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1) The equator doesn't run through South Africa. The Tropic of Capricorn does, but only through the northern tip of the country. The equator runs through Gabon, the two Congos, Uganda, Kenya, and the southern tip of Somolia. Here's a map showing specifically where.

2) Who said the elevator had to be stationed along the equator? A geosynchronous location can be had anywhere over the surface of the globe. It just happens that many communication and weather sats happen to be geostationary due to their respective functions, not because an equatorial orbit is the only one that can provide relative imobility. Most of those political considerations suddenly become alot easier to work around when you've got 197,000,000 sq. miles to work with instead of 25,000 linear miles.

No matter how you slice it, you'll never be able to make a machine do what a translator does. Why is it that these things are always made by people who aren't multilingual?

This excerpt taken from a paper written by Dijkstra in 1986 seems very appropriate:

"...society tolerates the computing profession because of its incompetance. It is our incopetence that makes us, though expensive, relatively harmless: were we as competent as we would like to be, we would offer the perfect implementation of the complete police state. We would be the darling of any dictatorship"

Food for thought.

But I can't drive 55!

Perhaps it is arrogant to assume, but I think I may be the undergraduate named at the top of Dijkstra Paper 1298. Indeed, my parents were born in 1954.. What a wonderful man.

Quote from the UTexas eulogy: "He and his wife had a fondness for exploring state and national parks in their Volkswagen bus, dubbed the Touring Machine, in which he wrote many technical papers." Now THAT's a computer scientist! And RIP, Edgar W. Dijkstra.

I had Dijkstra for a graduate CS class in the Fall of 1996. It was an exploration of elegance in the process of quantitative reasoning. I must say that he taught me the virtue of careful thinking more so than any other instructor during my formal education. Check out this link starting around manuscript 1237 to see the course notes. As an example, he showed us an algorithm for calculating increasing cubes (x^3 for x=1 to N) of integers that reduces to 2 C statements and uses only integer addition and initial assignment as operators. E-mail me if you want the code. Hint: It would only be a 2 statement algorithm for any arbitrary polynomial function.
k u r t AT s p a c e s h i p . c o m

At the UTexas EWD archive.

Just looking at his U texaspublication list is an awesome (pre-1990s meaning) experience. Let your eyes scan it, as they would the Grand Canyon. Then wander around the UTexas site, where many publications are online, and start reading. You'll be a better person for it. And you may experience a thrill of understanding, when you see that his hands hold up so much of today's code, as Shakespeare's hands hold up so much of the language and common experience of the English world.

To get a feel for the span of his life's work, consider his thesis title, "Communications with an automatic computer." The word "automatic" was necessary then, to distinguish it from a person with a calculator. The machine he used in his thesis? It had a 32K memory unit. He divided this into what he called "living" and "dead" memory.

Let's hope that his memory will be of the living variety.

To a man I never shall meet, thank you.

Some links from my article that slashdot rejected some hours ago: the University of Texas announcement has a list of his awards and discoveries. (He taught at UT.) A brief paper (in PDF, it's scanned from a handwritten paper for CACM if I recall) shows his brilliant, clear, and concise methods of thought and writing.

If you ever used an application that made use of shortest-path searching -- say, any real-time strategy game -- then you owe this man a debt of gratitude.

Some links from my article that slashdot rejected some hours ago: the University of Texas announcement has a list of his awards and discoveries. (He taught at UT.) A brief paper (in PDF, it's scanned from a handwritten paper for CACM if I recall) shows his brilliant, clear, and concise methods of thought and writing.

If you ever used an application that made use of shortest-path searching -- say, any real-time strategy game -- then you owe this man a debt of gratitude.

A pity he's gone.

It is striking that this nonsense FORTRAN debate makes it to the /. front page on the day that the death of E.W.Dijkstra has been announced. It is even more striking that the news about the loss of this computer science giant is deemed of less significance by your moderators. What is next? Advocating the implementation of 'goto' in java 3?

E.W.D. was one of the most influential pioneers of computer science, like Turing, Zuse and Von Neuman. His work was always been in the light of creating a solid mathematical foundation for programming. His most remarkable achievements include the wide acceptance of 'structured programming', the invention of semaphores and ofcourse the Dijkstra shortest-path algortihm. He was awarded the ACM Turing Award in 1972. For /.-ers is may be interesting that he also started the first real flamewar with his infamous "Goto considered harmful"-article.

For the news on his death: here, here or here.

For programmers who like to read all of his manuscripts (if you haven't read them, you don't know what programming is about): there is a great archive of all his material. Dijkstra died at the age of 72. May he rest in peace and may his work live on.

Back on topic:

FORTRAN, "the infantile disorder", by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra.

It is striking that this nonsense FORTRAN debate makes it to the /. front page on the day that the death of E.W.Dijkstra has been announced. It is even more striking that the news about the loss of this computer science giant is deemed of less significance by your moderators. What is next? Advocating the implementation of 'goto' in java 3?

E.W.D. was one of the most influential pioneers of computer science, like Turing, Zuse and Von Neuman. His work was always been in the light of creating a solid mathematical foundation for programming. His most remarkable achievements include the wide acceptance of 'structured programming', the invention of semaphores and ofcourse the Dijkstra shortest-path algortihm. He was awarded the ACM Turing Award in 1972. For /.-ers is may be interesting that he also started the first real flamewar with his infamous "Goto considered harmful"-article.

For the news on his death: here, here or here.

For programmers who like to read all of his manuscripts (if you haven't read them, you don't know what programming is about): there is a great archive of all his material. Dijkstra died at the age of 72. May he rest in peace and may his work live on.

Back on topic:

FORTRAN, "the infantile disorder", by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra.

UT-Austin has an obituary.

I'm really busy now, but I can make some quick replies:

You are really right about Linux lacking a central configuration database. Windows XP configuration is easier, even though the access is poorly designed. I've been hoping that Jonathan Abbey of Ganymede will extend his project to include program configuration.

Nothing is being sold. It is not an infomercial. Yes, I wrote the article. No one ever questioned that before. In the future, I will make it clear that I wrote the article.

There is no -D switch in Windows XP Start.exe

I thought your comments were excessively negative, as though someone is trying to sell you some lies.

You are confusing system preparation with backups. This is a common mistake, I've found. Perhaps the article could be more clear. The facts were verified by Microsoft employees.

Here is an example. Suppose it is four years from now. You have a backup that was made a week before. When you do the restore, you quite likely will not do it to a machine that is identical, because you won't be able to buy identical parts. That's where one of the problems lies. The new machine won't work with the old system drivers or hard drive drivers, almost certainly. Sometimes this problem can be solved, sometimes it can't. Microsoft says that it can't, and they don't support it.

In Microsoft XP, the registry is several files, scattered around the hard drive. Corruption in any of those files can cause your machine to be useless. However, most of the problem occurs with one big file SOFTWARE, which is 25.69 megabytes on the machine I am using to post this. Here are the files names for that machine. As you can see, more files has made the problem worse, not better:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\h ivelist]
"\\REGISTRY\\MACHINE\\HARDWARE"=""
"\\REGISTRY\\MACHINE\\SECURITY"="\\Device\\Harddis kVolume1\\WINDOWS\\SYSTEM32\\config\\SECURITY"
"\\REGISTRY\\MACHINE\\SOFTWARE"="\\Device\\Harddis kVolume1\\WINDOWS\\SYSTEM32\\config\\SOFTWARE"
"\\REGISTRY\\MACHINE\\SYSTEM"="\\Device\\HarddiskV olume1\\WINDOWS\\SYSTEM32\\config\\SYSTEM"
"\\REGISTRY\\USER\\.DEFAULT"="\\Device\\HarddiskVo lume1\\WINDOWS\\SYSTEM32\\config\\DEFAULT"
"\\REGISTRY\\MACHINE\\SAM"="\\Device\\HarddiskVolu me1\\WINDOWS\\SYSTEM32\\config\\SAM"
"\\REGISTRY\\USER\\S-1-5-20"="\\Device\\HarddiskVo lume1\\Documents and Settings\\NetworkService\\ntuser.dat"
"\\REGISTRY\\USER\\S-1-5-29_Classes"="\\Device\\Ha rddiskVolume1\\Documents and Settings\\NetworkService\\Local Settings\\Application Data\\Microsoft\\Windows\\UsrClass.dat"
"\\REGISTRY\\USER\\S-1-5-12"="\\Device\\HarddiskVo lume1\\Documents and Settings\\LocalService\\ntuser.dat"
"\\REGISTRY\\USER\\S-1-5-13_Classes"="\\Device\\Ha rddiskVolume1\\Documents and Settings\\LocalService\\Local Settings\\Application Data\\Microsoft\\Windows\\UsrClass.dat"
"\\REGISTRY\\USER\\S-1-5-20-1177998915-706699826-1 060284298-1003"="\\Device\\HarddiskVolume1\\Docume nts and Settings\\JohnJ\\NTUSER.DAT"
"\\REGISTRY\\USER\\S-1-5-20-1177998915-706699826-1 060284298-1003_Classes"="\\Device\\HarddiskVolume1 \\Documents and Settings\\JohnJ\\Local Settings\\Application Data\\Microsoft\\Windows\\UsrClass.dat"

This makes sense from a managing-customer-expectations view: They likely want a working copy now and they (and you!) don't want to be involved in getting online, finding out it's stale software, long downloads, corrupted downloads, etc. Let the installer install, that's nasty enough.

Many apps offer a menu option that fires off a URL event for update-checking. The web-browser opens up the page and there you are. Some applications are clever and fire off a URL event with the version number already encoded so you get your version-check right away, automatigically answer is there more or not. Others make you look up your own version number and then figure out what your choices are. And some take the opportunity to include the serial number and such "for the record."

An alternative is a polite version checker that (with permission!) automatically checks for updates every so often, say two weeks, or on demand. If there's no new version it quietly shuts down and nobody was disturbed. Or if it was a manual check it gives a nothing-new response. If there is something new it gives a response and supplies a link to the appropriate web-page/download/whatever.

Of course any such transaction should be well documented and easily interpreted so folks know exactly what is being 'phoned home' and don't start getting the willies. This may mean a larger transaction then strictly neccessary but keeping it human-interpretable is likely valuable in a suspicious world.

So with all of that said I'd like to point folks to one existing implementation: Simple Internet Version Control Protocol. I've no connection whatsoever with it beyond having a product or two on my machine that use it but it's always seemed to me to be a well-thought-out bit of code and after 7 years of in-production-use likely well-tested. Oh, and I may have met the author years ago (Chris, were you @neu.edu?)

It does version-control, also does anonymous user counts, it's free in all senses, there's code examples, etc. Here's their summary:

The Simple Internet Version Control protocol (SIVC - pronounced "civic") is a system intended to help people on the Internet keep their software up-to-date, while providing software developers with good estimations of their products' Internet user bases. While interesting to all developers, these estimations are particularly useful to developers of public domain, freeware and shareware products since the size of a product's user base is often a major factor in justifying continued development. In addition, SIVC can reduce product support demands, and improve user experiences, by helping to ensure that users have current versions of their SIVC-equipped software.

This makes sense from a managing-customer-expectations view: They likely want a working copy now and they (and you!) don't want to be involved in getting online, finding out it's stale software, long downloads, corrupted downloads, etc. Let the installer install, that's nasty enough.

Many apps offer a menu option that fires off a URL event for update-checking. The web-browser opens up the page and there you are. Some applications are clever and fire off a URL event with the version number already encoded so you get your version-check right away, automatigically answer is there more or not. Others make you look up your own version number and then figure out what your choices are. And some take the opportunity to include the serial number and such "for the record."

An alternative is a polite version checker that (with permission!) automatically checks for updates every so often, say two weeks, or on demand. If there's no new version it quietly shuts down and nobody was disturbed. Or if it was a manual check it gives a nothing-new response. If there is something new it gives a response and supplies a link to the appropriate web-page/download/whatever.

Of course any such transaction should be well documented and easily interpreted so folks know exactly what is being 'phoned home' and don't start getting the willies. This may mean a larger transaction then strictly neccessary but keeping it human-interpretable is likely valuable in a suspicious world.

So with all of that said I'd like to point folks to one existing implementation: Simple Internet Version Control Protocol. I've no connection whatsoever with it beyond having a product or two on my machine that use it but it's always seemed to me to be a well-thought-out bit of code and after 7 years of in-production-use likely well-tested. Oh, and I may have met the author years ago (Chris, were you @neu.edu?)

It does version-control, also does anonymous user counts, it's free in all senses, there's code examples, etc. Here's their summary:

The Simple Internet Version Control protocol (SIVC - pronounced "civic") is a system intended to help people on the Internet keep their software up-to-date, while providing software developers with good estimations of their products' Internet user bases. While interesting to all developers, these estimations are particularly useful to developers of public domain, freeware and shareware products since the size of a product's user base is often a major factor in justifying continued development. In addition, SIVC can reduce product support demands, and improve user experiences, by helping to ensure that users have current versions of their SIVC-equipped software.

You are correct. Various types of air cooling and conditioning have been in use for thousands of years. Here is a brief list of some of the types of air conditioning methods used in the history of Texas for the last few hundred years. It is worth noting that many large buildings still use the ice-chiller system to cool air, and it's being used in new construction, as well. "Refrigerated air" is simply not terribly efficient in large spaces.

Linear motors have been around for quite a while in non "levitation" applications to:

• actuate X/Y/Z Position Stages for manufacturing and research (See more on Google)
• To launch roller coasters up to 100 MPH in 7 seconds. (See more on Google)
• Move objects on a belt-less conveyor "belt"
• And, excite nerds like us by launching projectiles really really fast.(See more on google.)

BTW, why did the FT put a picture of a CCD imager chip on an article about linear motors?

The best ssh-enabled terminal program I've used is puTTY, which is free and indeed much better than TeraTerm. Links to puTTY are on my nix site, a collection of "UNIX" tools for Windows.

He must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. Clearly, a man this intellegent ment to be going to the only University of Texas. Seriously, that's what we're called THE University of Texas. This A&M place must be some sort of a hoax.

This is not a troll. Just the results of four years of constant propaganda. Sorry, can't help it.

How can BSD be dying when it has girls like this supporting it? The best Linux can come up with is an obese penguin. What are those Linux people smoking?

What we need are more free software babes like her. This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. Even this old Unix guru looks like he's having trouble keeping his wang under control when close to such an amazing babe. This girl has to be one of the hottest ever! I can tell you that I'll be installing BSD after catching sight of her!

Linux will never be able to compete until it ditches the fat arctic birdlife and gets itself a mascot like this little hottie. Let's face it: there's just no way Tux is ever going to compete with the divine Ceren. She is surely the woman of every computer geek's dreams. Wouldn't you kill to get just this close to her.

Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

How can BSD be dying when it has girls like this supporting it? The best Linux can come up with is an obese penguin. What are those Linux people smoking?

What we need are more free software babes like her. This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. Even this old Unix guru looks like he's having trouble keeping his wang under control when close to such an amazing babe. This girl has to be one of the hottest ever! I can tell you that I'll be installing BSD after catching sight of her!

Linux will never be able to compete until it ditches the fat arctic birdlife and gets itself a mascot like this little hottie. Let's face it: there's just no way Tux is ever going to compete with the divine Ceren. She is surely the woman of every computer geek's dreams. Wouldn't you kill to get just this close to her.

Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

How can BSD be dying when it has girls like this supporting it? The best Linux can come up with is an obese penguin. What are those Linux people smoking?

What we need are more free software babes like her. This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. Even this old Unix guru looks like he's having trouble keeping his wang under control when close to such an amazing babe. This girl has to be one of the hottest ever! I can tell you that I'll be installing BSD after catching sight of her!

Linux will never be able to compete until it ditches the fat arctic birdlife and gets itself a mascot like this little hottie. Let's face it: there's just no way Tux is ever going to compete with the divine Ceren. She is surely the woman of every computer geek's dreams. Wouldn't you kill to get just this close to her.

Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

Err... maybe I mean 12 and 60 are two such numbers. Anyway, here's a link to what the hell I'm talking about.

And you also could use Maxima, which is GPLed.

Check out: (google search:harry ransom center world's first photograph)
here for more info.

You can get more information about the Ransom Center's photographic collections.

Jive Server

To be honest, the Jive Server only has evil applications.

Refuting global warming
You provide evidence that global tropospheric temperatures are decreasing. However, these measurements are actually further evidence of global warming. If the greenhouse effect is trapping heat in the lower atmosphere, less heat makes it back into the upper atmosphere as measured by satellites. Check out this article from the NOAA, especially paragraph 3 (although the whole thing is pretty interesting). Also note the results of a NAS study that examines the data you referenced. They conclude that global surface warming is definitely real and that the satellite data does not invalidate these measurements.

Refuting importance of CO2 compared to H2O in global warming
Your source states that water vapor is a greenhouse gas and that it exists in much greater concentrations than CO2 in the atmosphere. Therefore, global warming should be closely related to an increase in atmospheric water vapor, with the effect of CO2 being negligible. However, if we grant that global surface temperatures are increasing, were are left wondering why atmospheric water vapor is increasing. This document from the WMO explains how CO2 emissions affect the climate by increasing the amount of water vapor in the air. Basically, the CO2 traps a bit of heat near the surface. The warmer air holds more water, and this additional water in turn leads to more warming. The "push" from the CO2 basically changes the planet's water distribution, with more water in the air and less elsewhere. You can consider the CO2 an indirect cause, but it definitely leads to warming. On a related note, here's an interesting article from NASA which suggests that an increasingly moist atmosphere may harm the ozone layer as well. Note the quote in paragraph 7.

Refuting rising sea levels
This article was by far the most entertaining source you provided. I love the part in paragraph 10 where Lord Bumpershoot (or whatever his name was) complains about convicts vandalizing his test equipment. According to your source, the sea level measurements in this area seem to be decreasing. However, consider the observations from the TOPEX/POSEIDON satellite, which uses a radar altimeter to map global sea levels. There appears to be a clear upward trend of about 3 mm/year. Judging from the data, it's apparent that the global mean sea level is increasing.

On a final note, I noticed from your previous posts that you seem to be a Bush supporter. It looks like the Bush administration has reversed its position on the existence of global warming. I'm totally shocked. Are you? :)

dominik@schnitzer.at, mozparty-at-subscribe@relax.ath.cx, dominik@schnitzer.at, david_markvica@web.de, johannes_richter@gmx.net, kairo@kairo.at, rossi@chello.at, markush@world-direct.com, cbiesinger@web.de, jenskager@gmx.net, jo-at-mt@gmx.net, johann.petrak@gmx.at, dviper01@gmx.net, simon@simonschwaighofer.net, dreckskerl@glump.at, wt-lists@trexler.at, dusty@strike.wu-wien.ac.at, kasparhauserjr@hotmail.com, b.schallar@gmx.net, mutato@libero.it, phil@goli.at, diddalick@gmx.net, studio@paw8.com, croco@utanet.at, petru@paler.net, jlemmerer@node.at, bigkub@time2change.at, patrick@seher-it.at, ronald@hartwig.at, mozilla_party@webterminate.com, stefan@kleinhans.it, horst.jens@gmx.at, jjan@gibts.net, mjahn@agency.at, gpoul@gnu.org, green@eggs.ham, gerhard.hipfinger@openforce.at, mailto:moz@moz.org>, florianweinwurm@yahoo.com, christian@precht-jensen.dk, Bill_Gates@microsoft.com, Tux_the_penguin@linux.rules.microsoft.sux.open.sou rce.is.the.way.to.go.net, domi@schnitzer.at, 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mike@mjoy.us, miles@openly.com, LuciferSD@hotmail.com, nsdilwor@intertechmedia.com, chrisdowden@yahoo.com, pgs10@columbia.edu, sbrennan@ovid.com, lthomiso@rcn.com, paralox@paralox.ath.cx, Jester_458@yahoo.com, jsadove@beltion.net, stuehmke@yahoo.com, mike@realfx.com, alex@risky-roosky.com, shava@efn.org, kra10@columbia.edu, saihung@ix.netcom.com, gropo@mac.com, scottnym@yahoo.com, shaas@vibe.com, roon_toon@hotmail.com, ajaygautam@yahoo.com, jhdaly@mindspring.com, manuel@sphinx.ms, very_itchy_rash@yahoo.com, emeldrum@drew.edu, jeld@mindless.com, as867@columbia.edu, slams@penguin.rutgers.edu, wassa@columbia.edu, tony@vegan.net, zilla@bibliotrack.com, zeno_lee@hotmail.com, fosh@fishnet.cx, linux@gpl.us, jblow@hotmail.com, dkrook@hotmail.com, ivesti@yahoo.com, arek@arekwyderka.com, bljoechang@yahoo.com, brian@tribrothers.com, sparky@marklife.org, charles@softwareprototypes.com, scottkundla@hotmail.com, ccharabaruk@meldstar.com, ian@pottinger.ca, netdemonz@yahoo.com, diatribe@mailcity.com, nick@tomkinet.com, shawnlin@yahoo.com, sculley@pathcom.com, herd.killing@rogers.com, dave@renouf.com, aliyamin@hotmail.com, aswitzer@ispgn.com, netm0nkey@ispgn.com, hyakugei@hotmail.com, geduggan.mozparty@peri.csclub.uwaterloo.ca, lwhite@darkfires.ca, jorel@the-wire.com, js@tap.net, davew@tap.net, tmh@whitefang.com, vid_mozillaparty@zooid.org, anon@foolswisdom.org, morris_mk@yahoo.ca, colinmc@idirect.com, marcus.brubaker@utoronto.ca, akish@kishcom.com, nconway@klamath.dyndns.org, jason@thegeekcave.com, rampaging_simian@hotmail.com, garret@sirsonic.com, piowie@myrealbox.com, m5m5m@yahoo.com, ivan.brovko@net-sweeper.com, returnofthedorks@hotmail.com, axxackall@yahoo.com, tednye@sympatico.ca, darren.fuller@bell.ca, jbailey@nisa.net, swangeo@yahoo.ca, Hercynium@yahoo.com, cinetron@passport.ca, jotaroh@hotmail.com, aghajani@principle.com, fzv@yahoo.com, rocketmail_com@rocketmail.com, foo@bar.com, wolfe@alt.net, drew@xyzzy.dhs.org, jimmiejaz@nixhelp.net, bofh@swma.net, nilesh_mehta@email.com, mslack@rogers.com, m-cahill@rogers.com, tworkowski@sympatico.ca, george@openlight.com, irina@openlight.com, ilia@lobsanov.com, rjs@tao.ca, paul-mp@it.ca, alvarolists@aycuens.com, xan@dimensis.com, ike@lab.org, miguel@asiinfo.net, marevalo@marevalo.net, iolalla@yahoo.com, peluz0n@justice.com, weeddeveloper@yahoo.com, alfonsobugs@terra.es, sgala@apache.org, z_gringo@hotmail.com, santiz@madritel.es, murphy@litio.net, fox@mozilla.gr.jp, party@mozilla.org.uk, danj@fledgeling.com, fun@thingy.apana.org.au, moz@the-allens.net, onelists@hotmail.com, joel@fysh.org, simon.mozilla-party-if-its-in-central-london@rumbl e.net, bigboyjim@excite.com, andrew.and.friends.iff.central.london@sent.freeser ve.co.uk, itwillbecentrallondon@mozilla.org.uk, noahsark2x2@tiscali.co.uk, mmm-central-london@smileyben.com, jonathan-for-central-london@peepo.com, dave-Party-in-Central-London@dgta.co.uk, DJGMOL@netscape.net, srick@europe.yahoo-inc.com, moz-party@zpok.demon.co.uk, moz-party-central-london@trickofthelight.org, marc@brosystems.com, party@budge.net, rillian@telus.net, uphillsurfer@hotmail.com, edward@debian.org, mozilla@robertbrook.com, reagan@technomoose.com, lew@saltbeefsandwich.co.uk, osama@afghanistan.com, barking@insaneworld.org.uk, john@billabong-media.com, leith@cs.bu.edu, mozparty@noseynick.org, jonasj@jonasj.dk, bugzilla@kenneth.dk, chr_damsgaard@hotmail.com, alring@email.com, hp.grondal@get2net.dk, martin@marquentein.dk, Lovechild@foolclan.com, Kim@schulz.dk, kl@vsen.dk, mbendix@dunghill.dk, schnitzer.at@tange.dk, tommy@svindel.net, moz10@pbb.dk, dezral@despammed.com, nick@tioka.com, ask@fujang.dk, gecko@c.dk, spam@deck.dk, bugzilla@gemal.dk, b@bogdan.dk, kenneth@gnu.org, jee@email.dk, daniel@rtfm.dk, umfalvo@yahoo.com, christian@ostenfeld.dk, xor@ivwnet.com, Jason@screaminweb.com, alex@spamcop.net, dustym@riseup.net, rmcgee1@earthlink.net, dr_zeus@hotmail.com, chris.lozano@myrealbox.com, looney_binn@yahoo(dot)com, apendell@attbi.com, dantrevino@wrevolution.org, fireball1244@mac.com, tommyo@hargray.com, natas@redtailboa.net, emmett_in_dallas@yahoo.com, razzbuten@yahoo.com, igdavis@truculent-telephone.org, foobar@null.net, bob@kludgebox.com, cgrimland@yahoo.com, ghamlett@swbell.net, bgood@inceptual.com, slot0k@pogox.org, kwhudson@netin.com, jimjamjoh@softhome.net, jimmys@utdallas.edu, charlesv@mfos.org chris@focus2.com jest6r@hotmail.com steve@ncc.com, usrg@mail.utexas.edu, steve@deltos.com, alex@avengergear.com, mkoenecke@alum.haverford.edu langley@hex.net mordred@inaugust.com swapan@yahoo.com drosoph@hotmail.com, goulash1@mac.com, ean@brainfood.com, vj@vj.com lpret42@hotmail.com bugoff@hotmail.com chad@digitaltriage.net, stewart@digitaltriage.net scottvr01@yahoo.com adam@dfwuptime.com dsaint@gnumatt.org naltrexone42@yahoo.com, webmaster@bast.net, tommyo@hargray.com, ladd@kryp.to, jtaylor5@bayou.uh.edu, jgschmitz@linuxmail.org, enslaver@enslaver.com edfierro@yahoo.com, moz@photonsphere.com, rayw@fuckmicrosoft.com, rfmobile@swbell.net, kevin@unif.com trident5@bigfoot.com Erik_Osterholm@ieee.org, tmunson@houston.rr.com, alessi_brand@hotmail.com, rballa1@lsu.edu, wasted@kewlhair.com, jofficer@martinapparatus.com, idiot@mylinuxisp.com, j0sh01@ev1.net faust@wintermarket.org bouncer@hotmonkeyporn.com tk-mozparty_@perljam.net janisch@students.zcu.cz, aha@pinknet.cz kuzi@atlas.cz scat@reboot.cz, petr@dousa.cz, ruzicka@core.cz, roman@management.cz, hojan@students.zcu.cz, tille@soti.org, cas.tuyn@hetnet.nl, aeon@pandora.be, sensi_millia2000@yahoo.com, crypto@shiftat.com, jan.fabry@vsknet.be, monkeyboy@fruru.com, adulau@foo.be, johan@linux.be, karu@pobox.com, soggie@soti.org nick@tomkinet.com, why_are_you_too_lazy_to_drive_1_hour_to_toronto@yo u_lazy.com try_grammer_class_a_while@get_a_life.com john@interlynx.ca asharp@axo.cc, unionstation@ryder.ca, prade@hotmail.com, 2600@hamilton2600.ca, chris.lozano@myrealbox.com, dantrevino@wrevolution.org, jksteinhauer@netscape.net, i_love_junk_email@yahoo.com, cmiller@surfsouth.com, jan@bestbytes.de, me@phillipoertel.com, sebastian@pixelsalon.de, ccozan@andtek.com, ben@itlib.de, martin.ament@gmx.de, pulsar@highteq.net, muid@gmx.de, cedi@zooomclan.org, soapy@soapy.ch, deep_blue_ocean@gmx.ch, stamp@zooomclan.org, hans@switzerland.com, milamber@zooomclan.org, mtettea@switzerland.com, cylander@zooomclan.org, duke@zooomclan.org, pegirun@gmx.ch, pilif@pilif.ch, mlati@yahoo.com, Mozillzooom@holophrastic.com, erichiseli@yahoo.com, la_burdet@yahoo.com, rkoerber@gmx.de, dotzmasta@hotmail.com, B.Eckstein@cli.de, rtfm@linux.de, info@phosmo.de, gz@disintegrated.de, byronbay@gmx.de, stiwi@mac.com, mage@koeln.netsurf.de, mozilla@portfolio16.de, wrede@fh-aachen.de, ilikemozilla@html.de, cloud@final-fantasy.de, sfricke@sfricke.de, info@flossbau.de, no@dom.de, julian.suschlik@gmx.net, omero@m4d.sm, lapo@lapo.it, alcor78@email.it, info@fuelcat.it, mutato@libero.it, ildella@inwind.it, a.marabini@spinthehumanfactor.com, uomoman@criticalbit.com, thefl74@netscape.net, elbardo@libero.it, clem131@libero.it, t-i-e@bigfoot.com, gng74@libero.it, moz.party.20.gnes@spamgourmet.com, ema.cerqui@libero.it, ubertob@tin.it, mozparty.20.anagoor@spamgourmet.com, gianpaolo@preciso.net, ian@deepsky.com, marco@porciletto.org, planetx2100@hotmail.com, billabong@tiscalinet.it, piofree@libero.it, skunkyboy@tiscalinet.it, vincenzo@mondopiccolo.net, macmatteo@interfree.it, contreras@jce.it, hereandnow@libero.it, pza@students.cs.mu.oz.au, caedwa@students.cs.mu.oz.au, mgi@students.cs.mu.oz.au, bah@humbug.net, mfp@cs.mu.oz.au, nospamplease@indevelopment.org, peter@simplyit.screaming,net, pmj@users.sf.net, xanni@sericyb.com.au, agh@kalcium-is.com, felicityconsult@ozemail.com.au, lucas@lucaschan.com, andrewg@nopninjas.com, andym@abnormal.com, ts@meme.com.au, jasonpell@hotmail.com, syngin@gimp.org, mhammond@skippinet.com.au, szutshi@devraj.org, rmoonen@bigpond.net.au, fawad@fawad.net, ufs@softhome.net, kotrade@yahoo.com, ben@benscorp.com, stevesmith@columbus.rr.com, kkimmelosu@yahoo.com, neal.lindsay@peaofohio.com, pat@linuxcolumbus.com, chrisbaker@iname.com, hiroki2c@yahoo.com, seth@remor.com, jsohn@columbus.rr.com, ross@nanonet.net, mark@cushman.net, swinghammer.2@osu.edu, roberto.12@osu.edu, farhat@hotmail.com, pgunn@dachte.org, jwagner@gcfn.org, bp@osc.edu, joepletch@postmark.net, dsherman@iwaynet.net, glenn@uniqsys.com, bernstein.46@osu.edu, trent_reznor@nothing.com, erikniklas@bobanddoug.com, walters@gnu.org, timo@bolverk.net, annek25@aol.com, jlamb@leader.com, bart@osc.edu, jason@mcvetta.org

U of Texas has done this chemically using glycerol to dry out tissues. Most impressive are the pictures. The story is a bit dated, but at the time, they had only done this with hamsters. previous slashdot story

U of Texas has done this chemically using glycerol to dry out tissues. Most impressive are the pictures. The story is a bit dated, but at the time, they had only done this with hamsters. previous slashdot story

Following the link from the article verifies that humans have spent less than 96 hours on the Moon's surface. Lunar Missions? Yes! Colonization? Sadly, I think that's a bit premature. As long as we're realistic about our goals I believe we can sell the general public on them. It's so easy for naysayers to point out the problems from the past, why not set some realistic goals and then accomplish them?

Yeah, we see problems like that with our npasswd based Ganymede configuration.

We require all passwords to pass a fairly strict password quality checking filter upon entry, and we require users to change their passwords every 3 months. This has met with some grumbles, but it has gotten a lot of dead accounts cleared off our books, which is a big benefit in and of itself. We have had some users report that the password checking logic was too strict, but I haven't seen a case of rejection as egregious at the one you listed, and our 700+ users seem to be coping okay. Knowing that none of those 700+ users are using 'password' or are likely to be using their 3 year old slashdot password for their local account makes it worthwhile, though.

It does help that we do a lot of work to reduce the number of redundant passwords users have to remember.

Yeah, we see problems like that with our npasswd based Ganymede configuration.

We require all passwords to pass a fairly strict password quality checking filter upon entry, and we require users to change their passwords every 3 months. This has met with some grumbles, but it has gotten a lot of dead accounts cleared off our books, which is a big benefit in and of itself. We have had some users report that the password checking logic was too strict, but I haven't seen a case of rejection as egregious at the one you listed, and our 700+ users seem to be coping okay. Knowing that none of those 700+ users are using 'password' or are likely to be using their 3 year old slashdot password for their local account makes it worthwhile, though.

It does help that we do a lot of work to reduce the number of redundant passwords users have to remember.

Actually, praise of the Taliban freedom fighters used to occur often in this country; for example look at Reagan's speech marking Afghanistan Day.

I attended a lecture by Steve French of IBM/Samba where this was explained from his slides. The following is part of his explanation:

• People think of Microsoft when they think of CIFS since they coined the new name for the SMB protocol in 1996, soon after Sun announced the WebNFS extensions to NFSv3.
• But Dr. Barry Feigenbaum (IBM) actually invented CIFS's predecessor SMB (originally called "BAF" protocol) in the mid-1980s and multiple companies contributed.
• SMB is the X/Open (Open Group) "Standard for PC Interworking" (1992)
• SMB/CIFS is the main network filesystem on OS/400, OS/2, DOS and other operating systems and implementations are available on most every major operating system for the past 10 years.
• Storage Network Industry Association just released CIFS Technical Ref.
• Unix and Macintosh extensions to CIFS are documented by SNIA and implemented

You can (possibly ;P) see his lecture notes here. Warning: powerpoint slides.

Checkout their people page, and scroll to the bottom for pictures of some hectic research activity. These biochemists....

Main Research Page

And yes, they have Movies, along with pretty pictures

Main Research Page

And yes, they have Movies, along with pretty pictures

Main Research Page

And yes, they have Movies, along with pretty pictures

There's been lots of work on auto-classifying email. I did my semester project in Machine Learning on this in 1999. It's a fairly simple study, but it seems like a Naive Bayesian classifier using word counts as features does a pretty decent job of classifying email, and does really well on spam.

The paper is here here.

J.

You're so confused about these issues that conversation is difficult.

Evolutionary theory: The earth was created around 4 billion years ago. Is this scientific? Is it testable?

1. Evolutionary theory says nothing about the age of the earth. It requires an old earth, but we get the data from geology.
2. Testable? Of course. There are literally dozens of different tracks of evidence that show an old earth: radioactive dating, sedimentation rates, magnetic field reversals, glaciation evidence, etc.
3. Creation science has it at 6k years. Testable? Yes. All evidence shows that this is not the case. Every bit of it. Not a *single* piece of evidence shows otherwise. You are welcome to troll the creationist web sites looking for something, but what they claim as evidence is laughable.

Ergo, creation theory is *wrong*. You can dance around the issue as much as you want, but you simply can't ignore the facts. (Well, it appears that you and other creationists can, but people living in the real world can't.)

Besides, dating method is flawed and impossible to argue with since it is so unscientific. What would happen if a flower was found blooming in a cambrian strata? The "scientists" would simply say, evolution of flowering plants began earlier than we thought!

Again, there are so many misconceptions in here that it's clear you do not understand science. Dating methods are *not* flawed. You are quite welcome to present any evidence you think proves this. Unlike some of the tricky bio that I have to rely on experts in that field for info, as a physical chemist I can blow them out of the water by myself.

Second, a flowering plant in Cambrian strata would certainly prove evolution wrong. *Land* plants hadn't evolved by the Cambrian, much less flowering ones. They're a quite recent invention. Finding a fossil 300MY before any precursors appeared would be a disproof of evolution. You're quite welcome to look for one.

As for the nylon example - there was a stream of germs that was found in a hospital completely immune to all antibiotics.

You're babbling here. Nylon is not an antibiotic. You clearly don't understand the premise here. Nylon did not exist before 1940. Why would an organism be able to eat the waste products before nylon existed? Hint: they couldn't: a *new* enzyme was created by a favorable mutation to do this.

Ditto vancomycin resistance. Please read the details None of that existed until quite recently.

Give me an example of added information that is the beginning of the process to evolution.

I've given you several: nylon eating, antibiotic resistance, tetrachromaticity. You choose to simply ignore them.

What more do you want from Creationists?

I want them to present a scientific, testable, non-falsified theory of creationism or get the fuck out of science classrooms . Teach your fairy tales in Sunday school.

Weigh our two acceptances and your fate will either be one of two things...

1) If you are right, looking back and then nothing, conceding to the end.
2) If God is right, suffering eternally with satan.

False dichotomy. What if we're both wrong? What if I decided to worship your god and it turns out that Baal or Zeus get angry and smite me for worshipping the false christian god?

Read about the many problems with Pascal's wager.

IANAL either. However, note that fair use is something guaranteed by the First Amendment--particularly, the four-part balancing test of Fair Use is a court-designed solution to the way in which First Amendment rights are necessarily in conflict with the grant of copyright. Hence, fair use may not be explicitly guaranteed, but fair use is the means by which First Amendment rights are weighed in a copyright claim.

I teach Physics 100A. The best way to think about Centripital "force" is: it is whatever force holds the object in circular motion. (Thus it must be directed towards the center of the circular motion). For example, the earth is held in a (nearly) circular orbit around the sun by gravity. Your car can go around a curve, and locally travel in "circular" motion and it is held in the turn by friction (unless the turn is "banked" - you know, like highway turns, then gravity assists you, also).

What is called "centrifugal" force does not exist. What is most commonly cited as a "centrifugal" force is a force which pushes things out from the center of circular motion. In fact, there is no magical force pushing things away from the center of circular motion. What you feel is called inertia: the tendancy for objects to go in a straight line unless acted on by an outside force. This is not a force, it is Newton's first law.

The expression which is *not* a force is mass times speed squared divided by radius. It is a mass times acceleration, which belongs on the "right" hand side of Newton's second law, which says: the sum of all forces equals mass times acceleration. There is an expression for centripital acceleration because by stating the object is traveling in circular motion, you are saying something about what acceleration it is experiencing: namely that the acceleration is directed inward and has magnitude equal to speed squared divided by radius. (What is called "uniform" circular motion adds an additional requirement: that the speed does not change. (The velocity is a vector, so it sure does change in circular motion!) In the case of uniform circular motion, the only acceleration is centripital (center seeking), whereas in general you can also have tangential acceleration as well which changes the speed). There are magnetic, electric, and frictional forces. There are no equations for magnetic, electric, and frictional accelerations. The live on the left hand side of Newton's second law. Each can cause circular motion, and thus can be what is refered to as a "centripital" force. In general, there may be many forces acting to hold an object in circular motion.

By the way, floW is actually right about Newton's laws not holding in accelerating frames of reference. However, we don't invoke centrifugal forces to deal with this "problem". Perhaps the author was refering to the coriolis force, which *is* a fictional force.

We use the coriolis force because the effect is rather small on Earth and it is more intuitive to view Earth as a non-accelerating system, rather than one which is rotating. You may have hear about the coriolis force in physics 101 but you likely did not compute it. To do so you need the vector product (or cross product) which generally is not used in into physics books like Giancoli, Serway or Haladay and Resnik. The coriolis force effects: storm systems, water swirling down a drain, the Foucault pendulum (in fact any pendulum, but the giant pendulums in museums which knock over dominoes or trace out lines in sand are designed with coriolis in mind and called "Foucalut's" - it has to do with velocity that the pendulum achieves), and actually is used in firing Naval guns. See, for example:
some physics stuff

There is quite a bit of confusion as to what the force is that is holding the disc in circular motion. Most forces cited are actually what will cause the disc to either speed up, or slow down. The force holding the disc in circular motion is actually the atomic forces. This is why the disc does not fly apart (each part traveling in a staight line).

By the way, I actually searched for a few minuets trying to find a decent explanation of all this on the web, but most have mistakes. I am sorry to say the only way to really learn this seems to be to get a published book like Giancoli, Serway or Haladay's books (all titled Physics or something like that).

This is actually a rather delicate issue which I don't think most physics 100 students *ever* grasp. In fact, even after careful re-reading, I may have made mistakes. Heck, I get paid to explain this stuff to people, (which is a great joy) so I hope someone gets something out of this, even if it is inexact.

Gregory G. Wood

Coincidence? Probably.

Mapping Gravity
Posted by michael on Thursday November 22, @01:22AM
from the slim-fast dept.
overThruster writes: "No, you don't need to drink the water... Gravity is less strong in India--enough so that you weigh almost 1% less there. See BBC story about NASA's gravity map." Here's another story about the mission, and the GRACE home page (or NASA's less-informative page).


But this did make me wonder if there is any connection to what I posted back then:

Back in 1978, Arthur C. Clarke ended his book The View from Serendip by writing about a gravitational anomaly which was found off the coast of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) -- the small island near India where he lives.

I am able to visit my favorite spot (Chapter 13) for only a few days a year. But now, quite unexpectedly -- and literally since I wrote the preceding paragraph! -- Serendipity has struck again. While researching a totally different subject, I've discovered a good reason for spending more time on the south coast.

It concerns the greak Sanskrit epic, the Ramayana. In this 2,200-year-old poem, the demon-king Ravanna kidnaps Sita, wife of Rama, and takes her to his island stronghold of Ceylon. Needless to say, she is ultimately released, after aerial battles involving what look suspiciously like atomic weapons and laser beams.

To heal the wounded, the heroic monkey-general Hanuman is later sent back to India to fetch a medicinal herb found only in the Himalayas. Unfortunately, when he gets to the right mountain he is unable to identify the herb. No problem; he brings the whole mountain back! However, one piece drops off, on the southern tip of Ceylon. The locals believe this fragment is in fact my favourite bay, for its name in Sinhalese means "there it fell down" (onna watuna).

There it fell down. Place names usually have a meaning, though it is often lost in the mists of time. Did something really fall down, centuries or millennia ago, at Unawatuna Bay? A meteorite would be the obvious explanation; it must have been a big one for the legend to have lasted down the ages.

And here's another weird coincidence. Little Unawatuna, believe it or not, is the closest point on dry land to the world's greatest gravitational anomaly, a few hundred kilometres out in the Indian Ocean. On the Goddard Space Flight Center's 3-D map of the Earth's Gravimetric Geoid, that strange phenomenon looks liek a deep pit [1] into which the whole island of Sri Lanka is about to slide.

Let's put two and two together. A few thousand years ago, a huge object of peculiar density plunged into the Indian Ocean, creating a tradition that is remembered to this day. And it's still there, distorting the earth's gravitational field -- Terran Gravitational Anomaly I.

That might make an opening for a pretty good science-fiction movie . . . and an even better ending for this book.

Ayu Bowan.

1. One hundred and ten metres below zero reference on the Goddard model (March & Vincent, 1974).


Of course, the Ramayana is "only" 2,200 years old, compared to an estimated age of 5,000 years for this discover. Since I don't have a map of the locations of either TGA-1, or the sunken city, I don't know how close they are.