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I've spent the last 5 years writing code. I've gone back to school to finish my degree. I hate writing code, but I enjoy mathematical logic. I like the rigour of foundational mathematics and theoretical CS.

Unfortunately, CS courses don't transfer well, and I don't feel like paying large ammounts to private school to finish non-major coursework (unfortunately I can't transfer non-major coursework in from another university at my old school).

I hate writing stupid code. I hate paying someone for the privilege of writing trivial classroom code. I'm working without the degree, so a math/physics double major with a minor in CS will work for me. Frankly, no one cares what your major was in IT. CS-based math courses (theory of computation|algorithms|discrete math) tend to lack rigour. My experience is that they often stop sort of proof. How can you study graph theory without proofs? Erdos and Dykstra are rolling over in their graves! CS is the one field you can teach yourself.

Do you want to be in IT or do you like applying computers to scientific problems? Frankly, physics, chemistry, and biology have computational subfields. There are even a few bioinfomatics programs for undergraduates. You might find cognitive science or statistics interesting. Heck, many good physics departments offer a computational physics/scientific computing course(s). It just depends.

The other option might be to suffer through a few CS courses, and get a degree in something else and study CS at the graduate level. Most CS departments take people from other disciplines. Math is the best in that regard. Some MIS programs (like CMUs) allow you to focus on non-programming areas and are pretty good. You might like a program like Boston University's "Cognitive and Neural Systems". CalTech has a similar program at the Koch Lab. I even saw a "computational mathematics" program at JHU that required little programming. In fact, some of the best computer scientists are secretly mathematicians. Knuth, (Martin) Davis, Minsky, Ritchie, and many others have PhDs in math.

The little joke among computer scientists is that the best don't often study it. Logicians and combinatorical mathematicians tend to be better with the theory. Engineers are better with hardware. EEs are usually the ones who write device drivers. Heck, who wouldn't want a Claude Shannon or Lofti Zadeh working on CS problems. Frankly, I don't understand the point of modern-day CS. It's not math and it's not quite engineering. I like CS, but I just hate the boring coursework.

If you're still not convinced take a look at "The Feynman Lectures on Computation" and "Feynman and Computation". One of his hobbies was algorithm analysis. The man wasn't just a brilliant physicist. He did ground-breaking work with computers. I was first introduced to analog computation and quantum computation by Richard Feynman's work. He also worked on some deeper computational problems during the Manhattan Project (see "Surely You're Joking" [his memoirs]).

Type analog computation in a search engine and you'll see that this area of CS is done by other other fields. I've been reading about the applications of analog computation and their relation to limits of computation (see Neural Networks and Analog Computation: Beyond the Turing Limit). In fact, the future of computing may lie in some analog world. The computer program is math (see An Introduction to Kolmogorov Complexity and Its Applications). Church's Thesis may prove to be the most valuable piece of 20th century mathematics. In fact, I've seen a few logicians that use LISP code to do mathematical work (like Gregory Chaitin).

Ultimately, I think you need to figure out what you really enjoy doing and find other people who are doing it.

I've spent the last 5 years writing code. I've gone back to school to finish my degree.I hate writing code. I enjoy mathematical logic. I like the rigour of foundational mathematics/theoretical CS.

Unfortunately, CS courses don't transfer well, and I don't feel like paying large ammounts to finish non-major coursework (unfortunately I can't transfer it in from another university) at my old school.

I hate writing stupid code. I hate paying someone for the privilege of writing trivial classroom code. I'm working without the degree, so a math/physics double major with a minor in CS will work for me. Frankly, no one cares what your major was in IT. CS-based math courses (theory of computation|algorithms|discrete math) tend to lack rigour. My experience is that they often stop sort of proof. How can you study graph theory without proofs? Erdos and Dykstra are rolling over in their graves! This may be differ by school. CS is the one field you can teach yourself.

Do you want to be in IT or do you like applying computers to scientific problems? Frankly, physics, chemistry, and biology have computational subfields. There are even a few bioinfomatics programs for undergraduates. You might find cognitive science or statistics interesting. Heck, many good physics departments offer a computational physics/scientific computing course(s). It just depends.

The other option might be to suffer through a few CS courses, and get a degree in something else and study CS at the graduate level. Most CS departments take people from other disciplines. Math is the best in that regard. Some MIS programs (like CMUs) allow you to focus on non-programming areas and are pretty good. You might like a program like Boston University's "Cognitive and Neural Systems". CalTech has a similar program at the Koch Lab. I even saw a "computational mathematics" program at JHU that required little programming. In fact, some of the best computer scientists are secretly mathematicians. Knuth, (Martin) Davis, Minsky, Ritchie, and many others have PhDs in math.

The little joke among computer scientists is that the best don't often study it. Logicians and combinatorical mathematicians tend to be better with the theory. Engineers are better with hardware. EEs are usually the ones who write device drivers. Heck, who wouldn't want a Claude Shannon or Lofti Zadeh working on CS problems. Frankly, I don't understand the point of modern-day CS. It's not math and it's not quite engineering. I like CS, but I just hate the boring coursework.

If you're still not convinced take a look at "The Feynman Lectures on Computation" and "Feynman and Computation". One of his hobbies was algorithm analysis. The man wasn't just a brilliant physicist. He did groundbreaking work with computers. I was first introduced to analog computation and quantum computation by Richard Feynman's work. He also worked on some deeper computational problems during the Manhattan Project (see "Surely You're Joking" [his memoirs]).

Type analog computation in a search engine and you'll see that this area of CS is done by other other fields. I've been reading about the applications of analog computation and their relation to limits of computation (see Neural Networks and Analog Computation:
Beyond the Turing Limit. In fact, the future of computing may lie in some analog world. The computer program is math (see An Introduction to Kolmogorov Complexity and Its Applications)

Like the PIII Coppermine CPUs that wouldn't even boot sometimes.

Or the randomly rebooting PII Xeons.

Or the voltage problems with certain PIII Xeons.

Or the memory request system hang bug in the PIII/Xeon.

Or the PIII's SSE bug whose 'fix' killed i810 compatability.

Or the MTH bug in the PIII CPUs that forced Intel customers to replace boards and RAM.

Or the recalled, that's right, recalled PIII chips at 1.13GHz.

Or the recalled (there's that word again) Xeon SERVER chips at 800 and 900MHz.

Or the recalled (that word, AGAIN?!) cc820 "cape cod" Intel motherboards.

Or the data overwriting bug in the P4 CPUs.

Or the P4 chipset bug that killed video performance.

Or the Sun/Oracle P4 bug.

Or the Itanium bug that was severe enough to make Compaq halt Itanium shipments.

Or the Itanium 2 bug that "can cause systems to behave unpredictably or shut down".

Or the numerous other P4/Xeon/XeonMP bugs that have been hanging around.

Yes, I did consider the possibility that there might just be some basis for the belief that Intel's products are superior. Having considered that, in light of the mountains of evidence to the contrary, I shall now proceed to laugh at you.

Ha ha ha.

Now go away, or I shall mock you again.

Declaration of Independence

U.S. Consititution

That's where they DON'T.

The following is a full list of the primary and secondary mirrors that have Firefox 0.8 builds. This list will also be maintained and updated.

Apologies for not listing one per line, but slashdot rejects posts with "too few characters per line".

North America: mozilla.isc.org (http) mozilla.isc.org (ftp) trillian.cc.gatech.edu (http) trillian.cc.gatech.edu (ftp) mozilla.ussg.indiana.edu (http) mozilla.ussg.indiana.edu (ftp) mozilla.oregonstate.edu (http) mozilla.oregonstate.edu (ftp) mozilla.gnusoft.net (http)

Europe: sunsite.rediris.es (http) sunsite.rediris.es (ftp) sunsite.cnlab-switch.ch (ftp) ftp.cvut.cz (ftp) www.artfiles.org (http) ftp.rediris.es (ftp) ftp.rediris.es (http) ftp.task.gda.pl (ftp) ftp.task.gda.pl (http) sunsite.icm.edu.pl (ftp) (Windows only) sunsite.icm.edu.pl (http) (Windows only) ftp.mirror.ac.uk (ftp)

Asia/Australia: ftp.lab.kdd.co.jp (ftp) ftp.kaist.ac.kr (http) ftp.kaist.ac.kr (ftp) ftp.nctu.edu.tw (ftp) mozilla.mirror.pacific.net.au (ftp) mozilla.mirror.pacific.net.au (http)

The following is a full list of the primary and secondary mirrors that have Firefox 0.8 builds. This list will also be maintained and updated.

Apologies for not listing one per line, but slashdot rejects posts with "too few characters per line".

North America: mozilla.isc.org (http) mozilla.isc.org (ftp) trillian.cc.gatech.edu (http) trillian.cc.gatech.edu (ftp) mozilla.ussg.indiana.edu (http) mozilla.ussg.indiana.edu (ftp) mozilla.oregonstate.edu (http) mozilla.oregonstate.edu (ftp) mozilla.gnusoft.net (http)

Europe: sunsite.rediris.es (http) sunsite.rediris.es (ftp) sunsite.cnlab-switch.ch (ftp) ftp.cvut.cz (ftp) www.artfiles.org (http) ftp.rediris.es (ftp) ftp.rediris.es (http) ftp.task.gda.pl (ftp) ftp.task.gda.pl (http) sunsite.icm.edu.pl (ftp) (Windows only) sunsite.icm.edu.pl (http) (Windows only) ftp.mirror.ac.uk (ftp)

Asia/Australia: ftp.lab.kdd.co.jp (ftp) ftp.kaist.ac.kr (http) ftp.kaist.ac.kr (ftp) ftp.nctu.edu.tw (ftp) mozilla.mirror.pacific.net.au (ftp) mozilla.mirror.pacific.net.au (http)

How long do you think it would take Disney to setup a Pixar knock-off?

I don't think the question is setting up a Pixar knock off. If Disney wanted a fully 3d animation studio I'm sure Eisner could put it on his personal platinum card and have it bought this afternoon. So let's say they do that, what then? The problem is that Disney almost never produces any original ideas. Most of their work has been adaptation of existing stories. Outside of their distribution agreements with Ghibli and Pixar(oops), There aren't manny original stories that they can claim. Oh, and before you tell me that the Lion King or Disney's take on Atlantis were original, you had better check here and here.

Since mozilla.org is slashdotted, here are the primary mirrors:

And the google cache for more mirrors.

Since mozilla.org is slashdotted, here are the primary mirrors:

And the google cache for more mirrors.

USA:
California
Georgia
Indiana
Oregon
Europe:
Spain

The full list may be found on the google cache

Is it ethical to break the law?

Some would argue that it can be. She might. They might. He might. Heck, some people might argue that treason against one's country could sometimes be ethical.

Mind you, I'm not defending counterfeiting currency, just answering your question. Your question implies that you would say that breaking the law is unethical. I'm always surprised to hear Americans declare that the law is a measure of morality or ethics given that many of the best parts of our country came from civil disobediance. (I realize you might not be American, if so, my apologies. Still, the statement stands.)

"Kazaa and the Sherman Networks people would be better off moving to somewhere like Yemen, China or Cuba, where even though you don't have some rights, I doubt they go busting down doors over copyright."

Oh ya China, good idea, as long as you they did not facilitate the proliferation of information/material of which challenges the "Party".

"Between 1994 and the present, China's rules and regulations on the Internet became progressively more comprehensive, moving from efforts to regulate Internet business to restrictions on news sites and chat rooms. These regulations give the government wide discretion to arrest and punish any form of expression. For example, "topics that damage the reputation of the State" are banned, but an Internet user has no way of knowing what topics might be considered injurious." More here
They already banned google

Yemen sounds good too right?

Too bad they pretty much banned the Internet in Cuba.

"History teaches us that anyone who tries to get in the way of progress either gets a war against them or is bypassed. Or to put it in other terms "nature finds a way"."

You mean like all the wonderful progess we see in China?

The RIAA is dying - just a matter of time.

"The USA was built on some principles of being a new, golden land. It's heading for decline into conservatism and corruption. I think that China and India will be the new superpowers."

I suggest you read The Declaration of Independence

I think that there's a difference between a person searching unconnected data, even using a text index like Google, and a government team of people using Google, or a more potent search engine. Governments have more actions, many coercive or worse, at their disposal, once they've obtained information, than do people. And people have a right to liberty, while "to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed". People have more rights than do governments, in a just society.

If a person were to search Google, or any public information, and then do what governments do, like send out police, investigate private documents, invade countries, or any other exercise of power, they would be in a lot of trouble pretty quick, and probably be stopped - hence the deterrent that preempts such actions. But once governments are in motion, it's very difficult to stop them, with tremendous damage done regardless of justice, or even positive benefits, like catching criminals. So limiting the rights of government workers, to less than their civilian rights, is necessary to preserve justice and liberty.

In America, we have lots of immediate problems that are a legacy of complacency in vigilance of the primacy of rights of the individual. People are supposed to all be equal under the law in the US. But corporations are now first-class citizens, primary above people. So their owners have more rights than noncorporate people, when acting through their corporations. As "synthetic legal people", corporations can act the same way as people with the same rights, but have very limited liability. You cannot arrest a corporation, or execute it. Corporations are never "minors", with limited rights while they "learn the ropes". The rights:liabilites ratio of people and corporations (and the people who control them) are completely reversed, and so liberty suffers in every way.

Governments, in turn, have been addled in this hierarchy. It's supposed to be #1: people, #2: government. But introducing corporations at the top, it becomes #1: corporations, #2: government, #3: people. Flipping the priority not only allows government to subjugate people, but also allows corporations to evade government.

What we need is a revolution, not violent, but legal, similar to the legal revolution that threw King George III out of the US. We must enforce suspension of corporate charters as a parallel to human incarceration and execution, but more readily than to people. We must enforce new laws to prevent the shuffling of liability by corporate people, unavailable to people with whom they compete. The biggest problem in this campaign is the international scope of corporate power, now that this American invention roams the globe at will. Until we do, we will be the lowest entity on the food chain.

Ohmigod... it lives....

Yeah, right. Singing synthesis is about as old as speech synthesis itself. Here's an example from 1958 (item 11 on the linked page). By 1961 singing synthesis had become fairly mainstream -- witness the singing HAL in "2001".

Well spoken. It's nice to see some clear examples instead of "AMD sucks".

But, being the AMD fan I am, I must say that perhaps your problems are more due to bad luck than anything, since RMA rates for motherboards are significantly higher than other components.

And so this brings me to a question... is there a site that gives statistics on RMA rates?

- - - - - - - - - -

P.S. - The following riposte is a cut and paste of a previous slashdot post:

Pentium Floating-point division bug [ku.edu] (it's close enough, isn't it?)
Invalid Operand Instruction crashes original Pentiums [iss.net] Pentium crash codes
Pentium Pro/II still having problems with floats [ddj.com] Unable to convert to int
Pentium III can't even start up [bbc.co.uk] You went faster with an 8088
SSE is great for when you want your PIII to crash [zdnet.co.uk] Pretty blue screens abound.
PIII Xeon, quality you can count on, except at high CPU usage [macworld.com] Watch the task manager, Phil.
Yay, PIII MTH crashes! [com.com] Does MTH stand for Meth?
Total Recall 2: PIII@1.13GHz [com.com] Fastest crashes ever.
Total Recall 3: PIII Xeons@800/900Mhz [com.com] More Xeon quality in a box.
Total Recall 4: CC820 [techweb.com] How many defects? Can't recall...
Pentium 4 overwriting data [zdnet.co.uk] Hope it wasn't something important.
Pentium 4 chipset bug [com.com] Fast video performance? Naaa.
P4 Oracle/Sun problems [indiana.edu] More workarounds than work
Itanium shipments halted [theinquirer.net] That's an expensive oops.

Just so nobody gets any ideas that Intel is perfect...

Care to explain the sharp shadows in this picture then? It was taken inside a cloud.

It is mentioned in Douglas R Hofstadter's book Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.

On what planet? The average US manufacturing wage is more like $14-15. In some states (e.g. Michigan) it is as high as $20, and even the lowest state average (South Carolina) is over $11.

I wonder how many software errors will be caused by neutrons hitting the processor and upseting logic gates? I have not seen any test results from Los Alamos for 90nm processors using EIA JESD 57, (1996) JEDEC Standard - Test procedures for the measurement of Single Event effects in Semiconductor Devices from Heavy Ion Irradiation. Unfortunately the Radhard server at NASA is down right now so I can't check the server for the latest test results.

Some people think Failures in Time (FIT) rates will get better at 90nm than 130nm. Some think the opposite. Xilinx and Actel are arguing over it. Caches are epecially vulnerable. In a critical software application, this is unacceptable, and sometimes the cache needs to be disabled altogether.

One method of addressing this is built in checksumming on the cache, and triple redundancy on certain registers like program counter, etc... This does induce a performance hit.

For those who haven't heard of it yet: TEI is an open SGML/XML format created for electronic editions of literary texts. It is as comprehensive and well-designed for text philology as DocBook is for technical documentation. The only drawback is that it is, like DocBook, very comprehensive and accurate in its markup tags (fulfilling all needs of academic editions of historical texts), so that for average readers, the trimmed-down TEI Lite DTD should do the job.

For e-literature collections created by professional philologists - such as the Victorian Women Writers Project, TEI already is the standard text format. Thanks to the SGML/XML toolchain, TEI sourcecode can, like DocBook, of course be painlessly transformed into HTML, txt, RTF, PDF etc. (TEI is, btw., also being mentioned in Eric S. Raymond's quite useful DocBook Demystification HOWTO.)

Florian

(philologist by profession)

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies: "

"FDR did it during WWII,"

This action has been blasted time and time again by Supreme Court justices, Presidents, and others. The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 gave a Presidential apology to all those affected and went so far as to provide reparations. From this site:

"Civil Liberties Act of 1988, signed by President Reagan and passed by Congress, provides for a Presidential apology and appropriates $1.25 billion for reparations of $20,000 to most internees, evacuees, and others of Japanese ancestry who lost liberty or property because of discriminatory wartime actions by the government. Civil Liberties Public Education Fund created to help teach the public about the internment period."

The Executive Order authorizing the internment camps was rescinded by President Ford in 1976 with Proclamation 4417, ti

There's lots of examples of this, if you search on google. The first one I found is in this powerpoint (slide 9). For those of you who don't want to download a ppt, here's the relevant text:

Basic Switching Algorithm
- Maintain data structure called the switch forwarding table
- The forwarding table is indexed by MAC address and contains port numbers
- Packet arrives on port P with source S and destination D
- Set Fwd(S)=P
- If we have an entry Fwd(D) and Fwd(D)P, then send packet out Fwd(D)
- Otherwise, flood packet out all ports

I googled with "learning bridge OR bridges" network switch algorithm.

This looks pretty cool, but it seems like there will be problems when nodes go on and offline, since broadcasts get used to find nodes. Won't nodes that come and go periodically cause problems -- or is this a non-issue?

The idea that nodes go down will probably not be an issue, because you have a (two-way) TCP connection to the node, so you know when it goes down.

The War is illegal because it was never declared. The war is not illegal. The President no longer has to declare war to attack a sovereign state its called the war powers act which was passed in 1973. The war powers act has superceded the antiquated notion of 'declaring war'. It gives Congress the right to give the President (who I will also remind you is Commander-in-Chief), the right to use the military forces, which by law he commands, to invade and attack a foreign nation. The reason behind the war powers act was twofold. One, it declares our intent to use force without actually demanding action as the old way of declaring war did. The hope was that this would be enough to scare the foreign nation into backing down and give us what we want without the lose of lives. Two, it allows the use of force at anytime once Congress gives the President the right to use force. This allows for more tactical strategies to be used in a war. Instead of the country under attack being prepared and knowing more or less when the first strike will be coming (as in the old system), it gives us a much larger window to attack. Again, this gives us an upper hand, but also helps to minizmize the loss of lives. (Think Normandy beach.) In a legal sence, the United States of America has only been at war with Iraq one time 1991. Wrong again. The United States never declared war with Iraq in its entire history. In fact, the last time the United States declared war was World War II. The war powers act was used in the Vietnam war, the Korean war, and the Persian Gulf wars. As far as legality under our country's constitution, this war is just as legal as the rest of the wars in or history have been. Since then we've bombed a soverign state for shits and giggles, but haven't really declared war. I wouldn't really call it shits and giggles. The bottom line is, while no weapons of mass destruction were found in ready yo use form, the reasearch and facilities for making these weapons was obvious. Given time to continue these pursuits, Saddam would have unquestionably had weapons of mass destruction at his disposal. But he didn't have them now you say? Welcome to current foreign policy. The neew theme to our countries foreign policy is based as a direct result of Vietnam. We are no longer going to wait until a country develops its weapons and mechanics of war to a point where we can no longer stop them easily if they become a threat to us or our allies in surrounding nations. Again, you can rant and rave as much as you want about the motivation behind Bush's reason for invading, but the bottom line is, we are trying to stop a threat that could potentially cause the loss of lives equaling or exceeding that of Vietnam if let to grow and fester. Our new foreign policy now is to squelch these threats now before they become to big too handle.

Back in my day we didn't have this abstract stuff [introduction to a book]. No sir. No turing machines and no compilers. We had to hard code our algorithms. We didn't have punch cards either. I had to manipulate the very laws of physics. My computers were huge, took large grants from the government to build. Heck, one of my employees (a woman) had to pretend to be a man just to find work.

--Charles Babbage

Actually due to a HUGE congressional blunder called the War Powers Act of 1973 that is no longer the case.

Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men, generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to put out its faults, and do better than it would have them? Why does it always crucify Christ and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?
...
Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

Maybe this would cover California or part of the Northeast...

or a very densely populated Indiana. South Korea is the same approximate size as Indiana but has an estimated 48 million people (CIA's WorldBook)compaired to Indiana's 6 million (stats.indiana.edu).

I'm guessing trillions, so heck, why not? double the defecit, but get free broadband...

No world wars in 50+ years

No world wars? Do you recall the Cold War? Or more recently, the (insert brassy fanfare) "War on Terror"?!? Just because it wasn't an all-out, killeverythingthatmoves kind of war doesn't mean that hostilities didn't occur, or that it didn't involve the "world".

Has negotiated and enforced many peace treaties throughout that time.

And it has failed to negotiate and enforce just as many. Look up a country called Rhodesia and the history of the land it inhabited. No UN intervention there, and we're still seeing the fallout in central Africa. Or better yet, look at the strength of UN resolutions at work in Israel. There have been UN sanctions for decades against Israel, and it hasn't stopped the crimes one bit.

Economic and other sanctions have had positive effects on some countries.

Such sanctions have allowed dictators to divert funds from aid programs to build military infrastructure, enabled "ethnic cleansing" such as that in former Yugoslavia, and created situations leading to attacks on the US and other member nations.

WHO has done some fantastic work in the 3rd world.

Work which includes proposing some of the most restrictive "health" laws ever seen.

Is the world's first supra-national organization and, more remarkably, has had its power seriously challenged only a few times.

First?!? Even the UN admits that the League of Nations existed. And as for serious challenges to UN authority, you can look at the record of the last 50 years to see the endless challenges and flaunts of that authority. The UN has been ignored from Korea to Iraq.

Has, respectively, saved the countries of Korea, Kuwait,and many others i'm forgetting by using multinational forces to defeat a common agressor enemy.

The UN saved Korea? The Korean War didn't end. It is still in a negotiated ceasefire, and is still a divided country. As for Kuwait, the country it was ceased to exist when they were invaded. To say that the UN saved these countries is to ignore the facts. It would be more proper to say that the UN helped to alleviate some of the destruction caused by internal or external aggressors, and in some cases aided the victimized society to rid itself of the invading force.

I'm not trying to say that the UN is a failure. However, the current political and economic climate make the organization more of a pawn to a few powerful nations than a true supranational entity charged with protecting the peace and enforcing international law. While it has contributed somewhat to international stability, it can be seen to offer selective stability, chiefly for Western nations that expect UN backing for their own whims.

</offtopic rant>

Is anybody else worried that this might turn into another Corel?

Corel died because Microsoft wanted them to.

Corel had a great plan but, ultimately, management was bought out by Billy.

People don't seem to be picking up on this. The same thing happened with Apple and OSX right after Steve Jobs dumped every last share in the company (aside from the single "symbolic" share that he did keep).

Microsoft owns each and every one of us. If they didn't, we'd have seen them split up a long time ago...

sigh...

the purpose of government IS to protect the citizenry from undesirable elements.
The purpose of government is to secure the rights of individuals.

We establish laws to punish the criminals.
We establish laws to prevent crimes.

We fight wars to keep the bad guys out.
We guard our borders to keep bad guys out.
We fight wars to expand our borders.

I want my government to serve me...
I'd like my government to serve me also. It's too bad that that's not how governments work. Maybe you should look into a private police force, or talk to a local mobster, because those seem to be the only legitimate ways to get what you are asking for.

Answers to your questions:

A) There are no more 'bad people' in this country than in any other.

B) We also execute more people than any other country (that keeps records).

C) The 'judges' have minimum sentencing guidelines set by the 'legislatures', which are mostly too severe and not suited to the crime.

D) This is a result of many Americans' (including yours) views on children and who should be responsible for raising them. It was established since before Locke wrote his Treatise on Government and our Founding Fathers created a country based upon his ideals.

If you are carrying drugs, I want you busted. This nonsense of drug crimes being prosecuted like jay-walking has to end.
Carrying drugs is no more a crime than your ignorant ranting on /. We're willing to overlook your faults. Why can't you find it in your heart to have a little tolerance for others?

For another, it recommends a public sector-led effort to adopt an XML-based standard document format, either that of OpenOffice or a new one developed by the EU. Will they push ahead with these plans or is it just more talk?

What's wrong with good old reliable existing formats?

Isn't this effectively just a new Norplant?

Phat Tony.

You might be interested in Variations2, a project at Indiana University that combines a digital music library (yes, it's legal!) with a library of scores. See for example a page from the Variations2 manual that explains how to synchronize music playback with score viewing:

With the score viewer, you can listen to a selection and follow along on the score at the same time. You can bookmark pages in online scores for future use, and score views can be changed according to your preferences. If the score you want to view is unavailable in Variations2, it likely has not yet been digitized but is probably available for checkout

(However, if you want to actually try it out, you will have to visit Indiana University because it is only available on campus for legal reasons).

You might be interested in Variations2, a project at Indiana University that combines a digital music library (yes, it's legal!) with a library of scores. See for example a page from the Variations2 manual that explains how to synchronize music playback with score viewing:

With the score viewer, you can listen to a selection and follow along on the score at the same time. You can bookmark pages in online scores for future use, and score views can be changed according to your preferences. If the score you want to view is unavailable in Variations2, it likely has not yet been digitized but is probably available for checkout

(However, if you want to actually try it out, you will have to visit Indiana University because it is only available on campus for legal reasons).

heh, and what about the clowns that came up with these references to God?

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights...

Declaration of Independence

Oh yeah, and IANAL, but let's be clear that you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand the law. (Or be a lawyer, for that matter.)

And the most important feature of all....

an OFF switch!

This doesn't compare to the wide variety of advanced hosting accounts you can find. Scroll about 3/4 of the way down to 759-09 and prepare to bust a gut.

Perhaps it will be Scheme.NET (sadly, not a joke)

"Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men, generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to put out its faults, and do better than it would have them? Why does it always crucify Christ and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?"

Funny, I just got done reading something else that sounds famailar: Science is a process

The article lists several more sources for information:

• Warschauer, Mark. Technology and Social Inclusion: Rethinking the Digital Divide. Boston: MIT Press. 2003.
• Becker, Henry J. Who's Wired and Who's not? The Future of Children Vol 10 No 2; 2000.
• Warschauer, Mark. Reconceptualizing the Digital Divide. First Monday Vol 7 no 7; 2002.
• Athena Alliance
• Center for Scoial Informatics
• Community Informatics Research and Applications Unit
• Community Technology Centers Network
• Digital Divide Network

A very well attended symposium was held at Stanford in 1999 that covered this very topic (in even more optimistic depth, in the case of the majority of the speakers). Entitled, Will Spiritual Robots Replace Humanity By 2100?, the symposium was organized by Doug Hofstadter and was themed around two books that expoused very similar views and were written independently of each other around that time: Ray Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines and Hans Moravec's Robot.

Kurzweil has actually been preaching about this for quite a while now, and the details of Marshall Brain's article are eerily reminiscent of both of the above mentioned books.

The Internet Oracle always provides the best answer(s) to your questions.

who took part in this study recently joined Indiana University that is why I am posting AC (I am getting my masters here).

The main problem I see with this experiment is that it makes the assumption that the kids will be more productive/learn more when placed in this tech ambient environment. But won't kids be just as productive if you just place them in the woods by itself? I remember when I was younger, we would love going on trips that put us outside, out of the classroom, and no ambient tech was needed to maintain our interests. All we needed was a log book, some nets, and jars!

There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which I have also imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.

But if congress passes a law they are very unlikely to strike that same law. In fact most of the time they just make more laws and don't get rid of the old ones.

And what I was talking about was what the common citizen (or group) could still do to fight the law. Well besides write your congressmen, because you know they care.

I thought of this because of the question raised in the article about identity: "It probably would change people's ideas of themselves, to say nothing of their ideas of artistic talent."

Another interesting angle is to look into the way the brain may rely on quantum processes... Apollo 14 astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell has done some interesting, if nigh-kooky, summaries of work on this.

Doesn't their software also run the RigiScan?

Another nice little postscript program can be found here

It's only about 10 lines long and creates a image with 2 bubbles and even reflections.

And if someone wants to learn Postscript:
A first Guide to Postscript