Actually, I don't have a medical degree from Harvard. But I have written peer-reviewed medical journal articles with Harvard Med School Professors as co-authors...
Weill recommends things that are not only not proven to be effective, they have not even been shown to be safe! Very dangerous thing to do.
Anecdotal evidence can harm or kill. That is why thinking people use the scientific method.
My displeasure with quacks like Weill should not be taken as an endorsement of quacks like the USDA. The "food pyramid" was based on just as much evidence as most of Weill's stuff, and has now been shown to be unsafe and uneffective.
Plants and animals have been hybridized for thousands of years. Hybridized plants keep us from having famines and so forth. This is a good thing!
I'm a little confused:
In the good old days, plant genes were altered by humans using many relatively random processes, for example by putting different crops together in a field, by exposing seeds to radiation, and so forth -- the hope was that some of the random mutations would result in a beneficial outcome, even though most mutations were bad. (The "bad" plants eiter never germinated, or otherwise didn't make the cut). Seed stock was improved over time, and humans ate better. This was considered a good thing.
In the bad new days, we make very, very selective changes to genes. This freaks everyone out.
Go figger.
Andrew Weil is a an interesting fellow. From Weil's answer to a question asked on the front page of his website:
"I'm unaware of evidence showing that any commercially available combination of supplements provides effective control of blood sugar. However, I do recommend several individual supplements:..."
Read as: That's right, damn the evidence! I'm making stuff up so that you'll think that I'm smart and buy my books!
Has he ever heard of the scientific method? Sticking to TESTED hypotheses is why blood letting and phrenology are history. (Until Weil brings 'em back to make a buck off of a new book...)
At the risk of sounding paranoid:
Perhaps they are really worried about secret trapdoors in Windows. MS might be able to bypass security and retrieve stuff from Windows-based PCs. Perhaps the US Government is working MS to do so. In fact, MS did get away pretty lightly with the antitrust stuff... hmmm... nah... couldn't be...
A very large problem here is that almost everyone buys on price alone. Over the years I've seen a number of manufacturers of really superior stuff get beaten up because manufacturers and consumers are so price-oriented.
IBM and Fujitsu hard drives used to be the best -- really really solid and reliable. But they cost more. I remember when, several years ago, Fujitsu dropped their drive prices to bring them in line with seagatemaxtorquantumwesterndigital... -- I was surprised that Fujitsu could build a much better drive than their competition, at the same price. Turns out that they actually could not -- Fujitsu drives quickly started getting ungood.
Sigh. I'll gladly pay a little more for quality, but since few others will -- I'm hosed.
A Good Way To Scare A Beginner?
on
SQL Fundamentals
·
· Score: 1
SQL is an interesting critter: you can learn the basics in 10 minutes, but mastery is very tough.
Seems to me that learning SQL requires a 10 page "which end is up" book (the PostgreSQL tutorial is good for this, if I recall correctly) -- enough so that one gets the basics, along with an 814 page reference for doing those big nasty queries that are needed in serious environments.
OK, perhaps it uses less power than something from AMD or Intel. At first blush, this might be useful for extending battery life in a laptop.
But how much less power for the entire system does this translate to? I'm not an expert on this, but I'll bet that LCD displays use as much or more power than CPUs. In the end, I don't expect that there is much of an impact on battery life, and thus not much of a selling proposition.
Frankly, I've never understood why this company was funded. For that matter, I still don't understand most of the dot coms, including Amazon and Yahoo. I guess I'm just old and cranky.
There seems to be a common belief that folks become ill from radiated electrical power. However, I've never seen any published studies that show this. I seem to recall one study that showed a slight increase in childhood leukemia in folks that live under powerlines, but that this was later disproven in a larger study.
I'm sure that there's a problem if you pump in enough energy to heat tissue, but short of that, is there any evidence at all that electromagnetic fields impact health? Or is this an unproven or disproven hypothesis?
I purchased a Palm 1000 the first week that it went on sale, as it seemed to be the first truly-usable PDA.
Since day 1 I've been using address book, calender, and to some degree the to-do lists and memos. The only other thing that I've ever found to be even vaguely interesting since then is the Zagat restaurant software.
I've seen a ton of other potential uses for Palms that failed -- for viewing medical records, for example. I suspect that anything small enough to fit in a pocket is too small to do many things with.
On the other hand, I've seen Microsoft, a very smart and successful company, repeatedly try to top Palm -- only to get killed by overly-complexifying Win CE.
So I wince whenen I hear that Palm is looking to add complexitity a la Win CE. I hope Palm keeps it simple! If they must add complexity, I hope that the basic things that Palms are good for do not become bloated.
I used Forth in the early 80s to build computer-based test equipment. It was super awesome for that purpose. (The stubborn avoidance of floating-point numbers was an irritant, but kept one on one's toes).
It always seemed to me that Forth and C were two solutions to the same problem: the need for a lightweight and portable computer language. Something very close to macro assembler, but with cross-CPU portability. Back in the "good old days", we didn't have CPU cycles or memory to spare -- to paraphrase Dr. Dobb's motto back then, we needed to run light without overbyte.
Forth seemed to attract the hardware types, like me. C attracted the software types. The world became overrun and dominated by software types, so we know who won.
As fondly as I remember Forth, I can't imagine that Forth would have much use these days -- modern languages are just so much more powerful.
Perhaps Forth would be useful for really terrifyingly critical embedded systems, say, for weapons or medical use. It seems to me that since Forth is so close to the hardware level, it lacks the inherent untestability and instabilities that occur in modern languages with their many levels of abstraction.
XP comes preinstalled in most corporate-type PCs. The savings from deleting it is typically small or none -- I'm pretty certain that it's well under $129.00.
For $129 I can get an OS that runs Office (but doesn't include it, as far as I can see) and which possibly runs other Windows apps, and which definitely runs Linux apps.
Or, for much less than $129 I can get an OS (Windows XP), that absolutely runs MS Office and which definitely runs vrtually all other Windows apps.
Linux is useful and fun for us nerds, but is a bit of a sell to non-nerds, and I don't see the above selling proposition as favoring SUSE for desktop applications -- Linux has no inherent appeal to non-nerds.
If one really wants or needs to run MS Office, XP makes sense. If one wants Linux on the desktop, I'd go with Redhat 8.0 (with its out-of-the-box non-sucking fonts, except in Mozilla) along with Open Office (excellent free replacement for MS Office) and other software that is designed for Linux use.
You absolutely cannot trust the tests given by psychologists in this area. They are consistantly shown to be unreliable (i.e., different people giving the same test to the same person get vastly different results) and have not shown to be valid (i.e., nobody really has a clue as to what is being measured). Finally, there are no controlled studies which show that, for a group of folks "diagnosed" using these tests, anything whatsoever can be done to change outcome. The suggested mitigations are as likely to hurt as to help.
In short, this is all pretend science. If you're currently involved with any psychological types, and want to have a little fun, ask them to name specific, peer-reviewed controlled outcome studies (i.e., that which seperates science from, say, phrenology) which show that anything they are doing is reliable, valid, or can change outcome. If they are honest, they will turn red, flap their arms and admit that there is nothing. If they are dishonest or ignorant, they will name some literature. Look up the literature on Medline and you'll likely see that they the literature is not as advertised.
Basically, if there is some aspect(s) to your persoanlity that is causing you to be unhappy, I'd work on that. If you are generally happy, then don't bother with this stuff.
Look closely at the criteria in your links. These are all SUBJECTIVE criteria. Highly subjective. In a disease like diabetes, there are real numerical criteria. In the three widespread PDDs, Aspergers, Autism and PDD-NOS, the criteria are either utterly subjective, or they are based on "numerical" scores from tests that have never, ever, been shown to be valid or reliable. Spend some time looking at Medline -- you might be surprised to find out that this is a very squishy diagnosis.
Because it is squishy, there is a lot of room for psyhologists to push a diagnosis one way or the other essentially based on gut feel. I've had at least on psychologist boast to me that she and her colleagues work hard to over-diagnose cases so that kids suffering from PDD in any form whatsoever can get the treatment that they so desperately need. However, there is NO evidence that the treatment is either safe or effective. For example, even the "definitive" work on autism admits that all of the treatments are essentially untested -- the evidence that they help anyone is no greater than the evidence that they hurt anyone. After admitting this, they go into page upon page of recommendations for treatment. (This is why Psychology is a pretend science -- they never let a lack controlled studies get in the way.)
I am also knowledgable on the subject. My son has been diagnosed by a number of psychologists, and the results vary all over the map. The most empirical pschologist of the lot, judged by a Medline search of her papers (she looks at outcomes! And tests significance!) and medical reputation, told us to go away -- our son is fine, just a little language delayed which is not atypical in very bright children. The least empirical psychologist diagnosed straight-out autism -- a check of her writeup showed that she had purely fabricated stuff, no doubt in order to support her gut feel. (This will be aggressively pursued with our state's licensing board).
This strange disparity in diagnoses led me to do a good bit of research on the area of PDDs -- I've been in another part of the medical field for a while, and have published in peer-reviewed journals, run clinical trials, participated in big multi-center studies, and so forth, so I believe that I know my way around medicine and science. There is really almost no science on the PDD field. Really apalling.
So, until there is some actual science here, my hypothesis, which is just as well proved as any oter, is that most, but not all kids being diagnosed with PDDs, particularly the oft-diagnosed offspring of geeks, are simply shy/introspective/bright. This over-diagnosis would explain the interesting statistics out of California.
Mostly, it would really be good if some folks did some real research on this. Using science and everything. But the number of Psychologists who understand the scientific method can probably be counted on one hand.
Finally, my heart goes out to you. Good luck to you and your son. This is tough stuff to navigate.
But psychology is a pretend science -- no tests are reliable, and controlled outcome studies are considered to be for losers (by psychologists, not by me!). So we can make up any fun and highly-subjective criteria that we want, but if you're smart and shy, some pinhead psychologist will label you with Aspergers. If a toddler is shy and language delayed, some pinhead psychologist will label you with Autism.
Like most computer users, I stare at text all day. The screen fonts suck on all Linux distros that I know of. Screen fonts are excellent on Windows. When, oh when, will Linux screen fonts stop sucking! (Without my spending hours dicking around with internals)
Why would this be any less safe than butane cigarette lighters? I'm not sure if these are allowed on flights now, but they definitely were in the good old days.
And then I'll seriously kick your ass while you're trying to figure out how to recharge the thing. The shock will not be in the least bit incapacitating.
You're better off jamming the capacitor lead in my eye.
Actually, this is no different than studying EE 20 years ago, as I did. Virtually none of the students in my EE program could strip a wire, solder, or design anything. It was entertaining to watch them blow up meters trying to measure current across a resistor...
It was funny even back then: a lot of time spent on analysis, which even then could be done better by SPICE than could ever be done by hand. But only a little work on design, which is what real engineers really do, and almost no opportunities to actually build realistic circuits using realistic parts to learn about real-world issues.
Some would say that the real-world stuff should be kept out of a university, that it is the stuff od trade schools. If that's the case, then we'd better abolish all engineering curricula, and have students major in something more purely academic, like Physics. Engineering IS the application of science. Unfortunately, the applications taught are typically of no worth.
The only thing that's worse now is that students pay more than twice as much for the honor of being taught stuff that is of zero use. They graduate with a miserable debt into a world where it is virtually impossible to afford a middle-class existance. Shame on the schools and their faculty! Shame! Shame!
If "unnatural substances in our diets" cause "deleterious effects", then why has life expectancy increased by 30 years in the last century? Note that antibiotics and other medical advances only account for a fraction of that time.
Maybe the unnatural substances in our diets are not so bad for us.
I've used StarTeam and CVS. StarTeam is fantastic, 'tho expensive.
It is very, very, very useful to tie bug tracking and change requests to version control. This makes it easy for an organization to see how a product is progressing, and to track the history of changes vs. bugs. This is particularly critical for folks who work under ISO9000, FDA QSRs, and other such regulatory regimes. It is also super-useful if you are not working under any regulatory regime other than your customer getting ticked when important bug fixes or new features fall between the cracks.
Starteam is a GUI-based system that integrates version control with bug tracking and change requests. It is intuitive, powerful, and reliable.
(No, I don't work for the StarTeam folks)
I suggest that YOU listen closer. Stick some instrumentation in the chain and do some analysis. Yes, people spend extra money first to reduce already-inaudible distortion, and then pay more extra money to add loads 'o audible distortion.
Some people also spend good money to get tied up, naked, with ball gags in their mouths and to perform various demeaning acts. I don't understand that either, but whatever turns people on...
Given what I know about hearing (as it happens, my minor in college was neurobiology) I'm rather convinced that a well-designed DSP-based system will perfectly emulate anything you want it to as far as the ear is concerned -- that is, a well-designed solid-state system will not be distinguishable from a tube in a properly-designed double-blind test.
A scientist. How cute.
Transistor circuits are even simpler. Bipolar theory is a bit tough to understand (or at least is almost always poorly-taught), but the actual circuits are simple. FETs are simple a lot like tubes in theory, and also require trivially simple circuits.
Slashdot Mirror
Believe it or not, I actually did some consulting for someone the other day who wanted to use RS-485 in a new application.
They wanted RS-485 to hook two devices to a PC. RS-485 because they only wanted one cable (spanning 6 feet), rather than two serial cables. Yow.
Actually, I don't have a medical degree from Harvard. But I have written peer-reviewed medical journal articles with Harvard Med School Professors as co-authors...
Weill recommends things that are not only not proven to be effective, they have not even been shown to be safe! Very dangerous thing to do.
Anecdotal evidence can harm or kill. That is why thinking people use the scientific method.
My displeasure with quacks like Weill should not be taken as an endorsement of quacks like the USDA. The "food pyramid" was based on just as much evidence as most of Weill's stuff, and has now been shown to be unsafe and uneffective.
And that's OK!
..."
Plants and animals have been hybridized for thousands of years. Hybridized plants keep us from having famines and so forth. This is a good thing!
I'm a little confused:
In the good old days, plant genes were altered by humans using many relatively random processes, for example by putting different crops together in a field, by exposing seeds to radiation, and so forth -- the hope was that some of the random mutations would result in a beneficial outcome, even though most mutations were bad. (The "bad" plants eiter never germinated, or otherwise didn't make the cut). Seed stock was improved over time, and humans ate better. This was considered a good thing.
In the bad new days, we make very, very selective changes to genes. This freaks everyone out.
Go figger.
Andrew Weil is a an interesting fellow. From Weil's answer to a question asked on the front page of his website:
"I'm unaware of evidence showing that any commercially available combination of supplements provides effective control of blood sugar. However, I do recommend several individual supplements:
Read as: That's right, damn the evidence! I'm making stuff up so that you'll think that I'm smart and buy my books!
Has he ever heard of the scientific method? Sticking to TESTED hypotheses is why blood letting and phrenology are history. (Until Weil brings 'em back to make a buck off of a new book...)
A very dangerous person.
At the risk of sounding paranoid: Perhaps they are really worried about secret trapdoors in Windows. MS might be able to bypass security and retrieve stuff from Windows-based PCs. Perhaps the US Government is working MS to do so. In fact, MS did get away pretty lightly with the antitrust stuff... hmmm... nah... couldn't be...
A very large problem here is that almost everyone buys on price alone. Over the years I've seen a number of manufacturers of really superior stuff get beaten up because manufacturers and consumers are so price-oriented.
IBM and Fujitsu hard drives used to be the best -- really really solid and reliable. But they cost more. I remember when, several years ago, Fujitsu dropped their drive prices to bring them in line with seagatemaxtorquantumwesterndigital... -- I was surprised that Fujitsu could build a much better drive than their competition, at the same price. Turns out that they actually could not -- Fujitsu drives quickly started getting ungood.
Sigh. I'll gladly pay a little more for quality, but since few others will -- I'm hosed.
SQL is an interesting critter: you can learn the basics in 10 minutes, but mastery is very tough.
Seems to me that learning SQL requires a 10 page "which end is up" book (the PostgreSQL tutorial is good for this, if I recall correctly) -- enough so that one gets the basics, along with an 814 page reference for doing those big nasty queries that are needed in serious environments.
834 pages seems might intimidate a newbie!
OK, perhaps it uses less power than something from AMD or Intel. At first blush, this might be useful for extending battery life in a laptop.
But how much less power for the entire system does this translate to? I'm not an expert on this, but I'll bet that LCD displays use as much or more power than CPUs. In the end, I don't expect that there is much of an impact on battery life, and thus not much of a selling proposition.
Frankly, I've never understood why this company was funded. For that matter, I still don't understand most of the dot coms, including Amazon and Yahoo. I guess I'm just old and cranky.
There seems to be a common belief that folks become ill from radiated electrical power. However, I've never seen any published studies that show this. I seem to recall one study that showed a slight increase in childhood leukemia in folks that live under powerlines, but that this was later disproven in a larger study.
I'm sure that there's a problem if you pump in enough energy to heat tissue, but short of that, is there any evidence at all that electromagnetic fields impact health? Or is this an unproven or disproven hypothesis?
I purchased a Palm 1000 the first week that it went on sale, as it seemed to be the first truly-usable PDA.
Since day 1 I've been using address book, calender, and to some degree the to-do lists and memos. The only other thing that I've ever found to be even vaguely interesting since then is the Zagat restaurant software.
I've seen a ton of other potential uses for Palms that failed -- for viewing medical records, for example. I suspect that anything small enough to fit in a pocket is too small to do many things with.
On the other hand, I've seen Microsoft, a very smart and successful company, repeatedly try to top Palm -- only to get killed by overly-complexifying Win CE.
So I wince whenen I hear that Palm is looking to add complexitity a la Win CE. I hope Palm keeps it simple! If they must add complexity, I hope that the basic things that Palms are good for do not become bloated.
I used Forth in the early 80s to build computer-based test equipment. It was super awesome for that purpose. (The stubborn avoidance of floating-point numbers was an irritant, but kept one on one's toes).
It always seemed to me that Forth and C were two solutions to the same problem: the need for a lightweight and portable computer language. Something very close to macro assembler, but with cross-CPU portability. Back in the "good old days", we didn't have CPU cycles or memory to spare -- to paraphrase Dr. Dobb's motto back then, we needed to run light without overbyte.
Forth seemed to attract the hardware types, like me. C attracted the software types. The world became overrun and dominated by software types, so we know who won.
As fondly as I remember Forth, I can't imagine that Forth would have much use these days -- modern languages are just so much more powerful.
Perhaps Forth would be useful for really terrifyingly critical embedded systems, say, for weapons or medical use. It seems to me that since Forth is so close to the hardware level, it lacks the inherent untestability and instabilities that occur in modern languages with their many levels of abstraction.
XP comes preinstalled in most corporate-type PCs. The savings from deleting it is typically small or none -- I'm pretty certain that it's well under $129.00.
OK, so here's the selling proposition:
For $129 I can get an OS that runs Office (but doesn't include it, as far as I can see) and which possibly runs other Windows apps, and which definitely runs Linux apps.
Or, for much less than $129 I can get an OS (Windows XP), that absolutely runs MS Office and which definitely runs vrtually all other Windows apps.
Linux is useful and fun for us nerds, but is a bit of a sell to non-nerds, and I don't see the above selling proposition as favoring SUSE for desktop applications -- Linux has no inherent appeal to non-nerds.
If one really wants or needs to run MS Office, XP makes sense. If one wants Linux on the desktop, I'd go with Redhat 8.0 (with its out-of-the-box non-sucking fonts, except in Mozilla) along with Open Office (excellent free replacement for MS Office) and other software that is designed for Linux use.
In short, this is all pretend science. If you're currently involved with any psychological types, and want to have a little fun, ask them to name specific, peer-reviewed controlled outcome studies (i.e., that which seperates science from, say, phrenology) which show that anything they are doing is reliable, valid, or can change outcome. If they are honest, they will turn red, flap their arms and admit that there is nothing. If they are dishonest or ignorant, they will name some literature. Look up the literature on Medline and you'll likely see that they the literature is not as advertised.
Basically, if there is some aspect(s) to your persoanlity that is causing you to be unhappy, I'd work on that. If you are generally happy, then don't bother with this stuff.
Because it is squishy, there is a lot of room for psyhologists to push a diagnosis one way or the other essentially based on gut feel. I've had at least on psychologist boast to me that she and her colleagues work hard to over-diagnose cases so that kids suffering from PDD in any form whatsoever can get the treatment that they so desperately need. However, there is NO evidence that the treatment is either safe or effective. For example, even the "definitive" work on autism admits that all of the treatments are essentially untested -- the evidence that they help anyone is no greater than the evidence that they hurt anyone. After admitting this, they go into page upon page of recommendations for treatment. (This is why Psychology is a pretend science -- they never let a lack controlled studies get in the way.)
I am also knowledgable on the subject. My son has been diagnosed by a number of psychologists, and the results vary all over the map. The most empirical pschologist of the lot, judged by a Medline search of her papers (she looks at outcomes! And tests significance!) and medical reputation, told us to go away -- our son is fine, just a little language delayed which is not atypical in very bright children. The least empirical psychologist diagnosed straight-out autism -- a check of her writeup showed that she had purely fabricated stuff, no doubt in order to support her gut feel. (This will be aggressively pursued with our state's licensing board).
This strange disparity in diagnoses led me to do a good bit of research on the area of PDDs -- I've been in another part of the medical field for a while, and have published in peer-reviewed journals, run clinical trials, participated in big multi-center studies, and so forth, so I believe that I know my way around medicine and science. There is really almost no science on the PDD field. Really apalling.
So, until there is some actual science here, my hypothesis, which is just as well proved as any oter, is that most, but not all kids being diagnosed with PDDs, particularly the oft-diagnosed offspring of geeks, are simply shy/introspective/bright. This over-diagnosis would explain the interesting statistics out of California.
Mostly, it would really be good if some folks did some real research on this. Using science and everything. But the number of Psychologists who understand the scientific method can probably be counted on one hand.
Finally, my heart goes out to you. Good luck to you and your son. This is tough stuff to navigate.
But psychology is a pretend science -- no tests are reliable, and controlled outcome studies are considered to be for losers (by psychologists, not by me!). So we can make up any fun and highly-subjective criteria that we want, but if you're smart and shy, some pinhead psychologist will label you with Aspergers. If a toddler is shy and language delayed, some pinhead psychologist will label you with Autism.
Praise the Creator! A voice of reason!
Why does everyone need an illness? What ever happened to personalities?
Like most computer users, I stare at text all day. The screen fonts suck on all Linux distros that I know of. Screen fonts are excellent on Windows. When, oh when, will Linux screen fonts stop sucking! (Without my spending hours dicking around with internals)
Why would this be any less safe than butane cigarette lighters? I'm not sure if these are allowed on flights now, but they definitely were in the good old days.
Yes, I will get a shock on my neck.
Ow.
And then I'll seriously kick your ass while you're trying to figure out how to recharge the thing. The shock will not be in the least bit incapacitating.
You're better off jamming the capacitor lead in my eye.
Actually, this is no different than studying EE 20 years ago, as I did. Virtually none of the students in my EE program could strip a wire, solder, or design anything. It was entertaining to watch them blow up meters trying to measure current across a resistor...
It was funny even back then: a lot of time spent on analysis, which even then could be done better by SPICE than could ever be done by hand. But only a little work on design, which is what real engineers really do, and almost no opportunities to actually build realistic circuits using realistic parts to learn about real-world issues.
Some would say that the real-world stuff should be kept out of a university, that it is the stuff od trade schools. If that's the case, then we'd better abolish all engineering curricula, and have students major in something more purely academic, like Physics. Engineering IS the application of science. Unfortunately, the applications taught are typically of no worth.
The only thing that's worse now is that students pay more than twice as much for the honor of being taught stuff that is of zero use. They graduate with a miserable debt into a world where it is virtually impossible to afford a middle-class existance. Shame on the schools and their faculty! Shame! Shame!
I agree with most of your post, but...
If "unnatural substances in our diets" cause "deleterious effects", then why has life expectancy increased by 30 years in the last century? Note that antibiotics and other medical advances only account for a fraction of that time.
Maybe the unnatural substances in our diets are not so bad for us.
I've used StarTeam and CVS. StarTeam is fantastic, 'tho expensive. It is very, very, very useful to tie bug tracking and change requests to version control. This makes it easy for an organization to see how a product is progressing, and to track the history of changes vs. bugs. This is particularly critical for folks who work under ISO9000, FDA QSRs, and other such regulatory regimes. It is also super-useful if you are not working under any regulatory regime other than your customer getting ticked when important bug fixes or new features fall between the cracks. Starteam is a GUI-based system that integrates version control with bug tracking and change requests. It is intuitive, powerful, and reliable. (No, I don't work for the StarTeam folks)
I suggest that YOU listen closer. Stick some instrumentation in the chain and do some analysis. Yes, people spend extra money first to reduce already-inaudible distortion, and then pay more extra money to add loads 'o audible distortion. Some people also spend good money to get tied up, naked, with ball gags in their mouths and to perform various demeaning acts. I don't understand that either, but whatever turns people on...
Given what I know about hearing (as it happens, my minor in college was neurobiology) I'm rather convinced that a well-designed DSP-based system will perfectly emulate anything you want it to as far as the ear is concerned -- that is, a well-designed solid-state system will not be distinguishable from a tube in a properly-designed double-blind test. A scientist. How cute.
Transistor circuits are even simpler. Bipolar theory is a bit tough to understand (or at least is almost always poorly-taught), but the actual circuits are simple. FETs are simple a lot like tubes in theory, and also require trivially simple circuits.