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To actually start a comment out by fulfilling godwin's law, and hence proving yourself wrong before you made your point, is so increadibly dumb that, I am hoping, that it is the reason you got mod'ed up to (3), was which means we need a new catagory:- (Score 5: Hey come look at this idiot!)

Having discussed extensively design possibilities with the big walker operator and worked a bit on a Walking robot repairs with him while with SRL (www.srl.org), I can attest that the Honda robot is definately an impressive achievement. Stable walking is difficult enough on tripedal and quadropedal robots, and the hacking done at SRL only succeeded in 2 and 3 legged robots, with not much hill-climbing ability, and only moderate speeds. The feedback circuitry and balancing techniques needed for a biped like the Honda robot is, sadly, not yet within reach of even the sophisticated hackers without a ton of money.

The Honda robot qualifies as an "impressive start"... its 2.0km/h speed of the Honda robot is not impressive for a lightweight tri or quad walker, but it is for a bipedal robot of human size.
The fact that it can climb stairs is especially cool, given the extensive rebalancing done every moment in a step, and the feedback sensors needed to read these motions properly.

Certainly there are lifting robots which can hoist many tons, so the 5.0kg/hand weight limit seems skimpy - but not when considering that this machine can allegedly walk and perform complex arm manipulations while holding this weight. Sadly, its continuous runtime before recharge is only 30 minutes, but I suspect later versions will take advantage of increasing innovation in charge/weight ratios in batteries, and perhaps solar panels for space use (an obvious application of these robots would be EVAs for the ISS or other craft).

Cool, in terms of integration with other systems, is the use of wireless ethernet as the comm standard, rather than some proprietary system. This means this robot could be controlled by base-station systems of arbitrary complexity - including a Beowulf cluster running a complex AI system like Webmind. This means that while technology is not quite there yet to put any advanced computational intelligence inside a biped robot, it can be controlled by advanced systems running at fixed-position stations through LAN technology - a good compromise in terms of merging the state-of-the-art in Robotics with AI to try to build towards a better convergence.

Regarding the robustness, it appears that the 25 minutes of runtime is the primary limitation in terms of continuous operation - there is no data I was able to find on failure rates or the fault tolerance of the sensors or computational systems on-board.

As for hacks vs. new general purpose algorithsm... They obviously do not reveal tremendous amounts of details, but suffice it to say that the engineering done to build 3 successive models of bipedal robots that can walk and climb (stairs, hills) represents fundamental work in robot dynamics engineering which, while parameter tweaked for this robot's operations, is certainly applicable (with some tweaks or modifications, as with all engineering techniques) to other bipedal robot applications.

The wireless lan comm technology, improved user interface (over the previous version), and sensor systems are all also certainly reusable in similar robots (indeed, likely also in multi-legged robots).

However, as it is a commercial product AND I do not read Japanese, I was not able to find any papers on specific algorithms to give a more detailed analysis...

Here are some useful resources I did find:

The official site in English

An article about the robot's walking functions

Images of the robot at UIUC

Biped Robots in General

Robodex Robotics Conference

You're absolutely right. Check it out here.

Actually, I've been looking into this type of thing as a possibility for a Master's Project at my school, and I'm wondering if some of you guys might have some good ideas of how to improve it. What I've been looking into is maybe doing a more hardware-oriented version of it--y'know, shove some gyroscopic sensors and such into it so you don't need the webcam. After all, the general concensus seems to be that a webcam would be too slow to keep up with a *real* Jedi. :)

The idea that progress is going through a sharp turn upward is not supported by the Kurzweil's reference to the "exponential", a curve that looks basically the same at any scale -- but on a more radical mathematical formulation that goes to infinity in finite time -- specifically by Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026 (give or take). No, this isn't just some New Age eschatology -- it was actually arrived at by looking at historic data and extrapolating into the future.

Here is an excerpt from "Spasim (1974) The First First-Person-Shooter 3D Multiplayer Networked Game" that discusses the origin of the Transhumanist conception of "The Singularity":

They were trying to realize a man-machine cybernetic vision of this magical little gnome named Heinz von Foerster and needed an email system to go along with it.
...
When the semester was over, I threw a few things into my '64 Chevy Impalla, and headed east on Interstate 80 across the Illinois border for Urbana and CERL. It was my first paying job as a programmer.

Arriving at the Mecca of networking and meeting the magical little gnome who founded second order cybernetics (symbolized by the Ouroboros) in his Biological Computer Laboratory was an amazing experience.
...
A vital side note: Heinz von Foerster had published a paper in 1960 on global population: von Foerster, H, Mora, M. P., and Amiot, L. W., "Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D." 2026, Science 132, 1291-1295 (1960). In this paper, Heinz shows that the best formula that describes population growth over known human history is one that predicts the population will go to infinity on a Friday the 13 in November of 2026. As Roger Gregory likes to say, "That's just whacko!" The problem is, after he published the paper, it kept predicting population growth better than the other models. (see section 4.1 "Systems Ecology Notes") One of Heinz's early University of Illinois colleagues was Richard Hamming of "Hamming code" fame. Once while visiting the Naval Postgraduate School, I asked Dr. Hamming what he thought of Heinz von Foerster. Professor Hamming's response was "Heinz von Foerster: Now there's a first class kook!" I suspect Heinz's publication of, what Transhumanists call, "the singularity" had really gotten to Hamming -- not that Heinz wasn't eccentric enough get Hamming's goat in any case. Well, to continue this digression so as to give the damn Transhumanists a much-deserved keyboard lashing: It's one thing to be a guy like Hamming and denounce Heinz as a "kook" for following his formulae where they lead -- it's another to turn Heinz's formulae into a virtual religion, call it "the singularity" and totally forget where the idea came from the first place. I suggest the Transhumanists cite Heinz in the future whenever they refer to "the singularity" and think about his assumptions -- the primary one being that societies success varies directly with population size. It might be good to see if his model fits the data subsequent to the last check of which I am aware -- 1973 -- which just happens to be right at the point high population density societies decided to abandon their forward progress toward the space frontier.

..use tags that say what the information is, not what it looks like...

The ability to capture and transmit semantic and structural data made possible by XML ...

Computers, of course, are not that smart; they need to be told exactly what things are, how they are related and how to deal with them. Extensible Markup Language (XML for short) is a new language designed to do just that, to make information self-describing.

So is there some steak among all of this sizzle?

(And yes, I'm well aware of the fact that CORBA is brain damaged as well.)

I've been up all night. Don't ask me what I've been doing, I really couldn't tell you. I've been up all night. In about 25 minutes I'll be going to breakfast. I went to breakfast yesterday as well, once again because I stayed up all night. Today is a little different from my other random purposeless all nighters. Today I got to be the first kid on my block to vote. The polls opened at 6 in the UIUC Snyder hall lounge. I rolled myself a cigarette, and mosied on over with my photo ID and certificate of registration. They told me I was the first person to vote at the dorms in this election. I voted for Ralph Nader.

Now I'm in a computer lab. Waiting for breakfast. For my omelet. Some Kiwi-Strawberry. A bagel.

"At some point, you have to say enough is enough. Today is that day for me. I will go to the polls and vote for Ralph Nader. I am doing so for the only reason you should ever vote for anyone. I am voting for Ralph because it is what my conscience says is right. I am doing what they taught us to do in civics class -- vote for who you think the best candidate is. Period." -Michael Moore

2000_11_07, my first election day. I'm really young. I'm really young and angry. I'm really young and annoyed. I'm really young and disolusioned. We all are. And when it comes to voting, it doesn't even take being young to be angry annoyed and disolusioned. This shit sucks. Campaigns suck. Candidates suck. The Government sucks. Every day we see so much bullshit all around us, its pathetic. I'm surprised anyone votes at all. Anyone. The only reason I voted at all, the only reason I looked forward to my first election, was Ralph Nader. The chance to vote for something different. To say "I want something different." To point out in some small way the fact that what we have isn't good enough. We all know why it isn't good enough. Check the web links, read your friends' e-mails, whatever, its obvious, so I wont even get into it.

We all know Ralph Nader is something different. We all know that the Green Party is something different. We all know that simply acknowledging at a federal level the notion of having more than one political party, er, I mean, two political parties (had an inadvertent spurt of real awareness there, sorry) is something different. We need something different. What we have is not good enough. A lesser evil, a lesser anything is not good enough.

It's time for breakfast. I feel good. I voted. I voted for something good.

-chorder

I just got 0 seconds.

I don't know how... it was sort of an accident.

Click here for a pic of it. It didn't congratulate me though... damn.
0 seconds???

"the so-called "pro-life" [highly ironic since people have been killed in the "pro-life" battle] movement wants to impose their will on all others. pro-choice does not. "

FYI, Pro-Choicers Are not Innocent in the Violence Issue

Insane Abortionist

Dr. Bruce Steir, Abortionist, Charged With Murder

before you continue basing your opinion in the misconception that the pro-choice side is any less violent to grown-up people (as they are already are encouraging the killing of the unborn from 2 weeks to 9 months).

We here at Anarchists for Life took a stand against violence when we adopted this as part of our faq that "We do not support violence inside or outside of abortion clinics. We do support peaceful protest." We are hardly alone on the issue

Pat Goltz's Pro-life and Feminist Writings

Leftout: A Haven for Progressive (Liberal) Pro-Lifers

Pro-Woman, Pro-Life: Stop Abortion

What A Wonderful World

"A Life Is..."

Serena & Semira's Home

Check Your Stereotypes At the Door

neon goddess page

Idle Hands Productions

MaeFlowers

Straight Edge Power!

Christian Morality

Tree of Life Pro-life Page

Human Life is Sacred

Vox Crying

Laura's Homepage

Respect Life Ministry

Rennaissance Suffragettes (Pro-Life Feminism)

Star Angel's Pro-Life Page

Lutherans for Life

DazedHippie's Causes

Atheist and Agnostic Pro-Life League

RightGrrl: Conservative Pro-Life Women

Life Links

Linkie's Place

Sweet Pain's Causes

An American Patriot's Page of Thanks

Diogenes's Friends

Anarchists for Life

(( apprehension ))

Versailles Artists for Life

Matt Wallace: A Pro-Life/Anti-Violence Secular Humanist Atheist

BroPeace's Page: Shalom!

Carol's Pro-Life Page

Mallory's Owner's Page

Jim Sieffert's Page

Military Spouse Club

Rebecca's Pro-Life Page

Reality Check-Canada

Rochester Area Right To Life Committee (Rochester, NY)

Joel's Journey

Indiana University Students for Life

Consistent Life Ethics

Electric Cheetahland

Central Truths

Linda's Lair

David Horne's Gay Pro-life Christian Homepage

Roy and Joanna's Beliefs

In Susan B. Anthony's Footsteps: Pro-Woman, Pro-Life! Webring

The New Abolitionists (or "Funny, I Don't Feel Like A Conservative!")

STAAR: Standing Together Against Abortion Rights (Canada)

Do Babies Have a Choice?

Weird Politik: Because Politics Can be Very Strange Sometimes

Elizabeth's Place

Sehlat's LifeLinks

Sleepless in Atlanta

Bill Samuel's Pro-Life Links

Pro-Life Activities in Maryland / Washington DC

Daweena's Political Page

Glitched

Doubet Family Page

I Did get suckered in to buying a U-Force, which had a clamshell design with motion sensors. The idea seemed cool- controlling Mike Tyson's Punchout by moving your hands, or driving Rad Racer by pretending you're holding a steering wheel. The motion detection was crap though...(and trying to play 'normal' games like Zelda was a riotous exercise in futility)...I fortunately managed to get my parents to return it.

Now the Power Glove may not have been very popular, but I have to give props to Nintendo for putting it out. It was clunky, but you could get it to work with some effort...and it did look cool in its own late 80s geekish way. Check out http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/sigarch/pgsi/ for a nice little hack that lets you hook one up to your PC.

Ah...such fond memories...
---

You can do multiplayer, though only with other Cave Quake players (not too many of those around). When an enemy sneaks up behind you, they really are behind you. The best part, though, is the position sensors on the goggles and your control wand. When you see a rocket coming straight for your head, you don't just hit a key to dodge, you instinctively duck off to the side, just in time to see the rocket blast by your head. If any computer game can scare the living shit out of you, this is it. It's also a hell of a lot more fun to point your arm at an enemy (from your viewpoint, your gun is sort of superimposed over your arm.) to aim, rather than moving a mouse.

The whole cave thing could get a lot smaller and more affordable with large flat panel displays, since they currently cost in the range of $70,000 for just the display system. The floor display would still be a problem, though it would be easier to do a 360 degree display than with the projectors. Even with flat panel displays, you're still gonna need a hell of a lot of cash to get one.

Never mind the whole thing, I'd settle for some ribosomal RNA sequences that I could compare with other existing rRNA sequences from the public databases. It'd be a simple matter to grab some sequences from The Ribosomal RNA Project database, align them with a sequence from this bacteria in ClustalX, and then generate a phylogenetic 'tree' with fastDNAml, which gives a nice, simple representation of how closely related the sequences are to each other.

It's fun to do. At least, I think so, but then again, I'm a sick puppy.

It looks like this troll used the automatic complaint letter generator. It gives different results every time. When I put in Sun, I got this:

This is an open letter, which you are welcome to use as you wish. I want as many people as possible to know that Sun is unable to see any issue in a broad perspective or from more than one side. Read on, gentle reader, and hear what I have to say. Sun not only lies, but it brags about its lying to its spokesmen. When the war against reason is backed by a large cadre of uneducated protestors, the results are even more loathsome. Now that that's cleared up, I'll continue with what I was saying before, that its prank phone calls serve only to safeguard its own power and privilege. If, after hearing facts like that, you still believe that without its superior guidance, we will go nowhere, then there is decidedly no hope for you.

To say otherwise would be oppressive. Is it not positively the distinguishing feature of Sun's activities to descend to character assassination and name calling? There is no inconsistency here; a central fault line runs through each of Sun's statements. Specifically, the law is not just a moral stance. It is the consensus of society on our minimum standards of behavior. I find Sun's policies rather immature, don't you? Of all of Sun's exaggerations and incorrect comparisons, one in particular stands out: "Nonrepresentationalism is a noble goal." I don't know where it came up with this, but its statement is dead wrong.

According to the laws of probability, we were put on this planet to be active, to struggle, and to justify condemnation, constructive criticism, and ridicule of Sun and its huffy reinterpretations of historic events. We were not put here to excoriate attempts to bring questions of emotionalism into the (essentially apolitical) realm of pedagogy in language and writing, as Sun might feel. Words fail me in describing my pure distaste for Sun's positions and abhorrent assertions. I put that observation into this letter just to let you see that Sun should think about how its double standards lead uncompromising vexatious provocateurs to pander to our worst fears. If Sun doesn't want to think that hard, perhaps it should just keep quiet. Sun has stated that the sky is falling. That's just pure hooliganism. Well, in Sun's case, it might be pure ignorance, seeing that Sun frequently avers its support of democracy and its love of freedom. But one need only look at what Sun is doing -- as opposed to what it is saying -- to understand its true aims. I'd like to finish with a quote from a private e-mail message sent to me by a close friend of mine: "Sun believes that everyone and everything discriminates against it -- including the writing on the bathroom stalls -- only because it has a need to believe that".

http://brighton.ncsa.uiuc.edu/~prajlich/caveQuake/

I'm not sure how much the whole system would cost, but you can read the specs on the site.

I know someone at the University of Michigan that let a group of us play around with it. Very cool stuff. It's really strange becoming a character in Quake.

I've read rumors that someone is working on a Half-Life port for this system. Imagine actually becoming Gordon Freeman.

• Under $300: A Klein bottle. You though it was impossible? Think again!
• $300-$1500: A nice big monitor. Mine sucks.
• Unlimited: A CAVE to play Quake 2 in. A mere $1,000,000+. The link to the Gamespy article gives a good overview of it all.

It looks like a Scott Pakin's Complaint generator written complaint. I've always been quite fond of that myself.

My guess is Scott Pakin's automatic complaint-letter generator.


...phil

If I understand it correctly, their choice to release the source code, was to expand the user base. How has this been going for them? What percentage of users actually use Netscape?

Lookie here at some nice historical browser statistics. Netscape / Mozilla has about 27% of the market. Netscape has around 45% of the market when Mozilla was opened. So you can see that this strategy, like most things associated with Mozilla, has been a failure.

We have (or rather, had) the same problem here at UIUC. Before the networking guys imposed a 500MB/day transfer limit on each computer in the dorms, a frighteningly large percentage of the campus bandwidth was being used for MP3s. (If I remember correctly the statistic was somewhere around 10%!)

Also amusing is the fact that computers in the dorms here regularly show up higher on the bandwidth usage than ANY of the other machines on campus, including research computers and machines at on-campus organizations such as the NCSA, which does HUGE amounts of data transfer for their computational simulations.

Check out the by-day bandwidth usage statistics here.

We have (or rather, had) the same problem here at UIUC. Before the networking guys imposed a 500MB/day transfer limit on each computer in the dorms, a frighteningly large percentage of the campus bandwidth was being used for MP3s. (If I remember correctly the statistic was somewhere around 10%!)

Also amusing is the fact that computers in the dorms here regularly show up higher on the bandwidth usage than ANY of the other machines on campus, including research computers and machines at on-campus organizations such as the NCSA, which does HUGE amounts of data transfer for their computational simulations.

Check out the by-day bandwidth usage statistics here.

Black Holes and Beyond

Black Holes: Mystery of the Cosmos

Black Hole: The Death of a Star

Shit Load of Links

CAVEs have been connected over Internet 1 for a long time now using the CAVERNSoft library. This is how CAVE Quake II runs its deathmatch.

It's some pretty impressive stuff and quite fun although I find the old mouse + keyboard controls much more responsive. :)

To find out more about the VR "Cave" they're talking about, check out NCSA's CAVERNUS (CAVE Research Network Users Society) site.

I believe this showed up in a /. article about holodecks a while back... :)


---

CAVEs have been connected over Internet 1 for a long time now using the CAVERNSoft library. This is how CAVE Quake II runs its deathmatch.

It's some pretty impressive stuff and quite fun although I find the old mouse + keyboard controls much more responsive. :)

To find out more about the VR "Cave" they're talking about, check out NCSA's CAVERNUS (CAVE Research Network Users Society) site.

I believe this showed up in a /. article about holodecks a while back... :)


---

There's more interesting information about the binary powers here

--

For a more pessimistic view, check out this journal paper.

--

Sorry I don't have a login, so I'll just post this with my name at the end.

This is just one example of a new field in biochemistry called "porphyrins". I've been working on them for my doctorate thesis for the last three years, but I never expected to see them mentioned on Slashdot.
The way metalloporphyrins (and the larger group of porphyrins) work is that when a particular molecule hits a pre-prepared surface coated with the dye, the metalloporphyrin alters its structure through movement in the electron shells to mimic the molecules form, producing an altered isotope of the metalloporphyrin that has different optical properties, reflecting only a select sequence of wavelengths. This is caused by the electron shells collecting energy from the photons as they arrive, and re-emitting them in accordance with Precontelli's principle of refraction.
Porphyrins have much in common with the family of chromopolymers, as well (at least in their macroscopic physical interactions. It's a very interesting field of research, and I hope that some future chemists might become involved.

-- Chris Ellendale
Ph.D candidate, University of California

For more information, see the following links:
Porphyrin Co., Ltd.
Summary of Porphyrins and Metalloporphyrins
Metalloporphyri ns
Photosensisizing effects of metalloporphyrins

Basically the policy says that "traditional academic copyrightable works" belong to the author (unless commissioned by the university). But they make a special exception for work that may also be patentable, and explicitly say that software may be patentable and so is an exception. The result is that the university owns all the software you write in the lab. This was an issue with the local chapter of SigOps when different members wrote operating systems. We had to be careful and only use the ACM machines, not university machines.

The line the University held to, and still holds to, is that NCSA's job is to research new technologies, not to market them as business products. Once Mosaic was deemed a success, they gave licensing rights over to a separate company (Spyglass) and got back to researching other technologies.

The line the University held to, and still holds to, is that NCSA's job is to research new technologies, not to market them as business products. Once Mosaic was deemed a success, they gave licensing rights over to a separate company (Spyglass) and got back to researching other technologies.

And why does this remind me of a certain scene in "Dark Star"?

Doolittle: Hello, Bomb? Are you with me?
Bomb #20: Of course.
Doolittle: Are you willing to entertain a few concepts?
Bomb #20: I am always receptive to suggestions.
etc...

What do we want in a package format?

• Minimal root privileges
• Can easily identify what belongs to what package
• Can easily and completely remove packages and be sure you didn't miss anything
• Can install and run multiple versions of a package

But how do you do this? It's easy if you leverage the power of...symbolic links.

First, you extract the package into, say, /opt/packagename-packageversion. Under that directory, there's a /bin, a /usr, a /lib, a /whatever, etc. You can even run it and test it from there, without privileges, before moving on.

Next, when you're sure it was extracted correctly, and it's passed some basic functionality checks, you create symbolic links from within, e.g., /usr/bin/ to within /opt/packagename-packageversion/usr/bin, then chown to the user the package needs to be.

Note that most of these steps can be done without root privileges. You extract it as user "tool", who has basically the rights of a guest account. The function checks are done that way, too. Only once you're satisfied do you need root to set the symbolic links and do the chown to whatever user the files need to be.

You can easily figure out what belongs to what package. Just do a "find" for symbolic links that link into that directory under /opt.

Completely and safely removing a package is easy too, just have that find command remove the symlinks too, then remove the directory.

Because the package's files are concentrated in one place, it's possible to have multiple versions installed on the same system without overwriting each other. The symlinks get a bit more complicated, but you can have, e.g., a Netscape-4.05 and a Netscape-4.07, and pick which one works best for which pages, just as an example.

It seems to me that the existing pakage systems were too inspired by Windows, scattering files willy-nilly. I've been told that in the 70's and 80's software was typically installed the encap way, though not always so automatically.

The old copies of Mosaic were never taken off of NCSA's FTP server You can find them here. This is a little more complete than Evolt.org since it includes the Unix binaries along with source for several versions. Don't forget to pick up your copy of NCSA HTTPD while you're there!

No, he just ran: http://www-csag.cs.uiuc.edu/ individual/pakin/complaint
--

I guess an important thing is to emphasize what it is that should be "distributed". Allready, most operating systems function "distributed", i.e. have the ability to access remote file systems, remote printers, support execution of a given process on a given remote "machine" etc. This is one form of "distributed operating system", which has proven to be well functioning in many settings. This is imho basically "distributed ressource sharing". A little more advanced is the case of one process, executing on one CPU in on one "machine" utilizing memory in another "machine". Still, this is not far out (see f.eks. Berkeley NOW or some such project). This is basically a matter of providing some services and presenting them in a way such that they appear as if they were "local" services.

Another, different "wish" is the ability to "execute any one process on 4½ processor". Which basically amounts to two issues, namely writing applications such that they can take advantage of an arbitrary number of underlaying processors (it's not gonna do much good to take a strictly sequential program and execute on any "multiprocessor-like" platform). The other issue involves automatic parallelization of programs by the operating system - something which is not a trivial matter, and often hardly worth it in "real applications". This basically amounts to providing a set of "handles", usefull for the programmer when writing a process and used by the operating system when scheduling and executing the process. Such exists allready both in academia (The Actor Foundry or Emerald are examples hereof) or in "real life" with MPI et.al.

But the "dream" of having an operating system which is just "undefined distributed" and which is able to execute "just any" process distributed is not realistic - for many reasons, including those above....Unfortunately it is also a common "wish" to see caught out of the blue...

IANAD, but I wouldn't be so quick to blame those effects on stereoscopic imagery in general. I work for a research group at the University of Illinois that does some work with the Cave at the NCSA. The Cave is a virtual reality system that uses stereoscopic imaging on four projection screens that surround the user to create a VR effect. I've never heard of this problem from anyone that's used the system (although some people do get slightly nauseous or feel other side effects after prolonged usage).

I would imagine the side effects you mentioned are HIGHLY dependent on the specific hardware and on the person (just like pretty much anything VR-related).

It's not surprising that it was re-used as a manuscript. Manuscript writing was a great art and a worthwhile hobby for bored monks, practised widely up to the middle of the millenium. A lot of the works were of religious/Christian content, and some were historic (generally sponsored by rich patrons). Vellum, or processed calf skin, was written on using pigments and natural minerals which varied from crushed beetles to lapis lazuli. Frequently, gold leaves were used to emboss ornamental designs.

Perhaps the most famous lost and found manuscript is the book of Kells. Written by Irish monks in the 8th century, it was lost during viking attacks on monastaries, found buried underground and unearthed, and today resides at Trinity College, Dublin. It's regarded as Ireland's national treasure. (BTW, the word "miniature" used to describe these manuscripts has nothing to do with size, but indicates drawn inline images, from Latin miniatus, past participle of miniare, to color with minium, from minium red lead.)

If you get a chance to see manuscripts at a nearby exhibition, don't miss it. They are fabulous. And simply looking at words written centuries ago in ink on parchment is quite an indescribable feeling.

(In related news: one of the greatest wonders of the ancient world was completely recycled. The bronze Collossus of Rhodes was sold as scrap metal.)

Check out this link to look at some of the old manuscripts of mathematics.

w/m

People need to stop looking at the d.net/Seti@home problems as the only model for Internet computing. They're not that hard of problems. What makes them neat is that they've got lots of CPU's. (SETI is cool because it's space and aliens and everything, but RC5-64 is just plain stupid - they're proving that 64 bit RC5 is 256 times harder to crack than 56bit RC5. Yawn.)

Numerical accuracy is a concern. Latency is a concern - but not for a a huge set of problems. You don't need a T3E for Monte Carlo simulations, and you shouldn't try and put your finite-element simulations all around the world. Networks are getting faster and faster, so code size is really not an issue today for anyone on a real network (ie vBNS.) Data size can be a problem, but again, networks are getting faster, and you can prestage a lot of the data. If your code is too sensitive to risk distributing, then no amount of technological progress is going to change it. User security is not that difficult of a problem - it's not too hard to sandbox an application on a decent OS. And as for FORTRAN, I don't see what the problem is. Processors don't run C or FORTRAN or Pascal, and the FORTRAN compilers still produce some pretty tight code.

The Internet makes great sense for high-performance computing, for the right problems.

Yeah, my little blue Abbott/Doenhoff is prominently placed amongst the "good books I don't read much anymore" bookshelf. It's a bit dated, since most modern aero types design their own airfoils for a particular application, but it is pretty good for developing an undergraduate level understanding of the applicable theory. The tas section is great. Unfortunately TOWS doesn't really go into more advanced methods. If you are interested I highly recommend Belotserkovski's "theory" book, and especially Richard Eppler's "Airfoil Design" book. Eppler's is interesting because he was a (very) early champion of computational techniques in airfoil design, and his book contains snippets of Fortran code that does just that. Also, UIUC has an excellent database of airfoils designed by Eppler and Selig which I have used quite extensively in building model aircraft.

Anyway aeronautics is the science of designing an airplane or other flying machine, not the science of determining the effect of deforestation on the living environment of people in Atlanta. That is meteorology, and the scientists imo should have sought funding from 1)their university (GA tech) 2)private sources (i.e. Ralph Nader, the green party, etc.) or 3) government agencies designed to support meteorological research, such as the National Climate Prediction Center", the National Weather Service or the NDBC. I don't think that NASA had any right to spend my money on this survey. If this case is a typical of their "Mission to Planet Earth", then I think that there is a problem with the organization that needs to be fixed- because NASA isn't designed to fill this role. If they had no better use for the money, then it should not have been spent- regardless of the fact that this is anathema to bureaucrats everywhere.

How I screwed up NASA's acronym is beyond me. I think you are right though- I have the NASM on my mind since I was in DC last week (4th). FYI I don't recommend that particular experience. No matter how patriotic you are, stay the hell away from that city in the summertime, especially on a national holiday.

Rev Neh

Actually, it is a rather interesting scientific question as to how far you have to alter the landscape before local micro-climate effects become significant and broadly measureable. Claims that cutting down rainforests affecting the tight ground-moisture cycle (e.g. leaves breaking up the water to reduce flash run-offs + erosion) tend to be rather hot points of discussion but certainly humans can alter ground effects such as vegetation, heat distributions, evaporation rates, etc which can lead to a discernable regional effect on the local weather patterns. However, exactly how much impact we have on the wider global cycles taking into account natural decadal variability is still a major topic of research

LL

Actually, it is a rather interesting scientific question as to how far you have to alter the landscape before local micro-climate effects become significant and broadly measureable. Claims that cutting down rainforests affecting the tight ground-moisture cycle (e.g. leaves breaking up the water to reduce flash run-offs + erosion) tend to be rather hot points of discussion but certainly humans can alter ground effects such as vegetation, heat distributions, evaporation rates, etc which can lead to a discernable regional effect on the local weather patterns. However, exactly how much impact we have on the wider global cycles taking into account natural decadal variability is still a major topic of research

LL

I've got one of those Intellimouse Explorers (the huge silver ones with the superfluous tail light and like three extra buttons; well, what the hell, here's a http://www.microsoft.com/Mouse/explorer.htm link) and sites that won't let you back out are an incredible annoyance. See, two of the buttons on there serve as Forward/Back (respectively) while browsing the web, and after about 20 minutes of using them, I was hooked. You wouldn't believe how simple (and remarkably intuitive) to navigate with your thumb. Now if I could just find a good use for those buttons in Half-Life... I mean, sure, it's easy enough to hold down the back button and select the page before the offending site, but that would require moving my cursor over six or so linear inches of desktop space. Isn't that just a little bit unreasonable? No? Ah well.

• Tempest
• Laser Snoopers

Spiral antennas of this nature are often used in things like radar warning receivers for military aircraft where one needs to listen to a wide range of possible threat radar bands. A modern figher aircraft could easily have 10 spiral antennas on it. Next time you are at an airshow, see if you can spot them (hint: they are usualy under small dome shaped radomes about 5cm across).

Just out of curiosity, who here thinks there is any chance that MSFT, probably the only software company with billion$ of dollars in cash reserves will either a.)go out of business or b.) quit development on a product in which from various statistics is the dominant player in its market.

Secondly, who believes that if AOL fired all the Netscape developers (who outnumber Open-Source contributors) there'd still be a Mozilla? Considering that several laudable open source projects have languished without corporate support including IBM's JFS and almost everything SGI has GPLed for Linux.

Finally from a PointyHairedBoss perspective which is more likely a.)MSFT goes out of business or quits developing IE or b.) AOL decides to stop flogging a dead horse and concedes defeat by keeping IE as its default browser instead of spending money developing a second stringer to IE?

This is not a troll but a genuine counter-opinion, being Open Source does not mean diddly to most PHBs unless there is still someone to point at Apache has the Apache Group while Linux has Red Hat, SuSe, etc...Mozilla has AOL. Almost four years later, it is still primarily a Netscape operation with a minority of Open Source developers. Your argument would not hold sway with most bosses (heck, it didn't hold sway with my project manager and he's a developer) since it is unlikely that they are either a.) going to say "yeah, we can carry on development if it ever gets scrapped by AOL" or b.)We'll trust our entire corporate decision making on the hope that a bunch of random hackers will work on this software in their spare time.

Thomas Paine author of "Common Sense," "The Age of Reason" and "Rights of Man" is well-known American patriot and deist.

The two are pretty far apart in all but age.

It's also worth noting that the printing press was invented around 1437, and was hardly revolutionary when either "A Modest Proposal" or "Common Sense" were published.

It's here.

tc>

What the researchers in this case found was spectral lines for a single kind of molecule. That is, they found a bunch of "sugar" molecules emitting the same spectral lines. (Six lines, I think.)

As for how many you need in the cloud, well that depends on the distance to the cloud and the sensitivity of the detector. The radio sky is fairly noisy, so you need many little molecules generating signal to pull out enough signal to see it above the noise. (If I weren't so lazy, I could do the math.) In this case, I'd guess they found a whole lot of this single kind of molecule.

tc>

It's not leftover from the Big Bang; it's a sugar buzz!

Abstract and source PDF doc for the Fast Multipole method can be found at the source site

Ahh! What are we going to do? Help! Help!

Video Games and Children

Violent video games unplugged by King County health board

John S. Rhodes
WebWord.com (Usability Portal)

Yea, but they made it "easier" for the average user, getting Mosaic to work was extremely difficult. Not like IE or Netscape. Please using DUN or a chat script was hard, you had to remember phone numbers, or atleast write them down. Now you don't have to with AOL, Compuserve and the likes of point and click, "we remeber the phone number for you" services.

(The above is sacarism)

5 years ago, when I got 3 wishes granted towards me and I used them all for the good of the Internet:

1) faster bandwidth than 28.8
2) Netscape won't crash as much
3) more people online

1) ok, techinally my wish came true, so now we have 56.6K, wait 5 more years, cable and dsl should be coming around (live in a small town)
2) Uh, ok Netscape doesn't crash the entire system now with it (switched to Linux) and techinally if you don't use it, it won't crash so much
3) Ok, so there is more people

It is like to monkeys paw. Techinally my wishes did come true, but at what price? MUAHAHAHAHA

...

...

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MUAHAHAHAAHAHA

I think I should of wished for 1 million dollars, I mean 100 BILLION DOLLARS and built my own Internet Super Highway, this one seems to be more like an alleyway in Vegas, slow moving, littered with trash, pimps and whores on both sides and some crazy homeless person standing in front of you car shouting about his shoes.