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It depends. If you're reverse-engineering to gain access to a system rather than completely rewrite it, you can achieve a lot without too much work. You just need to know how to work with the system, and then you can subvert it for your own twisted purposes (like making it snow on the desktop). There are limits, but I'm sure we could go a long way with genes.

As for your second question, I guess I'm just a very amoral person in some ways. Maybe I'd feel differently if the subject was right before me, but I don't particularly care for babies either, so . . .

The story is here and there's also a picture. And guess what: The scientist learned from his painful mistake, and moved on with the next batch, which was better as a result of the mistake. As you say, some doctors face the same issues - but they do face them, and society is better for it.

It depends. If you're reverse-engineering to gain access to a system rather than completely rewrite it, you can achieve a lot without too much work. You just need to know how to work with the system, and then you can subvert it for your own twisted purposes (like making it snow on the desktop). There are limits, but I'm sure we could go a long way with genes.

As for your second question, I guess I'm just a very amoral person in some ways. Maybe I'd feel differently if the subject was right before me, but I don't particularly care for babies either, so . . .

The story is here and there's also a picture. And guess what: The scientist learned from his painful mistake, and moved on with the next batch, which was better as a result of the mistake. As you say, some doctors face the same issues - but they do face them, and society is better for it.

If you pay a phone bill, you've been paying for internet infrastructure for years. You've been paying for this for years.

Instead of double dipping and asking for more money to upgrade/create internet infrastructure why don't they start spending the money they already collect IN THE RIGHT PLACE?

FEDERAL UNIVERSAL SERV FUND
http://www.fcc.gov/wcb/universal_service/welcome.html
The goals of Universal Service, as mandated by the 1996 Act, are to
promote the availability of quality services at just, reasonable, and
affordable rates; increase access to advanced telecommunications
services throughout the Nation; advance the availability of such
services to all consumers, including those in low income, rural,
insular, and high cost areas at rates that are reasonably comparable to
those charged in urban areas. In addition, the 1996 Act states that all
providers of telecommunications services should contribute to Federal
universal service in some equitable and nondiscriminatory manner; there
should be specific, predictable, and sufficient Federal and State
mechanisms to preserve and advance universal service; all schools,
classrooms, health care providers, and libraries should, generally, have
access to advanced telecommunications services; and finally, that the
Federal-State Joint Board and the Commission should determine those
other principles that, consistent with the 1996 Act, are necessary to
protect the public interest.

FEDERAL UNIVERSAL SERV FUND PRIVATE LINE
http://www.shore.net/support/usf.html
The Universal Connectivity Charge is 9.25% of state-to-state and
international long distance charges, and on Internet circuits. (ATM,
Frame Relay, Private Line, Internet Access and SDSL)
[NOTE: This may be the local number portability surcharge - ED]

E911 SURCHARGE
http://www.legis.state.ia.us/GA/79GA/Legislation/HF/00200/HF00279/Current.html
The surcharge shall
3 21 be collected as part of the access line service provider's
3 22 periodic billing to a subscriber. In compensation for the
3 23 costs of billing and collection, the provider may retain one
3 24 percent of the gross surcharges collected. If the
3 25 compensation is insufficient to fully recover a provider's
3 26 costs for billing and collection of the surcharge, the
3 27 deficiency shall be included in the provider's costs for
3 28 ratemaking purposes to the extent it is reasonable and just
3 29 under section 476.6. The surcharge shall be remitted to the
3 30 E911 service operating authority county auditor or the
3 31 auditor's designee of the county in which the subscriber
3 32 resides for deposit into the E911 service fund quarterly by
3 33 the provider. A provider is not liable for an uncollected
3 34 surcharge for which the provider has billed a subscriber but
3 35 not been paid. The surcharge shall appear as a single line
4 1 item on a subscriber's periodic billing entitled, "E911
4 2 emergency telephone service surcharge". The E911 service
4 3 surcharge is not subject to sales or use tax.

SCHOOL INFRASTRUCTURE TAX
http://www.state.ia.us/tax/educate/78511.html
IOWA SCHOOL INFRASTRUCTURE LOCAL OPTION TAX
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

FEDERAL TAX
This should be the federal excise tax

STATE/LOCAL TAX

FEDERAL ACCESS CHARGE
http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/accesschrg.html

shouldn't it be fairly straightforward to locate the origin of these transmissions?

Yes. Automatic radio direction finding is common and was often used in the cold war. The spectrum is constantly monitored and when a new broadcast pops up, it is automaticaly DF'ed and logged. When several DF sites pickup the same broadcast, triangulation to the source is a simple task.

Here is what a typical DF site looks like. Both the US and Russia have them.

http://www1.shore.net/~mfoster/FLA_Wullen.htm

Beakman's world was a much better science show.

Lynn's equivalent of Saugus.net is Shore.net. Or I guess you could say "was". Some might say they sold out.

Into the few-megahertz range, twisted pair wire works remarkably well. This is the stuff we're all familiar with as phone lines and cat-5. The number of twists per unit of length determines how resistant it is to interference, hence cat-5 is much more tightly twisted than cat-3. Each pair in a multipair cable is twisted a slightly different amount, to prevent inductive coupling and crosstalk between pairs.

The signal sent down a twisted pair is bipolar and "balanced", so that the two wires are carrying mirror opposite signals. There's an excellent explanation of this. T-1 signals ride twisted pair for several kilofeet between repeaters. The N-carrier system (low rate analog multiplex) also used twisted pair, but I don't know how far it would go between terminals.

Above a few megahertz, twisted pair gets unacceptably lossy and noisy. Higher speed signals are carried on coaxial cable, which we all know and love for its role in television wiring. The characteristic impedance of coax is determined by the ratio of the center conductor diameter and the distance to the inner surface of the outer conductor. Very early coaxial lines were made by suspending thin rods inside sections of copper pipe, by means of cardboard disc insulators. Soon a method of manufacturing flexible cable was developed, and has remained largely unchanged.

Signals carried on coax are "unbalanced", where the outer conductor is grounded and the inner conductor carries an AC wave. The need for the ground reference means that coax runs between buildings can become part of a ground loop, and cause all sorts of electrical problems. T-3 circuits use coax, but only for very short runs. (A T-3 that leaves a building does so as a DS-3 carried on fiber.) The L-carrier system, which multiplexed several N-carrier signals together, used thick coaxial lines for long-haul runs across the countryside.

As you approach the gigahertz range, coax also becomes too lossy, and hollow waveguide becomes the obvious choice. Waveguide can be rectangular, ovoid, or circular in cross-section, which effects the polarization of the signals carried in it. The inner dimensions influence loss and frequency range. Personally I'm not familiar with the buried waveguide system, but the TD and TH microwave systems used waveguide to connect the antennae with the terminal equipment.

Looks like they are still around.

The good places for surplus stores are areas where they build things. Mass was good, NJ was good. I live near DC now, and nobody builds anything here, just a great swirl of paper circulating around the beltway and finally (due to coriolus forces) piling up in the federal government.

Plus no heavy industry means no blue collar workers, so no great cheap restraunts.

Back to work!

-- ac at work

The most fortifies of sites were designed to be 2.5 miles from a 20 megaton nuke strike and survive, these were sites near prime military targets, then there were slightly less hardened ones for withing 5 miles, and then basically non hardened site for anything further. More info here

Mark Foster has another really nice Long Lines site that includes a table that lists many Long Lines facilites in many states, describes the equipment installed there and has photos of some of the facilities. He also provides the technical specifications for the construction of these sites, as well as photos from tour he took of a still-operating one.

Mark Foster has another really nice Long Lines site that includes a table that lists many Long Lines facilites in many states, describes the equipment installed there and has photos of some of the facilities. He also provides the technical specifications for the construction of these sites, as well as photos from tour he took of a still-operating one.

Mark Foster has another really nice Long Lines site that includes a table that lists many Long Lines facilites in many states, describes the equipment installed there and has photos of some of the facilities. He also provides the technical specifications for the construction of these sites, as well as photos from tour he took of a still-operating one.

Mark Foster has another really nice Long Lines site that includes a table that lists many Long Lines facilites in many states, describes the equipment installed there and has photos of some of the facilities. He also provides the technical specifications for the construction of these sites, as well as photos from tour he took of a still-operating one.

--N. Megill

Well you've given me something to think about. I thought you might like to read this article I found about negative mass tachyons... interesting stuff, and I think its genuine.

What caught my eye, apart from the negative mass, was the fact he was using MeV to measure mass, which can definately be negative. So I concede, even if a little reluctantly ;0)

... you'll need this program to read the raw CCD data.

For instance, consider their version of the pigeonhole principle, stated as "A natural number is not equinumerous to a proper subset of itself" and written formally as a bunch of symbols. Along with a 75-step proof consisting entirely of symbols that gives very little intuititve idea of what's going on. Contrast this with the version that most mathematicians use -- "If you have n pigeonholes and n + 1 pigeons, some pigeonhole has more than 1 pigeon." I know which version I prefer!

What the Metamath page does is lay out proofs of logic and set theory. That's fine, but people should realize that these fields are not at all representative of most areas of math. These fields tend to be very concerned with absolute precision (hence all the symbols), whereas most math is concerned only with ideas (conveyed best through words). Unfortunately, I think this page gives people the idea that math is just an icky stream of symbols, which is definitely not true.

Tablet was the name of the winning entry, and it pretty much predicted all of the technology that Microsoft (and Apple, in their failed Newton pad project) were going to use: thin LCDs, wireless networking, lithium power sources, etc.

Read the winning team's report at http://www3.shore.net/~kht/text/cacm/cacm.htm. It's pretty neat, considering it was written over a decade ago.

You're a little late on number 6. 1+1 has been shown to be equal to 2, but the proof took 211 pages in Principia Mathematica . You can also find the proof for 2+2=4 here. 2+2=4 is obviously related to 1+1=2, with a few extra steps.


...phil

I F YOU PAID $1,000,000 to advertise on the Super Bowl and only viewers with a Sony 35 inch TV set could see it, would you be getting your money's worth?

Accessible web design increases the size of the audience for your page. Inaccessible designs lock part of your audience out. How is that justifed by "da bottom line?"

I'm thinking you take a few of the machine-gun guy's LEGO Toy Canyons, one of his guns, and this six-legged walker ... pick a battlefield, and go forth and conquer. :)

Which brings up the question: is there a way to get some Crusoe chips into these, set up TCP/IP, and have the battles remotely via webcams?

--

Watching the millenium roll by made me realise...

Did you suddenly learn how to travel forward in time and not share it with anyone? Take a look at this link.

I want a rock.

Does that mean you're not going to inflict upon us any more postings for an entire year?

link



I want a rock.

The current issue of Computer Graphics World has an interesting article on Toy story 2 and the processes that went into making it. It seems that one of the concerns was losing the sense of continuity with the first movie because of the advances in the technology since then.

The movie was done using Renderman (as are all of Pixar's films). More info could probably be found on the comp.graphics.rendering.renderman newsgroup (although there's not much discusion of the movie going on today).

C.

Check out the most recent issue of Computer Graphics World and read their cover story.

Here are a few choice quotes:

Pixar uses Alias|Wavefront's (Toronto) Alias Studio for modeling, Interactive Effects' (Irvine, CA) Amazon Paint for painting, and a host of custom software for such tasks as modeling, animation, and compositing-all running on SGI machines. For rendering, the studio used its own RenderMan software running on Sun machines.

...and:

Pixar's renderfarm has now grown to 1400 processors and even so, Toy Story 2 pushed the studio's rendering capabilities to the limit. There are 122,699 frames in the movie, according to Thomas Jordan, render technical director (TD), who, with a team of 10 "render wranglers," herded final frames through the render pipeline. According to Jordan, the time it took to render each frame ranged from 10 minutes to three days, with frame sizes as large as 4gb. The fastest output was 930 feet of film, or 14,880 frames, in one week.

Loads more, and they talk with all the principles of the film, John Lasseter, Ed Catmull and the rest. Not too many spoilers, and the detail is great...for instance, the dust on the shelf Wheezy was on was NOT a particle system; it was actually discrete geometry. And the hairs on Al's arm were modeled as well.

Well, there is one, or at least the beginnings of one. The source for a BeOS Look and Feel is available in the CVS tree for BeKaffe .. e-mail heuermh@shore.net for more information.

See also the BeKaffe home page.

mmm... Mars

I've got a story I worked on a while ago that
deals, somewhat, with this. It's about a group
of gene-modified/cyborged people exploring Mars.
It needs some more work, but I'm working on some
other writing projects now, so the Cats are on
the back burner:
Cats on Mars
Anyway, if you like it, send me some feedback.

Linux Journal, Issue 56, December 1998
p. 30

"Performance Monitoring Tools for Linux", by David Gavin.

Really nice article. 6 pages. First introduces linux facilities to get information in /proc. (for ex, /proc/stat), then goes about developping some shell scripts to make use of that. Presents a complete system that produces nice graphs about daily activity, etc. Well worth taking a look at.

The author later re-wrote the tools in perl, and the result can be found at:

http://www1.shore.net/~dgavin/Computer/

Enjoy!

So if you calculate the extra burden on the economy from every copy of Windows being US$30 to US$40 too expensive, plus the drag on the economy from so many brilliant minds being lured to work for over-inflated stock options rather than working on other potentially more productive software projects, then US$30Billion doesn't sound so bad.

And if competition scares you, GPL the whole mess. There are too many Windows coders for the code base to "stagnate". Perhaps you wouldn't see the inclusion of voice recognition in the OS, but you finally would see prompt bug and security fixes. And any monkey business with previously unpublished APIs and code breaks within published APIs would be fixed.
And yes such things do exist. Go find Bret Glass's article from last year where he published code demonstrating that Microsoft never removed, just disabled, the infamous DR-DOS message.
Some more of my thoughts on possible solutions to Microsoft v. DoJ.