Larger maximum record size. I believe 8192 bytes is the biggest record you can do with PostGreSQL at the moment.
Yesterday, Tom Lane posted in de sql-pgsql list about this. The current limit is 32k, to be set at compile-time, version 7.0.
Faster write speed! In fairness, this is being worked on. Many people don't know that you can use the -F option, which disables the syncs (three per insert AFAIR). However, speediness of the 6.5.x versions stays low. Should check out V7 myself, I know...
Papers scoring highly (a weighted average of the scores) could then be submitted to a more formal 'classic' peer review, then see real paper (thus allowing Real World in come from the process).
I would not use such a system, because there is no security for my valuable work... someone could take my idea, give it a twist, and push it into peer review. The current system assures a certain level of security (altough bad things do happen, but rarely). However, if the system would be begin used for a prolonged period, these problems would probably be solved...
Methink LOCKKS is good for save and redundant storage of data. However, it gives *no* waranty for the storage on the *long term*. Actually, I think that is a real problem for digital data. This problem is far from being solved.
A total different point of view is the following. What good is an ideal storage system for the scientific world? Probably none, because that is not the problem.
As a PhD student, I'm deeply involved in the scientific world, not to say that I'm (going to be) a scientist myself. But a progressive one, who certainly likes the net, and electronic publishing. I've published electronically myself, at Brain Research Interactive. However, ZERO response!
The scientific culture has the following properties:
(i) Scientists have highly conservative attitude. If 'the others' don't like it, they simply will no touch it.
(ii) Naturally, status is very important. Only scientists with very, very high status can change things. Furthermore, the status of your publications is all. You will not publish in a journal with a low status, only if your data is bad. So, as long as the electronic journals don't have a high status, they will be neglected.
(iii) Apart from the aforementioned characteristics, the peer review is important. The peer review mechanism is more important than how the journal looks like, or its medium. And for the peer review, you need good editors and a good system, which of course is expensive.
In conclusion, just put up a website with articles and call it a journal, won't work. The safety of the data is only a minor point.
Just curious here. It's about the movie 'Men in Black'. I had great fun watching that movie (as I had great fun reading *the book*), and it was strongly reminding me of the guide. Well, of course, the subject space-aliens stuff is alike. Moreover, to my humble opinion, the humor is somewhat of the same nature as the humor in the guide. So I would like to ask you, have you seen MIB && how did you like it?
Thank you for your time,
Jeroen (who deeply enjoyed reading the guide, but what the ***: who didn't?)
Certainly in the afternoon, when the sluggards in the States wake up, swobble their burgers with a can of coke, unlock their xwindows and slashdot slashdot, it gets little fun slashing the dot, if you know what I mean.
But than, I tried this beta machine. Wizzling speed, my friend! Like that box is standing next to me.... methink it's time to use my bandwith and see how many postings perl can make per second.... must be great fun. Dinner can wait.
But when do we get to see those specs? I want to know everything. Perl? php? C? Cluster? PostgreSQL? Visual Basic? W2k? Solaris? AU/X? Minix? Parallel-SCSI-RAID-5?
Cheers && wait for some scripts...
BTW, when hitting the beta, you can moderate twice, how nice.
One could also state that this bug, altough repaired, is more like a defeat. Some maintainer can, whatever the background may be, release software with a huge security leak into the community, without any garanty of a decent and thorough checkup of every aspect of the program/packet/whatever.
Maybe large vendors/distributions should start some sort of certification/verification protocol to provide standard quality of at least part of the products.
I use perl a lot in everyday's work to do checks and first-round computations on my datafiles, that I aquire in ASCII text.Everything fine with that unicode, but what happens to my zero? Is it automatically translated into a multi-byte Unicode character, and so definitely not a number zero anymore?
To explain my problem, look at this filter: while ([]) {//prints only lines with col3 nonzero to tab-seperated cols; [] means diamond here @line=/(\d)+, +(\d)+, +(d)+/; if ($line[3]) {print join(/\t/,@line)."\n";} } I often have to make filters like these, many ad hoc. Does the unicode support make me to change my coding style, that means, translate a zero-character to zero?
Only theoretical this problem, 'cause I can use those tr// kind'o' codes and more so, because textfiles aren't read in unicode but plain ASCII instead. But anyway, I still like to know how this zero character works...
Some time ago I posted an elaborate piece about a neuroscience related topic, AFAIR the bandwith of a neuron. I got one enthousiastic reaction in my mailbox, but no moderation at all. Makes one wonder if there is use in posting at all.
Languages like perl have enough possibilities to compile the graphics from within the language. PHP can do that also (but why go dynamic and tease your little server?), and with very little difficulty.
Actually, programming your graphics gives you great flexibility, methink.
Good luck,
Jeroen
Post Posting: Has any european poster any chance to get a rating higher than 1 (unless posting in the middle of the night?). Probably, this posting proves no again.
Reading John's article, I was suprised at the high flaming rate. Of course I don't know american newspapers, but the dutch seem to grant a reasonable amount of space to tech-related topics. IT-stuff regularly makes it to the front page of the NRC Handelsblad or to the front page of the economics section. Once a weak, there is a dedicated page to electronical gadgets. At every week's science section, there is a lot of attention for tech stuff. So, as far as concerned the paper I'm reading, I don't see why newspapers are flamed so hard by John.
Added to this, I would like to recall the pro's of hardcopy news posters before me mentioned:
1. Newspapers come in a portable, handy format; 2. Newspapers (can) have high quality research and writing, because of journalism standards; 3. Newspapers more often contain high quality background articles, that you won't generally find at your favorite news-site. 4. Newspapers are written for a broad audience, so you may find pieces that broading your view, whereas your web-site generally tries to narrow it. 5. Most of all, hard copy is better readible than those darned monitors.
Cheers,
Jeroen
PP: Slashdot seems to suffer from huge response delays today. De ping delay is only 85ms, without package loss. It the traffic getting too heavy?
4 Years ago I was in a course to get a license as radio technologist (for in the lab) during my study. The colleges were at the nuclear experiment plant of the Delft Technical University. Over there, they have a completely working nuclear reactor.
OK, I guess you already know where I'm heading.... that reactor was controlled by an old apple ][e, dear slashdotters! I guess that makes a very very old real Personal Computer[1] in a critical mission! However, wouldn't dare to label it the oldest.
Actually, I'm glad the control isn't done by some wintel-box. Delft is too close to home (maybe 30 miles).
Cheers,
Jeroen
[1] By my knowledge, the apple series were one of the early *real* personal computers. They were used at publishing companies, high schools, technical schools etc etc and where capable of a variety of office and educational tasks. Still, in those days you were one of the few (and I was only ten years old at that time).
I'm a very little bit of an expert, as I am very specialized in only one little region of the brain. So this is just my $.02 ! With this in mind, I'd like to make a few remarks:
1. As others pointed out, the question is confusing. A nerve is a bundle of neuronal processes, mostly axons. Depending on the nerve, the type and amount of axons varies. So a nerve is too complicated to start guessing about bandwith. Let's assume the question regards axons 'stead nerves.
2. Even axons form a complicated model. One axon may (but not always does!) bifurcate hugely! In the brain, one neuron (BTW: thusfar no neurons with more than one axon have been observed) contacts on average one thousand (1E3) of other neurons. I don't know about the maximum contacts observed. To simplify, assume one neuron, one axon, one contact.
3. Information along an axon travels on action potentials. As others have pointed out nicely, the maximum frequency cannot exceed the 500 Hz. But although every action-potential is identical at the axon, the reaction it elicits may vary enormously. Action potentials act via chemical messangers, and each messanger acts via it's own pathway. Different messangers from the same neuron may interact, and the history (short-term, long-term) of each messanger, each pathway, each integration step may be of importance. Again, let's simplify. Consider an axon with one synaptic contact on one target neuron acting on that neuron via one pathway that is static, so the pathway's characteristics don't change at all in time. You probably can't find such an axon, and if you find it, you'll have a very very hard time to proof it's indeed that simple. But, let's assume we are looking at this marvle right now.
4. In order to grasp the bandwith, we need the bus-width, as we already know the maximum frequency. So how much information does one single action potential encode maximally? The answer is, we just don't know. Consider the visual system. Receptors in the retina catch light. Depending on the receptor, it's state and the wavelength of the photon, one or more photons may be required. (BTW: these receptors do not encode with action potentials) So, the receptors reaction may encode the place of the impact, more or less the intensity of the impact, and partly the color of the impact. We don't know the resolution of the eye, but let's assume it's 8 times as high as our screen. So 8x1200x8x1000= is somewhat like 80e6, 27 bits. Truecolor=32 bits (;-)), you need three types of receptors for that, so 11 bits. That's 38 bits only at the beginning of the cascade. The information is processed at a lot of levels, from detection of light spots, lines, squares, circles until the detection of objects and their relative speed etc. How many bits is the message there is a dangerous object, so -and so large, this form, this speed, that color etc. in the upper right corner of your eye (BTW: i don't know if such a neuron/message exists, but it could be possible)? One megabit? And where does it stop? No-one knows (Daniel Dennett, consiousness explained, argues it never stops, but somewhere along the pathway a reaction is triggered, and a thought occurs (more denett: a thought thinks you)). Maybe I could imagine a action potential of one gigabit? Let's cut it somewhere. One megabit. That makes our simple model a bandwith of 500 Mbit maximum. Or 500 kbit, give or take a factor thousand.
5. At billions and billions of neurons residing in your brain, you make a pretty speedy connection!
Slashdot Mirror
Yesterday, Tom Lane posted in de sql-pgsql list about this. The current limit is 32k, to be set at compile-time, version 7.0.
Faster write speed! In fairness, this is being worked on. Many people don't know that you can use the -F option, which disables the syncs (three per insert AFAIR). However, speediness of the 6.5.x versions stays low. Should check out V7 myself, I know...
All the best,
Jeroen
But..
Papers scoring highly (a weighted average of the scores) could then be submitted to a more formal 'classic' peer review, then see real paper (thus allowing Real World in come from the process).
I would not use such a system, because there is no security for my valuable work... someone could take my idea, give it a twist, and push it into peer review. The current system assures a certain level of security (altough bad things do happen, but rarely). However, if the system would be begin used for a prolonged period, these problems would probably be solved...
Jeroen
Methink LOCKKS is good for save and redundant storage of data. However, it gives *no* waranty for the storage on the *long term*. Actually, I think that is a real problem for digital data. This problem is far from being solved.
A total different point of view is the following. What good is an ideal storage system for the scientific world? Probably none, because that is not the problem.
As a PhD student, I'm deeply involved in the scientific world, not to say that I'm (going to be) a scientist myself. But a progressive one, who certainly likes the net, and electronic publishing. I've published electronically myself, at Brain Research Interactive. However, ZERO response!
The scientific culture has the following properties:
(i) Scientists have highly conservative attitude. If 'the others' don't like it, they simply will no touch it.
(ii) Naturally, status is very important. Only scientists with very, very high status can change things. Furthermore, the status of your publications is all. You will not publish in a journal with a low status, only if your data is bad. So, as long as the electronic journals don't have a high status, they will be neglected.
(iii) Apart from the aforementioned characteristics, the peer review is important. The peer review mechanism is more important than how the journal looks like, or its medium. And for the peer review, you need good editors and a good system, which of course is expensive.
In conclusion, just put up a website with articles and call it a journal, won't work. The safety of the data is only a minor point.
But, let's keep on trying!
Jeroen
Just curious here. It's about the movie 'Men in Black'. I had great fun watching that movie (as I had great fun reading *the book*), and it was strongly reminding me of the guide. Well, of course, the subject space-aliens stuff is alike. Moreover, to my humble opinion, the humor is somewhat of the same nature as the humor in the guide. So I would like to ask you, have you seen MIB && how did you like it?
Thank you for your time,
Jeroen (who deeply enjoyed reading the guide, but what the ***: who didn't?)
Certainly in the afternoon, when the sluggards in the States wake up, swobble their burgers with a can of coke, unlock their xwindows and slashdot slashdot, it gets little fun slashing the dot, if you know what I mean.
But than, I tried this beta machine. Wizzling speed, my friend! Like that box is standing next to me.... methink it's time to use my bandwith and see how many postings perl can make per second.... must be great fun. Dinner can wait.
But when do we get to see those specs? I want to know everything. Perl? php? C? Cluster? PostgreSQL? Visual Basic? W2k? Solaris? AU/X? Minix? Parallel-SCSI-RAID-5?
Cheers && wait for some scripts...
BTW, when hitting the beta, you can moderate twice, how nice.
Maybe large vendors/distributions should start some sort of certification/verification protocol to provide standard quality of at least part of the products.
Jeroen
print scalar(('a'..'z')[int(rand 25)]);
obfuscated at all?
Just remove scalar, and it nearly reads like text: print (('a'..'z')[int(rand 25)]); . Just read it like
Well, of course you have to know that you have 26 members, and that indici start at 0. For a coder, you could take that knowledge for granted.Just to prove the beauty of perl (american, that is).
Some theoretical point here.
//prints only lines with col3 nonzero to tab-seperated cols; [] means diamond here
I use perl a lot in everyday's work to do checks and first-round computations on my datafiles, that I aquire in ASCII text.Everything fine with that unicode, but what happens to my zero? Is it automatically translated into a multi-byte Unicode character, and so definitely not a number zero anymore?
To explain my problem, look at this filter:
while ([]) {
@line=/(\d)+, +(\d)+, +(d)+/;
if ($line[3]) {print join(/\t/,@line)."\n";}
}
I often have to make filters like these, many ad hoc. Does the unicode support make me to change my coding style, that means, translate a zero-character to zero?
Only theoretical this problem, 'cause I can use those tr// kind'o' codes and more so, because textfiles aren't read in unicode but plain ASCII instead. But anyway, I still like to know how this zero character works...
Thanx,
Jeroen
Subject: valuable Subroutines
Comment: 'I surely do hope that's a syntax error.' - lwall
Example:
sub mysub : lvalue {
if ($_[0] > 0) { return $a } else { return $b }
}
mysub(2) = 15; # Set $a to 15
mysub(-1) = 9; # Set $b to 9
Wow! This is really bizar. With this, you really can start writing for the Obfuscated Perl Contest.
I conclude from this that the sub can't have a proper return value. So apperantly, you have to treat these subs really different-- or am I wrong here?
Some people in my department really distest perl for the post-modern language tricks... but this shell surely will explode! Camera ready...
Jeroen
Well, that is nice to know.
Some time ago I posted an elaborate piece about
a neuroscience related topic, AFAIR the bandwith of a neuron. I got one enthousiastic reaction in my mailbox, but no moderation at all. Makes one wonder if there is use in posting at all.
However, European stuff is read also, apperantly.
Thanx,
Jeroen
Languages like perl have enough possibilities to compile the graphics from within the language. PHP can do that also (but why go dynamic and tease your little server?), and with very little difficulty.
Actually, programming your graphics gives you great flexibility, methink.
Good luck,
Jeroen
Post Posting: Has any european poster any chance to get a rating higher than 1 (unless posting in the middle of the night?). Probably, this posting proves no again.
Reading John's article, I was suprised at the high flaming rate. Of course I don't know american newspapers, but the dutch seem to grant a reasonable amount of space to tech-related topics. IT-stuff regularly makes it to the front page of the NRC Handelsblad or to the front page of the economics section. Once a weak, there is a dedicated page to electronical gadgets. At every week's science section, there is a lot of attention for tech stuff. So, as far as concerned the paper I'm reading, I don't see why newspapers are flamed so hard by John.
Added to this, I would like to recall the pro's of hardcopy news posters before me mentioned:
1. Newspapers come in a portable, handy format;
2. Newspapers (can) have high quality research and writing, because of journalism standards;
3. Newspapers more often contain high quality background articles, that you won't generally
find at your favorite news-site.
4. Newspapers are written for a broad audience, so you may find pieces that broading your view, whereas your web-site generally tries to narrow it.
5. Most of all, hard copy is better readible than those darned monitors.
Cheers,
Jeroen
PP: Slashdot seems to suffer from huge response delays today. De ping delay is only 85ms, without package loss. It the traffic getting too heavy?
4 Years ago I was in a course to get a license as radio technologist (for in the lab) during my study. The colleges were at the nuclear experiment plant of the Delft Technical University. Over there, they have a completely working nuclear reactor.
OK, I guess you already know where I'm heading.... that reactor was controlled by an old apple ][e, dear slashdotters! I guess that makes a very very old real Personal Computer[1] in a critical mission! However, wouldn't dare to label it the oldest.
Actually, I'm glad the control isn't done by some wintel-box. Delft is too close to home (maybe 30 miles).
Cheers,
Jeroen
[1] By my knowledge, the apple series were one of the early *real* personal computers. They were used at publishing companies, high schools, technical schools etc etc and where capable of a variety of office and educational tasks. Still, in those days you were one of the few (and I was only ten years old at that time).
Interesting things said in this 'ask slashdot'
I'm a very little bit of an expert, as I am very specialized in only one little region of the brain. So this is just my $.02 ! With this in mind, I'd like to make a few remarks:
1. As others pointed out, the question is confusing. A nerve is a bundle of neuronal processes, mostly axons. Depending on the nerve, the type and amount of axons varies. So a nerve is too complicated to start guessing about bandwith. Let's assume the question regards axons 'stead nerves.
2. Even axons form a complicated model. One axon may (but not always does!) bifurcate hugely! In the brain, one neuron (BTW: thusfar no neurons with more than one axon have been observed) contacts on average one thousand (1E3) of other neurons. I don't know about the maximum contacts observed. To simplify, assume one neuron, one axon, one contact.
3. Information along an axon travels on action potentials. As others have pointed out nicely, the maximum frequency cannot exceed the 500 Hz. But although every action-potential is identical at the axon, the reaction it elicits may vary enormously. Action potentials act via chemical messangers, and each messanger acts via it's own pathway. Different messangers from the same neuron may interact, and the history (short-term, long-term) of each messanger, each pathway, each integration step may be of importance. Again, let's simplify. Consider an axon with one synaptic contact on one target neuron acting on that neuron via one pathway that is static, so the pathway's characteristics don't change at all in time. You probably can't find such an axon, and if you find it, you'll have a very very hard time to proof it's indeed that simple. But, let's assume we are looking at this marvle right now.
4. In order to grasp the bandwith, we need the bus-width, as we already know the maximum frequency. So how much information does one single action potential encode maximally? The answer is, we just don't know. Consider the visual system. Receptors in the retina catch light. Depending on the receptor, it's state and the wavelength of the photon, one or more photons may be required. (BTW: these receptors do not encode with action potentials) So, the receptors reaction may encode the place of the impact, more or less the intensity of the impact, and partly the color of the impact. We don't know the resolution of the eye, but let's assume it's 8 times as high as our screen. So 8x1200x8x1000= is somewhat like 80e6, 27 bits. Truecolor=32 bits (;-)), you need three types of receptors for that, so 11 bits. That's 38 bits only at the beginning of the cascade. The information is processed at a lot of levels, from detection of light spots, lines, squares, circles until the detection of objects and their relative speed etc. How many bits is the message there is a dangerous object, so -and so large, this form, this speed, that color etc. in the upper right corner of your eye (BTW: i don't know if such a neuron/message exists, but it could be possible)? One megabit? And where does it stop? No-one knows (Daniel Dennett, consiousness explained, argues it never stops, but somewhere along the pathway a reaction is triggered, and a thought occurs (more denett: a thought thinks you)). Maybe I could imagine a action potential of one gigabit? Let's cut it somewhere. One megabit. That makes our simple model a bandwith of 500 Mbit maximum. Or 500 kbit, give or take a factor thousand.
5. At billions and billions of neurons residing in your brain, you make a pretty speedy connection!
Enough mindgames for now...
Cheers,
Jeroen
Neurons are capable of firing, depending on species, type etc at around 100-200 Hz
Yes it is...
Really cool. Runs matlab nearly as fast as under nt..
This morning, i'm gonna install ms-office...
Jeroen
Yes.
...
With the bugfix, i could compile 2.2.4 but not
do make bzImage
So now I'm shutting of BSD (thanks) and trying again....
Jeroen
I encountered the same error, and was wildly
;-)
bewondered. That's because so many people seem
to have no problems at all here.
How the *** can that be?
BTW: I'm installing NT now in a vmware-box.
But compiling the 2.2.4 now makes that install a
little bit slow
Cheers,
Jeroen