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NT has a pretty powerful DOS batch scripting program. I'm not entirely familiar with Vista, but I suspect it still retains that capability. Here's how the Vista (and XP and Windows 2000 and NT) batch scripting will suit your needs: 1) simple 2) works in Vista 3) portable 4) not an online app 5) does not use Java It does fail miserablely in the F/OSS requirement, however - it will be proprietary to your needs. But on the upside, there are no libraries to install -- it's all built in. --------------- DOS scripting can do variable expansions, for loops of numbers, for loops of directory entries, and such. It can be configred to read in entries from flat files, and parse each line and split arrays, and such - perfect for your needs. --------------- Failing that, you can write simple Visual Basic files (.vbs files) that you can execute from the command line. These things are great, because you can use the Windows Scheduler to schedule execution of these batch files, the batch files can spawn other batch processes, kick off other jobs, etc. http://www.computerhope.com/sethlp.htm http://www.robvanderwoude.com/variableexpansion.html http://www.maem.umr.edu/batch/dadd.htm

just let me know when they provide a nuclear option

It's a little expensive and has lots of regulations for it, but that's old tech dating back to the 1950's.

http://www.nuc.umr.edu/nuclear_facts/spacepower/spacepower.html

That's not a close-up of the propeller -- THIS is a close-up!

Exactly why this has become a major research topic at universities.

These clowns overreached enough when they targeted the public Ivies on that list (Penn State, Ohio State, Minnesota et al), but they must be downright mad to go after Missouri Rolla. Why in the name of all that is good would you want to piss off a school full of explosive demolition engineers?

Effective Jan. 1, 2008, UMR becomes Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T)

http://www.umr.edu/namechange/

Even if we had a breakthrough and suddenly we had all the equations and knowledge to build practical fusion reactors, fusion power would still be at least a decade away.

5 years to design it into a power plant, find and obtain a site, necessary permits, etc... Then 5 years to actually build the thing.

I'll believe that it's twenty years away when we have a working plant sustaining a fusion reaction for testing purposes. IE operating the thing for days/weeks, not seconds/minutes.

We had the first nuclear pile in 1942. The first nuclear reactor to produce electricity came online in 1951. It wasn't until 1957 when the first commercial fission plant came online. 15 years from the first pile until a commercial plant. All signs point towards fusion being bigger and more difficult, so I figure one will take even longer to build than a fission plant.

I don't know if any of this is possible, but Cerenkov radiation is very cool to look at.

http://campus.umr.edu/reactor/cerenkov.html

Don't tell the worrymongers, but I hear other space craft (take for instance Voyager - wouldn't work with just solar...) already contain RTGs.

I think that is the real problem, the cost of dealing with "customer support" of this caliber isn't really worked in to the calculations. I recently had to call Dell customer support, because a laptop I was using was shorting out. My boss and I quickly diagnosed the problem, in under ten minutes. It would run from the battery, but would instantly power off whenever it was plugged in. We swapped power supplies with an identical laptop: same results. We swapped batteries: same results. It had to be either (a) a short where the power supply plugs in to the computer, or (b) a bad motherboard. Either way, it needed to be sent in.

I am practically done with my MS in computer science, and my boss has a PhD in electrical engineering. I think we are qualified enough to diagnose an electrical problem with a laptop. Unfortunately, Dell customer support thought otherwise. I got some Indian guy named "Jacob" on the phone. This very unique name for an Indian was probably so that your average American wouldn't have to try to pronounce his real name, but I thought it was kind of funny. Not that I would have any trouble with his real name, since so many of my friends here at UMR are Indians. "Jacob" felt the need to go through the entire script, which involved me going under my desk several times to unplug and replug the system, which wouldn't have any real effect anyway, if it was just the brick that had gone bad. After about an hour of this, "Jacob" finally decided that my laptop's motherboard was bad.

But that wasn't the end of it. I spent another hour trying to figure out who Dell thought owned the computer. I knew who really owned the computer (my employer) but apparently they had mis-registered the thing to some random employee, that I found out about a week later had left the company a year ago. As far as Dell was concerned, she was the laptop's owner.

When all is said and done, I probably wasted about four hours of my time, on the clock, dealing with Dell customer support. Do you think that money was saved? I make three or four times as much as what a tech support guy would make in America, who would have been able to get the thing taken care of in about fifteen minutes. This has honestly got to be the worst experience I ever had calling customer support, with the sole exception of ATI back in 1999, who wouldn't even answer the phone for several days in a row, which was an international call to boot (Canada).

My company doesn't buy stuff from Dell anymore, it quit well before this call. They moved to Alienware (although Dell just bought them out, so now they are buying from some local shop near the Omaha office now I think). I haven't bought anything from ATI since, and probably never will. I will be personally buying a laptop in the not-too-distant future. It won't be a Dell.

Or is it?

You might be interested in D. radiodurans which can survive 1.5 million rads whereas 500 - 1,000 rads can kill a human. However this item explains the repair mechanism.

My mug is Stainless steel why bother with ceramic. I can drop it from anywhere. And if I feel ambitious I can beat people with it. It can also break ceramic cups. Yes, I know it a ceramic cup contest but, why bother with ceramic.
I thought that undergraduate students at this "University" would be working on more meaningfull experiments.
Seems like this experiment belongs in High School. Reminds me of the high school egg drop contest.
First place was multiple ceramic cups with a very thick base.
Diffrent cups were dropped by each member until they broke. Each member had one drop.
I think that is called blind luck. And in a scientific comunity this test can not be reproduced.
Second place was a crumple zone thing.
Sure works well but, it is not practical and adds at least 50% if not more material.
Any forward thinking here? I don't think so.

First place:
http://news.umr.edu/news/2006/mugdrop06.html
second place:
http://infohost.nmt.edu/mainpage/news/2006/15feb01 .html

Why read how the 2nd place finishers did?

Here's the article that should have been posted (from the winners) and with pictures and tactics.

http://news.umr.edu/news/2006/mugdrop06.html

Rolla came in 2nd in 2005 and 1st in '06.

http://news.umr.edu/news/2006/mugdrop06.html

You kids have it easy these days! I went to an engineering-focused school where there was 4 guys to every 1 girl. (But the old timers told me that we had it good... after all, the school started in the 1800s with an all-male role.)

I would have been happier with a college experience even with 2 guys to every girl, let alone the majority of students being women.

This is called Computer Voice Stress Analysis (CVSA). It has been largely discredited as being less effective then polygraphy (I think).

I wish I could provide a more authoratative link, but it's difficult. The entire field of lie detection is so buried in political bullshit that it's almost impossible to tell what is and is not effetive. Every study is from someone on the take, and every cited study is funded by the citer. For example, take this from the American Association of Polygraphers with, surprisingly, a comprehensive listing of why CVSA doesn't work.

As I understand it, from people I talked with involved in security at my previous government job, pretty much all lie-detectors and methods is 90% psychological and 10% actual. In other words, having the subject believe it works is where 90% of the effectiveness comes from. For specific situations (ie, did you kill Jim-bob), polygraphy seems to be far more effetive then CVSA. For general-purpose ("Have you ever done anything bad?"), all forms of lie-detector are suspect, at best, and very much a voodoo-science. CVSA's lure comes from the fact that it's cheap and easy to train people to use, and less intrusive (requires less calm enviornment). However, it's far less effective then polygraphy, and it's primary function is to give the interregator a psychological advantage, and no more.

The symbol c in the subject equation, and generally, stands for the speed of light in a vacuum, 299792452 meters/second. In any other medium light travels slower than c, by a factor equal to the inverse of the index of refraction. Id est, for water the index of refraction is about 4/3, so light travels through water 3/4 as fast as it does through vacuum.

While people may have set up interesting media through which light travels at some odd speed, no one has ever observed light traveling through a vacuum at other than c. Indeed, it's a bedrock principle of relativity that it cannot.

Interestingly, the eerie blue glow you see coming from nuclear reactor cores that live at the bottom of pools of water (called Cerenkov radiation) is emitted by particles coming from the core that are traveling faster than the speed of light in water (although of course slower than c). The blue light is a sort of "optic boom" similar in its origin to the "sonic boom" you hear from aircraft exceeding the speed of sound.

How can you say that this war does not demand R&D when we have 50 soldiers getting killed a month?

For one, we need to have research in ways of detecting IEDs by other means besides having them blow up on us, and the government is working on this:

http://www.hsarpabaa.com/main/BAA0503_solicitation _notice.htm

http://www.emclab.umr.edu/research/IED_Detection.h tml

http://www.special-operations-technology.com/print _article.cfm?DocID=1129

And we are building a better armored vehicle to replace the HUMMER.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-08-23-hum vees-main_x.htm

And we need to have a means of intercepting RPGs in flight.

http://www.deagel.com/pandora/cicm_de00400001.aspx

If you want real genius with Postscript, I think this qualifies.

Actually the cars are very safe. unlike your passanger car, each one features a full roll cage, have a fire extinguiser, 5 point harness. and riders must beable to exit the care in only a few seconds. Most of the cars feature a full telemtrics system. IN short they are far safer than anything you will ever ride in. Additionaly all vechicals are supported by their teams. This includes lead and chase cars with yellow warning lights, and onboard emergency members, which are more than cappable of dealing with all but emergency medical situations. a circle track race isnt the same kind of engineering challenge. (yes they do do circle track races with these solar cars) These cars have to prove their abilities on roads whith varring terrain, weather conditions, enviroments, and physical properties. Plus lets face it, road races are more entertaining for te public, who line the roads when the cars go through. \http://solar42.umr.edu/

Actually, they have to stay within the speed limit. That's the only reason they don't go faster. UMR won last time. I'm hoping they can take it again. http://news.umr.edu/news/2005/solarprkit05.html

There hasn't been a Federal Interstate speed lmit in, oh, 10 years now. Each state is allowed to set their own Interstate speed limits. For example, it's 70mph through most of MO, and 75 in CO I think. Interestingly, the last time I drove through KS to CO, everyone slowed down when crossing the border, even though the speed limit went up! I think it had something to do with the sign that said "Speed limits are enforced."

Back On-topic: Go UMR! Time for Solar Miner IV to win a second race!

Close enough for digital circuits!

The University of Missouri-Rolla does some work with virtual reality. I'm not involved in it but you can find out more http://web.umr.edu/~vrpl/news.htm here. I found a pic of what they call the http://web.umr.edu/~vrpl/pictures/cave04.jpg "cave". Plenty of other pics and information there for those who are interested.

The University of Missouri-Rolla does some work with virtual reality. I'm not involved in it but you can find out more http://web.umr.edu/~vrpl/news.htm here. I found a pic of what they call the http://web.umr.edu/~vrpl/pictures/cave04.jpg "cave". Plenty of other pics and information there for those who are interested.

That is actually one of the weirdest road signs I have ever seen: On I-44 Eastbound on the way from Rolla (home of a good engineering school and not much else), there is a mileage sign saying St. Louis ??MI 100KM (can't remember how many miles, if I remembered my basic engineering stuff I could figure it out). That is the only time I have seen metric on a US road sign, only that one sign. It's still there.

The University of Missouri at Rolla has a half-scale version of Stonehenge on campus. (See http://web.umr.edu/~stonehen/) This one is constructed from solid granite, not easily eroded sandstone (like the original), nor wood, drywall, and sprayed concrete (like the one in New Zealand). Sam Hill built his version of Stonehenge in Maryhill, Washington before anyone knew much about the original and so it has no astronomical alignments; UMR Stonehenge has additional features and alignments beyond the original.

UMR has also had SSO with kerberos for a long time now.

Braintrax is a system being developing by one of my officemates at the University of Missouri-Rolla. It tracks your progress and hands you problems in algebra and calculus depending on your skill level. Braintrax

How do you spell creat/create and do you agree with Ken that this is the biggest thing that needs fixing in Unix?

It's interesting, actually. The best-known radiotolerant bacterium, Deinococcus radiodurans, was actually discovered in radiation-sterilized meat. The entire Deinococcus genus (eight known species) consists of extremophiles; they share some very robust DNA repair processes.

On the other hand, they're quite safe to eat. Although they can cope with very high doses of radiation, like most extremophiles they're poorly suited to competition with other bacteria in less challenging environments--in the human gut, for example. The D. radiodurans was only observed after radiation treatment cleared the field, as it were.

The real question we should be asking is not whether or not radiation sterilization is a safe procedure, but whether the food industry will consider it a panacea and become more lax in their other handling procedures as a result. After all--how did D. radiodurans get into the meat in the first place?

UMR Stonehenge was dedicated on June 20, 1984 (summer solstice), at the site of the northwest edge of campus. Approximately 160 tons of granite were used in the monument. The rock was cut to the proper dimensions by UMR's Waterjet equipment. This equipment used two waterjets cutting at a pressure of 15,000 pounds per square inch traversing the surface just like a conventional saw. The cutter moved at a speed of about 10 feet per minute and cut between one-quarter and one-half inch on each path.

The University of Missouri Rolla has had a 1/2 scale replica of Stonehenge since the 1970's. It was cut out using water jets that the mining department and the engineering research lab had been working on.

The henge itself was a collaboration between the mining dept and the physics dept. Physics got involved to make sure it was accurate. After all, the original is several thousand years out of date. Whenever you see a show describing it, they usually talk about how they had to model where the sun was in the sky at the time when Stonehenge was in active use, and by-golly, it worked. UMR's henge works correctly as a solar calendar calibrated for now.

Kind of an interesting project, and one of those sort of distinctive things around the campus.

Not like the ugly pink bathroom signs. (Previous link, beneath the UMR henge.)

The University of Missouri Rolla has had a 1/2 scale replica of Stonehenge since the 1970's. It was cut out using water jets that the mining department and the engineering research lab had been working on.

The henge itself was a collaboration between the mining dept and the physics dept. Physics got involved to make sure it was accurate. After all, the original is several thousand years out of date. Whenever you see a show describing it, they usually talk about how they had to model where the sun was in the sky at the time when Stonehenge was in active use, and by-golly, it worked. UMR's henge works correctly as a solar calendar calibrated for now.

Kind of an interesting project, and one of those sort of distinctive things around the campus.

Not like the ugly pink bathroom signs. (Previous link, beneath the UMR henge.)

UMR did this many moons ago.

Chernobyl was a graphite fire - the fire is probably what is being described.

There is a visible phenomenon - Cerenkov radiation - a beautiful blue glow produced when fast moving particles strike water (speed of light in a transparent medium is a function of refractive index -- if particles have to "slow down", that energy has to go somewhere - it gets shot out in a cone of radiation).

If you're seeing Cerenkov radiation at the bottom of a reactor pool, it's beautiful. If you're seeing it because the neutron flux through your eyeballs is enough that your vitreous humor is glowing blue, it's probably less than beautiful, given that if you know what you're seeing, you realize that your lifespan is probably best measured in hours/weeks, rather than years.

Given that the only probable reports of seeing Cerenkov radiation from within the eyeball have been criticality incidents at very close range (1946, Tickling the dragon's tail"> and 1999 Japan, Tokaimura), I'm skeptical that the people on top of the building were seeing Cerenkov radiation from within their eyeballs.

Chernobyl wasn't just a graphite fire, however, it was also a steam explosion. It's plausible (I don't have the numbers) that the neutron flux being spewed from the building was high enough to make condensing steam in the nearby air glow blue.

From the account provided, there's insufficient data to sway me one way or the other -- were witnesses seeing light from the burning graphite and related fire, or were they seeing Cerenkov light released when you dump a massive neutron flux into a tower of condensing steam. The simpler hypothesis is that it was merely light from the intense fire.

If I had to choose, I'd go with fire, but a single picture from the rooftop, or an eyewitness reporting blue in the fire would be enough to convince me that the shining was the blue light of Cerenkov radiation brought on by the dumping of insane numbers of neutrons into condensing droplets of water as the steam condensed.

Aside to Elena: Thank you again for documenting this.

I don't know what the shining at Chernobyl was, but maybe it was something like the Cerenkov Radiation "blue glow".

That bacteria would be Deinococcus radiodurans. Literally, 'strange berry that withstands radiation'. Its trick is actually several copies of important genes on different chromosomes, so that it can line up a good copy with a bad one and rapidly make the repair to damaged DNA. From this site:

Among the many characteristics of D. radiodurans, a few of the most noteworthy include an extreme resistance to genotoxic chemicals, oxidative damage, high levels of ionizing and ultraviolet radiation, and dehydration. The ability to survive such extreme environments is attributed to D. radiodurans ability to repair damaged chromosomes. It is known that heat, dehydration and radiation causes double-strand breaks in chromosomal DNA. D. radiodurans will repair these chromosome fragments, usually within 12-24 hours, using a two-system process with the latter being the most crucial method. Initially, D. radiodurans use a process called single-strand annealing to reconnect some chromosome fragments. Next, D. radiodurans use a process known as homologous recombination, where a modified yet efficient RecA protein patches double-strand breaks. RecA protein works by cutting usable DNA from another molecule and inserting it into the damaged strand.

However, these repair methods alone are not unique to D. radiodurans, which therefore cannot account for its radiation resistance. The aforementioned statement has led scientists to propose the "Life Saver" hypothesis. The hypothesis states, that in order to speed homologous recombination, D. radiodurans align copies of its genome so that identical DNA sequences are near each other. This proposal is now entirely possible due to the verification that D. radiodurans genes come packaged in four distinct circular chromosomes, thus giving stacked loops of DNA and resembling a Life Saver. To add to the list of radiation protective traits, D. radiodurans also possess carotenoid pigments, oxygen toxicity defense enzymes, and a distinctive outer membrane. First, carotenoids, which cause red pigmentation, are thought to act as free radical scavengers, thus increasing resistance to DNA damage by hydroxyl radicals. Next, high levels of enzymes such as superoxide dismutase and catalase both play a role in effective defense mechanisms against oxygen toxicity. Finally, a cell wall forming three or more layers with complex outer membrane lipids and a thick peptidoglycan layer containing the amino acid omithine also serves to protect D. radiodurans from lethal doses of radiation.

"This is highest building in town and in April 26-27, 1986 after reactor exploaded, people gathered on the roof of this building to watch a beautiful shining that rised above APP. They didn't know this was shining of radiation."

This makes me wonder exactly what those people saw. It obviously wouldn't be a bright flash like a nuclear bomb since it wasn't a nuclear explosion, it was a steam explosion with a tremendous amount of aerosolized radioisotope contamination. So it's a good bet that if this story is true they were actually looking at a blue glowing steam/dust cloud with the glow caused by CERENKOV RADIATION in the air!! To actually see Cerenkov radiation in the air would mean that the radiation in that initial rising cloud must have been unbelieveably intense, and they didn't even know the danger of the situation......horrifying.

I'd rather see him pay a la King Louis XIV.
swiiiiisssh! thump! spurt!

It's too bad this year's winner of the American Solar Challenge couldn't raise enough money to ship the car to Australia and compete.

I've had success installing Mandrake using the network install floppy. Here are some simple instructions, but the gist is that you download the network.img and note the location of a rpm mirror for when it asks you. It downloads a 45mb cramfs image and uncompresses it to memory so you should ideally have 90+mb of ram, or mount a swap partition from one of the other terminals.

I would recommend doing a very minimal install consisting of nothing but GNOME or KDE and any servers you wish to run. Then after the install, use urpmi to install any other packages. With 9.1 I would get lynx and use it to grab a list of mirrors from Easy Urpmi. I recommend using Texstar's repository whenever he starts packaging for 9.2. The page currently only has 9.1 and earlier sources, but expect people pestering him from this link to illicit an update.

I've had success installing Mandrake using the network install floppy. Here are some simple instructions, but the gist is that you download the network.img and note the location of a rpm mirror for when it asks you. It downloads a 45mb cramfs image and uncompresses it to memory so you should ideally have 90+mb of ram, or mount a swap partition from one of the other terminals.

I would recommend doing a very minimal install consisting of nothing but GNOME or KDE and any servers you wish to run. Then after the install, use urpmi to install any other packages. With 9.1 I would get lynx and use it to grab a list of mirrors from Easy Urpmi. I recommend using Texstar's repository whenever he starts packaging for 9.2. The page currently only has 9.1 and earlier sources, but expect people pestering him from this link to illicit an update.

There's no business school. There's no school for teachers.

Actually, you're not quite right.

There's an Education program: http://www.umr.edu/index.php?id=310

And the School of Managment and Information Systems offers a Business Administration program: http://www.umr.edu/index.php?id=319

And getting back into sciences, there are programs for pre-med, pre-dentistry, and pre-veterinary, as well as pre-nursing, and pre-law.

The female population is currently listed as 25%. It's been around 23-24% for the past ten years or so. Go back a few years, and it was much worse. In 1977, only 15% of the campus was female. (You used to be able to view the historical enrollment data on the web site, but I can't find it right now.)

There's no business school. There's no school for teachers.

Actually, you're not quite right.

There's an Education program: http://www.umr.edu/index.php?id=310

And the School of Managment and Information Systems offers a Business Administration program: http://www.umr.edu/index.php?id=319

And getting back into sciences, there are programs for pre-med, pre-dentistry, and pre-veterinary, as well as pre-nursing, and pre-law.

The female population is currently listed as 25%. It's been around 23-24% for the past ten years or so. Go back a few years, and it was much worse. In 1977, only 15% of the campus was female. (You used to be able to view the historical enrollment data on the web site, but I can't find it right now.)

Only the most important one,

McNutt Hall

home of the School of Mines and Metallurgy. Or is that what you meant by Geology and Geophysics sans Metallurical, Ceramic, Mining, and Petroleum engineering. For those not familiar with the University of Missouri-Rolla, it was originally the Missouri School of Mines before being "annexed" into the University of Missouri system.

My condolences to the family and friends of Dr. Robert E. Moore. His enthusiasm introducing the wonders of Ceramic engineering during my "camp-out" at the Jackling Institute the summer between my junior and senior years of high school was instrumental in my decision to attend UMR.

UMR class of 1988 (Ceramic Engineering)

JOE MINER!

Only the most important one,

McNutt Hall

home of the School of Mines and Metallurgy. Or is that what you meant by Geology and Geophysics sans Metallurical, Ceramic, Mining, and Petroleum engineering. For those not familiar with the University of Missouri-Rolla, it was originally the Missouri School of Mines before being "annexed" into the University of Missouri system.

My condolences to the family and friends of Dr. Robert E. Moore. His enthusiasm introducing the wonders of Ceramic engineering during my "camp-out" at the Jackling Institute the summer between my junior and senior years of high school was instrumental in my decision to attend UMR.

UMR class of 1988 (Ceramic Engineering)

JOE MINER!