Bye Bye Pluto...:(

To ensure that kids who keep up on astronomical news don't think the planetarium is behind the times, Pluto is no longer part of one move-it-yourself display at the Irene W. Pennington Planetarium. The button that made it move around the replica sun is disabled. With school gearing up and field trips on the way, director Jon Elvert said, staffers have been busy reworking exhibits to fit an international group of astronomers' decision that Pluto isn't a planet, after all.

Rather, the International Astronomical Union decided, it's a dwarf planet, one of a number of rocky thingummies in the Kuiper Belt at the solar system's edge. Pluto was discovered in 1930, the year Mickey Mouse's dog _ then unnamed _ made his debut. Disney archivists to assume the dog took the name of the planet then dominating the news. In the end, many factors did it in, including Pluto's unusual orbit, which passes inside Neptune's orbit for 20 years, and the fact that its moon, Charon, is so large that the two bodies orbit around a common center of gravity.It will be several more years until students in East Baton Rouge Parish schools receive new textbooks telling them that Pluto no longer is classified as a planet. Instead, educators will rely on newspaper articles, scientific journals and other means to bring students up to date. The planetarium hopes to become a resource for educators wanting to explain to students the recent decision to demote Pluto from regular planet status.

Elvert said his immediate response is to change all references to Pluto from "planet" to "dwarf planet." The main exhibit room, called the solar system gallery, already has been modified. In the outer planet exhibit, a panel with text about Pluto has been removed. Its place is empty, though Elvert said he wants to include a panel with information about dwarf planets. A board with historical information about how planets received their names may remain. That board says Pluto was named for the Roman god of the underworld. A ceiling exhibit, called an orrery, contains models of all the planets and the time it takes them to orbit the sun. That exhibit still has Pluto and its orbit of 249 Earth years. In the planet tower, a staircase that leads to the planetarium, all nine planets are displayed hanging from the ceiling, showing their size in relation to Earth. Elvert said he believes the planetarium will add other "golf-ball size" objects to the collection near Pluto, to represent other dwarf planets.

Four-year-old Haley Hiriri visited the planetarium last week with her grandparents, Louis and Margaret Meade. Louis Meade of Bernardsville, N.J., said he had heard of the change in Pluto's classification, but did not think it would affect too many people.While some astronomers and planetarium staff members have refused to accept the new ruling, Elvert said he sees a great opportunity to teach people how science works."The solar system is still forming. It's still evolving," Elvert said. "Science is an evolving, learning process.""It would be kind of dull if it was all finite, laid out, black and white," he said.Elvert said he hopes the new buzz will cause children and adults to become interested in how planets are discovered.And, he noted, two other objects will join Pluto as dwarf planets: the asteroid Ceres, which was considered a planet in the 1800s, and 2003 UB313, an icy object slightly larger than Pluto and nicknamed Xena."Pluto is still Pluto, but it will be part of another classification of planets," Elvert said.

Vista!!! Waitin 4 U

Microsoft rushed what may be the final test version of its Windows Vista operating system to more than a million testers on Friday(Sep 1), trying to meet deadlines for its long-delayed commercial release.With pressure mounting to squeeze out final bugs, Microsoft asked testers to give Vista an urgent shakedown — even as they headed into a long holiday weekend. Microsoft has said publicly that it is hoping to offer the program to corporate customers before the end of November and to the broader consumer market in January. It will be the first new version of Windows in more than five years, an unusually long time between releases. But Microsoft executives have also repeatedly cautioned that until Vista meets performance and stability standards, the company will refrain from offering it commercially.

On Friday, several analysts said that the Microsoft program might end up slipping further from the November goal. Microsoft has recently been talking about an “end of the year” shipping goal for the corporate version of Vista, according to one analyst who was briefed on Thursday.A company spokesman disputed the reports of further slippage, saying that the company was still aiming to meet the November and January goals.Because most large corporations may wait as long as 18 months before deploying the program widely to employees, a relatively short further delay is unlikely to have a significant revenue impact on Microsoft.“Corporate adoption will be relatively slow,” said Roger L. Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates, a computer industry consulting firm. “It could be 2008 before many companies actually deploy in volume.”

Over the summer, Vista has been tested by several million developers and ordinary users and has received less than stellar marks. Complaints have ranged from repeated crashes to an irritating user interface that constantly force users to click on warning boxes.A recent version being used by a smaller group of technical experts has been given much higher marks for stability and for using less computer memory.Friday’s version, called Release Candidate 1, or RC1, is a crucial last trial needed to tell the company whether it is on track. “This is supercritical for us,” said Sven Hallauer, director of release management for Windows Vista, during an internal interview that was posted Friday on a company Web site. “We have our own criteria for quality to ship, but we really need the validation from the community.”Time is particularly tight, he said, because the company has only two or three weeks after Friday’s release to make significant changes, after which the project will grow increasingly constrained.“Teams are working superhard right now,” he said in the interview. “Teams are working 50, 60, 70 hours a week to go ship this RC1 milestone.”In an e-mail message sent to testers Friday, Jim Allchin, co-president of Microsoft’s platform and services division, wrote: “The operating system is in great shape with RC1, but there’s still a lot of testing to do. You’ve come through for us so far, and I’m asking you to once again put the pedal to the metal and send us feedback.”

Analysts said that while the company has made progress, there could still be land mines that could throw the effort into disarray. “They are never out of the woods until the product is delivered,” said Al Gillen, research director for system software at the International Data Corporation, a market research firm based in Framingham, Mass.This week, Microsoft declined to comment after pricing information appeared on Amazon.com. The prices, which ranged from $199 for a basic home version to $399 for the all-in-one Windows Vista Ultimate, will potentially increase Microsoft’s earnings next year, according to Rick Sherlund, a Goldman Sachs financial analyst.In a research note, he also cautioned that the significant hardware requirements for the new operating system might limit the rate of adoption for the software.Vista will have an array of new features and changes in appearance from Microsoft’s current operating system, Windows XP. Superfetch, for example, lets Vista monitor the applications most frequently used and places them in memory so that they will appear to load more quickly.In the interview posted by Microsoft, Mr. Hallauer said Vista would have fewer dreaded “blue screens of death,” in which the operating system freezes and leaves the user with a blue display screen. Instead, Vista will automatically recover from such freezes and start over, without forcing the user to restart the system manually.