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Women used to make up %40 of CS students in the 1980s (Camp 2001) and make up on average a little over %35 of Israeli undergrads in CS ( Vilner 2006) and vary all over the globe. This indicates that the current US rate of about %20 is due to culture because if there was something biological going on, then the rates around the world should be roughly the same.

They don't know what causes it exactly, but most research indicates it is caused by problems with the dopamine system. In a particularly unfortunate incident, some bad "designer heroin" got loose and caused users to develop what appeared to be incredibly fast-onset late stage Parkinson's. Nasty bit of business, but a boon for researchers. More info here. Sad case, but interesting.

http://classes.uleth.ca/200901/chem2600a/Designer%20Drugs%20PPT.pdf

The discussion of UML's death has been very interesting. Along those lines, we invite you to participate in a survey of how Use Cases are used (within or outside UML). We would really like to hear your views about Use Cases and what you are doing with them. We have recently created a web survey and we would love to get your responses and ideas, no matter what you think! The survey can be found at: https://www.uleth.ca/survey/uml/ The survey is hosted by the University of Lethbridge in Alberta Canada. We are Brian Dobing, from the University of Lethbridge, and Jeff Parsons, Memorial University of Newfoundland. We are primarily researchers and teachers, not UML consultants or book writers. We have no preconceived notions of what distinguishes good vs bad Use Cases, when and how they should be used, etc. But we are very interested in your views. Some of our work was published in the Communications of the ACM and is available free online at: http://www.acmqueue.org/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=461 We have recently completed a longer article based on this research and should be able to provide it to anyone interested in a few months. (It isnâ(TM)t published yet.) You can request a copy if you complete the survey â" but actually we will provide it free to anyone so please donâ(TM)t enter a lot of garbage data just to get the paper. Just send us an email (there are email links on the first page of the survey). We really welcome all opinions, including those that say weâ(TM)re asking the wrong questions etc. Our goal is to help the UML and Use Case community better understand what it going on. To that end, the OMG is supporting our research and has provided a link to our survey on their web pages (omg.org and uml.org). We look forward to hearing from you and providing you with some interesting feedback in return. Once again, the link is: https://www.uleth.ca/survey/uml/

The discussion of UML's death has been very interesting. Along those lines, we invite you to participate in a survey of how Use Cases are used (within or outside UML). We would really like to hear your views about Use Cases and what you are doing with them. We have recently created a web survey and we would love to get your responses and ideas, no matter what you think! The survey can be found at: https://www.uleth.ca/survey/uml/ The survey is hosted by the University of Lethbridge in Alberta Canada. We are Brian Dobing, from the University of Lethbridge, and Jeff Parsons, Memorial University of Newfoundland. We are primarily researchers and teachers, not UML consultants or book writers. We have no preconceived notions of what distinguishes good vs bad Use Cases, when and how they should be used, etc. But we are very interested in your views. Some of our work was published in the Communications of the ACM and is available free online at: http://www.acmqueue.org/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=461 We have recently completed a longer article based on this research and should be able to provide it to anyone interested in a few months. (It isnâ(TM)t published yet.) You can request a copy if you complete the survey â" but actually we will provide it free to anyone so please donâ(TM)t enter a lot of garbage data just to get the paper. Just send us an email (there are email links on the first page of the survey). We really welcome all opinions, including those that say weâ(TM)re asking the wrong questions etc. Our goal is to help the UML and Use Case community better understand what it going on. To that end, the OMG is supporting our research and has provided a link to our survey on their web pages (omg.org and uml.org). We look forward to hearing from you and providing you with some interesting feedback in return. Once again, the link is: https://www.uleth.ca/survey/uml/

The closest thing I could recommend would be squeezing everything onto one line, using CompactMenu

Heres a screenshot of it being on one line. (I use mouse gestures for the other navigation buttons). In order to get rid of the extra lines, you have to uncheck both "Navigation Toolbar" and "Bookmarks Toolbar".

Its not as technically neat, but it really helps maximize screen space, something that this new Netscape Beta can't figure out.

I think the term that you're looking for is Imperial. And yes, as a person from the US, I think it sucks. Metric stuff is just so much easier to deal with.

The code can be found here

The solution can be found by starting up 'bc' and typing
ibase=4

And then each number of the puzzle.

The result is the number in the alphabet of the corresponding character.

Have fun ...

The hard part is to get the text corresponding to the encoded message so that you don't have to type it in. The ULeth Press Release has a JPEG (are you supposed to do OCR?), and the Go Figure web site has a really messy navigational structure and the message hidden in a PDF file. Now, getting it out requires experience with Adobe Acrobat or some other PDF tools. That's much harder than undoing the simple encoding or solving the trivial math problem.

Here is a JPEG vesion of the code for thouse that don't like PDF.

The New Scientist article was really short on details. Anyway though, I found the university's press release, which has much more details. It can be found here. This link also contains the actual puzzle in case anyone is so inclined to try to break it...

Here's a link to the puzzle from the college's website:

http://www.whatmagnet.com/gofigure/index.html

The cryotography turns out to have been very trivial. Here are the details.

I have noticed a few posts so far mentioning how a lot of sound might be generated from the fans, and more posts dismissing the idea, although they have provided no corroboration.

I cannot provide any links as corroboration for what I am about to add to this discussion, other than I know that is true. You are free to accept it as you will.

Those fans are not going to run at any high speed. They will most likely be 300 rpm or lower. That means low frequency hums, growls and vibrations. Remember sound can also be transmitted through attached structures as vibration.

My point is that sound is going to be generated, regardless of how well they are designed. Case in point ...

The town of Lethbridge is located in Alberta, Canada, just north of the U.S. border. It is an extremely windy city, and has a university - the University of Lethbridge. There is a spot on campus that had wind funneling through it all year round, so they decided to install some fans to generate power.

Smart move. Reason why?

Campus-wide depression of students and staff began to rise, and the number of suicides went up. Not dramatically, but up, nonetheless.

As one poster has mentioned already (re: the epileptic seizures) - you never know the full effects of implementing a technology until it goes in, no matter how you try to 'plan' for it.

Rock

This site includes satellite images of both north and south poles so you can see where the aurora is visible.

To see how active the sun has been for the last 2+ days try the NOAA site. There was an X1 flare today, which should provide plenty of aurora material in a day or so.

To see if auroras are visible at this moment try the Auroral Activity Report page.

A lot of people are arguing, "How is this art? How is this original? All he did was doodle a bunch of times and put it on a poster." This is a valid practical argument, but I think these posters are missing the point. A guy slapping together 1000 pixelated drawings may not be good art to a lot of people, but the original application of technology in an expressive form is as much art as anything else. It's all in how you define human expression.

Why do I think it's original? Simply because I don't think anyone has done anything like this before. Jim Dine, for example, usually uses hearts, skulls, robes and tools in his artwork, and while he manages to approach these subjects in a colorful and interesting way, the most original thing of his I've seen was a heart shape made of straw that measured about 5' by 3' by 1'. The heart shape itself is not original; making a large one out of straw and placing it on its side is - in my opinion, which is what it all really boils down to.

Some Jim Dine links, fyi:

• Cincinnati Enquirer's "The Object Is The Art"
• Dine Works
• The Trianon Gallery at the University of Lethbridge
• Artcyclopedia
• WWW Pop Art
• Jim Dine: Walking Memory, 1959-1969 (this was the exhibit I saw with the huge straw heart)
• Pace Wildenstein
• Pace Prints
• Poster Shop
• Art Print Collection
• Fine Art Site

You may also be interested in looking at WorldForge, Cyphesis and Lycadican, as some other Linux game development projects in need of developers. These are more fantasy roleplaying oriented. -- Bryce