Nothing to see here. I just wanted to make certain that I was included on what is sure to be the most commented about story on Slashdot until MS releases a Linux distribution.:)
Replacement - The replacement for the HST is due to go up in 2012, so there's a relatively small window with no orbital telescope (at least, if all goes well)
Exactly. As an astronomer let me assure you that all of these are absolutely worthless, and all scientific progress will cease once this horribly-redesigned-to-justify-a-manned-shuttle, wasn't-even-built-right-by-political-contractees turkey that's reached the end of its operative lifetime.
Actually, it is a shame in a purely emotional way. Just like when MIR was deorbited. But it's still the right call.
And I don't mean to demean the astronauts who at risk to their own lives got that POS in something like working order, and finally gave everyone some pretty pictures.
Funny this story appears just as I was synching all of my contact info between my cellphone, laptop, and desktop. Just one handy use of bluetooth.
Wireless headsets rock.
You haven't lived until you've spent an afternoon reducing stellar spectra and having the results published immediately on the web- while sitting in the middle of a endangered oak savannah. Cell phone coverage is almost complete over North America. A Bluetooth connection on an internet capable phone make a use wherever-the-fuck you want wireless modem. Forget tracking down grungy bookstores in filthy alleys for a WiFi hotspot.
Other technologies are more advanced, but Bluetooth is everywhere- and it just simply works.
I'm sure many here would disagree, but the best science show I've ever seen is PBS' NOVA. If the BBC doesn't already carry this somewhere then they absolutely should. This series totally inspired me as a kid, and now that I'm actually doing science as an adult my admiration for it has only grown. Nothing else on TV comes close to conveying what it's actually like to be a scientist.
First of all, drive through Nevada some time. Mile after mile of empty space, but according to this report, humans have "appropriated" it. Technically, I'm sure they're right in the sense that someone owns it, but it's not as if the land is being used for anything.
Funny: I just got back from a little road trip across the southwest, and from all the nothing you see out there, you would think that 83% is a bit high. I guess Arizona farmlands must look a lot like wild, untouched desert.
By road trip I'm sure all of these posters mean tore off in the Landrover 3 days away from any sign of civilization and most certainly not drove the Buick from one McDonald's to the next.
Here's a clue for the rest of the ignorant: the Interstate Highway System is not a natural geologic formation. If you can drive there, then that land most certainly is being used for something; the road for starters.
To put it bluntly, if you
a) try to sell resume keywords like "C++" or "B.S. in Comp.Sci" as a business;
b) can't explain things in a simple, non-technical manner;
c) pressure your clients to do things your way ("Oh my God! You're using Internet Explorer! UGH! You want me to code what?");
your business will FAIL.
Obviously you've never encountered a Microsoft consultant. Not only do they do all three things listed above, it seems to be the primary focus of their training. And it's gotten them to be the most succesful business in the history of business.
I'm sorry, but I get so sick of hearing this shit from so many people. There's this wonderful myth floating around a handful of EU countries that America is nothing but a land of prudes. "Most everywhere else in the world" actually seem to think that we're The Great Satan: a nation of nothing but drunk, dope addicted fornicators.
When terrorist in Asia, Africa, and South America slaughter innocent tourists as fast as they can claiming they will do anything to stop the spread of "American culture" it's not because they are afraid we may steer their daughters away from a profitable career in adult videos.
I just wish all of the fans of these films would use all of their creativity and imagination to create something of their own. Lucas liked space opera serials, old myths, and fast cars. So he created a world based on such things.
Instead of screaming that they can't regurgitate Lucas' vision over and over, fans interested in film making should develop their own. Maybe just start with what they like most about Star Wars, whether it's comical droids, spiritual warriors, or whatever, then run with it in their own way.
Okay, I'm not going to rant on this. I just think George has a long-range idea of what he's doing with is supossed anti-fan stance on some issues. One day he's going to die, and probably much sooner stop making movies. We need someone who will create something that will replace Star Wars, not just an army of directors making sequel after sequel of another's ideas.
I do have the same condition. I was diagnosed when I was thirteen. I wore glasses for about two years, then moved to soft contacts for a few years. Originally it only showed in one eye, but then both lenses became noticably affected. So i was switched to a combo soft contact with a rigid center type of lens. I was still assured that I would eventually need a transplant or accept being blind.
When I got to college I was lucky that the university optometry program had specialists studying this disorder. They wanted to switch me to just a regular gas permeable lens. My God, what a difference! Without the contact lenses I have to hold a newspaper centimeters from my nose to read it, but wearing contact lenses I have almost perfect vision. And as an astronomer I'm damn careful with my eyesight. It's not exactly 20/20, but it's better than most people who only need reading specs.
In short my advice is to talk with your optometrist and strongly consider getting regular, run-of-the-mill hard contact lenses and spring maybe $100-$200 before you invest in specialized technology for people with less easily corrected conditions
Fallacy 7: Programs are Getting Better
- How often do you need to
- perform a Fourier analysis?
Several times a day, usually. How often do I need to email a document to more than one person? Almost never. One tool is not adequate for all people. This is a fact all to often overlooked in arguing for software applications as standards.
What NASA/ESA and all the other agencies in the world need to do is send out a swam of probes to *every* planet - a little science is better than no science!
Yes, and I'm sure they'd love to do it. The problem, as always, is funding. In the early days of the Space Race Soviet and American taxpayers gladly ponied up the cash for spaceprobes, just for the bragging rights to be 'first'. After that was accomplished we've entered phase 2: probes can only get funding by exploiting the 'search for possible life' angle. We're throwing probe after probe at Mars (and consequently billions and billions of dollars) yet we haven't even seen Pluto.
Quick and dirty Pluto flybys keep getting canceled almost as soon as any funding is approved, even though most of us working in the space sciences would gladly relocate funding from projects we're involved in just to get something simple like Pluto-Kuiper Express of the ground.
The public won't have it, though. Now to explain why we should send a 'swarm' of spacecraft to places they've never heard of. We astronomers have the advantage of the huge amount of unknown in searching for planets. We can, in mostly good conscience, play the Lifecard in proposals to study any stellar phenomena. Geologists are stuck with just two at his point: Mars and Europa.
Just think of all we don't know about our own moon. Where is the swarm of really cost-effective probes we could be sending there? The only time anyone took notice was when a military craft found very shaky evidence for a possible tiny bit of water in a shadow of a small crater near the pole. The only return visits under any serious consideration are desgined soley to test that finding.
If any exobiologists are reading, all you need to do is come up with a convincing argument for micro-organism in Saturn's atmosphere and I have the suspicion that Slashdot readers will get all the pretty ring pictures their hearts' could desire.;)
Using Mozilla 0.9.6 on Mac OS 10.0.4, and with Javascript enabled all I saw was a regualr financial news page. No popups, no popunders. A banner add for an X-10 camera at the top of the page. Various stories about the recession and budget surplus in the larger table cells, and links to other sites and clearly labled text ads in the smaller ones.
Nothing sinister, or even as annoying as most other news sites nowadays.
Question: Was this just crying wolf, or are they doing random tests of this? (Like I noticed most people report pop under ads, which I didn't get)
Having briefly worked as tech support for @Home, allow me to show a brief glimpse of why providers may want to do this.
An inordinate amount of cable internet support calls are VPN related. If you thought that clueless people having trouble connecting to their AOL email was a tech support nightmare, you've not seen anything until you get someone unable to connect to a VPN. A typical call would go like: "Dammit, why can't I get online!" After asking a few questions and running some tests it's made clear that the connection is fine, and they're able to connect through their desktop machine, just not their laptop. "Okay," I'd say, "It's probably just an error in the settings somewhere." I'd then proceed to describe how to open up the relevant controls in NT4 (it was always NT4...) "What? Are you kidding?!" they'd scream "This is my companies laptop and we're not allowed to touch anything on it!!!!!" "That's a problem, then," I'd say. "You'll have to have your sys admin check the settings for you then." "You're fucking kidding me! I'm in Redmond, WA and the company is in Denver! I work from home!"
The story was always the same: dumbass company gives employess laptops so they can work from home, and told them they had to get a broadband internet service, but didn't configure the machines for even DHCP or give the employees the admin passwords to configure things. You'd get that call about 20 times a day.
Dunno about the tech involved, but for reference I ripped Tori Amos' "Strange Little Girls" the day it came out so I could listen to it on my Rio. No problems whatsoever. I didn't do anything fancy, but it was done with iTunes on a Mac. All tracks were encoded at 192kbps and the tags were generated automatically. There wasn't even the hint of any errors.
If there is copy interference on that cd then it's either OS dependent or only on copies sold in certain markets
This where we seperated the real penguin-heads from the mere "penguins are cool because there's one on my Linux distro box" crowd.:p
The noise made by most penguins does indeed sound like a donkey braying, and this was often mentioned by the early arctic explorers. I believe this has survived even among one common name for a species, the jackass penguin.
I noticed a distinct difference between the summary on the main page of Slashdot, and that given by the BBC, and what is being reported by other websites and the American television news. The stories linked to from here say it's a 3-way equal split, and "experts" expect a long legal process to decide on a penalty. The more "mainstream" press is saying the settlement is a done deal with (the last count I just heard) only 3 states holding out and going after penalties on their own. Both views are supported by quotes from the attorney generals involved and even the judge herself, so what is the real story?
Is this a case of people only hearing what they want to hear?
That's still not the movie file, just another binary acting as a pointer. If anyone can download this serve it on a mirror I think that'd be a big help.;)
I'm in the strange situation of actually having QT5 Pro, but on the G4 at home with the 56k modem only capable of getting 28.8 on a good day, thanks to monopolistic telephone companies. Here at the university I have a T1 but no way to watch the clip on any available machine. Downloading the actual movie, saving to a disk and watching it when I get home would make me very happy, but appears to be the one thing Lucasfilm/Apple are going out of their way to make impossible.
It'll be closer, but position is also important. What's so special about the alignments of 2001 and 2003 is that Mars is so close at its opposition to the sun. The combination equals the best view in 1000 years.
Slashdot Mirror
Nothing to see here. I just wanted to make certain that I was included on what is sure to be the most commented about story on Slashdot until MS releases a Linux distribution. :)
I think most geeks already have DO NOT REPRODUCE marks. Pimples, black trench coats, or threadbare Star Wars t-shirts all appear to be very effective.
Exactly. As an astronomer let me assure you that all of these are absolutely worthless, and all scientific progress will cease once this horribly-redesigned-to-justify-a-manned-shuttle, wasn't-even-built-right-by-political-contractees turkey that's reached the end of its operative lifetime.
Actually, it is a shame in a purely emotional way. Just like when MIR was deorbited. But it's still the right call.
And I don't mean to demean the astronauts who at risk to their own lives got that POS in something like working order, and finally gave everyone some pretty pictures.
Exactly. Bonaparte and Hitler would both have been victorious had they only invaded during non-winter.
That usually occurs June 28 through the 30th.
Interesting, but not universal. None of my Macs have dual format writers. On the new Powerbook where I'm writing this:
Funny this story appears just as I was synching all of my contact info between my cellphone, laptop, and desktop. Just one handy use of bluetooth.
Wireless headsets rock.
You haven't lived until you've spent an afternoon reducing stellar spectra and having the results published immediately on the web- while sitting in the middle of a endangered oak savannah. Cell phone coverage is almost complete over North America. A Bluetooth connection on an internet capable phone make a use wherever-the-fuck you want wireless modem. Forget tracking down grungy bookstores in filthy alleys for a WiFi hotspot.
Other technologies are more advanced, but Bluetooth is everywhere- and it just simply works.
Hm. I work with a lot of Brits. Soudns like I might want to be hitting them up for tapes after everyone returns from the holidays. :)
I'm sure many here would disagree, but the best science show I've ever seen is PBS' NOVA. If the BBC doesn't already carry this somewhere then they absolutely should. This series totally inspired me as a kid, and now that I'm actually doing science as an adult my admiration for it has only grown. Nothing else on TV comes close to conveying what it's actually like to be a scientist.
For lighter fare I'd recommend either Scientific American Frontiers or the already mentioned Beyond 2000.If New Scientist doesn't already have a TV series, though, they really should.
A starting place. No way to know really how close they'll stick to what they've done up to this point.
First of all, drive through Nevada some time. Mile after mile of empty space, but according to this report, humans have "appropriated" it. Technically, I'm sure they're right in the sense that someone owns it, but it's not as if the land is being used for anything.
Funny: I just got back from a little road trip across the southwest, and from all the nothing you see out there, you would think that 83% is a bit high. I guess Arizona farmlands must look a lot like wild, untouched desert.
By road trip I'm sure all of these posters mean tore off in the Landrover 3 days away from any sign of civilization and most certainly not drove the Buick from one McDonald's to the next.
Here's a clue for the rest of the ignorant: the Interstate Highway System is not a natural geologic formation. If you can drive there, then that land most certainly is being used for something; the road for starters.
Obviously you've never encountered a Microsoft consultant. Not only do they do all three things listed above, it seems to be the primary focus of their training. And it's gotten them to be the most succesful business in the history of business.
I'm sorry, but I get so sick of hearing this shit from so many people. There's this wonderful myth floating around a handful of EU countries that America is nothing but a land of prudes. "Most everywhere else in the world" actually seem to think that we're The Great Satan: a nation of nothing but drunk, dope addicted fornicators.
When terrorist in Asia, Africa, and South America slaughter innocent tourists as fast as they can claiming they will do anything to stop the spread of "American culture" it's not because they are afraid we may steer their daughters away from a profitable career in adult videos.
Get a fucking clue.
I just wish all of the fans of these films would use all of their creativity and imagination to create something of their own. Lucas liked space opera serials, old myths, and fast cars. So he created a world based on such things.
Instead of screaming that they can't regurgitate Lucas' vision over and over, fans interested in film making should develop their own. Maybe just start with what they like most about Star Wars, whether it's comical droids, spiritual warriors, or whatever, then run with it in their own way.
Okay, I'm not going to rant on this. I just think George has a long-range idea of what he's doing with is supossed anti-fan stance on some issues. One day he's going to die, and probably much sooner stop making movies. We need someone who will create something that will replace Star Wars, not just an army of directors making sequel after sequel of another's ideas.
I do have the same condition. I was diagnosed when I was thirteen. I wore glasses for about two years, then moved to soft contacts for a few years. Originally it only showed in one eye, but then both lenses became noticably affected. So i was switched to a combo soft contact with a rigid center type of lens. I was still assured that I would eventually need a transplant or accept being blind.
When I got to college I was lucky that the university optometry program had specialists studying this disorder. They wanted to switch me to just a regular gas permeable lens. My God, what a difference! Without the contact lenses I have to hold a newspaper centimeters from my nose to read it, but wearing contact lenses I have almost perfect vision. And as an astronomer I'm damn careful with my eyesight. It's not exactly 20/20, but it's better than most people who only need reading specs.
In short my advice is to talk with your optometrist and strongly consider getting regular, run-of-the-mill hard contact lenses and spring maybe $100-$200 before you invest in specialized technology for people with less easily corrected conditions
- How often do you need to
- perform a Fourier analysis?
Several times a day, usually. How often do I need to email a document to more than one person? Almost never. One tool is not adequate for all people. This is a fact all to often overlooked in arguing for software applications as standards.
Yes, and I'm sure they'd love to do it. The problem, as always, is funding. In the early days of the Space Race Soviet and American taxpayers gladly ponied up the cash for spaceprobes, just for the bragging rights to be 'first'. After that was accomplished we've entered phase 2: probes can only get funding by exploiting the 'search for possible life' angle. We're throwing probe after probe at Mars (and consequently billions and billions of dollars) yet we haven't even seen Pluto.
Quick and dirty Pluto flybys keep getting canceled almost as soon as any funding is approved, even though most of us working in the space sciences would gladly relocate funding from projects we're involved in just to get something simple like Pluto-Kuiper Express of the ground.
The public won't have it, though. Now to explain why we should send a 'swarm' of spacecraft to places they've never heard of. We astronomers have the advantage of the huge amount of unknown in searching for planets. We can, in mostly good conscience, play the Lifecard in proposals to study any stellar phenomena. Geologists are stuck with just two at his point: Mars and Europa.
Just think of all we don't know about our own moon. Where is the swarm of really cost-effective probes we could be sending there? The only time anyone took notice was when a military craft found very shaky evidence for a possible tiny bit of water in a shadow of a small crater near the pole. The only return visits under any serious consideration are desgined soley to test that finding.
If any exobiologists are reading, all you need to do is come up with a convincing argument for micro-organism in Saturn's atmosphere and I have the suspicion that Slashdot readers will get all the pretty ring pictures their hearts' could desire. ;)
Wow. That may well have been the least informative popular science article I've read in a few years.
If anyone is interested in the results and the technique they used an abstract and the preprint of their results are available here
For thos of you who are serious about boycotting artist, and not just the usual whining on Slashdot. :)
Universal Artist ListNothing sinister here
Using Mozilla 0.9.6 on Mac OS 10.0.4, and with Javascript enabled all I saw was a regualr financial news page. No popups, no popunders. A banner add for an X-10 camera at the top of the page. Various stories about the recession and budget surplus in the larger table cells, and links to other sites and clearly labled text ads in the smaller ones.
Nothing sinister, or even as annoying as most other news sites nowadays.
Question: Was this just crying wolf, or are they doing random tests of this? (Like I noticed most people report pop under ads, which I didn't get)
Having briefly worked as tech support for @Home, allow me to show a brief glimpse of why providers may want to do this.
An inordinate amount of cable internet support calls are VPN related. If you thought that clueless people having trouble connecting to their AOL email was a tech support nightmare, you've not seen anything until you get someone unable to connect to a VPN. A typical call would go like: "Dammit, why can't I get online!" After asking a few questions and running some tests it's made clear that the connection is fine, and they're able to connect through their desktop machine, just not their laptop. "Okay," I'd say, "It's probably just an error in the settings somewhere." I'd then proceed to describe how to open up the relevant controls in NT4 (it was always NT4...) "What? Are you kidding?!" they'd scream "This is my companies laptop and we're not allowed to touch anything on it!!!!!" "That's a problem, then," I'd say. "You'll have to have your sys admin check the settings for you then." "You're fucking kidding me! I'm in Redmond, WA and the company is in Denver! I work from home!"
The story was always the same: dumbass company gives employess laptops so they can work from home, and told them they had to get a broadband internet service, but didn't configure the machines for even DHCP or give the employees the admin passwords to configure things. You'd get that call about 20 times a day.
I'm so fucking glad I'm back in research. :)
Dunno about the tech involved, but for reference I ripped Tori Amos' "Strange Little Girls" the day it came out so I could listen to it on my Rio. No problems whatsoever. I didn't do anything fancy, but it was done with iTunes on a Mac. All tracks were encoded at 192kbps and the tags were generated automatically. There wasn't even the hint of any errors.
If there is copy interference on that cd then it's either OS dependent or only on copies sold in certain markets
This where we seperated the real penguin-heads from the mere "penguins are cool because there's one on my Linux distro box" crowd. :p
The noise made by most penguins does indeed sound like a donkey braying, and this was often mentioned by the early arctic explorers. I believe this has survived even among one common name for a species, the jackass penguin.
I noticed a distinct difference between the summary on the main page of Slashdot, and that given by the BBC, and what is being reported by other websites and the American television news. The stories linked to from here say it's a 3-way equal split, and "experts" expect a long legal process to decide on a penalty. The more "mainstream" press is saying the settlement is a done deal with (the last count I just heard) only 3 states holding out and going after penalties on their own. Both views are supported by quotes from the attorney generals involved and even the judge herself, so what is the real story?
Is this a case of people only hearing what they want to hear?
That's still not the movie file, just another binary acting as a pointer. If anyone can download this serve it on a mirror I think that'd be a big help. ;)
I'm in the strange situation of actually having QT5 Pro, but on the G4 at home with the 56k modem only capable of getting 28.8 on a good day, thanks to monopolistic telephone companies. Here at the university I have a T1 but no way to watch the clip on any available machine. Downloading the actual movie, saving to a disk and watching it when I get home would make me very happy, but appears to be the one thing Lucasfilm/Apple are going out of their way to make impossible.
It'll be closer, but position is also important. What's so special about the alignments of 2001 and 2003 is that Mars is so close at its opposition to the sun. The combination equals the best view in 1000 years.