i lost the use of my right (dominant) hand for 6 weeks and tried the twiddler. I didnt find the chorded text entry easy and struggled to get to much over 30-40 characters per min (!), but the mouse pad button works well for navigating a gui desktop (think ibm thinkpad 'trackpoint' center button). Oh and it works perfectly with linux.
Unfortunately, you are completely wrong. The paradigm is in fact good. In particular, I think that you will find that you are equipped with a cerebellum which runs your motor control through feedback provided through your eyes in the same way that this experiment works
thanks for posting this. what a beautiful relation. it is occasionally coming across nuggets of gold like this that keeps me reading slashdot (although, to continue the analogy, it must be said that there is a whole lot of prospecting through cr*p required!).
Changes in synaptic connectivity are one way that learning occurs. It is interesting to see that even minor stimulation (in playing a game like tetris) can lead to observable changes, i.e., the hardware of the mind (aka the brain) can be re-modelled by the software being run (the 'program' or specific task being undertaken). One of the next questions is to begin to understand the rules governing how learning is represented. This will allow us to begin debugging the OS kernel that links brain and mind.
Having unlimited cycles and memory creates its own problems. Brooks describes in the mythical man month how increasing the size of a software project introduces errors that slow down development. Having limited cycles forces code optimization, which is why many numerical tools used today are directly based on beautifully optimized fortran 77 routines written when number crunching power was precious.
However, srm & shred are secure-ish on ext3; since although ext3 is a journaling file system by default it only journals a file's metadata (so file erasing tools should be effective.)
But you're quite right. If you need to be getting up to shenanigans like this you either : (i) shouldn't be doing what you've been doing with flash (aka watching p0rn), or (ii) you should get really paranoid and knowledgeable and run on openbsd with an Encrypted Virtual Filesystem.
As the number of information sources N increases total work output M decreases and can even become negative (i.e. the total work remaining at the end of a day is greater than the total work that had been remaining at the beginning of that day):
Group Intercommunication Formula: n(n 1) / 2
Example: 50 developers -> 50(50 1) / 2 = 1225 channels of communication
more formally, one way the 'usefullness' of a diagnostic test can be assessed is in terms of positive predictive value. I suspect the ppv of electronic vs ordinary stethoscope would be very low
Also, apocryphally, a poor stethoscope may be very helpful: in general practice if a murmur is loud enough for you to hear with a 'cheapo' stethoscope its probably serious enough for you to do something about it, if you can't hear it with a cheapo stethoscope you probably don't need to worry !
In gastroenterology the only use of a stethoscope would be to listen for bowel sounds (increased if there is obstruction). This does not need any great audio resolving power. In 'pulmonology', i.e., respiratory medicine, bedside diagnosis with a 'scope is a thing of the past. V/Q scanning, VO2 testing, bronchoscoping, or even simple CXR are what lead to diagnosis. In emergency medicine I can't think of any situation where a stethoscope would be useful (other than it looks good around the neck of George Cluney); In an A+E room BP is checked by auto-BP cuff reader and chest injury would be examined by CXR.
The point I was trying to make: there is no point in a clinical diagnostic test if it does not alter the clinical management.
In this case: how will a highly complex, highly accurate, highly audio-resolving digital stethoscope change clinical management ?. I can't think of any situation where it would (c.f. low uptake of the digital littmann scopes). If it doesn't change clinical management how is it useful ?
littmann make a variety of stethoscopes including digital ones, and have done for some time.
However, dont believe the hype. They are of very limited clinical value. No hospital cardiology diagnosis these days would be based on auscultation. (echocardiography would be used). For taking BP the traditional tube plus ear-pieces 'scope more than suffices.
the next generation merom will, apparently, operatate at wattages of ~0.5 watts. Maybe now they will be a bit more cool. And, maybe, now I can buy a laptop that wont heat to the point of causing infertility. Kool. This better happen soon or there will be no "geeks, the next generation"(TM)!
Obviously not. So, no, they can't mash the system -- which is of course one of the beauties of using a *nix system. But still I dont want them to mess up their own files. Apart from the work it causes me (not great) there is sometimes stuff there I'd rather not loose, e.g., photo's that have been uploaded from the camera.
I think this is a general issue. There have got to be lots of circumstances where it would be better if users didn't scramble their own home dir. With slightly more mature users (wife, grandparents) it prob is okay to let them mess stuff up. Cos, in my admittedly limited experience, if somebody can muck up a system then they will.
Infact, thinking of this I think I'm going to go now and reset some bash commands to root only. Let my wife just move stuff to trash ('mv') and disable 'rm' for her. She does sorta know what she's doing but that doesnt stop "but I didnt want to do that" every now and again.
This is the nub of the matter. What is the easiest way to restrict access. My contention here is that rather than set elaborate group membership and permission schemes it is much simpler to have the kids in 'user' and operate a GUI with only 3 icons (gcompris, tuxpaint, firefox with cbeebies home page) on a simple menubar - and absolutely nothing, nothing else. This takes me about 2 min to do with icewm. It is robust and, most importantly, has to date proved to be kid-proof (the ultimate test!).
This is not the most elaborate *nix sys admin scheme (but at the end of the day I am not really a *nix sys admin, though I might pretent to be one from time to time on slashdot), but, having tried many alternatives, it has prooved robust in practice.
Restricting the kids net access is actually quite easy as at the moment I can satiate them by allowing them only to browse the bbc web site. This will not last long I realize. Then the real fun will start. As far as I know there are no really kidproof ways of keeping the p0rn away.
Ha. But no. First you have to spend 4 days getting mplayer to work so you can watch the movie you've downloaded (but dont worry this is an LUPAA entry requirement)
its called firefox (it lets you browse something called the world wide web).
kubuntu lets your kids browse the web, while you drink beer
if you've got kids you'll know how much that is worth...
ha ha. But they all can !, and worse.
Here is a test: get a windoze box and leave 5yr old in front of it for 5 min
Bet you anything you like 100 times out of 100 by the time you return:
-15-20 windows will be open or (more likey) half hung waiting to open
-some systems settings or files ! will have been scrambled or deleted
-you wont be able to work out what they've done, or reverse it easily in less than 10x5=50min (no rcs here, its windoze remember)
-the prog the poor little soul actually wants to use wont have come up and they will be frustrated and crying
For all these reasons a kubuntu-like (see other post comments) set up is ideal for young kids.
Its secure, solid, easy to lock down. It works. The kids are happy. The parents are happy. Dad has a beer...hooray !
sorry. completely disagree in this specific case. kubuntu isn't (IMHO) in any meaningful sense a 'distribution'. I've tried it, I do know. It is == ubuntu with a couple of packages added and a mod'd gnome desktop. Thats it.
Now, I'm a complete *nix nut, and I love to see it promoted, and I think kubuntu is a worthy project, but I'm sorry I think it is complete nonsense to call it a distribution.
I (or any other half competent user) could take a vanilla ubuntu and with apt-get and vi in 5 mins produce 'kubuntu' for you
The people here who deserve credit are the program creators, e.g., of gcompris
[I also think you are wrong in the general sense w.r.t. distribution specialization. This is however a matter of non-rational belief (and one of the reasons I like freebsd). But that is another story]
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i lost the use of my right (dominant) hand for 6 weeks and tried the twiddler. I didnt find the chorded text entry easy and struggled to get to much over 30-40 characters per min (!), but the mouse pad button works well for navigating a gui desktop (think ibm thinkpad 'trackpoint' center button). Oh and it works perfectly with linux.
The CO2 footprint is, surprisingly, similar (to within one order of magnitude)
Unfortunately, you are completely wrong. The paradigm is in fact good. In particular, I think that you will find that you are equipped with a cerebellum which runs your motor control through feedback provided through your eyes in the same way that this experiment works
thanks for posting this. what a beautiful relation. it is occasionally coming across nuggets of gold like this that keeps me reading slashdot (although, to continue the analogy, it must be said that there is a whole lot of prospecting through cr*p required!).
Changes in synaptic connectivity are one way that learning occurs. It is interesting to see that even minor stimulation (in playing a game like tetris) can lead to observable changes, i.e., the hardware of the mind (aka the brain) can be re-modelled by the software being run (the 'program' or specific task being undertaken). One of the next questions is to begin to understand the rules governing how learning is represented. This will allow us to begin debugging the OS kernel that links brain and mind.
the 'amount of information' you refer to is the Kolmogorv Complexity
- all you are saying is that the system to be modeled has a large number of degrees of freedom.
- I suspect the FACETs team know this.
- the more interesting question is, even approximately, how many degrees of freedom, f, are there?
for n synapses; what is O(n^f)
trust ? trust nothing and nobody !, and encase your head in lead to prevent Van Eck Phreaking
Having unlimited cycles and memory creates its own problems. Brooks describes in the mythical man month how increasing the size of a software project introduces errors that slow down development. Having limited cycles forces code optimization, which is why many numerical tools used today are directly based on beautifully optimized fortran 77 routines written when number crunching power was precious.
True, but have tried encrypting and decrypting by hand ? (that is, afterall, why the first computers were invented)
Yes. Quite true.
However, srm & shred are secure-ish on ext3; since although ext3 is a journaling file system by default it only journals a file's metadata (so file erasing tools should be effective.)
But you're quite right. If you need to be getting up to shenanigans like this you either : (i) shouldn't be doing what you've been doing with flash (aka watching p0rn), or (ii) you should get really paranoid and knowledgeable and run on openbsd with an Encrypted Virtual Filesystem.
ho ho ho, very funny. Only, rm does not securely delete.
srm is fairly safe.
This has been explored in depth in The Mythical Man-Month:
As the number of information sources N increases total work output M decreases and can even become negative (i.e. the total work remaining at the end of a day is greater than the total work that had been remaining at the beginning of that day):
Group Intercommunication Formula: n(n 1) / 2
Example: 50 developers -> 50(50 1) / 2 = 1225 channels of communication
completely agree.
more formally, one way the 'usefullness' of a diagnostic test can be assessed is in terms of positive predictive value. I suspect the ppv of electronic vs ordinary stethoscope would be very low
Also, apocryphally, a poor stethoscope may be very helpful: in general practice if a murmur is loud enough for you to hear with a 'cheapo' stethoscope its probably serious enough for you to do something about it, if you can't hear it with a cheapo stethoscope you probably don't need to worry !
'Determining what to test for' is diagnosis
In gastroenterology the only use of a stethoscope would be to listen for bowel sounds (increased if there is obstruction). This does not need any great audio resolving power. In 'pulmonology', i.e., respiratory medicine, bedside diagnosis with a 'scope is a thing of the past. V/Q scanning, VO2 testing, bronchoscoping, or even simple CXR are what lead to diagnosis. In emergency medicine I can't think of any situation where a stethoscope would be useful (other than it looks good around the neck of George Cluney); In an A+E room BP is checked by auto-BP cuff reader and chest injury would be examined by CXR.
The point I was trying to make: there is no point in a clinical diagnostic test if it does not alter the clinical management.
In this case: how will a highly complex, highly accurate, highly audio-resolving digital stethoscope change clinical management ?. I can't think of any situation where it would (c.f. low uptake of the digital littmann scopes). If it doesn't change clinical management how is it useful ?
littmann make a variety of stethoscopes including digital ones, and have done for some time.
However, dont believe the hype. They are of very limited clinical value. No hospital cardiology diagnosis these days would be based on auscultation. (echocardiography would be used). For taking BP the traditional tube plus ear-pieces 'scope more than suffices.
which is ironic really, given they are such technophilies you would have thought they'd find it easier to open source their own source code...
the next generation merom will, apparently, operatate at wattages of ~0.5 watts. Maybe now they will be a bit more cool. And, maybe, now I can buy a laptop that wont heat to the point of causing infertility. Kool. This better happen soon or there will be no "geeks, the next generation"(TM)!
thanks. looks good. downloading iso now to see how it works in practice
Obviously not. So, no, they can't mash the system -- which is of course one of the beauties of using a *nix system. But still I dont want them to mess up their own files. Apart from the work it causes me (not great) there is sometimes stuff there I'd rather not loose, e.g., photo's that have been uploaded from the camera.
I think this is a general issue. There have got to be lots of circumstances where it would be better if users didn't scramble their own home dir. With slightly more mature users (wife, grandparents) it prob is okay to let them mess stuff up. Cos, in my admittedly limited experience, if somebody can muck up a system then they will.
Infact, thinking of this I think I'm going to go now and reset some bash commands to root only. Let my wife just move stuff to trash ('mv') and disable 'rm' for her. She does sorta know what she's doing but that doesnt stop "but I didnt want to do that" every now and again.
This is the nub of the matter. What is the easiest way to restrict access. My contention here is that rather than set elaborate group membership and permission schemes it is much simpler to have the kids in 'user' and operate a GUI with only 3 icons (gcompris, tuxpaint, firefox with cbeebies home page) on a simple menubar - and absolutely nothing, nothing else. This takes me about 2 min to do with icewm. It is robust and, most importantly, has to date proved to be kid-proof (the ultimate test!).
This is not the most elaborate *nix sys admin scheme (but at the end of the day I am not really a *nix sys admin, though I might pretent to be one from time to time on slashdot), but, having tried many alternatives, it has prooved robust in practice.
Restricting the kids net access is actually quite easy as at the moment I can satiate them by allowing them only to browse the bbc web site. This will not last long I realize. Then the real fun will start. As far as I know there are no really kidproof ways of keeping the p0rn away.
Ha. But no. First you have to spend 4 days getting mplayer to work so you can watch the movie you've downloaded (but dont worry this is an LUPAA entry requirement)
its called firefox (it lets you browse something called the world wide web).
kubuntu lets your kids browse the web, while you drink beer
if you've got kids you'll know how much that is worth...
ha ha. But they all can !, and worse.
Here is a test: get a windoze box and leave 5yr old in front of it for 5 min
Bet you anything you like 100 times out of 100 by the time you return:
-15-20 windows will be open or (more likey) half hung waiting to open
-some systems settings or files ! will have been scrambled or deleted
-you wont be able to work out what they've done, or reverse it easily in less than 10x5=50min (no rcs here, its windoze remember)
-the prog the poor little soul actually wants to use wont have come up and they will be frustrated and crying
For all these reasons a kubuntu-like (see other post comments) set up is ideal for young kids.
Its secure, solid, easy to lock down. It works. The kids are happy. The parents are happy. Dad has a beer...hooray !
sorry. completely disagree in this specific case. kubuntu isn't (IMHO) in any meaningful sense a 'distribution'. I've tried it, I do know. It is == ubuntu with a couple of packages added and a mod'd gnome desktop. Thats it.
Now, I'm a complete *nix nut, and I love to see it promoted, and I think kubuntu is a worthy project, but I'm sorry I think it is complete nonsense to call it a distribution.
I (or any other half competent user) could take a vanilla ubuntu and with apt-get and vi in 5 mins produce 'kubuntu' for you
The people here who deserve credit are the program creators, e.g., of gcompris
[I also think you are wrong in the general sense w.r.t. distribution specialization. This is however a matter of non-rational belief (and one of the reasons I like freebsd). But that is another story]