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And that's why a bicycle is no easier to balance while moving? Bicycles balance because the wheels spin, anyone who doesn't think a spinning wheel is a gyroscope needs to go to elementary school "magic" show.

I refer you to the Wikipedia link in my original post. Also, I refer you to the "bicycle physics" website of one of my physics professors. Yes, spinning bicycle wheels do have angular momentum and hence there is some gyroscopic force on the wheels when you turn, but it's ultimately a matter of magnitudes—other forces are much greater and experiments have shown that the gyroscopic properties of bicycle wheel has little to do with ability or ease of steering a bike.

Physics is an experimental science, not a dogma based on maxims and rules of thumb. The only dogma we have is that experiment always right—after the consideration of experimental errors.

spice

http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/pubs/networking/2008-ccs-spamalytics.pdf

The idea that 12% have responded and tried to make purchases is ridiculous. Take a look at the paper I just linked. If you scroll towards the end, you can see the results of the experiment they did. Out of about 350,000,000 e-mails they observed being sent out, they only had about 10.5K (0.00303%) actually click on the link, and of those, only 28 (well below 0.00001%) people tried to make a purchase.

Now, granted, the poll included historical data, since they asked if people had ever clicked on a link or else tried to make a purchase before, but come on. 12%? Maybe back when spam was new or something, but as another person said earlier, almost all of us are "not retarded" at this point, or at least not stupid enough to go clicking those links. I wonder what percentage of people have actually clicked on spam links in the last year, as opposed to in their lifetime...

I don't want to name names, but Netalyzr showed that several major ISPs already do this, and allows you to check for yourself what the behavior is on your network.

Comcast is following the lead of other major ISPs which have been doing this for some time now.

Here's an open source text book:

http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/v1-toc2.html

http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_details_new.php?seriesid=2009-B-51905%7C2009-B-69390&semesterid=2009-B/

Lecture 1 - 46 mins in Richard Muller talks about the cost vs pay of an electric vehicle.

However, we're moving away from such "crude" techniques towards more sophisticated analytical tools, since in many ways biochemistry is now technology-limited. Single-molecule work, such as that pioneered by Carlos Bustamante provide insights that would never be possible with classical methods, and on the other end of the spectrum, we're now working on characterizing the entire network of small metabolite molecules simultaneously and quantitatively. This kind of work just isn't easily carried out by amateur enthusiasts.

That said, there is certainly quite a bit of research that DIY biologists would be capable of performing, especially considering that they could have access to the same kind of resources that professionals do. For example, after amplifying a gene, no researcher will sequence it themselves: it's shipped of to a specialized lab that will do it, for a fee. That sequencing step requires equipment and expertise that's at a higher level than even the pros don't have.

But regardless of theoretical ability, the professionals retain the advantage that it is their job to work on these projects. The time they can dedicate to their work will be far greater than someone who does it as a hobby.

Back to the subject of "openness", the professional scientific world isn't nearly as closed-off as the article would have you believe. It is true that there is a persistent fear of being "scooped", but the standards are changing for staking your claim on a particular piece of research.

It used to be that a full manuscript in a scientific journal was the only thing sufficient to get credit for something. Now, people are gradually embracing online resources are a valid way to communicate, and by extension, to prove that they were the source of any particular bit of publicized material. Even non-finalized material is now more common to make public: Nature has a pre-publication online source for publishing findings, and there are journals devoted entirely to negative results, which was previously unheard-of.

The walls are coming down, it's just a question of finalizing the transition, and winning over the old guard.

Disclosure: I am a professional research scientist, one of the younger ones. I have a substantial hardware/software project in the works, which will likely be simultaneously published via classic journal, online website, and software via SourceForge.

After countless resources wasted by the IRS and the University of California system, it looks like some sanity has finally set in.

Besides the fact that the IRS should not have enforced this law (much less choose another mostly governmental agency as its first (and only?) target), the sad thing is that there was some Congressional movement last year when the settlement between the two parties was first reached:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008078765_celltaxes29.html

I guess elections, eroding economy and the wars were all higher priority.

Of course, the victim in this case is the citizens of the United States (and the state of CA gets the double whammy) as we have all contributed to the IRS's audit process as well as the settlement/change in policy (which is looking like it is going to get changed back) by the UC system.

http://controller.berkeley.edu/policies/cellphone.htm

I wonder how many hours were wasted in auditing, lawyering, administrating and...IT professional hours changing the systems for the new policy implementation...

Sounds like a job for BOINC.

IIRC, Intel got the rights to all of Digital Semiconductor's design portfolio, bar AXP, as part of the DEC v Intel lawsuit settlement in about 1997. This included things like the 21x4x tulip NICs, the 21x5x PCI-PCI bridges, the SA-110 StrongARM.

It's disappointing that they're using a home-grown management software instead of BOINC like many of the other distributed computing projects. I, for one, would be much more likely to add to the effort if I didn't have to worry about another piece of software and how it shared resources with the Einstein and Rosetta I'm already running.

Seriously though. Why all the relational database and SQL bashing? Someone explain to be what sort of new math people are trying to invent that will invalidate the mathematics of set theory and render it obsolete?

Dataspaces (ignoring the hype explosion) has nothing to do with relational database or SQL bashing; it fills a different role than RDBMSs; a particular purposes of "Dataspaces" is to unify access to heterogenous collections of data, including the case where some of the underlying data is held in RDBMSs, as is apparent from the paper describing them.

The pre-alpha implementation here doesn't seem to do much of that; it requires importing fairly simple tabular data into its internal datastore, and doesn't seem to do much to unify diverse underlying datastores, but given the technology that Google says its based on, one presumes that that's the future goal of Fusion Tables, and that the current version mostly is a demonstration of some what you will be able to do on the front-end given the existence of the right back-end data. The really interesting part will come if and when they support back-end data other than stuff exported into there internal servers in CSV/XLS format, particularly, linking to externally-stored and maintained data. And, for that matter, when they can support aggregation and calculation rather than just simple filtering and joins.

The marketing speak and abuse of the term "dimensions" in TFS is entirely unhelpful as to what "dataspaces" are about. The pre-alpha release of Fusion Tables now available has pretty limited (though interesting) functionality; a broader picture of what "dataspaces" are about is available in this paper, which is probably more useful to the technically- (rather than marketing-) oriented crowd on Slashdot.

Of particular note, a "DataSpace Support Platform" (DSSP) is not a replacement for RDBMSs, but instead something that fits a different role and provides a common interface for data stored in heterogenous underlying storage systems, some of which could be RDBMSs. Its true that some RDBMSs do provide some features along these lines, but they aren't the principal strength of RDBMSs.

In your calculations you forgot the small factoid that it may be another thousand years before it goes supernova. It has brightened considerably in the past only to dim back down. It was Fox news (fair and balanced) that mentions it going supernova, not the paper presented at the meeting that merely states a 15% shrinkage and nothing else.

Well, yes. It's been known as a variable for a very long time, and while I don't know how long its diameter has been monitored, it seems likely that its changes in brightness would be accompanied by changes in size. A 15% change in diameter isn't quite so impressive against a history of twofold changes in brightness.

In fact, here's an article claiming that its diameter varies from 550 to 920 times that of the Sun (alas, the link the article cites is dead). They might mean, though, that measurements using different techniques yield results in this range, not that the actual size varies within that range. From the Berkeley press release:

"Since the 1921 measurement, its size has been re-measured by many different interferometer systems over a range of wavelengths where the diameter measured varies by about 30 percent," Wishnow said. "At a given wavelength, however, the star has not varied in size much beyond the measurement uncertainties."

Hey Thanks! Here's a good survey of 'symplectic integrators': http://math.berkeley.edu/~alanw/242papers99/markiewicz.pdf Basically, choosing the parameters of your integration scheme smartly (based on the system you're integrating) so you do a better job at conserving energy for long time integrations. The example they give in that survey article is exactly this problem (solar system orbit simulation).

On Comcast (home, not business) in Chicago, my out-of-comcast-network DNS requests appear to be working fine. Also: http://n3.netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/summary/id=4b65b5d3-14844-ea3b2189-1d85-4789-8dd2

I show that line on my comcast connect as well, however the tcp connect is blocked. TCP is not generally needed on a home connection as it allows for requesting larger UDP and that gets most people through. Of course 'most people' isn't everyone :( Digs with tcpdump show me talking to opendns's servers so does not appear to be a redirect. This is on a basic Comcast home connection however Comcast has the apperance of placing different rules in various parts of the country. Permalink on scan

Comcast Residential in Minnesota. I use OpenDNS to filter the net here at home so the kiddies don't hit to much porn while trying to do homework. http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/restore/id=482c3e43-1843-a5565296-caaa-42bf-819d

Direct UDP access to remote DNS servers (port 53) is allowed. The applet was also able to directly request a large DNS response.

I think this is the permalink.

http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/restore/id=ae819c33-24534-54c0c922-5d71-4950-9aea

ICSI link from Augusta: http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/restore/id=43ca3cda-24704-6729e1f9-944a-4263-9b69

http://n18.netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/summary/id=ae817952-25497-39a13fe0-7769-4072-beae All seems fine to me. So if you really want to test this.. Change your resolver to 70.88.178.97 (Comcast Business IP) and then attempt to lookup some name such as http://atlantic.ocean/ or http://www.servers.ucann2/ The second page is a parked page which is correct, the first page should give you a ftp style listing, if you do not get either of these pages, then you may be experiencing this type of hijacking. But I highly doubt this would be performed on commercial accounts, maybe residential. David - UCANN2

Chelmsford, MA: http://n11.netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/restore/id=4b65aebb-24402-a096f42c-4416-49d9-84c8/rd

Looks like wowway is hijacking www.google.com, capturing the search and then doing a 302 to the actual search page (?)

http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/restore/id=4b65aebb-24385-1985f52c-c397-4cc4-b780

http://n1.netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/summary/id=43ca253f-12268-d90b4111-dd9a-4663-ac6d

Currently in Peachtree City Georgia, Comcast triple play service - across wifi 2 stories away from base in concrete apt. structure

http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/restore/id=ae8199ad-23094-f50550b1-c25f-4332-87fe Seems like OpenDNS is working OK for me.

http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/restore/id=43ca253f-12250-938258b8-71f4-4051-9c5a

unconfirmed in seattle: http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/restore/id=4b65b6fc-21491-2181f4fc-478a-4498-9b26

Actually, I think it's the app now. We have VPN and an email server here, but not a web server. So the firewall is letting it through, but it's not going anywhere after that because the web server is not installed. Could that be it? Problem or lack thereof solved.

http://n9.netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/summary/id=4b65b8c9-23945-2830067c-fc56-4979-89bd

I run the applet with IE because I have Firefox set to not run that stuff.
BTW, does anyone smart here know how to adjust packet buffering?
The only other negative thing was the computer clock being 76 seconds fast. Wait I get to go home 76 seconds early ;)

http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/restore/id=ae8199f5-18807-f5eeee66-ce59-42a4-8803

Note that my DNS servers are Level3 servers (4.2.2.2, 4.2.2.4) since they are much faster than Comcast DNS.

Not only are they faster, but IME comcast's servers go down on a fucking weekly basis. Totally unacceptable.

Additionally, as comcast is a level 3 customer, they're not going to be blocking us from using those any time soon.

You couldn't have just dropped the link?!

I can verify this is happening in Lynnwood, WA - just north of Seattle - on my Comcast residential connection. First port 25 is blocked, now 53 is being rerouted? GD Comcast is a bunch of toolsheds.

My working third party server connected to the dummy DNS server just fine, while my home Comcast connected PCs couldn't. Tested in Windows 2008, Gentoo and Windows XP @ home - same results on all 3.

Webalyzer results: here

Here are my ICSI results.

Direct UDP access to remote DNS servers (port 53) is allowed.
Direct TCP access to remote DNS servers (port 53) is allowed.


My office is just outside of Philadelphia, so southeastern PA, for regional results.

http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/restore/id=ae8199f5-18807-f5eeee66-ce59-42a4-8803

Note that my DNS servers are Level3 servers (4.2.2.2, 4.2.2.4) since they are much faster than Comcast DNS.

Here are the ICSI results. Results are from a PC behind a bog-standard Linksys WRT-54g, for what it's worth.

Not my field, but I see Direct TCP access to remote DNS servers (port 53) is allowed. I'll leave it to the networking experts to pick through the rest of the report.

Someone asked me for a study on this point, so I'll post it here for inquiring minds. I only recall one study off the top of my head, though I know others are out there. You may know this already, but there are several economic journals dedicated to housing, labor, and poverty - they'd be a good start if you wanted to read more.

The article is a bit dated - from 2004 - my apologies on that, I haven't kept up with more current research, if any exists, on this topic. Without further ado, the article is entitled "Public Housing, Housing Vouchers, and Student Achievement: Evidence from Public Housing Demolitions in Chicago" and the primary author is Brian Jacob.

Basically, the city of Chicago demolished some slummy towers and the residents moved to "substantially better neighborhoods" with vouchers. The study follows the educational achievement of the children of those who stayed in public housing (non-demolished towers) as well as the children of those who moved. The study finds performance doesn't differ meaningfully between the two groups in educational attainment or poverty.

The study does have some flaws - for example, the study was big, but looked only at those forced to relocate, taking volunteers might produce better results - though that may just re-enforce the finding that whatever makes most of these kids perform poorly transfers with their family. Anyhow, I think the study is statistically meaningful and the methodology is reasonably sound.

Additionally, re-reading my comment here, I believe I overstated the results - the students here weren't moved to wealthy areas. I'm sure I read a study on that, and I recall that the transplants reduced their peers performance but did no better themselves, but I won't look that up, since it had smaller control & test groups, plus this study is pretty close. Anyhow, here residents were moved to significantly better areas, but not wealthy areas.

JSTOR Page & PDF.

You must not get out a lot or read much...it's been all over the news (and I mean that in terms of regardless of whether or not you AGREE with the allegations, the allegations have been EXTREMELY widely reported, blogged, etc about)

So in short, I'm not sure if you're trying to be snide or not, but the allegations go back to a statement she made (linked below, see for greater context):

Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2009/05/26_sotomayor.shtml

That's from whence the allegations come. Make of it what you will--I don't think that's racist, I think it just shows that she's a full blown identity politics player.

Well, while I was still doing "SETI@Home", for "Team Microsoft" -> http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/team_members.php?teamid=26482&sort_by=expavg_credit&offset=60 (#76, that's me there, lol, & to think I used to be as high as #12 on that chart)...

I said this, while checking the "optimized version" of the character-mode/tty/DOS mode clients (by BOTH Trux & Cruncher), I said WE were going to function one day as Star Traveller's first "stellar cartographers", & in fact, here is that very statement:

-----

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=27644&nowrap=true

"We're their 'stellar cartographers' in a way if you think about it: Giving them potential targets to journey to, based on data gained from this project."

-----

Who would've guessed that "PULSARS" (what they're trying to detect for iirc, it's been a LONG while since I did that, & I moved onto Folding@Home afterwards for a good bit also) would be the target data centers used for this type of thing!

APK

P.S.=> Perhaps my "ESP" was operating @ peak efficiency that day? 'Inquiring minds want to know', lol... got lucky I guess (maybe)?? Who knows, but, this is pretty cool stuff, & I hope it works out one day - be cool to know that some good came from SETI@Home, @ least in terms of data for pulsar stars for this type of application this very thread is all about... apk

Well, while I was still doing "SETI@Home", for "Team Microsoft" -> http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/team_members.php?teamid=26482&sort_by=expavg_credit&offset=60 (#76, that's me there, lol, & to think I used to be as high as #12 on that chart)...

I said this, while checking the "optimized version" of the character-mode/tty/DOS mode clients (by BOTH Trux & Cruncher), I said WE were going to function one day as Star Traveller's first "stellar cartographers", & in fact, here is that very statement:

-----

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=27644&nowrap=true

"We're their 'stellar cartographers' in a way if you think about it: Giving them potential targets to journey to, based on data gained from this project."

-----

Who would've guessed that "PULSARS" (what they're trying to detect for iirc, it's been a LONG while since I did that, & I moved onto Folding@Home afterwards for a good bit also) would be the target data centers used for this type of thing!

APK

P.S.=> Perhaps my "ESP" was operating @ peak efficiency that day? 'Inquiring minds want to know', lol... got lucky I guess (maybe)?? Who knows, but, this is pretty cool stuff, & I hope it works out one day - be cool to know that some good came from SETI@Home, @ least in terms of data for pulsar stars for this type of application this very thread is all about... apk

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1244909&cid=28091617

$30 is a carton of beer, a pdf is much cheaper (Score:1)
by tqft (619476) on 01:48 AM May 26th, 2009 (#28091617) Homepage Journal

http://www.physics.berkeley.edu/research/zettl/publist.html#bottom [berkeley.edu]
http://www.physics.berkeley.edu/research/zettl/pdf/361.NanoLet.9-Begtrup.pdf [berkeley.edu]

The highlights
http://www.physics.berkeley.edu/research/zettl/highlights.html [berkeley.edu]

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1244909&cid=28091617

$30 is a carton of beer, a pdf is much cheaper (Score:1)
by tqft (619476) on 01:48 AM May 26th, 2009 (#28091617) Homepage Journal

http://www.physics.berkeley.edu/research/zettl/publist.html#bottom [berkeley.edu]
http://www.physics.berkeley.edu/research/zettl/pdf/361.NanoLet.9-Begtrup.pdf [berkeley.edu]

The highlights
http://www.physics.berkeley.edu/research/zettl/highlights.html [berkeley.edu]

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1244909&cid=28091617

$30 is a carton of beer, a pdf is much cheaper (Score:1)
by tqft (619476) on 01:48 AM May 26th, 2009 (#28091617) Homepage Journal

http://www.physics.berkeley.edu/research/zettl/publist.html#bottom [berkeley.edu]
http://www.physics.berkeley.edu/research/zettl/pdf/361.NanoLet.9-Begtrup.pdf [berkeley.edu]

The highlights
http://www.physics.berkeley.edu/research/zettl/highlights.html [berkeley.edu]

Full article is available at the University of California, Berkeley website in pdf format.

A bigger issue to me is that Steel isn't just iron and nickel, there's all kinds of other stuff in it. This is littering, plain and simple. Remember in Zodiac when they're talking about some transformers or something which were turned into a "habitat for marine life"? When you drop stuff on the bottom of the ocean, of course it will be a habitat for marine life, that's where the marine life is. But will it be a good home, or will it be like some toxic housing projects where the sidewalks and playgrounds are made with the sand used to blast radioactive paint off of ships in the Hunter's Point shipyards?

I'm a computer science major at Berkeley and I can attest that, outside of the EECS department, things run on pretty much the same software as at any university. I don't know about server software specifically, but all the administrative computers I've seen run Windows or are Macs.

Inside the EECS department, though, you can see the Unix-centric heritage. It's like a little software enclave—it's got its own class account system with email and newsgroups, no doubt dating back to when it was the only department on the campus to have such things. Oddly enough, most of the machines don't run on BSD, nor on Linux, but on Solaris. I think Sun must have given them a deal on hardware a while back. Of course, there are some BSD and Linux boxes around too.

Here is the text of the email that was send out to the Berkeley community.

Colleagues,
We want to let you know that today the campus is sending notification letters and emails to members of our community to inform them of a computer breach that resulted in the theft of personal information from databases in our University Health Services, UHS, area.

The victims of this crime are current and former students, as well as their parents and spouses if linked to insurance coverage, who had UHS health care coverage or received services. We are also sending notification letters to Mills College students who received, or were eligible to receive, healthcare on the UC Berkeley campus.

We sincerely regret and apologize for any difficulty this theft may create for individuals who may have had their personal information exposed. We have alerted campus police detectives and the FBI, and are doing all that we can to investigate this crime. All of the exposed databases were immediately removed from service to make sure that they would be completely protected from any future attacks.

Those individuals directly affected by the theft will receive letters with detailed information on steps that they can take to protect their credit and identity. We have launched a dedicated web site, http://datatheft.berkeley.edu/ that contains detailed information for affected individuals, the media and the general public. In addition a Data Theft Hotline, 888-729-3301 will be operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to answer questions from affected individuals.

UC Berkeley computer administrators determined on April 21 that electronic databases in UHS had been breached and data stolen by overseas criminals. The databases stored personally identifiable information used for billing such as Social Security numbers, and non-treatment medical information such as immunization history, UHS medical record numbers, dates of visits or names of providers seen, or for participants in the Education Abroad Program, certain information from the self-reported health history.

Please be assured that UHS electronic medical records, which include details of patients diagnoses~, treatments and therapies, are stored in a separate system and were not affected in this incident.

To ensure that we fully understand the nature of the security breach and to determine the steps that we can take to minimize the risk of a reoccurrence, the university has hired an outside auditor, Price Waterhouse Coopers, to support our ongoing investigation of the incident. The campus is committed to implementing recommendations that address the root causes of this security breach.

Steve Lustig
Associate Vice Chancellor
Health and Human Services

Shelton Waggener
Associate Vice Chancellor & CIO
Information Services & Technology

Yes, but the most interesting part of the story is at Berkeley's website. They were entirely unaware of the intrusion until the "highly skilled" intruders, having had their way with Berkeley's system(s) for eight months, "...left messages on the server."

Here's a useful primer if you're really into that kind of thing but don't have background specifically on it. Makes the article a bit easier to understand on a technical level.

Give away almost 5000 pcs or maybe more.....
With conditions pc must remain on 24/7 , they must pay for Internet service - and allow use of grid computing software.

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/
cooling cost - almost 0
power cost - almost 0

Mark

Give away almost 5000 pcs or maybe more.....
With conditions pc must remain on 24/7 , they must pay for Internet service - and allow use of grid computing software.

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/
cooling cost - almost 0
power cost - almost 0

Mark