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> When they get the Linux client, they'll get 79,000 /.ers.

Well, you don't have to wait.

If you want to contribute to a good project, why not join Slashdot's team over at Folding@Home?

Unlike the IBM project, Folding@Home has its very own Linux console version.

I really like Folding@Home too.

Folding@Home is pretty to watch as the atoms get twisted about. I particularly like when you get some of the larger projects with 12,000+ atoms in total.

I used to crunch SETI packets, but that project lost me after when they upgraded to BOINC. BOINC managed to crash my otherwise unshakable Win2K machine, which is completely unacceptable.

So here's my question: How pretty is the eye candy on this new IBM client? Does anyone have screenshots?

I really like Folding@Home too.

Folding@Home is pretty to watch as the atoms get twisted about. I particularly like when you get some of the larger projects with 12,000+ atoms in total.

I used to crunch SETI packets, but that project lost me after when they upgraded to BOINC. BOINC managed to crash my otherwise unshakable Win2K machine, which is completely unacceptable.

So here's my question: How pretty is the eye candy on this new IBM client? Does anyone have screenshots?

Why use wine?
I've been working with Stanford on Protein Folding for a while...plus they support Windows, Linux AND MacOSX

Let us know when IBM decides to let the 'rest of us' in on their fun and maybe we'll join up...

Why use wine?
I've been working with Stanford on Protein Folding for a while...plus they support Windows, Linux AND MacOSX

Let us know when IBM decides to let the 'rest of us' in on their fun and maybe we'll join up...

Now that was a funny advertisement. 79 users? By the time it takes me to write this sentence, at least that many will have joined up.

Seriously, I'm already running Folding@home, and have been for a while now. Processing for cancer is cooler than cranking for IBM. Sorry guys.

From what it appears, IBM's newest creation seems to be a poorly created or prematurely released distributed project: only Windows apps, and only dual processor support included. As someone else mentioned, HT isn't enabled for those who have the hardware capable.

When they finish their project and have proper clients, then this will be news.

Check it Out

I am currently running Folding@Home. As soon as I finish with that research, I will move my 20Ghz to the next medical research project.

**They also have a Linux client.

I'm reminded of a note on Dr. Donald Knuth's web page. Dr. Knuth apparently ditched e-mail in 1990 after 15 years of use.

Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration.

I'm reminded of a note on Dr. Donald Knuth's web page. Dr. Knuth apparently ditched e-mail in 1990 after 15 years of use.

Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration.

One of the more famous advocates of batch processing by humans is Don Knuth (the inventor of LaTeX and the author of "The Art of Computer Programming"). Read about why he doesn't have an email address. Of course, unlike us mere mortals, he can afford not to have one :-)

One of the more famous advocates of batch processing by humans is Don Knuth (the inventor of LaTeX and the author of "The Art of Computer Programming"). Read about why he doesn't have an email address. Of course, unlike us mere mortals, he can afford not to have one :-)

It wouldn't work, because at any one instant in time, several of the cameras are taking a picture at once. This is why in the fan video, the blades are warped - they are moving as the image is being scanned from the sensor.

This means that to get an image from a single moment in time, you need to take strips from all the cameras that are taking a picture at one time and splice them together.

So the difficulty with a rotating mirror system would be splitting the light between several cameras at once. Also, the images would be darker, as you're effectively splitting one camera's light between several.

First, this work is part of a larger research effort. In the past several years, cameras have become cheap, commodity devices, and you still get more processing power for the buck every year. I designed the Stanford Multiple Camera Array (http://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/array) not to be a high-speed camera, but to be a research tool for exploring the potential of large numbers of cheap image sensors and plentiful processing. High-speed video is one example of high-performance imaging using an array of cameras. We have also used our array for synthetic aperture photography, using many cameras to simulate a camera with a very large aperture. Such a camera has a very narrow depth of field, a property we exploit to look through partially occluding foreground objects like foliage. We are interested in view interpolation (Matrix-like effects, but with user control over the virtual camera viewpoint), too. If you want to learn more about the array and these applications, check out the links to our papers and my dissertation on the camera array website.

About the high-speed video work in particular, there are plenty of commercial high-speed cameras that run at higher frame rates than our camera array. If you want high-speed video camera, I recommend buying one of them. Using an array of cheap cameras has its disadvantages. You have to geometrically and radiometrically calibrate the data from all the different sensors, and in our case, we had to deal with the electronic rolling shutter. One benefit of this work for us was developing accurate and automatic (very important for 100 cameras) calibration methods for our array. An interesting property of the camera array approach is that parallel compression reduces the bandwidth so we can stream continuously. By contrast, as frame rate increase, most high-speed cameras are limited to recording durations that will fit in memory at the camera, usually well under one minute. That said, one could certainly design architectures to compress high-speed video in real-time.

What's most interesting to me about the high speed work is combining it with other multiple camera methods. One example is spatiotemporal view interpolation--capturing a bunch of images of a scene from different positions and times, then generating new views from positions and times not in the captured data. Think Matrix again, but with user control over the virtual camera view position and time. While the BulletTime setup from Manex captured one specific space-time camera trajectory, my goal is to capture images in a way that would let us create many different virtual camera paths later on. Traditional view interpolation methods use arrays of cameras synchronized to trigger simultaneously so they can reason about shape of the "frozen" scene, then infer how the scene is moving. In my thesis, I discuss how using the high-speed approach of staggered trigger times increases our temporal sampling resolution (effective frame rate) and can enable simpler interpolation methods. The interpolation algorithm I describe is also exactly the correction needed to eliminate the jitter due to parallax in the high-speed video sequences.

I've described just a few of the applications we've investigated using our camera array, but we hope this is just the tip of the iceberg. We're hard at work on new uses for the cameras, so stay tuned.

The Spanish flu of 1918, which killed between 20 and 40 _million_ people across the world? For more details see here...

How do they put all the footage together in the correct 'order', that is to say where each frame is in sequence.How can they be sure that none of the cameras capture the same instant of the action?

You know, there might be a reason why those people are at Stanford.

A related area that may be of interest:

There is a deterministic interpretation of QM, known as de Broglie-Bohm Theory (dBB Theory) (or Bohmian Mechanics, pilot-wave theory), which was first proposed in 1927 and is currently an active area of research.

This theory maintains causality. However, it requires the existence of non-local effects (effects that propagate at faster than the speed of light).

More about it here:

• Bohmian Mechanics.
• Causal explanation of the double-slit experiment.
• Bohm interpretation.

A related area that may be of interest:

There is a deterministic interpretation of QM, known as de Broglie-Bohm Theory (dBB Theory) (or Bohmian Mechanics, pilot-wave theory), which was first proposed in 1927 and is currently an active area of research.

This theory maintains causality. However, it requires the existence of non-local effects (effects that propagate at faster than the speed of light).

More about it here:

• Bohmian Mechanics.
• Causal explanation of the double-slit experiment.
• Bohm interpretation.

There's a video about it here: video/mov,4MB [stanford.edu]
Mentioned in news article from [stanford.edu] ay

There's a video about it here: video/mov,4MB [stanford.edu]
Mentioned in news article from [stanford.edu] ay

Right here [stanford.edu]

(Quicktime required) qs

QM accounts for the data to ridiculous accuracy and the only problem is accepting the interpretation. and that's a problem with humans, not QM.

No, it seems more like a problem with current theory. QM is very accurate as far as it goes, but it doesn't give the whole picture, even in its own domain. Theories about the causes of decoherence - collapse of superposed states - are still very much under development, which explains why there's so much confusion about the subject.

The naive and typically anthropomorphic idea that human or conscious observation has something to do with decoherence hasn't been credible for a long, long, time, and Nature (the magazine) deserves to have its ass kicked for allowing an abstract to pit its argument against such a nonsensical straw man. For an update on the most credible current work, a good starting point is The Role of Decoherence in Quantum Theory.

Fine, you lazy bastard.

There you go. Happy now?

I am no geologist, but I wonder too about the relationship here between Earth's magnetic field changes and the two recent high magnitude quakes. Yes I know that these quakes are linked to subduction zones of the major plates, but at the same time I am thinking about the rotation of earth's magnetic core. If there is a major flip of the field, can we assume it is purely associated with field changes, or might there be some physical turbulence at lower levels, which manifest as quakes.

How can we test this hypothesis? Simple. Do some comparitive measurements of magnetic field strength and direction at the two locations which experienced major quakes. I suspect there may be a correlation, and further predict major tremblors in the near future, linked to an acceleration of magentic field changes, especially ELF magnetic signals.

Everything I've read on slashdot will have you belive these hybrids are clean and green. And they are on the surface... But what your NOT told about is when it comes to disposing of those batteries and replacing them. It's bad enough seeing standard lead acid car batteries being illigally dumped, but can you imagine if everyone started driving hybrids?

Look folks, even if you could centrally recycle and administer these batteries, your still having to deal with the chemical pollution they cause themselves in regards to manufacturing and servicing. At this point, why not use bio-fuels such as diesel and E85? We all know that the Sun UV rays will break up these gassious compounds in the upper atmosphere and simple CO2 will reused by mother nature is some form and fassion. At the worst, will just get quicker growing plant life...as alreadying being recording.

Just to be fair though, I see studies reporting both positive and negitive impacts of high CO2 levels on plant life. So I guess the jury is still out on this one.

http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/001938.html

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2002/decembe r11/jasperplots-124.html

There's a video about it here: video/mov,4MB [stanford.edu]
Mentioned in news article from [stanford.edu] tf

There's a video about it here: video/mov,4MB [stanford.edu]
Mentioned in news article from [stanford.edu] tf

There's a video about it here: video/mov,4MB [stanford.edu]
Mentioned in news article from [stanford.edu] vuk

There's a video about it here: video/mov,4MB [stanford.edu]
Mentioned in news article from [stanford.edu] vuk

Right here [stanford.edu]

(Quicktime required) udx

• ... designed for visualizing and exploring software architecture and any other information space. SHriMP (Simple Hierarchical Multi-Perspective) is a domain-independent visualization technique designed to enhance how people browse and explore complex information spaces. Among the applications we are actively exploring is the exploration of large software programs, and the understanding of complex knowledge-bases (via the Protégé tool)."

Currently SHriMP runs both as a standalone application and, using the Creole plugin, inside Eclipse to augment its existing, extensive code browsing capabilities. There's also a plugin for Protégé, a Stanford project to build "an ontology editor and a knowledge-base editor" supporting new techologies such as OWL.

While Creole is currently Java-specific, SHriMP is a generic framework for code visualization.

> It's algorithm

Actually, it's Al-Gore-ism.

After all, Al Gore invented the Information Superhighway, and it is by this transmission medium that the viruses, trojans, and worms will travel.

Oddly enough, I tried to confirm this wisdom by flipping through Knuth, but the books got too heavy and I had to put them down again before I could find my proof.

Parody is the only Constitutionally-protected form of copying

I didn't realise parody was in the Constitution, but you are dodging the point, as the Constitution is not the only law in the land. From copyright.gov:

Under the fair use doctrine of the U.S. copyright statute, it is permissible to use limited portions of a work including quotes, for purposes such as commentary, criticism, news reporting, and scholarly reports. There are no legal rules permitting the use of a specific number of words, a certain number of musical notes, or percentage of a work. Whether a particular use qualifies as fair use depends on all the circumstances.

So you can copy and distribute stuff, and it does depend on the circumstances. Huh. That sounds almost identical to what I said, doesn't it?

However, parody by definition is not a copy, merely an imitation so close as to be easily recognizable as the real thing

You have an overly-narrow definition of parody. Parody may include copying, for instance rearranging video footage for ironic purposes.

If copying is not involved in parody, then why does copyright law have to exempt it?

However, parody has no relevance to a bit-for-bit copy of a piece of music or a movie.

That depends on the context. Given the right context, I believe John Cage's 4'33" could be parodied with a bit-for-bit copy, although personally I don't believe that it merits copyright protection in the first place.

However, I was only using parody as an example. Fair use doesn't just cover parody.

So, not to be argumentative, but your comment of "it's not true at all" is hogwash.

You claimed that you can't copy and distribute legally. That isn't true at all, and if you read the two links I've provided, you will see that.

News is a rather large exception. And even in the news, the image must be newsworthy.

Show me the law that says that. If it's done in public, it's fair game, regardless of whether it is "newsworthy" or not. I don't recall any newsworthiness standards, so I think that you're completely wrong.

Bzzzt. He's completely right. You're not.

Specifically what's wrong is your idea that "if it's done in public, it's fair game" - no, it isn't, and I want to put a stop to this myth right now.

Read this to learn the difference between informational (ie. news) and commercial (ie. non-news) uses of photography. Read this for some general information on when and why a release is required.

Now that that's out of the way, surely you must know that minors cannot sign binding contracts (ie. a release from a minor is meaningless, even if one exists in this case), and that depictions of underage nudity in this country are illegal in their own right. What some people are doing in this thread right now is defending child porn, whether or not they think that's what it is. Legally, that is what it is.

There is grounds for a lawsuit here on several different issues, and grounds for criminal prosecution on at least one.

News is a rather large exception. And even in the news, the image must be newsworthy.

Show me the law that says that. If it's done in public, it's fair game, regardless of whether it is "newsworthy" or not. I don't recall any newsworthiness standards, so I think that you're completely wrong.

Bzzzt. He's completely right. You're not.

Specifically what's wrong is your idea that "if it's done in public, it's fair game" - no, it isn't, and I want to put a stop to this myth right now.

Read this to learn the difference between informational (ie. news) and commercial (ie. non-news) uses of photography. Read this for some general information on when and why a release is required.

Now that that's out of the way, surely you must know that minors cannot sign binding contracts (ie. a release from a minor is meaningless, even if one exists in this case), and that depictions of underage nudity in this country are illegal in their own right. What some people are doing in this thread right now is defending child porn, whether or not they think that's what it is. Legally, that is what it is.

There is grounds for a lawsuit here on several different issues, and grounds for criminal prosecution on at least one.

Of course that article adresses only legality. For the morality of it, I would say that because we grant copyright to promote innovation and art, we should not protect short phrases in most circumstanses. People offer quips spontaneosly for the approval of the people around them and for their own enjoyment, so protecting them does not promote innovation or art. And the harms of restricting these phrases are great, as every time I want to print something, I need to check if someone else was inspired the same way. This is a far smaller risk for larger works, as the ways of expressing the same idea grow exponentially with the number of words allowed. So while I admire you generosity I think it may be misplaced.

I don't think Linux has a realistic shot at beating down Apple (Logic), Steinberg (Nuendo, Cubase), Cakewalk (Sonar), Digidesign (Protools) and MOTU (Digital Performer) without any kind of differentiation.

I dunno...right now, all of the good sequencers are pretty expensive, so there's definitely a market on the Mac/PC for a somewhat decent, free sequencer. For instance, I own Logic 5.1 for Windows, which I use for recording and stuff, but I have an OSX laptop that I use for performances, etc. However, I can't afford Logic 7 for OSX, so it would be nice to have a minimal sequencer that I could use when I'm on the road.

an open-standard "music computer" with a lightweight embedded OS that can be taken out live on stage, and used to run what are effectively server applications (MIDI or audio in, audio or MIDI out) in a stable manner.

One thing to look into would be the Planet CCRMA version of Fedora out of Stanford. You have to install Fedora first, but then you install their stuff with APT. It has a low-latency kernel, and a bunch of audio software:

http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software/

Also, a traditional sequencer isn't really the best for live performances...look into PD http://www-crca.ucsd.edu/~msp/software.html or Supercollider http://www.audiosynth.com/ for live-performance stuff on Linux

Tom

The Art of Computer Programming (Donald Knuth) and the dragon book on compilers of course (I'm reading the first and I will buy the second in a few days). If you don't like mathematics, a good book on functional programming will make your brain all warm inside!

I found the following to be surprising and useful background for the glut of writing about complexity/emergence/universality etc. Lots of historical detail from J. S. Mill onwards about the use of emergence in philosophy. Good bibliography too of which I can recommend the Kaufman books as good fun:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties-emerg ent/

Einstein probably put it best when he said:
"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."

If it's good enough for Google then it's good enough for me. Although I'm guessing that in order to make it completely out of LEGO it will require quite a bit more space. Like maybe a stadium?

I would hate to see the instructions for it, and just imagine trying to find all the proper pieces. Wouldn't walk near it in the middle of the night either, man those things f'ing hurt.

This doesn't mean that the kernel has only 985 bugs, it means that the Stanford guys found 985 bugs using their particular tools (which scan for certain types of bugs). That's a big difference. Remember Dijkstra's law: testing can show the presence of bugs, but never their absence.

985 bugs is an absurdly low figure for a software system of any respectable size (except, maybe, life-critical systems). Hell, just looking at a handful of changelogs for Linux kernel releases gives you more bugs than that.

The merits of using computers for this sort of thing reminds me of Dijkstra's famous statement: "Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." The statement is very applicable to math as well. I have a book on my shelf called Concrete Mathematics - A Foundation for Computer Science. It's all math, the fact that it's for computer science is irrelevant. You needn't a computer to make sense of it. Until kids have actually learned the math (and in high school, they really haven't), I don't see the need for computers.

How dare they omit john backus? He invented fortran, which is still the most often used language for scientific calculations. And he pioneered functional programming.

He deserves to be on top of this list for this publication alone.

We'll just take the existing Wheel of Time books, feed them into a text synthesis engine and let it write any number of sequels. In fact, that's probably what Robert Jordan does now..

We are currently trying to build an institutional repository using DSpace. Open Source and pretty cool:

http://www.dspace.org/

In the Library we are testing LOCKSS. It looks like it could go far if it catches on:

http://lockss.stanford.edu/

Offtopic, not meant as a flame: If you're going to donate your CPU cycles to something, please donate them to Folding at Home instead. Potentially saving lives is better than trying to find aliens.

Global Warming is a Myth

It's nice to know I wasn't the only one who thought of the other Flash. Although I thought of All Your Base, Yatta, and How to Kill a Mockingbird first. :)

I know, very March 2001...

I think much of the tricks are covered in Bit Twiddling hacks here.