Who says they need to "fix" it? Perhaps Motorola may be losing a big customer in the future... I've heard from more than one source now that big changes may be coming in Mac hardware... Absolutely all rumors of course, but this fact fits in nicely with what I've already heard...
It seems that the older we have children, the more that can go wrong.
Ever heard of genetic mutations?
I'm talking about the cellular ones that are going on in your body every single day, not the overall effect we see in each generation of the entire organism.
Most cellular mutations are harmless in the very tiny area of the organ in which they occur, and many of the ones that do occur are unable to divide again and spread the error.
For example, old people's skin looks "old" because they have accumulated a lot of these benign mutations. Occasionally some mutations go seriously wrong, and are able to divide forever, and so then you get things like benign or cancerous tumors.
When mutations occur in the cells/stem cells which are responsible for reproduction, you tend to have more problems in your children. Obviously the probability of passing on a mutation in your reproductive cells goes up with age as a result.
I'm thinking it's not really a clearly definied series of shades of autism, but more like a continuous greyscale. Aspergers falls somewhere between geekdom and classic autism. And like the article suggested, it may be linked to the same condition that makes most males more logically oriented, and most females more socially oriented.
I imagine it as more of a smooth specturm with an occasional mile-marker label that goes something like this:
Jocks / "the blonde stereotype" - Socially savvy but tehnically clueless
Balanced, average people
Geeks
Asperger's
Classic Autism
There are probably more markers to place on the spectrum, but I wonder if there's a condition which would act as a counter-balance at the beginning of the spectrum?
I'd imagine you'd probably need to put the whole computer into a vacuum chamber or something which removes humidity from the air, because after a while the frost buildup would be tremendous, and you'd have to occasionally defrost your computer, like we used to do with freezers =)
I don't know if it's quite "just science for the sake of science"... Just imagine the geek women flocking to them after they read some of the stuff they've written about their little project:
The RF matching box houses the lumped inductance which provides the tuning to bring the chamber's capacitance into resonance at the ion revolution frequency.
Guess that depends on whether you use MPEG-2 or DivX =)
When are we going to get DivX;-) player units anyway?
I've tried searching teh web, but It's nearly impossible to search for a "DVD/DivX;-)" player without getting tons of old dusty websites about the Circuit City DivX fiasco.
It's not a matter of boolean on or off, it's a grey scale. You want to only use the people who are most likely to do the best job. There may be people who are able to do a great job who do not fit the profile, but it is not "efficient" to try every person out first to see if a rare exception exists.
If I recall correctly (I only saw the movie once), the main character actually was not fit for the job, as I seem to recall he was having a very hard time on the treadmill, while the other "genetically legitimate" characters in the same room seemed to be handling the excercise fine. But since it's been a while since I saw the movie, it could be that he was not able to handle it due to some other circumstance.
"Majority rule only works if you're also considering individual rights. Because you can't have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for supper." --Larry Flynt
Genes work chaotically within the body, so like you said, changing one attribute almost certianly will always change several others, even if they are subtle.
Your body is basically grown as a biological fractal... That's why something like 98% of all base pairs are the same in humans. That 98% probably describes the things that make us all similiar (placement and purpose of organs, the humanoid form, general cell structure and function).
If our DNA had to contain explicit instructions about the placement of every molecule in our body, it'd take the same amount of matter to encode that information =)
Let's not forget that as science advances, we'll get to know exactly what gene sequences do for various things, and we'll be able to respond to them even more quickly. If a disease comes along which can't be stopped naturally due to us removing certian (formerly harmful) alleles from the gene pool, we just use the same technology we used to remove the allele to re-insert the allele and reverse the problem.
In some cases, it may be impossible to eliminiate all diseases for a certian gene. For example, it may come down to whether you will die of some heart condition or a digestive disorder; well, then perhaps your parents get to choose which allele you are given.
In the long term, I doubt this will matter, as anyone with enough hope and imagination would predict that our exponential technology growth would probably grant our descendents some form of technological immortaility in the distant future, and would be accomplished completely without a genetic system.
You make a good point. I was thinking about this as I read the article. If genetic knowlege becomes widespread, the private insurance industry is going to consumed by their own greed.
The problem is, they need to gather lots of information quickly, before many people start to know what their dispositions are. Once a large portion of the population go to their corner drug store and spend $25 to know their genetic predispositions, they will mostly all start behaving differently to avoid those potential diseses. This would certianly throw off the numbers, especially for preventable diseases.
An important aspect of this research a chaotic reaction, probably not much unlike the stock market. I can imagine a highly preventable disease would even have skewed statistics to the point of being reversed...
For example, you have two groups. Group A is predisposed to heart attacks. Group B is not. Group A leads a heart-healthy lifestyle, and beats the statistics by a large margin.
Group B on the other hand, have found out that they are not as susceptible to heart attacks, so they continue eating their triple-bacon-cheeseburgers three times a week, and keel over at 45 of heart disease.
Now the statistics are reversed. Now things get crazy.
So it's important to stop gathering new information once a large portion of the population becomes aware of their genetic predispositions.
I wonder why gas turbine + generators are not scaled down to portable-for-your-home sized units? Even my office uses a very large diesel generator that automatically fires up when the power goes out. Surely if gas turbine generators are more efficient, they would be used in the place of the diesel generators.
My understanding is that Aluminum is actually diamagnetic, which does mean it would be affected by magnetic fields, only in the opposite way of ferromagnetic/paramagnetic metals.
Scroll down to the area titled "Slow Fall 2" at this site for a cool example of diamagnetic braking.
I'm not entirely familiar with stack machines, but they sound very interesting (I may look some info up over the weekend). But I wonder if more performance be gained by having multiple stacks?
Many news sites nowadays have a light mode, so you should be able to stay well within the 15MB.
They do? If so, does anyone maintain a nice index of such sites? It would be nice if there were a standard for lightweight low-bandwidth web browsing, like if sites started putting up text.sitename.com in addition to their www.sitename.com addresses.
Unfortunately, this probably won't happen as everyone would start using those sites instead of the version with four flash banner ads and 10 little animated GIF buttons flashing and dancing...
Dammit, people, it's not that hard to be polite. You don't need to be reachable immediately at the press of a button all the time.
UGH. This reminds me of a brainwas^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hdisplay at Epcot by Motorola where they give you their view of the future of communication, and basically everybody's interconnected instantly by various devices.
The worst part was someone who took a call on their wristwatch-videophone while he was in the middle of bungee-jumping.
I'm sorry, but if I'm in the middle of bungee-jumping, I'm not taking a call.
I'm just curious, as I have heard this claimed for both types of processors. It seems like a processor with more instructions would be more optimizable because the compiler has more ways to describe what it wants the CPU to do; and the CPU has a better understanding what it needs to do, which allows it to optimize even further.
Slashdot Mirror
Who says they need to "fix" it? Perhaps Motorola may be losing a big customer in the future... I've heard from more than one source now that big changes may be coming in Mac hardware... Absolutely all rumors of course, but this fact fits in nicely with what I've already heard...
Ever heard of genetic mutations?
I'm talking about the cellular ones that are going on in your body every single day, not the overall effect we see in each generation of the entire organism.
Most cellular mutations are harmless in the very tiny area of the organ in which they occur, and many of the ones that do occur are unable to divide again and spread the error.
For example, old people's skin looks "old" because they have accumulated a lot of these benign mutations. Occasionally some mutations go seriously wrong, and are able to divide forever, and so then you get things like benign or cancerous tumors.
When mutations occur in the cells/stem cells which are responsible for reproduction, you tend to have more problems in your children. Obviously the probability of passing on a mutation in your reproductive cells goes up with age as a result.
Very interesting.
- Jocks / "the blonde stereotype" - Socially savvy but tehnically clueless
- Balanced, average people
- Geeks
- Asperger's
- Classic Autism
There are probably more markers to place on the spectrum, but I wonder if there's a condition which would act as a counter-balance at the beginning of the spectrum?Oh, you mean a hue like 0x10, such as in #AE7D60? =)
They should have put a tap on it to offer drinks to potential buyers =)
I'd imagine you'd probably need to put the whole computer into a vacuum chamber or something which removes humidity from the air, because after a while the frost buildup would be tremendous, and you'd have to occasionally defrost your computer, like we used to do with freezers =)
Mmmmmmm.. must build tokamak..
When are we going to get DivX ;-) player units anyway?
I've tried searching teh web, but It's nearly impossible to search for a "DVD/DivX ;-)" player without getting tons of old dusty websites about the Circuit City DivX fiasco.
I've actually been wondering if we are to expect faster CD-R drives that will go, for example, 60x for Mini-CD's, and 48x for standard CDs...
"Majority rule only works if you're also considering individual rights. Because you can't have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for supper." --Larry Flynt
Your body is basically grown as a biological fractal... That's why something like 98% of all base pairs are the same in humans. That 98% probably describes the things that make us all similiar (placement and purpose of organs, the humanoid form, general cell structure and function).
If our DNA had to contain explicit instructions about the placement of every molecule in our body, it'd take the same amount of matter to encode that information =)
In some cases, it may be impossible to eliminiate all diseases for a certian gene. For example, it may come down to whether you will die of some heart condition or a digestive disorder; well, then perhaps your parents get to choose which allele you are given.
In the long term, I doubt this will matter, as anyone with enough hope and imagination would predict that our exponential technology growth would probably grant our descendents some form of technological immortaility in the distant future, and would be accomplished completely without a genetic system.
*shrug*
And before anyone starts spouting their McCarthyisims, I'd like to also add that I am quite libertarian about most things, just not healthcare.
Now a government has no shareholders, bonuses, stock options, nor does it have any incentive for making a profit, so it would be a little different:
- We estimate spending A dollars for insurance claims this year.
- In order to cover our raw business expenses, we need B dollars.
- Tax things which are potentially unhealthy (tobacco, alcohol, fast food, sports events (to cover injuries)), put all of this together and call it T.
- So we will charge *ALL* of our citizens P2 = (A + B - T)/number of citizens.
I guarantee you that P1 will not only be substantially more than P2, but P1 will also incur much more hassle and run-around in making a claim than P2.You make a good point. I was thinking about this as I read the article. If genetic knowlege becomes widespread, the private insurance industry is going to consumed by their own greed.
An important aspect of this research a chaotic reaction, probably not much unlike the stock market. I can imagine a highly preventable disease would even have skewed statistics to the point of being reversed...
For example, you have two groups. Group A is predisposed to heart attacks. Group B is not. Group A leads a heart-healthy lifestyle, and beats the statistics by a large margin.
Group B on the other hand, have found out that they are not as susceptible to heart attacks, so they continue eating their triple-bacon-cheeseburgers three times a week, and keel over at 45 of heart disease.
Now the statistics are reversed. Now things get crazy. So it's important to stop gathering new information once a large portion of the population becomes aware of their genetic predispositions.
I wonder why gas turbine + generators are not scaled down to portable-for-your-home sized units? Even my office uses a very large diesel generator that automatically fires up when the power goes out. Surely if gas turbine generators are more efficient, they would be used in the place of the diesel generators.
Scroll down to the area titled "Slow Fall 2" at this site for a cool example of diamagnetic braking.
I'm not entirely familiar with stack machines, but they sound very interesting (I may look some info up over the weekend). But I wonder if more performance be gained by having multiple stacks?
They do? If so, does anyone maintain a nice index of such sites? It would be nice if there were a standard for lightweight low-bandwidth web browsing, like if sites started putting up text.sitename.com in addition to their www.sitename.com addresses.
Unfortunately, this probably won't happen as everyone would start using those sites instead of the version with four flash banner ads and 10 little animated GIF buttons flashing and dancing...
Wouldn't that make you a copyright circumvention device, and therefore effecitvely make YOU illegal under the DMCA?
UGH. This reminds me of a brainwas^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hdisplay at Epcot by Motorola where they give you their view of the future of communication, and basically everybody's interconnected instantly by various devices.
The worst part was someone who took a call on their wristwatch-videophone while he was in the middle of bungee-jumping.
I'm sorry, but if I'm in the middle of bungee-jumping, I'm not taking a call.
I'm just curious, as I have heard this claimed for both types of processors. It seems like a processor with more instructions would be more optimizable because the compiler has more ways to describe what it wants the CPU to do; and the CPU has a better understanding what it needs to do, which allows it to optimize even further.