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What the intent was is actually completely irrelevant in any law. The courts do not decide on intent.

That's not always the case. Where the law has a clear and obvious meaning, legislative intent does not enter into the discussion. However, when there is ambiguity, courts may turn to legislative intent to get an idea of what the law should mean. In Johnson v. United States, 529 U.S. 694, 723 (2000), the majority (six justices) opinion and one of two concurring opinions held that because a plain reading of the law resulted in an absurdity, the intent of Congress in passing the law must be examined. Thomas concurred in the result but disagreed with the need to use legislative intent, and Scalia disagreed with using legislative intent and with the Court's choice of definitions.

This has become less common in the last few decades, as discussed in this William and Mary Law Review article but it's still around at various levels. In general, the more conservative the judge or justice, the less likely they are to rely on legislative intent, while more liberal judges and justices are more likely to rely on it. However, use of it has decreased across the spectrum.

The whole point of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty was the states that had nukes would not use them against those who did not on the condition they did not make their own in the meantime and that the nuclear powers would disband their nuclear weapons by 1995. Well 1995 came around and the nuclear powers flipped the bird to the rest of the world and said 'SUCKERS!' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

And the rest of the world said "What the fuck ever", "sure thing boss," or "awesome! lets get some too!!!!" Nothing magical about the technology so it was only a matter of time before they caught up. And so now, having blown their chance to rid the world of nukes, America finds everyone else is getting them too, and eventually American troops will be on the receiving end of the weapons as they spread. http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/...

Now we have a butt-fucking crazy mo-fo, protected by China, with his hands on the most dangerous weapon ever created. This is what happens when you sit back and do nothing and wish the world won't change, even as it changes around you.

I'd call this a massive fucking foreign policy failure. Nicely played, America.

Trump is a purveyor of vile and ignorant ideas, but the more he speaks, the dumber he looks, and the more people are turned off by him. Yes, some Americans are sucked in by this. But will a majority elect him? I doubt it, but if they do, American voters will learn the hard way not to cut off their nose to spite their face.

I don't condone the hacking but in a perverse way its leveling the playing field. Trump is filthy rich and gives him a much louder voice than any of us. This is what SCOTUS' regretable citizens united decision overlooked. That said despite the hacking his voice remains very loud. Countering his views with intelligent debate and giving voters a genuine alternative at the elections is a better approach.

As for Anonymous, anonymity it is essential in a Democracy: "The US Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized rights to speak anonymously derived from the First Amendment" because it is the only way for the weak to criticize the powerful without being bludgeoned by them. https://www.eff.org/issues/ano...

For reference, here is the text of the 5th amendment:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

So, to be clear, you only appear to be interested in one portion of it, the self-incrimination clause.

The purpose of this amendment, as written, was to prevent the government from abusing the legal process in such a way that no private individual could reasonably expect to prevail. All of the things that are prohibited in this amendment, were things that had actually happened to the colonists or their recent ancestors in England, so the concern was a very real one.

Let's take a brief break, and let me get something out of the way: You say "It would be disturbing to think that we've built a whole legal edifice in the United States (and many other countries) on a "right" that has no rational basis." - But you haven't done the most basic of research to discover what that is. Here's a link (PDF warning) to a examination of the events that led to the existence of the self-incrimination clause of the 5th amendment: http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3341&context=wmlr Because you have said that links constitute a fail, (which is foolish of you), I will summarize:

In 15th and 16th century England, people were accused of a crime (Frequently it was that they were not strictly holding to the beliefs of Anglicism, which was interpreted as interpreted as treason against the King or Queen). When brought before a judicial authority, an oath was applied requiring that they answer all questions truthfully and completely - even if it incriminated themselves.

Then, one of two things would occur:

1) A fishing expedition, where questions would be asked until something was revealed that was a offence deemed worthy of punishment. (Damned if you do)
2) A refusal to take the oath. This was interpreted as directly denying the authority of the monarch (who had ostensibly given permission for such questions to be asked), and a charge of treason would be leveled, usually with a disproportionate punishment. (Damned if you don't)

So the end result was that the accused receives punishment. There was little possibility for a good outcome.

The 5th amendment exists to prevent the threat of disproportionate punishment for not answering questions from compelling a person to answer questions. It also prohibits the government from using a $5 wrench (http://xkcd.com/538/) on you - it follows directly from this amendment that the use of torture to compel information which could incriminate you is prohibited. (A prohibition against torture as a form of punishment is covered under the 8th amendment.)

---------------------

Now, to answer your questions:

The outcome in the world where we do have the Fifth Amendment, is clearly different from the outcome in a hypothetical world where the Fifth Amendment does not exist, even while holding all other assumptions constant.

You cannot be specifically punished (beyond the crime of which you have been found guilty) for refusing to testify. Without the 5th amendment, that would not be true.

The outcome in the "Fifth Amendment" world is better than the outcome in the "no Fifth Amendment" world:

Less use of $5 wrenches. Here's a test: If the outcome in a 5th amendment world is no better than the non-5th amendmen

Actually he is being treated pretty lightly compared to what would have happened in the past. He is guilty as hell and has already admitted it. Most governments would have either shot him in the head or hanged him by now. He is military, not a civilian, and should be treated differently.

" The imposition on servicemen of a stricter criminal law, with less due process than enjoyed by civilian defendants, is not the result of mere caprice or of any innate harshness on the part of senior military commanders. Rigid standards for the military, strictly enforced, are vital to the safety, even the continued existence, of a civil society. Soldiers undeterred by the realization that desertion and battlefield derelictions will bring prompt and drastic punishment may not provide effective defense against foreign enemies. Civil governments, whether democratic or not, are on unstable ground as long as cliques of military officers feel safe in plotting coups. Finally, few worse fates can befall a society than to be at the mercy of either hostile or "friendly" troops who are not deterred from violence by the expectation of swift trial and prompt punishment."

http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2769&context=wmlr

Anyway, you guys need to come join our wonderful 'write an X on paper' system. We get results the same night, too.

We had mechanical voting booths in the Bronx and NY in general, but then had to change to electronic ones to comply with federal law. (Stupid HAVA.)

Bloomberg called its first use on primary day 2010 a "royal screw-up". I've voted with both old and new machines, and while both seemed to work well, who knows what bits flipped (or were flipped) between feed and count. Personally I think the change was as necessary as the impending invasion of internet TLDs (i.e. not at all).

Incase you want some light reading about plea bargins: Justice in Plea Bargaining

To sum it up, even though the prosecutor may believe that some one committed a crime, they may not feel that they have the best evidence to prove that to the standards that the justice system requires.

As to your point of why people plead guilty when they believe they are innocent...I doubt that happens too often in criminal cases since you are provided with free legal representation if you need it. Also there is some thing called an Alford Plea which allows you to say "I plead guilty while still asserting my innocence because of the fact that I believe the prosecution's case is too strong for me to fight."

[citation-needed]

At my university, ~$1300 of undergraduate tuition/fees per year went toward (our hilariously awful) intercollegiate athletics program.

On the other hand, our intramural sports and fitness programs cost each student about $130, and had nearly a 100% participation rate.

Guess which one had its funding cut last year?

He's also the asshole that told all the public universities in Virginia they could no longer have policies of non-discrimination towards gays.

Stay classy.

Virginia's public universities were not amused.

What's with this current batch of activist DAs anyway? Are they being set up as scapegoats for all of the batshit-crazy schemes hatched by the majority party?

Virginia's DA has ruffled more than a few feathers during his short term in office. His first major action as DA was to send letters to the presidents of each of the state's universities, informing them that they were not allowed to not discriminate against their employees with regard to sexual orientation.

Although it was completely ambiguous as to how the universities were supposed to interpret this double-negative, most of their presidents were not amused.

New Jersey's former DA is now governor, and is (extensively) using his gubernatorial powers to exact some sort of vendetta he formed against the teacher's union during his time as DA. Although I'll give him credit for being one of the few conservatives to actually cut spending, his cuts will have virtually no effect on the wealthy (actually, they're getting a huge tax break), but will be devastating to the poor.

For a variety of reasons, my school tries to shoot for a 55/45 female-to-male split.

However, the applicant pool is split 65/35 (F/M)

In other words, admission for females is considerably more competitive than it is for males.

In my experiences as a student (I recently graduated), I witnessed virtually no anti-female sexism, but plenty of anti-male remarks, many of which were praised and even applauded. (I find it very difficult to take Women's Studies seriously as a field of study, particularly at the undergraduate level. Studying gender would be much more appropriate, and less prone to bias)

Don't get me started on the processes that take place if a male is accused of sexual assault. The male student is given virtually no opportunity to defend himself, even in light of a complete lack of physical evidence (the Duke lacrosse incident is a good example of this). We also received some of the most offensive "sexual assault prevention training" that I could possibly imagine.

At one point, we were asked to respond to a multiple-choice survey asking us if we'd sexually assaulted a woman A) 0-5 times, B)6-10 times, C)10-15 times, or D)15+ times. (Also, according to the survey and training program, rape apparently only occurs within the heteronormative ideal)

But, yes. In Mathematics and Physics (my field), you do have fewer females than males. Although there isolated incidents of legitimate sexism, I believe that the reasons are largely historical, and will disappear with time. As more females trickle into the field, the field becomes increasingly attractive to other females.

I believe much of the gender disparity in these fields stems from the fact that up until the past decade, Physics and Mathematics were dominated by the huge influx of professors who graduated immediately following WWII. Given that there were comparatively few hires in these departments until that generation began to retire, it's no surprise that that generation's cultural standards lingered around for much longer in those departments.

I say we just let the news industry go back to it's more honest past...

When was that? It must've been before 1770, because it only takes a moment to tell which side any of the period illustrations of the Boston Massacre were on. The engraving by Paul Revere is the only one you ever see anymore, but there were others published in loyalist papers that showed a handful of frightened, panicked british soldiers firing in helpless self defense as they are set upon by a huge mob of angry, rioting colonists. The media has never been honest. At best, it may have had a brief period where it pretended to be honest in a fairly convincing way.

My college allocates $1560 of each student's tuition per year toward intercollegiate athletics. This doesn't include athletic funding derived from other sources.

More alarmingly, our athletics programs are not terribly large, nor do they perform particularly well.

If anything, athletics are sucking us dry.

(To save you a Wikipedia search, we're a Div-1 public liberal arts college with 5,850 undergraduates.)

My college allocates $1560 of each student's tuition per year toward intercollegiate athletics. This doesn't include athletic funding derived from other sources.

More alarmingly, our athletics programs are not terribly large, nor do they perform particularly well.

If anything, athletics are sucking us dry.

(To save you a Wikipedia search, we're a Div-1 public liberal arts college with 5,850 undergraduates.)

Shameless plug:

William & Mary offers a very similar class as an undergraduate Physics elective that I just completed.

Mirroring the parent poster's comment: "It was very hard" (damn interesting though...)

Shameless plug:

William & Mary offers a very similar class as an undergraduate Physics elective that I just completed.

Mirroring the parent poster's comment: "It was very hard" (damn interesting though...)

These things are pretty trivial to write.

If you're paranoid enough that you don't trust rand(), writing your own random number generator isn't that hard (the hard part, determining good magic numbers, has already been done for you).

Unless it's a superconducting electromagnet, it's probably not all that strong, especially in comparison to the NMR equipment that's likely being used elsewhere in the building.

The largest Cyclotron ever built has a main magnet with a field strength of 0.46 T.

The magnets in your speakers have a field strength of about 1T. Your hard drive probably contains a 1.5T magnet as well.

An NMR (MRI) machine will range from anywhere from 1.5T to 7T (although experimental setups can go a good bit higher).

The strongest continuous magnetic field produced in a laboratory is 45T.

The strongest pulsed magnetic field ever created was by the Russians at 2,800T (they cheated and used explosives).

The reason the magnet is so "huge" is that the field needs to cover a large area.

Somewhat offtopic, but it would seem that universities are bowing to pressure from a lot more than the RIAA these days.

Earlier in the week, The College of William & Mary fired its president on ideological grounds, after he removed a religious symbol from a public building, and chose to uphold students' 1st Amendment rights in light of a controversial event. The ensuing conservative smear campaign was too much for The College to handle, and he was dismissed.

How is it that Universities, which have historically been strongholds for civil rights and liberties are now ceding so easily to external demands?

Many US Universities (Including MIT) are happy with grades from those exams. So happy that you are not asked to pay school fees if you can run or jump.

I don't know what MIT is doing, and I'm not contradicting you about wherever you went, but I don't think that's typical. At least at my alma mater, they don't care where you came from, but they want to see some sort of standardized test score. In fact, they tend to rely on them more heavily for foreign students, who typically don't get an opportunity to interview in-person, and who may be coming from a radically different educational background than a U.S. student. (Which means the admissions officer can't look at their transcript and really know what it means, in the same way someone very familiar with high schools in a particular region of the U.S. can.) Foreign students usually also have to take the TOEFL and get some minimum score.

I also distinctly recall that there was no financial aid offered to foreign students; it was a strictly cash-on-the-barrel-head operation (in some cases, literally *cash*, although I don't expect that happens anymore).

I think that the extent to which universities roll out the red carpet to foreigners is usually overestimated by many U.S. students; coming here to study ain't no picnic.

Picking a few schools more or less at random, I see that testing for non-U.S. students is de rigueur at William and Mary, Caltech (which offers some financial aid to foreign students, but admission is not need-blind), and Duke. They seem to vary a little on whether the TOEFL is required or just encouraged, but except for a short note on Duke's page about an exemption from the SAT for students coming from countries where it isn't offered, there's no acceptance of alternative national tests in lieu of the usual SAT/ACT. I think that's more an exception than a rule.

Another factor during this time was paternalism on the side of the slave owners. They felt they were doing the slaves a favor by providing them with a home, clothing and food when all they want in return is some labor. They thought that without the owners, slaves would not be able to care for themselves and so by looking after the slaves, the owners were being kind.

One URL. ...of many, but just an example:

http://www.wm.edu/news/?id=4027

In light of President George W. Bush's convincing win, Rapoport attempted to explain how the polling services could have been wrong.

"I'm not sure what happened. I don't think anybody is," Rapoport said. "But I think the Kerry voters were angry at Bush, and that anger made them more willing to respond to the surveys. Nationwide, refusals clearly were Republican."

...of many, but just an example:

http://www.wm.edu/news/?id=4027

Oh, wait, sorry about believing what you want to believe, I forgot.

I actually hope a Republican DOESN'T win in 2008 so we can have a 4 year reprieve from the incessant bitching about people who thing Bush/Republicans stole the election(s). (I didn't vote for Bush.)

... The majority of exit polls carried out in European countries over the past years have been failures. ...

Of the ten battleground states that the exit poll showed Kerry winning, he ultimately lost four -- states that, you could say, cost him the election. These were Ohio, Iowa, Nevada and New Mexico. But in none of those states was Kerry's lead outside the poll's margin of error. In other words, the poll results showed a race that was too close to call, and it is impossible to use such a poll to prove that fraud occurred.

http://www.mysterypollster.com/main/2004/12/have_t he_exit_p.html

etc.

I really am concerned when people think that there are active and massive (yet always unprovable) campaigns to literally rig and steal elections, and that it's only the GOP at that, and that they'll be even more pronounced in 2008. If all this is true, what happens if a Democratic candidate wins? The Republicans just didn't "cheat enough"? Or people were *so* fed up that even all of Diebold's hidden secrets to sway the numbers just weren't enough to flip it? Why would a Democratic victory be any more sound given how unbelievably insecure and corrupt it is claimed that the voting machines are, and indeed, that the system itself is? The answer is undeniable: it wouldn't be. And that's exactly why we need a trusted process with a paper trail.

I do agree that a paper trail solves a lot of this, if only to go a long way to restoring faith in the system. But I really am legitimately surprised and concerned - and I'm not just saying that - when people actually think wholeheartedly that there are current, ongoing, massive conspiracies, that somehow miraculously can't be firmly uncovered or proven, to steal elections, only the part of ONLY Republicans no less. Especially in an environment where the most secretive government agencies in the country can't even keep their own classified information, that FAR fewer people would necessarily know about, secret. If you care to discuss this further, feel free to IM or email me at any of my listed contact mechanisms.

...

At least we have a frame of reference on where you're coming from now.

(What about, oh, I don't know, Newsweek, US News, Time, The Economist, etc. etc. etc.? I suppose they're all run by the "corporate machine" and won't tackle "real news" like the 2004 election being stolen or other "news" you want to see?)

As to exit polls, see http://www.wm.edu/news/?id=4027 for an example. So, can you respond to that? See? It works both ways.

Also, even if every single thing Kennedy says in the Rolling Stone article is true, can you not comprehend the fact that he's writing to support a particular position and idea? Do you think he would present studies, news articles, reports, websites, and so on, that didn't support the position he was writing about? Do you think the article is unbiased? Do you think it's possible to fill an article with "references" and "proof" and still be one-sided? Would you feel equally about a Weekly Standard article by William Kristol about some topic, even if it contained its own "references"?

Considering the source is one of the most important aspects of recognizing potential bias, even if every factual item contained therein is true.

Yes, I read the article back when it was published. I'm speaking more to just the general idea that the election was stolen, and one of the more common things people tend to bring up (e.g., Diebold).

As far as exit polls, see http://www.wm.edu/news/?id=4027 ...that's just one of many, but there is no reason to believe that anything was stolen on the basis of exit polls either.

And as to black populations, as I said in another post, this is a county issue. Sure, there's a lot of problems in terms of some of these counties not having the resources, but the claims of the most disenfranchisement are, for whatever it's worth, often in solidly Democratic controlled counties, in terms of both voters and county government. And the legislation (like HAVA) to ensure equal access and begin mandating electronic voting machines was all either Democratic or bipartisan.

The algorithm may fair poorly when given only 2 or 3 threads in parallel or with less than say 10000 things that need to be done, but really that isn't much of a parallel problem at all.

Bingo. It has to do with the granularity of parallelism. You can take a look at this paper written by people I work with, Multigrain Parallel Delaunay Mesh Generation: Challenges and Opportunities for Multithreaded Architectures. But understanding why is simple: if the cost of communication overwhelms the gain from doing the computation in parallel, then it doesn't scale.

Okay. This is the first public school in Indiana to require a laptop. Lots of schools have required students to own a laptop for a long time. I know that undergrad business programs have required it for 4 or 5 years now.

The public university I attend will begin to require incoming freshmen to own a laptop starting next fall. Their primary reason for this is that according to a survey, over 99% of students at the school own a computer of some sort, over 90% of which used laptops. The remaining 1 percent presumably could not afford a computer.

Because virtually all administrative tasks (registration, housing selection, turning in papers, etc.) occur via an online system, and that many reserarch assignments are much easeier via th einternet, students who do not own a computer are placed at a significant disadvantage. If students are not required to own a laptop, the school is not legally allowed to provide them with financial assistance to purchase one. I'm not sure how this works for private schools, but that's the way it goes for public schools. If your family is making just under $40,000 per year, purchasing a $2000 computer is simply not an option, even if you're being granted reduced tuition.

And of course, IT's job gets much easier, as everyone's on a standardized platform, and support costs are usually subsidized by the hardware vendor.

Okay. This is the first public school in Indiana to require a laptop. Lots of schools have required students to own a laptop for a long time. I know that undergrad business programs have required it for 4 or 5 years now.

The public university I attend will begin to require incoming freshmen to own a laptop starting next fall. Their primary reason for this is that according to a survey, over 99% of students at the school own a computer of some sort, over 90% of which used laptops. The remaining 1 percent presumably could not afford a computer.

Because virtually all administrative tasks (registration, housing selection, turning in papers, etc.) occur via an online system, and that many reserarch assignments are much easeier via th einternet, students who do not own a computer are placed at a significant disadvantage. If students are not required to own a laptop, the school is not legally allowed to provide them with financial assistance to purchase one. I'm not sure how this works for private schools, but that's the way it goes for public schools. If your family is making just under $40,000 per year, purchasing a $2000 computer is simply not an option, even if you're being granted reduced tuition.

And of course, IT's job gets much easier, as everyone's on a standardized platform, and support costs are usually subsidized by the hardware vendor.

This is a trend. My state college has instituted a similar program, to be instituted fall of 2006.

I don't understand it myself. It seems like most students who sit in class with laptops play games more than anything else.

The investigative newspaper I work for will be printing an article soon after break about it. It seems like IT just wants to limit their support tickets to Thinkpads. It's actually a pretty shitty program in that respect too--you essentially have to have a Thinkpad.

A notebook computer requirement is in effect for students entering the College of William and Mary in the fall of 2006. Through the myNotebook program, incoming students may purchase a ThinkPad notebook computer ensuring access to the computer technology which is essential for academic success. ThinkPads purchased through this program will connect seamlessly to the W&M network, include four-year warranty and accidental damage coverage, and be eligible for on-campus service and repair.

Yikes.

This is a trend. My state college has instituted a similar program, to be instituted fall of 2006.

I don't understand it myself. It seems like most students who sit in class with laptops play games more than anything else.

The investigative newspaper I work for will be printing an article soon after break about it. It seems like IT just wants to limit their support tickets to Thinkpads. It's actually a pretty shitty program in that respect too--you essentially have to have a Thinkpad.

A notebook computer requirement is in effect for students entering the College of William and Mary in the fall of 2006. Through the myNotebook program, incoming students may purchase a ThinkPad notebook computer ensuring access to the computer technology which is essential for academic success. ThinkPads purchased through this program will connect seamlessly to the W&M network, include four-year warranty and accidental damage coverage, and be eligible for on-campus service and repair.

Yikes.

I actually noted that it was a social networking service, if you read the summary.

I *am* an public school bitch through and through.

Naked pictures may be banned, but what about drug or alcohol related groups--or photos that show you indulging?

There isn't much in joining a group with a controversial name? Did you not RTFA? A Fisher College sophomore was expelled for essentially that!

As for what you say on Slashdot...

--Petey

Not totally accurate. One of the links I posted above details that one of the colleges considering disciplinary action for students is the University of Missouri--a public school.

However, that's only for illegal activity. What are the parameters for prosecution for underage drinking. I mean, Facebook could be a goldmine for authorities.

I know teachers at my college have spoken out against this practice. I wonder how far they'd go if it was their ass on the line, though...

--Petey

Harvard is not a tech/trade school. Their graduates don't seem to have any problems finding jobs in the real world.

There is a definite trend where employers are looking to hire people with a broader educational background. They may not start the job with all the necessary skills, but will definitely be able to learn those skills rapidly, and adapt to whatever is thrown at them.

Alas, I do not attend harvard, but am currently attending a similarly-minded public institution, and can already see how this applies. Rather than being enrolled in exclusively compsci/physics/engineering courses, I'm taking a smattering of courses this semester, each from a different department. Although I have no intent to become a psychologist, I can easily see how what I'm learning in the class would apply to UI design. The english course I'm taking certainly isn't going to help me write better code, but will certainly help me document that code.

I believe that all but one or two of our CS courses are predominately theory-based. Although useful, learning the language itself is peripheral to the overall theory.

On a similar note, Jon Stweart gave a commencement speech at his alma mater -- funny to point out that he was offended by the honarary doctorate they gave him.

But, of course, in the typical Jon Stewart fashion, it's also funny as hell. A good read.

1. the relationships between TTLs and DNS record update frequencies for different kinds of domains and different kinds of records;

2. the relationships between TTLs and freshness of cached records.
More than 15000 domain names and around 9000 DNS caches were examed in the first set and second set of experiments. Our experiments confirmed your concern in the effectiveness of TTL-based solution. Based on the measurements, we further proposed a new protocol DNSCUP (DNS Cache Update Protocol) to address this issue.
You can find more information at: http://www.cs.wm.edu/~xinchen/DNScup.html

I quote:

"The National Science Foundation (NSF), suffering its first budget cut in years, will operate at 1.9% below FY 04 spending levels. The Foundation is funded at $5.47 billion, $105 million below last year and $232 million below the FY 05 request.

The budget cut affects the two major NSF accounts: Research & Related Activities (R&RA) and Education and Human Resources (EHR). The R&RA Account, which funds NSF's core research directorates and programs, falls to $4,220.56, $30.8 million (0.7%) below FY 04 funding levels and $200.95 million below the FY 05 request level. Funding decisions by directorate and program will be left to the discretion of NSF, pending Congressional approval. The EHR Account drops $97.56 million, or 10.4%, below FY 04 spending levels to $841.4 million."

• R, including several add-on packages (such as tseries, RODBC, coda, mcmcpack, gtkdevice, rgtk, rquantlib, qtl, dbi, rmysql), out-of-the box support for the powerful ESS modes for XEmacs as well as the Ggobi visualisation program;
• A complete teTeX, TeX, and LaTeX setup for scientific publishing, along with TeXmacs and LyX for wysiwyg editing;
• Perl and Python with loads of add-ons, plus ruby, tcl, Lua, and Scientific and Numeric Python;
• The Emacs and Vim editors, as well as Gnumeric, kate, Koffice, jed, joe, nedit and zile;
• Octave, with add-on packages octave-forge, octave-sp, octave-epstk, and matwrap;
• Computer-algebra systems Maxima, Pari/GP, GAP, GiNaC and YaCaS;
• the QuantLib quantitative finance library including its Python interface;
• GSL, the Gnu Scientific Library (GSL) including example binaries;
• The GNU compiler suite comprising gcc, g77, g++ compilers;
• the OpenDX, Plotmtv, and Mayavi data visualisation systems;
• it includes apcalc,aribas,autoclass,

I recommend looking into the SINAPSE Project (http://www.sinapse.org). SINAPSE is a free, open-source student community tool (we like to call it a nexus, not a portal). It's written in PHP (on SourceForge - http://sourceforge.net/projects/sinapse), and it's a strict CMS system (no open editing - each app has controlled input and output). It's Developed at University of Oklahoma (go Sooners!) and run by students there.

You can see it in action at OU (The Sooner Information Network - http://sin.ou.edu), Baylor (Baylor Information Network - http://bin.baylor.edu), Purdue (HAIL - http://hail.purdue.edu), Southern Miss (The Varsity - http://thevarsity.usm.edu), California University of Pennsylvania (CalYou - http://calyou.cup.edu), SW OK State U (LIFE - http://life.swosu.edu), and Eastern VA Medical School (http://student.evms.edu)). There's also a similar site at William and Mary (SIN - http://sin.wm.edu) that's not running SINAPSE, but should be.

SINAPSE Consulting (http://www.sinapseconsulting.com) also makes some for-pay add-ons like LegiSlate which allows SGA's to do their Legislative processes online (voting, tracking, attendance, etc.) It's in action at OU (http://congress.ou.edu), OK State (http://www.osusga.com), Central Arkansas (http://uca.mysga.com), and very soon at Rhode Island, Illinois Institute of Tech, and U Texas - Arlington (and possibly Miami).

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."

As for exit polls, often brought up in the context of electronic voting, here is one expert's view:

I think the important thing about exit polls is they show us why people won and the dynamics of the race. The mistake most people make is they see polls as a horse-race, but they are actually the explanation of what happened.

The polls may have been wrong about who won, but they were right about explaining why people voted the way they did. If you don't have polls, you allow the elites and candidates to interpret the elections in their own interest. Polls, in many ways, are crucial to democracy.

If you look at previous elections, you can see that exit polls are always different the day after the election. Exit polls ultimately are always right, though they are never right originally. This is because polls have to be weighted with the actual vote to be completely accurate. The vote, of course, can't be factored in until the election is completed. If the exit polls are not "corrected" in this way, then the analysis of the election will always be flawed. So after the polls have closed, exit poll

Here's yet another person who is an expert in political polling and exit polls, talking about why the polls were wrong (hint: it's not because electronic voting machines were rigged):

http://www.wm.edu/news/?id=4027

Notable quote:

I think the important thing about exit polls is they show us why people won and the dynamics of the race. The mistake most people make is they see polls as a horse-race, but they are actually the explanation of what happened.

The polls may have been wrong about who won, but they were right about explaining why people voted the way they did. If you don't have polls, you allow the elites and candidates to interpret the elections in their own interest. Polls, in many ways, are crucial to democracy.

If you look at previous elections, you can see that exit polls are always different the day after the election. Exit polls ultimately are always right, though they are never right originally. This is because polls have to be weighted with the actual vote to be completely accurate. The vote, of course, can't be factored in until the election is completed. If the exit polls are not "corrected" in this way, then the analysis of the election will always be flawed. So after the polls have closed, exit polls are always weighted for demographics and for the actual votes.

Don't you think that a person like this, and all the other veteran people who have devoted their lives to politics and elections, even SUSPECTED that there might be fraud on a scale that "handed" someone an election, that they have access to all sorts of connections, resources, and tools far beyond the lame (sometimes fabricated) charts (with no attribution whatsoever) that are being emailed around supposedly "proving" that exit polls only didn't match in states that use e-voting?

The reason why the mainstream press isn't talking about it isn't because they "don't want to touch it", or that they haven't picked up on it. It's just not true.

Stop focusing on really, really stupid comments that Diebold's CEO made in the capacity of a GOP campaigner (as if he can magically have a 13,000 person company rig elections in 88 counties and thousands of polling places around the states, on machines over which they have no control), and instead focus on what's important, which is ensuring that as the Help America Vote Act moves forward, and more and more electronic machines get installed everywhere in an effort to make voting fair and consistent for every American citizen, that we have a permanent voter-verified paper trail associated with every individial vote in every election. The e-voting manufacturers already have this capability. All we have to do is make it an umbrella federal law that ALL municipalities implement such technology, whether they want to or not.

Here's yet another person who is an expert in political polling and exit polls, talking about why the polls were wrong (hint: it's not because electronic voting machines were rigged):

http://www.wm.edu/news/?id=4027

Notable quote:

I think the important thing about exit polls is they show us why people won and the dynamics of the race. The mistake most people make is they see polls as a horse-race, but they are actually the explanation of what happened.

The polls may have been wrong about who won, but they were right about explaining why people voted the way they did. If you don't have polls, you allow the elites and candidates to interpret the elections in their own interest. Polls, in many ways, are crucial to democracy.

If you look at previous elections, you can see that exit polls are always different the day after the election. Exit polls ultimately are always right, though they are never right originally. This is because polls have to be weighted with the actual vote to be completely accurate. The vote, of course, can't be factored in until the election is completed. If the exit polls are not "corrected" in this way, then the analysis of the election will always be flawed. So after the polls have closed, exit polls are always weighted for demographics and for the actual votes.

Don't you think that a person like this, and all the other veteran people who have devoted their lives to politics and elections, even SUSPECTED that there might be fraud on a scale that "handed" someone an election, that they have access to all sorts of connections, resources, and tools far beyond the lame (sometimes fabricated) charts (with no attribution whatsoever) that are being emailed around supposedly "proving" that exit polls only didn't match in states that use e-voting?

The reason why the mainstream press isn't talking about it isn't because they "don't want to touch it", or that they haven't picked up on it. It's just not true.

Stop focusing on really, really stupid comments that Diebold's CEO made in the capacity of a GOP campaigner (as if he can magically have a 13,000 person company rig elections in 88 counties and thousands of polling places around the states, on machines over which they have no control), and instead focus on what's important, which is ensuring that as the Help America Vote Act moves forward, and more and more electronic machines get installed everywhere in an effort to make voting fair and consistent for every American citizen, that we have a permanent voter-verified paper trail associated with every individial vote in every election. The e-voting manufacturers already have this capability. All we have to do is make it an umbrella federal law that ALL municipalities implement such technology, whether they want to or not.

Watch The Daily Show.

Honestly, it's perhaps the best show on television. You may consider--quite rightly--Comedy Central to be a mind-numbing experience, but Jon Stewart asks some of the most insightful, hard-hitting questions I've ever heard on television. Read his commencement speech.

As an undergrad, I went to Virginia Tech. Now I'm a grad student (and a TA) at William & Mary. All of my courses at Tech were taught by full instructors or professors. I had two math classes taught by advanced grad students (they were Ph.D. candidates at that point). Here at W&M, the only course I know of that has been taught by a TA is the intro to CS for non-majors course (again, Ph.D. candidate).

Tech is a big university; W&M is a small one. I would have been shocked to walk into a junior level CS course at Tech and see a grad student teaching it. At that point, in fact, instructors didn't teach the courses anymore, only professors. Here at W&M, it's almost entirely professors from beginning to end.

Where did you go?

Are you in Hampton Roads (Southeastern Virginia)?

I was for four years...

Of course, the real action is in Southside Virginia. I wonder if there's a LUG there.... ;-)

You realize umlauts in domain names will only bring about another wave of hair metal bands, don't you?

Billy and the Boingers? I want the return of Deathtongue(with umlaut).

Palladium is a software solution that uses parts of the "palladium hardware" you mention. In reality, the hardware is a different implementation all together and has very little to do with Microsoft's Palladium. Linux will run just fine on hardware that's TCSA aware.

This "megahertz myth" crap was around when I had a 33 MHz 68040 Performa 640, and my 486/DX2 66 blew the shit out of it.

Therefore, with my minimum sample size of 2 machines, I can deduce that all processors can be compared with MHz alone. Further, all architectures perform exactly the same, MHz for MHz across the board for similar instructions and they all scale in a linear fashion regardless of the ratio of core speed to main memory speed or other similar limitations. There is also no such thing as this "bottleneck" crap. Bottlenecks r what yer get when your old Chev brakes down on tha intastate and bloks a lane.

PS, this is sarcasm.

NASA did a study to find the best cost/performance for their Fortran number crunching.

AltiVec is a beast. A 500MHz G4 using AltiVec ran 6.9 times faster than a P3 800 and 3.7 times faster than a 500MHz Alpha 21264. The G4 worked out to be 5.3 times cheaper per FLOP than the P3 and 8.4 times cheaper than the Alpha. Although there is no mention of Intels SIMD within this documents and the FORTRAN compilers at the time of the documents writing were very limited in their abilities to vectorize FORTRAN code to make better use of the AltiVec.

Here is a 1GHz G4 performing up to 10 times faster than a 2GHz P4 while querying a DNA database and 2 times faster at their fastest measured rates.

Saying that the MHz Myth is a Myth, based on a single experience is really idiotic. Anyone who has at least failed the first semester of a CS course would know that different architectures cannot be judged on MHz alone. Hell, even comparing different revisions of the same architecture family cannot be judged on MHz alone (a 33MHz 486DX is much faster than a 33MHz 386 for example, ignoring floating point of course). Wanna talk about CISC vs RISC vs CISC-wrapped-around-RISC?

Here are some G3's (as low as 333MHz) and a 450MHz G4 running faster than a P3 500MHz. There are plenty of graphs and numbers here which might put a fright into you Hrothgar.