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Here is a bunch of links about Computer Ethics from when I was researching about it. The google video link (last one on this list) is particularly interesting. Computer ethics is actually a university research topic! http://www.brook.edu/its/cei/cei_hp.htm http://ethics.csc.ncsu.edu/ http://www.southernct.edu/organizations/rccs/resources/teaching/teaching_mono/moor/moor_definition.html http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-computer/ http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/ProfessionalEthics.html http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/hackers.html http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=4279094 http://cyberethics.cbi.msstate.edu/ http://www.oekonux.org/texts/copykillsmusic.html http://www.progilibre.com/Open-Source-Alternative-ou-fausse-route-_a350.html http://www.osalt.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOSS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License http://creativecommons.org/ http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html http://www.itc.virginia.edu/policy/ethics.html http://www.brook.edu/its/cei/overview/Ten_Commanments_of_Computer_Ethics.htm http://www.acm.org/serving/se/code.htm http://www.ieee.org/portal/site http://video.google.fr/videoplay?docid=-3088012854941915784&q=computer+ethics

Being subtle works, too. Personally, I'd rather not be a dormitory

That patent was on using reactive forces generated by having smaller planes at an angle of incidence to a larger plane. It covers wing-warping, elevons/elevators, everything. It also covers using angle-of-attack to regulate speed.

Wing-warping just happened to be how the Wright brothers implemented their patent. In fact Curtiss used ailerons , not wing-warping, to try get around their patent but failed. Bleriot used elevons in his 1909 monoplane. The problem is that there were implementations of Wright's patent *prior* to them ever flying.

Ultimately, the Wright brothers patent story proved how bad patents can be for development. The european aviation scene progressed marvelously (none of the inventors bothered much with patents it seems) while american aviation stagnated.

To say that Wright brothers invented flying is contentious at best. They made huge contributions, and were at the technical fore-front of their day - no doubt - however their achievements were NOT made in a vacuum! Aviation was one of the hottest fields of R&D of the close of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th.

The propellor efficiency patent is interesting though, but does not contradict my point that *much* research in aviation was done prior to the Wright brothers achieving powered flight.

As an alum of Mississippi State, I think that a Google Data Center would fit in perfectly as MSU's ERC: http://www.hpc.msstate.edu/

Plus, Mississippi _loves_ to attract new business by giving them gargantuan incentives. For example, when Mississippi brought Nissan to Mississippi (the only plant that manufactures the Armada and the Titan), they _gave_ Nissan the land, gave them the water, power, and road infrastructure, and deferred their property taxes for five years. My mom is an economic developer for Mississippi and she said that it's likely they just gave Toyota the same deal to develop in North Mississippi. I'm sure that a big-name company like Google could likely score some similar perks. However, being on TVA power at MSU's campus would not be such a good thing.

From http://giantsquid.msstate.edu/Background/squidtxt. html OK, it's for Giant, but no reason to suppose there're not similar.. "Giant squids do not have any gas spaces in their bodies, which means they do not have soft bladders filled with gas to keep them from sinking as fish have. In fact, no squids do, and neither do really deep sea fishes. Air is so compressible in high pressure habitats that the bladder would be squeezed until it imploded and would be useless. How then is the giant squid able to survive in very deep waters without sinking or being crushed? The answer is ammonium ions. (Ammonia in water splits into ammonium (NH4±) and hydroxyl (OH-) ions.) Unlike air, liquids cannot be crushed or compacted or compacted. Ammonium also solves the sinking problem, since, like oil, it is lighter than seawater. A giant squid concentrates ammonium in its body and is either slightly buoyant (floats) or neutrally buoyant (does not float but does not sink). Ammonia is a natural waste product, like urine. Instead of eliminating or urinating waste out as humans do, giant squids store some of the waste in their bodies. This is why so many giant squids float to the surface and wash ashore when they die. That is also why giant squids are not very tasty to eat!"

My meteorologist friend -- she's a student at the moment -- is a senior in operational meteorology. As I understand it that's the science of predicting weather. The school also has a degree in broadcast meteorology, which focuses on being a TV meteorologist. The operational students seem to hold the broadcast students in a bit of contempt for not being "real" meteorologists. I understand the broadcast meteorology degree, while apparently becoming more science-like, has historically been more communications oriented. So a degree in meteorology, particularly if it's broadcast, does not necessarily imply a fair knowledge of sciences.

Of course, the contempt may be just rivalry, I'm not entirely sure.

Here's Mississippi State's (the school she attends) relevant websites: Broadcast Meteorology and Operational Meteorology. A quick perusal suggests that operational meteorology does have stronger science requirements than the vanilla broadcast meteorology degree (though not necessarily the professional broadcast meteorology degree). And yeah, I realize they're more concentrations than degrees.

--sabre86

My meteorologist friend -- she's a student at the moment -- is a senior in operational meteorology. As I understand it that's the science of predicting weather. The school also has a degree in broadcast meteorology, which focuses on being a TV meteorologist. The operational students seem to hold the broadcast students in a bit of contempt for not being "real" meteorologists. I understand the broadcast meteorology degree, while apparently becoming more science-like, has historically been more communications oriented. So a degree in meteorology, particularly if it's broadcast, does not necessarily imply a fair knowledge of sciences.

Of course, the contempt may be just rivalry, I'm not entirely sure.

Here's Mississippi State's (the school she attends) relevant websites: Broadcast Meteorology and Operational Meteorology. A quick perusal suggests that operational meteorology does have stronger science requirements than the vanilla broadcast meteorology degree (though not necessarily the professional broadcast meteorology degree). And yeah, I realize they're more concentrations than degrees.

--sabre86

Wallace: Gromit, that's it! Cheese! We'll go somewhere where there's cheese!
[Looks at "Cheese Holidays" magazine, then out window]
Wallace: Everybody knows the moon is made of cheese...


NASA should just save money by scaling the sets down a bit - Oh damn I almost forgot....it might take a while to make some more sets! NASA could just import some moon dust instead!

Just FYI:

My university runs a lecture podcasting program: http://podcast.its.msstate.edu/

FYI - The judge in THIS case is actually one of Klinton's Komrades.

http://www.msstate.edu/dept/politicalscience/event s/Alsup.html

Actual pictures from the Dwarf Galaxy here, here, and here

Actual pictures from the Dwarf Galaxy here, here, and here

Actual pictures from the Dwarf Galaxy here, here, and here

Sorry, I screwed up the URL above. Here it is: Accessible Speech Recognition Technology software.

Mississippi State has courses in Computer Forensics and in Information Security at the graduate level. Here's a little blurb about it: http://www.cse.msstate.edu/RESEARCH/security/

Something to keep in mind is that each "generation" can be as short as the single division of a cell. In addition, don't underestimate the power of individual cells/organisms/creatures/animals to act in a parallel manner. There are insects (termites) that lay 7000 eggs a day, providing 7000 opportunities for some sort of evolutionary event. Looking at the aphid, in a single season, if all offspring lived to reproduce, there would be 1,560,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (1.56x10^24) offspring. Reference here.

Multiply that by the total number of insects (including different species) and this is a lot of opportunities for mutations and evolutionary activity. Also, keep in mind things like viruses and bacteria that reproduce in even greater numbers.

I don't claim that this makes evolution any less amazing, but a billion+ years and all the parallelization possible from all types of life makes for an incredible amount of computation. Enough, perhaps to even determine the question to life, the universe and everything.

Any patents registered by a company (or individual) that goes Chapter 11 or all the way to bankruptcy should automatically become public domain. If the inventor isn't good enough to make money out of it then it should be open for all.

Oops, there goes the Wright Brothers patent for a "flying machine" (http://invention.psychology.msstate.edu/i/Wrights /WrightUSPatent/WrightPatent.html). They must have been patent trolls, and not inventors, because they didnt make a lot of money!

Moodle and other open-source Learning Management Systems (LMSs) are your best bet. They are based on a set of open standards known as the Sharable Content Object Object Reference Model, or SCORM. SCORM is the product of years of research and development by the Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative and is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense. There are lots of resources available on the ADL site to help you get started and to test your content for conformance. The nice thing about going with SCORM as the basis for your work is that you can move up to a supported, enterprise-level LMS if you need it. A lot of schools already have a SCORM-conformant LMS (like BlackBoard) in place.

SCORM is composed of several component specifications like IMS Content Packaging and IMS Simple Sequencing. You can also include (optional) metadata about the parts of your course, known as Sharable Content Objects (SCOs) and assets. Other standards like the Question and Test Interoperability Specification (QTI) are not officially a part of SCORM but can be incorporated using a number of established techniques.

As far as tools go, there are open-source tools available that expose the SCORM specs in a form that is usable by computer-savvy users, like Reload. There are other tools available that are intended for use by users who are less technical, like InSite Studio by Mississippi State University. Other tools are also available from commercial vendors. Some LMSs even have web-based tools built-in, and are known as Learning Content Management Systems (LCMSs).

SCORM is a mature set of specs that are designed to meet the needs of organizations that are in your exact position, and are widely accepted -- some Asian countries have adopted it as a national standard. The SCORM community is growing quickly and new complimentary specs are being leveraged within SCORM-conformant courses all the time. Tool support should also expand quickly now that the SCORM 2004 spec has been in circulation for a while and vendors are getting thier products certified by the ADL.

speech recognition
http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/sphinx/

image+speech recognition
http://sourceforge.net/projects/opencvlibrary/

Desktop voice commands
http://perlbox.sourceforge.net/

Others
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Speech-Recognition-HOWTO /software.html
http://www.cavs.msstate.edu/hse/ies/projects/speec h/software/

Do you know about other usable open source speech solutions?

I'm not sure if you are aware of it, but several speech databases are avialable to researchers. Some have licences with a yearly fee, but some are free of charge.

Try http://www.cavs.msstate.edu/hse/ies/projects/speec h/databases/ for a list of some of these, including the CMU kid speach database.

There seem to be quite a few examples of the FBI engaging marketing students on 'Projects' NPR was talking about it last week too http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/ a/2005/11/22/state/n081156S81.DTL&type=printable http://www.ur.msstate.edu/news/stories/2004/fbimar ketingplan.asp

... it had something to do with the cheese?

The lowering of the orbit is primarily due to atmospheric drag, as mentioned in other posts.

Pure water is 1000kg/cu.m like others have said already, but apparently sea/salt water is slightly heavier (cuz of heavier minerals?).

Sugar is 800kg/cu.m and Salt is 1200kg/cu.m... (I'm assuming powder compacted by gravity and regular shaking)

Stone is around 2500kg/cu.m.

A cubic meter of steel, bronze or iron might be around 8000kg/cu.m.

Uranium and gold are close to 19000kg/cu.m.

Dalekenium (fictional metal alloy used in Daleks) might be around 600-700kg/cu.m (about 1/4 of aluminium) and this happens to be the density of wood, which the first Dalek models were made of.

Found this link some time ago. Weights of stuff
Works well in conjunction with Volume calculator page

I believe DEET is actually N, N-diethyl-3-methybenzamide (DEET)
See ref: http://www.msstate.edu/Entomology/Homepest/mosquit orepell.html
Although I am not a chemistry person.

produced by Avon skin-so-soft is a popularfolk mosquito repellent, if your friends can stand the smell.

AP reports that researchers in Banglaturkistan are now slicing bread. This astonishing turn of events opens a wide realm of possibilities including toast, sandwiches, toasted sandwiches, and a new integrated circuit medium that could potentially increase the processing power of the Celeron processor by as much as 10 fold.

Lead researcher Helmar Ackmedsteinski states, "though the possibilities are endless, we are at least 10 years away from any viable toasting technology".

Though toast may not be in our near future, rumors have surfaced that new Celerons are on the way and will be in stores in time for Chirstmas. They are calling it the Celeron T.

Anyway, software patents have two big problems. The first one is that about 20 years is way too long time for a patent in information technology field. Another big problem is that software patents have to be obfuscated. Otherwise the patent would cover just one implementation. As a result, nobody can even explain what a patent really does or what it covers because a thorough explanation could also be an implementation of said patent. Especially, one cannot explain the patent with any machine readable language. Or it that's allowed, no open source developer never needs to mind about software patents. Because then we're just distributing the description of the patent and patents do not cover use of patent for personal use -- like using the description to build/compile the software, for example.

However... IANAL, obviously, and I do live in a country that doesn't yet have software patents, so what do I know?

Patent Law -- a system desigened by lawyers, for the lawyers.

Summary
Phased Logic (PL) is a self-timed design methodology that provides an automated translation of a clocked system in the form of D-flip-flops and combinational gates to a self-timed netlist of PL gates. The only global net in the self-timed netlist is a reset signal. The PL netlist is a micropipelined system with two-phase control. Two distinct implementation technologies are supported, fine-grain and coarse-grain.
--ERC Website on Phased logic

Summary
Phased Logic (PL) is a self-timed design methodology that provides an automated translation of a clocked system in the form of D-flip-flops and combinational gates to a self-timed netlist of PL gates. The only global net in the self-timed netlist is a reset signal. The PL netlist is a micropipelined system with two-phase control. Two distinct implementation technologies are supported, fine-grain and coarse-grain.
--ERC Website on Phased logic

Thanks for taking the time to remove any doubt whatsoever that you are, in fact, not only a bigot, but a complete idiot.

Thanks for taking the time to remove any doubt whatsoever that you are, in fact, not only a bigot, but a complete idiot.

--
Try Nuggets , the mobile search engine. We answer your questions via SMS, across the UK.

--
Try Nuggets , the mobile search engine. We answer your questions via SMS, across the UK.

With the upcoming LookingGlass failing on many hardware setups, it's only natural that they should look for a license that would allow them to capitalize on the efforts of the Bearded Terminal Hackers the oopen source movement provides.

Didn't the fire occur because they overcharged their batteries in the room?

Anyway, they did build one, and congratulations to them. So did many others, in this student competition. The Washington Post wrote up a little article (PDF) (HTML), too.

Note that I link to the pdf hosted on msstate.edu because that's where I go to school. Our plane ran Slackware.

According to the article, it utilizes Cavity Ring-Down Spectroscopy (CRDS) to detect concentration levels of acetone in a person's breath gas.

Well, pass me some crow. After checking some of the replies, an anonymous coward wrote

I think you will find that the BBC got the spelling from mississippi state univeristy.

Wondering where he found that information, I clicked on the "Related Links" link from the BBC article, did a little more clicking, and found the following excepts from this article

After many puzzling months, RLF finally went to the Biology library and found that, yes, dwarfed bacterial cells were known, variously called spores, resting stages, or ultramicrobacteria. Along the way, a friend stopped by to examine the photos and said that these looked like what had been called "nannobacteria" (term coined by R. Y. Morita in 1988).. So Folk adopted that term, analogous to "nannoplankton" or "nannofossils" common terms in geology dating back to the 1800's.

Guess it's not the BBC's fault after all, though I still prefer "nanobacteria".

I think you will find that the BBC got the spelling from mississippi state univeristy.
Nanobacteria Photo Gallery [msstate.edu]

Nanobacteria Photo Gallery

This was demonstrated over a hundred years ago by Samuel Pierpont Langley. He had everything: the education, the money, the resources and he used them all to try to create a flying machine - only to be beaten by two bicycle makers.

How do you account for the fact that mars is also showing signs of global warming? Sure, it's possible that a bunch of martians are having their own industrial revolution at the same time as ours, but it seems more likely the sun has something to do with it. And sure enough, it turns out the sun is getting hotter. And sunspot activity is changing, and the strength of the sun's magnetic field is changing, and so on. And we don't have good models to account for much of it, and we don't have good data going back more than a few decades on much of it either.

My personal theory is that incrementing the year on our calendars causes global warming. The whole time that people think the planet has gotten hotter, the calendar has been increasing! Coincidence?

Bill gets he-man, bitch-slapped.

From an Image here

Good to see Gates' bowel movements are working great

Mirror of the images

When I was working as a webmaster at Mississippi State University (the site I made: http://www.agecon.msstate.edu), I followed federal, state, and university guidelines for web page design, which included using descriptive ALT tags and banned the use of graphics-only links. Like the response above me said, it's a pain sometimes, but ultimately it's worth it if you make life easier for someone else.

Granted, this isn't anything to do with garbled text for registration things, but I just wanted to chime in with my personal experience with the ALT tag issue. The federal government and most state governments have regulations about websites to make them handicap-accessible (I think there are even some regulations in the Americans With Disabilities Act).

My main rant is this: private industry can discriminate. I don't care who they are, any private company can (or should be able to) intentionally single out individual groups and refuse service to them if they want to. They shouldn't, but they certainly have that right. Why not? I mean, I don't recall ever hearing, "Private industry by the people, for the people, of the people." It's more like, "Private industry by the rich person, for the rich person, of the rich person." And that's alright, isn't it? He never agreed to serve humanity. What he does with his company is his business.

Lawsuits suck. I'm going to sue lawyers.

Any Germans want to weigh in? (Although I'm not sure why we should view their statements as more authoritative than those from the American IANAL's who can't grasp the difference between criminal and civil law...)

In case anyone wants to see the pics of that really cool guy in the glasses, I've mirrored all the pics on my uni account.

http://www.msstate.edu/~ajl3/cache/003mid.jpg
http://www.msstate.edu/~ajl3/cache/004mid.jpg
http://www.msstate.edu/~ajl3/cache/013mid.jpg
http://www.msstate.edu/~ajl3/cache/P0000381.gif
http://www.msstate.edu/~ajl3/cache/P0000387.jpg
http://www.msstate.edu/~ajl3/cache/bonifaciy.jpg

Oh yeah...the pics of that chick are there too, but I know none of you care about that...

In case anyone wants to see the pics of that really cool guy in the glasses, I've mirrored all the pics on my uni account.

http://www.msstate.edu/~ajl3/cache/003mid.jpg
http://www.msstate.edu/~ajl3/cache/004mid.jpg
http://www.msstate.edu/~ajl3/cache/013mid.jpg
http://www.msstate.edu/~ajl3/cache/P0000381.gif
http://www.msstate.edu/~ajl3/cache/P0000387.jpg
http://www.msstate.edu/~ajl3/cache/bonifaciy.jpg

Oh yeah...the pics of that chick are there too, but I know none of you care about that...