Domain: unsw.edu.au
Stories and comments across the archive that link to unsw.edu.au.
Comments · 296
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Re:The problem with powerpoint...I still can't find a paper about it through that link. And reading the UNSW article doesn't make anything much clearer either: they apply Cognitive Load Theory to support their statement that making people solve problems requires time, which is true, but is not the point we are debating. They also state that getting the same information through sight and hearing _can_ be counterproductive. That just means someone preparing a presentation must take care of doing it right: the information on the slide and the verbal information must complement each other.
I may have no college degree on making presentations, but I can usually tell when one won't work. It's all about compactness: the slides must show the basic concepts in as few words as possible so the audience can tune the slide out in the time the speaker needs to mention each concept and then pay attention to what the speaker says. It's all about the KISS principle. What's the difference between that and having the teacher write the concepts on the blackboard and then start talking about them? Little to none: I would actually posit using slides is more efficient.
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required memory bandwidth?It's not clear who came up with it, but there's an old joke about supercomputers being devices to convert computation-bound problems into I/O-bound problems.
This chip would almost certainly have the same issue in many applications - how do you get data on and off it fast enough to keep the cores full of data? Do they do anything unique to improve memory bandwidth?
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Difficult call...
I briefly read the article. The idea is to discourage certain high school students from taking a class which (a) they are likely to fail or at least do poorly, and (b) they will derive little or no benefit from, namely higher level mathematics. The key problem is how to determine if both (a) and (b) apply to a particular student.
Personally, I'd prefer it if first year science and engineering students knew something about matrices and complex numbers before they begin their university studies, but only if what they know is correct. It would also help students who need statistics.
On the other hand, it helps nobody if certain underprepared high school students struggle, crash and burn in higher mathematics.
So, maybe discourage those who fail ordinary level mathematics in Year 10 from taking higher mathematics in Year 11 and 12 (NSW system). But, maybe encourage others, especially those who keep on going with puzzles, maths competitions, etc. (ie. mathaholics, Parabola readers).
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Re:Pretty In-depth
If you read the actual mdadm code (I used v2.6.2 from http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~neilb/source/mdadm/). Looking at Monitor.c 487 of the Monitor function, it "polls" the file. Waiting 60 seconds (by default, you can set the delay lower). However, if you look at the mdstat_wait(int) call, you'll notice that it's doing a select on the "/proc/mdstat" file. It'll break out of the select if fairly quickly. Force a mirror break, and if you have it setup to get an e-mail, you'll have the e-mail with in your in box in seconds. There's no 1 minute or 15 minute lag.
I'd swear that at one point it used an ioctl to extract all of this information, but it's been ages since I actually read the mdadm tools source... Heck it might have been the precursor tools... mdtools or mdctl or whatever it was called before.
Kirby
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Re:I'm giving odds...
Google says your wrong, wikipedia says you are wrong, linux ntfs says you are wrong, ntfs-3g says you are wrong. But you respond that it's something everybody learns in their lol course using 15-year-old documents that apparently only exist inside Microsoft (since you can't post a link or quote them).
You'll come back and argue on slashdot about something that even if it was true is irrelevant to the fact that NTFS doesn't do checksums on data or metadata, but you won't spend a minute pointing out which structure it is in from the link above to linux/fs/ntfs/logfile.h or correcting wikipedia. So it's not the time involved, or the desire to correct an alleged misconception, it's the fact that you look like a retard in this thread and are trying to save face. That's lame. -
Re:Efficiency
You are correct, The carnot efficiency comes about due to the phonons:
http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServ let?prog=normal&id=JAPIAU000084000002001109000001& idtype=cvips&gifs=yes
http://www.evidenttech.com/applications/solar-cell -white-paper/solar-limitations.php
http://www.springerlink.com/content/u8854u22418252 73/
http://www.evidenttech.com/applications/quantum-do t-solar-cells.php
http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/29499/
(some of these require account to access :(
In practice only those photons that exactly match the bandgap are able to be converted with this efficiency, limiting Silicon cells to about 30%. Using multiple layers of decreasing bandgap can produce higher efficiencies (and hence the interest in higher bandgap materials such as those based on Gallium). This lower efficiency is called the Shockley-Queisser limit which increases with increasing illumination to about 40%:
http://www.pv.unsw.edu.au/Research/3gp.asp
Similarly, virtual photons corresponding to the 'flame temperature' or 'temperament' (derived from the Gibbs free energy) limit the maximum efficiency of the fuel cell to the carnot ratio:
http://www.benwiens.com/energy4.html#energy1.17 -
This article is about using lectures in teaching
... not about presentations made to peers. Good teaching in a classroom and good communication in a meeting between peers require some of the same skills, but also some very different ones. What makes a presentation to colleagues effective is a related topic, but it is not the same thing. An effective presentation made to colleagues could be a terrible classroom lesson for students. There is more on the specific research findings here.
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Java is fine for emulation
[1995] When I was at university on Java 1.0, we were taught operating systems on emulated Minix. It was fine then, no reason x86 won't be fine now.
Just give this project time. Everybody is queuing up to knock it down, but it should be fine. They're not planning to put Vista on it, just emulate some DOS data entry applications. -
Re:What about the solar cells?
They were developed at the School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering.
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Is that a link to a marsupial?
One of the links in the summary shows a picture of some animal - is that the "wombat"?
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Re:Bad use of "already"
There is a theory that the speed of light has changed over the lifetime of the universe, yes.
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/einsteinlight/jw/modul e6_constant.htm
As the article points out, discussing the possibility is complicated by the fact that our definition of velocity depends on the meter and second, which are defined in terms of the behavior of photons, and hence dependent on the speed of light... -
Re:Not an upgrade?
If Intel makes their latest 3D graphics chip work on Linux guess whose drivers aren't going to pass Microsoft's signing requirements?
Replace "Intel" with "ATI" or "nVidia."
But wait, those do make Linux drivers. The catch is that they're binary. However, said drivers do exist.
Here's the other rub:
The Windows driver system was designed as an API to encourage third parties to write drivers.
The Linux driver system is heavily dependant on the kernel interface, which as we've learned, is not stable. To quote:You think you want a stable kernel interface, but you really do not, and
you don't even know it. What you want is a stable running driver, and
you get that only if your driver is in the main kernel tree.
In other words, third party drivers are going to break at some point unless you contribute it to the kernel, and more importantly, that the kernel team accepts it.
(Side note: stable_api_nonsense.txt is in the kernel tar.gz files under linux-x.y.z/Documentation/stable_api_nonsense.txt where x.y.z is the kernel version) -
A very odd mathematicianThe author, Norman Wildberger, is one strange mathematician. I could hardly believe his rant against set theory, which borderlines on crankish or at the very minimum appallingly uninformed. For example, he calls the ZF (Zermelo-Fraenkel) axioms a "sorry list of assertions" - "these statements are awash with difficulties. What is a property? What is a parameter? What is a function? What is a family of sets? Where is the explanation of what all the symbols mean, if indeed they have any meaning? How many further assumptions are hidden behind the syntax and logical conventions assumed by these postulates?" In fact, these axioms are very precisely defined, and rank among mankind's greatest achievements.
(For the uninformed, consult Wikipedia. For a very precise breakdown of these axioms translated to primitve symbols - Wikipedia still includes some higher-level defined symbols that Wildberger objects to because he can't seem to understand them - see the metamath version. In other words, there is nothing fuzzy or ambiguous about these axioms.)
His set theory rant created quite a furor on Usenet, here and here.
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Philosophically/Ideologically driven blather
The author (of the book) is, to my mind, tending dramatically toward the loopy side. Take, for instance, this piece he wrote. It starts out as an interested discussion into some issues in the philosophy of mathematics, so skip down to the middle or closer to the end to read what has, by that point, devolved into an unmitigated rant from a finitist of the worst kind. Questioning the foundations of mathematics is not new, nor is questioning whether we wish to admit the concept of a "completed infinity" as compared to conceptions of "potential infinity", however even the Intuitionist school, hell even Brouwer himself (who was certainly not a man interested in compromise) would be rather appalled by the extremes here. Intuitionist mathematics has developed into a respectable field, with things like nonstandard analysis proving to provide interesting alternative constructions of real numbers and analysis. I can't see how Wilderberger's philosphy will lead anywhere.
Wilderberger's stance - that there is simply a finite "biggest number" and we shouldn't use or allow anything "bigger", and the resulting implications for irrational numbers - is just baffling. I'm guessing it is the extreme (and from what I can tell surprisingly uninformed) finitist philosophy that drives his Rational Geometry (he needs to somehow eliminate non-commensurable/irrational quantities from geometry lest they interfere with his fear of the infinite) - to him the superiority of Rational Geometry is presumably clear, in that it aligns with his extremist philosophy. The problem is that his philosophy seems, at best, half baked. He seems like a mathematician who took an interest in philosophy but couldn't be bothered seriously reading or considering any of the vast amounts of material on philosophy of mathematics. That is to say, he is, in many ways, little better than this lunatic ("Cubehead") who is hell bent of redefining mathematics to fit with the pronouncements of his idol, Gene Ray (creator of Time Cube), regardless of how shaky the grounding philosophy may be. -
Re:Now Explain How They Develop Feet
You can get an overview of the general principles here. This books is pretty old but it's still good and in some ways it's better than modern texts because it doesn't take anything for granted. This is a good modern popular account of the kinds of processes involved. By time you've read all three of these you should be in a pretty good position to think about how feet might develop. None of this tells you anything about how feet actually did develop - it just removes roadblocks that make such development seem impossible. If you actually want to find out more about how feet develop a good starting point might be here though I haven't read that.
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Link
http://www.unsw.edu.au/news/pad/articles/2005/sep
/ Orion.html
It has a few details, but not that much info.
It's like the hilltop algo, just for text. (YOu don't need a phd to do this ;)) -
Re:Quote from a play nobody else has ever seenIt looks to me like what you are actually saying and what you are trying to say are in contradiction. You're either conflating two definitions of the word "fact" or (less likely) your wording confuses epistemology and ontology.
You agreed with the statement, "Facts are things that are true, despite whether they are believed or not." This is an ontological claim--it's about what actually exists "out there" in the world beyond our experience. By agreeing, you are saying that an objective reality exists, regardless of our ability or inability to know it. This much is compatible with common sense.
Yet you then said, "And since human beings are only capable of opinion-not actually knowing reality, but only a model of reality we carry around in our heads-facts cannot exist." This is an epistemological claim--it's about what is or can be known--that you've twisted into a malformed ontological claim. You are basically saying that somehow, because of the limits of our knowledge, what exists "out there" in the real world doesn't actually exist at all!
That is, unless you've conflated two completely different uses of the word "fact" without telling us. (And to do so is really confusing!) Assuming that you've done this, and if I read you correctly, what the spirit of your words implicitly argue is:
1) We don't have direct access to the objective "real" world;
2) because of #1, we can never be 100% certain of our claims about the real world;
3) because of #2, all of our opinions on these matters are subjective and should not be called "facts."
(Or something much like this.)
I think the responses have been largely in agreement with #1 and #2, but taking great exception to #3. (If not, that at least reflects how I feel about it.) I don't think we ever know the truth about anything as certainly as we know 2+2=4, but I think there are principled ways to go about finding it; and one can certainly say that one given opinion is better than another, or even that one is the best at any given time. I don't see how one can deny--even granting our imperfect access to the world--that some claims are more supported than others, with some claims being so strongly supported that we should give them special consideration. I'd call them facts, even with the understanding that they might change.
In a more pointed fashion, Stephen J. Gould wrote something on the subject of science that I think reflects how I think of such fact claims:In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.
Further, to change directions a little, it looks to me like you might have used a form of what philosopher David Stove awarded the title: "Worst Argument in the World." (No insult intended. He chose this argument because it's so common--he's even caught himself making it.)
It basically goes like this:
We can know things only
o as they are related to us
o under our forms of perception and understanding
o insofar as they fall under our conceptual schemes,
etc.
So, we cannot know things as they are in themselves.
You can see more on it at this page devoted to it, since I can't recreate his entire account of it here. -
Re:and yet another way open source can make money!
The clock sold for 750. AUD The book, signed by various people, sold for 10,000 AUD and there was a considerable amount of money simply donated "out of pocket". ALL of that money will be doubled by USENIX, and given to the University of New South Wales to help create a position for a professor who will teach computer science in honor of John Lions.
Make no mistake about the fact that ALL of the money paid for the license plate off my wrangler will be doubled by USENIX and also given for the same cause.
If any other person would like to donate money to this cause, they can do this at:
http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/JohnLions/
or
http://www.usenix.org/about/lionsfund/index.html
Regards,
maddog -
what are you talking about?Sound familiar? "All we need to make it work as advertised is a really slick compiler that doesn't actually exist yet..."
That's kind of a weird comparison given the differences in innovation, demonstrated results and company attitudes.
IBM's Cell is a much more radical break from previous chips like Itanium, but the CES demo was reported to be very impressive. IBM has already released the SDK and openly published all specifications. The pace of development has been very rapid and people are predicting the replacement of Intel. The missing piece was a compiler to ease transition. It looks like that's coming along just fine.
The Itanium on the other hand was obsolete on it's launch. Even HP dumped it after killing their own better performing 64 bit processor for it and spending billions of dollars and ten years building it.
We can only wonder how things would have been if Intel had opened things up like IBM has, instead of making it so people have to figure things out on their own.
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The geek angle
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For Those who don't "get" delicious
When I first came across delicious, I didn't get it either. So what if it keeps my bookmarks? But now I see it differently. It's a great resource for finding sites that other people have found useful.
As an example... the other day one of my users asked me if I knew of a good place to get fonts. She said that a lot of the sites she had gone to had all sorts of pop-ups, and some had even put adware in with the supposedly free fonts.
I had no idea where to tell her to go, so I did what I always do and searched Google. The top few results were rather questionable, and I didn't feel comfortable telling her to got to them.
So I went to delicious, and type the URL for the tag "font", and then selected the most popular sites with that tag: http://del.icio.us/popular/font. This gave me a list of sites, some which had over 3,000 other people tag them. I showed her what I was doing to find the sites, and we both felt like if that many other people found the site useful, then it was probably a safe site to check out.
On the same lines, there's a great delicious search engine here: http://collabrank.web.cse.unsw.edu.au/del.icio.us/ which I have been using as much as Google when I want to see sites that people trust. -
Re:This is great and all...
Work in the "sign language to spoken language" translation is definitely being done. There have been gloves (similar to the one "Amy" wears in Congo) which have had some success.
I've found a paper on Australian research into Auslan recognition with "PowerGloves", for instance. And I know there's plenty of other research out there!
As for ones which recognise sign language from a camera, I haven't heard of it...
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Re:question for GPS geeks
Professor Werner Enderle from QUT has done extensive modelling and simulation on galileo performance for LEO missions. Have a look at http://www.gmat.unsw.edu.au/wang/jgps/v2n2/v2n2Fo
r umB.pdf -
GPS COULD be used on volcanos?
From TFA:
"With GPS, the displacements are measured second by second," said Bock, who also presented at the American Geophysical Union conference. "Within 70 seconds you have a good idea of the final deformation." In addition to predicting tsunamis, he thinks GPS modules could be used to monitor the activity of volcanoes and landslides in real time. [emphasis mine]
I thought GPS was already used extensively in volcano studies.
http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Monitoring/GPS/framework .html
No specific mention of real time data whacking in that link? A quick Google, and we find this, for example:
http://www.gmat.unsw.edu.au/snap/publications/jans sen_etal2002c.pdf -
Re:Tagging vs. Searching
BTW, you may be interested in this search engine for del.icio.us:
http://collabrank.web.cse.unsw.edu.au/del.icio.us/
Del.icio.us users bookmarking helpful/timely URLs (as evidenced by others subsequently bookmarking those URLs) have greater influence on the search rankings. -
Re:Not superheating
actually I think there are ways to use microwaves to get liquid water significantly above boiling, even if you don't want it that way... http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~jw/superheating.html
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Re:Neat [ You want a Foucault Pendulum ]
There would be many ways to test for a rotating frame even in the absence of any other mass. Any gyro will stay fixed, and you could observe that you were in a rotating frame. My favorite test for Earth's roation and no way to observe the stars would be the Foucault Pendulum. http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/PHYSICS_!/FOUCAULT_PE
N DULUM/foucault_pendulum.html This can be constructed with nothing more high tech than a mass and a decent cable. I think this would be the lowest tech, highest sensitivity test you could do. -
Re:Takes out the mystery?"Let's see... "she" is not a she (yet). There's no tissue differentiation yet."
After a brief search I came up with this site
UNSW Embryology
Formation of the Zygote
- male and female pronuclei
- first mitotic division
- sex determination
Further down
Sex Determination
- based upon whether an X or Y carrying sperm has fertilized the egg
Zygote stage of development is when an individual human's life begins and is before the blastocyst stage of development. Sex has been determined already.
"You also use the phrase "by attaching," which (not very subtly) implies volition on the part of the blastocyst."
Well the uterus certainly doesn't attach to the blastocyst yet they become attached somehow. Are you implying that the attaching is done by some third party?
"So is solar fusion."
Yes, yes, yes. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Yet we are not talking about ultimate origins of the matter we are talking about the origins of the individual human being.
"If I can use the DNA from any cell in your body to produce an organism - a clone of you - then are destroying millions of humans with each scratched itch?"
Don't be ridiculous. Cells from my body will not develop on their own into another individual human being. On the other hand a blastocyst will. So long as she is able to attach to a uterus (artificial or natural once the technology allows) so that she may obtain the nutrients she needs to continue growing.
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Re:it still needs fuel...
If you still need to refuel every so often, might as well use one of these in your car:
http://www.ceic.unsw.edu.au/centers/vrb/overview.h tm -
Microsft Front Exposed
Americans for Technology Leadership was founded by Jonathan Zuck in 1999 as a "grassroots" organisations for concerned consumers who want less regulation in the technology sector. It also campaigns on general tech issues such as spam.
It has been frequently described as a Microsoft front group. [1] (http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor /archives/000421.shtml) [2] (http://www.aaxnet.com/news/M010823.html) [3] (http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/blog/computer s/tanks.html)
ATL's domain name, techleadership.org, is registered to the Association for Competitive Technology. The site is hosted by Thomas E. Stock and Thomas J. Synhorst's LLC, TSE Enterprises. Synhorst is a founding member of the DCI Group, a Washington DC-based strategic consulting and lobbying firm which has counted Microsoft as a prime client for a number of years.
Joshua Micah Marshall reports in the July 17, 2000 American Prospect: "[W]hile Microsoft did confirm that Synhorst's DCI had been retained as a consultant, it insisted that another DCI employee, Tim Hyde, and not Synhorst, was handling the company's account. In any event, the web of connections among DCI, ATL, and Microsoft is striking. While working for Microsoft, DCI has also provided consulting services to ATL. And Josh Mathis, the man [ACT president Jonathan] Zuck installed as ATL's executive director, is also an employee of DCI, who still works out of the same Washington, D.C., office as Synhorst and Hyde."
[edit]
Pro-Microsoft letter campaign discovered
In August 2001 the Los Angeles Times reported that a ATL was behind a "carefully orchestrated nationwide campaign to create the impression of a surging grass-roots movement" behind Microsoft. "The campaign, orchestrated by a group partly funded by Microsoft, goes to great lengths so that the letters appear to be spontaneous expressions from ordinary citizens. Letters sent in the last month are printed on personalized stationery using different wording, color and typefaces--details that distinguish those efforts from common lobbying tactics that go on in politics every day. Experts said there's little precedent for such an effort supported by a company defending itself against government accusations of illegal behavior."
According to the Times, the campaign was discovered when Utah's Attorney General at the time Mark Shurtleff received letters "purportedly written by at least two dead people ... imploring him to go easy on Microsoft Corp. for its conduct as a monopoly."
Eighteen state's attorneys general were joining with the Justice Department in its anti-trust suit against Microsoft. Iowa's Attorney General Tom Miller reported receiving more than 50 letters in support of Microsoft during the summer of 2001. "No two letters are identical, but the giveaway lies in the phrasing," the Times wrote. "Four Iowa letters included this sentence: 'Strong competition and innovation have been the twin hallmarks of the technology industry.' Three others use exactly these words: "If the future is going to be as successful as the recent past, the technology sector must remain free from excess regulation."
Dewey Square Group and DCI Group sibling firm DCI/New Media are credited with assisting Microsoft with its "grass-roots" campaign, according to the Times.
[edit] -
Sourcewatch: Americans for Technology Leadership
From http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americ
a ns_for_Technology_Leadership
<SNIP>
Americans for Technology Leadership was founded by Jonathan Zuck in 1999 as a "grassroots" organisations for concerned consumers who want less regulation in the technology sector. It also campaigns on general tech issues such as spam.
It has been frequently described as a Microsoft front group. [1] (http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor /archives/000421.shtml)
[2] (http://www.aaxnet.com/news/M010823.html)
[3] http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/blog/computers /tanks.html
In August 2001 the Los Angeles Times reported that a ATL was behind a "carefully orchestrated nationwide campaign to create the impression of a surging grass-roots movement" behind Microsoft. "The campaign, orchestrated by a group partly funded by Microsoft, goes to great lengths so that the letters appear to be spontaneous expressions from ordinary citizens. Letters sent in the last month are printed on personalized stationery using different wording, color and typefaces--details that distinguish those efforts from common lobbying tactics that go on in politics every day. Experts said there's little precedent for such an effort supported by a company defending itself against government accusations of illegal behavior."
According to the Times, the campaign was discovered when Utah's Attorney General at the time Mark Shurtleff received letters "purportedly written by at least two dead people ... imploring him to go easy on Microsoft Corp. for its conduct as a monopoly."
Eighteen state's attorneys general were joining with the Justice Department in its anti-trust suit against Microsoft. Iowa's Attorney General Tom Miller reported receiving more than 50 letters in support of Microsoft during the summer of 2001. "No two letters are identical, but the giveaway lies in the phrasing," the Times wrote. "Four Iowa letters included this sentence: 'Strong competition and innovation have been the twin hallmarks of the technology industry.' Three others use exactly these words: "If the future is going to be as successful as the recent past, the technology sector must remain free from excess regulation."
Dewey Square Group and DCI Group sibling firm DCI/New Media are credited with assisting Microsoft with its "grass-roots" campaign, according to the Times.
</SNIP>
I wrote an e-mail to Foxnews using my gmail account. Besides answering some of Pendergast's claims, I quoted sourcewatch and said a couple of things to them. Let's see how they answer. -
See 360 degree video in action
My current work project deals with real-time presentation of a 360 degree video feed. We used the Ladybug camera to record 30min of footage in a contemporary glass studio. The video feed is later projected inside a hemisphere. You use a trackball to change your viewing direction at a rock solid 60Hz update rate.
Note that having a good 3D sound system is essential for this type of installation. Since you only see half of the world, a full 3D sound field can give you important clues about things which happen behind you.
We'll show this starting October 6 at the Sydney Powerhouse Museum (Australia). Enjoy. -
empyre
People might also be interested in a fairly extensive discussion about these issues that took place on the empyre mailing list in February.
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Better LInk
DIVINE PROPORTIONS: Rational Trigonometry to Universal Geometry by N J Wildberger is a link to the advertisment for his upcoming book, which also has a PDF dowbload of the first chapter.
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Recently competed in the UNSW ProgComp
I recently competed in the UNSW ProgComp ('largest competition within Australia'). We only came third place, due to good competition this year (we won in 2003 with VB against Perl, Haskell and C++, heh
:).
Although I think the article fails to mention the organisation of 'computer time'. The Australian Computer Programming Competition and the ProgComp both allow three members in a team, but only one computer between the three of them. This means that you have to organise the priority and the division of problems amongst your teammates. Also, learning to code on paper is another important skill, as you won't have access to a keyboard the whole time. Therefore, having access to a printer is extremely helpful as you can just print and debug your code.
Due to the nature of some languages, they restrict languages like Java and Python in the bigger competitions (IOI, ACPC) due to the large amount of standard libraries they get to play with. For example, I wasted half an hour coding Task 4 before I realised we could switch languages halfway through the competition and got it done in 15 lines with Python with regex.
Finally, you do not need to have a team that consists entirely of programmers. In our team (for this year), we had two programmers, one to do the algorithmic ones (my friend, who represented Australia in the International Informatics and returned with a bronze medal), one to do the string-based ones (me), and another person to solve the problems by hand. Although, due to ProgComp deciding to have less algorithmic questions, my friend was only able to use his skill effectively on one question and the rest were split up between us. We had our third team member solve Task 3 though, and just coded a small program to decode it using the supplied decryption matrix.
I won't be able to compete in high school competitions anymore as it is my final year, but I wish the rest of you, who are still able to compete, luck. -
Re:Isn't This the Universal Translator Idea
A real universal translator (artificial intelligence) would have to have many thousands of words of text to use as examples, so a language could be learned. http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~billw/mldict.html That is why many mechanical translation systems start with word lists and dictionaries to give the learning process a head start.
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more variaties of online service
* support OpenURL
* integrate with google scholar.. SFX
* participate in digitalization projects (such as google's)
* buy full subscription of safari online or euqivalent in ohter domains
* hire libarians that blog (meaning enthusastic about new technologies and willing to communicate)
* build a user community (forum for your library users)
* rss feeds on new resources/new services..
* make your catalogue URLs and pages more friendly to thirdparty integration (greasemonkey, such as john udell's local library integration on amazon)
hople my library (http://info.library.unsw.edu.au/ can do all these!! -
Re:Its bleak.
Sorry Mt View Guy.... algae is not the answer either! http://socialwork.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/D86.RE.Ch.
5 .LiquidsX.html The algae section is half way down. Check it out. There are enormous problems wtih the algae process, and the Australian CSIRO concluded it was a net energy loser. I hope they can turn it around, I seriously do... for the sake of my kids. After peak oil we will have to return our sewerage NPK nutrient values to the soil. We'll have to have some safe way of processing it while retaining the nutrients. Algae COULD be the answer but there are enormous technical problems to overcome first. Enormous! It's not the "silver bullet". It might help towards retaining fertilizer from our sewerage, but at this stage I doubt it will make a net energy profit. I'm more inclined to think we should try the standard wind turbines, plus the 24 hour reliable wind power of a Solar chimney, plus Solar PV and everything else we've got on some kind of electric grid transport system... but I'm all for saying goodbye the private car! We cannot afford the energy to drive to work, McDonalds, school, etc. We cannot afford the energy to construct vastly energy greedy suburbia. Hence the title of the movie! (See previews at website.) www.endofsuburbia.com -
Re:More to the point...
>>>"That's all current vegetable oil production. Serious, forward-looking studies of biodiesel consider growing new crops specifically optimized for oil production. IIRC an area 105 miles square would suffice for the entire energy requirements of the U.S.." Dream on. The areas required to grow biodiesel are ENORMOUS! For example... Australia exports 80% of our wheat. We eat a LOT of Weet Bix, bread, pasta, etc... but we still export 80% of our wheat. We grow a lot! But if we were to convert all 100% of our wheat into ethanol, we'd only get 9% of our transport fuels and no Weet Bix, bread, or wheat exports! Biodiesel has similar land limitations. You quickly end up running into making a choice between land and food! Also, how is it grown? If it is grown with traditional industrial "green revolution" agriculture, you LOSE energy! That's right. Look up the Haber Bosch process and figure how much gas energy gets used making nitrogen fertilizer. Figure how much petroleum & diesel energy gets used mining and transporting Phosphorous and Potassium. Once you add in the NPK values of the fertilizer, you realize we are in trouble. Then there's the pesticides... made from the petrochemical industry... oil again! So it's no wonder the "Green revolution" is now decidedly looked on as NOT that green. Indeed, after peak oil we will have enough trouble feeding ourselves, let alone growing fuel. check out "Eating Fossil fuels" at the link below. http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_
e ating_oil.html If the USA COULD grow it's own oil from just a hundred or so square miles of dirt, why hasn't it? Why blow out the trade figures? Why fund your enemies? Why go to war in Iraq? This is not a game Chris... IIRC, 105 square miles is NOT going to fuel America. http://socialwork.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/D86.RE.Ch.5 .LiquidsX.html Chris, please read the two links above. They could change your understanding of the world situation. This is really not a game, not a matter of personal opinion. We are in trouble... peak oil is here and yet we keep focussing on what "future cars" will look like when hardly anyone will be driving! -
Re:Pseudoscience?
Stirling engines seem legitimate enough
Indeed:
used in Antarctic conditions
Just because something is liked by kooks doesn't make it kooky.
BugBear -
Re:Won't work
http://www.science.unsw.edu.au/news/2005/astrovis
i on.html I don't really know how this can be totally live though. It would have to only be for certain small areas. -
Re:That's not a subwoofer....
Given my own expirience with live sound, and bass, I would say that MythBusters could have gone slightly further. In a live music venue, for example, you have a somewhat resonant wood floor coupled to large bass bins (instead of effectively immobile concrete ground) and an enclosed area (as compared to open air), and this seems to magnify that feeling of quaking guts.
They also could have tried interference beats at a higher volume (higher than 150dB-- am I on crack?!?). Though to be honest, I don't know if that would have got them any further. Or did they try that?
All that said, I don't think that the brown sound is actually achievable. -
Re:my attempt at RAID...
What makes you say 1.8 was the last stable version? I've never seen any complaints with the newer 1.x series releases, and I just noticed that 1.12.0 has been released by Neil Brown.
Besides, and I may be completely off here, doesn't mdadm only create/manage RAID arrays? I thought all the code involved in the actual running of an array (including writing to one as any other block device) was in the Linux kernel. Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. -
this is new?
The Itanium Linux crowd have been doing this for months now:
http://www.gelato.unsw.edu.au/IA64wiki/KernelAutoB uild
there's even a freaking RSS stream:
http://www.gelato.unsw.edu.au/kerncomp/rss.php
oh well, good to see IBM testing linux on more common-or-garden x86 machines... -
this is new?
The Itanium Linux crowd have been doing this for months now:
http://www.gelato.unsw.edu.au/IA64wiki/KernelAutoB uild
there's even a freaking RSS stream:
http://www.gelato.unsw.edu.au/kerncomp/rss.php
oh well, good to see IBM testing linux on more common-or-garden x86 machines... -
2.4 is better than 2.6
2.4.27 still provides better md performance than 2.6.9 says Neil, not sure if this go fixed in
.11.
http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~neilb/ -
Peiser's 34 er 33 counterexamples
-
Re:Closed drivers.
-
Social Bookmarking + Collaborative RankingI think social bookmarking and tagging would be more interesting when combined with collaborative ranking:
- http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~amichail/collabrank/
- http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~amichail/collabrank/f
a q.html
- http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~amichail/collabrank/
-
Social Bookmarking + Collaborative RankingI think social bookmarking and tagging would be more interesting when combined with collaborative ranking:
- http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~amichail/collabrank/
- http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~amichail/collabrank/f
a q.html
- http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~amichail/collabrank/