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You're assuming that such a model must necessarily exist, which is a huge assumption to make. Especially considering that there are many results in mathematics indicating that self-referential systems (say, for example, a complete model of reality created from within said reality) tend to be problematic.

https://cias.rit.edu/media/upl...

Luminescence can be used to create a depth map using two offset images.

3D movies and VR headsets don't work for everyone and create headaches for a variety of reasons, one probably being the lack of bit depth. It's much harder to judge depth when the colors are so close together.

https://cias.rit.edu/media/upl...

Luminescence can be used to create a depth map using two stereoscopic images.

3D movies and VR headsets don't work for everyone and create headaches for a variety of reasons, one probably being the lack of bit depth.

http://spiff.rit.edu/richmond/...

Add more comments; don't use silly C obfuscation tricks, give variables and functions meaningful names; write the code so that someone else can maintain it later; and so forth.

Heathen! Read the bible least your career be damned!

Posting because I've seen too many programmers misunderstand this and screw things up when using floats. This does not mean you can do whatever you want with floats and your accuracy will be at least 1.5 inches within a 25 billion mile radius. It means an individual double float number has a precision of 17 significant figures, nothing more. When you start doing math with that number, the precision can quickly go out the window.

For example, if you add a large float to a small float, say 3.14159265359x10^8 + 2.7182818284x10^-3, the latter number doesn't actually matter because it's largest digit is smaller than the uncertainty (the last significant figure) in the first number. In other words, floating point's accuracy decreases the further you get from zero. A solar system modeled with ints will have the same resolution everywhere, which is how people want to think significant figures work. But a solar system modeled with double floats will have very fine resolution close to the origin, lousy resolution out near the edges.

To do this sort of math accurately using float (e.g. calculating docking coordinates for two spacecraft orbiting Jupiter), you are better off first doing a coordinate transform to center your zero closer to where everything is happening, do your math, then transform the results back to your original coordinates (or keep them in your new coordinate system if you plan to do more math there later). Obviously that's a pointless exercise with this simplified math problem, but it can make a big difference in accuracy with more complex math.

For a real-world example, we once networked two flight simulators together and tried to make them fly in formation. The position of the second plane appeared to jump all over the place when viewed from the first plane, and vice versa. What was happening was our coordinate system was fixed to the Earth. Planes fly on the order of 1000 kph. At that speed, a transient network lag error of only 10 milliseconds results in a position error of several meters (dp = v * dt). It didn't matter that we knew the velocities to 7 significant figures or even if we'd known them to 17 significant figures, because the error in the timestamp overwhelmed that accuracy. The fix was to define a new coordinate system centered on the first plane. The velocity of the second plane was then only a few cm/sec relative to the first plane (since they're flying in formation), and the jumping disappeared since a 10 ms error only resulted in only a few millimeters of error.

Programming is not a building block.

Were you ever told to study or take notes in school? Do you know how to do either of those? Think before you answer.

Did you know organization aids in memorization? Did your teachers tell you rhythm and rhyme increase the ease with which you can learn something, or only leverage that fact, most likely thinking they were adding entertainment to keep a class full of distracted kids attentive?

Surely someone tried to feed you acrostics. Even engineers know this one.

What about mathematics? Are you still counting on your fingers and carrying the two? If you memorize your multiplication tables (by brute force) and practice using a Japanese 4/1 abacus, you can immediately compute arithmetic operations in your head. Memorize a simple system of numerical storage (Dominick's, Mnemonic Major, number shape, PAO) and use a digital computation algorithm and you can keep three registers straight while you compute infinite digits in any square root in your head faster than you can write or voice the numbers.

People think too much about goals and not about foundations. They also think children too stupid to understand anything complex, instead of thinking about how people think. You would think folks would say, "Hey, we can describe memory to children in great technical detail, because a child will stare at you blankly, think for about four seconds, and immediately recognize the mechanism you've described!" Instead they say, "Associative? You want to tell children memory is visual and associative? They're not going to understand that! It's too complex!" It's ludicrous; it's like claiming you can't tell a child teeth grind up food and wet it with saliva so it can safely transport down the esophagus to the stomach. They bite a chicken nugget, chew, swallow, and feel it move, and immediately understand what you're babbling about.

As a result, we don't teach children to learn. We force them to learn by whatever means necessary, but give them no tool to drive information into their minds. We don't teach them study methods, note-taking methods, or deliberate practice; we don't teach them any concepts of executive function or mnemonics; and we even avoid showing them highly-structured, systematic approaches to basic mathematics, under the assumption that children cannot handle structure and require a sort of free-play type of classroom learning.

Children need to start with a basic study of the mind. First a brief overview of memory in function, including a high-level overview of the neurology involved and an introduction to mnemonic devices, but excluding mnemonic systems. Then an explanation of leveraging human memory through systems of study and note-taking, like SQ3R and the Affinity Diagram device. These provide the easy foundation to ingesting new information.

Once you've transferred these, you can teach and apply deliberate practice and executive function. Deliberate practice is a method of technical, goal-oriented practice producing constant and immediate results: you recognize your weaknesses and focus on those, while trying to judge if you're improving. Executive function includes a broad array of loosely-related behaviors, notably in eliminating distraction, managing time, and orga

I've been using our university's observatory to take images of V404 Cyg for the past week. On Jun 23/24, the star underwent a particularly crazy series of variations: over a period of six hours, it fell to just 5 percent of its initial brightness, then recovered almost to its starting point.

I made an animated GIF showing the star's changes over this period. You can see it on my observing log for the the night:

http://spiff.rit.edu/richmond/...

That page also includes my full dataset, and pointers to additional reading.

The star is currently bright enough -- mag 11-14 -- to be studied easily with small telescopes. Anyone interested in joining the effort should start with the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) -- go to their campaign page at

http://www.aavso.org/aavso-ale...

I've been using our university's observatory to take images of V404 Cyg for the past week. On Jun 23/24, the star underwent a particularly crazy series of variations: over a period of six hours, it fell to just 5 percent of its initial brightness, then recovered almost to its starting point.

I made an animated GIF showing the star's changes over this period. You can see it on my observing log for the the night:

http://spiff.rit.edu/richmond/...

That page also includes my full dataset, and pointers to additional reading.

The star is currently bright enough -- mag 11-14 -- to be studied easily with small telescopes. Anyone interested in joining the effort should start with the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) -- go to their campaign page at

http://www.aavso.org/aavso-ale...

Don't they have something similar to a spectrograph to determine chemical signature of selected targets? I thought such was standard equipment on such probes. Perhaps they are not yet close enough to Ceres to get useful data from it.

spectrograph overview: http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/p...

I'm co-teaching a graduate course on exoplanets, and we talked about this paper in one of our meetings last week. Here's the link to our discussion of "spectroscopy of exoplanet atmospheres:"

      http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/e...

You can read all our materials at

      http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/e...

Enjoy!

I'm co-teaching a graduate course on exoplanets, and we talked about this paper in one of our meetings last week. Here's the link to our discussion of "spectroscopy of exoplanet atmospheres:"

      http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/e...

You can read all our materials at

      http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/e...

Enjoy!

My older daughter has done a 2 day GEARS program at RIT. http://www.rit.edu/kgcoe/women... and I found that quite interesting and she enjoyed it. I'm planning on sending my 9 year old next year when she's eligible for that course. The Modding course I linked to above actually has my daughter interacting with her mod and launching minecraft to see her work quite often, so when she makes changes to her sword or other, she gets to see the results quite quickly. The feedback is quite fast for her, which is nice.

.. By the Stefan-Boltzmann radiation law, the chamber walls add no net power in. It just goes right back out through your boundary again. How many times must I explain this to you? .. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-23]

If radiation enters the boundary and goes right back out, we need to account for it entering and exiting. That's why there are separate terms for "power in" and "power out". For instance:

There is no net "radiative power in" from cooler to hotter. It's against the second law of thermodynamics, and it violates the S-B radiation law: (e * s) * (Ta^4 - Tb^4). [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-23]

That's exactly the equation Jane should be using to calculate electrical heating power! It has separate terms for "power in" and "power out" so it can describe power entering and exiting a boundary. If Jane would use that equation, he'd honestly be only saying there is no net "radiative power in" from cooler to hotter.

Instead, Jane insists that electrical heating power = (e * s) * (Ta^4). Jane's ridiculous equation doesn't just say there is no net "radiative power in" from cooler to hotter. Jane's wrongly saying the source absorbs no radiative power at all.

There is nothing more to say. You have been proved wrong. You can write books about your nonsense "physics", and it won't make your bullshit theory any more correct. .. The textbooks all say you're wrong. Goodbye. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-23]

So Jane refuses to retract his absurd claim that view factors vary as the radius ratio, which violates conservation of energy. A cynic might have expected as much, given how Jane flagrantly violates conservation of energy by incoherently ignoring radiative power passing in through a boundary around the heat source.

.. I honestly -- and I mean that: honestly -- don't believe you could be this stupid and possess a degree in physics. .. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-15]

.. I only replied on the off-chance that you really were ignorant and could be educated. .. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-20]

Jane's campaign of educating ignorant, stupid physicists about physics has only just begun. Jane still needs to educate Prof. Brown and Lonny Eachus still needs to educate Dr. Joel Shore.

Then, Jane/Lonny Eachus needs to educate the "ignorant" and "stupid" American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, the Australian Institute of Physics, and the European Physical Society.

.. the CO2-warming model rely on the concept of "back radiation", which physicists (not climate scientists) have proved to be impossible. I'm happy to leave actual climate science to climate scientists. But when THEIR models rely on a fundamental misunderstanding of physics, I'll take the physicists' word for it, thank you very much. ..

A large body of scientists who are PHYSICISTS agree with me. A large body of scientists who are CLIMATE RESEARCHERS disagree. ... which group should I listen to? The ones whose SPECIALTY it is, or the tyros? Go learn a little humility yourself. Like for example learning to admit when you're wrong. [Jane Q. Public, 2013-05-30]

I showed Jane statements from the American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, the Australian Institute of Physics, and the European Physical Society. Spoiler alert: mainstream physicists don't agree with the Slayers.

Maybe Jane doesn't actually take the physicists' word for it?

... None of your citations even mention Latour, much less try to refute him. You are just making your usual straw-man arguments again. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-08-04]

All those professional physics societies agree that our CO2 emissions are causing warming, which Dr. Latour and the Slayers deny. Jane's claimed that physicists are "the experts" when it comes to physics, and that Jane "takes the physicists' word for it." I'm skeptical.

... To the best of my knowledge -- and I have been following the issue -- not one physicist has even attempted to refute LaTour's analysis, while a number of physicists have backed him up. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2013-05-30]

rgbatduke is Prof. Brown, a physicist who'd refuted Dr. Latour's analysis directly to Jane, but as usual Jane just doubled down. On a Slayer blog post about Prof. Brown, Lonny Eachus even repeated Jane's arguments to physicist Joel Shore, who refuted Lonny.

Maybe Jane/Lonny Eachus doesn't actually take the physicists' word for it?

... As for your heating the walls, the argument all along has been about something that is warmed from a cooler state to equilibrium. Whether your point about heating the walls is correct or not isn't part of it. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-08-04]

Of course it is. The heated plate reaches equilibrium at 150F with the chamber walls at 0F, then the chamber walls are warmed to 149F and the heated plate warms from a cooler state to a warmer equilibrium. This is a simple way to see that Slayer claims like these are wrong:

... Do you understand the second law of thermodynamics? Do you understand that it is not possible for a cooler body to increase the heat of a warmer body via infrared radiation? ... [Jane Q. Public, 2013-05-27]

... An object that is radiating at a certain black-body temperature WILL NOT absorb a less-energetic photon from an outside source. This is am extremely well-known corollary of the Secon

Except that it is not. There are currently about two million practicing engineers in the USA, and that number is growing by about 70,000 per year. So we are not "shedding" STEM jobs. The unemployment rate for computer professionals and engineers is about 3% compared to an overall rate of over 7%.

I apologize for interrupting this whine-fest with actual facts.

Actually for equivalently educated Americans (those who concluded accredited undergraduate degree programs) you're looking at around 4% unemployment versus a overall computer/math degree unemployment of 3.4% (as quoted in the original article).

It isn't that large of a gulf as it may appear with the general populace.

Generational GC can still be mark and sweep (and most of them are).

So looking around, it seems like "mark and sweep" does not have a single meaning. I didn't actually know this, and it means that I was wrong to say that the AC I replied to was wrong.

However, I learned "mark and sweep" (and my use is supported by this survey paper and, I believe, the second edition of the dragon book (see, e.g., the lecture 17 slides from here) though I can't check right now) to be a specific GC algorithm that basically works like an automated free() that traces and marks reachable objects then walks all heap blocks and frees any unmarked blocks. Specifically, this is a non-moving collector.

I also learned generational GCs to necessarily be moving collectors, though I suppose you could come up with some somewhat convoluted scheme that does not do this and would still be somewhat deserving of the term.

I'm not sure, but suspect that my usage is more standard.

I wrote up a short summary of the observational details for one of my classes -- you can find it at

http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/phys443/lectures/grb130427a/grb130427a.html

You can also follow a nice summary of the latest results by following Don Alexander's thread on the Cosmoquest forum:

http://cosmoquest.org/forum/showthread.php?143754-GRB-130427A-burst-of-the-(quarter)-century

I don't know if it's a good strategy to deduce from flat wages that there isn't a shortage in supply of STEM workers. In fact, it is more than likely that the 'replacement STEM workers' for Americans (i.e., immigrant workers) come cheaper. If there is a 'market force' of labor shortage, which brings wages up, there's a counteracting force of 'cheap labour', which brings the wages back to where they were. Essentially, if you pick 'wage behavior' and 'number of employments' as your two metrics for deducing something, you may be underestimating the dimensionality of your 'state-space'.

After looking at EPI's paper, the wages graphs vary around in an errorbar of about 100%, which is incidentally how much the number of employees graphs vary, too. Without actual errorbars, correlating two quantities with a similar-looking 'statistical spread' would lead to an underestimated total (or propagated error).

There is very little I can actually put in the app requirements that don't rely on self assessment of the applicant. I don't care for degrees. More than half of my crew never saw a college from the inside, and what's worse, they're the BETTER half of the people. They are, granted, also the older half of the people. So asking for a degree is certainly out of the question.

You do realize that some universities are starting to offer some courses in security?
http://www.csec.rit.edu/?q=node/29

Also, how about getting involved with something like this?
http://www.rit.edu/news/story.php?id=46016

Simply glossing over everyone who has a degree is a bit dangerous.

There is very little I can actually put in the app requirements that don't rely on self assessment of the applicant. I don't care for degrees. More than half of my crew never saw a college from the inside, and what's worse, they're the BETTER half of the people. They are, granted, also the older half of the people. So asking for a degree is certainly out of the question.

You do realize that some universities are starting to offer some courses in security?
http://www.csec.rit.edu/?q=node/29

Also, how about getting involved with something like this?
http://www.rit.edu/news/story.php?id=46016

Simply glossing over everyone who has a degree is a bit dangerous.

Here's a random example; although in this particular case it could probably be recoded to use JavaScript.

Hinting is like embalming a corpse --- it looks better, but is still a sad state compared to the original.

c.f. Tom Rickner and Steve Matteson's presentations at RIT's Reading Digital conference:

http://www.rit.edu/cias/readingdigital/speakers.php

There's a reason why Monotype discontinued their Enhanced Screen Quality (ESQ) line of fonts.

My university's math department maintains a web page listing careers for math majors: http://www.rit.edu/cos/math/Students/careers.html

Google already has video recognition filters in place. Granted it's not nearly as develloped as their music recognition but it exists.

It did say "precise" measurement afterall not "accurate." http://saturn.cis.rit.edu/~dxl1840/data/uploads/accuracyprecision.gif

Looks like Microsoft... *puts on sunglasses* is going around in circles (with sound).

RIT has a good Mechanical Engineering program (where you can specialize in aerospace engineering). If you do decide to go to RIT, try to get into their Honors program, it will make your life 500 times more awesome since you're focusing on academics.

Actually, all of my course materials ARE on-line already. See http://spiff.rit.edu/classes. Anyone who wants to use these materials to teach himself -- go for it!

This!

There are vast amounts of great course-materials freely available online, for all sorts of classes, at top-tier universities. They're a wonderful resource for somebody that wants to learn about a subject, and has motivation and some basic grounding but not the time / money to attend a formal class. You can find course lecture notes, links to papers, examples, reading lists, etc. Discussion groups etc tend to be university-private (which makes sense), but there's tons of stuff available to the world at large.

Most major universities have been "online" in this very valuable (but apparently not so fashionable) sense for ages...

I teach at a large university. My university is pushing for faculty to sign up for on-line courses. My guess is that they see two economic incentives: they can appeal to a larger customer base -- students who can't attend in person -- and they can cut costs by increasing the number of students enrolled relative to the number of professors.

What's in it for me? What do I gain by agreeing to teach on-line? I lose the give-and-take relationship with my students; how can I see if my explanation of a new concept is working if I can't see the expressions of the students as I try to explain it? I contribute to putting myself and my colleagues out of a job. I implicitly support the idea that the best way to teach is to give students videos to watch.

Actually, all of my course materials ARE on-line already. See http://spiff.rit.edu/classes. Anyone who wants to use these materials to teach himself -- go for it! So I'm not lazy, and I'm not trying to keep knowledge secret. I just think that teaching college students in person is better than doing so via web pages and videos.

I did a search on the american chem soc website, for "helium oxide" and "helium compounds" the first had no relevant hits, the second gave the hit below, which suggests that HeO doesn't exist (or may exist transiently, as some unstable species) http://pubs.acs.org.ezproxy.rit.edu/doi/pdf/10.1021/jp908254r

So, if I understand it correctly, "expected polynomial time" is about average running time? That doesn't seem like it would make a difference as long as you pick the "hard" graph isomorphism problems for encryption.

After all, there are several cases of large integers that are simple to factor. Public key encryption works simply by avoiding them when creating the key.

The current worst-case running-time for graph isomorphism is listed as 2^O(sqrt (n * log n)) in Wikipedia. Not sure how that compares to the integer factorization figure you gave (looks close), but it was no picnic dealing with that for my Master's.

I will answer the question. There are now several schools that over game development curriculum. Look into these first. I graduated from RIT taking the Game Development concentration and overall, my degree has been good.

Here is what I can say about that program: It's probably one of the best cs i programs at RIT. You take all the standard math, science, and cs courses. When you get to the actual games courses, you'll find the professors and students very dedicated. You are guided with strategies along the way, but you need to do a lot of learning on your own. When I was a student, it was pretty open - we pretty much took a year, broke up into teams, and made games. There are lots of skills we learned doing these projects that we might not have learned doing smaller, more concentrated projects.

Did I end up making games? Sort of. I've done a few budget, educational titles in my free time. I don't really have any interest in working on big-budget games, but if an idea comes along for a cool game I would consider executing it. The skills in 3d graphics and audio processing have been pretty useful to have because not many programmers in my field are experienced in these areas.

Recall the "Fun with YouTube's Audio Content ID System" on slashdot?
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/22/1723238
Based on http://www.csh.rit.edu/~parallax/
offer a speed increase of 5% or greater or a speed reduction of 4% or greater.

control+meta+hyper+super+front-shift+L (http://www.ist.rit.edu/~jxs/jargon/html/S/space-cadet-keyboard.html)

It's not just Microsoft. OSX defaults to autologin too:

http://ist.mit.edu/services/software/macosx/security
http://www.rit.edu/its/services/desktop_support/mac/xdisableautomaticlogin.html

OSX is NOT more secure from a technical POV.

But it is more secure the way a house with no locks in a small village is more secure than a locked apartment in a big bad city.

Heh Apple even do silly stuff like: http://www.fuzzydice.net/?tag=macintosh-osx-linux-telnet-auto-login

ahh, here it is. The how-to.

http://www.csh.rit.edu/~parallax/

This.

I'm a first year student at RIT. Of course it would be completely absurd to ban laptops in a school like this, but here's my thought on the matter: if you want to screw yourself out of your education, do it. Yay, more job opportunities for me. A fellow named Darwin called it "natural selection."

I spent the entire "Cyber Self Defense" (in other words, cyberbullshit) class first quarter playing SuperTux on my netbook-from-before-the-netbook-era. Pulled off an A in the class simply because I gave the politically correct answers to all the test questions (thankfully they didn't try to talk about copyright law, the DMCA, what have you), shat out a paper with a ridiculously oversimplified topic, and in general made it look like I was participating. In reality, I didn't give two shits about the class, and I already knew the stuff. The kicker was attendance credit, which we were told would make or break our grade.

The point is, did I master the material so that I might be better prepared for future classes? Yup. So as long as I'm not being disruptive to others, who is being harmed here? I'm an adult, and should be trusted to make judgments as to whether a certain behavior will be dangerous to my academic success or not. If I consistently make the wrong decision, I should deal with the consequences for it: trouble getting a co-op/first job, disfavor in selection processes for future elective classes, et cetera.

At the same time, all three of my math classes thus far have seen the extensive use of my computer for note-taking purposes. In classes where I need to learn, it's my right hand; in classes I don't need to pay attention to, it keeps me from dozing off (sometimes, at least).

As a professor... if a student was disrupting the class for others, I'd ask them to leave the class, and after three or four episodes I'd probably fail them for the course. But if they're only hurting themselves, who am I to stop them?

I teach astronomy courses to university students. The best object by far to look at is the Moon, as others have said.

1. it's big and bright, so you can't miss it
2. students can compare the view through the telescope to the view with their naked eyes
3. students can compare the view through the telescope to the view through binoculars

I've written a number of outdoor lab exercises for introductory astro students which would be perfectly appropriate for your students. You can read one on the Moon, in particular. Or you can look at the lists of exercises in this class or this other class for more ideas.

I'd recommend the "Limiting Magnitude" exercise as one which you can do when the Moon isn't up. It will help if you have several pairs of binoculars in addition to the telescope.

Good luck!

I teach astronomy courses to university students. The best object by far to look at is the Moon, as others have said.

1. it's big and bright, so you can't miss it
2. students can compare the view through the telescope to the view with their naked eyes
3. students can compare the view through the telescope to the view through binoculars

I've written a number of outdoor lab exercises for introductory astro students which would be perfectly appropriate for your students. You can read one on the Moon, in particular. Or you can look at the lists of exercises in this class or this other class for more ideas.

I'd recommend the "Limiting Magnitude" exercise as one which you can do when the Moon isn't up. It will help if you have several pairs of binoculars in addition to the telescope.

Good luck!

I teach astronomy courses to university students. The best object by far to look at is the Moon, as others have said.

1. it's big and bright, so you can't miss it
2. students can compare the view through the telescope to the view with their naked eyes
3. students can compare the view through the telescope to the view through binoculars

I've written a number of outdoor lab exercises for introductory astro students which would be perfectly appropriate for your students. You can read one on the Moon, in particular. Or you can look at the lists of exercises in this class or this other class for more ideas.

I'd recommend the "Limiting Magnitude" exercise as one which you can do when the Moon isn't up. It will help if you have several pairs of binoculars in addition to the telescope.

Good luck!

Offer to share the information with your prof or student teacher and they will usually give you the green light or become the note taker for the class (some schools have them for hard of hearing/deaf students - R.I.T.)...

If you use something like MS OneNote you can drop all these separate pieces onto the note pages and keep them better organized. Text, your notes, the sound clips, and the diagrams...

Which is why I think we need 4-year software engineering professional degrees, but then while we're at it maybe I could get a pony too..

Several schools have a 4-year Software Engineering degree, and more pop up every year. Ex.: http://www.se.rit.edu/

You can go back to hoping for that pony now.

At my university, the stats professor even joked about allowing us into the exam room with, in his words, a "cheat sheet" (8 1/2" by 11" paper with formulas of the students' choosing - that made sense; choosing which formulae to include on your sheet was essentially part of the test/challenge.)

GP: By Z-tests, I'm assuming you mean using something like this:
http://people.rit.edu/~smam320/Tables/NORMTAB.PDF

That was the first course in the sequence; the 2nd class in the sequence (which I'm in now) is using the same concept, but in a bit more advanced manner; we're in a computer lab with access to Minitab and such.

By contrast, the calculus class (I only took one, didn't need to take more and won't be doing so) was quite anti-calculator. (To their credit, the problems were structured so that doing the grunt work by hand was at least somewhat plausible. :P)
My last econ prof (okay, don't call it a science if you want, but there was definitely applied math), half-jokingly limited us to "ten-dollar calculators"

Hi, I'm with the Open Publishing Lab at the Rochester Institute of Technology. One of the things we specialize in is developing open source applications and support content for people interested in self publishing, One of our projects, Page2Pub (http://opl.rit.edu/project/page2pub), can be used in conjunction with a wiki platform, to enable some interesting publishing solutions. Page2Pub is a pair of open source applications that gather content from the web and assemble it into an epub document. The second application can then reformat that epub doc for publication in other media. The current version of the platform is optimized for gathering content from wikis and using it to generate a print ready PDF book that can then be sent to any print on demand service. This fall we are hoping to run a test of the platform with a professor at RIT who has developed a wiki based coursebook. Each quarter, the prof and his class, use and expand upon the previous classes work. He's planning to use Page2Pub to develop short primer books/pamphlets from that course material (and content on other sites like the Wikipedia). If you have questions about Page2Pub or self publishing in general, feel free to drop me a line, - Matt (Open Publishing Lab at RIT, http://opl.rit.edu/ e. mbernius@mail.rit.edu)

Google turned up this image:

http://people.rit.edu/andpph/photofile-b/ir-vulcan-comparison-1.jpg

Note the arm was moved.

I'm also quite unclear on why mac has this reputation for good usability/interface because in the few times I have used it I have encountered interface inconsistencies even within the base applications such as network settings. (e.g. radio buttons for "on"/"off" in one interface(dhcp) and a drop down box for "enable"/"disable" for another(static))

I have a drop down to select DHCP, DHCP with manual address, bootp, and manual.
In fact, I don't see radio buttons anywhere in "Network" system preferences.
http://www.rit.edu/its/services/desktop_support/mac/releaserenewipaddress.html
Those are old screenshots, and I'm using Leopard.. Still no idea where you are coming from.

Not that there aren't inconsistencies somewhere, but I've got over a decade of experience with Windows from 95 to XP, nearly as much with GTK/GNOME, and a couple years with OS X. It is clear as day why OS X has a good usability reputation. Again, I can find flaws, but how one could not even guess how they earned the reputation, yet understand what usability means is beyond me.

And, of course, inconsistencies between applications, too. Mail settings have cancel/save/apply buttons, but to save network config changes you have to close the window(hit the red x) and then get presented with an option to apply changes.

Where the hell did you find a cancel/save/apply menu on OS X?? Sorry for the language, but you must have got that mixed up with something else. Windows maybe?
I can find no apply buttons in Mail. This is consistent with nearly all OS X applications, in that settings are changed, and remembered instantly.
In the Network panel, there is something similar to what you describe. There are "Apply" and "Revert" options. You NEED this for network configuration, and many other system wide configuration tasks. Someone should be hung by their balls if fiddling with network settings happened live in a UI. If you don't apply changes and click the red X, you get a prompt: "Don't Apply", "Cancel", "Apply". In case it is not immediately obvious, Apply makes settings take effect, Revert clears changes you haven't applied (clean slate), Don't Apply exits without applying, Cancel closes the dialog without exiting, the dialog's Apply does so and exits. This is the only panel I can find in System Preferences that works like this. The others work like other applications where your change is immediate. Network settings is an appropriate place to skip this consistency.

This is actually a great example of Apple's attention to usability...

Hitting a red x to apply your changes is almost as silly as hitting the start button in windows to stop your pc. :)

You missed the Apply button in Network preferences, or was it not obvious your changes were applied in real time elsewhere?

in the few times I have used it

Between you and me, you need to spend a LITTLE more time with it to talk usability. Put up screenshots at least, maybe you have an older version, and might have had some valid points. Hey, if that was the case, try a newer version and see what was corrected. That would probably be the best demonstration of how Apple earned it's reputation.

I worked long ago for the founder of this company (gh, LLC) when he was in charge of the Purdue VISIONS Lab. They may have some useful technology to use.

The VISIONS Lab is probably defunct, but I found information about it.

...are candidates

You get a lot of talk about how spectacular Eta Carinae would be if it went up. There's already been a Supernova "imposter" event...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eta_Carinae ..and here's some analysis of whether it's a danger.
http://stupendous.rit.edu/richmond/answers/snrisks.txt ...or has done so already
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/246576/files/th-6805-93.ps.gz

What is this "Junk mail" you speak of? I can only guess that you are referring to a great offer sent to the wrong person. Seriously though, Standard Rate mail drives the economy. It is the most successful advertising method generating more than twice the sales dollars as any other form. ( http://printinthemix.rit.edu/fastfacts/show/159 ) And that number is going to rise, the thing that keeps is down is unscrupulous mailers who "Spray and Pray," content with a 0.5% response rate. As Mailers increase the quality of the data they use (i.e. not sending mail to where you used to live, but updating your address through the USPS.) the response rate starts to climb. On a side note, Printing is a very environmentally friendly process. Most paper is 30% recycled, and the rest is made from virgin fiber that was grown to be paper. Those trees never would have been planted if there wasn't a printing industry. Ink is mainly wax, and other safe chemicals. And a lot of shops use soy based ink. Okay, off my soap box now.