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I don't see why a computer couldn't use a similar algorithm...

Because the people that programmed this thing have never read any of the books written on solving a rubik's cube. There is *ONE* solution; one sequence of moves that when repeated will eventually solve the puzzle. There's no need to think out a solution. Simply pick up the cube and start repeating the pattern until all the sides match. (btw, that's how real people do it.)

No such solution exists. The best you can do by repeating the same pattern is to cycle through 1,260 states, multiplied by the length of the permutation sequence: https://people.kth.se/~boij/ka...

There does exist at least one sequence of moves that is guaranteed to solve the cube, eventually (it forms a Hamiltonian circuit.) It's 43 quintillion moves long, and you can download a (200MB) specification describing how to construct the sequence here: http://bruce.cubing.net/ham333... Iterating a sequence that long is well beyond the capabilities of both human and robot, sadly.

Modern solvers use variations of the Kociemba algorithm, which can find near-optimal solutions very quickly: http://kociemba.org/cube.htm CPU power is important because more time spent searching can yield shorter move sequences - the slowest part of the solve (computer vision, solution search, twisting the cube) is the physical part. However, every millisecond spent searching for shorter sequences might be better spent actually executing a suboptimal solution.

... "bra".

Why not? That's just Swedish for "good", after all.

Look at this study : Sex differences in human neonatal social perception.

Will you also say that this difference among children of an average age of 36.7 hours, is because of societal sexism?

I learned how to program alone in the beginning of the 80s. It's me who asked my parents for a computer as my Christmas gift. And I insisted a lot. It's not something they would have done otherwise. No one pushed me into programming as no one knew what it was about.

The interesting thing is in the 80s there was even fewer girls into computers then now. And no, no one was trying to dissuade them to learn to program as no one knew what is was. But the fact is computers and programming are just more natural for boys than girls. It's not because of sexism, it's because boys and girls have different interests. I'm pretty sure that if there wasn't social pressure for "equality", we would be like in the beginning of the 80s, that is with even less women in programming than the situation now.

So when you talk about sexism, give me a fucking break. No. Scratch that. There is a problem of sexism in tech : women are privileged over men.

Ever heard of Google? took me one try, top hit.
http://www.math.kth.se/matstat...

You don't get to call someone a liar without rudimentary research on your own part.

Accenture (and the like) image in IT departments (technical side) is often illustrated thanks to some jokes, like the famous Why did the chicken cross the road?. While the IT department usually delivers practical and tangible services, these "consulting companies" made their way up to the management. The management, IT illiterate, is always keen on overpaying some comforting but useless lengthy overpriced reports from such a consulting company, stacked later on at the bottom of a cabinet, having a sticky note inserted on page 3/1000, page where the reader gave-up reading. Useless reports aimed at influencing high level decisions at the management level, that may not have a direct or lethal impact on IT productivity. Besides the heavy cost embedded in the management budget, usually no one really cares. The problem arises when a big entity, IT illiterate, does not have a solid IT structure yet, and assigns full responsibility to such a "consulting company" to manage a new IT service, from A to Z.

There is some indication that at least some of the difference in preference does not come from societal pressure. The preferences of 1-day old babies is influenced by sex. The difference here is not that big, but I imagine experimenting with the preferences of babies that young will always contain a lot of noise.

So, it could be that at least part of the reason we give dolls to girls and not to boys because they usually play much more with dolls, and that some of this preference comes from biology, not from society. However, culture could easily take such a preference and amplify it enormously.

A Swedish company already did this, they call it "myFC" and it's powered by a "puck" of hydrogen. Wether it's useful, I have no idea.
http://www.kth.se/en/forskning/pa-djupet/ladda-mobilen-med-vatten-1.381551
http://powertrekk.com/

Chernobyl's RBMK reactors were too big to contain without it costing a ridiculous amount, so the building was the secondary containment structure - and it fell apart like tissue paper, as expected

IIRC it's not that the RBMK reactors themselves were too big, but that they were designed to have their fuel replaced whilst the reactor was running and keeping all the loading gear inside containment was space prohibitive. There's an awesome cutaway model here http://neutron.kth.se/gallery/power_reactors/Ignalina_model.JPG that shows the colossal crane/gantry above the core, along with what basically amounts to a shed roof covering the reactor core. Not pictured is the cooling pond, which sits parallel to the core (and takes up more space) that the spent fuel rods are dropped into.

Fitting all that folderol inside decent containment would be very expensive, because you now need at least twice the height and width of the reactor to fit everything in. So why bother? Allowing refuelling whilst the reactor is running meant a) you wouldn't need to close the reactor down to refuel it and b) you could make lots of weapons-grade plutonium very quickly. Weapons grade stuff requires very short fuel runs on a low burnup (exactly what you don't want in a reactor for power generation), whereas extracting P239 from all the other plutonium isotopes in "regular" nuclear wastes is exceptionally difficult. Since these reactors are expensive, lots of countries decided to cheap out and build dual purposed reactors which, after enough warheads had been made, could then be converted to civilian fuel loads. Hence you had a bunch of suboptimal design decisions taking place, such as the lack of containment on RBMK and other reactors. Yay for the cold war.

Not meant as a nitpick BTW, just thought people might find it interesting.

Thanks to people who linked to the patent, I think I understand what's going on now. My guess was mostly right...

A liquid crystal material consists of long rod-shaped molecules. They have the funny property that light passes through them at a different speed depending on whether the light is polarized parallel to or perpendicular to the axis of the rods. This is called "birefringence".

Normally, if a thin layer of liquid crystal is sandwiched between two glass plates, the molecules line up parallel to the plates. However, if you put a voltage across the plates, the molecules line up end-to-end, perpendicular to the plates.

Therefore, applying a voltage effectively changes the speed of light passing through the liquid crystal. Glass optics work because the speed of light in glass is slower than in air: the difference in speed causes the light to be bent. Since liquid crystals can *change* their speed of light electrically, if you create a LC layer with exactly the right shape you can make a "lens" that vanishes when you switch off the voltage.

There's a lot of technical details (rather than creating a classical lens, the liquid crystals impersonate a Fresnel lens, requiring specific shapes and voltages for the electrodes) but that's the gist of it.

Where I was being led astray was by the effect liquid crystals have on *rotating the polarization* of light. This is a crucial part of understanding how LCD monitors work, but after thinking about it I realize that when used in these glasses, the liquid crystal will indeed rotate the polarization, but that's not something the human eye can detect.

or the servers that are being cooled?

Why not? In the opposite situation to AC, I know the PDC supercomputing center in Stockholm, Sweden feeds the surplus heat from their machines into the local district heating system.
Perhaps even more originally, those crafty Swedes have also hooked up their crematoriums!

Correcting a human's articulations is a really tough task for a machine.
Interesting research on the topic has already been made, and the most interesting that I've seen lately is coming from KTH, in Sweden.

ARTUR - the ARticulation TUtoR
http://www.speech.kth.se/multimodal/ARTUR/

I guess you could ask them about the availabitilty of their software, but you would need a lot of work to customize it for each of the participants.
Or they could maybe give you an alternative....

That's a bit optimistic. Yes, one meaning of the Swedish word 'krona' can be translated to the English word 'crown'. That does not mean that all of meanings of the word can.
Try the same trick with the Swedish word 'fil', and start talking about how your hard drive is full of soured milk, how you were eating lanes for breakfast, and that you're switching files on the freeway (yes, Swedish uses the exact same word for those three things).

For Swedish speakers: http://lexin2.nada.kth.se/cgi-bin/sve-eng?krona

It works both ways, by the way. The first that comes to mind is the English word 'cut', which can easily be translated to at least three different Swedish words, depending on context (whether the tool involved is a knife, scissors or an axe).

Maybe he is just in love with the look of the thing. I just watched the in-game video, and it's both weird looking and yet oddly attractive. A bit like playing in a Van Gogh.
The whole "build your own base/city" part sounded quite good to me too though

The best part of the video though is "oh! The sun is coming out! How nice" ;)

Played it before FOX pulled the plug on the Mod. http://baron.tri6.net/alien_credit.htm http://www.student.nada.kth.se/~nv91-gta/quake/

5.1 million dollars if I remember right, according to the US government.

It Depends.

If you're being poisoned by air pollution, it's $6.1 million dollars (down from $8 million in 2000) but if a company is dumping poison in your water supply, it's $8.8 million dollars. If you need to know how much more to pay for little rubber caps to make your Pinto not explode, the DoT suggests $5.8 million, but starting this year wants everyone to analyze their work at $3.2 and $8.4 million, just to be sure. $5.8 million is also used by the FAA.

Laura Taylor of North Carolina State University, said her figure was lower because it emphasized differences in pay for various risky jobs, not just risky industries as a whole.[emphasis mine]

Anyone have a link to the actual study? I've found all sorts of people pontificating on whether it's done right or even the right thing to do, but not the study itself. I'm interested in knowing whether these "various" risky jobs included illegal immigrants in jobs like meatpacking or whether certain very dangerous and well-paying jobs were left out (surely an accidental oversight), similar to how energy and food costs are too "volatile" (read: embarrassing) to consider in inflation.

The energy payback time is much shorter than 15 years, typically about 1 year. http://www.infra.kth.se/fms/utbildning/lca/projects%202006/Group%2007%20(Wind%20turbine).pdf

Here's a shot of MSIE 8 Beta with the ACID3 test:

http://www.nada.kth.se/~edalen/msie8beta1-acid3.png

It shows some really strange stuff during the load and warns you that the page wants to run the MSXML Add On.

Actually you can know how much something effects the environment, there are standardized ways to evaluate a products effect on the environment through its life. I don't think you will get the whole picture with mines etc, but you will get CO^2 emission levels.

There is a recent study on e-readers vs. paper magazines done here in Sweden.

I am not interested in learning the computer to recognize my terrible pronunciation, but rather to have some program expect to hear standard Chinese which I could practice with.

One extremely useful program I have found which is able to decode and show the tones is Wavesurfer. For those of you that do not know, tones play a very important part in Chinese speech, and it is kind of difficult to learn as a foreigner.

Request: Can any of you with knowledge within this field please contribute a little to update http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Speech-Recognition-HOWTO/index.html, it is a bit dated.

Given that the post which got you into so much trouble was, to all intents and purposes, the same (content-wise) as your first BAUT post, your decision - deliberate or not - to not bother to check on replies to it (the first post) before starting a new thread was foolish and clumsy, at best.

If that were all there was, then you did pay a heavy price for being gauche.

However, your first post contained many pointers to something deeper, something going on behind the scenes as it were.

And a few minutes with Google will lead a disinterested person to a number of very interesting posts by a 'mgmirkin', around the time you posted on BAUT; reading some of those might lead such an unbiased observer to replace gauche with cynical, disingenuous hypocrite ... and that the BAUT mod's decision was entirely justified.

Next, an apology. I mistook a reference in your first BAUT post (to yourself as 'a mad scientist') to mean that you are a professional scientist. It seems I was wrong; certainly there are no citations in ADS (http://adswww.harvard.edu/) for author 'Gmirkin' (Astronomy, Physics, arXiv). But perhaps you got your PhD in a different field of science?

In any case, the second part of your comments, to which I'm replying, clearly indicate an unfamiliarity with contemporary physics, astronomy, space science, astrophysics, cosmology, ...

Perhaps a good way to show this is to compare your link (Conventional vs Maverick Science) with your admiration of Birkeland: it seems you are a fan of both 'Maverick Science' and Birkeland's work, yet apparently unaware of how ironic or inconsistent this is! By your own, preferred, definitions, Birkeland's work was 'Conventional' in the extreme.

It gets better (or worse, depending on your viewpoint).

Birkeland, no doubt, would have been horrified at your characterisation of the state of space science (and plasma physics in general), a century later, as being (still) 'conceptual'; after all, almost all his work involved (quantitative, with numbers, math, and equations) testing the ideas you are excited about.

mgmirkin, the content of your BAUT posts - to the extent it is 'wrong' - is wrong because the detailed, quantitative results of a century (and more) of research - into plasma physics, into aurorae, the Earth's magnetosphere, the solar wind, etc, etc, etc - have long since shown those 'concepts' to be inconsistent with the data.

Let me give you a very small example of just how far beyond the 'conceptual' stage research into aurorae, the Earth's magnetosphere, the solar wind, etc, has got, by referring you to a couple of MSc thesis projects at KTH's School of Electrical Engineering (Space and Plasma Physics section) - the academic institution which includes the Alfvén Laboratory (http://www.spp.ee.kth.se/): Multi-satellite measurements of solar wind plasma structures (http://www.spp.ee.kth.se/edu/exjobb/visaprojekt.html?id=47037), and Study of auroral potentials using multi-satellite data from ESA's Cluster mission (http://www.spp.ee.kth.se/edu/exjobb/visaprojekt.html?id=45773). And their syllabus for graduate studies: (http://www.spp.ee.kth.se/edu/graduate/Syllabus_2002.pdf, a link to a PDF). And the research area of Solar System Plasma Physics: (http://www.spp.ee.kth.se/res/ss/) ... be sure to check out the Publications link.

So, instead of ignorant bombast and vitriol, why not enrol in a university space science and/or plasma physics programme? Why not take the trouble to find out, first hand, for yourself, just how much further advanced we (collectively) are than mere 'concepts'?

And along the way

Given that the post which got you into so much trouble was, to all intents and purposes, the same (content-wise) as your first BAUT post, your decision - deliberate or not - to not bother to check on replies to it (the first post) before starting a new thread was foolish and clumsy, at best.

If that were all there was, then you did pay a heavy price for being gauche.

However, your first post contained many pointers to something deeper, something going on behind the scenes as it were.

And a few minutes with Google will lead a disinterested person to a number of very interesting posts by a 'mgmirkin', around the time you posted on BAUT; reading some of those might lead such an unbiased observer to replace gauche with cynical, disingenuous hypocrite ... and that the BAUT mod's decision was entirely justified.

Next, an apology. I mistook a reference in your first BAUT post (to yourself as 'a mad scientist') to mean that you are a professional scientist. It seems I was wrong; certainly there are no citations in ADS (http://adswww.harvard.edu/) for author 'Gmirkin' (Astronomy, Physics, arXiv). But perhaps you got your PhD in a different field of science?

In any case, the second part of your comments, to which I'm replying, clearly indicate an unfamiliarity with contemporary physics, astronomy, space science, astrophysics, cosmology, ...

Perhaps a good way to show this is to compare your link (Conventional vs Maverick Science) with your admiration of Birkeland: it seems you are a fan of both 'Maverick Science' and Birkeland's work, yet apparently unaware of how ironic or inconsistent this is! By your own, preferred, definitions, Birkeland's work was 'Conventional' in the extreme.

It gets better (or worse, depending on your viewpoint).

Birkeland, no doubt, would have been horrified at your characterisation of the state of space science (and plasma physics in general), a century later, as being (still) 'conceptual'; after all, almost all his work involved (quantitative, with numbers, math, and equations) testing the ideas you are excited about.

mgmirkin, the content of your BAUT posts - to the extent it is 'wrong' - is wrong because the detailed, quantitative results of a century (and more) of research - into plasma physics, into aurorae, the Earth's magnetosphere, the solar wind, etc, etc, etc - have long since shown those 'concepts' to be inconsistent with the data.

Let me give you a very small example of just how far beyond the 'conceptual' stage research into aurorae, the Earth's magnetosphere, the solar wind, etc, has got, by referring you to a couple of MSc thesis projects at KTH's School of Electrical Engineering (Space and Plasma Physics section) - the academic institution which includes the Alfvén Laboratory (http://www.spp.ee.kth.se/): Multi-satellite measurements of solar wind plasma structures (http://www.spp.ee.kth.se/edu/exjobb/visaprojekt.html?id=47037), and Study of auroral potentials using multi-satellite data from ESA's Cluster mission (http://www.spp.ee.kth.se/edu/exjobb/visaprojekt.html?id=45773). And their syllabus for graduate studies: (http://www.spp.ee.kth.se/edu/graduate/Syllabus_2002.pdf, a link to a PDF). And the research area of Solar System Plasma Physics: (http://www.spp.ee.kth.se/res/ss/) ... be sure to check out the Publications link.

So, instead of ignorant bombast and vitriol, why not enrol in a university space science and/or plasma physics programme? Why not take the trouble to find out, first hand, for yourself, just how much further advanced we (collectively) are than mere 'concepts'?

And along the way

Given that the post which got you into so much trouble was, to all intents and purposes, the same (content-wise) as your first BAUT post, your decision - deliberate or not - to not bother to check on replies to it (the first post) before starting a new thread was foolish and clumsy, at best.

If that were all there was, then you did pay a heavy price for being gauche.

However, your first post contained many pointers to something deeper, something going on behind the scenes as it were.

And a few minutes with Google will lead a disinterested person to a number of very interesting posts by a 'mgmirkin', around the time you posted on BAUT; reading some of those might lead such an unbiased observer to replace gauche with cynical, disingenuous hypocrite ... and that the BAUT mod's decision was entirely justified.

Next, an apology. I mistook a reference in your first BAUT post (to yourself as 'a mad scientist') to mean that you are a professional scientist. It seems I was wrong; certainly there are no citations in ADS (http://adswww.harvard.edu/) for author 'Gmirkin' (Astronomy, Physics, arXiv). But perhaps you got your PhD in a different field of science?

In any case, the second part of your comments, to which I'm replying, clearly indicate an unfamiliarity with contemporary physics, astronomy, space science, astrophysics, cosmology, ...

Perhaps a good way to show this is to compare your link (Conventional vs Maverick Science) with your admiration of Birkeland: it seems you are a fan of both 'Maverick Science' and Birkeland's work, yet apparently unaware of how ironic or inconsistent this is! By your own, preferred, definitions, Birkeland's work was 'Conventional' in the extreme.

It gets better (or worse, depending on your viewpoint).

Birkeland, no doubt, would have been horrified at your characterisation of the state of space science (and plasma physics in general), a century later, as being (still) 'conceptual'; after all, almost all his work involved (quantitative, with numbers, math, and equations) testing the ideas you are excited about.

mgmirkin, the content of your BAUT posts - to the extent it is 'wrong' - is wrong because the detailed, quantitative results of a century (and more) of research - into plasma physics, into aurorae, the Earth's magnetosphere, the solar wind, etc, etc, etc - have long since shown those 'concepts' to be inconsistent with the data.

Let me give you a very small example of just how far beyond the 'conceptual' stage research into aurorae, the Earth's magnetosphere, the solar wind, etc, has got, by referring you to a couple of MSc thesis projects at KTH's School of Electrical Engineering (Space and Plasma Physics section) - the academic institution which includes the Alfvén Laboratory (http://www.spp.ee.kth.se/): Multi-satellite measurements of solar wind plasma structures (http://www.spp.ee.kth.se/edu/exjobb/visaprojekt.html?id=47037), and Study of auroral potentials using multi-satellite data from ESA's Cluster mission (http://www.spp.ee.kth.se/edu/exjobb/visaprojekt.html?id=45773). And their syllabus for graduate studies: (http://www.spp.ee.kth.se/edu/graduate/Syllabus_2002.pdf, a link to a PDF). And the research area of Solar System Plasma Physics: (http://www.spp.ee.kth.se/res/ss/) ... be sure to check out the Publications link.

So, instead of ignorant bombast and vitriol, why not enrol in a university space science and/or plasma physics programme? Why not take the trouble to find out, first hand, for yourself, just how much further advanced we (collectively) are than mere 'concepts'?

And along the way

Given that the post which got you into so much trouble was, to all intents and purposes, the same (content-wise) as your first BAUT post, your decision - deliberate or not - to not bother to check on replies to it (the first post) before starting a new thread was foolish and clumsy, at best.

If that were all there was, then you did pay a heavy price for being gauche.

However, your first post contained many pointers to something deeper, something going on behind the scenes as it were.

And a few minutes with Google will lead a disinterested person to a number of very interesting posts by a 'mgmirkin', around the time you posted on BAUT; reading some of those might lead such an unbiased observer to replace gauche with cynical, disingenuous hypocrite ... and that the BAUT mod's decision was entirely justified.

Next, an apology. I mistook a reference in your first BAUT post (to yourself as 'a mad scientist') to mean that you are a professional scientist. It seems I was wrong; certainly there are no citations in ADS (http://adswww.harvard.edu/) for author 'Gmirkin' (Astronomy, Physics, arXiv). But perhaps you got your PhD in a different field of science?

In any case, the second part of your comments, to which I'm replying, clearly indicate an unfamiliarity with contemporary physics, astronomy, space science, astrophysics, cosmology, ...

Perhaps a good way to show this is to compare your link (Conventional vs Maverick Science) with your admiration of Birkeland: it seems you are a fan of both 'Maverick Science' and Birkeland's work, yet apparently unaware of how ironic or inconsistent this is! By your own, preferred, definitions, Birkeland's work was 'Conventional' in the extreme.

It gets better (or worse, depending on your viewpoint).

Birkeland, no doubt, would have been horrified at your characterisation of the state of space science (and plasma physics in general), a century later, as being (still) 'conceptual'; after all, almost all his work involved (quantitative, with numbers, math, and equations) testing the ideas you are excited about.

mgmirkin, the content of your BAUT posts - to the extent it is 'wrong' - is wrong because the detailed, quantitative results of a century (and more) of research - into plasma physics, into aurorae, the Earth's magnetosphere, the solar wind, etc, etc, etc - have long since shown those 'concepts' to be inconsistent with the data.

Let me give you a very small example of just how far beyond the 'conceptual' stage research into aurorae, the Earth's magnetosphere, the solar wind, etc, has got, by referring you to a couple of MSc thesis projects at KTH's School of Electrical Engineering (Space and Plasma Physics section) - the academic institution which includes the Alfvén Laboratory (http://www.spp.ee.kth.se/): Multi-satellite measurements of solar wind plasma structures (http://www.spp.ee.kth.se/edu/exjobb/visaprojekt.html?id=47037), and Study of auroral potentials using multi-satellite data from ESA's Cluster mission (http://www.spp.ee.kth.se/edu/exjobb/visaprojekt.html?id=45773). And their syllabus for graduate studies: (http://www.spp.ee.kth.se/edu/graduate/Syllabus_2002.pdf, a link to a PDF). And the research area of Solar System Plasma Physics: (http://www.spp.ee.kth.se/res/ss/) ... be sure to check out the Publications link.

So, instead of ignorant bombast and vitriol, why not enrol in a university space science and/or plasma physics programme? Why not take the trouble to find out, first hand, for yourself, just how much further advanced we (collectively) are than mere 'concepts'?

And along the way

Given that the post which got you into so much trouble was, to all intents and purposes, the same (content-wise) as your first BAUT post, your decision - deliberate or not - to not bother to check on replies to it (the first post) before starting a new thread was foolish and clumsy, at best.

If that were all there was, then you did pay a heavy price for being gauche.

However, your first post contained many pointers to something deeper, something going on behind the scenes as it were.

And a few minutes with Google will lead a disinterested person to a number of very interesting posts by a 'mgmirkin', around the time you posted on BAUT; reading some of those might lead such an unbiased observer to replace gauche with cynical, disingenuous hypocrite ... and that the BAUT mod's decision was entirely justified.

Next, an apology. I mistook a reference in your first BAUT post (to yourself as 'a mad scientist') to mean that you are a professional scientist. It seems I was wrong; certainly there are no citations in ADS (http://adswww.harvard.edu/) for author 'Gmirkin' (Astronomy, Physics, arXiv). But perhaps you got your PhD in a different field of science?

In any case, the second part of your comments, to which I'm replying, clearly indicate an unfamiliarity with contemporary physics, astronomy, space science, astrophysics, cosmology, ...

Perhaps a good way to show this is to compare your link (Conventional vs Maverick Science) with your admiration of Birkeland: it seems you are a fan of both 'Maverick Science' and Birkeland's work, yet apparently unaware of how ironic or inconsistent this is! By your own, preferred, definitions, Birkeland's work was 'Conventional' in the extreme.

It gets better (or worse, depending on your viewpoint).

Birkeland, no doubt, would have been horrified at your characterisation of the state of space science (and plasma physics in general), a century later, as being (still) 'conceptual'; after all, almost all his work involved (quantitative, with numbers, math, and equations) testing the ideas you are excited about.

mgmirkin, the content of your BAUT posts - to the extent it is 'wrong' - is wrong because the detailed, quantitative results of a century (and more) of research - into plasma physics, into aurorae, the Earth's magnetosphere, the solar wind, etc, etc, etc - have long since shown those 'concepts' to be inconsistent with the data.

Let me give you a very small example of just how far beyond the 'conceptual' stage research into aurorae, the Earth's magnetosphere, the solar wind, etc, has got, by referring you to a couple of MSc thesis projects at KTH's School of Electrical Engineering (Space and Plasma Physics section) - the academic institution which includes the Alfvén Laboratory (http://www.spp.ee.kth.se/): Multi-satellite measurements of solar wind plasma structures (http://www.spp.ee.kth.se/edu/exjobb/visaprojekt.html?id=47037), and Study of auroral potentials using multi-satellite data from ESA's Cluster mission (http://www.spp.ee.kth.se/edu/exjobb/visaprojekt.html?id=45773). And their syllabus for graduate studies: (http://www.spp.ee.kth.se/edu/graduate/Syllabus_2002.pdf, a link to a PDF). And the research area of Solar System Plasma Physics: (http://www.spp.ee.kth.se/res/ss/) ... be sure to check out the Publications link.

So, instead of ignorant bombast and vitriol, why not enrol in a university space science and/or plasma physics programme? Why not take the trouble to find out, first hand, for yourself, just how much further advanced we (collectively) are than mere 'concepts'?

And along the way

I played the demo of Ratchet & Clank, and it's wonderfull it was the first time I was amazed by a next gen machine since I entered a VR cube. Not sure if that says something about SGI or about Sony.

But I recommend the newly released Freeciv instead, since it's infinitely many times cheaper.

What we have found, after analysing the course of events and interviewing the file sharers, is that downloading and file sharing of music more has a positive than a negative effect on music sales. The music interest is promoted. New music and new artists are discovered.

How is Microsoft holding free software innovation back? How is this Office Suite or Open Office more innovative than MS Office? At least they innovated the new Ribbons interface whereas OO seems to be stuck on cloning the older versions. The only better thing I've seen in OO was that it used a gzipped xml compared to the opaque binary files that MS Office uses, but this hardly matters for the business users out there.

Your questions are important ones and need good answers for those who don't see the obvious. I don't know if you read my blog entry "SCO finally dead! MS next?" even though I don't prove my statements there about Microsoft having hold free innovation back, merely indicates the explanation for those who have same type of insight as me, which is not rare, about 50% of the people I know have this insight.

However, if you are very young and have grown up with the PC only, no Unix, no Lisa, no Mac, no Amiga then I don't expect you to have this insight. To achieve this you need to care a lot about computers and have been around them for a few decades. For my own I took my MSc in engineering physics with a enhanced focus on computer science 1981. After that I was working with software development and systems design the next ten years, teaching, research and development the next ten years, resulting in a PhD in computer science 2003 (my thesis, pdf) and I am now working as a researcher and research consultant in own company when at the same time developing a new business idea a mass innovation concept Wish-IT® to encourage free innovation, to give consumers, manufacturers and investors what they want.

To make a few brief statements about Microsoft.

1. Bill Gates is smart, but he lacks visions and he doesn't really care much about computers and computer science. He is a hacker, but unfortunately lacking the philosophy and spirit of a hacker his interest was just to make money on computer hacks. OK, something he managed quite well though...
2. Bill Gates as being the

IMHO the future direction taken with Kerberos should be merging the protocol into LDAP (e.g. for the future LDAPv4 revision of LDAP protocol).

Here's my rationale behind this: The problem with Kerberos being a distinct protocol from LDAP is that the distinction causes lots of confusion among the implementors, system architects, developers and administrators. This results in lots of cases where the two protocols are misused.

The correct distinction should be that you use Kerberos for authentication (that is, proving that a user is someone he claims to be) and LDAP for authorization (that is, given an authenticated user, determining information related to granting access to some resources - such as group memberships, possibly some application-specific ACLs etc) and for other data for which a directory is useful (hard to list all possible uses of LDAP, but e.g. mail aliases are a fine example).

But because the protocols are separate and very hard to setup together on a single authentication/authorization/directory server (or a group of servers!), people go along with only one of them, usually using LDAP for authentication instead of Kerberos (see mod_auth_ldap for Apache), effectively prohibiting themselves from implementing usable single sign-on

For an example, let's have a look at available OSS solutions. Apache Directory has Kerberos and LDAP integrated from the start, but it's painfully slow as a server at its current state. A mail server using LDAP for aliases can perform quite a bit of hammering on the LDAP server. MIT Kerberos cannot use LDAP databases. So doesn't Shishi Kerberos, although they plan implementing this in the future. That leaves us with Heimdal Kerberos. Heimdal requires the LDAP server to be on the same machine and support LDAPI connections. So that rules out Fedora Directory Server, whose stable version 1.0.4 doesn't support LDAPI yet (although the CVS development version recently got LDAPI support, finally).

I've tried setting up a Heimdal Kerberos server with OpenLDAP (with SASL2 daemon in the middle), and succeeded, but it was a royal pain in the *ss.

All HOWTOs I've found on the web described a brain-dead design where Kerberos maintains a classic file-based database on its own, separate from OpenLDAP database, and one has to make sure they both are in sync (because it's possible that one can have a user that the other doesn't). In such a setup replication is really troublesome and has to be done using 2 different channels and mechanisms (e.g. LDAP syncrepl + Kerberos' own redundant servers).

I wanted an integrated design, where Heimdal stores its data directly in OpenLDAP.
This way, I couldn't possibly create a Kerberos account without an LDAP account (well, I could if I omitted Kerberos objectclass and attributes, but it would be harder to do and easier to detect). Also, I could use only LDAP's replication mechanisms and easily provide fault-tolerant cluster of LDAP and Kerberos servers.

Unfortunately, the diagram for this setup looks quite daunting for a beginner implementor, as you can see for yourself.

There were also lots of gotchas:

• Heimdal can connect to LDAP as its database only using LDAPI - a networkless LDAP connection over UNIX domain socket. So you have to configure OpenLDAP in a quite non-standard way, and latest

It's pretty easy to do Units/Dimensional Analysis in the D programming language:

physical.d

The example is by Oskar Linde.

Sorry folks, but as a 30 year weather guy, I have to call B.S.

In the 1970's, the worry was Global Cooling, because global temps were on a down swing, so we're all going to die. Now they're tending upwards, so we're all going to die. Oh, and there was an Ozone Hole, so we're all going to die. You get the idea.

The global temps were much warmer than today from the 1300's to 1500's. Greenland was actually green and you could grow grapes in Scotland. The 1600's saw a cool period -- see Maunder Minimum. Around 14,000 years ago, when Europe, northern Asia and North America were under the ice, Egypt and North Africa were grassy plains. Therer were plenty of rivers through the Saraha, and the Qatar Depression was a lake. The ice age ended and the climate changed. Guess what -- animals and people moved along with it. The melted ice cap meant the oceans rose a few hundred feet, so the coastline changed too. Polar bears still know how to swim.

The Carbon Dioxde and temperature pattern are correlated, but from Statistics 101, day 1, Correlation is NOT causation. BTW -- warmer conditions mean more plant growth, so more C02 is a likely RESULT of a temperature rise, not a percussor. WATER VAPOR is the earth's primary "greenhouse" gas, and many times more significant than C02, because Water Vapor forms CLOUDS.

Without the atmosphere, the earth's blackbody temp would be 255K/-18C/0F. The atmosphere makes the effective temperature 288K/15C/59F, which is why 15C is part of the International Standard Atmosphere.

The point is that warming and cooling are going to come and go because solar cycles come and go. The last 14,000 years or so have been (mostly) warming -- the most recent (of many) ice ages ended. No doubt things will continue to fluctuate, and so what? We'll adapt.

If you were able to watch UK Channel 4's "The Great Global Warming Swindle", it's been pulled from YouTube for copyright issues. Pity. It was spot on.

Here's one that addresses the issue and describes some efforts in the "related works" section. It also cites, but does not discuss, IBM's "blue brain" project.

Kerberos provides strong authentication and encryption of network authentication, but nothing for the data communications part of a session.

I don't know about the part of his design that is above ground.

The underground bit however, works well in practice, at least in the Swedish climate.

Extracting heat from a temperature differential with a heat pump and storing it in the ground, is in wide commercial use here, and you can save money on it.

In a quick search in the Swedish yellow pages, I found hundreds of contractors to choose from.

There has also been plenty of research conducted in this field in various Swedish universities. The article author would probably save himself a lot of time if he looked some of it up. Here are a couple of abstracts (in English and Swedish):
http://www.lib.kth.se/main/stems_projektrapporter. asp?subj=vp

"Zappa fram klipp" should rather be translated as "zap clips"
"Titta på filkmklipp" means "watch film clips"
"ladda up" is translated as "upload"

Otherwise you succeded well :)

You can translate words over at this site.

To add to the above, the Swedish Authority for School Development hosts an online multilingual dictionary that can also handle conjugation, as well as declension.

I primarily bought this book for the very interesting treatment of data structures for storing large numbers of IP addresses and CIDR networks. Having already worked with the LCTrie http://www.nada.kth.se/~snilsson/public/papers.htm l to deal with very large numbers of networks, I found the discussion of Lulea vs. LCTrie and other formats quite useful. The fact that I don't do hardware level work didn't make those sections any less interesting.

Since when is this a new idea? I heard about people doing stuff like this years ago.

http://neuralnets.web.cern.ch/NeuralNets/nnwInHepH ard.html
http://www.particle.kth.se/~lindsey/elba2html/sect ion3_5.html
http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/D.Gorse/research/pRA M.html
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/neuronet/about/roadmap/hardwa re.html

Studies have been done.
Here is one:
http://w1.nada.kth.se/media/Research/MusicLessons/ Reports/MusicLessons-DL4.pdf

It has some interesting stuff.

Well written. Even if the "sarcastic" parent didn't need the smack with the clue stick (is there an equivalent "don't be such an ass" stick?) you make a good point about educating others.


What MS mostly has is ad-hoc, undocumented arbitrary code which the rest of the world is just supposed to accept as-is without questioning. The main notice they take of standards is when the see an opportunity to embrace-and-extend to subvert a standard (see ISO C, HTML, Java, Kerberos, etc., etc.)

I would add that they also "embrace" standards when they feel the need to do so to please requisition departments. POSIX and CS2 certification in NT4 comes to mind... POSIX in NT4 was a joke and if I remember correctly CS2 certification was only achieved by running an NT 4 server that was not plugged into a network.

Be sure to turn on tab-completion while you're at it (it's not the best tab completion in the world, but it's better than nothing)

If OpenSSH didn't exist, people would implement some other free ssh client or switch to a different standard.

Evidence that you're right.

Currently we use OpenSSH because it's the best free one. If it didn't exist the people working on it wouldn't all suddenly stop needing it, and if it had a different license some people who work on it would no longer be interested and others who aren't suddenly would be. It's currently a well-scratched itch, but the moment it isn't, it'll be scratched another way.

Fortune 500 companies rely on OpenSSH a lot more than they do OpenBSD; if nothing else, all the major Linux distros would collaborate on a fork of OpenSSH before they'd let it die. Or, more likely, jump-start lsh.

But the moon is still free, right? Right?

(Yes, the vast majority of the light emitted by the Sun goes off into deep space and is effectively wasted, but any that is used, the rightful owner would certainly expect to be compensated for, and while he'd rather not litigate if he can avoid it, he certainly will to protect his property!)

(Dyson sphere coming soon! Sort of like DRM, but on a much larger scale.) Of course, even a Dyson sphere eventually has to have the same luminosity as the star inside of it (unless it wants to just get hotter and hotter) but it still represents the best possible means of extracting the full licensing potential of 0wning (with a zero) the Sun, short of unprofitable legal/cosmological issues like black holes.

Hi,

I would recommend you to read Joe Armstrongs PhD thesis (http://www.lib.kth.se/Fulltext/armstrong031205.pd f), which is titled "Making reliable distributed systems in the presence of software errors".

http://www.nada.kth.se/~hjorth/krasse/english.html

I really enjoyed the little 'hook' that the BBC used in Dr Who - "Bad Wolf". It was fun looking out for its appearance in each episode and the BBC created a bunch of "fake" web sites tying into the series that added an extra dimension and helped to suck the viewer into the fictional world and suspend disbelief. What I enjoy about Lost is that it uses many of the same tricks - but on a grander scale that makes the little Dr Who games seem trivial by comparison.

http://www-lexikon.nada.kth.se/skolverket/swe-eng. shtml

This is sort of backwards.

The HOWTO discusses allowing authentication to Fedora Directory Server using Kerberos credentials from a Kerberos database. So this works like this: you want to use the LDAP service (Fedora Directory Server) to e.g. search for some users. You connect to it, and supply your Kerberos ticket, that's obtained from a Kerberos KDC (Key Distribution Server), based on authentication based on your Kerberos Server's database (probably some ordinary files). You get authenticated based on Kerberos's authentication databse (which is outside of FDS's LDAP!), then you get access to the LDAP database. It looks completely bottoms-up! You throw away the whole scalable n-way replicated LDAP authentication database that is available in the FDS, and use some simple academic Kerberos implementation to store all your users' keys and password data! You need to keep those 2 databases in sync, and your Kerberos server probably won't scale to such large numbers of users as the Fedora Directory Server, since open source Kerberos implementations (MIT, Heimdal) use their own file-based databases.
Forget 4-way multi master replication, forget scalability to hundreds of thousands of users.

Why use Fedora Directory Server at all then, if you delegate its most useful functionality to some separate agent, separating the authentication database from user database and turning the whole "centralized identity management by LDAP" concept upside down?

What's needed is getting a Kerberos server (KDC etc.) use Fedora Directory Server as its database backend, for efficient and stable storage of users, tickets, keys etc.
The Heimdal Kerberos implementation can do supposedly this, but only through UNIX domain sockets AFAIK (no LDAP over IP network :( ).
See:
http://www.padl.com/Research/Heimdal.html and http://www.pdc.kth.se/heimdal/ .

Since Fedora Directory Server doesn't seem to support LDAP over UNIX domain sockets, putting Heimdal Kerberos authentication layer on top of FDS looks impossible currently :(

When we finish covering the surface of the sun with solar panels, I'll believe you.

http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/dysonFAQ.html#WHAT

Robert Moog playing in an abandoned nuclear reactor hall at KTH after being awarded the Polar Music Prize in 2001. movie+pictures

Holodeck doesn't work. Not for anything except sitting on your ass and watching the action.

Well, I beg to differ.

Quite a few years ago I had the chance to visit the VR-cube at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden. And there's no sitting on your ass watching the action when you're in there. You're free to move around and observe from any angle you like. Sure, it's not solid projections like you get in a StarTrek holodeck, and it's quite a bit smaller than a holodeck, but other than that, the similarities are right there! But I must say that playing Cave Quake in there can be quite disorienting! =)

(I always wondered how the crew managed to walk around as much as they did on the holodeck without hitting a wall all the time...)