Actually, the submission says (in a direct quote) that "Turtnitin.com is supposed to be is a placebo for plagiarism." That makes NO sense unless one replaces "placebo" with "panacea."
Fox is going to cancel Futurama and keep "King of the Hill" on TV?! This has long been a problem for me: how is it possible that "King of the Hill" has survived for all this time? My only explanation before was that it had a great time slot (between Futurama and Simpsons). But if Fox is now claiming that Futurama doesn't get good enough ratings to stay on, how is it possible that "King of the Hill" has managed to stay around?!
Or, we might just say, "that guy had no idea what he was talking about because, obviously, life needs a penguin-shaped continent to exist."
My point simply is that we really know nothing about the way life forms. Hell; we don't even know if it is possible that life has formed on another planet in OUR OWN solar system. And I would argue that the Drake equation gives us NO new information about the statistics of life forming since we don't know the statistics of any of the terms. . .
I absolutely agree that knowing the terms can help in considering any problem. But, it's not even clear that these terms are the ones to consider. AND, some of the terms (i.e. probability that a planet can support life) are so general and don't address anything in any sort of specific way that they add very little to the discussion.
What possible good does the Drake Equation do? We are no where near being able to estimate accurately any of the terms in the Drake Equation. Even the Star Formation term (by far the term with the lowest errors) has gigantic uncertainty built into it. It seems ridiculous to try to make up an equation where you don't know any of the terms. Yes, I agree that it is facinating to consider the possibility of life elsewhere in our Galaxy, but applying an equation to this interest implies a level of knowledge that it just not there.
I mean, I can make up an equation to calulate anything I want, but if I don't know what the value of any of the terms are, what good is it to anyone?
OK. Fine. That certainly would be a solution. But just remember that it takes months for ground-based telescopes to be calibrated properly. It's even harder in space. _And_ if you're assembling it in space, it makes it extremely difficult to get the calibrations right. Just remember: we're talking in small fractions of a mm here.
They talk in this article about flying a bunch of small telescopes in formation as a surrugate to HST. This is _rediculously_ complicated. I have been at conferences where they talk about plans for the Terrestrial Planet Finder: a giant telescope array that will be space-based and fly in formation (slated, very optimistically, to fly in 2020). Just keeping the _distances_ accurate is hard enough, much less keeping all the instruments in the same plane. At least for Astronomical applications, these minis aren't going to replace the bigger guys any time soon.
This is actually very interesting. The question is if there will be feedback between this page and the main google page. I mean, will the top 10 declining queries be amung the top 10 gaining queries the next week? It seems that once people see this page, it will occur to them to do the searches on the page. It happened to me, anyway. So, in a way, this time is the only real, true, unpolluted sample.
True. You can see meteors any time of the year, but there are the most during the "meteor shower" periods (since we're usually going through the tail of the comet that allows the debris to crash into the atmosphere and cause the shower). In our light-polluted society, meteor showers are often the only time for a large portion of the population to see meteorites.
First of all, these data do _not_ suggest that the universe is open, but rather that it is flat. This is a key cosmological difference.
Secondly, dark energy does _not_ have mass (you're probably thinking of dark matter). Dark Energy is thought to be (by some) the vaccuum energy density of the universe. At the current time, it appears that dark energy is accelerating the outward motion of the universe. This, in fact, is what the supernova observations are showing: given our expansion rate now, we would expect the supernova to be moving away from us more quickly than the actual motion we observe. This suggests that the universe was expanding more slowly in the past than it is now; that is, the universe is accelerating in its expansion.
Because it adds to the overall energy density of the universe, however, it is thought to suggest that it makes the universe flat, cosmologically speaking.
No one really knows what the result of increased Greenhouse gasses is. Detailed models are unable to successfully predict what an increase in CO2 will do for the global temperature. Therefore, it is irresponsible to either dismiss the greenhouse effect as irrelivant (which about half the population seems to do) or say that there's nothing we can do because it's already progressed too far (which the other half seems to do). The simple fact of the matter is, the Earth is an incredibly complex system and is unbelievably difficult to model.
Actually, no one knows if black holes have infinate density or not. Current theory has them being a singularity, which would indicate zero volume and, therefore, infinate density (since we know they do have _some_ mass). . .
It may sound like stupid, obvious advice, but for the amount of money that you want to spend, you're not going to go into the super high end range of things. For that reason, I would find a nice reciever that you like that has all the bells and whistles that you're interested in, and then go out and listen to some speakers. If you find some that sound good, buy them. While this may seem obvious, most people have trouble accepting that you're (most likely) not going to be able to tell the difference between a $500 and $2000 pair of speakers.
My advice is to go out to a good (i.e. not Circuit City, Good Guys, etc.) stereo store and ask them to recommend some good speakers for you in your price range.
I really feel that this site must be owned by Sony. I mean, c'mon. Why else would they talk about the incredible graphics capabilities of the PS2? How could that possible effect the effectiveness of any typical type of super computer. But, as I'm sure the site says somewhere, "The Playstation 2 isn't your typical super computer.":-)
Actually, the Space.com story refers to it being 7 billion miles away, not light-years. Just to put it in perspective, our Galaxy is ~100,000 light-years across (depending on who you talk to).
Re:This has happened before?
on
eLection '04
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· Score: 1
Actually, the law is "no campaigning within 100 feet of the polls on the day of an election". That still means that door-to-door campaigning is fine. It just means that you wouldn't be able to go door-to-door on the first Tuesday after the first Monday.
That said, I agree with the problems that many people have brought up here about voting from home. I think computerizing the voting is a _great_ idea, but I think that doing it over a network could create huge headaches for the Registrar of Voters. Also, the best way to guarentee the whole "secret ballot" idea, in my opinion, is to maintain the polling places.
On the other hand, Oregon just held it's first mail-in-only election, so maybe the vote-from-home trend is going to take off. Who knows?
There actually is a decent chance that these "water" tracks on Mars are actually a result of carbon dioxide escaping from below the surface. While the desire to try to find water on another planet is tempting, the evidence seems to equally support the idea that it's CO2 as opposed to water. Who knows, really? I guess that's why it's useful to send some more missions up.:-)
Are you saying that the Producers can only choose one song to be taken under consideration for the Oscar. What about all of those Academy Award years in the past where 3 of the 5 songs nominated would be from a single Disney movie?
No matter what you think of the song, you gotta love the fact that they have to do a musical number at the Oscars for "Blame Canada." Hmmm. . . I imagine the choreographer is bashing his/her head against a wall right now trying to figure out what they're going to do for that song.
Actually, very recent data suggests that the universe is flat. This means that the universe will stop expanding at time=infinity (which is different than expanding forever, strangely enough:-) ) This implies a cosmological constant, some sort of weirdo anti-gravity-type thing. I don't really understand why dark matter necessarily implies reverse time, but I guess this guy might know what he's talking about. . .
Why would that imply that the universe expanded faster than the speed of light? We are able to see Galaxies at high red shift as they were being formed (billions of years ago), so why not the Big Bang?
We _can_ see the Big Bang. . . well, sort of. The 3 degree Cosmic Background Radiation is as far as we can see back. The CBR is actually the point at which space became translucent, so there is no way that we can see further back than that.
This is something that is always overlooked. I love the pulsar planets because the system (aside from the pulsar) is very similar to our own. The two outer planets even show 3/2 resonance like a bunch of objects in our solar system. For some reason neither the mainstream media nor/. seem to think these planets are important.
Actually, there is some evidence (albeit sort of round-about) that all life everywhere must be either Carbon or Silicon based with a strong preference towards carbon. Now, this could just be a case of us believing that because there is ample evidence on Earth for that hypothosis, but there is some evidence (and my argument is really weak right now because I can't find the book) that in order to develop bone structure, etc. the extraterrestrials would have to be carbon or silicon based. Damnit. . . I'll post it if I can find the book. . .
Another little interesting tidbit is the theory that all intelligent civilizations see eclipses. . . that's an even weirder argument about the tides and all that. . .
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, the submission says (in a direct quote) that "Turtnitin.com is supposed to be is a placebo for plagiarism." That makes NO sense unless one replaces "placebo" with "panacea."
Fox is going to cancel Futurama and keep "King of the Hill" on TV?! This has long been a problem for me: how is it possible that "King of the Hill" has survived for all this time? My only explanation before was that it had a great time slot (between Futurama and Simpsons). But if Fox is now claiming that Futurama doesn't get good enough ratings to stay on, how is it possible that "King of the Hill" has managed to stay around?!
Or, we might just say, "that guy had no idea what he was talking about because, obviously, life needs a penguin-shaped continent to exist."
My point simply is that we really know nothing about the way life forms. Hell; we don't even know if it is possible that life has formed on another planet in OUR OWN solar system. And I would argue that the Drake equation gives us NO new information about the statistics of life forming since we don't know the statistics of any of the terms. . .
I absolutely agree that knowing the terms can help in considering any problem. But, it's not even clear that these terms are the ones to consider. AND, some of the terms (i.e. probability that a planet can support life) are so general and don't address anything in any sort of specific way that they add very little to the discussion.
Allright. I'm going to rant a bit.
What possible good does the Drake Equation do? We are no where near being able to estimate accurately any of the terms in the Drake Equation. Even the Star Formation term (by far the term with the lowest errors) has gigantic uncertainty built into it. It seems ridiculous to try to make up an equation where you don't know any of the terms. Yes, I agree that it is facinating to consider the possibility of life elsewhere in our Galaxy, but applying an equation to this interest implies a level of knowledge that it just not there.
I mean, I can make up an equation to calulate anything I want, but if I don't know what the value of any of the terms are, what good is it to anyone?
OK. Fine. That certainly would be a solution. But just remember that it takes months for ground-based telescopes to be calibrated properly. It's even harder in space. _And_ if you're assembling it in space, it makes it extremely difficult to get the calibrations right. Just remember: we're talking in small fractions of a mm here.
They talk in this article about flying a bunch of small telescopes in formation as a surrugate to HST. This is _rediculously_ complicated. I have been at conferences where they talk about plans for the Terrestrial Planet Finder: a giant telescope array that will be space-based and fly in formation (slated, very optimistically, to fly in 2020). Just keeping the _distances_ accurate is hard enough, much less keeping all the instruments in the same plane. At least for Astronomical applications, these minis aren't going to replace the bigger guys any time soon.
This is actually very interesting. The question is if there will be feedback between this page and the main google page. I mean, will the top 10 declining queries be amung the top 10 gaining queries the next week? It seems that once people see this page, it will occur to them to do the searches on the page. It happened to me, anyway. So, in a way, this time is the only real, true, unpolluted sample.
True. You can see meteors any time of the year, but there are the most during the "meteor shower" periods (since we're usually going through the tail of the comet that allows the debris to crash into the atmosphere and cause the shower). In our light-polluted society, meteor showers are often the only time for a large portion of the population to see meteorites.
First of all, these data do _not_ suggest that the universe is open, but rather that it is flat. This is a key cosmological difference.
Secondly, dark energy does _not_ have mass (you're probably thinking of dark matter). Dark Energy is thought to be (by some) the vaccuum energy density of the universe. At the current time, it appears that dark energy is accelerating the outward motion of the universe. This, in fact, is what the supernova observations are showing: given our expansion rate now, we would expect the supernova to be moving away from us more quickly than the actual motion we observe. This suggests that the universe was expanding more slowly in the past than it is now; that is, the universe is accelerating in its expansion.
Because it adds to the overall energy density of the universe, however, it is thought to suggest that it makes the universe flat, cosmologically speaking.
No one really knows what the result of increased Greenhouse gasses is. Detailed models are unable to successfully predict what an increase in CO2 will do for the global temperature. Therefore, it is irresponsible to either dismiss the greenhouse effect as irrelivant (which about half the population seems to do) or say that there's nothing we can do because it's already progressed too far (which the other half seems to do). The simple fact of the matter is, the Earth is an incredibly complex system and is unbelievably difficult to model.
Actually, no one knows if black holes have infinate density or not. Current theory has them being a singularity, which would indicate zero volume and, therefore, infinate density (since we know they do have _some_ mass). . .
It may sound like stupid, obvious advice, but for the amount of money that you want to spend, you're not going to go into the super high end range of things. For that reason, I would find a nice reciever that you like that has all the bells and whistles that you're interested in, and then go out and listen to some speakers. If you find some that sound good, buy them. While this may seem obvious, most people have trouble accepting that you're (most likely) not going to be able to tell the difference between a $500 and $2000 pair of speakers.
My advice is to go out to a good (i.e. not Circuit City, Good Guys, etc.) stereo store and ask them to recommend some good speakers for you in your price range.
I really feel that this site must be owned by Sony. I mean, c'mon. Why else would they talk about the incredible graphics capabilities of the PS2? How could that possible effect the effectiveness of any typical type of super computer. But, as I'm sure the site says somewhere, "The Playstation 2 isn't your typical super computer." :-)
MAN! I almost never have this complaint, but this story needs some serious spell checking. Here are a few choice gems:
"Elain's boyfriend"
"This time I new nothing."
"reclaim his thrown"
Actually, the Space.com story refers to it being 7 billion miles away, not light-years. Just to put it in perspective, our Galaxy is ~100,000 light-years across (depending on who you talk to).
That said, I agree with the problems that many people have brought up here about voting from home. I think computerizing the voting is a _great_ idea, but I think that doing it over a network could create huge headaches for the Registrar of Voters. Also, the best way to guarentee the whole "secret ballot" idea, in my opinion, is to maintain the polling places.
On the other hand, Oregon just held it's first mail-in-only election, so maybe the vote-from-home trend is going to take off. Who knows?
There actually is a decent chance that these "water" tracks on Mars are actually a result of carbon dioxide escaping from below the surface. While the desire to try to find water on another planet is tempting, the evidence seems to equally support the idea that it's CO2 as opposed to water. Who knows, really? I guess that's why it's useful to send some more missions up. :-)
Are you saying that the Producers can only choose one song to be taken under consideration for the Oscar. What about all of those Academy Award years in the past where 3 of the 5 songs nominated would be from a single Disney movie?
No matter what you think of the song, you gotta love the fact that they have to do a musical number at the Oscars for "Blame Canada." Hmmm. . . I imagine the choreographer is bashing his/her head against a wall right now trying to figure out what they're going to do for that song.
:-)
Actually, very recent data suggests that the universe is flat. This means that the universe will stop expanding at time=infinity (which is different than expanding forever, strangely enough :-) ) This implies a cosmological constant, some sort of weirdo anti-gravity-type thing. I don't really understand why dark matter necessarily implies reverse time, but I guess this guy might know what he's talking about. . .
Why would that imply that the universe expanded faster than the speed of light? We are able to see Galaxies at high red shift as they were being formed (billions of years ago), so why not the Big Bang?
We _can_ see the Big Bang. . . well, sort of. The 3 degree Cosmic Background Radiation is as far as we can see back. The CBR is actually the point at which space became translucent, so there is no way that we can see further back than that.
THANK YOU!
/. seem to think these planets are important.
This is something that is always overlooked. I love the pulsar planets because the system (aside from the pulsar) is very similar to our own. The two outer planets even show 3/2 resonance like a bunch of objects in our solar system. For some reason neither the mainstream media nor
Actually, there is some evidence (albeit sort of round-about) that all life everywhere must be either Carbon or Silicon based with a strong preference towards carbon. Now, this could just be a case of us believing that because there is ample evidence on Earth for that hypothosis, but there is some evidence (and my argument is really weak right now because I can't find the book) that in order to develop bone structure, etc. the extraterrestrials would have to be carbon or silicon based. Damnit. . . I'll post it if I can find the book. . .
Another little interesting tidbit is the theory that all intelligent civilizations see eclipses. . . that's an even weirder argument about the tides and all that. . .
Just a few ramblings of my mind. . .