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Well, according to Nintendo, it must be.

Also feel free to check this out. It's not fantastic, but it's not bad.

Some googling revealed the groups publication history. I still fail to spot the relevant publication.

http://chemgroups.northwestern.edu/marks/pubs.html

The research focus of the group suggests that "SANDS" is an organic dielectric for thin film transitors - with either organic or transparent inorganic semiconductor channel. This kinds of transistors are still very much in research stage and have only found very limited commercial applications. The most probably use would be in displays.

We are talking about devices which are >3 orders of magnitude large and slower than those used in modern CPUs. The press release alludes to "intel CPUs", which could not be further off and is grossly misleading. This is a completely different application.

http://www.library.northwestern.edu/govinfo/collections/wwii-posters/img/ww1647-43.jpg

I think they're going to treat all traffic equally, so if your BT download rates suck due to congestion, so will your YouTube, Slashdot, etc. I don't see any way they can reliably allow on BT, Inc. traffic. Anyway, the more interesting question is what are they doing to make BitTorrent "more efficient" for Comcast. Maybe something like Ono?

These images are very pretty, but the techniques aren't as neat as atom-probe tomography, which yields 3-D atom-by-atom reconstructions. A few images show precipitates in metallic alloys, interfaces in semiconductors, and more.

http://www.qrg.northwestern.edu/papers/Files/Towards%20Construction%20Kits%20for%20Virtual%20World%20Artifacts.pdf

Enjoy.

The Supreme Court of the US ruled earlier this year that a manufacturer can set pricing for their product, and enforce retailers to sell at that price. This ruling was primarily to protect 'high end' products from discounters, but goes both ways.

The case was 'Leegin v. PSKS', and is summarized on the docket here:

http://docket.medill.northwestern.edu/archives/004185.php

This ruling is intended to protect a manufacturers brand by keeping discounters from undercutting (and subsequently devaluing) the perception of the brand to the public. Think of Rolex - do you REALLY think it costs them $5,000 to make a Rolex? Of course not, but you aren't buying a Rolex, you are buying the name and the perceived social capital that comes with it.

Let's assume that the manufacturing cost of a Rolex watch is $1250. This watch is sold at wholesale to a retailer for $2500, and has an MSRP of $5000. This is a pretty common pattern (although less so for hi-tech devices).

Now, if Joe's Discount Watch Kiosk in the crappy mall at the other end of town started selling Rolex for $1279, the Rolex name gets diluted, the social prestige goes down, and when Joe's Discount Watch Kiosk closes, the long-term business who has invested in the community, the Rolex brand name, in employing people, and has built the business from the ground up can no longer sell the Rolex for $5000. They end up with reduced cash flow, have to cut their staff, dogs and cats start living together, and all hell breaks lose.

OK, it's not THAT bad, but from the 'real world' (tm) department, I own a specialty toy store. No really, I do. I employ about 15 people, sell at or near MSRP, invest in my community, and build social equity.

When a specialty brand that I have invested in sells to Amazon or Target, I can no longer sell the product, because they discount. So, I have to mark down to sell what I have already purchased. With my reduced margins, I cannot employ 15 people, I have to cut to 12 and make do. I am not selling $5000 watches, I am selling $25 dolls, $40 wooden blocks, etc. My net margins in a good year are about 12% after all expenses, which allows me to pay my mortgage and keep the kids fed and the lights on. When Target, for example, comes in, woos a brand, buys their product, and then discounts the crap out of it, I lose, the manufacturer loses, and the consumers win - for a few months. Then, the brand goes out of business, I have lost margin and as a small locally owned business have to lay off staff, and there is direct damage to the consumer because next year, Target has moved on, the brand is no longer in business, and I can't get it for my loyal customers.

I am 100% in favor of competition, good pricing, fairness to customers, but consumers also have to realize the high cost of discounting overall. This is why the SCOTUS ruling is actually good for business, and good for consumers in the LONG TERM.

Now, how does this apply to the Wii?

Well, the SCOTUS ruling, as I understand it (IANAL) does not specify just minimum pricing, but that a manufacturer can set PRICING. So, if Nintendo says $249.99, it's $249.99 for the console.

Whether or not the retailer is able to stay in business is between the retailer and Nintendo, but one would hope that Nintendo would eat some of the costs of the console to get it out to the public.

Just my pre-coffee, pre-busiest toy shopping day of the year rant.

You mean this one? http://anthonydamato.law.northwestern.edu/Adobefiles/porn.pdf

Unfortunately,
Dr. Kuiken's device only works when you think, "Wiggle your big toe" in Dutch.
or, "Wiggle Sie grosse Zehe"

I'm disappointed that my favorite Settlers of Catan server has gone away (http://settlers.cs.northwestern.edu/) but there is one over at (http://www.jsettlers.com/) that I've been on. Of course, these are Java, not Flash. Potato, potato.

Logo was good, but the language landscape is so vast now there are better languages for almost every task to which logo can be put.

None of your links seem to work, but here are a few of mine:

Not a bomb.
Not a bomb.
Not a bomb.
Not a bomb.
Not a bomb.
Not a bomb.
Not a bomb.

Bombs tend to have an explosive payload of some kind, and they also tend to be too heavy to simply dangle from a shirt without some means of securing them. I'm surprised AIRPORT SECURITY doesn't know this. I am also alarmed at the "assume something is a bomb until proven otherwise" mentality.

It was a bunch of wires sticking out of a breadboard. I know people in general aren't that bright, but come on. We aren't talking about a to-scale gun replica here.

• abiword
• FileZilla
• fluxbox
• gnumeric
• mrxvt
• sy nergy

It's the video game bestseller list of the North American portion of an online retailer who does not specialize in video games. It is not a statistically sound sample for how any console is doing overall.

It is certainly not a definitive indicator but it is current and available. To give you a non-American retailer, the German Amazon site currently ranks PS3 at #14 in the games section. The highest ranked XBox360 was #381. Of course, it would be nice to know where the 360 would rank if you combined sales from all models. If anyone could post stats/ranks for other retailers, I would be interested to see how they compare.

Not sure why you think retailers specializing in video games are particularly relevant. I think what's more relevant is which retailers sell the most games/consoles. According to this article (which cites NDP) from 2004, WalMart was the top game retailer.

TFA links to the actual paper. Tensile strength is on the order of 35 GPa. We'd need 65 GPa or more from a material with density similar to graphite.

It's not even that good. The tensile strength is ~130 MPa. It's the Young's modulus that's 32 GPa.

So we're still short a factor of 500x from space-elevator-grade unobtanium.

Huge implications for . . . the ever-sought-after space elevator?

Sadly, no. TFA links to the actual paper. Tensile strength is on the order of 35 GPa. We'd need 65 GPa or more from a material with density similar to graphite.

"Nope. The supreme court now splits nicely down party lines for every vote." Firstly the supreme court is a-political but if you must know seven of the nine judges on the court now were apointed by Republicans. Sandra O'Conner was appointed by Regan and I doubt youd would have considered her a political hack for the right. "I wonder how many 5-4 votes have gone through in the last six months, with votes falling the same way every time." Probably about the same percentage as any other year you only hear about the 5-4's because, well, usually those are the news worthy cases. http://docket.medill.northwestern.edu/archives/003 771.php Shows most decisions in 2006/07 were either unaninous or extremely one sided but its not news worthy unless about 40% of the population disagrees with it. "Americans: I feel sorry for you." Dont, despite what you might think many of us are not hopelessly despondent and unhappy with our nation. Sure we have a very unpopular president but hell be out of office in a bit over a 18 months (if not sooner). Nothing is as tacky as someone from another nation saying who they 'feel sorry' for someone else because the culture there is different and the government reflects that. I Dont feel sorry for some European nations (Im not even going to name them) despite the fact people die waiting to see a doctor there its their health care system and for whatever reason they like what they got.

I personally think that since we know enough (not everything, but a good decent working approximation) about biochemistry that it is entirely possible to now do enhanced speed evolutionary experiments in a simulated environment. In fact, I know such research has been going on for longer than -I've- been alive already.

I myself, being passively interested in self-adapting systems have been mucking around for years with various AI, AL (artificial life), machine learning and genetic algorithm programs. You can experience the wonders of evolution for yourself if you're willing to stare at a screen for hours on end. This IS slashdot, many of us do that already. :-)

Seriously though, if you're really interested in at least seeing the very basics of evolution at work, I'd suggest a good start to be NetLOGO. It comes with a nice allotment of pre-built experiments for you to study and watch. Adaptive systems can effect very complex behaviors with very simple rules, and you can see that happen yourself if you really care.

After NetLOGO you might wanna have a look at framsticks. Framsticks is basically an evolution simulator. Not true biochemical evolution (though I do think work has been done to make a biochemically accurate framework for framsticks) but a decent framework for macro-effects of biological evolution.

Basically we already know that the mechanisms of life can (DO) change over time, and it's not too hard to grasp that the ones that work better survive longer. Since all life reproduces, it's probably a good assumption, though not 100% accurate, that the longer an organism lives, the more it reproduces. I cannot possibly fathom why such a simple system can draw so much ire.

Oh, here are links to the programs I referenced.
http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/
http://www.frams.alife.pl/

With framsticks (if memory serves, it's been a year) you need (unless you're a text mode superstar) the shareware package. It's not annoying bother you alot shareware, and though it IS slightly crippled, IFIAK all the crippling is done on things like rendering your creatures in a full OpenGL world. It DOES render them for you, just not in a beautifully crafted world. Again, I may be wrong, or things might have changed.

I don't get it. The flame expands outward to the surface in less than a second. I am ok so far. Now to do that the material would need to have a lot of momentum in the direction it is going, so how does it suddenly turn around and crash into itself on the other side? Not by gravity, or? Is there a pressure wave caused by the flame that travels along the surface and meets with itself on the other side, causing increased pressure and detonation as a result?

I found that passage confusing, too. I did some googling and found another (quite readable) article that suggests it is the latter:

It maps the progress of stellar ash and nuclear flame from the start as a tiny instability at or near the center of the star to the point where this "bubble" of material bursts through the star's surface and spreads out. It encircles the surface of the star, pushing a tidal wave of material ahead of it.

Northwestern University offers a program that is sort of the inverse of the one C.J. talks about in her article - MITP. 70% technology and 30% business, aimed at producing technologically competent managers.

Here are some links for your viewing pleasure:

Here are some links for your viewing pleasure:

Here are some links for your viewing pleasure:

Here are some links for your viewing pleasure:

Here are some links for your viewing pleasure:

Here are some links for your viewing pleasure:

Under an agreement with Independent Counsel Robert Ray, Clinton's law license will be suspended for five years and he will pay a $25,000 fine to Arkansas bar officials. He also gave up any claim to repayment of his legal fees in the matter. In return, Ray will end the 7-year-old Whitewater probe that has shadowed most of Clinton's two terms.

"I tried to walk a fine line between acting lawfully and testifying falsely, but I now recognize that I did not fully accomplish this goal and am certain my responses to questions about Ms. Lewinsky were false," Clinton said in a written statement released Friday by the White House.

On January 17, 1998, President Bill Clinton testified at what turned out to be the most significant deposition in U.S. history. Sworn to tell the truth, he calmly lied about his affair with Monica Lewinsky, falsely stating he was never alone with her and that he never had sexual relations with her. He would soon repeat his lies on television: "I never had sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky." Several months later he would attempt to wriggle out of his falsehoods in his videotaped grand jury testimony. But the harm was done. Clinton teetered for nearly a year on the edge of political ruin, becoming only the second president to be impeached. The scandal probably cost Al Gore the 2000 presidential election-either because it alienated voters from the Democratic party, or because the skittish Gore decided not to allow Clinton to campaign with him [or both].

Nearly all of Clinton's woes, including impeachment, are traceable to his perjury in the Jones deposition. Ultimately, there was no proof that he ever induced anyone else to lie, or that he concealed evidence, or that he destroyed gifts from Lewinsky. But there was no doubt [among any but the most credulous] that he flatly lied in his deposition, and was later less than candid about it when he testified before a grand jury. Clinton, alas, remains in denial. He wasn't lying, he writes; it was merely that he "had not been trying to be helpful to the Jones lawyers." Or, as he testified to the grand jury, "I was determined to walk through the minefield of this deposition without violating the law, and I believe I did."

Well, he was mistaken. Ken Starr and the U.S. House of Representatives impeachment managers obviously concluded Clinton violated the law, although that was hardly an objective assessment. But so, too, did Judge Wright, who held Clinton in contempt for his false testimony. Clinton was also compelled to surrender his Arkansas law license because his evasive and misleading answers were prejudicial to the administration of justice.

The greatest irony-or tragedy, or perhaps farce-is that Bennett easily could have rescued Clinton, if only the president had told him the truth. Adequately forewarned, Bennett surely would have counseled his client to tell the truth and skip the coy evasion. If the president refused, there were still feasible alternatives. They could have refused to attend the deposition, or they could have declined to answer "inappropriately personal questions," asserting a right to privacy.

Okay so you have personally witnessed every crime that someone has been put to death for? Even in the event that you have, why should I take your word for it? How do I know you don't have a grudge against the person you are testifying against, or worse still that you are in fact a serial killers whos preferred MO is to cause the state to perform your actual murders for you?

Even in the event of video evidence such as a man strangling a woman to death, how to we know this wasn't consentual? way they both got their rocks of and the woman accidently died? The video clearly shows the man killing the woman, however, given consentual circumstances this is death by misadventure or at worst manslaughter, the man didn't intentionally kill the woman therefore the state shouldn't intentially kill the man.

Failing that another situation, you find out your child has been sexually abused by a pervert, you go there to kick the crap out of the man, all that is caught on video is you kicking the guy, you accidently kill him do you deserve to be executed for this crime?

Or how about a real life case, a man, his wife and child are in a car with his friend, the friend has a criminal history, during the trip he shoot a cop dead, he then lies saying the man and woman had commited the murder, they are both sentenced to death, the man is executed, shortly after the actual killer confesses the truth that he had killed the cop, and then kidnapped the man and woman, the woman is released from deathrow but her husband has already been murdered by the state.......but hey there was a witness that saw him kill the cop nevermind the fact that he was lying.

Read all about it yourself

It proves you are good enough not to get caught.

2) If they tell you to do something illigal they don't want it comming back to them in the terms of "You hired a known felon..."

Several other people here have mentioned Logo - an excellent choice, in my view. I recommend taking a look at the three volumes of Brian Harvey's Computer Science Logo Style .

The Logo tree has spawned several other languages - two worth looking at are NetLogo and StarLogo TNG - both of these languages are particularly well-suited to modeling projects, the first with a traditional text-oriented perspective, the second with a graphical programming interface.

Another programming language specially designed for education is Alice - the language is designed so students can graduate rather quickly to more complex object-oriented languages. Python, Ruby, and Java would all be good follow-up languages to Alice.

Finally, let me gently suggest that you not follow through with at least one portion of your original plan: the game c-jump is a very poor choice for introducing students to programming. Not only is the game completely inappropriate for any child over the age of 3-4 (it is just a very boring version of snakes and ladders), it is also extremely poor from a pedagogical viewpoint, with no creative activity on the part of the students, reinforcing notions of code as arbitrary sets of commands. The first couple of tutorials in Alice will be far more enjoyable for your students, and actually get them involved in some real thinking about programming.

If you patent something you have to disclose exactly how it works, there's no way around this. A trade secret is a process that you keep to yourself because you believe no one will ever figure it out. The former prevents duplication by law, the second prevents duplication by inginuity and originality.

http://www.northwestern.edu/ttp/investigators/pate nts_tradesecrets.html

The acceptable face of spyware

Dear Bill:

The following argument is so old it should probably be modded redundant, but given Steve's mental faculties, perhaps it bears repeating.

1 - Pirates will not be hurt by this as they have corporate keys, etc
2 - Genuine customers will be annoyed by this
3- Therefore this makes no sense

By presupposing your customers are dishonest Microsoft creates tremendous ill-will. This would, of course, normally be a bad thing. Worse - they have that nice monopoly so it doesn't really matter. This causes unhappiness and resentment, even amongst ridiculous Redmond fanbois like Paul Thurrott and Ed Bott.

So, my friends, there is only one way out. If we want to be happy, Windows must be kill -9'd.

It isn't as simple as that article paints it. Download netlogo and look for one of the simulations in the social section. You can watch the effects of logo 'turtles' only being comfortable if they are around at least some minimum threshold of turtles of the same color as them. The result is always that the turtles will arrange themselves in such a way that those minimum thresholds are passed throughout almost every point in the distribution.

There is this lurking idea that Number Theory is very important in Physics. Witten has been investigating this via the Langlands Program. What if saying something is physically possible and mathematically possible is talking about the same realm of possibility. That is surely not how people think but if it was true would dramatically change our view of the world.

I make modest donations to many F/OSS projects. While many of the sourceforge hosted projects have obvious donation links, some others don't. So, I've made a list of donation URLs for projects I have supported.

As I understand it, one of the bedrock legal principles is that a person cannot be held responsible for obeying laws that he does not know about, but that a person has a concomitant obligation to know the laws, so that he cannot use ignorance as an excuse. This is why laws are public.

But the warrant was obtained illegally and as citizens we are expected to report any wrong doing. Job function or not he should have been protected.

Yes whistleblower laws should go into effect as the memo was not out of incompentance but to report misconduct and illegal violations of the US constition.

The prosecuter should be debarred and in jail if he approved of his firing and knew what happened. Scary indeed. But if he went to the rpess he still would have been fired for not doing the proper procedure which was letting someone know inside the department first. Disgusting.

If you read the details of the case, you'll see that Ceballos found out that a sheriff basically lied to obtain a search warrant. He wrote a memo about this and notified the defense attorney.

His boss forced him to rewrite the memo. The defense attorney subpoenaed him while attempting to have the case dismissed, but the prosecution deftly managed to prevent Ceballos from admitting on the record that the prosecutor's office knew about the lie and still went ahead with the prosecution.

You can find details about the case and tests used here.

What's frightening to me is that no one seems to be raising concerns about a prosecutor's office knowingly proceeding with a case that has been tainted. I guess it's now ok for all law enforcement officials to lie to obtain warrants.

Cellabos got in trouble for sending a memo to his superiors with his findings after being assigned to investigate potential misconduct by the Sheriff's Department. When his superiors proceeded with the prosecution anyway he contacted the defense attorney, which was certainly in the interests of justice and maybe even ethically required (any criminal lawyers out there to kill that "maybe" one way or the other?).

This article from doing actual measurements found a highest strength of 63 GPa:

Strength and Breaking Mechanism of Multiwalled Carbon Nanotubes Under Tensile Load.
SCIENCE, VOL 287, p. 637-640, 28 JANUARY 2000
http://bucky-central.mech.northwestern.edu/RuoffsP DFs/science-9.pdf

This report showed actual measured tensile strengths up to 150 GPa:

Direct mechanical measurement of the tensile strength and elastic modulus of multiwalled carbon nanotubes.
B.G. Demczyk et al.
Materials Science and Engineering A334 (2002), 174, 173-178.
http://www.glue.umd.edu/~cumings/PDF%20Publication s/16.MSE%20A334demczyk.pdf

  Both of these studies were done on multiwalled tubes since they are larger and it's easier to make attachments with them.
  In the earlier study in Science, the authors from SEM imaging noted that it was actually the outer single-walled nanotube that broke first therefore it was carrying the load. This would make sense from the way the attachments were formed which could only form a bond with the outer surface of the multiwalled tube. Therefore the numbers quoted were for the strength of this outer single-walled nanotube using as thickness only that of this single-walled nanotube.
  However, in the later study in Materials Science and Engineering, the authors believed the attachments were made to all the layers of the multi-layered nanotube, which would explain their higher measured strength.
  The prevailing theory is that the range of strengths is due to the number of imperfections in the nanotubes. So we should be able to look at the nanotubes at the nanoscale using SEM,'s, STM's or AFM's and find which ones have the least imperfections. These should be the strongest tubes.
  In the Science study, 1 out of 21 of them, 5%, have the best strength, 63 GPa. At a production of millions of tubes at a time this should still be feasible economically and technically.
  The lengths of the nanotubes in these studies were however, were at the micron scale though. Nanotubes have been created at the centimeter length scale, but as far as I know the strength of these have not been tested.
  Note that the reported strengths of centimeter long or longer "fibers" made of nanotubes being less than 1 GPA are not measuring the strength of individual nanotubes at these lengths. This is because the fibers are composed of the nanotubes stuck together end to end by weaker Van der Waals forces, rather than the much stronger carbon-carbon bonds that prevail in individual nanotubes.
  Here is one study that detects, characterizes defects in the nanotubes at the nanoscale:

Resonant Electron Scattering by Defects in Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes.
Science 12 January 2001, Vol. 291. no. 5502, pp. 283 - 285.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/291 /5502/283

  Methods such as this might make it possible to find the nanotubes with the least defects beforehand and therefore automatically select those of the highest strengths.

      Bob Clark

The only reason Peapod still exists is because they sold out to the international grocery giant Royal Ahold in 2001, for the princely price of $2.15 a share -- down from $18.50 at its 1997 IPO. Ahold's investment was the only thing that kept Peapod from folding.

Considering that they never earned a profit as an independent operation and were spending $1.60 to ship $1 worth of groceries, it's probably safe to chalk them up with the dot-bombs, even if the Peapod brand is still around.

Actually, it's a pretty straightforward result. They took old work by Chad Mirkin and Coworkers (http://www.chem.northwestern.edu/~mkngrp/Group%20 Research.htm/), and the use of sugars to solubilize gold for therapeutic uses http://images.google.com/images?q=auranofin&hl=en& btnG=Search+Images/, then changed the receptors. Straightforward applied engineering from known principles and substances. It's only novel if you're a science journalist with space to fill who doesn't follow the chemical literature.

From the LROC site http://cps.earth.northwestern.edu/LROC/summary.htm l

"All the data collected from the LROC will be transferred to the Planetary Data Systems (PDS). In all, about 62 terabytes (TB) of data will be sent to PDS from the data collected by LROC including the raw images in the original spacecraft viewing orientation (NASA Level-0) and radiometrically processed images (NASA Level-1) of the entire image collection. In addition, geometrically processed images (NASA Level-1C) from a subset of the image collection and uncontrolled mosaics from a subset of the image collection will also be transferred to the PDS."

The PDS ( http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/ ) "archives and distributes scientific data from NASA planetary missions..."
You can download data from many past missions from the PDS.

Virtually virus free? I worked in publishing in the early 90s using Macs and I would say about 30% of the floppies that came in had some kind of virus on them. Luckily there was the excellent freeware Disinfectant by the splendid John Nortstad - that sorted everything out until it was discontinued in 1998. Every Mac had the disinfectant init installed and the machines were religiously updated.

I took a hiatus from personal Mac use until the advent of OS X, since then I've only seen Word macro viruses.

I don't currently have a virus checker installed, am I complacent? Maybe.

I've put my money where my mouth is and have donated to my favorite open source projects. I encourage everyone else to do something similar (as incentive for many in the U.S. at this time of the year: some projects are run non-profit, so your donations may be tax deductible.

I do not believe that making Opera open source would benefit us all that much. I do not think it has benefitted Netscape much either.

Wow. Sit back and enjoy a cold one while we watch the Open Source fanboys rip him a new one :)

These are the projects that have been worthy of my money. There are donation links and methods of payment listed:
http://arc.nucapt.northwestern.edu/F/OSS

The path of love is never smooth
But mine's continuous for you
You're the upper bound in the chains of my heart
You're my Axiom of Choice, you know it's true

But lately our relation's not so well-defined
And I just can't function without you
I'll prove my proposition and I'm sure you'll find
We're a finite simple group of order two

I'm losing my identity
I'm getting tensor every day
And without loss of generality
I will assume that you feel the same way