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Overall, this work ties into my research at the MIT Media Laboratory, Tangible Media Group, specializing in the design of hybrid physical/digital objects for play, performance and psycho-physiotherapy. I create tactile interfaces to shift the body boundaries, exploring technology mediated "holding" (from grabbing, to hugging, to being secured) as a lever to personal growth.

The PSNR graph is quite interesting. To get comparable PSNR values from a recent x264 for the given source, you will have to use ridiculously low settings. I got about 700fps, with the required (lowest) settings, which still give better PSNR at 250kbps (47.333db) and above (300kbps is 48.222db), than is marked on the graph. This is with the lowest possible x264 settings, one-pass ABR. Also note, how the PSNR graph for x264 looks like a perfect logarithmic curve. None of the other plots are as smooth. Now, if you were feeling paranoid, you might get the feeling that they didn't even test their source with x264 at all.

If anyone is interested in look at stats based on the automatic detection, check out this blog from a site that keeps copies of videos: http://youtomb.mit.edu/blog/

Net Neutrality, however, is explicitly the case where an ISP prioritizes or degrades traffic based on whether or not the external site has paid them money.

That case violates network neutrality, but the issue of money is irrelevant. Generally, it's a good idea to do research before lecturing others, so that you don't end up telling someone that they're wrong, when really they are right, and you are wrong.

Here are two example definitions of net neutrality from [1] and [2]:

If I pay to connect to the Net with a certain quality of service, and you pay to connect with that or greater quality of service, then we can communicate at that level.

A neutral broadband network is one that is free of restrictions on content, sites, or platforms, on the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and on the modes of communication allowed, as well as one where communication is not unreasonably degraded by other communication streams.

This exact thing was done by Josh Smith at MIT in the 90s (see Geocities era page here ). His work was commercialized by Motorolla in their e-field sensing chip.

Correcting myself now, lol:

Right @ the line where I stated this (pretty much):

"(1.3 workplace shell isn't there either, so it's most likely character-mode/tty types))"... ugh!

Older GUI sub version 2.1, for Os/2, used "PRESENTATION MANAGER"...

(Lack of sleep - it just gets me, everytime! However, now that I'm typing, might as well let it rip!)

I.E./E.G.-> 2.x & beyond-above versions of Os/2 had the object-oriented "WorkPlace Shell" (long time user of this, 2.1 into Warp 3.0 too, circa 1994-1997 iirc, in fact, & I can't believe I slipped like that (old age, lol)))

APK

P.S.=> Os/2 also did Windows 16-bit Windows & DOS apps... AND, quite possibly BETTER than that combination itself (Os/2 was GREAT for multitasking DOS apps, & not too shabby @ many Windows ones either, especially vs. Microsoft Windows 3.x itself (because it ran all the apps in cooperatively multitasked processes w/ shared memory spaces for Windows 16 bit apps, although it too, could also pre-emptively task & separate DOS instances though)...

Os/2 was better for Windows GUI 16-bit apps, mainly because they COULD be put into their OWN 'virtual machines' & separate memory spaces, whereas Windows 3.x + DOS itself couldn't do that...

(Yes, albeit naturally @ the cost of more memory used of course (& I had 16-32mb of RAM systems back then) but it wasn't 110% compatible in many things also, & you had to keep that in mind (even then? Virtuslization on ALL levels, was far from 'perfect'))...

It's (Os/2) an OS that I thought was awesome, but didn't make it, vs. Windows NT-based Microsoft products!

(What saved Windows imo, was the sheer MASS of softwares it had built up around itself, & good tools to build them with pretty guickly, especially for GUI applications development & RAD tools between MS &/or Borland - but, it did have a boatload of DECENT tools like GammaTech Utlities -> http://martigny.ai.mit.edu/hypermail/thinkpad/1998-08/0091.html (defraggers + undelete, & other system type Norton-like tools), BackMaster -> http://www.thefreelibrary.com/BackMaster+for+OS%2F2+now+supports+QIC+drives+up+to+850MB.-a016673907, & a good word processor called "DeScribe" -> I actually liked + ALL of them worked perfectly w/ FAT or HPFS (decent filesystem for its time, partial ancestor of NTFS iirc))...

Man - too bad it's (Os/2) gone the way it has, & IBM sold it off iirc, or something like that! apk

Way back when, I would access the Naval Research Lab's websites for copies of OPIE (a one-time password suite), their IPSec code, their IPv6 code and their IPv4/IPv6 multiprotocol suite.

These days, they have some nice stuff in the areas of multicasting, wireless routing and network testing tools.

Even the DoD's Office of Information Security Research has done Open Source work before, publishing one of the early IPSec implementations publicly through MIT.

So other than the DoD finally putting onto a more official level a practice that has been commonplace for decades (the sharing of source under true open source licenses), what exactly is new here? That the politicians at the top of the food chain figured something out? That's just a freak event, a result of the statistical nature of quantum mechanics.

The article forgot to say that Steven talk
at Harvard tomorrow and that the talk is available over webcast.

See http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2009/04/wolfram

While we are waiting for alpha you might like
to play 2 other knowleadge engines like:
http://start.csail.mit.edu/
and
http://quizbot.trueknowledge.com/

PS. Also check out my news site
http://crowdnews.eu/

http://classics.mit.edu/Tzu/artwar.html

How about https://keyserver.pgp.com/ or http://www.rossde.com/PGP/pgp_keyserv.html or http://pgp.mit.edu/ or roll your own at http://pks.sourceforge.net/ if you are so inclined.

I guess we (rich countries) could also try to suck CO2 out of the air, but I haven't yet seen a proven method.

Trees?

There are two problems I know of to use trees to absorb CO2. One is that some trees have been shown to emit more CO2 during parts of their growth. Another problem is that once the trees die they'll release the CO2 again. What has been proposed is to bury trees deep underground. However others have called those people Envirokooks.

Something I just thought of typing this reply is if burying trees will really work, it may make greenhouse gases in the atmosphere worse. This is because as organic matter decomposes in an anaerobic , without oxygen, it decomposes into methane which is 20 tymes as strong a greenhouse gas as CO2 is.

Falcon

tc basically allows you to activate netem (a network emulator in linux). I dont know about now, but when I had used it for a project a year ago, you had to compile your kernel with netem enabled. tc then allowed you to modify your link properties to emulate wan links. Had used this with tcpprobe to analyze the performance of an Inverse Increase Additive Decrease congestion control algorithm that we had written for academic purposes (adapted from http://nms.lcs.mit.edu/papers/binomial-infocom01.pdf) and compare its performance with newreno. Fun stuff. This was a helpful reference: http://linuxgazette.net/135/pfeiffer.html

Yes. According to Channel 4, it wasn't actually a documentary, but a polemic, so it didn't have to be factually accurate in any way.

Which explains why Carl Wunsch, a scientist interviewed for the programme, was so upset at how his material was used:

"In the part of The Great Climate Change Swindle where I am describing the fact that the ocean tends to expel carbon dioxide where it is warm, and to absorb it where it is cold, my intent was to explain that warming the ocean could be dangerous--because it is such a gigantic reservoir of carbon. By its placement in the film, it appears that I am saying that since carbon dioxide exists in the ocean in such large quantities, human influence must not be very important--diametrically opposite to the point I was making--which is that global warming is both real and threatening."

Still, it was an important contribution to the ongoing debate. Here's how the film maker goes about debate.

And if there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their loves, they would be the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from all dishonour, and emulating one another in honour; and when fighting at each other's side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world. For what lover would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms? He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this. Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger? The veriest coward would become an inspired hero, equal to the bravest, at such a time; Love would inspire him. That courage which, as Homer says, the god breathes into the souls of some heroes, Love of his own nature infuses into the lover.

Apollodorus, in The Symposium by Plato.

Gotta love those Greeks

Oups, my bad, they can already write papers... http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/#generate

WOW. Someone truly open minded on /. - can it be?

Like you, FL, I also used to be a hard nose skeptic - no, scratch that, not a skeptic, more like a "cynic"; skepticism is healthy, cynicism is what we're dealing with here though. Over my 46 years, certain life experiences taught me to be more accepting of the possibilities (and claims of others) while at the same time, I came to fully realize that science is not so black & white, cut and dried, and nowhere near complete. It's not that I'm "anti-science" or anything (far far from it!) it's just that a cynical attitude is not very scientific.
What people seem to forget in every modern generation, is that science itself is a work in progress, subject to revision or even a total overhaul as new data permits. We make new discoveries everyday; we've detected new forms of matter or energy unknown to us before; we constantly learn that seeing is not necessary to believing, as there is a whole universe outside our 5 limited senses, one we're immersed in nonetheless.
Yet, history is full of "experts", (who in hindsight, should've known better) declaring this and that are "nonsense" on the basis of the current scientific knowledge at that time. Does anyone really believe that we know just about everything we're going to know, or even that our current view of how the universe is absolutely correct and infallible, and all that's left to do is build on the current foundation? Damn, that's just arrogant and hard headed. Those with such a rigid, inflexible, unforgivable worldview can hardly claim to be "scientific"; in fact that attitude is the very antithesis of the spirit of science.
Look how many people used to believe heavier than air flight was scientifically impossible. Pasteur's "germ theory" was rejected by a peer as "ridiculous fiction". There's a pretty good list of these poor judgements on the MIT website
http://web.mit.edu/randy/www/words.html

People need to be less willing to make a kneejerk denial of something as "unscientific".
And besides the point, nothing is every truly "proven", scientifically or otherwise.

Reminds me of this: http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/Global/B/B4ADC8C2-A786-4C79-A721-BA1C1BF5E1D4/0/chp18014.jpg

Exceptions (opt-out) aren't automatic at MIT: http://tech.mit.edu/V129/N14/open_access.html

At 50K for nine months, your wallet might be devastated...
http://web.mit.edu/facts/tuition.html

Yes, I said "free". For those interested in getting an education from MIT in any course/degree offered, go to MIT OpenCourseWare for full free access to all material needed to learn whatever the school has to offer.

Certification and faculty attention, however, is kinda pricy.

Liar.

Look at any of the course syllabuses and you'll find expensive textbooks for each one. (The one class using SICP barely counts.)

Yes, I said "free". For those interested in getting an education from MIT in any course/degree offered, go to MIT OpenCourseWare for full free access to all material needed to learn whatever the school has to offer.

Certification and faculty attention, however, is kinda pricy.

The vote was unanimous at the March 18th faculty meeting: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/open-access-0320.html

The original article I read said they would encourage MIT faculty and students to put their articles on a MIT-supplied website and back authors to obtain copyright permission. However, they weren't going to abrogate copyright contracts of existing articles and put the stuff out there without permission of the copyright holder. As more and more major institutions get on board this will back the expensive, commercial journals into a corner.

A possible compromise with the journals might be a 6 to 12 month delay before it goes on the MIT site.

Peter Hagelstein has an interesting background in hi-visibility technology. In the 1980s he was at the heart of trying to create an X-ray laser pumped by nukes that was to be a key component of the original Reagan Star Wars missile shield. See the writeup in the book Star Warriors.

Now we know that if a human has free will, then particles must have free will. Since it's nonsensical to talk about a particle with will, it's also nonsensical to talk about a human with free will.

And now we know that if a human has a fated destiny, then particles must have a fated destiny. Since it's nonsensical to talk about a particle with a fated destiny, it's also nonsensical to talk about a human with a fated destiny.

The whole thing is based on several confusions. Let me recommend Raymond Smullyan's essay Is God a Taoist?:

Mortal: Well, are my acts determined by the laws of nature or aren't they?

God: The word determined here is subtly but powerfully misleading and has contributed so much to the confusions of the free will versus determinism controversies. Your acts are certainly in accordance with the laws of nature, but to say they are determined by the laws of nature creates a totally misleading psychological image which is that your will could somehow be in conflict with the laws of nature and that the latter is somehow more powerful than you, and could "determine" your acts whether you liked it or not. But it is simply impossible for your will to ever conflict with natural law. You and natural law are really one and the same.

Mortal: What do you mean that I cannot conflict with nature? Suppose I were to become very stubborn, and I determined not to obey the laws of nature. What could stop me? If I became sufficiently stubborn even you could not stop me!

God: You are absolutely right! I certainly could not stop you. Nothing could stop you. But there is no need to stop you, because you could not even start! As Goethe very beautifully expressed it, "In trying to oppose Nature, we are, in the very process of doing so, acting according to the laws of nature!" Don't you see that the so-called "laws of nature" are nothing more than a description of how in fact you and other beings do act? They are merely a description of how you act, not a prescription of of how you should act, not a power or force which compels or determines your acts. To be valid a law of nature must take into account how in fact you do act, or, if you like, how you choose to act.

Mortal: So you really claim that I am incapable of determining to act against natural law?

God: It is interesting that you have twice now used the phrase "determined to act" instead of "chosen to act." This identification is quite common. Often one uses the statement "I am determined to do this" synonymously with "I have chosen to do this." This very psychological identification should reveal that determinism and choice are much closer than they might appear. Of course, you might well say that the doctrine of free will says that it is you who are doing the determining, whereas the doctrine of determinism appears to say that your acts are determined by something apparently outside you. But the confusion is largely caused by your bifurcation of reality into the "you" and the "not you." Really now, just where do you leave off and the rest of the universe begin? Or where does the rest of the universe leave off and you begin? Once you can see the so-called "you" and the so-called "nature" as a continuous whole, then you can never again be bothered by such questions as whether it is you who are controlling nature or nature who is controlling you. Thus the muddle of free will versus determinism will vanish. If I may use a crude analogy, imagine two bodies moving toward each other by virtue of gravitational attraction. Each body, if sentient, might wonder whether it is he or the other fellow who is exerting the "force." In a way it is both, in a way it is neither. It is best to say that it is the configuration of the two which is crucial.

http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/lfcamera/
http://www-bcs.mit.edu/people/jyawang/demos/plenoptic/plenoptic.html

I took a class with Pranav where he presented TapuMa http://fluid.media.mit.edu/projects.php?action=details&id=53 as his final project. The idea seemed cool, put down a pair an object on the map and it showed you relevant locations. In fact, I think most of his projects had something or another to do with maps. This new project of his incorporates pieces of tangible interfaces as well as fluid interaction (ambient interfaces) and smart agents

For massive enterprise deployments with serious access control, I'd take a look at MIT's infra. They make their own distro, called Athena, and everything is managed with kerberos auth. Its a really beautiful setup. See here: http://web.mit.edu/ist/topics/linux/linux-athena.html

Another distro that I use regularly for high security and mandatory access control is Hardened Gentoo with the GrSecurity & PAX patches to the kernel. Works really well in an untrusted environment. Couple this to LDAP, kerberos, and portage for updates & its simple to manage 5 or 5000 machines.

Good luck!

There are a million opinions on this subject. But actually programming by all students be it basic, java, javascript, html, c, flash, etc...is going to be a rough class for 90 percent of the students. And this might not be because they are not capable. It might just be socially more important to NOT excel at computer programming.

When I was a youth my father taught basic on Apple II's to all students in their 7th and 8th grade school. This was a 4 week class for everyone in the school. And it was generally disliked by most.

And programming in basic on an Apple II was much simpler than today and the heavy frameworks we deal with.

This brings me to Scratch from MIT. I downloaded this when it was released a few years back. It was fine. I build similar products in my real life so I am always interested to see what others are doing. This is free. It is visual. Teaches constructs of event programming. Deals with basic logic. All things that are good to help kids understand. The community seems to have grown a lot since then.

Explore and give it a try. http://scratch.mit.edu/

Am I the only one who finds Python cumbersome? When I program in Python I feel as if the language is trying to stay in my way, it is somehow as if I have to fight against its whims.

I would recommend Starlogo TNG to teach programming. It really helps people visualize the building blocks that constitute a program. And, given its 3D graphical nature, it attracts high school students (who play Halo or Doom after school [yeah, I am antiquated, I was going to say "play a nintendo" but that would be antiquated even for me]).

Not at all. Compare this with asking START the same question: "How far is Los Angeles from New York?"

http://start.csail.mit.edu/

So if Microsoft stole the code for Kerberos, why can download it here?

The double standard here is really funny. When it comes to RIAA and Pirate Bay then using the term "stealing" is bad. But when it comes to using code in a way that it was allowed to be used, then you get modded informative for using that term.

So one question to you: Is Google stealing GPL code? They surely have lots of modifications to GPL code they will never publish, but as with Microsoft noone requires them to.

In grad school I studied and developed methods to make programming accessible to young children. At the time, the general consensus in the field was that before the ages of 11-14, children don't typically have the cognitive ability to write programs, even simple ones. Even though I am a professional programmer now, when I was introduced to BASIC at age 9, I definitely didn't "get it." When I got to 7th grade I did.

Radia Perlman did some groundbreaking work in the 1970's to develop technology in the hope that 6-years-old could learn programming skills. Years later, Ken Kahn developed a game/programming environment called ToonTalk. From my personal experience and research, I don't think you can expect kids younger than 9 to build and program robots, but they can start playing with the physical and conceptual "building blocks."

I see from LEGO's literature that WeDo is aimed at children 7-11 years old. Their approach is very sensible: Keep things very, very simple: One motor, one motion sensor, and one tilt sensor. RoboSoccer can wait until they are older.

For further information

Goldwasser,Kalai,Rothblum - Delegating Computation: Interactive Proofs for Muggles

http://www.mit.edu/~rothblum/papers/del.pdf

This is a theoretic, not immediately applicable result, but it shows that it is possible to set up such a distributed system so that it is immune to poisoning attempts.

Doesn't the NIH already do this with Entrez ? Plus there are plenty of data generating institutions that actually chave such infastructure such as Connectivity Map, Chembank and the personal genome project to name a few. From the article I'm having trouble seeing how "Sage" will offer anything unique.

Although something of the scope that you describe certainly does not exist yet, there are projects along those lines. The main such projects I know of are MIT's OpenCourseWare, which apparently has spread to some other universities (Wikipedia page). In a similar, but currently much smaller project, Cornell has begun putting videos of some lectures online, but it appears to be only for Cornell students. Hopefully that will change.

Getting away from just college-level materials, there are a lot of collections of free textbooks, as revealed by a quick Google search (and remembering from prior Slashdot discussions on the topic), but I am not familiar with any of of them, so I do not know which ones are actually worth looking at. Specifically, the Wikibooks sister project to Wikipedia and its subproject (which I had not seen before) Wikijunior may interest you.

I am not sure how you feel about the MediaWiki projects, but that seems like a natural place to put in your efforts. If not, perhaps one of those other links may point you towards a project you are interested in helping with. Depending on how complete and high quality the existing material is, a better project might be one of making easier to find and encouraging people to actually use free educational materials, which could lead to more people contributing to those projects.

In fact human faces can be compressed very effectively. The top 20 features from eigenfaces are more than enough for recognition, so forget polygons.

I have been using Linux as my primary environment for more than ten years. In this time, I have absorbed all the lore surrounding the Unix Way -- small programs doing one thing well, communicating via text and all that.

As much as I like Linux, I don't think I ever brought into the "unix" way. Communicating via text is fine, but it doesn't seem really efficient.

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail... I wish this book, the Unix Hater's Handbook got a sequel:
http://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf

I keep around a copy of the Unix Hater's Handbook. http://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf

I haven't done the calculation, but I would bet that the energy required to lift a solar panel into orbit (even assuming perfect efficiency, no drag, etc.) would be greater than the amount of energy you can expect to get out in 15 years of operation. Given, there are very few degradation factors for GaAs solar cells in orbit (they are quite radiation hardened), but a payback time of anything greater than 3 years is not going to cut it for any energy source.

Oil has already fallen below the point of wind and solar in terms of energy in to energy out. The near term future of commercial energy is coal, nuclear, wind and G2 solar (thin film Si, CdTe, and CIGS). G3 solar might start to come around, but considering it doesn't even exist in the lab as of yet, it's going to be at least 20 years.

I really hope that hybrid fusion starts getting support. If humanity really wants to last for another few thousand years we need to get fusion working on a massive scale, and I just don't see that happening without an economically viable use for fusion being available in the next century. Hybrid fusion presents us with that use.

'Quantum consciousness' and all that is complete and utter bunk.

There are no quantum-entanglement phenomena going on in the body.
To put it in simple terms: It's too warm, and too wet.
Or in a bit more advanced terms: The decoherence times are FAR too short to have any chemical effect, much less a biological one. Almost nobody takes Penrose's ideas seriously, but just for the hell of it, the cosmologist Max Tegmark did the math a number of years ago to prove it.
Here's a link to an article about that paper that was in Science.

Java and Flash are really the only contenders that are likely to be able to be compiled directly from the browser.

This project allows Java compilation from the browser:

http://opencode.media.mit.edu/

To me, this is far more interesting than using the browser as a text editor.

Maybe I ought to replace my brain tubes with brain transistors, but then I'd have to wait for the damned thing to boot...

Nah, you just need to switch to a Unix system. The neat thing about Unix systems is that they really boot fast. You ought to see one boot, if you haven't already. It's inspiring to those of us whose LispMs take all morning to boot*. ;-)

* With apologies to John Rose

I like how she responded to this issue with the word 'democratization'. She doesn't seem to be so worried about some crazy terrorist getting access to this technology, as governments monopolizing it for biowarfare development. And I'm inclined to agree that we should be just as worried about the latter as the former. A few links about this scientist/entrepeneur:
Her Bio
Forbes article - DIY Life
MIT TechTV Video - DIY Biology

A laser measurement experiment could cover a number of interesting theoretical subject areas: optics (diffraction), solid-state physics, and atomic level structure. Experimental areas such as error analysis, linear/nonlinear fitting, lab safety, etc. would definitely be applicable.

One measurement that immediately comes to mind is using single/double-slit diffraction to measure the width of a narrow object, such as a hair or a thin wire. You can place a strand of hair in the light's path and then use the measured distance between the interference fringes to interpolate the width of the hair.

In retrospect, I think this might be a bit basic, and might best be suited as an introductory experiment. You certainly wouldn't have to build anything, if that's what you're aiming for. I personally think that constructing an experiment, unless carefully designed to be robust, would certainly take more than 72 hours.

A few other sources come to mind for me. The American Journal of Physics, which is an pseudo-educational physics magazine, might be useful when looking for new experimental ideas. The lab class I took last year had a bunch of great experiments, some of which are/were fairly cheap to implement:
http://web.mit.edu/8.13/www/experiments.shtml

As an example of that viewpoint, this article (PDF), from a 2007 volume of the Journal of Machine Learning Research characterizes open-source license choices from the perspective of scientists releasing their software as follows:

1. "A developer who wants to give away the source code in exchange for proper credit for derivative works, even closed-source ones, could choose the BSD license."

2. "A developer who wants to give away the source code, is comfortable with his source being incorporated into a closed-source product but still wants to receive bug-fixes and changes that are necessary to his source when integrating the code could choose the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)."

3. "A developer who wants to give away the source code and make sure that his program stays open source, that is, any extension (or integration) will require both the original and the derived code to be released as open source, could choose the GNU General Public License (GPL)."

http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=10470

The expensive-journal commercial publishers don't have much of a competitive moat: anyone can publish PDFs on the internet with the word "Journal" attached to groups of them, and you've got a journal. If that anyone is well-respected in the field and the PDFs are hosted by a well-known university that also prints off some paper copies for archival, you've got yourself a new journal.

In my area this revolt against the commercial publishers has been quite rapid and successful. The entire board of editors left the journal Machine Learning in 2000, setting up the non-profit, open-access JMLR instead, which is now at least as prestigious (possibly moreso). In more general AI, the open-access, non-profit JAIR now has a much higher impact factor than the old Elsevier journal in the area, "Artificial Intelligence".

The demo of making music reminded me of building things with Scratch, except that it's done with physical objects instead of stacking and joining GUI elements on screen.