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I was recently reading about hybrid cars that would be able to sell their excess electricity back to the power grid

Tsunamis can move faster than 200 metres per second because they have extremely long wavelengths (hundreds of km). In this case the speed is not related to the wave height at all, only water depth. But say the height was 50m and the wavelenth was 100m, then the speed would be 45kph or about 30mph in deep water. I'm betting that would be too fast to ride a wave of that steepness because the force of gravity down the slope must overcome the air+water resistance. There's a reason large waves in Hawaii can only be ridden as they begin to crest, as on an offshore ridge at Jaws.

Interestingly, The University of Delaware has just now adopted Mozilla 1.7 as its new supported browser. over Internet Explorer

To quote the udel.edu website :

"Due to recent security concerns with Internet Explorer, it is recommended that alternative browsers be used if possible. If you do use IE, recognize that doing so increases the importance of making sure your computer's operating system and anti-virus software are completely patched and up-to-date. However, users who encounter problems accessing a web site using Mozilla may have to use Internet Explorer to take advantage of all the features that web site provides. PeopleSoft is an example of a web-based application that still needs to be accessed using Internet Explorer. Mozilla support of PeopleSoft may be announced in the future. "

Interestingly, The University of Delaware has just now adopted Mozilla 1.7 as its new supported browser. over Internet Explorer

To quote the udel.edu website :

"Due to recent security concerns with Internet Explorer, it is recommended that alternative browsers be used if possible. If you do use IE, recognize that doing so increases the importance of making sure your computer's operating system and anti-virus software are completely patched and up-to-date. However, users who encounter problems accessing a web site using Mozilla may have to use Internet Explorer to take advantage of all the features that web site provides. PeopleSoft is an example of a web-based application that still needs to be accessed using Internet Explorer. Mozilla support of PeopleSoft may be announced in the future. "

• why mail from my uni account is marked as spam by several free providers
  
• why lots of providers block ZIP attachments, including AOL, the "#1 national ISP"
  
• why messages, even entirely within the uni's email system, sometimes have bizarre delays of several hours
  
• why some free providers take _forever_ to get some messages through
  
• why it's so damn popular to send messages *only* as html-formatted mime attachments, leaving the actual body of the message completely blank
  

There are many publicly available time servers. I don't quite get why this is all that important. When "Public Time Server" is entered in Google, the first hit yields a good resource:

http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/servers.html

Can anyone enlighten me on why this is special? I couldn't make it out from the site

Another scientific paper on the subject: "The ballistic impact characteristics of Kevlar (R)
woven fabrics impregnated with a colloidal
shear thickening fluid," JOURNAL OF MATERIALS SCIENCE 38 (2003) 2825 - 2833.

For a scientific paper on the subject, see Advanced Body Armor Utilizing Shear Thickening Fluids, by Y. S. Lee, R. G. Egres Jr. and N. J. Wagner, all of the Center for Composite Materials and Dept. of Chemical Engineering, U. of Delaware, and E. D. Wetzel of the Army Research Laboratory, Weapons and Materials Research Directorate Aberdeen Proving Ground.

For a University of Delaware Press Release (with photos), see here.

The Linux fileserver/firewall on my network keeps its time synchronized with ntpdate. All the Windows boxes run a batch script that does NET TIME \\[linux box] /SET /YES whenever anyone logs in. The setup seems to work fine; I also see that ther is a version of NTP for winNT.

HTTP Current 185MB Version | Current 210MB Version| Download Directory

FTP Current 185MB Version | Current 210MB Version| Download Directory

Please try to use a geographically closer mirror:

http://chefax.fe.up.pt/mirrors/las/ -HTTP Portugal
ftp://chefax.fe.up.pt/pub/mirrors/las/ -FTP Portugal

http://ftp.lug.udel.edu/pub/iso-images/LAS -HTTP US Delaware
ftp://ftp.lug.udel.edu/pub/iso-images/LAS -FTP US Delaware

http://www.mednor.net/ftp/pub/mirrors/las/ -HTTP US California
ftp://ftp.mednor.net/pub/mirrors/las/ -FTP US California

Not all mirrors are up at this time. We remove mirrors periodically from the list that are not updated but re-add them once updated.
We are currently seeking additional mirrors in Europe and Asia.

HTTP Current 185MB Version | Current 210MB Version| Download Directory

FTP Current 185MB Version | Current 210MB Version| Download Directory

Please try to use a geographically closer mirror:

http://chefax.fe.up.pt/mirrors/las/ -HTTP Portugal
ftp://chefax.fe.up.pt/pub/mirrors/las/ -FTP Portugal

http://ftp.lug.udel.edu/pub/iso-images/LAS -HTTP US Delaware
ftp://ftp.lug.udel.edu/pub/iso-images/LAS -FTP US Delaware

http://www.mednor.net/ftp/pub/mirrors/las/ -HTTP US California
ftp://ftp.mednor.net/pub/mirrors/las/ -FTP US California

Not all mirrors are up at this time. We remove mirrors periodically from the list that are not updated but re-add them once updated.
We are currently seeking additional mirrors in Europe and Asia.

I pretty much agree with the parent. Here is why. First, Take a look at this. It, basically, summs up a nice study that pretty much proves that as the government grows so does unemployment. So, if a consumption tax was to be implemented, there would be less of a need for IRS agents. The goverment would shrink (in an ideal world) and there would be more jobs for everyone. If there are more jobs for everyone (assuming perfect competition for the now more scarce resource of labor), then wages will increase as well. Too bad it will never happen.

My god - my department still uses the Motorolla MC68HC11. I used it a couple years ago for a 2 credit computer engineering lab course that I did 40 hours of work a week for. We had to build 2 calculators (one that took input from a keyboard and another that took input from a keypad we wired on), a voicemail, and an electronic etch-a-sketch. I ended up putting in ridiculous amounts of work, and nearly failed 2 other classes in the process - all for a whole 2 credits. To this day, I still have a picture of the voicemail we did.

Here's two links from Google:

http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/pic/h96566k.jpg

http://www.jamesshuggins.com/i/tek1/grace_hopper_h 96566k_thumb.jpg

I have a 5 year old who is diagnosed as an Asperger's individual. You are correct in saying that medications do not really help. The best thing to use is occupational therapy. The Asperger's individual has no inate concept of appropriate social behavior, and must be taught what to do in various situations. There are occupational therapists who specialize in this. More info at The Online Asperger Information and Support page.

Hi, I'm the last to blame disease for everything but I found the discription at www.udel.edu/bkirby/asperger to be really interesting. My personal advice, though, is to let the kid out of school. He'll get more of an education in front of the PC or soldering bench or whatever floats his boat, and if you can provide him with peers, you might stave off the contempt for humanity that so many geeks develop through years of suffering mind-numbing stupidity.

-scott
scott@slowass.net (that's right, I don't read the forums here, email me if you want me)

The OASIS (Online Asperger Syndrome Information & Support) is a great starting point.

Interesting that it comes up now, because after reading about Asperger Syndrome in this Slashdot-article a few days ago, I actually went to an AS-support group and asked whether I had it. Embarrassing, I know. Luckily the people on the forum turned out to be quite friendly and as it turns out my symptoms are more related to a mild case of social phobia.
If something is wrong with a person, the internet can serve as a useful tool during the initial information-finding phase. The unguided nature of the internet does carry the risk of misidentifying or imagining diseases or conditions. It should therefore never be used as a substitute for professional help!

And look, I definitely didn't intend to sound elitist. Perhaps I should have included the link to the annual salary survey conducted by my first University. 2002 Salary Survey (Arts and Sciences).
A more up-to-date, National median figure is at: Starting Salary Offers - National Averages for New College Grads, halfway down the page.

I have to admit I was surprised to see the median for 2002 at $38k, but that was 2002 and the Winter 2003 number is clearly much higher.

And look, I definitely didn't intend to sound elitist. Perhaps I should have included the link to the annual salary survey conducted by my first University. 2002 Salary Survey (Arts and Sciences).
A more up-to-date, National median figure is at: Starting Salary Offers - National Averages for New College Grads, halfway down the page.

I have to admit I was surprised to see the median for 2002 at $38k, but that was 2002 and the Winter 2003 number is clearly much higher.

Written in 1556, by a German, in Latin -- it covered labor management, metal working, ore processing, mining and prospecting .

Agricola explained that gold grew in the ground, like the roots of trees. So, he said it first.

(The first book was entitled Pirotechnia, written in Italian, in the city of Siena, in 1540, by one Vannocio Biringucio.)

(I know Agricola doesn't sound like a German name. His real name was Georg Bauer. Like Nicholas Copernicus he translated his name into Latin. People did that back then.)

Overture & Yahoo's view view about Internet.

Phunny score 0

ADHD is what I was diagnosed with in 3rd grade and the school demanded that I take Ritalin.

Was one in the morning, one at lunch. So I took half the dosage that the other ADHD folks did because I threw away my lunch pill because my parents weren't supervising me then.

Since I started taking it at that age I began to stay at home and simply watch TV and play Nintendo instead of going outside and socializing. With this amount of isolation from society and never talking to anybody at school I gradually found it more difficult to interpret body language and emotion (still have this problem to today, but have managed to mask it).

I searched the web when I was in my mid teens for other people that had this problem and ended up coming across Asperger Syndrome. Five years later I talked to my family doctor about my problem (but never said anything about Ritalin) and she agreed.

Anyone think it was caused by Ritalin?

Is the time controlling hardware on a PC board or PDA as accurate as an actual hard crafted caesium clock?

It's called Network Time Protocol Get the time here

For the sake of completeness (Because I forgot to include it in my first post!) Mills' Homepage is there. The picture he has posted is incredibly younger than he currently is. See a more current image.

Also, his homepage appears to be rather broken in Safari for OS X. He uses hideous javascript hacks where server-side includes would be more appropriate.

For the sake of completeness (Because I forgot to include it in my first post!) Mills' Homepage is there. The picture he has posted is incredibly younger than he currently is. See a more current image.

Also, his homepage appears to be rather broken in Safari for OS X. He uses hideous javascript hacks where server-side includes would be more appropriate.

Our dorm has something like six pairs of recepticles, and we have 11-outlet strips plugged into each and every one to power my many boxen. We're not allowed to use extension cords or piggyback surges strips, so we have to be careful and plan very well...

I also haven't turned on all the machines at once, because I'm fairly sure it would kill the circuit. I used to have half of these machines spread in my basement, and the load they would generate if they all switched on simultaneously, as the drives and fans were spinning up, was enormous; it would trip the breaker every time.

Yep, did a google, here's what I got:

The House Bank came under investigation in 1992 after allegations of check-kiting and violation of laws by both the Bank and members of Congress. Check-kiting takes places when overdrawn checks are written in rapid succession on account after account, building up phantom balances that allow the check kiter either to escape with the non-existent money or to enjoy the benefit of an interest-free loan on the money. A special investigator, retired Federal appellate judge Malcolm Wilkey, was assigned and he subpoenaed all House Bank records for the previous 39 months. Wilkey came under fire for his sweeping actions and his assertion that all House members were in violation and knew the House Bank was violating law. He subpoenaed the records of the 325 current and former lawmakers who wrote penalty-free overdrafts at the bank and additionally requested records of some 170 members who did not have any overdrafts at the bank. Speaker of the House Thomas Foley (D-Wash.) and Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.) both criticized Wilkey, saying he had no right to invade a member's privacy or conduct a "fishing expedition" into the private finances of House members until he could provide Congress with specific allegations his investigation had raised. Many House members were privately critical of Foley's leadership style, saying he was too low-key and unwilling to do battle with the Republican White House. Foley defended himself by noting that he demanded changes in the Bank as far back as 1990, but that they were never implemented. Carper answered allegations made by an article in the Wilmington News Journal via correspondence to the newspaper's president. Carper also issued press releases on the scandal, stating his minimal and unknowing involvement. Articles, clippings, and correspondence document the conflict.

Or you can google for "congress bank check kiting", it's the first hit.

Again, so much for "government of the people, by the people, for the people" :-(

It must gall him that Princeton was one of the founders of the uPortal project, an open source web portal for higher education. Check out the link, and you can see that Princeton is one of the institutions running it, albeit only for a subset of their user base.

http://ftp.lug.udel.edu/pub/NetBSD/misc/agc/pkgvie ws.pdf

Personally I have a pkgchk.conf shared between all my boxes so I knw what should be (re)installed at any point :)

If you can read nroff: cvsweb entry for pkg_chk.8

My local LUG invited a copyright lawyer from Widner last year to come in and talk about some tihng, and he covered this. He told us that copyright law protects not only the form but the basic plot as well. Were Shakespeare alive today, he would have a fairly good lawsuit against Disney for infringing on Hamlet.

"Part of the ham radio charter is to 'experiment and innovate'"... by clinging on to an anachronistic method of communication?

The frikkin' Amish are beating these guys!

I live in Virginia too, so here's some advice:
1) Get out of the state. Your tuition will probably be at least 10% higher next year, as far as I can tell. Ever since Gilmore screwed us up with the car tax, the schools have had to cut costs and raise tuition.

2) If you're looking in-state, why UVA? It's about as much of a liberal arts college as there is (and William & Mary is a better one) - VT is far less expensive, and you'd probably learn more about ELEG or CPEG there.

3) Always willing to pimp my school - University of Delaware... we've got a good ELEG and CPEG department, and if you're smart, you can probably get a really nice scholarship package.

Dennis Ritchie has written So far as I can determine, this is the earliest version of Unix that currently exists in machine-readable form. ... The dates on the transcription are hard to interpret correctly; if my program that interprets the image are correct, the files were last touched on 22 Jan, 1973. ...

Dennis Ritchie has written So far as I can determine, this is the earliest version of Unix that currently exists in machine-readable form. ... The dates on the transcription are hard to interpret correctly; if my program that interprets the image are correct, the files were last touched on 22 Jan, 1973. ...

1. Beware the lightning that lurketh in an undischarged capacitor, lest it cause thee to be bounced upon thy buttocks in a most ungentlemanly manner.

2. Cause thou the switch that supplies large quantities of juice to be opened and thusly tagged, so thy days may be only on this earthly vale of tears.

3. Prove to thyself that all circuits that radiateth and upon which thou worketh are grounded, less they lift thee to high frequency potential and cause thee to radiateth also.

4. Take care thou useth the proper method when thou taketh the measure ofhigh voltage circuits so that thou doth not incinerate both thee and the meter; for verily, thou hast no account number and can easily be replaced, the meterdoth have one, and as a consequence, bringeth much woe unto the supply department.

5. Tarry not amongst those who engage in intentional shocks, for they are not long for this world.

6. Take care thou tampereth not with interlocks and safety devices, for this will incur the wrath of thy seniors and bringeth the fury of the safety officer down about thy head and shoulders.

7. Work thou not on energized equipment, for if you doth, thy buddies will surely be buying beers for thy widow and consoling her in other ways not generally accepted by thee.

8. Verily, verily I say unto thee, never service high voltage equipment alone, for electric cooking is a slothful process and thy might sizzle in thine own fat for hours on end before thy Maker sees fit to end thy misery and drag thee into His fold.

9. Trifle thou not with radioactive tubes and substances, lest thou commence to glow in the dark like a lightning bug, and thy wife be frustrated nightly and have no further use for thee except thy wage.

10.Commit thou to memory the works of the prophets, which are written in the instruction books, which giveth the straight dope and which consoleththee, and thou cannot make mistakes, sometimes, maybe.

Author unknown

I can't stand it when people overload acronymns. It's a bad situation in a field when there are literally books of acronyms, but when you use NTP, I would surmise that the vast majority of people think the Network Time Protocol (which my advisor invented) as opposed to Non-Thermal Plasma. It's not acronymns I have anything against, it's just using the obscure ones that conflict with much better known ones.

Here's the 2048x1536 original. That should be suffecient for reading. (The blurriness comes from the glass, by the way - you can even see a reflection in it)

The Library of Congress (Jefferson Building, IIRC) has a copy on display. (Yep, that's me). Closeup available here

The Library of Congress (Jefferson Building, IIRC) has a copy on display. (Yep, that's me). Closeup available here

Unless you _need_ integrated DVD/R (as in, a docking station won't suffice) this is hardly better (and in some cases, worse) than the Gateway Solo 3450 which came out, lessee... 2 Augusts ago. Nearly 2 years.

Gateway / Sony
Chip speed? 750 vs 900.
Screen size? 12 vs. 10
Weight?3.00 vs. 3.11
Camera? well... I suppose if you were actually going to use it...

Considering that the price of the Gateway 2 years ago was just over $2k, including the docking station, I'm not getting terribly excited about the Sony.

Those codecs can be found here.

Wow. From your URL I'd almost think you actually managed to pass the entrance criteria for higher education, but on further consideration I assume that you've l33tly h4x0r4d the box3n and you are in fact stealing that webspace.

Say, would your administrator be interested to know that you trade copyright material over P2P without a licence from the copyright holder?

First, make sure you've downloaded the Quicktime codecs here.

Unzip and untar them to /usr/lib/win32.

Now, the problem I got here was that mplayer was apparently looking for the codecs in /usr/lib/win32, instead of /usr/lib/win32/qt6dlls -- the directory that came out of the tar file. So I just copied everything from qt6dlls up a level. That got video working for me.

So I've now got the trailer video working in mplayer, but the sound is still a nogo. It's encoded in AAC; the mplayer documentation says the FAAD decoder package can deal with that, and explains how to get the tarball from FAAD's CVS. I just picked up some rpms from PLF, and they seemed to install fine. Unfortunately, even after ./configure ing with --enable-faad, mplayer claims it can't find the FAAD libraries. I've been looking at the configure script, but I'm not very well versed in bash scripting so I can't make out exactly what files it's looking for.

If anyone gets it to work, please post with details.

There are already systems allowing radio users such as taxi's and security guards to use the same frequencys.

The same frequency is often allocated to firms in geographically seperate locations. A system called CTCSS is used so that even if a signal from the base transmitter of a building reaches the walkie talkie of a security guard miles away it dosn't come out of the speaker. CTCSS sends a low frequency tone along with the voice, the receivers only turn on the audio output when the correct tone is detected.

Security guards don't talk on their radio all the time and the wanted signal are usually closer and stronger so it works well.

Digital trunked radio systems, similar to cellular phone systems are also gaining ground.

I have read "Darwin's Black Box", I even have the book before me as I write this, and I would be interested as to which of Mr. Behe's arguments are supposed to be testable - I, for one, haven't found any.

Behe is argumenting from ignorance throughout the whole book, saying that since we cannot figure out how a complex system could have evolved through natural selection, it must be the work of a supreme being. This sort of reasoning can be called many things, science it is not.

Even his (in)famous mousetrap example doesn't hold water (DBB, Chapter 2, section "Irreducible Complexity and the Nature of Mutation"), see for example this, this or this link.

Umm... what are you going to do when someone sends a bucketload of spam to accounts at the ISPs who participate in this scheme, proclaiming that you can buy penis extenders (or, for added irony, "prestigious degrees from non-accredited colleges" ;-) at http://udel.edu/~markpell/?

If any domain name can be deleted or redirected on the basis of a few emails (and remember we're dealing with people who are proven liars) then congratulations, you've just invented a way to DoS any site off the web. On the other hand, if you require some sort of proof that the website owner sent or approved of the spam, then the spammer can spam with impunity until that proof has been gathered.

Tangentially related to this, a lot of the spam I get promotes websites where the URL has just an IP address, bypassing DNS altogether. If your proposal takes off, I suspect many more spammers would do this. Probably, the reasons they do it are:

• They don't want the overhead (in money or time) of registering a new domain, when the site will probably get pulled in a few weeks anyway.
• Most web users aren't very aware of domain names (the fact that Slashdot interpolates them into our posts after links suggests this), so there's little advantage to the spammer having one. After all, how much brand recognition does your average spamhaus have? To put it another way, if they had brand recognition, they wouldn't need to spam.

Fascism: A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.

A panel of prominent U.S. scientists on Tuesday opposed plans for a national anti-missile shield, entering a fierce public debate before President Clinton decides whether to deploy the system this summer. The 11 scientists, some of whom have worked in government missile programs, said the proposed system, in which a land-based missile would intercept an incoming missile carrying a nuclear, biological or chemical weapon, would not work. "Any country capable of deploying a long-range missile would also be able to deploy countermeasures that would defeat the planned National Missile Defense system," their report said, adding, "It makes no sense to begin deployment." The report, written under the auspices of the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Security Studies Program, said attackers could use decoys and other means to deceive the heat-seeking anti-missiles.

I did research under a professor who specializes in bioinfomatics. One particular goal of his research group is in visualization. Specifically, how the f*** do you graphically represent gigabytes of genetic data in a meaningful way? And how do you do it so that you can get useful information from it, like repeated patterns and whatnot?

The answer to the above is to do it in 3-D. One of the (mad-skilled, overachieving, indian) grad students wrote a program which renders DNA base sequences into a 2D plane, and then looks for important sequences (such as functional groups). When it finds one, it raises it out of the plane. All of this could be shown on our ImmersaDesk, but not everyone has an SGI Onyx. For that project, having a lot of processing power on individual PCs was a life-saver.