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A lenticular lens array in front of LCD screens are a nice do-it-yourself solution that almost does the trick. It makes an autostereoscopic display that can display more than 2 images in different directions, making it possible to move around in front of the screen and see a stereo image without glasses. However, there are a couple of limitations. The LCD resolution suffers tremendously and the number of zones that you can create still isn't very high. Maybe it gets better with retina displays, but I'm not sure. Even paper printouts of 20 to 30 images at 600dpi are barely good enough.

Another interesting idea is this proposal: http://gl.ict.usc.edu/Research/LFD/ - replace each pixel on a *huge* screen with a microprojector acting as a directional light source. It is insane in its own special way, but this research group has successfully thrown massive amounts of hardware at problems in the past.

One might suppose that the car would include infrared/thermal imaging and would be able to use that to identify animals vs plants. The signatures between the two would probably be different. Also, as outlined in http://iris.usc.edu/outlines/papers/2007/zhang-nev-wu-otcbvs07.pdf an autonomous car would also have the advantage of more information that a normal person would have. You could have a variety of imaging methods that could be juxtaposed to present a picture of the situation that would be unavailable to the human eye. It would be easier to detect the pedestrian walking down the side of the road in dark clothes at night because you would have a thermal signature. You can also track more objects at once if you do the software once. So you don't forget to look at the kid ahead on the right because a cyclist passed by on the left.

I get your point - humans have more sympathy for humans than for machines, and I honestly don't know what the answer is to that. On the other hand, if the overall number of traffic fatalities, injuries and collisions is reduced by a significant enough margin (and I suspect, based on that I've heard of the results of Google's tests, that they would) then I think society as a whole would recognize that although there are exceptions we are still far better off than before. Fortunately, we have the stats to be able to measure this.

I could see phasing the responsible human requirement out as time progresses. Maybe as we begin to implement such a system we require a human to be engaged and ready to take over at all times. As time progresses we can examine the collected data such as fatalities, injuries, collisions, amount of human intervention required and examine the causes of accidents and perhaps relax the rules if the technology really proves itself.

Hmm, their stuff doesn't look like CSG to me - look at the blends and morphs for example, those are certainly not CSG operations.

Also, don't trust wikipedia. CSG means something very specific and is not just an interface that lets you do Boolean operations. See explanations from some of the guys who came up with the stuff: Requicha (pdf) and John Woodwark's website

Only a system which has a CSG tree as an internal representation and point membership evaluation can be called a real CSG system. As soon as it stores surfaces, it's just back to being a plain old BRep system.

The packages you mention don't actually use CSG, whatever they may call their operations. Ones that do are: iCAD (from japan), BRL-CAD (US-Army, now open source) and the old AutoSolids add-on for AutoCAD (which is dead now).

If you're interested in reading up some more, a good starting point might be the original reports

I can help if you have further questions :)

Perhaps the issue is that you clearly do not understand how your government works.

That seems to be true, at least for one of us!

The fact that your town is 15 miles outside of Sacto doesn't mean that maintaining your roads is a State issue. In fact it is NOT. It is either the responsibility of your town or your county if unincorporated.

Yeah, the state cut the county road budget, and half the legislature lives in my town or nearby. Next?

Similarly the reasons your school budgets are being cut is most likley because of Prop 13 (which limits property tax) than because of poor management (although both could be at fault).

Yes, 20% taxes on income and sales combined isnt enough for the state with among the highest taxation levels in the country. We should also be raped on property taxes. I see you work for the state? Nobody else picks on prop 13 except the politicians. Stupid because property tends to transact often enough to keep the levels reasonable, and retired people and poor people don't get priced out of their homes during real estate booms.

I have no idea why you think CA spends anywhere near the most per student on education.

http://mat.usc.edu/u-s-education-versus-the-world-infographic/ We also spend more on healthcare in the US than most countries, and also get less. Seems we're underperformers all around.

You seem to be woefully confused about how your government works. I would suggest you start fixing the government problems you see around by first informing yourself about how it is supposed to operate and stop blaming your state government for the stupidity of your local government (e.g. for putting up expensive signage).

You seem to have trouble processing information and coming to a reasonable conclusion. I would suggest you stop figuring out how to peanut butter the blame around, since most of the stuff I mentioned that is being done locally was done so with federal and state earmarks. I'd suggest you quit your job with the state of california and take a whirl at working at a real company with real budgets and real deliverables. It'll be quite an eye opener for you, for sure.

What amount of money you spend on education??

According to this link, about $800 billion, which is by far more than any other country on the planet. Or $7700 per student. Which is over 30% more per student than the number two spot.

The education budget is cut every year,

That's bullshit perpetuated by which ever political party that is not in power at the time. The amount of planned increase to the education budget may get lowered, but it still gets increased. This is often times reported as a savings when it comes to other spending. The budget for project X was supposed to go up by $200 million, but we only increased it by $150 million. Look at how much we cut. The spending still increased, just not as much.

to make room for more war and keep the tax breaks for the rich.

Or hand outs to the poor. Blah, blah partisan bullshit.

And the higher education is just vastly overpriced.

I couldn't agree more.

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if the USA is waaay down on the list of how much education you actually get and on the price/performance ratio.

Indeed. Scroll down on that link I provided above.

Now I feel like I should say something good about US education, and how you can easily turn it around since you have the abilities... But I honestly can't think how... I just hope it gets better for you guys. I really do.

Agreed. It's pretty scary that our future leaders will be dumber than ever and still have command of one of the largest nuclear arsenals and well equipped militaries on the planet.

What I'm saying is that the US spends more per student than any other developed country, yet we consistently score in the bottom quartile in science and math. The entire system is broken, and spending more days per year doing the same dumb crap isn't going to make the system better. http://mat.usc.edu/u-s-education-versus-the-world-infographic/

http://mat.usc.edu/u-s-education-versus-the-world-infographic/

If only there were powerful unions looking out for the best interests of teachers...

By and large teachers get what they fight for. That they spend their time/resources fighting to keep administrations from firing the incompetent is on them.

It certainly isn't a lack of funding holding teachers in the US back... http://mat.usc.edu/u-s-education-versus-the-world-infographic/

We demonstrate that, for certain array configurations in free space, traditional MIMO theory leads to eigen-modes identical to the OAM states. From this we conclude that communicating over the sub-channels given by OAM states is a subset of the solutions offered by MIMO, and therefore does not offer any additional gains in capacity.

In other words, OAM is a perfectly legitimate technique for encoding data. It just happens to be a subset of what's already capable with MIMO. It's also worth noting that your paper discusses radio waves, and the OAM demonstration discussed in the submission is in the optical. There may be limitations that prevent certain MIMO techniques from being applicable to optical transmission, especially in guided-wave situations (i.e. optical fiber). In fact, the research group I worked with during my Ph.D. was looking at encoding extra information on single photons using OAM to increase the data capacity of quantum communication networks, a situation where MIMO is almost certainly not applicable.

It's worth noting that Alan Willner is no nutjob. He's worked at Bell Labs, has a chaired professorship at USC, is a fellow of IEEE, OSA and SPIE, and is an editor-in-chief for several reputable academic journals (JLT, Optics Letters, JSTQE). I had the pleasure of working with him on an unrelated project 5 or 6 years ago, and there's no reason to believe that he's trying to pull the wool over anybody's eyes. There's certainly no professional reason for him to do so, his CV speaks for itself: http://csi.usc.edu/faculty/willner.html

Like she's gonna know that the USC you refer to is not http://www.usc.edu/

Does anyone else find it odd that this paper has been submitted to American Economic Review?

Perhaps this validates the point of the paper in that if we had the title "Economists Investigate Political Bias On Wikipedia" we would have gone in with different feelings about the whole thing.

[Citation Needed]

Is Wikipedia Biased?, by Shane Greenstein and Feng Zhu.

and most carb rich, high glycemic index foods cause systemic inflammation. Particular ones involving grains, legumes, and dairy. Just go to nutritiondata.com and look at the inflammation factors. There are also links between chronic, elevated insulin levels (which high glycemic index foods cause) and systemic inflammation. http://www.usc.edu/hsc/info/pr/hmm/06fall/insulin.html

Man was never made to be vegan and, judging from our closest relatives the Chimps, probably not vegetarian either.

Ask any dentist if we are vegetarians.
Also read
The Predatory Behavior and Ecology of Wild Chimpanzees for those who think chimps are vegetarian.

The only cut the union gets is the teachers' union dues, paid by the teachers themselves. And for college educated people, teachers make SHIT wages. If you want to know where the money's going, look what a contractor gets for building a school. The damned bricklayers are earning as much as the teachers, and the contractor himself is getting filthy rich. The book publishers who gouge institutions for learning materials are getting filty rich. Our education system sucks because of greed and graft.

here's a better link, it goes to the University of California with far more detail than your Virginia school (disclaimer: I went to SIU, neither coast).

Restore family values

What, exactly, are "family values?" The Manson family? My family's of Irish descent, we drink and fight. My sister's husband is 100% Italian, his dad was rumored to be in the Cosa Nostra. Bill Gates' family? Who the hell could afford THAT lifestyle?

Family values? That's nothing but meaningless tongue wagging.

Anyone who games any amount should not be surprised by the "friends ftw" factor.

However, as for the younger games being better than older debate: my experience is that their reflexes are generally superior (see citations below) and they have a lot of time to practice, but their ability to think strategically can be pretty limited and consequently it is possible to outmaneuver them.

I'm not that old yet at 29, but I'm definitely noticing I'm not as good as I was at 15.

Citations: It looks like late 20s might be the fastest age group due to a superior combination of youth + experience:
http://www.teachervision.fen.com/biology/lesson-plan/63835.html
http://www.usc.edu/CSSF/History/2009/Projects/J1319.pdf

Can anyone find any other sources on this? I used to believe teens had the fastest raw reaction time of any age group, but I'm unable to find any support for this.

Behrokh Khoshnevis

Sounds like the good prof is more a industrial engineer than a civil engineer.
How about some specification such as the strength of this rapid concrete that he "invented"?
Does his invention also lay rebar, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, etc...?
From the picture of the tiny model he's holding in his hands on his website, he's suffering from a major bout of overcompensating for his shortcomings.

The US spends more per child than other countries, yet test scores are far lower. The problem is not the money, the problem is how the money is being used. The fix to education is to fix where the current money is being spent. Not to throw more money at the problem.

http://mat.usc.edu/u-s-education-versus-the-world-infographic/

I've been wondering when they'd make that work.

In retail areas, street numbers tend not to be too prominent. It may be necessary to read business signs and use that data to disambiguate addresses. This would help to clean up the phony-business problem in Google Places. An alternative is to use real estate records, as the USC Geocoder does for some areas, to get a solid lock on address vs. physical position. But that data is only available for some areas. There are also the Census Bureau's TIGER/LINE files, but they're US only and not complete for the entire US.

Outside the US, this is likely to be more useful. If you have a few street numbers and a few business signs per block, you can infer the rest reasonably accurately.

IIRC, the kinds of works which can be made for hire are explicitly limited, and music is not included. Of course, the RIAA tried to push a law through Congress which changed that (always thinking of [screwing] the artist, RIAA is), and actually succeeded, but the backlash was so strong it was amended out of law within a year.

http://sail.usc.edu/~kazemzad/emotion_in_text_cgi/DAL_app/index.php?emotional_text=fuckheads+tried+to+steal+my+candy%2C+so+i+had+to+bury+them+all&submit_emotional_text=Send+inn

Purdue. WPI. Georgia Tech. University of Florida. Florida Atlantic University. Arizona State University. Just off the top of my head, and with respect to 100% online master degrees in a variety of engineering fields (mostly CE/ECE and Systems Engineering) and Computer Science.

Add USC to that list: http://mapp.usc.edu/distanceeducation/index.html

That's pretty much the process that's been proposed by the USC contour crafting group proposed for doing rebar. Print a shell layer, drop in some modular rebar sections,then you fill up the shell with concrete so that your rebar connectors sticks out, and then repeat for the next layer. Another way to do reinforcement is to put a metal coil on your top layer and to print over it, so the coil gets embedded in the concrete. They've actually demonstrated this.

So why stop at just printing in colors? The contour crafting group has proposed putting in tiling, plumbing, electrical wiring, heaters, and strain gauges.

See this paper for more:
http://craft.usc.edu/CC/Welcome_files/resources/AIC2004-Paper.pdf

Oh, it's a lost cause? I guess we'll just close every one of our schools... since you've decided and all.

For a little perspective: http://mat.usc.edu/u-s-education-versus-the-world-infographic/

We spend a lot on each kid without commensurate performance across the board. But we're hardly in "lost cause" territory.

There is an initial Second Life / Kinect interface avaliable. It only triggers macros and implements crude gesture navigation, but it is a start:
http://ict.usc.edu/projects/gesture_emotion_transference_using_microsoft_kinect_and_second_life_avatars/

Look, solar irradiance averages about 1366 W/m^2 and a has a variation of about 1 W/m^2 (using a one-year moving average). That's 0.073%.

You are referring to the Total Solar Irradiance (TSI). But it is not total: the satellites used to measure it have a spectral window from 2000 nm down to 200nm. That leaves out the EUV and X-Ray region. There, the variation is huge. See for example this factor-of-three variation over the solar cycle in the 26-34 nm band.

In the X-ray region variations can be orders of magnitude. Looking at any EUV of X-ray image, it is obvious that the short wavelength intensity from the corona much exceeds the black body radiation coming off the surface. So the conventional view that the EUV and X-Ray region is just an irrelevant tail of the black-body curve is wrong:the flux there is much more intense.

Then there are serious doubts about whether the TSI time series as published are actually all that constant. There have been per-instrument aging calibrations that have removed slopes in the raw data. The question though is whether this slope was really due to aging or due to a systematic trend in the solar irradiance. Also, the long-term TSI curve spans a number of instruments (satellites) with some gap in between. There is a lot of discussion about whether this gap has been bridged without skewing the data towards less variance than there really is.

There. A tiny bit more research shows that the sun can have a rather greater effect on Earth's temperature than it is given credit for.

And no, climate scientists are not familiar with this. The importance of the EUV and X-Ray region has been overlooked in the past and only recently has started to gain attention.

However, solar variation in radiation is not the cause (this is what is taken into account in climate models) but the magnetic fields and the solar wind appear to play a much larger role.

I would not be so sure about that since there is a bit of a blind spot in the theories, models and observations: EUV and X-Ray radiation. Take, for example, this time graph of the 26-34 nm EUV band. A factor of three or so variation in flux over the course of the solar cycle.

Look at any EUV or X-Ray image of the sun, and it is obvious that we are talking about radiation that much exceeds that what would be expected from the short wavelength tail of the solar black body curve (the surface, which is the source of that tail, appears relatively "dark" at those short wavelengths). Indeed, the spatial distribution of the source of the short wavelength emissions looks determined by magnetic field loops and surface bundles as can be seen in this three-color composite EIT synoptic image in 171 Å (blue), 195 Å (green), and 284 Å (red) . So yes, there is a correlation with magnetic fields and the solar wind, but it is likely still direct EUV and X-Ray radiation (absorbed in the very upper layer of the atmosphere) that affects the climate on earth.

I assume you mean shitty stereoscopic '3d' like what everyone preaches is 3d at the present moment...

Screw that, give me a volumetric display. Proper 3d would be an absolute dream.

It's 1.2e16 Lennas.

Their not involving people as much as they could goes beyond the foreign media and bloggers not being let into press conferences.

"Japan nuclear commission fails to send experts to Fukushima

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan has failed to send designated experts to Fukushima Prefecture to look into the crisis at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant even though a national disaster-preparedness plan requires it to do so, many of the experts said Saturday.

A commission spokesperson said problems following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami such as blackouts had discouraged it from sending any experts to Fukushima Prefecture, but many of the specialists and government officials questioned the claim.

The commission designates 40 nuclear accident experts including university professors and senior officials of relevant institutions as well as five others as members of its panel on emergency technical advice.

The disaster plan requires the commission to dispatch members of the panel to a location near an accident site.
(follow link for the whole story)

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110417p2g00m0dm009000c.html

They're looking into "the flow of retiring ministry officials to senior positions at the country's electric companies"

It seems like Japan isn't the only country that needs to prevent regulators from later taking jobs with the companies they were supposed to be tough with. They shouldn't be allowed to be paid lobbyists either.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/news/20110419p2a00m0na012000c.html

To a great extent democracies depend on the media to put corporations and government in the spotlight for the public good. Reporters shouldn't be going to work for those they are reporting on.

But KSBY the NBC affiliate in San Luis Obispo county in California, home of the Diablo Canyon 2-unit power plant, has over the years had several of the newscasters hired by the utility P.G.& E. as PR people (including the one currently seen). KSBY is the only full power English speaking station in the county. Their reporting is very brief and lacks technical depth. They don't seem to do things like research NRC reports, mostly going . Although run by the same utility company, when the NTSB was starting hearings about the San Bruno gas pipeline explosion, all it got was a 20 second mention (Charlie Sheen got over 3 minutes the same day).
No details of the streamed hearings or mention anything from the related documents documents (on the NTSB site) was broadcast. They say the plants says it can handle a tsunami, but didn't mention that three of the plants radiation monitors were taken out by "heavy rain". There is talk about more earthquake studies, but no mention of a local tsunami in 1812. Nice people at the station, but should they be allowed to work for things like the power plant? Are they doing all that's needed in "Americas' Happiest City"? (in fairness, smaller market t.v. has a lot of other competition for a slice of a fairly small pie. No doubt resources are limited. They let a well liked newscaster go to cut costs.)

"On December 21, 1812, one of the largest earthquakes in California history completely destroyed the first Mission along with most of Santa Barbara. With an estimated magnitude of 7.2, and a hypothesized epicenter near Santa Cruz Island, the quake also produced a tsunami which carried water all the way to modern-day Anapamu Street, and carried a ship a half-mile up Refugio Canyon."
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/History_of_Santa_Barbara,_California
LA Times article on tsunami (pdf)
http://www.usc.edu/

http://interactive.usc.edu/membersmedia/jmcveighschultz/close_door_button.jpg

or better still:

http://interactive.usc.edu/membersmedia/jmcveighschultz/public_intimacy_pinball_dippybird.jpg

http://interactive.usc.edu/membersmedia/jmcveighschultz/close_door_button.jpg

or better still:

http://interactive.usc.edu/membersmedia/jmcveighschultz/public_intimacy_pinball_dippybird.jpg

Frankly, I don't see it as really hurting anybody. Yeah, it's misguided and dumb, but it's not necessarily hate speech.

Hate speech isn't the issue with this, AFAICT. The problem is, the app advocates a quack form of psychotherapy that is considered harmful by a number of important bodies, including the AMA. Yes, it does hurt people, leading to suicide in some cases, although it appears precise quantifications of how harmful it is are impossible to come by.

I'm standing on the sidelines of this one. I don't know whether this is speech that warrants defense or not: it will be directly harmful to some of those who hear it, and could perhaps lead to one or more of them killing themselves. As far as I'm concerned, this puts it in the class of speech that we at least need to be very wary of, and perhaps that we shouldn't be protecting at all. On the other hand, it is possible that some people may become happier as a result of it. Does this balance? I don't know.

Or were you saying that they shouldn't have been allowed to deconvert in the first place? If everyone who deconverted was shot, I suppose you can argue that fewer would have died, but that's rather harsh.

Sounds like Islam...

A Christian could as easily claim that since mass killing is against the teaching of Christ, the crazy Christian killers weren't really Christians.

By definition, a Christian is one who follows the teachings of Jesus Christ. Since Jesus Christ taught to turn the other cheek, pray for your enemies, bless those that curse you, and love unconditionally, then those "Christians" are acting outside of what their faith tells them to do. Does that make them not Christians? How far outside of Christ's teachings do we go before we aren't Christians? Only God knows the answer to that, but I think it's safe to say that mass-killing of innocents puts one over the limit.

By contrast, the Quran tells the Muslim to do just that. So Muslims are doing exactly what their faith tells them to do.

Compare with the statement from Jesus himself.

For instance, if America could get the national momentum to develop a truly high speed rail system, not that wannabe crap that got passed in California a year or two ago, that would show that we could overcome the bureaucratic, legal, and technical challenges that high-power, high-cost, high-risk projects tend to run into.

I ran across a phrase recently that describes my opinion about large projects like this. You can't steal a million from a million. In other words, you need a big public works project, if you want to steal a lot of money from it. I think a publicly funded space tether would be just as much a boondoggle for the US as a nation-wide high speed rail system today.

If one looks at the high speed rail, it doesn't fill an impressive role. Timewise, it covers distances too long for car and too short for plane. Merely improving those means of transportation (for example, a much faster airport check in and security screening procedure or tolls on congested artery roads) would close up that gap.

Nor is it going to be cheap. Glancing around it looks like the average cost per mile of track will be at least $50 million (and IMHO closer to $100 million per mile). In comparison, a 4 lane freeway in rural areas seems to cost up to $20 million per mile. I think there's far more mileage to be gained from merely improving existing transportation infrastructure.

There's no indication of demand for high speed rail. Amtrak would place somewhere in the bottom ten airlines by revenue passenger mile, if it were an airline.

It doesn't add anything to existing transportation networks. Amtrak had this cool idea of moving cars by rail. That seems pretty popular. But it doesn't require high speed trains in order to work.

While I've beat up on high speed trains, I imagine the same absence of practicality, high cost, and very similar problems would infect any public space tether project.

Finally, the US has a long history of underperforming public transportation projects. Sure, I bet it's the bureaucratic, legal, and technical challenges. But most of all, I think it's the reality challenge. Sure, we could waste a few tens of billions of dollars to find out that not only couldn't we pass those hurdles you mention (since that would never be the intention of the thieves who sponsor high speed rail, a space tether, whatever), but that the resulting product would never be worth what we put in, even if everything had gone along smoothly.

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned USC yet. And, of course, I found out about that on /. months ago.

Depth perception is not viewing in three dimensions. If you want three dimensions go develop a light field display (http://gl.ict.usc.edu/Research/3DDisplay/). Stereopsis is achieved perfectly using two displaced cameras to view the image. Parallax is not perfect unless head tracking is used to transform the view frustum dynamically. Its like static depth perception without it. Everyone knows that dynamic is always better unless it is typing (this is a funny truth/joke, I hope someone gets it).

There is a huge difference between the 2D to 3D conversion process to produce films and using a stereoscopic camera with dual cameras. Cameron used stereoscopic cameras to film Avatar, though I am sure he used some tricks to accentuate some scenes. Chronicles of Narnia used the conversion process, so all the characters are flat (I mean in regards to video, and not plot development), but the computer generated backgrounds have depth perception.

Somebody else mentioned that depth perception is past its prime. I agree with him/her. This is the same technology of the 60s. Until head tracking is combined with depth perception, all of the binocular cues are not active. Convergence can be achieved with future technology. The only problem with the current technology is that sometimes bad editors overlay foreground scenes (from a green screen) and backgrounds with different depths of field. This produces a wonky image that our brain has trouble processing. The Gestalt principles should be law when editing 3D video.

Nintendo DS does not use stereopsis (two images). It uses big object detection with a computer vision library to detect the position of your large head. It does not produce two separate images for each eye to view. It then transforms the viewing frame to account for the position of your head. So if you are looking out a window, you can poke your head around and see around the interior of the edges of the screen.

I can't believe I had to read this article so I could comment on it.

3D films remind the audience that they are in a certain "perspective" relationship to the image. It is almost a Brechtian trick.

What nonsense, this is only because its feels weird wearing those glasses. And the glasses tend to be less translucent around the edges which causes a dream like effect similar to the blurred borders in scenes used in 90s TV to evoke a dream state, and in some bad movies.

The shifting of convergence he is talking about due to the strobing from horizontal motion would be greatly reduced using head tracking (with depth perception) to perfect the parallax, but it is kindof difficult unless everybody has their own display with a camera on it. A side angle camera is required to perfect this technology, as using the size of your head does not really determine you head z position. The dynamic/instantaneous position of your head is important.

Unfortunately fl0w and Flower are PS3 only, though fl0w did start life as a flash game for a University project.

Chickity check it.. "Let there be no compulsion in religion." Of course, that hasn't particularly stopped anyone, but the Christians aren't exactly innocent there either; the only difference is that I don't know of any similar bit in the Bible. The Abrahamic religions all advocate some pretty atrocious customs, and I don't think characterizing one as more violent than another based on the texts would be accurate, especially given how history has turned out. That bloodshed has more to do with power than anything else.

According to at least one observation the live weight of animals they actually hunt to eat is around 30-35 pounds a year. That is almost 3 pounds a month if stretched over the year, but during the actual primary hunting season, they eat about 65 grams (about two ounces) per day per chimp. They weigh about as much as a small human (90 - 115 pounds (35 - 70 kg) for males and 57 -110 pounds (26 - 50 kg) for females).

Although that's actually less than many overweight Westerners, it's well within the proportions of meat intake vs. body weight that many dietitians and nutritionists recommend for humans.

These chimps are hunter-gatherers rather than farmers and ranchers. They hunt more when the energy spent to hunt is better rewarded than the energy spent gathering. They also use meat politically and in courting. The hunting skills probably also come in handy when they go into combat with other chimp clans, which they also sometimes do.

I think it's easy to say most Americans eat more meat than recommended. I don't really think you can say it's natural for us to give it up completely, though.

I guess you think modern tools are the first ones ever built and that we never could trap or hunt in packs. I've got news for you. Humans are more like wolves socially than like sheep. Knives and spears have existed for millions of years. Deadfalls, pit traps, and snares have existed for quite some time, too. Humans didn't wrestle the woolly mammoth one on one. Stampeding a herd over a cliff is a lot easier than strangling a steer. Fishing, snake catching, grabbing birds in the nest, throwing rocks at rabbits or squirrels, and sticking sharp sticks into knot holes and burrows have been used to get smaller animals as meals. We even tamed some of the wolves and taught them to help us hunt.

Humans are resourceful. Just because you'd only eat nuts and berries doesn't mean someone who wants meat couldn't find a way to get it without following lions around like hyenas do.

BTW, chimps eat monkeys, and they hunt them in organized groups sometimes using weapons. They also have been known to eat bush pigs, baboons, termites, and antelopes. Sometimes they eat other chimps. They use and even fashion tools to catch termites. They have even been known to rely on certain medicinal plants under the proper circumstances, which leads some researchers to believe they have some idea of which plant helps which malady. These and bonobos are our closest living animal cousins.

I didn't RTFA since I've already heavily researched these guys. D.E Shaw is the kind of billionaire I would be.

Summary: The actual atomic interaction equations are simulated very fast. Distributing the results of a local interaction to the rest of the simulation quickly, is hard.

http://www.deshawresearch.com/publications/Simulation%20and%20Embedded%20Software%20Development%20for%20Anton,%20a%20Parallel%20Machine%20with%20Heterogeneous%20Multicore%20ASICs.pdf
http://cacs.usc.edu/education/cs653/Shaw-msMD-SC09.pdf

its not about beliefs that the people were spoon fed by bad leaders.

its the bad leaders.

fix the leaders and update the teachings that are fed to the people.

it just so happens that almost all muslim states (if not all) have corrupt and evil leaders who use religion to divide. that's actually the core root problem, seemingly impossible to fix as it is.

of course it does not exactly help when there are things in the muslim teachings that lean very heavily toward the destruction of all things non-muslim. see this link for a bit of an extreme example.

is it wrong to ask that such concepts be removed from so-called 'holy texts' ? this is out and out race hatred that is being taught. I don't think its intolerant to expect that THEIR hatred be cleaned from their own books.

personally, I find such official race-hatred books to be worthy of being burned. really bad ideas don't need respect and there is a lot of darkness to the religion known as islam.

...it's stereo, giving you exactly one viewing angle. Actual 3D presentation provides a 3D scene display, with the resulting ability to move your head around (which changes the angle of view), or even walk around the display. Stereovision like this has been around since the ViewMaster, and it's a cheap gimmick compared to a display system that takes viewing angle into account, like this, for example, or this.

With a real 3D display, there are so many things you could do... with stereo, you get exactly what you've been getting all along, that is, the single viewpoint they think you should have, and that's it. Yeah, you'll think you're perceiving depth, but that goes away the moment you move your head and the image doesn't change the way it should.

Because actual 3D isn't just about providing two different images (which is what stereovision does.) It's about providing the two images that match the viewing angle your position and head angle set up relative to the material being viewed.

Me, I'm good with 2D until 3D actually arrives. Stereovision... no thanks.

Most of Los Angeles is just not dense enough for working internal public transport.

http://www.usc.edu/libraries/archives/la/historic/redcars/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Line_(Los_Angeles_Metro)

...to display realtime 3D scanned video:
http://gl.ict.usc.edu/Research/3DTeleconferencing/

Look at the cost of cars vs. highways. You can easily buy a Honda for between $15000 and $20000. You can buy other cars for less. According to this source http://www-pam.usc.edu/volume2/v2i1a3s2.html

Elevated multi-lane highways through cities can be costly because of the displacement of current infrastructure. For example, recent costs in the New York City area have been $333 million per mile (Wieman, 1996). However, these high costs are not representative of other major cities. Even with considerable displacement, the costs were only half of that amount in the Los Angeles area 710 freeway extension (Moe, 1994), and only $127 million per mile for Los Angeles' Century Freeway, which is still criticized as having been too costly (Smith, 1993), even though it was relatively cheap in comparison to other projects.

...

In 1996 dollars, the Federal Highway Administration has calculated the "weighted rural and urban combined" costs per mile of interstate highway to be $20.6 million.(9) Other highway construction normally ranges from $1 million to $5 million per mile, but in mountainous regions, like West Virginia, the costs can be as high as $15 million per mile (Brogan, 1997).

So if you compare the $20,000 Honda to a $20 Million mile of road, you can buy 1000 Hondas for the same price as a mile of road. If you take the $127 Million per mile for the Century Freeway in LA, you can buy over 60,000 Hondas for the price of a mile of road.

Using the logic of the posted article, no roads should be built because cars are cheap compared to roads. Heck, you can buy thousands of cars instead of building a mile of road, so clearly a car is a better (cheaper) purchase.

Gosh I wonder if there might be a flaw in this logic? Maybe in the real world fixed infrastructure has high initial costs that are amortized over time, so comparing those costs to vehicle development costs is not a meaningful measure: trains vs. track, ships vs. harbors, airports vs. airplanes,....

Let's face it, this is another anti-NASA hit piece. Someone found numbers that were roughly comparable, even though they were costs of wildly different kinds of projects, and they put them together to make NASA look bad. And as is always the case, the Slashdot Pundits responded like well trained dogs and started barking and howling in unison. Not much higher mental activity going on in this discussion.

So where do the morons and oranges come in? Well, obviously the morons are the barking Slashdot hoards. The oranges have absolutely nothing to do with dogs or Slashdot, making as much sense as the article that started the ruckus.

What a pile of stinky! Speech recognition was 20x better than the best humans 10 years ago. The US Navy got the technology, and its basically useless crap from Dragon and whatever still pissing around. I saw their stuff about 1993 and it was bad then, and still really bad now. The Berger-Liaw speech recognition system (the one the Navy got), was wicked though. The big difference between their system (with about 6 neural nodes) and the others (with maybe 10,000) is that theirs kept temporal information, the others use a stock computer clock (oscillator). The video gives you an idea of the capabilities of this system. The US Navy got it all. I always wondered why it wasn't a common feature on computers already. So you can wring your hands and put up silly slashdot articles, but its all a lie!

Like indie developers?