Slashdot Mirror

Sure :-)

Society is emergent on all sorts of stuff. Physical differences are part of that. I think everybody is fine with that fact.

However, gender is (by far) not the only one defining factor of each human's destiny, nor the one factor that defines neurological, hormone-driven psychological changes either. For example, did you read this one about female hormones in male scientists, and testosterone levels in female scientists? Well, turns out that male scientists typically have a level of the hormone oestrogen as high as their testosterone level, and women social scientists tended to have higher levels of testosterone, making their brains closer to those of males in general.

So where's the gender gap? Defined by hormones? Seems that at least where science is concerned, it's more of a gender blur ;-)

Srinivasa Ramanujan: He was self-taught but had an uncanny mathematical manipulative ability. Independently, he discovered results of Gauss, Kummer and others on hypergeometric series. He is known for major contributions in Number Theory and Modular Function theory.

Ramanujan worked out the Riemann series, the elliptic integrals, hypergeometric series and functional equations of the zeta function on his own. On the other hand he had only a vague idea of what constitutes a mathematical proof, and occasionally did state incorrect results.

Ramanujan was reported to have dreams where Indian deities would paint this an other equations in blood on his mind.

This formula as far as I can tell came from nowhere but a strangely tuned up mind

http://www.bath.ac.uk/~ma2lg/project/ramanujan.gif

Slashdot's inferior "lameness" filter won't allow formulas to be written textually with elegance.

1/pi = [sqrt(8)/9801] * summation of variable i from 0 to infinity [{(4i)! [1103 + 26390i]} / {(i!)^4 (396)^4i} ]

Where there sqrt(8)/9801, 1103, 26390, 396 all come from is anyone's guess. The thing generate 8 places of pi every cycle.

Edward Witten's work on unifying the string theories is another set of equations that probably deserve mention, but the practical use for Ramanujan's series and the Chodnovsky improvements to it are undeniable.

Archimedes understood infinity and how to work out the volumes of shapes around 212 BC (The year of his death - he was killed by a Roman soldier invading Syracuse when he said; "Stop disturbing me and my circles!" The soldier was supposed to take Archimedes custody and bring him to Rome).

He has written a book called, The Method, the last surviving copy of it was overwritten for prayers in 1000AD, and then the manuscript was partially discovered in the early 1900's, and just now is the rest being restored using modern technology. Archimedes understanding of infinity and the fundamentals of Calculus would take humanity until Newton / Leibniz, the modern world is probably "off" by possibly 500 years due to The Method having been lost.

The Navy doesn't like diesels because they're too noisy for vehicles which chase submarines.

But they're PISTONS. Imagine the ricing up you could do on this one. (yes, that's a 108,000 horsepower engine with cylinders you could fit a dozen or more people in)

A set of four hundred 200w ground effect neons, a couple of (dozen) turbos and a blow off valve that can create more PSHHHHHHHH than your average small jet... and she'd be SLIK.

or something

Some facts on the 14 cylinder version: Total engine weight: 2300 tons (The crankshaft alone weighs 300 tons.) Length: 89 feet Height: 44 feet Maximum power: 108,920 hp at 102 rpm Maximum torque: 5,608,312 lb/ft at 102rpm A single cylinder is 1820 Liters

The pictures are even more impresive:

In fact the most efficient ICE is some diesel engine that's the size of a house and is over 50% efficient, if I properly recall.
I believe This is the engine you're refering to...?

I'm sure the average flight data recorder box could easily survive the actual number of Gs you'd be able to throw at it with a vehicle (and that's significantly less than 80 times the force of gravity).

See some info on flight data recorders, and note the impact tolerance; 3400Gs/6.5ms.

Jovial

It was/is definitly a defense industry language. The dollar is not a statement delimiter, its information for the billing system :-)

Check out this concept car for a euro-interpretation of your vision. They're hoping for fuel consumption rate of 188 miles per gallon. They are also calling it the C.L.E.V.E.R. car (to cash in on the Smart car's advertising budget I assume). A nice idea but a dumb name.

2. De-gauze with a powerful electro magnet.

Yes, you always want to remove the gauze from your hard-drive before destroying it. Otherwise, it might catch on fire during the melting step (#4). I'm sure Karl Freidrich appreciates the hint.

Small engines have better performance per litre than big engines. Not because chevy sucks and honda rocks, just because it's the law of diminishing returns. Adding CCs is a more efficient way to increase power than adding vtec. The most fuel efficient engine in the world is also the most powerful and one of the biggest.

Really, who cares if your car has a 2 litre turbo or a 5 litre v8, if they make similar power? They're both going to use a similar amount of fuel.

When you get down to it, the reason japanese engines make more per litre isn't because they're better, it's because of the wacky restrictions and "agreements" the japanese government enforces on their car makers. So honda can make a 2 litre that puts out 160kw without a turbo. Then why don't they make a 400kw turbo 4 litre v8 for the nsx? Because it would be a grenade.

Bigger engines have more reciprocating mass, so they can't rev as highly, and most of the technological tricks that get more power out of small engines (vtec, vvti-l etc) relies on a much higher rev range.

A few chargebacks maybe, but I got nailed by a fraudulent transaction on PayPal and they didn't seem to care at all. There argument is that they are a payment medium and as such they don't have responsiblity over what happens! Absolutely ridiculous - I think they should have similar regulation to a bank or a credit card service, as they certainly provide a similar service. My problem was to do with the fact that UK PayPal users had (have?) no real protection from fraud (especially from their absurb Seller Protection Program - it's anything but!).

Please feel free to read what happened and also the email transcript between PayPal and myself - some interesting reading!

Any advice gratefully received!

Quite correct. In fact the most efficient diesel in the world is 50% efficient, allthough it is rather large.

Unfortunately, patching a leak in a space station is somewhat similar to taping a duct. And the only thing that duct tape is bad for is taping ducts

Which is why people who know call it by it's correct name "Gaffa Tape". Or simply "gaffa".

The rest of the world would call it gaffa tape too if only we could stop the persistent bickering on whether gaffa is spelt "gaffa" or "gaffer". Internecine battles asside, gaffa is without a doubt the most useful substance in the universe.

"It is vital to understand the importance of doing nothing. Slacking is a necessity; it is Yin to activity's Yang"

So said the comedian Simon Pegg in endorsement of last month's England's National Slacker Day (August 23rd). This current week (September 1-5) is Work-Life Balance week for Britons, centered around pretty much the same idea. It is no wonder that these ideas are popular in the UK, since British get the fewest vacations of any European nation.

While some view leisurely time off as a right, does slacking really mean happiness? Some lament that the slacker lifestyle isn't what it used to be. Simon Pegg himself broke the first and only rule in the Slacker Day handbook, by working: "there, perhaps, is the problem with slacking in a world which does not owe any of us a living"

More to the point, Professor Michael Rose at University of Bath (he seems to do a lot of research in the field of work) found that working long hours does not lower one's quality of life - and indeed improves it. Not only are workaholics making more money and getting promotions - they are happier as well.

Contrary to what most of us believe, the workaholics are not especially stressed, nor are they particularly unhappy -- at least no more than the rest of us.

Why is that? Because they like working.

A significant point is being made here. The work-life propagandists constantly see the office as the enemy and emphasize that more time has to be allowed for family and other interests.

But work is a life as well. We live in a hedonistic age, but our grandfathers, many of whom grew up among stern Victorian moralists, would have understood that work is what gives shape and purpose to our lives.

Most of us work because we have to make a living. But we also work because it gives us a role, status, a sense of achievement, and just occasionally the respect of our peers. And those are things we crave just as much as material goods.

So fess up. Are you a slacker or a workaholic? How do you achieve a healthy balance between success in the office and a happy life outside of it?

I found it disconcerting that the car itself is rated at 70 MPG equivalent, while it only gets 35-40 MPG on trailer power. AC Propulsion does not publish hard specs on the efficiency, but my calculations showed that it consumed on the order of 0.64 pounds of fuel per horsepower-hour. A typical car at cruise gets 0.40-0.50, medium-speed diesels hit 0.32, and marine diesels can get 0.260 lbs/hp/hour, or about 50% thermal efficiency. I think they lose a lot by running a tiny engine at 6000 RPM; a Geo Metro engine and transaxle would probably do a lot better.

For the technical writer, who plans on publishing conference papers or building large professional documents, such as a dissertation, there is no substitute for LaTeX. It is not a word processor or mark-up language but rather a true professional typesetting package. There really is no alternative (that you can afford).

Given that you're a CS major, you might be interested in looking at my LaTeX source code for a conference paper and my dissertation. Because LaTeX is so much like a programming language, I created a package containing subdirectories with the class file, images, and source code and perform the build using a Makefile. If you can code and you're familiar with Unix, it is a must have. To build the document, simply type make preview in the base directory. A word of caution -- don't even bother downloading this if you run Windows. It runs like a peach in all Unices and MacOS provided pdfLaTeX is installed.

Michael.

Y'know - if there's ampty seats, then it can't really be described as packed. I remember the day when people sat on the floor in the aisles to receive words of mathematical wisdom from Dmitri [www.bath.ac.uk].

No, no, no. It's not a matter of if you want to or not. If you do, there's a world of mathematicians who will tell you that what you are doing might not qualify as mathematics.

One is not prime. Prime means having exactly two divisors, one of which is one. Please find enclosed a snider definition and commentary.

(Yes, I took MATH 230, but no, I didn't pass. Sorry I couldn't hold on, Clive.)

I can't disclose the details of the "benchmark" I was doing because it pertains directly to some as-yet unpublished research. Sorry!

...you could just buy 3-4 cheap VCRs and set the time to record your shows. That would get you 18-20 hours of record time.

On a related note, I am going to get rid of my computer and replace it with an infinitely long strip of paper. My frame rates will suffer, but I will save a lot of electricity.

My local police department will also be replacing their firearms with rocks.

The relevant quantity in fibers is the critical angle, beyond which all light is reflected inside the higher-index core. (Actually, the whole ray-optics picture is not completely accurate for fibers with features, like the core size, comparable to the wavelength...but it's qualitatively the right idea.) (Which, by the way, has nothing to do with the reflection disappearing from the puddle, since that is a reflection into the lower-index medium, air. The puddle effect has more to do with your shadow blocking the light.)

Note also, by the way, that it's not so much that the index of the polymer fiber core has been increased, its that the effective index of the cladding is decreased (by adding lots of thin holes/veins, hence the name microstructured fiber). And you can do the same thing with glass fibers. (Because of the higher effective contrast, you can confine light more tightly and e.g. enhance nonlinear effects.

(You were on the right track that it's the bending light loss, and the advantage therein of higher index contrast, that the article was referring to.)

Microstructuring can also go in the other direction to photonic crystal fibers and guiding light in air.)

"The unit uses a NiMH battery which means that there may be a memory problem"

"I saw a mouse that some very strange and unique features"

"You don't need a line of site to use this thing"

"it only took about and hour"

"To enabled air navigation"

"You won't notice any problems unless your on the computer"

• Slashdot : Crank Up Your Webserver (18jun2001)
• Two days ago : Slashdot : First Wind-up Phone Charger Review (25jul2002)
• mini FAQ on bicycle lights (dynamo=3W)
• How to construct a permanent magnet alternator (this one is for windpower, ~180 watts)
• other homebuilt alternators (~100 watts) (again windpower. ?efficiency)

On a related note to this story, I compiled a list of free technical books from a slashdot thread a few weeks ago:

http://www.bath.ac.uk/~cs1spw/blog/archive/2002/06 / 9/#freeBooks

This technique is based on photonic bandgap fibers. They were invented by Phillip Russell at Bath University (UK). These fibers contains a pattern of hollow channels that form the 2D equivalent of a multilayer mirror. Light can not travel in such a region. One channel in the middle of the matrix is missing, creating a defect state where the light can travel.

Since I actually do research in this area and there is some confusion here, let me give a very brief introduction to photonic crystals (which can be studied using free software).

Photonic crystals are periodically-structured optical media that, with the right structure, completely forbid the propagation of light in a certain range of wavelengths (analogous to electronic band gaps). They form a sort of "optical insulator" that you can use to trap, guide, and control light. The work at essentially any wavelength (in contrast to metallic waveguides) provided that you can fabricate a periodic structure with periodicity on the order of half a wavelength, and have a number of potential applications, including:

• Integrated optics: optimally miniaturized networks of optical devices to offload some analog signal-processing or telecommunications tasks, circumventing e.g. bandwidth limitations of electronic circuits. (Few these days are predicting all-optical computers.)
• Optical fibers (from 2d or 1d patterns) that circumvent fundamental loss/nonlinearity/PMD limits of silica fiber, and for other novel applications (e.g. high-power or highly-nonlinear fiber devices).
• More-efficient LEDs and lasers, both by enhancing the optical density of states and by making the light go where you want it to go.
• Slow-light devices for time-delays, nonlinear interactions...
• Super-lenses (that can focus beyond the diffraction limit via negative effective indices of refraction).
• Super-prisms (very wavelength-sensitive refraction, e.g. for wavelength demultiplexing).
• ...

1d photonic crystals (multilayer films) have been known since Rayleigh in 1887 (although there are new twists) but 2d and 3d crystals weren't conceived until 1987, via a marriage of solid-state physics and electromagnetism.

The paper Slashdot linked to is considering photonic-crystals made by self-assembly of microspheres into close-packed lattices. A perfect crystal has limited use; you need to make defects to carve devices out of it, and that is what they are doing here. (There are many problems of precision, etcetera, that still need to be overcome for practical integrated devices, I think.)

Note that one can also make photonic crystals with traditional lithography, but that poses its own set of challenges (especially for full 3d-periodic crystals).

Why not simply make it a link?

Ian Hickson's Evil Test Suite Results

That way there's no worry about the random spaces put in by Slashcode.

I'm an Architecture Student at Bath , UK, and our civil engineering department is pretty well renowned so we had a lecture from the engineers of the Eden Project. Fascinating stuff. A few of the interesting things that they did:

A satellite survey of the site allowed them to make a 3D model of the clay pit, they could then reshape the landscape without having to bring fill to/from the site. They had special software that calculated volume of soil, so they just spread the existing material around.

GPS surveying. The base of each bubble comes down on to a concrete foundation. First, using the same 3D model, the intersection of bubble and ground is plotted, then on site a man with a gps reciever plots the centerline of the foundation all over the very irregular ground. The fact that the bubbles are based on spheres meant that as the ground conditions changed (the mine was still being worked during the design phase) only the edge of the bubbles had to be redesigned to adapt to the site.

The frame for the bubbles is based on the familiar "buckyball" arrangement like C-60 or a soccer (bleh) ball, only the pentagons are very small, and are surrounded by a large grid of hexagons. There is a fair amount of repition in the design (each fith of each dome is essentially symmetrical, the pentagon at the apex of each dome is openable for venting), but there are so many different pieces involved that humans could never make the pieces right. Instead, data from the 3d model was sent to the steelworkers, where a machine simply churned out thousands of individually numbered struts and nodes. These were then assembled in order on site.

The World's Largest Scaffolding was created inside each dome during construction. We saw some slides of this and it really was amazing. Imagine the shape of one of these domes, but filled with a regular 3D grid.

The ETFE foil that the envelope is made of is ridiculously thin. I forget the exact number, but it's measured in microns. There are three layers, giving two pockets in each segment. These can be inflated/deflated to take the weight of snow for instance. The largest segment is about 6 meters accross IIRC.

All the climate control is automatic. Vents open and close, humidifiers spray and heaters heat all day and night to keep the climate regular inside.

I went to visit Eden in November, and it was absolutely amazing. I won't repeat what's been said, but you should definately include it in your plans if you're coming to the UK. The education is so well done and so genuine that you can't help but learn. There's absolutely no cooporate sponsership or advertising on site. All the food is organic and all the staff have a genuine passion for plants. The only trouble is that it is too popular. There were no queues as such, but it was definately crowded. Brilliant day out though.

Um, since when did IE beat Mozilla here? IE doesn't even support <link>!

• The Labels feature in Mail&News is now fully implemented. Organize your mail messages with the following new features:
  • Add labels to messages via context menus or the Message menu.
  • Clear labels from messages.
  • Change description and color of the labels via preferences (Edit | Preferences | Mail & Newsgroups | Labels). Five different labels are supported.
  • Add filter rules to set labels to spec.
• Mozilla Mail&News now supports basic S/MIME functionality although the UI is still incomplete.
• The Document Inspector is now enabled in complete installations. The DOM Inspector is a tool that can be used to inspect and edit the live DOM of any web document or XUL application. The DOM hierarchy can be navigated using a two-paned window that allows for a variety of different views on the document and all nodes within. If you're using the Mozilla installer, be sure to switch from typical, to complete or custom install to install the DOM inspector and JS Debugger.
• The Mac OSX toolbar collapse button is now implemented. Press this button in the title bar to toggle display of toolbars.
• The latest and greatest ChatZilla 0.8.5 is now shipping in Mozilla.
• Springloaded folders -- Dragging and hovering over a bookmark or message folder will expand the folder.
• Mozilla works again on Mac OS 8.5.
• Mozilla now supports shortcut icons (a.k.a favicons) and custom page icons in bookmarks and in the personal toolbar.
• If you type into the URL bar while a page is loading, your text is no longer overwritten when the page load completes.
• The sidebar now has a Close button.
• Print preview is now available on Macintosh.
• Mozilla now has support for digest access authentication.
• The Save Page operation now also saves images, stylesheets, objects and applets included in the page.
• Mozilla now supports the longdesc attribute of the img tag. The longdesc attribute contains a link to a file describing the image in detail, for those times where the image cannot be downloaded. To view the longdesc, right click on an image, click 'properties' in the context menu, then click on the description url in the properties dialog.
• Mozilla has a new advanced preference panel for fine-grained JavaScript control. For instance, you can disallow pop up and pop-under windows without turning off JavaScript altogether.
• When a page using a strict document type declaration (e.g. HTML 4.01 Strict) links to an external style sheet (using <link>, @import, etc) Mozilla will only load the style sheet if it is served with a MIME type of "text/css". Style sheets served with other MIME types, like text/plain, application/x-pointplus, etc. will not be loaded. To add the proper css mime type to an Apache web servers, add "text/css css" to the system mime.types file. Or if you can't do that, add "AddType text/css .css" to your .htaccess file.
• 
  
  --Asa

There's a huge difference -- Netscape 4.x is a hacked up non-compliant mess that has been on web developers hit list for years.

On the other hand, Mozilla is far more standards compliant than MSIE. Microsoft is inventing an argument to support their anti-competitive actions.

To the other reply, I'll add my recommendation of RichInStyle, featuring giant bug table, plus bug-demo and css test pages. He's working on mapping support in less mainstream browsers, like different Konqueror versions and W3C's Amaya, and has a decent cross-compatibility tutorial.

On the non-css side, the Anybrowser site has useful tips, and HTML with Style pushes structure first, then layout. For "what works in what" info, there's the results pages of Robin's HTML 4 Conformance Tests and Ian Hickson's Evil Test Suite.

PS. Your timetable looks fine in BeOS's NetPositive 2.2, except that without a body bgcolor, Net+ defaults to grey, and imho, the Windows-1252 charset declaration is unnecessary.

Does anyone know of a place (on the web etc) where you can get a compact list of most of the common core of tags support by both the HTML standard and most browsers (ie. both IE and NS)as well as a list of unsupported browser specific tags.

NCD's tag/browser guide (good up to 4/5 of NS/IE), with the results of Robin's HTML 4 Conformance Tests, and Ian Hickson's Evil Test Suite for more outré browsers.

For more detail on usage/display, I recommend Webreference.com's report on html4/extensions in the 4.x browsers and Index Dot Html (big two, plus Mosaic/Opera). Hope this helps.

SLab is an excellent multitrack recorder/mixer. It is not up to snuff with ProTools yet (though no program is on any platform).

Other Linux audio related links include (sorry if some links are bad, I haven't updated this list in awhile):

Multitrack audio recording/mixing:
Ardour
Slab
Snd

Midi Sequencing:
Jazz++
Rosegarden
Brahms (I THINK this is a sequencer)

Sound editing / effects processing:
MixViews
ecasound

Audio creation (synth emulators):
Ultramaster RS-101 and Juno6 CSound
Cecilia (requires Csound)

Notation:
Lilypond
Rosegarden
Mup

Awesome pages with links to everything you wanted to know about Linux audio:
Applications for Open Sound System
Sound and MIDI software for Linux

SLab is an excellent multitrack recorder/mixer. It is not up to snuff with ProTools yet (though no program is on any platform).

Other Linux audio related links include (sorry if some links are bad, I haven't updated this list in awhile):

Multitrack audio recording/mixing:
Ardour
Slab
Snd

Midi Sequencing:
Jazz++
Rosegarden
Brahms (I THINK this is a sequencer)

Sound editing / effects processing:
MixViews
ecasound

Audio creation (synth emulators):
Ultramaster RS-101 and Juno6 CSound
Cecilia (requires Csound)

Notation:
Lilypond
Rosegarden
Mup

Awesome pages with links to everything you wanted to know about Linux audio:
Applications for Open Sound System
Sound and MIDI software for Linux

      I was surfing around a little while back when I decided to see if I could find a sliderule for sale somewhere. (yes..I AM a nerd :) During my search I ran across refrences to a mechanical calculator called the Curta.
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp According to this web page, the Curta was designed and built by a gentleman named Curt Herzstark of Austria. Although several prototypes were made, the first production began in April, 1947. The last Curta was made in November, 1970 but they were still sold until early 1973. Over the course of about 20 years approximately 80,000 of the Curta I and 60,000 of the Curta II were constructed.
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Additional links, articles, and pictures of this awesome little device can be found here and at Curta.org
I gotta say..The Curta is one sexy little calculator :) thanks to Bruce Flamm at the first link for some of the info.

I feel I'd better correct myself: there were some 50 posts on the RoseGarden list this year.

The very ambitious Rosegarden-3 development progressed fastest when I was in a really dull job a year or more ago, but it's been painfully slow going since. The main problem is just building up enough of a base to make it worth anyone else's while trying to do anything with it. Still, I'm persevering; the eventual aim is a bit different from that of Denemo or Brahms (though GSeq is probably closer) so it seems worth sticking with it for the moment.

Anyway, see Rosegarden's homepage for some development notes and the mailing-list archive; and the 3.0 code and docs, such as they are, are on GNOME's CVS server.

Chris

Jan

--
Jan Nieuwenhuizen | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
www.xs4all.nl/~jantien | www.lilypond.org

I don't know if it has been kept very up to date, and I had some problems when I tried it about a year ago, but it clearly worked for some people when I looked at it. Some aspects of it are somewhat reminiscent of Cakewalk, I think.

Looking at the website, it looks like the developers have kept working, so I'd give it a shot.

Rosegarden
-Matt

I'm surprised theres's been so many posts already without any mention of Rosegarden

When i first started playing around with midi on Linux, the first program i found was Jazz++. It's got plenty of features if you like editing music on what looks and feels like a piano roll.

Unfortunately, I've been cursed with the knowledge of how to read music, so the piano roll feels clumsy.

Rosegarden is GPL'd and includes a well developed notation editor, it's own scripting language for the technically inclined, and will even help you print sheet music.

It's known to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Irix, and even OpenVMS. And yes, it's completely free and open source.

Jazz++ does have some nice features, like GS compatibility, but for my purposes it would be incredibly obtuse to use for anything other than final touch-ups to the score.

What i need, and what i suspect most musicians prefer, is a midi sequencer with a notation editor - and there's already a pretty good one out there with a GPL license.

I recommend you look at this Rosegarden screenshot. Here are some more screenshots.

I have used Rosegarden extensively and think it is superb. The authors, Chris Cannam, Andy Green and Richard Bown wrote Rosegarden for their final-year BSc degree projects at Bath University. Excellent work!

I recommend you look at this Rosegarden screenshot. Here are some more screenshots.

I have used Rosegarden extensively and think it is superb. The authors, Chris Cannam, Andy Green and Richard Bown wrote Rosegarden for their final-year BSc degree projects at Bath University. Excellent work!

I recommend you look at this Rosegarden screenshot. Here are some more screenshots.

I have used Rosegarden extensively and think it is superb. The authors, Chris Cannam, Andy Green and Richard Bown wrote Rosegarden for their final-year BSc degree projects at Bath University. Excellent work!

Try Rosegarden; it accepts MIDI input, e.g. keyboards, and automatically creates music notation from your MIDI input. I think the notation graphics are very neat. It may not support all the MIDI features in expensive commercial software. I think it is an excellent tool for composition.

This page is a good place for music/sound software for Linux.