There is active research in measuring length. So even the length of a meter stick is subject to constantly changing models are refinements in technique. Of course, the error bars are pretty darn small. But if the standard is absolute stability in ideas and techniques, science cannot get you there.

As Signature # 9,559, I agree with you.

I see this as the wholly Grail of cloud services. Cloud Foundry will be groovy.

The images in question are bitmaps. Even on slashdot, they have integers for width and height. If you want to generalize, generalize to coprime, as other have noted.

I'm waiting for a kidney transplant. I'm not sure that fois gras is a more immediate concern.

It is pretty simple. These 'universities' sell worthless degrees and the 'graduates' get jobs in proportion to their degrees (e.g., most get very low pay). The graduates, with big loans and tiny pay checks, end up defaulting on their loans in high numbers. The 'for profit' universities made the investors happy by taking money from students in exchange for as little as possible. But like any scam artists, they have a really nice story that is bound to work some of the time. The students pay up front for delayed gratification. It just happens that the gratification is delayed for ever. If the universities were forced to 'invest' in the education for a piece of the eventual increase in pay, they would be incented to deliver real education so they could share in the increased value of the student's labor. But they can make more, at least in the short run, by playing this con game.

There are no investors that are expecting a direct payback from their investment in a not-for-profit university. Lawyers and investors know exactly what it meant by the term. Are universities cheap? Heck no, but it isn't to generate a profit for investors. Does Daddy Warbucks expect something in return for creating an endowment? Probably. Does he expect a direct return on his investment? No. Are the research faculty at a medical college well compensated? You bet. Is there pay excessive? That is a judgment call you have to make. Does their pay constitute 'profit"? No. Words have meanings, and 'profit' has a particular meaning. Most universities are not for profit.

There is an entire new class of educational institution that Wall Street has dreamed up. They basically use college students to suck up government and private loans. The money from the loans get deposited into the university. The students get an online degree that probably doesn't get them a job. But the student in 100% liable for the loan. You cannot even escape with bankruptcy. But the investors who never gave the student nothing more than a worthless sheet of paper is protected. This scam artist like Phoenix University are mere doppelgangers, they lack the substance of a reputable University like Harvard.

Oh shit, more creationist Moonies. I'll saying it, this is a bad thing.

Oh wait, I have one in my pocket.

The article states that this work is being done by a recent graduate in a PhD program. That doesn't make him a student. A young Ph.D. has developed a low power controller for a phased array radio receiver. This is a nice piece of kit with a range of applications in mobile devices. It builds upon technologies that have in the past been dominated by defense contractors. Our young Ph.D. is helping to make this technology more accessible to the 99% of the world who are not spooks. This is all good, even if it is not groundbreaking.

Any directional antenna needs to be aimed. Bump it an you loose the signal. with a phased array, you can combine the signals from each 'antenna-let' to act like a dish as far as signal strength is concerned. If you want to connect to multiple satellites, you don't need to move anything, you just have the signal processor combine the signals with different phases to lock into a different direction.

Petitions are used to cause governments to react. There are usually laws that require a government to respond if when there are a sufficient number of petitioners. Getting candidates placed on the ballot is just one example. Barak Obama used these rules to have competitors who didn't have the legal number of signatures removed from local elections when he was running in Chicago, for example. This is hardball politics, but it is certainly within the rules. If the list is not made public, what is to prevent a proponent of some petition to add names, either by accident or malice? If the list is public, a 3rd party has the opportunity to look for errors.

There was some government money (DARPA, I think) was was used to fund some development of OpenBSD. But then Theo, a Canadian, expressed his feelings about the invasion of Iraq. The money disappeared suddenly. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theo_de_Raadt and find the "DARPA funding cancellation' section.) The JASONs, it seems, have to answer to politicians. If you are more kind to the JASONs, you could note that the funding was yanked in April, 2003. The JASONs traditionally work in July, August, September, October and November so they only have to miss one semester. So in April, DARPA has all the bureaucrats and fewer JASONs.