Kind of weird to give everyone who reads your slashdot posts a link to some other guys web site just because he has the same name, but OK. I was just trying to be a smartass in any case.
I still argue your contention that the victims were to blame here. They ought to have been more cautious, but that doesn't justify the illegal assholery inflicted upon them.
I too am hesitant to say gdb sucks mightily, as I don't know, and assume it doesn't.
I expect you are correct, that "c 1000000" makes it go through whatever it has to go through to break at a breakpoint, then decrement the count and start up again. In VS, you would click on the breakpoint, select properties, select hit-count, select, "break when hit count equals" and enter 1000000. (You can also use other hit-count related tests, or any arbitrary boolean expression, just like being in an if statement). In the background, I expect this is just like adding the if statement in the code, except that I can do it after the code is compiled and running. In any case, the performance penalty you're seeing doesn't happen; despite your suspicions, VS does do better on this, by letting you set conditions that are evaluted before it bothers with all the break-point housekeeping. gdb may have some similar mechanism, but I don't know the command. (Then again, I didn't know how to do it in VS till I needed it, and then it was easily discovered; an argument for the superiority of guis perhaps, but that's another post.)
I continue in my beleif that those who think degubggers are of limited usefulness are misinformed.
If you "set a breakpoint on that printf statement" you must be running debug code, and in the debugger. At that point, if writing the if test into your code is even the slighteset bit faster than setting a hit-count condition on the breakpoint, you're doing something wrong, or your debugger sucks mightily. I've not used gdb, and while I'm guesing it doesn't have all the bells and whistles of the VS debugger, I'd also be suprised if it sucked mightily in such an obvious way.
Running debug code under the debugger is slower than release code, obviously; but it's almost universally worth it, because once you get to that 10000th iteration and break, you can look around at whatever you need to without running through those iteratins again, not just what you though of before you got there and put in a printf.
OK, but the sentence in question was not introducing D&D. It was introducing WotC. Both it and your objection are kind of silly if you ask me. Is there anyone on earth who knows about D&D but not Gygax, TSR, WotC, and their relationship?
Frankly, WotC is probably more widly known than D&D, thanks to Magic: The Gathering.
You, like Linus, don't know what you're talking about.
Monitoring the 4th & 5th elemnts of an array? Stopping the 1000th time a certain instruction is reached? In the VS debufgger at least, these tasks are trivial.
How about if I decide I want the 44th and 45th elements, without stopping debugging?
"Stick in a few lines "if (i==10000) { printf("debug"); } and set a breakpoint on that printf statement, it'll be way faster than instructing the debugger to ignore the next 9999 crossings of a nearby breakpoint."
Way faster than a couple mouse clicks and typing "1000"? How's that again?
"My name? Yeah, you can have that. Address? Sorry. Ten years ago yeah, but we have Google Earth now. Call phone? Are you crazy????"
Are you sure you want to be so critical of others letting their personal info get out there, Mr Steve McGrew, of 398 Rue Keroack, St-Bruno-De-Montarville, Quebec? Perhaps I should call you at 1-450-441-5458 to discuss it? I suppose I could stop by, but it looks like your neighbor has a nicer pool.
"Bingo. This is actually quite an interesting excercise in social engineering."
It would be an "interesting exercise" if he posted a notice saying that he got all this personal information, and people should be more careful, because he could have been some sociopathic asshole and posted it all publicly. But he did actually post it all publicly, so he actually is a sociopathic asshole, and ought to get sued. (Though he'll probably get beat to a pulp instead.)
"Why is the new definition 'better'?" Is it more accurate? Clearer?"
Than what? There has not been a definition at all previously. There's been a listing of things that has varried in length from 5 down to 4, then slowly up to nine, and then bopped between 10 and 9 a few times, but it's never been based on any clear criteria. "What are the planets in the solar system?" is the total extent of what most grade-school kids learn about astronomy. It would be nice if it meant something. In particular, it would be nice if it meant something based on astronomy. Teaching kids things solely because they're the same things their parents were taught is for sunday school, not science class.
Not change the definition to suit better knowledge because you learned there were these 9 planets? What hubris! The current list of 9 isn't even two generations old; what makes us so special that our grade school learning must be gospel?
In any field, having good, clearly defined technical terminology is not a fetish, it's important.
Calling it "Plantar fasciitis" DOES give you power over it. If you call it that, other doctors will understand exactly what tendon is distressed, and can meaningfully discuss and compare treatments for it; medical science can advance. They cannot do so if they just say "hurty foot" for any and all foot injuries. They use latin because it's an easy way to come up with names for things that aren't already in (conflicting) use.
Well, it's not quite so simple as not knowing what it does and assuming it does nothing. We don't know what most "coding" DNA does either, but we know how it does it. We know that RNA makes copies of "coding" sequences, carries them off and produces protiens based on them that then go off and do whatever they do. We call the sequences the RNA copies "genes". When we say a gene does X, we mean X happens because RNA copied that gene. In the case of the "junk" DNA, RNA doesn't copy it. Furthermore, mutations in the "junk" seem to be fairly randomly distributed, indicating they have not been selected for or against; they don't make an apreciable difference in the organisms chances of survival. So there are pretty good reasons to suspect it has no function. Recent indications that it might not be entirely irrelevant are interesting, but no reason to ridicule those who assumed otherwise. They had good reason, and still apear to have been almost entirely correct.
Re:Maybe Joe Schmoe shouldn't be using a computer.
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AOL 9.0 Called Badware
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"the right fuel" ???
I mean I guess you have to know if you've got a diesel, but other than that, most people know their car runs fine on the cheap stuff, or that it needs the high-octane stuff, and if you get theat wrong once, no biggie. Maybe you have more choices in the UK? (I've been there, but I didn't drive)
Oil level, coolant, screen wash, tire pressure and tread...
I know how to check those (though I don't have a radiator), but many people don't know how to check any of those things. The light on the dashboard comes on or they hear a funny noise, they take it in. And they get by fine.
Re:Maybe Joe Schmoe shouldn't be using a computer.
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AOL 9.0 Called Badware
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"Even more people have no clue what engine they have in their car, let alone numerous other important details."
Important? Why would someone who doesn't do their own car repairs ever need to know what engine is in there, or whatever other "important details" you're refering to. You push down the pedal, it goes. The driver needs to worry about driving, because cars can kill people, and he knows this. But if he pushes down the pedal and it doesn't go, he takes it to a mechanic; nobody expects him to know it was the ignition timing, or how to fix it, and why should he?
The same guy sits down to surf the web, knowing the computer isn't going to kill anyone no matter what he does, and we expect him to master some sort of arcane knowledge first? How silly.
"Yes, the old traffic deaths argument. Beaten to death already."
Is that intended to be a rebuttal? Does repetition make the argument less apt? Vast societal resources are expended on minor threats while obviously more significant ones are ignored, why should people stop saying so?
"The whole point of terrorism is that the effects are much more serious than the deaths of the people involved."
Because we let them be, and we should not.
"Also, the relatively low number of people killed in attacks may be low in the west..."
It's relatively low in the whole world, actually.
"...but that is undoubtedly partially because of the paranoid security that some people like to laugh about."
Undoubtedly? Well, I doubt it. There is no evidence of paranoid airport security stopping any terrorist plot ever. Without even thinking hard, I can imagine ways to get explosives on a plane that won't be detected short of a cavity search and an MRI scan; I'd assume would-be terrorists can come up with these too. The War on Moisture is pointless. It is a huge waste of time, money and civil liberties that protects no one. At the very best, it is laughable, so why should we not laugh at it?
For this purpose, orbital distance ever crossing is not what we're looking at, as it varies widely for bodies with highly eliptical orbits. Orbital period is what we want, which is essentially the same as average orbital distance.
Anything of significant mass with the very similar orbital period to Neptune, but say, ahead of it, would get steadily slowed by Neptune until it fell into a different orbit or got captured as a moon. The reverse works equally well for bodies behind Neptune. Thus has Neptune "cleared" it's orbit. Quite a few things have similar orbital periods to Pluto, but neither they nor Pluto are big enough to cause each other problems. Partially because as things leave that that neighborhood, (at 2/3 Neptunes period), the pushes and pulls from Neptune get unbalanced and shove them back in.
Not so. The original proposal (which had the "is not a satelite" clause) made Charon a planet.
"is not a satellite" does not exclude Charon, because they picked a somewhat peculiar definition of "satelite" (barycenter of gravity inside the primary), which excludes almost everything we typically think of as a moon, but not Charon. This definition makes the Moon a satelite, but if the Earth had a slightly smaller radius but the same mass, the Moon would follow exactly the same orbital track, but suddenly be a planet.
I beleive they picked this definition of "satellite" specifically to exclude Earths Moon. If you actually plot the orbital tracks of the Moon, Charon, and any other moons you like, one stands out like a sore thumb as the one that should obviously be said to be orbiting the Sun. It's not Charon.
Good question. I don't know. Neither do you. Neither does anyone, because it's a matter of opinion. So the question is whose opinion should matter most in the case of a particular pregnat woman. I find it hard to imagine answering that with anything but "Hers".
Here's how it is. Many companies treat their employees like humans, and figure work will be intermingled with their lives. They'll make occasional personal calls, or surf the web a bit when they need a mental break. Smart, talented workers will work for these companies, and not for you. These companies realize that the expenses incurred by treating their employees well are trivial compared to the difficulty of finding good employees.
If a company is as hard-assed as you propose about such things, and people don't like it, I'll concur in your recomendation that hey get another job. They'll have to anyway when the company goes out of business because they're out-competed by someone who hasn't driven away all the talented employees.
I have 64-bit XP at work, and must say my experience is different than yours. Not a single app has failed to run on it. The absolutely only reason I've even noticed at all is that the 32 bit version of Tortise SVN doesn't work with the 64 bit Explorer. I hear there is a new version that does, but I've already switched the default to the 32 bit Explorer, which not only works fine, but is absolutely indistinguisable. As a developer, when dealing with the relevant obscure corners, 32 vs 64 makes a difference; as a user, it's been a non-issue.
Well, of course, it's a matter of how you look at it. The Moon certainly does orbit the earth once a month; while orbiting the sun once a year. But which one does it "primarily" orbit? This is not an easy question.
If you take a look at the various moons in the solar system, and calculate how hard gravity from the sun pulls on them relative to how hard gravity from their planet pulls on them, you find it is typical for the sun to pull on a moon maybe one quarter as hard as the planet. In some extreme cases, the sun pulls on the moon close to equally as hard as the planet, but the sun almost never pulls harder, with one notable excteption: The sun pulls on our Moon more than 180 times harder than the Earth does! Our Moon is exceptionally far away from earth, and exceptionally large compared to earth. So in my opinion, it is considerably more worthy of being called a planet than Plutos moon Charon.
All definitions are somewhat arbitrary, and things do blend together. But not smoothly. There are jumps and bumps, and so there are better and worse places to draw lines, so some definitions are more arbitrary than others. "The gas giants" describes a group that have a whole slew of stuff in common with each other that nothing else has in common with them. There is nothing that is almost a gas giant. Ditto for "The rocky planets". Ditto for "The asteroid belt", "the Kuipier(sp?) belt", "the comets", "the oort cloud" etc. For that matter, the original definition of "Planet" included 5 things that were a lot like each other but not like anything else: small lights in the sky that moved in relation to the background stars. Things got a bit more complicated as we discovered that those five things were really 4 things in 2 groups that weren't like each other, and that one of those groups contained 2 more things we couldn't see before, and the other contained one we couldn't see before, as well as the Earth itself. But still, "Planet" describing the 8 things that were in either of those two groups wasn't so bad. But then someone found Pluto, and called it a planet without knowing much about it. By now we've figured out that Pluto is not much like either of the two groups, and actually part of a really big group that has a lot in common with each other and not much in common with the planets. It blends, quite smoothly, from Pluto and Xena down to tiny chunks of stuff way out there that no one would consider a planet.
It is not clear how one should define "planet". But I argue while it is not obvious *how* to draw the line, it is obvious *where* to draw the line. And the IAU definition is wrong on both counts.
"The barycenter is to determine what the object is actually orbiting. If it's primarily the Sun, then it's a planet. If it's primarily a planet, then it's a moon. It's pretty simple. It's not about size, it's about what it's orbiting."
In my opinion, the Moon is primarily orbiting the Sun. If you were to plot and examine the orbital path of our Moon, I think you would agree. Comparitively, every other moon in the solar system does tight, fast loop-de-loops while it's planet circles the sun. Our moon just sort of wobbles in and out slightly as it orbits the sun along with us. If I were to judge what a particular body primarily orbits, I would look at the gravitational atraction between it and other bodies, or perhaps at which bodies its orbital track was concave toward. The radius of the bodies would not be a factor.
This disagrees with the Barycenter-inside-the-other-body standard, which does depend on the larger bodies radius. If the Earth was denser; if it had the same mass, but a smaller radius, the Barycenter standard would call the moon a planet and not a moon. The barycenter standard would say it orbits something different, even though it's orbital path would be identical. Therefore, that standard is stupid.
"The definition wasn't to satisfy anything but science, not to purposefully keep the Moon as being a moon or Pluto to be a planet."
Of course it was. "Planet" hasn't had a specific definition, but it has certainly had a vauge one, and the point was to come up with a specific one that mostly matched everybodies pre-existing ideas of what the word meant. Science doesn't need the word; it already divides stuff orbiting the sun into a bunch of more detailed categories based on their properties: rocky planets, gas giants, rocky moons, icy moons, asteroids, comets, Kuipier belt objects, Oort cloud objects, etc.
The problem with "Planet" is it originally meant "thing you can see that looks like a star, but wanders about in relation to the other stars", and we thought there were 5 of them (Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Venus). That was fine, but with the advancement of knowledge, invention of telescopes, etc. we figured out more about them and that there were other things like them, so the definition drifted.
Anyway, today we have a couple generations who grew up learning a list of nine objects as "The Planets". But it turns out, these are: All the rocky planets, all the gas giants, one of the many kuipier belt objects, and none of the many asteroids, oort cloud objects, comets, rocky moons, icy moons, etc.
"I challenge you, come up with a better definition which is scientific and not arbitrary."
A rocky planet or a gas giant. Sorry Pluto. There are several logical groups of similar objects in our solar system (listed above). Two of those groupings contain only 4 members a peice, while the others contain dozens to trillions. Those two groupings contain all the 5 (really 4) original see-it-with-the-naked-eye "planets", and 8 of the 9 list-from-grade-schools-this-century "planets". The gas giants have a lot in common with each other. The rocky planets have a lot in common with each other. The other "planets" of this new definition have squat in common with each other compared to what they have in common with very similar objects that don't quite make the cut.
There are perfectly good, logical groupings of objects in our solar system. We ought to use them if we want a specific defiinition of "planet". You can come pretty close to the current list if you drop Pluto. If you insist on not droping Pluto, you need a contorted, not ver useful definition, that inclues a whole bunch more stuff while excluding not-very-different stuff. We now have such a definition, so I conclude the motivation was to come up with something that didn't re-categorize anything lay-people had heard of (like Pluto or the Moon).
I understand about the barycenter of gravity. I still call it arbitrary.
There are any number of ways to decide whether a particular pair of bodies are a double planet or a planet and moon. Barycenter-of-gravity inside the primary strikes me as a particularly lame one, but it is one of the few that makes our Moon a moon and not a planet if you've already accepted a lame gravitational rounding standard as you first condition of planethood. We (humans) had already *arbitrarily* decided Pluto is a planet and the Moon is not. This definition has been carefully chosen, not because it makes a terrible lot of sense, but because it conforms to those arbitrary decisions.
A lot of lay-people get cranky if you tell them what they learned in grade school (Pluto is a planet) isn't right. One can only imagine the reaction if we told them the Moon was a planet. The same people have never heard of Charon and Ceres, so they never learned specifically that they weren't planets, so they don't get upset.
If Ceres is a planet, and the next largest asteroid (whose name I don't remember) is a planet, and the next after that isn't, your definition is arbitrary. If Charon is a planet, your definition sucks.
Astronomers are making the definition of planet fit what grade school kids were taught. This strikes me as backwards.
What does the barycenter being above or below the surface of the primary have to do with anything? By that rule, you could have two bodies that were absolutely identical in evey way, and one would be a moon and the other a planet, because their primaries were different densities. Being in exactly the same orbit, but a planet or not based on another bodies radius seems pretty arbitrary.
The only thing it has going for it is is about the only way of specifying what something orbits that doesn't conclude our Moon orbits the Sun and is therefore a planet. Which I imagine is why they went with it. The new planet definition is based on coming up with something purportedly based on the properties of the object in question, but with the restrictions that you can't kick out Pluto or let in the Moon, no matter how much sense either might make.
Which is a llousy way to make scientific definitions. If Charon is a planet, and not the Moon, it's a stupid definition.
But you would not. Every other moon in the solar system gives you a spirograph like thing. Earths moon produces a uniquely boring patern: more or less an elipse, just a bit wobbly. Other moons curve away from the sun as they circle around the far side of their planet. Our moon always curves toward the sun, just slightly less tightly. If there is a "double planet" in our solar system, it is clearly Earth-Moon, not Pluto-Charon.
Slashdot Mirror
Kind of weird to give everyone who reads your slashdot posts a link to some other guys web site just because he has the same name, but OK. I was just trying to be a smartass in any case.
I still argue your contention that the victims were to blame here. They ought to have been more cautious, but that doesn't justify the illegal assholery inflicted upon them.
I too am hesitant to say gdb sucks mightily, as I don't know, and assume it doesn't.
I expect you are correct, that "c 1000000" makes it go through whatever it has to go through to break at a breakpoint, then decrement the count and start up again. In VS, you would click on the breakpoint, select properties, select hit-count, select, "break when hit count equals" and enter 1000000. (You can also use other hit-count related tests, or any arbitrary boolean expression, just like being in an if statement). In the background, I expect this is just like adding the if statement in the code, except that I can do it after the code is compiled and running. In any case, the performance penalty you're seeing doesn't happen; despite your suspicions, VS does do better on this, by letting you set conditions that are evaluted before it bothers with all the break-point housekeeping.
gdb may have some similar mechanism, but I don't know the command. (Then again, I didn't know how to do it in VS till I needed it, and then it was easily discovered; an argument for the superiority of guis perhaps, but that's another post.)
I continue in my beleif that those who think degubggers are of limited usefulness are misinformed.
If you "set a breakpoint on that printf statement" you must be running debug code, and in the debugger. At that point, if writing the if test into your code is even the slighteset bit faster than setting a hit-count condition on the breakpoint, you're doing something wrong, or your debugger sucks mightily. I've not used gdb, and while I'm guesing it doesn't have all the bells and whistles of the VS debugger, I'd also be suprised if it sucked mightily in such an obvious way.
Running debug code under the debugger is slower than release code, obviously; but it's almost universally worth it, because once you get to that 10000th iteration and break, you can look around at whatever you need to without running through those iteratins again, not just what you though of before you got there and put in a printf.
OK, but the sentence in question was not introducing D&D. It was introducing WotC. Both it and your objection are kind of silly if you ask me. Is there anyone on earth who knows about D&D but not Gygax, TSR, WotC, and their relationship?
Frankly, WotC is probably more widly known than D&D, thanks to Magic: The Gathering.
being carried by tubes, I guess..
You, like Linus, don't know what you're talking about.
Monitoring the 4th & 5th elemnts of an array? Stopping the 1000th time a certain instruction is reached? In the VS debufgger at least, these tasks are trivial.
How about if I decide I want the 44th and 45th elements, without stopping debugging?
"Stick in a few lines "if (i==10000) { printf("debug"); } and set a breakpoint on that printf statement, it'll be way faster than instructing the debugger to ignore the next 9999 crossings of a nearby breakpoint."
Way faster than a couple mouse clicks and typing "1000"? How's that again?
"My name? Yeah, you can have that. Address? Sorry. Ten years ago yeah, but we have Google Earth now. Call phone? Are you crazy????"
Are you sure you want to be so critical of others letting their personal info get out there, Mr Steve McGrew, of 398 Rue Keroack, St-Bruno-De-Montarville, Quebec? Perhaps I should call you at 1-450-441-5458 to discuss it? I suppose I could stop by, but it looks like your neighbor has a nicer pool.
I remember that last time, and I think a friend of mine summed it up best:
"Scientists constructing a device that could potentially destroy the earth? Don't we have super-heroes to deal with this sort of thing?"
"Bingo. This is actually quite an interesting excercise in social engineering."
It would be an "interesting exercise" if he posted a notice saying that he got all this personal information, and people should be more careful, because he could have been some sociopathic asshole and posted it all publicly. But he did actually post it all publicly, so he actually is a sociopathic asshole, and ought to get sued. (Though he'll probably get beat to a pulp instead.)
"Why is the new definition 'better'?" Is it more accurate? Clearer?"
Than what? There has not been a definition at all previously. There's been a listing of things that has varried in length from 5 down to 4, then slowly up to nine, and then bopped between 10 and 9 a few times, but it's never been based on any clear criteria. "What are the planets in the solar system?" is the total extent of what most grade-school kids learn about astronomy. It would be nice if it meant something. In particular, it would be nice if it meant something based on astronomy. Teaching kids things solely because they're the same things their parents were taught is for sunday school, not science class.
Not change the definition to suit better knowledge because you learned there were these 9 planets? What hubris! The current list of 9 isn't even two generations old; what makes us so special that our grade school learning must be gospel?
In any field, having good, clearly defined technical terminology is not a fetish, it's important.
Calling it "Plantar fasciitis" DOES give you power over it. If you call it that, other doctors will understand exactly what tendon is distressed, and can meaningfully discuss and compare treatments for it; medical science can advance. They cannot do so if they just say "hurty foot" for any and all foot injuries. They use latin because it's an easy way to come up with names for things that aren't already in (conflicting) use.
Well, it's not quite so simple as not knowing what it does and assuming it does nothing. We don't know what most "coding" DNA does either, but we know how it does it. We know that RNA makes copies of "coding" sequences, carries them off and produces protiens based on them that then go off and do whatever they do. We call the sequences the RNA copies "genes". When we say a gene does X, we mean X happens because RNA copied that gene. In the case of the "junk" DNA, RNA doesn't copy it. Furthermore, mutations in the "junk" seem to be fairly randomly distributed, indicating they have not been selected for or against; they don't make an apreciable difference in the organisms chances of survival. So there are pretty good reasons to suspect it has no function. Recent indications that it might not be entirely irrelevant are interesting, but no reason to ridicule those who assumed otherwise. They had good reason, and still apear to have been almost entirely correct.
"the right fuel" ???
I mean I guess you have to know if you've got a diesel, but other than that, most people know their car runs fine on the cheap stuff, or that it needs the high-octane stuff, and if you get theat wrong once, no biggie. Maybe you have more choices in the UK? (I've been there, but I didn't drive)
Oil level, coolant, screen wash, tire pressure and tread...
I know how to check those (though I don't have a radiator), but many people don't know how to check any of those things. The light on the dashboard comes on or they hear a funny noise, they take it in. And they get by fine.
"Even more people have no clue what engine they have in their car, let alone numerous other important details."
Important? Why would someone who doesn't do their own car repairs ever need to know what engine is in there, or whatever other "important details" you're refering to. You push down the pedal, it goes. The driver needs to worry about driving, because cars can kill people, and he knows this. But if he pushes down the pedal and it doesn't go, he takes it to a mechanic; nobody expects him to know it was the ignition timing, or how to fix it, and why should he?
The same guy sits down to surf the web, knowing the computer isn't going to kill anyone no matter what he does, and we expect him to master some sort of arcane knowledge first? How silly.
"Yes, the old traffic deaths argument. Beaten to death already."
Is that intended to be a rebuttal? Does repetition make the argument less apt? Vast societal resources are expended on minor threats while obviously more significant ones are ignored, why should people stop saying so?
"The whole point of terrorism is that the effects are much more serious than the deaths of the people involved."
Because we let them be, and we should not.
"Also, the relatively low number of people killed in attacks may be low in the west..."
It's relatively low in the whole world, actually.
"...but that is undoubtedly partially because of the paranoid security that some people like to laugh about."
Undoubtedly? Well, I doubt it. There is no evidence of paranoid airport security stopping any terrorist plot ever. Without even thinking hard, I can imagine ways to get explosives on a plane that won't be detected short of a cavity search and an MRI scan; I'd assume would-be terrorists can come up with these too. The War on Moisture is pointless. It is a huge waste of time, money and civil liberties that protects no one. At the very best, it is laughable, so why should we not laugh at it?
Pluto and Neptune are not in the same orbit.
For this purpose, orbital distance ever crossing is not what we're looking at, as it varies widely for bodies with highly eliptical orbits. Orbital period is what we want, which is essentially the same as average orbital distance.
Anything of significant mass with the very similar orbital period to Neptune, but say, ahead of it, would get steadily slowed by Neptune until it fell into a different orbit or got captured as a moon. The reverse works equally well for bodies behind Neptune. Thus has Neptune "cleared" it's orbit. Quite a few things have similar orbital periods to Pluto, but neither they nor Pluto are big enough to cause each other problems. Partially because as things leave that that neighborhood, (at 2/3 Neptunes period), the pushes and pulls from Neptune get unbalanced and shove them back in.
Not so. The original proposal (which had the "is not a satelite" clause) made Charon a planet.
"is not a satellite" does not exclude Charon, because they picked a somewhat peculiar definition of "satelite" (barycenter of gravity inside the primary), which excludes almost everything we typically think of as a moon, but not Charon. This definition makes the Moon a satelite, but if the Earth had a slightly smaller radius but the same mass, the Moon would follow exactly the same orbital track, but suddenly be a planet.
I beleive they picked this definition of "satellite" specifically to exclude Earths Moon. If you actually plot the orbital tracks of the Moon, Charon, and any other moons you like, one stands out like a sore thumb as the one that should obviously be said to be orbiting the Sun. It's not Charon.
Good question. I don't know. Neither do you. Neither does anyone, because it's a matter of opinion. So the question is whose opinion should matter most in the case of a particular pregnat woman. I find it hard to imagine answering that with anything but "Hers".
Here's how it is. Many companies treat their employees like humans, and figure work will be intermingled with their lives. They'll make occasional personal calls, or surf the web a bit when they need a mental break. Smart, talented workers will work for these companies, and not for you. These companies realize that the expenses incurred by treating their employees well are trivial compared to the difficulty of finding good employees.
If a company is as hard-assed as you propose about such things, and people don't like it, I'll concur in your recomendation that hey get another job. They'll have to anyway when the company goes out of business because they're out-competed by someone who hasn't driven away all the talented employees.
I have 64-bit XP at work, and must say my experience is different than yours. Not a single app has failed to run on it. The absolutely only reason I've even noticed at all is that the 32 bit version of Tortise SVN doesn't work with the 64 bit Explorer. I hear there is a new version that does, but I've already switched the default to the 32 bit Explorer, which not only works fine, but is absolutely indistinguisable. As a developer, when dealing with the relevant obscure corners, 32 vs 64 makes a difference; as a user, it's been a non-issue.
Well, of course, it's a matter of how you look at it. The Moon certainly does orbit the earth once a month; while orbiting the sun once a year. But which one does it "primarily" orbit? This is not an easy question.
If you take a look at the various moons in the solar system, and calculate how hard gravity from the sun pulls on them relative to how hard gravity from their planet pulls on them, you find it is typical for the sun to pull on a moon maybe one quarter as hard as the planet. In some extreme cases, the sun pulls on the moon close to equally as hard as the planet, but the sun almost never pulls harder, with one notable excteption: The sun pulls on our Moon more than 180 times harder than the Earth does! Our Moon is exceptionally far away from earth, and exceptionally large compared to earth. So in my opinion, it is considerably more worthy of being called a planet than Plutos moon Charon.
All definitions are somewhat arbitrary, and things do blend together. But not smoothly. There are jumps and bumps, and so there are better and worse places to draw lines, so some definitions are more arbitrary than others. "The gas giants" describes a group that have a whole slew of stuff in common with each other that nothing else has in common with them. There is nothing that is almost a gas giant. Ditto for "The rocky planets". Ditto for "The asteroid belt", "the Kuipier(sp?) belt", "the comets", "the oort cloud" etc. For that matter, the original definition of "Planet" included 5 things that were a lot like each other but not like anything else: small lights in the sky that moved in relation to the background stars. Things got a bit more complicated as we discovered that those five things were really 4 things in 2 groups that weren't like each other, and that one of those groups contained 2 more things we couldn't see before, and the other contained one we couldn't see before, as well as the Earth itself. But still, "Planet" describing the 8 things that were in either of those two groups wasn't so bad.
But then someone found Pluto, and called it a planet without knowing much about it. By now we've figured out that Pluto is not much like either of the two groups, and actually part of a really big group that has a lot in common with each other and not much in common with the planets. It blends, quite smoothly, from Pluto and Xena down to tiny chunks of stuff way out there that no one would consider a planet.
It is not clear how one should define "planet". But I argue while it is not obvious *how* to draw the line, it is obvious *where* to draw the line. And the IAU definition is wrong on both counts.
"The barycenter is to determine what the object is actually orbiting. If it's primarily the Sun, then it's a planet. If it's primarily a planet, then it's a moon. It's pretty simple. It's not about size, it's about what it's orbiting."
In my opinion, the Moon is primarily orbiting the Sun. If you were to plot and examine the orbital path of our Moon, I think you would agree. Comparitively, every other moon in the solar system does tight, fast loop-de-loops while it's planet circles the sun. Our moon just sort of wobbles in and out slightly as it orbits the sun along with us. If I were to judge what a particular body primarily orbits, I would look at the gravitational atraction between it and other bodies, or perhaps at which bodies its orbital track was concave toward. The radius of the bodies would not be a factor.
This disagrees with the Barycenter-inside-the-other-body standard, which does depend on the larger bodies radius. If the Earth was denser; if it had the same mass, but a smaller radius, the Barycenter standard would call the moon a planet and not a moon. The barycenter standard would say it orbits something different, even though it's orbital path would be identical. Therefore, that standard is stupid.
"The definition wasn't to satisfy anything but science, not to purposefully keep the Moon as being a moon or Pluto to be a planet."
Of course it was. "Planet" hasn't had a specific definition, but it has certainly had a vauge one, and the point was to come up with a specific one that mostly matched everybodies pre-existing ideas of what the word meant. Science doesn't need the word; it already divides stuff orbiting the sun into a bunch of more detailed categories based on their properties: rocky planets, gas giants, rocky moons, icy moons, asteroids, comets, Kuipier belt objects, Oort cloud objects, etc.
The problem with "Planet" is it originally meant "thing you can see that looks like a star, but wanders about in relation to the other stars", and we thought there were 5 of them (Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Venus). That was fine, but with the advancement of knowledge, invention of telescopes, etc. we figured out more about them and that there were other things like them, so the definition drifted.
Anyway, today we have a couple generations who grew up learning a list of nine objects as "The Planets". But it turns out, these are: All the rocky planets, all the gas giants, one of the many kuipier belt objects, and none of the many asteroids, oort cloud objects, comets, rocky moons, icy moons, etc.
"I challenge you, come up with a better definition which is scientific and not arbitrary."
A rocky planet or a gas giant. Sorry Pluto. There are several logical groups of similar objects in our solar system (listed above). Two of those groupings contain only 4 members a peice, while the others contain dozens to trillions. Those two groupings contain all the 5 (really 4) original see-it-with-the-naked-eye "planets", and 8 of the 9 list-from-grade-schools-this-century "planets". The gas giants have a lot in common with each other. The rocky planets have a lot in common with each other. The other "planets" of this new definition have squat in common with each other compared to what they have in common with very similar objects that don't quite make the cut.
There are perfectly good, logical groupings of objects in our solar system. We ought to use them if we want a specific defiinition of "planet". You can come pretty close to the current list if you drop Pluto. If you insist on not droping Pluto, you need a contorted, not ver useful definition, that inclues a whole bunch more stuff while excluding not-very-different stuff. We now have such a definition, so I conclude the motivation was to come up with something that didn't re-categorize anything lay-people had heard of (like Pluto or the Moon).
I find this lame, but not unexpected.
I understand about the barycenter of gravity. I still call it arbitrary.
There are any number of ways to decide whether a particular pair of bodies are a double planet or a planet and moon. Barycenter-of-gravity inside the primary strikes me as a particularly lame one, but it is one of the few that makes our Moon a moon and not a planet if you've already accepted a lame gravitational rounding standard as you first condition of planethood. We (humans) had already *arbitrarily* decided Pluto is a planet and the Moon is not. This definition has been carefully chosen, not because it makes a terrible lot of sense, but because it conforms to those arbitrary decisions.
A lot of lay-people get cranky if you tell them what they learned in grade school (Pluto is a planet) isn't right. One can only imagine the reaction if we told them the Moon was a planet. The same people have never heard of Charon and Ceres, so they never learned specifically that they weren't planets, so they don't get upset.
If Ceres is a planet, and the next largest asteroid (whose name I don't remember) is a planet, and the next after that isn't, your definition is arbitrary. If Charon is a planet, your definition sucks.
Astronomers are making the definition of planet fit what grade school kids were taught. This strikes me as backwards.
What does the barycenter being above or below the surface of the primary have to do with anything? By that rule, you could have two bodies that were absolutely identical in evey way, and one would be a moon and the other a planet, because their primaries were different densities. Being in exactly the same orbit, but a planet or not based on another bodies radius seems pretty arbitrary.
The only thing it has going for it is is about the only way of specifying what something orbits that doesn't conclude our Moon orbits the Sun and is therefore a planet. Which I imagine is why they went with it. The new planet definition is based on coming up with something purportedly based on the properties of the object in question, but with the restrictions that you can't kick out Pluto or let in the Moon, no matter how much sense either might make.
Which is a llousy way to make scientific definitions. If Charon is a planet, and not the Moon, it's a stupid definition.
But you would not. Every other moon in the solar system gives you a spirograph like thing. Earths moon produces a uniquely boring patern: more or less an elipse, just a bit wobbly. Other moons curve away from the sun as they circle around the far side of their planet. Our moon always curves toward the sun, just slightly less tightly. If there is a "double planet" in our solar system, it is clearly Earth-Moon, not Pluto-Charon.