhaps most americans don't realize it, and that's bad of course, but I really can't put the blame on anybody but yourself: NASA has a really good outreach-program, and they even feel compelled to design missions with outreach in mind (compare the design of ESA's XMM to NASA's Chandra, at least people in NASA blames the design of Chandra on the fact that NASA has to keep an eye on outreach in everything they do).
With private companies, do you really think that things like NASA Astrophysics Data System would be open? Nope, it would have been closed, complete with DRM and the like. What a wonderful world that would be!
I know a lot of people working in NASA, both fresh-outs and mission Science Operation Coordinators, and it's being done a lot of really good work in NASA, and I really doubt it could have been done any better.
Furthermore, NASA is not only into the "space exploration" that's about just popping in and out of our atmosphere, around our tiny planet. It is also into some really fundamental science, like cosmology. That's the kind of research that expands the forefronts of science, I can understand why people don't recognize it, because it is so very far ahead, but it is nevertheless the driving force for any subsequent technology: Without Bohr's speculations on the nature of atoms, you would have no semiconductors and no computer for you!
I've never seen NASA actually kill off any private ventures, but I have seen a few kill themselves due to incompetence and or a "1) blah 2) ??? 3) profit!" business plan. And it may well be that others will "kill" themselves in the true sense of the word...
That being said, I'm not impressed with Bush in this matter either. The US needs to fix the economy, stop wars, transfer the defense budget into space exploration, free NASA from the hands of the DoD, and then let scientists decide what to do and how.
I get the same statistics as you with my SA install, most of it is given a BAYES_99 score. Unfortunately, many don't train their own filters, and this is rather effective against them. But that's not the only reason why I think it is too early to declare the war as won.
There are ways to poison Bayes-filters that are better than this, and that may well be effective. If you sit down and think about it, I'm sure you can think of something too. I'm not going to write them, because it will be too easy for spammers to implement. Fortunately, spammers are stupid, and that buys us some time, but we still need more options.
Huh?!? AFAIK, CSS/Text was invented by Hakon Wium Lie, now CTO of Opera, in 1994. Or what do you mean by CSS/Text?
Indeed. That's why I wrote that it is a copyright infringement regardless of GPL in my original post.
OK, I thought it was similar to Norwegian law, but I may be wrong here.
Have you ever contributed code to other projects? I know I have, and my three-line patches doesn't have my name on it nor my copyright notice. My name is in a Contributors file, but that's common courtesy, not required by the license. I'd argue that a lot of the code in free software is like that. And then, the problem is: If I go to court and say "I didn't know what I was doing when I sent this patch, I had beer with a few guys that seemed so nice, and they got me drunk and made me do it", what happens?
The crucial distinction, as far as I understand it is that a US court would probably say "tough, you had been using free software, benefitted from it, and knew what it was about", whereas a Norwegian court would say "Yes, they put you under undue pressure, made you sign away inalienable rights. They have to remove your code. So ordered".
Removing a few lines here and there would be a minor annoyance, but the problem is that it can, in principle happen to major libraries, such as Qt. Again, not that I think it would, but imagine the FUD if M$ started pushing this idea.