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Here's an article by a leading expert, Irving Biederman, describing current thinking.

He starts by describing basic object recognition; and he theorizes on how face recognition both builds on the basics, and yet, differs from, seemingly, all types of objects.

corn products are currently being researched for creation of ultra-efficient hybrid vehicles.

In the Reuters story about Dr. Murphy I can't believe that this guys testimony could be taken seriously. First of all I see nothing in his credentials which would qualify him to talk about the computer industry and this thesis is quickly backed up by his testimony. What does he know about

"The potential costs of requiring the removal of (computer code) are far greater in terms of the costs it will impose on design and testing and the reliability problems it is likely to impose on users. "

No one has still actually seen the code. And you're going to love this one,

there is no proof that Microsoft's tactics actually harmed Netscape Navigator and Java.

Has he ever actually used a computer?!? This guy is obviously just reaching conclusions based on false data M$ gave to him. I cannot imagine that any judge with an I.Q. higher than your average house plant would give this guys testimony and credence.

This is a really cool Idea, but I can see the obvious improvements... hood mounted weather proof camera, maybe a digital cam hooked up to a laptop for high quality shots without replacing the film ever 36 miles.

I counted 3304 miles, at 36 miles/roll... that's 92 rolls of film. By the time he gets done
$8 per roll and $15 for development...
well, 92*(8+15)=$2116 plus tax- that's not including wear and tear or gas.

unless kodak fronted him some film, this seems REALLY expensive...
I think I'd like to see someone do this with a really nice digital cam and a laptop for less- just to see if it can be done.

And here's the group's web page, including their preprints and FAQ. No preprint of the present paper, though.

The REAL article states that

"It would take a breakthrough in the technology of working with large biomolecules like DNA for molecular computers to beat their electronic counterparts".
So while the article also mentions code-breaking as an obvious application for this ... device ..., electrons will be our computing friends for the foreseeable future.

If memory serves me correctly, the problem described in the REAL article is a 3-SAT, but algorithmics class was years back and beginning to fade from memory...

Here is the article at USC which covers the subject, including an interesting picture!

The article in the Online Journalism Review says: "Newsblaster seems to make things somewhat generic or more conservative, especially when summarizing reports over several days. This can take away the editorial edge or nuance that a reporter or editor might use to make a lead or report powerful. Summarizing news over several days in this approach results in a certain staleness."

I noticed the "blandness" of the summaries too, but I think that's a benefit-- reading CNN stories can get really tiring after a few minutes since everything has to have as much punch as possible.

virt? The guy who did the Thong Song cover using a Game Boy sound chip emulator? Oh, hiya! ^_^

Say, YOU wouldn't happen to know what happened to all the content from Jimmy Vetayase's site (the Hi-Fi Gaming Page from 1997 or so), would ya? Thanks.

< tofuhead >

The now defunct Hi-Fi Gaming Page, once located at http://www-scf.usc.edu/~vetayase/, used to feature huge MP2 downloads and MIDIs back in 1997 or so. This is the site that introduced me to the wonders of MPEG audio. They had some killer remixes of rare games, along with some soundfont downloads, etc. I once got a sweet Super Mario Bros. waltz medley from that site, and I haven't heard it since my HD at the time crashed so many years ago.

Jim Vetayase and the other guys who ran that site moved on to create another site, but I just don't know if that one is still around, and if so, which of the major sites it is. The old Hi-Fi page had a great library of cool stuff, and I'm still looking for that content 5 years later, with no luck. If anybody knows what happened to that site, and where those old downloads can be found nowadays, I'd love a heads-up reply.

< tofuhead >

People don't mod flaimebait like this because it isn't flamebait. You were not talking about the roads in your first comment, you were talking about books. I feel that you are misreprisenting his viewpoint when you claim that Lessig thinks some things should not be copyrightable at all. Even though I have not read his new book yet, I am certain that nowhere in it he ever claims this. Certainly not for any form of creativity. I know this because he stated so very specifically in his latest debate with Jack Valenti. As a matter of fact, Valenti makes almost the same comment you make, implying that because he had to purchase Lessig's book he is being hypocrytical. Lessig subsequently totally refutes that statement.

Anyway, I think the roads are a very good example of a commons: they were created with public funding, to the benefit of everyone. Of course, since roads are rivalrous, they are subject to the tragedy of the commons, as is evident in traffic jams.

Maybe I was a bit harsh with my wording in my first reply, for which I apologise!

Do your homework Just like you apparently did in this post. Yes Ma'am. http://cartalk.cars.com/Mail/Electric/-another good kneejerk reaction http://michele.usc.edu/105b/electrochemistry/batte ry.html-Problems with using batteries & fuel cells http://www.geocities.com/MotorCity/Shop/3589/effic iency.html-Maybe Stanley had it right to begin with... As for the lead acid batteries, almost all are recycled now Ah, yes they go to that happy, magic place where batteries go in dead and come out alive, and leave absolutely no pollution in the air or water. Again, I'm not saying electric cars and recycling are bad- just there's more to being 'environmentally friendly' than riding around in over-blown PowerWheels.

available here. The applications of the general techniques they are developing are pretty interesting. Even the further development of SPM's into three dimensional probing is pretty remarkable. Not to mention the greater ends of nanotechniques on manufacture.

He wants the perks that go with it. Congressmen don't care about their salaries (though they have no trouble raising them) -- it is a pittance compared to the bribery received from lobbyists of all sorts. Roman senatorial hopeful used to mortgage their entire estates and sell franchise rights to wealthy investors to finance their elections, and it wasn't because they (or their backers) had strong moral opinions they wanted voiced. He's following the money, and quick to deny it.

HOO HOO HA HA HEE HEE HEA HEA HOOOOOO!

Thank you for the BEST LAUGH I'VE HAD IN HOURS. If I had moderator points, I'd award as many "+1 Funny" as I could to your post. Thank you, thank you.

Oh, I grant you there are cases of people like building inspectors who have been successfully bribed, but the take is nowhere near enough to justify the heat and hassle once the bribe is discovered. When you really, really look at the job description for the TC, there is very little difference between the TC member and the building inspector. All it takes is for another building inspector to say "there is no way a competent BI would miss all this crap" to send the corrupt one to jail. Read about how a cabinet official was nailed, and the briber set free. No thank you.

No, if I wanted to follow the money, I would try to get onto a rules-making body. There, you can accept all the bribes you want and it's almost impossible to convict you for it. Unlike people who have to follow the rules, there is no way the people who make the rules can be found to "break the rules" unless they are very, very stupid. (Or unlucky.)

You allude to this in your supporting text, by pointing out the interests of the rulemakers (Congressmen and Roman senatorial hopefuls). Now make your argument by pointing to the quartermasters who became multimillionares by accepting bribes for generators, or policemen who retired from the force and started living on the rich side of town from the bribes they received on the job for looking the other way.

Follow the money, indeed!

1. How will they focus the beam on receptor antenas?

2. How will they keep airplanes from flying across the beams?

The only way for this not to harm you would be for it not to strike you. Early radar technicians learned about microwave cooking standing in front of such beams

In 1960 the most powerful earthquake of the 20th century moved the Chilean coast 60 feet in 5 minutes.
http://www.extremescience.com/GreatestEarthquake.h tm
http://www.usc.edu/dept/tsunamis/chile/

In 1998 Hurricane Mitch pushed rivers 100's of feet up mountains, created brand new rivers, caused landslides which changed the shapes of mountains and covered entired cities, and left parts of the land covered in water over a year later. (if you're in Nicaragua look for the "Las Casitas" memorial - the distant mountain which caused the landslide shows obvious changes in its shape).
http://www.osei.noaa.gov/mitch.html
http://www.acerca.org/ejd1_results1.html

Volcanic eruptions can be so great as to cause the birth of islands. There was a well-studied one in the Pacific in 2000, i believe. Also in Nicaragua is an interesting series of small islands caused by a nearby volcano loosing its top - large pieces of land were blown miles away and landed in a lake creating these islands. I dont remember the name of the lake or volcano, though i have some photos at /home.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_7 62000/762047.stm

Natural Disasters are called "disasters" for a reason. 6000 years seems plenty for the earth to move a small bit of land a couple hundred metres.

The Debate was named Creativity, Commerce, & Culture: Lessig vs. Valenti and occured on November 29, 2001 at USC Annenberg School.

Watch the archived webcast (1.35 h) with Real Video under: http://annenberg.usc.edu/events/011129LessigValent i/debate.smil

Best regards

Mikael

Archive here Use your realplayer to open this file. For some reason I could not get sound though?? Could be just my client I suppose. Had volume maxed and speakers on... Try it and see if it works for you.

Other verses can be used to argue for using it to directly cure diseases/benefit the human kind, but it's a thin line.

Creating a "spiderman" or whatever just for the "fun of it" so to speak is out of the question.

Apparently it'll be available in a week or so; see this discussion-board post:
http://ascweb.usc.edu/debate/viewtopic.php?topic=1 1&forum=1&2

If you're quick, you can still pose questions for them to answer.

After the pullout, the conflict didn't cease immediately. The overwhelming poverty in Ireland gave the IRA a large pool of unemployed young men to recruit. Border skirmishes, assignations and other acts of terror continued off and on for years.

Along the border they still hate each other, but there is less conflict today because so many people are working. IMHO if everybody keeps working long enough, the old hatreds might stand a chance of cooling off to the point that they can really get along.

The greatest Evil

From the point of view of the Americans, they feel like they are caught between the rock and the proverbial hard place.

After WWII, many in the Middle East saw the US as the country to emulate. They saw the US as a country that exuded freedom, wealth, and modernity and so on. We said great. Here is aid in the form of education resources, health resources, money etc. The various leaders in the Middle East squandered these opportunities. When their people began to rebel and complain, their leaders moved to suppress these dissenters. This powerless underclass was ripe pickings for the various religious leaders spewing hatred for the west.

The big mistake the US made? The mistake was being loyal to those leaders that had promised freedom. Always have been loyal...loyal to a fault.

It is happening again in Israel. They are getting funding from the US and preaching freedom, but they treat the Palestinians that work in Israel like crap. Arrested and detained without being charged for months at a time.

Israel is so close. They need to look to Ireland. Years of conflict that has gone quiet because the young male population that was throwing fire bombs, what else was there to do, are now employed and making money.

Oh well The greatest Evil

You can shield your child from someone's views. I have no problem with that. You can show you child their views and then express your counterargument. That's fine too. But to distort someone else's views without their permission is unfair and dangerous, and that is essentially what editing for content is. Well-done films are not merely a commodity for you to pick and choose pieces of, a la carte. They are coherent wholes intended to be seen as a whole, and doing anything else with them violates the integrity of the art.

Somewhat contrived example: Say I see Goya's Saturn Devouring His Children, and I think the lighting and style create a great mood, and I want to show my kid this piece of art.. but the whole eating-the-kid bit is too graphic, so I blot it out. Am I being fair to the artist to say that this is what was intended? No. My kid would be missing out onn the artist's intention. I think that in this case, since I'm not comfortable with showing my child the subject matter, I should just find a different painting.

"Well, this is different," you might say, "because the eating-the-child thing is crucial to the painting, and the nude scenes in movies aren't." Well, who should decide what is crucial to the film and what isn't? I say the artist should get to decide.

• COCOMO (COnstructive COst MOdeling)
• MBASE (Model-Based Architecting & Software Engineering)
• and other resources

• COCOMO (COnstructive COst MOdeling)
• MBASE (Model-Based Architecting & Software Engineering)
• and other resources

• COCOMO (COnstructive COst MOdeling)
• MBASE (Model-Based Architecting & Software Engineering)
• and other resources

• COCOMO (COnstructive COst MOdeling)
• MBASE (Model-Based Architecting & Software Engineering)
• and other resources

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/eo/20011101/en/_quot_ shrek_quot_stalks_quot_monsters_inc_quot__1.html

Disney/Pixar most definitely do not like DreamWorks, and vice versa. Ever notice how Farquad (the villain in Shrek) looks amazingly like Micheal Eisner, and that saying "farquad" fast enough sounds a lot like "fuck wad"? These guys dislike each other on a personal level.

in pseudo-Eiffel:


allocate_3 is
require
SOME_NUMBER>=0
local
p1,p2,p3: INT_POINTER
do
p1 := malloc(SOME_NUMBER*sizeof(int))
p2 := malloc(SOME_NUMBER*sizeof(int))
p3 := malloc(SOME_NUMBER*sizeof(int))
/* do something with p1,p2,p3*/
free(p1)
free(p2)
free(p3)
rescue
free(p1)
free(p2)
free(p3)
end

Notice how little changed from the original program. You can have a similar C solution and a discussion of the problem (as an example on error-handling) at this document.

Note that this solution does all this things (and compare with other solutions posted):
* frees all memory, no matter if things succeed or fail, and even if things fail in the do_something part
* checks that SOME_NUMBER is valid (non negative) and does not overflow when multiplied by sizeof(int)
* Has not a deeply nested structure
* Has an obvious and visible flow control* Works as a non-error when SOME_NUMBER is 0
* Allows calling routines to get the same kind of clean error-handling
* works robustly when other error conditions I haven't thought of happen.

Yes, C allows all this, but it is a pain in the neck, the code gets big and messy, and hard to mantain. So error-checking in C comes at a great cost...

Most languages make error checking very hard. In particular, C and Perl, two of the most used langs in OSS development, lack good mechanisms for sane error checking. I might explain more, but is better explained at this document.

btw, the document is part of a library that allows nicer error checking in C, called BetterC. (Yes, this is a plug, I've participated in the development).

It is modelled in Eiffel's "Design by contract", a set of techniques complemented with language support to make error checking a lot easier and semiautomatic. "Design by contract" has been described as "one of the most useful non-used engineering tool".

Most languages make error checking very hard. In particular, C and Perl, two of the most used langs in OSS development, lack good mechanisms for sane error checking. I might explain more, but is better explained at this document.

btw, the document is part of a library that allows nicer error checking in C, called BetterC. (Yes, this is a plug, I've participated in the development).

It is modelled in Eiffel's "Design by contract", a set of techniques complemented with language support to make error checking a lot easier and semiautomatic. "Design by contract" has been described as "one of the most useful non-used engineering tool".

If we were to discover that Edvard Munch's "The Scream" were not made with heart and love, but rather a smothering dread and intense claustrophobia, would that mean that it wasn't art? Of course not. Therefore love and heart aren't necessary. On the other hand there are plenty of people who claim that Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" isn't art simply because it's an image of a crucifix submerged in his (then pregnant) wife's urine. Interviews with him indicate that he wasn't attempting to be blasphemous -- the extra chemicals in his wife's urine due to her gravid condition produced a colour that Serrano found appealing. So, it's arguable that love and heart aren't sufficient. If they are neither necessary nor sufficient, they are simply not meaningful. It's just as appropriate to say that giraffes and bananas are needed for art.

And, incidentally, infant sacrifice has been with us for a long time. In Tunisia, around the time of the Roman Republic, the natives worshipped a pair of gods named Baal-Hamon and Tanit. They put their first born children in the arms of large statues of Baal-Hamon and lit a fire underneath the statue. When the metal heated up, the arms separated and the infant was dropped into the fire. There's a long standing connection between art and the divine -- in fact, many artists and philosophers use divinity, rather than heart and love, as the defining criterion for art.

Finally, if you use 'love and heart' as the defining criteria for art, then, since there's no empirical way of determining whether something possesses those antecedent qualities, there's no way of determining whether something is art. The only recourse is to admit everything into the realm of art. At this point, the term 'art' ceases to be meaningful since it's just a synonym for 'everything'.

3 translations of the qur'an

interesting parts: 060.008, 060.009, 047.004, use the search to find others if you'd like.

there is text to support what bin laden is doing, but there is text that condemns it too. guess Islam is closer to Christianity than i though... in any case i though your comment was pretty insightful.

All those who learned the major arcane heiroglyphic of the CLI, saw the GUI as a threat to their elite geekyness, almost seeing it as a virus threatening their priveliged earning status. Configuring a Linux box should not be made too easy should it? But wait..... another virus awaits around the corner. Ready to infect the earnings of all GUI writers. Yes my friends, better than human speech recognition, yeah I know you don't believe me, well you are wrong. And whats more its been out for nearly two years, very strange, how silent the media has been about this speech recognition breakthrough. Unspoken middle class conspiricy maybe? Well go here then and see what you think. Once people can talk to their computers, I'm afraid the bottom will drop out of the market, a bad virus indeed!!

Right on, go here to see how its done.

Peter.

Imagine what you could find for "CmdrTaco" or "JonKatz" through this amazing search engine? Naked photos? Embarassing drunken pee-pee shots? Oh yes. All this and more....

I used to be a student of architecture at the USC. They have a (I think) rediculous policy that any submitted work becomes the property of the School of Architecture, possibly the property of the University. This includes drawings, physical models, 3-D animations, movies, pictures, even a student's portfolio (which, in architecture, is your life). For one class, a group of us built a collaborative model, costing the group well over $800. This model then became the "property" of the university/school, and we haven't seen it since. Since 16 of us paid for this, and 8 people worked on it, I'd at least like to see where my 50 bucks and 80 man-hours went!

It is unfortunate that the GPL only covers software.

Sorry, here's the link http://ojr.usc.edu/content/story.cfm?request=558

On a prior thread, the subject of plastic.com came up. In my prior and current opinion, plastic.com doesn't have a long-term future as a viable community. It seems, at least to me, that the operating assumptions regarding the generation of meaningful, tangible value- are inherently flawed.

Plastic.com has mistakenly assumed it could replicate the success of Slashdot simply by repurposing the Slashdot message board system for the purposes of broad-minded subjects mostly related to pop culture, pop technology and pop politics. They have failed to realize that Slashdot's success has come through its specialization. The broader the subject matter, the less compelling the appeal to a broader base of people. The narrower the subject matter, the stronger the potential appeal to a smaller base of people. They are failing because they thought if they focused on broad subjects, that all your base would belong to them. But they ain't CATS. They are on their way to destruction. They have no chance to survive, make their time.

Seriously, though- I think most people who read and participate in Slashdot would agree that there is something of a Slashdot POV that is reinforced through the editorials, through the article selection, through much of the posting activity, etc. While you see a lot of variation in the worldviews of participants (agnostics, christians, atheists, relativists, absolutists, humorists, nihilists, etc.)- the community still has several hundred thousand participants who fit the profile one-way-or-another (in short, they understand at some level the Slashdot narrative, and want to participate in and contribute to it).

What is the Plastic.com POV? There isn't one, really. It isn't created BY a certain specialized community FOR a specialized community. It is a created by a conglomerate of differently-minded interests, lacking in a coherent POV, and it feels like it. Oh sure, it has a sort of ironic, detached postmodern perspective- that is reflected in the cheeky commentary here-and-there, but come on- isn't that the standard TONE of almost web-based content sites these days? Salon, Slate, Wired News, etc.? So how original is that?

Now, Plastic.com will have two less sources funnelling a readership towards its community board. No Feed readers, no Suck readers. Who will it continue to receive readers from? Modern Humorist? (who jokingly noted in a recent press release that they were almost out of the seven-figures in venture capital they raised only a year ago, and could be in trouble?) Netslaves? (who repeatedly asks on their own site if they should discontinue the site itself since their purpose has been satisfied and frankly, Netslaves isn't exactly making anyone richer OR happier?) Inside.com? (who at their PEAK had less than 2000 paying subscribers, as noted by Poynter.org a week ago?)

I don't bear Plastic any ill-will, that isn't why I'm bringing this up. I think the concept is flawed and in time, this will be manifest. But I'd be happy to I was wrong about that.

But, backing up, it begs the question- who in the Internet content business is going to survive?

Jim Romenesko's Media News had a link today to a story in which Slate publisher Scott Moore "was kind of funny, drolly knocking down anybody's ideas about what might make a dollar online... He didn't seem to think any known model will sustain a Web-media company. Because his publication is paid for by Bill Gates, he can afford to be pessimistic."

Truth be told, Moore is wrong. We see that at least The Onion has been able to make a ton of money ($2,000,000 in ad revenues alone last year, for their website only). They also have print advertising in their print publication, and several best-selling books they've released, plus "The Onion" radio news (syndicated for indy & college radio stations, mostly), and have made money optioning articles to Miramax for film development (two to date that I know of).

So, there is a hybrid new media / old media company that is making serious money in content. And, most would agree, they are the best at what they do.

Another content company making money online is Fu----company.com. Founder Pud runs the thing pretty much by himself. He's got a book deal with Simon & Schuster, he's got at least $60,000 a month in subscriber revenues to his unedited gossip / rumours database, he's got some banner advertising (prolly not too special revenue wise), and he's got f'dcompany-branded products he sells on his site (I think I read this may bring in over $100,000 this year, but I'd need to double check).

There are other Internet content players who are surviving, generating revenues and even profits. I don't know of ANY that have done so after raising venture capital. Ironically, the sites that raised capital to fund content are the ones who are dying here, there and all over the shop.

I wish I could think of some more Internet content "pureplays" that seem likely to survive, but I can't off the top of my head.

Where was I going with all this? I don't know. But now that I'm here, I think I'll rest and pretend this was where I was intending to head.

Good luck to the content players still out there, still trying to make something work while remaining independent. I feel obligated to say that after reading that 4 corporate players control over HALF of the public's internet browsing needs or some such nonsense.

All of this speculating has got me depressed. Think I'll go read some old USENET articles and think of a simpler time. A time when it looked like Netscape was going to change the world, when it looked like Microsoft had finally been bested, when Amazon was just selling books and it seemed like the people starting companies left-and-right were doing it because they wanted to make a change in something other than their personal worth.

The article misses the point. They do intend to use composite fibers.

What they are trying to convey is that power transmission companies are considering using the same type of fiber-glass strength member that is currently being used in fiber-optic data cables as opposed to a steel strength member. This will make the cables lighter and sag less. Your point about composites is well taken, but carbon-fiber is a bit too expensive for applications such as this. Fiber-glass with intermediate strands of kevlar would probably work very nicely, which oddly enough is exactly how Siecor (and others) makes their fiber-optic cables.

If you go to the link that Wired refers to you will see the following:

Approach: The simplest solution is to increase the volume of the aluminum strands without increasing the assembly diameter. This can be achieved by replacing the steel strands with fiber-reinforced composites that are more than twice as strong and far lighter. Thus, less material is needed to carry loads, and more Al can be incorporated into the design. USC is teaming with several industrial partners (Goldsworthy, SCE, Southwire, and ORNL), to develop a design and prototype called CRAC (Composite Reinforced Aluminum Conductor.)

So yes, they really do intend to use composites and the though of putting actual data-transmitting fibers in the power cable is being overlooked. Justifiably so, I might add. There is already plenty of data transmission capacity between SoCal and NorCal and the costs aren't really in laying the fiber in the first place. Lighting the fiber gets way more expensive in the end.

This is really just another example of bad journalism.

If you read the Wired article, you see a link to the real article. Congrats to Wired for citing their source. Too bad they blew their article, and so did Slashdot. It is not "fiber optics" in the center of the wire. This is *so* *obviously* *wrong*. Fiber optics are glass! Is glass stronger than steel? The real article clearly says that they are "fiber-reinforced composites". That is, newfangled materials that are indeed stronger than steel. Not glass! Have some common sense, people.

So yes, soon, all of California will be addicted to CRAC.

Sometimes, you just can't make this stuff up.

fiber links may act as "information wormholes", subverting this rule for the parties at each end of the link, but you can't run fiber links from everywhere to everywhere else. therefore links will inevitably turn into bottlenecks.

i think that people are still gravely underestimating the amount of bandwidth that we can use. think about distributed computing. for example, imagine a hypothetical future realtime computer simulation of a human brain: if you've got two of them, communication can take place just like it does for us (a telephone line!); but try splitting the simulation into its two hemispheres, each running on a different computer. how much bandwidth will this require? what about splitting it into four?!

ok, you might be able to do it for one such distributed calculation, but what if everyone is trying to do it? a conservative (read naive) estimate gives 10 terabits/s required... for one such calculation. that's more than the predicted maximum bandwidth of a single fiber for the foreseeable future. ok, it's maybe a contrived example, but what about peer-to-peer 3D virtual worlds? there are a billion possible computing tasks requiring that much bandwidth...

• there will always be a cost advantage to physical proximity.
• high bandwidth over long distances will always command premium rates.
• the internet will always be too slow...

I believe that 'dude' was Leonard Adleman ('A' of RSA infamy)

Check out the papers at the USC Laboratory for Molecular Science

It's a statistical technique, which is never guaranteed to find a solution (I believe) but takes advantage of the huge number of molecules available to speed up the brute-force search. Unfortunately, I have no idea what it's time complexity is, nor how it compares to this technique (not paying for a subscription today :)

I believe that 'dude' was Leonard Adleman ('A' of RSA infamy)

Check out the papers at the USC Laboratory for Molecular Science

It's a statistical technique, which is never guaranteed to find a solution (I believe) but takes advantage of the huge number of molecules available to speed up the brute-force search. Unfortunately, I have no idea what it's time complexity is, nor how it compares to this technique (not paying for a subscription today :)

In benchmark testing using just a few spoken words, USC's Berger-Liaw Neural Network Speaker Independent Speech Recognition System not only bested all existing computer speech recognition systems but outperformed the keenest human ears.

and

The system can distinguished words in vast amounts of random "white" noise -- noise with amplitude 1,000 times the strength of the target auditory signal.

I don't know about you, but I'm pretty damned impressed.

the article on this system

Here's an aerial shot to illustrate how arbitrary soveregnity is. Quick - what part of the above photo is an independent nation of long and undisputed standing, and what parts are just an ordinary city?

Okay, let's try another country. The narrow strip of coastal buildings in this photo is a centuries old (far older than Germany, to cite one example) nation of undisputed sovereignity.

For that matter - I can think of a dozen nations that are a single rifle shot from end to end. You'd have an interesting time explaining why this structure made of coral is an independent nation (more precisely, a disjointed major fragment of an ocean nation -- just as the Sealand photo in the parent post showed only one platform of Sealand)

National jurisidiction is arbitrary. Who will get mad if the UK invades Sealand? The UK courts , who have already ruled that the UK could not assert territoriality or jurisdiction over these platforms. (The British press would have a nice field day with the 'underdog' angle, too. It's funny how stuff like that weakens or topples administrations in parliamentary systems -- it's kind of like counting chad...)