Looks like they did a lot of research to narrow down that Energy secretary short list. Arnie the actor, Colin the military guy (or the football player?) or a Nobel prize winning energy scientist. I dunno, my my gut feeling is to go with the Nobel prize scientist, but then I don't have much political savvy...
A new theory still being explored is that each galaxy has two black holes
By who? You can't just throw out some far fetched idea like that without any reference. I think that you may have misunderstood something that you have read elsewhere. Could you point me to your source? Or your dealer:)
are black holes really still considered theoretical constructs?... I thought many scientific articles bring up black holes now and then without questioning, anyway.
Black holes do have a solid foundation in theory, and we can observe the gravitational effects they have on their neighbours. However, as far as I know, Hawking radiation is the only way to detect them directly and I don't think that this has been observed.
The authors of this article are showing observational evidence for a supermassive (millions of solar masses) black hole in the centre of our Galaxy - something that was thought to be at the centre of many galaxies but was still in open question. The observations made during this study have shown that our Galaxy has one, using techniques that are not an option for galaxies further away, thus giving us the best evidence that supermassive black holes exist.
I'm not saying it shouldn't be done. I guess my point is that the Millenium Bridge is so simple by comparison, yet it needed ~2 years of repairs after opening because of a wobble. People could have been thrown into the Thames, but no big deal, I guess. The space elevator, however, seems so much more prone to failure and with much bigger consequences.
The engineering required for this elevator is mind boggling. After witnessing the amount of time and effort that went into
a small suspension bridge spanning the river Thames in London (The Millenium Bridge), the mere idea of this elevator scares the shit out of me.
We would need monumentally large telescopes for this. The largest optical telescope on earth, the Keck, has a diameter of 10m. Using the Rayleigh Criterion, we can calculate the minimum resolvable detail at a given distance. For example, we can resolve details on the surface of the moon (in the visible) that are around ~20 meters across. If you want to resolve an apple falling on somebodies head you need ~10 cm resolution. So to see this happening on the moon we would need a telescope with a primary mirror ~ 2.6 km across. To see the same thing echoed back from a dust cloud near the closest star to our sun (4 ly * 2), you would need a telescope with a primary ~ 7e+10 m across or around half the distance between the earth and the sun. Not to mention that the signal would be very weak and completely lost in noise.
But when doing calculations over long distances (billions of light years), the thin interstellar medium does indeed induce absorption and polarization effects that must be considered. The effects happen on much smaller scales than this, and will depend on the density of matter that the light crosses. You can simply look at an optical image towards the centre of our Galaxy. It is only ~25000 light years away and has a huge concentration of stars. It should be a blazing ball of light but it is obscured by a dark "shadow".
This is the effect of minute "dust" particles permeating space and absorbing/deflecting light. The effect is less for longer wavelengths which is why we can get a better view of the Galactic centre in the infrared.
Interplanetary space is not a void. There is matter, just its density is so low that not even our best laboratory "voids" can match its low density. But there is "stuff" so a sound speed is definable and shocks certainly do happen.
Neutrons don't go through everything. You may be thinking of neutrinos, which pretty much do go through everything.
Most radioactive elements do not give off single neutrons. They are more likely to give off alpha particles (two protons and two neutrons), beta particls (electrons or positrons) along with gamma rays.
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
Where has this gone wrong? Happy Birthday is under copyright?? This is blatant abuse, for financial gain of course, of what is legitimate protection for innovation.
Better yet, why send someone to the moon? What is this person going to do there? Is it good value for money?
NASA (and other world space agencies) are actually *much more* efficient nowadays with remote exploration of the solar system. We have sent probes to Mars, Jupiter and we have even landed one on Titan (one of Saturn's moons). These probes can send back images, take & analyze samples and, most importantly, they cost a fraction of a similar manned mission. They don't ask to come back to Earth and don't care if the voyage is long or bumpy.
The main driver for future manned missions to the moon will be commercial rather than scientific, for space tourism and exploitation of the moon's resources. There are more cost efficient and scientifically rewarding missions than sending someone to bring back a piece of moon rock.
The funding was cut because its own community of researchers no longer considers it to be very important.
That's not true. The community of radio astronomers recognize Arecibo as a "jewel" of a telescope. It is being used to conduct three very important Galactic surveys and has very broad international support. NSF decided to cut funding to a minimum as they saw their overall budget being reduced.
Also, I'm not convinced that a public outcry on/. would "lead to more money coming into their field".
At any rate, the strict money saving no longer seems to be necessary as the NSF budget has been increased. For more info, and to read what a selection of radio astronomers think of Arecibo : http://www.naic.edu/aorss/cornell_daily_sun.html
The biggest con I ever faced came from Medion / Carrefour (supermarket in France). I bought a Medion laptop in the supermarket chain and three months later a bios update for my model appeared on the Medion site. I flashed the BIOS and later found out that it had invalidated my warranty! Needless to say, I was lost for words....
One could argue that the criminal rate would have risen without these convictions. Therefore, thanks to CCTV, I am as likely to be mugged as before but not more likely. Small comfort.
"I'm sure someone who's been violently mugged or raped will be really happy to know that the police caught them afterwards."
Well I'm not really sure about them being "really happy" but I imagine that knowing your assailant is behind bars is quite a large comfort.
If this is just a big exercise by lazy cops instead of something that will work in conjunction with regular patrols then I would agree that it's a waste of time.
Also, the rise of crime rates is not something that can be attributed to one single factor. Poverty, opportunity, violence in the media, education and many other contribute to a quite difficult problem.
"The technology is of questionable public benefit since street crime has not decreased despite the presence of CCTV""
I am not a fan of a big brother state (who here is?) but I wonder if CCTV technology has helped catch and prosecute more criminals. If it has been useful after the crime, perhaps this approach may be more helpful in stopping crime.
That said, with the arrival of this kind of technology, we should be concerned and make sure that it is put to the right use.
For 'roughly 200 million computers... [with] just 800,000 [(0.004%)] of them acting as honeypots [it] would restrict a viral outbreak to 2,000 machines.'
The only relevant Einstein quotes I came up with are :
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe."
and
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
I don't think that the internet is a substitute for imagination for most users. Many things that I look up are not already in my memory - mere concentration will not give me the answers. I do agree with you that filling up a head with lost of information does not make the person intelligent. However, this does not mean that there is a problem making a ton of information easily accessible.
The internet serves more as a giant encyclopedia and means of communication then a mind-numbing medium like the television. So many things are explained and presented with different points of view that they help users understand concepts that they may have struggled with using the limited resources around them. I don't think we can say that there is anything wrong with that.
I agree that CUPS works very well. I use it for printing to different network printers at work and I had almost nothing to do to get it working.
However, I'm wondering what you mean by "toy printers". Are they the ones that most home users will buy? If that's the case then we come back to my original point - the general public will find installing a printer under Linux a pain in the arse. When I started using Linux a few years ago I battled long and hard with a Lexmark that just didn't want to play. Had I not been interested in Linux for other reasons I probably would have given up then.
Slashdot Mirror
Looks like they did a lot of research to narrow down that Energy secretary short list. Arnie the actor, Colin the military guy (or the football player?) or a Nobel prize winning energy scientist. I dunno, my my gut feeling is to go with the Nobel prize scientist, but then I don't have much political savvy...
A new theory still being explored is that each galaxy has two black holes
By who? You can't just throw out some far fetched idea like that without any reference. I think that you may have misunderstood something that you have read elsewhere. Could you point me to your source? Or your dealer :)
but I'd think a black hole would create a lensing effect
Indeed it does; it is called Gravitational lensing
You're not going to be happy with the new generation of telescopes then. First of all there's the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). What could be bigger than that? Wait for it ... the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (OWL) of course!
are black holes really still considered theoretical constructs? ... I thought many scientific articles bring up black holes now and then without questioning, anyway.
Black holes do have a solid foundation in theory, and we can observe the gravitational effects they have on their neighbours. However, as far as I know, Hawking radiation is the only way to detect them directly and I don't think that this has been observed.
The authors of this article are showing observational evidence for a supermassive (millions of solar masses) black hole in the centre of our Galaxy - something that was thought to be at the centre of many galaxies but was still in open question. The observations made during this study have shown that our Galaxy has one, using techniques that are not an option for galaxies further away, thus giving us the best evidence that supermassive black holes exist.
Here is the press release from ESO
I'm not saying it shouldn't be done. I guess my point is that the Millenium Bridge is so simple by comparison, yet it needed ~2 years of repairs after opening because of a wobble. People could have been thrown into the Thames, but no big deal, I guess. The space elevator, however, seems so much more prone to failure and with much bigger consequences.
The engineering required for this elevator is mind boggling. After witnessing the amount of time and effort that went into a small suspension bridge spanning the river Thames in London (The Millenium Bridge), the mere idea of this elevator scares the shit out of me.
We would need monumentally large telescopes for this. The largest optical telescope on earth, the Keck, has a diameter of 10m. Using the Rayleigh Criterion, we can calculate the minimum resolvable detail at a given distance. For example, we can resolve details on the surface of the moon (in the visible) that are around ~20 meters across. If you want to resolve an apple falling on somebodies head you need ~10 cm resolution. So to see this happening on the moon we would need a telescope with a primary mirror ~ 2.6 km across. To see the same thing echoed back from a dust cloud near the closest star to our sun (4 ly * 2), you would need a telescope with a primary ~ 7e+10 m across or around half the distance between the earth and the sun. Not to mention that the signal would be very weak and completely lost in noise.
This is the effect of minute "dust" particles permeating space and absorbing/deflecting light. The effect is less for longer wavelengths which is why we can get a better view of the Galactic centre in the infrared.
Between the Sun and the shock, it is technically the Interplanetary medium
Interplanetary space is not a void. There is matter, just its density is so low that not even our best laboratory "voids" can match its low density. But there is "stuff" so a sound speed is definable and shocks certainly do happen.
I wonder why this law seems to be upsettinng so many slashdotters ....
Most radioactive elements do not give off single neutrons. They are more likely to give off alpha particles (two protons and two neutrons), beta particls (electrons or positrons) along with gamma rays.
Another one from the same article that we may all be guilty of :
"It is illegal not to tell the tax man anything you do not want him to know, but legal not to tell him information you do not mind him knowing"
"COPYRIGHTS AND PATENTS"
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
Where has this gone wrong? Happy Birthday is under copyright?? This is blatant abuse, for financial gain of course, of what is legitimate protection for innovation.
NASA (and other world space agencies) are actually *much more* efficient nowadays with remote exploration of the solar system. We have sent probes to Mars, Jupiter and we have even landed one on Titan (one of Saturn's moons). These probes can send back images, take & analyze samples and, most importantly, they cost a fraction of a similar manned mission. They don't ask to come back to Earth and don't care if the voyage is long or bumpy.
The main driver for future manned missions to the moon will be commercial rather than scientific, for space tourism and exploitation of the moon's resources. There are more cost efficient and scientifically rewarding missions than sending someone to bring back a piece of moon rock.
That's not true. The community of radio astronomers recognize Arecibo as a "jewel" of a telescope. It is being used to conduct three very important Galactic surveys and has very broad international support. NSF decided to cut funding to a minimum as they saw their overall budget being reduced.
Also, I'm not convinced that a public outcry on /. would "lead to more money coming into their field".
At any rate, the strict money saving no longer seems to be necessary as the NSF budget has been increased. For more info, and to read what a selection of radio astronomers think of Arecibo : http://www.naic.edu/aorss/cornell_daily_sun.html
The biggest con I ever faced came from Medion / Carrefour (supermarket in France). I bought a Medion laptop in the supermarket chain and three months later a bios update for my model appeared on the Medion site. I flashed the BIOS and later found out that it had invalidated my warranty! Needless to say, I was lost for words ....
One could argue that the criminal rate would have risen without these convictions. Therefore, thanks to CCTV, I am as likely to be mugged as before but not more likely. Small comfort.
Well I'm not really sure about them being "really happy" but I imagine that knowing your assailant is behind bars is quite a large comfort.
If this is just a big exercise by lazy cops instead of something that will work in conjunction with regular patrols then I would agree that it's a waste of time.
Also, the rise of crime rates is not something that can be attributed to one single factor. Poverty, opportunity, violence in the media, education and many other contribute to a quite difficult problem.
I am not a fan of a big brother state (who here is?) but I wonder if CCTV technology has helped catch and prosecute more criminals. If it has been useful after the crime, perhaps this approach may be more helpful in stopping crime.
That said, with the arrival of this kind of technology, we should be concerned and make sure that it is put to the right use.
I make it 0.4% ...
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe."
and
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
I don't think that the internet is a substitute for imagination for most users. Many things that I look up are not already in my memory - mere concentration will not give me the answers. I do agree with you that filling up a head with lost of information does not make the person intelligent. However, this does not mean that there is a problem making a ton of information easily accessible.
The internet serves more as a giant encyclopedia and means of communication then a mind-numbing medium like the television. So many things are explained and presented with different points of view that they help users understand concepts that they may have struggled with using the limited resources around them. I don't think we can say that there is anything wrong with that.
However, I'm wondering what you mean by "toy printers". Are they the ones that most home users will buy? If that's the case then we come back to my original point - the general public will find installing a printer under Linux a pain in the arse. When I started using Linux a few years ago I battled long and hard with a Lexmark that just didn't want to play. Had I not been interested in Linux for other reasons I probably would have given up then.