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I'm going to get modded to oblivian for this, but..

I hate to be a burster of bubbles, but this stuff is going too far. Sure, it's cool that Tilden makes these robots with a handful of transistors. What's not cool is how he goes on about how incredible they are, and implies that he can make them do things he can't. Yeah, that'd be cool if he could make these bugs clean his windows and vacuum his floors, like the article suggests. But how would that happen? It would have to be either so crude that it had to work, or so complex that his dinky little creatures could never do it. Folks, these are Braitenberg vehicles, nothing more. I just get very annoyed with the way he belittles digital computing, and yet has very little to show for things on the analog side.

What he can do in 5 transistors, I can do in 5 lines of code on a microcontroller. (Or 5 transistors, I'm not limited to the digital world. It's the design that matters.) And indeed, if a simple analog circuit can be built easily which solves the problem, it will invariably be superior to a comparable software solution. But the unfortunate fact is, you can't do anything worthwhile at this level of simplicity. Sure, biology is elegant. It's bloody incredible. But saying Tilden's robots are comparable to biology, or that they "learn", or any of the other claims I keep hearing... Yeesh. Let's get a grip, people. Ever heard of the C. Elegans? That's about as simple as biology gets, and yet it is lightyears ahead of anything we've got, digital or analog.

Yes, analog robotics are very cool. Yes, there is great potential. But BEAM robots? Let's get real. Use the best tool for the job, right? I have yet to see a job for which these devices prove more than mere toys. Somebody prove me wrong.

Modders, do your worst.

-David, President, IU Robotics Club

http://www.indiana.edu/~roboclub/index.html

The total revenue of the mass media industry was $250.9 billion in 1998.

In essence, the problem is seen on reiserfs (being investigated) and also in NFS. No-one has mentioned following up on the NFS problems yet...

Nor have problems yet been seen in XFS, Ext2 or Ext3.

In essence, the problem is seen on reiserfs (being investigated) and also in NFS. No-one has mentioned following up on the NFS problems yet...

Nor have problems yet been seen in XFS, Ext2 or Ext3.

It was already discussed on the kernel mailing list.
Including a (trivial) port to GNU/Linux.
Local filesystems are OK (except for ReiserFS), but NFS does show some problems.
http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel /0112.1/1573.html

The 1973 War Act attempts to limit the President's ability to declare war, while also giving the option to pass a euphemistic "use of force" resolution rather than old fashioned (and honest) declaration of war.

But the War Powers Act is not carte blanche. Section 5(b) requires the President to withdraw the military after 60 days if Congress hasn't given him a declaration of war by then. Both Clinton and Bush the Elder have been sued by Congress over violations of this. It remains, then, to be seen what will happen this time around. When did the clock officially start on this one?

Completely untrue -- This is a post regarding a bug in Linux 0.01. And here Linus assigns the maintainer of the 0.01 Kernel. That beats IBM's 7-year maintenance policy.

Completely untrue -- This is a post regarding a bug in Linux 0.01. And here Linus assigns the maintainer of the 0.01 Kernel. That beats IBM's 7-year maintenance policy.

An alternate fix from Al Viro is here.

I'm using it now.

Nowhere in the US Constitution does it state that Congress must declare war.

The powers of Congress over the military and military actions are defined in Article I, Section 8:

The Congress shall have Power to [...]
To Declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

The Authority of the President as Commander in Chief are defined in Article II, Section 2:

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States

To summarize the above articles, Congress establishes, maintains, and regulates the military. The President determines how, when, and where will military force be applied.

When the Consitution was written in the 1700's, armed conflicts were rigidly defined, where the the combatants consisted of formally recognized governments. In such an environment a Declaration of War made perfect sense. This system worked fairly well until the Second World War, which was the last time the United States formally declared war..
The tradition context of war was challenged with the rise of the Cold War and modern warfare techniques such as guerrillas, proxy wars, and non-state combatants. As armed conflict evolved, the US government had to address the issue. In 1973 the War Powers Act (WPA) was passed to address these issues. The primary reason for this act was to establish limits on the Commander in Chief's ability to use force without the formal consent of Congress, as exemplified by the Vietnam War. The WPA allows the President to commit military actions without a declaration of war, as long as certain reporting conditions to Congress are met. The heart of the WPA is Section 5 (b), which establishes concrete time limits, and Section 5 (c), which gives Congress the authority to terminate military action.

________________________

None of the words or meaning in the Constitution has changed, either. It still guarantees Justice to All. This includes a fair trial, just as much as it includes the lethal injection as punishment.

The fundamental question here is do we treat acts of terrorism as a crime or as an act of war? The various rights to trial enumerated in Section III and the Bill of Rights apply only to crimes. By history and precedent, acts of war are not treated the same as criminal acts. For example, the Nuremberg Trials were military tribunals with convictions determined by a panel of judges, not juries. Similar tribunals were called for the Japanese military and government, instead of trying them in US criminal courts for the attack on US territory (Pearl Harbor)
The US has been consistent in treating the attacks of September 11th as a military action, not criminal, to include the application of military courts to eventually try Al Qaeda members. This is no different than the application of justice at the end of WWII.

• Bill Of Rights
• The Declaration of Independence
  
  

You are correct, sir. Cyan is indeed the two colors, blue and green, together.

Whenever I'm making a color stereo anaglyph, I combine the red channel from one image, with the green AND blue channels of another image (effectively copying the cyan channel). This works because the anaglyph glasses have a red filter over the left eye, and a cyan filter over the right.

Get yourself some anaglyph glasses and check out some of my pics:

http://php.indiana.edu/~dgsharp/gallery.html

Or if you don't have any glasses you can see the non-anaglyph stereograms by crossing your eyes. As far as I know, the crappy little gallery I made has the only existing stereo images of The Matrix. :)

actually, there are already two bugs. the one for loop.c is by far the worst.

as for loop.c, Linus gives this (not very detailed)answer:
http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel /0111.0/1084.html
(just delete the two lines were deactivate_page appear).
But what makes me worried about that is Andrea's mail:
http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel /0111.0/1088.html

second bug is using I2C Philips PARPORT:
http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel /0111.0/1089.html
it should impact that many people, but it's a great one.

so actually, that means Linus didn't try to compile the kernel enabling all modules before releasing it. waow :-((

actually, there are already two bugs. the one for loop.c is by far the worst.

as for loop.c, Linus gives this (not very detailed)answer:
http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel /0111.0/1084.html
(just delete the two lines were deactivate_page appear).
But what makes me worried about that is Andrea's mail:
http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel /0111.0/1088.html

second bug is using I2C Philips PARPORT:
http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel /0111.0/1089.html
it should impact that many people, but it's a great one.

so actually, that means Linus didn't try to compile the kernel enabling all modules before releasing it. waow :-((

actually, there are already two bugs. the one for loop.c is by far the worst.

as for loop.c, Linus gives this (not very detailed)answer:
http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel /0111.0/1084.html
(just delete the two lines were deactivate_page appear).
But what makes me worried about that is Andrea's mail:
http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel /0111.0/1088.html

second bug is using I2C Philips PARPORT:
http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel /0111.0/1089.html
it should impact that many people, but it's a great one.

so actually, that means Linus didn't try to compile the kernel enabling all modules before releasing it. waow :-((

See this posting to LKML:

Alans talking about switching VMs in -ac kernels

FNORD

Sounds like someones been playing DeusEx..

Oh, goddess. Look, get the Illuminatus Trilogy, then get the Principia Discordia . (The reason I pointed you to the Steve Jackson Games edition of the Principia is because they were the company hit by the infamous Secret Service raid -- you've heard of that at least, right?). You probably need a copy of the Jargon File, too. Read alt.religion.kibo a few days, and then move on to the Internet Oracle.

Then come back here when you're properly versed in esoteric geek subculture memes. 'Kay?

Good point, AC probably has nothing to fear. But...

That does not excuse poorly written law. There is a fine line here between what is right and what is wrong and every effort should be made to hold to this line in the law.

When I watch a DVD on my computer, using Xine and Captain CSS's d4d plugin I am violating the DMCA. I am breaking the law. Am I doing something wrong? I don't thing so. I'm watching a DVD that I paid for, using a DVD drive that I paid for. With my DVD drive came software for watching DVDs, so if there's any royalty to the MPAA or whoever they got the money, I effectively purchased a license to watch DVDs on my PC.

What Alan Cox is doing, if I understand the situation correctly, is deliberatly and provocatively breaking a law that he opposes, that he believes is unjust. It's the sort of behavior that Thoreau called Civil Disobedience.

I admire him for it, I think it's a brave thing to do. I expect our legislators to do a better job than they have done with the DMCA, and I support any effort that leads to that end.

XEmacs can be compiled as an Athena or Gtk widget so that it can be embedded into other apps. See this documentation and this screenshot

I wish more apps would use XEmacs as the text editing widget. :)

I can't wait to show the girlfriend. Shes gonna go nuts like that time I wiped my dick on the curtains.

Gtk/XEmacs is available here if you really want gtk. Unfortunately this is based on an earlier version of XEmacs (21.1.12, current is like 22 something I believe), but it does look nifty and fit with your other gtk apps if you have any. There are a few minor caveats:

• A few (very) minor visual bugs, most notably if you hide the toolbar, the minibuffer is too big.
• No pseudotransparency. ;-)
• The upgrade to 22 might outweigh the pretty visuals.

It does look nifty, though (depending on your taste), as screenshots indicate.

Gtk/XEmacs is available here if you really want gtk. Unfortunately this is based on an earlier version of XEmacs (21.1.12, current is like 22 something I believe), but it does look nifty and fit with your other gtk apps if you have any. There are a few minor caveats:

• A few (very) minor visual bugs, most notably if you hide the toolbar, the minibuffer is too big.
• No pseudotransparency. ;-)
• The upgrade to 22 might outweigh the pretty visuals.

It does look nifty, though (depending on your taste), as screenshots indicate.

Also see The War Powers Act of 1973.

I think that most of the corruption comes from agencies of the U.S. government that are allowed to break the law, secretly. This article is about that: What should be the Response to Violence?


Invalid form key: RY1U5tMMTq !

Let me guess: you're an emacs user, right? I'm not trying to start a flame war here (honest!) but you might want to try vim, or perhaps a vi-like binding for emacs (like viper mode). vi-style keybindings tend to be much easier on the fingers (especially the pinkies) than the standard emacs bindings.

There was a colloquium given here at Indiana University (Bloomington) by Gregory Wilson (he was a contributing editor to dr. Dobb's Journel) called Open Source, Open Science which touched on this question. He suggested using CVS for class projects, and said "if seven people submit their code at about the same time five minutes after the first person did, you can be pretty sure whose cheating."

There was a colloquium here at Indiana University (Bloomington) given by Gregory Wilson (a contributing author to Doctor Dobb's Journel) entitled Open Source, Open Science which touched upon this question. He suggested using CVS to submit assignments (I think this was meant for upper-level projects, not for little six-line Scheme programs). He said, "if you have seven people submit code at about the same time five minutes after the first person does, you have a pretty good idea of whose cheating."

http://www.indiana.edu/~poynter/tre1-1.html#Cranks

Fly (Aggie '94)
--
end of line

Well, yeah, I read that. But what does it mean?

Read the fucking mailing list. God you slashdot jockeys are pitiful. Here's the mailing list url:

http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel /

Start with the long threads where Andrea Archangeli, Linus Torvalds, Rik Van Riel, Marcello Tossatti, and Daniel phillips are going back and forth. Yes, it is a major VM change, and for the better. Rik's vm that started in 2.3.99 is not showing signs of getting better, so they are scrapping most of the experimental stuff and going for a solid design from andrea (the guy who finally got 2.2's vm stable under heavy load).

As far as I know, Emacs/w3 has support for elisp as scripting language (instead of javascript used elsewhere).

You only need to read last weeks kernel mailing list to see how much has changed with the VM and why.

Normal fuel probably meaning regular unleaded at the pump for cars. Jet fuel has much higher octane rating than "normal" fuel so it has more energy, and you don't have to put as much of it in the plane.

Chevron gives these values for energy density:

• Aviation Gas: 4.371 x 10^7 J/kg
• Wide-Cut Jet Fuel: 4.354 x 10^7 J/kg
• Kerosene Jet Fuel: 4.328 x 10^7 J/kg

I'm just typing our loud here, but it looks to me like a plane loaded with gasoline would have been about the same problem.

From my own experience, gasoline burns faster (bang!) than diesel (woooosh!). I gather that jet-fuel is similar to diesel (perhaps incorrectly, in this case). Using my ultra-scientific method, I note that they smell very similar.

A comparison between Dylan and Scheme is available
Basically you're right, Scheme had a lot of influence on Dylan. The original Dylan even had prefix notation as known from Scheme and Lisp, but that was changed to infix, because it was perceived that more people would prefer the syntax as it is.

Dylan adds some features not found in Scheme: hygienic macros, an object system inspired by Common Lisp, modules and libraries.

The object system is especially interesting: it is based on the generic function model of OO, as opposed to the message passing model most people know from Smalltalk, C++, Java, or perl. Basically objects don't "own" methods anymore, they are standalone. To select the right method (or "virtual function" in C++ lingo), all the parameters are looked at at runtime, not just the first one.

For example, Dylan's syntax is based on whitespace; so identifiers are permitted to contain most characters except whitespace and punctuation. (The downside, of course, is that you must type spaces around most operators. However, any character can be escaped with \, and you can even reuse reserved words this way.)

This flexibility gives you a lot of freedom. For example, the official convention uses dashes to separate words; methods/functions that return a boolean value ends with ?; globals are surrounded by asterisks; and types are surrounded by angle brackets. So a method may be named is-camera-on?(), a global may named *game-clients*, and a class may be named <socket-server>.

Dylan provides other small, but distinctive, features. For example, it supports per-file metadata: Any source file can start with an RFC 822-like header, which you'd typically use for version, author, copyright, license and documentation data.

Of course, I haven't even started on the language features. Dylan has an interesting, elegant object model. It has explicit support for "slots", analogous to Delphi's class properties: data members whose access is delegated to accessor methods. It has explicit support for singletons and generic programming. It has multiple inheritance. It has garbage collection, type safety, a modern module system, etc. Dylan is usually compiled, but can be interpreted. Its extremely dynamic nature means that method dispatching and "smart linking" can be a complex affair; this is a weak link, and at least for Functional Developer (formerly Harlequin Dylan), program efficiency is dependent on the compiler being able to do "whole program" analysis.

However, I would hesitate to call it a functional programming language. According to the Dylan reference manual, "Dylan is a general-purpose high-level programming language, designed for use both in application and systems programming". It is a structured programming language belonging to the same paradigm as C++ and Java. There are clear signs of having been influenced by functional programming, though.

The name "Dylan" does not come from Bob or Thomas, but from the phrase "dynamic language".

For more information, I recommend the Functional Objects site. They provide a Windows/Linux-based IDE and compiler for Dylan. The "Basic Edition" is free as in beer.

Don't differently colored lenses only work for black and white 3D stuff

They were all right-handed, too.

There is a "robust-but-imperfect correlation between handedness and brain lateralization", so if you are studying brain geography it is important to know the handedness of the individuals in the study.

Personally, I think that if they really wanted to control for this they would have used left-handed indivuals only since people that are biologically lefthanded are often made to adapt as to living as righthanded, but the reverse is never true (except in the case of amputees or stroke victims who have lost the use of the right hand).

This is very interesting:
http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel /0108.2/0416.html

It seems Alan Cox is considering his -ac kernel tree to be a legitimate alternative to the official "Linus" tree, rather than a playground for testing patches. He's actually perpetuating a difference between -ac and the official tree, in a way that breaks source compatibility between the two (albeit in a very small way.) The fact that RedHat's kernels are all based on -ac now bears this out.

Alan has forked the Linux kernel.

::meyhem::

I think he has Linus' blessing in this though. Reading between the lines, I think Alan has been taking on more and more work in the past year or so that had previously been Linus'. Linux is ten years old now; I suppose Linus is burning out.

And Alan works for RedHat too, which is one of the two distributions that I *know* will be around in ten more years -- they have a solid business plan. Alan is voracious, just tireless, and RedHat would hire the entire core kernel development team if they had to. Linux will not die for lack of a maintainer if Linus gets hit by a bus tomorrow.

plot synopsis [SPOILER!] :) Hans says "there is no reason for RedHat to build Reiser in debug mode" but Christoph points out that in debug mode it detects some extra errors and halts. Hans seems to think it's better for it to keep running with erroneous data. That ain't a guy I want writing my fscking filesystem.

BTW, I have nothing against Hans or ReiserFS: I just learned this 10 seconds ago, and I've been running ReiserFS with good results under the Manstroke distro. I had already planned to stop using it but that was because it is not integrated with the latest RedHats so it was limiting my options for upgrading or testing.

Also, earlier in that thread, Hans indicates that he doesn't test with Red Hat himself, and he accuses them of just shoveling code onto CDROMs. This strikes me as a juvenile attitude if he at all wants people to run his code. Hate RedHat all you want... but, it will still have the #1 market share in the US and you ought to check that your code works with it if you want your code to acheive stardom in the US. Maybe he doesn't care--that's cool too--but then he shouldn't care if people who run RedHat are a little uneasy with ReiserFS.

plot synopsis [SPOILER!] :) Hans says "there is no reason for RedHat to build Reiser in debug mode" but Christoph points out that in debug mode it detects some extra errors and halts. Hans seems to think it's better for it to keep running with erroneous data. That ain't a guy I want writing my fscking filesystem.

BTW, I have nothing against Hans or ReiserFS: I just learned this 10 seconds ago, and I've been running ReiserFS with good results under the Manstroke distro. I had already planned to stop using it but that was because it is not integrated with the latest RedHats so it was limiting my options for upgrading or testing.

Also, earlier in that thread, Hans indicates that he doesn't test with Red Hat himself, and he accuses them of just shoveling code onto CDROMs. This strikes me as a juvenile attitude if he at all wants people to run his code. Hate RedHat all you want... but, it will still have the #1 market share in the US and you ought to check that your code works with it if you want your code to acheive stardom in the US. Maybe he doesn't care--that's cool too--but then he shouldn't care if people who run RedHat are a little uneasy with ReiserFS.

I kinda think that this is a far better link.

... since Alan Cox (@redhat.com) had so many arguments over the Linux kernel Mailing List with Hans Reiser.
This thread is a good example.

• Opera
• Konqueror
• Mozilla
• Galeon
• Skipstone
• Netscape

The article did not review a number of browsers. Here are a some more that you may want to try:

• Arena
• Amaya
• Chimera
• MMM
• Emacs/W3
• Lynx (text based)
• Links (text based)
• Debris (text based)
• w3m (text based)
• Libwww (text/line based)
• HowJava
• Express
• Armadillo (was Gzilla)
• Mnemonic
• Kde (file manager with builtin browser)
• mMosaic
• QtMozilla
• QWeb
• Mosaic
• Arachne
• Beest
• Beonex
• BrowseX
• Grail
• Dillo
• NetRaider

And how the disclaimers: The list above by no means complete. The browers above were listed in j-random order. Some browsers are in early alpha stage, some in Beta and others are in full release. Some of the browsers may suck, some are OK and some are good. Your mileage may vary. Sorry If I left out your favorite browser. IE was left off the list for obvious reasons. Good while supply lasts or until Bill Gates takes over. I'm not a member of the FCIA. Void where cast as (void).

Actually, NASA uses the old stuff because of radiation. My roommate works for the IUCF and they have NASA out every few months for radiation effect testing on all kinds of computer equipment.

Not directed at you in particular, but let me just say this:

"God, sometimes I wish analogies could be lameness-filtered."

There. Nothing personal. However, I have determined that analogies get it wrong in this forum, more often than not.

Here is the point that your analogy misses, and a very important point at that, to quote:

The relevant protection for copyrighted material becomes as the technology says, not as copyright law requires.

What Lessig is saying is that lawmakers have allowed the industry to write law... with regular books the copyright is the sole protection, but with e-books the industry is entitled to protection beyond what an ordinary "copyright 1994 Random Books, Inc, All Rights Reserved yadayadayada" provides; it is entitled to provide an electronic adjunct that becomes protected under the law in a way unprecedented in American legal history.

What Congress has done is given legislative authority away to big corps* and relegated themselves to irrelevance, i.e., the original copyright laws are no longer needed. Not only that, but they have delegated to law enforcement a basically insurmountable task: to prosecute each and every electronic transgression, no matter how small, in a way never intended by the original copyright law! The courts should/would be awash in a great and diverse array of cases, each with its own unique conundrum, if the DMCA holds. In fact, Metallica did point out the absurdity of trying to enforce such laws when they essentially sued all Napster users. The other side of that coin is that computers make such prosecution easier: a simple summons in your email in-box should suffice. Maybe someday, like the whole photo radar brand of violation of our Bill of Rights, such emails Will constitute proper law enforcement procedure.

So tell me, what has happened in the past when unenforceable and unjust laws went on the books? Is it then not our civic duty to take a stand against it, however we must sacrifice?

I understand that analogies can sometimes help, but they often warp the main thrust of the issue, and definitely have a tendency to understate the finer points. I agree with your stance and support your opinion (as all good ./ers will), but an education about the DMCA until we all understand it as well as we understand the GPL (I love explaining that to cowworkers!) necessitates a proper approach. Sorry, the lock analogy just don't get it here, and it is my contention that there is NO analogy that will fit, as there are no analogies in many of these issues that we discuss because of the high-tech and highly complex nature of these issues.

*- ya know, it doesn't Have to be read as "big bad powerful corps with senators in their pockets", but tell me, who else but them will be able to sic the FBI hounds on guys like Skly? The DMCA is for corps only, not for regular folks, but you knew that already, don't you?

All I want to know is wheather or not the VM is stable. From what I understand it has been the source of instability and deadlock. I know Linus, Rik van Riel, Andrea Arcangeli, and others have been hunting for the source of the reported problems and did find some potentialially serious bugs but it's been difficult to reproduce the problem which as the programmers here know greatly complicates finding a fix. I'm getting some of this from the last paragraph of the Kernel page at lwn.net and there's an intersting thread in the lk mailing list here: Re: VM in 2.4.7-pre hurts.... Anyone have any insight into this particular problem? And I wonder if Linus will drop the issue and turn his attention to the imminent 2.5. I think that would be a mistake.

It seems to me that as accelerators become more and more expensive, it might be more cost-effective to devote accelerator funding to researching other classes of accelerator, instead of building larger and larger synchrotons and other conventional accelerators.

I've been following the development of plasma accelerators with much interest. They have a much greater rate of acceleration of particles, which means that an accelerator of a given energy could be much smaller (and hence hopefuly cheaper) than a synchroton. A good paper discussing the merits and problems with current plasma accelerator designs is at http://www.indiana.edu/~icfa/icfa12/node24.html .

Other promising types of accelerator almost certainly exist also.

I'm not saying that synchrotons should be abandoned because they're bad; on the contrary, they work quite well. I'm arguing that it would be _cheaper_ to invest accelerator funding in developing new types of accelerator, as opposed to building ever-larger synchrotons.

For those that want it, there's a popular (shareware? I've never used it) graphical system for Windows called Moray. It apparently allows you to graphically setup your scene, and it generates the POV source for you to tweak as you see fit.

I've started working on entries for the Internet Ray Tracing Competition, it's been a lot of fun. The current topic is "Fantasy and Mystic", and is due August 31st. Some of the work done is simply *incredible* (check out Gilles Tran, freaking awesome). Come on you Fantasy and Sci Fi folks, you'll love it. (And you're not required to use POV-Ray for the IRTC, btw, but it's sponsored by the great folks who bring us POV.) Go browse the IRTC galleries, some of the winners are truly stunning.

And lastly, for those interested, here's my first submission to the IRTC contest (topic: "Insects and Spiders"), it's called Pond Life

Seriously! Everybody go check it out! No, it's not as easy as lots of other packages. But I must say this is the most fulfilling programming I have ever done. (Probably because my robots don't work yet. ;)

I'll give the brain hemisphere bit... it's tricky. See http://www.indiana.edu/~primate/brain.html

I probably have it the best of anyone I know. I work for a large university and besides getting tuition reimbursement up to six hours a semester and time off to attend classes, I am expected to attend any university provided classes that would help me in my job. This includes certified Microsoft training, UNIX admin training and talks from outside venders (Microsoft, Sun, HP, etc.). I can also take time to attend the various user group meeting on campus (Windows, UNIX, Linux, MAC, etc.). This is all outside my $6000/yr budget for myself and my assistant to attend training and tradeshows.