Comment Re:Anonymous communication (Score 1) 53
You kids these days...
Comment Re:Need to think of other ways of landing (Score 4, Informative) 39
Phoenix is a re-fly of MPL using flight-spare MPL hardware. The difference is that since the spacecraft and instruments were already on the shelf, there was relatively more budget for the kind of investigation, review, and rework that the original mission should have had. As a result, we've identified and fixed a sobering number of fatal errors in the original design.
The disposition of the team at this time is "cautiously optimistic", which is more confidence than we had on MER at the same time. That said, there is always residual risk and the chance of just having a bad day.
The disposition of the team at this time is "cautiously optimistic", which is more confidence than we had on MER at the same time. That said, there is always residual risk and the chance of just having a bad day.
Is An Uninformed Vote Better Than No Vote? 1048
ras_b asks: "I don't pay attention to politics at all, and so I will not be voting in today's elections. My family has been telling me that this is a mistake and I should vote anyway, partly because I have slightly conservative views which agrees with their political outlook. My reasoning is that since I am totally uninformed, I shouldn't vote. I don't want to vote Republican or Democrat, only to find out later I totally disagree with something a candidate stands for. So, here's my dilemma and my question: Is an uninformed vote better than no vote?" This issue is touched upon in a posting by Ezra Klein, of the The American Prospect, who disagrees, arguing against a similar assertion by Greg Mankiw, from a suppressed Fortune article. Greg says: "Sometimes...the most responsible thing a person can do on election day is stay at home ... If you really don't know enough to cast an intelligent vote, you should be eager to let your more informed neighbors make the decision." What do you think?
Space Telescope Catches Monster Flare 158
gollum123 writes, "NASA's Swift satellite has seen a giant flare explode from a nearby star. Our sun also flares when twisted magnetic field lines in the solar atmosphere suddenly snap — but this was on a far larger scale, perhaps 100 million times as strong. The energy released by the explosion on II Pegasi was equivalent to about 50 quintillion atomic bombs. If the Sun were ever to produce such an outburst, it would almost certainly cause a mass extinction on Earth. II Pegasi is a binary system 135 light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus. Its two stars are close, only a few stellar radii apart; as a result, tidal forces cause both stars to spin quickly, rotating in lockstep once in seven days compared to the Sun's 28-day rotation period. Fast rotation is thought to be conducive to strong stellar flares."
Slashdot Top Deals
"The Computer made me do it."
