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From the MIT Ultracapacitors website:
Researchers fired up over new battery

The new nanotube-enhanced ultracapacitors could be made in any of the sizes currently available and be produced using conventional technology.

"This configuration has the potential to maintain and even improve the high performance characteristics of ultracapacitors while providing energy storage densities comparable to batteries," Schindall said. "Nanotube-enhanced ultracapacitors would combine the long life and high power characteristics of a commercial ultracapacitor with the higher energy storage density normally available only from a chemical battery."

Sure sounds like a potential battery replacement to me... Just takes a different university to do it.

Given the person's stated background, I'm not even the least bit surprised he reached this conclusion. That being, that as someone's educational background is more exposed to restricted admissions universities such as MIT, the more they want to implement that as an end-run around the public. The only clear misinformation out of this was with the W3C.

Now, could someone have informed him clearly about who foots the bills for the building? It's not like it's run by a organization who insists on exclusivity even though it is known for being "open"?


They'd serve well to be more truthful about their openness, or the lack thereof.

Can you drain the power slowly from an ultracapactor, to run a car for a few hours, or do you have to drain it quickly? Does charge leak out slowly over time from an ultracapacitor, or can you make it fairly inert?

When you eat your Smarties,
Do you eat the red ones last?
Do you suck them very slowly,
Or crunch them very fast?
Eat that candy-coated chocolate,
But tell me when I ask,
When you eat your Smarties,
Do you eat the red ones last?


It's just not as much fun without the annoying tune.

With thanks to another old geezer.

Call me when they're competing with MIT's carbon nanotube based ultracapacitors. Conventional ultracapacitors can achieve an energy density of 6Wh/kg, but the CNT ultracapacitors being researched and developed by MIT are claimed to achieve an energy density of 60Wh/kg (or, let's say, ten times more than this "new" capacitory developed by North Carolina State University).

Overview: http://lees-web.mit.edu/lees/projects/cnt_ultracap _project.htm
More-detailed Poster (PDF): http://lees-web.mit.edu/lees/posters/RU13_signorel li.pdf

Call me when they're competing with MIT's carbon nanotube based ultracapacitors. Conventional ultracapacitors can achieve an energy density of 6Wh/kg, but the CNT ultracapacitors being researched and developed by MIT are claimed to achieve an energy density of 60Wh/kg (or, let's say, ten times more than this "new" capacitory developed by North Carolina State University).

Overview: http://lees-web.mit.edu/lees/projects/cnt_ultracap _project.htm
More-detailed Poster (PDF): http://lees-web.mit.edu/lees/posters/RU13_signorel li.pdf

What I mean with this title is that you cannot understand Microsoft's actions by looking at it from the perspective of someone who wants to produce good products. As in someone who wants to truly push the state of the art as a goal in itself. Someone who wants to 'innovate' to use that bumf-laden word. Microsoft prefers to let start-ups do that for them, select the promising ideas, and then *buy* or *copy* the technology. Which incidentally is why Microsoft is so hostile to the GPL. If any innovative code is GPL'ed, then Microsoft cannot secure an exclusive hold on it, so they cannot use it to shore up their market dominance by creating imperfect competition or their pricing power {see http://financial-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/ Pricing+Power for a definition of pricing power}.

For background reading, see: http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/A82DB83B-1F43-4EEB -8311-CC93A1B0245C/0/deltamodel.pdf for a description of the "Delta model" of strategic positioning, and note the position of Intel and Microsoft in the graph on page 3.

Rational actors versus emotional ones

Hackers and geeks {a sizeable proportion of Slashdot's readership} cannot understand Microsoft's actions because they are driven by emotion {love of tinkering, thinking source code is interesting and attractive, idealism} rather than rational thought. You can understand Microsoft's actions if you look at it from the point of view of a rational actor that tries to {mathematically speaking} maximise revenue, and to obtain that revenue, to either build or maintain sufficient dominance of the market to have that holy grail of marketing: 'pricing power'. You can understand them if you consider them from a marketing point of view. Implicit in which is that you *really* don't care what you sell, as long as it makes a profit. Some people {Slashdotters for example} need to have that, and its implications, explained to them - in small and easy steps... Hence my choice of title.

A marketing point of view

See e.g. http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Sloan-School-of-Manageme nt/15-810Spring-2005/CourseHome/index.htm for introductory background material on marketing.

The notion of Marketing is crucial because it explains another of Microsoft's strategic constraints. Microsoft cannot afford a truly level playing field in the markets in which it operates because in such markets it wouldn't have the dominance and the lock-in that would allow it to exercise pricing power. It would slide from the top of the Delta pyramid to the right-hand side. Bye-bye profit margins.

Implications of marketing considerations for Microsoft actions

People have to realise that Microsoft truly does not care about *what* it ships ... as long as it maintains Microsoft's position in the Delta model ... which in turn determines it's ability to generate revenue.

Good enough ... for Microsoft

Now ... as I did not make explicit, but which several posters pointed out, Microsoft's 'Good Enough' means 'Good Enough to allow Microsoft to win in the marketplace while leveraging every other advantage they have'.

What other advantage? Well ... control of the PC platform for one thing. MS-Windows is the standard ... and largely because it becomes pre-loaded. As in "Hey ... it's included, right, so why look further?". Why does it become pre-loaded? Because people are used to MS Windows, so that pre-loading MS-Windows opens the mass-market. If you doubt the sensitivity and importance of having MS W

What I mean with this title is that you cannot understand Microsoft's actions by looking at it from the perspective of someone who wants to produce good products. As in someone who wants to truly push the state of the art as a goal in itself. Someone who wants to 'innovate' to use that bumf-laden word. Microsoft prefers to let start-ups do that for them, select the promising ideas, and then *buy* or *copy* the technology. Which incidentally is why Microsoft is so hostile to the GPL. If any innovative code is GPL'ed, then Microsoft cannot secure an exclusive hold on it, so they cannot use it to shore up their market dominance by creating imperfect competition or their pricing power {see http://financial-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/ Pricing+Power for a definition of pricing power}.

For background reading, see: http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/A82DB83B-1F43-4EEB -8311-CC93A1B0245C/0/deltamodel.pdf for a description of the "Delta model" of strategic positioning, and note the position of Intel and Microsoft in the graph on page 3.

Rational actors versus emotional ones

Hackers and geeks {a sizeable proportion of Slashdot's readership} cannot understand Microsoft's actions because they are driven by emotion {love of tinkering, thinking source code is interesting and attractive, idealism} rather than rational thought. You can understand Microsoft's actions if you look at it from the point of view of a rational actor that tries to {mathematically speaking} maximise revenue, and to obtain that revenue, to either build or maintain sufficient dominance of the market to have that holy grail of marketing: 'pricing power'. You can understand them if you consider them from a marketing point of view. Implicit in which is that you *really* don't care what you sell, as long as it makes a profit. Some people {Slashdotters for example} need to have that, and its implications, explained to them - in small and easy steps... Hence my choice of title.

A marketing point of view

See e.g. http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Sloan-School-of-Manageme nt/15-810Spring-2005/CourseHome/index.htm for introductory background material on marketing.

The notion of Marketing is crucial because it explains another of Microsoft's strategic constraints. Microsoft cannot afford a truly level playing field in the markets in which it operates because in such markets it wouldn't have the dominance and the lock-in that would allow it to exercise pricing power. It would slide from the top of the Delta pyramid to the right-hand side. Bye-bye profit margins.

Implications of marketing considerations for Microsoft actions

People have to realise that Microsoft truly does not care about *what* it ships ... as long as it maintains Microsoft's position in the Delta model ... which in turn determines it's ability to generate revenue.

Good enough ... for Microsoft

Now ... as I did not make explicit, but which several posters pointed out, Microsoft's 'Good Enough' means 'Good Enough to allow Microsoft to win in the marketplace while leveraging every other advantage they have'.

What other advantage? Well ... control of the PC platform for one thing. MS-Windows is the standard ... and largely because it becomes pre-loaded. As in "Hey ... it's included, right, so why look further?". Why does it become pre-loaded? Because people are used to MS Windows, so that pre-loading MS-Windows opens the mass-market. If you doubt the sensitivity and importance of having MS W

Well, I said I wanted an account on DM to learn MDL, but I actually only wanted to play Zork. I tried to find the source code at the time, to help me solve the harder puzzles, but not until years later did I stumble across it thanks to google. Finding the source code was a grand adventure in itself!

MDL is basically just a fancy dialect of Lisp, with data types and angled brackets. Now days, the best way to learn MDL is to read the Zork source code!

Where did you find the MDL binary on Twenex.org? I wonder if the binary version of MDL you found would run under the KLH10 PDP-10 emulator, like the one you can telnet to at its.svensson.org. Probably not, since ITS is a lot different than Twenex. Maybe Devon could pull it off of an old DM dump tape! Good luck with your open source MDL interpreter!

I've had a hard time finding the tech reports about MDL online. Here is a thread about locating those and other MIT LCS Tech Reports. It mentions this place to find TR's. That links to this catalog, which lists several MDL publications. Those listings say you can purchase them from MIT Document Services.

MIT-LCS-TR-292: The MDL Programmig Language Primer, by M. Dornbrook, M. Blank.
MIT-LCS-TR-293: The MDL Programming Language, by S. W. Galley, G Pfister.
MIT-LCS-TR-294: The MDL Programming Environment, bu P. D. Lebling.

You might try asking Gerald J Sussman, Hal Abelson, Stu W. Galley or Steve Meretzky. I wonder who owns the copyright, and if they'd be willing to make it GPL and put the original Zork source code up on Google Code for people to read and search and learn from? The version I found is the latest greatest PDP-10 ITS version, just before Infocom took it and ported it to microcomputers.

-Don

Well, I said I wanted an account on DM to learn MDL, but I actually only wanted to play Zork. I tried to find the source code at the time, to help me solve the harder puzzles, but not until years later did I stumble across it thanks to google. Finding the source code was a grand adventure in itself!

MDL is basically just a fancy dialect of Lisp, with data types and angled brackets. Now days, the best way to learn MDL is to read the Zork source code!

Where did you find the MDL binary on Twenex.org? I wonder if the binary version of MDL you found would run under the KLH10 PDP-10 emulator, like the one you can telnet to at its.svensson.org. Probably not, since ITS is a lot different than Twenex. Maybe Devon could pull it off of an old DM dump tape! Good luck with your open source MDL interpreter!

I've had a hard time finding the tech reports about MDL online. Here is a thread about locating those and other MIT LCS Tech Reports. It mentions this place to find TR's. That links to this catalog, which lists several MDL publications. Those listings say you can purchase them from MIT Document Services.

MIT-LCS-TR-292: The MDL Programmig Language Primer, by M. Dornbrook, M. Blank.
MIT-LCS-TR-293: The MDL Programming Language, by S. W. Galley, G Pfister.
MIT-LCS-TR-294: The MDL Programming Environment, bu P. D. Lebling.

You might try asking Gerald J Sussman, Hal Abelson, Stu W. Galley or Steve Meretzky. I wonder who owns the copyright, and if they'd be willing to make it GPL and put the original Zork source code up on Google Code for people to read and search and learn from? The version I found is the latest greatest PDP-10 ITS version, just before Infocom took it and ported it to microcomputers.

-Don

Well, I said I wanted an account on DM to learn MDL, but I actually only wanted to play Zork. I tried to find the source code at the time, to help me solve the harder puzzles, but not until years later did I stumble across it thanks to google. Finding the source code was a grand adventure in itself!

MDL is basically just a fancy dialect of Lisp, with data types and angled brackets. Now days, the best way to learn MDL is to read the Zork source code!

Where did you find the MDL binary on Twenex.org? I wonder if the binary version of MDL you found would run under the KLH10 PDP-10 emulator, like the one you can telnet to at its.svensson.org. Probably not, since ITS is a lot different than Twenex. Maybe Devon could pull it off of an old DM dump tape! Good luck with your open source MDL interpreter!

I've had a hard time finding the tech reports about MDL online. Here is a thread about locating those and other MIT LCS Tech Reports. It mentions this place to find TR's. That links to this catalog, which lists several MDL publications. Those listings say you can purchase them from MIT Document Services.

MIT-LCS-TR-292: The MDL Programmig Language Primer, by M. Dornbrook, M. Blank.
MIT-LCS-TR-293: The MDL Programming Language, by S. W. Galley, G Pfister.
MIT-LCS-TR-294: The MDL Programming Environment, bu P. D. Lebling.

You might try asking Gerald J Sussman, Hal Abelson, Stu W. Galley or Steve Meretzky. I wonder who owns the copyright, and if they'd be willing to make it GPL and put the original Zork source code up on Google Code for people to read and search and learn from? The version I found is the latest greatest PDP-10 ITS version, just before Infocom took it and ported it to microcomputers.

-Don

Well, I said I wanted an account on DM to learn MDL, but I actually only wanted to play Zork. I tried to find the source code at the time, to help me solve the harder puzzles, but not until years later did I stumble across it thanks to google. Finding the source code was a grand adventure in itself!

MDL is basically just a fancy dialect of Lisp, with data types and angled brackets. Now days, the best way to learn MDL is to read the Zork source code!

Where did you find the MDL binary on Twenex.org? I wonder if the binary version of MDL you found would run under the KLH10 PDP-10 emulator, like the one you can telnet to at its.svensson.org. Probably not, since ITS is a lot different than Twenex. Maybe Devon could pull it off of an old DM dump tape! Good luck with your open source MDL interpreter!

I've had a hard time finding the tech reports about MDL online. Here is a thread about locating those and other MIT LCS Tech Reports. It mentions this place to find TR's. That links to this catalog, which lists several MDL publications. Those listings say you can purchase them from MIT Document Services.

MIT-LCS-TR-292: The MDL Programmig Language Primer, by M. Dornbrook, M. Blank.
MIT-LCS-TR-293: The MDL Programming Language, by S. W. Galley, G Pfister.
MIT-LCS-TR-294: The MDL Programming Environment, bu P. D. Lebling.

You might try asking Gerald J Sussman, Hal Abelson, Stu W. Galley or Steve Meretzky. I wonder who owns the copyright, and if they'd be willing to make it GPL and put the original Zork source code up on Google Code for people to read and search and learn from? The version I found is the latest greatest PDP-10 ITS version, just before Infocom took it and ported it to microcomputers.

-Don

Well, I said I wanted an account on DM to learn MDL, but I actually only wanted to play Zork. I tried to find the source code at the time, to help me solve the harder puzzles, but not until years later did I stumble across it thanks to google. Finding the source code was a grand adventure in itself!

MDL is basically just a fancy dialect of Lisp, with data types and angled brackets. Now days, the best way to learn MDL is to read the Zork source code!

Where did you find the MDL binary on Twenex.org? I wonder if the binary version of MDL you found would run under the KLH10 PDP-10 emulator, like the one you can telnet to at its.svensson.org. Probably not, since ITS is a lot different than Twenex. Maybe Devon could pull it off of an old DM dump tape! Good luck with your open source MDL interpreter!

I've had a hard time finding the tech reports about MDL online. Here is a thread about locating those and other MIT LCS Tech Reports. It mentions this place to find TR's. That links to this catalog, which lists several MDL publications. Those listings say you can purchase them from MIT Document Services.

MIT-LCS-TR-292: The MDL Programmig Language Primer, by M. Dornbrook, M. Blank.
MIT-LCS-TR-293: The MDL Programming Language, by S. W. Galley, G Pfister.
MIT-LCS-TR-294: The MDL Programming Environment, bu P. D. Lebling.

You might try asking Gerald J Sussman, Hal Abelson, Stu W. Galley or Steve Meretzky. I wonder who owns the copyright, and if they'd be willing to make it GPL and put the original Zork source code up on Google Code for people to read and search and learn from? The version I found is the latest greatest PDP-10 ITS version, just before Infocom took it and ported it to microcomputers.

-Don

Well, I said I wanted an account on DM to learn MDL, but I actually only wanted to play Zork. I tried to find the source code at the time, to help me solve the harder puzzles, but not until years later did I stumble across it thanks to google. Finding the source code was a grand adventure in itself!

MDL is basically just a fancy dialect of Lisp, with data types and angled brackets. Now days, the best way to learn MDL is to read the Zork source code!

Where did you find the MDL binary on Twenex.org? I wonder if the binary version of MDL you found would run under the KLH10 PDP-10 emulator, like the one you can telnet to at its.svensson.org. Probably not, since ITS is a lot different than Twenex. Maybe Devon could pull it off of an old DM dump tape! Good luck with your open source MDL interpreter!

I've had a hard time finding the tech reports about MDL online. Here is a thread about locating those and other MIT LCS Tech Reports. It mentions this place to find TR's. That links to this catalog, which lists several MDL publications. Those listings say you can purchase them from MIT Document Services.

MIT-LCS-TR-292: The MDL Programmig Language Primer, by M. Dornbrook, M. Blank.
MIT-LCS-TR-293: The MDL Programming Language, by S. W. Galley, G Pfister.
MIT-LCS-TR-294: The MDL Programming Environment, bu P. D. Lebling.

You might try asking Gerald J Sussman, Hal Abelson, Stu W. Galley or Steve Meretzky. I wonder who owns the copyright, and if they'd be willing to make it GPL and put the original Zork source code up on Google Code for people to read and search and learn from? The version I found is the latest greatest PDP-10 ITS version, just before Infocom took it and ported it to microcomputers.

-Don

Well, I said I wanted an account on DM to learn MDL, but I actually only wanted to play Zork. I tried to find the source code at the time, to help me solve the harder puzzles, but not until years later did I stumble across it thanks to google. Finding the source code was a grand adventure in itself!

MDL is basically just a fancy dialect of Lisp, with data types and angled brackets. Now days, the best way to learn MDL is to read the Zork source code!

Where did you find the MDL binary on Twenex.org? I wonder if the binary version of MDL you found would run under the KLH10 PDP-10 emulator, like the one you can telnet to at its.svensson.org. Probably not, since ITS is a lot different than Twenex. Maybe Devon could pull it off of an old DM dump tape! Good luck with your open source MDL interpreter!

I've had a hard time finding the tech reports about MDL online. Here is a thread about locating those and other MIT LCS Tech Reports. It mentions this place to find TR's. That links to this catalog, which lists several MDL publications. Those listings say you can purchase them from MIT Document Services.

MIT-LCS-TR-292: The MDL Programmig Language Primer, by M. Dornbrook, M. Blank.
MIT-LCS-TR-293: The MDL Programming Language, by S. W. Galley, G Pfister.
MIT-LCS-TR-294: The MDL Programming Environment, bu P. D. Lebling.

You might try asking Gerald J Sussman, Hal Abelson, Stu W. Galley or Steve Meretzky. I wonder who owns the copyright, and if they'd be willing to make it GPL and put the original Zork source code up on Google Code for people to read and search and learn from? The version I found is the latest greatest PDP-10 ITS version, just before Infocom took it and ported it to microcomputers.

-Don

Actually, the more I think about it they could have made a better whitepaper using this:

http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/

When Simjian initially came up with the idea of creating a hole-in-the-wall machine that would allow customers to make financial transactions, the idea was met with a great deal of skepticism. Starting in 1939, Simjian registered 20 patents related to the device and persuaded what is now Citicorp to give it a trial. After six months, the bank reported that there was little demand.

People can donate their old batteries to the NSA to help run the spy servers!

Really!

Don't most ISPs (in the U.S.) already do that?

http://spoofer.csail.mit.edu/summary.php

It'd be nice if IPv6 would do more guard against spoofing; it tackles some of the issues, but not all.

The relevant facts in this case are not in dispute. Gonzalez admits that she infringed upon the Recording Companies' copyrights by downloading 30 songs from the internet which she did not own.

...

To allow Gonzalez to assert this defense based on her ignorance would eviscerate copyright protection and the old adage that "ignorance is no defense to the law." This Court thus holds that she is not entitled to the innocent infringer defense and awards the Record Companies $ 22,500 (30 songs times the minimum statutory penalty ($750)).

Sorry for linkage delay: "Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.

It's been 10 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment." THEY'RE WORSE THAN BMG!!!

The worst darkness is ignorant of history, and to calumniate one's ancestors. If we know more now, it is only because we build upon the achievements of the past. The theories of Isaac Newton would not have been possible if it were not for such men as Bernard of Clairvaux, Anselm of Cantebury, Thomas Aquinas, and a host of persons who lived in the so-called 'dark ages'. Even Aristotle, so vilinised by Sagan actually predates Galileo's theory of inertia by 1800 years. Quotation:

Further, in point of fact things that are thrown move though that which gave them their impulse is not touching them, either by reason of mutual replacement, as some maintain, or because the air that has been pushed pushes them with a movement quicker than the natural locomotion of the projectile wherewith it moves to its proper place. But in a void none of these things can take place, nor can anything be moved save as that which is carried is moved.

Further, no one could say why a thing once set in motion should stop anywhere; for why should it stop here rather than here? So that a thing will either be at rest or must be moved ad infinitum, unless something more powerful get in its way. (Physics IV, 8)

Carl Sagan actually wrote a lot of science fiction, which have little or nothing to do with reality but one's own dreams. Often one doesn't see the light simply because one prefers one's own dreams instead of reality.

Given the person's stated background, I'm not even the least bit surprised he reached this conclusion. That being, that as someone's educational background is more exposed to restricted admissions universities such as MIT, the more they want to implement that as an end-run around the public. The only clear misinformation out of this was with the W3C.

Now, could someone have informed him clearly about who foots the bills for the building? It's not like it's run by a organization who insists on a large Far Eastern presence.

Professor Lindzen is a dynamical meteorologist with interests in the broad topics of climate, planetary waves, monsoon meteorology, planetary atmospheres, and hydrodynamic instability. His research involves studies of the role of the tropics in mid-latitude weather and global heat transport, the moisture budget and its role in global change, the origins of ice ages, seasonal effects in atmospheric transport, stratospheric waves, and the observational determination of climate sensitivity.

He has been a critic of some anthropogenic global warming theories and the political pressures surrounding climate scientists. He wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in April, 2006, in which he wrote: "In Europe, Henk Tennekes was dismissed as research director of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Society after questioning the scientific underpinnings of global warming. Aksel Winn-Nielsen, former director of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, was tarred by Bert Bolin, first head of the IPCC, as a tool of the coal industry for questioning climate alarmism. Respected Italian professors Alfonso Sutera and Antonio Speranza disappeared from the debate in 1991, apparently losing climate-research funding for raising questions."

"If I jump from a tower which is 100 (?) meters high, I will be weightless for about 4 seconds, ignoring the air drag."

Standards for weights, mass, distance or any other measure, are critical in the calibration of instruments. This calibration provide the means that to compare product specifications and research results.

This particular effort is a very interesting set of challenges. It requires the use of single isotope of silicon; calibrations for distance and roundness, and a sophisticated means to to count the atoms. This last step requires the silicon to be perfectly crystalline.

Measurement is itself a very interesting study bordering on metaphysics and philosophy. The desire to measure things has been at the heart of a lot of scientific investigation, economics and other areas of study. Ref "Abstract Measurement Theory" by Louis Narens https://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp? ttype=2&tid=6345/

http://web.mit.edu/admissions/
http://www.admissions.caltech.edu/
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/uga/

and the list goes on...

"wherein entries corresponding to each one of said hierarchy of geographical areas is further organized into topics"

IMHO, drupal is the best open source cms, powerfull and flexible, with lot of features. Also has very strong community, and a lot of community contributed modules and themes (take look at Drupal Theme Garden).

Another thing: even the inventor of the HTML -- Tim Berners Lee -- uses Drupal for his personal Blog (http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/blog/4)

John McCain's wretched bad taste in singing 'Bomb! Bomb! Bomb! Bomb bomb Iran...' to the tune of the the old Beach Boys hit shows he is completely unsuitable for high office. It was disrespectful to those who have given their lives in these misguided wars.

Very few Americans seem to realize that the terrorists in Northern Ireland were not bombed out of existence by the RUC and British Government, but that an American called George Mitchell brought the different parties together and negotiated a power-sharing settlement that was satisfactory to all.

It makes a good disaster story, but analysis shows that only significant danger is to anyone that happened to be on the elevator at the time.

This is interesting. We are looking at upgrading Office, and both Office 2007 and OpenOffice.org 2.2 are being considered. I had thought that Office 2007 would be able to use existing macros, but if this is not the case it could help tip the scales in favor of OO.o. After some study, it turns out that OO.o has templates that are more capable that Word (See thesis instructions from MIT or David Wheeler's blog. (Even if you don't want to write a thesis, they do represent a highly structured documents with stringent standards. This is something of an acid test for document formating.) The OO.o master documents are also a selling point, since dividing large written works into chapters is a time-honored approach to collaboration. If MSO 2007 doesn't import existing macros better than OO.o, its going to be harder for management to justify the considerable upgrade costs.

like these guys at MIT. See:
http://web.mit.edu/zacka/www/midas.html
The page has the circuit diagrams for the wiring as well as a suggested layout.

It's pretty obvious that this "innovation" is just one of many projects trying to bridge the traditional computer screen with tangible objects. The post mentions one of the other public projects. I also remember seeing this exact sort of thing at the MIT Media Lab 5 years ago and apparently it's still being developed. The real test is how useful and flexible the interface can become. Just like with the motion sensing in the Wii controllers, you can develop stuff all you want but until you make it cool, easy to use, easy to program, and introduce it to a mass market, it's really just a novelty.

http://pag.csail.mit.edu/~adonovan/dilbert/show.ph p?day=24&month=02&year=2000

The Science Daily article gets stuff a bit wrong.

It isn't directly their fault. This article is a reprint of the MIT press release. Admittedly, it's just as embarrassingly pathetic. SD must be hard-pressed for stories to be reaching into the press release bin for rubbish written as poorly as this...

I have to agree with this sentiment. The article seems to have been targeted at a fifth grade reading level (or below) and was quite painful to read. It isn't Science Daily's fault, however, as it appears the article was not an "adaptation" but rather a blatant reprint of the original press release. Oh, silly me, I forgot one minor detail: Adaptations are little more than a copy and paste away!

The WIND-SWE group appears to have links to some of the papers they have presented. I'm not sure of the relevancy but it might make for a worthwhile read to curious minds.

I have to agree with this sentiment. The article seems to have been targeted at a fifth grade reading level (or below) and was quite painful to read. It isn't Science Daily's fault, however, as it appears the article was not an "adaptation" but rather a blatant reprint of the original press release. Oh, silly me, I forgot one minor detail: Adaptations are little more than a copy and paste away!

The WIND-SWE group appears to have links to some of the papers they have presented. I'm not sure of the relevancy but it might make for a worthwhile read to curious minds.

Here are some even better links. MIT's SenseTable was presented at CHI 2001. http://tangible.media.mit.edu/projects/sensetable/

Here's a good MIT thesis on RFID tables: http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~mazalek/publications/ mazalek_phd-thesis.pdf

There's more than just Audiopad, look at all these audio-related tables: http://mtg.upf.edu/reactable/?related

Here are some even better links. MIT's SenseTable was presented at CHI 2001. http://tangible.media.mit.edu/projects/sensetable/

Here's a good MIT thesis on RFID tables: http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~mazalek/publications/ mazalek_phd-thesis.pdf

There's more than just Audiopad, look at all these audio-related tables: http://mtg.upf.edu/reactable/?related

>The GP was suggesting that closed source projects are supporting an ecosystem of programmers some of whom contribute to open source projects on their own time...

Right, that was my understanding also, and I highly doubt it was, is, or ever will, be true. The very activities around nonfree software you have in mind are simply not big enough to be the main driver. Doing a search on who pays programmers only confirms what has always been my understanding about how most programming is paid for, e.g., (http://www.hostingforum.ca/113080-re-two-percent- desktops-who-cares-3.html):
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Actually, there are surveys galore that show that most software
development is custom work and not for general resale. That certainly
matches with my experience. I've done my share of work on embedded
projects that were resold, but the rest of my work has been
implementation of internal business logic.

Take a look at this report:

http://ebusiness.mit.edu/research/papers/178_Cusum ano_Intl_Comp.pdf

A few years old but very comprehensive and still pertinent. It shows
that most software falls into the custom or semi-custom category. Less
than one quarter falls into the application category that most consumers
think of when you mention software, and even less falls into the system
and embedded space. The Enterprise market dwarfs all other categories,
which is hardly a surprise to me as that is still where most of my
business comes from. On a related note, the enterprise market continues
to be where Linux enjoys its strongest growth.

The take away here is that most software development is custom
development work for big enterprise clients and not the final-form
shrinkwrap stuff that gets the most attention in the press.
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I think that what's most likely to happen is we'll see the emergence of a new programming model, which allows us to specify an algorithm in a form resembling a Hasse diagram, where each point represent a step and each edge represents a dependency, so that a compiler can recognize what can and cannot be done in parallel and set up multiple threads of execution (or some similar construct) according to that.

This is more-or-less how functional programming works. You write your program using an XML-like tree syntax. The compiler utilizes the tree to figure out dependencies. See http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z -H-10.html#%25_sec_1.1.5. More parallelism can be drawn out if the interpreter "compiles" as yet unused functions while evaluating others. See the following section.

People may or may not process information in a linear fashion, but human brains are, apparently, massively parallel computational devices.

Addressing architecture for Brain-like Massively Parallel Computers

or from a brain-science perspective

Natural and Artificial Parallel Computation

The common tools (Java, C#, C++, Visual Basic) are still primitive for parallel programming. Not much more than semaphores and some basic multi-threading code (start/stop/pause/communicate from one thread to another via common variables). I've made programs, specifically, spiders, that can run 200-1,000 simultaneous threads usefully on a PC. They work ok, as long as the inter-thread coupling is minimized. Until we get enough exposure to parallel systems that we develop new languages to express the solutions, parallel programming will remain accessible to the few, the proud, the geeks. But I don't think it's because of our brains architecture.

This is such a hilarious troll, normally I wouldn't feed but the parent post is so ridiculous that it's gone beyond trolling into some random fantasy land.

Go to hell, communists.

The GPL is not Communist in nature, in fact when I distribute software under the GPL it's all about me and my choice to share work with others. In a Communist scenario all the sofware would belong to the state, the choice of sharing would not be mine. Secondly, nowhere in the GPL does it say you cannot charge for your work, Studio to Go is a good example of this.

You democrats are trying to destroy the United States' only hold over China: They need Microsoft software. When they can get crappy free solutions to do the same, the United States will just continue to become indebted to China and other countries. And it will be all your fault, you Hillary fanboys.

Right, because Free software is all a conspiracy to ruin the US. Of course most of the people who answered the survey in this MIT study, when asked what their motivation is, said: 'I'm a Hillary fanboy and want to ruin the US!' Or could it be that FLOSS developers enjoy coding and want to share stuff they like? Which do you think is more likely?

I like FLOSS but am not a Hillary fanboy. In fact am not really interested in your elections, suprise: there are people who live outside the US!

For the sake of national security, free software efforts must become against the law.

This is the funniest thing I've read for a long time. It would be interesting to see this happen, my hypothesis is that this would ruin software development in the US. Am pretty certain your country would suffer rather badly if it outlawed FLOSS but the rest of the world continued developing it. Think of all those savings your corporations would be missing out on! What about the US corporations who're distributing FLOSS, e.g. IBM, Sun, HP, Dell, RedHat et al?

Besides, free software destroys our free market, creating monopolies, by selling at excessively low prices. Would Microsoft get away with giving away free products to take competitors' market share away? No. Neither should these ****ing tree-hugging, Prius-driving free software zealots. The captcha is appropriately "planking."

Oh dear, that's funny. Free software does not destroy the free market, but encourages it. With FLOSS there's much less possibility for vendor lock-in (since everything is out in the open and I can't imagine the many volunteers working on FLOSS projects being happy with creating proprietary file formats etc.). Theoretically Microsoft would not get away with giving away software for free, yet that's exactly how they gained their monopoly: by turning a blind eye to piracy. Your point is invalid in another respect: Microsoft is a company whereas Free software is an ecosystem/licensing model. If all proprietary software disappeared tomorrow there would still be plenty of competition, this is one of the things people complain about with GNU/Linux: there's too much choice!

I'd almost like to see your post modded up as 'Funny', just because it's so stupid and full of hilarious vitriol. Also I feel it's important to debunk rubbish like this sometimes, just in case someone else read your post and thinks that you've got a point (a scary prospect).

Sharp's Actius MM10 notebook (review, run Gentoo on it) is about 6 years old now, and it's just as thin as the Intel prototype. It had one of the first Transmeta chips, the Crusoe at 933Mhz. I own one, and it still gets used to this day. It runs Linux now, because only that OS supports WPA2 with its wireless chipset (Prizm2). I love this thing so much that when it's display got damaged I payed for an out-of-warranty repair.

The newer MM20 model is slightly thicker, has a built-in optical drive, and runs a Transmeta Efficeon core.

Where did you pull that number out of? I thought there were estimates of thousands of years of fissionable uranium deposits based on current energy usage...

Maybe if by "current energy usage" you mean the current amount of electricity generated by fission. Or if by "deposits" you mean every atom of uranium on the planet, regardless of the cost to collect it.

MIT's report of the future of nuclear power concluded that "the world-wide supply of uranium ore is sufficient to fuel the deployment of 1000 reactors over the next half century and to maintain this level of deployment over a 40 year lifetime of this fleet." That's based on 1000 reactors of 1000 MW each, which they estimate would supply about 20% of world electrical demand. If we scale that up by 5 to meet all world demand, that's less than 20 years of reserves.

They considered the "once-through" cycle, not breeders, saying that once-through "has advantages in cost, proliferation, and fuel cycle safety", and finding that "reprocessing and one-pass fuel recycle with current technology...[increase by] about 4.5 times the fuel cost of the once-through cycle." Even if you assume a breakthrough in reprocessing could increase the practical reserves by a order of magnitude, that's only 200 years.

A reply below mentions what become economical at $400-500 per pound of uranium. That's absurd. At that price it becomes even more clear that fission is a poor choice.

This principle is similar to Rivest's winnowing and chaffing cryptographic system, or the military countermeasures used to confuse self guiding missiles.

(*) but not fake terrorism, that would be counterproductive in his case :)

Adi Shamir designed one already. Instead of 11 months, it takes 12--but it could (in theory) factor any 1024-bit number.

You've left off "D".
I wasn't explaining their example, I was giving you a different example where network coding can be put to good use with a clear reason for the existence of the additional unused resources. There are more good examples in wikipedia.

And you failed to account for how B would know ahead of time that C would be sending a message.
  That's an implementation detail. It's been solved by buffering some packets at B. There are good papers on this out there, like xor in the air.


In your wireless example, it would be easier to just skip B and have A broadcast its message to all and sundry and then C can broadcast.

What part of "A and C are too far from each other, so they need to go through B" did you not understand?

Network coding is far from a brand new idea. It is introduced in a paper by Ahlswede http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/decouto/papers/ahlswede0 0.pdf published in 2000 and has ever since been a very popular research topic in the networking world (http://www.ifp.uiuc.edu/~koetter/NWC/index.html). These "clues" are linear equations where actual packets can be retrieved by applying a gaussian reduction on the equations. Its most obvious applications are with multicasting where utilization of network links can indeed be increased in an informational theoretical perspective. The tradeoffs are increased CPU load on the intermediate and end nodes. The research so far is a bit from getting into the practical stages but it has promise. As for "99% of internet traffic being unicast"; even though that might be true, one needs to think outside the box. If it turns out that multicasting will be much cheaper than now (multicasting is now in most cases basically multiple unicasting), broadcasting TV through packet networks might become much more efficient and this proportion could change. Finally, don't forget that research is still in early stages. I believe there are some years, even decades (if ever), until we will see any of this in practice. Maybe it turns out to be useless for computer networks, who knows. Even so, the basic principle might still prove useful for other applications such as routing inside solid state chips.

This is also a hot topic in wireless networks. In multi-hop wireless networks it can enable nodes to forward many packets in a single transmission. A neat paper about this is here.

Also the coding people are going crazy about this too. There were a couple papers showing that network coding is a simple extension of linear block codes.

Don't tell me Intel isn't trying to hurt the One Laptop Per Child program. They've bought 'sponsored link' ads on Google linked to 'Nicholas Negroponte'. The chief proponent of the OLPC program.