What always bothers me is when people want uniformly distributed random numbers. I know why its valuable but if you make sure that your numbers are uniformly distributed they aren't really random anymore.
I'm guessing that this isn't exactly what you wanted to say and it just came out wrong, but why are uniformly distributed random numbers not random? True, you have knowledge about the distribution that the random numbers came from, but you still would never be able to predict the next number. And, bottom line, if you can't predict the next number IT REALLY IS RANDOM.
Once you get the hang of it LaTeX lets you make complex formulas far more easily than Word's equation editor. And you can use LyX to put a nice WYSIWYG on top of LaTeX which some people prefer-- it certainly makes making tables a lot easier. Anyway, if you want your papers to look professional, LaTeX is a great way to go.
Yes, they did. However, AOL didn't like it and got it shut down within the day. Then someone (Justin Frankel?) leaked the source and the rest is history.
The story I heard is that Kraftwerk "toured" with David Bowie in the '70s-- he would play tapes of them before he went on stage. I wonder if they got a share of the tour proceeds.;)
There was a pretty good (and free) article about Rosalind Franklin in Physics Today last month that gives a good overview of her, her X-ray photographs, and her much discussed role in the discovery of DNA.
The problem is that if you tap in at that point (and let's pretend that you could sink enough electrodes into the retina; if you're tapping in at that level you'd have to hit a significant percentage of them) the raw image would be very poor. You'd have to do all the processing yourself, in hardware and the required processing is not fully understood.
I'd suggest that you'd be better off letting the brain do most of the processing and take output from the visual cortex. I believe there has been some success doing this with blind persons. Tapping into the optic nerve is a tempting compromise, but remember that the optic nerve is made up of hundreds of axons. I doubt a simple cuff electrode would do the trick-- you'd need to get the firing rates for each one (or at least some large percentage of the axons) and this is beyond the current state-of-the-art, afaik.
In any rate, cat example you're citing was for tapping into the thalamus. That's about smack dab in the middle of the brain. Some of the computation is done and some isn't, so that might be a good compromise.
It's important to realize that there is computation done at virtually every step of the path from retina to the visual cortex. There is no passive transmission of data (afaik) so each part is important.
The following link is a very exhaustive analysis of the appropriateness of using the results from unethical experiments, and does a far better job than my one paragraph treatment.
There is no good reason to not use information, even if it was collected unethically. What isn't mentioned in your above link is that the Nazi hypothermia tables are still in use today-- it is quite simply the best information on human hypothermia that we have. (What monster would duplicate that research, afterall?)
I guess I'm not disagreeing with you that stem cell research is a serious moral issue that must be considered very carefully, but the information itself is ethically neutral. Always has been; always will be.
Slashdot Mirror
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(Very funny comment though. :-)
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Very very astute. If someone makes Mozilla-framebuffer, I'll seriously consider moving back to the console.
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I suppose your modern political theory doesn't include things like quarentines?
Or perhaps even laws...
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Call me old fashioned, but I don't think you should have the right to patent maths!
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I'd suggest that you'd be better off letting the brain do most of the processing and take output from the visual cortex. I believe there has been some success doing this with blind persons. Tapping into the optic nerve is a tempting compromise, but remember that the optic nerve is made up of hundreds of axons. I doubt a simple cuff electrode would do the trick-- you'd need to get the firing rates for each one (or at least some large percentage of the axons) and this is beyond the current state-of-the-art, afaik.
In any rate, cat example you're citing was for tapping into the thalamus. That's about smack dab in the middle of the brain. Some of the computation is done and some isn't, so that might be a good compromise.
It's important to realize that there is computation done at virtually every step of the path from retina to the visual cortex. There is no passive transmission of data (afaik) so each part is important.
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The following link is a very exhaustive analysis of the appropriateness of using the results from unethical experiments, and does a far better job than my one paragraph treatment.
http://www.jlaw.com/Articles/NaziMedEx.html
I guess I'm not disagreeing with you that stem cell research is a serious moral issue that must be considered very carefully, but the information itself is ethically neutral. Always has been; always will be.
I'll tell you why they didn't want you to talk about it: asymmetric information benefits the supplier.
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