I'm a little disappointed in slashdot's editors for posting this. It's speculation that has nothing to do with any reality that we know. It's like a banner headline on a newspaper reading "Apple could possibly buy Verizon" or "Pfizer has ability to buy Home Depot" - yes, possibly true, and yes, it's ever so slightly more possible than it would have been a few years ago.
The difference is - slightly more possible. NOT AT ALL PROBABLE.
I'm not trolling, it's just that this kind of headline on slashdot has such little value; I'm sure it's not THAT slow a news day.
I doubt this will become the standard of care for type I diabetics.
Why? This treatment is very complicated, costly, invovles suppressing the immune system (which has its own problems), and has had very limited success in the past. Pancreas transplantations are really nothing new (they've been doing them with bilateral kidney tranpslants for years); what's more novel here is that they've transplanted only the islet cells from the pancreas. The thing is, whatever causes type I diabetes in the first place, by killing the islet cells, has killed the transplanted iselt cells in previous attempts.
I'm doubtful but hopeful.
Oh, and for those with Type-II diabetes in the family, this has no relevance to you whatsoever. Sorry; the mechanism of the disease is different, though the results (too much sugar in the blood) is the same. In short, in type-I, the body doesn't produce enough insulin, and in type-II, the body is insulin-resistant (ie, less responsive to insulin).
Based on everything I've read, it looks like Pages is pretty darn good - the analogy to other Mac applications (iTunes, iMovie, the iLife suite, etc) is obvious, in that it does what the majority of home PC or Mac users need it do, but cleanly, intuitively, and naturally. The lack of grammar checking is a fairly major flaw, but I would expect that to come in a later version (just as early versions of iPhoto had some significant limitations that were largely resolved in later versions)
Incidentally, the posted review is very brief and maybe not worth a slashdot post...
XM @ 40kbps per music channel, quality still OK
on
Low-bandwidth Net Radio
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I subscribed to XM for about three months, and one of the main reasons I canceled was that the quality was not quite what I wanted. It was pretty good, but some of the "harshness" that you get with lower-bitrate Vorbis, AAC, etc, with cymbals, was pretty jarring to me. I've reencoded files in OGG, WMA at 64kbs, and it's fairly equivalent (though, of course, this is IMHO and therefore totally subjective.) I haven't tried lower bitrates, but as I recall, Vorbis scales downward very well. This may or may not be the new champ for low bitrate sound quality, but this is NOT revolutionary.
Speaking of XM, it seemd to be feast or famine- either they're playing stuff I like on several channels at once, or I flip around for an entire hourlong drive withouth finding anything - the other main reason why I canceled.
PCMCIA was based on ISA architecture; they've already bumped the bandwidth several times, but it pales in comparison to desktop bus speeds.
I look at this as being analagous to moving to PCIe, which definitely bothered some folks; backwards compatabiity is sometimes more trouble than it's worth, and that's why PCI express and, quite possibly ExpressCards too, will probably win out over the next few years.
A touch of history (wiki's not working for me, so this'll have to do): http://www.quatech.com/support/comm-over-pcm cia.ph p
As I recall, the consensus on LocationFree TV was that it was interesting but grossly overpriced ($1500 for a 12" LCD!!). They may be using the same encoding/decoding software as LocationFree, which works passably well. If they require purchasing/using LocationFree, then this would definitely be garbage.
More on LocationFree TV: http://www.engadget.com/entry/357503873618346 1/ http://www.sonystyle.ca/view/LocationFreeTVLan ding/index.shtml?storeId=10001&langId=-1&catalogId=100 01&categoryId=47640
And for the/. reader with a 5th grade education, the USA Today review: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/ed wardbaig/ 2004-12-01-baig_x.htm
Google news has a few articles about it - here's clips from the original article via other articles on google. By the way, slashdotting a medical journal is a bad thing - I'm a medical student and I rely on these resources to guide or double-check decisions, or to keep up to date.
"A space occupying lesion such as a brain tumour is unlikely as his symptoms are long standing. Gollum's diet is extremely limited, consisting only of raw fish. Vitamin B-12 deficiency may cause irritability, delusions, and paranoia. His reduced appetite and loss of hair and weight may be associated with iron deficiency anaemia. He is hypervigilant and does not seem to need much sleep. This, accompanied by his bulging eyes and weight loss, suggests hyperthyroidism. Gollum's dislike of sunlight may be due to the photosensitivity of porphyria. Attacks may be induced by starvation and accompanied by paranoid psychosis.... On initial consideration schizophrenia seems a reasonable diagnosis. However, in the context of the culture at the time it is unlikely. Delusions are false, unshakeable beliefs, not in keeping with the patient's culture. In Middle Earth, the power of the ring is a reality. The passivity phenomena Gollum experiences are caused by the ring, and these symptoms occur in all ring bearers. Gollum does not fulfil the ICD-10 criteria for the diagnosis of schizophrenia.
The presence of two personalities, Gollum and Sméagol, raises the possibility of multiple personality disorder...."
"There is no disorder of the form of thought. He uses neologisms such as "triksy" and "hobbitses." Gollum has nihilistic thoughts, believing that he is a murderer, liar, and thief; although there is some basis in fact for this and he shows little guilt or remorse. He is preoccupied with, and deeply desires, the ring. He has obsessive thoughts but no compulsions, though he would do anything for the ring. He is hostile towards Frodo, the current owner of the ring. He has paranoid ideation about Sauron ("the eye is always watching") and about Samwise Gamgee ("the fat hobbit... he knows"). Gollum has difficulty controlling his thoughts and actions, exacerbated by prolonged contact with the ring. As Gandalf and Frodo have similar symptoms in the presence of the ring, we can attribute this somatic passivity to the ring. There are features of dissociation. Smeagol has separated his personality and is now Gollum as well."
"Gollum displays pervasive maladaptive behaviour that has been present since childhood with a persistent disease course. His odd interest and spiteful behaviour have led to difficulty in forming friendships and distress to others," she said.
"He fulfils seven of the nine criteria for schizoid personality disorder, and if we must label Gollum's problems we believe that this is the most likely diagnosis,"
My experience with this is limited, but that a lot of postgraduate education is not set up for your type; they're looking for people with more discipline, who will see projects through to the end and get published (and possibly make advancements in whatever field).
Your type of intelligence frustrates many people because it's not helpful; to produce usable software or make advancements in practically any field, you need to focus on them for a long time; I'd say that most of the "obvious" or "easy" discoveries have been made, and much of the research out there is fine-tuning what we know.
The best thing to do is to find a mentor, someone who has a similar mindset. You may find one at your institution, but you shouldn't rule out looking further. In order to do discover or create something important, you need to overcome this... Of course, lots of very effective managers and adminstrators are like this; expand your search for a mentor to maybe the field of business... And check your ego at the door. You may think you're incredibly bright, but just wait until you hit postgraduate education. I'm in medical school, and some of the people around me are exceedingly intelligent, and others are average joes like me. The higher you go, the more you realize you're not "uniquely" anything.
That stuff's always on North Campus. They usually put fliers up all over... Email L33 (at) umich; he's the microsoft student liason thing, and he'll add you to the email list. They also provide free stuff for "educational purposes": OS's, IDE's, any software for which you can make up a development project, and any book published by Microsoft Press.
maybe they're running their websever on one of those tablets...
Incidentally, they had a demo at my school (University of Michigan) last month, and I must say that the detail captured by the touchscreen is pretty amazing. Gabe from Penny-Arcade has been using it instead of a sketchbook, and the picture speaks for itself. Now, whether it's worth $2300 is a different story.
IMHO, this is yet another technology that could be very cool and convienant, and all it needs a killer app and a critical mass in the marketplace, but it doesn't look likely
I'm fairly certain that UWB devices will see the light of day, but let's not forget the oodles of previous technologies that could've, should've, but never did make the imapact that were promised.
I'm not saying UWB is vaporware, though. It'll just have (greatly) limited application unless much of our other wireless technologies change before then too (which is unlikely- eg, look at how slowly DTV is replacing analog TV, or how slowly G3 mobile phones are taking hold here in the states)
(flaimbait?) I'm a big fan of the movie, but the music was already kind of grating (although, nowhere near as bad a BSB remake).
I can't help myself- my brother and I have a stupid synopsis of the movie- Tetsuo! Kenada! (from the soundtrack, sing it like Beavis and Butthead): DAAAANNNNNN!
Like I said though, I'm a fan, and the DVD had some damn good dubbing (as far as dubbing goes)
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a little disappointed in slashdot's editors for posting this. It's speculation that has nothing to do with any reality that we know. It's like a banner headline on a newspaper reading "Apple could possibly buy Verizon" or "Pfizer has ability to buy Home Depot" - yes, possibly true, and yes, it's ever so slightly more possible than it would have been a few years ago.
The difference is - slightly more possible. NOT AT ALL PROBABLE.
I'm not trolling, it's just that this kind of headline on slashdot has such little value; I'm sure it's not THAT slow a news day.
I doubt this will become the standard of care for type I diabetics.
Why? This treatment is very complicated, costly, invovles suppressing the immune system (which has its own problems), and has had very limited success in the past. Pancreas transplantations are really nothing new (they've been doing them with bilateral kidney tranpslants for years); what's more novel here is that they've transplanted only the islet cells from the pancreas. The thing is, whatever causes type I diabetes in the first place, by killing the islet cells, has killed the transplanted iselt cells in previous attempts.
I'm doubtful but hopeful.
Oh, and for those with Type-II diabetes in the family, this has no relevance to you whatsoever. Sorry; the mechanism of the disease is different, though the results (too much sugar in the blood) is the same. In short, in type-I, the body doesn't produce enough insulin, and in type-II, the body is insulin-resistant (ie, less responsive to insulin).
Based on everything I've read, it looks like Pages is pretty darn good - the analogy to other Mac applications (iTunes, iMovie, the iLife suite, etc) is obvious, in that it does what the majority of home PC or Mac users need it do, but cleanly, intuitively, and naturally. The lack of grammar checking is a fairly major flaw, but I would expect that to come in a later version (just as early versions of iPhoto had some significant limitations that were largely resolved in later versions)
Incidentally, the posted review is very brief and maybe not worth a slashdot post...
I subscribed to XM for about three months, and one of the main reasons I canceled was that the quality was not quite what I wanted. It was pretty good, but some of the "harshness" that you get with lower-bitrate Vorbis, AAC, etc, with cymbals, was pretty jarring to me. I've reencoded files in OGG, WMA at 64kbs, and it's fairly equivalent (though, of course, this is IMHO and therefore totally subjective.) I haven't tried lower bitrates, but as I recall, Vorbis scales downward very well. This may or may not be the new champ for low bitrate sound quality, but this is NOT revolutionary.
Speaking of XM, it seemd to be feast or famine- either they're playing stuff I like on several channels at once, or I flip around for an entire hourlong drive withouth finding anything - the other main reason why I canceled.
PCMCIA was based on ISA architecture; they've already bumped the bandwidth several times, but it pales in comparison to desktop bus speeds.
m cia.ph p
I look at this as being analagous to moving to PCIe, which definitely bothered some folks; backwards compatabiity is sometimes more trouble than it's worth, and that's why PCI express and, quite possibly ExpressCards too, will probably win out over the next few years.
A touch of history (wiki's not working for me, so this'll have to do):
http://www.quatech.com/support/comm-over-pc
As I recall, the consensus on LocationFree TV was that it was interesting but grossly overpriced ($1500 for a 12" LCD!!). They may be using the same encoding/decoding software as LocationFree, which works passably well. If they require purchasing/using LocationFree, then this would definitely be garbage.
6 1/n ding /index.shtml?storeId=10001&langId=-1&catalogId=100 01&categoryId=47640
/. reader with a 5th grade education, the USA Today review:d wardbaig/ 2004-12-01-baig_x.htm
More on LocationFree TV:
http://www.engadget.com/entry/35750387361834
http://www.sonystyle.ca/view/LocationFreeTVLa
And for the
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/e
Google news has a few articles about it - here's clips from the original article via other articles on google. By the way, slashdotting a medical journal is a bad thing - I'm a medical student and I rely on these resources to guide or double-check decisions, or to keep up to date.
... On initial consideration schizophrenia seems a reasonable diagnosis. However, in the context of the culture at the time it is unlikely. Delusions are false, unshakeable beliefs, not in keeping with the patient's culture. In Middle Earth, the power of the ring is a reality. The passivity phenomena Gollum experiences are caused by the ring, and these symptoms occur in all ring bearers. Gollum does not fulfil the ICD-10 criteria for the diagnosis of schizophrenia.
..."
"A space occupying lesion such as a brain tumour is unlikely as his symptoms are long standing. Gollum's diet is extremely limited, consisting only of raw fish. Vitamin B-12 deficiency may cause irritability, delusions, and paranoia. His reduced appetite and loss of hair and weight may be associated with iron deficiency anaemia. He is hypervigilant and does not seem to need much sleep. This, accompanied by his bulging eyes and weight loss, suggests hyperthyroidism. Gollum's dislike of sunlight may be due to the photosensitivity of porphyria. Attacks may be induced by starvation and accompanied by paranoid psychosis.
The presence of two personalities, Gollum and Sméagol, raises the possibility of multiple personality disorder.
"There is no disorder of the form of thought. He uses neologisms such as "triksy" and "hobbitses." Gollum has nihilistic thoughts, believing that he is a murderer, liar, and thief; although there is some basis in fact for this and he shows little guilt or remorse. He is preoccupied with, and deeply desires, the ring. He has obsessive thoughts but no compulsions, though he would do anything for the ring. He is hostile towards Frodo, the current owner of the ring. He has paranoid ideation about Sauron ("the eye is always watching") and about Samwise Gamgee ("the fat hobbit... he knows"). Gollum has difficulty controlling his thoughts and actions, exacerbated by prolonged contact with the ring. As Gandalf and Frodo have similar symptoms in the presence of the ring, we can attribute this somatic passivity to the ring. There are features of dissociation. Smeagol has separated his personality and is now Gollum as well."
"Gollum displays pervasive maladaptive behaviour that has been present since childhood with a persistent disease course. His odd interest and spiteful behaviour have led to difficulty in forming friendships and distress to others," she said.
"He fulfils seven of the nine criteria for schizoid personality disorder, and if we must label Gollum's problems we believe that this is the most likely diagnosis,"
Wiki entry on Schizoid
My experience with this is limited, but that a lot of postgraduate education is not set up for your type; they're looking for people with more discipline, who will see projects through to the end and get published (and possibly make advancements in whatever field).
Your type of intelligence frustrates many people because it's not helpful; to produce usable software or make advancements in practically any field, you need to focus on them for a long time; I'd say that most of the "obvious" or "easy" discoveries have been made, and much of the research out there is fine-tuning what we know.
The best thing to do is to find a mentor, someone who has a similar mindset. You may find one at your institution, but you shouldn't rule out looking further. In order to do discover or create something important, you need to overcome this... Of course, lots of very effective managers and adminstrators are like this; expand your search for a mentor to maybe the field of business... And check your ego at the door. You may think you're incredibly bright, but just wait until you hit postgraduate education. I'm in medical school, and some of the people around me are exceedingly intelligent, and others are average joes like me. The higher you go, the more you realize you're not "uniquely" anything.
This was covered a few years ago; no surprise that most people forgot. The answers are mostly the same; still a good read though: http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/12/07/19 1220&mode=thread
-----
Trogdor the Burninator!
That stuff's always on North Campus. They usually put fliers up all over...
Email L33 (at) umich; he's the microsoft student liason thing, and he'll add you to the email list. They also provide free stuff for "educational purposes": OS's, IDE's, any software for which you can make up a development project, and any book published by Microsoft Press.
maybe they're running their websever on one of those tablets...
Incidentally, they had a demo at my school (University of Michigan) last month, and I must say that the detail captured by the touchscreen is pretty amazing. Gabe from Penny-Arcade has been using it instead of a sketchbook, and the picture speaks for itself. Now, whether it's worth $2300 is a different story.
IMHO, this is yet another technology that could be very cool and convienant, and all it needs a killer app and a critical mass in the marketplace, but it doesn't look likely
I'm fairly certain that UWB devices will see the light of day, but let's not forget the oodles of previous technologies that could've, should've, but never did make the imapact that were promised.
I'm not saying UWB is vaporware, though. It'll just have (greatly) limited application unless much of our other wireless technologies change before then too (which is unlikely- eg, look at how slowly DTV is replacing analog TV, or how slowly G3 mobile phones are taking hold here in the states)
"Snatch" Soundtrack , track 3.
Track name: "Supermoves", by Overseer.
It's a strange, but still great, CD.
(flaimbait?)
I'm a big fan of the movie, but the music was already kind of grating (although, nowhere near as bad a BSB remake).
I can't help myself- my brother and I have a stupid synopsis of the movie-
Tetsuo!
Kenada!
(from the soundtrack, sing it like Beavis and Butthead): DAAAANNNNNN!
Like I said though, I'm a fan, and the DVD had some damn good dubbing (as far as dubbing goes)