Slashdot Mirror

True, for a stationary black hole. But a rotating black hole is a lot more complicated; if it's rotating fast enough, the singularity (if there is one) can actually be exposed.

(Yeah, yeah, how can a point rotate? Well, angular momentum is assumed to be conserved. Indeed, recently NASA discovered good evidence that at least some black holes do, in fact, spin.)

Anyway, this "gravastar" model would presumably show markedly different results in the rotating case.

Here's more than you ever want to know about spina bifida / hydrocephalus and how it generally affects those who have it - one of whom talks about it here. One study on IQ follow-up is here but it only says the expected problems result. My wife is a labor / delivery nurse and sees this pretty frequently, it's not pretty and just about always causes neurological damage....

Thinking Machines Corp went out of business around 1994.

The story that Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet has been thoroughly debunked by Phil Agre in http://commons.somewhere.com/rre/2000/RRE.Al.Gore. and.the.Inte.html and rebutted further later
That meme was a creation of Declan McCullagh, a "reporter" for Wired News who is politically a dogmatic Libertarian so extreme that he managed to get a book chapter using him as a poster-boy for Libertarian ideologues, and a different book chapter using him as Libertarian joke-fodder.

If you think this is flame-bait, the aspect of his fabricated story being a Liberatarian hit-piece on Al Gore was extensively discussed in a debunking by Salon

After Declan McCullagh was repeatedly taken to task for his hatchet-job, over more than year, by everyone who was there, from Dave Farberto Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf, Declan finally grudgingly retracted the "story"

But people still repeat it, because urban legends never die.

Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)

The story that Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet has been thoroughly debunked by Phil Agre in http://commons.somewhere.com/rre/2000/RRE.Al.Gore. and.the.Inte.html and rebutted further later
That meme was a creation of Declan McCullagh, a "reporter" for Wired News who is politically a dogmatic Libertarian so extreme that he managed to get a book chapter using him as a poster-boy for Libertarian ideologues, and a different book chapter using him as Libertarian joke-fodder.
If you think this is flame-bait, the aspect of his fabricated story being a Liberatarian hit-piece on Al Gore was extensively discussed in a debunking by Salon

After Declan McCullagh was repeatedly taken to task for his hatchet-job, over more than year, by everyone who was there, from Dave Farberto Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf, Declan finally grudgingly retracted the "story"

But people still repeat it, because urban legends never die.

Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)

If you look hard enough, and know where to look, one can find an amazing set of "toys" that could be easily modified and/or mass-produced into something useful.

One such page I visited described research in the field of gesture capture, interfaces, and applications to sound synthesis and performance. Yes, it's for music & peformance now, but could be used for communications either by handicapped, or by individuals and situations where the human and/or NON-human voice is muted.

Vocoders are another set of techologies I personally find interesting. Here is a page that offers schematics on how to roll-your-own speach synths, text-to-speech and other goodies ... including do-it-yourself for some rather old computers.

Here's something for you young sprites trying to fake out mom so she thinks your practicing your paino. But remember, you're only cheating yourself !

Of course, you hardwire geeks already know about this one ... PAiA Electronics ... offering user assembled kits for all sorts of electronic products for hobbyists, musicians, education.

Of course, having cut my teeth in electronic music back in the late 70's, in an old analog studio, we saw all sorts of home brewed devices our mad PhD professor put together. From a rubber-band articulator (a record tone arm nailed to a board with a rubber-band and nails to change pitch) to using two tape recorders to get true double-deck dealay (the more nails, the bigger the delay !-). Here is a site that lists similar do it yourself projects.

Toys ... yup ... but I suspect there is also utility for it all.

Classes are not the only way to learn in college. I managed to get hired last year to do tech support work for a decently sized university. I worked all year last year, and am working there again this year. What have I learned from this job? Teamwork, troubleshooting, lots of experience with TCP/IP problems, networking problems, and even some stuff about how to run wires (they normally don't let the Student Consultants do anything with wiring). All the skills that you say you're looking for, but not finding in people fresh from college. All this and I'm still only a sophomore. (even though I've still got more time to go, not too early to start looking for a job ... if you're interested in hiring me, drop me a line)

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• Paul Verhelst, Computer Chess Programming. Includes many other links.
• T.A. Marsland, The Anatomy of Chess Programs. International Computer Chess Association.
• A.N. Walker, Notes for a course at the University of Nottingham.
• Fox, Williams, and Messina. Chapter from a book called Parallel Computing Works.

Very independent and forward thinking society.

Infant mortality rate (deaths/1000)
Sweden: 3.5
U.S.: 6.8

Life Expectancy (years)
Sweden: 79.6
U.S.: 77.1

Child poverty (%)
Sweden: 2.4
U.S.: 20.3

urlmon makes a connection to a web site and records the last_modified time
for that url. Upon subsequent calls, it will check the URL again, this
time comparing the information to the previously recorded times. (Note
that if the subsequent time is older (less than) the first, urlmon will
still assume that the URL has been updated. I figured I'd play it safe.)
Since the last_modified data is not required to be given by the http (it's
optional), urlmon will then take an MD5 checksum.

urlmon makes a connection to a web site and records the last_modified time
for that url. Upon subsequent calls, it will check the URL again, this
time comparing the information to the previously recorded times. (Note
that if the subsequent time is older (less than) the first, urlmon will
still assume that the URL has been updated. I figured I'd play it safe.)
Since the last_modified data is not required to be given by the http (it's
optional), urlmon will then take an MD5 checksum.

The story that Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet has been thoroughly debunked by Phil Agre in http://commons.somewhere.com/rre/2000/RRE.Al.Gore. and.the.Inte.html and rebutted further later
That meme was a creation of Declan McCullagh, a "reporter" for Wired News who is a fanatical Libertarian so extreme that he managed to have a chapter of a book using him as a poster-boy for Libertarian ideologues If you think I'm just flaming, this aspect of his fabricated story being a Liberatarian hit-piece was extensively discussed in a debunking by Salon

After Declan McCullagh was repeatedly taken to task for his hatchet-job, over more than year, by everyone who was there, from Dave Farber to Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf he finally grudgingly retracted

But people still repeat it, because urban legends never die.

The right hand rule is not really a rule, it is a easy way to remember the direction of the positive cross product of two verticies. Its the same as putting your hands in front of your face to see which one forms an 'L' for 'Left' hand.

So tell me how these materials form a negative cross product of radiation across the E and M flow?

And what does this have to do with refraction?

No links to anything. You should be...

..proud of yourself. Fooled the moderators again.


~^~~^~^^~~^

Here's a comparison:
Sun vs SGI

and i swear i can type a lot more accurately with it with close to 140+ wpm when my mind can keep up...

What bullshit. There are lies, damn lies, and then there are claims of typing speed.

The world record for typing speed is 150 WPM, sustained. Interestingly, she prefers the Dvorak keyboard and can sustain 170 WPM. Doesn't suprise me; I'm sure a more efficient layout pays dividends at the very high end where finger efficiency is really going to pay a price.

Anyway, just wanted to call bullshit when I see it.

--

I'm just inquiring about your services because i'll be moving back to boston soon, and i know there would be a LOT of residents that would be interested in your services. The only other options for broadband are Media One Cable and DSL (provided by Verizon). From what i hear, both those services are piss poor. So if you guys start wiring up apartment complexes, i sure as hell would like to know about it.

It'd serve many people well to have a little understanding of the physics of a black hole.
Here are a three of my favourites:

Virtual Trips to Black Holes and Neutron Stars Page

Jillian's Guide to Black holes

I've wondered the same thing before. I don't think RealAudio wants you to be able to save streams for liability reasons. And i just did some tinkering with winamp's writing capabilities... It appears that broadcasts using SHOUTcast (streaming MP3 ala live365) also do not allow you to record streams due to "copyright issues".

RIAA and associates, do not read below:
If you are using windows, there's a piece of software called Stream Save that lets you save a SHOUTcast stream to disk (still in MP3 format). If you are running Linux there's a program called paudio that lets you capture and save raw audio data being written to the soundcard. You might be able to mod it to compress it to mp3/vorbis/whetever before it hits the disk with a little tinkering.

I thought that a black hole was just a star that collapsed on itself because there was no matter trying to escape, and therefore just started to, uhh, suck. :-)

Greengard and Rokhlin's Fast Multipole Method (FMM) algorithm computes an approximation for the sum total of the interactions between all pairs of elements out of a large group.

For instance, in astrophysics simulations, one quantity that needs to be computed is the total force on a star that results from the gravitational attraction from each of the other stars. If you have to do this computation for each star, then the total ammount of computation required grows as N^2, given N total stars.

This is where the name "The N-body Problem" comes from.

The FMM algorithm essentially models distant groups of particles (stars) as a single mathematical object and by using other fairly complex operations and representations, reduces the overall complexity from N^2 to N.

The importance of this algortihm comes from the fact that in many different types of scientific simulations (astrophysics, molecular modeling, computational fluid dynamics, etc.) the N-body computation was the limiting factor in the performace of these algorithms. Use of FMM and similar algortihms has reduced the overall simulation times by orders of magnitudes for large systems, allowing simulations that once required CPU-decades to be completed in CPU-months.

There are several good sources of FMM material on the web. You can try:

Mario's Nbody resources

More Nbody

Leslie Greengard's page

And of course, I'll have to plug our research group page at Duke

Hope this helps

-bill

I really don't care for their choices at all. A lot of them are more like general approaches than algorthms, and I'm not at all sure they are the most influential. I think they are supposed to be "the cleverest of the common fancy methods"

Simple algorithms for common problems are much more widely used, and have far more impact and influence, but try telling *them* that!

I hope these links help. (Warning: many are technical) If anyone has personal favorites that are less dry than many of these, please post!.

10. 1987: Fast Multipole Method. A breakthrough in dealing with the complexity of n-body calculations, applied in problems ranging from celestial mechanics to protein folding. [Overview] [A math/visual approach]

9. 1977: Integer Relation Detection. A fast method for spotting simple equations satisfied by collections of seemingly unrelated numbers. [Nice article with links]

8. 1965: Fast Fourier Transform. Perhaps the most ubiquitous algorithm in use today, it breaks down waveforms (like sound) into periodic components. Everyone knows this one (or should) [Part II of my personal favorite FFT and wavelet tutorial]

7. 1962: Quicksort Algorithms for Sorting. For the efficient handling of large databases. [Definition][Basic Method][Mathworld][More technical explanation][A lecture with animations and simulations]

6. 1959: QR Algorithm for Computing Eigenvalues. Another crucial matrix operation made swift and practical. [Math] [Algorithm

5. 1957: The Fortran Optimizing Compiler. Turns high-level code into efficient computer-readable code. (pretty much self-explanatory) [History and lots of info]

4. 1951: The Decompositional Approach to Matrix Computations. A suite of techniques for numerical linear algebra. [matrix decomposition theorem] [Strategies]

3. 1950: Krylov Subspace Iteration Method. A technique for rapidly solving the linear equations that abound in scientific computation. [History] [various Krylov subspace iterative methods]

2. 1947: Simplex Method for Linear Programming. An elegant solution to a common problem in planning and decision-making. [English} [Explanation with Java simulator] [An interactive teaching tool

1. 1946: The Metropolis Algorithm for Monte Carlo. Through the use of random processes, this algorithm offers an efficient way to stumble toward answers to problems that are too complicated to solve exactly. [English] [Code and Math] [Math explained]

I really don't care for their choices at all. A lot of them are more like general approaches than algorthms, and I'm not at all sure they are the most influential. I think they are supposed to be "the cleverest of the common fancy methods"

Simple algorithms for common problems are much more widely used, and have far more impact and influence, but try telling *them* that!

I hope these links help. (Warning: many are technical) If anyone has personal favorites that are less dry than many of these, please post!.

10. 1987: Fast Multipole Method. A breakthrough in dealing with the complexity of n-body calculations, applied in problems ranging from celestial mechanics to protein folding. [Overview] [A math/visual approach]

9. 1977: Integer Relation Detection. A fast method for spotting simple equations satisfied by collections of seemingly unrelated numbers. [Nice article with links]

8. 1965: Fast Fourier Transform. Perhaps the most ubiquitous algorithm in use today, it breaks down waveforms (like sound) into periodic components. Everyone knows this one (or should) [Part II of my personal favorite FFT and wavelet tutorial]

7. 1962: Quicksort Algorithms for Sorting. For the efficient handling of large databases. [Definition][Basic Method][Mathworld][More technical explanation][A lecture with animations and simulations]

6. 1959: QR Algorithm for Computing Eigenvalues. Another crucial matrix operation made swift and practical. [Math] [Algorithm

5. 1957: The Fortran Optimizing Compiler. Turns high-level code into efficient computer-readable code. (pretty much self-explanatory) [History and lots of info]

4. 1951: The Decompositional Approach to Matrix Computations. A suite of techniques for numerical linear algebra. [matrix decomposition theorem] [Strategies]

3. 1950: Krylov Subspace Iteration Method. A technique for rapidly solving the linear equations that abound in scientific computation. [History] [various Krylov subspace iterative methods]

2. 1947: Simplex Method for Linear Programming. An elegant solution to a common problem in planning and decision-making. [English} [Explanation with Java simulator] [An interactive teaching tool

1. 1946: The Metropolis Algorithm for Monte Carlo. Through the use of random processes, this algorithm offers an efficient way to stumble toward answers to problems that are too complicated to solve exactly. [English] [Code and Math] [Math explained]

I really don't care for their choices at all. A lot of them are more like general approaches than algorthms, and I'm not at all sure they are the most influential. I think they are supposed to be "the cleverest of the common fancy methods"

Simple algorithms for common problems are much more widely used, and have far more impact and influence, but try telling *them* that!

I hope these links help. (Warning: many are technical) If anyone has personal favorites that are less dry than many of these, please post!.

10. 1987: Fast Multipole Method. A breakthrough in dealing with the complexity of n-body calculations, applied in problems ranging from celestial mechanics to protein folding. [Overview] [A math/visual approach]

9. 1977: Integer Relation Detection. A fast method for spotting simple equations satisfied by collections of seemingly unrelated numbers. [Nice article with links]

8. 1965: Fast Fourier Transform. Perhaps the most ubiquitous algorithm in use today, it breaks down waveforms (like sound) into periodic components. Everyone knows this one (or should) [Part II of my personal favorite FFT and wavelet tutorial]

7. 1962: Quicksort Algorithms for Sorting. For the efficient handling of large databases. [Definition][Basic Method][Mathworld][More technical explanation][A lecture with animations and simulations]

6. 1959: QR Algorithm for Computing Eigenvalues. Another crucial matrix operation made swift and practical. [Math] [Algorithm

5. 1957: The Fortran Optimizing Compiler. Turns high-level code into efficient computer-readable code. (pretty much self-explanatory) [History and lots of info]

4. 1951: The Decompositional Approach to Matrix Computations. A suite of techniques for numerical linear algebra. [matrix decomposition theorem] [Strategies]

3. 1950: Krylov Subspace Iteration Method. A technique for rapidly solving the linear equations that abound in scientific computation. [History] [various Krylov subspace iterative methods]

2. 1947: Simplex Method for Linear Programming. An elegant solution to a common problem in planning and decision-making. [English} [Explanation with Java simulator] [An interactive teaching tool

1. 1946: The Metropolis Algorithm for Monte Carlo. Through the use of random processes, this algorithm offers an efficient way to stumble toward answers to problems that are too complicated to solve exactly. [English] [Code and Math] [Math explained]

I really don't care for their choices at all. A lot of them are more like general approaches than algorthms, and I'm not at all sure they are the most influential. I think they are supposed to be "the cleverest of the common fancy methods"

Simple algorithms for common problems are much more widely used, and have far more impact and influence, but try telling *them* that!

I hope these links help. (Warning: many are technical) If anyone has personal favorites that are less dry than many of these, please post!.

10. 1987: Fast Multipole Method. A breakthrough in dealing with the complexity of n-body calculations, applied in problems ranging from celestial mechanics to protein folding. [Overview] [A math/visual approach]

9. 1977: Integer Relation Detection. A fast method for spotting simple equations satisfied by collections of seemingly unrelated numbers. [Nice article with links]

8. 1965: Fast Fourier Transform. Perhaps the most ubiquitous algorithm in use today, it breaks down waveforms (like sound) into periodic components. Everyone knows this one (or should) [Part II of my personal favorite FFT and wavelet tutorial]

7. 1962: Quicksort Algorithms for Sorting. For the efficient handling of large databases. [Definition][Basic Method][Mathworld][More technical explanation][A lecture with animations and simulations]

6. 1959: QR Algorithm for Computing Eigenvalues. Another crucial matrix operation made swift and practical. [Math] [Algorithm

5. 1957: The Fortran Optimizing Compiler. Turns high-level code into efficient computer-readable code. (pretty much self-explanatory) [History and lots of info]

4. 1951: The Decompositional Approach to Matrix Computations. A suite of techniques for numerical linear algebra. [matrix decomposition theorem] [Strategies]

3. 1950: Krylov Subspace Iteration Method. A technique for rapidly solving the linear equations that abound in scientific computation. [History] [various Krylov subspace iterative methods]

2. 1947: Simplex Method for Linear Programming. An elegant solution to a common problem in planning and decision-making. [English} [Explanation with Java simulator] [An interactive teaching tool

1. 1946: The Metropolis Algorithm for Monte Carlo. Through the use of random processes, this algorithm offers an efficient way to stumble toward answers to problems that are too complicated to solve exactly. [English] [Code and Math] [Math explained]

There exists some optimized algorithms that make it easier.
For example, you could do a depth first search, so that you dont have to keep every node in memory - only keep the nodes that you expanded.
And you can use Alpha-Beta Pruning to reduce the number of nodes you exapand.

You can also search in parallel. Ofcorse there are problems when parallelism is introduced..

There exists some optimized algorithms that make it easier.
For example, you could do a depth first search, so that you dont have to keep every node in memory - only keep the nodes that you expanded.
And you can use Alpha-Beta Pruning to reduce the number of nodes you exapand.

You can also search in parallel. Ofcorse there are problems when parallelism is introduced..

Cooling to really low temperatures is important for physicists to study the properties of weird things like Bose-Einstein condensates -- macroscopic amounts of stuff behaving in a quantum manner. This, as usual, helps with our understanding of quantum mechanics in specific and physics in general.

However, you may not be satisfied with such a response -- not practical enough? Cold atoms are essential for decent atomic clocks, because such a clock works by measuring the natural frequency of oscillation of the atoms. If they have heat too, they wobble due to this temperature as well as due to the natural frequency so you get a lower signal-to-noise ratio.

Atomic clocks are also very useful for physics -- some aspects of special relativity have been confirmed directly by this (twin paradox, anyone?).

Ultimately you might ask what the practical point is for this too. Those funky global positioning satellites need accuracy of this order to work out where the satellite is at any one time and hence where you are.

Well, the guy's page lists some papers about it. Maybe it's something that'll work, maybe not, but they're well past the write-it-once stage.

Explanation>/a >

The facts about this are that some large sites get taken down for a few hours, the world panics, the media panics, the average citizen panics, legislation gets passed to allow the government to interfere in our lives. Maybe I AM paranoid, but the above link seems to make me a little wary (as if I wasn't wary enough already) of the government.

Final notes on this....:

• Overated
• Overdone Media
• Government sponsered (just speculation)

I just get sick and tired of all the friggin media coverage at 12:30 AM when I just want to find Dragon Ball Z on Cartoon Network.... Not to mention that now whenever I go to ANY channel all I hear about is the airplane crash (tragic) and the DOS attacks (or hackers as 99.9% of the news shows call it) Yhcrana

--

The sliced-up person mentioned in the article has his homepage here. There's also a nice Java applet to view slices of him here.

Rebooting is truly a nasty habit that users have gotten into.

Which brings up another question -- Is Linux really suited to use on laptops? Or NT for that matter? Lawrence Tech here in Michigan wants their students to run NT on their laptops, which seems stupid to me.

Personally, I think GEOS would be better for those, if anyone was still developing it. It doesn't care if you shut down, it boots quickly, and it has very modest hardware requirements. How many of us really need to run a web server while sitting under a tree in a park somewhere?

I, for one, despise auto-configuring dhcp clients. However, they are a real boon for novice users, how don't care what an IP address is. In this case, I support it (sort-of) to make it easier for novice users to get a network up and running. Real Sys Admins will, of course, configure the boxes properly. And they'll probably use Debian :)

Ah, from the dhcp faq we see why clients shouldn't assign IP addresses without the use of a server. Couldn't find any documentation on MS' site as to the details of their dhcp client though.

As gathered from theWhat is Autism? page

Autism is a complex developmental disability that typically appears during the first three years of life. The result of a neurological disorder that affects the functioning of the brain, autism and its associated behaviors have been estimated to occur in as many as 1 in 500 individuals (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 1997). Autism is four times more prevalent in boys than girls and knows no racial, ethnic, or social boundaries. Family income, lifestyle, and educational levels do not affect the chance of autism's occurrence. Autism impacts the normal development of the brain in the areas of social interaction and communication skills. Children and adults with autism typically have difficulties in verbal and non-verbal communication, social interactions, and leisure or play activities. The disorder makes it hard for them to communicate with others and relate to the outside world. In some cases, aggressive and/or self-injurious behavior may be present. Persons with autism may exhibit repeated body movements (hand flapping, rocking), unusual responses to people or attachments to objects and resistance to changes in routines. Individuals may also experience sensitivities in the five senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste.


See also this Autism resoucre page.

Ok. Here's my (Duke of URL) bit: As mentioned in the main story Autistic people tend to have underdeveloped cerebellum which plays a role in coordinated movement (think athletes).
Autistics may also have RAS's (Reticular Activating System) which may be improperly developed. The RAS filters out unwanted stimuli (such as the sensation of the pants on your legs, the air on your arms and all the other stimuli you never think about). With a damaged RAS they may be experiencing sensory "overload" and attempt to focus on one thing or avoid social contact to compensate.

For once a question on /. that I can handle. My psychology degree wasen't a waste. I hope.

While at first I was dismayed at yet another attempt to classify people as "normal" or "abnormal", this line of "Where are the women Geeks?" got me thinking about the prevelance of autism related to gender.

After a little bit of digging I found the FAQ below which mentions that Autism affects four times as many males as females.

Within the past few years there has been much publicity given to the fact that educational interest in maths/sciences/engineering is clearly disproportionately male, and growing.

Possibly coincidence, but a little food for thought...

[Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM IV)]:
http://web.syr.edu/~jmwobus/ autism/autismfaq-defi.html

Yes, autism is a fuzzily defined syndrome, rather than a simple disorder. There's a collection of possible displayed behaviors, any of which can combine to prompt a diagnosis of autism -- if you have a certain number of traits from one category, a certain number from another, and a certain number from yet another, you officially qualify for the diagnosis.

There are some points that proof didn't mention, such as that which as been speculated by Decartes, specifically, "I think, therefore, i'm spam." In this essay, written 3 years ago, i prove a similar finding.