I have my VNC server set to only accept connections from localhost (and it's firewalled, too), so that only connections which are forwarded and encrypted via SSH wind up being accepted. This way I get secure remote access, the VNC protocol tends to be less bandwidth-intensive than raw X, and it preserves my session in case I get disconnected.
Don't get me wrong, an X server on Android is a cool technical achievement, but existing SSH and VNC clients for Android are a more practical and secure way of accessing your workstations/servers on the go.
I had the pleasure of meeting the champion from spellbound, Nupur Lala, when we were both undergraduates at the University of Michigan. We became great friends and, along with another friend, shared an apartment our senior year. Although she is undoubtedly a genius, Nupur is far from the stereotype of the over-achieving Indian kid. She loves her family and is proud of her heritage, and her parents are likewise very proud of her. Her parents didn't, however, force her into academic competition or drill her with thousands of words per day. They did instill in her a love of learning and gave her a great deal of gentle encouragement when she showed a passion for language.
I think Nupur's example shows that very high-achieving young people, Indian or otherwise, need not be humorless robots driven by overbearing parents. She's a fun-loving, friendly, and extroverted woman who has the support of an engaged family that values academics without pushing too hard. She attended public schools her whole life (on through UM, go wolverines!) and likewise found teachers and peers who inspired her to further develop her talents.
In the end, what I'm driving at is that my experience with an Indian spelling bee champion contradicts a lot of stereotypes about Indians and Indian families, as well as those about high-achieving students. In her case, triumph is all about passion, inspiration, and love, not ethnicity.
I saw District 9 this Friday, and I have to agree that it was a great piece of cinematic sci-fi: an allegory for apartheid with a very human unlikely hero and some great popcorn-fodder action sequences. I'd like to remind everyone, though, that it still has some competition for year's best sci-fi movie in the form of Moon, which is a drama of isolation, loneliness, and ethics set in the stark, cold beauty of space, very reminiscent of 2001. While it doesn't match the action of D-9, it makes up for it with its emotional intensity and thoughtfulness. I highly recommend any Slashdot movie fans out there see both.
There's a lot to be said for libraries. Bradbury may not like it, but these days one of the most vital things libraries do is provide free Internet access to the poor, as well as the elderly and disabled who may require the assistance of a librarian.
Of course, it would be lovely if we could dispense with the entire status quo wherein mobile carriers subsidize the cost of phones to lock people in to long-term contracts. I'd gladly pay more for unlocked smartphones if it meant I could pay less for service (you'd better believe the cost of all those handsets is built into your bill) and switch at-will.
Now, it's true that you can buy some unlocked phones today, but it's far from the ideal situation for several reasons: 1. The price of unlocked phones is substantially above the wholesale price which phones are sold to the carriers for (I don't expect a volume discount like they get, but a few hundred dollars markup is a bit steep). 2. Some phones simply aren't available unlocked without going to the grey market, including the iPhone. That's because a lot of the most appealing phones (I'm debating an iPhone 3GS or an HTC Magic for my next) are offered as "exclusives" for a single carrier. That means that, in my region, if I want a particular phone, I'm stuck with AT&T or T-Mobile, respectively, for service. 3. No price break on service. If you bring your own phone to play, you're still paying the extra that would cover the cost of a carrier-provided phone, which in this case is pure extra profit for the carrier.
Now, just imagine if a similar situation existed with TVs: you only get a cool new TV when you sign up for an extended cable or satellite contract, and you're then locked into using that TV with that provider. You'd also have to consider the tradeoff between the features you want in a TV and the coverage and quality of service you get. In other words, it would be an intolerable, fragmented mess.
But the service providers love vendor lock-in, and the phone manufacturers are only to happy to collude with them. It would probably take regulatory action to cut this particular knot. It's not impossible (remember when the FCC finally forced the mobile carriers to implement cell number portability, then they all advertised it as a great new feature), but I certainly wouldn't hold my breath for it.
This story actually coincides with an interesting story that ran on NPR yesterday about several experimental new transplant techniques that might help future transplant patients avoid having to take anti-rejection drugs, as well.
In particular, the article tells the story of one 28-year-old woman who received a kidney transplant from her mother, who was only a partial match. Prior to the kidney transplant, she also received a partial bone marrow transplant from her mother. The bone marrow transplant essentially caused the patient's immune system to become a "blend" of her own and her mother's, producing T-cells that would attack bacterial and viral antigens just like normal, but leave the transplanted kidney alone.
The results are pretty impressive. The patient originally had to take anti-rejection drugs after her first kidney transplant at age 13, and they caused a host of miserable side effects. After her more recent transplant, however, she's been off the drugs for five years and even ran 2 marathons last year (how's that for healthy?).
Unfortunately, the new technique only works for organs that you intentionally plan on transplanting ahead of time, since the bone marrow has to be transplanted first in a separate surgery. That means that organ donors who die and donate hearts, livers, etc. aren't really an option. But for a transplant from a living donor, this is a very promising new technique (some of the researchers even think that it could eventually make transplants from animals possible).
It strikes me that a lot of the work that has gone into optimizing databases in the past (especially storage, index structure, and buffer management) works on the assumption that the database will be stored to a hard drive, which is way slower than main memory and has variable access times depending on the relative position of the disk head and the required data.
Nowadays there's a lot of large solid-state flash drives coming out, and as time goes on we can expect to see sizes increase and costs decrease. For small-to-medium size databases, it's now reasonable to keep the whole database on, say, one of the new 64GB memory drives. The use of drives which have a fixed, cheap cost for random access seems to invalidate and simplify a lot of the assumptions made about conventional back-end data storage, and opens up possibilities for new types of optimization (binary tree indexes instead of B+ trees, more use of indirection).
I'm wondering what you see as some of the biggest opportunities for memory-resident databases, and what work is going into MySQL to take advantage of the changes that are happening in storage.
Noticing a tag about the name "Myanmar", I thought I'd explain the controversy over the country's name. The official name of Burma was changed to Myanmar by the ruling military junta. Since the pro-democracy movement doesn't recognize the legitimacy of military rule, they and their supporters around the world continue to use the name Burma.
Sorry, Jack, but parody is protected speech here, and by making very public and very inflamatory comments every chance you get, you've made yourself a ripe target for parody. But even other media-whoring lawyers have managed to take it in stride in the past (see the late Johnny Cochrane), and have maybe even been a little flattered that they are culturally relevant enough to be parodied.
In general, you've made statements and filed lawsuits that show that you are either A: woefully ignorant of the law, or B: intentionally misrepresenting the law for your own benefit. Either way, you are an extremely shitty lawyer.
P.S. Don't try to sue me for libel. The preceding is a statement of fact.
From the article itself, it appears that, since acquiring uTorrent, a closed-source C++ BitTorrent client for Windows, Bittorrent, inc. has decided to keep it closed source, and also to make it the new "mainline" BitTorrent. The old "mainline" client, which is open-source, written in Python (with wx for the graphics) and is generally cross-platform, last I checked, will continue to be maintained as a "reference implementation", but might not always track the latest protocol updates to uTorrent. Full documentation on the protocol will apparently come with an "SDK license", which they claim is "easy to get".
Well, first of all they ARE doing a few things that contradict the spirit of free software. Their main client app will be closed source, and although the reference implementation will apparently continue to be free, protocol docs require you to acquire a special license. A few years ago, these moves would have tightened Bittorrent inc's grip on the world of bt clients in general.
Now, however, the landscape is different. I can't produce statistics for all torrent users in general, but when I take a look at my peers in my preferred client, KTorrent, there seems to be a near dead-heat for most popular client between uTorrent and Azureus (also open source), with certain alternative clients like Transmission, Bitrocket, and KTorrent making frequent appearances, as well (and all 3 of those examples? also open source). Although uTorrent certainly remains a big player, it doesn't confer upon BitTorrent, inc. the ability to dictate major compatibility-breaking protocol changes by fiat. The fact that the main implementation of BT was open source to start basically stops things from being ruined by more restrictive licensing now.
Case in point: in 2001, I was a competitor at the International Science and Engineering Fair. One of the events for attendees featured a performance by the band Sugar Ray and was MCed by Kennedy. He told a few jokes that we'd all already heard on Comedy Central and generally didn't seem to know how to play to a crowd of nerdy teenagers (and incidentally, the opening band was far better than Sugar Ray, but that's really no surprise).
I'm an eldest child, but some things are still beyond me... for instance, if my dad's a youngest child, and my mom's a youngest child, how come I'm not a youngest child?
Well, YouTube videos are delivered at 320x240 resolution, whereas the iPhone has a 480x320 display to work with... of course, much of the source material uploaded to YouTube may be in a lower resolution anyway, since the content authors may not have anticipated having higher resolutions available for their videos later on.
Even at the same resolution and bitrate, however, H.264 is a very high-quality codec and is bound to have higher video quality with less blurring and blocking than Flash Video. The reason YouTube uses flash is that it's loaded on damn near every desktop computer and doesn't require spawning a separate player, installing decoders, etc. But it actually makes sense when targeting a fixed platform like the iPhone or AppleTV to take advantage of the better video formats that are available.
Also, I'd personally love it if YouTube let me set an option in my profile to view H.264 videos as I'm browsing the website. Keep the videos in flash by default, but let people who know they can view embedded H.264 take advantage of it.
We'll probably just see the same thing that we did with the first XBox: a modchip with an external switch connected that can tell it to disable itself and let the original drive firmware load. Of course, setting it up probably won't be as easy as it was in the XBox 1 (which had a nice little LPC port that you could get the system to load a different BIOS from by just shorting one solder point to ground)... it may be necessary to actually remove the firmware ROM chips from the drive and wire in a new switched bank with copies of both the original and the modified firmware, but it certainly seems doable.
Another issue that slightly complicates things is the fact that the 360 signs you in to XBox live by default when you have an active network connection, so modders will have to be careful to unplug their ethernet cables when the switch is turned on. One vulnerability remains, though, and that is that Microsoft may choose to push out a dashboard update which checks for the drive's original firmware on EVERY bootup, and remembers to tattle to XBox live as soon as you sign on. Microsoft could choose to store this data on the hard drive/memory card (in which case it could be defeated by having a pair of storage devices, one for modded and unmodded use), or they could put it in the 360's internal flash storage, where the dashboard and system software itself is stored (no easy solution for that one, but I don't know enough about the 360's internals to know if the internal storage is flash RAM, which makes this easy, or an EEPROM, which would seem to require that the dashboard reflash itself with the new variable set every time that happens).
Anyway, it does seem that it is possible to defeat this scheme. I'd also like to note that Microsoft's stated reason for the update is bullshit, since even with the drive's firmware flashed, the 360 will still only load Microsoft-signed executables (meaning that it can play backups of original games, but is useless for homebrew and modified games). They might as well just come out and say that it's a measure to defeat privacy, since they've locked out homebrew programs anyway (with the exception of their XNA creator's club program, which lets you run only games written for their limited API, and only in C#, instead of giving access to the full-on devkit that the pros use). Couching it in pro-gamer language about defeating cheaters is disingenuous.
I was pretty worried about that life imprisonment clause... then I realized that even if Alberto Gonzales gets it in his head to try me, he'll just forget about it 30 seconds later.
Unfortunately I don't know of any particular studies off the top of my head, but anecdotal evidence certainly suggests that multiple monitors (after perhaps a very brief period of adjustment) certainly make you more productive. Granted, the increased productivity is probably equivalent to what you would get with one very large, high-res widescreen monitor, but usually a pair of SXGA monitors cost a fair bit less than a big 1080p screen.
Personally, I like to keep my IDE open on one display, while I run a build of the app I'm working on and my debugger on the other (probably with Firefox browsing some documentation, too). My Dad, who works in an office for an auto company, might run PowerPoint on one screen (yeah, I know, that's the business world for you) while he references messages in his mail/groupware client on the other. My mom, who's a librarian, can keep the circulation system on one display with a browser she uses to help deal with reference questions on the other. Alright, neither of my parents' employers gave them multiple desktops, but they'd both certainly prefer to have them.
Basically, if you do any kind of multitasking, multiple displays will help. You can see more of your workspace at a time, you don't waste time switching between apps, and its especially time-saving if you're working on something in one window that requires information from another beyond a simple copy/paste. The only caveat is that people might use some of the extra real-estate to keep timewasters like an IM client open, but a worker with reasonable self-discipline will certainly increase their productivity.
This same issue came up on a recent episode of NPR's Science Friday (look towards the right side of the page for an mp3 download link). Essentially, biologists were being encouraged by well-meaning people at the government agencies who sponsor them to avoid the word "evolution" so that their research remains uncontroversial and doesn't run afoul of any anti-science policy makers.
This latest article raises a good point, though. By trying to cloak discussion of evolution in other terms, anyone with a grasp of basic evolutionary biology is able to understand what is meant and how the process of natural selection applies to the problem at hand. Politicians and non-scientific observers not familiar with biology, however, don't see that evolution is explicitly referenced and so they don't raise a ruckus over it.
The problem is that this can help feed the general lack of understanding about evolution that creationists exploit. On the one hand, because most schools don't teach a rigorous curriculum on evolutionary biology, creationists can argue pseudo-scientific fallacies (e.g. that the second law of thermodynamics rules out evolution of increasingly complex species. Incidentally, this is false because the second law only applies to closed systems, and Earth's ecosystem continuously receives new energy from the Sun's light and heat). Additionally, because the fact that natural selection, as the basic organizing principle which has guided research in biology for over a century, isn't emphasized in new research reports that come out, many people don't realize that the huge advances we've made in our understanding of life on Earth over the past century, and the great medical breakthroughs that have emerged, nay, evolved from that understanding would not have been possible if we didn't understand evolution. Indeed, many things that we know to be true about biology simply couldn't be true if evolution weren't at work. That's not to say that it's a perfect theory, but like many good scientific theories it is revised and its precision is sharpened as new evidence becomes available (for example, we now know about cycles of punctuated equilibrium in the fossil record, and about patterns in human and other animal genomes, which Darwin didn't know about), in the same way that Einstein's relativity built on and refined Newton's laws of motion.
As loathe as many scientists are to do anything with public relations, I think that we have to do a better job of emphasizing the basic scientific theories behind today's research. So I encourage researchers out there to not be scared of using the word evolution, as it will hopefully contribute to people understanding that it is pervasively important to biology.
Hi Scott. It's true that I ask a lot of questions that may be tangentially related to the topic at hand, and I do so because I'm curious and I want to know the answer. If I come across as arrogant I sincerely apologize, but I hope that despite any ill will you have for me you will take my word that I ask questions for my own intellectual edification as a student. If I thought I "knew it all" already, I wouldn't have asked (come to that, I wouldn't have gone to college in the first place). If a professor doesn't feel like answering my question right away (which I'm sure you've seen happen on a couple of occasions), they'll defer me to the end of class or to office hours, which is fine, as I'd certainly not want to waste people's time on something that isn't likely to be useful to them.
I certainly hope that I'm not well-disliked. If you dislike me, then so be it, but I know that it's more than likely because of a highly personal matter between us (which is certainly no business of the slashdot crowd) than because of our interaction as classmates. I've always hoped that we could be civil and professional with each other in a classroom setting and live our separate lives elsewhere. I assure you that I have my own personal reasons to dislike you, but in any professional environment, whether it's the Academy or Industry, you've got to do your best to be professional and get along with people. That's the highest expectation and the minimum standard that I hold for our relationship.
And a bit of advice to the poster: don't be scared to ask questions when you get to college. As I mentioned in my initial post, the main differentiating factor in the quality of education that you will now receive is the initiative you yourself take to learn. Don't be afraid of sounding too dumb or, paradoxically, too smart and coming off as arrogant. One thing I've learned at college is that there will always be people who find a reason to dislike you, but if you treat people with kindness and decency you'll have plenty of friends just the same.
A few years ago, I was in a situation very similar to yours. I went to a very good public school, had excellent grades and an impressive palette of extracurriculars. I applied to the same schools that you mentioned. Ultimately, I was accepted at Carnegie Mellon and Caltech, and turned down by MIT. In the end, I chose to go to the University of Michigan, and I don't regret the choice at all.
To be quite honest, going to any high-end research university is going to provide you with great opportunities for learning and getting involved in research. Carnegie Mellon is a fantastic school, and although you might think MIT or Caltech are more "prestigious", people in the industry you're hoping to enter know that CMU has absolutely world-class programs in CS and EE. I might also add that CMU is more of a "general" school than a tech school which specializes in science and engineering. Chances are that you will have more of an opportunity to nurture your interests outside of EE by taking other classes if you choose to go to CMU.
Of course, I don't mean to slight MIT and Caltech at all. They definitely deserve their reputations, and they're two of my top choices for graduate school because of the excellent research that goes on there. While you're an undergrad, though, you'll want to be in a setting where you'll have good teaching, have an opportunity to get involved with research and major-related clubs, and hopefully have some fun. My advice to you is not to stress out about getting into MIT or Caltech, as you've already gotten in to a great place to be for undergrad (or for graduate school as well, seriously where did you get the impression that CMU is less than top tier?). If you are fortunate enough to get into either of the other schools, go on some campus tours, talk to some current students, try to meet some professors, decide whether you like Boston, Pittsburgh, or Pasadena better (all great places to live), and also think about what kind of lifestyle you want to have in college, and what you want to do outside of your major.
In any case, though, you're already into one of the best places you can be for college, so congratulate yourself and stop worrying! At this point, the main deciding factor in what you get out of your college education isn't which school you go to, but the initiative you take to take advantage of the resources available to you (in terms of faculty, ongoing research, etc.) once you get there.
Frequency and Amplitude were amazing, unique music games. After those 2, Harmonix moved on and created something new: Guitar Hero, which was a very different, but also excellent music game. After one sequel, it seems Harmonix is getting the creative itch to explore new game territory again. Although it would have been nice to see them make Guitar Hero 3, I'm even more excited to see what they come up with next.
I remember a conference of Physicists at my University a few years back talking about possible missile defense technologies. The general consensus is that missile defense technologies aren't going to be very effective at defending against missiles (certainly they won't stay ahead of missile guidance systems), but they are a great way to spend billions of dollars on the aerospace industry.
Slashdot Mirror
I already use my Android phone to do some light remote work. I use ConnectBot http://code.google.com/p/connectbot/ to SSH into a remote workstation. For graphical apps, I set up port forwarding for VNC (there's a menu option for it in connectbot) and use AndroidVNC http://code.google.com/p/android-vnc-viewer/
I have my VNC server set to only accept connections from localhost (and it's firewalled, too), so that only connections which are forwarded and encrypted via SSH wind up being accepted. This way I get secure remote access, the VNC protocol tends to be less bandwidth-intensive than raw X, and it preserves my session in case I get disconnected.
Don't get me wrong, an X server on Android is a cool technical achievement, but existing SSH and VNC clients for Android are a more practical and secure way of accessing your workstations/servers on the go.
I had the pleasure of meeting the champion from spellbound, Nupur Lala, when we were both undergraduates at the University of Michigan. We became great friends and, along with another friend, shared an apartment our senior year. Although she is undoubtedly a genius, Nupur is far from the stereotype of the over-achieving Indian kid. She loves her family and is proud of her heritage, and her parents are likewise very proud of her. Her parents didn't, however, force her into academic competition or drill her with thousands of words per day. They did instill in her a love of learning and gave her a great deal of gentle encouragement when she showed a passion for language.
I think Nupur's example shows that very high-achieving young people, Indian or otherwise, need not be humorless robots driven by overbearing parents. She's a fun-loving, friendly, and extroverted woman who has the support of an engaged family that values academics without pushing too hard. She attended public schools her whole life (on through UM, go wolverines!) and likewise found teachers and peers who inspired her to further develop her talents.
In the end, what I'm driving at is that my experience with an Indian spelling bee champion contradicts a lot of stereotypes about Indians and Indian families, as well as those about high-achieving students. In her case, triumph is all about passion, inspiration, and love, not ethnicity.
I saw District 9 this Friday, and I have to agree that it was a great piece of cinematic sci-fi: an allegory for apartheid with a very human unlikely hero and some great popcorn-fodder action sequences. I'd like to remind everyone, though, that it still has some competition for year's best sci-fi movie in the form of Moon, which is a drama of isolation, loneliness, and ethics set in the stark, cold beauty of space, very reminiscent of 2001. While it doesn't match the action of D-9, it makes up for it with its emotional intensity and thoughtfulness. I highly recommend any Slashdot movie fans out there see both.
There's a lot to be said for libraries. Bradbury may not like it, but these days one of the most vital things libraries do is provide free Internet access to the poor, as well as the elderly and disabled who may require the assistance of a librarian.
We could dump a bunch of sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) into the ocean. It'll neutralize the acid and release... carbon dioxide. Crap! We're doomed.
Of course, it would be lovely if we could dispense with the entire status quo wherein mobile carriers subsidize the cost of phones to lock people in to long-term contracts. I'd gladly pay more for unlocked smartphones if it meant I could pay less for service (you'd better believe the cost of all those handsets is built into your bill) and switch at-will.
Now, it's true that you can buy some unlocked phones today, but it's far from the ideal situation for several reasons:
1. The price of unlocked phones is substantially above the wholesale price which phones are sold to the carriers for (I don't expect a volume discount like they get, but a few hundred dollars markup is a bit steep).
2. Some phones simply aren't available unlocked without going to the grey market, including the iPhone. That's because a lot of the most appealing phones (I'm debating an iPhone 3GS or an HTC Magic for my next) are offered as "exclusives" for a single carrier. That means that, in my region, if I want a particular phone, I'm stuck with AT&T or T-Mobile, respectively, for service.
3. No price break on service. If you bring your own phone to play, you're still paying the extra that would cover the cost of a carrier-provided phone, which in this case is pure extra profit for the carrier.
Now, just imagine if a similar situation existed with TVs: you only get a cool new TV when you sign up for an extended cable or satellite contract, and you're then locked into using that TV with that provider. You'd also have to consider the tradeoff between the features you want in a TV and the coverage and quality of service you get. In other words, it would be an intolerable, fragmented mess.
But the service providers love vendor lock-in, and the phone manufacturers are only to happy to collude with them. It would probably take regulatory action to cut this particular knot. It's not impossible (remember when the FCC finally forced the mobile carriers to implement cell number portability, then they all advertised it as a great new feature), but I certainly wouldn't hold my breath for it.
Achievements, slashdot?
Remember Karma numbers?
Whoring has returned.
Indeed. Anything which plays Rej by Ame while installing/upgrading gets high marks from me.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/9/7/new-from-squareenix/
Enough said
This story actually coincides with an interesting story that ran on NPR yesterday about several experimental new transplant techniques that might help future transplant patients avoid having to take anti-rejection drugs, as well.
In particular, the article tells the story of one 28-year-old woman who received a kidney transplant from her mother, who was only a partial match. Prior to the kidney transplant, she also received a partial bone marrow transplant from her mother. The bone marrow transplant essentially caused the patient's immune system to become a "blend" of her own and her mother's, producing T-cells that would attack bacterial and viral antigens just like normal, but leave the transplanted kidney alone.
The results are pretty impressive. The patient originally had to take anti-rejection drugs after her first kidney transplant at age 13, and they caused a host of miserable side effects. After her more recent transplant, however, she's been off the drugs for five years and even ran 2 marathons last year (how's that for healthy?).
Unfortunately, the new technique only works for organs that you intentionally plan on transplanting ahead of time, since the bone marrow has to be transplanted first in a separate surgery. That means that organ donors who die and donate hearts, livers, etc. aren't really an option. But for a transplant from a living donor, this is a very promising new technique (some of the researchers even think that it could eventually make transplants from animals possible).
It strikes me that a lot of the work that has gone into optimizing databases in the past (especially storage, index structure, and buffer management) works on the assumption that the database will be stored to a hard drive, which is way slower than main memory and has variable access times depending on the relative position of the disk head and the required data.
Nowadays there's a lot of large solid-state flash drives coming out, and as time goes on we can expect to see sizes increase and costs decrease. For small-to-medium size databases, it's now reasonable to keep the whole database on, say, one of the new 64GB memory drives. The use of drives which have a fixed, cheap cost for random access seems to invalidate and simplify a lot of the assumptions made about conventional back-end data storage, and opens up possibilities for new types of optimization (binary tree indexes instead of B+ trees, more use of indirection).
I'm wondering what you see as some of the biggest opportunities for memory-resident databases, and what work is going into MySQL to take advantage of the changes that are happening in storage.
Noticing a tag about the name "Myanmar", I thought I'd explain the controversy over the country's name. The official name of Burma was changed to Myanmar by the ruling military junta. Since the pro-democracy movement doesn't recognize the legitimacy of military rule, they and their supporters around the world continue to use the name Burma.
Sorry, Jack, but parody is protected speech here, and by making very public and very inflamatory comments every chance you get, you've made yourself a ripe target for parody. But even other media-whoring lawyers have managed to take it in stride in the past (see the late Johnny Cochrane), and have maybe even been a little flattered that they are culturally relevant enough to be parodied.
In general, you've made statements and filed lawsuits that show that you are either A: woefully ignorant of the law, or B: intentionally misrepresenting the law for your own benefit. Either way, you are an extremely shitty lawyer.
P.S. Don't try to sue me for libel. The preceding is a statement of fact.
From the article itself, it appears that, since acquiring uTorrent, a closed-source C++ BitTorrent client for Windows, Bittorrent, inc. has decided to keep it closed source, and also to make it the new "mainline" BitTorrent. The old "mainline" client, which is open-source, written in Python (with wx for the graphics) and is generally cross-platform, last I checked, will continue to be maintained as a "reference implementation", but might not always track the latest protocol updates to uTorrent. Full documentation on the protocol will apparently come with an "SDK license", which they claim is "easy to get".
Well, first of all they ARE doing a few things that contradict the spirit of free software. Their main client app will be closed source, and although the reference implementation will apparently continue to be free, protocol docs require you to acquire a special license. A few years ago, these moves would have tightened Bittorrent inc's grip on the world of bt clients in general.
Now, however, the landscape is different. I can't produce statistics for all torrent users in general, but when I take a look at my peers in my preferred client, KTorrent, there seems to be a near dead-heat for most popular client between uTorrent and Azureus (also open source), with certain alternative clients like Transmission, Bitrocket, and KTorrent making frequent appearances, as well (and all 3 of those examples? also open source). Although uTorrent certainly remains a big player, it doesn't confer upon BitTorrent, inc. the ability to dictate major compatibility-breaking protocol changes by fiat. The fact that the main implementation of BT was open source to start basically stops things from being ruined by more restrictive licensing now.
Case in point: in 2001, I was a competitor at the International Science and Engineering Fair. One of the events for attendees featured a performance by the band Sugar Ray and was MCed by Kennedy. He told a few jokes that we'd all already heard on Comedy Central and generally didn't seem to know how to play to a crowd of nerdy teenagers (and incidentally, the opening band was far better than Sugar Ray, but that's really no surprise).
I'm an eldest child, but some things are still beyond me... for instance, if my dad's a youngest child, and my mom's a youngest child, how come I'm not a youngest child?
Well, YouTube videos are delivered at 320x240 resolution, whereas the iPhone has a 480x320 display to work with... of course, much of the source material uploaded to YouTube may be in a lower resolution anyway, since the content authors may not have anticipated having higher resolutions available for their videos later on.
Even at the same resolution and bitrate, however, H.264 is a very high-quality codec and is bound to have higher video quality with less blurring and blocking than Flash Video. The reason YouTube uses flash is that it's loaded on damn near every desktop computer and doesn't require spawning a separate player, installing decoders, etc. But it actually makes sense when targeting a fixed platform like the iPhone or AppleTV to take advantage of the better video formats that are available.
Also, I'd personally love it if YouTube let me set an option in my profile to view H.264 videos as I'm browsing the website. Keep the videos in flash by default, but let people who know they can view embedded H.264 take advantage of it.
We'll probably just see the same thing that we did with the first XBox: a modchip with an external switch connected that can tell it to disable itself and let the original drive firmware load. Of course, setting it up probably won't be as easy as it was in the XBox 1 (which had a nice little LPC port that you could get the system to load a different BIOS from by just shorting one solder point to ground)... it may be necessary to actually remove the firmware ROM chips from the drive and wire in a new switched bank with copies of both the original and the modified firmware, but it certainly seems doable.
Another issue that slightly complicates things is the fact that the 360 signs you in to XBox live by default when you have an active network connection, so modders will have to be careful to unplug their ethernet cables when the switch is turned on. One vulnerability remains, though, and that is that Microsoft may choose to push out a dashboard update which checks for the drive's original firmware on EVERY bootup, and remembers to tattle to XBox live as soon as you sign on. Microsoft could choose to store this data on the hard drive/memory card (in which case it could be defeated by having a pair of storage devices, one for modded and unmodded use), or they could put it in the 360's internal flash storage, where the dashboard and system software itself is stored (no easy solution for that one, but I don't know enough about the 360's internals to know if the internal storage is flash RAM, which makes this easy, or an EEPROM, which would seem to require that the dashboard reflash itself with the new variable set every time that happens).
Anyway, it does seem that it is possible to defeat this scheme. I'd also like to note that Microsoft's stated reason for the update is bullshit, since even with the drive's firmware flashed, the 360 will still only load Microsoft-signed executables (meaning that it can play backups of original games, but is useless for homebrew and modified games). They might as well just come out and say that it's a measure to defeat privacy, since they've locked out homebrew programs anyway (with the exception of their XNA creator's club program, which lets you run only games written for their limited API, and only in C#, instead of giving access to the full-on devkit that the pros use). Couching it in pro-gamer language about defeating cheaters is disingenuous.
I was pretty worried about that life imprisonment clause... then I realized that even if Alberto Gonzales gets it in his head to try me, he'll just forget about it 30 seconds later.
Unfortunately I don't know of any particular studies off the top of my head, but anecdotal evidence certainly suggests that multiple monitors (after perhaps a very brief period of adjustment) certainly make you more productive. Granted, the increased productivity is probably equivalent to what you would get with one very large, high-res widescreen monitor, but usually a pair of SXGA monitors cost a fair bit less than a big 1080p screen.
Personally, I like to keep my IDE open on one display, while I run a build of the app I'm working on and my debugger on the other (probably with Firefox browsing some documentation, too). My Dad, who works in an office for an auto company, might run PowerPoint on one screen (yeah, I know, that's the business world for you) while he references messages in his mail/groupware client on the other. My mom, who's a librarian, can keep the circulation system on one display with a browser she uses to help deal with reference questions on the other. Alright, neither of my parents' employers gave them multiple desktops, but they'd both certainly prefer to have them.
Basically, if you do any kind of multitasking, multiple displays will help. You can see more of your workspace at a time, you don't waste time switching between apps, and its especially time-saving if you're working on something in one window that requires information from another beyond a simple copy/paste. The only caveat is that people might use some of the extra real-estate to keep timewasters like an IM client open, but a worker with reasonable self-discipline will certainly increase their productivity.
This same issue came up on a recent episode of NPR's Science Friday (look towards the right side of the page for an mp3 download link). Essentially, biologists were being encouraged by well-meaning people at the government agencies who sponsor them to avoid the word "evolution" so that their research remains uncontroversial and doesn't run afoul of any anti-science policy makers.
This latest article raises a good point, though. By trying to cloak discussion of evolution in other terms, anyone with a grasp of basic evolutionary biology is able to understand what is meant and how the process of natural selection applies to the problem at hand. Politicians and non-scientific observers not familiar with biology, however, don't see that evolution is explicitly referenced and so they don't raise a ruckus over it.
The problem is that this can help feed the general lack of understanding about evolution that creationists exploit. On the one hand, because most schools don't teach a rigorous curriculum on evolutionary biology, creationists can argue pseudo-scientific fallacies (e.g. that the second law of thermodynamics rules out evolution of increasingly complex species. Incidentally, this is false because the second law only applies to closed systems, and Earth's ecosystem continuously receives new energy from the Sun's light and heat). Additionally, because the fact that natural selection, as the basic organizing principle which has guided research in biology for over a century, isn't emphasized in new research reports that come out, many people don't realize that the huge advances we've made in our understanding of life on Earth over the past century, and the great medical breakthroughs that have emerged, nay, evolved from that understanding would not have been possible if we didn't understand evolution. Indeed, many things that we know to be true about biology simply couldn't be true if evolution weren't at work. That's not to say that it's a perfect theory, but like many good scientific theories it is revised and its precision is sharpened as new evidence becomes available (for example, we now know about cycles of punctuated equilibrium in the fossil record, and about patterns in human and other animal genomes, which Darwin didn't know about), in the same way that Einstein's relativity built on and refined Newton's laws of motion.
As loathe as many scientists are to do anything with public relations, I think that we have to do a better job of emphasizing the basic scientific theories behind today's research. So I encourage researchers out there to not be scared of using the word evolution, as it will hopefully contribute to people understanding that it is pervasively important to biology.
Hi Scott. It's true that I ask a lot of questions that may be tangentially related to the topic at hand, and I do so because I'm curious and I want to know the answer. If I come across as arrogant I sincerely apologize, but I hope that despite any ill will you have for me you will take my word that I ask questions for my own intellectual edification as a student. If I thought I "knew it all" already, I wouldn't have asked (come to that, I wouldn't have gone to college in the first place). If a professor doesn't feel like answering my question right away (which I'm sure you've seen happen on a couple of occasions), they'll defer me to the end of class or to office hours, which is fine, as I'd certainly not want to waste people's time on something that isn't likely to be useful to them.
I certainly hope that I'm not well-disliked. If you dislike me, then so be it, but I know that it's more than likely because of a highly personal matter between us (which is certainly no business of the slashdot crowd) than because of our interaction as classmates. I've always hoped that we could be civil and professional with each other in a classroom setting and live our separate lives elsewhere. I assure you that I have my own personal reasons to dislike you, but in any professional environment, whether it's the Academy or Industry, you've got to do your best to be professional and get along with people. That's the highest expectation and the minimum standard that I hold for our relationship.
And a bit of advice to the poster: don't be scared to ask questions when you get to college. As I mentioned in my initial post, the main differentiating factor in the quality of education that you will now receive is the initiative you yourself take to learn. Don't be afraid of sounding too dumb or, paradoxically, too smart and coming off as arrogant. One thing I've learned at college is that there will always be people who find a reason to dislike you, but if you treat people with kindness and decency you'll have plenty of friends just the same.
A few years ago, I was in a situation very similar to yours. I went to a very good public school, had excellent grades and an impressive palette of extracurriculars. I applied to the same schools that you mentioned. Ultimately, I was accepted at Carnegie Mellon and Caltech, and turned down by MIT. In the end, I chose to go to the University of Michigan, and I don't regret the choice at all.
To be quite honest, going to any high-end research university is going to provide you with great opportunities for learning and getting involved in research. Carnegie Mellon is a fantastic school, and although you might think MIT or Caltech are more "prestigious", people in the industry you're hoping to enter know that CMU has absolutely world-class programs in CS and EE. I might also add that CMU is more of a "general" school than a tech school which specializes in science and engineering. Chances are that you will have more of an opportunity to nurture your interests outside of EE by taking other classes if you choose to go to CMU.
Of course, I don't mean to slight MIT and Caltech at all. They definitely deserve their reputations, and they're two of my top choices for graduate school because of the excellent research that goes on there. While you're an undergrad, though, you'll want to be in a setting where you'll have good teaching, have an opportunity to get involved with research and major-related clubs, and hopefully have some fun. My advice to you is not to stress out about getting into MIT or Caltech, as you've already gotten in to a great place to be for undergrad (or for graduate school as well, seriously where did you get the impression that CMU is less than top tier?). If you are fortunate enough to get into either of the other schools, go on some campus tours, talk to some current students, try to meet some professors, decide whether you like Boston, Pittsburgh, or Pasadena better (all great places to live), and also think about what kind of lifestyle you want to have in college, and what you want to do outside of your major.
In any case, though, you're already into one of the best places you can be for college, so congratulate yourself and stop worrying! At this point, the main deciding factor in what you get out of your college education isn't which school you go to, but the initiative you take to take advantage of the resources available to you (in terms of faculty, ongoing research, etc.) once you get there.
Frequency and Amplitude were amazing, unique music games. After those 2, Harmonix moved on and created something new: Guitar Hero, which was a very different, but also excellent music game. After one sequel, it seems Harmonix is getting the creative itch to explore new game territory again. Although it would have been nice to see them make Guitar Hero 3, I'm even more excited to see what they come up with next.
I remember a conference of Physicists at my University a few years back talking about possible missile defense technologies. The general consensus is that missile defense technologies aren't going to be very effective at defending against missiles (certainly they won't stay ahead of missile guidance systems), but they are a great way to spend billions of dollars on the aerospace industry.