Twelve years ago my father was diagnosed with a rare genetic liver disease called alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency. While he had problems with his liver all of his life, they had not been able to diagnose and treat this new disease until recently.
When my father's symptoms got worse and worse, it was clear that there was only one cure for his disease. Liver transplantation was the only way to save his life. Because this treatment was "experimental" 11 years ago when it was performed, the insurance company flatly refused to cover it. The doctor told my father (quoting here)... "If you do not come up with $250,000 for the transplant, you will die". Did I mention I come from a fairly poor family? There was no WAY we could afford that.
The person who saved my father was a union manager. My father was a truck driver, a car hauler, who had been in the teamsters union for many years. After making the right calls and talking to the right people, the union stepped in and provided the money needed to save him.
After waiting a long time on the waiting list and with an estimated 2 weeks left to live, my father got his transplant. They gave him a 50/50 chance to survive the surgery at this point, and much less to even survive for the next 5 years. It has been 11 years and my father is still alive and enjoys a quality of life that's better than it ever has been.
Now I know this is slightly off-topic, but I saw many anti-union posts and I knew I had to say something. I'm always for expanding unions wherever possible, because I've seen in my jobs and in my life that sometimes the only ones who will stand up for you, is a union.
Back when I was a newbie admin I went shopping for a second T1 for an old ISP I worked for that doesn't exist anymore. Anyhow, I remember calling PSINet (their offices are semi-local) and being told that they didn't sell to ISPs. Huh?! Their sales rep told me that ISPs fragment their network too much and are too difficult to maintain. By selling only to business customers they could keep their network in better condition for their customers.
I thought... That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard... Then the next boardwatch came out with the backbone provider network ratings and PSINet came out somewhere in the middle. Then I really had a clue that the company would go nowhere. When my friend bought stock in the company (with a prospectus that made them look like they were in the black till I pointed the facts out to him), I laughed heartily and told him that was a bad move.
So the moral of the story is, I was expecting them to go down in flames eventually...
Well you cannot tell a mouse's perception, perhaps I used the wrong word. However, we can measure how much an animal detects the presence of a bitter compound. Quick Neurophysiology lesson:
Rats and mice (especially rats) can be completely decerebrated (take away all higher processing, brain dead), and they will still respond to bitter taste. How do we know? Well, if one of these brain dead animals is presented with a bitter taste, it will reflexively withdraw its head. This is a very basic primitive response that goes beyond any perception and is located in the brain stem of the animal (with things like breathing and heart control).
So, they knew that certain mice had this mutation that affected its response to a bitter compound, cyclohexane (I think it was cyclohexane anyways) and caused the mouse to not respond. The reasoning is that the mutation effected the receptor in a way that caused it to no longer respond, or not respond as strongly, to the stimulus.
I don't believe they specifically tested this, but I am sure that if you ran specific tests to test for the products of the reaction of cyclohexane with the taste receptor, you would not see the products of the reaction (Calcium influx and neurotransmitter release).
I am writing a paper for Molecular Biology about this right now interestingly enough. For a long time we have had little information about bitter, sweet, and umami (monosodium glutamate... meat! (well mostly)) taste receptors.
But one day someone found that a genetic mutation at a specific allele can cause changes in a mouse that effects perception of a specific bitter taste. When they researched the area around the mutation with the genomic database, they found an entire bitter receptor. When they searched for similar bitter receptors across the entire genomic sequence, they found an entire array of bitter taste receptors! This goes for humans too. With so much less work, we've found a whole class (the T2R) of bitter taste receptors.
Now you all may say "WHO GIVES A FUCK?!?", but this is actually important. Since we never knew how sweet receptors worked, we've always guessed about what compounds will substitute for sugar. For example, all the artificial sweetners that I know of were found accidentally, with a chemist tasting the substance during lunch or dinner after working with it for something unrelated. Now that we're gaining more information about receptor function we could conceivably find the perfect artificial sweetner... BILLIONS OF DOLLARS.
Besides, if you can't see by now that finding new receptors and quick searches for similar (consensus) sequences in the genomic database isn't going to herald all sorts of scientific advances, you're pretty dense... While it's true that there are alot of different ways the genetic code is used (substitution of polyadenylation sites in leukocytes, different intron splicing in cochlea frequency detectors), we know about alot of them, and with more analysis we will continue to learn more about ourselves even faster than we ever have before.
Any Biologist knows that lipids with a hydrophobic and hydrophilic end that are exposed to external compounds will spontaneously form a bilayer membrane. It's simply a matter of the system attempting to reach its lowest energy state.
A membrane does not make an organism. There's more to it than that.
I may just be full of myself, but I think I was a child prodigy and that I had enough potential to do alot of things I wish I could have gotten started on sooner.
BUT, it was that kind of mentality, that I was just a child and I should be with normal children my age, that made my life miserable. They used to pry me away from my electronics and make me go outside and get hit upside the head with a football almost every day. In school, there were no advanced programs, instead when I wasn't in normal classes, they put me with the slower kids in hopes I could help them. Instead I just got beat on every day, and because I resented school so much, the teachers wouldn't help me at all either.
Children who are that smart DO NOT FIT IN WITH OTHER CHILDREN. Sure, some may, but I've seen too many who didn't. Imagine being a child thinking about electronics all day with kids who know nothing but TV and soda and running around and screaming like kids tend to do all day. These intelligent kinds of kids are teased, made fun of, and just generally made into outcasts by the other children. A good example is "Voices from the Hellmouth", as kids/teachers don't only exclude the intelligent in high school, but the social selection extends to grade school as well.
I guess it does come down to asking the child what he/she wants. I'm willing to bet any child who shows prodigy-grade talents is going to want to play sometimes (don't we all?). But, when it's time to learn or have time to themselves, they're going to be drawn to excersizing the abilities that make them a prodigy.
Believe me, I do make sure my opinion is known. Everyone I write sems to make their opinions known as well. I've written Castle, Roth, and Biden numerous e-mails and snail mails about key issues that are of interest to us geeks. It doesn't change anything, as I get nice pleasant responses that explain the mainstream reasoning for their votes, but hey, at least I try.
Oh yeah, and that thing about the Libertarians, it wasn't serious. But... I tell people to vote libertarian, and that's the same thing I hear from all of them... "You're throwing your vote away."
Between the University of Delaware and the political system you feel about 1nm big.
But, since I'm still immature and I think I might actually make a difference by being different, I'll continue trying. I hope everyone else does the same.
Vote for whom? I haven't seen any candidates around my teeny state (Delaware) standing out for Napster, nor do I expect anyone I can vote for to make a stand on crucial technology issues.
The only way to vote would be Libertarian. But hey, who wants to vote for a party nobody else votes for.
Even so, if a lot of college kids vote in this year's election, it will just be for whoever put the most money into the campaign... as usual. What do you think MTV's Rock the Vote is all about anyways?
But ya know, at least you'll never get moderated down. Moderaters only pay attention (especially for upping points) to stuff for the first hour something is posted.
It's all analog. From what I've been told by someone who's been there, they have to flip all kinds of switches to make the networks and they act rather stagnantly because it takes so much work to change it.
There's alot of debate over which system provides the most realism vs. the most flexability. I think the answer lies in several Universities' approaches (including Udel and apparently MIT's new setup) as an analog-digital hybrid.
At the University of Delaware we've had a complete system setup with emulated neural circuitry for some time now. Each circuit is a hybrid analog/digital artificial neuron called a "neuromorph".
The spikes are recorded by a seperate board and routed through hardware buffers to "synapses" on the next circuit, thus emulating the "leaky-integrate and fire" mechanisms of neurons.
For more information e-mail me at the above address (yes it's real) and I can point you to research articles and information that has been published from our Neuromorphic Systems Laboratory at Udel.
Even so, this is not a new thing, the theory behind artificial neural networks dates back some 40+ years, and there have been many attempts at Universities to implement the most realistic and interesting mimicries of human behavior.
> as far as i know glucose is just a string of > amino acids strung together.
Actually, you're thinking of proteins.
Sugars are also called carbohydrates. They are called this because they fit the formula Cx(H2O)y. So they appear to be in chemistry terms "hydrates of carbon".
However, glyceraldehyde is the simplest possible sugar. Due to its small size (as a triose, 3 carbon backbone) it does not have many of the properties of sugars that are so important to life on Earth (existance in pyranose form for example).
I suppose this is important somehow... But I won't be impressed until they find some useful (5 or more carbon) sugar out there.
Once I used to listen to Metallica, several of their CDs are mixed in with that several hundred I own. If I didn't find Napster, I may still be listening to Metallica today for lack of something better to listen to.
Another motive for stifling online trade of music completely? I'm sure that the big record companies want as little competition as possible, but with the Internet, they cannot control all of the music like they do with MTV or radio.
Alright, I'm tired of hearing the same old arguement over and over again, so here's the reasons I use Napster now instead of buying CDs (I own several hundred CDs btw).
First, I'm into trance, a form of eletronic music, that I can't seem to buy ANYWHERE, not even online. Sure I can find some albums every once and awhile, but most of the time the stores have never heard of what I'm looking for, can't get it, or it will take weeks to get, etc...
Second, in the electronic music spectrum, there's alot of stuff I don't like. I used to try buying CDs, then find out they were junk. Waste of money. Sure, I'd buy CDs of artists I liked that I could actually get ahold of, but I'm listening to alot of bootlegs and things from Europe that can't be purchased, at least in the USA...
Third, I'm poor. Now more than ever, it's difficult being a college student. I couldn't buy albums at all (maybe a couple a year) if I even wanted to. I'm sure alot of other people feel the same way. Most of the people who are pirating on Napster (including me) I bet would not buy the album of the person they were pirating anyway, either because they don't like it that much, it's just something novelty they wanted, or they're too poor to go out and actually buy it. You can argue then that the person should not have that recording, but the artist still is not losing money anyways and perhaps smaller ones gain from sharing their music to people who would have never heard it otherwise.
Fourth, everywhere I look, record sales are booming. They're having no problems pushing CDs, even though they're generally $3 - $5 more than 5 - 10 years ago when I was in my teen popular artist CD buying phase.
The only thing I can find in my local record stores are asshole employees, limited selection (plenty of the MTV crap), and high prices. I could buy online, but it's more of the same except the salesperson is taken out and replaced by phony reviews.
I'm glad Napster exists, it has opened me up to music I would not have found otherwise and allows me to get my hands on things I wouldn't be able to get my hands on.
(P.S. I've posted this before, but it never gets moderated up very high, if at all)
Alright, I'm tired of hearing the same old arguement over and over again, so here's the reasons I use Napster now instead of buying CDs (I own several hundred CDs btw).
First, I'm into trance, a form of eletronic music, that I can't seem to buy ANYWHERE, not even online. Sure I can find some albums every once and awhile, but most of the time the stores have never heard of what I'm looking for, can't get it, or it will take weeks to get, etc...
Second, in the electronic music spectrum, there's alot of stuff I don't like. I used to try buying CDs, then find out they were junk. Waste of money. Sure, I'd buy CDs of artists I liked that I could actually get ahold of, but I'm listening to alot of bootlegs and things from Europe that can't be purchased, at least in the USA...
Third, I'm poor. Now more than ever, it's difficult being a college student. I couldn't buy albums at all (maybe a couple a year) if I even wanted to. I'm sure alot of other people feel the same way. Most of the people who are pirating on Napster (including me) I bet would not buy the album of the person they were pirating anyway, either because they don't like it that much, it's just something novelty they wanted, or they're too poor to go out and actually buy it. You can argue then that the person should not have that recording, but the artist still is not losing money anyways and perhaps smaller ones gain from sharing their music to people who would have never heard it otherwise.
Fourth, everywhere I look, record sales are booming. They're having no problems pushing CDs, even though they're generally $3 - $5 more than 5 - 10 years ago when I was in my teen popular artist CD buying phase.
The only thing I can find in my local record stores are asshole employees, limited selection (plenty of the MTV crap), and high prices. I could buy online, but it's more of the same except the salesperson is taken out and replaced by phony reviews.
I'm glad Napster exists, it has opened me up to music I would not have found otherwise and allows me to get my hands on things I wouldn't be able to get my hands on.
I spent a whole summer playing EQ, get my char up to lvl 21 (yes, I know I sucked that it took me that long to get to lvl 21) and then had a GM come along and say "Neuronix isn't a good nickname. Change it."
When I tried to argue, he changed it to Niriik and left. I had to find him days later, and got it changed top Xinoruen (Neuronix backwards).
About a week later I quit EQ entirely. I now play Asheron's Call and the GMs haven't been nearly as intrusive in game play (less needed for one thing, perhaps if you have missing items?) and they're a pleasure to deal with, not Mr. I'm a Big Shot like some IRCops I know... Makes me sick now that I have a game I can't play and they took all that money from me.
Talking about EQ, that whole expansion pack should be free. One of the reasons I bought EQ is because upgrades to the game and they said that they could do all kinds of wonders through their update system and EQ could be a changing world. EQ has been so stagnant, and now when they finally do make changes to the world, they're charging us real money for them.
Yeah right, ban selling of virtual items, how about banning the sales of that virtual expansion pack... At least Asheron's Call makes changes to their game world fairly frequently with a decent storyline so it isn't just a big monster hunt (at least for higher lvls).
A majority of IRCOps (IRC Operators, people with the "O-line") have the worst personality in the world. The only time they speak to anyone outside of their close friendly circle is to correct someone or laugh at someone. They have no tolerance for screwing around (even if it doesn't hurt anyone) and use their forces, usually G-lines (AKA Global Bans/Global K-Line), excessively.
Many of the users on IRC are people who, somewhat like the IRCOps, have some technical skill, and are usually fairly young. They like to get drunk, high, and they like to screw around. When conflicts happen, usually IRCOps are completely unforgiving and rather rude.
This provokes alot of the Denial of Service attacks.
IRC Networks for a long time now have been ignoring security (It took them sooo long to get any preventative measures) and they just blame the user who attacks them, which may provoke more attacks, usually doing nothing.
I've never been on IRCNet, but I've been on IRC (Starting with EFNet) for about 7 years. I've run several small networks of my own. What I said here may not apply to IRCNet, but it sure does apply to all of the IRC Networks I've been on.
Now, if my message is moderated up, the IRCOps I've offended will flame, point out any little errors I made in this e-mail, etc. For saying things along these lines before, I've been G-Lined and tons more (including Undernet Ops e-mailing my boss in hopes of them firing me, hah).
Alright, I'm tired of hearing the same old arguement over and over again, so here's the reasons I use Napster now instead of buying CDs (I currently own several hundred CDs btw).
First, I'm into trance (a form of eletronic music) that I can't seem to buy ANYWHERE (not even online). Sure I can find some albums every once and awhile, but most of the time the stores have never heard of what I'm looking for, can't get it, or it will take weeks to get, etc...
Second, in the electronic music spectrum, there's alot of stuff I don't like. I used to try buying CDs, then find out they were junk. Waste of money. Sure, I'd buy CDs of artists I liked that I could actually get ahold of, but I'm listening to alot of bootlegs and things from Europe...
Third, I'm poor. Now more than ever, it's difficult being a college student. I couldn't buy albums at all (maybe a couple a year) if I even wanted to. I'm sure alot of other people feel the same way. Most of the people who are pirating on Napster (including me) I bet would not buy the album of the person they were pirating anyway, either because they don't like it that much, it's just something novelty they wanted, or they're too poor to go out and actually buy it. You can argue then that the person should not have that recording, but the artist still is not losing money anyways and perhaps smaller ones gain from sharing their music to people who would have never heard it otherwise.
Fourth, everywhere I look, record sales are booming. They're having no problems pushing CDs, even though they're generally $3 - $5 more than 5 - 10 years ago when I was in my teen popular artist CD buying phase.
The only thing I can find in my local record stores are asshole employees (sorry for the nice ones, 25% maybe), limited selection (plenty of the MTV crap), and high prices. I could buy online, but it's more or less more of the same except you take out the salesperson and add phony reviews.
I'm glad Napster exists, it has opened me up to music I would not have found otherwise and allows me to get my hands on things I wouldn't be able to get my hands on.
I mean comeon, who tries to censor and cover up more than the American media? I've seen America called the most conservative country in the world a bunch of times now (*cough* Clinton + Lewinsky *cough*).
I don't know, I'm American, so I can't tell if Canada is much better.
The connections made inside the brain. Einstein's brain size was irrelevant, he did not have complete seperation of the hemispheres and did have an exceptionally large portion of his pre-frontal lobe, the part thought to control mathematical reasoning.
I know that's not what you meant when you said that:) So many stupid stereotypes.
It's sad that schools like CMU or any other school takes people not based on merit but rather by a statistic. When CMU takes more women just because they're women they've pushed out men who want to go to CMU and had higher scores on SATs/GPAs or whatever and more deserved to get in.
I'm a straight white male, I face this kind of opposition all the time. Drives me nuts.
When the women around here stop teasing me cause I'm a geek (the men don't do this, at least nowhere near as many) I'll recognise women are ready to equalize the computer job market. But if they do, it should be because they want to, as far as I can tell from the people I've met, women do not want to.
Slashdot Mirror
Twelve years ago my father was diagnosed with a rare genetic liver disease called alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency. While he had problems with his liver all of his life, they had not been able to diagnose and treat this new disease until recently.
When my father's symptoms got worse and worse, it was clear that there was only one cure for his disease. Liver transplantation was the only way to save his life. Because this treatment was "experimental" 11 years ago when it was performed, the insurance company flatly refused to cover it. The doctor told my father (quoting here)... "If you do not come up with $250,000 for the transplant, you will die". Did I mention I come from a fairly poor family? There was no WAY we could afford that.
The person who saved my father was a union manager. My father was a truck driver, a car hauler, who had been in the teamsters union for many years. After making the right calls and talking to the right people, the union stepped in and provided the money needed to save him.
After waiting a long time on the waiting list and with an estimated 2 weeks left to live, my father got his transplant. They gave him a 50/50 chance to survive the surgery at this point, and much less to even survive for the next 5 years. It has been 11 years and my father is still alive and enjoys a quality of life that's better than it ever has been.
Now I know this is slightly off-topic, but I saw many anti-union posts and I knew I had to say something. I'm always for expanding unions wherever possible, because I've seen in my jobs and in my life that sometimes the only ones who will stand up for you, is a union.
Back when I was a newbie admin I went shopping for a second T1 for an old ISP I worked for that doesn't exist anymore. Anyhow, I remember calling PSINet (their offices are semi-local) and being told that they didn't sell to ISPs. Huh?! Their sales rep told me that ISPs fragment their network too much and are too difficult to maintain. By selling only to business customers they could keep their network in better condition for their customers.
I thought... That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard... Then the next boardwatch came out with the backbone provider network ratings and PSINet came out somewhere in the middle. Then I really had a clue that the company would go nowhere. When my friend bought stock in the company (with a prospectus that made them look like they were in the black till I pointed the facts out to him), I laughed heartily and told him that was a bad move.
So the moral of the story is, I was expecting them to go down in flames eventually...
Well you cannot tell a mouse's perception, perhaps I used the wrong word. However, we can measure how much an animal detects the presence of a bitter compound. Quick Neurophysiology lesson:
Rats and mice (especially rats) can be completely decerebrated (take away all higher processing, brain dead), and they will still respond to bitter taste. How do we know? Well, if one of these brain dead animals is presented with a bitter taste, it will reflexively withdraw its head. This is a very basic primitive response that goes beyond any perception and is located in the brain stem of the animal (with things like breathing and heart control).
So, they knew that certain mice had this mutation that affected its response to a bitter compound, cyclohexane (I think it was cyclohexane anyways) and caused the mouse to not respond. The reasoning is that the mutation effected the receptor in a way that caused it to no longer respond, or not respond as strongly, to the stimulus.
I don't believe they specifically tested this, but I am sure that if you ran specific tests to test for the products of the reaction of cyclohexane with the taste receptor, you would not see the products of the reaction (Calcium influx and neurotransmitter release).
I am writing a paper for Molecular Biology about this right now interestingly enough. For a long time we have had little information about bitter, sweet, and umami (monosodium glutamate... meat! (well mostly)) taste receptors.
But one day someone found that a genetic mutation at a specific allele can cause changes in a mouse that effects perception of a specific bitter taste. When they researched the area around the mutation with the genomic database, they found an entire bitter receptor. When they searched for similar bitter receptors across the entire genomic sequence, they found an entire array of bitter taste receptors! This goes for humans too. With so much less work, we've found a whole class (the T2R) of bitter taste receptors.
Now you all may say "WHO GIVES A FUCK?!?", but this is actually important. Since we never knew how sweet receptors worked, we've always guessed about what compounds will substitute for sugar. For example, all the artificial sweetners that I know of were found accidentally, with a chemist tasting the substance during lunch or dinner after working with it for something unrelated. Now that we're gaining more information about receptor function we could conceivably find the perfect artificial sweetner... BILLIONS OF DOLLARS.
Besides, if you can't see by now that finding new receptors and quick searches for similar (consensus) sequences in the genomic database isn't going to herald all sorts of scientific advances, you're pretty dense... While it's true that there are alot of different ways the genetic code is used (substitution of polyadenylation sites in leukocytes, different intron splicing in cochlea frequency detectors), we know about alot of them, and with more analysis we will continue to learn more about ourselves even faster than we ever have before.
Any Biologist knows that lipids with a hydrophobic and hydrophilic end that are exposed to external compounds will spontaneously form a bilayer membrane. It's simply a matter of the system attempting to reach its lowest energy state. A membrane does not make an organism. There's more to it than that.
I may just be full of myself, but I think I was a child prodigy and that I had enough potential to do alot of things I wish I could have gotten started on sooner.
BUT, it was that kind of mentality, that I was just a child and I should be with normal children my age, that made my life miserable. They used to pry me away from my electronics and make me go outside and get hit upside the head with a football almost every day. In school, there were no advanced programs, instead when I wasn't in normal classes, they put me with the slower kids in hopes I could help them. Instead I just got beat on every day, and because I resented school so much, the teachers wouldn't help me at all either.
Children who are that smart DO NOT FIT IN WITH OTHER CHILDREN. Sure, some may, but I've seen too many who didn't. Imagine being a child thinking about electronics all day with kids who know nothing but TV and soda and running around and screaming like kids tend to do all day. These intelligent kinds of kids are teased, made fun of, and just generally made into outcasts by the other children. A good example is "Voices from the Hellmouth", as kids/teachers don't only exclude the intelligent in high school, but the social selection extends to grade school as well.
I guess it does come down to asking the child what he/she wants. I'm willing to bet any child who shows prodigy-grade talents is going to want to play sometimes (don't we all?). But, when it's time to learn or have time to themselves, they're going to be drawn to excersizing the abilities that make them a prodigy.
Believe me, I do make sure my opinion is known. Everyone I write sems to make their opinions known as well. I've written Castle, Roth, and Biden numerous e-mails and snail mails about key issues that are of interest to us geeks. It doesn't change anything, as I get nice pleasant responses that explain the mainstream reasoning for their votes, but hey, at least I try.
Oh yeah, and that thing about the Libertarians, it wasn't serious. But... I tell people to vote libertarian, and that's the same thing I hear from all of them... "You're throwing your vote away."
Between the University of Delaware and the political system you feel about 1nm big.
But, since I'm still immature and I think I might actually make a difference by being different, I'll continue trying. I hope everyone else does the same.
Vote for whom? I haven't seen any candidates around my teeny state (Delaware) standing out for Napster, nor do I expect anyone I can vote for to make a stand on crucial technology issues.
The only way to vote would be Libertarian. But hey, who wants to vote for a party nobody else votes for.
Even so, if a lot of college kids vote in this year's election, it will just be for whoever put the most money into the campaign... as usual. What do you think MTV's Rock the Vote is all about anyways?
But ya know, at least you'll never get moderated
down. Moderaters only pay attention (especially for upping points) to stuff for the first hour something is posted.
P.S. NOW I HAVE THE LAST POST hehe
Neuromorphic Engineering is a real term to describe this kind of research. The problem is, it isn't new. (See some of my other comments...)
It's all analog. From what I've been told by someone who's been there, they have to flip all kinds of switches to make the networks and they act rather stagnantly because it takes so much work to change it.
There's alot of debate over which system provides the most realism vs. the most flexability. I think the answer lies in several Universities' approaches (including Udel and apparently MIT's new setup) as an analog-digital hybrid.
At the University of Delaware we've had a complete system setup with emulated neural circuitry for some time now. Each circuit is a hybrid analog/digital artificial neuron called a "neuromorph".
The spikes are recorded by a seperate board and routed through hardware buffers to "synapses" on the next circuit, thus emulating the "leaky-integrate and fire" mechanisms of neurons.
For more information e-mail me at the above address (yes it's real) and I can point you to research articles and information that has been published from our Neuromorphic Systems Laboratory at Udel.
Even so, this is not a new thing, the theory behind artificial neural networks dates back some 40+ years, and there have been many attempts at Universities to implement the most realistic and interesting mimicries of human behavior.
> as far as i know glucose is just a string of
> amino acids strung together.
Actually, you're thinking of proteins.
Sugars are also called carbohydrates. They are called this because they fit the formula Cx(H2O)y. So they appear to be in chemistry terms "hydrates of carbon".
However, glyceraldehyde is the simplest possible sugar. Due to its small size (as a triose, 3 carbon backbone) it does not have many of the properties of sugars that are so important to life on Earth (existance in pyranose form for example).
I suppose this is important somehow... But I won't be impressed until they find some useful (5 or more carbon) sugar out there.
Duh.
Once I used to listen to Metallica, several of their CDs are mixed in with that several hundred I own. If I didn't find Napster, I may still be listening to Metallica today for lack of something better to listen to.
Another motive for stifling online trade of music completely? I'm sure that the big record companies want as little competition as possible, but with the Internet, they cannot control all of the music like they do with MTV or radio.
Alright, I'm tired of hearing the same old arguement over and over again, so here's the reasons I use Napster now instead of buying CDs (I own several hundred CDs btw).
First, I'm into trance, a form of eletronic music, that I can't seem to buy ANYWHERE, not even online. Sure I can find some albums every once and awhile, but most of the time the stores have never heard of what I'm looking for, can't get it, or it will take weeks to get, etc...
Second, in the electronic music spectrum, there's alot of stuff I don't like. I used to try buying CDs, then find out they were junk. Waste of money. Sure, I'd buy CDs of artists I liked that I could actually get ahold of, but I'm listening to alot of bootlegs and things from Europe that can't be purchased, at least in the USA...
Third, I'm poor. Now more than ever, it's difficult being a college student. I couldn't buy albums at all (maybe a couple a year) if I even wanted to. I'm sure alot of other people feel the same way. Most of the people who are pirating on Napster (including me) I bet would not buy the album of the person they were pirating anyway, either because they don't like it that much, it's just something novelty they wanted, or they're too poor to go out and actually buy it. You can argue then that the person should not have that recording, but the artist still is not losing money anyways and perhaps smaller ones gain from sharing their music to people who would have never heard it otherwise.
Fourth, everywhere I look, record sales are booming. They're having no problems pushing CDs, even though they're generally $3 - $5 more than 5 - 10 years ago when I was in my teen popular artist CD buying phase.
The only thing I can find in my local record stores are asshole employees, limited selection (plenty of the MTV crap), and high prices. I could buy online, but it's more of the same except the salesperson is taken out and replaced by phony reviews.
I'm glad Napster exists, it has opened me up to music I would not have found otherwise and allows me to get my hands on things I wouldn't be able to get my hands on.
(P.S. I've posted this before, but it never gets moderated up very high, if at all)
Alright, I'm tired of hearing the same old arguement over and over again, so here's the reasons I use Napster now instead of buying CDs (I own several hundred CDs btw).
First, I'm into trance, a form of eletronic music, that I can't seem to buy ANYWHERE, not even online. Sure I can find some albums every once and awhile, but most of the time the stores have never heard of what I'm looking for, can't get it, or it will take weeks to get, etc...
Second, in the electronic music spectrum, there's alot of stuff I don't like. I used to try buying CDs, then find out they were junk. Waste of money. Sure, I'd buy CDs of artists I liked that I could actually get ahold of, but I'm listening to alot of bootlegs and things from Europe that can't be purchased, at least in the USA...
Third, I'm poor. Now more than ever, it's difficult being a college student. I couldn't buy albums at all (maybe a couple a year) if I even wanted to. I'm sure alot of other people feel the same way. Most of the people who are pirating on Napster (including me) I bet would not buy the album of the person they were pirating anyway, either because they don't like it that much, it's just something novelty they wanted, or they're too poor to go out and actually buy it. You can argue then that the person should not have that recording, but the artist still is not losing money anyways and perhaps smaller ones gain from sharing their music to people who would have never heard it otherwise.
Fourth, everywhere I look, record sales are booming. They're having no problems pushing CDs, even though they're generally $3 - $5 more than 5 - 10 years ago when I was in my teen popular artist CD buying phase.
The only thing I can find in my local record stores are asshole employees, limited selection (plenty of the MTV crap), and high prices. I could buy online, but it's more of the same except the salesperson is taken out and replaced by phony reviews.
I'm glad Napster exists, it has opened me up to music I would not have found otherwise and allows me to get my hands on things I wouldn't be able to get my hands on.
I spent a whole summer playing EQ, get my char up to lvl 21 (yes, I know I sucked that it took me that long to get to lvl 21) and then had a GM come along and say "Neuronix isn't a good nickname. Change it."
When I tried to argue, he changed it to Niriik and left. I had to find him days later, and got it changed top Xinoruen (Neuronix backwards).
About a week later I quit EQ entirely. I now play Asheron's Call and the GMs haven't been nearly as intrusive in game play (less needed for one thing, perhaps if you have missing items?) and they're a pleasure to deal with, not Mr. I'm a Big Shot like some IRCops I know... Makes me sick now that I have a game I can't play and they took all that money from me.
Talking about EQ, that whole expansion pack should be free. One of the reasons I bought EQ is because upgrades to the game and they said that they could do all kinds of wonders through their update system and EQ could be a changing world. EQ has been so stagnant, and now when they finally do make changes to the world, they're charging us real money for them.
Yeah right, ban selling of virtual items, how about banning the sales of that virtual expansion pack... At least Asheron's Call makes changes to their game world fairly frequently with a decent storyline so it isn't just a big monster hunt (at least for higher lvls).
A majority of IRCOps (IRC Operators, people with the "O-line") have the worst personality in the world. The only time they speak to anyone outside of their close friendly circle is to correct someone or laugh at someone. They have no tolerance for screwing around (even if it doesn't hurt anyone) and use their forces, usually G-lines (AKA Global Bans/Global K-Line), excessively.
Many of the users on IRC are people who, somewhat like the IRCOps, have some technical skill, and are usually fairly young. They like to get drunk, high, and they like to screw around. When conflicts happen, usually IRCOps are completely unforgiving and rather rude.
This provokes alot of the Denial of Service attacks.
IRC Networks for a long time now have been ignoring security (It took them sooo long to get any preventative measures) and they just blame the user who attacks them, which may provoke more attacks, usually doing nothing.
I've never been on IRCNet, but I've been on IRC (Starting with EFNet) for about 7 years. I've run several small networks of my own. What I said here may not apply to IRCNet, but it sure does apply to all of the IRC Networks I've been on.
Now, if my message is moderated up, the IRCOps I've offended will flame, point out any little errors I made in this e-mail, etc. For saying things along these lines before, I've been G-Lined and tons more (including Undernet Ops e-mailing my boss in hopes of them firing me, hah).
Alright, I'm tired of hearing the same old arguement over and over again, so here's the reasons I use Napster now instead of buying CDs (I currently own several hundred CDs btw).
First, I'm into trance (a form of eletronic music) that I can't seem to buy ANYWHERE (not even online). Sure I can find some albums every once and awhile, but most of the time the stores have never heard of what I'm looking for, can't get it, or it will take weeks to get, etc...
Second, in the electronic music spectrum, there's alot of stuff I don't like. I used to try buying CDs, then find out they were junk. Waste of money. Sure, I'd buy CDs of artists I liked that I could actually get ahold of, but I'm listening to alot of bootlegs and things from Europe...
Third, I'm poor. Now more than ever, it's difficult being a college student. I couldn't buy albums at all (maybe a couple a year) if I even wanted to. I'm sure alot of other people feel the same way. Most of the people who are pirating on Napster (including me) I bet would not buy the album of the person they were pirating anyway, either because they don't like it that much, it's just something novelty they wanted, or they're too poor to go out and actually buy it. You can argue then that the person should not have that recording, but the artist still is not losing money anyways and perhaps smaller ones gain from sharing their music to people who would have never heard it otherwise.
Fourth, everywhere I look, record sales are booming. They're having no problems pushing CDs, even though they're generally $3 - $5 more than 5 - 10 years ago when I was in my teen popular artist CD buying phase.
The only thing I can find in my local record stores are asshole employees (sorry for the nice ones, 25% maybe), limited selection (plenty of the MTV crap), and high prices. I could buy online, but it's more or less more of the same except you take out the salesperson and add phony reviews.
I'm glad Napster exists, it has opened me up to music I would not have found otherwise and allows me to get my hands on things I wouldn't be able to get my hands on.
I mean comeon, who tries to censor and cover up more than the American media? I've seen America called the most conservative country in the world a bunch of times now (*cough* Clinton + Lewinsky *cough*).
I don't know, I'm American, so I can't tell if Canada is much better.
Wanna have alot of fun? Call your high school teachers "woman".
:)
I used to do it when I was in high school, got me detention more than once
When I go out to dinner tonight I'm gonna go out to a Mexican restaurant and order some of those Neutralinos. They sound tasty.
The connections made inside the brain. Einstein's brain size was irrelevant, he did not have complete seperation of the hemispheres and did have an exceptionally large portion of his pre-frontal lobe, the part thought to control mathematical reasoning.
:) So many stupid stereotypes.
I know that's not what you meant when you said that
It's sad that schools like CMU or any other school takes people not based on merit but rather by a statistic. When CMU takes more women just because they're women they've pushed out men who want to go to CMU and had higher scores on SATs/GPAs or whatever and more deserved to get in.
I'm a straight white male, I face this kind of opposition all the time. Drives me nuts.
When the women around here stop teasing me cause I'm a geek (the men don't do this, at least nowhere near as many) I'll recognise women are ready to equalize the computer job market. But if they do, it should be because they want to, as far as I can tell from the people I've met, women do not want to.
Strange, this story never got posted on the front cover with the main stories (I think?), yet ended up over here in the old articles for Sunday.
Oh well, I guess it got Bugdotted!