One of the big issues with recording from the skull is the quality of the data. The skull attenuates the signals considerably and besides you have all sorts of artifacts from head motion etc.Anyway, there is yet reason to hope. Finding usable realtime data from noninvasive recordings is going to be very very difficult.
The reason you do want to shove things or place electrodes in the brain is to improve the signal to noise of the recordings. With implanted electrodes in specific areas of the brain such as the motor cortex you get excellent clean signals which can then be further processed using clever machine learning algorithms. However, there are still problems because gunk builds around the electrodes and chances of infection and so on. Having said that, as electrodes become smaller and smaller, it should soon be possible to place electrodes a few microns thick inside the skull. Presumably in the future you will be able to have a USB like plug on your skull to control things. This is optimistically 10 - 15 years off in the future.
My weak understanding of chip dynamics is the fact that 65 nm processes will inherently consume less power than a 90 nm feature size, so how much of the performance gains with the new "Conroe" or Core 2 duo lines is due to this feature size. The question to ask is it a core architectural difference or a process gain. I remember studying something about this in VLSI design.
Point well taken, for the average john doe Windows 2000 is the best, it is remarkably stable. I am just adding a few cents, this is probably common knowledge. In addition I have seen several of these people especially people who have huge monitors like 21 inches just to browse email and things. They would probably better in investing their money in printer cartridges!
Some people do need high performance computing at an affordable cost. Our lab buys the latest hardware because I want to run MATLAB on my data and at the same time do something useful (other than sleep), the worst memory management I have seen is with MATLAB and its a resource hog. The invention of dual cpus and dual core cpus makes my life a million times easier because I can actually have two MATLAB programs running side by side where I code on one and run on the other:). (For the graphic cards, we have some of these image processing routines which also map to the Graphics card in which case we use it for all our matrix manipulations. So more pixel pipelines and shaders is actually a boon, and visualizing 3D data with opengl is nice, sometimes we need 14 bit grayscale instead of 8 bit for this we actually get it from special vendors).
I did find a slight speedup with MATLAB on XP rather than MATLAB on 2000 which sometimes is slightly slower, although this is just a perception , I havent done any tests. Finally my MATLAB on the AMD processors kicks ass compared to the super hot Xeons I used before, I am surprised at how quiet these new opterons are... so there is some worth in upgrading to new OSes and hardware.
I dont mind clusters but they need some management, in my old lab they had several of these but they need somebody dedicated to manage, I dont have the time nor the skills
so a dual core / dual processor is some sort of compromise...
Two things here:
1) I can tell you 50 GB is super useful for backing up data.
50 GB is useful for example I backup a lot of fMRI data and our lab has something like 10 4 TB on harddisks but when you leave labs and you want to take the data you need a few tapes which take forever to read ~ 7 hours for 80 GB is ridiculous. Backing up takes similar amount of time, it would be nice to have RELIABLE 50 gb disks and I mean really reliable because if you get a read error at some vague location then you are in a state of limbo
2) In a related note, it takes forever sometime to copy something like 50 - 100 GB of data, the read and write speeds are still in double digit Megabits per second even for super fast HDDs, this is still unacceptable, you would want really fast data transfer speeds ~100 to 200 Mbits/s so that you can back up data quickly
3) Finally even if these DVDs cost 10 to 15 dollars each, 10 of them would be cheaper than a 500 GB disk just to backup data. Although a Harddisk gives you infinite read and write, they have their own problems that they crash and stuff like that.
Just my 2 cents:)
You are perfectly right, but most of the time its not so bad if you are any religion, there are some right wing idiots with nothing to do but harass people. I know friends who were hindus who were harassed during such riots. Its pure politics and rumor mongering. Gujarat was a particularly bad case in point.
My thing is it is completely transparent which individuals want to do this, I think its also surprising that Hindus, Muslims and Christians (We have big populations of all of those) can live in excellent harmony.
By a process of natural selection such elements will be removed. See the BJP govt which had links to such organizations is now removed from the government, next time they wouldnt do such a thing, I hope
Yes I am Indian, but I try to take an unbiased view here.
"Yes, I can see where that helps immensely"
Every trickle helps. 7000 jobs which pay well will trickle down by market economics into lower levels of the populace. India, since independence has seen a surge in population to nearly 1 Billion people over the last 50 years, it was approximately 300 Million I think at the time of partition, unforeseen population growth has put a tremendous strain on the system. Infrastructure which was supposed to be for 1/3 of the current population needs a tremendous overhaul which is happening slowly. As my dad points out the number of colleges and universities are just not enough to support the population. However we believe our schooling system can match the best in the world.
"these jobs aren't available to the greater majority of the population, especially to the Dalit (formerly known as "untouchable") segment"
Typically a statement which comes from slight amounts of ignorance. With the Dalits, its no longer true that they are oppressed and have no chances, in fact the state governments try really hard to ensure that these communities get a large representation in Government / education. If you work hard enough you do get a chance. I know so many friends who have made it to very high positions in Government and Academia through sheer hard work. In fact, Indians are so broadminded that our constitution was formulated by a dalit, I dont believe this is possible anywhere else in the world. in fact 50% of all seats at state universities are reserved for you if you can prove you are from a lower caste.
In addition, the poorest of the poor may not have XBoxes / iPods / SUV but the conditions of life (Weather and plentiful food) and reasonable chances of employment make it much easier to live compared to several other places. This statement may sound lame but even the poorest of the poor in India is happier compared to some yuppies I see day in and day out in the rest of the world.
I think India tries hard to imbibe western culture but in a way that it doesnt affect the ideals and culture of a land which has seen so many different civilizations. I personally think there are several problems with India. But a secular democratic civilization after so many invasions / so much imperialism needs more than 58 years to evolve completely(think CIV IV).
Slashdot Mirror
One of the big issues with recording from the skull is the quality of the data. The skull attenuates the signals considerably and besides you have all sorts of artifacts from head motion etc.Anyway, there is yet reason to hope. Finding usable realtime data from noninvasive recordings is going to be very very difficult. The reason you do want to shove things or place electrodes in the brain is to improve the signal to noise of the recordings. With implanted electrodes in specific areas of the brain such as the motor cortex you get excellent clean signals which can then be further processed using clever machine learning algorithms. However, there are still problems because gunk builds around the electrodes and chances of infection and so on. Having said that, as electrodes become smaller and smaller, it should soon be possible to place electrodes a few microns thick inside the skull. Presumably in the future you will be able to have a USB like plug on your skull to control things. This is optimistically 10 - 15 years off in the future.
My weak understanding of chip dynamics is the fact that 65 nm processes will inherently consume less power than a 90 nm feature size, so how much of the performance gains with the new "Conroe" or Core 2 duo lines is due to this feature size. The question to ask is it a core architectural difference or a process gain. I remember studying something about this in VLSI design.
Chand
Point well taken, for the average john doe Windows 2000 is the best, it is remarkably stable. I am just adding a few cents, this is probably common knowledge. In addition I have seen several of these people especially people who have huge monitors like 21 inches just to browse email and things. They would probably better in investing their money in printer cartridges!
Some people do need high performance computing at an affordable cost. Our lab buys the latest hardware because I want to run MATLAB on my data and at the same time do something useful (other than sleep), the worst memory management I have seen is with MATLAB and its a resource hog. The invention of dual cpus and dual core cpus makes my life a million times easier because I can actually have two MATLAB programs running side by side where I code on one and run on the other :). (For the graphic cards, we have some of these image processing routines which also map to the Graphics card in which case we use it for all our matrix manipulations. So more pixel pipelines and shaders is actually a boon, and visualizing 3D data with opengl is nice, sometimes we need 14 bit grayscale instead of 8 bit for this we actually get it from special vendors).
I did find a slight speedup with MATLAB on XP rather than MATLAB on 2000 which sometimes is slightly slower, although this is just a perception , I havent done any tests. Finally my MATLAB on the AMD processors kicks ass compared to the super hot Xeons I used before, I am surprised at how quiet these new opterons are ... so there is some worth in upgrading to new OSes and hardware.
I dont mind clusters but they need some management, in my old lab they had several of these but they need somebody dedicated to manage, I dont have the time nor the skills
so a dual core / dual processor is some sort of compromiseTwo things here : /s so that you can back up data quickly :)
1) I can tell you 50 GB is super useful for backing up data. 50 GB is useful for example I backup a lot of fMRI data and our lab has something like 10 4 TB on harddisks but when you leave labs and you want to take the data you need a few tapes which take forever to read ~ 7 hours for 80 GB is ridiculous. Backing up takes similar amount of time, it would be nice to have RELIABLE 50 gb disks and I mean really reliable because if you get a read error at some vague location then you are in a state of limbo
2) In a related note, it takes forever sometime to copy something like 50 - 100 GB of data, the read and write speeds are still in double digit Megabits per second even for super fast HDDs, this is still unacceptable, you would want really fast data transfer speeds ~100 to 200 Mbits
3) Finally even if these DVDs cost 10 to 15 dollars each, 10 of them would be cheaper than a 500 GB disk just to backup data. Although a Harddisk gives you infinite read and write, they have their own problems that they crash and stuff like that.
Just my 2 cents
You are perfectly right, but most of the time its not so bad if you are any religion, there are some right wing idiots with nothing to do but harass people. I know friends who were hindus who were harassed during such riots. Its pure politics and rumor mongering. Gujarat was a particularly bad case in point.
My thing is it is completely transparent which individuals want to do this, I think its also surprising that Hindus, Muslims and Christians (We have big populations of all of those) can live in excellent harmony.
By a process of natural selection such elements will be removed. See the BJP govt which had links to such organizations is now removed from the government, next time they wouldnt do such a thing, I hope
Yes I am Indian, but I try to take an unbiased view here. "Yes, I can see where that helps immensely"
Every trickle helps. 7000 jobs which pay well will trickle down by market economics into lower levels of the populace. India, since independence has seen a surge in population to nearly 1 Billion people over the last 50 years, it was approximately 300 Million I think at the time of partition, unforeseen population growth has put a tremendous strain on the system. Infrastructure which was supposed to be for 1/3 of the current population needs a tremendous overhaul which is happening slowly. As my dad points out the number of colleges and universities are just not enough to support the population. However we believe our schooling system can match the best in the world.
"these jobs aren't available to the greater majority of the population, especially to the Dalit (formerly known as "untouchable") segment"
Typically a statement which comes from slight amounts of ignorance. With the Dalits, its no longer true that they are oppressed and have no chances, in fact the state governments try really hard to ensure that these communities get a large representation in Government / education. If you work hard enough you do get a chance. I know so many friends who have made it to very high positions in Government and Academia through sheer hard work. In fact, Indians are so broadminded that our constitution was formulated by a dalit, I dont believe this is possible anywhere else in the world. in fact 50% of all seats at state universities are reserved for you if you can prove you are from a lower caste.
In addition, the poorest of the poor may not have XBoxes / iPods / SUV but the conditions of life (Weather and plentiful food) and reasonable chances of employment make it much easier to live compared to several other places. This statement may sound lame but even the poorest of the poor in India is happier compared to some yuppies I see day in and day out in the rest of the world.
I think India tries hard to imbibe western culture but in a way that it doesnt affect the ideals and culture of a land which has seen so many different civilizations. I personally think there are several problems with India. But a secular democratic civilization after so many invasions / so much imperialism needs more than 58 years to evolve completely(think CIV IV).