No text. Really.

Fun :)

And shared experience, so someone else will have a little less tinkering to do when they look at this and go "Hey, I wonder if I could..."

For anyone who doesn't feel like clicking through the slow copy-and-paste blog to get to the actual NewScientist article:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20827875.800-worlds-first-ice-touchscreen-virtually-burns.html

Blame the idiotic coverage rather than the folks building the wall. They're well aware it was just a cool (sorry) art piece. And shared their experiences for anyone who wants to build or build on the design.

That work was just published at the ACM Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces conference, so there is a rather more coherent explanation (and another video) at:
http://www.dfki.de/its2010/papers/sp199.html

(Not affiliated with either group, but ITS was a lot of fun)

Google must have "forced" Apple to drop Skyhook as well. Or maybe there were reasons to develop a competitor, rather than continue to deal with Skyhook. Like Apple did.

Seriously, when did "Oh no, we're being forced to compete! Let's sue everyone!" become an acceptable business plan?

Digital information is *very* easy to authenticate and *very* hard to forge -- think SSL -- in comparison something like physical bills.

Digital information being easy to copy means that you *detect* the copy, rather than trying to *prevent* it. DRM tries to prevent the copy. All Bitcoin determines is whether you got the oldest copy (and the how is in their tech report).

Approaches vary but that is far from an obscure threat. Some, like I believe Bitcoin does, do a global check of the current owner of the coin (and yes, handle the obvious race conditions). Others make it relatively expensive to establish a new identity, provide probabilistic discovery of double spending...

Well, close. Money needs to be hard to replicate _without getting caught_.

Part of the design of digital currencies is making it so that double-spending is likely to be detectable. Bitcoin seems to broadcast all transactions to the network, but I admit I just glanced at their technical paper.

The other *big* reason to start your inquiry with published papers: Unless your initial e-mail shows that you have read and understood some of the professor's papers, your request is likely going to be ignored. The professors I know get requests every day from random students seeking a graduate supervisor. Many of them are form e-mails. Many more simply show no idea what the professor does. They all get deleted.

Express interest in a part of their work which is interesting to you, and come up with a few questions about their future work.

Like the privacy setting entitled "Photos and videos I'm tagged in", which can be customized to Only Me or blocked from specific people?

I can't swear that it works properly. So test with someone other than your mistress first :)

Now make it 6x the size, triple the display resolution, add space for your knees, and a whole whack of custom software...

Except that would be a few hundred thousand dollars. Canned technology is not the solution for all problems.

Yes and no. I don't think $70K with a few years experience is unheard of, but it's also outside the normal distribution.

Many companies are in places with absolutely mind-numbing costs of living. Many also seem to realize that non-professional development experience is still valuable. The combination of the two can make the salaries for some "new" programmers pretty impressive.

Are you sure that statement is true? It seems inconsistent with other information posted here, and in the LWN discussion.