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At Carnegie Mellon, considered to be one of the best tech schools in the world, all students (even CS and ECE majors) are required to take Computing Skills Workshop. The very first lesson in the course is on security and passwords. It also covers UNIX commands, file management, and access rights.

After a few weeks, most people realize that they can skip the classes and only show up for exams, so it's not really a waste of time for those who do not need it. However, for those who do, it ensures that they have a baseline level of computing knowledge, which helps keep our network safer.

One of the original designers of Scheme?
Primary author of Common Lisp the Language?
Co-author of C: A Reference Manual, which was the bible on writing portable C?
Co-author of The Java Language Specification?

If contributing to the design of four major programming languages doesn't get you into the top twenty, how about designing the original EMACS command set? There may be people who are better known for contributions to one language or one toolset, but it's hard to beat him for sheer breadth.

"Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)"
Promote Pro*mote", v. t. imp. & p. p. Promoted; p. pr. &
vb. n. Promoting. L. promotus, p. p. of promovere to move
forward, to promote; pro forward + movere to move. See
Move.
1. To contribute to the growth, enlargement, or prosperity of
(any process or thing that is in course); to forward; to
further; to encourage; to advance; to excite; as, to
promote learning; to promote disorder; to promote a
business venture. ``Born to promote all truth.'' --Milton."

Having some vague memories of this myself, I went hunting. Here's the trivia:

- Photos of one for sale
- The Sub Dragon's Lair gameplay was actually courtesy of Dragon's Lair's creator (Rick Dyer). Go figure.
- Rather wordy essay about the game. Grainy gameplay pictures included.
- Original Arcade Flyer for the machine. (Translation not included)
- Editorial on Rick Dyer, Don Bluth and the history of Laser-Disc-Based Games. Time Traveler is mentioned under an avalanche of other obscure releases. The bottom line: $18M in sales. Now, I wonder if the arcade ops made anything on it.

I just started a grad program in information security offered through the Information Networking Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. It's a unique program, because along with a very solid technology core, we also take some policy and business classes to better prepare for industry. I think alot of problems still stem from the tech/security guys not being able to communicate with management and vice versa, so hopefully having this background will allow us to bridge that gap more effectively - and even fill some of those management positions ourselves. A few potential employers I've spoken with seem to agree. The general consensus is that it is easier to teach the geeks policy and management than it is to teach tech to the MBA's.

We're also affiliated with a number of research centers, which allows for some pretty interesting research opportunities. CERT/CC, Carnegie Mellon CyLab, and the Center for Wireless and Broadband Networking are the main three.

I just started a grad program in information security offered through the Information Networking Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. It's a unique program, because along with a very solid technology core, we also take some policy and business classes to better prepare for industry. I think alot of problems still stem from the tech/security guys not being able to communicate with management and vice versa, so hopefully having this background will allow us to bridge that gap more effectively - and even fill some of those management positions ourselves. A few potential employers I've spoken with seem to agree. The general consensus is that it is easier to teach the geeks policy and management than it is to teach tech to the MBA's.

We're also affiliated with a number of research centers, which allows for some pretty interesting research opportunities. CERT/CC, Carnegie Mellon CyLab, and the Center for Wireless and Broadband Networking are the main three.

I just started a grad program in information security offered through the Information Networking Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. It's a unique program, because along with a very solid technology core, we also take some policy and business classes to better prepare for industry. I think alot of problems still stem from the tech/security guys not being able to communicate with management and vice versa, so hopefully having this background will allow us to bridge that gap more effectively - and even fill some of those management positions ourselves. A few potential employers I've spoken with seem to agree. The general consensus is that it is easier to teach the geeks policy and management than it is to teach tech to the MBA's.

We're also affiliated with a number of research centers, which allows for some pretty interesting research opportunities. CERT/CC, Carnegie Mellon CyLab, and the Center for Wireless and Broadband Networking are the main three.

I just started a grad program in information security offered through the Information Networking Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. It's a unique program, because along with a very solid technology core, we also take some policy and business classes to better prepare for industry. I think alot of problems still stem from the tech/security guys not being able to communicate with management and vice versa, so hopefully having this background will allow us to bridge that gap more effectively - and even fill some of those management positions ourselves. A few potential employers I've spoken with seem to agree. The general consensus is that it is easier to teach the geeks policy and management than it is to teach tech to the MBA's.

We're also affiliated with a number of research centers, which allows for some pretty interesting research opportunities. CERT/CC, Carnegie Mellon CyLab, and the Center for Wireless and Broadband Networking are the main three.

I just started a grad program in information security offered through the Information Networking Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. It's a unique program, because along with a very solid technology core, we also take some policy and business classes to better prepare for industry. I think alot of problems still stem from the tech/security guys not being able to communicate with management and vice versa, so hopefully having this background will allow us to bridge that gap more effectively - and even fill some of those management positions ourselves. A few potential employers I've spoken with seem to agree. The general consensus is that it is easier to teach the geeks policy and management than it is to teach tech to the MBA's.

We're also affiliated with a number of research centers, which allows for some pretty interesting research opportunities. CERT/CC, Carnegie Mellon CyLab, and the Center for Wireless and Broadband Networking are the main three.

It was definitely harder for me to get in the door for that first job, though. I got lucky in many respects, whereas other folks from higher profile programs had an easier in. For the most part, though, I agree with the folks here saying your first job matters more than your degree. After my first job, experience and social networking were definitely more important than the degree itself.

On the other hand, I didn't want to finish with a B.S., I wanted to go back to grad school and eventually get into teaching at the college level. So after having been a part of the workforce for a few years, I applied to Ph.D. programs at several well known schools.

Despite my having very good grades and excellent references, most of them turned me down flat. I'm reasonable sure the primary reason was my undergraduate degree -- when you're competing with 9 other people for one slot in the program, it's easy to get tossed out for not having a degree from a well known university. My work supervisor at the time got his Ph.D. in CS from CMU, one of the programs to which I was applying. He wrote one of my recommendations. I got in. I think if he hadn't, they probably would have turned me away because of my undergraduate degree as well.

So I do think what program you're in does matter. It's also been my recent experience that the undergrads at the high profile program really do learn a lot more than I did in my undergraduate program. That doesn't mean it's true in all cases, but it certainly is true in my limited experience.

When I first applied to undergrad programs, I was accepted at several well-known programs, but I decided I wanted to go to smaller, more personal school instead. I liked the program I was in, but if I had a chance to do it over again, I would choose a different school.

Shorter summary: Granter of degree is not destiny, but is an important component of same.

Hope that helps!

The school name on your resume gets you on the interview pile, that's about it.

The more important decision IMO, is what kind of education you want from your CS degree. I've been to both stateU and a big name school. I hated every minute of my time at the big name school because they were more research oriented, and I could care less.

Sometimes it's hard to determine from the school, since my stateU was also well known for research as well, but also it's teaching excellence, but decide which you'd prefer, and base your decision on that.

cant forget DeCSS

Developed originally by Disney VR Studio for Toontown Online, we use the Panda3D game engine at the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University for our Building Virtual Worlds class. A lot of the projects result in machinima-like content.

There's an exporter for Maya and 3ds Max models and animation, which makes it quite easy to do a world in Maya, then dump it straight into a realtime engine and add basic or complex interactivity. Scripting is done in python so it's easy do create and expand.

It's pretty versatile too - we've used it for motion-tracked virtual reality, dome projection, 3D polarized projection, desktop pets, and integrated things like MIDI, all sorts of physical interfaces, show control, etc...

Developed originally by Disney VR Studio for Toontown Online, we use the Panda3D game engine at the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University for our Building Virtual Worlds class. A lot of the projects result in machinima-like content.

There's an exporter for Maya and 3ds Max models and animation, which makes it quite easy to do a world in Maya, then dump it straight into a realtime engine and add basic or complex interactivity. Scripting is done in python so it's easy do create and expand.

It's pretty versatile too - we've used it for motion-tracked virtual reality, dome projection, 3D polarized projection, desktop pets, and integrated things like MIDI, all sorts of physical interfaces, show control, etc...

Developed originally by Disney VR Studio for Toontown Online, we use the Panda3D game engine at the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University for our Building Virtual Worlds class. A lot of the projects result in machinima-like content.

There's an exporter for Maya and 3ds Max models and animation, which makes it quite easy to do a world in Maya, then dump it straight into a realtime engine and add basic or complex interactivity. Scripting is done in python so it's easy do create and expand.

It's pretty versatile too - we've used it for motion-tracked virtual reality, dome projection, 3D polarized projection, desktop pets, and integrated things like MIDI, all sorts of physical interfaces, show control, etc...

What is interesting (sort of) is that one "important" haskell project was cacheprof http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/academic/cl ass/15213-f01/L4/cprof/documentation.html

The most interesting thing is that, IIRC, the author said, in his page that rewriting cacheprof in C was an exercice in futility (because haskell was much much better at the kind of manipulations that cacheprof did). In one word, the author said that C was totally unsuited for writing cacheprof

Now, the main cacheprof page (http://www.maxuk.net/cacheprof.html just says that functionality have been rolled into valgrind, saying "[valgrind] is vastly superior in every way".

And guess, what, valgrind is... in C.

Which make haskell a nice prototyping language, but the vast amount of people knowing C blew it away in the long run.

(As a side point, I never seen a code migration from C to assembly, so I take all the opinion that C will be replaced by functional languages with a rock of salt...)

Perhaps this is a way for Verizon to force themselves into the wireless throughput game? Perhaps it prevents WISPs from forming.

Here in Pittsburgh, there ain't much going on, 'cept at CMU, and one of the local mom and pop shops. There are a few players, but none who talkabout it -- it's taboo here, most people are happy with their dialup (Ugh!).

Personally, I've used Macintosh Common Lisp (now from Digitool) since it was available from Apple, but I've tried Lispworks (since that's what I use on a Linux box at work), and CLISP of course. Most of the other versions, including Franz's, I've used in the past on other platforms (Sun) since I lost my beloved Symbolics box. MCL was by far the best experience under OS9 and prior, though the user interface elements haven't completely tracked the change to OS X, though I usually use CLIM anyway for code portability so we're really just talking look and feel issues. The Xanalys product is very nice, the demo is pretty unrestricted (just the continuous time to use it, and inability to dump images so you need to load up your system after you start - pretty reasonable for what you get), and the full unrestricted version isn't too expensive.

If you're just starting out and want to poke around, I'd have to recommend Xanalys personal as the best bang for the buck, since you get a pretty nice IDE with it (though Digitool's might be easier to learn if you're used to OS 9). Once you get to the point of needing to dump applications, you can either spend the money to upgrade to professional, or use one of the free lisps to dump images. Your main limitation in these alternatives will be the user interface, as that is generally unique to the implementation unless you use CLIM (and CLIM is not free) or something like Garnet, neither of which will give you something very mac-like.

Personally, I've used (now from Digitool) since it was available from Apple, but I've tried Lispworks (since that's what I use on a Linux box at work), and CLISP of course. Most of the other versions, including Franz's, I've used in the past on other platforms (Sun) since I lost my beloved box. MCL was by far the best experience under OS9 and prior, though the user interface elements haven't completely tracked the change to OS X, though I usually use CLIM anyway for code portability so we're really just talking look and feel issues. The Xanalys product is very nice, the demo is pretty unrestricted (just the continuous time to use it, and inability to dump images so you need to load up your system after you start - pretty reasonable for what you get), and the full unrestricted version isn't too expensive.

If you're just starting out and want to poke around, I'd have to recommend Xanalys personal as the best bang for the buck, since you get a pretty nice IDE with it (though Digitool's might be easier to learn if you're used to OS 9). Once you get to the point of needing to dump applications, you can either spend the money to upgrade to professional, or use one of the free lisps to dump images. Your main limitation in these alternatives will be the user interface, as that is generally unique to the implementation unless you use CLIM (and CLIM is not free) or something like Garnet, neither of which will give you something very mac-like.

For the kernel itself to support fork(2), you'd have to have a meta-OS running the kernel, similar to a supervisor OS running as a user task in Mach.

But I can see things deteriorating rapidly: someone will want vfork for kernels, someone else will implement kernel-to-kernel pipes, someone else will make vfork obsolete, someone will complain about kernels not getting SIGCHLDs from their child kernels, etc.

What? No, of I course I didn't read the fsck'n article ... not even the summary!

Touché.

BUT! why have it in machine-readable form unless you intend to use it? It must be planning a crime, like I said in my other post. Or at least that's presumably the theory behind why your Perl code would be illegal, but this stuff isn't.

site's getting slow (8k/sec), so I've mirrored it:
http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~pnelson/ucdata. berkeley.edu/new_web/VOTE2004/

2) just assume that content is being traded illegally without checking (as we've seen before) and just send spurious DMCA notices until internet 2 is beaten into submission.

Actually, that's pretty much out of the question.

If may suprise you to hear this, but a lot of universities actually have law schools. Some of them have really good law schools. Besides having tons of good lawyers, they also have LOTS of money. The annual budget of my alma mater is a TEN figure amount.

If you want to see an example of this in action, look at the Gallery of CSS Descramblers.
Sure the MPAA, would LOVE to have it taken down, but CMU has the actual resources to beat them in court, and a reputation that will get them taken seriously.
It's not like taking on some schmo making $30K/year or going after an organization that you can paint to be a bunch of criminal anarchists (2600).

"I]n the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a 'shotgun having a barrel of less than 18 inches in length' at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well- regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument."

The point to really make regarding this quote from Miller is that it explitly recognizes that there is a class of weapons that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear, and that classes of weapons is those in current use by our armed forces, ie the fully automatic M-16. Another point is that the ruling really doesn't say that the government can regulate sawed-off shotguns, it says that the case has not been proven that the government cannot regulate them.

Read the full text of the decision here: http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/wbardw el/public/nfalist/miller.txt

To quote Linus: They are smoking crack.

Colorful metaphors, while entertaining, have not historically proven useful to rebut ruthless corporate attack-tactics.

If I were Linus, I wouldn't find this to be such a joking matter. One could conceive of Ballmer and his cronies as hackers; every attempt to root the system may not work, but 100% success rate isn't the point- one success is all that's necessary and it doesn't matter how many failures preceded it. Linux is being hacked through atom-world measures, what is usually called by hackers 'social engineering'. Only in Ballmer's case he has an army of the best lawyers at his command.

The Church of Scientology have tried similar tactics before. They've failed a lot... but they have also succeeded and survived because of it. Money and lawyers, combined with a brute force attack strategy, can accomplish incredible things. And that's why I wouldn't scoff at Ballmer. His actions may be unjust, immoral, unethical and absurd to you, but that doesn't mean he won't win.

One thing I like about Brad Meyers is that he's a strong programmer, as well as an excellent researcher, so he had a first-hand understanding of the real-world issues involved in programming languages and user interface architecture, unlike many academics who talk a lot of theory but never get their hands dirty. Brad Meyers understands where the rubber hits the road, and how important it is to have good tires.

At the time I worked on it, Garnet didn't have pretty graphics like Flash, but the underlying programming system had some advanced features that are sorely lacking from most modern user interface development environments.

Laszlo is an modern open source GUI programming system, with many of Garnet's advanced "natural programming" features like prototypes and constraints. Laszlo currently uses Flash as its virtual machine, but it's a much higher level way to program dynamic interactive web based applications, without using the proprietary Flash authoring tool.

Garnet had a true prototype based OOP system (somewhat like Self), which is great for gui programming, because guis have so many objects that look and behave like each other except for a few little customizations (like the layout, graphical style, data source and call-back behavior).

Garnet also had an automatic constraint system, which enabled you to simply define any attribute as a formula that depend on other attributes, without needing to worry about how and when the values were calculated. Garnet's constraint system automatically figured out the dependences of each formula, and automatically and efficiently recalculated and cached any values that needed to be updated, but only when necessary.

With constraints, you can make a button inside a window, and define its left edge to be ((parent.width - self.width) / 2), and it will automatically remain horizontally centered in the window from then on, without you (the programmer) having to worry about what to do when the parent window's size changes.

Without constraints, you have to manually write all the code that changes the button position whenever the window size changes, which results in code scattered all over the place in different classes and handlers and intermediate objects.

Constraints are much easier to use and more general purpose than resize handlers, springs and struts, complex MVC updating schemes, and other Rube Goldberg devices.

Constraints are especially useful for user interface programming, because they save you from having to write lots of annoying boiler plate and error prone code for handling updates (registering, chasing down dependencies, detecting changes, notifying updates, all happens automatically).

Constraints make GUI programming much easier, but they're also useful anywhere in your program where one value is defined in terms of other values that might change at any time.

Once you've tasted a programming language with constraints, you will not want to go back. Programming without constraints is like writing in machine language: error prone, low level, tedious, inefficient and mind numbing.

Constraints are like structured programming for variables: In the same way that it's better to use loops and conditionals instead of gotos, it's also better to use declarative programming that says what you mean, instead of imperative

First, the article on ACM Queue is about Natural Programming and NOT Natural Language Programming. Please at least read the article before making an inane post.

Second, the concepts in Natural Programming are quite sound. Rather than re-using programming concepts that people often have difficulty with or are error prone (such as looping structures or boolean statements), they suggest alternatives and provide user tests that indicate that these alternatives have good potential.

If you want to see an example video of one of the projects, please see:
http://web.cs.cmu.edu/~pane/HANDS/HANDS.MPG (Warning: 73Megs)

I know what you mean. I read that this "HaikuOS" had finally implemented fork() and I thought someone was rewriting the Linux kernel in haiku, a la deCSS.

Then I thought it was funny that something related to Japanese was implementing a fork.

• In other news EA grinds up babies to make their games. Well maybe they aren't that bad but they do totally fuck over their employees.

Randy Pausch:

• One of EA's major strengths is in management of people and process.
• The largest sin at EA is not delivering your game on time.
• EA has a very young, energetic work force.
• People at EA work long hours, in large part because of their great passion for making games.

Who's telling the truth? You decide.

Personally, I think Randy Pausch is a putz, and I'm speaking both as someone who has seen him lecture at CMU and who has friends that were advised by him.

-c

Perl might not be the best starting point if you want to learn something about desining a programming language. If you're thinking of using that, I'd say you're better off starting from scratch.

Functional languages, especially those with pattern matching primitives (like ML or Haskell), are really good at this kind of program -- in fact, writing compilers and interpreters is really their shining point. I highly recommend using one of these languages rather than C. Lots of undergraduate computer science classes (like 15-212 and 15-312 at my university) write interpreters in functional languages as part of the curriculum. You could try to find some course notes... I speak from experience when I say that this beats the hell out of mucking around in C or C++, not really knowing what you're doing. ;)

Check out the CMUCAM: CMUcam vision sensors.

It can be hooked to servos and automatically track objects, plus the CMUcam2 can control multiple servos, so you could have it be a sentry without having to do any wacky wiring or microprocessing.

For a background on the technology, check out:
http://yogi.pdl.cmu.edu/research/MEMS/

quote: "storage capacity of 1-10 GB of data in under 1 cm^2 area with access times of under a millisecond and streaming bandwidths of over 50 Mbytes per second."

The research is about 5 years old. Because of constant seek times (the surface agitates in both x and y axes) and a kajillion heads, this is technology really designed to bridge EEPROM versus hard drive access times/throughput.

Think 50 Mbytes per second isn't any great shakes? Keep in mind that this is a chip less than a square centimeter in area, and start thinking of replacing RAID drives with these.

sloth jr

I thought football was that game where the ball was only played with the feet. Oh that's right, you think that's called Soccer.

Hell, the term originates in England, not in America, so don't blame us Americans for being more traditional ;-)

-chris

Consider one row in a 7 drive array. It has 6 data blocks and one parity block:

D1 D2 D3 D4 D5 D6 P1

where P1 is the XOR of D1 through D6.

If I write to D1, but leave any of D2-D3 alone, then it is necessary to read SOMETHING in order to calculate the new parity. Yes, I know what I'm writing, but unless I overwrite the whole thing, I must perform extra operations in order to update the parity block correctly. These extra operations degrade performance, and are known as the small write problem. As another AC above said, the update can be done with two reads and two writes; read the old D1 and the old P1, then write the new D1, and write P1 to be (old D1 XOR new D1 XOR old P1). It's a bit of trickery, but it does give the correct parity block. It does, however, take two reads and two writes, to update the one block.

Linux (last I looked) doesn't do this. Instead it takes the simpler approach of reading the blocks in the row that it isn't updating (D2 through D6 in this case), and then computing P1 as the XOR of D1 through D6 again.

The small write problem is a big deal. Although the IOs can happen in parallel, the latency for the write becomes the maximum of the reads plus the latency of the parity write. The larger number of IOs also keep the array busy when it could be doing other things, which degrades the performance of those other operations. And it causes this performance degregation for small updates (those under the stripe size), amoung the most common operations. Even if all of your files are big, and written in a streaming manner, the metadata updates are generally in a different row in the array, and are small, isolated writes. A journaled file system, depending on how it is implemented, can be much worse for generating lots of scattered writes. Here is a paper from CMU that gives one possible solution (one that isn't implemented by Linux). The traditional solution is write caching--you delay the write until either you've updated the other entries in the row, you've read the other entires in the row, or it is otherwise convienient to do the update (i.e. array isn't busy). This is of course dangerous because your data isn't on disk but in RAM. OTOH, witha good UPS, loosing the contents of RAM is a relatively rare event. To sidestep the volitility of RAM entirely, nice HW raid controllers have some amount of non-volitile memory (either NVRAM or battery backed DRAM) for this purpose. Writeback caching can also help perfomance on non-RAID devices, since it allows you to reorder the writes to minimize head seeks and rotational latency. These two, especially the head seeks, are what make disk IO slow.

You obviously don't have much background in storage. Try reading Chen's classic paper on RAID, go and search for a few papers the reference it, and then come back and spout off. Until then, quit giving people bad advice.

Okay, so ATMs in the US run windows. In fact there is one the building my office is in that managed to crash to windows a few months a go. I posted a comment about it with links to movies but I think the movies are dead now. Anyway, this is sorta a rerun of a previous slashdot story.

Missing data is a pain for social network analis. Non of the models that are used can really deal with it. And most models need the data to be in binary form there is no good models that uses reals so you can not really see gradulaity.

If want to see some good social network software and you can do the networks yourself. Just look at ucnet or ora
Ora is making better work of missing data

"All men are mortal
Socrates is a man
Therefore, all men are Socrates."

"The last scene was interesting from the point of view of a professional logician because it contained a number of logical fallacies -- that is, invalid propositional constructions and syllogistic forms -- of the type so often committed by my wife."... :-)

Monty Python

Looks like the military segbots are already getting in trouble with the police: http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~carmen/segbot/images/cops /index.html

I can see it now: "World's Wildest Robot Chases"

We've had a couple of these for the past year or so. They're currently being developed into soccer-playing robots as part of Robocup.

The goal there is to have a team of humans on segways play segway robots in an actual soccer match.

The project's website, which has a movie page with a ton of movies of the thing in action is here.

Not a bad list, but a bunch of things you answered as "No" are really "Yes". We still have a few No's, but they are kind of questionable IMO.

Is a computer ethics policy in place for the school? No
Yes We Do

Do students have access to Usenet newsgroups? No
Yes (news.andrew.cmu.edu).

Does the school provide multimedia equipment? No
Yes, the CFA (College of Fine Arts) cluster has just about everything (computers, scanners, etc), and the mobile portions can be signed out (cameras).

Does the school offer courses in emerging technologies? No
Yes! In methodology they mention computer security, robotics, and "videogaming". So, there's the class 15-827, "Security and Cryptography". Then there's the 25 year old Robotics Institute, which offers undergraduate minors and graduate degrees (MS,PhD) in Robotics. And as far as video game courses, do you want engine programming or cross-discipline game design?

That leaves requiring/providing computers for every student (pointless now that most students have machines anyway, and free clusters if they don't). Oh, and "support for handhelds", which has nothing to do with connectivity. If so, which one are they supposed to support since they are all different? Why not just have a course web page?

Not a bad list, but a bunch of things you answered as "No" are really "Yes". We still have a few No's, but they are kind of questionable IMO.

Is a computer ethics policy in place for the school? No
Yes We Do

Do students have access to Usenet newsgroups? No
Yes (news.andrew.cmu.edu).

Does the school provide multimedia equipment? No
Yes, the CFA (College of Fine Arts) cluster has just about everything (computers, scanners, etc), and the mobile portions can be signed out (cameras).

Does the school offer courses in emerging technologies? No
Yes! In methodology they mention computer security, robotics, and "videogaming". So, there's the class 15-827, "Security and Cryptography". Then there's the 25 year old Robotics Institute, which offers undergraduate minors and graduate degrees (MS,PhD) in Robotics. And as far as video game courses, do you want engine programming or cross-discipline game design?

That leaves requiring/providing computers for every student (pointless now that most students have machines anyway, and free clusters if they don't). Oh, and "support for handhelds", which has nothing to do with connectivity. If so, which one are they supposed to support since they are all different? Why not just have a course web page?

Not a bad list, but a bunch of things you answered as "No" are really "Yes". We still have a few No's, but they are kind of questionable IMO.

Is a computer ethics policy in place for the school? No
Yes We Do

Do students have access to Usenet newsgroups? No
Yes (news.andrew.cmu.edu).

Does the school provide multimedia equipment? No
Yes, the CFA (College of Fine Arts) cluster has just about everything (computers, scanners, etc), and the mobile portions can be signed out (cameras).

Does the school offer courses in emerging technologies? No
Yes! In methodology they mention computer security, robotics, and "videogaming". So, there's the class 15-827, "Security and Cryptography". Then there's the 25 year old Robotics Institute, which offers undergraduate minors and graduate degrees (MS,PhD) in Robotics. And as far as video game courses, do you want engine programming or cross-discipline game design?

That leaves requiring/providing computers for every student (pointless now that most students have machines anyway, and free clusters if they don't). Oh, and "support for handhelds", which has nothing to do with connectivity. If so, which one are they supposed to support since they are all different? Why not just have a course web page?

Not a bad list, but a bunch of things you answered as "No" are really "Yes". We still have a few No's, but they are kind of questionable IMO.

Is a computer ethics policy in place for the school? No
Yes We Do

Do students have access to Usenet newsgroups? No
Yes (news.andrew.cmu.edu).

Does the school provide multimedia equipment? No
Yes, the CFA (College of Fine Arts) cluster has just about everything (computers, scanners, etc), and the mobile portions can be signed out (cameras).

Does the school offer courses in emerging technologies? No
Yes! In methodology they mention computer security, robotics, and "videogaming". So, there's the class 15-827, "Security and Cryptography". Then there's the 25 year old Robotics Institute, which offers undergraduate minors and graduate degrees (MS,PhD) in Robotics. And as far as video game courses, do you want engine programming or cross-discipline game design?

That leaves requiring/providing computers for every student (pointless now that most students have machines anyway, and free clusters if they don't). Oh, and "support for handhelds", which has nothing to do with connectivity. If so, which one are they supposed to support since they are all different? Why not just have a course web page?

There are other comments above that similar mistakes were made for MIT. It doesn't seem like a whole lot of care went into making that list.

Also, of course, MTBFs for hard drives are tested and calculated in laboratory conditions, and real-world usage data may paint a different picture. More interesting info from http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/whit epapers/WhitePaper_05.htm:

SAMSUNG's MTBF for HDDs is 500,000 hours. That means that if you use your PC for 9 hours every day, your HDD should operate for 152 years. In imperfect, non-test conditions, however, please note that the real life span of an HDD varies because of fluctuating operating environments. Now, let us show you have the MTBF value is calculated.

MTBF Values are Derived From Arithmetic Calculation MTBF valuation by arithmetic calculation is used in the early stages of product development-it is the sum of all of an HDD's components. After the initial test phase, the MTBF value is reconfigured to account for the following factors: design faults, manufacturing faults, software bugs, and other environmental problems.

It's Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Every year there is a large ACM conference on this called CHI. There are also hundreds of HCI researchers all around the world at some of the top institutions working on problems like this.

Georgia Tech and Carnegie Mellon have two of the bigger masters programs available. Each program pumps out between one to two dozen people a year who should be well equipped to perform usability testing, among other things.

And you don't need a whole lab. You don't need to videotape often, and you don't need to buy some special software/hardware (you can, and they help, but you can get a lot of mileage from much less). Jakob Nielson and his cohort Don Norman have published a few good books that should be accessible to the uninitiated. Often times, some scribbles on paper are a better choice than prototyping the interface (scribbles usually give you higher levels of feedback, as opposed to "The font is ugly.").

There really are much better sources than articles like this one where people are just discovering HCI methods (not to rag on the article). Do a little google searching (you now have the right keywords: usability, hci), read some books (amazon is bound to have something up your alley), and maybe even ask some people in the field. There's a lot of really cheap, really quick things you can do to help yourself out (lookup Nielson's Discount usability, or you can hire an HCI person onto your team, we're very worth the cost).

BTW: There are many more excellent sources than Nielson, he's just the easiest to cite for applied HCI in a short period of time.

The parallel data lab at Carnegie Mellon has a fascinating paper on Power and reliability benefits from arrays of 1" disks in laptops instead of a single 2.5" disk.

The PDL has a ton of RAID-related resources, but their site hasn't been updated in a few years. I'd love to see the math redone with modern hardware specs and modern RAM prices.

Your design is a variant of a device I've heard called the Forward Slingshot some links. Which I first heard described by Robert L. Forward. Congrats are in order for co-inventing and possibly improving upon such an original concept.

I also feel that this is one of the most practical means of getting things into orbit.

An alternative means of powering the slingshot is to deliver mass (cargo) down the energy well, though you'll have to deliver enough cargo to overcome the cost of raising the next outbound payload along with all of the air friction losses on both transfers. If you're taking apart a second asteroid for raw materials, however, you'll probalby be able to find enough mass to make this practical (and it radically increases the safety of deorbiting the inbound payload, helping the practicality of that enterprise as well). A third advantage of this approach is improved stabilization of the tether during the descent phase.

Regards,
Ross

They could've just emailed in a nicer photo of themselves and I'm sure IM would have put it up for them--bringing in the FBI was a bit much.

(Personally I don't think the world's best photographers could make their ugly mugs look any better than that.)