I saw this cartoon the other day. It is a classified ad on God's computer, with Him pushing the submit button.
The text reads:
Designer Wanted Full-time position (6 days/week; 24 hours/day). Must be intelligent. Must be able to conceive and manufacture organisms and genetically modify 5000 species a minute. Fabricate evidence of evolutionary adaptation and carelessly cast said product about while transforming living organisms in an increasingly complex and generally miraculous manner. Must be detail oriented and create non-redundant internal networks of varying complexity in species with intriguingly systematic (but actually random) appearance. Proficiency in message encryption highly desirable. Salary to be determined according to evangelistic vigor of followers. Benefits include Medical, Dental, Immortality, Omnipotence, Dissolution of Science as a discipline, Disease, Pestilence, Famine, Destruction of the Earth.
I think someone at my work made it and posted it up (I work at a research facility), but it is hilarious.
Excellent trolling! Fortunatly, these are published in a publicly funded database. The benefit isn't neccessarily in treating the rare diseases, but knowing if you and your spouse carry them.
I always think it is ridiculous how these genomic announcements happen. They choose to announce that they have ONE MILLION SNPs with big press release, but this data is available online as soon as its sequenced.
This reminds me of the Doki Doki Panic/smb2 incident. Super Mario 2 was originally a Fuji Television promotion starring an arabian family called Doki Doki Panic. The people at Nintendo USA thought the Japanese version of SMB2 was too difficult, so they changed the Arabian characters in Doki Doki Panic to Mario and his friends. It's a really interesting story. Check out more here.
And here is the abstract: Learning to perform a behavioural procedure as a well-ingrained habit requires extensive repetition of the behavioural sequence, and learning not to perform such behaviours is notoriously difficult. Yet regaining a habit can occur quickly, with even one or a few exposures to cues previously triggering the behaviour. To identify neural mechanisms that might underlie such learning dynamics, we made long-term recordings from multiple neurons in the sensorimotor striatum, a basal ganglia structure implicated in habit formation in rats successively trained on a reward-based procedural task, given extinction training and then given reacquisition training. The spike activity of striatal output neurons, nodal points in cortico-basal ganglia circuits, changed markedly across multiple dimensions during each of these phases of learning. First, new patterns of task-related ensemble firing successively formed, reversed and then re-emerged. Second, task-irrelevant firing was suppressed, then rebounded, and then was suppressed again. These changing spike activity patterns were highly correlated with changes in behavioural performance. We propose that these changes in task representation in cortico-basal ganglia circuits represent neural equivalents of the explore-exploit behaviour characteristic of habit learning.
Re:It's a surprisingly decent video player
on
Video iPod Screen Test
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· Score: 1, Insightful
"I don't know why the guy is that surprised. Apple lately has a reputation of making good products, minus some untested issues with first generation products like scratches on iPod Nano."
So let me get this straight. You don't know why someone would be suprised that apple made a good first generation product. Then admit that apple is known for making poor first generation products. Yeah... you're not an apple fanboy./*sarcasm*/
That's a pretty bold statement to make. One my all time favorite games is Goldeneye. I think most people would argue that the game exceeded the movie. This is the game that brought multiplayer first person shooters to the TV sets across the US and began the concept of getting a bunch of real (non-virtual) friends to get together and play first person shooters in the same room. This is a big milestone for those of us who enjoy hanging out with friends instead of blasting someone across the internet.
I love how every time something is posted on Slashdot as to what makes humans unique, everyone states some random idea as if it has more credibility than the others. The fact is that there is likely no simple reason why humans outcompeted Neanderthals, but was problem several factors working synergistically. Furthermore, mitochondrial DNA contradicts your argument. Mitochondrial DNA is passed down only from mother to child. The evidence stongly points to the fact that modern humans do not have Neanderthal mtDNA. For your scenario to work, all humans would have Neanderthal DNA.
Actually, you would know that homer has been known to give a rating as high as nine thumbs up.
Also, he would mention how the gameplay was ruff and the graphics tasted like bark.
I love the occasional obscure Simpsons quote. Thanks for making my day, grandparent.
-mark
There is a very interesting online java demo available here http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/grafs/demos/15.html that gives a great example of "sustained inattentional blindness". It is provided as a supplement to a paper published in "Perception. 1999;28(9):1059-74." In the video, the audience is told to count how many times the white team passes the ball. During the video, a man in a gorilla suit walks by, and most people fail to notice him. I have spoiled it however, and now you will NOT be unable to notice him.
As a fellow bio researcher, I wholeheartedly agree. The problem is that "News for Nerds" really means "News for CS Nerds". I would love a forum similar to Slashdot that was geared at the bio/med community, and I think it could really take off in the bio community. It would be so wonderful to be able to discuss current items of interest (i.e. journal publications) in a forum similar to Slashdot, but with some serious insight into the articles.
If you want to consider Firefox an innovator, then you need to consider every Microsoft product one as well, since all of them have extended the features of their predecessors in some way. I'd prefer to refer to none of them as innovators unless the program as a whole is completely unlike anything before it.
This is just a semantics arguement. Your arguement would have be bolstered if you could give an example of a truely innovative product. I, for one, think Firefox is incredibly innovative. When I originally started using it, I felt that all the praise was just MS haters trying to bring down IE. Its amazing to me now, however, how much I feel crippled when I use IE. The search as you type and tabbed browsing really expand my productivity when using Firefox.
Slashdot Mirror
I saw this cartoon the other day. It is a classified ad on God's computer, with Him pushing the submit button.
The text reads:
Designer Wanted
Full-time position (6 days/week; 24 hours/day). Must be intelligent. Must be able to conceive and manufacture organisms and genetically modify 5000 species a minute. Fabricate evidence of evolutionary adaptation and carelessly cast said product about while transforming living organisms in an increasingly complex and generally miraculous manner. Must be detail oriented and create non-redundant internal networks of varying complexity in species with intriguingly systematic (but actually random) appearance. Proficiency in message encryption highly desirable. Salary to be determined according to evangelistic vigor of followers. Benefits include Medical, Dental, Immortality, Omnipotence, Dissolution of Science as a discipline, Disease, Pestilence, Famine, Destruction of the Earth.
I think someone at my work made it and posted it up (I work at a research facility), but it is hilarious.
Excellent trolling! Fortunatly, these are published in a publicly funded database. The benefit isn't neccessarily in treating the rare diseases, but knowing if you and your spouse carry them.
Here is a link to the mp3 of the Nature podcast on this.
I always think it is ridiculous how these genomic announcements happen. They choose to announce that they have ONE MILLION SNPs with big press release, but this data is available online as soon as its sequenced.
and wikipedia
Good info. Interesting read. -mark
This reminds me of the Doki Doki Panic/smb2 incident. Super Mario 2 was originally a Fuji Television promotion starring an arabian family called Doki Doki Panic. The people at Nintendo USA thought the Japanese version of SMB2 was too difficult, so they changed the Arabian characters in Doki Doki Panic to Mario and his friends. It's a really interesting story. Check out more here.
Here is a link to the primary article.
And here is the abstract:
Learning to perform a behavioural procedure as a well-ingrained habit requires extensive repetition of the behavioural sequence, and learning not to perform such behaviours is notoriously difficult. Yet regaining a habit can occur quickly, with even one or a few exposures to cues previously triggering the behaviour. To identify neural mechanisms that might underlie such learning dynamics, we made long-term recordings from multiple neurons in the sensorimotor striatum, a basal ganglia structure implicated in habit formation in rats successively trained on a reward-based procedural task, given extinction training and then given reacquisition training. The spike activity of striatal output neurons, nodal points in cortico-basal ganglia circuits, changed markedly across multiple dimensions during each of these phases of learning. First, new patterns of task-related ensemble firing successively formed, reversed and then re-emerged. Second, task-irrelevant firing was suppressed, then rebounded, and then was suppressed again. These changing spike activity patterns were highly correlated with changes in behavioural performance. We propose that these changes in task representation in cortico-basal ganglia circuits represent neural equivalents of the explore-exploit behaviour characteristic of habit learning.
"I don't know why the guy is that surprised. Apple lately has a reputation of making good products, minus some untested issues with first generation products like scratches on iPod Nano." So let me get this straight. You don't know why someone would be suprised that apple made a good first generation product. Then admit that apple is known for making poor first generation products. Yeah... you're not an apple fanboy. /*sarcasm*/
"The traditional distribution model allows media outlets to force consumers to have interrupted commercial sessions."
Most likely we will see a huge shift from 15/30 second spots between television acts towards more product placement ads.
By default, a game based on a movie has to suck.
That's a pretty bold statement to make. One my all time favorite games is Goldeneye. I think most people would argue that the game exceeded the movie. This is the game that brought multiplayer first person shooters to the TV sets across the US and began the concept of getting a bunch of real (non-virtual) friends to get together and play first person shooters in the same room. This is a big milestone for those of us who enjoy hanging out with friends instead of blasting someone across the internet.
I love how every time something is posted on Slashdot as to what makes humans unique, everyone states some random idea as if it has more credibility than the others. The fact is that there is likely no simple reason why humans outcompeted Neanderthals, but was problem several factors working synergistically.
Furthermore, mitochondrial DNA contradicts your argument. Mitochondrial DNA is passed down only from mother to child. The evidence stongly points to the fact that modern humans do not have Neanderthal mtDNA. For your scenario to work, all humans would have Neanderthal DNA.
It was published in Nature, last year. Nature. 2004 Nov 25;432(7016):461-5.
-Mark
Actually, you would know that homer has been known to give a rating as high as nine thumbs up. Also, he would mention how the gameplay was ruff and the graphics tasted like bark. I love the occasional obscure Simpsons quote. Thanks for making my day, grandparent. -mark
There is a very interesting online java demo available here http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/grafs/demos/15.html that gives a great example of "sustained inattentional blindness". It is provided as a supplement to a paper published in "Perception. 1999;28(9):1059-74." In the video, the audience is told to count how many times the white team passes the ball. During the video, a man in a gorilla suit walks by, and most people fail to notice him. I have spoiled it however, and now you will NOT be unable to notice him.
As a fellow bio researcher, I wholeheartedly agree. The problem is that "News for Nerds" really means "News for CS Nerds". I would love a forum similar to Slashdot that was geared at the bio/med community, and I think it could really take off in the bio community. It would be so wonderful to be able to discuss current items of interest (i.e. journal publications) in a forum similar to Slashdot, but with some serious insight into the articles.
This already exists. http://www.sueandpaul.com/gmapPedometer/
actually, it was Scientific American, and it was written by Mark Roth, the lead investigator in the hydrogen sulfide experiment.
Article Summary
If you want to consider Firefox an innovator, then you need to consider every Microsoft product one as well, since all of them have extended the features of their predecessors in some way. I'd prefer to refer to none of them as innovators unless the program as a whole is completely unlike anything before it.
This is just a semantics arguement. Your arguement would have be bolstered if you could give an example of a truely innovative product. I, for one, think Firefox is incredibly innovative. When I originally started using it, I felt that all the praise was just MS haters trying to bring down IE. Its amazing to me now, however, how much I feel crippled when I use IE. The search as you type and tabbed browsing really expand my productivity when using Firefox.
Warden:There's no billboards in space Homer:There's a billboards in space museum!