The problem with dupes is not that you already have read the submission, but most comments are going to be dupes, too! Those that aren't usually turn out being bitching about dupes, just like these! Or bitching about bitching. Or bitching... you got the point.
At first, I wondered why these moons were not spotted by the Cassini probe from its much closer point of view. The answer lies probably in their large orbital radius. These bodies are farther from Saturn than Phoebe, the first moon Cassini encountered while approaching Saturn for the first time. The main Cassini mission happens well inside their orbit, so that the probe should point outward in order to spot them. It probably will, now that their existence and position is known, but it would have been wasteful to do a survey of the open sky far from Saturn, with so many interesting things to see in detail around it.
At first, i misread the title (not to mention TFA) and thought of a server platform that, when under excessive load, infects unsuspecting insecure Windows clients and offloads part of the work to them. Maybe the successor of the 'client-server' and 'n-tier' models turns out to be the 'do it yourself, slacker' model...
Isn't "sans" a french word? Maybe this venture should be renamed something like "Freedom from wires" in order to attract capitals from red-blooded American investors...
Well, I live right here. The nearest canal is 10 meters away. May I interest you in an "exclusive" Murano glass bottle of cooling liquid? I can't guarantee the smell to be as awful as you expect, though. As someone else pointed out, the sewer situation improved in recent years. On the other hand, if you REALLY want it, with a little overprice you can buy a "secret" addictive to give your fluorescent water cooling setup just the right smell and even colour!
How is this significantly different from the fluorescent marking techniques used for ages in conventional microscopy? It lasts longer? Big deal. Do calling things "nano" attract more funds/media attention? Sure!
http://www.hardydiagnostics.com/Glossary-F.html
Actually, they didn't take a conventional "picture" of the planet, just photometric observations. I don't know if Spitzer could ever resolve (i.e. map onto different pixels) the light from the star and that from the planet when at maximum separation, but surely it's impossible in the observed position, with the planet being occultated behind the star. Actually, the ideal conditions for this photometric approach (measuring the "missing light" when the planet disappears) are the worst possible for direct imaging of the planet.
It should also be noted that the measurements have relatively large error bars, such that it would be very difficult to fit them to a predicted light curve if the planet existence and orbital elements were not known in advance from the "gravitational wobble" method. Nice to see two totally different approaches match their results and giving us a more complete knowledge.
As a European, it really worries me to hear so many people having no problem in declaring themselves as "fundamentalist". It really strikes me that (in USA at least) it became a socially acceptable thing; a belief like another.
In Europe, too, fundamentalists are growing, but it seems to me they are still ashamed of declaring themselves as such. You don't hear anybody introducing himself saying "Hello, I'm evil" like if being evil or not were just a matter of preferences. The same goes for fundamentalism: we are not ready to put it on the same level with tolerance (its real opposite).
In my opinion, the much abused and much derided "Politically Correctness" (an US specialty) should be a widely accepted behaviour if, instead of focusing on superficial and sometimes hypocritical aspects, it involved a common perception of what is accepted and what not. Hurting someone's rights (i.e. by preventing them to receive a complete scientific information, like in this case) can't be considered a right itself. You often hear fundamentalists crying over anti-christian persecution (in Italy it happens a lot), when what they really want to protect is their "right" to hamper other people's rights: believing in no God, having sons outside of a "traditional" family structure, reading some books, speaking freely, etc.
If Islamic fundamentalists are succeeding in anything, it is in making Western societies more like theirs. Or maybe I'm wrong, and we are doing it all by ourselves. How sad.
The contest is designed to award and showcase innovative new open source applications that are designed or optimized specifically for Linux running on the PPC architecture
I don't get it. Are they rewarding the project that comes up with the poorest code portability? I always thought that one of the strongest points of Open Source Software is portability across platforms (OS and CPU architectures). Does IBM (in the role of a strong platform vendor) publicly promote going in the opposite direction? It is understandable from their point of view, but not a big help for OSS development, in my opinion.
Since the socket appears to be the same 754 used for Semprons and Athlon64, you should be able to put one of these in many desktop motherboards with, at most, a simple BIOS update. The same applies to upcoming dual-core CPUs from AMD: they should slip into socket 940/939 with no problem, which is amazing when you think that you replace one CPU with what are essentially two in the same hole. Nice thing is that AMD, in contrast to Intel, doesn't make chipsets, as it hasn't any interest in making you buy a new motherboard.
Who could actually believe that SMART-1 is really circling the Moon? How could it manage that, without smashing into the giant crystal sphere that holds it up? They try to blind us with all this "Ion Engine" technobabble while everybody knows that all you need is a really long ladder to reach the Apollo 11 landing site and see with your own eyes the flag, the lander an all that stuff.
Some people misdirect their skepticism...
Lesson learned. Next time you try to smuggle radioactive material through a border, send someone who verifiably has had recent radioactive treatements.
Customs officer: It's OK, we checked with your doctor. You can bring in that... uh... strange glowing giant lead cat toy!
Still too hi-tech for my tastes! I rely on software distribution by word-of-mouth. The bugs introduced by the iterated copy process get really interesting!
Without making it so personal (with-US vs against-US, like these are the only alternatives), I'd say that suicide terrorism would surely disappear the moment nobody is left with nothing to lose in the world. Utopian, I know. But still a direction opposite to the one we are pursuing today: leaving more and more people in the world with nothing to lose.
...there goes my already-drafted patent request for "A software system that caters to some unspecified need"! How am I supposed to profit from my brilliant inventiveness, now? Move to US? India, maybe?
I'd like to reply to the many "Warming is OK" posts i see, some of them looking serious. Without going into the "human cause-natural cause" debate, that seems to be so relevant among Americans (being mostly settled elsewhere), I'd like to spend my 0.02€ about the effects it will likely have on my personal life.
I live in Venice. In recent years we have seen the "acqua alta" (flooding due to unusually high tides) phenomenon becoming more and more frequent. While my house has been flooded only twice since 2000, it is obvious that when we get to a point where 90% of the city is flooded more than 30 days a year, it becomes impossible to carry on normal activities that make a city "alive" as opposed to "pictoresque ruins".
We had a strong subsidence effect in past years, but it stopped when we (actually, some criminal industries) stopped pumping water out of the ground. Contrary to a common misconception, Venice is not "sinking": it's the sea that is rising.
The problem is very real and frighteningly fast for us. Just moving elsewhere is not a solution I would welcome, as I know this place is really unique. Not the same as moving from average Minnesota small town to average Kansas small town (both nice places, I'm sure, but you get my point about uniqueness).
You can find some data about past trends of flooding here.
Nuffsaid
A very interesting thing about this stellar outburst is the possibility to get a 3D image of the cloud surrounding the star. Images of this event taken months apart (like this sequence) show the flash of light as it expands, illuminating regions of space that form spherical shells around the star. This gives a unique insight into the actual threedimensional structure of the cloud, a bit like a CAT scan builds a 3D view from a sequence of planar 2D images. Pity we don't have (for all I know) one picture per day: it would have made a stunning movie! No to mention the scientific value...
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with dupes is not that you already have read the submission, but most comments are going to be dupes, too! Those that aren't usually turn out being bitching about dupes, just like these! Or bitching about bitching. Or bitching... you got the point.
At first, I wondered why these moons were not spotted by the Cassini probe from its much closer point of view. The answer lies probably in their large orbital radius. These bodies are farther from Saturn than Phoebe, the first moon Cassini encountered while approaching Saturn for the first time. The main Cassini mission happens well inside their orbit, so that the probe should point outward in order to spot them. It probably will, now that their existence and position is known, but it would have been wasteful to do a survey of the open sky far from Saturn, with so many interesting things to see in detail around it.
What? Did they sabotage even THAT?!?
Oh... Actually, they did!
At first, i misread the title (not to mention TFA) and thought of a server platform that, when under excessive load, infects unsuspecting insecure Windows clients and offloads part of the work to them. Maybe the successor of the 'client-server' and 'n-tier' models turns out to be the 'do it yourself, slacker' model...
Isn't "sans" a french word? Maybe this venture should be renamed something like "Freedom from wires" in order to attract capitals from red-blooded American investors...
Well, I live right here. The nearest canal is 10 meters away. May I interest you in an "exclusive" Murano glass bottle of cooling liquid? I can't guarantee the smell to be as awful as you expect, though. As someone else pointed out, the sewer situation improved in recent years. On the other hand, if you REALLY want it, with a little overprice you can buy a "secret" addictive to give your fluorescent water cooling setup just the right smell and even colour!
I'm not going to drink or eat anything that's still in beta!
How is this significantly different from the fluorescent marking techniques used for ages in conventional microscopy? It lasts longer? Big deal. Do calling things "nano" attract more funds/media attention? Sure! http://www.hardydiagnostics.com/Glossary-F.html
Actually, they didn't take a conventional "picture" of the planet, just photometric observations. I don't know if Spitzer could ever resolve (i.e. map onto different pixels) the light from the star and that from the planet when at maximum separation, but surely it's impossible in the observed position, with the planet being occultated behind the star. Actually, the ideal conditions for this photometric approach (measuring the "missing light" when the planet disappears) are the worst possible for direct imaging of the planet.
It should also be noted that the measurements have relatively large error bars, such that it would be very difficult to fit them to a predicted light curve if the planet existence and orbital elements were not known in advance from the "gravitational wobble" method. Nice to see two totally different approaches match their results and giving us a more complete knowledge.
As a European, it really worries me to hear so many people having no problem in declaring themselves as "fundamentalist". It really strikes me that (in USA at least) it became a socially acceptable thing; a belief like another.
In Europe, too, fundamentalists are growing, but it seems to me they are still ashamed of declaring themselves as such. You don't hear anybody introducing himself saying "Hello, I'm evil" like if being evil or not were just a matter of preferences. The same goes for fundamentalism: we are not ready to put it on the same level with tolerance (its real opposite).
In my opinion, the much abused and much derided "Politically Correctness" (an US specialty) should be a widely accepted behaviour if, instead of focusing on superficial and sometimes hypocritical aspects, it involved a common perception of what is accepted and what not. Hurting someone's rights (i.e. by preventing them to receive a complete scientific information, like in this case) can't be considered a right itself. You often hear fundamentalists crying over anti-christian persecution (in Italy it happens a lot), when what they really want to protect is their "right" to hamper other people's rights: believing in no God, having sons outside of a "traditional" family structure, reading some books, speaking freely, etc.
If Islamic fundamentalists are succeeding in anything, it is in making Western societies more like theirs. Or maybe I'm wrong, and we are doing it all by ourselves. How sad.
Maybe you'll be able to buy a couple of Cappuccinos with that amount by then...
Other than that, nice/evil retirement plan! As a programmer (slightly) older than you, I just hope not to be "long gone" by then!
Optical audio? What will they think next, acoustic graphics?
I don't get it. Are they rewarding the project that comes up with the poorest code portability? I always thought that one of the strongest points of Open Source Software is portability across platforms (OS and CPU architectures). Does IBM (in the role of a strong platform vendor) publicly promote going in the opposite direction? It is understandable from their point of view, but not a big help for OSS development, in my opinion.
Since the socket appears to be the same 754 used for Semprons and Athlon64, you should be able to put one of these in many desktop motherboards with, at most, a simple BIOS update. The same applies to upcoming dual-core CPUs from AMD: they should slip into socket 940/939 with no problem, which is amazing when you think that you replace one CPU with what are essentially two in the same hole. Nice thing is that AMD, in contrast to Intel, doesn't make chipsets, as it hasn't any interest in making you buy a new motherboard.
Who could actually believe that SMART-1 is really circling the Moon? How could it manage that, without smashing into the giant crystal sphere that holds it up? They try to blind us with all this "Ion Engine" technobabble while everybody knows that all you need is a really long ladder to reach the Apollo 11 landing site and see with your own eyes the flag, the lander an all that stuff.
Some people misdirect their skepticism...
Customs officer: It's OK, we checked with your doctor. You can bring in that... uh... strange glowing giant lead cat toy!
When they will tell us to.
(Only half-joking).
This from an ESA fanboy...
Still too hi-tech for my tastes! I rely on software distribution by word-of-mouth. The bugs introduced by the iterated copy process get really interesting!
Hey, that might even work... :-)
Without making it so personal (with-US vs against-US, like these are the only alternatives), I'd say that suicide terrorism would surely disappear the moment nobody is left with nothing to lose in the world. Utopian, I know. But still a direction opposite to the one we are pursuing today: leaving more and more people in the world with nothing to lose.
At least, you'll save the other eye from the blast!
...there goes my already-drafted patent request for "A software system that caters to some unspecified need"! How am I supposed to profit from my brilliant inventiveness, now? Move to US? India, maybe?
I live in Venice. In recent years we have seen the "acqua alta" (flooding due to unusually high tides) phenomenon becoming more and more frequent. While my house has been flooded only twice since 2000, it is obvious that when we get to a point where 90% of the city is flooded more than 30 days a year, it becomes impossible to carry on normal activities that make a city "alive" as opposed to "pictoresque ruins".
We had a strong subsidence effect in past years, but it stopped when we (actually, some criminal industries) stopped pumping water out of the ground. Contrary to a common misconception, Venice is not "sinking": it's the sea that is rising.
The problem is very real and frighteningly fast for us. Just moving elsewhere is not a solution I would welcome, as I know this place is really unique. Not the same as moving from average Minnesota small town to average Kansas small town (both nice places, I'm sure, but you get my point about uniqueness).
You can find some data about past trends of flooding here.
Nuffsaid
A very interesting thing about this stellar outburst is the possibility to get a 3D image of the cloud surrounding the star. Images of this event taken months apart (like this sequence) show the flash of light as it expands, illuminating regions of space that form spherical shells around the star. This gives a unique insight into the actual threedimensional structure of the cloud, a bit like a CAT scan builds a 3D view from a sequence of planar 2D images. Pity we don't have (for all I know) one picture per day: it would have made a stunning movie! No to mention the scientific value...