But also, what is the purpose of the rule? And can it realistically be enforced?
I responded to the parent post of your post, but here is another reply. My old workplace had a ban on cell phones because classified research was being conducted there.
As far as I saw it, the purpose was that with land lines, security could monitor your conversations if they wanted to. With cell phones it would be ALOT harder. Same with email, they can monitor that if they desire (not sure how they deal with encrypted stuff, though).
My boss told me on the first day there to just think that every byte I send on the network might be monitored by somebody in security. That's just the nature of having a security clearance, if it bothers you do other work. (Actually, I didn't do anything that was classified there, but I still needed a clearance, and they still want to monitor all employees).
As for enforcing it, I don't think they can do it very effectively. There's a fair amount of trust in those labs. But if they catch you violating the rules, you're out.
All in all, there should be other ways you can deal with your processes. Ie, have them email an account and check that continuously. But if your company doesn't want cell phones, than abide by that rule or leave.
You do what the employer wants or you start sending out the resumes. A cell phone isn't exactly something required to sustain life.
I agree completely.
I used to work at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, which is on an air force base and does some classified research. As a result, cell phones and cameras aren't allowed in the workplace.
Once you have those restrictions in mind, you can make do just fine. And there was full-time maintainence going on there much more critical than system administration. For example, one of my coworkers maintained one of the cleanrooms stocked with arsine and phosphine gas. He had to be 'on-call' 24-7, and the lack of using a cell phone at work didn't hinder him at all. He may have used one at home, I don't know. But at the lab (and it's a big place) between various other means he was able to be touch just fine.
And of course the employees still had land-line phones in their offices, and personal codes, so one can take care of all necessary personal business at the workplace.
So it should definitely be possible, but if somebody has addicted themselves to their cellphone, then they'll have to go through the withdrawl. And finally, quit if you don't like it, but IMHO if a company decides to make the place cell-phone free, they should be able to do so.
I think we need a manned Mars mission badly, and I Am worried the Democrats will kill it just because Bush signed off on the idea.
Don't worry, this is just election-year crap.
If Bush gets re-elected, he'll cancel the program anyway. He's just marketing the recent Mars hype to make it sound like he's bold and innovative, and an explorer, etc. He'll probably start funding it, with monies going primarily to space (ie military) companies, and then it'll get cut later.
Sorry, I want to go to Mars too, but we have to be realistic about how to do it, while not sacrificing too many things to get there.
Mr. Dell : I would like to step down as CEO. Here's my written statement. Boardroom Exec : Whoa, that's one helluva doozy, your memo doesn't look right. Are you sure the power cord is plugged in to your computer? Mr. Dell : Yes, this isn't a computer issue at all. I want to step down as CEO. Let's elect someone else. Boardroom Exec : No, that cannot be right. Okay, reboot your computer and try printing our your memo again. That should fix the problem. Mr. Dell : No you nitwit, I just want to resign. I know it, and I want us all to elect a new CEO. Boardroom Exec : Okay okay, now I know what's wrong. Before we do anything else I want you to reinstall these drivers on your computer and then give me the memo again. That should really fix the problem this time. Mr. Dell : Argh, I don't have time for this crap. I know what I want to do, just listen to me. I've been running the show for years, and now I know I want to leave. Let's convene a chairholder's meeting now. Boardroom Exec : No, we cannot do that yet. It wasn't a driver issue, so it must be the OS. Before we convene any meetings you'll have to reinstall windows on your computer so we can all make sure this is a legit memo. I'll hold as you do that....... Mr. DellAAARRRGGGHHHH!!!
ike they're so determined to make something make sense, they blindly look for something that'll fit the problem, even if it's obvious that it's probably not right
I actually recently responded to a similar accusation against physicsists, and you can read my reply here . That response has more examples listed of 'kludges' in physics, but I'll talk about a few in more depth in this post.
What you've just described is known as phenomenology. In other words, trying to come up with some sort of basic theory to match the given data. Examples include Planck's original quantizing of radiation into discrete quanta, which turned out to be right. Another example is the Landau theory of 2nd-order phase transitions, where one builds a power-series expansion of the free energy in powers of something called the 'order parameter'. This is a total hack, but in many cases can adequately describe phase transitions (including superconductivity).
In fact, there are many kinds of physics theories, some termed 'macroscopic' in which case they're phenomonoligical, and describe what's going on, but don't adequately describe the 'physics' of the system. Then there's the microscopic theories that talk specifically about particle interactions, and follow directly from quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, E&M, etc. The goal is to make these two approaches mesh.
For example, superconductivity could be described fairly well using the Ginzberg-Landau expansion, where the order parameter described above is complex, instead of real. Many things can be described this way, including Josephson Junctions and fluxoid quantization of superconducting loops.
(Ginzberg just won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2003. Landau, if he were still alive, would have probably won it too, and it would have been his 2nd physics nobel prize). This approach worked fairly well, but physicists weren't sure why that was.
But then in 1957 Bardeen/Cooper/Schrieffer came up with the BCS theory of superconductivity, which explicitly describes how the electrons can pair up into Cooper pairs. Electrons want to repel, but in the right crystal lattice an electron-phonon-electron interaction (ie, a local distortion of the lattice) can produce an attractive interaction. BCS describe how this attraction comes about, how the energy gap forms, and how the electron pairs can carry a resistanceless supercurrent. BCS won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1972.
This was microscopic vs macroscopic development of superconductivity. Two years later, physicist Gor'kov was able to show that the Ginzberg-Landau theory comes as a limiting case of the BCS theory. Hence, microscopic meets macroscopic, and everybody's happy.
So yes, physicists do look for something to fit the problem, but they don't just stop there. They also try to make those hacks or kludges match up directly from physical laws of the universe. That's what physics is about.
Kerry is mega-rich, influenced by special interests, and voted for the DMCA. Why aren't we voting for Edwards again?
Then go vote in the Democratic Primary in your home state! Why are you assuming slashdot is a collective we anyway?
I'm registered as independent, so I can't vote in the Democratic Primary. Personally, I'm going to vote for Kerry or Edwards, whoever gets the nomination, at the presidential election in November.
or you could have physically opened the CD player, to retrieve the CD, which is fun in it's own right to see "what it's insides look like.".
It's funny, 6 years ago my friend was having trouble with has new car stereo/radio/CD player that he just installed. It wasn't working at all, so he called me over to track down the problem.
Turns out the fuse was blown, a new fuse blew instantly, I tracked the problem to the unit. We took it out, took the whole thing apart ot see if anything was shorting inside. It all looked okay. Then I asked him how he hooked up the power lines, and he had the 12V/ground reversed on the unit! I showed him how you can almost always find which line is ground by the big swathing ground planes on the circuitboards. THat fixed the problem instantly, although he could have save the trouble by telling me he blindly guessed which way the power lines should go.
The interesting thing was how different the CD electronics were from the radio. Ie, the radio board looked like something right out of the 70's, slapped onto a more modern high trace-density PCB for the CD player. It was kind of funny, I guess the stereo groups have circuits that 'just work', and don't waste engineer time to change them at all or make them more modern.
And on another note, I highly recommend The Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill, to anybody wanting to learn electronics without doing a 4-year EE program. It will teach you how to effectively USE transistors, op-amps, logic, etc without involving you in obscure mathematical details.
Hi, I agree with you 99.9%. I hate the 2 party system, and voted for Nader in 2000, although if my state (Maryland) was a swing state I'd have voted for Gore.
The unfortunate thing is that in reality one often has to prioritize, in this case voting out Bush vs promoting a system beyond the 2-party system. And for this current election there are so many important issues at stake. IMHO, Bush has led the country in many wrong paths and IMHO made some dangerously poor choices. IMHO, for the benefit of not only the USA but the entire world, I consider it more important to get Bush out of office than advocate a 3rd party candidate.
Yeah, it means I'm not the dreamy-eyed idealist that you'd like, but in reality there are just some decisions that you have to set your priorities straight for. IMHO, this is one of them.
I suppose the saying, "The devil you know..." would be kind of lost on you, huh?
And I suppose the possibility that someone's quote can only be taken literally so far, and doesn't constitute a global universal truth would be kind of lost on you, huh?
. You want to elect someone into the highest office in the country based on the fact that you don't like the current office holder.
Absolutely. IMHO the current office holder has moved in the opposite direction than I would like in many issues I feel strongly for. Looking at the records of the various contenders, they all are much more reasonable IMHO. And, again IMHO, they'll move the country back into the direction I think it should be going.
Despite the fact that the current office holder has been mildly to outright friendly to the goals of us geeks
Sorry I don't follow the group-think that you apparently do. There are many issues beyond the geek-friendly ones that I feel strongly about and consider more important.
you want to replace him with someone who stands a chance of promoting legislation and leadership that will give more power to long term copyrights
Bush stands the same chance of giving more power to long term copyrights.
shut down the space program
The decision to cancel Hubble was made by O'Keefe, a Bush appointee, remember. And this is all really just election-year politics of trying to look like a reorganization of NASA is in swing. Bush Sr. tried the same thing.
enact more DMCA type laws
Bush did plenty of that, I don't necessarily think Kerry or others will be specifically worse in this regard
promote outsourcing of our jobs, etc., etc., etc
Bush hasn't been too helpful here either.
You may like that idea, but some of us are a little more intelligent.
Then go ahead and be more 'intelligent' than me. I personally hate the direction this country has taken in the past 4 years and I feel strongly enough about I will do everything I can to bring the country back the way I would like it.
Sometimes the devil you know is better than the one you don't know.
Sure, and any candidate is a devil that most won't know. However I cannot see Kerry continuing on Bush's destructive path.
FYI, I voted Nader in 2000 because I also hate the 2 party system and my state (Maryland) is solidly democratic. If it was a swing state I'd have voted for Gore. My priority was to firstly prevent Bush from getting office, but secondly to help the Green party attain the 5% of the vote.
And yes, it might not be wise to keep the 2 party system going by continuing to vote for the lesser of two evils. But IMHO Bush has done so much disaster that I feel it is far more important to swing things around in the next 4 years and keep Bush out of office.
But my enthusiasm for it was damaged when they neglected to test it before launch.
You do realize, though, that the Hubble had the most accurate optics of any telescope ever built? (It was at the time, though since then Chandra probably exceeds it). That's why they were able to correct the spherical aberation perfectly with COSTAR.
Anyway, IIRC, it was the testing equipment that led to the problem with the spherical aberration. Ie, they ground the mirror to a very high standard. They fine-tuned the curvature with testing equipment to get it to the proper shape (talking 10's of nanometers of material to grind away here, not much material at all). It was this testing equipment that was miscalibrated. But it was a systematic error, so they could perfectly undo the aberrations introduced into the mirror.
As far as testing it before launch, I beliebe there were some problems that it couldn't be tested until it was in a microgravity environment. For example, the weight of the mirror in a gravitational field distorts it significantly that it can't actually focus.
The fact that you only consider newspapers and TV a valid source of information is rather disturbing.
Are you seriously comparing the Hubble PR publications with ISS's microgravity scientific research publications?
Hubble data is used in publications all the time in Nature, Science, and of course Ap. J. and many other publications. But I guess you are right, astrophysicists don't publish in Cell, therefore ISS does more important research.
Yeah, of course ISS does microgravity research, some people here in my physics departement are interested in looking at phase boundaries between complex fluids in absence of gravity. But 1-2 orders of magnitude more scientists make use of Hubble. But then again, I'm biased because STScI is right across the street. But wait, I'm biased the other way too because nearly the rest of campus here at Johns Hopkins does bio research and is more interested in your Cell microgravity stuff then hard astrophysics.
But anyway, back to your ridiculous point, why would you compare the audience that the PR office reaches for? This is Public relations, that implies the general public, not the specialized scientific community. Because if you get off your high hourse and "base your conclusions after doing a bit more research" as you quoted in your post, you'd see that astronomers and physicists make heavy use of Hubble data and do publish in the most prestigious scientific journals as well.
Sorry to let you know but making kludges is really how alot of new physics is done. Someone finds some kind of 'kludge' that models reality, then the theorists try to explain it in terms of basic laws.
Lots of things were done this way. Specifically, Planck's attempt to correct the ultra-violet catasctrophe of black-body radiation theory by quantizing the radiation was a total kludge. The theory matched the data fairly well, which led to a flood of new inquiries, leading to Einstein's description of the 'photoelectric effect' and the birth of quantum mechanics.
The concept of the gyromagnetic ratio, or Lande g factor, for particles was another kludge that can be adequately explained using sufficient detail of Quantum Field Theory.
Even more macroscopic phenomenological theories, like Landau's theory of 2nd-order phase transitions expands the free energy of a physical system in terms of one or more order parameters. That's a kludge and a half, but in many cases adequately describes physical systems close to phase transition points that formal Hamiltonian interaction methods cannot get to.
Extending on this is the Ginzberg-Landau theory using a complex order parameter for superconductors. (Remember Ginzberg just won the Nobel Prize for Physics a few months ago. Landau won it decades ago and would have won it again if he was alive). It was shown by Gor'kov that the BCS theory of superconductivity (ie, formally-applied theory involving Cooper pairs of electrons and superconducting gap) approaches the Ginzberg-Landau expansion at the critical point.
So yes, Kludges are really used all the time in physics, and they're no black eye at all. There's two reasons we need to use these. Firstly - macroscopic systems are just so damn complex one cannot solve a 10^23 dimensional Hamiltonian, that's ridiculous. So even from basic principles complicated order can emerge.
The second reason is that it is quite likely we don't fully know the ultimate physics basic building blocks, just a very good approximation of them. Complicated systems can reveal small perturbations from the standard model that's accepted.
However, they have thereby limited their current claims to these sections. And five beeeellion dollars.
Okay, I'm too lazy here on saturday nite. Has anybody done the math to figure out how much the entire linux kernel would be worth in SCO's ridiculous view?
They want $699 for these x number of lines of 'stolen' code. If linux kernel has y lines of code total, then the kernel should be worth (y/x)*699 dollars. What are x and y?
Maybe we can use this to our advantage. For example, with MSFT, pay $300 for a kernel worth $300. With linux, pay nothing for a kernel worth $$$$$.
I really don't know why he's (either Bush or O'Keefe) scrapping Hubble, but that's one guess. The other is that they're trying to 're-organize' NASA to promote the so-called Mars program.
In reality, though, I don't think they're that serious about the Mars mission and were trying to capitalize off the recent Mars success. And by claiming to re-organize NASA it'll make it look like some winds of change are blowing.
Anyway, regarding Hubble, I do hope the money can be found from somewhere. Even if the geek collective grovels to Bill Gates to fund it. Astronauts have volunteered to service it (ie John Grunsfeld), so all that's needed is a 'relatively' small amount of cash and an 'approval' stamp by NASA's bureaucracy.
I think it's just trying to cut costs, and announcing a Mars program while getting rid of the old shuttle program sounds innovative and progressive. And there's the savings of the last shuttle flight to Hubble too, which would be about $500 million. Of course that's a drop in the bucket compared to the govt's spending and deficit, though.
I don't think Bush wants to be associated with the end of the Hubble program directly, and O'Keefe gives him a buffer layer. Since Bush is now rather known for skyrocketing deficit spending, he needs to cut costs somewhere. And for his agenda, Hubble takes a back seat to other programs.
It's not the fucking Bush administration's descision. It's NASA's descision.
Except the decision was made EXCLUSIVELY by O'Keefe. And O'Keefe was appointed as NASA Administator by Bush.
Even if O'Keefe doesn't want to do what Bush asks, he still knows that it was Bush that gave him his current position. That thought will always be in the back of O'Keefe's mind, and is likely to interfere politics into his managemenet decicions.
So the call to cancel Hubble was made by O'Keefe and O'Keefe alone. Only after Sen. Mikulski of Maryland hounded him about it did he reluctantly agree to form a committee. That's crap, he should have formed a damn committee in the beginning before solely making the decision to cut NASA's most successful program since Apollo.
John Grunsfeld, one of NASA's head astronauts, has serviced Hubble twice previously, and has volunteered himself to go on the SM04 mission.
He used to be an astronomer (maybe he still is) so he knows the value of the Hubble.
Interestingly, he also said that he will go to Hubble, but won't go to ISS! Ie, he knows Hubble is more scientifically and technologically important than ISS.
Its taken some pretty pictures dont get me wrong, but has it saved humanity?
In no less way than Coulomb, Faraday, Ampere, Maxwell, and others who were toying around with electric charges, currents, and magnetism, and trying to quantify their interactions.
pace telescope will never be able to compete with a ground telescope in that area in our lifetimes.
Do you do any astronomical observations?
Having a larger aperature not only increases the angular resolution of your scope, but also increases the collecting area.
The first is very useful for imaging, in which case under certain ideal conditions ground-based AO imaging can achieve marginally better pictures than Hubble.
But the second implies faint observing, and the atmosphere still cuts the SNR of faint objects greatly. That is an area Hubble is superior in. Read about the Hubble Deep Field, for example. Ground-based observatories cannot keep the excellent SNR for a 100 hour observation (with breaks for lots of daylight) nearly as well as Hubble.
And for the n'th time, AO cannot take out atmospheric defects. Space-based spectra are (maybe in very few instances where high frequency-resolution isn't needed) superior
Compared to new ground-based telescopes, the Hubble is a technically inferior telescope.
Uggh.
Ground-based adaptive optic telescopes are only marginally superior to Hubble in terms of imaging.
Hubble is still superior for long-term integrations (much lower SNR in space than Earth and can hence observe much fainter objects) and spectra.
Spectra from Hubble don't have atmospheric artifacts that even the best adaptive-optic scopes cannot get rid of.
Except, of course, for the new generation of ground-based telescopes with better resolving power than the hubble. It's silly to spend more money on inferior technology just because it's space-based and therefor "must be cooler".
Except, of course, that ground-based scopes can't take the long stable integrations that Hubble can.
And additionally ground-based spectra is damn inferior to Hubble's. Adaptive optics fixes atmospheric effects of distorting angular resolution. AO doesn't do anything to fix absorption/emission spectra artifacts caused by the atmosphere itself.
Much of the real astronomical research uses spectra (ie, determining redshifts and hence distances, what elements are in what stars, how quickly black holes are rotating, etc).
If you really think scientists are supporting Hubble only because it's space-based and 'cooler' than you're severely naive.
By publishing on-line, Wolfram does something courageous as well - rather than simply submitting his work to academia and using their vetting procedure, he's opening up his work for criticism from a much, much wider body of critics.
Ummm, what do you think the bulk of physicists do with the arxiv ?
Slashdot Mirror
I responded to the parent post of your post, but here is another reply. My old workplace had a ban on cell phones because classified research was being conducted there.
As far as I saw it, the purpose was that with land lines, security could monitor your conversations if they wanted to. With cell phones it would be ALOT harder. Same with email, they can monitor that if they desire (not sure how they deal with encrypted stuff, though).
My boss told me on the first day there to just think that every byte I send on the network might be monitored by somebody in security. That's just the nature of having a security clearance, if it bothers you do other work. (Actually, I didn't do anything that was classified there, but I still needed a clearance, and they still want to monitor all employees).
As for enforcing it, I don't think they can do it very effectively. There's a fair amount of trust in those labs. But if they catch you violating the rules, you're out.
All in all, there should be other ways you can deal with your processes. Ie, have them email an account and check that continuously. But if your company doesn't want cell phones, than abide by that rule or leave.
I agree completely.
I used to work at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, which is on an air force base and does some classified research. As a result, cell phones and cameras aren't allowed in the workplace.
Once you have those restrictions in mind, you can make do just fine. And there was full-time maintainence going on there much more critical than system administration. For example, one of my coworkers maintained one of the cleanrooms stocked with arsine and phosphine gas. He had to be 'on-call' 24-7, and the lack of using a cell phone at work didn't hinder him at all. He may have used one at home, I don't know. But at the lab (and it's a big place) between various other means he was able to be touch just fine.
And of course the employees still had land-line phones in their offices, and personal codes, so one can take care of all necessary personal business at the workplace.
So it should definitely be possible, but if somebody has addicted themselves to their cellphone, then they'll have to go through the withdrawl. And finally, quit if you don't like it, but IMHO if a company decides to make the place cell-phone free, they should be able to do so.
Don't worry, this is just election-year crap.
If Bush gets re-elected, he'll cancel the program anyway. He's just marketing the recent Mars hype to make it sound like he's bold and innovative, and an explorer, etc. He'll probably start funding it, with monies going primarily to space (ie military) companies, and then it'll get cut later.
Sorry, I want to go to Mars too, but we have to be realistic about how to do it, while not sacrificing too many things to get there.
Mr. Dell : I would like to step down as CEO. Here's my written statement. .......
Boardroom Exec : Whoa, that's one helluva doozy, your memo doesn't look right. Are you sure the power cord is plugged in to your computer?
Mr. Dell : Yes, this isn't a computer issue at all. I want to step down as CEO. Let's elect someone else.
Boardroom Exec : No, that cannot be right. Okay, reboot your computer and try printing our your memo again. That should fix the problem.
Mr. Dell : No you nitwit, I just want to resign. I know it, and I want us all to elect a new CEO.
Boardroom Exec : Okay okay, now I know what's wrong. Before we do anything else I want you to reinstall these drivers on your computer and then give me the memo again. That should really fix the problem this time.
Mr. Dell : Argh, I don't have time for this crap. I know what I want to do, just listen to me. I've been running the show for years, and now I know I want to leave. Let's convene a chairholder's meeting now.
Boardroom Exec : No, we cannot do that yet. It wasn't a driver issue, so it must be the OS. Before we convene any meetings you'll have to reinstall windows on your computer so we can all make sure this is a legit memo. I'll hold as you do that
Mr. DellAAARRRGGGHHHH!!!
I actually recently responded to a similar accusation against physicsists, and you can read my reply here . That response has more examples listed of 'kludges' in physics, but I'll talk about a few in more depth in this post.
What you've just described is known as phenomenology. In other words, trying to come up with some sort of basic theory to match the given data. Examples include Planck's original quantizing of radiation into discrete quanta, which turned out to be right. Another example is the Landau theory of 2nd-order phase transitions, where one builds a power-series expansion of the free energy in powers of something called the 'order parameter'. This is a total hack, but in many cases can adequately describe phase transitions (including superconductivity).
In fact, there are many kinds of physics theories, some termed 'macroscopic' in which case they're phenomonoligical, and describe what's going on, but don't adequately describe the 'physics' of the system. Then there's the microscopic theories that talk specifically about particle interactions, and follow directly from quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, E&M, etc. The goal is to make these two approaches mesh.
For example, superconductivity could be described fairly well using the Ginzberg-Landau expansion, where the order parameter described above is complex, instead of real. Many things can be described this way, including Josephson Junctions and fluxoid quantization of superconducting loops. (Ginzberg just won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2003. Landau, if he were still alive, would have probably won it too, and it would have been his 2nd physics nobel prize). This approach worked fairly well, but physicists weren't sure why that was.
But then in 1957 Bardeen/Cooper/Schrieffer came up with the BCS theory of superconductivity, which explicitly describes how the electrons can pair up into Cooper pairs. Electrons want to repel, but in the right crystal lattice an electron-phonon-electron interaction (ie, a local distortion of the lattice) can produce an attractive interaction. BCS describe how this attraction comes about, how the energy gap forms, and how the electron pairs can carry a resistanceless supercurrent. BCS won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1972.
This was microscopic vs macroscopic development of superconductivity. Two years later, physicist Gor'kov was able to show that the Ginzberg-Landau theory comes as a limiting case of the BCS theory. Hence, microscopic meets macroscopic, and everybody's happy.
So yes, physicists do look for something to fit the problem, but they don't just stop there. They also try to make those hacks or kludges match up directly from physical laws of the universe. That's what physics is about.
Then go vote in the Democratic Primary in your home state! Why are you assuming slashdot is a collective we anyway?
I'm registered as independent, so I can't vote in the Democratic Primary. Personally, I'm going to vote for Kerry or Edwards, whoever gets the nomination, at the presidential election in November.
It's funny, 6 years ago my friend was having trouble with has new car stereo/radio/CD player that he just installed. It wasn't working at all, so he called me over to track down the problem.
Turns out the fuse was blown, a new fuse blew instantly, I tracked the problem to the unit. We took it out, took the whole thing apart ot see if anything was shorting inside. It all looked okay. Then I asked him how he hooked up the power lines, and he had the 12V/ground reversed on the unit! I showed him how you can almost always find which line is ground by the big swathing ground planes on the circuitboards. THat fixed the problem instantly, although he could have save the trouble by telling me he blindly guessed which way the power lines should go.
The interesting thing was how different the CD electronics were from the radio. Ie, the radio board looked like something right out of the 70's, slapped onto a more modern high trace-density PCB for the CD player. It was kind of funny, I guess the stereo groups have circuits that 'just work', and don't waste engineer time to change them at all or make them more modern.
And on another note, I highly recommend The Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill, to anybody wanting to learn electronics without doing a 4-year EE program. It will teach you how to effectively USE transistors, op-amps, logic, etc without involving you in obscure mathematical details.
The unfortunate thing is that in reality one often has to prioritize, in this case voting out Bush vs promoting a system beyond the 2-party system. And for this current election there are so many important issues at stake. IMHO, Bush has led the country in many wrong paths and IMHO made some dangerously poor choices. IMHO, for the benefit of not only the USA but the entire world, I consider it more important to get Bush out of office than advocate a 3rd party candidate.
Yeah, it means I'm not the dreamy-eyed idealist that you'd like, but in reality there are just some decisions that you have to set your priorities straight for. IMHO, this is one of them.
And I suppose the possibility that someone's quote can only be taken literally so far, and doesn't constitute a global universal truth would be kind of lost on you, huh?
Absolutely. IMHO the current office holder has moved in the opposite direction than I would like in many issues I feel strongly for. Looking at the records of the various contenders, they all are much more reasonable IMHO. And, again IMHO, they'll move the country back into the direction I think it should be going.
Despite the fact that the current office holder has been mildly to outright friendly to the goals of us geeks
Sorry I don't follow the group-think that you apparently do. There are many issues beyond the geek-friendly ones that I feel strongly about and consider more important.
you want to replace him with someone who stands a chance of promoting legislation and leadership that will give more power to long term copyrights
Bush stands the same chance of giving more power to long term copyrights.
shut down the space program
The decision to cancel Hubble was made by O'Keefe, a Bush appointee, remember. And this is all really just election-year politics of trying to look like a reorganization of NASA is in swing. Bush Sr. tried the same thing.
enact more DMCA type laws
Bush did plenty of that, I don't necessarily think Kerry or others will be specifically worse in this regard
promote outsourcing of our jobs, etc., etc., etc
Bush hasn't been too helpful here either.
You may like that idea, but some of us are a little more intelligent.
Then go ahead and be more 'intelligent' than me. I personally hate the direction this country has taken in the past 4 years and I feel strongly enough about I will do everything I can to bring the country back the way I would like it.
Sometimes the devil you know is better than the one you don't know.
Sure, and any candidate is a devil that most won't know. However I cannot see Kerry continuing on Bush's destructive path.
FYI, I voted Nader in 2000 because I also hate the 2 party system and my state (Maryland) is solidly democratic. If it was a swing state I'd have voted for Gore. My priority was to firstly prevent Bush from getting office, but secondly to help the Green party attain the 5% of the vote.
And yes, it might not be wise to keep the 2 party system going by continuing to vote for the lesser of two evils. But IMHO Bush has done so much disaster that I feel it is far more important to swing things around in the next 4 years and keep Bush out of office.
You do realize, though, that the Hubble had the most accurate optics of any telescope ever built? (It was at the time, though since then Chandra probably exceeds it). That's why they were able to correct the spherical aberation perfectly with COSTAR.
Anyway, IIRC, it was the testing equipment that led to the problem with the spherical aberration. Ie, they ground the mirror to a very high standard. They fine-tuned the curvature with testing equipment to get it to the proper shape (talking 10's of nanometers of material to grind away here, not much material at all). It was this testing equipment that was miscalibrated. But it was a systematic error, so they could perfectly undo the aberrations introduced into the mirror.
As far as testing it before launch, I beliebe there were some problems that it couldn't be tested until it was in a microgravity environment. For example, the weight of the mirror in a gravitational field distorts it significantly that it can't actually focus.
Are you seriously comparing the Hubble PR publications with ISS's microgravity scientific research publications?
Hubble data is used in publications all the time in Nature, Science, and of course Ap. J. and many other publications. But I guess you are right, astrophysicists don't publish in Cell, therefore ISS does more important research.
Yeah, of course ISS does microgravity research, some people here in my physics departement are interested in looking at phase boundaries between complex fluids in absence of gravity. But 1-2 orders of magnitude more scientists make use of Hubble. But then again, I'm biased because STScI is right across the street. But wait, I'm biased the other way too because nearly the rest of campus here at Johns Hopkins does bio research and is more interested in your Cell microgravity stuff then hard astrophysics.
But anyway, back to your ridiculous point, why would you compare the audience that the PR office reaches for? This is Public relations, that implies the general public, not the specialized scientific community. Because if you get off your high hourse and "base your conclusions after doing a bit more research" as you quoted in your post, you'd see that astronomers and physicists make heavy use of Hubble data and do publish in the most prestigious scientific journals as well.
Lots of things were done this way. Specifically, Planck's attempt to correct the ultra-violet catasctrophe of black-body radiation theory by quantizing the radiation was a total kludge. The theory matched the data fairly well, which led to a flood of new inquiries, leading to Einstein's description of the 'photoelectric effect' and the birth of quantum mechanics.
The concept of the gyromagnetic ratio, or Lande g factor, for particles was another kludge that can be adequately explained using sufficient detail of Quantum Field Theory.
Even more macroscopic phenomenological theories, like Landau's theory of 2nd-order phase transitions expands the free energy of a physical system in terms of one or more order parameters. That's a kludge and a half, but in many cases adequately describes physical systems close to phase transition points that formal Hamiltonian interaction methods cannot get to.
Extending on this is the Ginzberg-Landau theory using a complex order parameter for superconductors. (Remember Ginzberg just won the Nobel Prize for Physics a few months ago. Landau won it decades ago and would have won it again if he was alive). It was shown by Gor'kov that the BCS theory of superconductivity (ie, formally-applied theory involving Cooper pairs of electrons and superconducting gap) approaches the Ginzberg-Landau expansion at the critical point.
So yes, Kludges are really used all the time in physics, and they're no black eye at all. There's two reasons we need to use these. Firstly - macroscopic systems are just so damn complex one cannot solve a 10^23 dimensional Hamiltonian, that's ridiculous. So even from basic principles complicated order can emerge.
The second reason is that it is quite likely we don't fully know the ultimate physics basic building blocks, just a very good approximation of them. Complicated systems can reveal small perturbations from the standard model that's accepted.
Okay, I'm too lazy here on saturday nite. Has anybody done the math to figure out how much the entire linux kernel would be worth in SCO's ridiculous view?
They want $699 for these x number of lines of 'stolen' code. If linux kernel has y lines of code total, then the kernel should be worth (y/x)*699 dollars. What are x and y?
Maybe we can use this to our advantage. For example, with MSFT, pay $300 for a kernel worth $300. With linux, pay nothing for a kernel worth $$$$$.
I should have previewed first. I am referring to spectrographic atmospheric interference, which will always be there, AO or not.
In reality, though, I don't think they're that serious about the Mars mission and were trying to capitalize off the recent Mars success. And by claiming to re-organize NASA it'll make it look like some winds of change are blowing.
Anyway, regarding Hubble, I do hope the money can be found from somewhere. Even if the geek collective grovels to Bill Gates to fund it. Astronauts have volunteered to service it (ie John Grunsfeld), so all that's needed is a 'relatively' small amount of cash and an 'approval' stamp by NASA's bureaucracy.
I don't think Bush wants to be associated with the end of the Hubble program directly, and O'Keefe gives him a buffer layer. Since Bush is now rather known for skyrocketing deficit spending, he needs to cut costs somewhere. And for his agenda, Hubble takes a back seat to other programs.
Except the decision was made EXCLUSIVELY by O'Keefe. And O'Keefe was appointed as NASA Administator by Bush.
Even if O'Keefe doesn't want to do what Bush asks, he still knows that it was Bush that gave him his current position. That thought will always be in the back of O'Keefe's mind, and is likely to interfere politics into his managemenet decicions.
So the call to cancel Hubble was made by O'Keefe and O'Keefe alone. Only after Sen. Mikulski of Maryland hounded him about it did he reluctantly agree to form a committee. That's crap, he should have formed a damn committee in the beginning before solely making the decision to cut NASA's most successful program since Apollo.
He used to be an astronomer (maybe he still is) so he knows the value of the Hubble.
Interestingly, he also said that he will go to Hubble, but won't go to ISS! Ie, he knows Hubble is more scientifically and technologically important than ISS.
In no less way than Coulomb, Faraday, Ampere, Maxwell, and others who were toying around with electric charges, currents, and magnetism, and trying to quantify their interactions.
Do you do any astronomical observations?
Having a larger aperature not only increases the angular resolution of your scope, but also increases the collecting area.
The first is very useful for imaging, in which case under certain ideal conditions ground-based AO imaging can achieve marginally better pictures than Hubble.
But the second implies faint observing, and the atmosphere still cuts the SNR of faint objects greatly. That is an area Hubble is superior in. Read about the Hubble Deep Field, for example. Ground-based observatories cannot keep the excellent SNR for a 100 hour observation (with breaks for lots of daylight) nearly as well as Hubble.
And for the n'th time, AO cannot take out atmospheric defects. Space-based spectra are (maybe in very few instances where high frequency-resolution isn't needed) superior
Uggh.
Ground-based adaptive optic telescopes are only marginally superior to Hubble in terms of imaging. Hubble is still superior for long-term integrations (much lower SNR in space than Earth and can hence observe much fainter objects) and spectra.
Spectra from Hubble don't have atmospheric artifacts that even the best adaptive-optic scopes cannot get rid of.
Except, of course, that ground-based scopes can't take the long stable integrations that Hubble can.
And additionally ground-based spectra is damn inferior to Hubble's. Adaptive optics fixes atmospheric effects of distorting angular resolution. AO doesn't do anything to fix absorption/emission spectra artifacts caused by the atmosphere itself.
Much of the real astronomical research uses spectra (ie, determining redshifts and hence distances, what elements are in what stars, how quickly black holes are rotating, etc).
If you really think scientists are supporting Hubble only because it's space-based and 'cooler' than you're severely naive.
Don't forget O'Keefe (current NASA administrator) was a Bush appointee.
Ummm, what do you think the bulk of physicists do with the arxiv ?