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Sorry, but you're quite wrong here. Most filesystems can be configured at mount-time to behave in the manner you describe, but by default, they may defer writes to the disk for upwards of several seconds.

This improves performance tremendously, and the resulting unreliability is simply a tradeoff that is required to deal with what are fundamentally very slow devices.

http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~enightin/syncio.ps

You do not want the filesystem to striving to dump all data to disk as fast as possible, all the time - for instance, it doesn't really matter if you lose some items from your browser cache during a crash. So, the filesystem can defer writing new files in your cache until the disk is idle in between some more important operations, and the only effect you'll notice is vastly improved performance.

I think everyone is putting too much emphasis on what language to use. No matter which one you pick the students will never think you were trying to make things easier for them. Instead I would suggest looking for local High School Programming Competitions http://www.engin.umd.umich.edu/contest/ Pick a language to match a local competition, Telling everyone that the top 3 students from each class, or however you want to do it gets to compete for $500 dollars will do a lot more for learning then picking an easy language.

You mean like this?

http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/radmind/

Indiana once passed a law saying that PI should be exactly 3.2:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aux/pi.html

I'm not going to the library for the purpose of this discussion. For now, let us agree to disagree. We'll see the new data from the spacecraft soon enough.

Here is something I found while looking for the sea shell study from the 70s. I couldn't find the one I mentioned earlier. Again, I don't think we should be using fossil fuels. We should be using oil solely for petrochem manufacturing like plastics, fertilizers, etc. My position is that I don't agree that we're going to have as drastic changes as people like you claim, and I don't think the solution is low-tech renewable energy. The solution is fast-breeder high tech nuclear energy (you know, the reactors that produce more fuel than they use). That's renewable, and it being high tech will save and boost all aspects of our industries should we produce them on a wide scale. I can't say the same for windmills. Advanced design nuclear plants should be rolled out while we have a full scale drive to fusion energy. If you impose renewable energy on us it's probably going to drain the last of our resources and doom humanity to a painful die down.

"sed" - could work, but why bother if vim works? Personally, I can never remember the sed syntax.

*sputters* You can't remember the sed syntax? It's the same as vi.

Mostly likely, if you're editting a several gig text file, you're doing bulk edits, not single edits. ala:

:%s/hamburger/cheeseburger/g

Well, here's the sed script to do that:

sed 's/hamburger/cheeseburger/g' < infile > outfile

They're so similiar, I suspect that they're related... yup. The Sed History says that "Sed was first written in 1977 as a stream adaptation of the ed editor".

And since vi is just a fancy tui on top of ed, you already know sed.

Why bother? Just because vi can edit large files, it's still painfully slow. Large and/or many edits are very slow to apply and undo. The same commands executed in sed can be done order of magnitude faster. I believe (but have never taken the time to prove it) that it's related to the undo buffer. And yes, my anecdotal evidence took place on machine with enough RAM that no swapping was required for vi or sed.

Now if you want to get really productive, we can talk about taking your vi commands, wrapping them in a sed script, then running it through sed2perl. Oh the Thinks you will have Thunk.

Unfortunately, I can't find very good information online on site licenses for proprietary software. How much does a site-license for Endnote cost? What about a site license for MS Office for 2,000 computers?

It doesn't surprise me that you can't find good information about this. Even if you found valid pricing for a medium-sized business, I doubt that universities have the same pricing. Universities themselves also negotiate directly with Microsoft (at least the larger ones do), leading to differences in pricing and terms. Unis also often negotiate to obtain student pricing on products like Office. For example:

University of Wisconsin Office 2007 Enterprise: $72
University of Michigan Office 2007 Enterprise: $47

The real question is, if you're "in a position to potentially influence future software purchasing decisions", how do you not have access to the current expenditures on software licensing? What you really need are current expenditures and knowledge about when the current contract expires.

The BBC Domesday project attempted to create a time capsule in 1986 and is a classic example of digital obsolescence. The BBC Domesday project Camileon Project

Hate to close the door on him yet...

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/sig.html

The future is an uncertain thing. Perhaps America will be destroyed with Russian nuclear missiles by tomorrow. Perhaps Obama will be assassinated and someone else will be chosen for the post. Perhaps he will turn down the post at the last minute. Perhaps there will be another breakthrough.

The title (possibly wrongfully, but probably not) assumes that Chu has no additional breakthroughs (or even research published) before he takes an office (which he may be unwilling or unable to do, and which may not exist) that he was appointed to (assuming the appointment is not revoked or otherwise taken apart) for a president and country (that may not exist tomorrow). You cannot say with definite certainty that this is "Chu's Final Breakthrough Before Taking Office".

I know that we are splitting hairs here, but the point is that articles titles should not proclaim anything about the future, ever. They should be solidly based in facts, and not misleading in any way.

I'm pretty sure we can modify some existing patents to apply to distributed firewalls.

US Patent Application 20080250497: Statistical method and system for network anomaly detection

"Whatever concept a person can think of, there will be a patent either active, being applied, or being prepared to include new concept." -- Troll

---

There's also some other related studies.

Modular Strategies for Internetwork Monitoring, which "addresses the longstanding and difficult problem of detecting and classifying spatially distributed network anomalies from multiple monitoring sites on the Internet".

Good point, but this page on Solenodon paradoxus says it eats "various orthopteran insects (Gryllidae, Tettigoniidae, Blattidae)", and Blattidae are a family of roaches. They got that from fecal analysis.

"Solenodon paradoxus collects food by digging extensive tunnel systems under the ground, then foraging for insects and other invertebrates from the surrounding soil.

Foods eaten include: millipedes (Iulides), ground beetles (Carabidae), various orthopteran insects (Gryllidae, Tettigoniidae, Blattidae), earthworms (Lumbricidae) and various types of snails."

Strange that an animal loaded with venom doesn't go after small mammals or something.

"Solenodon paradoxus is described as a 'slow mover' and a 'clumsy runner with no agility in avoiding enemies and a poor means of defense'"

So what you're saying is, Solenodon paradoxus is the nerd of the jungle.

more interesting facts: http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Solenodon_paradoxus.html

Can you give examples of good Exchange replacements?

Yes, for that see DVL. Seriously, though you have to define what activities you need to do before you can ask for a replacement. MS Exchange is marketed in many niches and fails (on the surface) in most. The most spectacular is its failure as a mail server replacement, if you look at it as such. If you look at the wonderful cover of plausible deniability it gives executives by randomly losing and delaying mail, then that is a success.

Anyway, try looking these. Keep in mind that, unlike with M$ products, you can combine pieces of several packages.

• Kolab — http://www.kolab.org/
• Citadel — http://www.citadel.org/
• Dingo Calendar Server — http://andrew.triumf.ca/dingo/
• Darwin CalendarServer — http://trac.calendarserver.org/
• Bedework — http://www.bedework.org/
• Zimbra — http://www.zimbra.com/
• OpenGroupware — http://www.opengroupware.org/

If you are simply looking to improve reliability of e-mail they a plain Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) will do. Before it became too embarrassing for M$, it used to be recommended practice to put one of these in front of MS Exchange to improve reliability and security. Also look up ClamAV, Spamassassin and how to do greylisting.

• simta — http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/simta/
• Dovecot — http://www.dovecot.org/
• Postfix — http://www.postfix.org/
• Exim — http://www.exim.org/
• Sendmail — http://www.sendmail.org/
• qmail — http://www.qmail.org/

However, before you can think about "replacing" MS Exchange, you will have to get rid of the staff that selected and deployed it in the first place. They ignored all the licensing shortcomings, the bad reviews, high price and ongoing technical failure to instead push ideology over technology. People making decisions based on ideology are not going to accept any technical or economic arguments...

Can you give examples of good Exchange replacements?

Yes, for that see DVL. Seriously, though you have to define what activities you need to do before you can ask for a replacement. MS Exchange is marketed in many niches and fails (on the surface) in most. The most spectacular is its failure as a mail server replacement, if you look at it as such. If you look at the wonderful cover of plausible deniability it gives executives by randomly losing and delaying mail, then that is a success.

Anyway, try looking these. Keep in mind that, unlike with M$ products, you can combine pieces of several packages.

• Kolab — http://www.kolab.org/
• Citadel — http://www.citadel.org/
• Dingo Calendar Server — http://andrew.triumf.ca/dingo/
• Darwin CalendarServer — http://trac.calendarserver.org/
• Bedework — http://www.bedework.org/
• Zimbra — http://www.zimbra.com/
• OpenGroupware — http://www.opengroupware.org/

If you are simply looking to improve reliability of e-mail they a plain Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) will do. Before it became too embarrassing for M$, it used to be recommended practice to put one of these in front of MS Exchange to improve reliability and security. Also look up ClamAV, Spamassassin and how to do greylisting.

• simta — http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/simta/
• Dovecot — http://www.dovecot.org/
• Postfix — http://www.postfix.org/
• Exim — http://www.exim.org/
• Sendmail — http://www.sendmail.org/
• qmail — http://www.qmail.org/

However, before you can think about "replacing" MS Exchange, you will have to get rid of the staff that selected and deployed it in the first place. They ignored all the licensing shortcomings, the bad reviews, high price and ongoing technical failure to instead push ideology over technology. People making decisions based on ideology are not going to accept any technical or economic arguments...

I've been a victim of lost DTE outage tickets too ( http://www-personal.umich.edu/~rsc/Stories/36hours.html ), but I'd caution you to think about the real risk (probability of an outage * probable duration * cost of an outage) vs. the cost of implementing a permanent generator solution. Don't forget that in order to be effective, the generator (and fuel supply) will have to be maintained too.
Getting off the grid might appeal to a certain survivalist sense of independence, but it doesn't make a lot of sense in SE Michigan which is relatively well covered by the grid (as compared to the UP.) Think about alternatives to a generator too. Draining the pipes and packing off to a motel might make a lot more sense. Around the time of the DTE outage I endured, DTE customers had been suffering a large number of outages due to a lack of line maintenance (tree trimming, etc.) DTE suffered a lot with the PSC (Public Service Commission) and the State Legislature for that. The PSC has been neutered by the Republicans, but I suspect that the State Legislature will be looking into DTE over the next few months.

http://www.med.umich.edu/opm/newspage/2003/cocaineheart.htm

"They've recently found that it isn't the cocaine causing the heart attacks."

No.

They found that cocaine causes heart attacks, and the failure to make the doctors aware of the cocaine use results in the standard treatment being counterproductive.

They did not, in any way, form or fashion, find that "it isn't the cocaine causing the heart attacks".

"The cocaine (powder or rock) can give the symptoms of heart attack without the victime actually having heart problems."

The symptoms of a heart attack in this case ARE heart problems, so your comment here makes it clear you simply didn't understand the article as well as you thought you did.

Maybe. For people with arachnophobia, researchers were able to help them by having them virtually approach a large spider and eventually "touch" it. link

Another example I can think of is shopping for curtains or rugs. It would be nice to be able to jump into a virtual room with whatever curtains you are thinking of to see how it would look.

Cosma Shalizi is also a Physicist. I don't think he is actually doing research in machine learning or AI but he likes to read a lot and he tends to have fairly extensive reading lists.

Machine Learning

AI

You may also want to get familiar with Geoffrey Hinton's current work in neural networks.

Cosma Shalizi is also a Physicist. I don't think he is actually doing research in machine learning or AI but he likes to read a lot and he tends to have fairly extensive reading lists.

Machine Learning

AI

You may also want to get familiar with Geoffrey Hinton's current work in neural networks.

I've posted it over there, I'll post it here.

Read section 12-3 of FM 34-40-2:

http://www.umich.edu/~umich/fm-34-40-2/ch12.pdf

This technique of solving incomplete columnar transposition ciphers had been described in the open literature prior to 1941.

It was described in Helen Gaines' "Elementary Cryptanalysis", published in 1939. Many of the techniques in Gaines' book originated in M.E. Ohaver's column "Solving Cipher Secrets", in "Flynn's Weekly Detective Fiction" magazine, which ran from 1924 to 1928. I'd not be at all surprised to find that this technique was described there.

It's beyond the realm of possibility that any German intelligence agency would have been using single transposition in 1941. It's not at all impossible to believe that someone at the FBI, asked to create a worksheet for a Life photo-op that didn't reveal anything of substance, would choose to demonstrate the cryptanalysis of a cipher that was already widely-known among the well-informed amateurs. and hence wouldn't compromise any of the systems the Germans were actually using, or how effective they were at breaking them.

Yes. Exactly. It always irks me when modern people betray their own ignorance and arrogance. Dr Haak's speculation that there might not have been space for love is ridiculous. Love is what held them together and made life worthwhile. Somebody else in this thread mentions that we tend to view stone age people as ignorant, brutal children.

Nothing could be further from the truth. It is the modern human who displays these traits. Our modern world offers an enormously effective safety net that allows the stupid to survive. Simply put, we are breeding stupid people and our modern medical technology also means we are breeding people who physically could not survive in the natural world. The stone age cultures were brilliant and the people made use of wonderful technology: snowshoes, skis, atlatls, or woomeras, stone blades sharper than any scalpel, and canoes, dugouts and sleighs for traveling. The Saan bushmen and Australian aborigine tribes people used marvelous technology to survive in impossible deserts.

These stone age people possessed encyclopedic knowledge of plants, animals, geology and terrain. They were educated to the doctorate level in their skills and knowledge and the passing grade was survival. The stupid people died.

Your friend probably was African American. I wouldn't say you're racist for wanting to deport those who voted based upon race, but I would call you a bigot.

Frankly, if you want to disagree with the Founders, at least attempt to reason at a similar strength as they did. The i-pod in your pocket doesn't give your ideas any extra merit.

It's actually a nomad jukebox, the discman-sized one, thank you very much.

The strongest reason is that the primary reasons I've heard for it's existence in the first place are no longer concerns. One idea was that you needed an electoral college because someone could get the nomination of a party and fool the nation, especially since back in the drafting days, most citizens wouldn't ever see a speech by the canidate. As I've heard it, the thinking was that electors would be able to change their minds to reflect the best interests of the nation if upon coming to washington they realized the citizenry had been duped and the candidate was bad. In modern times, this has not really happened.

The wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_States)#Origin_of_name) has a different interpretation than the one I remembered from gradeschool: that the electoral college was supposed to merely nominate canidates for congress to choose, because the forefathers didn't realize elections would come down to two canidates, meaning someone would always get the majority.

So their reasons appear to have no strength and are based off of false predictions.

Against the electoral college is what is for me the most convincing argument: that it makes the "One citizen one vote" ideal a joke. Citizens in less populated state have more of a vote than citizens in more populated states. Three times now, that has meant the candidate who more citizens voted for did not get the presidency.

This is a good visual presentation of counties distorted by population and how they voted in kerry V bush
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/countycartredbluelarge.png

I can see advantages of the electoral college, but none that justify why one citizen should get a bigger vote than another.

"Azureus" (which is a made up word).

Nope. It's a blue poison dart frog, hence the logo.

Have you even looked at the OpenSSH source code?

It's a bit ugly, not very consistent, almost completely undocumented, but it's very secure by design. Please don't take my word for it. Read this and then look at the source code.

Now have you looked at the Windows SMB server source code? I rest my case.

They already do. I've done support for W.A. schools that were having problems with their internal Exchange server. They were shocked when we discussed the 'real' price for Exchange. They paid less than $1000 for it including CALs and hardware. MS has some serious sweetheart deals for schools and I bet if it came down to providing even cheaper Windows and Office for schools they will do it.

That's not the real price, though. The real price also includes all the down time, extra re-builds, malware tools, etc. Add to that also the cost of missing incoming messages, missing outgoing messages and delayed messages -- these last add up to more work for the users, which can number in the 100's, rather than just the maintenance staff which can usually be counted on one hand.

Before MS Exchange was hammered through the back door, e-mail was both so fast and reliable that many used it in ways resembling instant messaging.

Worth a look:
Roundcube: http://roundcube.net/
Kolab: http://www.kolab.org/
Citadel: http://www.citadel.org/
Zimbra: http://www.zimbra.com/

If you need a plain vanilla mail transfer agent instead of all the non-essentials, then postfix, exim, qmail, the new sendmail, and simta each have their niche. They're used pretty much everywhere, even if you don't always see the evidence of them outside the message headers.

Your assumption that a 16-18 year old can't be responsible enough to drive is just that, an assumption. There are a lot of kids who are more than capable of handling that responsibility at that age....My personal, non-scientific, talking-out-of-my-ass opinion is that it's not the 16-18 year olds you have to worry about, it's the 18-22 year olds that cause more trouble,

You are definitely "talking-out-your-ass". Teenage drivers have three times the fatal accident rate of 20-70 year olds (page 17 of the PDF). It is not just an assumption, it is a well know fact.
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/1007/2/83596.0001.001.pdf

In the rural area where I'm from, it's not uncommon for kids as young as 10 to drive cars and trucks on back roads and on their farms, and you never hear of them getting into accidents.

Well, yeah, there are no other cars around to hit or worry about.

Now, whether the fact that the teenagers have such a high rate of accidents might be due to their lack of driving experience more than their age. Maybe a more limited driving permit at an early age (daytime, no passengers, limited allowed driving range, etc.) might gradually build up their skill and confidence, while also addressing some of the issues brought up in this thread (jobs, after-school activities, etc.)

This actually isn't new. Systrace has been doing this for years. And it runs on more than just Linux.

Try coloring the states red and blue according the percent of popular vote. Then every state is some hue of purple, with only DC being explicitly blue.

Change "state" for "voting district", and the map you are describing is here. I know it isn't quite the same thing, but you'll see a lot of large nearly solid blue areas.

A "feature" (probably unintended) of the design of the Electoral College system is that most elections look like more of a blowout than they were. In theory, if someone manages to consistently get 50.5% in every state, they could win every state and the public will be told the next morning about the victor's huge landslide victory.

That's why after the 2000 election the Reps floated around those red state/blue state US maps with such glee. It made a squeaker look like a huge victory. (For a better picture, see the University of Michagan , which use some cartiographical tricks to adjust for population).
A better illustration are Regan's victories. Everyone knows Regan clobbered Carter and Mondale, right? Well, the true answer is not really, and sorta respectively. The electoral college turned his %50.7 victory in 1980 into a %86 state victory, and his %58.8 victory in 1984 into a %94 state victory.

It has been argued that this effect is actually good for the country, as it gives presidents more legitimacy from their elections.

I can't think of anything that will boot faster, although EMACS will likely be the friendliest editor available.

Qedit

was my favorite from that time, not for windows as The SemWare Editor.

I had the unfortunate pleasure of owning a compaq contura aero 486sx33 laptop. I got it cheap as it was even for the time period a piece of shit, but it did the job. I often times avoided booting to windows to use qedit to take down notes and such.

If you read the article, "Right now, we do not have OpenGL support but will be working to release it soon". So when it hits the shelves for purchase, opengl games, including Linux games, will work out of the box. One opengl game, Secondlife was modified for 3D by University of Michigan. http://um3d.dc.umich.edu/software/second_life/ https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-2972

an assurpation of power

I thought you'd invented a new word there, but sadly you've been beaten to it. You'd think someone submitting their PhD thesis would know how to use a spell checker, or do things not work that way at the University of Michigan? It probably didn't help that her parents couldn't decide if she was a boy or a girl. Rebecca Nathan Brannon, we salute you.

And no, 100 Fahrenheit isn't very useful medically

While 100F body temp isn't considered normal, it isn't severe - it is low grade fever. You're usually not bed ridden at the temp. Once you're above 102 to 104 - that is considered moderate fever. Above 105 F it is pretty bad and much above 107F you turn into an average anonymous Slash dot poster. http://www.med.umich.edu/1libr/pa/pa_feverpho_hhg.htm

Fahrenheit has approx. twice as many divisions between water freezing and boiling, so in effect given the same number of significant digits, a temperature in Fahrenheit is more "precise" than one given in Celsius, but your point that this precision is more than what is needed in everyday life is quite valid. Also, given the ease of conversion between Celsius and the even more useful (in scientific circles) Kelvin scales, Celsius has the edge.

I've heard that even the best organic crops only deliver half of what regular crops do, so if we can produce food for 8 billion today (there's enough but not in the right places) then say we could grow organic food for 4 billion.

Then you have heard incorrect information.

A 22 year study by Cornell, a survey of research by Berkeley (the longest of which is a 150 year study), and a study by the University of Michigan all say that organic farming techniques are at least as good as conventional techniques in terms of yield and often better. In addition to better yields, the organic techniques required less energy inputs, used less water/irrigation, improved soil conditions over time, and retained additional carbon in the ground!

To present a balanced view, this is not true for all crops. Notably potatoes and certain fruits have better results with petro-chemical methods (organic potato yield is roughly 60-65% compared to conventional). However, organic yields are approximately equal for important staples such as corn, wheat and soybeans, as well as many others crops like apples and tomatoes.

On the low end of the studies, a 20 year Swiss study concluded that organic farms produce 80-90% yields compared to conventional farms. And all the studies show that organic techniques have greater yields during drought years.

One of the promising links I saw was UM Computer Monitor/Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) Recycling Program

Maybe IBM might wish to consider throwing some money at someone developing those apps.

IBM does throw lots of money at Open Source projects. For example, he mentioned Sakai; http://www.umich.edu/news/?Releases/2005/Apr05/r042605a

http://www.engin.umd.umich.edu/CIS/course.des/cis400/cobol/hworld.html

21 lines. OK, I was surprised.

If it's your webserver, you could always install Webshell.

If it's your server, you could always set up Webshell

Not to mention highly confusing once inside and ringed by a darstadly innescapable staircase that's been baffling would-be thieves for many a year.

The key thing is to make sure that power is not and can not be consolidated by any one group or person.

It is a little late for that.

We now have Presidential Directive 51.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlB966zQIZ4&NR=1

So that pesky Judiciary, Congress, and Constitution is optional.

My personal FAVORITE is Executive order 11,000.

http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/jfkeo/eo/11000.htm

You will be picked up and sent to work camps as the needs
of the Homeland are paramount.

You will be assigned to what work is "important" to the state
by the Director of the Selective Service.

Yeah, the Selective Service, same one used in times of war for
the draft.

I am feeling a "Superbad" moment here.

It's Mc Lovin' time, and Shrub in Chief thinks we are all cute.

1993 called to recommend PCFILE!

http://www.umich.edu/~archive/msdos/database/pcfile/

Mind you, you'll have to toss Jim Button $10 as it's shareware!

Speaking of Apple, has anyone ever noticed that under Mac OS X, there isn't even a built-in function to remove an application? At least Windows pretends to. And before you mention, "just drag the application icon to the trash"-- what about the dotfiles, preferences, tempfiles, and other miscellaneous shit that applications spew around the system? E.g., Dreamweaver, the only application I've found so far to be completely unmanageable with radmind, thanks to these assholes?

To steer the topic back to technical rather than emotional content, here More related links:

Probably one of the more interesting ideas:

Ballast-Free Ship to Combat Aquatic Life
http://michigantoday.umich.edu/2008/apr/ballast.php

And others:

http://massbay.mit.edu/resources/pdf/NABSdatasheet.pdf

Using pier-side bottles to collect ship ballast water
http://www.seagrant.noaa.gov/newsevents/stories/Ballast_water_battles.html

UV Disinfection Method
http://www.triangularwave.com/a3b.htm

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/papers/cmn08.pdf

How many Linux distros come with services running as root?