Agreed, and this evolution in scientific terms is exactly why we shouldn't let people repress its new status. It's very much necessary, we've had to "relearn" science all the time (that's the largest aspect of science evolution, actually!), so that's simply not a valid argument. And even if you'd call it one, then that includes making dozens or hundreds more "planets" new candidates.
I think this is a necessary change and those trying to have Pluto remain a planet just because of some weird-ass nostalgic reason or that books shouldn't have to be rewritten haven't understood a single thing about science and the importance of being accurate and true to observations. In case of astronomers doing this idiotic claim, I guess some of them are just trying to protect NASA's Pluto probe mission that suddenly got a "dwarf planet" destination instead of the "last planet in the solar system". But on the other hand, what's wrong with being the first to check out a dwarf planet?
So do they now want the definition to remain with the exception "... and except Pluto, which is really a planet!"
An exception like that would just look plain silly.
If the current definition excludes Pluto because it's much like a Kuiper belt object, maybe it *actually makes sense* and the former de facto loose "definiton" was what was messed up and not this more precise one. Heck, there's so much against Pluto, like its orbit, kind, and theories of where it came from that should really make one doubt its classic planetary status, and if a standard calls it a dward planet, IMHO, all the better!
And if you think this is a tradition thing and "omfg, don't change what I've learnt or what kids learn, that's herecy", should past mistakes in classifications remain just because of their age? We'd have a fucking messed up view of science in that case.
Didn't check, because I refuse to read an article with a title " Redmond Yawning at Apple-Google Alliance?" when there is no fucking alliance, or even close. Read up on what the board of directors are, what they do, and how many members Apple has had from various companies, and why they aren't allied and sometimes even competitors. Then come again.
Damn steganophilias has come to Slashdot as well.:-(
Not only are their practices wildly unethical in their sexual attraction in covering things up, there are clear links to terrorism in the practice too! You can hide a Michael Jackson nose close up in a Natalie Portman portrait, and if that's not an act of terror to the digital information representing the image, I don't know what is!
I demand a WOWUSA Act (War On Wildly Unethical Stenography Applications) to be written and sneaked into approval thanks to a tasty acronym that the American public can associate to positive feelings. Someone seem to have to think of the children here!
This decision was handed down in response to a campaign waged by a grieving mother who lost her daughter to someone obsessed with violent pornography.
So, was the person having a personality that made him enjoy violent pornography and killing people, or did violent pornography turn him into a killer? Strangely I find the former case far more logical, but who said legislation follow logics, especially when it grants power to those writing them?:-p
Correct -- the "Ultimate" edition is the edition that combines features from Vista Enterprise (unlisted above, and not sold in normal retail channels) and Vista Home Premium. I.e. it features everything from the Media Center to BitLocker drive encryption and virtualization.
Note that the January 30th date is just the release date for home users. Corporate users are expected to get it earlier than that, and since Vista is expected to go RTM sometime in Nov/December, you can expect at least pirates to have the final release sometime then, as for home users.
They have a side by side comparison of many frames they changed from the film. With something along the lines of "Many people don't realize the technical capabiltiy that went into this!"
... and it seems Lucasfilm don't realize what technical capability that went into the original work, at the time. That's where I think things are impressive, not work from today's run-of-the-mill CGI farms. Sure, these are huge networks, lots of manhours, but not pioneering sci-fi special effects like the original editions did. I think they should honor this material better than they do for that reason.
I used a "Googledork" search from johnny.ihackstuff.com and after ~30 minutes found a ~10 character randomized root password (yes, the user name next to the password was "root") on a public web page, along with a login form there. I almost considered replying to your post in saying that it's not just about P2P when it comes to these things and giving the link, but thought it would be too evil. The admin(s) at Apollo3 has some security reviews to do though.:-p
The Relakks service (which is not a service by the Pirate Party, just endorsed by them) is only "anonymous" until the police comes knocking on their door with a crime that would give a high enough penalty. 2+ year jailtime and they can do any form of traffic analysis on site as they want. The Relakks site also states this in their FAQ, btw. Any form of jailtime penalty and they can request personal information, and it's possible IP addresses are considered that. Perhaps they don't keep logs to spite them, but then Relakks may be guilty of violating data retention laws, etc, etc.
Besides, and this is on a different note, if I'd be honest, I'd answer "it's sad, but it didn't affect my life as a foreigner much" to "What do you think about 9/11?", "yes" to "Do you think government is too big, too powerful?", and perhaps even "maybe by demonstrating sometime" to "Would you ever "make a point?"".
What I wonder is what they would do if I did tell them that? It would be interesting to see the response if he had done so.
Now the questions became really pointed. What do you think about 9/11? What are your views on the Iran issue? Do you think government is too big, too powerful? Would you ever "make a point?"
"Child porn I can understand, that's illegal. But hate propaganda is protected speech." Now he looked up. "What country do you think you're in?" "Oh, it's illegal in Canada?" "I honestly don't know. But that doesn't matter. I get to decide what goes in this country. Do you have a problem with that?"
All this for something that can easily be identified as an iPod?:-/ And how was the child porn and hate propaganda suspicions tied to an iPod in the toilet, exactly?
This reclassification was not done out of a new piece of data
Wasn't it? I thought the talk started as so many TNO's were discovered in the Kuiper belt. Where some were almost like Pluto clones too. But maybe you would've rather had these added to our solar system instead. Or maybe you wouldn't want any change at all, proposing a static solar system model and being blind to observations made after 1930 saying e.g. Pluto is pretty much a caught Kuiper belt object. Heck, in the 30's, people hadn't even direct evidence of the Kuiper belt with the first object found in 1992, and you complain about a lack of new data.:-p
A lack of new definition would've left all those TNO's as objects without official definitions and scientists never liked undefined but identified objects, ever.
I don't get this either - that's from a quote from a Harvard professor who drafted the proposal to increase the number of planets. From somebody from such a background, I'd hope for more accuracy - even if he'd doubled that figure, it'd have been closer (since the actual figure is ~15.7%).
I guess he's using the definition of "percent" that ended as a draft proposal, because it was "better".:-p
On a different note, another scientist friend of mine just told me his six-year-old daughter burst into tears when she found out Pluto isn't to be considered a planet anymore.:-(
Think of the children.
The last thing we needed in this debate.
Oh wait. Mentioning Nazi's too. These IAU guys are acting like nazi's in their ruthless decision process, aren't they?
Of course we can. That's what language is. A planet is a planet because we call it a planet. We're humans. Things have names because we give them names. That's our god-given right. I'm not about to let these leftists in Czechoslovakia or anywhere else tell me my American schooling is wrong.
This is the language of science though, not any form of ebonics. We must be able to classify things, or we could just as well just call everything "celestial bodies" and be done with that, including stars and planets alike in the same definition. That would be easier, and humans like convenience according to this kind of humanitarian reasoning, right?
The problem with your logic is that simplicity or tradition is not paramount in science -- accuracy is. You also say tradition should be considered, when that's not really what even traditional languages follow much, and what words mean today doesn't have to be what they meant in the 30's when Pluto was discovered as a "planet".
If one think Pluto could be called planet just for the heck of it and because it was before, what are we going to call all the rest of the celestial objects exhibiting similar characteristics as Pluto? We'd easily fall into the trap of having to call all these planets too because they're "pretty much behaving like Pluto", and voila, you'd get dozens more planets in our solar system. This was similar to the draft proposal that was shot down btw, and I believe for good reasons.
(Posting anonymously so I won't get raped by one of the socialist moderators around here.)
What's with your obsession about "Czech leftists" and "socialist moderators" in a planet debate? Just looks like you're doing a good job giving right-wing people a bad name.
And unfortunately for you, you can still get "raped" by moderators as AC; you just don't suffer any Karma penalty that you seem to treasure so dearly.
I guess many astronomers, like programmers, don't like these kind of illogical exceptions to definitions.;-) (especially as there's at least Ceres that was a past planet too)
I'm inclined to agree with not using exceptions. That would tend to say that Pluto, showing all behavior as other dwarf planets per the definition, would be a... planet?? That may make sense to us now, but what about in 50 years?
I agree, and Pluto was always controversially labelled "planet" in the science communtiy.
It feels almost like they're finally fixing a mistake made 70 years ago.
But since people more often than not resist change and there are so many different opinions on this, this is an impossible matter to define (and I believe we need stricter definitions with the late Trans-Neptunian Object discoveries) without upsetting groups of people. Bear in mind that some complaining about this may be people that would rather have us make 50 more objects or so as true "planets", like indicated by the draft proposal. I think that would be much worse, and I also don't think we should set an arbitrary limit of a planetary system to include Pluto artificially and make historians happy, as that would be an incosistent rule when we start mapping extrasolar systems.
Hey, it went from being a 16-bit OS, to a bugged 16/32-bit hybrid, to a 32-bit OS with severe security flaws, to being an OS sued by courts on an international scale, to having a pretty glass theme on a DRM foundation. I'd say it has achieved quite a lot! Sure, with Vista, you have around 600 MB RAM consumption directly after start up in its Release Candidate, but I'd say this is a small price to pay for all amazing things it can do to you.
I'm a little disappointed to read that MS is changing the ribbon system.
They aren't. They aren't touching the ribbons with this change, just letting users with an optional option (yes, really!) hide the ribbons when you don't use it. Why that would imply a change in how ribbbons work is beyond me. The story tell the ribbons have been a success among many testers, and in response to some concerns they could be slimmed a bit better, MS is now adding this option.
*gets flashback from Digg and people not reading this story*
I think it's because it was posted on Digg and a whole lot of people started digging up the story, thinking MS (due to a sensationalist headline on Digg) was doing away with ribbons, hence spawning a flood of story submissions to Slashdot, many submitters still thinking it was something big. This is as little change as a task bar hiding when you don't use it.:-S
It's the same as the "old" design but that the ribbons can auto-hide. Sort of like how the Windows task bar has the option for that to conserve a little extra space.
This "change" sparked a whole lot of confusion on Digg as it was believed MS was doing away from the interface, or changing how the ribbons worked. It's in reality just an optional setting to auto-hide them now. There's therefore not really any change to the ribbons themselves, but just when they'll be displayed.
I really don't think such a small extra optional feature even warrants an article. That just confuse people into thinking it's something big when it's quite tiny in the larger perspective with all the UI changes in Office 2007.
It seems MS won't be negotiating with AT&T to reduce bandwidth for "bad" users or anything, so I can't say network neutrality is affected one way or another. As for some users on Microsoft's services getting less bandwidth from their own servers because Microsoft wants that, well, who cares? If you don't like their service (and given the quality of Microsoft's stuff, you likely won't), just don't use it?
I can't see anything in the article saying the network owner will start reducing your bandwidth for YouTube if you were a "bad" user on Microsoft Service X in this patent. You'd only be affected if using Microsoft Service X by Microsoft themselves. Like another way of punishing users than downmodding on Slashdot, but perhaps better applied to high bandwidth media content. Shouldn't Microsoft has the right to dedicate their server resources like they want?
My problem is mostly about companies paying actual network owners to get improved quality of service which could affect users in totally different ways than this.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed, and this evolution in scientific terms is exactly why we shouldn't let people repress its new status. It's very much necessary, we've had to "relearn" science all the time (that's the largest aspect of science evolution, actually!), so that's simply not a valid argument. And even if you'd call it one, then that includes making dozens or hundreds more "planets" new candidates.
I think this is a necessary change and those trying to have Pluto remain a planet just because of some weird-ass nostalgic reason or that books shouldn't have to be rewritten haven't understood a single thing about science and the importance of being accurate and true to observations. In case of astronomers doing this idiotic claim, I guess some of them are just trying to protect NASA's Pluto probe mission that suddenly got a "dwarf planet" destination instead of the "last planet in the solar system". But on the other hand, what's wrong with being the first to check out a dwarf planet?
So do they now want the definition to remain with the exception "... and except Pluto, which is really a planet!"
An exception like that would just look plain silly.
If the current definition excludes Pluto because it's much like a Kuiper belt object, maybe it *actually makes sense* and the former de facto loose "definiton" was what was messed up and not this more precise one. Heck, there's so much against Pluto, like its orbit, kind, and theories of where it came from that should really make one doubt its classic planetary status, and if a standard calls it a dward planet, IMHO, all the better!
And if you think this is a tradition thing and "omfg, don't change what I've learnt or what kids learn, that's herecy", should past mistakes in classifications remain just because of their age? We'd have a fucking messed up view of science in that case.
Didn't check, because I refuse to read an article with a title " Redmond Yawning at Apple-Google Alliance?" when there is no fucking alliance, or even close. Read up on what the board of directors are, what they do, and how many members Apple has had from various companies, and why they aren't allied and sometimes even competitors. Then come again.
Damn steganophilias has come to Slashdot as well. :-(
Not only are their practices wildly unethical in their sexual attraction in covering things up, there are clear links to terrorism in the practice too! You can hide a Michael Jackson nose close up in a Natalie Portman portrait, and if that's not an act of terror to the digital information representing the image, I don't know what is!
I demand a WOWUSA Act (War On Wildly Unethical Stenography Applications) to be written and sneaked into approval thanks to a tasty acronym that the American public can associate to positive feelings. Someone seem to have to think of the children here!
So, was the person having a personality that made him enjoy violent pornography and killing people, or did violent pornography turn him into a killer?
Strangely I find the former case far more logical, but who said legislation follow logics, especially when it grants power to those writing them?
I mean, that's what matters, isn't it?
Although I guess it can be interesting as a curiosity if it has many inactive genes...
Correct -- the "Ultimate" edition is the edition that combines features from Vista Enterprise (unlisted above, and not sold in normal retail channels) and Vista Home Premium. I.e. it features everything from the Media Center to BitLocker drive encryption and virtualization.
Note that the January 30th date is just the release date for home users. Corporate users are expected to get it earlier than that, and since Vista is expected to go RTM sometime in Nov/December, you can expect at least pirates to have the final release sometime then, as for home users.
I used a "Googledork" search from johnny.ihackstuff.com and after ~30 minutes found a ~10 character randomized root password (yes, the user name next to the password was "root") on a public web page, along with a login form there. I almost considered replying to your post in saying that it's not just about P2P when it comes to these things and giving the link, but thought it would be too evil. The admin(s) at Apollo3 has some security reviews to do though. :-p
The Relakks service (which is not a service by the Pirate Party, just endorsed by them) is only "anonymous" until the police comes knocking on their door with a crime that would give a high enough penalty. 2+ year jailtime and they can do any form of traffic analysis on site as they want. The Relakks site also states this in their FAQ, btw. Any form of jailtime penalty and they can request personal information, and it's possible IP addresses are considered that. Perhaps they don't keep logs to spite them, but then Relakks may be guilty of violating data retention laws, etc, etc.
That guy with a glowing @ on his back looks so hip, like he's totally part of the Internet Revolution!
Besides, and this is on a different note, if I'd be honest, I'd answer "it's sad, but it didn't affect my life as a foreigner much" to "What do you think about 9/11?", "yes" to "Do you think government is too big, too powerful?", and perhaps even "maybe by demonstrating sometime" to "Would you ever "make a point?"".
What I wonder is what they would do if I did tell them that?
It would be interesting to see the response if he had done so.
All this for something that can easily be identified as an iPod?
And how was the child porn and hate propaganda suspicions tied to an iPod in the toilet, exactly?
Wasn't it? I thought the talk started as so many TNO's were discovered in the Kuiper belt. Where some were almost like Pluto clones too. But maybe you would've rather had these added to our solar system instead. Or maybe you wouldn't want any change at all, proposing a static solar system model and being blind to observations made after 1930 saying e.g. Pluto is pretty much a caught Kuiper belt object. Heck, in the 30's, people hadn't even direct evidence of the Kuiper belt with the first object found in 1992, and you complain about a lack of new data.
A lack of new definition would've left all those TNO's as objects without official definitions and scientists never liked undefined but identified objects, ever.
I guess he's using the definition of "percent" that ended as a draft proposal, because it was "better".
Think of the children.
The last thing we needed in this debate.
Oh wait. Mentioning Nazi's too. These IAU guys are acting like nazi's in their ruthless decision process, aren't they?
OK, I'm done.
This is the language of science though, not any form of ebonics. We must be able to classify things, or we could just as well just call everything "celestial bodies" and be done with that, including stars and planets alike in the same definition. That would be easier, and humans like convenience according to this kind of humanitarian reasoning, right?
The problem with your logic is that simplicity or tradition is not paramount in science -- accuracy is. You also say tradition should be considered, when that's not really what even traditional languages follow much, and what words mean today doesn't have to be what they meant in the 30's when Pluto was discovered as a "planet".
If one think Pluto could be called planet just for the heck of it and because it was before, what are we going to call all the rest of the celestial objects exhibiting similar characteristics as Pluto? We'd easily fall into the trap of having to call all these planets too because they're "pretty much behaving like Pluto", and voila, you'd get dozens more planets in our solar system. This was similar to the draft proposal that was shot down btw, and I believe for good reasons.
What's with your obsession about "Czech leftists" and "socialist moderators" in a planet debate?
Just looks like you're doing a good job giving right-wing people a bad name.
And unfortunately for you, you can still get "raped" by moderators as AC; you just don't suffer any Karma penalty that you seem to treasure so dearly.
I guess many astronomers, like programmers, don't like these kind of illogical exceptions to definitions. ;-)
... planet?? That may make sense to us now, but what about in 50 years?
(especially as there's at least Ceres that was a past planet too)
I'm inclined to agree with not using exceptions. That would tend to say that Pluto, showing all behavior as other dwarf planets per the definition, would be a
I agree, and Pluto was always controversially labelled "planet" in the science communtiy.
It feels almost like they're finally fixing a mistake made 70 years ago.
But since people more often than not resist change and there are so many different opinions on this, this is an impossible matter to define (and I believe we need stricter definitions with the late Trans-Neptunian Object discoveries) without upsetting groups of people. Bear in mind that some complaining about this may be people that would rather have us make 50 more objects or so as true "planets", like indicated by the draft proposal. I think that would be much worse, and I also don't think we should set an arbitrary limit of a planetary system to include Pluto artificially and make historians happy, as that would be an incosistent rule when we start mapping extrasolar systems.
Hey, it went from being a 16-bit OS, to a bugged 16/32-bit hybrid, to a 32-bit OS with severe security flaws, to being an OS sued by courts on an international scale, to having a pretty glass theme on a DRM foundation. I'd say it has achieved quite a lot! Sure, with Vista, you have around 600 MB RAM consumption directly after start up in its Release Candidate, but I'd say this is a small price to pay for all amazing things it can do to you.
They aren't. They aren't touching the ribbons with this change, just letting users with an optional option (yes, really!) hide the ribbons when you don't use it. Why that would imply a change in how ribbbons work is beyond me. The story tell the ribbons have been a success among many testers, and in response to some concerns they could be slimmed a bit better, MS is now adding this option.
*gets flashback from Digg and people not reading this story*
Why this is front-page news is a mystery to me.
:-S
I think it's because it was posted on Digg and a whole lot of people started digging up the story, thinking MS (due to a sensationalist headline on Digg) was doing away with ribbons, hence spawning a flood of story submissions to Slashdot, many submitters still thinking it was something big. This is as little change as a task bar hiding when you don't use it.
It's the same as the "old" design but that the ribbons can auto-hide.
Sort of like how the Windows task bar has the option for that to conserve a little extra space.
This "change" sparked a whole lot of confusion on Digg as it was believed MS was doing away from the interface, or changing how the ribbons worked. It's in reality just an optional setting to auto-hide them now. There's therefore not really any change to the ribbons themselves, but just when they'll be displayed.
I really don't think such a small extra optional feature even warrants an article. That just confuse people into thinking it's something big when it's quite tiny in the larger perspective with all the UI changes in Office 2007.
It seems MS won't be negotiating with AT&T to reduce bandwidth for "bad" users or anything, so I can't say network neutrality is affected one way or another. As for some users on Microsoft's services getting less bandwidth from their own servers because Microsoft wants that, well, who cares? If you don't like their service (and given the quality of Microsoft's stuff, you likely won't), just don't use it?
I can't see anything in the article saying the network owner will start reducing your bandwidth for YouTube if you were a "bad" user on Microsoft Service X in this patent. You'd only be affected if using Microsoft Service X by Microsoft themselves. Like another way of punishing users than downmodding on Slashdot, but perhaps better applied to high bandwidth media content. Shouldn't Microsoft has the right to dedicate their server resources like they want?
My problem is mostly about companies paying actual network owners to get improved quality of service which could affect users in totally different ways than this.