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The TI-92 is allowed by the University of Alberta Faculty of Engineering and for Diploma Exams by the government of Alberta.

http://www.edc.gov.ab.ca/k_12/testing/diploma/dip_ gib/08_Calculator_Policy_&_Writing_on_Computers_Po licy.pdf

http://www.engineering.ualberta.ca/calculator.cfm# approved

Bob Beck gave a talk on spamd at NYCBSDCon this past October. I've published some recordings of the conference proceedings, but only on DVD and CD media so they're not available on the Net. A guy named Nikolai from the NYC group also made recordings, which he's posted here:
http://www.fetissov.org/public/nycbsdcon06/

Here's a direct link to the spamd presentation. Slides are also available.

You're welcome :)

Researchers at University of Alberta have found that dichloroacetate (DCA) is able to cause tumor regression in a number of human cancers growing in animals. DCA seems to awaken mitochondria, which are present in normal animal cells but dormant in cancer cells, and cancerous tumor growth is stopped.

While DCA has been used for decades to treat mitochondrial diseases in humans, patients are cautioned no human beings have gone through clinical trials using DCA to treat cancer.

Researchers at University of Alberta have found that dichloroacetate (DCA) is able to cause tumor regression in a number of human cancers growing in animals. DCA seems to awaken mitochondria, which are present in normal animal cells but dormant in cancer cells, and cancerous tumor growth is stopped.

While DCA has been used for decades to treat mitochondrial diseases in humans, patients are cautioned no human beings have gone through clinical trials using DCA to treat cancer.

Researchers at University of Alberta have found that dichloroacetate (DCA) is able to cause tumor regression in a number of human cancers growing in animals. DCA seems to awaken mitochondria, which are present in normal animal cells but dormant in cancer cells, and cancerous tumor growth is stopped.

While DCA has been used for decades to treat mitochondrial diseases in humans, patients are cautioned no human beings have gone through clinical trials using DCA to treat cancer.

ShawnX wrote,
>Let's use our collective community to help rm -rf cancer!

Second that.

We can start by donating online to the University of Alberta Cancer Research Fund. Contributions support the continued work of Dr. Michelakis, author of the article in the journal Cancer Cell which kicked off all the fuss. Want to move the process forward? Vote with your credit card.

More information, donor form here: http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/campaign/priorities .cfm?typ=103&id=11&fund=191

You have no idea what you're talking about. If you did, you wouldn't be trying to conflate a data corpus and an algorithm. Also, if you had done the least bit of research into AI, and in this case information retrieval, you'd know just how simple real AI really is. I hate to tell you this. But AI is pretty much just simple search and table lookups. There's no magic dude. None what so ever. So I guess in that sense, it is like magic. It looks cool and amazing when you don't know how it's done, but when you know how it works, you're left thinking, "That's all there is?"

Perhaps you would like to actually read about reinforcement learning. Because as it stands, you have all the arogance and knowledge of the sophmore cs major that you are.

For example - is there any particular reason that an AI would every miss in an FPS combat... They know exactly where they are, exactly where you are, what your direction and rate of movement is, how fast the projectile flys - heck they can even pick up tendencies in your movement patterns. Now they should be able to place a round pretty much exactly where you will be (given your current tendencies) each and every time. Ok, that is FPS games.

The developers could also give the computer more health and armor, the problem is that neither are AI. In fact, most would call that cheating (or developers too lazy to create true AI). Using internal game knowledge that the player has little to no knowledge of isn't an example of how to make good AI. Same thing goes for the MMO comment. For a true AI to work it needs to have the same knowledge that the other players have (which is often incomplete). What you're saying is like building a poker bot where the bot gets to see all of the mucked cards. Sure the bot will beat a lot of people, but it is in effect cheating.

Chess is also not a very good example since most of the chess programs I've seen just use a brute force search algorithm. The board contains all of the information (which is actually pretty limited) at which point the computer just has to do the calculations.

If you want to see where true AI is at work look at the game Go. Many players can beat the computer regularly since the solution space is so large (can no longer use a brute force like chess). Also look at poker (in particular the pokibot where players are always working with incomplete sets of information. A decent poker player still can beat computer players simply by changing their game once and awhile. It ends up taking the bots too long to adapt before they are put out.

Real AI, not the shortcut methods you mentioned, require time and a lot of processing power to implement.

Hmmm, and I'd also like to point out from the MSDS you referenced it states

Ingestion:

Narcotic. Human lethal dose probably 120-250 mg. In addition to its analgesic action, morphine may cause gastric disturbance with nausea, vomiting and constipation. Large amounts may cause central nervous system depression, respiratory or cardiac collapse, coma and death.

Wow, you really didn't do your homework, did you?

Didn't your CS programs have "software engineering" courses? Here are the courses from the two Universities that I've been a student at:

University of Manitoba: Description: 074.335 Software Engineering 1 (3)L
Introduction to software engineering. Software life cycle models, system and software requirements analysis, specifications, software design, testing and maintenance, software quality.

Course homepage here. The University of Alberta has a similar page here.

Is this unique? Doesn't every CS program have 1-2 courses that exactly focus on gathering requirements and building some code as a team? Maybe it doesn't work - in my experience the best/most motivated programmer in the group ends up doing 95% of the work... but the course exists.

Hi,

I browsed through the article. A couple of things I would like to see better backed up by scientific references.

ISSUE 1: Viking farms

Article: "There were Viking farms in Greenland: now they're under permafrost. "

"Reference" linked from article: "Greenland in the Middle Ages: Eric the Red had named Greenland "Greenland" to encourage Danish
settlers, because in his time south-western Greenland was indeed green. It was ice-free, and was extensively cultivated until c.1425 AD, when the farms were suddenly overrun by permafrost. The Viking agricultural settlements remain under permafrost to this day - a powerful indication that the Middle Ages were warmer than the present, and that there is little cause for alarm at the current melting of Greenland glaciers because they are very likely to have melted to more than their present extent during the mediaeval warm period."

Permafrost or not, it seems that some vegetation does thrive in Greenland summer: http://www.narsaq.dk/green-00.html

A related article I found on the web: http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/article.cfm?id= 776
According to this, the farms are indeed under permafrost. However, it seems the reason for failure of the farms was not frost, but sand blown over the farms. Which is naturally caused by runaway erosion, which I had understood the Vikings had caused themselves by chopping down everything resembling trees (as happened with Iceland). If there were forests before, losing them would also mean changing the local microclimates, exposing the farms to chilly winds, and thus triggering the local freezing?

So to me it is not certain that global temperature change caused the freezing or non-freezing of the farmed areas. Somebody got harder facts?

ISSUE 2: Polar bears and iceless Arctic

Article: "There was little ice at the North Pole: a Chinese naval squadron sailed right round the Arctic in 1421 and found none."

Reference linked from article: "In 1421 a Chinese Imperial Navy squadron sailed right round the Arctic and found no ice anywhere. It is possible that at that time there was less of an icecap at the North Pole than there is now, particularly in summer. Yet the polar bears survived. Though there has been much discussion of the supposed threat posed by the warmer Arctic, the polar bears are thriving in the current warm period. Eleven of the thirteen principal known families are prospering as never before."

What does it mean "thriving as never before?" The Polar Bear Specialist Group has a table of the population status of 20 polar bear populations (http://pbsg.npolar.no/status-table.htm). Two populations are decreasing in numbers, and *additionally* "thinner bears, lower female reproductive rates, and reduced juvenile survival in the Western Hudson Bay polar bear population in Canada, which is at the southern edge of the species' range and the first to suffer impacts from global warming."

Most of the populations are tagged "W - evidence global warming effects on sea ice or populations"

The populations do not change in a few years time. "Polar bears rely almost entirely on the marine sea ice environment for their survival so that large scale changes in their habitat will impact the population (Derocher et al. 2004). Global climate change posses a substantial threat to the habitat of polar bears. Recent modeling of the trends for sea ice extent, thickness and timing of coverage predicts dramatic reductions in sea ice coverage over the next 50-100 years (Hassol 2004)." http://www.iucnredlist.org/search/details.php/2282 3/all

I would be extremely surprised about the adaptivity of polar bears had they survived without polar sea ice during hundreds of years during the assumed iceless period, and then within hundreds of years fully retaken

I've just done a google and found this new relevant article:

http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/article.cfm?id= 776

It talks about Viking farming on Greenland around AD900. I'm not doubting Global Warming - something funny is definitely happening to our weather, and it scares me - but HTH did they farm there?

After seeing this presentation on OpenBSD's spamd, which profiles and greylists SMTP connections coming from botnets, I'm convinced of the need for HTTP POST greylisting.

Point is twofold: slow the bots down (or stop the dumb ones altogether) and block obvious botnets completely.

SMTP has the handy retry message. For HTTP, we would need to store the original POST request, and return a response with a 10-20 second meta-refresh to a confirmation url. Anonymous posters won't mind the wait, and the time window gives us time to watch for additional POSTs from the same ip, and blacklist them outright if they match a spammy profile.

The real problem is you are applying expensive content filtering tools to everything when you don't need to. Try something like OpenBSD spamd in front of your box. see

http://www.ualberta.ca/~beck/nycbug06/spamd/

      For some info and numbers. just stop the botnet crap before it gets to your content filter.

How about learning some science. Much of what we call intelligence is highly malleable. There is a growing body of research that shows that talent doesn't really exist. Smart, talented people are made, not born. Even athletic prowess has been shown to be environmentally determined.

Here's a paper that shows that musical talent is mostly a matter of practice. http://www.freakonomics.com/pdf/DeliberatePractice (PsychologicalReview).pdf

Here's link to some papers that show that athletic prowess is mostly determined by the month you were born. http://www.socialproblemindex.ualberta.ca/relage.h tm

Here's a link to Lauren Resnick. http://www.lrdc.pitt.edu/media.htm She points out that iq can be changed.

Beauty? Check this out. http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com/home_films_ev olution_v2.swf

What you are spouting is popular prejudice not science.

The first version of @acronym{UNIX} was developed on a PDP-7 which was sitting around Bell Labs. In 1971 the developers wanted to get a PDP-11 for further work on the operating system. In order to justify the cost for this system, they proposed that they would implement a document formatting system for the AT&T patents division. This first formatting program was a reimplementation of McIllroy's roff, written by J. F. Ossanna.

French: here or here.

This notion is completely and utterly false. In fact, it is _spectacularly_ wrong.

The strongest checkers playing entity in the world is the program Chinook -- vastly stronger than any human that has ever lived. It was written by my supervisor, Jonathan Schaeffer, who is a mediocre checkers player, at best.

The Othello program Logistello *crushed* the human world champion 6-0 in a 1997 match. It's author, my friend Michael Buro, claims to be a weak Othello player.

For the game of Lines of Action (LoA), I wrote a program called Mona that won the de facto world championship in 2000, and has won every game it has ever played against the world's best human players. I don't play LoA at all. (More than once I questioned a choice of Mona's, only to discover that my preferred move was, in fact, illegal. :)

I know a lot about poker, but that could actually be a hindrance to writing a world-beater program. Finding the best algorithmic solutions to a problem is not based solely on the personal knowledge the programmer has about the domain.

    - Darse.

http://games.cs.ualberta.ca/poker/

Actually, we did the multi-player game about eight years ago, and eventually produced a program that is better than an average human player (it has won consistently against humans on our online server for tens of millions of games). It's not nearly as good as the best human players though (and won't be any time soon). The program is available as part of the poker training software "Poker Academy" (http://www.poker-academy.com/poker-software/).

Although the multi-player game is harder in theory, in practice the heads-up game turns out to be tougher, because the amount of tricky play (bluffing and trapping) is much higher for 1-on-1.

There will likely be a multi-player tournament as part of next year's AAAI competition. There might also be a competition for heads-up No Limit Hold'em (or it might be added in 2008).

    - Darse.

http://games.cs.ualberta.ca/poker/

I am a member of the Alberta team.

The article did not explain this part of the competition very well. The bots did not have access to any hidden information. The opponent's cards were only revealed at a showdown.

Here's how it works. A mini-match (1000 games) was played, with all of the cards recorded. Then a completely separate mini-match was played with the same cards, but with the positions reversed. This is possible because fresh copies of the programs can be started with a clean slate, having no memory of the previous match. (In fact, the two halves of the mini-match aren't even played on the same computer). Many of these duplicate matches were then played (40 for the fast competition, 12 for the slow competition) between each pair of players.

It is essential to run the matches in duplicate, in order to equalize the opportunities each side gets. The natural fluctation (variance) due to luck is huge in poker, making it very difficult to separate the signal from the noise. The problem is much worse than most people imagine, making accurate measurement of performance a sticky problem. The duplicate matches go a long way toward reducing that variance, and revealing the true long-term expectation.

[On a related note, I created a technique for direct assessment of poker decisions, which cuts away much of the noise. It is described in detail in my PhD thesis, which should be available from the CPRG website (http://games.cs.ualberta.ca/poker/) in September. A detailed analysis of the AAAI matches will also be available.]

Incidentally, there are a lot of incorrect statements being made in this thread. See the post titled "Some Actual Factual Information" for links to some of the original sources.

    - Darse.

Computers aren't good at retaining knowledge and recognizing patterns? That's news to me... this statement is obviously made by someone who doesn't know what he's talking about...

The reason this game is difficult is not based on a computer's inability to solve problems, rather that there are so many possibilities that we cannot effectively design algorithms that the can be put to use.

Computers aren't good at retaining knowledge and recognizing patterns? That's news to me... this statement is obviously made by someone who doesn't know what he's talking about...

The reason this game is difficult is not based on a computer's inability to solve problems, rather that there are so many possibilities that we cannot effectively design algorithms that the can be put to use.

Funny you should mention RTS games. The people at the University of Alberta are working on that too. The group working on RTS is currently spearheaded by Michael Buro (http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~mburo/).

> I'd like to know how it happened. What attracts some of the best researchers in the world to Alberta? It sure isn't the balmy weather (unless you take balmy to mean nuts). It may or may not be a cultural mecca.

Can't say in general, but regarding game AI, Alberta has a big, well-known research program.

Hi, I've been studying poker bots for a year or so. I'm not a /. member but somebody brought this to my attention and I thought I would post some useful resources.

The Alberta folks are the world's leading (publicly known) authorities on poker AI. (There may be others who are using their knowledge to cheat at online poker, but they're not talking).

Here is the link to the Alberta web site:

http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~games/poker/

(Note: you have scroll down a ways to the doc links).

If you want to read just one paper about computer poker, read "The Challenge of Poker". Here is a link (PDF warning):

http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~darse/Papers/AIJ02.pdf

Some of the Alberta guys spun off into a local company that makes an excellent software product, Poker Academy Pro:

http://www.poker-academy.com/poker-software/

This software written in Java and offers a programming API so you can plug your own bots into their game. The programming API has an online forum:

http://www.poker-academy.com/forums/viewforum.php? f=3

Here is the resources page of one of Alberta guys, now a senior developer working on Poker Academy:

http://spaz.ca/poker/

And here is a blog written by a guy who has some excellent LGPL code available (left side of page);

http://pokerforprogrammers.blogspot.com/

Note: do NOT use the version of this software on the Code Project - it is out of date and buggy - get the download from this blog.

There's lots of other stuff of variable quality...all the pages linked here are high-quality content in the sense that the authors have thought deeply about the AI problem and/or are very skilled programmers.

Enjoy,
Jeff

Hi, I've been studying poker bots for a year or so. I'm not a /. member but somebody brought this to my attention and I thought I would post some useful resources.

The Alberta folks are the world's leading (publicly known) authorities on poker AI. (There may be others who are using their knowledge to cheat at online poker, but they're not talking).

Here is the link to the Alberta web site:

http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~games/poker/

(Note: you have scroll down a ways to the doc links).

If you want to read just one paper about computer poker, read "The Challenge of Poker". Here is a link (PDF warning):

http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~darse/Papers/AIJ02.pdf

Some of the Alberta guys spun off into a local company that makes an excellent software product, Poker Academy Pro:

http://www.poker-academy.com/poker-software/

This software written in Java and offers a programming API so you can plug your own bots into their game. The programming API has an online forum:

http://www.poker-academy.com/forums/viewforum.php? f=3

Here is the resources page of one of Alberta guys, now a senior developer working on Poker Academy:

http://spaz.ca/poker/

And here is a blog written by a guy who has some excellent LGPL code available (left side of page);

http://pokerforprogrammers.blogspot.com/

Note: do NOT use the version of this software on the Code Project - it is out of date and buggy - get the download from this blog.

There's lots of other stuff of variable quality...all the pages linked here are high-quality content in the sense that the authors have thought deeply about the AI problem and/or are very skilled programmers.

Enjoy,
Jeff

The University of Alberta is located in the city of Edmonton, which is the capital city of the province of Alberta, Canada.

Interestingly, this is also the same province which contains Calgary, which some people mistakenly think is the capital city. Edmonton in general (and the University of Alberta in particular) has a great track record of innovation and research. In addition, Edmonton is one of the prettiest cities you're likely to see, and far less testosterone-infused and brash than our cattle-fixated cousin to the south (Calgary).

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.2 0060628.TEETH28/TPStory/National/
http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/article.cfm?id= 7691
http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/ece/news.cfm?story= 47563

and here is one of the papers:

Growth Modification of the Rabbit Mandible Using Therapeutic Ultrasound: Is it Possible to Enhance Functional Appliance Results?
http://www.angle.org/anglonline/?request=get-docum ent&issn=0003-3219&volume=073&issue=06&page=0631

They don't know why ultrasound stimulates growth, but it does.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.2 0060628.TEETH28/TPStory/National/
http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/article.cfm?id= 7691
http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/ece/news.cfm?story= 47563

and here is one of the papers:

Growth Modification of the Rabbit Mandible Using Therapeutic Ultrasound: Is it Possible to Enhance Functional Appliance Results?
http://www.angle.org/anglonline/?request=get-docum ent&issn=0003-3219&volume=073&issue=06&page=0631

They don't know why ultrasound stimulates growth, but it does.

For the engineers in the room...

http://www.ece.ualberta.ca/~jchen/

Article from the Globe & Mail

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.2 0060628.TEETH28/TPStory/National

I had a chance to tour the original NINT facility (not the new one), and I recall a few interesting facts from it. Perhaps most interesting is that the original facility resides at a higher level (read: not basement or 1st floor), and while that means little to most of us, apparently the vibration of a building at that height - in MICROmeters - does effect NANO-research. I suppose that when you do research that's so intensive, factors you've never considered become critical in design, and the essential need for shielding from vibration and electrical interference is partially the reason for the cost of the building.

Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Institute_fo r_Nanotechnology

Press Release:
http://www.engineering.ualberta.ca/news.cfm?story= 47344

I'd say they hyped the existence of the Nanofab pretty extensively, and even if you're an undergrad in Engineering or a few of the Sciences (Physics comes to mind) you've probably heard of the existence of the Nanofab. It's been overshadowed by NINT, but you still hear about the Nanofab in conjunction with nano research at the U of A (and will probably continue to until they get their facilities fully up and running)

They've also started demolishing V-Wing and Physics, and Physics will be moving to BRAND NEW FACILITIES... in 2010. They've "temporarily" (the old Temp Labs building lasted for over 15 years) moved into the old Civil Electrical Building. There was a story in the Folio detailing most of the moves.

The University of Alberta has their own nano tech lab called the NanoFab and it is good for what it did. However it is an open access research facility and the space inside of it was almost all used up by the time I finished working there 2 years ago. This new lab is huge and has tons of room for more equipment and has taken advantage of new construction techniques in order to allow for more sensitive equipment. There is a lot of research in nano-tech happening in Alberta and this will allow it to continue.

You may be interested in a paper from PLDI of this year, Shared Memory Programming for Large Scale Machines. They implemented UPC on BlueGene/L, and the paper explains the infrastructure they developed to do that. However, it's not about how to program on BlueGene/L.

As a goal to encourage scientific progress it may be a good idea. As a practical matter, I don't think it is.

And that is the whole point. To encourage scientific progress. It is an enormous challenge to create a robot that can be a match for a human in a sport such as soccer. The difficulties that have to be resolved are huge. These matches provide a forum for comparing work with others and for exchanging ideas. It speeds up progress considerably.

A similar event has started this year around RTS game AI. As most of us know, there has been very little progress in game AI in the last decade. Now scientists finally get involved, game AI competitions will help to increase the quality of the AI significantly. Game developers are usually guarding their ideas and code closely, as an industrial secret. It is no wonder that we have seen little progress from them. The event is still small, but hopefully it grows after its start this year.

They've been at it since 2001. Looks like they're getting even more serious now.
See below:

http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/chinainstitute/nav0 3.cfm?nav03=45720&nav02=43603&nav01=43092

Very informative post. I didn't realize they were going to more advanced avionics in small airplanes; I thought that would be too expensive. I also didn't realize they were finally getting away from carburetors on some planes. My wife is in training to be a helicopter pilot, but all the R22s still use carburetted Lycomings, so I assumed planes were the same way. As for magnetos, I'm not an automotive or mechanical engineer, but the problem with magnetos is they're not as efficient as an automotive-style spark ignition system, especially during low-power cruising because the ignition timing cannot be advanced. Here's a web site that explains all this in much more detail. So while magnetos are reliable, with fuel economy becoming more and more important, I think they need to be replaced with something more advanced.

As for composite materials, small planes are already extremely expensive. Composites would only increase their cost, putting them out of reach of even more private pilots, so I'm not sure how much those are going to be used. Composites are great for $1+ million supercars like the McLaren F1, or for $100+ million fighter aircraft like the F-22, but they're too labor-intensive and expensive overall to be used in lower-end applications, unless someone comes up with a way of automating their assembly.

Jonathan Schaffer also thought that checkers was simple. Years of effort building Chinook fixed that. He just announced after ~17 years of effort that three of the ~150 3-move ballot openings are draws, and I'm just amazed that he managed that. It's *not* a simple game- it only looks like it.

Once again, you have to look at the time period of these "studies". Pretty much ANYTHING produced before 2000 or so is junk. Even a cursory examination of these shows massive flaws in methodology. Brown and Bohn for instance, they never even looked for abuse by mothers. It wasn't even part of the research.
If you look at the title of the work you quoted from them you would see that's it's full version is "Christianity, Patriarchy, and Abuse". Note the use of the word "Patriarchy", a term used almost exclusively by radical feminists. Indeed the work was funded by radical feminist think tanks and is a favorite reference of anti-christian and misandrist advocates as you can see here:

http://www.ualberta.ca/ST.STEPHENS/CHRTP316.htm

Finkelhor also failed to include women in any of his studies as is documented in his own work here:

http://paedosexualitaet.de/lib/Finkelhor1986/c3.ht ml

pertinant quote - "Frend (1967a, 1967b) and Freund and collegues (1973, 1976), in a series of studies, investigated penile responses to slides of female and male children and adults. They found significantly more arousal to children in a group of molesters, both female-object and male-object, than in either of two control groups (homosexual and heterosexual males)"

Note that he did no research on any female subjects.

Of Carol Holderhead Heggen, one only need to read her blog here:

http://monado2.blogspot.com/2005_05_01_monado2_arc hive.html

to see that she is a radical feminist with a serious grudge concerning organized religion. All "facts" coming from someone with such an obvious advocate position should be seen as suspect.

It's important for us as a society to get a CLEAR head on this subject and that takes OBJECTIVE data, not feminist/socialist screed pieces that start with a conclusion and work backwards to present the case they want.

Checkout ORTS (http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~mburo/orts/orts.html) platform. It is being developed at the Univ of Alberta (which has one of the biggest games research groups in the world).

I am not sure why simply because it is about one of many available tools, the post is out of place on Slashdot. I am not a member of a huge biochem or medical lab, but I am trying to learn and use biochemistry, so I can use every bit of help.

It's out of place because the announcement is somewhat akin to posting a front page article when some guy releases version 0.1 of a new text editor onto Sourceforge. It's been done a million times before, and it doesn't cover any new ground. It isn't even interesting to people who don't use text editors.

That said, if you're really trying to get a handle on biochem and molecular biology (and the bioinformatics that goes along with it), almost all up to date textbooks on the subject include a section (or more) on bioinformatics. In 2006, knowing how to perform basic analysis on your DNA or protein sequence is just about as important as understanding the concept of a gene, or how the complementary nature of DNA works. If the textbooks you currently have are a little out of date, take a look around the library and grab something more recent. There are also plenty of bioinformatics and sequence analysis textbooks on the shelves now.

If you're looking for some places to get started, (and I think someone has already mentioned these), try ExPASy . Although it's more protein oriented, it has an extensive list of links to a very broad cross-section of bioinformatics and sequence analysis tools (along with some tutorials). Also take a look at NCBI, which not only has a range of important tools (like BLAST), but also PubMed. In a similar vein, also explore the EBI site which has another extensive set of tools and databases.

Since you ask, some of the stuff that I commonly use for bog-standard molecular biology tasks (in addition to the links above) includes PlasMapper (finds restriction sites and generates tasteful plasmid maps) and the New England Biolabs site which has some similar tools (NEBcutter, for example), but also handy information on all the restriction enzymes themselves.

If you're into writing bioinformatics applications yourself, start by looking at something like BioPerl. Just using Perl as an example (since it's very popular in biology), there are pre-existing libraries, all fully open sourced and Free(tm), which do things like reverse translation and interfacing with analysis tools like BLAST already.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. Anyone getting started in molecular biology will discover these kinds of sites very quickly. They're mentioned in the textbooks, they're easily found with Google, and they'll be revealed after a 2 minute conversation with anyone working in the field. That's what make this story so pointless. There's nothing new here. It's all been done before, and done 500 times before at that. Even outsiders from other sciences will discover this kind of stuff within a day or two if they're actually serious.

"This cosmic dance of Shiva is called 'Anandatandava,' meaning the Dance of Bliss, and symbolizes the cosmic cycles of creation and destruction, as well as the daily rhythm of birth and death. The dance is a pictorial allegory of the five principle manifestations of eternal energy -- creation, destruction, preservation, salvation, and illusion. According to Coomerswamy, the dance of Shiva also represents his five activities: 'Shrishti' (creation, evolution); 'Sthiti' (preservation, support); 'Samhara' (destruction, evolution); 'Tirobhava' (illusion); and 'Anugraha' (release, emancipation, grace). The overall temper of the image is paradoxical, uniting the inner tranquillity, and outside activity of Shiva.

But the interesting deitic interplay is between Shiva and Kali... "The goddess Kali is somewhat distinctive from the other popular Hindu goddesses. Her name is translated as "she who is black" or "the black one" (Kinsley 1993: 134). She is a goddess who is usually depicted in relation to violent battles, in which her passions have arrived at a tremendous intensity. In situations such as these, it generally appears that Kali is expressing the "wrath of the divine" through acts of severe violence. Kali is often described as drinking the hot blood of her victims and then dancing out of control - threatening to destroy the cosmos itself (1993: 134). In appearance and function, Kali symbolizes uncontrollability that neither humans nor the male gods can overcome. Kali's appearance has been represented by various images over the years. Perhaps Kinsley describes her best when he states:

Her hair is disheveled, her eyes red and fierce, she has fangs and a long lolling tongue, her lips are often smeared with blood, her breasts are long and pendulous, her stomach is sunken, and her figure is generously gaunt. She is naked but for several characteristic ornaments: a necklace of skulls or freshly cut heads, a girdle of severed arms, and infant corpses as earrings. She is usually said to have four arms. In the upper left hand, she holds a bloodied cleaver, in her lower left, a freshly cut severed head; her upper right hand makes the sign "fear not," and her lower right hand, the sign of one who confers boons (Kinsley 1996: 77)."

The dance of Kali at the end of time is danced upon the body of Shiva. The wildness of her dance tears the universe apart and brings about the death of Shiva.

Would make one hell of a ballet.

Because the scoping itself works fine. The problem lies with variable assignment and declaration in Python being ambiguous when dealing with multiple scopes.

But if the syntax for assigning variables doesn't work nicely with lexical scoping, I think it's reasonable to say that something to do with lexical scoping isn't working properly. If Python would change it's lexical scoping rules slightly, the problem would be fixed without changing the assignment syntax. (Essentially, you could have the system work such that every line of a function introduced a new nested scope).

This is why I say incomplete, and not broken. By the same standards, I say that Perl's object model is incomplete, rather than broken. If you claim that Python's closures are 'broken', then you must also accept that Perl's object model is 'broken'.

I don't see why, given that there aren't any standard OO features missing from Perl (with the exception of enforced public/private access, but that's missing from Python too). Arguing over the definitions of "broken" and "incomplete" seems pointless to me. I've made it clear what I think is wrong with Python's closures, you can call it what you like.

When last I looked, Perl didn't treat scalars, hashes and arrays as objects.

No, but you can create your own classes which use the special syntax for built-in types (e.g. you can create your own hash class, see man perltie). IIRC, the class you create doesn't technically inherit from a standard hash class, but since Perl is a dynamic dispatch language this doesn't have any practical consequences (other people can use your custom hash object just as if it were a real Perl hash). Python's treatment of builtins has some quirks anyway, since it's only recently they've become true Python classes ("len" is not a method, etc.)

. And on the subject of things Perl doesn't have, as far as I know, it has no metaclass support, either.

Well, you can create classes programmatically, so in effect it does. See the Class::Struct module, for example, which generates structure-like classes. Perl has pretty much everything in terms of OO (including for example the ability to trap calls to non-existent methods). The syntax is a little clunky, but the actual functionality is easy enough to use.

Only in the scope of a single function, and realistically speaking, if your functions are so long that you don't know whether a local variable has been assigned or not, then perhaps your function is too long, anyway. Certainly when I'm programming in Python, functions tend to be under a dozen lines long.

True, but that basically amounts to saying "lexical scope isn't particularly useful". You have a point here I admit -- it's easy enough to get along in a language with little or no lexical scoping (e.g. C, prior to C99). But it's still anoying that closures are so limited in Python, if you like functional programming, as I do.

I personally know when I've gone to the store, I've had to choose between a few different CDs, knowing I'd be reasonably happy with any of them. The point is they are substitutes, though not exact.

The line of reasoning is false because it tries to claim a recording monopoly doesn't exist when there are substitutes. However it's beyond dispute that copyright creates a time-limited monopoly. Jefferson was clearly aware of the monopoly nature of copyright.

"I like the declaration of rights as far as it goes, but I should have been for going further. For instance, the following alterations and additons would have pleased me . . . Article 9. Monopolies may be allowed to persons for their own productions in literature, and their own inventions in the arts, for a term not exceeding ___ years, but for no longer term, and for no other purpose." -- Jefferson

And a definition of copyright.

Copyright is a negative monopoly right that allows the owner to prevent others from doing things which only the owner has been granted the right to do. -- http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/ualberta/Servic es/copyright.html#sec1

Your argument really is that there is competition between musicians, which I do not dispute and I even gave the examples of competing musicians and competing record labels in my first post, but my claim is that there is no competition in recordings because of exclusive recording deals. You are arguing against something different.

You're right, with this, Emacs rocks.

Another question is whether we want to do that. Will it increase overall human happiness?

It's been up for quite some time all ready. Check this out: Poki Poker Server

AI _can_ help with data reduction, but not understanding.

TD-gammon is a classic example of how AI has improved the understanding of a particular subject of study. Gerry Tesauro created an AI backgammon player that not only rivaled the best grandmasters of the time, but also allowed a new strategy of oppening play to surface as the dominant style.

http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~sutton/book/11/node2.ht ml:TD-Gammon learned to play certain opening positions differently than was the convention among the best human players. Based on TD-Gammon's success and further analysis, the best human players now play these positions as TD-Gammon does

While GTK+ is written in C, they have always used the object-oriented paradigm. There are, of course, wrappers which make both branches of GTK+ easier to use in whatever language you choose.

demolished the field of the international computer rock paper scissors contest with its 6 levels of sicillian reasoning. (I know what you're thinking; but you know that I know what your're thinking; but since I know that you know that I know what you're thinking - I can beat you).