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Nothing in my experience comes close to the iPic. I suppose if they started weaving webservers into currency, that would be even more impressive (and quite a bit scarier). Still, the matchhead-sized server is quite cool.

Why not to study Japanese.

It seems that if you look hard enough, you can find this kind of thing for almost any subject. One that instantly springs to mind is Japanese. I sort of wonder why this was posted. Something about news for nerds I obviously missed.

Since I haven't seen it, here are several free programs useful for computational chemistry:

GAMESS Free Electronic Structure Package

ViewmolMany types of visualization

gOpenMolVisualization and property Calculation

RasMolVisualization

EgoMolecular Dynamics Program

TinkerMultifacited Package

X-PLORMolecular Dynamics Tailored for Biological Systems

"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened." - Douglas Adams

I found this tiny HTTP 1.0 complian web server while researching a project. Very interesting.
"It is based on the world's smallest implementation of a TCP/IP stack -- which is implmented on a small 8-pin low-power microcontroller .. using a mere 512 words of program ROM."
There are many such resources out there (both software and hardware). And during my research I had the most luck when I included "embeded" in the search.

U-Mass has a cool collections of Robot videos here from their Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics: http://www-robotics.cs.umass.edu/robotics-mpegs.ht ml -- a must see for those interested in robotics.

This research project is repackaged swarm robotics. Swarm robots have been around for years. The main problem with swarms is getting the power and leverage to manipulate large objects as the swarm is only as strong as it's weakest link. The main benefit is that they tend to be more fault tolerant than monolithic robots.

See:
Robotics portal
Swarm robotics google search
CMU Robotics Institute

Asteroids are held together by gravity... that is why NEAR could land on one, and why these photos from the NEAR probe show a boulder field strewn with SEVERAL rocks.

The limiting factor on how big an asteriod can get without falling apart is a combination of centrifugal force caused by its rotation, and the Roche limit of how far away it is from a larger body that inflictes tidal forces upon it. More on the Roche limit here.

Comets may be a single cohesive body of some sort, we don't know yet. Hopefully the Contour mission will tell us what comets really are made of.

-AD

Something Awful had a tidbit a couple of days ago about the crack baby scare for a new generation. One such example was the "Counter-Strike baby.":

"The restaurants of the future will be forced to feature illegible menus that cater to these Counter-Strike babies, adversely effecting the rest of us:

WTF!!! TEH CAMPIN LAMA RESTARANT/ MEUNU: DINNAR: WTF!!!

HAMBuRGR..... $5
COKA_COLA....2
FRENCH FIRES.... #1.50!!!!!!!!!!!

NO SHIT NO SHOES NO SERVAICE ! WTF!!! U FUKER/// IF U DONT LIKE OUR RULEZ U CAN GO SUK AN ASS U FAG
15 PRECENT GRADUTIAN INCLUDED!! WTF1111!!!!A"

In all seriousness, I don't think playing video games makes you stupid or anti-social. Playing video games excessively might do (probably does) these things. But doing most anything excessively often has such negative consequences. Studying physics 12 hours a day will make you stupid and anti-social. Sure, you'll know all about physics, but you're missing that key phrase "well-rounded."

Here is a link to the official UMass press release.
http://www.umass.edu/newsoffice/archive/2001/07090 1shower.html
I am kicking my self for seeing this story on the UMass newsoffice site a few days ago and not submitting it.

Computers playing games are always much better than humans if their AI is done correctly.

Actually, computers have, as of now, never been able to master the game of Go. For an intro to the game from the angle of Game Theory, check out http://eksl.cs.umass.edu/~heeringa/home/doc/go_pap er/. A human being with a mastery of the basic strategy can beat most of the best artificial intelligence simulations. Fascinating stuff....
----
"Here to discuss how the AOL merger will affect consumers is the CEO of AOL."

Makes the smallest web server seem pretty huge, hunh?

But seriously, the ramifications of nanotechnology are pretty scary. I thought the Foresight Institute was supposed to be about becoming aware of them, and keeping the scary ones from becoming reality. Now it seems like they just push the science forward as fast as possible. Did they get so much resistance to the idea of nanotechnology being real that they got permanently distracted into proving that it is?

This is one technology which might not let us clean up the mess afterwards (like what's happening now with genetic modification).

There's a great site with tons of links and info on Lisp right here.

Ok--now go read about the deaths of 80 innocent civilians in their own homes at the hands of US Defense and the FBI in 1993; read how the United States is the world leader in incarceration, with many of the jailed being casualties of the War on Drugs; read about the victims of racial profiling in the US ("Driving while black"); read about prison labour in the United States; or police brutality; perhaps even the many violations of international law by the United States.

Go read all of those links (and while you're at it, brush up on your history; for instance, slavery in the United States), and come back and tell me that you welcome the US as a power any more than China. Take off your rose-coloured US-media-manipulated glasses, and realize that America is as affected by propaganda convincing its citizens that their country faultless as China is.

Macs Netware is perfectly doable if everyone is willing to work together. (Unfortunately for my PowerBook, the local IT group wasn't willing). Some helpful links I found while trying to solve the problem unilaterally:

• Netware FTP site
• Installation guide at UMass
• FAQ at WTVI
• Troubleshooting at UMD

The new list includes 2 multiple planet systems, one planet with an orbital eccentricity of .93, and another in a nearly circular orbit near its star's habitable zone.

For those of you who don't know what orbital eccentricity is, it is a measure of how much an orbit deviates from being a perfect circle. IOW, the planet in question here has a very elliptical orbit, which is not close at all to being circular. See http://www-astro.phast.umass.edu/courseware/java/p lanets/ecc.html for more information on this.

---
The AOL-Time Warner-Microsoft-Intel-CBS-ABC-NBC-Fox corporation:

What license is it published under? I can't seem to find any mention of licensing on their website.

According to this page, Vim is public domain charity-ware. Bram Moolenaar, the creator of Vim, asks users who appreciate the software to contribute money to an orphange/hospital in Uganda.

I believe that the FSF objects to the public domain feature of the license, as it's not copyleft.

I agree with you: Vim is a great editor! It's a pity that my CS Department is an Emacs zone...

Who can resist claymation for the common man, i.e. the lego film? I'm quite fond of 2001: A Lego Odyssey.

Unfortunately, they're in Quicktime, mostly. If you're without, it's worth finding someone with a Mac or Windows to watch the better of them.

I might also, humbly, suggest that people look at Duck and, in particular read why I wrote it.

I might also, humbly, suggest that people look at Duck and, in particular read why I wrote it.

Kinda reminds me of my first astronomy class. I hadn't even made it to my freshman year of high school and I had 4 credits of Astronomy from the local community college.

Many people have given good advice above. I'll mainly just second their comments. The order I'd proceed in is.

First item, a good beginners star atlas.

Second item, warm clothing.

Third item, many nights in the country just learning the stars and constelations.

After that go and get a good pair of binoculars or a good telescope.

Last, but not least. As your doughter is so young, you will need to be there as a source of infromation. You'll need to learn alot to help guide her in the early years.

Now for some Links. The first two have good beginners information. Some of the links below may be dead. I just quick cut and pasted them from the astronomy section of my Interesting Places page.

• Astronomy Mag. (www.astronomy.com/home.asp).
• Sky & Telescope Mag. (www.skypub.com).
• Minnesota Astronomical Society (MAS) (www.mnastro.org).
• The Telescope Shoppe (www.telescopeshop.com), 3402 Federal Dr., Eagan, MN, 651-688-7335. Yes this is a local Twin Cities telescope shop. They have a map on their site showing where they are. They are tucked in the lower level along the side of the strip mall they are in. The store is small and easy to miss. If your at the corner of Yankee Doodle RD and Federal Dr., park in the lot to the south east. They are a short stones throw from the intersection.
• Telescope making links
• • Many good links on making AltAz mounts (zebu.uoregon.edu/~mbartels/altaz/altaz.html).
  • ATM's resource List (www.freenet.tlh.fl.us/~blombard).
• Astronomy-Mall.com (www.astronomy-mall.com/Astronomy-Mall).
• Stellafane (www.stellafane.com).
• Terrestrial Planet Finder (tpf.jpl.nasa.gov).
• Many Images of the moon (www.seds.org/nineplanets/nineplanets/pxmoon.html) .
• Solar Views (www.solarviews.com).
• Planetary Image Atlas (www-pdsimage.JPL.NASA.GOV/PDS/public/Atlas).
• Hubble Space Telescope Archive (oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pictures.html).
• Hummble Site (hubble.stsci.edu).
• StarStuff (www.starstuff.org).
• SpaceRef (www.spaceref.com), Your space refference.
• Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive (antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html).
• SkyView (skyview.gsfc.nasa.gov) virtual observatory.
• 2MASS (www.ipac.caltech.edu/2mass/) and (pegasus.astro.umass.edu/GradProg/2mass.html) Two Micron All Sky Survey.
• Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph Experiment (LASCO) (http://lasco-www.nrl.navy.mil/lasco.html).
• AAVSO Network to Search for Optical Counterparts of Gamma-Ray Bursts (www.aavso.org/grb.stm).
• High Altitude Observatory (www.hao.ucar.edu).
• Asteroid Comet Impact Hazards (impact.arc.nasa.gov).
• • Unusual Minor Planets (cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/Unusual.html).
  • Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/PHACloseApp.html).& nbsp; Of particular interest to me are LB16 and AN10 which will pass at a distance closer than the moon's orbit. LB16 currently only has one opposition charted so it's predicted orbit will likely change as new data comes in. It's expected to swing by in 2004. In 2027 AN10 will visit earth. It's orbit is calculated with three oppositions meaning it't much more likely to really showup ontime and in place. With further data LB16 could either get closer or farther away. When AN10's orbit was first predicted (only one opposition at the time) it's error envelope included earth. With further data it was found to just pass within the moon's orbit and miss the earth.
  • Forthcoming Close Approaches To The Earth (cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/CloseApp.html).&nbs p; This is the document to look at when you want to know who will visit next and how far away. It has all close approaches to 0.2 AU away from earth or within 20% of the distance of between the sun and earth. On Sep 19th, 2000 we will have a visiter at 0.0477 AU and on Oct 31st anotehr one will pass at 0.07386 AU. LB16 and AN10 are expected to pass at around 0.25% of the distance between the sun and earth.
• Mars Global Surveyor (mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/index.html).
• Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) (ltpwww.gsfc.nasa.gov/tharsis/mola.html). There are full data on the shape of Mars including 1 degree and .5 degree elevation data sets.
• Planetary photojournal by JPL (photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov).
• NASA's Origins Program (origins.jpl.nasa.gov).

You need to read about the IPic match-head sized web server.

The author claims RFC-1122 (host requirements) compliance and telnet and web servers in 1K 12-bit words.

Having said that, I suspect a simple, application specific protocol would be more effective in this case.

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.

Mandating laptops is all well and good, but for what? Will they insist that it's from one particular manufacturer, and that it runs their mandated OS and software (and we all know what that'll be), or will students be given the choice?

I'm getting quite interested in the answer to this question as the whole story never mentions the price of software. This would mean only free software could be installed on them.

Ok, in reality at least part of the laptop will probably have some sort of windows install. A quick browse of the umass LAN support pages suggest it's a Novell shop. But with their own local redhat mirror so they promote 'choice' in operating systems.

All I am getting interested in is, are they going to support wireless LAN ?

I used to work in a university and one of our 'very far future' ideas was to support wireless lan for students who brought their own laptops and wireless nics to save on computer rooms.

Mandating laptops is all well and good, but for what? Will they insist that it's from one particular manufacturer, and that it runs their mandated OS and software (and we all know what that'll be), or will students be given the choice?

I'm getting quite interested in the answer to this question as the whole story never mentions the price of software. This would mean only free software could be installed on them.

Ok, in reality at least part of the laptop will probably have some sort of windows install. A quick browse of the umass LAN support pages suggest it's a Novell shop. But with their own local redhat mirror so they promote 'choice' in operating systems.

All I am getting interested in is, are they going to support wireless LAN ?

I used to work in a university and one of our 'very far future' ideas was to support wireless lan for students who brought their own laptops and wireless nics to save on computer rooms.

I did not read Richard Rhodes' article in the New York Times which Katz cites, but I did read his book Why They Kill , and it seems to me that Katz has misrepresented Rhodes' position. In the book, Rhodes explains and elaborates on the theory of the "maverick criminologist" Lonnie Athens, regarding the origins and perpetuation of violence in society. It's well worth reading.

In Why They Kill, Athens and Rhodes do indeed discuss the considerable decrease in private violence (revenge, blood feuds, etc.) in Western societies over the last several centuries, and its replacement by "official" forms of violence: civilian police forces, an organized system of criminal justice, etc. But when Katz writes "Rhodes and others have pointed out that as media use has increased in the western world, violence has generally declined", ISTM he is putting words in Rhodes' mouth. Athens' argument, as reported by Rhodes, has little or nothing to do with media and everything to do with the very personal process which Athens has dubbed violentization. This process incorporates brutalization, exposure to violent behaviour (especially perpetrated upon a loved one), and successful violent performances, tending to lead to a violent self-image and an acceptance of violence as an integral part of one's identity. This, according to Athens, is the process by which violence passes down through the generations; and he holds that understanding this process is the key to reducing violence in society. There is no particular reference to the role of technology, if any. (If Rhodes did indeed specifically address technology in the Times, of course, I would accept that.)

Of course, there is as always some substance to what Katz writes. There is a significant measure of hysteria, verging on moral panic, in the debate over violence in media. If he wanted to shed some light on this, Katz might have cited some studies by George Gerbner, who among other things has noted a positive relationship between media consumption and fear of violence (i.e., those who watch more TV believe the world is a more violent place than those who do not -- no surprise, given the "if it bleeds, it leads" ethos of most local TV news programs in the U.S.!).

Katz might also refer to the book On Killing by Dave Grossman, a history of violence in warfare which offers a very interesting perspective on the effects of violent media, especially video games. Grossman establishes with some authority that it is very difficult to train people to kill; most soldiers don't do very much killing at all. When this fact was discovered by the U.S. military after the Second World War (and it came as a nasty shock, as you can imagine), it led to new training methods based on operant conditioning, which led further to the familiar Vietnam syndrome -- significant increases in kills perpetrated by increasingly traumatized soldiers. And this kind of operant conditioning, Grossman believes, is also at work in first-person shooters and similar violent video games. I can't do justice to his argument (which I don't quite buy, BTW), but it's worth a read.

Write it in Java!! If there is one thing I can't stand it is playing around with over hacked C. I developed a pure Java MPEG-1 video browsing and searching enviornment this summer. Java is a godsend. Take one look at the Berkely MPEGPlay code and you would know why. It will be a lot more usefull to the general public who want to tinker with new algorithms.

A web server (incl. TCP stack) has been put on a PIC (256 bytes, 12 bit).

http://www-ccs.cs.umass.edu/~shri/iPic.html

Check this out. The Borg to exist at the University of Mass Amherst ;)

Mr. Borg himelf

The Univeristy of Mass. (Amherst) has been doing some cool stuff with 3D modeling of images too. Check it out.

Ascender II Project

I was also disappointed not to see a symbolic logic algorithm such as the Resolution Theorem Prover (Robinson, 1965) or Circumscription (McCarthy, 1980). I'd like to have been able to point to something of Jon Barwise' Situation Semantics, but couldn't think of a specific algorithm to highlight.

Okay, the PROCESSOR will run at 1/6th watt, I still need to solve the LAN card problem. In any event, you want this link which details a microcontroller which was converted to run a small TCP/IP stack and webserver. As to the power output from a spud, try here.

Just ran some benchmarks, looks like some solid progress on the IBM JVM under threadload. IBM's JVM is now runs just short of TowerJ's performance.
If you're not familure with TowerJ, it's a commerical piece of software which given a set of java class files, turns them into C++ code. Then runs GCC over them, producing a native binary. TowerJ [specifically on Linux] is currently ranked in the top slot on the Volano Benchmark. TowerJ under linux even beats TowerJ under NT; apparently in the words of the TowerJ engineers, the linux libraries are just more efficient :)

You can view a JVM graph here of the various Linux JVMs under load. As you can see the old IBM JVM didn't fair very well under threadload, regardless that it generally ran faster for single threaded applications. Good work IBM!

Heads up, AFAIK the IBM JVM is a mixed-mode VM. That means it learns as it runs. You'll have to make sure you let it run long enough for it to compile the code on the fly. If you use a running average you can clearly see it's performance increase dramatically over time.

I've found the IBM JDK1.3 almost 40% faster under heavy servlet threadload then it's ibm1.1.8 predecessor. Almost as fast as TowerJ, --which is GCC compiled converted Java code.

View the graph here.

Here's a chart of the results I used to make my previous assertions. Although I don't have results for #'s of threads below 10, you can see the trend that as the number of threads goes down, IBM's VM gets faster.

I know from experience that IBM's VM wins beats Blackdown+Inprise JIT in single thread competitions. The chart is
here
and measures the number of milliseconds response time of a Java servlet.

http://www.bio.umass.edu/bio logy/kunkel/cockroach.html has by far more than most people want to know. As far as bugs go, cockroaches arn't so bad. Flies, bees, hornets, ants (fire ants come to the top) are FAR worse. It is just our conditioning that makes roaches on the hated list.

Cockroaches are very sensitive to water loss, that is why they don't like the light. Airflow, low humidity, and no dripping water will kill them quickly.

So darkness with alot of airflow and no water, and they won't thrive, survive, or breed. If you want to kill roaches with mold spores, then you have to have the damp conditions. The use of diatematous earth causes cuts in the excskeleton, and dehydration. Note mold/DE will work well for ants also.

Now...ESR's latest story he tries to forward the Linux-as-OpenSource adjenda (note how he speaks at The Bazzar/elsewhere and how he wants to see BSD have more success, yet no BSD binaries for fetchmail and no mention of BSD. So much for using his bully pulpit to back what he says.) And, although his points about OpenSource are correct, the statement about "inserted a security-compromising back" seems to be false. So this story by ESR falls short of what it could have been.

Of course, pointing out backword text of Netscape engineers are weenies!, is not as damning as a backdoor. A backdoor is nice press, too bad it is looking like it is not true.

Taking this article and waving it under other people's noses as proof of how much better OpenSource is over closed source will do little good because the reports of a backdoor is false. Nice preaching to the choir, but you need to be convicining others, not the readers of /.

Now you can have them do some really neat stuff with technology. One project we've been having our intro students do (I think) is quite interesting. We have students aggregate scientific data across multiple sections. This allows us to have: (1) a good rationale for using technology to analyze data (you have 600 records, after all); (2) each group of students do something novel that is worth presenting about; and (3) students address fairly complex problems with subtle effects (that you need a large n to observe). I will argue to anyone that this is an excellent use of technology in education: this mirrors what these students will really do in the 'real world' if they go on to become scientists.

We also have students work with 'practice test' software. I was reluctant to write such software, but at least I did it on my own terms. We have worked very hard to avoid 'drill and kill' software, which so many course management systems are eager to promulgate.

I think the larger and scarier issue is that the course management software producers are entering into agreements with publishers that will result in huge pressure on faculty to pick-up and use these systems which greatly limit and 'dumb down' the web publishing opportunities. They are mostly proprietary too (although the IMSproject gives some hope for open standards and there are some interesting open source alternatives like learnloop) and may convince administrators that all that is needed for an introductory course is a 'techie' and a course management system. (I personally believe the introductory level is where you need the most help and support -- not the least).

The biggest danger is this: faculty are being convinced by these companies that they need to produce web materials that 'look' as good as published materials. For the information revolution to be democratic, educators need to be encouraged to continue to learn to author simple materials by themselves. We didn't feel self-concious to produce a course pack of photocopies and dittos. Do it yourself! Don't let them lock it up in a proprietary, password-protected course management system! Keep it open!

Now you can have them do some really neat stuff with technology. One project we've been having our intro students do (I think) is quite interesting. We have students aggregate scientific data across multiple sections. This allows us to have: (1) a good rationale for using technology to analyze data (you have 600 records, after all); (2) each group of students do something novel that is worth presenting about; and (3) students address fairly complex problems with subtle effects (that you need a large n to observe). I will argue to anyone that this is an excellent use of technology in education: this mirrors what these students will really do in the 'real world' if they go on to become scientists.

We also have students work with 'practice test' software. I was reluctant to write such software, but at least I did it on my own terms. We have worked very hard to avoid 'drill and kill' software, which so many course management systems are eager to promulgate.

I think the larger and scarier issue is that the course management software producers are entering into agreements with publishers that will result in huge pressure on faculty to pick-up and use these systems which greatly limit and 'dumb down' the web publishing opportunities. They are mostly proprietary too (although the IMSproject gives some hope for open standards and there are some interesting open source alternatives like learnloop) and may convince administrators that all that is needed for an introductory course is a 'techie' and a course management system. (I personally believe the introductory level is where you need the most help and support -- not the least).

The biggest danger is this: faculty are being convinced by these companies that they need to produce web materials that 'look' as good as published materials. For the information revolution to be democratic, educators need to be encouraged to continue to learn to author simple materials by themselves. We didn't feel self-concious to produce a course pack of photocopies and dittos. Do it yourself! Don't let them lock it up in a proprietary, password-protected course management system! Keep it open!

Now you can have them do some really neat stuff with technology. One project we've been having our intro students do (I think) is quite interesting. We have students aggregate scientific data across multiple sections. This allows us to have: (1) a good rationale for using technology to analyze data (you have 600 records, after all); (2) each group of students do something novel that is worth presenting about; and (3) students address fairly complex problems with subtle effects (that you need a large n to observe). I will argue to anyone that this is an excellent use of technology in education: this mirrors what these students will really do in the 'real world' if they go on to become scientists.

We also have students work with 'practice test' software. I was reluctant to write such software, but at least I did it on my own terms. We have worked very hard to avoid 'drill and kill' software, which so many course management systems are eager to promulgate.

I think the larger and scarier issue is that the course management software producers are entering into agreements with publishers that will result in huge pressure on faculty to pick-up and use these systems which greatly limit and 'dumb down' the web publishing opportunities. They are mostly proprietary too (although the IMSproject gives some hope for open standards and there are some interesting open source alternatives like learnloop) and may convince administrators that all that is needed for an introductory course is a 'techie' and a course management system. (I personally believe the introductory level is where you need the most help and support -- not the least).

The biggest danger is this: faculty are being convinced by these companies that they need to produce web materials that 'look' as good as published materials. For the information revolution to be democratic, educators need to be encouraged to continue to learn to author simple materials by themselves. We didn't feel self-concious to produce a course pack of photocopies and dittos. Do it yourself! Don't let them lock it up in a proprietary, password-protected course management system! Keep it open!

__________

The "Uses for an Altoid tin" site has a link to a guy who put a webserver on a PIC microcontroller, including a real TCP/IP stack (not just a plain serial link with a terminal server handling the TCP/IP, as the Atari 800 webserver is). Much cooler, IMO :)

I think the neatest things from this were links off the Altoid tin page, including the match-head sized web server, and the Altoid tin radio.


--Phil (And who doesn't like Unwise Microwave Oven Experiments?)

Yahoo's running a bit behind on that story! In my biology class over 20 days ago the professor made reference to the full genome of the fruit fly being sequenced. I presume it was completed quite a bit before then. Visit: The online course notes

And click on "Timeline of some Relevant Biological Discoveries"

It's great to see Mark Tuominen getting such good press. I had a class with him as an undergraduate and I worked in his lab for a summer. His Mesoscopic Physics lab is a great place. There is always a good group of graduate and undergraduate students working on interesting projects. The thing that makes him stand out from some other researchers, though, is the attention he gives his undergraduates. The synergy between these different areas (undergraduate, graduate, and research) is a great example of how education at a University is supposed to work.

--

The only wrist problems I have ever had I think I have to attribute to using the mouse. I tended to rest my hand on it and weight of my arm then went on my wrist, and so sometimes got pain in my right wrist (my left, non-mousing wrist was fine) which went away in a few days. In my opinion the mouse is a very bad device from an ergonomics standpoint, especially the act of clicking places a lot of stress on the tendons.

These days I have a laptop with a touchpad and haven't had any problems, the amount of force required to move the pointer around on a touchpad is much less than than to move a mouse around.

I also use a dvorak keyboard layout, which places far less stress on my wrists for typing - the debate on whether it really is faster aside, dvorak is subjectivly a much more comfortable way to type.

One seemingly minor change that I have found very nice is moving the backspace key from its far-flung position in the right corner - which forces you to either contort you wrist or move your whole arm to reach it - to the alt key to the left of the spacebar. Now deleting text is just a matter of holding down the left alt key with my left thumb, and I never have to leave the home row - faster and more comfortable. I haven't seen too many people who do this but even with a QWERTY keyboard it is a really good idea, I think.

The graphs at that Canadian site are particularly inexcuseable - were they drawn freehand? For those of you who'd like to see a peer-reviewed graph of the recent global mean surface temperature (published in _Nature_, and showing confidence bounds) see this U Mass press release and especially this figure .

The graphs at that Canadian site are particularly inexcuseable - were they drawn freehand? For those of you who'd like to see a peer-reviewed graph of the recent global mean surface temperature (published in _Nature_, and showing confidence bounds) see this U Mass press release and especially this figure .

I think I'd rather help bring it around than just sit and hope.

An excellent area for contribution is design software. Currently there are a number of excellent free molecular modeling packages: MMTK, NAMD, Moldy, NWchem. There are also several excellent display programs: RasMol, VMD, Midas, and my own feeble effort, xyz2rgb. What is still lacking is:

• Software to generate structures painlessly. Two efforts in this area are CavityStuffer by Markus Krummenacker, DiamondCAD by Chris Phoenix and John Michelsen, and some tinkering of mine.
• Some kind of wrapper that makes all this stuff easy to use. There is a commercial package called HyperChem, and the DiamondCAD folks are working on an open-source version called OpenChem.