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Why bother with that crap? Just use Ghostscript and Ghostview. It's fast, reads PDF documents just fine, and it's open source. Plus, it will also read PostScript files (not sure, Acrobat might be able to do that too).
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/

Take the batteries out of them.

These screens sound more and more like the novelty cards, and will need a switch on the page otherwise the batteries will flatten before you buy them.

So... just wait a couple of hours with the page open, and then carefully start hacking.
I think you could have a usable display soon afterwards.

One other thing, I went looking at their methods and this paper is not the same as e-ink, they say on the website (link below) it doesn't hold its display without power.

(On the Siemens
  website, they talk more about it, the method they are using involves electrochromic substances, and there is an example of one such film being built here)

Check this out. While some engines try to re-create hand-drawn cell art, here's someone who did Quake as sketchy line art.

I attended the event this afternoon, and overall found it to be interesting, particularly the Q&A session. Gates' response to a question concerning Microsoft potentially collaborating with Google was entertaining. :)

Other moments of note:

A short starring Bill Gates and Jon Heder (of Napolean Dynamite) was shown, which I found to be surprisingly hilarious..
"Where do you want to go today?"
"Wherever I feel like going, gosh..."

XBOX 360s were on-hand, but should have been demoed by a gamer rather than Bill himself; seeing him attempt to fumble through and explain the menu systems was more painful than informative, and seeing him try to take a corner successfully in Project Gotham Racing 3 was humorous, to say the least. :)

The miss penalty times I googled for review site where they'd benchmarked it. If you look, you can probably get more accurate numbers from Intel. For the disk latency, the manufacturer of a disk will generally report some sort of access latency number, but overall, a "fast" 7200 RPM disk has a latency of about 8 ms.

So far as how malloc() works, well, it is open source. But some discussion on malloc design can be found at http://gee.cs.oswego.edu/dl/html/malloc.html. More simple information can be found linked at http://www.cs.utk.edu/~plank/plank/classes/cs360/l ecture_notes.html (again, just a quick google).

Mostly, it comes down to that my area is systems and architecture. My job is to know all those little details about how things interact. This was just a quickie. No guarantees it is right--I'm using other people's numbers, and just my recollection of how malloc() behaves. If this were more serious than /. then I'd dig through Intel's processor manuals for more exact numbers, figure out which (if any) of those latencies can happen in parallel, measure things myself to verify, etc. I'd also write a small program to do a lot of mallocs and frees and see what addresses are returned to verify the locality properties.

If I were really really serious, I'd come up with a benchmark program that allocates and frees memory, of various sizes with various working sets and object lifetimes, and measure the execution time for both Java and C. I'd use something like VTune (http://www.intel.com/cd/software/products/asmo-na /eng/vtune/index.htm) or SimICS (http://www.virtutech.com/) (with a timing model, say GEMS (http://www.cs.wisc.edu/gems/tutorial.html)) to analyze exactly where the differences are coming from.

And then I'd write it up and submit the results to SIGMETRICS, PLDI, OOPSLA, or some other conference, because I just spent a metric butload of time tracing down shortcomings in the GC implementation of various JVMs as compared to programmer managed memory allocation. If somebody is willing to pay me, I still might, but as it is, back of the envelope is all you'll get.

Information on this from the university itself can be found here (not much info, but more technical than the article)

What you want is called gsview, and it uses ghostscript for doing the image processing. (Notice the lack of Adobe and Postscript anywhere in the process?)It's available at http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/gsview/, and it works quite well. It's much lighter weight and faster than the Adobe Acrobat Reader, and it even prints better.

It's not integrated into Internet Explorer or other web browsers the way Acrobat Reader, but it's awfully good.

Ok just going to answer #2, as I dislike Access too much to give an unbiased opinion on #1.

The PDF standard is in all actuality a "Generic format" as you term it. You see there might be a proprietary reader such as Acrobat required to view the document. However there is nothing preventing others from creating their own PDF reader application. The spec's on the PDF format are well known and published on the Adobe website (http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/pdf/in dex_reference.html).

There are plenty of other PDF viewers around if you look. There is no need to use Acrobat to view a PDF document. On Linux you could use Xpdf, or gPDF to view the file. On the MacOS you could use the bundled Preview application. If you really don't want to use the Acrobat PDF reader for Windows any longer (I'm making the assumption that you're running Windows based on you not realizing that there are other options, I could easily be wrong here) I would suggest that you check out GSView (http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/gsview/index.htm) or perhaps FoxIt (http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php). Not that these are the only options available, just the first few I found. ;-)

Just because there is one widely known reader for a format does not mean that it is a closed format.

Gremlin

As to no known usefulness of going to the moon, I'd like to at least
give partial credit to the discovery of the presence of helium-3 .

In oil equivalency at about $1.50 a barrel it was estimated worth about 12,000 Trillion dollars .

If it could be acquired at a reasonable cost it would be worth while .

Article from Space.com :

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/helium3_0006 30.html

Working helium-3 reactor in US :

http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/iec/GeneralOpPics.htm

***** I really do not think ppl fully understand how truly awesome it is to hear how
cheaply this can be built, and that it already works . *****

I think sending ppl up there is a bad idea, because it cost more to feed/house them .

Send robots that can repair each other, and send 10, if one breaks down it uses the other
for spare parts . If the 10 bot project works , send 100, and so on .....

Make them Solar powered, and make them remote control .

To launch H3 canisters off lunar surface use solar powered mass driver as was
theorized by NASA a long time ago .

H3 canister sitting at a La Grange point with a space station, shuttle ( or its replacement )
picks up canister for return to earth or place canister in heat shielded re-entry capsule
and drop it in the pacific, add inertial gyros for guidance, parachute for drag .

We need better robot rovers than the ones we sent to mars, and this would be a good test bed
as the delay for RF between the earth and the moon is alot shorter than from here to mars .

Build and test the bots here on earth, get all major nations involved, offer the power to the
world with no strings attached as a total end to oil .

Once things are cranked up on moon, and lots of robots are harvesting H3, have some take some
time to dig an underground cavern that can be used as a moonbase shielded from at least smaller
meteor bombardment .

Use the moon as ur building point in an underground hangar, and then launch into space with
a H3 powered mass driver from the moon, then the transport can use zero G drive system to travel to
stable high orbit around mars thus avoiding a rocket type lift off from the moon .

A larger scale Bio-sphere type project will need to be done here on earth to see if it is feasible,
though I must say the astronauts manage well in the tin can called ISS , a underground moonbase
would offer a LOT more cu. ft.

The lunar soil needs to be heated, and this can be done like the solar heat furnace in the mojave
that is used as a 350M watt power source .

http://www.isracast.com/tech_news/130305_tech.htm

It is possible, and it is worth doing and with the world energy needs going up, we really don't
have alot of choice in the matter . We need more energy and we need it soon .

Only other hope would be bubble fusion, but it has not progressed as far as this .

Peace,
Ex-MislTech

Ten light-years? How many stars do you know of that are ten light-years away from us? There aren't too many- this page seems to list 12, and one of those is the Sun. None of these stars is a neutron star, either, or even close to it.

It's April 1st already?

I played with one of those Van De Graaff doodads in high school. I was told it put off about 10kV. The longest arc length I observed between the metal ball on top and my hand was roughly an inch. So unless he's a wee fella, I doubt electricity arced from his jacket to the floor. Oh and you've got to love this quote:

"Static electricity is a similar mechanism to lightning, where you have clouds rubbing together and then a spark generated by very dry air above them," said Gosden.

If you haven't guessed, Gosden (if he even exists) is an electrical engineer, not a meteorologist. Maybe one of our slashdot chemical engineer should alert Reuters to the potentially lethal effects of dihydrogenmonoxide when inhaled.

ENMOD means environmental modification. It was tested extensively in the gulf war for oil number 1, by british/israeli agent george bush (knighted by englands queen) and ENMOD has been deployed here in murka (texan for America) as an attack on America by foreign powers who have infiltrated through religious fanatacism and perpetuation of ignorance. The attacker of course is son of george I, who is george II, who is actually the THIRD george here in usa, counting George Washington. FYI and BTW, george III just happened to be the name of the king of ex insula angelorum (england) during murkas first revolution. So. We are being attacked by england through the bush crime family. ENMOD is radiation science which causes severe damage to many peoples digestive tracks, and makes cancers and funguses grow at accelerated pace, as well as causing confusion, and sleepiness in the subject population when needed, plus a lot lot more. This explains why Americans have not risen up and cut off the head of bush the super criminal.
Here are two links to a REAL BIG picture of hurricane ivan (the edu site has already gone down several times), which show in no uncertain terms ENMOD being used to steer and POWER UP the hurricane:

http://www.luxefaire.com/ivan.jpg

http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~gumley/modis_gallery/ima ges/HurricaneIvan_20040916_1620_500m.jpg

Hurricane Katrina (911, tsunami, etc) was an attack and there is a lot more to come. ENMOD incorporates old tesla tech, tectonic energies, particulate spraying and much more. Here is some info from a patent by bernard eastlund concernin that:

from Patent 4,686,605 HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program)
DISCLOSURE OF THE INVENTION... ...Sufficient energy is employed to cause ionization of neutral particles (molecules of oxygen, nitrogen, and the like, PARTICULATES, etc.) which then become part of the (plasma) region, thereby increasing the charged particle density of the region. This effect can also be enhanced by providing artificial particles, eg electrons, ions, etc, directly into the region to be affected from a rocket, satellite, or the like, to supplement the particles in the naturally occurring plasma. The artificial particles are also ionized by the transmitted electromagnetic radiation thereby increasing charged particle density of the resulting plasma of the region...
In another embodiment of the invention, electron cyclotron resonance heating is carried out in the selected region or regions at sufficient power levels to allow a plasma present to generate a MIRROR FORCE which forces the charged electrons of the altered plasma UPWARD along the force line to an altitude which is higher than the original altitude... Sufficient power, eg 10 to the 15th joules, can be applied so that altered plasma can be trapped on the field line between mirror points and will oscillate in space for prolonged periods of time. By this embodiment, a plume of altered plasma can be established at selected locations for communications modifications or other purposes...
=
ed.-That means Surveillance KEYHOLES of ALLLLLL types, folks. Coupled with Time Domain Corporation Classified Eavesdropping Patents (200+) that does not bode well for Human Liberty ANYWHERE.
= ...Thus, this invention provides the ability to put unprecedented amounts of power in the Earths Atmosphere at strategic locations, and maintain the power injection level, particularly if random pulsing is employed, in a manner far more precise than heretofore accomplished by prior art, particularly by the detonation of nuclear devices of various yields at various altitudes...
Disruption of communications can be employed by one knowledgeable of this invention as a communications network at the same time (Disruption is caused t

University of Wisconsin did the design on the only "scientific" instrument on the telescope, the PFIS... or "Prime Focus Imaging Spectrograph". Have a look at http://www.sal.wisc.edu/~ebb/pfis/pics/ for some construction pics and http://www.astro.wisc.edu/salt/ for minimal info.

University of Wisconsin did the design on the only "scientific" instrument on the telescope, the PFIS... or "Prime Focus Imaging Spectrograph". Have a look at http://www.sal.wisc.edu/~ebb/pfis/pics/ for some construction pics and http://www.astro.wisc.edu/salt/ for minimal info.

You need to factor in "Rape Face" Captain America!!

Note: I didn't make the images (I'm not that talented)

Here's the thing. I am currently posting this message as I sit at my desk in this building. You needn't wait until the middle of the next decade to see what Fast Ignition MAY offer us in terms of inertial fusion power. Only 2 more years. That is when our new multikilojoule multiPETAWATT laser will come online and fast ignition experiments will begin. Kodama et. al. have shown a neutron yeild increase of over three orders of magnitude when they coupled 500 J of chirped pulse (heater) light to their imploding cone in shell targets. We will be able to couple a ~3Kj heater pulse to the targets normally imploded on our current 30Kj 60 Terawatt system which currently holds the world record for neutron production at ~5X10^14 neutrons per pulse. This will therefore put us VERY close to the ignition regime and in fact one of the reasons the building of the new laser was approved was to examine the "near ignition parameter space" of scaled implosions to determine if the National Igniton Facility will ignite its capsules with high gain.

As to the subject of hydrodynamic instabilities, IANAP, but from what I gather of it, this problem is far less serious today with the discoveries (many made here at LLE) of things like frequency tripling the beam (to suppress hot electron production in the plasma), polarization smoothing, distributed phase plate smoothing (google for more info on this stuff or just go to the documents section of the LLE site) with the introduction of larger bandwidth of the laser pulse and the simple improvement of irradiation uniformity on target using more beams (our system is only a ~30Kj laser while the NOVA laser at LLNL was a ~40-60Kj laser, the reason we hold the record for neutrons/pulse is because NOVA was a 10 beam system, we are a 60 beam system. The supression of Rayleigh-Taylor instability in imploding targets is VASTLY reduced on our system because of the increase in uniformity.

Fast ignition is exciting because it potentially allows us to examine ignition and high gain in ICF with a huge decrease in price required to build the device to do it by at least a factor of 10. NIF is going to cost ~$4-5 Billion, a fast ignition device which could theoretically attain comparable fusion conditions (as described in TFA) is around $500 million.

Also building chirped pulse petawatt lasers is great for other sicience too. The light is so unbelievably intense from these things that they can initiate nuclear reactions DIRECTLY (photodisruption of the nucleus etc.)! The OMEGA EP will probably allow scientists here to examine Unruh and Hawking radiation in the laboratory....

To anyone who doesn't think that ICF or MFE methods of attaining fusion breakeven and ignition in the laboratory take a look at some graphs like this. The power produced by experimental devices has increased by nearly a factor of a BILLION over the past 3 decades. Slowly but surely we will get there, and when we do, it will change the world in ways I can't even imagine.

Actually I recently set up my dad's windows laptop to do something similar. Remove the Acrobat plugin from the Mozilla plugin directory, and set Mozilla to launch Acrobat as an external viewer. He likes it much better than having it embed in the browser. On my Linux box I use GV.

http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php
http://www.planetpdf.com/

I've only used Adobe's reader.
I have used a free pdf maker, and it worked fine.

I remember the story in New Scientist on a computer program to simulate hardness of crystal structures was let loose and strnagely suggested carbon nitride C3N4 was the hardest. The researchers were checking their program and expected diamond to come up the hardest. It's very hard to make though.

A search in Google finds a reference here, section 4.11, which shows this happened in 1989. It's nice to know my memory is still working :-)

...there must be something better for Windows too.

... without any of that mumbo-jumbo from RFCs can be found here [warning: PostScript file]. It's well written, and the safeguards and filtering techniques are very interesting.

- shadowmatter

Use Ghostscript and GSView instead. It loads faster and is GPL.

What's interesting is the 45 degree tilt claim

It appears the article may be mistaken about that. Another article states that the bar is simply at a 45 degree angle relative to our position from the core. In other words, where we are in relation to the bar.

"the bar is oriented at about a 45-degree angle relative to the main plane of the galaxy"

typical science reporting. totally wrong. if that
chap had bothered to READ and understand the original article or web site, he would have
read
"It also shows that the bar is oriented at about a 45-degree angle relative to a line joining the sun and the center of the galaxy."

meaning the bar is in the galactic plane, not sticking out as the space.com article suggests

http://www.news.wisc.edu/11405.html seems a far better reference.

Just for the record, I still find it amusing that
astronomers always seem to need to report
in numbers astronomers don't even use. I know
of no single person that uses the lightyear, in
galactic astronomy we use the kilo-parsec (kpc).
The pc and lj are pretty close to each other,
3.26 between the two. So that 27,000 lightyear bar
would be 8.2 kpc. It must be the total length, since the sun is about 8 kpc from the center of
the milky way.

I'm sorry, but nobody in the photos of the event could ever pass for a genuine Apple user, like these beautiful and stylish souls. It's no surprise they've decided to switch their school system to Dell.

http://www.sal.wisc.edu/~jwp/astro/OrbitApplet.htm l

Sorry no mod points, but that's cool.

I wrote a bare-bones applet that lets you try to get to Mars. Very crude, but it manages the momentum correctly and does illustrate that launch windows and transfer orbits are tricky. http://www.sal.wisc.edu/~jwp/astro/OrbitApplet.htm l

These guys installing OS X on their PCs make me sick. What do they hope to accomplish? It won't make them stylish, fashionable, or aesthetically intuitive, it won't liberate them or make them creative, and it certainly won't make them as beautiful or interesting as we old-school Mac users. You can't change who you are. You can't polish a turd. As the saying goes: Once a PC user, always a PC user.

Why, yes, I am one of the bad guys, but Pavlovian conditioning is only a hobby of mine. Now if I can only convince her that having sex with me regularly will help her network reception; where did I put my BOFH excuse file...?

Whether or not a molecule emits energy in the form of light has nothing to do with the number of atoms. It has to do with the energy levels of the electrons in the outer shell.

As the electrons fall back from their excited state they emit a photon of light at a particular wavelenght, related to the energy drop. If you have a small drop then the wavelength will be large, ie red or infra-red light. If you have a large drop then the wavelength will be smaller, ie green, blue, violet.

Don't forget that when hydrogen reacts it produces water was well 2H2 + O2 -> 2H2O, so you'll have your triatomic molecule you want.

The reason that corn brooms are used to detect flames is that the flame from a slow hydrogen leak is not very intense, made up almost exclusively with blue and violet photons. These are hard to see.

Have a look at http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/hyde.ht ml to see the spectra of hydrogen. It's got some visible lines in it.

Here's a picture of a hydrogen flame, faint but visible. http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/JCESoft/CCA/CCA3/STIL LS/CLH/CLH/64JPG48/2.JPG

Charles

Here's what Dave said:

The actual ruling... (Score:2) by daveschroeder (516195) * on Wednesday August 03, @03:33PM (#13233393) (http://das.doit.wisc.edu/) .

...since the submission is extremely misleading and melodramatic, as usual.

NLRB ruling [nlrb.gov].

The ruling does not universally allow employers to ban any and all off-duty interaction. It made a specific ruling, in its capacity of administering the National Labor Relations Act [nlrb.gov], that Guardsmark's ban on in-uniform, but off duty, fraternization ("dating or becoming overly friendly with") with clients and coworkers. The critical and key aspect of the ruling was that it allowed for the prevention of such inappropriate fraternization while in Guardsmark uniform. The NLRB ruling further stated that care must be taken such that this ruling is not misapplied as to have a "chilling" effect on employee's rights under Section 7 of the the Act..

The actual order is:

So basically, except for the chopped sentence, everyone reads "The critical and key aspect of the ruling was that it allowed for the prevention of such inappropriate fraternization while in Guardsmark uniform." Whether you meant to say that or not, that is how the flaming ----es are reading you. You can't get more specific than that, saying it was about activity in uniform.

If you want to get all Clinton about "allowed for prevention" not same as "ruled in favour", you'll find most people don't read it that way, I'm sure.

I kinda agree with the thrust of this or the hotel ruling - being chummy with people when you are expected to stay aloof can compromise security - that's how social engineering gets people past security barriers; or give the wrong impression of the service in a posh hotel.("We want service to be 'Yes, sir, no sir', not 'Sure nuff, bubba' even if he is your friend.") The ban on fraternizing with co-workers does seem to take it too far. And, any company that finds it necessary to forbid their employees from telling clients how poorly they get paid is probably not on the "10 best places to work" list.

The concept that people can be "fired at will" seems pretty bizarre outside the USA. In Canada, yes, an employer can dump anyone (non-union) as long as it's not discrimination - but the severance pay provisions kick in; it will cost you. (Typically from 1 week to 1 month per year of service, depending on various factors - age, difficulty or finding replacement job, etc.)

Heck, it's illegal in Canada to demand a drug test or lie detector test as a condition of employment. That's an invasion of privacy...

There is little evidence that pot has any negative effects...

Uh, wrong. There is good and mounting evidence.

Mental Illness

Cannabis link to mental illness strenghtened

The link between regular cannabis use and later depression and schizophrenia has been significantly strengthened by three new studies.

Marijuana Use Increases Risk of psychiatric illness Cannabis link to depression

This study suggests that girls who use cannabis as teenagers are more likely to develop anxiety or depressive disorders.

Psychotic symptoms more likely with cannabis

Marijuana in adolescence and early adulthood increases the likelihood of psychotic symptoms in later life.

Study suggests marijuana abuse increses risk of depression

Subjects diagnosed with cannabis abuse at the start of the study were four times more likely to experience depressive symptoms.

Marijuana makes blood rush to the head

Smoking marijuana can affect blood flow in the brain so much that it takes over a month to return to normal. And for heavy smokers, the effects could last much longer, a new study suggests.

Child Development

Marijuana use in pregnancy damages kids learning

Children born to mothers who use marijuana during pregnancy may suffer a host of lasting mental defects.

Dope-smoking dads double risk of cot death (SIDS)

Dope-smoking dads double the risk of cot death, a survey in California has revealed.

Maternal marijuana use during lactation and infant development at ...

THC concentrates in the mother's milk and is absorbed and metabolized by the nursing infant.

Reproductive effects

The Effects of Marijuana on the Endocrine System

Marijuana directly effects the endocrine system causing:

reduced sperm counts, sperm deformations, shrunken testes size, degenerates the seminiferous tubules, halves testosterone levels, decreases libido, causes the accumulation of breast tissue in men, causes anovulation, causes an acute reduction in prolactin, reduces adrenocortical reserve causing reduced ability to respond to stress, inhibits growth hormone, and depresses thyroid activity.

Cannabis, cannabinoids and reproduction

Marijuana inhibits implantation and increases miscarriage rates. Marijuana use during or after birth may impair reproductive behavior of children when they reach adulthood.

Study finds marijuana use in rats stops reporduction Research Survey: Common Ancestors

Marijuana suppresses the production of luteinizing hormone in rats by stimulating the production of stress hormones. "It turns out that marijuana is a stressor, which might explain a lot of its effects on the brain and on people"

Marijuana firmly linked to infertility

Scientific American Tue, 12 Dec 2000

General Heal

Wow.

I think you've trolled me before, but anyone is welcome to look at my web page:

http://das.doit.wisc.edu/

There is nothing remotely having anything to do with Christianity, much less fundamentalist Christianity, anywhere in it. In fact, there's nothing even about politics or religion in it.

And since I know of troll of this nature would probably claim that I "just changed it", please feel free to look at the http://das.doit.wisc.edu/>wayback machine archives of my web page.

Further, this Google comment has nothing to do with Bush, right wing politics, religion, or anything asserted in this troll post. And yes, please do look at my posting history. You'll find that out of my over-1000 posts, probably 5 of them are along the lines of the "before anyone bashes Bush..." variety. They're all also typically highly moderated, meaning they're not trolls or flamebait in the opinion of mods and metamods (because they're generally not). Further, I have not said anything remotely related to evangelism or fundamentalist Christianity, or indeed really Christianity or religion at all except tangentially, in any of my posts, or anywhere else on the web.

So in short, I have no fucking idea what you're talking about.

Oh, *SPIN*! I thought you were talking about SPIM!

About 67 percent of the energy required to make ethanol is consumed in fermenting and distilling corn. As a result, ethanol production creates 1.1 units of energy for every unit of energy consumed. In the UW-Madison process, the desired alkanes spontaneously separate from water. No additional heating or distillation is required. The result is the creation of 2.2 units of energy for every unit of energy consumed in energy production.

Dear nutjob,

Nobody cares about what you think.

Sincerely,
The 21st century

I took this class last semester, although it was with a different TA. Nobody took it seriously (not even the TA). The class was only really about nanotechnology for the first few weeks. We spent most of the remaining time learning about STS (Scientific and Technology Studies) theories and how they could be related (loosly) to nanotech. There was one midterm that was ridiculously easy, and no final. We emailed all our papers and never received comments or grades for them. The class was 75 minutes twice a week, and we probably spent 45 minutes per class period just talking in our "small groups". On a related note, our TA received a $500 grant to make this http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~rleung/sts_201/ (visit for a laugh) which was only updated a couple of times. It was clearly made in a few hours time (and never finished). I guess I wish I was in the other section of this class if someone else actually found it useful.

Here's his list of places where major graphics research is going on in North America:

The "Big" Places for Graphics: (all of these places have LOTS of graphics students)

• Washington
• Stanford
• Georgia Tech
• UNC
• Utah
• MIT
• Brown
• British Columbia

Other Really good groups (smaller, more personable):

• Princeton
• Caltech
• NYU
• CMU (was big, but lots of people left)
• Toronto

Up and Coming Groups (newer groups with a small number of newer faculty in graphics)

• Berkeley
• Virginia
• Illinois
• USC

Having spent time studying and researching in Europe, there are some good graphics groups there too. In the UK, I know of two places off hand: Cambridge (Malcolm Sabin doing stuff with surfaces and geometric modeling) and Bath (Phil Willis and some others). In Germany, there is the Max Planck Institute (which does everything in English and is a very strong group although I admit I used to work there, so I'm probably biased), TU Darmstadt (Alexa), RWTH Aachen (Kobelt) and Tuebingen (Strasser). In Switzerland, there is the ETH in Zuerich (Markus Gross), the EPFL in (I think) Lausanne (Nadia and Daniel Thalmann) and Basel (Thomas Vetter who not so long ago left Freiburg to start a new graphics group there). In France, there is a group at the INRIA in Grenoble (Marie-Paul Cani). The above is certainly not an exhaustive list, just names that come to mind off the top of my head.

Most of these programs in continental Europe probably require you to already have your MSc before beginning PhD studies, but some have MSc programs as well. I know the MPI has one and awards scholarships even to foreign students. Generally, it's easier to get funding with only a Bachelor's degree in the US than in most of Europe. I've also heard the funding situation in the UK is not really very good, which is probably another reason to consider places like the US, Canada, Germany or Switzerland.

Competition for admission to US schools is fairly intense and is a time consuming and expensive process, but there are some really amazing opportunities here. I'm currently a grad student (graphics, visualization and scientific computing) at UNC and we probably have the largest number of graphics and imaging faculty and grad students under one (academic) roof in the world. We're not as hard to get into as a lot of the top schools like Berkeley, MIT, Stanford or CMU, but we still only take about 1 in 7 applicants or something. The key is to apply to as many places as you can afford, but only apply to places you'd actually attend.

Happy searching!

One of the biggest problems with any in-order microarchitecture is stalling due to L1 cache misses. What does an in-order machine do when a memory operation misses in L1 and a dependent operation is next in line? Sits there. An OOO machine can continue to do useful work on non-dependent instructions in its instruction window.

In some instances, an advanced Itanium/EPIC compiler can play around with the memory latencies and try to hide them - for example, schedule a bunch of non-dependent instructions right after a long-latency load from memory. This requires a lot of program and pointer analysis, and is doable only sometimes (things like heavy array-based computations, for example).

So, on real-world programs that may have varied memory access patterns, the Itanium family isn't going to do very well, but on many of the scientific and floating-point benchmarks (regular memory access patterns that the compiler can understand), it flies.

Granted, this memory latency thing is becoming a problem even on OOO microarchitectures, because there's only so much the processor can do before it has to stall waiting for the data to come back from memory. Check out a few papers on runahead execution, which helps to mitigate this problem on either OOO or in-order microarchitectures. I wouldn't be surprised to see the next major incarnation of the Pentium or Athlon line have this feature.

Support contracts are available, but not mandatory.

Not affiliated, just a happy customer.

The Wisconsin Condor Project has been harvesting unused compute cycles for over a decade. The software is free to use and deploy, and is used by various corporations including Western Digital and others.

Good point. Having to rewrite the application to make use of a parallel MPI can be a pain. Condor is a free full-featured batch system that allows you to run apps on remote machines without having to recompile them

Why not use condor?

It seems like this article exists merely to hype the IBM clustering solution.

I actually have the Mac 128K that my dad got at Dillard's department store in Dallas, TX on January 24, 1984. I was 9, and I'd been wanting a computer and was angling for an Apple //e. But my dad - who wasn't the computer type - thankfully said that he'd heard some rumblings about this new computer that he thought he should wait for.

It was the Macintosh.

I just snapped a couple pictures with my Treo 650:

Here it is, alongside a NeXT cube and ann actual Motorola Viper CHRP box (capable, at the time, of running Mac OS, Windows NT, AIX, and the at-that-time-already-defunct Solaris and NetWare implementations for PowerPC):

http://das.doit.wisc.edu/nostalgia/CHRP_128K_Cube. jpg

And the model tag from the 128K, barely visible, "M0001":

http://das.doit.wisc.edu/nostalgia/M0001.jpg

A couple other things; a 20th Anniversary Macintosh and a PowerBook Duo 2300c, with DuoDock II+:

http://das.doit.wisc.edu/nostalgia/20th_Duo.jpg

And now, over 21 years later...

http://das.doit.wisc.edu/nostalgia/Desk.jpg

How time flies.

I actually have the Mac 128K that my dad got at Dillard's department store in Dallas, TX on January 24, 1984. I was 9, and I'd been wanting a computer and was angling for an Apple //e. But my dad - who wasn't the computer type - thankfully said that he'd heard some rumblings about this new computer that he thought he should wait for.

It was the Macintosh.

I just snapped a couple pictures with my Treo 650:

Here it is, alongside a NeXT cube and ann actual Motorola Viper CHRP box (capable, at the time, of running Mac OS, Windows NT, AIX, and the at-that-time-already-defunct Solaris and NetWare implementations for PowerPC):

http://das.doit.wisc.edu/nostalgia/CHRP_128K_Cube. jpg

And the model tag from the 128K, barely visible, "M0001":

http://das.doit.wisc.edu/nostalgia/M0001.jpg

A couple other things; a 20th Anniversary Macintosh and a PowerBook Duo 2300c, with DuoDock II+:

http://das.doit.wisc.edu/nostalgia/20th_Duo.jpg

And now, over 21 years later...

http://das.doit.wisc.edu/nostalgia/Desk.jpg

How time flies.

I actually have the Mac 128K that my dad got at Dillard's department store in Dallas, TX on January 24, 1984. I was 9, and I'd been wanting a computer and was angling for an Apple //e. But my dad - who wasn't the computer type - thankfully said that he'd heard some rumblings about this new computer that he thought he should wait for.

It was the Macintosh.

I just snapped a couple pictures with my Treo 650:

Here it is, alongside a NeXT cube and ann actual Motorola Viper CHRP box (capable, at the time, of running Mac OS, Windows NT, AIX, and the at-that-time-already-defunct Solaris and NetWare implementations for PowerPC):

http://das.doit.wisc.edu/nostalgia/CHRP_128K_Cube. jpg

And the model tag from the 128K, barely visible, "M0001":

http://das.doit.wisc.edu/nostalgia/M0001.jpg

A couple other things; a 20th Anniversary Macintosh and a PowerBook Duo 2300c, with DuoDock II+:

http://das.doit.wisc.edu/nostalgia/20th_Duo.jpg

And now, over 21 years later...

http://das.doit.wisc.edu/nostalgia/Desk.jpg

How time flies.

I actually have the Mac 128K that my dad got at Dillard's department store in Dallas, TX on January 24, 1984. I was 9, and I'd been wanting a computer and was angling for an Apple //e. But my dad - who wasn't the computer type - thankfully said that he'd heard some rumblings about this new computer that he thought he should wait for.

It was the Macintosh.

I just snapped a couple pictures with my Treo 650:

Here it is, alongside a NeXT cube and ann actual Motorola Viper CHRP box (capable, at the time, of running Mac OS, Windows NT, AIX, and the at-that-time-already-defunct Solaris and NetWare implementations for PowerPC):

http://das.doit.wisc.edu/nostalgia/CHRP_128K_Cube. jpg

And the model tag from the 128K, barely visible, "M0001":

http://das.doit.wisc.edu/nostalgia/M0001.jpg

A couple other things; a 20th Anniversary Macintosh and a PowerBook Duo 2300c, with DuoDock II+:

http://das.doit.wisc.edu/nostalgia/20th_Duo.jpg

And now, over 21 years later...

http://das.doit.wisc.edu/nostalgia/Desk.jpg

How time flies.

On this site, he's the 12th most popular poster according to the automated Slashrank script engine.

I explained exactly what it had to do with the topic in question, which is why CNN is so far behind FOX News in ratings, and is trying to do something about it, which then responds to the

Also, if you think I or FOX News is "far right", you have no fucking clue what "far right" is. Further, I am not an "evangelical". And lastly, I'm not sure what on my web site you find objectionable or "evidence" that I'm an "evangelical". In fact, there is nothing related with any religion or evangelism anywhere on my website.

Also, what in the living FUCK does any of my post have to do with "values"?

I await what is sure to be a stunningly cogent reply.

Hear, hear.

I've been quite surprised at the influx of "odd" observations over the past few years; I certainly wasn't expecting local pancake structures.

You raise a pretty good point, though, on the structure of disks, large and small, in the first place.

Plasma physicists jump up and down that the in-vogue theories treat large-scale magnetic fields and currents as non-existent, as though charge must cancel out on the large scale, therefore it has no effect. Sometimes, they make a good point - some of the disk systems do resemble dynamos.

Some of the papers I've read in passing on "push" gravity theories estimate that the force of gravity is proportional to 1/d**2 locally, but trends to 1/d on the outsides of the galaxy. Otherwise, there's a lot of unseen matter there (and we haven't seen anything resembling the high-velocity clouds gathering on the edges of the galaxy)... or, alternately, we're ignoring a dynamo effect.

Or... etc. (Assuming we stop before postulating that angels sit on the edge fanning galaxies with their wings ;)

It's the bank of poorly-explained pieces that will lead us to our next big theoretical breakthrough (or revolution) - but it takes some special vigilance to keep track of what hasn't actually been explained properly, and what's been merely papered over.

Too many tweaks. They should have realized something was wrong sometime between inflation theory, and dark-energy-requiring ever-increasing-acceleration theory. Plenty of duct tape on things already :)

By the way, speaking of aether... ;)

I can understand the establishment position somewhat... it's either duct tape or anarchy. There's got to be a standard to measure against, but if the explanations start stretching thin, they need an exit strategy.

If that day comes, they will need to exit to something, though. What's out there that can explain the pancakes at multiple scales of the universe and other phenomena as well?

Perhaps they need to take a page out of other research and development, and apportion some funds to "blue sky" research.

The biggest dividends will come from research that's reviewed for logic, self-consistency and explanation of phenomena without regard to how well it fits into prior patterns. Pro-Ams and people in fields with more easily measureable results (applied sciences, for one) realize these benefits, but being in a field where so many assumptions have to be made to interpret the results in the first place make this next to impossible for the theoreticians to condone dissent.

Everybody's MMV :)

-- Ritchie