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Read this:
http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~schuch/papers/lci-ndss.pdf

Then read this:
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174

It's a simulation of the impact of a coordinated attack on BGP. We know since a long time back that BGP is vulnerable to a number of attacks, this being one of them. The researcher has done a good job with the simulations and putting numbers on it.

Nothing else to see here, move along. The writer of the news article has no idea what he/she is talking about. We have much larger stability issues (such as Network Neutrality, IPv6 swap over and government blocking) to deal with, and theoretical attacks by large scale bot nets on BGP Is not something that will keep me up at night.

And Virginia's AG want's to investigate climate scientists. WYFP?

The St. Louis County attorney was endorsed by Progressive Action. In her bio, she certainly sounds like a foaming at the mouth right winger doesn't she? Why waste everyone's time with this nonsense?

Do charges equal guilt on your planet?

I never said they were guilty, I was merely responding to the assertion that this was a FOX / right wing manufactured incident.

Next time, a little more diligent research and a pinch less straw man would go a long way.

I said it was almost to the point where it feels that way. Intentional hyperbole aside, I think it's clear that dissent of all flavors (particularly against actual government positions and actions) are slowly being vilified. Refer to recent Napolitano (and others) quotes over the last two months as an example of where they're headed.

Anyway, I'll see your Islam and raise you an Atheist.

+ Atheists are the least electable persons in the country (source: 2007 Gallup poll).
+ Atheists are the least trusted people in America (source: UMN study).

Ninety percent of respondents thought whites and blacks could share their vision of society. About 80 percent said the same of Hispanics, Jews and conservative Christians. More than 70 percent said it of immigrants, and 64 percent said it of Muslims. Atheists had the lowest rating at 54 percent.

Asked whether they would disapprove of a child's wish to marry an atheist, 47.6 percent of those interviewed said yes. Asked the same question about Muslims and African-Americans, the yes responses fell to 33.5 percent and 27.2 percent, respectively. The yes responses for Asian-Americans, Hispanics, Jews and conservative Christians were 18.5 percent, 18.5 percent, 11.8 percent and 6.9 percent, respectively. (source)

I would certainly hesitate before letting anyone get the idea that I was an atheist. I probably wouldn't mention it to my neighbors. I wouldn't mention it to a girlfriend's family. I absolutely would not mention it to an employer or colleague or would avoid inadvertently giving the impression that I was. People react viciously and with great prejudice toward it and it is not a stretch to imagine that a "believer" would can your ass for it. Or at least, treat you with great disfavor within the work place.

And, no, I don't necessarily buy that being associated with Islam makes you the most likely to be disappeared within this country. I steadfastly assert that it's anyone voicing too much dissent that crosses the attention of the wrong official. Now, you might be accused of ties to Islam or some terrorist group as part of the justification of harassing or disappearing you (like the guy in Portland a few years ago and several others in the last half decade), but that's more a scapegoat than a reason.

So, you are calling the University of Minnesota a diploma mill? You should avoid such sweeping statements. I am in the MSSE program myself. Here is the text from "Why an MSSE degree?":

Advance your career with a Master of Science in Software Engineering degree. MSSE is a full-time, 2-year Master's program with a 95% graduation rate and is designed for working professionals.

The need is clear

Recently, a "skills development and preparedness" study was conducted in Maryland. This survey found that: "In the high-tech area, more than two-thirds of businesses that hire computer engineers, laboratory or technical personnel... reported difficulty in finding qualified workers. Overall, nearly 40 percent of survey respondents reported that a lack of skilled workers negatively impacted their firm's ability to do business..."

Industry needs qualified leaders - those who can understand the fundamentals of a software system, and be able to guide its development and deployment through an organization. These leadership roles are integral to the success of a company, and are not easily outsourced.

Critical thinking

The Master of Science & Software Engineering (MSSE) degree prepares students to become Software Engineering leaders. The core of the program is focused on building a foundation of critical thinking skills on which to make professional judgements.

Often, in the workplace, that's what is needed of an engineer - his or her professional judgement; to assess a request and judge whether it makes sense. 'Is the request reasonable?' 'Given the constraints of my organization, can something be produced that will be acceptable to the users?' 'Do we understand the risks?' 'If yes, how could a solution be structured?' 'After all is said and done, is it a good solution?' 'Why?'

Theory and practice

The MSSE program builds these thinking skills through a solid understanding of theoretical methods, principles, and tools and an examination of fundamental software development issues and processes. Topics include requirements engineering, project management, quality assurance, and database management systems.

Acclaimed faculty with both academic and industry backgrounds also provide practical perspective. Real-world problems and opportunities with software intensive systems are explored, and methods to evaluate, adopt and take advantage of emerging technologies are learned.

MSSE students will also be working closely with fellow software professionals, completing applicable class assignments within teams. Working relationships developed will be a significant resource throughout one's career.

I design enterprise scale systems. That involves taking in to consideration many stakeholders concerns and being able to address then and to communicate the architecture to them based on their viewpoint of the system.

http://www.math.umn.edu/~rusin018/1271_Fall_2006/extra_1.pdf

"...Nine times seven, thought Joe Sixpack with deep satisfaction, is sixty-three, and I don't need
a brain to tell me so. The brain is in my own hand.

And it was amazing the feeling of power that gave him. "

FTFY!

http://www.math.umn.edu/~rusin018/1271_Fall_2006/extra_1.pdf

"...Nine times seven, thought Shuman with deep satisfaction, is sixty-three, and I don't need
a computer to tell me so. The computer is in my own head.

And it was amazing the feeling of power that gave him. "

I suppose the horrific grammar and punctuation in that tale is an attempt at sarcasm?

http://www.math.umn.edu/~rusin018/1271_Fall_2006/extra_1.pdf

"...Nine times seven, thought Shuman with deep satisfaction, is sixty-three, and I don't need
a computer to tell me so. The computer is in my own head.

And it was amazing the feeling of power that gave him. "

Ariane rocket buffer overflow: http://www.ima.umn.edu/~arnold/disasters/ariane.html

That's what I thought of when I saw the headline. They thought they could simply reuse Ariane 4 software for the new, bigger, faster Ariana 5 rocket. But some speed was higher, a value overflowed, and all of a sudden, there's nonsense values all over the place. Not good for such a big and expensive rocket.

Money would be better spent making a few places secure for winter time emergencies. Unlike California, if we're without power or housing, we die.

If you look at the map, you'll see that the New Madrid fault line is mostly in Missouri and will affect several states further south. It won't even touch Minnesota. Serious earthquakes are pretty rare, even historically in Minnesota.

I don't know what the winters are like in Missouri and I don't know if many people die from them down there. The threats from poor driving on the road are probably their biggest problems and I don't know if any amount of money will fix that sort of behavior. I grew up near Buffalo Ridge in Minnesota and there were a couple of earthquakes I remember but they didn't leave any visible damage. But yeah there were several ice storms and snowstorms that left us snowbound ... my mom would fill the bathtub full of potable water in case the pipes froze to our well. We had a fireplace as our only heat until I was fifteen when we got a gas heater. Yes, I woke up some mornings to see my breath had frozen to frost on my pillow in front of my face. And there were more than a few nights when I opt to sleep next to the fireplace rather than my bed which seemed to be the furthest away in the house.

Knowing how to survive a bad winter or a hot summer in Minnesota is important but if you look at the area these earthquakes could affect, the area is staggering. I don't know if it would hit quite the population that the San Andreas could but you're talking about a potential large area without utilities, increased lawlessness and a logistical nightmare for support/rescue. It might be worth risking billions to inform people of how to prepare and handle this sort of disaster. I guess that's up to the geologists and seismologists to recommend though.

Political heavyweight Jim McDermott acquired an illegally recorded phone call and released it for political gain.
Privacy issues, you would think....
Jail time?
Not even.
Check out this statement: "Full D.C. Circuit Rules McDermott Had No First Amendment Right to Leak Phone Tape Due to Ethics Committee Rules".
Really?
It is only an 'ethics committee' rule violation.
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cla/discoveries/2009/10/full_dc_circuit_rules_mcdermot.html

I am just as surprised as you, they have an ethics committee?

No wonder they had advanced tools for retouching pictures. The Soviets were masters at removing officials from pictures (after they'd been thrown out of the party and/or sent to the gulags) almost from the beginning of their rule.

Examples here:

http://www.tc.umn.edu/~hick0088/classes/csci_2101/false.html

Heh... Function follows need I guess.

BS! I dare you to cite one scientific study supporting your statement. Here are some studies or references to studies that conclude organic food [pdf] can feed the world.

Falcon

How do you block Freenet? Seriously, how do you block it and not other services?

If Freenet is banned, the government can collect the address of every "opennet" Freenet node in a matter of hours. Then it's a question of finding the "darknet" nodes. A simple heuristic will probably catch most of them: recursively look for any address that has at least three long-lived, encrypted, two-way UDP streams to known or suspected Freenet nodes. The standard of proof at this stage is probable cause (or the French equivalent), rather than overwhelming evidence, so a heuristic approach is good enough. Wholesale traffic interception isn't needed: it's sufficient to monitor known or suspected nodes.

Now the government raids the owners of all the French nodes, confiscates their hard drives and decrypts their Freenet caches. There's bound to be some nasty stuff cached there on behalf of other nodes, even if the owners never uploaded or downloaded anything bad. The government charges the owners with "running a Freenet node" (so it's not necessary to prove what they uploaded or downlaoded) and makes a highly public announcement that it busted an extensive child porn / terrorist / neo-Nazi network thanks to the new anti-Freenet law. Then it waits for the handful of node operators it didn't catch to shut down their nodes and never say the word "Freenet" again.

Part of the problem here is that Freenet's design requires all nodes to belong to a single network, so if you have a heuristic for identifying Freenet traffic you can start from any node and 'unravel' the whole network. But to be fair to the Freenet designers, the alternative - lots of small, isolated darknets - isn't very appealing to users, because the only people you end up communicating with belong to the small intersection of "people I trust" and "privacy nuts". I'm a privacy nut who trusts his friends, and even for me that intersection isn't large enough to make for much of a conversation.

Do you really think they would have any difficulty coming up with an *actual* rape victim if they were behind this? Someone who had a black eye, bruises on their wrists and arms, signs of forced entry, high emotional distress

It's a common rape myth that rape is not ``real'' unless it is committed by a stranger, involved physical violence and/or a deadly weapon, and the survivor resisted all physical contact. The reality is that, in the majority of rapes, the attacker is known to the victim, and in nearly half, the attacker is a friend or acquaintance. A weapon is used only 11% of the time.

It's important to dispel these myths; they give cover to attackers by enabling them, and those around them, to believe that forcing someone to engage in sexual activity without consent ``is definitely not rape'' because what they did does not fit the armed-stranger stereotype. If someone does not consent to a particular activity, whether or not she (or he) has consented to anything else, proceeding with that activity is rape.

If that were a reasonable argument the Soviet embassy in Washington should have been invaded in the 1950s. Citation among many others.

http://www.wisconsin.edu/campuses/

When a state university has campuses in more than one city, they tend to differentiate between them all by appending the city name to the name of the university.

That's why there's UCLA, UC-Berkeley, etc. ( http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/campuses/ ).

Why, even Minnesota does it ( http://www1.umn.edu/twincities/campuses.php ); imagine that!

Of course, if you have a better system, by all means, let's hear it.

I was a research assistance for a study conducted in 2007, which surveyed the usage of Telemedicine in Minnesota. http://www.mti.umn.edu/mti.html, (be kind, it was my first web application ever, and it has since been broken by the people maintaining it).

The primary usage, IIRC, was for psychiatric health. In particular, mental health facilities in northern Minnesota seemed to favor this approach; it is much cheaper to employ councilors and "out-source" a MD rather than have a full-time psychiatrist on staff.

Telemedicine may be more cost-effective, but IMHO it will probably be abused and doctors (like radiologists), whom are already very busy, will be pushed even harder. Computer-Aided-Diagonsis tools, like those in existence for detecting microcalcifications in breast tissue, will become essential. Over-worked doctors miss things, and sometimes a computerized second opinion can improve the quality of diagnoses while holding down costs.

DISCLAIMER: I am not in the medical industry, but I did some research as an undergrad on the things mentioned above.

Unless the cause was an error in programming some system that failed.

At first, I thought "Turkey wants nothing to do with PIGS; they're mostly Muslim there." then I Googled Turkey and this image showed up on top. http://blog.lib.umn.edu/admisfa/prospective/turkey.jpg Apparently turkey does like pig.

geolocation, which is what Google obviously wants them for

Bingo. A neat idea made almost moot with GPS chips in cell phones. If you know where the WiFi is, you can look up the location of the WiFi via Google -- without a GPS. I mentioned in a similar /. article about placelab.org which I think maps whichever radio they're able to get data from.

I experimented with this stuff back in 2002 when I created wifimaps.com, which is a wardriving map application, which harvests data from wardrivers. I'm not a math guy, so I used a weighted average for estimating the WIFi signal source. Mapserver is kinda neat too, which I used since Google Maps didn't exist yet.

Yeah, I would immediately classify any error that caused deaths to be more important.

Another interesting case was the Patriot Missile failure. The system clock counted in 1/10th second increments. However, it added 0.1 to a floating point number. Unfortunately, 0.1 in binary is a repeating number, similar to 1/3rd in binary being 0.333333333...

So, ten times every second the time drifted just the tiniest bit. The missile that missed had been running for days, so its clock was one third of a second off, and a Scud travels a long way during that time.

Let that be a lesson to all of you: use an integer counter, and divide by 10 to get the time in seconds.

Well first of all, your premise is false: both milk and yogurt are available in typical Japanese grocery stores. Milk is served in the Japanese school lunch program, and milk consumption in Japan has been increasing since WWII.
http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/18596/1/wp050401.pdf
http://www.westonaprice.org/Inside-Japan-Surprising-Facts-About-Japanese-Foodways.html

The trend there is increased social and culinary westernization, not a biological shift.

Hmm , I find it implausable that millions of people in one part of the world would completely ignore a very nutritious and readily available form of food for millenia simply out of culinary preference.

Really? In the US, insect and reptile consumption is virtually nonexistent, fish is a very small percentage of our diet (even on the coasts), and about the only eggs we eat are chicken eggs. We're one of the few western nations that don't consume blood, which is extremely nutritious, nor do we eat organ meat, aside from the occasional liver. Despite the availability of a wide range of vegetables, corn and potatoes dominate consumption patterns. I'm pretty sure spinach intolerance isn't to blame.

This material could conceivably be studied by a student on his or her own, but this seldom works out. Students tend to get stuck on something, and, having no goad to keep them going, they try to get past it with decreasing energy, and ultimately develop mental blocks against going on. Having an organized course prevents this by forcing them to face obstacles like exams and assignments.

If you attempt this and get stuck, as is almost inevitable, you could try emailing us and we can try to unstick you.

Did you catch that last part? You're going to need help. Whether it's bribing your nerdy friends with cases of beer or Star Wars Galaxy Series Five collectible card packs (*cough* *cough*) you are going to need guidance at certain points in time. Don't be afraid to ask those around you or -- and I recommend this only in dire cases -- dressing up like a student and rolling into your local university asking to see the precalc professor for help.

Your codex might be Wikipedia. Your codex might be Wolfram's MathWorld. My codex sits three feet in front of my face as I type this. My codex (and this is purely personal) Bronshtein et al's Handbook of Mathematics. The binding is acceptable. The paper is not the greatest. The content is priceless. This is not a teaching device. This is my starting point. If I were you my ending point would be at my college's library pouring over all calculus textbooks. The great thing about this starting point is that I like how it lays out all the starting points leading up to that starting point in case I need to start backwards. Another great thing about this particular resource is that it has nearly everything imaginable and is well organized. The bad thing is that it costs $71.97. I think I paid $60 for mine but either way it's not free like Wikipedia.

I don't know where you are comfortable starting from but if I were you I would simply research what your learning institutions pre requisites are and spend your free time now acquiring their books and notes in order to make sure you have them covered. All of my old University of Minnesota syllabuses are online although I cannot find the Math department equivalent (aside from the registration listings).

If you could name your courses, I'd suggest books like The Annotated Turing which has been a page turner for me and actually starts with basic set theory to work up to automata. I'm guessing you're aiming for more Multivariable and Diff Eq type stuff. Let us know what the courses are and perhaps more human readable works can be suggested that aren't as laboriously mind numbing as reading a codex would be.

A random bookmark I happened to have, here.

This isn't quite the same issue, the focus is on scratch removal, but it's close.

I know this is against /. 's unwritten rules, but here are actual results of previous tries:

http://www.cehd.umn.edu/research/highlights/Sleep/ and http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080609071202.htm and http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/133246.php

Ok, now back to fantasies about sex-crazed teens left unattended but apparently with the means to get to their FWB's house at 7 AM...

You may be listening to the wrong stations, then... Admittedly, the Clearchannel stations are told by the RIAA what they're going to be playing, but there *are* indie/alternative stations in most major cities that will play indie music and promote local artists.

Here's the one I listen to the most: http://live885.com/

Don't get me wrong, there are some good bands here ... and especially the international ones are good. I have CDs of Arcade Fire and We Were Promised Jetpacks but let's not kid ourselves, Pearl Jam has some albums on UMG. Red Hot Chili Peppers is on EMI. From a quick glance at the playlist, a lot of these bands aren't directly on big labels but they're on labels like Island Records which is now owned by UMG. Even the renowned subpop walks a fine line with Warner's half ownership.

If you want a good idea of what I'm talking about, check out the programming at my old college's radio station. It even appears that Minnesota Public Radio has a better mix of both indie and big four than live 885. When I listen to these channels on the internet, I find that I am constantly writing down acts and constantly going directly to their pages to send them $8-$10 for an album. I wish more people took this organic approach to finding out what your music tastes are instead of being force fed commercialized music or trying to align your tastes with your friends'.

Live 885 has some good stuff and is way more palatable to the average listener but if you could point out a Radio K or even The Current for the DC area where I now live, I would thank you endlessly.

If there was a bug, it's unlikely the final result would make sense. "It would go fastest with the engine in the ground!", or "it would go fastest with the engine backwards!". With that many calculations, one error would be magnified.

A floating point conversion error caused an Ariane 5 rocket to explode back in 1996

http://www.ima.umn.edu/~arnold/disasters/ariane.html

The University of Minnesota is moving all their e-mail over to Google as well. The push from the top doesn't seem to take into account that some faculty, staff, and students DO NOT WANT their e-mail going to Google. The plans are a joke; you can see them at http://www.oit.umn.edu/google-initiative/. The way it's being handled is like it's somebody's MBA project or something, not like something that's really being done for the benefit of the U. If you know staff there talk to them about it.

Thanks for the confirmation.

Let's show the world what the US can do when disaster strikes.

Yes.. let's

disaster - result

disaster - result

disaster - result? Still waitin' on that one.

As for Haiti? Look at who's been meddling all this time.

Us. We've been meddling, and not in a good way. We can't change the past, all we can do is try harder to do the right thing in the future.

Let's show the world what the US can do when disaster strikes.

Yes.. let's

disaster - result

disaster - result

disaster - result? Still waitin' on that one.

As for Haiti? Look at who's been meddling all this time.

Mod parent down for grossly exaggerating. Cases of over diagnosis/treatment are rare in the real world. Any doctor worth a damn will only medicate kids with a real problem. i think you're reacting to something that isn't as real as you think it is. We have a tendency to hear/think about negative things far more than positive. You won't hear about the 10 kids whose lives radically improved after being treated, only about the 1 kid that was misdiagnosed. If that rare misdiagnosis twists your panties you're going to think about it every time the matter appears (and ignore pounds of case files about proper treatment).

Some kids DO have these conditions. Some kids will cope, others will spend their lives struggling. Our prisons are packed with people who have these conditions and weren't diagnosed or treated. My own life could have been radically different if i had been diagnosed. i went to school under people who "think" like you do. So i was "undisciplined and lazy". With treatment i could have earned the grades to go to college with scholarships instead of doing four years in the USAF followed by borrowing $30K.

Much of this cavalier attitude you're showing comes from ignorance backed by a religious belief that humans are meat occupied by spirits. That all we do is a matter of choice and will. When the reality is that we're only meat. With the addition or removal of this or that chemical we can make a person more or less violent, attentive, horny or whatever. We can herd the cats in people heads to help them deal with a world that doesn't care if someone keeps changing the channel in their head. Consciousness can only do so much.

i'd love to be as disciplined and awesome as you are, but my brain works like a radio in scan mode. Ever few seconds the channel changes without any input from me. Without medication sleep i get about 4 hours of sleep per day because the noise will not stop. But the rest of the world is like you, they don't get it, and they don't give a shit. They don't care that i'm reliving conversations from 15 years ago while they are talking to me. All they care about is that i forgot what they said. If only i could be as attentive and perfect as you!

As for helmets... brain injuries are often permanent and life altering. It is a risk that just isn't worth taking. A helmet is tiny thing to require. Do you wear your seatbelt or are you so tough that you could just walk it off after slamming your head into a windshield at 50 MPH? Wow, you are so cool.

i will agree with you that some parents are over protective and paranoid with regards to kidnapping and molesters and the like. i was allowed to range far and wide as a kid. i didn't have to go far to encounter a molester, he was right next door which is more typical than the "guy in the van". Kids should be allowed a long enough leash to learn how to handle themselves.

On the matter of cocooning and protecting them from challenge, i agree. Giving kids challenges and allowing them to make decisions is usually great for their development. As long as some responsible adult is there to make sure it's not TOO stupid.

The third sentence from the end highlights your ignorance with a search light and flashing neon arrows. You say that they shouldn't be taking medication for anything less than a physical problem. ADD, ADHD, Aspergers and the like ARE PHYSICAL PROBLEMS. Your brain is part of your body. Those conditions are as physical as diabetes.

The last sentence makes me wonder if you're trolling. It's so unhinged that it seems like satire or concern trolling.

Become less ignorant:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9679423
http://www.crimetimes.org/02b/w02bp1.htm
http://www.bhsi.org/stats.htm
http://enhs.umn.edu/current/6120/bicycle/index.html

Oh please. Men are on average about 12kg larger than women and are much more prone to spousal abuse - It's because of men that domestic violence is framed as a women's issue. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, women are 7 to 10 times more likely to be injured during an act of violence, while men commit 90% of domestic homicides, and before you start complaining about the unfair treatment men get from public institutions, maybe you should have taken the time to find out that women are much more likely to be convicted for murdering their spouses than men.

Also, could you please cite statistics for the "commonly shocking occurrence" of women tricking men into raising children that arent' their own, especially in regards to the other "shockingly common occurrence" of men skipping town after getting their partner pregnant? Or women forced to raise children conceived by rape - how's that for "having no say in how the pregnancy turns out"? Just try to tell me with a straight face that men get raped by women as much as women get raped by men. You mentioned molested boys, but do you really think that it's women that are abusing them?

Your indignation at Americans not taking "men's issues seriously" and then citing examples like rape and domestic violence is absurd since those areas in particular lay bare the fact that men and women's issues are inherently different. If anything, Americans elevate "men's issues" (crime, unemployment, war) disproportionately over other pressing issues, like equality, which you seem to have a seething disdain for (is your solution to racism for minorities to "grow up and take responsibility for all the crap they do" to white people?). Nice straw man, but your meaningless call for women to "as a group decide to grow up" is childish especially since all the "crap" you mentioned is a much worse problem for women.

And while you're spending your time figuring out why something that isn't broken works, he is coding something that you aren't coding at all.

How do you know it isn't broken if you can't prove it works? You don't. It could be platform specific, it could be compiler specific, it could be accessing invalid memory that is by chance set to a valid value in another section of code. This means the algorithm doesn't work, and would need to be rewritten when it breaks later down the road. Any software developer worth hiring should know this. If you can't figure it out yourself, ask another developer, because shit like this is not acceptable in production code.

Sure, coding until it passes isn't the ideal, but it's a whole lot better than not coding at all (you).

Erroneous code can be worse than nothing. I'd rather know that I didn't have code for a task, rather than depend on faulty results. Just ask the 23 soldiers killed when their patriot missile battery did not launch and they were killed by a Scud missile. Better to know you are exposed and to seek cover, rather than have a false sense of security and die.

Extreme example, of course, but I'd much rather have no software, instead of software that just appears to work.

To sum up the data: Per Capita Income in "Blue" states is 20% higher then in Red States and Graduation rates are 5.4% higher. Violent and Property crime are 11.1% and 10.1% higher respectively in states controlled by Republican Legislatures. In terms of taxation, "Blue" States overwhelmingly pay far more in taxes then they receive in federal outlays, with the money going to "Red" states. Interestingly, under pretty much every measure of administrative efficiency, Democratic governments do better then Republican ones, by a sizeable margin.

Brush it off as the price of hedonist sin? 9 out of 10 of the states with the lowest divorce rates are blue states, while all 10 out of 10 of the top 10 states are red states. All of the top 16 states with the highest abortion rates voted for Bush, while 9 out of 10 of the states with the lowest rates voted for Kerry.

Unlike you, I'm not going to be a dick and assume Correlation-->Causation, but for what it's worth, the evidence is on my side, not yours.

Other nitpicks:

1) When my home state, Florida, got hit by Hurricanes in 2004, crop yields fell by 40%. But unlike Nicaragua, we were part of a large country, most of which was not hit by a Hurricane, that was able to carry us through for our eating needs. Nicaragua meanwhile, is roughly the size of Miami-Dade county. When it gets hit by a hurricane, the entire country gets hit. And so without importing food from elsewhere, famine is inevitable. It's a little inexplicable that this didn't occur to you in your analysis.

2) "There was no famine in New Orleans. There was a major break down in law and order and other failures of the local government."

Don't rewrite history. I remember when it took days and days for the government to get *anybody* to the Superdrome as 20,000 people were in dire need of food and water. We spend more on our military then literally every other country combined, but we couldn't air drop food and water onto a large stationary target on our territory? (And don't mention security. Our National Guard manages to run humanitarian efforts in Fallujah under heavy weapon fire). It was a terrible display of incompetence, and voters saw it too, with the disaster triggering a huge structural decrease in Bush's approval ratings.

3) Unless the pre-Katrina government of New Orleans engaged in policies that nationalized the means of production, then calling them "Socialist" makes you look like a dumbass.

I read about a research a while ago (years, sorry no source) that states that acquiring large sums of money creates the same kind of euphoria as for instance using cocaine as it causes the same neurotransmitters to be produced in the brain. Irrational need for more and more money is a real addiction I think and should be treated as such.

Did you mean something like this? http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111579154 though it's more related to love according to this article.

Researcher Xinyue Zhou, of the department of psychology at Sun Yat-Sen University in China, puts it in very human terms. "We think money works as a substitute for another pain buffer -- love."

And they link to this pdf http://www.csom.umn.edu/assets/127771.pdf
Seems like if you handle money you can endure certain amounts of pain a bit more if the study is correct and you feel more strength.

snow melts better from the bottom than from the top. when melting from the top the insulating properties keep the heat away altogether, heated from the bottom, the insulating effect can help because the heat under the snow is trapped by the snow so almost all of it is expended on the snow rather than dispersing into the environment, also water from melting snow does not fall away from the heat source, but rather sits on it and gets warmer as it flows down the surface of the dome, melting even more snow.

1. Snow and ice float on top of water. The water will flow partway down the dome, then re-freeze, forming an ice dam. Look at any poorly insulated roof. Yu can even see this effect in miniature on car roofs in the winter.

2. Most of the problem with melting snow is the energy required for phase change, from crystalline to liquid. It's going to stay at the freezing point for a LONG time.

3. What heat? The snow is blocking the sun, so the dome doesn't warm up. Also, sun falling on the snow is mostly reflected back into space. Cities absorb more insolation in the winter because of pavements, buildings, etc. - they're islands of comparative warmth compared to the snow-covered country around them. The dome, by allowing a blanket of snow to cover the city, chills the city.

Of course that is the solution they used that caused the problem.

So first you berate people for not reading the article, then when they point out it contradicts you suddenly it's wrong? You have to be a troll....

Ignore my other reply about accumulated error, it turns that I was wrong. The software problem was actually as simple as the loss of precision in the fixed-point multiply. Very simple but complete description is available here.

If the OP was correct, then PATRIOT failed because it did none of them. My bet is in reality, they simply underestimated the actual error term, but did everything else correct.

Read this, and take into account that the Patriot system was designed to be reset once every 36 hours to protect against arithmetic drift, but the operators didn't want to switch them off in case a Scud flew over while they were rebooting.

The engineers didn't fail. The manual writers, or the trainers did.

I would say to RTFA, but it's so badly written that it doesn't make it clear that this is precisely what they did.

The problem is that the system clock was counting in 0.1 second increments, but the targeting maths was being done in units of 1s, and the conversion from one to the other was done with insufficient precision for the operating conditions.

There are more details here.

Yes, there have been compilations of such examples... why indeed is this news?

Nothing to see here, move along...

"H1N1 appears to be more contagious than seasonal influenza," the WHO said in an online statement released today. "The secondary attack rate of seasonal influenza ranges from 5% to 15%. Current estimates of the secondary attack rate of H1N1 range from 22% to 33%." (The secondary attack rate is defined as the frequency of new cases of a disease among the contacts of known cases.)

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/swineflu/news/may1109severity.html

Incorrect.

No. In fact NOTHING you've said contradicts my statement IN ANY WAY.

With a sufficient number of vaccinated individuals in a population, an effect call heard immunity comes into play. This protects people who cannot get the vaccine (people allergic to it, etc.) or who the vaccine does not work on.

This is bull. There are a MINUSCULE number of people in the world which would chose to get vaccinated, but CAN'T for various reasons. So for the sake of the 0.01% of the population, you believe we should compel EVERYONE ELSE to get vaccinated, and thereby CAUSE many MORE health issues? It's idiotic.

There has been a 4 year study done in Ontario on this with respect to seasonal flu vaccines and found favorable results.

That article is missing the huge disclaimer on that study: "The authors point out that one of the major drawbacks of the study was random variation which limits the abilities of small vaccine trials to assess the real relationship between vaccination and influenza."

I find most interesting this combination of quotes:

"the researchers found that the mortality decreases in Ontario compared with the other provinces were statistically significant only in those aged 85 or older." http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/general/news/oct2908ontario.html
&
"The results also indicated that increasing immunization rates were not as clearly associated with a reduction in mortality and health care need in older people, especially older than 75 years, in comparison with younger people." http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/126891.php

And TWO of the 3 links I posted include studies in Alberta and Ontario, explaining why the vaccine is scarcely effective, and why many flu studies greatly exaggerate results...

When OJ Simpson was arrested in the 90s, Newsweek and Time both ran his mugshot. Time simply reduced the color saturation, and the effect was dramatic.

One such polarization experiment is EBEX. This experiment seeks to map the CMB polarization from a balloon-borne telescope.

One of the consequences of working for a truly global conspiracy is that many of us are based in countries where, despite our malign influence on the mass media, US television is sadly unavailable. Our sources inform us that 'Colbert' can only be accessed in our current location by a subscription to News Corporation's FX channel, and there some things even we are not prepared to stoop to. We humbly suggest that your cultural assumptions are even wider of the mark than your beliefs about infectious disease, though it is of course perfectly understandable that anyone immersed in the American mass media would attribute all use of ironic language to one of the few sources they are likely to be familiar with.

We do not, of course, encourage critical thinking. Anyone wishing to follow this dangerous route would probably start by consulting one of the providers of 'reliable' information we have not yet managed to suppress or discredit, such as:

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/panflu/index.html

http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/

http://www.euro.who.int/influenza/ah1n1

and applying some common sense and a modicum of scientific training. We would much prefer that everyone else receives their information from (e.g.) self-publicising osteopaths citing scare stories from UK tabloids with similar credibility to Fox News, including the memorable article that turns a sensible precaution about a possible rare complication of vaccination into a Deadly Nerve Disease Warning. Otherwise we might get people reading things like this:

http://www.cdc.gov/FLU/about/qa/gbs.htm

"Several studies have been done to evaluate if other flu vaccines since 1976 were associated with GBS. Only one of the studies showed an association. That study suggested that one person out of 1 million vaccinated persons may be at risk of GBS associated with the vaccine."

and comparing any possible risk with the real case fatality rate of swine flu, which would never do.

Science Museum of Minnesota is a remarkable place, esp if you want to learn about the earth's surface. They have teamed up with the National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics to create some pretty amazing exhibits, including the Big Back Yard (mini-golf that teaches you about rivers) and Science on a Sphere (just go see it to see what I mean). California Academy of Science in the Golden Gate Park of San Francisco has just reopened in a remarkable new building. Its a green design with an entire tropical ecosystem contained in a 3 story tall glass sphere.

Second, most corporate or educational institutions require their staff to sign over ownership of intellectual work products as a basis for employment in the first place.

actually, there is a rising trend at educational institutions to go the opposite direction, as far as ip that is academic in nature. the university of minnesota in 2007 adopted new copyright guidelines in which "The University shall maintain the strong academic tradition that vests copyright ownership of academic works in the faculty."

Here's a typical bit of Open Source design suckage.

I just installed the latest version of Blender, over an existing installation. The installer can't find the exact version of Python it wants (which, incidentally, is not a currently supported version.) The program itself can, it's just the installer that's broken. Typical.

Now I want to draw a spiral spring. Naturally, that's not built-in; I'll need a third-party plug-in. So I find the Blender Plug-In Repository using Google. That says "The main page for Blender python scripts is now: here. That gets "If you are not redirected within 5 seconds, click here", which then redirects to a dead link.

OK, let's try Blender's main site and search for "plugins". That leads to documentation on how to code a plugin. Another search result returns "Plugin functionalities varies so much that it is not possible to describe them here. Differently than Texture Plugins Sequence Plugins do not have a Buttons in any Button Window, but their parameters are usually accessed via NKEY." Really.

OK, let's just try "blender spiral" in Google. This gets a script for drawing spirals. That's nice. But it's a ".rar" file. That's not something Blender-specific. It's a proprietary Russian archiving format. The RAR site promotes something called "RegistryBooster", which is a strong indication of involvement with hostile code. So I probably don't want to buy the WinRAR product so I can decompress something which is a few lines of Python. This

Typical.