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Oh, did I mention they'll throw in a static IP on your residential DSL just for asking? I've been using MV for over a year now, they're the best ISP I've ever had.

They should visit film.disney.com, kids.disney.com, and fun.disney.com. The DNS works backwards ...

Indeed. One of the oldtimers at a local and old ISP -- http://www.mv.com/ -- related the story about how they got their domain name. Originally, the thinking was that domain names were a scarce resource. So rather than having everybody register a 2LD themselves, they would get one from their local ISP. So my domain name would be dragonhawk.mv.com or something like that. Could you imagine the chaos that would ensue if everyone had to register their own domain name?

My, how times have changed.

...and people should learn that just as they learn how an email address works and how to work web forms.

I've found that any plan that depends on people learning is in trouble. ;-)

Well for everyone who says don't learn Japanese or Japanese is too hard, or other such nonesense. It is a difficult language to learn but not impossible if you are motivated enough to spend the time doing so, but it can be fun at the same time. Learning Japanese is a great endeavor and I wish you luck.

Most naysayers have very little practical experience speaking/reading/writing Japanese.

As for me, I'm probably not as good as I should be.
Now, I'm not fluent, but speak pretty decent Japanese, I can write about 1000 kanjis and can read nearly 1500. I've been studying for quite some time though. Also my wife is Japanese, and I've dated a number of Japanese women and I've lived in Japan. I speak with her nearly daily in half Japanese and half English. I've also worked for nearly 3 years in Tokyo.

Depending on where you live, I would recommend taking some classes to get your feet wet, FIND Japanese friends. If you are single, find a Japanese girl, many of the girls I dated wanted me to learn more and were happy that I wanted to learn and studied Japanese. So they helped ALOT! My wife also happens to be a Japanese language teacher, but she is too strict with me, so I gave up on her giving me formal lessons, though the informal ones are the best.

I'm still learning and I'm nearly 40, but I'm always finding out new things.

The two really difficult things about learning Japanese are the particles and Kanji. The best way for me was to really learn the radicals and learn how to 'break' 'up' the kanji into small components, this way you can easily recognize much more complicated kanji.

Speaking and Listening are just a matter of using it. Watching Anime can help, but watching Japanese TV/movies and dramas with or without subtitles can beneficial too.

Check out this series of books for learning Japanese:

http://genki.japantimes.co.jp/index.en.html

Some good dictionaries:

http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/wwwjdic.html

http://linear.mv.com/cgi-bin/j-e/dict

Learning Kanji:

Guide to Writing Kanji & Kana Book 1: A Self-Study Workbook for Learning Japanese Characters (Tuttle Language Library) (Paperback)
ISBN: 0804833923

Find Japanese friends (girls)
http://friends.japantoday.com/

Just don't tell Japanese girls you are into Anime, they will generally run the other way.
Finding Japanese girls who are really into Anime, are well not as common as you would like or would think. Nearly all the girls I've dated thought guys who were into Anime or Manga were gross.

So I told them I'm only into Studio Ghibli, then they think your cool. :-)

Also, consider taking a break from doing IT or whatever you do and go teach English in Japane for 6 months to a year.

Good Luck

The only problem with CD/DVD media is rot.
http://www.mv.com/ipusers/richbreton/m/files/cd_ro t.htm

CDs (and DVDs, for that matter) do not last forever, even if used. Optical media is subject to a decay called "CD Rot", which essentially means that it has a shelf life of ~10 years.
Better start backing up your 1991 CDs.
DVD Rot Info: http://www.mv.com/ipusers/richbreton/m/files/cd_ro t.htm

For my own personal archives, I have taken the methods from the masters in USENET.

OS X & UNIX: I'm lazy just: tar.gz

For Win32, I back-up a lot more files under win32 than *nix.

Compression
WinRAR
Compression Method: Best
Split to Volumes: 20MB
Parity
QuickPar
With general settings.

I back-up to decent quality DVD media, as I have had a lot of problems with CD media rotting after about a year.

Cliki, a wiki directory of "Links to and resources for free software implemented in Common Lisp and available on Unix-like systems."
CLOCC - the Common Lisp Open Code Collection"
common-lisp.net, providing hosting and remote repositories to dozens of Free Software Common Lisp applications.

This doesn't even touch SourceForge (which hosts another two dozen or so Lisp projects I'm aware of). When you consider how small the Lisp community is compared to the number of Perl hackers (easily in the range of 1000:1), and the number and quality of the code on just those repositories to CPAN, the productivity advantage of Lisp really does seem closer to 50x. According to your argument, all those Perl hackers should not have had any trouble in coming up with an efficient implementation by now. Yet, with less that a dozen regular hackers between them, the CMUCL and SBCL projects have produced compilers that outperform g++. At the very least, the Perl folks should not have had any trouble producing an efficient regular expression library, but here again, Lisp has them beat.

Of course, the above links point to software written in only one dialect of Lisp, Common Lisp. When you consider the software produced in other dialects, like Scheme, NewLisp, LUSH, XLISP, and Isis, the difference becomes even more apparent. To say nothing of commercial software, where none of the languages you mention can even boast a fraction of the number of large, successful systems delivered in Lisp.

Remember to mount a scratch monkey.

Unfortunately, both The Inquirer's terse and sloppy writeup and the poster's cut 'n paste job have the newspaper in question's name misspelled: it's the Nihon Keizai Shinbun (shinbun/shimbun are alternate romanizations of the same Japanese), not Kaizai. Keizai means "economics; business; finance; economy" as per the excellent and free Jeffrey's Japanese/English Dictionary. (Kaizai, on the other hand, translates to "interposition; intervention".) The mistake changes the reading from "Japan Economic newspaper" to "Japan interposition newspaper", quite the difference...

Unfortunately, both The Inquirer's terse and sloppy writeup and the poster's cut 'n paste job have the newspaper in question's name misspelled: it's the Nihon Keizai Shinbun (shinbun/shimbun are alternate romanizations of the same Japanese), not Kaizai. Keizai means "economics; business; finance; economy" as per the excellent and free Jeffrey's Japanese/English Dictionary. (Kaizai, on the other hand, translates to "interposition; intervention".) The mistake changes the reading from "Japan Economic newspaper" to "Japan interposition newspaper", quite the difference...

AutoLisp is based on an early version of XLISP (which isn't on the chart either). Given that AutoLisp was probably the most widely used dialect of Lisp, it really should get it's own little box and arrow.

You mean always mount a scratch monkey?

Spamhaus sez NOT LEGIT - I'll belive them. Time to toast MV Communications I guess. Adios spammy.

Whois:

• Atriks, LLC
  55 Bridge Street
  Manchester, NH 03101-1188
  Phone- 603-624-7008
  Fax- 603-624-9089
  hostmaster@atriks.com

Atriks is a mailing list company. "Atriks offers targeted public record data that comes entirely from publicly available Internet sources. We collect, compile, aggregate and provide the most high-quality, complete, and up-to-date data possible for every individual and business with a presence on the Internet." They're a member of the Direct Marketing Association. They claim a server farm with 330 servers and seven terabytes of data. Here are some of the lists they offer:

• Atriks Broadband Consumers "1,000,000+ consumers who have demonstrated a thirst for better technology and a willingness to spend money for enhanced products and services are included."
• Atriks Personal Domain Owners with Credit Cards "7,000,000+ consumers have registered a domain for their own personal use and have created Web sites that share everything from jokes to family pictures. A key part of their registration is supplying credit card information, resulting in a file with all major credit card selects available."
• Atriks Subscribers by ISP "6,700,000+ subscribers identified by ISP are included in this database. Mailers can target these subscribers by more than 100 selectable ISP providers."

Atriks is co-located with a local ISP, MV Communications.. MV has been in business for many years. They have modest backbone connections for an ISP; 6Mb/s to Global Crossing, 12Mb/s to Level 3, and 12Mb/s to Paetec. Unclear at this time if MV and Atriks have common ownership.

They're what the DMA would call a "legitimate spammer".

That's a marketing department gone bad.

No, no, no! You forget that this is a Japanse invention. So it actually means 'Beefsteak Plant Ink'

See this for reference.

Unless, of course, you are friends or secret business partners with a congressman, in which case you may be getting a few million in grants to study the rate that ketchup flows.

I'd say that, while that does seem quite inconsequential, at one point we thought that the flow of molasses couldn't be all that crucial either, until the lives of 21 people depended upon it.

Arg, tranlate it yourself you ninny!

When you're testing, I hope you always remember to mount a scratch kid.

Sorry, but you are wrong.
Ringo is an apple.
Ingo is a secret/code language, like the transposition slang of the Japanese criminal underworld which you can read more about in this wonderful, yet instantly dated book.

Sorry, but you are wrong.
Ringo is an apple.
Ingo is a secret/code language, like the transposition slang of the Japanese criminal underworld which you can read more about in this wonderful, yet instantly dated book.

Well, you obviously didn't look too hard for Linux software ;)

Amateur ballooning can be quite a bit of fun. There is a small but active ballooning sub-hobby within the ham radio hobby. Ham radio is an ideal medium for transmitting telemetry from balloons, since we have access to cheap high quality (and high power) equipment.

I participated in a balloon tracking experiment not too long ago. The students of Timberlane Regional High School of Plaistow NH launched several high-altitude balloons carrying APRS transmitters, as a part of their CAPSAT (Coordinated Algebra (II) & Physics Simulated Satellite) project. I was able to track two of them. The balloons carried GPS receivers and ham radio Automatic Position Reporting System transmitters.

The launch was from Hopkinton NH. The first launch went well, and we received good signals from the balloon all the way out into the Atlantic ocean. This was quite a bit farther than they expected the baloon to travel, they had planned on recovering and reusing it :o It was still cool IMHO. Check out this kick ass map of the balloon's track.

The second launch was also a success, and the baloon only traveled about 50 miles before touchdown. Map is here.

The third launch went up with the GPS receiver turned off :/ At last check, it was at 00.000N 000.00W. They didn't launch any more balloons that day.

My tracking station consisted of a Kenwood TH-D7 radio and a PowerMac 7500 604e-180 running XASTIR on Yellow Dog Linux. The full results of the day (and APRS logs for the entire hamfest) are here.

The problem is that the big players priced the Compiler based Common lisp development frameworks right out of the reach of most business developers. They also failed to take full advantage in the increasing capability of the PC, turning their noses up at in favour of past glories of the Symbolics machines. A good Lisp compiler could factor out the "cons", producing code sometimes surpassing the performance of C++.

The void was filled mostly by C++ and now Java, lesser beasts dispite their current quality standard libraries, overly verbose and fragmented incomparison to Common Lisp elegance.

Today there are open implementation of the lisp compilers, but they still lack a comparable development enviroment to the commercial varients. Sadly, since I started professionally in 1988, I have not had one job or contract were they would consider the adoption of Common lisp, and I have never programed professionally in it. David Betz's XLisp, and later XScheme was the closest I came to using it at work for scripting, and at home for some early AI-planning system hacking that has yet to see the light of day.

In my opinion, IBM's Eclipse IDE has finally comming close to surpassing the old benchmark of the commercial Lisp IDEs, it even has the ability to plug in refactoring tools. But then I can remember when, thanks to the "cons"-ed Lisp, manupulating the source of the program was as easy as mainpulating the data,

My primary experience has been with APRS, the Automatic Position Reporting System. It's in many ways similar to this system. It's used quite extensively by ham radio operators to coordinate public service activities, track storms out in tornado ally, etc.

The neat thing about APRS is that it isn't just a position tracking system, but it's a distributed network of repeating stations linked via radio and landlines. Here are some neat links you might find interesting:

• My APRS server/digipeater
• These are the results of a baloon tracking exercise I participated in a little while ago
• The APRS homepage
• www.findu.com allows you to locate any ham radio operator's last known position transmitted via aprs from location in the world that has coverage to an APRS internet gateway.

I never thought to look up the word until you posted that...

From Jeffrey's Japanese{-}English Dictionary Server:

mainichi
(n-adv,n-t) every day; (P)

(BTW, this site is a good place to go if you want to see the kana for an English word.)

MDN is one of the two Japanese news sites I go to, along with Japan Today. MDN is more into WaiWai and shocking news, while JapanToday covers a wider range of news topics, and has comment sections for just about everything they post, from quotes to pictures to news of the day.

What is going on here? If you want to be a scientist, you must at least make an effort to find current papers on the subject you talk about. Robert Park didn't do that when he wrote his book, if he ever has on this subject. Mallove shows this very clearly in his review of this book. So who's at fault? Who's doing the hard science?

Excess Heat:
Why Cold Fusion Research Prevailed

by Charles G. Beaudette

Published May 2000

$29.95 Paperback / $39.95 Hardcover - Canada, USA, Mexico.
$34.95 Paperback / $46.95 Hardcover - all other countries.

Foreword by Sir Arthur C. Clarke and Introduction by David J. Nagel

"Charles Beaudette has done a remarkable job in untangling and documenting the whole story of cold fusion. Excess Heat is not only a superb record of an extraordinary episode, but is also highly entertaining." --Sir Arthur C. Clarke

Celebrate Ten Years of Cold Fusion! Issue 24 [of Infinite Energy] , released in March/April 1999, celebrated the tenth anniversary of the announcement of cold fusion claims by Pons and Fleischmann on March 23, 1989 at the University of Utah. Cold Fusion: Looking Back and to the Future Commentary by the following scientists in the field:

• Scott Chubb, Naval Research Laboratory
• Michael McKubre, SRI International
• George Miley, University of Illinois
• Keith Johnson, Quantum Energy Technologies
• Francesco Celani, Instituto Nazionale Fisica Nucleare
• John Dash, Portland State University
• Peter Gluck, Institute of Isotopic and Molecular Technology
• Bart Simon, Queens University
• Harold Aspden, Energy Science Ltd.
• Hal Fox, Trenergy Inc.
• Edmund Storms, Los Alamos National Laboratory (Ret.)
• Tadayoshi Ohmori, Hokkaido University
• R.A. Oriani, University of Minnesota
• John Bockris, Texas A&M University (Ret.)
• Fred Jaeger, ENECO
• Dennis Cravens
• Akira Kawasaki
• Mahadeva Srinivasan
• Robert Bass

  ORDER THIS ISSUE!

  Featuring

  MIT and Cold Fusion: A Special Report by Eugene Mallove
  Nuclear Reactions in the Pd/D System: The Pre-History and History of Our Early Research by Martin Fleischmann
  My Life with Cold Fusion as a Reluctant Mistress by Edmund Storms

  Including Valuable Research Tools
  Key Experiments That Substantiate Cold Fusion Phenomena
  A Chronology of Cold Fusion

Note: I'm in no way connected with the cold fusion research -- but scientists doesn't dismiss research on hearsay, as Robert Park has been shown to do in his book (see Dr Eugene Mallove's review of Parks book).

Excess Heat:
Why Cold Fusion Research Prevailed

by Charles G. Beaudette

Published May 2000

$29.95 Paperback / $39.95 Hardcover - Canada, USA, Mexico.
$34.95 Paperback / $46.95 Hardcover - all other countries.

Foreword by Sir Arthur C. Clarke and Introduction by David J. Nagel

"Charles Beaudette has done a remarkable job in untangling and documenting the whole story of cold fusion. Excess Heat is not only a superb record of an extraordinary episode, but is also highly entertaining." --Sir Arthur C. Clarke

Celebrate Ten Years of Cold Fusion! Issue 24 [of Infinite Energy] , released in March/April 1999, celebrated the tenth anniversary of the announcement of cold fusion claims by Pons and Fleischmann on March 23, 1989 at the University of Utah. Cold Fusion: Looking Back and to the Future Commentary by the following scientists in the field:

• Scott Chubb, Naval Research Laboratory
• Michael McKubre, SRI International
• George Miley, University of Illinois
• Keith Johnson, Quantum Energy Technologies
• Francesco Celani, Instituto Nazionale Fisica Nucleare
• John Dash, Portland State University
• Peter Gluck, Institute of Isotopic and Molecular Technology
• Bart Simon, Queens University
• Harold Aspden, Energy Science Ltd.
• Hal Fox, Trenergy Inc.
• Edmund Storms, Los Alamos National Laboratory (Ret.)
• Tadayoshi Ohmori, Hokkaido University
• R.A. Oriani, University of Minnesota
• John Bockris, Texas A&M University (Ret.)
• Fred Jaeger, ENECO
• Dennis Cravens
• Akira Kawasaki
• Mahadeva Srinivasan
• Robert Bass

  ORDER THIS ISSUE!

  Featuring

  MIT and Cold Fusion: A Special Report by Eugene Mallove
  Nuclear Reactions in the Pd/D System: The Pre-History and History of Our Early Research by Martin Fleischmann
  My Life with Cold Fusion as a Reluctant Mistress by Edmund Storms

  Including Valuable Research Tools
  Key Experiments That Substantiate Cold Fusion Phenomena
  A Chronology of Cold Fusion

Note: I'm in no way connected with the cold fusion research -- but scientists doesn't dismiss research on hearsay, as Robert Park has been shown to do in his book (see Dr Eugene Mallove's review of Parks book).

Excess Heat:
Why Cold Fusion Research Prevailed

by Charles G. Beaudette

Published May 2000

$29.95 Paperback / $39.95 Hardcover - Canada, USA, Mexico.
$34.95 Paperback / $46.95 Hardcover - all other countries.

Foreword by Sir Arthur C. Clarke and Introduction by David J. Nagel

"Charles Beaudette has done a remarkable job in untangling and documenting the whole story of cold fusion. Excess Heat is not only a superb record of an extraordinary episode, but is also highly entertaining." --Sir Arthur C. Clarke

Celebrate Ten Years of Cold Fusion! Issue 24 [of Infinite Energy] , released in March/April 1999, celebrated the tenth anniversary of the announcement of cold fusion claims by Pons and Fleischmann on March 23, 1989 at the University of Utah. Cold Fusion: Looking Back and to the Future Commentary by the following scientists in the field:

• Scott Chubb, Naval Research Laboratory
• Michael McKubre, SRI International
• George Miley, University of Illinois
• Keith Johnson, Quantum Energy Technologies
• Francesco Celani, Instituto Nazionale Fisica Nucleare
• John Dash, Portland State University
• Peter Gluck, Institute of Isotopic and Molecular Technology
• Bart Simon, Queens University
• Harold Aspden, Energy Science Ltd.
• Hal Fox, Trenergy Inc.
• Edmund Storms, Los Alamos National Laboratory (Ret.)
• Tadayoshi Ohmori, Hokkaido University
• R.A. Oriani, University of Minnesota
• John Bockris, Texas A&M University (Ret.)
• Fred Jaeger, ENECO
• Dennis Cravens
• Akira Kawasaki
• Mahadeva Srinivasan
• Robert Bass

  ORDER THIS ISSUE!

  Featuring

  MIT and Cold Fusion: A Special Report by Eugene Mallove
  Nuclear Reactions in the Pd/D System: The Pre-History and History of Our Early Research by Martin Fleischmann
  My Life with Cold Fusion as a Reluctant Mistress by Edmund Storms

  Including Valuable Research Tools
  Key Experiments That Substantiate Cold Fusion Phenomena
  A Chronology of Cold Fusion

Note: I'm in no way connected with the cold fusion research -- but scientists doesn't dismiss research on hearsay, as Robert Park has been shown to do in his book (see Dr Eugene Mallove's review of Parks book).

"...

Cold fusion -- the suggestion that hydrogen nuclei can be made to fuse together and thereby generate considerable energy at near room temperature, using an electrochemical process instead of the usual very high temperatures -- was a claim that seemed initially very unlikely to be true, though not totally ruled out. After some workers found themselves unable to reproduce the results initially claimed by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann in 1989, a high degree of scepticism arose in the scientific community, especially after the publication of an official report declaring the absence of any evidence that fusion had taken place.

It is interesting to look both at Park's account of the history of cold fusion and at that of the protagonists, presented in a video documentary Cold Fusion: fire from water (available from www.infinite-energy.com). Park impresses on the reader the fact that if the process that generates the heat is really fusion then one would expect to see fusion products. He fails to mention here, as the video does, that the small amount of such products anticipated, given the amount of energy generated, was eventually observed, and in just the right quantity. All mention of positive results, such as the experiment where, by what appears to be a sound method, it was found that the energy generated was considerably in excess of anything that could be explained conventionally, is collapsed into a paragraph where Park notes that many claims are soon withdrawn because of errors being found (as also happens in ordinary science).

This device legitimises the dismissal of all positive results, and so also the corollary "cold fusion is no closer to being proven than it was the day when it was announced". This is a seriously misleading statement.

There are scientific arguments against cold fusion, but equally there were arguments against continental drift. The fact that theories have been proposed to provide a mechanism seems not to impress Park as much as the argument made by Douglas Morrison of CERN, that one should be "suspicious" if one cannot get the same result in an experiment every time. Perhaps he would find such a circumstance less suspicious if he were a material scientist rather than a high-energy physicist.

..."

• -- Brian D. Josephson, Nobel Laureate, rofessor of physics, University of Cambridge Dr Eugene Mallove's
• review is also very much worth reading, he goes on with some very delicate comments on Robert Park's lack of scientific methods regarding physics (!). Very good read!

See what Nobel Laureate and professor of Physics Brian D. Josephson has to say of Robert Park.

In Washinton Post, Charles Platt comments like so.

For a good commentary on Park vs Cold Fusion, go to the source.

"When I began my physical studies [in Munich in 1874] and sought advice from my venerable teacher Philipp von Jolly... he portrayed to me physics as a highly developed, almost fully matured science... Possibly in one or another nook there would perhaps be a dust particle or a small bubble to be examined and classified, but the system as a whole stood there fairly secured, and theoretical physics approached visibly that degree of perfection which, for example, geometry has had already for centuries."

• -- from a 1924 lecture by Max Planck (Sci. Am, Feb 1996 p.10)

11 February 1987

This morning, I spoke for an hour with Laura Creighton, who wrote the device driver for the equipment between the monkeys and the computer.

This incident happened at the University of Toronto in late November of 1979 or 1980. The zoology department had used digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital converters in a large number of experiments, including attempting to synthesize pheromones to reduce breeding of beetles that fed on tobacco crops, some rat neurological experiments, and some cricket behavior/population studies. The rat experiments involved implanting electrodes in the rats' brains, and the rats experienced some pain. The Humane Society learned of this and raised complaints, resulting in the shutting down of the zoology department for a day while the experiment was stopped. The University of Toronto has the third or fourth most respected zoology department in the world and wanted to maintain that prestige, so there was lots of screaming to avoid having such a thing happening again.

The various data from the experiments was collected by PDP-11/05 front ends and sent to an 11/44. Laura Creighton had written the software for this, fixing a problem they had previously with the 11/44 not being fast enough to collect the data by itself. This was being done for 16 to 18 experiments.

The folks in the physiology section of the Department of Medicine (separate from Science, which contained the zoology department) had bought their first VAX, an 11/780, and wanted a similar set-up. So Laura Creighton and the zoology department agreed to set up their software for this. The physiology people decided not to use 11/05s in between, since the VAX was fast enough to handle the data. So five monkeys were fitted with caps intended to sense brain waves, and the caps were attached to various A-to-D and D-to-A converters (which were US Army surplus from 1956) which were in turn connected to the VAX. This connection was piggybacked on a disk drive (pre-RL02), which contained a disk and was mounted read-only - the read-only button was pressed and taped over with a warning not to remove it. In normal operation, software would read data from that drive and write it to a regular disk. The room containing the monkeys was several stories removed from the computer room.

After some time, the VAX crashed. It was on a service contract, and Digital was called. Laura Creighton was not called although she was on the short list of people who were supposed to be called in case of problem. The Digital Field Service engineer came in, removed the disk from the drive, figured it was then okay to remove the tape and make the drive writeable, and proceeded to put a scratch disk into the drive and run diagnostics which wrote to that drive.

Well, diagnostics for disk drives are designed to shake up the equipment. But monkey brains are not designed to handle the electrical signals they received. You can imagine the convulsions that resulted. Two of the monkeys were stunned, and three died. The Digital engineer needed to be calmed down; he was going to call the Humane Society. This became known as the Great Dead Monkey Project, and it leads of course to the aphorism I use as my motto: You should not conduct tests while valuable monkeys are connected, so "Always mount a scratch monkey."

Laura Creighton points out that although this is told as a gruesomely amusing story, three monkeys did lose their lives, and there are lessons to be learned in treatment of animals and risk management. Particularly, the sign on the disk drive should have explained why the drive should never have been enabled for write access.

... they remember to mount a scratch monkey.

According to the XLISP home page, the Bob source code was last updated today (oh, ok, maybe in response to the /. article). But at least the author is out there and paying attention...

It is obvious this is still fringe science.

Don't act like it's not.

-Ben

http://linear.mv.com/cgi-bin/j-e/dosearch?sDict=on &H=PW&L=J&T=otaku&fg=r&S=26&I=on&IK=on&LI=on

Infinite Energy magazine seems to keep up to date on cold fusion research. It's not exactly a main-stream scientific journal, so take it with a grain of salt.

There's couple of older articles on research at SRI here and here.

Allegedly there are reports of fusion byproducts from cold fusion experiments. Dr. McKubre from SRI has reported elevated levels of helium-4 in cold fusion cells, for example. Of course, he's merely an electrochemist and not a *ahem* real physicist, so his experiments can be discounted.

[pedanchikku]
kawaii
[/pedanchikku]

'Well, diagnostics for disk drives are designed to shake up the equipment. But monkey brains are not designed to handle the electrical signals they received. You can imagine the convulsions that resulted. Two of the monkeys were stunned, and three died. The Digital engineer needed to be calmed down; he was going to call the Humane Society. This became known as the Great Dead Monkey Project, and it leads of course to the aphorism I use as my motto: You should not conduct tests while valuable monkeys are connected, so "Always mount a scratch monkey."'

On a nearly related note, (Now that I think about it), this year's presedential election could be described as a race between "Curious George and The Man With The Big Yellow Hat."

Actually it's the prefix o-, meaning honorable (or just a polite way of talking) and nigiru, meaning to form rice into a shape.

Not as funny as the previous definition though.

Two reasons? The script and the voice acting.

I have seen Mononoke Hime in its original Japanese, in a fan-subbed English translation, and with the Princess Mononoke's dubbed translation.

First, I strongly disagree with some of Neil Gaiman's decisions in "adapting" the English translation. Attempting to make the film seem less foreign to North American audiences, he completely lost much of the feel of the original script. The other English translations I've read retain Japanese names for gods and spirits. Gaiman decided to change tatarigami to "demon monster," which sounds stupid after several repetitions, and shishigami became "Great God of the Forest," which was just incredibly clumsy. These are only the most prominent examples.

The translation also changed some blocks of dialogue to provide background info on some of the Nipponese history and culture in the film. Thanks, but no thanks. I'd prefer to get the original dialogue and not be treated like an ignorant gaijin.

Then there's the voice acting. The talent featured in the Japanese voice track were among the best voice actors I have ever heard. The voice of Ashitaka in particular was really the essence of his character, and for me that made the movie. I can't describe it; you'll have to hear the performance for yourself.

The U.S. has no real professional vocal talent (and even the best-known are poorly paid, such as the actors on The Simpsons), so as usual the American version was done by Hollywood screen actors not trained in voice acting. Their performances were good, but no match for the acting in the original. Many of the characters (cough - Moro) were severely changed by the acting alone. Actors with noticeable American or English accents (Billy Bob Thornton, Minnie Driver, Claire Danes) were especially out of place in this story, which was so rooted in the place and culture of Japan. A monk from ancient Japan should not use dialect from the Southern United States.

As an added slap in the face, I believe they also decided to translate the music. Why?!

For reference, here is an excellent annotated English/Japanese script. Sorry, I don't know if or where you can find a copy of the Princess Mononoke adaptation.

First, picture Cyberball. Now, do the following:

• change the cabinet from 2-screen upright to cocktail (except you have to stand)
• make it 2-player only
• make the rules more realistic
• change the perspective to overhead
• remove a player from each side
• strip the playbooks to 4 plays total
• replace the players with Xs and Os
• use a black and white monitor

That should give you an idea. :^) (All of this was really impressive in 1978, of course.)

Back to the point, Atari Football used a trackball for a controller. A much larger and heavier trackball -- the same size as the one in Missile Command. What made it really hurt, though, was that basically all you did in the game was roll the ball as fast as you could. None of this precision "aim and fire" "gameplay" found in Centipede and Missile Command. :^)

(Question: Anyone know what the last major b/w video game was? Asteroids Deluxe? Space Invaders II? Something I've forgotten?)
--

Just don't let a Field Service Engineer monkey with the machine while you're playing.

Sigh, I don't know why I bother with this..

1. Sorry working from memory here. Maybe it was a ratio where they needed to get to 90% of the theoretical maximum possible. Anyway this is more or less antique technology in this area. See this page for a synopsis of important experiments.

2. See near bottom of this page .

3. Allegedly - until published and peer reviewed. However, the work was convincing enough to get conservative investors coughing up 25 million.

4. It is a theory with alleged (see above) experimental confirmation repeated by independent labs. A slightly different situation.

5. I am too tired and irritated by your attitude to provide specific counter examples. However, there is one story I came across that summarizes what I see happening in this field. The Wright Brothers were ignored or denounced as frauds by 'authorities' for 5 years in America even though they could be seen to be flying regularly by Long Island commuters. They only got attention from institutions like the US DOD after they moved to Europe and became an instant press sensation. (sorry no links).

I am really hesitant to post anything about this since it will most likely be flamed to a crisp.

However, Mills stuff is just the tip of the iceberg. There has been quite a bit of active research in this whole, particularly in Japan and Europe.

The most interesting work has not been in the original electolysis using heavy water and palladium although SRI and to a lesser extent Los Alamos have been doing work in this area and have essentially confirmed the *original* observations of Pons and Fleischman. The major problem with this type of experiment is that you need to get close to a 1:1 (.9 as I recall) ratio of hydrogen atoms for each atom of the palladium crystal matrix before you get results. If you have cracks or other impurities you will NOT achieve that level of packing. If you use bulk materials the stuff gets explosive. One SRI researcher died from this. Also this whole area is *very* close to weapons research so Los Alamos has become very quite in the last couple of years while SRI is still plugging along. Here is a link to a page that has a nice summary of the issues.

The most interesting area, in my opinion, has been in the area of light water electrolysis where some people have seen signs of transmutation - which of course goes from 'fradulence' to 'outright witch craft' as far as conventional science goes.

Mills work is actually kind of on the sidelines from the 'mainstream' research in this area. He does have a lot of backing by reasonably conservative investors (2 mid size power utilities). He does have a comprehensive theory and has done numerous experiments to validate various aspects of his theory that have allegedly been confirmed by independent labratories.

Here is a link to a reprint of a recent Wall Street Journal article on BlackLight and its recent work.

Here are some other 'Cold Fusion' sites:

Cold Fusion Times
Infite Energy Online
BlackLight Power
Clean Energy Technologies a company that has done a lot with light water cold fusion and has recieved a number of patents in the area.
A Cold Fusion Bibliograph by Dieter Britz

The translation of "aibo" (romaji Japanese), according to Jeffrey's J/E Dictionary defines what qualities we all admire in a real dog:
-cherish the memory of; yearn for
-love; attachment; adoration
-companion
-partner; pal; accomplice
Now, this may seem OT to some of you, but I read through various postings here, saying all the Aibo lacks dramatically is the ability to love it's owner back, like a real dog. I just happened to look up the name...and seeing these definitions in correspondance with what was said here on /. it really makes you think : ) At least, it should...
Mmm...Sony.

And yes, an Aibo is a great chick magnet. We are known for our expensive tastes ^-^

miyax

This is something I've been thinking about for a while. I might give a go once my current project (the user-mode kernel port) settles down.

This my current thinking on cfs (cluster fs)

All members of the cluster share a filesystem, which potentially uses all the available storage on the cluster (although you might want to keep stuff like your home directory on a separate device that you don't share with the cluster).

Files are duplicated on multiple machines for speed and redundancy. Files will tend to be located on the machines that are accessing them, so most I/O is local.

cfs will just be the networking part. Local storage will be handled by a local fs (like ext2). cfs metadata will be stored in local files with funky names (which are made invisible by cfs anyway)

There are multiple levels of membership in a cluster. Primary members can read and write everything. Secondary members can only read. They can have read copies of files locally, but they can't hand those out to other machines. Machines wanting to read a file have to go to a primary member for a copy. This is for sysadmins who don't necessarily trust their users to prevent them from becoming root and modifying files (like /etc/passwd) behind the back of cfs and then handing the new /etc/passwd out to everybody else.

Machines can be members of multiple clusters. /etc might come from a cluster that everyone is a member of, /bin might come from a cluster of machines of the architecture, /projects might come from a third cluster, etc.

Files can be marked "local" which means that they permanently live on that machine, override whatever file comes from the cluster, and aren't shared with the cluster. This would be useful for config files which are only relevant to your machine, or your email directory.

A machine's /dev would mapped into the cluster filesystem as /dev/aa.bb.cc.dd/ rather than being marked local. This gives transparent access to every device in the cluster.

A machine which a writing a file is designated the file's owner. While writes are in progress, all reads have to go to that machine. Once the writes have stopped, the machine remains the owner, but it can start spreading the new data around the cluster. It can also designate secondary owners, who would come into play if the primary owner crashes. One of them would become the new owner. If it turns out that the old owner had changes which it didn't manage to propagate and the new owner made changes, then my current thinking is that this is brought to the attention of a human, who straightens things out. If this is not acceptable for a particular file for some reason, then that file can be marked in such a way that accesses to it hang or fail until the owner comes back.