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CL has several advantages over both Perl/Python and C/C++.

• Like Perl and Python, Lisp provides an interactive environment. You can make changes to a running program without having to restart it. Plus, modern Lisps give you a real garbage collector, not a simple reference counter like in Python (although newer versions of Python may have a better GC).

• Like C/C++, Common Lisp is compiled. Unlike C/C++, CL allows you to call the compiler interactively---again, you never have to restart your program. Compiled Lisp code is about as fast as comparable C or C++ code. In fact, most interactive environments compile code on the fly as you type expressions in!

• Like Python and C++, Common Lisp also provides a robust and rich object system, called CLOS. I haven't done much with CLOS, although I like the idea of multiple inheritance and the ability to dispatch methods based on more than one object (Lisp methods and generic functions can dispatch on any of their arguments).

• Unlike C and Perl, Lisp is pretty clean, syntacticly. You never have to remember operator precedence or any of the funky variable naming rules. Lisp is case insensitive, although it is pretty easy to override this.

Several Lisp environments are available, both commercial (Franz, Harlequin) and free (CMU Common Lisp). There's a complete web server written in Lisp, the Common Lisp Hypermedia Server. If you want to learn more about Lisp, check out the Associate of Lisp Users and browse through the section on tutorials and books (a good book, by David Lamkins, is called Successful Lisp).

Not all is happy in Lisp-land, though. There's no archive network like CPAN or CTAN, so you'll have to go digging when you want a regexp package (although I can tell you to look at SCSH for that). While commercial Lisp environments from Franz and Harlequin are available on Windows, the only free Lisp I know of that has been ported to windows is Clisp, which "only" has a byte-compiler (like EMACS). CMU CL, the best free Lisp around, only runs under UNIX. I also don't know of an equivalent to mod_perl that embeds Lisp in Apache, although if you use CL-HTTP this isn't an issue. Still, Lisp may deserve your attention. As old as the language is, Lisp is still years ahead of its time.

For all the bitching and moaning, I haven't yet seen a post that mentions this link:

League for Programming Freedom

Funny, they used to be at lpr.org, but now "Students for Unity" is there ... does LPR have funding issues, or are they just charitable?

Anyway, this site explains in detail what is wrong with patents and what we can do about it. They are even old-school enough to use .xbm's just to prove a point ;-)

I graduated from MIT last year. I can speak from experience when I say that student government elections at MIT have been conducted online for at least the past four years. The Cryptography and Information Security group at MIT's LCS has been working on a secure voting system for some time. Check it out.

I concur that this is a very good thing, provided it is implemented correctly.

I graduated from MIT last year. I can speak from experience when I say that student government elections at MIT have been conducted online for at least the past four years. The Cryptography and Information Security group at MIT's LCS has been working on a secure voting system for some time. Check it out.

I concur that this is a very good thing, provided it is implemented correctly.

Heh the article reminds me of this MIT hack, where students renamed the Athena workstations after chemical elements :).

I think that the funniest (and the most truthful) hack is the "MIT doesn't do windows" and the "Crash" button that some hackers put up in '96 when Bill Gates spoke at MIT.

For my money, the Green Building as a VU meter is the most impressive, the cop car on the dome the most humorous.

Anyway, I thought it was sad that true great hacks got no mention.

-B

For my money, the Green Building as a VU meter is the most impressive, the cop car on the dome the most humorous.

Anyway, I thought it was sad that true great hacks got no mention.

-B

For my money, the Green Building as a VU meter is the most impressive, the cop car on the dome the most humorous.

Anyway, I thought it was sad that true great hacks got no mention.

-B

The MIT student newspaper had an interview with Knuth about these lectures, and gives some insight. http://www-tech.mit.edu/V119/N5 1/knuthtlin.51f.html. Basically just Knuth expressing his religious views.

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I hate to see the mentality of fungible goods being applied to the pursuit of learning. I'd like to think college students are not just bodies filling chairs, but helping advance the sum of human knowledge. It's easy to see why colleges might look at this as a tool, though. Education isn't its own end anymore.

This is about "education" being treated as a commodity. Education -- or more precisely the experience of attending college, whether or not that results in an education -- has always been a commodity.

Frankly, I don't see what's wrong with that. I find it fascinating that people get so upset confronting that reality. People have idealized this nebulous conception of "education" as something pure and unbesmirched by the necessities of real life, such as money. "Education" has become a sacred cow. It has become a vehicle for a fantasy about higher, nobler goals for a deeply cynical society.

If your neighborhood fiddler can put up his shingle and offer violin lessions for $N/hr, if your neighborhood yogi can charge $M at the door to attend his yoga class, then teaching can be a commodity. If Club Med, and Outward Bound can charge you for their services, then experiences can be a commodity. Attending college is not morally different, whether you consider tuition to be buying you an education or buying you the experience of being at college.

What is changing here is that instead of colleges setting a price which customers can either pay or not, the customer can haggle. Objections that the (presumed) resultant change in the distribution of college educations will have an undesirable impact on society are at least reasonable. Objections that amount to "colleges should be above the worldliness of commerce" are irrational.

What has been noticably missing from this discussion so far is the admission that would-be students (and their parents) have always comparison shopped. This is not new. Remeber Overlap. Yes, the money matters.
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Some clarifications: First of all, we don't sign NDAs. Neither do any other reputable VCs along Sand Hill Road, because we'd quickly be swamped with them (we review upwards of 10,000 plans a year). Our business depends on our reputation, and nothing else--everyone's money is green, and our competitors are literally everywhere along Sand Hill. If someone approaches us with an NDA, and refuses to talk until we sign, we pass on the deal.

Second, VCs do take a big ownership stake. But it's not just about money. We have the connections into our portfolio companies and into other large companies around the Valley and beyond. As an early stage firm, we work for our money. We help recruit talent, we help with later financings, we help make strategic decisions, etc. CEOs often talk with their lead investors several times a week.

Third, regarding patents, they're nice, but what's more important is defensibility in the marketplace. With the exception of foundational algorithms like RSA, it's unlikely that patent protection will be all that significant. It's more important to have a lead over potential competition due to a combination of better technology, speed, and strategy.

Finally, no bank in the world is likely to give a loan to a startup company without financial backing--you're simply too risky, and there's no assets to recover. VCs can handle the risk; we're used to it.

As far as advice goes: 1. Make progress. Prove your assumptions--people want your product, say they will pay for your product, want an alliance with you. Move your technology as far along as possible. Hire good people.

If you have had no professional money invested yet, consider approaching angel investors Garage.com, Angel Investors LP. They will help you advance to the stage where VC money is appropriate. If it's two guys and an idea, we generally won't back it unless it's people we know and trust already. And sometimes not even then.

2. Think about the strategic landscape of the market you're entering now, 6 mos from now, a year from now, and beyond. What will happen once you enter the market? Most importantly, what problem are you solving, and who will pay you to solve it? How much will they pay? How will you market to/sell to them? VCs will ask tough questions about everything--you, your competition, your technology, your strategy, etc.
Good VCs aren't just money managers--they are engineers with MBAs. Many have CS or EE degrees, and all are up on the latest technologies. You'd be surprised how many technical discussions take place here.

3. Do your homework. Figure out who else is out there, what they're doing, and make yourself stand out. Be the diamond in the rough of 10000 plans we see. For advice on how to do that, check out MIT's 50K page. Pay special attention to the "resources" section.

There are dozens of other pieces of advice to offer. So I am considering creating a website with this and other information on the VC process. Does that seem like something people would be interested in? If so, please post a reply, and I'll start putting one together.

I may not know much about the kernel, but finally a subject I can be useful on!

This is the actual site at MIT: www.cag.lcs.mit.edu/raw/

The Oxygen project is part of the Labortatory of Computer Science at MIT, but it's kind of a pain to get direct info off of MIT's site. The best I could find is a list of articles of LCS in the news, that includes the Scientific American articles. www.lcs.mit.edu/news/inthenews/

It seems to be a new project (started in April) with a lot of money (38 million from DARPA), and, I'm sure this will piss some of you off, a new 20 million dollar facility donated by - you guessed it - Bill Gates.

From these articles, I get the impression that the technology goes a ways beyond FPGA's, because it is actually a whole bunch of processing units tiled together, and they plan to run multiple "programs" at once by varying the paths through the tiles. So, the chip could be a custom video chip and a radio and a cell phone at the same time. The last line in the article kind of sums it up:"...within a couple of decades there will be only three kinds of chips in the world: Raw chips, memory chips and, of course, potato chips." As long as we still have potato chips...

This is the actual site at MIT: www.cag.lcs.mit.edu/raw/

The Oxygen project is part of the Labortatory of Computer Science at MIT, but it's kind of a pain to get direct info off of MIT's site. The best I could find is a list of articles of LCS in the news, that includes the Scientific American articles. www.lcs.mit.edu/news/inthenews/

It seems to be a new project (started in April) with a lot of money (38 million from DARPA), and, I'm sure this will piss some of you off, a new 20 million dollar facility donated by - you guessed it - Bill Gates.

From these articles, I get the impression that the technology goes a ways beyond FPGA's, because it is actually a whole bunch of processing units tiled together, and they plan to run multiple "programs" at once by varying the paths through the tiles. So, the chip could be a custom video chip and a radio and a cell phone at the same time. The last line in the article kind of sums it up:"...within a couple of decades there will be only three kinds of chips in the world: Raw chips, memory chips and, of course, potato chips." As long as we still have potato chips...

This is the actual site at MIT: www.cag.lcs.mit.edu/raw/

The Oxygen project is part of the Labortatory of Computer Science at MIT, but it's kind of a pain to get direct info off of MIT's site. The best I could find is a list of articles of LCS in the news, that includes the Scientific American articles. www.lcs.mit.edu/news/inthenews/

It seems to be a new project (started in April) with a lot of money (38 million from DARPA), and, I'm sure this will piss some of you off, a new 20 million dollar facility donated by - you guessed it - Bill Gates.

From these articles, I get the impression that the technology goes a ways beyond FPGA's, because it is actually a whole bunch of processing units tiled together, and they plan to run multiple "programs" at once by varying the paths through the tiles. So, the chip could be a custom video chip and a radio and a cell phone at the same time. The last line in the article kind of sums it up:"...within a couple of decades there will be only three kinds of chips in the world: Raw chips, memory chips and, of course, potato chips." As long as we still have potato chips...

• USPTO Patent FAQ
  
• EFF's IP page
  
• Oracle's testimony
  
• An overview of software patent opposition
  
• The League for Programming Freedom's Software Patent page
  

What do we do? The only organization I've ever heard of to oppose this sort of thing is the League for Programming Freedom, which is not much more than some web pages at the moment (no formal organization, no budget). Who else is there to co-ordinate actions against SW patents?

The biggest job I have as an implementor of EC software is convincing the clients that the hard part of electronic commerce is not the web site or the technology that runs it.

The hard part of setting up an electronic business is all the infrastructure stuff that has to go on in the background (ie. Shipping/Warehousing, Order Tracking, Customer Service, Credit Card Fraud investigations, Sales Tax accounting and payment (which can be a nightmare). Putting up a web site that displays your catalog of products, allows people to order from that catalog and takes and processes their credit card info is comparitively easy. Also, most commercial "EC" software solutions do none of the backend processes. They hook into what you already have (your accounting software does have public api's/views right?) with custom code (written by the vendor's $$$ consultants) and they are far from free (sometimes into $ millions).

OK, now to the free, open source E-commerce software running on a free, open source web server. First, read the article at http://photo.net/wtr/thebook/ecommerce. html. This provides far more detail than I have time to write here and is the best reading I could recommend to someone considering purchasing commercial EC software. Second you can get the software (it's all source code, it's in TCL) at http://arsdigita.com/free-tools/shoppe. html. Third, you can see the software in action on an ancient solaris box at http://mitpress.mit.edu.

I learned most of the stuff that Philip espouses the hard way. He is certainly not humble but I would have killed for that kind of info 18 months ago when I busted my toe on each and every stumbling block associated with online commerce!

Oh, and it all runs on Linux as well.

It's not clear how they plan to program the things. Maybe they broadcast programs to the entire swarm in infrared.

There is some interesting stuff in a similar vein being done by MIT's Amorphous Computing group. The MIT folks have thought a lot about conservative sets of assumptions that shape the kind of software you can write for these things.

Linear Aerospike engines (what the X-33 will use). Basically they optimize rocket performance for any given altitude, making for a far more efficient launch, and enabling Single-Stage-To-Orbit (SSTO) vehicles that are lighter and smaller.

Aerial Rocket Refueling. Also known as "Black Horse"Technology which is far crazier than the aerospike and far less safe, but it'll probably be cheaper if it gets off the ground (pun not intended).

Alternative SSTOs like that rotor-rocket (the name of the company escapes me) and the McDonnel Douglas (I guess Boeing now) Delta Clipper.

ICBMs... didn't the Russians recently launched a LEO off a damn silo? ;-)....

Maglevs are cool, but IMHO rail-guns will be a lot more useful for what the Army *really* wants them for: high-speed anti-armor projectiles, as in tank canons... guess with those Lithium Polymer batteries, they might be able to pull that off ;-)...

That program is PGPfone. It can send data over an internet or direct modem connection. Everything sent over the connection is encrypted.

Hmm... class of bacteria have cillia. One has a bad gene, a mutation, and has one BIG cillia. Somehow, it can marginally swim around better and eat more than its fellows, and pop! soon it's split, and there are two. And, as bacteria go, this one is no different, as it's popping out plasmids all the time, and some others pick up on this one.

But this begs the question of how they got cilia that let them swim around in the first place. A flagellum is a lot more complicated than one might think:

The flagellum is an outboard motor that many bacteria use to swim. It consists of a rotary propeller, motor, and stationary framework. Yet this short description can't do justice to the machine's full complexity. Writing of the flagellum in Cell,2 Lucy Shapiro of Stanford University marvels, "To carry out the feat of coordinating the ordered expression of about 50 genes, delivering the protein products of these genes to the construction site, and moving the correct parts to the upper floors while adhering to the design specification with a high degree of accuracy, the cell requires impressive organizational skills." Without any one of a number of parts, the flagellum does not merely work less efficiently; it does not work at all. Like a mousetrap it is irreducibly complex and therefore cannot have arisen gradually.

(From Behe's reply to a critique of his work.)

-jimbo

There is a good explanation from Prof. Jaffe at MIT. (Scroll down a few pages to get to the relevant part of the transcript. The realvideo at the top picks up around at the interesting bit, and has more info.)

First, some Wearable computing links:

• http://wearables.blu.org/ (use the static mirror for now)
• wear-hard@haven.org is a moderate traffic, but fun listserv for discussion of wearables by people that actually have wearables (and their admirers)
• http://lcs.www.media.mit.edu/proje cts/wearables/

And now some opinons:

Here are some obstacles to wearable computing by the masses

1. Footprint (wearprint). The size of wearables are still prohibitive. Disclaimer: this statement is a massively erroneous generalization. As most people on wear-hard@haven.org will tell you, the size of your wearable greatly depends on your needs. Are you building a walking workstation or just a custom PDA? Can you get by with CLI or need a graphic window system? Do you need a visual display at all? Nevertheless, I'd say most usefull wearables would still result in prohibitively large (or prohibitively expensive to make small) systems. Prediction: wearables will catch on when they're as inobtrusive as a Sony Discman and a pair of Gargoyle sunglasses.
2. Network. Computers in the future need to be connected (or able to connect) to the Net. Wearables pose some problems. Bandwidth. Need for a wireless infrastructure capable of supporting mobile devices. Fortunately, this nicely intersects with less-fringe technologies like laptops, PDAs and automotive computers
3. Interface. Well, until traditional software and Web site developers start building with Accesability in mind, then you must have either a very custom software environment or a visual display and run a graphical windowing system. Input is another difficult matter. One of the most popular input devices is the Twiddler, a hand held chording keyboard. However, in some circumstances, keyboard input is innapropriate. Speech recognition requires a powerfull CPU. Gesture based input is still an area of reasearch. Brain or nerve input is still Science Fiction. Prediction: non-standard computing I/O will be only be practical when more mainstream networked devices with limited display capabilities abound, i.e. networked Palm Pilots or automobile PCs will drive things like non-visual accessibility and software supportive of speech recognition, etc..
4. Mass Production. Wearables are very custom designed systems and often need to be built custom to the individual to be usefull.

I used to work at the MIT Media Lab in direct conjunction with several of the pioneers of the field. I've listened to Thad pontificate on the various uses of them for almost 5 years now, so I've got a good idea where you're going to see them:

• Places where the PDA is king right now, particularly in the vertically-integrated market. People like UPS and FedEx, inventory at warehouses/supermarkets/etc., airline checkins, etc. Alot of those places would greatly benefit from having more horsepower (and also a network connection).
• Aids for the disabled. The current crop is good enough to do decent sign-language interpretation, and I'd expect wearbles would be a boon to people with limited sight or hearing, since they could use them to do amplification and/or enhancement.
• The Military. The US Army is absolutely bonkers of this kind of stuff - it fits so nicely into their LandWarrior2000 concept of the fully-wired warrior.
• As a replacement for the Laptop, which, let's face it, is a rather cruddy computer. I'd expect the laptop to get completely killed by the wearable within 5 years.
• Specialty medical apps like surgeon's or ER doctor's aids (nothing like being able to look up all the possible drug interactions without taking your hands out of the GSW), or a link from the ER to the Ambulance crew.

The big stumbling blocks to wearables right now are the displays (though take a look at the one Thad is wearing in the above picture) and battery life. I expect displays to be solved within 2 years at the outside, after which it's really simply a matter of production. The battery life is a harder issue, but it's being worked on too.

I look at Xybernaut, and think that they are targeting the wrong market first - they're doing consumer applications, which I don't expect to be feasible for 4-6 years; instead, they should be focusing on the specialty and vertical markets, where the need and demand is NOW.

Disclaimer - Thad is a personal friend of mine, and I think his shit is cool. So I might be biased.

-Erik

Check out Cilk for what seems like quite an effective way to parallelize C.
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Behe's book is about abiogenesis, not evolution.

Anyways, if you are interested in the subject, why not start with some critiques (which lead to links both pro and con). Or a biologist's critique.

Cheers,
Ben

Now there is such a thing as tracing rays from the lights, but nowadays that is typically referred to as "backwards raytracing" which is confusing because physically speaking that's forwards. So some confusion is understandable.

But techniques that use this backwards raytracing typically just do a pass with backwards tracing to deposit light in the scene, and then actually do the rendering with a more conventional raytracing pass (from the eye). Arvo was the first to use this technique I believe, in his "shadow maps" [Arvo, James: "Backward Ray Tracing" ACM Siggraph Course Notes 1986]. Jensen's photon maps are a more refined version of similar technology [paper here].

I don't know if anyone has posted this link yet, but you can find a good web based Dvorak typing tutor at:

Yeah. Here's to classical music while coding: Dvorak in MP3; Dvorak in Real Audio.

Yeah. Here's to classical music while coding: Dvorak in MP3; Dvorak in Real Audio.

Read the next issue of The Tech (a new issue will probably be out in a few days covering the future fest incident). You may change your mind.

Y'all may wish to read MIT's spin on the alliance -- if it's true, the scope of the project is limited. The administration might have its crazy ideas, but the professors, who care about their own research, keep them in line. Unlike the Scott Kreuger incident and aftermath (for those who aren't familiar, the dumbass drank himself to death) the faculty has a stake in this area, and will be keeping a close eye -- many a lab group use Linux (e.g. physics and math) and MacOS (biology, chem. e.).


*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring bohemian. ***

For another perspective on the way MIT has changed, you might be interested in visiting the ILTFP home pages. I don't know how widespread the ribbons are.
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The real joke here is: At MIT, if a junior professor is a good teacher, the senior faculty take this as a sign that he or she isn't working hard enough on research, and so the professor's chance of getting tenure goes down. (My wife and I are both alumni of "Hell", so I know whereof I speak....)

So what is MIT doing to improve the quality of its education? Taking a $25M grant to build fancier computer systems! And after this grant money runs out, the extra hardware and software acquired through it will be part of the school's infrastructure, so MIT will need money to maintain it -- either from more tuition hikes, or from the overhead on more research grants.

- Seth Finkelstein

- Seth Finkelstein

- Seth Finkelstein

A $20 million donation to the Laboratory of Computer Science made by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates for the construction of a building in his name has been received by MIT students with mixed reactions.
...
Joseph T. Foley G said that the donation was "the funniest damn thing," and that Microsoft products are laden with "creeping featurisms." Microsoft products contain too many unnecessary features that introduce bugs, Foley said. His largest complaint was that the software "is not worth the money."
...
One individual suggested that the plaque bearing Bill Gates' name be changed to read `Linus Torvaldis.' Torvaldis is the developer of the Linux operating system , a free alternative to Windows.

- Seth Finkelstein

Another good article along these lines is the humor (so far) piece Esther Dyson announces ratings partnership with Vatican (collected as part of a page I had of Freedom of Expression Satire and Humor)

Oh well, I started talking about this stuff in 1995 , and much of what I said is coming true. Nowadays I just console myself about the cocktail-party way of doing things.

- The Boston Lunatic

Another good article along these lines is the humor (so far) piece Esther Dyson announces ratings partnership with Vatican (collected as part of a page I had of Freedom of Expression Satire and Humor)

Oh well, I started talking about this stuff in 1995 , and much of what I said is coming true. Nowadays I just console myself about the cocktail-party way of doing things.

- The Boston Lunatic

Another good article along these lines is the humor (so far) piece Esther Dyson announces ratings partnership with Vatican (collected as part of a page I had of Freedom of Expression Satire and Humor)

Oh well, I started talking about this stuff in 1995 , and much of what I said is coming true. Nowadays I just console myself about the cocktail-party way of doing things.

- The Boston Lunatic

(Proof)

I also take issue with mutex duality.

--s

See what Need To Know said about this article... last week. The established opinion seems to be that The Sunday Times got TWINKLE mixed up with other stuff in their foggy heads and is now talking out of their ass.

this is a little bit dated but a decent enough overview.

In addition there are many software patents considered void because the patented ideas are obvious (and thus violate patent law). The XOR patent is usually quoted in this context. There is hardly a chance a small software company can know all the relevant patents let alone fight the bad ones in court, which would be the constitutional/legally correct thing to do.

It all boils down to whether society profits from software patents. With industrial manufacturing the decision of most of todays industrial nations is to support the patent system. For other things like mathematics, law, and to a large extent basic research including medicine these same industrial nations won't grant the protection of patents. Software currently falls under the patent system but the discussion is far from over.

This article or the League for Programming Freedom have a few arguments.

In addition there are many software patents considered void because the patented ideas are obvious (and thus violate patent law). The XOR patent is usually quoted in this context. There is hardly a chance a small software company can know all the relevant patents let alone fight the bad ones in court, which would be the constitutional/legally correct thing to do.

It all boils down to whether society profits from software patents. With industrial manufacturing the decision of most of todays industrial nations is to support the patent system. For other things like mathematics, law, and to a large extent basic research including medicine these same industrial nations won't grant the protection of patents. Software currently falls under the patent system but the discussion is far from over.

This article or the League for Programming Freedom have a few arguments.