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The entire point of EVs charging at night is that's when power is cheapest, because infrastructure cost is driven by peak usage.

To the extent that EVs increase off-peak usage without increasing peak usage, they're actually saving utilities money by increasing the usage factor of the distribution network.

If EVs end up reversing the peak (which I don't is likely, but let's suppose), then utilities will change their pricing and those who can (not all, but enough to achieve the goal) will switch to charging during the day to take advantage of it. No problem.

Now, on-demand high-rate charging Supercharger-style is a significant grid load, but overnight charging is actually very easy on the grid.

And a nice thing about having all those large, high-current rechargeable batteries distributed around the grid is that they can act as UPSes to actually reduce peak loads. Even if we don't let them back-feed the grid proper, they can let your house drop off the grid during a peak.

As for your comment about transformers heating, an oil-immersed transformer can store a significant amount of heat, but the time constant is on the order of 90 minutes. By three hours after dawn, the effect of night-time temperatures is gone.

> NetBSD, OTOH, is a cornucopia of new frameworks and libraries, especially in the kernel.

NetBSD has a very interesting approach to kernel modularity, using "rump kernels" to provide specialized kernel functionality to drivers and an "anykernel" underneath that combines the best features of microkernels and monolithic kernels.

If you're interested in kernel architecture, take a look at Flexible Operating System Internals: The Design and Implementation of the Anykernel and Rump Kernels by Antti Kantee.

The Euclideon infinite detail technology was exposed in a recent interview to be efficient sparse voxel octree ray-casting with contours (instead of axis-aligned cubes), which was previously investigated by nVidia researchers and others.

http://www.tml.tkk.fi/~samuli/publications/laine2010tr1_paper.pdf

It's still not quite competitive enough with conventional rasterization techniques if you also try to do decent lighting with it along with all of the other stuff that goes into developing a game. Maybe in couple of more GPU generations. And in the Euclideon demos, you can see they're only getting 15-25 frames per second, and yet they're using a simplistic lighting model with a single global light.

Also, you can merge polygon rasterization and voxel ray-casting under the same rendering architecture if you employ deferred shading and composition. That way you can have your static models as a voxel-octree that you ray-cast into your geometry-buffer, rasterize your dynamic polygonal models in a second pass into the same geometry-buffer, and then perform your lighting passes with the geometry-buffer as input, and then your final scene composition and post-processing passes. In fact, I bet you that in 5-6 years time, this will become a standard practice among PC game developers. Unfortunately, I think the upcoming next console generation, with hardware from Sony and MS due out next year, will miss out on being able to handle this.

I disagree. The most common reason to duplicate research is to test new apparatus or techniques. For example, when I was working on some mathematical research, I developed at one point a new, efficient notation for a class of operators. One of my first tasks using this notation was to replicate the results of old research in the field (which turned out to be special cases of my research) and among other things to see how these results looked when represented in terms of the new notation. If my work differed from the original work, the first assumption was that I did something wrong not the original researchers.

There are at least two known examples of 20th Century mathematics where serious errors developed not just in a few researchers work, but throughout a body of work. For example, the "Italian school" of geometry developed a great body of work, but in the end, it was too hard to separate correct from incorrect results, requiring a reformulation of algebraic geometry in a more rigorous style (this probably was one of the driving forces behind the "Bourbaki" school of French mathematicians who developed a great deal of sophisticated and extremely rigorous mathematics.

The second example is Clifford algebras. A lot of the results in this field depended on the assumption of convenience that sign did not matter. This turned out to be erroneous on many occasions leading to a number of bad theorems and other results.

The problems with Clifford algebras also IMHO foreshadow probable future difficulties with the mathematics behind a lot of modern physics theory. I don't want to insult the physics and math community who have done, IMHO, a lot of good work with hard theories like superstring theory, quantum field theory, quantum loop gravity, etc. But I think it likely that at some point in the not so distant future, rigor (both mathematical and empirical) will need to be applied to these theories in order to cull flawed theory from the good.

So to summarize, we have two examples of mathematical cultures that were derailed by flawed approaches to math and a possible third active example in current QFT and superstring theory. My view is that a lot of the error propagated because people expected the results to be true (perhaps they even were, but not demonstrated so by the community of the time), and much flawed research was conducted to support those assumptions. This supports my original assertion that systemic bias can occur in a scientific group.

I wrote my master thesis on a similar solution. I made a Python-based standalone implementation of the protocol and a simulator for it with everything happening on a single local machine. No nodes or no internet traffic. Kind of lame, but hey I got my degree :) Never bothered to do a proper implementation suitable for the real world use, as I got bored to tears by the time the thesis was done. Glad to see this something like this happening for real.

I can look for you, but it would be on one of a half dozen drives sitting on my shelf.

I was surprised they took it out of public circulation. Now you have to pay for it, or be associated with an institute that has access of the above IEEE digital library.

You should check if you have a document delivery service at your college or university, since they tend to be able to find most anything.

In regards to your comment, divergence is only a problem for ray tracing due to branching with SIMD. But the upcoming GTX 300 is going to have a MIMD hardware architecture, and we will then enter the world of photorealism. There may be some issues for CUDA at first, but I gather OpenCL is more than sufficient for the task at hand.

Here are some good papers on the subject by NVidia:
http://www.tml.tkk.fi/~timo/publications/aila2009hpg_paper.pdf
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1413968

The second link requires access through a university network or personal account.

In regards to your last comment, I believe light fields are more significant for volumetric displays. The day I get to play with an interactive volumetric display is the day I die a happy man.

If you are interested in light fields, check out:
http://gl.ict.usc.edu/Research/3DDisplay/
http://scripts.mit.edu/~raskar/lightfields

I'm interested in getting a Nook, but I haven't been able to find any rundowns of its PDF display capabilities. I'd be looking at reading a lot of CS papers, which are typically two-column with graphics. Could you try putting something like this paper on your Nook and seeing if its readable? Perhaps post a few pics?

Technically, "Nethack at full res" would be the GL ports Falcon's Eye and its successor Vulture's Eye. Despite the oddball names and fancy 3d graphics, these are Nethack. And it probably is possible to find a card that would struggle to run these versions of Nethack (though you might have to go to the used market).

So...your question wasn't actually quite as dumb as you probably intended it to be. Still dumb enough that I won't waste your time or mine by actually answering it, though. :)

cheers

I had much the same set of problems and found decent universities in Tampere, Finland, Luleå, Sweden

Well, I'll have to chip in my 2 eurocents and plug my own alma mater in Finland, TKK. The last I looked, it too was part of ISEP (or at least it offers the ISEP program to students). All (or almost all) of our graduate courses are lectured in English and those that aren't can still be taken in English through special arrangements.

Not that Luleå is a bad choice at all. My sister is going to go there for an exchange in 2010.

In Finland and Sweden the tuition costs are only nominal (< $100/year).

There are very strong English language masters programs available in engineering schools and universities in Sweden and Finland (also this one), and presumably the rest of Scandinavia as well.

You haven't lived till you've biked over a frozen lake or read a book in perfect daylight at 2AM. Some schools have industries right next to campus to tap the student labor force and nearly all the universities have ample jobs for masters students right there on campus. This is also the perfect choice to allow you to maximize your vacation opportunities - Cheap student rates and lengthy school breaks. A university is also the ideal environment in which to study the language, both in a formal setting and with the students that are much more used to dealing with foreigners on a daily basis than the rest of the population.

That said, there's plenty of sysadmin jobs abroad under the employ of the US government, if you're willing to give up on coding at work for a while. See usajobs.gov and careers.state.gov. Simplifies dealing with visas and such.

Nowadays (flat-screen) televisions commonly have direct VGA input, but if you don't have that, there are commercial scan converter boxes and DIY adapter schematics available (building one is easier if your TV has RGB Scart input).

well, i think you got in a bit late ;-)

I remember going into RIT in the Fall of '86 and the 'computer lab' was row after row of mainframe terminals. however, if you got in there early enough (before professors started logging in) you could plan a mean game of Moria, to me, still one of the greatest games going.

Going back a bit further, my first computer would be the Atari 1200XL with external cassette drive and plug in Basic cartridge. My display would be my then 10 year old black and white TV. Still have it, should fire it up one day.

Maybe not Teddy Bear Head... but there is the Head of Vecna...

Nephilium

Your calculations are wrong because monitors are measured along the diagonal and you're assuming that the size provided is the height/width and that they are square, neither of which is true. You can't actually calculate a moniter's screen area from just the diagonal, you need to know the ratio. As well as that, diagonals of the screens on CRTs aren't actually the size specified as the measurement is from the edges of the frames whereas LCDs don't have bulky frames around the screen. I don't feel like doing the calculations right now but this page provides the information necessary to calculate the screen area and other things about monitors of various sizes.

Off-topic, but this reminds me of the old story of the head of Vecna...

Nowadays the students have to take the course twice, once in a developer/tester role and again as a project manager, architect or in another specialist role.

The course is actually one of the best in school and greatly benefits everyone: the students get real-world experience in long term project and the clients get a low-cost, good quality (usually) software solution. The course overview

If something like this could ever be made graphical I would eat it alive.

Although I think, based on that statement, that you might not quite "get" the charm of NetHack...

Falcon's Eye does exactly what you ask for, a fully (isometric) 3d interface on top of core game engine.

Take a look at Falcon's Eye. Being a geek, I prefer the text interface over any other.

There's an isometric graphical version out there on the *almost* latest edition. It's called Falcon's Eye http://users.tkk.fi/~jtpelto2/nethack.html. If the ASCII graphics are turning you off, you can try that.

I've been playing NetHack since the late 80's (1988 to be exact) and still have it installed on several computers (including the PocketPC version for my phone). It is a great time waster that has had me hooked for almost 20 years.

Layne

Freeciv is probably the most complete Open Source game I've had the pleasure to enjoy. Supplemental nethack interfaces (Such as Falcon's Eye/a.) take a close second.

Hm, I'm highly in doubt about this.

The php developper is Jani Taskinen : http://photos.derickrethans.nl/album/album02/Jani. sized.jpg
The UN peace keeper, also computer scientist, seems to be Jari Taskinen :
http://users.tkk.fi/~jtaskine/
http://users.tkk.fi/~jtaskine/kosovo/2004_10_05/An other_day_in_Paradise/images/159-5964_IMG.JPG

It's Jani vs Jari. It seems that they are two different people so it's highly plausible that someone saw this on the web (when looking for "Jani Taskinen" on Google, "Jari Taskinen" is automatically proposed) and did a fake log or a steal the nickname on IRC.

Well, perhaps the real PHP dev Jani was also part of the army. But it seems too much of a coincidence to me.

So, unless more proof is showed, I consider this IRC log as a fake intended to bring the Israel/Lebanon troll on /. (sadly one of those trolls who is played with guns instead of puns) and under the spotlights of the web => digg and site like. This is a very common practice.

Hm, I'm highly in doubt about this.

The php developper is Jani Taskinen : http://photos.derickrethans.nl/album/album02/Jani. sized.jpg
The UN peace keeper, also computer scientist, seems to be Jari Taskinen :
http://users.tkk.fi/~jtaskine/
http://users.tkk.fi/~jtaskine/kosovo/2004_10_05/An other_day_in_Paradise/images/159-5964_IMG.JPG

It's Jani vs Jari. It seems that they are two different people so it's highly plausible that someone saw this on the web (when looking for "Jani Taskinen" on Google, "Jari Taskinen" is automatically proposed) and did a fake log or a steal the nickname on IRC.

Well, perhaps the real PHP dev Jani was also part of the army. But it seems too much of a coincidence to me.

So, unless more proof is showed, I consider this IRC log as a fake intended to bring the Israel/Lebanon troll on /. (sadly one of those trolls who is played with guns instead of puns) and under the spotlights of the web => digg and site like. This is a very common practice.

Probably the most successful hack (as in practical joke) by Finnish tech students ever is also linked to the Vasa ship. In the 1950s the students of the Helsinki University of Technology sold mini-statues of Paavo Nurmi to fund new student housing. The night before the recovery of the ship in August 1961, a group of students managed to dive to the ship, and placed one of these statues on the deck. This caused quite a sensation in Sweden at the time.

All jackassery asside (and yes, that is a tranvistive verb, so I guess not all, pi) instead of always bitching on /. about /., put your code where your mouth is and get it done. Even if you are not a coding wizard, there are any number of portals and blogging scripts available, so no excuses. I, myself, recognize the flaws in the /., but still enjoy the /., so I am still here. You are still here too, so you must enjoy the /., or at least have a positive apathy/dupe level.

Just a minor correction to the linked article: Mika Sillanpää worked at the Helsinki University of Technology, not at the Helsinki University when he wrote the paper in question.

Unlike most old games, Nethack has remained under active development the whole time, both in the core and in interfaces (plus the Slash'em branch). It's one game that people just don't want to watch die.

It's nice to watch (and help!) the progression from rogue to nethack to qt nethack to Falcon's Eye to Vulture's Eye/Claw and back to Rogue in tribute ;)

It's been awhile since I've tried Opera but I'm very impressed with it. I love the small tabs that minimise screen real estate, the seamlessly integrated pop3 email, the personal toolbar, incredible speed, etc. I would make a permanent switch to Opera if they had features equivalent to these firefox extensions:
Hit-a-hint Noscript Bugmenot Downthemall

1. Hit a specified key to start hint mode.
2. Each link on the page will get a small floating label next to it.
3. Type the keys for a particular label and it will light up.
4. Hit Enter or Space to follow the link associated with that label.

This reminds me of one day, when I was reading my access_logs and discovered that some bastard was hotlinking to a "Powered by SuSE" png button on my server. He had placed the image in his .sig on some forum and didn't bother to host the pic in his own web-space. I wanted to teach him a lesson, and thus the "Powered by Goatse" image was born. After setting Apache to serve the new picture instead, requests dropped dramatically during the next week :)

There aren't many Wal-Mart-shelf style open source games out there for a couple of reasons:

1) Most of the effort in developing such games comes from producing content (audio, artwork, models, etc). There aren't lots of people producing this in the OSS world.

2) Most current closed source games have very minimal replay value -- a good deal of the enjoyment comes from one-off events, like watching animations in the game, or plot twists. People that write open source software almost universally are writing something that they themselves can use. Since game elements that only work once or a few times (animations, etc) don't enhance their enjoyment of the game much, they don't happen.

As a result, you find many games in the "a lifetime to master" sort of class. Most of these have minimal graphics and art content, gameplay that either relies on randomly-generated gameplay/levels or human competition (to keep the game fun for the authors as well).

If you look at some of the open source games that diverge from the conventional closed-source world, you will find games of a sort that you cannot find elsewhere, and in many ways are much stronger than their closed-source brethren.

*) Text-based interactive fiction. TADS or one of the many other interactive fiction systems provide years of plotlines that are deeper, richer, and better-written than commercial games out there. There is a learning curve to get into text-based interactive fiction -- once you're over it, you have a vast, excellent library of games available to you.

*) Rogue/Moria/Angband/Nethack games. There is a whole genre of "dungeon crawler" games like this. They traditionally have limited graphics or just text (though there are exceptions, such as Falcon's Eye and Egoboo). If you have played Diablo or the console versions of the Baldur's Gate games, you've played a game inspired by these (but with far more simplistic gameplay, if more graphics). Dungeon crawlers involve you moving a character deeper and deeper into increasingly dangerous dungeons underground. Most levels are randomly generated, so that each play is different. In general, there are two families of dungeon crawlers -- Nethack, which is in the "sit down and play a quick game" category, and Moria, which is in the "a single game may last for a week and you probably still won't win" category. Nethack, which has many years of people hacking on and improving and extending the game code, is mostly oriented towards figuring out the staggering number of interactions between game elements. A few examples: if it's a full moon outside in real life, werecreatures in the game will be affected. And then there's the Kosiak example:

"Eat a floating eye corpse and you'll get ESP, which will allow you to see enemies anywhere on the map, but only while blinded. To take advantage of it, you may want to drink a potion of blindness, or preferably, find and wear a blindfold. Of course, while blindfolded, even with ESP you won't be able to see inanimate objects on the floor--when you find piles of items, your character will have to "feel" for them. Oh, and you won't be able to read scrolls. Whoops! In that pile of items you just felt is a cockatrice corpse--fortunately you were wearing gloves, otherwise you would've been turned to stone just by touching it. But now, blind and protected, you can pick up the cockatrice corpse and use it to attack monsters--now your enemies will turn to stone when you strike them! Unfortunately, their inventory turns to stone as well. Hey, no problem--you've

Have you tried Hit-a-hint? It highlights all accesible targets and assigns a number to each of them for direct keyboard access.

Ah, Firefox extensibility...

That's not how it works, thank god. http://users.tkk.fi/~psillanp/hah_hp/ is an example of a better method in the form of a Firefox extension.

Imagine trying to use a CAD program, or even browse a web-forum without a mouse. The mouse still wins in some applications.

I do all my browsing with the keyboard. What's so hard to believe about that? Ironically, editing text is the hardest thing about browsing (in Firefox) which is why when I need to do a lot of editing (i.e. project wikis) I use w3m-el.

This post sponsored by Hit-a-Hint, the best thing to happen to keyboard navigation since the keyboard.

it's much easier than having to tab 30 times till the correct hyperlink is selected in my browser

Hit-a-Hint

Better keyboard Hyperlink navigation:

Firefox + Hit a Hint (http://users.tkk.fi/~psillanp/hah_hp/)

If you really want to do without a mouse use Ratpoison with Conk http://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/ http://conkeror.mozdev.org/

I use ratpoison and conk when I want a happy medium between a full blown GUI and a low rez terminal.