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Bose is actually named for its 1964 founder (and current MIT professor of EE & CS) Dr. Amar Bose. I agree that what you're buying is marketing, but I don't want the parent's acronym (humorous as it is) to be labelled as informative.

"This book is dedicated, in respect and admiration, to the spirit that lives in the computer."

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.

AIX is not a pure micro based but something called an exokernel. I am not an expert on this but other slashdotters mentioned that exokernels are micro based but graphics are run in the kernel as well as a few other subtile differences.

I'm not sure those other Slasdotters are experts, either, as I've not seen "exokernel" used in the sense of "a small kernel to which user-mode servers are added to handle file systems, network protocols, and the like" - the sense in which I've usually seen "microkernel" used when it's describing something that's not a "modified microkernel" along the lines of NT's kernel or Darwin's xnu; it generally seems to refer to a kernel that provides very low-level primitives that provide a secure interface to the low-level hardware, with file systems, network protocols, and the likes implemented as libraries that use those low-level primitives. See the MIT Exokernel Operating System page, for example, or the Wikipedia article on "kernels" in the OS sense.

I've certainly not seen anything about an exokernel being like a microkernel except that graphics are run in the kernel; that sounds more like a "modified microkernel" to me.

But really it is a microkernel like design

Really? To which version of AIX are they referring? The current one for RS/6000s (and post-Great Renaming POWER series IntelliStations and p5 and pSeries servers), in its Kernel Extensions and Device Support Programming Concepts manual, speaks of a fairly traditional VFS interface (suggesting that file systems run in kernel mode, not in userland), speaks of "network kernel services" that at least suggest that network protocols run in kernel mode, and speaks of subsystems for various driver types suggesting that those drivers run in kernel mode as well.

IBM's had several different OSes named "AIX" that were not, as far as I know, the same OS. One of them - the one for the RT PC, I think - did, if I remember correctly what I'd read, have a "hypervisor" atop which the OS kernel ran, but I don't think the kernel in question ran in user mode atop the hypervisor, and that's not the flavor of AIX running on RS/6000's and POWER series IntelliStations/p5 and pSeries servers.

In the US, we had the Hacker Crackdown of the late 80's and early 90's where law enforcement started taking computer crime a little more seriously. Plus, after Kevin Mitnick was forbidden from accessing a computer for years that would probably be enough to discourage most U.S. hackers.

On the other hand, mosst of these worm-writers have been writing their viruses and malware in countries that have computer crime laws that are either weak, not enforced, or both. Thus, they can do whatever they want, because they won't get in trouble with their governments.

Now, if we could get the virus-writers in foreign countries extradited to the US based on damage done to systems here, we might see a decrease in the viruses and mal-ware out there.

Of course, switching to operating systems other then Windows helps too.

http://cerboli.mit.edu:8000/research/mary101/resul ts/results.html

There is a problem. I have learned that if you "innovate" for the sake of innovation, your ideas will be only useful to a few, and the good enough solution takes over.

You may want to read Worse is Better, by Richard Gabriel, a prominent Lisp hacker. It discusses this phenomenon with two examples: ITS (better) vs Unix (worse), and Scheme (better) vs Common Lisp (worse). It's part of a paper about Lisp's future (at the time; it's over 11 years old).

One of my favorite quotes from the paper: The good news is that in 1995 we will have a good operating system and programming language; the bad news is that they will be Unix and C++. He was close; it's Linux and Java.

The ultimate would be to compile the program while you run it, i.e. a JIT C compiler.

DynamoRIO

Yes, I would think so. http://www.csail.mit.edu/index.php

After you have read it, I would very much like to hear a comment from you about what you think of that analysis. How much or how little do you agree with their conclusion? Has reading the report made you change your view in any way?

Because Lawrence Lessig is cool Stanford Professor that argued in front of the Supreme Court about copyright extensions, and Richard Stallman is hippy-looking MIT drop-out that argues with geeks about Linux really being GNU/Linux?

I know this is a trendy thing here to insult Richard Stallman, but please at least stick to facts. First of all, he is not an "MIT drop-out." Back in 1971, as an 18 years old freshman at Harvard University he was hired by MIT as a hacker in the AI Lab. If working as a teenager in The Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in the early '70s is not "cool" than I seriously don't know what is.

Second of all, it is slightly more complicated than "Linux really being GNU/Linux." You might want to read the GNU/Linux naming controversy article on Wikipedia for a good start. Do you remember the Seattle Times interview with Linus Torvalds which was posted here just a week ago? This is the first sentence of the opening paragraph: "Linus Torvalds [pronounced LEE-nus] started a revolution of sorts in the computer industry when he created the Linux operating system and decided to share it with fellow programmers on the Internet."

The problem is that Torvalds didn't start any revolution in 1991. The revolution had already been happening becuase that very operating system had been being written since Linus was 14 years old. Eight years later he wrote the final piece, the kernel, and finally made GNU usable.

This was a great achievemnt. But the fact that taking an 8 years old project and renaming it after one's name can often start flame wars should not be surprising to anyone. Do you remember the recent outrage with CherryOS and PearPC? There are a lot of strong emotions involved where one puts many years of hard work into a project. But that is even not the most important thing here.

It is not important whose name is on the project. It is not important who started it, but it is very important why. The GNU project was started because of some ideals. Those very ideals made it possible. And those ideals made it needed in the first place. When people read such intervies and get the impression that Torvalds wrote the entire operating system starting a revolution and don't even know that GNU has ever existed, they read "Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary" Torvald's autobiography and get the impression that it is all about fun. Meanwhile, the real revolution has started because of freedom and nothing else.

And this revolution was not about starting something new, but rather saving something old.

I strongly urge you to read Free as in Freedom written by Sam Williams to know how, when and why the revolution was started. The entire book is released under the GNU Free Documentation License and is available on-line.

Stallman, an MIT hacker in the 1970s, wanted a source code for his printer drivers to fix them. A fellow programmer refused to give it to him because of an NDA. It outraged Stallman who considered it a personal insult and who repeatedly refused to get software which was offered to him for free but with an NDA, alienating himself and making his life as a programmer much harder, because at the end he was pretty much the only person in the AI Lab with no access to all of the proprietary software there.

There are strong emotions involved. There are ideals, fight for freedom at the cost of personal sacrifices. It is not "just for fun." Richard Stallman was not an "MIT drop-out." He r

Exactly my point. "Saddam had no connection with al Qaeda" -- wrong, check the 9/11 commission and Senate Intelligence Committee report. They said "had no *direct, operational* connection." But they document a number of connections, and Saddam's other connections to Islamic fascist terrorism were not just well-documented, but overt, open, eg, the $25,000 bounty to suicide bombers in Israel.

"WMD were the sole justification under int'l law" -- also wrong, especially since the state of hostility still existed between the US and Iraq and Iraq was in multiple egregious violations of the cease fire (eg, firing on planes patrolling the no-fly zone.)

And "Saddam had no substantial WMD or WMD programs" -- except that the Duelfer report actually contradicts this: Saddam had substantial programs, and was making a major effort to maintain the infrastructure to resume WMD production as soon as the sanctions could be removed.

So, what the report is saying is that anyone who read the actual reports, instead of following the media's very high level and shallow reporting, is marked as not being in touch with reality.

Here's the searchable 9/11 Commission report.

Here's the searchable Senate intel report.

Kere's the Duelfer report.

Read the real sources. Don't believe what anyone tells you until you check them.

Jim you're on my slashdot friends list but I'm afraid I must completely disagree with you here. :o)

Tokamaks have problems, yes, but I don't think it's known weather these problems will prohibit their utilization as a fusion power source. For instance if a plasma instability forms in a tokamak while running (happens all the time) and the plasma bumps the divertor or the inside of the chamber it most certainly will not be bomb like and won't "result in burn-through" either. The introduction of (relatively) high Z material (carbon from graphite, iron, or aluminum from chamber walls) will result in INSTANT plasma quenching via the plasma radiating a huge portion of its energy through bremsstrahlung. This causes burn marks and other dust problems in the chamber but can't cause burn through of the thick metal vacuum chamber walls. And if there is a catastrophic breach of the plasma vessel it definitely, DEFINITELY will never be anything even close to a "chernobyl-style quarantine". At most, a couple grams of radioactive tritium (3-hydrogen) are contained in the vessel while "burning", even considering a total failure of containment and burnoff (a small explosion, to be sure) of all the hydrogen to form tritiated water (forming molecules of TOH or TOT rather than HOH) the amount of radioisotope release will be in the tens of KiloCurie range. Tritium is the least dangerous radioactive isotope that exists (I work with it daily), with a ~12 year half life and an average beta particle emission energy in the 5KeV range to a max of 18KeV, barely enough to go a few mm in air before being blocked; and owing to the fact that both hydrogen and water are volatile, it will be VERY quickly be evenly dispersed and diluted in the atmosphere and oceans. I doubt anyone working in the plant would die if assuming sufficient containment were used.

Tokamaks do have the issue of neutron activation to worry about among other things but I think these are at least workable problems. Remember, Tokamaks have held the world record for plasma temperatures and containment times for a very long time.

But ultimately you may be right, the Tokamak may prove unworkable from an economic energy generation standpoint. I think the project at MIT using a levatated dipole for more "natural" quiescent plasma containment looks very interesting (promising? maybe), for instance.

All of this said, BIG congratulations to the Sandia Z-machine people!! They deserve it. The energies and powers (~300 Twatts!) they've achieved are barely a factor away from those expected on the finished National Ignition Facility. The lab where I work supplied the parts for the laser called the Z-Beamlet they use to "backlight" targets so they can be viewed in X-rays as they're being imploded on Z. Looks like they've put it to good use. As new technologies like these (and others achieving PETAwatt powers) come online they will open completely new doors to fusion research This is an exciting time for very high energy experimental plasma physics.

Not sure why you would expect The Second Best Science & Technology School to be The Most Connected. I wasn't surprised that The Best Science & Technology School wasn't at the top of this list -- just look at some of the criteria. Online classes (good schools have small classes with lots of student/teacher interatction)? Online registration (students at good schools have advisors who talk to them about what classes they are going to take) ? Require students to own a computer? These aren't the kind of things that I would expect out of a Top Two school.

Check out The Columbia Tragedy: System Level Issues for Engineering, a free video from MIT World. In this video Sheila Widnall, MIT Institute Professor (Engineering Systems Division, Aeronautics) talks about her work on the investigation board. She talks about NASAs "culture of invincibility" where well-intentioned people became "desensitized to deviations from the norm". That is not only something often goes wrong as the Murphy's Law says, but people learn to ignore this until the disaster strikes.

As Sheila noted, if an engine fell off from the shuttle, people tended to notice, act and do something about it, but when it was something small, like foam, they ignored the issue, even though it was clear that this anomaly warranted investgation, testing, etc.

Interesting presentation that shows not only NASA sometimes ignores the potential for human error, but ignores the actual errors when they happen.

Every gender bias related paper I've read is about why women are the inherent underdog, not about the nature of gender bias and programming. Gender bias and programming are inherently equal opportunity victimizations and aggressions perpetrated by society, by natural situations, and by self.

The only equal-opportunity social anti-bias resource I've seen yet is VHEMT. ;-)

• "HOWTO Encourage Women in Linux"
• "Why are There so Few Female Computer Scientists?"

It's more than inertia. look at what they have first year students doing at MIT -implementing interpreters and object systems and stuff like that. Scheme is the only language with which you could reasonably expect freshmen to do that, having started the semester not even knowing the language.

The Wizard Book is still [one of?] the best introductory CS course[s] around. It's being used in Universities all around the world.

At MIT the required first computer course uses the 47-year old LISP language, at least the object-oriented, modular version called SCHEME. I guess this partially intertia, having done this since the 1970s. All electrical engineers and computer sci majors are required to take this course. That can be 40% of MIT undergrads in popular years.

This work seems to be about two things (which I am not sure I see a strong connection between): lowering transport latency, and using available bandwidth better. The latter has been the subject of many papers in the last few years. There are now several serious proposals of how to fix TCP with respect to long fat pipes. They don't seem to support the idea that retransmissions are harmful. So I'm going to talk about the first issue, transport latency.

The idea of using error-correcting codes (ECC) to eliminate the need for retransmissions is an interesting one. The main benefit is to reduce transport latency (the total time it takes to send data from application A to B). Here is another paper proposes has a similar idea, applied at a different level of the network architecture.

The root problem here is that network loss leads to increases in the transport latency experienced by applications. In TCP, the latency increases because TCP will resend data that is lost. That means at least one extra round-trip-time per retransmission. This "Rateless TCP" approach uses ECC so that the lost data can be recovered from other packets that were not dropped. In this way, the time to retransmit packets may not be needed. I say may, because there will be a loss rate threshold which will exceed the capability of the ECC, and retransmission will become necessary to ensure reliability. But, as long as the loss rate is below the threshold, then retransmissions will not be necessary. Note that the more "resilient" you make the ECC (meaning supporting a higher loss threshold), the more work will be needed at the ends. So you are not eliminating latency due to packet loss, you are simply moving it away from packet retransmission into the process of ECC. However, if you've got good ECC, the total latency will go down.

The ECC approach may be a nice middle ground. But, it the ultimate solution to minimize latency is probably through a combination of active queue management (AQM) and early congestion notification (ECN). Unlike ECC, this approach really would aim to eliminate packet loss in the network due to congestion, and therefore completely eliminate the associated latency. Either ECC or regular TCP would benefit. In a controlled testbed using AQM and ECN, I've completely saturated a network with gigabits of traffic, consisting of thousands of flows, and had virtually no packet loss.

It should also be noted that retransmission is NOT the dominant source of transport latency in of TCP. I am a co-author on a paper that shows another way (other than eliminating retransmission) to greatly reduce the transport latency of TCP. The basic idea is that the send-side socket buffer turns out to be the dominant source of latency (data sits in the kernel socket buffer waiting for transmission). In the above paper, we show how a dynamic socket buffer (one that tracks the congestion window) can dramatically reduce the transport latency of TCP. We allow applications to select this behaviour through a TCP_MINBUF socket option.

-- Buck

From my opinion as a student of computer arts/digital arts, the first thing you have to ask yourself is how to include the computer in your artistic work.
I can recommend the Book "Composing Interactive Music" from Todd Winkler, as I found it not only interesting for re-thinking how to use Computers in artistic installations, but also how to completely rethink computer interaction.
Winkler proposes a framework of 5 stages which i think can also be adoped for any digital works, not only music.
The book is inteded for composers working with max/msp, a visual programming language where object boxes can be "patched" together; this style of working shows fast results, as this kind of software is working "realtime", meaning you get constant ouptput of the things you are doing or the parameters you are changing.
I am working with this kind of "patchable software interfaces" for more than five years now; and this is also teached on the University of Applied Arts in Vienna/Austria, where I am studying.
If it comes to interaction (sound-visual, sound-dancers, graphics-interface, whatever) in the field of artistic work, these tools such as
PD Pure Data (windows/mac/linux) - Audio/Video/3D (GEM,Framestein) -opensource-
Cycling74 max/msp (windows/mac) - Audio/Video/3D (also see Nato and Jitter) -free 30days demo-
Native Instruments Reaktor (windows/mac) -commercial, but has education pricing-
vvvv (win) -free-
are used from lots of the people around.
there are hell lots more, you might want to take a look at the audiovisualizers.com tool shack, or pawfal.org for example.

For some visual examples and also works, you might want to take a look at
http://www.harvestworks.org/maxreel/
http://puredata.info/community/ (mostly audio)
talking chair (vvvv+hardware)
http://www.realtimearts.net/

or you might also want to take a look at the department of digital art in the university of applied arts/vienna.
currently we are a group of people trying to bring opensource and arts together. there are also workshops and lots of projects going on: http://5uper.net

for sure there are also "standard" programs teached, which are good for working with business and advertising companies -- but if we are speaking about digital arts, that's going beyond the standard approach of software use. at least for me.

I love this kind of device, and I can't wait to finally be able to acquire one for a reasonable price. I've been keeping an eye on a similar device called AudioPad for a while now, which works with a projector and drawing tablets.

The devices are similar, but the MIT project seems to place the bar higher concerning potential UI innovations instead of re-creating existing hardware virtually. (Look at the IP Workbench example video and see what I mean...)

I love this kind of device, and I can't wait to finally be able to acquire one for a reasonable price. I've been keeping an eye on a similar device called AudioPad for a while now, which works with a projector and drawing tablets.

The devices are similar, but the MIT project seems to place the bar higher concerning potential UI innovations instead of re-creating existing hardware virtually. (Look at the IP Workbench example video and see what I mean...)

Can I get any advice? Is Ruby really "more powerful than Perl and more object oriented than Python" - is this what I'm looking for, or should I put it off and learn Python first?

No, it is not more powerful than Perl. But than again, nothing is. The points is not what is more powerful per se, but rather which is more powerful in your hands and which one best fits your own brain. At this point it is extremely important to mention Parrot: "The amazing project [...] to really unite Perl and Python one day (not to mention Tcl, Scheme, Forth and Ruby, to name just a few)."

Perl, Python and Ruby, while not the only ones, are certainly the most important languages for the Parrot development. Parrot will not be considered ready until all of them are fully supported, and at this point Parrot will be their main target Virtual Machine, running each of them and allowing them to interoperate. At this point it won't matter which of those languages you personally use, because whatever you choose you will still have access to all of the libraries and module, class and object, of each of them.

Few years ago I will tell you: "go for Perl because of CPAN." Now my advice woule be: "go for whatever you please, for in few years it won't really matter. We will be able to work on the same project, write the same application. I will write my part in Perl 6, you will write yours in Ruby, someone will write in Python and another one in Scheme. We will all subclass our classes, invoke our methods, use our objects, and we will produce a single, monolithic Parrot application anyway."

Just imagine picking up some fresh, young and cutting-edge language designed weeks ago--or even designing your own language--and having every module from CPAN available at once, working just fine using your new language syntax. This is the future Perl, Python and Ruby. Interoperation instead of competition.

This is stuff aimed at people without a whole lot of experience programming in first year CS courses.

1. Get a software engineering book, and study the concepts of software design. Even if you're just doing some small little "print a schedule" type assignment, thinking about how you would design a bigger project will help you.

2. Get a good book on algorithms. I'm partial to Introduction to Algorithms but there's lot's of good choices. So when your prof assigns you to do a project using a circular linked list, think about what might be better. But resist the temptation to smart off and try to do better, and complete the assignment the way (s)he says to. Perhaps ask the instructor what they wanted you to learn from the assignment if you feel that the algorithm is particularly inappropriate.

Don't just read the alogrithms, write them from scratch as well until you understand them. Be aware that some algorithms are completely different if you're using a language that starts arrays at [0] than at [1].

3. Take good technical writing courses. Many CS majors can't write well. Being able to clearly communicate is a great skill to have, regardless of what your position is, and it's a good way to differentiate yourself from the masses. Being able to write in American style English is something that many Indian/Chinese/etc. programmers won't be able to offer.

Take business courses, etc. Broaden your horizons in profitable ways.

4. Network, network, network. Not LANs and wireless, but people. They are the ones that will get you jobs in the future, who will provide you with sales leads and consulting. Mingle with people in the field. Mingle with business majors. Start it now, not in your senior year. Today's seniors may be the one's e-mailing you about a great position three years from now when you're about to graduate. I've seen very smart, very talented people sit for months without a job because they didn't start this process early.

5. Get out and enjoy yourself. You have the rest of your life for LAN parties and coding sessions. If you're in college and not working, you are likely never to have the same freedom that you do now. (Excepting unemployment...) Get out, go hiking, meet people of the appropriate sex, see concerts, learn to cook. Virtually no one dies wishing they'd spent more time in front of an LCD screen.

More here

Pike has a few misused patents to his name, and his unwillingness to answer a perfectly valid question is a good indicator of his stance on the issue. As another poster suggested earlier, Pike really was caught between a rock and a hard place by the question: admit that he supports patents and face the wrath of the slashdot crowd or deny his past stands and expose the duplicity of his current employer. Either of the two answers might've opened some fanboy eyes around here. Too bad it didn't come to pass.

Not sure which I am but to make my comment, I must betray a bit of both.
When I got my first software engineer job, a PDP-20 was a cool toy. Back in the day, one thing about DEC that just blew us away was that they actually published the bus standard. Any garage or EE grad could design peripherals to plug into a PDP backplane. It was a defacto standard and it turned a "good" processor family into a great product family because any would-be customer in a laboratory could just about be certain that whatever odd data-capture, storage, display or comms device was needed, someone had developed. It made DEC's fortunes to multiply the advantages of a [then] cheap new processor by the advantages of a published "standard" architecture. The ironic thing is that when the PC revolution got under way, DEC's response was to emphasize the PRO350, a [by then] relatively closed PDP based architecture over its "Rainbow" product. The IBM PC architecture rules to this day because IBM beat DEC at its own game. Those of us in the early 70's who said "Digital is crazy: they're gonna let everyone else make the peripherals that DEC could be sellng" just didn't get it. Gordon Bell was a chief architect and engineering manager of the original PDP...he did get it, at least back then.
There are lessons in the parabola of DEC's fortunes that bear study by any of us, engineers to marketing, who compete in development of technical products.
Favorite geek-geezer link is to a book that recounts the history on which my pathetic career was spent. See also a link to much of Bell's commentary and output since joining Microsoft

As for a straight couple making a healthier family, I am sticking to a sociological perspective in my previous post

Can you cite some definitive, controlled, and large-sample sociological study which has adequately investigated this issue? I'm curious - even the dissenters in Goodridge v. Massachusetts Dept. of Public Health acknowledged they had no solid evidence heterosexual couples provided the "optimal" setting for child rearing.

Suppose your wife dies in a horrific accident and you don't remarry. Should you be allowed to keep raising your three-month-old child, or should it be taken as a ward of the state and given to a deserving, loving heterosexual couple?
Little Timmy's parents are killed in a horrific plane crash. His only living relative, his grandmother, raises him. Should she give him up to adoption by a "normal" heterosexual couple?
What if Tiny Tim's only relative, his grandmother, lives with her wife?
What if a girl leaves her abusive husband and takes the child? Should she keep it?
A transsexual marries his high school sweetheart. For medical reasons they can't conceive children themselves. Should they be allowed to adopt one, or to serve as foster parents?

They wouldn't get a double sided femenine/masculine upbringing

Pat is a self-confessed 'tomboy'; she was raised in a family of six boys, and she has mild Asperger's syndrome. She marries the very manly man Dan, and they enjoy the same activities; practically the only 'female' thing Pat does is sleep with her husband, and even then she's into kinky S&M stuff. Are Pat and Dan communicating an appropriate "feminine/masculine" image?
Dan has had a change of heart and decides to be fashionable; now he's a "metrosexual". This isn't in the masculinity book! Should he lose his children?

a kid who is raised in a gay family will be disadvantaged socially. His two dads or whatever will not be able to participate in activities that require a mother. He/she may be ostracized by peers.

So - children of gay parents are in a bad place because nobody likes children of gay parents. Isn't that a little sweeping of a generalization to make about the entire world? (country?) How is a gay family in notoriously homosexual-friendly Provincetown, Massachusetts disadvantaged? Is this more pronounced than the severe lack of cultivation one gains by living on an Amish farm? By living a life confined exclusively to the inner city of Detroit? By being raised in Hawaii as a haole in an unfriendly community?

it would most likely encourage non-conformity by the child, which some would argue is a good thing but I disagree with that.

Should children develop as individuals?
Frequently conservative Christians (some of them; not all!) assert that their orthodox Christianity is 'under assault' in our society. Suppose that this is the case. Then children raised with Bible-belt values in strongly "atheistic" areas may have trouble communicating their upbringing and, worse, may find that they and their parents are excluded from the religiophobic community on the basis of their being "them crazy religious freaks". (This happens, according to some said "crazy religious freaks"; they assert it's the reason revival meetings and the like are necessary.) Never mind how mean and intolerant these atheists are being; suppose that it happens. (Remember the Pledge of Allegiance lawsuit?) The child will want to conform with the expectations all around them, but a child -can't- abandon those most basic, axiomatic built-in parts of himself, such as "Jesus Christ is my personal savior and I must help save others." So two parents of the same strong religious faith should not be allowed to raise a child (it

Although... in perusing MIT's own links, it looks like the solar books somewhat exaggerated the success.

I'm still defending my position though. I live in a 1957 ranch house in NC that has, at present, *no* insulation in the walls. We have survived winters without turning on the heat. Though we did look specifically for a house that was properly oriented.

Most houses are not properly oriented. The long dimesion of the building should run East-West and the short North-South. The sun is lower in the winter so most sun comes through the south side of the building. In summer, the sun is high, so you want your East and West walls short. Most houses are not like this.

We do not use air conditioning. Ever. Plant a tree on the south side and don't be such a wuss.

"why haven't most houses and buildings built since then (south of Boston anyway) use passive solar designs?"

Simple-- in 99+% of the cases of a house going up, the person that is going to use it is not the person designing or building it. Unless you have a custom-built home, you get whatever you can, and the price is based more on location than quality.

The economics are simple. A builder wants to invest as little as possible, so he builds crap-- as little insulation, as little thought to efficiency, as little *thought* as possible. A buyer buys for location. Then they realize they have huge heating/cooling costs. Most individuals can't or won't finance the construction of a smart home and most builders have no incentive to.

In a corporate situation, there's no reason to build a good building that will last hundreds of years and perform well because you can build a cheap tin box and write it off as it depreciates then build a new one. (or so says my architect brother-- I really have no idea how that works).

There are a few energy concious builders and apartment complexes, but most people don't know about them because they don't care and they're particularly advertised. I recommend you look for a "solar home tour" in your area. You'd be surprised what is possible. Unfortunately, except for some free-heat-and-hot-water solar college apartments I saw, most seem to be on the high end luxury homes.

p.s. Slashdot sucks, you can't draw a diagram because of the lame filter.

Clean Energy Systems paper

Carbon Capture and Storage from Fossil Fuel Use

Capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide"

My version:

Holy run-on sentence, Batman!
That's funny you mention it because quite frankly I did preview it and in fact it was not until then when I decided to turn a list of comma separated values into a bullet list as well as [break] the second then single-sentence paragraph into three separate sentences exactly because I was somewhat concerned readability-wise [...]

Your version:

Funny you mention the run-on sentence. I did preview the article. As I previewed the article I decided to turn a list of comma separated values into a bullet list and broke the second single-sentence paragraph into three separate sentences. I did these two actions because I was somewhat concerned about the readability of the article. [...]

Please take no offence but your version is hardly an improvement, not only because the dissonance between sentences (or impedance mismatch, if you will) makes it sound like a homework written by a six years old child, but most importantly becuase in addition to changing style you have also removed content by dropping quite a few important subtleties and overtones in the form of relations of different parts of the original sentence, as well as my emotional relation thereto. Why not "correct" more texts while you are at it! They might really need their "run-on sentences" broke into infantile series of three-word statements!

Now, on a much serious matter:

[...] I can understand that for some people interested in the subject my story might indeed contain not nearly enough whitespace.

Some people do not contain enough whitespace. [Not sure why Pan would mention whitespace in conjunction with people.]

You have probably parsed it as: "I can understand that some people interested in the subject of my story might indeed contain not nearly enough whitespace" or "I can understand that for some reason people interested in the subject of my story might indeed contain not nearly enough whitespace" instead of the literal and correct "I can understand that for some people interested in the subject my story might indeed contain not nearly enough whitespace" which is parsable only one way, using dashes instead of whitespace for indentation:

- I can understand that
- - [that] my story might indeed contain not nearly enough whitespace
- - - [enough] for some people
- - - - [people] interested in the subject

It might be disambiguated using punctuation: "I can understand that, for some people interested in the subject, my story might indeed contain not nearly enough whitespace" or "I can understand that--for some people interested in the subject--my story might indeed contain not nearly enough whitespace" but even without such punctuation marks this part of the sentence is unambiguous nonetheless, fot there is no other way whatsoever for it to make any sense assuming it was written correctly in the first place, while you have presumably assumed otherwise (which itself is an insult).

Still, I am most disappointed (if not outright outraged) by the fact that you have completely missed the humour therein! I can only hope that some people who use some language named after a certain BBC show from 1969 are a somewhat better parsers because otherwise I would have to consider the time spent on writing that comment--and indeed submitting the whole story--completely wasted.

I would also point out that even Lindzen agrees, in the document cited above and in his testimony to the US Senate, that "global mean temperature is about 0.5 degrees Celsius higher than it was a century ago," but he claims that we can't tell whether this temperature rise has anything to do with the rise in CO2 levels.

I also find it strange that you would assert that over the past 20 years the Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43 governments would have cut funding for scientists who found that the world was not warming up ("many of them depend on ongoing funding that would be in jeapordy if they were to massage the data a little more conservatively"). I can see this charge against the Clinton/Gore administration, but for most of the last 20 years we've had conservative Republican administrations. Can you substantiate this claim?

I would also point out that even Lindzen agrees, in the document cited above and in his testimony to the US Senate, that "global mean temperature is about 0.5 degrees Celsius higher than it was a century ago," but he claims that we can't tell whether this temperature rise has anything to do with the rise in CO2 levels.

I also find it strange that you would assert that over the past 20 years the Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43 governments would have cut funding for scientists who found that the world was not warming up ("many of them depend on ongoing funding that would be in jeapordy if they were to massage the data a little more conservatively"). I can see this charge against the Clinton/Gore administration, but for most of the last 20 years we've had conservative Republican administrations. Can you substantiate this claim?

I would also point out that even Lindzen agrees, in the document cited above and in his testimony to the US Senate, that "global mean temperature is about 0.5 degrees Celsius higher than it was a century ago," but he claims that we can't tell whether this temperature rise has anything to do with the rise in CO2 levels.

I also find it strange that you would assert that over the past 20 years the Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43 governments would have cut funding for scientists who found that the world was not warming up ("many of them depend on ongoing funding that would be in jeapordy if they were to massage the data a little more conservatively"). I can see this charge against the Clinton/Gore administration, but for most of the last 20 years we've had conservative Republican administrations. Can you substantiate this claim?

C# is just one option for .NET eh?
Hmm... if only there were some other languages that could be compiled to JVM bytecode.

The typical example is that you've got a water wheel where each bucket has a hole that leaks water at a fixed rate. Now you allow water to flow into the system - the more water, the faster the wheel goes... up to a point. when the "tipping point" is reached, the system goes haywire, speeding up, slowing down, even reversing direction. Here's a little demo

I'm not saying that this is what is happening here, just that "but we had a mild summer this year" is missing the point.

I remember going to a science museum when child. And I've studied a bit of holography.

Holography stores some kind of interference pattern obtained from hitting an object with normal light and with a laser beam. The "difference" of these light patterns can be stored in 2D surfaces. All you need to display the holograph, is a light source hitting those surfaces, and voila.

Now the *INTERESTING* thing about holographic displays, is that they replace the interference pattern imprinting process, with COMPUTER CALCULATIONS. The computer reproduces the calculated interference pattern.

So if these interference patterns can be changed, we have not only holography, but holovideo.

Here's what i found: a holovideo link showing the process.

Here's an oft-cited explaination, by none other than Donald Knuth: http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/Patents/knuth-to-pto.txt

Here are some patents that have something to do with smell... But none are awarded to a smell itself. They are mostly devices that emit some smell.

Of course, it had the problems that your circuits had to be arranged vertically, and you couldn't have sequential circuits. But it wasn't intended for serious use, but as a teaching tool to help people understand binary logic.

http://web.media.mit.edu/~paulo/courses/howmake/ml fabfinalproject.htm

This is true. My previous geekiest friend (and I'm an IT guy and ex-astro grad student myself) was somebody who read the O'Reilly sendmail book cover-to-cover, for fun. (Well, perhaps that's more sick than geeky ...) Now, that's been topped by another friend who is building a prototype tile (basically, the dish) for a new radio telescope, the Mileura Wide Array, in his front yard. Man, what a geek! And I told him so.

http://web.mit.edu/physics/facultyandstaff/faculty /frank_wilczek.html - no following / on the original post

It always amazes me how little I know when I look at what these folks do. http://web.mit.edu/physics/facultyandstaff/faculty /frank_wilczek.html/ Interesting reading.

Here is the original link, along with an explanation of why this illusion works.

Link

Examples of where "software" patents have been, or can be, harmful is not an argument that they are inherently bad. There are also bad "device" patents even outside software, such as the combover and using a laser pointer to play with a cat. It also doesn't show that all software patents are harmful.

The harm caused by some software patents isn't because algorithms and methods are patentable, it's because simple obvious ones are being approved as valid patents. Think about it. If the algorithm is not trivial or simple, nobody would come up with it by chance anyway and so it isn't stopping them from doing anything. For example, there are a multitude of machine vision algorithms such as facial recognition or object recognition. You can't accidently stumble on the same approach, they are complicated an non-obvious. Patenting these harms nobody. If they weren't patentable, many of these intelligent algorithms would not get published and would be kept secret, so we'd never learn how they worked and couldn't improve from them. Conversely, as in the typical examples given, if someone can inadvertantly implement a patented algorithm, it must be somewhat obvious to people in the industry (and hence shouldn't be patentable).

As far as the "it's just math" argument, I go back again to machine vision. Yes, it can be written as math. But we're not talking about fundamental math derivable from first principles, we're talking about procedures that involve math as a basic building block. This is akin to developing physical devices in which physical laws are the basic building blocks. Often a physical design is optimized by math, the same as an algorithm.

In short, so far the arguments against software patents in general don't hold water. Yes, there absolutely has to be patent reform, but that includes all forms of patents. But that doesn't mean that one has to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are non-harmful algorithms (and I would argue these are the majority of algorithms) and it is in the public's interest to provide some protection to the inventor, otherwise these algorithms will be kept secret.

Software is fundamentally a mathematical process.

Read Donald Knuth's letter to the USPTO to get a better understanding of this reasoning against software patents.

What PJ is effectively pointing out is that software patents have degenerated from rewarding true innovators to being serious road blocks to software innovation. They are land mines waiting to explode on anyone writing serious software without the resources to pay an army of lawyers to protect them.

science has increased the average lifespan but not the max by very much.

http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/sciam.inhe rit.html
Minsky (no expert on the topic I will admit) sites a couple sources and discusses it a bit.

For example it is thought that Archimedes lived to be about 75.

Maybe this will provide some help. Search for more at MIT.

Maybe this will provide some help. Search for more at MIT.

Well, I don't know about *numerous* per se - but, I do know about two offhand:

quoted from: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-12-03-music -downloading_x.htm

"Among the RIAA's recent targets is retiree Ernest Brenot, 79, of Ridgefield, Wash., who wrote in a handwritten note to a federal judge that he does not own a computer nor can he operate one."

and then there was...

quoted from: http://www-tech.mit.edu/V123/N38/38riaa.38n.html

"MIT answered a subpoena from the record industry last night, naming Claudiu A. Prisnel '06 in response to the industry association's request for the name of a network user who, on June 27 from a computer at Theta Delta Chi, allegedly offered hundreds of music recordings over the KaZaA file-trading system, according to Prisnel and James D. Bruce, the vice president for information systems."

. . .

"Between the dates of May 25, 2003 and August 25, 2003 I have been travelling in Europe," he wrote to MIT attorney Mark DiVincenzo in an Aug. 30 letter to protest the release of his name, according to a copy of the letter he provided The Tech. "In particular, on June 27, at the time of the alleged infringement, I was in Romania."

As far as whether or not they won or lost, I'll leave that bit of research for you :-)

Cheers,

It is a very big deal if you've used Subversion for any appreciable amount of time. See my other post in this thread for a more detailed overview of BDB vs. FSFS. Or just take a look at the Greg Hudson FSFS document.

There is the little note; "Note that the data files created by fsfs repositories are still in a binary format, and are not human editable!"

Which brings up the question, why do you want your repositories to be human editable? With CVS, you needed it because CVS regularly screwed up your repository, with Subversion, that's guaranteed not to happen.

Also, when you use apps that use Berkeley DB, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, MS SQL, Sybase, or DB2 as a backend, does it bother you that your data is not human editable? Why should you worry so much about Subversion then?

And can it do hot backup, with guaranteed atomicity?

Yes, "svnadmin hotcopy" works just fine.

Thomas