How is this better than looking at the cell directly using a really powerful microscope? Wouldn't it be better if you could actually see stuff happening rather than getting an indication that it is? Also, would using quantum dots save a signficiant amount of money by lowering the need for more advanced instrumentation?
I wonder why it took them so long to come up with a model for lemmings' weird population behavior. I think such "boom and bust" cycles have also been observed for caribou and the arctic wolf. A rise in the caribou population causes a corresponding rise for wolves and both fall dramatically afterwards. I'm not completely sure about this, so please feel free to correct me here.
Also, it is interesting that suicidal behavior among animals does exist. This Everything2 node provides some very interesting information about this matter.
Yes, you are right. My choice of words was incorrect here and "implant" was definitely the wrong term.
The point of my post is not to revile Disney as evil and raise an alarm about "evil" corporations, but to suggest (what I naively think) an area where a lot of future research should be directed.
So many studies are done about consumer behavior and advertisers' tactics and, yet, consumers behave exactly as they did before. For example, research by Elizabeth Loftus at UCI has shown that advertisers like Disney routinely implant memories into us. In one of her studies, subjects even believes that they had seen Bugs Bunny at Disneyland. Even after this was widely reported by the media, Disney ads have stayed the same and are still as likely to "fall prey" to them.
Obviously, the benefits to advertisers and consumers are quite asymmetrical from all this research. Advertisers can actually refine their techniques and perhaps learn new ones. Consumers, on the other hand, may be a little more educated but they certainly are more easily seduced. While this is not absolutely bad and may even be good in some ways, the fact remains that with increasingly power research tools like fMRI mentioned here, the potential for corporations to absolutely manipulate us increases. I'm sure that things will work out in the future, as they have always done. However, research into "defenses" against memory implantation, et al does need to be conducted.
I think this trip to the moon is especially significant since unlike the last time India made a very high-profile foray into space, it will be doing so on its own. In 1984, Rakesh Sharma became the first Indian to go into space. However, he was carried there by the Russians on a Soyuz T-11. This time, the vehicle will be conducted by the Indians and it won't be carried out through the generosity of Russia.
Also, technological progress is a positive disruptive influence on Indian society. This mission will add to the numerous changes that have come about in India recently, both economically and socially.
The system doesn't actively disallow people their vote. This is why so many people are able to legitimately express themselves. As I said, the system isn't perfect and it needs mending- but it works to an amazing extent.
Using something like Yahoo Messenger to talk to people instead of using long distance isn't a new phenomenon. I have personally been using Yahoo Messenger and (before) Net2Phone on MSN Messenger to talk to people in England and India. International call rates aren't prohibitively expensive for me but it still makes sense to save a lot of money by using a free service. Voice quality isn't bad at all- most of the times it seems quite natural in a telephone sort of way. It works almost perfeclty if one or both parties have a broadband connection. Also, I have been talking to and have stayed connected to people who I otherwise wouldn't have been in touch with.
A lot of the people I talk to wouldn't be able to afford international telephony or find it very expensive at best. These people have been using tools such as Yahoo Messenger to stay connected for quite some while now.
If you think this is bad, try keeping a country of that size with so many conflicting parts together while still retaining a measure of progress, unity and a large degree of individual liberty.
I don't think the system there is perfect or nearly as good as it should be. It must be admitted that in some twisted, obtuse way, today's Indian state is an expression of the people's will.
Widespread corruption and bribery are not incompatible with democracy.
People belonging to the lower castes were certainly disenfranchised before in independent India's history. The Indian state was used as a tool of control by the upper castes to a certain extent and there certainly were localized efforts to prevent lower castes from voting to keep them powerless. However, the situation today is very different. The lower castes are generally no longer disenfranchised and many political movements (e.g. the BSP) who represent them have become significant players both regionally and nationally. Of course, these parties are as corrupt and criminalized as the rest.:)
Today, there are still some regions of India where the upper castes wield enough power to shut out the lower castes from assuming electoral expression. I believe these pockets are shrinking and democracy is become more representative with every passing day. This upsurge of lower caste power has created complex political dynamics today, with many competing groups fighting for the largest share of the economic pie.
India does live in two realities. Rural and poor India is still caught up in caste struggle, while urban and rich India could care less (to a large extent). As a result, the reality is infinitely more complex than what I have posted here.
Elections in India are generally marvellous exercises in democracy. In national elections, hundreds of millions of people of many different kinds cast their votes and elect their representatives. Many people doubted whether democracy would flourish in India, but they are proved wrong after every election. However, the fact still remains that there are still a lot of irregularities in the electoral process.
The bulk of the states have generally free and fair elections. The poorest states, especially those in the North, do not. There, the local strongmen actively use force to swing voted to their side and in a lot of constituencies it is not the most popular candidate who wins, but the most popular. In the poorest of the poor states, this fraud happens on a very large scale.
Today, vote rigging is a very simple exercise. All you have to do is get a bunch of very strong men with weapons of some kind and visit each polling station one by one, threaten the officers there and stamp the ballot papers in your favor. The more organized efforts include printing fake ballot papers and having them counted.
Now that EVMs have been introduced, the potential for localized fraud will be several restricted in some ways. Fake ballot papers cannot be printed, votes cannot be changed or removed. However, the local strong men and criminalized parties will still be around. They will still be able to threaten/cajole/buy people and subvert the democratic process. These problems are more systemic and will solve themselves with the passage of time.
Centralized election fraud is a very different matter. On paper, it looks like EVMs can take care of it. The results of "electronic" elections can be easily verified repeatedly and it should be somewhat difficult to systematically rig EVMS. I'm sure that people will find some way of manipulating EVMs, but it shouldn't knew the results much.
Finally, EVMs have delivered a lot of tangible results in India already. For example, results have been tabulated almost instantly, considerably shortening the political and economic uncertainty associated with elections. They definitely help democracy at every level in India.
Rationally, this idea will be beneficial to everyone. The incentive behind this scheme is that members contribute to the welfare of others so that if they ever need an organ donation, their chances of getting it are higher. The incentive here is really clear and so people who don't contribute their organs normally now will do so.
Let's say this whole thing catches on fast and soon a large proportion or organ donors belong to this clique. You might thing that this is some sort of "organ legging." However, as everyone realizes that membership into this clique brings great benefits, they too will sign up for it in large numbers. Once this clique is large enough, it will be indistinguishable from "normal" organ donation, where the incentive is basically the same as that of LifeSharers, but on a larger scale and more implicit). IMHO this Domino Effect is a very good thing.
A salary of $5900 in India translates into around Rs. 300,000. That's not a large sum here, but in India you could live pretty decently. Every living expense and housing would easily be covered and you would still have a lot to spare since the cost of living is so low. Your standard of living also wouldn't change very drastically. I'm not saying that if everyone moves to India and lives on Indian wages, they would be happy. On the contrary, they would have to deal with a country where the system doesn't work even half as well as here and put up with relatively bad surroundings. I just wanted to point out for sheer curiosity value what that salary would get you in India. I'm also very suspicious of that figure since it seems like a lot to pay for an average IT employee in India.
Companies did embrace telecommuting before. It did go through a phase when it was hot, but things eventually cooled down. I remember reading about this on my "Social Analysis of Computerization" class. The reasons given were that:
- Teleworkers are harder to monitor.
- Apparently, telecommuting hit productivity hard.
- Workers aren't in office enough to get promotions.
- In the office, there aren't enough people to keep ideas going.
- Working at home can be distracting.
- Telecommuting breeds resentment among co-workers since they are anonymous to each other and also because non-telecommuters might dislike others getting such a "rosy" deal.
Ultimately, however, it came down to managers being distrustful of new ideas. They dislike having to put such a high level of trust on employees that they rarely see. They like things the way they are right now and wouldn't really like to see them change. Maybe after some time passes, when many current prospective telecommuters rise to managerial positions, we might see telecommuting establish a strong presence.
IMO, this is further indication that the internet is maturing as a communications medium. Until last year, the net was fairly new and its nature and content evolved every month. I think we are finally beginning to realize what we are going to do with it.
For starters, the days of the ideological, free internet are sadly over. Almost everyone experimented with the free model of the internet and a large proportion of those people failed in their efforts. We have now labelled every commodity with a price, something that will help this medium further.
Then there are the signs that the infant internet is dying. The millions of badly-designed, rearely-updated pages are perishing, and a more well-woven web is taking over. The initial hysteria is gone, most people have already tried their hands at bulilding webpages and have given up due to their lack of talent and/or initiative.
Thus I, for one, am happy at these new state of affairs. I'm not a big fan of paying for content, but that doesnt matter since there are ways of getting around it. I like the better content, the smoother usability and the more complex apps that are emerging today.
I'm a CS major at UC Irvine. Even as a sophmore who's barely been past the basic courses, I can see that it's very important that people work on their own on coding assignments. For at least the first two years, CS majors go through classes on basic programming and computer architecture in which, if they don't code on their own, they will never learn the very basics.
I've had many friends who had to leave the major because they couldn't cope with the coding demands. Now imagine if they were allowed to work in a team- a lot of them surely would have still been in the major, perhaps damaging their entire lives.
We do have a few labs that are meant to be done with partners and it is my opinion that they are quite adequate as teach you team-work and more importantly, how to factor in complete idiots in your team.:-)
I think you shd learn to take certain things lightly. Scroll up and read what I posted. Do you think I'm serious? Maybe it's time for you to lay off the Red Bull.:-)
This concept could easily be put to immensely destructive use. Think about it. Have a million, anti-m$ children march to the m$ headquarters in Seattle and stomp their legs off in a manner that ensures that the frequency of their hops matches the natural frequency of the m$ buildings. That way, resonance would be produced and *voila*, in a few minutes, the m$ campus would be reduced to rubble!
Anyone have an idea how much was spent by the British govt? Think we shd start the fund-raising soon.:-D
..doesnt really seem to exist. Sure, a couple of years back it was hailed as revolutionary and it was supposedly going to change the face of animation. But what has happened since then?
Anime itself has stalled with few of the newer flicks progressing beyond a minor foray from the tried and tested. When GITS was released, I would have expected that its sequel would one day extend a complete revolution, but instead I now look forward merely to a couple of hours of quality entertainment.
Sure, you could name Final Fantasy to prove that I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that a few years down the line, people will recall FF too as a really well-done movie instead of some kind of harbinger of a revolution in animation.
Does any remember 'Ghost In The Shell'? It came out in 1995 and was quickly hailed as the future of Japanese animation. It featured a complex storyline and some really, really impressive special effects and artwork.
Six years down the line, GITS has yet to manifest itself in newer works of Anime. I wonder if this would apply to Blood too. Very often, some very revolutionary animated movies come along our way, but don't seem to influence their successors.
I haven't had a chance to watch Blood yet, but I'm sure that even if this movie is a gem by itself, it will not go a long way in how animation is done.
Why has the BUS speed screeched to a halt at 400 MHz when the processor itself is beyong 1.5 GHz? I don't think these grandoise plans make any sense unless something is done about the very basics.
Frankly, I feel we users are at fault for this entire fiasco. It is we who drive companies such as Intel and AMD to dish out faster processors while hypocratically bashing them for doing something that was caused due to us. In this maddening race for a faster processor, Intel and AMD have slipped up so many times in the process of tryint to raise the bar one more notch. Similarly, hardware reviewers like Tom are under extreme pressure to churn out reviews and benchmark scores. Yes, it is we who are at fault for pushing the entire industry. However, it *is* true that Tom could have exercised some caution and carried out more prolonged, and exhaustive test like SharkyExtreme.
Slashdot Mirror
How is this better than looking at the cell directly using a really powerful microscope? Wouldn't it be better if you could actually see stuff happening rather than getting an indication that it is? Also, would using quantum dots save a signficiant amount of money by lowering the need for more advanced instrumentation?
A search engine is only as good as the number of pages about/made by me that it returns when I ego surf. In this regard, DogPile is the best. :)
I don't get it. Who is GA Proposes and why is he restricting game sales to minors?
This sounds a lot like the Ministry of Information Retrieval from the movie Brazil. The more things change, the more they remain the same. :)
I wonder why it took them so long to come up with a model for lemmings' weird population behavior. I think such "boom and bust" cycles have also been observed for caribou and the arctic wolf. A rise in the caribou population causes a corresponding rise for wolves and both fall dramatically afterwards. I'm not completely sure about this, so please feel free to correct me here.
Also, it is interesting that suicidal behavior among animals does exist. This Everything2 node provides some very interesting information about this matter.
Yes, you are right. My choice of words was incorrect here and "implant" was definitely the wrong term.
The point of my post is not to revile Disney as evil and raise an alarm about "evil" corporations, but to suggest (what I naively think) an area where a lot of future research should be directed.
So many studies are done about consumer behavior and advertisers' tactics and, yet, consumers behave exactly as they did before. For example, research by Elizabeth Loftus at UCI has shown that advertisers like Disney routinely implant memories into us. In one of her studies, subjects even believes that they had seen Bugs Bunny at Disneyland. Even after this was widely reported by the media, Disney ads have stayed the same and are still as likely to "fall prey" to them.
Obviously, the benefits to advertisers and consumers are quite asymmetrical from all this research. Advertisers can actually refine their techniques and perhaps learn new ones. Consumers, on the other hand, may be a little more educated but they certainly are more easily seduced. While this is not absolutely bad and may even be good in some ways, the fact remains that with increasingly power research tools like fMRI mentioned here, the potential for corporations to absolutely manipulate us increases. I'm sure that things will work out in the future, as they have always done. However, research into "defenses" against memory implantation, et al does need to be conducted.
I think this trip to the moon is especially significant since unlike the last time India made a very high-profile foray into space, it will be doing so on its own. In 1984, Rakesh Sharma became the first Indian to go into space. However, he was carried there by the Russians on a Soyuz T-11. This time, the vehicle will be conducted by the Indians and it won't be carried out through the generosity of Russia.
Also, technological progress is a positive disruptive influence on Indian society. This mission will add to the numerous changes that have come about in India recently, both economically and socially.
The system doesn't actively disallow people their vote. This is why so many people are able to legitimately express themselves. As I said, the system isn't perfect and it needs mending- but it works to an amazing extent.
Using something like Yahoo Messenger to talk to people instead of using long distance isn't a new phenomenon. I have personally been using Yahoo Messenger and (before) Net2Phone on MSN Messenger to talk to people in England and India. International call rates aren't prohibitively expensive for me but it still makes sense to save a lot of money by using a free service. Voice quality isn't bad at all- most of the times it seems quite natural in a telephone sort of way. It works almost perfeclty if one or both parties have a broadband connection. Also, I have been talking to and have stayed connected to people who I otherwise wouldn't have been in touch with.
A lot of the people I talk to wouldn't be able to afford international telephony or find it very expensive at best. These people have been using tools such as Yahoo Messenger to stay connected for quite some while now.
If you think this is bad, try keeping a country of that size with so many conflicting parts together while still retaining a measure of progress, unity and a large degree of individual liberty.
I don't think the system there is perfect or nearly as good as it should be. It must be admitted that in some twisted, obtuse way, today's Indian state is an expression of the people's will.
Widespread corruption and bribery are not incompatible with democracy.
People belonging to the lower castes were certainly disenfranchised before in independent India's history. The Indian state was used as a tool of control by the upper castes to a certain extent and there certainly were localized efforts to prevent lower castes from voting to keep them powerless. However, the situation today is very different. The lower castes are generally no longer disenfranchised and many political movements (e.g. the BSP) who represent them have become significant players both regionally and nationally. Of course, these parties are as corrupt and criminalized as the rest. :)
Today, there are still some regions of India where the upper castes wield enough power to shut out the lower castes from assuming electoral expression. I believe these pockets are shrinking and democracy is become more representative with every passing day. This upsurge of lower caste power has created complex political dynamics today, with many competing groups fighting for the largest share of the economic pie.
India does live in two realities. Rural and poor India is still caught up in caste struggle, while urban and rich India could care less (to a large extent). As a result, the reality is infinitely more complex than what I have posted here.
Elections in India are generally marvellous exercises in democracy. In national elections, hundreds of millions of people of many different kinds cast their votes and elect their representatives. Many people doubted whether democracy would flourish in India, but they are proved wrong after every election. However, the fact still remains that there are still a lot of irregularities in the electoral process.
The bulk of the states have generally free and fair elections. The poorest states, especially those in the North, do not. There, the local strongmen actively use force to swing voted to their side and in a lot of constituencies it is not the most popular candidate who wins, but the most popular. In the poorest of the poor states, this fraud happens on a very large scale.
Today, vote rigging is a very simple exercise. All you have to do is get a bunch of very strong men with weapons of some kind and visit each polling station one by one, threaten the officers there and stamp the ballot papers in your favor. The more organized efforts include printing fake ballot papers and having them counted.
Now that EVMs have been introduced, the potential for localized fraud will be several restricted in some ways. Fake ballot papers cannot be printed, votes cannot be changed or removed. However, the local strong men and criminalized parties will still be around. They will still be able to threaten/cajole/buy people and subvert the democratic process. These problems are more systemic and will solve themselves with the passage of time.
Centralized election fraud is a very different matter. On paper, it looks like EVMs can take care of it. The results of "electronic" elections can be easily verified repeatedly and it should be somewhat difficult to systematically rig EVMS. I'm sure that people will find some way of manipulating EVMs, but it shouldn't knew the results much.
Finally, EVMs have delivered a lot of tangible results in India already. For example, results have been tabulated almost instantly, considerably shortening the political and economic uncertainty associated with elections. They definitely help democracy at every level in India.
Rationally, this idea will be beneficial to everyone. The incentive behind this scheme is that members contribute to the welfare of others so that if they ever need an organ donation, their chances of getting it are higher. The incentive here is really clear and so people who don't contribute their organs normally now will do so.
Let's say this whole thing catches on fast and soon a large proportion or organ donors belong to this clique. You might thing that this is some sort of "organ legging." However, as everyone realizes that membership into this clique brings great benefits, they too will sign up for it in large numbers. Once this clique is large enough, it will be indistinguishable from "normal" organ donation, where the incentive is basically the same as that of LifeSharers, but on a larger scale and more implicit). IMHO this Domino Effect is a very good thing.
A salary of $5900 in India translates into around Rs. 300,000. That's not a large sum here, but in India you could live pretty decently. Every living expense and housing would easily be covered and you would still have a lot to spare since the cost of living is so low. Your standard of living also wouldn't change very drastically. I'm not saying that if everyone moves to India and lives on Indian wages, they would be happy. On the contrary, they would have to deal with a country where the system doesn't work even half as well as here and put up with relatively bad surroundings. I just wanted to point out for sheer curiosity value what that salary would get you in India. I'm also very suspicious of that figure since it seems like a lot to pay for an average IT employee in India.
Companies did embrace telecommuting before. It did go through a phase when it was hot, but things eventually cooled down. I remember reading about this on my "Social Analysis of Computerization" class. The reasons given were that:
- Teleworkers are harder to monitor.
- Apparently, telecommuting hit productivity hard.
- Workers aren't in office enough to get promotions.
- In the office, there aren't enough people to keep ideas going.
- Working at home can be distracting.
- Telecommuting breeds resentment among co-workers since they are anonymous to each other and also because non-telecommuters might dislike others getting such a "rosy" deal.
Ultimately, however, it came down to managers being distrustful of new ideas. They dislike having to put such a high level of trust on employees that they rarely see. They like things the way they are right now and wouldn't really like to see them change. Maybe after some time passes, when many current prospective telecommuters rise to managerial positions, we might see telecommuting establish a strong presence.
IMO, this is further indication that the internet is maturing as a communications medium. Until last year, the net was fairly new and its nature and content evolved every month. I think we are finally beginning to realize what we are going to do with it.
For starters, the days of the ideological, free internet are sadly over. Almost everyone experimented with the free model of the internet and a large proportion of those people failed in their efforts. We have now labelled every commodity with a price, something that will help this medium further.
Then there are the signs that the infant internet is dying. The millions of badly-designed, rearely-updated pages are perishing, and a more well-woven web is taking over. The initial hysteria is gone, most people have already tried their hands at bulilding webpages and have given up due to their lack of talent and/or initiative.
Thus I, for one, am happy at these new state of affairs. I'm not a big fan of paying for content, but that doesnt matter since there are ways of getting around it. I like the better content, the smoother usability and the more complex apps that are emerging today.
I've had many friends who had to leave the major because they couldn't cope with the coding demands. Now imagine if they were allowed to work in a team- a lot of them surely would have still been in the major, perhaps damaging their entire lives.
We do have a few labs that are meant to be done with partners and it is my opinion that they are quite adequate as teach you team-work and more importantly, how to factor in complete idiots in your team. :-)
Real men play Core Wars and learn assembly. This does beat learning Java in Prof. Thronton's ICS 22 class tho. :-)
I think you shd learn to take certain things lightly. Scroll up and read what I posted. Do you think I'm serious? Maybe it's time for you to lay off the Red Bull. :-)
This concept could easily be put to immensely destructive use. Think about it. Have a million, anti-m$ children march to the m$ headquarters in Seattle and stomp their legs off in a manner that ensures that the frequency of their hops matches the natural frequency of the m$ buildings. That way, resonance would be produced and *voila*, in a few minutes, the m$ campus would be reduced to rubble!
:-D
Anyone have an idea how much was spent by the British govt? Think we shd start the fund-raising soon.
..doesnt really seem to exist. Sure, a couple of years back it was hailed as revolutionary and it was supposedly going to change the face of animation. But what has happened since then?
Anime itself has stalled with few of the newer flicks progressing beyond a minor foray from the tried and tested. When GITS was released, I would have expected that its sequel would one day extend a complete revolution, but instead I now look forward merely to a couple of hours of quality entertainment.
Sure, you could name Final Fantasy to prove that I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that a few years down the line, people will recall FF too as a really well-done movie instead of some kind of harbinger of a revolution in animation.
What a disappointment!
Does any remember 'Ghost In The Shell'? It came out in 1995 and was quickly hailed as the future of Japanese animation. It featured a complex storyline and some really, really impressive special effects and artwork.
Six years down the line, GITS has yet to manifest itself in newer works of Anime. I wonder if this would apply to Blood too. Very often, some very revolutionary animated movies come along our way, but don't seem to influence their successors.
I haven't had a chance to watch Blood yet, but I'm sure that even if this movie is a gem by itself, it will not go a long way in how animation is done.
Why has the BUS speed screeched to a halt at 400 MHz when the processor itself is beyong 1.5 GHz? I don't think these grandoise plans make any sense unless something is done about the very basics.
Frankly, I feel we users are at fault for this entire fiasco. It is we who drive companies such as Intel and AMD to dish out faster processors while hypocratically bashing them for doing something that was caused due to us. In this maddening race for a faster processor, Intel and AMD have slipped up so many times in the process of tryint to raise the bar one more notch. Similarly, hardware reviewers like Tom are under extreme pressure to churn out reviews and benchmark scores. Yes, it is we who are at fault for pushing the entire industry. However, it *is* true that Tom could have exercised some caution and carried out more prolonged, and exhaustive test like SharkyExtreme.