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Forgot this one...

- In 2050, The Internet Oracle (formerly the Usenet Oracle) wins a landslide lawsuit against Google for patent violation, infringement and using Zadoc without a license. The Internet Oracle licenses Zadoc to Google and as part of the settlement, Google is now responsible for answering all woodchuck-related queries.

"In a 32 bit world, you're a 2 bit user." -- All About the Pentiums by Weird Al

Just guessing here, but I believe the grandparent post was refering more to the work of people like Douglas Hofstader than work being done on artifical neural networks. I can highly recommend Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought as an introduction to this branch of AI research.

I get the impression though that many AI researchers see Hofstader as a heretic. That's too bad because I think the ideas he and his team have developed hold more promise than any other approach to AI currently extant.

Just guessing here, but I believe the grandparent post was refering more to the work of people like Douglas Hofstader than work being done on artifical neural networks. I can highly recommend Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought as an introduction to this branch of AI research.

I get the impression though that many AI researchers see Hofstader as a heretic. That's too bad because I think the ideas he and his team have developed hold more promise than any other approach to AI currently extant.

And as well they shouldn't. The challenge isn't to emulate the hardware, so much as to reverse engineer the software. It's the algorithm, not the machine. It's rather tricky in the brain since hardware and software are so tightly entwined, but it should be possible to someday to at least get the gist of what the algorithm is, and recast that in silicon, without having to model ion flux and membrane potential, etc. I think Hofstadter is on the right track with his parallel terraced scan

As a recovering math person, I think programming is math. For me, figuring out how to write a proof feels the same as figuring out how to write code to do something. It's just a different kind of math.

I think the issue is that computers let people do mathematics that has computational beauty, not proof beauty, and you have to appreciate the computational side to really understand it.

It's as Hofstadter wrote in Godel Escher Bach. It is possible to create systems with computers in which the entire system can be understood, but once the system is used to compute, the results can be so complex that they can't be preditcted.

This is the mathematics of computation where interesting things happen only after you compute. It's not the same as traditional mathematics where the beauty is found in the static proofs of theorems themselves. It's easy to miss what makes computers and programming special if you only try to apply the yardstick "proof beauty" of traditional mathematics to programs without understanding and applying the "computational beauty" that the programs create.

Within sixty calendar days after a report is submitted or is required to be submitted pursuant to section 4(a)(1), whichever is earlier, the President shall terminate any use of United States Armed Forces with respect to which such report was submitted (or required to be submitted), unless the Congress (1) has declared war or has enacted a specific authorization for such use of United States Armed Forces, (2) has extended by law such sixty-day period, or (3) is physically unable to meet as a result of an armed attack upon the United States.

on this note, feel free to play my tetris implementation i programmed for my C212 programming class @ my page ! it is assignment 8, and the controls are the arrow keys (and u can use for rotations instead of up). furthermore, dont feel stressed waiting for that straight piece, simply hit 'S' and watch your next piece turn into that beloved straight piece u've been waiting so long for in agony.

[offtopic]

For those of you who haven't seen this, check out The Usenet Oracle's response when he was asked about the imperial system vs the metric system ...

The sensation excited in the human eye by light with a wavelength at or near 510 nm.

How would you move Mount Fuji?

It's going to take lots of heavy equipment, a large labor force, and ~16 rail lines in parallel to the destination site. Please sign this waiver and wire 11.6 tillion Japanesse Yen to my account.

How would you design a remote control for venetian blinds?

Ha ha... silly. Why would you want a remote control for your blinds? Everyone I know just hooks a servo up to their old 802.11b cards and writes a device driver to control it over the network.

...

Questions like these were great ones to ask the UseNet Oracle. I got a great response once on the manhole cover question...

According to the Declaration of Independence, rights are not given by government, but by the "Creator", however you choose to define it. So, your argument is pretty much at odds with the tenets of that document. Fair enough.

Now, in your scenario, who is doing the forcing at gunpoint?

There is an old 'where are your beliefs?' question that helps you figure out what you think government should be like. The question (paraphrased) is: If you could place the people in the top 100 positions of government from the following two choices, which would it be? A) The top 100 graduates from Harvard University, -or- B) The first 100 people in the phone book? The point to think about is: which bias you prefer? Do you want people from a select class, with obvious advantages, but perhaps some myopia with respect to the real world; or, a bunch of people from all walks of life, some of which will be just like you? Do you want to be governed by The Elite or The Average Joe?

So what is the /. crowd is made up of?

I think with /. you get a little of best of both worlds. You get the focus of a tech-savvy community, without the exclusionary elements. Better yet, the Average Joe gets moderator points.

Sure, the professor could have thrown the question out on Usenet. Or, the professor could have only regurgitated what his peers in the education industry are saying. Heck, he could have done both at the same time by consulting the Internet Oracle ;-)

I think too, that the timing of the question is significant. It isn't like classes begin next week. Chances are, this professor is preparing for a class for the summer or fall semester. That does show some forsight, and real interest being able to present quality material.

So if I were in a position of looking for the technology + moral questions of the day, I think I could do a lot worse than /.

If you want something more specific, check out Grover's algorithm for quadratic searching. Imagine a database with N entries, and you only need to spend sqrt(N) time to search the whole thing! For you cipherpunks out there, see Shor's algorithm for quantum computers. This is the algorithm everyone says will destroy public-key crypto.

XPP which has evolved into Common API for XML Pull Parsing . I don't believe there is a standard pull-based API for XML parsing in the Java world yet although there is JSR 173.

Mea culpa. That's what I get for trusting random "quotes" on the web. Through the Looking Glass, chapter V.

Of course, resources like this (derived from Project Gutenberg) could not exist if works did not fall into the public domain in less than geological periods.

It will stop you when Disney sues your school district and they fire you.

It sounds to me like your uses fall within Fair Use, which for multimedia is generally interpreted as 10 minutes or 15%, whichever is less. (multimedia copyright info) TEACH allows you to use materials in the same way online that you always used them in a live classroom, but the materials must be password protected and protected from further copying (generally interpreted as streamed).

If you are interested in copyright, check out the University of Texas and Purdue which both have wonderful information about Copyright.

Check out the War Powers Act. It is the law of the land, Joint Resolution by Congress. If this isn't Constituional enough for you, blame the Rules Committee.

I was about to ask the same thing, but looked it up instead. According to the Marriage to a US Citizen FAQ, it takes up to five years to get a green card, and becoming a permanent resident/citizen takes 12-18 months. She's probably in the waiting period. I guess we've been watching too 'marriage of convenience' movies.

patch for 2.4.21-pre5

Got these from a LKML archive that handles attachments nicely.

patch for 2.4.21-pre5

Got these from a LKML archive that handles attachments nicely.

Different mirror

I guess these are the same.. haven't read the origial ./ed site, but this is from lklm and guess they're the same...

If the universe is known to be expanding farther and farther away from each individual star from the Big Bang, would the universe one day begin to 'collapse' on itself when stars begin to attract each other towards the center of the universe caused by their own gravities?

In short, the fate of the universe depends on the true nature of Einstein's cosmological constant, also known as "that damn nuisance of a lambda" in more jocular astrophysics circles. I quote:

"In this model, called the inflationary Big Bang, the universe should contain a critical density of matter, just enough to slow expansion to a halt, given infinite time. Scientists express this condition of critical density as omega equals one. Too little mass -- if omega equals less than one -- and the universe would expand forever, growing ever more tenuous. If omega equals more than one, then the universe would collapse of its own weight, contracting in what is called the Big Crunch."

Read the link for more. There was also an excellent article on this in last month's (?) American Scientist, IIRC.

The NEIC gives you all the data you need to predict your own Earthquake as accurately as any other internet-diploma geologist.

This isn't exactly what I'd call `practical' computer math, but I would by all means try to expose people to it. I first heard of it when our Computer Science teacher (12th grade; language was Pascal, to give an idea when this was) read some of it to us, to try and illustrate the concept of recursion and recursive algorithms...

Reading this book, years ago, first gave me the inkling that mathematics and computer programming could be interesting and cool in and of themselves, and eventually this grew into the impetus to learn more.

Of course, when you tell people that you really became interested in Computer Science because you were interested in Godel's Theorem, they think you're pretty strange. But, from a learning standpoint, it's easier to learn if you have a genuine interest in something; and for me, it's these strange, paradoxical-seeming branches of math that don't necessarily seem to have any practical applications (like Godel's Theorem, or Cantor's countable and uncountable infinities, or Quine's Paradox) that made the rest of math come alive.

I'm sure this is a little off topic, because I'm speaking of make I like, not math I use. I just couldn't resist plugging the book that got me interested in math in the first place... A good review can be found here, Google will find a lot more. Oh, what the heck, I'll save you a few keystrokes: here.

Either you are Linus Torvalds, read linux-kernel, or have nearly exactly the same opinion as linus.
Show that to people here in this thread, that should be enough namedropping for slashdot.

Btw., this lklm thread is really informativ.

I have no problem, I don't see that non-citizens are due the same rights as a US citizen

Why are americans so special that they have rights that others do not?

Try reading this, and get back to me.

The commons is a general term for shared resources in which each stakeholder has an equal interest.

Research on commons usually focuses on some aspect of the relation between the physical resource and human institutions designed in the use and maintenance of that resource.

It's a mistake to posit altruism and the market as the only alternative institutions --- the Balinese example does not rely on altruism, it's consistent with a game theoretic model with rational actors.

As to the benefits of introducing market-mechanisms into the internet, I would pose the following question: how many viruses, worms, etc. would we expect to see released in an environment where there was a potential monetary payoff for such actions?

Enron made a huge mess of the electricity markets in California, partly through fraud and deceit, but mainly because the people who designed the rules of the market didn't think the problem through. Let's not repeat that mistake with the Internet based on some theoretical ideas about the efficiency of markets.

blog-O-rama

Let me know when you find a few people who are willing to spend a year - or even a night - in jail for the sake of their fair use rights. Then we can talk about a campaign of civil disobedience.

Also, civil disobedience means being prepared: you have to study up on the law you're about to take on, and be absolutely certain that you want to commit to opposing this one piece of legislation over others (you cannot at once fight ALL oppresive laws by yourself). Be sure to read up on the subject (Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" is a good start) and it's previous practitioners. Also, be prepared to deal with the consequences: aligning yourself in direct defiance of the state is a sure way to inflame it's proponents and incite non-official (but tacitly approved) retribution in most any part of the world. Try to align yourself with similar minded people. If you survive all this and your actions have an effect, be ready to enter into politics!

PS: To return to the subject, do not forget that IEEE is also a guild, not a samaritan organization to help downloaders, and aims chiefly to further the well-being of it's members. That's why it has a larger hope of succeeding against RIAA/MPAA, because it's yet another powerful lobby.

1. 
   Pentium Floating-point division bug (it's close enough, isn't it?)
   Invalid Operand Instruction crashes original Pentiums Pentium crash codes
   Pentium Pro/II still having problems with floats Unable to convert to int
   Pentium III can't even start up You went faster with an 8088
   SSE is great for when you want your PIII to crash Pretty blue screens abound.
   PIII Xeon, quality you can count on, except at high CPU usage Watch the task manager, Phil.
   Yay, PIII MTH crashes! Does MTH stand for Meth?
   Total Recall 2: PIII@1.13GHz Fastest crashes ever.
   Total Recall 3: PIII Xeons@800/900Mhz More Xeon quality in a box.
   Total Recall 4: CC820 How many defects? Can't recall...
   Pentium 4 overwriting data Hope it wasn't something important.
   Pentium 4 chipset bug Fast video performance? Naaa.
   P4 Oracle/Sun problems More workarounds than work
   Itanium shipments halted That's an expensive oops.
   

Thanks! (Link)

• 
  
• Microsoft SQL Server Personal will be installed only on machines owned by IU, students, faculty, or staff.
• This form is a request for only one copy of Microsoft SQL Server Personal.
• You will not allow illegitimate copies of Microsoft SQL Server Personal to be made or distributed.
• You will pay $5 per CD requested by providing an IU account number.
• etc...

If you believe in legalisation, then do promote that guy -- he was doing the right thing (and perhaps breaking the law, the two aren't always the same).
Although the circumstances/topics are different, the logic is akin to Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr., and many other people who try to do what is right.

Henry David Thoreau talks about this type of stuff in Civil Disobedience (quoted below)

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?

One would think, that a deliberate and practical denial of its authority was the only offense never contemplated by its government; else, why has it not assigned its definite, its suitable and proportionate, penalty? If a man who has no property refuses but once to earn nine shillings for the State, he is put in prison for a period unlimited by any law that I know, and determined only by the discretion of those who put him there; but if he should steal ninety times nine shillings from the State, he is soon permitted to go at large again.

If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth--certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.

"The Lion King" was essentially stolen from Japanese manga artist Osamu Tezuka. Take a look online.

Each of the two Keck telescopes cost about $94 million U.S. to construct. If we amortize that over twenty years, that's five million per year, $14,000 per day, or nearly six hundred dollars per hour. You'll settle for one Keck, right?

And that's just your sticker price. Actually operating the damn thing requires a lot of money. This site gives a figure of about a dollar per second--that's about four thousand dollars an hour. It's not cheap to haul astronomers, mirror bits, refrigeration units, and everything else up a mountain, you know.

Oh, and if it's cloudy while you're up there, too bad. You can apply for more time now, but your request likely won't be granted for another year or so. Not that the group responsible for adminstering the Kecks would let you play with their toy anyway. There are real scientific projects that already suck up all the available observing time--and many more waiting in the wings that would kill for some. Do you think that CERN would let you mess around with their collider?

Your best bet for getting to play with mid-scale scientific toys (linear accelerators, van de Graff generators, telescopes in the three meter class, and so forth) would be to befriend someone at a university owning such facilities. Once you know the right people, you can get in for free.

I can not belive no one bothered with this style. Usenet oracle

> Oh great and mighty oracle whos toejam I am
> unworthy to throwup. Could you re-write
> the LOTR in your style?

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} OH THAT tired old story. How many more times
} must I hear about the great Frodo Baggins. I
} should ZOT you dead for even muttering that name
} around me! What great power that was bestowed
} upon him and he squandered it. Typical Hobit.
}
} You owe the Oracle 3 cans of Canned Hobit. Not
} the creamed ones but the chunky.

The placement of an apostrophe has been a pet peeve of mine for quite a while with the most egregious offense lately being the title of the movie "Bridget Jones's Diary". Or maybe that just the british way of doing things...

Don't assume that something that counters your experience or learning is automatically incorrect. That just might be a sign of elitism and intellectual laziness. The title of the movie refers to a diary that belongs to the character "Bridget Jones". Whether the possessive form of her name should be written Jones' or Jones's seems to be a matter open to debate. I am not an English major, so I don't pretend to have a definitive answer; it seems to depend on whom you ask....

Give these links a try.

It's called forming an opinion based on facts. Most educated people are familiar with the concept.

During the Kosovo war, 10 times as many drones were lost as manned vehicles, according to a report from Teal Group Inc.. Three of the Air Force's six Global Hawks, which cost about $35 million each, have crashed. About half of the 50 much smaller, $4.5 million Predators, which can get closer to potential targets to send pictures and coordinates, have been lost, including some that were shot down, an Air Force spokesman said.

This is all great, except that during the Kosovo conflict, 10 times as many drones were lost as manned vehicles. Three of the Air Force's six Global Hawks, which cost about $35 million a piece, have crashed. About half of the 50 much smaller, $4.5 million Predators have been lost, including some that were shot down, according to the Air Force's own data.

I agree. Building your own chemistry set would be more fun, and you would learn more.

The best way to learn is to teach. Collecting a bunch of good chemistry experiments, and the sources for the materials, would make a great project.

And you aren't the only one who benefits...

Some places to start:
Delights of Chemistry
Demonstration Lab
Lecture Demonstrations
Chemistry Resources

Some Sources of chemicals:
CHEM Scientific
Fisher
Sagent Welch
Carolina

I am certain you will get lots more from other Slashdaughters...

Yeah, I love this book. What I find most amazing about it is that it was originally written in Polish, and somehow all that poetry still comes out amazing. The one you quoted goes on for another 7 verses, and each damn one rhymes. Although that's probably a much of a tribute to the translator as is is to Lem himself.

Translation is an interesting problem.

Douglas Hofstadter , of Goedel Escher Bach fame, wrote an entire book about the nuances of translation, using many, many translations of an obscure one stanza poem to illustrate his theme.

It is somewhat surprising how well translation of poems or other word play works, and even more surprising is how wildly differant translations can convey the same feel, and somehow capture the feel of the original work.

Of course, it isn't too hard to screw it up completely either.

Id like to share with you /.'ers a portion of the email i sent to this guy Hes a laywer, and he was whining about being black holed because he had a open relay that he says could not be... but I digress. (see his thing for details). I think it speaks for itself, and has larger implications beyond spam.

Quote below:
--
On a non logic issue, it is my belief that we (members of the internet) will soon badly need some law that enchances the common sense doctrine that you have the right to control all content that goes in and out of your network. On that note people have every right to block incoming traffic, including email. They can choose to block /allow all,some, or none. The criteria they choose to use to control that traffic is strictly up to them. They make the choices on whom to lay trust and whom not to, not only to allow traffic but where they get information which effects their criteria.

There's nothing wrong with expecting to make a living off music (or writing code, or books, or whatever), the problem arises when you expect to make millions off it.

Some artists (most of the so-called nu-metal scene spring to mind) seem to be more interested in the money than the music, just like many dotcommers were more interested in the money than the technology. That's when it crosses the line between wanting economic security and petty greed. I would love nothing more than to make a living off playing my bass, writing code or making computer graphics, but I don't need a big mansion or ten cars and a thousand groupies (of course, bass players are cursed by God anyway, and never get groupies, groupies can sense such things).

Some artists just want to make music, and it'd be a bonus if it's enjoyed by lots of people. These tend to be the folks who don't give a flying fuck about their music being traded on P2P networks (although they often release through small labels, who are hit harder by filesharing than Sony and BMG -- let's face it, many filesharing fans don't buy what they've already downloaded). Others want the fame, riches and glory associated with the popular media representation of a musician, and will happily sell their souls to the highest bidder to fulfill that particular dream.

Most of the music I listen to is published by small labels, and I don't use P2P because I want to help keep the small labels alive. Paradoxically, the big ones are the ones most actively combating so-called piracy, but they are also the ones most financially resistant to it. Of course, it may be because they fear obsoletion, and 'piracy' is a good smokescreen to put up while they're destroying online music distribution.

/me removes his tinfoil hat

Correct, but there is such a thing as Civil Disobedience.

Stop buying CD's and DVD's. RIP all the stuff you have and post to usenet. Support EFF, ACLU etc.

My other thought is this particular example plays right into the strength of Java's JIT. Since the same code is run over and over, it can be compiled once at runtime. The code is very short, so the just-in-time compilation doesn't take much time. And it can fully exploit Java's key performance advantage: the ability to incorporate runtime profiling information into the optimization process.

Static compilers make "eduated" guesses as how to best optimize code. When it comes to a fork in the road it, since they don't have actual run-time information, they have to do the best they can and move on. Java can leverage run-time information against the statically compiled bytecode and utilize dynamic optimization. Granted completely linear code will always run better when statically compiled to machine code, but if at any point in the compilation process the compiler has to make an "educated" guess, a better decision can be made at run-time through dynamic optimization. General information on dynamic optimization can be found here.

Unfortunately, the dot-com crash ensued just as I was getting started, and things have been a little too hectic since then for me to do much about it.

A number of people suggested I use bugzilla, and I thought a lot about it, but didn't want to use it, at least not in its current form, because it lacks a feature that I feel is critical for a bug database that is to be used to track operating system development: storage of preset machine configurations.

Perhaps the people with the new kernel bugzilla can put this in.

What I envisisioned was a way for the user to specify the hardware configuration of their machines by drawing on a database of all known hardware. (Just making that database would be a big job in itself). The user could give a name to each configuration.

Then when reporting a bug, the user would be presented with a popup menu or scrolling list of their configuration presets. There would be a way to make variations for a particular bug report, to indicate that a board had been added or removed from the stored preset.

Then the user would upload their kernel .config file.

This would allow the kernel developers to search for combinations of hardware that is or isn't installed along with kernel config options that are selected or not set.

This would help a lot to identify situations where FooBar Corp's ethernet board doesn't work when you've got a WhizzyVideo card installed.

I would also encourage people to report the configurations for successful kernel tests. That would help to build confidence as well as to identify untested areas so more attention could be paid to them.

Unfortunately, I'm just a guy working alone and although some have offerred to help, I have been working too hard just to survive to even coordinate the development of such a database.

However, I have found some time to write some articles on various aspects of Linux and web software quality and post them at the site. Writing is what I like to do to relax when I'm not programming - I write articles like these whenever I can, despite despite what the anklebiters have to say about them.

The OSDL was kind enough to mirror my two kernel testing articles and even translate them into Japanese. You can mirror or translate them if you like, as they are under the GNU Free Documentation License. I would be particularly pleased if any of my articles were translated into more languages.

The two kernel testing articles are:

• Why We Should All Test the New Linux Kernel ( Japanese translation)
• Using Test Suites to Validate the Linux Kernel ( Japanese translation)

But I found the OSDL's interest in my articles quite encouraging.

A lot of people are griping about not being able to file bugs anonymously with bugzilla. I had always intended to allow anonymous bug reports, although I would encourage users to log in so we could follow up with them.

Also some people are saying in other comments that bug reports that aren't emailed to the linux-kernel mailing lists won't be as good as the traditional ones. But I'd like to point out that linux-kernel is one of the highest traffic mailing lists around, and the discussions are extremely technical and often heated. Patches also fall on the floor all the time, as I found when someone posted a patch that fixed the problem I reported when I first subscribed.

I felt then and still feel that linux-kernel is too intimidating for the average linux user, so most will choose not to partipate in kernel QA. A bug database with a nice web interface where the reporter doesn't have to participate in the mailing list traffic can only encourage more people to post bugs. And a bug database would make it possible to log successes without overwhelming the list.

It would also be possible to publish an XML interface to the database, so people could log reports programmatically. That would help for identifying configuration information, for example you could run a program that would do what lspci does and upload it to your account at the bugbase.

Ok i dont know if your trolling as the devil advocate or you really believe this BS but let me explain. We cannot live in a free society where the government suspects of things we dont do.

First of all we have the right to privacy. The constitution never says directly that we have this right but the supreme court has made it clear, to have all of our other rights to speech as well as other we must have privacy.

Because we have the right to privacy we should be able to exercise our right and be able to actually keep some privacy. Exercising your rights is not groudns for probably cause, that has been defended over and over again up to the Supreme Court.

I do care if they flag me as a terrorist. Even though i also have no intention of becoming a terrorist who knows what will be defined as terrorism. Read Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau, he explains that going against the goverment is patriotism at its best and only when you stand up for yourself even while encarcerated you will be more free than any iron bars can ever lock down. Civil Disobediance open with a quote and i will end with it; "That government is best which governs least".

I agree - this is a real accomplishment in terms of pioneering a new development methodologies, esp. considering how geared the typical CS mindset is completely focused on absolutely predictable results.

I enjoy reading up on (some branches) of AI, and the most interesting advances (IMHO) in the last few years have been coming from the specific application end, i.e. video games and this... on the pure research end I'm still most interested in the work done by Douglas Hofstdater at U Indiana, but the work being done for games and movies really digs into on the important, but unsexy issues like "how the hell do we actually work with this stuff to get stuff done??". Sure, they've got a conceptually simple goal (make crowds fight!), but this is a case where the devil is in the details, but there are a billion details and the details are all that matters.

Anyway, it's great to see that they've made strides in making this sort of non-deterministic (kinda-misapplied-term) functionality usable by normal humans.

Besides, I'm freaking out at the idea of seeing 10,000 orcs (and the article mentions that there will be 100,000 fighters in one of the ROTK battles - yeep!)

It seems to me that since the cosmologists have been working hard since the Big Bang theory was first proposed to work out the manner in which this universe (lets start by not assuming its the only, or one of many, but just...here) came into being. This has worked out well with many other fields since both ends of the spectrum, quantum and astronomical, have been feeding back more solid information (be they constants or otherwise) to "keep the cosmologists on track". But it seems in just the last 5 or so years, the facts about what we *don't* know about the universe are begining to make the theories of cosmology a bit out of touch.

For example back in 1998 when studies of distant supernova gave thorough evidence of an increase in the speed of the universes expansion. Now, this one still seems to be giving headaches to most all the theorists, and it seems to me that working around, or flat out ignoring that fact when building the "big theory" leaves a bit to be desired. Now enter Dark Matter. The lack of a comprehensive understanding of either A) the particle composition of the universe in the order of about 88% or B) an understanding of gravity to a power of 10 gives us yet another piece of the puzzle we're basically clueless about. Now, I understand that the purpose of these kinds of theories is just that, to test out hypotheses against what we do have in terms of fact and go from there, but it seems like maybe we should shelve the Big Theory Of Everything and work a little harder on the Theory of Very Specific Things That We Know We Don't Know.

That being said, IANA(astromomer/cosmologist/physicist) so please, jump down my throat and tell me what *I* don't know because I for one am willing to admit that I don't have it all figured out quite yet.

Try something like the Civic Education Project, they will take anyone with a graduate level degree and have them teach anything from history to economics, in English, of course...and you don't even have to be trilingual! If CEP doesn't float your bill, keep searching, because there are a lot of nonprofits out there, each one centering on a certain region of the world. For the NIS, you can start at IREX, ACCELS, or check the Web Links section of this web site at Indiana University.

Happy Hunting!

Well, not exactly. That's about $6 for each license, not a legal copy. Schools agreements for enterprise (that just means lots of licenses) pay per seat. Student and teacher licenses are included in this, esp through Microsoft agreements. Your school has found a way to pass some of this cost onto the students. Technically it's yours to use for school purposes only while you are student.

Well, not exactly. That's about $6 for each license, not a legal copy. Schools agreements for enterprise (that just means lots of licenses) pay per seat. Student and teacher licenses are included in this, esp through Microsoft agreements. Your school has found a way to pass some of this cost onto the students. Technically it's yours to use for school purposes only while you are student.

One of my favorites is the sodium acetate tower. It is a very safe demo that gets a good reaction out of just about any age group. You make a supersaturated solution of sodium acetate in a spotlessly clean beaker. Show everyone the clear liquid (looks like water) then start slowly pouring it on the table. Crystals of sodium acetate form as you pour, and the water is trapped within the crystals. You wind up with a pile of fairly dry looking sodium acetate and no liquid. Very impressive. Sodium Acetate Tower

Another one I like is the burning carbon disulfide demo. I've seen this done using a long glass tube full of carbon disulfide gas. Drop a glowing splint in one end of the tube, and as it falls you get an amazing blue flame. Here's a link (hope you speak a little German) CS2

They did it a bit differently. As you might guess, this lab is a bit more hazardous and you do get some stink from the sulfur. It's pretty though.

Making your own mirror is another great demo. You prepare a small batch of silvering solution. ISTR using silver nitrate and nitric acid, maybe using an aldehyde as a reducing agent. I'll try to link to a recipe. Anyway, you mix the solution in a round bottom flask and begin swiriling. It takes about a minute, but as you swirl a silver mirror plates out onto the glass. Tollens Mirror

I used a bit of a different procedure, but this looks like it should work. You may consider keeping the flasks a little on the warm side (100-120 F) just before you do the demo. I've gotten better results compared to using cold glassware.

A great set of books is Tested Chemical Demonstrations, Vol. 1-4, by B. Shakishiri (University of Wisconsin Press.)