They use the term to differenciate from ammonia ice, etc. There are numerous other elements that form ice, and those are found on other planets more commonly than water.
I heard about the underground ocean in 6th grade! Honestly, this is nothing new. Maybe the editors are posting extra stories to divert all the traffic on the Sklyarov story and 511 comments.
How will people see what a ridiculous thing the DMCA is if they never hear about this? Few people other than slashdotters and people who have witnessed the protests actually have heard of the DMCA, let alone Sklyarov! In fact, I went to a political gathering last evening, where there were numerous citizens and several politicians, both local and otherwise. Only one of them had heard of the DMCA, and none knew about the Sklyarov issue. The major newspaper here hasn't run a single story on the issue. The media was what was pushing for this dumb act! It's in their best interest to maintain it, to keep the public in ignorance... Anyway, unless this is taken to the Supreme Court, it seems unlikely the courts could find the jurisdiction to squash the DMCA.
"this story is really only of interest to geologists and those who pretend to be able to fake it."
Wow, then a majority of slashdotters are either astronomers or pretend to be able to fake it? Seems a sure lot of the science articles on the main page deal with asteroids crashing into earth, stars crashing into earth, etc.? Guess vulcan global cooling in thousands of years is less compelling to the average slashdotter than stuff raining in from the heavens in millions of years.
Five comments! They stick this in obscurity, in the science section which few ever seem to read. Doesn't anyone care if Yellowstone explodes into a roiling, noxious pit of fire, even if in a long long time from now? There goes the wolf reintroduction project, and the world's climate, among other things! Course... I don't expect either of the Wyoming residents are computer geeks.
I see two problems here: first, that kids have access to inappropriate material; and second, that news and entertainment are becoming increasingly similar. The first seems almost impossible to solve, as no filter is perfect. Teenage boys will nearly always find a way past any wall set up against them. If this material did not exist, that could solve the problem, but that could border on First Amendment violation. As for the second problem, that is more a societal issue. News is a business, unfortunately, and if people don't care about fact, they won't get it. Many people are stupid; what do we do about THAT? If there were more choice in news information, there could be something for everyone. Let the masses have their 'Big Brother'; just as long as it doesn't dilute MY news!
I don't see why they're using chickens for this. I mean, yeah, birds evolved from dinosaurs, but you would think that modern lizards would be more closely related. A Komodo dragon would need very few changes - it's already a monster! But I suppose chickens are much easier to work with in a lab than Komodo dragons. Try getting a DNA sample from a giant lizard with sharp teeth encrusted with lethal bacteria!
If people had complete freedom to speak as they please, the nation would be in chaos. When the right to free speech is considered boundless, defamation, sedition, incitement to crime, etc. would all be perfectly legal. Obviously there must be exceptions to the First Amendment, which the courts have created. However, I agree that in this case the First Amendment outweighs. Anonymous speech is speech, and the speaker should be protected until they cross the line and use their speech in an illegal manner. Just like it would be in any other free speech situation!
NASA should work like this! Have the projects on an open forum, where anyone and everyone can suggest changes, look for problems, etc. I suppose actual scientists would have to have the final say, but many mistakes could be fixed and systems made more efficient if others were given the chance to look at the project with fresh eyes. Do you think that the little feet-meters mixup with that Mars mission would've happened if the project was open source? If a scientist screws up on a small detail, no one will check that. If the project was open source, it is more likely someone would.
"Men are the great innovators of our society. 90% or more of successful business men are, well, men. Men are more creative than women... Men overwhelmingly win nobel prizes, and it could be because of genetic advantages, hormone levels, or a combination of the two. It's also interesting to note that men have larger brains than women on average."
All right, great, more businessmen are men. And more men are win Nobel prizes, because more men are scientists. This says nothing about women's competency in fields of business or science, however. Could it not be because of societal roles? Women who have the same exact potential as men to become scientists, businesspeople, president, etc. often, for better or worse, marry and become homemakers instead. Perhaps they are qualified to take the homemaking role which society and tradition advocates, but that doesn't mean women are qualified for nothing else, especially not ALL women! To continue to maintain such beliefs would be illogical, ignorant, and sexist. Also, about your remark on men's brains, brain size has nothing to do with intelligence. Einstein's brain was in fact slightly smaller than average.
"Each panel has rows of hexagon-shaped wafers
made of ultra-pure silicon, diamond, sapphire, gold, aluminum or germanium, all of which
will serve as, basically, flypaper."
No wonder NASA projects cost so much! If ultra-pure silicon can be flypaper and so can ultra-pure diamond, why use two? The silicon's a ton cheaper! Is it that one substance can catch only a few elements of solar wind, or what? Otherwise it just seems like a waste of money.
I wonder what you can learn from a single noble gas atom. Sure, it existed when the solar system hadn't even been formed yet, but so did every other atom that you could find here on earth. Noble gases don't combine or change when in contact with other elements, so I wonder what's so special about those which are found in space. It doesn't seem like a single atom could tell you more than an atom on earth could. Is there something special about elements found in the solar wind that I'm missing?
Actually, I WANT to go to school, I WANT to learn, I just GREATLY ABHOR learning all about the rights my forefathers died for in gov't class and THEN walking into the hall and seeing them violated (uniforms, metal detectors, purse searches, etc.) without justification (my school is and was one of the more peaceful in the country). If you want us to learn about our rights, maybe you should let us use them! (coughhypocrisycough)
The point is of COURSE we have to go to school. Duh. Somehow my peers had better get some knowledge crammed into their thick skulls. But that doesn't mean we have to have these excessive rights violations, any more than adults do in their daily lives.
Scientists' prediction capabilities seem to be applied very erratically. We consider the possible influence of a star light years away more than a million years from now, but fail to track most of the near-earth objects, which would pose a much more immediate threat to life on Earth than any star! Do they just pick a large object at random and say, 'Okay, how could this affect Earth?' or what? It just seems like it would make more sense to organize our tracking, and study bigger threats first.
Perhaps all citizens SHOULD have their privacy infringed. Students have their rights violated all the time! We can't vote, but we can be put to death! We are legally obligated to go to an institution which can violate our civil liberties with abandon (school). Perhaps all should be subject to such an environment. After all, students aren't any more criminals than the general populace; we just get more media attention. So if crime justifies these right infringements all should be subject to them. It's all or nothing, guys!
Government of the people, by the people, for the people. So why is it so often that the government does not value the people's freedom? No matter political affiliation, politicians have the gall to increase their power and the spin doctors to get reelected, and few Americans have the time, energy, or discernment to hold them accountable. And why is that? We're too busy eating our Big Macs and watching soaps to critique our government!
How do they name these things? 2001 KX76 - how boring! Charon is named - why not this? Don't these astronomers have any creativity left in them? Maybe they're waiting to name it - a 'Name That Planet' contest or something. Or if someone pays enough, they'll name it after them - money got a tourist into space.
Another problem with having computers calculated to fit their users' personalities would be that it would cause people to separate themselves from society. I'd lock myself in my office and spend hours in conversation with my computer, until my brain is mush and my once-picture-perfect physique resembles a cheese puff. Not that I don't spend hours locked in my office in conversation anyway, but it consists of: "****! Crashed again, you stupid excuse for a toaster oven!" Not exactly scintillating dialogue.
I wonder what the computer's personality will be like. Humorous? Insane? Pragmatic? Philosophic? Who knows? Perhaps in the future people will take personality tests to match them with computers, like a dating service. Though a lot of people would rather have a very simple-minded computer, so it doesn't mess with their stuff. It wouldn't be good if my computer liked my term paper as much as I do, and thus deleted all of it. And my computer wouldn't allow any Microsoft application to be installed, which I wouldn't mind but if I sold it the new owner might!
Cowards lie down and let the whole bloody planet be turned into a parking lot. Cowards don't bother to do anything to fix a government corrupted by big business. Cowards aren't willing to put their lives on the line for a cause they believe in. Cowards wouldn't trust enough that democracy can be fixed in order to work outside the system to fix it.
Arizona can most definitely shoot back - figuratively AND literally. It's legal in AZ to shoot a arsonist if caught in the act. The FBI and Arizonan police are on the case. Do you think the courts will be KIND to the eco-arsonists if they're caught??
Of course, that's IF they're caught. Nearly all of what the police knows is what the eco-arsonists fed them in that Phoenix New Times interview, which may be total B.S. for all we know. The FBI has resorted to photographing random mountain bikers to find the eco-arsonists - real effective, huh? Especially when they might not be bikers anyway.
And the point is to find a target that will make the impact you're looking for. The media will cover arsons of luxury homes, more than less notable targets. A trend brings even more attention to the crimes... and to the reasons for them, which is the whole point of it all!
Eco-Terrorism isn't always unjustified... see AZ
on
Eco-Terrorism
·
· Score: 2
I agree that often eco-terrorism is sometimes crazy teenagers playing with matches, or extreme ignorant firebugs, but NOT ALWAYS. For example, there was a case in Arizona where half-built luxury homes on the edge of a nature preserve were being burned down by a group of mountain bikers. Though in MOST cases this would be unacceptable, consider:
1.) All the targets were half-constructed mansions, thus uninhabited. Evidence shows the eco-arsonists took great pains not to put other people's safety at risk.
2.) They were LUXURY homes. One still shouldn't burn any home down, generally, but at least it wasn't low-income housing or something like that. The owners of these mansions would have to be INSANELY wealthy, and probably they own other homes elsewhere, so it doesn't hurt THEM too bad.
3.) The message had to be sent. In Arizona, it is all too obvious that developers' money is in control of the government. Previously untouched wilderness is being developed at an acre per hour. That is obscene! There's absolutely NO planning or limits on growth. A bill to slow down development WAS introduced, but an influx of money killed it. Obviously SOMETHING had to be done! So the eco-arsonists started torching some half-built mansions, not to burn down every luxury home in the state, duh, but to attract the media and increase public awareness, in the hopes that government officials might listen to the people rather than their wallets, or else be voted out of office. And they have been somewhat successful.
I'm not recommending that everyone go out and burn down buildings. The eco-arsonists, in a newspaper interview, showed that they take their job seriously. They extensively plan each fire, to make sure no one is hurt. They care about the environment and realized the problem before others paid attention. And they have enough faith in democracy to risk their lives in order to rally the public behind this important issue. No one is hurt, the environment at stake.... I think these eco-terrorists are justified.
Not to say the SUV-burning ones being discussed are justified, though. They seem ignorant, unproductive, and rather insane. I'm just arguing that not all eco-terrorists are wrong.
My best friend is the 'Supreme Commander of the Order of the Atomic Squid'. Yes, the people at my school are VERY weird.
'Course, I'm 'Tsarina of All Things Not McDonalds', so maybe I shouldn't talk.
But, unfortunately, many parents HAVEN'T bothered to raise their children. Nor will they take responsibility for their neglect. And these families are not islands. People will be hurt if children grow up without ANY guidance, parental or otherwise. I certainly don't want hordes of juvenile delinquents traipsing the streets! Parents should be responsible for their kids, but when they aren't, it's better that the government raise them than nobody.
Slashdot Mirror
They use the term to differenciate from ammonia ice, etc. There are numerous other elements that form ice, and those are found on other planets more commonly than water.
I heard about the underground ocean in 6th grade! Honestly, this is nothing new. Maybe the editors are posting extra stories to divert all the traffic on the Sklyarov story and 511 comments.
How will people see what a ridiculous thing the DMCA is if they never hear about this? Few people other than slashdotters and people who have witnessed the protests actually have heard of the DMCA, let alone Sklyarov! In fact, I went to a political gathering last evening, where there were numerous citizens and several politicians, both local and otherwise. Only one of them had heard of the DMCA, and none knew about the Sklyarov issue. The major newspaper here hasn't run a single story on the issue. The media was what was pushing for this dumb act! It's in their best interest to maintain it, to keep the public in ignorance... Anyway, unless this is taken to the Supreme Court, it seems unlikely the courts could find the jurisdiction to squash the DMCA.
"this story is really only of interest to geologists and those who pretend to be able to fake it." Wow, then a majority of slashdotters are either astronomers or pretend to be able to fake it? Seems a sure lot of the science articles on the main page deal with asteroids crashing into earth, stars crashing into earth, etc.? Guess vulcan global cooling in thousands of years is less compelling to the average slashdotter than stuff raining in from the heavens in millions of years.
Five comments! They stick this in obscurity, in the science section which few ever seem to read. Doesn't anyone care if Yellowstone explodes into a roiling, noxious pit of fire, even if in a long long time from now? There goes the wolf reintroduction project, and the world's climate, among other things! Course... I don't expect either of the Wyoming residents are computer geeks.
I see two problems here: first, that kids have access to inappropriate material; and second, that news and entertainment are becoming increasingly similar. The first seems almost impossible to solve, as no filter is perfect. Teenage boys will nearly always find a way past any wall set up against them. If this material did not exist, that could solve the problem, but that could border on First Amendment violation. As for the second problem, that is more a societal issue. News is a business, unfortunately, and if people don't care about fact, they won't get it. Many people are stupid; what do we do about THAT? If there were more choice in news information, there could be something for everyone. Let the masses have their 'Big Brother'; just as long as it doesn't dilute MY news!
I don't see why they're using chickens for this. I mean, yeah, birds evolved from dinosaurs, but you would think that modern lizards would be more closely related. A Komodo dragon would need very few changes - it's already a monster! But I suppose chickens are much easier to work with in a lab than Komodo dragons. Try getting a DNA sample from a giant lizard with sharp teeth encrusted with lethal bacteria!
If people had complete freedom to speak as they please, the nation would be in chaos. When the right to free speech is considered boundless, defamation, sedition, incitement to crime, etc. would all be perfectly legal. Obviously there must be exceptions to the First Amendment, which the courts have created. However, I agree that in this case the First Amendment outweighs. Anonymous speech is speech, and the speaker should be protected until they cross the line and use their speech in an illegal manner. Just like it would be in any other free speech situation!
NASA should work like this! Have the projects on an open forum, where anyone and everyone can suggest changes, look for problems, etc. I suppose actual scientists would have to have the final say, but many mistakes could be fixed and systems made more efficient if others were given the chance to look at the project with fresh eyes. Do you think that the little feet-meters mixup with that Mars mission would've happened if the project was open source? If a scientist screws up on a small detail, no one will check that. If the project was open source, it is more likely someone would.
"Men are the great innovators of our society. 90% or more of successful business men are, well, men. Men are more creative than women... Men overwhelmingly win nobel prizes, and it could be because of genetic advantages, hormone levels, or a combination of the two. It's also interesting to note that men have larger brains than women on average." All right, great, more businessmen are men. And more men are win Nobel prizes, because more men are scientists. This says nothing about women's competency in fields of business or science, however. Could it not be because of societal roles? Women who have the same exact potential as men to become scientists, businesspeople, president, etc. often, for better or worse, marry and become homemakers instead. Perhaps they are qualified to take the homemaking role which society and tradition advocates, but that doesn't mean women are qualified for nothing else, especially not ALL women! To continue to maintain such beliefs would be illogical, ignorant, and sexist. Also, about your remark on men's brains, brain size has nothing to do with intelligence. Einstein's brain was in fact slightly smaller than average.
"Each panel has rows of hexagon-shaped wafers made of ultra-pure silicon, diamond, sapphire, gold, aluminum or germanium, all of which will serve as, basically, flypaper." No wonder NASA projects cost so much! If ultra-pure silicon can be flypaper and so can ultra-pure diamond, why use two? The silicon's a ton cheaper! Is it that one substance can catch only a few elements of solar wind, or what? Otherwise it just seems like a waste of money.
I wonder what you can learn from a single noble gas atom. Sure, it existed when the solar system hadn't even been formed yet, but so did every other atom that you could find here on earth. Noble gases don't combine or change when in contact with other elements, so I wonder what's so special about those which are found in space. It doesn't seem like a single atom could tell you more than an atom on earth could. Is there something special about elements found in the solar wind that I'm missing?
Actually, I WANT to go to school, I WANT to learn, I just GREATLY ABHOR learning all about the rights my forefathers died for in gov't class and THEN walking into the hall and seeing them violated (uniforms, metal detectors, purse searches, etc.) without justification (my school is and was one of the more peaceful in the country). If you want us to learn about our rights, maybe you should let us use them! (coughhypocrisycough) The point is of COURSE we have to go to school. Duh. Somehow my peers had better get some knowledge crammed into their thick skulls. But that doesn't mean we have to have these excessive rights violations, any more than adults do in their daily lives.
Scientists' prediction capabilities seem to be applied very erratically. We consider the possible influence of a star light years away more than a million years from now, but fail to track most of the near-earth objects, which would pose a much more immediate threat to life on Earth than any star! Do they just pick a large object at random and say, 'Okay, how could this affect Earth?' or what? It just seems like it would make more sense to organize our tracking, and study bigger threats first.
Perhaps all citizens SHOULD have their privacy infringed. Students have their rights violated all the time! We can't vote, but we can be put to death! We are legally obligated to go to an institution which can violate our civil liberties with abandon (school). Perhaps all should be subject to such an environment. After all, students aren't any more criminals than the general populace; we just get more media attention. So if crime justifies these right infringements all should be subject to them. It's all or nothing, guys!
Government of the people, by the people, for the people. So why is it so often that the government does not value the people's freedom? No matter political affiliation, politicians have the gall to increase their power and the spin doctors to get reelected, and few Americans have the time, energy, or discernment to hold them accountable. And why is that? We're too busy eating our Big Macs and watching soaps to critique our government!
There is varnish on Martian rocks. There is varnish on my piano. Therefore, the Martians like to listen to Horowitz.
How do they name these things? 2001 KX76 - how boring! Charon is named - why not this? Don't these astronomers have any creativity left in them? Maybe they're waiting to name it - a 'Name That Planet' contest or something. Or if someone pays enough, they'll name it after them - money got a tourist into space.
Another problem with having computers calculated to fit their users' personalities would be that it would cause people to separate themselves from society. I'd lock myself in my office and spend hours in conversation with my computer, until my brain is mush and my once-picture-perfect physique resembles a cheese puff. Not that I don't spend hours locked in my office in conversation anyway, but it consists of: "****! Crashed again, you stupid excuse for a toaster oven!" Not exactly scintillating dialogue.
I wonder what the computer's personality will be like. Humorous? Insane? Pragmatic? Philosophic? Who knows? Perhaps in the future people will take personality tests to match them with computers, like a dating service. Though a lot of people would rather have a very simple-minded computer, so it doesn't mess with their stuff. It wouldn't be good if my computer liked my term paper as much as I do, and thus deleted all of it. And my computer wouldn't allow any Microsoft application to be installed, which I wouldn't mind but if I sold it the new owner might!
Cowards lie down and let the whole bloody planet be turned into a parking lot. Cowards don't bother to do anything to fix a government corrupted by big business. Cowards aren't willing to put their lives on the line for a cause they believe in. Cowards wouldn't trust enough that democracy can be fixed in order to work outside the system to fix it. Arizona can most definitely shoot back - figuratively AND literally. It's legal in AZ to shoot a arsonist if caught in the act. The FBI and Arizonan police are on the case. Do you think the courts will be KIND to the eco-arsonists if they're caught?? Of course, that's IF they're caught. Nearly all of what the police knows is what the eco-arsonists fed them in that Phoenix New Times interview, which may be total B.S. for all we know. The FBI has resorted to photographing random mountain bikers to find the eco-arsonists - real effective, huh? Especially when they might not be bikers anyway. And the point is to find a target that will make the impact you're looking for. The media will cover arsons of luxury homes, more than less notable targets. A trend brings even more attention to the crimes... and to the reasons for them, which is the whole point of it all!
I agree that often eco-terrorism is sometimes crazy teenagers playing with matches, or extreme ignorant firebugs, but NOT ALWAYS. For example, there was a case in Arizona where half-built luxury homes on the edge of a nature preserve were being burned down by a group of mountain bikers. Though in MOST cases this would be unacceptable, consider: 1.) All the targets were half-constructed mansions, thus uninhabited. Evidence shows the eco-arsonists took great pains not to put other people's safety at risk. 2.) They were LUXURY homes. One still shouldn't burn any home down, generally, but at least it wasn't low-income housing or something like that. The owners of these mansions would have to be INSANELY wealthy, and probably they own other homes elsewhere, so it doesn't hurt THEM too bad. 3.) The message had to be sent. In Arizona, it is all too obvious that developers' money is in control of the government. Previously untouched wilderness is being developed at an acre per hour. That is obscene! There's absolutely NO planning or limits on growth. A bill to slow down development WAS introduced, but an influx of money killed it. Obviously SOMETHING had to be done! So the eco-arsonists started torching some half-built mansions, not to burn down every luxury home in the state, duh, but to attract the media and increase public awareness, in the hopes that government officials might listen to the people rather than their wallets, or else be voted out of office. And they have been somewhat successful. I'm not recommending that everyone go out and burn down buildings. The eco-arsonists, in a newspaper interview, showed that they take their job seriously. They extensively plan each fire, to make sure no one is hurt. They care about the environment and realized the problem before others paid attention. And they have enough faith in democracy to risk their lives in order to rally the public behind this important issue. No one is hurt, the environment at stake.... I think these eco-terrorists are justified. Not to say the SUV-burning ones being discussed are justified, though. They seem ignorant, unproductive, and rather insane. I'm just arguing that not all eco-terrorists are wrong.
My best friend is the 'Supreme Commander of the Order of the Atomic Squid'. Yes, the people at my school are VERY weird. 'Course, I'm 'Tsarina of All Things Not McDonalds', so maybe I shouldn't talk.
But, unfortunately, many parents HAVEN'T bothered to raise their children. Nor will they take responsibility for their neglect. And these families are not islands. People will be hurt if children grow up without ANY guidance, parental or otherwise. I certainly don't want hordes of juvenile delinquents traipsing the streets! Parents should be responsible for their kids, but when they aren't, it's better that the government raise them than nobody.