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Some interesting speculation as to why the results were pulled...

Every patenting law has, until now, excluded the patenting of mathematical constructs. There are many reasons for this, not least of which the fact that mathematics can be considered a force of nature. The problem is that there is no real difference between a mathematical formula and an algorithm (see Knuth's letter to the patent office). So, any algorithm should be excluded from patenting.

There are some people who try to distinguish between "mathematical algorithms" and "non-mathematical algorithms". As I see it, this is a ridiculous distinction to make. But even if you would make it, the RSA algorithm quite clearly falls in the category of mathematical algorithms, since it is based purely on the number properties. So, the RSA patent should never have been granted.

I'd be more excited about this announcement, if I could get my own Actius PC-MM10 to boot from the USB CDROM drive. First, I tried a generic CDROM drive. No go. I called Sharp (1-800-BE-SHARP), and they told me that practically the only CDROM which the laptop can boot from is the Lite-On model which comes bundled with it (I didn't go for the bundle). The tech support guy told me that I didn't have to purchase the drive from Sharp, as long as I got the correct Lite-On model.

I purchased that CDROM drive (not from Sharp, which charges $300 for a simple combo drive) and now I have two CDROM drives which the laptop can't boot from. I'm pretty frustrated, because I'm trying to create a dual-boot installation, and resizing the Windows partition has made it unbootable. Also, I'm not an expert, and so I'm having some trouble installing GNAA/Linux through the cradle. I think it's a problem with initrd. I'm not too worried about that. I'll figure it out. But, it would be nice to retain a small Windows installation, as well.

I absolutely love my laptop. It's super-portable and has a wonderful bright screen, but not being able to boot from USB CDROM is making my life very difficult.

Resources for installing GNAA/Linux on this laptop:

Gentoo GNAA/Linux on the Sharp Actius PC-MM10 [mit.edu]

GNAA/Linux on the Sharp PC-MM10 [sleepers.net]

I emailed John Lee from the first link above, and he confirmed that he is able to boot from his CDROM drive. I'm interested to know how Sharp tech support will handle this, because they have so far been very courteous. ucw

Here's the introduction:

abc is a language designed to notate tunes in an ascii format. It was designed primarily for folk and traditional tunes of Western European origin (such as English, Irish and Scottish) which can be written on one stave in standard classical notation. However, it is extendible to many other types of music and recently Steve Allen has coded Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, Movement 2 in abc! Since its introduction at the end of 1991 it has become very popular and there now exist several Windows, Mac, Palmtop and UNIX based tools which can read abc notation and either process it into staff notation or play it through the speakers of a computer.

One of the most important aims of abc notation, and perhaps one that distinguishes it from most, if not all, computer-readable musical languages is that it can be easily read by humans. In other words, with a little practice, it is possible to play a tune directly from the abc notation without having to process and print it out. Even if this isn't of interest, the resulting clarity of the notation makes it fairly easy to notate tunes. In addition, the ability to write music in abc notation means that it can be easily and portably stored or transported electronically hence enabling the discussion and dissemination of music via email.

ABC is an extremely popular format for collecting and exchanging tunes. There are Large Tune Repositories [norbeck.nu] and Tune Search Engines [mit.edu] using ABC. cm

I found a Java Simulation

Around 20 years ago a programmer at MIT quit his job to develop a complete and free Unix-style operating system--the GNU system. That programmer was Richard Stallman, also known as rms, the founder of the Free Software Foundation.

Since 1984 he has fought for software freedom and created the concept of free software. Software is considered free if users have the following four freedoms:

• The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
• The freedom to improve the program and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition.

Copyleft licenses protect these four freedoms. The most prominent license is the GNU General Public License, which allows the author to retain a copyright and permits redistribution and modification under terms designed to ensure that all modified versions of the software remain under copyleft terms.

In this period of threats to freedom, Federico Biancuzzi interviewed this freedom paladin.

FB: GNU/Linux (the complete OS!) is probably the most known free software project. What do you think about the fact that Linux (the kernel!) uses a proprietary program to manage its source code?

RMS: It is unfortunate when anyone uses proprietary software. Using it publicly for the development of a prominent free software package is particularly unfortunate, because it sets a bad example for the community.

FB: Isn't there any free alternative under development?

RMS: There are already free programs that do the same basic job. Linus Torvalds feels they are not convenient enough, and he values convenience more than he values standing firm for freedom. I think that is leading the community in the wrong direction.

As part of the GNU Project, Tom Lord is developing a new free source control system called Arch, which we hope will outdo the proprietary ones.

But just because we are competing with proprietary software on issues of technical merit doesn't mean we think people should choose the program for source control based on technical qualities alone. That would mean assigning zero value to freedom itself. If you value freedom, you will resist the temptation to use a program that takes away your freedom, whatever technical advantages it may have.

FB: What do you think about proprietary software? Does it have low quality? Is it unsecure? Does it restrict freedom too much? Is it unethical?

RMS: Proprietary software is unethical, because it denies the user the basic freedom to control her own computer and to cooperate. It may also be of low quality or insecure, but that's a secondary issue. I will reject it even if it is the best quality in the world, simply because I value my freedom too much to give it up for that.

FB: Would you accept a federal law in the United States to enforce the distribution of source code with every type of software?

RMS: I am not calling for such a law as of now, but I think that would be a valid consumer protection measure--like requiring food products to publish the list of ingredients.

Of course, some software companies would object to this, j

Movies or music on the other hand requires expensive equipment to be put in recording.

Then movies and music need a lot of finance to be publicized. This is something new and people won't go watch/buy it unless they know about it. So you buy advertisement slots in different outlets. This also costs money.

As a recording musician, I'd rather that 10 people buy my CD and pay me, instead of 1 buying and uploading it and having 100 people listening to it.

Not all people downloading will buy but some would have.

Robert Morris et al took a look at establishing ad hoc networks in cars a few years ago: http://www.pdos.lcs.mit.edu/~rtm/papers/carnet00-a bstract.html

What We Can Learn From BSD
By Chinese Karma Whore, Version 1.0

Everyone knows about BSD's failure and imminent demise. As we pore over the history of BSD, we'll uncover a story of fatal mistakes, poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.

Let's not be overly morbid and give BSD credit for its early successes. In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as the premiere open platform, and, after initial successes with the 4.1BSD product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract.

These early triumphs would soon be forgotten in a series of internal conflicts that would mar BSD's progress. In 1992, AT&T filed suit against Berkeley Software, claiming that proprietary code agreements had been haphazardly violated. In the same year, BSD filed countersuit, reciprocating bad intentions and fueling internal rivalry. While AT&T and Berkeley Software lawyers battled in court, lead developers of various BSD distributions quarreled on Usenet. In 1995, Theo de Raadt, one of the founders of the NetBSD project, formed his own rival distribution, OpenBSD, as the result of a quarrel that he documents on his website. Mr. de Raadt's stubborn arrogance was later seen in his clash with Darren Reed, which resulted in the expulsion of IPF from the OpenBSD distribution.

As personal rivalries took precedence over a quality product, BSD's codebase became worse and worse. As we all know, incompatibilities between each BSD distribution make code sharing an arduous task. Research conducted at MIT found BSD's filesystem implementation to be "very poorly performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind, according to this study.

Problems with BSD's codebase were compounded by fundamental flaws in the BSD design approach. As argued by Eric Raymond in his watershed essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, rapid, decentralized development models are inherently superior to slow, centralized ones in software development. BSD developers never heeded Mr. Raymond's lesson and insisted that centralized models lead to 'cleaner code.' Don't believe their hype - BSD's development model has significantly impaired its progress. Any achievements that BSD managed to make were nullified by the BSD license, which allows corporations and coders alike to reap profits without reciprocating the goodwill of open-source. Fortunately, Linux is not prone to this exploitation, as it is licensed under the GPL.

The failure of BSD culminated in the resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core team. Both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality. Like an empire in decline, BSD had become bureaucratic and stagnant. As Linux gains market share and as BSD sinks deeper into the mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies to BSD's demise.

"Thevere lithp"? You mean a Thcheme?

What We Can Learn From BSD
By Chinese Karma Whore, Version 1.0

Everyone knows about BSD's failure and imminent demise. As we pore over the history of BSD, we'll uncover a story of fatal mistakes, poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.

Let's not be overly morbid and give BSD credit for its early successes. In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as the premiere open platform, and, after initial successes with the 4.1BSD product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract.

These early triumphs would soon be forgotten in a series of internal conflicts that would mar BSD's progress. In 1992, AT&T filed suit against Berkeley Software, claiming that proprietary code agreements had been haphazardly violated. In the same year, BSD filed countersuit, reciprocating bad intentions and fueling internal rivalry. While AT&T and Berkeley Software lawyers battled in court, lead developers of various BSD distributions quarreled on Usenet. In 1995, Theo de Raadt, one of the founders of the NetBSD project, formed his own rival distribution, OpenBSD, as the result of a quarrel that he documents on his website. Mr. de Raadt's stubborn arrogance was later seen in his clash with Darren Reed, which resulted in the expulsion of IPF from the OpenBSD distribution.

As personal rivalries took precedence over a quality product, BSD's codebase became worse and worse. As we all know, incompatibilities between each BSD distribution make code sharing an arduous task. Research conducted at MIT found BSD's filesystem implementation to be "very poorly performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind, according to this study.

Problems with BSD's codebase were compounded by fundamental flaws in the BSD design approach. As argued by Eric Raymond in his watershed essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, rapid, decentralized development models are inherently superior to slow, centralized ones in software development. BSD developers never heeded Mr. Raymond's lesson and insisted that centralized models lead to 'cleaner code.' Don't believe their hype - BSD's development model has significantly impaired its progress. Any achievements that BSD managed to make were nullified by the BSD license, which allows corporations and coders alike to reap profits without reciprocating the goodwill of open-source. Fortunately, Linux is not prone to this exploitation, as it is licensed under the GPL.

The failure of BSD culminated in the resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core team. They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality. Like an empire in decline, BSD had become bureaucratic and stagnant. As Linux gains market share and as BSD sinks deeper into the mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies to BSD's demise.

IANACS (I Am Not A Climate Scientist), but while there are areaa w/ warming trends, there are also some odd cooling trends. Interesting quote from a link below:

Since 1940, however, the Greenland coastal stations data have undergone predominantly a cooling trend. At the summit of the Greenland ice sheet the summer average temperature has decreased at the rate of 2.2 C per decade since the beginning of the measurements in 1987.

Some links:

• Global Warming and the Greenland Ice Sheet
• Reason magazine article mentioning various conflicting evidence / dissenting views on global warming.
• SATELLITES SHOW OVERALL INCREASES IN ANTARCTIC SEA ICE COVER

Fun quote from a actual MIT climatologist, Richard S. Lindzen :

the Antarctic is not warming and there is nothing in the models that distinguish the temperature trends they predict in the Arctic from those in the Antarctic.

My favorite quote from the Reason article:

Climate is messy.

Until Asimo appeared, there were no self-balancing two-legged robots.

Honda themselves disagree, never mind that there also have always been a number of (little-known) academic research projects around the world in this area since the 60s.

American universities had given up on the idea.

Oh, is that why MIT started work on M2 in 1998, two years before ASIMO came out?

Look, I do not deny that ASIMO has captured the public's imagination and done a great deal to popularize this field. However, it wasn't the first to do much of anything, it's just (along with Qrio) the most lavishly funded and hence prettiest show-off biped.

I still haven't seen a working self-balancing bipedal robot of American design

Well now you have. You're welcome.

Until Asimo appeared, there were no self-balancing two-legged robots.

Honda themselves disagree, never mind that there also have always been a number of (little-known) academic research projects around the world in this area since the 60s.

American universities had given up on the idea.

Oh, is that why MIT started work on M2 in 1998, two years before ASIMO came out?

Look, I do not deny that ASIMO has captured the public's imagination and done a great deal to popularize this field. However, it wasn't the first to do much of anything, it's just (along with Qrio) the most lavishly funded and hence prettiest show-off biped.

I still haven't seen a working self-balancing bipedal robot of American design

Well now you have. You're welcome.

This is an example of a hack:
Rewiring an elevator when no one is looking to make it say witty things.

This is an example of not a hack:
Using computers to steal credit card numbers.

Do we see the difference? One is "playfully clever" and one is not.

To save anyone else poking around....

The file based backend (termed FSFS) came out in version 1.1.0 which was released on Sep 29, 2004. Since then, a minor bug fix maintenance release V1.1.1 has been released on Oct 22, 2004.

Subversion 1.1 Release Notes

(and State of the Project)

--snip--

Non-database repositories (new server feature)

It's now possible to create repositories that don't use a BerkeleyDB database. Instead, these new repositories store data in the ordinary filesystem. Because Subversion developers often refer to the repository as "The Filesystem", we have adopted the rather confusing habit of referring to these new repositories as "fsfs" repositories... that is, a Filesystem implementation that uses the OS filesystem to store data.

Note that the data files created by fsfs repositories are still in a binary format, and are not human editable!

Why would someone choose an fsfs repository over BerkeleyDB? The immediate and obvious advantages are the ability to access a repository over a network filesystem, and no more database "wedges" needing recovery. You can read the
full list of advantages/disadvantages at http://web.mit.edu/ghudson/info/fsfs

To create an fsfs repository, simply run 'svnadmin create --fs-type fsfs'. Or, if BerkeleyDB wasn't detected at compile time, 'svnadmin create' will default to type fsfs.

--snip--

run then svn dump command which will serialize your database into a text representation.

Run svn create --fs-type fsfs

and usesvn load to incorporate all the data into your new database.

the similarity between the .com domain and the .com executable has been exploited in recent email-worms.

At the rate TLD's are being added how long before more such problems arise?
How long before users simply click on this stuff, assuming that .url is simple another TLD?

I did a little bit of searching and haven't been able to find anyone who still has one. I did find this site which has the digi-comp 1 implemented in knex.

What We Can Learn From BSD
By Chinese Karma Whore, Version 1.0

Everyone knows about BSD's failure and imminent demise. As we pore over the history of BSD, we'll uncover a story of fatal mistakes, poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.

Let's not be overly morbid and give BSD credit for its early successes. In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as the premiere open platform, and, after initial successes with the 4.1BSD product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract.

These early triumphs would soon be forgotten in a series of internal conflicts that would mar BSD's progress. In 1992, AT&T filed suit against Berkeley Software, claiming that proprietary code agreements had been haphazardly violated. In the same year, BSD filed countersuit, reciprocating bad intentions and fueling internal rivalry. While AT&T and Berkeley Software lawyers battled in court, lead developers of various BSD distributions quarreled on Usenet. In 1995, Theo de Raadt, one of the founders of the NetBSD project, formed his own rival distribution, OpenBSD, as the result of a quarrel that he documents on his website. Mr. de Raadt's stubborn arrogance was later seen in his clash with Darren Reed, which resulted in the expulsion of IPF from the OpenBSD distribution.

As personal rivalries took precedence over a quality product, BSD's codebase became worse and worse. As we all know, incompatibilities between each BSD distribution make code sharing an arduous task. Research conducted at MIT found BSD's filesystem implementation to be "very poorly performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind, according to this study.

Problems with BSD's codebase were compounded by fundamental flaws in the BSD design approach. As argued by Eric Raymond in his watershed essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, rapid, decentralized development models are inherently superior to slow, centralized ones in software development. BSD developers never heeded Mr. Raymond's lesson and insisted that centralized models lead to 'cleaner code.' Don't believe their hype - BSD's development model has significantly impaired its progress. Any achievements that BSD managed to make were nullified by the BSD license, which allows corporations and coders alike to reap profits without reciprocating the goodwill of open-source. Fortunately, Linux is not prone to this exploitation, as it is licensed under the GPL.

The failure of BSD culminated in the resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core team. They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality. Like an empire in decline, BSD had become bureaucratic and stagnant. As Linux gains market share and as BSD sinks deeper into the mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies to BSD's demise.

here are some nice pictures of Hillis' tinker toy tic tac toe machine...It predates his work on the Connection Machine and Thinking Machines Inc.
Goes to show you how strong the mind can become with a little exerecise in logic. Other posters are right about how limited the potential circuits are with lossy elements but all the the same, kudos to Lego for hoping that at least some of us consider thinking a form of recreation.

The squeeze theorem is taught in 2nd year calculus, used to evaluate limits of some functions..

I've usually found technically minded kids from 7th grade through high school get a kick out of making computer games, even very crude, simple ones. I had a class in high school where we'd write simple programs and build things with Legos and motors, etc which turned out to be fun even for people that usually wouldn't be into it.

On the programming end, PyGame, an API for writing games in Python based on SDL should provide the gentlest introduction while still having kids do real "programming". And it's all free as long as kids have access to a computer lab. DirectX/C++ is usually too much for newbies to handle, but beginners can usually do some basic work in Python.

An element of competition may help increase interest -- I know this is way beyond anything you'd be planning and the scope of what high school kids could handle but here we have a game/AI programming contest (6.370) which provides a base platform/game engine so people without much game programming experience to still make something useful.

Lego Mindstorms probably also work in giving kids something "technical" to play with, but might be expensive for a volunteer project (unless you can get funding or have the kids buy the sets.)

I'd say start small -- many kids are elated to even get draw a ball bouncing across the screen, and it may spur their enthusiasm to learn on their own from there. Just tell them they can learn to make computer games.

-fren

My wife, an elementary school teacher, has been coaching a Lego league team. They use lego mindstorms (the robotic kit spawned from MIT I'm sure many slashdotters are familiar with) to build a robot that will compete against other local teams robots at a variety of tasks.

The 5th graders have been very enthusiastic and there was far more interest than space available. High School kids were used as volunteers to help the younger kids and chaperone. Once again the interest was much higher than the space available.

I think that robotics is still an exciting technology and it is much more accessible than it ever was when I was in school.

At least you have a support group.

I'm a high school senior and I would love to have software like this.

There are times in my high school calculus course where I would love to be able to see practical applications of the things I learn in class. Or get extra help on a difficult concept I didn't quite understand in class.

I've tried to use recouces like wikipedia, open course ware (though MIT is a bit out of my leauge), and Sparknotes; but, its hard to learn a concept without a good explanation and instruction.

In conclusion, software that could achually teach or at least tutor math would be a godsend to me and thousands of other confused math students.

P.S. Please don't complain to me about getting better math teachers - thats an issue you'd have to take up with the union. Also, bad students isn't always their fault.

In addition to Octave (which I've played with a little but can't really comment on), I experimented a bit with a number of symbolic math programs. My problem was that I had a really freakin' big machine-generated equation that I was hoping could be reduced to something sane. As it happened, the answer was no, but I tried out a bunch of programs.

(Disclaimer: it's been a while and I didn't put too much effort into investigations so I Could Be Wrong About Stuff.)

JACAL managed to actually do the reduction (instead of flailing away for a while before dying or my killing it) but that's not all that useful for students. My main complaint was that it didn't seem useful if you didn't know Scheme, or at least how to cope with a Scheme interpreter. So if you typed the wrong thing, it dropped into the Scheme debugger. Also, no graphics.

Mathomatic choked on the Giant Equation and died. On the other hand, it built painlessly and seems reasonably simple. Once again, it's text-only. I wasn't very impressed with it, but on the other hand, I gave up on it as soon as I realized it couldn't handle my equation.

YACAS seemed better organized. It has a C-ish interpreted language that seems to implement a lot of the system and it looks pretty well-documented. When I tried it on my equation, it ran for about 24 hours without returning a result so I killed it. Once again, it's textual but it'll talk to a plotting program called Superficie to, uh, plot stuff.

You may want to try these out and see if they'll do what you want.

Umm, to kill germs. That's why water is heated, not just for comfort.

Standard home hot water heaters aren't designed to kill germs, and they don't get hot enough to kill germs.

Furthermore, you should never use your hot tap water for cooking, due to hot water's better ability to carry lead found in home plumbing. Instead, boil cold tap water on your stovetop or in your microwave oven.

Here are a couple references for your benefit:
About hot water's ability to kill germs
On lead and plumbing

There are many other (better) references than these two... these are just the ones I found first.

One of the original designers of Scheme?
Primary author of Common Lisp the Language?
Co-author of C: A Reference Manual, which was the bible on writing portable C?
Co-author of The Java Language Specification?

If contributing to the design of four major programming languages doesn't get you into the top twenty, how about designing the original EMACS command set? There may be people who are better known for contributions to one language or one toolset, but it's hard to beat him for sheer breadth.

After all a few years ago, the WSJ used to use crypt() with input == username || server_secret (where || means concatenation) to create a user's cookie (for access to the subscription-only portions of the site).

And crypt() only takes 8 chars of input; so if the username was longer than 8 chars then the server_secret was not used and if two usernames were identical in the first 8 chars (not prohibited by the WSJ system), then the two would have the same hashed value.

And the cookie consisted of: username || output_of_crypt (as above); so one could forge a cookie for any user (and thereby have access to that user's account info... and use that user's credit card info (if stored as part of the user's account)

So the adversary only needs to know a username to log in as a user (and can discover a username by trying to register one and IF registration fails (b/c "that username is not available") -- bam! you've got access).

Anyway, it was pretty easy to recover the server_secret because of this... which by the way was a value that could have been recovered via a dictionary attack anyway (IIRC, it was the original release date of the system).

Want the dets? Look here (*.pdf) -- "Dos and Don'ts of Client Auth on the Web" by Fu/Sit/Smith/Feamster.

Nice set of links. Some additional ones, more focussed on the US program:
The largest magnetic fusion experiment in the US is the DIII-D tokamak in San Diego:
http://fusion.gat.com/
There's some nice educational material on fusion available on that site at:
http://fusioned.gat.com/
Other major US experiments are the Alcator C-Mod tokamak at MIT (http://www.psfc.mit.edu/cmod/), and the NSTX device at Princeton (http://nstx.pppl.gov/). Rob Goldston, who is interviewed in the article is the director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab, where NSTX is located.

The field of study of physicists working on (magnetic) fusion energy research is not nuclear physics, it is plasma physics. The relevant nuclear physics issues (mostly just reaction cross sections) have been largely understood for some time. The physics of plasmas (ionized gases) is the area in which the advances described in the article occurred, in particular advances in understand how energy is transported by turbulence, and how high plasma pressures can be confined by magnetic fields.

For any young folks interested in pursuing fusion research/plasma physics, some major US graduate programs are at:
Princeton, MIT, U. of Wisconsin, U. of Texas, UCLA, UCSD and Columbia.

Also, all the comments on the CS Monitor as a source here strike me as odd. The Monitor is one of the most respected publications in the US, and its reporting, particularly on foreign policy issues, but also on science, is of a quality rarely matched in the US mainstream press. This article is a nice example - it contains very few of the usual misunderstandings and misrepresentations often found in mainstream press articles about fusion. I'm surprised that so many here seem not even to have heard of the Monitor before.

Unfortunately, Apple has it patented.

Interesting idea, though - what if Apple sold an iPod with electronic paper in the case? You really could skin that hardware, and it would sell the same way that custom cases and faceplates for cellphones do today.

This concept reminds one of the MIT robotic competition http://web.mit.edu/6.270/www/contestants/ et al. Design teams work with identical parts kits http://web.mit.edu/6.270/www/contestants/handouts/ kit2004.html which, in the 2004 competition, included Legos components.

The teams must create a robot that performs a given task(s), and the 'bots battle it out at the end.

This concept reminds one of the MIT robotic competition http://web.mit.edu/6.270/www/contestants/ et al. Design teams work with identical parts kits http://web.mit.edu/6.270/www/contestants/handouts/ kit2004.html which, in the 2004 competition, included Legos components.

The teams must create a robot that performs a given task(s), and the 'bots battle it out at the end.

What We Can Learn From BSD
By Chinese Karma Whore, Version 1.0

Everyone knows about BSD's failure and imminent demise. As we pore over the history of BSD, we'll uncover a story of fatal mistakes, poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.

Let's not be overly morbid and give BSD credit for its early successes. In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as the premiere open platform, and, after initial successes with the 4.1BSD product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract.

These early triumphs would soon be forgotten in a series of internal conflicts that would mar BSD's progress. In 1992, AT&T filed suit against Berkeley Software, claiming that proprietary code agreements had been haphazardly violated. In the same year, BSD filed countersuit, reciprocating bad intentions and fueling internal rivalry. While AT&T and Berkeley Software lawyers battled in court, lead developers of various BSD distributions quarreled on Usenet. In 1995, Theo de Raadt, one of the founders of the NetBSD project, formed his own rival distribution, OpenBSD, as the result of a quarrel that he documents on his website. Mr. de Raadt's stubborn arrogance was later seen in his clash with Darren Reed, which resulted in the expulsion of IPF from the OpenBSD distribution.

As personal rivalries took precedence over a quality product, BSD's codebase became worse and worse. As we all know, incompatibilities between each BSD distribution make code sharing an arduous task. Research conducted at MIT found BSD's filesystem implementation to be "very poorly performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind, according to this study.

Problems with BSD's codebase were compounded by fundamental flaws in the BSD design approach. As argued by Eric Raymond in his watershed essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, rapid, decentralized development models are inherently superior to slow, centralized ones in software development. BSD developers never heeded Mr. Raymond's lesson and insisted that centralized models lead to 'cleaner code.' Don't believe their hype - BSD's development model has significantly impaired its progress. Any achievements that BSD managed to make were nullified by the BSD license, which allows corporations and coders alike to reap profits without reciprocating the goodwill of open-source. Fortunately, Linux is not prone to this exploitation, as it is licensed under the GPL.

The failure of BSD culminated in the resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core team. They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality. Like an empire in decline, BSD had become bureaucratic and stagnant. As Linux gains market share and as BSD sinks deeper into the mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies to BSD's demise.

Uncertainty principle, as in Quantum Mechanics?! That's a really funny one! The only thing fundamentally limiting signals transmission is noise, which in electromagnetic transmissions comes in its most unavoidable form from thermal noise. There are other sources of "noise" or "interference": depending on the environment, interference can come from other communicating devices, a car's engine ignition sparks, thunder, a static discharge, a microwave oven... And worsening it all, media also always attenuate the signal, more or less, therefore weakening the Signal-to-Noise ratio which along with the available bandwidth determines the theoretical capacity of the transmission system. The uncertainty principle has nothing to do with it.

Any good introductory course in Digital Communications will cover this, and introduce the notion of QAM and constellations in passing. May I suggest this Digital Communications OpenCourseWare module (viva MIT) or, for a gentler introduction that might not be as complete, this set of slides (viva University of Cambridge).

And once you've read all about it, be sure to write up an entry about it in WikiPedia ;-) -- or to update this one.

Radio systems utilizing multiple antennae (MIMO), may "trump" this to some extent by playing on the fact that spectrum is a three-dimensional medium and not a one-dimensional medium (contrary to twisted pairs or coaxial cables). On that, you may want to read this intro.

MIT is very much accredited. "Everybody knows they're just fine" is not nearly enough to continue in business, not least because neither the federal government nor any state will extend grants or loans to students attending institutions that are not accredited by a recognized governing body. No accreditation = no $$$$, period. Recognized accreditation commissions are organized regionally in the United States - the US Department of Education would probably be the best place to start for a comprehensive list.

The reason the organization that accredits UC Berkeley has any clout is that it accredits Berkeley.

Nope. The reason the organization that accredits UC Berkeley has clout is for the same reason the organization that accredits MIT has clout - without it, the money dries up and the joint either shuts down or converts over to a for-profit trade school.

Yeah, that is more or less it:

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Brain-and-Cognitive-Scie nces/9-96Experimental-Methods-of-Adjustable-Tetrod e-Array-NeurophysiologyJanuary--IAP-2001/CourseHom e/

At Furdlog the question is posed how interested a Chinese manufacturer will be in incorporating hardware controls that comply with US copy protection policies, but also cripple the product?

This blog notes that the same question was raised by the broadcast flag scheme. Foreign manufacturers that want to export PCs to the U.S. will have to incorporate this copy protection in the hardware. A globalization of U.S. policies.

I guess Lenovo will be more than happy to comply with U.S. policies to bring IBM PCs back home, controlled and all-American style.

Whatever the merits of the argument, you're asking people to try to prove a negative, aren't you?

Typically the way these things work is that you come up with a hypothesis, gather some data, look for a mechanism and do some statistics. If the stats are amazing you can get by with asserting a causative effect without a mechanism, but if they're not you have to stick with correlation.

So far, we have a theory, some short-term data, and some signs of correlation. That Slashdotters are throwing out alternate unproven theories doesn't change the process - they can be safely ignored.

That they are driven to even try fits with Dr. Lindzen's observations on the media's love affair with the story. I mean, "End of the World," now that sells papers!

Steve: a lot of your comments in /. are on the money or at least worth a read but "as long as we have a few smart people..." is abjectly elitist and dooms us to a downward spiral...I'm sure some in the whitehouse hold the same view even if they are not aware they are one of the dimwits. and as for "...it doesn't matter how many dumb people you have..." Did you notice our recent election?
...If only 5% of students are really good at math, that is still tens of millions of students and thats more than enough to engineer world class materials and products. The other 95% will get jobs to service others,...
I don't think so. Unless you can put that 5% all in one place, they won't have anybody who understands them, or can even STAND them and they won't have anybody to compete with. Don't underestimate comptetitive instinct as a motive to drag the best performance out of people. Having a place, like MIT, doesn't seem to work either: MIT gets only a fourth of its students from other countries as a matter of policy and could easily take more if grades and test scores were the only criteria for admission. Your spin on foriegn students misses the point: we need them as much as they need us if we are going to remain a country of "the best and the brightest" and keep the old phrase "American know-how" from becoming a joke.
Lets look at your math a bit more closely:
get the census bureau demographic picture for this [or any other ] country. In our case there are only 60 million people old enough to be in school. Suppose they all were in school. Then your 5% number is 3 million, country wide, in all grades who are capable of benefitting from a more strenuous math curriculum. No school system I know can provide tutors for a gifted 5%. Or, viewed another way, only in poorer schools [class size > 20 ]would you be likely to find even one of your worthy student per classroom on average.

NO. Wrong answer, Wrong attitude. The number who could really "get" most math is closer to 50% if it were a family and community value [read the comments about Korea] to do so and the salary and community respect for teachers would attract teachers that "got" math. People are put in classrooms to learn about things. They are put in familys to care about things...but the caring predicts success for the learning.

It's nice to know I wasn't the only one who thought of the other Flash. Although I thought of All Your Base, Yatta, and How to Kill a Mockingbird first. :)

I know, very March 2001...

It's nice to know I wasn't the only one who thought of the other Flash. Although I thought of All Your Base, Yatta, and How to Kill a Mockingbird first. :)

I know, very March 2001...

After a bit of research (reading the article) I found this link

I'll wager a wild guess that it's a glass bow...

Aolution by the photographer

How about playing games while you pee?

LL1 Call for Participation
Anton van Straaten

I think there is a lot more agreement about what isn't lightweight.

If a language is statically typed and doesn't have type inferencing, it's probably not lightweight. If a language does not have a freely available implementation, it's probably not lightweight. Any language that requires you to type this much to implement "Hello World" is definitely not lightweight:

using System;

namespace MyProject
{
public class MyClass
{
public static void Main(string[] args)
{
Console.WriteLine("Hello World!");
}
}
}

I think one good way to look at it is whether you feel like the programming language gets in the way of what you're trying to express. If you're constantly adding characters to placate a compiler, if you're forced to define an object when what you really want is to write a simple script, if you're forced to do all sorts of arcane tricks to interop with other languages (especially C), all of these things work against you as a programmer and add "weight" to the program and to the process.

By these criteria, I think most programmers would consider Perl a lightweight language...

LL1 Call for Participation
Anton van Straaten

I think there is a lot more agreement about what isn't lightweight.

If a language is statically typed and doesn't have type inferencing, it's probably not lightweight. If a language does not have a freely available implementation, it's probably not lightweight. Any language that requires you to type this much to implement "Hello World" is definitely not lightweight:

using System;

namespace MyProject
{
public class MyClass
{
public static void Main(string[] args)
{
Console.WriteLine("Hello World!");
}
}
}

I think one good way to look at it is whether you feel like the programming language gets in the way of what you're trying to express. If you're constantly adding characters to placate a compiler, if you're forced to define an object when what you really want is to write a simple script, if you're forced to do all sorts of arcane tricks to interop with other languages (especially C), all of these things work against you as a programmer and add "weight" to the program and to the process.

By these criteria, I think most programmers would consider Perl a lightweight language...

Apple should invent an e-book reader.

They already had one, years ago. It was called the Newton.

Back when I was working for ANS - err, UUNet - umm, WorldCom - I would download text files, convert them to Newton Book files, upload them to my trusty Newton 2100, and read away. I read The Hacker Crackdown while taking lunchtime walks, as well as a few RFCs.

The Newton's form factor would still be great for an ebook reader. There's still a small but rabid base of people still writing software for the Newton, including mp3 players, 802.11 support, and even a web server! Surely someone can be persuaded to come up with a modern book reader / creator package for the Newton.

The only problem with this is the pride of Steve Jobs. One of his first actions upon returning to the Apple helm was the killing of the entire Newton program, ostensibly as it was the baby of John Sculley, the man who had Jobs removed from Apple. Apple still has the rights to the name and the hardware, and the Inkwell software that's included with OS X supposedly came from the Newton handwriting recognition software, so I can't see a reason why this wouldn't be possible.

Then again, I'm a hopeless dreamer about seeing the best PDA platform in existance making a return to the market :)

Lua was in last year's lightweight languages workshop.