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MIT is working on exactly that, at least at the high school level. And they're distributing the videos for free.

At MIT, there is a similar project called BLOSSOMS. One would hope that these types of programs would be able to find common ground to get positive network effects.

The original letter AND the reply from MIT are posted here.

Given the fact that they're facing similar problems today, we can conclude that MIT failed to come up with anything useful in response to the mayor's query. It would be nice to know what their response was, if they responded at all.

It's actually an interesting read: http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/exhibits/curley/index1.html; the link contains the original letter AND MIT's response.

tl;dr: Here's a summary of the response (dated Jan 28, 1948)

1. Use salt; corrodes cars and roads.
2. Use hot water: Fuel consumption would be high.
3. "The use of flamethrowers to dissipate snow would be neither practicable nor efficient. Even the earlier types of flamethrower were designed so that combustion took place about twenty yards away from the nozzle. Obviously it would be hazardous to use a flame thrower for snow removal at this distance. If used at a closer range, there would be an excess of vaporized fuel on the snow, resulting in poor combustion, a considerable amount of black smoke and relatively low hear per unit of fuel consumed."
4. "...On the basis of such information as we have, only the salt method appears to be an economical alternative to the present method of snow removal."

http://web.mit.edu/2.009/www/experiments/deathray/10_ArchimedesResult.html

If space were not expanding, the most distant object we could see would now be about 14 billion light-years away from us, the distance light could have traveled in the 14 billion years since the big bang. But because the universe is expanding, the space traversed by a photon expands behind it during the voyage. Consequently, the current distance to the most distant object we can see is about three times farther, or 46 billion light-years.

Source

no. it was fair criticism. you just didn't get it

No, it was not fair criticism. And I did get it.

The assertion that we are going to heaven when we die has absolutely no evidence for it whatsoever. The existence of parallel universes, however, has a lot of evidence for it, albeit indirect. There's a huge difference.

You want to see the evidence? Look no further than here.

|>ouglas

If you want to get the actual scientific scoop on multiverses, as opposed to John Horgan's myopic rant, check out this excellent article by renowned cosmologist Max Tegmark. It was the cover story in Scientific American a few years ago.

|>ouglas

John Horgan is utterly misguided. He has apparently decided, for instance, that the entire field of Cosmology is a moral outrage because it doesn't gel with his myopic notion of how science should work. But contra to what he asserts, Science does not require direct evidence. No one will ever see a quark, for instance, with their own eyes. Or even with a microscope. We know that quarks are there because when we theorized their existence, it made our theories simpler and gave them more predictive power. Likewise for multiverses.

In any case, you don't have to take my word that multiverses are on sound scientific footing. There's an excellent article on the topic by the renowned cosmologist Max Tegmark in Scientific American here.

|>ouglas

P.S. Don't take any of this to mean that multiverses are now an accepted scientific fact, but they are a very plausible scientific theory for which we do have a significant amount of evidence. Also, Horgan's notion that scientists should stick to the more mundane is ridiculous. Scientific theories that promote wonder (especially if they have a good chance of being true) are essential for generating interest in science amongst the general populace, and for enticing future generations of scientists.

Btw, they are up to 15 fps now, per http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/video-holography-0124.html

so, snarky unimpressedness = fail

Where are you that you think that's true? Are you sure?

I don't live there, but in the state of New Jersey for example this is illegal. Actually I was quite surprised when I found out this information myself. Here is a website that highlights the "keep right laws" that I speak of... apparently there are many variations on this law.

(Also I am awful at grammar... it pains me to see mistakes I cannot fix.)

The article linked to in the article http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/video-holography-0124.html explains the actual holographic video generation part in more detail. They are using arrays of lasers to make fringe/interference patterns. This IS "real holography", just very low resolution and framerate.

Perhaps that was when it was officially supported, but I do remember downloading fonts for MathML in Mozilla that predate Firefox. In fact, here's a page from 2003 about those very fonts. http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/projects/intelligent-book/mathml/

I think, given the disagreement on your claim, it would be best if you gave an actual cite that people could actually look up.

I think, given the ease of finding this information, my critics are bitches. They don't actually give a fuck about the issue, they just want to make me look bad. The fourth result for my search leads us to CVC 21654(a) where it says:

21654. (a) Notwithstanding the prima facie speed limits, any vehicle proceeding upon a highway at a speed less than the normal speed of traffic moving in the same direction at such time shall be driven in the right-hand lane for traffic or as close as practicable to the right-hand edge or curb, except when overtaking and passing another vehicle proceeding in the same direction or when preparing for a left turn at an intersection or into a private road or driveway.

(b) If a vehicle is being driven at a speed less than the normal speed of traffic moving in the same direction at such time, and is not being driven in the right-hand lane for traffic or as close as practicable to the right-hand edge or curb, it shall constitute prima facie evidence that the driver is operating the vehicle in violation of subdivision (a) of this section.

(c) The Department of Transportation, with respect to state highways, and local authorities, with respect to highways under their jurisdiction, may place and maintain upon highways official signs directing slow-moving traffic to use the right-hand traffic lane except when overtaking and passing another vehicle or preparing for a left turn.

So in summary: You are required to get the fuck out of the "normal" flow of traffic if you are obstructing it, in spite of the speed limit, and the DoT may spend your tax money to put up signs reminding people of this in the state of California. The site I found this link from claims that 30/50 (aka the majority of) states have similar laws. And the people who were crying about the need for a citation could have found one with google in less time than it would have taken to bitch and whine about how I didn't post one.

Real summary: Driving in the passing lane is illegal more often than it isn't, and people who just hang out there and make you pass on the right are douchebags.

Why not create your own incomprehensible CS paper?
http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/

"For anyone who thought the open source movement was a passing fancy, this is the book to read. Written by two experts in innovation and patent policy, it presents important evidence on the scope and complexity of how firms and public authorities have embraced open source software. The reader will learn which nations and which types of firms use open source most heavily, and may be surprised at the extent to which open source code is blended with code and products that are kept proprietary. The authors provide a rich foundation for yet another wave of thinking on the subject."
—Suzanne Scotchmer, University of California, Berkeley, author of Innovation and Incentives

“Unlike much of the writing on open source versus proprietary software, this book offers factual evidence, careful analysis, and evenhanded discussion, while avoiding unsupported opinions, hyperbole, and exaggeration. Everyone who is concerned with open source will want to read this book.”
—Hal Varian, Chief Economist at Google

These people aren't idiots, and neither are they MS fanatics.

Try an open mind, maybe....?

Doesn't this answer your problem? http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/

I doubt you can derive human like artificial intelligence from simple word order frequency charts.

It's been done already, and the resulting AI was good enough to get three papers submitted to a computer science conference.

Death and the Powers impresses me. http://opera.media.mit.edu/projects/deathandthepowers/index.php

see: http://web.media.mit.edu/~hayes/mas863/urinecontrol.html

When i first saw Scratch, included with the XO, got stunned on how powerful it was, and how visual and intuitivel could be for the children. Not sure if there is a web based implementation, but is open, available for all platforms, and maybe more important, already included in a computer meant for children (not sure how much it count in the rest of the world, but in my country almost all school chidren have it).

The internet was started in spite of the military, not because of it. The myth that the internet was the result of research initiated by request of the Pentagon is getting old. The military jumped in only after it was shown that computer networks were possible. Arpanet was the result of military funding, yes. But inter-connected data networks were the result of model train geeks at MIT. Read Steven Levy's Hackers.

Mathematics predates the scientific method, so mathematics can't be dependent on the scientific method for discovery.

Even for those aspects of computer science that actually could apply the scientific method seem to mostly dismiss it.

Academic papers usually read more like an essay than a scientific study. They spend time trying to captivate your attention with a problem, come up with a solution that works under some set of constraints, downplay the significance of those constraints, and then spend a lot of time showing you the solution and how well it works under their contrived scenarios.

They spend no time trying to construct experiments that will disprove their hypothesis (usually you can't even call it a hypothesis), and if they do find bad cases they call them "degenerate" cases and downplay those, too, or maybe add something to the list of constraints under which the solution works.

I would like to pose this challenge: pick a few academic papers; identify the hypothesis; identify the experiment that tries to disprove the hypothesis; and show a clear indication in the paper whether the experiment disproved the hypothesis, was consistent with the hypothesis, or was inconclusive (i.e. experiment not good enough).

Take the C-Store paper, for instance:

"We present preliminary performance data on a subset of TPC-H and show that the system we are building, C-Store, is substantially faster than popular commercial products."

The paper has been influential, and the argument convincing. I even like the paper and find it insightful. But it looks more like they had an idea, tried it out, and published as soon as the numbers were good enough. I don't see much effort to control variables at all.

I think the problem with that is that many mathematicians would say that arithmetic really isn't math, just like spelling isn't English or lit crit. Certainly anyone who has taken a real course in algebra (i.e. the one you take as a senior in college as a math major, as opposed to what's in 8th/9th grade) will be quick to point out that it has essentially nothing to do with what you were told algebra was.

As a CS prof at various schools, I've taught a discrete math called "Foundations of Computer Science" as a first course in the major, and I've taught a variety of programming courses with different titles as the first course. I completely agree that most of the meat of CS first out in your CS3 class (although at my current school we actually teach design patterns and real OOD in our CS2 class).

Instead of fighting over the course name that should be in HS, I think it's a lot more important to try and establish what course _content_ should be in HS, MS and Elementary school. LOGO was used by elementary school kids in the 70s and 80s, and BASIC and/or Pascal were taught in high schools in the 80s (as many have noted). Modern tools like Storytelling Alice and Scratch (an heir apparent to LOGO) are amazing tools that can teach elementary/middle school kids to write plays and learn geometry while introducing them to programming in an amazingly rich way. And they're free.

These tools are so far beyond what I learned on it's amazing. So why are we in the dark ages?

Sure.

http://web.mit.edu/~sdavies/MacData/afs.sdavies/MacData/afs.course/other/sp275/www/organicmyth.pdf
http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/organic.html
http://www.scribd.com/doc/14079717/The-Seven-Most-Dangerous-Myths-About-Organic

The irony is if biz had had its way, you'd be posting on Prodigy or Compuserve.

From Computer networks and the Internet: A brief history of predicting their future:

One recurring theme in the early days of packet switching is the skepticism voiced about the concept by the traditional telecommunications providers, in particular AT&T. Baran recollected (Brand
2001) that when he tried to interest AT&T in the idea, he was told: "It's not going to
work. And furthermore, we're not going into competition with ourselves." Larry Roberts
recollected (Roberts 1986): “In some of the initial technical speeches I gave,
communications professionals reacted with considerable anger and hostility, usually
saying I did not know what I was talking about since I did not know all their jargon
vocabulary.” From one perspective, this response is a classic illustration of what
Christensen called the “innovator’s dilemma” (Christensen 1997), in which an incumbent
industry rejects a new idea which then matures and overtakes it. In fact, this early
rejection may have been very liberating for the designers of packets switching, and may
have materially contributed to the success of the concept. While this is pure speculation,
it is possible that if AT&T research had fully participated in the evolution of packet
switching, they might have imposed a bias on the idea in order to fit in with their
conception of voice services that could have limited its general utility. When AT&T
research did get involved with the packet switching concept, they put forward an
alternative to the Internet design called Asynchronous Transfer Mode, or ATM, based on
switching small, fixed size data cells rather than larger, variable size packets as the
Internet does. This design was considered more suitable for voice, and was not, as
initially standardized, the commercial success that the Internet was.

Don't know if you've read this paper, but that's exactly what these researchers are doing. The researchers outfitted an entire dorm with cellphones (which they tracked through various methods). They borrow the information-theoretic concept of "entropy" to measure a person's activity level. The most interesting (and counter-intuitive) thing from the study is that, when you live in a dorm, "staying home" when you're sick appears to put you in contact with more people than if you just carried on as usual!

Actually the higher the compression, the more efficient the 4-stroke cycle is.

Look: http://web.mit.edu/16.unified/www/FALL/thermodynamics/notes/node26.html

This was being done at MIT 10 years ago.
http://people.csail.mit.edu/rweiss/

I think Therac-25 should have made the list.

A race condition in software caused the radiation does delivered to be 100 time too big. It occurred when an unanticipated order of keystrokes were typed very fast. Other poor design choices helped to hide the problem.

Here is a more detailed history.

The kids at MIT proved you and Jamie wrong.

There's a huge difference between a democracy and a republic!

One is representative, the other is not. No troll there, just a correction of the misinformation in the original post.

And yes, the US Constitution protects against the tyranny of the majority, as I said. Here are some links so that you can familiarize yourself:

Where is majority rule and minority rights incorporated into the US constitution?
Minority Rights
How does the US constitution protect minority from majority?

http://pgp.mit.edu/

Give him MIT's Scratch! Definitely. http://scratch.mit.edu/

Interesting but patentable?
Google for

haptic shape memory

haptic display

and you will see it is not a sudden invention out of nowhere. The pixels used to be electromagnetically activated metal pillars whereas they are using shape memory alloy. Perhaps the part about how they are using the alloy mechanically is new?

NHK and Tokyo U. in 2008 develop touch panel/braille display

Harvard research

It talks about shape memory alloy in pixel sized units.. So did Microsoft get this idea from the Russian and 4 Japanese below?
Reference 12 is from a well known source in 2004:

[12] I. Poupyrev, T. Nashida, S. Maruyama, J. Rekimoto, and Y. Yamaji. Lumen: interactive visual and shape display for calm computing. In Proc of SIGGRAPH ’04, page 17. ACM.

Shape-changing interfaces encode information by modifying the shape of the device, using any of a number of different approaches. Pin-based displays use a matrix of elements that move up and down. Horev [7] describes how one might design a TactoPhone, in which the back of the phone is a morphing surface for displaying animated tactile icons. His video prototype shows how it might be used to provide location information. Lumen [12] is a 2D low-resolution pin- based display that controls the height and color of individual 'pixels'. Shape Memory Alloy provides noiseless, smooth and continuous actuation. Although notification through the haptic channel, SMA threads are fragile and are not very responsive.

Start with getting him a tablet like the Bamboo Pen & Touch and let him go crazy on ArtRage. You'll definitely get your money's worth in saved paper, crayons, and stained walls. Or get him started on 3D modeling with Anim8or, an absurdly easy and free program to get into, and then later follow an introduction to real LEGOs with MLCad.

There are also kid's programming languages, which help prevent kids from seeing computers as "magic devices". Popular examples that use a visual drag-and-drop method are Alice and Scratch.

StarLogo TNG, being one of the successors of the LOGO language, StarLogo TNG provides an easy and fun environment to learn about "programming" by using graphical "building blocks" (akin to Lego) to create a program.

Plus, it makes is very easy to populate simple 3D worlds with "agents".

While Scratch is geared towards 6 - 16 year olds, it may be worth a look.

Scratch! http://scratch.mit.edu/

Ah like the "old men" that invented computing as we know it? Um, Like JCR Licklider?

You know, the guy who was 45 in 1960, when he wrote about needing billions of bits in computers? IN 1960!??

Yes, yes, I know, history is not important around here, especially when it doesn't involve rockets or space. Hell, even then no one cares.

If that were true, then the concept of responsibility would crumble. I can't be held responsible for something that's inherent to the fabric of the universe. I never had a choice.

The whole question of "free will" is based on an erroneous partition of the universe into "self" and "other". I suggest Raymond Smullyan's essay "Is God A Taoist? as a corrective.

The question of "responsibility" is based on a confusion about "ability to respond" versus "liability for punishment/reward". If, for example, you conk a little old lady over the head and steal her purse, and I want to take some action to rectify the situation and prevent a re-occurrence, you are the segment of the universe to which I must address my efforts. That's the case regardless of whether we have a "clockwork" deterministic universe, or whether we have a quantum one where particles have random behavior; and it the case regardless of whether my corrective methods are harsh punishments or compassionate rehabilitation.

I actually have lots of recommendations for doing cheap controllers for lower power LEDs =) I helped an extremely good friend of mine design several LED displays and have done a few myself. His design is extremely cool, although it took a lot of labor to do:

http://web.mit.edu/dgrnbrg/www/Eye_Of_Gorlack.html

Highly, highly, highly recommend the TLC5940 (or the most recent iteration in that line). Does onboard 12-bit PWM, 16 channels, and open drain so you can in principle run an arbitrary number of LEDs on it so long as the voltage difference between the last LED and the chip isn't too high. I don't like it for stuff like this spotlight because it's limited to 100mA per channel, and is a linear regulator. If I used something like that for my lights, they'd burn out really, really fast. However, for a LED strip, it's *perfect*.

You get to offload all the PWM that wastes CPU cycles better spent on harder tasks, operates off of a simple SPI bus, has 12-bit resolution, don't have to worry about aliasing the buck converter frequency with your PWM signal, and you can daisy chain them together to allow you to operate I think as many as 16*16 lights off of one SPI bus. It's crazy.

I have circuit designs for it if you'd like to work from them as an example. Just send me a note either on the saiko-dev@saikoled.com development list, or directly to me at neltnerb@saikoled.com. I also know lots of other people interested in similar projects. Here's one that Xander is doing that looks very similar to what you're describing:

http://www.synopticlabs.com/blog/

Anyway, I'm not a big enough fan of slashdot to post much more on here; feel free to send email though.

TFP mentions that the laser is operated at an average power of 425 mW. So I'd rather not be the guy standing round the corner getting hit in the eye with such a beam.

Slashdot says that UPI.com said that physorg.com said that Tech Radar said that MIT said that there is an interesting paper at http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/58402/656284100.pdf?sequence=1 and the BBC went to learn more, conduct an interview and take photos http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11544037

http://web.media.mit.edu/~raskar/femto/

Enough of Slashdot's SEO link farming spammy shit. Here's what you want to read, unless you like your science news dumbed down to a third grade level.

I've read a couple articles and they are no worse than the SEO-targeted content written by freelancers odesk for $2/hr (and english as a second or third language).

Seems as though the "algorithm" is quite elaborate - taking into account odds of winning as well. Lines such as "The [team] was not supposed to win this game, but made it happen" and combined player statistics "Coming off a poorly put together team last year, this year, the [team] looks to have greater talent."

It reminds me of how someone in Junior high would write. Impressive. Similar to MIT's paper generator: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/paper.html

PHP + MySQL + Mad Libs for Sports.

GOO was already taken - it's a lisp dialect by Jonathan Bachrach of MIT. "GOO" is an acronym for "Generic Object Orientator."

Bachrach was one of the people working on Dylan, and people in language and compiler development circles (such as the creators of Google Go) would likely have known about his work (or at least know how to google "goo language" and discover that the name was already in use for a computer language).

There is one somewhat related EVA suit, too: http://mvl.mit.edu/EVA/biosuit/index.html

The bottom line seems to be: since some...tissues can't really maintain shape when put under mechanical pressure (what those tight suits are about), this means big breasts seem to be destined to die out, confined to this planet.

Mwuahahaha.

It's dense and relatively long, but perhaps this well reasoned article will offer some food for thought, or even guidance: "The Right to Privacy", Warren and Brandeis Harvard Law Review. Vol. IV December 15, 1890 No. 5.

Pawan Sinha runs Project Prakash which goes into rural areas of India where treatment for congenital cataracts is not generally available. They do the surgery, for free, and in some cases ask the recipient whether they would like to contribute to the research program, which tracks how patients learn to see after the surgery [pdf]. The oldest person to receive the surgery was 29, and has had limited recovery of visual acuity. Children under the age of 6 typically have excellent prognoses following the surgery. See Pawan's TED talk here.