That's funny - what's the usual hours for a graduate student? Or even an assistatn prof? I've work night's, mornings, afternoons - I'd probably have been picked if this was considered back when I was in grad school
The motto for the site is "News for nerds, stuff that matters". I think the ending falls under the second part of that
I always thought that the "stuff that matters" actually mattered - like rights, events and so on, with a tech flavor.
It is unfortunate that a TV show now comes under "stuff that matters". I'm surprised that we don't have Paris Hilton updates as well - I'm sure that matters to a good number of people.
> Rather than making the composition of the drug open, don't release what's actually in it, > and just test it as a 'black box,' show empirically through tests that it's effective and > reasonably safe, but dope the actual pills with a lot of random substances that make it > difficult to reverse-engineer
I really can't forsee any form of DRM for chemical compounds. It's quite like DRM for music - at one point the music has to be played on a speaker. Similarly, if you're going to make a drug, you're going to have to give the pill out at which point you have the whole field of analytical chemistry (mass spec, HPLC etc) at your disposal!
Furthermore, adding random substances to it, doesn't really hinder the identification process - they'd just show up as separate peaks on the spectrum. In addition randomly adding substances to a drug mixture would probably mess up pharmacokinetics which would have to be restudied all over again.
Unfortunately the chemical world is a little bit messier than the digital world:)
I see your point regarding 'moral absolutes', but the thing is, even if they transcend culture and societies, the individual societies do not (or did not?) know this. Rather than assuming that certain moral behaviors are the 'good thing to do', i.e., they are natural, these behaviors are identified as being defined by god, scripture etc.
It is this leap from a simplistic solution to a much more complex solution that always bugs me. And I could understand it if this feature was an artifact from hundreds or thousands of years ago. But even now, the bulk of the population will ascribe what they do not understand to god.
This still does not explain why it is *so* widespread. Why is it better for me to know that when I die, I'm going to heaven and somebody will be there for me? What is the benefit of the belief to the believer?
I think you're looking at it the wrong way. The article (at least from what I read in the summary:) is indicating a genetic predisposition tothe belief in god. I don't think that it tries to answer whether there is a god or not. It's rather describing why so many people have the belief?
I won't try and speak for the article, but from my atheistic viewpoint, from which I see no *need* for a god (a.k.a, Occams Razor) I have always wondered why it is people choose to believe rather than not believe - is it a weakness (but I know many strong people who are religous), is it laziness (again, I have many counter examples)?
It's a strange phenonemon and understanding it might help us to finally let go of the behavior!
This was one of the possibilities that Dawkins talked about in the God Delusion - according to the evolutionary approach, the belief in gods and the supernatural is really a 'spin-off' of a ingrained tendency to believe authority. Now, the reason this might be useful in an evolutionary perspective is that a child whose genetic makeup predisposes him to be a little more gullible, will probably heed his parents warnings about dangerous things. So if a child were to be told that he should not go down to a certain part of the riverside because of snakes - the more readily the child accepts this, the longer his genes will survive.
The side of effect of this whole process, is that the species may have a tendency to believe authority - some more so than others. Obviously, one has to be a little more specific as to what exactly is 'authority' - but thats a whole other thread.
As with all evolutionary explanations, one shouldn't push it too far - but it does sound quite plausible.
A brief scan of the paper seemed to indicate that their results were based on simulations. Do they have some working model that justifies it coming out in 2 or 3 years?
Or did I read the paper to fast (hey, at least I *did* RTFA)?
Given that electrons are so much smaller (and hence faster) than atoms, wouldn't this lead to slow circuits? What is the advantage of use atoms in place of electrons?
Well if you look at the underlying technique (essentially filtering algorithms) then one can extend it to a variety of areas which might be more useful than movie recomendations. An example area would be analysis of biology/chemistry literature to search for molecules with properties related to diseases. Image a 'drug recomendation' system (for the scientists who're looking for drugs, not for people to decide whether to take a Tylenol!)
Very true - data mining is the new buzzword. The techniques used in data mining are prettyold and standard. Thats not to say that theres no research - theres a ton of stuff that can be done especially when handling large datasets. But fundamentally, it's well known statistical modeling - just rephrased for the 'Age of Marketing':)
I thought that this was previously known - isn't the Higgs field (http://hepwww.ph.qmul.ac.uk/epp/higgs1.html) supposed to endow empty space with a non-zero energy? (Or maybe it was postulated but not observed)
Slashdot Mirror
From the article it looks like they used a variant of SNOBOL. I wonder why such a language was chosen? Was it just a geeky decision?
That's funny - what's the usual hours for a graduate student? Or even an assistatn prof? I've work night's, mornings, afternoons - I'd probably have been picked if this was considered back when I was in grad school
The motto for the site is "News for nerds, stuff that matters". I think the ending falls under the second part of that
I always thought that the "stuff that matters" actually mattered - like rights, events and so on, with a tech flavor.
It is unfortunate that a TV show now comes under "stuff that matters". I'm surprised that we don't have Paris Hilton updates as well - I'm sure that matters to a good number of people.
I just clicked to reply, not to read
Whats the connection? Has this become a movie/tv site?
How does the inclusion of Santa Rosa help/improve the MacBook Pro? Does it lead to better performance?
Can't be too difficult to code up a utility to strip out such tags (?)
But then I've just moved to a Mac so I don't know my way around too well yet
> Rather than making the composition of the drug open, don't release what's actually in it,
:)
> and just test it as a 'black box,' show empirically through tests that it's effective and
> reasonably safe, but dope the actual pills with a lot of random substances that make it
> difficult to reverse-engineer
I really can't forsee any form of DRM for chemical compounds. It's quite like DRM for music - at one point the music has to be played on a speaker. Similarly, if you're going to make a drug, you're going to have to give the pill out at which point you have the whole field of analytical chemistry (mass spec, HPLC etc) at your disposal!
Furthermore, adding random substances to it, doesn't really hinder the identification process - they'd just show up as separate peaks on the spectrum. In addition randomly adding substances to a drug mixture would probably mess up pharmacokinetics which would have to be restudied all over again.
Unfortunately the chemical world is a little bit messier than the digital world
We're in the 21st century. We've got the Internet, everybody (ok, most) is aware of blogs and the relocatability of information sources.
So when will institutions learn that times have changed?
I think this is common in many areas. Whenever something is new, it is usually upto the rich to buy the thing and try it out.
:)
As time goes by, these things will get cheaper and at one point will hopefully be cheap enough for the ordinary person to buy/try.
So if anything, you were born too early
I see your point regarding 'moral absolutes', but the thing is, even if they transcend culture and societies, the individual societies do not (or did not?) know this. Rather than assuming that certain moral behaviors are the 'good thing to do', i.e., they are natural, these behaviors are identified as being defined by god, scripture etc.
It is this leap from a simplistic solution to a much more complex solution that always bugs me. And I could understand it if this feature was an artifact from hundreds or thousands of years ago. But even now, the bulk of the population will ascribe what they do not understand to god.
This still does not explain why it is *so* widespread. Why is it better for me to know that when I die, I'm going to heaven and somebody will be there for me? What is the benefit of the belief to the believer?
I think you're looking at it the wrong way. The article (at least from what I read in the summary :) is indicating a genetic predisposition tothe belief in god. I don't think that it tries to answer whether there is a god or not. It's rather describing why so many people have the belief?
I won't try and speak for the article, but from my atheistic viewpoint, from which I see no *need* for a god (a.k.a, Occams Razor) I have always wondered why it is people choose to believe rather than not believe - is it a weakness (but I know many strong people who are religous), is it laziness (again, I have many counter examples)?
It's a strange phenonemon and understanding it might help us to finally let go of the behavior!
This was one of the possibilities that Dawkins talked about in the God Delusion - according to the evolutionary approach, the belief in gods and the supernatural is really a 'spin-off' of a ingrained tendency to believe authority. Now, the reason this might be useful in an evolutionary perspective is that a child whose genetic makeup predisposes him to be a little more gullible, will probably heed his parents warnings about dangerous things. So if a child were to be told that he should not go down to a certain part of the riverside because of snakes - the more readily the child accepts this, the longer his genes will survive.
The side of effect of this whole process, is that the species may have a tendency to believe authority - some more so than others. Obviously, one has to be a little more specific as to what exactly is 'authority' - but thats a whole other thread.
As with all evolutionary explanations, one shouldn't push it too far - but it does sound quite plausible.
Like bombing the whole of China? (http://politics.slashdot.org/politics/06/01/27/18 57208.shtml)
A brief scan of the paper seemed to indicate that their results were based on simulations. Do they have some working model that justifies it coming out in 2 or 3 years?
Or did I read the paper to fast (hey, at least I *did* RTFA)?
So what next - snitch networks? Informants?
Pissed off people (and assholes) will always remain so.
Given that electrons are so much smaller (and hence faster) than atoms, wouldn't this lead to slow circuits? What is the advantage of use atoms in place of electrons?
How seriously can you take would be crackers who go around blabbing about an upcoming attack?
Sheesh, and the media just have to take it up. They even contradict themselves in the same paragraph!
I think you mean etymology :)
Well if you look at the underlying technique (essentially filtering algorithms) then one can extend it to a variety of areas which might be more useful than movie recomendations. An example area would be analysis of biology/chemistry literature to search for molecules with properties related to diseases. Image a 'drug recomendation' system (for the scientists who're looking for drugs, not for people to decide whether to take a Tylenol!)
This is pretty impressive - the work is just 8 years old. And Prof. Mello is pretty young (at least, looks like it)! Neat
Very true - data mining is the new buzzword. The techniques used in data mining are prettyold and standard. Thats not to say that theres no research - theres a ton of stuff that can be done especially when handling large datasets. But fundamentally, it's well known statistical modeling - just rephrased for the 'Age of Marketing' :)
So all that crap about junk being saved in a DOC file must have gotten back to Redmond.
So I wonder what they'll be dropping from the format?
I thought that this was previously known - isn't the Higgs field (http://hepwww.ph.qmul.ac.uk/epp/higgs1.html) supposed to endow empty space with a non-zero energy? (Or maybe it was postulated but not observed)