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If you're a poor peasant living in some place where they don't even have toilets, can you really afford bags to poo in? Chances are food and fuel are more important to you.

This still has applications in a semi-first world nation like the US, especially during a disaster scenario. Before you say food and water are more important, you might want to reflect back on the Superdome incident. Feces from thousands of people in 100 degree weather contained in the Superdome and it starts to become more important than food (but not water).

"During that lonely and frightening time, Norton starved himself in fear of having to use the restroom facilities. An unthinkable stench of feces permeated the Superdome. As disgusting as the restrooms were, Norton vowed to only drink water to keep from dehydrating. Fearing for his safety, he urinated only in the upper level of the dome."

Former USM student is finally able to tell of Katrina nightmare:
http://www.usm.edu/afterkatrina/Bueto.html

i also submitted this story this morning so since this made it i guess mine will be scrapped. because of this i can also give you a few links. This is great technology no doubt.

USM Main Website

Scientific American had a hit on this.

School of Polymers and High Performance Materials Link

Marek W. Urban is the principle chemist and researcher for the project and was the co-author of the findings and its current research publication in the journal Science.

Video of an actual test after scratching a surface.

Sorry if i am a little excited but its nice to be personally linked to a university that is about 15 minutes from where you live.

i also submitted this story this morning so since this made it i guess mine will be scrapped. because of this i can also give you a few links. This is great technology no doubt.

USM Main Website

Scientific American had a hit on this.

School of Polymers and High Performance Materials Link

Marek W. Urban is the principle chemist and researcher for the project and was the co-author of the findings and its current research publication in the journal Science.

Video of an actual test after scratching a surface.

Sorry if i am a little excited but its nice to be personally linked to a university that is about 15 minutes from where you live.

i also submitted this story this morning so since this made it i guess mine will be scrapped. because of this i can also give you a few links. This is great technology no doubt.

USM Main Website

Scientific American had a hit on this.

School of Polymers and High Performance Materials Link

Marek W. Urban is the principle chemist and researcher for the project and was the co-author of the findings and its current research publication in the journal Science.

Video of an actual test after scratching a surface.

Sorry if i am a little excited but its nice to be personally linked to a university that is about 15 minutes from where you live.

Dunno about you, but I sure as hell don't want to put my fate in the hands of the financial decisions of those with an IQ of 80 or 90.

But you are now doing that by having the government take your money for the social security tax. If you started saving and investing $2000 at the age of 18 and invested $2000 a year until the age of 25 at 10% a year by the tyme you're 65 you'll have more than $800,000 invested. Do you think Social Security will pay you that much? Not only will Social Security not pay you that much but you'll pay more than $14,000 ($2000 X 7) in SS taxes. For those who aren't intelligent enough to invest their money, they can higher certified financial planners. Of course because of the cost of a CFP they wouldn't do as good as they would if they could invest his or her self, but who says we can only invest for 7 years? A little bit of money should be invested yearly while working. Instead of investing $2000 a year for 7 years invest $2000 a year for 40 years. Try it yourself, use the compound interest formula to calculate the future value. Of course that only calculates the future value for a given amount invested all at once, it doesn't calculate the future value if you invest yearly. Here's the formula for periodic investing. Then even if you're not intelligent you should be paying a mortgage not rent for most of your working life. Buy a house at 35 then with a 30 year mortgage it'll be paid off when you're 65. Get a 20 year mortgage at 30 and it paid off at 50.

What percentage of Americans actually graduate from an accredited University with a higher degree that also includes a mathematical element?

As the above formulas show the average investor only need simple algebra, and maybe a calculator. Of course you can go deeper.

Even if they never got taxed again in their life, how much of the road system could they sensibly maintain on their own?

Roads should be paid for by users, and the way to do that is taxes on vehicles, tires, and fuel ie user fees. The more you drive on the roads the more you pay.

How long would it take to pay off even the cost of the school equipment their kids use?

Schools, along with the fire department, police, and other things can be paid for with property tax. That's what property taxes are for.

Falcon

crazy...I live in Hattiesburg too. Check out my personal page ;)

I'd like to see a source based distro that relied on Autopackage for it's application myself... You'd let your libraries, the kernel, userland, X, Gnome/KDE, and low level OS type software be custom compiled ala Gentoo, and then for all your software like Firefox, Gimp, Mplayer, etc you would use Autopackages. It would be quite a challenge to create, but it would be well worth it...Here are a few further thoughts I've had on it.

Hopefully your college can help to confuse you further. Example: my degree is in Software Engineering, I took mostly hardware-based classes and ended up with studies that would be proficient for network engineering.

In a nutshell, do what you want.

Course list of my degree. Yes, I'm from Mississippi so that must be the problem. HURRRRR.

I recommend looking into the SINAPSE Project (http://www.sinapse.org). SINAPSE is a free, open-source student community tool (we like to call it a nexus, not a portal). It's written in PHP (on SourceForge - http://sourceforge.net/projects/sinapse), and it's a strict CMS system (no open editing - each app has controlled input and output). It's Developed at University of Oklahoma (go Sooners!) and run by students there.

You can see it in action at OU (The Sooner Information Network - http://sin.ou.edu), Baylor (Baylor Information Network - http://bin.baylor.edu), Purdue (HAIL - http://hail.purdue.edu), Southern Miss (The Varsity - http://thevarsity.usm.edu), California University of Pennsylvania (CalYou - http://calyou.cup.edu), SW OK State U (LIFE - http://life.swosu.edu), and Eastern VA Medical School (http://student.evms.edu)). There's also a similar site at William and Mary (SIN - http://sin.wm.edu) that's not running SINAPSE, but should be.

SINAPSE Consulting (http://www.sinapseconsulting.com) also makes some for-pay add-ons like LegiSlate which allows SGA's to do their Legislative processes online (voting, tracking, attendance, etc.) It's in action at OU (http://congress.ou.edu), OK State (http://www.osusga.com), Central Arkansas (http://uca.mysga.com), and very soon at Rhode Island, Illinois Institute of Tech, and U Texas - Arlington (and possibly Miami).

Um, they were under no obligation to enforce the law. The only people obligated to enforce the law are, surprise, law enforcement agencies.

That's the way it ought to be, but trademarks are different. random google hit.

This is more of a copyright issue, but use of trademark is peripherally involved, and they'll use any excuse here. Yes, I do believe their lawyers have fun doing this.

PS> Oxford isn't in the US ?

You might better break the news to

http://www.oxfordms.net/

Which is home to a little known University

http://www.olemiss.edu/

If you had only graduated from USM http://www.usm.edu/index.php, you would have known that ;)

http://www.psrc.usm.edu/macrog/mech.htm

I have done level design for a few engines and a number of different games. I do it as a hobby, so I am no professional. The most fun I have had designing maps, though, has been with the Torque Engine.

I say this not because it is the most advanced engine out there, but because I have actually done work on games and not mods. A few of my maps will actually be released in the wrapped version of the independent games I have worked on. That is a cool feeling.

By working with the torque engine on an indie game, I also get to work with the engine developers to add needed features.

As far as the tools used to create the maps, QuArk is used to create buildings (that same site has more information) and an in-game map editor.

I have done level design for a few engines and a number of different games. I do it as a hobby, so I am no professional. The most fun I have had designing maps, though, has been with the Torque Engine.

I say this not because it is the most advanced engine out there, but because I have actually done work on games and not mods. A few of my maps will actually be released in the wrapped version of the independent games I have worked on. That is a cool feeling.

By working with the torque engine on an indie game, I also get to work with the engine developers to add needed features.

As far as the tools used to create the maps, QuArk is used to create buildings (that same site has more information) and an in-game map editor.

3.97 C

not related to silicon, but i like to point that out. in case people are looking for uses for zirconium =).

for those that thought about it - no spectra is not good enough for space elevator. only 3GPa tensile strength (steel about .25 for cheap ones and 5 for REALLY good ones). space elevator needs ~62GPa. nanotubes ~150GPa theoretical.

okay. end rant.

not related to silicon, but i like to point that out. in case people are looking for uses for zirconium =).

for those that thought about it - no spectra is not good enough for space elevator. only 3GPa tensile strength (steel about .25 for cheap ones and 5 for REALLY good ones). space elevator needs ~62GPa. nanotubes ~150GPa theoretical.

okay. end rant.

not related to silicon, but i like to point that out. in case people are looking for uses for zirconium =).

for those that thought about it - no spectra is not good enough for space elevator. only 3GPa tensile strength (steel about .25 for cheap ones and 5 for REALLY good ones). space elevator needs ~62GPa. nanotubes ~150GPa theoretical.

okay. end rant.

Very nice.

Erm. Mylar is also what film (as in what goes through the projector at your local megaplex) headers are made of (the actual film is usually polyester).

Some speakers have their active surface made of Mylar.

Light, yes. Flimsy, not necessarily.

If having more guns causes more problems then why when Kennesaw, GA passed a law that all homeowners be gunowners did crime drop?

I know this to be true. But you can read about it here.

When the law was first passed the local press and other towns thought they were insane. But it worked.

And more criminals in the USA has been shot by private citizens defending themselves than police.

Yesterday: ZeoSync Expects Data Compression Science To Improve Wireless

01/14/2002 Summary: A Florida-based scientific research company expects its technology, which compresses digital signals for transmission and storage, to enable wireless operators to deliver third-generation capabilities without deploying 3G infrastructure.

Experts question compression 'breakthrough' 1/10/02

Experts Question Compression Breakthrough Friday 11, 2002

Zariski surfaces:

Zariski surfaces by Piotr Blass ASIN: 8301019719 Zariski Surfaces and Differential Equations in Characteristic P-O Zar Piotr Blass, Jeffrey Lang 2nd Rev edition, Marcel Dekker; ISBN: 0824776372

ULAM Previous

Students

Blass, Piotr; 1977 Thesis: Zariski Surfaces.

Previously cited Archive.orgzeosync

Big Number Mathematics

The Real Life Problem

It takes days to download a large (say one movie) file today.

To increase communication speeds throughput over the Internet.

For doing the above a very high compression ratio in the tune of 1000:1 needs to be achieved.

The Possible Approach

In order to do solve the same we have approached the problem using: BIG NUMBER MATHEMATICS.

How Big is this Number ?

The number is in the range of 28,000,000,000

The base of this number system is 232

But the big numbers can not be handled by the computers that exist today

How can Computers handle Big Numbers?

Only if these Big Numbers are converted into numbers which lie within the scope of computation by computers that are present today.

The Challenge

To represent these big numbers by smaller integers.

Encode Big Number into a Small Integer.

And finally Decode the Small Integer and re-create back the Big Number without any loss.

Assumptions in the Big Number Space Domain

No Negative Numbers
No Floating Numbers
Minimize Divisions

If I'd done it, I would have allowed them to use any language/environment. I think the ones using Perl would have had an advantage on certain problems, but that's just because we gave them many limited scope problems. If you gave them a single large problem, the ones using a stricter language like Java or Ada would probably have the advantage.

Anyway, I think you need to avoid subjective judgments like elegance and concentrate on measuring things like correctness and speed of completion.

Check out my college's programming contest website for some ideas.

Good luck

Ok - my little story does indeed reek of 'urban legend' and just 'sounds' credible (hey, it got +4 here already!) I did a more indepth research and found one Phd who makes a distinction between MRI as a type of NMR, but then again here is another site that repeats my story.

You could try something like that. We do not collect dues, as we are a student organization and feel that it would deter membership, but you can always find some creative ways of raising capital, if you really need it.

As far as meeting places, we have never had a problem with finding rooms at the University. It helps to have a faculty member on your side. We just meet in whatever rooms are not occupied at our meeting times.

We have also met at the local Books A Million. They have been very willing to work with us, and let us bring in machines and virtually take over the coffee shop area. In return, we patronize them with lots of business during our meetings. You might think about taking a similar approach with a business in your area.

Other than that, as one poster mentioned, try your public library.

I don't think anything like this is feasible, for the simple reason that a healthy species *needs* genetic variation to survive. Imagine the inbreeding problems when an entire population is basically copies from one or a few individuals!

This all reminds me of a William Gibson interview I read once, where he talked about his illusions about computers being shattered by noise:

...Then I went out and bought an Apple II on sale, took it home, set it up, and it started making this horrible sound like a farting toaster every time the drive would go on. When I called the store up and asked what was making this noise, they said, "Oh, that's just the drive mechanism--there's this little thing that's spinning around in there." Here I'd been expecting some exotic crystaline thing, a cyberspace deck or something, and what I'd gotten was something with this tiny piece of a Victorian engine in it, like an old record player (and a scratchy record player at that!). That noise took away some of the mystique for me, made it less sexy for me. My ignorance had allowed me to romanticize it.

(the full interview is here).

It's funny to think back to this... computers as exotic, crystalline machines. I think everyone's jaded about them these days.

I was thinking, though, that aside from the drive, the Apple ]['s were also silent, since they didn't need cooling fans (in fact, most of small personal computers of the early 80's, such as the C64, didn't need them either).

I do remember that the first computer I used that did have a fan (an Osborne Executive CP/M machine) really impressed me by sounding... well... Powerful. It made this sort of turbine-whining noise as it started. It made a breathy white noise hiss while it ran, which reminded me of huge computer rooms packed with Serious Equipment. Last time I stuck my head into the server room at work... wow... that was really noisy.

Ah well. I'd love to have a silent PC again. I'm planning on using my old Pentium Pro 200 as a server PC, but I'll have to suff it someplace in my apartment where it's out of the way. The fan isn't bad, but the drives whine like a bitch.

Ah, for the good old (fanless) days of computing...

...is what I want to know. Must not have much to do with who your local political pull. In MS, the only two schools with I2 are Southern Miss and Msstate. Olemiss, alma mater of Trent Lott and countless other tenured politicians doesn't have it, according to the I2 website. Makes sense, though. USM and MSU have the more well developed CS departments. Glad to see that southern pork barrel politics hasn't yet tainted this area of computing.