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My Piano teacher has perfect pitch and can tell the difference (without a tuning fork) between notes that are in-tune and notes that are out of tune. A few percent difference would certainly be something she'd notice. A4 is 440Hz, while A#4 is 446Hz, which is an increase of only 1%, and she can tell the difference of fractions of that. All individuals with perfect pitch would be able to tell the 1% difference between A4 and A#4.

As you stated, in general, most people would not be able to notice small differences in absolute frequency, only relative frequency--provided those differences are relatively small (within an octave or so on a musical instrument).

http://pages.mtu.edu/~suits/no...

It also generated an imperceptible thump

the U.S. Geological Survey confirmed that there was a coincident magnitude 2.0 earthquake

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

I do not think that means what you do not think that means.

According to this,

Magnitude 2.5 or less: Usually not felt, but can be recorded by seismograph.

so an event comparable to a 2.0 earthquake would have registered on seismographs, but wouldn't likely have even caused the glasses in the kitchen to chime against one another.

No charger is 99% efficient. You have losses in the switching circuitry, battery management and safety circuits, motor controller pass through, the batteries themselves, etc. This user group forum reports real world situations where the efficiency is as low as 54%. Line losses matter because the whole reason for this thread on EV in the first place is about lowering pollution CO2, which is dependent on line losses. If you read my original link, you will find in India today (well a couple of years ago when the study was done but basically same as today) that electric vehicles pollute more co2 than gas ones due to the reasons I've listed.

When the electric motor has applied power, but the output rotaton is zero, efficiently is by definition zero. Thus all powered motors of any kind have zero efficiency at stall. Here is an example of a engineering document explaining how basic electric motor formulas work. Though these are for smaller motors used in machinery, they are basically the same/similar for all types of electric motors used in cars of all kinds.

I have a masters in mechanical engineering and have designed systems that include electric motors for 10 years.

You mean like in this document ? If so, then no it isn't. Compare to that document. In particular typesetting quality, consistency, features, and ease of creating macros.

Natural gas valves could be shutoff at the building or even better at the substations. "The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 caused 90% of damage by fire." http://www.geo.mtu.edu/UPSeis/...

Wonder if it works like this one, http://www.mtu.edu/news/storie...

It has been upheld in US courts that even the minor fame from open-source authorship counts as economic gain (thus reinforcing the GPL's validity as being consequential).

I'd like to know the court citation. I did a quick Google search for "Arms Export Control Act open source software" and it looked like open source and anything else that was public domain was not subject to export restrictions.

http://oti.newamerica.net/blog...

http://www.mtu.edu/research/ad...

As to imports of scientific information, I read about that (I think) in Science, about how some American journals were refusing to accept papers from restricted countries. At least some lawyers argued that the regulations allowed the exchange of scientific information, the journals were wrong, and should start accepting papers.

I've seen submissions in the New England Journal of Medicine from Iran, usually short pieces in their "Images in Clinical Medicine" feature. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/1... Iran has a pretty good health care system, with doctors trained in the UK.

Iraq used to have one of the best health care systems in the world. Some of the most bitter critics of Saddam Hussein were Iraqi doctors, and I used to read their articles in The Lancet and BMJ. After the war, some of them were treated worse by George W. Bush than they were by Saddam (as in blowing up hospitals).

If they couldn't publish their stuff in American medical journals, the British journals are happy to publish high-quality work.

When you put ice cubes in your warm drink, they are melting, yet at the same time, they are still there. Imagine that. Then they can float around too, like on the ocean. On the ocean they tend to float around by a phenomenon that's called wind. Wind blows ice around and if you are not careful or just unlucky, you'll get yourself stuck or worse. You can have a nice channel between ice one minute, and then wind switches, and it makes something like this out of your channel,

    http://www.geo.mtu.edu/great_lakes/ice/IMAGES/ICE_PHOTOS/KEW_BAY1/pressure_ridge3.jpg

At least they are not crushed by ice like many expeditions of the past.

So either an ice breaker will get to them (it may not if ice is too thick), or they will have to wait for the ice pack to shift. That can take a while but they will most likely not be stuck there until next summer. It's not even the warmest part of the year in Antarctica.

PS. Alaska is much warmer than Antarctica. Lack of trees in Antarctica is one giveaway.

PPS. This event has absolutely, positively nothing to do with AGW like some poasters are talking about. Just some floating ice and wind.

Your brain fixes the colour cast from the ambient light, not the colour of the objects you're looking at. Does your office look like this? When you go outside does it look like this?

The corrected photos show that the landscape of Mars, at least in that location, isn't as red as photos usually show. Much of the redness comes from the light illuminating the scene - Mars' atmosphere filters out more blue light than ours does.

"The SOFC is made of brittle ceramics which cost a bundle. Hit a bump on the road and you probably cracked it."

Maybe the pilot model is that expensive & fragile. But there are tough (not brittle) ceramics that can withstand those temperatures. http://www.admin.mtu.edu/urel/PressReleases/feature/tuffceramic/uts.html

My point is & always was that it's not the 1000C operations temperature that will kill this project. The SOFC in car will more likely fail from power density from CH4 to wheels.(Weight & Volume of COFC + motors too high) per KW delivered at the wheels.

This (energy density) is an even greater problem with fuel cells that operate on Hydrogen, because liquid hydrogen, although energy dense as a liquid, must be stored at high pressures to reduce the space taken by fuel tanks to a reasonable volume. To maintain a high pressure requires a very heavy container.

I disagree. Camps are a about a lot more than just learning material - there is a huge social interaction component that goes along with them that you're just not going to get on a summer job. And frankly, the social skills are the more important aspect of the program than the academic material for many of the participants (myself having been one of them.)

I strongly recommend:

http://youthprograms.mtu.edu/explorations.php

Summer Youth Programs at Michigan Tech University. I suppose it's been 16 years since I've been, but they were excellent then and a quick perusal of their site leads me to believe they are excellent now, especially if you're interested in Engineering.

There are just not many opportunities for High School students to get exposure to real engineering, but this program definitely offers them.

Oh, and there are girls there.

Anyway, I went 2 or 3 summers and always had a great time. It's not just tech class stuff, there's a strong social program associated with it as well.

Great for those of you who are in HS, and those of you who now have HS-aged children yourselves. I'm honestly not aware of another program in the US like it.

I also did the Illinois Math and Science Academy program as an incoming freshmen or sophomore (it's been a while), but their program focuses more on straight math/science and not so much on practical engineering application, so I definitely preferred Tech. Then again, I don't remember much from the IMSA camp other than the girls and the pinball machine (much time spent on both, although probably more on the pinball machine) so take that as you will. Depending on your age, you could do both; IMSA as an incoming Freshman and Michigan Tech after that.

One other difference is the IMSA program was loaded with a lot more math/science nerds (I recognized a lot of people at IMSA from math competitions), while Tech had a more well-rounded group of people and programs (a lot of participants are Tech alum who just think it's a good idea to get their kids exposed to engineering), so I also liked Tech as an opportunity to work on social skills with non-nerds in a low-pressure environment (nobody knows you when you start and you're leaving in a week or two, so no permanent damage) - and I needed the practice.

Oh, one more I did:

http://engage.illinois.edu/entry/5785

Now called "Exploring Your Options", back in my day it was S.I.T.E., student introduction to engineering. I was pretty sure at that point I was going to Illinois though (summer prior to senior year) so it was double-helpful for me in just learning the engineering department and campus, and a lot of the people I met in the camp ended up attending Illinois as well so it was a leg up on meeting people. I'd say this is a good program if you're a Senior and did the others, but if I was picking ONE, I'd still probably go with Michigan Tech. IMSA vs. UofI will just depend on age. I think the UofI program would have been less interesting if I were not already sure I were goingto UofI.

Caveat: I was in high school 16-20 years ago, so my info is a bit dated. :)

Me and my wife are involved with the Michigan Tech summer youth programs and are familiar with the CS offerings. If anybody has any questions about it, feel free to reply! It is not unusual for international students to participate in the program. http://youthprograms.mtu.edu/

As for the Michigan Technological University program here is more info: http://youthprograms.mtu.edu/

I went there in early high school for some of the CS camps and came away with a lot of interest and a great head start for college.

I was just going to point about Michigan Tech's Summar Youth Program: http://youthprograms.mtu.edu/

It is a very well run educational summer camp at one of the better small engineering and sciences schools in the country. I did a summer of intro to CS classes while in high school and got a huge jump start for my college career. Also it is a lot of fun and a beautiful place to visit.

You might want to look into something like this or this .
My daughter took one out of this one, specifically one on Physics. She loved it and we plan to do another. My other daughter is looking forward to this one.

I remember Feynman wrote some about quantum computing. -- Yeah, see, e.g., here: http://www.phy.mtu.edu/~sgowtham/PH4390/Week_02/IJTP_v21_p467_y1982.pdf

Some people say that he coined the term "Quantum computer", others say that he popularized it, and it was originally due to David Deutsch. And of course it was influenced by Fredkin and Toffoli, and others asking about energy requirements for computation. And THAT goes back to von Neumann!

Now, von Neumann gave us not only classical computer view, currently bearing his name, but also showed the mathematical equivalence of Heisenberg's matrix and Schrödinger's wave formulations of quantum mechanics. I think that I've read it somewhere recently (do not remember where, up to /. crowd to crowdsource it :) ) that the really interesting question is not why quantum computers are taking so long to arrive, but why they were not conceived much, much earlier!

If all the questions that can be answered competently are already being answered competently, how are things going to change with some added computational power? Well, see P vs. NP (BQP in this case, YMMV) -- there are questions that we were trained not to be asking, knowing that we can not get the answer back before the heat death of the Universe! ;) See Feynman link above, the real impact would be not in cracking RSA, but in simulating (and, thus, being able to engineer) quantum systems. Think better materials/batteries/"gadgets", but also think proteins, cells, your body, maybe your mind...

Paul B.

Mirror Here

Clearly you have never googled "stack lenses" or seen a lens coupling adapter or seen this guy's rig.

You just need find a set of lenses that reduces the chromatic aberration but still has a decent plane of focus. Lots of people have done crystal clear shots.

If stacking lenses doesn't work, then ophthalmologists have some explaining to do:)

An equivalent of the Carnot limit exists for thermochemical cycles as well -- Gibbs free energy. The Second Law is not merely constrained to heat engines. H2 + O2 has a higher entropy state than H2O (esp. if the H2O is liquid or solid). So the reaction is a reduction in entropy. It must correspond with a greater increase in entropy for the equation to be balanced -- i.e., waste heat. The maximum theoretical efficiency for a fuel cell can be calculated as described here. You'll notice that it *does* depend on the operating temperature. Also note that in practice, fuel cells don't get anywhere close to their theoretical, esp. in real-world conditions where you're not running them at low loads and where they're not being fed air rather than pure, pre-compressed oxygen as one of the feedstocks, plus all of the parasitic losses.

I don't know of any such rule at any level of government, so you'll have to check the policy of the school in question. I went and looked up my alma mater's rules. Section 4.2 deals with textbooks. In practice, the "special oversight or management procedures" is generally turning the royalties over to the university.

When it comes to music, I am an admitted idiot, and unable to easily express this idea that is banging around my head right now. But I'll try.

This guy explains part of it nicely. Granted, the page is speaking about string rather than wind instruments, but the ideas of harmonics is the important part. Basically, the frequency of harmonic notes will be mathematically related in some fashion.

Now, there is nothing absolute about a musical note. Sure, in western scales, notes are defined as having a particular frequency, but that is largely arbitrary. "A" is defined as a multiple of 27.5 hz, (double the frequency, you go up an octave) but I could tune my guitar's A string to an arbitrary frequency - say a multiple of 26 hz. Then, if I tune the rest of my guitar to that string, the chords I play would sound fine ... as long as no one else isn't playing with me, because then we wouldn't be in harmony.

Now, if they tuned their A string to match mine, and so on with the rest of their instrument, we could play together and sound fine to anyone listening, because we would be in harmony, that is, the fundamental and harmonic tones of the notes on our instruments would be in sync.

To me, that is the amazing thing about this discovery. If I read the article correctly, this thing came out of the ground with a tuning that is closely related to the scale we use now, even though the frequencies are essentially arbitrary.

When it comes to music, I am an admitted idiot, and unable to easily express this idea that is banging around my head right now. But I'll try.

This guy explains part of it nicely. Granted, the page is speaking about string rather than wind instruments, but the ideas of harmonics is the important part. Basically, the frequency of harmonic notes will be mathematically related in some fashion.

Now, there is nothing absolute about a musical note. Sure, in western scales, notes are defined as having a particular frequency, but that is largely arbitrary. "A" is defined as a multiple of 27.5 hz, (double the frequency, you go up an octave) but I could tune my guitar's A string to an arbitrary frequency - say a multiple of 26 hz. Then, if I tune the rest of my guitar to that string, the chords I play would sound fine ... as long as no one else isn't playing with me, because then we wouldn't be in harmony.

Now, if they tuned their A string to match mine, and so on with the rest of their instrument, we could play together and sound fine to anyone listening, because we would be in harmony, that is, the fundamental and harmonic tones of the notes on our instruments would be in sync.

To me, that is the amazing thing about this discovery. If I read the article correctly, this thing came out of the ground with a tuning that is closely related to the scale we use now, even though the frequencies are essentially arbitrary.

An f sharp is quite different from a g flat in function, and only sounds identical if your hearing is mediocre

So if I hear middle F# (369.99 Hz) and middle Gb (369.99 Hz) as the same note (when middle C=261.63Hz), my hearing is mediocre?

Wow, that's just... wow.

Here's some more context to think about:

14,000 years ago, Michigan was covered by a glacier. I have a hunch that SUVs did not melt this glacier.

Use an old mouse (optical probably works better) for the sensor, attach to a long-period pendulum, write some software for filtering and display, and keep track of local seismic activity.

The Loma Prieta quake had a magnitude of 6.9 and the quake in Sichuan, China had a magnitude of 7.9. This means that the Sichuan quake was ten times more powerful than the Loma Prieta quake.

http://lug.mtu.edu/ubuntu-releases/8.04/ We're doing fine so far, would like to see some more load though!

1. The burning of Christian martyrs by Nero
2. The burning of Rome itself under Nero
3. The Government of Pompeii for failing to properly mitigate the greenhouse gas footprint of Mount Vesuvius.

While away a useful few hours with Google Tech Talks
http://research.google.com/video.html

Then do some searching for podcasts, both audio and video. A quick sample of a hundred feeds or so:

http://www.esa.int/gsp/ACT/podcast/podcast.xml

http://feeds.feedburner.com/AiBquicktime

http://www.archaeologychannel.org/rss/TACfeed.xml

http://webcast.berkeley.edu/courses/rss/archive.php?seriesid=1906978378

http://aaweekly.blip.tv/?skin=rss

http://www.techonline.mtu.edu/iTunes_Media/astronomy_rss.xml

http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast161/Audio/Podcast.xml

http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Audio/Podcast.xml

http://astronomy.libsyn.com/rss

http://www.astronomy.com/asy/podcasts

http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~clgroks/groks.rss

Pick your own subjects!

Travelling only through the crust, surface waves are of a lower frequency than body waves, and are easily distinguished on a seismogram as a result. Though they arrive after body waves, it is surface waves that are almost enitrely responsible for the damage and destruction associated with earthquakes. This damage and the strength of the surface waves are reduced in deeper earthquakes.

Quick sort does not require random access in order to be E[O(n*log(n))] on a shuffled linked list. Here is a good example. Even if you want to use the middle element as a pivot (good for near-sorted data), you can scan the linked list linearly for that element, and it will amortize to the same complexity.

Now, there is the question of whether you want to do it, but you most certainly can. For my unsigned integer linked-list sorting needs, I've found radix sort with a radix of 6 to work pretty well in practice.

speaking of earthquake proof, cement is notoriously bad for earthquakes. The more bendy the material, the better it does in an earthquake. wood, for example, is the best material. Even cement mfgrs say you need steel in the walls for a cement home to be sturdy.

OCT 1 2006 to JAN 9 2007: 4.90 in / 12.52 cm
source

OCT 1 2005 to JAN 9 2006: 8.43 in / 21.49 cm
source

OK so we're not too far off from last year's precipitation amount.

Also, for good measure. 219.5" snow fall was recorded for 2005-2006. This seems to translate to 15.63 in / 39.86 cm.

Expanding from there... (219.5" / 15.63") * 4.90" = 68.8" approximated for 2006-2007 so far. 40.5" fallen so far.

You know, Michigan's upper peninsula. "Normally" we get about 200" of snow in a winter season. So far this season we've had one major snow storm, leaving us with approximiately 18". That's all. In December 2005, 77.5" fell. I would be surprised if we got a 1/10 of that in 2006.

That's not necessarily a multicore problem. With most games, it's probably more likely a problem with the 64 bit architecture running 32 bit code.

The exception would be if the code is, in fact, multithreaded or if it runs a server and clients as separate processes. Most games don't, or at best use a thread to dynamically load files in the background (and most games that do that are RPGs like Diablo 2 and Gothic 1-3). Even then, assuming that threads are stable, it's highly likely that the problem would crash 32 bit machines as well (with the possible exception of race conditions).

The major problems with threads are lock/starvation (see the dining philosopher's problem and race conditions (you have A and B in separate concurrent threads but A needs to finish before B). Both of these problems are usually caused by coding errors.

The target child, who isn't starving, eats his food (that's already there before the laptop ever entered the scene) and pedals his laptop and creates a link in the mesh network that enables children farther from the Internet link to communicate. He looks up the how-to on hydro-from-junk and he and his teenage sister build a microturbine from a 2 liter soda-bottle and then they don't have to pedal anything any more and the mesh is up 24x7.

Some other child, who IS starving, who somehow got a laptop even though there aren't any being distributed to starving children, is now able to link to the Internet even though he's 200 miles from the nearest Internet link. He finds out how to make a solar cooker from trash, reducing deforestation in his area and allowing him to barter the fuel he gathers for more food instead of burning it, or spend his time building cookers for his neighbors instead of gathering fuel. Or he finds out what locally valueless resource he can sell to the next tribe down and becomes the classic Alger rags-to-riches hero. Or he does something we can't anticipate, using local intellectual resources we don't know about, because he's part of the largest free wireless communications network there is, built by and for children who live in conditions we don't have to endure.

You are arguing against a fantasy that you've built up in your mind, where OLPC is about giving computers to people with no food. That's not what's happening, and even if it was it wouldn't hurt anyone because they could sell the technology for food - a generator is worth money everywhere, even where people are starving. There's isn't actually any wind-up laptop, you know - that idea went out the window early in the design stage - these machines come with a separate foot-powered generator that is easily driven from a pulley.

As for the zealotry and demogougery (I like that word, incidentally, though I assume it's a typo) you're the one who started the demagoguery duel we're embroiled in. You started it with the "stop wasting resources we could use to feed the starving children" schtick, and continued it by saying things about OLPC that simply are not true.

Surely one of the reasons for doing this is not to preserve bandwidth. I'm an undergrad at MTU (http://www.mtu.edu/) in the middle of nowhere, MI. We are so far north from the rest of the world that we got 7" of snow this morning (not even a record for today). Even here we have no problem getting a fair amount of bandwidth, even if it's in a single bundle of fiber than happens to get cut a lot. So being in San Antiono, access to some fast connections shouldn't be any problem.

I'd love to see a big SCO-shaped crater, but we've been following that case for so long, I want to see how it ends.

How about seeing a caldera? Here's Rabaul Caldera, Papua New Guinea.

Undoubtedly, some of you may have seen the short film "A Private Universe." It begins with footage shot on graduation day on the campus of Harvard University. In these opening scenes, a number of Harvard graduates and faculty members are interviewed and asked some basic questions about science and astronomy. If you haven't seen it, you can watch it online at http://www.learner.org/resources/series28.html

The first question posed to the graduates is why seasons occur on Earth. The overwhelmingly most frequent answer? These graduates from one of the finest institutions of higher education, many with extensive course work in physics and astronomy, say that seasons happen on Earth because its orbit about the sun is profoundly elliptical. When the Earth is farther away from the sun, the Earth has winter. When it is closer, we get summer. Isolated case of misunderstanding? Twenty-one of 23 randomly selected students and faculty members interviewed on the Harvard campus that day offered almost-identical, erroneous explanations for the seasonal changes.

On another question about the phases of the moon, most graduates responded that the moon's phases observed on Earth are caused by the Earth's shadow routinely obscuring the light from the sun from reaching some portion of the moon's surface.

"Minix 3 was written in scratch over the last year by three people, and it is a functional OS that can be used right now"

First Linux source 'intended to be read not run' was released Sept 1991, and in Oct 1991 thre was the fist usable linux. And in Dec 1992, it was self hosted.

First Point is: making something that can be used a bit is not a feat unique to microkernels.

Secont Point is: Re-starting from scratch doesn't reset the 'development time' counter. It simply means that you're trying again because the previous tries failed.

http://lug.mtu.edu/slides-fall04/history.html

ya some kids program but its few and far between to find kids who program, the problem is public schools look down on it because they are run by over controlling systems admins - at least that was my experience in hs. im 19 and there were probably 15 kids in my school of 330 could program html and maybe 2 others besides myself could write a cmd line c++ app, the prob was the sys admin was runnign winME still and was paranoid of any kid who knew how to resize the screen resolution. myself i have been programming since 8th grade ~6yrs ago (the first yr my family got internet access), since then ive learned how to program webpages w/ html, javascript, php, asp and use mysql db. also i know c/c++ some opengl some java (not to mention video/photo editing) i see some people remarking sarcastically to other's teens lists of programming languages they know, this pisses me off because they probably do know the languages they listed, just for proof go to http://www.yes.mtu.edu/ or http://honors.mtu.edu/ I built both of those sites from the ground up hand coding everything and yes i'm 19 yrs old. I just started working on a mechanical engineering degree but when i was 17 i also worked on a research project at MichiganTech writing opengl C code for a DOD rsch project. kids do program still but the negative public image of a CS geek hurts the field and more importantly poor teaching and administrating of coding/computer classes and computer networks at schools are the real problem

ya some kids program but its few and far between to find kids who program, the problem is public schools look down on it because they are run by over controlling systems admins - at least that was my experience in hs. im 19 and there were probably 15 kids in my school of 330 could program html and maybe 2 others besides myself could write a cmd line c++ app, the prob was the sys admin was runnign winME still and was paranoid of any kid who knew how to resize the screen resolution. myself i have been programming since 8th grade ~6yrs ago (the first yr my family got internet access), since then ive learned how to program webpages w/ html, javascript, php, asp and use mysql db. also i know c/c++ some opengl some java (not to mention video/photo editing) i see some people remarking sarcastically to other's teens lists of programming languages they know, this pisses me off because they probably do know the languages they listed, just for proof go to http://www.yes.mtu.edu/ or http://honors.mtu.edu/ I built both of those sites from the ground up hand coding everything and yes i'm 19 yrs old. I just started working on a mechanical engineering degree but when i was 17 i also worked on a research project at MichiganTech writing opengl C code for a DOD rsch project. kids do program still but the negative public image of a CS geek hurts the field and more importantly poor teaching and administrating of coding/computer classes and computer networks at schools are the real problem

The schools get CS majors ready to be programmers ( bad ones at that ). That's it.

You were in a CS program for a year, I'd hardly claim you're qualified to talk about what a modern CS degree prepares its students for. The first year at my school, sounds like yours, it was basic programming knowledge (data structures, loops, logic). If you passed the CS AP test, about half the first year was basic programming concepts, the rest was studying big-O notation, inductive proofs, etc. Stuff that will teach a student how to identify bottlenecks and produce efficent code. After that first year, you move on to more advanced topics and theory, some which will apply to any programming job (threading, algorithm complexity/effiency, computer architecture). You then move into various concentrations (3D graphics, networking, databases, software "engineering"/management, AI, etc...). At this later stage a student should have a better idea of what CS field they're going into and take classes that will add to their knowledge set.

One of the best profs I had constantly mentioned if a company just wants a programmer to create code that produces a correct "answer" they could hire high school students. If a company wanted someone to be able to create safe, efficient, maintable and "correct" code, they'd need someone better.

There is a huge gap between what the schools teach and what businesses need from their computer personel.

This isn't unique to CS. Universities focus on theory, that's at least half their job. A good tactic for a student to follow is to use their summers/free-time as an intern/co-op student/part time employee in their given field. If I were charge of graudation requirements, I'd require at least 2 semesters of internship/co-op for all students. This allows buissnesses to test you at a much lower pay rate (and without benefits), and you get to test yourself (is this really what you want to do?). If all a buissness is interested in is someone who "knows" java or SQL, then they can stick to HS kids with java and SQL certifications.

This game sounds eerily similair to Police State, a game that was developed in the 1960's and inspired by life in the Soviet Union. The goal was a little different - you were trying to become the Soviet Premier (basically, the only person with any rights) while avoiding being denounced by others and sent to Siberia. The game board was even vaguely Monopoly-ish (in appearance, not in play).

If you're curious, you can see the game here.

t's unfortunate but true, we trade with them to reap from their child labor.

I have to admire with your honesty but can't help pointing out that cheap child labor is not the only exploitation/human right violation/crime that US and other western countries commit there. They also violate the rights of tens of millions of "cheap adult" laborers and dump their waste in third world countries and cause enormous environmental damage which in turn destroys tens millions of lives (human, animal and plant) in due course of time.
http://www.hu.mtu.edu/hu_dept/tc%40mtu/papers/bhop al.htm
http://www.monitor.net/monitor/0204a/hightechtrash .html
http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/Dumping-Pepsi-P lastic-India94.htm
This has been going on for centuries now.
Who's asking for sanctions against these crimes against humanity? Not anybody on slashdot.

First off, owning an mp3 is not illegal as long as you have the rights to own it (i.e. you legally own the compact disc, cassette or record of it).

If you really want me to name people charged with illegally acquiring mp3s:
Diana Li
Daniel Peng
Joe Nievelt
... etc. ...

The list is a long one, I hope three names will suffice, if not, you know where Google is ...

This means anytime it misses in L1, the entire machine stalls waiting for the data to come back from L2/L3/memory. This is fine for applications where the compiler can figure out all the data dependences and schedule the code to hide these cache misses (i.e. scientific applications). It is not good for your run-of-the-mill GUI programs like Word, Firefox, your favorite email reader, etc. Out-of-order architectures like Pentium Pro/II/III/4 and Athlon hide L1 misses a LOT better because other (independent) instructions can execute while the cache miss is going on.

A few points brought up in the article that I'll respond to:

• Predication - Predication (conversion of if/else code with branches to branchless straight-line code using predicated instructions) is not limited to EPIC/Itanium architectures. Conditional movs (cmov) in x86/AMD64/EM64T are a watered-down version, but they suffice for a lot of simple situations such as the one the article brings up.
  
  
• Instruction Level Parallelism (ILP) - Sure, the Itanium can decode/execute/retire up to 6 instructions per clock. That's dependent on two things: a) the compiler finding 6 independent instructions to schedule every clock, b) no L1 cache misses occurring (remember, Itanium is in-order, cache miss = stall).
  
  
• ILP is dead anyway - CPU cores are much faster than memory. Any time you have to go to main memory for something, you take a HUGE hit in performance. Who cares if your CPU core executes 100,000 instructions in 0.00001 ns if it takes 100,000 cycles to bring a cache line in from memory? Memory bottlenecks are starting to dominate CPU performance (see this paper for more info), so single-thread performance is going to be dominated by how well the cores mitigate cache misses. Out-of-order cores can do this well (it's getting harder, read the paper), but it's difficult for in-order cores.
  
  
• Thread Level Parallelism (TLP) - Any benefits of TLP stated in the article will apply to dual-core out-of-order processors in the same way they will apply to Itanium processors.
  
  
• Power - Intel just came out with their dual-core mobile stuff. AMD will sometime before the summer. The article claims that performance per watt is superior for Itanium; that may have been true a year ago, but it's about to not be true.
  
  
• Floating point performance - Itanium is the fastest FP chip on the planet. However, a lot of consumer apps aren't floating point-intensive, they're non-FP apps like Word, Firefox, an email client. Performance of these apps, like I said before, is much more dependent on not having cache misses dominate performance. Plus, with SSE2/SSE3 taking over all the FP duties in the latest Athlon64/Xeon/P4s, and Intel and AMD concentrating their efforts on improving those functional units, I bet consumer-level FP performance goes up.
  
  

Oh yeah, this is all academic anyway; backwards-compatibility (x86 has it, Itanium doesn't) is probably going to be the real driving force like it has been for the past 6 years.

First, Ash does and can fall right out of the sky during an eruption, it is called a nuee ardente or pyroclastic flow. http://www.geo.mtu.edu/volcanoes/hazards/primer/py ro.html It happened at St. Helens and if the eruption is significant enough it will most likely produce one. It is more common than rare. If the eruption is big enough to cause this type of eruption, you can be assured that the ash can and often does reach into the upper limits of the atmosphere and can have a long term effect on the atmosphere and even cause climate changes and disrupt the ozone layer.

Second, volcanoes can develop quite rapily, Paricutin for example.http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/Mexico /description_mexico_volcanoes.html

Third, Krakatoa's devopement was due to subduction and did have the high silicic lava that causes plugging, but the explosive event it created was due more to the ocean water getting into the crater that resulted from the huge amount of magma loss resulting in a collapse of the island. This ocean water was super heated and is called a phreatomagmatic erruption. This is what is thought to be mostly responsible for the resultant tsunami and destruction of Krakatoa.http://www.drgeorgepc.com/TsunamiVolcanic Mechanisms.html

Forth, As for Mars, there is no source for internal heating that drives the processes that lead to vulcanism anymore. The current belief is that the heat source is either to small or has cooled sufficiently to have ceased any geological surface processes. It has probably been more than 20 million years since a volcano has errupted on Mars.http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/planet_volcano/ mars/Overview.html

Fifth, As for igneous rock "not flexing" it is pretty flexible in the molten state. It is no less "flexible" than other rock types, metamorphic and sedimentary. Usually geologists discuss rocks in terms of hardness using the standard Mohs scale where talc is 1 and diamond is 10.http://geology.about.com/library/bl/blmohsscale .htm

I believe to retain credibility it is helpful to have facts straight before stating them.

A. Sun "Wouldn't they be able to tell if the sun was having some kind of effect? Aren't they able to measure these kinds of things?"

Of course they can measure such things. Your skill at finding charts comparing other such things (CH and CO2 emissions in relation to temperature) is more than satisfactory. May I suggest you find a similar chart comparing solar output to global mean temperature. Sunspot activity would also be useful. The article should offer plenty of help in locating such information.

B. Water vapor "I would think they could measure this also. If they can tell how many parts per million of CO2 is in the air, I would think they could do the same thing for water vapor."

Again of course. Usually water vapor levels are reported in weather reports using the term humidity. It is also well known that water vapor accounts for the majority of greenhouse warming, minimum I've seen is 60%+ up to 88%+ Some go even further into the 90% range, none are below 60%. IIRC water vapor alone accounts for about 30C warming making earth livable.

Concerning the 30C #, remembr the greenhouse effect is logarithmic.

C. Natural variation (Entropy, ringing) "I don't know what this has to do with global warming, so I can't comment on it."

There are any factors to climate, I gave two examples of fluctuation that would be visible over a small (decades) time scale. Entropy can be seen with things like the 1998 El Nino, where large amounts or warm water, trapped deep in the Pacific, were suddenly released, causing an enormous spike in global temperatures. Ringing is the phenomenon whereby after a drastic change (the ending of an ice age for example). Thermal inertia can force temperatures beyond, or below what should be equilibrium, forcing a diminishing sine wave temperature change, independent of other factors.

D. Loss of cloud cover "Wouldn't the loss of cloud cover be a result of other things? The loss of cloud cover wouldn't really cause global warming. It would merely be the byproduct of something else that was causing it."

Cloud cover drastically effects the Earths albedo. It should be obvious. On cloudy days the lack of sunlight makes it cooler, on cloudless days you can feel the direct warming of the sun. I don't understand why you wouldn't see the effect this could have. It should be noted that an important variable that Mathematical climate models can not incorporate is cloud cover, it is accepted that cloud cover has a significant effect.

E. Natural emissions of greenhouse gasses "Have there really been enough volcanoes in the last hundred years or so to produce the kind of effect that is happening?"

Quick numbers, by no means complete. Human emissions of CO2 approx 500 million tons per year. Mt. Etna, produces 35,000 tons of carbon dioxide per day. 12.775 million tons per year, or 2.5% of human emissions. From One volcano. East of Naples are some CO2 emitting vents (not volcanoes) There are approximately 175. Just one emits 200 tons per day, or 73,000 tons per year. Even conservatively that one area emits just as much as Mount Etna (Which is nearby) In 1986 a massive upwelling of CO2 at Lake Nyos in Cameron released an estimated 100 Million cubic feet (don't know conversion to weight) of Carbon Dioxide. In 1984 there was a similar eruption in Lake Monoun

These are only three examples. For a list of active volcanoes (not including vents or other geologically active areas) http://www.geo.mtu.edu/volcanoes/world.html/

"The climate has certainly changed many times before mankind was around. The question is, has it ever changed as drastically as has been reported?"

In the last 150 - 300 years? No. In the past, before man, yes, quite often actually. Research it, there have been dramatic climatic changes that put the current 1 degree F per century in perspective. Your second graph from NCDC even shows numerous extremely drastic deviations. On

I wish that worked on girlfriends...

Wait, what are those?