Slashdot Mirror

In many present and (not so far) future experiments in HEP we deal with this kind of data rate. A nice overview can be found here here.

On page 14 you can find the data valume. It is at about 100 TB for present experiments (I am with BaBar).

page 25 gives some overview on the hardware we use at BaBar/SLAC (e.g. farms of STK Powderhorn tape silos with 6000 tapes each, etc..).

page 95 gives an overview on data rates. ATLAS records at 100Hz and 1MB per event, i.e. 100MB/s

Page 99 gives overview of the (estimated) costs of hardware and tapes for LHC experiments. They are in the order of 20 MCHF (Mega Swiss Franks ~ 0.8 Mega Dollar) initial + 10 MCHF per year. We use a mixture of large RAID farms and tape silos. Everything is managed by HPSS (High Performance Storage System). From my experience at BaBar I can tell you that these numbers are underestimated by at least a factor of 2.

The Lisp-like language I was referring to is the one listed on this page - look for the heading "The First Known Interpreter". This language is not Lisp as we know it - it used McCarthy's M-expression syntax - and syntactically, it is not the S-expression language that the first interpreter was capable of interpreting. Hence my statement that "the very first computer language interpreter ever was a Lisp interpreter, written in a Lisp-like language".

In "The implementation of Lisp" by McCarthy himself, he describes the following:

I decided to write a paper describing LISP both as a programming language and as a formalism for doing recursive function theory. The paper was "Recursive functions of symbolic expressions and their computation by machine, part I".
...
Another way to show that LISP was neater than Turing machines was to write a universal LISP function and show that it is briefer and more comprehensible than the description of a universal Turing machine. This was the LISP function eval[e,a], ...
...
S.R. Russell noticed that eval could serve as an interpreter for LISP, promptly hand coded it, and we now had a programming language with an interpreter.

Do I get that cigar now?

LISP has survived for 21 years because it is an approximate local optimum in the space of programming languages.

Lisp is a programmable programming language.

PIM's vs. paper... very interesting, but what really caught my attention in your post was this little gem:

One of my girlfriends Joselle had to cancel a date with me because...

Man, being a geek ain't what it used to be. I guess Scott Adams was right

The mouse was invented by Douglas C. Engelbart at Stanford

I fear most of his arguments are due to listening to RMS too much (I have great respect for genius, just a problem with his views in public). They don't reflect Open Source, more the FSF saying "all software must be mandated/forced open".

But, the valid case against Open Source is (realize I _AM_ a proponent, it's just good to know the negatives):

Suppose I tried to sell a customer a desktop Linux operating system and distribution.

The first consumer question is: is it compatible with MS applications?

The answer is "of course not". While Linux has many "Office" applications, compatibility with a proprietary protocol or format is a moving target, compatibility can't ever be guaranteed by anyone, and any competition is always one step behind, because MS changes their proprietary "standards" at will. As long as consumer's demand proprietary standards, their can be no real standards nor competition.

(It's very tough, but not insurmountable to overcome proprietary standards.)

Then, the consumer asks: I want to watch my DVD's... can Linux do that?

The answer is "yes... but it's illegal". No distribution can install the necessary DeCSS code, or the folks who sell the distribution would be charged with a criminal offense under the DMCA. Only those companies approved by the MPAA can legally sell the software for watching DVD's, and they aren't allowing any Open Source projects to do it. But you can go off shore (France) to get DVD viewing programs; but realize that software is illegal to possess in the states. Note that you bought or rented the DVD legally -- they're just trying to control the applications that allow you to watch it. The legislators decided that they couldn't stop those illegally distributing copyrighted material, so they wrote laws that make it criminal to write programs that compete with programs that handle copyrighted material.

When Open Source gets beyond proprietary standards, laws benefiting those with the proprietary lock-in kick in to help maintain monopolies and proprietary standards.

So, the customer asks: you mean to be compatible with Windows I have to use illegal "hacker" software.

The answer is, in the states, "yes".

As long as the answer is "yes", no Open Source distribution can be a legitimate contender for the desktop.

And can we really blame the architects of the WTC for not making the building plane-proof? No, I think they performed "reasonably" well.

Actually (my wife is an architect) the buildings WERE designed to be plane-proof...as long as the plane was a 707 or smaller and not loaded with as much fuel as the 9/11 planes were. Here's a story where the architect is quoted. You just have to set limits somewhere (as is your point) as to how far you can go. You obviously can't design the building to withstand the equivalent of a kiloton of TNT...I mean, sure you could, but it simply wouldn't be practical.

who, in turn, owe a debt to a quirky academic out east for the invention of the "mouse".

The mouse and hypertext was invented by the Englebart team at SRI in Menlo Park, CA (on Ravenswood near a really good bar, coffee shop and book store).

The original 1968 presentation which includes the world's introduction to hypertext and windowing is available on video at: http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/1968Demo.html. So, it might be safe to say Xerox owes their GUI to someone SRI who owes Turing who owes Grunt for discovering fire.

So we have heard this before, McNealy does not believe in privacy. I was tempted to stand up and ask him "How many abortions has your wife had?". He things his Java powered National ID card will make him safe from terrorists. Well Scott when the terrorist has no criminal history and perfectly passes a background check and still decides to die in order to further his cause, how safe will you feel then? McNealy spent the rest of his talk explaining monopolies and why Microsoft is evil and must be stopped. Some /. readers buy into the whole legitimacy of antitrust law. That is an argument for another time. Don't for a minute buy into the idea that Scott McNealy believes in antitrust law, it is merely a weapon against his rival Microsoft. A good question for Scott, "Since Intellectual Property Laws grant Microsoft monopoly power over their software, would you support the repeal of all such laws?" I think the answer would be interesting.

Nope. Can't do pixmap themes (that is, themes where all of the widgets, title-bars, etc have pixmaps, not just flat colors or gradients).
>>>>>
Nope, sorry. Try Window Blinds

Can't do windows with transparent backgrounds.
>>>>>
Wrong again. transparency too. Plus, this is even better than GNOME's transparency. Performance is great. Moving is instananeous, and resizing is only a little worse than KDE-2's without transparency. Plus, you can make any window transparent, play a video, and then put the transparent window over it. The video will by alpha-blended with the window in real time, without ANY flickering or jerking. I tried it with the opacity program web page, and the logo overlaid perfectly over a CNN newfeed. Last I heard, X won't allow *real* transparent windows, where the window underneath can update and the updates will show through. Oh, and all this is on a lowly PII-300 with 256MB of RAM.

Can't do much of the customization that you can do with Gnome.
>>>>>>
Like?

MS has just failed to put in the features that I'm suggesting low-end users turn off.
>>>>>
So, these features are just in my mind? I'm imagining real transparency because its so late at night?

To their credit, I find programs such as Audacity and snd equally useful as, say, Cool Edit, meaning I can paste together a few things and apply simple audio transformations, but nothing comes close to the sophistication offered by Pro Tools. So far linux's applications represent the "lite" of audio engineering.

Stanford already has a test suite for linux kernels, and it fixes hundreds of bugs that Alan Cox incorporates and passes along.

The checker lives here

"Yes...the former errand boy cum Sr. VP of Linux Promotion and SEC investigation was indeed the one who wrote the business plan that got them funding from Sequoia Cap, the same company that brought you Webvan.com. He promise them hype, and that is what he is good at. With Chris Dibona (last week he was still pushing VA's vaporware..do they still sell anything??) as his henchmen, the 2 basically hired every Linux developer in existence...promised them the moon and then fired them. In addition, they tried to malign and defame other Linux companies because that is how they do business. They even manage to destroy the quaint Silicon Valley Linux Group (SVLUG) into the hype machine that is VA LUG!"

"In the midst of all this, they forgot they needed to make money to pay the pension holders back for the IPO. Instead, JTH cashed 100MM out, without it being listed in Yahoo insider. Dibona bought a fancy new house and car, Larry has cashed $35 MM out, according to Yahoo insiders..."

"Yes, Marc Merlin, SVLUG's current president, even became a doomed VAer...Hall, Dibona and Augustin tried in their glory to create the "VA Linux machine." If you were not with them (and their overhyped IPO scheme to rob pension holders of money) then they would use eveything in their power, including the once neutral Slashdot.org or their fake news site, Newsforge to destroy you. If there is enough interest in this board, I will create a website, with facts to substatiate all statements made here...with even more facts on hypster of Hall, Dibona, & Augustin...please reply to post if you are interested..."

"Linux will never die because the foresight of RMS and Linus but VA must surely. If Linux is to ever win the server, desktop market...heck... the hearts of computer users all around the world, then the people behind the scene must be highly ethical and deserving of success."

"That being said, John T. Hall was fired, and is now hyping another start-up, writing another biz plan for Sequoia Cap, so more pensions can lose money."

"Tell these guys how you really feel directly at:"

John T. Hall
289 Fernando Ave
Palo Alto, CA 94306
ceo@sse.stanford.edu
650-494-0818

Chris Dibona
dibona@dibona.com
(He is the Linux Evangelist from day 1 since VC funding...basically selling Linux out)

and of course Larry...lma@valinux.com

also, email:
leone@sequoiacap.com
moritz@sequoiacap.com

There is a lot of visualization research happening at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that's using Linux. A lot of the boxes that we do our day-to-day work on are boxes running RedHat 7.1. We're researching how to best use the latest nVidia drivers with GeForce 3 cards.

I've personally been working on scalable parallel rendering. We have a couple Linux clusters that we're working with. The one that I work on is a 32-node cluster with a Myrinet interconnect. Each box has hardware graphics in it. That cluster is hooked up to several displays so that we can explore very large tiled displays. I'm working on a project called Chromium that's hosted at SourceForge.

So I think you could say that the researchers in the DOE are very interested in what Linux can do.

For those of you with some extra CPU cycles left over from running SETI@home, you should check out what Stanford's Pande Group is doing. Their two big distributed programs are Folding@home and Genome@home which do research in protein folding and their geometry. And if you're the type that worries what happens with the research (for profit, non profit, who gets the results, etc.), check the F@H FAQ that answers some of those questions - it's all non profit and eventually the results will be publicly available.

IMHO, I like Folding@home and Genome@home more than SETI because their results hit closer to home than SETI. But it's all in the name of science so as long as everyone can benefit from some spare CPU cycles, it's all good =)
t.

For those of you with some extra CPU cycles left over from running SETI@home, you should check out what Stanford's Pande Group is doing. Their two big distributed programs are Folding@home and Genome@home which do research in protein folding and their geometry. And if you're the type that worries what happens with the research (for profit, non profit, who gets the results, etc.), check the F@H FAQ that answers some of those questions - it's all non profit and eventually the results will be publicly available.

IMHO, I like Folding@home and Genome@home more than SETI because their results hit closer to home than SETI. But it's all in the name of science so as long as everyone can benefit from some spare CPU cycles, it's all good =)
t.

For those of you with some extra CPU cycles left over from running SETI@home, you should check out what Stanford's Pande Group is doing. Their two big distributed programs are Folding@home and Genome@home which do research in protein folding and their geometry. And if you're the type that worries what happens with the research (for profit, non profit, who gets the results, etc.), check the F@H FAQ that answers some of those questions - it's all non profit and eventually the results will be publicly available.

IMHO, I like Folding@home and Genome@home more than SETI because their results hit closer to home than SETI. But it's all in the name of science so as long as everyone can benefit from some spare CPU cycles, it's all good =)
t.

For those of you with some extra CPU cycles left over from running SETI@home, you should check out what Stanford's Pande Group is doing. Their two big distributed programs are Folding@home and Genome@home which do research in protein folding and their geometry. And if you're the type that worries what happens with the research (for profit, non profit, who gets the results, etc.), check the F@H FAQ that answers some of those questions - it's all non profit and eventually the results will be publicly available.

IMHO, I like Folding@home and Genome@home more than SETI because their results hit closer to home than SETI. But it's all in the name of science so as long as everyone can benefit from some spare CPU cycles, it's all good =)
t.

I prefer projects with a higher probability to make an actual differene to how people live, like the (already named) Folding@Home, Genome@Home, or FightAIDSatHome. The last one may not appeal to many here as Entropia, the distributed computing network behind it, apparantly insists in throwing in some commercial work packets to the clients. Finding a cure for AIDS sounds like a splendid idea, otoh.
My personal favorite is GIMPS, the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, discoverers of the four largest explicitly known prime numbers. I like them because you actually have a chance to understand what the program is doing (if number theory is for you, that is). IMHO better than looking at some blinking lights of a screen saver that looks for ET.

Alex

I prefer projects with a higher probability to make an actual differene to how people live, like the (already named) Folding@Home, Genome@Home, or FightAIDSatHome. The last one may not appeal to many here as Entropia, the distributed computing network behind it, apparantly insists in throwing in some commercial work packets to the clients. Finding a cure for AIDS sounds like a splendid idea, otoh.
My personal favorite is GIMPS, the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, discoverers of the four largest explicitly known prime numbers. I like them because you actually have a chance to understand what the program is doing (if number theory is for you, that is). IMHO better than looking at some blinking lights of a screen saver that looks for ET.

Alex

Of course it's. I think many will disagree but there's no point breaking RC5 or any other cryptographic key. We already know that it's possible. It's like breaking a glass. The only question is if it will break with the first hit... or how long it will take to break the key - we already know it'll happen sooner or later anyway. If we weren't breaking the key with brute force it could be more interesting...

Searching for ET is more interesting because we don't know the answer for sure. Probably we won't find anything. OTOH, why miss the change to be the discover if we do?

In the end, helping with folding problem would probably be the sane thing for a geek because there's a nice probability that we get something usefull out of used CPU time.

Its a matter of scale. Authors have made much of the impact that learning that there is (well has? by the time a signal would reach us) another civilisation out there. However in the shorter timeframe there are perhaps more pressing and worthwhile projects, be it looking at protein self assembly and nanotechnology, modelling global warming and so forth. Anyway, its your computer to use as you see fit and its up to various projects to press thier case for you idle time.

I seriously question the science of SETI@home. I left them after one of the first debacles where they kept sending out the same packet of data to most everyone.

genome and folding@home just seems so much more likely to be useful.

If you're an atheist (or even if you aren't) you're welcome to join our genome@home team, Wicked Old Atheists. We're currently placed #24 in the world.

I seriously question the science of SETI@home. I left them after one of the first debacles where they kept sending out the same packet of data to most everyone.

genome and folding@home just seems so much more likely to be useful.

If you're an atheist (or even if you aren't) you're welcome to join our genome@home team, Wicked Old Atheists. We're currently placed #24 in the world.

I've done the SETI thing and the Distributed.net thing and both, IMHO, were not very pragmatic. Other distributed projects exist, like Folding@Home and my favorite Genome@Home. They need more computing power, so please visit and try them. The even have Linux console versions for x86 machines.

I've done the SETI thing and the Distributed.net thing and both, IMHO, were not very pragmatic. Other distributed projects exist, like Folding@Home and my favorite Genome@Home. They need more computing power, so please visit and try them. The even have Linux console versions for x86 machines.

There's a simulator in Knuth's book. (It's source code is available for download, but you need CWEB, of course.)

MMIX, of course.

Cheap grab for box-office bucks? Hardly.

First, you assert rather blatantly and incorrectly that "movie-making is a business, of which entertainment is a by-product". Filmmaking is an artform. Hollywood is an industry which uses and very often abuses the artform in the pursuit of wealth. The establishment within Hollywood largely, but not exclusively, pursues films which cost less to make than they can probably be assumed to gross. The artform, then, often suffers, because marketing forces affect both the sort of films which are made, and frequently the way in which films are made.

Having clarified that, let us move on.

Filmmaking is an artform, and certain films are universally recognized as being fantastic works of art- regardless of the processes or powers that created them. You can not look at many of the masterpieces of modern cinema and pretend otherwise. Tell me, was "Taxi Driver" a cheap-grab for box-office bucks? "Citizen Kane"? "Sex, Lies and Videotape"? "Run Lola Run"? "This Is Spinal Tap"?

Few films are both artistic masterpieces and box-office blockbusters. Nevertheless, some films are, and it is elitist and cynical to be dismissive of high art that just happens to be popular and financially successful.

"The Matrix" is, regardless of your somewhat low-regard for the film, a true masterpiece of science-fiction. Yes, the creators of the film offhandedly said the "Matrix is about robots vs. kung fu". That comment was a humble, joking hypersimplification. Sorry if you missed that.

Do some reading. Consider Simulacra and Simulations for starters (a book which Neo has early in the film). Read up on Culture Jamming. There is a war underway, RIGHT NOW, for the control of the minds of mankind. "The Matrix" is a film which addresses that very subject- co-opting the form of a shoot-them-up-sci-fi-FX-supermovie in order to make a bigger point than most of you seem to have realized.

The 60s were a period of great civil unrest and cultural change. Many great films of the day reflected the social upheaval our nation experienced- touching on the subjects of the civil rights (for minorities and women), the counter-culture, etc.

As we speak, a new war rages- but it is a quiet war, an invisible one. The war is being waged by corporate interests, using media and advertising, to create and control a complete version of reality, one which allows them to encourage endless consumption and one that discourages them from questioning the reality. The rebellion is being fought by individuals and groups that realize that the consumption culture is creating empty shells of all of us. It is isolating us from family and community.

The rebellion has no leader- it has no center. It is a thousand small pockets of rebellion, each attempting to use novel means to awaken others to the war. Noteworthy authors include Thomas Frank (One Market Under God), Adbusters, Neil Postman ("The Disappearance of Childhood" and "Amusing Ourselves to Death"), Mark Osborn ("More" (a FANTASTIC short film)and so many, many others.

The film "The Matrix" is a part of this movement. It isn't just a cool sci-fi. Yes, the film is being marketed and used by the Producer Joel Silver to generate a serious mint. The system is necessarily co-opted to subsidize the creation of the expensive, incredibly complex work. Is this hypocritical? You decide. Do the ends justify the means? I would say yes. I'd rather see "The Matrix" realized as a $100M work than see what the Brothers would've been able to come up with using only the money they made painting houses and doing their first film, "Bound".

Watch the movie again with these facts in mind. Research the culture-jamming movement and read everything you can if you want to be a part of the fight. If you don't, at least be aware that it is being waged- and that you minds are the spoils if the powers win the war.

Both this post, and the moderator, are wrong.

Please read up before more nonproductive moderating and posting.

Maybe it's because all the alternatives are still under development? IE's really the only mature browser available for OS X. All the features are there, and they work well enough, while Omniweb, iirc, has major CSS issues to deal with, Moz/Netscape have stability and UI, and both iCab and Opera are in the time-bombed beta stage. Though iCab's "pre-release" feature set beats everyone elses, imho.

(Posted with Omniweb, which is great, as long as you're not looking at this page.)

Yeah, but most geeks didn't think that such a network would be useful. See the last few days' message traffifc on the RicochetUsers group.

For those who don't know, Ricochet modems can operate in three modes. The first is similar to 802.11b's "infrastructure" mode, where the modems all report to the Metricom network. The second mode is "hayes emulation", where one Ricochet modem can directly dial another, independent of Metricom's repeaters (as long as they're within range, which is quite long!). The third mode is "Starmode", similar to 802.11b's "ad-hoc" mode. The IP-over-Starmode drivers have been part of the Linux kernel since 1.x, the package is called STRIP and it's worth looking into.

802.11b has pathetic range. Better antennae are directional, which isn't suitable in this situation. For this reason, I'm going to suggest keeping the Ricochet modems in service, just flipping them into Starmode so they can operate on a geek network, rather than Metricom's network.

"QWERTIOP", two machines in the same room at Cambridge, supposedly according to here.
Stanford claims that they were the recipient of the first data communication.

"QWERTIOP", two machines in the same room at Cambridge, supposedly according to here.
Stanford claims that they were the recipient of the first data communication.

E-Mail is more than 30 years old. Doug Englebart's NLS system was doing email for years prior to '71, and infact, demonstrated it publically in '68.

Get your facts straight, gang.

Cheers,

I have no idea what the original intent was, but Knuth says let's drop the hyphen. I have to agree with him. Think of how much time you would save by typing it email instead of e-mail. History shows language evolves to the point where the hyphen is omitted reguarly. Whens the last time you saw "main-frame" or "soft-boot"? Mainframe and softboot are the prefered forms, and for a good reason.

Don Knuth weighs in on this at the bottom of this page.

I've often wished I had the guts to take the same action as Donald Knuth and get rid of my e-mail address:

• "... it seems to me that 15 years of email is plenty for one lifetime."

Of course, I'll be the first to admit that DEK's time is more in demand than mine.

At the school that I went to about 10% of each class majored in CS. However, over 50% of all undergraduates took CS 106 which at the time was a pretty fast-paced introductory C course. Later in life, which would you want to work with:
A) The English major who has written a fractal generation program, and has spent hours debugging code.
B) The English major who only used a computer to write papers.

If you picked B then I can't help you. Maybe your university is expecting too much from you.

If you picked A then use some of that logic that you've learned and apply it to yourself.

As for the comment about learning what you'll need for the next 10 years, what industry do you think you'll be working in? Should the people who graduated in 1993 not have learned Java since then? I graduated in 1998 and have spent much of the time since then working with smart cards. Should I have learned that in school? The technical aspects of your education prepare you enough that your first employer won't laugh at your resume. The theoretical aspects give you the tools you need to teach yourself new skills and that is what the computer industry is all about.

Disclaimer: I majored in CS and minored in Portuguese. I thought the different specialties were each a nice break from each other. I certainly never thought that either one hurt me.

http://crypto.stanford.edu/ibe/

Based on ellipses.


An Identity Base Encryption (IBE) scheme is a public-key cryptosystem where any string is a valid public key. In particular, email addresses are public keys. Only a trusted party knows the private key corresponding to a particular public key.
In standard public-key cryptosystems such as RSA, if Alice wants to send Bob an encrypted message, Bob must first generate a public key, and then Alice must retrieve it before she can encrypt. Alternatively, there might exist a directory service; a third party generates a public key on Bob's behalf (and gives the private key to Bob later), but Alice must still retrieve this key from this directory service.

With IBE, if Alice wants to send Bob an encrypted message, she simply encrypts using Bob's email address. Thus Bob's email address is his public key; there is no need for Bob to use cryptography software to generate a public key, nor does Alice have to retrieve a public key from Bob, or from a directory service.

Once Bob receives an encrypted message, he retrieves his private key from the trusted server (he only has to do this the first time) and then decrypts.

The main aim of this project to encourage use of encrypted email. Conventional public-key systems have trouble spreading beecause the average user has little motivation to generate keys. However, because the trusted server (or servers) knows every user's private key (i.e. the system has built-in key escrow), it is hoped that users will migrate to traditional public-key cryptosystems, and we are ressearching how to automate the transition and make it as seamless as possible. (For example, since the server is trusted, it naturally takes on the role of a certificate authority when switching to standard cryptosystems.)

Get your own private key here or download the GPLed source or windows binaries here.

http://crypto.stanford.edu/ibe/

Based on ellipses.


An Identity Base Encryption (IBE) scheme is a public-key cryptosystem where any string is a valid public key. In particular, email addresses are public keys. Only a trusted party knows the private key corresponding to a particular public key.
In standard public-key cryptosystems such as RSA, if Alice wants to send Bob an encrypted message, Bob must first generate a public key, and then Alice must retrieve it before she can encrypt. Alternatively, there might exist a directory service; a third party generates a public key on Bob's behalf (and gives the private key to Bob later), but Alice must still retrieve this key from this directory service.

With IBE, if Alice wants to send Bob an encrypted message, she simply encrypts using Bob's email address. Thus Bob's email address is his public key; there is no need for Bob to use cryptography software to generate a public key, nor does Alice have to retrieve a public key from Bob, or from a directory service.

Once Bob receives an encrypted message, he retrieves his private key from the trusted server (he only has to do this the first time) and then decrypts.

The main aim of this project to encourage use of encrypted email. Conventional public-key systems have trouble spreading beecause the average user has little motivation to generate keys. However, because the trusted server (or servers) knows every user's private key (i.e. the system has built-in key escrow), it is hoped that users will migrate to traditional public-key cryptosystems, and we are ressearching how to automate the transition and make it as seamless as possible. (For example, since the server is trusted, it naturally takes on the role of a certificate authority when switching to standard cryptosystems.)

Get your own private key here or download the GPLed source or windows binaries here.

Well, she contradicted every statement on this page...Critiques
..True these are opposing ideas, but my side has back ups too.

Anf if you can't trust someone in Stanford U who backs up his opinion with reasons (unlike the professor who just spitted out opinions, and backed them up with more opinions) who can you trust?

All this said and done, I would like to make a comment that I really do not oppose their views, I am just tired of the snotty types, who believe they are fighters for rights..freedom, whatever, while in reality, they do not know jack about what they are trying to achieve.

This goes for other flamewars as well. Personally I am tired of anti-microsoft people who can't run their linux systems without KDE/other graphical management installed, and then claim that NT is bloated with unnecessary crap. For that I am willing to be devil's advocate. Oh well, I am moving off topic..

Anyway just to get back to my opinion -- ethernet in class makes for good discussion topics.

Pang: Can you say something about your role in deciding how many buttons the mouse would have?

Raskin: Yeah. That's my fault entirely.

I had observed at PARC, in myself and others, that the three-button mouse was confusing. And I said, "What would be the way of making it so there would never be any question about what button to press?" If there's only one button, you can't make any mistakes. So I said, "Let's make a mouse with one button." But the first thing is, how can you do all the things? You have to use a few buttons to do everything on the PARC machine.

So I designed the method of using a one-button mouse, and so invented a lot of methods that are still in use, like click and drag for selecting a region, and for dragging things across the screen. Now the first one, it turns out, I only learned years later-- only a few years ago-- there had been a use of dragging for selecting text in Gypsy, but I didn't know about that editor then, so I invented it independently. But the ones about collecting things, and dragging icons across, that was not at PARC.

So I invented the one-button mouse, and the methods for how to use it, and it's really a very heady feeling to go up to almost anybody in this entire culture, and know that they're using something that I invented every day. They don't know that anybody invented it at all.

and then there's this, by some of the designers who built the mice themselves:

Sun: The only story I have on that is also anecdotal. Someone else told me that Chris Espinosa said that it would be easier for him to write the documentation if there was only one button, so he wouldn't have to talk about "left button" and "right button."

Kelley: The woman who was writing the user's manual was heavily involved, and they thought that it would be easier to explain how to use it if it had one button.

Yurchenco: I don't remember strong arguments for two buttons from anybody. I don't think there was much strong support from it at Apple at all. There may have been some software guys who wanted it because they could put more bells and whistled on, but I don't ever remember any screaming arguments there. I don't think it was a big decision in the end.... It's probably one of those osmosis decisions: the consensus is there, and people just say, "Yeah, it's going to be one button."

Sachs: As for the one-, two-, or three-button design, we just built all kinds of different prototypes of buttons, and one button seemed easier to use. It might have gone differently if there was software to use that would have shown why you needed a second button. At Apple, the evidence that the mouse was designed first, rather than the user interface, is that only later on did the idea of option-clicking, shift-clicking, command-clicking come about. If we had known that that was required, it might have forced us to make a two-button mouse.

So it appears that the one-button mouse was developed by Raskin, and supported by a few people, around whom a consensus naturally grew, _prior_ to the full-fledged design or testing of the UI at all, and founded on little more than Raskin's personal experiences with Alto mice. There may have been after-the-fact user testing, but no one has seemed to discuss this. As I am very interested in computing history, I would be very grateful if you could point me to someplace that contraverts this point, and which has some weight behind it. (honestly, it's interesting to me, no joke)

As for the early Mac interface, remember, an intuitive UI is one that people can pick up immediately. An easy-to-learn UI is one that requires actual effort to learn, but very very little. Given that the Mac had to ship with really good documentation (I still have copies), audio casette tapes, posters, etc. back in '84 and still people often had a hard time 'getting it' (e.g. the disasterous Test Drive promotion) I wouldn't call it intuitive, so much as very easy to learn. There is a minor, but important difference, i.e. if a mouse was intuitive, people would know what to do with it the first time they see it, rather than learning how to use it easily by watching someone use it for all of five seconds.

A tree is built - the rating is based on not just how many people link to a page, but how many people link to the page linking to the page, etc. all the way back through the tree. The rank is scaled by the number of links on a page (so a link on a page with few links ranks higher than a page on a bookmark listing).

The text linked to a page (i.e. what's inside the <a>...</a> tags is used as well as the text in the page itself (it often gives a higher quality match). Yet another reason to use good descriptive text for your links than "click here" :)

A tree is built - the rating is based on not just how many people link to a page, but how many people link to the page linking to the page, etc. all the way back through the tree. The rank is scaled by the number of links on a page (so a link on a page with few links ranks higher than a page on a bookmark listing).

The text linked to a page (i.e. what's inside the <a>...</a> tags is used as well as the text in the page itself (it often gives a higher quality match). Yet another reason to use good descriptive text for your links than "click here" :)

Not for the PS2, but you might want to check out Stanford's video game competition . The games are all full 3D, and many have simple, but effective, AI, not to mention great gameplay! The results are incredible: after only 3 weeks, 3 people.

See The 1982 Daily Kal

(Well, it looked much better on paper.)

Polls like this are the worst examples of manipulation. The polsters rely on the general public's ignorance, and go out of their way to perpetuate that ignorance. We went once around with this last time the WTC was attacked. And guess what.... the terrorists did _not_ use encryption then either.

"The terrorists responsible for the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City attacks did not use encryption. Furthermore, both the New York and Oklahoma City bombings were solved using traditional law enforcement methods of investigation, not electronic surveillance... Moreover, the validity of the government's demand for unprecedented power to invade privacy in its concern over terrorism has to be considered in light of other preventive efforts." [story here]

And [here] is an interesting story from [U.K. Yahoo] concerning the absolute futility of any effort to hurt terrorists by restricting crypto.

My recommendation: encrypt your snail mail.

I don't have any reason to be SURE, but http://foldingathome.stanford.edu is all buggered up with regards to their counts.

Check out http://archimedes.stanford.edu/