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Actually this isn't even right... It's really more like having two towers. In these two towers you can go into the basement, and you kick a poll. You then jump up and down 6 times, run over and kick another poll. Quickly you take the elevator up one floor, stop it, climb out on top of it, and cut the cable. Then and only then do the two towers come collapsing down.

Or a better analogy would be saying it's like the Tacoma Narrows bridge. You have a bridge that seems to work fine. It's even up for a few months. And then the wind finds an exploit.

The fact of the matter is that there isn't a big red polished exploit button in MS software. Rather people spend hours, days, weeks, months, etc... trying to find exploits. But it only takes one exploit to screw you.

If people were to dedicate the same amount of effort with everyday things they may come up with some equally bad problems. And if you look at all the warnings on the common items consumers buy its obvious making things "safe" is very difficult and just doesn't happen much.

PS: MS practically gives away software to universities.

Carleton University student access for the MSDNAA software.

We get .NET and Visio for free if we're in certain classes, and XP for the cost of shipping. It's just ridiculous. They're definitely feeling the heat.

To be fair first year we did get WordPerfect Office and RedHat for $20, but hey, we're Ottawa based.

Those notes are pretty good, but they seem to be missing Lanthier's trademark brain in a jar and other random images.

Here are the assignments, exams, and notes for that course as zip files.

There's also COMP1406 (main course page), the next Java course which focuses on GUI design. And here's the list of CS course web pages (not all of them have good notes, it depends on the prof).

Those notes are pretty good, but they seem to be missing Lanthier's trademark brain in a jar and other random images.

Here are the assignments, exams, and notes for that course as zip files.

There's also COMP1406 (main course page), the next Java course which focuses on GUI design. And here's the list of CS course web pages (not all of them have good notes, it depends on the prof).

Those notes are pretty good, but they seem to be missing Lanthier's trademark brain in a jar and other random images.

Here are the assignments, exams, and notes for that course as zip files.

There's also COMP1406 (main course page), the next Java course which focuses on GUI design. And here's the list of CS course web pages (not all of them have good notes, it depends on the prof).

Those notes are pretty good, but they seem to be missing Lanthier's trademark brain in a jar and other random images.

Here are the assignments, exams, and notes for that course as zip files.

There's also COMP1406 (main course page), the next Java course which focuses on GUI design. And here's the list of CS course web pages (not all of them have good notes, it depends on the prof).

Those notes are pretty good, but they seem to be missing Lanthier's trademark brain in a jar and other random images.

Here are the assignments, exams, and notes for that course as zip files.

There's also COMP1406 (main course page), the next Java course which focuses on GUI design. And here's the list of CS course web pages (not all of them have good notes, it depends on the prof).

Those notes are pretty good, but they seem to be missing Lanthier's trademark brain in a jar and other random images.

Here are the assignments, exams, and notes for that course as zip files.

There's also COMP1406 (main course page), the next Java course which focuses on GUI design. And here's the list of CS course web pages (not all of them have good notes, it depends on the prof).

Oops, didn't notice Slashdot added a space in the link. Here, you can just click it instead: Java Course Notes

The chicken and the egg don't constitute an intractable problem (hint: the first chicken's grandma came from an egg). This is not a case of mere complexity, it's intractable, of the NP complete variety. This is rational, not mystical. Mystical is believing that you have reduced to a /. paragraph an intractable deterministic filter for people outsmarting people about what is in their minds, before it is expressed outside their bodies. Especially when you can read your paragraph for yourself, and see how it would fail, as so many others have poked apart in this discussion.

"I just can't believe it's so,
and though it seems strange to say
I never been laid so low
In such a mysterious way
And the course of a lifetime runs
Over and over again"

- Paul Simon, "Mother and Child Reunion"

Here is another real story:
a PDF document about a town in Iran with a comparable level of the natural background radiation, and people live there quite happily (or as happily as one can live in Iran, for that matter).

That's what I call procrastination !
Congrats guys !

I'm just about finished Communications Engineering at Carleton University. If it's really a professional engineering design degree that you're after, and not somethign with more of a technological slant, it's definitely the way to go. It was the first Comm Eng program in Canada (I'm in the third batch to graduate this year), and there's a strong batch of professors in the field. It also helps that Ottawa is 'Silicon Valley North'. Nortel headquarters is here, and various Alcatel and JDS plants, etc. Not to mention all the local start-ups.

We cover everything from distributed network programming, to coding techniques, to circuit design, to protocol implementation, to allocating resources for quality of service. It's great, once you get past all the math and science at the beginning. Introduction to Communications Software was my favourite course ever.

I'm just about finished Communications Engineering at Carleton University. If it's really a professional engineering design degree that you're after, and not somethign with more of a technological slant, it's definitely the way to go. It was the first Comm Eng program in Canada (I'm in the third batch to graduate this year), and there's a strong batch of professors in the field. It also helps that Ottawa is 'Silicon Valley North'. Nortel headquarters is here, and various Alcatel and JDS plants, etc. Not to mention all the local start-ups.

We cover everything from distributed network programming, to coding techniques, to circuit design, to protocol implementation, to allocating resources for quality of service. It's great, once you get past all the math and science at the beginning. Introduction to Communications Software was my favourite course ever.

BTW, what happened before Creation?

I don't know. Could be the question is meaningless, like "What positive integer is less that 1?" or "What is further North than the North Pole?" Could be an oscillating universe, or an endless stream of universes being created. (Though this might require slippery considerations of wat "before" means.) Could be the whole thing was sneezed out of the nose the Great Green Arkleseizure.

I do know that positing a pre-existing creator explains nothing, because one then is left with the puzzle of the creator's origin. Shifting mysteries is no solution.

"2: mars is bigger then earth, gravity is based on mass of all surronding objects. Mars has more mass then earth, therefore Mars has more gravity then earth." what? You better check that: http://www.carleton.ca/~tpatters/teaching/climatec hange/solar/earthmarscomp.gif

> How would I be able to continue doing this under such a system?

Use your "halfway across the continent box" as your SMTP server. If your connection to that box is fast enough to download all your incoming email from it should also be fast enough to forward all your outoing email. You can even do this securely.

Look into Canadian diamonds.

I'm reminded of Boat of a Million Years by Poul Anderson (an OK read...) and Iain Banks' novels (e.g. Excession) about the Culture. Both address societies where immortality has become the norm and have (IMHO) some interesting things to say about them. In Anderson's world immortal societies tend to sink into idleness as machine intelligence takes over the interesting stuff and science speeds well beyond human comprehension. Banks' Culture sees a gradual, more productive blending of machine and human mind.

If Sci-Fi really is speculative sociology/anthropology as it is sometimes taught in universities (although that link is to Carleton University, where the "K" stands for "quality") the the SlashDot crowd should be well versed in the possibilities.

...I like to think we are on headed in the right direction.. see here and here I have frequently visited Bo Brodie's company, Computer Recyclers Inc., an Ottawa company that deals in electronic junk. Brodie's firm takes in about half a million pounds of electronic junk a year. Not only will they take your old junk off your hands but they sell the stuff people get rid of that is still good. Win win if you ask me.

Hey - I've heard about something like this...it was called...
Oh, right...karma.

by Tony White can be found here.

this is such a bunch of tripe!

First of all.. if we were to take the encylopeadia Britannica and stack all the books up.. then the thickness of each page would represent more than 100,000 years of the earth's history. This means that the last ice age which ended about 10,000 years ago and was at peak 18,000 years ago would be within 1/5 of the thickness of the last page.

There were 8 ice ages in the last 2 million years and that is within the last 20 pages.

Within the last 2,000 years (2% of the thichness of the last page) there have been several warming and cooling periods denoted by such names as the little ice age and the medieval warm period . Crocs were in the themes during Roman times... (little warmer).

look here to see a chart showing global temperature over the last billion or so years. This is the paleomap project an they have done increadible work.

Check out the university of Carleton, Tim Patterson has an excellent course on climate change and this is being broadcast on TLC as well.

On Chris Scotese's web site you will see that for 90% of the history of the planet for the last 650 million years or so, the earth was about 20 degrees warmer than now. If you look at the miocene maps you will see that 14 Million years ago the planet was warmer.. and a lot wetter..

BTW... the time scale on Chris's chart is not linear. If the chart is re-scaled it tells the same story but is even more dramatic. (We leave the re-scalling to the student as an excersize).

Look here if you want to know why Britian is so keen on renewable energy and specifically look at these charts which show the decline rate of North Sea oil production. Britain will become an oil importer within 2 years. The decline rate of North Sea oil production is more than 15% per year. The chart shows how feilds deplete. You can see how the big plays are drilled first and last the longest... and thereafter smaller and smaller fields are brought online until they give up and stop drilling. This is where Britian is now. One of the stats is that Britian has about 250 barrels of oil per capita. That is it! On to renewable because the oil resource is gone.

The real issue of climate change is this. Water in the atmosphere is far more significant than CO2. Firstly H2O is at a far greater level so the question becomes... how would we express the level of H2O in the atmosphere? Secondly there is uncertainty in the measurements. Thirdly, irrigation and agriculture increase the H2O levels. Most of that water pumped onto the fields will evaporate and plants do transpire!

CO2 levels are in the range of 0.036% and this of course is a plant nutrient.

So we are left with adding 2 numbers for instance.

H2O = 0%-4.0% +/- what? a percent?
CO2 = 0.036% +/- 0.0005

You can see these numbers here in table 7a-1.

Since the warming response is most likely due to the weighted "sum" of the CO2 and H2O and all the other green house gasses of course, then we need to "add" the H2O levels to the CO2 levels. Well - the numbers are in the preceeding paragraph and I don't know how to add them. We don't even have a good handle on the uncertainty of the H2O levels... but, My guess is that irrigation and agriculture have increased the H2O substancially.

So - we end up with the anaolgy to the encyclopeadia. Almost all of the data for climate modeling has been collected in the last 100 years and this represents 1/1000'th of the thickenss of the last page of the stack of books. Meanwhile all the other pages are basically ignored. The geological history of the planet shows that the planet is usually (90% of the time) about 20 degrees warmer than now. So most likely the planet will warm back up. But we don't know when and we might get another ice age or several before this happens. Anyone for 10,000 feet of ice over Toronto? Who votes for palm trees in the artic circle?

Fermi's reactor in Chicago (the first) used natural uranium (almost all U-238) as fuel.

There are ways to get energy directly from fission of U-238, but they require very fast neutrons such as are created in a deuterium-tritium fusion reaction.

The Russians, before they got the plans for our reactor, looked at a U-238 design that used heavy water as the moderator...

Sorry, but the idea that sharks never get cancer is a myth.

Didn't see no women there...

And people wonder why it is so hard to make money in the computer game industry...

Let me quote from the article:

"We're undeniably late and we know it. We've switched engines a couple of times, and we've started over a couple of times. We've made some mistakes, and we've learned from them.
--George Broussard, President, 3D Realms

The least they can do is hire a competent project manager to slap those ho's back on track.

Way I figure it, if they had 3 developers and one manager working full time for five years, they've already burned through close to two million dollars and have nothing to show for it. Hope they figure they can sell enough copies to *cough* at least break even. Do'o!

This book reminds me of my university education. When I was done, we had done transistors, digital logic, PC architecture, assembly language, C and C++ and network protocols. I have always felt that having an understanding of how everything works has made me a better programmer.

However, I would like to visit the sites of some engineering failures.

If you're interested in famous engineering failures of Eastern Canada, check out the Quebec Bridge story.

Also read To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design (if you haven't already).

If your key code is buried deep in some subroutine, then how can you "remove" it from your product and still make it functional?

And somewhat OT, but I was unaware the Verrazano Narrows fell down! What a mess that will cause for holiday traffic! Or did you mean the Tacoma Narrows? Your point on bridge design being non-obvious is noted, but software design is usually (or should usually be) easier to inspect, if you know what to look for. And Joe User doesn't have to know how to inspect it, but a software professional should. Well-designed software can still fall down under load testing or other types of tests, but good design is at least a good start.

Have you ever played the Star Trek Drinking Game?

Carleton University does this. Some courses have some generic info on the professor's personal webpage, while others have detailed schedules and assignments (including assignments and solutions from years past). The level of this varies from prof to prof as some are not the most computer litterate.

An example of everything online is my "Problem solving and Computers for Engineers" class. The course site is here. A somewhat less helpful site is my mechanics prof's site, here.

However, some of my classes use WebCT (should be familiar to at least some students out there) to post course materials, as well as some grades and for some testing. However, the TAs and both professors have made comments that they really don't like the system because it is too hard to upload files and make changes. Has I have known that all this info was availible online when I was applying to university programs, it probably would have helped me out a bit in choosing programs.

Carleton University does this. Some courses have some generic info on the professor's personal webpage, while others have detailed schedules and assignments (including assignments and solutions from years past). The level of this varies from prof to prof as some are not the most computer litterate.

An example of everything online is my "Problem solving and Computers for Engineers" class. The course site is here. A somewhat less helpful site is my mechanics prof's site, here.

However, some of my classes use WebCT (should be familiar to at least some students out there) to post course materials, as well as some grades and for some testing. However, the TAs and both professors have made comments that they really don't like the system because it is too hard to upload files and make changes. Has I have known that all this info was availible online when I was applying to university programs, it probably would have helped me out a bit in choosing programs.

Carleton University does this. Some courses have some generic info on the professor's personal webpage, while others have detailed schedules and assignments (including assignments and solutions from years past). The level of this varies from prof to prof as some are not the most computer litterate.

An example of everything online is my "Problem solving and Computers for Engineers" class. The course site is here. A somewhat less helpful site is my mechanics prof's site, here.

However, some of my classes use WebCT (should be familiar to at least some students out there) to post course materials, as well as some grades and for some testing. However, the TAs and both professors have made comments that they really don't like the system because it is too hard to upload files and make changes. Has I have known that all this info was availible online when I was applying to university programs, it probably would have helped me out a bit in choosing programs.

Actually, I'm taking engineering at Carleton University and we're using IntelliCAD. It's just about the same as AutoCAD from what I see, except it's free. It also opens .dwg files and whatnot.

• First off, Vorbis concentrates its encoding in the more audible midrange, completely cutting out higher overtones. While MP3 works similarly, it manages to keep enough of the high range to maintain the "feel" of the original music. While you may not consciously notice this lack, there is an easy way to demonstrate it. Try singing along with a Vorbis track. You'll find that it's much more difficult to keep in tune, because the brain unconsciously uses inaudible overtones as a guide to determine the tone of the music when singing along. To put it bluntly, don't encode your karaoke tracks in Vorbis.
• Vorbis claims to support more than two channel audio, but this is misleading. MP3 encodes stereo using a "joint-stereo" method, which couples both tracks together into a mono track, giving each frame a different balance to simulate stereo on a mono track. This is equivalent to playing a mono tape and turning the balance knob! Obviously, this is less than optimal. While Vorbis supports true stereo encoding, it fakes 5.1-channel audio using a "joint-joint-stereo" method, where the left-back/left-front and right-back/right-front channels and joined together into the two stereo tracks in a similar fashion. Not very good at all.
• The way that Vorbis compresses its audio accelerates speaker degradation. It breaks sound up into an evenly-spaced array of harmonics which approximate the original waveform. "Big deal", you say, "that's how all lossy encoding schemes work!" But the way that Vorbis does it causes a noticeable amount of harmonic resonance in speaker systems, stressing their driver system and accelerating the rate at which they decay. If you know the story of the first Tacoma Narrows bridge, this is the same principle, working at a smaller and more gradual pace.

12 years ago, in first grade I wanted to be a rocket scientist. Now I'm writing this post from my dorm room at Carleton University where I'm taking Aerospace Engineering. Dreams do come true! *wipe away tear*

Reminds me of this story. Neural Network Follies

Frankly, all that i can do is offer my best jacques cousteau impression, and hope that they don't evolve further.

NASA

Another Squid Site

Discovery Channel and the Giant Squid

Weird Squids In Action (that one's just fun for the cool giant squid graphics- how would YOU have done it?)

A A 1996 article regarding giant squid discovery>

A 2002 discovery of a MUCH smaller 'giant' squid

and of course, proof that there's a convention group for everything.

And if anybody wants to know how i happen to know any of this, let's just say that i dated a marine biologist. It won't be true, but it would make my mum happy....

I've said it before, but implementing these laws is nigh on impossible. Think about how you would implement them...

They are defined is such a high-level way that hard coding them into anything would be extremely hard. In fact, you'd probably have to train a neural network with these laws just so that you had them in a suitable language. Of course then you have to determine whether this is what the robots have learned, or whether the action is the cause of some side effect learning (ie. Tank recognition).

I can't see anyone ever being able to do anything useful with these laws.

You can find out more about "Tasmanian Tigers" at The Thylacine Museum. In reality it's a marsupial, not a mammal, and so it's closer to an opossum than a feline like a tiger. The only reason it's called a "tiger" is because of its stripes, as seen in the photo at the top of this webpage about mysterious animals. And it may not even be extinct...

In 1940, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed" because insufficient stiffening allowed the wind to create oscillations that destroyed it.

Fast forward 61 years to London and the Millennium Bridge near-disaster where insufficient stiffening ... well, you get the picture.

Point is, a list such as this one is valuable ONLY if we remember and learn from it. Those who forget history are doomed ...

Haven't tried it, but you could try gnuShogi. Another open source version is WinShogi.

Same principle (harmonics), somewhat larger scale.
A nice movie can be found here.

Oh, and did I hear "scientific" space telescope? Well, space telescope, orbital missile defence platform, same thing, right?

The rest of the world will soon learn the virtues of putting cheese curds on french fries! BWAHAHAHA!

This falls under the "I just don't get it" category -- but to question it is to somehow admit that you are uncultured? Like the 1.8 million dollar red stripe purchased by the National Gallery a few years ago. (I've seen this painting in person. It's big. Otherwise, much the same as the picture. I'm not sure why it's worth so much more than "Yellow Edge," which is.... a blank black canvas with one edge painted yellow.)

Who can honestly tell me why something like this is so brilliant? And why, say, an exhibit consisting of two telephones ringing (an idea I just came up with this moment, believe it or not) wouldn't be worthy of a cash prize?

My best guess is that everyone says "oh, yes, it's brilliant" just so they look like a fine art connaisseur. After all, someone thought it was brilliant, and that person is obviously more qualified to judge art than I am... so to question it would be to appear ignorant.

It all boils down to whether Slashdot can successfully differentiate itself from the hundreds of other "Cool Linux Stories" sites. In the end, what keeps Slashdot's readers coming back is the discussion and the attached moderation system. What remains to be seen is whether or not people will pay for that.

Apparently someone has made a more advanced version of my childhood handheld.

- Freed

Not exactly with Mindstorms, but the idea is the same, and with manipulators similar to the ones used to solve the rubik's cube I see no real problems.