Slashdot Mirror

I just Googled to see what I could come up with:

http://www.eschoolnews.org/news/showStory.cfm?Arti cleID=3028
http://www.eschoolnews.org/news/showStory.cfm?Arti cleID=1050
http://www.wmich.edu/facultysenate/FSminutes2002/a pril.htm
http://www.it.utah.edu/leadership/committees/uWebA dvisory/minutes/uWeb_minutes_2002_05.pdf

Interesting:

http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2003/08/24/sto ry101270136.asp
http://www.aaxnet.com/topics/slicense.html

But:

http://www.wired.com/news/story/0,1240,10654,00.ht ml

Which does not put the problem in a good light.

I also see references to SPA audits, which does not Google well. :) It also looks like the SPA might now be the SIIA (Si-I-A?).

Good thing it hasn't happened then.

Sure it has. Still does, past and present examples.

Joke or not, your comment is indicative of the denial most Mac users seem to live in- "If it's not Windows, it's secure" and "If I don't hear about it, I must be OK" but the fact is that Mac OS X uses BSD, BSD has holes == Mac OS X has holes. Mac OS X is written by people who want users to have the easiest possible experience using their Mac. As a result, some of the things in place to make usability easier open up holes. This is the same for any OS. Anytime you cater to the user first and security second (or later) you will always ALWAYS provide someone else a way in.

I have no problem with using one OS or another, I use whatever the hell I need to get the job done- to me it's a tool, not a lifestyle. As such, I make sure my tools are safe and pay attention when someone says my OS has a hole or exploit or vulnerability, rather than just refusing to believe it's true.

OK, so like the other posters have said, there is considerable processing that occurs in the brain. However, most people are not aware of how much visual processing actually occurs in the retina. Hint: it is considerable.

As for the results that Humayan et al are showing to great effect, there are major problems aside from the engineering ones. First off, part of my PhD dissertation was on just this problem of retinal degeneration. It turns out that the implants they are designing are not taking into account some of the most basic issues of biology. Notably that any time you deafferent a CNS system, it remodels. They will have to deal with remodeling and continuously degenerating retina. In order for implants like this to work, we need to arrest retinal remodeling or take advantage of it to enable wiring into bionic or artificial biological circuits.

From an engineering standpoint, traditional electrode grids like this will end up with other problems. Notably, the issue of heating. You don't want to cook your retinas, so the need for very small currents with microelectrodes are what will be necessary. I show one such bionic implant on my blog here.

OK, so like the other posters have said, there is considerable processing that occurs in the brain. However, most people are not aware of how much visual processing actually occurs in the retina. Hint: it is considerable.

As for the results that Humayan et al are showing to great effect, there are major problems aside from the engineering ones. First off, part of my PhD dissertation was on just this problem of retinal degeneration. It turns out that the implants they are designing are not taking into account some of the most basic issues of biology. Notably that any time you deafferent a CNS system, it remodels. They will have to deal with remodeling and continuously degenerating retina. In order for implants like this to work, we need to arrest retinal remodeling or take advantage of it to enable wiring into bionic or artificial biological circuits.

From an engineering standpoint, traditional electrode grids like this will end up with other problems. Notably, the issue of heating. You don't want to cook your retinas, so the need for very small currents with microelectrodes are what will be necessary. I show one such bionic implant on my blog here.

You can suppress people from buying guns legally, but you can't ever stop people buying, selling and trading guns illegally.

Hmm, make it so guns must be registered to an individual. All gun sales must be made legal by transfer of a bill-of-sale via a government agency. Sorta like the DMV. Stiff federal crimes for possessing an illegal firearm (they can use file trading, hacking and violating copyrights as baseline penalties). Of course there would have to be a grace period of a fair number of years until all -- what is it? 100+ million guns? -- are properly registered. But all new gun sales would have to meet the requirement immediately.

Ask someone about how it is going in England sometime. Lots of gun control, lots of illegal guns too.

Number of gun deaths from firearms United Kingdom 163 (year 2003). Number of gun deaths from firearms United States: 29737 (year 2002), a little more than half are suicides. Yes, I see your point. No, wait, I don't.

The United States has the highest per capita gun death rate of any semi-civilised country. Can't understand that? Here's pretty graphs for you.

Removing legal guns just eliminates any hope you might have of defending yourself.

Yes, yes. When the criminal calls you out into the middle of main street, all you have to do is be quicker on the draw. That is such bullshit. That legally owned gun is more likely to be used to kill your spouse when you get angry, or to kill your kid when he/she gets too curious all alone in daddy's closet. Of course, that leaves the best use of the gun for yourself... right temple, please.

I have certainly seen the number of attacks rising on our academic computing resources as well as my blog. Tracking IPs leads to lots of cable modems from Comcast and such which could be zombies, but given the lack of sophistication from those IPs, I have to wonder. Most of the attacks from these cable modem IPs are scripts directed at Windows vulnerabilities and buffer overflow attacks, but a few coming from Taiwan and Korea as well as some in the Balkans are fairly sophisticated that sometimes appear to come via compromised computers from other universities for example. Depending upon how sophisticated they are, I have reported some of them to Federal authorities who have the resources to subpoena logs and go after folks intruding into Federal resources. Interestingly others have also recently reported intrusions followed by blackmail which are likely not the domain of script kiddies. Certainly, comedy aside, one wonders if many of these kids have any idea of what they could actually be dealing with. Back in 1982 (we were 12), all that happened to us after hacking into government computers was my friend Lance getting his Apple ][+ confiscated followed by a job offer 9 years later from the same folks who confiscated his computer back in 1982. Now however, hacking into even an educational system could net you serious Federal penalties depending upon the system one hacks into. One admin friend of mine at a certain government lab is absolutely militant about this stuff. It has become her all consuming hobby to track these folks down and allocate whatever government resources she can muster to prosecute intruders into her systems. Woe be unto those that intrude into one of Melissa's systems.

www.math.utah.edu/~shekhar/papers.html

I am still waiting for a subnotebook from Apple. My 12in Powerbook is nice, but what I would really like is a subnotebook, perhaps even an Newton replacement. I've made an argument for Apple's reentry into the "PDA" market here. If such a device could be made, I am sure it would have huge sales. The market is moving towards smaller devices that are even more portable and there are folks that are clamoring for it. Mark Cuban also makes a compelling argument for smaller portable devices here.

Don't get me wrong....Apple needs to keep its Pro level line on top of things. In fact, I will likely be ordering a new G5 to replace my dual 2.0 G5 if they are in fact announced, but as the numbers are showing after Apple's financial conference yesterday, portables are where the market is at.

As far as your projections 500-1000 years into the future go, we'll probably have inside of ten years rapid prototype machines (with human operators) capable of replicating themselves. It's not a particularly large jump from that point to building a space-based infrastructure from a small investment of self-replicating factories. Certainly not 500-1000 years worth which is a vast amount of time for such things.

I'm not sure what your point was about mobile homes. Mass production will always be an option. Even if we suppose that every space station has to be made by hand and was intended to stay in L5, we can move these stations literally anywhere given enough time. We either just accelerate below the tolerances of the station or we can strap down the station (or break it up into more manageable pieces) and accelerate faster. Where's the difficulty?

After all, homes made on site on Earth are moved all the time even homes that are a century or older and extremely fragile. It just requires more care, slower speeds, and more time. I see no real difference with moving space stations around. Beside each space station will need station keeping and hence will handle a usable amount of acceleration anyway. The effort required to move a station around the solar system just isn't that great. IMHO, it's harder to make the station in the first place.

Part of this is that you have to consider that for many of us, the Internet has become a daily part of our workflow and without it we could not perform in our jobs. I absolutely need the Internet to collaborate with colleagues, and because I am paid to know things and to think, the ability to be able to search for information and access online scientific journals is critical. I cannot believe how much time I spent as a beginning undergraduate in the library looking through actual card catalogues! Now one can survey tremendous amounts of data in very little time, but the tradeoff is that we have become dependent upon the Internet for our data gathering. I will admit however, to also becoming dependent upon the Internet for daily news as well and do feel a sense of loss when disconnected. For instance, when taking hikes or going biking in the mountains for longer than a day, I feel the need for an information fix. Even when traveling nationally or internationally, I ensure that I am connected via broadband, can communicate through iChatAV with colleagues, can post to my blog, can get the latest news as it happens and of course, keep up with Slashdot. :-)

Of course the referenced links do contain valid points, particularly Rand's blog. What Rand alludes to however and needs to be learned is the ability to focus and extract the absolutely relevant information related to the task at hand. I've noticed in the undergraduates in particular that have come through the lab that they tend to try and multitask everything, talking on the phone, performing Internet related searches, writing their reports and listening to music while also running an experiment in the background. Almost always, mistakes ensue, the quality of the work suffers, wrong conclusions are drawn and it takes them a couple of months to learn to focus while eliminating some of the competing tasks to ensure quality work for the essential task at hand. Once they learn to focus, not only does the quality of their work improve, but also their ability to extract information from all sorts of tasks including Internet related work. Confusion goes away and is replaced by efficiency of thought and action.

Good review here of the Oreily bioinformatics book. I found this book makes it much easier for computer scientists to understand some of the basics and get up to speed. The book is about three or four years old, but the fundamentals are still there.

...then a repost of the Google story.

...then a repost of the Apple PDA story.

...then someone bitching about reposts.

Love-Hate/.

Wow, the Google story first non April Fools post of the day on Slashdot. Now all we need is a true to life post on the new Apple PDA.

"If there is an application I run more often than my Web browser, particularly since I also use it as my email client, then I don't know what it might be. "

And if there could ever in a million years possibly be a more prolonged, yet utterly useless way of saying "I use it for everything", particularly since I can't think of anything right now, then I don't know what it might be. At all. Or something.

Sounds like Tony is just trying to fluff his word count.

1. Requires write permission for all users (non-admin) permissions in
/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Registration Database
If you installed Acrobat after installing Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and GoLive which don't need write permissions in the Registration Database, then the original default read only permissions correctly set by the other Adobe applications causes problems for the Acrobat application

2. Acrobat writes folders everywhere on the system. Even if you haven't bought any eBooks. Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and GoLive don't need to generate legal documents in the users Document folder or place file in the /Users/Shared/ folder
~Documents/Acrobat/Legal _______ (Unnecessary)
~Documents/Acrobat Reader/Legal _______ (Unnecessary)
~Documents/eBooks _______ (Unnecessary)
~Library/Acobat User Data/ _______ (Unnecessary. Wrong place)
/Users/Shared/Adobe PDF 6.0/ _______ (Unnecessary. Wrong Place)
/Library/Application Support/Adobe/
~Library/Application Support/Adobe/
~Library/Preferences/Adobe/

3. Acrobat tool bar plugin "pushes" Microsoft Office tool bar around and takes up an entire row by itself. This is another pet peeve of mine

4. Acobat 6.0.2 and prior versions had issues with Microsoft Office 2004 SP1. The known issue about Excel 2004 SP1 quitting with the "Compile error in hidden module: AutoExec" was mentioned. That's actually related to the Acrobat "PDFMaker.xla" startup item. Adobe has finally fixed this in version 6.0.3. Another administrator indicated he had a user with a PowerPoint file that refuses to open in PowerPoint SP1, but will open fine otherwise in older versions Office vX and Office 2004 11.0 (and other Windows versions...)

My message to the Acrobat team is to stop writing poorly written applications for Mac OS X and to talk to your coworkers writing other well written Adobe applications. They better fix most of this in Acrobat 7.0 otherwise I'm not upgrading if there is no improvement.

sosumi the system sound was included in system 7, several years before the 7100 was ever created (that shipped with 7.5)

The 7100 originally shipped with System 7.1.2 the first version of Mac OS that supported PowerPC. However, Sosumi did premier in System 7 which predates the introduction of the first PowerMacs by a couple years.

Mac OS History or EveryMac will tell you this. If you have any doubts, a 7100 runs around $50 nowadays and 7.1.2 is free from Apple on their FTP server.

My recent experience with a near miss can be read here.

Maaaan, what a bitch, you should've done something to make sure she doesn't forget about the incident, because the way she arrogantly sounds, she doesn't think it's her fault, she'll keep driving the way she drive and next time it might really injure someone. You said you had your camera, you should've taken her picture and her car's, and say "This is going on the internet.".
That would've pissed her off. :p

As you can see, I'm not that good when dealing with people.

In addition it could also possibly pose an interesting safety issue, since a pedestrian or motorist would not hear it coming.

We bicyclists have the same problem, but if one obeys the rules of the road, there should be no problem. The problem bicyclists (and many motorcyclists) have is with people in their automobiles who fail to properly look out and are too busy talking on the damned cell phone while driving their gas sucking SUVs. (Disclaimer: I own a Toyota 4runner, but bicycle back and forth to work every day, and run many of my errands on the bicycle) My recent experience with a near miss can be read here.

The engine is completely silent, which might not go well with many motorcycle lovers.

I have to admit that when I did ride motorcycles, there was a certain magic about either the banshee wail of a sport bike as you wound it up while screaming up a canyon road or even the relaxed "POTATO POTATO POTATO" of the Harleys. However that said, this is going to be the future of transportation and I would most certainly embrace fuel cell technology that reduces the worlds outrageous consumption of oil. Plus, this ENV bike is a pretty sweet looking ride.

Ah, maybe this will explain the sharp increase in bots from Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and others hitting my Blog constantly over the past couple of months. The interesting thing is that the bots somehow have been preferentially scanning my blog over our lab site which is also hosted on my same workstation.

Ah, maybe this will explain the sharp increase in bots from Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and others hitting my Blog constantly over the past couple of months. The interesting thing is that the bots somehow have been preferentially scanning my blog over our lab site which is also hosted on my same workstation.

So, while it is interesting to speculate on what Apple may be doing and where they may be going with various products, I have never really understood the rabid nature of the fan sites and rumor sites. What is the point with rumors? Can anybody explain that to me?

I am going to be practical here: It has always amazed me that people say "I am going to wait to buy XXXX until they come out with the new one". Buy what you need for the job you need it for and realize that whenever you buy something computer related, it is likely already obsolete and will be replaced with the next shiny thing in a couple of months. There are very few times where waiting will recoup your investment. Get what you need for the job and start being productive now. If something comes out that will make you more productive, then sell off the previous system and get the new one if 1) it will pay off the investment or I suppose, 2) if you simply like shiny things.

Don't get me wrong. Apple builds some sexy hardware and software, but I prefer to use their stuff for my work and research because it simply allows more productivity and is more pleasurable to work with, but somebody, please explain to me why the rumor sites are so popular? I understand why business analysts might be interested, and competitors, buy why the obsession of fans with these rumors?

Oh, and is not it time for the Slashdot Apple desktop icon to be updated to reflect the current desktop line? i.e. G5.

If you do IT and have Linux machines, then you will need programs to access the machines remotely. As mentioned by many comments previously, you will need an ssh client. I would like to also suggest you install an NX client from NoMachine.com. You can remotely access the GUI desktop on your Linux desktop (you'll need to install Free NX in your Linux box). Or you can install a VNC client and just about control any OS remotely.

It is not just about reporting news items. Most blogs are forums for personal opinion, like mine. However, I have also used it for publishing reviews that some folks do find interesting and for the occasional news item. The interesting thing is that through my blog I have received a number of inquiries from traditional journalists looking for information that runs the gamut from Macintosh stuff, to vision research to the latest inquiries on my article discussing the latest Newsweek cover. This is the revolutionary thing about blogs, right? They can encompass a tremendous amount of information that is available via the Internet that allows for the dissemination of information. If you recall, this was one of the original purposes for the Internet, as I recall folks talking about the liberties allowed when one can publish without having to go through the normal hierarchy that limits what gets heard. It is a revolution.

It is not just about reporting news items. Most blogs are forums for personal opinion, like mine. However, I have also used it for publishing reviews that some folks do find interesting and for the occasional news item. The interesting thing is that through my blog I have received a number of inquiries from traditional journalists looking for information that runs the gamut from Macintosh stuff, to vision research to the latest inquiries on my article discussing the latest Newsweek cover. This is the revolutionary thing about blogs, right? They can encompass a tremendous amount of information that is available via the Internet that allows for the dissemination of information. If you recall, this was one of the original purposes for the Internet, as I recall folks talking about the liberties allowed when one can publish without having to go through the normal hierarchy that limits what gets heard. It is a revolution.

The problem of course is that blogs are accessible world wide and can potentially reach a much larger audience than if you were simply talking to friends about how crappy your company is. To some extent, the fired employees deserve some of the blame as they would have to realize the potential implications of posting the information they did, but this IS the problem with technologic advancement. There are always teething problems associated with new technologies being used within existing methodologies and communication paradigms. The trick is, always be careful of what you say and be willing to take the heat for it......even if it is on a personal blog that might be accessed by hundreds, or thousands of individuals. I am always amazed at the traffic my blog receives for a non-commercial ( I would rather keep it commercial free), personal site. Articles like my What is the iPod are some days getting a hundred hits or more from all over the world, so one should expect that some attention may come your way even with what you may consider minor posts.

These results mirror what I typically see on my workstation. I run a couple of websites on my workstation including our laboratory website, and my blog. Logs are monitored constantly with a nice tool called mkconsole that displays the logs transparently on my desktop. Several times a week, there is an attack. Most however are either scripted or fairly primitive, although last week there was a sophisticated attack that that bounced through a compromised Windows machine on campus. We tracked it back to an AOL user on the East coast and reported his IP address to the sysadmins. They sent an email back to me letting me know that they would follow it up. I've not heard anything else since, but in addition to using a more secure OS, one should also maintain a vigilance of your systems to help keep things under control and if you do use Windows, PLEASE keep it patched with recent security releases.

The truth is that if somebody really does want to get into your system, it can happen. In addition to using a secure OS and keeping the security updates current, securing physical access is your next line of defense.

These results mirror what I typically see on my workstation. I run a couple of websites on my workstation including our laboratory website, and my blog. Logs are monitored constantly with a nice tool called mkconsole that displays the logs transparently on my desktop. Several times a week, there is an attack. Most however are either scripted or fairly primitive, although last week there was a sophisticated attack that that bounced through a compromised Windows machine on campus. We tracked it back to an AOL user on the East coast and reported his IP address to the sysadmins. They sent an email back to me letting me know that they would follow it up. I've not heard anything else since, but in addition to using a more secure OS, one should also maintain a vigilance of your systems to help keep things under control and if you do use Windows, PLEASE keep it patched with recent security releases.

The truth is that if somebody really does want to get into your system, it can happen. In addition to using a secure OS and keeping the security updates current, securing physical access is your next line of defense.

Given the quality of the writing in the blogs I have seen, I doubt that many of the Blog People are in the habit of sustained reading of complex texts.

Yo is sure to get schooled from my mad skillz. Oh by the way, this 3l33t haxor had oatmeal for breakfast this morning. Oh and here's a picture of my cat.

It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs.

On one level, blogs are intended for brief communications or thoughts that often revolve around a central theme, but not always. Often they are intended as a means for maintaining communication with family and friends or as a creative outlet. However, this guy has obviously not been very informed or is lazy about finding informative/interesting blogs out there like:

Kevin Sites whose reporting pioneered the use of the blog in combat reporting.

Dan Gillmor whose new efforts are targeted at grassroots journalism from sources exactly like blogs.

Or Chris Anderson's blog The Long Tail which discusses businesses, economic, cultural and political models whose goals are to take advantage of the significant portion of those populations underlying the distal distributions of a curve.

And many others whose careful investigation, research, thought and reporting go into the content on their blogs.

Oh, and then there are the blogs like mine........

Yes, you shouldn't have to write serialization code by hand. And there's no C++ library I know that serializes objects (perl and python have such facilities built in.)

If you want a code-less way to save lots of state, and aren't worried about cross-platform portability, try mmalloc: http://www.math.utah.edu/docs/info/mmalloc_1.html. That can allocate all your game state variables in memory which also persists in a file on disk, automatically.

To create game state:

fd = fopen("my_state_file", "r+");
md = mmalloc_attach(fd, 0)
my_state_root = mmalloc(md, sizeof(*my_state_root));
mmalloc_setkey(md, 1, my_state_root);
// add linked list of state structs
mmalloc_detach(md);
fclose(fd);

To restore game state instantly (no serialization code at all):

fd = fopen("my_state_file", "r+");
md = mmalloc_attach(fd, 0)
my_state_root = mmalloc_getkey(md, 1);
// change state, free and alloc nodes
mmalloc_detach(md);
fclose(fd);

Note that when you restore, all data (including pointers) will be valid without any serialization code at all. But, the save file will not be portable between different architectures.

HTH

--Noel

first, you would only have lost about 50% if you were completely in stocks

http://www.sa.utah.edu/personalfinance/handouts/in vesting/investing.html

or if you would have continued investing a certain amount each year(dollar cost averaging)into a balanced portfolio you would have a return of 6% from 1928-1938...

I agree with you. In spite of the risk of getting modded off-topic, let me tell you my personal story.

I had a page about Gateway laptop, which Google removed from search results, probably after complaints from Gateway, one of their advertisers.

The page did not even have anything biased or untrue, it just stated facts about some hardware bug with the particular laptop model. That's when I lost my trust in fairness of Google. My page went from the top 3 to invisible in search results for "gateway 200 arc". I used to get about 20 unique hits daily through Google before they removed it.

I reported about the page gone AWOL from their results, and Google reinstated it in their search results. But it went AWOL again, and they never reinstated it, in spite of my three notifications to Google (using the "Dissatisfied? Help up improve") link at the bottom of their search results.

Dangerous drivers--be they drunk, elderly, or just distracted by their phones--should all be off the streets. I don't see any reason to privilege one group of dangerous drivers over another. The fact that drunk and dangerous elderly drivers still seem to be on the road doesn't support the notion that other dangerous drivers should be ignored.

Simply put...I see tons of people driving on the cell phones - and driving fine. Sometimes a momentary reaction issue...yes. But when I see a drunk driver they are all over 2 or three lanes. They nearly hit everyone. They often run off the road. Somehow it is hard for me to accept that I can see a 100+ cell phone users who are supposedly "more impaired" and they don't perform as poorly as drunk drivers.

As another poster has already asked--how do you know that you didn't pass hundreds of drunk drivers who were staying in their lanes, driving along, but with much slower reaction times? Unless they're actually holding up flasks, you can't measure blood alcohol remotely. As a frequent pedestrian in a large city, I will gladly submit my own (subjective and anecdotal) opinion that drivers on cell phones are less aware of their surroundings.

And I am sorry....a cell phone user is NOT more impaired than a drunk driver. It is political BS. I refuse to buy it and no statistic will prove it to me.

And I am sorry...tobacco use is NOT more likely to kill me than the local nuclear plant. It is political BS. I refuse to buy it and no statistic will prove it to me.

Seriously--people are really bad at assessing risks. This is the type of question that statistics are designed for. Relative risks, odds ratios, confidence intervals. Feel free to provide specific criticism of the study methodology, and note where errors or biases may have been introduced. Don't try to tell me that anecdotal evidence is inherently more reliable for risk assessment than large-scale statistical analysis.

"The numbers....come down to milliseconds"

If you pull the study (it's online here in PDF format) then the total difference is reaction time is on average 130 ms, or about 12 feet at 60 mph (3.5 m at 100 km/h).

The key? is to know if you can multi-task or not. If you can't multi-task than DON'T USE A CELL PHONE AND DRIVE AT THE SAME TIME unless it's an emergency. A little common sense, and a little less stupidity will bring the human race a long way!

The problem is that people tend to be very poor judges of their own abilities. Ask anybody--they will tell you that they are an above average driver, but that there sure are a lot of idiots out on the road. People don't notice their own bad habits, unless and until they actually hit somebody. That's the whole point of a distraction--it means that you don't notice when you're making mistakes. I'm not saying that the parent poster is a bad driver, but that I don't trust people in general to be able to make that assessment.

David Strayer has been kind enough to provide an index of papers and articles he's authored or co-authored on this subject (no few - while I would never suggest any kind of bias, he really seems to have it out for cellphones.):

http://www.psych.utah.edu/AppliedCognitionLab/

From that index may I point out an item that appears to suggest that merely carry on a conversation even absent the mechanical problems associated with a cell phone/earbud etc. will cause impairment:
http://www.psych.utah.edu/AppliedCognitionLab/ViV_ 2001.pdf

This would seem to support the use of HOV lanes not as a reward for environmental sensitivity but as a safety measure for the rest of us singletons just trying to get to work in one piece; HOV need to be partitioned from the rest of traffic to protect us, heh. And what if the passenger is wearing a skimpy dress(!)while yaking about the absolute DEAL they got at Nordstroms.

Never mind the distraction factor from changing the radio station/CD, eating, makeup, picking nose, etc. Surely tasks that involve the motor regions would be even more troublesome than simply speaking...

In another item from the DoT, all autos will now be refitted with passenger gags.

David Strayer has been kind enough to provide an index of papers and articles he's authored or co-authored on this subject (no few - while I would never suggest any kind of bias, he really seems to have it out for cellphones.):

http://www.psych.utah.edu/AppliedCognitionLab/

From that index may I point out an item that appears to suggest that merely carry on a conversation even absent the mechanical problems associated with a cell phone/earbud etc. will cause impairment:
http://www.psych.utah.edu/AppliedCognitionLab/ViV_ 2001.pdf

This would seem to support the use of HOV lanes not as a reward for environmental sensitivity but as a safety measure for the rest of us singletons just trying to get to work in one piece; HOV need to be partitioned from the rest of traffic to protect us, heh. And what if the passenger is wearing a skimpy dress(!)while yaking about the absolute DEAL they got at Nordstroms.

Never mind the distraction factor from changing the radio station/CD, eating, makeup, picking nose, etc. Surely tasks that involve the motor regions would be even more troublesome than simply speaking...

In another item from the DoT, all autos will now be refitted with passenger gags.

My view is based on the scientific data that exists. I therefore want laws enacted to ban driving while using a cel phone. The more data that supports my view, the better.

http://www.psych.utah.edu/AppliedCognitionLab/Stra yerHFES04.pdf
http://www.hcra.harvard.edu/cellphones.html
http://www.utah.edu/unews/releases/03/jan/cellphon e.html
http://www.nsc.org/library/shelf/inincell.htm
http://www.ur.ku.edu/News/01N/JulyNews/July12/cell ular.html
http://www.icbc.com/Inside_ICBC/january2001news.ht ml

You sir, should be modded to the floor for your trollish ways.

My view is based on the scientific data that exists. I therefore want laws enacted to ban driving while using a cel phone. The more data that supports my view, the better.

http://www.psych.utah.edu/AppliedCognitionLab/Stra yerHFES04.pdf
http://www.hcra.harvard.edu/cellphones.html
http://www.utah.edu/unews/releases/03/jan/cellphon e.html
http://www.nsc.org/library/shelf/inincell.htm
http://www.ur.ku.edu/News/01N/JulyNews/July12/cell ular.html
http://www.icbc.com/Inside_ICBC/january2001news.ht ml

You sir, should be modded to the floor for your trollish ways.

SCIRun is released under a BSD license and comes with several medical related datasets.

Could there be anything dumber than the idea of a smart gun?

Maybe you should think the whole issue more rationally than so emotionally. There are lots of statistics against the freedom to carry a dumb gun.

From Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library's Firearms Tutorial:
The issue of "home defense" or protection against intruders may well be misrepresented. A of 626 shootings in or around a residence in three U.S. cities revealed that, for every time a gun in the home was used in a self-defense or legally justifiable shooting, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides (Kellermann et al, 1998). Over 50% of all households in the U.S. admit to having firearms (Nelson et al, 1987). It would appear that, rather than beign used for defense, most of these weapons inflict injuries on the owners and their families.

Are the dumb guns really worth all the suffering? Smart guns could prevent many accidental shootings. Oh, I forgot, people are emotionally connected to their guns. They just love them!

Gun control laws don't work so there's no point discussing them.

That's interesting because they do work in Europe. But seeing how Americans behave around the world, you must be a one trigger happy nation. Here's some statistics for you.

Maybe gun control doesn't work for you. You'll just get your guns by any means necessary, because you love them.

Time is money. Lots of it and as any person who has done any hiring (especially in small to mid size businesses) will tell you, personnel costs are among the largest financial obligations you will have bar none. Therefore, I actually find it more cost effective to 1) perform an analysis to best determine needs based on anticipated traffic (Slashdottings aside) [GRIN], and 2) purchase a complete system from a vendor based upon the outcomes of the analysis. Spending time rolling your own hardware can be cost effective in some circumstances, but do not overlook the time you are spending on this project. A simple cost analysis should suffice.

Also, if needs are low, common desktop hardware (even outdated hardware) can meet needs sufficiently without the need for a Server OS. (I have an old G3 iMac running a desktop OS X serving up one of the oldest online textbooks available on the Internet, Webvision which routinely serves up about 45,000 hits/day of graphics intensive webpages). For larger needs or e-commerce for medium to large businesses, you obviously need something more substantial. After looking at solutions from Dell, Sun and SGI, and a local whitebox builder, believe it or not, Apple makes some pretty nice servers servers at very cost competitive points. We will likely be picking up a couple in the near future for some very heavy data intensive work we are embarking on. The nice thing about these solutions is that we can develop the code cross platform from some Linux workstations and fairly simply deploy on the Xserves.

Ah, yes.
It seems that we need to review
The Story of Mel.

I'll post it here from several places,
So that the good people of /.
(and the other people of /.)
Don't wipe out a single server (yeah, right!)

http://www.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/mel.html
http://www.wizzy.com/andyr/Mel.html
http://www.science.uva.nl/~mes/jargon/t/thestoryof mel.html
http://www.outpost9.com/reference/jargon/jargon_49 .html

and, of course, many other places.

Perhaps in thirty years we could obtain some degree of enhancement for our eyes that would be optically based. However, a more pressing (and needed) benefit will be a cure or fix for folks with vision loss. "Zoom lenses" and such could relatively easily be accomplished with bionically enhanced optics, but the real trick is going to be designing and implementing the hardware/wetware interface and creating true bionic retinas. Bionic implants for retinal degenerations as currently implemented are not going to work for a variety of reasons (read my doctoral dissertation to find out why), but there are other approaches that can be taken or modifications that will be successful (part of my current work). Also alternative ways of implementing the interface cortically will likely have some success (not my work, but it is of my colleagues). Artificial retinas are going to be harder than artificial cochleas for the hearing impaired or cortical control of motor functions which are both applications that are having some success currently. The retina is a much more complex tissue with (in our eyes) 55-60 different classes of neurons all wired together in a precise manner to generate proper signals for image interpretability. As an interesting aside, I have said this before on Slashdot, but human eyes are pretty pathetic in terms of their sophistication. Birds, fish and many reptiles have much more sophisticated retinas that perceive what we would term a multi-spectral visual world. A visual scene much richer that the simple three-space world we currently see.

Not sure if I want to play Pop'n Music now

Ummmm, well how about this?

There is nothing that I talked about in my post that did not take serving up web pages into account. In fact, the standard OS X is robust enough to withstand a Slashdotting on even low end hardware. Witness a little old G3 iMac hosting a vision education resource we have here. This little iMac is running a standard OS X license (not server) and hosts upwards of 45,000 hits per day from all over the world. Not huge traffic, but pretty impressive for a desktop OS and a 400 Mhz G3.

So, what is it you are talking about specifically?

Errr, at Indiana University, by any chance?? With Aaron Kelly?

Nope. U of U. Click on the link.

• TOPS/CVM
• Immersion Haptic Workstation
• Utah Dextrous Hand Master
• Green Man

At the fovea, the area of best vision, resolution is 60 cycles/degree. A degree is roughly the width of your thumb held at arm's length. So about 60 vertical lines on your thumb at arms length would be just barely individually distinguishable.

This number is limited by the optics of the eye, not the spacing of detectors. There are about 6 million cones, used for day vision, and 100 million rods, used for night vision.

The spacing of cones would otherwise limit acuity to 150 cycles/degree at the fovea. The neat thing about that is that you can use the same kind of adaptive optics that astronomers use to correct for atmospheric aberation to project images of 150 cycles/degree directly onto the retina. Theoretically you can also use laser surgery to improve acuity beyond 20/20 vision using these same principles.

http://webvision.med.utah.edu/KallSpatial.htmlMore here

Mach 2.5. It was used more along the lines of something like oskit than a microkernel, as it was integrated into the kernel.

protein and grease parts find the bottom, watery layer the most comfortable place, while the DNA prefers the top, alcohol layer.

From "How to Extract DNA from Anything Living":
http://gslc.genetics.utah.edu/units/activities/ext raction/

Having nothing else to do, I'll use this opportunity to show off my pumpkin from last year.