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I think several of the things I mentioned would also work in Texas, but it's true that different places do have different problems. I use a lot of energy to heat my house, whereas I suppose you use a lot of energy to cool yours. So some of the solutions may be different, but they do exist. For example, I suspect that solar power has a lot more potential for you than it does for me. And with three times the land area you have plenty of space for wind farms, in fact the BBC reported that "According to a US Department of Energy study, most of the electricity needs of the whole country could be provided by the wind power potential of three states: Kansas, North Dakota and Texas". Anyway, although I can't speak from personal experience of living in Texas, here are some made-in-Texas ideas.

Exactly the reason correlation does imply causation. (See graph*)

* Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

"Has it made us safer? Obviously."

I wore a red shirt yesterday and a green shirt today. It was colder yesterday than it is today. Therefore, wearing a green shirt makes the temperature warmer.

How is this reasoning any different than yours? Correlation does not imply causation

I'd like proper multi-user support in both Unix and Windows:

1. Security updates: allow non-root users to update the main system copy by prompting for the root (or Windows Admin) password.

2. Multi-user networks: allow Firefox to be installed on a network device and completely runnable from that device, along with customizable paths for the cache/configuration data, and integration with Windows Policies. It would be extra-nice if FF had zero Windows registry dependencies. See https://oalinfo.tamu.edu/faq/faq_viewer.asp?faqID= 55 for the reasons I can't use Firefox on school computers.

3. Ability to back up and restore the password store to/from ASCII file.

4. Ability to completely pack up a user's data (passwords, bookmarks, history, font settings, even cache) to a single archive file that can be passed around a USB stick. So that when I go to a new computer, I can start FF and point it to the USB file and it will immediately behave like my home copy.

Trust me on this one.

Correlation != Causation

Yes. Attending a science fiction convention discussion group in a farming state a few years ago, we readily had experience among the group (including someone whose college job was "grain inspector" to rather quickly suspect that cross-pollination (and other contamination) are virtual certainties. Standards do not, and practically probably cannot, adequately segregate GM crops in the field and there are multiple opportunites for grains to intermix and spill in transport. For instance:

"Bees [think pollination] forage over large expanses of area: 8000-25000 acres."

http://lubbock.tamu.edu/ahb/docs/FactsAboutAHB.pdf #search=%22bees%20forage%20area%22

For the benefit of the city slickers, a square mile is 640 acres. Unless you are free-grazing cattle in Montana or the like, even 8000 acres is a seriously large family farm. And I'm not sure that bees respect property lines.

Sounds like determining the "best" will be a guess based on less than 48 hours of time, however, the best tasting beef is dry aged from 10-28 days (even the wet aged, vacuum packed, beef is aged for about 7 days). This means this will basically be done by visual inspection grading, not actually tasting anything...

Then you get make this clone of something that might taste good (at least has good fat marbling since that is what they grade on mostly) which you will need to have eat and exercise the exact same way to get the same beef grade. Sounds like the odds are perhaps better than playing dna roulette, but it still seems like a crap shoot to me.

Besides cows have already been genetically sequenced. You can already test them for the "marbling gene" and the "tenderness genes", which means you can sort embryo already. There's no need to clone to get this result. It really just sounds like they are doing this just because they can.

From this publication I get the impression that Listeria isn't the focus of hygiene in raw meat products, and that the main problems are Eschirichia Coli (the bacteria we all carry in our intestines) and Salmonella.

So perhaps a Listeria spray will not affect the standards of safety and hygiene as those might be driven by the need to keep the counts for E. Coli and Salmonella down. Therefore it could be that I was too hasty in my earlier criticism.

Permission to use and/or modify this image is granted provided you acknowledge me lewing@isc.tamu.edu and The GIMP if someone asks.

"Permission to use and/or modify this image is granted provided you acknowledge me lewing@isc.tamu.edu and The GIMP if someone asks."

http://www.isc.tamu.edu/~lewing/linux/

How about Texas A&M?

NOAA?

Heh, social engineering is a technique that essentially all humans are vulnerable to. Also, phone companies are actually one of the top targets of social engineering. That combination makes for a pretty high likelihood of peoples' phone-line-related data to be effectively public domain...

There isn't really much way to be "secure" against social engineering because it exploits the one system you can't secure - the human mind. I know people who do this sort of stuff (I don't mean theft though heh) for fun on a fairly regular basis and they can all screw with pretty much any person. It's really amazing how easily you can manipulate someone of any personality type, actually. heh.

The only people who I've found to be highly resistant to any sort of social engineering are the type of people who know how to do it as well. It requires a certain mindset to be able to catch on to when a person might be trying to manipulate you. Unfortunately that sort of mindset usually involves always having a certain amount of suspicion towards peoples' statements all the time...

Some reading material:

http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1527

http://www.morehouse.org/hin/blckcrwl/hack/soceng. txt

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/6/3/223758/2267

http://rf-web.tamu.edu/security/secguide/V1comput/ Social.htm

etc. etc..

From a look at the clever car*, my first impression is there's going to be an issue with weight. And no, I'm not talking about Americans being too fat to fit inside. It's a simple concept of weight-ratios.

I worked on a solar-car team at Texas A&M, and trust me, ultralight cars have weight problems that average ones just don't have to deal with. Our own car had limits - if you weight over or under a certain amount, the car wouldn't be safe to drive.

Think about it: if your car weighs 2500 - 3000 pounds, it doesn't matter if you're an anorexic 90-pound Paris Hilton wannabe, or a 350-pound linebacker. Your car will perform relatively the same, and the suspension will help the car stay in control quite simply.

Now imagine your car weighs 500 pounds. There's a huge difference! Even a change from a 120-pound teenager to a 240-pound mother-to-be would result in significantly different needs in the suspension system to keep the weight balanced & distributed correctly during acceleration, braking, turning, and any other activity your average car is engineered to handle safely.

And don't get me started on crash safety ... if I have an 18-wheeler lock its brakes behind me, you bet I'd rather be in a Lincoln Aviator or an H2 than in a clever car, smart car, or motorcycle. Shoot, if I get in a wreck with a schoolbus or an SUV, same story. And don't give me that "well people should stop buying SUVs and you wouldn't have a problem" tripe.

* By the way, what's up with "Clever car (Compact Low Emission Vehicle for Urban Transport)" ... um ... CLEVFUT ... yeah, I totally get how they turn that into "clever"

But will it be bug compatible?

Mentifex was the original author of Mind.Forth, Mind.html and the AI4U ISBN 0595654371 textbook of artificial intelligence.

Mind.Forth was a primitive artificial mind written in Win32Forth for robots and based on a Theory of Cognitivity for artificial intelligence. AI functionality was developed by Mentifex first in Mind.Forth and ported subsequently into the Mind.html Seed AI for propagation throughout the installed user base.

Mind.html was an artificial intelligence coded by Mentifex initially in JavaScript for Web migration and in Forth for robots, evolving towards full civil rights on a par with human beings and towards superintelligence beyond any human IQ.

The AI4U textbook was reviewed falsely and viciously but found its way into libraries at such prestigious universities as the University of Hong Kong, North Carolina State University and Texas A&M University.

Technological Singularity was launched almost single-handedly by Mentifex against all odds and in the face of desperate opposition from the FAQ-writing AI Establishment and the Singularity wannabes whose revenue stream was threatened by the free Open-Source AI software released into the Web Wilds by Mentifex.

Greets!

In the Journal special issue I edited a while ago was a very interesting paper on just this subject.

http://jodi.tamu.edu/Articles/v05/i01/schraefel/

"The paper considers possible 'future everyday hypertext systems'. To ground the discussion, we look first at the functional and conceptual definitions of hypertext that have evolved in the hypertext research community. We then consider these definitions against the Web, the best known current everyday hypertext, but one that the hypertext community has regarded as only partially a hypertext system at best. We propose, however, that a full, rich hypertext is alive and well and living in an equally successful everyday system: that system is email. We look at how email meets the criteria, both functionally and conceptually, for rich hypertext. "

The administration's cutting of the NIH budget is part of an overall effort to reemphasize funding of the physical sciences. In the decade after the Cold War, health and biology research saw a funding boom due to the inherent political attractiveness of funding efforts to fight disease. On the other hand, basic physical sciences suffered from shrinking governmental support because of dissipation of competitive pressure from the USSR. Today, with new competition from Asia and Europe, the US is seeking to reenergize research in the physical sciences with massive budget increases. Not all of this money could come from net increases in the overall science budget, especially in tight fiscal times, so part of the money was shifted from the biological sciences.

From the 2006 State of the Union address:

"...

And to keep America competitive, one commitment is necessary above all: We must continue to lead the world in human talent and creativity. Our greatest advantage in the world has always been our educated, hardworking, ambitious people -- and we're going to keep that edge. Tonight I announce an American Competitiveness Initiative, to encourage innovation throughout our economy, and to give our nation's children a firm grounding in math and science. (Applause.)

First, I propose to double the federal commitment to the most critical basic research programs in the physical sciences over the next 10 years. This funding will support the work of America's most creative minds as they explore promising areas such as nanotechnology, supercomputing, and alternative energy sources.

Second, I propose to make permanent the research and development tax credit -- (applause) -- to encourage bolder private-sector initiatives in technology. With more research in both the public and private sectors, we will improve our quality of life -- and ensure that America will lead the world in opportunity and innovation for decades to come. (Applause.)

..."

Here's another write up from Texas A&M:

"....

President George Bush is proposing to double the budget of the National Science Foundation (NSF) over the next ten years. As the first step in the doubling process, the President's budget request would increase funding for the National Science Foundation by $439 million or 7.9 percent to $6.02 billion in fiscal year 2007.

....

Noting that most of the increase in federal funding for research and development since 2001 has gone toward biomedical research and advanced security technologies, President Bush wrote, "To ensure our continued leadership in the world, I am committed to building on our record of results with new investments - especially in the fields of physical sciences and engineering"

...

Optimism about the current proposal to double the NSF budget in ten years is tempered by the failure of recent legislation to double the NSF budget in five years.... The FY 2007 budget request for NSF is nearly $4 billion below the level authorized in the last doubling initiative. However, the current doubling initiative has been given a high priority in the President's budget request and has strong support from key members of Congress.

"

The bottom line is that one should not jump to conclusions based on one piece of information without knowing its context. People are always going to want more money, but some times one has to juggle between priorities.

try to picture the reality of the simulation. you're in the backyard, sipping on a soda, then : http://www.isc.tamu.edu/~astro/sl9/sl9images.html it happened on jupiter in 1994 !

Greets! I ran a panel on this in 2003 at the Hyertext conference [http://www.ht03.org/panels.html#panel1 ] I think Pete came closest to getting it right - predicting a 'hot or not' for the general web - now see Digg [http://www.digg.com/ ]. We also ran a special issue linked to the panel in JoDI [http://jodi.tamu.edu/?vol=5&iss=1 ]

Supposedly the atmosphere of Mars is 0.15% oxygen. That's 1500 parts per million. Earth Air has roughly 210,000 PPM, but water on Earth (which Fish extract oxygen from) is only 5 PPM. If the fish manage to extract oxygen without major issues (and there are larger lifeforms in the water than on Earth), I don't think it should be a problem for us humans. Given that Mars has a 300× richer atmosphere than Earth's water, I think we shouldn't have a problem extracting oxygen. To make air we would also need Nitrogen, which is present at 30,000PPM.

With a sufficiently big enough machine, we should be able to provide enough oxygen to burn stuff. Perhaps we can create a form of fuel that contains both hydrocarbons and oxygen. As I understand, most cars have a certain mix of air and gasoline that is actually ignited. Also, supposedly some race cars use nitrous oxide as an oxidizer.

So it should be possible to provide a system that can generate earth-like air from the Mars atmosphere. The primary question is whether the system would be efficient enough that it can be powered by solar or maybe oil based. On the other hand, I believe a nuclear plant would work. Maybe the first step to collonizing Mars to any degree should be to get some power generators over there.

Then you can start making oxygen. Melt the ice to get water. And with the two you should be able to grow stuff. (you'll probably need to bring fertilizer along as well at the beginning, but later you can just recycle dead plants, feces, etc., to save on fertilizer).

Supposedly the atmosphere of Mars is 0.15% oxygen. That's 1500 parts per million. Earth Air has roughly 210,000 PPM, but water on Earth (which Fish extract oxygen from) is only 5 PPM. If the fish manage to extract oxygen without major issues (and there are larger lifeforms in the water than on Earth), I don't think it should be a problem for us humans. Given that Mars has a 300× richer atmosphere than Earth's water, I think we shouldn't have a problem extracting oxygen. To make air we would also need Nitrogen, which is present at 30,000PPM.

With a sufficiently big enough machine, we should be able to provide enough oxygen to burn stuff. Perhaps we can create a form of fuel that contains both hydrocarbons and oxygen. As I understand, most cars have a certain mix of air and gasoline that is actually ignited. Also, supposedly some race cars use nitrous oxide as an oxidizer.

So it should be possible to provide a system that can generate earth-like air from the Mars atmosphere. The primary question is whether the system would be efficient enough that it can be powered by solar or maybe oil based. On the other hand, I believe a nuclear plant would work. Maybe the first step to collonizing Mars to any degree should be to get some power generators over there.

Then you can start making oxygen. Melt the ice to get water. And with the two you should be able to grow stuff. (you'll probably need to bring fertilizer along as well at the beginning, but later you can just recycle dead plants, feces, etc., to save on fertilizer).

"A senior executive at Thiokol, Jerald Mason, commented that a management decision was required. The managers seemed to believe the O-rings could be eroded up to one third of their diameter and still seat properly, regardless of the temperature. The data presented to them showed no correlation between temperature and the blow-by gasses which eroded the O-rings in previous missions. According to testimony by Kilminster and Boisjoly, Mason finally turned to Bob Lund and said, "Take off your engineering hat and put on your management hat." Joe Kilminster wrote out the new recommendation and went back on line with the teleconference. The new recommendation stated that the cold was still a safety concern, but their people had found that the original data was indeed inconclusive and their "engineering assessment" was that launch was recommended, even though the engineers had no part in writing the new recommendation and refused to sign it. Alan McDonald, who was present with NASA management in Florida, was surprised to see the recommendation to launch and appealed to NASA management not to launch. NASA managers decided to approve the boosters for launch despite the fact that the predicted launch temperature was outside of their operational specifications."

The article is wrong. We have samples of the mantle. Lots of samples of the mantle. There are several sitting here on my desk as I type. Not a lot, grant you, since the majority comes up as xenoliths in igneous rocks or as inclusions in other minerals (anyone ever heard of, say, diamonds?) or in tectonically uplifted terrains. Moreover, we (the geoscience community, that is) has recoverd mantle samples via drilling. During ODP Leg 209 in 2003, for example.

See

http://www.ece.tamu.edu/People/bios/bkish.html

for full details. Looks credible to me.

This page http://www.ece.tamu.edu/People/bios/bkish.html says he is Hungarian. (Or at least got his degree and doctorate in Hungary. Whith this name it makes him more than likely a fellow hungarian.)

First off, the electroplating tank:

These are a blast. Everything looks better if you electroplate it!

Any of the cool looking, under the hood gagetry for your car, found cheaply at Schuks Auto would look better in gold. Any flat sided metal object can be enhanced with whatever artwork you can make a sillouette of on your computer, print in Press-n-Peel masking material
iron on, and plate.

Flatware should never be monochromatic
Your own Electron Microscope? Sweet.

The first thing to do is find the guy that's good at operating this and buy him several good lunches. Getting good images is tricky. That done, there is a world of stuff that looks better super close up, and best yet, the annoyingly black and white nature of this device lends itself to.... Yes! Electroplate sillouttes! Imagine how cool the aluminum case sides of your favorite computer would be if this were etched on the side. Your kids/nephews could have the coolest metal lunchboxes in the school. Like this or this or this or this.
A clear spray-on enamel will keep oxidation from uglying things up if your experiment with some of the more easily tarnished metals like copper and silver....

Sounds like you're in for a good time. Good luck.

Clearly Cyclotrons are built that small.

Well, the only one I've ever seen in person is described at http://cyclotron.tamu.edu/K500.html and if you look at that, little things like the picture of it dwarfing a person, or 25 miles of wire in the coils, or all the other cool specifications of the "K500 Superconducting Cyclotron" indicate that it isn't exactly small.

Predatory pricing is unlawful under s. 46(1) of the Trade Practices Act, which prohibits businesses that have substantial market power from taking advantage of that power to eliminate or substantially damage a competitor, prevent the entry of a person into a market, or deter or prevent a person from engaging in competitive conduct in a market.

I've been interested in Applied Math for some time, and have completed some courses at the local JC as a refresher to my BSCS. Attending Graduate School is very appealing, but I'm interested in math, Computational Science. Although I have an understanding employer, and family, there's no way I could attend traditional classes. I don't see why a math degree couldn't be done online, and there is one through Texas A&M University , but it's not exactly what I'm interested in. MIT has very nice OpenCourseware MIT OpenCourseWare | OCW Home, but it's not a degree granting program. Maybe some /.ers might know of others.

correlation does not imply causation. Oh right, that only applies to arguments you all disagree with.

You are wrong... it was AT&T Bell labs, but other than Bjarne Stroustrup, who went to Texas A&M, most of the Bell guys are now at Google. These are people Microsoft could never hire away, but Google did.

Mr Thompson has made himself a public figure, which makes his sueing folks for slander or libel just about impossible. Pretending to be harassed while deliberately harassing others is hypocrisy. A debating technique commonly called Ad Ad Ad Hominem.

Bring LOTS of water. Its still summertime down here regardless of it being October already. we hit a high of 99 this week(i am in Hattiesburg,MS which is 1 hour north of Gulfport and was hit hard by Katrina. we had a 99 degree record high on Tuesday and thats not counting the 90-95% humidity. So the heat index was about 105 or so.

Also if you have never heard of love bugs and you are driving here in your own car you might want to bring plenty of cleaning stuff for your car or plan to buy some when you get down here. to find out why and more you can find out more about them(love bugs) here , here , here , and here its hard to get them off short of pure muscle and car washes. when i am driving to work on the interstate you can see them in black clouds.. sorta like a black plague.

That's funny since the original text has it spelled Quixote: http://csdl.tamu.edu/cgi-bin/shuehu/qbrowse/qb?POR C=P&NO=1

I wonder when they decided to change the spelling.
 

Because languages evolve. 'El Quijote' was written 400 years ago and a lot of the words (if not all) which had an 'x' in the middle at that time, now have a 'g' or a 'j' (with the same phonetic sound). e.g.: parexa -> pareja, coraxe -> coraje.

That's funny since the original text has it spelled Quixote: http://csdl.tamu.edu/cgi-bin/shuehu/qbrowse/qb?POR C=P&NO=1

I wonder when they decided to change the spelling.

http://www-gerg.tamu.edu/photogallery/submarine/a1 .jpg

http://images.google.com/images?q=methane%20worms& hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&sa=N&tab=wi

The "right" way to do motion blur is the cartoon way. If something moves fast, deform the mesh to stretch across its field of movement. This is much more realistic than trying to render 1000fps, and won't leave gaps between frames for the "Player on drugs" effect. And before anyone asks, yes, the entire map will have to be deformed if the player turns quickly.

If you think this would be disorienting, remember that the mesh is being deformed for a movement for 1/30-1/60 of a second. See here for a paper on how to do this in real-time.

But since 9/11, increased scrutiny and hightened visa restrictions have stopped the best and the brightest from entering the United States' talent pool. The following is an excellent article written by Robert Gates, the President of Texas A&M University and former FBI boss in the NY Times where he talks about the challenges faced by the U.S. in maintaining its edge in scientific research: Robert Gates' article in NYTimes

NetSQUID from Texas A&M... based on Snort, pretty cool: netSQUID

The military takes the security of nuclear weapons extremely seriously, that whole "Deadly Force Authorized" thing. They have a very strict two man (person) rule, it doesn't matter if you are the CO of the carrier, squadron or GW himself, no one will not be allowed access to the weapon alone, period! Even if you have the clearence and the required second person you will not be with the weapon unless you have an authorized purpose and it fits with the current status. No "we're just here to move things for the exercise" or "we're just gonna get an early start on some maintenance" no movement or maintenance scheduled, start kissing deck or you will get shot. Besides I think that carriers unload even the conventional stuff before going in for maintenance, makes things a bit safer and in '91 Bush Sr. removed all tactical nukes from surface ships http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/research/papers/1991/9 1092704.html ~18th paragraph down or just Google tactical nuclear weapon surface ship but don't ask http://neds.daps.dla.mil/Directives/5721e1.pdf cause they won't tell.

Take a look at Texas A&M's VizLab. They're a part of the school of architecture there, but they do graduate training in computer graphics, generally. A lot of their grads go on to work in the movie business.. Pixar, PDI, Sony, etc.

they made engineering math possible? So before them, adding and subtracting wasn't possible? That's like saying before Sir Isaac Newton discovered gravity, everything just floated.

Look here: http://www.math.tamu.edu/~don.allen/history/pythag /pythag.html/

This was a really long time ago, and he was believed to have learned this from the egyptians.

Hey, you're right. I'm giving up my granola bar snack and going to eat dog shit instead. It's much more natural and less refined. If I can't find dog shit I might try a scoop of mud. OK, I'm carrying it too far. In reality I'll just eat more natural vegetables like rhubarb. It can't possibly be harmful to me because it's natural.

Ha! You think "spreadsheet" is a PAPER related term? True, some kids were in the habit of using spreadsheet papers. Only because they didn't know REAL spreadsheets were written on papyri. But the REALLY REAL men used stone tablets and clay blobs.

You should understand that the reason I have done this calculation is because I got serious enough about biodiesel to actually come up some ideas about how to make it economic.

No one would be happier than me if I turned out to be too pessimistic about this bioreactor design but the numbers look pretty bad.

My calculations have led me to pursue a different system:

Grow arthrospira and:

1. Provide a feed stock for Tilapia.
2. Provide a possible nutraceutical stream.
3. Develop algae slurry as a possible direct diesel fuel.

Arthrospira may not be optimal for algae slurry diesel fuel but it is comparable with other algae for turning solar into slurry fuel so, given the other well established uses of arthrospira its my best bet.

sounds like WTAMU or one of the other Texas A&M University schools...

They have a history of banishing those that try to inform them of flaws in their systems.

This of course has led to a situation where those that discover the issues simply keep quiet in fear of such underhanded retaliation; leading to those systems being actively exploited....

This is the method used at Texas A&M University, which I attend, for their residence hall network.

We use netsquid, http://netsquid.tamu.edu/, which is essentially some code that ties into snort to provide automatic filtering by mac address and notification.

It works quite well.

We use Net Squid to do that. Essentially it's a PC acting as a transparent bridge sitting in the middle of the fiber uplink from each dorm. It uses a combination of Snort, Squid , and IPTables. If a computer starts misbehaving, it'll get added to a block list for 15 minutes, which will allow access only to a web page that downloads our site-liscensed copy of Sophos Antivirus.

Gig'em Aggies.

http://soilcrop.tamu.edu/professors/borlaug/profil e.htm