Amateur astronomers have always had a big impact, there is nothing new going on here. Many comets are found by amateurs, as (until recently, when the process was automated) were many extra-galactic supernovae. Likewise, many amateurs have devoted a great deal of time to monitoring variable stars.
In many cases, these observations are not done by professionals because the return on each *individual* observation is small, and they could not justify the time. But there is singificant synergy, since a researcher interested in (say) variable stars has access to many different light curves from each star thanks to the work of amateurs.
The technology used by amatuers has improved, with cheap CCDs and computers -- but the same technology has also made professional instruments much more effective than they were in the days of photographic plates and clockwork drives.
To my mind (as a theoretical physicist who started out as an amateur astronomer in junior high) an analagous activity is bird watching: professional ornithologists use a huge amount of use of data gathered by amateur "birders", who are often exceptionally knowledgeable about the species they look at, and who gather data from a love of observing the natural world. But this is not high tech, so Fast Company didn't see it.
Strictly speaking, New Zealand and Australia were both 'discovered' (by both Europeans, and their indigenous inhabitants) well before 1769, when Cook sailed to Tahiti to observe the transit. Cook's contribution was mapping the coastline of New Zealand with much greater accuracy, and mapping big chunks of the eastern coast of Australia.
His biggest discovery was what he didn't find -- at the time, there was considerable belief in the idea of a "great southern land" somewhere in the Pacific, and Cooks three voyages, when taken together, cross-hatch the Pacfic and demonstrate that it contained no large and undiscovered landmassess.
I am ripping into Apple lossless, not because I care about the quality, but to future-proof the process.
If I rip into any lossy format (AAC, MP3, whatever) and that becomes obsolete and less supported 10 years from now, then rerippingy those lossy files into some *new* format would be annoying (especially if that format was also lossy, although ten years from now I doubt the savings in bandwidth or storage space will make lossy compression seem worthwhile).
I saw ads for the Soundbridge, and had been waiting for the first review -- hoping it would be the ideal device to play music stored on my (MacOS X) fileserver over a household wireless network.
So if the Soundbridge sucks, what is the consensus on the alternatives?
This is true of the first generation 12'' PookBooks, but is much less of a problem is the second generation models (and the newly released ones are the third generation).
There are two 12'' 1GHz models in my household, and they never get uncomfortably hot -- neither is used for gaming, but I do a good deal of development and numerical computation on mine, which means the CPU can be pegged at 100% for lengthy periods. The fan does kick in fairly regularly though.
My guess is that encrypting your email makes it easier for the NSA -- only a tiny fraction of email traffic is encrypted. Outside of the tinfoil hat community, very, very few people bother to secure their email, so the simple act of sending an encrypted message (which can be spotted due to the low information content of cyphertext, or due to specific comments in the message header) probably flags you for attention.
And if that message is routed from an IP address in England to a cybercafe in Pakistan then so much the better. And if mail from the same address was sent to a known bad-guy last week then better still -- and before you know it, your door gets kicked in and several burly men are asking you questions about the half-tonne of fertilizer you just purchased.
Actually this is BS. Einstein and Heisenberg both published their work without significant difficulty in the leading journals of their day.
Einstein *was* working in the famous patent office when he wrote the papers that established his reputation, but he quickly received offers from universities -- the job market for theoretical physics has always been a tough one, althogh nowadays he would almost certainly have landed a post-doc somewhere.
By the time Heisenberg's work appeared, quantum mechanics was already receiving considerable attention and its importance was quickly realised. His key work appeared in 1925 and he won the Nobel Physics Prize in 1932.
The only way Wolfram will get to stand on the podium for a Nobel lecture is if he is the guy that comes in with a broom after the crowd has gone home. But that doesn't matter, because Wolfram has given himself the Wolfram Prize, and that is all he seems to care about.
This may already have been posted, but the new protocol is that any mission not to the ISS will require another shuttle to be waiting ready to launch if a rescue is needed. That greatly increases the cost and complexity of any service mission, and pretty much rules it out..
I am an astrophysicist, and I derive a lot of benefit from the Hubble data. BUT, on average, an astronaut gets killed once every ten shuttle launches. I know the astronauts are volunteers, but the sooner the shuttle is retired the happier I will be. It is too expensive and too dangerous, and the shuttle needs to be replaced, since it can't be fixed. There will always be good arguments for "just one more launch" but sooner or later there will be another accident, and that will be the last time a shuttle flies.
To me, by far the most interesting part of this announcment was the early retirement of the shuttle. I have serious doubts about whether the US will fly anyone to the moon anytime soon, but retiring the shuttle is a brave and bold step, since the program sucks up such a huge portion of the NASA budget it makes it almost impossible to develop a replacement.
> Wherever there is an area you must warm up, > the effective cost of running a heat-producing > piece of equipment is zero. Think about it.
This assumes the price per unit energy is the same. Electrical heating is usually more expensive than gas or oil, so if you live in a place where you need a furnace this does not follow. The *expensive* heat generated by your computer will replace *cheap* heat generated by your furnace.
Doesn't unix talk do this -- can't you see the characters as the other person types them.
OK, it does -- just tried it between two accounts, and whaddaya know?
I first used talk in 1990 -- I think -- when phonecalls across the Pacific cost an arm and a leg, and any sort of real-time communication over the net seemed just enormously cool.
When Instant Messaging was suddenly the next big thing I had to smile -- talk and finger (back in the day when most sites didn't block finger requests) do much the same thing as an IM system with a central server. Right down to having an analog of the unix.plan "away message"
Am I the only person reading this who thinks that anyone who argues for a space program on the basis of its ability to detect (and presumbaly prevent) large rocks about to hit the earth, and who also thinks that the biggest danger posed by these rocks is their "dangerous iridium compounds" is an idiot.
I would have thought the giant tsunami and 100 metre high land-waves are a whole lots scarier than a small amount of iridium.
If this guy actually thought about it, he might have worked out that a once in 65 million year event is not our biggest concern right now.
Speaking as a physics PhD, post-doctoral researcher, and person currently looking for faculty jobs...
1) I agree with the person who said take the GREs. If you have a good undergrad degree in physics, and good letters of recommendation, the GREs are not that important. However, if you have none of these things but did well on the GREs then you will get looked at.
2) I know a lot of physics PhDs who have left "research" for programming, consulting and all sorts of weird and wonderful things. Some leave because they couldn't make the cut (and these are the bitter and twisted ones:-) in a tight job market, but lots of the people I know who have left research are smart people who left of their own volition.
3) Do ask yourself why you want to do this -- a PhD is a lot of hard work.
4) Identify some institutions / individuals who do work that you are interested in, and email them (and perhaps sit a couple of mock GREs first, so you can reassure them you are not a complete daydreamer) for advice.
5) I know plenty of people who have completed PhDs without a strong undergraduate background in physics, so it is not impossible.
Slashdot Mirror
ah well. Looks like you still need an "invitation" :-(
Electric as in electric puha?
It will play straight through as well, apparently.
Amateur astronomers have always had a big impact, there is nothing new going on here. Many comets are found by amateurs, as (until recently, when the process was automated) were many extra-galactic supernovae. Likewise, many amateurs have devoted a great deal of time to monitoring variable stars.
In many cases, these observations are not done by professionals because the return on each *individual* observation is small, and they could not justify the time. But there is singificant synergy, since a researcher interested in (say) variable stars has access to many different light curves from each star thanks to the work of amateurs.
The technology used by amatuers has improved, with cheap CCDs and computers -- but the same technology has also made professional instruments much more effective than they were in the days of photographic plates and clockwork drives.
To my mind (as a theoretical physicist who started out as an amateur astronomer in junior high) an analagous activity is bird watching: professional ornithologists use a huge amount of use of data gathered by amateur "birders", who are often exceptionally knowledgeable about the species they look at, and who gather data from a love of observing the natural world. But this is not high tech, so Fast Company didn't see it.
Strictly speaking, New Zealand and Australia were both 'discovered' (by both Europeans, and their indigenous inhabitants) well before 1769, when Cook sailed to Tahiti to observe the transit. Cook's contribution was mapping the coastline of New Zealand with much greater accuracy, and mapping big chunks of the eastern coast of Australia.
His biggest discovery was what he didn't find -- at the time, there was considerable belief in the idea of a "great southern land" somewhere in the Pacific, and Cooks three voyages, when taken together, cross-hatch the Pacfic and demonstrate that it contained no large and undiscovered landmassess.
I am ripping into Apple lossless, not because I care about the quality, but to future-proof the process.
If I rip into any lossy format (AAC, MP3, whatever) and that becomes obsolete and less supported 10 years from now, then rerippingy those lossy files into some *new* format would be annoying (especially if that format was also lossy, although ten years from now I doubt the savings in bandwidth or storage space will make lossy compression seem worthwhile).
I saw ads for the Soundbridge, and had been waiting for the first review -- hoping it would be the ideal device to play music stored on my (MacOS X) fileserver over a household wireless network.
So if the Soundbridge sucks, what is the consensus on the alternatives?
This is true of the first generation 12'' PookBooks, but is much less of a problem is the second generation models (and the newly released ones are the third generation).
There are two 12'' 1GHz models in my household, and they never get uncomfortably hot -- neither is used for gaming, but I do a good deal of development and numerical computation on mine, which means the CPU can be pegged at 100% for lengthy periods. The fan does kick in fairly regularly though.
My guess is that encrypting your email makes it easier for the NSA -- only a tiny fraction of email traffic is encrypted. Outside of the tinfoil hat community, very, very few people bother to secure their email, so the simple act of sending an encrypted message (which can be spotted due to the low information content of cyphertext, or due to specific comments in the message header) probably flags you for attention.
And if that message is routed from an IP address in England to a cybercafe in Pakistan then so much the better. And if mail from the same address was sent to a known bad-guy last week then better still -- and before you know it, your door gets kicked in and several burly men are asking you questions about the half-tonne of fertilizer you just purchased.
Actually this is BS. Einstein and Heisenberg both published their work without significant difficulty in the leading journals of their day.
Einstein *was* working in the famous patent office when he wrote the papers that established his reputation, but he quickly received offers from universities -- the job market for theoretical physics has always been a tough one, althogh nowadays he would almost certainly have landed a post-doc somewhere.
By the time Heisenberg's work appeared, quantum mechanics was already receiving considerable attention and its importance was quickly realised. His key work appeared in 1925 and he won the Nobel Physics Prize in 1932.
The only way Wolfram will get to stand on the podium for a Nobel lecture is if he is the guy that comes in with a broom after the crowd has gone home. But that doesn't matter, because Wolfram has given himself the Wolfram Prize, and that is all he seems to care about.
This may already have been posted, but the new protocol is that any mission not to the ISS will require another shuttle to be waiting ready to launch if a rescue is needed. That greatly increases the cost and complexity of any service mission, and pretty much rules it out..
I am an astrophysicist, and I derive a lot of benefit from the Hubble data. BUT, on average, an astronaut gets killed once every ten shuttle launches. I know the astronauts are volunteers, but the sooner the shuttle is retired the happier I will be. It is too expensive and too dangerous, and the shuttle needs to be replaced, since it can't be fixed. There will always be good arguments for "just one more launch" but sooner or later there will be another accident, and that will be the last time a shuttle flies.
To me, by far the most interesting part of this announcment was the early retirement of the shuttle. I have serious doubts about whether the US will fly anyone to the moon anytime soon, but retiring the shuttle is a brave and bold step, since the program sucks up such a huge portion of the NASA budget it makes it almost impossible to develop a replacement.
I want one of these....
http://www.ericharshbarger.org/lego/desk.html
> Wherever there is an area you must warm up,
> the effective cost of running a heat-producing
> piece of equipment is zero. Think about it.
This assumes the price per unit energy is the same. Electrical heating is usually more expensive than gas or oil, so if you live in a place where you need a furnace this does not follow. The *expensive* heat generated by your computer will replace *cheap* heat generated by your furnace.
Doesn't unix talk do this -- can't you see the characters as the other person types them.
.plan "away message"
OK, it does -- just tried it between two accounts, and whaddaya know?
I first used talk in 1990 -- I think -- when phonecalls across the Pacific cost an arm and a leg, and any sort of real-time communication over the net seemed just enormously cool.
When Instant Messaging was suddenly the next big thing I had to smile -- talk and finger (back in the day when most sites didn't block finger requests) do much the same thing as an IM system with a central server. Right down to having an analog of the unix
Am I the only person reading this who thinks that anyone who argues for a space program on the basis of its ability to detect (and presumbaly prevent) large rocks about to hit the earth, and who also thinks that the biggest danger posed by these rocks is their "dangerous iridium compounds" is an idiot.
I would have thought the giant tsunami and 100 metre high land-waves are a whole lots scarier than a small amount of iridium.
If this guy actually thought about it, he might have worked out that a once in 65 million year event is not our biggest concern right now.
Speaking as a physics PhD, post-doctoral researcher, and person currently looking for faculty jobs...
1) I agree with the person who said take the GREs. If you have a good undergrad degree in physics, and good letters of recommendation, the GREs are not that important. However, if you have none of these things but did well on the GREs then you will get looked at.
2) I know a lot of physics PhDs who have left "research" for programming, consulting and all sorts of weird and wonderful things. Some leave because they couldn't make the cut (and these are the bitter and twisted ones
3) Do ask yourself why you want to do this -- a PhD is a lot of hard work.
4) Identify some institutions / individuals who do work that you are interested in, and email them (and perhaps sit a couple of mock GREs first, so you can reassure them you are not a complete daydreamer) for advice.
5) I know plenty of people who have completed PhDs without a strong undergraduate background in physics, so it is not impossible.