Your comment, "... as they're already big on integrated graphics." is true for some values of "big". Intel has been big in integrated graphics the way a dead whale is big on the beach.
Basically, once you discover what Intel graphics has not been able to do, you buy an ATI or Nvidia graphics card.
Today at a coder's party we had a discussion about Intel's miserable corporate
communications.
Intel's introduction of "Larrabee" is an example. Where will it be
used? Only in high-end gaming computers and graphics workstations? Will
Larrabee provide video adapters for mid-range business desktop computers?
I'm not the only one who thinks Intel has done a terrible job
communicating about Larrabee. See the ArsTechnica article, Clearing up the confusion over Intel's Larrabee. Quote:
"When Intel's Pat Gelsinger finally acknowledged the existence of Larrabee
at last week's IDF, he didn't exactly clear up very much about the project. In
fact, some of his comments left close Larrabee-watchers more confused about
the scope and nature of the project than ever before."
The Wikipedia entry about Larrabee is somewhat helpful. But I
don't see anything which would help me understand the cost of the low-end
Larrabee projects.
Excellent, I agree. But generation of Par2 files should be automatic. I don't mind having only 3.5 gigabytes on a DVD for data if the Par2 files are generated and tested automatically.
It would be good if Slashdot stories provided some perspective.
When stories about small countries are posted, it is useful to know
the population. The entire country of Israel has a population like a big city.
There are only 7,282,000 people in Israel. There are only 5,499,000 Jews
in Israel. There are only about 14,000,000 Jews in the entire world.
Slashdot often runs stories about New Zealand. There are only 4,270,605
people in all of New Zealand, both north and south islands.
My guess is that you intended to joke, but MetaGrid and HyperNet have already been trademarked.
Quote: "GridNet(tm) includes, but is not necessarily limited to, two moieties,
The MetaGrid(tm) and The HyperNet(tm)."
For example, Dell notebook turns into a Bad Buy. Quote: "... wonder if company
executives just don't care anymore what people think of Dell support."
Another quote from the same story: "Every contact number I got took me to
an overseas call center, and after finally getting past the ridiculous voice
systems, when I got a live person and asked for corporate contact info (email
or phone) for corporate, I was either disconnected or put on hold for a
manager -- who never picked up and I was disconnected after five minutes."
Here's a quote from No
Spare Processors for Dell Server: "At what point does a manufacturer's
obligation to provide spare parts for a system cease? Consider the experience
of one reader who recently found he could not get a processor for a
two-year-old Dell server, a system still covered by a Dell same-day onsite
service contract."
I like to speculate about the social background of how these things
happen. Here is my guess:
Dell top executives were sitting around during a long lunch smoking
cigarettes and drinking martinis. One of them said, "We've gotten a lot of free bad publicity in the past, but now that Ed Foster
has very unfortunately and sadly died, how will we get bad press in the future?
They smoke their cigarettes for a while in silence while staring at a
good-looking waitress, until one of them says, "I know. We will get Dell on
the front page of Slashdot by trademarking a commonly used term!"
Another says, "I don't like that idea very much, but since we only get
a new idea about once a year, let's do it."
And that's how it happened. Or maybe not. I would love to know the
true story, which I think would be more interesting than this fictional one.
There are so many problems with Nvidia graphics drivers and software that there is a web site devoted specifically to solving the problems: LaptopVideo2Go.com.
Funny comment. But the underlying facts about the name, and the drug, don't
seem funny to me:
1) The person who submitted the story to Slashdot says, The trademark word "rember" is written with a lower-case
initial letter. A trademark in a proper noun, and must be capitalized to
show that it is not a common noun. The word seems to me to be chosen to
confuse those who don't know how to think about drugs in a scientific way.
2) The "drug" is an aniline dye commonly used in laboratories. Aniline
dyes have been known to cause cancer. See the comment about that, Odd
facts about the BBC article, which I posted below.
3) The Slashdot story is an advertisement, apparently. The company is
looking for money for more trials. See the comment
More odd facts about the drug "Rember".
4) The above comment links to a Chicago Sun-Times newspaper article
which says that two-thirds of the study produced no results and were ignored.
The one-third of the study which is being considered produced only "7 percent"
results.
5) The chemical in the drug is cheap and has been widely available for
decades. Apparently to make it commercial, they are claiming they have a
special formulation.
Quote from the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper article: "In the study,
321 patients were given one of three doses of Rember or dummy capsules three
times a day. The capsules containing the highest dose had a flaw in
formulation that kept them from working, and the lowest dose was too weak to
keep the disease from worsening, Wischik said. However, the middle dose
helped, as measured by a widely used score of mental performance. 'The people
on placebo lost an average of 7 percent of their brain function over six
months whereas those on treatment didn't decline at all,' he said."
This seems to say that two-thirds of the results of the study of 321
people were thrown away, with excuses, and the one-third of the study that
produced only 7 percent results was kept. How many people were in the
one-third of the trial that produced 7 percent results? That's the true size
of the trial.
Quote from the Sun-Times article: " 'This is suggestive data,' not
proof, Wischik warned. The company is raising money now for another test of
the drug to start next year." So, this is another Slashdot story that is
in fact an investment opportunity.
You said, "I should say that Claude Wischik thinks he *does* know what
causes Alzheimer's disease. He's sure that tau tangles cause it."
But what causes tau tangles?
Fraud? In my opinion, at the very least the BBC story is very
badly written. In my opinion, there are elements of fraud. If I were the
manager of "Emma Wilkinson, Health reporter, BBC News" I would review her work
to try to discover if she has been taking money to advertise drugs. I would
consider firing her, or at least re-assigning her to less demanding writing
projects.
Quote from the BBC
article: "Rember, or methylthioninium chloride, is the first treatment
specifically designed to target the Tau tangles." There was no "design".
The effect was discovered entirely because of a laboratory accident with a common laboratory chemical. Quote
from the BBC article: "Methylthioninium chloride is more commonly used as a
blue dye in laboratory experiments. Professor Wischik discovered it by
accident 20 years ago, when a drop in a test tube led to the disappearance of
the Tau protein he had been working on."
It seems a bit odd that, if Professor Wischik discovered the effect 20 years
ago, there is an investigation of the effect only now. Why the delay? What happened?
Cancer? The BBC article should have mentioned that the laboratory chemical they are now calling "Rember" is an aniline dye, that aniline dyes cause cancer, and that has been known for a long time. Quote
from that web page: "A group of chemicals called arylamines are known to
cause bladder cancer. These chemicals have been banned in the UK for about 20
years. But it can take up to 25 years for a bladder cancer to develop. You may
have been exposed to them a long time ago if you work in industries such as
rubber or plastics manufacture. Arylamines that increase risk of bladder
cancer include * Aniline dyes...".
What that quote doesn't say is that direct chemical exposure can cause
cancer immediately. How is it possible that "chemicals have been banned in the UK for about 20
years" can be given to people in the U.K. as a drug?
The title of the BBC article is NOT "Alzheimer's drug halts decline".
It is "Alzheimer's drug 'halts' decline", but people with no professional
writing experience will almost certainly miss the significance of the single
quotes, which mean that a claim is merely being made, and the claim is not a verified fact.
The BBC article contains 539 words total. Of those, 243 words, more
than half, are quotes. It seems that much of the article may have been taken
from a PR release, with little or no critical thinking.
Calling the dye "Rember" encourages those with no scientific training
in the field to believe that it will help them "Remember".
There are other odd aspects of the BBC article. The article says,
"Trials of the drug, known as Rember, in 321 patients showed an 81%
difference in rate of mental decline compared with those not taking the
treatment." Does that mean there continues to be mental decline, but the
decline is slower?
Later the article says, "Patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's
disease were given either 30, 60 or 100mg of the drug or a placebo. The 60mg
dose produced the most pronounced effect - over 50 weeks there was a
seven-point difference on a scale used to measure severity of dementia."
How many points total are on the scale? Isn't that odd, that the 60 milligram
dose worked better than a 100 milligram dose? How much better? Doesn't that
say that there were really 3 trials, and one of the dosage levels was by chance
statistically better than the others, so it was chosen to report the results?
The BBC article says, "At 19 months there was no significant decline in
mental function in patients taking the drug, the researchers said."
Certainly by choosing a Greek name he made talking about his project more difficult. The fact that the name requires an explanation indicates it will confuse those who are new to the work.
The BBC article linked in
the Slashdot story says, "Rember, or methylthioninium chloride, is the
first treatment specifically designed to target the Tau tangles."
Note that, apparently:
1) They don't know what causes Alzheimer's disease. They have only
found a chemical that modifies the course of the disease.
2) The smack-you-in-the-face marketing has already begun? They are
calling the drug, "Rember"?
The "drug" is only a well-knownsynthetic dye. "Rember" is Methylene blue. The Free Dictionary says it is, "A
basic aniline dye that forms a deep blue solution when dissolved in water and
is used as a bacteriological stain and as an antidote for cyanide
poisoning."
3) This is apparently just an example of trying every known chemical to
see if it modifies every known disease. If it works, fine, but it is not an
example of science; it is apparently only an example of somewhat blindly
trying everything. How is that a "treatment specifically designed"?
My understanding is that it is common to have temporary remissions of
the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. In any short clinical trial, there will
be some people who have improved.
4) "... the trial was funded by a pharmaceutical company..."
according to the BBC article.
MOD PARENT UP!!! Thanks for your extensive comments.
What software do you use with LaTeX?
Quote: "When you get to more complex documents, I find Word has a tendency to screw up - it will crash and/or eat parts of the formatting or content of your document."
I've experienced that. Sometimes Word even ruins its own files so badly that it can't read them. If that happens, here's a tip: Load the Word file in Open Office, and save it in Word format. That repairs the file. Word will then be able to read its own file. So, Open Office is a necessary Microsoft Office utility.
I sure wish Open Source authors would choose sensible names for their projects. The name TeX and LaTeX has undoubtedly reduced the acceptance of the software. See this quote, for example:
"TeX's creator Donald Knuth promotes a/tx/ pronunciation (that is, with a voiceless velar fricative as in Modern Greek, or the last sound of the German word "Bach", similar to the Spanish "j" sound)."
Didn't he look around and see that no professional communication was using "Voiceless velar fricatives"? Did he decide that all other writers in the entire English language were wrong, and he was being more communicative than the professionals? Or was he intentionally making communication difficult?
I read the NY Times article and thought Steve Jobs calling Joe Nocera a "slime
bucket" was not accurate. But then I realized that apparently someone doctored the recent
NY Times photograph of Steve Jobs used in the story so that it would have less healthy-looking red color.
It's amazing to me how quickly Google's Knol service has proven to be a failure. The articles are thinly veiled advertisements. The idea behind Wikipedia now seems even more wise than before.
"Trying to come up with a justification for seeking some grant money?"
Exactly. Possibly. MOD PARENT UP.
Fraud Alert? There are many physicists who would love to have a quick Nobel Prize for finding some sense in this. There is no evidence that there is some unknown way electromagnetic energy interacts with matter. Talk to Max Planck.
We have covered this many times before on Slashdot. Here is only one example: There is no need for speculation. See the comment below, also.
Slashdot Mirror
Your comment, "... as they're already big on integrated graphics." is true for some values of "big". Intel has been big in integrated graphics the way a dead whale is big on the beach.
Basically, once you discover what Intel graphics has not been able to do, you buy an ATI or Nvidia graphics card.
Today at a coder's party we had a discussion about Intel's miserable corporate communications.
Intel's introduction of "Larrabee" is an example. Where will it be used? Only in high-end gaming computers and graphics workstations? Will Larrabee provide video adapters for mid-range business desktop computers?
I'm not the only one who thinks Intel has done a terrible job communicating about Larrabee. See the ArsTechnica article, Clearing up the confusion over Intel's Larrabee. Quote: "When Intel's Pat Gelsinger finally acknowledged the existence of Larrabee at last week's IDF, he didn't exactly clear up very much about the project. In fact, some of his comments left close Larrabee-watchers more confused about the scope and nature of the project than ever before."
The Wikipedia entry about Larrabee is somewhat helpful. But I don't see anything which would help me understand the cost of the low-end Larrabee projects.
Excellent, I agree. But generation of Par2 files should be automatic. I don't mind having only 3.5 gigabytes on a DVD for data if the Par2 files are generated and tested automatically.
Par2 is apparently Reed-Solomon done in a more helpful way.
Quote from the Parity Volume Set Specification 2.0: "PAR 2.0 uses a 16-bit Reed-Solomon code and can support 32768 blocks."
"... data integrity MUST be an operating/file system service."
I agree. I'm willing to have a small loss in speed and a small increase in price to have better data integrity.
There is already data integrity technology embedded in hard drives, and I support making it more robust.
It would be good if Slashdot stories provided some perspective.
When stories about small countries are posted, it is useful to know the population. The entire country of Israel has a population like a big city. There are only 7,282,000 people in Israel. There are only 5,499,000 Jews in Israel. There are only about 14,000,000 Jews in the entire world.
Slashdot often runs stories about New Zealand. There are only 4,270,605 people in all of New Zealand, both north and south islands.
There are only 21,382,480 people in Australia.
My guess is that you intended to joke, but MetaGrid and HyperNet have already been trademarked. Quote: "GridNet(tm) includes, but is not necessarily limited to, two moieties, The MetaGrid(tm) and The HyperNet(tm)."
Dell has often been adversarial. Here are some recent stories about ways Dell has treated customers poorly:
For example, Dell notebook turns into a Bad Buy. Quote: "... wonder if company executives just don't care anymore what people think of Dell support." Another quote from the same story: "Every contact number I got took me to an overseas call center, and after finally getting past the ridiculous voice systems, when I got a live person and asked for corporate contact info (email or phone) for corporate, I was either disconnected or put on hold for a manager -- who never picked up and I was disconnected after five minutes."
Here's a quote from No Spare Processors for Dell Server: "At what point does a manufacturer's obligation to provide spare parts for a system cease? Consider the experience of one reader who recently found he could not get a processor for a two-year-old Dell server, a system still covered by a Dell same-day onsite service contract."
Another quote from College Kid Learns Lesson About Dell's Warranty: "Maybe I've been lucky, but in 70 years I've never dealt with a worse company than Dell."
I like to speculate about the social background of how these things happen. Here is my guess:
Dell top executives were sitting around during a long lunch smoking cigarettes and drinking martinis. One of them said, "We've gotten a lot of free bad publicity in the past, but now that Ed Foster has very unfortunately and sadly died, how will we get bad press in the future?
They smoke their cigarettes for a while in silence while staring at a good-looking waitress, until one of them says, "I know. We will get Dell on the front page of Slashdot by trademarking a commonly used term!"
Another says, "I don't like that idea very much, but since we only get a new idea about once a year, let's do it."
And that's how it happened. Or maybe not. I would love to know the true story, which I think would be more interesting than this fictional one.
Here is the U.S. Patent and Trademark listing: CLOUD COMPUTING
Cloudy thinking by Dell.
MOD PARENT UP.
Nvidia is managing badly in other ways, also, than supplying poor quality software; this Slashdot story is not an isolated occurrence. For example, All Nvidia G84 and G86s are bad. Or see All Nvidia G84 and G86 chips faulty?. Or, Nvidia Likely to Confirm Scale of Chip Troubles Soon.
There are so many problems with Nvidia graphics drivers and software that there is a web site devoted specifically to solving the problems: LaptopVideo2Go.com.
Interesting. MOD PARENT UP.
Interesting comment.
Funny comment. But the underlying facts about the name, and the drug, don't seem funny to me:
1) The person who submitted the story to Slashdot says, The trademark word "rember" is written with a lower-case initial letter. A trademark in a proper noun, and must be capitalized to show that it is not a common noun. The word seems to me to be chosen to confuse those who don't know how to think about drugs in a scientific way.
2) The "drug" is an aniline dye commonly used in laboratories. Aniline dyes have been known to cause cancer. See the comment about that, Odd facts about the BBC article, which I posted below.
3) The Slashdot story is an advertisement, apparently. The company is looking for money for more trials. See the comment More odd facts about the drug "Rember".
4) The above comment links to a Chicago Sun-Times newspaper article which says that two-thirds of the study produced no results and were ignored. The one-third of the study which is being considered produced only "7 percent" results.
5) The chemical in the drug is cheap and has been widely available for decades. Apparently to make it commercial, they are claiming they have a special formulation.
Quote from the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper article: "In the study, 321 patients were given one of three doses of Rember or dummy capsules three times a day. The capsules containing the highest dose had a flaw in formulation that kept them from working, and the lowest dose was too weak to keep the disease from worsening, Wischik said. However, the middle dose helped, as measured by a widely used score of mental performance. 'The people on placebo lost an average of 7 percent of their brain function over six months whereas those on treatment didn't decline at all,' he said."
This seems to say that two-thirds of the results of the study of 321 people were thrown away, with excuses, and the one-third of the study that produced only 7 percent results was kept. How many people were in the one-third of the trial that produced 7 percent results? That's the true size of the trial.
Quote from the Sun-Times article: " 'This is suggestive data,' not proof, Wischik warned. The company is raising money now for another test of the drug to start next year." So, this is another Slashdot story that is in fact an investment opportunity.
You said, "I should say that Claude Wischik thinks he *does* know what causes Alzheimer's disease. He's sure that tau tangles cause it."
...".
But what causes tau tangles?
Fraud? In my opinion, at the very least the BBC story is very badly written. In my opinion, there are elements of fraud. If I were the manager of "Emma Wilkinson, Health reporter, BBC News" I would review her work to try to discover if she has been taking money to advertise drugs. I would consider firing her, or at least re-assigning her to less demanding writing projects.
Quote from the BBC article: "Rember, or methylthioninium chloride, is the first treatment specifically designed to target the Tau tangles." There was no "design". The effect was discovered entirely because of a laboratory accident with a common laboratory chemical. Quote from the BBC article: "Methylthioninium chloride is more commonly used as a blue dye in laboratory experiments. Professor Wischik discovered it by accident 20 years ago, when a drop in a test tube led to the disappearance of the Tau protein he had been working on."
It seems a bit odd that, if Professor Wischik discovered the effect 20 years ago, there is an investigation of the effect only now. Why the delay? What happened?
Cancer? The BBC article should have mentioned that the laboratory chemical they are now calling "Rember" is an aniline dye, that aniline dyes cause cancer, and that has been known for a long time. Quote from that web page: "A group of chemicals called arylamines are known to cause bladder cancer. These chemicals have been banned in the UK for about 20 years. But it can take up to 25 years for a bladder cancer to develop. You may have been exposed to them a long time ago if you work in industries such as rubber or plastics manufacture. Arylamines that increase risk of bladder cancer include * Aniline dyes
What that quote doesn't say is that direct chemical exposure can cause cancer immediately. How is it possible that "chemicals have been banned in the UK for about 20 years" can be given to people in the U.K. as a drug?
The title of the BBC article is NOT "Alzheimer's drug halts decline". It is "Alzheimer's drug 'halts' decline", but people with no professional writing experience will almost certainly miss the significance of the single quotes, which mean that a claim is merely being made, and the claim is not a verified fact.
The BBC article contains 539 words total. Of those, 243 words, more than half, are quotes. It seems that much of the article may have been taken from a PR release, with little or no critical thinking.
Calling the dye "Rember" encourages those with no scientific training in the field to believe that it will help them "Remember".
There are other odd aspects of the BBC article. The article says, "Trials of the drug, known as Rember, in 321 patients showed an 81% difference in rate of mental decline compared with those not taking the treatment." Does that mean there continues to be mental decline, but the decline is slower?
Later the article says, "Patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease were given either 30, 60 or 100mg of the drug or a placebo. The 60mg dose produced the most pronounced effect - over 50 weeks there was a seven-point difference on a scale used to measure severity of dementia." How many points total are on the scale? Isn't that odd, that the 60 milligram dose worked better than a 100 milligram dose? How much better? Doesn't that say that there were really 3 trials, and one of the dosage levels was by chance statistically better than the others, so it was chosen to report the results?
The BBC article says, "At 19 months there was no significant decline in mental function in patients taking the drug, the researchers said."
Certainly by choosing a Greek name he made talking about his project more difficult. The fact that the name requires an explanation indicates it will confuse those who are new to the work.
Interesting points.
The BBC article linked in the Slashdot story says, "Rember, or methylthioninium chloride, is the first treatment specifically designed to target the Tau tangles."
Note that, apparently:
1) They don't know what causes Alzheimer's disease. They have only found a chemical that modifies the course of the disease.
2) The smack-you-in-the-face marketing has already begun? They are calling the drug, "Rember"?
The "drug" is only a well-known synthetic dye. "Rember" is Methylene blue. The Free Dictionary says it is, "A basic aniline dye that forms a deep blue solution when dissolved in water and is used as a bacteriological stain and as an antidote for cyanide poisoning."
3) This is apparently just an example of trying every known chemical to see if it modifies every known disease. If it works, fine, but it is not an example of science; it is apparently only an example of somewhat blindly trying everything. How is that a "treatment specifically designed"?
My understanding is that it is common to have temporary remissions of the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. In any short clinical trial, there will be some people who have improved.
4) "... the trial was funded by a pharmaceutical company..." according to the BBC article.
Ray, get a better picture of yourself, a seriously professional picture.
MOD PARENT UP!!! Thanks for your extensive comments.
/tx/ pronunciation (that is, with a voiceless velar fricative as in Modern Greek, or the last sound of the German word "Bach", similar to the Spanish "j" sound)."
What software do you use with LaTeX?
Quote: "When you get to more complex documents, I find Word has a tendency to screw up - it will crash and/or eat parts of the formatting or content of your document."
I've experienced that. Sometimes Word even ruins its own files so badly that it can't read them. If that happens, here's a tip: Load the Word file in Open Office, and save it in Word format. That repairs the file. Word will then be able to read its own file. So, Open Office is a necessary Microsoft Office utility.
I sure wish Open Source authors would choose sensible names for their projects. The name TeX and LaTeX has undoubtedly reduced the acceptance of the software. See this quote, for example:
"TeX's creator Donald Knuth promotes a
Didn't he look around and see that no professional communication was using "Voiceless velar fricatives"? Did he decide that all other writers in the entire English language were wrong, and he was being more communicative than the professionals? Or was he intentionally making communication difficult?
I read the NY Times article and thought Steve Jobs calling Joe Nocera a "slime bucket" was not accurate. But then I realized that apparently someone doctored the recent NY Times photograph of Steve Jobs used in the story so that it would have less healthy-looking red color.
This is apparently a normal photograph: Steve Jobs, looking healthy. Here's another: Steve Jobs, plenty of purple in the background, but with red in his skin.
Try OpenWengo. It works as well as Skype. It is encrypted with the "NG release", available now. The download page says "secure PC-to-PC calls". See this discussion about encryption. It's Open Source. Linux, Mac, and Windows.
It's amazing to me how quickly Google's Knol service has proven to be a failure. The articles are thinly veiled advertisements. The idea behind Wikipedia now seems even more wise than before.
You apparently didn't read the link I provided.
"Trying to come up with a justification for seeking some grant money?"
Exactly. Possibly. MOD PARENT UP.
Fraud Alert? There are many physicists who would love to have a quick Nobel Prize for finding some sense in this. There is no evidence that there is some unknown way electromagnetic energy interacts with matter. Talk to Max Planck.
We have covered this many times before on Slashdot. Here is only one example: There is no need for speculation. See the comment below, also.