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Actually, I don't know what this is. Is it a secret project?

With a quick google search, you can find a number of references to the use of spintronics for disk drive heads. Here are just a couple.

Here is something from 1999:

MAGNETOELECTRONICS, SPIN ELECTRONICS, AND SPINTRONICS are different names for the same thing: the use of electrons' spins (not just their electrical charge) in information circuits. One magnetoelectronic device is the magnetic hard drive based on the giant magnetoresistance (GMR) effect. In a GMR material, consisting of a stack of alternating layers of magnetic and nonmagnetic atoms, a small magnetic field can produce a large change in electrical resistance. Already a billion dollar business, GMR read heads will boost disk drive densities from 1 to 20 Gbits, and GMR might be incorporated into random access memory units as well (Gary Prinz, Science, 27 Nov 1998). The latest demonstration of spin versatility is the organized movement of a herd of spins over a lateral distance of 100 microns. In an experiment at UC Santa Barbara, David Awschalom first aligned the spins of a swarm of electrons and then nudged them across a semiconductor strip without the spin bunch falling apart. Such coherence will be necessary if spin currents are to transport information from place to place, particularly in quantum computers. (Nature, 14 Jan 1999.)

And this is from 2003, or at least, last updated in 2003:

A new approach to electronics, called 'spintronics' ( a short for spin electronics), is now emerging, and it is based on the up and down spin of the charge carrier rather than on electrons and holes as in traditional semiconductor electronics. Spintronics, also called magnetoelectronics including all the electronic devices where ferromagnetic thin films play an essential role, is today one of the most rapidly growing fields in electronics. A recent example of a rapid transition from discovery to commercialization in spintronics is the giant magnetoresistance effect (GMR), as applied to magnetic information storage. Although the first commercial product using GMR ( a magnetic field sensor) was available in 1994, the first products to have economic impact are read heads for magnetic hard disk drives, which were announced by IBM in 1997. The market for these products is estimated to be on the order of $1 billion per year and will increase the storage on a disk drive from 1 to 20 gigabits, merely by the incorporation of the new GMR materials.

I'm sure someone will manage to get it running some flavour of Linux. In the mean time, I'll be happy to run Contiki on my real C64 - unless someone can come up with a linux-distro for it that is.

If this 'new C64' turns out to be naught more than a reasonable standard PC bundled with an emulator and some repackaged software, porting Linux to it should be as hard as placing the Knoppix CD in the drive and booting it up...

Personaly, I would think it would be great if they brought back to life some of the old hardware - the VIC was an interesting grapichscontroller with it's independent sprites, and the SID could make music like no chip has before or after.

If you're a youngster and wish to learn more about one of the most influential micros in the early 80's, you may want to look at Marko Mäkelä 8-bit server. His document page is a treasure in it's own right.

I'm sure someone will manage to get it running some flavour of Linux. In the mean time, I'll be happy to run Contiki on my real C64 - unless someone can come up with a linux-distro for it that is.

If this 'new C64' turns out to be naught more than a reasonable standard PC bundled with an emulator and some repackaged software, porting Linux to it should be as hard as placing the Knoppix CD in the drive and booting it up...

Personaly, I would think it would be great if they brought back to life some of the old hardware - the VIC was an interesting grapichscontroller with it's independent sprites, and the SID could make music like no chip has before or after.

If you're a youngster and wish to learn more about one of the most influential micros in the early 80's, you may want to look at Marko Mäkelä 8-bit server. His document page is a treasure in it's own right.

A while back, MozillaZine ran Mozilla being used at universities.

Houston, MIT, Durham, Cambridge and The Helsinki University of Technology all use Mozilla in one form or another.

is right here! Seeing how you have all these browsers, run them against this suite, and see how they faire. Nothing like the fresh scent of google.

In regards to plain text/personal information -- have you thought about looking at Bayesian filtering for a solution to that? I haven't (yet) but the idea is festering in my brain.

Bayesian filtering is another of those words that mean a lot of things ;)
Nowadays it is usually used in reference to the techniques used for spam-filtering, which is a very specific task. Classification: Spam / Not Spam. Basically everything that uses the bayesian view on statistics can be considered a bayesian method, without considering the underlying model. In other words for many statistical models it is possible to derive bayesian optimization schemes (or "learning rules").
A widely used set of language models are the Hidden Markov Models. I'm planning to use them on an information extraction problem (populating database tables from free-text descriptions), and that's about the closest to the problem we're discussing that I've been. You could probably use them as a partial solution here as well, but I can't think of any really clever scheme at the moment.

For personal information one would like to have something that clusters the data into different categories. There are lots of methods for this. One I'm familiar with is Self Organizing Maps (an example paper about them).

And finally, sorry to be boring, but I'm not currently working on anything that would create something like the system we've discussed =)

I know, I shouldn't reply to my own posts...but I missed out a critical number. It should have been "Liquid helium 3", it's the isotope of mass 3 that does it. See this Finnish site for more than you ever wanted to know on the subject.

• U4 for PC
• Graphics Upgrade
• Sound Upgrade
• Quick Reference

Actually, synapses are the only thing in there. What we can't figure out is what they are computing. The brain is a massive parallel processor. the arguments in the field rest on the nature and instantiation of the computational processes and representations employed in cognition.

AI is trying to model the computational level of cognition, not the physical system. There have been many successful models of low level neural architecture, such as this .

Synapses really are the only thing going on in there, but those synapses are part of a body, which is a big, wet parallel processor

joe,killed by a wraith called joe, while helpless

When using parallel port all you need is the leds and some resistors. I made this for my firewall box. At the moment it is showing the transmit speed of ETH0 by cycling the leds. And here is some good info for parallel port projects..

* RealDolls

You'll only get one from a geek who gets married. Sometimes not even then. Not Surplus

* Commodore 64s

Make nice web servers. Not surplus.

* Brain Transplants

There could never be enough to provide governments with brains - sorry. Not surplus.

* Bending Unit

Hey, my unit "bends", and the wife likes it that way. Most definately not surplus.

* Condoms

Well, maybe some of the geeks around here have those.

* Beer

???? Surplus beer? Never. I'm Canadian.

* Slashdot Coders

OK. Slashdot "Speel Chekers", duplicate catchers and editors who catch dupes are needed, not more
coders - I'll give you that one. But I doubt they're very interesting, so maybe not.

* Windows NT 3.5.1 Licenses

There was, as far as I'm concerned, a surplus once production of those things went above zero units. Interesting? Nope.

Hmmmm - 1 for 8. You need to improve big time, bud.

Soko

I hadn't heard of either technique

As far as SOM stuff, Kohonen is the man.

There are indeed many things that can be done with SOMs, but to get really good, human-like, results is quite difficult. The problem expands when you need to consider different words for the same thing (e.g., cat/feline), and exclude words that appear identical, but aren't. Then the need to consider context becomes increasingly important (e.g., this article is not about cats). The complexity builds quite quickly.

That's a joke, but if you want a colorful graphical version, try out Falcon's Eye.

Games with full-screen character graphics are called "roguelike", after the 1980's game "rogue". IMHO, they're much deeper than most modern so-called RPGs.

Some of my favorites are angband, mangband, slashem and omega.

For general information, try this or that.

1. Bring Nethack to today when it comes to graphics and sound

Have you seen Falcon's Eye?

Researchers at Helsinki University of Technology have reached
100 billionths above zero Kelvin, which is even less than the record made in Brighton.

But the fact is, as long as something is illegal, and there is money to be gained by enforcing the prohibition, America will find a way.

(Regarding 802.11b WiFi in coffee shops, there's many ways you might be tracked: if it's a paid-access arrangement, then they probably have your credit card. Or your Starbucks-Saver card, or whatever. Or the Feds can require that the MAC addresses of users be logged for some period- and begin to outlaw software which modifies the effective access. Steps like that would be a blow to free software as well)

The only really good strategy for keeping P2P transfers possible is to make them legal. Fighting to reduce the power of copyright is the way to start.

(Encouraging the developement of a safe, reliable micropayment system is an alternative approach, as it might provide an alternative economic model for the RIAA)

The creek near your house might be better put to use as a hydroelectric generator.

Biological fuel cells have been around for a long time. The ones we built in high school used yeast.

Here is more information on Desulfuromonas acetoxidans. You can buy pure cultures here.

An article with more information (didn't Hemos ask?) is here.

Let's see...

CGA already did composite out, so believing VGA to composite could be done cheaply isn't very hard. In fact, with some tweaking of the card's clock rates (to something _less_) you can get pretty close to TV-Out without massively expensive electronics (even for then).

Next, how much is an external back-pack CD-ROM of now? About $200. A regular CD-ROM? $30. Difference in price? Over 6 times.

Dividing $1200 by 6 we get... $200. Now, I know that CD-ROMs were never that cheap then, but they certainly weren't all that overpriced!

Think again.

I was pleasantly suprised to find there was a Windows port, so I could finally wrestle my Linux box back from them, although they keep insisting on playing Frozen Bubble, but mostly Rocks and Diamonds.

One of the great things about Rogue (read: NetHack) was that it gave *nix a unified way of talking with various and diverse terminals.

It's not much, but it's a sig.

> Anybody know what NetHack's relation to Rogue is? The games are incredibly similar.

Basic answer here and here. You should be able to find more by googling for roguelike.

This should explain it (if it isn't /.'d first).

[Might be redundant, haven't read all the comments.]

Another Finnish project, a sauna in a Volkswagen kleinbus.

The vehicle belongs to the car club of the student union at the Helsinki University of Technology.

[Might be redundant, haven't read all the comments.]

Another Finnish project, a sauna in a Volkswagen kleinbus.

The vehicle belongs to the car club of the student union at the Helsinki University of Technology.

[Might be redundant, haven't read all the comments.]

Another Finnish project, a sauna in a Volkswagen kleinbus.

The vehicle belongs to the car club of the student union at the Helsinki University of Technology.

[Might be redundant, haven't read all the comments.]

Another Finnish project, a sauna in a Volkswagen kleinbus.

The vehicle belongs to the car club of the student union at the Helsinki University of Technology.

This doesn't move alone, but is certainly mobile, and has been in reasonably active use around the HUT campus for a decade or so, and sometimes a bit further. The page is in Finnish but the pictures are good...
Sauna-Auto

Given the qualifications and history of Ken Biba listed in the article

Biba started in security and networking R&D 30 years ago with Mitre Corp. and was a member of the Advanced Research Projects Agency Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) Working Group

I wonder if he is the same Ken Biba that worked on/devised Mandatory Access Control (MAC) and the Biba Integrity Model.

There is a good description of MAC here, and an explanation of the Biba Integrity Model here.

The principle is simple, because the TV is just a fixed frequency monitor that takes RGB and timing signals. The circuit only converts the timings. This means a little extra work on the software side, as you have to configure X for the TV's resolution and frequency. Unfortunately some video boards (such as mine) have a lower limit on the frequency and the circuit won't work well. Otherwise it might be worth the hack :-)

I wanted a definitive answer. You quoted one answer, DeadVulcan quoted another.

And here's another.

To be honest, I was more interested in the second question, which no one seems to have commented on, but to be truthful, it's not really that important. Why it got 19 mods is beyond me. B)

Accuse me of FUD all you want, but examine the evidence for yourself.

Exhibit A
Win NT beats Windows 2000 in SQL Server 7 Benchmarks
What? The new O/S is slower? Must be FUD, doesn't have anything to do with bloated code and forcing users into hardware upgrades.

Exhibit B
Red Hat/Samba far outscales Windows 2000 on identical hardware
Yes your honor, it's true, at a load level of 16 clients Windows 2000 filesystem throughput flat lines vs. Red Hat Linux with Samba which is still scaling up nicely with 28 clients.

Does Windows 2000 mask the true power of the Intel hardware? Examine the report and look at the benchmark graphs. Decide for yourself if it's FUD or FACT. Note: the source is PC Magazine which if you will refer to this months copy contains many advertisements for Microsoft .NET .. Looks like PC Mag has some integrity.

Shall I continue?
Want to see why TUX stomps IIS and Apache for serving static content?
I challenge you to find the FUD in any of this. In fact, many of you might wish to save these links for future TCO discussions within your local IT departments.

PROVE ME WRONG!!!! Show me how Microsoft is doing it faster and better compared to either a) A Previous Microsoft Server Product, or b) Linux. Wave your hands and shout FUD all you want, but be prepared to back it up.

I wish someone would back me up! :)

As for my 486, I wrote a user mode driver which allows me to access the data pins on the parallel port to activate a relay and ultimately switch A/C power. (Web page coming soon.) This device can be used to remotely reboot Windows servers that BSOD, or turn on Christmas Lights add/or Coffee Pots via cron or telnet. Did I mention it all fits on a floppy, runs on a 486, and is network accessible? I am trying to shoe-horn a webserver onto the floppy now.

Depending on what is the field you would like to specialize in, think about studying abroad. For example, I have heard that studying in Finland in HUT or TUT for example might be a major boost both for your skills and employment opportunities especially if you plan to specialize in wireless stuff. (Why? Much of it originates from Nokia)

I thought the world was on the backs of four elephants then a turtle.

For those who are not familiar this is a Terry Pratchett thing.

Actually, it's an old myth that's existed in some shape or form in almost every culture. The closest one is the Hindu myth, where "we find the idea of a lotus flower growing out of Vishnu's navel. Swimming in a pool in the lotus flower is the world turtle, on whose back stand four elephants facing in the four compass directions. On their backs is balanced the flat, disc-shaped world." (The Turtle Moves)

It's this old belief that inspired Terry Pratchett to come up with Discworld, which is "a geological pizza (only without the anchovies) on the back of a starturtle, called Great A'Tuin (sex unknown). The disc itself sits on the back on 4 elephants who stand on Great A'Tuin's meteor pocked shell. Occasionally one of them has to cock its leg to allow the sun to pass." (Turtles All the Way Down)

Why wait for DVD-player's to get features you need? We're building a DVD player with my friend which can do DVD, VCD, DIVX, OGG, MP3.. actually everything xine can. And it has 132X64 graphical lcd, custom joystick for buttons, remote control, hard drive, possibly net access for cddb and streaming video and audio. Most of you probably say "nay, this bloke's just another troll or something", well go check out pics

how about an isometric view with 3d rendered characters instead ?

nethack - falcon's eye

feature list (with screenshots) (be gentle, it looks like a personal server)

These users is the reason to why Apple has been able to survive the late 80s and early 90s when the x86 ran away from then performance wise.

It is fun to notice all these little fanatic communities for all old computers: Atari, Amiga, ABC80, Spectrum, C64...

It is nice to see that some of us aren't here just for performance and the latest games!

Someone's already working on it, but their site hasn't been updated since March. I tried it once, I guess I'm not enough of a Nethack fan to appreciate it.

I'm not too familiar with VMS, but Linux can and IRIX might (not support is mentioned for it) be able to use the pam_ldap/nss_ldap modules from padl.com to authenticate against Active Directory. IIRC, this requires SFU, but I could be wrong. There is a document about it in the tarball for nss_ldap.

Here's some links to Linux/AD integration from padl.com's doc section:

Active Directory and Linux

Linux-AD Integration

Active Directory and nss_ldap

/pointer

And don't forget to try Nethack - Falcon's Eye.

Pretty hilarious :) Wonder if that book collection is protected...

Speaking of nethack... here's a graphical version: http://www.hut.fi/~jtpelto2/nethack.html

Nethack has been brought to a level Quake fans might enjoy. Well, maybe not.

I want to do a nice little page, and do it in XHTML because it's The Way Of The Future (or I want to display a little math, which only XHTML+MathML allows without resorting to ugly inline images). The tag soup itself isn't a problem, I just close all my tags and make sure the doctype declaration says XHTML instead of HTML, as prescribed by the standard.

However, is this enough? The document is now XML, and therefore should have a <?xml declaration, if only to specify its encoding. Except that said XHTML standard says it is optional if the encoding is UTF-8 or UTF-16, or has been otherwise determined (think HTTP headers), which contradicts the XML standard, sec. 4.3.3, the last two paragraphs, one which says that no declaration and no other information means mandatory UTF-8, and the next one "It is also a fatal error if an XML entity contains no encoding declaration and its content is not legal UTF-8 or UTF-16."

So I need a declaration no matter what. But according to this page about the different layout modes in current browsers, MSIE will react to an XML declaration by switching to "quirks" mode, which is precisely what I wants to avoid by sticking to the standards... And I wouldn't want to lock out 85% of WWW users, wouldn't I?

But wait, this is only if the page was served with a text/html content-type. The right answer would then be to use the standard content-type for XML/XHTML... which should be application/xhtml+xml! Yes, "application"! Now if I use that content-type, all browsers I have at my disposal except Mozilla (MSIE5, Konqueror, Links, Lynx...) either consider the page an application and offer to save it to disk, or display it as-is! Same with the second-best, text/xml.

Okay, am I the only one experiencing this? Any point in not using good-ol' HTML4 and avoid doing (yet another kind of) horrible bugware?

Sure they do, I bet every university out there has a course on practical computer security. Should be, at least. My university's is here, probably not very interesting though since it's in Finnish. Basically first you choose a topic which can be from cracking DES to hijacking TCP session to hacking into WWW/FTP/DNS/NFS server. Then you make a written plan then you do the hack (within the lab network :) and then you get a grade.

Sure they do, I bet every university out there has a course on practical computer security. Should be, at least. My university's is here, probably not very interesting though since it's in Finnish. Basically first you choose a topic which can be from cracking DES to hijacking TCP session to hacking into WWW/FTP/DNS/NFS server. Then you make a written plan then you do the hack (within the lab network :) and then you get a grade.

Do you think it will spell an end to D&D ?

Oh, you mean will D&D software survive. That has nothing to do WotC. They only control things that are called D&D. Example:

A long time ago a undergrad name Michael Toy used the D&D fighting system and monster stats to create a Curses game called Rogue, the predecessor to NetHack. (Ignore Glenn Wichmann -- he's a legend in his own mind.) TSR didn't care for this, of course, and sicced their lawyers on him. The only result was that all the names got changed to non-D&D things. Which was actually an improvement -- there's no place in the D&D universe for my own favorite player character, the Tourist

Bottom line -- you don't need the media monopolies to play games, any more than you need them to make music. Pity about Farscape though.

Telecommunications software and multimedia laboratory of my school, Helsinki University of Technology organized this this kind of course back in year 1999. It was the first and the last time it was organized. The reason why they removed it, that I don't know. Maybe subject wasn't sexy enough back then. But it's a real shame I have no possibility to attend a course like that. Actually, maybe I hold a petition among friends and mail the professor who lead the '99 course and request the course to be added to selection :) Actually, the homepage of the course is still online (in Finnish) as is the course material which is partly in English. Material covers corresponding EU directives and Finnish national legislation.

Telecommunications software and multimedia laboratory of my school, Helsinki University of Technology organized this this kind of course back in year 1999. It was the first and the last time it was organized. The reason why they removed it, that I don't know. Maybe subject wasn't sexy enough back then. But it's a real shame I have no possibility to attend a course like that. Actually, maybe I hold a petition among friends and mail the professor who lead the '99 course and request the course to be added to selection :) Actually, the homepage of the course is still online (in Finnish) as is the course material which is partly in English. Material covers corresponding EU directives and Finnish national legislation.

Telecommunications software and multimedia laboratory of my school, Helsinki University of Technology organized this this kind of course back in year 1999. It was the first and the last time it was organized. The reason why they removed it, that I don't know. Maybe subject wasn't sexy enough back then. But it's a real shame I have no possibility to attend a course like that. Actually, maybe I hold a petition among friends and mail the professor who lead the '99 course and request the course to be added to selection :) Actually, the homepage of the course is still online (in Finnish) as is the course material which is partly in English. Material covers corresponding EU directives and Finnish national legislation.