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Perhaps they should dump everything else and work on that Harry Potter-like wizards game they mentioned? (And hope that the forces of J.K. Rowlings don't attack!)

Some of the guys in out sister group at the Hamilton Institute have been working on doing exactly this -- using tremor as an input mechanism on mobile devices:
See the paper at
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~rod/publications/StrMur0 4.pdf and the video at http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~rod/Videos/TremorVideo.m ov

--John (researcher on the audioclouds project)

Some of the guys in out sister group at the Hamilton Institute have been working on doing exactly this -- using tremor as an input mechanism on mobile devices:
See the paper at
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~rod/publications/StrMur0 4.pdf and the video at http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~rod/Videos/TremorVideo.m ov

--John (researcher on the audioclouds project)

I expect we can also look forward to seeing many great new haptic applications being created as a result of SensAble contest that the article mentions. Being able to feel and interact with simulated objects in a very intuitive way will undoubtedly become an increasingly import part of how we use computers.

I would personally appreciate hearing from anyone out there who has an interesting haptic application in the works (or wants to hear about mine). scottgilroy2000 - a - yahoo dot com

Search engine stuff is not covered in the CS curriculum of any university I've heard of.
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/courses/teaching/level4/m odules/IR4.html Glasgow ?

I'm sure it's not the only one.

IAAL (I am a linguist). I study computational linguistics, which uses computers to study every aspect of human language. We use statistics, ANNs, or other tools, to learn something about how people learn, interpret, and produce language.

Linguists don't just study speech. As far as classical linguistics goes, syntax and semantics are both studied using text. Even some of the sound branches, such as phonology, use abstract representations of the sound, and not the real sound. (So your alphabet will look like this.)

Internet-only strings like "pwn3d," "LOL," or ":)" are statistically significant to some experiments, but it isn't just newsgroups and blogs that are creating words. For example, if you look at a newspaper such as the New York Times, many new words are added to the English language every month. Verbs such as "pwn3d," verb phrases such as "lol," and emotion cues such as ":)" can be analyzed just like new verbs heard in speech (i.e. "to google." )

Paul Rodrigues

A friend worked on a project which used windows XP embedded and booted off flash memory set to read only. He managed to strip out unnecessary bits of xp and got the install size down to around 200MB if I remember correctly. It was for a museum display system. Shown here

http://www.hunterian.gla.ac.uk/collections/museum/ scientific/index.shtml/
If you have the XP embedded development kit you can get XP to install on all sorts of media.

I believe that sometimes the problem may be one of context. "1337" speak or the dialect used in am IM environment SHOULD NOT be used in a more formal business environment. It's like "aw shucks"-ing or saying "motherfucker". There are times when it may be appropriate, but almost never in a business context. Your "homies" are not in the office, amigo.
But I do find it interesting (as a Linguist) that there seems to be a trend towards simplification of written language. English especially needs this. My interpretation of "IM"-speak is that people are trying to reduce English orthography to a more phonetic writing system. Once I was familiar with the IPA (http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/ipa.html) it made perfect sense to me that orthography should be phonetic and that English was particularly bad in this regard. Now, it would probably be a big slap in the face to the history of the language to shift English orthography to being phonetic as we would loose most of the ties with other languages, but is that a very high price to pay for greater accessability? I pity ESL students who have to learn how to spell in English. And it has the potential to make written communication much, much quicker.
Language, like the people who use it, is a living thing. Maybe it's time ours evolved some more.

• 2. Next question, can Haskell be embedded inline in Perl code?

Not that I'm aware. However, all you need is an embeddable Haskell interpreter. I believe this is possible with Hugs, which has a "server interface", and possibly even with ghc (the native compiler that Darcs is compiled with). You'd probably have to write the C/Perl interface yourself.

• 3. Can the quantum theory of patches be implemented as a Perl module ...

Certainly.

• 4. Reading about the symmetry or lack of it, concepts of physics this is helping me think about an app of my own. I'd like to read more about this does anyone have links?

More than anything it's mathematics. But David Roundy, the author of Darcs, is a physicist, and may have some pointers for you.

• 5. Time to learn Haskell!! Great!

If you're a Perl hacker, you might be interested in this. Scary, eh?

Further digging led me to theUniversity of Glasgow's Optics Groupd where there is a great deal of information on their project page about optical tweezers. As an aside, I don't suppose anyone has the time to elaborate on the Gerchberg-Saxton algorithm?

I think I first read about the Williams/Hotwired dispute in Ansible a few years ago, the only thing I can find online is about halfway down the chatlog at, ammusingly enough, Club Wired. Even Paramount reckoned they had to ask his permission to use Hardwired as the title for the Johnny Mnemonic movie supposedly (he said no), but Wired thought they could go ahead and register it as a trademark.

Ok, I'm going to file for my own patent. I'll call it "Geek Apartment" and it will consist of empty soda cans, dirty laundry, an unmade bed,

Seriously... get the server room shielded with wire mesh built into the walls and conductive film on the windows... like a Faraday Cage... then you won't get weird interference problems

Done.


Well partly done. I'm sure you could program a computer program to make Teeny boober songs in an afternoon.

@lyrics = "Baby, ooooo, love, ooooo, dance, oooo, uhuhuh";

You get the idea ::)

When people think 'science-fiction' they usually think Star Trek, or they think Star Wars, or they think War of the Worlds - you know, talking squid ... talking cannibalistic squid. And I saw a huge range of sci-fi B-movies in the 50s: the glory days, those low budget ones with names like The Creeping Eye, which was quite good until you actually saw it! You could see the tractor tied underneath as it crept along! So that's what people think of when they think 'science-fiction'.

> Let's see your evidence for abiogenesis.

We know that the universe was once inhospitable to biological life, and we know that at least one corner of it now teems with biological life.

Ergo, life had a non-biological beginning at some point.

Notice that even creationists believe this: the only point in dispute is the mechanism.

> Are you going to cite Miller-Urey????

No, U-M is simply a demonstration that complex biological molecules can arise from simpler precursors. Since then we've even discovered that amino acids arise in deep space.

No one claims to know how abiogenesis happened, but there are some plausible ideas out there. A recent one (which I have only skimmed) can be found here.

And, as we must apparently remind you an infinite number of times, evolution and abiogenesis are separate topics. Evolution would happen even if your god created the original life forms, if he happened to use imperfect replicators in his design. (And since existing life forms do use imperfect replicators, you should be able to work out the implications on your own.)

Actually, this has been done in a way with the International Phonetic Alphabet and one specifically just for English

Reading comprehension, please. I specifically said that I didn't care about when the species became known to western science.

As I said, a quick web search shows that the Vu Quang was well known to the locals, but it was unknown to western science. This has nothing to do with any search for bigfoot in the US. There are not piles of bigfoot bones and pelts sitting around in Oregon, unknown to scientists because nobody thought it worth mentioning to anyone. That is the comparison you have to make. You can't expect villagers in southeast Asia to go searching through European zoological literature to see if some of the critters haven't been described there. On the other hand, there is nobody in the Pacific northwest who wouldn't go screaming to the media if he found some concrete evidence of a bigfoot.

Ah, I just found the page you cut-and-pasted. Plagiarist.

I did a project a while back using TIGA and the associated chips. You might want to take a look at , FPGA and User Interface Guide.

It's all obsolete and legacy now. But it gives you a good idea about how a current day graphics card is designed. Back then, the various components had to be implemented on separate chips (eg. RAMDAC's, clock oscillators, memory decoding, graphics).

TI also had the TMS34082 vector processor. You could have up to four of those in a slave/master configuration (a bit like the PS2 VU0 processor). The TMS34020 supported 1/2/4/8/16/24/32 bit pixel sizes and had a parallogram rendering instruction (Two of those allow you to render a triangle). If they had kept the product range going and allowed Moore's law to keep going, they would probably have been able to keep up with 3Dfx.

Intel also has the i860 which combined the floating point and graphics processing onto a single chip. The Intel XEON chip still supports this instruction set.

If you can access the IEEE and ACM archives, you'll find out about dozens more such processors.

Presently, you should have a look at the OpenGL extension a href="http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ogl-sample/regis try/ARB/vertex_program.txt">ARB_vertex_program and "a href="http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ogl-sample/regis try/ARB/fragment_program.txt">ARB_fragment_program .

Any Google search on these topics will provide an almost infinite list of topics.

Making them conform to standards that tend to make sites look bad (by your own admission) just turns an already bad situation to shit.

Are you confusing me with somebody else? I am arguing that conforming to standards does not make sites look bad.

The rest of your argument is the tired old "lowest common denominator" straw man argument that has been refuted over and over again. I don't see the point in rehashing it once more, so just read this refutation instead.

• Have a robot attend your acquaintance's wedding.
  
• Save on sick days, have the robot show up to work.
  
• Stash one at the co-location facility, have Tweekie take care of those pesky reboots and upgrades.
  
• Send one to your local polling place when it's time to vote. Let them sort it out.
  
• Have it wait in line for the next Star Wars Episode. Then have it see the movie. Do you really think the plot will be more interesting if you go yourself?

These researchers at the University of Glasgow are studying a correlation between some bird species having relatively large genomes, and their long life spans and decreased senescence compared to mammals.

Subsequent research has shown (links in other people's answers above) that the presumed conditions never existed.

Of course, they don't have to form on earth.. They can form in space. They can also form on earth without the lightning/UV requirement.

Taking the next step is more than a little harder, as is coming up with a source for those necessary aminos which don't ever form under simple conditions.

That depends on what you think the next step is. After all, a specific-sequence protein, even if it manages to form by chance, is useless; only when a transcription mechanism exists which can generate the protein will it be useful.

However, a simple peptide coat for an Fe/Ni-S reaction center would be a useful early step, as both would arise spontaneously. Proteins matching such a description are shared amongst *every* organism (ferrodoxins), which suggests a very early origin.

The 1000BaseT standard was released in June 1999, defined by IEEE 802.3ab. It supports Gigabit Ethernet over 100 meters of CAT5 balanced copper cabling. It achieves a data rate of 1000 Mb/s is by transmitting data at a rate of 250 Mb/s over four CAT5 wire pairs. Full-duplex operation is possible by the use of Hybrids and Cancellers by allowing symbols to be sent and received on the same wire pairs simultaneously.

Allan Snavely... hmmm, sounds fishy to me - does he have good credentials?

Ok, hompage, Paper on scheduling threads on one processor, Write-up on speech about aforementioned paper... he sounds legit, but that name? Snavely is like sly (S nave ly) and knave (minus the "k") mushed together... I don't know if we can trust his recommendation.

Indeed, I was going to post here to say that Glasgow University was around 550 years old, but then remembered the University only actually moved to it's current site almost 140 years ago. That said, some of the architecture on the old main building is pretty impressive stuff, and certainly isn't going to fall down of it's own accord within the next couple of hundred years at least.

I don't live too far away from Lanark though, which has been around for 850 years. Although there aren't any structures of that age still standing, there are some that are at least 200 years old, and are probably going to be standing for many years to come. Next to Lanark is New Lanark, being around 200 years old, whose buildings are all from that era, and given the amount of work that has been going on for years to restore the insides of these buildings, are very likely to be in good condition in another 200.

Indeed, I was going to post here to say that Glasgow University was around 550 years old, but then remembered the University only actually moved to it's current site almost 140 years ago. That said, some of the architecture on the old main building is pretty impressive stuff, and certainly isn't going to fall down of it's own accord within the next couple of hundred years at least.

I don't live too far away from Lanark though, which has been around for 850 years. Although there aren't any structures of that age still standing, there are some that are at least 200 years old, and are probably going to be standing for many years to come. Next to Lanark is New Lanark, being around 200 years old, whose buildings are all from that era, and given the amount of work that has been going on for years to restore the insides of these buildings, are very likely to be in good condition in another 200.

It doesn't excuse what they do, but it doesn't help the problem by the media lying about their motives.

Our media presents a very disgraceful bias on these affairs. May I recommend that you take a look at this article, which is an analysis of the fairness of the media reporting.

I must have missed that part about him trying out chemical weapons on his own people

I'm from the UK. We were gassing the Kurds long before Saddam was born. Saddam's attacks on the Kurds were supported by the Regan administration, who shut down congresses attempt to do some thing about it. But, now that this suddenly suits Bush, it becomes a big issue. Where was the call to war back then? Iraq was an ally of the USA at the time, the west was supplying the ability for him to do this. That is complete hypocracy.

or the acid baths, or calling for the holocaust part II, or paying bounties to PLO for their terrorist organizations.

I'd like to see proof of either of the first two. Sounds like the usual "he is evil" talk, used by the like of Bush. If you can remember the first Gulf war, perhaps you can remember the story about the Iraqi soldiers stealing Kuwaiti incubators, leaving the babies to die on the cold floor. It was Bush Sr. that used that lie to get the undecided congress and public to back that war. Frankly, I don't believe a word Bush says.

As for financing terrorist organisations, that's a bit rich comming from an American. Perhaps you should have a chat to the people from England and Northern Ireland, who's lives have been destroyed by the IRA, a terrorist organisation funded by the US.

Or perhaps the Taliban and Al Qeuda, who we both funded and partially created by the US. Or countless other terrorist groups in South Africa, Asia and South America.

That's nearly as bad as torturing children to death in front of their parents.

Hmm, next you'll be telling me that he eats babies! If we are going to go for all the traditional racist hatred incitements used throughout history that is. These insults date back to biblical times. Gimmie credible proof that Saddam has tortured children to death please.

What *EXACTLY* has Bush done that shows a lack of respect for what the USA is supposed to stand for? Can you even tell me what the USA is supposed to stand for?

To paraphrase a popular cartoon, "Truth, justice and the American way". Democracy is founded on the principle of an informed electorate. Bush is deliberatly lying and misleading the electorate, to push though policies and wars that coincidently work out well for his oil buddies. Jeez, the national security adviser has an oil tanker named after her! He is corrupt and a disgrace. He is also turning the entire world against the USA.

vile spouting idiot with a feeble "education" who learned everything you "know" about "freedom" from MTV.

Jesus, are you are one of these Yanks who thinks that the USA is the only country in the world where freedom florishes?

Just to bring you up to date, most of the world has more freedom than the US. Your complete lack of world knowledge and blind patriotism shocks me. The USA is a great place, don't get me wrong. But you need to throw off this "we are superiour" attitute. If you were superiour, I could maybe handle it, but you aren't/

And let me point out that this is the first time I've ever heard an American imply that everyone elses education system is "feeble". You don't know jack, the US education system is a joke. While you are still gluing macaroni to card we are learning calculus and second languages.

You probably can't even rationalize why the Constitution does a better job of protecting human rights than the U.N's declaration of Human Rights ever will. Fool.

Perhaps the original constitution does, I'm not an expert in US history. Not the key word "history". The US constitution doesn't stand for shit anymore, all the ammendments have pretty much destroyed the original values it once held. Just about every one of the primary ammenments (or whatever they are called) has been attacked by recent legislation. By all means be proud of what the US constitution once was, but stop pretending to yourself that it means anything nowadays.

Bullshit, this is one of the disinformation tactics mentioned in the above link.

Logical error: Appeal to authority/Circular reasoning.

Actually, it's a classic straw man argument, not Circular reasoning. Are you suggesting that starting a war is the only option available at the current time? Of course it isn't.

Even a chimpanzee could grasp this binary relationship.

It's not a binary relationship. Sure, you could have a war, or you could not have a war. Two choices there. You could also increase sanctions, encourage the population to revolt (and actually back them up this time) or use the SAS/CIA to go into Iraq to attack the infrastructure and leadership. There's several options right there.

Raining down 800 cruise missiles on a highly populated city is not the only choice available.

Only a Eurotrash pseudo-intellectual would try to rationalize that it doesn't.

Your true racist tendances are showing now. Is it impossible for a citizen of Europe to be an intellectial? And the "Eurotrash" mention? You are sick, twisted, misguided fool.

spoken like a true frenchman. Q: Hey, why are there trees lining the streets of paris? A: So the Germans can march in the shade.

Semi-funny, I'll grant you that. It's also highly racist and would not be tollerated here. But racism is much inbred into the American way, isn't it. First it was the Indians, nice bit of ethnic cleansing there. Twenty million culled down to less than half a million in the space of two generations. Hitler would be proud, he never thought of calling the concentration camps "reservations".

Then the blacks. Nice bit of slavery you had going there. You stole them from their homeland, make them work for no pay, denied them the rights granted by the constitutions and are still shitting on them today. Look at the startling ratio of blacks/whites in your prison population. Disgusting.

Then the Japanese. Again, rounded up into re-named concentration camps, this time you called them "interment" camps. Since you mention Orwell, I guess you are familiar with the concept of "newspeak".

And the communists. Ohhh, that was a deep hatred, wasn't it. I wonder how many were starved by forcing the Ruskies into an arms race that their ecconomic environment (communism) could not support, ultimately breaking the countries back. I bet you are proud of this to. Yet, despite you stockpiling masses of nuclear weapons, pointing them at everyone who shows a little independance, and using your government agencies to fuck these countries over big time, putting CIA agents into the highest governmental positions then later killing them because they disagree with someone. And you are trying to tell me Iraq is a bad nation? Don't make me laugh, you're lack of knowledge of world history only goes to prove the point that your eduction is sub-standard.

And now it's the Arabs. Can you see how you have been manipuated into hating various groups over the years? Hatred which has aided those at the top to acheive their goals...

Do you mean long term problems like keeping Americans alive to buy some more oil?

When has Iraq ever presented a threat to the USA?

Long term problems like liberating the Iraqi people? Long term problems like destabilizing a fundamentally corrupt chain of arab states led by backwards authoritarians who blame all their internal problems on the west?

Jesus, you really need to get hit by a clue-stick. The liberation of the Iraqi people was never an issue when the US first aided Saddam to power, and supported him. The people of many states in the Middle East are currently (as I type) being surpressed by the governments supported by the USA. Kuwait (where women can't vote), Saudi Arabia (where no one can vote, even if they could, they'd find it hard with the government cutting their hands off).

Why, all of a sudden, has the plight of the Iraq people become an issue for the USA? Historically, you couldn't give a shit about them. Ditto the people who suffered under the US creation and support of the Talliban. When they stopped playing ball with US business interests, they suddenly became this "axis of evil". Note, this switch of "good guy" to "bad guy" happened prior to 9/11, that had nothing to do with the demonisation of Afganistan.

War solves most intractable problems in human interaction in a very permanent fashion. Only a deluded idiot who has never cracked a history book or lived through a time of strife would believe the old hippie canard that "violence solves nothing".

Hmm, sort of. War is the ultimate power, I'll grant you that. It it isn't always the answer, and it's never the only answer.

With respect to your mention of "permanent fashion", that is completely false. It worked in WW2, very well in fact. However, I'd hardly call Korea, Solmalia or Afganistan a permanent solution. War didn't work out very well in those places. Just because the media stops reporting somnething it doesn't mean that it's no longer a problem, it just means that it no longer gets ratings. The rain forests are still being destroyed you know, yet the media interest has gone elsewhere.

(In case you don't know, and if you only follow US media outlet you probably won't, but control of Afganistan is currently being fought over by the government left in place by the US, the remainder of the Talliban and the drug/crime lords. It's a total mess, but the western media seems to have forgotten about it)

Inspectors are now in Iraq because of a tangible threat of force. They are not there because of 12 years of sanctions, or 8 years of inspections.

Yes, and if the threat of force brought all this about, then it is valid. But it's not as simple as that. War is inevitable, there are too many troops commited to the region to not go in. Iraq is now completely complying with the inspectors etc. We have no reason to attack, but we will anyway.

Iraq is not complying because it is hoping people like you will win the day. It will not comply until American boots are in the sand, because that is how the world works, little lamb.

Jesus fucking christ. I really hope you are trolling me here. I really do. This "American boots in the sand" belief was the reasoning the terrorists behind 9/11 hate you. The lives of all those innocent people were lost due to these arogant beliefs. Do you think you can run half-way across the world, kill and fuck people over, without some form of retailiation. Who made you King of the World?

Seing as your country has a terrible record for international relations, I think you are the worst possible nation to do this role. It is the role of the U.N., which represents the whole civilised world. Are you familiar with the concept of democracy, or is facism more your thing?

Gee, by your account we f*cked with them for fifty years, (Guess muslims don't appreciate that we fought the last three wars in Kuwait, Somolia, and Kosovo on their behalf)

You weren't fighting on their behalf. You fighting in the iterests of your own business dealings. I'm not saying that these things weren't admiral or anything like that, but it's not a clear-cut as you make out.

back up their supposedly mortal enemy, Israel, (who hasn't attacked a muslim neighbor since the Six Day War, and humiliated the mujahadeen in Afghanistan.

Excuse me? Israel is illegally occupying a foreign land right now! They are commiting their own holocaust. They have killed all of the key Palestinion figureheads. Any intelectials, writers and politions have been assasinated by the Israelis, but the media refers to these as "targeted killings". Please follow the link and learn about the corporate medias deliberate distortion of the facts in this matter.

Only fools think that the most advanced society on earth has to fear the scorn of people who don't even have the freedom to protest without their government's permission.

Firstly, I have to laugh at the "most advanced society on earth". Please explain the why so much poverty is allowed to exist in this mythical land? Why there are communities of homeless people all over the place. I was amazed to see this in the US, hardly a shining example of modern living. Please explain why you still apply the death penalty to mentally retarded people.

And please explain to me your beliefs about free expression are in any way relevant in modern America. We are talking about a place that cages protestors into "free speach zones", well out of the way from whatever they are protesting. The same society that attempted to ban the anti-war rallys in several cities. And how your government is now tracking an analysising every communication on the internet, databasing anything deemed interesting. How can you feel safe critizing a government who is noting down everything you say? Again, a keystone of democracy is the ability to critize the government, but now all that will get you is a higher "terrorist ranking" on an automated system somewhere, again something that is specifically stated against in the US constitution.

Yeah, just like the Japanese and the Germans are running around trying to blow up Americans today. Even the Vietnamese respect the fact that we weren't there to conquer them.

So, it worked some times. Big deal, it doesn't mean you are going to get a 100% success rate. Remember, Bin Ladens personal beef with the US is due to the fact that the Saudi royal family (dictators) are supported and guarded by US troops. I'd say that's a pretty big example of this kind of thing not working out.

Terrorism will end if people don't think it's in their interests to kill their children for some misguided cause. Right now many do. That will change if A) things improve for them, or B) Antiterror techniques are racheted up until it's very difficult to inflict damage on American targets.

Hmm. And you do you propose making it difficult to inflict damage to the US? Ban diesel and fertiliser? Have checkpoints every 10 miles on the road, searching for bombs etc? Having all plane passengers tied up in their seats? Not possible.

Amazingly, we are in agreement on your first point. If things improve for them, terrorism will stop. But that's not going to happen, and it's not in the interests of our leaders. Again, I bring attention to the fact that our governments (I'm from the UK, which is more similar to the US than Europe by the way) happily deal with and support countries that are screwing over their populations. Until we have honest governments that refuse to have anything to do with these nutjobs and display some honour and valor, then that's not going to happen.

And as I can't see either of these things happening in the near future, I say that the war on terrorism is unwinnable.

(you can't defeat an enemy you can't see)

Woa, they have "predator" light bending camofluage now?

No, but the US is actually developing that sort of technology, not sure with what success though. But that's a geeky side note that has so far been the most on-topic statement so far.

You can't see them because they look like you and be. They don't wear uniforms. They don't have special badges or rings. Sure, you could round up all the Arabs (if you were to throw out yet another part of the constitution), but then you still get the likes of Timmoty McVeigh and the IRA. How do you propose to "win" this "war"?

Yes, let's just become good muslims, and enslave our women, and do nothing while they slaughter or enslave members of other religions, or even their own religion (like that bombing of Shite muslims in Pakistan)

100 years ago, America was enslaving the Blacks. Around the same time, my country denied women the right to vote and the right to own property. We are a more advanced society than them. But it doesn't mean that we are "better" than them and we shouldn't look down on them. Look at how far our societies have come in the last 200 years. You can't expect the world to advance at a uniform rate.

And the sad fact is that we call many countries who do look down on women "allies". We can't critize one nation for doing something when we support other nations that do the same, if not worse. Saudi is an ally of the west, yet Afganistan in 2001 would be a relative paradise for the women there.

They are a common pox not worthy of classification. They have nothing of value to show us.

Again, we are in agreement about something. It's a shame thought that the only ammendment in the constitution to survive unscathed is the first. The Ruskies had that right, religion is stupid.

I didn't realize that we needed you're leave before we go free that slave pen and put an end to France's illicit oil supply. Can you perhaps provide better reasoning for your position

Simple. Because there are other slave pens being supported by us that give us oil supplies that we aren't preparing for war with. If we are going to go around the world fighting for freedom, then we should apply that fairly and not pick out only the ones that we also benefit from attacking.

It is this hipocracy that is the basis for my anti-war stance.

Having banged my head against a wall over this for a while, I eventually managed to put together a script (based on ideas from Pieter Thysebaert) that builds and installs mingw from latest sources (gcc-3.2.1, binutils-2.13.90, ...)

The script also works around a couple of problems not described in any of the HOWTOs I've read.

Anyway, download it from here

Actually, that's an interesting point to make. Geneticists actually classify donkeys and horses to be different species since mules are sterile. This means that their genes will not be interfused beyond that one generation of mule offspring, therefore, there gene pools continue to stay seperate.

A good way to find good new authors (other than asking slashdot, which in this case seems to have been a great idea) is to find a reviewer you like. I'm particularly a fan of Dave Langford's reviews. He's very prolific, writes well, and knows the breadth of the field. He also writes a newsletter ansible as well as some quite amusing columns for various magazines.

Langford has introduced me to an sf culture of which previously I was only perhipherally aware.

This is going to be a bit long but bear with me, I hope I can explain it a little.

The fundamental limit of high bandwidth technologies is due to the physical nature of copper wire.

Any digital signal is essentially a composition of a series of sine waves. Don't worry if this doesn't make sense - what happens is that the sharp 'edges' of a digital pulse are effectively very high frequency. So although it is conventient to think of a digital signal having a single frequency that is effectively the data rate, its not actually true.

One of the properties of copper wire is that different frequencies travel at different speeds in the wire, and get attenuated (lose power) at different rates.

Now we combine these two thoughts and what happens is that the well defined pulse get smeared as the frequencies that make them up seperate as the pulse goes down the line, and misshaped as attenuation kicks in. At some point this smearing will make it impossible to reconstruct the pulse. Also every single joint in the cable causes reflection of the siganl to some point.

In a transmission system this is not a problem, as the great thing with a digital signal is we know it only has two states - 1 or 0 - so we can regenerate and clean up the signal and transmit it again. This is what repeaters in undersea cables do (even fibre has to have these, but at much greater lengths than copper). But to your house there is no point in the cable to put a repeater - if the signal can be read when it gets to where you are then it works, if not then it doesn't.

Now in reality digital signals are not transmitted as a single stream of on/off pulses, but encoding systems are used that turn the signals into ranges of tones - which is why when you listen to you modem you here a range of tones, rather than a single one.

All of these techniques aim to minimise the effect of the smearing due to the different speeds the different frequencies travel, and to make the signal more resiliant to noise issues. But at some point either the pulses will become so corrupted they cannot be recognised, or the signal to noise ratio will get so bad that they can't be distinguished from noise.

Generally the problems get worse as the frequency goes up, and in data terms this is roughly the same as baud rate. This is why faster DSL rates are only available nearer the exchnage.

The reasons why ADSL2 isnt a great improvement is we are hitting fundamental limitations of copper wire transmission systems as used for analogue telephones (and it is analogue in the local loop no matter what the exchnage is) and tweaking the encoding techniques is not bringing great increases.

Remember with normal modems we hit the limit at 36Kbaud due to the fact that normal voice is limited to 0-4Khz - a bit of clever engineering managed to boost this to 56Kbaud on the downlink because you avoid one of the anti aliasing filters in the exchange.

So modems are limited to 4Khz and Shannons Law tells us the maximum data rate we can do at 4Khz, and 56Kbaud modems are damn near the limit.

ADSL is carried as a piggy back signal on your analogue line - below 4khz is the normal voice signal, above 25Khz is the ADSL signals. There is no 'hard' upper limit to ADSL due to filters like there is for voice, but there is a 'soft' limit where the problems discussed above mean its not possible to get reliable transmission.

Current ADSL is pretty close to those 'soft' limits - ADSL2 tweaks it a bit to get more in and increase the range.

The bad news is its not going to get much better on copper wire - the modem limit was due to filtering, but ADSL is down to basic physics.

Explanation of the local loop technologies - mostly found via ADSLGuide (These guys do a great job of keeping on top of UK ADSL issues)

The Last Mile - personal site, but a good heads up. Significantly shows the bandwidth limits as related to the type of wire the signal is transmitted down.

The Trouble With DSL great well written article that summarises some of the technical and practical issues with DSL.

ADSL Techincal Summary

DSL Source Book - PDF (registration required) - very good for technical geeks.

Erm, this has nothing to do with water/land and stuff.

The difference is that theories said self-replicating molecules came first, cells came later. This theory says that cells have to come first, before self-replicating molecules have a chance to be created..

Also look at the author's web pages!

(Something that might be hard if you never rtfa)

having said that, the file name should 'NEVER' be changed, I might like my jpegs with the extrension .jpeggypicfiles, i don't want moilla guessing that it should put a .jpg or .jpeg on the end for me, nothing else does!

Well, unless there are servers serving .jpeggypicfiles, you would have to rename them yourself. If renaming based on mime type is allowed you could "fix" mozilla (and other browsers) to save "image/jpeg" as ".jpeggypicfiles".

One case comes to mind, where using the "filename" part of the url is less than optimal: CGI, why the hell should I ever want to save a "text/html" file as "somename.pl" or even "somename.dll"? The data on my end is html no matter if it was served from files or generated by scripts/programs.

But I suppose I can live with either behavior, as long as the browser uses mime types to select the correct display option (as mozilla does), rather than guessing like IE.

Lord Kelvin (William Thomson) created an older pitch experiment: one which had a variety of objects lying on a tray of pitch that are slowly sinking in.

Its usually on show in either the Hunterian Museum or the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Glasgow University.

As I recall, this is considered the oldest continuously running scientific experiment, with the exception only of a wheat-breeding experiment in England? (I can't find references on that, just remember it from back in the mists of time)

BTW: it is more fun to watch paint dry - its faster...

Lord Kelvin (William Thomson) created an older pitch experiment: one which had a variety of objects lying on a tray of pitch that are slowly sinking in.

Its usually on show in either the Hunterian Museum or the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Glasgow University.

As I recall, this is considered the oldest continuously running scientific experiment, with the exception only of a wheat-breeding experiment in England? (I can't find references on that, just remember it from back in the mists of time)

BTW: it is more fun to watch paint dry - its faster...

Stone makes a Faraday Cage. Glass must make a faraday cage also.

What the hell are you smoking?

Stone and glass don't make faraday cages...only CONDUCTORS do.

A 3-second google search made this clear!

Learn something about your subject (faraday cages) before posting next time...

There's good news and bad news. The bad news is that the government is making an active attempt to read peoples' minds. The good news is that it's never going to work---if the description in this article is any indication of how they're going to go about it.

How could I possibly know it's not going to work? Well, let's just say I worked for a company that burned up millions of dollars attempting to do something FAR less ambitious than these bozos at NASA have set out to do. We were using essentially the same techniques as described in the article, with one incredible difference. THE NASA THING IS NOT GOING TO TOUCH YOU. BAA HAAA HAAAAA! I nearly broke a rib when I read they're going to gather the EEG signals---I have to steady myself from laughing so hard as I type---without placing a "cap" on the subject. Wait, can you hear that? It's the sound of my former co-workers laughing their asses off. What is the NASA team going to do *I'm still chuckling*, have every airline passenger step inside a Faraday cage packed with room temperature, superconductive sensors built by little gnomes at Area 51!?

We've been there, we've tried this....well, minus the full body Faraday cage and extraterrestrial sensors. That is, we had the luxury of actually using a standard EEG headset to collect the data. And it was still difficult to JUST GET QUALITY DATA. EEG is the biggest pain in the ass to work with. Ask ANYONE who's ever dealt with it.

Well, say NASA can wave a magic wand and somehow collect the data, then what? Predict high order human behaviors and thought processes by analyzing EEG with some other special herbs and spices thrown in for good measure? It may sound good on paper, but I'm here to tell ya: It's bullsh*t. No, it's double bullsh*t. Two years and millions of dollars later, I'll tell you what we got: Snake Eyes. Nothing. Jack. Nil. And I can assure you that we weren't going for anything remotely as hard as this NASA thing. We had lots of PhDs, freaks, nerds, experts, etc. It didn't matter. The feds would have a better chance of getting at the intent of an individual if they would let a circus macaque run loose in the terminal, randomly identifying "terrorists" in the crowd!

In case you think I'm kidding about all of this, that's me in the pictures. Pic1 Pic2 Pic3

Here have some information that will answer that question....

the faraday effect

and the faraday cage

I can block a 20 Bajillion watt transmitter with tinfoil.. I am sure that the signals from 6-12 sattelites overhead can easily be blocked by it.

so your answer is yes.

Similarly, sheets or mesh screens of conductive material are routinely used to block unwanted RF interference generated by devices like computers and televisions which would otherwise create a great deal of "leakage".

So I ask again: What's new here? Why is this guy getting attention? I think any electrical engineer could figure out how to wrap a Faraday cage around a theater; the question is whether theater owners want to do it.

• Bad science
  
• Cardboard characters
  
• Clumsy prose (Mr. Sawyer, meet Mr. Katz)
  
• An unbelieveable plot

Also you may be interested in the Edinburgh Wireless network --- Backnet which is a little more established than Glasgow. Both projects are generating a lot of interest but we need as many people as possible so if you are interested then check out the Consume.net Node Database to find out who's near you.

The GlasgowNet page also has some news, reviews and articles that may be of use to people interested in Wireless networks. Both Backnet and GlasgowNet have IRC channels so feel free to come on and have a chat. The Backnet channel is #backnet on irc.backnet.org.uk and GlasgowNet is #glasgownet on the same server. If you don't have an IRC client then GlasgowNet is testing a Java applet IRC interface that you may want to try.

• We can place as many elements as we like in perfectly stable relative positions; we do not need to continually monitor and control their positions.
• Such observatory would last virtually forever (Lifetime would be limited only by fuel for the relay satellite).
• Access from scientific stations
• There are craters to avoid lunar-surface interferences
• stable: interferometry
• only half of celestrial sphere need imaging.
• Sun is blocked half the time
• long integration time (slow rotation)
• We can lay antenna elements wires directly on regolith.

do real astronomers call it the 'dark side,'...

Of course they don't. That would be foolish and un-"real astronomer"-like. They call it the 'far side'. :) Really though, what is it called? I doubt it is called the 'dark side', or the 'far side', although I may be wrong.

If this proposal does go through though, and NASA begins research and development, hopefully it will reignite interest in the moon. We shouldn't dirty up the moon, but we should definately learn more about it.

~thebabelfish

Straw man argument: Straw man argument

Since your rebuttal is simply a shift of the
burden of proof, I do not think that is is
a valid request for me to prove you wrong.
Just as I can be accused of simply accepting
the Bible as the word of God, you fall under
the opposite spectrum by simply denying it.
If "Propeller-head" statements as 'student of
classical languages' are intended to strengthen
you viewpoint, I find that as weak as me saying
"Because the bible says so"...
Why do I make the assumptions that you
judge fatal to my belief and argument? Because
I believe in and describe the God of christianity
as He is described in His word, namely the
bible. So I do label arguments as "straw-man",
because they take the view I represent, and by
using extra-biblical sources, make it into
something that can truly not stand, thus taking
the benefit of bringing it down.
All I defend, is that the christian God is only
and exclusively described in the bible. Any other
additional sources render a new, false, deity,
which I can not and will not debate.
Finally, if you sincerely seek debate and
reasoning, words like "blathering", and labels
like wasteful and ignorant (God gave humans the
ability of rational thought, don't continue
to waste yours! Learn the rules of logic)
really do not any add any merit. Z

Also I wholeheartedly agree with Virgin's statement: "As retailers we do support the fight against copyright theft, however this should never be at the expense of the customer."

I have no objection to meaures that prevent only illegal or immoral behaviour, but by preventing digital copying the record companies are preventing the public from making legitimate, legal and moral uses of their CD, such as making a backup copy for safety reasons or transferring to a MP3/Minidisc player. I am also unconvinced that such draconian measures need to be put in place since the availibility of MP3s has not been shown to decrease CD sales, in fact the contrary seems to be the case, as shown in the paper "The Use of Conventional and New Music Media: Implications for Future Technologies" by Brown, Geelhoed and Sellen (2001).

This paper argues that intangible files, such as MP3s will never replace the role of physical objects such as LPs, CDs and casettes since music enthusiasts are collectors, and just the ability to listen to music is not enough, rather a tangible object is desired. Instead of trying to eliminate duplication of Music (which, both historically and technically, can be seen to be impossible), they would be better to use it to their own advantage, which would help them, the artists and the public.

A case which Neil Gaiman finds totally unconvincing, for the record.

"Back in November I was tracked down by a Scotsman journalist who had noticed the similarities between my Tim Hunter character and Harry Potter, and wanted a story. I disappointed him by explaining that, no, I certainly didn't believe that Rowling had ripped off Books of Magic, that I doubted she'd read it and that it wouldn't matter if she had: I wasn't the first writer to create a young magician with potential, nor was Rowling the first to send one to school." - Neil Gaiman, April 2000.

The solution used for my department is the FormatIO, a Java package written by Dr. Ron Poet, which allows easy text and numerical input and output from a file or the console, or the creation of a graphical console via AWT.

Once I/O is fixed, Java is quite a good teaching language provided it is taught correctly (do not introduce Applets in the first lecture, teach the fundementals first - that is what simple console I/O is good for).

--
Steven Murdoch.

The solution used for my department is the FormatIO, a Java package written by Dr. Ron Poet, which allows easy text and numerical input and output from a file or the console, or the creation of a graphical console via AWT.

Once I/O is fixed, Java is quite a good teaching language provided it is taught correctly (do not introduce Applets in the first lecture, teach the fundementals first - that is what simple console I/O is good for).

--
Steven Murdoch.