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Prof. Joe Weizenbaum used to tell this joke to his intro programming students.

Question: There's a cabin in the woods, a table in the middle of the cabin, a bucket of water on a table, a fire burning in the fireplace, and it's raining outside. How do you boil the water?

Answer: Take the bucket off the table and put it in the fireplace.

Question: There's a cabin in the woods, a table in the middle of the cabin, a bucket of water on the floor, a fire burning in the fireplace, and it's raining outside. How do you boil the water?

Answer: Put the bucket of water on the table, thus reducing it to a problem already solved.

There's an article on the Foundation for Programming Freedom by Richard Stallman titled 'Anatomy of a Trivial Patent'. Read this and you will see how people sneak these patents past the PO.

There's an article on the Foundation for Programming Freedom by Richard Stallman titled 'Anatomy of a Trivial Patent'. Read this and you will see how people sneak these patents past the PO.

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.

Since 1994, Donald Knuth has lobbied against algorithm patents. Perhaps we ought to ask whether interface patents are not just as destructive of freedom and human rights.

Do interface patents "take away [our] right to use fundamental building blocks" (in Knuth's words)?

Here is the text of Knuth's letter.

Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks
Box 4, Patent and Trademark Office
Washington, DC 20231

February 1994

Dear Commissioner:

Along with many other computer scientists, I would like to ask you to reconsider the current policy of giving patents for computational processes. I find a considerable anxiety throughout the community of practicing computer scientists that decisions by the patent courts and the Patent and Trademark Office are making life much more difficult for programmers.

In the period 1945-1980, it was generally believed that patent law did not pertain to software. However, it now appears that some people have received patents for algorithms of practical importance--e.g., Lempel-Ziv compression and RSA public key encryption--and are now legally preventing other programmers from using these algorithms.

This is a serious change from the previous policy under which the computer revolution became possible, and I fear this change will be harmful for society. It certainly would have had a profoundly negative effect on my own work: For example, I developed software called TeX that is now used to produce more than 90% of all books and journals in mathematics and physics and to produce hundreds of thousands of technical reports in all scientific disciplines. If software patents had been commonplace in 1980, I would not have been able to create such a system, nor would I probably have ever thought of doing it, nor can I imagine anyone else doing so.

I am told that the courts are trying to make a distinction between mathematical algorithms and nonmathematical algorithms. To a computer scientist, this makes no sense, because every algorithm is as mathematical as anything could be. An algorithm is an abstract concept unrelated to physical laws of the universe.

Nor is it possible to distinguish between "numerical" and "nonnumerical" algorithms, as if numbers were somehow different from other kinds of precise information. All data are numbers, and all numbers are data. Mathematicians work much more with symbolic entities than with numbers.

Therefore the idea of passing laws that say some kinds of algorithms belong to mathematics and some do not strikes me as absurd as the 19th century attempts of the Indiana legislature to pass a law that the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter is exactly 3, not approximately 3.1416. It's like the medieval church ruling that the sun revolves about the earth. Man-made laws can be significantly helpful but not when they contradict fundamental truths.

Congress wisely decided long ago that mathematical things cannot be patented. Surely nobody could apply mathematics if it were necessary to pay a license fee whenever the theorem of Pythagoras is employed. The basic algorithmic ideas that people are now rushing to patent are so fundamental, the result threatens to be like what would happen if we allowed authors to have patents on individual words and concepts. Novelists or journalists would be unable to write stories unless their publishers had permission from the owners of the words. Algorithms are exactly as basic to software as words are to writers, because they are the fundamental building blocks needed to make interesting products. What would happen if individual lawyers could patent their methods of defense, or if Supreme Court justices could patent their precedents?

I realize that the patent courts try their best to serve society when they formulate patent law. The Patent Office has fulfilled this mission admirably with respect to aspects of technology that

You can read the actual theorem from Chapter 3 of Peter Gilkey's book available here. The Aitiyah-Singer Index Theorem is Theorem 3.9.5 on page 233, right at the top of the page. There is a nice explanation of it in easy to understand terms on MIT's press release. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to capture how impressive the theorem really is.

import serial

def init(timeout=0.5):
ser = serial.Serial(0) #open first serial port
ser.baudrate = 1200
ser.bytesize = serial.SEVENBITS
ser.parity=serial.PARITY_NONE
ser.stopbits = serial.STOPBITS_ONE
ser.timeout=timeout
ser.xonxoff=0
ser.rtscts=0
ser.open()
g=ser.read(30)

return ser

def tobin(val):
retret=[]
for c in val:
value=ord(c)
ret=[]
for i in range(8):
a=pow(2,i)
ret.append((value & a)>0)
retret.append(ret)

return retret

def read(ser):
g=ser.read(1)

if g=='':
return None

while ord(g) & 64 == 0:
g=ser.read(1)

g=g+ser.read(2)

if len(g)==3:
vals=tobin(g)
l=vals[0][5]
r=vals[0][4]
x=vals[0][1]*-128+vals[0][0]*64+vals[1][5]*32+vals [1][4]*16+vals[1][3]*8+vals[1][2]*4+vals[1][1]*2+v als[1][0]
y=vals[0][3]*-128+vals[0][2]*64+vals[2][5]*32+vals [2][4]*16+vals[2][3]*8+vals[2][2]*4+vals[2][1]*2+v als[2][0]
#print "L:%d R:%d X:%d Y:%d" % (l,r,x,y)
return x,y,l,r
else:
return None

def flush(ser):
ser.flush()

#ser=init()
#while 1:
# read()

Here is an old article on the subject: the more-left and more-right Republicans and Democrats were mostly pushing for human rights, and the centrist Democrats and Republicans were mostly pushing for free trade. Kind of strange, huh? Clinton, in fact, flip-flopped on this one; he was in favor of granting MFN here and here, and finally pushed for and got permanent trade status for China. That last article also mentions that it happened on GW's watch when they finally entered the WTO.

I used LISP back in the dark ages. Lighten up! Code is meant to be read by humans, and only incidentally for the computer to parse.

Actually, the quote is:

"Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute."
- H. Abelson and G. Sussman (in "The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs)

For those not familiar with "The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" it is one of the most famous introductory texts to computer science. All the code examples, of course, are written in Scheme...

PS: The full text is available here.

implementing classes, the OOP approach

The OOP approach isn't limited to the class based languages. Class based languages have traditionally been more popular. The only recent mainstream prototype based language I can think of is javascript.

Saying one is better than the other is only ever likely to generate an argument, they're just different.

Have a look here for the classic paper on the prototype based approach.

Keep in mind the probable reason behind this move. Wal-Mart is not looking to make money on these songs. That's why they can offer them for $.88 instead of $.99. They're looking to drive website hits, which in turn drives web revenue through other products.

There are on-going battles with Wal-Mart and the major credit card brands (old article here). They recently stopped allowing customers who use a MasterCard branded debit card to use the card as a credit card (ie, sign the receipt instead of enter a PIN). This fight is much bigger than anything to do with the on-line music sales, in my humble opinion.

Don't expect Wal-Mart to try and take over the on-line music industry. It doesn't fit their model very well. As others have said, the real challenge for Apple will come when the likes of Amazon.com or others with true on-line business models enter the fray. For the store based retailer, it's simply a good way of driving additional customers to the website, where traffic translates into sales.

As someone else has pointed out, the Stata center (which is the new building complex housing CSAIL) contains both the Gates tower and the Dreyfoos tower. However, the poster incorrecly stated that RMS will be in the Dreyfoos tower. In fact he is in the space between the two towers - known as the "warehouse" space (for reasons which escape me).

Office location in the Stata Center can be identified by letters attached to the office number. Stallman's office is 32-381, here:

http://www.csail.mit.edu/resources/maps/3/381.gif

(I'm right across the hall, in 32-386.) A Gates office would be, e.g., 32-G585. A Dreyfoos office would be, e.g., 32-D585. Yes, as someone else pointed out, we have a holodeck. :-)

Most of us are hoping / assuming that, like almost all other buildings at MIT, the new building(s) will be referred to by number, not by name.

IMHO MIT missed a great opportunity to influence the world for the better by publicly snubbing Gates' offer to fund (a small part of) the new building. But, I'm told, that's just not the way things work...

Hey, it worked for Robert Morris! He wrote the "Morris Worm" that brought much of the Internet to its knees by invading UNIX services such as unpatched sendmail, telnet, and other services in roughly 1988.

What happened to him? He managed to avoid the jail time by having his daddy (who was head of the NSA) hand him a "get out of jail free" card and indirectly impede the investigation to find the cracker who brought research and defense networks crashing to the ground worldwide.

Where is he now? Why, he's Professor Robert Morris of MIT and is apparently moving into the William Gates building with the rest of his department at MIT. href=http://www.pdos.lcs.mit.edu/~rtm/

http://www-tech.mit.edu/V110/N30/rms.30n.html

Free Software for all who want it

More like "manditory free software only." RMS does not want people to have a choice. He has stated on numerous occasions there should only be free software.

OK, don't trust the reputation of MIT. Here are the results. 57 MIT-affiliated Nobel Prize winners, including the co-inventor of the transistor (Shockley), one of the world's best organic chemists (Woodward), inventor of one of the most important chemistry experiments (Mulliken oil drop experiment). One of the architects of the free software movement (RMS) and the inventor of the WWW (TBL) are MIT affiliates. Several potential soon-to-be Nobel laureates (Langer, Guth, maybe even Chomsky given the political attitudes of Stockholm these days) in a variety of science, engineering, and social science fields. Back in 1997, BankBoston released a study that calculated that if all of the MIT-related businesses were put into a separate economy, it would be the 11th largest economy in the world.

Is the MIT name overhyped? Perhaps, but the results speak for themselves.

If you think the outside is ugly, you should see the inside. There are exposed, rough finish concrete support beams cutting through the middle rooms (those gray circles on the floor plan), and all the exposed wood on cabinets and shelves is low grade plywood. Other walls are bereft of shelves (Many researchers here keep their own copies of journals), because it was cheaper to leave the studs out of non-structural walls.

I'm not even getting into the lack of straight lines and right angles (very disorienting). But other than that, and the fact that it's years behind schedule and massively over budget, it's great.

-JWB

The Gates of Hell?

That's at Stanford.

Don't feel bad -- that building is the ugliest thing imaginable to begin with. Putting Stallman in there can only increase its esthetic value.

The practical limitation with this kind of thing is that electrical activity recorded at the scalp is noisy and diffuse. If you could implant an electrode, or a chip with wireless transmitter then you can use the actual neural signals themselves to control something external. This has been done in monkeys.

But at this point I bet most people are not going to want one of these implanted in their parietal lobe just to play a video game.

On the other hand, you can do a lot better with EEG than these guys have done. It's not all that impressive, considering moderate success with this thing has been acheived with neurofeedback without having people look at a visual stimulus. For example, you can train people to move a cursor around a screen by controlling the relative amount of alpha activity over each hemisphere (or something like that, I can't remember the details.) It seems to me like these guys are just eliciting visual cortex activity at a particular frequency with these checkerboards and then reading it off with their electrodes.

Cambridge:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/UoCCL/intro/
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/site-maps/gates.html

+ Washington:
http://www.law.washington.edu/GatesHall/

+ Stanford:
http://www-db.stanford.edu/pub/keller/gates-map.ht ml

+ Pennsilvania:
http://www.facilities.upenn.edu/mapsBldgs/view_map .php3?id=401

+ MIT:
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V119/N20/20lcs.20n.html

+ RIBA:
http://www.riba.org/go/RIBA/About/About_162.html

+ Southern Indiana:
http://www.usi.edu/visit/map/housing.asp

+ Michigan:
http://www.admin.mtu.edu/admin/prov/facbook/ch9/9c hap-37.htm


= University Building Monopoly !!!!

http://lists.csail.mit.edu/pipermail/csail-discuss /2004-March/000077.html

I got a chance to talk to one of my bank's IT people about this a few months ago, and basically, they don't know what's causing the crashes because analyzing the log files would just be too much trouble. So their SOP is to have some guy with a key come out, literally pull the plug on the machine and wait till it reboots.

He also told me that they were slowly migrating over to a "custom XP version", whatever that's supposed to mean. I probably should have told him that Windows machines can be prone to virus infections (cough cought).

The work being done by Deb Roy's Cognitive Machines Group @ MIT might also be of interest.

Sure would be nice if Grand started making bits of code and a few technical papers available. Guess he can't just give it away if its his bread and butter though.

...this? It sounds like the same thing.

Sounds like a perfect opportunity for another GForge installation... one more for the list!

If you haven't seen it before, check out the Carnival Booth paper and remember your argument when they mention Richard Reid and John Walker whatshisname.

As pointed out in other posts, not only with this decrease security, apparently "behavior that may seem "too normal" might be flagged".

No, this isn't. It actually decreases security. Israel has had success because they've implemented security measures that actually increase security. (Read the above link to see the difference.)

Perhaps you should read the other posts about the Carnival Booth algorithm which demonstrates (quite effectively) that this approach actually decreases security, and that it puts you (and other passengers) at higher risk.

Read the full report on the Carnival Booth method here: http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/6805/student-papers/sp ring02-papers/caps.htm

Anonymous to avoid Karma Whoring

This paper describes how such a system actually makes it more likely that a terrorist cell can carry out a successful attack, when compared with random screening. The basic idea is that it is not hard to determine whether or not you are on the watch list, and then the terrorists can use hijackers who aren't on the watch list. Anyway, I know slashdotters aren't known for reading links, but the paper is actually quite accessible and worth reading at least some of.

But some say the project would violate privacy rights, while others are concerned it would cost the private sector too much money.

Reasonable people could argue those points if the damn thing could work, but it can't. (For discussion see this interesting paper.) And since it cannot be effective, it is complete foolishness to even consider this massive invasion of citizen privacy, not to mention waste so much money!

First, there is no substitute for exposure to a great math teacher. I had the fortune to have had a couple great math teachers through elementary and high school that led me to major in math in college.

Second, knowing a few tricks isn't enough. Understanding the tricks and why they work is the key to improving your math skills. Beyond access to a teacher to help you with this, you may want to try some resources available on the web like MIT's OpenCourseWare. They have a lot of information available on their courses, including lecture notes and text books. However, quite a few of their courses online deal with mathematical theory and may not fit with what you are looking for, try some of their "applied" courses.

Third, as one previous poster mentioned, understanding algebra will help with breaking larger calculations into smaller, and easier, parts to calculate quickly in your head. A good source for learning materials would be a local college book store. Focus on algebra textbooks that cover the basics and how to teach them (If a local college offers Education majors, they should have at least one course that will fit your needs, find out which course and the accompanying books they recommend).

Finally, go to your local high school and find out what text they use in their first year algebra classes. If you mainly what to be able to calculate angles or lengths of object sides quickly, texts for high school geometry and trigonometry classes will offer more information. Understanding these texts will help you to improve.

I hope this helps.

Actually, I do not think the project is CPU-bound. If you happen to have an extra GEODSS telescope in your backyard, though, maybe they could use the extra data. :)

Actually, I do not think the project is CPU-bound. If you happen to have an extra GEODSS telescope in your backyard, though, maybe they could use the extra data. :)

What's really wonderful is that, since this is a static system, this is still subject to the Carnival Booth terrorist screeing attack which was documented not so long ago and which guarantees that this will reduce and not increase security by allowing terrorists to identify which people they can use to carry out attacks.

Idiots.

Fifty bucks.

Perhaps PGP Freeware would fit the bill for the budget-minded slashdotter. (Also integrates with popular mail clients.)

gnu.org is down because the MIT CSAIL (Comp Sci and AI Lab), which houses servers such as gnu.org and debian mirrors, is moving into its new home in The Stata Center this week. Lots of important machines are being moved over from the old buildings to the new ones.

I was just discussing this with Rodney Brooks at the DSTO today, and essentially the answer is that it shows that the company can deliver high tech solutions. A lot like the F1 grand prix, really, mostly advertising and some blue sky research.

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 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 Linux on this laptop:

Gentoo Linux on the Sharp Actius PC-MM10

Linux on the Sharp PC-MM10

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.

I don'k know if you are aware, but a group at MIT did a musical spoof of Star Wars about a year ago. It was actually very funny, at least if you also knew enough of the original songs as well (such as being able to guess your tune is "Luck Be A Lady Tonight"). Link to MTG past shows site.

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 and Tune Search Engines using ABC.

Too bad PGP phone never took off.

Actually, the truth is a bit different. There was a STRONG probability that Microsoft would have been broken up UNTIL Bush got into office and tossed the original judge off the case because he listened to the PILES of evidence over MANY years and came to the conclusion that Microsoft a huge pile of lying dung. (ok...not in so many words) THEN Bush and Co. said that he was biased. Who in hell wouldn't build up a bias after HEARING THE FACTS and then JUDGING? Isn't that a JUDGES job? To pass judgment? He was tossed out and then Bush stuck a "bought and paid for" judge in to do his bidding. The rest is history.

Maybe instead of reading entire court rulings you should pay attention to the news in general. In other words maybe you should try breadth instead of depth.

It was the Supreme Court who decided that Jackson was biased. It was not Bush.

Another common complaint about Bush is that he ended the case against MS. The truth is that it was really the states that pushed all along for going to trial - even when Clinton was in power. There's a good book called World War 3.0 that goes over the entire trial. And it discusses the settlement talks BEFORE the original verdict, while Clinton was still in power. The US Gov't was ready to settle with Microsoft, but the states stopped it.

But don't get me wrong, Bush sucks.

http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/which contains a great deal of interesting material collected over the years from the comp.dcom.telecom newsgroup on USENET.

Who is this guy really? Thats not what IP is for - foolproof delivery of packets is handled by connection-orientated protocols like TCP.

NO KIDDING.

They need to read "End to End Arguments in System Design".

http://web.mit.edu/Saltzer/www/publications/endtoe nd/endtoend.pdf

Don't forget existing ad-hoc routing protocols that work fine with IPV4 or IPV6, like

dynamic source routing (dsr)
destination sequenced distance vector (dsdv)
temorally ordered routing (tora)
ad-hoc on demand distance vector (dsdv)
comparison paper

Some of these are even used in reasonably large real world networks.

-jim

Note that I'm not considering OS in this. These are general suggestions.

* Anything in the "programming game" genre. When doing this, a player designs a robot to go through some kind of puzzle or challenge (or theoretically fight, though as much of this is rather abstract, it may work under your violence issues). The original game in this genre is "Core Wars" (despite the name, if you consider this violent, I will be impressed), where little bits of code struggled desperately to try to control more memory. There are other games in this genre, like "Mindrover". I found a quick list of games in the genre here

* There are a number of simulation games that would work. Most games in the sim genre really *are* okay. The SimCities have been in the educational market forever for a good reason (makes me realize how dated my educational software knowledge is, though). For Linux, Lincity is good -- plays quite different from SimCity, with distribution of goods and power more of an emphasis than utilitiy coverage.

* Many puzzle games can be considered educational. Go to Info-Mac or another Mac software site and look under "Puzzle". I'm personally rather fond of sobokan and clones, where one pushes boxes around in a "warehouse" into proper locations. It's untimed, but fun.

* The Simple End User Linux (SEUL) project maintains a lot of links to software (including educational software) for Linux. Open source software has a way of getting ported, and I suspect you'll find that a fair amount works on OS X. Take a look here

* Ultimately, I'd say that web-browsing can be an awfully educational experience (seriously, I've learned so much of what I know from the Internet that it's nuts -- almost anything you want to know is out on the Web somewhere), more so than most "educational" games. If they have a laptop, they can browse the web, no?

I never thought much of the whole brand of "educational" software. The ones that simply included some interesting facts, like Oregon Trail or Sim City, seemed to provide a relatively low amount of knowledge for the amount of effort that gets put into them. The ones that made you do math quickly to play the game just doesn't seem to help real-world math skills much. When I learned to do math rapidly in my head, it was not using a video game.

The Web is a fantastic research tool -- boy, it's irritating when teachers try to discourage students from using any Web sources. As a matter of fact, I'd consider having a web browser always available to be one of the most valuable educational resources available. When I didn't know what a word meant, my mother always tried to train me and my siblings to go find a dictionary and look it up. The problem is that it's a real pain in the ass to do so, especially if I'm comfortably reading a book. If I have a nice, fast, stable-and-not-swapping system with a web browser up that doesn't need to run through a modem (most people used to get this in university for the first time), I'd very inclined to look up words and concepts that I'm interested about. Just recently, I read an article on "The Onion", a decidedly non-educational piece of satire that alluded to the Dauphin, some sort of French nobility. I got curious. I never, ever would have done this if I had to use paper encyclopedias, because of the effort involved, but I read up on the Dauphin, and ended up reading for much of the day about French political and military history.

So I don't seem hypocritical, here are my free classical music recordings!

Disguise the Limit

Extract: "Old Loony plans to make like a Greek and build Celestial Spheres around the Earth with stars painted on them and the moon projected onto the inner sphere by a laser spotlight! And you stand there, nodding your head as if this were a perfectly sane ambition! Then you tell me he wants this done because he thinks the universe as it stands is 'aesthetically displeasing'. This from a man with the aesthetic sense of a flame-thrower. He's mad, Mike, and you're mad to go along with him. The environmental lobby for one would sooner eat whale than let us build these spheres."

Here are some photos:

DARPA Grand Challenge Photos

Enjoy!