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During the summer, I suggested to my local Unix Users Group that we put together a campaign on campus dubbed "Software for Starving Students." The idea is that we would advocate the use of Free Software among the student body at BYU.

The ball got rolling, and we put together a CD image that we burned and handed out to students from a booth in the student center. We selected OpenOffice, Mozilla, The Gimp, BZFlag, and AbiWord in the most recent incarnation.

Last week, we gave out 400 copies of the CD from the booth. I mentioned to the group that if we did the math the way Microsoft does math, with each disc, we saved a student around $1,300. The 400 copies from last week combined with the 180 copies we gave out during the summer comes to around 3/4 of a million dollars with of savings to the student body! :-)

I, of course, took every opportunity to explain to passerby who accepted the disc about the multiple meanings of the word "free." The club president was making people promise to copy the software and give it to their friends in exchange for receiving the disc. Our Linux Install Fest last Saturday kept the classroom packed with students who heard about Linux and wanted us to install it on their computers for them.

I'm happy to say that we're doing our part to keep Linux from getting "stomped."

There's so much focus on the tools of voting, that people don't pay much attention to the fact that there are fundamental limits to voting systems themselves.

For example, in 1950 Kenneth Arrow proved that no voting system is fair.

This is know as Arrow's Impossibility Theorem and places fundamental mathmatical limits on what the democratic process is capable of.

Of course, we have the worst of the worst sort of voting system here with its single-member voting districts and "one man - one vote" philosophy.

An improvement would be proportional representation.

This can't overcome Arrow's theorem, but its better than what we have now.

Some of you may be interested in Clean Flick's membership agreement terms.

Charles Babbage never patented any of his inventions either. There's a short essay on it here.

Cool link, here is a clickable version for the lazy mouse squad :)
http://unicomm.byu.edu/news1/mynews/releases/archi ve02/apr/miniairplane.htm

The quote you provide from Elder Ballard is both accurate and in context, and you are quite correct that the proper place to find out about what Mormons believe is to visit either lds.org or mormon.org, both of which are operated and overseen by the Church and can be trusted to contain correct information.

However, byu.edu cannot be trusted as a source of doctrine, and particularly, the page you visited seems to just be the reflections of a random student or professor. The link does not work, so I can't see who wrote it, and I can't claim any more authority to define church doctrine than the author, so I will defer you to the pages at lds.org and mormon.org above. Some of those assertions you will find on the pages above, and those you can call LDS doctrine (you are quite correct that many of them will be different from what you believe). Others you will not find (I do have to address the worst fallacy: Yes, God did create us. I don't know what the context of that quote was or what the author was trying to point out, but it simply is not true. Gen 1:27 -- God created man in his own image. The only thing I can think of, besides the author just being whacko, is that we believe that God the Father directed the creation through Jesus Christ, who is also God, but since you believe they are one and the same, I can't see a whole lot of divergence there).

If you are seriously interested in what we believe on those subjects, there is a link to the scritpures on the lds.org site, and you can look up the following references, which pertain to the assertions in the page you found:
Gen. 1:26-27 (Bible); Alma 34:8-10(Book of Mormon); Doctrine and Covenants 131:22-23; Moses 1: 10-17, 31-42 (Pearl of Great Price); Rev. 12:1-11 (remember, we identify Lucifer with Satan) (Bible).

The scriptures are the basis of our beliefs, and anything else you happen across on that site, you can trust, especially if it is a quote from one of our General Authorities (like Elder Ballard), who are the ones authorized to interpret scripture.

In summary, yes, we believe in Christ and all of his teachings, yes, we believe in the Holy Bible (we particularly prefer the KJV), yes, we probably have very similar beliefs about what is right and what is wrong, yes, we celebrate holidays, birthdays, Easter, Christmas, and any other excuse we can find to serve red punch and cookies, yes, there are sometimes substantial differences between Mormons and other Christians, but no, that is not a reason that we cannot all work together for good common causes. If you know many Mormons, you will probably find that they are overall pretty normal folks. So, I think that other than a difference in definition of the word "Christian," we pretty much agree with each other. And that is indeed the most religious and off-topic discussion I have ever had on Slashdot.

The Webster definition would certainly include Islam(after all, they believe that Christ was a prophet), so I would say that a more strict definition is needed than that. I would be inclined to present the Apostle's Creed as a good foundation, having never met a Christian who would deny it. Can you affirm the Apostle's Creed, as understood by orthodox Christians(Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox)?

The very idea of the total apostasy is a denial of the veracity of Christian beliefs. The LDS makes no bones about the fact that foundational Christian doctrines(such as the Trinity, the nature of the Father, creation "ex nihilo", etc) are gross heresies.

Your idea that a belief in the divinity of Christ unites us ignores the fact that we fundamentally disagree on the meaning of "divinity."

Want some examples? I would start by pointing you to the LDS website:

"We do believe things about Jesus that other Christians do not believe, but that is because we know, through revelation, things about Jesus that others do not know. . . . ", M. Russell Ballard

Notice that that is from the LDS website, not exactly a hostile source.

Let's look at some basic doctrines, espoused by a document called "A Brief Introduction to the Origin, Organization and Doctrines of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."

' Latter-day Saints do not believe in the philosophical constructs or thinking of scholars, ancient or modern, in regard to God.'

In a nutshell, the LDS does not believe in Christian concepts of God.

'The Godhead consists of Three Persons, not of the same "substance" but of the same purpose, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.'

Whether right or wrong, this is in exact contradiction to the Christian belief of the Trinity.

'He is a corporeal being possessing a body of flesh and bone, human in form and once lived as a mortal man on a world of the same pattern as the earth upon which we now live.'

A distinct difference from orthodox Christian doctrine, which holds that the Father is a spirit only, and certainly never experienced life in the same pattern as earth.

Of course, you also run into the problem of the claim that we are not created by God:

'...for God did not create us, but by his grace, we are offered the possibility of greater happiness.'

And, the belief that Christ and Lucifer are spirit brothers can be found in the section "Mortal Life" and the section "The Son" in the second reference:

"He(Christ) is the example in all things for the other spirit children of God the Father."(emphasis mine)

"Among the many spirit children of God who had great influence in premortal life was one called Lucifer."

That logically leads to the belief that Christ and Satan are spirit brothers. This is different from the Christian belief that Christ is not of the same nature as Satan. Rather, Satan is a created being(another divergence), subservient in nature and existence to Christ.

I applaud you for your willingness to work alongside others, but that doesn't negate the fact that your beliefs directly and forcefully contradict those of Christians. Even without worrying about which one is correct, it is clear that they are divergent.

Negative transmission times is a wave phenomenon, which together with superluminal propagation has been observed for light propagation through wave guides and through dispersive atomic media. It is not suprising that the [equations we used] show similar effects, and, indeed, Ray Chiao et. al. [ref] have suggested a [...] mechanism. [...] From our [...] analysis it is not clear whether it is due to this mechanism or if it is more closely related to the time delays which may also be observed in normal wave packet tunneling through barriers

This is a phenomenon that has been observed in other places already, either through quantum tunneling or through some similar quantum effect suggested by the group (Chiao et. al.) mentioned in the article. The (non-sensational) news is that it occurs in BEC's as well.

BMagneton

Well... almost. ( sorry couldn't resist )

Anyways, a space vehicle can actually be propelled by light alone (no reaction mass needed - Solar sail).

This is due to the fact that light actually exerts pressure on any surface it shines on (altough very little) - thus, the idea is to deploy a big sail in a spaceship (in space, not inside the atmosphere) and use the pressure of solar radiation to propel it.

Due to the fact that the pressure per unit of area is proportional to the intensity of the light (Formulas for the mathematical inclined), a (really powerfull) laser can be used to provide a significant boost to said solar sail, with a much smaller decrease of the radiation intensity versus distance than the one you get from the sun's radiation (ie when the ship gets to Pluto, the Sun's radiation is very weak, while the laser's is still strong).

He's not related to Archduke Ferdinand, is he?

... like the dogma project at Brigham Young University is a distributed application system currently on used on a few thousand machines. It is written in pure Java, requires no persistant storage on the local machine, can be interrupted at any time, and is OS independant, to name a few things.

... like the dogma project at Brigham Young University is a distributed application system currently on used on a few thousand machines. It is written in pure Java, requires no persistant storage on the local machine, can be interrupted at any time, and is OS independant, to name a few things.

No mention of anyone but the Arabs in the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement.

I challenge you to find a country where this is not the case.

I didn't make that claim. I refer you to my theory on the modus operandi of governments

I assert that if you have several bullies doing their thing in the schoolyard that if you are going to make a difference it makes sense to start with the biggest and meanest.

Critical analysis of American government does not mean:

American people are bad.
Other governments are good.

Another reason not to buy Intel chips.

Regarding Balfour Declaration (direct from Israel's own Jerusalem Post):

President Truman would later say that the US did not pressure any country to vote for partition. That statement, however, would seem to be based on an interpretation of pressure as gunboats or White House stationery. Two US Supreme Court justices, Frank Murphy and Felix Frankfurter, contacted the Philippine ambassador in Washington and sent telegrams to Philippine president Carlos Rojas warning that a negative vote would alienate millions of Americans. Ten senators also cabled Rojas. Presidential aide David Niles, Truman's channel to the Jewish community, contacted influential American-Greek businessmen in an attempt to persuade Athens to vote for partition. Unlike with the Philippines and Liberia, this effort was not successful.

[SNIP]

The voting was conducted by the senior American on the UN Secretariat, Andrew Cordier. When it was done he handed the tally to Aranha who studied it for a moment before announcing that the resolution had been carried by a vote of 33 for, 13 against and 10 abstentions. "I close the meeting."

So, after U.S. pressure to accept the Balfour Declaration it was passed with 33 of 56 (member nations) votes, 59%.

Let's see, U.N. resolution 42/159 states:

Reaffirming also the inalienable right to self-determination and independence of all peoples under colonial and racist regimes and other forms of alien domination, and upholding the legitimacy of their struggle, in particular the struggle of national liberation movements, in accordance with the purposes and principles of the Charter and of the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations,

This is apparently the reason that it was voted for by everyone except the USA and Israel.

IANAP (I Am Not a Psychologist!), but check Sociopathy.

• '[psychopaths have a personality that] emasculates the constraining force of social rules: people for whom... the idea of a common good is merely a puzzling and inconvenient abstraction.' Canter says 'Seems that back then the Internet was more or less the private playpen of academics and geeks, and any commercial solicitations were considered off limits.' That sounds like a bunch of inconvenient soial rules. Check 1
• 'Groups high on psychopathy include... high-pressure salesmen and stock promoters... unethical lawyers...' Check 2
• '... psychopaths are characterised by an absence of remorse or any conception that their behaviours ought to be changed.' In reply to the question 'Do you have any regrets about sending the spam?' Canter says 'I don't think so. Given the same set of circumstance--the same time, the stage of the Internet--I'd probably do the same thing.' Check 3

Yes, they favor them because Germany lost the war and the winners decided to go beyond mere reparations ala the Versailles Treaty and pursue a Romanesque "salted earth" policy by attacking anything that might contribute to another resurgence of Naziism -- like racism, antisemitism, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia, nationalism, isolationism and economic independence. I suppose they'd make sure food, water and air were all under the control of central banking authorities if they could since that, too, would decrease the chance of a resurgence of Naziism. In fact, why don't we just get rid of humans? Seems they're nothing but trouble anyway.

Had this not been miraculously modded up into the realm of positive numbers, I would have continued to ignore it. However, given that the weirdos with spare points and an antiwar axe to grind deem, by their positive moderation, your comment somehow relevant to the original article, I will respond (nee bite).

(If the original AC post, entitled "Sick", has since been appropriately re-modded into oblivion, Slashdot folks can move right along to the next post, as there's nothing to see here.)

First, we're not all Americans on here, you know - I would hardly call Slashdot "US media" (Fastcompany, I'll acknowledge, is as US as it comes this side of Guns and Ammo). Second, if you were paying attention in history class you'd know that, by most interpretations, there wouldn't be an english-speaking Great Britain today if it weren't for the Americans and Canadians that rolled up onto the shores of Normandy. (Granted the Soviets also had a lot to do with it, but the history books most post-war Brits undoubtedly favoured the American influence over the Soviet influence on the matter. Save the debate for later.)

The reality of the matter is that there are certain times where force, and/or the threat of force, absolutely MUST be used in the name of peace and saving lives. Asking an advancing army nicely doesn't always work. I think that much is pretty obvious to anyone over three apples high.

As for the B52s in question, you (as a war hater) should be able to grasp that preserving B52s is GOOD for those with your mentality, for three simple reasons.

#1 - It's good for the environment to reduce, reuse and recycle, right? Better to use what we have already than build new bombers.

#2 - B52s are hardly high-tech. Keeping them around means less likelihood of an arms race based on either a) more of the planes that replace them (B1-B/B2 etc) or b)the search for alternative delivery mechanisms (ICBM / space laser / rail-gun / death ray).

YOU of all people should be THANKFUL that B52s are being kept instead of scrapped for newer, scarier war technologies - better the smoky, subsonic devil you know than the one you don't. Let me know if you're still having trouble with this concept.

#3 - Economics. Undoubtedly, you're not a big fan of your tax money going to defence. I know, I know, you're not an American, but from UN dues to NATO dues to peacekeeper participation, I'd guess your country foots some of the bill somewhere down the line. And besides, would you rather have the best scientists and engineers in the world working on a B52 replacement, or working on more peaceful things?

So yes, tell me again how you disapprove of this article and the news that B52s are going to be kept online for the next fourty years.

Last little bit, the US military is becoming MORE militaristic than it was in, say, the 1980s? Or in the 1960s, when Walt Disney submitted each of his films to the FBI for editing? Or during WWII, when major pro-war Hollywood films were made entirely with government grants? Where-ya-been? Now, more than ever (which admittedly isn't saying much), US media is quasi-objective about what its government and military are doing. If you're a Western European, you're shallow for not recognizing that your country's freedom is in no small way connected to Americans. If you're an Eastern European, you are a hypocrite for complaining about the actions of American media when your own (former soviet) media are so blind to what goes on in Chechnya and if you are neither Eastern European nor Western European, how in heck are you able to offer a "European point of view"?

Sheesh.

Enjoy your 16th birthday... and the freedom that surrounds it.

When I went to college in fall of 2000, I decided to get a part-time job. I had worked for the previous year doing contract programming at a large chip company, and I had started my own small online (and profitable) business. However, I had just moved to a different city, and I didn't really know anyone who could get me a tech job.

I decided that an online search just might do the trick. Monster.com yielded nothing interesting, nor did HotJobs. As I was walking home from class one day I saw a billboard ad for FlipDog, and decided to try it.

After a quick and easy search focused down very specifically by city and job category, I found about four relevant jobs within three miles of my home. After a bit of resume touch-up, I e-mailed my resume to the interesting-looking employers. I received two e-mails back, one with an interview offer. I called the company and scheduled it for the next day.

In short, I had a job three days after my search on FlipDog.

As an aside to the story, FlipDog has some very cool technology developed at WhizBang! Labs. WhizBang! was headquartered in the same city that I attended school, and I got to go to a lecture about them. They have their web spiders crawl the web looking for job listings on companies' own sites. Then they use machine learning software to recognize and extract information (job title, location, description, etc.) from the free-form web page. That gets dumped into a database that FlipDog uses to help you find a job. Instead of making employers post available jobs on a special job site, FlipDog goes to the employers' own web sites and extracts job postings. Very cool. Check it out. (No, I'm not affiliated with them, except that they helped me find a job.)

hi there j/k about the limey thing...

well, i'm not kidding, you bunch of crumpet eating dog-faced dental nightmares!

This is actually what the movie industry calls a 'teaser'.

Agreed.

The video file is 1:07 long, but after I cut out the Fox and Lucasfilm titles, and the end Star Wars logo, and then removed all of the blank screen, I was left with (I kid you not) 25 seconds of video.

Here are the files:

The whole 640 trailer

The one I edited

This is actually what the movie industry calls a 'teaser'.

Agreed.

The video file is 1:07 long, but after I cut out the Fox and Lucasfilm titles, and the end Star Wars logo, and then removed all of the blank screen, I was left with (I kid you not) 25 seconds of video.

Here are the files:

The whole 640 trailer

The one I edited

A lot is made of the fact that almost every culture has some version of the Noah myth. (There's an interesting exception, that I'll talk about in a moment.) But why is this suprising? Cultures from this period tended to grow up around small (a few thousand people) cities built in flood basins. The river was source of life -- it provided topsoil, transportation and food. It was often considered divine (the Latin word for "priest" originally meant "bridge-keeper").

But life on the river has its downside, as everybody who lives near one knows. One major flood, and there goes your urban center. Not cataclymisic if you're one river town in a bigger culture. But suppose that town contains your entire government, economic establishment, and cultural elite? Obviously, the River God has decided to mod your civilization down in a big way.

The exception is very interesting -- sub-Saharan Africans don't have a Noah myth. Which is hardly suprising. Altough the pre-colonial Africans did build a few cities none of them were on flood plains.

Other things can wipe out a small civilization too. It can outstrip its resources, be decimated by plague, or simply get sloppy about maintaining its source of wealth. We need to consider the mundane before we start worrying about the exotic.

Yeah i am bored and read these, and you can too.

• Some bubonic plauge history.
  
• Center for disease control plague info.
  
• Current Bubonic Plague treatment and here.
  
• Plague outbreak news

Bubonic plague is nasty, nasty stuff. . .I've read a lot about the various fun ways it can kill you through history books. For those who have no idea of what it did to Europe, read a good summary of the Black Death here.

Also, before people go off on biological weapons, etc, consider that there have been several recent breakouts of this disease, particularly in the southwest US(where I'm from). Don't know what I'm talking about? Check out this as an example. I remember reading in the paper in AZ about outbreaks occasionally and shuddering. A cure would be a godsend--even though there are only about 10-15 cases in the US a year, its a painful way to go.

The systemic problem is that after WWII a bunch of Europeans were given land in the Middle East and the people who were there are understandably pissed. If you have a solution to this problem that doesn't require the removal of either group, then I would love to hear it. Nobody else seems to. Globalization is irrelevant.

Interestingly, I should mention that in WWI, Britain made a declaration supporting the foundation of the state of Israel so long as it did not impinge upon the human rights of the residents at the time. It did not happen during WWI, and in WWII, people I think were not guided by such concerns.

I hope I am alone in seing parallels to the shot that started WWI?

Next week you have to sign in to Passport to post on /. and pay Malda's cronies $10 per month to "get compliant".

I hereby award Larry Augustin with the Neville Chamberlain Award for turning 180 degrees on an earlier viewpoint.

Several semesters ago in one of my college classes, my profesor told us about his research. He goes to guatemala(where I'm from), to install solar stoves. They are very simple, but they work very good. It decreases their need for firewood. Any way, here is the link to the article. It was posted in the University's magazine.

Several semesters ago in one of my college classes, my profesor told us about his research. He goes to guatemala(where I'm from), to install solar stoves. They are very simple, but they work very good. It decreases their need for firewood. Any way, here is the link to the article. It was posted in the University's magazine.

This is actually quite impressive software.

I'd be more impressed if they had trained the software to imitate multiple artists, such as O'Keefe, Rembrandt, Klee, Gauguin, Monet, Picasso, etc., shown as a single image, as processed by all of the above, side by side.

__

Utah is quite different from the rest of the US. Unwritten rules of many kinds are of far greater importance than the first amendment there.
Although the University of Utah is rather open-minded compared to, say, BYU, I'm not at all surprised that this site got shut down.

Utah is quite different from the rest of the US. Unwritten rules of many kinds are of far greater importance than the first amendment there.
Although the University of Utah is rather open-minded compared to, say, BYU, I'm not at all surprised that this site got shut down.

Utah is quite different from the rest of the US. Unwritten rules of many kinds are of far greater importance than the first amendment there.
Although the University of Utah is rather open-minded compared to, say, BYU, I'm not at all surprised that this site got shut down.

Utah is quite different from the rest of the US. Unwritten rules of many kinds are of far greater importance than the first amendment there.
Although the University of Utah is rather open-minded compared to, say, BYU, I'm not at all surprised that this site got shut down.

Utah is quite different from the rest of the US. Unwritten rules of many kinds are of far greater importance than the first amendment there.
Although the University of Utah is rather open-minded compared to, say, BYU, I'm not at all surprised that this site got shut down.

Utah is quite different from the rest of the US. Unwritten rules of many kinds are of far greater importance than the first amendment there.
Although the University of Utah is rather open-minded compared to, say, BYU, I'm not at all surprised that this site got shut down.

Utah is quite different from the rest of the US. Unwritten rules of many kinds are of far greater importance than the first amendment there.
Although the University of Utah is rather open-minded compared to, say, BYU, I'm not at all surprised that this site got shut down.

Utah is quite different from the rest of the US. Unwritten rules of many kinds are of far greater importance than the first amendment there.
Although the University of Utah is rather open-minded compared to, say, BYU, I'm not at all surprised that this site got shut down.

Utah is quite different from the rest of the US. Unwritten rules of many kinds are of far greater importance than the first amendment there.
Although the University of Utah is rather open-minded compared to, say, BYU, I'm not at all surprised that this site got shut down.

Utah is quite different from the rest of the US. Unwritten rules of many kinds are of far greater importance than the first amendment there.
Although the University of Utah is rather open-minded compared to, say, BYU, I'm not at all surprised that this site got shut down.

Utah is quite different from the rest of the US. Unwritten rules of many kinds are of far greater importance than the first amendment there.
Although the University of Utah is rather open-minded compared to, say, BYU, I'm not at all surprised that this site got shut down.

Utah is quite different from the rest of the US. Unwritten rules of many kinds are of far greater importance than the first amendment there.
Although the University of Utah is rather open-minded compared to, say, BYU, I'm not at all surprised that this site got shut down.

Utah is quite different from the rest of the US. Unwritten rules of many kinds are of far greater importance than the first amendment there.
Although the University of Utah is rather open-minded compared to, say, BYU, I'm not at all surprised that this site got shut down.

Utah is quite different from the rest of the US. Unwritten rules of many kinds are of far greater importance than the first amendment there.
Although the University of Utah is rather open-minded compared to, say, BYU, I'm not at all surprised that this site got shut down.

... get the word about the Mormon fascists out there...

You're thinking of BYU. The University of Utah is a state run school. I doubt the administration's possible religious following makes a difference anyway - would you have include a comment about the Drunken Irish Catholics if this had happened at Duke?

I hate intollerant people.

no one was calling China an "enemy" until January 20th,
I disagree. The Chinese leaders have been philosophically opposed to the US for a very long time. They have made every effort to get the upper hand in every way.

You may see this as "the way of the world" but I see it as a country that would very much like to abolish the freedoms that we have in this country.

The Chinese government is as much our enemy as the USSR ever was.

It takes about 5 minutes to target a missile.
My understanding is that the guidance computers in those systems are sufficiently primitive that it requires a substantive effort to reprogram them They are programmed with targets because it is assumed that there would not be time to meaningfully program them in the event of a nuclear war.

they are not being used. So chill out.
Are you familiar with the term "mutually assured destruction?"
A theory of deterrence based on NOT using missiles!

Even if they are not in flight at this time, they are a threat to us.


some of the money we get from our economic ties with them end up in our defense systems The imbalance of trade is such that effectively zero dollars from the Chinese economy goes toward defense, and the entirety of their defense budget is paid by our purchases.

When you buy that cooling fan, or dog's chew toy, or baby stroller, you're effectively giving that money directly to their military so they can build more missles to point at us.

a simple "I'm sorry" would have our crew home within hours,
I'm immediately reminded of Neville Chamberlain:

"We, the German Führer and Chancellor, and the British Prime Minister, have had a further meeting today and are agreed in recognizing that the question of Anglo-German relations is of the first importance for our two countries and for Europe. We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again. We are resolved that the method of consultation shall be the method adopted to deal with any other questions that may concern our two countries, and we are determined to continue our efforts to remove possible sources of difference, and thus to contribute to assure the peace of Europe." Chamberlain read the above statement in front of 10 Downing St. and said: "My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time... Go home and get a nice quiet sleep."

You're right. "Sorry China. We're afraid of you and want to kiss up to you in spite of the fact that you blew it." It is a game. We both played by the rules, edging toward the limits of the rules and they fell over the line. When that happens, the one who fell apologizes. Period. Now lets have their apology and be done with it.

After the NATO screw-up, Mr. Clinton apologized like crazy, and this was their response:
"They were so indifferent. They simply said, 'Well, we're sorry.' Then they shrugged their shoulders and walked away," said Li Zhaoxing, China's ambassador to Washington.

It's just not that simple, as much as I'd like it to be that simple. In this case, their desire to save face is conflicting with the need to apologize.

I hope that the crew was really able to destroy the OS and data on the systems on the plane before it was captured.

I want them home, too. My heart goes out to them, but they are players in the big game of international relations, and the other side has captured our pawns.

Stinks to be them.
I'm praying for them.

There are a lot of groups working on similar stuff:

http://www.ccm.ece.vt.edu/acs_api - This is my group and I apologize for the lame web page. http://splish.ee.byu.edu These guys do very good work, especially when it comes to hardware description languages. http://www.east.isi.edu/projects/SLAAC/ We like these people too. http://www.annapmicro.com A lot of our graduates go here.

There are several more groups - you can find a more complete list on the People section of ISI's web site.

(2) Even many of those individuals with talent have insufficient knowledge of (and/or, apparently, desire to learn about) the art and science of software engineering and so persist in making the same stupid mistakes that have been well-documented for 30+ years.

(3) As a result, anyone who has had to recruit software developers can tell you how much muck you have to sift through to find the gems.

(4) I can't speak for the relevance of most CS departments; I know that my undergraduate CS program (BSCS, BYU, 1978) helped me tremendously when I went out into the real world. But that may have been an anomoly; I had some brilliant teachers with real-world experience (one had worked at Bell Labs; another went on to co-author and co-found Word Perfect).

(5) After some years in the workforce, many of those with talent and skills find they can double or triple their salary by becoming a consultant. This leads to a talent-flight from organizations.

In short, you're trying to find someone with talent, training, inclination to your topics and circumstances, and a lack of awareness of how much s/he could be making elsewhere. :-)

Best of luck. ..bruce..

There are scads of great educational resources available in the OpenContent database.

--------
meta4
dw2-dont-spam-me-@opencontent.org
http://davidwiley.com/

(I know this is way down at the bottom, so not likely many will read it, but I'm still interested in people's opinions. Let me know what you think.)

My Ideas for United States General Election Reform:

• Keep the Electoral College

The electoral college needs to stay. A president should be elected because he receives the support of the majority of the states, not the majority of the people in the nation. Small states and minorities would lose out considerably if the electoral college were completely abolished.

Alleged problems with the Electoral College:

Myth 1. The American people do not really elect the president

The American people, of course, still elect the president, but not directly. They never have. This is not a problem, and never has been. Some people like to point at elections in which the president has lost the popular vote, but won the office because of the Electoral College. A good example of this is George W. Bush in the 2000 election. If one were to look at a map of the United States, one would see that Bush won the support of the majority of the nation, while Gore won several pockets of large population. If the Electoral College were abolished, candidates could campaign only in these pockets of people, and win the office of the presidency even though the majority of states supported a different candidate.

Nobody argues that in a basketball tournament, the winner should be the team who scores the most total baskets combined from every game. The baskets have to be arranged to win games, just as the votes in a General Election have to be arranged to win states. However, I suggest to:

• Split Votes to Congressional Districts

The electoral votes allotted to each State corresponds with the number of Representatives and Senators each State has in Congress. Instead of the majority winner in a particular state receiving the entirety of that state's electoral votes, have one electoral vote per Congressional district and two for the state majority.

Myth 2. Your vote counts for more if you're from a larger state

The number of electors a state received is directly proportional to the population of the state. Assuming that a state has 100% voter turnout, every vote counts as an identical percent of an elector. In fact, it is the smaller states whose vote counts for more, because each state has the two electors corresponding to Senators regardless of size. The problem ensues when one state has a high voter turnout, while another has a very low voter turnout. In the latter case, one's vote is worth quite a bit more. Therefore I propose that the number of electors be:

• Representative of Voters, not Population

Using the national census, calculate the population of the United States and divide by 435 (the number of members in the House of Representatives). This will result in the number of people per congressional district. However, instead of counting basic population, count the number of people who voted in the previous general election. Then organize the congressional districts based on this information. This way, votes from states with large populations but with very low voter turn-out don't count for more than votes from states with higher voter turn-out.

Myth 3. Faithless electors can swing votes

A much-touted problem with the Electoral College, the fact that electors can change their vote at the last minute has never been a problem. In the very few times it has happened in this nation's history, not once has it even come close to changing the results of an election. In addition, the electors are generally chosen from the prominent members of the political party for whom your vote is case. That is to say, if you vote for a Republican president, you are in actuality voting for the Republican elector who has been chosen by party leaders. If your vote is cast for a Democratic president, you are electing the elector whom the Democrat party has chosen. There is very little chance that such a person would choose to go against the wishes of his party without good reason.

A bigger problem is that a president might be elected without gaining support of the majority of the nation, especially if the votes are divided among three or four parties. A form of run-off voting, such as Instant Runoff Voting or Instant Pair Runoff Voting (Condorcet), would solve this problem.

• Use Instant Runoff or Condorcet (Instant Pair Runoff) Voting

Instant Runoff Voting allows voters to rank candidates as their first choice, second choice, third, fourth, and so on. If a candidate does not receive clear majority of votes on the first count, a series of runoff counts are conducted, using each voter's top choices indicated on the ballot. The candidate who received the fewest first place ballots is eliminated. The ballots are then retabulated, with each counting as a vote for the top-ranked candidate listed on the ballot that is still in contention. Voters who chose the now-eliminated candidate have their votes transferred to their second choice candidate--just as if they were voting in a traditional two-round runoff election. This process continues until a candidate achieves more than fifty percent of the vote. However, this still encourages people not to "vote their conscience." A more effective system is the Condorcet, or "Instant Pair Runoff Voting" method.

In the Condorcet election method, voters rank the candidates in order of preference. The vote counting procedure then takes into account each preference of each voter for one candidate over another. It does so by conceptually breaking the election down into a series of separate races between each possible pairing of candidates, hence it is sometimes referred to as a "pairwise" method. If one of the candidates beats each of the other candidates in their one-on-one race, then that candidate wins. Otherwise, the result is ambiguous and an optimal procedure is used to resolve the ambiguity. Unlike our current plurality election method, the Condorcet system gives voters little incentive to falsify their true preferences.

More detailed information about Condorcet voting can be found here: http://russp.org/ElectionMethods.org/CondorcetEx.h tm.

Other thoughts to consider:

• Move the general election to a Saturday & Sunday weekend? A mandatory national holiday?
• Close all polling booths simultaneously across the nation?
• Outlaw exit polls?
• Reform campaign spending? Ban political advertising on broadcast TV and Radio?
• Create a more efficient way of checking the validity of a voter's identification and get rid of voter registration?

Thanks for your input. Please email me with comments and suggestions.

can be found her e. It was an excellent hearing, and Shawn did a good job of explaining his position.

The older thing like this which I know of, is Khoros, a library of image processing utilities, which you could wire together with Cantata. However cantata allows each module to have multiple inputs and outputs (for example, there might be a module which takes two images and blends them together). Seems like a really good idea to me, and I think the GUI could be reused for other tasks besides image processing, because cantata is only a shell for starting up multiple processes and connecting their inputs and outputs together. Khoral Research tries to make money off this product, but it looks like you can still download some stuff from ftp://ftp.khoral.com/pub/khoros/. I was running it on my Linux box in 1996 or so, and prior to that, had used it at ASU on a Sun.