Slashdot Mirror

You may not have heard that there is a theory that oil fields are self replenishing. The theory is actually more intense than that and is about life deep inside earth (deeper than you might imagine). Check out this posting. The guy that came up with the theory is Thomas Gold. He's a nobel laureate and he wrote a book about it called , The Deep Hot Biosphere. Here's an overview of his theory. I can't find the original article I read about this. But that article went on to say that this is a new field for Gold and his last theory which proved to be true had the same initial reaction as this one. He's usually booed and hissed and heckled off the podium when he presents his work at the conferences. No respect I tell ya!

"Originally published as part of the COSMIC collection - 500+ programs across the widest imaginable range of disciplines - NASA CLASSIC software essentially is the "retail" end of that collection.

Like Taco, one of the major sites I hit was cnn and msnbc ...after, mind you... loading up /.

Well, everyone where I work (well, now used to work as of today) was feeling so out of it because there is literally no cable access in the entire building(s).

People wanted *information* and the tradegy also opened a few eyes with us being asked (the techs).

My response was "slashdot.org is the best place to go...and don't forget to read the comments section which will have more valuable information by support from other techs and people out there".

Heck, even today one of the Directors asked where to go for even more info...and once again, I recommended slashdot.org with the "down and dirty" explanation 'this is a community of "nerds/techs" that kept the information flowing by giving up their time and resources to keep the rest of the world up to date.'

Some of my coworkers asked why, to which I would smile and say "what does the "I" in IT stand for, but "Information".

Moose.

Oh, and over at arstechnica.com's "lounge" section there was a comment that deserves to be on /., as it was very insightful and correct in a backhanded way:
"We seem to project to the rest of the world that we are 'fat, lazy, and kind of goofy', but what most of those that dislike us forget is: when you piss us off we tend to fight like cornered badgers (Tooth and Nail or the movie "tombstone" the "I'm coming and I'm bringing hell with me for those that don't get the badger reference).

I *am* Interesting and I *am* Insightful and IF ppl would read my FSCKing comments they'd see that. (me ranting after several post, esp after losing a +4 to database corruption...now..who the hell cares? It ain't that important in the grand scheme of things.
Amazing what happens when you actually get on board the "cluetrain".

Heh, I've babbled enuf, thanks to everyone + world.

Viacom does however own the network that runs the best news program in America, the Peabody Award winning Daily Show on Comedy Central.

My initial sentiment would be the same but...

I've read on numerous occasions that hydroelectric power is one of the most destructive to ecosystems. The Aswan High dam in Egypt, finished in 1972, has caused horrific changes to the ecosystem in the Nile river valley and a lot of environmentalists what that thing torn down.

On a longer term prospective the interruption in the Nile ecosystem (by building dams and diverting water into canals at the delta), have many negative effect on Egypt and it surrounding.

Many ecologists feel that dams on big rivers have put numerous animal species in peril.

The Hoover dam also displaced Indian tribes and burial grounds and destroyed the ecosystem there and created a flood plane over the wrong kind of soil.

IMHO, the more we rip apart and terraform and screw with the Earth, the worse off we will all be.

lets you compress your files down to 0% of their original size.

http://www.peabody.uga.edu/

When I followed the links given by CmdrTaco and the press release was on the site itself.. I almost laughed and thought never trust a press release on a satire site.. so I went looking on the net to see if it was true or not.. sure enough I found this on official peabody site. Way to go daily show :)

Ian

"Athens, GA - Razor-sharp coverage of the 2000 presidential campaign from an unlikely source, a freshman comedy focusing on a loving but quirky American family, and an invaluable public service effort on colon cancer are among the 34 winners of the 60th annual Peabody Awards. Comedy Central?s "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Indecision 2000" joined FOX?s "Malcolm in the Middle" and "Confronting Colon Cancer" reported by "NBC Today" co-anchor Katie Couric - along with repeat winners "The West Wing" and "The Sopranos" - on the list of this year?s Peabody recipients. "

press release

wow, they actually won. For a full list of winners, hit this link
good job Daily Show

Uhm...no.

http://www.peabody.uga.edu/news/pressreleases/pres srelease.asp?ID=56

No April Fools.. that was my guess at first as well. You can find the press release at the Peabody Awards website.

-gerbik

No April Fools.. that was my guess at first as well. You can find the press release at the Peabody Awards website.

-gerbik

Updateme is free, and does the same basic function.

--

"Was not intended" by whom? As Orwell noted in Politics and the English Language , the passive voice tends to obfuscate.

IMO, the RIAA most certainly did intend the law to turn out as it did, and pulled a scam on the legislators.
/.

"The Administration shall provide for the widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of information concerning its activities and the results thereof." -National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958

Professor Heald's article, linked by an anonymous contributor, is a good addition to this discussion. Professor Heald argues that the simpler sorts of musical editing (such as changing cleffs and adding slurs) should not qualify for copyright.

In the other article noted by the anonymous contributor Professor Heald proposes a number of legal actions that might be taken against those who claim payment for a bogus copyright. He seems to consider false advertising charges to be fairly promising, but I've never heard of this approach being used in the way Professor Heald proposes.

Note that previous page of that site mentions that weathering of silicate rocks uses carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Also, the geological carbon cycle has 1,800 times more carbon than the atmosphere. Our climate has a lot more variation than our last thousand years. Well, maybe you'd rather just look at the last 300 years, if the Little Ice Age messes up your statistics. Or the last 30 years, as some have used, because the 1960s had an unusually cold winter and so makes "warmer" easier to show. And please do ignore that we've stopped the prairie fires that used to cover the central plains of North America.

Note that the main greenhouse gas is water vapor which is just a wee bit hard to measure and control. And we can only hope that we don't see another Iceball Earth.

Note that previous page of that site mentions that weathering of silicate rocks uses carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Also, the geological carbon cycle has 1,800 times more carbon than the atmosphere. Our climate has a lot more variation than our last thousand years. Well, maybe you'd rather just look at the last 300 years, if the Little Ice Age messes up your statistics. Or the last 30 years, as some have used, because the 1960s had an unusually cold winter and so makes "warmer" easier to show. And please do ignore that we've stopped the prairie fires that used to cover the central plains of North America.

Note that the main greenhouse gas is water vapor which is just a wee bit hard to measure and control. And we can only hope that we don't see another Iceball Earth.

Maybe it's a problem to the linguists that Renfew's an anthropologist?

(FWIW, I very nearly switched my major from physics to anthropology... if I'd had the inclination, I could have taken a couple more classes and had a double major. It still interests me, and I also subscribe to both Science and Nature so I can follow developments in the field. I definitely don't share your opinion of Renfew.)

---

Actually, Al's the one who listened to the Dead...

Tipper's the one who formed the PMRC after catching her daughter listening to a Prince song.

Of course, Frank Zappa effectively shut that down... :)

No, Tipper is the big Deadhead, check out the book Skeleton Key.

Also, read here, Tipper is a rabid Stones and Dead fan.

Don't argue with me, I'm a deadhead.

Good idea, but do you like NASA's current technology transfer program? The NASA COSMIC software distribution center has been down for two years.

All you have to do is scratch the surface to see the puss ooze. For instance;

Actually, it was Linda Daschle, wife of Democratic Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle who lobbied on the behalf of the drug companies to pass the bill through.


Actually, if Hatch has balls why didn't he use them to put his name on his legislation???? See here.

Also, you can follow the history of this crap legislation here.

That, and if Disney were to have lost those trademarks, it would have lost the core of their business, costing a hell of a lot of jobs

It is not the purpose of the constitution to "provide jobs for Disney employees". Sure, that was Disney's teary eye plea, but it doesn't wash. This is the epitome of "corporate welfare". Maybe they could think of some new ideas to sell, like the constitution intended??? See all of the pathetic arguments dealt with here and here and here and most importantly here

He's an artist himself, so he undertstands both the need to protect content creators as well as the need for people to be able to copy works they own.

Actually, he doesn't have a clue. See this letter written to him.

And people who have "copyrights" don't "own" their work. It was only meant to be a temporary "right to copy". Not a perpetual "right to own". See this for a detailed history and explanation.

and what the hell relevance does it have to any of this anyway?

I guess when Senator Hatch speaks "in favor" of the consumer as he does here in the NYT article, he pegs the BS meter now.

As for the link, several Democratic senators were also involved in the copyright extensions

Oops, you're right here. This is not a "Democratic" or "Republican" issue. It's a "represent the public interest issue before those of lobbyists" issue.

It would have been a perfect troll otherwise.

to think it does. And in the confusion that is presently called copyright everybody has bought off on this idea. But it's not just Slashdotters who are confused about copyright - everybody is. Including, which is very depressing to say, our lower courts. So we are in good (bad!) company. The erosion of our public "copyright" has reached the point where we have been put in a "virtual prison", and by illusion have lost all our rights given to us by our constitution. I say by "illusion", because companies want us to believe that we don't own the work that they sell us, that we just "rent it".

The startling fact of the matter is, and some of you are going to have a hard time believing this is - but it's true- that copyright owners do not "own" the work that they have a copyright for. They own the right to copy only, not the work that they have a copyright for. See the link below to understand this (and before you email me in a huff). So the notion of "intellectual property" is not constitutional. Only the "right to copy" is constitutional.

Congress has sold us down the river Big Time . They have bastardized copyright law to the point that it is only good for suing people, which is exactly what MPAA/RIAA and pals wanted in the first place. If anybody wants to have _any_ right to fair use in the future, we have to get organized. Whatever shreds of public access to the works of authors, both past, present and future - we _must_ protect. It's so bad that nobody knows what those rights are any more, and especially what they should be . You must read this to appreciate fully what's going on here. And to understand that Congress has enacted unconstitutional laws at the bequest of companies, and nobody has noticed until now. Please email me (kphil(at)hotmail)if you are interested in organizing to reclaim our public rights. It's going to be long, hard, and boring work. But it has to be done.

to think it does. And in the confusion that is presently called copyright everybody has bought off on this idea. But it's not just Slashdotters who are confused about copyright - everybody is. Including, which is very depressing to say, our lower courts. So we are in good (bad!) company. The erosion of our public "copyright" has reached the point where we have been put in a "virtual prison", and by illusion have lost all our rights given to us by our constitution. I say by "illusion", because companies want us to believe that we don't own the work that they sell us, that we just "rent it".

The startling fact of the matter is, and some of you are going to have a hard time believing this is - but it's true- that copyright owners do not "own" the work that they have a copyright for. They own the right to copy only, not the work that they have a copyright for. See the link below to understand this (and before you email me in a huff). So the notion of "intellectual property" is not constitutional. Only the "right to copy" is constitutional.

Congress has sold us down the river Big Time . They have bastardized copyright law to the point that it is only good for suing people, which is exactly what MPAA/RIAA and pals wanted in the first place. If anybody wants to have _any_ right to fair use in the future, we have to get organized. Whatever shreds of public access to the works of authors, both past, present and future - we _must_ protect. It's so bad that nobody knows what those rights are any more, and especially what they should be . You must read this to appreciate fully what's going on here. And to understand that Congress has enacted unconstitutional laws at the bequest of companies, and nobody has noticed until now. Please email me (kphil(at)hotmail)if you are interested in organizing to reclaim our public rights. It's going to be long, hard, and boring work. But it has to be done.

It could be argued now that the first BIOS clone made by compaq violated a copyright, as it duplicated the functionality exactly.

And this was Sony's arguement when they went against Connectix and lost (one judge had half a clue)

However, the extent of copyright/trademark infringement depends on what is being infringed. IANAL, (and you should find an _informed_ lawyer) but gameplay is not copyrightable. Similar trademarks probably infringes on their tademark, and they should try to defend that. The graphics are copyrightable, but if they are significantly different and have the same gameplay, then that's ok.

My guess is that these companies that were sued by Hasbro got a "sweetheart deal" to cease and decist (maybe even Hasbro said "we will ask for just $1.00 for infringement, but you gotta keep this secret). The companies, even though they made valid "non infringing clones" probably said to themselves "you know, we would lose more money in a protracted legal battle with these guys than we would earn off the game themselves, so it's a better business decision to fold".

I believe this is the scenario that played out. Because look at what Hasbro got back in return - the ability to strike fear into every "clone" maker, whether this fear is justified or not, which is worth far more than the peanuts they would have gotten from these guys. (They got peanuts anyway!). Look at the confusion in all the different posts here. Fine example of FUD purchased.

But it's not just Slashdotters who are confused about copyright - everybody is. Including, which is very depressing to say, our lower courts. So we are in good (bad!) company. The erosion of our public "copyright" has reached the point where we have been put in a "virtual prison", and have by illusion have lost all our rights given to us by our constitution. I say by "illusion", because companies want us to believe that we don't own the work that they sell us, that we just "rent it".

The startling fact of the matter is, and some of you are going to have a hard time believing this is - but it's true- that copyright owners do not "own" the work that they have a copyright for. They own the right to copy only, not the work that they have a copyright for. See the link below to understand this (and before you email me in a huff). So the notion of "intellectual property" is not constitutional. Only the "right to copy" is constitutional.

Congress has sold us down the river Big Time. So even if you go to a lawyer now, you may not even get the "right story" about what your rights are under copyright law. If anybody wants to have _any_ right to fair use in the future, we have to get organized. Whatever shreds of public access to the works of authors, both past, present and future - we _must_ protect. It's so bad that nobody knows what those rights are any more, and especially what they should be . You must read this to appreciate fully what's going on here. And to understand that Congress has enacted unconstitutional laws at the bequest of companies, and nobody has noticed until now. Please email me if you are interested in organizing to reclaim our public rights, and that goes for anybody reading this post. It's going to be long, hard, and boring work. But it has to be done. I'm looking for coders (Java and C) and non-coders.

If you really love this game, then this is what I would do. Purchase a "legal copy" of the game. If its an arcade game, purchase the machine, even if it's non-working (look on ebay - alot of the old ones show up). Then you have a right to "fair use", meaning that you have a _right_ to copy it for personal reasons. Don't let anybody tell you FUD to the otherwise, even a lawyer. Then, make your "exact" clone.

When you got the game to be exact, change _all_ the graphics and sounds, and give it an _entirely_ different name (something that these guys being sued by Hasbro failed to do). Then post _that_ result to your website for good gaming among friends (and happy strangers who pass by!). And most importantly, post with a clean conscience, because that's what you should have.

And one more thing, send me a copy.

It could be argued now that the first BIOS clone made by compaq violated a copyright, as it duplicated the functionality exactly.

And this was Sony's arguement when they went against Connectix and lost (one judge had half a clue)

However, the extent of copyright/trademark infringement depends on what is being infringed. IANAL, (and you should find an _informed_ lawyer) but gameplay is not copyrightable. Similar trademarks probably infringes on their tademark, and they should try to defend that. The graphics are copyrightable, but if they are significantly different and have the same gameplay, then that's ok.

My guess is that these companies that were sued by Hasbro got a "sweetheart deal" to cease and decist (maybe even Hasbro said "we will ask for just $1.00 for infringement, but you gotta keep this secret). The companies, even though they made valid "non infringing clones" probably said to themselves "you know, we would lose more money in a protracted legal battle with these guys than we would earn off the game themselves, so it's a better business decision to fold".

I believe this is the scenario that played out. Because look at what Hasbro got back in return - the ability to strike fear into every "clone" maker, whether this fear is justified or not, which is worth far more than the peanuts they would have gotten from these guys. (They got peanuts anyway!). Look at the confusion in all the different posts here. Fine example of FUD purchased.

But it's not just Slashdotters who are confused about copyright - everybody is. Including, which is very depressing to say, our lower courts. So we are in good (bad!) company. The erosion of our public "copyright" has reached the point where we have been put in a "virtual prison", and have by illusion have lost all our rights given to us by our constitution. I say by "illusion", because companies want us to believe that we don't own the work that they sell us, that we just "rent it".

The startling fact of the matter is, and some of you are going to have a hard time believing this is - but it's true- that copyright owners do not "own" the work that they have a copyright for. They own the right to copy only, not the work that they have a copyright for. See the link below to understand this (and before you email me in a huff). So the notion of "intellectual property" is not constitutional. Only the "right to copy" is constitutional.

Congress has sold us down the river Big Time. So even if you go to a lawyer now, you may not even get the "right story" about what your rights are under copyright law. If anybody wants to have _any_ right to fair use in the future, we have to get organized. Whatever shreds of public access to the works of authors, both past, present and future - we _must_ protect. It's so bad that nobody knows what those rights are any more, and especially what they should be . You must read this to appreciate fully what's going on here. And to understand that Congress has enacted unconstitutional laws at the bequest of companies, and nobody has noticed until now. Please email me if you are interested in organizing to reclaim our public rights, and that goes for anybody reading this post. It's going to be long, hard, and boring work. But it has to be done. I'm looking for coders (Java and C) and non-coders.

If you really love this game, then this is what I would do. Purchase a "legal copy" of the game. If its an arcade game, purchase the machine, even if it's non-working (look on ebay - alot of the old ones show up). Then you have a right to "fair use", meaning that you have a _right_ to copy it for personal reasons. Don't let anybody tell you FUD to the otherwise, even a lawyer. Then, make your "exact" clone.

When you got the game to be exact, change _all_ the graphics and sounds, and give it an _entirely_ different name (something that these guys being sued by Hasbro failed to do). Then post _that_ result to your website for good gaming among friends (and happy strangers who pass by!). And most importantly, post with a clean conscience, because that's what you should have.

And one more thing, send me a copy.

The freedom to learn is a natural-law right and the materials of learning are a necessary condition for the exercise of that right. Even if we say copyright has a natural-law basis, the benefit to the author is a reward to induce the author to make his or her writings public so that others may enjoy their natural-law right of learning. Copyright thus is, and can be, only a positive-law concept, for only a positive-law concept can serve to mediate two natural-law rights.

The Copyright Clause makes the point by recognizing the natural-law right of the people to learn as well as the natural-law right of the author to gain a profit. Thus, we come to the fundamental point. Copyright, whatever its basis, cannot co-exist as a natural-law right in a society where learning is a natural-law right and the public domain has a natural-law basis. Therefore, American copyright must be-as the framers intended-a positive-law concept, a legislative grant of limited rights conditioned on the author's making his or her writing available to the public. This principle was acknowledged in the Resolution of the Continental Congress, implied in the Copyright Clause, and adopted by the United States Supreme Court in Wheaton. This is why the copyright statutes do "not provide for the continuation of the common-law [i.e., natural-law] right, but under constitutional authority, created a new [statutory] right." The most important natural-law right of the Copyright Clause is not the right of the author to gain a profit, but the right of the people to learn: The future of a society is determined by the learning of its citizens.

The separation principle-the copyright and a copy of the work are separate legal entities subject to separate ownership, and both are separate from the work, which can be owned by no one-is a corollary of the limited-grant principle. The Supreme Court's most famous statement of this principle is found in Baker v. Selden,[72] which established the rule that copyright cannot protect ideas, and therefore the copyright is separate from the work. The Supreme Court's most definitive statement of the separation principle was, however, in American Tobacco Co. v. Werckmeister, in which the Court said that it was not the "physical thing created (the copy), but the right of printing, publishing, copying, etc., which is within statutory protection."

The crucial relevance of the separation principle is that no one can own the work. The copyright of a work and a copy of that work can be owned by different persons, and this difference in ownership is the essence of copyright. As the Supreme Court in Werckmeister stated, copyright "grows out of the recognition of the separate ownership of the right of copying from that which inheres in the mere physical control of the thing itself." Thus, the copyright and the copy in which the work is embodied "are distinct subjects of property, each capable of existing and being owned and transferred independent of the other."

The separation principle is thus fundamental to copyright law. The principle tells courts (and copyright owners) to distinguish: (1) the existence of the copy from the existence of the copyright; (2) the ownership of the copy from the ownership of the copyright; and (3) the use of the copy from the use of the copyright. These distinctions flow from the fact that copyright is an instrument to encourage copyright owners to distribute copies of the work in order to promote learning, not an instrument to control use of the copies after they have been distributed.

Well, I had to get used to FORTRAN77 "legacy" code two years ago (that was 7 years after I learned Pascal and C). I know I wasn't the only one who spent ages on finding a very strange bug...

The formula extended beyond the 72nd character!
See also this for good FORTRAN programming style. ALWAYS USE CAPITALS IT LOOKS WAY BETTER THIS WAY;-)

No, not very likely.

The ancestors of homo sapiens can be traced back in time further than that.

Besides, the meteorite theory is only one theory. I lend more credibility to the theory that activities in the earth core were the cause of dinosaur extiction (scientific american, oct 1990, Courtillot, A Volcanic Eruption) (as well as the rise of them). Still, that might be triggered by comet inpacts of course.



----------------------------------------------

I think that's either the most clueless, or the most willful distortion of history I've ever seen.

While it's correct to note that the Statute of Anne was the first modern copyright law, it was introduced as a response to serious problems - an unlimited printer's monopoly combined with oppressive government censorship. Before the Statute of Anne, the right to print (anything!) was a monopoly controlled by a trade guild, the Stationer's Company. This situation arose in part with the support of Crown, particularly Queen Mary, as a means of controlling the political dialogue (and resulted in large numbers of "dissenting" printers setting up in the Netherlands). The Stationer's Company enforced a "perpetual" monopoly on printed works - each printer registered the works he was printing and no other printer could print them. They also enforced import restrictions - primarily designed to dissuade heresy and dissent, but also to enforce the printer's guild's monopoly.

After over a hundred years of this monopoly, the printers were rudely suprised by the Statute of Anne, which allowed anyone (who could afford it) to become a printer, and which, for the first time, gave authors a copyright, for 14 years (renewable for another 14).

Before free speech, before freedom of assembly, before freedom of religion, there was copyright protection in our Constitution. The founding fathers knew copyright protection could improve society by preserving the economic incentive for people to come up with brilliant ideas and inventions.

The founding fathers knew the history when publishers controlled ideas (as a surrogate for governments), and were trying to prevent it from happening, again.

Links:

• http://www.marcihamilton.com/ip/occ asional.html
• http://www.lawsch.uga.edu/~jipl/vol1/patterson.htm l#english
• http://www.soc.hawaii. edu/~future/dissertation/Chapter2.html

When checking out the PETA Parody Site I tried following numerous links, particularly in the Miscellaneous section. Most don't work at all, including some interesting titles such as The Implications of Nazi Animal Protection, Militant Vegetariansim, and Animal Rights and the New Man Haters.

No, none of these were hosted on peta.org, they were hosted elsewhere. Obviously, the long arm of PETA and its supporters appears to have reached well beyond peta.org in silencing their critics.

When checking out the PETA Parody Site I tried following numerous links, particularly in the Miscellaneous section. Most don't work at all, including some interesting titles such as The Implications of Nazi Animal Protection, Militant Vegetariansim, and Animal Rights and the New Man Haters.

No, none of these were hosted on peta.org, they were hosted elsewhere. Obviously, the long arm of PETA and its supporters appears to have reached well beyond peta.org in silencing their critics.

This article in the Journal of Intellectual Property Law proposes ways of fighting against payment demands based on spurious copyrights. One of the four suggestions is a false-advertising action which can be brought under the laws of some states. I wonder if the professor's theory (which so far as I know has never been tested on any copyright claims) might be applied in the patent realm as well.

Assuming the worst, that the patent is valid: would every web site that used one of these methods be liable for infringement, or only the makers of the software that was installed at those sites ? I am not a lawyer, but I fear that the web sites themselves would be liable, unless the software manufacturer had licensed the patent in a certain way. Anyone have any thoughts on this ?

This article in the Journal of Intellectual Property Law proposes ways of fighting against payment demands based on spurious copyrights. One of the four suggestions is a false-advertising action which can be brought under the laws of some states. I wonder if the professor's theory (which so far as I know has never been tested on any copyright claims) might be applied in the patent realm as well.

Assuming the worst, that the patent is valid: would every web site that used one of these methods be liable for infringement, or only the makers of the software that was installed at those sites ? I am not a lawyer, but I fear that the web sites themselves would be liable, unless the software manufacturer had licensed the patent in a certain way. Anyone have any thoughts on this ?

(Readers of "Lucifer's Hammer" may remember that a copy of COSMIC was one of the treasures which was mentioned)

It would be nice if the old NASA COSMIC software archive were still available...

The simple fact is that the first US copyright law established a fourteen-year term, with a single fourteen-year renewal option. Thus, it is quite evident that the Founders considered limited periods of protection sufficient unto the purpose of protecting the right to profit from one's intellectual creations.

So they put a limit on it. That limit was not some compromise between the two ends of the spectrum, it was something they felt would be enforceable.

Surely you do not seriously suggest that the Founders felt themselves incapable of enforcing the law over a twenty-nine-year period.

I recommend L. Ray Patterson's essay on the topic for a historical overview of Anglo-American copyright law.
/.

I thought everyone could use a good laugh, while I cry of course. University of Georgia Salaries You thought your's was bad? Pyber_Samurai

University of Georgia Department of English. Old, throwaway 486s as X terminals, with a central application server. (Disclaimer: not my project)

I like Mandrake Linux in and of itself, but more to the point MacMillian as a company was very good
to CHUGALUG. They were quick to respond to our request for prizes to give away at our Linux Fest and sent us a ton of goodies.. both software and books to give away as door prizes. We found them very supportive of "the community."

Athens Linux Fest 2.0
Classic Hackers University of Georgia Linux Users Group (CHUGALUG)

I like Mandrake Linux in and of itself, but more to the point MacMillian as a company was very good
to CHUGALUG. They were quick to respond to our request for prizes to give away at our Linux Fest and sent us a ton of goodies.. both software and books to give away as door prizes. We found them very supportive of "the community."

Athens Linux Fest 2.0
Classic Hackers University of Georgia Linux Users Group (CHUGALUG)

Winglee estimates "a minimum system can provide a typical thrust of about 3 Newton continuous (0.6 MW continuous power), with a specific impulse of 104 to 105s) to produce an increase in speed of about 30 km/s in a period of 3 months."

"The Administration shall provide for the widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of information concerning its activities and the results thereof." -National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958

(Someplace called NTTC claims to have COSMIC, but their web site only has obscure titles without descriptions or archives)

There is a *great* Artificial Intelligence / Artificial Life HOWTO here geared towards Linux.

explorezone.com has a news article on this which includes and interview with the astronomers.

My map of Near Earth Objects has 1999 AN10 marked on it, and will be updated daily. It's Currently the red object near mercury.

And Benny Peiser's Cambridge Conference network mailing list broke the news of this to it's readers - readers like Arthur C Clarke, Bill Napier, Mark Bailey and other big names in the field.

explorezone.com has a news article on this which includes and interview with the astronomers.

My map of Near Earth Objects has 1999 AN10 marked on it, and will be updated daily. It's Currently the red object near mercury.

And Benny Peiser's Cambridge Conference network mailing list broke the news of this to it's readers - readers like Arthur C Clarke, Bill Napier, Mark Bailey and other big names in the field.

Actually there are a number of F90 compilers under Linux. We've been using the Portland Group compiler for more than a year. There are several others. See the Linux Fortran Information Page for all the details.

I have to admit that I am biased (in large part due to my employer). I would not consider a dual PII generally a good multiprocessor for numerically intensive codes. This has nothing to do with Intel or Linux, or g77/pgf77/absoft, etc.

What I have found on my codes is that small (actually tiny) problems run well on pentia. But reasonable research sized problems cause it to huff and puff. Machines like the alpha or the R10k (and R12k) kick serious butt on the larger problem sizes. What is just insanely cool is to watch your code (efficiently) use all 32 processors, and get something like a 28-30x speedup.

But, as I said, I am biased.

Back to fortran. Jeff Templon has an excellent page on Linux and Fortran. Better is the big fortran link page. This is really a nice resource and is a nice intro to the general Fortran Market setup by Walt Brainerd. I strongly advise visiting this site if you need to think Fortran.

Ok, now some thoughts. Craig Burley and crew have done a positively bang up job on g77. It is IMO a useful productive research tool... with a caveat or two.

First, it really is just a front end to the gcc back end, so there are many... gcc-isms... floating about.

Second, while optimization is OK, it is generally tied to the gcc optimization, which has traditionally not been very good. The egcs project has had a much better track record on getting real optimization into the compiler. Folks, if your runs can take years, 5% DOES matter. Optimization on pentia is not just -O, you need things like

-O3 -malign-double -malign-functions=2 -funroll-loops -ffast-math

among others for decent performance.

Third, and most important for me, it (nor egcs) knows nothing whatsoever about multiprocessing.

In short, g77 and egcs in general are awesome tools. But unless you work on small problems, they are not suitable. You will need some better tools, and that involves passing over some money in this case.

I like the Portland Group tools, though the KAI tools are effectively identical to what you use on big supers like Origins. Unfortunately, I do not think KAI supports Linux any longer. Maybe we can all write them a nice letter on how they could drop support for some underused platform for computation (some come to mind here :-) ) in favor of Linux. Market size and all that.

As the author of the referant article wrote, most fortran users want all the speed they can get, so you need to look at what your code spends the most time doing, and figure out if it is doing it the right and most efficient way, or if your system is correctly designed for speed, or if you are hitting one area of your system really hard, and thus causing a bottleneck. In short, if you need to design for speed, start out with a workstation design, and not a PC design. You likely will need massive memory and IO bandwidth to complement an insanely fast CPU. Putting an Alpha into a PC architecture should be considered a capital crime. It makes much more sense to put it into something like a DS20, a T3E or some other design (I can fantasize about an Alpha in an Octane or an Origin, that would be a complete screamer... a memory and IO bus capable of feeding the processor at its full speed... shudder).

The language and its implementation are important, but so is the fundamental system design. You need to avoid bottlenecks everywhere.

Joe