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The blurb on parallel constructs is well said. This has been said on Slashdot before, but with more and more computers getting multicore CPUs, it behooves us to figure out ways to get apps to use multiple threads of execution.

We can do this by multithreading in a single process, which the latest release of PMD does. This is kind of complicated, although using a good concurrency library certainly helps. Or we can separate concerns, like moving the user interface into a separate process like we do with indi. Either way, no sense in leaving CPU power on the table...

These have to be the best winner ever... I'm sure everyone else here wants a virtual flock of 16000 chickens.

as a 'loser in 2007'. This was in their January 2007 Edition. Kind of interesting that Germany has already pulled out. See: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jan07/4842

Of course WiMAX (8026.16e) hardware is not really available yet, but it is too early still. There was a plugfest in 9/2006: http://www.wimaxforum.org/news/downloads/Mobile_Wi MAX_Plugfest_WhitePaper.pdf

Sprint announced they would have trial markets in 2007 and deployments in 2008. Not 2006: http://www2.sprint.com/mr/news_dtl.do?id=12960

The question that Marx raised that is still relevant today is: how do you keep free trade capitalism from devolving into corporate aristocracy? There are no checks and balances, it's a runaway feedback loop. Of course, his proposed solution necessarily leads to dictatorship so that won't work.

A strong court system which is vigirously used serves as the checks and balances. Another is an open market. If they think about it, most people don't think, or know, that Adam Smith was against monopolies including patents. He believed patents stiffle economic activity and that if a person could make and sale something cheaper or better than the inventor could they should be allowed to do so. Personally I disagree with this as I support patents however in today's day and age I would shorten the time patents are enforced. Ths same with copyrights. They are both supposed to encourage creativity and the progress of society, and allowing them to last the life of the patent or copyright holder, never mind until after they've died as copyrights do now, don't encourage creativity, they discourage it if anything. To encourage creativity you want to limit the time these right exists, make them continue to invent or write new things. Long patents also discourage others from making inprovements.

Your use of the "Government granted natural monopolies" is an oxymoron. Natural monopolies are those that aren't granted by the government, but exist because of the very nature of the market.

As many others who use the phrase "natural monopolies", I use it to mean things like how governments granted a monopoly to phone companies, power companies, and broadcasters. Governments gave phone and power conpanies the right of way to lay cables on public as well as private properties. Only one phone or power company is allowed to use the rights of way, if someone else wanted to offer the same service they wouldn't be able to as they can't use the right of way. The same applies to cable operators. Now this could be the big disagreement I may have with some other Libertarians, I'm beginning to think a local organization whether a nonprofit; the government; or the community itself should be who owns the local infrastructure. This would include cable, electrical, and phone lines. But then the owner must allow anybody who wants to, has the expertice and resources to, and has the finances to, will be allowed to offer any and all services the infrastructure can deliver. A good example of this is A Broadband Utopia in northeast Utah. Here a group of communities got together to build a broadband utopia. They created an organization that built out a network then opened up access to it so a business could come in and offer one or more services such as internet access, phone, and cable tv. Internet "service providers there will be offering speeds of 50 and even 100 Mb/s." All that bandwidth allows hd tv for the kids while the parents can watch another hd channel, and there's still enough bandwidth left for broadband access to the net and even for video telephone service.

In my mind, there's a good reason that the libertarians are on the ringe of economics, but you'll have to decide for yourself, and you can't do that until you know both sides of the debate.

One reason Libertarians are "on the fringe" is a matter of why the party started. The first ones were Republicans who became dissolutioned over Nixon's actions, including what he said about one of his own presidential commissions. This commission was setup to study whether hemp, marijuana, should be legalized. He said no matter what they decided he would never legalize it, which after studying it they did decide should be done. It only makes economic sense as hemp is one of if not the most industrially useful plants around. Libertarians saw how Republicans were not for

Once it is ratified as an ISO Standard, the standard is locked up and anyone that does want to a copy has to buy it from ISO. These are copyrighted. They're not cheap; thousands of dollars. Out of the reach of the average hobbyist, and not listed anywhere on the Internet. That 6,000 page draft will vanish into the mists of time.

Larger Companies can afford this, but garage companies and hobbyists definitely can't. So what's the chance of an open source or even small upstart challenging Microsoft's Documentonopoly? Zero.

Want another example? ISO country codes. The country codes (e.g. .us, .jp) are actually ISO, and ISO ended up backing off on a demand for royalties for this(!) But if you want state codes (e.g. California, Kantou), well, forget it unless you want to buy them off ISO. http://www.alvestrand.no/pipermail/ietf-languages/ 2003-September/001472.html

ISO aren't the only ones guility of doing this. IEEE do it as well. Want the latest simulation standard? Then get out your checkbook: http://standards.ieee.org/catalog/olis/compsim.htm l

ISO and the IEEE are enemies of openness. Microsoft is taking a page out of their gamebook.

ISO or IEEE certification is a *bad* thing.

I remember when Minitel was first introduced, and, in 1982, it was pretty hot stuff. Lots of people were playing with videotex in the 1980s (remember Telidon?), but only France seemed to find a use for it. I knew people who used Prestel, but all they ever seemed to do with it was send pr0n.

I have used Minitel when visiting France for its original purpose, putting the phone book online. It worked.

...laura

Can't people give others the benefit of the doubt before attacking them? The quote on Wikipedia is taken out of context. Placed back in proper context, it is (emphasis mine):

As he describes it, from a user's point of view, Parakey is "a Web operating system that can do everything an OS can do."

And I was referring to end-users like my mother, who don't know about the memory allocation, etc. facets of an operating system.

Parkey is a Blake Ross product. Perhaps he thinks he won't get fair representation on searches.

More info: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/nov06/4696

Cheers.

It is apparently going to be a "Web OS" by the guy who started Firefox. You can read an interview with him in the IEEE Spectrum in which he talks a bit about it.

Article

In summary, he says 50" is the magic number. If you want a TV >50", buy a projection TV, if you want a TV 50" buy an LCD.

It is important to note the resolution of any Plasma or LCD you buy. For my money buy the LCD.

You trust the Mythbusters? They do stunts for movies, not actual science.

Here's an article from the IEEE Spectrum: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/mar06/3069.

Not that I'd call Mythbusters "science", but the Spectrum article was complete sensationalist bullshit. Here's a quote:

There is no smoking gun to this story: there is no definitive instance of an air accident known to have been caused by a passenger's use of an electronic device. Nonetheless, although it is impossible to say that such use has contributed to air accidents in the past, the data also make it impossible to rule it out completely.

So, essentially, they are saying that they don't have any evidence indicating that cellphones have actually caused an accident, but they are going to call cellphones "unsafe at any airspeed" because they can't rule out the possibility completely. In science, we call such results "inconclusive".

It gets better, though:

Results from our analysis imply that calls from on board scheduled commercial aircraft in the eastern United States occur at a rate of one to four per flight.

Basically, their analysis boils down to this: despite the fact that cellphones are used on airplanes all the time, and despite the fact that they haven't found a documented case of a cellphone contributing to an accident, they are still going to conclude that cellphones are unsafe. Where's the beef?

You trust the Mythbusters? They do stunts for movies, not actual science.

Here's an article from the IEEE Spectrum: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/mar06/3069.

don't know about Physorg.org, but the original paper by Bossel was published on the last issue of Proceedings of the IEEE, which is a very reputable source indeed. And (as you would expect) there is no silly considerations about rare water in the original article. Unfortunately, the article is not free, but the abstract should be accessible to everyone here.

I agree with all of that. Joining a professional organization like The ACM or The IEEE and reading their journals is also a good place to get informed about some of the broader trends in the industry. This is not necessarily writing of code, but learning about the things that underly the code. Core ideas IMHO are much more important than code itself. When you reach a certain level the act of coding should become trivial, like picking up a book and reading it. Its the ideas behind the code that are interesting and what keeps us moving forward. I can't speak for IEEE personally, but I've been a member of ACM since my college days and have learned a lot from reading "Communications of the ACM".

A cursory Google search revealed the following article:

• The blood-brain barrier, cancer, cell phones, and microwave radiation JC Lin - Antennas and Propagation Magazine, IEEE, 2001

I wish you luck on your quest.

Would 15 seconds be enough warning time to prepare for an earthquake?

Nope. But a few hours to a few days would be lots better.

This is perilous. Our society has not yet resolved the problem of the internet's long memory. Most of our custom is built upon the now-obsolete idea that memory does not last long or spread very far. And so the birth of the Information Age has brought with it the personal catastrophes such as "Dog S*** Girl" and "Shemale Vids Guy" and that asshat Jason Fortuny. These are all examples of normal, limited outbreaks of personal information that turned into unjustified disasters for the affected persons, simply because the internet's memory is fast, broad, and permanent.

If everyone has a cellphone, and most cellphones have videocameras, and most of those videocameras are now linked up to YouTube, we'll see this memory problem greatly multiplied.

Of course that might be the antidote: put so much information out there about so many people, that it will no longer matter. It'll be a poor man's Friends of Privacy, which would be a Good Thing probably.

But I don't want to be one of the forerunners, having my personal foibles instantly broadcast all round the world, and googlable by every future employer, boyfriend, girlfriend, etc. This unholy marriage between YouTube and Verizon is fraught with peril.

"Let me go back and face the peril!"
"No, it's too perilous!"

As a member of IEEE, I have read about plasma and LCD in a recent article appeared on Spectrum (I read it on the print edition, but I think the online version is similar if not the same). The article confirmed what we all know: Plasma is impractical; Long live LCD! The winning technology must be cheap, reliable, with a long lifespan. LCD has all of these characteristics, but Plasma has none of them.

This discussion mirrors an article that appears in the current issue of the IEEE Spectrum magazine. They review the pros and cons of LCD and Plasma technologies, with a brief look at DLP, SED, LCOS.

Their take on it? It won't be settled for another couple of years, and there will be two distinct categories: screens below 50" (or 42"), and screens larger. LCD will dominate the smaller screen size market, though SED may replace that when the cost comes down (after 2010?). For larger screens, don't discount projection technology, particularly in terms of cost.

Incidentally, the cover article for this issue is on Blake Ross, whom they call the Firefox Kid.

This discussion mirrors an article that appears in the current issue of the IEEE Spectrum magazine. They review the pros and cons of LCD and Plasma technologies, with a brief look at DLP, SED, LCOS.

Their take on it? It won't be settled for another couple of years, and there will be two distinct categories: screens below 50" (or 42"), and screens larger. LCD will dominate the smaller screen size market, though SED may replace that when the cost comes down (after 2010?). For larger screens, don't discount projection technology, particularly in terms of cost.

Incidentally, the cover article for this issue is on Blake Ross, whom they call the Firefox Kid.

This discussion mirrors an article that appears in the current issue of the IEEE Spectrum magazine. They review the pros and cons of LCD and Plasma technologies, with a brief look at DLP, SED, LCOS.

Their take on it? It won't be settled for another couple of years, and there will be two distinct categories: screens below 50" (or 42"), and screens larger. LCD will dominate the smaller screen size market, though SED may replace that when the cost comes down (after 2010?). For larger screens, don't discount projection technology, particularly in terms of cost.

Incidentally, the cover article for this issue is on Blake Ross, whom they call the Firefox Kid.

Since you asked...

The paper he mentioned in the talk: http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.biblio .jsp?osti_id=20516096

An IEEE publication on a related topic: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arn umber=1495587

And finally a recent PhD thesis on a related subject: http://edt.missouri.edu/Fall2004/Thesis/MeyerR-120 904-T282/research.pdf

But then again, this is slashdot so we're all free to discuss without watching the video, reading the paper or otherwise knowing what were talking about.

IEEE announces at each of its standards development meetings (just like IETF) that anyone knowing of IP that they believe applies to the standard being developed should let the chairman know about it. The chairman is then responsible for contacting the owner of hte IP and soliciting a "letter of assurance". The letters of assurance that are returned are available at the IEEE web site (standards.ieee.org). The letters filed against 802.11 are here.

IEEE announces at each of its standards development meetings (just like IETF) that anyone knowing of IP that they believe applies to the standard being developed should let the chairman know about it. The chairman is then responsible for contacting the owner of hte IP and soliciting a "letter of assurance". The letters of assurance that are returned are available at the IEEE web site (standards.ieee.org). The letters filed against 802.11 are here.

Further googling. He is an ieee fellow http://www.ieee.org/organizations/pubs/newsletters /leos/dec05/fellows.html http://www.ieee.org/web/aboutus/fellows/fellows.ht ml

Further googling. He is an ieee fellow http://www.ieee.org/organizations/pubs/newsletters /leos/dec05/fellows.html http://www.ieee.org/web/aboutus/fellows/fellows.ht ml

For more information about electronic medical records, and the efforts to create national medical databases, I would suggest an article that appeared in IEEE Spectrum's October issue entitled "Dying for Data." The article describes some of the monumental challenges in creating such a system, profiles the British effort, and highlights the success that the Mayo Clinic has had in moving to electronic records for all its patients.

[I can't link to the full text of the article, because that issue is not longer current. IEEE members can log in and view it, however.]

For more information about electronic medical records, and the efforts to create national medical databases, I would suggest an article that appeared in IEEE Spectrum's October issue entitled "Dying for Data." The article describes some of the monumental challenges in creating such a system, profiles the British effort, and highlights the success that the Mayo Clinic has had in moving to electronic records for all its patients.

[I can't link to the full text of the article, because that issue is not longer current. IEEE members can log in and view it, however.]

The conversational telephone speech (CTS) results I quoted above were achieved using a state-of-the-art research system running under 10 times real time (10xRT); i.e., using less than 10 hours to transcribe an hour of speech. The winning system in 2004 DARPA EARS evaluation achieved 15.2% WER. For system description, see this paper (requires subscription to ieeexplore). In 2004, many EARS teams achieved the same level of performance in real time as their 10xRT system in 2003. Since EARS program was killed after 2004 evaluation and DARPA's focus has shifted to foreign languages (GALE), it is hard to predict the current state-of-the-art in English CTS transcription and when that level of performance will be available in commercial products.

Just to correct my earlier post, Arabic broadcast news (BN) transcription error rates are still around 20%. Mandarin Chinese BN character error rate is close to 10%.

You want municipal wireless? Fine, but understand that means you'll ONLY get whatever products and quality of service your town's government is capable of. Servers and static IPs? Ho ho, good luck. And you'll be the last town in the nation to get anything better.

Many of these places are only putting in muni wireless because nobody else will so in one since they already are the last one to get anything period. Simply if a company doesn't think it can make a hugh profit in installing wired or wireless access they won't and when a town decides they will do it themself the company whines. Now I'm not saying that everybody should be made to pay if they don't want the service offered, only those who use the service should pay, but if no company will make the service available then the town should be allowed to build and offer the service themself. Actually though I'm a libertarian and believe in a free market I also believe that local communities should be the ones who own the local infrastructure. IEEE's magazine "Spectrum" has a good article on what I'm talking about, how some communities in northeastern Utah got to together to offer A Broadband Utopia.

There are two ways to conduct business: competitively, or with the help of the State. Regulations, licensing, taxations, embargoes, tariffs, duties and other "pro-market" structures are "legal" uses of force by the State for one thing and one thing only: to take care of the businesses friendly with the State.

Actually there's a third way, have the local infrastructure owned by the local community but have them open it up to all comers. IEEE's "Specturm" has an article on A Broadband Utopia. Several cites and communities in northeastern Utah got together to lay down fiber which they then allow businesses to access and sale services. They are able to offer speeds of 30Mb/s now but the spped can go up to 100Mb/s. The service providers can offer internet access, phone service, and tv service or any combination of them. I believe this is a much better idea when dealing with natural monopolies like landlines or cables than with granting a business sole right to the monopoly, right of way.

I don't really know, unfortunately. Poking around on Google Scholar turns up a few references that look somewhat like it, e.g. by using some photonic tricks with femtosecond pulsed sources, multimode diodes etc.

Here are a couple links (though not necessarily representative, I just spent a couple minutes surfing) http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumb er=968016 and http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumb er=1361727

I don't really know, unfortunately. Poking around on Google Scholar turns up a few references that look somewhat like it, e.g. by using some photonic tricks with femtosecond pulsed sources, multimode diodes etc.

Here are a couple links (though not necessarily representative, I just spent a couple minutes surfing) http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumb er=968016 and http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumb er=1361727

Looks like someone RTFA a bit wrong. Ben Sander works for AMD. He is one of their media presenters. Here are a few of the events he has done: http://www.cpd.iit.edu/cpd/events.htm http://www.ewh.ieee.org/r4/chicago/foxvalley/meet. thru.mid2005.html http://www.instat.com/FallMPF/06/conf1.htm http://mtv.ece.ucsb.edu/MTV/index_files/program-mt v.txt

AutoMap spits out the network in a form of eXtensible Markup Language (XML) and passes the data on to another program written by Carley's group, the Organizational Risk Analyzer. It uses statistics to examine a network to discover more about particular agents and how they interact with each other and influence group dynamics. Based on network theory, social psychology, operations research, and management theory, the software identifies the most important agents in a terrorist network.

Before identifying key individuals, however, first you have to find the covert network, which is by definition working hard to stay hidden. Here the Fuzzy Overlapping Grouping (FOG) algorithm, developed by Carley's grad student George B. Davis, provides something like an X-ray view of a society.

this pic makes it look fairly attractive. i'm sure there'll be some that complain, but IMO it isnt nearly as ugly and tacky as a flag.

0000000000000000000 00000281474976710656
0000000000000000000 18446744073709551616
3402823669209384634 63374607431770000000

"Deuterium is abundant in ocean water, and one cubic kilometer of seawater could, in principle, supply all the world's energy needs for several hundred years." - According to an article in IEEE

Add to this the fact that it's proposed Lithium be used to adsorb the neutron radiation from a reactor, which would in turn breed Tritium for use in the fusion reaction.

Here's a quote from an IEEE Spectrum article (Aug, 2005):

"It now costs about US $20 000 per kilogram to put objects into orbit. Contrast that rate with the results of a study I recently performed for NASA, which concluded that a single space elevator could reduce the cost of orbiting payloads to a remarkably low $200 a kilogram and that multiple elevators could ultimately push costs down below $10 a kilogram. With space elevators we could eventually make putting people and cargo into space as cheap, kilogram for kilogram, as airlifting them across the Pacific."

The article answers many space elevator-related questions. Those who want to know more about the project can read it here:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/aug05/1690

There are some technical problems (mainly related to construction of the cable) to be solved first, but the space elevator idea is definitely worth serious consideration, as it could provide humanity with extremely cheap and easy access to space.

Bruce Sterling has written many amazing stories. ("Maneki Neko.") But that was just horrible.

It's like reading a 60's icon critiquing the year 2006, complaining it's not "hippie" enough, and pretending to take the role of a teenager in 2006, an adult in teenage clothing. "Hey, why isn't everybody listening to really great works of music, like Pink Floyd, or reading truely great works of literature, like, Allen Ginsberg and Timothy Leary?"

All the kids getting up to cheer in high school, against technology? Can I see a trend line that even hints in this direction?

"Okay, sure: I know I sound pretty depressed. Us teenage poets depress easily." -- Apparently!

I'll stick with Synthetic Serendipity.

Good points you have there, and for further probing, here is an excellent article on the topic from the always excellent IEEE Spectrum:

I was at a conference last weel (http://www.ieee.org/organizations/society/leos/LE OSCONF/GFP2006/index.html) were this was presented by John Bowers. As they explain briefly in the article, they are bonding InP to Silicon wafers. The silicon provides the waveguiding, and enough of the mode is in the InP to give them gain. They achieved an optically pumped laser, and were still working on an electrically pumped one. I wonder if this announcement will mean that they achieved electrically pumped lasing.

It's good work, but I'm not sure if the bonding process will ever be suitable for monolithography integrated CMOS and photonics. I was more impressed by the work done in Huffaker's lab (http://www.chtm.unm.edu/huffaker/index.html) where they are working on growing III-V materials directly on silicon. However, the work by Bowers is more mature and will lead to devices sooner.

1. How many Americans died from terrorist attacks in 2001?
2. How many Americans died from natural disasters in 2001?
3. Where did the government spend more money keeping us safe?

I'm not trying to lessen the seriousness of 9/11. It was a very serious attack that demanded our attention. However, there are lots of other serious issues that also demand our attention.

As I recall there weren't any government granted monopolies

Governments did grant monopolies. They granted rights of way to businesses to string up the wires and cables, even on private poperty. Try this if you own property that has cables crossing it, try to have them removed because they are on your private property. You can't, the government granted whichever company it is the Right of Way. Then try to run your own cables along the same path. You can't unless you get permission from the government to use the Right of Way. Even if you had the money to, say start your own windfarm, you wouldn't be able to hook it up to cables that you put up that crosses others' property without their permission or getting the government to grant you the Right of Way.

After having typed the above I see you bring up the lack of the ability to have a bunch of cables, transmission lines, strung up. All of these leads to the creation of natural monopolies and the only solution I see is if the local communities or governments own the infrastucture, but with any and all comers being able to "hook up" to it and then is able to offer services to those willing to pay for the service(s). And excellent example of this is in northern Utah, where a group of communities' governments acting together built the infrastructure for a Broadband Utopia. While I'm a Libertarian I believe this is a good example of where local governmental bodies can and should own the infrastructure and wouldn't have any problems if things like this expanded to other places, so long as those who use the services are the ones who pay for it. It wouldn't be anything new as this is how it is done with roads.

http://standards.ieee.org/getieee802/download/802. 11-1999.pdf

please go and read the 802.11 standard. Wireless networking in the ISM bands is not what this is all about.

Ok, I submitted a story, but in case it gets rejected, here you go:

Jon Ellch and Dave Maynor have raised quite some noise about ther recent wifi exploits. But some clever sleuthing from a blogger has dug up some some damning evidence. Most notably a high resolution version of the video (2) where you can see Maynor claiming he is using an external card. He further states that he got an ip 192.168.1.50, but according to the ifconfig output, the mac address associated with that ip is 00-17-F2-41-31-6D. According to the IEEE OUI that mac address belongs to apple. The problem here is that Secureworks claims they he did not hack the apple driver but an external card's driver. Thus the video was faked.

*fixed the links:
Here's a mirror: maynor video screenshots (image 6)
If you check the mac address you will see that it's an apple mac address. See the IEEE OUI list.

So, what we have is:
a) Maynor claiming he is using an external card
b) Maynor claiming that the ip they got is 192.168.1.50 (see the video)
c) According to the screenshot the mac address associated with that ip is 00-17-F2-41-31-6D
d) According to the IEEE OUI that mac address belongs to apple
e) Maynor claiming he did not hack the apple driver but an external card's driver

THE VIDEO WAS FAKED. END OF STORY

*fixed the links:
Here's a mirror: maynor video screenshots (image 6)
If you check the mac address you will see that it's an apple mac address. See the IEEE OUI list.

So, what we have is:
a) Maynor claiming he is using an external card
b) Maynor claiming that the ip they got is 192.168.1.50 (see the video)
c) According to the screenshot the mac address associated with that ip is 00-17-F2-41-31-6D
d) According to the IEEE OUI that mac address belongs to apple
e) Maynor claiming he did not hack the apple driver but an external card's driver

THE VIDEO WAS FAKED. END OF STORY

Oops, the image ran out of bandwith, here's a mirror: maynor video screenshots (image 6)
If you check the mac address you will see that it's an apple mac address. See the IEEE OUI list.

So, what we have is:
a) Maynor claiming he is using an external card
b) Maynor claiming that the ip they got is 192.168.1.50 (see the video)
c) According to the screenshot the mac address associated with that ip is 00-17-F2-41-31-6D
d) According to the IEEE OUI that mac address belongs to apple
e) Maynor claiming he did not hack the apple driver but an external card's driver

THE VIDEO WAS FAKED. END OF STORY