The prequels, sequels, and now also immediate sequels written by Kevin J. Anderson and Brain Herbert are a hunderd time more spotty in quality and the prequels that Frank Herbert wrote. It is sure that Frank Herbert "Dune Messiah" was different than many people who had read "Dune" expected, but there are many who believe that the novels in the series actually got better and better. At least Frank Herbert was not repeating the old trick over and over again, as Kevin and Brain have been doing. I write "Kevin and Brain", because I am getting the impression that Kevin is actually doing most of the creative work.
My wife already once a week attends day-care at a nursing home specialized in all forms of dementia (including Korsakov syndrome and early-onset Alzheimer's). It seems to be quite a nice nursing home. It is one of the few nursing home that have stayed small. In our country we have seen a lot a merging, with the idea that this would reduce costs, but in fact only created new management layers and such. This nursing home is called Bruggerbosch and situated in Enschede, The Netherlands.
I know that taking care for a person with Alzheimer's Disease is very exhausting. I can also not imagine how I have to deal with this in combination with having a job. It is said that people with early-onset Alzheimer's Disease are earlier institutionalized. Here in the Netherlands, nursing home are for the greatest part subsidized by the government, but with the rising number of old people compared to the young, the government is trying to cut cost, meaning, delaying institurionalizing as much as possible.
O yeah, besides reading be a problem, reading the time from a clock is even a bigger problem. I have removed the minute hand from some of our clocks in home, because already very earlier phases of Alzheimer's Disease, confusing the hour and minute hands is a big problem. A sense of time is also one of the things that is often lost early phases of the disease.
Alzheimer's Disease is not only about memory. A recent article describes how certain cognive abilities, such as visuospatial skill, already start to decline three years before the first signs of memory imparement start to surface. My wife, who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease about three years ago, can no longer write, not even her own name. She cannot even sign. She still thinks that she can write her name, but when she tries, she fails. Even copying her name from an example, is very hard for her. She can still read, although lately I have noticed, she is also starting to have problems with that. However, she still does most of our shoppings. She goes shopping almost everyday and I tell her what to buy. But I should limit the number of items to about three, otherwise she is getting trouble. If its more than one or two items, I have to give her a shopping list. I give her the list in the morning, before I go to my office, and in most cases it is only during the day, that she goes shopping. Her short-time memory is very poor. She can tell you the same story within five minutes, or also often loses her keys or makes things 'disappear' in the house.
This is very true. Most of her activities depend on procedural memory. It seems she has already forgotten all the things she does not do on a weekly basis. She is not able to write her name. Lately, I discovered that she cannot make the most simply 9 piece jigsaw puzzles any more. Even with three pieces left, she had a hard time. But if I play some old Chinese songs (she is from China), she immediately starts to sing a long. There are still many things she remembers. I am surprised that she still can remember her shoppings. Sometimes, I give her a list, but lately she is getting trouble with reading it seems. I have to read the list to her a few times. It seems she can remember up to about three items. She goes to do some shopping almost every day. She likes to bike around the city (we live in The Netherlands).
To be honest, lately, I have been thinking about putting a cinder-block around my neck and jump in the canal. The slogan of the Dutch Alzheimer's society is: "He suffers from Alzheimer's Disease, she has it." Alzheimer's Disease is often the hardest for the people around, who have to see a loved slowly crumble down and return into a baby. I already have lost her as a partner, her emotional development is like a 10 year old child. I often find myself talking with my 15 year daughter about her like normal parents would talk about their children. It is no surprise that my daughter is only staying with us in the weekends and staying elsewhere the rest of the time. I have a feeling that my life has come to an end. Next month I am going to be 48, but it often feels like I am 20 years older.
In the early stages of Alzheimer, people can remember a lot. I notice this with my 52 year old wife, who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease in December 2006. Sometimes she can lose her keys twice within half an hour. But when I ask her to buy something, when she goes shopping, she usually succeeds in doing this. At the end of the day, she often does not know what she all did during the day. On other times she keeps repeating telling me some story about what happend during the day. I could imagine that something like "Lifeblogging" could help her to remember more of her day.
The UK has a two party system, just like the USA. For this reason, new parties, almost make no chance to get any political power. This is due to the district system, in which it is not true that all votes are equal. Because you need to gain majority in a sector to get someone in the parlement. People are not inclined to vote on a small party if it is almost sure that they will not get any significant representation in the parlement.
If such a party would be established here in the Netherlands, it might make a better chance of getting at least a few representatives in the parlement because we do not have a district system and each vote has the same weight.
Maybe the should also include the abolishment of the district system as a part of their program.
Not so long ago, I came across a website on which Germany got the highest score with respect to the protection of human rights such as privacy and the freedom of speech.
True, it doesn't look like the old Star Trek, but I was surprised by how much it feels like Star Trek the original series. It has some great lines that could come straight from the original series. And the emotional level, I guess, it even goes deeper. The movie almost made me cry in first ten minutes. And although the "new" Spock is not exactly like the original Spock, who does play a very nice role in this movie, I find him in a sense more realistic and far deeper than the original character, who in this movie also seems to have matured.
For all these reasons, I feel that this new Star Trek movie is very much like the original series, maybe even more than the New Generation and Voyager spin-offs.
This kind of testing was performed on my wife in the fall of 2006 her in the Netherlands. In de december 2006 she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease based on the test results. I do not know whether this is exactly the same test as described in the article, but I remember having read that it was developed by a Dutch academical hospital.
I feel it is very natural to use English, not just for the comments but also for all the identifiers and file names. I do this both in the office and for my private projects. In the office, with only Dutch, we even use English for all our technical documentation and in our bug-tracking system. When we write emails to each other, we use Dutch.
Maybe it also is related to the fact that almost all good computer science related books are in English. I had a hard time in high school with mastering English, but once I entered university more than half of the books we used, where in English, and my knowledge of English quickly grew.
Also in computer science there are groups of authors who only write in their 'own' journals and attent their 'own' conferences. Look up the subject of 'method engineering' and you will find a whole field of 'Computer science' with high crackpotness.
Indeed, very interesting. Makes you understand how the average end-user thinks compared to the average software-engineer. I also has some interesting things to say about 'stuckness', something you often experience during programming and/or debugging.
Visual basic, I mean the version before.Net, has one of the most beautiful event mechanism I have ever found in a programming language, which allows truely elegant programs. Also the fact that every object has a COM interface, allows you to perform interprocess communication in a very nice manner. I have seen Visual Basic being used for a communication stack for controlling a scientific measurement intrument, through a series of communicating servers. The measuring instrument involved was of world class, sold all over the world, a price ranging between 100,000 and 500,000 dollar depending on the configuration.
Okay, I agree, it does have its limitations, but as it is with each type of programming language, it can be abused to write the most ugly type of programs but also be used to write the most beautiful and elegant programs. Just simply bashing a language because it is misused simply shows that you have no understanding of what is writing programs is all about
Sadly, this joke is incorrect, because recently it has become known that HIV causes damage to the brain even if there are no signs of AIDS. So people, how catch HIV when they young and take their anti-viral medications the rest of their life, and thus prevent AIDS, still risk that they will become dement.
I wonder if compiling eight C programs in parallel on an eight core CPU is faster than compiling them sequential, because one of the performance bottle-neck seems to be in the amouth of data to be read (searching for include files) and written. Not so long ago there was a long discussion on whether it is better to compile C programs separately or simply include them all in one single file.
Regularly add some Curcumin, found in turmeric, to your food. There are some indications that it might prevent Alzheimer's Disease. The development of Alzheimer's Disease usually starts many years before any serious memory problems start.
I guess you are refering to the preprocessing step of C and C++ compilers, which was really a lame hack, I think. If you have a lot of include files, preprocessing produces large intermediate files, which contain a lot of overlapping code, that has to be compiled over and over again.
Preprocessing should have been removed a long time ago, but nasty backwards compatability issue, it was never done. Other languages, such as Java and D, solve this problem in a much better way. Just as did TurboPascal with its TPU files in the late 1980's.
This is indeed what one would expect. For that reason I find matemath far more interesting. Isabelle already has been use for some time. According to the wikipedia entry: "It is an LCF-style theorem prover (written in Standard ML), so it is based on a small logical core guaranteeing logical correctness."
Although Alzheimer's Disease might seem a very scary disease, the reality is often that the family members suffer most. As a partner of someone with Alzheimer's Disease, I can affirm this. Although my wife is only in the early stages of the disease, the effects are already dramatic. She is no longer my equal and I often feel I have to treat her like a teenager, as she is showing similar kind of behaviour. Our teenager daughter is also suffering from not having a "normal" mom anymore.
Although most people with Alzheimer's Disease go through periodes of depression, they often appear to be rather happy with their condition, because they are no longer aware of what has happened to them. They forget that they forget.
In view of the political discussion here in the Netherlands it should be important to note that abortion is legalized in the Netherlands. Meaning that there is no problem to have an abortion after some genetic testing is done. The parents who are now asking for embryo selection, are the ones who do not like the idea of going for an abortion, after the same kind of testing they now want to use for selecting the embryos. (Which seems to suggest that there are indeed parents who perform abortions after similar genetic testing.)
Furhtemore it should be noted that almost all women above the age of 35 are screened on Down Syndrome and that parents are encouraged to consider abortion. (I personally have been told by a gynaecologist that I would have difficulties to find a doctor who would be willing to perform heart surgery on my yet unborn child in case of Down Syndrome.)
The whole discussion here in the Netherlands is mainly a political on, because one of the parties in the coalition is a very conservative christian party who are against any form of selection and are against abortion. For them a firtelized human egg, is a human being. In their thinking the distruction of an embryo equals murder. It seems that they have more problems with the distruction of embryos than that there is a selection being made.
Slashdot Mirror
The prequels, sequels, and now also immediate sequels written by Kevin J. Anderson and Brain Herbert are a hunderd time more spotty in quality and the prequels that Frank Herbert wrote. It is sure that Frank Herbert "Dune Messiah" was different than many people who had read "Dune" expected, but there are many who believe that the novels in the series actually got better and better. At least Frank Herbert was not repeating the old trick over and over again, as Kevin and Brain have been doing. I write "Kevin and Brain", because I am getting the impression that Kevin is actually doing most of the creative work.
My wife already once a week attends day-care at a nursing home specialized in all forms of dementia (including Korsakov syndrome and early-onset Alzheimer's). It seems to be quite a nice nursing home. It is one of the few nursing home that have stayed small. In our country we have seen a lot a merging, with the idea that this would reduce costs, but in fact only created new management layers and such. This nursing home is called Bruggerbosch and situated in Enschede, The Netherlands.
I know that taking care for a person with Alzheimer's Disease is very exhausting. I can also not imagine how I have to deal with this in combination with having a job. It is said that people with early-onset Alzheimer's Disease are earlier institutionalized. Here in the Netherlands, nursing home are for the greatest part subsidized by the government, but with the rising number of old people compared to the young, the government is trying to cut cost, meaning, delaying institurionalizing as much as possible.
O yeah, besides reading be a problem, reading the time from a clock is even a bigger problem. I have removed the minute hand from some of our clocks in home, because already very earlier phases of Alzheimer's Disease, confusing the hour and minute hands is a big problem. A sense of time is also one of the things that is often lost early phases of the disease.
Alzheimer's Disease is not only about memory. A recent article describes how certain cognive abilities, such as visuospatial skill, already start to decline three years before the first signs of memory imparement start to surface. My wife, who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease about three years ago, can no longer write, not even her own name. She cannot even sign. She still thinks that she can write her name, but when she tries, she fails. Even copying her name from an example, is very hard for her. She can still read, although lately I have noticed, she is also starting to have problems with that. However, she still does most of our shoppings. She goes shopping almost everyday and I tell her what to buy. But I should limit the number of items to about three, otherwise she is getting trouble. If its more than one or two items, I have to give her a shopping list. I give her the list in the morning, before I go to my office, and in most cases it is only during the day, that she goes shopping. Her short-time memory is very poor. She can tell you the same story within five minutes, or also often loses her keys or makes things 'disappear' in the house.
This is very true. Most of her activities depend on procedural memory. It seems she has already forgotten all the things she does not do on a weekly basis. She is not able to write her name. Lately, I discovered that she cannot make the most simply 9 piece jigsaw puzzles any more. Even with three pieces left, she had a hard time. But if I play some old Chinese songs (she is from China), she immediately starts to sing a long. There are still many things she remembers. I am surprised that she still can remember her shoppings. Sometimes, I give her a list, but lately she is getting trouble with reading it seems. I have to read the list to her a few times. It seems she can remember up to about three items. She goes to do some shopping almost every day. She likes to bike around the city (we live in The Netherlands).
To be honest, lately, I have been thinking about putting a cinder-block around my neck and jump in the canal. The slogan of the Dutch Alzheimer's society is: "He suffers from Alzheimer's Disease, she has it." Alzheimer's Disease is often the hardest for the people around, who have to see a loved slowly crumble down and return into a baby. I already have lost her as a partner, her emotional development is like a 10 year old child. I often find myself talking with my 15 year daughter about her like normal parents would talk about their children. It is no surprise that my daughter is only staying with us in the weekends and staying elsewhere the rest of the time. I have a feeling that my life has come to an end. Next month I am going to be 48, but it often feels like I am 20 years older.
In the early stages of Alzheimer, people can remember a lot. I notice this with my 52 year old wife, who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease in December 2006. Sometimes she can lose her keys twice within half an hour. But when I ask her to buy something, when she goes shopping, she usually succeeds in doing this. At the end of the day, she often does not know what she all did during the day. On other times she keeps repeating telling me some story about what happend during the day. I could imagine that something like "Lifeblogging" could help her to remember more of her day.
The UK has a two party system, just like the USA. For this reason, new parties, almost make no chance to get any political power. This is due to the district system, in which it is not true that all votes are equal. Because you need to gain majority in a sector to get someone in the parlement. People are not inclined to vote on a small party if it is almost sure that they will not get any significant representation in the parlement.
If such a party would be established here in the Netherlands, it might make a better chance of getting at least a few representatives in the parlement because we do not have a district system and each vote has the same weight.
Maybe the should also include the abolishment of the district system as a part of their program.
Another example of a game used for science is Foldit where you have to fold a protein. I find this example more interesting than SAT.
Not so long ago, I came across a website on which Germany got the highest score with respect to the protection of human rights such as privacy and the freedom of speech.
True, it doesn't look like the old Star Trek, but I was surprised by how much it feels like Star Trek the original series. It has some great lines that could come straight from the original series. And the emotional level, I guess, it even goes deeper. The movie almost made me cry in first ten minutes. And although the "new" Spock is not exactly like the original Spock, who does play a very nice role in this movie, I find him in a sense more realistic and far deeper than the original character, who in this movie also seems to have matured.
For all these reasons, I feel that this new Star Trek movie is very much like the original series, maybe even more than the New Generation and Voyager spin-offs.
This kind of testing was performed on my wife in the fall of 2006 her in the Netherlands. In de december 2006 she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease based on the test results. I do not know whether this is exactly the same test as described in the article, but I remember having read that it was developed by a Dutch academical hospital.
I feel it is very natural to use English, not just for the comments but also for all the identifiers and file names. I do this both in the office and for my private projects. In the office, with only Dutch, we even use English for all our technical documentation and in our bug-tracking system. When we write emails to each other, we use Dutch.
Maybe it also is related to the fact that almost all good computer science related books are in English. I had a hard time in high school with mastering English, but once I entered university more than half of the books we used, where in English, and my knowledge of English quickly grew.
Also in computer science there are groups of authors who only write in their 'own' journals and attent their 'own' conferences. Look up the subject of 'method engineering' and you will find a whole field of 'Computer science' with high crackpotness.
Indeed, very interesting. Makes you understand how the average end-user thinks compared to the average software-engineer. I also has some interesting things to say about 'stuckness', something you often experience during programming and/or debugging.
Visual basic, I mean the version before .Net, has one of the most beautiful event mechanism I have ever found in a programming language, which allows truely elegant programs. Also the fact that every object has a COM interface, allows you to perform interprocess communication in a very nice manner. I have seen Visual Basic being used for a communication stack for controlling a scientific measurement intrument, through a series of communicating servers. The measuring instrument involved was of world class, sold all over the world, a price ranging between 100,000 and 500,000 dollar depending on the configuration.
Okay, I agree, it does have its limitations, but as it is with each type of programming language, it can be abused to write the most ugly type of programs but also be used to write the most beautiful and elegant programs. Just simply bashing a language because it is misused simply shows that you have no understanding of what is writing programs is all about
This is probably a more likely way in which the world may end than any of the ten possibilities that where mentioned on the last science story.
Sadly, this joke is incorrect, because recently it has become known that HIV causes damage to the brain even if there are no signs of AIDS. So people, how catch HIV when they young and take their anti-viral medications the rest of their life, and thus prevent AIDS, still risk that they will become dement.
I wonder if compiling eight C programs in parallel on an eight core CPU is faster than compiling them sequential, because one of the performance bottle-neck seems to be in the amouth of data to be read (searching for include files) and written. Not so long ago there was a long discussion on whether it is better to compile C programs separately or simply include them all in one single file.
Regularly add some Curcumin, found in turmeric, to your food. There are some indications that it might prevent Alzheimer's Disease. The development of Alzheimer's Disease usually starts many years before any serious memory problems start.
And yes, exercise is always good
I guess you are refering to the preprocessing step of C and C++ compilers, which was really a lame hack, I think. If you have a lot of include files, preprocessing produces large intermediate files, which contain a lot of overlapping code, that has to be compiled over and over again.
Preprocessing should have been removed a long time ago, but nasty backwards compatability issue, it was never done. Other languages, such as Java and D, solve this problem in a much better way. Just as did TurboPascal with its TPU files in the late 1980's.
This is indeed what one would expect. For that reason I find matemath far more interesting. Isabelle already has been use for some time. According to the wikipedia entry: "It is an LCF-style theorem prover (written in Standard ML), so it is based on a small logical core guaranteeing logical correctness."
The Spice (from Frank Herbert's Dune) also gave you those blue in blue eyes. Made me wonder what it will to a "normal" person.
Although Alzheimer's Disease might seem a very scary disease, the reality is often that the family members suffer most. As a partner of someone with Alzheimer's Disease, I can affirm this. Although my wife is only in the early stages of the disease, the effects are already dramatic. She is no longer my equal and I often feel I have to treat her like a teenager, as she is showing similar kind of behaviour. Our teenager daughter is also suffering from not having a "normal" mom anymore.
Although most people with Alzheimer's Disease go through periodes of depression, they often appear to be rather happy with their condition, because they are no longer aware of what has happened to them. They forget that they forget.
Furhtemore it should be noted that almost all women above the age of 35 are screened on Down Syndrome and that parents are encouraged to consider abortion. (I personally have been told by a gynaecologist that I would have difficulties to find a doctor who would be willing to perform heart surgery on my yet unborn child in case of Down Syndrome.)
The whole discussion here in the Netherlands is mainly a political on, because one of the parties in the coalition is a very conservative christian party who are against any form of selection and are against abortion. For them a firtelized human egg, is a human being. In their thinking the distruction of an embryo equals murder. It seems that they have more problems with the distruction of embryos than that there is a selection being made.