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But why, some say, mythtv on linux for a pvr? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Go to the moon?

We choose to use mythtv. We choose to use mythtv this year and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
</plagiarism>

With a respectful apology to President Kennedy, because I abused the famous quotes from his speech for this...

Didn't know about the others really. Reagan famously wanted the "star wars" program to be a joint US/USSR one since he was certain that Earth would be invaded by aliens. Where others scorn the man, I call him a visionary.

But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too. - JFK at Rice Univeristy 9/12/62

Why is the US singling out France? They're not the only ones who disagree with the US's foreign policies. Let's go for some real isolationism and single out the rest of the world! After all, you're "either with us, or against us." Unilateralism. That's the U. in USA, baby!

Seriously, though. I find this little piece by News World International interesting. It's on the wide gap in perceptions the US has of itself compared to how the rest of the world thinks of the US.

When America truly was a land of opportunity, there were periods where it was legal to shoot a guy so long as he drew first.

Oh really? You mean it was legal to do that when Andy Grove escaped Hungary when the Soviets ruled it and came to help found Intel? Or when a couple of high school punks ripping off Ma Bell jump started the personal computer industry a couple years later? You have a narrow view of what opportunity means.

Human rights have nothing to do with lands of opportunity.

Yeah, I guess no one should think about that shit. What an incredible inconvenience. Hell, Tibet didn't need all those monks, and big deal if before they were murdered they were forced to fuck nuns in the street at gunpoint beforehand. That could never happen again anyway.

As for pendulum swings. . . I think you're going to be upset with how things continue to disintegrate in the West. There is no return from where we're heading. Sorry. Face the truth and get yourself well placed, or continue to dream.

Wow- I didn't know crystal balls were real. Where'd ya get it? They do swing.

Actually, I did understand your point the first time. I just wanted to remind people of what they get themselves into before they leap. Don't think I hadn't thought of it as well before (several times), but I can't sacrifice certain ideals to the benefit such an odious system. I say it well knowing that so much stuff we have on the shelf was made in shitty and murky circumstances but people have to be reminded of certain things from time to time.

I got one of those also... it still bugs me to this day. This was upon bootup:

The dump

Java limited people to one language, a language that many coders didn't like.

Which language would that be, then? Would it be BASIC, or COBOL or ADA or Python or FORTH or PASCAL or C or PERL or FORTRAN or LISP or Scheme or Smalltalk or one of these?

In fact, surprise, surprise, there are over 200 different programming languages you can use to write Java VM programs in.

This was one of Kennedy's four goals during his Special Message to Congress on Urgent National Needs (a.k.a. go to the moon speech). He said that it gives "promise of some day providing a means for even more exciting and ambitious exploration of space, perhaps beyond the moon, perhaps to the very end of the solar system itself".

The nuclear rocket is probably the best choice in large distance exploration that we have right now. Solar power becomes useless pretty much past the Earth and no other power source can pack the mass to power ratio that nuclear power can. If we want to go big, we have no choice but to use a nuclear rocket or take a long, long time. The weight issue in rockets is a big deal, so alternate propellants are out since they will take up to much weight for the same power.

For close distance exploration (i.e. the moon) I don't really see a nuclear rocket taking any part. While obviously it could achieve its goal, its a little overkill for the purpose (and considering the fact that if it were a direct exhuast type it would have a plume of activated radioactive materials, assuming it uses water as a propellant, it probably wouldn't be that popular).

I hope this happens, and I've been hoping for a long time. Its our only real chance to get off the earth permanently at the present time.

This gives promise of some day providing a means for even more exciting and ambitious exploration of space, perhaps beyond the moon, perhaps to the very end of the solar system itself.

1.
How can our University of Massachusetts get away with subjecting people to stricter policies than might be accorded you publishing in a public forum such as a commercial ISP or a book you might publish?...

Click on
use of copyrighted material
at
http://www.cs.umb.edu/help/Lab_help.shtml

Quote
"Copyright Policies
By law, individuals generally can make copies of small portions of copyrighted material for their personal use. This is called "fair use". Exactly what consitutes fair use is often a matter for courts to decide. See the WebLaw FAQ for discussion of these matters. As the FAQ suggests, you are usually better off making a link to material rather than copying it

In any case, the use of the Math and Computer Science Departmental Network subjects you to stricter policies than might be accorded you publishing in a public forum such as a commercial ISP or a book you might publish. Whether or not a court would declare it fair use, you may not post on our servers, email to anyone, or post to newsgroups the entirety, nor even significant portions, of copyrighted materials without the permission of copyright owner. We will not enter into discussions of what is a significant portion or what is fair use. Follow the same rules you learn about for writing papers: use of a few sentences, fully attributed, is OK. More than that usually is not. A copyrighted image is not.

Finally note that just because something doesn't have a copyright notice on it does not mean it has no copyright. Your best strategy is to assume anything you find on the web is copyrighted and if it does not explicitly carry permission to copy, or if you do not have written permission to copy it, you should just link to it. See the aforementioned FAQ."
Quoted

Click on
use of copyrighted material
at
http://www.cs.umb.edu/help/Lab_help.shtml

Our universities should be more open centers of intellectual freedom devoted to free speech, individual liberty, religious freedom, the rights of conscience, legal equality, due process, and academic freedom on campus

See also
http://thefire.org

Professor Robert A. Morris http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ram/ appears to be a principal among university faculty in devising policies that remarkably for an institution devoted to thought even overrestrictively state "We will not enter into discussions of what is a significant portion or what is fair use."

2.
It is ironical that our university will not even enter into an open discussion of ideas?...

1.
How can our University of Massachusetts get away with subjecting people to stricter policies than might be accorded you publishing in a public forum such as a commercial ISP or a book you might publish?...

Click on
use of copyrighted material
at
http://www.cs.umb.edu/help/Lab_help.shtml

Quote
"Copyright Policies
By law, individuals generally can make copies of small portions of copyrighted material for their personal use. This is called "fair use". Exactly what consitutes fair use is often a matter for courts to decide. See the WebLaw FAQ for discussion of these matters. As the FAQ suggests, you are usually better off making a link to material rather than copying it

In any case, the use of the Math and Computer Science Departmental Network subjects you to stricter policies than might be accorded you publishing in a public forum such as a commercial ISP or a book you might publish. Whether or not a court would declare it fair use, you may not post on our servers, email to anyone, or post to newsgroups the entirety, nor even significant portions, of copyrighted materials without the permission of copyright owner. We will not enter into discussions of what is a significant portion or what is fair use. Follow the same rules you learn about for writing papers: use of a few sentences, fully attributed, is OK. More than that usually is not. A copyrighted image is not.

Finally note that just because something doesn't have a copyright notice on it does not mean it has no copyright. Your best strategy is to assume anything you find on the web is copyrighted and if it does not explicitly carry permission to copy, or if you do not have written permission to copy it, you should just link to it. See the aforementioned FAQ."
Quoted

Click on
use of copyrighted material
at
http://www.cs.umb.edu/help/Lab_help.shtml

Our universities should be more open centers of intellectual freedom devoted to free speech, individual liberty, religious freedom, the rights of conscience, legal equality, due process, and academic freedom on campus

See also
http://thefire.org

Professor Robert A. Morris http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ram/ appears to be a principal among university faculty in devising policies that remarkably for an institution devoted to thought even overrestrictively state "We will not enter into discussions of what is a significant portion or what is fair use."

2.
It is ironical that our university will not even enter into an open discussion of ideas?...

1.
How can our University of Massachusetts get away with subjecting people to stricter policies than might be accorded you publishing in a public forum such as a commercial ISP or a book you might publish?...

Click on
use of copyrighted material
at
http://www.cs.umb.edu/help/Lab_help.shtml

Quote
"Copyright Policies
By law, individuals generally can make copies of small portions of copyrighted material for their personal use. This is called "fair use". Exactly what consitutes fair use is often a matter for courts to decide. See the WebLaw FAQ for discussion of these matters. As the FAQ suggests, you are usually better off making a link to material rather than copying it

In any case, the use of the Math and Computer Science Departmental Network subjects you to stricter policies than might be accorded you publishing in a public forum such as a commercial ISP or a book you might publish. Whether or not a court would declare it fair use, you may not post on our servers, email to anyone, or post to newsgroups the entirety, nor even significant portions, of copyrighted materials without the permission of copyright owner. We will not enter into discussions of what is a significant portion or what is fair use. Follow the same rules you learn about for writing papers: use of a few sentences, fully attributed, is OK. More than that usually is not. A copyrighted image is not.

Finally note that just because something doesn't have a copyright notice on it does not mean it has no copyright. Your best strategy is to assume anything you find on the web is copyrighted and if it does not explicitly carry permission to copy, or if you do not have written permission to copy it, you should just link to it. See the aforementioned FAQ."
Quoted

Click on
use of copyrighted material
at
http://www.cs.umb.edu/help/Lab_help.shtml

Our universities should be more open centers of intellectual freedom devoted to free speech, individual liberty, religious freedom, the rights of conscience, legal equality, due process, and academic freedom on campus

See also
http://thefire.org

Professor Robert A. Morris http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ram/ appears to be a principal among university faculty in devising policies that remarkably for an institution devoted to thought even overrestrictively state "We will not enter into discussions of what is a significant portion or what is fair use."

2.
It is ironical that our university will not even enter into an open discussion of ideas?...

From the DVD/Mpeg2 it is a rather dark scene, but on the highest Mpeg4 setting it is dark & "muddy" and gets rather pixellated. I've noticed that while you can't see the "grid", there are still "striations/gradation/banding" (one of those words).

What you're seeing is Mach banding (Java demo; explanation) caused by the interaction between color quantization and the eye's high-pass edge detection filter. It kills the quality of anything played back at 15/16-bit high color. DVDs don't show this because the hardware decoder uses 24-bit or higher color, which eliminates most Mach banding.

Same argument stands -- the "bad guy" will find it anyway... The easier the access, the higher the awareness -- no longer will one's unwillingness to, say, use the Social Security Number as the student ID number (UMass Boston's practice, for example), look freakish...

Then perhaps, the politicians will realize something too and some of those records will not be public anymore...

> Thank you :)

You're welcome :)

> All these things I had been pondering before, but it's very hard to do a web search on "color depth" or "frame rates" and get useful results

Aye, you won't find the answers unless you knew what you were looking for, but if you knew what you were looking for, you wouldn't need to look. Or something like that ;-)

You can see an example of "Mach Banding" here

http://graphics.lcs.mit.edu/classes/6.837/F00/Lect ure04/Slide22.html

This page shows how our eye percieves Mach Banding
http://www.loria.fr/~holzschu/cours/HTML/ICG/Resou rces/Shading/21.html

And this applet lets you try it out:
http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ram/ArtAndVision/MachBandin gApplet.htm

Cheers

For those with a technical bent who were disappointed by the lack of information on SMT in the linked artilce, here are some better resources:

Introduction to Simultaneous Multi-threading from UMass .

Quick Quiz on SMT.

Caches for Simultaneous Multithreaded Processors: An Introduction

For those with a technical bent who were disappointed by the lack of information on SMT in the linked artilce, here are some better resources:

Introduction to Simultaneous Multi-threading from UMass .

Quick Quiz on SMT.

Caches for Simultaneous Multithreaded Processors: An Introduction

You can attribute that to John F. Kennedy. It's from his inaugural address.

The only reference that I can find to goto in Java is this.

You beat me to one of the issues: books. He referred to Andrew Carnegie and libraries in the original article. A university is going to need textbooks for classes and a library. While it is all well and good to say that lecturers will do it for recognition and posterity, there is no way to stock a library with an up-to-date, complete collection of relevant material for free. Some items can be obtained that way. An online university could mirror Project Gutenberg. I also heard yesterday that the Oxford English Dictionary is going online and that they are looking for institutions (such as libraries) to subscribe and then provide access to communities. He could make them an offer to pay to put them online for everyone.

Then there is the issue of up-to-date technical references and textbooks. There are going to be people willing to write material for free for a good cause. But making it complete, getting it reviewed for technical accuracy and keeping it up-to-date are a different issue. A good start might be to seek out good material that is already on the net on various subjects and offer the authors a permanent, stable home for it. That alone, with a really good index and search engine could be a fantastic asset.

Another idea that might attract some good free material would be to offer a service like Source Forge to people interested in creating free content. Give them free web space, backups, CVS trees, mailing lists, etc. for the project. Host mirrors for some of the open text formatting tools: (La)TeX, texinfo, DocBook, etc. and encourage authors to use one of them and link to the mirror so that users can download the software they need easily.

And, I second the motion to interview him. Maybe we can help him set the initial direction on some of this by asking some good questions. Whether his free online university succeeds or fails in the end, it is worth the effort. It will help answer the questions about what an online school can offer and what it needs to do to offer it.