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Absolutely the *best* programming book I have ever found!

Here is a link to it. It has details on C/C++, complete RFCs, amazing example code, and a huge index!

The biggest problem is that there is only one copy. I tried to make my own copy, but quickly ran out of toner. When I asked one of the authors if there were any plans to make a second copy, he laughed and said, "Maybe on Mars!". I think he is losing his mind from all the corporations trying to stake a claim in his creative works. He really wants to be available to everyone.

P.S. Here is a great article on the history behind this imaginative book.

Learn to use your 104-button mouse. A.K.A. the keyboard.

Open source is the definition of Market Economics. You show a woeful understanding of market economics. Market economics dictate that price is determined by the functions of supply and demand. Here's a basic example. So, as price increases, supply goes up - more people are willing to sell something at a higher price, right? As price increases, demand decreases - less people are willing to buy at a higher price, right? Market economics dictates that the free market determines price as these two functions intersect. Nowhere does the definition of market economics mention anything about free engineering. In fact, the term "free" is an anathema to true market economists. Nothing is free - after all, there is always an opportunity cost. In conclusion, STFU and go back to smoking pot with your libertarian buddies.

About two years ago, I read an article from the Washington Post by a Dr. Cindy Williams of MIT, formerly of the Congressional Budget Office, who stated that she felt that military personnel were adequately compensated -- and in many cases overpaid -- for the jobs they do. The Post included her e-mail address, so I decided to write a response to that. At the time, I was in the Air Force myself, and the son of a 26-year Air Force veteran, so what she said understandably got my dander up a bit.

Since my father forwarded me a copy of the article, I figured I'd send him a copy of my response as well. This was a mistake; he actually liked what I wrote and forwarded it to some of his friends, who sent it to their friends, and so on ad nauseum.

Now it's been archived on a number of different websites, and I have no control over my own words. There are two glaring changes that have been made to what I wrote, and someone added to the message that Dr. Cindy Williams is the same Cindy Williams from "Laverne and Shirley." That's landed me on all the urban legend websites, like Snopes, About.com, and Truthminers. I don't own those websites, so anyone can go to them and discover that I was dumb enough not to keep my fool mouth shut in spring of 2000.

If you're really interested in finding the letter (which means you're either mentally ill or have a lot of free time on your hands), do a Google search for "A1C Michael Bragg". Ugh.

"Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything."
Joe Stalin (maybe)

i think it's called the Peter Principle and it hits every sector, regardless.
example given: Dilbert's Manager!

(except maybe HORECA -hotels,restaurants,cafés)

Actually all presidents have used the power of the Executive Order. It bypasses congress and allows the president to a law. For example, Bill Clinton executed an executive order lowering the allowed level of arsenic in drinking water. Bush changed that order. President Bush issued an executive order that contradicted the 1978 Presidential Records Act, a law passed by congress. The law would have required records of the Reagan White House to be released 12 years after that president left office. Bush also used an executive order to establish the office of homeland security. So parts of Bush's "anti-terrorism" package were enacted through what amounts to presidential fiat, the executive order. The next president will obviously be able to undo any and all presidential orders, just each congress can repeal the laws passed by the previous congress. I believe executive orders can also be ruled unconsitutional.

I am sure Clinton signed some executive orders I disagree with and I'm sure Bush must have signed some I agree with, but these examples were both in the news at the time and they are the ones I remember.

For more information about the checks and balances of the American government, check out your local library or go on-line and visit:

• http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aa121897 .htm
• http://www.infoplease.com/ipd/A0431503.html
• http://www.loc.gov/law/guide/usexec.html
• http://www.sonic.net/sentinel/gvcon5.html - for a view opposing the executive order power

And that's One to Grow On.

Some of the story can be found here. There is more here.

Some of the story can be found here. There is more here.

"There is no problem with technology. Technology is neither good nor bad, it is just the application of science."
So WRT your subject line, we're really talking about the application of the application of science.

I would like to assert that technology is BOTH good AND bad. I can't think of one technology that is exclusive either way. New technology will need time to expose both extremes.

"There was nothing bad about the Germans inventing the rocket during WW2. The problem was they used the rocket to boost warheads towards London."
Point one: the Germans didn't invent the rocket. Ancient asia had the solid fuel rocket, 1926 USA is credited with 1st liquid fuel rocket.
Point two: the Germans DID invent the warhead-equiped high-altitude rocket (V2 - see above link) that happened to use liquid fuel pioneered in USA.

The application of the technology is essential to the moral judgement. I can find some examples that initially seem VERY evil but, given a different application of the technology produces something very good. The example you provided with the V2 you labeled as bad. Considering that the same technology (delivery system of a payload via liquid-propelled rocket) allows for space travel and moon/Mars exploration, we can see that the application of the technology is what can be deemed good/bad. Therefore I agree that the technology itself cannot be judged.

A more commonly experienced example is lockpicking tools. They're bad if possessed by a thief, while good when carried by the locksmith when you locked your key inside.

I'll go one more: nuclear weapons. We are all exposed to the negative aspects, which I realize are severe. However, what options will we have if we spot a huge asteroid on collision with Earth in time?

The reason we focus on the technology is because of the idiots and lunatics that may have access to the technology (releasing the "bad" potential of the technology).

Overall, what's interesting to me is that technology is inspired by conflict. Man: versus man (automatic firearms); versus nature (farm tools); versus boredom (synthetic hallucinogens); versus time (time efficiency); etc.

Probably because they were. It was around the same time that they were supposedly caught in bed together.

Christopher Lawrence
Sandra Collins
Nicholas Bennsion
Adam Wiggins (shameless plug)

I hate to come along this late, but I found this comment in meta-mod and... According to this page on Freons, they were patented in 1928. This would have put them ex-patent in 1945.

I know this are going to be a quick list:

Mentalhealth.com

NASA

Violence

I don't know about you but having two separate studies, one from a "University" in Japan, and one from NASA, I am more likely to choose the side that NASA is on! ;)

It does seem strange that the Japan one says it causes ADD and the NASA one says it cures ADD! WTF?

There are some reviews here. I've used the bulky but natural "virtual vision" goggles they mention, and yes, it's perfect for camcorders and mangles text. TekGear has some more modern displays, all of which look like your eyes are being attacked by a small piece of aluminum. They also carry the "best selling QUGA (?) monocule in the world" a one-eyed machine very close to what you describe except that the resolution is low and you look like a call center employee with the microphone stuck in your eye. There are also some in the Imac family, Bizrate has a list of several. Liteye puts out some sufficiently small displays of reasonable image integrity. Once again, still looks funky but in a funkytional sort of way. Plus, they are more of a parts supplier than a solutions provider. MicroOptical has several, with their tech briefly reviewed by about.com.

If you are looking to purchase one, the two buzzwords to use are head mounted display and wearable display. Hitachi even combined buzz and produced a wearable internet applicance, though only for the japanese and who knows if it was released.

I hope that gives you some ideas. I also hope some people post here who didn't just pick through google :).

Tang: 1957. Good call.

Tang. Yum.

In a way. Qwerty was designed to keep mechanical typewriters from jamming, which meant physically separating the keys for common digraphs. This requirement is somewhat incompatible with the requirement that common digraphs be quickly typeable, hence some slowndown.

If Sholes and Densmore had just had computers to run evolutionary algorithms on, they presumably could have designed a better layout for mechanical typewriters... :-)

Wired News has a similar interesting article about a cease and desist letter sent to an independant news site by Belo, corporate parent of The Dallas Morning News, forbidding them from linking to individual stories within the site. They claim that the author can only link to the site's homepage, and attempting to link to stories within the site violates their copyright.

And as soon as that patent expired, the black helicopters flew off with the formula that turned water into gasoline.

This is a specious claim by Mr. AC. Diesel engines have been fuel injection since their creation; Mechanical fuel injection was used in cars in the 30s, but was generally too complicated for mass production-- but see the 1957 Corvette for an example. It was used in aircraft, see the DB601 that powered the Bf109 from the 30s through the end of the Reich. Alfa Romeo used MFI in the 60's just to make life especially hard for rare US Giulia owners for whom Weber carbs would be even more fiddly.

Electonic injection was invented in the UK in 1966, according to this; on the other hand, Ford says Bendix patented it in the early 60's (maybe the same?). Porsche started using FI in 1968.

EFI wasn't widely popular until there were cheap computers to do the thinking. This wave started in the 80's and was basically over by 1990. It had nothing to do with patents, and everything to do with regulations that made it effectively impossible to meet cold-start emission limits with carbs anymore. (The same thing that killed air-cooled VW engines in the 70s, and Porsche boxers more recently.)

-dB

I love Andrew Lipson's Math site, thought it was on slashdot for a while. If you like to see other such sites check out Eric Harshbarge's Lego page (cool stuff like wedding cakes and skyscrapers), Henry Lim's totally awsome lego sculptures, he's even got Natalie Portman (Not naked, and next to the petrified beethovan). BTW, Eric's got a very interesting page on on San Mononoke (more on those).

a quick google search found a page on the meaning of 420.

Hasn't someone already used the prouct name Freon before?

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of i{Spiritus Mundi}
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at laSt,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

One of the twentieth century's greatest poets, W. B. Yeats, was a bona fide occultist. He was a member of The Golden Dawn , which also claimed such notables as Aleister Crowley as alumni. You cannot seperate a study of Yeats belief in the occult from a study of his poetry and still teach about it. You cannot have a good course about post Great War literature, history and poetry without any mention of the influence of the occult on the artists of that era.

Oh, and I wouldn't be surprised if hardheaded materialists (such as Lovecraft) would be included in "occult" bans for writing "occult" literature. This despite the fact that he did not believe in the supernatural at all and was a firm atheist.

It gets even more complicated if you go back towards the Dark Ages, because it becomes harder to seperate the occult from what we would call religion today. Even as late as the Renaissance this was true. James I of England (that's the Bible James) was fascinated with the occult:

After the death of Elizabeth I, James the VI of Scotland became the new ruler, known in England as King James I. His fascination with the occult prompted him to write his own treatise on witchcraft, "Daemonology", and many believe that James's vehement belief in the divine right of kings influenced Shakespeare's playwriting methodology. James I is probably best known for his translation of the Bible into English which became known as the Authorized King James Version.

The point is, the only way to teach literature and history is to include the occult, or selectively censor both topics. This is a serious matter, and has nothing to do with teenagers thinking they are "dark lords." (Which sounds like something from that Baptist preacher's anti-Harry Potter video.)

Of course, 8 year olds don't seriously study history, but you started this discussion by talking of people 13-19, teenagers (not pre-teens). Better be careful of what college your daughter goes to, a good liberal arts college will require a certain minimal amount of study of the occult.

Frankly, we aren't talking about censoring "objectionable material" because that is what is covered by other catagories (sex and violence). We are talking about censoring Web site for no other reason than that they fall into the "occult" catagory. The reason these sites are censored is purely because modern people still believe in the occult and consider it dangerous, in and of itself. Therefore, rather than expose it to the cold light of reason, they'd rather shove it into the dark (along with Charles Darwin). In many cases the people behind this censorship are people who I also consider to have whacky beliefs (such as faith healing) which could be dangerous. Should their beliefs be censored as well? Good luck, the political power is on their side.

Enlightened people don't bother to censor dangerous beliefs, they mock them.

I remember an anecdote about a du Pont employee demonstrating the safety of the chemical by inhaling a good breath of Freon and blowing it out to extinguish a candle, demonstrating that it was both non-toxic and not explosive. Try that with ammonia!

Even if it may have had an impact on the ozone layer, there's more than just the safety component of the refrigerant chemical to consider. Where would food safety and preservation be without refrigeration? Without refrigeration, say hello to E. Coli and friends. Get used to salt-curing, preservatives, and freeze drying (yum). And then say goodbye to fresh seafood, out-of-season produce, frozen pizza, and a lot of the food that we eat.

Here's an article about the history of Freon and another about the history of the refrigerator. (Oops, it wasn't just a du Pont employee who did the demo, it was the actual inventor... sounds like a lot of technology demos.)

I remember an anecdote about a du Pont employee demonstrating the safety of the chemical by inhaling a good breath of Freon and blowing it out to extinguish a candle, demonstrating that it was both non-toxic and not explosive. Try that with ammonia!

Even if it may have had an impact on the ozone layer, there's more than just the safety component of the refrigerant chemical to consider. Where would food safety and preservation be without refrigeration? Without refrigeration, say hello to E. Coli and friends. Get used to salt-curing, preservatives, and freeze drying (yum). And then say goodbye to fresh seafood, out-of-season produce, frozen pizza, and a lot of the food that we eat.

Here's an article about the history of Freon and another about the history of the refrigerator. (Oops, it wasn't just a du Pont employee who did the demo, it was the actual inventor... sounds like a lot of technology demos.)

I think that some of the marketing/PR people of MS have been sick / on holidays / away these times.

Palladium : was originally the name of the statue of Pallas-Athenas, which was supposed to protect the city of Troie. Which was later invaded by greeks which used a subterfuge which will be known for centuries as trojan horses.

Freon : according to this web page, apart from evident utility in refigerators, "Only decades later did people realize that such chlorofluorocarbons endangered the ozone layer of the entire planet." and, even worse for MS : "The trade name Freon® is a registered trademark belonging to E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company (DuPont)."

Trailer Mirror 1
Trailer Mirror 2
Trailer Mirror 3
Trailer Mirror 4
Trailer Mirror 5
Trailer Mirror 6
Trailer Mirror 7

This is a link to a site with links to other sites that have information on absurd patents. I know it's not coopyrights, but it will have to do.

Wacky Patents

for those of you interested in bands that promote the distribution of their live material try FurthurNet It's very similar to Limewire in look/feel but only allows the trading of music by artists that allow the taping of their shows (and videotaping as well).

Thanks for the suggestion. I've mostly gone back to listening to my own CD collection, but for a long time I was listening one of the various SomaFM streams, sitting back, coding, and occasionally writing down the name of a new group or album that I had never heard. I have made dozens of CD purchases based on that list. That source is gone now, and the list (along with CD purchasing for the last few months) is frozen with its departure.

Another funny anecdote: While driving (the only time I ever consider subjecting myself to broadcast radio) recently, I actually heard a song I liked. Missed the name of the artist, but I paid close attention to the lyrics to see if I could pick out keywords. Went home, logged in to the nearest P2P network and had that exact song in less than 30 minutes.

If someone would develop a system with that kind of response time, that would allow me to download what I want by the song, I'd pay for that. The RIAA has had at least half a decade to develop such a system, yet instead they have tried to legislate the technology back into Pandora's Box.

This disgusts me to no end, and I think I'm now fed up enough where this will now become a personal crusade for me. These leeches do the public, and the arts no good. They've refused to evolve, so now it's time for their extinction.

I was gonna say that since we planted a US Flag on the Moon, then basically we claimed it. (At least that's the way it works in cartoons.) But as I recall, we actually brought the flag back with us.

The US has limited outer space jurisdiction, according to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. The treaty limited State sovereignty over outer space. Outer space was declared to be the common heritage of mankind. It prevented certain military operations in outer space and upon celestial bodies, specifically, the placing in orbit of any nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction, and the installation of such weapons on celestial bodies. Outer space was otherwise to be reserved for peaceful uses. Various other international conventions, such as the Moon Registration, and Liability Treaties, expand upon provisions found in the Outer Space Treaty.

The Moon Treaty of 1979 essentially stated that the exploration and use of the moon shall be the province of all mankind and shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries.

I was gonna say that since we planted a US Flag on the Moon, then basically we claimed it. (At least that's the way it works in cartoons.) But as I recall, we actually brought the flag back with us.

The US has limited outer space jurisdiction, according to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. The treaty limited State sovereignty over outer space. Outer space was declared to be the common heritage of mankind. It prevented certain military operations in outer space and upon celestial bodies, specifically, the placing in orbit of any nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction, and the installation of such weapons on celestial bodies. Outer space was otherwise to be reserved for peaceful uses. Various other international conventions, such as the Moon Registration, and Liability Treaties, expand upon provisions found in the Outer Space Treaty.

The Moon Treaty of 1979 essentially stated that the exploration and use of the moon shall be the province of all mankind and shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries.

The "Low Speed Data" port on DSS recievers can be hooked up to a PC serial port for control. This guy has an interesting project, with downloadable source code for just that purpose. There's even scripts for pulling down the program guide from direcTV's website. Email him if you want.

I'm currently using a setup like this with another debian box running samba, so I have near unlimited storage space.

Myself and may others out there have TNT2 cards - what exactly doesn't work?

The rendering doesn't sync properly on TNT2s.

Look at what about.com has to say about this update. about.com review. It may surprise many here.

You know, the hole that allows a specially crafted, chunk-encoded HTTP request to execute arbitrary code on the server, and as Microsoft would say, "a malicious user" could exploit this to damage systems, take over a box, or worse.

Altough the idea that the vast majority of the UFOs sightings is made by witnesses of low credibility, and scientists (who may believe in time travel and other even less plausible theories) tend to ridiculize anything UFO-related, there's a few cases who defies explanation. I don't believe in any abduction case I've ever heard about, I think there's too much people making money with this stories (like the ones who use religion to profit - religion "mysteries" tend to be much more ridiculous than the UFO ones, but they're, by some reason, respected).
But I also think that we should pay attention to cases like this.
Thousands of witnesses. Militaries confirming the target in many of their radars. Definitelly, something that deserves real explanation. Was this a meteorological baloon?

I'm on the University of Virginia team, and we're in the simulation league. We don't have physical robots. The result is we don't have to spend the effort on mechanical concerns and image recognition, and we get to devote more effort to the AI aspect of the competition. In the simulation league, the robots DO get tired, they do miss shots, and they have imperfect information. The idea is to remove all physical considerations from play and have them win on intellect alone. The robots being used in competition are no where near the level required to beat a world cup team, but I imagine that once they get close, these "humanizing" factors will be added to keep the match fair. At the current rate of development, I expect this to be well before 2050.

Here's additional information for those of you who are interested in what happens behind-the-scenes on HAM radio.

On 9/11 the Emergency Broadcast System here in the USA was not used AT ALL. WHY?? Because the news channels knew what was going on before the government.

All this talk of emergency communication networks is bogus. They just need to feed information to the news outlets like they always do.

What really needs to happen is that the ICANN should be completely eliminated. Every decision about assigning IP addresses to corresponding web addresses should be democratically made by the net-community. That is, every issue should be voted on by the net. The internet makes it possible to have a true democracy as did the Greeks. We should go in that direction.

A lot of people are probably asking why we don't have this technology yet.

One possible answer is because of the sensitivity of holographic equipment to vibrations. A hologram encodes phase differences between laser beams. Errors in the phase encoding mean errors in the data retrieval - you get a blurry or disjoint hologram, or you lose your data.

Light is in the hundreds of nanometers range of wavelength. This means a vibration in the equipment (a movement of one part relative to another) of only a tenth of a micron can completely throw the phase encoding out of alignment. Imagine a tape deck whose heads needed positioning to submicron precision.

Making holographic images is therefore rather difficult if, say, a large lorry rolls past your window. A hard-drive with the same problem would be absolutely useless.

So until a suitably hard substrate can be found on which to engineer this equipment, it's only a pipedream. Maybe nanotechnology will create such a material ... I doubt it'll happen before then.

Just buy a different brand of laptop, it's not hard to do. If you are going to use Linux, check out a quick google search first to see people's impressions of the compatibility. This is a good idea anyway since people often sprinkle general comments into these and give you an idea of the quality of the product.

Finally, unless you are going for a Dell please go to a computer store and browse. Laptops are very personal machines and pointing device preference and the feel of the keyboard beneath your fingers as well as general layout of special buttons and the brightness and clarity of the screens are something you need to get a feel for first-hand.

If you get a Dell or other mail-order product it also gives you a point of reference so you know what to look for. For example if you try a box out at a store and realize you can't live without at least 15" screen or something.

I have Dell Inspiron 4000 and have been very happy with the quality of the product. SuSE 7.3 installed with no issues and Sax2 did a better job than Dell in figuring out my video settings.

Castle Wolfenstein looks damn good.

The nice thing is that Michael Meeks talked about porting OpenOffice to GTK at FOSDEM , also he has mentioned the same thing on one of the GNOME mailing lists (can't be bothered to look this up).

Miguel de Icaza too has said that time is better spent on improving OpenOffice rather than working on say Gnumeric (which he wrote part of too).

So, nothing concrete but who knows, maybe Michael wil work on integrating OpenOffice with GNOME some day. Another possibility is that Sun will do the integration after they switch to GNOME (perhaps they could pay Ximian to do this for them?).

I think that Moore's "Law" is just a self-fulfilling prophecy. For 30 years or so, it's been a pretty reasonable estimate of the performance of the industry, but it's exponential in nature, so that means that at some point, the number of transistors on a device is just going to become too big. And that point is within a few years.

The .10 micron processes that are state of the art right now are actually pretty big compared to what would be required in a few years, at least by Moore's Law. The problem is that technologies are lagging behind the "Law". A prime example is in lithography. Commercially practical sub-.1 micron lithography doesn't exist. Extreme UV hopes to drive device sizes down to as low as .04 microns, but it's still very experimental, even in its 4th year of development.

Not to belittle Gordon Moore and his "Law", but I think that it's about to give out. Of course, what we call Moore's Law was really nothing more than an off the cuff remark by an "important person", so by following it, the semiconductor industry has validated it.

Anyway, I don't think that it matters whether or not the industry follows it...after all, what we're really after is faster, better devices. And if it's possible to get there without following Moore's Law, then what's the difference? I think that's where we're headed.

Jefferson wasn't at the Constitutional Convention.


That doesn't mean he didn't contribute to it. At the conclusion of the convention Madison sent a copy of the Constitution to Thomas Jefferson in Paris. It was impossible, he wrote Jefferson, "to consider the degree of concord which ultimately prevailed as less than a miracle." Madison's own contributions to this successful outcome were considerable. An important participant in the debates, respected by both allies and opponents as the leader of those favoring a strong national government, he was, in Professor Farrand's words, the "leading spirit" of the convention and the "master builder" of the Constitution.

Some of you might be interested in a related study (published in Nature ) which made headlines last summer.

Summary: Dr Freda Miller and colleagues at the Centre for Neuronal Survival and the Brain Tumour Research Centre at the Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, have isolated stem cells from the dermis of adult rodents that will proliferate and differentiate in culture to produce very different cell types- neurons, glia, smooth muscle cells, and fat cells. These novel stem cells, SKPs, were isolated from the skin of juvenile and adult rodents -- an accessible on-embryonic source. Human studies have indicated that similar cells are present inadult human skin. "We believe our discovery is important as we have identified an exciting new stem cell from a non-controversial source that holds considerable promise for scientific and therapeutic research," says Dr Freda Miller.

The media publishing industry (RIAA, MPAA, etc) needs to take heed, and follow in Circuit City's footsteps. They need to be taught a lesson along the lines of "The quick eat the slow"...by failing to adapt, adopt, and embrace new technologies, they miss out on revenue streams or fail to capitalize on them in a timely manner. Take MP3. Actually, lets take Vorbis now, since it's royalty free (thus depriving yet another revenue stream). Any given schmoe now has the capacity to inexpensively collect and redistribute unsigned music, make a profit off the distribution, and in the process allow the bands a promotional outlet which will increase their performance revenues. Anyone know the figures on income from record sales, performances, airplay royalties, and licensing? And how do we contrast that with costs for distribution, promotion, and other expenses?

The AdTI report qualifies as well written, but the rebuttals to the AdTI report do not. They BOTH make the mistake that continues to negatively impact the arguments of Open Source/ Free Software advocates: childish personal attacks. Continually repeating phrases like (paraphrasing here) "Microsoft, err, AdTI, says" and "worried about losing the Trophy Wife and the vacation home in the Bahamas" are NOT logical arguments for the superiority of open source software, and they make the open source community look bad. Logic alone will not win the day....

So, while the AdTI piece is certainly poorly researched, corporate pandering tripe, it is likely to have a much MUCH larger impact on policy makers than any rebuttal, not BECAUSE of its accuracy, but because of its tone. Open Source gets bitten by this all the time, and the advocates don't seem to be learning.

I'm wondering about the transconductance. What is the maximum switching speed? The gain/bandwidth product? In short, where are all the specs on this transistor that a real engineer would need to evaluate it?

I don't care if you can make a transistor with a gate length of .1 Planck length, if the thing only has gain below 1 Hz it won't be very useful.

Until they releasee some more data on how this device can perform, don't get too excited....

While the work done at Bell labs does indeed look unique, this experiment and breakthrough has technically already been done by Prof. James Tour (at Rice University) and Prof. Mark Reid of Yale who, in a very high-tech experiment, showed that a single molecule can conduct. It was similar to the structure shown in the Bell labs work, except it was one benzene rather than two. Tour and Reid also used self-assembly to get the molecules to line up to check conductance. The work was published in Science in late 1999.

Further, Tour and his group have synthesized molecular transistors (he calls them "Moleisters") about a year and a half ago. Unfortunately, I can't bring up his web pages to find the reference to the papers.

I agree. the real victory will be when we can overcome Myelin-associated glycoprotein (MAG)accumulation on axon surfaces. The MAG interaction causes gangliosides to cluster together, generating a signal that inhibits axon regrowth. A number of antibodies and enzymes that reverse the MAG-ganglioside interaction (permitting nerve regeneration) have been found to be effective in Rats, but human trials are still a ways off.