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It's not like they haven't messed up before. http://www.cse.lehigh.edu/~gtan/bug/localCopies/marsOrbiter

Then there's wireless. Here's what my university says about connecting to the network: "Making wireless work in Linux is non-trivial. Here are steps to make wireless work on the University's network with PEAP-MSCHAPV2 encryption for broadcom card running on a debian machine." Then there's about a page of commands and conf files to edit. In Windows I click on the connection and type in my username and password. Done.

From the bottom of that page:

This page (wireless.html) is hosted at http://coral.ie.lehigh.edu/~asm4/howtos and was last modified on December 25, 2006.

So you are quoting a problem that is 5 years old. What do I call you? Shill perhaps?

I used to see this a lot on /. but not so much recently. The postings go like this: "I like Linux, but it has xyz problems" Of course, as you, the problems are not described in sufficient detail to fully rebut them, but more often than not, they describe old problems, long fixed, such as the problems you described above.

^That's not always the case.

A more sophisticated proposal for 3-D CAPTCHA was first developed in 2004 and it is currently described at http://spamfizzle.com/CAPTCHA.aspx. This 3-D CAPTCHA was presented in abstract form at The Second International Workshop on Human Interactive Proofs HIP2005. Slashdot reported on this CAPTCHA in January of 2005 when it was described under the name Virtual Photographic CAPTCHA.

drawing a big black rectangle is 10x faster and there is no way you can de-obfuscate that

That's not entirely true. There was an article a couple years back about a technique for recovering redacted text with pretty high reliability.

It used the fact that most standard fonts have variable spacing, and that once you've determined the font you can model that only certain combinations of letters will actually fit in the space of the redacted word or words. Combined with a dictionary and bayesian matching based on nearby words, you can often figure out what words would have fit into a redacted rectangle. Or at least limit it to a fairly small pool of possibilities.

They demonstrated it on a redacted government document, and pulled out some places where the redacted words had to be "Iran" and "Ahmedinejad" etc., because nothing else both fit and made sense. If it's a monospaced font, you know the exact number of letters of the redacted text.

I can't find the original link, but here's a paper that describes some of the techniques available for "cracking" blackout redaction. (some apply only to magic-marker-type redaction, but others apply even to electronic black-rectangle redaction).

Pure ID (i.e without the superfluous Creationist baggage) is agnostic about the nature of the designer, other than it requires intelligence.

Michael Behe is a research biochemist. He's also an Evolutionist with some, to him, cogent questions.

So anyway, why did I use the word paranoid? It seems to me that with notable exceptions*, the Evolutionists I've come across when they're dealing with Creation/Evolution have been badly bitten by the antics of the rabid Creationists. The Evolutionist response to Intelligent Design seems to be disproportionate and often off topic - which looks to be somewhat paranoid about a rabid Creationist resurgence.

I'm not claiming anything for Intelligent Design. It should be dealt with as anything else in a civilized and rational public arena. I am bemoaning the BS from rabid Creationists and rabid Evolutionists alike.

BTW, not all religions do claim to be The One. For that matter, not all religious types are arrogant fools - but perhaps it's the noisy, arrogant fools who get more notice?

* I'd disagree with Steven Jay Gould's premiss in his "Rock of Ages" but it didn't come over as paranoid. Unlike, say, the ranty Dawkins.

There are "open redirectors" on many major sites, including Google, AOL, eBay, and Microsoft Live. (Yahoo plugged their hole by giving their open redirector its own, easily blockable, domain.) We mentioned this on Slashdot a few days ago, and someone immediately followed up by using the Google exploit to get through Slashdot's filters.

These open redirectors are regularly exploited by phishing scams. People report them to PhishTank, and over at SiteTruth, we tie them back to the domain responsible and fix blame. PhishTank is too nice about this. They just blacklist the phishing URL. That stopped working a few months back, when phishers started generating random URLs and subdomains for each e-mail. We down-rate the whole base domain.

It's time to take a hard line on this. The Internet used to tolerate open mail relays, which were a nice feature until spammers started exploiting them. Now they're routinely blocked. Open redirectors now need similar treatment.

Beyond simple URL redirectors are exploits of JavaScript redirectors. Efforts are underway to detect and block those.

I've also been meaning to read the arguments and decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover. However, from what I've read so far, I get the impression that the defense team was borderline incompetent.

The testimony is freely available and is an educational but fairly easy read, since it is intended for a more general audience. I was especially impressed by the testimony of Dr. Padian. The defense recruited who they thought were the most distinguished ID proponents, though a few did not appear due to disagreements, but still, I think those that did take the stand failed to provide solid scientific evidence for ID, which was a serious deficit given that the goal was to allow ID into science classes. Reasonable people could disagree whether the legal team took a bad approach or faltered due to internal squabbling, but I think it is reasonable to conclude that the scientific arguments for ID failed to impress. Over the years since, basically every example Behe proposed for irreducible complexity and the inability of evolution to produce new genes/information and new functions was reasonably refuted, with the classic example being the bacterial flagellum. Here is one more recent disagreement with an argument from Behe's latest book (with lots of technical details and references):
http://endogenousretrovirus.blogspot.com/2007/08/michael-behe-please-allow-me-to.html

We can't assume that the majority has exclusive access to the truth, but nevertheless Behe's own academic department has a statement on the their main homepage about his ideas (see the left column):
http://www.lehigh.edu/~inbios/
I've never seen a similar statement on any university department's web site, so I think it is safe to assume this isn't just a minor disagreement, but the result of someone completely lacking any hint of support from his colleagues. From what I've heard, many of the faculty members are quite embarrassed. This doesn't necessarily make him wrong, but it is something to consider.

However, obviously, the vast majority of human beings have not studied comparative cellular biology or genetics in any detail.

Sadly, you are correct that most people have limited scientific exposure. In general, belief in evolution (and atheism) in the US correlates with increasing levels of academic education (undergraduate degree, graduate degree, National Academy of Science, etc.), though medical doctors (not PhDs!) are a notable exception in the area of atheism. One explanation for this trend is that more educated people are better prepared to make reasoned decisions based on the current evidence, but others say that the secular educational system is brainwashing people. Given the traditional emphasis on education in Jewish culture, I'm not surprised to see evolution acceptance fairly high there.

Moreover, assuming that God exists, one can't really say that He didn't give us enough compelling proof of Himself, seeing how the vast majority of human beings do in fact believe.

I'd be careful here, since "God" has a strong Judeo-Christian connotation, and the vast majority of humans are not Christians/Jews (and an even smaller percentage of all humans that have ever lived). Popular support for a notion is a limited form of evidence, I'd prefer a meritocracy of ideas, where the ones supported by the best evidence survive. I don't want membership numbers to determine which of the many religions or non-religions is more likely to be correct/true (and I assume you'd agree). Current growth rates predict that Islam will become more popular than Christia

If your television gets to you over the Internet, and your telephone gets to you over the Internet, and your Internet gets to you over the Internet, then there's only need for one connection into your house. This could be a single strand of fiber optic cable. Fewer holes to dig, less material to manufacture.

As you know, the Internet is transmitted using digital signals. These signals have a multitude of mediums they can use. Radio waves, electrical signals, light pulses, carrier pigeons, etc.

POTS travels almost exclusively over copper (at least up to and into your house). Copper is expensive.

POTS is also geographically oriented. This is nice, in the case of reliable 911 service, but sucks when it comes to long distance charges. The Internet is not geographically oriented, so the pros and cons are exactly the opposite. (Though I'm sure solutions will be found in both cases!)

In general, VoIP is awesome for the big company who has to worry about 100 strand fiber optic cables as opposed to 5000 pair copper cables, especially in the event of a cut. It will be rather 'meh' for the consumer who might see lower bills or more features, but will generally see minimal benefit.

For now, nothing beats a "2500" set and a pair of copper wires for basic voice transmission.

I know that for my school, women are drastically in the minority in CS classes http://www.lehigh.edu/~oir/stats/200710/ug200710.h tm/

There are 0/44 in Comp. Eng, and 6/31 in Comp Sci. Not that it lends any credence to the article, there are 11/80 in the Computer Science & business program, which is lower as a percent than CS... (It's also worth noting that a fair number of CSB's drop the program for a business/information systems major)

As a disclaimer, the general campus population is 42% female, 58% male. Oddly enough, the females in those fields tend to take slightly more credits per semester than males. Still, I don't see that changing anytime soon. There are opportunities for female CS students, as one I know has attracted quite a reasonable amount of attention, though she's a good programmer in her own right.

But all in all... its a male dominated field, and I'd be surprised if that changes anytime soon. There tends to be a far greater chance that a male will be somewhat anti-social, and given that there's a fairly strong desire to fill the void with something, sometimes fooling around with random engineering bits, others playing copious amounts of games.

All the editors of the math journal Topology, which is an overpriced Elsevier journal, resigned effectively the end of last year: http://www.lehigh.edu/~dmd1/toplet.pdf (pdf warning). Instead the same editors are starting a new, open access journal. I think we will see more of this as more and more scientists are fed up with overpriced, limited access journals, and libraries start dropping subscriptions. We are fully capable of running the journals ourselves, we already do most the work anyway.

Online gambling is not desired because it makes it way to easy for people who are gambaholics (or to become such). Travelling to a casino is at least a chore (unless you live close to one).

You mean it'll help prevent cases like This Guy?

It also seems like it would make it a lot easier to keep gambling out of states where it is illegal.

You want the drugs made in your body instead. Running or any other proper endurance sport and the fitness imparted can make a huge difference (I find) to your ability to focus and deal with heavy workloads. Apparently cocaine and other similar drugs mimic the effect of endorphines, the drugs produced by the body under heavy excercise load. Why not cut out the expensive middle man and manufacturer your own?
YMMV of course!

Charlie

Michael Behe is an embarassment to Lehigh University, and the only reason he is still employed there is because he has tenure.

"Generally, it boils down to finding examples of complicated structures or systems in biology, and saying "see, this is complex enough that I don't think it could arise by evolution.""

No it's the other way around I.D. is based on one point of view among biologists trying to find how something as complex as for example a flagellum could evolve. In their opinon they did not find any satisfactory answers within the confines of the theory (in the scientific sense of the word) of evolution. They also think there are other scientific flaws within the theory of evolution or at least in how it is being backed up and taught. Of course other scientists disagree with them and that's fine.

I.D. doesn't say that evolution doesn't occur, it is saying that evolution does not provide enough explanation and that there are parts of the theory of evolution that are simply wrong and even larger parts which are on very shaky ground scientifically. But not all of it.

"Their is a conundrum here when ID proponents say these supposedly "enormously" complex structures couldn't possibly have spontaneously sprung in to existence on their own."

I'm sure some of them, or more precisely some adherents of them, put it this way but the point of the matter is as explained above. You wouldn't say that someone who manufactured a car or similar just made it "spring into existence" would you?

"The entire framework of their philosophy is that God, the most complex entity imaginable, somehow spontaneously sprang in to existence from nothingness."

Sorry but that is easily a straw man argument as a lot of religious people believe god is eternal in both directions. I'm religous myself (no organised religion though and I don't see either I.D. or evolution as having anything to do with religion) and I consider the idea of a god having to spring into existence totally absurd (I could go into a scorching rant and use worse words) as imo god is not confined by time/space-time.

Since the rest of your post is your conclusion from the above quotes it shouldn't be necessary to reply to.

Now, I.D. might be totally wrong or completely right or somewhat right/wrong (imo the last is the case) but why not try to get going a real discussion about the topics instead of the illinformed inflamed opinions that dominate Slashdot on these subjects?

Btw here's a link to a page by Michael Behe http://www.lehigh.edu/~inbios/behe.html who is probably the most recognized scientist among those who are behind I.D.. It doesn't directly concern I.D. and it might give a more nuanced impression of the scientist. Imo a lot of people on both sides desperately need that.

Although I think that the ID people are nuts, the problem is that there are a whole lot of them and the US culture has a preference for allowing equal debate time to opposing sides of an argument even when one side is totally bonkers. This is done in the name of fairness. The trick is how to show that one side is totally bonkers.

Take a step back.

The true problem is NOT ID. In fact ID is just a smokescreen and the sooner we can all stop talking about it the sooner we can end the debate. ID requires a supernatural explanation for a natural phenomenon. This immediately puts it in the EXACT SAME camp as astrology, tarot cards, numerology, and the bodily humor theory of medieval medicine.

You will note that whenever some crazed school board starts trying to insert ID or creationism into their science classes that something else happens too. At best this something else gets a single sentence in mainstream media reports but it is actually the fundamental linchpin of the whole deal. Everybody yammers on and on about ID and evolution and misses how to shut these people down.

The linchpin is that they MUST change the definition of science to get their nutty ideas into a science debate. Science only works because it is based on NATURAL phenomena. The insane policy makers that want to push ID or whatever realize this and quietly change the definition of science to include everything BUT the requirement that phenomena be explained naturally (e.g. Kansas school board). Then they distract everyone with a fireworks show of VALID REAL TESTABLE GAP FREE DISCOVERY ID SCIENCE PROMOTED BY SOME REAL VALID BIOLIGIST AT LEHIGH UNIVERISTY vs. the GAP-ISH MISTAKE RIDDLED COMPLEXITY BEYOND REDUCABILITY EVOLUTIIIIOOOOONNNNNN! (only on pay-per-view).

Enough already. Strip away the distracting and emotionally charged bits and get down to the fundamental postulates! Stop debating ID vs. Evolution. Start debating natural vs. supernatural phenomena. Science is materialistic, supernatural phenomena (including ID and palm reading) are not. You must either say that ID is not science, or you must change the definition of science to get away from materialism.

It is my hope that once the public realizes that by changing the definition of science they give validity to things like future prediction through chicken entrails and will then back away from it. It is up to the readers of this note to make the connection between ID and future prediction through chicken entrails very clear to everyone they meet and in every discussion they have. ID and future prediction through chicken entrails are intimately connected because both are supernatural phenomena. If you vote for ID you are actually voting for supernatural phenomena and therefor getting a steaming plate of chicken entrails.

NO WAY OUTTA THAT!

Hope Michael Behe is hungry.

For anybody who grew up with a Nintendo this is definitely worth a listen... Super Mario Brothers Theme by Boston Pops - John Williams.

No mention of intel threading tools were mentioned, although I imagine some are in the works. How helpful these will be is debatable. Much more work is needed to improve TLP. I've been doing research on threading models for database applications (http://www.lehigh.edu/~pcg2 has some information on it). However database applications tend to be parallelized easier than others (although my work is trying to parallelize them further for future architectures as well as compare workloads).

While TLP requires much programmer effort, if an application is well designed it may not be as difficult as thought. You just need to located the primary sections of code and see what can be done, or create pipeline code that supports N-threads running on each stage of the pipeline. Its kind of weird to do, but can work remarkably well, especially when communication overhead is minimal.

Phil

from article "we rarely hear of companies doing wide-scale migrations from IE." Actually, I disagree with that. A lot of places use firefox, and have specific settings/features specifically for netscape-based browsers. I go to Lehigh University, where firefox is standard on every computer.
Somehow, I just don't feel like "migrate" is quite the right word. Obvoiusly, if a company put Linux on every one of it's computers, it'd be pretty damn migrated. However, since you obviously can't have a Windows box that doesn't run IE, it's still hanging on every computer. But the IT guys push it and tell all the professors/staff to use it for security issues, and all the Mail is Thunderbird.

I really feel like Firefox and Thunderbird are a lot more "migrated" than it seems like, but it's just not a complete move away from IE becuase you could still use it if you absolutely wanted to.

Long live Firefox!

That still leaves a lot of possibilities. Here's a better idea: In your classified processing facility, start with a hardcopy of the document in question. Mark out everything you don't want revealed. When you're done, RE-TYPE the declassified version in a new file. There's something to be said for the low-tech approach.

At the risk of sounding like a karma-whore to all those people that accuse people as such, I have made a PDF of the .DOC

It can be found here: http://www.lehigh.edu/~mlt3/Unclassified.pdf

> As he's explained to me, Hindu has yet to find itself in a real conflict with science.

How can i put this nicely... he's wrong. Witness...
the caste system (theory of racial superiority, google for "Aryan Dasyu"), mythical creation history (giant turtle supporting the world), support for unscientific superstitions make the Indian populations easy prey for charlatans etc.

Don't get me wrong - there are many things right with Hindu tradition, with wisdom about herbs, medicines, several graceful and beautiful customs, etc. But as a religion, it's just not right. :0)

I'm an Hindu by ethnicity (I have no part in the religion anymore).

Yes, the parent understands this well. Modern music is all about the creation and release of tension. The standard dissonant chord, if there is such a thing, would be the dominant 7th. Without the existence of this chord jazz could not exist in any recognizable form. While it is not so often used explicitly in classical music, a sparse progression often implies dissonance. Rather than the analogy to visualizing depth, I would say that music without dissonance is like a novel that contains no conflict. Sure, it is legible, but incredibly boring.

And now, time for a shameless plug. I am working on a somewhat related project in computer-aided composition. Unfortunately, my current methods are highly computationally expensive. So, I have called my project "Chording At Home", similar to the old SETI@home project. If you would be willing to help me out, just download the file at http://sea-lion.eecs.lehigh.edu/ChordingAtHome/ to a Linux machine and run it for a few days. It takes one argument, which is the IP address of the server it should receive data from, which is currently 128.180.121.4. Oh, and if you actually run it you will definitely want to make it a "nice" process, unless you don't mind your machine being unusable.

If anybody is willing to help out or just wants more information, email cmhREMOVE204@lehigh.edu and let me know. And please be nice, this is NOT an enterprise-level server.

I have also heard of an aboriginal Australian tribe that used to / still does? run down kangaroos.

Think about it. A bunch of marathon runners with spears jog after you all day. You are fit, but not trained for endurance running. Each time you stop for a break, they catch up to you relentlessly, dogging you. Only fear of death gives you the reserves to keep up your flight all day long, sprinting and then resting while they doggedly persue you. You are suprised your heart hasn't burst. Then it starts to get dark. You rest, and this time they don't persue you. They make camp. You fall fast asleep almost immediately grateful that your persuers have stopped chasing you. You wake up to the prod of a spear in your backside. OUCH! It's morning, and the people that chased you all day are upon you. Your instinct is to dart away, but you find that your every muscle has ceased to function. You feel like you must have rigormortis, and are completely unable to move as they tie you to a spit and plop you over their fire to cook.

Hasn't everyone heard of this already?
W3C semantic web activity from 2001.
Heflin's Thesis from 2001.

I'm rather skeptical of the whole thing, it seems to me to be like "Wouldn't it be nice if people documented their web page content better? Then we could do all these neat things." The second statement is right, but I fear the first statment is intractable.

I converted the MS Word to a PDF and it is available on my school's server. They are going to hate me:

http://www.lehigh.edu/~mlt3/textbook.pdf

The paper you have in mind is "Distributed Ray Tracing" by Robert Cook, Thomas Porter, and Loren Carpenter, all from Lucasfilm. It was published in the ACM "Computer Graphics" publication, Volume 18, Number 3, July 1984. If you have access to the ACM Digital Library, you can find the full info and a PDF link here; otherwise, you can download my copy from here. (This redistribution is permitted by the paper's copyright notice.)

Distributed ray tracing isn't a "hack", though -- it's a fundamental principle of modern global-illumination rendering systems. Kajiya introduced the rendering equation in 1986 (ACM citation here, my copy here), and Monte Carlo integration is used as a means of solving it. Monte Carlo integration approximates the value of an integral by sampling random points in the function's domain; in graphics, the domain is the illumination in the scene, the point samples are taken by tracing rays, and the random distribution is what originated in distributed ray tracing.

The paper you have in mind is "Distributed Ray Tracing" by Robert Cook, Thomas Porter, and Loren Carpenter, all from Lucasfilm. It was published in the ACM "Computer Graphics" publication, Volume 18, Number 3, July 1984. If you have access to the ACM Digital Library, you can find the full info and a PDF link here; otherwise, you can download my copy from here. (This redistribution is permitted by the paper's copyright notice.)

Distributed ray tracing isn't a "hack", though -- it's a fundamental principle of modern global-illumination rendering systems. Kajiya introduced the rendering equation in 1986 (ACM citation here, my copy here), and Monte Carlo integration is used as a means of solving it. Monte Carlo integration approximates the value of an integral by sampling random points in the function's domain; in graphics, the domain is the illumination in the scene, the point samples are taken by tracing rays, and the random distribution is what originated in distributed ray tracing.

[Windows 95] did one thing that the Mac OS hadn't (and still doesn't, being icon-centric in navigation of apps)--allow a quick way to launch an application.

Ummm, ever hear of a little thing called the Apple menu?

And if the Start menu is so great for launching apps, how come there are still a million or so commonly-used apps that throw a shortcut on the desktop when you install them? Is it because over time the Start menu gets wildly out of control and it's too much of a hassle to navigate through all the accumulated shit to find the one item you want to launch? I think so.

TCP/IP Lean by Jeremy Bentham, ISBN: 1-929629-11-7

Cirrus Logic CS8900a Ethernet module, it works in 8-bit mode

Buy a CS8900 module.

** Shameless plug **
Read my thesis about how to put it all together.

Here's a site I stumbled across a couple years ago that supports both your criteria and that used to proclaim Taipei the tallest:

HEIGHT: The height of a building is measured from the sidewalk level of the main entrance to the structural top of the building. This includes spires, but does not include television antennas, radio antennas, or flag poles. Height is listed in both meters and feet and is rounded to the nearest integer. This is the official criterion used by the Council in determining ranking.

OTHER MEASURES OF HEIGHT: In an effort to reflect other aspects of the statistical height of a building, additional information is shown for buildings ranked in the top ten. (All of the following measurements begin at the sidewalk level of the main entrance of the building.)

To Structural Top: Height to structural top of the building (the Council's official criteria as defined above).

To Highest Occupied Floor: Height to the floor of the highest occupied floor of the building.

To Top of Roof: Height to the top of the roof.

To Tip of Spire/Antenna: Height to the tip of spire, pinnacle, antenna, mast, or flag pole.

Of course, the leaders in each of these categories claim that they are the "tallest building." Then of course there's the debate over whether radio towers such as the CN Tower count as buildings.

I'm a student consultant at my school who helps other students with computer problems, and believe me, the network people in charge here are fully aware of this fact. For what we call "mass-install week", which means setting up all the new students, we're being told to enable the XP firewall, check for and remove Blaster, install patches from windowsupdate and explain to the student the importance of patching, and install the school's site-licensed copy of Norton.

Hopefully these sort of measures, here and at other schools, will mitigate the damage.

Western Digital manufactured them? My dad had a deskstar die, and the replacement was a nearly-identical drive labeled Hitachi. Have a look.

Is the entire hard-drive industry consolidating or something?

Many schools are having problems related to unauthorized downloads. Lehigh University is among these. Seventeen "cease and desist" orders. Seventeen! The university is cooperating the the RIAA and the MPAA in identifying the students involved.

GF.

• OS Sucks-Rules-O-Meter
• Editors Sucks-Rules-o-Meter
• Vegetarion Sucks-Rules-O-Meter
• What [Programming] Languages Rule (alternative)
• Linux Distribution Comparison

Usualy the wheel can click, acting as the middle button. This can cause problems if you are prone to rolling the wheel while trying to press it. I have Taco's Logitech mouse (or the same model, rather) and the fourth button, on the thumb, is also a "middle button". This solves the above issue. The fact that this is /all/ I can get the fourth button to do is my failure to configure linux.
My favorite mouse ever was my Logitech Series 9, which went into spasms and had to be removed from service. I plan to replace its guts with a wheel mouse some day, giving it every feature I want.

Found this on the "web browser" tab of Morpheus that no one ever looks at because there is no pirated music or movies on it.....it's in PDF, but it is a response to this lawsuit.

It's dated Nov. 6.....has this suit been going on that long?

Anyway, sorry it's in PDF. If this gets modded up, somone should probably mirror it.

Yep you could change WS to Server (not sure why you would want to though) see http://www.lehigh.edu/~rjm2/ntwntw.html for a method.

I went to school at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, one of the earlier schools to have a mandate that all students should be "wired" (as they called it). When I arrived as a freshman in 1995, all non-Greek on-campus housing was wired with 10baseT LAN access and all libraries and academic buildings (save for the Architecture building, funny enough) had access to the same network. Remember, this is the first year that Windows 95 came out. Through the network, not only did you have access to the Internet, but you also had a complete suite of software available without any installation hassles, including Maple, Word, Excel, and various other programs required for all your classes. By my sophomore year, when I started working for the IT guys as a part-time student installer, every on-campus student could bring in their machine and plug it in. I spent a good deal of time running around to various buildings, installing ethernet cards and making sure people could print, login, stuff like that.

The number one most important thing for a large-scale mass install like this is excellent documentation. I'm not talking user manuals, but step-by-step, written for special-ed third grader instructions. The docs for this project were excellent. I may have helped out maybe 50 people tops in those first couple of move-in weeks. I think the figures I remember were something like 70% of people needed no help beyond the instructions. That's pretty good when you're dealing with 5000 students, 3500 of which had older computers that were setup on the network the previous year (those are more difficult because they still have all their settings in place for older configurations).

The second most important tip is to have well-written support software. The software that Lehigh had doing the dirty work of configuring network settings, initializing programs for network use, and setting up printers and connections was pretty solid. Everyone once and while you'd get some oddball Packard Bell that didn't like it, but for the most part, it was solid. Macs were even supported well (indeed first, because the school actually transitioned from all Macs to all PCs during this period). People running Linux were usually clued in on their own, so no help needed there. In contrast, other friends have reported stories to me of utter nightmare installs due to programs crashing, wiping out configuration settings, installing the wrong software, etc. at other universities. If you don't have solid software that you yourself are comfortable using, don't push it out onto thousands of incoming freshmen. Every tiny annoyance you see will become a full-blown logistical nightmare as you try and coordinate your support staff to fix it.

Finally, use e-mail effectively. Our student consultants were all setup with mailing lists that we could post problems and solutions (mostly solutions) for even the rarest of situations. We were all told to do this and told to watch for the information as well. Information flows a lot better when a bunch of geeks can read threads of problems and solutions than when you go over it during organizational meetings. For us, those usually were reserved for congratulatory pizza and the occasional mass wishlist.

Of course, all that is probably a little dated (we didn't have wireless LANs yet when I left), but as far as logistics goes, it's pretty much the same good advice.

Documentation. Solid software. Communication. If you've got that, you should be fine.

It runs every hour and says Python rules 18.1 over Perl's meager 4.9. Ironic, but at least they are honest.

Lightning does strike the same place twice (I know hirschma was probably kidding, but there are some people who believe this myth). There was a report on the news (Philadelphia, ABC, Channel 6) about a person whose house got hit twice. That's a normal, small, house. There was nothing that would attract lightning. Also, lightning strikes tall skyscrapers almost all the time. Here's a page that has info on the Empire State Building. The lightning fact is close to the botton. The building gets struck 100s of times a year, and it acts as a giant lightning rod for the rest of the city.

When governments fear the people there is liberty.

In fact (insert tounge in cheek) we could probably watch all kinds of TV... Even my relatives on another planet (it seems that way sometimes, anyway!) could watch the superbowl:

Television signals are some of the more powerful signals and could be received by other civilizations. They would not, however, be watching the latest episode of the Simpsons.

Robert Dixon, a SETI authority from OSU, illustrated how far our televisions signals have traveled. "Super Bowl I, which was broadcast about 30 years ago, reached the closest star in 1974, and it has now reached about 1000 stars," said Dixon.

That quoted from http://www.lehigh.edu/~injrl/scop e/vol1_2txt.html (I am not a regular reader of this site, in fact I never saw it before, I just searched for SETI and television... suprisingly, no pornography turned up in the search results!)

:)

Lehigh University, my alma mater, and Princeton have been researching photonics for quite some time. Lehigh, being the engineering school that it is, has been focusing on the material considerations of actually building photonics systems and developing any new materials that will make it work properly. Princeton has an entire web site devoted to their research in photonics.

The field has been around for quite some time, so there's a lot of information on the web about it. Certainly, MIT's partnership will help push things along, but it is only a very small piece of the research puzzle.

I couldn't agree with you more concerning the film. You final remark however...

So what's the sound of one hand clapping? Does a dog have a Buddha Nature? Who cares? I know why electrons have quantum states and how stellar distances are calculated beyond 100 light years. Go enough. I'd rather know than believe.

So, you can make a rigid distinction between knowing and believing? I assume you use the Hubble law to calculate the distances. And how do you know that this law is valid? Presumably because it seems to be in agreement with parallax methods for nearby stars. You have to make the assumption that it works the same way outside this range. That's what I would call believing ;)

Understanding of Buddha nature is more similar to this than you might think, you could even view it as the metaphysical counterpart to science -- you find models for thought instead of for the physical universe. Please don't confuse Zen with pyramidology, scientology, psychoanalysis and the likes. Zen won't ask of you to believe, it's the other way round.

It's a pity that there are so few good films about science. I'm looking forward to Kubricks next project, A.I. The plot sounds promising...