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Yea, I used to know the assphat who redesigned Duquesne University's website. He converted it from HTML to 100% Flash a little over three years ago.

I tried to explain why all Flash and no HTML is bad. In the end he was like, "Ooooo but Flash and Dreamweaver are sooo SHINY!" To top it off he was all impressed with himself because he learned enough "programming" to write some simple SQL queries. Now he thinks he's a bigtime coder. What a fag!

For those of you who don't know, phylogenetics is a set of techniques for working out a 'family tree' of taxa (taxa = basically units of analysis, normally species or genetic sequences). The main reason for doing this is that it gives an objective way of testing evolutionary hypotheses. For example - If I predict a certain protein has evolved through stages A, B then C, but my tree shows a pattern of A - C - B, I can reject that hypothesis.

Phylogenetics is extremely powerful and has allowed us to investigate many many cool things (like the origin of modern humans in Africa, and the migrations out of). The problem is that there is a *huge* number of trees to search to find the optimal set of trees. The formula (IIRC) is 5N-2!!, where N is the number of taxa. So, 10 taxa (species or whatever) has 34 million trees, and when you get up to a real dataset it gets much worse: There are 10^132 ways of connecting my 77 taxa dataset.

Bayesian approaches can really really speed up this process. We used to have to do a large number (100-1000) of heuristic analyses and then bootstrap (a resampling procedure) these to get a confidence interval, of say, a date of a divergence time or a model fit. These Bayesian techniques allow us to do, say, 10 long runs whilst simultaneously estimating parameters.

Sooo much faster (ie - that 77 taxa dataset mentioned before - instead of ~250 hours x 1,000, I can do the same in about ~100 hours x 10.

There are some problems - it possibly over-estimates support (ie underestimated uncertainty in the data) for taxa groupings, compared to the bootstrap method. This isn't terribly surprising given the hill-climbing approach these algorithms use, but no-one's really sure whether this is a good or bad thing (since no-ones really sure how to interpret the alternative bootstrap support)

Fantastic software: Mr Bayes: Bayesian Inference of Phylogeny
and BAMBE: Bayesian Analysis in Molecular Biology and Evolution

Who modded this infomative? While low chlorine is rarely a problem (at least compared to metals like potassium, etc.), Cl is still vital, and hypochloremia and the resulting metabolic alkalosis isn't a good thing. Since Cl is the major anion (-vely charged ion), it and bicarbonate are kinda necessary to balance those positive charges. It is also absorbed with the sodium and mostly excreted through the kidneys (sometimes with sodium, sometimes not, depending on the transporter).

I'd say that the ClearType fonts on the XP one look far better to me than the ones on the iBook did.

RGB decimation exists on OS X as well. I use it on my 15" TiPB and I am quite pleased with it. Assuming your display's pixels are in the same order as those on my laptop (RGB), then this screenshot should look pretty good for you.

And somehow I don't think that "going after" the users works well either... I had this realization the other day when I got a speeding ticket... The reason why I speed is because I don't think that it is wrong. Or perhaps that I think that it's just not that bad. This puts law enforcement in a hard place. They will never be able to convince me that speeding is very wrong, and if I don't get caught very often, I will continue to do it.

I believe this is very similar to pirating music / movies. Many belive that it's not that bad. And since the Enlightenment Project failed, there is not absolute foundation for ethics. Nothing to tell me why I really shouldn't speed or steal music. So what is the answer? I believe that After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntryre has some great insight into ethics not based on absolutes.

That's what my one professor, Donald Simon, always says. For the moment, he's right.

Currently, AI is nothing more than a magic trick. It's not about intelligence - it's simply an illusion that when you figure out how it works, it is no longer impressive. Every AI researcher is a magician in that respect, no matter which of the two schools you come from. Yes, all of this is quite sophisticated, but so are most modern magic tricks.

Needless to say, the same as illusionists today make people appear to levitate, we will one day have that technology. While AI today is just a bunch of deceit, some day we may see "intelligent" (as far as we understand it - currently, all AI is "stupid") machines.

Just a few thoughts...

We all complain and moan and whine that Slashdot are a bunch of sell outs. That they post stories and opinions that are sponsored by corporate interests and not in the interests of the readers.

Well, today I stumbled upon Slashdot, only to have this ad thrust in my face. (It linked to this location.)

You'd think that /. would be the last place you'd see all this bullshit MS propaganda, but alas, we can't get away from it. Slashdot (and qutie possibly OSDN) are a Microsoft funded operation, which means its stories and opinions are those of Microsoft.

Be even more careful about what you read here.

1. The defendent must have a defined duty -- in this case to produce working products and not snake oil.
2. Breach of duty: act or ommision must be shown -- Sony knew about the defective CD's and any reasonable person would think that they should play in ALL cd players. Sony also knows that most people would try to use them in computer CD players which is why they have a warning.
3. The Breach of Duty must be shown to be considered a reasonable cause of damage -- Clear cut case here.
4. Damages must be shown.

The college I'm attending, Duquesne University, has a more draconian policy aside from disallowing net access in class. Here are a few of the features of one of the nation's "most top 10 wired universities".

* Multiuser operating systems are banned. No form of *nix can be run on our network. Reason: "Linux can be used as a hacking tool."

* No server of any kind including HTTP, Telnet, ssh, etc. can be used.

* Students are permitted to HAVE one computer per resident in dorms. If more than one computer is FOUND in a dorm, the owners access is revoked.

* Students must have a CTS certified NIC. (In otherwords, it MUST be a 3Com.)

* Students may not possess or distribute files with a ".mp3" extention. This is copyright infringement. (Napster's ports are also banned, btw.)

In actual practice, the policy is a lot worse than this. The people at our "Computer and Technology Services" are so absolutely clueless that they aren't quite sure when a policy is "broken", so they err on the side of paranoia. For example, I have known other students here using Linux, nmap'ing their own ports to check security and gotten nailed for using what CTS called an "illegal hacking tool".

These total idiots basically ban anything they don't understand and leave students reeling in the wake of it. Technology gifted students can't bring more than one PC (if you have a laptop for example, you can have it on the wireless LAN that's SLOWLY becoming available, IF you give up your PC's connection) and they cannot enjoy hosting services to the rest of the world (running internet daemons gets you called down for a warning - further violations result in suspension of access and a visit to our judiciary committee).

If your college only blocks net access in classes, consider yourself lucky. Hopefully their network policy hasn't banned free speech while I wasn't looking.

The college I'm attending, Duquesne University, has a more draconian policy aside from disallowing net access in class. Here are a few of the features of one of the nation's "most top 10 wired universities".

* Multiuser operating systems are banned. No form of *nix can be run on our network. Reason: "Linux can be used as a hacking tool."

* No server of any kind including HTTP, Telnet, ssh, etc. can be used.

* Students are permitted to HAVE one computer per resident in dorms. If more than one computer is FOUND in a dorm, the owners access is revoked.

* Students must have a CTS certified NIC. (In otherwords, it MUST be a 3Com.)

* Students may not possess or distribute files with a ".mp3" extention. This is copyright infringement. (Napster's ports are also banned, btw.)

In actual practice, the policy is a lot worse than this. The people at our "Computer and Technology Services" are so absolutely clueless that they aren't quite sure when a policy is "broken", so they err on the side of paranoia. For example, I have known other students here using Linux, nmap'ing their own ports to check security and gotten nailed for using what CTS called an "illegal hacking tool".

These total idiots basically ban anything they don't understand and leave students reeling in the wake of it. Technology gifted students can't bring more than one PC (if you have a laptop for example, you can have it on the wireless LAN that's SLOWLY becoming available, IF you give up your PC's connection) and they cannot enjoy hosting services to the rest of the world (running internet daemons gets you called down for a warning - further violations result in suspension of access and a visit to our judiciary committee).

If your college only blocks net access in classes, consider yourself lucky. Hopefully their network policy hasn't banned free speech while I wasn't looking.

The college I'm attending, Duquesne University, has a more draconian policy aside from disallowing net access in class. Here are a few of the features of one of the nation's "most top 10 wired universities".

* Multiuser operating systems are banned. No form of *nix can be run on our network. Reason: "Linux can be used as a hacking tool."

* No server of any kind including HTTP, Telnet, ssh, etc. can be used.

* Students are permitted to HAVE one computer per resident in dorms. If more than one computer is FOUND in a dorm, the owners access is revoked.

* Students must have a CTS certified NIC. (In otherwords, it MUST be a 3Com.)

* Students may not possess or distribute files with a ".mp3" extention. This is copyright infringement. (Napster's ports are also banned, btw.)

In actual practice, the policy is a lot worse than this. The people at our "Computer and Technology Services" are so absolutely clueless that they aren't quite sure when a policy is "broken", so they err on the side of paranoia. For example, I have known other students here using Linux, nmap'ing their own ports to check security and gotten nailed for using what CTS called an "illegal hacking tool".

These total idiots basically ban anything they don't understand and leave students reeling in the wake of it. Technology gifted students can't bring more than one PC (if you have a laptop for example, you can have it on the wireless LAN that's SLOWLY becoming available, IF you give up your PC's connection) and they cannot enjoy hosting services to the rest of the world (running internet daemons gets you called down for a warning - further violations result in suspension of access and a visit to our judiciary committee).

If your college only blocks net access in classes, consider yourself lucky. Hopefully their network policy hasn't banned free speech while I wasn't looking.

This game was put out by Apogee. I'd tell you more, but there is an Act of Congress and a Federal Law that prevents me from speaking my mind.

Interesting, a Federal Law which limits my First Amendment Right to Free Speach. I guess it just goes to show, now more than ever: The business of America, is Business.

Oh, 310th post!