I don't hear people complaining that Ceres isn't a (minor) planet, so why pick on Pluto?
That's because Ceres IS a Minor Planet, infact it is the first object in the Minor Planet Catalogue. What we are actually debating here is whether Pluto should be considered a Major Planet. One of the proposals voiced in 1999 about this was to give Pluto the number 10,000 in the Minor Planet Catalogue.
The first idea that popped into my head was that a planet is anything that's hard for me to jump off of.
Do any moons have moons?
Some asteriods have moons. Some of the asteriods had enough gravity to become spherical during formation. Also some astronomers expect that there are many Pluto sized objects in the Kuiper belt, so that definition might prove controversial.
To my mind a planet is something that is made round by its own gravity, and is in orbit around a star.
Clearly under that definition Pluto counts as a planet. Pluto even has a moon called Charon.
Sure, but there are a bunch of asteriods (the largest being Ceres which has a diameter of 933km) which also meet that criteria.
There are a whole bunch of reasons to not consider Pluto to be a planet:
Pluto has a composition unlike any other planet. It most closely resembles Triton (a moon of Neptune).
Pluto has an orbit which is unlike any other planet. It's orbit is inclined 17 degrees, and is high eccentric - it is sometimes closer to the Sun than Neptune. It's orbit is similar to at least 70 other Kuiper belt objects.
It's "moon", Charon, is in a synchronous orbit (it's position is fixed relative to Pluto's surface). No (other) planet in the solar system has a natural satelitte in synchronous orbit.
Pluto is far smaller than any other planet. It is half the size of Mercury and only two-thirds the size of our Moon. It is likely that many other Kuiper belt objects will be of similar size.
Pluto is also very light in terms of mass. Current estimates put it's mass at around 1/500 of Earth's.
The fact that Pluto is made of ice is irrelevant- Jupiter is made of gas. Does that mean Jupiter isn't a planet?
Jupiter has a metallic core (as do all the other gas giants). In my view the two most damning factors are the orbit and the size of Pluto. Composition is of lesser concern. Note that we don't know for sure that Pluto doesn't have a rock or metal core, it's density is higher than that of the ices that it is thought to be primarily composed of (nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide).
For reference, here is the 2 year old CNN article about how the International Astronomical Union was/is considering reclassifying Pluto as a minor planet (like many asteriods). They decided against it. This is a really good article from Sky and Telescope covering the debate.
No. Australia is a continent. The definition of a continent is fairly arbitrary, but basically it means a large, continous mass of land. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica the continents are North America, South America, Africa, Antartica, Australia, Asia, and Europe. Asia and Europe are sometimes combined into the single continent Eurasia. While Australia is often considered an island, it is four times larger than the next biggest (non-continental) island, Greenland.
...is a search that can read our minds and instantly infer the most relavent results.
Or people could learn some more skills and actually specify what they want more accurately. I rarely have any trouble finding what I want with Google.
Google uses PageRank to determine the order of results, but does it track the sites its users click on after performing a search? No, but it should.
It's not really that useful because there's no way for Google to tell if you are happy with the page you clicked on. They might be able to implement it via the toolbar, but it'd probably still require the user to tell them manually (something along the line of the "did you get what you want?" question you see on a lot of site searches.
In my opinion the only worthwhile technology thay have is Babelfish. They should concentrate on making a revenue stream out of that.
This is all just noise from them anyway, they may be able to bully a few companies into paying royalties but if they go to trial they will probably lose. At least if these are the patents they're talking about, because they where all filed in 1998. Search engine technology was well established before these patents where filed. I remember using Lycos in '95 or '96. Even AltaVista was around before '98. So finding prior art should not be a problem.
As a user I hate Real. More than any other single app I use. I don't want fucking channels. I don't want take5 or whatever that shit is. I don't want icons I never asked for all over my desktop. I don't want spam. All I want to do is watch some video. Video that I can download, not a fucking stream. I don't want to have to go back to the server every time I want to see it, just because some asshole in marketing thought by streaming it they might get a few extra clicks on their banner ads.
I know streaming is suited to this particular application (live video), but I urge anyone looking at doing streaming media to avoid Real. For the damage they've done to my online experience they deserve a plague of festering boils, but I'll setting for them never getting another customer.
</rant>
By who, the anonymous posters? How are they gonna prove it's their work?
Besides it isn't illegal to publish this stuff at all. If you write a letter to a newspaper they can publish it. In it's entirity. Without a name, if they want (they don't because then they become the defendant in any ensuing slader/libel cases).
I know many programmers that, despite having no 'formal' training, can run rings around the Software Engineers I know.
Yeah, we've all met them, but most programmers who haven't had formal training lack the theoretical basis that makes great programmers. From simple stuff like proper structure, to stuff like knowing when and what to optimize, analysis of algorithms, database theory, functional programming. A lot of people think this sort of stuff is irrelevant in the "real world". It's not.
IMO a lot of industry courses are relatively useless because they teach how to program a specific language or a specific API. Degree courses usually aim to teach how to solve problems with programming.
IMO, formal training often reduces the ability to think creatively -- once you are taught "the right way", it's hard to break new ground.
I think that's true of a lot of university subjects but in my experience it's generally not true of computer science.
So does this mean there are some scientists who don't believe in the greenhouse effect or global warming?
No, this is a myth. All scientists believe in the greenhouse effect. Without it the planet would be largely frozen. And all scientists accept that if humans put more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere it will tend to warm the planet. The only disagreement is over precisely how much warming will be amplified by feedbacks. And there is a growing consensus that the average global warming of 0.6 C seen in the past century - and particularly the pronounced warming of the past two decades - is largely a consequence of the greenhouse effect.
So yes, there is debate over degree of influence human emissions will have. But there is far less debate about it now than 3 or 5 years ago. Most scientists are convinced. This isn't a theory of physics, if we get this wrong it could have disasterous consequences. As you say we are better to play it safe and continue research.
A really big problem with all of this is that we do not have any accurate records of temperature going back more than about 200 years. The link you point to starts at 1850. So yes, the '90s were the hottest decade in the last CENTURY, we have no idea if they were the hottest in the last millenium.
Direct measurements go back about 200 years, correct. There are other indirect ways of determining temperatures. See the links off of the page I was quoting from.
It took much discussion and a lot of preceding sentences about uncertainties and qualifications and multiple reasons for supporting the conclusion before the IPCC scientists were able to conclude in the summary that "the balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate." This may sound like indecision, but it is merely standard clarification of the context of their findings. There are no bold or unsupported claims.
Since last October they've taken a harsher stance. Accord to this article the text in the October stated that human activities "have contributed substantially to the observed warming over the last 50 years." The final text however said that "most of the warming is attributable to human activities".
Their main reason for the change is that the scientists are (justifiably) worried that politicians are not taking the situation seriously enough.
Yeah well junkscience.com is about the only URL I've seen produced by you doubters. And as the other replys testify there is virtually no recent material against global warming there, and the owner is hardly an unbiased observer.
First of all, reducing C02 doesn't really lower greenhouse gases. The biggest greenhouse gas is water vapor, making up 98% of all greenhouse gases. We can't control water vapor.
Let's assume human activities have no effect on atmospheric water vapour (which is obviously false: water vapour is a primary byproduct of hydrocarbon combustion). Atmosphere starts at a balance. Humans industrialize, we emit some (comparatively) minor amounts of greenhouse gases. Temperatures rise slightly, it may be hardly detectable. That results in increased water evaporation. Water vapour in the atmosphere increases. Nasty positive feedback loop. See here.
That's a gross simplification, and may not even occur. But we don't know. We don't know how delicate the system is. And we don't know if some previously undiscovered feedback loop is going to leap up and bite us on our arses (several candidates are already known).
It was similar to the worry about global warming now, only the reverse. As we know now, this didn't happen.
You display a lack of understanding. Global warming doesn't mean "everywhere gets hotter", it means that the Earth's average temperature goes up. Which results in changes to climate patterns which can result in regions getting colder, and possibly cause localized ice-age like conditions. This article (which is a year old) expresses concerns that Europe may face an ice-age style cooling effect. Again I stress: we don't know what effects these climate changes might have, but there's a good chance they won't be pleasant. Are you willing to take the gamble? Also note that we're talking decades to centuries here, not years.
Third, global temperature depends on where you measure temperature. If I measure temperature in the middle of the city, it will go way up as the city increases in size and population. If I measure it in the country, it's not going to increase. Statistics lie, that's what they're good for.
That's why they use averages. Sheesh. This stuff is not the result of some propaganda machine, despite what you might hear around here. The research is available in the applicable journals. Go read it.
Lastly, scientists don't agree on global warming. There was a similar conference earlier this year where scientists decided that they couldn't come up with a solid decision on global warming.
That sounds like lies to me. Produce a reference. Scientists can't agree on the exact effect of global warming but there are very few on deny it outright these days.
prediction of a specific future climate state is not possible.
No one is predicting a specific climate state for the future. They are predicting that on average global temperatures will be as much as 6 degrees higher.
They are trying to prove something that can't be observed, because it hasn't happened yet, can't be reliably seen to be happening...
You, and presumably JunkScience.com need to do a little more reading. Start here. Some highlights: 1987 was the warmest year on record to that date. The '80s had 7 of the 8th warmest years. 1995, then 1998, then 1999 broke that record. The '90s became the hottest decade of the last millenium, despite the eruption of Mt Pinatubo which interrupted the trend for two years.
Everyone should do their part, just cuz there's the slight POSSIBILITY something bad could happen.
And if we do nothing and Earth ends up like Venus, what then?
Man (as a species) has always been very fast to use new technology, which is fine. But we've also been very slow to respond to evidence of damage caused by that technology. For example, asbestos in buildings, thalidomide for pregnant women, DDT, lead in petrol, list goes on and on. These things aren't necessarily automatically evil, they often have their place if used correctly, but as a race we have a tendancy to jump in now and worry about consequences later.
The problem is that these days we're playing for much higher stakes. Global warming has the potential to cause massive extinctions possibly even end life on this planet.
First it was 3.5, now it's 5.8. That's a difference of 2.3 degrees! So what happened with the original computer model? Are now to believe that "Oh, that original one was flawed, but this one is the real deal! AND GOOD GOD IT'S WORSE THAN EVER BEFORE!!"
Or perhaps it's the same model and with the latest data it's now predicting a greater effect. I.E. global warming is accelerating.
Public ignorance and apathy are the reason we're losing these freedoms, not corporate greed and governmental corruption. Neither of those would have any power at all in a world of educated people who care about their rights.
You are right, of course. But I shouldn't have to know every damn thing that's going on. It is the government's role to protect the constituents. It's really the only role of the government. The government should be protecting my freedom, and they're not.
Of course not. BSD comes under a fair license that actually gives you choice and control of your code, unlike the GPL, which forces everyone who uses it to keep it open for the world to see. No choice, just forced openness.
So if the BSD license(s) are so great and fair while has it taken a GPL'd Unix to catch peoples' attention? Why is Linux the free OS that so many big companies have decided to support?
Project leader Professor Paul Horowitz, of Harvard University, said: "Using only Earth 2001 technology, we could now generate a beamed laser pulse that appears 5,000 times brighter than our sun, as seen by a distant civilisation in the direction of its slender beam.
But the critical point he forgot to mention is that while we could, we don't. What makes us think the aliens will?
Even if they did, laser based communication is likely to be line of sight so any aliens using this technology will be aiming the beams at their detectors. For us to detect the beam either they'd have to miss and hit us accidentally, or we've got to be within the spreading path of the beam behind the target, or we've got to detect it reflected off interstellar dust or something (which would radically reduce it's brightness).
Here is an article pointing out that the sun activity correlation fails to account for all of the warming that has occured since 1985. Note that one of the researchers involved in the original work referenced in the parent co-authored this new finding.
Slashdot Mirror
There are a whole bunch of reasons to not consider Pluto to be a planet:
- Pluto has a composition unlike any other planet. It most closely resembles Triton (a moon of Neptune).
- Pluto has an orbit which is unlike any other planet. It's orbit is inclined 17 degrees, and is high eccentric - it is sometimes closer to the Sun than Neptune. It's orbit is similar to at least 70 other Kuiper belt objects.
- It's "moon", Charon, is in a synchronous orbit (it's position is fixed relative to Pluto's surface). No (other) planet in the solar system has a natural satelitte in synchronous orbit.
- Pluto is far smaller than any other planet. It is half the size of Mercury and only two-thirds the size of our Moon. It is likely that many other Kuiper belt objects will be of similar size.
- Pluto is also very light in terms of mass. Current estimates put it's mass at around 1/500 of Earth's.
Jupiter has a metallic core (as do all the other gas giants). In my view the two most damning factors are the orbit and the size of Pluto. Composition is of lesser concern. Note that we don't know for sure that Pluto doesn't have a rock or metal core, it's density is higher than that of the ices that it is thought to be primarily composed of (nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide).For reference, here is the 2 year old CNN article about how the International Astronomical Union was/is considering reclassifying Pluto as a minor planet (like many asteriods). They decided against it. This is a really good article from Sky and Telescope covering the debate.
No. Australia is a continent. The definition of a continent is fairly arbitrary, but basically it means a large, continous mass of land. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica the continents are North America, South America, Africa, Antartica, Australia, Asia, and Europe. Asia and Europe are sometimes combined into the single continent Eurasia. While Australia is often considered an island, it is four times larger than the next biggest (non-continental) island, Greenland.
This is all just noise from them anyway, they may be able to bully a few companies into paying royalties but if they go to trial they will probably lose. At least if these are the patents they're talking about, because they where all filed in 1998. Search engine technology was well established before these patents where filed. I remember using Lycos in '95 or '96. Even AltaVista was around before '98. So finding prior art should not be a problem.
I know streaming is suited to this particular application (live video), but I urge anyone looking at doing streaming media to avoid Real. For the damage they've done to my online experience they deserve a plague of festering boils, but I'll setting for them never getting another customer.
</rant>
Besides it isn't illegal to publish this stuff at all. If you write a letter to a newspaper they can publish it. In it's entirity. Without a name, if they want (they don't because then they become the defendant in any ensuing slader/libel cases).
IMO a lot of industry courses are relatively useless because they teach how to program a specific language or a specific API. Degree courses usually aim to teach how to solve problems with programming.
I think that's true of a lot of university subjects but in my experience it's generally not true of computer science.My favourite entry from that FAQ:
Yeah well junkscience.com is about the only URL I've seen produced by you doubters. And as the other replys testify there is virtually no recent material against global warming there, and the owner is hardly an unbiased observer.
That's a gross simplification, and may not even occur. But we don't know. We don't know how delicate the system is. And we don't know if some previously undiscovered feedback loop is going to leap up and bite us on our arses (several candidates are already known).
You display a lack of understanding. Global warming doesn't mean "everywhere gets hotter", it means that the Earth's average temperature goes up. Which results in changes to climate patterns which can result in regions getting colder, and possibly cause localized ice-age like conditions. This article (which is a year old) expresses concerns that Europe may face an ice-age style cooling effect. Again I stress: we don't know what effects these climate changes might have, but there's a good chance they won't be pleasant. Are you willing to take the gamble? Also note that we're talking decades to centuries here, not years. That's why they use averages. Sheesh. This stuff is not the result of some propaganda machine, despite what you might hear around here. The research is available in the applicable journals. Go read it. That sounds like lies to me. Produce a reference. Scientists can't agree on the exact effect of global warming but there are very few on deny it outright these days.There's a better article at NewScientist.com
Man (as a species) has always been very fast to use new technology, which is fine. But we've also been very slow to respond to evidence of damage caused by that technology. For example, asbestos in buildings, thalidomide for pregnant women, DDT, lead in petrol, list goes on and on. These things aren't necessarily automatically evil, they often have their place if used correctly, but as a race we have a tendancy to jump in now and worry about consequences later.
The problem is that these days we're playing for much higher stakes. Global warming has the potential to cause massive extinctions possibly even end life on this planet.
I thought Pitt did well in Snatch, and in Fight Club which was a similar role in some ways.
Even if they did, laser based communication is likely to be line of sight so any aliens using this technology will be aiming the beams at their detectors. For us to detect the beam either they'd have to miss and hit us accidentally, or we've got to be within the spreading path of the beam behind the target, or we've got to detect it reflected off interstellar dust or something (which would radically reduce it's brightness).
Here is an article pointing out that the sun activity correlation fails to account for all of the warming that has occured since 1985. Note that one of the researchers involved in the original work referenced in the parent co-authored this new finding.