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Depending on what your current degree is in, you might want to follow it up with a degree in Computer Science with a heavy emphasis on Computer Security and Information. A while back, when I was applying to graduate schools, I found that there were very few universities, on the list that I had created, that specialized in Computer Security; albeit, I was more concerned with their EE/Computer Engineering than Computer Science.

With that said, I do know that there are a variety of courses available at places like Johns Hopkins University (http://www.cs.jhu.edu/academics_catalog_grad_cour ses.html), New York University (http://www.cs.nyu.edu/web/Academic/Graduate/cours es.html), George Washington University (http://cs.seas.gwu.edu/academics/graduate/courses /), Virginia Tech (http://www.cs.vt.edu/site_pages/courses/), and the University of Florida (http://www.cise.ufl.edu/student_services/grad/cou rses/) that might suit your needs. While computer forensics is useful for a variety of agencies and institutions, the fundamentals behind those methods are important, as it governs how new tools can be created. MIT (http://student.mit.edu/@5675354.9107/catalog/m6a. html) also has a very interesting course selection, and the techniques and research coming out of there are very top-notch. If I had the time, I'd attend more lectures there, as the content is very diverse and alluring, especially when a grade is not on the line.

See Ken Perlins page (yes, the Perlin noise guy) and check out the face applet. At the bottom there is a link to a story how it can help autistic children learn how to interpret peoples facial expressions. Best of all it's free.

See Ken Perlins page (yes, the Perlin noise guy) and check out the face applet. At the bottom there is a link to a story how it can help autistic children learn how to interpret peoples facial expressions. Best of all it's free.

Maybe he'll use this neat little futuristic Apple Multitouch Graphical User Interface

Also check out the Multi-Touch Interaction Research website

If you are interested in DNA nanotech, definitely check out the SciAm article by Ned Seeman (the founder of the field). Here are some links to lab pages:

Ned Seeman
William Shih
Eric Winfree
John Reif

http://mrl.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/index.html The concept is really really cool with the potential to completely change the UI as we know it. I am surprised that this has not been covered on slashdot

http://mrl.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/index.html

I've studied various mnemonic methods. The ancient greeks used an empty stadium as a mnemonic device then would 'seat' items to be remembered in the stadium seats.

Luria, A. R. (Aleksandr Romanovich) The Mind of a Mnemonist: A Little Book about a Vast Memory

check this one out, it looks amazing!

http://mrl.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/

There's a hysterical clip from the Daily Show about this very topic. Wait for the punch line at the end.

Tell us more.

I am fascinated by the use of this. The resolution sesme to be limited to 600x800. It might seem like enough, but it isn't though unless I could scroll a reactive 'landscape' under it.

The project at http://mrl.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/ is just a reactive screen with .1" resolution. It uses any image that can be 'back projected' onto its surface.

Quite apart from the "Minority Report" flat-screen object/relationship presentation level aspect, it ccould be combined with another project at the Media Research Lab of New York University which traces 'social networks,' and labelling the 'rays' between objects could be used to support multiple Relationships/connections between object instances.

That would make navigation of a complex database a great deal easier, either at the schema level, with the addition/deletion of Objects and Relationships, or at the instance level with the creation/deletion;connection/disconnection of instances.

Here is a link to the technology used to detect the touches (I scarfed this link from a forum post on fingerfans.dreamhosters.com, thanks to eelfinnTy for posting it):

http://mrl.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirsense/index.html

I think the touchscreen is backlit with a projector. The scattered light from the touches is probably infra-red and could be measured by an IR camera located back with the projector, which is how the device could be 'scalable to very large installations'.

Very cool, but the slimline version for a tablet PC is still a few years away.

until I read that it was based on Frustrated Total Internal Reflection. This baby *is* for me. Plus, butt mousing.

The NYU guy put the video up on Coral Cache, so just go to the main project page to get better response. The author should have listed THAT as the primary link anyway. That tech blog has nothing to do with the project, and that site is Slashdotted now anyway.

http://mrl.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/

This has nothing to do with Apple specifically, but after watching this demo, it has a lot of people thinking that way.

http://mrl.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/

Mythbusters is not bad as entertainment - certainly better than that 70s show - but science?

It is to laugh!

My favorite was when they proved that hitting a wooden dowel with an arrow always resulted in a split down the grain, regardless of speed, point of impact, or any other factor they managed to notice. From that, they concluded that Robin Hood could not possibly split one arrow with another. Amount of time spent doing historical/archeological research to determine whether 14 century archers preferred end-to-end straight-grained wood for their arrows? Zero. Zip. Nada.

The one where they "prove" Archimedes' mirror couldn't work is almost as funny, though. They actually used a previously sunken ship for a target without considering the effect that total saturation might have on the flammability of wood!

I love watching those guys with actual scientists in the room. It's just like MST3K!

This is getting pretty offtopic. Maybe I should refrain? Nahh. ;-)

Ha! but in fact, science does tell us if war is just or not.. In fact, most every war waged this century had more to do with the scientific method than religion. Logical constructs of use-cases.

This appears quite circular to me. You're talking about using science to determine the truth or falsity of various measures of justice, but the original assertion is that science cannot provide a definition of justice.

Rather, you simply assume here...

Quantitatively weighing the human cost against the abstract political gain.
 
...what sounds like a utilitarian model of justice.

Any given "moral" issue can be socialogically deconstructed. And just like inconsistencies between quantum and reletevism, current gaps in our understanding of social moral delemmas are only a PHD thesis away.

Morality is socially deconstructible only if you believe it is. That's a philosophical assumption, a starting position that is no more, or less, rational than the assumption that morality is objective.

And frankly, I have a pretty low view of our "current... understanding of social moral [di]lemmas." The radical subjectivism characteristic of postmodern social sciences is beyond ridiculous -- and would be particularly irksome to the scientifically-minded Slashdot crowd if they ever realize that the "best" contemporary scholarship in the social sciences all begins with the assumption that truth does not exist -- not even scientific truth.

The idea that social and moral concepts will fall to the inquiry of Reason is an old one -- rooted in (of course) the Enlightenment, buoyed by the triumph of Newtonian physics. But as we know, science went on to achieve an unbroken record of success, while the sociological side is fairly a train wreck. All attempts to create Utopia have failed, despite the appearance of rigor and plausibility in their underlying theses. Marxism is the poster child, of course; but the same impulse led to that other regime that Godwin prohibits me from mentioning outright. ;-)

The essential problems of the human condition are moral ones, chronicled in literature for thousands of years, unchanged in the face of scientific advancement. Lately, from Nietzsche to Skinner to Dawkins, the fashionable response has been to blandly assert that these things are just illusions and social constructions -- a non-answer that Kant famously decried as being pretty unhelpful, even if true.

So, given that there isn't much historical reason to believe that social Progress has anything to do with scientific Progress, I can only assume that you look to the impending solution to all our moral problems as an article of faith? (Kidding, kidding. Mostly.)

--
Dum de dum.

The vast number of factors necessary to fathomable answers to the questions..."Are we being overloaded by knowledge? Is the number of sources growing faster than we can keep up with them?", are such that they point out the flaws inherent in the questions asked.

Thanks for phrasing your post in an authentic question instead of just a flame like it could have been. I'll try to give you at least some of the reasons why a society full of people like the GP wouldn't just degenerate into violent lawlessness...

Even if you want to take a purely "immediate self-interest" viewpoint, kill or be killed will get you killed at some point, whereas live and let live tends to keep you alive. In other words, we voluntarily choose to live in societies based on law, because we are personally much better off living in such a society. We get a benefit (very few people do bad stuff to us) by consenting not to do bad things to other people on a whim. If you often go an extra step to be nice to people, you become known for that, which might carry its own benefits as well depending on your society.

However, you are making a false assumption that atheism (or lack of afterlife) implies a lack of morals. Someone can practice a strict moral code for reasons other than religion, such as a personal sense of honor and pride in upholding a higher standard, or a wish to be remembered for something even after they die. Many practitioners of belief systems like Buddhism or Shinto don't describe themselves as "religious," because they aren't concerned as much with the spirituality of those beliefs as with their implications to secular life and everyday human behavior.

Also, note that there are ways for evolution to select for traits which are bad for the individual who has them, but better for the whole society. I won't get into it, but if you're interested you can read up on Evolution and Altruism, for example at the Wikipedia entry on Altruism or a bit more in depth here.

One of the best I've seen was Alan Sokal's experiment with cultural studies. Sokal is a physicist at NYU who wrote a completely ridiculous paper entitled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" and managed to get it published in a reputable social science journal. While hilarious, the prank has a very serious message. The cultural studies fields are far too preoccupied with making themselves appear scientific rather than actually following the scientific method.

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act I, Scene iv, lines 49-103 (Sparknote analysis)

Making a blanket statement like "DNA is a delicate molecule" or "this will never be useful" is not necessarily correct. It is more correct to say "DNA can be delicate in the wrong conditions" and "this does not have applications, yet." Now, will we overcome the cost of synthesizing DNA? Perhaps. The cost of DNA synthesizing oligonucletides (15-20bp) has dropped dramatically in the last few years. Now will this be useful in making nano-toaster ovens or other more "industrial" tech? Probably not, but neither article really proposes anything like that. Also DNA is a lot less expensive than certain chemicals that are used in trace amounts in all sorts of tech and industrial applications. The field really seems to be wide open.

Ned Seeman's work is slightly different but along the exact same lines. Also, of course he has been doing it for years! A lot of people have been working on this for years. The scientific community is all for competition. Simply because Dr. Seeman has been working on this doesn't somehow invalidate this study. People have also been working on broadband over powerlines for several years. Is that now "old non news?"

Oh, don't worry, it was quite explicit. If one were to read my comment looking for detail, one would see that I did in fact say that you were definitely explicit in calling my argument infantile, and that I did not have to rely on that most greatest of sins on Slashdot, infering someone's meaning from their implicit statements.
Also, perhaps you don't understand that telling someone their argument is childlike is rude, and derogatory. I don't mind you saying that it's ignorant, incorrectly founded, based on false premises, or other such things. These are constructive comments that state that I amm either missing information, or I'm making statements that are not logically based, or that I'm just making shit up.
Telling me that what I'm writing is exactly what a child would write isn't exactly constructive...

I was qualifying an attitude towards authority that I can really describe best by saying it is infantile. I am sorry if you find this derogatory.

Childishness can be grown out of; indeed, it is usually grown out of.

Because you feel a need to force me to go out and obtain a book, rather than using that vastly more mature and adult knowledge to simply assert a reasonably relavent reason to me.

I could do that, I guess. I simply do not have the energy.

One of the things I do is teach math, and I both love doing it and am quite good at it. I have practice explaining elaborate, complex reasoning to people. I know that doing so in writing is orders of magnitude harder and I know I am not very good at that. I believe that a bad explanation can do much more harm than no explanation.

Finally, I am forcing you to do nothing.

I hate this behavior of people. "I don't know how to spell 'eccentric'" "Look it up in the dictionary." "Awesome, thanks for the advice."

I'd tell you to look it up in the dictionary. The spelling of one word is irrelevant, yet knowing how to solve spelling problems is invaluable; my saying "E C C E N T R I C" to you would not solve your problem.

Perhaps I don't have the literary pedigree that you do to make any sort of passible progress attempting to read this book.

I'll try to find some commentary on the book for you. There must be some.

Meanwhile, you can read the prologue to the book's second edition, which was written by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont.

As you said, you're not certain if there exists an English translation.

You can get the book in Spanish, if that works better for you. I am quite surprised that it has not been translated into English: the book is quite related to the Sokal affair... (If you do not know what that is, look for "Alan Sokal" in Wikipedia, go to the guys' homepage, &c) USian academia is strange!

Well, do you mind being so kind as to grace us with an summary of an excerpt of the argument to show us that you're not just saying, "Well, there's this book, "EnAjAvUVes, Bej AlGer AlEnDov." and it says everything that I need to support my argument. Oh, by the way, I don't know if they have an English version, so I hope you can speak IoVeb."

Believe me: I know the feeling. If it only were the search for arguments! One of the ways I've tried to deal with this has been learning languages. English is not, as you have probably noticed, my first language.

You have to understand that the statement "6+6=0" in the theorry of Z_12 and the statement of "6+6!=0" in the theory of Z are using the same sign "6" to represent different things. They are conventionally represented with the same sign, by what is called in the jargon an "abus de langague", but they mean different things. It is not that one statement is true in one context and false in the other:

This certainly underlines the double standards of the ID right. They want religious criticism of evolution put in science classes, and are using the ID trojan horse to do so, while trying to silence those who point this out in those self same classes.

Disclaimer: I am not a proponent of ID, and do not support its teaching in schools.

But it's rare that anyone in a rancorous debate won't have double standards. Narrowing the field to abiogenesis for a moment -- when respected nonreligious scientists espouse speculative, largely unfalsifiable hypotheses of origins that have no evidentiary basis other than (hmm) the lack of evidence for abiogenesis, they are welcome to speak publicly, and write for journals and magazines. Where is the outcry?

And you certainly can't wave your arms and yell "ID is the end of science in America!" when by far the greatest threat to science today is radical postmodernism, whose adherents thrive in overwhelming numbers on university campuses, enjoying secure and unassailable academic respectability, and teaching both implicitly and explicitly that all "so-called facts," science included, are subjective social constructions with no true validity. Where is the outcry?

Here's a personal observation. Although it's unfortunately true that most ID activists are motivated by a prior agenda, in my experience (of moderate sample size) most evolution activists are motivated by a prior agenda as well. Such people tend to be quite surprised when I tell them that I'm a Christian and that I have no overall problem with evolution -- and it is very revealing that this is often considered an insufficient response. They are ultimately satisfied only if I renounce religion entirely. Of course, I am not allowed to have an outcry.

--
Dum de dum.

would it be as portable as it is now?

Well, if you need portability for some graphical gadget, why not do it in Java?

I'm really not too impressed with all this Javascript-used-for-graphics stuff that's in vogue right now - okay, so this Canvas element allows much more graphical control over page layout, but if this mini-FPS is anything to go by, it's horribly slow. As a comparison, see the famously slow Java do a far more complex scene entirely in software...

would it be as portable as it is now?

Well, if you need portability for some graphical gadget, why not do it in Java?

I'm really not too impressed with all this Javascript-used-for-graphics stuff that's in vogue right now - okay, so this Canvas element allows much more graphical control over page layout, but if this mini-FPS is anything to go by, it's horribly slow. As a comparison, see the famously slow Java do a far more complex scene entirely in software...

of course the conventional way to sink a fleet of ships would be to use greek fire tipped arrows

You seem to be quite hostile to concepts from basic finance.

It does not show the analysts picks were bad. It shows that you cannot reliably pick good stocks despite your skill. All these techniques we have are often rendered useless and irrelevant by the way the market reacts.

My point was that price is typically dictated by perceived value. You just reiterated the point of the analyses I mentioned, which is to compare the market price with your projection for the future market price. I can definitely price almost any stock in favor or against any of my predictions, even with justification. This is why you'll often see 3 big firms saying different things. They all have their own case, but no one really knows what is going to happen. You look like a great analyst if you prediction is good, a dog if it is way off. There is no way to predict a stock price, but there are ways to perhaps statistically increase your chances of picking better on AVERAGE, hence an analysis of future price.

If you want a source, please pickup just about any finance textbook written in the past 20 years. The source = Wall Street Journal. Alternatively, I can search for my old graduate thesis in finance that has some good examples related to forecasting. I suggest you do some reading from an old profession of mine at http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/.

Darts can be found at http://www.investorhome.com/darts.htm

That's comparable to the Social Text scheme perpetrated by Alan Sokal, not only in that they were both adding fake discussion into a system, but in that they both confirmed their preconceptions: that the system was filled with idiots. Wasn't that already obvious in both cases, though?

Links here and especially here.

If you find Singer's argument "that living human beings are not necessarily people" disturbing and eerily reminiscent of pre-Abolition America, then you understand the beginnings of the pro-life position.

My own criticism of Singer is that he relies far too heavily on an already-discredited ethical theory, Utilitarianism.

• Problems with Using Microsoft Excel for Statistics
• Fixing Statistical Errors in Spreadsheet Software: The Cases of Gnumeric and Excel
• Using Excel for Data Analysis
• Statistical Flaws in Excel
• On the Accuracy of Statistical Distributions in Microsoft Excel 97
• On the Reliability of Microsoft Excel XP for Statistical Purposes
• Use of Excel for Statistical Analysis
• Reliability of Statistical Procedures in Excel
• Association of Statistics Specialists Using Microsoft Excel
• Statistical Analysis Using Microsoft Excel

This page[math.nyu.edu] quotes The Book of Histories by John Tzetzes as saying:

When Marcellus withdrew them [his ships] a bow-shot, the old man [Archimedes] constructed a kind of hexagonal mirror, and at an interval proportionate to the size of the mirror he set similar small mirrors with four edges, moved by links and by a form of hinge, and made it the centre of the sun's beams--its noon-tide beam, whether in summer or in mid-winter. Afterwards, when the beams were reflected in the mirror, a fearful kindling of fire was raised in the ships, and at the distance of a bow-shot he turned them into ashes. In this way did the old man prevail over Marcellus with his weapons.

Archimedes used a set of smaller mirrors to focus the sunlight on the main mirror first. This would greatly increase the intensity of the energy reflected by the main mirror.

Simply saying "research and reporting" isn't quite enough, there should be logical and very simple standards. Should anonymous sources be protected if they are lying? For example Wen Ho Lee, who was arrested due to an article written in the New York Times based on information given by an anonymous informant, only to find out that nothing had even happened... are lies "news" (hm, what about reporting about lies)? Or on a less tinfoil-hat conspirational note, I'm sure that tabloid staff members put a lot of research into "Woman gives birth to baby boy with face of Jesus tattoed on his back and who can fart Ave Maria", but is that "news"?

These days there's very little about language in a typical English degree, at least not in North America,probably nothing at all about grammar or history of the language, nor is there much emphasis on clear expository writing. All too many English majors are amateur psychologists, anthropologists, historians, or political scientists, or even worse, historians and philosophers of science. The nonsense that passes for literary theory these days has got to be seen to be believed. A prime example is Alan Sokal's demonstration that post-modern literary theorists pretending to be able to critique science don't know their rear end from a doorknob.

It sounds like you missed the Alan Sokal affair a few years back.

He basically pulled together a bunch of philosophical jargon, made some stuff up relating it to quantum mechanics, loaded it with red flags for anybody with a minimal knowledge of physics and had no trouble getting it published in the journal Social Text. He even wrote a book critical of philosophers misusing physics, and did it in french because he thought the worst culprits were francophone. You can read all about it here: Sokal affair

Of course, there are also scientists who could use a little refresher in math, too. One of my favorite papers is some psychiatrists who were inadvertantly testing the equivalence principle in a study on clozapine and weight gain. It was reported that clozapine causes weight gain, and they proposed that it might also cause an increase in body mass index (BMI). BMI is defined as: m/h^2, where m is weight in kilograms and h is height in meters. If you read the paper they weren't suggesting that clozapine affects your height. Abstract available here: Clozapine and Body Mass Change.

The amazing thing is that the reviewers didn't at least make them change the first two lines of the abstract.

On hearing a heckler in the front row question his sanity, George Carlin replied... "Nice...I see you've been given the gift of a functional brain - please let us know when you unwrap it and take it out of the box."

Ok, I'll spot you this one, but next time, do yourself a favor and pay attention during class...

Functionalism has three distinct sources. First, Putnam and Fodor saw mental states in terms of an empirical computational theory of the mind. Second, Smart's "topic neutral" analyses led Armstrong and Lewis to a functionalist analysis of mental concepts. Third, Wittgenstein's idea of meaning as use led to a version of functionalism as a theory of meaning, further developed by Sellars and later Harman.

...for something to be a carburetor is for it to mix fuel and air in an internal combustion engine--carburetor is a functional concept. In the case of the kidney, the scientific concept is functional--defined in terms of a role in filtering the blood and maintaining certain chemical balances.

In the world of transistors, during manufacturing, we have functional and non-functional dies, where the non-functional are discarded, and the rest are further tested and assigned a 'functional level'.

This is where we end up with ram (or processors, etc.) being 'speed' rated, such as 80ns, 70ns, 60ns... These different speed components can all surface as part of a yield from the same 'batch', when some refuse to lock at one speed, and then pass inspection at another. Samsung doesn't run production of 60's on one day, and then 70's on the next. It's all about their 'functional' status as they come out of the oven...

A 'functional' transistor can go thru as many as 300 steps before it earns that title.

I had to look this one up: No Exit

this is a bit wrong, because water never turns into gas, water can be heated up in air to turn into steam, but it never turns into a *gas*. so it can't be a greenhouse gas.

You're really not helping yourself. When water boils, it goes from a liquid form to a gaseous form. Steam is just vaporized water. But just in case you don't believe me, you're welcome to check these sources for validation.

ofcourse it's responsible for the heating effect in the sunlight, we wouldn't be chatting here in slashdot if we had no air with water around us, we'd freeze to death.
If it's a gas that captures and holds the heat from the sun, warming the ambient temperature above that which it would be without an atmosphere, then it's acting like a greenhouse, and such is a greenhouse gas.

but if you define water as a responsible material for heating up earth in the sun, you should add oxygen and nitrogen too and every other thing that you see.

I'm sure they contribute to some extent, but not nearly to that which water, methane, and carbon dioxide do.

but you should try to look over the border of your "great" country and see that other people use cars that need 6 litres of gas for 100km

Not sure where you are, but that's 39 miles per gallon, and while it is higher than the average car mileage, we have plenty of vehicles that get that kind of mileage and higher. One of my cars (the one I use for leisure) gets about half of that, and the one (the one I drive to work and which is now about 12 years old) gets 75% of that. Not too terrible.

a local heat station running 9 months a year produces far more co2 than cars over here for example
Judging by your e-mail address, you live in Estonia, which has a much colder climate than the average US resident has to protect against, so it's not surprising that you put more into heating than you do into transportation. That does not negate my position that a significant fraction of emitted CO2 is released by vehicles. It may not be that way for you, or for Lithuania, or Finland, but it is that way for many other nations.

power stations may be more effective, but the still shoot out massive amounts of co2, even the electricity that is used to make me type here is produced by burning the old goold coal.

Yes, they do, which is why I am far more comfortable with nuclear power. In fact, some of the electricity I'm using comes from a nuclear power plant, which means that there is zero CO2 being released. During the day, some of the power comes from a solar plant, and perhaps some from wind. Most of the rest for me comes from methane-fired power plants, which are even more efficient than coal.

..and so I'll provide an answer

There is actually a lot of evidence backing my point...

This is hardly "insider" stuff--it is "popular science" material my friend. Hormones affect sleep, sleep affects hormones and so on...it is all linked and involves more than cognitive abilities are physical alertness. Sleep deprivation (especially long-term/chronic) can affect growth, metabolism, aging, sex drive...everything. There is no way a single drug that merely keeps you physically and mentally alert without sleep would be healthy if used chronically.

Like this ?

Query by Humming at CS.NYU works for me some of the time.

Actually, I remember seeing this somewhere. I want to say it was on the old tech TV (back before G4 ran it into the ground). You hum the tune of the song or audio clip and it matches it to similar sounding audio files.

(As I was writing this I remembered the name)

Query by hum, here is the website. querybyhum.cs.nyu.edu

Interesting and fun, although not particularly useful, there are more efficient ways to search data (Metadata), although this way may be more natural to the way humans work. Not to mention the fact that it requires a rather time intensive process of creating profiles of each audio file to be matched against.

These features are available, but do not belong in the kernel.

Check out LibTrash that does just what you ask for, and sits between your apps and the kernel.

But using gravitational pull as a timing system could only work if conciosness was in place first.If conciosness is a wave form ,life could then start to addapt to a changing enviorment as long as the changes were very small

In 1996 Sokal wrote what was essentially a parody of a scientific journal article, filled with meaningless technical and philosophical jargon. His goal was to demonstrate that academic publishing had fallen victim to the emperor's new clothes syndrome. Sokal was able to get his paper past the peer review of Social Text, a serious academic journal, who published the paper and subsequently suffered great embarrassment when Sokal revealed what he had done. Sokal followed up by writing Transgressing the Boundaries: An Afterword, which explained why he had done it.

The Social Text Affair caused great controversy in the scientific publishing world.

Another mumbo-jump king, who, this time, appears to be serious is Francis Fukuyama , who wrote The End of History. Disturbingly, he is an advisor to the American president.

In the business world, no one's that interested in exposing the hoax of buzzword-speak. I suspect the reason is because impressive sounding, but meaningless, text generally helps you get ahead in business. Hence we end up with mission statements and Dilbert, all of which ultimately, aims to profit from all this silly-ness.

In 1996 Sokal wrote what was essentially a parody of a scientific journal article, filled with meaningless technical and philosophical jargon. His goal was to demonstrate that academic publishing had fallen victim to the emperor's new clothes syndrome. Sokal was able to get his paper past the peer review of Social Text, a serious academic journal, who published the paper and subsequently suffered great embarrassment when Sokal revealed what he had done. Sokal followed up by writing Transgressing the Boundaries: An Afterword, which explained why he had done it.

The Social Text Affair caused great controversy in the scientific publishing world.

Another mumbo-jump king, who, this time, appears to be serious is Francis Fukuyama , who wrote The End of History. Disturbingly, he is an advisor to the American president.

In the business world, no one's that interested in exposing the hoax of buzzword-speak. I suspect the reason is because impressive sounding, but meaningless, text generally helps you get ahead in business. Hence we end up with mission statements and Dilbert, all of which ultimately, aims to profit from all this silly-ness.

You should have not posted that iClod link. If you would have read their site agreement, you would have noticed the Do-Not-Slashdot ACT. Below is a quote for the punishment:
"Those who did not act swiftly or simply ignored the effectiveness of The Do-Not-Slashdot ACT had suffered the consequences of burnt-down server rooms and employment termination, just to name a few."

I should probably mention that the following sites are bad ideas because they make the ACT void (if anyone actually used them): Corel or Mirrordot.

(Aside: they're not claiming to be the first to attack this problem - see eg this paper - but that their technique is much more computationally efficient.)

Point of information on the ITP (the program from which he is graduating): http://itp.tisch.nyu.edu/object/itp_overview.html It's not an engineering program. It's a technology and media arts program in one of the best art programs on the planet.

http://endeavor.med.nyu.edu/lit-med/lit-med-db/web docs/webdescrips/atwood157-des-.html

The Handmaid's Tale is set in the futuristic Republic of Gilead. Sometime in the future, conservative Christians take control of the United States and establish a dictatorship.