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Thanks for the evidence-free assertions, but I'll be happy to hear your personal refutation of 2500 years of western philosophy by simply providing your resolution to the 5 theses presented, rather concisely, here:

http://home.sprynet.com/~owl1/...

You are arguing a Straw Man. Neither I nor anyone else is denying the brain is involved in consciousness. That's been known since the first caveman hit another caveman in the head with a rock. What I am arguing is that the physical brain is not -sufficient in itself- to explain known mental phenomena.

Not the least of which is the whole range of everyday phenomena within the scope of the Mind-Body Problem.

The paper says precisely what I say it does. Phenomena suggestive of an "immaterial soul" are consistently experienced during NDE's. The study quantifies them and elaborates on the specifics of their experiential nature and the medical conditions under which they occur. Again, you need to establish a basic baseline of intellectual honesty regarding definitions and content.

My problem comes when people don't think they should "work their way out of" poverty, but that the government should do it for them, not by helping them to get better work or creating an environment where business thrives so jobs are created (not a liberal strong point), but by simply giving them the money to support a better lifestyle.

Slight problem with that Randian storyline - even if it were true - giving poor people money to support a better lifestyle is not only a more moral system than the "up from your own bootstraps" nonsense, but it makes for vastly better economics than cutting taxes on the rich.

Working stiffs can't take lengthy unpaid internships to get a job in their field after college. They better hope that they find one though before their student loans become a weight around their neck. If George Bush was George Johnson, he'd be lucky to be the assistant manager of a Burger King, if he wasn't in prison for cocaine possession. Not handed business after business no matter how many he drove into the ground, much less the presidency. Or have beautiful women sent to your hotel room to have sex with you because your last name is Bush.

Social spending isn't about "hand outs". It's about basic human decency and equality of opportunity.

Referring to the 17th-century French philosopher who wrote, "I think, therefore I am," Tonegawa says, "Rene Descartes didn't believe the mind can be studied as a natural science. He was wrong. This experimental method is the ultimate way of demonstrating that mind, like memory recall, is based on changes in matter."

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on. The Mind-Body Problem isn't going down quite that easily.

This issue isn't whether the brain participates in mental phenomena (that's been clearly known since the first time a caveman hit another one in the head with a rock), but whether physical processes are sufficient in themselves to capture the range of capabilities of "mind". To support that, one would need to, on some level, show an equivalency of a broad set of mental abstraction to a set of brain processes. That is, basically, to be able to use the abstraction and the supposed brain mapping essentially interchangably for the purposes of description or logic.

Take, say, "freedom", as one of a broad range of "mental entities". It's insufficient to show, say, an EEG representation of a brain with an individual "thinking about freedom", and claim you've captured the content materially. Apart from the difficulties of teasing apart the concept itself from the feelings about it generated in his brain by the concept, his personal mental associations with it, associatable but not definitionally-equivalent memories, etc., which we cannot presently do on at minimum a technological level, there is a bigger issue here of whether this is even theoretically, or logically, possible--ever. Those neurochemical activities occurring when "contemplating freedom", even constraining ourselves to one particular individual, are -not- the same meaning and content as "freedom". If they were, we should be able to interchangeably say, "Ron Paul is for freedom" and "Ron Paul is for..." and hold up an EEG of test subject thinking about freedom, and have these two approaches be equivalent in content for all uses of the concept "freedom" in all contexts of discussion and logical inference. That is the criteria by which one could know they have fully and accurately mapped mental concepts to brain processes. In reality, this example fails right out of the gate, in that we would have, at best, the mapping for one or a few individuals (which, in the distinctions between the individual brains would break equivalence another way...), not something that could answer "point to a complete physical description of the concept 'freedom' as it exists in the world". Thinking of other possible examples of attempts to retain equivalence between the concept and the picture quickly make it clear claiming equivalence would be absurd, e.g. "Would you sacrifice that freedom for a million dollars?". Hence, they are not equivalent, and a physical mapping cannot be claimed for at least a broad class of this type of mental phenomena.

Really, this dilemma has been around for a couple thousand years in philosophy, and not because people didn't understand the brain was associated with mental processes, or had not investigated neurobiology to our current degree of breadth and specificity. The questions the Mind-Body Problem poses are not fundamentally technological and will not be solvable by that means, however headline-grabbing finding another thinking-or-feeling associated process may be for neuroscience. Quite simply--"is associated with", materially in the brain, is not equivalent to "is", conceptually in the mind.

Lest I be accused of worldview bias here, here's a good overview, presented, incidentally, by a Professor of Philosophy who is also quite vocally atheist. Further references from over the last 2000 years of Western Philosophy, forwarded from people of all manner of metaphysical presuppositions, can be googled at will.

I think you have to start by making a distinction between the institution of government and the process of governance in which government, business, and civil society all participate. The idea is, a FOSS-inspired change in the process might improve governance decisions.

I think of it as government of the ones who show up, and it already happens, to some extent, everywhere. In democracies, most of the decisions aren't made by elected officials, but by bureaucrats. The people doing the work. I recently spoke with a young woman who was a junior staffer in one of the highest offices of the executive branch in the George Bush administration. She said that most of the decisions made in the US capitol were actually made by people in their early twenties, just out of college, who were willing to work long hours for peanuts. If these young folks had majored in CS and Math instead of PoliSci and History, they'd have been coding instead of drafting legislation. (Joel Reidenberg and Laurence Lessig have both written cleverly on the parallels between code and law.) In authoritarian states, like for example China, the bureaucracy plays a similar role (wish I could find a reference quickly).

Most existing government structures keep some people away from the decision-making process. Law-makers hide the code of governance (the law) until it's ready to be shipped. Some of us (I don't know the metagovernment people, but I like the way they think) who are interested in both law and code think there's something to learn from FOSS. Maybe the process can be opened up. Let's acknowledge the underlying process of governance, which doesn't have much to do with voting, and more to do with people making decisions by default, because they're in the room when the question comes up.

There are plenty of problems with ideas like this. Of course, you probably don't start tinkering at a national level, but at a local level where the stakes are lower. Maybe the analogy between governance and coding is a false one. But you can't know until you give it a go, see what problems there are, and try to fix them.

TFA seems to be about trying to show that George W. Bush was actually smart. Without arguing the actually merits either way, I'd say his mediocre grade-point average (77 according to http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=1006041514803 - to be fair, Kerry and Gore weren't much better), failed businesses (http://www.villagevoice.com/2002-07-09/news/george-bush-failed-corporate-crook/1, http://alaric3rh.home.sprynet.com/science/bceo.html), and legendary misspoken-isms, I'd say the researcher is fighting a losing battle...

Now, can we talk about former President Jimmy Carter's Community Reinvestment Act that precipitated the current economic meltdown?

Honestly, I think Bush Jr's karma is just catching up with him. He has had a long history of business failure, and the USA is just another bullet point on the list.

Thing is, materialist reduction of consciousness results in paradoxes which have remained unsolved throughout this history of Western Philosophy, such as the Mind-Body Problem.

Given that history, one might plausibly conclude that such materialist reduction is insufficient.

If they don't like what we are doing, in country x all they have to do is crank the price of Oil higher. Eventually we won't be able to afford the war any more

Um you are away that's real reason we invaded Iraq right? To remake an oil rich country that is in our pocket. Of course it's not going so well, but that's not surprising given the executive's track record. I don't think the idea of having close ties to an oil rich country is a bad idea, but I think we when about it completely backwards. We were in the right when we bailed Kuwait out in Desert Storm, we dropped the ball when we didn't grow that into a lasting friendship between the US and Kuwait. A rich and powerful voice in the Middle East that had positive things to say about the US could have avoided this entire mess and had our politicians less trigger happy because of our energy vulnerabilities. But when the majority of the people in charge are in the businesses of power and guns, then their solution to every problem is going to be power and guns.

A very interesting book was written about the first MIG-25 to fall into U.S. hands. The book follows the life of the pilot as he defects, and eventually returns to the Soviet Union. The book is called, "Mig Pilot".

I found a page where western acquisition of Soviet and Chinese aircraft are listed:

http://home.sprynet.com/~anneled/Defections.html

The "Mig Pilot" episode is listed for 1976.

...before the advent of the Suburban...

was the Vista Cruiser. THE one and only family car.

Really? So you would say, trust traditional news sources? What about peer reviewed scientific studies? Government?

Wikipedia has a lot of knowledge but it's more of a jumping point than a rock solid reference book, just like a regular encylopedia, regular news sources, and goverment. whenever someone is doing someething so important it really needs to be free of errors they need a body of evidence not just a single source!

Milestones keep the development on track, and deadlines are used in projectplanning to determine an end state for the development project.

Besides all this, lots'o'time doesn't give you quality, necessarily. Look at knowledgable modern artists; all the time in the world, and all they produce is a pile of crap.

Given his Poor Record?

Time to post > Fr. Frog's gun safety lecture.</a>
Read it.
Here's the part that applies to this discussion, but you should read the rest, it's valuable.

"The current politically correct rage is "trigger locks" and "smart guns." Trigger locks have a place but they are not a cure-all. First, their use on a loaded firearm kept for self protection is dangerous as their installation or removable could cause an unintended discharge. Second, they are slow to remove. As to their preventing unauthorized use of a stolen firearm their protection is illusionary. At least one major brand name trigger lock can be be defeated simply by using a thin bladed screw driver through its rubber pads. If a firearm is properly stored under lock and key, the chances of an unauthorized individual getting to it is slim, and if it is gotten to locks can easily be removed by an individual with a drill or bolt cutters. The place of trigger locks in my mind is to provide temporary denial of use during unloaded transportation or temporary storage.

The "smart gun" idea is no where near a useful state, and probably will never be, especially for a firearm used for personal protection. A dead battery, a lost magnetic ring, or a loose connection can cause disastrous consequences as could a burst of high energy radio or magnetic energy. There have even been proposals that the government should have the means to remotely deactivate all civilian held "smart guns" in the event of a "national emergency."

(In NJ they recently passed a law which states that if/when "smart guns " come into use that the police will not be required to use them. Hmmmm! Great technology, eh? Good enough for the peons but not the government.) The claim that they would prevent someone from using a stolen gun is also a joke. If the firearm is stolen the device can be easily deactivated by just about anyone by disassembling (forcefully or otherwise) the firearm.

No, safety is not gadgets! It is common sense."

Erm, no, sorry: http://home.sprynet.com/~frfrog/shotgun.htm

This design worked quite nicely during my youth.

Neglecting air resistance (hah!) .50 BMG bullets are about 700 grains or 0.045 kg. Muzzle velocity is around 1000 m/s, for kinetic energy of 22500 J. This implies a .50 BMG bullet could reach an altitude of 51,000 m maximum (at which point it would have zero velocity). But of course, you can't neglect air resistance, especially with fast-moving objects as it increases faster than linearly with velocity.

I've seen a study looking at the maximum trajectory of .50 BMG for surface-to-surface use, which is generally around 25,000 feet surface range and maximum height of around 8000 feet. At maximum height, horitzontal velocity is down to 100 m/s.

Another study has shown that rifle bullets tend to reach a maximum altitude of about 9000 feet.

Finally, here there is a quote about an Army firing table for the Browning M2 with .50 BMG for anti-aircraft use, which tops out at 7500 feet altitude (but within 400 yards horizontal distance).

So extrapolating, I think it is safe to say that .50 BMG will generally not reach higher than 10,000 feet, and will probably be fairly useless in engaging targets much more than 7500 feet high.

I've put together a business to do just this, building industry "associations" to leverage a small amount per desktop into a large overall development organization to push through global and industry specific apps. For example: One medium bank with 500 desktops spends $500 per PC per year for licensing (not just to MS.) That translates to $250,000 per year (conservatively.)

If they temporarily spent $10 extra per month per desktop, ($120 per year per desktop or $60,000 total annual), they could join a group effort to move from the proprietery world to the open source world. $60,000 is not a lot for them. Link together 100 banks of this size and you've got $6,000,000 annually to build a common set of applications that can be customized at will. The annual cost per PC ($120) is far less than the estimated $500 per PC per year cost for the various proprietery licenses. To top it off, once the goals are reached (within two years) the cost can drop to a $5 per PC cost for support or updates in Federal requirements, or $0 if they so choose. The annual cost savings in license fees would be $250,000 or $220,000 if the optional $5 per PC per month support is kept.

If you add in multiple industry associations, common goals, such as directory based desktop/server management and security or grid-based back end processing, can be attained in a short period of time.

I've found a mirror here

I hope you enjoy it as much as I didn't.

Shouldn't that be GNU/Win? Or, more precisely, VMS/Win/GNU?

This name reminds me of the weird name feud between two towns in rural Alabama.

It sounds to me like the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution is using the Chewbacca Defense!

You do know that that's an urban myth? [or rural myth as the case may be? :) ]
Check here for details.

This study was done using a 150gr M2 Ball bullet that dropped from muzzle velocity of 2700 f/s to ~300 f/s on reimpact. The terminal velocity of a shotgun pellet would be even less.

A sudden complication between us.

There ahead lies nothing of it, yet.

I don't know about spy planes, but I seem to recall a couple of MIG pilots defecting with their jets... Try this link

In Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky" the same idea is expressed in a rather more brutal way. Rather than volunteering service the experts get en-slaved and plugged in as a service. Not such a bad idea if you ask me. And not that far from the truth when looking at various parts of USENET or some company's support operations :)

• AccuView Linux mentions an "optional VGA input".
• Video-Capture.Net mentions VisionRGB, although the link for it is not working at the moment.

Linuxmedialabs.com place seems to sell boards, but not for cheap.

You could also buy a standard tvtuner board and use these or these drivers.

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This a great topic. I've been waiting for the opportunity to ask some questions. At this point I need tools for recording, mixing, and realtime visualization of line input.

I've been using Goldwave for recording. It's a great shareware program despite only being available for Windows. The problem, other than my aversion to Windows, is that when Windows crashes the entire segment I was recording is lost. This is a definately a problem when it's live performances that you are recording.

Gmurf (open source) has a lot of potential but needs more development. The primary thing I'm looking for right now is software that allows me to record and does realtime visual analysis of the input. This is critical for adjusting the recording level to prevent clipping. The second thing I need is a nice open source mixer--one that allows me to adjust recording and playback levels at the same time. As far as the actual recording goes, SoX does an excellent job of recording and uses very little overhead.

My question is: What are the best open source packages for realtime visualization, the mixer, and wave editing?

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