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Er, conversion to what? Islam? Muslims in India have a well-oiled Caste system already. Read about the Ashraf/Ajlaf divide The Qomiyat of Swat, Pakistan and Bengal and the jajmin/Kamin separation.

Among Muslims, the Ashraf are regarded as those descended from Arab stock and are mandated by Fatwas to be "superior" to those converted from Hinduism, called "Ajlaf". even among the Ajlaf we have the "Arzal" who are treated as untouchable. To quote a scholarly paper Arzals are those:

"with whom no other Muhammadan would associate, and who are forbidden to enter the mosque or to use the public burial ground"

http://www.indianexpress.com/story/12109.html

http://stateless.freehosting.net/Caste%20in%20Indi an%20Muslim%20Society.htm

Read this famous book by Ambedkar (I already spoke about him in a thread earlier), a Buddhist by the way, who exposes the entire Muslim Caste System in South Asia:

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00amb edkar/ambedkar_partition/410.html

Also, read:

Aggarwal, Patrap. Caste and Social Stratification Among Muslims in India.
Social Stratification Among Muslims in India by Zarina Bhatty

and "Political theory in the Delhi Sultanate by Mohamed Habib" when the Muslim Castes of Ashraf/Ajlaf/Arzal was established by religious sancation through the Fatwa-i-Jahandari.

Convert to Christianity? Dalit Christians are the among the most persecuted people in India right now. Read about Bama Faustina, a Dalit Christian, who has exposed the atrocities committed on Dalit Christians by the Christian clergy

http://www.hinduonnet.com/2001/09/16/stories/13160 17m.htm

http://www.womenswriting.com/writerdetails.asp?wri terid=116

In the book "Sangati":
http://www.us.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/L iteratureEnglish/WorldLiterature/India/~~/dmlldz11 c2EmY2k9OTc4MDE5NTY3MDg4Mg==

Christian churches in India are largely controlled by upper caste Christian Priests and nuns. Low-caste Dalit Christians are discriminated against by the upper-caste Christians. The extent and practice of untouchability within the Indian Christian community have been researched. Chapels for Dalit Christians are often segregated from Christians of a higher caste. Other churches admit Dalit Christians, but keep separate pews for them. Dalit Christians are buried in separate cemeteries. In addition, Dalit boys are not allowed to be altar boys or lectors.In addition, there are various instances of economic discrimination where Dalit Christians are not allowed to own arable land by upper caste Christian clergy. In many Christian communities in India, bonded labor is still practiced. As a consequence of the discrimination, Dalit Christians tend to be very poor and undernourished. Dalit Christians are denied education by the Upper Caste Priests and nuns. Very few Dalit Christians are involved in administrative services, except for the few who reconverted back to Hinduism.

http://indianhope.free.fr/site_eng/article_5.php3

The only realistic religion to convert to would be Buddhism, which is no biggie because Buddhism originated in India only. However, the movement is being taken over by violent extremists and anti-Hindu bigots who have even gone so far as to side with Islamist terrorists in Kashmir who ethnically cleansed millions of Hindu

We don't have animals in our climate model, but if you'd like to see how orbit effects climate, you can do so yourself.

The EdGCM project has wrapped a NASA GCM in a graphical interface. You can double-click to install, and if you'd like to turn the sun down a few percent or change the orbit, there are checkboxes and sliders. Press play, wait a while (hours to a day or so depending on your computer), and you can look at the results...

Disclaimer: I'm the developer.

If you're doing kernel development, you may want to look into (or indeed focus on) lock free and wait free data structures. I'm not sure if there are any books out on this, but there are some great resources on the web such as

http://works.music.columbia.edu/LFDS

as well as a mailing list at

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/liblf-dev/

The group is developing an open source lock free data structures library - I'm just a lurker waiting for the library to become available ;-)

The posts so far at the Yahoo site are a gold mine of links to sites and papers.

The point of the whole free-culture position is that it does *not make economic sense to purchase what is downloadable for free. We're on the same side of that fence. Those who wish to make money need to find something non-digital to sell. The experience of a live show is one of many hundreds of possible examples.

"The study of economics proposes that people respond to incentives"
---
"According to the econodwarf's vision, each human being is an individual possessing "incentives," which can be retrospectively unearthed by imagining the state of the bank account at various times. So in this instance the econodwarf feels compelled to object that without the rules I am lampooning, there would be no incentive to create the things the rules treat as property: without the ability to exclude others from music there would be no music, because no one could be sure of getting paid for creating it."

"The dwarf's basic problem is that "incentives" is merely a metaphor, and as a metaphor to describe human creative activity it's pretty crummy"

http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/my_pubs/anarchism. html

On the other hand, those events are infrequent compared with the hindrances on free speech rights that take place at our public educational institutions every day, this time motivated by left-leaning political correctness advocates rather than by right-leaning Patriot Act advocates.

You might have had a point if Columbia University were a public educational institution. Heck, it wasn't even until 1983 that Columbia's largest undergraduate college admitted women.

On February 19th of this year, CBS News's "60 Minutes" produced a segment on the North Pole. The segment was a completely one-sided report, alleging rapid and unprecedented melting at the polar cap. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/16/60minute s/main1323169.shtml

It even featured correspondent Scott Pelley claiming that the ice in Greenland was melting so fast, that he barely got off an ice-berg before it collapsed into the water.

"60 Minutes" failed to inform its viewers that a 2005 study by a scientist named Ola Johannessen and his colleagues showing that the interior of Greenland is gaining ice and mass and that according to scientists, the Arctic was warmer in the 1930's than today.

On March 19th of this year "60 Minutes" profiled NASA scientist and alarmist James Hansen, who was once again making allegations of being censored by the Bush administration. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/17/60minute s/main1415985.shtml

In this segment, objectivity and balance were again tossed aside in favor of a one-sided glowing profile of Hansen.

The "60 Minutes" segment made no mention of Hansen's partisan ties to former Democrat Vice President Al Gore or Hansen's receiving of a grant of a quarter of a million dollars from the left-wing Heinz Foundation run by Teresa Heinz Kerry. There was also no mention of Hansen's subsequent endorsement of her husband John Kerry for President in 2004. http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/dai_complete.pdf

Many in the media dwell on any industry support given to so-called climate skeptics, but the same media completely fail to note Hansen's huge grant from the left-wing Heinz Foundation. http://www.heinzawards.net/speechDetail.asp?speech ID=6

The foundation's money originated from the Heinz family ketchup fortune. So it appears that the media makes a distinction between oil money and ketchup money.

"60 Minutes" also did not inform viewers that Hansen appeared to concede in a 2003 issue of Natural Science that the use of "extreme scenarios" to dramatize climate change "may have been appropriate at one time" to drive the public's attention to the issue. http://naturalscience.com/ns/articles/01-16/ns_jeh 6.html

Why would "60 Minutes" ignore the basic tenets of journalism, which call for objectivity and balance in sourcing, and do such one-sided segments? The answer was provided by correspondent Scott Pelley. Pelley told the CBS News website that he justified excluding scientists skeptical of global warming alarmism from his segments because he considers skeptics to be the equivalent of "Holocaust deniers." http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2006/03/22/publiceye/ entry1431768.shtml

This year also saw a New York Times reporter write a children's book entitled" The North Pole Was Here." The author of the book, New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin, wrote that it may someday be "easier to sail to than stand on" the North Pole in summer. So here we have a very prominent environmental reporter for the New York Times who is promoting aspects of global warming alarmism in a book aimed at children.

Educate yourself. Read the entire speech here... http://epw.senate.gov/speechitem.cfm?party=rep&id= 263759

If you'd like to use some of the data these articles discuss, the EdGCM project has wrapped a NASA global climate model (GCM) in a GUI (OS X and Win). You can add CO2 or turn the sun down by a few percent all with a checkbox and a slider. Supercomputers and advanced FORTRAN programmers are no longer necessary to run your own GCM.

Disclaimer: I'm the project developer.

This is great. According to the Gore film An Inconvienent Truth the auto makers were suing California over emission standards. Counter-suing for once seems like a good idea.

If you'd like to run a Global Warming simulation on your own computer you can. The EdGCM project has ported a NASA global climate model to Win/Mac and wrapped it in a point-and-click interface. Check boxes and sliders can now be used to run the GCM on your own computer instead of an advanced FORTRAN programmer and a supercomputer.

Disclaimer: I'm a developer on the project

I know you're joking, but you should check out EdGCM, a NASA climate model that you can run on your Mac or Win Desktop/Laptop. It is a NASA GCM that has been ported and wrapped in a point-and-click interface.

The first wearable computer was used for this from 1961 to 1966. When it wasn't bugged, it worked well. The project started at MIT in 1955. I thought there was a link to Bill Gates also, but I can't find that part.

Here's the paper.

Most of your discussion is a matter of taste and fashion, but one point is I believe just plain wrong. Kemeny and Kurtz most certainly DID design BASIC as a learning language. A few minutes research on the Internet should make that clear. See http://www.columbia.edu/~jrh29/kemeny.html There's no way to know if they would have designed their language the same way a decade or two later. I'd guess probably not, but I doubt Dijkstra would have liked whatever they designed then any better. Kemeny (who has a record every bit as illustrious as Dijkstra's) and Dijkstra worship at different alters in the church of computing.. While I'm not particularly a fan of BASIC, I can't say that I'm overwhelmed by the products of Dijkstra's ideas. There have been innumerable times when I have felt that code readability would be enhanced by a few judiciously placed GOTOs. And frankly, I'd rather deal with a well written 50,000 line FORTRAN program than 3000 short "encapsulated" subprograms in some "modern" language. When a simple task is fragmented into more than 5 entities, I run out of fingers to mark pages.

Most of your discussion is a matter of taste and fashion, but one point is I believe just plain wrong. Kemeny and Kurtz most certainly DID design BASIC as a learning language. A few minutes research on the Internet should make that clear. See http://www.columbia.edu/~jrh29/kemeny.html There's no way to know if they would have designed their language the same way a decade or two later. I'd guess probably not, but I doubt Dijkstra would have liked whatever they designed then any better. Kemeny (who has a record every bit as illustrious as Dijkstra's) and Dijkstra worship at different alters in the church of computing.. While I'm not particularly a fan of BASIC, I can't say that I'm overwhelmed by the products of Dijkstra's ideas. There have been innumerable times when I have felt that code readability would be enhanced by a few judiciously placed GOTOs. And frankly, I'd rather deal with a well written 50,000 line FORTRAN program than 3000 short "encapsulated" subprograms in some "modern" language. When a simple task is fragmented into more than 5 entities, I run out of fingers to mark pages.

This is what you asked for, I hope you can read Coptic, Demotic, Hieratic, and Kemetic Heiroglyphics.

Have fun.

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/projects/digital/a pis/search/

If you'd like to use some of the data these articles discuss, the EdGCM project has wrapped a NASA global climate model (GCM) in a GUI (OS X and Win). You can add CO2 or turn the sun down by a few percent all with a checkbox and a slider. Supercomputers and advanced FORTRAN programmers are no longer necessary to run your own GCM.

Disclaimer: I'm the project developer.

Proponents said the Segway would be bigger than the Internet and more revolutionary than the personal computer. Kamen told Time magazine in 2001 that the Segway "will be to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy." A headline in Time magazine asked the startling question: "Could this thing really change the world?" The answer appears to be no.

I'm a firm believer that the market should (and will) regulate itself, only requiring laws breaking monopolies on limited necessities

In that case I suggest you read some of the publications of this nobel prize winning economist, consider why you used the word "belief" in the above sentance, and then re-assess your views.

http://www2.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/jstiglitz/ind ex.cfm

Think of it this way: What Scotty knows about engineering and such is in the context of his time period, which in that movie was pretty far displaced from "now". True, he probably does know of older computer technology, but most of his day-to-day knowledge centers around the technology available to him in his own time. It shouldn't be any wonder that he might make a few mistakes and take a little bit to "get up to speed" when faced with what to him was a very old piece of technology.

I don't know if you have ever had a chance to visit a well stocked computer museum, but if you ever do, you will be amazed. Take a look at an old IBM card sorter or card punch - these were two of many devices used to communicate with computers in the 1950's and 1960's - even if you know what they do, and have read about how a Hollerith or IBM card is formatted, you would still be stymied by both of the devices (though the sorter is easier to understand, and becomes even easier to understand if you operate it with a real deck of unsorted cards). Here we are only talking technology 50 or so years old. Most people don't even know how to properly load an open-reel 9-track tape into a vacuum column drive...

Go back a little further to the plug-board era of ENIAC and other machines, and things get really hairy. Go back further to the 1930's and you see analog differential analyzer devices which had to be set up by positioning belts and motors and wheels and such (knife edge wheels on glass disks, etc) - to get a calculation output from that (in the form of graph on a 2-axis pen plotter if you were lucky) requires a lot of knowledge in many different areas that most people don't even have today. Go back a little further, and you are back in punch-card territory with Hollerith tabulation machines (which were used not only for census tracking, but in some cases warehouse inventory tracking and purchasing tracking - some of the first credit processing systems were done with Hollerith tabulators). Go back much further, and you are talking devices made by Pascal, Napier, and others for simple mechanical-based calculations - while a Pascaline is fairly easy to operate (although very finicky and fragile), your first time setting up a calculation for multiplication might give you pause.

I have only scratched the surface here, too - the history of computation and calculation using machinery and mechanical/electronic means is long and varied, and not nearly as large a time span as that between "today" and the time period Scotty hailed from. So, no, I don't find the scene as unrealistic as some imagine it to be, given the examples I have explained above...

Think of it this way: What Scotty knows about engineering and such is in the context of his time period, which in that movie was pretty far displaced from "now". True, he probably does know of older computer technology, but most of his day-to-day knowledge centers around the technology available to him in his own time. It shouldn't be any wonder that he might make a few mistakes and take a little bit to "get up to speed" when faced with what to him was a very old piece of technology.

I don't know if you have ever had a chance to visit a well stocked computer museum, but if you ever do, you will be amazed. Take a look at an old IBM card sorter or card punch - these were two of many devices used to communicate with computers in the 1950's and 1960's - even if you know what they do, and have read about how a Hollerith or IBM card is formatted, you would still be stymied by both of the devices (though the sorter is easier to understand, and becomes even easier to understand if you operate it with a real deck of unsorted cards). Here we are only talking technology 50 or so years old. Most people don't even know how to properly load an open-reel 9-track tape into a vacuum column drive...

Go back a little further to the plug-board era of ENIAC and other machines, and things get really hairy. Go back further to the 1930's and you see analog differential analyzer devices which had to be set up by positioning belts and motors and wheels and such (knife edge wheels on glass disks, etc) - to get a calculation output from that (in the form of graph on a 2-axis pen plotter if you were lucky) requires a lot of knowledge in many different areas that most people don't even have today. Go back a little further, and you are back in punch-card territory with Hollerith tabulation machines (which were used not only for census tracking, but in some cases warehouse inventory tracking and purchasing tracking - some of the first credit processing systems were done with Hollerith tabulators). Go back much further, and you are talking devices made by Pascal, Napier, and others for simple mechanical-based calculations - while a Pascaline is fairly easy to operate (although very finicky and fragile), your first time setting up a calculation for multiplication might give you pause.

I have only scratched the surface here, too - the history of computation and calculation using machinery and mechanical/electronic means is long and varied, and not nearly as large a time span as that between "today" and the time period Scotty hailed from. So, no, I don't find the scene as unrealistic as some imagine it to be, given the examples I have explained above...

Think of it this way: What Scotty knows about engineering and such is in the context of his time period, which in that movie was pretty far displaced from "now". True, he probably does know of older computer technology, but most of his day-to-day knowledge centers around the technology available to him in his own time. It shouldn't be any wonder that he might make a few mistakes and take a little bit to "get up to speed" when faced with what to him was a very old piece of technology.

I don't know if you have ever had a chance to visit a well stocked computer museum, but if you ever do, you will be amazed. Take a look at an old IBM card sorter or card punch - these were two of many devices used to communicate with computers in the 1950's and 1960's - even if you know what they do, and have read about how a Hollerith or IBM card is formatted, you would still be stymied by both of the devices (though the sorter is easier to understand, and becomes even easier to understand if you operate it with a real deck of unsorted cards). Here we are only talking technology 50 or so years old. Most people don't even know how to properly load an open-reel 9-track tape into a vacuum column drive...

Go back a little further to the plug-board era of ENIAC and other machines, and things get really hairy. Go back further to the 1930's and you see analog differential analyzer devices which had to be set up by positioning belts and motors and wheels and such (knife edge wheels on glass disks, etc) - to get a calculation output from that (in the form of graph on a 2-axis pen plotter if you were lucky) requires a lot of knowledge in many different areas that most people don't even have today. Go back a little further, and you are back in punch-card territory with Hollerith tabulation machines (which were used not only for census tracking, but in some cases warehouse inventory tracking and purchasing tracking - some of the first credit processing systems were done with Hollerith tabulators). Go back much further, and you are talking devices made by Pascal, Napier, and others for simple mechanical-based calculations - while a Pascaline is fairly easy to operate (although very finicky and fragile), your first time setting up a calculation for multiplication might give you pause.

I have only scratched the surface here, too - the history of computation and calculation using machinery and mechanical/electronic means is long and varied, and not nearly as large a time span as that between "today" and the time period Scotty hailed from. So, no, I don't find the scene as unrealistic as some imagine it to be, given the examples I have explained above...

Read here about moving swapfiles on Tiger (or Panther).

Imagine a world where only the people that can afford to have ideas are allowed to. How many Mozarts will die unrecognized because they infringed (bridged) on an already owned concept?

Unfortunately, we don't have to imagine. There exist only a finite number of distinct pieces of music. Accidental copying is already considered infringement in two U.S. appeals circuits. See Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music and Three Boys Music v. Michael Bolton, both of which can be found in Columbia Law Library's music copyright case list and both of which have been upheld on appeal. (And before you accuse me of not reading the whole opinion, please explain exactly which parts of the opinion invalidate my point.) So what can an independent musician do to protect himself?

You'll never get a consise answer to this about v2. Pretty much because the people who wrote is aren't lawyers either and there are enough inherent contradictions that the entire license could probably be invalidated if it was actually presented to a court.

Riiiiggggghhhhtttt.... IHBT, just not very well.

99% of the legitimate 99% is music. Its just legal http://bt.etree.org/ and http://www.archive.org/audio for starts.

How do you know that the independent music that you download is lawful? Heck, how do even the bands know that their music is lawful, given the subconscious copying doctrine?

I have to say I agree 100%. In my own little social sphere, I'm a big supporter of FOSS (just did a Chicago cable access TV interview about the subject, as a matter of fact). But I'm not religious, and I think there are limits to free software, particularly for the desktop. I've used this example before, but the GIMP is a perfect example of this: as a designer (mainly web, but also for fine-art photography printing and print design), it really doesn't cut the mustard. Indeed, the amount of intellectual capital that is required to make a design or photo editing program such as InDesign or Photoshop is substantial. Now, Adobe profits significantly from this intellecual input by forcing new versions on users on a regular basis that may or may not add much in the way of functionality. However, Adobe is also pretty okay about maintaining application compatibility across versions, so my legal version of Photoshop 7 is all I ever need to get 95% of my work done, and if I ever need InDesign instead of Scribus (which is rare, but happens, mainly with typographically complex layouts, like posters) I just use my roommate's legal version of InDesign CS2.

Here's the thing -- I would pay good money to be able to run Adobe's products natively on my Linux desktop instead of via CrossOver Office. Those applications have significant value to me that I think it is hard (not impossible, but structurally very very difficult) for the free software development model to provide. Now, while I want Adobe to be governed by a sane and resonable copyright and patent regime that doesn't let them own their ideas for all eternity, I would assert that they should have the right to profit off their significant intellectual investment within certain limits. Therefore, I would pay -- be really delighted, in fact -- to be able to run legal versions of the Adobe CS2 applications natively on a Linux desktop without resorting to CrossOver Office.

I think many of us (rightly) believe in the whole the utility of all non-free software approaches zero over time argument. But this entire discussion, and that maxim, is primarily predicated on the current patent and copyright system, which allows intellectual property holders to withhold their work from the commons essentially forever. In a saner climate for intellectual property law, with some specific thought given to information technology, I think that free and proprietary software could coexist pretty well, with significant UI and development investments having the possibility of creating profit for the creators without screwing the rest of us in perpetuity. In fact, such a coexistence might be a healthy thing, because these debates on some level come down to making binary choices between business models that, given the broader ecology, are in conflict.

The big caveat here lot of corporate power is arrayed very much against such a scenario, which means that this is an even steeper uphill battle than the acceptance of FOSS generally. It isn't an easy argument to make, while it is very easy for corporate lobbyists and their lackeys in various governments (Congresscritters where I'm from) to keep things swinging in their favor. Their favor isn't just profits and money, but a legal environment that essentially denies the possibilities for hybrid combinations of free and proprietary software, which in turn lends fuel to the (understandable) hardline stance of the FSF and others.

So remap the key and quit whining.

In Linux under X:
http://www.columbia.edu/~djv/docs/keyremap.html

In windows:
http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/tools/msklc.msp x
or http://webpages.charter.net/krumsick/

Or, you could start jousting at windmills and try to change the entire industry. Whatever is easier for you...

Actually, I do know the answer to that. The IBM 1403 Chain Printer. It was an incredibly high-speed (3 seconds per-page on 11x14 fanfold) impact printer which used a continuously moving chain with letters attached, and 132 hammers behind the paper. Each hammer would strike when the right letter passed it at the right position. The standard suppled chain came, IIRC, with 8 upper case alphabets, and 2 lower case alphabets. Due to the rotational latency of the chain, lower case letters really slowed down print jobs, so people used all upper case. Even today these beasts are still in use for multi-part forms like invoices and such.

Actually, I do know the answer to that. The IBM 1403 Chain Printer. It was an incredibly high-speed (3 seconds per-page on 11x14 fanfold) impact printer which used a continuously moving chain with letters attached, and 132 hammers behind the paper. Each hammer would strike when the right letter passed it at the right position. The standard suppled chain came, IIRC, with 8 upper case alphabets, and 2 lower case alphabets. Due to the rotational latency of the chain, lower case letters really slowed down print jobs, so people used all upper case. Even today these beasts are still in use for multi-part forms like invoices and such.

I am in the field, and I am pretty sure that there is no application of this conjecture to any branch of physics at the moment (in particular, for string theory). See also this:
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=43 4
(Peter's answer to Cynthia question)

P.S. what is this crap?
"Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 10 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment"[...]

And 320x200? My teletype only had 132 columns.

Hold on, I gotta go chase some of those damn kids off my lawn...

you just don't get beaten for complaining . . . . . .

pfft..... downstater

If you dislike the majority of these new operating systems, explore the Internet on the TeleType!

*Shrug*. My country has been targetted by Islamic terrorists for about two decades. They are backed by a Chinese/US/Saudi Arabia supported, armed and funded nuclear power. The Islamic terrorists already have nukes. Believe me, it really can't get worse from where I sit.

http://www.kashmir-information.com/Terrorism/
https://lists.cs.columbia.edu/pipermail/ornet/2002 -June/004544.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_Kashmir
http://www.kashmirherald.com/january2002/kashmirte rrorismupdate.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10958641/
http://www.brookings.edu/views/op-ed/fellows/beher a_20020525.htm
http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/publication/faultlin es/volume16/Article1.htm
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/pakistan/nuke/index. html
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/10/12/terror/m ain648733.shtml
http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/1577.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_and_weapons_ of_mass_destruction
http://www.parapundit.com/archives/000575.html
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040104-102921-916 6r.htm

And you think I worry about teeny little things like giving nukes to Lebanon forcing Israel to openly declare its nuclear status? I suspect you need to learn a little bit more about the rest of the world.

>This summer I read C.S. Lewis's masterpiece The Abolition of Man.

The Abolition of Man

If the souls of aborted babies go to heaven, then shoudn't the christians ENCOURAGE abortion as much as possible? Especially in athiests? I mean, saving the child's soul is the most important thing, right? What kind of loving parent would allow the child's soul to come in danger of eternal torment, when salvation is just an abortion away? :)

Sarcasm doesn't work to point out the goofiness of religion when you get the premise wrong. The Catholic Church says, quite literally, "We don't know what happens to unbaptised babies who die... we just assume God does the right thing".

As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them. Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved, and Jesus' tenderness toward children which caused him to say: "Let the children come to me, do not hinder them,"[63] allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism.
Source: Some official Church thing circa 1992. John Paul II said something very similar later on in one of his little letters on abortion.

As I understand it... the Church basically admits, on this particular issue, that God may "let" people into heaven through ways "unknown" to the Church. This concept intruiges me.

According to this website on paleoclimatology, there are some long period weather oscillations such as:

the El Niño -Southern Oscillation (ENSO) - 6 to 18 months,

the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) - 20 to 30 years

the Pacific-North American Oscillation (PNA) - 3 to 10 years

the The North Atlantic Oscillation NAO - 5 to 10 years

the Artic Oscillation (AO)- 5 to 10 years

the Antartic Oscillation (AAO) - 5 to 10 years

Paleoclimatologists have the records of weather condifions going back thousands of years using information such as tree rings, snow, lava, and seed deposits.

If the researchers could develop a long timescale atmospheric simulator that could replicate this data, then maybe they could predict general trends 30 years into the
future. Although unpredictable events such as earthquakes and volcanos) make things
bit harder, although they will probably run a large number of possible scenarios
before making any conclusions.

Perhaps, but I'm guessing the other part was PL/I: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLI/

More like PL/S. It was not one of the original OS/360 languages, however; see, for example, slide 20 of this presentation for an OS class, which says "In mid-1970s, IBM migrated to PL/S, a medium-level language".

This paper was published in 2004, by the VoIP group at Columbia. It reverse-engineers the Skype network with sufficient detail to let one make a serious attempt at firewalling Skype traffic.

does anyone have anything interesting to say about it?
I read on a theoretical physics blog (yes, there are such things) that there is a fear that this LHC might actually generate black holes.
link
Now that could make things very interesting, for a short time. . .not that I think it's likely to really happen.

Yes, you're right. Bisexuality is more common. But homosexuality isn't exactly unheard of:

They're in love. They're gay. They're penguins.

Smartest, wittiest, most stylish guy I ever knew was blind. Got all the ladies. Rhodes scholar, too. And he wrote a screen reader for Linux.

When you look at it, you wonder why the US designers are so retarted to design ugly stuff like the KSR-33.

To be fair, the IBM 2741 isn't quite so ugly, and the IBM 1050 was also a bit less clunky-looking (i.e., they, like the Olivetti, look more as if they actually belong in the Swinging '60's than did the Models 33 and 35 Teletypes). Even Teletype came out with the Model 37 eventually....

Looks like his book doesn't come out until September 30. You can, however, check out his blog with the same title, Not Even Wrong.

Oh, yeah, that was just amazing when we got our DECwriter and a 300 baud modem. It was like hog heaven, especially for some of the chatting and gaming. If you had a 300 baud terminal on MU,COMBAT, for example, you RULED the kids with the 110 baud.

The funniest thing about my post above, though, is that it's all true. We were on a time-shared CDC Cyber 73 with 60 bit words divided up into 10 characters per word. It lent a certain similarity to many programs: for example chat and mail programs all seemed to coincidentally offer 10 character nicknames. But six bits isn't enough for both upper and lower case.

But try telling any of that to kids these days and they just don't understand. :-)

For those who don't know what parent means by "the standard way," this handy reference may help.

Awesome post! My laugh of the week. I remember the day we went from a 10 cps teletype to this: http://www.columbia.edu/acis/history/la36.html , and I thought, "This is truly the coolest thing ever invented. Ever."

Hell, I'm a woman and I want a wife, too!

The resolution does become important as there are algorithms to increase dynamic range as a tradeoff against the full resolution of the device.

Just a matter of patents and companies willing to license the novel approach with standard CCD device technology.

If you'd like to run your own NASA Global Climate Model (GCM) on your own computer, the EdGCM project has ported a GCM to Mac & Windows and wrapped it in a GUI so you can point-and-click your way around. Turn the sun down or add some nitrogen, whatever you want...

Disclaimer: I'm a developer on the project.

I agree. I don't understand why the FSF isn't sendng Eben Moglen to important meetings like this instead of RMS. Eben is both extremely well spoken and dress for the occasion (being a lawyer after all).

Well then, this is where you are an idiot. The Pirate Bay and other torrent sharing sites *DO NOT HAVE ONE SINGLE BIT OF INFRINGING MATERIAL*!!! Not one bit (let alone one byte). Taking down the Pirate Bay is like arresting someone who sells a map to the Hollywood stars house. The movie star might not like the person selling the map, but its just a map. Pirate Bay contains indexs. It's like a municipality (town, city) that must go to jail because they allowed a crimminal in their midst. Further, not all of the information Pirate Bay indexes is illegal. Some of it (All of the thousands of programs I run on my computer) are *LEGAL FOR DOWNLOAD*. I'm not making this up. The licence is legal and binding and allows me to share with others. It was created by a New York City lawyer and professor at law: http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/ and pro bono general counsel for the Free Software Foundation. Your ignorance is annoying. If you got pushy, you would find yourself in a jail in a very short time. I see thin headed boobs ranting all the time. This is the standard boiler plate I give them. I'd really love to see them *really* learn by spending a few days in jail, but this is all I can hope for for now.