I think it is time to have another go at a jupiter atmosphere probe. This time try for a hot hydrogen balloon, heated by an RTG. If we don't do the basic research we will never understand the biggest planet in our solar system.
Of all of the interesting phenomena in the outer solar system I'd say further investigation of Jupiter's atmosphere is down the list. Some missions of greater interest:
This one is just a bizarre bit of disinformation that keeps getting circulated. It is quite false. Volcanoes put out around 130 to 230 teragrams [wikipedia.org] of carbon dioxide a year. The US alone puts out around 5844 teragrams [wikipedia.org].
You complain about 'bizarre disinformation' then use Wikipedia as your only reference? Amusing! The Wikipedia article cites UN sources. I could just as easily cite Michael Crighton in 'State of Fear' for counter arguments. Wouldn't add up to much, would it? You have no credibility.
The savings rate now is -0.5% and it was 10% in the 70s,
It had to be with inflation running at 12% and banks paying higher even rates it was the only way to stay above water. Do I need to remind your that the misery index reached historical heights during the Carter years? The low savings rate is not Mr. Bush's fault. He lowered tax rates on dividends that make it more worthwhile to save and invest. Also, remember that the savings rate doesn't reflect the large run up in equity most people have seen on their homes. To argue that your material standard of living was higher in the 70's is absurd.
high growth and high opportunity for the upper crust of society, the middle class and lower class don't have either.
Tell 12 million Mexican illegal aliens that America is a bad place to be if you are poor but want to work.
My dad used to be able to provide enough money (in a unionized blue collar factory job) to enable my mother to be a stay-at-home mum, me to go to university and saving a little bit, nowadays this would require probably 3 full time jobs at the salary rates we have now.
The unions provided leverage when their wasn't an excess of labor around the world. There is now no one can change it. You also probably had 1 car, 1 phone, and an electric bill. That's it. No other choices. No credit cards. And your parents had priorities. Today you are bombarded by options. The fact that most people choose to spend like drunken sailors drives their need to work. It is not easy to resist forces of consumerism in the US. But you can't blame President Bush for America's lack of restraint.
How many of you are making more money because of all the people in China, India, and other cheap-labor locales, who buy stuff that you produce? To vote, Click here [republicans.org]
How many of us benefit from quality goods at very low prices? Judging from the lines at Walmart, lots.
Now, how many of you know somebody who lost their job because of overseas competition? To vote, Click here [democrats.org]
Now, how many of those people have moved on and have a better job? That would be almost all judging by the unemployment numbers.
The only people who really benefit from offshoring are the business owners who can costs by firing American workers and replacing them with cheap overseas labor. There may be more wealth, but it's all concentrated in a few hands.
Try following the reasoning: businesses make a profit and shareholders benefit from increased stock price and dividends. Thus validated, businesses grow into new markets and create new jobs. That class warfare stuff went out with Carter. It is pretty discredited.
Bush can't understand what's it's like for an ordinary family to suffer the devastation of unemployment because he's never lived through it.
Unemployment is devastating, no doubt. But I would take the high growth, high opportunity economy we have here over low growth nanny states that predominate elsewhere. Over your lifetime you will be materially better off.
Yes, because "pro-choice"ers are in favor of taking away the mother's right to choose.
If they are so proud of the practice the demos should say 'pro-abortion' or 'pro-infanticide' and not hide behind a code word that salves their conciences. 'Tax cuts for the rich reflects' the resentment that democrats have for the reality of the Laffer curve that was demonstrated effectively by President Reagan.
Republicans are not the only practitioners of ironic naming. We should recognise the democrat word hoard: pro-choice, Social Security, Tax Cuts for the Rich, Public Education.
I chose my words to illustrate the falacy of the earlier argument that the search of habitable planets was somehow a plan to visit one.
and then convince the mindless masses that I'm all into this whole space thing, I've got a vision, trust me...
I think President Bush does not have your contempt for the views of your fellow countrymen. Is returning to a real space program, like the US had during Apollo, really that controversial? Is pumping cash into aerospace corporations any less noble than pumping it into research universities? You aren't thinking clearly.
Considering how much of the federal budget is spent on destroying this planet we should definitely be spending a fair amount looking for other habitable planets!
But if the US is destroying the planet, doesn't it make sense to develop the technology that will allow us to colonize other planets before it is too late? That is what President Bush's moon initiative is about. What good does it do to discover planets around other stars if all we can do is gaze wistfully at them without the means to travel to them?
Space property rights are a very murky and ambiguous area, but one which should get resolved if we want to have any hope of expanding out there permanently.
Space property is also a very political idea. It is not a coincidence that NASA is building fully domestic exploration and landing infraststructure at a time when competing space programs in Russia, Europe, India, and China are in their ascendancy. The US may not make territorial claims of celestial bodies like the moon unilaterally, but it will influence international property rights agreements from a position of strength.
Students attending IU revel in the intellectual freedom liberal democracy brings: freedom of expression, descent, association, the open exchange of ideas. The use of the laptop computer is a symbol of this pinnacle of freedom, an enabler for students to do more, go further. How ironic that the laptop IU mandates is built by a company (Lenovo) that gains a competative advantage by being based in a country that practices child and slave labor, censorship, political repression, and currency manipulation. All for a 15% discount. There is no underestimating America's love of the "deal" and how deeply it can corrupt.
We have two ways we can deal with these facts. One is to invoke some supernatural entity that somehow or other made life. The other is to try to gather as much evidence as possible about conditions early on in Earth's history, gain as much knowledge as we can on the kinds of organic chemistry possible during this epoch, and then try to come up with potential pathways that would lead from organic chemistry to some sort of primitive self-replicating molecules and from there to the earliest cells.
No argument here. Your last sentence is the extent of the theory or the origin of life. It has been stuck there for a long time. It is just bothersome that chemists have been doing life in a bottle experiments since the 1960's and that the state of the art of understanding has not advanced very much. To be critical of progress to understanding the origin of life does not imply a religous predisposition.
No abiogenesis researcher is going to say "That's how it happened". Billions of years have passed, and we may very likely never know how it occured.
Such an intellectual retreat from the most interesting phenomenon known in the universe is very disappointing. I don't share your pessimism.
not all scientists agree on which theory regarding the origins of life, or the origins or present state of the human race
This statement is half right. I would say that the evolution of humans from primates established, iron clad. But the theory of the origin of life, and Darwin's theory of natural selection are not the same thing. Darwin's theory is an empirical explanation the transition of forms of subsequent generations in response to stimuli. For the origin of life scientists have made plausible inferences on the spontaneous organisation of prebiotic molecules into self-replicating forms. This hardly constitutes a theory. How and why can primative life reach the point to where there is something to naturally select?
I can't help but view this as the fault of the US. Think about it. ICANN, a US organisation, has done little to cater to the wishes of China, even though they're a large (and growing) presence on the internet.
You speak of the masses of Chinese internet users as if their wishes mean anything to the Maoist hacks that are making the decisions. What US interest, business, freedom, or political does it serve to cater to their wishes? You criticism is grossly misplaced.
I may not agree with some of the views of the Chinese government, but if they want Chinese TLDs, they should have them.
which consists of 70 minutes of Eben Moglen, with 20 minutes worth of interruptions from Stallman.
You address Eben Moglen by his full name and then addresses Richard Stallman with much less respect. In my book both men are due some respect. This biasness should have been edited out by the Slashdot priesthood.
(5) therefore any collosion with the golfball at a later time will be at a velocity SLOWER than the swing, far slower than any other piece of space junk out there, and definitely not a threat. Not to mention there is a TRANSMITTER in there. They will see it coming and wave
ISS orbits inclined at 56 deg. A satellite orbiting in polar or equatorial orbit will be hit at a relative cos(i - 56). That can be a lot, like ~8000mph. It is a pretty irresponsible act given that space debris is already a serious problem.
Tentatively scheduled for a spacewalk this summer, a Russian cosmonaut will take his trusty six iron and a special weightless-friendly tee and put a golf ball into orbit from outside the International Space Station.
Is there any better example of the pettiness and utter pointlessness of the ISS? The program has been reduced to a carnival side show of paid stunts and celebrity guests. It won't be long until its hull is rented for advertising. I can imagine it eventually looking like a NASCAR racer. The political goal of moderation of Russia, set by Clinton, has failed. The program cost and responsibility for launching and assembly is disproportately born by the US. In the US we have wasted 30 years of the future on this. Support project Constellation.
What do you think of interaction design patterns or usability patterns?
I didn't know what they were. I ended up looking here. The closest thing in my experience with this is with style guides of various GUI's. But this is better. I think this is very much in the spirit of software design patterns. These are best practices and are well thought out. The ideas are certainly reusable.
...what it amounts to is little more than a list, each item on the list referring to the other items like bloggers hawking each others' hyperlinks.
There are an increasing number of books on design patterns being published, all trying to ride piggy back on the success of the gang of four, and each taking more liberties on what a design pattern is. The result is a profusion of 'faux patterns' that obscure real ones. Most of these newer books are catalogs of the obvious. The fact that the original patterns book was published in 1994 and has not had a newer addition should tell you something. It is a timeless trove of good ideas that are independant of the programming subject matter or the OO language du jour. New patterns are pretty rare.
Any channel that has to remind you that they're "real journalism, fair and balanced" every hour is neither fair, balanced, nor real journalism.
You try to sound profound but your words add up to nothing. Fox News' slogan is a lot less pompous than the Owellian "All the News That's Fit To Print".
Given the seemingly endless series of negative things that have come out in recent times I don't find this surprising.
Consider the sources for the 'negative things': New York Times, Washington Post, CBS, ABC, NBC, Slashdot... Do you contend that none of these institutions have an ax to grind? There are other more reliable sources for news and commentary. Check them out.
How does this make slashdot part of a vast liberal conspiracy?
Slashdot collusively propogates the dishonesty of the old media and suppress balanced debate of issues.
How does not approving of the current US administration automatically make anyone a right-wing liberal?
(left-wing liberal) It doesn't. But the news media does far more than that. They actively impede the administration's efforts and provide comfort and support for our enemies. The same enemies (Al-Qaida) called out by most democrats in congress in the Iraq war resolution.
How does anything not make your comment not left-wing flamebait?
My comment calls it as it is. That is honesty.
How does your comment add anything useful to the conversation?
Because I call out politicing disguised as a tech story. That is useful to many readers. The submitter or the slashdot priests could have defused the matter by leaving out the snide barb. But instead they prejudged what should be a non-partisan matter and tried to use it for political advantage. If I want to read left wing propoganda, there are other more honest and appropriate sources.
No liberal bias on this site. It should have been edited out for flaimbait. Wouldn't it be better to focus your energies on improving the voting problems some states are having? Or perhaps look inward as a democrat and figure out why the party 5 of the last 7 presidential elections.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a decent summary.
I think it is time to have another go at a jupiter atmosphere probe. This time try for a hot hydrogen balloon, heated by an RTG. If we don't do the basic research we will never understand the biggest planet in our solar system.
Of all of the interesting phenomena in the outer solar system I'd say further investigation of Jupiter's atmosphere is down the list. Some missions of greater interest:
This one is just a bizarre bit of disinformation that keeps getting circulated. It is quite false. Volcanoes put out around 130 to 230 teragrams [wikipedia.org] of carbon dioxide a year. The US alone puts out around 5844 teragrams [wikipedia.org].
You complain about 'bizarre disinformation' then use Wikipedia as your only reference? Amusing! The Wikipedia article cites UN sources. I could just as easily cite Michael Crighton in 'State of Fear' for counter arguments. Wouldn't add up to much, would it? You have no credibility.
The savings rate now is -0.5% and it was 10% in the 70s,
It had to be with inflation running at 12% and banks paying higher even rates it was the only way to stay above water. Do I need to remind your that the misery index reached historical heights during the Carter years? The low savings rate is not Mr. Bush's fault. He lowered tax rates on dividends that make it more worthwhile to save and invest. Also, remember that the savings rate doesn't reflect the large run up in equity most people have seen on their homes. To argue that your material standard of living was higher in the 70's is absurd.
high growth and high opportunity for the upper crust of society, the middle class and lower class don't have either.
Tell 12 million Mexican illegal aliens that America is a bad place to be if you are poor but want to work.
My dad used to be able to provide enough money (in a unionized blue collar factory job) to enable my mother to be a stay-at-home mum, me to go to university and saving a little bit, nowadays this would require probably 3 full time jobs at the salary rates we have now.
The unions provided leverage when their wasn't an excess of labor around the world. There is now no one can change it. You also probably had 1 car, 1 phone, and an electric bill. That's it. No other choices. No credit cards. And your parents had priorities. Today you are bombarded by options. The fact that most people choose to spend like drunken sailors drives their need to work. It is not easy to resist forces of consumerism in the US. But you can't blame President Bush for America's lack of restraint.
How many of you are making more money because of all the people in China, India, and other cheap-labor locales, who buy stuff that you produce? To vote, Click here [republicans.org]
How many of us benefit from quality goods at very low prices? Judging from the lines at Walmart, lots.
Now, how many of you know somebody who lost their job because of overseas competition? To vote, Click here [democrats.org]
Now, how many of those people have moved on and have a better job? That would be almost all judging by the unemployment numbers.
The only people who really benefit from offshoring are the business owners who can costs by firing American workers and replacing them with cheap overseas labor. There may be more wealth, but it's all concentrated in a few hands.
Try following the reasoning: businesses make a profit and shareholders benefit from increased stock price and dividends. Thus validated, businesses grow into new markets and create new jobs. That class warfare stuff went out with Carter. It is pretty discredited.
Bush can't understand what's it's like for an ordinary family to suffer the devastation of unemployment because he's never lived through it.
Unemployment is devastating, no doubt. But I would take the high growth, high opportunity economy we have here over low growth nanny states that predominate elsewhere. Over your lifetime you will be materially better off.
Yes, because "pro-choice"ers are in favor of taking away the mother's right to choose.
If they are so proud of the practice the demos should say 'pro-abortion' or 'pro-infanticide' and not hide behind a code word that salves their conciences. 'Tax cuts for the rich reflects' the resentment that democrats have for the reality of the Laffer curve that was demonstrated effectively by President Reagan.
Republicans are not the only practitioners of ironic naming. We should recognise the democrat word hoard: pro-choice, Social Security, Tax Cuts for the Rich, Public Education.
I chose my words to illustrate the falacy of the earlier argument that the search of habitable planets was somehow a plan to visit one.
and then convince the mindless masses that I'm all into this whole space thing, I've got a vision, trust me...
I think President Bush does not have your contempt for the views of your fellow countrymen. Is returning to a real space program, like the US had during Apollo, really that controversial? Is pumping cash into aerospace corporations any less noble than pumping it into research universities? You aren't thinking clearly.
Considering how much of the federal budget is spent on destroying this planet we should definitely be spending a fair amount looking for other habitable planets!
But if the US is destroying the planet, doesn't it make sense to develop the technology that will allow us to colonize other planets before it is too late? That is what President Bush's moon initiative is about. What good does it do to discover planets around other stars if all we can do is gaze wistfully at them without the means to travel to them?
Space property rights are a very murky and ambiguous area, but one which should get resolved if we want to have any hope of expanding out there permanently.
Space property is also a very political idea. It is not a coincidence that NASA is building fully domestic exploration and landing infraststructure at a time when competing space programs in Russia, Europe, India, and China are in their ascendancy. The US may not make territorial claims of celestial bodies like the moon unilaterally, but it will influence international property rights agreements from a position of strength.
On the other hand, the Russians just do their thing with little or no media attention.
The Russian space program has received a lot of attention recently.
Thanks for the Hoosier lowdown. Do you yahoos ever consider going to school out of state?
Guess which laptop is the preferred one...
Students attending IU revel in the intellectual freedom liberal democracy brings: freedom of expression, descent, association, the open exchange of ideas. The use of the laptop computer is a symbol of this pinnacle of freedom, an enabler for students to do more, go further. How ironic that the laptop IU mandates is built by a company (Lenovo) that gains a competative advantage by being based in a country that practices child and slave labor, censorship, political repression, and currency manipulation. All for a 15% discount. There is no underestimating America's love of the "deal" and how deeply it can corrupt.
We have two ways we can deal with these facts. One is to invoke some supernatural entity that somehow or other made life. The other is to try to gather as much evidence as possible about conditions early on in Earth's history, gain as much knowledge as we can on the kinds of organic chemistry possible during this epoch, and then try to come up with potential pathways that would lead from organic chemistry to some sort of primitive self-replicating molecules and from there to the earliest cells.
No argument here. Your last sentence is the extent of the theory or the origin of life. It has been stuck there for a long time. It is just bothersome that chemists have been doing life in a bottle experiments since the 1960's and that the state of the art of understanding has not advanced very much. To be critical of progress to understanding the origin of life does not imply a religous predisposition.
No abiogenesis researcher is going to say "That's how it happened". Billions of years have passed, and we may very likely never know how it occured.
Such an intellectual retreat from the most interesting phenomenon known in the universe is very disappointing. I don't share your pessimism.
not all scientists agree on which theory regarding the origins of life, or the origins or present state of the human race
This statement is half right. I would say that the evolution of humans from primates established, iron clad. But the theory of the origin of life, and Darwin's theory of natural selection are not the same thing. Darwin's theory is an empirical explanation the transition of forms of subsequent generations in response to stimuli. For the origin of life scientists have made plausible inferences on the spontaneous organisation of prebiotic molecules into self-replicating forms. This hardly constitutes a theory. How and why can primative life reach the point to where there is something to naturally select?
I can't help but view this as the fault of the US. Think about it. ICANN, a US organisation, has done little to cater to the wishes of China, even though they're a large (and growing) presence on the internet.
You speak of the masses of Chinese internet users as if their wishes mean anything to the Maoist hacks that are making the decisions. What US interest, business, freedom, or political does it serve to cater to their wishes? You criticism is grossly misplaced.
I may not agree with some of the views of the Chinese government, but if they want Chinese TLDs, they should have them.
They do. It is called .cn.
which consists of 70 minutes of Eben Moglen, with 20 minutes worth of interruptions from Stallman.
You address Eben Moglen by his full name and then addresses Richard Stallman with much less respect. In my book both men are due some respect. This biasness should have been edited out by the Slashdot priesthood.
(5) therefore any collosion with the golfball at a later time will be at a velocity SLOWER than the swing, far slower than any other piece of space junk out there, and definitely not a threat. Not to mention there is a TRANSMITTER in there. They will see it coming and wave
ISS orbits inclined at 56 deg. A satellite orbiting in polar or equatorial orbit will be hit at a relative cos(i - 56). That can be a lot, like ~8000mph. It is a pretty irresponsible act given that space debris is already a serious problem.
Tentatively scheduled for a spacewalk this summer, a Russian cosmonaut will take his trusty six iron and a special weightless-friendly tee and put a golf ball into orbit from outside the International Space Station.
Is there any better example of the pettiness and utter pointlessness of the ISS? The program has been reduced to a carnival side show of paid stunts and celebrity guests. It won't be long until its hull is rented for advertising. I can imagine it eventually looking like a NASCAR racer. The political goal of moderation of Russia, set by Clinton, has failed. The program cost and responsibility for launching and assembly is disproportately born by the US. In the US we have wasted 30 years of the future on this. Support project Constellation.
What do you think of interaction design patterns or usability patterns?
I didn't know what they were. I ended up looking here. The closest thing in my experience with this is with style guides of various GUI's. But this is better. I think this is very much in the spirit of software design patterns. These are best practices and are well thought out. The ideas are certainly reusable.
There are an increasing number of books on design patterns being published, all trying to ride piggy back on the success of the gang of four, and each taking more liberties on what a design pattern is. The result is a profusion of 'faux patterns' that obscure real ones. Most of these newer books are catalogs of the obvious. The fact that the original patterns book was published in 1994 and has not had a newer addition should tell you something. It is a timeless trove of good ideas that are independant of the programming subject matter or the OO language du jour. New patterns are pretty rare.
Any channel that has to remind you that they're "real journalism, fair and balanced" every hour is neither fair, balanced, nor real journalism.
You try to sound profound but your words add up to nothing. Fox News' slogan is a lot less pompous than the Owellian "All the News That's Fit To Print".
I protest! Those statements were taken completely out of context 7;^)
Given the seemingly endless series of negative things that have come out in recent times I don't find this surprising.
Consider the sources for the 'negative things': New York Times, Washington Post, CBS, ABC, NBC, Slashdot ... Do you contend that none of these institutions have an ax to grind? There are other more reliable sources for news and commentary. Check them out.
How does this make slashdot part of a vast liberal conspiracy?
Slashdot collusively propogates the dishonesty of the old media and suppress balanced debate of issues.
How does not approving of the current US administration automatically make anyone a right-wing liberal?
(left-wing liberal) It doesn't. But the news media does far more than that. They actively impede the administration's efforts and provide comfort and support for our enemies. The same enemies (Al-Qaida) called out by most democrats in congress in the Iraq war resolution.
How does anything not make your comment not left-wing flamebait?
My comment calls it as it is. That is honesty.
How does your comment add anything useful to the conversation?
Because I call out politicing disguised as a tech story. That is useful to many readers. The submitter or the slashdot priests could have defused the matter by leaving out the snide barb. But instead they prejudged what should be a non-partisan matter and tried to use it for political advantage. If I want to read left wing propoganda, there are other more honest and appropriate sources.
Given the findings here, can we have a do-over?
No liberal bias on this site. It should have been edited out for flaimbait. Wouldn't it be better to focus your energies on improving the voting problems some states are having? Or perhaps look inward as a democrat and figure out why the party 5 of the last 7 presidential elections.
Here are two reasons for no do-over: John Kerry and Al Gore
IT hiring is up" ... what the fuck does that mean? In the states? In Canada? globally?
Ofcourse he means the US of A. The rest of the world is just target coordinates.