Yes, as we all know, we get *music* from radio telescopes, right?
Yes we do! They specially train radio astronomers to listen to it. Did you know supernovae sound like violins?
Re:usual quote from Scotty re physics, immutabilit
on
When Lofar Meets Stella
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· Score: 2, Insightful
A reasonable sized antenna for this frequency range is not very directional.
You'd really like to have a directional antenna to block out signals that are not coming from the sky.
That's why it's a 'phased array'. The concept is pretty simple: if a signal is coming from a certain direction, it will arrive at antenna A a fraction of a second earlier than at antenna B. LOFAR measures the incoming signals and their phase at all the antennae, and then lets software 'untangle' this information to reconstruct the direction of the different signals.
There's an awful lot of man-made noise and very strong signals in this frequency range.
This is true, but most of it is limited to certain frequency intervals. There are still enough other frequencies left to observe in.
One lousy piece of rusty fence wire can intermix all that crud and rebroadcast all kinds of sum and difference gobs of spurious signals.
Actually I think the wavelengths used here are large enough to just ignore rusty fence wire;)
Fact is that this 'idea' is up and running, and it works!
Does anyone else think it is strange to install a supercomputer years before this telescope gets deployed?
Something that hasn't really been mentioned in the article is that this telescope is being constructed now. The land has been bought, the paperwork done and the sensors are being built. Even though it will not be finished until 2008, the 'bits & pieces' can be used before that date. They have been testing the setup on a small array (about 100 antennae) for about 3 years now, and even have some results to show for it.
It's nice for business and science here, but putting it on a field somewhere in East Germany, Tsech Republic etc. might be more economic.
While it is true that building it there might be more economic, consider that this thing is being built where the astronomers are. The 'brain' and control center are located close to the WSRT, the 'other' big dutch radio telescope. Of course, boosting business and science is one of the reasons, but I think it's just practical and fair to use the long tradition in radio astronomy provided by the region..
No, this project is not 'replacing' Hubble, since this telescope will be looking at different wavelengths than Hubble (Hubble = optical, LOFAR = radio). If I understand correctly, LOFAR will mostly be used to research the formation and evolution of the early universe and galaxies, as well as the characteristics of radio sources (esp. black holes). Their site has some more information about the astronomical research..
I can't see how this should replace the design document. Although it can clear up a lot of questions, I find it more plausible that it will solve requirement related problems instead of design related ones.
But I agree nevertheless, building a prototype is much more fun than writing such a stupid document.
From what they understand they just showed that the available theories (well, the ones they chose to use) already give an explanation of the current situation.
This seems a bit similar to the massive boycot of crappy microsoft software we have now. We know from this that people really care about the quality of the products they are using.
In reality people wouldn't even think a second before opening a pdf that includes some tracking software, all they care about it reading the contents, doube click and there you go. The only thing that stop this is a message that damages the image of pdf i.e. the big media labeling pdf as spyware, which it seems to become if this is implemented.
The only thing I don't get is that they need extra technology to do this. Can't they just check who's downloaded a file how many times? Or are they worried they'll miss the countless copies passed on by floppy?
Well, the brain is actually a very flexible organism, it can adapt to the new situation with more possibilities for output. Someone with a chip like this in his/her head would have to learn to use it.
These new technologies seem a major breakthrough in technology, but I think it's much more amaizing to see how incredibly well the human brain is able to react to this kind of things.
The chip's resistance is futile, he will be assimilated!
Part of the problem may be that the project in question is huge. It is not a problem an avarage software company can solve. The expertise required may not even be available in france. But I don't know anything about french software companies. I just know, I don't know any, which may be because they do not exist.
Until then, anything that alters our atmosphere, oceans, or ecology significantly is Russian roulette.
Although I tend to agree with you, comparing altering our environment to russian roullette aint fair either. It implies that very bad things can happen, but how can you know, if so little of these matters are understood?
But nevertheless I agree, because I too fear playing around with the environment might cause destruction of a magnitude we cant even imagine. There seem to be some indications that this is possible, but I havent seen any proof yet. But until it's not disproven I's rather be safe.
Design of cause is a matter of taste, so fortunatly I can say I disagree and I like my gnome 2.0 better than windows. It's true though that windows has a smoother operating gui, but that's not going to change in linspire. So pratically, there's no market for linspire.
You're probably right and I understand this is the motivation to make linspire. But as you say yourself, Joe Average is unable to install a new OS. Which means that they won't ever come to try linspire unless it comes pre-installed with the computer, which doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon.
I don't really see why distributions should mimic windows. Those who bother to install any os install like windows or some linuxes can probably adept to gnome or kde easily. And the windows interface definately aint the best around. The real problem is microsoft's hold of the big OEMs. To me that's the clearest abuse of their monopoly, yet they aren't really attacked for it...
In the US, we allow people to call themselves neo-Nazis and salute Hitler while holding a sign proclaiming that "God hates fags." And, as nauseating as I find those points of view, I think people should have the right to express them (but not to act on them.)
At the same time, I'm somewhat curious whether they would also be allowed to say "God hates negros" or the like. Here in the netherlands, we give 'fags', black and white people the same rights, which means you could neither say "god hates negros" nor "God hates fags".
That said, here it is actually possible to say, "god hates fags", it is however not possible for someone to tell your followers (this actually happens too often) to kill fags because "god hates fags". Actually I think you'd be suprised what kind of things you can write in mainstream newspapers here. For example some guy repeatedly stated that Morrocan people are goatfuckers on all different media, which shouldn't have been allowed imho. Unfortunately this guy was killed by muslim extremists, mainly because of other things he said/did though. More info about Theo van Gogh at for example the bbc.
The bottom line is that the right to keep and bear arms is directly linked to the right to free speech (which most of us cherish).
I can accept this as an argument in favour of gun possession. But you must also see that there is a darker side to this policy, the number of casualties in both gun related accidents and crime are much higher in the USA. For me the second argument is simply stronger, especially because I believe in europe it has been proven that we don't need guns to preserve our freedom of speech. Besides, why is there such little freedom of expression in the middle east where it is common for every family to have a gun?
If the rest of the world jumps off a cliff, should America join them?
Actually, I'm experiencing the opposite, since your war on terrorism things are changing here now. I didn't have to wear an id with me before, now I do.
In our economy we often see specialisation in companies. We see this in a lot of area's, for example the music industry where we've got different parties supplying different components of the final product. eg music + nice face + studio artists + marketing + legal 'protection'... -> britney spears.
Although I don't like most music that's been produced this way, I don't oppose to the method (apart from the extreme copyright protection). It's the consumers 'fault' that they buy it.
I think the same thing should be possible in technology/research etc. Patents can allow companies specializing in research only and sell patents as their product. IMHO it's not neccesary that the company should actually produce the stuff themselves. If it's not possible to sell patents when a company goes bankrupt, investors would be much less willing to invest in a research-only company.
So although I see your point, I think the flexibility of patent ownership isn't neccesarily bad. However it is true that a shopping-cart patent does much more harm when it can be sold this easily. But that is more a problem of patents that shouldn't have been granted.
I somehow didn't expect slashdotters to give up their slashdot that easily. I'd think there are a lot of you who aren't following their own laws to the letter. Copyright laws, for example, and do you all stop for a red traffic light? I'm afraid I've broken quite a few laws. Some because it was more convenient to, others because I simply disagree.
The analogy is flawed though, the risk of being caught for the laws I break is zero. The risks in china seem to be unpredictable , which isn't very promising. But I cannot find any information on how they treat non-chinese. I would expect them to be mild, especially if you're not involved in political activities but reading slashdot. Maybe it's an idea not to encrypt your traffic but use a plain proxyserver. That way they can see you're just accessing slashdot and not organising a coup.
Of course it's nice of you to worry about him doing illigal stuff in a country like China. But I don't understand that there're are no practical answers being modded up. Only the warnings that say he should adapt to the situation there.
Everyone here probably objects strongly to the Chinese censorship, but nobody seems to we willing to take the risk to 'protest' against it. The risk might be very real indeed, but then again, I'd bet laws like these aren't quite the same for foreigners. Maybe someone could enlighten us about the risks involved? Are there any example cases?
I hope you realise it wasn't the internet or broadband that created the situation in Sweden and Denmark and I'n not entirely sure wether or not broadband acces would make a difference.
When people have access to more information it doesn't automatically mean they are more capable of judging sources for what they are. A lot of people probably wouldn't 'dive' in the internet to really get the facts, most of them are quite content to trust sources they already know, that tell them things they're familiar with.
Of course incidents will 'bubble up' faster than they do now. You'll probably more often see politicians or companies falling because of some scandal that the public would never have heard of if it werent for the internet. But I very much doubt it would add anything constructive to politics. Even worse, real political issues might get covered up even more than they are now.
That said, I hope you are right, things need to be changed!
Patents cannot really give one a monopoly over a chemical, rather it protects a certain use of it. For example as a medicine. So when company X discovers some new plastic (organic molecule) to build for example airplanes with and company Y discovers it heals cancer, both can have a pantent concerning the same chemical.
How that's supposed to work in genes puzzles me though.
I was probably incredibly naive to have thought that patents did not prevent scientific research. At least in centers paid by the government...
This whole patent business often make me doubt democracy where the representatives are betraying or failing us (the people) while the people (exept us?) don't notice...
Slashdot Mirror
Yes we do! They specially train radio astronomers to listen to it. Did you know supernovae sound like violins?
You'd really like to have a directional antenna to block out signals that are not coming from the sky.
That's why it's a 'phased array'. The concept is pretty simple: if a signal is coming from a certain direction, it will arrive at antenna A a fraction of a second earlier than at antenna B. LOFAR measures the incoming signals and their phase at all the antennae, and then lets software 'untangle' this information to reconstruct the direction of the different signals.
There's an awful lot of man-made noise and very strong signals in this frequency range.
This is true, but most of it is limited to certain frequency intervals. There are still enough other frequencies left to observe in.
One lousy piece of rusty fence wire can intermix all that crud and rebroadcast all kinds of sum and difference gobs of spurious signals.
Actually I think the wavelengths used here are large enough to just ignore rusty fence wire ;)
Fact is that this 'idea' is up and running, and it works!
Something that hasn't really been mentioned in the article is that this telescope is being constructed now. The land has been bought, the paperwork done and the sensors are being built. Even though it will not be finished until 2008, the 'bits & pieces' can be used before that date. They have been testing the setup on a small array (about 100 antennae) for about 3 years now, and even have some results to show for it.
It's nice for business and science here, but putting it on a field somewhere in East Germany, Tsech Republic etc. might be more economic.
While it is true that building it there might be more economic, consider that this thing is being built where the astronomers are. The 'brain' and control center are located close to the WSRT, the 'other' big dutch radio telescope. Of course, boosting business and science is one of the reasons, but I think it's just practical and fair to use the long tradition in radio astronomy provided by the region..
No, this project is not 'replacing' Hubble, since this telescope will be looking at different wavelengths than Hubble (Hubble = optical, LOFAR = radio). If I understand correctly, LOFAR will mostly be used to research the formation and evolution of the early universe and galaxies, as well as the characteristics of radio sources (esp. black holes). Their site has some more information about the astronomical research..
I can't see how this should replace the design document. Although it can clear up a lot of questions, I find it more plausible that it will solve requirement related problems instead of design related ones.
But I agree nevertheless, building a prototype is much more fun than writing such a stupid document.
From what they understand they just showed that the available theories (well, the ones they chose to use) already give an explanation of the current situation.
This seems a bit similar to the massive boycot of crappy microsoft software we have now. We know from this that people really care about the quality of the products they are using.
In reality people wouldn't even think a second before opening a pdf that includes some tracking software, all they care about it reading the contents, doube click and there you go. The only thing that stop this is a message that damages the image of pdf i.e. the big media labeling pdf as spyware, which it seems to become if this is implemented.
The only thing I don't get is that they need extra technology to do this. Can't they just check who's downloaded a file how many times? Or are they worried they'll miss the countless copies passed on by floppy?
Well, the brain is actually a very flexible organism, it can adapt to the new situation with more possibilities for output. Someone with a chip like this in his/her head would have to learn to use it.
These new technologies seem a major breakthrough in technology, but I think it's much more amaizing to see how incredibly well the human brain is able to react to this kind of things.
The chip's resistance is futile, he will be assimilated!
Part of the problem may be that the project in question is huge. It is not a problem an avarage software company can solve. The expertise required may not even be available in france. But I don't know anything about french software companies. I just know, I don't know any, which may be because they do not exist.
I'm tempted to mod this as funny, but I've only one modpoint left so I think I won't.
Although I tend to agree with you, comparing altering our environment to russian roullette aint fair either. It implies that very bad things can happen, but how can you know, if so little of these matters are understood?
But nevertheless I agree, because I too fear playing around with the environment might cause destruction of a magnitude we cant even imagine. There seem to be some indications that this is possible, but I havent seen any proof yet. But until it's not disproven I's rather be safe.
i meant to say there's no market because joe avarage cant install it, and it will not be available preinstalled in the foreseable future....
Design of cause is a matter of taste, so fortunatly I can say I disagree and I like my gnome 2.0 better than windows. It's true though that windows has a smoother operating gui, but that's not going to change in linspire. So pratically, there's no market for linspire.
You're probably right and I understand this is the motivation to make linspire. But as you say yourself, Joe Average is unable to install a new OS. Which means that they won't ever come to try linspire unless it comes pre-installed with the computer, which doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon.
I don't really see why distributions should mimic windows. Those who bother to install any os install like windows or some linuxes can probably adept to gnome or kde easily. And the windows interface definately aint the best around. The real problem is microsoft's hold of the big OEMs. To me that's the clearest abuse of their monopoly, yet they aren't really attacked for it...
At the same time, I'm somewhat curious whether they would also be allowed to say "God hates negros" or the like. Here in the netherlands, we give 'fags', black and white people the same rights, which means you could neither say "god hates negros" nor "God hates fags".
That said, here it is actually possible to say, "god hates fags", it is however not possible for someone to tell your followers (this actually happens too often) to kill fags because "god hates fags". Actually I think you'd be suprised what kind of things you can write in mainstream newspapers here. For example some guy repeatedly stated that Morrocan people are goatfuckers on all different media, which shouldn't have been allowed imho. Unfortunately this guy was killed by muslim extremists, mainly because of other things he said /did though. More info about Theo van Gogh at for example the bbc.
The bottom line is that the right to keep and bear arms is directly linked to the right to free speech (which most of us cherish).I can accept this as an argument in favour of gun possession. But you must also see that there is a darker side to this policy, the number of casualties in both gun related accidents and crime are much higher in the USA. For me the second argument is simply stronger, especially because I believe in europe it has been proven that we don't need guns to preserve our freedom of speech. Besides, why is there such little freedom of expression in the middle east where it is common for every family to have a gun?
If the rest of the world jumps off a cliff, should America join them?Actually, I'm experiencing the opposite, since your war on terrorism things are changing here now. I didn't have to wear an id with me before, now I do.
In our economy we often see specialisation in companies. We see this in a lot of area's, for example the music industry where we've got different parties supplying different components of the final product. eg music + nice face + studio artists + marketing + legal 'protection' ... -> britney spears.
Although I don't like most music that's been produced this way, I don't oppose to the method (apart from the extreme copyright protection). It's the consumers 'fault' that they buy it.
I think the same thing should be possible in technology/research etc. Patents can allow companies specializing in research only and sell patents as their product. IMHO it's not neccesary that the company should actually produce the stuff themselves. If it's not possible to sell patents when a company goes bankrupt, investors would be much less willing to invest in a research-only company.
So although I see your point, I think the flexibility of patent ownership isn't neccesarily bad. However it is true that a shopping-cart patent does much more harm when it can be sold this easily. But that is more a problem of patents that shouldn't have been granted.
I somehow didn't expect slashdotters to give up their slashdot that easily. I'd think there are a lot of you who aren't following their own laws to the letter. Copyright laws, for example, and do you all stop for a red traffic light? I'm afraid I've broken quite a few laws. Some because it was more convenient to, others because I simply disagree.
The analogy is flawed though, the risk of being caught for the laws I break is zero. The risks in china seem to be unpredictable , which isn't very promising. But I cannot find any information on how they treat non-chinese. I would expect them to be mild, especially if you're not involved in political activities but reading slashdot. Maybe it's an idea not to encrypt your traffic but use a plain proxyserver. That way they can see you're just accessing slashdot and not organising a coup.
Of course it's nice of you to worry about him doing illigal stuff in a country like China. But I don't understand that there're are no practical answers being modded up. Only the warnings that say he should adapt to the situation there. Everyone here probably objects strongly to the Chinese censorship, but nobody seems to we willing to take the risk to 'protest' against it. The risk might be very real indeed, but then again, I'd bet laws like these aren't quite the same for foreigners. Maybe someone could enlighten us about the risks involved? Are there any example cases?
I hope you realise it wasn't the internet or broadband that created the situation in Sweden and Denmark and I'n not entirely sure wether or not broadband acces would make a difference.
When people have access to more information it doesn't automatically mean they are more capable of judging sources for what they are. A lot of people probably wouldn't 'dive' in the internet to really get the facts, most of them are quite content to trust sources they already know, that tell them things they're familiar with.
Of course incidents will 'bubble up' faster than they do now. You'll probably more often see politicians or companies falling because of some scandal that the public would never have heard of if it werent for the internet. But I very much doubt it would add anything constructive to politics. Even worse, real political issues might get covered up even more than they are now.
That said, I hope you are right, things need to be changed!
maybe this is a good opportunity to test the missile defence system against an easy target?
true, but I wasn't talking just about the USA...
So how long until companies start sueing people for having a baby?
Patents cannot really give one a monopoly over a chemical, rather it protects a certain use of it. For example as a medicine. So when company X discovers some new plastic (organic molecule) to build for example airplanes with and company Y discovers it heals cancer, both can have a pantent concerning the same chemical.
How that's supposed to work in genes puzzles me though.
I was probably incredibly naive to have thought that patents did not prevent scientific research. At least in centers paid by the government...
This whole patent business often make me doubt democracy where the representatives are betraying or failing us (the people) while the people (exept us?) don't notice...
What would cleaners do with their 20%?
test google...?
improve social skills...?
comb their brooms...?
or maybe their're the ones that really keep google running.