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He went to a private university. They're not bound by (most) rules, certainly not ones like requiring a GED.

He went to Loyola University Chicago when he was 9 and their admissions says they require a high school transcript, no exceptions for home school and he was home schooled.

So I still wonder why did Loyola accept him? Yes yes, he's a genius, I got that, but there are a lot of geniuses who are still wasting the first 18 yrs of life going through all 12 years of school before learning something that actually matters.

If you can't tell I'm rather frustrated with the school system in the US, I wish it gave smart students the chance to live to their full potential instead of holding them back and making them wait for the group.

Students should be able to enter college when they're ready, not when they have been alive a certain number of years

This doesn't help if you need a gigabit link to your switch, or only have one PC,(or, most likely, if you just don't look good in a tinfoil hat); but constructing a passive tap for 10/100 ethernet is trivial and allows you to sample the ether between your system and the hostile world of the internet from a second host.

If you need gigabit, or want to be all classy about it, you'll need a switch with port mirroring; but this is the easy and cheap way to slip an almost-certainly-OK-because-it-was-just-booted-from-LiveCD system onto the wire to have a look at what a possibly compromised host is doing...

Yeah, I think this is the most important part. Even if you aren't a technologist, it's a bad situation to be in the 21st century and have no understanding of how systems work, at least in principle, because you're unable to offer even commentary or suggestions about them, or think about how to interface with them, in a way that's grounded in anything approaching reality. This has sometimes been called "procedural literacy" [pdf] or "computational thinking" [pdf].

The fact that he is possibly targeting minors, creating risk to them through emotional trauma, and making academic claims about the information he is gathering on online subjects definitely means he should have IRB approval. Any reasonable academic would state that, especially given the risque nature of the study. In fact, given my experience with the IRB, I doubt he would even get approval. It really saddens me that so many graduate students spend their time following the rules just to watch misguided faculty members ignore them. I like the message this sends. Below is a link to their own policy for online research. It does not deviate much from the policies I have seen at the multiple institutions I have attended. To the best of my reading, his research is in flagrant violation of the policies. http://www.luc.edu/ors/irbonlinesurveys2.shtml

Will this Google OCR really work, and can I install it with APT?

Yes and no. (I've tested it, but you have to install from subversion.)

Meanwhile, why is it all Optical Character Recognition, when the accuracy we expect is really Optical Word Recognition? How come spelling, grammar and phrase frequency (including typos etc) isn't used to error correct at a symbolic level higher than pixels?

Teas Willis, and the sticky tours
Did gym and Gibbs in the wake.
All mimes were the borrowers,
And the moderate Belgrade.

I did a network security project for a class at Loyola University Chicago not too long ago. As part of that project, I built a passive ethernet tap.

There are a few problems with passive taps...

1. They *don't* work with gigabit ethernet. If I remember the spec for gigabit ethernet correctly, this has something to do with the fact all of the wire pairs are used for XMIT and RECV.

2. The passive tap in the link you provided isn't exactly good for your network. This tap will still draw current as well as introduce some interference. In the worst case, you can blow a NIC with one of these. Of course, the easiest way around these problems is to use a hub (do not use a network switch as that won't work... you need a HUB).

3. You will need to run 2 NICs (1 for XMIT, 1 for RECV) in order to examine full duplex traffic. This may be an issue if you are trying to run snort on an embedded device.

If I had the option, I would rather run a spare computer as a Linux (or BSD based for that matter) firewall box and use port mirroring to mirror ethernet traffic over IEEE1394 (firewire) to another box running snort. The only downside is that ethernet over firewire is at best a 400 megabit connection.

I did a network security project for a class at Loyola University Chicago not too long ago. As part of that project, I built a passive ethernet tap.

There are a few problems with passive taps...

1. They *don't* work with gigabit ethernet. If I remember the spec for gigabit ethernet correctly, this has something to do with the fact all of the wire pairs are used for XMIT and RECV.

2. The passive tap in the link you provided isn't exactly good for your network. This tap will still draw current as well as introduce some interference. In the worst case, you can blow a NIC with one of these. Of course, the easiest way around these problems is to use a hub (do not use a network switch as that won't work... you need a HUB).

3. You will need to run 2 NICs (1 for XMIT, 1 for RECV) in order to examine full duplex traffic. This may be an issue if you are trying to run snort on an embedded device.

If I had the option, I would rather run a spare computer as a Linux (or BSD based for that matter) firewall box and use port mirroring to mirror ethernet traffic over IEEE1394 (firewire) to another box running snort. The only downside is that ethernet over firewire is at best a 400 megabit connection.

Excellent!

Thank you, kind Massysett. I have spread this information to my research lab's mailing list.

( As a side note, http://webpages.cs.luc.edu/~gkt/ has a video of a Gentoo install. )

Even at low resolution a video that long must take up a lot of HD space..

Sweet! The site features all of the various Linux distros in action, including Gentoo doing its endless install compile.

( As a side note, http://webpages.cs.luc.edu/~gkt/ has a video of a Gentoo install. )

I don't think I would ever buy a powersupply that didn't function like this, as I due value the quiet

Faith-based schools shouldn't have Med schools, that's Science!

Plenty of doctors who got their degrees from Loyola, BC, etc are going to be pretty disappointed. WTF were they thinking?

Here is a flash movie of a Gentoo Linux install: http://webpages.cs.luc.edu/~gkt/GentooDemo/

Can I just ask a question? Is there such a thing as a non-unique innovation? Is this story title a bit redundant?

The buzzword generator isn't perfect you know....

Attempting to find this answer for you I instead found a research paper (with references) that stated the opposite conclusion.

From the article Gender Differences in Cognitive Functioning by Heidi Weiman

Before the advent of advanced brain imaging technologies, a large body of research accumulated on some of the behavioral characteristics indicative of the sex-related cognitive abilities of males and females. Behavioral studies, along with brain imaging research, autopsies, and animal research have begun to provide converging lines of evidence for some biological differences in the cognitive functioning of the sexes.

The differences between the intellectual capacities of the sexes appear to be in patterns of ability, rather than in overall intellectual functioning (Kimura, 1992). Attention and perception, which occur at the earliest stages of information processing, appear to differ between the sexes and may ultimately provide some clues in regard to differences that occur later on in cognitive processing. Infant girls have been found to gaze longer at visual stimuli than boys, and males are much more likely to be diagnosed with attention related problems. Baker's review of sex-related perceptual differences (as cited in Halpern, 2000) suggests that there are variations in all of the sensory systems. Males tend to be more adept at dynamic visual acuity, which involves the ability to detect slight movements in the field of vision. Males are also more adept than females in temporal cognition, the ability to recognize the passage of time. Females tend to be more sensitive to touch, odors, taste, and sounds --much of which is detectable shortly after birth.

Males have consistently shown an advantage in visual-spatial abilities, such as aiming at stationary or moving targets, as well as throwing and intercepting projectiles (Kimura, 1992). Males also perform better, and differently, than females in navigation. Whereas females are inclined to use landmarks as guides, males tend to rely on direction, distance, and geometric shapes for navigating their way through a route. Males also excel at quantitative problem solving, and mental rotation, or tasks involving the underlying cognitive processes of maintaining and manipulating a visual image in working memory (Halpern, 2000). It has been theorized that, evolutionarily, many of these abilities would have been important for survival when humans lived in hunter-gatherer societies, where males navigated unfamiliar terrain while hunting, and females foraged more nearby areas gathering food. An evolutionary theory regarding ADHD has been proposed as well. According to this theory, the ability to vigilantly scan the horizon, on alert to novel stimuli, such as stampeding buffalo, would have served the prehistoric hunter well (Hartmann, 2001). Recent genetic research suggests that there is scientific evidence to support this theory (Seay, 2002). It is conceivable that some cultures would value and reinforce different kinds of skills and behaviors, including perseverance and novelty-seeking, especially when advantageous to survival. Additionally, evidence on the evolution of the cerebral cortex suggests brain-behavior relationships, particularly in regard to the development of the prefrontal lobes, seat of the Executive Functions, including planning and organization, maintenance and flexibility of mental set, and self-regulation, such as delayed gratification and the inhibition of impulses --deficits often associated with ADHD.

In 1995, Shaywitz et al. identified evidence for gender differences in the functional organization of the brain for language, in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study. Behaviorally, females have consistently shown an advantage for verbal abilities, including earlier language acquisition and longer attention spans than males for conversation (as cited in Kruger, 2001). Females also tend to excel at memory ta

Thanks for the tips! This is too true. I wish I could find a PHB buzz word site so I could use some words that are sure to get them all listening. ; )

Try http://www.dilbert.com/. There's also a short list at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzzword.

You could also sign up at http://www.buzzwhack.com/nletter/nlsign.htm to receive daily buzzwords by e-mail.

And, last but not least, here's two bullshit generators: http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html and http://orion.it.luc.edu/~ahill1/buzzword.html.

Now aren't you happy that you read Slashdot and learn the stuff that matters ?

You can always check out the Dogbert Buzzword Generator :)
http://orion.it.luc.edu/~ahill1/buzzword.html

And, as always, Bullshit Bingo! You can grab a few choice terms from there, too
http://www.perkigoth.com/home/kermit/stuff/bullshi tbingo/

This guy might care...

The programming contest is part of icfp (they usually announce the winner at the conference).

And there are many, many more buzzword generators out there, implemented using open-architected dynamic algorithms by organic radical policies...

How about the ICFP contests, which have been featured on Slashdot many times? Entries are usually made for just about every language out there, so there is a good chance that someone else may have already used your language to implement a solution. After working out your own solution, looking at others' solutions could teach you even more about the language.

It's Loyola Marymount's Law School in Los Angeles participating, not Loyola University, which is Chicago. It looks like they both are taking pains to differentiate - "Loyola Marymount" vs. "Loyola University Chicago".

Other than that, carry on.

How about the "split screen" shots in commercials where one housewife is scrubbing mountains of dirty dishes, while in an identical household the other is leaving a sparkling room because she's used Sudzy brand soap?

Or, more usefully, the picture-in-picture golf sports shots where you see a widescreen of the golf course, and a closeup of the putt in another window?

Or how about when a signer for the deaf is added in a little oval window on the bottom corner of the screen?

How about the instructional guitar videos, where there are three shots - one so you can see the fingering of the chord, the picking pattern, and an arial shot? Plus, there may be music notation composited in as well.

Nothing especially new here, especially since it's filching from cubists. No one even paints in that style anymore - why emulate it on film?

Remember when video could first stagger frames in the futurist style (sort of like mouse trails - think Nude Descending a Staircase). That was overdone to death, and fortunately we never see that effect except on bad sci-fi reruns.

Special effects are best when you don't notice them, and let the story stay in the forefront.

Gaack.. my liver!

What do you get when you combine a wireless beer glass that orders your refills for you?

<sarcasm />

Interested in Generics?
A Compiler for generic Java has been available for years:
You can check out Pizza/GJ here or here

About 30 Minutes after the police issued an arrest warrant for John Allen Williams in connection with the DC area sniper murders, I looked him up on Google. In only a matter of minutes this page had already been set up.

There are millions of people whose lives are so disorganized that they won't get the ID cards or they'll lose them when they get them or they'll fail to get them renewed.

For instance, in 1993-97, 3.7 percent of drivers were unlicensed, 7.4 percent were driving on an invalid (e.g., suspended, revoked, etc.) license, and 2.7 percent were of unknown license status.

The result is that if the police have to investigate everyone they stop without a valid ID card, they will be spending thousands of useless man hours verifying the identities of non-terrorists. Possibly they will be investigating the same hopeless people over and over again.

At best, a national ID system will prove a short term impediment until the terrorists figure out a way to acquire the cards illegally.

In fact, one can imagine a large black market for ID cards that would be a further drain on the resources of the police.

But an interesting link I came across was Why would a healthcare professional want a PDA?. But the whole snippet of interest that comes out of this is the last line... "The best advice is to try a PDA for a few weeks and customize it to fit your professional and personal interests." You can always return it, right? Most people just assume that it will replace all other pen and paper models, but have no idea, and are usually stuck with $400 paperweights. Why does everyone just assume that they absolutely NEED one to function?

Oh well, just my 2 cents.
--

Unfortunately, at the school that I attent (Loyola University Chicago, for those who are interested), the Comp. Sci. Dept. *only* offers java, and stopped offering c and c++ two years ago, as the professors and chair explain, "well, that's the trend now adays. C is out and obsolete, and Java is in." Currently, as a chem major, and interested in pursuing computer science, I find myself in a poisition where I have no interest in learning java, and every interest in learning c, yet paying over 18k per year to not have the option. I know there is not "much" of a difference between the two; however, as java may be the "hottest" thing right now, I still think that I should have the option to learn C and C++ simply because I love linux, and I can't remember when I've ever seen, in the six years that I have been running linux and BSD, any important code written in java that has anything to do with the OS. It seems to me that they have lost touch of the OS and focus only on the industry needs.
And for those who are even slightly interested, they stopped offering assembly at the same time. =(

The marketing line is simple: you can have a JVM, which only runs Java (and a few fringy languages, like Pizza), or you have this super-duper VM that runs Java and a whole lot more. Difficult for a naive person to argue with.

The defacto VM is currently JVM, and Sun owns it. MS is starting to realize the strategic importance of this, and this is their attempt to steal it away from Sun. It's not an anwer to Java, it is an answer to JVM.

(For whatever it's worth, one of the GJ designers, Philip Wadler, works for Bell Labs, a division of Lucent, my employer.)

They presented a paper on the subject at OOPSLA '98, last October. According to the GJ page linked to above, adding generic types to Java is one of the top twenty-five requests for enhancements.

Loyola University Chicago was able to get a near real-time (3 or 4 seconds between update) view of the Chicago water tower (one of the few building to survive the famous Chicago fire) using an Axis Communications camera. Distance from the server (approx. 10 miles in this case) wasn't a problem because the camera plugs into the ethernet. Also, CPU horse power of the web server wasn't much of a issue because the Axis camera does the JPEG compression/creation (including time-stamp) in firmware so the web server only needs fetch the image and reserve it.