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"It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because it was possible to find them." -Robert Oppenheimer

Robert Moody from the Department Mathematical Sciences, University of Alberta illustrates the importance of curiosity based research in his paper using lasers as an example of why curiosity based research is necessary.

Carl Sagan in his book, The Demon Haunted World, also stresses the importance of curiosity based research using James Clark Maxell's discoveries as an example of how it effects our lives today by providing the necessary building blocks for radio, television, computers, lasers, etc.

Basic science is nice, but erstwhile star captains probably wouldn't find the universe's origins very relevant.

It may not seem very relivant at first, but there are those who would argue in order to even begin to piece together data for a theory of everything (which may be vital to even approach the idea of star captains), we need to gather as much data as possible to reduce our error bars of knowledge.

All in all, Good question... I'm sure some of you have better answers...

In times of solar flares, the BOFH recommends: "MAGNETS. Wrap your disks up in a pillow case with lots of magnets - Solar Flares hate that"

Frankly, I'd like to see some more work on developing birth control for men.

Actually, researchers at the University of Newfoundland have come up with a birth control pill for men. The odd thing about this pill is that it isn't taken orally; you put it in the heel of your shoe.

It works by making you limp.

<rim shot>

"It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because it was possible to find them." -Robert Oppenheimer

Robert Moody from the Department Mathematical Sciences, University of Alberta illustrates the importance of curiosity based research in his paper using lasers as an example of why curiosity based research is necessary.

Carl Sagan in his book, The Demon Haunted World, also stresses the importance of curiosity based research using James Clark Maxell's discoveries as an example of how it effects our lives today by providing the necessary building blocks for radio, television, computers, lasers, etc.

It may be a while before we can find any spectacular applications with this new knowledge of pi, or we may not find any spectacular applications before we dissapear in the cosmos.

The point is: We'll never know if there are any spectacular or even merely useful applications if it isn't shared, discussed and debated throughout the community.

If you look at the history of writing you will see that at different times and in different periods different letter sets were used at different times by different people: consider this rendering of a simple text in a 'roman' hand (400 BC to 400AD ish) and the same one in a carolingian hand (Carolingian referring to Charlemagne, Charles The Great circa the 750 AD onwards).

Well one looks like it is all written in upper case and one in all lower case.

A general overview can be found here.

Mixed case (dual alphabet) stuff only took off with the invention of printing. The issue of whether the lower and upper case character sets are different alphabets is simply one of degree, how different are they from each other and from other alphabets (like the greek one. This article makes the point that in ancient greece there were also no "lower case" letters only "upper case" ones - modern greek developed a dual alphabet in emulation of the modern latin one.

Would you consider this to be a different alphabet? - I can barely read it, and certainly not in blocks - and it was used all over Germany until 1941 when it was banned by Hitler.

Cyrillic also only gets dual case in the time of Peter the Great, having been "upper case" only before. Lots of languages only have one case.

Quite easy actually. I've been doing a lot of ncurses programming lately. You can do some amazinly elaborate things with it if your a good programmer. A good technique really pays. If you start running into situations where you're brute-forcing it, I advise that you back off and do a little work on a good "framework" for your app(that's one minus about ncurses, there's very little "flamework").

Some key points about ncurses:

o It's very fast - Text mode applications are great for productivity. Their GUI counterparts always turn out to be slower for some reason.
o Menus and Forms - The menu and form libraries are standard on UNIXes. You can fairly easily create fields for data entry that have built in validation routines ...etc.
o Tables - Well, not exactly, but a clever way to make a very snappy table is to just use a menu. In text mode you can't tell the differnce. Ncurses menu-tables are more than what the Java 1.1 AWT library provides
o Well established - Curses programming has been around for a long time. The characteristics of many terminal types has been worked out(by ESR) and abstracted into the terminfo database. Its quite portable.
o Works Anywhere - You can run it over telnet, ssh, or just dump bulky X alltogether and run on the Linux console.

Here's some links:

Ncurses Intro by Eric S. Raymond and Zeyd M. Ben-Halim
Linux Journal Artical by ESR
Fujitsu ETI Programmers Guide
SCO ETI Programming

I really wish people would concentrate more ncurses programs. They're just damn efficient. Anyone who uses mutt and slrn and such knows what I'm talking about. If you're really clever, you'll librarify whatever it is that your working on so you can hook on a GUI version later after you've tweeked the behavior of the app without wasting a lot of clock-cycles on graphics programming.

Check this out:
http://www.engr.mun.ca/~holden/pi.html
That's a lot of Pi.

The pdksh page refers to this difference and seems to suggest that they are working on getting the correct (ksh) behavior. Check it out. pdksh home page

• its free and quite portable - you should be able to compile it easily on pretty much any unix box.
• the vi editing mode is better (IMHO) than that of ksh88 or ksh93 (command/file completion using tab (optional), less buggy).

you can become more educated about IQ, however, especially if you read this open letter published in the Wall Street Journal a few years ago.

A kinda sweet romance (and about the only anime I've seen) is Ah! My Goddess - the younger of the 3 goddess' is the Yggdrasil system's debugger. However I'm sure going to take suggestions from this article to the video rental store! Nice subject....

James M. Atkinson is a communications engineer, security consultant, and instructor with a reputation for designing and installing some of the most powerful secure communications systems used by both government agencies and major corporations.

...

He is also a prolific computer programmer with over 142 published software titles ranging from accounting packages and databases to TSCM, cryptographic, signals intelligence and electronic warfare software.

Mr. Atkinson has been trained by the U.S. Government in Intelligence, Covert Operations, Technical Surveillance, and Cryptanalysis; and is a graduate of the Defense Intelligence School with extensive field experience.

A military veteran with eight years of service, followed by several years of employment with a U.S. intelligence agency, and holds a Top Secret security clearance.

James M. Atkinson is one of a small number of people who have been formally certified and trained by the NSA as a TEMPEST Engineer, and Cryptographic Technician. He has extensive experience with the design and development of SIGINT systems to exploit and/or control compromising emanations. Additionally, he has many hours of experience working deep inside highly classified U.S. and NATO cryptographic, communications, and computer systems.

...

Also, he maintains the worlds largest private reference library regarding technical surveillance devices, and TSCM protocols used internationally. Included in this library is a computerized database of almost a quarter million eavesdropping devices. This computerized database includes complex mathematic models which permit the evaluation and analysis of eavesdropping devices.

In addition to a strong background in intelligence operations and electronics he also has extensive training in tactical operations, including Instructor and Master Instructor certifications for: Pistol, Shotgun, Rifle, Sniper Weapons Systems, Assault Weapons, Grenade Launchers, Chemical Weapons, Explosive Breaching, Stun and Distraction Devices, Straight/Expandable and Riot Baton, Non Lethal Use of Force, Specialty Impact Munitions, Riot Control, Vehicle Operations, and related tactical subjects.

I should assume that "Ganymede's Gambit" must refer to some gamble to play the catamite for a time in pursuit of some other goal.

Jody McIntyre