Slashdot Mirror

I see a pattern that looks like a human figure dancing, perhaps juggling a beach ball on his or her left arm, in the lower portion of the image of the Sloan Great Wall?

actually.. i take that back... the EU (450 million people) merely has a GNP similar to the US (280 million)...

we both have a GNP of aprox 9 trillion (PPT doc.. dated sept 2003)

I think this was one of the few things minority report got right. This kind of gesture-based control is potentially extremely powerful. Human capacity for sequencing and generation of action sequences is extremely advanced, and may be the evolutionary precursor to vocal language. I bet a gesture-based computer-human interface will ultimately be the way we deal with these things rather than the star-trek vocal control way.

Anyway, if you re-read brad's post, his home grown SSL replacement will be rolled out at the same time as a full SSL login system, with most likely the javascript version being the default.
This will allow the SSL believers to feel comfortable, which keeping the overall system load at an acceptable level.

I'm having a hard time understanding the difficulty. Libraries around the country can do it, why can't yours?

1. virus -- ((virology) ultramicroscopic infectious agent that replicates itself only within cells of living hosts; many are pathogenic; a piece of nucleic acid (DNA or RNA) wrapped in a thin coat of protein)

In viruses, which represent the border between living and dead matter, there are simpler aggregates between nucleic acids and proteins. A virus can be said to be genetic material without a cell of its own, and the structure of viruses can provide clues to the more complicated organisation of the hereditary material in higher organisms.

Virus represent the border between living and dead matter. I thought that it meant that when the virus came across a host cell it could inject its DNA and multiply and that is why it is living , and when it didn't it just lay dormant i.e. it was dead matter. Wasn't the whole premise of Jurrasic Park based on this notion ?

But in the article it says ....

Several years ago in Kentucky, she said, a construction crew unearthed a metal coffin containing the mummified corpse of an apparent smallpox victim that researchers traced to the mid-1800s. The CDC checked the tissue for live virus and came up empty.

There's also a slim chance, researchers say, that the scabs could yield live smallpox virus -- believed to reside in only two laboratories in the world -- and provide valuable information on the deadly plague.

If the virus is nothing but the DNA and a protein coating around it, why are the people wanting it to be live ?

Am I missing something ? What am I missing ?

Well Done DVD-Jon

Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never, in nothing, great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.

There is a beautiful Gallery of CSS descramblers by Dr. David S. Touretzky (Carnegie Mellon University).

His site is a gallery devoted to representations of a piece of software that has been deemed illegal because it can be used to break through the copy-protection system on DVD movies.

"It never occurred to me that someone would actually try to prevent people from publishing code that they wrote," he said. "The idea just struck me as so deeply offensive that I felt I had to do something about it."

To make his point about free speech, he offered several exhibits from his gallery, including a description of the DeCSS code in plain English and a T-shirt on which the code was printed -- both of which could be considered illegal under the copyright act.

This sounds like it might have a lot in common with the Priceton 3d model search engine covered on slashdot a while back.

AP, Saddam Hussein has been rescued from a farm house near Tikrit, Iraq. The leader had gone missing - presumed kidnapped by loyalists months before. Mr Hussein has already been reunited with long-time friend Donald Rumsfeld by video phone who was reported to say "Hey Saddam! Hows it going? i havnt seen you for years". There was some speculation that video footage of Saddam Hussein recieving a medical check violated the geniva convention but that was quickly dismissed by the ex-leader saying "I've got no problem with the cameras aslong as they arnt from fucking OK Magazine or the Sun!".

Meanwhile the Queen of England, in spirit of inviting potential dictators around for tea has already asked Mr Hussein to join her in Buckingham palace. Tony Blair and George W. Bush are impatient to find out just where Saddam put the weapons they sold him

It seems like that the "Robert George of Princeton Law School" mentioned in the New Jersey Ballot site (second "this") is probably Robert George, Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton. It seems like an understandable error to mistakenly assume the Professor of Jurisprudence is at a Law School.

the research site is already slowing to a craw !

Sorry, I mean "a crawl" and not "a craw" = craw, crop -- (a pouch in many birds and some lower animals that resembles a stomach for storage and preliminary maceration of food)

Doppler shift, related to Hubble's Law, except in the expanding universe, everything is redshifted, going away; if you're going fast TOWARDS something, you'll get blueshift. If the Red stop light (or stop-sign) looks blue or even amber or green, you're approaching the ultimate speed limit. Try this at home.

Periodically, we hear about the rule of 7 +/- 2 from inexperienced interaction designers: Users can't handle more than 7 bullets on a page, seven items in a form list, or more than seven links in a menu. This has no evidence in reality - on the contrary. The psychologist George Miller's conclusions apply to what we can memorize - not what we can perceive.

Current research strongly supports that broad structures perform better than deep structures. Users can more easily cope with broad structures, they have a greater chance of getting lost in deep hierarchical structures, and new visitors are able to get a better overview of sites offerings from a broader structure.

read more: The Myth of "Seven, Plus or Minus 2"

dd is unix' version of ghost. Its included with nearly every Linux/unix distribution. Okay, it doesn't do stuff over the network, but its very good at copying partitions and stuff like that. See the man page.

Cheers,

Costyn.

[definition of cocaine,cocain

1. poetic justice, just deserts -- (an outcome in which virtue triumphs over vice (often ironically))

http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn?stag e=1&word=poetic+justice

All hail King Douche!

Emergency contraceptive pills may prevent fertilisation or may prevent a fertilised egg implanting. Some consider the latter to be abortion. However, given that most fertilised eggs fail to implant anyway, I don't think that's reasonable. (By the way, ECPs may be effective as long as 5 days after intercourse. You got the success rate about right though.)

Emergency contraceptive pills may prevent fertilisation or may prevent a fertilised egg implanting. Some consider the latter to be abortion. However, given that most fertilised eggs fail to implant anyway, I don't think that's reasonable. (By the way, ECPs may be effective as long as 5 days after intercourse. You got the success rate about right though.)

Emergency contraceptive pills may prevent fertilisation or may prevent a fertilised egg implanting. Some consider the latter to be abortion. However, given that most fertilised eggs fail to implant anyway, I don't think that's reasonable. (By the way, ECPs may be effective as long as 5 days after intercourse. You got the success rate about right though.)

How about Neo, once realizing he could accomplish anything in the matrix discovered that those same thoughts could work in the real world ala telekinesis. He moved electrons in the machines to activiate various commands in their processors -- in the real world.

Princeton ENgineering Anomalies Research

The number one defacto problem with sample based studies is that we know for a fact that people who take part in surveys are not necessarily representative of everyone else. The magnitude of this problem is debated (see John Brehm's book The Phantom Respondents).

Read the social science classic Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research by King, Keohane, and Verba.

Chapter 5 on "What to Avoid" explains how selection bias works, and why, for example, asking 40,000 people who agree to have their computers monitored by a commercial research marketing group is probably a heavily biased sample.

That being said, its interesting to note that the same research firm notes that while file sharing has an impact on record sales, the music industry is still to blame for declining sales.

(A quick All-The-Web search turned it up several times over on various campus pages. It's real.)

As much as a twit like Strauss deserves it, please refrain from crap-flooding his address. People like him tend to not be able to deal well with criticism in the first place, which means it is more than likely that he'll just ignore all his incoming email once he realizes that the internet is a two-way street. To blast a fool like him, you need to be subtle. Like emailing him the address to the slashdot article for instance. . .

Those denial balloons are sure hard to penetrate, but curiosity always kills the cat!

Cheers!

-FL

That was quite interesting, but your letter loses all its merit upon examining your home page where, amongst other things, you proudly display a picture of you posing with a Yoda doll.

You also seem overly pleased with the fact that your webpage is "strictly conforming" to XHTML 1.0.

Sorry, but I refuse to take advice from someone so hopelessly geeky and anal.

I sent a letter to howard@princeton.edu expressing my thoughts. I suggest all of you do the same. Here's the contents of my letter:

Dear Howard,

I think I speak for all the hard-working members of the open-source community when I say,

"Fuck you."

Sincerely,
Ignorant Aardvark

Amazing, something that actually made me de-lurk on Slashdot...

Here is my letter to this guy:

From: Kevin B. McCarty <kmccarty@nospam.Princeton.EDU>
To: howard@princeton.edu
Subject: Your article in Syllabus (perspective from a Princeton graduate student)

Sir:

I am a graduate student in the Princeton University Physics Department. I came across your article regarding open source software on Syllabus Magazine's web site, in which you do a grave disservice to Princeton University's reputation of technical excellence. Allow me to elaborate.

You say, with a tad of sarcasm:

"These folks [open source software developers] are some of the same great people who are supposed to be working for you anyway, plus a smattering of teenagers too young to work at Redmond, hackers, virus creators, and a menagerie of others with whom you will feel great pride in entrusting your IT infrastructure."

I am interested, then, in how you feel about the Princeton University web servers at www.princeton.edu running Apache, the most well-known open source web server. Apparently [1], Apache has more than 2/3 of the web server market share on the Internet, so someone must trust these people. Of course, the fact that source code is available for open source projects may have something to do with this trust. By the way, how many open source viruses have you seen? (Microsoft Word macros don't count.)

[1] http://www.netcraft.com/

You say:

"We may have to give up project planning, quality control, coding standards, accountability, version control, and support, but it's FREE and we get the ability to modify the source code ourselves, something that is extremely dangerous to do, was discredited decades ago, and few people do anyway."

Really? Who discredited the ability to modify source code? Did I miss a Congressional report or something? I apologize for calling you dead wrong, but in fact the Linux kernel [2], one of the most successful open source projects in existence, has been continually updated and improved since its first release in 1991, all by people with an interest in changing source code. These "dangerous" modifications have strangely made Linux and its BSD Unix cousins more stable than any release of Windows. The open source software development process is self-regulating: stable, good software survives, while low-quality efforts are ignored and drop from the face of the Internet. It is too bad that mediocre commercial software does not do the same, since it is too well-supported by people who will not consider using anything they are not required to pay for.

[2] http://www.kernel.org/

You say:

"We either pay commercial software developers, pay to build it ourselves, or pay the even higher price to manage and maintain FREE open source software."

I don't suppose you are aware of the existence of companies who provide support for open source software. Believe it or not, it is possible to buy a support contract from most major Linux distributors, e.g., [3]. It is even possible to ask (politely) for FREE support on open source message boards, such as [4], where you will usually get far more helpful responses than the standard Microsoft "Have you tried rebooting? Reinstalling?".

[3] http://www.redhat.com/apps/commerce/
[4] http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/

You say:

"Another way to get free software is to have students develop our critical systems," and "You can also get free software developed by having your users develop it for you."

These are ridiculous straw man arguments. No sane system administrator would tell his/her students or users to develop their own softwa

Howard Strauss, a technical staff member in Computing and Information Technology, is an expert on voting methods. He can be reached at howard@princeton.edu or (609) 258-6045. Strauss was a founding member and the computer expert of Election Watch, a public interest group that advocated ways to ensure the integrity of electronic elections. The organization no longer operates, but it was instrumental in getting the Federal Election Commission and other groups to review issues involved in electronic elections.

This presentation contains content that your browser may not be able to show properly. This presentation was optimized for more recent versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer.

"We will do nothing short of transforming our cars and trucks into a portal for the Internet." - Jacques Nasser - Ford CEO - 1/2000

"Wine.com will become the wine portal." - Peter Granoff CEO 1/2000

Digiscents is building the Snortal - a web portal for interactive smelling experiences.

Howard Strauss, a technical staff member in Computing and Information Technology, is an expert on voting methods. He can be reached at howard@princeton.edu or (609) 258-6045. Strauss was a founding member and the computer expert of Election Watch, a public interest group that advocated ways to ensure the integrity of electronic elections. The organization no longer operates, but it was instrumental in getting the Federal Election Commission and other groups to review issues involved in electronic elections.

This presentation contains content that your browser may not be able to show properly. This presentation was optimized for more recent versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer.

"We will do nothing short of transforming our cars and trucks into a portal for the Internet." - Jacques Nasser - Ford CEO - 1/2000

"Wine.com will become the wine portal." - Peter Granoff CEO 1/2000

Digiscents is building the Snortal - a web portal for interactive smelling experiences.

The Office of Information Technology at Princeton is divided between thoughtful and clueful people who are an absolute pleasure to work with --- and, regrettably, a few people like those who wrote the above article for Syllabus.

If you look beyond the cheap shots at OS/FS, he's defending PeopleSoft, which makes the CRM-like software that runs the University's bureaucratic systems. The company certainly needs some defending. Case in point: up until last year, Princeton course registration was paper-based. Fill out a scan-tron sheet, have your adviser sign it, and take it to the Registrar. Simple, but students complained about the long walks to remote parts of campus.

Last year, the Registrar finally implemented a new computerized system based on PeopleSoft. The steps for a student to register as follows:

• Pull up the registrar's website; find the PDF form for course registration.
• Fill in the form with your courses.
• Print out the form, and take it to your adviser for their signature.
• Deliver the form to your department's secretary, so he or she can manually enter the course selections from the forms into the system.

Maybe I'm not subtle enough, but I fail to see how this represents a step forward. It would seem trivial to save the course information on the registration system so the adviser could approve it with a mouse-click at their meeting with the student. But let me guess --- does PeopleSoft not support that? In fairness, PeopleSoft might support it. But if it did, one wonders why the registrar chose a more inefficient solution. Why a three-way paper-shuffle? Is that what PeopleSoft's "aging, over-21 staff" thought was a good idea?

I will not begrudge Mr. Strauss his vitriol --- he reminds me of the apologists for any broken platform. If you're stuck with it, you might as well at least pretend that you like it, and that the competition is junk.

Also -- I can't help but note the omission of a link to the student-run Linux/Unix Users' Group at Princeton. (Consider this a shameless plug.)

for anyone who's interested, the author's web site seems to be at http://www.princeton.edu/~howard/ , and he has a directory of presentations here: http://www.princeton.edu/~howard/slides/.

for anyone who's interested, the author's web site seems to be at http://www.princeton.edu/~howard/ , and he has a directory of presentations here: http://www.princeton.edu/~howard/slides/.

I'm posting AC because I'm at Princeton. I did some checking around. According to our campus directory, he works in the Enterprise Infrastructure Services department of our IT division (OIT--Office of IT). And while the article credits him as "manager of technology strategy", I cannot find him on the OIT org. chart that you can find in our OIT's annual report. He must be some underling who's bitter.

I intend to write his boss. I mean, I appreciate satire and parody, but as everyone has pointed out, his article is just malicious and factually false. It's filled with ad hominem attacks at students, hackers, the whole open source community. All based on a ridiculous metaphor that doesn't hold. Hell, it doesn't even make sense. If he hates young people so much, why in the world would he work in an "outreach" capacity at a university?!

Interestingly, his department is responsible for serving the notorious PeopleSoft management and purchasing software here....roundly hated by every administrative person I know at Princeton. I only mention this because he specifically mentions PeopleSoft. OIT at Princeton is definitely a mixed bag--some outstanding services, people, and liberties (including, yes, plenty of linux support)--and some horrible policies and red tape (like, charging for every ethernet box they activate--both for students and in the depts!--AND charging for every device attached to the network! They nickle and dime like crazy).

I'm posting AC because I'm at Princeton. I did some checking around. According to our campus directory, he works in the Enterprise Infrastructure Services department of our IT division (OIT--Office of IT). And while the article credits him as "manager of technology strategy", I cannot find him on the OIT org. chart that you can find in our OIT's annual report. He must be some underling who's bitter.

I intend to write his boss. I mean, I appreciate satire and parody, but as everyone has pointed out, his article is just malicious and factually false. It's filled with ad hominem attacks at students, hackers, the whole open source community. All based on a ridiculous metaphor that doesn't hold. Hell, it doesn't even make sense. If he hates young people so much, why in the world would he work in an "outreach" capacity at a university?!

Interestingly, his department is responsible for serving the notorious PeopleSoft management and purchasing software here....roundly hated by every administrative person I know at Princeton. I only mention this because he specifically mentions PeopleSoft. OIT at Princeton is definitely a mixed bag--some outstanding services, people, and liberties (including, yes, plenty of linux support)--and some horrible policies and red tape (like, charging for every ethernet box they activate--both for students and in the depts!--AND charging for every device attached to the network! They nickle and dime like crazy).

Since the "at" link in the story is to a former version of my homepage (~ferguson is my dad), I think I can comment on this.

I don't know WHERE this guy is coming from, unless its satire, in which case, it is poorly executed. Linux is quite prevalent on campus. In fact, OIT (central campus network folks) had to drop support for the public Irix cluster because of support costs, while the public Linux and Solaris clusters are chugging along just fine.

Yes, students have been using it on campus forever, but the scientists and engineers like it quite a bit too. A 1999 report by a Faculty Sub-Committee writes, "Linux is emerging as a widely-used version of Unix. At this time there are over 600 Linux systems registered at Princeton, and the number is growing rapidly. One of the advantages of Linux is that it makes it possible to take advantage of the economies of Intel-based computing and a full-featured operating system with a complete set of high quality software tools available gratis. We recommend that consideration be given to expanding the university DeSC program to include the Linux operating system as an option." [DeSC is the Desktop Systems Council, which oversees official university desktop computers.] So Slashdot crowd, remember who makes the real decisions at a private university: the tenured faculty, end of story. (NB, how many slashdot stores have been posted about Prof. Felton and his group? They do plenty of work with OSS.)

OIT has included Linux-specific information for a couple years now in its knowledgebase, complete with setup information, network configuration & printing, mounting the campus samba servers, backing up to the central Tivoli servers, etc. etc. They've also held seminars touting the benefits of OSS for departments; I know, because I've been to them.

So Linux isn't in trouble at Princeton. Guess this oddball found a pulpit from which to buck the herd.

Silly Howard J Strauss of 205 87 Prospect Avenue Princeton, NJ. I wonder how many calls you will receive tomorrow on your phone number of 609-258-6045. Your silly antics and sophomoric analogy will surely enrage many who have dedicated their time to that which they love. I wonder how many email's you will receive at your address of howard@Princeton.EDU I wonder how many will visit the school website running apache in search for more words of wisdom coming from someone of your power.

It's too bad actually that you feel this way. The free software community could use the expertise that you must bring to the table at Princeton. Take for example your web programming skillz and your ability to use the export feature of Microsoft Power Point to create a stunning web presentation. You will be receiving an email from me shortly asking where to sign up for your "Putting Your Stuff on the Web" Seminar, I am sure it will be well worth whatever fee you charge. I only wish I were on campus at Princeton to take one of your "Lunch and Learn" seminars, like this one on creating your very own PDF forms! Last, but certainly not least, I am amazed by your grasp of web friendly concepts such as FORMS, I will bookmark this page and reference it often!

Love,
Another who lives in a glass house.

Silly Howard J Strauss of 205 87 Prospect Avenue Princeton, NJ. I wonder how many calls you will receive tomorrow on your phone number of 609-258-6045. Your silly antics and sophomoric analogy will surely enrage many who have dedicated their time to that which they love. I wonder how many email's you will receive at your address of howard@Princeton.EDU I wonder how many will visit the school website running apache in search for more words of wisdom coming from someone of your power.

It's too bad actually that you feel this way. The free software community could use the expertise that you must bring to the table at Princeton. Take for example your web programming skillz and your ability to use the export feature of Microsoft Power Point to create a stunning web presentation. You will be receiving an email from me shortly asking where to sign up for your "Putting Your Stuff on the Web" Seminar, I am sure it will be well worth whatever fee you charge. I only wish I were on campus at Princeton to take one of your "Lunch and Learn" seminars, like this one on creating your very own PDF forms! Last, but certainly not least, I am amazed by your grasp of web friendly concepts such as FORMS, I will bookmark this page and reference it often!

Love,
Another who lives in a glass house.

Silly Howard J Strauss of 205 87 Prospect Avenue Princeton, NJ. I wonder how many calls you will receive tomorrow on your phone number of 609-258-6045. Your silly antics and sophomoric analogy will surely enrage many who have dedicated their time to that which they love. I wonder how many email's you will receive at your address of howard@Princeton.EDU I wonder how many will visit the school website running apache in search for more words of wisdom coming from someone of your power.

It's too bad actually that you feel this way. The free software community could use the expertise that you must bring to the table at Princeton. Take for example your web programming skillz and your ability to use the export feature of Microsoft Power Point to create a stunning web presentation. You will be receiving an email from me shortly asking where to sign up for your "Putting Your Stuff on the Web" Seminar, I am sure it will be well worth whatever fee you charge. I only wish I were on campus at Princeton to take one of your "Lunch and Learn" seminars, like this one on creating your very own PDF forms! Last, but certainly not least, I am amazed by your grasp of web friendly concepts such as FORMS, I will bookmark this page and reference it often!

Love,
Another who lives in a glass house.

Silly Howard J Strauss of 205 87 Prospect Avenue Princeton, NJ. I wonder how many calls you will receive tomorrow on your phone number of 609-258-6045. Your silly antics and sophomoric analogy will surely enrage many who have dedicated their time to that which they love. I wonder how many email's you will receive at your address of howard@Princeton.EDU I wonder how many will visit the school website running apache in search for more words of wisdom coming from someone of your power.

It's too bad actually that you feel this way. The free software community could use the expertise that you must bring to the table at Princeton. Take for example your web programming skillz and your ability to use the export feature of Microsoft Power Point to create a stunning web presentation. You will be receiving an email from me shortly asking where to sign up for your "Putting Your Stuff on the Web" Seminar, I am sure it will be well worth whatever fee you charge. I only wish I were on campus at Princeton to take one of your "Lunch and Learn" seminars, like this one on creating your very own PDF forms! Last, but certainly not least, I am amazed by your grasp of web friendly concepts such as FORMS, I will bookmark this page and reference it often!

Love,
Another who lives in a glass house.

Silly Howard J Strauss of 205 87 Prospect Avenue Princeton, NJ. I wonder how many calls you will receive tomorrow on your phone number of 609-258-6045. Your silly antics and sophomoric analogy will surely enrage many who have dedicated their time to that which they love. I wonder how many email's you will receive at your address of howard@Princeton.EDU I wonder how many will visit the school website running apache in search for more words of wisdom coming from someone of your power.

It's too bad actually that you feel this way. The free software community could use the expertise that you must bring to the table at Princeton. Take for example your web programming skillz and your ability to use the export feature of Microsoft Power Point to create a stunning web presentation. You will be receiving an email from me shortly asking where to sign up for your "Putting Your Stuff on the Web" Seminar, I am sure it will be well worth whatever fee you charge. I only wish I were on campus at Princeton to take one of your "Lunch and Learn" seminars, like this one on creating your very own PDF forms! Last, but certainly not least, I am amazed by your grasp of web friendly concepts such as FORMS, I will bookmark this page and reference it often!

Love,
Another who lives in a glass house.

Silly Howard J Strauss of 205 87 Prospect Avenue Princeton, NJ. I wonder how many calls you will receive tomorrow on your phone number of 609-258-6045. Your silly antics and sophomoric analogy will surely enrage many who have dedicated their time to that which they love. I wonder how many email's you will receive at your address of howard@Princeton.EDU I wonder how many will visit the school website running apache in search for more words of wisdom coming from someone of your power.

It's too bad actually that you feel this way. The free software community could use the expertise that you must bring to the table at Princeton. Take for example your web programming skillz and your ability to use the export feature of Microsoft Power Point to create a stunning web presentation. You will be receiving an email from me shortly asking where to sign up for your "Putting Your Stuff on the Web" Seminar, I am sure it will be well worth whatever fee you charge. I only wish I were on campus at Princeton to take one of your "Lunch and Learn" seminars, like this one on creating your very own PDF forms! Last, but certainly not least, I am amazed by your grasp of web friendly concepts such as FORMS, I will bookmark this page and reference it often!

Love,
Another who lives in a glass house.

this page has Howard Strauss's email address

this page has Howard Strauss's email address

angst: an acute but unspecific feeling of anxiety; usually reserved for philosophical anxiety about the world or about personal freedom

www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn

Microsoft also publish the method for disabling auto-run on CDROM drives - so can they expect a law-suit too? The word is barratry - harrassing people with groundless law-suits. My advice to John Halderman would be to sue back for all its worth - oh and write a letter to the judge in the case asking him to ensure that this company have sufficient funds to pay his legal costs, by depositing some sort of bond with the court..

If a company like that tried that trick with a UK based individual, just drag them through the EU courts (if it gets that far) - I would love to see a US based company like that try and convince a French judge of thier rights in a case of this ilk..

The following text is printed at the bottom of the back cover: THIS CD IS ENHANCED WITH MEDIAMAX SOFTWARE. Windows Compatible Instructions: Insert disc into CD-ROM drive. Software will automatically install. If it doesn't, click on "LaunchCd.exe." MacOS Instructions: Insert disc into CD-ROM drive. Click on "Start." Usage of the CD on your computer requires your acceptance of the End User License Agreement and installation of specific software contained on the CD. Windows System Requirements: Windows 98/2000/XP, Internet Explorer 5.5 or later, Windows Media Player 7.1 or compatible player. Mac System Requirements: Mac OSX 10.1, Power Mac G3/G4, iMac, eMac, Powerbook G3/G4, iBook with 128 Mb of RAM, Windows Media Player for Mac OSX, Internet Explorer 5.2, Monitor capable of displaying 800x600 screen resolution & 256 colors (64K colors recommended), 12x or faster multi-session-enabled CD-ROM drive, Flash Player 6. Digital files on this CD will also play on portable devices supporting secure WMA files. Certain computers may not be able to access the enhanced portion of this disc. None of the manufacturers, developers, or distributor make any representation or warranty, or assumes any responsibility, with respect to the enhanced portion of this disc. The "Compact Disc Digital Audio" logo is absent from the printed jacket and the face of the disc, but it is embossed in the plastic on the inside of the jewel case. The CD itself bears the warning: "This disc is protected against unauthorized duplication."

"Where's the legal defense fund, I want to contribute?"

For example, I know Andrew "bunnie" Huang of xbox cracking fame was very hesitant to publish the paper without MIT's support, and MIT (specifically their lawyers) held out on that support until MS agreed that it was legitimate adademic research and that they had no intention of going to court.

When copy-protected CDs first started coming out, Philips said that the official compact disc digital audio logo could not be put on the packaging, since the discs did not conform to the standard and, hence, were not really "compact discs". If you follow the link to the report, you will see mention that "The "Compact Disc Digital Audio" logo is absent from the printed jacket and the face of the disc".

One last time: yes, seeing typing is an indication that typing is occurring. Seeing an indication that typing is occurring is not seeing typing. See here and here for prior art - sorry, prior discussion of this point.

To summarise: you and others are saying:

• The patent refers to an indication that typing is occurring.
• Seeing the typing is an indication that typing is occurring.
• Therefore, the patent refers to seeing the typing.

• You have two eyes.
• George Walker Bush has two eyes.
• Therefore you are George Walker Bush.

More info on logic here

That's true. In fact, Daniel Kahneman of Princeton won a Nobel prize based on work discovering just that. Essentially, he demonstrates that, contrary to traditional micro-economic theory, the behavior exhibited by actors in the economic arena is not always rational. There are other apparent motivations and descriptors of their behavior. IIRC, John Nash (aka Russel Crowe in "A Beautiful Mind") also won a Nobel Prize with similar discoveries rooted in game theory, but also had important implications for whether or not rationality was the sole descriptor of the behavior of economic actors.

Interestingly, a search on Google for "John Nash Rational Actor" reveals a number of relevant articles, one of which suggests that Nash overstated his discovery's impact on economics.

If you'd like to see how to do a fermi problem, look here.

If you'd like to see about why we call these "fermi problems", look here.

For more history about the fermi problem, and a number of examples, try here.

I assure you, the fact that I was right on was not accidental. I'm used to doing such order-of-magnitude calculations as a part of doing my work (checking other peoples' work).

It's important for studies to be peer reviewed and duplicated. If this is real, other scientists will say its real, and they'll duplicate the results.

(Here's a little pop-quiz to see if you were paying attention in science class. What's wrong with this Princeton project? The answer is that no one else can duplicate their results. Peer review and duplicable results are key, even with studies coming out of big name institutions.)

There have been quite a few studies on the effects of cell phones, and dramatic evidence that they cause problems has not jumped out at anyone.

And people have been using cell phones for a long time. I got my first one about 10 years ago, and they were already common back then.

There's a doctor named Dean Edell who does a radio show, and he wrote a book called "Eat, Drink, and Be Merry." In that book, he spent a lot of time talking about how bad most medical reporting is. He makes a pretty persuasive case.

Almost everything you hear on the radio or see on tv about supplements, studies, etc., is either totally false or based on weak science.

I don't know anything about this particular study, but I do know that a study that doesn't find anything isn't news, while the opposite story -- we're all going to have our brains turn to mush in our middle years! -- is sensational news.

And its news to say that the evil cell industry has used its vast power to suppress studies (that's a big red flag in this story for me). Apparently the cell companies aren't just evil, they're stupid, because if they did that they'd be sued out of existence. But hey, corporations are evil, and they're lust for immediate profits knows no bounds.

This story got hyped mostly through a link on Drudge. I love Drudge, but you have to read him with a critical eye. He says outright that he'll put questionable stuff out there and let the readers decide. And I've heard him wax paranoiac on the dangers of cloning, he's kind of whacked out on some biological and medical stories.