And here I thought the purpose of "technical terminology" was to improve communications between experts within a field by assigning strict definitions to certain words. In the field of linguistics, this is called a "jargon", and can be used to refer to the trade talk of nuclear physicists or that of plumbers or carpenters, etc. Of course astronomers don't study linguistics so it is not surprising that they don't know this term.

Within their jargon, astronomers can mangle, mutilate, extend, or transmogrify whatever words they feel is necessary. But they have no business attempting to dictate anything about language to the general population. Going so far out of their area of expertise just demonstrates that some astronomers are know-it-all assholes.

Astronomers can have their "dwarf planets", and can define a planet such that anything like a planet that happens to orbit another star has to be called something else. But trying to make the common English language conform to their jargon is as silly as their current definition of what a planet is.

By the way, a more succinct and valid definition of "planet" within the current accepted jargon of astronomers is this: "A planet is a member of the following set: { Mecury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune }".

And I see no reason why objects that meet all the requirements of being a planet but happen to orbit some other star cannot be planets. Wow, astronomy has now gone all the way from a parochial Earth-centered view of the Universe, to a parochial Sol-centered view.

But I guess you've got to expect stupid results when astronomers with no training in linguistics, taxonomy, or any related field step way out of their area of expertise to dictate about stuff to the rest of us.

Stupid astronomers. What would Galileo say?

Having RTFA, it is evident to me that the reason the abstract lacked any redeeming quality of any kind is because the article itself had no redeeming quality of any kind.

Slashdot: I wasted several minutes of my life reading TFA. I want them back.

That seems to be true of Apple products. But there are Android devices that are not built that way, and I think the same is true of at least some of the Chromebooks. I've done module level repairs on Asus netbooks and Acer laptops in the last few years, and I expect that Chromebooks of the same level of quality would be built as modular units. Not as monolithic "got to put it in the landfill because somebody spilled cola on the keyboard" crap.

But I may be wrong. I don't buy completely unrepairable trash, no matter what the price; I won't even look at it. (Part of the reason I haven't owned any Apple products since I gave up my Apple ][+ 30 years ago.) Back in the day, I used to custom build IBM compatible PCs by buying empty cases and fitting them with power supples, IO cards, memory sticks, drives, peripherals, and what-not for the soho market. So I have a lot of experience in computer maintenance that is almost impossible to acquire these days. Except of course for the gamers who are into the liquid nitrogen cooling systems so they can overclock to ridiculous speeds while using GPUs that all by themselves have a hundred times more computing power than was used to build the stuff that put a man on the Moon. Way back when. I wonder if anyone now alive will see THAT happen again.

That is a great concept! I doubt that there is any school system that does not have a closet somewhere where dead Chromebooks could be stored. When the inventory becomes large enough, an elective high school course in tearing down, diagnosing, and repairing them would get some of them back in service while providing the students a great hands-on learning opportunity in problem solving and general shop procedures.

While many schools would not have a teacher with the requisite technical skills to take on such a class, most large school systems would be able to recruit volunteer "teaching assistants" from the local Free Geek computer recycling center. That recycling center might possibly provide access to shop space and tools, too. But given enough lead time and a willingness to canvas local businesses, the needed equipment (screwdrivers, testing frames, nuts and bolts storage containers, etc) could be obtained gratis. And I would expect that upon a properly presented request, Google would provide some help in getting a program up and running.

One of the things school administrators are likely to overlook (since to date they have not been schooled in looking at it) is the cost associated with the waste stream of broken student electronic gizmos. Like Chromebooks or iPads, etc. This needs to be corrected. Slashdot readership can take a role in helping local school systems come to terms with these end-of-service-life problems.

As someone who successfully parented a child through her teenage years, how the hell else could you give your child appropriately guided access to the Internet? The web is full of dangers for grandparent newbies who had been around the block several times before most slashdot readers were even born. It would be totally irresponsible, a complete case of child abuse, to turn a kid who has not yet even learned how to use his or her moral compass loose on the web without close adult supervision.

Very few, if any, kids who cannot yet get a drivers license should have their own accounts on the web. Let those accounts be in a parent's or guardian's name, where there is at least the possibility of intervening before the kid gets sucked into trouble.

I sometimes make exceptions and respond to AC posts. This is an instance. Since I am procrastinating on some other thing.

Objective reality is in the mind of the beholder. And nowhere else.

I could offer a book list for you to read up about this, but I won't, because it would be very long and I doubt very much that you would bother to do the work. Since it would only deprive you of the comfort of your 19th century world view.

Instead I would suggest that you google on the difference between science and philosophy, and on the limitations of the scientific method. But I doubt that many with your point of view will do that either. That's okay: for every great thinker, we also need a multitude of lab techs, code monkeys, and admin assistants who can have perfectly comfortable lives using a pre-twentieth century mental framework.

BTW, whatever an imagined thing is, it is as independent of the instrument that produced it as the sound of music is independent of the chorus that is singing it. Learning something about the underlying physiology will be interesting, but at most that will be like learning how a violin is put together, and will say nothing at all about how the fiddle is played (or the music produced).

I like your sig. But it would be better with the closing quotation mark.

Well, they are good enough for everyday work. Today's everyday work. We'll be looking for something better tomorrow, since what we got now will not get us the flying cars we want.

But remember kids, it all starts with imagination. Which is not at all scientific. Which most definitely is not "real", even though all our technology and all the things good and bad that we do with that technology could never have come into existence without someone first imagining a thing.

To use the language of grandparent post, science and technology are dependent on the magic of imagination. Therefore magic rules. Science comes afterward, and only in certain corner conditions. Most of what we experience as the universe is magical. Which may or may not explain dark matter and dark energy (in an entirely unscientific way).

The truly scientific mind recognizes that even things like the laws of thermodynamics are merely mental models that do not necessarily reflect objective reality, but do seem close enough to true to be incredibly useful ways of looking at the problems we face today. For one thing, there is no objective reality. The most anyone can do with the scientific method is make better models of some parts of the human experience.

Other parts that science cannot handle includes the capacity to imagine, as used by artists of all types, including those involved in making the Interstellar movie. This kind of imagination obviously exists in the universe, and definitely has an influence on other parts of the universe. If that were not so, the toaster in your kitchen would be nothing more than a bunch of ores embedded in rocks somewhere. So imagination is a dominate force in humankind's world, but is totally outside the kinds of things that the scientific method can deal with. Thus I refute parent post's logic.

I do agree that science is not magic. Whatever magic is, even if it is "only" imaginary, it is not bounded by the "laws" of thermodynamics or any other limitation of science. Yet magic sometimes has a very powerful effect on us, and on the things around us. It is not science that has mainly shaped our lives. It is instead magical things like the rule of law, systems of ethics and morals, and myths like Star Trek, Avatar, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and other fantasies. These are what people live by; these are the things that shape our lives. They are not scientific and have nothing to do with the materials that science works with.

Science has its place. It can assist in realizing the magic, by providing guidelines for the engineers who actually make things happen. That is science's primary role: to be handmaiden to the engineers.

I took typing for the first time-- required for entry into a computer Associate degree course-- when I was in my early 30s. I thought I could practice at home on my Apple ][+. Really, really bad mistake. That machine not only had a non-standard key layout, the distance between keys was also not standard and I had to give up my "practice" with it since that was giving me bad habits.

Some of us remember passwords. I'm seeing a growing number of persons who are having trouble remembering where they wrote down the blooming passwords.

Also, I once knew how to calculate a square root by hand. How many today ever learned how to do that, nevermind remember how to do it?

Should I fear the Zombie Electronic Apocalypse? When some nasty malware gets loose and bricks every iGizmo and Android device in the world, and we all have to try to find, and learn how to re-use, our old fangled calculators and phone books?

True.

However the corporation was culpably stupid in dabbling before they knew what they were getting into. A corporation the size of any of Sony's divisions has enough resources to figure out the consequences of their actions before they make their decisions. There is no excuse for implementing a strategy in ignorance of its impact on customer/clients (or the indirect impact on shareholders, for that matter).

I am, and you are too, much safer dealing with criminals who know what they are doing than dealing with corporations like Sony who will screw you over without any intention of doing so. Sony's vulnerability in this matter shows that its management still doesn't get it, and that every officer of the company needs to do the honorable thing and leave the company, leave the industry, and get a job more suited to their ethical and strategic skill set. Like flipping burgers, or arranging the sushi on the platter.

Harvard got into a shitload of trouble in the 1960s when students found, by tracing ownership through layers of flse front corporations, that Harvard University was one the largest and filthiest of Boston's slum lords. Seems they ended up having to mend their ways wrt real estate management or lose some of the endowments and prestige they like to flaunt.

Perhaps this law suit will go the same way. It would benefit the USA and the world in general if a wedge could be driven between academia and Corporate America. Those two should not be in bed together, but there they are, diddling each other under the sheets.