Slashdot Mirror

They did. Lovelock's "Gaia theory" approach has been greeted pretty skeptically by scientists, who've pointed out that in simple forms it's trivial, and in stronger forms it's unfalsifiable. The new-agey spiritual aspect of it hasn't been popular, either.

Here is a frequently cited 1989 paper that describes it as "untestable, and if taken literally as a basis for research, potentially misleading... ill-defined, unparsimonious, and unfalsifiable".

Java floating point management is flawed by design. Using java for controlling anything serious opens up a Pandora box: just look at this (and look here if you don't know dr. Kahan)

Using *any* floating point for anything serious opens Pandora's box.

That't why universities teach all those fantsy courses in numerical processing.

Java floating point management is flawed by design. Using java for controlling anything serious opens up a Pandora box: just look at this (and look here if you don't know dr. Kahan)

Using *any* floating point for anything serious opens Pandora's box.

That't why universities teach all those fantsy courses in numerical processing.

Java floating point management is flawed by design. Using java for controlling anything serious opens up a Pandora box: just look at this (and look here if you don't know dr. Kahan)

Java floating point management is flawed by design. Using java for controlling anything serious opens up a Pandora box: just look at this (and look here if you don't know dr. Kahan)

http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Programs/two_ways.html

The Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) major is housed in the College of Engineering and culminates in a Bachelor's of Science degree.
The Computer Science (CS) major is housed in the College of Letters and Science and culminates in a Bachelor's of Arts degree.

I think it's worth noting that the new malicious applications found by McAfee researchers were video trailer applications that overtly requested the READ_PHONE_STATE and READ_CONTACTS permissions at install time.

While it's clear that users have limited comprehension of the permissions requested at install time (for instance see: Android Permissions: User Attention, Comprehension, and Behavior) it is rather suspicious that a trailer application require access to your contact list. From the sounds of it the malware doesn't do much other than siphon off your contact list & some identifying information (Android ID & phone number).

Should it be removed from the Android market? Yes. Is it the best example of subversive Android applications? Probably not.

Actually, the networks used in Network-on-Chips are quite unlike the networks used for TCP/IP. For example, when you develop a System-on-Chip you have a very good idea of your workload, so you can optimize the network topology based on that information. The networks proposed in NoC research typically also have other features not found on the Internet such as guaranteed and in-order delivery of packets. (Which is fairly easy to do in a small network with low latencies.) In many cases you can also reserve bandwidth between nodes so that you can give real-time guarantees. However, in some systems circuit-switching may be better than packet switching, although most researchers seem to focus on packet-switching NoCs.

A good paper to read for an introduction to NoCs is "Route Packets, Not Wires: On-Chip Interconnection Networks" by Dally and Towles. (You can find it at http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~vwen/backgrnd_papers/41_4.pdf if you are interested.)

Anyway, the basic idea behind a NoC is that it is a good trade-off between the two extremes of a bus and a cross-bar. If you implement a chip with just a single bus on it, the silicon-area used for communication will be very low, but the bandwidth will also be relatively low. On the other hand, if you create a huge cross-bar to which every module is connected to, the silicon area used for communication is extremely high (the area for a cross-bar grows quadratically with the number of ports), although the theoretical maximum bandwidth is also very high. In most systems, the optimum point will be somewhere in between, where you have several buses and/or cross-bars connected by a network.

but can not accept cosmology/evolution on a scientific basis until we are advanced enough to either create our own universes to observe We have one, and evolution hasn't stopped 6000 years ago you fool. Look at that : http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/search/topicbrowse2.php?topic_id=52

There's several for MacOS Classic.

Several Trojans, Worms, etc for OSX. Virus in the classic form? Some proof-of-concepts here and there.

For a blast from the past:
http://ftp.cerias.purdue.edu/pub/tools/mac/mac-virus-list.txt (speaking about Mac viruses from the 1980's)

Interesting read on creation of malicious software targeting OSX:
https://www.securelist.com/en/analysis/204791948/Mac_OS_X

A list of baddies for MacOS Classic and OSX:
http://www.iantivirus.com/threats/

Also interesting:
http://lscr.berkeley.edu/archive/mail/magnet/2004/0418.html

And then there's this:
http://www.forbes.com/2006/02/16/apple-osx-virus-cx_po_0216autofacescan09.html

This was amusing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sf6_sPkMupA

I'm sure there's lots more if I care to dig.

http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~lhom/organictext.html

Contrary to what most people believe, "organic" does not automatically mean "pesticide-free" or "chemical-free". In fact, under the laws of most states, organic farmers are allowed to use a wide variety of chemical sprays and powders on their crops.

So what does organic mean? It means that these pesticides, if used, must be derived from natural sources, not synthetically manufactured. Also, these pesticides must be applied using equipment that has not been used to apply any synthetic materials for the past three years, and the land being planted cannot have been treated with synthetic materials for that period either.

Most organic farmers (and even some conventional farmers, too) employ mechanical and cultural tools to help control pests. These include insect traps, careful crop selection (there are a growing number of disease-resistant varieties), and biological controls (such as predator insects and beneficial microorganisms).

ORGANIC PRODUCE AND PERSONAL HEALTH
When you test synthetic chemicals for their ability to cause cancer, you find that about half of them are carcinogenic.

Until recently, nobody bothered to look at natural chemicals (such as organic pesticides), because it was assumed that they posed little risk. But when the studies were done, the results were somewhat shocking: you find that about half of the natural chemicals studied are carcinogenic as well.

This is a case where everyone (consumers, farmers, researchers) made the same, dangerous mistake. We assumed that "natural" chemicals were automatically better and safer than synthetic materials, and we were wrong. It's important that we be more prudent in our acceptance of "natural" as being innocuous and harmless.

The journalist is making it harder to understand what is going on.

IANAP but here's how I understand it thanks to google.

First, 85 tesla have been generated for very short instants in the lab so the article is wrong in saying 60 tesla is higher than ever achieved.

Graphene forms a two-dimensional lattice surface like a chicken wire fence.
For each molecule of graphene a single electron sticks out from the surface.
These electrons are free to hop around to other atoms.
In fact they act just like particles that have no mass and can travel at 1% of the speed of light. These quasiparticles are called massless dirac fermions. A fermion is a particle with certain properties, the nucles of a helium atom being one kind of fermion.
Electrons travelling at relativistic speeds is not earth shattering since that is what happens in gold atoms too. But the point is the electrons are free to sweep through the lattice without hindrance, and that if you can control the way the electrons move, you can control the apparent properties of the quasiparticles.

In 2010 Francisco Guinea in Madrid predicted that stretching graphene along all the axes of it crystal structure will make the electrons act as if subjected to a magnetic field.
http://www.gizmag.com/straining-graphene-creates-strong-pseudo-magnetic-fields/15891/
http://physics.berkeley.edu/research/zettl/pdf/386.Science.329-Levy.pdf

In July 2010 Michael Crommie proved the prediction, by growing bubbles of stretched graphene that stick up like pyramids from the platinum surface they were grown on. The electrons acted as if they were subjected to 300 tesla fields.
This technique works at room temperature.

The paper mentioned by the OP talks about designer Dirac fermions which means that you can create quasiparticles possessing the characteristics you desire by simply moving atoms around so they make electrons move in the way necessary to make the quasiparticles appear to exist. You can thereby freely mess with simulated mass, electrical and magnetic fields, etc. which might be very useful.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v483/n7389/full/nature10941.html

The technique used in the OP experiment is low temperature and nanoscale. But based on Crommie's work it should not be hard to imagine processes in the future that could allow similar structures to be built quickly on a larger scale.

This is an exciting a relatively new field of research apparently but breathless reports using terms like designer babies or designer electrons when it is really designer quasiparticles, and saying that the fabric of reality is being messed with, is just distracting and does not help people who are not prepared to dive into the actual research paper to find out what is going on.

Citation for the parent: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/329/5999/

n.b. the work [1] by Müller, Chu et al is related, but different, and the interpretation is strongly contested (e.g. [2])
[1] http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2010/02/17/gravitational_redshift/
[2] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v467/n7311/full/nature09340.html

However, pre Korean war only 15 to 20% of of soldiers in close qurarters fired their weapons. http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/hope_on_the_battlefield/

Those who are violent enough to kill are a pretty small number, percentage wise. And nobody would blame a solder for shooting at a soldier that was firing at him.

Being able to deliberately kill a fellow human being is a somewhat rare ability.

However, the US military addressed that problem, and the rates rose past 90% in Vietnam. Before that, soldiers would often fire over the heads of their enemies. According to Lt. Col. Dave Grossman in his books "On Combat" and "On Killing," their training methods changed to include replacing stationary round targets with man-shaped silhouette targets that moved, exposed themselves, and fell when hit. This training overcame natural tendencies to avoid killing and instead posture and display when competing with other members of the same species (think lions and wolves wrestling instead of tearing throats out during mating season). There's a natural 2% or so that don't have this conditioning and will kill without compunction. He also points out that a majority of airplane kills were accomplished by around 10% of the fighter pilots. He also says that violence, vigilantism, and anti-heros in movies, TV, and video games also provides this training to break the natural conditioning not to kill one's own species. He says that while the rates of murder have dropped, the aggravated assault (attacks with deadly weapons/attempted murders) has stayed steady or increased. This indicates not a drop in violence but an increase in medical technology and transportation that makes formerly mortal wounds survivable.

However, pre Korean war only 15 to 20% of of soldiers in close qurarters fired their weapons. http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/hope_on_the_battlefield/

Those who are violent enough to kill are a pretty small number, percentage wise. And nobody would blame a solder for shooting at a soldier that was firing at him.

Being able to deliberately kill a fellow human being is a somewhat rare ability.

It really depends on 'to where you measure' and 'under what conditions' and 'what technology'. EG, satellite broadband will just have bad latency, period. Its the nature of the beast. And cellular/wireless can vary all over the place.

But for fixed, land-line connections? I'd say well under 50ms of latency for the last hop, so perhaps 125ms latency max to an in-ISP test server (giving them the benefit of the doubt and assuming 75 ms latency to their test server because its somewhere in the middle of the US).

However, this is 'no traffic' latency: if you are doing a file transfer, BitTorrent, etc, the bad buffering in many networks can make the latency under load much much much worse.

It is also "no WiFi latency": your WiFi connection can introduce all sorts of problems, including bottlenecks etc. So it should be the latency you see when plugged into the wall.

Two other resources I'd recommend you look at: Ookla's Speedtest.net, which is a very good speed tester for latency and bandwidth, and Netalyzr, which is a very comprehensive network tester.

Whoa, 1cm sounds pretty darned big for a flea. That's about the same size as a typical bee.

That can't be right [places thumb and forefinger about a cm apart], let me check that. Ok so I couldn't persuade a bee to let me measure him but I did find a link that says they are double that at about 2cm: http://nature.berkeley.edu/urbanbeegardens/research_regional.html

Jees, I can't believe I looked that fact up, pathetic!! :-)

Nice! See also: http://journalism.berkeley.edu/projects/biplog/archive/000431.html

Berkeley is doing similarly cool stuff in their Biomimetic Millisystems Lab .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servowriter

http://www.me.berkeley.edu/~horowitz/Publications_files/All_papers_numbered/186c_Nie_ACC10_TutorialonSSTW.pdf

The day after 9/11, my boss was scheduled to lecture undergrads. He talked about the idea of using terrain maps to prevent planes from flying in to buildings. The system is called Softwalls, which was discussed on Slashdot. The really interesting thing about this is how strongly pilots and others objected. There is a FAQ that covers common objections.

The day after 9/11, my boss was scheduled to lecture undergrads. He talked about the idea of using terrain maps to prevent planes from flying in to buildings. The system is called Softwalls, which was discussed on Slashdot. The really interesting thing about this is how strongly pilots and others objected. There is a FAQ that covers common objections.

Yes the concept dates back to the 80's

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Processor-in-memory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Berkeley_IRAM_Project
http://iram.cs.berkeley.edu/

This is not just about putting DRAM and a CPU on the same chip while keeping the architecture of both unchanged.
This is about how computer architecture is effected by the possibility of implementing both on the same chip.

Dave Patterson noted in the nineties that the number of DRAM chips per computer went down with time. He predicted that DRAM
will become large enough soon that at least the memory for a single process will fit into one chip soon. At that point it is unecessary
slow and power consuming to move the data to the CPU and back for every computation (or alternativly spend 90% of the CPU chip
area for cache to reduce the number of transports)

When you do put CPU and DRAM on the same chip the cost functions change and different architectures become optimal.
Patterson noted that when you have a CPU and DRAM on the same chip the relative architectural cost functions will be similar to the
technologies of the 70ies, just a few orders of magnitude smaller. Therefore he revisited architectures of that time and suggested to
put a vector computer on a DRAM chip called the IRAM.
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~pattrsn/talks/iram.html

Vector computers do not benefit much from cache. Latency is not a big issue for vector computers but they really benefit from bandwidth.
On chip you can connect the DRAM to the CPU with 2048 bits bus width or more. (And the latency would be much smaller than the latency
of a CPU going through a big cache hierachy and an external bus to the RAM)

If more memory is needed than fits on one chip he suggested to minimize data transports between chips. Instead the register state of the
process would be migrated to the DRAM where the desired data resides.

(investors will go for the company that broke the cartel and has higher profits)

The real world is not so simple. The company that left the cartel will not necessarily have higher profits, it may not have the resources to increase production (which is what selling at a lower cost would require to be more profitable), and it exists in a complex network of interdependent business entities, including the other members of the cartel, all of which can (and indeed, may be contractually obligated to) enforce penalties against, or not deal with, the cartel breaking company. One example:

Zaire Incident
Zaire was not satisfied with CSO’s sales conditions
Decided to sell on the industrial diamond free market
De Beers responded by flooding the market with similar diamonds at below market prices
Zaire came back to De Beers to ask for readmission into cartel
– De Beers accepted and offered even worse terms http://are.berkeley.edu/~sberto/DeBeersDiamondIndustry.pdf

A video lecture on the topic from the man who gave us the Josephson junction, who is certifiably smarter than any of us here and as good a physicist as we have on the planet. That doesn't mean he doesn't have some peculiar ideas. He most certainly does. Walks funny too. But some of his most peculiar ideas have paid off big time, and were contrary to "everyone's" intuitive sense of how things work in reality.

It's also a LISP and was a teaching language at Berkeley. I don't know if it's still used there but the books are online at http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/v1-toc2.html

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/hacker.html

A ``hacker'' is... someone who never goes to class, who in fact sleeps all day, and who spends the night pursuing recreational activities rather than studying.

What does this have to do with computers? Originally, nothing. But there are standards for success as a hacker, just as grades form a standard for success as a tool. The true hacker can't just sit around all night; he must pursue some hobby with dedication and flair. It can be telephones, or railroads (model, real, or both), or science fiction fandom, or ham radio, or broadcast radio. It can be more than one of these. Or it can be computers.

Yeah, I had to really dig through the Berkeley web site to figure out what they were actually claiming. It's no wonder people are confused.

It's as if I took pictures of some distant airplanes and posted a blog about taking pictures of UFOs, highlighting my pictures, and talked about how these pictures had all the confirming points I was looking for in a UFO picture, with a note at the bottom saying that, as I didn't have any actual UFO pictures, I substituted these.

It would be hard to claim sympathy if I was then ridiculed, which I suspect they will be.

The expansion phase is extremely short on those time scales. A star will typically remain a red giant for a few million years. Its surface temperature at that time will be only around 5000K, which is hot enough to evaporate the planet eventually, but not by orders of magnitude. The red giant has low density, so the heat exchange takes longer.
All in all, it's not inconceivable that a planet's core might remain intact if it's on the very edge of expansion.

Come ON people! In 1900 the average life expectancy of a male in the U.S.A. was only 46 years for Pete's sake. No wonder on average most of the 'BIG' work was done before age 40. In 1940 life expectancy was 60 years, and in 1960 it was 66. Considering that even 50 years ago, as people approached these ages many were in nowhere near as good good health as people are today when approaching end of life, so they likely weren't productive at anything in the last few years (back then smoking was advertised as good for your health... heavy bacon and eggs was a 'healthy' breakfast, exercise was not part of the urban or the new 'drive everywhere' suburban vocabulary, etc etc. etc.).

Now we have a life expectancy of over 80 years old in some countries like Canada and some Western European countries. Heck even in the U.S. with it's criticized health care system the average age is over 77.5. And to top it off, people are in much, much better health all the way to within a couple of years of the end. I see people who are in their 70s now-a-days who like folks who were in their 60s or younger a few decades ago. Mind you there are still people living unhealthy life styles, but they are the ones who are keeping the life expectancy averages lower than they could be (i.e. they die earlier than they should).

For a good example of how modern health care keeps us "younger" as we age, look at the Afghan girl (in a Pakistani refugee camp) that was on the iconic front cover of National Geographic in 1984. And then how she looked in 2002. When she was maybe 13, 14, or 15 she captured the worlds attention with her stunning eyes and the photo became one of the most viewed in the world. They went back in 2002 to find her. She had gone back to Afghanistan and had 4 children (one had died by then... life expectancy...) and even though they figured she was between 26 and 29 then (even she wasn't sure) she looked like a 45 or 50 year old woman, maybe older in Europe or North America. Interestingly and sadly, the average life expectancy in Afghanistan today is the same as what it was in America in 1900. Think about it.

So this whole notion of looking back and making judgements about what we should expect our productive ages to be is utter horseshit. Because of advances in medicine, better food, and better life style in general, the only way to determine when someone is less productive is when they are less productive. To arbitrarily say that after 50 you aren't able to think anymore is something that someone who doesn't think to begin with would say. No matter how old they are. We live far longer, and healthier lives. Therefore our productive years are far longer. That is the bottom line.

A four-year degree at an in-state school should not cost more than $15-20,000 including fees. If you went $60k into debt for school, consider that a $40-45k math lesson.

Tuition has gone up. In California, home of the free public university, tuition is $3,500 per semester or $7000 per year for a lesser-known, low-demand university. Add $1,000 per year for books and we're seeing a minimum cost of $32,000 for a four-year degree. A better public university will be more expensive with the higher demand. Someone who wants to learn the subject and go to to a research university may be paying twice as much, $60,000+, not counting housing costs.

The university claims its own costs are $15,000 per student per year. If the state were not subsidizing the cost of education, a four-year degree would cost $60,000 assuming that a student could get into all the needed classes and get out in four years.

A student going to a private university can expect to pay even more.

Then there is the cost of housing. This will run students another $9,000-$11,000 per year to rent a dorm; the cheap university is now costing close to $20,000 per year. Renting a house instead of a dorm will run to $20,000-$30,000 per year ($1,600-$2,500 per month), not including utilities, but it can be split between housemates.

Total costs can be kept lower by going to a community college for the first two years and for the standard young adult "what do I want to major in" phase.

If you are driving slowly on a fast road, you will cause crashes, even if you aren't involved in them.

That statement contradicts itself.

Driving is about getting there as efficiently as possible... If it weren't for you (and your ilk), there would be no traffic jams.

Because a freeway's greatest throughput happens at 60 mph, if you drive above 60, you are making the freeway less efficient.

Heck, you'd be surprised how many projects have gotten people to volunteer to run such things. All you have to do is provide good uptime and statistics and people will come running! (Though a good project description helps too.)

This video and scores does not include the feedback loop of the course exercises. The feedback of the coursework is where the pre-conceptions are corrected. Reviewing a vid can be a moment of discovery when you find a preconception is false.

I am taking some lessons. I am learning. Additional videos from other sources are great reinforcement of learned concepts. I recommend the Physics for Future Presidents.
http://physics.berkeley.edu/academics/Courses/physics10/teaching/Physics10/PffP.html

So it isn't easy, in fact it may even be illegal to formally co-opt a CU in the way the GP described, but sometimes they do end up being managed by execs with a bankster mindset.

When has "illegal" been a sure stop? If the executives, under whatever influence, decide to appoint a consultant to put forth a conversion proposal, and the members are persuaded to go with the conversion (which is in the consulants' interest), within the rules of the CU's charter, conversion can happen legally, ultimately at a loss to members, and profit to the acquirer.

And yes, Credit unions can convert to bank charters, although it has been rare in the past , see CU Financial Services.

See... FRBSF Economic Letter, Credit Unions, Conversions, and Capital , Credit Union Conversions to Banks: Facts, Incentives, Issues, and Reforms.

A mass exodus to credit unions could change matters greatly, as the members who have the most $$$ tied up, could begin to see opportunities from the mass importation of financially unsavvy members joining, to provide the CU as a whole great opportunity for exploitations.

And the loss of $$$ to banks would give then a great incentive to want to join / become a "partner" in a credit union.

Meanwhile as the CU struggles with growing pains due the importation of members and requires more scalability and more resources to provide service, for-profit models become more enticing, as they provide more capital towards that end.... P.S. and more capital to pay executive bonuses

Random != no pattern

You might create a tune with no pattern but chances are there will be a pattern of some kind in there.

Exactly. This is why sports fans think that there's such a thing as form. Human beings are very bad at judging randomness - we actually bias towards alternating patterns, which is decidedly non-random.

Bill Gates' only published paper gives a solution to the pancake-sorting problem. I discuss it at my blog.

You are flunking basic evolutionary theory, slashdot. Organisms do not evolve, populations do. Ontogenesis is not evolution. Lamarck was wrong.

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php#a4

Many of you are completely missing the point, compounded by anyone criticizing Ron Paul's economics by saying it's "stupid" has utterly no understanding of economics. Net, We in the US have two choices: take a good deal of pain now (slash government expenditures - and departments), or take apocalyptic pain later. That really is the basis of the choice. I'm going to go through this pretty fast, so try to keep up.

This is the best presentation I've found that really characterizes where the US and world economy is right now. One of the worlds smartest hedge fund managers giving you a real education of the state of the world. It's really a brilliant video: Kyle Bass @ AmeriCatalyst 2010 | 'Confessions of a Dangerous Mind' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWgtzwqWh60

The economics are sound despite the 3rd grade level retorts I've read on this thread. There is clear empirical data demonstrating that the money multiplier effect from government spending and lack thereof (expenditure cuts) that support Ron Paul's plan -support data follows:
"The Macroeconomic Effects of Tax Changes: Estimates Based on a New Measure of Fiscal Shocks," by Christina Romer and David Romer. Working Paper version.
"An empirical characterization of the dynamic effects of changes in government spending and taxes on output", by Olivier Blanchard and Roberto Perotti. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2002. Online version dated July 1999.
"What are the Effects of Fiscal Policy Shocks?" by Andrew Mountford and Harald Uhlig. Journal of Applied Econometrics, 2009. Earlier Working Paper version (no charge).
Here's a higher level view for those that don't want to get into the minutiae of the data and want a MTV education of economics: Watch this:Fear the Boom and Bust then this: Fight of the Century
Then the tired argument that Ron Paul wants a gold standard is just not right: Go look at his campaign page then read this: A Free-Market Monetary System http://mises.org/daily/3204
It's really surprising really, because technology and Internet people like us should really be the most capable of understanding the Austrian economic ideas. It's a complex self organizing system like the Internet. Hayek's absolutely beautiful essay "The Use of Knowledge in Society" captures it perfectly: http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html

Google has so much contradiction in what it wants for itself and what it does with other websites

For them it already is theirs.
As long as nobody clearly states that it isn't their data, they will treat it as theirs. And nobody is saying that the personal data belongs to the person, so companies can keep confusing you and telling that as soon as it is somehow online, it is not yours anymore.

Are you suggesting Google is a toddler?. They're supposed to be 13 years old now. Someone send them a note to grow up and start grunting and concentrating on their music like any other teenager!

This paper" states that "contrary to common belief, gyroscopic forces play only a limited role in balancing and steering". The "feel" of a bike (pedal or motor) is said to be dominated by "trail", and aspect of steering geometry; gyroscopic torque is "non-negligible", but "much smaller than trail torques".

Gyroscopic steering is said to assist no hands bicycle riding, but I'm not a motorcycle rider and don't know about wheelie stability.

"Visual Programming" is the opposite of Computer Science. Telling someone those tools are related to CS is like correctly hooking up your cable modem and declaring you are a networking genius.

Rather than feed a troll without question, I'll give you a few links, and then we can discuss your plan to frighten every non-CS major away from learning about CS.

        A high-school teacher from one of our last events reflects on his bias against visual programming as "real" programming:

http://itmoves.wordpress.com/2010/12/08/cs-ed-day/

        Here's the factorial block that he mentions:

http://www.aggroculture.com/cal/cs10/factorial.gif

        An example of what's available in BYOB (Build Your Own Blocks, an enhanced version of MIT's Scratch):

http://www.aggroculture.com/cal/cs10/BYOB+tools.gif

(You'll probably have to zoom in on this one. I don't have a lot of time to split it up into pieces right now)

        Check out the lectures that are associated with the class, which have both "big ideas" as well as some fundamental CS concepts (E.G. algorithmic complexity, abstraction, recursion, etc.):

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLECBD29A17AAF6EF9

        And if you feel it isn't too beneath you, why not give it a whirl?

http://byob.berkeley.edu/

        Here's a tutorial video about Lists and Higher-Order Functions (since you probably want to jump straight into the .. "genius" .. stuff):

http://byob.berkeley.edu/BYOB3-Tutorial2.mov

"Visual Programming" is the opposite of Computer Science. Telling someone those tools are related to CS is like correctly hooking up your cable modem and declaring you are a networking genius.

Rather than feed a troll without question, I'll give you a few links, and then we can discuss your plan to frighten every non-CS major away from learning about CS.

        A high-school teacher from one of our last events reflects on his bias against visual programming as "real" programming:

http://itmoves.wordpress.com/2010/12/08/cs-ed-day/

        Here's the factorial block that he mentions:

http://www.aggroculture.com/cal/cs10/factorial.gif

        An example of what's available in BYOB (Build Your Own Blocks, an enhanced version of MIT's Scratch):

http://www.aggroculture.com/cal/cs10/BYOB+tools.gif

(You'll probably have to zoom in on this one. I don't have a lot of time to split it up into pieces right now)

        Check out the lectures that are associated with the class, which have both "big ideas" as well as some fundamental CS concepts (E.G. algorithmic complexity, abstraction, recursion, etc.):

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLECBD29A17AAF6EF9

        And if you feel it isn't too beneath you, why not give it a whirl?

http://byob.berkeley.edu/

        Here's a tutorial video about Lists and Higher-Order Functions (since you probably want to jump straight into the .. "genius" .. stuff):

http://byob.berkeley.edu/BYOB3-Tutorial2.mov

Ironic because Europe has some damn-good sites for preserving dinosaur-age animals (Solnhofen limestone of Germany). Also US dominates the world university list...

CS10 : The Beauty and Joy of Computing (Give them the "big ideas" on one hand, and allow them to "peek under the hood" (do some visual programming with Scratch/BYOB/Snap) on the other. :)

Full prelim berkeley report, can't find the full final

not going to link out the 6k page army corps of engineers report

Actually, the Corps should take the fall. Do your research or support your claims. Thanks

See also:

Investigation of the Performance of the New Orleans Flood Protection Systems in Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005

Army Corps Admits Design Flaws in New Orleans Levees

If you have a user behind this proxy willing to run Netalyzr and send us the results link either direct to netalyzr-help@icsi.berkeley.edu or to you, I'd be very interested in seeing if we can see the BlueCoat proxy in our Netalyzr testing.

No, by "current understanding" s/he means current understanding.