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> This is the actual press release from Dr. Schaefer.
http://www.phys.lsu.edu/GRBHD/pressrelease/ It seems that the results are very damning to cosmological constants.

It seems that even if he's right it would only require one cosmological constant to be non-constant.

Or maybe not even that. Maybe the effect he's observing is dependent on something that changes with times, such as the temperature or density of the universe. Most cosmologists already believe the universe underwent a sort of "phase change" during the inflationary period, and it hasn't exactly destroyed the idea of cosmological constants.

This is the actual press release from Dr. Schaefer.
http://www.phys.lsu.edu/GRBHD/pressrelease/
It seems that the results are very damning to cosmological
constants.

Unfortunately there are no good web sites talking about
Mannheim's theory the only paper that explains a lot of
it is "Alternatives to Dark Matter and Dark Energy" which
can be accessed at http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0505266

You've got it backwards. The critical orbital radius (the innermost stable circular orbit, or ISCO) is outside the horizon, not inside. It is located at a radius 3 times larger than the Schwarzschild radius. There is no orbital velocity at the horizon; no orbits exist there, unless you count "falling into the black hole".

Incidentally, your formula for circular orbit velocity in terms of escape velocity is Newtonian and doesn't apply in strong field relativistic gravity.

Well done, yes, this is quite true. I believe the General Relativistic (gravity) and Special Relativistic (relative motion) effects are actually of the same order, and indeed, the software does have to take both into account to reach the accuracy it does. I believe that this is the only use of General Relativity in consumer applications.

A rather technical ref.

These are pretty obvious, but documentation and planning are something you need to stress.

Documentation is the most important, from business rules and operating procedures (this code gets backed up at this time every night) to the code itself. As a project manager, your job is to build a little box for the developers to work in. You want to make sure that all the important stuff is just a simple list of stuff to follow so they can concentrate on coding. Programmers are generally not good at scheduling or remembering to do mundane daily tasks. Get that stuff straight and you'll solve 50% of your day to day problems.

Planning is important. Make sure that there's a good plan that everyone's following. Plan naming conventions and folder/file systems for your code. Then, everyone knows where to look if they need to find something. Simple organization is important. As far as actual development, you need to have a broad plan for the goal of the project, what general steps need to be taken (initial planning, module coding, testing, beta, release, maintain) and do them in that order. You don't need to get crazy with project planning software either; what you want is results, not to dictate how the results occur.

To that line, this box you're building has to be open enough that your developers aren't too constrained to innovate. This means you have to make it kindof a fun challenge to document the code, plan the project, etc. Don't make it seem like it's some chore to document. Force them to pass their code around for a few weeks to work out the bugs; don't wait until you have to. Or start with some dumb easy project that is a small part of the larger problem, and make everyone do one little piece of the planning, then pass it to the other people.

Anyway, this stuff is pretty obvious management stuff. I can tell you that in my 6+ years of business experience with coding and coders, the most important thing is having naming conventions for your files and folders. It seems obvious but when you get a new developer in, he's not going to understand Module3.CreditWidget.x3.1211.c when it could just say "NumberVerifier.CreditCard.c".

The military logistics people have good ideas for that sort of stuff:

-A data element name consists of a prime word, a class word, and modifiers.
-A prime word is the noun designation given to an entity identified in a data model. For example,
a company may need to maintain information about customers, so an entity "Customer" could exist. The prime word for this entity would be called "Customer." The prime word identifies the object to which the data element refers.
-Prime Word Modifier. Prime word modifiers are adjectives that further refine and categorize the
prime word. They designate the name of a data subentity in the data model and distinguish it from other subentities of the same data entity. They are needed to distinguish that data subcategory from other subcategories of data represented by the data entity. For example, a company may be interested in information about two distinct groups of customers, "Retail Customers" and "Wholesale Customers." The prime word modifiers "Retail" and "Wholesale" are used to distinguish between these two types of customers
- class word is a noun that prescribes a definition for a general category of data. A class
word designates the category of data into which a data element fits. Examples of class words are: "Code," "Name," and "Quantity."

Etc.

Check out Department of Defense Data Element Standardization Procedures

Good luck.

First, it's not "far" above; it's only a couple kHz. 20 kHz is the number that I most often see for human ranges. The first link in a Google search for "hearing ranges" even gives 23kHz as an upper bound, which is above your Nyquest frequency for CDs and barely below the 48kHz that the X-Fi resamples to. (Not that I think that frequencies that high would add much.)

I have a sine wave generator program and can clearly hear 17 kHz. Above that there's not a clean sound, and it sounds like there may be artifacts being introduced. (For instance, 18 kHz fades in and out in volume. 20kHz sounds like a buzz at a LOT lower frequency.) Thus I can't give you my personal upper range.

Second, a couple other posts I've seen say that a higher sample rate simplifies the design of a low-pass filter. I don't know if this is true because I don't know enough signal processing stuff, but I didn't see any rebukes.

They were speaking a different language I didn't recognize at ALL.

Anyone who's been to the area care to elaborate? (they knew english well, too)

A massive earthquake in San Francisco.

http://www.hurricane.lsu.edu/_in_the_news/houston. htm

One of the weird things is that the first major breach happened on one of the few sections that had recently been upgraded:

No one expected that weak spot to be on a canal that, if anything, had received more attention and shoring up than many other spots in the region. It did not have broad berms, but it did have strong concrete walls.

Shea Penland, director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of New Orleans, said that was particularly surprising because the break was "along a section that was just upgraded."

[link]

It is not surprising that there were multiple levee failures, given the underfunding of the system... especially during the Bush administration.

But on the other hand, to really do it right and improve the system to survive a direct hit from a category 4 hurricane was estimated (in 2002) to cost around 14 Billion dollars. link

It's obvious to everyone now that this would have been a bargain compared to the loss of life that is going on today. But politically it would have been almost impossible to commit that kind of federal funding without a major disaster happening first. The reason the levees were improved to handle a category 3 hurricane was the flooding and deaths caused by Hurricane Betsy in 1965. And in any case, such a project was estimated to take over ten years to implement.

It is sad that practically all of this was foreseen, and that the government did not have the will to do anything about it. Clinton (and the Republican Congress of the time) at least increased rather than decreased the funding. But even then, it was nowhere near enough of what was needed to handle a storm like Katrina.

Woah now, I think bitterness is an understatement.

Supermike is, in fact, fully operational. I beleive being operational is a key requirement in being listed in the top500.org list

I think the results speak for themselves.
2003 ACM Regional Programming contest results:
LSU Teams ranked: 21st, 27th, 50th, 67th, and 72nd
ULL Teams ranked: 70th

2002 ACM Regional Programming contest results:
LSU: 4th, 17th, 37th, 57, 63
ULL: 18th, 46th

Perhaps if ULL isn't getting the "money and the press" that LSU is getting, you should take it up with the heads of the CSC department.

But in closing, I think the greatest evidence against LSU's computer science program being just a pony show is that LSU doesn't even HAVE an accredited computer science program! (hint: ULL does)

http://top500.org/sublist/System.php?id=6084
http://icpc.baylor.edu/icpc/regionals/ViewRegional Standings.asp?ContestID=648
http://acm2002.csc.lsu.edu/results/finals.html

Allow me to clear up your thinking. Consider Proteus. It is a high-performance simulator written at MIT for MIPS. Some graduate student at LSU ported it to SPARC.

This work is stunningly brilliant and egalitarian.

In the late '80s and early 90s, the eggheads at MIT and Stanford felt that they need only develop simulators for their clique-ish processor: MIPS. Yet, the rest of the world was using SPARC. In this way, the eggheads cornered multiprocessor research for themselves.

LSU actually opened up multiprocessor research to the rest of the world by building a simulator that actually runs on the SPARC machines.

To be fair, I should note that a small team at Stanford did the same thing with ABSS, another simulator that runs on SPARC machines.

>I never said faith was better.
Contradicted by this in your original post, "My faith does not need to subject itself to new "understandings" of science. The possibility of findings being discovered as faulty is pretty good.", implying science is greatly flawed and therefore faith is superior.

>But since there's a great war in science pitting theists against atheists.
There is not religious war in science, the only "war" is against dumbasses, who happen to be mostly evangelical christian creationists, instead of people trying to invent perpetual motion.

>If you feel the need to evangelize to me... - evangelize
1 : to preach the gospel to
2 : to convert to Christianity

>appriciate ->appreciate.

>But I would appriciate it if you would be objective...
And the next sentance is some petty attempt at my intelligence, from someone who probably doesn't know what QFT even stands for, much less what it's used for.

>...many variables are obscure or hidden or confusing.
A lot of programming languages contain obscure or confusing statements if you aren't familier with them, just like the gravitationl constant's units of m3 kg-1 s-2 are illogical by "common sense". As for hidden variables, are you talking about about what science hasn't discovered, or saying these hidden variables can't be discovered by science?

Re:relativity. SR deals with objects traveling > .1c, GR deals with gravitation. QFT is the current description of the weak force which governs radioactive decay. GPS satilites signals need to be corrected by GR.

>You haven't argued any of the points I made in the analogy...
Back those "points" up with some evidence that you know what you're talking about and I will.

As you persist on painting science as some hodgepoge group with your flawed analogies, here's a defn "Science is a procedure for converting observations into "understanding", or more precisely into general rules about what will be observed given certain conditions." There are dissenting voices, like a professor of geology that believes the grand canyon was created in a few days and the earth is 6000 years old, and scientists have fought hard to keep science from being perverted by including beliefs like that from being called science.

This post is evidence that your information is wrong, hence blatent falsehoods etc. Care to actually provide something of substance instead of ignorance and attempts at flames?

Shooting holes though your poorly thought our rhetoric with you have massive emotional investment in is not flaming. - from somebody's sig.

Causes more pollution to turn it back into quality paper? I think not.

If you are referring to the County of Suffolk, New York v. First American Real Estate Solutions case (and it sounds like you are) then you are misinformed, as that case had nothing to do with GIS data.

SCRPTSA had not denied any FOIA request of their GIS data by First Experian in this case.

First Experian/First American Real Estate Solutions was accused of violating SCRPTSA's copyright when they took the published, paper tax map compilation books, scanned them and then tried to sell CDRoms of the scans on the open market.

Suffolk lost in US District Court for Southern NY, but won on appeal to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. That decision can be found at http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/cases/IP/copyright/suff olk_v_first_american.htm

As far as I know First Experian has not appealed this decision, and an amendment to NYS FOIA law to exempt GIS data is still pending before the NYS Legislature.

I think it's funny whenever anyone calls for less government. How do you define this?

I use the COnstitution of the USA as my guideline. Get rid of all the agencies, departments, and offices not specifically authorized by the Constitution. Here's a directory of federal agencies, LSU Libraries Federal Agencies Directory, most of which aren't specifically authorized by the Constitution.

It is the only natural language that can be used as a programming language. Check this article out

Akk! I goofed on Spafford, ignore that sentence. The TCPA papers were by Safford [no P], different person. My bad, ignore that part.

But I think that is more than made up for by this item, David Patterson is on Microsoft's Trusted Computing Academic Advisory Board. Chuckle.

They list Carl E. Landwehr (one of their invited experts) as "Program Director" at the National Science Foundation, but more specifically he is the Trusted Computing Program director. Which also happens to be where they say we need $90 million a year in government grants.

And here's a link to the former presidential Cyber Security advisor Richard Clark's Global Tech Summit speech that I mentioned. Quote: "TCPA is not enough. It is a a good beginning, but it is not enough". He goes on to say that we need "a way of forcing down patches" (which can only be enforced through Trusted Computing) and that ISPs and carriers insist that firewalls be installed (again only enforceable through Trusted Computing). To Secure the National Information Infrastructure against bin Laden. Oh, and by the way the Trusted Computing Group has announced they are working on routers that enforce exactly those things, forcing down patches and verifying that firewalls are installed and compliant. If you're not compliant then the router would deny you a net connection except strictly to receive the patches to come into compliance.

Amit Yoran (another invited expert) is the more recent president's Cyber Security Advisor who just resigned becuase he was frustrated that the government wasn't making *mandatory* action for those changes to Secure the National Information Infrastructure. He didn't want to just make recommendations and wait for businesses and the market to change, he wanted the government to regulate and force things along.

I'm too tired to try and research everyone. Neeeeed sleeeeeep. But I'd wager there's more Trusted Computing ties and support among them.

-

IMO caching and hash tables are optimization details for implementation, not the heart of what there is to undestand.

If the computer had access to the full image, the code I was using could probably be modified to indicate where any give piece went. It handled translation and rotation so in theory, you could supply the piece to the scanner/web can at in any position.

Used a hell of a lot more than 200 lines of code though and it wasn't pretty!

It has been estimated that a fast computer applying plausible rules for protein folding would need 10**127 years to find the final folded form for even a very short sequence of just 100 amino acids. Such a mathematical formulation of the protein-folding problem shows that it is NP-complete[6]. Yet Nature solves this problem in a few seconds. Since quantum computing can be exponentially faster than conventional computing, it could very well be the explanation for Nature's speed. The anomalous efficiency of other biological optimization processes may provide indirect evidence of underlying quantum processing if no classical explanation is forthcoming.

Some good information I googled up on the system he talks about:
http://byte.csc.lsu.edu/~durresi/7080/reading/B500 0.htm

I am curious about the Burroughs machine mentioned in the interview. Can anyone give me an overview of it?

word!
To add some content, here is the home page of Bradley E. Schaefer (the guy who made the discovery). There you can find hi-res photos of the globe, a powerpoint presentation which has more details than the NYT article, some quicktime movies (didn't work on my machine) showing the precession of earth's rotation axis and a preprint of the research article.

Good idea. That's how a cone truck I worked on solved the problem. They used an old thinkpad and it was tough. It was fanless too, so you did not have to worry as much about dust. The purpose of the cone truck was to shove a rod (cone) into the ground to determine soil types. It was a hot and dirty environment, but the Thinkpad collected data for years. Eventually, the keys got sticky.

You can pick up 486 and pentium laptops for next to nothing on ebay. If the thing has trouble booting of a CD, just get a $10 adaptor and install it in a faster computer. Woody works on my old thinkpad and so did Potato. Afterstep or Window Maker run well within 24MB or RAM and you can use Dillo and other packages chosen by Feather Linux to get your work done. Don't forget PCMCIA packages! The screens are genreally only 640x480, but they look good.

Due to resource conflicts, we were not able to schedule this [programming] contest in late March or any Saturday in April. Based on feedback, May 1st is too late. Because of this, the 2004 High School Programming Contest is officially cancelled.

Don't get me wrong, I am not characterizing the whole state as slack jawed, cross burning, inbred, yokels, but saying that LA is a great state for gaming companies is rather like my state, Massachusetts, saying we are a tax haven. A cursory examination of prima facie evidence suggests otherwise.

You may have more luck targeting the college level...perhaps a computer science or IT program at a local university up there in RH. Down at LSU, we have several IT/CSC interested social organizations (ACM, AITP, LUG) as well as an entire dorm full of geeks begging for the IT industry's attention. the ITRC (information technology residential college) at LSU, of which I'm a member, would adore connecting with people in the industry like ya'll.

Evidence: Average salary of BS in CS from NMT $70,750 Source, versus $38,000 for LSU Source

This obvious is affected by location, parterships the school has, connections professors have, quality of program, reputation, etc..(doesnt really matter what affects it, this is the bottom line) My advice to you find the school that has the highest rate of successful placement of CS majors and the highest average salary and go to either one or the one if they happen to match and I expect they will.. MIT anyone?

• Nuclear power
  
• Global Positioning Systems
  
• Nuclear Weapons
  

Sorry... I was trying to not be long winded :)

It basically seems to be related to having a white pigmentation (NOT albino... albino is completely different). Best summed up from the site that taught me about it -

"Congenital deafness in dogs and cats is primarily of the hereditary sensorineural form associated with white pigmentation genes, although acquired forms of deafness are possible. Highest prevalence is seen in white cats, especially those with blue eyes, and the Dalmatian, with many other dog breeds affected to some extent. This deafness results from degeneration of the cochlear blood supply at age 3 to 4 weeks, presumably resulting from suppression of melanocytes by the white (cat) or merle or piebald (dog) genes",

and

"Deafness prevalence (unilateral and bilateral) in mixed breed white cats was 17%, 40%, and 85% for zero, one, or two blue eyes, respectively."

(source)

So, eyes can be a strong indicator (depending on why they're blue) since they'll indicate an environment in which the deafness can occur.

I recently saw Rick McGeer from HP talk at our LONI Forum conference. Rick is on the steering committe for PlanetLab and his talk centered around it. At first I was skeptical, to say the least. I smelled snake-oil. However, after looking into it more, I do believe that this concept does have value. I do not think it will become the "next wave" on the Internet, but I can certainly see where organizations might leverage this technology. The rub, of course, is always security, control, and accountability. Whenever you start talking about distributing intellectual property around the net, many companies will go apoplectic.

I'd certainly live in this SpaceHouse... my Florida home is concrete top to bottom, and only rated to withstand a Category 3-4 hurricane.

Not much difference. This concept is rated at winds of 220 km/h, or 137 mph, means this should survive the upper limit of Cat 3, and possibly Cat 4 if you are lucky.

But we *have*; and given the repeated observations...regardless of the curve, there will *still* be some particles at the extreme ends. Given that our detectors are still fairly primitive, it's possible that the high-e events are statistically more likely to be detected, is it not?


(Yes, I know we've seen them. Otherwise I'd be in a different field right now, and the waiters in Malargue, Argentina wouldn't all know me by name. :) But the fact that we've seen them probably implies that we don't know the source, not that we don't understand the propagation.)

I think you're missing what I'm saying - the only way we could've seen any of these particles is if they came from less than 50 Mpc. The GZK effect gets much, much stronger as you go to higher energies. After 50 Mpc, a particle that starts off at 1E21 is below 6E19. Same with particles of higher energy. Astrophysically, that's right in our backyard. There's nothing we know of that could accelerate particles like that. There's an additional problem, which is the fact that there's a spectral change in the 10^19 range that we can't explain, either. Spectral changes occur when acceleration mechanisms change. Supernovae fall apart in the 10^14-10^15 range, and there's a spectral change there, too. The fact that the spectrum continues after 10^19 (in fact, it flattens) implies that there's a new source that's "turning on" in that energy range.

As far as I understand it, the mw background is the peak energy distribution, not the total one. It's what we built our detectors to observe because it's easiest to observe - sorting random noise from the detector noise in gamma/XR is damned difficult.

It's a pure blackbody distribution, with a characteristic temperature at 2.7K. In order to have a particle out of that spectrum at 10^20, it would need to have about 10^23 times the most probable value. I haven't done the math, I'll admit - but something like e^-(10^23) probably times even the size of the Universe probably doesn't even equal *1*. (Oddly enough e^(-(10^23)) times the *number of bits* in the Universe through the end of Time wouldn't even be 1)

We don't know that, because we don't have a source for those protons. Sure, there's nothing on that vector, but even ultra-high-c factor particle paths can be altered by gravitational fields - which were not mentioned in the OMG webpage)

Yes, we do. The GZK cutoff is not "experimental physics". It's the delta++ resonance. This is stuff that they did in the 1950s, and has been extremely well studied since then. It's just proton-photon interactions. Unless Lorentz invariance is wrong (which is possible! but you should read the paper on that suggestion, and it's very, very bad), we know that GZK will slow a particle travelling faster than 6E19 couldn't've travelled more than 50 Mpc.

And gravity doesn't alter particle's paths anywhere near as much as magnetic fields do, and those particles have such high speed that neither gravity, magnetic fields, or anything else could possibly alter their path more than a tenth of a degree.

The "OMG particle"'s webpage (which, by the way, I've never heard it called - which is... odd) is a little sparse. Try the Auger homepage, this UNM site, or this LSU site. If you've got access to Science magazine, also here.

There are actually many, many more interesting things going on in the UHECR field which I haven't even mentioned.

LAMER
LAMER
LAMER
LAMER

But anyway, I do this for a living, and my first bit of fun was to port the Linux kernel to run on an FPGA-based processor, the Xilinx Microblaze.

Next step, work I'm doing at the moment, is to map the reconfiguration memory into the Linux device heiracrchy, so I build self-reconfiguring Linux systems. Imagine Arnie in T2 operating on himself, and you're getting the idea.

Doing it this way, I can type something like

cat bitstream.bit > /dev/self

and it causes the fpga-based linux system to partially reconfigure the FPGA itself, swapping in new hardware functionality.

fun stuff..

At the time of launch of the first NTS-2 satellite (June 1977), which contained the first Cesium clock to be placed in orbit, there were some who doubted that relativistic effects were real. A frequency synthesizer was built into the satellite clock system so that after launch, if in fact the rate of the clock in its final orbit was that predicted by GR, then the synthesizer could be turned on bringing the clock to the coordinate rate necessary for operation. The atomic clock was first operated for about 20 days to measure its clock rate before turning on the synthesizer. The frequency measured during that interval was parts in faster than clocks on the ground; if left uncorrected this would have resulted in timing errors of about 38,000 nanoseconds per day. The difference between predicted and measured values of the frequency shift was only parts in , well, within the accuracy capabilities of the orbiting clock. This then gave about a validation of the combined motional and gravitational shifts for a clock at earth radii.

a map of LSU's wireless coverage

ask any American how much of a part the Russians had in WW2, and many will say, 'the russians fought in WW2?'

Many will. And many will not be able to locate Pearl Harbor, or even Hawaii on a globe. The ignorance of a few does not mean that the rest of us are ignorant of the history of the 20th century.

what did the Americans lose, like 30 thousand or so?

Not that it matters to the defense of your thesis, but you are off by about an order of magnitude. The US lost about 400,000 soldiers and sailors in combat and non-combat actions in the various theaters of war between Dec 7 1941, and January 1 1946, with another 700,000 wounded, out of just over 16 million on active duty. See, for instance, here

Further, comparison of casualty figures is a particularly poor measure of the contribution of an army to a conflict; US technological advantages (medical, transportation, communication, weaponry, etc) in WWII gave the US Army major strategic and tactical doctrinal advantages that were just not available to the Soviet army, especially early on in the war. Additionally, American soldiers were not fighting on their own home soil, and very few were threatened with death by their own officers if they retreated; these two disadvantages by themselves were enough to doom many hundreds of thousands or millions of Soviet men to death in the defense of the Motherland.

the Germans were mostly defeated by Russia.

That is, at best, a vapid over simplification. The defeat of Germany relied on both the actions of the Soviet Army in the East, and the Western Powers opening fronts in Africa, Italy, Southern France, Normandy, Norway, and the Atlantic. It also relied on the arming of the Soviets and British by the United States, even before early 1942, and vast strategic mistakes by the German political/military leadership:

• Had the Germany not attacked the USSR, the Soviets would have happily split Poland with Germany, and annexed/invaded their Eastern European neighbors; they certainly wouldn't have come to the defense of Britain.
  
• Had the Western Allies, in particular the US, not supplied arms and supplies to the Soviets, they would have crumbled beneath the German onslaught when they ran out of supplies. Resupply via the Northern Convoys allowed the Soviets the time and materials to move their industrial capacity east of Moscow without loss of manufactured goods to maintain their army.
  
• Had the US not supplied military and civilian goods to the British Empire around the world, the Empire would have collapsed, and with it, all active defense against the German army.
  
• Had the Western Allies not continually maintained open fronts against the Germans on two continents, pressure would have remained very much stronger on the Soviets.
  
• Had the Western Allies not destroyed the German Navy at sea, the lifeline to Murmansk would have been strangled.
  
• Had the British negotiated a surrender with Germany instead of being the lone holdout against Germany, most of Europe would today speak German.
  
• Had the Soviets not fought so valiantly on the Eastern Front, the Western Allies would have been unable to open additional fronts in Western Europe.
  

It is ridiculous to assert than any one of the three major allied powers was THE critical link in the defeat of Nazi Germany, at least the way history actually played out. Without any of them, Germany would have very likely won the war; similarly with Japan in the Pacific.

How?
GPS works because the handsets know exactly where the satelites are, and exactly what time it is, and the precise timing of the signals.
They even have to take into account general relativity due to time dialation.
So how could the satelites be moved without them being useless?

Here is a neat site that I found (yep, using Google):

Great Papers in Computer Science:
http://bit.csc.lsu.edu/~chen/GreatPapers.html

I kept trying to put the TOC from the site in this comment, but Slashdot kept saying that the line length was too short. Since it was just plain text, I do not understand what was going on with that. So sorry, but the link really is worth checking out. Good reading!

The book indeed contains a list of great papers:
Link

Since when has democracy in America not been "for the cash, of the cash, by the cash"? Since the inception of the current state, it was this way. Even our founding fathers, while espousing human freedoms where simulaneously hoarding large groups of rights-less people known as 'negro slaves'. The purpose of those slaves were to help their owners make money. It's always been about the cash. Note that I'm not trying to discredit the founders, just pointing out that the U.S. has never been that imaginary ideal free society. Just being pessimistic.

Negro President
Slave Power
George Washington and Slavery
etc...

Vietnam, sacrifice an entire generation? Nice histrionics. ~60,000 barely compares to conflicts the US has participatd in in the 20th century. For something that truly destroyed a generation, look further back in US history.

The Vietnam War barely edged out the Korean War WRT % of population dead, and I don't hear Korean War vets pissing and moaning.

Take a look at this link.

The paper claims in its conclusion a speedup of ~800 (for DES encrpytion) and ~1600 times (for DES breaking) over C code for the P4.

I wonder who would be interested in that?!

For what it's worth, our group (http://sam.phys.lsu.edu) )uses a variety of systems (from redhat linux to various Windows versions to Mac OS) with our HP Color Laserjet 4500N. I dont know about cost, but this baby's been pretty reliable for 6 ot 7 years, over several systems. Perhaps you could find a used one cheap?

thank you for saying this! you studied with Carter?! that's awesome... he's a god. i was only lucky enough to study with someone who studied with Milhaud...

and you're right -- Machover is quite a press junkie. there is much more important work being done by real composers who are interested in making good music rather than nifty noisemaking gadgets. like the people at SEAMUS.

Forget all the techno/electronica/house/doof-doof/etc. stuff they call "electronic music" nowadays. Look into electroacoustic music, the kind of electronic music that university music professors and electrical engineers have been doing since the mid 1950's (racks of punch cards fed into mainframes). Good starting links are SEAMUS and CSounds.

I would have to say that you just went to a bad university. I'm an undergraduate at North Dakota State and am currently in the mathematics REU at Louisiana State, and I couldn't disagree with you more about reducing mathematics to rote memorization. I TA'ed a trigonometry class last fall, and our students were expected to understand how things worked and were given problems that required them to apply the trig they learned to a tangible problem. Yes, introductory mathematics courses do require a lot of "memorization," but that memorization should be accompanied by understanding. Sure it's one thing to know a theorem's statement, but to understand how to use it is another thing altogether.

I'm not really sure if the person asking the question just wants a familiarity with mathematics through, say, calculus or if abstract mathematics is a desired area to learn. However, starting at a CC is probably adviseable to get through college algebra, trig, and calculus. After that, I'd suggest at least a couple courses from a university. An introduction to mathematical logic and proof (and set theory) is important for any further reading. Most universities have the so-called "bridge courses" and they vary in their worth. However, if you've been out of school for awhile, it would be worth it to find and take one. After that, I (being a dedicated discrete mathematician) would suggest an area of discrete math such as graph theory or combinatorics. (There are several good books out there, or you could find classes to take.) They're very approachable, even if they have too many definitions. After that, head onto some other math along the lines of abstract algebra and real analysis (this is where you really learn what calculus is all about).

Mathematics is a fascinating subject with many diverse areas to explore. Check them out, find out what you like, and then pursue it. If you're not going for a degree, steer clear of areas that don't interest you, but don't hesitate to read a book or take an intro course in that area. You might be surprised that you like it.

Mitch

A lot of university professors post their tests or nots online.

Try google...

or go to the math dept.'s site and click on professors. You'll find something like this: LSU Prof's
From there you can get their personal sites that have tons of information.

This is how Passed Dif. Eq. Got most of the information from google and lots of different university's notes.

AFAIK the current GPS satelite system makek adjustments for relativity in the signals it is sending around and they have been adjusting for this for years. See the articles at Metaresearch and lsu.edu for more info.

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