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Actually, if you will refer to Dr. Aubrey de Grey's work on Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence http://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/sens/ you will find that this is not entirely true. Also I feel that what everyone seems to be overlooking in this discussion is that evolution is merely the change in genes over time within a population. It is not inherently adventageous to the organism. That train of thought is called a "teleological assumption" which is a very nasty thing to make in the Biology community. "Evolution" doesn't necessarily make it any easier for an organism to survive, but it surely can. Deleterious mutations, while usually weeded out can and do get passed along, and that is evolution too.

The Methuselah Mouse Prize (MPrize), is the premiere effort of the Methuselah Foundation and is being offered to the scientific research team who develops the longest living Mus musculus, the breed of mouse most commonly used in scientific research. Developing interventions which work in mice are a critical precursor to the development of human anti-aging techniques, for once it is demonstrated that aging in mice can be effectively delayed or reversed, popular attitudes towards aging as 'inevitable' will no longer be possible. When aging in mice is shown to be 'treatable' the funding necessary for a full-line assault on the aging process will be made available. This is the true power of the Methuselah Mouse Prize, to demonstrate a proof of principle, and give hope to the world that decline in function and age-related disease are no longer guarantees, for us, or for future generations, if we work together now.

charts and graphs are meant to be compiled --- use R. Seriously though, it's
got a bit of a steep learning curve, but overall, it's pretty useful. Generates
prettier graphs, too. The price is just as good as oo.o's, as well.

I noticed some folks have mentioned Edward Tufte's work with graphs too, and
there's some work done to generate Tufte-esque graphs from R. I've been playing
around with some myself after reading his books.

One of them is here:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/sjm217/projects/grap hics/fancyaxis.html

1. The Report on the language used a formal syntax specification, one of the first, if not the first, to do so. Semantics were specfied with prose, however.

Unfortunately this is the case with all programming languages (with the exception of standard ML).

Not all others -- for example, LISP 1.5 originally had its semantics defined in terms of actions taken by a LISP interpreter (written in LISP, of course).

There have been a few more with formally defined semantics as well. SPARK and the current Scheme spec (R5RS) both have formally defined semantics. A few others are open to some question -- for example, the VLISP project did a formal definition of the semantics of Scheme, and then did a verified implementation. Unless I'm badly mistaken, that's what led to the formal semantics in the current Scheme spec. Whether VLISP qualified as its own language or not is open to some question though.

Attempts have even been made for C. During the C standardization process, some work was done on a (non-normative) appendix defining its semantics formally as well, but this didn't make it into the standard. I don't know if the last version is still avaiable, but I believe it was based on this paper by Michael Norrish

You may (or may not...) have some success getting her Windows install to run inside Xen (which is included in SuSE 10). Then she would have the best of both worlds. Xen is not an emulator like WINE, but more like a virtual PC environment like VMWare. (So, you would install Windows on the PC along with SuSE, and then have Xen boot into Windows from inside SuSE -- apparently you get nearly native speed, but I have a bucket of salt...)

I haven't played with Xen yet, so I can't recommend it, and it might be a fiddle to get it going, don't know. But it's something to keep in the back of your head for next time, maybe...

Universities don't tend to have bleeding edge workstations.

My college at Cambridge just got some new desktops. They're dual-P4 systems with a gig of RAM each, and they're primarily used for word-processing and surfing the net. Guess how long they take to go from Windows' login screen to a usable desktop?

FIVE GOD-DAMN MINUTES?!?!?!?!??!!

*beats head against desk*

This is while the Engineering department use Knoppix (well, MDP) workstations that take 5-10 seconds to log on to and are just as usable....

He he he, nope, that's what you do with LV's. xen's para-virtualizing allows you to move them while they are still running, really ;). http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/rea dmes/user/user.html Check out the introduction "Live migration of running virtual machines between physical hosts." Xen is going to mess with your head. Can you pass me that freebsd server when your done with it?

PS: This submission to /. was rejected so I'm posting it here - f*ck them and f'u if you think it's 'off-topic'...

Sincerely - Ransu, Finland

PS: This submission to /. was rejected so I'm posting it here - f*ck them and f'u if you think it's 'off-topic'...

Sincerely - Ransu, Finland

Perhaps a mechanical vote counter is the answer.

Let's hear it for Babbage !

Diebold can't make a robust ATM network

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mkb23/phantom/

And they are trusted to help decide on the govt. of the biggest war machine ever.

Try not to think of that one too much when you goto bed tonight.

You won't even be able to use your OSS tools on a "trusted computing" platform. That's the whole point.

Actually, that's completely wrong. Untrusted OSS tools simply wouldn't be able to access the the "trusted" memory pool or interact at all with "trusted" components. See this FAQ.

I was quite depressed reading an article like this, it seems we're on the slippery slope to all sorts of mischief, slowly as you say. eg1 eg2

Then again, we can always rely on organisations getting too greedy too quickly. If software piracy is greatly reduced (how many people have actually paid $600 for Photoshop to edit a couple of wedding photos?) this may mean a mass migration to F/OSS software, which could represent too large a userbase for vendor lock-in to be a viable prospect.
When Microsoft brought in Product Activation for Windows and Office how much of the savings on piracy was fed back to customers in the form of lower prices? (clue, the answer is negative!)

Linux is ok for openoffice, internet, mail and programming, but if you actually want to *do* something with the computer that isn't programming there's no wealth of professional grade software out there for professionals who are reliant on computer technology.

There's a lot of professional grade software out there for professionals that runs as well or better on Linux than on any other operating system:

• Pro Engineer
• Various Cadence microcircuit design toolkits (schematic capture, mask layout, simulation)
• Xilinx FPGA design & synthesis tools

I could carry this list on for a long time, and that's just in my field. I keep on having to repeat myself: for high-end engineering research and development, people are upgrading to Linux all the time.

Cambridge University Engineering Department use Linux workstations for all undergraduate tuition -- they're based on a custom Knoppix distribution. More information at the CUED website.

Professional software for professionals: lots of it for Linux. Maybe you mean "professional" software for amateurs?

It'd probably be easier to get the US using A4 paper first.

Anybody know if StegFS described in http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ih99-stegfs.pdf/ is actually available? Plausibility deniability of the knowledge of keys to unlock deeper levels of encyryption is an explicit goal of the project.

I recommend anyone who seriously thinks that engineering in nanotubes translates to macro-scale realisations of their THEORETICAL strengths needs to go right back to remedial materials engineering class. The sooner we stop pissing money at this doomed project and start looking at those materials which do exhibit the same mechanical properties in nano-scale and bulk samples, the better.

Probably the most succinct and easy to follow explanation of why carbon based materials for this application is areally, really bad idea is right here;

http://www.msm.cam.ac.uk/phase-trans/2005/MST7118. pdf/

It's really disheartening when otherwise sensible people wet themselves at the mere thought of how carbon nanotubes will shore up economies, end world hunger and bake a better pizza.

Ross Anderson is one of the worlds leading security researchers, check his site.
This has surprised me actually, as he's not exactly pro TCPA.

Ross Anderson is one of the worlds leading security researchers, check his site.
This has surprised me actually, as he's not exactly pro TCPA.

Although I don't know the man, I just looked up what I think is his blog, and provided he's not lying through his teeth, the Politics and Public Policy section of his blog seems quite agreeable in spirit to me.

He also has some really interesting papers on there. (Check out the "Cocaine Auction Protocol" and "Programming Satan's Computer" -- the first is a methodology for creating an un-mediated auction house, the latter is about programming on untrusted networks.)

Of course, to each his own.

Here's the link:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/#Lib

That article surprised me rather - because I know Ross Anderson to be one of the Good Guys. He is opposed to DRM, Trusted Computing, (see here) and ID cards. Furthermore, even if he has had a change of heart, he's far too smart to advocate a backdoor into encryption.

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~gh275/ is worth a look too.
Describes attacks on contactless smartcards, a subset of RFID devices.

That cloning device only works on cheap RFID's that don't do cryptographic authentication. This is not the first time this has been done.
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~gh275/relay.pdf

The method Shamir talked about is a little more interesting because the cards are leaking information wbout what they are doing internally. It is possible that a more detailed examination of the power consumption may reveal other detail of what the card is doing as well as when it things it has receive a bad bit.

Power analysis has been a known attack on smartcards for a long time. A few cards were vulnerable to an attacker looking for increase current draw just after a PIN/password attempt when the card tried to increment a count of the number of failures, cut the power when it tries to write to the fail count and you could attempt a brute force attack. I believe the most obvious way around the problem, to decrement the counter before checking the PIN and increment it after if the check passed, is patented.

It would be interesting to see if any RFID cards have that flaw.

It may be true that Moore's law became the industry expectation, but given the winner-take-all nature of semiconductor manufacturing I have a hard time believing that IBM/AMD/Intel etc are simplying "developing to the timeline".

AFAIK all published image watermarking systems are not robust.

AFAIK all published watermarking systems are not robust. As for non-published methods, the video pirates enthusiastically applaud the use of 'security through obscurity.'

As far as the watermarking tools themselves, all the ones I'm aware of are proprietary (patented and/or trademarked.) They are certainly not open source. If you think about it, that's the only way watermarking software can ever be made practical. Watermarking is 100% "security through obscurity." Once an attacker is aware of a watermark, that watermark can be tampered with and/or destroyed. But GPL'd code is not obscure: it is transparent by fiat. So anyone attacking an open source watermarked document would either completely undo the mark or completely and perfectly obscure the meaning of the mark.

There's a basic explanation of the known forces (Strong, Electronmagnetic, Weak and Gravity

There are quite a few ideas kicking about:

scalar-tensor-vector gravity (STVG)

Modified Newtonian Dynamics
General Relativity,
Quantum Gravity,
The http://www.halexandria.org/dward155.htm">Zero-poin t Field,
Superstring Theory,
M-theory,
Inflation/Cosmology,
Yilmaz gravitation, and
Membrane Gravity

Law of Universal Gravitation,

And there's also Intelligent Gravity

Unfortunately, there is no one simple experiment to prove any of these either true or false.

There's a basic explanation of the known forces (Strong, Electronmagnetic, Weak and Gravity

There are quite a few ideas kicking about:

scalar-tensor-vector gravity (STVG)

Modified Newtonian Dynamics
General Relativity,
Quantum Gravity,
The http://www.halexandria.org/dward155.htm">Zero-poin t Field,
Superstring Theory,
M-theory,
Inflation/Cosmology,
Yilmaz gravitation, and
Membrane Gravity

Law of Universal Gravitation,

And there's also Intelligent Gravity

Unfortunately, there is no one simple experiment to prove any of these either true or false.

There's a basic explanation of the known forces (Strong, Electronmagnetic, Weak and Gravity

There are quite a few ideas kicking about:

scalar-tensor-vector gravity (STVG)

Modified Newtonian Dynamics
General Relativity,
Quantum Gravity,
The http://www.halexandria.org/dward155.htm">Zero-poin t Field,
Superstring Theory,
M-theory,
Inflation/Cosmology,
Yilmaz gravitation, and
Membrane Gravity

Law of Universal Gravitation,

And there's also Intelligent Gravity

Unfortunately, there is no one simple experiment to prove any of these either true or false.

1. The Xen Project is the leader

2. Intel VT

3. AMD Pacifica

Wake up! A big change is coming...

Did you look at any universities outside the US?

Even then, the official syllabus can be rather misleading. For example, in the department where I studied CS a few years ago, Java is the language used for the kiddie introductory programming course. On the other hand, it's a good bet that 90% of the people who are taking that particular course for formality's sake already know pretty much everything in it and then some, and the more interesting courses use languages like ML, Prolog, etc.

I haven't seen any information that suggests shared storage is necessary. I skimmed this paper on the subject, and it appears that all that is necessary is a network connection so that the memory can be transferred.

Apparently they found it to be responsive enough to even work effectively with Quake 3 servers, taking about 60ms to get the new node operating. If you are talking about the data that must be accessed on disk, then how does VMWare skirt around the issue? Reliable shared storage may be expensive, but a virtualization cluster isn't exactly cheap either.

Whether you believe humans are causing global warming, or don't effect it.

It's going to happen, so instead of bitching about it we can actually adapt to it.

Volcanic venting releases more than 130 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every year http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/What/VolGas/volg as.html

We can begin to breed crops that are more resistant to drought and heat (which we already do anyhow http://www-saps.plantsci.cam.ac.uk/articles/broad_ biotec.htm)

Of course plants being more resistant to drought and heat would happen naturally because the plants that weren't would die leaving room for the ones that were to take over the land (natural selection :p), but we as humans can and have been speeding up the process.

Also no massive tidal wave is going to just overtake our coastal cities; we will have plenty of time to move out of the way of the raising water.

One street that can be looked at as well is with higher global temps, there will be higher global evaporation, which in turn will raise global precipitation.

There is an article from FIPR which discusses this case, and some problems it introduces.

Grrr, stupid date format, grumble, grumble. Why not use 2006-01-23? Here are all the reasons why you should.

The relevant keys may be stored in a "trusted platform module", a hardware device that is designed to wall off its contents from the owner of the computer. The TPM requirement (?) for Vista is one of the first steps in the so-called "trusted computing" scheme. TC is deceitfully promoted as "security", but is in fact a vast DRM and remote-control system. When ISPs start requiring it to be present and turned on as a condition of internet access, computers will be "trustworthy" from the viewpoint of the commercial software vendors and copyright cartel, but complete, treacherous trojans from the viewpoint of their owners, not only for music and movies but for communication as well.

"IBM and HP have apparently started work on a TC-enhanced version of GNU/linux. This will involve tidying up the code and removing a number of features. [...] Although the modified program will be covered by the GPL, and the source code will be free to everyone, it will not work in the TC ecosystem unless you have a certificate for it that is specific to the Fritz chip on your own machine. That is what will cost you money (if not at first, then eventually)."

SWSoft are the makers of Virtuozzo a commercial product that allows hosting companies to offer Virtual Private Servers.

A rival technology is Xen from Cambridge University, which is free.

"This is the first time a computer program could simulate a phase transition because the computers would always bog down at what's known as the 'critical slowdown.' We figured out a way to perform a kind of end-run around that critical point slowdown and the results allow us to calculate certain critical point properties for the first time."

For example, in the Ising Model or the Potts Model, one can examine system parameters arbitrarily close to the critical point, in finite time, using a Cluster Algorithm. This page gives some information on how the cluster algorithm. The page has a java applet graphically depicting the system for a variety of algorithms.

Just for completeness, here's an Ising model applet that I wrote, which doesn't just have a system animation, but allows you to calculate and plot data (specific heat, magnetization, etc) as the system passes through the critical point. This applet uses the Metropolis algorithm for time advancement, hence it is subject to critical slowdown. In that respect, the applet is flawed because close to the critical point I don't generate enough Metropolis iterations to ensure the subsequent frame is sufficiently thermally indepdent from the previous state. However, the cluster algorithm would remove these limitations. This applet has actually been used in graduate physics classes at Johns Hopkins to demonstrate magnetic phase transitions.

And also for completeness, here's a Potts model applet, but it doesn't acquire data for plotting like the Ising model. The Potts applet actually uses the Microcanonical ensemble, whereby the energy of the system is conserved, but the Ising applet uses the Canonical ensemble, where the system is in contact with a heat bath at some settable temperature.

And in case anyone's curious, these applets (except for the first one) are part of the Java Virtual Physics Lab , which contains a few different physics java simulations I wrote to help with conceptual understanding.

That's why computer programming is difficult, especially security-related computer programming: you have to deal with people doing unexpected things.

Xen... I think the Yonah (Duo) has SSE3 which allowed Xen to run with unmodified OSes.

1.Install Linux
2.Install Xen
3.Install OSX and Windows
4.Never dual boot again.

I highly encourage everyone to listen to a speech given by Richard Stallman on Software Patents.

I know RMS may not be too popular because of his stern disposition, but I find that he chooses his words very carefully and is very articulate. Note that he does reference "Society" quite often and many people mis-understand him because of this. To actually get where he is "coming from" you may want to read the first section of "Common Sense".

Don't be deceived by the headline! To see how ugly this beast really is, take a look at Ross Anderson's excellent TC FAQ http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html. It's the best investment you can make (20 minutes) to get informed on computer ethics, and now is the time to be informed.

You might be joking, but the US actually does want to abolish leap seconds. As a compromise to keep UTC somewhat in sync with UT1 (time as measured by astronomical observations), a leap hour would be inserted every 500-700 years.

I wish I were making this up.

He is the master who has power over things which others wish to have or to avoid, the power to take these things away or bestow them: the power to inflict or to withhold. Whoever then wishes to be free, let him neither wish to have anything nor wish to avoid anything which depends on others. Who does not observe this rule, he must be a slave.--Epictetus

xen is the king. ( http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/ ) Many ISP who prowide virtual hosting provide you a xen machine instead - you have a full root access in a chmod jail, they have several VMs w/o perf penalty. Not your case though...

but wrong

Isn't there some Computer Science adage about solving problems by adding another layer of abstraction?

--
Do we need more fiber to keep our network regular?

http://www.msm.cam.ac.uk/phase-trans/2004/HIT4/HIT 4.html/

search for "chinese typewriter" on that page. click the thumbnail for a larger image. it's frightening.

1) A vheclie epxledod at a plocie cehckipont near the UN haduqertares in Bagahdd on Mnoday kilinlg the bmober and an Irqai polcie offceir

2) Big ccunoil tax ineesacrs tihs yaer hvae seezueqd the inmcoes of mnay pneosenirs

3) A dootcr has aimttded the magltheuansr of a tageene ceacnr pintaet who deid aetfr a hatospil durg blendur

Sinrlrsigpuy, it's slitl pttrey rdlaaebe rhgit? All words are scrambled according to the rule of keeping the first and last letter fixed.

http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/~mattd/Cmabrigde/