Whose to say that the topography of the brain could not be digitized and represented in the form of 1's and 0's. We don't know what the limitations are, but certainly nothing on the horizon would lead me to believe that we will do this in my lifetime. The flying machine took 500 years, maybe the digital brain will only take 250.
This is something that I believe is probably for businesses, not really a home-use thing. Plus, ya'll didn't have Enron fucking you over on your powerbill for a few years. California got ass raped....
I disagree with your analysis because the assumptions that your are founding your position on are false, as demonstrated by the general prublic. What do I mean?
The first false assumption that you make is that the most consumers are CAPABLE of building a custom rig for around that price tag. We often taken that for granted here because most of us have the skillset necessary to do this; many people would have no clue how to do this. But wait why not have a friend do it? That may incur more cost and certainly adds another layer of complexity to the custom rig.
Moreover, the market demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that the statement, "If it was priced any higher, consumers would start to wonder why they shouldn't get a new gaming-rig computer instead". Craigslist, Ebay and any other online auctioning site was selling the XBox 360 at nearly double the asking price for stores. People paid this amount and would have made no reservations paying this much money to stores; it's supply and demand nothing else.
You would never pay that amount, and I understand why but you're an informed observer. The market does care about informed observers, the market cares about the lemmings.
Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction
on
An Alternate Human
·
· Score: 1
I believe I read an article on slashdot about some scientists making an argument to say that the bundle of nerves at the base of the spinal cord act in a brain like manner with respect to the stomach. The argument going something along the lines of the proximity to the stomach allows for faster recognition of contents in the stomach to react accordingly.
Too bad I can't find the articles and I can't seem to find anything on google about it:-/
Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction
on
An Alternate Human
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I'm no expert in this sort of stuff but my guess would be that the spinal cord is actually a newer more advanced system and the vagus nerve is the more primative of the two structures. I would guess the vagus nerve dates back to when hearts and lungs started appearing in organisms and not the other way around as your post implies. The importance of that is the vagus nerve was not something that decided the survivability of our ancestors; it was some other species a billion years ago or so who developed it to survive.
Since the start of 2006 I have read two seperate stories about mass coral reef bleaching in both the southern hemisphere [great barrier reef] and the northern hemisphere [florida costal region]. This bleaching ultimately leads to the death of coral; the believe it has been caused by slight increases in the tempature of the ocean.
I am no climatologist, but I would guess that coral reefs are kinda like caneries...slight alterations to the environment causes bad things. Oh well!
Wal-Mart will have this control for a bit longer but as things like Direct2Drive become more prevalent I imagine we'll see the gaming industry caring less and less about what Wal-Mart has to say. Honestly, if I was a gaming company, I'd much rather sell digital copies than copies on some sort of media. There's no shipping, there's no storage, there's no 3rd party vendor who has to make copies of the game before its released; bandwidth space and data storage arn't cheap but they're far cheaper than the traditional distribution model.
Although, if Wal-Mart were smart, they'd bury Direct2Drive because they do have the market share and corporate power to do so; but what do I know? I work in a cubicle;)
Having been a rather akward teenager myself, I can understand why he decided to file suit against them. I don't know anything about this kid or how he feels about himself or even what he went through on an every day basis before this occured but I remember being in high school and feeling invisible to the rest of the world. Suddenly, one day to have myself posted all over the internet and being the subject of laughter, at the age of 15, would have been psychologically devestating to me. It is easy, for those of us who are adults, to be critical of his choices but we weren't the ones treated this way. We never walked in his shoes and never suffered the embarassment that he suffered.
On the outside, since we have no emotional attachment to the situation, it's easy for us to say "I'd ride that money train all the way to the bank" but that fails to give the situation its true weight. Being 15 is tough enough for most kids without having themeselves publically humilitated by their peers just for a few laughs. I'm not a huge fan of law suits in general, but in this instance I am. The action of these kids was not criminal but it was a terrible thing to do and there needs to be consequences.
Articles like these anger me because it's creating excuses for ourselves. I weighed 245 lbs my junior year of high school and not because I was unable to focus on those tasks. The fact was I was a lazy geek who preferred playing computer games and eating lots of junk food as opposed to busting my ass everyday like I do now. That was eight years ago, I weigh 155 lbs [only 5'9]and look amazing [I've been told I look like Brad Pitt by women]. It was done through a whole lot of hard work; the same sort of dedication and focus that I put in to learning the geek stuff in the first place.
Excuses are pointless, small changes over a prolonged period of time make a huge difference.
I wasn't attempting to say that what Viacom is attempting to do was intelligent nor was I saying that I agreed with Murdock's decision to buy MySpace. My point was that this is not indicative of a bubble bursting, when the internet stock bubble burst it was for the reasons you mentioned; Viacom has a business model and so does News Corp, and these acquisitions are merely a piece of that business model.
Sometimes money has to be spent in order to just do business, and Viacom may feel that this is one of those situations. Here's an example, my old man is a partner with a large consulting firm who does work with major oil companies. These oil companies have huge deposits in Russia so they HAVE to do business in Russia even though they operate at a loss in Russia. The clients are too big to just walk away from it. I realize that the situations are vastly different but my point was that these acquisitions are more about the price to play ball than existing on a concrete business model. Moreover, Facebook is just being greedy with their 2 billion dollar price tag; anyone with brain knows its not worth it.
Ok chicken little, the sky is still up where it's supposed to be. Do your understand the difference between what's occuring today and what occured six years ago?
Viacom is a huge company, as is Rupert Murdock's news company; seven hundred fifty million is not nearly as much money to Viacom as one might think. These are niche websites that DO NOT CONSTITUTE AN ENTIRE INDUSTRY.
The point of the investment is for market infiltration; Viacom is going "Oh shit, Murdock is kicking our ass on the internet we need to get involved" thus they are trying to buy things up like they are the New York Yankees. This is the same thing as when Microsoft takes a hit on the Xboxs...market infiltration you'll recoup your money from existing areas.
Weren't they saying the same thing about science at the turn of the 20th century?
This ranks up there with "640k will be more than enough memory" on the idiotic statements that fail to reflect reality in any way what-so-ever. Innovation might need some innovation but Mr. Donofrio is a moron.
About ten years ago, Jared Diamond wrote a book called "Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Society" that explores why certain civilizations and societies were able to rise to the top while others fell apart, some quite suddenly. Mr. Diamond's conclusion was that Europeans were able to expand in the manner in which they did not because of any physical or intellectual advantage but because of superior resistence to pathogens, Bubonic Plaque for instance.
As another poster mentioned, there is a segment of the European population [was listed at 25% by other poster although I was under the impression it was closer to 10%] that is all but immune to AIDS; it's the same gene that granted immunity to bubonic plaque. No other population has it; oh and biological warfare certainly shaped the face of the world today. Case and point: Cortez in Mexico and American Settlers in the US. The native populations were absolutely ravished by these diseases.
In other words, not in our lifetime...but maybe in another 500 years.
To add to your point: Human beings find symmetry attractive. Symmetry is the result of the proper replication of your DNA during your developing years. The replication errors can be caused by all sorts of things most of which are environmental. Second, major facial features that are considered attractive [high cheek bones, strong jawlines in men] are a product of high testostorone levels. This is a genetic thing but invariably the environment plays a role.
Incredibly good looking people can also be incredibly intelligent; my sister just so happens to be one of those people.
Wrong, that self awareness improves the quality of mate that we choose thus we go for quality over quantity. Most mammals do this because of the gestatution period and the inability of the young to protect itself in the wild. It's the difference between digital and analog; insects and mouses and rabbits go for quantity, homo sapiens apes and gorillas go from quality.
Both are valid means of evolution, just fined tuned to the needs of the species. The 18 year thing is no accident.
Evolution is an amazingly large and complex system; I can say without a doubt that my lack understanding of evolution would preclude me from making as decisive a statement as "If you follow that through, mankind is likely to get less healthy, and less intelligent". I do not mean this to be a flame, rather I want to point out that there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that A) Evolution is occuring faster than we realize and B) there are factors besides random mutation that affect the ability of a Homo sapien to survive. What I mean by my second point is that with the creation of civilization, we have introduced a socio-economic element in to the process of natural selection. In other words, resources are now scarce on this planet (The demand for resources exceeds the supply) with seven billion of us thus we compete for resources. Certain socio-economic factors play a role in what resources an individual has access too thus improving the chance that their progeny will survive.
Hypothetical situation time! The year is 2050 and the glaciers have melted cutting the amount of usable and farmable land mass throughout the world. Wars, faminine, plaque, the seven signs of the apocolypse have all come to bear; whose left standing? The people with the socio-economic wherewithall to weather the storm.
As I've been writing this post I've been developing my own thoughts on the topic and I would actually argue that your logical progression is incorrect. The greatest strength of evolution is randomness; although people who already have superior genes more readily pass them on to the next generation, that does not preclude randomness from stepping in and giving someone a step up. Under no circumstances in evolution is lots of offspring a bad thing; at least not one I'm aware of. Breaking the cycle just allows for mutations in other groups giving other people a chance at survive. Plus many evolutionary advantages come with disadvantages too so maybe all us smart folks will die to some brain eating disease. The species survives, all the smart people die and within 100 years there are smart people again. Go evolution...
Actually to be slightly more precise, albeit less humorous, "They're like your average Mammal then?". I know slashdot has run a few articles on it and what not; here's a brief synopsis from the Discovery Channel..
I'm not a neuroscientist nor a psychologist nor anyone else who studies the nature of the mind. As someone who enjoys comedy, I would say that laughing is a product of our mechanisms to deal with the threat. There is ancedotal anthropological evidence that suggests that "a sense of humor" is very important in finding a mate for men[Look at any of those lists and sense of humour will be in the top three, I believe it's usually number one]. Why is that? Well my hypothesis would be because humor is a soci-survival mechanism developed in order to cope with tragedy. Women gravitate towards men who can find humor in tragedy because it was one of the methods that Homo sapiens as a speicies developed to survive all the random shit that happens to us.
In high school, I was obsessed with a MUD called Arctic and introduced a bunch of my friends to the game. I enjoyed various aspects of it, probably most of all the ability to step outside my boring everyday life and be something extraordinary, but the most interesting aspect of it was the social engineering that occured. Eventually my whole group of friends got drawn in, and they probably all blame me for not getting laid in high school but that is besides the point; one of my friends latched on to the game not to enter a fantasy world but to use it as a test bed for human manipulation.
For him, the game was a test bed where he could determine what sorts triggers and levers people have and then see how he could manipulate them to his own end (no surprise that he loved "The Prince" when he read it). I came to appreciate the same things he did later on in my experience, although I never been the manipulating type. It's fascinating though, there are extraordinary leadership opportunities to be learned in these games a person need only the fortitude to deal with morons.
Right, so what you're saying is that China is currently a DEVELOPING capitalist economy; the United States is a STABLE or DEVELOPED [When I say stable I don't mean that it doesn't fluctuate, rather that the biggest pieces of the infastructure have been in place for decades now] economy.
The parents point was that capitalism, regardless of who is doing it, drives innovation. So yes Oil is going to rise to $20/gallon and that is going to be a real pain in the ass but as it occurs the market will bring to bear alternatives. I wouldn't be surprised if the large oil companies are sitting on some of the said alternatives; why release it to the market just yet? You can drive the price of oil up, getting probably 7-8 a gallon in the states before it really starts to have an affect on the purchasing power of consumers at which point the alternative will be introduced. Chances are they are working on streamlining the process to maximize their profits and this is what is so beautiful about capitalism. At first glance, the greed is a little nauseating but by streamlining the system they are able to get the product to the consumer at a cheaper price.
Now the real key is going to be whether a single company has a monopoly on whatever this alternative technology is because that will be dangerous. Assuming it is dispearsed between a few large companies/nations there will be competition which will mitigate the ability to price gouge.
The sky isn't falling, the world isn't about to end and even if it does in another 10,000 years there will be life on Planet Earth once again...just might not be us!
Not to be the rain cloud on a parade, but this joke needs to be put in to the same category as "All your base belong to us" or "I personally will welcome our new overlords". Please, for the love of jove, stop.
Slashdot Mirror
Whose to say that the topography of the brain could not be digitized and represented in the form of 1's and 0's. We don't know what the limitations are, but certainly nothing on the horizon would lead me to believe that we will do this in my lifetime. The flying machine took 500 years, maybe the digital brain will only take 250.
This is something that I believe is probably for businesses, not really a home-use thing. Plus, ya'll didn't have Enron fucking you over on your powerbill for a few years. California got ass raped....
Read the entire thread please, then if you still don't agree I'll have this discussion but clearly you missed early posts in the thread.
"Donnie, you're out of your element." - The Big Lebowski
My posts are about economics, the only reason I brought graphics in to the equation is because you CANNOT get the same product for the same price.
Consoles have never been about MODs, that's the domain of the PC. The XBOX 360 is NOT A PC. Read the posts and pull your foot out of your mouth.
Fine, please let me know where I can get a rig for under $400 that will play Oblivion comparably to the Xbox 360. Custom or not, it doesn't exist.
I disagree with your analysis because the assumptions that your are founding your position on are false, as demonstrated by the general prublic. What do I mean?
The first false assumption that you make is that the most consumers are CAPABLE of building a custom rig for around that price tag. We often taken that for granted here because most of us have the skillset necessary to do this; many people would have no clue how to do this. But wait why not have a friend do it? That may incur more cost and certainly adds another layer of complexity to the custom rig.
Moreover, the market demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that the statement, "If it was priced any higher, consumers would start to wonder why they shouldn't get a new gaming-rig computer instead". Craigslist, Ebay and any other online auctioning site was selling the XBox 360 at nearly double the asking price for stores. People paid this amount and would have made no reservations paying this much money to stores; it's supply and demand nothing else.
You would never pay that amount, and I understand why but you're an informed observer. The market does care about informed observers, the market cares about the lemmings.
I believe I read an article on slashdot about some scientists making an argument to say that the bundle of nerves at the base of the spinal cord act in a brain like manner with respect to the stomach. The argument going something along the lines of the proximity to the stomach allows for faster recognition of contents in the stomach to react accordingly.
:-/
Too bad I can't find the articles and I can't seem to find anything on google about it
I'm no expert in this sort of stuff but my guess would be that the spinal cord is actually a newer more advanced system and the vagus nerve is the more primative of the two structures. I would guess the vagus nerve dates back to when hearts and lungs started appearing in organisms and not the other way around as your post implies. The importance of that is the vagus nerve was not something that decided the survivability of our ancestors; it was some other species a billion years ago or so who developed it to survive.
Kinda like Windows, just keep building on top!
Since the start of 2006 I have read two seperate stories about mass coral reef bleaching in both the southern hemisphere [great barrier reef] and the northern hemisphere [florida costal region]. This bleaching ultimately leads to the death of coral; the believe it has been caused by slight increases in the tempature of the ocean.
I am no climatologist, but I would guess that coral reefs are kinda like caneries...slight alterations to the environment causes bad things. Oh well!
Wal-Mart will have this control for a bit longer but as things like Direct2Drive become more prevalent I imagine we'll see the gaming industry caring less and less about what Wal-Mart has to say. Honestly, if I was a gaming company, I'd much rather sell digital copies than copies on some sort of media. There's no shipping, there's no storage, there's no 3rd party vendor who has to make copies of the game before its released; bandwidth space and data storage arn't cheap but they're far cheaper than the traditional distribution model.
;)
Although, if Wal-Mart were smart, they'd bury Direct2Drive because they do have the market share and corporate power to do so; but what do I know? I work in a cubicle
Having been a rather akward teenager myself, I can understand why he decided to file suit against them. I don't know anything about this kid or how he feels about himself or even what he went through on an every day basis before this occured but I remember being in high school and feeling invisible to the rest of the world. Suddenly, one day to have myself posted all over the internet and being the subject of laughter, at the age of 15, would have been psychologically devestating to me. It is easy, for those of us who are adults, to be critical of his choices but we weren't the ones treated this way. We never walked in his shoes and never suffered the embarassment that he suffered.
On the outside, since we have no emotional attachment to the situation, it's easy for us to say "I'd ride that money train all the way to the bank" but that fails to give the situation its true weight. Being 15 is tough enough for most kids without having themeselves publically humilitated by their peers just for a few laughs. I'm not a huge fan of law suits in general, but in this instance I am. The action of these kids was not criminal but it was a terrible thing to do and there needs to be consequences.
Articles like these anger me because it's creating excuses for ourselves. I weighed 245 lbs my junior year of high school and not because I was unable to focus on those tasks. The fact was I was a lazy geek who preferred playing computer games and eating lots of junk food as opposed to busting my ass everyday like I do now. That was eight years ago, I weigh 155 lbs [only 5'9]and look amazing [I've been told I look like Brad Pitt by women]. It was done through a whole lot of hard work; the same sort of dedication and focus that I put in to learning the geek stuff in the first place.
Excuses are pointless, small changes over a prolonged period of time make a huge difference.
I wasn't attempting to say that what Viacom is attempting to do was intelligent nor was I saying that I agreed with Murdock's decision to buy MySpace. My point was that this is not indicative of a bubble bursting, when the internet stock bubble burst it was for the reasons you mentioned; Viacom has a business model and so does News Corp, and these acquisitions are merely a piece of that business model.
Sometimes money has to be spent in order to just do business, and Viacom may feel that this is one of those situations. Here's an example, my old man is a partner with a large consulting firm who does work with major oil companies. These oil companies have huge deposits in Russia so they HAVE to do business in Russia even though they operate at a loss in Russia. The clients are too big to just walk away from it. I realize that the situations are vastly different but my point was that these acquisitions are more about the price to play ball than existing on a concrete business model. Moreover, Facebook is just being greedy with their 2 billion dollar price tag; anyone with brain knows its not worth it.
Ok chicken little, the sky is still up where it's supposed to be. Do your understand the difference between what's occuring today and what occured six years ago?
Viacom is a huge company, as is Rupert Murdock's news company; seven hundred fifty million is not nearly as much money to Viacom as one might think. These are niche websites that DO NOT CONSTITUTE AN ENTIRE INDUSTRY.
The point of the investment is for market infiltration; Viacom is going "Oh shit, Murdock is kicking our ass on the internet we need to get involved" thus they are trying to buy things up like they are the New York Yankees. This is the same thing as when Microsoft takes a hit on the Xboxs...market infiltration you'll recoup your money from existing areas.
Get off the soap box.
So you're telling me that I'm shit free? I haven't eaten in a week! I'm on the "Four wisdom teeth removed" diet; 10 lbs already!
Weren't they saying the same thing about science at the turn of the 20th century?
This ranks up there with "640k will be more than enough memory" on the idiotic statements that fail to reflect reality in any way what-so-ever. Innovation might need some innovation but Mr. Donofrio is a moron.
About ten years ago, Jared Diamond wrote a book called "Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Society" that explores why certain civilizations and societies were able to rise to the top while others fell apart, some quite suddenly. Mr. Diamond's conclusion was that Europeans were able to expand in the manner in which they did not because of any physical or intellectual advantage but because of superior resistence to pathogens, Bubonic Plaque for instance.
As another poster mentioned, there is a segment of the European population [was listed at 25% by other poster although I was under the impression it was closer to 10%] that is all but immune to AIDS; it's the same gene that granted immunity to bubonic plaque. No other population has it; oh and biological warfare certainly shaped the face of the world today. Case and point: Cortez in Mexico and American Settlers in the US. The native populations were absolutely ravished by these diseases.
In other words, not in our lifetime...but maybe in another 500 years.
To add to your point: Human beings find symmetry attractive. Symmetry is the result of the proper replication of your DNA during your developing years. The replication errors can be caused by all sorts of things most of which are environmental. Second, major facial features that are considered attractive [high cheek bones, strong jawlines in men] are a product of high testostorone levels. This is a genetic thing but invariably the environment plays a role.
Incredibly good looking people can also be incredibly intelligent; my sister just so happens to be one of those people.
Wrong, that self awareness improves the quality of mate that we choose thus we go for quality over quantity. Most mammals do this because of the gestatution period and the inability of the young to protect itself in the wild. It's the difference between digital and analog; insects and mouses and rabbits go for quantity, homo sapiens apes and gorillas go from quality.
Both are valid means of evolution, just fined tuned to the needs of the species. The 18 year thing is no accident.
Evolution is an amazingly large and complex system; I can say without a doubt that my lack understanding of evolution would preclude me from making as decisive a statement as "If you follow that through, mankind is likely to get less healthy, and less intelligent". I do not mean this to be a flame, rather I want to point out that there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that A) Evolution is occuring faster than we realize and B) there are factors besides random mutation that affect the ability of a Homo sapien to survive. What I mean by my second point is that with the creation of civilization, we have introduced a socio-economic element in to the process of natural selection. In other words, resources are now scarce on this planet (The demand for resources exceeds the supply) with seven billion of us thus we compete for resources. Certain socio-economic factors play a role in what resources an individual has access too thus improving the chance that their progeny will survive.
Hypothetical situation time!
The year is 2050 and the glaciers have melted cutting the amount of usable and farmable land mass throughout the world. Wars, faminine, plaque, the seven signs of the apocolypse have all come to bear; whose left standing? The people with the socio-economic wherewithall to weather the storm.
As I've been writing this post I've been developing my own thoughts on the topic and I would actually argue that your logical progression is incorrect. The greatest strength of evolution is randomness; although people who already have superior genes more readily pass them on to the next generation, that does not preclude randomness from stepping in and giving someone a step up. Under no circumstances in evolution is lots of offspring a bad thing; at least not one I'm aware of. Breaking the cycle just allows for mutations in other groups giving other people a chance at survive. Plus many evolutionary advantages come with disadvantages too so maybe all us smart folks will die to some brain eating disease. The species survives, all the smart people die and within 100 years there are smart people again. Go evolution...
Actually to be slightly more precise, albeit less humorous, "They're like your average Mammal then?". I know slashdot has run a few articles on it and what not; here's a brief synopsis from the Discovery Channel..
I'm not a neuroscientist nor a psychologist nor anyone else who studies the nature of the mind. As someone who enjoys comedy, I would say that laughing is a product of our mechanisms to deal with the threat. There is ancedotal anthropological evidence that suggests that "a sense of humor" is very important in finding a mate for men[Look at any of those lists and sense of humour will be in the top three, I believe it's usually number one]. Why is that? Well my hypothesis would be because humor is a soci-survival mechanism developed in order to cope with tragedy. Women gravitate towards men who can find humor in tragedy because it was one of the methods that Homo sapiens as a speicies developed to survive all the random shit that happens to us.
In high school, I was obsessed with a MUD called Arctic and introduced a bunch of my friends to the game. I enjoyed various aspects of it, probably most of all the ability to step outside my boring everyday life and be something extraordinary, but the most interesting aspect of it was the social engineering that occured. Eventually my whole group of friends got drawn in, and they probably all blame me for not getting laid in high school but that is besides the point; one of my friends latched on to the game not to enter a fantasy world but to use it as a test bed for human manipulation.
For him, the game was a test bed where he could determine what sorts triggers and levers people have and then see how he could manipulate them to his own end (no surprise that he loved "The Prince" when he read it). I came to appreciate the same things he did later on in my experience, although I never been the manipulating type. It's fascinating though, there are extraordinary leadership opportunities to be learned in these games a person need only the fortitude to deal with morons.
Right, so what you're saying is that China is currently a DEVELOPING capitalist economy; the United States is a STABLE or DEVELOPED [When I say stable I don't mean that it doesn't fluctuate, rather that the biggest pieces of the infastructure have been in place for decades now] economy.
The parents point was that capitalism, regardless of who is doing it, drives innovation. So yes Oil is going to rise to $20/gallon and that is going to be a real pain in the ass but as it occurs the market will bring to bear alternatives. I wouldn't be surprised if the large oil companies are sitting on some of the said alternatives; why release it to the market just yet? You can drive the price of oil up, getting probably 7-8 a gallon in the states before it really starts to have an affect on the purchasing power of consumers at which point the alternative will be introduced. Chances are they are working on streamlining the process to maximize their profits and this is what is so beautiful about capitalism. At first glance, the greed is a little nauseating but by streamlining the system they are able to get the product to the consumer at a cheaper price.
Now the real key is going to be whether a single company has a monopoly on whatever this alternative technology is because that will be dangerous. Assuming it is dispearsed between a few large companies/nations there will be competition which will mitigate the ability to price gouge.
The sky isn't falling, the world isn't about to end and even if it does in another 10,000 years there will be life on Planet Earth once again...just might not be us!
Not to be the rain cloud on a parade, but this joke needs to be put in to the same category as "All your base belong to us" or "I personally will welcome our new overlords". Please, for the love of jove, stop.