[The hubris of calling your potential clients 'c-level' boggles my mind]
I have no idea about the bait-and-switch-ness of this whole thing, but one minor point: a "c-level executive" refers to an executive whose acronym begins with a "C", e.g. CEO, CTO, etc. etc.
So the hubris is not in demeaning their own clients, but rather in inflating their importance (which, I guess, was already obvious).
Oh, right. That's just a mistake. I completely missed that... sorry. I really should be more careful about reading stuff... I thought it was enough to RTFA, but I guess I need to RTFCTIATRT (comment that I'm about to reply to) as well.
For the record, it appears that Saturn's max brightness has an apparent magnitude of around -0.3, so it's that it's out of place on the table rather than off by a minus sign.
Magnitude is a log scale, with brighter objects having lower magnitudes. Like so much in astronomy, the reason is historical: when the first guy (Greek, probably) decided to categorize stars by brightness he said the brightest stars should be first magnitude, the next brightest second, and so on. Because of the nature of the human eye, the scale is logarithmic. Objects brighter than what this guy considered first magnitude thus have a magnitude of less than one, or even less than zero.
The numbers are funny (rather than -1, 0, 1, 2) because they're giving you sample objects so you can get an idea about the range of the scale.
Yeah, I'm an astronomy undergrad, and I caught this. Glad somebody cleared it up. I imagine it must have been misreported... I don't see any serious astronomer (let alone one who's looking for old stars!) mixing this up.
I just did a presentation on speech recognition software for the Office of Disabilities Services at my school, and since I see that you have a lot of response on the technical aspect of it, I'd like to bring up something else: how speaking to the computer affects *you*.
One of the things that most surprised me about using speech recognition is how speaking comes from a different part of the brain than typing. Composition through speech is *very* difficult to start; don't think you're going to just dive in and compose an essay or report right off the top: even if the computer can understand you, you won't be able to coherently phrase your thoughts in a truly professional manner. Speech recognition is at its best when used for email and (ironically, at least I thought) instant messaging, because these forms of communication most accurately mimic speech. I don't know how it's going to affect coding, though, 'cause I wasn't brave enough to try that (but I can only imagine it would be difficult).
I just wanted to offer a slightly differerent perspective on it. It certainly seemed like I was using different neural pathways or *something*, so just remember: as much as you're going to be training the speech recognition profile, you're going to be training yourself, as well!
I'd guess they just mean the local cluster of galaxies, that is, the group of galaxies around us that we are gravitationally bound to. It's been known for a while that the Milky Way is larger than average, but Andromeda (which we are on a collision course with) was thought to be larger than us. I'm skeptical, myself, but it would be awesome if we did turn out to be bigger. 'Cause that kind of thing is cool.
As has been said before, of course the Big Bang is a theory. The question is whether it should be called as such. Perhaps the first time it is mentioned in an article intended for the general public this is a good idea. To refer to it as the "Big Bang Theory" every single time it is mentioned is not only overkill, it is humiliating to the writers who are forced to do so. The issue is not whether it is a theory, but whether it is acceptable for a political appointee to require a scientific writer to say something--anything--whenever a "hot button issue" is mentioned.
Slashdot Mirror
[The hubris of calling your potential clients 'c-level' boggles my mind]
I have no idea about the bait-and-switch-ness of this whole thing, but one minor point: a "c-level executive" refers to an executive whose acronym begins with a "C", e.g. CEO, CTO, etc. etc. So the hubris is not in demeaning their own clients, but rather in inflating their importance (which, I guess, was already obvious).
Oh, right. That's just a mistake. I completely missed that... sorry. I really should be more careful about reading stuff... I thought it was enough to RTFA, but I guess I need to RTFCTIATRT (comment that I'm about to reply to) as well. For the record, it appears that Saturn's max brightness has an apparent magnitude of around -0.3, so it's that it's out of place on the table rather than off by a minus sign.
Magnitude is a log scale, with brighter objects having lower magnitudes. Like so much in astronomy, the reason is historical: when the first guy (Greek, probably) decided to categorize stars by brightness he said the brightest stars should be first magnitude, the next brightest second, and so on. Because of the nature of the human eye, the scale is logarithmic. Objects brighter than what this guy considered first magnitude thus have a magnitude of less than one, or even less than zero.
The numbers are funny (rather than -1, 0, 1, 2) because they're giving you sample objects so you can get an idea about the range of the scale.
Hope that helped!
OK then, *you* go turn them back on...
Yeah, I'm an astronomy undergrad, and I caught this. Glad somebody cleared it up. I imagine it must have been misreported... I don't see any serious astronomer (let alone one who's looking for old stars!) mixing this up.
I just did a presentation on speech recognition software for the Office of Disabilities Services at my school, and since I see that you have a lot of response on the technical aspect of it, I'd like to bring up something else: how speaking to the computer affects *you*. One of the things that most surprised me about using speech recognition is how speaking comes from a different part of the brain than typing. Composition through speech is *very* difficult to start; don't think you're going to just dive in and compose an essay or report right off the top: even if the computer can understand you, you won't be able to coherently phrase your thoughts in a truly professional manner. Speech recognition is at its best when used for email and (ironically, at least I thought) instant messaging, because these forms of communication most accurately mimic speech. I don't know how it's going to affect coding, though, 'cause I wasn't brave enough to try that (but I can only imagine it would be difficult). I just wanted to offer a slightly differerent perspective on it. It certainly seemed like I was using different neural pathways or *something*, so just remember: as much as you're going to be training the speech recognition profile, you're going to be training yourself, as well!
And you are expecting slashdotters to have children.... why?
I'd guess they just mean the local cluster of galaxies, that is, the group of galaxies around us that we are gravitationally bound to. It's been known for a while that the Milky Way is larger than average, but Andromeda (which we are on a collision course with) was thought to be larger than us. I'm skeptical, myself, but it would be awesome if we did turn out to be bigger. 'Cause that kind of thing is cool.
As has been said before, of course the Big Bang is a theory. The question is whether it should be called as such. Perhaps the first time it is mentioned in an article intended for the general public this is a good idea. To refer to it as the "Big Bang Theory" every single time it is mentioned is not only overkill, it is humiliating to the writers who are forced to do so. The issue is not whether it is a theory, but whether it is acceptable for a political appointee to require a scientific writer to say something--anything--whenever a "hot button issue" is mentioned.
Of course it is unacceptable. It is disgusting.