Especially given that a 3D windowing system will totally under-utilize even the cheapest of modern video cards. If my roommate's $30 bargain bin video card can run UT2004's million polygons per second for six hours with a smooth framerate, I think it can handle rendering five or six window polygons per second on behalf of the windowing system.
You bet. These video cards can handle marathon 12 hour gaming sessions, but they're gonna break like matchsticks under the burden of running a WINDOWING system.
You're just playing semantics now -- what's the difference between "performing specific groups of functions" and being "in charge" of those functions? The wikipedia link you include describes one of the parts of the brain where the structural model is most applicable! Broca's centre and Wernicke's centers are just about the most localized brain features in the entire cerebral cortex (which is, ironically, the least structural component of the brain).
Once you get outside of the cerebral cortex, the structuralist model is nearly flawless -- look at the thalamus, hypothalamus, hippocampus, the spinal cord, the ascending reticular activating system, or the cerebellum. These structures are quite specialized, and quite compartmentalized. You might as well try to tell me that the stomach, esophagus, and mouth aren't cooperatively responsible for mechanical digestion.
Just because you have a bone to pick with phrenology, doesn't mean you should discard the structuralist model of biology.
Why don't they to get an analogous law passed for violence in TV and movies? That way there would be a precedent. Or how about about music that advocates violence? There's plenty of that.
I swear, there's something about being a legislator that rots the brain.
To your first point: guess what -- the plural of anecdote isn't data. SUVs are very dangerous -- they are involved in more fatal accidents than cars.
To the second point: the members of the auto industry are extremely chummy. Not unlike the DRAM industry, which despite having multiple companies in theoretical competition, engages in rampant price-fixing and other forms of cartel behaviour.
To the third: you understand about the difference in emissions? All combustion engines produce emissions, but SUVs produce much, much more than cars. They get away with it because they're classified as light trucks. By way of analogy, consider a forestfire and a campfire; both produce smoke, but guess what -- one produces a whole lot more. And when half the population of my neighbourhood drives SUVs, the air-quality notably suffers.
I'm attack SUVs precisely because they're something I hate. After having been nearly run-down half a dozen times by SUV and minivan drivers, I came to realize that the people who drive these things are assholes of the highest calibre.
I dislike motorcycles too, BUT:
Motorcycles produce very low levels of emissions, lower than any car or truck.
Motorcycle accidents typically only kill the driver, not other people.
I despise the hideous noise-pollution they produce.
I do dislike camp fires -- after having my home nearly destroyed by campfire-triggerd forest fires on several occasions, I came to the conclusion that campfires are too dangerous to trust people with. I do dislike Apple devices; they're grossly overpriced (especially here in Canada for some reason). Asphalt roads suck, but I hardly have to be the one to state that. Anyone who's seen the amount of upkeep they require knows that we need something better to build roads out of.
Asphalt roads don't waste petroleum though, since they're made of ASPHALT, brainiac. Not diesel, not propane, but ASPHALT. The crap left over at the end of oil refining. You might as say that we're wasting corn because we don't eat corn husks.
So you see? I hate lots of things that I can have. I have access to asphalt roads, and I can afford Apple products, and I could easily afford a motorcycle. I'm just not stupid enough to buy those things. Just like I'm not stupid enough to waste hideous amounts of money on an SUV that will get terrible gas mileage and increase the odds that I will get myself and other people killed, while simultaneously making the air around me shittier than it would otherwise be if I drove a car or rode a bicycle.
No, I think those things are all wrong too. The SUV is just getting more attention because SUVs are so popular right now, and are somewhat more retarded than those other vehicles. They waste more oil than other vehicles, they are more dangerous, and they're more overpriced (with the possible exception of sports cars).
True enough. There's also the genetic aspect -- some people just spiral into depression, and never get out. Normal treatments fail, because they're designed to correct the depression and then end (a normal course of SSRIs or psychotherapy is two years). And then there's people who have a negative stimulus (such as a loved one dieing), but their grieving period never really ends. And geriatric-onset depression -- lots of eldery people become extremely depressed, although I understand this is one of the easiest forms of depression to treat.
To summarize, depression is difficult to treat precisely because its so multicausal. The chemical model misses a lot. It's to be hoped that in the future, with better genetic testing and holistic (in the legitimate psychiatric sense, not in the hippy bullshit sense) treatment, interventions for depression will be much more targetted and individualized.
Which is? I'm unfamiliar with any model that doesn't involve identifying specific brain structures that perform certain groups of functions. If that wasn't a good model for the brain, brain surgery would be virtually impossible, as would most forms of brain-imaging.
But please, enlighten me. Can you point me in the direction of some new, superior model?
A side effect is any effect other than the intended effect. Just like my CPU catching on fire is a side effect of recompiling the Linux kernel.
Reductionist euphemism? Welcome to the world -- everything is a reduction. The only thing that isn't a reduction is the entire universe itself. We reduce because describing the entire universe in complete detail is a bit more difficult than using reductionist nouns and pronouns.
First off, you completely missed the fact that I was making a joke.
Secondly, the only reason depression seems so prevalent now is that in the past, it wasn't diagnosed, and people who had it either wasted away and died, or they killed themselves. It's nothing to do with being spoiled, with imagination, or anything like that.
There's nothing that pisses me off more than people who come up with stupid ideas about depression stemming from jealousy, or being spoiled, or anything like that. Depression stems from aberrant brain chemistry -- nothing more. It's highly genetic, and spans all races, cultures, and groupings of any kind. Stop with your idiotic "lets blame progress for alienating us from each... technology is killing us... toil makes up happy...". History is filled people who killed themselves. Millions and millions of them.
So fuck off -- all progress means is that depression now gets diagnosed and treated. I guarantee you that a modern person, with their iPod and ADSL, is about a billion times happier than a French serf from the middle ages who had to work 18 hours a day just to survive.
Typical kneejerk reaction -- assume that any criticism, no matter how well-founded, is due to jealousy.
Let me try: you only hate white supremacists because you're jealous of their racial pride.
Sound stupid? That's how you sound.
SUVs are wrong in every way. They're dangerous, overpriced, they reduce the air-quality in our neighbourhoods, and they waste oil (a limited resource, which could last a lot longer if people starting conserving it). Fortunately, wasting money and driving a dangerous vehicle are traits that evolution selects against.
And yet we all accept that there's a speech center, a language center, an optical center, etc. What's so different about a pleasure center that it invokes your bizarre ire?
That happens a lot with some of the older SSRIs. Some of the newer ones are better about those side effects.
To be fair though, SSRIs have some of the mildest side effects of any psychotropic medications. I was on a tiny dose of a mild antipsychotic for three weeks; the end result was that I temporarily became sociopathically antisocial, I gained fifty pounds (and I wasn't exactly Tommy Tune to start with), and my liver had started failing. I'm STILL taking the weight off. Apparently people often die of heart disease after just a few years on an antipsychotic. Lame, huh?
Oh, I'm well aware of that. Hence the "seriously though".
Depression is definitely a nasty business. It's often extremely difficult treat (some people are virtually immune to the positive effects of psychotropic medications, although rarely to the negative ones). Psychotherapy is often unhelpful for intelligent and/or cynical people. It's a bad scene.
There actually is such a thing. It's located in the limbic system, and is primarily affected by the release of dopamine (which is why drugs that stimulate the release of dopamine are so pleasurable). The rat story isn't apocryphal, although I'd feel better if I had a link to a journal it was published in.
Didn't it ever occurr to anyone to just make the world less shitty? That would clear up most depression quite nicely.
Seriously though -- I've seen people with medication-resistant major depressive disorder, and it sucks real bad. Anything that can help these people is worth looking into.
And not phoney-baloney charities either. He's getting children immunized and properly educated, investing in our future so to speak. Plus, his hyper-aggressive business practices have pushed tens of thousands of tech-enthusiasts into Stallman's arms, increasing the liberalism of our entire society.
Sun is notorious for producing some of the most stable software in the world. It's not fast, or pretty; it just never, ever fails. You can see this in the SUN JVM; it's about as stable as you could ever hope for. It's ugly and sluggish, but it's abhorrently resilient.
It seems like ex-presidents are invariably more socially-concious than acting presidents. I guess it's because they can get away with it, whereas an acting president is still under the thumb of the big lobbyists.
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Especially given that a 3D windowing system will totally under-utilize even the cheapest of modern video cards. If my roommate's $30 bargain bin video card can run UT2004's million polygons per second for six hours with a smooth framerate, I think it can handle rendering five or six window polygons per second on behalf of the windowing system.
You bet. These video cards can handle marathon 12 hour gaming sessions, but they're gonna break like matchsticks under the burden of running a WINDOWING system.
Once you get outside of the cerebral cortex, the structuralist model is nearly flawless -- look at the thalamus, hypothalamus, hippocampus, the spinal cord, the ascending reticular activating system, or the cerebellum. These structures are quite specialized, and quite compartmentalized. You might as well try to tell me that the stomach, esophagus, and mouth aren't cooperatively responsible for mechanical digestion.
Just because you have a bone to pick with phrenology, doesn't mean you should discard the structuralist model of biology.
I swear, there's something about being a legislator that rots the brain.
That's a bunch of hippy Rogerian bullshit. If that were true, why would ECT and SSRIs eliminate depression in so many cases?
To the second point: the members of the auto industry are extremely chummy. Not unlike the DRAM industry, which despite having multiple companies in theoretical competition, engages in rampant price-fixing and other forms of cartel behaviour.
To the third: you understand about the difference in emissions? All combustion engines produce emissions, but SUVs produce much, much more than cars. They get away with it because they're classified as light trucks. By way of analogy, consider a forestfire and a campfire; both produce smoke, but guess what -- one produces a whole lot more. And when half the population of my neighbourhood drives SUVs, the air-quality notably suffers.
I'm attack SUVs precisely because they're something I hate. After having been nearly run-down half a dozen times by SUV and minivan drivers, I came to realize that the people who drive these things are assholes of the highest calibre.
I dislike motorcycles too, BUT:
I do dislike camp fires -- after having my home nearly destroyed by campfire-triggerd forest fires on several occasions, I came to the conclusion that campfires are too dangerous to trust people with. I do dislike Apple devices; they're grossly overpriced (especially here in Canada for some reason). Asphalt roads suck, but I hardly have to be the one to state that. Anyone who's seen the amount of upkeep they require knows that we need something better to build roads out of.
Asphalt roads don't waste petroleum though, since they're made of ASPHALT, brainiac. Not diesel, not propane, but ASPHALT. The crap left over at the end of oil refining. You might as say that we're wasting corn because we don't eat corn husks.
So you see? I hate lots of things that I can have. I have access to asphalt roads, and I can afford Apple products, and I could easily afford a motorcycle. I'm just not stupid enough to buy those things. Just like I'm not stupid enough to waste hideous amounts of money on an SUV that will get terrible gas mileage and increase the odds that I will get myself and other people killed, while simultaneously making the air around me shittier than it would otherwise be if I drove a car or rode a bicycle.
No, I think those things are all wrong too. The SUV is just getting more attention because SUVs are so popular right now, and are somewhat more retarded than those other vehicles. They waste more oil than other vehicles, they are more dangerous, and they're more overpriced (with the possible exception of sports cars).
To summarize, depression is difficult to treat precisely because its so multicausal. The chemical model misses a lot. It's to be hoped that in the future, with better genetic testing and holistic (in the legitimate psychiatric sense, not in the hippy bullshit sense) treatment, interventions for depression will be much more targetted and individualized.
But please, enlighten me. Can you point me in the direction of some new, superior model?
Reductionist euphemism? Welcome to the world -- everything is a reduction. The only thing that isn't a reduction is the entire universe itself. We reduce because describing the entire universe in complete detail is a bit more difficult than using reductionist nouns and pronouns.
Thank y'kindly.
Secondly, the only reason depression seems so prevalent now is that in the past, it wasn't diagnosed, and people who had it either wasted away and died, or they killed themselves. It's nothing to do with being spoiled, with imagination, or anything like that.
There's nothing that pisses me off more than people who come up with stupid ideas about depression stemming from jealousy, or being spoiled, or anything like that. Depression stems from aberrant brain chemistry -- nothing more. It's highly genetic, and spans all races, cultures, and groupings of any kind. Stop with your idiotic "lets blame progress for alienating us from each... technology is killing us... toil makes up happy...". History is filled people who killed themselves. Millions and millions of them.
So fuck off -- all progress means is that depression now gets diagnosed and treated. I guarantee you that a modern person, with their iPod and ADSL, is about a billion times happier than a French serf from the middle ages who had to work 18 hours a day just to survive.
Let me try: you only hate white supremacists because you're jealous of their racial pride.
Sound stupid? That's how you sound.
SUVs are wrong in every way. They're dangerous, overpriced, they reduce the air-quality in our neighbourhoods, and they waste oil (a limited resource, which could last a lot longer if people starting conserving it). Fortunately, wasting money and driving a dangerous vehicle are traits that evolution selects against.
And yet we all accept that there's a speech center, a language center, an optical center, etc. What's so different about a pleasure center that it invokes your bizarre ire?
Do you have any links to information about TMS? It sounds like interesting stuff.
To be fair though, SSRIs have some of the mildest side effects of any psychotropic medications. I was on a tiny dose of a mild antipsychotic for three weeks; the end result was that I temporarily became sociopathically antisocial, I gained fifty pounds (and I wasn't exactly Tommy Tune to start with), and my liver had started failing. I'm STILL taking the weight off. Apparently people often die of heart disease after just a few years on an antipsychotic. Lame, huh?
Depression is definitely a nasty business. It's often extremely difficult treat (some people are virtually immune to the positive effects of psychotropic medications, although rarely to the negative ones). Psychotherapy is often unhelpful for intelligent and/or cynical people. It's a bad scene.
There actually is such a thing. It's located in the limbic system, and is primarily affected by the release of dopamine (which is why drugs that stimulate the release of dopamine are so pleasurable). The rat story isn't apocryphal, although I'd feel better if I had a link to a journal it was published in.
Seriously though -- I've seen people with medication-resistant major depressive disorder, and it sucks real bad. Anything that can help these people is worth looking into.
And not phoney-baloney charities either. He's getting children immunized and properly educated, investing in our future so to speak. Plus, his hyper-aggressive business practices have pushed tens of thousands of tech-enthusiasts into Stallman's arms, increasing the liberalism of our entire society.
Sun is notorious for producing some of the most stable software in the world. It's not fast, or pretty; it just never, ever fails. You can see this in the SUN JVM; it's about as stable as you could ever hope for. It's ugly and sluggish, but it's abhorrently resilient.
Ah, Kentucky, favourite state amongst enthusiasts of fine spirits.
It's a testament to the robustness of the GNU/Linux desktop that most of this stuff was pretty behind-the-scenes for users.
It seems like ex-presidents are invariably more socially-concious than acting presidents. I guess it's because they can get away with it, whereas an acting president is still under the thumb of the big lobbyists.
If it helps keep disease researchers happy and productive, I consider it money well spent. :)