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Oh, yes, I see... the prevailing scientific "consensus" should be the only thing that is allowed in a discussion of public policy. Is that your contention? Think carefully about your answer - that has been tried in the past.

Sigh.

It's not easy to overturn a consensus. It never was, nor would it be reasonable to expect it to be so in the future. The best way tends to be to assemble evidence that the consensus is demonstrably wrong and that your proposed alternative is less wrong. Scientists are usually (but not universally) happy to change their minds about things if you provide good evidence. The trick is that you really do need to provide good evidence.

What are you up against? Well, the basic physics of CO2, CH4 and H2O vapor in the atmosphere has been pretty well established for over a century; the higher the levels of those gases, the more the atmosphere retains the sun's heat. I wouldn't recommend attacking that, as you can check it pretty easily. It's also the case that levels of CO2 have been measured as increasing at multiple geographically distributed sites pointing in the other direction; something is increasing it (and hence increasing the amount of energy retained, which in turn increases the temperature somewhere). The real questions are what are the consequences and what are the causes?

The consequences are difficult to predict, as the atmosphere and oceans are a furiously complex non-linear system, but increased average global storminess is at least likely, and more worryingly, shifts in where the local climate zones for the most productive crop-lands are located is a distinct possibility (which could be really bad; history says that that sort of thing triggers huge wars). Nobody knows where the trigger levels for such changes are, but given what's at stake you can understand people being rather worried.

On the causes side, it doesn't look like it is volcanoes that are spewing all that CO2 out (vulcanologists keep fairly close tabs on that sort of thing) so the big candidates are discharging clathrates, melting permafrost, or human activity (there's a lot of people burning fossil fuels). We hope it's not the clathrates, because there's precisely nothing we can do about those. There does seem to be quite a bit of gas emission from permafrost, but that's probably a feedback triggered by something else. The simplest reasonable option for the rise in levels of atmospheric CO2 is due to human activity, as we know for sure that there's been a lot of that. (I've heard it argued that global temperature rises could be due to changes in solar activity, but the argument runs into the problem that temperatures have been rising through a whole solar cycle; if that was a major cause/trigger, you'd expect temperate patterns to correlate with solar activity patterns much more strongly.)

In short, if you want to argue against the AGW hypothesis, feel free but realize that there's a great deal of unrelated lines of evidence that point to it being highly believable; the bar to disproving it is set very high.

Which brings us to the other question: why are you so keen on trying to disprove something with so much evidence in its favor? That's a genuinely difficult task you've picked for yourself there. Is it because you like to challenge every consensus? Or that you don't like the moral consequences of AGW if is true? Or is it just because someone you trust (or who is paying you) told you to think that? Only the second of those gets any respect from me (the first would just mark you out as a social leper, and the third would make you a patsy or shill) and then only minimally much: it's morally consistent but still would make you an asshole.

Before you go jumping up and down in indignation, remember this: the majority of climate scientists would very much like for this problem to go away. They're worried about possible outcomes, some of which are quite dire (historical and archeological evidence says that climate change is not good for civilization) and changes to the nature of the economy now are favored tools because they're believed to be the cheapest way of avoiding the worst.

Yes, curse cold hard science, tool of the despot! Soft, warm batshit insanity shall set the people free!

Oh, yes, I see... the prevailing scientific "consensus" should be the only thing that is allowed in a discussion of public policy. Is that your contention? Think carefully about your answer - that has been tried in the past.

The hyperbole of "dangerous levels of radiation" came from you, not the original article. The actual quote was, "...samples of seaweed taken from as far as 40 miles of the Fukushima plant had been found to contain radiation well above legal limits. Of the 22 samples tested, ten were contaminated with five times the legal limit of iodine 131 and 20 times of caesium 137." [emphasis mine].

The legal limits of radiation are so very low that even the 5x dose of iodine is still likely not dangerous. In fact, wait 24 days (3 half-lives) and you'll be under the limit. The cesium is a bit more troubling as its half-life is more like 30 years, although it's biological half-life is more like 70 days.

I assume the 'legal limit' mentioned in the article is the lower, more conservative non-nuclear worker limit. The US limits for cesium 137 are 1mSv/yr for non-nuclear workers and 50 mSv/yr (max 100 mSv over 5 years) for nuclear workers. If a nuclear worker can handle 50x the non-nuclear limit for two years out of five or 20 mSv/yr every year indefinitely, I'm sure members of the public will be ok at that dose, too.

Note that the naturally-occurring background radiation level varies by a factor of over 200 with no apparent negative effects, and possibly positive effects.

http://isr.uncc.edu/repliwiki/

the problem is that each of those sources are disputed for a variety of reasons, some good and some not so... Thallus, Mara-Serapion (scroll down/search for "Mara")... Pliny the Younger talks about the sacrifices of Christians but never saw Christ himself. Tacitus, who may be the most reliable reference, may have only been repeating hearsay and does not report seeing anything himself either. Finally, all evidence points to Josephus' text being revised to say certain things about Jesus, which frankly makes the entire passage suspect - which is unfortunate for christianity in that it is the best secondary source for his existence. Meanwhile (from that last link):

It is worth noting that in his earlier work, The Jewish War, written shortly after the revolt under the auspices of the Emperor Vespasian, he mentioned neither Jesus, nor John the Baptist, nor James, while in Antiquities, written in the early 90s C.E., he mentions all three.

So uh, I am actually interested in this thing, and there is no historical basis for the existence of Jesus besides some heavily contested references, all of which have serious problems.

That's not what I am saying. What I am saying is much more offensive to evolutionists than that ;) And, hopefully, a little bit more logical. I am saying that all that supposed evidence that the world is billions of years old is nothing of the sort, and that it is an either intentional or unintentional result of the assumptions people make when they start off doing things.

Well, there are literally hundreds of thousands of very educated scientists who, for hundreds of years, have put their entire lives into the study of these things. They do understand such things as radio-carbon dating and seasonal effects on rock formations and ice cores and whatnot. The fact is, you simply cannot argue that the proponderance of evidence for the continuing existance of planet earth over billions of years does not exist. It does. Go take a look at it instead of saying you aren't an expert. Really.

That's micro evolution. I believe in micro evolution. What I don't believe is *macro* evolution, which says that everything came from a turnip. I don't see how it can be possible for turnips to turn into dogs, or dogs to turn into people, and that *hasn't* been proven in a lab. There are plenty of problems with macro evolution. micro != macro. Sure, you can keep adding billions worth of years in order to make those ludicrously low chances seem less low (because after all, 4.5 billion years is a *LONG* time, couldn't *ANYTHING* happen in that long?), but I for one am not convinced.

Well, the fact is, your DNA is 99% the same as a chimpanzee and we have surprisingly accurate copies of fish DNA as well. In fact all living things share a tremendous amount of genetic material. What this indicates, very strongly, is that there was a time when our ancestors and those of other living things converged to the same creatures.

The concepts of mutation and punctuated evolution are important ones. There is a natural randomness to the genotypes and phenotypes that exist within a population. Some of this randomness expresses itself because of variations in the genetic pool of the population and some of it expresses itself because of errors in combining DNA during mitosis or in mutation caused by radiation or other natural phenomena. The mutations will most often have no effect (genes that do not express) or effects that are terrible for the organism (missing limbs, problems with internal organs, etc..). However, ocassionally such mutations can result in a survival advantage for the recipient of the mutation. An example could be a gene in humans that accidentally mutated to reduce or eliminate melatonin production, resulting in very light skin humans - which is a survival advantage in cold snow-covered climates as it assists in hiding such humans. Some mutations produce morphological changes (changes in body shape). All of them would be minor and only after they accumulate over tens of thousands to millions of years would we see profound differences in organisms. This is how macro-evolution works. Micro-evolution, as you are using the term, is the process of weeding out irrelevant phenotypes that already exist in a genepool and selecting the most relevant. Macro-evolution, your term again, is the process of amplifying and spreading mutations that introduce new genes into the genepool. Both exist, are proven and cannot be argued.

Really? Personally I would think it would be a lot more interesting to design a really cool computer from the get-go, if you knew how, rather than starting off with vacuum tubes and working your way slowly up from there. After all, if the Bible is to be trusted (and I have decided to trust it unless or until it's proven wrong - not by force of how many people in the world think it's right or wrong, but when someone proves to *my* satisfaction t

No, you got none of it right, mostly because you don't have the foggiest clue what you're talking about.

If you haven't read the history of the discovery of the Scrolls, nor read any of the translations, obviously you are clueless, right? Nowhere did I say any of these scrolls are fakes, in any event.

There's absolutely nothing secret about them NOW, since as I so carefully pointed out, they were fully exposed to the academic community as a result of photographs released by a member of the Bechtel family. BEFORE THAT, the scrolls were only examined by a select group of Catholic priests in Israel.

Here http://www.religiousstudies.uncc.edu/jdtabor/dssfa cts.html/ is a link to The University of North Carolina at Charlotte which outlines the basic timeline of the Scrolls which includes the following remarks:

8) The bulk of the scrolls were in Jordanian control and were placed with a team of Christian (mostly Catholic--no Jewish) scholars who over the next four decades published eight volumes of material. The team was left intact by the Israelis after the Six Day War (1967). The publication schedule was constantly delayed and many outsiders found the official team to be arrogant and unyielding. The team was expanded in the 1980's and was much more broadly based, finally including Jewish scholars and a more open approach to sharing materials.

9) As much as 40% of the Scrolls, mostly fragments from Cave 4, remained unpublished and unreleased (photos), until pressure mounted in the 1980's. A breakthrough occurred in the Fall, 1991: the photos were published by the Biblical Archaeological Society in a non-official edition; a computer reconstruction, based on a concordance, was announced; the Huntington library pledged to open their microfilm files of all the scroll photographs.

Wikipedia also has a nice overview.

Read "The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception" by Baigent and Leigh for the full story - especially the direct anti-Semitic quotes from the Catholic priests involved in the study.

I guess you could reverse-engineer it.

• Original Module
• "Decompiled" Output (run through REC)

The source code to "wl.o" is NOT part of the GPLed code at Linksys's GPL page.

If anyone actually got it to work, rest assured someone would feel threatened and DMCA it off the face of the Internet.

However, there are FAR worse ways to disrupt communications than by tweaking a few lines of code in a driver.

I guess you could reverse-engineer it.

• Original Module
• "Decompiled" Output (run through REC)

The source code to "wl.o" is NOT part of the GPLed code at Linksys's GPL page.

If anyone actually got it to work, rest assured someone would feel threatened and DMCA it off the face of the Internet.

However, there are FAR worse ways to disrupt communications than by tweaking a few lines of code in a driver.

Bookmarked. In return, $1 Wireless Interface (I dunno why he's got a copy of the Circuit Cellar article. Didn't expect the All-seeing Google eye?)

Hard? Better go buy the Feb issue of Circuit Cellar while you still can. (Or just read this guy's copy of it)

I just ran out and took some pictures if you wanted to see what it looks like in the day. It's much more interesting at night when the letters are projected all over.

Wow, my school has recieved the honor of being mentioned in a Slashdot story. The Cyrillic Projector is next to the Fretwell building, across from the Friday building (home the capitalistic College of Buisness). It looks kind of boring during the day when it is not lit up, so most might not notice it.

Wow, my school has recieved the honor of being mentioned in a Slashdot story. The Cyrillic Projector is next to the Fretwell building, across from the Friday building (home the capitalistic College of Buisness). It looks kind of boring during the day when it is not lit up, so most might not notice it.

Wow, my school has recieved the honor of being mentioned in a Slashdot story. The Cyrillic Projector is next to the Fretwell building, across from the Friday building (home the capitalistic College of Buisness). It looks kind of boring during the day when it is not lit up, so most might not notice it.

and my two cents: rmdyer@uncc.edu

rmdyer@uncc.edu

Enjoy!

We spent hours playing like this, and of the 20 of us in the class, not one was injured.

Perhaps we are all attempting to look too deep into the software archives to find the solution here...maybe we should look a bit more towards the obvious!!!

My vote is for Word Perfect 6.0!!! It occupies minimal disk space, requires very few resources, and is well documented!!! :-)

Just a thought...I mean it worked great back in the day!!!

DISCLAIMER: If you think I am serious, YOU are the idiot - not me!!! :-)

Hey there! I would just like to say that there is a HUGE lack of females in the Computer Science department at my college. I mean, I may have 3-5 women in a class, but they are the same ones I've seen since freshman year and none of them look good.

So, WOMEN!!! Please join the Computer Science department at your school! Just think, if you do....you have a 50% chance of breeding more female computer scientists.....or something like that.

When I taught our (UNC-Charlotte's CSCI) graduate operating systems course, assmuming that the students had already received an undergraduate OS course (sadly, sometimes too hopeful of an assumption) which covered the core basics of memory management, process management, context swtching, and introduces the two-layer device driver approach (our undergraduate course uses the XINU book), I picked up where that course left off, covering more about device drivers, I/O descriptors and their interaction with system calls, the filesystem (on-disk implementations, kernel implementations, different implementations at different mountpoints), then finishing off with distributed systems. One large component of the course was reading the Linux kernel source code in order to see a "real world" implementation of the coding concepts discussed in class. I have aways been a critic of how too many CSCI courses focus solely upon writing projects, yet don't spend enough (or any) time having the students read non-trivial code. We wouldn't ask novelists-in-training, essayists-in-training, or poets-in-training to write more than we've asked them to read, would we?

Anyway, two series of projects accompanied the lectures and assigned code readings. The first was to design and implement a basic interactive shell, first with basic file redirection and piping, later adding redirection to TCP sockets. This project aimed at giving the students a taste of systems programming that they may not have otherwise received, plus hammering in the UNIX concept that read() / write() will work on any sort of descriptor, be it pipe, file, or socket; even without the knowledge / cooperation of the process doing the I/O. At the time of writing the projects, the students were to read though the kernel code which implements the major system calls that they were using in order to see what was really going on (or at least to get a general idea that it all wasn't magic -- it all boiled down to "C" source code somewhere).

The second project suite was the implementation of an inode-based filesystem, starting from the ground up. First write a simulated mini-SCSI bus that supported two types of devices (one with 512-byte sectors, the other with 4096-byte sectors, just to ward off assumptions at the inode/block management layer). Once that works, add an inode manager that can use one of the virtual SCSI disks. Lastly, add a directory services module on top of the inode manager, so that we can manipulate files, directories, and symbolic links.

Ultimately, the projects asked a good deal from the students, as that the majority of them had not written any multi-threaded OO systems that made use of message passing (over the SCSI "bus"), so not only did they get to simulate some kernel components, they also had to come up to speed with some relatively advanced programming designs. The folks who used C++ learned the hard way that (at the time) debugger support for multithreaded programs was, um, challenged. Folks who wrote in Java had a bit of an easier time. Depending upon the level of knowledge in your undergraduates, I would not recommend the filesystem project. The shell project, OTOH, would be applicable to either 3'rd/4'th year undergraduates or graduate students, as that it hits home on the core UNIX datastructure -- the I/O descriptor. If the students were to have root access to the boxes, then I would have them perhaps extend an existing kernel subsystem or to write a new driver given an existing one. What about a thorough examination of the Linux scheduler / context switching algorithm. Could they cut any fat from it, as the IBM JDK folks did? What about examining the timer system? What about implementing a new "toy" virtual device driver, such as /dev/random (not that it is a toy, but that it doesn't correspond to any single piece of hardware, per se), such as a simple message passing port? One process opens it up, writes to it, then closes, followed by another process opening it and reading from it. That would demonstrate upper-layer device driver interfaces, plus the issue of passing bulk data to/from user space, and why time spent memcpy'ing becomes a factor in I/O bound systems.

Oh yeah, one other thing. You might want to think about obtaining the source code for more than one OS kernel (say also a *BSD kernel or the Solaris kernel -- being at an institution of higher learning, you should be able to get the Solaris source code w/o charge) in order to have the students compare / constrast the different approaches taken.

Have fun with the course!