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check out the MIT/Industry consortium. They have links to news and research as well as all the major industrial players.

One advantage I haven't seen in any of the previous posts is that 42V provides enough power for components to be moved off of the serpentine belt and away from engine. The change from mechanically powered to electrically powered has the potential to drastically alter the design of automobiles by distributing components around the vehicle instead of everything being lumped together under the hood.

but of course we can't do that - that'd mean doing some (shock! horror!) nuclear power research, and (no! say it ain't so!) building some brand-new designs. clearly it must be much better to keep building those nuke plants just like they did back in the 1950's and 60's, or better yet, don't build any new ones at all - just keep running the ones they built back then, more or less unchanged.

You're right. Computer technology hasn't changed at all, really. Infact, one of my favorite languages, Lisp, is something like the 2nd oldest computer language. The only thing that changes is the hardware technology, and that only grows in capability and not fundamental differences. This is much easier to see when looking at the IBM-PC. The difference between an XT (8088) and the latest generation of Pentiums and Athlons is nothing, in terms of computing concepts.

I can almost guarantee that the book Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs will be valid for the next 10 years, and most likely 25, 50 and possibly 100 years. In the end, you are still talking to the computer in whichever symbolic way you choose to get a certain job done. You might have to learn about XML, Java, C++, or whatever other buzzword of the day is, of course.

No contest. Cute turtles, clear language, instant graphical results.
here

You may not feel the pain/strain as your mind is inundated by other, more important datum. Here is a url with simple pictures and descriptions of some integral stretches to prevent RSI and prolong comfort; http://web.mit.edu/atic/www/rsi/RSIMIT/exercise.ht ml.

This is from my own home page:

People who do not have carpal tunnel can get an incredible amount of help out of work with a physical therapist with experience dealing with RSI/CTS supervised by a doctor. Get a medical diagnosis first, preferably involving an electromyogram which can determine definitively whether or not the median nerve is really compressed or not. I had tendinitis a few years ago which was originally diagnosed as CTS, I considered this a wakeup call.

And if you've really screwed the pooch and the doctor is recommending carpal tunnel release surgery, be warned, I've met more than one person who's tried carpal tunnel release... and is not happy with the results, anyone contemplating that procedure should probably check into the balloon release described below first.

"Sunday February 25, 1996 Balloon catheter relieves pressure on median nerve in carpal tunnel"

"A new procedure to alleviate carpal tunnel syndrome uses a balloon catheter to stretch and expand the ligament and relieve pressure on the median nerve in the carpal tunnel of the wrist. This avoids cutting the ligament when conventional therapy is not effective."

"According to a study of 120 patients treated with the new procedure during the past four years, 85 percent had marked clinical improvement in relief of wrist pain and numbness, and 95 percent reported overall satisfaction with the outcome."

American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons web site carpal balloon release info.

Check out this. Its a masters thesis from the comparative media studies dept at MIT.

-bloo

The robots you are talking about are on this page. Check out the running and hopping robots halfway down the page.

I read it as he was trying to get people to understand that it is difficult for *any* newbie to get up and rolling nowadays, especially a person under 10.

If you are looking for updated LOGO (which is a good place for a 7 - 8 year old to start since they have just begun reading and really beginnign to understand things instead of just mimicking), one should take a click over to StarLogo that has been created by the brains at the MIT Media Lab. While targeted for 13+ year olds, it can be a great place to begin for the youngins!

They even have a reasonable resource site for those who are trying to teach or expose this language to others.

I read it as he was trying to get people to understand that it is difficult for *any* newbie to get up and rolling nowadays, especially a person under 10.

If you are looking for updated LOGO (which is a good place for a 7 - 8 year old to start since they have just begun reading and really beginnign to understand things instead of just mimicking), one should take a click over to StarLogo that has been created by the brains at the MIT Media Lab. While targeted for 13+ year olds, it can be a great place to begin for the youngins!

They even have a reasonable resource site for those who are trying to teach or expose this language to others.

I read it as he was trying to get people to understand that it is difficult for *any* newbie to get up and rolling nowadays, especially a person StarLogo that has been created by the brains at the MIT Media Lab. While targeted for 13+ year olds, it can be a great place to begin for the youngins! They even have a reasonable resource site for those who are trying to teach or expose this language to others.

Another entry into programming is creating web pages, by tweaking them with JavaScript, and eventually CGI scripts. Really anything that allows tweaking is good, such as tweaking Mozilla or the computer desktop. Programming is about tweaking the world.

Once they feel ready to transition to a full programming language (Java, C++, etc.), there are ways to ramp up to that too. JavaScript is a great way to learn object-oriented concepts. Learning game programming really motivates kids and they learn about 3D graphics too (Nehe and GameTutorials). For building real desktop applications, NetBeans and the free JBuilder edition let you visually design java user interfaces, but something like Thinlets simplifies java development greatly (and introduces you to XML, see also other XUL-based development tools). Of course there are thousands of resources out there for learning java, see Sun's New to Java center.

Lastly, I think kids should keep a blog or a journal somewhere. If you have webspace, set them up a MovableType blog and let them tweak everything they want (adding commenting, shoutboxes, javascript goodies, etc.).

It's available for free for most platfoms.

Richard Stallman

The whole GNU project is really one big hack. It's one big act of subversive playful cleverness...

Richard Stallman, Revolution OS (DVD)

One thing to remember with the whole "hack" quote is, coming from an MIT guy (which Stallman was) it has three possible connotations.

1) an act of breaking into something. Though most folks would use the term cracker here, SCO is probably pleased when people associate these negative connotations with Stallman's statement. The "subversive" part of the quote probably doesn't win many favors in big business or in the Bush regime.

2) a clever solution to a problem, sometimes Quick and Dirty just to get it out, othertimes smashingly elegant. SCO probably would say that Stallman meant the first Quick and Dirty, for its connotations of low quality. Stallman probably meant a lot more of the latter.

3) MIT calls pranks "Hacks". Well past the "shaving cream on someones hand while they sleep, feather on face to make them scratch" stage, these required inticate planning and timing. From the "playful" portion of his quite, I kind of feel Stallman meant more of this. In this case, the "hack" is on the closed source companies, which pissed him off because he couldn't get the source to change a printer driver that MIT actually had helped develop. He was further pissed off by Digital discontinuing the PDP-10, which threw MIT's computing plans a massive curveball. By making a computing system himself, he was able to bypass all these restrictions and have a useful system. The big "hack" was that this was useful, and joined his programming skills with his social views of sharing.

The system you describe would not violate the second law. Yes, you could use this plasma valve as a gate between two chambers at equal temperature. But you're putting energy in to keep the plasma there....and the collisions of the plasma with the gas particles will heat the gas (increasing entropy).

In theoretical thermal rectifiers in general, the interaction of the gas with, for example, the gate or the thermal interactions of the pawl in Feynman's ratchet cannot be disregarded and is often the key to seeing how a particular reincarnation of the demon fails to violate the second law.

Bennett's work, referenced by another post, kills the poor little demon on even more solid theoretical ground.

FWIW here are some documents about the Apollo guidence computer, pdf's.

There's also a mailing list and another web site for putting Linux on the Acer TM100.

There's also a mailing list and another web site for putting Linux on the Acer TM100.

Is that anything like Intel Inside?

history: MIT--electronic locks requiring the swipe of a card

mit big brother inside

The current rovers have been designed to survive the forces of the launch, the baking and freezing imposed by the journey to Mars, the impact of the solar wind, the forces imposed by re-entry, deceleration and impact, the constant UV flux and the highly reactive Martian surface.

AIBO was designed to get around a flat, friendly living room, it would fail all the above tests. It doesn't lift its legs very far to walk, nor does it recognise walls or drop-offs so obstacle avoidance isn't present.

Not to mention that AIBO is smaller and lighter for the simple reason he has no instrumentation onboard. He wouldn't be very useful.

You could add extra computing power to the system, but either that would be present on a lander, which would reduce the weight for actual science, or you'd have to send all the commands back to Earth for processing - which would be painful.

You could have a walking robot on Mars, but the benefits seem somewhat elusive. And if legged robots do go to Mars, I think they'll owe more to the likes of Genghis than to AIBO.

AIBO is great, I have two, but he's no explorer.

Best wishes,
Mike.

then you better stay away from the remberance agent.

People would go to secret locations and leave messages and spy related items, never to return. Their contacts would then come at a totally different time and pick up said items.

Geo Caching would provide far to many 'False Positives' to the Keystone Kops chasing terror suspects.

One big hurdle you'd have to jump through first is the "take micropayments."

From a merchant perspective, micropayments SUCKS ASS because the cost of processing such a payment is more expensive than the amount being paid. You end up with the same problem you describe, except now you are forking all the dough to the payment companies.

This is a good point. In fact, Rivest (of RSA fame) and Silvio Micali have already solved this problem. The original paper can be found here. Rivest and Micali have already started a company off of this idea.

CDex uses LAME. LAME's site links here . The answer seems to be a big fat maybe. Also, try here, and click on News. Notice BladeEnc was discontinued for reasons including legal hassles. Also, note that RedHat wussed out and pulled MP3 support from RedHat Linux 8.

Don't be so sure you'll never get to take that course. MIT - the birthplace of GNU, after all - is leading the academic world in its "OpenCourseWare" initiative. The syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, labs and exams for some courses have already been published on the web, and MIT plans to publish almost all its course materials by 2007.

Don't be so sure you'll never get to take that course. MIT - the birthplace of GNU, after all - is leading the academic world in its "OpenCourseWare" initiative. The syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, labs and exams for some courses have already been published on the web, and MIT plans to publish almost all its course materials by 2007.

Disclaimer: I have tremendous respect for Hal Abelson and Gerry Sussman, having worked with both while teaching the MIT EECS core undergraduate curriculum, including 6.002.

The article glosses over a couple of details which are important to understanding what Abelson and Sussman are proposing (as evidenced by many of the comments thus far). The course, 6.002, is already a laboratory couse with required lab assignments. However, there aren't that many (4 or 5), and while one's lab grades are important, it is possible to pass the course (*pass*, not do well) without doing well on the labs. The course is reasonably heavy on theory, and somewhat light on practical knowledge. When I was TA-ing it, I was amazed at how many students did not already know how to solder.

For many students, it was the first lab course ever, so things like oscilloscopes were poorly-understood tools. (As part of the first lab assignment, if I recall, one must prove proficiency with a 'scope.) As a result of this, many of the students don't really get a good understanding of basic parameters and values -- practical knowledge -- because there's so much to learn already, and because there are only 4 or 5 lab assignments and only so many lab TAs.

What Abelson and Sussman are trying to do (and, by the way, they are the authors of what is widely considered one of the best, if not the best, course at MIT, 6.001) is shift some of the tutorial instruction, typically centered on going over lectures and recitations in more detail with an eye towards the homework assignments and similar problems, towards understanding specific real-world problems. They are, in effect, changing the syllabus where it has been previously poorly-defined, and where the student-to-faculty ratio is the lowest, so it can do the most good.

(For those not familiar with the way such courses are structured, there are some number of hundreds of students per term taking the course, and three levels of instruction: twice- or thrice-weekly lectures by senior faculty to the entire class, supplemented by twice-weekly recitations by junior faculty or senior graduate students to sections of 15-30 students, supplemented by once-weekly tutorials by junior graduate students to sections of 4-8 students. This is a well-developed and powerful means of teaching a huge amount of difficult material in a short amount of time to highly-motivated students.)

It will be very interesting to see how 6.002x develops. Very interesting. Might just go and volunteer to help teach next term right now.

Gee, its not like MIT physics didn't have an experimental version (8.01x, 8.02x) of its classes ten years ago.

get with the program. its just like course 6 to be deriving all their cool stuff from physics anyway, when they are not stealing course ideas from mechanical engineering, that is.

And 6.001 is a just a dumb witgenstein reference to recursion anyway...

Hal Abelson, the Class of 1922 Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering...

Abelson obviously ain't 99 years old, what does this title mean?

are also the authors of Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. One of the very best books on CS ever written.

I love any company that manages things like this.

these probably won't be widely accepted at teaching institutions

From http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jsp?forum=316&thr ead=389987&start=15&range=15&tstart=0&trange=1 5:

> I can't quite get my head round what combination of
> VM, compiler and/or language changes would iron out
> the following incompability between arrays and
> generics:
>
> Cat[] cats = new Cat[10];
> Animal[] animals = cats; // legal
>
> List cats = new List(10);
> List animals = cats; // illegal
> according to JSR-14

This problem is addressed in the "variance" extension to
the generic type system, which will be included in the
imminent JSR14 prototype 2.0. Details are enclosed in
the prototype.

Also a link to a MIT research paper on variance from that thread.

Not only has everyone seen TV shows and movies illustrating that, but it happens in everyone's brains all the time. Go read #5 of the Reith Lectures 2003 by Vilayanur S Ramachandran.
Zen Buddhism's claim to enable the practitioner to "live in the present" seems to be connected with these phenomena, and seems to have actual foundations in the material phenomena in the brain. Everybody interested, go read Zen and the Brain by James H. Austin

Brainball is a biofeedback game where the person who relaxes the most wins- an interesting contrast to most games where the most competitive person usually wins

Also have a look at AffQuake for a biofeedback mod of quake II

It has already been done for FPS as an MIT research project. Check out where the player avatar's size depends on your heartrate, the avatar also jumps if you are startled

REAL men use the console. For those forced to use those silly window gadgets by their PHBs, there's NAWM: Not a Window Manager. Non-reparenting, non-eye candy, pure window management functionality and nothing more. Check it out.

When I was in college radio at MIT, we were so paranoid about the FCC. Did we run enough public service announcements (PSA's), were we serving the community, did anyone play anything offensive on the air, etc. Your station license was up for renewal every year, and you spent weeks before the renewal running announcements about public comments and other BS just in case someone wanted to try and grab the frequency from you. Now (from what I understand), renewals are every five years, and I can't remember the last time I heard a TV or radio station mention that their license was up for renewal. So much for public ownership of the airwaves. Support your local stations and pirate radio.

There's not much about it on the main MTG page because it's a past show, but two good reviews appeared in the Cambridge Chronicle and the Boston Phoenix.

[It was worth nearly all the work just to hear C3PO (Nori Pritchard) get into a rant and call R2D2 an "upstaging little bitch". That wasn't onstage, sadly, 'twas a 'family friendly' show, like the original movie]

Monty

alwas interesting to read: http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/philosophy/right-to-read .html

This isn't entirely accurate. It's true that MIT has its own Class A (18.*), but take a look at the Network Topology Map (pdf) and you'll see that most buildings are /21's (including most dorms). Most frats and independent living groups are on /23's because they're smaller... but it's definitely true that MIT owns a hell of a lot of IP's.

In response to the Sussman/Ableson book suggestion, I would like to add a couple of items and a correction. First off, it is a truly remarkable book when combined with the VIDEO LECTURES!!!!! available for download from M.I.T., Beware though, it's about 8.85 gigs worth of divx. Also it is reccommended as reference for those with some prior knowledge of programming through something like Python(love it) at least. It's all taught in LISP(ugh), but the course is more of a metalinguistic analysis of programming languages in general and very good despite its age ca. 1986. So if you ever really wanted to understand what good things like: (DEFINE FOO (x y) (lambda(x) lambda(y)(x+y))) are, and so much more, then this course should satisfy.

MIT needs every IP address they have!

actually, they're not /16s

Yeah. Or find out which bathroom to use?

I'm sure that even MIT isn't using all 16.something million addresses their 18.foo class A allows for.

I'm sure that even MIT isn't using all 16.something million addresses their 18.foo class A allows for.

I'm sure that even MIT isn't using all 16.something million addresses their 18.foo class A allows for.

I'm sure that even MIT isn't using all 16.something million addresses their 18.foo class A allows for.

I don't think one need be too cynical to imagine that the government might forbid the wearing of masks under certain circumstances, as sometime happens with gas masks during demonstrations.

In any case, some face recognition techniques can be adapted to work even when some features are concealed. For example, the eigenface method can be applied to individual facial features, resulting in eigeneyes, eigennoses and eigenmouths which can be used for matching. MIT has done this with some success (scroll down to the section titled "Modular Eigenspaces").

That earned the 1st prize for 'Best Obfuscated Artwork' in Obfuscated PostScript Contest 1993. Shorter version is here.