Domain: wisc.edu
Stories and comments across the archive that link to wisc.edu.
Comments · 1,436
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NPR Quake
Speaking of non-photorealistic and real-time, this reminds of me NPR Quake.
Dan East -
Re:Who Did What When How?Just for fun, I've compiled a list of misc "terrorist" links myself:
- Assassination Politics by Jim Bell
- The American Holocaust
- Anarchist's Cookbook
- Icky, unpatriotic, morbid beheading videos and such
- Bias to balance U.S. news bias
- Map of the White House
- Location of NYC water resevoirs
- Alex Jones loves progress!
- Economic terrorism #1 - buy nothing day
- Economic terrorism #2 - evil ad-skipping Tivo
- Economic terrorism #3 - running out of oil isn't a conspiracy theory.
- Economic terrorism #4 - the top 10 most fuel efficient cars of 2005
:) - The widening wealth gap
- Paper trails make it much harder to steal elections
- Hamster dance!
If jackboot thug out there wants to arrest me for "implicitly supporting" the content of any of these links, feel free to abuse the PATRIOT ACT in order to force slashdot.org to reveal the IP address associated with this post, and in turn my ISP will reveal my name and home address associated with the DHCP lease (because I didn't bother to post through an anonymous proxy(s)). tinfoil_hat_mode off.
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Re:They have the power scotty
My MSc thesis implemented a grid service for (non-computer science) computational scientists through Globus (V3.2) that harnessed a Condor (V6.6) backend for a heterogeneous computational grid. Here at the university, because funds are not exactly forthcoming, we utilize idle resources in computer labs and classrooms.
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Re:Surely?
Slackware, you insensitive clod!
;-)
Actually on a serious note, I install (for my mother, family and friends)...
7-zip
gs / gsview
Firefox / Thunderbird
AVG
WinPT
Eraser
OpenOffice
Gimp (depending on the family member or friend)
Gaim
FileZilla
Amaya (only because bluefish is not available on win32 yet)
RealVNC
VIM
irFanview
Azureus (depending on the family member or friend)
Daemon Tools (depending on the family member or friend) -
Re:Surely?
Slackware, you insensitive clod!
;-)
Actually on a serious note, I install (for my mother, family and friends)...
7-zip
gs / gsview
Firefox / Thunderbird
AVG
WinPT
Eraser
OpenOffice
Gimp (depending on the family member or friend)
Gaim
FileZilla
Amaya (only because bluefish is not available on win32 yet)
RealVNC
VIM
irFanview
Azureus (depending on the family member or friend)
Daemon Tools (depending on the family member or friend) -
Answers
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=239735 (video)
Doug Chapin, a nonpartisan election analyst, finds the claims to be baseless. "There were no problems that would lead me to believe that there were stolen elections or widespread fraud," he said.
"There was no overwhelming reason to cast doubt on the outcome of this election," seconded Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, the campaign manager for Al Gore's 2000 campaign. "George Bush got more votes this time."
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/11 /10/internet_buzz_on_vote_fraud_is_dismissed/
Much of the traffic is little more than Internet-fueled conspiracy theories, and none of the vote-counting problems and anomalies that have emerged are sufficiently widespread to have affected the election's ultimate result.
Kerry campaign officials and a range of election-law specialists agree that while machines made errors and long lines in Democratic precincts kept many voters away, there's no realistic chance that Kerry actually beat Bush.
''No one would be more interested than me in finding out that we really won, but that ain't the case," said Jack Corrigan, a veteran Kerry adviser who led the Democrats' team of 3,600 attorneys who fanned out across the country on Election Day to address voting irregularities.
''I get why people are frustrated, but they did not steal this election," Corrigan said. ''There were a few problems here and there in the election. But unlike 2000, there is no doubt that they actually got more votes than we did, and they got them in the states that mattered."
''I think it's safe to say that on the votes that were cast in Ohio, Bush won," said Dan Tokaji, a law professor at Ohio State University who is working with the ACLU to challenge Ohio's use of punch-card ballots. ''If the margin had been 36,000 rather than 136,000, we would have seen another post-election meltdown."
http://www.sacbee.com/state_wire/story/11436220p-1 2350492c.html
All three said their networks had set up investigative units to review any claims of voter fraud or problems with electronic voting technology this year, but that nothing significant had appeared anywhere to affect the election's outcome.
"A lot of the allegations we've looked into, they're just not true," Shapiro said. "Believe me, I'd love a juicy story about the election as much as anybody. Florida was a great story, but it's just not there this time." -
Some thoughts
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=239735 (video)
Doug Chapin, a nonpartisan election analyst, finds the claims to be baseless. "There were no problems that would lead me to believe that there were stolen elections or widespread fraud," he said.
"There was no overwhelming reason to cast doubt on the outcome of this election," seconded Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, the campaign manager for Al Gore's 2000 campaign. "George Bush got more votes this time."
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/11 /10/internet_buzz_on_vote_fraud_is_dismissed/
Much of the traffic is little more than Internet-fueled conspiracy theories, and none of the vote-counting problems and anomalies that have emerged are sufficiently widespread to have affected the election's ultimate result.
Kerry campaign officials and a range of election-law specialists agree that while machines made errors and long lines in Democratic precincts kept many voters away, there's no realistic chance that Kerry actually beat Bush.
''No one would be more interested than me in finding out that we really won, but that ain't the case," said Jack Corrigan, a veteran Kerry adviser who led the Democrats' team of 3,600 attorneys who fanned out across the country on Election Day to address voting irregularities.
''I get why people are frustrated, but they did not steal this election," Corrigan said. ''There were a few problems here and there in the election. But unlike 2000, there is no doubt that they actually got more votes than we did, and they got them in the states that mattered."
''I think it's safe to say that on the votes that were cast in Ohio, Bush won," said Dan Tokaji, a law professor at Ohio State University who is working with the ACLU to challenge Ohio's use of punch-card ballots. ''If the margin had been 36,000 rather than 136,000, we would have seen another post-election meltdown."
http://www.sacbee.com/state_wire/story/11436220p-1 2350492c.html
All three said their networks had set up investigative units to review any claims of voter fraud or problems with electronic voting technology this year, but that nothing significant had appeared anywhere to affect the election's outcome.
"A lot of the allegations we've looked into, they're just not true," Shapiro said. "Believe me, I'd love a juicy story about the election as much as anybody. Florida was a great story, but it's just not there this time."
A frequent charge levied after the 2000 election was voter disenfranchisement and ballot spoilage due, in large part, to antiquated, malfunctioning, or broken mechanical voting equipment. Legislation was introduced guaranteeing a minimum standard for the equipment and processes associated with voting in all jurisdictions. Since we are living in the 21st century, electronic systems were specified. $3.9 billion was set aside under HAVA to replace all mechanical punch card systems with electronic systems by 1 January, 2006. The goal is to ensure a consistency and fairness in the appearance and operation of the voting systems, both for voters and local election officials.
After the 2000 presidential election, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA):
To establish a program to provide funds to States to replace punch card voting systems, to establish the Election Assistance Commission to assist in the administration of Federal elections and to otherwise provide assistance with the administration of certain Federal election laws and programs, to establish minimum election administration standards for -
Re:then why can't we find obl?
If we can monitor things so closely, can anyone explain to me why we can't watch iraq, or afganastan for movement by terrorists?
The higher the resolution of the data, the less frequently it can be obtained.
Images of the earth at 1-km resolution are acquired by geosynchronous satellites about every 15 minutes (e.g. GOES).
Images of the earth at 250-m resolution are acquired about once a day (e.g. MODIS)
Images of the earth at 15-m resolution are acquired as often as once every two weeks (e.g. LandSat 7
Data from the above three satellite instruments are publicly available. You could create your own database, if you had the bandwidth and storage capacity.
There are other satellite instruments that take much higher-resolution images, but these are generally "targeting" instruments - you need to give them specific locations to capture, because there isn't enough storage and bandwidth to cover the entire earth regularly at that resolution. It typically takes weeks or months (if not longer) to create a high-resolution mosaic of something like a city.
Note, though, that geosynchronous satellites are the only ones that could take continuous images of a particular location, and they're too far away to take high-resolution images. High-resolution imagers have to be taken from lower orbit, which means that the satellites are moving, and thus they can't stay focused on the same spot for very long.
Also, many high-resolution images are taken from aircraft, not satellites. This is a convenient way to get high-resolution images of major cities, but this doesn't help us with reconnaisance in Iraq or Afghanistan, for obvious reasons... -
Re:Count me as a fellow Lone Coder
YOUR code, if you choose, can be released under whatever licence that YOU choose.
Now, in the context of the GPL... I CANNOT choose. I have to go GPL if I have anything at all to do with GPL code being involved in my changes.
Still, not true. Your code, which you wrote, can still be released under whatever licence you like. You just can't release any GPL'ed contributions under another licence, nor any of your code that is derivative of those contributions. But you certainly can keep parallel trees for GPL and non-GPL development. Have a look at the Ghostscript licensing, for an example.
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Re:Firefox is becomming the #1 browser where I wor
You can use GhostWriter (based on ghostscript) to print to PDF from any windows application (inluding MS Office). I run it on my work XP laptop and it is very easy to use.
I tried to find a link for GhostWriter but couldnt see anything obvious. It is related to GhostView\GSView so it's a good start.
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Re:VA Tech Supercomputer
How is this different from any other school? At Wisconsin undergrads rarely if ever saw the clusters they had, and these weren't particular prestigious either. For instance, I never saw the WAIL lab, and I didn't know anyone else who had either. So, I don't know why you would expect to be able to view VTech's cluster.
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Re:Neutrino detectors are unbelievably cool.how unbelievably cool neutrino detectors are
Literally, in this case. Very, very cool indeed.
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Same proof?
There is no scientific proof for the theistic or the atheistic view on the origin of life. Why the atheistic gets the favored son status in schools is beyond me, when both viewpoints have the same credentials scientifically.
Let's look at the definition of theory:A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.
Evolution is a theory, not a law, because it cannot so far be tested in a laboratory and no one has a time machine to go back and see it in action in the past. This is something that operates over long time periods. Natural selection can be seen in some instances, like when dark gypsy moths won out in England in the early 19th century because of all the industrial pollution.Another thing supporting Evolution is the analysis of DNA.
The speciation that is predicted by the theory of evolution has been observed. We explore natural selection and evolution in animal breeding all over the world and have for centuries.
Creationists (who prefer to take God out of their own theories to try and insinutate them into schools) basically say that life is too complicated for us to understand, so a higher being must have created it. They offer no theory as to how this occurred, just that it was "designed". A proper theory would have to explain the supernatural powers of god and how they are at work in the universe now, as well as make predictions about the future, which they cannot.
The typical Intelligent Design argument is that if you come across a watch laying on the ground, do you think it "evolved" or was created? With a watch, we could see the manufacturer, tavel to their plant, and actually see one being assembled. We could then find their parts and go to the plants they were made at and see them being made. There are physical processes for the making of the watch and we could examine them all. If you come across a watch laying on the ground, you don't just assume that God created it out of thin air and placed it on the ground.
What are the physical processes that the "Intelligent Designer" used to create life? What force caused the atoms to form in the correct way to make the first living cell? Where did that power come from? Did the "Designer" use a machine he build or did he use some kind of supernatural powers that we have no description of? The reason "Intelligent Design" should not be on the same ground as evolution is that it is not a well formed theory. It doesn't explain how life came to be, it just says that it "must" have been designed by someone because it is so complex. To find out how it came to be you must look to Genesis, which just says God created the earth and life in 6 days. No thoeries on how that feat was accomplished.
Intelligent Design is a joke. It belongs right up there with meteorologists predicting the weather based on how angry they think Thor is.
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Re:On Address Space Randomization...
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IceCube starting upThere is always a tremendous amount of science going on in Antarctica, but this year will mark the first deployment of sensors in the IceCube neutrino detector at the South Pole, one of the largest Antarctic science projects to date.
If all goes well this Austral Summer, IceCube will deploy four "strings," each with 60 light sensors attached, at a depth of about 2 km. Subsequent years will deploy more sensors until a total of 4800 is reached, making the cubic-kilometer sized detector one of the largest on Earth.
IceCube's quarry is primarily neutrinos of extraterrestrial origin. For the uninitiated, neutrinos are extremely elusive subatomic particles produced by high energy interactions. Candidate sources include the supermassive black holes at the heart of so-called "Active Galactic Nuclei", dark matter, and the mysterious Gamma Ray Bursts.
A recent article has more information.
See also a previous Slashdot post about IceCube's predecessor, AMANDA.
Wikipedia has this introduction to neutrinos. -
Actually, you're wrong
I don't know how much Dell's Tungsten cluster cost but those guys went online last year and got ranked #4 (just behind this Mac cluster) and they're #5 or something now. These bozos have spent a year fscking around with upgrades and from the theoretical #3 (as they were taken out since the cluster couldn't enter production) will have dropped to #7 or more in the next ranking....
Tungsten cost $12 million. Just for the hardware.
System X cost a total of $6 million, and it's still faster.
Not to mention that Virginia Tech was able to pull of a publicity coup and become #3 in the world, #2 in the US, and #1 academic for a paltry $5.2M. And they were "taken out" of the list voluntarily, because they dismantled the entire thing to replace it with Xserve G5s. With the renewed US focus on supercomputing, no one will likely EVER be able to hit #3 on this list for something anywhere close to $5.2M again.
Here's the current list:
http://www.netlib.org/benchmark/performance.pdf
Here's just the current top 20, as of 10/26/04:
http://das.doit.wisc.edu/misc/top500.jpg
Confusingly, you seem to have forgotten that since VT dropped on the list, since VT is still much faster than Tungsten, that means Tungsten also dropped. Tungsten is currently #16. For $12 million. VT's 2.5 Tflops faster - a respectable standalone clusters' worth faster - for half the price. Plus VT got all the huge publicity and news articles, and attracted millions of dollars in funding and grants for their new supercomputer center. Not to mention bringing a whole new OS, platform, interconnect, and processor onto the scene, which will benefit everyone (competition and choice is good, right?).
Also, here's a really great cost/performance comparison of all the top clusters.
Nice try at trolling, but next time don't be so obvious and pathetic about it, especially when Tungsten looks like it clearly is the raw end of the deal, when you have to spend over twice as much money to get a cluster that performs significantly worse, and has worse power requirements. -
Re:Interesting Facts
According to http://das.doit.wisc.edu/misc/top500.jpg/ this number was reached using 16 boxes containing 504 processors each.
Same source a little bit further down ( 6. position to be exact) one can find another measurement they made using 8x 512 processors, result was 19.56 GFlop/s -
Here's the current list...
Prof. Jack Dongarra of UTK is the keeper of the official list in the interim between the twice-yearly Top 500 lists:
http://www.netlib.org/benchmark/performance.pdf See page 54.
And here's the current top 20 as of 10/26/04... -
Not exactly
Yes, it was up for a while, but mostly for testing and tuning.
The one critical problem with the initial cluster was that the Power Mac G5 didn't have ECC memory, meaning that any long calculation would really have to be run twice - or at least until the result was the same - to essentially insure a soft error did not go unnoticed (and no, VT's special "error detecting" software didn't account for this).
The Xserve G5, however, does have ECC memory, making the current cluster just as capable as anything else in the top 10.
I'm not denigrating the original cluster, however: VT played by the rules, and made it to #3 in the world, #2 in the US, and #1 academic for a mere US$5.2M. They also broke the burgeoning Dell/Linux hegemony for cheap clusters, proving that you could use Apple, PowerPC, Mac OS X, and Infiniband to make clusters just as cheap, if not cheaper (note how much better the Apple clusters perform per processor than the closest Dell P4 Xeon 3.06GHz Linux cluster several spots below...additionally, check out this fantastic cost comparison of many of the top machines). Not to mention bringing a new 64-bit player to the HPC table. And one would hope that competition, even in supercomputing, is a good thing. -
Actually, VT will be #8 this time around
Prof. Jack Dongarra of UTK is the keeper of the official list in the interim between the twice yearly Top 500 lists:
http://www.netlib.org/benchmark/performance.pdf (see page 54)
There have been some new entries, including IBM's BlueGene/L, at 36Tflops, finally displacing Japan's Earth Simulator, and a couple other new entries in the top 5.
Here's just the top 16 as of 10/25/04:
http://das.doit.wisc.edu/misc/top500.jpg
No matter what anyone says, Virginia Tech pulled an absolute coup when they appeared on the list at the end of 2003: no one will likely EVER be able to be #3 on the Top 500 list for a mere US$5.2M...even if the original cluster didn't perform much, or any, "real" work, the publicity and recognition that came of it was absolutely more than worth it.
Also interesting is that there is also a non-Apple PowerPC 970 entry in the top 10, using IBM's JS20 blades... -
21 Celcius or 70 farenheit is optimal
just before reading the article as far as I know not such warm climate is optimal
:) see http://www.usaweekend.com/00_issues/000116/000116b iology.htmlPay attention to air quality. Cool, dry air, especially on your face, helps keep you alert, while heat and humidity make you drowsy. Studies show that mental performance, such as rule-based logical thinking, can be reduced by 30% at temperatures not even warm enough to cause sweating. So keep the room at 70 degrees, the average optimum temperature for mental work in the United States. (Not everybody shares the same optimal temperature -- some are "cold-blooded"; others are "hot-blooded" -- so you may need to adjust up or down.)
see also http://schoolstudio.engr.wisc.edu/energysmartschoo ls.htmlOptimal Thermal Conditions Thermal comfort has been shown to influence task performance, attention spans and levels of discomfort. In general, historical empirical studies going back 50 years have indicated that temperatures above 80 degrees F tend to produce harmful physiological effects that decrease work efficiency and output (McGuffy, 1982). Thermal conditions are below optimal levels affect dexterity, while higher than optimal temperatures decrease general alertness and increase physiological stress. One researcher (Harner, 1974) when reviewing optimal temperature levels for the performance found that reading and mathematical skills were adversely affected by temperatures above 74 degrees F. Reading speed and comprehension were most affected by temperature. A significant reduction in reading speed and comprehension occurred between 73.4 degrees F and 80.6 degrees F. This researcher also found that achievement is mathematical operations such as multiplication, addition and factoring have been shown to be significantly reduced by air temperatures above 77 degrees F.
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Re:There is more on Earth than US
>Really ?
Yes. I provided an example by showing that a disproportional number number of nobel prize winners reside in the US. As another example, take the listing of the top universities in the world . In the top 10, only Oxford exists outside of the US. In the top 25, only 6 are outside of the US. In top 100, the US holds over 50% of the slots. One of the main reasons for this is the ability for the US to draw in the best talent in science and engineering from around the world.
>You mean like stem cell research ?
>Ummm ....
Stem cell research is very active in the US. A simple google search would show you the research centers at NIH and University of Wisconsin-Madison . Even California is floating a $3billion dollar bond to support stem cell research. However, yes, the current ban on the harvesting of embroyonic stem cells is not doing much good to foster research in this area in the US.
>I've always thought it wise to actually do the thinking part *BEFORE* the speaking part.
You obviously think one way and act another. -
Re:Actually...it's complaing about the fall lineup
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NPR Quake
Many years ago there was NPR Quake, a mod for Quake I that adds a new rendering system that looks like hand-made pencil drawing.
Check these screenshots.
And here is a more modern version. -
NPR Quake
Many years ago there was NPR Quake, a mod for Quake I that adds a new rendering system that looks like hand-made pencil drawing.
Check these screenshots.
And here is a more modern version. -
NPR Quake
Many years ago there was NPR Quake, a mod for Quake I that adds a new rendering system that looks like hand-made pencil drawing.
Check these screenshots.
And here is a more modern version. -
NPR Quake
Many years ago there was NPR Quake, a mod for Quake I that adds a new rendering system that looks like hand-made pencil drawing.
Check these screenshots.
And here is a more modern version. -
NPR Quake
Many years ago there was NPR Quake, a mod for Quake I that adds a new rendering system that looks like hand-made pencil drawing.
Check these screenshots.
And here is a more modern version. -
Re:How is this diffrent?
The trick is taking something like CO2 and turning it into graphite or something else more readily useful for industry.
You are assuming that CO2 itself doesn't have any uses... A quick google search turned up:
See Last Paragraph
But CO2 isn't really dangerous anyway, right? Remember this Bush Administration EPA ruling? -
Re:liquid?
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Mirrors of torrents
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Mirrors of torrents
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Mirrors of torrents
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Another famous proof
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Apostol's Calculus - fallen by the waysideI took an introductory calculus class that used this textbook. It is a rigorous (delta, epsilon) derivation of the calculus. It doesn't include Robinson's non-standard analysis (NSA) and denigrates Robinson's infinitesimals, which were the basis for Newton's and Leibnitz's calculus and which are the most natural way to explain calculus. Twenty years later I found NSA, which is beautiful by comparison with (delta, epsilon). Here's an NSA textbook.
So skip Apostol.
My special disdain goes out to Dr. Roach and other purists of the University of Texas' School of Mathematics, where a band of rigorists held sway for decades. Their influence and too-early focus on unnecessary rigor [e.g., teaching advanced group theory to freshmen instead of introductory calculus] and upon the (delta, epsilon) interpretation of calculus rippled through numerous universities as their disciples spread out into professorial positions. These bigots ruined the minds of scientists and mathematicians and drove thousands from those fields. May those rigorists stoke the ovens of Hell forever.
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Re:Google vs. Evening News> Especially their crawler-full of hilarity. I was watching their very early coverage of the Shuttle explosion, and the crawler said something like "Was travelling at twice the speed of light when it exploded" (wish I had a screen capture of it!).
Only twice the speed of light? Maybe for that little dinky SpaceShip One contraption.
When NASA does it, they go all-out. The Space Shuttle was doing nearly 18 times the speed of light.
Thank you, CNN...
...for ensuring that Dan Rather will have a place to work after CBS shitcans him. -
CNN.COM: "SpaceShipOne goes for orbit again"
... And here's the screenshot:
http://musicalgearbox.com/cnnorbit.jpg
And after the Shuttle going "nearly 18 times the speed of light" ... someone please save us from bad science reporting... -
Re:Kiss that stream good bye
Well, at lest they didn't say it was going 18 times the speed of light this time...
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the misery love company
Typical waster. Demonstrating an extremely efficient house with some compromises doesn't force anyone to use it. The ease with which oil shoots from the ground and burns in furnaces has allowed us to waste so much of it that it now costs over $40:barrel, with $50 inevitable, and soon. Why are you complaining about environmentalists offering a typically sized city apartment, when you could be complaining about the energy companies whose supply of misery is inexhaustable?
As for "wasteful nature", the Earth sheds only 30% of the power it receives in sunlight. The other 70% is consumed in the complexity of natural processes, with human life balanced amidst the cycles. Even that 30% albedo might not be "wasted" - it's too early to tell, until we understand even a little about the conditions where it goes, far from the planet. Nature's conservation is an inspiration, not an invitation to waste. -
Re:sureAntarctica is covered in at least a few thousand feet of snow which would probably be the most unperdictable surface you could try to build on
That several thousand feet is ice. Given the temperature, it's pretty stable. The Amundsen-Scott base is built on top of it.
Ice also doesn't cover the whole of Antarctica; if you're worried about ice you could build your telescope right on top of the permafrost. Some pictures of the "dry valleys" are here.
Yours truly,
Jeffrey Boulier -
Re:FallaciesBush does not support fetal stem cell research
Umm its embryonic stem cell research. In no way are these things ever fetuses. They never attached to the uterus lining which is the definition of a fetus. The cells in questioned are the waste of invitro fertilization. And his ban affects all universities from exploring embroyonic stem cell research which has greater possibility of curing nerve and brain diseases since adult stem cells cannot transform into nerve or brain cells(neurons). Calling them fetuses is pure FUD and leads me to question wheter your statement about being a scientist is truthful.
Statement from the white house about in vitro fertilization and embryonic research.
The origin of embryonic stem cells. Embryonic stem cells are derived from excess embryos created in the course of infertility treatment. As a result of standard in vitro fertilization practices, many excess human embryos are created. Participants in IVF treatment must ultimately decide the disposition of these excess embryos, and many individuals have donated their excess embryos for research purposes.
White house statement -
This is already happening sometimes!
I published a paper in the Journal of Chemical education last December, but I also posted in on our own website for anyone to download...
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Re:Windows option?
I see some other suggestions here, but here's one I used:
RedMon redirects a print stream into a program. Install a PostScript printer (say a LaserWriter), print through RedMon to ghostscript to produce a PDF. -
Re:Just two questions
Man, I can't believe I'm getting sucked into this moronic, paranoiac debate.
1 - Lake Ontario doesn't freeze over, but it does have some surface ice in midwinter. Ice implies a surface temp at or below 0 degrees c. Right?
2 - Having lived next to another sizeable lake (Lake Champlain, which typically does freeze over), and as an EXPERT in hydrodynamic modelling, I can assure you that that niggling little physics detail about water having maximum density at... (drum roll) 4 degrees C is accurate. However, twice a year, lakes like Ontario have all their water churned about as ambient average temp falls below 4 degrees C, then as ambient temp rises above 4 c. Wierd, but true. Frankly, seiche's are wierder.
3 - So, as winter gets cold enough, any water not AT 4 degrees C rolls to the surface, where it is... say it with me... chilled by the Toronto winters. Before any ice is made, everything in the lake chills to 4 degrees C (this is my biggest oversimplification here, since inversion layers can exist in large water bodies. It doesn't matter in the overall calcs to follow, since all I was interested in showing is the mechanics for recharge of the cold zone).
4 - The thermal mass of Lake Ontario (one site says 86 m average depth, x 19,000 km^2 in area... 19,000,000,000 x 86 x 100 ^3 cm^3 per meter x 1 degree c x 0.0039683 btu's per calorie x .000000293 btu's per megawatt hour = 2* 10 ^9th Megawatt hours needed.
The Fact Sheet on Enwave's site says they're gonna free up 59 megawatts. Now, I should be able to disregard a part of this as an efficiency improvement (electricity for cooling is gawdawfully inefficient, compared to non-compressive heat exchangers like this'll use), but I'll eat the inefficiency because that's the nice guy I am. 59 x 24 x 365 (megawatt-years to megawatt-hours) gets us *finally* to matching units. If I haven't completely bolluxed the calculation, we're looking at a capability of handling 3673 of these facilities. Or, the temp of Lake O going up 1/3673 of a degree.
Oh. Yay. The little fishies aren't even going to notice this. In fact, there's room for exporting this capability and if we're willing to warm Lake O by a few degrees I think it'd take care of the AC demands of most of North America, if them clever Canadians can just figure out a way to export this.
When she's working hard, the sun 'wastes' enough energy warming up dirt and water around the world to fuel our needs a thousandfold over. When she's not paying attention (at the poles, nights and winters), earth's radiating it off like gangbusters.
The risk of us boogering up our surroundings when we do BIG things is a valid one. But not here, not yet.
We've reached the point where we're influencing the world in several spots: cfc's, pesticides, acid rain, particulate emissions, garbage, animal populations, etc. etc. etc.
But this isn't one of them. As a side joke, I bet there are a few million Toronto residents that'd be more than happy to let the thermal average temp of Lake O go up 30 degrees, just for the lake-effect warmth it'd impart on their town each winter and the ability to swim without turning blue in midsummer. Back during a nasty winter ('93), a favorite bumper sticker of mine was 'Another Vermonter *for* global warming'.
Rock on Toronto & Enwave.com -
You filthy liar.
Transgaming is selling a product based on Wine, a totally free software project. TransGaming has added to that codebase, but without contributing most of those additions back to the Wine codebase.
About 30 second son Google shows otherwise. You can hear it from the horse's mouth: http://www.transgaming.com/sources.php. Enjoy your CVS access to the WineX codebase, under fairly non-suck license. Transgaming contributes their improvements to Wine back to the community except for the parts they are legally bound to keep proprietary.
I am not happy about this new trend of "anti-piracy" mechanisms. It really does suck, but at least let's rail them for what they're doing wrong and not for what they are doing right.
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Another concept..
If you guys dig this, you may also get in to NPRQuake which takes quake 1, and turns it in to sketch art. It works on the shareware Q1 client, and doesn't require the amount of user intervention that this MS project does.
Still, it is an interesting concept.. and as I understand, the playstation2 is a huge seller. I had no idea there was such a market for this stuff. -
Blah blah blah
It's easy to say "oh, it's okay that nurses make 60% of what software engineers do, because there are lots of nurses, and nursing is less technical and less important."
Nurses are subject to the same labor market that everyone else is. And if you believe what you read, the avg starting salary for a nurse compared with, say, an accountant (another male-dominated field) is 6.1% less. Comparied with MIS, 8.3% less. So... uhhh... what's the problem? That's certainly not in the 60% range! And since we're talking about money, for a long time my wife made more than me. If I would have continued at my old programming job, she probably would have continued to make more than me for our entire careers. (I started a successful business, so now I make way more than she does, but that has nothing to do with the job market for CS grads vs. other majors.)Or, it could turn out that schools and businesses are discouraging women from entering CS, and that discouragement might rise to the level of unfair gender discrimination.
When I filled out the application to declare my CS major, there was no spot for me to indicate my sex. Maybe because there is no descrimination based on sex for declaring a major in college, CS or otherwise. In fact, at my Alma Mater, there is a special Women in Computer Sciences group that gives women increased access to grad students, faculty, and research/teaching staff. If there is any unfair descrimination going on here, it would most certainly be against men, who don't get that kind of special treatment!The reason I responded to you is I feel that people are way too quick to cry "descrimination" in this country. Not a 50/50 male/female balance? Must be those evil men descriminating again! Evil evil evil!
Sometimes I feel like I live in a nation of wussies with each person trying to be a bigger victim than the next. You want to know what I think? I think people should just do what they want to do. If women want to major in CS, they should. If men want to major in nursing, they should. Whatever your calling is, you should do, and you shouldn't need any encouragement or special treatment, and you definitely shouldn't whine about it.
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Blah blah blah
It's easy to say "oh, it's okay that nurses make 60% of what software engineers do, because there are lots of nurses, and nursing is less technical and less important."
Nurses are subject to the same labor market that everyone else is. And if you believe what you read, the avg starting salary for a nurse compared with, say, an accountant (another male-dominated field) is 6.1% less. Comparied with MIS, 8.3% less. So... uhhh... what's the problem? That's certainly not in the 60% range! And since we're talking about money, for a long time my wife made more than me. If I would have continued at my old programming job, she probably would have continued to make more than me for our entire careers. (I started a successful business, so now I make way more than she does, but that has nothing to do with the job market for CS grads vs. other majors.)Or, it could turn out that schools and businesses are discouraging women from entering CS, and that discouragement might rise to the level of unfair gender discrimination.
When I filled out the application to declare my CS major, there was no spot for me to indicate my sex. Maybe because there is no descrimination based on sex for declaring a major in college, CS or otherwise. In fact, at my Alma Mater, there is a special Women in Computer Sciences group that gives women increased access to grad students, faculty, and research/teaching staff. If there is any unfair descrimination going on here, it would most certainly be against men, who don't get that kind of special treatment!The reason I responded to you is I feel that people are way too quick to cry "descrimination" in this country. Not a 50/50 male/female balance? Must be those evil men descriminating again! Evil evil evil!
Sometimes I feel like I live in a nation of wussies with each person trying to be a bigger victim than the next. You want to know what I think? I think people should just do what they want to do. If women want to major in CS, they should. If men want to major in nursing, they should. Whatever your calling is, you should do, and you shouldn't need any encouragement or special treatment, and you definitely shouldn't whine about it.
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Re:Ok ... I'm ready.
I think you should think of another number to send them to.
You've inadvertently implemented a phone version of the netgear DoS of the university of wisconsin clock.
I'm sure you can be more creative with the phone number...
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Re:Why Computer Science?
You know, I almost disagree with everything in this post.
a degree in CS is as far as I'm concerned silly
I don't know where you went to school, but a CS degree is not a cake major at my school computer science is about the ability to think algorithmically; to be able to analyze a problem and break it down into every conceivable step to get it mechanically implemented.Computer Science is far too cobbled together from other disciplines right now
As opposed to what, chemistry? Chemistry has been around as a science separate from physics for about as long as Computer Science has been separate from math. While math and computer science do heavily overlap, math has just as much overlap in statistics, physics, and economics. Math is a very broad set of theories used in many areas of science. The ability to apply math to algorithmic processes and machinery is a part, but not all of computer science, just like applying calculus to real world situations isn't physics or economics in its entirety, just a piece of it.I was hired without any experience(actually had never seen any of it before) in the language I was going to use and within two days I started producing useful code
Computer Science isn't about learning a programming language. That's what certifications are for! It's learning the theory behind the languages and how they interact with the computer. I've walked into a few jobs where I had never seen the language code before, but because of the computer science background, I was able to pick it up within a few days.
Programming languages aren't all radically different, they all do the same thing at some level. If you know the background, you know it all.Computer Science is far too cobbled together from other disciplines right now, it honestly lacks identity. The formula now is, (some)Math + (a tiny bit of)Engineering + (a lot of)Programming = CS. CS should be a concentration under a Math degree.
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Operating systems, database design, computer architecture, networking, and data structures all don't fall under math; rather it's part of what gives computer science its identity.Well that's my 2 cents. Programming and problem solving may be easy for you, but it's not for the vast majority of people. Like anything in life, some people are good at things, and others simply aren't. So just because it came easy to you and seemed like a joke at your school doesn't mean it's just a collection a crud.