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I can conclusively prove that researching the effects of violent video games on children make the researchers stupider.
My evidence? http://www.news.iastate.edu/news/2010/mar/vvgeffects

Your lack of confidence in the nuclear option is... misguided.

http://www.aere.iastate.edu/no_cache/events-seminars/article/article/2806/2506.html

When scientists talk about using nukes to move asteroids, they are usually talking about using the enormous heat and other radiation from the blast to ablate one side of the asteroid; this will cause the asteroid to move in the opposite direction (per newton's third law).

-b

But, if you're looking for HAL, you have another 2001 years to wait. Nobody seriously is working toward that, except as a dream goal. Everybody wants a better prediction model for the stock market first.

Computational Perception and Developmental Robotics are a strong undertone in computer engineering courses at ISU. I don't know about other schools, but a HAL like computer is much less than a "dream goal". I can say without a doubt that it something similar will be engineered in much less than 2001 years. Technological growth is speeding up nearly exponentially(steam engine, combustion engine, flight, electricity, moonwalk) I'm sure everyone has heard the spiel. http://www.ece.iastate.edu/~alexs/dissertation/dissertation.pdf Asst Professor at ISU, Alex Stoytchev's dissertation focuses specifically on building a system of robotic learning, commonly called "Developmental Robotics". While his robot only had the ability to categorize objects based on resonance sound and mass, it still shows that fundamental building blocks for a one day "HAL" are already in existence.

It is high, but not out of the range of reality. Converting to units that I understand, I get 9 gallons of fuel per acre, assuming that he's talking about CO2, rather than carbon. That's got to be the total emissions per acre, rather than just for one or two operations, like discing his fields. And maybe his fuel calculation includes the fertilization that he's not doing anymore??? He is using a sizable machine, though. Maybe the number accounts for his total fuel consumption for a year's production.

It's been years since I worked on farms as a boy, and my memory has never been as good as the farmers that I worked for, so I spent some time with google after I wrote the preceding paragraph. The University of Iowa suggests that corn, a particularly fuel-intensive crop shouldn't need more than 5-6 gallons of fuel per acre. Also look to the University of Illinois for a shorter discussion.

I just can't get to 9 gal/ac, but maybe the farmer had an extra can of Fosters that day, or maybe he just wants to feel good about what he's doing.

(I used, 2.23 lb/kilo, 2.47 ac/ha, 22 lb CO2/gal diesel. Let me know if I've screwed up somewhere. 1.1 kg/ha, as suggested below, is low by more than two orders of magnitude, by the way.)/p>

Energy companies won't develop them because of the large financial risk and paranoid regulatory environment and lack of a clear payoff. Governments won't step in because any nuclear reactor is seen as evil by the green fanatics and seen as threatening by the coal companies.

Assumptions:
- They can actually generate 20,000 gallons per acre per year
- 1 gallon of biofuel will get you the same mileage as 1 gallon of gasoline

US gasoline usage = 378,000,000 gallons/day = 137,970,000,000 gallons/year
Source: http://www.eia.doe.gov/basics/quickoil.html

Area needed: 137,970,000,000 gallons/year / 20,000 gallons/acre/year = 6,898,500 acres = 10,779 sq.mi.

Comparative area: Massachusetts is 10,555 sq.mi.

So, we'd need an area slightly larger than MA to generate the needed biofuel. This may seem like alot, but...

Farmland in US: 922,095,840 acres = 1,440,774 sq. mi.
Source: http://www.ers.usda.gov/StateFacts/US.htm

Percent farmland to convert to biofuel: 10,555 sq. mi. / 1,440,774 sq. mi. = 0.73%

This isn't much, if you ask me.

Now, for the financial incentive to do so:

Value of 20,000 gallons of biofuel at $50/barrel: 20,000 gallons = 476 barrels * $50/barrel = $23,000

Corn yield of one acre: 162 bushels/acres (Iowa)
Source: http://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/crops/pdf/a1-14.pdf

Value of 162 bushels of corn: 162 bushels * $4.77/bushel (Estimated 2008 Calendar Year Average) = $772.74
Source: http://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/crops/pdf/a2-11.pdf

So, converting one acre of corn farmland to one acre of biofuel farmland will increase the revenue from $773 to $23,000, a nearly 30-fold increase.

So, this looks like it might be worth it depending on the cost of conversion and cost versus revenue. It'll certainly be interesting to watch.

Assumptions:
- They can actually generate 20,000 gallons per acre per year
- 1 gallon of biofuel will get you the same mileage as 1 gallon of gasoline

US gasoline usage = 378,000,000 gallons/day = 137,970,000,000 gallons/year
Source: http://www.eia.doe.gov/basics/quickoil.html

Area needed: 137,970,000,000 gallons/year / 20,000 gallons/acre/year = 6,898,500 acres = 10,779 sq.mi.

Comparative area: Massachusetts is 10,555 sq.mi.

So, we'd need an area slightly larger than MA to generate the needed biofuel. This may seem like alot, but...

Farmland in US: 922,095,840 acres = 1,440,774 sq. mi.
Source: http://www.ers.usda.gov/StateFacts/US.htm

Percent farmland to convert to biofuel: 10,555 sq. mi. / 1,440,774 sq. mi. = 0.73%

This isn't much, if you ask me.

Now, for the financial incentive to do so:

Value of 20,000 gallons of biofuel at $50/barrel: 20,000 gallons = 476 barrels * $50/barrel = $23,000

Corn yield of one acre: 162 bushels/acres (Iowa)
Source: http://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/crops/pdf/a1-14.pdf

Value of 162 bushels of corn: 162 bushels * $4.77/bushel (Estimated 2008 Calendar Year Average) = $772.74
Source: http://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/crops/pdf/a2-11.pdf

So, converting one acre of corn farmland to one acre of biofuel farmland will increase the revenue from $773 to $23,000, a nearly 30-fold increase.

So, this looks like it might be worth it depending on the cost of conversion and cost versus revenue. It'll certainly be interesting to watch.

Or eubonic's code, allegedly a runnable language:

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~crb002/prog.html

Sample:

sup
{
    gimme x bitch
    slongas (x aintlike 1)
        if ((x videdby 2) time 2 sameas x)
            x be x videdby 2 bitch
        ifitaint
            x be x time 3 an 1 bitch
        fi
        putou x bitch
    nomo
}

You are exactly correct. Hand made "impractical" instruments fell out of fashion in the mid 1700's en masse for the beginnings of mass manufactured instruments. People would have replaced this with trumpets or coronets. Which were newer and more standard. What you see is a trend from 4-6 piece "chamber" or "folk" music to something that looks like the modern orchestra. In folk music handmade instruments and the "flaws" of instrument and player are features that make live performances better. In large groups you want to minimize individual players to have the group play as one "instrument".

I'm getting into middle ages instruments [a good guide is here: http://www.music.iastate.edu/antiqua/instrumt.html%5D And most of the list is woodwind or string. You can see the take over of strings because they are compact, portable (like another poster below mentions) and they are easily tuned to match each other. About the time the time lituus was lost brass instruments became affordable to produce nearly identical copies of and could be played in tune like Trombones, or tuned with sliders like trumpets and tubas. Why keep a single purpose non-tunable horn?

There's nothing like hearing music played on the instruments it was written to be played on. When listening to old music it helps put you in the mood the people then would have been in. It may not be the best thing now, but it was the best they had then.

Of course, the most popular music now is the 4-6 piece "rock" band. Drums, keyboard, and some number of guitars is the "standard" pop music right now. [much like violin, viola, cello, and bass in the 1600's] The core needed instruments of even the Rolling Stones fit in the back of Mom's minivan. We (ok not slashdotters, but other we) go to rock concerts because they play to the audience, even though their CDs are technically better and more polished we like to be there to watch and the artists do different things depending on the crowd.

I have been looking for formal academic training in computing security for quite some time.

Try Iowa State University's program. It is one of the charter schools under a 1994 act signed by former President Clinton to do research and training in this area. The school has an excellent program (I actually attended it) with some good research going on, as well as very good formal courses. It's not just CISSP stuff or competitions, although the school does very well in competitions as well and hosts some of its own (and ISU undergraduate team also just won a major hardware hacking competition, beating out many prestigious schools). Personally, I'm very glad I attended ISU and studied in their security program, because it has made me a much better developer.

The PiSight HMD promises 187 degrees horizontal and 84 degrees vertical FOV by tiling DLP chips. I have yet to see it myself, but the units start somewhere around $20K and go up depending on how much FOV you want). 1900x1200 per eye (kind of low, but higher than anything out there).

The problem to solve with HMDs is not just field of view or resolution--you also need to solve the convergence and accommodation problems.

I envision a future HMD unit integrating eye tracking and auto focus which exploits the way the human eye really sees (few degrees at a time, in extremely high resolution) instead of trying to render a very high resolution image at interactive frame rates. I imagine the fact that this has not been built is due to the catch-22 involving low demand and high cost [when only the military can afford your hardware and is willing to pay for it, there is absolutely NO incentive to mass produce it]

In the meantime, the state of the art in VR is still in systems like the CAVE. I think the Iowa State VRAC CAVE has something amazing like 16 Mpixel resolution...

I am waiting for one of the game companies to start exploiting this. In the meantime, get yourself a pair of NuVision Cinema LCD shutter glasses (around $100), a $500 emitter, and a DLP 3DTV device for under $3000 if you are serious about home-based VR. If you can drive the 3DTV device (NVidia is releasing drivers for it ... there is also hardware available from RealD), the quality is stunning. (You're on your own with head tracking...but there are cheap solutions out there such as the WiiMote based hacks...I've only used the more expensive solutions).

Wait, a Craig Anderson cronie finds something bad about videogames? That's amazing!

There's no story here. Gentile has published lots of papers with Craig Anderson (here is Gentile's list of publications http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/~dgentile/publications.htm ). Anderson has never met a form of media that didn't have negative effects. This is like Jack Thompson saying videogames are murder simulators.

Data is more unlimited than water because we completely control its distribution. Water is plentiful in Chicago, for example, because it's directly next to a huge freshwater lake. In Los Angeles or Phoenix it's a much more complicated story. The middle of the US relies almost entirely on the Ogallala Aquifer, with attendant problems. Even the U.S. Southeast, which is a traditionally wet "humid subtropical" climate zone, has had a decade or so of rather severe drought-related problems. Water requires treatment; it requires physical plant; it requires nontrivial connections to every single portion of a city; it's a necessity; and a single point of failure can cause pressure loss over a wide area resulting in a very expensive repair. Bandwidth has none of these issues. It's limited only by the amount of cable the ISP is willing to run, and their hardware. Nothing as complex as aquifer physics is involved.

Now, obviously one big difference between deciding if the right suspect has been identified in a lineup, and deciding whether an image constitutes child pornography, is that the question of a suspect's identity in a lineup is a question about objective reality, while the question of whether an image is "child pornography" is a matter of opinion and consensus about an imprecisely defined English phrase _______________________________________________ Objective reality? Hardly...Anyone ever read about the failings of "eyewitness testimony"? Often there is no better convincing evidence than the crying victim dramatically pointing to the defendant and saying "That's who raped me (or what have you)." Dr.Gary Wells has been studying eyewitness testimony for the past 20 years or so (and I saw him on 60 minutes in an (I'm told) rerun of a segment on it, but I digress), and basically said it is highly influenced by outside influences because of how memory works: A lot of people think it's like a tape, and you press record. That's untrue. It's a procedural, systematic building block that leads to whatever memory and such is available (For more on it, visit http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/faculty/gwells/homepage.htm) On the actual case itself: This judge is clearly a Moral Guardian (in the most literal sense of the word) and is blinded by emotion and the "For The Children (tm)" argument. It's despicable to be honest.

> Agricultural production -- we're still one of the strongest, if not the strongest, in the world.

Oh please. US agriculture has been receiving aids for decades. http://www.card.iastate.edu/iowa_ag_review/summer_04/article3.aspx

A few months ago I asked the aging Bob Johnson -- former CTO of Burroughs Corporation when it was a leading mainframe company in Minneapolis where he developed the magnetic ink you see on the bottom of your checks -- what he thought caused the loss of the Midwestern high tech leadership to the coasts, and he said it was the financial dominance of the coasts.

That squares with what I observed while at Control Data Corporation/Cray Research, Inc -- midwestern companies that invented the supercomputer.

The reason Bill Norris and Seymour Cray were able to start CDC thence Cray Research was because they violated SEC regs and went around selling stock at PTA meetings, making a lot of middle class people retire very comfortably. My late father bought some Cray stock early on which helped greatly with his retirement.

When I was at CDC in Arden Hills, MN attempting to deploy the mass market version of the PLATO network with Internet-like capabilities (the system that Ray Ozzie (Bill Gates' replacement at Microsoft) cut his teeth on) in 1980 the primary resistance was from a middle management that, due to the financial press' hostility toward Norris's vision of a society disintermediated by computer networking, small high-tech farms and locally produced and consumed essentialsâ"had itself grown hostile to Norris.

My proposed solution is simple to state but will perhaps require a war to institute:

Replace all taxes on economic activity with a tax on net-assets, assessed at their in-place liquidation value, at the risk free interest rate (which according to modern portfolio theory is the short-term US Treasury rate) so as to extract all economic rents from the private sector, and then, to prevent public sector rent-seeking in pork-barrel politics, disperse those funds evenly in a dividend to all citizens, as the beneficiaries of the land-trust called the United States.

That will not only stop the vicious centralization of power in the private and public sectors, but it will clarify the role of immigrationâ"it is a dilution of the benefits intended for the Posterity of the Founders of the land trust called The United States of America.

This guy has been presenting this research as "New" since 1987....
http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/faculty/caa/abstracts/2000-2004/00senate.pdf
The link above is a transcript to the Senate hearing back in 2000 regarding this study. If you read the 1987 study, the 2000 study and this "New" study you'll find the methods are all almost exactly the same. So the study and the results are anything but new. Also, the roll of the parents, the test subject's home situation and their family histories are almost completely ignored in these studies. If you honestly think the influence of daddy beating the tar out of mommy can be overshadowed by the influence of Gordon Freeman waxing genetically mutated demons from an alternate reality on a TV screen.... I'm sorry to say, you should never be a parent. Give your kids up for adoption right now. Even if they're 16 years old... give them to someone else. There is still a chance you won't have fucked them up completely.
The reason this shit is so annoying isn't because we know it's bogus... it's because supposedly reputable news organizations like CNN continue to treat us like we're retarded and have the memory capacity of a comatose, lobotomized two year old with ADD.

I used to do work study for some of the folks working with the GLAST project at Iowa State University their website is here and has some more information about Gamma Ray Astrophysics.

Why not link to the official Fermi (GLAST) websites directly www-glast.stanford.edu and http://glast.gsfc.nasa.gov/, instead of linking to an institution who has not contributed significantly to GLAST?

Btw, I used to work with GLAST.

I used to do work study for some of the folks working with the GLAST project at Iowa State University their website is here and has some more information about Gamma Ray Astrophysics.

The great minds are pooling together to save us from impending doom...

Engineering researcher seeks answers to asteroid deflection

Here...
Coverage of Sol Invictus

Running into brake problems...
http://www.me.iastate.edu/index.php?id=6082

Here...
Coverage of Sol Invictus

Running into brake problems...
http://www.me.iastate.edu/index.php?id=6082

Here...
www.engineering.iastate.edu/news/news-article/article/1815/5828.html

Footage from their brake failure...
http://www.me.iastate.edu/index.php?id=6082

Here...
www.engineering.iastate.edu/news/news-article/article/1815/5828.html

Footage from their brake failure...
http://www.me.iastate.edu/index.php?id=6082

I'm talking about the energy inputs into "modern" farming. You can change toxicity by juggling a few atoms around, but there's no getting around the energy inputs into a physical process. Ammonia for fertilizer is made from natural gas at the rate of 33.5 MMBTU per ton. Nitrogen fertilizer is the second highest cost of growing corn after rent for land, and that's before prices for fertilizer nearly doubled. It's easy to say we'll just pay more if that's what it costs. 75 cents of fertilizer for a bushel of corn may not sound like much when you're buying corn at retail, but for an industrial scale buyer of corn like a cattle feedlot that's real money. Then consider that heating and electricity also use natural gas, and we'll get to decide which is worth more to us: food, heat or power. Right now fertilizer doesn't compete for the same natural gas supplies because it's nearly all imported. Domestic gas is too expensive. Ammonia is easy to liquefy compared to methane and is more readily imported than LNG. But don't worry. We're working on LNG terminals and gas-to-liquid plants to exploit remote supplies of gas and push ammonia prices up even more.

Oh yes, we haven't found any other life anywhere else. Given that we can only really look closely at a couple dozen worlds (counting some moons) and we have only actually put probes on less than a handfull of them. There couldn't possibly be life anywhere else in our solar system, let alone the rest of our galaxy or the universe.

Clearly this makes life extremely rare and unlikely to be observed elsewhere.

You are asking about maintenance per ton/mile, and also about carbon requirements? If you are asking about the carbon requirement of maintenance, the answer is simple: Roads are paved with carbon (asphalt), rails are rock, cement/wood ties and steel. Also, the carbon footprint for maintenance of a mode of transport is minuscule when compared to the carbon footprint of that modes use. If you are asking two different things, let me expound. Budget figures exist. Nobody can make a per ton/mile estimate of capital and regular maintenance costs for either truck or rail modes. However, cost per mile estimates do exist. VERY quick Google search would yield the following:

Highway:

South Carolina Department of Transportation Interstate Corridor Plan Fiscal Years 2008-2030:
"In 2008, providing an additional lane in each direction on an
interstate mainline is estimated to cost almost $20 million per mile for design, right of
way acquisition, and construction."

Rail:

On existing rights-of way, rail costs around $2 million per mile per track, so the quad track CSX route down the eastern seaboard is costing $8 million a mile.

The point is, figures exist. At the very least, stroll over to teh Google. If you really want hard numbers, including the data to roughly calculate a ton/mile maintenance figure, start with Trains magazine, which had an industry cost breakdown a few months ago. Then move to the FRA and DOT websites. Ports planners are acutely aware of these issues, and are, perhaps, the most unbiased, since their only objective is moving cargo as quickly and efficiently as possible to and from their ports.

Now, you also asked about carbon requirements. The figures I cited are well-known and heavily vetted. For instance:

http://www.extension.iastate.edu/grain/info/estimatesoffuelconsumption.htm

and a nice, plain, simple graph:
http://www.irpt.net/irpt.nsf/LinksView/EnvironmentalAdvantages?Opendocument

What's that? It seems like figures to me...and they even allow one to make a value judgment about the carbon requirement of rail vs. road.

So I really don't think my claims are so extravagant when they are based on information coming directly from scientific studies. Granted, I am NOT in the biotech industry and do not possess the requisite education to interpret the findings directly. However, to the best of my recollection, these articles were not published in a biased manner against Monsanto specifically. The presentation of the information was not like that, IMO.

The problem is that none of the studies you referred to demonstrate the conclusions implicit in your posts.

The monarch butterfly study (there were actually many), for example, is one of the talking points of anti-GMO groups, but does not apply to field conditions. The studies most likely behind the claims in your posts basically consisted of researchers finding out how much Bt11 corn pollen had to be on the milkweed leaves before butterflies and other lepidoptera feeding on the leaves were adversely affected. The studies (e.g., here or broad overview of the subject here, and a good abstract that directly addresses the initial misunderstanding of the topic here) generally all find negligible, and potential positive impact of Bt11 on monarchs. More comprehensive studies noted correctly that the alternative to Bt11 varieties is broad-spectrum insecticidal sprays that are guaranteed to impact any butterflies in the field. Also, the number of butterflies that actually use cultivated croplands as a habitat has never been determined conclusively, but is known to be relatively low, as clean cultural practices drastically reduce the density of milkweed in croplands vs uncultivated ground, and the much taller corn plants deter butterflies from landing on milkweed in the field.

Similarly with the BGH-1 and dairy cattle: Studies have shown that BGH-1 consumption can raise the incidence of cancer. Monsanto produces rBGH, which is injected into dairy cattle to increase milk yields. Hence, Monsanto increases cancer!... Except not. While I'd rather not get milk from cows injected with rBGH, it's not because of fear of cancer (rather, it's the higher incidence of mastitis = more possible puss in milk.. eww). The milk from cows injected with rBGH does not contain significantly elevated levels of BGH. The variability of BGH in a cow's milk is such that a given cow not on rBGH, on a given week (it varies even for individual cows) can have higher BGH output in its milk than the next cow over that is being dosed with rBGH. If you want to avoid exposure to BGH, you just have to stop drinking cow's milk. Period. Non-rBGH milk will not help you in any way, shape, or form in this regard.

Finally, I've said it a few places before, but the usual portrayal of Percy Schmeiser's case is another example of a massively disingenuous representation of events for several reasons:

1. The issue of GMOs is completely orthogonal. Schmeiser's field would have been just as forfeit if he had used non-GMO Dekalb (a Monsanto brand) lines instead.
2. Whether or not you agree with the ethicality of the PVPA (plant variety protection act of 1970), Schmeiser was in violation of the law, which *everyone* in the plant breeder industry was extremely well aware of (especially by almost 30 years later!). Ignorance of the law is not a legal defense, and, in this case, was not even a plausible explanation.
3. Anyone reading the case, or even an abstract thereof, will note that 'contamination' was absolutely not the cause of his troubles. He deliberately, systematically, and knowingly selected for Monsanto's varieties.

Monsanto's reaction was unnecessarily brutal, but he was absolutely not innocent. The best analogy I can think of is a display spilling in front of a shoplifter, who gets caught

The sugars from the corn get converted to ethanol, and the "everything else" is still used as livestock feed.

It looks like the by-product of ethanol is only good for some livestock but not others. If you're not dairy or cattle, you're left in the cold, kind of like Maple Leaf Duck Farms. I found this article to be quite interesting and worth a read.

Look at the courses he teaches. He should know better than to present something like this to the court.

Look at the courses he teaches. He should know better than to present something like this to the court.

Look at the courses he teaches. He should know better than to present something like this to the court.

Am I misremembering, or was he the one who in one deposition that he worked with some company that sold P2P-filtering software that the RIAA is trying to peddle to universities? The RIAA is even trying to turn schools into copyright cops, with the linked story being a Tennessee copy of some federal legislation that would do the same thing. Except that the TN legislation more explicitly threatens their funding if they don't "do something" about student piracy.

Actually, there is time - it's just that most students decide to skip some of the technical classes for an "easy A" class and there are limits to the number of courses that a program can require students to take.

Since students are supposed to expand their horizons, most schools have a limit on how many credits can be required by a specific program. This means programs require their "core" classes and then require students to take 3 out of 5, (or however many, in some sort of pattern), of the other courses they offer. When I went to Iowa State for my undergrad in CS, (late 90s), the program was only 2 credits under the university limit of credits you could require in a program, so they did the "groups" thing which gave students some choice, but also made sure they hit specific areas. The current catalog, showing the required courses and the current groups, can be found here. [Warning: PDF]

So, all the classes you would need to learn "both sides" are generally offered but, by Junior year, most students just want to graduate and get a job, so they take easy courses as their electives instead of more technical, (and usually harder), classes.

http://opensolaris.org/os/project/opengrok/ and http://www.ece.iastate.edu/~zola/glow/ . The latter requires addr2line which is available for linux, but not OSX :(

It isn't a simulation - it's a video game.

Sure, if everything is virtual and has no purpose, then there is no test. However, if we assume that there is a purpose - such as the universe actually being a giant video game then there are ways to test it.

I wrote up a paper on a "Unified Theory of Existence" to demonstrate how to misapply the scientific method that has "proof" that the world is a giant video game. The interesting part is that there is a test that can disprove this hypothesis, so it's science, right? I don't want to give the ending away, so you'll have to read the paper to find out what the test is.

Some keyboard internationalization research I did a few years back:

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~crb002/ie574final.pdf

I bet it kicks their designs all the way to Timbuktu, which isn't too far from Nigeria :)

If you really want tortured logic, you should see the Unified Theory of Existence - it proves that creationism, intelligent design and evolution are only pieces of the puzzle. The truth is much bigger.

http://clue.eng.iastate.edu/ptsldap/

developing nation highways
20 mph difference increases accident risk 3X

Hmmm... Not the same thing, but a link showing that Montana was safer without speedlimits on highways.

As an interesting datapoint:

http://www.ctre.iastate.edu/mtc/papers/2002/Veneziano.pdf

LIDAR equipment in an aircraft had an accuracy in the order of 10cm. Which is about 100 times away from what's needed (1mms-1 to a few percent). GPS is much lower wavelength of course, so would have lower resolution - but i've no idea if that'd have any appreciable affect on attainable accuracy.

Here is a link to the raw movie file:

http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/cases/071002/bore/saylorville_timelapse.mov

and the original youtube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMqhtQyYQzY

This bore was also captured from two other cameras:

Tama, Iowa: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D46eNa5sjok

Indianola, Iowa: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AgVYb4hGBU

I've got the MCE remote running already. Here's my desired setup: Cable -> DCT700 -> PVR500

I know I'll need a second box for the other tuner and that's fine. I'll have to figure out how to get another script working with the second IR port on the receiver instead of the first.Newegg picture for reference.

The script in the link I provided has a lircd.conf for the Comcast remote instead of the MCE remote .conf I'm using. The channel change script is a little more involved than what I need it for since we also have an HD box that we can use for most Comcast needs (on-demand, etc) and the script looks to be heavily tied into the Comcast remote. I went with the script here for the channel change. I then changed the words one, two, ... to 1, 2, ... That is what I hope will work. I'll try it out tonight.

If someone wondering who is it Contact Information: Doug Jacobson 2419 Cover Hall Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering Iowa State University Ames, IA 50011 Telephone: (515) 294-8307 Fax: (515) 294-8432 E-mail: dougj@iastate.edu hompage: http://vulcan.ee.iastate.edu/~dougj/

Agreed. Being a professor does not (and should not, unless reasonable evidence can be presented) automatically qualify a person as an expert witness.

Doug Jacobson's homepage is probably a reasonable indicator of his actual research and qualifications, since they're all listed there. He is a security researcher, but it appears at a glance that his specialty is massed network operations.. I guess at the very least he'd have to know a little bit about TCP/IP, although that isn't necessarily sufficient to prove he is an expert on spoofing, IMHO..

of course, those who i do consider experts in the field would not be allowed anywhere near a case like this.

As one of the principal developers of this technique, I can clarify a few points:

1. 99% of the leak noise escapes into the vacuum on the downstream side of the leak. Thus conventional industrial leak detection devices are much less effective for leaks into vacuum than for leaks into air.

2. The real challenge is the extraction of the leak noise from other noise sources. We do this by recording cross-correlations of noise measured at different locations. Electronic (preamp) noise does not correlate and is rejected. Thus we can get far higher sensitivity than a single sensor.

3. This device uses a piezo sensor with an array of multiplexed electrodes to sense the direction of sound propagation under the sensor. A 3D time-x-y Fourier transform maps the measured correlations from the time/space domain to the frequency/wavevector domain. The wavevector points precisely away from the leak, allowing us to find the leak through triangulation from two or more sensor arrays.

4. For all you Linux fans, this sensor was developed entirely using open-source software. We used Linux with gEDA schematic capture and pcb.sourceforge.net for board layout. Lab measurements are done using the soon-to-be-published open-source Dataguzzler software on Linux x64.

(Contact me for more information about Dataguzzler)

5. One paper on this sensor, published in the journal Ultrasonics, vol 45 (2006) pp 121-126,
can be found at http://thermal.cnde.iastate.edu/~sdh4/home/leakarray.pdf

          Stephen D. Holland
          Assistant Professor, Iowa State University

Just use RubyMPI when I release it next week :)
The power of MPI wrapped in the beauty of Ruby.

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~crb002/

The problem is, how do you know its the parents making that decision?

You don't. And you don't need to. It's none of your business, and most certainly none of the government's.

So, the government is either allowed to make laws in this regard or they are not. You can't say that it's OK to put age restrictions on purchasing arms, which is explicitly guaranteed by the Constitution by NAME, but not on video games, which are not mentioned. And before you say "freedom of speech", the speech the founders were referring to was political speech, as in, you are allowed to criticize the government. Freedom of expression is not mentioned. For that matter, neither is freedom of commerce. The only way a video game can considered free speech is if it's free, as in beer.

Also, here is what Judge Richard A. Posner said:

'Violence has always been and remains a central interest of humankind and a recurrent, even obsessive theme of culture both high and low ... It engages the interest of children from an early age, as anyone familiar with the classic fairy tales collected by Grimm, Andersen, and Perrault are aware. To shield children right up to the age of 18 from exposure to violent descriptions and images would not only be quixotic, but deforming; it would leave them unequipped to cope with the world as we know it.'"

Sounds to me like HE (speaking for the state) is making the final say, not the parents. Do you agree that the state should decide when my children can be exposed to violence?

No, the judge did NOT say that, nor did any of the other judges who shot down these laws. Stop putting words in other people's mouths.
I didn't. I evaluated what the ruling meant. You said that parents have the final say. The result of this law is the exact opposite. Parents do NOT have the final say. The judge himself said parents making that decision would be would not only be quixotic, but deforming; it would leave them unequipped to cope with the world as we know it. Now, if the laws were banning these games completely, he would have a point, but
that was not the case. These laws forced the parents to decide, and he thought parents would over shield their children. That's MY decision, not his!

Unlike you, I comprehended it all. Which is why, for your convenience, I've changed the emphasis to show why it doesn't even approach the conclusiveness you need to be taken seriously on a forum, let alone successfully defend a law in court.
Funny, when I list an article that was written in the '90's, you say it's too old. When I list an article that says the same thing, from 2003, you say it doesn't mean anything. YOU set up the rules by saying that "Rational people do not ignore scientific research". I provided that research. Research, btw, only suggests. Research doesn't "prove", especially when dealing with something as fluid as psychology. For there to be laws in psychology, all people would have to act the same to stimuli, and they don't.
I'm sorry if those with doctorates disagree with what you "think", but a rational person wouldn't let their personal opinions interfere with the years of research that went into these studies.

But, if you don't like my sources, I'll even offer a few more.
HERE (PDF warning)
HERE (update of above, also pdf)
HERE (Last edited 11/9/05)
HERE
and HERE

Of course, there are several more, but a "rational person" would get the idea. Besides, from the looks of the judges

The problem is, how do you know its the parents making that decision?

You don't. And you don't need to. It's none of your business, and most certainly none of the government's.

So, the government is either allowed to make laws in this regard or they are not. You can't say that it's OK to put age restrictions on purchasing arms, which is explicitly guaranteed by the Constitution by NAME, but not on video games, which are not mentioned. And before you say "freedom of speech", the speech the founders were referring to was political speech, as in, you are allowed to criticize the government. Freedom of expression is not mentioned. For that matter, neither is freedom of commerce. The only way a video game can considered free speech is if it's free, as in beer.

Also, here is what Judge Richard A. Posner said:

'Violence has always been and remains a central interest of humankind and a recurrent, even obsessive theme of culture both high and low ... It engages the interest of children from an early age, as anyone familiar with the classic fairy tales collected by Grimm, Andersen, and Perrault are aware. To shield children right up to the age of 18 from exposure to violent descriptions and images would not only be quixotic, but deforming; it would leave them unequipped to cope with the world as we know it.'"

Sounds to me like HE (speaking for the state) is making the final say, not the parents. Do you agree that the state should decide when my children can be exposed to violence?

No, the judge did NOT say that, nor did any of the other judges who shot down these laws. Stop putting words in other people's mouths.
I didn't. I evaluated what the ruling meant. You said that parents have the final say. The result of this law is the exact opposite. Parents do NOT have the final say. The judge himself said parents making that decision would be would not only be quixotic, but deforming; it would leave them unequipped to cope with the world as we know it. Now, if the laws were banning these games completely, he would have a point, but
that was not the case. These laws forced the parents to decide, and he thought parents would over shield their children. That's MY decision, not his!

Unlike you, I comprehended it all. Which is why, for your convenience, I've changed the emphasis to show why it doesn't even approach the conclusiveness you need to be taken seriously on a forum, let alone successfully defend a law in court.
Funny, when I list an article that was written in the '90's, you say it's too old. When I list an article that says the same thing, from 2003, you say it doesn't mean anything. YOU set up the rules by saying that "Rational people do not ignore scientific research". I provided that research. Research, btw, only suggests. Research doesn't "prove", especially when dealing with something as fluid as psychology. For there to be laws in psychology, all people would have to act the same to stimuli, and they don't.
I'm sorry if those with doctorates disagree with what you "think", but a rational person wouldn't let their personal opinions interfere with the years of research that went into these studies.

But, if you don't like my sources, I'll even offer a few more.
HERE (PDF warning)
HERE (update of above, also pdf)
HERE (Last edited 11/9/05)
HERE
and HERE

Of course, there are several more, but a "rational person" would get the idea. Besides, from the looks of the judges

Really? Please name a specific town where the only place to shop or work is Wal-Mart.

I can't remember any specific names but I was specifically thinking of some towns I passed through while on a Greyhound bus in Wyoming. Somebody else on the bus knew someone who lived there and that was pretty much her life.

This phenomenon has been studied and discussed pretty thoroughly, though. Here's a report by an Iowa State University professor from 1997 where they found that small towns lose up to 47 percent of their retail trade once Wal-Mart moves in. (It's a PDF.)