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http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/1999/02.18/lig ht.html

oh yeah?

do the math on how much energy is required

If you would kindly finish that sentence with how much energy is required to do what, I'd happily run the calcs for you. If you're referring to how to obtain the 1GW of power, all I can say is that's the easy part in engineering such power stations.

what sort of remote devices exist for conveying that power back to ear[t]h.

High powered masers into the gigawatt range have been a reality for some time. This paper from 1977 describes experiments with running multi-kilowatt masers all the way up into the gigawatt range. On making these efficient, there has been a LOT of R&D over the years with papers such as this one (1997) describing the work being done. What's been driving the development of such high power beams, believe it or not, is the development of the fusion reactors. Scientists have been investigating the possibility of using high-powered masers to excite the fuel into a fusion state.

In short, all the technology has been researched, and the groundwork has been laid. What's needed now is a market to drive the development of the technology.

The GPL needs to be tested in court.

Eben Moglen (the FSF's general counsel) feels differently. Almost two years ago, while speaking at Harvard Law School, at he had this to say on the subject:

"To those who like to say there has never been a court test of the GPL, I have one simple thing to say: Don't blame me. I was perfectly happy to roll any time. It was the defendants who didn't want to do it. And when for ten solid years, people have turned down an opportunity to make a legal argument, guess what? It isn't any good."

You can read the entire transcript or watch the speech (but make sure you'll be free for the following 90 minutes or so).

If the speed of light is a constant, how can, almost 6 years ago, physicists slow the speed of light?

2. go here

There. You have seen a vehicle that can travel faster than light.

"In the real world, 10 K isn't that much, although it would be nice to know why our estimates are off."

Here's the original press release: http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/press/pr0601.html

The energy is lost when liquid nitrogen evaporates. I don't think the scientists were too surprised.

The achievment is that they reached better resolution than what was previously possible at that wavelength, not the scientific results themselves. Though I guess it does tell us something about Pluto's atmosphere.

I've had the privilege of having Gilbert as a lecturer, and I've got to agree that he's one of the best speakers you'll ever hear. For a good overview of his work, check out this New Yorker article: http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~dtg/The%20New%20Yorker %20Fact.htm

It's actually called the Berkman Center for Internet & Law http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/

If you're referring to Larry Summers, that's a misrepresentation of what he said. His claim was that *on average*, men are more interested in technical fields, and there's strong evidence that this is true. (Whether it's due to biological or social issues is a separate matter).

Bull-cocky. He explicitly referred to intrinsic -- meaning biological -- differences in aptitude being dominant over social and discriminatory factors. The relevent statement from his speech:

"So my best guess, to provoke you, of what's behind all of this is that the largest phenomenon, by far, is the general clash between people's legitimate family desires and employers' current desire for high power and high intensity, that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination."

I'm pretty sure the majority of male IT workers would be quite happy to have a higher percentage of females around.

Sure, "around", but how about "competing for promotions"? If the women were around but in a non-engineering capacity would these male IT workers care?

My eyes and ears are the analog hole.

Actually, your eyes are a good example of the A/D converter. Don't forget how the eye works - nerves don't sense all the time, they work in impulses, literally digitizing what is around, so your brain can "see" it:
http://neuro.med.harvard.edu/site/dh/b5.htm

I wonder if they are going to install that DRM crap into your eyes, as an A.Hole device, too.

The RSS standard is meant to be extendable, the creators realised it wouldnt cover all circumstances and situations. Get over it.

Linky.

I cured what I thought was "RSI" using this "mindbody" approach:
http://www.rsi.deas.harvard.edu/handout.doc
(Coincidental that Harvard is hosting this document, maybe the researchers should look at it themselves)

Here is the Google cache for those who don't want to open a .doc.

I suffered for 1.5 years (where I didn't work because I didn't think I could) before I found that my cure was a completely psychological approach. From my research of CTS (as well as what my doctor told me), it is completely unrelated to typing. And from my experience with "RSI" and understanding what it actually was, I no longer believe you can actually hurt yourself from typing too much.

I now type sometimes all day long without taking many breaks. I play guitar, bass, and drums. I don't worry about posture at all. Ergonomics are only a way for me to get comfortable, not to avoid injury. I have no pain at all, and don't worry about ever having "RSI" again. It's been 3 years since I cured myself.

Please read up on the approach I'm talking about here before you flame me. It actually makes sense once you put all the pieces together. You can also search for "sarno tms" to find more info.

additionally, more can be found on the white dwarfs in general Here.

One of the best explanations of how employee motivation occurs is the Harvard Business Journal's "One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?" Unfortunately, it doesn't specifically say how to motivate IT workers, but it gives you a plan on how to determine what changes will create long term motivation instead of making them look for the next bonus or perk.

http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b02/ en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=388X

I would also recommend "Rapid Development" by Steve McConnell. It covers a lot of topics, but it recommends a lot of books and articles, which is how I found out about the HBR article above.

http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/770.asp

Anybody reckon they can tell the difference between a human brain and a mouse brain? Check out the Mouse Brain Library and the Human Brain Library. There are a couple of obvious difference in shape, but the individual structures are remarkably similar.

Two academic papers argue that markets/auctions for vulnerabilities provide a logical and useful way of measuring the security of a software product.

"Bug Auctions: Vulnerability Markets Reconsidered." Andy Ozment, 2004 [pdf]

"How to Buy Better Testing: using competition to get the most security and robustness for your dollar" Stuart E. Schechter, 2002 [pdf]

Geomagnetic reversals happen within time frames of tens of thousands to tens of millions of years. There are also quick switches that occur over a 5 thousand year or so, called "tiny wiggles".

In short, it's not something you should worry about.

So if Australia wants to block pr0n, go ahead, adults won't give a sh*t they'll register their names to get access. However, the teenagers who'll be craving for pr0n will also find ways to access it through the internet, but in process will probably learn a lot more shady techniques than if they had access to it like they do now.

Hell they might end up with the same situation as in the States, where adults buy beer for the teenagers who want to drink:

Teenager: |-|3Y D0od C4N J0o 637 /\/\3 t3|h lAt3St J3N|\|4 J4m350|\| ?!??!111? Opportunistic adult: Jenna Jameson? It's gonna cost ya big...

http://www.hcra.harvard.edu/about.html

Center Director of Risk Communication David Ropeik and George Gray are authors of "RISK, A Practical Guide for Deciding What's Really Safe and What's Really Dangerous in the World Around Us."

A terrific read. Bursted many of my preconceptions about risky choices when I read it.

One point we DO know, invading Iraq has costed 2000+ American lives and xxx(classified) # of civilian lives i Iraq so far. HOW MANY HAS IT SAVED?
Remember that 911 costed us ~2700 lives. We have passed that point quite a ways back in terms of death toll.

Did you read the RSS specs before posting? If yes, did you notice that the specs explicitely allows room for extensions, provided they are confined within a namespace? Now, does Microsoft extensions live in their own namespace? (hint: yes)

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss#extendingRss

WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?

"http://msdn.microsoft.com/xml/rss/sse/ reads pretty much like an IETF RFC."

Okay, it looks like an RFC, but why isn't it an RFC?

Besides the fact that RSS doesn't appear to have been submitted to the IETF either, of course. Both the MS extension and original RSS spec were released under Creative Commons licenses. So what's the point of releasing a spec without going through the standards process? It depends on the motives of the issuer, doesn't it?

I personally am strongly opposed to this kind of unilateralism. I'm not a big fan of Dave Winer's approach to things, and I'm even less of a fan of MS'. Having worked on the web almost from the day it was born, I can speak from experience, and MS has been a divisive force from the moment they cottoned on to this Internet thing, almost single-handedly creating the security nightmare we have today by plying half-educated cargo-cult 'developers' with convenience and ease of use that turned out to be easy for anyone to exploit.

So please, when we look at this issue, let's not forget two things:

• Specs exist for a reason - peer review, consultation and openness. MS has ensured none of these in this instance.
• MS has created these pseudo-standards in the past, in effect, dressing itself up in black robes and saying, 'I belong on the Supreme Court too, 'cause I got the robes!'

The (false?) naivete that the parent espouses does nothing to change my suspicion that this new 'standard' from MS is any different from what came before. MS are relying on just this kind of cursory investigation ('He must be a judge; he's wearing a robe!') to insinuate these extensions into the mainstream.

I would trust them a lot more if they took the time to actually cooperate with the community, and to follow the well-established processes that exist. They've buckled down and done so in the past, so why can't they do it this time?

Funny, I don't ever recall reading that Microsoft was responsible for the development and evolution of RSS. And now they want to set their own development standards? Seems to me that we had this same problem with HTML circa 1998/9.

Good news, to be added to the possibility that caffeine is is linked to protection from Parkinson's disease. Makes those first couple of mugs of coffee taste that much sweeter... well, that and 2 heaping tablesoons of sugar and all the packets of Splenda® I can find.

So, you killed someone in cold blood, and your parents were murderers too - sorry, bud, you're still going to jail. No amount of genetic "blame" will ever allow us to trust you or your choices.

Steven Pinker did a thorough exploration of this in "The Blank Slate".

I'm surpised that there hasn't been more discussion about arXiv in these comments. At our institute (astrophysics) most people send their pre-prints to astro-ph before the journal version is published, and NASA ADS http://adswww.harvard.edu/ is the first place to go when looking for something. There are also frequent group meetings to discuss recent submissions to astro-ph, making it more talked about than any particular journal.

Personally I feel that research which is not made publicly available only helps re-inforce the white tower image of scientists as self-serving. The fact that funding is directly related to citations has firmly entrenched journals in the run of things. Of course they are going to make vague claims about how science will suffer without their editorial control, but maybe if money was not an issue things wouldn't be this way.

http://arxiv.org/blurb/pg02pr.html is a pretty insightful consideration of how peer review systems can be made more efficient.

We couldn't hurt the earth if we wanted to. Make it unlivable for us, yes. Destroy it? No. And after we've killed ourselves off (either via pollution/global warming/thermonuclear war/pooping too much), there will be another species that's adapted to all of that and will prosper.

Hypnosis found to alter the brain: Subjects see color where none exists http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2000/08.21/hyp nosis.html

"RSS" is not a form of RDF. Only "RSS 1.0" is a form of RDF, and it is, by far, not the commonly-used version. SSE is built on RSS 2.0 which is not RDF at all.

RSS 2.0 supports XML namespaces. This defines such a namespace. RDF is not involved.

Christopher Lydon was the host on WBUR/NPR's "The Connection", one of the best radio interview/talk shows around. He left after a dispute with WBUR and spent some time at the Harvard Berkman Center, where he met Dave Winer and became a pioneer in podcasting by running a podcast interview show. His interviews are all available from his Berkman blog and they're consistently excellent (the breadth of the interviewees is substantial, including people such as Doc Searle, Paul Krugman, Larry Lessig, Jeffrey Sachs, Howard Dean, David Weinberger).

His company, Open Source Media, and the radio show are both very much inspired by open source values (e.g., openness, cooperation and sharing):

- All content is Creative Commons licensed (compare to OSM's obnoxious TOS).
- They actively interact with their audience through blogging.
- They involving the audience in show production (read How this works).

It doesn't seem like an unreasonable translation of the open source ethos to radio and media production within what's feasible.

I think his trademark case is pretty solid; he has a live registered mark (meaning the examiners have accepted it so they have the benefit of the doubt if someone claims it's not trademarkable) on Open Source as applied to a radio show and commentary website, and prior use of the trade name Open Source Media. The potential for confusion (the big criteria in TM issues) is substantial. OSM LLC, meanwhile uses all kinds of weaselly wording to handwave around the fact that they use the phrase "Open Source Media" as an alternate name for the operation everywhere while implying they're just "OSM" so that makes them not really infringing (if I started RH LLC but had the name "Red Hat" plastered all over my site and press releases, do you think I could be in a bit of a bind?).

I have no dog in this fight (except as a longtime fan of The Connection, which is not the same without Lydon), but there is really no contest IMO.

France's GDP per capita stands at about 95% of the UK's

Yes, but it is down from 122% of the UK's since the 1970's...

This study looks at labor regulation effects on European work hours.

A great historical comparison between other countries and the U.S. on GDP per capita, hours worked, productivity, and workforce participation is here

Even if the string was copyrightable, your use is purely functional, and thus not subject to copyright laws in this case.

See Sega Vs Accolade

The world population is at what, 6 billion and some change? When the previous outbreaks occured, world population was much smaller. This has significant epidemiological implications. The First and Third Worlds are now significantly more densely populated. IIRC, the First World, which suffered heavy casualties during the previous epidemics, was already densely populated and the bulk of casualties were in densely populated areas.

Now consider the dense population of the Third World. This is a recent phenomenon - see India's rapid growth (http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/Organizations/healthn et/SAsia/suchana/1028/C02_328.htm). Consider the public health infrastructures in India and the US. An outbreak of a highly contagious, highly lethal flu in a newly dense Third World would would wreak devistation on a scale the world has never seen. It would travel quickly and the infrastructure would not be able to respond. Mobility increases -- airports etc. -- would spread such a flu over the earth rapidly.

Here's hoping it doesn't become contagious!

Here's a list of book scanning equipment. I've seen the one from Kirtas in action, it's fun to watch.

Let's not forget where this event is being held.

The primary reason I abandoned my Thinkpad was, I think, that I outgrew tinkering. It used to be fun to make ALSA work and to figure out the winmodem and all that, but after one more broken kernel upgade, I just didn't want to do it any more. Meanwhile, OS X was just the right thing at the right time for me.

Now (postdoc) I know at least three colleagues who have moved to Mac desktops, and since all our processing software (mostly GPL/BSD licensed) is just as happy on the Mac platform as on Linux, I might do so too. (See, for example, Professional Astronomy Software for Mac OSX.)

Conclusion 1: I "switched" (partly), and I was counted as leaving Windows (my Thinkpad can still boot WinMe, I think), but I actually left Linux.

Conclusion 2: Lickable hardware is *nice*. I bought a nano last weekend!

Yes, communists have a wonderful history of environmentally friendly policies:

http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~asiactr/haq/200301/030 1a001.htm
http://www.infomanage.com/environment/russia.html
http://countrystudies.us/germany/81.htm

This is the same tripe communist-lovers spewed before we found out what an environmental disaster the former Soviet Union is.

The only reason China is cleaning up anything is because of their prosperity brought about by relatively free trade with the United States. If China does build these cities and they are what they claim, it is a direct result of economic prosperity from free market capitalism, not because of their glorious central planning.

And I can imagine the US if the government didn't "give" (the government has no money not taken from the people) businesses money for jobs "and everything else." We would all have more money in our pockets.

Harvard scientists slow down light to 38 mph Just create a bose-einstein condensate and fire a laser through it. Pretty simple if you ask me.

No kidding. I always hate it when the tempertures outside get below -200 C. Having to swim through the atmosphere makes me terribly cold by the time I get to work.

Like you haven't heard this a thousand times before - do you have backups:)?
Assuming it's a corrupt parition table:
If you've got a mirror, you would be able to dd out the (known location of the) partion table on mirrored disk 1, and dd it back to the failed drive.

If none of those work/are not applicable, follow this:

http://surfer.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/partition/partit ion-6.html

If that fails/isn't applicable, try using gpart, included in the coroners toolkit:

http://www.porcupine.org/forensics/tct.html

p.s. When you're mounting it, you're doing "mount -t ext2 /dev/hdaX /mnt/foo", right? Make sure you have the "X" (1,2,3, etc) variable in there. Sometimes even I forget to add the 1,2,3 and spend a few minutes thinking my data is lost!

p.p.s I used your Xbox howtos back in the day and appreciated them!

Please read this document to read an alternative view of what "RSI" is. It makes a lot more sense then anything else. It's the only thing that was able to completely cure me when I had what I thought was "RSI".

Abusing the Patriot Act? Sounds more like abusing power... and we've NEVER heard of any police force or government agency abusing power before have we? [/sarcasm]

There is a distinctive difference between abusing power, and abusing the Enacted Law: Abusing Power is using your resources to do something you shouldn't be, and would never be allowed to do. Abusing the Enacted Law (Let's say the Patriot Act), would be doing something that is approved to do under that Law, but using it to harrass someone you don't like.

I'm no choir boy, but I do like to play devils advocate here... So chew on this thought:

The Patriot Act was renewed again because it helped gather intellegence to stop London Style Bombings here in America, along with some other plotted attacks. Hell, we even have Mr. Clarke (Bush hater himself) stating that the preserves civil liberties: 'I can't find anything wrong with it [the Patriot Act], and if I'd had it prior to 9/11, it would have been a hell of a lot easier to stop 9/11.'

Harvard Gazette Link: http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/04.29/03- clarke.html

I think the point that hits ME the most, is that the same people bitching and moaning now, would be the EXACT same people bitching and moaning that we didn't do enough. Were you one of those Koolaid drinkers that said Bush didn't do enough to stop the attacks? What about Clinton? Did he do enough? Can we say Able Danger? (Don't know? Look it up...)

You can't have it both ways folks. But you MUST make a choice.

What the federal trademark dilution statute does (15 U.S.C. 1125(c)) is make parody and satire, especially in advertisements and commercials, a high risk endeavor. For example, where there's a negative or unwholesome connotation about a "famous" mark, courts are likely to enjoin use.

Now if we're going to argue that the Supreme Court will apply trademark rules to a non-trademarked item, then we need to take this caselaw all the way. For example, from L.L. Bean, Inc. v. Drake Publishers, Inc.:

The court also held that enjoining the publication of a parody to prevent trademark dilution did not offend the first amendment.

I would al

by means of share-holder's resolution. Check out this article below.

http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/olin_center/co rporate_governance/MediaMen
tions/WSJ_Winning_Apr.11.2005.pdf

If ALL sharesholders demand this of their CEOs, then there would be no excuse about needing to pay up for talents.

No it shouldn't, Chiropractic is bullshit. See a real back doctor who went to medical school, not a pretend doctor.

There are also other reasons why chiropractors are not effective. Same thing with massage therapists. They are basically providing a placebo to their patients. Real doctors can provide a placebo as well, in the form of physical therapy, drugs, surgery, etc. So sometimes both traditional and alternative medicine fail.

try a real law school

There are much more precise mass estimates than that... here is a good one, from: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bi bcode=2005ApJ...620..744G&db_key=AST&data_type=HTM L&format=&high=421632d27a04011 M_BH = (3.7 +/- 0.2) × 10^6 (Ro/8kpc)^3 M* Where Ro is the distance to the galactic center, and M* is the mass of the sun.

The keyboard is not ideal, and I miss Grafitti, but it's more than usable

That's why I use Graffiti Anywhere on my Treo 600. It lets you do grafitti right on the screen. I have mine set to activate when I tap the upper right 5 pixels of the screen.

it's nice to be able to listen to mp3s on this once in a while but you're crazy if you want this to replace your music player

I'm curious. Why? I use my Treo 600 as my primary mp3 player and It's been great. What problems have you run into?

People laugh about the camera,

With qset, you can change the default jpeg quality (around 60 or so) all the way up to 99. Still, I've found the camera works much better in sunlight than indoors.

BTW, if you don't already have it installed, you ought to try out TCPMP. I use it to watch all kinds of video (divx, xvid, you name it). I can compress a full 2 hour movie down to about 70 megs. I've also installed several game console emulators on it (NES, GB, SG, etc.) and play them frequently. The digital camera can even be a video camera. I use it to take short home movies and then export to mpegs. Just thought you might be interested in some Treo apps I've found very helpful.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not an Apple-hater -- far from it. I use a Mac at work (designer) all day long, and you'd have to to pry my PowerBook® from my cold dead hands and all, but anyone that thinks it's earth-shattering is more than slightly behind the times. I've been watching video (divx, xvid, you name it), listening to mp3's *and* oggs for almost 2 years now on my Treo 600. It's also my cell phone, calendar, addressbook, yada-yada... I can even use it to ssh, vnc, ftp, or connect to Samba shares on my server at home and run several game console emulators on it (NES, GB, SG, etc.). The video iPod does have more disk space (although I've never had problems filling up my Treo's 2 Gig expansion card -- which card I can swap out for more space, if I ever *do* need it). Another key advantage is that my Treo 600 is also a digital camera and can even be a video camera. I use it to take short home movies of my kids when we're at the park or fair, or whatever and then export to mpegs. Not that the video iPod isn't cool and all, I'd just like to see more honesty in reporting the originality of the feature set.

Jonathan Postel, the Internet pioneer, used to keep the entire list of Top Level Domains (TLD) at first on the back of an envelope, then on his own paper record sheets. Before he died young (or was "suicided"?), Postel frequently told the world that there ought to be hundreds and hundreds of Top Level Domains -- in a spirit of human freedom and variety of choice.

Ronda Hauben the historian has described how Jonathan Postel's wishes and recommendations were thwarted by the evil ICANN empire of greedy corporations.

Hauben's History of the Internet " A New Communication Paradigm " is something everybody should read, who wants to keep the greatest communications medium of all time free from the greedy corporations.

Top Level Domain Suggestions is my own contribution of ideas for non-corporate, non-tyrannical Internet governance. For instance, a .jam TLD would serve the double purpose of providing a home for jamming musicians and for manufacturers of fruit preserves.

There was just one such study, and that involved the German Wikipedia. It was matched against the German Encarta and Brockhaus (which is essentially the German equivalend of Britannica), with subject experts evaluating 66 articles whose topics had been blindly chosen beforehand. Wikipedia won based on article quality (though not on multimedia and presentation). Further details here.