Slashdot Mirror

Maybe they are suggesting decommisioning the Hubble for the same reason that schools often cut extracurricular sports first when budgets get tight. If it is something people care about, they will cough up the money. Hubble is fantastic but expensive to operate and they might have to cut dozens of smaller programs to equal the savings from mothballing it. Joe Sixpack certainly wouldn't agree to pay for all those other programs but he might be willing to pay for just one especially since he gets cool wallpapers for his desktop from it.

According to this article Hubble has cost about 2B plus about 2B more in operating costs while its replacement will supposedly cost a total of about 1.2 B. Of course, when is the last time something came in under budget? But even a savings of just a couple billion adds up to a lot of science that can be done elsewhere. 2B or not 2B? That is the question. (couldn't resist)

From the article: "...MPEG 2 MPEG 4 WMV9 DiVX decoding and encoding, scaling, frame rate conversion, and anything else you'd like it to do for you..."

Umm, I'm looking at the thomson-micro2002 pdf right now, and I can't find 'MPEG' anywhere in it? What page was this on? I just emailed the first author asking about exactly this..
br Jim

i have to agree with this nigger.
What the hell is with all this high school crap on slashdot?

it just proves this guys point. /. is for pimple faced nigger loosers.

"most universities make it a requirement to use powerpoint"

Don't know about most, but I bet these ones do.

Microsoft's Big Role on Campus

Gates to fund Cambridge scholarships

Gates Foundation Gives Record $70 Million for Genomics Research

If you would like to know what O(n) notation is, I suggest you look at this page.

These are slides taken directly from the CSE 143 class I took here at college recently.

If the people you're hiring don't even know THIS basic information, you really should be looking at which colleges these people graduate from.

Don't forget Monopoly Sharing; by pirating popular games, you're giving independent developers less consideration and perpetuating the market bombardment of sequels and "Same Game 2004" titles.

it's been nice having Sun regulate it

1. I imagined the rigid airframes on the sides for stability. The lighter than air properties of that part of the hull would offset the weight in the center. Giving it a center of gravity like that makes it easy to keep it stable.
2. The actual lift power should probably be slightly lower than the entire weight of the craft. This would allow the engines to drive quick ascents and descents, giving the ship unparalleled maneuverability. It may seem a bit odd, but such a ship could actually perform a low altitude "sneak attack" through a valley or canyon. If it's discovered, it can quickly gain altitude and deploy fighters.
3. Making it slightly heavier than air makes the airdock simple. You have a platform to work on it, then land the thing right on the platform. No need to concern one's self with difficulties similar to removing a ship from the water.
4. Protection against weapons and nukes may have a little more "Sci-Fi-ish" answer. Mini-Magnetospheric Propulsion (M2P2) systems have been in development for space travel. A magnetic "balloon" surrounding the ship would help divert any incoming charged particles or projectiles. (Missiles are still best handled by advanced anti-missile systems.)
5. The idea of a "drop carrier" is a very interesting way to launch planes. (If not reminiscent of shows like Space Above and Beyond.) Unfortunately, that also means you'd need to be at high altitudes to launch fighters. I think you'd still need a deck catapult or JATO equipped craft for low altitude attacks.
6. 70 knots is a tremendous speed! I hadn't considered that such a craft would be able to travel much faster than a wet carrier. Definitely makes for a deployment advantage. Your air carriers can be on the scene in less than half the time of your wet carriers!
7. Part of the reason for the lack of large airships may have been related to the lack of computer technology. A wet vessel will naturally sit in place. It's been designed so that its hull will shape the waves passing around it, thus making sure that applied thrust drives the ship in the correct direction. With an airship, you suddenly have to concern yourself with 6 degrees of freedom. That includes rotation; a very dangerous thing for such a large ship. Computers would be needed to precisely control the engines and helium levels so that the ship would stay stable. Without computers, you'd be talking about a tremendous man-effort to keep the ship afloat. Sailing a warship of the 18th century would pale in comparison!
8. There is truly nothing more terrifying than seeing a mile long airship deploy weapons and planes at you. Our shock and awe campaign on Bagdad would have been a hundred times more effective, even if they could only see it in the distance! Not to mention that the ship would have been able to better coordinate troops movements on the ground, provide close-in air support, and actually airlift the soldiers all the way to their destination!

US News and World Report (2003 mirror): UIUC is #5.

Many/most people today (especially young people), do not view file sharing of music and videos as wrong. Doesn't mean anything. It's wrong. If this website was made up of musicians and not Linux geeks, the entire opinion of the hivemind would change.

How does this not mean anything? The fact that's it's wrong means nothing; people still do it. The fact that's it's wrong isn't what the RIAA claims is losing them money; it's the fact that people are doing it that the RIAA claims is losing them money.

Remind me of that again when some company violates the copyright of the GPL. Is it "strongarm tactics" to enforce the law then?

Exactly like the RIAA lawsuits, if they can prove the case, then no, it's not a strongarm tactic. But keep in mind that an IP address is not much evidence (what if a virus was downloading files? What if someone else was doing the downloading?).

I don't think you'll be happy unless everything is free.

I would be willing to pay 10 cents per song. Free is better, yes, but 10 cents per song would be ok with me. So basically, you're just wrong on this point.

They don't pay for any. But don't pirate it either. That's illegal and immoral. They don't owe you anything. Like you said, music is just entertainment and is not a right. Which means people around here who justify it as some sort of innate right to pirate music because it's too expensive are wrong by your own argument.

Finally a good point. Luckily, it's been discussed before.

Yes, the vaunted consciousness that reacts a full 1/4 second after the fact when we do most common actions such as crossing the road, kicking a ball, picking up a cup, or typing comments to Slashdot?

3) Children are usually not hired in place of graphic artists for a reason.

4) The "OK" logo (which I haven't seen anyone use in about 7 years) is obscene in many countries.

I think it's a mistake. In fact, I think logo competitions in general are just asking for trouble.

OK, offtopic, but let's avoid one common misunderstanding. Flight of airplanes is based on the Coanda effect, which was found by Henri Coanda, the inventor and builder of the first jet airplane. Even if the Wright brothers could put this effect into use, they didn't understand it.
See: A Physical Description of Lift

So, find another example.

Similar maglevs have been built. Birmingham Airport had one from the mid 1980s to 1995. It was too hard to maintain, and was replaced with a cable-driven system.

Even as a pork program, the Old Dominion University system sucks. Better taxpayer-supported overpriced transit systems have been built at Southern universities. The Morgantown, West Virginia Group Rapid Transit System is a futuristic system started during the Nixon administration and opened in 1975. It's automated, with 3.6 miles of line, five stations, and little eight-person cars. It's an advanced system; all stations are "offline", and cars pull off the main line to stop at stations, rather than blocking the main tracks. It actually works, but it's way overbuilt for the usage it gets.

The previous author should probably review this: (University of Washington) Computer Usage Limitations.

http://students.washington.edu/joshuadf/decss/

Use responsibly.

Bernoulli is not appropriate for explaining why airplanes fly. Read this.

MS got to be market dominant (which is NOT a true monopoly) by making genuinely good programs

Out of curosity, how old are you, and how long have you been using small / personal computers?

Oh, I'd say he's about 49 years old and has been using personal computers since 1981.

The only people who deny that Microsoft is a monopoly are Microsoft itself or its apologists. You can make the argument that the web browser SHOULD be part of the OS - after all, that's what Netscape was thinking at one point, to build a platform on the browser, and Mozilla has a good start in that direction - and you can make arguments against a number of the other cases that lead to the monopoly judgment; but you can't dismiss them all. Microsoft is a monopoly which has illegally leveraged that monopoly to drive competition out of most of the markets they've targeted. Those are the findings of fact produced by Penfield Jackson, a judge who was cherry-picked by MS after they claimed the previous judge, Daniel Sporkin, was biased against them; and then, of course, when Jackson judge ordered a break-up, Microsoft successfully got him dismissed for defending his ruling before the pro-Microsoft business press, helping Microsoft to stall the case long enough for a pro-MS administration to come in and pull the prosecution's fangs - as Jackson actually predicted (see the com.com link above)!

If the monopoly ruling had been used to enforce the imposition of standard formats for a handful of document types, to force MS to release their flagship applications for competing platforms, or best of all to divorce the applications product line from the platform product line via a break-up, we might see for all aspects of computing a degree of integration similar to what the web provides (common protocols that promote and ensure interoperability). Instead, we have hydraulic despotism - the entire world economy is beholden to Bill Gates' whims, because the only way a company can interoperate effectively with its corporate partners is through Microsoft on the desktop, and Microsoft on the desktop doesn't interoperate well with anything other than Microsoft on the network, except where Microsoft's competitors have made heroic efforts toward interoperability.

I've tried nearly every sniffer (open-source or commercial) that has been available for the past 10 or so years.
Having the right tools for the right job is so important. Here's my list of good vs. bad in the packet capture world:

Good:
1) Running 'tcpdump -vvens0 -w file.cap' will basically give anyone anything they need, period
2) arpwatch, just to have a nice list of MAC2IP's
3) argus (already mentioned here)
4) snort (although I suggest the commercial Sourcefire instead). However, `unified logging' in snort (e.g. mudpit or barnyard), along with cerebus and logtopcap can scale snort to large-installations
5) ourmon is the best pcap visualization tool out there. it's BPF+RRDTool, so it basically rules
6) After you gzip the pcap file, scp it to your Windows/Linux desktop and run Ethereal to analyze in-depth
7) NAI SnifferPro "Expert" mode is sometimes useful instead of Ethereal. However, it's not worth the money even if you have money to burn
8) tcptrace is VERY useful to run on your saved tcpdump pcap files
9) Bro, ngrep, and dsniff are well-written, albeit somewhat security-specific
10) iftop and tcpdstat ala ddittrich's preso's

Bad:
1) SnifferPro, Network Observer, Fluke, et al
2) ntop (although their website is very cool for info on packet capture)
3) ntop look-a-likes like darkstat
4) pastmon doesn't really work yet, but looks promising
5) Cisco Netflow and SPAN ports. I highly recommend Internap FCP, argus, or Bro instead of Netflow. I also highly recommend NetOptics port aggregator taps over SPAN ports, however SPAN is better than nothing

A lot of people were confusing packet creation with packet capture. For more information on packet creation, see packetfoo [PDF]

The modifications can be as simple as telling it to look for config files

This particular example doesn't need a patch

makes it troublesome for anyone who wants to provide the program on a shared machine where they don't want the users to have access to a compiler

I grant this could be a pain in the butt if you wanted a binary-only distro. I would think that so many other things would make not having a compiler such a pain in the butt, that the ideal solution would be to use access rights to restrict the compiler to be used by root only.

As mentioned in another post: I do wish that pine was more free. Or that mutt or gnus suited my needs. I am also fine with distros who don't ship pine or xfree because they simply don't want to. But it seems silly to harp on the license when you ship other software that isn't libre.

They will announce the new name next Wednesday, although a favorite is Lindos -- 'because it's the W that is causing all the problems'."

How to wean you losers back to reality

From UWTV.org and the 2002 University of Washington Computer Science and Engineering Colloquia:

Google Linux Cluster, The
Google's Linux cluster currently processes over 150 million queries a day, searching a multi-terabyte web index for every query with an average response time of less than a quarter of a second, with near-100% uptime. In this discussion, Google Fellow Urs Holzle will describe the software and hardware infrastructure that makes this performance possible, as well as provide an overview of the main problems facing a web search, software architecture, servers and compact rack hardware designs. For more information about this program, please see the CSE web site.

Watch here using Windows Media Player or compatible:

Modem

DSL (250k)

Cable (1300k)

The video is also available in streaming mpeg2 using IBM VideoCharger. If you are on the UW lan and want to use the VideoCharger link it can be found on the UWTV site.

The CSE department at the University of Washington also has Aibo robots and participates in RoboCup. More information here.

I went to a presentation of the robots for a robotics course (not the RoboCup team, however) last quarter, and it was extremely interesting seeing how the robots work and what they could do. They appear to run a custom Unix-like or Unix OS by Sony, and one of the students remarked how they could telnet into the dogs for debugging or development (?) purposes.

The robots themselves move quite slowly, and they frequently get themselves into comical positions. Putting two robots side by side and placing a ball in front of them is not good; they'll fight with each other for space. I also witnessed several occasions where the robots got stuck around the goal area.

This was offset, however, by some truly spectacular goals scored by some of the robots, as well as the incredibly interesting ball-searching behavior exhibited by some of the robots.

Overall I had a sense of awe seeing these tiny mechanical things moving around under their own power and making computations themselves. A century ago people couldn't even imagine the state of electronics today, and I think a century from now these robots will likewise do things unimaginable to us.

The CSE department at the University of Washington also has Aibo robots and participates in RoboCup. More information here.

I went to a presentation of the robots for a robotics course (not the RoboCup team, however) last quarter, and it was extremely interesting seeing how the robots work and what they could do. They appear to run a custom Unix-like or Unix OS by Sony, and one of the students remarked how they could telnet into the dogs for debugging or development (?) purposes.

The robots themselves move quite slowly, and they frequently get themselves into comical positions. Putting two robots side by side and placing a ball in front of them is not good; they'll fight with each other for space. I also witnessed several occasions where the robots got stuck around the goal area.

This was offset, however, by some truly spectacular goals scored by some of the robots, as well as the incredibly interesting ball-searching behavior exhibited by some of the robots.

Overall I had a sense of awe seeing these tiny mechanical things moving around under their own power and making computations themselves. A century ago people couldn't even imagine the state of electronics today, and I think a century from now these robots will likewise do things unimaginable to us.

The CSE department at the University of Washington also has Aibo robots and participates in RoboCup. More information here.

I went to a presentation of the robots for a robotics course (not the RoboCup team, however) last quarter, and it was extremely interesting seeing how the robots work and what they could do. They appear to run a custom Unix-like or Unix OS by Sony, and one of the students remarked how they could telnet into the dogs for debugging or development (?) purposes.

The robots themselves move quite slowly, and they frequently get themselves into comical positions. Putting two robots side by side and placing a ball in front of them is not good; they'll fight with each other for space. I also witnessed several occasions where the robots got stuck around the goal area.

This was offset, however, by some truly spectacular goals scored by some of the robots, as well as the incredibly interesting ball-searching behavior exhibited by some of the robots.

Overall I had a sense of awe seeing these tiny mechanical things moving around under their own power and making computations themselves. A century ago people couldn't even imagine the state of electronics today, and I think a century from now these robots will likewise do things unimaginable to us.

People just don't know how to Google for an answer here?

The Integraph suit deals with Itanium stuff, as is stated here. The SSE/Hyperthreading suit is another company (MicroUnity) and another suit (same article).

Now, from what I understand, MicroUnity's MediaProcessor is a fine-grained multithreaded processor. There's limited information here and here, which may be the processor with the alleged patents that have been infringed upon. But what about University of Washington's SMT group? They put out their first paper in 1995. The Alpha EV8 (21464), before it got canned, was supposed to have SMT (and the Alpha group went from Digital to Compaq and then to Intel). I'm speculating that Intel got Hyperthreading from Alpha who got it from Washington. DEC/Compaq worked with Washington's SMT group, as Luiz Barroso is listed on the Washington SMT page (interestingly, he works for Google now. His Google article is quite interesting).

> (1) the parent post is brought to you by the USian govment
> propaganda machine. indirectly, by way of one of its drones.
Well, make sure you watch out for those black helicopters too.

> (2) t's'ok, the DEA guys have to support themselves, too.
Tsk tsk... let the truth help you out here... I am neither American nor European.

> (3) no laws against any drug is fair.
Laws exist for our protection. Why do you need me to repeat this historyto you...?: ... the British traders generously bribed Canton officials in order to keep the opium traffic flowing. The effects on Chinese society were devestating. In fact, there are few periods in Chinese history that approach the early nineteenth century in terms of pure human misery and tragedy. In an effort to stem the tragedy, the imperial government made opium illegal in 1836 and began to aggressively close down the opium dens.

I think if you went back two centuries, and you'd happily function as a British opium trader -- intent on his own self-interest, uncaring of the misery he is causing thousands of people. Go back two centuries more, and you'd be happily be selling limitless quantities of liquor to Red Indian tribes -- with similar effect.

Could you be a little more caring of other people?

> USian laws and their emulations
> (BR laws, even) aren't fair. they treat people who take drugs also on
> pair with people who trade drugs.

Google was valuable in neutralizing your reality distortion field:
Federal drug trafficking convictions may result in denial of federal benefits for up to 5 years for a first conviction, ...
Federal drug convictions for possession may result in denial of federal benefits for up to 1 year for a first conviction ...

> (4) alcohol has worse social effects than marijuana.
> tobacco has worse health effects than marijuana.
You're sounding more coherent now, but still wrong about marijuana v/s alcohol. (More on that below.) Note, wine etc is good in moderation. Pot is Not. The answer to abuse - whether alcohol or drugs - is enforcement of laws that protect the addicts, including "inebriate orders" (a.k.a forced detox)

Looks like this needs repeating... NOTE: most governments do not BAN hard drugs, they REGULATE them to ensure that only those that NEED them get them. For eg: tons of opium [ieo.org] are legally shipped to countries like the US and Japan each year.

> marijuana is not a hard drug (and will not make you madder than booze)
> regardless of what Uncle Sam told you.
Sorry - inadvertent misclassification of marijuana as a "hard" drug (not that the distinction is great)...

4.1. I have some personal testimony on the damaging effect of pot: My friend is a pothead. He has very obvious signs of damage from his decades-old pot habit (shakes, general dimness - sad to see in an otherwise very bright person, working in computers). When I point this out to him, he doesn't see it (or rather doesn't want to admit it), and covers it up with... "ah, you can't get addicted to it.. I've got it under my control,... blah blah blah...". Well, he just got back from vacationing for some weeks with his brother, and said something that surprised me. He said: "I never thought I would ever tell you this... you *can* get addicted to pot". Apparently, his brother - who is another pothead - is addicted to pot (he cannot function without it) and is in a much worse state than he is.

4.2. Marijuana is instead often a gateway drug
Researchers looked at over 300 pairs of same sex twins, both identical and non-identical, in which one twin started using cannabis before hi

You have missed one group. They are a bit like the first group, but they are concerned with us (not just our descendants) having a place (any place) to live in 15 or 20 years, not hundreds of years. The way things are running, it is likely that working people today will end up in a totally broken planet, with no services and global economies unable to cope with effects such as global drought, and Atlantic Conveyor Shutdown. This may all happen in 15 to 20 years, i.e. while my kids are still at school.

Let's not forget Personal Rapid Transit (PRT), with travel pods sliding around town.

Havn't you heard? We are not progressing in our knowledge and abilities! We are dying out according to Conveyor Shut Down.

Unfortunately, it contributes to monopoly-sharing as explained in this Slashdot posted article (that was mysteriously absent from the main page).

While you may be correct that most pirates have not really deprived the authors of money, illegally obtaining the software/entertainment is still (surprise!) illegal. It may seem like a victimless crime, but as a recent article on Slashdot explained (my comment, blog post on "monopoly-sharing") explained, you're not giving competing products a chance at all. This, in turn, perpetuates the monopoly and encourages nothing to change in the market place that is overcharging.

A classic example is the GIMP. If you can't afford Photoshop AND you're barred from obtaining it illegally, you either do without any photo-manipulation software or you get the GIMP. A much higher proportion of of pirates would probably give attention to competing products if they weren't allowed (or were deterred) from getting the too-expensive monopolyware. Unfortunately, all these people just pirate away and don't give free software such as the GIMP even a glance.

The most interesting side-effect of all this is that DRM (championed by the monopolists) will force poorer consumers to look at alternatives, chipping away at the monopolies.

Why not a few hard numbers? Enrollment trend at University of Washington CS Dept:

http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/lazowska/selfst udy/Sec3Charts/

Specifically take a look at:

http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/lazowska/selfst udy/Sec3Charts/cse.enrollments.pdf

Definitely a bump in the late 90s.

Why not a few hard numbers? Enrollment trend at University of Washington CS Dept:

http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/lazowska/selfst udy/Sec3Charts/

Specifically take a look at:

http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/lazowska/selfst udy/Sec3Charts/cse.enrollments.pdf

Definitely a bump in the late 90s.

Basically, anything is "world class" compared to the previous CS building.

I have lots of fond memories of that building, though. Go huskies!

I would hope that the buyer would take the same approach the UW astronomy department did and use it in an outreach program. Its much more powerful than the typical amateur would ever be able to use, and would be an excellent teaching tool. Its historical status would be an excellent excuse to educate the public on the recent history of astronomy. Hell, strap a camera on it and it would be a great tool for undergraduate research. Alot of professional research is still done on smaller backyard telescopes. Its not Mauna Kea, true, but its still very impressive.

You all forgot the allen library:

Designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes, it is named for Kenneth S. Allen, associate director of libraries from 1960 to 1982.

Allen's son Paul, cofounder of Microsoft, donated $10 million in his father's name, of which $8 million supports a permanent endowment for the library. The library contains 25 miles of shelving space and was built with about 400,000 bricks.

In addition to the aforementioned William H. Gates Hall, the University of Washington also has:

- Mary Gates Hall

- The brand new Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science and Engineering.

The UW has also recently started construction of a new Genome Sciences Building that was funded in large part by a donation from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

In addition to the aforementioned William H. Gates Hall, the University of Washington also has:

- Mary Gates Hall

- The brand new Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science and Engineering.

The UW has also recently started construction of a new Genome Sciences Building that was funded in large part by a donation from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

In addition to the aforementioned William H. Gates Hall, the University of Washington also has:

- Mary Gates Hall

- The brand new Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science and Engineering.

The UW has also recently started construction of a new Genome Sciences Building that was funded in large part by a donation from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Actually, that's Gates, Sr. He's not exactly a poor man at all.

On the other hand, we also have:

+Washington
http://www.washington.edu/classroom/EventReservati ons/mgh.html

+Washington (in the Paul G. Allen CSE building)
http://www.cs.washington.edu/building/tour/05_gate s_commons.html

Of course, it's no surprise. Just about every building on campus is named after fantastically wealthy people. Gates is just the newest generation, and others will come after. If all it takes to get money for facilities is to slap somebody's name on it - then I'm all for that.

Actually, that's Gates, Sr. He's not exactly a poor man at all.

On the other hand, we also have:

+Washington
http://www.washington.edu/classroom/EventReservati ons/mgh.html

+Washington (in the Paul G. Allen CSE building)
http://www.cs.washington.edu/building/tour/05_gate s_commons.html

Of course, it's no surprise. Just about every building on campus is named after fantastically wealthy people. Gates is just the newest generation, and others will come after. If all it takes to get money for facilities is to slap somebody's name on it - then I'm all for that.

Don't forget Mary Gates Hall at the University of Washington. Named after his mother, of course.

Cambridge:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/UoCCL/intro/
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/site-maps/gates.html

+ Washington:
http://www.law.washington.edu/GatesHall/

+ Stanford:
http://www-db.stanford.edu/pub/keller/gates-map.ht ml

+ Pennsilvania:
http://www.facilities.upenn.edu/mapsBldgs/view_map .php3?id=401

+ MIT:
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V119/N20/20lcs.20n.html

+ RIBA:
http://www.riba.org/go/RIBA/About/About_162.html

+ Southern Indiana:
http://www.usi.edu/visit/map/housing.asp

+ Michigan:
http://www.admin.mtu.edu/admin/prov/facbook/ch9/9c hap-37.htm


= University Building Monopoly !!!!

no good excuse not to uninstall Outlook from their machine
There is one good reason..
Like Internet Explorer it's part of the OS now. You'll kinda mess things up.

For users who want an industreal e-mail client Eudora is far better than Outlook anyday.

Also some users (*Cough* Rush Limbaugh *Cough*) complain that the massive amounts of e-mail they get kills most e-mail clients.

As Unix experts learnned long ago Pine has no such problems and there is a Windows version.

Mahogany is annother full featured e-mail client that could easly drop in replace Outlook in most cases.
And it's open source.

I think people go out of there way to suggest Mozilla mail over Eudora becouse Mozilla is open source.

But... Mozilla is a web browser and EVERYTHING takes a back seat to that. Including the e-mail client.
If any e-mail client outside Microsofts own Outlook were to support viruses it would be a browser based one and Mozilla is not immune.
Highly unlikely true.. but it's the MOST likely cannidate.

Scribe looks intresting for corprate e-mail.

The point being here there are quite a few alternitives and it might be worth your time to check them out before advocating a client change to your friend or boss.
You'll go a lot farther if you advise a client suted to the needs, environment and culture of the target.

pine (or mutt)

As the article points out, a lot of people are also moving into the academia, not necessarily back into the industry. Perhaps they're happier working in academic environments - atleast that way, they get to have their knowledge and findings out in the open.

However, what the article fails to mention is that a lot of corporate researchers like this guy are increasingly looking at the industry as a means of getting their research done.

This is an issue not just with AT&T, but lots of other research labs out there. If you look at some of the top conferences on AI, Graphics and the like (SIGGRAPH for instance) - you have an alarmingly high percentage of people performing cutting edge work from Microsoft Research.

So, it does look like MS-R is becoming a destination for a lot of good researchers out there - however, the collective prowess of other places like IBM, Intel and Xerox might just be able to bring in a balance.

The good thing is that this brings money for research and researchers. The bad thing is that all the patents of tomorrow in a lot of the cool technologies will be 0wnzer0ed by MSFT - where would that lead OpenSource in terms of a future - if all the technology that is to come is patented?

Its a double edged sword.