I too have a son with a birth defect that caused him to be mentally handicaped. He is 10 now. He cannot read nor write, but can do simple maths with numbers below 20. He has a great sense of humor and uses the computer to surf the internet searching for images of his favourite TV-shows.
Of course, not every handicapped child is the same, but I believe that my son is having a happy life dispite his handicaps. And in a sense, he also is a joy to us.
But his life did have a dramatic effect on our family life. My wife devoutes all her energy in taking care for him. As a result of this, her relationship with my now 13 year old daughter has been very poor. My wife also has been suffering from a burn-out and depressions. For many years my daughter has not been able to invite friends over to our house, because my wife could not handle the additional stress of an extra child in the house, while having to care for our son. It is my daughter who has been suffering far more than my son. For me too it has not been very easy. For many years our lives have been centered around caring for our son.
I have also discovered that with interface design, one should focus on the view of the users of the interface, not on the implementers. If an interface is designed by the person having to implement the functionality, there is a great danger that the interface will reveal unneccessary details of the implementation and thus break encapsulation. These kind of interfaces also tend to have to many elementary methods, often resulting in the same sequence of methods being called by the code that needs to use the interface. Whenever this happens, it means something went wrong in the interface design.
Some years ago, I wrote an interpretting parser, which simply loads a grammer (in extended BNF) and next parses a string according to it. The lexical analyses needs to be hand coded, but examples for the most common literals are included. The interesting bit is that the parser controls the lexer, which simply gives you context sensitive lexing. The whole thing is rather small. The nice thing is that it doesn't generate code. I once tried to make it generate code, but the produced code was actually slower than the interpretting version. (Probably has to do with the fact that the interpretter fits in the primary processor cache.) The parser uses back-tracking, but uses some smart caching, making it very fast. The whole interpretting parser consists of a single C file of about 100 Kbyte and can be found here.
I wonder about the stability of the peanut shape. Why would the two stars not simply merge into a single star with a greater rotational speed? I guess if stars get this close together they must rotate (around themselves) at the same speed due to the tidal forces.
I am getting the impression that JavaScript 2.0 is slowly heading into the direction of Java by adding all those new features. I would not be surprised if the next step will be "pre-compiled" script modules, just like the Java.class files. Adding features to an already existing language is not always making a language better.
Here in the Netherlands we already have such a number for a long time. First it was only used for taxes, but slowly it was used for more and more things. Recently it has been renamed into "citizen service number", suggesting that it is a number for the government to serve its citizens better. Of course, it is just the other way around. Now the Dutch government has decided that everyone who gets an ID card, and really you cannot do without one if you want to open a bank account and things like such, needs to provide his/her fingerprints. These fingerprints are stored in a national database and at first this was only going to be used to be able to find fake ID cards. Now our government want to open this database for criminal investigations as well. There is also a law that every citizen older than 13 should be able to identify him/herself in case the police makes a request. And the police has been used this to fine many people. I even heard of a story of a person who was a victim of a car accident, got a ticket when he could not show his ID card. And yes all your bank accounts are linked to the your ID number and the government has the right to see all your bank transactions by court order. If you want to have a job, you need a bank account, because employers in the Netherlands do not like they idea to pay you in cash.
My experiences with some of generic XML parser is not very good. (Technically speaking we are dealing here with lexical scanners, not parsers.) Especially the SAX interface is not a pretty one. It is a typical interface that was designed from the inside (the parser) point of view, but not from the user point of view. Also, because XML is very rich, and you hardly every use all of this richness, there is always a performance penalty. If you have to parse megabyte size of XML files that you know only make use of a very limited subset of XML, there is no reason to not use a custom made XML parser. For our application, I developed a XML parser making use of C++ templates in just 9Kbyte. This parser implements a XML iterator with which it is easy to write clear parsing methods that follow the structure of the XML you want to parse. Also because of the use of template and inline methods, a lot of overhead for method calling is done away with.
Okay, it should have been "break dancing". I felt that there was something funny about it when I wrote that, and me knowing that I am dyslectic should have made me think twice. I suppose your Dutch is as good as my English, as otherwise you would not have made fun of me.
Everyday, I bike along a company called Xsense here in Enschede, the Netherlands, which is selling a similar system called Moven as described here as a commercial product.
Where can I download the software? Is there a open source project on this?
Over the years I have seen many different attempts from reconstructing scenes from digital pictures, some of them being very impressive, but for some reason I have never been able to find a working piece of software or a open source project dealing with this. Yes, there are several nice frame works available. Or I am I just looking in the wrong places? I did find some commercial packages, but these are beyond my budget.
Is there some reason why researchers in this direction are not willing to donate their results to the public? Or is it just coincidence.
Thank you very much for your information. I have succeeded in contacting the coordinator of the phase III trial for the Netherlands. He will contact us later to see if my wife meets the conditions for this trial. (I rather would have send you a private emai, but your personal web site is down.)
The entry about Bapineuzumab on Wikipedia states that during an earlier trial 6% of subjects developed aseptic meningitis. I would not dare to expose my wife, whoes condition seems to be reasonably stable at the moment, to such risks, even if there would be a change for her to improve.
Although my wife is still able to do many daily things, such as shoppings and house keeping, I have felt emotionally drained for years. We have an almost 10 year old son with mental handicaps, and, what is maybe even worse, I have to deal with an almost 13 teenage girl who has had a very bad relationship with her mother for many years (many due to the behaviour of my wife). I often feel like being a single parent with two teenagers and a 4 year old child, who often have problems with each other. My wife already has had mental problems for eight years. Some years ago it seemed that her condition was improving. Now I know that it will only get worse, much worse, if I am to believe others in a similar situation. At the moment, I am barely able to maintain a normal life and keep my mental health. Keeping my mental health is important to provide my family with a descent income for the coming years. Luckily my employer has been kind to me, allwoing me to take of whenever needed. Now that it is no longer safe for my wife to drive a car, it means that it is my responsability to go with my children to doctor visits. At the moment I am already losing an average of 4 hours per week.
I think I totally lack the energy and resources to start some research myself. I did do some research, and as a result started to give my wife curcumin, omega-3 fish oils and some vitamines. We did contact the main Alzheimer's Disease researcher in the Netherlands, who is also the coordinator of many of the trials that are currently underway. My wife is too young for some of the trials. Another problem is that some of the trials require frequent visits, something which is rather difficult in our situation.
I understand that the results for the phase II trials for Bapineuzumab are only due next year. I also understand that in the past trials where stopped because of life threatening complications.
LY411575 also seems to be associated with side effects. Two patients where withdrawn during a trial in 2004.
From this, I conclude that we are not close to a safe medication to cure Alzheimer's Disease in the near future.
All medications that have been developed sofar only show a delay in the development of the disease in a part of the patients. One should realize that the cause and the mechanism behind Alzheimer's Disease are not very well understood and that there are competing theories, where "Alzheimer's Could Be a Third Form of Diabetes" is just one of them.
Could you please provide some pointers. My wife is suffering from Early-Onset Alzheimers disease and is still in the early stages of the disease. I am not asking for a cure, only something that could stabilize her current state.
Another person who learn the hard way that making backups is not enough, but that you have to store the backups in more than one physical location. I wonder if the thieves will even hear his request, let alone consider to listen to it. Nowadays you can get a 2.5 inch 80 Gbyte harddisk for less than 100 USD. You can easily store this at a location that won't be found by thieves looking for computers. Thieves almost never search children bedrooms or kitchens for these kind of items.
It is maybe not as Obligatory as it seems. I friend of mine who got interested in Hex and now beats a certain computer program every time, and who is also a fair Go player (still amature rank), noticed that game playing programs are not very good at dealing with things like sacrificing some small gain to get win a larger gain elsewhere. Although Poker and Go cannot be compared, in a sense it comes down to the same kind of problems, namely not being able to model strategy, that is your own strategy and the strategy of your opponent.
If Spirit and Opportunity do incur damage from the current dust storm, it will be because they are already on the margin of their ability to function anyway in terms of power, McKay said. Originally designed for only a three-month mission, the plucky rovers have continued operating for an astonishing three years. Aged as they are and despite concern from rover mission officials, McKay is optimistic the rovers will survive this latest ordeal.
The rovers are "way past their warranty date," McKay said. "It could be that under the low power condition of the dust storm, they may have some breakdowns that can't be repaired but I actually would be surprised, especially since they both just survived the winter. This should be a piece of cake for them."
At Mars Exploration Rover Mission there is still no official statement that the Rovers are no longer operating normal. It seems that this site is not always up to date, but if I count correctly, images from the Rovers are still arriving. The last status report of Spirit is from June 2, for sols 1234-1239. The last Spirit images are from Sol 1247. The last Opportunity images are from Sol 1226. If I counted correctly, that must have been yesterday or today.
What I have often felt is that non-technical people think that techies don't understand business and that they understand both business and technical issues. But whenever I have asked a business person if they could give an estimate of the profits of a certain functionality, they often simply stated that it was needed to win a customer. Yet at the same time they often demand that I give an accurate estimation of the development effort (costs).
But the reality is that software is usually bought by non-technical persons (both private as commecial), and that features are more important than functionality. Often it is sufficient that a certain functionality can be demonstrated, not that it is really working or adding something to the product. How the product looks is always more important than how it works. (And once the product is sold, it is usually the helpdesk that is required to help the customer work around all the "features".)
My conclusion is that software development is mostly driven by prospects not by existing customers.
Indeed Go is a much bigger challenge. At the moment the best Go playing programs are about 8 Kyu. Which means that they are just childplay for any professional player (in Japan, China, South Korea). Even at the club where I play, half of the players beat these kind of programs with ease.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, not every handicapped child is the same, but I believe that my son is having a happy life dispite his handicaps. And in a sense, he also is a joy to us.
But his life did have a dramatic effect on our family life. My wife devoutes all her energy in taking care for him. As a result of this, her relationship with my now 13 year old daughter has been very poor. My wife also has been suffering from a burn-out and depressions. For many years my daughter has not been able to invite friends over to our house, because my wife could not handle the additional stress of an extra child in the house, while having to care for our son. It is my daughter who has been suffering far more than my son. For me too it has not been very easy. For many years our lives have been centered around caring for our son.
I have also discovered that with interface design, one should focus on the view of the users of the interface, not on the implementers. If an interface is designed by the person having to implement the functionality, there is a great danger that the interface will reveal unneccessary details of the implementation and thus break encapsulation. These kind of interfaces also tend to have to many elementary methods, often resulting in the same sequence of methods being called by the code that needs to use the interface. Whenever this happens, it means something went wrong in the interface design.
It almost sounds like he is talking about MonetDB.
Some years ago, I wrote an interpretting parser, which simply loads a grammer (in extended BNF) and next parses a string according to it. The lexical analyses needs to be hand coded, but examples for the most common literals are included. The interesting bit is that the parser controls the lexer, which simply gives you context sensitive lexing. The whole thing is rather small. The nice thing is that it doesn't generate code. I once tried to make it generate code, but the produced code was actually slower than the interpretting version. (Probably has to do with the fact that the interpretter fits in the primary processor cache.) The parser uses back-tracking, but uses some smart caching, making it very fast. The whole interpretting parser consists of a single C file of about 100 Kbyte and can be found here.
I wonder about the stability of the peanut shape. Why would the two stars not simply merge into a single star with a greater rotational speed? I guess if stars get this close together they must rotate (around themselves) at the same speed due to the tidal forces.
I am getting the impression that JavaScript 2.0 is slowly heading into the direction of Java by adding all those new features. I would not be surprised if the next step will be "pre-compiled" script modules, just like the Java .class files. Adding features to an already existing language is not always making a language better.
Apart from the referenced paper being some months old, the author has an extended paper with an efficient algorithm. See A Subquadratic Algorithm for Road Coloring.
Here in the Netherlands we already have such a number for a long time. First it was only used for taxes, but slowly it was used for more and more things. Recently it has been renamed into "citizen service number", suggesting that it is a number for the government to serve its citizens better. Of course, it is just the other way around. Now the Dutch government has decided that everyone who gets an ID card, and really you cannot do without one if you want to open a bank account and things like such, needs to provide his/her fingerprints. These fingerprints are stored in a national database and at first this was only going to be used to be able to find fake ID cards. Now our government want to open this database for criminal investigations as well. There is also a law that every citizen older than 13 should be able to identify him/herself in case the police makes a request. And the police has been used this to fine many people. I even heard of a story of a person who was a victim of a car accident, got a ticket when he could not show his ID card. And yes all your bank accounts are linked to the your ID number and the government has the right to see all your bank transactions by court order. If you want to have a job, you need a bank account, because employers in the Netherlands do not like they idea to pay you in cash.
My experiences with some of generic XML parser is not very good. (Technically speaking we are dealing here with lexical scanners, not parsers.) Especially the SAX interface is not a pretty one. It is a typical interface that was designed from the inside (the parser) point of view, but not from the user point of view. Also, because XML is very rich, and you hardly every use all of this richness, there is always a performance penalty. If you have to parse megabyte size of XML files that you know only make use of a very limited subset of XML, there is no reason to not use a custom made XML parser. For our application, I developed a XML parser making use of C++ templates in just 9Kbyte. This parser implements a XML iterator with which it is easy to write clear parsing methods that follow the structure of the XML you want to parse. Also because of the use of template and inline methods, a lot of overhead for method calling is done away with.
Okay, it should have been "break dancing". I felt that there was something funny about it when I wrote that, and me knowing that I am dyslectic should have made me think twice. I suppose your Dutch is as good as my English, as otherwise you would not have made fun of me.
Sorry, for the incorrect link, it is www.xsens.com. There system is much more wearable and you can even capture things like brake dancing.
Everyday, I bike along a company called Xsense here in Enschede, the Netherlands, which is selling a similar system called Moven as described here as a commercial product.
This is really a very clear explaination.
Where can I download the software? Is there a open source project on this?
Over the years I have seen many different attempts from reconstructing scenes from digital pictures, some of them being very impressive, but for some reason I have never been able to find a working piece of software or a open source project dealing with this. Yes, there are several nice frame works available. Or I am I just looking in the wrong places? I did find some commercial packages, but these are beyond my budget.
Is there some reason why researchers in this direction are not willing to donate their results to the public? Or is it just coincidence.
Thank you very much for your information. I have succeeded in contacting the coordinator of the phase III trial for the Netherlands. He will contact us later to see if my wife meets the conditions for this trial. (I rather would have send you a private emai, but your personal web site is down.)
The entry about Bapineuzumab on Wikipedia states that during an earlier trial 6% of subjects developed aseptic meningitis. I would not dare to expose my wife, whoes condition seems to be reasonably stable at the moment, to such risks, even if there would be a change for her to improve.
Although my wife is still able to do many daily things, such as shoppings and house keeping, I have felt emotionally drained for years. We have an almost 10 year old son with mental handicaps, and, what is maybe even worse, I have to deal with an almost 13 teenage girl who has had a very bad relationship with her mother for many years (many due to the behaviour of my wife). I often feel like being a single parent with two teenagers and a 4 year old child, who often have problems with each other. My wife already has had mental problems for eight years. Some years ago it seemed that her condition was improving. Now I know that it will only get worse, much worse, if I am to believe others in a similar situation. At the moment, I am barely able to maintain a normal life and keep my mental health. Keeping my mental health is important to provide my family with a descent income for the coming years. Luckily my employer has been kind to me, allwoing me to take of whenever needed. Now that it is no longer safe for my wife to drive a car, it means that it is my responsability to go with my children to doctor visits. At the moment I am already losing an average of 4 hours per week.
I think I totally lack the energy and resources to start some research myself. I did do some research, and as a result started to give my wife curcumin, omega-3 fish oils and some vitamines. We did contact the main Alzheimer's Disease researcher in the Netherlands, who is also the coordinator of many of the trials that are currently underway. My wife is too young for some of the trials. Another problem is that some of the trials require frequent visits, something which is rather difficult in our situation.
LY411575 also seems to be associated with side effects. Two patients where withdrawn during a trial in 2004.
From this, I conclude that we are not close to a safe medication to cure Alzheimer's Disease in the near future. All medications that have been developed sofar only show a delay in the development of the disease in a part of the patients. One should realize that the cause and the mechanism behind Alzheimer's Disease are not very well understood and that there are competing theories, where "Alzheimer's Could Be a Third Form of Diabetes" is just one of them.
Could you please provide some pointers. My wife is suffering from Early-Onset Alzheimers disease and is still in the early stages of the disease. I am not asking for a cure, only something that could stabilize her current state.
Another person who learn the hard way that making backups is not enough, but that you have to store the backups in more than one physical location. I wonder if the thieves will even hear his request, let alone consider to listen to it. Nowadays you can get a 2.5 inch 80 Gbyte harddisk for less than 100 USD. You can easily store this at a location that won't be found by thieves looking for computers. Thieves almost never search children bedrooms or kitchens for these kind of items.
It is maybe not as Obligatory as it seems. I friend of mine who got interested in Hex and now beats a certain computer program every time, and who is also a fair Go player (still amature rank), noticed that game playing programs are not very good at dealing with things like sacrificing some small gain to get win a larger gain elsewhere. Although Poker and Go cannot be compared, in a sense it comes down to the same kind of problems, namely not being able to model strategy, that is your own strategy and the strategy of your opponent.
The rovers are "way past their warranty date," McKay said. "It could be that under the low power condition of the dust storm, they may have some breakdowns that can't be repaired but I actually would be surprised, especially since they both just survived the winter. This should be a piece of cake for them."
At Mars Exploration Rover Mission there is still no official statement that the Rovers are no longer operating normal. It seems that this site is not always up to date, but if I count correctly, images from the Rovers are still arriving. The last status report of Spirit is from June 2, for sols 1234-1239. The last Spirit images are from Sol 1247. The last Opportunity images are from Sol 1226. If I counted correctly, that must have been yesterday or today.
What I have often felt is that non-technical people think that techies don't understand business and that they understand both business and technical issues. But whenever I have asked a business person if they could give an estimate of the profits of a certain functionality, they often simply stated that it was needed to win a customer. Yet at the same time they often demand that I give an accurate estimation of the development effort (costs).
But the reality is that software is usually bought by non-technical persons (both private as commecial), and that features are more important than functionality. Often it is sufficient that a certain functionality can be demonstrated, not that it is really working or adding something to the product. How the product looks is always more important than how it works. (And once the product is sold, it is usually the helpdesk that is required to help the customer work around all the "features".)
My conclusion is that software development is mostly driven by prospects not by existing customers.
Indeed Go is a much bigger challenge. At the moment the best Go playing programs are about 8 Kyu. Which means that they are just childplay for any professional player (in Japan, China, South Korea). Even at the club where I play, half of the players beat these kind of programs with ease.