Slashdot Mirror

At the last Global Grid Forum, you'd be surprised (or maybe you wouldn't) at how many keynote speakers (Folks from IBM, Microsoft and HP were the big names) had "Stop the Hype" in their presentations. Of course, the hype machine himself, Ian Foster, didn't even show up.

Here's a one sentence description of Globus: It let's you execute programs on systems in different (virtual) organizations. The interaction between virtual organizations is where globus becomes useful. If you are only staying within your organization (or group) then Globus isn't really worth the effort.

For your type of group, you may be better off playing with Condor. Less hype, and a lot more useful if you are only going to be working on computers that are under your control.

You may also want to check out IBP if you are into distributed filesystem stuff.

When I first read your post, I thought, hmmm.... that's a good idea for right-handed people (and left-handed people like me who use their right hand to move the mouse.) After all, most desktops/workstations/notLaptopsOrPDAs have the mouse on the right. But then I looked at the picture and saw that it was on the left. I did a quick Google Image Search for Toshiba laptops and noticed that they've had some like that for a while. (Check out this old one.) On the Toshiba website, most of their laptops have the mouse pad slightly to the left. It could be a hardware issue (something in the way under the hood), or maybe just the preference of their (slightly illogical) boss? Their site doesn't help...

This was the most interesting topic I saw at this years Midwest Renewable Energy Fair

the process essentially can turn sugars and carbohydrates into either hydrogen or hydrocarbons.

Here are some relevant links:

http://www.virent.com/technology.htm

http://www.engr.wisc.edu/industry/atwork/9.html

http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/

Software provider Softmart will face up to $1 million in fines after pleading guilty to bilking Microsoft in a phony rebate scheme in 1995. [...] According to court documents, Sloane ordered reluctant employees to submit phony sales reports to Microsoft and Symantec in late June and early July of 1995 that amounted to close to $1.2 million.

Where I work (CS Dept at University of Wisconsin), one of the professors (Paul Barford) is setting up the Wisconsin Advanced Internet Laboratory.

The website is located at http://wail.cs.wisc.edu

Right now the project is still getting started (We in the Computer Systems Lab just finished building them 75 P4 2.4Ghz machines with gigabit cards soley for the purpose of packet generation, as far as I understand) but it should be really interesting when it gets done. Basically, it's a simulation of the internet all in one room. It's a cool room to be in...lots of wires and cisco crap everywhere. Almost as cool as the main CS server room...

Where I work (CS Dept at University of Wisconsin), one of the professors (Paul Barford) is setting up the Wisconsin Advanced Internet Laboratory.

The website is located at http://wail.cs.wisc.edu

Right now the project is still getting started (We in the Computer Systems Lab just finished building them 75 P4 2.4Ghz machines with gigabit cards soley for the purpose of packet generation, as far as I understand) but it should be really interesting when it gets done. Basically, it's a simulation of the internet all in one room. It's a cool room to be in...lots of wires and cisco crap everywhere. Almost as cool as the main CS server room...

I also found more detailed information on quipus, if anyone is interested.

If you look at the pdf summary it states that the team spent $117,000 on the prototype but estimates that the production costs would be $48,300 (the stock 2000 Suburban has a sticker of $38,000)

Why is it every slashdot article needs to have nearly every word linked? We don't care what the University of Wisconsin's website is.. don't bother linking it.

Having to guess which word takes me to the article is insane. (In this case, it's "team". All the other links are extraneous).

This site has all the relevent information.

First to combine nuclear+ion drive, yes. Cassini-Huygens used nuclear (Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator) power for onboard systems, though, and Deep Space 1 used (solar-powered) ion drive.

Spacecraft aren't the only systems powered by RTGs; medical devices are as well.

You can also check the on-line docs for RedMon, at the Ghostscript Home Page.

You set up a fake printer port, and redirect that to Ghostscript, convert it to PDF, and prompt for a filename. After you get it all set up, creating a PDF is just like using any printer, and works from any application.

I wish this capability was published a little wider, could have saved us some money at our company...

You could also use redmon, available at the ghostscript site, and follow the instructions in the online help file on how to set up a RPT1: (or as I like to call it PDF:) printer port, which will automatically prompt for a filename, and converts ps to pdf on the fly, no cygwin neccesary.

For added coolpoints, you could use the Adobe Acrobat Distiller PPDs for the postscript printer that's attached to the PDF: port - this will allow custom "paper" sizes for example.

You will either need the adobe ps driver (winsteng.zip), or use the following oemsetup.ini for windows 2000/xp

--------
[Version]
Signature="$Windows NT$"
Provider=%slashdot%
ClassGUID={4D36E979-E32 5-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
Class=Printer
[Manufac turer]
%slashdot%=slashdot
[slashdot]
"Adobe Acrobat Distiller"=ADIST5.PPD

[OEM URLS]

[ADIST5.PPD]
CopyFiles=@ADIST5.PPD,PSCRIPT
Dat aSection=PSCRIPT_DATA
Include=ntprint.inf
Needs= PSCRIPT.OEM, PSCRIPT_DATA

[DestinationDirs]
DefaultDestDir=66000

[SourceDisksNames]
4= %DiskID1%,,,

[SourceDisksFiles]
ADIST5.PPD = 4

[Strings]
DiskID1="ADIST5"
slashdot="slashdot"
--------

Tell all your friends about redmon!! Redmon rules!

For click-monkeys, you can also use pdf995 a commercial distro which installs ghostscript in a hidden away directory (no source! GPL??) and has its own redmon-alike functionality. The PPD used is from an Apple colorwriter (doubt they have permission to distribute it). It also will fire up iexplore to go to its own homepage after each file you print.

You could also use redmon, available at the ghostscript site, and follow the instructions in the online help file on how to set up a RPT1: (or as I like to call it PDF:) printer port, which will automatically prompt for a filename, and converts ps to pdf on the fly, no cygwin neccesary.

For added coolpoints, you could use the Adobe Acrobat Distiller PPDs for the postscript printer that's attached to the PDF: port - this will allow custom "paper" sizes for example.

You will either need the adobe ps driver (winsteng.zip), or use the following oemsetup.ini for windows 2000/xp

--------
[Version]
Signature="$Windows NT$"
Provider=%slashdot%
ClassGUID={4D36E979-E32 5-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
Class=Printer
[Manufac turer]
%slashdot%=slashdot
[slashdot]
"Adobe Acrobat Distiller"=ADIST5.PPD

[OEM URLS]

[ADIST5.PPD]
CopyFiles=@ADIST5.PPD,PSCRIPT
Dat aSection=PSCRIPT_DATA
Include=ntprint.inf
Needs= PSCRIPT.OEM, PSCRIPT_DATA

[DestinationDirs]
DefaultDestDir=66000

[SourceDisksNames]
4= %DiskID1%,,,

[SourceDisksFiles]
ADIST5.PPD = 4

[Strings]
DiskID1="ADIST5"
slashdot="slashdot"
--------

Tell all your friends about redmon!! Redmon rules!

For click-monkeys, you can also use pdf995 a commercial distro which installs ghostscript in a hidden away directory (no source! GPL??) and has its own redmon-alike functionality. The PPD used is from an Apple colorwriter (doubt they have permission to distribute it). It also will fire up iexplore to go to its own homepage after each file you print.

You could also use redmon, available at the ghostscript site, and follow the instructions in the online help file on how to set up a RPT1: (or as I like to call it PDF:) printer port, which will automatically prompt for a filename, and converts ps to pdf on the fly, no cygwin neccesary.

For added coolpoints, you could use the Adobe Acrobat Distiller PPDs for the postscript printer that's attached to the PDF: port - this will allow custom "paper" sizes for example.

You will either need the adobe ps driver (winsteng.zip), or use the following oemsetup.ini for windows 2000/xp

--------
[Version]
Signature="$Windows NT$"
Provider=%slashdot%
ClassGUID={4D36E979-E32 5-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
Class=Printer
[Manufac turer]
%slashdot%=slashdot
[slashdot]
"Adobe Acrobat Distiller"=ADIST5.PPD

[OEM URLS]

[ADIST5.PPD]
CopyFiles=@ADIST5.PPD,PSCRIPT
Dat aSection=PSCRIPT_DATA
Include=ntprint.inf
Needs= PSCRIPT.OEM, PSCRIPT_DATA

[DestinationDirs]
DefaultDestDir=66000

[SourceDisksNames]
4= %DiskID1%,,,

[SourceDisksFiles]
ADIST5.PPD = 4

[Strings]
DiskID1="ADIST5"
slashdot="slashdot"
--------

Tell all your friends about redmon!! Redmon rules!

For click-monkeys, you can also use pdf995 a commercial distro which installs ghostscript in a hidden away directory (no source! GPL??) and has its own redmon-alike functionality. The PPD used is from an Apple colorwriter (doubt they have permission to distribute it). It also will fire up iexplore to go to its own homepage after each file you print.

If you want to read about the doppler effect actually read the document you linked to!

"Police officers use the Doppler Effect to determine the speed of your car."

Doppler effect has nothing to do with this.

"The radar set measures the time it takes for the echo to arrive, as well as the Doppler shift of the echo."

"A police radar looks only for Doppler-shifted signals, and because the radar beam is tightly focused it hits only one car."

"Radar works by the Doppler effect except that it uses radio waves instead of sound waves."

"In radar where a moving target is involved, the signal undergoes the Doppler shift when impinging upon the target."

"The Doppler effect is also used in some forms of radar to measure the velocity of detected objects."

"Radar guns, for example, are based on the Doppler effect."

"Radar guns, for example use the Doppler effect to measure the speed of vehicles or other objects such as baseballs."

Want more?

There are any number of freeware ftp clients. Go to a site like freewareweb and find several.

Personally, I use the ftp client built in to Far, which is shareware, but doesn't expire. (I guess the Win version of Midnight Commander has it too, if you use that on Linux.)

Want to write a PDF file? People in my office needed to, asked me to find something free online. After spending a couple of hours looking for something for windows, I ended up giving them a knoppix cd.

Or you could have used Ghostscript, i.e. the same app as in Knoppix.

And trust me, paying for software is far more abhorrent to these co-workers of mine than any piracy issues. In fact my boss always makes a joke every time someone comes in to get some software, "but you still have to pay the software company for the license to use the software". Heh.

Well, just go to Astalavista for all your serialz and crackz.

I hate Windows myself, but I stick with it for most of my work exactly because I can find just about any app I need, free (as in beer). There are many cool apps, it's the OS that sucks.

Install Ghostscript first, then use GSView to open the .ps files.

Install Ghostscript first, then use GSView to open the .ps files.

Of course it's a programming language. Not only was it designed as a programming language (thus the "script" in Postscript), but it easily passes the test of producing a quine, as can be witnessed here and here.

Outdoor Enclosures for 802.11b Equipment?

Well, since it is Minnesota I suggest an Iron Oxide and Aluminum enclosure. But this still may not be warm enough for winter time in MN.

On the other hand...

Not only is the genome mapped out, but C. elegans has been a model organism for development. A complete flow-chart-esque understanding of the division of the first egg cell down to the last of its 959 cells. Its one of the first model organisms for a complete body-plan understanding of genetic development, but knowing the genes and figuring out the genes are 2 differant matters. Hence the experiments in space trying to understand how 0 g and amazingly controled environments affect gene expression.

Seeing as the Columbia Mission was the first *pure science* mission not having to do with Space Station construction in 2 years, I think its a great legacy for those who lost their lives that some really amazing science can come out of their work.

There is a talk at my university that makes sense. It has to do with not accepting email unless it has a certificate that the sender did a 10 second compution. This would cripple mass email sending. Fighting Spam may be easier than you think

My wife's grandmother had issues with her hearing, so we started to send her faxes instead of calling her. If her eyesight started to fail, we could put transparencies into her fax machine and set her up with a small overhead projector in a back room. When she had a hard time reading the fax, she'd just put it on the Dukane in the back room to read it off the wall, which was plenty big for her to read. This would even work with single-page documents, where she could feed them into the fax as a copier, which would put the text on the transparency. This of course wouldn't work so well for books and newspapers.

This event is primarily targeted at the media, Apple Retail stores, and Apple corporate offices around the country. It's not like Apple thinks people are just going to pull out their 12 foot C-band dish and start watching this; it wasn't intended to be a "public" or webcast event (in fact, the original release was likely intended to be a Media Alert release and not a full blown public press release, as it was pulled from Apple's press release page).

That said, the University of Wisconsin - Madison will be hosting the event live at the Pyle Center. It will be open to the public. For details, see:

04.28.2003 Apple Media Event Coverage

Regarding the more general request for software that manages data, beats me. I do computer science research and I have asked myself many times if such software exists.

What suitable proprietary solutions did you find? I could not find any software (open or closed) that would properly manage bulk data.

The same company also makes keyboards with braille displays for regular computers. Good sites to visit on the topic of computer access for the blind are:

Trace Center
Smith-Kettlewell RERC
Section 508
W3C's WAI
National Center for Accessible Media

If you are in the States, see if there is a local Independent Living Center (sometimes also called Center for Independent Living). These offer support and information for people with disabilities in the local community.

On a separate note, if she is not sensitive to red light, you might be able to whip up a red "grayscale" display. Check the CRT and LCD manufacturing companies to see if they make such screens already for low light work settings (military).

A crazy thought: If the safe light frequency is too narrow for off the shelf screens, you could go the full geek route and construct a matrix using narrow frequency red LED's (like the banner message board signs) and feed the display with the text stream. One of the low vision/blind access software programs might be able to extract the text for the display.

I think more important than the story is the recent trend to use the term "Google" as a common phrase - "to google," "googlewashing." Xerox, Kleenex, and Microsoft are all aware of the possibly of losing exclusivity of their trademarks by having their brand become a household name.

I hope Google is paying attention.

It's already been done. Ghostscript is available for windows, and it includes ps2pdf, which does the conversion nicely.

It's already been done. Ghostscript is available for windows, and it includes ps2pdf, which does the conversion nicely.

It would be interesting to analyze this new music using iterated function systems as described in the seminal work by Meloon and Sprott. The method characterises the organization of the music which may, or may not, occur in this new music generated by 'flock theory'.

OK one step further: Martian Atmosphere

Surface pressure: 6.36 mb at mean radius (variable from 4.0 to 8.7 mb depending on season)
[6.9 mb to 9 mb (Viking 1 Lander site)]
Surface density: ~0.020 kg/m3
Scale height: 11.1 km
Total mass of atmosphere: ~2.5 x 1016 kg
Average temperature: ~210 K (-63 C)
Diurnal temperature range: 184 K to 242 K (-89 to -31 C) (Viking 1 Lander site)
Wind speeds: 2-7 m/s (summer), 5-10 m/s (fall), 17-30 m/s (dust storm) (Viking Lander sites)
Mean molecular weight: 43.34 g/mole
Atmospheric composition (by volume):
Major : Carbon Dioxide (CO2) - 95.32% ; Nitrogen (N2) - 2.7%
Argon (Ar) - 1.6%; Oxygen (O2) - 0.13%; Carbon Monoxide (CO) - 0.08%
Minor (ppm): Water (H2O) - 210; Nitrogen Oxide (NO) - 100; Neon (Ne) - 2.5;
Hydrogen-Deuterium-Oxygen (HDO) - 0.85; Krypton (Kr) - 0.3;
Xenon (Xe) - 0.08

So we're talking carbon dioxide. Pressure is 7mb or 7hPa or 0.7kPa (earth pressure beeing around 1000hPa or 100kPa)

Here's a phase diagram of CO2

So at such low pressures, CO2 is vapor at diurnal temperature ranges. My theory seems not to hold. Please go back to sleep.

SWAP in Madison, WI always has an interesting selection of stuff ranging from desktop PCs to copiers to surplus lab equipment (think cool stuff for your Halloween Haunted House) to office furnishings.

All of the stuff comes from the various University of Wisconsin campuses statewide. SWAP does have an online inventory but there's no substitute for taking a couple of hours to look through all of it.

Also, note that SWAP's hours are kinda goofy so don't head out until you've checked their hours of operation.

In 1998, I took a class at the University of Wisconsin called "Resources from Space", cross-listed in Nuclear Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, and Geology departments with professors from each, along with one from economics. One of the professors was Harrison "Jack" Schmidt, who was the last man on the moon (see note at end), the only scientist ever on the moon (he was a geologist at the time), and currently does fusion research at the Fusion Technology Institute at UW. The class began broadly with the big bang, then Mars, Earth and moon formations, then onto the rocket equation and space flight. But five or six weeks into it, our focus was clear. The criteria for a viable space program beyond the space station was this: It had to be technologically feasible now (or during the duration of the program). It had to generate profits (hopefully in the short-term, but more likely in the long-term). Investors had to be far-sighted (which meant most backing would come from the private sector). Finding a program which fits this criteria is difficult, to say the least. The only feasible solution our credible teaching staff focused on was this: The mining of Helium 3 in the lunar regolith (10-40+ ft. layer of debris settled on the entire surface of the moon from crater dust) for He3-He3 fusion here on Earth (which is efficient (up to +70%) and has no radioactive waste (see here)).

Basically, the given the conditions on the moon, Helium 3 gas has settled as shallow as 15 feet into the regolith making it easily available for mining. So one needs only to get there, establish a mining operation, then bring some He3 back, and set up a fusion facility to convert it. Easy. The main obstacle: In 1998, if the funding $215 billion was available, there would be no profits (or maybe it was returns, even) until the year 2015. That is long time. Plus, the adapting regulations to space (specifically, the moon) would make investors even less interested. But China has their government behind it, and that's how come they're actually taking steps to do this. Here's some statistics (or "propoganda", if you prefer):

-Mining 40 tonnes of He3 would provide the entire U.S. electricity consumption in 2000.

-There is 10 times more energy available in Helium-3 on the moon than in all the economically recoverable coal, oil, and antuarl gases on earth.

That's it for me. Read more about it at the links provided. Good night.


NOTE: Gene Cernan, the other recon astronaut on Apollo 17, would never admit this, claiming he was the last one on the moon. This is due to him and all the other Apollo astronauts being former military pilots and would never admit to a SCIENTIST being the last man on the moon!

In 1998, I took a class at the University of Wisconsin called "Resources from Space", cross-listed in Nuclear Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, and Geology departments with professors from each, along with one from economics. One of the professors was Harrison "Jack" Schmidt, who was the last man on the moon (see note at end), the only scientist ever on the moon (he was a geologist at the time), and currently does fusion research at the Fusion Technology Institute at UW. The class began broadly with the big bang, then Mars, Earth and moon formations, then onto the rocket equation and space flight. But five or six weeks into it, our focus was clear. The criteria for a viable space program beyond the space station was this: It had to be technologically feasible now (or during the duration of the program). It had to generate profits (hopefully in the short-term, but more likely in the long-term). Investors had to be far-sighted (which meant most backing would come from the private sector). Finding a program which fits this criteria is difficult, to say the least. The only feasible solution our credible teaching staff focused on was this: The mining of Helium 3 in the lunar regolith (10-40+ ft. layer of debris settled on the entire surface of the moon from crater dust) for He3-He3 fusion here on Earth (which is efficient (up to +70%) and has no radioactive waste (see here)).

Basically, the given the conditions on the moon, Helium 3 gas has settled as shallow as 15 feet into the regolith making it easily available for mining. So one needs only to get there, establish a mining operation, then bring some He3 back, and set up a fusion facility to convert it. Easy. The main obstacle: In 1998, if the funding $215 billion was available, there would be no profits (or maybe it was returns, even) until the year 2015. That is long time. Plus, the adapting regulations to space (specifically, the moon) would make investors even less interested. But China has their government behind it, and that's how come they're actually taking steps to do this. Here's some statistics (or "propoganda", if you prefer):

-Mining 40 tonnes of He3 would provide the entire U.S. electricity consumption in 2000.

-There is 10 times more energy available in Helium-3 on the moon than in all the economically recoverable coal, oil, and antuarl gases on earth.

That's it for me. Read more about it at the links provided. Good night.


NOTE: Gene Cernan, the other recon astronaut on Apollo 17, would never admit this, claiming he was the last one on the moon. This is due to him and all the other Apollo astronauts being former military pilots and would never admit to a SCIENTIST being the last man on the moon!

In 1998, I took a class at the University of Wisconsin called "Resources from Space", cross-listed in Nuclear Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, and Geology departments with professors from each, along with one from economics. One of the professors was Harrison "Jack" Schmidt, who was the last man on the moon (see note at end), the only scientist ever on the moon (he was a geologist at the time), and currently does fusion research at the Fusion Technology Institute at UW. The class began broadly with the big bang, then Mars, Earth and moon formations, then onto the rocket equation and space flight. But five or six weeks into it, our focus was clear. The criteria for a viable space program beyond the space station was this: It had to be technologically feasible now (or during the duration of the program). It had to generate profits (hopefully in the short-term, but more likely in the long-term). Investors had to be far-sighted (which meant most backing would come from the private sector). Finding a program which fits this criteria is difficult, to say the least. The only feasible solution our credible teaching staff focused on was this: The mining of Helium 3 in the lunar regolith (10-40+ ft. layer of debris settled on the entire surface of the moon from crater dust) for He3-He3 fusion here on Earth (which is efficient (up to +70%) and has no radioactive waste (see here)).

Basically, the given the conditions on the moon, Helium 3 gas has settled as shallow as 15 feet into the regolith making it easily available for mining. So one needs only to get there, establish a mining operation, then bring some He3 back, and set up a fusion facility to convert it. Easy. The main obstacle: In 1998, if the funding $215 billion was available, there would be no profits (or maybe it was returns, even) until the year 2015. That is long time. Plus, the adapting regulations to space (specifically, the moon) would make investors even less interested. But China has their government behind it, and that's how come they're actually taking steps to do this. Here's some statistics (or "propoganda", if you prefer):

-Mining 40 tonnes of He3 would provide the entire U.S. electricity consumption in 2000.

-There is 10 times more energy available in Helium-3 on the moon than in all the economically recoverable coal, oil, and antuarl gases on earth.

That's it for me. Read more about it at the links provided. Good night.


NOTE: Gene Cernan, the other recon astronaut on Apollo 17, would never admit this, claiming he was the last one on the moon. This is due to him and all the other Apollo astronauts being former military pilots and would never admit to a SCIENTIST being the last man on the moon!

In 1998, I took a class at the University of Wisconsin called "Resources from Space", cross-listed in Nuclear Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, and Geology departments with professors from each, along with one from economics. One of the professors was Harrison "Jack" Schmidt, who was the last man on the moon (see note at end), the only scientist ever on the moon (he was a geologist at the time), and currently does fusion research at the Fusion Technology Institute at UW. The class began broadly with the big bang, then Mars, Earth and moon formations, then onto the rocket equation and space flight. But five or six weeks into it, our focus was clear. The criteria for a viable space program beyond the space station was this: It had to be technologically feasible now (or during the duration of the program). It had to generate profits (hopefully in the short-term, but more likely in the long-term). Investors had to be far-sighted (which meant most backing would come from the private sector). Finding a program which fits this criteria is difficult, to say the least. The only feasible solution our credible teaching staff focused on was this: The mining of Helium 3 in the lunar regolith (10-40+ ft. layer of debris settled on the entire surface of the moon from crater dust) for He3-He3 fusion here on Earth (which is efficient (up to +70%) and has no radioactive waste (see here)).

Basically, the given the conditions on the moon, Helium 3 gas has settled as shallow as 15 feet into the regolith making it easily available for mining. So one needs only to get there, establish a mining operation, then bring some He3 back, and set up a fusion facility to convert it. Easy. The main obstacle: In 1998, if the funding $215 billion was available, there would be no profits (or maybe it was returns, even) until the year 2015. That is long time. Plus, the adapting regulations to space (specifically, the moon) would make investors even less interested. But China has their government behind it, and that's how come they're actually taking steps to do this. Here's some statistics (or "propoganda", if you prefer):

-Mining 40 tonnes of He3 would provide the entire U.S. electricity consumption in 2000.

-There is 10 times more energy available in Helium-3 on the moon than in all the economically recoverable coal, oil, and antuarl gases on earth.

That's it for me. Read more about it at the links provided. Good night.


NOTE: Gene Cernan, the other recon astronaut on Apollo 17, would never admit this, claiming he was the last one on the moon. This is due to him and all the other Apollo astronauts being former military pilots and would never admit to a SCIENTIST being the last man on the moon!

In 1998, I took a class at the University of Wisconsin called "Resources from Space", cross-listed in Nuclear Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, and Geology departments with professors from each, along with one from economics. One of the professors was Harrison "Jack" Schmidt, who was the last man on the moon (see note at end), the only scientist ever on the moon (he was a geologist at the time), and currently does fusion research at the Fusion Technology Institute at UW. The class began broadly with the big bang, then Mars, Earth and moon formations, then onto the rocket equation and space flight. But five or six weeks into it, our focus was clear. The criteria for a viable space program beyond the space station was this: It had to be technologically feasible now (or during the duration of the program). It had to generate profits (hopefully in the short-term, but more likely in the long-term). Investors had to be far-sighted (which meant most backing would come from the private sector). Finding a program which fits this criteria is difficult, to say the least. The only feasible solution our credible teaching staff focused on was this: The mining of Helium 3 in the lunar regolith (10-40+ ft. layer of debris settled on the entire surface of the moon from crater dust) for He3-He3 fusion here on Earth (which is efficient (up to +70%) and has no radioactive waste (see here)).

Basically, the given the conditions on the moon, Helium 3 gas has settled as shallow as 15 feet into the regolith making it easily available for mining. So one needs only to get there, establish a mining operation, then bring some He3 back, and set up a fusion facility to convert it. Easy. The main obstacle: In 1998, if the funding $215 billion was available, there would be no profits (or maybe it was returns, even) until the year 2015. That is long time. Plus, the adapting regulations to space (specifically, the moon) would make investors even less interested. But China has their government behind it, and that's how come they're actually taking steps to do this. Here's some statistics (or "propoganda", if you prefer):

-Mining 40 tonnes of He3 would provide the entire U.S. electricity consumption in 2000.

-There is 10 times more energy available in Helium-3 on the moon than in all the economically recoverable coal, oil, and antuarl gases on earth.

That's it for me. Read more about it at the links provided. Good night.


NOTE: Gene Cernan, the other recon astronaut on Apollo 17, would never admit this, claiming he was the last one on the moon. This is due to him and all the other Apollo astronauts being former military pilots and would never admit to a SCIENTIST being the last man on the moon!

According to a lecture on this subject by Dr. Gerald L. Kulcinski (University of Wisconsin-Madison) a working He-3 + He-3 fusion would change everything. 2He-3 ---> He-4 and 2 Protons!!

Just collect the protons and you got pure electricity, a nearly 100% conversion. No neutrons = no radiation! Hell you could have one running in the basement in theory. 40 Tonnes of He-3 (one cargo load on a space shuttle...like it could haul stuff from the moon) could produce enough power the entire US for one year.

Check out these slides.

The term is WORM...Write Once Read Many.

You've never heard of write-only memory? Signetics put out a datasheet on a WOM chip once.

During the Manhattan Project in 1944 and 1945, 26 men accidentally ingested plutonium in quantities that far exceeded what is now considered to be a lethal dose. Since there has been a consistent interest in the health effects of this brand new substance (first discovered by Glenn Seaborg's team at the University of California in 1940), these men were closely tracked for medical studies.As of 1987, more than four decades later, only four of the workers had died and only one death was caused by cancer. The expected number of deaths in a random sample of men the age of those in the group is 10. The expected number of deaths from cancer in a similar group is between two and three.

No need to compare plutonium with nerve gas. A better comparison would be caffeine. Yup, caffeine is more deadly than plutonium.

Ralph Nader made the claim that plutonium was the most toxic substance known. As the page linked to above says, "Dr. Bernard Cohen, went so far as to volunteer to eat as much plutonium as Ralph Nader would caffeine in an attempt to demonstrate the folly of the severe toxicity claims. Mr. Nader refused the challenge."

How far must the Hurst exponent deviate from 1/2 for you to consider something non-random? You need to be able to answer this to claim the ability to test for randomness.

Also: Consider a random walk generated by a step of a size generated by a pseudo-random number generator. This will appear to be made of independent incremental steps of a set variance. Thus the Hurst exponent will be indistinguishable from 1/2. However, this is an entirely deterministic system. So the Hurst exponent can be tricked, and my original observation that the determination of randomness is dependent on your model holds.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank you for introducing me to Hurst Exponents. I found a couple of interesting sites (here and ) because of this discussion. Quack!

there was a paper published in the early nineties which tested various standard unix command-line tools from a variety of vendors. They subjected the tools to horrendous stress and abuse, and found (to their suprise) that the GNU tools were the most reliable, with approximately a 1% failure rate in their bank of tests. The second best was HP, with about 8% failure rate, and everyone else was between 12-20%.

I'm guessing you're probably referring to Bart Miller's Fuzz Testing software. They did a survey in 1990 and a followup in 1995. They've even got the software available if you want to do the 2003 version!

I believe you're referring to the fuzz papers. They basically threw a bunch of random garbage at different commands and then watched for core dumps.

Maybe you already tried this, but: Try installing GSview for Windows. If it can't grok the file, try printing it once the Evil Way but sending it to the RedMon virtual printer driver - then you'll have a copy you can actually use.

Maybe you already tried this, but: Try installing GSview for Windows. If it can't grok the file, try printing it once the Evil Way but sending it to the RedMon virtual printer driver - then you'll have a copy you can actually use.

Uh, wtf?

Konfabulator is a runtime engine for scripting languages. It allows very functional applets, which Konfabulator calls widgets, to be written quickly without higher level language knowledge. It's $25 shareware.

All the widgets that come with it are useless to me.

The widgets that come with it are merely very simple examples! You can make a widget to do that task you've always wanted to do even if you have no programming knowledge. A widget that does about anything can be made with about a page of code.

OMG, the widgets are just eye candy that take up to much desk space!@ Plus, I have menu extras that do everything!@

1. Then make a widget that is whatever size YOU want it to be!

2. Make a widget that ISN'T eye candy (in your opinion), and displays the data however YOU want!

3. The widgets that come with Konfabulator are simple examples, to show the kinds of things that can be done, while also being visually pleasing.

4. The size issue has been discussed at length. The response seems to indicate the ability to actively scale any widget just didn't make it into 1.0. (I don't speak for the authors, but that was my interpretation.)

Konfabulator still isn't worth it to me...like I said, I have menu extras and docklings that do all this stuff!

If you can't see any purpose for Konfabulator, and can't think beyond applications you already have, and are stuck on the size of the default widgets, then you have utterly, totally missed the point of Konfabulator: to let people with very minimal programming language, i.e. almost anyone, make a small application that does whatever they want it to and looks however they want it to; the ability to actively obtain and display information by any scripted action, or to cause events to occur by any scripted action, all in the interface of your choosing.

The widget library is all clocks and newsreaders!@

Konfabulator has only been out for a week, and relatively few people know about it. There are already over 75 widgets. Yes, there are a lot of people who are just "skinning" the existing widgets, but this is the beginning. There are two people who can benefit from Konfabulator: those who are willing to write a little JavaScript, and those who are talented with artwork and graphics. There's nothing wrong with 20 beautiful clocks that people may want to choose from. Lots more widgets will continue to come.

OMG, they used Java??! Java is slow as HIZZELL on Mac OS X

1. Uh, this is JavaScript, not Java. They have nothing to do with one another.

2. As an aside, Java on Mac OS X is not slow.

This is Active Desktop all over again.

No, it's not, because this doesn't suck.

This is bullshit! They're charging you $25 so that YOU have to go out and do the work of making widgets!!

Look, you can decide if this thing is worth $25 to you or not. They're not charging $25 for the default widgets; they're charging $25 for an easy-to-use and innovative programming/scripting framework. The default widgets are JUST EXAMPLES. Also, we'd better warn Metrowerks to stop charging for CodeWarrior, after all, CodeWarrior is useless unless you actually make an application with it!

By the way, anyone reading this at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, we have a site license for Konfabulator. Email for info.

I still don't get it/think Konfabulator is usless/think it costs to much.

Well, no one's forcing you to use it. Sorry you don't see the value in being able to quickly whip up little mini-apps that can do pretty much anything, AND be visually pleasing!