Slashdot Mirror

You should look at these places:

Faced with the challenged of building a large home on a small plot on the side of a steep ridge, the solution was to build the entire house on a single concrete column, with the entire floor space made octagonal to maintain stability.

Chemosphere (or Malin House) by John Lautner

Outside and inside the living room

Or maybe even a Pod house

And there's always Dymaxion House

..."War in Middle East" ... which got nothing to do with terrorism ... the real term should really be "War for Oil"

Iraq's current oil production is 2,900,000 barrels per day. At $70 a barrel, the value of Iraq's entire daily production is $203,000,000. The total cost of your "War Against Middle East" (so far) is $65,000,000,000 and is expected to top $300,000,000,000. If today the war magically became free and we magically got all $203 million in revenue (not profit) each day, it would take a year to "break even" on the war.

Can anyone really believe that a war was fought for oil if it costs more (just in money!) to FIGHT the war than to just buy the oil?

Also, "Climate Change" is more accurate. We're in a period of "global warming" right now (1 to 2 degrees), but we just finished with a "global cooling" - the "Little Ice Age". See here. See how our climate is changing, not just warming? And that this isn't a recent phenomenon? Not that global warming/climate change isn't an issue - climate change just isn't newspeak.

Bushspeak != Duckspeak

Here is a paper about it.

I'd like to expand on the sibling who recommended to read Wilhelm Reich. I think the best you can do to learn about how they knew is to read (some of) the many autobiographies written by people who lived through it in Germany or the concentration camps, or fled. There is a huge number of writings available in German. I don't know how many of those are available in English, but I guess at least those of the more famous refugees who have found a haven in the US are.

I'd recommend from he top of my head to look into the lives of these people (didn't check that they all have written auobiographies, but their lives and works will be interesting reading nevertheless): Manès Sperber, Hannah Arendt (all is recommended; she wrote an essay, "We Refugees" that was once published by New York Press, I don't know if it is still available), Arnold Schönberg, Maria von Trapp ("The Sound of Music"), Sigmund Freud, Claude Lévi-Strauss, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper (required reading for slashdotters in any case), Billy Wilder, Elias Canetti, or Thomas Mann.

Wikipedia has a good list of famous refugees.

In German there are whole libraries of first-person accounts by non-famous people, again I don't know about English availability. The Shoah Foundation and the Simon Wiesenthal Center will give you a good start. You might also want to watch Shoah for a first-person account of the times on film.

Isn't it fucking scary that there is need to think about this? In Austria, where I originally come from, a certain local brand of populist neofascism has been on the rise for 20 years (don't believe anyone who tells you it was contained. It was not, it has just become mainstream in a harder-to-detect form) and the political climate in Europe, as in the US, has become considerably scarier. It is/was a common theme among old people I know/knew that it all reminds them terribly of the late 1920ies/1930ies.

Oh, but it is you who is the flamebaiting moron.

Educational regulations vary by state. Many universities offer some sort of general education degree intended for grade school teachers, such as the USC B.S. degree in General Studies. Beyond that, there are programs within other colleges which are education specific, such as the programs in Agricultural Ed., Art Ed., Exercise Science Ed. at OSU. And even beyond that, within other colleges there tend to be multiple degree offererings, such as a B.A. or a B.S. in Mathematics or Physics.

So, there certainly are education degrees beyond Spec. Ed. and Masters of Education. There are so many degree programs out there that saying anyone needs to earn the "same degree" for anything makes little sense. Many EE programs put you within a class or two of getting B.A. in Math AND Physics. All of them could get you into a variety of careers or grad programs, but they are not "the same degree".

This entire place is like one great, big idiot convention.

Then you should fit right in.

Oh yes, I am so stupid for calling a writing system an alphabet, could not imagine anyone else doing so.

Ask and you shall receive . . .just made it =) http://www-scf.usc.edu/~cfenton/flyingchairs.zip

This argument is a common tactic to assign "guilt by association" to the source, without even naming the specific phantom source, or putting even one example into "context". It is slanderous, presumptuous, and a very weak argument.

I can't name your source because I don't know where you got it from (why don't you name your source?). I just happen to have run across those verses on several pages, all with the same claim, that "Islam is evil" or "Islam is not peaceful". The same verses, the same translations of the verses -- it gets boring after a while. Put some original thought in your argument.

I noticed that you only put links, and not the entire body. This is yet another attempt at discrediting without the use of actual facts.

Linking to the translated verses is somehow different from copying and pasting them here? How? Are linked verses not factual, and the copied/pasted verses are? I notice that you didn't paste all the verses you listed here, either.

Let me summarize just how these verses appear to me, and you can correct me with your far more vast knowledge of the "real" context of these verses.

Your summary is a pretty loose interpretation of the verses ("beg", "by any means necessary", etc). Anyway, by quoting the two verses around the one you quoted alone, we've gone from "kill the disbelievers unless they convert" to "don't kill the ones you have a treaty with, kill the ones who won't submit, and if they are ignorant and ask for your protection, teach them your ways and let them leave in peace." Sounds slightly different to me.

I'll also add that the word used in those verses is mushrikeen, not kafireen. The result is obvious: your first quoted verses says "disbelievers" where it should've been "idolators". And, at the time of the revelation (more "context"), the "idolators" were Arabs who lived in Arabia, and also kept and worshipped the idols in the Kaabah, in Mecca.

That isn't to say the rest of the chapter doesn't have instructions on fighting non-Muslims (and how to go about that). Are you honestly unaware of the 1400 years of scholarly research into what the verses meant, or are you simply ignoring it?

If I had a dollar for every time I came across someone pointing at 9:5 without quoting 9:4 or 9:6, I'd be a rich man.

Why are you quoting verses out of context?

"Also the problem isn't Islam itself read the Quran yourself before passing judgement on it. "
I have.

But you didn't come up with that list, did you? There are hundreds of sites out there quoting those exact verses, all of them quoting out of context.

If I had a dollar for every time I came across someone pointing at 9:5 without quoting 9:4 or 9:6, I'd be a rich man.

Why are you quoting verses out of context?

"Also the problem isn't Islam itself read the Quran yourself before passing judgement on it. "
I have.

But you didn't come up with that list, did you? There are hundreds of sites out there quoting those exact verses, all of them quoting out of context.

The fact that Mohammed married a 9-year-old girl (or rather, married a 6-year-old girl and consummated the marriage when she was 9) comes from hadith sahih bukhari 7.62.64. The hadith sahih bukhari are a primary muslim religious text, secondary only to the Qu'ran to most Sunnis, though apparently Shi'a have a more nuanced view of the factuality of the hadith.

In any case, I agree this is a silly reason to attack a religion, since the Hebrew Old Testament has many protagonists and prophets who did things that would be considered immoral or illegal by modern standards. But that doesn't make the underlying comment untrue.

As for the Iran-badges-for-non-Muslims story, I read it originally on Canada.com, where it was posted on the National Post site. They have since removed the story. However, the UPI news wire story on the subject is still up. This story was published in several mainstream outlets. It seems the story was basically untrue at least based on corrections like these, but it wasn't just printed in some fringe outlet by any means.

However, I will grant you that a real news outlet should fact check and withdraw stories that turn out to be false. Many "blogs" and online rant sites don't qualify as news since they don't follow basic rules of journalistic conduct.

Okay, here you go. It's right there. Not from the Qu'ran, but from the Hadith Sahih Bukhari. This is not part of the Qu'ran per se, but is considered the primary trusted book by Sunni muslims (and less so by Shi'a). Also see this page for an explanation of the Hadith's role in Islam. It is similar to the role of the Midrash, or maybe the way Prophets and Writings are viewed relative to the Pentateuch or Torah in Judaism.

So yes, it's true that this is from Muslim holy writings, but no, it's not from the Qu'ran per se.

Problem is, it comes from a not quaran verse and there are translation issues.

It is a history text written years after mohammed died, so that may make it less "valid" but most sites I read support that mohammed had sex with his nine year old wife. You won't see that on CNN...

http://www.wiki.faithfreedom.org/index.php/Consumm ate

http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsun nah/bukhari/sbtintro.html

alien probes are scary...

Why is there any need for interpretation by these middle men? Why does something thats omnipotent have such problems communicating? [I] expect the Quran to talk about pig genes in vegetable products 1500 years ago

Islam strongly encourages learning as one of the noblest forms of worship and scientists were often praised in the Quran.
Perhaps God didn't tell humanity everything that is to know so that they discover the universe on their own. It is widely believed in Islam that learning was one of the primary reasons for creation of mankind. In that context, it makes sense. (See 2:30 to 2:32 in the Quran. Also,The relation between Islam and science is discussed here quite well).

will also know that we're human and therefore there should be no room for doubt as to meanings, because conflicts and divisions will ensue
In the Quran and quotes of the prophet, the big picture is very clear and not very open to interpretation. All the important stuff are there and Muslims rarely have conflict over them. For example, the Quran says that "there is no enforcement into religion". If someone says "I'm a Muslim" and then forces someone into Islam, then it's human hypocricy in action, not miscommunication.
As for stuff related to changing times and scientific discovery, God left those to us. The prophet encouraged Muslims to 'renew religion' by thinking about new situations and applying Islamic axioms to them. Some Islamic scholars did quite an impressive job. One even discussed the rights of a human if he was created by means other than normal parenthood. That was a few centuries ago and the concept of cloning was undreamed of but the scholar thought of it as a philosophical exercise!

But god does. And they're "guiding" you to what god thinks. I'm sure 99% are honest and true to you and themselves. But its a perfect position to manipulate people from, and would therefore attract the sort of person that would want to manipulate others

Well, prophet Muhammad in his life was a very good listener and consulted other Muslims in most of his decisions. His companions did the same and were careful to make sure people could come forward and correct them if they made any mistakes. If the current Muslim community read history and followed their example, manipulators would have a very hard time. The fact that the majority of Muslims are ignorant of that topic is due to a mix of bad decisions and social circumstances, hardly the error of the Islamic System.
Scholars or no scholars, ignorant people are always manipulted by power hungry people.

FWIW i applaud you for your English skills. Skills that you acquired because the US was built on freedom of and from religion, freedom of thought, freedom of trade. And so it became ideal place to prosper. They became wealthy and
their influence has spread through the world

Thanks! I don't live in America BTW* but I appreciate and admire the freedoms they created and fought so hard to keep. America may have it's problem now (sigh) but it's mostly built on the right principles.
It's funny that Islam guarantees almost all those freedoms but in the Middle East Muslim nations ignore them. I remeber a famous Muslim scholar who went to Europe, and came back to say "Those people aren't even Muslims, but they follow Islam better than us!"

-----
* I was taught by English and American teachers in school, though :)

You typically don't see packs of monkeys chasing down a water buffalo and tearing out its throat.

Consider this a key difference between Judaism and Islam/Xianity then.
Some cultures place different value on intellectual pursuits.

I didn't understrand. Did you mean that Islam gives a high value to intellectual pursuits or that it gives a lower value?

Islam encourages science and intellectual pursuits a lot.
The Quran is full of praise for scientists and how they are better worshippers of God than those who don't bother learning. It also mentions that after God showed the angels how Adam is capable of learning, the angels understood why God created him and was making him his follower/agent on Earth.

The point I made, about how not a lot of Egyptian youth are geeks was a jab at modern society in general, not at Islamic societies ( the same problem is everywhere) . FWIW, not a lot of Egyptian youth are particularly religious, either.

For more info about how Islam encourages science, I suggest
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/scislam.html

Consider this a key difference between Judaism and Islam/Xianity then.
Some cultures place different value on intellectual pursuits.

I didn't understrand. Did you mean that Islam gives a high value to intellectual pursuits or that it gives a lower value?

Islam encourages science and intellectual pursuits a lot.
The Quran is full of praise for scientists and how they are better worshippers of God than those who don't bother learning. It also mentions that after God showed the angels how Adam is capable of learning, the angels understood why God created him and was making him his follower/agent on Earth.

The point I made, about how not a lot of Egyptian youth are geeks was a jab at modern society in general, not at Islamic societies ( the same problem is everywhere) . FWIW, not a lot of Egyptian youth are particularly religious, either.

For more info about how Islam encourages science, I suggest
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/scislam.html

One of the things I am concerned about is that while it is absolutely fantastic how they plan on integrating the content of other players into your worlds....I want a method to limit the inclusion of that content to just my friends. Which sounds more fun to you....having a little "survival of the fittest" contest with random creatures from people you have never met, or having a biological death-match against the creations of your circle of friends? If anybody knows of the details of this aspect, please by all means fill me in.

Also, recently on Fark I saw a game posted that bears a striking resemblance in gameplay to the first level of Spore (as demonstrated in the video). This is called Flow and is quite excellent...albeit not finished. Still very fun to play through though.

Flow

This feels like some early level of Spore, very fun game.

http://intihuatani.usc.edu/cloud/flowing/

Enjoy :)

Oh, wait. I thought we were playing buzzword bingo.
http://isd.usc.edu/~karl/Bingo/

Buzzword Bingo!

That Islam is against homosexuality is no secret. This is no different from other faiths. Islam is also against sex outside of marriage, even between a man and a woman.

The original poster is wrong in one regard: the crime of Zina (extra-marital sex) is provable only by either of a) 4 witnesses (not 3), or b) by voluntary confession.

The only two known cases of punishment in the life time of the prophet were by confession. The two people felt guilty and it was eating them, and wanted absolution. The prophet tried to make them go, saying "Go, you may just have kissed .. Go, you may just have touched ...". But they were adamant on getting the punishment.

Interesting trivia: Baghdad was the capital of the Eastern Islamic world for many centuries. Historians say that for 5 centuries, not a single case of stoning an adulterer was recorded.

The Bible prescribes similar punishment for adultery and homosexuality.

I notice your attempt to change the subject to Christianity that you commit several times in your defense. I can understand why: you'd much rather me talk about Christianity than continue talking about Islam. By discussing Islam its ugly secrets come out and the Kufr will wake up to the threat.

He was merely pointing out that this is not unique to Islam, and is shared by other faiths that are more familiar to the audience.

He was not trying to distract.

In other words, I'm not my son's parent. I'm merely a "caregiver". This is in direct violation of my rights as an adoptive parent, and one of many good reasons to reject Islam.

This is just a matter of symantics. Nothing changes the biological relationship of a father and mother to their offspring. That is merely what Islam says. Raising an orphan is recommended and is greatly appreciated by God (if you read the Quran, you will find several references). You just cannot change the biological relationship, and their family name stays what it is.

In other words, it is sometimes permissible! So much for the "major and hellworthy sin"! The muslim from whyislam.org indicated that it was permissible to lie to the Kufr "only during war." And which "house" do I live in? It's the Dar al-Harb, correct? That means "house of war", correct?

No, you are wrong. As much as many want to make it an either/or (Dar Al Islam = House of Islam, and Dar Al Harb = House of War) this is not Dar Al Harb. This is Dar Al Aman (House of Safety). As long as a muslim is able to worship freely, and not prevented from doing what Islam says, then it is not Dar Al Harb.

So, this invalidates your argument.

The Quran sanctions violence (remember "strike at the neck of unbelievers"? Hence, beheadings)

Did you read the verses, or are you repeating bigoted drivel?

Here is what it says: "Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers (in battle), smite at their necks; at length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind (the ropes) firmly (on them): thereafter (is the time for) either generosity or ransom: until the war lays down its burdens."

You can read it here http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/047.qmt.html

The context here is war, and in battle the objective is to subdue the enemy by force, and kill them if the need be. It is clear that prisoners and taken, and then either freed for ransom, or just for generosity.

Nothing about kidnapping journalists and beheading them.

Ummah can rebuild the Kahlifah (sic)

Yeah, many Muslims think that the Khilafah is the cure to all ills they have (and they are many, seeing the Muslim world's troubles). This is an overly simplistic wishful thinking, and is not realistic. It is merely escapism.

If you look at Islamic history, the unified Islamic state only existed for merely a few DECADES over the last 14th century.

You are not going to like this, but I am going to say it anyway: this is no dif

Like a cartoon about running out of virgins in a paradise created by a god who chose a dude with a 9 year old second wife for his prophet. Allah's Pediphile Prophet

But interestingly, when I researched "Franklin S. Felber", I found conflicting dates for his degrees. At USC it says M.A. Physics, 1973; Ph.D. Physics, 1975. http://physics.usc.edu/Alumni/F.html. But the University of Chicago notes an alumnus Franklin S. Felber, SM'74. http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0304/alumni/works.htm l. Did he really get an MA in California in 1973 then a Masters in Chicago in 1974, then a PhD in 1975 in California?

How many Franklin S. Felbers are there? Perhaps he is well-known in some circles, and I could just be ignorant or mixed up. But I am getting the impression of an ambitious man here, and all that entails. Would someone who knows him well please straighten me out.

Lots of people will try to work around your requirement for C++, but I'll assume your reasons are solid and let it stand.

What your are looking for are not design patters but software engineering practices. Specifically, you're interested in what would be called critical systems (think things like air-traffic control where failures can cost lives). These sorts of systems exist, and are written in all sorts of languages, but writing them is not a small undertaking. To get an idea of what you're undertaking, have a look at how reliability (RELY) affects things in the COCOMO II model.

http://sunset.usc.edu/research/COCOMOII/expert_coc omo/drivers.html

The next step is to look at some of the literature. I'd suggest starting with Somerville's 'Software Engineering', where you'll find part 4 dedicated to critical systems and part 5 dedicated to verification and validation. The chapter on critical systems validation is probably the meat of what you need, but the rest is likely needed for a solid background. Suffice to say that those saying 'test driven development' are on the way to enlightenment, but are missing a large part of the story.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321210263/102-91 00997-2271304

Best of luck though. It sounds like you'll be in for an interesting project.

Not necessarily.

AutoCAD used to be offered as a UNIX program. Like the "Photoshop for UNIX" that Adobe offered, it was distributed as a binary for Sun Solaris, I believe. A quick Google search didn't turn up any definitive information on whether or not it's still being offered (I'm thinking no) but there's one university that still has it available for students to use, and you can read the instructions for using it here. Based on the list of packages installed on their UNIX systems, I'm going to guess they're older SparcStations.

This doesn't do us modern Linux users much good, since it means the software was probably distributed as SPARC binaries only. So unless you know of a good way to emulate/virtualize a SPARC (which shouldn't be impossible, given that it's an allegedly open architecture) system from within x86 Linux, I'd say we're SOL there.

There are some people in South Africa who have AutoCAD running (apparently) to their satisfaction under Debian WINE, according to this page. They mention a "German GNU/Linux clone of AutoCAD which is quite impressive and very cheap" in the article, but sadly don't give a name.

LinuxCAD, which rather hilariously describes itself as "the Best application program for Linux. Period." claims to be an AutoCAD replacement, but just from first glance the site seems questionably maintained (as in, '1995 called, they want their web page back'). The company behind it has also been alleged to be behind some Usenet spam. On that last site there are several "alternatives to LinuxCAD" listed, including VariCAD, which seems like a pretty polished (it ought to be, for $500) product from a company in the Czech Republic.

Anyway, I thought I'd throw those options out there. If anyone has any experience with any of them I'd be interested to hear them.

AutoCAD used to be offered as a UNIX program. Like the "Photoshop for UNIX" that Adobe offered, it was distributed as a binary for Sun Solaris, I believe. A quick Google search didn't turn up any definitive information on whether or not it's still being offered (I'm thinking no) but there's one university that still has it available for students to use, and you can read the instructions for using it here. Based on the list of packages installed on their UNIX systems, I'm going to guess they're older SparcStations.

This doesn't do us modern Linux users much good, since it means the software was probably distributed as SPARC binaries only. So unless you know of a good way to emulate/virtualize a SPARC (which shouldn't be impossible, given that it's an allegedly open architecture) system from within x86 Linux, I'd say we're SOL there.

There are some people in South Africa who have AutoCAD running (apparently) to their satisfaction under Debian WINE, according to this page. They mention a "German GNU/Linux clone of AutoCAD which is quite impressive and very cheap" in the article, but sadly don't give a name.

LinuxCAD, which rather hilariously describes itself as "the Best application program for Linux. Period." claims to be an AutoCAD replacement, but just from first glance the site seems questionably maintained (as in, '1995 called, they want their web page back'). The company behind it has also been alleged to be behind some Usenet spam. On that last site there are several "alternatives to LinuxCAD" listed, including VariCAD, which seems like a pretty polished (it ought to be, for $500) product from a company in the Czech Republic.

Anyway, I thought I'd throw those options out there. If anyone has any experience with any of them I'd be interested to hear them.

It turns out that variations in chromosome number are known to occur in many different animal species, and although they sometimes seem to lead to reduced fertility, this is often not the case. For example, Przewalski's Wild Horse has 66 chromosomes, but domesticated horse has 64 chromosomes, yet they can breed to produce fertile offspring.

The is good evidence based on structural analysis of human chromosome 2 that it is the fused version of two chromosomes found in modern apes.

The genetics of "Post-zygotic Isolating Mechanisms" of speciation is under much study now. Here is a great review of speciation mechanisms.

Generally the strong force on post-zygotic speciation is "epistasis", negatively interacting genetic loci. So different and negatively interacting genes are more important in speciation than slight differences in chromosomal configuration. There are some speciation events driven mainly by chromosomal configuration, though most are not.

The article lead-in is wrong, since they have no plans to get anywhere near the core. They are planning on drilling down to the mantle (which is correctly reported later in the article). As this figure shows, this is akin to breaking through the skin of an apple to see what mushy goodness lies within.

"is not likely to solve problems caused by methylation of a tumor suppressor gene."

in the formation of cancer, abnormal methylation, resulting in both hypomethylation and hypermethylation, has been observed.
Folate deficiency is a major cause of impaired methylation, because it leads to a decrease in the levels of SAMe and hence to impaired methylation.
http://www.ffnmag.com/NH/ASP/strArticleID/357/strS ite/FFNSite/articleDisplay.asp

Of all epigenetic modifications, hypermethylation, which represses transcription of the promoter regions of tumor suppressor genes leading to gene silencing, has been most extensively studied.
The contribution of dietary folate and methylene terahydrofolate reductase polymorphisms to methylation patterns in normal and cancer tissues is under intense investigation.
http://www.jco.org/cgi/content/full/22/22/4632

Too much methylation, known as hypermethylation, is thought to play an important role in the pathogenesis of cancer. "And so folic acid may be working to reduce hypermethylation in genes that might otherwise produce colon cancer." Pinning down just how they keep control over these processes might allow researchers to find or create drugs that would be even more targeted, and even more effective at keeping cancer at bay.
http://www.usc.edu/hsc/info/pr/hmm/00-01winter/hai le.html


As i said in my first post, proper supplementation with a balance of the right supplements gives the body everything it needs to heal itself.

Innan and Nordborg

How about electricity, indoor plumbing, toilets in general. Don't forgent anything to do with farming. Plows, harvesters, trucks to ship food. I would say that if all technology disappeard tomorrow, 99% of the population would die. So, yes we are addicted, as most of the world is.

indoor plumbing,
It was left to the classical Greek and Roman civilizations to bring a degree of sanitation to the masses, or at least the upper middle classes. Excavations at Olynthus in northern Greece, destroyed by Philip of Macedon in 432 B.C., attest to tiled bathrooms and self-draining tubs.


toilets in general
The earliest identifiable flushing toilets have been found in the ruins of the palace of King Minos on the island of Crete, circa 1500 B.C. Rain water or water from cisterns traveled though conduits built into the wall to flush away the waste from a master bathroom presumably belonging to the monarch, as well as several other toilets located within palace walls.

source

Don't forget anything to do with farming. Plows, harvesters, trucks to ship food.

hmm, you really think 99% of the population will die ?

makes me wonder how your family got here today

Yes, Stallman hates fascism so much.... he was against a war against an actual, genuinely-based-on-facism government.

As for his own teenage-bedroom-angst definition of fascism, let's just skip that embarrassment for all our sakes.

Will any luck, the neutopia is just around the corner.

P.

As a past participant in the AUVSI/IARC, I've noticed that only a few teams have tried using a fixed-wing approach. This is likely because the "building entry" requirement is difficult to accomplish without navigating in close proximity to the buildings. Yet since Mars has such a thin atmosphere, one would think that a rotary-wing aircraft would be much less practical for NASA's purposes.

However, if the NASA competition allows for helicopters, there are several IARC teams that have developed vision-based (no GPS) navigation capability for their rotary-wing platforms. In particular, Carnegie Mellon University, Georgia Tech, and USC all appear to have successfully developed this capability.

The only other requirement listed is "extending and retracting a probe to precisely hit multiple targets on the ground." This statement is pretty vague, and doesn't sound very trivial, but there is precedent.

So far anyway, there doesn't appear to be much any new technology needed to win this NASA competition. Contending institutions that have developed visual navigation techniques can probably just integrate an extra computer/camera to a cheap commercial UAV, optimize their algorithm for the competition terrain type, and interface their controller with the UAV's mission planner. Hopefully NASA will soon add some requirements that will level the playing field a bit and provide them with some usable R&D.

The data set falls into two halves -- self-reported takedown notices and takedown notices sent to Google. The Google part of the set is a complete record of all the notices they have received over the last 3 years or so.

One would expect the self-reported notices to have a bias, but it turns out that Google notices shows the same proportion of flawed notices: 30%.

Bruce

(Full disclosure: my wife is one of the co-authors of the paper.)

The data set falls into two halves -- self-reported takedown notices and takedown notices sent to Google. The Google part of the set is a complete record of all the notices they have received over the last 3 years or so.

One would expect the self-reported notices to have a bias, but it turns out that Google notices shows the same proportion of flawed notices: 30%.

Bruce

(Full disclosure: my wife is one of the co-authors of the paper.)

Taking a look at the comments posted and moderated highly on /. on this thread is a bit horrifying. About 80% of the comments thus far are pointing to the fact that in spite of the fact that America gets so much flack for being a general world class jack ass the american's view of race/minority relations are so much better thought out than some of our european collegues. Let me point out some of the obvious issues here. There is a consensus forming that the "immigrants" have only themselves to blame as they have insulated themselves, refused to assimilate and are just leechers of a welfare state embracing multiculturalism and more over islam is "antidemocratic".

If you replaced "French Riots" w/ Watts Riots in Chicago and "north african/immigrant communities" w/ Black people, would you be so comfortable repeating your statements? Have we after all these years come nowhere? I am not justifying what is going on there but people are burning thousands of cars and rioting that is now spreading all over europe. To not be somewhat self-reflective enough to ask how did it come to this is woefully ignorant.

Might not the idea that the two immigrant hoodlums running from the police who accidentally killed "electrocuted" themselves, might have some what less credibility being that just a few months ago, the police stalked, chased down and gunned down a brazillian immigrant at a subway stop and initially covered it up and blamed the immigrant that allegedly was wearing a coat in summer and acting suspiciously and running away all of which turned out not to be true at all and in fact was a complete fabrication?

How did did it come to this? Tell me why enforced secular humanism seems to be targeted primarily at the muslim community? Tell me about job prospects> and what the french have to do fix this problem. Tell me why the majority of people in french jails are muslim.

And most of all tell me why europe is insisting on creating 2nd and 3rd generation second class non citizens "gast-werkers" who will never be allowed to truly be "french", "german" or more generally european because being born european doesn't make you european. To understand this more clearly I am linking a comparison of citizenship laws for countries around the world. The american so called "myth" is the nation of immigrants, we are all american one. But the europeans (somewhat ironically w/ their neoliberalism) makes you be european by blood or by an arbitrary bureaucracy leading to 2nd and 3rd generation foreigners (witness Germany and the Turks). If what is now going on in france happened here, we would not hear an end to the "shame of the nation" (aka la riots), and I find it mortifying that we collectively do not have enough reflexitivity to go beyond the "they are not us, they are them and they hate us, they are foreign" mentality. And it is shameful.

• CO2 levels: http://earth.usc.edu/geol150/variability/images/ca rboncycle/berner.gif
• Temps: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/temperature/ first chart.

• CO2 levels: http://earth.usc.edu/geol150/variability/images/ca rboncycle/berner.gif
• Temps: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/temperature/ first chart.

This piece of kit is a robot that is powered by slugs. It searches for slugs and places them into it's fermentation pod in order to power itself. The creator said he planned to make a larger model powered by rats that could run about indefinately in the sewers. I'm not sure how far along this project has gotten...

http://www-robotics.usc.edu/~ikelly/tta.htmlLink

given we have enough of these to to generate the power. Maybe they could power their own mp3 players that way....

Innan and Nordborg

As I understand it a great deal of what we consider mistreatment of women in Islam is actually an attempt to protect them. For example: Early in Islam's history Muslims were very much persecuted by others in the Middle East. Many Islamic men were killed and as a result there were many widows and orphans and not a lot of men. Polygamy was a very practical solution to this problem: there weren't enough men to go around otherwise and a lot of women would be left with noone to protect them (from the Meccans in particular if I recall correctly). See what the Quran has to say on the subject (http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/004.qmt.html).

Now, there are Islamic groups who do in fact mistreat women, but that really has nothing to do with Islam itself: there are also Christian groups who mistreat women. Unfortunately Americans pay a great deal of attention to such Islamic factions but not such Christian factions.

As for your points about how wonderful your precious Nation Under God is, having apparently invented separation of church and state (the seeds of which were present in the Magna Carta, long before the US Constitution), there is a difference between espousing these values and actually practicing them. The fact of the matter is that at the moment "fundie christians" do rule the United States. I become very concerned when I see a nation or administration claiming to be blessed or chosen by God (this includes any Islamic nations that may make this claim). This kind of thinking can easily turn into the assumption that one can do no wrong and that anything one does is right. Case in point.

Americans seem to hate to admit it, but a lot of the ideas they pretend to have invented actually appeared in England long before the colonization of the New World, and probably have roots much farther back in time than that. The US has its virtues, but it does not have a monopoly on virtues and it also has plenty of vices.

This can all be summarized in one word: hypocrisy (on both sides).

There's a similar list of editors at the Vector Graphics Foundry at SourceForge. My favorite for advanced diagramming is TGIF. For more simple stuff I usually use OpenOffice Draw (or a white board and a digital camera ;-)

my favorite one (still today...):

http://bourbon.usc.edu:8001/tgif/

and you did mention clones of xfig, but not the original:

http://www.xfig.org/

TGIF is a very nice vector drawing program. It is a very highly evolved version of xfig (but with better UI than xfig -- not gtk or qt though). It exports to a whole slew of vector formats -- my favourite being LaTeX and EPS. I don't leave home without it. ... Then again, I don't leave home much. :-p

One interesting project is USC iLab's Beobots, which basically puts a very small Beowulf cluster on a mobile robot, with available source code and design plans. They also have a very neat neuromorphic vision toolkit in general.

One interesting project is USC iLab's Beobots, which basically puts a very small Beowulf cluster on a mobile robot, with available source code and design plans. They also have a very neat neuromorphic vision toolkit in general.