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Note parent doesn't list his country of origin. Hypocrite. Lets review some facts-

In 1992, the United States ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Article 6(5) of this international human rights treaty requires that the death penalty not be used on those who committed their crimes when they were below the age of 18

At which point I have to ask the author of the comment if he considers 18 year olds "childern". Also note....

Countries which have the death penalty for ordinary crimes, of which most have a limiting age of 18.

AFGHANISTAN, ALGERIA, ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA, ARMENIA, BAHAMAS, BAHRAIN, BANGLADESH, BARBADOS, BELARUS, BELIZE, BENIN, BOTSWANA, BURUNDI, CAMEROON, CHAD, CHILE, CHINA, COMOROS, CONGO (Democratic Republic), CUBA, DOMINICA, EGYPT, EQUATORIAL GUINEA, ERITREA, ETHIOPIA, GABON, GHANA, GUATEMALA, GUINEA, GUYANA, INDIA, INDONESIA, IRAN, IRAQ, JAMAICA, JAPAN, JORDAN, KAZAKSTAN, KENYA, KUWAIT, KYRGYZSTAN, LAOS, LEBANON, LESOTHO, LIBERIA, LIBYA, MALAWI, MALAYSIA, MAURITANIA, MONGOLIA, MOROCCO, MYANMAR, NIGERIA, NORTH KOREA, OMAN, PAKISTAN, PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY, PHILIPPINES, QATAR, RUSSIAN FEDERATION, RWANDA, SAINT CHRISTOPHER & NEVIS, SAINT LUCIA, SAINT VINCENT & GRENADINES, SAUDI ARABIA, SIERRA LEONE, SINGAPORE, SOMALIA, SOUTH KOREA, SUDAN, SWAZILAND, SYRIA, TAIWAN, TAJIKISTAN, TANZANIA, THAILAND, TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO, TUNISIA, UGANDA, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, UZBEKISTAN, VIET NAM, YEMEN, YUGOSLAVIA (Federal Republic), ZAMBIA, ZIMBABWE

So please, check your facts before spewing your righteous indignation upon people who actually know better.

For the rest, sorry for the off-topic. I just can't stand these people.

at least the skateboard anyway, this article disputes that... Otherwise, great review, though I wish there was a link to somewhere else that has screenshots or more info on the documentary itself. (perhaps a link to order it?)

1. Installed the new palm desktop into my TitG4 just fine. hooray.
2. Went to synch my palmVx, previously only backed up via PalmCopy - thankyou palmCopy. Started the HotSynch and it found my Palm via IR and recognsied me as user. So far this is better than the beta.
3. I went off to make some tea, came back at distress sound from my palm. The synch connection broke while trying to install some new OS upgrade.
4. annoyed, I surfed about on /. and Mac/ to see if others had experienced the same probs. they had and advocated trashing the OS3.5.3 folder from the OS updates folder.
5. I moved the offending system update and tried my synch again. No luck, the synch jammed up on trying to identify the user.
6. so, having experienced this before with the beta I logged out and in again, then performed a synch. - voila, it worked and for the first time in almost a year the contact list on my mac is in synch with my palm - now if only I could simpyl synch palm desktop, address.app, ipod and palmVx in one go...
7. not content, I updated some of the contact info via palm desktop and then went to resynch. - no luck as now it can't identify the user.
8. so once again logged out, logged in and tried to resynch. same result - can't identify the user.
9. so full reboot - try again - no luck.
10. fiddle about, reboot, try again - no luck.
11. give up in disgust and look for someone at palm to flame - no luck. the last person i spoke to at palm emphaticalyl told me that th emac was not supported and certainly not hotsynching via IR - idiots

• Here's what I want.
• To synch my palm with my address books and ipod
• A freeware OS independent shared calendar that works like an instant messenger that I can synch my palm with.
• shared to-do lists
• Oh hell, I want my Newton back

dave

At two different universities (undergrad at Miami University and grad State) both programs just recently switched to Java as the intro language and, later on, introduce C/C++ for OS courses.

And this seems to be the big push (I think Cornell uses Java as its intro language too) internationally.

The rational: free (as in a book on Dianetics), object-oriented, relatively painless.

And as far as I know Sun and MS still aren't giving each other reach arounds.

curses. how far along is this and what's his name? I'm in CSE 331 & 320 at that same institution and I rather hate VC++, and i'm used to *NIX and g++. What is going on? i've heard the complaints/rumors about .net in 231...?

This reminds me of my intro to c++ course at a major research institution. They recently switched the intro course from Solaris/g++ to Windows/Visual C++/.NET. It's a total mess in a very similar way. In one of the first assignments students were required to make use of the math library, which turned into a mess when people passed ints and floats to functions that only accepted doubles. This worked just fine under VC++ but failed on the Solaris machines with g++ where all the grading is done.

Aside from this and other compatibility problems we've had between g++ and VSC++, the profs have no idea what they're doing with VS.NET because they've spent most of their time using the Solaris machines. I'm pretty sure the whole switch was motivated by the CS Department head, who switched Purdue over to M$ products when he worked there. So far he's only got the intro course, but they're looking at using it in higher courses too :(.

I was talking to a friend today. He runs an ftp here at my school and is a good computer programmer. We got on the subject of operating systems* and he asked why i didn't run winXP, as it is provided free to all CSE students. I explained that it didn't run some games/apps (notably abandonware like the Cmdr Keen which I did pay for back in the day) and I told him that XP reports a lot of what you do back to MS. yay. gettin' monitored. I run windows 98SE for games. Now with a good version of Xine in my new OS, i don't need 98 for movies any more.

My friend blew off hte privacy issue, and that worried me. I mean, this guy trades warez, he has illegal movies, pirated MS office, and he doesn't worry about MSspyware XP. sigh. and this guy is supposed to be a computer-smart CS student.

*i mentioned how i was soon going to install mandrake 8.2, which btw, is beautiful, and i love you mandrake-linux. its just so...good...

Except for a few extremist zealots, the Newton is thoroughly dead.

Extremist zealots? Are you terrified of Newton users for some reason? Some people prefer it and there is still an active eBay selling community. Are they all dangerous? Should they be locked up for not buying a newer PDA? Hardly. The Newton 2x00 series died because it was a $1000+ piece of technology before it was discontinued. There's no doubt that's too much for a PDA, no matter how advanced. But of course it was so expensive when new because of just how high-end it was, and that's why it survives today.

The 2000 series had an EL-backlit 100dpi 320x480 display, PCMCIA slots (shove a 256MB CF card in one and an ethernet card in the other and away you go), a standard DHCP-compliant TCP/IP stack (browse the Web, send/receive e-mail), sound (play MP3's, take voice notes), natural handwriting recognition from Paragraph (which works incredibly well and now forms the basis for Microsoft's "Transcriber" in PocketPC), a 162MHz StrongARM processor, the ability to import and edit Office documents, the ability serve Web pages, and an interface which combines the best aspects of Mac OS, Palm OS and Windows CE, all at only an inch thick and about a pound in weight.

The fact that this product was killed off years ago (as you mentioned) and that people still use it every day to listen to MP3's, edit reports, browse the Web, send/receive HTML mail, and host their Web sites makes it more amazing, not less.

But I'll be damned if these new Sony PDAs don't come close. If only they'd used CF rather than memorystick! If only Transcriber/Calligrapher were released in a Palm OS version!

Uh, no.

An MP2100, with batteries, is 1.4 lbs. But coming from an MP2100u user, it doesn't bother me. I'd rather carry around one Newton than a backpack full of notebooks and handouts.

See the Woody 2.4 boot floppies.

There was previously a reiserfs flavor based on the 2.2 kernel, but it doesn't seem to be availble any more.

Daniel

The reason these technologies are no longer considered "AI" is that they never were actual artifical intelligence.
When the original researchers in AI began, they saw that the bottom-up approach had a huge number of issues. So they ended up spliting into the computer vision, modeling, logic, etc.. groups. The idea was that if we could figure out all of these individally, we could bring them together and show real intelligence. The problem is that as these individual technologies become more mature, the path for putting them back together is gone. We're seeing that this isn't the way to model real intelligence.
There is a group, involving some major players, that is looking at other methods though. Personally this seems like a more viable approach.

Each project solution is electronically compared to all other solutions to identify similar solutions. Teams or individuals that submit solutions that are essentially identical will receive a score of zero for that assignment. A student who is involved in a second such incident of academic dishonesty will receive a grade of zero in the course. Under no circumstances should you share a project solution with another team or individual. Sharing your solution almost guarantees a zero score: past experience shows that a student who asks to "look at" your solution will copy parts of it or pass it along to someone else who copies it.

That guy on the bus who plays Quake on his notebook computer just got ten times as annoying!

Seriously though, how do you recharge a fuel cell. The howstuffworks article covers hydrogen fuel cells which you recharge by... inserting more hydrogen. They also make water, bad for notebooks. This prototype looks like a sealed system and being billed as a replacement for Li-Ion, which means it's rechargeable and doesn't leak. "Carbon nanotubes" are very cool but there's nearly no mention of an application to new forms of fuel cells in the literature. This press release is great but... where's the science?

Just curious.

For sure... I did this several years ago...

Here is a link

Funny coincidence, mine was stolen too!

Ferrofluids are colloidal suspensions of nanoscale magnetic particles in a carrier fluid; the particles form magnetic domains separated by coats of dispersant only a molecule thick. These magnetic fluids have been used in many ways--to form airtight seals around rapidly moving parts, to move drugs in the bloodstream and rocket propellants in spacecraft, even to cool and dampen powerful audio speakers. Now steerable ferrofluids may give rise to new tools for subsurface environmental engineering and laboratory safety.

At Berkeley, they use magnetic fluids to control movement of underground fluids without any contact. Interesting stuff. For an introduction to ferrofluids, see University of Wisconsin's excellent article.

Absolute zero is -273.16C, so -255C is indeed possible.

It's never a mistake to grab an old SGI - Irix is slick, and if you don't want it, you can be sure that someone you know will swap you something for it.

I tried to grab this one a couple of years ago when MSU was getting rid of it.
Someone beat me to it, but later that day, I got a call offering it to me, as it wouldn't fit through the door of my friend's apartment!
I snapped it up, as I had plenty of room, and was working at a place where I had easy access to Irix disksets.

Well, the US has some (and has had) solutions to your Sipping tea in an Air Conditioned room problem:

- Put on the hood. Aim for the white O. Bang, Bang, Bang, Poof, Bang. Sandbags mop up the blood. Unconscious minutes after.
- A quick shave. Some gel. Zap 'em for four minutes 'till he's dead. Hey... Did you forget to fix the restraints? His body went across the room that time.
- A last look at society. Now, strap him in so he doesn't look like he's in pain. Pop a vein, drop in the IV. Pop another, do the same. Pump him full of Anesthetic. Now kill his muscles. Finish off his heart.
- Throw him in the box. Add some sulfuric acid. Listen to the heart. Add sodium cyanide. Wait 18 minutes. You now have one prisoner gassed to death slower than even the most powerful dictators in the world could ever dream of. The masked men add some little bleach to wash off those deadly gas stains.
- Weigh him. Calculate the rope length. Open the door. Wait 45 minutes. Pop, Pop, plop.

Oh, so sorry, did I scare you? Some desensitization might help. May I suggest you take a seat in the room with a view and watch the show? I hear today's is going to be good: Another big guy, should take enough to kill a horse to get rid of him.

Well, the US has some (and has had) solutions to your Sipping tea in an Air Conditioned room problem:

- Put on the hood. Aim for the white O. Bang, Bang, Bang, Poof, Bang. Sandbags mop up the blood. Unconscious minutes after.
- A quick shave. Some gel. Zap 'em for four minutes 'till he's dead. Hey... Did you forget to fix the restraints? His body went across the room that time.
- A last look at society. Now, strap him in so he doesn't look like he's in pain. Pop a vein, drop in the IV. Pop another, do the same. Pump him full of Anesthetic. Now kill his muscles. Finish off his heart.
- Throw him in the box. Add some sulfuric acid. Listen to the heart. Add sodium cyanide. Wait 18 minutes. You now have one prisoner gassed to death slower than even the most powerful dictators in the world could ever dream of. The masked men add some little bleach to wash off those deadly gas stains.
- Weigh him. Calculate the rope length. Open the door. Wait 45 minutes. Pop, Pop, plop.

Oh, so sorry, did I scare you? Some desensitization might help. May I suggest you take a seat in the room with a view and watch the show? I hear today's is going to be good: Another big guy, should take enough to kill a horse to get rid of him.

...does anyone else find it just slightly strange that his name is DAVID HAHN!??

Most of our enemies would see it most efficient to use prions.

These are what scientists think are responsible for mad cow disease, as well as the Kuru disease from Africa. Supposedly, if used as a biological weapon (which is years away, if even possible), they could be targetted toward specific ethnic groups and people with certain attributes. (Yes, each word in the above is a link to a resource.)

This is the most comprehensive site I've found for deep bakground on Carbon Nanotubes: http://www.pa.msu.edu/cmp/csc/nanotube.html

--CTH

--

Also, is there such a thing as "the Corporate Republic"? When you use loaded expressions like that, you sound just as paranoid as Oliver Stone, ranting away about "the Military-Industrual Complex" which he blames for all his little conspiracy theories.

Actually, the term "Military Industrial Complex" was not the invention of Oliver Stone, whose loose theories are well-known and generally regarded in accordance to how well substantiated they are.

Rather, it was a Republican icon from the 1950s, President Dwight Eisenhower, that warned of the "Military Industrial Complex" in his farewell address to the nation. Because his position permitted him a great deal more familiarity with such matters, I attribute greater credence to Ike's warning than, say, Katz on the Corporate Republic.

That's not to say that Corporate Republic is a total distortion of the facts, but only that a spokesperson, from a position of authority, knowledge and either recognized neutrality or, better, former advocacy, has yet to utter this expression.

The term coporate republic gained some currency with James K Galbraith in this article, so it gets more credence and respectability than if Katz coined the term.

Nonetheless, its usage is primarily confined to advocates pushing a particular view or position, much like the self-serving code words employed by the government of the PRC (eg, imperialists == America, hegemonists == Russia), or the many colorful appellations that Rush Limbaugh uses to ridicule opponents of his views.

I've got a better question: why aren't you using the RDBMS?

Many of us who crow about the wonders of OO programming environments, don't have a firm grasp of the alternatives, nor do we fully appreciate the problems that those OO environments solve versus the good things they traded away. For building significant, long-lived, scalable, evolveable, administerable, restartable information systems the RDBMS has not been beat.

If we start from the opposite side, i.e. we start with the RDBMS and ask: what is it that is distasteful about programming in this environment, we might actually get somewhere. If I take Oracle as an example and compare it to e.g. Java the only shortcoming I see with Oracle's PL/SQL is that it doesn't (to my knowledge) support polymorphism. It does support encapsulation and abstraction (functions, procedures, packages with data hiding), and the biggie: declarative, optimizable association specification. It certainly supports "structured programming". Are you willing to trade away all that RDBMS goodness just to get polymorphism. Seems like a poor tradeoff.

I'll go even further. It is not at all obvious that the OO "model" is superior to the relational one. These observations from this paper by McCarthy apply just as well now to OO models, as they did to non-relational (accounting) models back in 1982 (pp 554-555):

(2) Its classification schemes are not always appropriate. The chart of accounts for a particular enterprise represents all of the categories into which information concerning economic affairs may be placed. This will often lead to data being left out or classified in a manner that hides its nature from non-accountants.

(3) Its aggregation level for stored information is too high. Accounting data is used by a wide variety of decision makers, each needing differing amounts of quantity, aggregation, and focus depending upon their personalities, decision styles, and conceptual structures. Therefore information concerning economic events and objects should be kept in as elementary a form as possible to be aggregated by the eventual user.

What McCarthy is arguing for is dis-encapsulation! Anti-OO. I think there's an important lesson there.

So the question is: can we have that flexibility along with maintainability?

Also, be careful to avoid reasoning from an outdated view of the data type expressiveness offered by the modern RDBMS. All the major vendors are now offering so-called OO/Relational features such as object identifiers, large objects, arrays, structures, sub-tables.

Fore more deep background check out the Nanotube website at: http://www.pa.msu.edu/cmp/csc/nanotube.html


---

It already exists, and has existed for a number of years now... (since 1995)

It is called "xmove", and is available from ftp://ftp.cs.columbia.edu/pub/xmove/

If you're running Debian, then it's only an apt-get away.

If running Red Hat or any other RPM-based distribution, there is an i386 and src RPM available on the 'Net as well.

In addition, I suggest that you try out x2x. Think "Xinerama" across multiple desktops over the network. It's kind of like that. With the combination of x2x and xmove, you can actually move the displays of X applications across machines, and control all of the boxes from one control point. Good stuff. (:

I remember the day that I mistakenly left some aluminium foil in the microwave to heat up some dinner. So the sparks and all the screaming provide the distraction for me to escape, right?

And don't forget that we can have portable grape races now.

First of all, I want to say that not all schools are like this. I went through the CS program at MSU and can tell you that their program gives it's students quite a bit of opportunity to learn CE subjects. Now, I only went to one school, so I don't have much basis for comparison, but it seems like my education there was rather robust.

Second of all, if you're only a second-year CS student, then I think it's a bit premature for you to "attest to the fact that they train you t o be a code monkey." Of course they're gonna concentrate on teaching you how to code at first. Why? Because, first of all, you're busy taking the university-required liberal arts classes etc and are only taking like one CS course per semester anyway (instead of 2 or 3), and second of all because you can't write good code until you know how to write code.

Time is fun when you're having flies.

Not to be confused with "Battlefield Earth", which was made by another cult, the "church" of scientology. Check out this web page for more info on the mormon/BG connection. Check out this web page for more info on the clams:

Check out GNU libavl for some good binary tree structure code. The stable version is well written C; the development version is a literate program. (Note: I am the author.)

Try out the demo here.

Main features are:

e-mail notification

problems entered by users or reps

users can view the problem status and add additional information

searchable problem database

usage reporting

comment forms

Be afraid, be very afraid... or amused- whichever you tend to do in the presence of sarcasm.

Sounds like you're misinformed.

Can I quote you when I next talk to the folks planning this? ;)

Some quick, publicly-available mentions of the plans (note the recurrent references to Lake Vostok, the Antarctic lake with miles-thick ice cover, which is our present best model for the Europa ocean):

From Wired ; search for "Engelhardt", near the end. He's the CalTech glaciologist who invented the "hot water drill."

BBC's Online talks about this, too: the article is about the parallels between Antarctia's Lake Vostok and Europa. Search for "melt," it's the third occurance of the word. Frank Carsey, who's talking, is with the Polar Oceanography Group at JPL (and is mentioned in the Wired link, too).

A website on Europa's oceans, which mentions the "melting" plan. Papers are cited, and the bibliography's here.

JPL's website also mentions it; search for "hydrobots". Also check the Europa Orbiter Fact Sheet link (to a PDF) on that same page.

And finally, a Michigan State University honors course page which talks about the proposed Odysseus Mission, which is looking at an ice-melting "drill".

I'm not misinformed -- I think you haven't thought it through. Yeah, drilling that deep on Earth is incredibly hard, if not impossible. But Europa (and Lake Vostok, for that matter) are covered with miles of ice, not rock... a very different problem, with a very different solution.

---

You have the right to remain silent while we beat the shit out of you. You have the right to a fair trial before a politically-biased judge and a randomly selected jury of morons. You have the right to spend the rest of your life taking it up the ass from murderers and drug kingpins.

Never mind the whole thing, I'd settle for some ribosomal RNA sequences that I could compare with other existing rRNA sequences from the public databases. It'd be a simple matter to grab some sequences from The Ribosomal RNA Project database, align them with a sequence from this bacteria in ClustalX, and then generate a phylogenetic 'tree' with fastDNAml, which gives a nice, simple representation of how closely related the sequences are to each other.

It's fun to do. At least, I think so, but then again, I'm a sick puppy.

I think that program starts this year, if I'm not mistaken.

It starts with incoming freshmen for the 2001-2002 school year. Also, you are correct in that the policy just requires A computer, not a laptop. I still wonder why this is needed. MSU has plenty of computer labs (both PC/Windows and Sun/UNIX). Some of these labs are even open 24 hours a day. Probably just a way for the Computer Store to make money.

Ok People, I realize that MSU isn't the largest school in michigan... Oh wait, it is.
Then I guess it doesn't have any sports teams to make you remember it... Oh wait. it does& lt;/a>
Look... MSU instituted this policy for all incomming freshman at the start of this school year..... well shoot me with a stick
The only article I found on the net was this one.

Anyhow.. just trying to give my alma mater it's Due Props.

If the RIAA can violate your rights in order to make a buck, they will (and are) do(ing) so without flinching.

This basically all stems back to the fact that most people don't vote. The election is so close right now that if even half of the students at my college voted, the election could be swayed.

I went out and registered the minute I turned 18, not because I felt it was my duty as an American or because I felt the need to flex my newfound Major muscles. I registered because I wanted my voice to be heard.

As a friend of mine once said:
"By definition if you don't stand up for anything, you stand for nothing"

There was a lawsuit. The universities lost.

Would you happen to have any more information, like which case this was? I was searching for information on the internet and couldn't find much, although I did find this, which was a case in which those coursepacks were NOT illegal, after a long battle:

http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~women/threads/pack.html

I am personally interested because I was working on software to help university bookstores track those copyright clearances. I haven't touched the project in a long time though. I'm trying to decide what I think about that now based on this information.

Finally, someone is talking some sense! The tutorial that I used is on this page. Click on the link that says 'the best LaTeX guide that I've found'. It's a dvi file so you need to have a dvi viewer. There's also a link to a good index of LaTeX commands on this page.

The Nazis also could have cared less about disabilities and social equality. Slave traders could have cared less about disabilities and social equality. I bring to your attention a trifling document called the Declaration of Independence.

Elitist regimes and dynasties come and go with the winds, but the United States government has stayed intact since its inception. This perceived need for social equality seems to have created a lasting governmental structure.

If that isn't enough, take a look at the Hungarian Declaration of Independence which looks like it was closely based on the U.S. Declaration.

Or perhaps glance at the French Constitution which notes in its first clause: "Frenchmen are equal before the law, whatever may be their titles and rank."

If you are willing to take a look at these, I might be willing to look at Schopenhauer.

Check out the GARAGe at Michigan State University. They use Genetic algorithms for many different and interesting problems. From consumer preference predicting to financial analysis.

There code is called Gallops, and it seems very scalable. There is a Meta-GA built into Gallops that allows the GA to genetically change itself in order to be the most efficient GA.

This is cool stuff!

Hi.

I'm a little hesitant to give out someone's email address without asking him, but a professor at MSU had a similar problem. We had a similar machine at Michigan State Univeristy in the Materials Science and Mechanics dept. It was better to scrap the machine for the laser/lenses/mirrors/actuators then it was to fix it. I'm not sure exactly why but if you are interested in knowing more, then email the faculty member in the department who does know more. His name is Lee.

Hey, thank Google for this one:
http://www.msu.edu/user/reicher6/zyll.htm has links to get the program! Time to fire up Virtual PC and see if it works.

Pope

Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!

At www.gravitykills.com you can find a number of mp3s (from full-length commercial albums even) free for download for promo purposes. The band members have alluded to maybe putting new tracks from their forthcoming album online, if/when they get permission from TVT.

So (not that this is news to most /.ers) I just want to say that I hope the actions of the company don't reflect on the band. Of course, fans following GK's recent online chats know that GK and TVT might not be on the best of terms right now....

I wonder if TVT's legal/PR people even know...?

How about trying to improve on the Eliza bot. I'm fairly positive Eliza bot would have been covered quite significantly in you AI class. For some more info check out http://www.msu.edu/user/gilber63/paper3 .htm.

I've always been intrigued by this bot and since (according to the above article) she was created back in 1987 I'm sure there would be lots of "updates" you could make.

OTOH, you may have covered this extensivly and this could be very unoriginal. Whatever the case, Eliza is a prime example of AI at work.

Good luck,
LiNT

I re-emailed the letter I sent to them earlier. A copy of which can be found here

I really don't know if e-mailing the suggestion box will do any good. By this time they're probaly forwarding all e-mail to /dev/null, but it won't hurt to try.

All e-mail concerning the above link can be directed to the address above.

"Bucky Shuttle" Memory Device: Synthetic Approach and Molecular Dynamics Simulations,
there are also MPEG simulations available here: Simulation of a nanotube-based memory element.

"Bucky Shuttle" Memory Device: Synthetic Approach and Molecular Dynamics Simulations,
there are also MPEG simulations available here: Simulation of a nanotube-based memory element.