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Domain: dartmouth.edu

Stories and comments across the archive that link to dartmouth.edu.

Comments · 269

  1. No official limit... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on E-Mail Size Limits?

    The educational institution where i work has a fairly good system. There is no official limit, but as your mailbox grows, so do the consequences.

    After 10 megs, you get a message asking you to remove stuff whenever you sign on.

    After 50 megs, the message appears whenever you send or receive a message.

    After 100 megs, you will continue to receive messages, but you won't be able to send any until you drop below 100 again.

    There are approximately 5000 people here, and as of 1998, around 250,000 messages were sent every day. I haven't seen any more recent stats than that, but I'm sure it has increased. It's a homegrown system ( http://www.dartmouth.edu/pages/softdev/blitz.html) , but the source and specs for the server are freely available, as are the clients.

  2. Jackson is a Dartmouth Alum by Myopic · · Score: 1 · on Microsoft Judge Takes His Case to the Public

    (I'm a Dartmouth alum, too.)

    I wasn't surprised to hear people ridicule Judge Jackson considering the three other most famous Dartmouth alums are Dr. Seuss, Captain Kangeroo, and Mr. Rogers (who spoke at the most recent graduation ceremony).

    (it's a joke. laugh.)

    peace

  3. whiney whine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on Are Colleges Helping to Maintain the Microsoft Monopoly?

    Your school, if it is in the United States, probably has a "recommended system" that it is suggested you purchase. The college I attended required incoming students to purchase a computer since 1991. Usually included in this package is Microsoft Word. The simple fact of the matter is that the school can only afford to support one platform, and if you must choose one word processor for 10,000 users, why not choose the one most frequently chosen by people choosing systems for 10,000 users? These days there are really not many viable alternatives to MS Word and Office. If you have some philosophical problem with the school's behavior then why did you choose that school?

    Regardless, I don't think schools should offer documents in .doc or even .txt form. Everything should be in PDF, like it was at my school.

  4. Dartmouth Chance Lectures by frenchgates · · Score: 1 · on Science for the Car Ride?

    These are audio/video, but you don't really need the video. A lot of fascinating discussions of probability and statistics including many colorful topics like meteor strikes, magic, and gambling.

  5. Physics has always been ethically compromised by Bonker · · Score: 5, Interesting · on Ununoctium Wrapup

    Taken from
    http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/chance_news/recen t_news/chance_news_11.02.html#item11


    The third example is Robert Millikan. Here we read about the experience of Gerald Holton studying Millikan's notebooks related to his famous oil droplets experiment to measure the charge e on a single electron. He found some variability in his estimate for e in difference sets of observations. Millikan gave a personal quality-of-measurment rating to each of the sets of observations in his original 1910 experiment. He then used these to obtain a weighted average of the values obtained from his sets of observation which gave him the estimate for e of 4.85*10^(-10) electrostatic units. The simple average would have given him 4.70*10^(-10) which would have been closer to the currently accepted value of 4.77*10^(-10). Holton also found that, referring to specific sets of observations, Milliken wrote: "publish this", "beauty", and "error high, will not use."

    Milliken guessed or decided beforehand what he wanted the electrostatic constant to be and kept fudging his results until he got the one he wanted.

  6. Author of article more right than he knew by Yeechang+Lee · · Score: 1 · on One Glimpse Of The Wireless Future

    ekrout wrote:
    > Yes, the article's interesting if you're into
    > networking and/or wireless data transmission, but
    > their explicit focus on Dartmouth makes it seem as
    > though they're unique and trendsetting. It's quite
    > the contrary, however, as Dartmouth was in no
    > way one of the first handful of schools to deploy
    > 802.11b.

    Actually, the writer was more correct than he knew, as Dartmouth pioneered computing access for its entire student body back in the '60s. Kemeny and Kurtz's BASIC was used to, among other things, set up a requirement that every Dartmouth student would have to demonstrate the ability to write a simple computer program in order to graduate. Dartmouth even provided some students with terminals in their dorm rooms. How cool is that for forty years ago?

  7. Re:some dartmouth background... by annodomini · · Score: 2, Interesting · on One Glimpse Of The Wireless Future
    I'm sure there's more i'm missing here... anyone?
    AI. What many people see as the birthplace of AI is the 1956 Dartmouth Conference on AI. While there had been a few independent researchers working on related projects, the Dartmouth conference is where it turned into a field.

    The reason why BASIC was developed was because Dartmouth required everyone to learn to program. I think Dartmouth may have been the first college to do that. Sadly, it's no longer required. The requirement now is that you have to take one technology related course.

    And currently, you can look at where Dartmouth is currently moving in this field. The wireless is one thing. One of the big efforts is the Institute of Security Technology Studies, which is doing research into all kinds of information security, and the Public Key Infrastructure Lab, which is doing research into how to set up a secure public key infrastructure in an institutional environment like Dartmouth. Now, some people might say that this has all been solved, but one of the most difficult problems Dartmouth faces is the numerous untrusted public computers all around the campus. Key distribution in this environment is quite tricky, especially if you don't want to require all users to get extra hardware.

  8. Re:some dartmouth background... by annodomini · · Score: 2, Interesting · on One Glimpse Of The Wireless Future
    I'm sure there's more i'm missing here... anyone?
    AI. What many people see as the birthplace of AI is the 1956 Dartmouth Conference on AI. While there had been a few independent researchers working on related projects, the Dartmouth conference is where it turned into a field.

    The reason why BASIC was developed was because Dartmouth required everyone to learn to program. I think Dartmouth may have been the first college to do that. Sadly, it's no longer required. The requirement now is that you have to take one technology related course.

    And currently, you can look at where Dartmouth is currently moving in this field. The wireless is one thing. One of the big efforts is the Institute of Security Technology Studies, which is doing research into all kinds of information security, and the Public Key Infrastructure Lab, which is doing research into how to set up a secure public key infrastructure in an institutional environment like Dartmouth. Now, some people might say that this has all been solved, but one of the most difficult problems Dartmouth faces is the numerous untrusted public computers all around the campus. Key distribution in this environment is quite tricky, especially if you don't want to require all users to get extra hardware.

  9. Re:What Security? by annodomini · · Score: 1 · on One Glimpse Of The Wireless Future
    1) security of the end users machine. Most of us would shudder at the though of connecting a desktop windows box directly to the internet. Since the average student is only online for 16 minutes at a time, there's enough of a moving target to make this easily as secure as 85% of dialup usage.
    WTF? I don't know where that 16 minutes at a time comes from, but it certainly doesn't apply to Dartmouth. The average student at Dartmouth is online all the time that they're in front of there computer, and if they have a desktop computer, all the time that they're not, too. Think hours at a time. But this isn't really an issue that Dartmouth needs to deal with. All of the computers they sell to students have antivirus software, and I would presume are set up to be secure (since I don't use a Dartmouth supplied computer, I can't say for sure). But really, it's not their problem if a student's computer is cracked, and there's no difference between the wireless network and the wired in this example.

    2) privacy of the data. There is none. Neither is there once your packets leave your wired ISP. Deal with it, or use GPG.
    This is very true. Dartmouth is working to fix this with a new PKI infrastructure they're developing.
    3) abuse of the network. Drive-by spammers, kiddie-porn downloaders, and so on. MAC addresses can be snooped and reused. Possibly the triangulation tools they were talking about can help you prove that it wasn't you downloading live goat porn in the lecture hall in the middle of Prof. X's lecture, even if it was going to your MAC address
    This is a problem, but it's not that serious, and was present even with the wired network.
  10. some dartmouth background... by blackdefiance · · Score: 2, Interesting · on One Glimpse Of The Wireless Future

    While not exactly at the front of the pack on wireless, Dartmouth has had a number of interesting contributions to the field:

    - DCTS/DTSS: Dartmouth developed an early timesharing system in the late 60's
    - BASIC: Kemeney & Kurtz, a pair of professors, wrote Beginner's All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code in 1964. It's easy to dismiss BASIC, but a lot of people got their start with it.
    - Synclavier: Jon Appelton, currently the head of Dartmouth's electroacoustic music program, developed this digital synth in '78 at New England Digital. It was widely used through the 90's.
    - Networked Campus: Dartmouth adopted a "port for every pillow" philosophy in 1984 and wired the whole campus with appletalk. They got a lot of mileage out of that network.
    - Required computers: Dartmouth has mandated computer ownership for all students since (i think) the class of '91. Having it mandatory means students can get financial aid for their computers, if necessary
    - blitzmail: dartmouth wrote an email program in '84 (?). nothing amazing or groundbreaking, but the the widespread adoption of "blitz" in combination with the mandatory computers and ubiquitous networking had a huge effect on the campus social scene, and did a lot to bring dartmouth grads into the information age.

    I'm sure there's more i'm missing here... anyone?

  11. Re:Security by annodomini · · Score: 1 · on One Glimpse Of The Wireless Future
    What security issues exactly are you referring to? The one main one I can think of is people stealing our bandwidth. Well, guess what: the whole town of Hanover is Dartmouth and people that provide services for Dartmouth professors, students, and administration. Oh, and a couple of companies founded by former Dartmouth students. There's really no other industry in Hanover to employ people, so there's not enough people out there to steal a significant amount of bandwidth. In a large city, the story would be different.

    All other issues of security on the network existed before we moved to wireless. You could walk up to any frat, dorm, or other building, find a free ethernet jack, and plug in, and no one would be the wiser. Because of this, systems have never relied on security based on whether or not you're on the network. To do anything serious you'd have to crack the Kerberos authentication that most things are secured with.

    Of course, we still currently have all email in plaintext, and the encryption built into the 802.11 protocol is laughable. But this is an issue that existed with the ethernet network, which had no encryption at all. There are several research projects in the CS department, at Kiewitt (Dartmouth's IT department), and in other places at Dartmouth to improve this situation, through a strong public key infrastructure, among other things.

    So yes, security is definitely being considered. Right now, it's no worse than it was beforehand, and a hell of a lot more convenient for everyone involved.

  12. Re:Security by annodomini · · Score: 1 · on One Glimpse Of The Wireless Future
    What security issues exactly are you referring to? The one main one I can think of is people stealing our bandwidth. Well, guess what: the whole town of Hanover is Dartmouth and people that provide services for Dartmouth professors, students, and administration. Oh, and a couple of companies founded by former Dartmouth students. There's really no other industry in Hanover to employ people, so there's not enough people out there to steal a significant amount of bandwidth. In a large city, the story would be different.

    All other issues of security on the network existed before we moved to wireless. You could walk up to any frat, dorm, or other building, find a free ethernet jack, and plug in, and no one would be the wiser. Because of this, systems have never relied on security based on whether or not you're on the network. To do anything serious you'd have to crack the Kerberos authentication that most things are secured with.

    Of course, we still currently have all email in plaintext, and the encryption built into the 802.11 protocol is laughable. But this is an issue that existed with the ethernet network, which had no encryption at all. There are several research projects in the CS department, at Kiewitt (Dartmouth's IT department), and in other places at Dartmouth to improve this situation, through a strong public key infrastructure, among other things.

    So yes, security is definitely being considered. Right now, it's no worse than it was beforehand, and a hell of a lot more convenient for everyone involved.

  13. Dartmouth by pauleir · · Score: 1 · on One Glimpse Of The Wireless Future
    As a Dartmouth alum, specifically of the Masters Electro-Acoustic Music Program, I can wholeheartedly say that Dartmouth has traditionally led the pack in technology and computing. Since the 1960's Dartmouth has pushed computing and technology to its students. Basic was developed there by a former president of the college.

    The Electro-Acoustic Program merges CS, EE, and music composition into a program that is perhaps the best of its kind in the world.

  14. Private Colleges by Myopic · · Score: 1 · on Is Today's IT an Undervalued Asset?
    This situation is also present at Universities. I currently work for Dartmouth College writing a flashcard-type program for foreign language students. My job ends at the end of the summer because the money to develop the software has dried up. Dartmouth has been cutting back on many of its software projects while weathering the tech bust and, more generally, the bear stock market. I am aware that the budgets for hardware and software both have shrunk considerably from last year and a lot of our techies are scrambling to figure out where they'll find the money to buy the things the want and need.

    I am a recent computer science graduate; instead of trying to find a job in the tech industry, I'm taking some time off from working -- and when I decide to return to work I don't think I'll be looking in the computer industry.

  15. DIB:S by Buzx · · Score: 1 · on All We Want Is Whatever's On Your Machine

    I can understand the desire to defend against worms, but there are other methods. Check out this worm detection system that the Institute for Security Technology Studies is working on:

    http://www.ists.dartmouth.edu/IRIA/projects/dibs/

    Buzx

  16. mirrors by dotgod · · Score: 3, Informative · on Mandrake Linux 9.0 Beta 1

    Australia

    ftp://ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Brisbane)
    Austria

    ftp://ftp.univie.ac.at/systems/linux/Mandrake/8.2/ i586/ (Vienna)

    ftp://gd.tuwien.ac.at/pub/linux/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Vienna)
    Belgium

    ftp://ftp.belnet.be/packages/mandrake/8.2/i586/
    Costa Rica

    ftp://ftp.ucr.ac.cr/pub/Unix/linux/mandrake/Mandra ke/8.2/i586/
    Czech Republic

    ftp://ftp.cesnet.cz/OS/Linux/Mandrake/mandrake/8.2 /i586/ (Brno)

    ftp://ftp.fi.muni.cz/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Brno)

    ftp://klobouk.fsv.cvut.cz/pub/linux-mandrake/Mandr ake/8.2/i586/ (Prague)

    ftp://mandrake.redbox.cz/Mandrake/8.2/i586/

    ftp://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz/OS/Linux/Dist/Mandrake/m andrake/8.2/i586/ (Prague)

    http://ftp.fi.muni.cz/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Brno)
    Denmark

    ftp://ftp.dkuug.dk/pub/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Koebenhavn)

    ftp://ftp.sunsite.dk/mirrors/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Aalborg)
    Estonia

    ftp://ftp.aso.ee/pub/os/Linux/distributions/mandra ke/8.2/i586/
    Finland

    ftp://ftp.song.fi/pub/linux/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Espoo)
    France

    ftp://ftp.ciril.fr/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Nancy)

    ftp://ftp.club-internet.fr/pub/unix/linux/distribu tions/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Paris)

    ftp://ftp.info.univ-angers.fr/pub/linux/distributi ons/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Angers)

    ftp://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/linux/distributions/mandrake /8.2/i586/ (Paris)

    ftp://ftp.proxad.net/pub/Distributions_Linux/Mandr ake/8.2/i586/ (Paris)

    ftp://ftp.u-strasbg.fr/pub/linux/distributions/man drake/8.2/i586/ (Strasbourg)

    ftp://linux.ups-tlse.fr/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Toulouse)
    Germany

    ftp://ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/Mandra ke/8.2/i586/ (Esslingen)

    ftp://ftp.de.uu.net/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/

    ftp://ftp.fh-giessen.de/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i58 6/ (Giessen)

    ftp://ftp.fh-wolfenbuettel.de/pub/os/linux/mandrak e/dist/8.2/i586/ (Wolfenbuettel)

    ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Goettingen)

    ftp://ftp.join.uni-muenster.de/pub/linux/distribut ions/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Muenster)

    ftp://ftp.leo.org/pub/comp/os/unix/linux/Mandrake/ Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Munchen)

    ftp://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i5 86/ (Chemnitz)

    ftp://ftp.tu-clausthal.de/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i 586/ (Clausthal)

    ftp://ftp.uasw.edu/pub/os/linux/mandrake/dist/8.2/ i586/ (Wolfenbuettel)

    ftp://ftp.uni-bayreuth.de/pub/linux/Mandrake/8.2/i 586/ (bayreuth)

    ftp://ftp.uni-kassel.de/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i58 6/ (Kassel)

    ftp://ftp.uni-mannheim.de/systems/linux/mandrake/8 .2/i586/ (Mannheim)

    ftp://ftp.vat.tu-dresden.de/pub/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Dresden)

    ftp://ramses.wh2.tu-dresden.de/pub/mirrors/mandrak e/8.2/i586/ (Dresden)

    ftp://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/pub/Linux/ mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Aachen)
    Greece

    ftp://ftp.duth.gr/pub/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Thrace)

    ftp://ftp.ntua.gr/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Athens)
    Hong Kong

    ftp://ftp.wisr.eie.polyu.edu.hk/linux/mandrake/8.2 /i586/
    Hungary

    ftp://ftp.linuxforum.hu/mirror/Mandrake/8.2/i586/
    Ireland

    ftp://ftp.esat.net/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/
    Italy

    ftp://bo.mirror.garr.it/mirrors/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Bologna)

    ftp://ftp.edisontel.it/pub/Mandrake_Mirror/Mandrak e/8.2/i586/
    Latvia

    ftp://ftp.latnet.lv/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/
    Netherlands

    ftp://ftp.nl.uu.net/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/

    ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/os/Linux/distr/Mandrake/Man drake/8.2/i586/

    ftp://ftp.surfnet.nl/pub/os/Linux/distr/Mandrake/M andrake/8.2/i586/

    ftp://ftp.wau.nl/pub/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Wageningen)
    Poland

    ftp://ftp.ps.pl/mirrors/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Szczecin)

    ftp://ftp.task.gda.pl/pub/linux/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Gdansk)
    Portugal

    ftp://ftp.dei.uc.pt/pub/linux/Mandrake/Mandrake/8. 2/i586/ (Coimbra)

    ftp://tux.cprm.net/pub/Mandrake/8.2/i586/
    Russia

    ftp://ftp.chg.ru/pub/Linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Chernogolovka)
    Singapore

    ftp://ftp.singnet.com.sg/opensource/linux/Mandrake /8.2/i586/
    Slovakia

    ftp://spirit.profinet.sk/mirrors/Mandrake/8.2/i586 / (Bratislava)
    Spain

    ftp://ftp.cesga.es/pub/linux/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Galicia)

    ftp://ftp.cica.es/pub/Linux/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Sevilla)

    ftp://ftp.rediris.es/pub/linux/distributions/mandr ake/8.2/i586/
    Sweden

    ftp://ftp.chello.se/pub/Linux/Mandrake/8.2/i586/

    ftp://ftp.chl.chalmers.se/pub/Linux/distributions/ Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Gothenburg)

    ftp://ftp.du.se/pub/os/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Dalarma)
    Switzerland

    ftp://ftp.pcds.ch/pub/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Neuhausen)

    ftp://sunsite.cnlab-switch.ch/mirror/mandrake/8.2/ i586/ (Zurich)
    Taiwan

    ftp://linux.cdpa.nsysu.edu.tw/pub/Mandrake/mandrak e/8.2/i586/

    ftp://linux.csie.nctu.edu.tw/distributions/mandrak e/Mandrake/8.2/i586/

    ftp://mdk.linux.org.tw/pub/mandrake/8.2/i586/
    Turkey

    ftp://ftp.ankara.edu.tr/pub/linux/dagitimlar/Mandr ake/8.2/i586/ (Ankara)
    United Kingdom

    ftp://ftp.mirror.ac.uk/sites/sunsite.uio.no/pub/un ix/Linux/Mandrake/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Canterbury)
    United States

    ftp://ftp-linux.cc.gatech.edu/pub/linux/distributi ons/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Georgia)

    ftp://ftp.cise.ufl.edu/pub/mirrors/mandrake/Mandra ke/8.2/i586/ (Florida)

    ftp://ftp.cse.buffalo.edu/pub/Linux/Mandrake/mandr ake/8.2/i586/ (NY)

    ftp://ftp.nmt.edu/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (New Mexico)

    ftp://ftp.orst.edu/pub/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Oregon)

    ftp://ftp.tux.org/pub/distributions/mandrake/8.2/i 586/ (Virginia)

    ftp://ftp.umr.edu/pub/linux/mandrake/Mandrake/8.2/ i586/ (Missouri)

    ftp://ftp.uwsg.indiana.edu/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586 / (Indiana)

    ftp://linux-cs.tccw.wku.edu/pub/linux/distribution s/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (WKU-Linux, Western Kentucky University)

    ftp://mirror.aca.oakland.edu/linux/mandrake/8.2/i5 86/ (Michigan)

    ftp://mirror.cs.wisc.edu/pub/mirrors/linux/Mandrak e/8.2/i586/ (Wisconsin)

    ftp://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Illinois)

    ftp://mirrors.ptd.net/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Pensylvania)

    ftp://mirrors.secsup.org/pub/linux/mandrake/Mandra ke/8.2/i586/

    ftp://uml-pub.ists.dartmouth.edu/mirrors/ftp.mandr akesoft.com/pub/Mandrake/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (New Hampshire)

    ftp://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/mirrors/mandrake/Mandra ke/8.2/i586/ (Hawaii)

    http://mandrake.dsi.internet2.edu/Mandrake/8.2/i58 6/ (For Internet2 academic institutions only)

  17. This is cool. by Sheetrock · · Score: 1 · on Randomizing Survey Answers For Accuracy

    I hadn't heard about this before. Randomized Response

  18. Re:I would pay for a grammar check by dghcasp · · Score: 2 · on Sizing Up StarOffice 6.0
    Grammer checkers generally stink.

    From the Jack Lynch Guide to Grammar and Style:

    A fun experiment is to take some great work of literature and feed it to a grammar checker, and then to see what mincemeat it makes of it. Here are some mindless tips on the first sentence of Milton's Paradise Lost: "Consider revising. Very long sentences can be difficult to understand." Avoid contractions like "flow'd" in formal writing ("consider 'flow had'"). Avoid the use of "Man" ("Try 'he or she'"). "One greater Man restore" has subject-verb agreement problems. "In the Beginning" should be "at first." "Or if Sion" should be "also if Sion."

    Milton's style is judged appropriate for a 98th-grade reading level. (Well, okay, that seems about right. But the rest is silly.)

  19. Music is a verb by jzitt · · Score: 1 · on Where Music Will Come From
    For more on the act and process of musicking, check out this article by Christopher Small, author of Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening .

    A sample:

    It's quite simple. To music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance. That means not only to perform, but also to listen, to provide material for a performance -- what we call composing -- to prepare for a performance -- what we call practicing or rehearsing -- or any other activity which can affect the nature of the human encounter. We should certainly include dancing, should anyone be dancing, and we might even stretch the meaning on occasion to include what the lady is doing who takes the tickets on the door, or the hefty men who shift the piano around or the cleaners who clean up afterwards, since their activities all affect the nature of the event which is a musical performance.
  20. More info about moving protons by Lord+Sauron · · Score: 4, Informative · on De-Icing with Electricity, Not Heat

    University of Illinois has a very good article (with pictures!) about Proton conduction, proton channels, proton wells on water.

    This page about Victor Petrenko, a little more technical than Slashdot's article

    This one is brief, but says: "PROTONIC CHIPS NEVER FORGET Researchers at the University of New Mexico and Sandia National Laboratories are investigating the use of protonic memory for making cheap forget-me-not computer chips. In 1995, they noticed during experiments on silicon wafers that protons deep within the wafers were responding to electrical signals on the surface. "Nobody had seen these moving protons before," says one scientist. Further research showed the protons can be precisely controlled with standard microcircuits -- and are thus able to store data. Protonic chips won't need the fancy processing used in "flash" and other so-called nonvolatile memory chips, and can operate at very low power levels, thus prolonging battery life in laptops. Protonic chips currently are being tested at Texas Instruments.

    This PDFexplains the Mechanism of proton diffusion in the solid state protonic conductor Rb3H(SeO4)2, wich I assume is somewhat equivalent to the ice (haven't read the whole article yet) This

  21. Re:Alternative Download by ScumBiker · · Score: 2 · on DesqView/X: Night of the Living Dead Codebases

    In order to save a mirror from AC oblivion, here's a copy of the link to a DesqviewX mirror:

    ftp://uml-pub.ists.dartmouth.edu/mirrors/desqviewx

  22. Re:Alternative Download by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on DesqView/X: Night of the Living Dead Codebases

    Many thanks to the chsoft people; as an attempt to share the load, the files are also at: ftp://uml-pub.ists.dartmouth.edu/mirrors/desqviewx

  23. Re:Career? by guygee · · Score: 2 · on Non-Traditional Career Routes?




    You are actually choosing your subjects based
    on a future career? That's interesting.

    In my view, few of us has any idea what we are going to be doing twenty years
    from now.

    Exactly. Technological progress continues to accelerate at an exponential rate.
    Therefor, you should focus your studies on the eternal principles instead
    of learning only of today's technology. For example, instead of only worrying
    about the syntactical details of a handful of computer
    programming languages, try to focus on the theory of computer languages. Get
    a bigger perspective by including studies of human linguistics, from Chomsky
    to current thought. Try to analyze the computer languages that are
    the fads of today, in terms of their weak points and future failings. Include
    a greater emphasis on mathematics and statistics then is usually found in
    the modern curricula. As an exercise into obtaining insight, imagine
    technical events leading up to the
    Singularity (or the failure of said Singularity to occur).

    Yes, getting your degree may take longer, so this becomes a mattter of economic
    feasibility. Perhaps you should just plan on going through to your
    Master's degree (almost always justifiable from an economic standpoint),
    and not necessarily in the exact same field as your undergraduate degree.

    As an undergrad, I was an EE (before there was even a computer engineering
    program at my school), who took many extra classes in computer science, mathematics,
    and other engineering disciplines. I took an overloaded schedule, and
    five years to complete. I took my graduate degree at Dartmouth College,
    Thayer School of Engineering,
    the only school to my knowledge that offers a department-free engineering
    curricula resulting in a degree in Engineering Science.

  24. Comparison to mice chromosomes? by Harumuka · · Score: 4, Informative · on 3rd Chromosome Deciphered
    With the 3rd human genome chromosome completely mapped out, it's time to move on to other chromosomes such as the 17th. According to A Brief History of The Human Genome Project,
    For example the 17th chromosome in mice is homologous in large part to the 11th in human beings and of the 35 mapped loci in both organisms on these chromosomes, all but two are ordered into the same sequence.

    I wonder how similar 3rd chromosome of mice is to the 3rd chromosome of the human genome. Any research being done in this field?

  25. Where to begin... by blahtree · · Score: 4, Informative · on Can the DM2 Out-Turn the Turntables?

    Ok, I am a dj. I play vinyl mostly, although I've played around with cd's, and playing stuff off MD. (blatent self-promotion: djrightround.zyx.com

    First to correct Cliff's comment:

    I don't know about its revolutionary properties, but it does look to be a nifty tool, and it looks to be the perfect thing to learn on.


    This is actually a very poor platform to learn how to dj on. There are 2 keys to good dj'ing. 1) Beat matching...getting two tracks to sync up. 2) Track selection...choosing the tracks that get everybody dancing. I guess there is also a 3) which is scratching. Depends on your style.

    The DM2 automatically beat matches everything, so that kind of rules out learning #1, and the DM2 will only play the tracks you can buy from mixman. Ouch. So much for track selection.

    Now to get to what Todd was asking about. You might be able to get the DM2 to do some neat stuff. A far more interesting device, however, is Final Scratch. This is what Ritchie Hawtin has been using in his shows lately. It's basically a device that will map mp3's off your laptop onto a special piece of vinyl that slaps onto an ordinary turntable. Less gimicky, and no hacks required. Team this up with csound and/or reaktor, add a sequencer, and you'll really be cooking.

    As an interesting side note, you don't even really need a pro audio card for this kind of thing. Most high end consumer cards have a relatively clean audio out. As long as you're not recording anything, which requires a quality analog to digital converter, you should be fine.

  26. Re:Setup a peer review site like slashdot. by soulhacking · · Score: 1 · on Cutting Out the Middle Men in Scientific Publishing
    I'm ecstatic about developments like this, and I think that a Slashdot model for academic publishing would (with some tweaks) be better than the current system. Slashdot-like publication technology presents an opportunity for a welcome change. A few points:

    1) Even with all the freedom of the Machine Learning people's new model, the entrenched editorial board still places a biased bottleneck in the the propagation of information. The presence of an editor (or a publisher) is not equivalent to unbiased and effective peer review. In an edited journal, peer review often reinforces the 'old boys' network (I think Kuhn pointed this out in his book on Paradigms), and because journal space and reviewer's time are both limited, lots of good data never see the light of day (not only for this reason, but also for some of the reasons others have mentioned).

    2) As for "Correctness", I would suggest that one thing added to the Slashdot model of academic publishing that would help make it work would be the posting of raw data. "Correctness" isn't the issue addressed in the peer review process. Nobody *really* knows whether results are "correct" (meaning that the experimentation was done properly) just by reading a paper, no matter how detailed (unless you work in a field that works on formal proofs rather than experiments). The review process weeds out the grossly incompetent stuff, and shapes up the other work to be more useful to the readership. "Correctness" is usually assumed: journal articles are so brief that the information necessary to establish correctness simply cannot be included. I say, put the whole damn data set on the internet, and anybody who wants to can dig around in the data to see whether what the author says matches up with the truth in the data. The only people who will dig around in the data are are those invested in the particular finding, but the end result is that for any given relevant finding, *somebody* who is skeptical will do a cross-check.

    Recently a neuroscience journal (Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience) proposed a requirement authors submit their data to a massive neuroimaging database, see this essay. The debate was *very* heated, and JOCN eventually backed down (Those of you with journal access can see an editorial in the September 2000 issue of Nature Neuroscience for a rehash of the events). There were many reasons for the controversy, but one of the big ones was that people didn't want others to have access to their data -- authors want to be able to use their data for publishing new results before somebody else does. Really, though, authors don't want to let other people rummage around in their data because much of the research process involves putting a spin on things, and people not sharing the same views will not put the same spin the data.

    3) An additional point of resistance to change is that Universities rely heavily on the current system for tenure and promotion evaluations. The currency in these is evaluations how many articles you've published, and how many of these were cited by others (and how frequently). It will take some work to figure out how to do this with a new system, but it should be possible, and at any rate this is a lesser goal than the one of truth-seeking.

    4) Finally, the issue of credibility. From another post: "A comment made by a random AC on slashdot, in contrast, is not worth my [professional] time. There are just too many posts by too few knowledgable [sic] people." This is a good point, but it underestimates the power of the Slashdottish process: it would take a conspiracy of crackpots and cowards to cause a large enough wave of review-posts to give bad research any prominence. Slashdot's "threshold" function, even within a few hours of the original post, seems to work pretty well at weeding out the stuff I don't want to read; something developed for the purpose of academic research would be even better.

    5) A related comment on the quality of peer review: In a Slashdottish system, the attractions of signed (i.e., not-anonymous) reviews would increase, because criticism of an article does not prevent it from being published. I would suggest optional signed reviews. In a Slashdot-like system, "signing" your review would give it more weight, perhaps (through cross-linking to your own work and to your other reviews) by establishing that you the reviewer are highly "cross-linked" and thus worth paying attention to. Plus, a Slashdottish system would naturally put a lot of pressure on people not to flame (and presumably the anonymous idiot-flames would soon die out).

    General comment: The whole point of scientific publishing is to facilitate the search for and dissemination of truth. The rest -- journals protecting their territory, editors protecting their power, authors protecting their spin on their own data, and Universities protecting an easy method of performance evaluation -- is an unnecessary side show that impedes the primary purpose of uncovering truth. Let's have the authors post their papers and their data, submit them to the scrutiny of everyone else in the field (without the intervention of editors) and see what stands the test of time. The flaws in the system are the flaws of natural selection and democracy, of course, but that's just the way reality and people work. The truth will survive the process and it will come out more quickly and accurately with a bottom-up researcher-driven strategy than with any strategy driven by corporate profits.

  27. The Virtual Child Pornography Case by Myopic · · Score: 1 · on Free Speech, Porn And Internet Controls

    I wrote a paper for a college class ("Offensive Art") which dealt in part with that case.

  28. Well-rounded: Thinking "Out of the Box". by guygee · · Score: 1 · on Is A "Well-Rounded" Education a Good One?

    There is really no substitute for a well-rounded education. What is today's technological marvel is nothing but tomorrow's surplus junkpile. In a quality educational program, abstraction and timeless principles are emphasized over concrete implementation details. How many programmers are there that can write syntactically correct C++ code, but don't know an AVI tree from an oak tree, have no idea how to do complexity analysis, think Chomskyian grammer is political criticism, and wouldn't recognize a correctness proof if it bit them on the ass. Syntax is easy, synthesis and analysis are hard.

    In addition,what some people forget is that a college education has different goals than a trade school. Democratic societies require that the general populace possess sufficient education to make rational choices required to assure survival of a democratic political system, to discern the leaders from the demagogic poseurs. Economic theory, as well, from Adam Smith onwards, assumes that the consumer is making the rational and informed choices necessary for the continuation of prosperity.

    If you can forgive me pushing one of my old alma maters, in my opinion one of the best, and most underrated, engineering degrees in the country is offered by Dartmouth College, Thayer School of Engineering. The Bachelor's degree in engineering is interdisciplinary, and generally requires 2-3 semesters beyond the A.B., which is a prerequisite. This program emphasizes "how to think" over "what to think", and produces an unusually high proportion of successful entrepeneurs and businessmen (Among the students, one of the local "conceits" is that Thayer graduates will start a business, and then go hire MIT graduates to work for them). The Ph.D. program is interdisciplinary as well, and has a special emphasis on the applied mathematical principles that underly all of the engineering disciplines. The latter program is the one that I have the honor of graduating from, and it has served my career well, providing me with a solid background and the flexibility required to remain competitive in rapidly evolving fields of research related to computer science and technology.

  29. Marketshare doesn't matter by Philbert+Desenex · · Score: 2 · on Is the Unix Community Worried About Worms?

    That's right: marketshare doesn't matter. And here, I'm taking "marketshare" to mean either (a) the number of servers sold or (b) the number of servers running.

    The reason why marketshare doesn't matter: every server connected to a TCP/IP network is "touching" every other server connected to that network. Marketshare has no bearing on which servers can possibly infect which other servers in a population, only connectivity does. Essentially, the "population" of unix servers on the internet all "touch" one another, just like the population of all IIS servers "touch" one another.

    That said, it hasn't really been a banner year for Linux/Unix/BSD worms. We've seen adore, l1on, cheese, ramen, sadmind/IIS, lpdw0rm, and x.c. Absolutely none of these worms ripped through the Linux/Unix/Solaris/BSD population. This is indisputable. The question is why does one population have resistance, while the other doesn't? I think the answer is diversity on four levels:

    • CPU architecture. Sure, Linux/Unix/etc boxes are far and away x86-based, but having a sprinkling of SPARC, Alpha, Mips and PPC probably makes a difference - no single shellcode or exploit covers all architectures.
    • OS architecture. Instruction-level calling sequences probably prevent a "universal" shellcode from working on all OSes that a given CPU architecture runs.
    • Web server variety. Sure, Apache dominates, but WN, iPlanet and thttpd have a presence.
    • Userland software variety. A huge variety of email clients that don't share a common scripting language or address book format keeps NIMDA and SirCam like things from happening.
  30. Re:There have already been some Linux worms by wstearns · · Score: 1 · on Is the Unix Community Worried About Worms?

    100% agreed; when Ramen came out it exploited vulnerabilities that had been patched 3 and 6 months before.
    Just for reference, there are detection and removal tools for all of these worms at ISTS/Dartmouth College. GPL'd, source at www.stearns.org/detectlib. (Many thanks to ISTS and SANS for their contributions).

  31. Self Reconfiguring Robots by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on Xerox PARC Working On Modular Robots

    Related link. Modular robots that change configuration on the fly to adapt to their environment. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~rus/self-reconfig.htm l

  32. Re:nice, but welcome back to the real world by Myopic · · Score: 5, Insightful · on Software Aesthetics
    I've seen this comment a lot in this discussion: "well, my software works, so it's good enough". You even say that you don't get paid to make pretty software; just usable software.

    I suppose that might be true, but I would venture that not everyone is in the same boat. I, for example, AM paid to write pretty code. My job is to come up with relatively simple perl scripts (modules) to solve various problems that Dartmouth's website users have. (For example, I wrote a quota module to help people verify that files they want to write to disk will fit within their alloted disk quota.)

    I have NEVER turned in to my boss anything but well-documented, well-commented, readable code. I don't do this out of respect for my users; frankly, I know how to use the software and if they don't they can read my docs and try to figure it out. No, I do it for the other schmucks like me. At some point, my boss will probably tell his next lackey to add some little feature to one of my modules, as he's asked me to do with some older programmer's works. And it's DAMNED IMPOSSIBLE to wrap my head around code which is all mixed up. I comment for other programmers. People who might need to sink their hands into my code.

    Paying me now to write comments and format things well is worth it for the added speed with which the software will be maintained in the future. So for me, and I'm sure most of the code jockeys on Slashdot, the "real world" is one where software is written, THEN MAINTAINED. Beauty is part of maintanence.

  33. Benefits by Myopic · · Score: 1 · on Ask AtheOS Creator Kurt Skauen About His Creature
    Kurt, I work at Dartmouth College's Experimental Computing Group. We are a support group for new technologies which might interest researchers here, or be of use to the campus.

    I first learned of AtheOS on Slashdot, and mentioned it to my boss. He looked at me and asked me what benefits it might offer over other operating systems and I couldn't really give him any good answer. We use mixtures of unices (pretty much every flavor, from Red Hat and Debian to IRIX, Sun, MacOS X, you name it) along with Windows. My boss will pay me to play with fun new technology but I have to justify it. Can you give me something to take to him and say "See, this is a great product that might be useful for this reason."

  34. Benefits by Myopic · · Score: 1 · on Ask AtheOS Creator Kurt Skauen About His Creature
    Kurt, I work at Dartmouth College's Experimental Computing Group. We are a support group for new technologies which might interest researchers here, or be of use to the campus.

    I first learned of AtheOS on Slashdot, and mentioned it to my boss. He looked at me and asked me what benefits it might offer over other operating systems and I couldn't really give him any good answer. We use mixtures of unices (pretty much every flavor, from Red Hat and Debian to IRIX, Sun, MacOS X, you name it) along with Windows. My boss will pay me to play with fun new technology but I have to justify it. Can you give me something to take to him and say "See, this is a great product that might be useful for this reason."

  35. Re:stegdetect already does this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on Battling Steganography
    But it is especially silly since he does such a bangup job of putting his technical work on-line:

    Farid's Publications

    say, which one of those papers listed on the page you mention talks about Farid's steganographic detection work?

    The best part about Neil Provos' work is that he goes both ways, working on both OutGuess and stegdetect.

    While i'm singing the praises of Neil Provos, thanks for your work on OpenSSH and pf, as well as the rest of the OpenBSD work you've contributed.

    -f
    http://www.blackant.net/

  36. stego in the article from earlier by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on Slashback: Subterfuge, Rejoinder, Caution

    I found that the stego article from earlier today, there were two pictures, one of a stego demo, and a picture of Dartmouth stego researcher Hany Farid. I have cracked the stego in this second picture. The guy's real name is Sudikoff.

  37. Re:stegdetect already does this by dbmartin00 · · Score: 1 · on Battling Steganography

    Actually, the forum this story was extracted from is pretty much geared towards only generating PR, and not scientific exchange. Attacking Farid and/or Dartmouth for this is silly... this is how institutions generate attention and money for grants.

    But it is especially silly since he does such a bangup job of putting his technical work on-line:

    Farid's Publications

  38. Re:GIF formatted images by MyopicProwls · · Score: 1 · on Who'll Be Using Ogg Vorbis Instead Of MP3?
    As others have pointed out, PNG graphics are supported in all modern browsers. Even old browsers such as N4.7 had partial support for PNG. My personal website (shameless plug) for instance, uses no GIF images because I decided to support the whole patent protest thing. Websites could have switched from GIF to PNG about 15 months ago and left behind only 5% of users. Why didn't they? Who knows. Maybe it's for that last 5%.

    Your assertion, however, that PNG is "superior in every way to GIF" isn't quite true. First of all, PNG graphics are larger than GIF files. Sometimes the difference is only minimal (file sizes are ~5-1-% larger for images that look like advertisements/banners/few colors) but can be MUCH MUCH larger (several times as large) in photographic uses (full color).

  39. Re:The BEST Linux laptop one can buy? by cyrii · · Score: 1 · on Installing Linux On The New Apple iBook
    I searched Dell.com for Linux (nothing), and also browsed about a dozen laptop configurations in the small business section (not an option).

    Well... it says small business, but I just bought a Latitude C500 for school next year, and they don't require any real proof that you're a small business.

    Until 7/12 there's also a $200 small business discount that was quite appreciated by my... um... small business. :)

  40. Re:Wasn't the first cross-platform virus... by Philbert+Desenex · · Score: 1 · on Cross-Platform Pseudo-Virus: Don't Panic

    Cross platform worms have existed since at least 1988: the RTM Nov '88 Internet worm infected both Sun3 (M68020) and DEC VAX hardware. The Cornell report on that worm implies that the source code had slots for executables for other types of hardware, too.

    Shell script viruses should be pretty much cross-platform on all unix-a-like systems, too. A fellow named Keith McMillan wrote a master's thesis on how to write a cross-platform virus in TeX and Emacs.

    So, no, Word macro viruses weren't the first cross-platform anything. Just another case of a supposed MSFT "innovation" turning out to be a cheap imitation instead.

  41. Linux isn't for everyone. by searleb · · Score: 1 · on K12Linux + LTSP = .edu Terminal Server Distro

    Infact, it's for very few people. Although, yes, I think it is wise to encourage school children to use alternative operating systems to expand their minds, yadda yadda...

    I can't but empathize for the ordinary students who are going to school to get an ordinary degree and later an ordinary job. These kids will only be retarded in their persuits if you force them to learn Linux when they will really only benefit from a Windows education in the long run.

    If your budget allows, provide a box, maybe two. But not a whole lab of 10 computers over 100 schools. Don't waste your 10 computer budget on dedicated linux machines which will be used rarely by rare individuals.

    At the collegiate level, I've schooled at Dartmouth College which provided a small corner of absolutely never used SGI machines and at Reed College which has a lab of LinuxPPC machines, all completely idle. The respective linux/unix machines are nice for me to dick around on, but not the average student. Additionally, that's all I do on them- dick around. I'm not about to write a term paper with Emacs when there is a Macintosh lab just down the hallway.

  42. Several schools do this (summary) by paulschreiber · · Score: 3 · on Georgia Tech Implements Wireless Campus Net
    I wrote an article about this for our school paper one and a half years ago.

    We (Waterloo) still don't have a wireless network.

    Here's who does:

    Grumble, grumble. So much for us being a high tech school.

    Paul

  43. Re:Man pages and Info should not compete by Lars+Arvestad · · Score: 2 · on Are Manpages Becoming Obsolete?
    I like the argument of man for quick summaries and something else for manuals. I still say use html for what is currently in info. Then I can use lynx, links, w3m, Netscape, Konqueror, Opera, ... whatever I want. Why must I be forced to use info?

    Well, you are not really forced to use an Info browser. I just searched using Google and found a site with a info2html tool.

    For me, however, the main argument is that there is an excellent info browser in my programming editor and it is very easy to switch from programming to reading. OK, so there is the W3 browser implemented in elisp, but it does not quite cut it for me. The web pretty much need a "real" GUI browser.

    And there is no way you will be able to have a ready-to-print typeset manual using an HTML format. If you have a manual in Info, there are sources marked up using texi, and then you have a TeX backend. It is unbeatable for printing quality. To me this is one of the most remarkable aspects of Info. The markup is so carefully chosen that a document is instantly ready for both pleasurable online viewing and printing.


    Lars
    __

  44. It's "Dartmouth". by Alik · · Score: 4 · on Transforming Robots: Smart Blocks

    Dartmough? Feh. They mean Dartmouth College, my very own alma mater. I graduated in the same class as the guy who built the little block they show in the picture.

    Yes, the idea of miniaturization is kind of hype. OTOH, Daniela trained under Dartmouth's MEMS guy back at Cornell, so she has some contacts in the field. He's already built (years ago, actually) prototypes of these "smart manipulating surfaces". They look like just a flat chip, but when powered, they'll spin things around, act as conveyor belts, and generally create 2D "force fields".

    Shrinking the things isn't the issue. Even if they're an inch cubed, they could still be useful, especially if we borrowed from Lego the idea of having a few "special bricks". The problem is control. Can you imagine having to specify your body one cell at a time? These things are going to need to be able to work out where they should be with minimal cues from the central brain. She does have some work in the field (algorithms to move around furniture with a team of robots, all of whom have limited sensing and communications power; also, the stuff I worked on with transportable agents), but there's a long way to go.

    Her own page on the subject is here.

  45. It's "Dartmouth". by Alik · · Score: 4 · on Transforming Robots: Smart Blocks

    Dartmough? Feh. They mean Dartmouth College, my very own alma mater. I graduated in the same class as the guy who built the little block they show in the picture.

    Yes, the idea of miniaturization is kind of hype. OTOH, Daniela trained under Dartmouth's MEMS guy back at Cornell, so she has some contacts in the field. He's already built (years ago, actually) prototypes of these "smart manipulating surfaces". They look like just a flat chip, but when powered, they'll spin things around, act as conveyor belts, and generally create 2D "force fields".

    Shrinking the things isn't the issue. Even if they're an inch cubed, they could still be useful, especially if we borrowed from Lego the idea of having a few "special bricks". The problem is control. Can you imagine having to specify your body one cell at a time? These things are going to need to be able to work out where they should be with minimal cues from the central brain. She does have some work in the field (algorithms to move around furniture with a team of robots, all of whom have limited sensing and communications power; also, the stuff I worked on with transportable agents), but there's a long way to go.

    Her own page on the subject is here.

  46. It's "Dartmouth". by Alik · · Score: 4 · on Transforming Robots: Smart Blocks

    Dartmough? Feh. They mean Dartmouth College, my very own alma mater. I graduated in the same class as the guy who built the little block they show in the picture.

    Yes, the idea of miniaturization is kind of hype. OTOH, Daniela trained under Dartmouth's MEMS guy back at Cornell, so she has some contacts in the field. He's already built (years ago, actually) prototypes of these "smart manipulating surfaces". They look like just a flat chip, but when powered, they'll spin things around, act as conveyor belts, and generally create 2D "force fields".

    Shrinking the things isn't the issue. Even if they're an inch cubed, they could still be useful, especially if we borrowed from Lego the idea of having a few "special bricks". The problem is control. Can you imagine having to specify your body one cell at a time? These things are going to need to be able to work out where they should be with minimal cues from the central brain. She does have some work in the field (algorithms to move around furniture with a team of robots, all of whom have limited sensing and communications power; also, the stuff I worked on with transportable agents), but there's a long way to go.

    Her own page on the subject is here.

  47. Re:Geek and Fraternity Brother, too! by MyopicProwls · · Score: 1 · on William Hewlett Dead
    You might be surprised. My fraternity is known as the computer science house, though that's not totally factual in reality. When our friends need computer help, they come to us. Last year we graduated the 2000 class valedictorian.

    MyopicProwls

  48. Boarding School by alleria · · Score: 3 · on Voices From The Hellmouth Revisited: Part Six

    From Comment #9: Boarding school, of course, with 100-base-T in every room. Please don't crash down on me with the logistical problems, I'm daydreaming.

    You're not daydreaming. It's a possiblity, and an opportunity that most don't realize are open to them. It's true that the lesser boarding schools will be unlikely to offer you any sort of financial assistance (money probably being the biggest 'logicstical' problem that I can think off, and likely what he was talking about), but the better ones sure can.

    It's true that the 'better' ones with the money are far, and few in between, but if you're good enough (at whatever...) to be an outcast, you definitely have a shot into these schools. A personal experience:

    I went to public high school in South California in a lower-middle-class neighborhood for the first two years. Some physical abuse, although by keeping a low profile, it was mostly avoided. But it still sucked. I had my P.E. locker broken into repeatedly (good locks don't do jack shit, as any high school gangbanger would testify), and my regular locker broken into once. (After which I carried all my books in a huge bag on my person, but whatever...)

    All of this changed when my dad was talking to an old friend of his, and the guy mentioned that he'd just sent his daughter to boarding school. Now, this guy isn't hugely well-to-do either, and we all knew that boarding school was expensive. Really expensive. It turns out, that she had gotten a scholarship from the school, that covered most everything.

    This daughter of hers -- not to say that she wasn't a good student, but she wasn't outstanding. Nonetheless, she went to Blair Academy, went to Smith, got sick of it, switched to UPenn, and is now out, and being fought over by Goldman Sachs and Merill Lynch, etc. etc.

    After my parents heard this (and they knew that high school sucked, but didn't really understand how much) decided to let me apply to private schools, hoping for a scholarship. (Seeing as how I could not have gone by myself either).

    I applied to Thatcher, Blair, and Exeter.

    Surprisingly, though all three accepted me, but only Exeter (arguably the best out of the three, but only IMHO, of course) gave me any money -- but they gave me quite a bit.

    The general breakdown is as follows:
    $24,000 total tuition at Exeter every year (room, board, tuition, all food)
    - $20,000 endowed scholarship
    - $1,000 loan, ($25 interest per quarter) = $1,000 out of pocket a year.

    Pretty generous of them, I think.

    Exeter was great -- absolutely no harassment of any kind, most _everyone_ was nice, we has 100-Base-T, though it was hampered (see that Kuro5hin article for details...), and the classes were great. Compared to public schools, this was like night and day.

    I've since graduated and am now at Dartmouth College, enjoying the unhampered internet access. :)

    I'm hoping that maybe someone out there is reading this right now, and will ask their parents about applying. The cost for applying can be waived very easily, and the only formality is an "SSAT" test for 10th graders and below. (11th, 12th grade applicants submit PSAT and SAT scores, mostly). Interviews can be done by alums in the local area, so there is no flying out to the school, although you can certainly do that as well if you so choose ... (I did alum interviews).

    So, go on now! Apply! It won't hurt ya a bit, I promise! :-)

  49. Re:No one was hurt? still != it's all good by KjetilK · · Score: 1 · on Cassini Greets Jupiter
    I once did a back-of-an-envelope calculation, and got to about 100 deaths myself as a worst case scenario, using the standard linear model. It's well known and you can find it in any biophysics text book. These calculations are very easy.

    However, there is mounting evidence that the standard linear model is wrong, that small doses of radition isn't dangerous, and I would be surprised, very surprised if a reentry where the RTGs dissolved, which is the worst-case scenario, pretty much, caused any deaths at all.

    Finally, you might want to read Carl Sagan's article about the launch of Galileo. It was the same issue back then, and as good as every point he made back then is valid for Cassini, and indeed similar future projects.

  50. Re:Physics by ahu · · Score: 1 · on "Red Planet": Stay Here
    Actually, he is right. Einstein for example did not study physics, he studied mathematics. There was no such thing as physics back then. Feynman mentions this in his books as well, that only during the war the term 'physicist' had started to mean something.

    It is only recently that we realise the distance between mathematics and physics, see for example Bertrand Russell's 'On the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences'