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Katz,

You seem to be laboring under the illusion that our voting system can be made to be "fair". It can't. Arrow's Theorem pretty much demolishes the concept.

A google search for "Arrow's Theorem" will turn up lots of useful links, like this on path-voting or this collection of notes.

If you're going to talk about changing how we vote, other than just the mechanics, you really need to read up on this stuff. Yeah, it's all academic and abstract, but it's quite relevent (imagine that!).

1. Open source library of knowledge for developing nations (making the world's intellectual wealth available to all)
http://www.oneworld.org/globalp roj ects/humcdrom/
http://www.oneworld.org/globalprojects/& lt;/a>
http://www.oneworld .or g/globalprojects/humcdrom/copyrigh.htm
http://payson.tulane.edu:8888/
; http://www.globalprojects.org/
; http://www.humanitylibraries.net/ http://www.villageearth.org/
http://www.villageearth.org/ATLi bra ry/cdrom.htm

2. Open source knowledge management systems
http://www.bootstrap.org/
http://bootstrap.org/colloquium/ar chi ves.html
http://www.bootstrap.org/dkr/discussion /

3. Self-replicating space habitats (support trillions of humans in style without overrunning the earth)
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/s ett le.htm
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs /sp acsetl.htm
http://www.permanent.com/
http://science.n as. nasa.gov/Services/Education/SpaceSettlement/
http://www.luf.org/
http://www.ssi.org/
http://www.ssi.org/alt-plan.html http://www.spacedev.com/
http://www.spacehab.com/
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/

4. Pursue the "Ecocity Berkley" vision in the book by that name by Richard Register and look for related visions of sustainable development
http://www.amazon.com/exec/ob ido s/ASIN/1556430094/
http://www.co-intelligence.or g/y 2k_commtyorgs.html
http://www.fuzzylu.com/greencenter/h ome .htm
http://www.ulb.ac.be/ceese/meta/sust vl. html
http://www.rmi.org/

5. Work towards ending the drug war and pardoning hundreds of thousands of Americans imprisoned on non-violent drug charges. (I believe drug use is wrong and should be avoided, and by all means as it is now illegal, so don't do drugs! But as with alcohol and tobacco and caffeine, drug abuse should be considered a medical problem, not a legal one (except when like DUI it hurts or puts at risk others directly)).
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pag es/ frontline/shows/drugs/
http://www.drcnet.org/facts/

6. Teaching tolerance and compassion
http://www.splcenter.org/
http://www.splcenter.or g/t eachingtolerance/tt-index.html

7. Open source educational simulations and simulation construction toolkits (one of the most meaningful ways to use computers in the classroom).
http://www.gardenwithinsight.com/ http://riceinfo.ri ce. edu/armadillo/Simulations/simserver.html
http://www.creativeteachingsite .co m/edusims.html
http://www.workingmodel.com/
http://www.idsia.ch/~andrea/simtools.h tml

8. Preserving biodiversity (when it's gone, it's gone forever)
http://www.tnc.org/
http://www.environment.about.com/newsissues/enviro nment/library/weekly/aa091700.htm

9. Develop any specific sustainable technology in energy (e.g. solar), recycling (e.g. recycle computers), materials (e.g. plastics from starch), society (e.g. participatory democracy & social justice).
http://www.google.com/sear ch? q=sustainable+technology
http://www.edf.org/issues/Recycling.htm l
http://www.sustainable.doe.gov/

10. Make corporations more accountable to human needs
http://www.adbusters.org/inform ati on/foundation/
http://www.adbusters.org/c amp aigns/charter/death.html
Previous link vanished, try instead:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.adbuste rs.org/ campaigns/charter/death.html+corporate+death+penal ty&hl=en
http://www.cwsl.edu/news/n_corpo rat e_death.html
http://monkeyfist.com/articles/340& lt;br> http://www.chaordic.org/

11. Reform the "Intellectual property" laws and their related organizations, perhaps so that copyrights are for a couple decades and most patents are for a dozen years and only for true innovations. Ensure that any IP developed with any government money is immediately put into the public domain.
http://danny.oz.au/fre e-s oftware/advocacy/against_IP.html
(Lots of other Slashot links!)

12. If you don't want to get you hands dirty volunteering your own time, look around and find good people (not organizations, although the people may be in organizations) already doing good things. Pick people with a track record of years of fighting for the common good or who have already made a major accomplishment demonstrating commitment and just anonymously give them $100K without strings attached. Example: Marty Johnson at Isles, Inc.
http://www.isles.org/mileston.html& lt;br> Find people just starting a career of public service or a charitable venture and struggling to do good things and give them $20K and tell them you believe in their promise and cause. Expect a bunch of the money to be wasted but give it anyway and learn how to give effectively. For ideas, look at the grantees list of any foundation. Then ask those people who they know who are just starting out and trying to do a good job.
http://www.beldon.org/grants2000_07.htm l

When I was about thirteen, I got about seven books out of the library on money thinking I wanted to become a millionaire. Six told me how to get rich (start a business and run it well.) One of them asked me "why do you want to be rich?" That is the one whose name I remember and the ideas in it have changed my life. For advice on setting a direction of what to do with wealth, read the Book "The Seven Laws of Money" by Michael Phillips and Sally Raspberry, especially the chapter on how foundations fail in their mission and how grants go to people who sound good but usually can't deliver (i.e. how hard it is to give money away).
http://www.seeingmoney.com/SevenLaws.ht m
http://www.hallbusi nes ses.com/biographies_primers/1420.shtml

My wife and I are working on a few of these issues ourselves (and a few example links are to our stuff). We make money contracting and spend it to "buy" our own time for making quality software the market can't or doesn't seem to want to pay for. Even without IPO riches, any competent software developer can make $75K-100K in today's market. Graduate students can live on $20K a year, and so can many software developers (kids make it harder) if they follow the path of Voluntary Simplicity. It's a question of priorities.
http://www.life.ca/subject/simplicity .ht ml
http://www.simpleliving.net/slj/ http://www.scn.org/earth/lightly/ http://www.thegarden.net/simplicity/

Voluntary simplicity leaves a lot of funds for doing good deeds - even if they are done on your own time by using your own money to take time off and develop open source software or do other worthwhile ventures. Or take a job that doesn't pay as well but involves helping an organization that you believe in.
http://www.idealist.org/

There are awesome things happening over the next twenty to forty years. According to Moore's law, desktop computers in twenty or so years will be a million times faster than today's. Already computers can drive cars somewhat well and identify vegetable better than humans.

http://www.research.ibm.com/resources/magazine/199 9/number_3/machine399.html ;

Other breakthrough innovations are happening in technological areas like energy, materials, nanotechnology, communications, agriculture, biotechnology, and robotics. Use your wealth to think deeply about what all this means and do something to ensure human survival with style.

It is saddening to see people spend so much money on less important stuff (another night club in this case). Now if it was a night club where these issues are discussed, then maybe it makes sense.

Capitalism without charity is evil, because capitalism only meets the needs of people with money.

The real problem here is that the Microsoft tools are teaching kids C and C-derivative languages. C is a broken language, and has been since the beginning. It doesn't even have first-class functions! If you want to give a kid a good solid grounding in computer programming, please teach them a real programming language so that they will know better when they do eventually learn C or a C-derivative. Take Scheme, for instance: Scheme is very easy to learn, it is very powerful and elegant, and implementations such as DrScheme are portable as well (as well as having a decent IDE). As for people who balk at functional programming: Have you ever considered that using pipes to connect two programs in the Unix shell is analagous to using lazy evaluation to connect two functions in a functional programming language? The functions run concurrently and values are only returned from one function when the other function needs it. Maybe you should read up on it before passing judgement. Here is a paper (Yes, Scheme does not support lazy evaluation as a first-class construct, yet it has other advantages such as easy syntax and capability to program in other styles)

Well, I trust that the fact that those people are out yelling and waving signs saying they want Gore means they meant to vote Gore. Have you seen a county by county breakdown of buchanan votes in florida? Take a look over here.

Anyone with any understanding of statistics will have to acknowledge that something is amiss. Now let me be clear - I don't think there should be a revote. That would set a horrible precedent. However, I do think the electors representing florida should be mad aware of this glaring statistical anomaly. Say just 10 of those electors decide to switch their vote because of it. Well, that would give Gore the magic 270.

If you think electors violating party lines is unheard of, you are wrong. It's ben done by electors from several states before, including Florida.


-------

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For example, at CMU the intellectual property policy seems to say that by default inventors own 50% of whatever they create. But this is only if the university decides to commercialize an idea. If the university declares itself to be uninterested (ie, the university doesn't want to take the risk of spinning off a business) then the inventor owns 85% of any proceeds after the first $25000 of profit.

Note that this applies to work that you do while sponsored by a research grant. For non-sponsored work (such as classwork), a student owns 100% of their work, and the university has no claim on it.

(Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, I am just talking about my non-professional interpretation of the rules.)

Anyone who tells you Scientology isn't dangerous or should be protected under freedom-of-religion doesn't know what Scientology is all about. It's no more a religion than, as another poster, Amway, but it's far, far more destructive. Where Amway will get you to do stupid things like try to sell cheap-ass junk to your friends and cost you some money, Scientology will destroy your mental health, estrange you from everyone you know, physically rape your friends and relatives, force you into slave labor to pay for the very classes that are ruining you, and, should you try to leave, will discredit you, harass you, defame you, file lawsuits against you, and make your life hell until you commit suicide (a href="http://www.xenu.net/">see xenu.net for details.) And, yes, you post anonymously when you speak out against them, or they'll come after you and your loved ones. I can take care of myself, but I wouldn't unleash them on my family for anything.

Religious protection.. hah.

They are related in that they were both created at CMU as part of the Andrew project. The applications you are thinking of are probably part of the Andrew User Interface System. It's a suite of integrated applications for Unix. Check the web site for more info.

Ahhh!

It's bad enough that Gore and all of the other union-loving Democrats are holding a rally at Carnegie Mellon tomorrow.

How anyone could vote for such a lying sack of crap is beyond me.

I feel that companies should not care / take any action as long as installing linux does not put any more stress on critical resources (such as Tech Support/Bandwith/etc). After all whats more important for a company .. productivity or selling their soul to NT ;) ? Its just true that somepeople are more comfortable with linux than NT (and it should be noted.. vice versa) so give people the chance.

I personally am happy as all my computers at work are dual boot and am free to use whatever I want. Just hope more companies move out to supporting linux and you can have standarized maintainance (look at CMU's depot with automatic upgrades/changes/patches every night. Just my two cents

Yes, and someone used Eliza to talk to AIM users. The Result!

Omniware was a RISC-like VM, with 16 registers and a instruction set that would not surprise anyone familiar with the MIPS or Alpha. We used a gcc backend to generate this code, and guaranteed against misbehaviour in network-downloaded code by inserting bounds-checking for loads and stores in our VM. We would translate from the VM into native code, doing it on the fly. Translation time was trivial - the translation process was pretty much a 1:1 thing, without complicated optimizations. Our code ran well within the 20% of native code; 10-20% overheads were typical (not counting translation time, of course :-) ).

The protection model was pretty simplistic - we could essentially build our own paging model (read permission, read/write permission) in software, but it was nowhere near as sophisticated as the mechanisms that Java uses to ensure good behaviour in unsafe code.

The project never went anywhere; Lucco & Wahbe formed a start-up (Colusa) which was acquired by Microsoft. Microsoft presumably bought the company as a hedge against Java and for the (ick) software patents that Colusa holds in this area (chiefly relating to the software-inserted-checking page protection model). I wouldn't be suprised to hear that C# has some common ground with Omniware.

The most important lesson, IMO, that Omniware held was that it's quite possible, and maybe even desirable, to do heavy optimization (global and interprocedural) on a low-level intermediate representation. This gets most of the possible optimization done _before_ you start shipping code around the net.

Of course, your optimizations are limited by the virtual machine - a 16-register machine results in register use that is profligate by x86 standards (we had a simple reallocator, very fast) and parsimonious by RISC standards.

Java takes quite a different tack. Java's IR is comparatively high-level. Thus, if you want to heavily optimize Java code, you have to do it everywhere, on each VM. This is despite the fact that there will be much in common with the optmization process across many of these different machine types - even between the RISC and x86 families. Of course, Java was solving a quite different set of problems.

Of course, it's all hogwash. We need to ship random snippets of untrusted code around the net the same way that we need an icepick in the head. What can I say? It was 1995, and we'd all drunk the "mobile code Kool-aid".

Could a European on Slashdot please tell us what the connotation of Eris is over there?

You see, here in America, it's an underground "art" style movement (ghod, it's difficult to describe) that is described in the free tract Principia Discordia and the Illumnati Trilogy has led to things like the The Church of the SubGenius. Even new agers seldom touch Eris due to her modern links to the wierd.

Serious Freak. I'm curious if he's expressing a bit of his inner freak nature, or if it has a different connotation in Europe.

--
Evan

Soft Updates: A Solution to the Metadata Update Problem in File Systems by Gregory R. Ganger and Yale N. Patt

Now onto my opinion...

ffs with softupdates is great. It has the rare combination of speed AND stability. One of major problems with that behemoth known as ext2fs is that its either slow and stable or fast and extremely unstable. While some of the "alternative" Linux filesystems fix some of the problems inherent with ext2fs, they still won't touch ffs w/ softupdates for a while.

Why do college kids?

Being a Computer Science major at a particular school I could tell you that having a laptop (at least in my case) would have helped out a LOT.

Nearly everything I do involves a computer...from writing up my Operating Systems projects to writ ing up papers.. And using the campus's WaveLan, I could be doing it in a class I don't care nearly as much about.

Plus, the ability to take notes in class and have them readable (my handwriting is shit...) would be a nice bonus.

Why haven't I got one now? I'm pretty much broke...

Of course, if it were mandated that I have a laptop, I may be even deeper in the red than I am now...
--------------------------

Why do college kids?

Being a Computer Science major at a particular school I could tell you that having a laptop (at least in my case) would have helped out a LOT.

Nearly everything I do involves a computer...from writing up my Operating Systems projects to writ ing up papers.. And using the campus's WaveLan, I could be doing it in a class I don't care nearly as much about.

Plus, the ability to take notes in class and have them readable (my handwriting is shit...) would be a nice bonus.

Why haven't I got one now? I'm pretty much broke...

Of course, if it were mandated that I have a laptop, I may be even deeper in the red than I am now...
--------------------------

Why do college kids?

Being a Computer Science major at a particular school I could tell you that having a laptop (at least in my case) would have helped out a LOT.

Nearly everything I do involves a computer...from writing up my Operating Systems projects to writ ing up papers.. And using the campus's WaveLan, I could be doing it in a class I don't care nearly as much about.

Plus, the ability to take notes in class and have them readable (my handwriting is shit...) would be a nice bonus.

Why haven't I got one now? I'm pretty much broke...

Of course, if it were mandated that I have a laptop, I may be even deeper in the red than I am now...
--------------------------

Why do college kids?

Being a Computer Science major at a particular school I could tell you that having a laptop (at least in my case) would have helped out a LOT.

Nearly everything I do involves a computer...from writing up my Operating Systems projects to writ ing up papers.. And using the campus's WaveLan, I could be doing it in a class I don't care nearly as much about.

Plus, the ability to take notes in class and have them readable (my handwriting is shit...) would be a nice bonus.

Why haven't I got one now? I'm pretty much broke...

Of course, if it were mandated that I have a laptop, I may be even deeper in the red than I am now...
--------------------------

Why do college kids?

Being a Computer Science major at a particular school I could tell you that having a laptop (at least in my case) would have helped out a LOT.

Nearly everything I do involves a computer...from writing up my Operating Systems projects to writ ing up papers.. And using the campus's WaveLan, I could be doing it in a class I don't care nearly as much about.

Plus, the ability to take notes in class and have them readable (my handwriting is shit...) would be a nice bonus.

Why haven't I got one now? I'm pretty much broke...

Of course, if it were mandated that I have a laptop, I may be even deeper in the red than I am now...
--------------------------

I've looked at many lists of banned and challenged books, and the bible doesn't even appear in the top fifty. My references include:

• http://www.cs.cmu.edu/People/spok/most-banned.html
• http://www.ala.org/bbooks/challeng.html

Can you back up your assertion?

How do you define Free Speech? How will you protect it? I am especially interested in your commentary on the deCSS case (see this article and visit this gallery) - do you support the MPAA in their lawsuit? are you concerned about the effects on free speech that might result?

if you can't get to WhiteHouse.gov, there's always WhiteHouse.com...

Mac OS X's kernel (Darwin) is not your typical monolithic BSD kernel. It's a Mach kernel with a layer of BSD-like services around that. Darwin is Nearly-Free Software under the Apple Public Source License.

clinko writes:

This Article from Carnegie Mellon Talks about how lead based battery cars would be bad for the enviroment.

Ohh, man. I hear this too much. I've been participating on the Electric Vehicle Discussion List for over a year now. This topic comes up every now and then, usually in some editorial or article in the news. Lead-Acid batteries of starter battery size or greater are one of the most recycled manufactured products extant today. Forklift batteries are often rebuilt instead of recycled as well.

Lead-Acid batteries can also be fast-charged. The limiting factor is mostly the supply current! EV drag racers are dump-charging their small high power-density battery packs from large banks of more traditional "flooded" golf-cart style batteries, with currents in excess of 150A. They'd go higher but they don't have to. Discharge currents are up to 1400A in some cases. Quarter mile times are steadily dropping.

Of course, we'd like more energy density, or as we like to say it "miles per pound", out of the batteries. Nickel Cadmium batteries are currently a good solution, though they cost quite a bit more up front. Their longer cycle lifetimes do, however, make up for much of the difference in cost over the life of the batteries. SAFT is a good source for them.

These high power density batteries are interesting in that they will probably allow a lot more companies to make viable hybrid cars since the high charge/discharge currents will enable dumping many amps into an assist motor for rapid acceleration. The solid-state construction also lends itself to secreting the batteries all over the car, giving much more freedom to the styling designers.

As for immediate safety concerns, the spill from a wrecked lead-acid battery EV can be safely neutralized with baking soda and/or simple water dilution will eliminate most of the immediate danger. Gasoline is much worse!!!

Whew, that's enough for me today...

-cajun

This Article from Carnegie Mellon Talks about how lead based battery cars would be bad for the enviroment. They also talk about how there needs to be a better technology. Well, of all people NEC did it. I'm really excited about this.
Imagine this battery and a transmeta chip also. This Is Great

Only one problem... it didn't happen.

Instead, IBM's Ope nAF S web site contains only a FAQ and documention. The downloads page contains only: "Source Downloads are not yet available. Please check back later!"

Unfortantly, the FAQ page still doesn't answer the frequently asked question on everyone's minds: When can we expect the source code or was the announcements for vapor-code?

In the mean time, the Arla, NFS v4 and Coda projects provide alternatives to OpenAFS while also delivering something International Business Machines has failed to follow through on... providing the source code.

Things like illegal search and seizure and free speech protect you from the government, NOT from private citizens. Corporations are considered to be private citizens

See what the US Code says about this question:
"...We are of the opinion that there is a clear distinction in this particular between an individual and a corporation, and that the latter has no right to refuse to submit its books and papers for examination on the suit of the State. The individual may stand upon his Constitutional Rights as a Citizen. He is entitled to carry on his private business in his own way. His power to contract is unlimited. He owes no duty to the State or to his neighbors to divulge his business, or to open his doors to investigation, so far as it may tend to incriminate him. He owes no such duty to the State, since he receives nothing therefrom, beyond the protection of his life, liberty, and property. His Rights are such as the law of the land long antecedent to the organization of the state, and can only be taken from him by due process of law, and in accordance with the Constitution. Among his Rights are the refusal to incriminate himself, and the immunity of himself and his property from arrest or seizure except under warrant of law. He owes nothing to the public so long as he does not trespass upon their rights."

"Upon the other hand, the corporation is a creature of the state. It is presumed to be incorporated for the benefit of the public. It receives certain special privileges and franchises, and holds them subject to the laws of the state and the limitations of its charter. Its rights to act as a corporation are only preserved to it so long as it obeys the laws of its creation. There is a reserved right in the legislature to investigate its contracts and find out whether it has exceeded its powers. It would be a strange anomaly to hold that the State, having chartered a corporation to make use of certain franchises, could not in exercise of its sovereignty inquire how those franchises had been employed, and whether they had been abused, and demand the production of corporate books and papers for that purpose." [emphasis added]

--Hale vs. Hinkel, 201 US 43, 74-75.

The above was taken from this page which also has lots of interesting legal briefs & correspondence between private citizens and the US Gov't.

Basically, it says that a corporation is a private citizen in some respects, but is also legally a PART OF THE GOVERNMENT. I wonder if this means that illegal search & seizure laws would apply if Walmart employees attempted to search you without your consent? (since the corporation is legally a government entity....)
-The Reverend (I am not a Nazi nor a Troll)

Carnegie Mellon University's Distance Learning program may offer some of what you're looking for. They have courses on videotape and the Web, as well as teleconference classes you can participate in. My own master's degree was in CMU's Software Engineering program, and I know the people who teach some of their classes, and they're all top notch. (As if there would be any doubt about CMU's faculty!) They even offer teleconference links to some of the classes.

In addition to software engineering, you can also take classes in the Heinz Business School, which is also one of the best in the country in its subject matter. CMU is expensive, but if you can get your business to foot part of the bill, it's well worth it. What I don't know about is whether you can transfer your credits in there or not. Even if you can't, some of their courses might be transferrable elsewhere, or they might have recommendations about another good distance program you could finish with.

the thoery for this was printed in a analog sci-fi magazine back in 93 or 94... i'll dig it up and publish the issue date...
ok, from this old message post comes the info on the publish date, it was actually in 92!!
Heres a quote:
"There's a cover-story article I've just read that I think a lot of you
will be interested in: ``The Magnetic Sail,'' by Robert M. Zubrin
(based on work by Dana G. Andrews (Boeing) and himself (Martin-Marietta).
I regret it appeared in an only *quasi*-reliable source: the "science fact"
section of this month's (May 1992) _Analog_.
"

In the 'Under PlayStation 2' category, I've got to go with the wierd non-computer games from Looney Labs . Specifically they're all under the $40 mark.

You'll find more information on their site, but here's a quick rundown:

Fluxx $10

A card game where the rules to the game are the cards you play. Very recursive, hence very geeky. Simple to learn, pointless to master. (It's partially luck based...)

Icehouse $35

A unique set of translucent stacking plastic pyramids you can use to play all sorts of neat games. The signature one is so geeky there's even a graphical version for X windows.

Chrononauts $20

A card game based around time travel. How cool is that? The official release date isn't until October 31st, but I can tell you from first hand experience that the cards are beautiful and the gameplay is solid.

--

What about the WebDAV that has been development? see the IETF page or the webdav site, and let's not forget the Apache webdav module mod_dav.

Plus there is RFC 2518 for it -

http://andrew2.andrew.cmu.edu/rfc/rfc2518.html

While there may not be a 100% fit, there could be enough to invalidate this patent.

3 4cm diameter omni-directional wheels ***
3 MS492MH continuous rotation servos modified using the "Mekatronix" method
3 Sharp GP2D12 Infrared Rangefinders
1 SV203 Board
1 Palm Pilot III Hot Sync Cable (Part #10104U)
1 6.0V 2000mAh Nickel-Metal Hydride battery (Part #LC1922) *
2 Clear Cast Acrylic Disk 6" Dia x 1/8" thick (Part # 8581K26)
1 256¾ x 1½ Polyethylene foam tape strips (Part #75785T87) **
1 Cyanoacrylate glue (superglue)
1 Male DB9 connector
1 Heatshrink tubing

It has been a disaster. BA won't talk directly to the user, so we have to act as intermediaries. It took a long time for them to accept electronic problem reports, which turned out to be an email address where someone retypes the problems into their system (and usually omits most of our troubleshooting information). The rest of the time, we have to call their Broadband "Solutions" Center, where we wait on hold for a long time before talking to an operator who knows far less than we do. Problems can take months to be resolved. We complained enough that we have a person within BA to cut through red tape for us. I've had occasions where I had to put one of our networking people on the phone with them to explain to them how their network works (or doesn't).

Meanwhile, they've raised the monthly price that they charge us per-customer above the price that they offer their own end-users because after the service we've received, we're unwilling to sign a multi-year contract.

We're currently looking at ways of getting out of the DSL business as quickly as possible.

The characters in the book are black-and-white, it's true, but it's all the more fun because Brunner's palate of blacks and whites are somehow more intense than those of other writers. Nickie Halfinger is a great character, recreated several times throughout the book as he adopts and integrates different personas.

Thinking back on the book a few years after I read it, I notice parallels to events in my own life; and that made me wonder about those events. These are almost certainly coincidences...but -- all but fans of conspiracy theories can stop here.

When I was 12 (in 1972) the state of Maryland held a 'contest' where they took the top 2% of kids on the standardized tests of the day, and brought them to Johns Hopkins University to take the SATs. The top 2% of those were brought in for a huge battery of further tests, both academic and psychological. The top few percent of those kids were enrolled in something called the Study of Mathematically and Scientifically Prococious Youth (SMSPY, later SMPY as they dropped the Scientifically part).

We were given special math courses on weekends in lieu of our middle- and high-school classes, basically to see how fast a bunch of kids could learn things. These classes were amazing; wonderfully taught by gifted instructors. We were encouraged to and given the opportunity to enroll in local community colleges for further math and science courses. Many of us then went to college at rediculously early ages (I was in the middle of the pack of SMPY kids at 15 when I started at JHU.)

All through this, we were monitored and profiled, but provided practically no guidance or counseling. Sadly, this was a disaster for many of us; we couldn't handle the pressure of Johns Hopkins (which was, and is, an incredibly competetive and cutthroat school.) I find this lack of guidance or even simple compassion unforgivable now.

The sinister part of this, though, is that a relatively large percentage of my SMPY-mates went on to work at the NSA, nearby in Fort Meade, MD. It just seems a little too convenient to me -- and reading Shockwave Rider a few years out of school (after getting kicked out myself, but fortuitously landing in the groundbreaking computer graphics facility of the day at NYIT [whew!]) made the parallels of TSR's Tarnower to SMPY clear and disturbing.

Anyway -- I now return you to your regularly scheduled Slashdot.

thad

Have you tried ftp://cronus.res. cmu.edu/pub/linux/ftp.redhat.com/redhat-7.0/iso/ ?

It's crowded, but the iso images are there.

And I thought CMU was so geek-friendly because we had Mystery Science Theater 3000's MIKE NELSON here on Monday, and Ralph Nader next Tuesday. Come on our, guys! We need you for Geek Week!

The first paragraph of the Introduction section in RFC 1631 is:

"... Long-term and short-term solutions to these problems are being developed. The short-term solution is CIDR (Classless InterDomain Routing) [2]. The long-term solutions consist of various proposals for new internet protocols with larger addresses. "

if you look up the reference [2] at the bottom of the RFC, you will see:

REFERENCES
[1] Karn, P., "KA9Q", anonymous FTP from ucsd.edu (hamradio/packet/ka9q/docs).
[2] Fuller, V., Li, T., and J. Yu, "Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) an Address Assignment and Aggregation Strategy", RFC 1519, BARRNet, cisco, Merit, OARnet, September 1993.

note that this RFC (1631) references RFC 1519 (Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR): an Address Assignment and Aggregation Strategy) which includes personnel from Cisco Systems, Inc. (Tony Li). RFC 1519 was written in 1993.

further note that RFC 1519 itself references RFC 1518 whose authors are from IBM and from Cisco.

Cisco obviously has prior work in this area well before RFC 1631. Cisco employee Tony Li contributed to the two RFCs on which RFC 1631 are based.

The first paragraph of the Introduction section in RFC 1631 is:

"... Long-term and short-term solutions to these problems are being developed. The short-term solution is CIDR (Classless InterDomain Routing) [2]. The long-term solutions consist of various proposals for new internet protocols with larger addresses. "

if you look up the reference [2] at the bottom of the RFC, you will see:

REFERENCES
[1] Karn, P., "KA9Q", anonymous FTP from ucsd.edu (hamradio/packet/ka9q/docs).
[2] Fuller, V., Li, T., and J. Yu, "Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) an Address Assignment and Aggregation Strategy", RFC 1519, BARRNet, cisco, Merit, OARnet, September 1993.

note that this RFC (1631) references RFC 1519 (Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR): an Address Assignment and Aggregation Strategy) which includes personnel from Cisco Systems, Inc. (Tony Li). RFC 1519 was written in 1993.

further note that RFC 1519 itself references RFC 1518 whose authors are from IBM and from Cisco.

Cisco obviously has prior work in this area well before RFC 1631. Cisco employee Tony Li contributed to the two RFCs on which RFC 1631 are based.

Some parts of such a metadata standard are easy: language, compiler, platform, architecture, etc. But once you start trying to document the actual functionality of your code, you get into some sticky territory that is still the domain of researchers at a number of universities. The problem first is to devise a language powerful enough to facilitate formal methods. The next problem is actually convincing people that it's worth all the effort to formalize their specs (I think it is, but there are many who disagree). The last problem is coming up with a search algorithm that is able to match specs. For this part, you can't just use a string match or unification algorithm... there's some deeper semantic and structural analysis that needs to be done to determine that a certain fragment of code meets the constraints you want. To make the whole problem even worse, we don't even know if such an algorithm is computable! So, a full-blown metadata standard seems a bit out of the question now, but if you're willing to lower your standards a bit, I bet you can whip up a more practical implementation (with some natural language thrown in).

see "The Principia Discordia or How I Found The Goddess And What I Did To Her When I Found Her" by Malaclypse the Younger

Uhm. I asume you mean corporate web sites have more content, cleaner designs, ect. It might be true, to some extent, but did you stop and ask yourself why?

Maybe they have the resources (read money) to hire people to build those.

While the "free" and uncolonised may have good ideas, they have to work to "earn their lives" (anyone else than me sees something wrong with the way that sounds?) and do that in their free time.

My point is that we're all stuck in a capitalistic system and some are advantaged and others held back by it. But you can't judge people's capabilities based on their production in such unequal system.

Anarchy is the answer.
Must read
An Anarchy FAQ

checkout The Software Quality Profile to see how some people measure/predict/and improve defect rates in code.

I found this the other day and thought it was kinda neat.

That's really interesting. You should make sure it's on the CMU professor's gallery.

-Jon

y'know, what would happen if somebody were to make an mp3 of something that didn't sound like DeCSS, but had the text or one of the images from here in its id3 tag?

Any mostly unknown geek out there can give the MPAA the finger and create a gallery of css descramblers but to do it as a CS professor at a major university, you risk a lot more, so you've got to have balls.

Also, a silly plug, we (the monarch group) haven't updated our latest internet draft because we've been busy writing working code =) Another interesting protocol is DSR: http://www.monarch.cs.cmu.edu/ietf.html

Well, you may be right.. people in academics and research really think that languages like scheme and ml are underused despite their power and expressiveness. Take a look at the kernighan interview: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/ ~mihaib/kernighan-interview/index.html

Something that seems to have been lost in all the free-speech drivel^H^H^H^H^H^Harguments is that university networks are, first and foremost, intended for academic use. Now it's true, of course, that most universities have more bandwidth than most academic use needs, so universities generally let students use the remaining bandwidth as they like. However, when non-academic use (e.g. Napster) takes up so many resources as to impair academic use, then the univeristy has the (at least moral) duty to restrict that use. If Napster is taking up as much bandwidth as some other people have suggested, then universities should be doing something about it--whether shutting it down entirely, rate-limiting it, or whatever--even without any threats from Metallica.

I attended Carnegie Mellon University through May 1999. Their Computing Code of Ethics states explicitly that "[u]niversity resources are provided for university purposes", and the residence hall network guidelines add that

Residence hall and dedicated remote access service connections to the campus network, and to the Internet, are provided to allow students, staff and faculty to fully participate in the educational and research missions of Carnegie Mellon University. [...]

It may not remain feasible to provide unlimited connectivity for systems which are not strictly serving the University's missions. Beacuse of this possibility, we reserve the right to request that users reduce the amount of traffic being caused by their service, or where necessary, to remove such systems or services from the campus network.

As a matter of fact, a free (non-commercial) web-hosting service I ran off the dorm network while I was a student there got me a couple of "friendly notices" from the network admins about bandwidth use, and I eventually had to move it offsite. I found this perfectly reasonable, since it wasn't university-related traffic, after all.

Copyright arguments aside, what university-related purpose does Napster serve that it doesn't deserve the same treatment?

(Disclaimer: I do support free speech, I just don't think Napster qualifies. Find an alternative that doesn't have "piracy" in its mission statement and I'd be happier.)

Something that seems to have been lost in all the free-speech drivel^H^H^H^H^H^Harguments is that university networks are, first and foremost, intended for academic use. Now it's true, of course, that most universities have more bandwidth than most academic use needs, so universities generally let students use the remaining bandwidth as they like. However, when non-academic use (e.g. Napster) takes up so many resources as to impair academic use, then the univeristy has the (at least moral) duty to restrict that use. If Napster is taking up as much bandwidth as some other people have suggested, then universities should be doing something about it--whether shutting it down entirely, rate-limiting it, or whatever--even without any threats from Metallica.

I attended Carnegie Mellon University through May 1999. Their Computing Code of Ethics states explicitly that "[u]niversity resources are provided for university purposes", and the residence hall network guidelines add that

Residence hall and dedicated remote access service connections to the campus network, and to the Internet, are provided to allow students, staff and faculty to fully participate in the educational and research missions of Carnegie Mellon University. [...]

It may not remain feasible to provide unlimited connectivity for systems which are not strictly serving the University's missions. Beacuse of this possibility, we reserve the right to request that users reduce the amount of traffic being caused by their service, or where necessary, to remove such systems or services from the campus network.

As a matter of fact, a free (non-commercial) web-hosting service I ran off the dorm network while I was a student there got me a couple of "friendly notices" from the network admins about bandwidth use, and I eventually had to move it offsite. I found this perfectly reasonable, since it wasn't university-related traffic, after all.

Copyright arguments aside, what university-related purpose does Napster serve that it doesn't deserve the same treatment?

(Disclaimer: I do support free speech, I just don't think Napster qualifies. Find an alternative that doesn't have "piracy" in its mission statement and I'd be happier.)