No. I have no idea exactly what you might have meant. It seems that your comment is of the same kind of fuzzy nature as your apparent criticism of TFA.
What is newsworthy is that these 5 were found by Hubble and had been missed by earlier attempts to catalog the asteroid belt.
These are extremely faint objects, that were seen by Hubble while it was gathering extremely faint light from very distant galaxies.
Hubble has a very narrow field of view.
To discover 5 faint asteroids in this incidental way suggests that there may be a lot more stuff in the asteroid belt than previously estimated. Anything that fuels that kind of speculation is newsworthy on slashdot, for it is that kind of speculation that drives hypothesis formation, which in turn drives the expansion of scientific knowledge.
I hope to get back to this later today, or maybe tomorrow. But it is a difficult subject to write about, partly because it challenges models of the world that we rarely if ever give critical thought to. But I've got a life to live outside of slashdot and I must do something else right now.
What is the meaning of "thing" in this context? The way I parse it, "thing" is being used here to describe everything that can be understood by the scientific method, and to exclude everything which is not quantifiable. Which makes a tight, circular argument of "science is the study of things that can be studied by science." Which, while definitely true, does not advance anyone's understanding, and in fact is an impediment to thinking outside the box.
Part of the difficulty here is that a strong implication of relativity is that there is no position of "objective observer" that can be reached within human experience; it is all illusion. The concept of an objective observer is illusionary. It is not that we have yet to reach the place where we can observe the universe as an outsider; it is that we can never, ever be an objective observer. And yet, so many persons involved in science or technology have this strong faith that there is something Out There that is independent of their own projections.
I regret that my response is phrased like troll bait. I do not mean it that way. As our studies in the realms of quantum mechanics and celestial mechanics progress, we are moving closer and closer to the edge of what science can handle. It would be useful, I think, to recognize that science is butting up against its own limitations.
While I do not disagree with your assessment that the post you authored should be modded Vorpal Flamebait +5, I rather hope that the moderators do not go snicker-snack upon it. Since it is a good jumping off point into one of my favorite rants.
The thing is, the universe is inherently unscientific. I don't believe that makes it irrelevant. Instead to a certain degree it makes the scientific method irrelevant.
The most powerful forces affecting any human's life are labelled "love", "hate", "ugly", "beautiful", "awesome", etc. None of which are quantifiable. Further, imagination is definitely within the Universe since it is through imagination that we get experiences like Star Trek, Gladiator, the Allelujah Chorus, Hymn To Her. Trace it backward: the music you will hear today is an arrangement of distinct aerial vibrations whose pattern was described sometime back by someone who imagined what the sound would be like. Imagination has a powerful affect on the world around us, and throughout the history of human experience, imagination has done more for us than atomic theory, electricity, classical physics and chemistry, or any of the applications of science.
Further, science without imagination cannot exist; imagination is at the root of hypothesis formation, as Isaac Asimov once pointed out. And yet imagination cannot be quantified or in any way studied using the scientific method.
A person who dismisses all forms of "intelligent design" as inherently unscientific says more about that person's limited imagination than it says about anything else. That person might become a passable technologist ---someone who can apply science to particular problems--- but without imagination that person will never be a scientist ---someone capable of developing new hypotheses.
Well, while there are many mothers who are very intelligent, there are also a number that are... um... not so much so. There are also a goodly number of mothers who start out kind of dumb about the whole thing, but over time get increasingly intelligent and sophisticated in their child rearing practice.
So for the devout neopagan the question is what kind of mother is the Mother Of All?
Assuming that She is of at least average intelligence, I think that we should expect that She has been becoming increasingly sophisticated over time. And that somewhere along the way She has begun incorporating her kids' refrigerator art (Euclidean geometry, classical physics, quantum mechanics, etc) into Her daily activities, because, well, every mother takes a bit of pride in their kids' artwork.
It seems to me that every physicist who chooses to be on the theoretical cutting edge should keep in mind that if they come up with something pleasing to Her, She may go beyond just sticking it on the refrigerator door; She might take that design and use it in creating Something New. Or even shifting Old Stuff around in some new and interesting way. And so if certain theoretical physicists are in fact acting as Momma's Little Helpers in the never-ending ongoing creation, then perhaps they should think about how the work they produce might be changing things.
I am the author of record of this message, but it is possible, even maybe likely, that I am channelling some powerful Discordian.
How about replacing "In the beginning God said 'Let there be light'"
With "In the beginning She said, 'I just had a thought...'"
This aligns contemporary neopagan mythology with information theory, which is a useful early step in building a new bridge from Here to Somewhere Else that avoids reliance on any of the shopworn and unsafe postulates of the old way of thinking about things.
(There. I think that's vague enough to seem plausibly metaphysical.)
Studio Ubuntu user here. That's xubuntu tweaked for low latency which is needed in audio recording. I don't work with the audio studio apps, but this package comes with Inkscape, Blender, etc, and it seems like the low latency speeds up rendering somewhat.
I run this same package on a 16" laptop, 10" tablet, as well as my 27" quadcore desktop with no problems other than the obvious limitations (tablet and laptop suck at video editing, etc).
I don't do games; I don't need a freaking 4K display. I could use faster render times, but the way to get there is to set up a dedicated render farm rather than a bigger machine, and that render farm can use cheap, outmoded machines (soon as I talk the household into letting me have shelf space). Basically my computers are pickup trucks where what is important is towing capability and max payload. Not speed and bling. The fellow with "25 years with Linux" has nothing to say that has any value in my work.
Until parent post, I was unaware that 2SN was a recognized gender. See wire-wrapped rubber hose. (The diameters might be small, but look at the burst pressures! 23,200 psi in the quarter inch! Now that's some serious sex appeal!)
Gee, perhaps the COMPANY should be responsible for knowing how it is conducting its business?
There is a rather ancient business process called "auditing". The corporate officers who fail to institute information systems auditing are guilty of failure to handle their fiduciary responsibilities to the stockholders and should be tried in civil courts. And when it is on the scale of the Equifax debacle, it is very likely that the negligence was criminal.
Let me gently suggest that the reason why businesses do not "build it themselves" the way Id Software does is because businesses have to deal with real world issues.
I admire you, sort of. You've got a pretty low/. ID# yet you have managed to avoid moving from the basement to the room with the blue ceiling.
You are on to something with safety in redundancy through separate virtual machines.
Except of course for the "virtual" part.
There has to be physical redundancy such that there is backup when something bricks one of the computers. As will happen every so often when self-driving cars are doing millions of highway miles each year. Additionally, self-driving cars need enough AI to bee able to identify the car ahead in the fast lane with the nearly flat rear tire is a threat; that the hail that is bouncing off the road a hundred yards ahead is a danger; and that little Timmy in the back seat who is making urrping noises means that there is an urgent need to stop on the shoulder so you can get his head out the door before he pukes.
The computer network that has the smarts to handle all the stuff that can happen on the road will easily require 4 kw power, including the cooling system that will keep it functioning when you are stuck in the commuter traffic jam.
As far as driving on the open road is concerned, the best we can hope for in the foreseeable future is improved auto-pilots, that will still require a trained and experience driver, who is alert and paying attention, behind the wheel.
Your argument is persuasive. It is certainly possible that my failure to detect a second probable grammatical error of the same form as the first one had led me to a wrong conclusion.
Unfortunately the likelihood that there is a systemic failure to use proper grammar in the story destroys its credibility rather than clarifying anything.
This story is worthless. But the comments do suggest that filaments of baryonic matter exist between galaxies and have significant total mass. So there is redeeming value in slashdot publishing this very badly written story, even if the story itself is trash.
My understanding is that the story is about finally "seeing" half of the hidden baryonic mass that was inferred to exist from other data. That suggests that there is still a more baryonic mass that we only infer exists; it remains hidden.
But that this has nothing to do with the dark matter and dark energy that is also inferred by current best theories.
Someone has made a comment suggesting that much of the dark energy is the "vacuum energy", which I take as a reference to the energy that is demonstrated in the Casimir effect. I find that interesting and I might consider subscribing to your magazine.
Obviously you are not bothering to carefully read my previous posts, either.
An autogyro that seats two and can carry a couple of sacks of groceries is definitely comparable to a ForTwo. That it can do so with less than half the weight of the subcompact is a positive thing.
There are on-line courses that can help improve reading comprehension in the privacy of your own home.
You can buy an autogyro now with an empty weight of 585 lb and gross weight of 910 lb, seating two and a couple of sacks of groceries, which is comparable to a ForTwo. The gyro is powered by a 100hp engine, which is within the range of what could be installed in a ForTwo. While this is a gyrocopter and not a quadcopter, it demonstrates that a multirotor VTOL craft using four, six, or 8 electric motors powering individual rotors is within the realm of possibilities.
Gyrocopters like the AutoGyro Calidus can typically cruise at 90 - 110 mph, with a typical range of 400 - 500 miles. A quadcopter would likely be less capable: as a WAG, cruise speed of 70 mph and range of 100 miles.
Obviously lead-acid batteries are out of the question, and even current lithium-ion batteries would be marginal. I think the big question is how soon Elon Musk will make his battery breakthrough research public. If it is in fact the nanoparticle-air battery concept that has recently been in the news, then we won't have a road-worthy flying car but we could have a personal quadcopter.
Definition of "soon": 1. After Real Soon Now, and before End Of Times. 2. (in context) After LAPD deploys quadcopters to monitor traffic and attach tickets to the passenger windshield of speeding cars, and before China establishes its first lunar colony.
About two decades ago, the second most efficient people mover was the bicycle, when measured by calories per mile. The only thing more efficient was a 747 on a transcontinental flight with a full load of passengers.
I guess now there are several other big airplanes that can move people long distances more efficiently than the bicycle, but the lowly bicycle remains by far the most efficient way to get to and from the corner store.
Flying cars should be equipped with bicycle racks...
Visualize an electric Smart Fortwo car with fold-out quad rotors and you'll be imagining a true flying car. Capable of jumping over traffic jams. Performing U-turns on divided roadways. Roof top parking.
Now strip off its wheels and drive train and use the weight saved to increase the size of its battery. Make the flight controls semi-autonomous: you use something like Google Maps to select your destination and the vehicle finds the best route. And uses collision avoidance technology and active cooperation with all other aerovehicles to assure an uneventful ride. Sit back and enjoy the view.
It is much easier to safely manage air traffic than to devise safe self-driving cars.
Detection and avoidance of other aero vehicles can be done with existing technology, municipally defined air corridors can be incorporated into GPS aware autopilots. But good collision avoidance in self-driving cars involves somehow seeing around obstacles, and dealing with capricious moving obstacles like deer, toddlers chasing rubber balls, jay-walkers popping out from behind parked trucks, etc. And self-driving cars have but two dimensions to maneuver in.
Going airborne avoids a huge amount of difficult problems that the self-driving car developers have to contend with.
Oh! And pot holes and road debris, downed power lines, flooded roads, patches of black ice, and so forth. Self-driving cars might be kewl on Santa Monica Boulevard, but in the real world of East Coast cities, not so much. Definitely not so easily.
Slashdot Mirror
No. I have no idea exactly what you might have meant. It seems that your comment is of the same kind of fuzzy nature as your apparent criticism of TFA.
Just saying.
What is newsworthy is that these 5 were found by Hubble and had been missed by earlier attempts to catalog the asteroid belt.
These are extremely faint objects, that were seen by Hubble while it was gathering extremely faint light from very distant galaxies.
Hubble has a very narrow field of view.
To discover 5 faint asteroids in this incidental way suggests that there may be a lot more stuff in the asteroid belt than previously estimated. Anything that fuels that kind of speculation is newsworthy on slashdot, for it is that kind of speculation that drives hypothesis formation, which in turn drives the expansion of scientific knowledge.
Our different approaches may be converging.
I hope to get back to this later today, or maybe tomorrow. But it is a difficult subject to write about, partly because it challenges models of the world that we rarely if ever give critical thought to. But I've got a life to live outside of slashdot and I must do something else right now.
Is the universe a "thing"?
What is the meaning of "thing" in this context? The way I parse it, "thing" is being used here to describe everything that can be understood by the scientific method, and to exclude everything which is not quantifiable. Which makes a tight, circular argument of "science is the study of things that can be studied by science." Which, while definitely true, does not advance anyone's understanding, and in fact is an impediment to thinking outside the box.
Part of the difficulty here is that a strong implication of relativity is that there is no position of "objective observer" that can be reached within human experience; it is all illusion. The concept of an objective observer is illusionary. It is not that we have yet to reach the place where we can observe the universe as an outsider; it is that we can never, ever be an objective observer. And yet, so many persons involved in science or technology have this strong faith that there is something Out There that is independent of their own projections.
I regret that my response is phrased like troll bait. I do not mean it that way. As our studies in the realms of quantum mechanics and celestial mechanics progress, we are moving closer and closer to the edge of what science can handle. It would be useful, I think, to recognize that science is butting up against its own limitations.
While I do not disagree with your assessment that the post you authored should be modded Vorpal Flamebait +5, I rather hope that the moderators do not go snicker-snack upon it. Since it is a good jumping off point into one of my favorite rants.
The thing is, the universe is inherently unscientific. I don't believe that makes it irrelevant. Instead to a certain degree it makes the scientific method irrelevant.
The most powerful forces affecting any human's life are labelled "love", "hate", "ugly", "beautiful", "awesome", etc. None of which are quantifiable. Further, imagination is definitely within the Universe since it is through imagination that we get experiences like Star Trek, Gladiator, the Allelujah Chorus, Hymn To Her. Trace it backward: the music you will hear today is an arrangement of distinct aerial vibrations whose pattern was described sometime back by someone who imagined what the sound would be like. Imagination has a powerful affect on the world around us, and throughout the history of human experience, imagination has done more for us than atomic theory, electricity, classical physics and chemistry, or any of the applications of science.
Further, science without imagination cannot exist; imagination is at the root of hypothesis formation, as Isaac Asimov once pointed out. And yet imagination cannot be quantified or in any way studied using the scientific method.
A person who dismisses all forms of "intelligent design" as inherently unscientific says more about that person's limited imagination than it says about anything else. That person might become a passable technologist ---someone who can apply science to particular problems--- but without imagination that person will never be a scientist ---someone capable of developing new hypotheses.
Well, while there are many mothers who are very intelligent, there are also a number that are... um... not so much so. There are also a goodly number of mothers who start out kind of dumb about the whole thing, but over time get increasingly intelligent and sophisticated in their child rearing practice.
So for the devout neopagan the question is what kind of mother is the Mother Of All?
Assuming that She is of at least average intelligence, I think that we should expect that She has been becoming increasingly sophisticated over time. And that somewhere along the way She has begun incorporating her kids' refrigerator art (Euclidean geometry, classical physics, quantum mechanics, etc) into Her daily activities, because, well, every mother takes a bit of pride in their kids' artwork.
It seems to me that every physicist who chooses to be on the theoretical cutting edge should keep in mind that if they come up with something pleasing to Her, She may go beyond just sticking it on the refrigerator door; She might take that design and use it in creating Something New. Or even shifting Old Stuff around in some new and interesting way. And so if certain theoretical physicists are in fact acting as Momma's Little Helpers in the never-ending ongoing creation, then perhaps they should think about how the work they produce might be changing things.
I am the author of record of this message, but it is possible, even maybe likely, that I am channelling some powerful Discordian.
How about replacing "In the beginning God said 'Let there be light'"
With "In the beginning She said, 'I just had a thought...'"
This aligns contemporary neopagan mythology with information theory, which is a useful early step in building a new bridge from Here to Somewhere Else that avoids reliance on any of the shopworn and unsafe postulates of the old way of thinking about things.
(There. I think that's vague enough to seem plausibly metaphysical.)
Studio Ubuntu user here. That's xubuntu tweaked for low latency which is needed in audio recording. I don't work with the audio studio apps, but this package comes with Inkscape, Blender, etc, and it seems like the low latency speeds up rendering somewhat.
I run this same package on a 16" laptop, 10" tablet, as well as my 27" quadcore desktop with no problems other than the obvious limitations (tablet and laptop suck at video editing, etc).
I don't do games; I don't need a freaking 4K display. I could use faster render times, but the way to get there is to set up a dedicated render farm rather than a bigger machine, and that render farm can use cheap, outmoded machines (soon as I talk the household into letting me have shelf space). Basically my computers are pickup trucks where what is important is towing capability and max payload. Not speed and bling. The fellow with "25 years with Linux" has nothing to say that has any value in my work.
Until parent post, I was unaware that 2SN was a recognized gender. See wire-wrapped rubber hose. (The diameters might be small, but look at the burst pressures! 23,200 psi in the quarter inch! Now that's some serious sex appeal!)
--
Sign me Prob'ly clueless in PDX
Gee, perhaps the COMPANY should be responsible for knowing how it is conducting its business?
There is a rather ancient business process called "auditing". The corporate officers who fail to institute information systems auditing are guilty of failure to handle their fiduciary responsibilities to the stockholders and should be tried in civil courts. And when it is on the scale of the Equifax debacle, it is very likely that the negligence was criminal.
Which is an excellent way to make your product a non-competitive also-ran.
Let me gently suggest that the reason why businesses do not "build it themselves" the way Id Software does is because businesses have to deal with real world issues.
I admire you, sort of. You've got a pretty low /. ID# yet you have managed to avoid moving from the basement to the room with the blue ceiling.
I am so happy for you, and for me, that you do your driving in GTA.
You are on to something with safety in redundancy through separate virtual machines.
Except of course for the "virtual" part.
There has to be physical redundancy such that there is backup when something bricks one of the computers. As will happen every so often when self-driving cars are doing millions of highway miles each year. Additionally, self-driving cars need enough AI to bee able to identify the car ahead in the fast lane with the nearly flat rear tire is a threat; that the hail that is bouncing off the road a hundred yards ahead is a danger; and that little Timmy in the back seat who is making urrping noises means that there is an urgent need to stop on the shoulder so you can get his head out the door before he pukes.
The computer network that has the smarts to handle all the stuff that can happen on the road will easily require 4 kw power, including the cooling system that will keep it functioning when you are stuck in the commuter traffic jam.
As far as driving on the open road is concerned, the best we can hope for in the foreseeable future is improved auto-pilots, that will still require a trained and experience driver, who is alert and paying attention, behind the wheel.
I'm pretty sure the cause of the Antarctic waterhole is heat.
I leave it as an exercise for the Reader to determine where the heat is coming from.
Are those English football fields or USian football fields?
From here in the Upper Left Coast, these are all the same size: Lake Superior, Maine, and Rhode Island.
If you are far enough away, everything else is small.
Your argument is persuasive. It is certainly possible that my failure to detect a second probable grammatical error of the same form as the first one had led me to a wrong conclusion.
Unfortunately the likelihood that there is a systemic failure to use proper grammar in the story destroys its credibility rather than clarifying anything.
This story is worthless. But the comments do suggest that filaments of baryonic matter exist between galaxies and have significant total mass. So there is redeeming value in slashdot publishing this very badly written story, even if the story itself is trash.
My understanding is that the story is about finally "seeing" half of the hidden baryonic mass that was inferred to exist from other data. That suggests that there is still a more baryonic mass that we only infer exists; it remains hidden.
But that this has nothing to do with the dark matter and dark energy that is also inferred by current best theories.
Someone has made a comment suggesting that much of the dark energy is the "vacuum energy", which I take as a reference to the energy that is demonstrated in the Casimir effect. I find that interesting and I might consider subscribing to your magazine.
Obviously you are not bothering to carefully read my previous posts, either.
An autogyro that seats two and can carry a couple of sacks of groceries is definitely comparable to a ForTwo. That it can do so with less than half the weight of the subcompact is a positive thing.
There are on-line courses that can help improve reading comprehension in the privacy of your own home.
Nope. You are so wrong.
You can buy an autogyro now with an empty weight of 585 lb and gross weight of 910 lb, seating two and a couple of sacks of groceries, which is comparable to a ForTwo. The gyro is powered by a 100hp engine, which is within the range of what could be installed in a ForTwo. While this is a gyrocopter and not a quadcopter, it demonstrates that a multirotor VTOL craft using four, six, or 8 electric motors powering individual rotors is within the realm of possibilities.
Gyrocopters like the AutoGyro Calidus can typically cruise at 90 - 110 mph, with a typical range of 400 - 500 miles. A quadcopter would likely be less capable: as a WAG, cruise speed of 70 mph and range of 100 miles.
Obviously lead-acid batteries are out of the question, and even current lithium-ion batteries would be marginal. I think the big question is how soon Elon Musk will make his battery breakthrough research public. If it is in fact the nanoparticle-air battery concept that has recently been in the news, then we won't have a road-worthy flying car but we could have a personal quadcopter.
Definition of "soon": 1. After Real Soon Now, and before End Of Times. 2. (in context) After LAPD deploys quadcopters to monitor traffic and attach tickets to the passenger windshield of speeding cars, and before China establishes its first lunar colony.
About two decades ago, the second most efficient people mover was the bicycle, when measured by calories per mile. The only thing more efficient was a 747 on a transcontinental flight with a full load of passengers.
I guess now there are several other big airplanes that can move people long distances more efficiently than the bicycle, but the lowly bicycle remains by far the most efficient way to get to and from the corner store.
Flying cars should be equipped with bicycle racks...
Visualize an electric Smart Fortwo car with fold-out quad rotors and you'll be imagining a true flying car. Capable of jumping over traffic jams. Performing U-turns on divided roadways. Roof top parking.
Now strip off its wheels and drive train and use the weight saved to increase the size of its battery. Make the flight controls semi-autonomous: you use something like Google Maps to select your destination and the vehicle finds the best route. And uses collision avoidance technology and active cooperation with all other aerovehicles to assure an uneventful ride. Sit back and enjoy the view.
It is much easier to safely manage air traffic than to devise safe self-driving cars.
Detection and avoidance of other aero vehicles can be done with existing technology, municipally defined air corridors can be incorporated into GPS aware autopilots. But good collision avoidance in self-driving cars involves somehow seeing around obstacles, and dealing with capricious moving obstacles like deer, toddlers chasing rubber balls, jay-walkers popping out from behind parked trucks, etc. And self-driving cars have but two dimensions to maneuver in.
Going airborne avoids a huge amount of difficult problems that the self-driving car developers have to contend with.
Oh! And pot holes and road debris, downed power lines, flooded roads, patches of black ice, and so forth. Self-driving cars might be kewl on Santa Monica Boulevard, but in the real world of East Coast cities, not so much. Definitely not so easily.