I would agree with you until I had kids. They are unable to watch a DVD without destroying it, and are very adept at finding ways to get to things which seem to be out of reach.
My DVDs have jam fingerprints on them and scratches. Buggered if I'm paying $20 a time to replace them when I can back them up, keep the frequently-watched copies in a 20 DVD case, and the originals at home where they really can't be found (for now).
The actors' dialogue includes the contemporary language of the day. In real life, people swear, murder, fuck each other in odd places and a while lot more. The show is meant to be realistic, or the acting wouldn't work.
Remember that far worse happens in the real world every minute of the day. Genocide, rape, murder, sex, pornography, prostitution. Get your head out of the sand - people are awful, hideous, selfish, cruel monsters.
If you are so offended by people and art (in whatever form), turn off the TV, throw out that bible, and move to an island where you and your immediate family can live in isolation.
Around 1% of people survive an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest to discharge from hospital.
The vast majority of these are outside their breeding years.
This has no bearing on birth or death rates - they rarely last too long anyway.
There are few people medically worth resuscitating due to the futility of it anyway. But we do it because society demands we try, and we can't predict which ones will be successful too well.
Why not advocate getting rid of antibiotics? That would be about the most significant medical input of the last 1000 years - adds about 10 years onto life expectancy. If we cure cancer, we might add about 2 (most cancer deaths are elderly).
Hell, why not get rid of the big problems with population? Fresh drinking water, immunisation, good nutrition, shelter, perinatal care? We might all have to have more babies, but they won't last too long anyway.
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you HD-DVD fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a HD-DVD (a Toshiba HD DVD player HD-E1) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to read a 1st generation disc. 20 minutes. At home, on my PS3, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Toshiba, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this attempt to load the title menu, the remote will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even the volume control is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various HD-DVD players, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a HD-DVD that has run faster than its Blu-ray counterpart, despite the HD-DVD's faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram and an external blu-ray via USB 1.1 runs faster than this cutting edge HD-DVD machine at times. From an entertainment standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that HD-DVD is a superior format.
HD-DVD addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to watch HD-DVD over other faster, slightly more expensive, more usable systems.
You would think that GWB would be the one to know all the pre-school targeted claymation catchphrases. I could see him stealing one of the cookie monster's lines, for instance. (yes, I know that's not a claymation one)
I am a doctor. It is a given that of all the medication courses I prescribe:
- one-third of people will take it correctly
- one-third of people will try and take it correctly, but will get it wrong
- one-third of people won't even try to take it correctly (e.g. not finish a course, not pick up the prescription)
I am sure the numbers are not so round but this was the repeated teaching at medical school and beyond.
As you say, unnecessary prescribing is a pain in the arse too. Often it is done with good intentions but the manpower that would be required to review the original indication for a prescription, the ongoing need for it, whether (better or cheaper) more modern alternatives are there, new information regarding the safety of drugs and any other relevant factors makes it impossible on a large scale in practical terms. I am still waiting for an IT system in medicine that could semi-automate it (there are a number of things in medicine that could be revolutionised by proper IT but every system I have seen has been a kludge) as that would go a long way towards addressing issues like these.
Only if you drive it on a public road. And the state sets the laws, not the manufacturer. If you own your own island and roads, you can do whatever modifications to it after purchase that you like and the maker couldn't care less.
Another poster has already pointed out the brand name lacks the 'e' at the end. It is called adrenaline because it is produced in the adrenal glands. It has been called that for a lot longer than the brand has been around.
The template is an old one (1998 I think) which usually comes up in mac stories. It is only subtle when you haven't seen that particular one before - you'll see it again.
I was the original poster. 100% troll. An oldie but a goodie.
PS I use Vista. I will have to say I preferred XP but I don't care enough to go to the trouble of changing. For most things it is fine.
- UAC is annoying
- Very slow for the hardware (Turion 64 2GHz, 2GB) particularly start up where the usual windows annoyances of taking ages to load all the services with an essentially unusable but visible desktop, keeps taking focus from mouse so if you try and click on anything before t is fully ready it doesn't work, and a million little balloons in the corner telling me exactly the same thing it tells me every start up (including from sleep) and sometimes multiple times in one session
- IE for some reason has slowed to a crawl and is unusable. Phishing filter now off and no better. Other browsers are fine. No idea why, MS KB unhelpful (i.e. solutions don't work, as above)
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Vista fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Windows Vista rig (a 4GHz Intel Core2 Extreme w/ 4 GB of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to move a 17 KB file. 20 minutes! At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running Windows 3.1, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this behemoth, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this file transfer, Firefox will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even my IDE is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Vista machines, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Vista system that has run faster than its XP counterpart, despite Vista's modernised architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster with Photoshop than this 4 GHz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that Vista is a superior machine.
Vista addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use it over other faster, cheaper, more stable Windows environments.
I don't consider your arguments loony because
- the brain is so complex that, to most intents and purposes, what it does is magic
- science can't yet explain most of it
- a non scientific (whether philosophical or theological) explanation for some or all of it is much easier (despite still being complex) than filling in the scientific gaps
Due to my scientific background, I think it is just a big, complicated but ultimately explainable thing. Scientists of whatever flavour often do - there are a lot of complicated things which have been adequately explained which 100 years ago were due to magic so it's not a big leap to assume that everything follows physics and chemistry and those that don't are accounted for by gaps in our knowledge rather than something else being at play.
The things which aren't explained well at the moment (disclaimer - I am not a neuroscientist so someone else might have more to say on the subject) are essentially that there is no explanation for *producing* impulses spontaneously (and ultimately, spontaneous thought). All the neurones, individually, can either discharge in response to the summation of incoming signals, or have an inherent instability that makes them discharge spontaneously rhythmically, with stimuli either increasing or decreasing the rate of discharges. You can't just make a neurone discharge without those. They rely on ion channels which are chemical or voltage gated - and you can't just will them open or closed. They respond to circulating chemicals or local charge. So what is it that makes us able to generate impulses (i.e. thoughts, which ultimately end up staying internalised or being propagated into muscle contraction through a variety of steps)? When you are sitting on the couch, what makes the thought, 'I'm going to get up and get a beer from the fridge', appear?
I expect the answer is just due to complicated, reverbating electrical circuits modulated by learned or innate behaviour similarly reverbating pathways, all having been formed in response to fairly primal reward or punishment based stimuli. But trying to explain the logistics of such a system is, to me, currently unfeasible. If there is a place at which some 'non-scientific' process (e.g. a soul) may act, think I think it is here.
I think it can be algorithmic, just that the algorithms are so massively complex that they seem not to be algorithmic. The current state of AI is so basic compared to the human brain that the two can even be usefully compared.
The human brain is, at its most basic level, just a big bunch of interconnected voltage gates which can be either on or off. The complexities are:
- enormous number of neurones
- much more enormous number of interconnections, which can change. Repetitive use of some paths strengthens them, disuse weakens them.
- enormous number of inputs
- complex pathways
- groups of regularly discharging neurones
- feedback loops of various types
- large number of neurotransmitters with different properties.
Each neurone will 'fire' when it is stimulated to reach a certain voltage threshold (which may vary depending on the type of neurone). This will cause it to propagate an impulse which will ultimately lead to release of chemicals at its connections. It may release more then one chemical, from many locations. The chemical may or may not act in part on itself. It will have a period of latency after firing when it can not fire again. This will vary between groups of neurones. The likelihood of an impulse being fired depends on:
- amount of stimulation that particular neurone needs to fire
- amount of stimulus applied (remember the vast number of interconnections?)
- whether the stimulus applied is excitatory or inhibitory - some connections will be one, some the other. Some may be both (see below - e.g. a short acting chemical which tends to excite the next neurone and a longer acting mild inhibition acting as a modulator for further subsequent signals.)
- the nature of the inhibition or excitation (it can be vary in its amount and duration)
- the nature of other inhibitory or excitatory chemicals (hormones, drugs, other chemicals which may be released in a very small area, in the region of a group of neurones, or affecting the whole brain)
- variation between individuals - anatomical and minor changes in proteins which might make, for example, certain chemical reactions happen differently (like a neurotransmitter producing enzyme which is a little more efficient in one person causing higher amounts to be released)
There's plenty more too - and a lot we haven't yet discovered.
If we can map all these, then we could probably replicate the brain. We don't understand what consciousness is in humans, really. We could probably just ask the artificial brain what it thinks. Its answer may tell you whether it has consciousness or not. If it doesn't, then I would say that it's not an exact replica - we've missed something.
I'm not sure if that really answered your question - it's a bit of a big topic.
I am a doctor. Not yet a consultant, but a fairly senior one in the sub-consultant grades. I get $45 (australian, so much less in USD) an hour, with some extra for antisocial hours (15% evenings, nights, 50% sat, 100% Sun). When I finish my training, you can probably double that.
If they rearrange the pay scale, I'll move over to the US and work for Geek Squad.
There are lots of uses. Stick the OS on your SSD and commonly used files (e.g. server) on another SSD. Have HDD for the TBs of data. Dynamically find what the demands are and pull all that info from the HDD to a spare SSD. You could even have a DVD changer with 50-200 rewriteable DVDs for storage. The thing is that the applications/OS can figure out where to put the files in order of when / how often they are used, and figure out the best and fastest way to deliver the content.
Just the same as adding more RAM can speed up your computer, rearranging the storage with SSDs should be able to do the same too. As you say though, it's not going to be useful for everyone.
As a few other commenters have pointed out - you have admitted your mistake, offered to make amends and still been ignored. The handling of the situation has been appalling.
As for what you said - without reading it (and the exact wording and context) I can't offer any opinion on whether it was a legal but unsavoury commentary on the school and its teachers or if it did cross the line into libel. But it really would be worth getting a lawyer to address things. This may not be cheap but - you are an A student who could possibly get worse grades and have the entire rest of your life affected adversely by this. This could easily be worth tens or hundreds of thousands of lost income over your career. If the content was legal - then the school have horribly wronged you regardless of how much they might not have liked what was said.
Another poster has mentioned how this is sometimes crap for the teachers, who may be capable but having to teach subjects they are unfamiliar with due to lack of resources. That's not your problem. A journalist who points out in a newspaper that kids aren't being taught by qualified teachers won't get any crap for it if it's true - neither should you. The school either knows they are not qualified, in which case it is a school / state resource issue, or they have lied about their qualifications, and it is their problem. Either way naming them and pointing out their lack of qualifications is simply pointing out existing facts.
I am quite sure that what you wrote was likely to have been the same sort of dickhead crap myself and my mates did when we were at school - the difference being the audience and the lack of foresight (common among 18 year olds) about what might happen - we didn't have any worldwide publishing tools to hand - but that doesn't change the fact that the school's handling was fucking awful.
Slashdot Mirror
I would agree with you until I had kids. They are unable to watch a DVD without destroying it, and are very adept at finding ways to get to things which seem to be out of reach.
My DVDs have jam fingerprints on them and scratches. Buggered if I'm paying $20 a time to replace them when I can back them up, keep the frequently-watched copies in a 20 DVD case, and the originals at home where they really can't be found (for now).
The actors' dialogue includes the contemporary language of the day. In real life, people swear, murder, fuck each other in odd places and a while lot more. The show is meant to be realistic, or the acting wouldn't work.
Remember that far worse happens in the real world every minute of the day. Genocide, rape, murder, sex, pornography, prostitution. Get your head out of the sand - people are awful, hideous, selfish, cruel monsters.
If you are so offended by people and art (in whatever form), turn off the TV, throw out that bible, and move to an island where you and your immediate family can live in isolation.
Around 1% of people survive an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest to discharge from hospital.
The vast majority of these are outside their breeding years.
This has no bearing on birth or death rates - they rarely last too long anyway.
There are few people medically worth resuscitating due to the futility of it anyway. But we do it because society demands we try, and we can't predict which ones will be successful too well.
Why not advocate getting rid of antibiotics? That would be about the most significant medical input of the last 1000 years - adds about 10 years onto life expectancy. If we cure cancer, we might add about 2 (most cancer deaths are elderly).
Hell, why not get rid of the big problems with population? Fresh drinking water, immunisation, good nutrition, shelter, perinatal care? We might all have to have more babies, but they won't last too long anyway.
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you HD-DVD fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a HD-DVD (a Toshiba HD DVD player HD-E1) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to read a 1st generation disc. 20 minutes. At home, on my PS3, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Toshiba, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this attempt to load the title menu, the remote will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even the volume control is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various HD-DVD players, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a HD-DVD that has run faster than its Blu-ray counterpart, despite the HD-DVD's faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram and an external blu-ray via USB 1.1 runs faster than this cutting edge HD-DVD machine at times. From an entertainment standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that HD-DVD is a superior format.
HD-DVD addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to watch HD-DVD over other faster, slightly more expensive, more usable systems.
You would think that GWB would be the one to know all the pre-school targeted claymation catchphrases. I could see him stealing one of the cookie monster's lines, for instance. (yes, I know that's not a claymation one)
it's never lupus
I am a doctor. It is a given that of all the medication courses I prescribe:
- one-third of people will take it correctly
- one-third of people will try and take it correctly, but will get it wrong
- one-third of people won't even try to take it correctly (e.g. not finish a course, not pick up the prescription)
I am sure the numbers are not so round but this was the repeated teaching at medical school and beyond.
As you say, unnecessary prescribing is a pain in the arse too. Often it is done with good intentions but the manpower that would be required to review the original indication for a prescription, the ongoing need for it, whether (better or cheaper) more modern alternatives are there, new information regarding the safety of drugs and any other relevant factors makes it impossible on a large scale in practical terms. I am still waiting for an IT system in medicine that could semi-automate it (there are a number of things in medicine that could be revolutionised by proper IT but every system I have seen has been a kludge) as that would go a long way towards addressing issues like these.
Only if you drive it on a public road. And the state sets the laws, not the manufacturer. If you own your own island and roads, you can do whatever modifications to it after purchase that you like and the maker couldn't care less.
You must be new here.
Another poster has already pointed out the brand name lacks the 'e' at the end. It is called adrenaline because it is produced in the adrenal glands. It has been called that for a lot longer than the brand has been around.
Ron Paul? Is that you?
Shit. I have almost that same patent, without the 'on the internet' part.
The template is an old one (1998 I think) which usually comes up in mac stories. It is only subtle when you haven't seen that particular one before - you'll see it again.
I was the original poster. 100% troll. An oldie but a goodie.
PS I use Vista. I will have to say I preferred XP but I don't care enough to go to the trouble of changing. For most things it is fine.
- UAC is annoying
- Very slow for the hardware (Turion 64 2GHz, 2GB) particularly start up where the usual windows annoyances of taking ages to load all the services with an essentially unusable but visible desktop, keeps taking focus from mouse so if you try and click on anything before t is fully ready it doesn't work, and a million little balloons in the corner telling me exactly the same thing it tells me every start up (including from sleep) and sometimes multiple times in one session
- IE for some reason has slowed to a crawl and is unusable. Phishing filter now off and no better. Other browsers are fine. No idea why, MS KB unhelpful (i.e. solutions don't work, as above)
Original by kottke
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Vista fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Windows Vista rig (a 4GHz Intel Core2 Extreme w/ 4 GB of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to move a 17 KB file. 20 minutes! At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running Windows 3.1, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this behemoth, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this file transfer, Firefox will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even my IDE is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Vista machines, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Vista system that has run faster than its XP counterpart, despite Vista's modernised architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster with Photoshop than this 4 GHz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that Vista is a superior machine.
Vista addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use it over other faster, cheaper, more stable Windows environments.
My idea is one further. My new patented keyboard has one button and the software works out what letter it is that you mean to press each time.
What proportion of Mozilla's income is from Google via Firefox searchbar?
If it is more than a third,is this also suspicious?
I don't consider your arguments loony because
- the brain is so complex that, to most intents and purposes, what it does is magic
- science can't yet explain most of it
- a non scientific (whether philosophical or theological) explanation for some or all of it is much easier (despite still being complex) than filling in the scientific gaps
Due to my scientific background, I think it is just a big, complicated but ultimately explainable thing. Scientists of whatever flavour often do - there are a lot of complicated things which have been adequately explained which 100 years ago were due to magic so it's not a big leap to assume that everything follows physics and chemistry and those that don't are accounted for by gaps in our knowledge rather than something else being at play.
The things which aren't explained well at the moment (disclaimer - I am not a neuroscientist so someone else might have more to say on the subject) are essentially that there is no explanation for *producing* impulses spontaneously (and ultimately, spontaneous thought). All the neurones, individually, can either discharge in response to the summation of incoming signals, or have an inherent instability that makes them discharge spontaneously rhythmically, with stimuli either increasing or decreasing the rate of discharges. You can't just make a neurone discharge without those. They rely on ion channels which are chemical or voltage gated - and you can't just will them open or closed. They respond to circulating chemicals or local charge. So what is it that makes us able to generate impulses (i.e. thoughts, which ultimately end up staying internalised or being propagated into muscle contraction through a variety of steps)? When you are sitting on the couch, what makes the thought, 'I'm going to get up and get a beer from the fridge', appear?
I expect the answer is just due to complicated, reverbating electrical circuits modulated by learned or innate behaviour similarly reverbating pathways, all having been formed in response to fairly primal reward or punishment based stimuli. But trying to explain the logistics of such a system is, to me, currently unfeasible. If there is a place at which some 'non-scientific' process (e.g. a soul) may act, think I think it is here.
I think it can be algorithmic, just that the algorithms are so massively complex that they seem not to be algorithmic. The current state of AI is so basic compared to the human brain that the two can even be usefully compared.
The human brain is, at its most basic level, just a big bunch of interconnected voltage gates which can be either on or off. The complexities are:
- enormous number of neurones
- much more enormous number of interconnections, which can change. Repetitive use of some paths strengthens them, disuse weakens them.
- enormous number of inputs
- complex pathways
- groups of regularly discharging neurones
- feedback loops of various types
- large number of neurotransmitters with different properties.
Each neurone will 'fire' when it is stimulated to reach a certain voltage threshold (which may vary depending on the type of neurone). This will cause it to propagate an impulse which will ultimately lead to release of chemicals at its connections. It may release more then one chemical, from many locations. The chemical may or may not act in part on itself. It will have a period of latency after firing when it can not fire again. This will vary between groups of neurones. The likelihood of an impulse being fired depends on:
- amount of stimulation that particular neurone needs to fire
- amount of stimulus applied (remember the vast number of interconnections?)
- whether the stimulus applied is excitatory or inhibitory - some connections will be one, some the other. Some may be both (see below - e.g. a short acting chemical which tends to excite the next neurone and a longer acting mild inhibition acting as a modulator for further subsequent signals.)
- the nature of the inhibition or excitation (it can be vary in its amount and duration)
- the nature of other inhibitory or excitatory chemicals (hormones, drugs, other chemicals which may be released in a very small area, in the region of a group of neurones, or affecting the whole brain)
- variation between individuals - anatomical and minor changes in proteins which might make, for example, certain chemical reactions happen differently (like a neurotransmitter producing enzyme which is a little more efficient in one person causing higher amounts to be released)
There's plenty more too - and a lot we haven't yet discovered.
If we can map all these, then we could probably replicate the brain. We don't understand what consciousness is in humans, really. We could probably just ask the artificial brain what it thinks. Its answer may tell you whether it has consciousness or not. If it doesn't, then I would say that it's not an exact replica - we've missed something.
I'm not sure if that really answered your question - it's a bit of a big topic.
No, you don't get it.
Your girlfriend was telling me how you kept trying to microevolve with her, but she didn't dig it.
Then I came along and showed her some macroevolution and she was like, "oh, oh, oh".
Understand now?
I am a doctor. Not yet a consultant, but a fairly senior one in the sub-consultant grades. I get $45 (australian, so much less in USD) an hour, with some extra for antisocial hours (15% evenings, nights, 50% sat, 100% Sun). When I finish my training, you can probably double that.
If they rearrange the pay scale, I'll move over to the US and work for Geek Squad.
There are lots of uses. Stick the OS on your SSD and commonly used files (e.g. server) on another SSD. Have HDD for the TBs of data. Dynamically find what the demands are and pull all that info from the HDD to a spare SSD. You could even have a DVD changer with 50-200 rewriteable DVDs for storage. The thing is that the applications/OS can figure out where to put the files in order of when / how often they are used, and figure out the best and fastest way to deliver the content.
Just the same as adding more RAM can speed up your computer, rearranging the storage with SSDs should be able to do the same too. As you say though, it's not going to be useful for everyone.
As a few other commenters have pointed out - you have admitted your mistake, offered to make amends and still been ignored. The handling of the situation has been appalling.
As for what you said - without reading it (and the exact wording and context) I can't offer any opinion on whether it was a legal but unsavoury commentary on the school and its teachers or if it did cross the line into libel. But it really would be worth getting a lawyer to address things. This may not be cheap but - you are an A student who could possibly get worse grades and have the entire rest of your life affected adversely by this. This could easily be worth tens or hundreds of thousands of lost income over your career. If the content was legal - then the school have horribly wronged you regardless of how much they might not have liked what was said.
Another poster has mentioned how this is sometimes crap for the teachers, who may be capable but having to teach subjects they are unfamiliar with due to lack of resources. That's not your problem. A journalist who points out in a newspaper that kids aren't being taught by qualified teachers won't get any crap for it if it's true - neither should you. The school either knows they are not qualified, in which case it is a school / state resource issue, or they have lied about their qualifications, and it is their problem. Either way naming them and pointing out their lack of qualifications is simply pointing out existing facts.
I am quite sure that what you wrote was likely to have been the same sort of dickhead crap myself and my mates did when we were at school - the difference being the audience and the lack of foresight (common among 18 year olds) about what might happen - we didn't have any worldwide publishing tools to hand - but that doesn't change the fact that the school's handling was fucking awful.
Good luck with your exams!
I'm a doctor. We call it shit.