Delaware Water Gap (in NW NJ/East PA) has good skies, but the trick is finding a low horizon. The top of one of the smaller mountains works well. I found one that's only about an hour climb from a parking lot and has a good vantage point in most any single direction, but not the whole sky at once. Nearly 6th magnitude. Sorry I forget the name.
Another option is to head down the NJ shore. Below AC where there are some smaller beach towns have decent skies in the east, but you may have to ignore with silly laws about being on the beach after dark for that.
I'll be out of time for the storm, but otherwise I would identify a few possibly locations along comuter rail and then choose based on cloud patterns. NJT trains can take you to not-terrible skies (~4th magnitude). Connecting either a bus ro to the SEPTA commuter rail may be the easiest way to get down to 5th magnitude, but I don't have any specific recommendations.
If you want a good view:
- Get away from city lights. The farther the better.
- Get away from cloudy regions. Duh.
- Get lucky. Look at the right time. Only problem is that estimates of the right time are only estimates.
Realize that they didn't pay for launch costs. They got a free ride. That's significant, because if you're spending $100,000,000 for a launch it doesn't make sense to save $50,000 by using a cheap antenna which is more likely to break. If you're going to pay for your own launch (like most NASA missions), then spending several times as much for the actual satellite hardware to make sure it's triple tested makes sense.
I was just doing an order of magnitude estimate to illustrate the point that scientists will use as much computing power, memory, storage, etc. as they can afford. I wasn't paying attention to factors of 6 here or there.
Obviously, there are more relevant issues. For example, how are you going to store X bits of information using Y particles? At least for classical computing, you have a problem if Y is orders of magnitude less than X. Hence storing 8 numbers for each atom in the galaxy would be impossible if you were confined to using only the atoms on the earth, at least in classical computing. (I beleive with quantum computing in principle you can be clever and get around this, but I don't know enough to say for sure.)
But to answer your question since over 70% of the baryonic matter is hydrogen, nearly all the rest is helium, and less than 2% is heavier, the average molar mass of baryonic matter in the universe is less than 2.
There are about 10^10 solar masses of mass in a large galaxy like our own. At ~10^33 g/ solar maxx, and 10^23 atoms per gram, That's 10^66~2^219 particles in our galaxy. Beleive me, scientists will make use of as much computing power, RAM, and storage space as they can get their hands on. If only the limiting factor were operating system limitations rather than the more practicalities realities of funding and costs of hardware.
The meteor hypothesis can be considered scientific because it makes testable predictions which have not yet (to my knowledge) been refuted by observational data. People can go and take core samples, look for glassy beads concentrated near the crater, magnetic alignmnets consistant with the location of the crater, isotope anomallies concentrated on the crater, etc. If several of these support the meteor prediction, then most scientists will probably put a fair bit of credance in the meteor hypothesis. If they don't, then most scientists will probably dismiss it.
If some of the data is consistant and some is not what was expected, then people will think more about the avaliable data and how they can perform additional tests. Maybe there's a coincidence or maybe scientists can learn a little more about meteor impacts. In any case, there will probably remain a few scientits who cling to their original hypothesis as long as the data remotely allow. That's actually good, because they'll be motivated to keep performing additional tests when most scientists will think the case is solved. Most of the time they'll just dig their own graves, but ocassionally a scientist previously thought a crackpot manages to produce data that changes people's mind.
My point is that, yes, at this point, it's certainly not cemented. However, it's not just idle speculation. People can (and most likely will) collect data, do experiements, make models, and see whether a meteor is the most likely hypothesis to explain the avaliable data. Neither of us know what the outcome will be, but I have confidence that with time (maybe several decades), scientists will be able to make a convincing case either for or against the meteor hypothesis.
Hey, I still have a 80186 that's been one of my best purchases. It's on an old Intel SatisFAXion 14.4 fax modem. It really was able to receive a fax in the background without slowing down the system even on an old 486.
>> Viper 770 with all the little libraries that make it faster and/or work with VMware?
> You mean the proprietary NVidia 3D drivers? No, the NVidia license forbids this sort of redistribution. Complain to NVidia.
I wasn't asking if RedHat included Nvidia's proprietary drivers. I was hoping they provided open versions of them. "Them" being whatever is necessary to run a reasonablely accelerated X server and vmware. I don't care about 3d.
> VMware 1.0?
> Well, current VMware is 2 and 3 is in release candidate, and is proprietary and commercial to the tune of several hundred dollars. You
> can download a 30 day trial on your own.
I meant, will VMware 1.0 still run on RH 7.2? I seem to remember discussion about the possibilty of making some kernel changes that would render VMware 1.0 inoperable.
> ipchains based firewall and forwarding/routing/masquerading script?
> freshmeat.net
I've written my own script. I'm wondering if I need to plan to learn iptables, write a new script, and test it, should I install RH 7.2. Or can I install some compatibility module and continue to use my old script until I need to update it anyway.
Sorry, but I'm running an old patched system and wonder how much pain upgrading will bring me. Can someone tell me if the default 7.2 install supports...
The HighPoint ATA-66 controler (366?) on Abit BP-6 motherboards?
Viper 770 with all the little libraries that make it faster and/or work with VMware?
VMware 1.0?
SB Live?
lmsensors?
ipchains based firewall and forwarding/routing/masquerading script?
Also, how does the upgrade process work for user installed programs? In particular, I have things like postfix and dnscache installed. Is there a way I can tell the upgrader not to mess up those packages?
Thanks,
astro
Re:how cool
on
GPS Drawings
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The velocity limitation imposed on comercial gps's is that they max out at 999mph. Since that's nearly mach 2, not a problem for comercial flights. I download waypoints for several cities in the regions where I'm flying so I can see right on my GPS's screen, without having to bring a laptop.
Some people want training to help them with a job they have. Some schools specialize in providing that. Some people want training to get a particular job. Some schools specialize in providing training to get someone a job. Some people want training in fundamentals that will begin to prepare them for jobs in multiple fields. Some schools specialize in providing that. Some people want training so they can have some social status. Some schools specialize in providing that.
My point is that it's perfectly ok, and even desirable that different schools provide different types of training (career developement, trade school, focused, well-rounded, liberal arts, etc.). What's important is that prospective students be educated about what they would get at each schools so they make a choice that's right for them. Therefore, it's important that schools be honest when explaining their purpose to their students.
Of course, many people don't know what they want and just do what's "easiest" for them at the time. That's a problem that seems much more difficult to get around.
> No. The double slit experiment doesn't work with regular light, you need *coherent* light (e.g. a Laser).
Guess you didn't try this experiment in physics class. Anyone who wan'ts to see for themself, I recommend an ordinary Tungsten filament light bulb, a card board box, and two slits from a razor blade in a dark room.
Don't feel bad. An alarming number of my students in a junior level physics lab at MIT were suprised by this.
Numerical Recipies by William Press, Saul Teukolsky, William Vetterling and Brain Flannery.
There are C, Fortran, Pascal, and Basic versions. Obviously you don't need all. Any one will do. Although the Fortran version has the advantage that it would be contiguous with NR in F90 which is not like any of the others in that it focuses on parallel programming. I'd have to say that NR in F90 isn't nearly as essential as any one of the standard NR texts.
Scott Meyers has several good C++ books...
The first is organized as 50 tips (really concepts) to improve your code.
The second is 35 more.
The latest is on STL. I haven't read that one, but based on his previous ones and how long he took to write it, I trust it's also a good read.
Try sandwiching a thin layer of fuel and oxygen between two pieces of pyrex and igniting. That's a good way to study 2d fires. However, in 2d there's a lot less phase space for turbulence, and hence there are qualitative difference between 2d and 3d fires.
Your proposed standard levels of exploit are very unix centric. While such a set of "levels" might be appropriate (or even best) for comparing current unix-like operating systems, I think you'd want to try to make it more general. Things like: unauthorized permanent storaged read, unauthorized memory write, unauthorized code execution, unauthorized network write, etc.
If you applied such a system to our current linux, you might think it kind of silly since there would be a fair bit of redundancy (anyone who got root could do anything). However, I hope that in a couple years there will be several security systems that plug into linux that will make your current concept of root, user, and group privledges inadequate.
The reason code can be expressive is that you can do the same thing many different ways. Even something trivial like evaluating a mathematical function could be done by itteratively, recursively, or maybe with an unrolled loop. The itterations could be done with a counter variable that was incremented by one each time, or with a floating variable that is increased a little each time, or with a pointer or itterator. Maybe the best way to evaluate the function is to use a Taylor series or maybe it's to use a look up series. The fact that a programmer has so many options allows his/her choice of one of them to be expressive.
Now if I'm a beginning programmer and only know one way to do something, then I think it's reasonable to argue that doing something to only way I know how is expressive. Somehow I don't beleive that was the case here.
The other very relevant fact to this argument is the publication of code that doesn't compile. I'm thinking of things like meta-code in an algorithms book. There is no compiler that will generate a working program from that code. To a computer it only means error messages. Yet to a student or experienced programmer, that code expressess an idea. It conveys an approach to a problem. After understanding that bit of code, then they can go and write another program that a computer can understand and turn into an executable program. It seems to me the origianl code in the algorithms book was pretty expressive.
I'm glad to see he still beleives that users who don't use a feature shouldn't suffer a performance hit for it being part of the language.
As long as that's adhered to, I imagine I'll keep using C* for the forseeable future. If they add things that cause a performance hit for everybody, I and the scientific community will probably stick with an older version, even once it's obcure. Just look at how much Fortran 77 is still being used!
Personally, I really like the fact that I can write one section of code in a very generic OO manner, but then have the inner loop essentially in C. I try to get the advantages of C++ while avoiding the performance pitfalls in the most time critical parts of my scientific codes.
You're correct. The Earth is significantly larger (solid angle subtended is what's important) and has a much larger albedo (fraction of light reflected, moon~0.05, earth~0.4 in visible) than the moon. So earthshine is more than an order of magnitude brighter on the moon than moonshine is on the earth.
Although, I'm not sure about the phase of the earth during the moon landings. For all I know, there may have been a technical reason for doing the landings at some particular phase. There might have been one or several lunar landing at a time (near full moon, near new earth) when most of the earth was not lit by the sun, significantly reducing the earthshine. But if the landing did occur during different phases, then maybe the brightness of shaddows could be used to test the moon landing hypothesis. For some reason, I think I can guess what the results would be.
Organ Donors and where the organs end up...
on
Who Owns Your Body?
·
· Score: 2
I've put a little note on my id saying that I'm happy to be an organ donor. My logic is that if I can help someone else after I'm dead, why not.
But I wonder where the organs of millions like me end up going? And is there a practical way to gain more control over how my organs are "donated" after my death? If it's too complicated the organs will probably just die and become useless before people figure out who can use them.
Ideally I'd like my organs to be first donated to people who need such organs to stay alive. Then I'd want to offer my organs to people who would significantly benefit (not cosmetic surgery) from such an organ. Only if nobody needs an organ (unlikely?) would I want it to go to medical research, first offered to universities, and only if no universities wanted it (unlikely?) to a biotech company.
I beleive it would make more sense to say that desparately clinging to the idea that Pluto fits in the category of planets better than the category of Kuiper Belt objects tends to be associated with people who have an interest in the Pluto-Kuiper Express happening.
I would place the odds at better than 1000:1 that if Pluto were discovered today (now that we know of hundreds of similar objects), it would be considered a Kuiper belt object. It's status as a planet is only an artifact of history.
We've sent probes to every planet in the solar system, except pluto. Ah ha! Clearly, we need to send a probe to the only planet we haven't explored yet. This is exactly the argument some people (including professional astronomers, NASA policy folks, etc.) use in trying to justify a proposed mission that still hasn't been funded, the Pluto-Kuiper Express. If pluto is demoted to a Kuiper belt object, the "necessity" of that mission (which some people have already spent years of their career on) is gone. Hence the ridiculous tenacity of some astronomers and even the IAU to insisting that Pluto is a planet.
Personally, I think sending a space probe to a couple of Kuiper belt objects is a worthy goal in and of itself. I have no objections if one of them is Pluto/Charon. Indeed there is some urgency since it's getting harder/more expensive to do such a mission because Pluto is receding from Earth in it's very long period orbit.
In any case, I think as soon as the mission is launched (or maybe once it's finished visiting Pluto), you'll find most astronomers who previously resisted the idea will be much more willing to admit it makes more sense to call it a kuiper belt object.
It's beleived to be due to the planets forming from a disk of gas and dust. You ask why was the disk not a sphere? Well, in a protoplanetary disk the gas provides friction which tends to cause things to move is smooth coplanar, low eccentricity orbits. A small ammount of initial angular momentum (presumablely random) became more significant as the solar systems contracted to form the star and broke the symetry
Slashdot Mirror
Delaware Water Gap (in NW NJ/East PA) has good skies, but the trick is finding a low horizon. The top of one of the smaller mountains works well. I found one that's only about an hour climb from a parking lot and has a good vantage point in most any single direction, but not the whole sky at once. Nearly 6th magnitude. Sorry I forget the name.
Another option is to head down the NJ shore. Below AC where there are some smaller beach towns have decent skies in the east, but you may have to ignore with silly laws about being on the beach after dark for that.
I'll be out of time for the storm, but otherwise I would identify a few possibly locations along comuter rail and then choose based on cloud patterns. NJT trains can take you to not-terrible skies (~4th magnitude). Connecting either a bus ro to the SEPTA commuter rail may be the easiest way to get down to 5th magnitude, but I don't have any specific recommendations.
If you want a good view:
- Get away from city lights. The farther the better.
- Get away from cloudy regions. Duh.
- Get lucky. Look at the right time. Only problem is that estimates of the right time are only estimates.
Realize that they didn't pay for launch costs. They got a free ride. That's significant, because if you're spending $100,000,000 for a launch it doesn't make sense to save $50,000 by using a cheap antenna which is more likely to break. If you're going to pay for your own launch (like most NASA missions), then spending several times as much for the actual satellite hardware to make sure it's triple tested makes sense.
I was just doing an order of magnitude estimate to illustrate the point that scientists will use as much computing power, memory, storage, etc. as they can afford. I wasn't paying attention to factors of 6 here or there.
Obviously, there are more relevant issues. For example, how are you going to store X bits of information using Y particles? At least for classical computing, you have a problem if Y is orders of magnitude less than X. Hence storing 8 numbers for each atom in the galaxy would be impossible if you were confined to using only the atoms on the earth, at least in classical computing. (I beleive with quantum computing in principle you can be clever and get around this, but I don't know enough to say for sure.)
But to answer your question since over 70% of the baryonic matter is hydrogen, nearly all the rest is helium, and less than 2% is heavier, the average molar mass of baryonic matter in the universe is less than 2.
There are about 10^10 solar masses of mass in a large galaxy like our own. At ~10^33 g/ solar maxx, and 10^23 atoms per gram, That's 10^66~2^219 particles in our galaxy. Beleive me, scientists will make use of as much computing power, RAM, and storage space as they can get their hands on. If only the limiting factor were operating system limitations rather than the more practicalities realities of funding and costs of hardware.
The meteor hypothesis can be considered scientific because it makes testable predictions which have not yet (to my knowledge) been refuted by observational data. People can go and take core samples, look for glassy beads concentrated near the crater, magnetic alignmnets consistant with the location of the crater, isotope anomallies concentrated on the crater, etc. If several of these support the meteor prediction, then most scientists will probably put a fair bit of credance in the meteor hypothesis. If they don't, then most scientists will probably dismiss it.
If some of the data is consistant and some is not what was expected, then people will think more about the avaliable data and how they can perform additional tests. Maybe there's a coincidence or maybe scientists can learn a little more about meteor impacts. In any case, there will probably remain a few scientits who cling to their original hypothesis as long as the data remotely allow. That's actually good, because they'll be motivated to keep performing additional tests when most scientists will think the case is solved. Most of the time they'll just dig their own graves, but ocassionally a scientist previously thought a crackpot manages to produce data that changes people's mind.
My point is that, yes, at this point, it's certainly not cemented. However, it's not just idle speculation. People can (and most likely will) collect data, do experiements, make models, and see whether a meteor is the most likely hypothesis to explain the avaliable data. Neither of us know what the outcome will be, but I have confidence that with time (maybe several decades), scientists will be able to make a convincing case either for or against the meteor hypothesis.
> 5.80186 (Loser)
Hey, I still have a 80186 that's been one of my best purchases. It's on an old Intel SatisFAXion 14.4 fax modem. It really was able to receive a fax in the background without slowing down the system even on an old 486.
>> Viper 770 with all the little libraries that make it faster and/or work with VMware?
> You mean the proprietary NVidia 3D drivers? No, the NVidia license forbids this sort of redistribution. Complain to NVidia.
I wasn't asking if RedHat included Nvidia's proprietary drivers. I was hoping they provided open versions of them. "Them" being whatever is necessary to run a reasonablely accelerated X server and vmware. I don't care about 3d.
> VMware 1.0?
> Well, current VMware is 2 and 3 is in release candidate, and is proprietary and commercial to the tune of several hundred dollars. You
> can download a 30 day trial on your own.
I meant, will VMware 1.0 still run on RH 7.2? I seem to remember discussion about the possibilty of making some kernel changes that would render VMware 1.0 inoperable.
> ipchains based firewall and forwarding/routing/masquerading script?
> freshmeat.net
I've written my own script. I'm wondering if I need to plan to learn iptables, write a new script, and test it, should I install RH 7.2. Or can I install some compatibility module and continue to use my old script until I need to update it anyway.
Thanks,
Sorry, but I'm running an old patched system and wonder how much pain upgrading will bring me. Can someone tell me if the default 7.2 install supports...
The HighPoint ATA-66 controler (366?) on Abit BP-6 motherboards?
Viper 770 with all the little libraries that make it faster and/or work with VMware?
VMware 1.0?
SB Live?
lmsensors?
ipchains based firewall and forwarding/routing/masquerading script?
Also, how does the upgrade process work for user installed programs? In particular, I have things like postfix and dnscache installed. Is there a way I can tell the upgrader not to mess up those packages?
Thanks,
astro
The velocity limitation imposed on comercial gps's is that they max out at 999mph. Since that's nearly mach 2, not a problem for comercial flights. I download waypoints for several cities in the regions where I'm flying so I can see right on my GPS's screen, without having to bring a laptop.
E
Some people want training to help them with a job they have. Some schools specialize in providing that. Some people want training to get a particular job. Some schools specialize in providing training to get someone a job. Some people want training in fundamentals that will begin to prepare them for jobs in multiple fields. Some schools specialize in providing that. Some people want training so they can have some social status. Some schools specialize in providing that.
My point is that it's perfectly ok, and even desirable that different schools provide different types of training (career developement, trade school, focused, well-rounded, liberal arts, etc.). What's important is that prospective students be educated about what they would get at each schools so they make a choice that's right for them. Therefore, it's important that schools be honest when explaining their purpose to their students.
Of course, many people don't know what they want and just do what's "easiest" for them at the time. That's a problem that seems much more difficult to get around.
> No. The double slit experiment doesn't work with regular light, you need *coherent* light (e.g. a Laser).
Guess you didn't try this experiment in physics class. Anyone who wan'ts to see for themself, I recommend an ordinary Tungsten filament light bulb, a card board box, and two slits from a razor blade in a dark room.
Don't feel bad. An alarming number of my students in a junior level physics lab at MIT were suprised by this.
Numerical Recipies by William Press, Saul Teukolsky, William Vetterling and Brain Flannery.
There are C, Fortran, Pascal, and Basic versions. Obviously you don't need all. Any one will do. Although the Fortran version has the advantage that it would be contiguous with NR in F90 which is not like any of the others in that it focuses on parallel programming. I'd have to say that NR in F90 isn't nearly as essential as any one of the standard NR texts.
Scott Meyers has several good C++ books...
The first is organized as 50 tips (really concepts) to improve your code.
The second is 35 more.
The latest is on STL. I haven't read that one, but based on his previous ones and how long he took to write it, I trust it's also a good read.
Try sandwiching a thin layer of fuel and oxygen between two pieces of pyrex and igniting. That's a good way to study 2d fires. However, in 2d there's a lot less phase space for turbulence, and hence there are qualitative difference between 2d and 3d fires.
Your proposed standard levels of exploit are very unix centric. While such a set of "levels" might be appropriate (or even best) for comparing current unix-like operating systems, I think you'd want to try to make it more general. Things like: unauthorized permanent storaged read, unauthorized memory write, unauthorized code execution, unauthorized network write, etc.
If you applied such a system to our current linux, you might think it kind of silly since there would be a fair bit of redundancy (anyone who got root could do anything). However, I hope that in a couple years there will be several security systems that plug into linux that will make your current concept of root, user, and group privledges inadequate.
The reason code can be expressive is that you can do the same thing many different ways. Even something trivial like evaluating a mathematical function could be done by itteratively, recursively, or maybe with an unrolled loop. The itterations could be done with a counter variable that was incremented by one each time, or with a floating variable that is increased a little each time, or with a pointer or itterator. Maybe the best way to evaluate the function is to use a Taylor series or maybe it's to use a look up series. The fact that a programmer has so many options allows his/her choice of one of them to be expressive.
Now if I'm a beginning programmer and only know one way to do something, then I think it's reasonable to argue that doing something to only way I know how is expressive. Somehow I don't beleive that was the case here.
The other very relevant fact to this argument is the publication of code that doesn't compile. I'm thinking of things like meta-code in an algorithms book. There is no compiler that will generate a working program from that code. To a computer it only means error messages. Yet to a student or experienced programmer, that code expressess an idea. It conveys an approach to a problem. After understanding that bit of code, then they can go and write another program that a computer can understand and turn into an executable program. It seems to me the origianl code in the algorithms book was pretty expressive.
I'm glad to see he still beleives that users who don't use a feature shouldn't suffer a performance hit for it being part of the language.
As long as that's adhered to, I imagine I'll keep using C* for the forseeable future. If they add things that cause a performance hit for everybody, I and the scientific community will probably stick with an older version, even once it's obcure. Just look at how much Fortran 77 is still being used!
Personally, I really like the fact that I can write one section of code in a very generic OO manner, but then have the inner loop essentially in C. I try to get the advantages of C++ while avoiding the performance pitfalls in the most time critical parts of my scientific codes.
You're correct. The Earth is significantly larger (solid angle subtended is what's important) and has a much larger albedo (fraction of light reflected, moon~0.05, earth~0.4 in visible) than the moon. So earthshine is more than an order of magnitude brighter on the moon than moonshine is on the earth.
Although, I'm not sure about the phase of the earth during the moon landings. For all I know, there may have been a technical reason for doing the landings at some particular phase. There might have been one or several lunar landing at a time (near full moon, near new earth) when most of the earth was not lit by the sun, significantly reducing the earthshine. But if the landing did occur during different phases, then maybe the brightness of shaddows could be used to test the moon landing hypothesis. For some reason, I think I can guess what the results would be.
I've put a little note on my id saying that I'm happy to be an organ donor. My logic is that if I can help someone else after I'm dead, why not.
But I wonder where the organs of millions like me end up going? And is there a practical way to gain more control over how my organs are "donated" after my death? If it's too complicated the organs will probably just die and become useless before people figure out who can use them.
Ideally I'd like my organs to be first donated to people who need such organs to stay alive. Then I'd want to offer my organs to people who would significantly benefit (not cosmetic surgery) from such an organ. Only if nobody needs an organ (unlikely?) would I want it to go to medical research, first offered to universities, and only if no universities wanted it (unlikely?) to a biotech company.
So will Eros, the asteroid that the NASA probe NEAR/Shoemaker is about to land on (I think Feb 12) become a planet?
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/OuterPlot.htm l
If pluto didn't have a special symbol, and orbit drawn for it, could you pick out Pluto as different from other Kuiper belt objects?
Although I see you're where you're coming from...
I beleive it would make more sense to say that desparately clinging to the idea that Pluto fits in the category of planets better than the category of Kuiper Belt objects tends to be associated with people who have an interest in the Pluto-Kuiper Express happening.
I would place the odds at better than 1000:1 that if Pluto were discovered today (now that we know of hundreds of similar objects), it would be considered a Kuiper belt object. It's status as a planet is only an artifact of history.
Since /. loves conspiracey theories, I'll share one...
We've sent probes to every planet in the solar system, except pluto. Ah ha! Clearly, we need to send a probe to the only planet we haven't explored yet. This is exactly the argument some people (including professional astronomers, NASA policy folks, etc.) use in trying to justify a proposed mission that still hasn't been funded, the Pluto-Kuiper Express. If pluto is demoted to a Kuiper belt object, the "necessity" of that mission (which some people have already spent years of their career on) is gone. Hence the ridiculous tenacity of some astronomers and even the IAU to insisting that Pluto is a planet.
Personally, I think sending a space probe to a couple of Kuiper belt objects is a worthy goal in and of itself. I have no objections if one of them is Pluto/Charon. Indeed there is some urgency since it's getting harder/more expensive to do such a mission because Pluto is receding from Earth in it's very long period orbit.
In any case, I think as soon as the mission is launched (or maybe once it's finished visiting Pluto), you'll find most astronomers who previously resisted the idea will be much more willing to admit it makes more sense to call it a kuiper belt object.
It's beleived to be due to the planets forming from a disk of gas and dust. You ask why was the disk not a sphere? Well, in a protoplanetary disk the gas provides friction which tends to cause things to move is smooth coplanar, low eccentricity orbits. A small ammount of initial angular momentum (presumablely random) became more significant as the solar systems contracted to form the star and broke the symetry