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I doubt you had a personal internet connection in '85. Likely you had a UUCP connection, like I did for gnd0. UUNet (claimed to be the first ISP) didn't come into existence until '87, and that was as a UUCP hub until it launched IP-based AlterNet in '90.

I'm 45, so you get off _my_ lawn. :-)

LOGO was good but a better My First Language choice for today is Scratch from MIT.

Both Strang and Keisler are only free as in beer, not free as in speech, so they represent dead ends in terms of the free-information ecosystem.

Are you sure?

The Keisler site says the "work is licensed for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons License" and links to a BY-NC-SA 2.0 license.

I don't see a license specifically for Strang but the MIT OCW page refers to the CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 US license for OCW materials. (If you're interested in doing some work on Strang's Calculus, it wouldn't be too difficult to confirm the CC license applies to it specifically.)

They're limited to non-commercial use, but the BY-NC-SA license is hardly a dead-end.

Even if they were only free-as-in-beer, there are ethically and morally legitimate means to customize their use, if not their content. Teachers regularly write notes and supplementary materials for textbooks to adapt their use.

Check your facts:

http://scratch.mit.edu/users/124scratch

See what they've got on there. Basically pixel-for-pixel identical games from the arcade. They probably even used the original graphics/ROM's in order to get that "authentic". And they call them Pac-man or Donkey Kong. It's not the only one they've done and they call them all by their trademarked original names.

Welcome to real life, where if you directly steal other's work, distribute it, calling it by its original name, and get caught, you end up in trouble or at the very least with a cease-and-desist.

The kid can use it, they can make their own pet project, they can use the original graphics (hell, most programmers will substitute existing images in prototypes in order to get a feel for how it looks), but the second you start distributing it, it's no different to a school coursework which includes an MP3 of a chart hit (even historical), or a photographer's image without their permission, or huge excerpts verbatim from a still-in-print book. Yeah, a lot of people would just let it slide but NAMCO are well within their rights here, the kid didn't get sued or harsh punishment (just a "don't do that"), and if he'd had the brains to just call it a clone, not use only the words "Pac-man" in describing the game (even "Pac-man clone" would have been okay), and hadn't ripped-off graphics pixel-for-pixel, then nobody would care and it would be like the other 10 million Pac-man clones lining the web where people DID have the sense not to copy to this level of detail.

Nothing bad happened, nobody went to court, nobody demanded money (and NAMCO had to PAY to instruct their lawyer, don't forget), they just wanted the game taken off. It's happened a million times in the past, will continue to happen, and people KNOW it's not right.

I used to follow OpenTTD until they dismissed off-handly the fact that they were telling people to download a free, full copy of Transport Tycoon's graphics from an abandonware site in order to run their clone - and that was from one of the founding members. Disassembly of the original? No problem. Reliance on the original graphics? Great accuracy for me as a gamer, no problem. Pointing people to direct links to questionable abandonware sites for a file that can't be legally distributed, on the main wiki pages of the project and refusing to take them off while simultaneously chastising people for mentioning it on the forums? Just asking for trouble. Microprose does have a successor-in-interest somewhere and that attitude from some of the project leaders was just intolerable to me, so I stopped contributing. Who knows what else they've got inside their preciously-licensed and lovingly copyright-daubed code if they are just willing to infringe the author's copyright wholesale while pretending to maintain an air of respectability. I have original copies of TTD. Several years ago I made the code in TTD that verified the GRF file used was the original file because I had the DOS and Windows versions still sitting on a shelf. I used my CD to provide the original graphics and sound long before any "graphics replacement" projects existed. But I was disgusted by the attitude that you could just encourage users to download an absolutely, cast-iron, illegal copy that was required to run your clone project.

There's programming, there's cloning, there's even emulation (MAME is 100% legal don't forget), and then there's just outright copyright ignorance. This is the latter, and nobody got hurt, except NAMCO's legal budget.

I used scratch for a while when it first appeared but I abandoned it when I couldn't get some of scratch's features to work properly (some things work in the offline version, but once you upload them and play them from the web site they fail)
Here's my first attempt at a Pacman demo.
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/darkmuse/9082
I did draw the maze and sprites myself though.

Speaking of Google, I googled for user 124scratch, and found more of his evil deeds. If you thought NAMCO's response was bad, wait until Nintendo finds out that their beloved Donkey Kong has been reimplemented (a.k.a. pilfered!) Nintendo is on par with Disney for being protective about their copyrights.

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/124scratch/1217451

It's buggy to be sure, but it has the foundations of a very good port. Which in this case, is a bad thing.

I'll stick with Atari 2600 coding, where the graphics are so primitive that modern video game companies couldn't even recognize their game has been ported. Hopefully I'll have Crysis 2600 ready in time for Christmas.

There is another PACMAN in scratch if you search you'll find a dozen of them.

One of the key differences between those and 124Scratch's version is he used the original sprites from the game. Using those game sprites is a gray area when it comes to fair use (there are like 3 or so basic sprites, hard to copyright such little IP). But the real problem is trademark. NAMCO has a trademark on the PAC-MAN and the ghosts. They license those trademarks often. And in trademark it is protect it or lose it. Every poor student they ignore is a wedge for a some cheap ass software company to use as cover in a court case. Imagine every cheap cell phone with an identical rip-off of pac-man on it, except junky and hard to control. We expect the NAMCO PAC-MAN brand to be a certain quality (although the 3D ones pretty much sucked in terms of gameplay, so maybe not anymore).

Anyways trademark is there for a company to protect their brand. Establishing a brand costs money and maintaining it costs money, it has value and therefor should be protected. And as soon as a company no longer cares about their brand it ceases to be protected. It's a fairer system than the copyright system, in the sense that it actually ends. (copyright lasts like 10,000 years now?)

As a college professor (economics), I take pretty seriously the work of physicists like Carl Wieman (Nobel Prize, 2001, U.S. Professor of the Year (research universities), 2004; and currently associate science adviser to the President) and Eric Mazur (Harvard). They and many other serious physicists have carefully studied how students learn in their field. They've found that things like clickers, correctly used, and simulations can indeed aid learning in deep ways. Here's some links to summaries of their work: http://www.laspau.harvard.edu/idia/mecesup/readings/Eric_Mazur/Mazur_52364.pdf (Mazur -- short, in the journal Science) http://www.cwsei.ubc.ca/resources/files/Wieman-Change_Sept-Oct_2007.pdf (Wieman -- longer) Here's a key part of the primary literature; it has more than 1,000 cites: http://web.mit.edu/rsi/www/2005/misc/minipaper/papers/Hake.pdf (the most frequent method of "interactive engagement" is clickers). Yeah, I guess they're educational activists, but they're also leading physicists and have tons of research to back up their claims.

This made my morning. I agree wholeheartedly with this post and I recommend to people to start with fundamentals of computing/programming concepts so they can easily slip between languages if they choose to go this route.

http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/
The book linked above is a great start if you are serious. Don't half-ass the learning process. It is going to suck in the beginning and your brain will hurt (just like doing most new things in life) just stick with it and persevere.

Scratch or AppInventor for Android could be good starting steps. From there, will be easier to go then to more "textual" programming languages.

Funny you should ask...

I was just watching a video or 7 at the Khan Academy, and I was saying to myself "Wow, it would be so easy for me to make 10 minute lectures about one of my chosen programming language!". As a collective, we could probably simplify all sorts of compsci information!

Other than that, I know a few colleges have free courses online. Like the MIT free course material. I'm sure someone more informed here could provide you with some top-notch links.

graduating with six-figures of debt

http://ocw.mit.edu/ and other sites provide top-tier education, offering full course content on-line for free.
It's the certification that'll cost ya.

There's one for technical publications -- It's SCIgen.

The Therac-20 radiation therapy device worked reasonably well. Despite the software flaws, the hardware safeties in place prevented any deadly accidents. Problem is, because of the hardware safeties, nobody knew just how bad the software was. It had never been formally verified.

Then some numbskull decided, "Hey, let's let the software handle the safety interlocking, and we can cut down on hardware manufacturing costs!" The result was the Therac-25, which maimed and killed people.

After the machine was recalled, someone finally sat down and did a real analysis of the code, and found a whole raft of problems and bad assumptions. Nancy Leveson wrote the definitive report (PDF) on the failures in the R&D processes that made the Therac-25 so deadly.

Yet, armed with this warning (among many others), both manufacturers and purchasers keep human lives as transactions on a double-entry ledger. It simply comes down to, how many deaths per thousand uses are "acceptable"? Manufacturers and medical facilities already have so many costs. Is it worth it to add on the cost of formal code analysis?

But nobody will ask the Therac-25 victims and their families.

I decided early on in my I.T. career, that I didn't want the stress of people's lives depending on my correct code. I hadn't had any training in formal verification. In hindsight, I see my worries would have come from incompetent management, more than from myself.

For pre-U education to brush up your knowledge, there's Khan Academy to teach you everything from primary school to even college.

For formal university level education, you can get many of them free directly from university. MIT Open Courseware is one of the well known examples. You can find a list of them at Open Culture. Google Code University is a less known but great site that helps you start and search on your online education journey.

There are also video lecture collection sites that contain lecture recordings from various universities, such as Academic Earth and Video Lectures.

You may also interested in less formal technology videos such as BestTechVideos and Google Tech Talks.

You can download a lot of ebooks from the web. Here is an example list you can found on Delicious.

In case if you are only interested in web design, IMHO the best way to learn design and multimedia is go to a real college. But anyway, there are tons of resources for web design too. Delicious is a must have search tool for you to get started.

I'd love to provide more links that I have but I'm short of time. But as always, Google is your best friend!

For anyone interested the ACTUAL website for the ACTUAL study can be found here: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/locomotion/perching.html

Thank you for that. This is what should be the gist of TFA instead of a breathless summary perched in front of a login screen.

The home made windtunnel is excellent!

Why don't you just saunter on down to Cambridge, MA and let everyone in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory know that in 5 minutes you've figured out what they have been working on for months and that additionally, their doing it wrong.
Let me know how that goes for ya.

Also, this article isn't about planes that charge on power lines, its about some students that figured out how to automate the landing/perching maneuver on a small foam ultra light-weight rc unpowered glider.

The glider has no means of propulsion what-so-ever;
it has only 1 control surface, the elevator;
it has a tiny battery just large enough to run the servo and radio receiver;
it can't land in wind, rain, snow, or other real world conditions; AND
all of the sensing and control electronics (high speed motion detection cameras and Matlab running on a laptop) are mounted off-plane.

The reason landing a UAV on powerlines is hard isn't because the powerline are particularly difficult to hit, its because you have to design the landing system to work in real world weather conditions AND you can't have 20 some high speed motion capture cameras already at the landing site AND the thing still has to have all the normal electronics on board to fly after landing AND you have to cram on the large heavy (from a small UAV perspective) battery charging equipment as well.

For anyone interested the ACTUAL website for the ACTUAL study can be found here: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/locomotion/perching.html

If anyone here is actually interested in the science behind this you should have a look at some of the lab's publications on the subject. As per Slashdot tradition, all the brilliant points brought up so far in the comments already have answers, they're just a little bit harder to find this time.

Our research group's website:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/locomotion/index.html

On the actual perching work:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Cory08.pdf
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Hoburg09a.pdf
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Moore09.pdf
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Roberts09.pdf

Rick's PhD thesis on the subject:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/locomotion/perching_media/CoryThesis.pdf

and on the controls side:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Tedrake09a.pdf

If anyone here is actually interested in the science behind this you should have a look at some of the lab's publications on the subject. As per Slashdot tradition, all the brilliant points brought up so far in the comments already have answers, they're just a little bit harder to find this time.

Our research group's website:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/locomotion/index.html

On the actual perching work:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Cory08.pdf
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Hoburg09a.pdf
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Moore09.pdf
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Roberts09.pdf

Rick's PhD thesis on the subject:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/locomotion/perching_media/CoryThesis.pdf

and on the controls side:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Tedrake09a.pdf

If anyone here is actually interested in the science behind this you should have a look at some of the lab's publications on the subject. As per Slashdot tradition, all the brilliant points brought up so far in the comments already have answers, they're just a little bit harder to find this time.

Our research group's website:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/locomotion/index.html

On the actual perching work:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Cory08.pdf
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Hoburg09a.pdf
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Moore09.pdf
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Roberts09.pdf

Rick's PhD thesis on the subject:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/locomotion/perching_media/CoryThesis.pdf

and on the controls side:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Tedrake09a.pdf

If anyone here is actually interested in the science behind this you should have a look at some of the lab's publications on the subject. As per Slashdot tradition, all the brilliant points brought up so far in the comments already have answers, they're just a little bit harder to find this time.

Our research group's website:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/locomotion/index.html

On the actual perching work:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Cory08.pdf
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Hoburg09a.pdf
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Moore09.pdf
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Roberts09.pdf

Rick's PhD thesis on the subject:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/locomotion/perching_media/CoryThesis.pdf

and on the controls side:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Tedrake09a.pdf

If anyone here is actually interested in the science behind this you should have a look at some of the lab's publications on the subject. As per Slashdot tradition, all the brilliant points brought up so far in the comments already have answers, they're just a little bit harder to find this time.

Our research group's website:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/locomotion/index.html

On the actual perching work:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Cory08.pdf
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Hoburg09a.pdf
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Moore09.pdf
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Roberts09.pdf

Rick's PhD thesis on the subject:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/locomotion/perching_media/CoryThesis.pdf

and on the controls side:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Tedrake09a.pdf

If anyone here is actually interested in the science behind this you should have a look at some of the lab's publications on the subject. As per Slashdot tradition, all the brilliant points brought up so far in the comments already have answers, they're just a little bit harder to find this time.

Our research group's website:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/locomotion/index.html

On the actual perching work:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Cory08.pdf
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Hoburg09a.pdf
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Moore09.pdf
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Roberts09.pdf

Rick's PhD thesis on the subject:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/locomotion/perching_media/CoryThesis.pdf

and on the controls side:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Tedrake09a.pdf

If anyone here is actually interested in the science behind this you should have a look at some of the lab's publications on the subject. As per Slashdot tradition, all the brilliant points brought up so far in the comments already have answers, they're just a little bit harder to find this time.

Our research group's website:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/locomotion/index.html

On the actual perching work:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Cory08.pdf
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Hoburg09a.pdf
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Moore09.pdf
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Roberts09.pdf

Rick's PhD thesis on the subject:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/locomotion/perching_media/CoryThesis.pdf

and on the controls side:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Tedrake09a.pdf

Crowther adds that R136a1 is about as big as stars can get.

Right.

That's what Eddintgon said

Hot Dry Rock geothermal is just as good, cheaper, cleaner, and virtually unlimited. MIT says it's viable, look at http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/geothermal.html.

Online faster (simpler to build, simpler to get permits for), too.

And no nuclear waste, obviating the need for to pro-nuclear people to keep trying convince us that radioactive waste is no problem (while saying "Don't put it in my backyard, please").

In terms of other battery technologies, there are vanadium redox or new liquid batteries that might eventually work (see this work from MIT). But not yet. It is currently cheaper / better to just let the extra energy go to waste then try to store it.

I'll tell ya what's going on... What nobody has cited is that bundling or not, air fares are historically lower than they have ever been in inflation adjusted dollars. It's safer and there are more choices for the traveler. PSM (passenger seat miles) are at about the same level as 2000 and could be considered at the optimal level for demand. As for consolidation reducing employee costs, it might likely increase labor costs in the short term as new JCBA (joint collective bargaining agreements) must be negotiated in order to obtain a single operating certificate. (This is good news for me as I've not had a meaningful pay raise since 2003.) Labor costs are at steep historic lows! Don't blame labor. Airlines have a poor record of profits- many lean years or losses and very few banner years. Never buy airline securities as a long term investment (personal experience is bitter though I never actually bought them but was awarded them...) Best hope is for quick moves or short sales.

Actually, we'd be better off with geothermal. We'd get it online quicker, too.

MIT released a study (2007, link below) proving the economic viability of deep drilled, "hot-rock geothermal" energy in the US, delivered as electricity. The technology is proven and robust (Iceland has been doing it for a long time), the US just needs to drill deeper to find the same amount of heat. The plants are cheaper to build and last longer than fission energy stations because there's no neutron flux to chew up the materials and so no need to replace the equipment after 20-30 years. The technology is carbon neutral and clean, there's a lot less political and technical hassle getting permits, less toxic waste, no nuclear fuel cycle problems, and no radioactive waste (OK, maybe some radon). Just don't do too much hydraulic rock fracturing in geologically unstable areas (instead, build chambers to flow the water through, not just areas of cracked rocks with pressurized water) and it will be fine.

When we start pushing wells into, for example, hot areas a few kilometers below and a couple of hundred kilometers horizontally from Yosemite and Yellowstone, we'll be able to plug lots of 100MW plants into the grid pretty much wherever we want. You don't even need to be close to such hot areas as Yellowstone: you can drill down pretty much anywhere and find sufficient heat if you go deep enough, and even the greatest depths are well within the limits of drilling technology.

This isn't some wild dream: those MIT rocket surgeons have read books and stuff. ;*)

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/geothermal.html

http://iceland.vefur.is/iceland_nature/geology_of_iceland/geothermal_heat.htm

Sure, we can shoot down 80 missiles if we get lucky..

No, I don't think so. From Wikipedia: "As of February 2007, the U.S. missile defense system consists of 13 ground-based interceptors at Ft Greely in Alaska, plus two interceptors at Vandenberg AFB, California." There are a lot of doubts about the effectiveness of this existing system. See the work of MIT Professor Theodore Postol here.

but I think twenty-three-year-olds sometimes have issues actually comprehending what 50 years of an expensive daily drug regimen would be like.

incredibly insightful remark. Here's more food for thought. http://web.mit.edu/ariely/www/MIT/Papers/Heat_of_Moment.pdf

If you read the mentioned JMLR journal article (link to free version: here), it presents this problem as one of prioritizing maintenance. It's some neat AI, and seems quite useful.

The research was published in the July issue of Machine Learning.

Too bad, because if it had been published in the Journal of Machine Learning Research instead, people might actually be able to read it.

Here is an interesting study on electric powertrains... it comes to some remarkable conclusions about the wheel to well efficiencies of different technologies, and the long term cost projections... Their analysis seems to point to Battery Electric Vehicles as the least likely long term solution to the transportation section, instead favoring HEVs, PHEVs, and FCVs. Very interesting read!

Ok, here's a single counterexample to prove you wrong:
http://web.mit.edu/bzbarsky/www/mandelbrot-clean.html

Interesting example. Here are some results using a 7-year-old laptop (a newer PC would probably be a lot faster).
454ms - Opera 10.60
553ms - Firefox 3.6.6
661ms - Epiphany 2.30.2
992ms - Chromium 6.0.453.0
The two WebKit browsers were the slowest, while the Presto browser was fastest. It's not always so, of course.

Ok, here's a single counterexample to prove you wrong:

http://web.mit.edu/bzbarsky/www/mandelbrot-clean.html

Try it in the Firefox 4 beta, and compare it to the latest Chrome release.

The reason you got modded down is probably because you made a dramatic, blanket claim without backing it up with facts.

Incidentally, browser performance isn't a simple yes/no issue -- it depends on a number of different pieces of technology. E.g. there's DOM and CSS, graphics, and Javascript. Chrome, for instance, does Javascript overall faster than FF (barring some instances, as above), hence Mozilla's work on JaegerMonkey.

I don't know, maybe you just have a different definition for safe chemicals. I consider safe something that I don't need gloves to touch, or a Hazmat team to clean up if there's an accident. I guess those dumbasses at MIT are trying to get rid of all of the devices that contain mercury - including sphygmomanometers - because they just like to waste time and money.

It's cool, though. I know how you really feel about anyone who doesn't cuddle with toxic metals.

Let's help the environment by killing all of the environmentalists. How much carbon is generated by bloviating environmentalists spewing FUD by publishing badly flawed studies such as this one? It has to be in the megatons. By reducing the carbon footprints of all environmentalists to zero we could reduce energy consumption, carbon-dioxide production and we'd have fewer annoying fucks to deal with.

by multiplexo on Monday January 12 2009, @12:22AM (#26413305)

"There are no gods, and the lightning is not a sign of Zeus' displeasure, it's just [insert somewhat reasonable-sounding theory here]'

It might be harder to commit convincing heresy in a multitheistic belief system (because you always have the 'but my preferred god says that' argument), but it's certainly not difficult. It might be even easier because rather than one god you have to believe in, there's a whole pantheon.

For some examples, check out Aristophanes' Clouds. Aristophanes was obviously not accurately reporting Socrates' arguments - he was writing a comedy - but it gives you an idea. In this example, Strepsiades is the fall guy.

SOCRATES: [The Clouds] are the only goddesses; all the rest are pure myth.
STREPSIADES: But by the Earth! is our father, Zeus, the Olympian, not a god?
SOCRATES: Zeus! what Zeus! Are you mad? There is no Zeus.
STREPSIADES: What are you saying now? Who causes the rain to fall? Answer me that!
SOCRATES: Why, the Clouds, and I will prove it. Have you ever seen it raining without clouds? Let Zeus then cause rain with a clear sky and without their presence!
STREPSIADES: By Apollo! that is powerfully argued! For my own part, I always thought it was Zeus pissing into a sieve. But tell me, who is it makes the thunder, which I so much dread?
SOCRATES: The Clouds, when they roll one over the other.
STREPSIADES: But how can that be? you most daring among men!
SOCRATES: Being full of water, and forced to move along[...] they bump each other heavily and burst with great noise.
STREPSIADES: But is it not Zeus who forces them to move?
SOCRATES: Not at all; it's the aerial Whirlwind.
STREPSIADES: The Whirlwind! ah! I did not know that. So Zeus, it seems, has no existence, and its the Whirlwind that reigns in his stead? But you have not yet told me what makes the roll of the thunder?
SOCRATES: Have you not understood me then? I tell you, that the Clouds, when full of rain, bump against one another, and that, being inordinately swollen out, they burst with a great noise. Take yourself as an example. When you have heartily gorged on stew at the Panathenaea, you get throes of stomach-ache and then suddenly your belly resounds with prolonged rumbling.
STREPSIADES: Yes, yes, by Apollo I suffer, I get colic, then the stew sets to rumbling like thunder and finally bursts forth with a terrific noise. At first, it's but a little gurgling pappax, pappax! then it increases, papapappax! and when I take my crap, why, it's thunder indeed, papapappax! pappax!! papapappax!!! just like the clouds.
SOCRATES: Well then, reflect what a noise is produced by your belly, which is but small. Shall not the air, which is boundless, produce these mighty claps of thunder?
STREPSIADES: And this is why the names are so much alike: crap and clap. But tell me this. Whence comes the lightning, the dazzling flame, which at times consumes the man it strikes, at others hardly singes him. Is it not plain, that Zeus is hurling it at the perjurers?
SOCRATES: If Zeus strikes at the perjurers, why has he not blasted Simon, Cleonymus and Theorus? Of a surety, greater perjurers cannot exist. No, he strikes his own temple, and Sunium, the promontory of Athens, and the towering oaks. Now, why should he do that? An oak is no perjurer.
STREPSIADES: I cannot tell, but it seems to me well argued. What is the lightning then?
SOCRATES: When a dry wind ascends to the Clouds and gets shut into them, it blows them out like a bladder; finally, being too confined, it bursts them, escapes with fierce violence and a roar to flash into flame by reason of its own impetuosity.
STREPSIADES: Ah, that's just what happened to me one day. It was at the feast of Zeus! I was cooking a sow's belly for my family and I had forgotten to slit it open. It swelled out and, suddenly bursting, discharged itself right into my eyes and burnt my face.

You can explain a good chunk of this as the result of Akamai's world-wide content caching/load balancing solution. The default Akamai plan doesn't get you SSL support, but the thousands and thousands of web servers they have (which host a good 10% of the Internet's web traffic, last I heard) will all reply on the SSL port, and will present a certificate for an Akamai domain name, whether you connect to ocw.mit.edu or www.whitehouse.gov or www.mtv.com or whatever it may be.

In general, this can also be explained by servers that happen to listen on port 443 but aren't intended to do SSL.

http://web.mit.edu/mitei/about/members.html

Now, this should not surprise anyone: the major funding for this came almost entirely from the gas industry...

You're right!

http://web.mit.edu/mitei/about/members.html

I'm a developer ... I'm looking into something more formal like a research paper.

LaTeX. Here's a template (you wanted article.ltx). Some distributions of LaTeX come with templates as well. Here's a quick guide (PDF).

I've no experience on those, not even read a complete one, so my first question is what resources do you recommend to learn how to write one?

The template will make you get the basics right. The most basic I've seen are Title, Abstract, Sections, Conclusion, References. It's easy (I taught myself in college) and the production value of LaTeX gives you an instant artificially inflated level of credibility.

And even after I write it I can't expect to be published by Science or other high-profile publications.

Why the hell not? Just do it up and see what happens!

So where should I send it to make it known by people on the respective fields and be taken seriously?

Sounds like you should do some research on arxiv, a prepublication center where you can find some of the best stuff as well as absolute drivel. I would need to hear more about your method to ensure it's indeed an algorithm worthy of publication but I guess you would put that in Data Structures and Algorithms? But why stop there? Why don't you put it on arxiv and blog about it? Why don't you send out e-mails with the arxiv link to open source projects and commercial entities suggesting the use of your algorithm? I'd imagine the USGS would be interested in hearing from you. Sure that's all very wishful thinking but if you've got what you say you've got, why not? At the very least you'll learn why your idea isn't good enough to catch eyeballs.

I will caveat all this with the brutish reality of capital and give you a very unpopular option. Software algorithms are currently considered intellectual property by the United States government and several other countries. You could apply for a patent and then attempt to license your algorithm to companies like ESRI and Google or the USGS. You're on your own if this is what you're aiming for.

Those free-floating projections from the movies are, based on current knowledge, impossible.

No, they're not. The MIT Media lab was building them about a decade ago.

Those require a diffuser and a limited point of interest. They are not "Star Wars holograms".

Those free-floating projections from the movies are, based on current knowledge, impossible.

No, they're not. The MIT Media lab was building them about a decade ago.

Note, however, that temperature difference is not relevant when you're talking about radiation

You've been misled.
Near the bottom of this page is a worked example of heat tranfer by radiation in a thermos bottle as an example:
http://mit.edu/16.unified/www/FALL/thermodynamics/notes/node136.html
I get the idea from the posts by several on this thread that all they were told on this subject was a few words about black body radiation.

We are talking about heat loss and thus heat transfer here.
Black body radiation is only a single side of it and you need to consider a two body problem if you are talking about two bodies (you can model space as a sphere of constant temperature, or more usefully as just another 1 dimensional object). A hot object in space is going to lose heat faster than a cold object in space. To work it out you consider the heat transfer between two objects by radiation and have your spacesuit skin as one surface temperature and pretty close to absolute zero for whatever objects are around or far off as the other surface temperature - something like equation 19.3 on this page http://mit.edu/16.unified/www/FALL/thermodynamics/notes/node136.html
As you can see it's a bit more complex than the usual lie to children.
The cinematic frozen solid in seconds is of course even far more riduculous than the frozen solid in liquid nitrogen in seconds where there is far more rapid heat transfer (think it took me 20 mins just to freeze a banana in nitrogen). It would probably take days or weeks on the dark side of something. Out in direct sunlight the object would of course get hot by radiant heat just like the sunny side of spacecraft do.

Perhaps a good question is- will running CFD be a learning experience for your students? Will they just be blinding clicking options without getting much out of it? Perhaps they could interact with a CFD solution that you ran instead. They could still do a comparison to experimental results. I have found that simpler 2-D or other approximate codes offer better learning experiences that full-up CFD because changing options, creating geometry and viewing results is much simpler. Check out XFOIL and maybe ASWING: http://web.mit.edu/drela/Public/web/xfoil/ http://web.mit.edu/drela/Public/web/aswing/

Perhaps a good question is- will running CFD be a learning experience for your students? Will they just be blinding clicking options without getting much out of it? Perhaps they could interact with a CFD solution that you ran instead. They could still do a comparison to experimental results. I have found that simpler 2-D or other approximate codes offer better learning experiences that full-up CFD because changing options, creating geometry and viewing results is much simpler. Check out XFOIL and maybe ASWING: http://web.mit.edu/drela/Public/web/xfoil/ http://web.mit.edu/drela/Public/web/aswing/

Are you looking for real CFD software for pressure distributions or are you looking for something that returns lift, drag, side and moments?

On the CFD side: OpenFOAM. Learning this is quite a bit of work because you need to work with meshing, boundary conditions, etc. But I would be very surprised you really want flow visualisation.

For loads: XFOIL or AVL (Athena Vortex Lattice, http://web.mit.edu/drela/Public/web/avl/). AVL allows 3D visualisation of loads, perturbations, etc. When it comes to a first iteration in aeroplane design this is first thing we use in academia and is quite nice. XFOIL is 2D and is used for analysis on an aerofoil. Both allow arbitrary geometries, but I believe both are strictly for inviscid flows.

What theories in particular are you trying to validate?

Well I agree that, "There's capitalism, then there's capitalism," which is why I said "capitalism" as a moral system.

It's not just about the tax lawyers or the focus on short-term growth, but the people who sold us on the idea that "profit" is the only thing that matters. We have been convinced that things like "high customer satisfaction" and "providing a product you can be proud of" or "behaving in a moral and ethical manner" are not values that anyone should have when doing business. The *only* measure of success is profit.

And this doesn't just apply to people working within the business. We have been convinced that capitalism was devised as a moral system rather than simply an economic system. I read this article a while ago, and one of the paragraphs seemed to be a terrific example of this sort of thing:

I’m a free marketeer. I believe that voluntary exchange is not just a good method of incentivizing people to provide their labor and talents to society, but a robust moral system — goods and services represent tangible benefit to people, market prices represent the true value of goods in society, and wages represent the value that a worker provides to others. Absent negative externalities or monopoly effects, a man receives from the free market what he gives to it, his material worth is a running tally of the net benefit that he has provided to his fellow man. A high income is not only justified, but there is nobility to it.

If this is the way you view things, then "profit" is basically considered an absolute measure of "goodness". Good businesses are profitable, bad ones are not. Good people make lots of money, bad ones do not. If a businessman makes 10x the amount of money that a garbageman makes, then it must mean that he's 10x better than the garbage man. Not just that he's better at business, but that he's a superior human being who is much more useful to society. According to this line of thought, the garbageman is more or less expendable.

I don't know who sold us on this idea, but it's extremely creepy to hear it voiced by supposed Christians in the "religious right". Capitalism wasn't intended to be a moral system. If you go back and read people like Adam Smith, you see that capitalism was intended to be a way to achieve greater efficiency by expanding individual economic choice, but it was hoped that those choices would be made while exercising wisdom and morality, and not a blind lust for profits.