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has happened, with terrible results. Different machines of course, but nevertheless a demonstration that shit happens. There's no reason to believe that airport backscatter systems' software is any more reliable than that deployed on systems that have failed disastrously in the past.

See http://courses.cs.vt.edu/cs3604/lib/Therac_25/Therac_1.html
for one example.

One of the assumptions is safe: low oxygen environment. This bacterium does not "eat" metallic iron, but reduces dissolved iron oxide which requires a reducing (I.E. anaerobic) environment. How the existing iron structure turns into iron oxide is another question. My brief poking around on the internet (I'm not going to call it research) seems to indicate that these bacteria live in conjunction with many other bacteria and fungi in an associated called a rusticle which only seems to form on wrought iron. Modern steel should not be affected by this particular association, and chances are anything exposed to open seawater probably would be naturally exposed to all of the component organisms needed. Weaponizing this phenomenon would probably end up being more like developing some sort of fertilizing agent that hastens the colonization and growth rate of the appropriate colonies of organisms and would likely either be so bulky as to be noticed during routine maintenance, or require multiple reapplications which would increase the likelihood of being discovered. I really don't foresee this being more effective than traditional sabotage methods.

Researching this phenomenon is probably far more likely to give us a more thorough understanding of oxidation and improvements in the rust resistance of steel.

Who knows... the whole thing seems to be speculation at this point. After a bit of digging I think I found the paper that is being referenced here. It looks like they isolated some organism and figured out its taxonomy using molecular techniques and very little research on the bacteria's actual metabolism. For all I know this particular bacteria could be simply feeding on those that are doing the actual oxidation and reduction. It looks like I'd be able to learn a bit more on the topic of bacterial mediated corrosion from this document. Maybe I'll have that digested by the time this article comes up as a dupe.

This cave and this one sound perfect to start with. What do you think? Good places for hiding from daemons?

In the dejavu subsite, most publications share an author, so yes, it does "recycling" / self-plagiarism.

The article points to this link for the search engine. I did a search with a small paragraph copied from a paper and found too many results with different scores (it doesn't explain what these scores mean). It didn't tell anything decisively if the text is copied from any source, which is expected from a plagiarism tool.

Secondly, the About page doesn't talk plagiarism at all. What it says is: "eTBLAST is a unique search engine for searching biomedical literature. Our service is very different from PubMed. While PubMed searches for "keywords", our search engine lets you input an entire paragraph and returns MEDLINE abstracts that are similar to it. This is something like PubMed's "Related Articles" feature, only better because it runs on your unique set of interests."

However, I must say that the results did give lot of interesting related papers in the same subject which is not easy to find with keyword search. To me, it looks more like a search engine where you can search using a paragraph instead of keywords, which is quite impressive in itself. The site also offers few nifty features such as "Find an Expert" and "Find a Journal" which should be useful for research professionals. I also found the citations page to be quite informative. Since this service is free with API's available, it can be a great source for creating mashups.

The article points to this link for the search engine. I did a search with a small paragraph copied from a paper and found too many results with different scores (it doesn't explain what these scores mean). It didn't tell anything decisively if the text is copied from any source, which is expected from a plagiarism tool.

Secondly, the About page doesn't talk plagiarism at all. What it says is: "eTBLAST is a unique search engine for searching biomedical literature. Our service is very different from PubMed. While PubMed searches for "keywords", our search engine lets you input an entire paragraph and returns MEDLINE abstracts that are similar to it. This is something like PubMed's "Related Articles" feature, only better because it runs on your unique set of interests."

However, I must say that the results did give lot of interesting related papers in the same subject which is not easy to find with keyword search. To me, it looks more like a search engine where you can search using a paragraph instead of keywords, which is quite impressive in itself. The site also offers few nifty features such as "Find an Expert" and "Find a Journal" which should be useful for research professionals. I also found the citations page to be quite informative. Since this service is free with API's available, it can be a great source for creating mashups.

I poked around the site, and found the page describing some JSON APIs and things, but no links to code or developer pages.

So where's the code?

Hmm, okay, that's weird. The project is run by the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, but the disclaimer says:

This software and data are provided to enhance knowledge and encourage progress in the scientific community and are to be used only for research and educational purposes. Any reproduction or use for commercial purpose is prohibited without the prior express written permission of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

So they don't hold copyright to it? Or they didn't write it? Hmmmm....

Actually, it's not so nonsense. It's just stated inaccurately.

Dr. Keown at the Pamplin School of Business at Virginia Tech has been using his own book for years and years. If you are in the finance program at VT, you are going to take his class. Capacity for the two courses he is teaching this year equal to about 1100 students. He integrates an online passcode for the homework end of things and generally updates his book about every other year. The book costs the student $149 (no tax on textbook sales in Virginia). The book and the passcode are required and unlike other passcodes that can often be purchased separately, this one is only distributed with a new book. Now for the big bombshell that will certainly make everyone cream their pants: he also has been on the Board of Directors for the college bookstore (which, for full disclosure, is owned by itself and not by the University [cf: "axillary enterprise"]) for at least the last 8-10 years. That's only one example at one school; I'm sure there's others. He's not getting kickbacks, but he damn sure is getting royalties to the tune of close to 2000 students a year.

Just to throw this out there: the average retail markup on textbooks at the college level is 22% for new books and closer to 35% for used. Those of you who think the book you sold for $2 ends back up on the shelf for $80 are not really clear on the process: you're getting $2 because it's not being bought by the bookstore but rather a national used book dealer, and that's what the demand is worth. Sometimes that $2 does end up back on the retailer's shelf, but only because professors are really crappy about when they submit adoptions to the bookstore: if they wait too long, then the bookstore has to buy from the national dealer instead of buying directly from the student. Generally speaking, if the demand is there and the supply is not, the bookstore would always rather pay the student than the national dealer because if nothing else it breaks the ill will cycle. Now, those school-logo'd tee-shirts... that's where the real money is in college retail sales. That stuff commands a 55% and more margin. Then again, if you think that's outrageous then you don't know retail clothing practices well at all.

If that's what you're worried about, you should support GMO crops. Nitrogen use efficiency. I'm sure there are other traits to reduce fertilizer inputs out there, but that's a big one people are working on now.

which first caused a steam explosion, then a more powerful nuclear explosion.

It's probably a discussion based entirely on a technicality, but I'm curious if anyone can clarify or expand on this point: I'd been under the assumption that although the 2nd explosion at Chernobyl may have originated with a nuclear excursion, it generally isn't referred to as a "nuclear explosion." Wikipedia's article on the Chernobyl disaster states that "evidence indicates that the second explosion resulted from a nuclear excursion" but doesn't expound on how the excursion turned into an explosion. The reference for the Wikipedia statement is a bit over my head but only seems to explain how the yield of the explosion suggests a nuclear origin and not how the excursion turned into an explosion. Here's what Wikipedia's article on criticality accidents has to say on excursions resulting in explosions:

Although dangerous, the low densities of fissile material and the long insertion time involved in these events limit the fission yield and peak power, preventing them from becoming a large scale nuclear explosion.

I'm aware that excursions have caused explosions in other cases, such as the SL-1 and BORAX 1 incidents, but it seems that care has been taken in all these descriptions to refer to nuclear excursions rather than just saying nuclear explosions. Is it technically correct (albeit less precise) to refer to excursions resulting in explosions simply as "nuclear explosions" or is that phrase generally reserved for intentional nuclear explosions of enormous yield?

which first caused a steam explosion, then a more powerful nuclear explosion.

It's probably a discussion based entirely on a technicality, but I'm curious if anyone can clarify or expand on this point: I'd been under the assumption that although the 2nd explosion at Chernobyl may have originated with a nuclear excursion, it generally isn't referred to as a "nuclear explosion." Wikipedia's article on the Chernobyl disaster states that "evidence indicates that the second explosion resulted from a nuclear excursion" but doesn't expound on how the excursion turned into an explosion. The reference for the Wikipedia statement is a bit over my head but only seems to explain how the yield of the explosion suggests a nuclear origin and not how the excursion turned into an explosion. Here's what Wikipedia's article on criticality accidents has to say on excursions resulting in explosions:

Although dangerous, the low densities of fissile material and the long insertion time involved in these events limit the fission yield and peak power, preventing them from becoming a large scale nuclear explosion.

I'm aware that excursions have caused explosions in other cases, such as the SL-1 and BORAX 1 incidents, but it seems that care has been taken in all these descriptions to refer to nuclear excursions rather than just saying nuclear explosions. Is it technically correct (albeit less precise) to refer to excursions resulting in explosions simply as "nuclear explosions" or is that phrase generally reserved for intentional nuclear explosions of enormous yield?

This website's HTML is dubious, but it has a chart and discussion of ground temperature despite the focus on Virginia. Ground temperature tends to be fairly steady about thirty feet below the surface. I don't know what soil temperature would be in India but I suspect it would still be below 100 degrees at that point.

Of course this story is quite likely not true or useful, as other have pointed out. But if we ever do develop room-temperature superconductors, expect them to be buried. Even here in Michigan we'd be running a real risk if we left a ~100 degree superconductor above ground (it only takes one day, even just one second of your superconductor not being a superconductor to ruin your day, and preventively shutting the grid down ruins your day too), but bury it and it'll never warm up. In fact as you get close to "room temperature" you get to the point where every degree is a couple hundred miles further south you can bury the superconductor without having to refrigerate it at all.

Actually, System X ranked third when first introduced. Also, most aren't aware yet of Virginia Tech's new all Mac System G, and the new list

Actually, System X ranked third when first introduced. Also, most aren't aware yet of Virginia Tech's new all Mac System G, and the new list

Virginia Tech's System X

I mean it's not like they broke into the top 10 or anything:
Ranking seventh in the Top 500 list of the world's most powerful computer systems, System X was built at a fifth of the cost of the second-least expensive system in the top 10.

Not only that, but every computer that ships with OS X has the ability to become part of an XGrid. All you have to do is enable a checkbox in the Sharing control panel and that's it. XCode will seek out other XGrid computers and use it to compile.

Combine this with feminism's known class and race issues, and things start to look interesting...

I partially agreed with what you said, until I got here. Perhaps you mean feminism in the so called west but there are feminists all over the world. There are even African, Chinese, Muslim, and South American feminists.

Falcon

Of course, if what you want is not to simply put gay people on an even playing field legally, but you really want to give them special privileges instead, no argument is going to work with these people.

Here is an example of one of the policies in question.

Is not being fired simply for being black a "special privilege?"
Is not being denied entrance as a student simply for being black a "special privilege?"
Is not being denied financial aid simply for being black a "special privilege?"
Is not being denied the ability to participate in graduation simply for being black a "special privilege?"
Is not being called a [racial slur of choice] in the workplace or the classroom a "special privilege?"

Now s/black/gay and s/racial/sexual/. Do any of the above statements make _more_ sense after that? People should be hired/accepted/funded/allowed participation from the best possible candidate regardless of race, military background, age, disability, religion, gender, nationality, and so forth. Because there have been problems with issues in the past, they have been enumerated as things you should not discriminate against. It's not providing [positive] special treatment, it's ensuring against [negative] special treatment.

If violent crimes are not being dealt with properly, that is an issue to be dealt with across the board, but we should never have a law that imposes a heavier penalty for assaulting a member of a 'protected class' differently than an assault on any other citizen

If basic laws provide sufficient deterrence to common crime but a specific class of people are still being targeted, then some kind of additional measure is needed. Let's say that there's an acceptable level of muggings - there's a few, but in general, the threat of imprisonment is enough to deter most would-be muggers, and the punishment/rehabilitation level is maximizes deterrence, minimizes state costs, and minimizes repeat offenders by effectively rehabilitating them. At the same time, anti-Catholic sentiment has caused a rampant level of muggings of nuns that is not deterred by the basic statues.

To alter the already correct formula that deters casual muggings to attempt to protect the nuns would be a societal harm.

Further, hate crime prosecutions are often done to change the venue when local forces are sympathetic to the cause and chose not to use the existing laws. For example, U.S. v. Cecil Price et al.

we also should insofar as at all possible avoid defining crimes by ultimately unknowable mental states of the aggressors, rather than simply by their actions.

By that logic there should be no distinction between involuntary manslaughter and first degree murder.

oh.. and on the robot thing...

http://www.vt.edu/spotlight/innovation/2010-04-26-charli/charli-robot.html

just posted on slashdot today.

"He also will be able to run, jump, kick, open doors, pick up objects, and do just about anything a real person can do."

"I hope CHARLI could help physically challenged people to cook, clean, and carry items like the NS-5," said Han...

hmmm... do just about anything a real person can do.

I actually RTFA and didn't see any video, does anyone else have another link to it? I'm really rather interesting in seeing this.

It's right under the heading that says, "VIDEO". Or you can just go straight to the video.

Just what we need, more "Japanese are unique" idiocy to justify racism and discrimination in Japan. So far we've heard that "Japanese intestines are longer, so Japanese can't eat foreign beef", "Japanese brains are unique, so only Japanese people can speak the Japanese language." and so on, all of which are supported by pseudo-scientific studies such as this one.

This sort of incomplete research just feeds the view of racial uniqueness (and superiority) among Japanese and justifies their racism and discrimination against others.

Don't forget that only Japanese kids can pilot giant robots.

Just what we need, more "Japanese are unique" idiocy to justify racism and discrimination in Japan. So far we've heard that "Japanese intestines are longer, so Japanese can't eat foreign beef", "Japanese brains are unique, so only Japanese people can speak the Japanese language." and so on, all of which are supported by pseudo-scientific studies such as this one.

This sort of incomplete research just feeds the view of racial uniqueness (and superiority) among Japanese and justifies their racism and discrimination against others.

A quick google search should help that http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3A+byte&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t

I mean take a look at how many places say 8bits is 1byte
http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte -- but the modern de facto standard is 8 bits
http://www.choicesandchallenges.sts.vt.edu/modules/evillage_glossary.htm
http://www.satech.com/glosofmemter.html
http://www.teds.com.au/www/6/1001102/displayarticle/glossary-of-terms--2104323.html
http://www.precisecyberforensics.com/glossary.html
http://www.its.strath.ac.uk/helpdesk/glossary/

There are several places including Princeton University that state 8 bits is 1 byte.

Virginia land hides huge uranium deposit

First URL is UPI story. Second is abstract of a scholarly paper from Virginia Tech.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/01/02/Virginia-land-hides-huge-uranium-deposit/UPI-69751199296526/

http://www.geoinformatics.vt.edu/server/docs/jjerden/NA99l.htm

Estimated content 55,000 tons uranium per UPI. The second suggests ~40,000 tonnes of uranium, ~40 million tonnes of 0.1% ore. If the 0.1% ore is itself the usual 0.7% U235, then ~10,000 tonnes of 3% enriched would net from the ore body.

1. There was something wrong with the Audis. The throttle and brake pedals were too close together.

2. The problems with the Lexus/Toyotas have not been reproducible. The Audi problems were reproducible with video cameras pointed at the feet. Toyota blames the floor mats, but no one has been able to reproduce it as far as I can tell. Regardless, the floor mats may not be the only culprit. (Therac-25 had multiple bugs.)

3. For events to have happened as described, the code and designs for the system need to be open for peer review and testing before anyone can make any conclusive claim. (One can only guess at how comprehensive the investigations have been.)

4. Go read about the Therac25.
http://courses.cs.vt.edu/cs3604/lib/Therac_25/Therac_1.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25

I have no idea how many might be out there (hopefully, this bill will result in them being easier to find), but I know that IMLS (Institute of Museum and Library Services) and NSF (National Science Foundation) gives grants for writing curriculum. There was a talk at last year's ASIS&T meeting about the work done so far on a series of modules that teachers could use to build curriculum for digital libraries classes. (either from the Library or Comp. Sci side of things).

It's also pretty common for educational materials to be developed as parts of other funding. I think there were guidelines for all of NASA programs to spend 2% of their budget on EPO (Education and Public Outreach). Much of it's available on the internet, but there might've been other materials made, too.

I don't know anything about their deployment procedure, but here at Virginia Tech the Math Emporium has over 500 macs set up for student access. The courses I've had there have been boring, but the actual setup of the place is pretty neat.

If you post on slashdot a question on the best way to deploy lots of Macs, all you'll get is trollish comments from pre-pubs.

Really. It's the car equivalent on asking how to adjust the stock Caliber SRT4 wastegates on a Honda Civic SI site.

For real answers, check out System X. The hardware FAQ and history links will provide lots of useful info.

There are several helpful animations here

The sun-planet (or planet-moon) rotating reference frame is helpful. See Shane Ross's movie page and scroll down to "Comet Oterma's resonance transition via 3-body effects" to see short movies comparing the rotating and inertial frames. The "tube"/manifold transitions occur at the L1 and L2 Lagrange points. A Jovian moon tour is indeed a matter of finding cheap transitions between different Jupiter-moon manifolds and then working out the details of higher-order effects.

While a definite latecomer to this post, here's some info that may be of use to this topic: linuxaudio.org and its subdomains are all hosted by DISIS/Music Dept. at Virginia Tech (http://disis.music.vt.edu). Likewise, at DISIS we support Linux, Mac, and Windows through curriculum as well as infrastructure. Finally, for the Linux enthusiasts, this spring we've started a new program titled L2Ork, or Linux Laptop Orchestra. For more info please visit http://l2ork.music.vt.edu./ Cheers!

This is the subject that started my research career. Got some good references below (full references are available in the mentioned PDF).

Anything that has an effect on living organisms has the potential for incurring both positive and negative effects. We just have to find the way to make things happen the way we want them to. That's been the basis of pharmacology since its origin of trying to systematically determine what it is about material from one organism that has effects on another.

There's 5,000 chemical components in a cigarette, another 10,000 in the smoke from one. We understand about 1% of those 15,000. I was fortunate enough to do my dissertation examining the effects of some of those. It was part of the project that got its results mentioned in "Thank You For Smoking" ('We just found that smoking can offset Parkinson's Disease.')

Here's some words and numbers relevant to (and predating) TFA. The whole thing can be downloaded as a PDF from http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-05062002-134953/unrestricted/McClainFurmanskiAmend.pdf

=====

Some clinical populations use tobacco significantly more than non-clinical
populations. Whereas 24% of the general population smokes, 70% of schizophrenics
smoke (Adler et al., 1998), as do 42% of persons with attention deficit disorder (Lambert
& Hartsough, 1998). Both of these disorders are frequently associated with deficiencies
in ignoring or gating extraneous information. These persons, as well as many smokers
(Edwards et al., 1985; Gilbert, 1994; Kassel, 1997), report that smoking improves their
ability to concentrate and focus their attention. Nicotine may serve as an ameliorative for
cognitive decline in Alzheimerâ(TM)s (for review, see Rezvani & Levin, 2001). Thus, tobacco
smoking may serve a neurotherapeutic role in some groups or individuals.

Several epidemiological studies suggest that tobacco smokers contract
Parkinsonâ(TM)s disease at a rate of only 25% of that of non-smokers (e.g., Morens et al.,
1995). This may be due to the chronically inhibited monoamine oxidase (MAO) levels in
smokers (Fowler et al., 1996; Fowler et al., 1998). Despite negative connotations due to
harmful effects of smoking, tobacco remains a potentially important source of beneficial
pharmaceuticals.

[And a bit later...]

The majority of studies which have investigated sensory gating deficits in
schizophrenics, who often report accompanying difficulty in attentional processing and
the blocking out of extraneous information or stimuli, use ratio or subtraction scores to
determine degree of sensory gating and assume that differences are due to gating out
mechanisms. Smoking normalizes the deficit in P50 reduction in these patients and
decreases their negative symptoms (Adler et al., 1993). It is theorized that this is due to
dopaminergic activity (Lyon, 1999). After reviewing this literature, DeBruin et al. (2001)
point out that these sensory gating deficits observed in schizophrenics may be due to
decreased S1 (gating in) rather than decreased S2 (gating out) amplitudes.

=====

The 'gating' referred to is an EEG measure similar to the startle response. Both are inhibited more or less according to an individual's make up, by a stimulus that preceeds the startling one by half a second or so. The effect is very pronounced in schizophrenics. It is also pronounced in about half the non-symptomatic first degree relatives of schizophrenics. While TFA is correct regarding nicotinic/cholonergic effects (as noted in my dissertation) it is not the only chemical at work, and the results may be better explained as an interaction of the effects of nicotine and other psychoactive substances.

The substance of our interest wasn't nicotine, it was trimethyl naphthoquinone. It was up to me to show that something other than tobacco was activ

That was a good read - thanks for sharing the insight. I honestly didn't look at the POV of google reducing profit margins on its competitor's services, that it offers, in order to squeeze them out. They get a 2for: more customers and fewer competitors. Smart move really.

I do want to share the fact that I haven't used Wave, you are correct. Based on your description of Wave and what I perceived it to be from reading articles and seeing demos, I am still correct in my analysis. Here is an old writeup of Groove before MS was involved. MS eventually bought it and well, it is what it is. The point being that all that integration and synchronization you described was done, integrated with MS word and Outlook, 7 years ago.

Based on your description of Google's strategy I can't help but notice they're trying to pull people away from, in general, a thick-client model. Even PCs, hell even Notebooks, are too thick for the cloud. I can see Google wanting access to light-weight devices: phones, etc. Perhaps call them "Thin" clients? Maybe the could will one day have a way of allocating(sharing) time among all these light-weight devices, giving each just the amount of resources it needs.

By now you're realized that this time sharing model is a mainframe, just like we had 40 years ago. Please don't misunderstand, I comprehend that things move in waves/cycles - my beef comes from us(the industry) not innovating this time around. When I see people call a design or technology "revolutionary" and I've seen this same feature-set before(I'm only 30) it honest-to-god makes me wonder why there are people that act like this is brand new stuff.

HVDC can carry about 40% more power over the same lines, compared to AC. The main drawback is that you need to convert to/from AC on either end.

No, you don't need to convert DC to AC and back. Thomas Edison's electric company used DC. The old DC power system wasn't fully converted to AC until 2007. Even today Off the Gridders use DC. It's cheaper and loses less power if you use DC appliances with DC power than it is to convert DC to AC and use AC appliances. Of course this only matters if you only use solar PVs. If you use a hybrid system, solar and geothermal, micro hydro, tidal, or wind, then you'll need an inverter. You'll also need one if you use batteries to store energy.

Falcon

Each incident like this makes me realize that things have only gone downhill since I was in school.

When I went to school there were pregnant teens, drug and alcohol problems, suicides, kidnappings, attempted murders:

http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/faculty_archives/principalship/d/148duncan.html

I don't recall us having any civil rights, praise be unto Reagan and his War on Drugs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey_v._T._L._O.

Maybe you're a baby boomer and lived in the schools supplied by the Greatest Generation. If you're anything near my age (37) then I honestly doubt things are much worse now than they were when we were in school.

"The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation"

I'll leave you to guess who I'm quoting.

You're quoting Daniel Lapin. This is an excerpt from an essay of his which pretends to be a letter sent from the dead by Hitler to Julius Streicher.

It builds on Hitler's advocacy in Mein Kampf that the sick / handicapped should be deemed unfit for procreation:

[The state] must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. It must see to it that only the healthy beget children; that there is only one disgrace: despite one's own sickness and deficiencies, to bring children into the world, and one highest honor: to renounce doing so.

As such, the Hitler-attributable part of the quote is wildly out of context. But this fictional letter does a great job of pointing out where this "think of the children" is going.

Nah, Curator. Same principle though.

I may be wrong, but I believe the article was referring to the fact that parallel processing has been around since before Microsoft existed. Of course, Following the Links and perhaps a little research of your own will provide further insight.

These software developers killed six people with a series of software bugs and general poor software development practices:
http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs3604/lib/Therac_25/Therac_1.html
No one was personally held accountable.

http://www.channelinsider.com/c/a/Solution-Builder/We-Did-Nothing-Wrong-Why-Software-Quality-Matters/
21 people died due to a software error. The doctors that administered the doses were indicted for murder (I don't know the outcome), the software vendor was sued, but the developers were not personally held accountable. This one is interesting, because if the software had been built by an engineering firm and they had an licensed Professional Engineer stamp the design, he would have been held accountable.

The Therac-25 incident also includes a great example of a ridiculous workaround for a serious (fatal!) software bug, the race condition triggered by this fast typing, or using an unexpected sequence of keys. The manufacturer's initial suggested fix was:

"Effective immediately, and until further notice, the key used for moving the cursor back through the prescription sequence (i.e., cursor "UP" inscribed with an upward pointing arrow) must not be used for editing or any other purpose.

To avoid accidental use of this key, the key cap must be removed and the switch contacts fixed in the open position with electrical tape or other insulating material. For assistance with the latter you should contact your local AECL service representative."

Quite rightly, the FDA concluded this was completely inadequate:

http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs3604/lib/Therac_25/Therac_3.html

Start here for the whole sorry story:

http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs3604/lib/Therac_25/Therac_1.html

The Therac-25 incident also includes a great example of a ridiculous workaround for a serious (fatal!) software bug, the race condition triggered by this fast typing, or using an unexpected sequence of keys. The manufacturer's initial suggested fix was:

"Effective immediately, and until further notice, the key used for moving the cursor back through the prescription sequence (i.e., cursor "UP" inscribed with an upward pointing arrow) must not be used for editing or any other purpose.

To avoid accidental use of this key, the key cap must be removed and the switch contacts fixed in the open position with electrical tape or other insulating material. For assistance with the latter you should contact your local AECL service representative."

Quite rightly, the FDA concluded this was completely inadequate:

http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs3604/lib/Therac_25/Therac_3.html

Start here for the whole sorry story:

http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs3604/lib/Therac_25/Therac_1.html

First link seems like astroturfing. A better link would of been [NDSSL @ Virgina Tech], where the research is being done.

Sorry, I don't know what U[i]VA[/i] did. V[i]T[/i] however, was able to keep the [i]fees[/i] down. The technology fee is $20/semester. This is your internet connection, wired and wireless. There are no lab fees as the students buy lab kits for ~$30-50 that last through several classes in a series. So to answer what you really want to know, Yes, the savings are being passed on to the students.

engineering majors were forced to buy the same laptops as the rest of the college, which were sold through a contract for well above market cost.

I think this is your problem. At VT, the individual colleges, not the university, set the requirements for computers (if any). Further, they do not force you to buy a computer through them. However, the campus store prices are comparable to those you would find else where because they usually buy them in lots of 500-1000. We also did not have specific computer labs for graduate v. undergrad students. I've actually never heard of that before and I have attended three universities. It also sounds like an administrative problem in how the whole program was set up, not a problem behind the basic concept itself.

I just looked up U of D, so I'm basing this next part on some quick reading. At VT, the Engineering College has A LOT or 'power' in deciding things. Given that it is an Agriculture and Engineering school that isn't much of a surprise. The Engineering College, along with the rest, are allowed a lot of autonomy in choosing things. here's the engineering computer requirement. Those are actually not set in stone, as some of the individual engineering schools do not require quite those high of specs. Also, it's not really enforced. You could go in without a laptop, but a number of things are geared towards having one. You can also look below that and see links for prior year requirements.

VT Engineering put a bit of thought into their laptop requirements when they started it, along with ensuring ease of access to required software and use of lab kits. One thing they did, and it was a great idea from what I've seen, is they sell lab kits for cheap that are usable for multiple classes. The kits work with the computers and come with O-Scopes. The students are able to work outside of fixed lab hours on their projects and come in when they need help or for turning in lab reports. This is a great boost over having limited time in a small lab to get a lab completed. General lab hours for the courses were held for the students, and because of this there were a lot more hours available for student to work and get help on labs than if they didn't have the laptops and kits. It was a lot easier for students I TA'd there than when I was an undergrad at a different university that had computer labs and fixed lab hours and no support for students with their own computers (desktop or laptop).

unless you're going to go the extra step and mandate that students buy a particular computer with a particular OS and software environment.

Virginia Tech did this. Along with getting annual license keys at volume discounts for cheap. i.e. Matlab for $30/year. We had some students running macs and they generally ran it through VMWare (boot camp wasn't out yet). An XP Pro license was part of the standard engineering software bundle. Other specialized software was available at reduced prices depending on the major. Here's the main page for all that. Mind you, they just started requiring Vista this year, which is the only major change from last year. The license upgrade is included in the bundle. Hm. Also looks like Matlab has gone up to $67/year now.

Mathematics is often a very cultish to people who revere it and especially on people on slashdot who have never done nor read any serious science in the matter.

You can start by reading the work of other people in the field, I would suggest Molecule to metaphor a neural theory of language as a starting point since it's very well written, it's going to take more then a tiny slashdot post to really understand why neural computation is non-symbolic, you have to look at the evidence across many fields.

Also consider why is it that so many brilliant people visually model things and then derive and seek to mathematize from the visual-geometric images/structures which they are seeing? (Einstein comes to mind initially, but also feynmann) see: Visual thinking

http://www.sv.vt.edu/classes/ESM4714/Gen_Prin/vizthink.html

I also speak from personal experience from doing my own work in mathematical thinking, I am primarily a visual thinker, and people are often struck when I point out how you can mathematically derive something from merely looking at something i.e. math is an alphabet to systematize structure.

I also suggest you look into knowledge representation, this will probably give you the most insight into why neural computation is non-symbolic, but perhaps Daniel tammet would be more convincing -

Daniel tammet (multi modal ability - numbers as shapes, he derives numbers from literal visual imagery - geometric shapes) i.e. the structures come before the symbols, and are connected to the way he represents and frames knowledge.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbASOcqc1Ss

Book - Author Jerald Feldman MIT press

http://www.amazon.com/Molecule-Metaphor-Neural-Language-Bradford/dp/0262562359/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237566064&sr=8-1

I'm late into this story, and a lot has been said about this subject by now. Suffice it to say that I use Dvorak (the Norwegian variant with æÃÃ¥) and like it a lot. I don't need to type any faster than I can think, but it's nice to type comfortably.

Here, take this test:

This page shows the (standard US) qwerty and Dvorak layouts side-by-side. Feed it some text and it displays some statistics.

The statistics very clearly show how most hits on a qwerty keyboard are on the top row, while Dvorak scores between half and two thirds of all hits on the home row.

Actually, this very post has 62% of its characters on the home row on Dvorak, compared to only 32% on Qwerty (and 22% on the top row on Dvorak, compared to 47% on Qwerty). Another (scientifically speaking less 'hard') piece of data is finger movement: figures are 16.5m and 25.8m for Dvorak and qwerty, respectively. In other words, Dvorak gets you the same result with 36% less effort.

Dvorak is a more efficient layout, allowing a typist to type more words with less finger movement. The advantage has been quantified:

• Java Demonstration of Dvorak and Qwerty Finger Movement Distances Dvorak almost always reduces finger travel.
• Letter Frequencies in the English Language - How many of the more frequent letters are on Dvorak's home row, and how many in Qwerty's? Did it ever seem strange that "e" isn't on the home row in Qwerty? Dvorak fixes that.
• Words Possible on Certain Rows - One snippet: in Dvorak, using the home row alone one can type 99 of the 1000 most common English words. Qwerty's home row allows for only 15.

There was a time when indeed, custom software runs some dangerous and life-threatening machines, such as radiotherapy devices, and even the custom stuff will occasionally fail, with unfortunate consequences.

Then again, would a PDP-11 have been considered off-the-shelf hardware back in 1985?

Custom programming is no guarantee, and there is in fact no substitute for testing. It's not about how good your software is, it is even about how users actually use it...

Lost creator JJ Abrams has unveiled footage from his Star Trek prequel

Ha! If the movie will be as ridiculous as Lost is then we can look forward to such silliness as a detached, renegade warp nacelle which will fire up on its own while sucking people into it* as well as trombone glissandi** in the soundtrack! Shows like Lost make me yearn for more realistic shows...say, Twin Peaks ;)

* Remember the wreckage of the jet shortly after it crashed? It showed that one detached jet engine intermittently revving up by itself. What they tried to make creepy was just...funny. Again. At least the engine managed to suck someone into it before it finally exploded.

** Don't remember which part, but when something scary happens right before a break, 2 trombones a whole-tone apart play a descending parallel glissando. For you non-music types, think of what a trombone would play to accompany a clown falling off of a roof! It's entirely inappropriate for what should be "scary"!. My girlfriend, who is a rabid fan of the series, never understood why I always laughed at the same times that she jumped out of her seat in frightened surprise!

In my opinion, these accidental releases of radioactive material pale in comparison
to the atmospheric tests the US used to do before it was
banned in 1963.

Here are some of the tests.