Sure do. Actually, I even converted from a reform synagogue...just before I converted...(er...like...dunno...13 years ago maybe? can't remember) they instated a new law stating that they would accept reform conversions from canada and the us, but not actually in isreal itself (it's a political thing, I think). So yeah...isreal and the religion consider it the same. Actually, I get more looked down on because I'm reform than I do because I'm a convert.
Challenging that claim would certainly not be incorrect, but I hardly think that's what judaism claims. There are a lot of religions out there that claim to be chosen by god, and while, yes, it does come across as elitist, it is necessary to realize that it is not in reference to a bloodline or genetics, but a way of life. Similar to most religions, Judaism feels that religion brings them closer to god, and by choosing to follow this religion that they become a part of god's people. This isn't something that is only common to Judaism either.
Yes, it is tracked through the bloodline, but many other religions are also traced this way for the simple fact that people of a certain religion tend to bring up their children to hold their same beliefs. But make no mistake - just because something is passed down through parents does NOT mean that Jewish people claim RACIAL superiority.
For example, I am jewish, but not by blood...converted when I was quite little, actually. But even without that genetic trace, I've never been treated any differently, and I'm able to participate fully in all of the rites that all jewish people are. It's not a genetics/race thing, it's a beliefs thing, and it's common with a large number of religions.
the funny part is that people who are strong athiests fall back on the same types of arguments as strong religious types.... God's existance, or the lack of it is not obvious in any way...it is a belief. Without solid proof in one direction, we cannot say for certain whether or not God really exists because we have no solid proof either way. If we did, and it was really so obvious, well...argument over, we'd all know for sure. But the fact is that we don't have facts and proofs, we have beliefs and ideas, which differ from person to person and religion to religion. If it is your belief that there is no such thing as god, then fine...that is your belief and you are entitled to it, and I'm sure there are good reasons for it...but don't pretend this is some obvious truth that everyone should suscribe to, because beliefs about the nature of god are rarely obvious and are speculation on both sides of the road.
I think that probably the biggest market for stolen scrolls isn't where some guy is looking for hot torahs...it's probably where the buyer is being lied to. Getting or buying inherited or old scrolls isn't abnormal - I know our synagogue has an old one. It's kind of nice, actually - it hold its history not only because of its contents and traditional preparation, but also because it has a history of its own.
Our synagogue now has a scroll that was at one point stolen from a synagogue during the holocaust. The synagogue it came from most likely isn't around anymore (we don't know exactly where it is from). It's no longer kosher anyway, so it's not useable, just on display, but no one really has any idea where it's come from. At any rate, yes, it is a stolen torah, but it's not like we were looking for cheap torah goods...it's a religious artifact. Although we'd love to determine where it came from...some way to track it would be great.
Our work has a policy like that...
All official documents and emails are kept on the server. For the documents it's because you don't ever want out of date documents floating around on desktops - we're a pretty highly regulated industry (medical software) and it's regulated that you have to have certain document management policies in place. Ours involves an online doc management system. Doesn't have to be that way, but it works great. when your server is up. The email thing is a bit more just for practical reasons - we book meetings online and if you're keeping your own copy you won't know if the meeting room changes etc. just easier to have it centralized.
I've only been here once when the server went down, and it was an unproductive day to say the least. Works fantastically well when it's up, but when it's down...you're screwed.
I know what you're trying to say about the ranges, but in this case, what I was trying to say is that the ranges firstly, are not normal for this type of a study, and secondly, that when the values you are getting for your controls are the same as the values you are getting for your test subjects then this is an indication that perhaps it is not the drug that is causing the change in values...that there has to be something else there that would cause such a change, because the same change is being seen in the control subjects. This isn't about stats - it's about what is and is not normal for this type of a study. You're right - just because something is a 15 to 20x range does not make it automatically wrong. but in this cause it IS wrong - that kind of range in this type of a brain study is not normal. I'm sorry if I didn't make that clear - I'm not criticising the fact that there was a large range, I'm criticising the fact that the range was way out of whack with where it should have been IN THIS CASE and that should have been an indication that there was a flaw somewhere in the methodology.
Incidentally...I also wasn't saying they shouldn't have used controls...I'm not stupid...it was trying to set up the basic experiment. so thanks.
Just because the products are there does not mean that the substance itself
causes brain damage of any type. In fact, recently there has been a spade
of papers coming out discrediting the whole neurotoxicity theory. Two of
the most prominent works on mdma neurotoxicity are papers by Ricaurte and by
McCann (sp? I can't remember...sorry). The Ricaurte paper is the one that
esentially formed the basis for the placement of mdma in schedule I in the
states. It looked at the destruction of axons in seratonin neurons in
monkeys. Conclusion was that mdma causes brain damage in very low doses.
The problem with this one? well...turns out that it's fairly easy to stop
this damage (don't overheat the brain, first off) and also (and probably
more importantly) that there is a large amount of empircal evidence that low
doses of mdma do NOT cause the type of damage described in the paper.
Ricaulte essentially claimed that low doses (like...small recreational
doses) would cause irreversible brain damage. Well...there are tonnes of
people out there who have taken this and show no signs of the type damage he
is talking about. He's also seeming to develop this bad habit of publishing
papers on this subject and then retracting them. Makes sensational news to
start with, scares the public, but then he's like "oops, oh well".
The McCann paper is one of the one used in that whole "mdma causes brain
holes" thing. ok..first off...they arent brain holes...let's get serious.
It's not a brain picture, it's a representation of levels of brain
chemicals...the "holes" are dark areas. puh-lease. Now...as for the
paper...this one gets a LOT of criticism...the reserachers studied sert
levels in the brains of humans. They used controls and a number of users
ranging from mild users to heavy users. They found a correlation between
mdma use and sert levels in the brain and this is what the gov't ran with
for their campain. This paper has some major flaws though, and has actually
been the subject of a few papers that specifically refute the claims and
results of this study (of course, you never hear the results from these).
Specifically, the range of values in the control subjects was almost as
large as the range in the mdma users. Ie...the range found in mdma users
was normal. Despite this, they took an average for the controls, found an
increasing line as mdma user increased and claimed cause and effect.
Well...no...obviously if the control users can have this range too, then
either these high levels aren't harmful, or can be caused by a number of
different things, not just mdma. Holding that aside, the range found in the
controls was also just ridiculus. Something like 15 or 20 times greater for
the highest level in the control than the lowest. This is just unheard of,
and is a good indication that there was something else wrong with the study.
And yet it's still quoted in all the common gov't issue informational
booklets despite the fact that it has come into serious doubt.
Even taking all that aside, even the most alarmist studies neglect to
mention that the damage is about equivalent to the damage caused by other
fda approved drugs, including some common weight-loss drugs (which just goes
to show how screwed we really are in what we criticize and what we accept).
Just my $0.02...but I'd take it with a grain of salt that these things cause
the problems described. I have yet to see any convincing proof that mdma is
causing this major damage, or that the damage is any worse than damage
caused by other fda approved drugs.
In my first year of university, the other streams of engineering had to take this basic computer class in C. We were in a differnet class doing java, so I don't really know HOW bad their class was, but rumour has it that despite the fact that some of these people had never even seen a programming language before, he never even bothered to explain what programming was or how it worked, or even really basic things like the difference between code and comments in his examples. At any rate, suffice it to say that the class did NOT go well and they spent a LONG time on really basic stuff. Well, this guy keeps going back to this one example of an if statement using a game. And he constantly used the two phrases "printf("I win);" and "printf("you lose");". Well...with the guy's accent it came out as "I ween" and "you loose". Became kind of a running joke. So now every time something goes really well, instead of giving 'er a w00t, it gets a "printf I win!"
anyway, long story stort...I always now use the expression "printf something" in real life. Not as nerdy as spelling out the brackets, but close.
My view is undoubtedly very skewed on this since I literally just finished university and I'm going back in the fall for a second round (convocation in 2 week - I'm not joking when I say fresh out). But, personally, I don't think there's any possible way I could have learned what I did on my own. I just don't have the discipline to sit down and do it without the guidance and motivation of a teacher. Now, I'm not saying that some people can't do that on their own - I know a self-taught sys-admin with no university degree who's better at his job than I could ever hope to be. It's almost like he has a sixth sense about the things. But not everyone is so lucky.
The knowledge and experience and CONFIDENCE I've gained in my field is extraordinary. Not only that, but it exposed me to a wide variety of topics that I don't think I would have ever even considered on my own...I went in thinking the only thing I'd ever want to be was a math nerd and software developer, and I ended up in a grad program designing chips and writing assembly code for dsp. I really doubt I would have ended up in this field on my own.
I think it really afforded me some oportunities and experiences I never would have been able to get on my own - working with new, top of the line equipment, spending 1.5 months with 3 hours of sleep a night trying desperately to get a project working (ok...maybe I could have gotten that at work). Meeting people who really inspire you (I'm working on my first oss project right now with a prof I was ta-ing for).
Now I know a degree is not a parallel for the working world or real working experience, but it's a backround, and, personally, I think it IS proof that you have some ability and dedication.
I'm not saying university is for everyone - it's not. But some of us really gained a lot from the experience, and overall, I think I'm better off with my degree than if I hadn't gone at all. but that's just me.
I was working with a prof last semester who liked to talk a lot about AI applications to language processors...I think he was going to do his research in it and then got side-tracked onto another project. At any rate, he was giving me a quick rundown on how to get funding and showed me this paper he based his first research proposal on, and it was on self-organizing structures and the applicaiton to language. Essentially, the reserachers trained this NN to parse basic grammar and then let it run free for a while for some unsupervised training. What they found was that the program had lumped together the types of things that humans would normally lump together in groups - verbs with verbs, nouns with nouns etc. Really interesting results, especially considering some of the linguistics theories about the base structures of languages are mostly the same. Seems computers may pick up on that somewhat as well, which would make a NN an excellent tool for things like translations.
Incidentally, if anyone happens to know what paper I'm talking about...I'm totally drawing a blank on where this thing came from...it would be really appreciated. very interesting stuff, and I'd like the chance to check it out again.
are you kidding me? boy, yeah, it's sure a good thing that viruses are getting more destructive...maybe now people will do more to stop viruses....
first of all, let's be realistic...unless a person actually gets this virus, very few people who don't already have some knowledge of computer security issues already are even going to know/care about this. No matter how destructive it is, there are still going to be lots of people out there with little to know security measures in place. And when they call me up to fix their computers, I'd much rather be dealing with some stupid runaway program than a totally wiped hard-drive with no chance of recovery.
Even with some security measures in place, I mean, let's face it...there's no such thing as absolute security. Especially for your average user or small business who doesn't have the same type of time / resources to keep everything always patched and up to date. Viruses ARE going to sneek through - that's the whole point of a virus. And if it does...I'd much rather have some stupid thing that pops up random ads than something that's going to force me to do some major system restores to get things back to normal.
so, no, I definately don't think that more destructive viruses are a good thing. Given the choice, I'd say the best thing would be no viruses at all, but that's never going to happen. Even so, I'd much rather have something smaller and easier to fix than something that's going to cause major damage.
I totally agree - there is nothing worse than spending good time fiddling with web stuff and finally getting it to look how you want only to find that it looks like absolute crap in IE. And then you look online for how to fix it, and most of the time it involves exploiting other weird behaviours in IE to trick it into looking somewhat like I want it.
So yes, it would be fantastic if IE would just get itself compliant before it starts getting fancy. BUT...on the other hand...frustrating as it is...people have built sites based on strange IE behaviour...I'm not saying it's a GOOD thing to do, but if they changed now, a lot of pages would be doing a lot of strange things.
Not sure if it will work on IE (never tried, but I don't see why not), but I found that the equally annoying MSN messenger had an awfully hard time popping itself up unexpectely once I'd deleted all of its files.
Don't get me wrong, this is a really neat project...it's always nice to see people doing cool stuff with products that the manufacturers probably didn't intend. And I can see this being really great if you really wanted a PSP to begin with, and just popped on the emulator for the sake of having more games....but...I think I'll just stick with my actual gameboy. It's way cheaper and probably less of a pain to get working properly.
I am not a physicist, but from what I understand of it (which may not be a lot), particle pairs (matter particle and an anti-matter particle) are able to appear together in space. I'm a little fuzzy on this part because it seems counter-intuitive to me, but apparantly this does not violate the laws of conservation of energy because the matter is generated along with the anti-matter, which creates a balance.
Usually, just after the creation, the matter hits the anti-matter and they disappear. But at the event horizon of a black hole, it is possible for one of the particles to get sucked in, meaning that its partner is left visible. This is what creates the emissions from black holes, which actually makes them not so black at all, but visible to physicists so they can study them.
Although there are still areas where Open Office still needs some help. I just TA'd a class at the university (intro to computer applications - basic computer couse with lectures on basic computer theory and labs on software and web development). One of the assignment was done in word, using some of their nice pretty features (hey, it's an applications course...). The assignment included a section where they were to write a few paragraphs comparing open office to word. Overall, the comparions found them to be fairly equal, with OO having the added bonus of being free. However, I did get a few comments on how hard it was to apply styles correctly in OO and also to use some of their auto generated content functions. On the bright side, their approach to figure and table captaions is fantastic, and IMHO is vastly superior to the microsoft approach.
Overall though, the biggest complaint was that when you boot up OO all you get is a big blank grey screen with no instructions on where to go from there. For a beginner computer user, this is a big stumbling block. Very little problem technically, but it does seem to create a bit of a barier to learning how to use the software, particularily for new computer users. I find this is a fairly common problem with open source software in particular (although I can mention a few pieces of commercial software that have this problem in spades).
I'm sure there will be folks out there who try and scam the system, but as much as people like to bash them, Microsoft has never been a stupid company when it comes to business - I'm sure they have some type of a plan in place, I mean, it's not too far-fetched an idea - I'm sure someone over there must have put some thought into it. Besides, this is a pretty sweet PR move for them - they come off looking like the big company that really cares about their customers. I'm sure a few lost copies of their program pales in comparison.
yeah, but, just like open source, you can still change for the boards and open up the source, or in this case, building specs, programming code etc.
It would definately be interesting to have an fpga based board with the board programming code source available and the hardware specs available. That way, you could fiddle with your board and get it to do what you want, just like open source. It could be a viable business if they were charging for the boards themselves, but letting people play with the internal components a bit more than with proprietary. I can see lots of hardware geeks / hobbyists buying them just for the experience of playing.
I know I'm super late on this, and there are like 4 million posts before me, so no one will likely read this, but if you do want to see a comany doing some really cool stuff with car safety, check out this site
http://www.intellimec.com/
Really cools stuff like tracking where people's heads are to see if it is safe to deploy air bags, checking people's weight and position to determine if there are children in the car and what safety stuff to deploy for them...and the best one...tracking the heartbeat of ocupants without actually making them put on hearbeat sensors using some ungodly cool dsp stuff.
I agree. Maybe a court decision would stop future candidates from saying things like "yeah, I know the VOTES aren't all counted yet, but who cares about VOTES? I think I won, so I'm just going to call myself the winner - hey news networks...post me as the winner..."
For a country that talks so high and mighty about their well developed democracic nation, it doesn't seem to be too well implemented. In fact, declaring yourself a winner before bothering to count the votes actually sounds a lot like another kind of government system.
I'd say that there were some other serious competitors in there, but defiantely the BEST competitor won. There were for sure one or two others (as I recall) that had the ideas and the ships that were capable of reaching space and winning the competition. The problem was that they didn't have the time, and with spaceship one putting on the pressure, they tried to skip some seriously important steps (like test flights in some cases as I recall) in order to improve their chances of making it first. The winners really went about things the right way, propper testing and real R&D strategy and they came out on top, just as it should be.
Not that I mean to downplay the injury the pilot suffered in this case, but this seems (to me anyway) to be a fairly random event that isn't likely to happen too often. It seems like it would be more detrimental to put something on the windshield that might potentially obstruct the pilots view on every flight than it would be to leave yourself open to fairly infrequent and random lazer attacks. You can't account for every possibility, and it seems like these redundant safety systems for seemingly random events might cause more problems than they solve.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure do. Actually, I even converted from a reform synagogue...just before I converted...(er...like...dunno...13 years ago maybe? can't remember) they instated a new law stating that they would accept reform conversions from canada and the us, but not actually in isreal itself (it's a political thing, I think). So yeah...isreal and the religion consider it the same. Actually, I get more looked down on because I'm reform than I do because I'm a convert.
Challenging that claim would certainly not be incorrect, but I hardly think that's what judaism claims. There are a lot of religions out there that claim to be chosen by god, and while, yes, it does come across as elitist, it is necessary to realize that it is not in reference to a bloodline or genetics, but a way of life. Similar to most religions, Judaism feels that religion brings them closer to god, and by choosing to follow this religion that they become a part of god's people. This isn't something that is only common to Judaism either.
Yes, it is tracked through the bloodline, but many other religions are also traced this way for the simple fact that people of a certain religion tend to bring up their children to hold their same beliefs. But make no mistake - just because something is passed down through parents does NOT mean that Jewish people claim RACIAL superiority.
For example, I am jewish, but not by blood...converted when I was quite little, actually. But even without that genetic trace, I've never been treated any differently, and I'm able to participate fully in all of the rites that all jewish people are. It's not a genetics/race thing, it's a beliefs thing, and it's common with a large number of religions.
the funny part is that people who are strong athiests fall back on the same types of arguments as strong religious types.... God's existance, or the lack of it is not obvious in any way...it is a belief. Without solid proof in one direction, we cannot say for certain whether or not God really exists because we have no solid proof either way. If we did, and it was really so obvious, well...argument over, we'd all know for sure. But the fact is that we don't have facts and proofs, we have beliefs and ideas, which differ from person to person and religion to religion. If it is your belief that there is no such thing as god, then fine...that is your belief and you are entitled to it, and I'm sure there are good reasons for it...but don't pretend this is some obvious truth that everyone should suscribe to, because beliefs about the nature of god are rarely obvious and are speculation on both sides of the road.
I think that probably the biggest market for stolen scrolls isn't where some guy is looking for hot torahs...it's probably where the buyer is being lied to. Getting or buying inherited or old scrolls isn't abnormal - I know our synagogue has an old one. It's kind of nice, actually - it hold its history not only because of its contents and traditional preparation, but also because it has a history of its own.
Our synagogue now has a scroll that was at one point stolen from a synagogue during the holocaust. The synagogue it came from most likely isn't around anymore (we don't know exactly where it is from). It's no longer kosher anyway, so it's not useable, just on display, but no one really has any idea where it's come from. At any rate, yes, it is a stolen torah, but it's not like we were looking for cheap torah goods...it's a religious artifact. Although we'd love to determine where it came from...some way to track it would be great.
Our work has a policy like that...
All official documents and emails are kept on the server. For the documents it's because you don't ever want out of date documents floating around on desktops - we're a pretty highly regulated industry (medical software) and it's regulated that you have to have certain document management policies in place. Ours involves an online doc management system. Doesn't have to be that way, but it works great. when your server is up. The email thing is a bit more just for practical reasons - we book meetings online and if you're keeping your own copy you won't know if the meeting room changes etc. just easier to have it centralized.
I've only been here once when the server went down, and it was an unproductive day to say the least. Works fantastically well when it's up, but when it's down...you're screwed.
I know what you're trying to say about the ranges, but in this case, what I was trying to say is that the ranges firstly, are not normal for this type of a study, and secondly, that when the values you are getting for your controls are the same as the values you are getting for your test subjects then this is an indication that perhaps it is not the drug that is causing the change in values...that there has to be something else there that would cause such a change, because the same change is being seen in the control subjects. This isn't about stats - it's about what is and is not normal for this type of a study. You're right - just because something is a 15 to 20x range does not make it automatically wrong. but in this cause it IS wrong - that kind of range in this type of a brain study is not normal. I'm sorry if I didn't make that clear - I'm not criticising the fact that there was a large range, I'm criticising the fact that the range was way out of whack with where it should have been IN THIS CASE and that should have been an indication that there was a flaw somewhere in the methodology.
Incidentally...I also wasn't saying they shouldn't have used controls...I'm not stupid...it was trying to set up the basic experiment. so thanks.
Just because the products are there does not mean that the substance itself causes brain damage of any type. In fact, recently there has been a spade of papers coming out discrediting the whole neurotoxicity theory. Two of the most prominent works on mdma neurotoxicity are papers by Ricaurte and by McCann (sp? I can't remember...sorry). The Ricaurte paper is the one that esentially formed the basis for the placement of mdma in schedule I in the states. It looked at the destruction of axons in seratonin neurons in monkeys. Conclusion was that mdma causes brain damage in very low doses. The problem with this one? well...turns out that it's fairly easy to stop this damage (don't overheat the brain, first off) and also (and probably more importantly) that there is a large amount of empircal evidence that low doses of mdma do NOT cause the type of damage described in the paper. Ricaulte essentially claimed that low doses (like...small recreational doses) would cause irreversible brain damage. Well...there are tonnes of people out there who have taken this and show no signs of the type damage he is talking about. He's also seeming to develop this bad habit of publishing papers on this subject and then retracting them. Makes sensational news to start with, scares the public, but then he's like "oops, oh well".
The McCann paper is one of the one used in that whole "mdma causes brain holes" thing. ok..first off...they arent brain holes...let's get serious. It's not a brain picture, it's a representation of levels of brain chemicals...the "holes" are dark areas. puh-lease. Now...as for the paper...this one gets a LOT of criticism...the reserachers studied sert levels in the brains of humans. They used controls and a number of users ranging from mild users to heavy users. They found a correlation between mdma use and sert levels in the brain and this is what the gov't ran with for their campain. This paper has some major flaws though, and has actually been the subject of a few papers that specifically refute the claims and results of this study (of course, you never hear the results from these). Specifically, the range of values in the control subjects was almost as large as the range in the mdma users. Ie...the range found in mdma users was normal. Despite this, they took an average for the controls, found an increasing line as mdma user increased and claimed cause and effect. Well...no...obviously if the control users can have this range too, then either these high levels aren't harmful, or can be caused by a number of different things, not just mdma. Holding that aside, the range found in the controls was also just ridiculus. Something like 15 or 20 times greater for the highest level in the control than the lowest. This is just unheard of, and is a good indication that there was something else wrong with the study. And yet it's still quoted in all the common gov't issue informational booklets despite the fact that it has come into serious doubt.
Even taking all that aside, even the most alarmist studies neglect to mention that the damage is about equivalent to the damage caused by other fda approved drugs, including some common weight-loss drugs (which just goes to show how screwed we really are in what we criticize and what we accept).
Just my $0.02...but I'd take it with a grain of salt that these things cause the problems described. I have yet to see any convincing proof that mdma is causing this major damage, or that the damage is any worse than damage caused by other fda approved drugs.
In my first year of university, the other streams of engineering had to take this basic computer class in C. We were in a differnet class doing java, so I don't really know HOW bad their class was, but rumour has it that despite the fact that some of these people had never even seen a programming language before, he never even bothered to explain what programming was or how it worked, or even really basic things like the difference between code and comments in his examples. At any rate, suffice it to say that the class did NOT go well and they spent a LONG time on really basic stuff. Well, this guy keeps going back to this one example of an if statement using a game. And he constantly used the two phrases "printf("I win);" and "printf("you lose");". Well...with the guy's accent it came out as "I ween" and "you loose". Became kind of a running joke. So now every time something goes really well, instead of giving 'er a w00t, it gets a "printf I win!"
anyway, long story stort...I always now use the expression "printf something" in real life. Not as nerdy as spelling out the brackets, but close.
My view is undoubtedly very skewed on this since I literally just finished university and I'm going back in the fall for a second round (convocation in 2 week - I'm not joking when I say fresh out). But, personally, I don't think there's any possible way I could have learned what I did on my own. I just don't have the discipline to sit down and do it without the guidance and motivation of a teacher. Now, I'm not saying that some people can't do that on their own - I know a self-taught sys-admin with no university degree who's better at his job than I could ever hope to be. It's almost like he has a sixth sense about the things. But not everyone is so lucky.
The knowledge and experience and CONFIDENCE I've gained in my field is extraordinary. Not only that, but it exposed me to a wide variety of topics that I don't think I would have ever even considered on my own...I went in thinking the only thing I'd ever want to be was a math nerd and software developer, and I ended up in a grad program designing chips and writing assembly code for dsp. I really doubt I would have ended up in this field on my own.
I think it really afforded me some oportunities and experiences I never would have been able to get on my own - working with new, top of the line equipment, spending 1.5 months with 3 hours of sleep a night trying desperately to get a project working (ok...maybe I could have gotten that at work). Meeting people who really inspire you (I'm working on my first oss project right now with a prof I was ta-ing for). Now I know a degree is not a parallel for the working world or real working experience, but it's a backround, and, personally, I think it IS proof that you have some ability and dedication.
I'm not saying university is for everyone - it's not. But some of us really gained a lot from the experience, and overall, I think I'm better off with my degree than if I hadn't gone at all. but that's just me.
Sounds like that to me too.
I was working with a prof last semester who liked to talk a lot about AI applications to language processors...I think he was going to do his research in it and then got side-tracked onto another project. At any rate, he was giving me a quick rundown on how to get funding and showed me this paper he based his first research proposal on, and it was on self-organizing structures and the applicaiton to language. Essentially, the reserachers trained this NN to parse basic grammar and then let it run free for a while for some unsupervised training. What they found was that the program had lumped together the types of things that humans would normally lump together in groups - verbs with verbs, nouns with nouns etc. Really interesting results, especially considering some of the linguistics theories about the base structures of languages are mostly the same. Seems computers may pick up on that somewhat as well, which would make a NN an excellent tool for things like translations.
Incidentally, if anyone happens to know what paper I'm talking about...I'm totally drawing a blank on where this thing came from...it would be really appreciated. very interesting stuff, and I'd like the chance to check it out again.
Don't bet on it - I'd love it if a guy took me to a place like this. It's way more interesting than some movie and dinner thing.
are you kidding me? boy, yeah, it's sure a good thing that viruses are getting more destructive...maybe now people will do more to stop viruses....
first of all, let's be realistic...unless a person actually gets this virus, very few people who don't already have some knowledge of computer security issues already are even going to know/care about this. No matter how destructive it is, there are still going to be lots of people out there with little to know security measures in place. And when they call me up to fix their computers, I'd much rather be dealing with some stupid runaway program than a totally wiped hard-drive with no chance of recovery.
Even with some security measures in place, I mean, let's face it...there's no such thing as absolute security. Especially for your average user or small business who doesn't have the same type of time / resources to keep everything always patched and up to date. Viruses ARE going to sneek through - that's the whole point of a virus. And if it does...I'd much rather have some stupid thing that pops up random ads than something that's going to force me to do some major system restores to get things back to normal.
so, no, I definately don't think that more destructive viruses are a good thing. Given the choice, I'd say the best thing would be no viruses at all, but that's never going to happen. Even so, I'd much rather have something smaller and easier to fix than something that's going to cause major damage.
I totally agree - there is nothing worse than spending good time fiddling with web stuff and finally getting it to look how you want only to find that it looks like absolute crap in IE. And then you look online for how to fix it, and most of the time it involves exploiting other weird behaviours in IE to trick it into looking somewhat like I want it.
So yes, it would be fantastic if IE would just get itself compliant before it starts getting fancy. BUT...on the other hand...frustrating as it is...people have built sites based on strange IE behaviour...I'm not saying it's a GOOD thing to do, but if they changed now, a lot of pages would be doing a lot of strange things.
Not sure if it will work on IE (never tried, but I don't see why not), but I found that the equally annoying MSN messenger had an awfully hard time popping itself up unexpectely once I'd deleted all of its files.
Don't get me wrong, this is a really neat project...it's always nice to see people doing cool stuff with products that the manufacturers probably didn't intend. And I can see this being really great if you really wanted a PSP to begin with, and just popped on the emulator for the sake of having more games....but...I think I'll just stick with my actual gameboy. It's way cheaper and probably less of a pain to get working properly.
I am not a physicist, but from what I understand of it (which may not be a lot), particle pairs (matter particle and an anti-matter particle) are able to appear together in space. I'm a little fuzzy on this part because it seems counter-intuitive to me, but apparantly this does not violate the laws of conservation of energy because the matter is generated along with the anti-matter, which creates a balance.
Usually, just after the creation, the matter hits the anti-matter and they disappear. But at the event horizon of a black hole, it is possible for one of the particles to get sucked in, meaning that its partner is left visible. This is what creates the emissions from black holes, which actually makes them not so black at all, but visible to physicists so they can study them.
Someone correct me if I'm way off base with this.
Although there are still areas where Open Office still needs some help. I just TA'd a class at the university (intro to computer applications - basic computer couse with lectures on basic computer theory and labs on software and web development). One of the assignment was done in word, using some of their nice pretty features (hey, it's an applications course...). The assignment included a section where they were to write a few paragraphs comparing open office to word. Overall, the comparions found them to be fairly equal, with OO having the added bonus of being free. However, I did get a few comments on how hard it was to apply styles correctly in OO and also to use some of their auto generated content functions. On the bright side, their approach to figure and table captaions is fantastic, and IMHO is vastly superior to the microsoft approach.
Overall though, the biggest complaint was that when you boot up OO all you get is a big blank grey screen with no instructions on where to go from there. For a beginner computer user, this is a big stumbling block. Very little problem technically, but it does seem to create a bit of a barier to learning how to use the software, particularily for new computer users. I find this is a fairly common problem with open source software in particular (although I can mention a few pieces of commercial software that have this problem in spades).
I'm sure there will be folks out there who try and scam the system, but as much as people like to bash them, Microsoft has never been a stupid company when it comes to business - I'm sure they have some type of a plan in place, I mean, it's not too far-fetched an idea - I'm sure someone over there must have put some thought into it. Besides, this is a pretty sweet PR move for them - they come off looking like the big company that really cares about their customers. I'm sure a few lost copies of their program pales in comparison.
yeah, but, just like open source, you can still change for the boards and open up the source, or in this case, building specs, programming code etc.
It would definately be interesting to have an fpga based board with the board programming code source available and the hardware specs available. That way, you could fiddle with your board and get it to do what you want, just like open source. It could be a viable business if they were charging for the boards themselves, but letting people play with the internal components a bit more than with proprietary. I can see lots of hardware geeks / hobbyists buying them just for the experience of playing.
I know I'm super late on this, and there are like 4 million posts before me, so no one will likely read this, but if you do want to see a comany doing some really cool stuff with car safety, check out this site http://www.intellimec.com/
Really cools stuff like tracking where people's heads are to see if it is safe to deploy air bags, checking people's weight and position to determine if there are children in the car and what safety stuff to deploy for them...and the best one...tracking the heartbeat of ocupants without actually making them put on hearbeat sensors using some ungodly cool dsp stuff.
yeah, boy, good thing he's not dividing the country by trying to enforce a real democracy...phew...'cause that's the last thing that's needed....
I agree. Maybe a court decision would stop future candidates from saying things like "yeah, I know the VOTES aren't all counted yet, but who cares about VOTES? I think I won, so I'm just going to call myself the winner - hey news networks...post me as the winner..." For a country that talks so high and mighty about their well developed democracic nation, it doesn't seem to be too well implemented. In fact, declaring yourself a winner before bothering to count the votes actually sounds a lot like another kind of government system.
I'd say that there were some other serious competitors in there, but defiantely the BEST competitor won. There were for sure one or two others (as I recall) that had the ideas and the ships that were capable of reaching space and winning the competition. The problem was that they didn't have the time, and with spaceship one putting on the pressure, they tried to skip some seriously important steps (like test flights in some cases as I recall) in order to improve their chances of making it first. The winners really went about things the right way, propper testing and real R&D strategy and they came out on top, just as it should be.
Not that I mean to downplay the injury the pilot suffered in this case, but this seems (to me anyway) to be a fairly random event that isn't likely to happen too often. It seems like it would be more detrimental to put something on the windshield that might potentially obstruct the pilots view on every flight than it would be to leave yourself open to fairly infrequent and random lazer attacks. You can't account for every possibility, and it seems like these redundant safety systems for seemingly random events might cause more problems than they solve.