If the beta-amyloid plaques do ultimately kill the brain cells, what could be gained by removing them? AFAIK the only decent route out and away from Alzheimer's is to synthesize replacement brain tissue via new neurons AND new glial cells, and then somehow retrain the brain to use the new nervous tissue to 'route around' the damaged areas. Stroke victims often undergo years of intensive retraining in order to relearn how to walk and talk, etc., which shows that the retraining approach works in principle to fix arbitrary types of brain damage. But, you have to have somewhere for the training to go, which is why the prospect of well-engineered replacement nervous tissue is so important. IMHO, it could in fact very well become part of an Azheimer's cure.
I haven't seen Planeshift discussed here yet. It is the coolest looking FOSS game I have yet seen. It is a bit like EverQuest. The download is an astonishing 250MB, most of which is artwork. It is based on the CrystalSpace 3D engine, a truly great piece of code. If you look at the "related projects" link on the CS mainpage, you will find links to many, many other FOSS games based on the CS engine. Truly a vibrant community, yet mostly unknown. Check it out.
Newest ad-aware, newest Norton SystemWorks, half a dozen other malware removal programs, winxp firewall up and running... and I can't get this stuff (ads, CPU-sucking processes which respawn, etc) off my parent's machine permanently. What's the deal? Is anyone else out there finding it flat out impossible to make this stuff go away?
Jon
If you have to take medication to fall asleep (as I do), you should try Seroquel. Seroquel is an anti-psychotic, but taken in small doses it doesn't feel too strange (as most anti-psychotics do), and just about everyone falls asleep wonderfully on it. You might be a bit groggy in the morning, but the sheer pleasure of A) falling asleep when you want to, and B) staying asleep all night is indescribable to someone who hasn't experienced the "joys" (pained sarcasm) of insomnia. Check it out.
The best attempt at isolation at the language level is probably Java. The internal security architecture is rather complicated. And even after half a dozen years, Java still does not provide anything like "ulimit" and I wouldn't trust it to isolate arbitrary code within the same VM.
The Janos Virtual Machine (JanosVM) is a virtual machine for executing Java bytecodes. Unlike any available virtual machine, the JanosVM supports multiple, separate processes (called "teams" in JanosVM) within a single VM. Based on KaffeOS (and thus Kaffe), the JanosVM supports per-team separate heaps, per-team garbage collection threads, inter-team thread migration, safe cross-team reference objects, and a spiffy tutorial. Designed to support asynchronous termination of uncooperative or malicious Java bytecode applications, the JanosVM provides robust and scalable multi-process support within a single virtual machine.
Sir Roger Penrose, the brilliant methematical physicist, and Stuart Hammeroff, a medical researcher at the University of Arizona, have for years postulated that the human brain is a quantum computing substrate. Their hypothesis is that the cellular skeleton (cytoskeleton) of neurons, which is made up of so-called microtubules, functions as some type of quantum waveguide system, allowing for the production of large-scale coherent states of quantum superposition within the human nervous system. A nanotech quatum supercomputing neural net of amazing power might be between our ears! If this were to turn out to be true, one individual neuron might be more "powerful" than this whole computer!!! Perhaps this is unlikely, but given how little we know about the operation of large-scale logic in the brain, it cannot be ruled out. Penrose claims that this state of quantum superposition explains the sensations and operation of consciousness (a "soul" of sorts) as well. Read his book Shadows of the Mind for more info. There's lots of stuff about quantum consciousness on Hammeroff's page, too. Trippy stuff indeed.
This short story scared the hell out of me the first time I read it. The tech is mid-80s and thus very dated, but if you can get past that you have a classic geek horror story on your hands. Charles Kludge lives!
I wrote a 2D/3D accelerated Savage4 KGI driver for Creative earlier this year, until the project was canceled due to dismal Savage4 sales. I still maintain it on my own time. It's far from perfect, but 2D accels work well enough to make XGGI quite pleasant to use and I had passable 3D accels support working with Mesa at one point (the driver is all torn apart these days). I could release some VERY useful sources, if only S3 could be persuaded to let me do so (hint hint).
What non-X implementations of OpenGL exist? I've never heard of any.
GGIMesa is one. I bridged it to GLX well enough to run Quake3 in XGGI/GGIMesa, but with a GL-enabled X server you do have the potential for LD_LIBRARY_PATH related conflicts. Jon
Hear hear! I was an Amiga junkie from 1986 to 1993, and it hurt a LOT when Commodore went belly-up. Now that I am a Linux junkie, the fact that my new world cannot be destroyed by the mismanagement of one single company gives me a nice, warm, fuzzy feeling inside that I refuse to give up or even seriously risk again.
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If the beta-amyloid plaques do ultimately kill the brain cells, what could be gained by removing them? AFAIK the only decent route out and away from Alzheimer's is to synthesize replacement brain tissue via new neurons AND new glial cells, and then somehow retrain the brain to use the new nervous tissue to 'route around' the damaged areas. Stroke victims often undergo years of intensive retraining in order to relearn how to walk and talk, etc., which shows that the retraining approach works in principle to fix arbitrary types of brain damage. But, you have to have somewhere for the training to go, which is why the prospect of well-engineered replacement nervous tissue is so important. IMHO, it could in fact very well become part of an Azheimer's cure.
I haven't seen Planeshift discussed here yet. It is the coolest looking FOSS game I have yet seen. It is a bit like EverQuest. The download is an astonishing 250MB, most of which is artwork. It is based on the CrystalSpace 3D engine, a truly great piece of code. If you look at the "related projects" link on the CS mainpage, you will find links to many, many other FOSS games based on the CS engine. Truly a vibrant community, yet mostly unknown. Check it out.
Newest ad-aware, newest Norton SystemWorks, half a dozen other malware removal programs, winxp firewall up and running... and I can't get this stuff (ads, CPU-sucking processes which respawn, etc) off my parent's machine permanently. What's the deal? Is anyone else out there finding it flat out impossible to make this stuff go away? Jon
If you have to take medication to fall asleep (as I do), you should try Seroquel. Seroquel is an anti-psychotic, but taken in small doses it doesn't feel too strange (as most anti-psychotics do), and just about everyone falls asleep wonderfully on it. You might be a bit groggy in the morning, but the sheer pleasure of A) falling asleep when you want to, and B) staying asleep all night is indescribable to someone who hasn't experienced the "joys" (pained sarcasm) of insomnia. Check it out.
Jon
Check out Janos. From their page:
The Janos Virtual Machine (JanosVM) is a virtual machine for executing Java bytecodes. Unlike any available virtual machine, the JanosVM supports multiple, separate processes (called "teams" in JanosVM) within a single VM. Based on KaffeOS (and thus Kaffe), the JanosVM supports per-team separate heaps, per-team garbage collection threads, inter-team thread migration, safe cross-team reference objects, and a spiffy tutorial. Designed to support asynchronous termination of uncooperative or malicious Java bytecode applications, the JanosVM provides robust and scalable multi-process support within a single virtual machine.
Jon
This short story scared the hell out of me the first time I read it. The tech is mid-80s and thus very dated, but if you can get past that you have a classic geek horror story on your hands. Charles Kludge lives!
Jon
I wrote a 2D/3D accelerated Savage4 KGI driver for Creative earlier this year, until the project was canceled due to dismal Savage4 sales. I still maintain it on my own time. It's far from perfect, but 2D accels work well enough to make XGGI quite pleasant to use and I had passable 3D accels support working with Mesa at one point (the driver is all torn apart these days). I could release some VERY useful sources, if only S3 could be persuaded to let me do so (hint hint).
Jon
GGIMesa is one. I bridged it to GLX well enough to run Quake3 in XGGI/GGIMesa, but with a GL-enabled X server you do have the potential for LD_LIBRARY_PATH related conflicts. Jon
Hear hear! I was an Amiga junkie from 1986 to 1993, and it hurt a LOT when Commodore went belly-up. Now that I am a Linux junkie, the fact that my new world cannot be destroyed by the mismanagement of one single company gives me a nice, warm, fuzzy feeling inside that I refuse to give up or even seriously risk again.
Woops, that was me. Sorry about that. Be nice if Slashdot forced a preview and handled invalid usernames/passwords a bit more gracefully....