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Stories and comments across the archive that link to berkeley.edu.

Comments · 3,539

  1. mass confusion by yali · · Score: 1 · on Can University Students GPL Their Submitted Works?

    On reading this I became curious what my own institution's policies were, so I looked them up. FWIW:

    First of all, my school maintains separate policies for copyright and patents. The copyright policy states that copyright of student works resides with the student. The patent policy makes no specific references to students, but says that anybody who uses university facilities or receives money from the uni (including gifts and grants) has to surrender patent rights to the uni, though they get a chunk of any royalties.

    Since different aspects of software can fall under copyright or patent law, sounds like this must be mighty confusing for the CS folks. My best guess about what this means is that if you invent something, the university owns the invention, but you own whatever you say about the invention (and in the case of software, you own the specific code you wrote to implement the invention).

  2. Re:No Way by $asch · · Score: 1 · on Cheaters Sometimes Prosper
    > Yeah, right, next you'll tell me that winners sometimes use drugs.

    Nobel Laureates don't count?

    I'm referring to Kary Mullis, the inventor of PCR and his quite extensive use of LSD.

    Lots of other examples out there too, but DARE won't be the first to tell you about these.

  3. Re:Jeeeze, the moderation nowadays.... by bumski · · Score: 1 · on Star In A Jar
    Dark Matter ... does not interact with matter at all
    Eh? I suspect that you mean something other than what you said. Dark Matter is the "missing matter" that we need to find to explain the current rate of expansion of the universe and the rotational velocity of galaxies. It's only because of its gravitational interaction with matter that we know it exists at all.

    There's also a pretty good essay on the topic here.

  4. Re:Jeeeze, the moderation nowadays.... by bumski · · Score: 1 · on Star In A Jar
    Dark Matter ... does not interact with matter at all
    Eh? I suspect that you mean something other than what you said. Dark Matter is the "missing matter" that we need to find to explain the current rate of expansion of the universe and the rotational velocity of galaxies. It's only because of its gravitational interaction with matter that we know it exists at all.

    There's also a pretty good essay on the topic here.

  5. BULLSHIT physics! by sllort · · Score: 4 · on Star In A Jar

    Dark matter accretes. This means that when it comes into contact with normal matter, it transforms it into dark matter too. This is unstoppable.

    Um, are you really majoring in physics? Are you just spouting off the top of your head? I'm not sure you know what you're talking about when it comes to dark matter.

    First off, the story which /. failed to directly link to (as I have just done!) clearly states that dark matter is at the core of the experiment! They have used lasers to compress dark matter to the point where it creates an anti-matter star. While there would certainly be disastrous consequences if this ball of anti-matter were to come into contact with real matter (my first rough sketch comes out to a 350 Megaton yield for each square foot of compressed anti-matter, but feel free to double check) it is made very clear that this pseudo-star (is that what we should call christina aguilera?) is safely contained by the laser containment field.

    The benefits of this research, namely determing the mass density of the Universe (from the Berkley dark matter paper: "A parameter known as the "mass density" - that is, how much matter per unit volume is contained in the Universe") is far more important than any possible laser containment field leak. Not that any such leak is likely.

    Quit with your babbling and stick to the facts. If you want, you can learn more about laser containment fields here.

    If I were you I wouldn't bother.

  6. Re:Assembly by NaturePhotog · · Score: 1 · on Java as a CS Introductory Language?
    Your fresman year should be devoted to assembly language, basic data structures and low level hardware concepts. In general I agree, but there should also be some higher level language to start with, to start applying the things you've learned in something besides assembly, as well as some basic algorithms to go along with the data structures. Not to mention to be more fun :-)

    Python would be a good choice as it is geared towards teaching. Java and C/C++ might as well, though there are pros and cons to each. C has the advantage that the correlation between C and assembly is reasonably close and therefore understandable (unless you have optimizations turned on :-).

    My own programming education was a lot less structured initally, and went something like:
    1. self-taught BASIC programming on TRS-80, Commodore PET, and Apple ][+
    2. self-taught 6502 assembly on Apple ][+
    3. some Pascal at a computer camp (yeah, a geek at an early age)
    4. the teacher's course for AP Computer Science (including Karel the robot, and more Pascal)
    5. BASIC programming course in high school on TI-99/4 computers. I already knew more than the instructor, so I helped teach the course and learned more assembly language instead.
    6. CS major at UC Berkeley
      • CS-50, the "weeder" course (Pascal)
      • machine language and low level hardware
      • data structures and algorithms
      • operating systems (Panda, and Unix with C)
      • compilers and programming languages
      • computer graphics
      • computer hardware (plus a lab)
      • computer theory
      • graph theory and combinatorics
      • introductory EE lab

    an engineering co-op

    full time work for 13 years or so, including self-taught C++ and lots of other things... I guess my points are that (a) there isn't a single "right" answer (b) some OOP is OK, but needs to be balanced with some understanding of the underlying systems (i.e., I agree with you), and (c) that all needs to be balanced with some fun!

    P.S. I guess some things never die...there's a version of Karel written in Java and another over at SourceForge written in C using GTK.
  7. well, not quite by oldbox · · Score: 5 · on Is Brownian Motion The Secret Of Life After All?
    While ATP is a universal energy-storing molecule, kinesins, the "motor proteins" mentioned above are only found in eucaryotes. A much more universal molecule, the basis of all life if not the "secret of life" that the above article makes such a big deal about is ATPase (aka ATP synthase). The structure of F1F0-ATP synthase was deduced a few years ago, and won Prof. Paul Boyer and Dr. John Walker a Nobel Prize. The press release provides a good introduction to the discovery, and it's importance.

    Interestingly, ATPase is a nano-scale rotor/generator. There are some great movies of the proposed operation from a berkley server. The ATP synthase motor is driven by the flow of protons from an area of high to a low concentration. Therefore it is not brownian motion directly, but osmosis that powers all life.


    biobox

  8. Re:Get them on LOGO by Ian+Bicking · · Score: 5 · on Computer Curriculum for Inner City Kids?
    I really like Logo too. It teaches programming, but it also is very much about teaching mathematics, geometry, pre-algebra, and algorithmic thinking in general. Thus Logo can satisfy both the people who want academics (math), and people who want vocational aspects (programming).

    Some scattered thoughts:

    • You can use MSW Logo for free (GPL even). It's hardly the best interface or anything, but it will do. MicroWorlds is a very popular commercial Logo environment. If you have the budget, you might use it. HyperStudio, which they probably already have, has a Logo inside it too. But don't use that, as it's a really lame environment, not to mention a crappy implementation.

    • I would also like to reemphasize that you should do things in a hands-on manner. Start out right on the computer, and try to keep them working with the computer as much as possible. Try very hard to get a one-to-one computer-to-student ratio, even if it means kids get less total time on the computers. Of course this doesn't mean you should force the kids to stay at their computer -- if you are doing something fun, the kids will want badly to show each other what they are doing. If they don't want to show each other, you are doing the wrong project.

    • Against my previous advice, you should do physical practice with Logo turtle commands -- i.e., have the kids order each other or you around using Logo commands. Like, have the kids navigate you around the room by using just left, right, forward, and back commands. This amuses them, because they can make you bump into tables and walk out the door. It is useful, because they'll have an easier time imagining themselves in your place than they will have imagining themselves in the turtles place.

    • Of course, if you have access to Lego Logo stuff (which is expensive), use it. You'll probably enjoy that as much as the kids.

    • Don't start out too quickly -- just have them draw pictures at first. Kids are surprisingly easy to amuse this way. If you have enough time, kids might be able to make games too, but very possibly not :-( MicroWorlds would make game-making much easier.

    • Oh, and if you have older kids, Star Logo is a neat environment for experimenting with massively parrallel computation. And if you feel a bit more adventurous and have Macs available, maybe try Boxer, a somewhat more visual programming language with the same goals as Logo.
  9. Re:Top 500 Supercomputers can be found... by Greenisus · · Score: 1 · on "Cplant" Parallel Computing Tool

    I didn't notice SETI on the list . . . .

  10. Those who did not live through the '60s by blair1q · · Score: 4 · on Intellectual Property and a Censored Slash Site?

    Well...I was a year old when this happened, but...

    This is a cyberspace parallel to the situation at Berkeley in '64 that created the Free Speech Movement and made Mario Savio an international leader.

    --Blair

    P.S. Of course, because of the novel and creative nature of the first Free Speech Movement protests, people decided that such things were a lot of fun, and started looking for reasons to have "happening" protests --sometimes just to mock their own herd-like sociology-- and you know how the '60s ended up. In the '70s.

  11. My quiet case project : it's an answer ... sort of by Prozzaks · · Score: 1 · on Building Quieter Computers

    Well, it seem these days, most of the power user just care to get something like 200fps in Quake III. Why ? Beat's me ! I'm not on a quest to get the ultimate frame rate, I just want my box to be quiet as possibly can be.

    To help you understand my take on the subject, here is the background :
    My PC has the following components :

    • A OEM case
    • A 235W OEM power supply
    • ASUS P3B-F
    • Intel Pentium II rated 400Mhz @ 400Mhz
    • A cheap OEM SECC2 Heat-Sink made of aluminum
    • A 128MB CAS2 no-name DIMM
    • Two 32MB CAS3 Samsung DIMM slowing down my memory timing, but preventing the appearance of the all mighty evil SwaP
    • A ATI All-In-Wonder Rage128 16MB
    • A Creative SoundBlaster Live! Value
    • A Realtek 8139 Ethernet NIC
    • My beloved USR 56Kbps ISA Real Modem. Sorry but to me a component that uses CPU power to do it's processing instead of taking the load off is not worthy of being in my computer. Not to mention the M$ Win part...
    • A Creative 48x CD-ROM drive. It's the loudest damned thing in my computer when it's spinning
    • A Quantum Fireball AS PLUS 40GB (7200RPM) in a removable tray
    • A Quantum Fireball CX1 10GB (5400RPM) mounted inside the case
    • Of course the stupid old 1.44 MB floppy drive only used for booting Tomsbrt in case of emergency

    Soon to be :

    • A Adaptec 2940UW
    • A Diamond Monster 3D II for Glide games

    It turn out that the Quantum Fireball AS makes less noise than the Quantum Fireball CX1. I still have to figure it out ...

    I use my PC for :

    • Running Linux and learning as much as time allows me (Jez I had so much time when I was a student... Think of all the time I wasted in High-School running the evil W monster)
    • Doing some gaming i.e. : Diablo II, Unreal, UT, Undying (Although that thing is going to cost me a new box)
    • Spending numerous nights filling my brain @ Slashdot, Tomshardware, Anandtech, Arstechnica, StorageReview, Developper.Intel.com, and most importantly, hounding the web for all the case manufacturers and their take at a quiet box.

    As I'm writing this post, that is probably going to be the base documentation for my Silent Case Project, you're guessing that my sleepless night of browsing have not yielded the desired result.

    I've check out many options such as water cooling, moving the PC to the closet, returning to the forest where a PC is pretty far from your everyday quest for survival. None of them suits me.

    The objective of my project is to build a case that meets the following criteria :

    • A silent as possible
    • Accessible
    • Provides sufficient ventilation to maintain all the components running within thermal specs
    • Be light enough to be easily transportable (Let's not forget the Lan parties ;-)

    To attain those goals I have to :

    • Read all I can about noise, sound, aerodynamics, PC specs
    • Find suitable materials : A case is not just a protection against unwanted fingers and dust ; it must provide EMI shielding, proper grounding, resist to impacts, and fit into my conception of the king of object you want in your bedroom (If you were thinking about plywood and a box of rusted leftover nails, forget it)
    • Find the tools or the companies or individuals with the means to work the materials I choose to build the casing

    For the sound isolation I was thinking about some kind of foam. Mineral lint would be affective but that takes too much space and it's not the kind of thing I want beside my bed. Form the casing itself, metal is almost inevitable if you want EMI shielding and grounding. And as for you who wonder why I have not mentioned water cooling yet, the greatest source of noise is not my CPU cooler and your just moving the problem out of the case (Nice ; you have water heating up but unless your reservoir is like a bathtub or something you will have to transfer the heat for the water to the air).

    That about as far as I am. If you have any idea that might help me, please fell free to send me some bits forming ASCII characters at Prozzaks@operamail.com

    To finish up, here is a list of thing that might help people wanting to achieve similar goals :

  12. NO MACS ??? by 6EQUJ5 · · Score: 3 · on SETI@home: Research on the Research


    I can't believe they didn't test any Mac platforms. Mac users are some of the most enthusiastic fans of SETI! Team MacAddict is #3 in the Club Competition , only behind Ars Technica and Team Art Bell. If fact they're almost tied with Team Art Bell, with only 5,000 users to Art Bell's 13,000 users !!

  13. Muppets and Spa'am... by Fortyseven · · Score: 1 · on Hormel Gracefully Concedes On SPAM vs. Spam
    This coming from the same company that put the screws to Jim Henson Productions because of a name dispute.

    Bastards.

  14. links for the lazy: by kEnder242 · · Score: 1 · on Diesel Cars - High-Tech Low Tech

    Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition

    http://www.me.berkeley.edu/~mctai/hcci.html
    http://www.ca.sandia.gov/CRF/03_facilities/03_FacH CCI-SCCI.html
    http://www.vok.lth.se/CE/research/hcci/i_HCCI_uk.h tml

  15. Re:huh? by First+Person · · Score: 2 · on Kubrick's AI Spawns Distributed Client / Cognition

    I concur.

    What I really want to know is what the point of this puzzle is. With SETI@Home, we know the odds are poor, but there is at least some noble purpose. With RC5-64, there may not be much real point (after all - we know it can eventually be broken) but the power of massively parallel efforts for code breaking is further demonstrated. With the Golomb Ruler task, the computing power is going to an immediately useful task.

    So, someone tell me, why do I want to waste cycles promoting someone else's movie???

  16. Echelon: (non?)existent as it is, should you care? by lptp · · Score: 1 · on The EU Report on the Echelon System
    Echelon - Should you care?

    For more then a decade, assumption has been that the Echelon network actually exists, and there's been lots of discussion about that. I'll save you another comment on it, and leave that to the European Commission's investigation team. One of the websites mentioned in a previous comment (New Scientist) states: "A new European Parliament document confirms the existence of a secretive US-led communications surveillance network, known as Echelon."

    What's far more concerning (IMHO) and pops up in the discussions far less often, is how relevant a network like Echelon might be. Therefore, let's have a look at the technical difficulties one would have to overcome. Try to imagine being the 'big bad board' (BBB) implementing a system that would monitor all the network traffic for, say, a company with 10000 employees on five locations throughout the United States (or, if you prefer, Europe, the Far- or Middle East, Africa...).
    Our first challenge would be deciding what network traffic is worth monitoring. Of course we're going to intercept all e-mail sent by our employees! Who knows what evil plans they're making up to throw over the BBB! On the other hand, we're proud to have the best educated employees in the region, so they're probably not stupid enough to use our own mail server for their evil purposes. They're likely using a hotmail account or the likes, so we're going to monitor all internet traffic on our networks too. In fact, we'd better watch all network traffic other than the use of our network shares and databases! So this thing is going to take up a lot of computing power!
    Now, we can't possibly install the hardware needed for our Big Brother Watchdog on every site so we'll have to tap into network traffic at all five locations, bundle it and send it to our headquarters, where the BBB will be pleased to see all the hardware and extra cabling installed. Jeez, that'll be a lot of network traffic flowing to our headquarters from now on!
    And of course, let's not ignore the faxes, telephone lines and the likes.

    Talking about 'all the hardware' ... one of the things still growing more and more popular are peer-to-peer networks and combining the computing power of numerous machines to achieve nearly impossible investigation goals. Some examples are the "United Devices Cancer Research Project", the Seti@home project, and the diverse Distributed.Net projects. Please, do have a look at some of these and consider the tasks they're working at. Trying to fit a molecular structure to a cancer helix, calculating the numerous combinations of a 21 mark Golomb ruler, or -possibly the best comparison- sifting through an incredible amount of interstellar radio noise to sift out signals sent out by ALF's (Artificial Life Forms as seen by US television - No, I'm not talking about the Jerry Springer show here): These tasks are the likes of what the Echelon network is supposed to do (i.e. filter enormous amounts of data, looking for certain keywords, possibly even decoding encrypted messages).
    Now look again! But this time, try to perceive the number of computers taking part in these projects, the total computing power involved, and the time needed to acquire the ultimate goal: a possible match on a cancer cure, the radio signal we wanted or an optimal Golomb Ruler. Quoting some of these statistics:
    • Distributed.Net, OGR project: Our current combined OGR network speed is 182.49 Giga-nodes per second
    • UD Cancer Research Project: 609,178 devices, 104,791,203 hours total CPU time
    • Seti@home: 3044035 users, 673412.833 years of computer time
    Looking at these statistics, let's reconsider the amount of computing power we'll need to sift through all this network traffic... Yeah, sure, even as a European from a pretty open-minded and at times unbelievably tolerant country (I'm talking about the Netherlands here), I do believe that any government (1) has the money to make sure they get the best technology available to date, (2) can make sure this technology will be available to them alone by issuing laws accordingly and (3) will use this technology to whatever purpose they want. Even with this 'knowledge' in mind, it's hard to perceive the amount of equipment that would be needed to filter and accumulate all the data on the internet, telephone networks, etcetera.
    And that's just accumulating the data - not even processing it yet! Looking back to our mass-computing statistics, and how little you can actually achieve in a certain amount of time, it dare say that, even with the most advanced linguistic filtering techniques and disregarding all non-human communication, it's impossible to sift through the amount of data we're talking about when it comes to Echelon. And off course, since we're all a least a little geeky here, we wouldn't be using ASCII for our secret communications, would we?
    Too bad for our BBB, but we simply can't put up enough computer power to do the monitoring we had in mind here. So as a company, we better just stick to checking our employers' e-mail...

    There's one more technical hurdle I'd like to point out here. When you intercept network traffic at the source, for instance listening to a single segment of a network, it's pretty easy to reassemble single-user communication from the entire data stream. But on the internet, thanks to the wonderful original design of the network, we can't be sure that all our data is taking the same path from client to host and vice versa. In fact, TCP/IP makes sure our data is split into little fragments, and that each fragment on it's own will be routed to it's destination. One of these routes may be a copper cable on the seabed, another will be fibre, the third might even take a little space trip bouncing to and from a satellite. Now: how to intercept and reassemble ALL that?

    In the EU (European Union - subst: UE, L'Union européenne) report the point I'm trying to make is stated as follows:
    "Today, various media are available for all forms of intercontinental communication (voice, fax and data). The scope for a worldwide interception system is restricted by two factors:
    • restricted access to the communication medium
    • the need to filter out the relevant communication from a huge mass of communications taking place at the same time."
    Some of the arguments mentioned above are also (albeit briefly) illustrated in the report. The (EU rapporteur's) assumption that the ability to analyse spoken language using a computer is still very limited may be naïve, the restrictions mentioned in the report ("the scope for filtering out is restricted by other factors: the ultimate capacity of the computers, the language problem and, above all, the limited number of analysts who can read and assess filtered messages.") remain intact.

    Concluding, I think we shouldn't be worried about BBG (Big Brother Governments / Big Bad Governments) listening in on our communications. Nevertheless, I support the EU rapporteur's conclusion: it's always a good idea to encrypt messages that you don't want to go public. Even if we disregard Echelon, all you need is a single geek on your network trying to get out some interesting information...

    Paranoia, anyone? Tell us!

  17. Re:hmmm, just like I've been saying all along by imipak · · Score: 2 · on SETI's Anti-Cheating Strategy
    The closed-source SETI@home client *was* hacked, several times, by people trying to get faster performance (not outright cheating)... the SETI folks went pretty ballistic when they found out, sadly they had to explain in very short words that science is about repeatable experiments, and that requires that all the data is processed in *exactly* the same way. Otherwise the parameter-space searched by the programme would be subtly skewed - for example, a faster algorithm might mean that signals at the far end of the gaussian spectrum they're looking at would be missed or included for only the hacked clients.

    However there are tons of unofficial add-ons that *are* allowed: see here at the SETI@home site.

    This and much more info in the unofficial SETI FAQ... infuritatingly, I've got a copy saved at home but can't find a link to it anywhere. (Think this was the Usenet FAQ.) Anyone?
    --
    "I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"

  18. Re: Why cheat? by N-Wing · · Score: 1 · on SETI's Anti-Cheating Strategy

    I thought I saw this question answered on the SETI@home page a while ago, but I can't find it now...

    The reason you gave, "I'm 3117", shouldn't be ruled out.
    There may also be some people (yes, I doubt this is common) that don't want to make alien contact, no matter what, so they would send false negatives - they would always want to send a "no pattern" in, even if there is an interesting signal. Yes, lame reason, but it isn't lame to the people that believe that.

  19. Attention Team Slashdot ! Let's Climb SETI Ranks ! by cybrpnk · · Score: 2 · on SETI's Anti-Cheating Strategy

    For those of you who don't know, there is a SETI@home team composed of Slashdot netizens here. There are currently almost 2200 members in Team Slashdot that have contributed 700,000+ work units to the SETI@home project, for a team rank of 17th. Teams from HP, IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Compaq and Sun are ahead of us! Personally, I'd like to see Team Slashdot show these slackers a thing or two about what nerds can do. A little effort by an individual goes a long way in Team Slashdot. I've got SETI@Home running full time on a crappy little Pentium computer that has churned out only 35+ units and has taken almost a year to do it, and I've still contributed more units than half the Team Slashdot members. I'm gonna upgrade my input to SETI@home. Join me! Let's get a discussion / confessional / pep rally going here about what we can do to upgrade the Team Slashdot effort for what we all agree is a worthy cause!

  20. Attention Team Slashdot ! Let's Climb SETI Ranks ! by cybrpnk · · Score: 2 · on SETI's Anti-Cheating Strategy

    For those of you who don't know, there is a SETI@home team composed of Slashdot netizens here. There are currently almost 2200 members in Team Slashdot that have contributed 700,000+ work units to the SETI@home project, for a team rank of 17th. Teams from HP, IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Compaq and Sun are ahead of us! Personally, I'd like to see Team Slashdot show these slackers a thing or two about what nerds can do. A little effort by an individual goes a long way in Team Slashdot. I've got SETI@Home running full time on a crappy little Pentium computer that has churned out only 35+ units and has taken almost a year to do it, and I've still contributed more units than half the Team Slashdot members. I'm gonna upgrade my input to SETI@home. Join me! Let's get a discussion / confessional / pep rally going here about what we can do to upgrade the Team Slashdot effort for what we all agree is a worthy cause!

  21. Equations *ARE* speech by Eric+Green · · Score: 2 · on Ask an Attorney About Open Source Licensing
    In case you haven't heard, scholarly works (which are full of the things) *ARE* speech. Under the First Amendment, the government can no more censor the equations describing the physics of nuclear explosions than they can censor somebody's political speech.

    A description of the program and what it does (i.e. source code), is just as much speech as a paper describing how to build an atomic bomb -- which, BTW, was a test case a few years back. See: http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/neutronics/todd/nuc.bo mb.html

    -E

  22. god damm this took to long to find. by jon_c · · Score: 1 · on Digital TV Approaches

    Here is the most technical paper I could find on the subject. it was NOT easy to find, anyway. It looks like (from 500 yards) a lot like SDMI's dingy.

    Along the search I also found another artical on the subject, though it's pretty damm old (like 98), it seems that's when the MPAA got interested in the idea.

    my option: fuck em' they can't stop people from recording what they have in their living room. However they can STOP via LAWYERS, that and people that can't offord to fight it, and that PISSES ME OFF

    -Jon

  23. Re:Yeah Lisp! by zorba1 · · Score: 1 · on Aaron: Computer Program And Artist (Maybe)

    To clarify, Lisp is the second oldest language still in use. I refer you to these comments:

    Fateman, 1998
    McCarthy, 1996
    Walker, 1997
    Reference to McCarthy and Lisp

  24. Bioinformatics Books by StevenBrenner · · Score: 2 · on Bioinformatics

    I am pleased to see O'Reilly's entrance to the field, as well as the interest on Slashdot.

    My research group studies computational genomics, and I teach two classes in the field. For this reason, I've scoured the earth for suitable books on the topic.

    I have put together a list of 36 books on computational biology. Most of these are suitable only to niche interests, outdated, or simply bad -- and many are intended for the Llama crowd. I've reviewed several proposals for new books, so I expect the offerings to become stronger in the next year or so. Those desiring a brief introduction to the field might want to look at the Trends Guide to Bioinformatics (free, registration required; disclaimer: I was a guest editor). It's intended for biologists, but should be readable by /.ers.

  25. Re:Binary File Version Control - problems with it by ryants · · Score: 2 · on Version Control for Documentation?
    a binary diff will result in a file larger than the two original files.

    That's not true. I used xdelta on two ~180 MB binary files that were quite different, and it made a ~500K patch.

    Ryan T. Sammartino

  26. University of Toronto marking policies... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1 · on Technology vs. Cheating at the University of Virginia

    At the University of Toronto, a program called MOSS (Measure of Software Similarity), which was designed by the UC Berkeley Computer Science department, is used to compare programs submitted by computer science students. Here's an article that was posted at the UofT website some time ago:

    http://www.newsandevents.utoronto.ca/bin/000228g.a sp

    Personally, I was in an Introduction to Computer Science class last semester (CSC108H), and it was quite obvious that certain students were plagiarizing work. Luckily for those students, that specific assignment was not MOSSed. We were warned from the first day that we should not copy, even to the extent that if we were discussing a certain assignment with a friend, that we not take notes and go and watch television or something afterwards so that the slightest hint of code would not creep into a students assignment. From what I understand, however, some students were caught when some other assignment was MOSSed. Even all the assignments are submitted by FTP and date stamped so that the late submissions would be identified.

    It is quite funny though, those students that didn't seem to know much got a nice welcomed surprise on the midterm (which was quite easy if you knew what you were doing). But, even the MOSS program has its weaknesses. Basically, the trick to avoid its search schemes is to change the runtime of your code. Change certain loops around (eg: a for loop to a while loop), and move certain portions of code from one place to another. Heck, even throw in some extra "useless" methods that accomplish the same thing. Though, if a student were to take time doing that, they might as well write their own code. It's really funny how some students do amazingly well on their assignments, but have a "bad day" and barely pass the midterm and final exam. Unfortunately, there were quite a number of those in my class.

    A friend of mine once told me, "the system forces you to cheat". That may be true sometimes...though I'm quite content doing my own work I got a 4.0 in CSC108H by the way :)

  27. Re:Only one thing shocked me by gremio · · Score: 1 · on Technology vs. Cheating at the University of Virginia

    For code similarity (Computer Science applications), there is an excellent piece of software from UC Berkeley called MOSS. For the kind of text similarity this guy was doing, you don't have to home-grow your software either. Just look at findsame. Both use some rather sophisticated algorithms.

    As with security through obscurity, cheating detectors need to do only well enough that fooling them is more work than doing your own work. A six-word match doesn't meet that criterion. I'm not surprised that he didn't find many matches this year, but I'd be surprised if some students didn't get around the check by, say, changing tense throughout the passage.

    Preventing cheating should of course be easier than prosecuting it. Smaller class size, with instructors teaching somewhat different --more up to date-- material is more expensive, but better for the students; I have a feeling that if the instructor thus knows her students and is percieved to care whether they learn, that they will be less likely to cheat.

    Good job to the students for teaching their prof a hard lesson -- he needs to care and be involved. Kudos to the prof for caring and going after them.

    Gremio

    --

  28. Moss by Ratcrow · · Score: 1 · on Technology vs. Cheating at the University of Virginia
    UC Berkeley offers a service (Moss: Measure of Software Similarity) that allows programs written in many languages (C/C++, ML, LISP, ADA, Pascal, Scheme) to be automatically examined and the results mailed back. It actually parses out the code and looks for matching parse trees, so regardless of changes in indenting or variable names, people who cheat show up with a high correlation. It also nicely formats all of the results (color-coded, even) to allow for lines of similar code to be compared head-to-head. It offers features such as being able to specify a base file that others were derived from, and particular patterns to expect to see often that should not be flagged.

    This is not enough to accuse people of cheating, but it is certainly a good way to find papers that should be examined more closely. When I have graded papers, I usually catch everything that Moss does, but it is nice to know I haven't missed anything.

    Programs like this will only become more common. I, for one, am glad; if people who are not willing to do work are barred from getting a BS or MS degree, then it makes my own degrees mean a little more.

  29. Re:Writing Programs Rather Than Papers by Miles · · Score: 1 · on Technology vs. Cheating at the University of Virginia
    There are a number of programs you could use to do this. I even thought about using/creating one when I was a TA in computer science. For an online Java one, check out:

    UCSB's site.


    Berkeley also has their MOSS, which TA's and prof's may have heard of:
    http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~aiken/moss.html.


    I think it probably takes a look at a pseudo-compiled version. That's what I'd do, anyhow.

    Andrew.

  30. Encrypted Steg since 1996 by nealborring · · Score: 1 · on The Rise of Steganography

    Technically this is old news. But with all of the mp3s that are available today. Now you've got a sufficient pile of bits to place a good encrypted stegn'd fs. From a social point of view NOW its news. Get howtos and samples at Cypherpunks

  31. Re:Taking the good with the bad by leandrod · · Score: 1 · on XML Schema a W3C Recommendation

    > relational databases will be around for a long time to come

    That is, whenever they arrive they will be around for a long time. Up to now I know of no fully relational database or DBMS, apart from BS12 and perhaps Quel and Leap.


    > it's clear that no automated solution exists that will optimize performance in every case

    Performance is not the only issue, not even the biggest one: data access path independence and data integrity are bigger ones, and more fundamental.

    The problem is that up to this day no one fully implemented relational theory in a modern system, nor proposed a better theory than the relational one.


    --
    Leandro Guimarães Faria Corsetti Dutra
    DBA, SysAdmin
  32. Re:Chances of Finding Extraterrestrial life by Chris+Brewer · · Score: 4 · on Gordon Moore On Moore's Law

    According to the Drake equation, the number of communicable civilisations in the galaxy increases by one per year of our looking.

    Explanation here
    --

  33. Re:Wireless security is an iffy proposition at bes by hillct · · Score: 5 · on Hacking Wireless 802.11b Nets

    Here's the berkeley study on WEP security:
    http://www.isaac.cs.berkeley.edu/isaac/wep-faq.htm l
    ---

  34. All the world's information would fit inside... by gojomo · · Score: 5 · on 1TB In A Cubic Centimeter
    OK, if you can get 1 terabyte inside a 1-cubic-centimeter volume...

    ...and according to this UC-Berkeley study, the world produces about 1.5 billion gigabytes (1.5 million terabytes) of information each year...

    Then, you could fit the entire world's yearly production of information inside a cube that measured...

    cube-root(1.5 million) ~= 115 cm

    ..per side. That is, not as long in any dimension as most slashdot readers are tall, and only 1.5 cubic meters in total volume.

    (OK, so how about we create a couple of these every year, and launch them into space, just in case something goes horribly awry with our planet?)

  35. Media size isn't the real issue by KFury · · Score: 5 · on 1TB In A Cubic Centimeter

    Sure, ten or even five years ago, media size was really important, but as bandwidth increases the information bottleneck is the cost of data storage, and the speed of data transmission.

    A terabyte ina sugarcube is terriffic, but not because I'll be able to put a box that can read it on my desktop in 10 years, it's because I'll be able to control a couple hundred gigs on a server somewhere, or even better, everywhere (like OceanStore), because the cost of the hardware is distributed, much like the internet compared to dialup BBSes of the '80s.

    One of the supercool things about the net is that I'm using the latest expensive hardware every day when my packets are routed through gigabit routers and fiber-optic backbones. I don't have to pay for it like I did the long-distance copper wire when I called BBSes across the country.

    Storage will continue to follow the same trend, where the terabyte and exabyte drive complexes will serve my storage needs, and not some primitive box I plug into my computer and have to upgrade every year or two.

    Kevin Fox
    --

  36. setiathome runs informix by faithhopeandcharity · · Score: 1 · on IBM To Purchase Informix Database

    I have been watching the tech reports on the setiathome site to see how the db would handle the load. Nice of them to donate to the effort, and provide tech support.

  37. Re:Timely Question by Enigma2175 · · Score: 1 · on Whatever Happened to Internet Redundancy?

    Actually, I think you may be confusing this outage with the outage affecting Setiathome which was caused by copper thieves. From the website:
    Around 11:00 GMT (3:00am PST) on Tuesday, February 27, 2001, network fibers were broken, cutting off the entire Space Sciences Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley Labs from the internet. It turns out this was the work of vandals who cut the fiber in the process of gathering a bunch of expensive copper wire.


    Enigma

  38. Gestures by landay · · Score: 1 · on Opera Adds Gesture Navigation
    Gestural input using a mouse or pen is not very new and has been around since at least the mid-80s (e.g., see work by Bill Buxton's group at Toronto). It could be argued that Sutherland's SketchPad used gestures way back in the early 60s.

    The key advantage of gestures is that the user can specify a command and an operand all in the same motion. It takes less cognition than making a selection and then going to a menu/palette to select a command.

    They are quite useful for pen-based devices, which have made a comeback in the last few years, but can be hard to learn for beginners. One innovation is marking menus, which pop-up a pie menu if you move the mouse slowly, but if you move quickly the pie menu never pops up and the resulting mouse movement is simply a gesture (for the expert).

    We have created several research systems at Berkeley that use gestures (e.g., DENIM, a sketch-based web design tool.) We have also created tools and toolkits for creating gesture-based applications. Quill is a tool for training a popular gesture-recognition algorithm (by Rubine) that you could then easily incorporate in your own Java applications (our release includes Rubine's algorithm). SATIN is a toolkit for creating pen-based applications and includes hooks for the recognizers and pen-aware widgets like pie-menus.

    All of our code is open source, so feel free to download any of these systems or the source, try them out, and tell us what you think.

    James

  39. Gestures by landay · · Score: 1 · on Opera Adds Gesture Navigation
    Gestural input using a mouse or pen is not very new and has been around since at least the mid-80s (e.g., see work by Bill Buxton's group at Toronto). It could be argued that Sutherland's SketchPad used gestures way back in the early 60s.

    The key advantage of gestures is that the user can specify a command and an operand all in the same motion. It takes less cognition than making a selection and then going to a menu/palette to select a command.

    They are quite useful for pen-based devices, which have made a comeback in the last few years, but can be hard to learn for beginners. One innovation is marking menus, which pop-up a pie menu if you move the mouse slowly, but if you move quickly the pie menu never pops up and the resulting mouse movement is simply a gesture (for the expert).

    We have created several research systems at Berkeley that use gestures (e.g., DENIM, a sketch-based web design tool.) We have also created tools and toolkits for creating gesture-based applications. Quill is a tool for training a popular gesture-recognition algorithm (by Rubine) that you could then easily incorporate in your own Java applications (our release includes Rubine's algorithm). SATIN is a toolkit for creating pen-based applications and includes hooks for the recognizers and pen-aware widgets like pie-menus.

    All of our code is open source, so feel free to download any of these systems or the source, try them out, and tell us what you think.

    James

  40. Gestures by landay · · Score: 1 · on Opera Adds Gesture Navigation
    Gestural input using a mouse or pen is not very new and has been around since at least the mid-80s (e.g., see work by Bill Buxton's group at Toronto). It could be argued that Sutherland's SketchPad used gestures way back in the early 60s.

    The key advantage of gestures is that the user can specify a command and an operand all in the same motion. It takes less cognition than making a selection and then going to a menu/palette to select a command.

    They are quite useful for pen-based devices, which have made a comeback in the last few years, but can be hard to learn for beginners. One innovation is marking menus, which pop-up a pie menu if you move the mouse slowly, but if you move quickly the pie menu never pops up and the resulting mouse movement is simply a gesture (for the expert).

    We have created several research systems at Berkeley that use gestures (e.g., DENIM, a sketch-based web design tool.) We have also created tools and toolkits for creating gesture-based applications. Quill is a tool for training a popular gesture-recognition algorithm (by Rubine) that you could then easily incorporate in your own Java applications (our release includes Rubine's algorithm). SATIN is a toolkit for creating pen-based applications and includes hooks for the recognizers and pen-aware widgets like pie-menus.

    All of our code is open source, so feel free to download any of these systems or the source, try them out, and tell us what you think.

    James

  41. Re:How about a laptop uptime with a factor of 10? by shumacher · · Score: 2 · on New Batteries Promise 2.5 Times Longer Uptime
    Brilliant. Really. There are a few problems and considerations with using a rotary like the one in the site you mentioned.

    It would be loud. Internal combustion engines are loud to begin with, but wankels are damn loud, mostly because there is no valve train on the exhaust side serving to muffle the sound.

    The lack of a valve train also means the exhaust gases are very, very hot.

    While the wankel isn't itself the cleanest burning design, it does tend to lend itself well to use with cleaner fuels, like hydrogen. Hydrogen tends to be a tricky fuel because it can be prone to igniting as soon as it hits the hot cylinder of a traditional piston engine. With a rotary, the intake portion of the engine stays cool, and the combustion takes place elsewhere, avoiding preignition.

    Wankels also tend be very smooth when running at higher rpms.

    Traditional fuel and lubrication systems tend to be very sensitive to being turned upside down. That means fuel injection and dry sump lubrication more than likely, and that tends to mean there will have to be a bit of pressure in both those systems.

    Maintainance. Most current wankel designs I've seen burn lubricant because of the large swept area in the combustion chamber. Not only does that mean emissions, it also means you'll need to refill the lubricant.

    I could see that engine built into a generator the size of a laptop battery, but I don't think it will ever actually fit in the laptop. It will probably be rather noisy, and I suspect it will be a specialized product. It would, for example, be perfect for satillite phones, backpackers, just about any electronics on a sailboat, and of course, it would make a great UPS.

  42. Re:How about a laptop uptime with a factor of 10? by Snotboble_ · · Score: 1 · on New Batteries Promise 2.5 Times Longer Uptime

    Oops, I better add that you need to click on the MEMS link - or just click here :-)

  43. How about a laptop uptime with a factor of 10? by Snotboble_ · · Score: 2 · on New Batteries Promise 2.5 Times Longer Uptime

    I stumbled across this link today; micro engines to replace batteries.
    quote:
    An important asset of the internal combustion engine is the high energy density of liquid hydrocarbon fuels - approximately 30 times greater than that of the best batteries.
    and
    The "mini"-rotary has a generating radius of 5.5mm and a depth of 3.63mm, which gives the engine a displacement of 77.5mm3, or about 1/64th the displacement of the smallest commercially available rotary engine. A second-generation "mini"-rotary engine has been fabricated and tested, and it has produced approximately 0.5W at 3000rpm.
    Imagine an engine scaled at battery size. What can I say? Power to the people! :-)

  44. Setting up a 802.11 network by cje · · Score: 5 · on The Myriad Ways of Wiring Your Home?

    I've got some experience with setting up a wireless home network, and here are some of the things that I discovered. First of all, my general setup: I've got a ZyXEL Prestige 642 DSL router that I wanted to share between several machines, most notably a Dell laptop that I wanted to network wirelessly. The first thing that I did was buy a 5-port Linksys 10/100-BaseT autosensing Ethernet hub; I had been running the DSL router straight into my main desktop PC's NIC with a crossover cable. Now there's a hub, so the ground work is done.

    The first thing you'll need is (obviously) a wireless access point. For this, I would recommend the Linksys WAP 11 wireless NAP. This is an inexpensive (~$240) piece of equipment that has worked flawlessly for me thus far. There are more expensive and more capable access points, but IMHO you can't go wrong with this one, at least for a home setup. Note that this access point is a straight pass-through; it does not do DHCP or anything like that. For me, this isn't an issue because my DSL router acts as a DHCP server.

    Some more notes about the WAP11: it comes "out of the box" configured with an IP address of 192.168.1.250. Again, this was fine for me since my home network is 192.168.*.* based. Obviously, this can be changed, but the provided configuration software is Windows-only. You can configure the unit either by plugging in the provided USB cable and running the USB-based configuration program, or you can do it via a SNMP-based configuration client. Oh, and before I forget .. the access point needs to be plugged into either a 10BaseT or an autosensing 10/100BaseT hub! It will not work with a 100BaseT-only hub!

    Okay, so now you've got an access point plugged into your network hub. The next thing you need is a wireless card. If you're networking a laptop, grab a Lucent ORiNOCO 802.11 Silver PC card. Linksys makes its own wireless PC card, and if you're buying the Linksys access point, you may be tempted to buy the same brand for the PC card. Don't. Linksys's card works fine, but its range is limited; it is far less than what they advertise. The radio that the Lucent cards use is far, far better. Many people have reported tripling their ranges when switching from the Linksys to the Lucent card.

    I've had no problems with the Lucent card. Hell, they even include the source code for Linux drivers on the installation CD! The Linux driver you're looking for is "wavelan2_cs", and it supports 64-bit WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) (40-bit, actually) encryption. For the sake of full disclosure, however, it should be pointed out that WEP's security is under fire (expanded PDF version)

    In general, if you're looking for raw speed, you're not going to get it with 802.11b (or, at least, you aren't going to get wired speeds.) For me, I mainly use my network to surf the Internet, and my DSL downstream bandwidth maxes out at 1 Mbps or so .. anything above that is frosting on the cake. 802.11b offers a theoretical maximum bandwidth of 11Mbps, but in practice you'll probably get half that, even if you're in the immediate vicinity of the access point. If all you're looking to do is be able to sit out in your backyard and read Slashdot, that's probably more than sufficient. If you need 100Mbps+ speeds to your local machines, you need to drill some holes and run some cable. Personally, I think the wireless cards are just plain fun. I can read Slashdot from the neighbor's yard, for Christ's sake. :-)

  45. Setting up a 802.11 network by cje · · Score: 5 · on The Myriad Ways of Wiring Your Home?

    I've got some experience with setting up a wireless home network, and here are some of the things that I discovered. First of all, my general setup: I've got a ZyXEL Prestige 642 DSL router that I wanted to share between several machines, most notably a Dell laptop that I wanted to network wirelessly. The first thing that I did was buy a 5-port Linksys 10/100-BaseT autosensing Ethernet hub; I had been running the DSL router straight into my main desktop PC's NIC with a crossover cable. Now there's a hub, so the ground work is done.

    The first thing you'll need is (obviously) a wireless access point. For this, I would recommend the Linksys WAP 11 wireless NAP. This is an inexpensive (~$240) piece of equipment that has worked flawlessly for me thus far. There are more expensive and more capable access points, but IMHO you can't go wrong with this one, at least for a home setup. Note that this access point is a straight pass-through; it does not do DHCP or anything like that. For me, this isn't an issue because my DSL router acts as a DHCP server.

    Some more notes about the WAP11: it comes "out of the box" configured with an IP address of 192.168.1.250. Again, this was fine for me since my home network is 192.168.*.* based. Obviously, this can be changed, but the provided configuration software is Windows-only. You can configure the unit either by plugging in the provided USB cable and running the USB-based configuration program, or you can do it via a SNMP-based configuration client. Oh, and before I forget .. the access point needs to be plugged into either a 10BaseT or an autosensing 10/100BaseT hub! It will not work with a 100BaseT-only hub!

    Okay, so now you've got an access point plugged into your network hub. The next thing you need is a wireless card. If you're networking a laptop, grab a Lucent ORiNOCO 802.11 Silver PC card. Linksys makes its own wireless PC card, and if you're buying the Linksys access point, you may be tempted to buy the same brand for the PC card. Don't. Linksys's card works fine, but its range is limited; it is far less than what they advertise. The radio that the Lucent cards use is far, far better. Many people have reported tripling their ranges when switching from the Linksys to the Lucent card.

    I've had no problems with the Lucent card. Hell, they even include the source code for Linux drivers on the installation CD! The Linux driver you're looking for is "wavelan2_cs", and it supports 64-bit WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) (40-bit, actually) encryption. For the sake of full disclosure, however, it should be pointed out that WEP's security is under fire (expanded PDF version)

    In general, if you're looking for raw speed, you're not going to get it with 802.11b (or, at least, you aren't going to get wired speeds.) For me, I mainly use my network to surf the Internet, and my DSL downstream bandwidth maxes out at 1 Mbps or so .. anything above that is frosting on the cake. 802.11b offers a theoretical maximum bandwidth of 11Mbps, but in practice you'll probably get half that, even if you're in the immediate vicinity of the access point. If all you're looking to do is be able to sit out in your backyard and read Slashdot, that's probably more than sufficient. If you need 100Mbps+ speeds to your local machines, you need to drill some holes and run some cable. Personally, I think the wireless cards are just plain fun. I can read Slashdot from the neighbor's yard, for Christ's sake. :-)

  46. Re:Our own signals??? by Donwulff · · Score: 2 · on Explaining SETI
    Unfortunately SETI@home and SETI-like searches in general are typically very tight-lipped about their actual capabilities. Somewhere on SETI@home's pages I recall reading that with their latest "science additions" (More complex calculations in the client) they're now able to distinquish the equivalent of a cellular phone used on the surface of Mars. Whether this would actually be noticed and flagged as an intelligent signal is anybodys guess, though: By now SETI@home has "distinquished" over three hundred million events of interest.

    SETI@home offers some other statistics asked after here. Their FAQ circles the issue a bit, but finally admits in essence that SETI@home is unable to detect Earth-level technology even on the closest stars. (And there's no guarantee beyond-Earth civilizations still use radio-frequencies - in fact odds are against it). Their latest "Science Newsletter" just happens to discuss the separation of intelligent signals from noise as well, but leaves pretty hazy impression.

    Other wisdom gleamed from the SETI@home web-site includes the notion that the projects budget so-far has been $500.000, and they're capable of detecting signals tenth of the strength of best other SETI projects - which scan wider frequencies and typically concentrate on the likely locations, though.

  47. Re:Our own signals??? by Donwulff · · Score: 2 · on Explaining SETI
    Unfortunately SETI@home and SETI-like searches in general are typically very tight-lipped about their actual capabilities. Somewhere on SETI@home's pages I recall reading that with their latest "science additions" (More complex calculations in the client) they're now able to distinquish the equivalent of a cellular phone used on the surface of Mars. Whether this would actually be noticed and flagged as an intelligent signal is anybodys guess, though: By now SETI@home has "distinquished" over three hundred million events of interest.

    SETI@home offers some other statistics asked after here. Their FAQ circles the issue a bit, but finally admits in essence that SETI@home is unable to detect Earth-level technology even on the closest stars. (And there's no guarantee beyond-Earth civilizations still use radio-frequencies - in fact odds are against it). Their latest "Science Newsletter" just happens to discuss the separation of intelligent signals from noise as well, but leaves pretty hazy impression.

    Other wisdom gleamed from the SETI@home web-site includes the notion that the projects budget so-far has been $500.000, and they're capable of detecting signals tenth of the strength of best other SETI projects - which scan wider frequencies and typically concentrate on the likely locations, though.

  48. Re:Poor justification by ek_adam · · Score: 1 · on Explaining SETI

    Spinoffs? How about the SETI@Home Project popularizing distributed computing? Sure the idea was around for a long time, but SETI@Home brought it to the masses.

  49. Panty raid as expression of free speech? by DoorFrame · · Score: 2 · on Free Speech Movement Digital Archive
    Don't really know, but I just found this picture in the archive with the caption: "Barrington Hall Panty Raiders". Free speech never felt so good.

    --

  50. Re:Looking for pictures... failing by DoorFrame · · Score: 2 · on Free Speech Movement Digital Archive
    Hmm, ok. I found this. Good, but I want more. Are photographs really too much to ask for?

    --