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Climatology is the science, climate change is an event that is happening

Behind the times, are we? Well, if you insist on hair-splitting and arguing semantics, here... In University of Montana, for just one example, you can already minor in Climate Change. A college in a more progressive state may be already offering to major in the same discipline, but I'm too lazy to keep searching...

bet dollar to donuts you don' even know the science is [sic]

Ad hominems... How sad.

This paper indicates 1) that in Lightstone notation, the real number .999... would be written as the hyperreal number .999...;...999 (with a caret over the last 9). And secondly, that that number wouldn't actually be the same number as .999...

http://www.math.umt.edu/tmme/vol7no1/TMME_vol7no1_2010_article1_pp.3_30.pdf

Finally, you still have not shown any flaw in the original (or any other) proof, as far as I've seen.

Bozeman, Montana is now requiring all applicants for city jobs to furnish Internet account information for 'background checking.'

Montana is crazy about background checks. For example, faculty job applicants at University of Montana must agree to a background check even to interview for a job (http://www.umt.edu/jobs/FAC/apfe.html).

Only in Montana can one buy a handgun with no more than a driver's license (http://crime.about.com/od/gunlawsbystate/a/gunlaws_mt.htm), but must go through a full background check to give a talk at the university.

It would be nice to have a peer-reviewed paper cited, rather than a climate-change denialist (and another site, probably also denialist). So here's a link to Running's publication page. The relevant NASA presentations appear to be here. Have fun, folks.

Digital expenses represent an average of 11% of yearly revenue for the mostly big-market stations that have already made the transition. By contrast, the costs for stations in the 100 smallest markets, when they do go digital, will be about 242% of annual revenue.

Luckily for Montana's stations, the 2001 Legislature kicked in $1.9 million for the digital build-out, and both stations plan to meet the deadline with less-than-full-power transmissions.

J.R.R. Tolkien more or less invented high fantasy as we know it

I understand that you like Tolkien but I suggest you take a look at literary history before you make such a claim.

Epic fantasy/mythology - take a look at the ancient greeks for early work. Ever heard of Homer's Odyssey?
C.S. Lewis also often gets compared to Tolkien though I'd call his books lighter reading and the Christian metaphors are a little bit annoying.

Invented languages? Here's a list
http://www.lib.umt.edu/guide/lang/artifph.htm

By the way I love neither the Harry Potter books nor Lord of the Rings nor Homer's works. All eventually put me to sleep with the rich detail. (I don't enjoy multi-page descriptions of things I'm afraid).

Here's more info on the problems with publishing contracts. Don't know if this is accurate but here's a statistic stating "99 percent of all the books ever printed are out-of-print".

I'm not sure about the rest of the country, but where I went to school (for my BA and MA), the single largest source of revenue is from tuition:
http://www.umt.edu/plan/qfbudget.htm
As for student loans, I worked two jobs the whole way through and got out with about $2000 of debt, not to shabby. From what I understand about student loans, it is quite difficult to get any protection from that debt under bankruptcy, so it's pretty rare for anyone to just walk away from that debt.
I did hear a rumor about a pretty clever scam to get around that- as the rumor goes, some law students ran up as much student loan debt as they could, and when they graduated, put all the debt on their credit cards, declared bankruptcy, and voila, no more pesky student loan payments. Not my cup of tea, though, I hate debt.
Isaac

The Land NPP algorithm was developed at the NTSG at the University of Montana. I am the Sys Admin for this group.

We developed the software to do the Gross and Net primary productivity calculations (as well as some others), but the main production runs are done at the Goddard Space Flight Center in a room full of SGI Origin servers. Our development environment consists of several smallish linux beowulf clusters (32x1Ghz P3), a few Althon MP boxes, some old AIX dev boxes, and one SGI Oxygen for nasa code certification. Our largest resource is disk space, we have about 12TB of capacity. Keep in mind that this is just for algorithm development and testing. Goddard's production facility is huge, but that's becuase they are producing tons of other data products as well including all the land, ocean, and atmospheric products off of both the Terra and Aqua Satellites. This land productivity data (MOD17 in nasa speak) is derived in part from the MODIS sensor on Terra.

Both of these satellites are in sun syncronous polar orbits meaning that they come down over the earth's day side. This is because many of the sensors (like MODIS) are passive. Terra is the 'AM' satellite, it crosses the equator about mid morning local time, and Aqua being the 'PM' satellite crosses in the afternoon. The reason for this is because there is a significance in AM and PM cloud cover. Cloud cover is difficult to correct for (in fact with MODIS, sometimes you can't correct).

The Land NPP algorithm was developed at the NTSG at the University of Montana. I am the Sys Admin for this group.

We developed the software to do the Gross and Net primary productivity calculations (as well as some others), but the main production runs are done at the Goddard Space Flight Center in a room full of SGI Origin servers. Our development environment consists of several smallish linux beowulf clusters (32x1Ghz P3), a few Althon MP boxes, some old AIX dev boxes, and one SGI Oxygen for nasa code certification. Our largest resource is disk space, we have about 12TB of capacity. Keep in mind that this is just for algorithm development and testing. Goddard's production facility is huge, but that's becuase they are producing tons of other data products as well including all the land, ocean, and atmospheric products off of both the Terra and Aqua Satellites. This land productivity data (MOD17 in nasa speak) is derived in part from the MODIS sensor on Terra.

Both of these satellites are in sun syncronous polar orbits meaning that they come down over the earth's day side. This is because many of the sensors (like MODIS) are passive. Terra is the 'AM' satellite, it crosses the equator about mid morning local time, and Aqua being the 'PM' satellite crosses in the afternoon. The reason for this is because there is a significance in AM and PM cloud cover. Cloud cover is difficult to correct for (in fact with MODIS, sometimes you can't correct).

The Land NPP algorithm was developed at the NTSG at the University of Montana. I am the Sys Admin for this group.

We developed the software to do the Gross and Net primary productivity calculations (as well as some others), but the main production runs are done at the Goddard Space Flight Center in a room full of SGI Origin servers. Our development environment consists of several smallish linux beowulf clusters (32x1Ghz P3), a few Althon MP boxes, some old AIX dev boxes, and one SGI Oxygen for nasa code certification. Our largest resource is disk space, we have about 12TB of capacity. Keep in mind that this is just for algorithm development and testing. Goddard's production facility is huge, but that's becuase they are producing tons of other data products as well including all the land, ocean, and atmospheric products off of both the Terra and Aqua Satellites. This land productivity data (MOD17 in nasa speak) is derived in part from the MODIS sensor on Terra.

Both of these satellites are in sun syncronous polar orbits meaning that they come down over the earth's day side. This is because many of the sensors (like MODIS) are passive. Terra is the 'AM' satellite, it crosses the equator about mid morning local time, and Aqua being the 'PM' satellite crosses in the afternoon. The reason for this is because there is a significance in AM and PM cloud cover. Cloud cover is difficult to correct for (in fact with MODIS, sometimes you can't correct).

The Land NPP algorithm was developed at the NTSG at the University of Montana. I am the Sys Admin for this group.

We developed the software to do the Gross and Net primary productivity calculations (as well as some others), but the main production runs are done at the Goddard Space Flight Center in a room full of SGI Origin servers. Our development environment consists of several smallish linux beowulf clusters (32x1Ghz P3), a few Althon MP boxes, some old AIX dev boxes, and one SGI Oxygen for nasa code certification. Our largest resource is disk space, we have about 12TB of capacity. Keep in mind that this is just for algorithm development and testing. Goddard's production facility is huge, but that's becuase they are producing tons of other data products as well including all the land, ocean, and atmospheric products off of both the Terra and Aqua Satellites. This land productivity data (MOD17 in nasa speak) is derived in part from the MODIS sensor on Terra.

Both of these satellites are in sun syncronous polar orbits meaning that they come down over the earth's day side. This is because many of the sensors (like MODIS) are passive. Terra is the 'AM' satellite, it crosses the equator about mid morning local time, and Aqua being the 'PM' satellite crosses in the afternoon. The reason for this is because there is a significance in AM and PM cloud cover. Cloud cover is difficult to correct for (in fact with MODIS, sometimes you can't correct).

Wrong. The use of biodiesel uses carbon pulled from the sky, not the ground. Also, the University of Montana claims its BioBus produces far fewer obnoxious pollutants compared to any type of petroleum. The biodiesel is esterified with alcohol, so it is an oxygenated fuel. That's why it burns so clean.

This is gonna hurt, I just know it. But here is the oggification of it!

EFF-Tinseltown_Club.ogg

Why do I think that I'm going to regret doing this.
:S

-The JungleBoy

There are many compilations of alternative keyboard info on the web TIFAQ was one of the early ones but is no longer the best. Why you think Alternative Keyboard Gallery is a rip-off of TIFAQ beats me.

I am not sure if you knew this, but a primary purpose of perlbox was to study and attempt to quantify various aspects of the open source development model. If we can understand more about the development-release cycle of open source applications, we can begin to fine tune certain aspects of the model. Proprietary models have had millions of dollars and thousands of hours put into their development and refinement. The sinple fact is that open source software is not taken seriously by many because they do not understand how it work, non withstanding the fact that it just does. For some that is not good enough. I am in a position here to help explain misunderstood concepts and I think that that is a perfect use of my time. Besides, perlbox talks to you, that's just cool. scmason Our website was offline!
Sorry for the inconvenience, we were hijacked! We are now temporarily at:
http://www.wru.umt.edu/~scmason/pbox

No, the voice recognition was written by the good people at Carnegie Mellon University. It is a hardcore C thing, we just use perl to control it. It is called sphinx2: see our temp site for more info: We are now temporarily at:
http://www.wru.umt.edu/~scmason/pbox

Sorry for the inconvenience, we were hijacked! We are now temporarily at:
http://www.wru.umt.edu/~scmason/pbox

Sorry for the inconvenience, we were hijacked!
IP Piracy...
We are now temporarily at:
http://www.wru.umt.edu/~scmason/pbox

We are now temporarily at:
http://www.wru.umt.edu/~scmason/pbox

This was not intentional! We just never got around to doing much testing on IE! All the problems are fixed, and the site is relocated: Sorry for the inconvenience, we were hijacked! We are now temporarily at:
http://www.wru.umt.edu/~scmason/pbox

Sorry for the inconvenience, we were hijacked! We are now temporarily at:
http://www.wru.umt.edu/~scmason/pbox

Thanks,
scmason

The site has moved to: http://www.wru.umt.edu/~scmason/pbox

The problems with the site are very strange, and they just started from out of no where. I have no control over that host, so I have moved the pages to a server I do have control over, please visit: http://www.wru.umt.edu/~scmason/pbox
Sorry for any inconvenience scmason

Most of our conventional crops, including rice and wheat, assimilate atmospheric CO2 by the C3 pathway of photosynthesis, which takes place in the mesophyll cells of leaves. Photosynthetically, these plants are underachievers because, on the one hand, they assimilate atmospheric CO2 into sugars but, on the other hand, part of the potential for sugar production is lost by respiration in daylight, releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, a wasteful process termed photorespiration. This is due to the dual function of the key photosynthetic enzyme, ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco). High CO2 favors the carboxylase reaction and thus net photosynthesis; whereas high O2 promotes the oxygenase reaction leading to photorespiration. When plants first evolved, photorespiration was not a problem because the atmosphere then was high in CO2 and low in O2. As a byproduct of photosynthesis, O2 accumulated in the atmosphere and reached the present level a million years ago. Current atmospheric CO2 levels limit photosynthesis in C3 plants. Furthermore, photorespiration reduces net carbon gain and productivity of C3 plants by as much as 40%. This renders C3 plants less competitive in certain environments. In contrast, with some modifications in leaf anatomy, some tropical species (e.g., maize and sugarcane) have evolved a biochemical "CO2 pump," the C4 pathway of photosynthesis, to concentrate atmospheric CO2 in the leaf and thus overcome photorespiration. Therefore, C4 plants exhibit many desirable agronomic traits: high rate of photosynthesis, fast growth, and high efficiency in water and mineral use.

...and:

CO2 enrichment can also affect plant communities directly. For many plant species, increased CO2 concentrations lead to increased rates of net photosynthesis and improved water-use efficiency, resulting in larger plants. This effect is greatest in C3 plants and is typically small or negligible in C4 plants. Where plant communities consist of both C3 and C4 species, the different responses of these two groups can lead to changes in plant community composition over time.

Finally, IIRC, most of the biomass is C3 plants.

-- MarkusQ

To implement the Turing machine's infinite tape in a cereal, of course, you wouldn't use Life cereal, you'd use Aleph-Nought-Bits...

Oh god no! Math is not a language. Math is not an errand boy of science either. Mathematics is the process of precise and perfect (free from contradiction) thought. I have mathematics in my mind, but what I write on paper is just symbols... NOT math. 1+1=2 are symbols that you see in your web browser, but the concept is something which exists in all intelligent humans from birth, but from birth, we do not have these names or symbols associated with the concept of 1+1=2. The concept is intuitive, in the sense of Knronecker and Brouwer's constructive mathematics. Brouwer especially, argued against the hopeless linguistic approach to mathematics, pushed by the formalists - such as Hilbert . Hilbert and followers believed that mathematics could be formalized into a language: complete, perfect, and free from contradiction. Of course, your intuitionists (mathematicians who believe that mathematics was a mental activity separate from language and symbols) warned that such an idea was a fruitless sterile effort - an impossibility.

So Hilbert proceeded with his program to formalized mathematics. He black-listed Brouwer from the popular society of mathematics, and then Hilbert failed. Brouwer claimed that a linguistic formalization of mathematics was silly, but it wasn't until quite some time later that Godel proved that Hilbert's program to formalize mathematics was absolutely impossible.

Because our schools teach us a history of wars, as opposed to a history of men who actually did society a great service, we have people who know little to nothing about what math is and why we have it and who helped along the way. Also, because Hilbert and followers were more popular than Brouwer and intuitionists, schools continued in the tradition of Hilberts inherently flawed program.

The mathematics that you were taught in school was most likely this flawed approach. That would explain why you believe that mathematics is a "language" - you were taught such. Now, it is up to you, to correct your understanding of something which was incorrectly taught to you. Taught to you as a formal language of symbols with a finite set of rules that you had to memorize -rules which govern the movement of these sybmols, rules which are then applied to the symbols, in order to generate new theorems.

Mathematics is a purely mental occupation, where you create exact and perfect ideas in your mind. These ideas, most likely, do not exist in any true sense, outside of your mind. Because we are all limited in the quality of memory, we use formal symbols to aid in our mental constructions. Because no man has ever communicated his soul, his mind, directly with another man, we use formal symbols to aid in a form of crude communication of our perfect and exact ideas.
I believe, that once people understand what math really is, they see the beauty.

Schwarzchild said, "So at least two Nobels could be invalidated because of new research or having awarded the prize too quickly."

No, all Nobels could be invalidated because that is the "way of science". All science has the ability to be refuted. Most of science will eventually be replaced by "newer better theory".

The main crutch of science is its reliance on the belief in the existence of mathematics, outside of the mind of the creative subject. Ever since the Greek's popularized the idea of the existence of ideal mathematical objects, outside of and separate from our minds - popular mathematics and science have held onto that belief. Note that this belief is metaphysical.

It wasn't until a little over a hundred years ago, that a few mathematicians started to object to the metaphysical belief of ideal/transcendent mathematical objects (mathematical laws, constants, etc... which forever exist, independently from the creative subject's mind). One of these insightful mathematicians was Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer, who passionately argued against the use of these metaphysical beliefs in mathematics, and he went as far as to claim that the law of the excluded middle was in fact, not a mathematical law at all. It was a metaphysical belief.

Mathematics around the turn of the last century was in a crisis. Several branches of mathematics were showing inconsistencies/paradoxes - errors! Mathematics is without error, and therefore, many mathematicians were running wild, hoping that their mathematical edifices didn't crumble into dust, by the quake of another paradox. Brouwer argued that these paradoxes were the result of the use of non-constructive mathematics - he began to reconstruct all of mathematics, but the more popular David Hilbert feared that Brouwer was trying to drive mathematicians from the paradise of classical mathematics. So there was a big fight, and Hilbert ended up getting Brouwer black-listed from the popular mathematics scene. To this, Albert Einstein made the famous comment, "What is this frog and mouse battle among the mathematicians"?

It turned out that Hilbert's program was impossible and still most likely contained paradoxes.

Today, most people still use non-constructive methods in their math, and many people still believe in the existence of ideal/transcendent mathematical objects. This is why we end up with "laws of nature", in science. Time and time again, we have forgot what Brouwer was throwing such a fuss about, and time and time again, we find our mathematics and science in error.

If you limit the lab to running either Linux or Windows NT, you can limit who has access to those who can be trusted (you'll learn in a hurry). Windows 2000 is more secure by default than NT 4.0, but if you do use 4.0, grab these command scripts I created in my last job. They were designed for NT 4.0 running IE 3.0, but it gives you a good idea of how to set directory and file permissions. They'll require some updating to work with NT 4.0 and IE 5.

When the lab I used to run (on a campus) was running Windows 95, I'd spend at least 8 hours a week rebuilding and reinstalling. Once we went to NT and I got secure directory permissions (secure permissions being the key), I was in that lab 1-2 hours per month.

(An no flames about using Linux. This was in pre-1.0 kernel days, and the software we had to run still isn't available on Linux. The real challenge is not to make something work, but to make what you've been stuck with work perfectly.)

You can't make money if the resource isn't available.