Jupiter and its moons are always a fun telescope target. Tonight we had unusually clear and steady skies, which make it easier to clearly see surface details such as the latitudinal cloud bands, the Great Red Spot (or more appropriately for the amateur observer, the Great Pale Spot), and cloud festoons in the temperate belts. Saturn was also magnificent as well, with its moons Titan, Rhea, Tethys, Dione, and Iapetus clearly visible. Mimas and Enceladus were near the visual observation limit, though I managed to briefly glimpse them using averted vision. Uranus and Neptune, both currently in Capricorn, now set too early to allow serious telescopic observation, but when they're available, they're fun to look at too. On good nights, their largest moons (Titania and Triton) are resolvable from my backyard.
I know I'm not the only amateur astronomer that has a planet fetish. I spend about as much time looking at the planets in the solar system as I do looking at everything else combined(galaxies, open/globular clusters, nebulae, supernova remnants, etc.) While looking at Jupiter, Europa, Io, Callisto, and Ganymede tonight, I was reminded of the things that Arthur C. Clarke postulated in 2010: Odyssey Two, and lo and behold, when I check Slashdot, there's an article about possible life on Europa along with comments that reference Clarke's work.
Anyway, to get this more on-topic, I've always wondered what sort of experiments could be performed to test for life on Europa. The type of life that is postulated by current theories would reside far below the icy surface of the moon, near the theoretical surface vents fueled by the tidal kneading of Europa's parent and neighbors. I haven't read up a whole lot on the details of the future Europa missions, but it would be interesting to find out exactly what sort of scientific experiments are being planned.
MURDOCH: LINUX IS THE BEST OPERATING SYSTEM EVER "Fuck M$", Says High-Powered Executive
Note: This article subsumes a previous article posted by the United Press International.
NEW YORK, NY (UPI) - Businessman Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the immense and powerful News Corporation, sang the praises of the popular Linux operating system today at Fox News Headquarters in New York. In addition, Murdoch also announced the cancellation of a previously-planned program entitled "World's Least-Supported Operating Systems." The program was part of Fox's new fall line-up.
"What a jag-off I've been," admitted Murdoch.
"We all do things in life that we're ashamed of," explained Murdoch. "For my part, I allowed myself to be swept up by a large, domineering corporation. I allowed myself to be manipulated. I allowed the rascals in Redmond to brainwash me." Murdoch's voice cracked dramatically at several points in his speech.
"But we're past all of that now," continued Murdoch. "And I'm a better man because of it. That's why I say 'to hell with M$!' We will forge on! We will make history! The Fox network considers Linux to be the best operating system ever invented!" Murdoch spent the next several minutes explaining to reporters that the 'S' in "MS" was to be replaced with a dollar sign.
"It's important," explained Murdoch.
Candace Gorman, a public relations spokeswoman for the Fox network, made a few brief statements after Murdoch's comments. "I would like to make clear that Mr. Murdoch's statements and position reversal have absolutely nothing to do with the performance of Red Hat stock, and they certainly are unrelated to the record-setting IPO of VA Linux. Mr. Murdoch's stock portfolio is his own goddamn business."
Ms. Gorman continued. "Additionally, I must also add that Mr. Murdoch's comments are unrelated to the successful IPO of Andover.Net. It is common knowledge that supporters of Andover.Net are a bunch of complete and total assholes."
You know, Pathfinder. This was the mission that touched down on Mars on July 4, 1997. This was the mission that gave us spectacular panoramic views of the Martian surface, and allowed NASA scientists to actually drive a rover around on the surface of another planet to do remote science. This was a mission that far exceeded its projected life expectancy. Pathfinder will go down in history as one of NASA's most successful missions ever, and it was one of the first Better, Faster, Cheaper missions.
By the way, the Pathfinder mission cost less than it did to make a standard Hollywood big-budget blockbuster. I've seen Waterworld. Have you? We put a human-controlled rover on Mars for less money. Which do you think is the bigger waste?:-)
Let's consider the four Better, Faster, Cheaper missions to Mars so far: the Pathfinder, the Global Surveyor, the Climate Orbiter, and the Polar Lander. Of those, two were successful, one was a failure, and one is still in doubt (though as others have said, there is no reason to believe that the Polar Lander has failed yet.. not by a long shot.) These four missions combined have still cost less money than the failed Mars Observer mission.
NASA's on the right track. Let's just hope that the Polar Lander mission hasn't failed.. but if it does, let's hope that it doesn't serve to further fuel to fire of the "get rid of NASA" crowd out there. When the U.S. government is spending $350 million on an aircraft carrier that the military doesn't want, it seems kind of petty for these folks to be pointing their fingers at NASA.
PS I (Personally) really liked David Lee Roth, but the specific example of an evil Van Halen song was 'Best of Both Worlds' (on 5150, right?), so it looks like I'll be seeing you in hell. What a way to go.
Supposedly the band (with both Sammy Hagar and David Lee Roth) will be putting on a perpetual performance in hell, in the Fire and Brimstone Ampitheatre [*] at the corner of Beelzebub Lane and Pestilence Avenue. See you there! No need to bring a lighter.
:-)
[*] Hell has adopted British spellings, such as "theatre" and "cheque". The use of the euro as currency is still under consideration.
why don't we save life here on earth before we go looking for it in the reaches of space?
Why can't we do both?
Why do we have to pick and choose?
Why is the space program, and astronomical research of any kind, the favorite whipping boy of folks who claim to want to eliminate government waste? (This latest discovery comes out of academia, by the way.) While I can't comment on waste within the governments of other countries, some of the more lavish expenditures of the United States government are almost legendary. This is the same government that spends millions of dollars buying boats and airplanes that the military doesn't even want. Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of US taxpayer money went out to study cow farts. And don't even get me started on the six hundred dollar toilet seats.
And it's the space program people complain about?
Look, I'm all for trimming government waste, but the space program is a veritable island in a sea of pork. It's almost a cliche to present a list of new technologies that sprung up as a result of the space program, so I won't do it, but I will offer one opinion about news of this nature:
It's just fucking cool.:-) It really is News for Nerds. It's in the nature of humankind to study the universe and make observations about it. We've got an inborn curiosity that we're powerless to do anything about. What we're finding is that planets are really not all that special; that they exist in abundance outside of our own planetary system. Now this was pretty much well-established before these findings were published, but the news of six new planets of this nature just further confirms it.
So yes, by all means, let's work to solve the problems that we face here at home. But I don't think it's a "this-or-that" situation. We can have our cake and eat it too.
Why use up perfectly good places for life to evolve when you have much better control of your environment on artificial structures that you can make from raw sunlight and loose asteroidal materials?
Sort of like a Dyson Sphere? Sounds neat, but I'd say it's a bit beyond our technological capacity at the moment. Until we get to that level, maybe would should stick to planets until we grow out of our technological adolescence.
We should explore other worlds, but we should live in space where all aspects of our environment would be at our control: gravity, temperature, pressure, topography, atmospheric composition, design, ecology, zoning and most obviously whether we allow those Windows riff-raff on board.
And you forgot the most important one: Sex in near-zero-gee would be lots more fun!:-)
(Heh.. the first time I previewed this post before submission, I had mispelled "important" in the above sentence as "impotant". How ironic.)
The letters stand for "Henry Draper". Draper was an astronomical spectroscopist and one of the early pioneers of astrophysics. The Henry Draper Star Catalog is a listing of about 130,000 field stars down to a visual magnitude of approximately 9.
But what does everyone else think? Should we go and invade a planet that might have a history of other species? Or should we just stick to what we were given?
This is an interesting question, and it's been posed many times before.
The most obvious example to apply this to is Mars. Let's say that in a couple hundred years time, we decide to start colonizing and terraforming the Red Planet. So the International Space Agency sends a crew to land and do some initial surveys. They get out, take some samples, and wonder of wonders, they find living microorganisms!
So what do we do now? Do we start terraforming anyway, and begin the production of greenhouse gases to produce a more Earth-like atmosphere that retains more heat from the Sun? Do we do this, knowing that we'll be screwing with the Martian climate and perhaps altering/destroying the history of its native life? Or do we adopt a "Hands Off Mars" approach, and leave, never to return? After all, Mother Nature is at work on Mars, and perhaps we should let things run their natural course. Do we care? Should we?
Maybe single-celled organisms don't matter. One could successfully argue that if microorganisms currently exist on Mars (and that's a really big if.. though millions of years ago it may have been a different story) they don't have a chance of evolving to anything more advanced. But who's to say that things on Mars won't change? Perhaps a cataclysmic comet collision or two introduces a massive supply of water that fundamentally changes things on Mars, and maybe that gives the hardy Martian microbes an evolutionary leg up!
Or what about a thousand years from now, when the International Space Agency's first interstellar "generation ship" arrives at the Earth-like, second-innermost planet orbiting nu Andromedae? (I'm speculating.) Suppose they find amphibious, complex but otherwise unintelligent life forms? Do they turn around and go home? (Probably not.) What if they find intelligent life that has been unresponsive to our years of direct radio broadcasts to them, either for technological or xenophobic reasons?
Assuming that life is not all that unusual (and there's no real reason to assume that it is), the ethics of colonization can get pretty hairy. Things get complicated when you assume that a planet suitable for human colonization would have to be at least somewhat Earth-like, and Earth-like planets have a pretty good track record when it comes to harboring life. Hell, every Earth-like planet that we know about has life on it!:-)
But one sample makes for poor statistics, or so they say. I'm not considering Venus and Mars to be Earth-like here; by "Earth-like" I mean terrestrial (rocky) and covered by plenty of liquid water.
One example of this that comes to mind is the Napster software that was recently featured on Slashdot. For those who missed the article or are unaware of what it does, it basically establishes a "dedicated MP3 network" of users who connect into central servers and share their MP3 collections with all other users who are connected. If you want to find (for example) Billy Idol's "Rebel Yell", you enter the song and artist name into a search dialog, and it presents you with a list of dozens of users who are "sharing" that file, along with their connection speed and ping times. Then you pick who you want to download it from, initiate the transfer, and that's it.
Naturally, the Napster web site and welcome message prominently display warnings about copyright law and piracy, and they strongly stress that the software is only to be used to trade non-copyrighted MP3 music. But nobody is actually naive enough to believe that that's what people use the software for. The Napster developers know damn well that people are going to use the software to trade copyrighted music with each other. You only have to log in once to see that this is the case; a search for any song that is or was once even remotely popular will invariably produce many matches.
A couple of months ago or so, I bought a Creative CD-RW drive, and on the box it states that the included software will allow you to "share the latest independent MP3 music files with your friends." Here, again, Creative isn't fooling anybody. They know that there's huge demand for the ability to download music from the Internet and then burn it to CD where it can be played on a Discman, in a car, in the home stereo, or anywhere else. And guess what? Most of that music can't exactly be called "independent."
So are the Napster folks a party to piracy? What about Creative Labs? I think the answer to these questions is "yes"; it's kind of hard to argue that MP3 location software and CD burners have not contributed to copyright violations related to digital music. But (at least in my mind) there is a difference between being a party to piracy and being a sponsor of it. By placing obligatory warning messages on their products ("Thou shalt not pirate") and by essentially saying "Hey look, we're not responsible for what people do with this", the Napster and Creative Labs folks may have absolved themselves of legal responsibilty for what their users do (or have they? IANAL.)
In the end, I think it's clear that the user is responsible. There are certainly legitimate uses for an MP3 distribution network; it's a great way for garage bands across the world to get quick and cheap recognition for their work. And of course there are tons of legitimate uses for a CD burner! Since the technology is so neat, and since the providers of these technologies have no way to prevent people from misusing them, I don't see how we can place the responsibility on them.
Anyway, it isn't my intent to either condone or condemn music piracy. It is my intent, however, to illustrate an example of the sort of "moral dilemma" that some software and hardware makers face, instead of falling back on some lame gun analogy.:-)
While we're on the topic of open mathematical conjectures, my favorite still has to be Goldbach's Conjecture. It's tantalizingly simple; it states that any even integer greater than 4 can be expressed as the sum of two prime numbers. It seems intuitive, and it's certainly easy to verify "by hand", at least for relatively small numbers (i.e., 31 = 13 + 17). Indeed, computers have been unable to find a counterexample, regardless of how high they've gone.
Does anybody know the status of this problem? I recall reading something a while back about how somebody determined that this problem is undecidable, though I could be wrong.
When I was in college taking a History of Mathematics class years back, I was fascinated by this one. I even spent a fair amount of time hammering away at it, and while I came up with a few interesting ideas, nothing substantial came out of it. I was working using Euclid's famous proof of the infinitude of the primes as an inspiration. Anybody who's seen that proof knows that in mathematics, sometimes a correct proof can be completely unexpected and yet incredibly elegant and simple at the same time.
[The most disturbing thing] to me, is how eager many people (particularly here on Slashdot) are to see the government seize the assets of private citizens (aka "breaking them up").
Yes, this would be the first time in the history of the United States that the government has ever seized the assets of a private citizen.
The only reason Microsoft has achieved dominance is through the incompetence of its competitors.
To a certain extent, this is true, but it really isn't the point, is it? The question here is not how Microsoft achieved dominance, it's what they've done with that dominance.
Bill Gates has sworn up and down that the consumer has never been hurt by Microsoft. Yet when somebody like Intel comes up with a cool project that Microsoft views as a threat to its bottom line, Microsoft holds a financial gun to Intel's head and leverages its desktop monopoly to threaten them into submission. How is this good for the consumer?
Since its assumption as the King of Desktops, Microsoft has launched numerous systematic campaigns to either buy out or eliminate altogether any technologies that it felt threatened by. Now you listen to the polls, and you hear people say "Leave 'em alone, DOJ! I'm fat and happy and content with my Microsoft software, and plus I got some of their stock in my portfolio, so stop going after them!"
But it's hard to judge consumer harm when the technologies that we're talking about are really nothing more than potential technologies that were denied entry into the market by a ruthless monopolist. These technologies were not "voted down" by the market for being inferior. Microsoft simply threatened them out of existence, and that's wrong. Sure, people may be happy with their computers and their software. But the point is, if Microsoft had placed the welfare of the industry ahead of their own welfare, we might be even happier. We don't know. We just don't know.
Look, don't get me wrong; I'm not all that fired up about seeing government intervention in the technology sector either. But if there was ever a case where it was warranted, this is it.
I just got done throwing in "Children of the Night", a Nine Inch Nails bootleg that was recorded at a NIN/David Bowie concert. (It's got Trent Reznor and David Bowie doing duets of Reptile, Scary Monsters, and Hurt.. truly an awesome disc.)
So then I bring up Slashdot, and who's at the top of the list? David Bowie. Freaky.:-)
Actually, it was pretty refreshing to see Bowie say that he doesn't give a "flying fuck" about the bootleggers. Bootleg CDs are a great way for fans of a particular artist or group to expand their collection. And if you think about it, concert bootleggers don't really take anything away from the artist. Who is hurt by somebody who's recording a concert, regardless of whether they're plugged into the soundboard or if they've just got some low-quality tape recorder near a loudspeaker? The artist(s) have already made their money off the concert; the bootleggers are simply providing a "permanent record" of the concert, so to speak. Seems like Bowie knows this, and is okay with it.
Interesting stuff.
Re: Creationist condemnation
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Assuming this isn't a strawman of sorts, I'd like to apologize for the behavior of my fellows.
Oh, nobody (least of all me) is trying to attribute the rabidness of the most fundamentalist creationists to creationists as a whole. There are plenty of zealots who are only too willing to resort to vague threats to try to get their point across. Nevertheless, the sentence of mine that you quoted was overly sarcastic and was, in retrospect, ill-advised. Please consider it stricken from the record.
Ok, for years I have heard poeple say that evolution violates the second law.
Evolution violates the Creationists' Second Law of Thermodynamics. This is the law that says that things tend to progress from order to disorder, and since evolution says that the opposite is true, it must violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Now, this conveniently ignores such pesky terminology as "closed system", and for the sake of simplicity, minor things such as the Sun are not factored in. (Incidentally, I wonder if any of the creationists who claim that order cannot come from disorder in nature have ever seen a snowflake.)
It is only my intention to provide more information related to this query; it is not my intention to ignite some drawn-out thread about religion versus science in a place where it is clearly inappropriate. So creationists, before you condemn me, allow me to pre-emptively point out that I know that I am truly a horrible person, and that I am condemning myself to everlasting pain, and that as far as I'm concerned, all of you people are completely right and modern science is completely wrong.. 'kay? Thanks.
Ok, I'll admit that I'm a theist, and a rather naive one at that.
I disagree (about the naive part.) You make perfect sense to me.
It's just too bad that some people are convinced that they will be sentenced to eternal torture for using their own brains, curiosity, creativity, and common sense. Makes you think, doesn't it?
I'm getting more than a little bit weary of religious fundamentalists who suggest that anybody who does not subscribe to their narrow-minded, Biblical-literalist view of creation is an atheist. Look; I realize that we're talking about people's deep faith here. Lots of folks display absolutely no respect for the beliefs of others. It is wrong to call creationists "idiots." Most Slashdot readers inhabit countries that are free enough to allow people to believe whatever literalist diatribe they would like to believe.
But there are certain realities here.
We've got a mountain of evidence for evolutionary common descent. If this was a topic that did not conflict with people's religious views, nobody would even be debating this. It would be as widely accepted as the Blue Sky theory. Here's what we have:
The fossil record
Comparative anatomy
Comparative embryology
Comparative biochemistry
Genetics
.. and the list goes on and on. All of these individual fields of study point to one thing: evolutionary common descent as the source of biodiversity on Earth. Now, "scientific creationists" can do whatever is in their power to exorcise these topics from public schools. But they do so at the risk of the education of our young people. And they do so while conveniently ignoring two basic facts:
Evolution says nothing.. repeat, nothing about where life came from.
Science does not rule out a higher power as a guiding force behind evolution.
The bottom line is that equating belief in evolution with atheism is indefensible. 500 years ago, people were convinced that the Earth was flat, and that it was the center of the Universe. And then along came Copernicus and Galileo, suggesting that we were a small, uninteresting ball of rock that was moving.. orbiting the star we call the Sun. "Heretics!" they cried.
They did things to Galileo; let's not talk about that.
Guess what? People eventually learned that their faith was just as valid on a tiny ball of rock as it was when they were at the center of the universe. And as a hopeless optimist, this is where I see the evolution "debate" going; literalist creationists will eventually stop trying to place limits on the power of their God, and they will come around. Those that don't will quickly fade out. This is a process that is known as "natural selection.":-)
Yes, I believe that I live on a tiny ball of rock orbiting a main sequence star located in the suburbs of a very large spiral galaxy. Yes, I believe that the evolutionary precepts of changes in the gene pool over time have resulted in the diversity of life on our small planet. No, I don't believe that all of this has happened in purely naturalist terms that modern science can currently understand.
So, literalists: Stop putting words in my mouth.
Thank ya verr much.:-)
The Godfather Saga on USA Network
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When you can see sex and murder on TV, how important is it to ban the word "piss"?
Excellent point.
A couple of days ago, the USA Network here in the States was running "The Godfather Saga", which is a combined version of Francis Ford Copolla's first two Godfather films, re-edited so that all of the material is in chronological order. There's a classic scene where Al Pacino goes to have dinner with an enemy of the family, ostensibly to make peace with him. In reality, the family plants a pistol in the bathroom of the Italian place that they're eating at; the plan is that Pacino is to excuse himself to go to the bathroom, retrieve the gun, and blow the guy away.
In the setup scene, James Caan urges his associate (Clemenza) to take extra care when planting the gun. "I don't want my brother coming out of that bathroom with just his dick in his hands," he comments. Now, for the USA Network showing, that line of dialogue was edited. In its place, the line "I don't want my brother coming out of that bathroom with just his *stick* in his hands." The replacement was unbelievably cheesy; the sound was all wrong, and it was a strange mixture of funny and insulting all at the same time.
However, when it comes time for Pacino to pull the trigger, the USA Network showing was virtually unedited. In graphic detail, Pacino's unsuspecting victims get a bullet hole through their forehead, with streams of blood flowing out. They drop to the floor, Pacino drops the gun, and runs out.
Moral of the story? It's all right to show a couple of guys take bullets between the eyebrows, but the word "dick" is unacceptable, and must be replaced with the word "stick." Such hypocrisy is staggering.
(For the record, I'm not at all opposed to violence in films. I for one think that the graphic violence in The Godfather was mandatory; without it, the portrayal of the brutality, inhumanity, and lack of respect for human life in the Mob would not have been believable. I am, however, opposed to hypocrisy.)
The very possibility the bible might be false (or even only false in parts, or essentially correct but corrupted) seems to arouse anxiety in many religious persons.
The problem that many folks have is that they worship the Bible instead of the God that it talks about. They are more interested in holding it to a preposterous standard of inerrancy than they are in studying its deeper meaning. This amounts to little more than idolatry. When people use their own eyes and brains to make observations of the physical world and discover that said observations conflict with what is written in the Bible, they decide that God must be wrong and worship the book instead.
The doctrine of young-Earth creationism (the "universe is 6,000 years old" folks) requires its adherents to worship a deliberately deceitful God that will sentence them to an eternity of torture for having the audacity to use the brains, creativity, curiosity, and common sense they were given. I simply fail to understand why so many people are willing to characterize their God in such a manner. It is certainly not a flattering portrayal.
"Love the Lord your God, and Love your neighbour" seems to be a pretty good way to live regardless of whether man evolved from apes or a particular man was nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to each other for a change.
Slashdot Mirror
Jupiter and its moons are always a fun telescope target. Tonight we had unusually clear and steady skies, which make it easier to clearly see surface details such as the latitudinal cloud bands, the Great Red Spot (or more appropriately for the amateur observer, the Great Pale Spot), and cloud festoons in the temperate belts. Saturn was also magnificent as well, with its moons Titan, Rhea, Tethys, Dione, and Iapetus clearly visible. Mimas and Enceladus were near the visual observation limit, though I managed to briefly glimpse them using averted vision. Uranus and Neptune, both currently in Capricorn, now set too early to allow serious telescopic observation, but when they're available, they're fun to look at too. On good nights, their largest moons (Titania and Triton) are resolvable from my backyard.
I know I'm not the only amateur astronomer that has a planet fetish. I spend about as much time looking at the planets in the solar system as I do looking at everything else combined(galaxies, open/globular clusters, nebulae, supernova remnants, etc.) While looking at Jupiter, Europa, Io, Callisto, and Ganymede tonight, I was reminded of the things that Arthur C. Clarke postulated in 2010: Odyssey Two, and lo and behold, when I check Slashdot, there's an article about possible life on Europa along with comments that reference Clarke's work.
Anyway, to get this more on-topic, I've always wondered what sort of experiments could be performed to test for life on Europa. The type of life that is postulated by current theories would reside far below the icy surface of the moon, near the theoretical surface vents fueled by the tidal kneading of Europa's parent and neighbors. I haven't read up a whole lot on the details of the future Europa missions, but it would be interesting to find out exactly what sort of scientific experiments are being planned.
MURDOCH: LINUX IS THE BEST OPERATING SYSTEM EVER
"Fuck M$", Says High-Powered Executive
Note: This article subsumes a previous article posted by the United Press International.
NEW YORK, NY (UPI) - Businessman Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the immense and powerful News Corporation, sang the praises of the popular Linux operating system today at Fox News Headquarters in New York. In addition, Murdoch also announced the cancellation of a previously-planned program entitled "World's Least-Supported Operating Systems." The program was part of Fox's new fall line-up.
"What a jag-off I've been," admitted Murdoch.
"We all do things in life that we're ashamed of," explained Murdoch. "For my part, I allowed myself to be swept up by a large, domineering corporation. I allowed myself to be manipulated. I allowed the rascals in Redmond to brainwash me." Murdoch's voice cracked dramatically at several points in his speech.
"But we're past all of that now," continued Murdoch. "And I'm a better man because of it. That's why I say 'to hell with M$!' We will forge on! We will make history! The Fox network considers Linux to be the best operating system ever invented!" Murdoch spent the next several minutes explaining to reporters that the 'S' in "MS" was to be replaced with a dollar sign.
"It's important," explained Murdoch.
Candace Gorman, a public relations spokeswoman for the Fox network, made a few brief statements after Murdoch's comments. "I would like to make clear that Mr. Murdoch's statements and position reversal have absolutely nothing to do with the performance of Red Hat stock, and they certainly are unrelated to the record-setting IPO of VA Linux. Mr. Murdoch's stock portfolio is his own goddamn business."
Ms. Gorman continued. "Additionally, I must also add that Mr. Murdoch's comments are unrelated to the successful IPO of Andover.Net. It is common knowledge that supporters of Andover.Net are a bunch of complete and total assholes."
Nick Petreley contributed to this story.
You know, Pathfinder. This was the mission that touched down on Mars on July 4, 1997. This was the mission that gave us spectacular panoramic views of the Martian surface, and allowed NASA scientists to actually drive a rover around on the surface of another planet to do remote science. This was a mission that far exceeded its projected life expectancy. Pathfinder will go down in history as one of NASA's most successful missions ever, and it was one of the first Better, Faster, Cheaper missions.
:-)
.. not by a long shot.) These four missions combined have still cost less money than the failed Mars Observer mission.
.. but if it does, let's hope that it doesn't serve to further fuel to fire of the "get rid of NASA" crowd out there. When the U.S. government is spending $350 million on an aircraft carrier that the military doesn't want, it seems kind of petty for these folks to be pointing their fingers at NASA.
By the way, the Pathfinder mission cost less than it did to make a standard Hollywood big-budget blockbuster. I've seen Waterworld. Have you? We put a human-controlled rover on Mars for less money. Which do you think is the bigger waste?
Let's consider the four Better, Faster, Cheaper missions to Mars so far: the Pathfinder, the Global Surveyor, the Climate Orbiter, and the Polar Lander. Of those, two were successful, one was a failure, and one is still in doubt (though as others have said, there is no reason to believe that the Polar Lander has failed yet
NASA's on the right track. Let's just hope that the Polar Lander mission hasn't failed
Will there be less flames there than here on /.?
Absolutely!
PS I (Personally) really liked David Lee Roth, but the specific example of an evil Van Halen song was 'Best of Both Worlds' (on 5150, right?), so it looks like I'll be seeing you in hell. What a way to go.
Supposedly the band (with both Sammy Hagar and David Lee Roth) will be putting on a perpetual performance in hell, in the Fire and Brimstone Ampitheatre [*] at the corner of Beelzebub Lane and Pestilence Avenue. See you there! No need to bring a lighter.
:-)
[*] Hell has adopted British spellings, such as "theatre" and "cheque". The use of the euro as currency is still under consideration.
When I was young, I went to a Pentacostal Bible camp where they told me that I was going to hell for liking Van Halen (Pre-Sammy, of course)
My friend, if you liked pre-Sammy Van Halen, you are going to hell.
:-)
Are they using a particular individual's DNA .. ?
:-)
After we finish mapping some DNA we can go munch on some grindage, buuuuuuuuudy!
After all this showed how good a Web server NT is for static pages ;-)
:-)
NT/IIS is great for dynamic content too.
After all, have you ever seen how fast it generates those "server too busy" messages on the fly?
why don't we save life here on earth before we go looking for it in the reaches of space?
:-) It really is News for Nerds. It's in the nature of humankind to study the universe and make observations about it. We've got an inborn curiosity that we're powerless to do anything about. What we're finding is that planets are really not all that special; that they exist in abundance outside of our own planetary system. Now this was pretty much well-established before these findings were published, but the news of six new planets of this nature just further confirms it.
Why can't we do both?
Why do we have to pick and choose?
Why is the space program, and astronomical research of any kind, the favorite whipping boy of folks who claim to want to eliminate government waste? (This latest discovery comes out of academia, by the way.) While I can't comment on waste within the governments of other countries, some of the more lavish expenditures of the United States government are almost legendary. This is the same government that spends millions of dollars buying boats and airplanes that the military doesn't even want. Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of US taxpayer money went out to study cow farts. And don't even get me started on the six hundred dollar toilet seats.
And it's the space program people complain about?
Look, I'm all for trimming government waste, but the space program is a veritable island in a sea of pork. It's almost a cliche to present a list of new technologies that sprung up as a result of the space program, so I won't do it, but I will offer one opinion about news of this nature:
It's just fucking cool.
So yes, by all means, let's work to solve the problems that we face here at home. But I don't think it's a "this-or-that" situation. We can have our cake and eat it too.
Why use up perfectly good places for life to evolve when you have much better control of your
:-)
.. the first time I previewed this post before submission, I had mispelled "important" in the above sentence as "impotant". How ironic.)
environment on artificial structures that you can make from raw sunlight and loose asteroidal materials?
Sort of like a Dyson Sphere? Sounds neat, but I'd say it's a bit beyond our technological capacity at the moment. Until we get to that level, maybe would should stick to planets until we grow out of our technological adolescence.
We should explore other worlds, but we should live in space where all aspects of our environment would be at our control: gravity, temperature, pressure, topography, atmospheric composition, design, ecology, zoning and most obviously whether we allow those Windows riff-raff on board.
And you forgot the most important one: Sex in near-zero-gee would be lots more fun!
(Heh
The letters stand for "Henry Draper". Draper was an astronomical spectroscopist and one of the early pioneers of astrophysics. The Henry Draper Star Catalog is a listing of about 130,000 field stars down to a visual magnitude of approximately 9.
But what does everyone else think? Should we go and invade a planet that might have a history of other species? Or should we just stick to what we were given?
.. though millions of years ago it may have been a different story) they don't have a chance of evolving to anything more advanced. But who's to say that things on Mars won't change? Perhaps a cataclysmic comet collision or two introduces a massive supply of water that fundamentally changes things on Mars, and maybe that gives the hardy Martian microbes an evolutionary leg up!
:-)
This is an interesting question, and it's been posed many times before.
The most obvious example to apply this to is Mars. Let's say that in a couple hundred years time, we decide to start colonizing and terraforming the Red Planet. So the International Space Agency sends a crew to land and do some initial surveys. They get out, take some samples, and wonder of wonders, they find living microorganisms!
So what do we do now? Do we start terraforming anyway, and begin the production of greenhouse gases to produce a more Earth-like atmosphere that retains more heat from the Sun? Do we do this, knowing that we'll be screwing with the Martian climate and perhaps altering/destroying the history of its native life? Or do we adopt a "Hands Off Mars" approach, and leave, never to return? After all, Mother Nature is at work on Mars, and perhaps we should let things run their natural course. Do we care? Should we?
Maybe single-celled organisms don't matter. One could successfully argue that if microorganisms currently exist on Mars (and that's a really big if
Or what about a thousand years from now, when the International Space Agency's first interstellar "generation ship" arrives at the Earth-like, second-innermost planet orbiting nu Andromedae? (I'm speculating.) Suppose they find amphibious, complex but otherwise unintelligent life forms? Do they turn around and go home? (Probably not.) What if they find intelligent life that has been unresponsive to our years of direct radio broadcasts to them, either for technological or xenophobic reasons?
Assuming that life is not all that unusual (and there's no real reason to assume that it is), the ethics of colonization can get pretty hairy. Things get complicated when you assume that a planet suitable for human colonization would have to be at least somewhat Earth-like, and Earth-like planets have a pretty good track record when it comes to harboring life. Hell, every Earth-like planet that we know about has life on it!
But one sample makes for poor statistics, or so they say. I'm not considering Venus and Mars to be Earth-like here; by "Earth-like" I mean terrestrial (rocky) and covered by plenty of liquid water.
Anyway, plenty of interesting issues.
One example of this that comes to mind is the Napster software that was recently featured on Slashdot. For those who missed the article or are unaware of what it does, it basically establishes a "dedicated MP3 network" of users who connect into central servers and share their MP3 collections with all other users who are connected. If you want to find (for example) Billy Idol's "Rebel Yell", you enter the song and artist name into a search dialog, and it presents you with a list of dozens of users who are "sharing" that file, along with their connection speed and ping times. Then you pick who you want to download it from, initiate the transfer, and that's it.
:-)
Naturally, the Napster web site and welcome message prominently display warnings about copyright law and piracy, and they strongly stress that the software is only to be used to trade non-copyrighted MP3 music. But nobody is actually naive enough to believe that that's what people use the software for. The Napster developers know damn well that people are going to use the software to trade copyrighted music with each other. You only have to log in once to see that this is the case; a search for any song that is or was once even remotely popular will invariably produce many matches.
A couple of months ago or so, I bought a Creative CD-RW drive, and on the box it states that the included software will allow you to "share the latest independent MP3 music files with your friends." Here, again, Creative isn't fooling anybody. They know that there's huge demand for the ability to download music from the Internet and then burn it to CD where it can be played on a Discman, in a car, in the home stereo, or anywhere else. And guess what? Most of that music can't exactly be called "independent."
So are the Napster folks a party to piracy? What about Creative Labs? I think the answer to these questions is "yes"; it's kind of hard to argue that MP3 location software and CD burners have not contributed to copyright violations related to digital music. But (at least in my mind) there is a difference between being a party to piracy and being a sponsor of it. By placing obligatory warning messages on their products ("Thou shalt not pirate") and by essentially saying "Hey look, we're not responsible for what people do with this", the Napster and Creative Labs folks may have absolved themselves of legal responsibilty for what their users do (or have they? IANAL.)
In the end, I think it's clear that the user is responsible. There are certainly legitimate uses for an MP3 distribution network; it's a great way for garage bands across the world to get quick and cheap recognition for their work. And of course there are tons of legitimate uses for a CD burner! Since the technology is so neat, and since the providers of these technologies have no way to prevent people from misusing them, I don't see how we can place the responsibility on them.
Anyway, it isn't my intent to either condone or condemn music piracy. It is my intent, however, to illustrate an example of the sort of "moral dilemma" that some software and hardware makers face, instead of falling back on some lame gun analogy.
Oh and 31 is not even, and 13+17 = 30 :)
:-) Guess I should stop smoking that kitty litter!
Whoops
While we're on the topic of open mathematical conjectures, my favorite still has to be Goldbach's Conjecture. It's tantalizingly simple; it states that any even integer greater than 4 can be expressed as the sum of two prime numbers. It seems intuitive, and it's certainly easy to verify "by hand", at least for relatively small numbers (i.e., 31 = 13 + 17). Indeed, computers have been unable to find a counterexample, regardless of how high they've gone.
Does anybody know the status of this problem? I recall reading something a while back about how somebody determined that this problem is undecidable, though I could be wrong.
When I was in college taking a History of Mathematics class years back, I was fascinated by this one. I even spent a fair amount of time hammering away at it, and while I came up with a few interesting ideas, nothing substantial came out of it. I was working using Euclid's famous proof of the infinitude of the primes as an inspiration. Anybody who's seen that proof knows that in mathematics, sometimes a correct proof can be completely unexpected and yet incredibly elegant and simple at the same time.
Does this mean that I'll be able to buy eleven penny-sized CDs for only a penny?
..
Hmmm
[The most disturbing thing] to me, is how eager many people (particularly here on Slashdot) are to see the government seize the assets of private citizens (aka "breaking them up").
Yes, this would be the first time in the history of the United States that the government has ever seized the assets of a private citizen.
The only reason Microsoft has achieved dominance is through the incompetence of its competitors.
To a certain extent, this is true, but it really isn't the point, is it? The question here is not how Microsoft achieved dominance, it's what they've done with that dominance.
Bill Gates has sworn up and down that the consumer has never been hurt by Microsoft. Yet when somebody like Intel comes up with a cool project that Microsoft views as a threat to its bottom line, Microsoft holds a financial gun to Intel's head and leverages its desktop monopoly to threaten them into submission. How is this good for the consumer?
Since its assumption as the King of Desktops, Microsoft has launched numerous systematic campaigns to either buy out or eliminate altogether any technologies that it felt threatened by. Now you listen to the polls, and you hear people say "Leave 'em alone, DOJ! I'm fat and happy and content with my Microsoft software, and plus I got some of their stock in my portfolio, so stop going after them!"
But it's hard to judge consumer harm when the technologies that we're talking about are really nothing more than potential technologies that were denied entry into the market by a ruthless monopolist. These technologies were not "voted down" by the market for being inferior. Microsoft simply threatened them out of existence, and that's wrong. Sure, people may be happy with their computers and their software. But the point is, if Microsoft had placed the welfare of the industry ahead of their own welfare, we might be even happier. We don't know. We just don't know.
Look, don't get me wrong; I'm not all that fired up about seeing government intervention in the technology sector either. But if there was ever a case where it was warranted, this is it.
This is freaky.
.. truly an awesome disc.)
:-)
I just got done throwing in "Children of the Night", a Nine Inch Nails bootleg that was recorded at a NIN/David Bowie concert. (It's got Trent Reznor and David Bowie doing duets of Reptile, Scary Monsters, and Hurt
So then I bring up Slashdot, and who's at the top of the list? David Bowie. Freaky.
Actually, it was pretty refreshing to see Bowie say that he doesn't give a "flying fuck" about the bootleggers. Bootleg CDs are a great way for fans of a particular artist or group to expand their collection. And if you think about it, concert bootleggers don't really take anything away from the artist. Who is hurt by somebody who's recording a concert, regardless of whether they're plugged into the soundboard or if they've just got some low-quality tape recorder near a loudspeaker? The artist(s) have already made their money off the concert; the bootleggers are simply providing a "permanent record" of the concert, so to speak. Seems like Bowie knows this, and is okay with it.
Interesting stuff.
Who the fsck tells you this?
:-)
Try spending some time in talk.origins.
Assuming this isn't a strawman of sorts, I'd like to apologize for the behavior of my fellows.
Oh, nobody (least of all me) is trying to attribute the rabidness of the most fundamentalist creationists to creationists as a whole. There are plenty of zealots who are only too willing to resort to vague threats to try to get their point across. Nevertheless, the sentence of mine that you quoted was overly sarcastic and was, in retrospect, ill-advised. Please consider it stricken from the record.
Ok, for years I have heard poeple say that evolution violates the second law.
.. 'kay? Thanks.
Evolution violates the Creationists' Second Law of Thermodynamics. This is the law that says that things tend to progress from order to disorder, and since evolution says that the opposite is true, it must violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Now, this conveniently ignores such pesky terminology as "closed system", and for the sake of simplicity, minor things such as the Sun are not factored in. (Incidentally, I wonder if any of the creationists who claim that order cannot come from disorder in nature have ever seen a snowflake.)
Anyway, you might want to check this link out:
The Second Law of Thermodynamics, Evolution, and Probability
It is only my intention to provide more information related to this query; it is not my intention to ignite some drawn-out thread about religion versus science in a place where it is clearly inappropriate. So creationists, before you condemn me, allow me to pre-emptively point out that I know that I am truly a horrible person, and that I am condemning myself to everlasting pain, and that as far as I'm concerned, all of you people are completely right and modern science is completely wrong
Excuse me, I'm going down to staples to pick up my copy of Quake 4...
Why?
Quake 5 is much cooler anyway. Don't waste your money on 4.
Ok, I'll admit that I'm a theist, and a rather naive one at that.
I disagree (about the naive part.) You make perfect sense to me.
It's just too bad that some people are convinced that they will be sentenced to eternal torture for using their own brains, curiosity, creativity, and common sense. Makes you think, doesn't it?
But there are certain realities here.
We've got a mountain of evidence for evolutionary common descent. If this was a topic that did not conflict with people's religious views, nobody would even be debating this. It would be as widely accepted as the Blue Sky theory. Here's what we have:
- The fossil record
- Comparative anatomy
- Comparative embryology
- Comparative biochemistry
- Genetics
.. and the list goes on and on. All of these individual fields of study point to one thing: evolutionary common descent as the source of biodiversity on Earth. Now, "scientific creationists" can do whatever is in their power to exorcise these topics from public schools. But they do so at the risk of the education of our young people. And they do so while conveniently ignoring two basic facts:- Evolution says nothing
.. repeat, nothing about where life came from.
- Science does not rule out a higher power as a guiding force behind evolution.
The bottom line is that equating belief in evolution with atheism is indefensible. 500 years ago, people were convinced that the Earth was flat, and that it was the center of the Universe. And then along came Copernicus and Galileo, suggesting that we were a small, uninteresting ball of rock that was movingThey did things to Galileo; let's not talk about that.
Guess what? People eventually learned that their faith was just as valid on a tiny ball of rock as it was when they were at the center of the universe. And as a hopeless optimist, this is where I see the evolution "debate" going; literalist creationists will eventually stop trying to place limits on the power of their God, and they will come around. Those that don't will quickly fade out. This is a process that is known as "natural selection."
Yes, I believe that I live on a tiny ball of rock orbiting a main sequence star located in the suburbs of a very large spiral galaxy. Yes, I believe that the evolutionary precepts of changes in the gene pool over time have resulted in the diversity of life on our small planet. No, I don't believe that all of this has happened in purely naturalist terms that modern science can currently understand.
So, literalists: Stop putting words in my mouth.
Thank ya verr much.
When you can see sex and murder on TV, how important is it to ban the word "piss"?
Excellent point.
A couple of days ago, the USA Network here in the States was running "The Godfather Saga", which is a combined version of Francis Ford Copolla's first two Godfather films, re-edited so that all of the material is in chronological order. There's a classic scene where Al Pacino goes to have dinner with an enemy of the family, ostensibly to make peace with him. In reality, the family plants a pistol in the bathroom of the Italian place that they're eating at; the plan is that Pacino is to excuse himself to go to the bathroom, retrieve the gun, and blow the guy away.
In the setup scene, James Caan urges his associate (Clemenza) to take extra care when planting the gun. "I don't want my brother coming out of that bathroom with just his dick in his hands," he comments. Now, for the USA Network showing, that line of dialogue was edited. In its place, the line "I don't want my brother coming out of that bathroom with just his *stick* in his hands." The replacement was unbelievably cheesy; the sound was all wrong, and it was a strange mixture of funny and insulting all at the same time.
However, when it comes time for Pacino to pull the trigger, the USA Network showing was virtually unedited. In graphic detail, Pacino's unsuspecting victims get a bullet hole through their forehead, with streams of blood flowing out. They drop to the floor, Pacino drops the gun, and runs out.
Moral of the story? It's all right to show a couple of guys take bullets between the eyebrows, but the word "dick" is unacceptable, and must be replaced with the word "stick." Such hypocrisy is staggering.
(For the record, I'm not at all opposed to violence in films. I for one think that the graphic violence in The Godfather was mandatory; without it, the portrayal of the brutality, inhumanity, and lack of respect for human life in the Mob would not have been believable. I am, however, opposed to hypocrisy.)
I wonder if the Palm "Vx" is going to be popular in countries with chemical weapons programs?
The very possibility the bible might be false (or even only false in parts, or essentially correct but corrupted) seems to arouse anxiety in many religious persons.
The problem that many folks have is that they worship the Bible instead of the God that it talks about. They are more interested in holding it to a preposterous standard of inerrancy than they are in studying its deeper meaning. This amounts to little more than idolatry. When people use their own eyes and brains to make observations of the physical world and discover that said observations conflict with what is written in the Bible, they decide that God must be wrong and worship the book instead.
The doctrine of young-Earth creationism (the "universe is 6,000 years old" folks) requires its adherents to worship a deliberately deceitful God that will sentence them to an eternity of torture for having the audacity to use the brains, creativity, curiosity, and common sense they were given. I simply fail to understand why so many people are willing to characterize their God in such a manner. It is certainly not a flattering portrayal.
"Love the Lord your God, and Love your neighbour" seems to be a pretty good way to live regardless of whether man evolved from apes or a particular man was nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to each other for a change.
Truer words were never spoken!