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I am a strong believer in F/OSS. Not only do I run it, but I contribute code and money (I also submit bug reports, patches, contribute answers to forums, and am an advocate of F/OSS to my peers). In short, I drink the Kool-Aid. I use only Linux and FreeBSD on machines I own (and I bought the machine on my desk at work, so I can use it there). I am a zealot. I think that an all (or mostly) F/OSS stack is something to strive for & that a lot of F/OSS software does work better on a free OS (usually because that is what the developers write it for & where it gets the most complete and knowledgable testing).

That being said, I do still sometimes have to use Windows & I am happy to have F/OSS on that platform. I patch my own code to work around bugs that only impact Windows users & I have financially supported projects on that platform. I have even given money to good F/OSS software which is only on that platform. I am certainly not alone. Just look at the top projects on sourceforge. Most run on Windows. Some run only on Windows.

So...some of the best Windows-only/Windows-mostly F/OSS:
Filezilla--great (S)FTP client/server. Hopefully a *nix port soon.
7-zip--excellent compression software. p7zip is there for the rest of us, but updates take a while to reach us.
PuTTYFor your ssh/scp/sftp needs.

I've given money to these projects & carry them around on a USB key (along with Thunderbird, Firefox, and vim). Cygwin is another handy thing to have if you have to be on win32 for very long.

Well, that's the thing... they still gave them the authority. And the IOC certainly used it, when they went after the CCG known as "Legend of the Five Rings." What's truly sad is that Musashi's Book of Five Rings (which the game is based on) has been around far, far longer than the modern Olympics symbol, but the IOC decided it was a copyright infringement. Sadly, I can't find a link to this topic on the web at this time.

The basic idea is that the IOC is trying to defend itself against marketers that use the logo to promote their products as being endorsed by the Olympics, when it is not, as listed at http://www.law.northwestern.edu/journals/njtip/v3/ n2/6/ I can understand the IOC trying to protect itself from false endorsements, but it seems to have gone too far, and in the direction of corporate interest and moneymaking rather than fair use and protection of an organization's image.

Seriously, has this guy ever heard of the first amendment? how about New York Times vs Sulivan?. Mr. Thompson is a public figure and therefore a valid target of criticism. Penny arcade has done nothing except to post the messages the Jack has sent. people making death threats could be prosucted. but PA is protected under the law.

We tried Mozilla Calendar/Sunbird with a WebDAV server (even though it deleted two calendars upon upload and barfed on a third, my office loves Sunbird's interface)

For all non-US readers, form deep down in their website:
(http://www.northwestern.edu/

Northwestern University is a private institution founded in 1851 to serve the Northwest Territory, an area that now includes the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota. In 1853 the founders purchased a 379-acre tract of land on the shore of Lake Michigan 12 miles north of Chicago. They established a campus and developed the land near it, naming the surrounding town Evanston in honor of one of the University's founders, John Evans. After completing its first building in 1855, Northwestern began classes that fall with two faculty members and 10 students.

More on http://www.northwestern.edu/about/facts/

For all non-US readers, form deep down in their website:
(http://www.northwestern.edu/

Northwestern University is a private institution founded in 1851 to serve the Northwest Territory, an area that now includes the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota. In 1853 the founders purchased a 379-acre tract of land on the shore of Lake Michigan 12 miles north of Chicago. They established a campus and developed the land near it, naming the surrounding town Evanston in honor of one of the University's founders, John Evans. After completing its first building in 1855, Northwestern began classes that fall with two faculty members and 10 students.

More on http://www.northwestern.edu/about/facts/

I don't know where you people get these wacky ideas. EMP is a myth, propagated by science fiction and kept alive by idiots like yourself.

Let's start out with:

The existence of the electromagnetic pulse has been known since the 1940's when nuclear weapons were being developed and tested. However, because of lack of data, the effects of an EMP were not fully known until 1962. At this time, the United States was conducting a series of high-altitude atmospheric tests, code named "Fishbowl." The nuclear explosion, "Starfish Prime," which was detonated in the Pacific Ocean 800 miles from Hawaii, caused an EMP that disrupted radio stations and electrical equipment throughout Hawaii. Consequently, in 1963, the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty to counter the considerable threat posed by EMPs. Unfortunately, the destructive potential of an EMP increases everyday as society becomes evermore technological because of an escalating dependence on electronics.

Don't forget to review the US Army Corps of Engineers.

You can google and wiki more on your own.

Mod me how you like, but proceeds go to F/OSS projects. Feel free to see what I donate to. Greasemonkey automatically rewrites my amazon links & I don't mind if you rewrite the referral either. (I also encourage direct donations to F/OSS projects.)

You should too.

Even so, perhaps now you can see why Europeans are not precisely filled with sympathy at the poor ickle Americans who are cruelly being forced to pay almost half what we do for fuel.

Maybe if the EU didn't tax gasoline so much to line the governments pockets you wouldn't have this problem. Remember, you are subsidising public transportation systems with it.
UK Gas Tax: $2.80/gallon
US Gas Tax: $1.01/gallon
As of May, 2004. Exchange rates have changed since then.
Source:http://transportation.northwestern.edu/semi nars/03-04/small052704/

A couple things:

Back when the court was something, they are the ones who told the police they must read rights to people.
Actually, that decision gave the police more power. Think about it: once the police tell someone their rights, they know for sure that anything they get out of them is admissible evidence, because all the police had to do was read them their rights.

Back then, the courts said that people could not be taken by government for no reason.
See Korematsu v. US. regarding the Japanese Internment Camps.

That government could not look at your reading list and label you as a terrorist because you read Carol Marx.
Not a terrorist no. But you could get labeled a communist for attending a single Socialist Party meeting before WWII. And don't forget the Alien and Sedition Acts. This comment is more about the government than the court so that's all I really have to say.

Do you know how many Joe McCarthy's there are in government, and how the courts have stopped them?
You do know that the courts didn't stop Senator Joe McCarthy, that the trials were all Senate hearings and that he eventually just lost popularity.

Why did Rehnquist not retire? Why did he stay when he was sick? Was he this sick?
He probably didn't know when he was going to die and wanted to decide the abortion case once O'Connor gets replaced (hoping by someone pro-life) since there will be an abortion case on the docket for the end of November.

I spend money on software all the time.

http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/k opp/apjemp.html

http://www.physics.northwestern.edu/classes/2001Fa ll/Phyx135-2/19/emp.htm

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/pages/ebomb.html

A recent take on this is the Settlers of Catan. Interesting AI work in negotiations. Never saw the end results though (thesis), anybody?

http://www.infolab.northwestern.edu/infolab/

Thankfully all over the web now due to:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/jsettlers

I'm well aware of Keita and that he is a NAMCO employee... but this game was all about him and his idea. Totally different from how almost all other Namco titles are created/developed. He totally created the game outside of NAMCO and it was actually a Senior project of his! Here is a link with the full story since you still want to argue and think you can show me up (This is translated from Game Developer Magazine: December 2004): http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~hunicke/blog/conte nt/kdpostmort.htm

Now, want to continue or are you ready to concede? You are trying to argue with someone who has been a part of this industry for over 4 years... I'm well aware of Namco, KD, and the stories and people behind it and probably 1000 other titles... care to try me further?

Not as significantly as you might think. CPI is regularly adjusted to make it as accurate as possible and was substantially altered back in 1995 to reduce bias in the CPI. The Boskin Report was the basis for these changes.

Wikipedia also features a good article explaining the CPI and its limitations.

Precisely. Ever notice how some sort of marriage ceremony seems to be engrained in many otherwise distinct cultures? It leads me to suspect that what people like to call "sexual morality" is really just a survival trait that evolved as a result of natural selection. Recent research on sexual networks (example) seems to point to the same conclusion.

Southern Florida is closer to the equator which gives the spacecraft more of a push to achieve orbit. The Earth's rotation means the land is actually traveling faster at the equator (1670 kph), while the land halfway to the poles is traveling slower (1180 kph). This extra push reduces the amount of energy required to make it to orbit.

The easiest framework to write simulations of this type is Netlogo.
It's free, it's easy and quite powerful.

Skim through the models library (File->Models Library) for a large selection of simulations written. Almost every model you open, while it seems to be very complex when run, the code is usually no more than 50 lines.

For example try Biology->Ants. It shows a simulation of ants searching for food and when they find it, they will spread feromones to attract others.

A website that actually does implement searches by food price (among other things) exists for Northwestern University (Evanston, IL). Unfortunately, pricing information for restaurants doesn't exist for all those listed.

The google mapped version exists at:
http://restaurant.asg.northwestern.edu/googlemappe d.php

text only:
http://restaurant.asg.northwestern.edu/

A website that actually does implement searches by food price (among other things) exists for Northwestern University (Evanston, IL). Unfortunately, pricing information for restaurants doesn't exist for all those listed.

The google mapped version exists at:
http://restaurant.asg.northwestern.edu/googlemappe d.php

text only:
http://restaurant.asg.northwestern.edu/

You probably agree with them much more often than you think, particularly when the SCOTUS passes down a unanimous or close to unanimous decision. The 5-4 split doesn't happen in every single case -- in fact, that's a result in a minority of decisions. (Take a look at On the Docket at Northwestern, which I think is part of the Oyez Project.)

... The music/soundtrack of the game came out really well. Games and music have a lot in common. I have really had enough of the standard "the boss battle has music with tension" approach, however. In Katamari Damacy, there is no boss and there are no enemies, so we created a soundtrack that's original to the game.

I'll let Yu Miyake, our sound director, tell you about the music he created in his own words:

"Takahashi, the director, allowed me to direct the music any way I wanted. I would never have been given that kind of creative freedom working for an ordinary director. My goal was to have the music appeal to everyone, and so I tried many different methods of directing and creating tunes in order to have that appeal."

A little later:

"We were very serious when creating the music. Most game music nowadays is pretty forgettable. I wanted to create a soundtrack that would stick in player's heads, sort of like an evil curse. I also wanted to avoid using a single musical genre. Everything from the selection of the vocalists to the selection of song lyrics, was carefully considered."

Also worth reading for the process by which the "Nah, nanananana, na na..." song, so winningly alluded to by me in the subject line, made it into the game.

You can read the complete paper here:
http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/jones- ben/htm/AgeAndGreatInvention.pdf

Going to split this into 3 post for each of the ideas 1st off rail guns.

You can get some good info on rail guns from.
http://www.physics.northwestern.edu/classes/2001Fa ll/Phyx135-2/19/railgun.htm
Such as: Viable rail guns can now be constructed with rails only 1 meter long.
The projectile should have an exit speed of approximately 12km/s in order to successfully intercept missiles. (mach 35.26 ~= 12km/s)

They are working on 150 km/s rail guns which would work at around mach 300. So yea mach 10 is slow for a rail gun.

PS: Granted coil guns seem to work much better and have can get close to C but that's with a single atom.

Fascists always have the best art departments, whether they're fictional or not.

I mean, who got the cooler uniforms in the original BSG: the Viper Pilots, or the Space Nazis?

It's the same everywhere. Jedi vs Sith. Autobot vs Decepticon. Hippie vs Grammaton Cleric.

I think that part of the reason the *real* Nazis were able to have such influence over the Germans* are things like Speer and his Cathedral of Light, their military having uniforms that say "I am an evil person, and I will go forth and enjoy doing evil things in style," etc.

I guess we've explained why SF lovers like fascist decor -- it looks cool. (Though there's always been a certain fascist mindset in SF. Heinlen. Pournelle. Stirling keeps saying, "On the other hand," but his heart is really in Power and Will.) But why do so many college campuses seem to shout "Il Duce loves you"???

Cool, can we get some WWII style posters that show Tux working for the Arsenal of Democracy? Maybe something like this one only with Tux instead of the Minuteman telling people to buy Linux instead of stamps.

Better not let the **AAs get any ideas though. Hate to see a campaign like McCarthy's against communism targeting Open Source or P2P apps.

In preslashdot days, there was a segment of the VR community working on force-feedback (haptic) interfaces. In one application, a 6-DOF, 3-D mouse let a researcher "hold" a simulated molecule and "feel" how that molecule fit into a receptor site of an enzyme. Computing the forces required high-end equipment at the time, but should be very doable today if one had the specialized interface hardware.

In preslashdot days, there was a segment of the VR community working on force-feedback (haptic) interfaces. In one application, a 6-DOF, 3-D mouse let a researcher "hold" a simulated molecule and "feel" how that molecule fit into a receptor site of an enzyme. Computing the forces required high-end equipment at the time, but should be very doable today if one had the specialized interface hardware.

(a) there really is a link, and if the system hadn't spotted it an astute detective might have or (b) there really is no such connection, in which case the detective will swear at the system for wasting his time and get on with his job.

You forgot (c): the detective, after experiencing (b) a dozen times, and being grilled by his superior as to why he's not had any arrests in X months, will *make* a connection where there was none.

don't think it doesn't happen

(a) there really is a link, and if the system hadn't spotted it an astute detective might have or (b) there really is no such connection, in which case the detective will swear at the system for wasting his time and get on with his job.

You forgot (c): the detective, after experiencing (b) a dozen times, and being grilled by his superior as to why he's not had any arrests in X months, will *make* a connection where there was none.

don't think it doesn't happen

Being good open-source citizen, you will immediately donate that $100 gift to your favorite OSS project! Thank you! Or Maybe just a few bucks.

Plasmons are generated when, under the right conditions, light strikes a metal. The electric field of the light jiggles the electrons in the metal to the light's frequency, setting off density waves of electrons. The process is analogous to how the vibrations of the larynx jiggle molecules in the air into density waves experienced as sound.

This analogy makes no sense because this is not analogous to how the larnyx jiggles air. The larnyx squeezes together and air is pushed through causing the larnyx to vibrate. In the case of the larnyx, the squeezing of the larnyx as air is exhaled causes flaps of tissue to vibrate . . . . How is this analogous to photons striking metal?

A much better analogy would be how throwing a stone into a pond causes the water to vibrate. Or throwing a stone at a piece of metal causes sonic vibrations.

Roland really should do his homework before coming up with his half baked analogies. For homework on the larnyx and how it works, he could start here.

And of course, ( and may the gods of software have mercy on me for the heresy I'm about to commit ) GCC is the be-all end-all we should compare everything to ? C'mon....seriously. Wasn't GCC CREATED in part as an ALTERNATIVE to the other ( for various reasons ).

Yeah, and NeXT didn't exactly THRUST ObjC into the forefront of PC-based ( or any other SYSTEM based software ) development. As I recall, just before NeXT got sold to Apple, there was a release ( although I'm not entirely certain it was a commercial level release ) of NeXT for X86-based CPU's. Did Apple ever push that ?

Look, stop being so defensive about it. I'm not going to sit here and say that C++ is the be-all end-all of software development languages. But there a WHOLE lot more developers who program in C++ than in ObJC. Why is that again ? Given it's been a pre-processor source language for GCC for that long, the question still remains....why do you think it hasn't ( or didn't ) reach "critical mass" ? You're not actually going to play the "C++ hype" card are you ?

C'mon. C++ may not necessarily be "friendly" by modern standards, but at least C++OX is still being managed as a language with a clear standard. Who again manages the ObjC standard again ?

Check out GNU's own page for the answer to that:

http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Standards.html
( Psst..Huge Spoiler: Nobody manages a standard for Objective-C or Objective C++ )

And to really bake folks' noodles, try this on for size:

http://cs.northwestern.edu/~josha/objcpp.pdf

I most especially like the part about how in OS X, Objective-C++ mysteriously disappeared from the NeXT libraries.

C'mon...ObjC has it's uses, but could Apple have made NeXT ( OS X ) more accessible to C++ developers, and not anchor themselves so tightly to Smalltalk-ish syntax ( Oh, I just know some SmallTalk Guru will come down on me about that statement ).

The point is that while C++ continues to grow and evolve...ObjC has for the most part, not done so.

The book you're referring to is Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors, which is available a gazillion places online. The man who committed the murder was Lawrence Horn. Thing is, the dude had been in and out of prison several times previously... and if 1. the instructions in the book were worthwhile and 2. he had actually used them fully, then he wouldn't have allowed himself to get caught.

And the publisher was NOT found guilty, they settled.

I can and do donate to F/OSS. You usually get a tax deduction out of the deal, but it is also feels good to give money to those who have done such good work. Having been on the receiving end of this, it also feels great when people acknowledge your work.

I'll definitely be adding more projects to the list of who I will donate to after reading this article. If anyone can help me figure out where to send money to, please post to the email listed on my page or post under this thread.

more info

This location on Mars is actually moving faster than any other location. This provides us with a moving target and accuracy will be very tough. Landing at a specific spot on the poles is signifignatly easier to do because they are rotating much slower.

Also, launching from the equator is beneficial to us for orbiting platforms. I don't think there are any advantageous reasons for a extra-terrestrial vehicle to launch from there.

I know this is a joke, but I've actually gotten into the habit of paying for open source.

You do often get a tax deduction, but the real reason to do it is that it is such a pleasure to pay for something that is free. The developers appreciate it (or, at least, I have when people have given me a token). The money and equipment I have given has usually cost less than what it would take to buy comparable commercial software, but I feel like I've gotten much more in return.

Here's yet another mirror.

The easiest way to play Settlers of Catan on Linux is to try out an online java game such as http://settlers.cs.northwestern.edu/, http://catan.jsettlers.com/ or http://www.brettspielwelt.de/.

Really Logo wasn't intended to teach programming (though of course it did that). It was intended to teach math, and algorithmic thinking, and thinking in general. And, paired with the right teacher and an interested pupil, it's really great at that. Without realizing it, a child can end up learning not just geometry (through the turtle graphics), but a lot of pre-algebra. I think programming is a far more accessible way to introduce algebra than the traditional techniques; even young children can understand variables in programs, when the declarative variables that are used in mathematics are much more challenging.

It's also a better language than many of "teaching" languages, like Basic. It's an old-school version of Lisp, with a little tweak to avoid the parenthesis. And don't be fooled by things that call themselves Logo when they are just turtle graphics. Turtle graphics are cool, but just a piece of the equation. (Though not-so-coincidentally, Python has built-in turtle graphics).

If you are really interested in programming as education, I might recommend the book Mindstorms, which is a classic about some of the theory behind teaching with Logo. It's not a practical guide, though many of those also exist.

If you are looking for a Logo implementation, on Windows I would recommend Elica, MSWLogo, and UCBLogo, in that order. On Mac or Linux, you can use UCBLogo, Turtle Tracks (a cross-platform Java implementation), or on Mac one of a number of (rather expensive) commercial Logos. If you are a programmer and feel like fiddling alongside your child, you might try my project PyLogo, which is cross-platform and written in Python, but quite rough around the edges. Or if you want something that is Logo, but pretends to be a general-purpose scripting language, look at Rebol. Or for a slightly-lame but functional embedded robot Logo, Cricket Logo. Or for older people, NetLogo is a massively-multitasking implementation to use to play around with autonomous entities (e.g., ant simulations). NetLogo is kind of the successor to StarLogo.

For more information on Logo, you can look at the Logo Foundation, or get in touch with many helpful users in the LogoForum Yahoo Group.

It has been for years: http://settlers.cs.northwestern.edu/

Settlers is awesome. Play online with the java applet version or with the open source (windows only) version.

There's a java version with AI bots at http://settlers.cs.northwestern.edu/. Although sometimes the servers get clogged and you cannot get on, there's also a mirror linked at that site.

I know that at Northwestern, students don't have admin privileges to install software. However, we're able to download programs in zip format, so long as they don't have to be installed. Whenever I go to my school's computer labs I download a Firefox zip and run it from there. I assume it's a similar restriction that prevents just installing the full version of OO.o.

Sign up and help me get an LCD monitor!

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No, the majority of welfare recipients are second- and beyond-generation welfare recipients.

A little thought will show that it's quite possible for a welfare recipients to be a productive citizen temporarily fallen on hard times and also a second-generation recipient.

My own parents, were on food stamps for a few months when my mother was injured (on the job) and unable to work as a nurse and my father was laid off from his programming job due to downsizing. If at some point I had a spell of bad luck and had to do the same, I'd be a second generation food stamp recipient, never mind that both I and my parents would have paid much more into taxes than we took out in benefits.

The average welfare recipient spends about four years on the rolls, not a lifetime.

Social security is *not* a retirement pension plan

Uh, yes it is. Retired people get paid money, that's pretty much the definition of a retirement pension. I'm not saying it's a good one, but it is one.

Assuming constant acceleration and no retarding forces, if the initial velocity on leaving the Earth's atmosphere was 11.2 km/s, then the acceleration is (change in velocity)/(change in time) = (2737 - 11.2)km/s * 3600s / 3648h = 2725.8 * 3600 / 3648 km/h^2 = 2690 km/h^2 = 2.08e-4 km/s^-2 = 2.08e-7 m/s^2.

Rather slow accelaration, at that rate it'll take 29683seconds to travel the length of an American Football pitch (from a stationary start), approximately 8.25 hours. That's slow.

Data taken from here.

Narr

I wonder if they are aware of the open source (GPL) version of Settlers of Catan. Some guy wrote it for his thesis because writing the AI for a game where negotiation plays such a big role posed an interesting challenge. I was addicted to this version for several weeks when I came across it last year and I'd hate to see it disappear (but on the other hand, I don't think it was ever officially sanctioned by the owners of Settlers).

Some kind of reverse Peltier gizmo can't be used to create a solid-state nuclear battery?

Congratulations, you've just described an RTG.

You know, they used to use these things in pacemakers before Chernobyl happened. After Chernobyl, everyone got scared about "nuclear" anything. Now dead batteries in a pacemaker are a very real concern, whereas they used to be good until you were dead from other causes.