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Its not pea-sized at all, there's more to a clitoris than meets the eye!

If you can store potential energy in a spring (nano-springs?) Why not make use of this concept in modern cars much as hybrid cars do. Use braking to "wind-up" the spring, then energy from which can be used to give a good boost to acceleration.

Of course, the question is how much energy can we store in a spring and is it practical? Perhaps some research is required.

Thoughts?

If you can store potential energy in a spring (nano-springs?) Why not make use of this concept in modern cars much as hybrid cars do. Use braking to "wind-up" the spring, then energy from which can be used to give a good boost to acceleration.

Of course, the question is how much energy can we store in a spring and is it practical? Perhaps some research is required.

Thoughts?

from the article: "Kellaris said random shuffle likely appeals to the MTV generation -- kids with short attention spans who are likely "brain damaged." "

Kellaris is a Professor of Marketing, which naturally means he's an expert in brain damage. :rollseyes:

"The expert quoted in the article was a professor of marketing, hardly the go to guy as far as neuroscience is involved."

Well, according to http://business.uc.edu/James-Kellaris...
"His research concerns the affective, cognitive, and behavioral influences of music on consumers, including effects of music in advertisements and retail environments, the hedonic consumption of music as an aesthetic product, and the influence of music on time perception."

Not that I agree with his point of view.

I don't know about the networks on this list, but at the University of Cincinatti, you have to register your MAC address with your student ID number... however it didn't seem to rank on the list. The wireless coverage is decent, actually; I'm surprised it wasn't on there... A lot of the campus is covered.

"People realize that that "activation" in XP is invasive, and undesirable. People will continue to need the ability to install the same purchased license on more than one machine. Being the last Windows that let you do this easily,"

At some universities that have a special agreement with Microsoft, like The University of Cincinnati, Faculty can get a legal liscenced copy of Windows XP Pro that never asks for activation, doesn't require registration, and can be installed an infinite number of times, presumably on an infinite number of computers. And they can purchase it from the University Bookstore for around US$6.95

...And if you know someone who works at the bookstore, you can get one of these covenanted faculty versions even if you may not exactly be "faculty"...

The big companies that go public hope that an infusion of cash will make them more profitable, but it usually ends up that they get to take a break on stockholder's money for a while until it's deadline time again and they have to scramble to make product/service X work.

I've seen many types of correct critiques of the system, but this is just wrong. When a company receives money by issuing equity, they give up (through dilution of voting rights) partial control of the company. Management only authorizes stock issues when they expect to make money faster with the increased capital than their original equity could.
An IPO or follow-on offering brings in money, but it doesn't make the issuer "rich." If those accelerated earnings don't materialize, the company will be worth just as much as it was worth before, only now the original owners have a smaller stake.

Look at all the ads for investing these days. They all suggest that you trust them to make you money, and they have as selling points, how easy it is to make money.

I challenge you to produce evidence of this. This is strictly illegal. Read up on securities law my friend, and you will notice that the regulations on investment advertising is pretty severe. If you promise someone to make them money and can't deliver, you are in violation of the law.
The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 set out the general provisions, and the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) Advertising Rules have strict guidlines on what constitutes violations regarding investment advertising.

And even if somehow this ad got past the NASD, it wouldn't get past the SEC. If you learn anything about investing, learn that SEC Rule 10b-5 is your friend.

So is that why the reds on my DVDs are so poor? I always felt they weren't allocating enough for gradations of red in displays, and heard that we were most sensitive to red because of the need to identify blood (our own as well as of others).

And also why they use red for stop lights (and tail lights), which are far more important to notice than green.

And this web page seems to indicate that the red sensitivity is broader than that of green.

You need Bayes's Theorem to correctly prove things like this. In this case, I think it'd be something like:

A = child has a safe family (not molested by them, anyway)
B = child is molested

P(B | A) = P(A union B) / P(B)

We don't know any of these probabilities. We know the percentage of reported molestations that are by a family member (1%, again assuming the accuracy of that statistic).

First, I'll state an assumption to make things easier: all abuses are reported. That's clearly wrong, but it simplifies things. To do this correctly, you'd have to go through Bayes's Theorem again with molestations vs. reported ones.

Then our 1% becomes the percentage of molestations that are by a stranger. Assume there's at most one report per child per molester (how do these reports work? is each incident reported separately?). And assume there's at most one molester per child (and consequently there's no overlap between the family-abused and stranger-abused children). Then .01 = P(~A | B).

So .99 = P(A | B) = P(A union B)/P(A). We want P(B | A) = P(A union B)/P(B). So we need to multiply by P(B)/P(A).

You defined P(A) as .8 (and called it pessimistic; I do, too). Let's say P(B) is 5%. Then there's a 6% of a child with a safe family being molested.

Hmm...I said getting a result like that was possible, but I didn't expect it to actually happen. I think I've screwed up the reasoning somewhere along the way. (Maybe you can spot it.) Or maybe it's a consequence of the silly assumptions I've stated. In any case, making an error better proves my point: this sort of argument is complicated and error-prone.

The University of Cincinnati was founded in 1819, and in fact owns the uc.edu domain name. :-P

Says that SCO's employees are in a plan 10b5-1 that allows them to sell stock with non public info.
plan

Mutual funds are regulated by the Investment Company Act of 1940. To simplify a bit, a mutual fund can only invest in securities; it cannot actually run an operating company.

First there is the problem that Snapster is not planning on buying any securities. By law, this must be a mutual funds main business. A CD is not a security.

Second, Snapster is really going to be an operating business, which a mutual fund cannot run. A rental company, like Blockbuster, cannot organize itself as a mutual fund. Even without the distribution of physical tapes, a satellite company, like DirectTV, cannot organize itself as a mutual fund. An ISP cannot organize itself as a mutual fund.

Snapster 2.0 is going to need servers, databases, system administrators, etc. This will make it an operating company, not a mutual fund.

A mutual fund run business functions to the extend needed to track shareholders and make investment decisions. Snapster's lending of CDs goes way beyond this.

The depleted uranium used in weapons can be easily and verifiably shown to produce no hazardous levels of radiation. As far as I know, the amount of radiation produced by depleted uranium is indistinguishable from background.

I thought that the real issue using DU ammo was heavy metal toxicity which is a serious issue.

More info on DU and heavy metal toxicity.

It's not just the aforementioned schools that the RIAA has targetted: U of Cincinnati had 13 students busted as recent as a few weeks ago for running an on-campus Direct Connect hub. Most got off with probation, no expulsions.

Well, it isn't a store but the University of Cincinnati sells surplus, well, um, crap evey Thursday from 11:00-1:00 at the old Sears building (now the Campus Services Building), 2900 Reading Road, at the corner of Reading Road and Lincoln Avenue on Reading Road. They don't have a great selection but they definitely have weird stuff and it's cheap. They tend towards general stuff like tables & couches but I've bought oscillators ($15), the old spotlights from the student center ($75 but waaay cool!), racks ($35), and miscellaneous terminals and such ($10-15). They usually have a bunch of stuff from the labs that has been surplused (centrifuges and such) and old magnetic tape drives and the occasional VAX. Worth checking out.

We just have to hope that universities don't give in to this kind of blackmailing. The question of threatening a student's freedom is much larger than that of stopping some of them from taking part in illegal acts.

They are going after people at my university as well. What really bugged me about this was that the university IT guy said that while they have the ability to track students' online activity, they don't because "we don't have the right." Then he turns around and says that if the movie industry asks them to, they'll go ahead and "check" on you. What hypocrisy!

I wonder how they choose the students to go after. I mean, for every one student they go after, there are probably 50 more doing the exact same thing. It would really suck to get singled for something being done by everyone around you.

Anyway, so far their attention seems to be focused on undergraduates in the dorms. Are they going to start spying on us gradaute students in the research labs next?

Some students at the University of Cincinnati have also gotten in trouble for file sharing. You can check out the story on UC's Newsrecord. These students were visited by two IT people as well as four campus police officers. The students that got in trouble were using Direct Connect to share files. Some students had 150+ gigs shared. All students that were on the Direct Connect server had their internet connections shut off (in the dorms) and the people who were sharing a lot got in major trouble. As the newsrecord article says, the university decided, however, to keep all the consequences internal instead of letting the music industry, etc, deal with them. Just goes to show that if you aren't careful and don't have ways to hide your IP address, you can be easily traced.

The students do not keep the computers, unless they finish two years in the honors program.

Wow, at my old college, they are forcing all the engineers to have laptops (even have a used laptops for sale), but you have to buy them. And even if they supplied them, giving them away is -huge-. Think about it. If you get an iBook for free, its equivalent to going to school for a free semester...

A quick Google search shows that Georgia State University seem to think they are equal ("The mass of an object is a fundamental property of the object; a numerical measure of its inertia..."), and the University of Cincinati indicates that the m in f=ma represents inertia ("inertia is the resistance to changes in velocity").

If you can find a reference that claims they are not equal, I'd love to see it. In the mean time, you might want to consider lightening up a bit. You seem to have totally missed the point of my post in a misguided effort to discredit an essentially irrelevant physics analogy.

I recall reading about a study that said that hands-free systems did not reduce the number of gaffes people made while driving and talking on the phone.

Studies have shown that the distraction of a driver's attention from the road contributes to accidents involving cellular phones and that handsfree devices do not reduce the incidence of accidents.

Hands-Free, But Dangerous

Cell Phones and Car Crashes

A lot more, but I don't feel like typing, you probably don't feel like reading, and you can just do a google search to find more.

People who use cell-phones always argue that they are 1-percenters, those in the one percent who might actually not be so stupid when using a cell phone. 99% of cellphone users think they are in that 1 percent and, of course, this is one of those 90% of statistics that was just made up by me, but that is sure what it seems like.

Everyone that uses a cellphone that I talk to says they are capable of driving while using a cellphone. Well, sure, everyone is capable of driving while using a cellphone, but how capable are you at avoiding an accident and driving defensively while using a cellphone? If it's any less than without, then don't do it.

This sort of Co-op University - Company relationship is not unique to Waterloo and Microsoft. As an undergraduate at Ohio State, I co-oped with a company near Cincinnati. There I ran into many Engineering Co-ops from the University of Cincinnati. UC has one of the oldest and largest Co-op programs in the country. Many local companies employed UC co-ops. Not to mention hired them once they graduated. Most of the fulltime progammers I worked with were themselves co-op alumns!

This sort of Co-op University - Company relationship is not unique to Waterloo and Microsoft. As an undergraduate at Ohio State, I co-oped with a company near Cincinnati. There I ran into many Engineering Co-ops from the University of Cincinnati. UC has one of the oldest and largest Co-op programs in the country. Many local companies employed UC co-ops. Not to mention hired them once they graduated. Most of the fulltime progammers I worked with were themselves co-op alumns!

here is one, oh, and here is a list of about 4 more intro physics online texts.

Want some chemistry ones?

All of this information could have been yours with a simple Google search.

I wouldn't worry too much about that. The quote is ascribed to Benjamin Franklin, but originates from Shakespeare's Hamlet.

The closest you could probably come to that in the Bible is Romans 13:8 or for the old-school fans, Proberbs 22:7. The bible in general frowns on borrowing or loaning regardless of if usuary is involved or not. Apparently strife caused by the borrowing of tools between people is a timeless theme in humanity.

The starting point for this has to be the classic Boehringer Mannheim "Biochemical Pathways" charts which you can access on the Web here and here. Just click on one of the squares and it will present you with a blow-up of that section of the chart. These are also available as HUGE wallcharts on paper you can order from here. Amazing, ain't it? How the proteins produced by DNA manage to work together as catalysts to create the chemicals needed to form an organism is almost totally unknown, yet by definition it is a cellular automaton problem! To read up on all of this stuff, start with this, then for more details go here and here. After you've skimmed all of the above, pick a site from here or here or here and keep going. It never stops.

I saw that too ... and quickly got a screen capture.

For those of you who didn't see it, you can check out my cap. here: http://www.eng.uc.edu/~wwelch/first_slashdot_big_a d.jpg

Bill

Disclaimer: I boot Linux at home on my Alpha, but I'm at school now so I'm stuck with Windows. :) or maybe it should be :(

The book that I have right now and a cool program as well that shows the step by step process.

From what I understand of human embryology the start of a distinct human life from the sperm of one human being and the ovum of another would be at the zygote stage when both the sperm and ovum cease to be seperate things and cojoin in the creation of a complete monocellular human being. For it is at the genesis of the single cell zygote where nothing is needed except time and nutrition to continue the process of building a new and complex human life.

Public companies can't lie or make any misrepresentations when dealing with questions from investors (or the press). This makes coverups very difficult because they could result in very expensive lawsuits. If they deny that they are in negotiations, and they are, then they are liable under Rule 10b-5 of the Securities Exchange Act. And for the record, IAAL.

At my university IS, CS, and CE (computer engineering) degrees are offered. Both CS and CE are through the engineering college and focus heavily of typical engineering skills (physics, math). CE includes more low-level electrical skills, although not as much as electrical engineering.

In CE and CS theory is strongly emphasised. I don't think a real database (ie sql server) class is even required. Lanagues used are typically C++ and assembler, with a bunch of other used sparingly (smalltalk, java). In contrast, the IS degree has a bit of c++, although its the same c++ that mechanical or chemical engineers take, and a lot more current lanaguages, like asp, oracle, etc.

I'm in the CS program, and to me, the biggest benefit is that while my education is very theory-oriented, the program requires that I co-op full-time for 6 quarters (two quarters consecutively, working, not taking classes). This university has the oldest co-op program in America (100+ years), and they do a pretty good job helping you find a job. We've had people at Intel, Compaq, NASA, Apple, TI, etc. What's great about it, is that through co-oping I've had a chance to learn asp, oracle, sql server, flash, active-x stuff, xml, etc. Moreoever, I've worked with these things in a real business enviroment.

I should note that the IS people also co-op, although its not required for them, and they typically do less quarters co-oping. Where I work, my experience has been that in general, co-ops coming from an IS background come to the table with more immediate skils (like oracle), but typically can't pick up new things as fast, or do heavy math. Of course this is a gross generalization, but the trend seems to be there.

So my take: screw the IS degree; take a strong theoretical CS-type degree, but augment it with real-world experience co-oping or interning.

"Everything you do will be more fun." -MS Win95 Install.

Check out the pretty graphs here and here. Both show that red and green sensitivities are similar and different from blue. The two graphs seem to contradict each other - the first has blue the lowest, and the second has blue the highest, but they are graphing two things: the first shows sensitivity (excitability per # of photons) and the second shows the reciprical (# of photons to excite).

The pinky processor is a chip that's designed to be extremely parallelizable, that is, it is designed to work extremely well in groups. Developed by Dave Taylor, they are extremely simple chips made to be small and efficient, and fast.

We are required to have a laptop by the end of our first year. The requirement specs at the beginning of last [school] year were for a pent3 500mhz machine w/ 802.11b card, running about $2k-2.5k. Granted costs have come down, but its still quite a bit for something that is required. The offical policy is that they want everyone to have laptops so they don't use the computer laps for "personal computing", aka typing reports, surfing net, email.. Makes you wonder what all of the labs full of PC's are for then.

In any case, I guess its cool that you can sit outside on the commons and get internet access.

Students that co-op are required to do at least 4 quarters of coop, with students who stay on schedule completing 6 or 7 quarters of co-op depending on whether you take your first summer off or not. It's a five year program where you take classes for freshman year and then you can start co-op, with most students alternating co-op, school, co-op, school, etc on a quarterly basis. Works out nice since by the end of a quarter, you're often ready either to stop working or get out of classes, and do something else.

I'm currently with my 3rd company on my 6th co-op quarter. Students are required to stay with a company for at least 2 quarters, with a lot of students staying with one employer for the whole time. I decided at the beginning that I wanted to work for as many companies as I could since I had (and still don't) have a clue what exactly I want to do after I graduate.

I've learned a lot of things from my various co-op experiences, and I've also had some really stupid co-op experiences. My first co-op was with a fiberglass company that made parts mainly for the heavy truck industry (i.e. body panels for Freightliner semi's) and I worked in the lab there. I learned that small companies can be a bit screwy. The lab I worked in wasn't the most organized lab, and it was quite out-dated. Lots of 486's and the likes, with a lot of work being done in DOS based applications. I was stupid back then and didn't understand that a lot of a co-op is what you make of it.

My second co-op was with a DOE lab, where I worked in the ceramics group, which was interesting. I got my first experience with SEM there, but I also came to realize that your supervisor while on co-op makes a huge difference. My advisor didn't really interact with me, and didn't give me much to do, dishing me off to his post-docs. His post-doc's had no idea what to do with me since most of the work they were doing was stuff that they needed to do, and couldn't rely on someone else to do, so I ended up doing a lot of routine sample prep and the like. I also ended up working 4-6 hours a day and getting paid for 8 since all co-ops there are given a weekly stipend. Again, I probably could have got a lot more out of the co-op if I'd taken the initiative, but it would also have helped if the management had a better idea of how to utilize me. Other students were kept busy and productive, doing meaningful work because their advisors had taken the time to plan out what they'd use a co-op student for before they arrived.

Now, my third co-op is with a large computer company, which does more consulting now than hardware. Anyway, I work in a failure analysis lab, analyzing all kinds of things that come from production. This has by far been my best co-op, and I think a lot of that has to do with my getting along with my supervisors. Granted, my first two weeks here weren't the greatest since the guy I was supposed to work for was so busy he didn't really have time to set me up, but I ended up meeting one of the other engineer's in the department, and since then I've had lots of challenging work. I've developed some analysis techniques, refined my SEM and light microscopy techniques, and really learned how to cross-section and polish samples.

So, looking back through my rather long winded post it looks like a good co-op relies on two things. One being your initiative, the other being how well prepared the company is for a student. Rather difficult for companies too. They want to challenge the student, but they don't want to overwhelm and frustrate them either, and they have to do this w/o knowing the student except for a resume and an interview.

My co-op department does point out that your first quarter with most companies will usually be kind of boring, where you're mainly going to learn the ropes, and how things work, and probably won't be given lots of responsibility. The longer you stay with a company, the more responsibility you'll be given. I know I've done my fair share of grunt work on all of my co-ops.

My advice to you would be to find someone you work with who will really act as a mentor for you, and has time/energy to teach you and also pass work on to you. The longer you stick with one or two people, the more trust they'll gain in you (unless you turn out shitty work), and they'll give you better jobs. Yeah, you'll probably still end up doing the stuff no one else wants to do but that's what happens when you're on the bottom of the ladder . . .

We now know what finished off the dinosaurs and plesiosaurs.

we have strong evidence that the dinosaurs where thriving up until the impact.

as others have posted, the blood pressure argument only holds if the the circulatory system consisted of a heart and inelastic tubing - a fairly strong assumption. Various plausible mechanisms have been proposed to get around this problem.

Reading through the comments, I think that a lot of people seem to be concerned that students will cheat by talking to each other online or otherwise sharing answers with their neighbors. Wlodek Bryc has developed an online test-taking system called Online Exercises which not only is capable of generating different numbers for each student's exam, but it also frees students to take the tests at home if desired; each test can be timed and a submission will only be accepted within the timelimit.

Are you sure about that? The SEC's rules about short sales don't mention it.

I just read this paper. Now I'm sorry I posted in this thread already, so I can't use the moderator points I have to up your post. Hopefully someone will. That paper is a very good read. Very interesting. It explains a lot. Everyone should read it.

Also interesting is the link between low levels of infant/child touch in a society and high levels of violence.

Indeed, I think that's one of the most interesting aspects of it. One of its most important references on that topic, Body Pleasure And The Origins Of Violence is on the net. I just read it, as well. An equally good read.

I just read this paper. Now I'm sorry I posted in this thread already, so I can't use the moderator points I have to up your post. Hopefully someone will. That paper is a very good read. Very interesting. It explains a lot. Everyone should read it.

Also interesting is the link between low levels of infant/child touch in a society and high levels of violence.

Indeed, I think that's one of the most interesting aspects of it. One of its most important references on that topic, Body Pleasure And The Origins Of Violence is on the net. I just read it, as well. An equally good read.

There are so many topics here, but most of them (drug companies wanting money, government wanting more funds for agencies, etc.) have already been commented on. I'd like to discuss one possible reason why so many people in the U.S. have mental disorders.

One aspect of American society that's becoming more and more pronounced is that most of us are extremely touch phobic. It's not considered "normal" to have much physical contact with other people, unless it's in a sexual relationship. In fact, merely touching is viewed as a sign of sexual contact or desire, even when such is not the case. Hence the wide-spread fear of teachers in school even patting a kid on the back, because they're afraid they'll be accused of being a child molester.

They've done studies of the affects of long-term touch deprivation... one interesting thing is that it causes brain damage. Physical brain damage -- particularly in younger kids and infants, but chemcial changes happen in the brain at all ages.

For reference, see: Touch and Human Sexuality. It's thick going, but one sentence in the paper jumped out at me: "In other words, frequent pleasurable touch results in positive changes in brain tissue and chronic touch deprivation or trauma results in measurable significant brain damage." Also interesting is the link between low levels of infant/child touch in a society and high levels of violence.

The U.S. has become a society where people in general are less and less likely to have significant physical contact with other people. Not to even mention that adults are getting too scared to touch their own offspring in public for fear of being accused of being a pedophile. I've often wondered if maybe this is one factor (just *one* factor) in some of the school shootings. Now I wonder if some of the mental illness might be caused by actual brain damage from lack of touch.

Not that I think we can hug our way to good mental health :-) ... but I thought it might add to the discussion.

Dear Judith,

I'd like to apologize for all the mysogynist dorks in this otherwise enlightened community who feel the need to bring up your gender as if it mattered and then denigrate you as if your gender had anything to do with intelligence or courage. I hope these immature yutzes come out of their hovels some day and learn as much about intelligent, courageous women like Clara Barton, Jane Addams, and Maya Angleou (to name a very few) as they have about yacc and gcc.

You don't have to be an antisocial dweeb with blinders on to be a good hacker. Why don't we prove it?

Jason Dufair
"Those who know don't have the words to tell