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It is assumed that thousands of years ago all people had hypolactasia in the same way as most mammals do today. At that time in cultures where milk consumption was started after childhood, lactase persistence had a selective advantage. Those people with lactase persistence were healthier and had more children than people with hypolactasia, and the frequency of the lactase persistence gene started to increase.

it seems most likely that the European and Arabia-Sahara centers of LAC*P prevalence, and the Uganda-Rwanda center (if it in fact exists), arose independently. Population movement and gene flow can be very extensive and, no doubt, have played a substantial role around the centers. Despite the efforts of some authors to find a common origin in the ancient Middle East, it is simpler to suggest independent origins than to postulate gene flow from the Middle East to Scandinavia and to the interior of East Africa. The problem might be resolved in the future if gene sequencing could show that the LAC*P alleles in Sweden and Saudi Arabia are, in fact, the same or are distinct forms of the gene with a similar function.

Finally, the LAC*P and LAC*R genes are interesting far beyond their biomedical significance. Along with linguistics, archaeology, and physical anthropology, further research on lactase genes and other genetic markers will provide clues to the prehistory of peoples, their migrations and interminglings, and the origins and development of major language families.

Here is the abstract from the The American Society of Human Genetics article, and here is Stanford's press release on the story.

And are the web pages of Marcus W. Feldman and Noah Rosenberg From Rosenberg's research page, here is access to a PDF of the journal article.

This is absolutely the point - and the defense.

"The Congress shall have the power.... To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries"

There is a critical point here, carefully obfuscated by the RIAA and it's minions - there is no such thing as "Intellectual Property."

There is a concept in law called a "Natural Right," and it is generally accepted that people have a natural right to propriety. But as Jefferson was explicitly clear on, there is no natural right to "own" an idea:

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea..."

Copyright does not protect property, it is not about protecting property; it is about promoting science and the useful arts. Copyright is not a property right; it is a temporary monopoly. Violating copyright is not theft or piracy; it is guerilla anti-trust.

This distinction is quite clear in the constitutional grant of exclusive right, that such grant would not be obviously self-justified as it would be for property, but that such right is justified only in as much as it fulfills the noble social good of "promoting the progress of science and the useful arts."

Larry Lessig's recent supreme court challenge to the CTEA hinged on the second phrase's "limited time." He argued unsuccessfully that the extensions provided by CTEA violated the phrase by establishing essentially perpetual copyright. The court asked if 120 years was not a finite time, and turned the claim down.

It would seem that a more powerful case would be made by asking if the CTEA, DMCA, NET, etc. fulfill the purpose: "to promote science and the useful arts."

Chia Monkey makes a point I think universal--that fear of over-broad laws wielded by greedy institutions has a broad chilling effect on innovation: science and the useful arts. If found thus by the court, such laws would be unconstitutional.

The RIAA not only holds a monopoly with 90% market share, but wields a monopoly granted by We The People. An "embarrassing monopoly" at that, according to Thomas Jefferson. The exclusive right is not a property right, it is a temporary grant which may be "may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody."

Write your congress-people and explain how your efforts at innovation have been stifled by inappropriate extension of copyright in a manner entirely contrary to the constitutional mandate. We must take control of the language: the RIAA is a pirate organization, thieving and stealing from the public domain. File traders are freedom fighters and patriots, exploring new technology and pushing forward the progress of science and the useful arts, fulfilling the goals of the constitution bravely despite the threat of extorting pirate organizations like the RIAA and MPAA.

Of course it'd be a bit hard to defend lionizing most warez traders, but no more difficult than defending a billion dollar claim against a college kid.

You're both missing the big picture. When the Bill of Rights was being crafted, many opposed the whole idea, not because they were against individual rights, but because they feared that what you two are discussing would happen: that people would come to believe that *only* those rights specifically mentioned in the Bill of Rights were protected.

From: James Wilson, Pennsylvania Ratifying Convention, 28 Nov. - 4 Dec. 1787

"A bill of rights annexed to a constitution is an enumeration of the powers reserved. If we attempt an enumeration, every thing that is not enumerated is presumed to be given[to the government]. The consequence is, that an imperfect enumeration would throw all implied power into the scale of the government, and the rights of the people would be rendered incomplete."

Hmmm. I believe you need to read Judge Richard Posner's opinion on this particular issue.

He doesn't believe plagarism = theft, and so I'm rather more likely to take his view of the matter over that of some Anonymous Coward.

That being the system where one candidade gets his brother to remove 57000 of the other candidate's supporters from the election before you start and then has the count fiddled in areas where you know you won't win.

I'm tired of hearing whiny knee-jerk liberals complain about how Bush "stole" the position from Al Bore.

Yeah, the truth is just SO boring, isn't it?

The blazingly blatant fact is that Bush won Florida.

Yes, in the way that it was blatant that Ben Johnston won the Seoul Olympic 100m. Sometimes it's more important to pay attention to what happened after the race.

Many (otherwise left-wing) Florida newspapers have verified that, even if stupid voters were taken into account, Bush would still have won Florida.

They may have done that, but they'd be wrong. Even if the mis-counting was the real issue (which it is'nt). You are probably thinking of reports based on this CNN/Times back report. Trouble is, the "investigation" that is refered to in the CNN report actually found the opposite, ie that Bush lost. CNN etc simply lied. Basically, like Gore, they backed down in the face of the poitical power of a man that makes Nixon look like George Washington.

The actual NORC data showed that the Supremes' aborting of the recount prevented Gore from winning by over 40000 votes. And that's still before we look at what might have happened if Jeb Bush had not prevented 57000 legitimate voters from registering in areas of Gore support.

If you want to look at the data yourself instead of letting others do it for you then it is available from here but it is a 125MB download!

By saying that Bush should not be president, you must believe inherently that idiots should be given special treatment in the ballot box.

In fact, that's exactly what did happen. If you lived in a Bush area your ballot machine almost certainly had the "retry" function switched on, in which case an idiot that marked the paper incorrectly would have it returned for another try. In Gore areas this was switched off so the same mistake would simply loose you your vote.

I don't think they should be held to standards any different than that of those who can "bang the rocks together".

Well, Jeb clearly doesn't agree with you there.

Why is it so hard for you to admit that the man in the White House is there by a massive campaign of dishonesty and criminal activity for which the evidence is over-whelming? What does it cost you to stand up to him? Are you embarassed? Is that a good reason to allow an unelected man to rule America and send its troops to die in order to further his friends' and families' business ventures? Would it be different if it was your brother or sister that died for that?

Gore IS president (and an asshole, but that's not the issue here), and Bush is an unelected, military dictator of the classic type (money and favours to his supporters, war, fear and lies for the people).

TWW

You come up with example of example of ballots which are actually free of Gore votes, even if you want them to be....scenarios in which an enraged Republican writing "Gore sucks!" gets counted as a Gore vote.

Wow, you sure have an active imagination. Remember, this isn't being done by a machine, and human beings are perfectly capable of distinguishing "Gore sucks" from "I want to vote for Al Gore for President, please". You invent a secnario where "Gore Sucks" is counted, but it's purely an invention. What scenario are you talking about, one where we use poorly programmed OCR to scan the ballots? Okay, keep imagining that. Regardless, the data is there, the contents of each ballot noted, and based on those ballots that the panelists agreed had clear voter intent, Gore won.

Let the machines do their actual jobs

Right. Let's trust blind stupid computers to figure out that "I want to vote for Gore" is a vote for gore and "Gore sucks" isn't. Please. These are the same computers that can't handle a half-filled oval, and you want them to be held as authoritative.

instead of some party hack with a magnifying glass guessing that that G in the margin means Gore and not George.

Heh. You're trying to refute the conclusions of a study that you know absolutely nothing about. What "party hack" are you talking about? You're just arbitrarily creating the scenario that the re-count was done by a "Democrats for Gore Winning the Election or Death" club who'll count anything as a Gore vote, and then saying that study would be invalid. Well, sure, except it doesn't exist.

Sorry, man. You can keep imagining things that would mean you're right, but reality steadfastly refuses to align itself with what you want to be true.

It's funny. The study, done by NORC was sponsored by a large number of media sources. These sources mostly published "Bush Would Have Won" stories, which in the first line said Bush would have won under a specific recount scenario. They liked to focus on Gore's method, since that adds a nice twist, despite being irrelevent. Usually by the end of the article, they get around to admitting that by using the Florida Court's method of recounting Gore would have won. The irony here is that organizations that clearly wanted to come to a "Bush Wins" conclusion funded a study to prove that and ended up proving the opposite.

Maybe you just didn't read that far. Not your fault, since it is a common enough technique to put the headline that says what you want to say at the top on the front page, and the real story at the very end of the article in section C12.

Besides, if the re-count shows "intent", it is invalid. It should show actual voting.

100% wrong. The Florida Constitution states that the intent of the voter is what matters. You can talk all you want about how only the first time should matter and broken machines that cannot tolerate the slightest bit of deviation should be the authoritative judge of what an "actual vote" is, but you're wrong. The highest law of the state of Florida says so.

Check this still from the most recent episode.

It shows as Homer sings, "I can walk from Springfield to Alaska."

It seems to show pretty conclusively that it's Springfield, MO that he's referring to.

-kd

It was also unfairly counted because anything that had an "improperly" punched chad was disgarded, which tended be more Bush votes discarded.

Where do you get that? The data from NORC indicates that vastly more Gore votes weren't counted. Under certain recounting schemes (including ironically the one Gore's lawyers wanted to use) Bush would have won. Under the full-state recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court but stopped by the feds, Gore would have won. CNN lied to you.

Here's NORC.

1. 1 To get into one's possession by force, skill, or artifice, especially:
2. 
   a. To capture physically; seize: take an enemy fortress.
   b. To seize with authority; confiscate.

If I capture, seize, or confiscate your property, I have control and possession of your property while you lose it. That is the point you cannot see. If I don't take, or remove your property there is no theft. There might be copyright infringment, forgery or plagerism, but there is no theft without a transfer of possession.

But if that's not good enough for you, perhapse you'd like a few more. While you're noting the complete absence of any copying of so called "intellectual property" from any of those, check out how many specifically say "taking and removing". Thats because theft is concrete. I've either stolen your car from your garage or I haven't. I've either removed some stereos after breaking into Radio Shack or I haven't. That doesn't apply to downloading a copy of Office XP without paying for it, because there is no guarantee that I would have bought it in the first place. And even if it was guaranteed, MS has only "lo

You mean besides this and these? And you thought you were being funny...

Not true.

Gravity is only tested to solar system scales, and in an indirect way, galactic cluster lensing effects.

At very large scales, say of the Hubble radius, we have no tests of gravity. Cosmological models are almost always based on the belief that Gravity works at the very large scales, an extrapolation of many orders of magnitude. There is no proof that this is a valid extrapolation, and there are hints that they are not. (Like they lead to an extremely highly unlike situation. Check out This Talk )

Large scale modifications of gravity may affect the smaller scales, but these effects are naturally suppressed (you can cook up theories where they are not suppressed, but then it is not "large scale" modifications anymore). So to discover these effects are hard.

We have experimental constraints of course, but they are not very strong.

If somebody commits acts of copyright infringement amounting to a value greater than $1,000 over a period of 180 days, then it becomes a CRIMINAL offense, and that person can be ARRESTED and put in JAIL for it.

Without the content owner even complaining? Can you cite a case? I've never ever heard of that happening, and I don't see how it could happen unless you are suggesting that the government would call me up and say, "You know, we've seen your song being copied a lot on Napster and we assume you don't agree, should we go ahead and take care of him?" I can't imagine that has ever happened or the government would be doing the RIAA's legal work instead of the RIAA.

All professional musicians want to sell their music

"All". Right. Not a single professional musician wants to share their music and be heard for the love of music or so people come to their shows. Not a single one in the whole world. Right, I'll just take your word on that since you obviously speak for all professional musicians. :)

There are more musicians who care about copyright issues and piracy than there are who don't.

You seem pretty dang sure of yourself. Do you have some references (preferably not from the RIAA) that backs that up?

Crack a fucking history book! The atomic pile in the basement at the University of Chicago!

I refer you to the following two links:

The Fist Pile
The hHistory of Nuclear Energy

It was a controlled reaction and it was self-sustaining. Its power WASN'T harnessed.

Don't know what ad hominem means, huh? Here's a quick lesson for you, shitface. Calling a person a name is not an ad hominem attack. It's an insult.

It's both. Here's a definition for you...

ad hominem adj. Appealing to personal considerations rather than to logic or reason.

Indicating that you might not have the qualifications to make an informed opinion is not an ad hominem attack--it's a logical observation entirely material to your ability to make such informed opinion. You calling me a "shitface" is ad hominem, however, since it gets down to "personal considerations" rather than anything that has to do with the issue at hand.

Have a nice day, glad I could help you with the history of nuclear power and the definition of ad hominem. Google is your friend.

... though I'm a Democrat I think Bush won Florida ...

I don't.

Consider the thousands of people who were illegally denied the right to vote because a private company incorrectly listed them as felons. (There was probably no way to recover those votes after the election.)

Consider the so-called Brooks Brothers Riot, a Republican-sponsored mob that deliberately interfered with the vote count.

Consider the unambiguous overvotes that would have been counted in Gore's favor if Florida's election law ("clear intent of the voter") had been followed. (This is probably the clearest indication that Gore won the election.)

This CNN article is typical of the reports on the NORC recount study. The headline and the first few paragraphs tell you that Bush still would have won -- but if you read the entire article you'll find that they examined several possible scenarios, some of favored Bush and some of which favored Gore.

We've been told repeatedly, by people who should know better, that we should just "get over it". We do need to move on (there's no realistic hope of correcting the results of the 2000 election) but I will not "get over it". There is no statute of limitations for stealing a Presidential election.

Obligatory karme whore: http://www.math.uchicago.edu/~wald/lit/pi_proof.tx t

I think it's important that you know that height is a more important determinant of salary in the US than education. Management is hired by American "upper management" who's appointed by American boards of directors, who are appointed by the American (majority) stockholders, who are, in general, dumb-shit, protect-my-money-no-matter-what rich people.

What makes American management irreplaceable is their attractiveness to American capital. Pure and simple. They are unlikely to be replaced by our offshore cousins, because they're too attractive (and too close) to the stockholders. Capitalism creates the framework, but rich grammies and grampas vote for those tall, "effective" managers. I ain't gonna change.

Really, this is ON-topic... just not till the last point i guess :-/ This filter suggestion you have:

Beef up your filters and accept it.

is good. Your logic about the marketers needing 30 days is also reasonable. But since this is a board for nerds, I think it warrants something more involved... you want maintain control over your mailing addresses, and whether or not you recieve mail sent to them. The solutions are out there- you just need to take a few minutes to put the pieces together.

I just started using a new account for my main email address, and I'm taking this opportunity to try to break the chain of spam that I developed over 6 or 7 years of using my last address at a .edu domain. What steps am I taking? (note- of course, this is a linux-centric view. If you're using hotmail/outlook/AOL, and you're really concerned about the spam you get, my only suggestion is "find something else.")

1. Set up Procmail. If you're root, it's a little more involved... if you're not root, odds are procmail is already running somewhere on your system. "man procmail", "man .procmailrc", "man procmailex" should be enough to get you going.

2. Use Spamassassin. Once again, if you're the only user on your domain, it's more work because you have to dl/install/configure the SA program. Lucky for me, i don't have root on my mail domain, and my friendly new sysadmin had it running already- so all I had to do was set up a new procmail recipe like this one. In fact, i think i used that one, exactly.

3. Use sneakemail to generate new email addresses for any public post/contact information. Point the sneakemail account you set up to your real address. Don't ever list your actual REAL address ANYWEHRE that a bot can pick it up off the web. Don't give it out to anyone on the phone. Don't use it to send email to anyone at hotmail. Don't list it in the text on your resume or write it out in your .signature. Don't fill it in on warranty registration postecards.

#3 is the really important one- which is why i brought it up in an earlier post in this thread. You probably have another account that is getting a lot of spam right now, which is why you've read this far. So you .forward that address to your new address, where everything that comes in gets run thru procmail and SA just like any new mail. Procmail lets you set up separate delivery folders for mailing lists, so if you use Sneakemail every time you join a new mailing list, or give your address to another company online, you can direct mail coming to that address into its own folder, because sneakemail tags the "From:" headers with information as to which address someone is sending mail to. SO- to take this particular case in point, you make an "audiogalaxy" sneakemail address, and when you get spam from Sprint on the audiogalaxy address, you know that audiogalaxy sold you out. So you call them up, complain, AND THEN YOU LOG INTO SNEAKEMAIL AND TURN THEM OFF.

"There is no right to privacy."

For US citizens, I refer you to the Warren & Brandeis paper, titled The Right to Privacy . And this page has some good summaries.

Whether or not the US Government respects privacy rights is another matter entirely, but to say we don't have them is incorrect.

It is possible for inflation to produce gravitational waves, which in turn are imprinted as CMBR anisotropies, but we haven't seen evidence of them (in the tensor modes). But then, WMAP wasn't expected to be sensitive enough to detect the indirect effects of inflationary gravitational waves on the CMBR.

Well, back in the 80's, I was into AD&D and Palladium, thereafter. Palladium eventually lead to playing Rifts, which I think is a great game... I was especially into the Cyberneticist OCC and the Rouge Scientist OCC. That was in the mid 90's, about the same time I was applying to college. So, I decided to apply to a major research University, and the Cyberneticist and Rouge Scientist classes from Rifts led me to look at the University of Chicago, located in ChiTown, of course...

So, I actually wound up going to the University of Chicago, and wound up working at the Enrico Fermi Institute, which happens to also be the home of the Laboratory of Advanced Space Research. Well, at the same time, I began stopping by the RPG groups, and I found that nobody would touch AD&D or Palladium systems with a 10 foot pole. All the student gaming groups were pretty much strictly Mage, Vampire, or Legend of the Five Rings groups.

So, I played alot of VRAdept characters, which is a fairly good archtype and job description of modern-day molecular chemists and nuclear engineers. Along the way, I learned how to operate stereo-visualization equipment (VR goggles, VRML), turing machines (TMML), AI constructs (Lisp programming), etc. etc. Anyhow, somewhere along the way, I wound up helping the astrophysics department build a nuclear powered satellite...

And that is the connection to the VoidEngineer of the M:tA.

FYI, I've been playing M:tA for about 5 years now, and it's now definately my RPG of choice.

Anyhow, in M:tA game terms, chantry and artifact construction might be described along the following lines (but it's just a concept for narrative building, so please take this with a grain of salt):

Nuclear Fallout Chantry
Spheres: Forces 5, Matter 5, Prime 5, Correspondence 5, Entropy 5, Time 5
Requires: ResistAtomicForce, EarthWorks, GridTelecomunications, ResistAtomicEntropy, DeepTimePlanning

TreeHouse Chantry
Spheres: Forces 2, Matter 4, Prime 5, Entropy 2, Time 2
Requires: ResistStorm, BonzaiSculpting, ResistWarping, ResistRot

Nuclear Powered Satellite
Spheres: Forces 5, Matter 5, Prime 5, Entropy 2, Time 2, Correspondence 4
Requires: ThermoNuclearFuelCell, Plutonium, ResistSpaceDebris, AtomicSynchronization, SatelliteTelecommunications

Well, back in the 80's, I was into AD&D and Palladium, thereafter. Palladium eventually lead to playing Rifts, which I think is a great game... I was especially into the Cyberneticist OCC and the Rouge Scientist OCC. That was in the mid 90's, about the same time I was applying to college. So, I decided to apply to a major research University, and the Cyberneticist and Rouge Scientist classes from Rifts led me to look at the University of Chicago, located in ChiTown, of course...

So, I actually wound up going to the University of Chicago, and wound up working at the Enrico Fermi Institute, which happens to also be the home of the Laboratory of Advanced Space Research. Well, at the same time, I began stopping by the RPG groups, and I found that nobody would touch AD&D or Palladium systems with a 10 foot pole. All the student gaming groups were pretty much strictly Mage, Vampire, or Legend of the Five Rings groups.

So, I played alot of VRAdept characters, which is a fairly good archtype and job description of modern-day molecular chemists and nuclear engineers. Along the way, I learned how to operate stereo-visualization equipment (VR goggles, VRML), turing machines (TMML), AI constructs (Lisp programming), etc. etc. Anyhow, somewhere along the way, I wound up helping the astrophysics department build a nuclear powered satellite...

And that is the connection to the VoidEngineer of the M:tA.

FYI, I've been playing M:tA for about 5 years now, and it's now definately my RPG of choice.

Anyhow, in M:tA game terms, chantry and artifact construction might be described along the following lines (but it's just a concept for narrative building, so please take this with a grain of salt):

Nuclear Fallout Chantry
Spheres: Forces 5, Matter 5, Prime 5, Correspondence 5, Entropy 5, Time 5
Requires: ResistAtomicForce, EarthWorks, GridTelecomunications, ResistAtomicEntropy, DeepTimePlanning

TreeHouse Chantry
Spheres: Forces 2, Matter 4, Prime 5, Entropy 2, Time 2
Requires: ResistStorm, BonzaiSculpting, ResistWarping, ResistRot

Nuclear Powered Satellite
Spheres: Forces 5, Matter 5, Prime 5, Entropy 2, Time 2, Correspondence 4
Requires: ThermoNuclearFuelCell, Plutonium, ResistSpaceDebris, AtomicSynchronization, SatelliteTelecommunications

Well, back in the 80's, I was into AD&D and Palladium, thereafter. Palladium eventually lead to playing Rifts, which I think is a great game... I was especially into the Cyberneticist OCC and the Rouge Scientist OCC. That was in the mid 90's, about the same time I was applying to college. So, I decided to apply to a major research University, and the Cyberneticist and Rouge Scientist classes from Rifts led me to look at the University of Chicago, located in ChiTown, of course...

So, I actually wound up going to the University of Chicago, and wound up working at the Enrico Fermi Institute, which happens to also be the home of the Laboratory of Advanced Space Research. Well, at the same time, I began stopping by the RPG groups, and I found that nobody would touch AD&D or Palladium systems with a 10 foot pole. All the student gaming groups were pretty much strictly Mage, Vampire, or Legend of the Five Rings groups.

So, I played alot of VRAdept characters, which is a fairly good archtype and job description of modern-day molecular chemists and nuclear engineers. Along the way, I learned how to operate stereo-visualization equipment (VR goggles, VRML), turing machines (TMML), AI constructs (Lisp programming), etc. etc. Anyhow, somewhere along the way, I wound up helping the astrophysics department build a nuclear powered satellite...

And that is the connection to the VoidEngineer of the M:tA.

FYI, I've been playing M:tA for about 5 years now, and it's now definately my RPG of choice.

Anyhow, in M:tA game terms, chantry and artifact construction might be described along the following lines (but it's just a concept for narrative building, so please take this with a grain of salt):

Nuclear Fallout Chantry
Spheres: Forces 5, Matter 5, Prime 5, Correspondence 5, Entropy 5, Time 5
Requires: ResistAtomicForce, EarthWorks, GridTelecomunications, ResistAtomicEntropy, DeepTimePlanning

TreeHouse Chantry
Spheres: Forces 2, Matter 4, Prime 5, Entropy 2, Time 2
Requires: ResistStorm, BonzaiSculpting, ResistWarping, ResistRot

Nuclear Powered Satellite
Spheres: Forces 5, Matter 5, Prime 5, Entropy 2, Time 2, Correspondence 4
Requires: ThermoNuclearFuelCell, Plutonium, ResistSpaceDebris, AtomicSynchronization, SatelliteTelecommunications

Never mind that since History endlessly repeats itself, technology gets discovered, forgotten and discovered again...

It's not because people worship Pazuzu instead of Jesus H. Fucking Christ (you know, the god that got nailed) that they are stupid...

Here's the link to the actual journal his article was published in, for the curious.

From the article, it would be a stretch to say that Pashley has found a way to overcome "long-range" hydrophobic effects. Those effects are still present. However, he has found a way to get the hydrophobic liquid to break away in small droplets. Once broken away from the bulk, standard DLVO theory takes over to keep the particles apart. DLVO is not a cancelation of hydrophobic effects, it is just an overpowering of hydrophobic effects by electrostatic effects.

Unfortunately, it seems as though Pashley has no good explanation for why the degassing method works, it just does. This could be interesting, as more researchers study the role of gasses in keeping hydrophobic and hydrophilic liquids apart.

Overall, quite interesting, though New Scientist does tend to exagerate scientific findings.
Tony

Short version, as best I've understood so far:

During the earliest expansion after the Big Bang, the attraction of gravity was counterbalanced by the pressure of photons, with slight fluctuations that echoed thru this superdense plasma as 'sound'.

The resonant frequency of the sound was limited by the speed of gravity (ie, speed of light) and the spatial 'horizon' it could reach over the course of the universe's short life. (Harmonics also arose at some point.)

When the plasma cooled enough for atoms to form, all the photons were released at once, in a pattern that retained the resonant-frequencies fluctuations, and that's what WMAP is measuring.

Short version, as best I've understood so far:

During the earliest expansion after the Big Bang, the attraction of gravity was counterbalanced by the pressure of photons, with slight fluctuations that echoed thru this superdense plasma as 'sound'.

The resonant frequency of the sound was limited by the speed of gravity (ie, speed of light) and the spatial 'horizon' it could reach over the course of the universe's short life. (Harmonics also arose at some point.)

When the plasma cooled enough for atoms to form, all the photons were released at once, in a pattern that retained the resonant-frequencies fluctuations, and that's what WMAP is measuring.

http://www.findlaw.com

http://www.law.cornell.edu/

http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/law/

A major issue with the whole transcript system is that it is an average. If your class is graded on two papers discussing Kant and your first one bombs out because you didn't understand him at all, but your second one is the result of weeks of studying and as such is simply phenomenal, you might simply come out with a C...C+/B- if the teacher is feeling generous. Averages can't chart growth, can't chart experimentation with study habits, can't chart weaknesses, and can't chart strengths. I may be pretty good at speaking Japanese, but I absolutely suck when it comes to exams, and I don't know why. The result? C. And I put more work into that class than anyone else.

Grades in higher institutions seem redundant to me. They're useful in high school when attendance is mandatory, but if you're going to college then you must be self-motivated. If you're truly self-motivated to learn, then grades mean nothing to you. Let's just do away with them.

An initial purpose for the highway will be to help lay a $250-million fibre-optic cable to the Scott-Amundsen base. The cable, which should be completed within five years, will revolutionise communications at the Pole.

I have been told the US maintains a permanent presence at the South Pole for specifically that reason. Basically, although no country owns Antarctica, the resources there are free for grabs. Although inconceivable due to the expense, the US wants to maintain their claims on the resources in Antarctica, and the only way to do this is to have a permanent human presence.

As a result the US, though the NSF, funds lots of scientific experiments at the pole. Some examples besides Ice Cube are:

• DASI-Degree Angular Scale Interferometer
• BOOMERANG-Balloon Observations Of Millimetric Extragalactic Radiation ANd Geophysics
• TopHat

(Note: BOOMERANG and TopHat are balloon experiments which are not located at the south pole, but are funded by NSF in Antarctica)

Basically the pole is really good for cosmic background radiation (CMB) studies because the atmosphere is incredibly stable. This allows telescopes like DASI and balloons like BOOMERANG and TopHat to observe the sky without much atmospheric interference. IceCube involves drilling a hole in the ice and lowering a string of photomultiplier tubes(PMTs) down into the hole. After adding water, which freezes into very clear ice, the PMTs will look for neutrino interactions within the ice.

So I've gotten a little off topic so I'll conclude by saying that if such a road could be built, it would greatly increase the capacity of the good that can be shipped down. Currently only C-130's equipped with skis and land at the pole, which is so dangerous that there is one fatal accident every year. Also the limit on the weight of the equipment that can be brought down is only about 25 tons; I seem to remember this number for some reason. So any increase in cargo capacity to the south pole would be welcome.

Typical vehicles:

Jacked up pickup trucks: (Ford)
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~kimberly/images/Antarctic a/ben_truck.jpg
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~kimberly/images/Antarctic a/ben_sib_truck.jpg
http://tiger.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/truck_tracks_sm. jpg

Deltas: (built by Canadian Foremost)
http://astro.uchicago.edu/cara/vtour/mcmurdo/delta .gif
http://www.theice.org/gifs/delta.gif
http://www.gmra.org/n0nhp/antarctica/mendelta.jpg

Ivan the Terra Bus: (Foremost)
http://images.google.com/images?q=ivan+terra+bus&i e=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en

Other odd specialized vehicles:
Haagelund
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~kimberly/images/Antarctic a/SnowSchool.jpg
Sprite: (Thiokal)
http://tiger.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/sprite.jpg
Nodwell: (Tracked Delta)
http://tiger.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/nodwell.jpg
Tracked Crash/Fire vehicle:
http://www.theice.org/gifs/1frtrax.gif

No, I've marked you as a foe because your last email was rude and uncivil. You're arguments are fine, and obviously more well informed than mine are, in the areas of economics. I agree that economists may call the phenomena I was describing a 'barrier to entry' rather than a 'moat'. The evidence and reasoning presented within your arguments lack nothing. Your manners, however, ought to be far better, as an economist. You manage to structure your emails to be nearly as offensive as possible within the first couple of sentences.

Simply put, what evidence is there that you are an economist? Why do I care? Why are you belittling me in the first couple of sentences of your email?

When I was working at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago as a computing assistant, I had real economists, like Robert Fogel, bust my chops and criticize my work. I've already had people far better than you criticize me, and I happen to know from first hand experience, that people at the Doctoral and Nobel Leaureate level are much more courteous and civil about their criticisms, than you are.

Don't think you know everything, hot-shot economist. You're sounding like a wanna-be. Listen to yourself talk. You're resorting to sarcasm as a defence mechanism. You're making defensive rationalizations regarding why I marked you on my Foes list. You're quoting Gracie Allen. And you're trying to insinuate that I'm a little boy. As far as I can tell, you're hurt that somebody had the gall to mark you on their Foe's list... It's happened to you once before, and now you've gone and done something to piss somebody off again.

Learn some manners. A real economist knows how to give criticism and comment on other people's work without causing offence and being rude about it. I suggest the book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie.

You obviously have a lot of talent and are well educated. Have the civility and manners of men like Heckman, Lucas, Fogel, Scholes, Stigler, Friedman, Becker, or Coase.

No, I've marked you as a foe because your last email was rude and uncivil. You're arguments are fine, and obviously more well informed than mine are, in the areas of economics. I agree that economists may call the phenomena I was describing a 'barrier to entry' rather than a 'moat'. The evidence and reasoning presented within your arguments lack nothing. Your manners, however, ought to be far better, as an economist. You manage to structure your emails to be nearly as offensive as possible within the first couple of sentences.

Simply put, what evidence is there that you are an economist? Why do I care? Why are you belittling me in the first couple of sentences of your email?

When I was working at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago as a computing assistant, I had real economists, like Robert Fogel, bust my chops and criticize my work. I've already had people far better than you criticize me, and I happen to know from first hand experience, that people at the Doctoral and Nobel Leaureate level are much more courteous and civil about their criticisms, than you are.

Don't think you know everything, hot-shot economist. You're sounding like a wanna-be. Listen to yourself talk. You're resorting to sarcasm as a defence mechanism. You're making defensive rationalizations regarding why I marked you on my Foes list. You're quoting Gracie Allen. And you're trying to insinuate that I'm a little boy. As far as I can tell, you're hurt that somebody had the gall to mark you on their Foe's list... It's happened to you once before, and now you've gone and done something to piss somebody off again.

Learn some manners. A real economist knows how to give criticism and comment on other people's work without causing offence and being rude about it. I suggest the book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie.

You obviously have a lot of talent and are well educated. Have the civility and manners of men like Heckman, Lucas, Fogel, Scholes, Stigler, Friedman, Becker, or Coase.

No, I've marked you as a foe because your last email was rude and uncivil. You're arguments are fine, and obviously more well informed than mine are, in the areas of economics. I agree that economists may call the phenomena I was describing a 'barrier to entry' rather than a 'moat'. The evidence and reasoning presented within your arguments lack nothing. Your manners, however, ought to be far better, as an economist. You manage to structure your emails to be nearly as offensive as possible within the first couple of sentences.

Simply put, what evidence is there that you are an economist? Why do I care? Why are you belittling me in the first couple of sentences of your email?

When I was working at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago as a computing assistant, I had real economists, like Robert Fogel, bust my chops and criticize my work. I've already had people far better than you criticize me, and I happen to know from first hand experience, that people at the Doctoral and Nobel Leaureate level are much more courteous and civil about their criticisms, than you are.

Don't think you know everything, hot-shot economist. You're sounding like a wanna-be. Listen to yourself talk. You're resorting to sarcasm as a defence mechanism. You're making defensive rationalizations regarding why I marked you on my Foes list. You're quoting Gracie Allen. And you're trying to insinuate that I'm a little boy. As far as I can tell, you're hurt that somebody had the gall to mark you on their Foe's list... It's happened to you once before, and now you've gone and done something to piss somebody off again.

Learn some manners. A real economist knows how to give criticism and comment on other people's work without causing offence and being rude about it. I suggest the book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie.

You obviously have a lot of talent and are well educated. Have the civility and manners of men like Heckman, Lucas, Fogel, Scholes, Stigler, Friedman, Becker, or Coase.

Demographics yo. 'Record profits' are generally the result of sales hype, inflation, and overly simplistic accounting reports (read: people who look at the 'bottom line' profits and nothing else).

Now, I'm not in the music industry, but I used to work at the National Opinion Research Center, and we were doing some statistical analysis which was related to this topic. So, I'll give my 2 cents, and attempt to answer your question.

Anyhow, as I understand it, fewer and fewer CD/albums are generating positive returns on investment. At the same time, more and more CD/albums are being produced. The fact which seems to be keeping the industry alive is that when a CD/album does generate a return on investment, the return can be extremely large. In fact, the return on investment is increasing for those albums which do generate a positive return. (Mostly due to an increasing world-wide population, an increase in potential consumers, world-wide communication networks, and peer-to-peer network phenomenas. )

For example, consider Eminem. Selling more CDs than anybody else around. Who has ever heard of a CD selling over 1M copies, in its first week?! But he did it. Now then, I know my estimations are inexact, but figure that 1M x $20 = $20M in one week, from one product. That number (or a similar one) is what the industry reports as a record profit.

Behind that number (and similar numbers reported, which include record-label and industry-wide sums of sales/product) are tens of thousands of titles which are lucky to sell 1,000 copies per year. Over time, those tens of thousands of titles become part of the hundreds of thousands of titles which are lucky to sell 100 copies per year. Which then become part of the millions of titles which are lucky to sell 10 copies a year.

Now then, as to your question: The music recording industry actually is ailing (as an industry), because they've lost what economists call a 'moat'. That is, they don't have any protection from other competitors getting into the business. As an industry, they don't have something which protects them from Microsoft, Apple, or Linux competing with them (read: Independent Labels.)

Now, if the recording industry were not ailing, and were healthy, here would be the situation:

Every CD produced sold exactly N copies +/- 10% of N. For example, every CD would sell 90,000 to 110,000 copies. No more, no less. There would be approximately M titles produced per year. If a new employee was hired by the company, they would produce 'M + 10' or 'M + x' titles to offset the wages and cost of the new employee. In addition, the industry would use proprietary technology, which nobody had access to, and nobody else could produce compact disks. Those people in the CD industry would be the CD producers, and nobody else got to participate in the game. That is how the industry would be structured if it were healthy.

But, that's not the way it is, now is it?

All things considered, Microsoft getting into this business is very bad news for the recording industry. For the record labels, it just means another major player who wants a cut of the pie, which is already spread too thin as it is. It also means that anybody who buys a Microsoft Small Business Server license can start up not just an 'Independent Label' but, rather, a medium sized recording label. Put another way, the small fish have just gotten bigger.

Then why did you list it all here?

Well, I was arguing the point that there is a commonality amongst all of these operating systems... that is, they all have file systems, they all utilize data structures, and they all have user interfaces.

And since when do some of those OSes have a "root" anyway? Also, so you had root, big deal.

I agree that having root is no big deal, and I agree that not all of those OS have a specifically defined 'root', per se. In fact, many of those operating systems also lack a journaling filesystem, file security, user level security, and cryptography.

Do you have any idea how many OSes a person can have root on if they install it themselves at work?

Exactly! You've hit thethe nail on the head! It's very easy! But what you've just described is completely outside of the logic box for most people, as their 'job description' doesn't include a blurb about 'Incumbent will be responsible for researching operating system methods and functions, and developing reports on interconnectivity issues of said operating systems.'

Furthermore, in context of the above mentioned article, I believe that you have provided some supporting argument that a person shouldn't confine themselves to a single certification and and/or degree. It's very easy to install a bunch of operating systems for work, and have yourself your own testing LAN. All you need is a router, some CAT5 cabling, and a dozen workstations. My point is, don't go for the operating specific certification... I've been down that road, and it's only luke warm. There are, in my opinion, better pastures and forests elsewhere.

Network engineering has to do with the systems that are in place and will be in place in the future. What do protocol stacks and device drivers have to do with anything when it comes to network engineering? We have a protocol X network. This client supports the protocol and has a driver for the card. What else is there to know, really?

Good question. I'll answer it:

Scenario: Your hiring boss has just been awarded a $2.5M grant to build a picture archiving and communication system (PACS) for the local library of science and medicine. This project has to be completed in 10 months. You've been hired as a Systems Engineer to make this project happen. Your salary is $11/hr, no benefits, other than the opportunity to do some real network engineering and be exposed to lots of technology.

Here are project details: Now, because this is a major research university, this picture archiving system has got to be able to display scientific and medical grade pictures obtained from network resources as diverse as nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (nMRI) scanners , scanning electron microscopes, and orbital space telescopes (such as the Hubble Telescope). It's also got to support networked file systems, grid networking, and other distributed file systems protocols (such as Kerberos, LDAP, DDNS, VOIP, PXE, and Fast-Ethernet). Plus, it's going to support virtual reality technologies, including stereo 3d viewing, immersive visualization, collaborative computing. Your goal is to make sure that all of this equipment, which has been purchased, works correctly, can communicate with the University's data backup storage servers, and can transmit information consistently, correctly, and securely between nodes.

Now then, to complicate matters, network protocols haven't been completely written for most of this tech. It's not available at your local Staples or BestBuy; and it's custom built by the engineers in the AstroPhysics, Radiology, and Chemistry departments. Your job is to research network protocol stacks, device drivers, and operating systems to make sure that Joe, who is on a Solaris/VMS system in Radiology, can transmit data to Sue, who is running Windows/DOS in Chemistry. (Specifically, the job calls for Joe and Sue to both be able to go to the PACS at the local library, and pull up files from their respective departments on the same machine). Then, for kicks, Chris from Astrophysics joins them, and want's to show off new pics from the Irix/Linux systems that AstroPhysics is using. Then, to make things really fun, you have to use a new operating system which hasn't been publically released yet (Windows Longhorn, for example), becuase you have access to the MS TechNet program, and your university gets Beta Testing and Evaluation copies of it's operating system directly from a site-license with Microsoft.

On top of that, this PACS system is going to have 100 nodes, running multiple operating systems. Some nodes will have multiple network cards running multiple protocol stacks (IP and IPv6 specifically... you'll have to have dedicated hardware to connect to the other Universities running IPv6). This is because you have to support everybody's ideas and implementations, no matter how diverse. Your job is to make sure that all of this works. Saying, 'This is the client and this is the protocol stack' is not an option, because it's a research university.

Now then. When you think you have an answer which satisfied all objective and goals, previously stated, check out this link:

USITE:Crerar

That was our answer to the problem.

I agree, but again, you are working against yourself. People like myself are the specialist. When it comes to your and my world, doing what a CxO does isn't possible. Do you think companies will hire you as a sysadmin since you know a little bit about everything and then hire peers to make up for the expertise you lack?

Fair enough. You're a specialist, I'm a generalist. As far as your question goes, well, people do get hired as network admins since they know a little bit about everything (jack-of-all-trades); and then hire peers to make up for expertise they lack. Management (and network engineers) are expected to be generalists and to be able to handle a wide array of situations.

Besides, I'm not at all sure how somebody can know '10%' or '70%' of a system. What, exactly, is the metric by which this claim is being based? Oh jesus, quit splitting hairs, you're pathetic. You know what I mean.

Not really. I used to think I knew '90%' about Windows NT 4. Hell, I had a certification in it. Then, I worked on that multimillion dollar PACS system project. My certification, at best, tought me about 10% of the knowledge I needed for that job. The more experienced I get with technology and computers, the more I am convinced that most measurement systems are arbitrary and relative.

Which of of your former employers ran Atari?

The University of Chicago. (Amongst others)

Then why did you list it all here?

Well, I was arguing the point that there is a commonality amongst all of these operating systems... that is, they all have file systems, they all utilize data structures, and they all have user interfaces.

And since when do some of those OSes have a "root" anyway? Also, so you had root, big deal.

I agree that having root is no big deal, and I agree that not all of those OS have a specifically defined 'root', per se. In fact, many of those operating systems also lack a journaling filesystem, file security, user level security, and cryptography.

Do you have any idea how many OSes a person can have root on if they install it themselves at work?

Exactly! You've hit thethe nail on the head! It's very easy! But what you've just described is completely outside of the logic box for most people, as their 'job description' doesn't include a blurb about 'Incumbent will be responsible for researching operating system methods and functions, and developing reports on interconnectivity issues of said operating systems.'

Furthermore, in context of the above mentioned article, I believe that you have provided some supporting argument that a person shouldn't confine themselves to a single certification and and/or degree. It's very easy to install a bunch of operating systems for work, and have yourself your own testing LAN. All you need is a router, some CAT5 cabling, and a dozen workstations. My point is, don't go for the operating specific certification... I've been down that road, and it's only luke warm. There are, in my opinion, better pastures and forests elsewhere.

Network engineering has to do with the systems that are in place and will be in place in the future. What do protocol stacks and device drivers have to do with anything when it comes to network engineering? We have a protocol X network. This client supports the protocol and has a driver for the card. What else is there to know, really?

Good question. I'll answer it:

Scenario: Your hiring boss has just been awarded a $2.5M grant to build a picture archiving and communication system (PACS) for the local library of science and medicine. This project has to be completed in 10 months. You've been hired as a Systems Engineer to make this project happen. Your salary is $11/hr, no benefits, other than the opportunity to do some real network engineering and be exposed to lots of technology.

Here are project details: Now, because this is a major research university, this picture archiving system has got to be able to display scientific and medical grade pictures obtained from network resources as diverse as nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (nMRI) scanners , scanning electron microscopes, and orbital space telescopes (such as the Hubble Telescope). It's also got to support networked file systems, grid networking, and other distributed file systems protocols (such as Kerberos, LDAP, DDNS, VOIP, PXE, and Fast-Ethernet). Plus, it's going to support virtual reality technologies, including stereo 3d viewing, immersive visualization, collaborative computing. Your goal is to make sure that all of this equipment, which has been purchased, works correctly, can communicate with the University's data backup storage servers, and can transmit information consistently, correctly, and securely between nodes.

Now then, to complicate matters, network protocols haven't been completely written for most of this tech. It's not available at your local Staples or BestBuy; and it's custom built by the engineers in the AstroPhysics, Radiology, and Chemistry departments. Your job is to research network protocol stacks, device drivers, and operating systems to make sure that Joe, who is on a Solaris/VMS system in Radiology, can transmit data to Sue, who is running Windows/DOS in Chemistry. (Specifically, the job calls for Joe and Sue to both be able to go to the PACS at the local library, and pull up files from their respective departments on the same machine). Then, for kicks, Chris from Astrophysics joins them, and want's to show off new pics from the Irix/Linux systems that AstroPhysics is using. Then, to make things really fun, you have to use a new operating system which hasn't been publically released yet (Windows Longhorn, for example), becuase you have access to the MS TechNet program, and your university gets Beta Testing and Evaluation copies of it's operating system directly from a site-license with Microsoft.

On top of that, this PACS system is going to have 100 nodes, running multiple operating systems. Some nodes will have multiple network cards running multiple protocol stacks (IP and IPv6 specifically... you'll have to have dedicated hardware to connect to the other Universities running IPv6). This is because you have to support everybody's ideas and implementations, no matter how diverse. Your job is to make sure that all of this works. Saying, 'This is the client and this is the protocol stack' is not an option, because it's a research university.

Now then. When you think you have an answer which satisfied all objective and goals, previously stated, check out this link:

USITE:Crerar

That was our answer to the problem.

I agree, but again, you are working against yourself. People like myself are the specialist. When it comes to your and my world, doing what a CxO does isn't possible. Do you think companies will hire you as a sysadmin since you know a little bit about everything and then hire peers to make up for the expertise you lack?

Fair enough. You're a specialist, I'm a generalist. As far as your question goes, well, people do get hired as network admins since they know a little bit about everything (jack-of-all-trades); and then hire peers to make up for expertise they lack. Management (and network engineers) are expected to be generalists and to be able to handle a wide array of situations.

Besides, I'm not at all sure how somebody can know '10%' or '70%' of a system. What, exactly, is the metric by which this claim is being based? Oh jesus, quit splitting hairs, you're pathetic. You know what I mean.

Not really. I used to think I knew '90%' about Windows NT 4. Hell, I had a certification in it. Then, I worked on that multimillion dollar PACS system project. My certification, at best, tought me about 10% of the knowledge I needed for that job. The more experienced I get with technology and computers, the more I am convinced that most measurement systems are arbitrary and relative.

Which of of your former employers ran Atari?

The University of Chicago. (Amongst others)

1. Violent games can be shown to induce violent tendencies is some children who are already suggestible to these kinds of messages. This is not any different from the effect violent movies have on them.
   
   
2. Children who are not predisposed in this manner (i.e. the vast majority) do not appear to exhibit long-term violent tendencies due to video games. However, they may exhibit short-term violent tendencies due to the novel stimulus (e.g. showing off that new karate kick at the playground).
   
   
3. Data about anything else is inconclusive; there is a ton of methodical problems with existing studies. It's just too difficult to construct the experiment in such a way that the experimentor's bias doesn't show through - i.e. it's all too easy to get the kids accidentally 'primed' to exhibit increased violence.
   

I work for these people: the Digital South Asia Library. We have tons of free stuff -- dictionaries and pedagogical stuff being particular focuses. I could try to pitch it, but just check it out. I'd actually be interested to hear what others have to say.

Since the subject is of passing interest to you, I'll briefly mention the following three factoids:

1) I'm a New Yorker, and as such I defer to the NY Times Style Guide over the Chicago Manual. And I notice that the NY Times' website uses DVDs, which is enough to convince me.

2) If you google the phrase "DVD's", you'll get a message that says, "Did you mean: Dvds" The latter phrase also vastly outnumbers the former.

3) Here's the Chicago Manual Of Style's own FAQ page. I can't imagine you didn't at least peruse their online resource first, only to find that DVDs weren't mentioned. So I'm guessing you missed the subtle yet quite conclusive rebuttal to your argumentum ad verecundiam which is prominently displayed on the "New FAQs" page. Well, in fact, there it is.

So, in college, I worked with some astrophysicists at the Enrico Fermi Institute, which is where they build nuclear powered satellites, and took some classes from professors at at The Laboratory for Advanced Space Research, which is responsible for building such satellites/spacecraft as Ulysses, Pioneer 10 & 11, Cassini, StarDust, and Argos.

Anyhow, from talking with folks at the EFI and LASR, the general answer to everybody's questions is: latency and noise. Remember, this is a Cosmic Hot Interstellar Plasma Spectrometer, which means that it's going to be sent away from the earth, and eventually be millions and billions and trillions + miles away. The longer that it works, the more latency is going to build up... So, the programming needs a very non-interactive protocol. If this thing goes interstellar, it could take days and weeks for packets to travel from Earth to CHIPS and back.

Remember, it takes 4 minutes for light from our closest neighboring star to reach earth, traveling at, well, the speed of light. In all probability, this CHIPS will be using radio frequencies which are much, much slower. (I could be wrong, but I would be surprised if they had hacked some type of interstellar laser guidance system... )

Anyhow, they write scripts for this kind of mission, and generally operate with a big time lag, to the extent that it's sort of like typing with your computer monitor turned 'off'. That is, they'll figure out what they want the satellite to do for the next week or next month, type up a script, and 'submit' it to CHIPS. A couple of hours/days/weeks later, CHIPS will receive the script and start working. This kind of astrophysics programming generally involves being able to project into the future (temporally), and to know that in {x} days, the satellite will be past Mars, in {x+a} days, it'll be past the asteroid belt, in (x+a+b} days, past Jupiter, in {x+a+b+c} days, past Saturn, and so forth. It also requires good file keeping and record keeping, so that you know how many days {n} into the project you are, so you can calculate {n-x}, which gives you the time window for submiting an FTP control sequence.

Other than that, yeah... they can dir things and get thing. Depends on the exact implementation, but you have the concept.

So, in college, I worked with some astrophysicists at the Enrico Fermi Institute, which is where they build nuclear powered satellites, and took some classes from professors at at The Laboratory for Advanced Space Research, which is responsible for building such satellites/spacecraft as Ulysses, Pioneer 10 & 11, Cassini, StarDust, and Argos.

Anyhow, from talking with folks at the EFI and LASR, the general answer to everybody's questions is: latency and noise. Remember, this is a Cosmic Hot Interstellar Plasma Spectrometer, which means that it's going to be sent away from the earth, and eventually be millions and billions and trillions + miles away. The longer that it works, the more latency is going to build up... So, the programming needs a very non-interactive protocol. If this thing goes interstellar, it could take days and weeks for packets to travel from Earth to CHIPS and back.

Remember, it takes 4 minutes for light from our closest neighboring star to reach earth, traveling at, well, the speed of light. In all probability, this CHIPS will be using radio frequencies which are much, much slower. (I could be wrong, but I would be surprised if they had hacked some type of interstellar laser guidance system... )

Anyhow, they write scripts for this kind of mission, and generally operate with a big time lag, to the extent that it's sort of like typing with your computer monitor turned 'off'. That is, they'll figure out what they want the satellite to do for the next week or next month, type up a script, and 'submit' it to CHIPS. A couple of hours/days/weeks later, CHIPS will receive the script and start working. This kind of astrophysics programming generally involves being able to project into the future (temporally), and to know that in {x} days, the satellite will be past Mars, in {x+a} days, it'll be past the asteroid belt, in (x+a+b} days, past Jupiter, in {x+a+b+c} days, past Saturn, and so forth. It also requires good file keeping and record keeping, so that you know how many days {n} into the project you are, so you can calculate {n-x}, which gives you the time window for submiting an FTP control sequence.

Other than that, yeah... they can dir things and get thing. Depends on the exact implementation, but you have the concept.

Since I goofed on the last post, I'll add the obligatory links to:

CERN
The Enrico Fermi Institute
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratories
Agronne National Laboratories
Los Alamos National Laboratories

Yep, all the information you could want on modern Quantum Physics.

Gotta love quantum physics...

Check out the University of Chicago's Physics Department for all the information you could want to know about modern research in quantum physics.

Oh, and December 2, 2002 was the 60th Anniversy of the first self-sustaining controlled release of nuclear energy

Gotta love quantum physics...

Check out the University of Chicago's Physics Department for all the information you could want to know about modern research in quantum physics.

Oh, and December 2, 2002 was the 60th Anniversy of the first self-sustaining controlled release of nuclear energy

Nah. I'm not exactly 'lost'. I did live in the hometown of Gregor Mendel for a year during high school, where I studied mendelian genetics (Received a scholarship, via the 1994 congressional information act, and went with the Youth For Understand program). I also studied genetics at the University of Chicago's Department of Ecology and Evolution. Anyhow, I happen to know alot about genetics, actually... to the point that I'm making comments based on 'insider information' much like many people make 'inside jokes' which don't make sense to other people.

I would suggest the new mod: "Inside Info"

Hmmm. Seems like it would be easier to say that everything which has been done in computer science has 'been done', whereas everything that hasn't been done in computer science, 'hasn't'.

Seriously, though, you may be mis-categorizing your subjects. Look at computers as computational entities, rather than disk drives, monitors, and so forth. In that case, an optical computer or a biocomputer operates on many of the same systems priciple as a 'digital computer', and there is therefore much to be done in the field of computer science.

Absolutely. Optical computing is getting some great advances in Holographic Video at the MIT Spatial Imaging Group. And chemical computing is advancing nicely in Carbohydrate Chips at the University of Chicago.

For my money, I'd bet on optical video cubes, 3D television, and biochips in the future... which are all applications of computer technology. Remember, 'computer' use to refer to the job title of a person.

For my money, I think that the future has got SnowCrash, Cryptonomicon, Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, and Johnny Mnemonic written all over it (and maybe a bit of Jurassic Park.

Like this?

I used to work at a computing cluster & cybercafe, which operated under the paradigm of collaborative computing. We had all the fun toys there, like tablet PCs, palmtops, high end 3D graphic stations, and everything in between. The lesson I learned about computers while working there is this: Due to the personal computer revolution, people typically conceptualize and use computers as one of two things: glorified typewriters or interactive televisions, depending upon their funtional goals. Both of these functional goals are rather sedintary in their usage.

Tablet PCs are a major stepping stone in regards to mobile computing and collaborative computing. I don't mean to tell you what you do or do not like, but I suspect that you "really prefer your keyboard over a pen and screen combo" because you are doing a lot of typing, and not necessarily much else. If you were doing photo archiving, collaborative computing, pharmaceutical design, diagnostic imaging (MRI), or forensics work, a PC Tablet would be orders of magnitudes more efficient, ergonomic, and usefull than a keyboard.

In environments where you have to be walking around a lot, such as in a hospital, a clinic, a research laboratory, or a research center, Tablet PCs are becoming the rage for good reason. The Hype is because they can be really, really usefull. One has to view tablets as 'compute and run' devices for them to be conceptually usefull.

It is very, very difficult to build a lander, launch it a billion miles across the solar system, and have it actually land on a planet successfully. There already test landers as you have mentioned.

Point 1:
If you want more information on virtual worlds technologies and lander prototyping applications, check out the Sense8 product line. They have a good virtual world program that the astrophysicists use to model, design, and test mars landers. I've used WorldUp, WorldToolKit, and World2World, and can vouch that these are really good products. I think they have a user group on Yahoo. This, however, is probably not the kind of virtual world that NASA is going to be building for this project.

Point 2:
Also, you may want to check out the Laboratory for Advanced Space Research, at the University of Chicago, for information on the kind of data modeling that they are doing. They run a laboratory down at the Enrico Fermi Institute, where they build the nuclear powered satellites and nuclear powered space probes which they launch. Anyhow, I used to work down at the Enrico Fermi Institute, and I'll tell you this: 1. A whole lot of work goes into building a nuclear powered space probe or satellite. 2. NASA would very much build a hundred virtual worlds to help support those kinds of projects.

Specifically, as the article mentioned, there are certain and specific things which the astronomers and astrophysicists look for. These metrics include intensities, spectra, arrival directions, nuclear and isotopic composition of galactic cosmic rays, anomalous components, solar energetic particles, and particles accelerated in solar winds and planetary magnetospheres.

You see, the purpose of these virtual worlds isn't really to make landscapes for gamers to play Quake on. Rather, they are developing heuristics for space probes which are going to be launched in the future.

So, the virtual worlds which they are describing are summations of matrices, probably expressed in a quantum mechanical notation, utilizing a many-worlds interpretation. These matrices correspond to minimum and maximum values of ranges of the above mentioned metrics which the astronomers and astronauts are looking for.