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It is not borderline entrapment.

Entrapment in this sense is defined as: a defense that claims the defendant would not have broken the law if not tricked into doing it by law enforcement officials

This guy had *already broken the law*, he did not break any laws by going to a fake job interview. He just wasn't very smart.

Yes. That is my reading of TFA too. Any improvements made asa result of this homeostatic mechanism can only affect evolution if they directly and appropriately change the coding for the electron transport proteins, in mitochondrial or nuclear genes. I don't see any mention of this in the article.

Also the the io0.com and princeton.edu
articles seem to interpret Wallace's Steam Engine regulator metaphor differently The latter seems to refer more directly to what they actually found.

There seems to be confusion between phenotypic expression (what gets manifested in the organism's body) and genetic information (what's actually in the genes).

My $0.02.

Secondly, the press did cover Biden's "gaffes".

They did cover gaffes — socially awkward or tactless acts. But not the "gaffes" — stupidities and outright lunacies smoothed-over as mere gaffes. For example, if it were anyone from the opposing ticket, claiming:

When we kicked -- along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, "Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don't know -- if you don't, Hezbollah will control it."

MSNBC would've had a "Lebanon History Special" at prime time to show the entire nation, just how pathetically wrong that statement was — and on how many levels!

But it was Biden and up until very recently even a well-meaning slashdotter (not some Joe Carpenter) didn't realize, just how far from this Universe the man, chosen by Obama for his "foreign policy credentials," really lives.

McCain chose Palin. That was part of his strategy to energize the Religious Right AND an attempt to get the female vote.

And Obama chose Biden. That was part of his strategy to alleviate the concerns of his own foreign policy inexperience and reduce the impact of racial prejudices. That one strategy worked and the other didn't is works of the press and their now-documented bias towards Obama. The media — dishonestly — claimed, that Palin's inexperience trumps Obama's (as if they ran for the same post!), while looking the other way as Joe Biden mounted one lunacy over another.

Now that Obama has won, we might see more penance from the reporters and editors. We may even get some buyer's remorse from the voters. But they'll be justified, claiming, the papers misled them. This will be studied in journalism courses as a great example, of how not to write...

Slavery - work done under harsh conditions for little or no pay. Source of definition
So how is this
1) work done under harsh conditions
2) work done for little or no pay

What he said doesn't make sense. It was a gaffe.

You know, the word "gaffe" has already been made more famous by Obama/Biden in 2 months, than the word "snafu" — by Clintons in 8 years. But this was not a gaffe, a term defined (thank you, WordNet) as: a socially awkward or tactless act. A gaffe — such as Biden's statement, that Hillary would've been a better choice than him — is still factually correct, it is just "awkward or tactless".

What Biden said — and what I quoted was only one of the pearls — was not a gaffe, and no amount of spin can help that...

We all know Biden has plenty of foreign policy experience. Experts in foreign affairs say he does.

Oh, well, you should've started with that! Of course, if you say, that the experts say, it is true, then it must be true. It is just that somewhere higher in this thread a plea was made to concentrate on "people's actual articulated positions", rather than "hearsay"...

I only listened to Biden once — he never came to my state, which Democrats take for granted. I was quite astounded, that his "actual articulated positions" were so factually wrong. And a few days later, Ann Coulter has summarized it rather well — and added one, that I didn't notice myself. You can discount her for a partisan hack she is, but she didn't invent any of his words...

We also know he is also prone to some gaffes.

I'm sorry, but, as already stated, this was not a "gaffe". Bush had gaffes: "Don't misunderstimate," — that's a gaffe or, perhaps, a misstatement, for the intended meaning is clear and obvious. Biden — as quoted — was either lying trying to burnish his and Obama's credentials, or simply having a senior moment on national TV.

Much was made of the Bush's funky "nukular", even though, it was still perfectly clear, what he meant. But when Biden is going to be needed as a foreign policy expert, who can possibly rely on his advice?

The website ishttp://www.cs.princeton.edu/~appel/voting/index.html

Half of the 9/11 bombers had engineering degrees.

Osama bin Laden is a billionaire heir to a construction fortune. His major monetary backers are Saudi Arabian princes.

Of the 7/11 bombers (London bus bombings), Shehzad Tanweer's father is considered a prominent local businessman. He owns a successful fish-and-chop shop, the kind of entrepreneurial success that Americans would classify as prototypically middle class. Shehzad Tanweer himself was a college student.

Studies of killed Hezbollah fighters describe them as marginally less poor and more educated than Lebanese men generally. http://www.krueger.princeton.edu/terrorism2.pdf Suicide bombers in Israel/Palestine are, similarly, more likely to be high school or college educated than your garden variety Palestinian.

When you survey Palestinians, support for terrorism abstractly and blowing up Jews in particular both increase with economic and educational achievement.

William Ayers (hey, why not throw in a white guy) was the college-educated son of the president of Commonwealth Edison (the Illinois power monopoly -- i.e. a very rich and politically connected man). He "grew up" to become a respected professor of education at the University of Chicago and something of a local celebrity who launched the career of the man likely to be the next president of the United States.

Can you point out where the actual freaking EVIDENCE is for "poverty causes terrorism" is? The data suggest that, if anything, college education causes terrorism. (We'll ignore the religion angle for the moment because the numbers are too depressing and, hey, if you look hard enough you can usually find a token white guy to throw in.)

OK, honestly, why is this guy modded as flamebait? Sure, he said "propaganda", which has a negative connotation, but the definition that I'm reading is "information that is spread for the purpose of promoting some cause", (notice that it doesn't say anything about the veracity of the information being spread) so it seems legitimately used in this case. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but are there really that many Democrats out there who have the intention of banning all guns? It seems like the majority of mainstream democratic candidates out there just want to let the local law decide what is appropriate for their area.

For the record, I think banning guns would be really stupid at this point in our history, and I'm a registered democrat.

Yeah wow lol.

Read a book. People use different words and spellings in different areas of the world.

Was "windscreen" equally funny to you?

This is one of the things that makes Krugman in particular so insufferable about his profession. He places far too much importance on it in relation to it's actual value. Like all social sciences... sociology, psychology, political science... economics is not a hard science.

Question: do you know anything at all about Paul Krugman's research? Have you read anything at all of his popular writings?

Here, let me help you out a little:

• columns
• blog

And just for the hell of it, you might peek at the answer key, an article Krugman wrote about his own approach: How I Work

Most young economists today enter the field from the technical end. Originally intending a career in hard science or engineering, they slip down the scale into the most rigorous of the social sciences. The advantages of entering economics from that direction are obvious: one arrives already well trained in mathematics, one finds the concept of formal modeling natural. It is not, however, where I come from. My first love was history; I studied little math, picking up what I needed as I went along.

[...]

I was, of course, only saying something that critics of conventional theory had been saying for decades. Yet my point was not part of the mainstream of international economics. Why? Because it had never been expressed in nice models. The new monopolistic competition models gave me a tool to open cleanly what had previously been regarded as a can of worms. More important, however, I suddenly realized the remarkable extent to which the methodology of economics creates blind spots. We just don't see what we can't formalize. And the biggest blind spot of all has involved increasing returns. So there, right at hand, was my mission: to look at things from a slightly different angle, and in so doing to reveal the obvious, things that had been right under our noses all the time.

Krugman's site at Princeton has a rather interesting semi-bio titled How I work that gives a pretty good breakdown of his use of models and simplifications, most of which I think can be boiled down to "Simplified Models are great, but don't confuse the map for the terrain".

Pug

I had a real respect for him when he mentioned he was inspired by Asimov.

For more geek cred: while at Princeton in 1978, Krugman wrote a tongue-in-cheek paper titled The Theory of Interstellar Trade (PDF) (see Slashdot article on it).

I agree. Also illuminating is Essays on the Great Depression by one Ben S. Bernanke.

This would make swapping (and temp stuff) extremely fast to access, and more importantly, it would eliminate the need to encrypt your swap and/or temp partitions, as the data would simply disappear when power is removed. So when the agents (including Agent Smith) come to bust down your door, all you do is pull the plug and voila! Your secrets are safe. :-)

Wrong.

A simple cold boot attack can dump your memory contents, mostly intact. DRAM bits don't fade as quickly as you think.

Taggant chemical research papers :
 http://www.wws.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/byteserv.prl/~ota/disk3/1980/8017/801705.PDF
(remove spaces in url from slashcode if needed)
[amazing document deleted by feds recently]

The taggant article from Princeton's site wasn't deleted; its URL just changed. It's here.

Taggant chemical research papers :
 http://www.wws.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/byteserv.prl/~ota/disk3/1980/8017/801705.PDF
(remove spaces in url from slashcode if needed)
[amazing document deleted by feds recently]

The taggant article from Princeton's site wasn't deleted; its URL just changed. It's here.

If you want to see some poll meta-analysis that is pretty rigorous check out election.princeton.edu.

OK, but what about cold boot attacks?

Ah, good to see yet another person who Has Never Been To Texas.

Actually I have been to Texas :)

However I base my comments on national statistics. Take a look at this data map. Unfortunately it only traces population density at the county level, so it is less than perfect at tracking tighter urban concentrations inside otherwise low population counties. It is easy to see that the tall higher population density counties are much bluer than the super-red low population counties. Yes, even in Texas. Note that the red-vs-blue is tracking Democratic-vs-Republican votes in the last presidential election, but I think we can all agree that that is a reasonable proxy for the "socially liberal attitudes" that I am talking about.

-

Q. What encryption software is vulnerable to these attacks?

A. We have demonstrated practical attacks against several popular disk encryption systems: BitLocker (a feature of Windows Vista), FileVault (a feature of Mac OS X), dm-crypt (a feature of Linux), and TrueCrypt (a third-party application for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X). Since these problems result from common design limitations of these systems rather than specific bugs, most similar disk encryption applications, including many running on servers, are probably also vulnerable.

Did Bill Ayers ever try to kill anyone? I thought all he did was help blow up a statue?

WordNet defines "terrorism" as (emphasis mine::

The noun terrorism has 1 sense (no senses from tagged texts) 1. terrorism, act of terrorism, terrorist act -- (the calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear)

Belonging to a terrorist organization makes one a terrorist too, even if one is not (unlike Ayers) directly involved in any actual terrorism — take Hassan Nasrallah, for example.

Although per the definition above, simply threatening violence to attain certain goals is terrorism, Ayers' organization were planning to blow up an Army NCO club next. Fortunately for most concerned, they blew themselves up instead — the organization changed strategy to try to avoid casualties after this incident... But were also armed robberies (with fatalities) — a revolution always needs cash... (Interestingly, Joseph Stalin's first job in the Communist Party was to "rob the robbers" — what do the owners of "Democracy Now!" have in store for us?).

Just take Ayers' own words, spoken not during an interrogation, and not decades ago, but to the media this year: "I don't regret setting bombs, I feel we didn't do enough."

Whether he actually killed anyone is not relevant to his being a terrorist — only to an additional charge of murder, which, according to his "memoir" he may also have committed, but nobody knows for sure: "''Is this, then, the truth?,'' he writes. ''Not exactly. Although it feels entirely honest to me.''"

But his organization's ideology, as summarized by him back then was: "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at."

Back to my original point — although the scumbag's guilt is undeniable (and, indeed, not denied), he avoided any punishment, because of government misconduct in collecting evidence against them...

So, yes, Ayers was a member of a terrorist and otherwise criminal organization, and a terrorist himself — committed to this day to terrorism...

Let me explain it with a chart...

http://www.princeton.edu/~jchui/stuff/happiness_vs_intelligence.jpg

I don't care what you do for a living, as long as you don't work for us. :-)

http://www.rucharacter.org/page/ea_glossary/
http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=average
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/average
http://www.bartleby.com/61/53/A0545300.html
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/average

Even the ones that don't explicitly mention mean, median, and mode say that an average typically typifies a list of numbers. It can also be mean, of course, and that's the common definition, but I'm amazed that a statistician does not know this. What school did you go to?

Even secular humanists believe that human beings have a certain dignity or quality not found in most or possibly any other Earth species. So unless someone is a true, hard-core atheist -- note that when pressed, most self-described 'atheists' aren't really atheists, they're really anything from agnostics to secular humanists in terms of philosophy -- then generally they will believe that humans are special.

Any chance you could describe the difference between "secular humanist" and "atheist" in your definitions? I am most DEFINITELY an atheist (in fact, I generally consider religion to be a mental disorder - and, like most mental disorders is tolerable in small amounts, but in extreme cases is VERY scary), but also consider myself to loosely follow the guidelines of secular humanism (although, don't really pay that much attention to any particular philosophical guidelines - I just follow "what feels right" for me and it just happens to match secular humanism relatively closely).

Actually, I would have thought that by its very definition, secular humanism is a philosophy that would generally only be followed by atheists.
Atheism is a lack of religion, and says nothing about philosophy. Secular humanism is a philosophy, not a religion (although, as stated, I think by having the world "secular" in it, it implies a lack of religion IN the philosophy).

Definitions:
Secular (adj): Of or relating to the doctrine that rejects religion and religious considerations. Source
Atheist (n): a lack of belief in the existence of God or gods. Source

So, I think a secular humanist would in general be an atheist. It would be possible, but VERY odd for a religious person to be a secular humanist (belief in a higher power, but rejecting the philosophy of it to follow a secular philosophy). It is certainly NOT possible to say what you said with, "...aren't really atheists, they're really anything from agnostics to secular humanists..." as one does not logically preclude the other.

Now, also just to clarify on topic here: No, I don't believe humans are anything "special", I generally prefer humans to other species (roughly the order of priority to me is: "humans I know and like", "other creatures I know and like", "humans I don't know", "other creatures I don't know", "humans I know and don't like", "other creatures I know and don't like" (yes, I would rather save the life of my pet cat than some random stranger (human or otherwise) that I've never met)) however as other posters have pointed out, that's quite natural and requires no "special status" (just as a cat generally prefers other cats to any other species).

Even secular humanists believe that human beings have a certain dignity or quality not found in most or possibly any other Earth species. So unless someone is a true, hard-core atheist -- note that when pressed, most self-described 'atheists' aren't really atheists, they're really anything from agnostics to secular humanists in terms of philosophy -- then generally they will believe that humans are special.

Any chance you could describe the difference between "secular humanist" and "atheist" in your definitions? I am most DEFINITELY an atheist (in fact, I generally consider religion to be a mental disorder - and, like most mental disorders is tolerable in small amounts, but in extreme cases is VERY scary), but also consider myself to loosely follow the guidelines of secular humanism (although, don't really pay that much attention to any particular philosophical guidelines - I just follow "what feels right" for me and it just happens to match secular humanism relatively closely).

Actually, I would have thought that by its very definition, secular humanism is a philosophy that would generally only be followed by atheists.
Atheism is a lack of religion, and says nothing about philosophy. Secular humanism is a philosophy, not a religion (although, as stated, I think by having the world "secular" in it, it implies a lack of religion IN the philosophy).

Definitions:
Secular (adj): Of or relating to the doctrine that rejects religion and religious considerations. Source
Atheist (n): a lack of belief in the existence of God or gods. Source

So, I think a secular humanist would in general be an atheist. It would be possible, but VERY odd for a religious person to be a secular humanist (belief in a higher power, but rejecting the philosophy of it to follow a secular philosophy). It is certainly NOT possible to say what you said with, "...aren't really atheists, they're really anything from agnostics to secular humanists..." as one does not logically preclude the other.

Now, also just to clarify on topic here: No, I don't believe humans are anything "special", I generally prefer humans to other species (roughly the order of priority to me is: "humans I know and like", "other creatures I know and like", "humans I don't know", "other creatures I don't know", "humans I know and don't like", "other creatures I know and don't like" (yes, I would rather save the life of my pet cat than some random stranger (human or otherwise) that I've never met)) however as other posters have pointed out, that's quite natural and requires no "special status" (just as a cat generally prefers other cats to any other species).

Emulation == OS on top of other OS.

You are _emulating_ an _Operating_ System while it is in fact _not_ operating your computer.

Wine != even an OS so there is no emulation because it's natively run.

This means that Wine is not an OS and it's running native so no emulation here.

Only in strict interpretations of specific terms relating to a specific industry. Of course other definitions vary.

If you emulate a nuclear explosion then is there coming fire, pressure and radiation out of the server park?

Actualy, your confusing simulation with emulation. And yes, in an emilation, there would be fire and radiation.

I made the post because of the fuzzy definitions that seem to alter and become more precise depending on the institution or field of study and who you are currently speaking to. In biology, emulation would mean becoming equal to. In computer science, it means having the same capabilities. When Wine was created, if referenced the way emulation was handled at the time and attempted to create a definition from there. And all of this causes confusion.

See why you are insanely wrong now?

Banks have a lot more money to spend on ATMs than election officials have to spend on voting machines. Banks also have a lot more to lose if the machines malfunction.

I still find the antivirus explanation laughable. Was the AV software running on the voting machines? Was it running on the server to which the results failed to be sent? When I buy a voting system, isn't the manufacturer responsible for both ends of this connection?

The only virus I can think of that might infect a voting machine is the kind Ed Felten created to demonstrate how vulnerable these things are, and to install that you had to open the machine.

The recent Amateur radio mode called WSPR ('whisper') can work with a signal around 27 dB below the noise (SNR of -27dB). This site records contacts between hams worldwide in real time. Most activity is on 30m.

"Smidge" would have to be a trademark, not a copyright, since there is precedence for trademarking common English vocabulary. (See: Microsoft "Windows," "Apple," etc)

However, my bit string holds no other pre-established meaning in any known language. I fact, trying to convert it to ASCII text yields an unprintable character (0xE9 0x28).

The entire *point* of this discussion is that copyrights in the digital age don't work like they're supposed to. I'm glad we at least agree on that... but if I had the money to waste I probably (and sadly) could get my "1110100100101000 copyright" enforced in a court. Especially if I strong-arm the defendant like the RIAA does.
=Smidge=

ESP is at least partially real.

See the references on the bottom of this page of a project at Princeton University:

http://noosphere.princeton.edu/story.html

The result of that project itself are also interesting:

The jagged red line shows the accumulating excess of the empirically normalized Z-scores relative to expectation for the complete dataset of rigorously defined events. The overall result is highly significant. The odds against chance are about a million to one.

Also various organizations with three letters have been doing research on this for decades now.

Do you really think they're just doing that because they are bored? If nothing has been found that is statistically significant, they would have quit after 1,2,5 years or so.

you can recover your RAM minutes after loosing power.. no kidding! http://citp.princeton.edu/memory/

Chuck has been covered before on /.

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/20/0434210

Although the syntax *might* be a little too advanced at this stage ... being able to get real time audio feedback from method calls etc. will provide a certain fun factor that could spur his interest more than simple text output on a terminal screen (and could double as a great debugging aide).

There is full documentation with the install, and a lot of example functions and classes to get started. The separate GUI environment miniAudicle - currently in beta - allows Chuck programs (Shreds in Chuck speak) to be started and stopped in realtime, making it very easy to use.

It's a little like the old days of "Logo" but with sound :)

http://chuck.cs.princeton.edu/
http://audicle.cs.princeton.edu/mini/

(not sure why but the server is currently unavailable).

More info here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChucK

Peace,
Andy.

Chuck has been covered before on /.

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/20/0434210

Although the syntax *might* be a little too advanced at this stage ... being able to get real time audio feedback from method calls etc. will provide a certain fun factor that could spur his interest more than simple text output on a terminal screen (and could double as a great debugging aide).

There is full documentation with the install, and a lot of example functions and classes to get started. The separate GUI environment miniAudicle - currently in beta - allows Chuck programs (Shreds in Chuck speak) to be started and stopped in realtime, making it very easy to use.

It's a little like the old days of "Logo" but with sound :)

http://chuck.cs.princeton.edu/
http://audicle.cs.princeton.edu/mini/

(not sure why but the server is currently unavailable).

More info here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChucK

Peace,
Andy.

You have a point if this is a game where skill and wit is required.

However, I fail to see how this holds in a typical MMO hack 'n slash game where the automation is routine and requires no thought at all, especially when you're just using this to acquire certain items (among other huge differences between chess and MMOs) from a monster's random item drop. Hence the younger sibling and trained monkey used in place, not a genius or experienced player.

A concrete example in Diablo 2 would be using a bot for say, running Pindleskin, Eldricht and Shenk for their item drops, at the relevant difficulty. With most high level characters you build during the game, it is completely mindless and takes no effort to do, other than a few mouse clicks. I am sure similar examples exist in World of Warcraft. That's the crux of the matter I'm bringing up. Namely, what is the difference between a computer issuing the mouse and keyboard commands compared to a person for routine tasks, assuming they have the same knowledge of the game world without breaking the internal rules? I see none whatsoever for these tasks, thus this shouldn't be an issue.

Thus, the scenario WoW bots is not at all equivalent to deciding the next move in a game of chess. If there were bots that could intelligently play the game for you the whole time, making more intelligent decisions than a person would, this would be a different story. However, other than one done for Rogue, not many other bots exist. There are some in Nethack as well, but they are very much so a work in progress.

Oh, I forgot - I wanted to comment on the rest of those books and add a couple.

Re: Griffiths books - they are both really good as intros to these topics (both are amongst my favorite "pleasure" reading physics books), but in the field they are often considered too elementary to be "serious," for better or worse. It's not that they are wrong, just that they are a little too user-friendly, which to me is a good thing.

If you can manage to wade through the extreme density that is that Shankar book, that should rectify things for QM - I have to say, though, I did not particularly enjoy that book, which surprised me since I adored his "Basic Training in Mathematics" book (likely too basic for a math major, I'd guess) and found him to be a fascinating lecturer (I never took one of his classes, but I occasionally slipped in and watched while between other classes). I think it's just too difficult to be so brutally thorough and remain interesting throughout an entire tome like that.

Jackson's E+M book is really the gold standard for classical E+M, though I'd really recommend hitting the literature if you're into stuff like self-action and all that.

Actually, I just noticed that the Griffith's recommendation was for his particles book, not QM, so scratch my QM comments - though if you find Shankar's book too weighty, pick up Griffith's QM book as a start, like most of his books it's very digestible (should take just a couple days to get through). If you find Griffith's particles book too light, which you hopefully will after a couple reads, you'll want some real field theory. The "standard" here is the Peskin/Schroeder book. That can be a little tough if you don't already know something about it; as a slightly more basic step in that direction, check out Zee's Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell, which I was very pleasantly surprised with.

You'd also be remiss not to pick up something that Feynman has written on field theory, as I don't know that anyone else has understood it in as straightforward a manner as he has - there's always his various QED papers, which you MUST read all of, but as an astrophysicist, your thoughts will likely turn to gravity, in which case the often overlooked Feynman Lectures on Gravitation are definitely worth your time. Take the later chapters with a grain of salt, as some of the claims about stars are wrong; that said, his approach is quite interesting, and his approach to the Einstein equations is freaking amazing (he starts with a "bare" spin-2 theory, figures out how it's "wrong," and "fixes it up" until it "works," and lo and behold, Einstein's equations pop out of nowhere; those quotation marks hide all of the hard work required to get there, of course!).

Er, and also, I kind of hate to dump another 1000+ page monster of a book on your list, but as an astrophysicist you probably ought to read Misner/Thorne/Wheeler's Gravitation. It's great, though I can't promise it's just a few days work. The Wheeler stuff at the end is too speculative and flowery for my tastes, but the rest is pretty useful, and it's definitely worth keeping in your bookcase to intimidate anyone that might enter!

Robert Wald also has a great General Relativity book that might be less threatening; IMO, you should definitely own Wald and MTW. I'd suggest you avoid anything written by either Einstein or Dirac on the subject like the f***ing plague.

Also, check out http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Administrivia/rel_booklist.html for Joh

I'm with you on that. Evolution has more than one input or constraint. Even in the non-speaking animal world, communication occurs regularly. I find it difficult to surmise that because there is no record, it probably didn't happen. The development of many varied languages does not wholly support a sudden explosion of language, but a long history of developing communication methods. If it had started and caught on like some meme, it would look more or less alike all over the world despite local variations. It just doesn't seem to make sense that language could have arrived any other way than slowly with local variations vastly different from one another.. such as we see in the many languages spoken on the planet now. We see this even in the written word.

When the world was much larger (so to speak) assimilation of other cultures did not happen often or on the scales we see now, creating pockets of population that developed on their own-ish. This causes different needs for communication, and eventually different languages.

From http://www.trueorigin.org/language01.asp

By age four, most humans have developed an ability to communicate through oral language. By age six or seven, most humans can comprehend, as well as express, written thoughts.

In one short sentence, if the ability to speak/hear is innate in the human brain, then to say language only began abruptly 50,000 years ago is to say that the modern human brain really only developed abruptly 50,000 years ago. Forget the 10,000 year barrier some believe. Evolution is capable of many things, but I believe that the modern human brain was basically intact as we know it today before 50,000 years ago.

The paper at ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/.WWW/bbs.donald.html also suggests that it's possible that what we think we know may not be true as there seems no direct evidence to support explosive changes in hominids at that 45,000-50,000 point, only fossil evidence of physical changes. It's a good guess, but still a guess. Communication happened from day one, when spoken language we might recognize as such began is nothing but a guess without some evidence of the actual brain structure or perhaps a nice wall painting of someone giving a speech?

You know I've posted this on /. like three or four times now and you'd think it'd be more common knowledge by now... but getting encryption keys from RAM is pretty trivial. It's called a cold boot attack.

http://citp.princeton.edu/memory/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_boot_attack

This attack was sort of one that was under the hat of pentesters and hobbyists until a few months ago when it was rather a do-it-yourself thing, but then McGrew Security made a followup PoC - http://mcgrewsecurity.com/projects/msramdmp/ to the Princeton paper. I played with it right after it came out, and then awhile later threw up a tutorial on remote-exploit. Now, Mati Aharoni's a really smart guy and most assuredly knew about the PoC before I did, but shortly after the tutorial and some discussion on IRC, it's now in BackTrack 3 (http://www.remote-exploit.org/backtrack.html) as a syslinux boot option putting the attack within the reach of everyone.

http://tourian.jchost.net/shadow/liveusb/boot.png

Getting the encryption keys out of the ram dump isn't a point and click operation, but the code's out there and it compiles. People are walking around right now with this on their USB key, and it's the sort of attack that is a real problem that physical access and untrusted users present now. Even without the encryption keys, you've still got the contents of previous webpages, cookies, IM conversations, unencrypted files, and everything else in RAM. Disabling boot from USB doesn't matter much because you can just use a grub CD, and carry around a laptop drive and do dumps on multiple machines. Hell, if you felt like dealing with it you could make it a PXE image... even disabling both boot from USB and CD, most cases in public places(think Dell) can be quickly popped open with the power still on and the BIOS jumper tripped.

Things like this should make you really nervous if you were freaking out about Microsoft's little COFEE ( http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/29/1441215&from=rss ) toy, since it's no more impressive than a customized "Gonzor's Payload" U3 USB Drive ( http://wiki.gonzor228.com/index.php/SBConfig ) with a Microsoft Sticker and this is quite a bit more, well, dirty.

Heres a couple of others:

Electrochemistry: http://alford.bios.uic.edu/teaching/Nernst.html
Fluid Dynamics: http://mse-092697c.princeton.edu/lecture1001/page3.htm

Except that oil consumption by refiners is largely inelastic. They can't just flip speculators the bird and tell them to take delivery of the oil themselves, because the price on the futures market is actually higher.

I'm not sure what Krugman is getting on about with comparing the futures market to betting. He's right when he says placing a bet doesn't affect supply and demand, but the market isn't just betting.

There's no doctrine stating that God controls every single thing in the universe and there never will be.

Oh really?

Genesis 17:1: And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect.

almighty: having unlimited power http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=almighty

methods of causing massive harm before you can be prevented are literally without limit

That word doesn't mean what you think it means. I can't leap outside and kick the planet into the sun, no matter how willing I am to ride down with it. I can't even kill you with my brain.

Is it somehow actually different and/or better than the BSD licensed WordNet that's been active since 1985 or is it a case of NIH syndrome?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordNet

http://wordnet.princeton.edu/

Please let me know how the statement "Every religion is a cult" contradicts, in any way, the last definition of the word "cult" as found in the above link.

I see no misuse of terms.

Before I get modded down I should explain.

It's not a traditional single flat-file, it's multiple ones.

A file system is a database.

The date on the fax actually seems significant... TFA suggests that this was received by Fermilab just over a year ago, which was not long after the (very well publicized) Fermilab-manufactured quadropole triplet failure at the CERN Large Hadron Collider.

According to a 2006 Princeton Physics News article (page three of the PDF), Frank Shoemaker was a pioneer in using quadopole doublets to focus particle beams ... coincidence?

The timing seems suspect to me.

Basically, the country is insolvent. Not bankrupt: insolvent.

This dictionary defines bankruptcy and insolvency as the same (when liabilities/debts are greater than assets). Do you hold a differing definition? Just curious.

http://www.net.princeton.edu/traceroute.html

Put in google.com (not a member of the Internet2 consortium)

1 gigagate1 (128.112.128.114) 0.498 ms 0.289 ms 0.265 ms
2 vgate1 (128.112.12.22) 0.483 ms 0.319 ms 0.305 ms
3 patriotgate (204.153.48.14) 0.989 ms 0.976 ms 0.917 ms
4 g-4-1.hlb-c2.patmedia.net (24.225.237.173) 1.276 ms 0.838 ms 0.978 ms
5 reserved.above.net.48.184.208.in-addr.arpa (208.184.48.197) 2.612 ms 2.689 ms 2.943 ms
6 so-0-2-0.mpr2.dca2.us.above.net (64.125.26.105) 8.615 ms 43.063 ms 67.368 ms
7 xe-1-1-0.er2.iad10.above.net (64.125.26.242) 8.484 ms 9.012 ms 8.725 ms
8 xe-0-0-0.er1.iad10.above.net (64.125.26.233) 9.155 ms 8.583 ms 8.600 ms
9 above-google-1.iad10.us.above.net (64.125.13.154) 10.160 ms 9.032 ms 9.015 ms
10 216.239.48.108 (216.239.48.108) 9.210 ms 216.239.48.112 (216.239.48.112) 9.222 ms 216.239.48.108 (216.239.48.108) 9.129 ms
11 209.85.252.165 (209.85.252.165) 27.414 ms 216.239.46.224 (216.239.46.224) 36.738 ms 209.85.252.165 (209.85.252.165) 27.958 ms
12 72.14.236.27 (72.14.236.27) 39.443 ms 72.14.238.89 (72.14.238.89) 27.583 ms 66.249.95.126 (66.249.95.126) 9.970 ms
13 64.233.175.26 (64.233.175.26) 26.073 ms 38.275 ms 64.233.175.42 (64.233.175.42) 28.016 ms
14 py-in-f99.google.com (64.233.167.99) 27.984 ms 29.294 ms 27.645 ms

Put in mit.edu(a member of the Internet2 consortium) in:
1 gigagate1 (128.112.128.114) 0.491 ms 0.335 ms 0.318 ms
2 vgate1 (128.112.12.22) 0.349 ms 0.320 ms 0.310 ms
3 local1.princeton.magpi.net (216.27.98.113) 1.842 ms 2.749 ms 2.306 ms
4 remote.internet2.magpi.net (216.27.100.54) 4.119 ms 3.789 ms 4.243 ms
5 nox300gw1-Vl-110-NoX-INTERNET2.nox.org (192.5.89.221) 8.834 ms 27.282 ms 8.728 ms
6 nox1sumgw1-Vl-803-NoX.nox.org (192.5.89.237) 8.620 ms 8.756 ms 8.609 ms
7 207.210.143.110 (207.210.143.110) 383.144 ms 1030.692 ms 786.370 ms
8 W92-RTR-1-BACKBONE.MIT.EDU (18.168.0.25) 27.733 ms 21.215 ms 20.024 ms
9 WEB.MIT.EDU (18.7.22.69) 20.476 ms 20.206 ms 19.026 ms

Faster access between colleges. Resnet tends to be connected to the internet2 router as well.....

http://www.net.princeton.edu/traceroute.html not a member of the Internet2 consortium) 1 gigagate1 (128.112.128.114) 0.498 ms 0.289 ms 0.265 ms 2 vgate1 (128.112.12.22) 0.483 ms 0.319 ms 0.305 ms 3 patriotgate (204.153.48.14) 0.989 ms 0.976 ms 0.917 ms 4 g-4-1.hlb-c2.patmedia.net (24.225.237.173) 1.276 ms 0.838 ms 0.978 ms 5 reserved.above.net.48.184.208.in-addr.arpa (208.184.48.197) 2.612 ms 2.689 ms 2.943 ms 6 so-0-2-0.mpr2.dca2.us.above.net (64.125.26.105) 8.615 ms 43.063 ms 67.368 ms 7 xe-1-1-0.er2.iad10.above.net (64.125.26.242) 8.484 ms 9.012 ms 8.725 ms 8 xe-0-0-0.er1.iad10.above.net (64.125.26.233) 9.155 ms 8.583 ms 8.600 ms 9 above-google-1.iad10.us.above.net (64.125.13.154) 10.160 ms 9.032 ms 9.015 ms 10 216.239.48.108 (216.239.48.108) 9.210 ms 216.239.48.112 (216.239.48.112) 9.222 ms 216.239.48.108 (216.239.48.108) 9.129 ms 11 209.85.252.165 (209.85.252.165) 27.414 ms 216.239.46.224 (216.239.46.224) 36.738 ms 209.85.252.165 (209.85.252.165) 27.958 ms 12 72.14.236.27 (72.14.236.27) 39.443 ms 72.14.238.89 (72.14.238.89) 27.583 ms 66.249.95.126 (66.249.95.126) 9.970 ms 13 64.233.175.26 (64.233.175.26) 26.073 ms 38.275 ms 64.233.175.42 (64.233.175.42) 28.016 ms 14 py-in-f99.google.com (64.233.167.99) 27.984 ms 29.294 ms 27.645 ms Put in mit.edu(a member of the Internet2 consortium) in: 1 gigagate1 (128.112.128.114) 0.491 ms 0.335 ms 0.318 ms 2 vgate1 (128.112.12.22) 0.349 ms 0.320 ms 0.310 ms 3 local1.princeton.magpi.net (216.27.98.113) 1.842 ms 2.749 ms 2.306 ms 4 remote.internet2.magpi.net (216.27.100.54) 4.119 ms 3.789 ms 4.243 ms 5 nox300gw1-Vl-110-NoX-INTERNET2.nox.org (192.5.89.221) 8.834 ms 27.282 ms 8.728 ms 6 nox1sumgw1-Vl-803-NoX.nox.org (192.5.89.237) 8.620 ms 8.756 ms 8.609 ms 7 207.210.143.110 (207.210.143.110) 383.144 ms 1030.692 ms 786.370 ms 8 W92-RTR-1-BACKBONE.MIT.EDU (18.168.0.25) 27.733 ms 21.215 ms 20.024 ms 9 WEB.MIT.EDU (18.7.22.69) 20.476 ms 20.206 ms 19.026 ms Faster access between colleges.

Sounds like a Viterbi Decoder. A new Amateur Radio mode called WSPR relies heavily on this algorithm.

Here's a link to the non-thumbnail version of before and after. I couldn't see anything on my 17" 1920x1200. http://www.princeton.edu/pr/pictures/a-f/chou/Chou_micrographs.jpg