The conduction of nerve impulses is understood at a detailed molecular level. There are numerous experiments that have observed everything from individual charges and ions traveling through channels and careful electrical modeling, to rationally designed anaesthetics that interact with specific molecules and targeted modifications of channels.
Now, it's always a good idea to keep an open mind. But these people have presented no even remotely interesting evidence that we need a change in paradigms. They are simply nuts.
I think anybody who is claiming to get decent automatic parallelization out of C/C++ is selling snake oil. Even if a strict reading of the C/C++ standard ends up letting you do something useful, in my experience, real C/C++ programmers make so many assumptions that you can't parallelize their programs without breaking them.
I didn't say it wasn't important, I said few people are doing these searches. The reason that's important is because it means that users can generally run this stuff on their desktops for hours, which is a lot more compute power available than, say, for your average web query.
There are many databases of 3D representations of molecules.
There are indeed. But the actual number of comparisons you need to do numbers in the thousands, not in the billions, as it is for other kinds of content.
Here's a little one to play around with (180MB uncompressed)
That is a negligible amount of data compared to other search tasks. I have 10000 times more text and image data than that sitting around on my desktop alone.
The fact remains: we don't need ultra-fast 3D comparisons at this point, we need ultra-accurate comparisons, because even ultra-accurate comparisons would be fast enough to solve the 3D search problems people actually have.
I'm confused that you're advocating research and yet don't seem to want to research this
RTFA. They can conduct all the research they want; the accelerators for that already exist. In fact, they are using them, they simply haven't shown significant benefits in terms of outcomes yet.
What I don't want them to do is talk about building particle accelerators in every major cancer center for $200m-$300m each because that's mischaracterizing the technology as far more mature than it is.
as I understand it your objection is purely that it's a treatment instead of a cure.
No, my objection is that they have failed to show improved outcomes. Additionally, I'm objecting to characterizing this as a new treatment; this is simply a slightly different form of packaging a known treatment (like Tylenol syrup vs Tylenol capsules).
Most importantly, however, far more flexible ways of targeted radiation treatment for cancer have been, and are being, developed. The proponents of this technology haven't bothered even mentioning them, let alone comparing with them. And it's quite clear that those targeted ways are the future, not particle accelerators, so even when it comes to allocation of research dollars, it's probably actually time to wind down research in that area.
What tests of loyalty to US principles would you be speaking of? I've certainly never had to pass any of them
If you're born a US citizen, you don't. If you're a foreigner being hired for these jobs (as the posting suggested), then you do, either as part of your immigration process, or as part of your hiring process, or both.
All of those 2000 people could be treated effectively using existing treatments, probably with about comparable outcomes.
Yes, research is better long term. However, if you always spend 100 percent of your funding on research for those long term benefits no one is ever treated. You have to spend money on treatment at some point.
Research is already only a small fraction of governmental health treatment expenditures. It needs to get larger, not smaller.
So, it's now 10 thousand dollars a patient - that's still a good deal. If it were provided commercially and I needed it I'd pay that much.
You don't "need" it, since this treatment works like any other radiation treatment. The claimed advantage is that it reduces dosages received by other tissues, but they have not demonstrated that it makes a significant difference in outcomes, or that even if it does, it justifies the added expense. Furthermore, there are many far simpler ways of targeting radiation therapy that don't involve $300m particle accelerators.
Don't allow people to list credentials at all. Wikipedia content (like all content) should be just on its consistency and verifiability, not on some letters attached to someone's name.
No, sorry, that calculation doesn't work. There are plenty of similar cancer treatments available. The question is what number of patients per year have a meaningfully better outcome because of this treatment compared to existing, much cheaper treatments, and that number is likely to be small.
More importantly, the $300m that this costs is gone once it's spent: it treats a fixed number of patients, nothing more. In contrast, if you spend the same $300m on research, you generate knowledge and treatments that will benefit patients indefinitely.
Homeland security, TIA, etc. are programs put in place by the democratically elected government of the United States. If you think there's a problem with those programs and you are a US citizen, it's not just your choice, it is your duty to participate in the democratic process to change them. If you're a US citizen, you are personally responsible for what the US government does because the US government represents you and is done with your consent. That's what it means to live in a democracy.
In contrast, if you trash my car, that's a crime. I have already done what I need to do about it, namely elected a government and paid for a police force that catches and punishes criminals. I don't even complain about it, I just expect that the courts and the police catch you and punish you. And if they don't manage to do that, I get active in politics in order to make sure they get the funding they need to do their job to my satisfaction.
Radiation treatment for cancer is a desperate measure, something doctors do because they don't really know how to treat the actual cancer.
At $200-$300 million (!) per particle accelerator, capable of treating about 2000 patients per year, it seems doubtful to me that this is actually worth it.
Successes in non-radiation cancer treatments shows that through studying cancers and the underlying mechanisms, researchers can come up with targeted, rational treatments. Every single one of those particle accelerators translates into a cancer research lab. In the long run, far more patients are likely going to be cured if we spend money on cancer research and making it attractive for people to choose careers in biomedical research, rather than particle accelerators.
I'm guessing they hired developers from other countries just like MS does, they have no adversions to spying on the american people,
Actually, in order to work on such projects, you usually have to be a US citizen and pass plenty of US government tests of loyalty to US principles.
And you seem to forget that these projects were created by US governments elected by US citizens. This is what the majority of Americans want, either because they voted for it, or they didn't bother to vote and they didn't bother to participate in the political process otherwise.
What have you personally done to work against these kinds of programs? Unless you have gone through some extraordinary trouble, you have no justification to whine about it afterwards.
Microsoft claims that adjustments can be made to color balance and exposure settings that won't discard or truncate data that occurs with other bit-map formats.
It's trivial to do that: instead of changing the bits, you add a list of transformations to the image header. Trouble is: when such a format comes from Microsoft, they will have numerous patents on it and Microsoft will use those aggressively to maintain their monopoly. It doesn't matter that it's obvious how to do this. It doesn't matter that they weren't the first to invent it.
The world does need a better alternative to JPEG, but it must not come from Microsoft. The FOSS world should instead repeat what happened with PNG and Ogg: create an open, patent-unencumbered format.
Currently, the most common way to find the 3D shape of a particular molecule within a database is to superimpose a candidate over the query molecule and see how much of it overlaps. But this is time consuming, partly because it requires both molecules to be precisely aligned.
Yes, that's currently "the most common way" because at least you can tell what you're getting: when you get a match, you can actually say how close the different shapes are to one another.
The new technique uses a different approach. It analyses the position of the different atoms within a molecule to understand its shape. These relative positions can be mapped and stored a molecular database.
That's actually not a "new technique", it's an old technique. It's what people used to do before they tried to overlay 3D shapes accurately. They used to do that because computers used to be too slow to do the accurate comparison.
As the article points out, there is only limited 3D shape information available at all. Few people need to do 3D queries right now, and there is little data to do them on, so optimizing speed is the wrong thing to do; we need to optimize accuracy and scientific relevance.
How do I convey to the users that, in order to develop the software they want, I need detailed, accurate specs?
It's your task as a developer to get the specs you need and to communicate with users in a way that they can understand. Furthermore, it's never as simple as simply requesting specs from them; usually, you have to build prototypes, collect detailed feedback, and do many iterations of that. Throwing away most of your work over and over again because it doesn't do what users want is part of the job.
I'd say that 90% of software development is figuring out what needs to be done--getting the specs. So, do your job.
I call bs - you shouldn't have to buy a certain brand laptop or through a reseller that configures it
I call bs on you. You have to buy compatible hardware for Windows, you have to buy compatible hardware for OS X, and, of course, you have to buy compatible hardware for Linux.
Furthermore, if you don't buy Windows pre-installed, getting a system up and running from a Microsoft Windows distribution is often a harrowing experience because so many third party drivers and software need to be installed separately.
Finally, for the amount of money that Windows costs (not to mention all the proprietary third party Windows software), you can replace any piece of misbehaving/incompatible hardware, and you're still left with plenty of money to spare.
but sure as hell will make or break my moving to Ubuntu (or any other distro for that matter) and my sticking with Windows...
All the greenies going around down here bleating about us having the world's highest per-capita emissions is just a load of horseshit when you stand back and look at the big picture - 20 million industrialised Aussies versus over a billion rapidly industrialising Chinese! But now I'm starting to ramble so best leave it at that.
Ah, and your big picture is that 20 million privileged Australians are entitled to huge per-capita emissions, while the Chinese should just stay poor? And how exactly do you justify that entitlement?
Sorry, that may be the way it works out in real life, but don't try to argue that it's fair.
Per-capita emissions is what counts, not membeship in some self-appointed elite club of people with a license to pollute.
Not that it'll make much of an impact, since Australia is by far the worlds largest exporter of coal - our output dwarfs the next largest exporter. What's more is that we're currently at capacity - ships are lining up for weeks to be filled with their load of coal - and work is being done to expand export capacity.
Well, so in addition to using too much energy per capita, Australians also profit from the pollution sins committed by other nations. It seems to me that the logical conclusion is that Australia should reduce, not expand, export capacity.
On many systems, the original Microsoft Windows (that is, not the version bundled by the hardware vendor) does not work unless you go through a lot of trouble manually downloading additional drivers and configuration software. That frequently fails because the drivers are hard to find, don't exist for the current version of Windows, they aren't certified, the configuration software doesn't install or doesn't work, and a host of other problems.
It's just a fact that for any given version of Windows, there is a lot of hardware that doesn't work with it, either because the hardware is "too old" or because it's "too new" or because the driver and support software is plain broken. Configuring a Windows PC from scratch is as tricky as configuring a Linux PC. The only reason Windows seems easier is because most people buy Windows pre-installed and throw away the machine when they need to upgrade.
I think there are many things I'd fault Microsoft for, but dropping Office for Macintosh isn't one of them. The problem with Office is its proprietary and closed formats, and those don't get fixed by having a Mac version.
While Apple fans like to talk about Apple vs. Microsoft, Apple's actions suggest that they would really simply like to be part of a cozy little duopoly with Microsoft.
The author has a HP Laserjet standing around? Nice. Good luck with a Canon "software" printer or other GDI printers though.
Linux can't support printers for which no technical documentation exists and never will. But the same is true for Vista: there are plenty of devices that don't work under Vista. In fact, Linux supports a huge number of devices, many out of the box and with fewer hassles than Windows. And Linux supports far more devices than that other consumer operating system, OS X.
If you want to use Linux, do what you do with any other OS: use hardware that works with it. You can do that by buying a computer with Linux pre-installed or by doing your homework.
In terms of money, for the price of a Vista license, you can replace your printer, your graphics card, and your Wifi card, and have money left over. And the Linux-compatible devices will generally be of higher quality than the Windows-only soft-printers and soft-modems.
so, my question is, is there any (easy) way i could be running the.net framework on ubuntu ?
Yes, there is. In fact, it's essentially pre-installed. You can even do ASP programming on it (either this release or the next one).
But, take my advice: just stick with Windows. If you're an ASP programmer and not willing to learn anything else, that platform is the best choice for you.
You can't expect Linux to run on some random piece of hardware; no other operating system does that either. In fact, genuine Microsoft Windows frequently doesn't even install on supposedly supported hardware--you need the vendor's preinstalled image. In comparison, Linux works like a charm.
If you want no-hassles installations, buy a laptop that's know to work with Linux. Even better, buy a Laptop with Linux preinstalled, and it will work out of the box.
Slashdot Mirror
The conduction of nerve impulses is understood at a detailed molecular level. There are numerous experiments that have observed everything from individual charges and ions traveling through channels and careful electrical modeling, to rationally designed anaesthetics that interact with specific molecules and targeted modifications of channels.
Now, it's always a good idea to keep an open mind. But these people have presented no even remotely interesting evidence that we need a change in paradigms. They are simply nuts.
I think anybody who is claiming to get decent automatic parallelization out of C/C++ is selling snake oil. Even if a strict reading of the C/C++ standard ends up letting you do something useful, in my experience, real C/C++ programmers make so many assumptions that you can't parallelize their programs without breaking them.
It's very important for pharamceutical companies.
I didn't say it wasn't important, I said few people are doing these searches. The reason that's important is because it means that users can generally run this stuff on their desktops for hours, which is a lot more compute power available than, say, for your average web query.
There are many databases of 3D representations of molecules.
There are indeed. But the actual number of comparisons you need to do numbers in the thousands, not in the billions, as it is for other kinds of content.
Here's a little one to play around with (180MB uncompressed)
That is a negligible amount of data compared to other search tasks. I have 10000 times more text and image data than that sitting around on my desktop alone.
The fact remains: we don't need ultra-fast 3D comparisons at this point, we need ultra-accurate comparisons, because even ultra-accurate comparisons would be fast enough to solve the 3D search problems people actually have.
Who's going to verify its' consistency?
You, the reader, have to do that.
And when those people can't agree, who's going to make the final decision?
You. And the sooner you learn that, the better for you.
There is no such thing as an authoritative source.
I'm confused that you're advocating research and yet don't seem to want to research this
RTFA. They can conduct all the research they want; the accelerators for that already exist. In fact, they are using them, they simply haven't shown significant benefits in terms of outcomes yet.
What I don't want them to do is talk about building particle accelerators in every major cancer center for $200m-$300m each because that's mischaracterizing the technology as far more mature than it is.
as I understand it your objection is purely that it's a treatment instead of a cure.
No, my objection is that they have failed to show improved outcomes. Additionally, I'm objecting to characterizing this as a new treatment; this is simply a slightly different form of packaging a known treatment (like Tylenol syrup vs Tylenol capsules).
Most importantly, however, far more flexible ways of targeted radiation treatment for cancer have been, and are being, developed. The proponents of this technology haven't bothered even mentioning them, let alone comparing with them. And it's quite clear that those targeted ways are the future, not particle accelerators, so even when it comes to allocation of research dollars, it's probably actually time to wind down research in that area.
What tests of loyalty to US principles would you be speaking of? I've certainly never had to pass any of them
If you're born a US citizen, you don't. If you're a foreigner being hired for these jobs (as the posting suggested), then you do, either as part of your immigration process, or as part of your hiring process, or both.
What, like, 2000 people per year for instance?
All of those 2000 people could be treated effectively using existing treatments, probably with about comparable outcomes.
Yes, research is better long term. However, if you always spend 100 percent of your funding on research for those long term benefits no one is ever treated. You have to spend money on treatment at some point.
Research is already only a small fraction of governmental health treatment expenditures. It needs to get larger, not smaller.
So, it's now 10 thousand dollars a patient - that's still a good deal. If it were provided commercially and I needed it I'd pay that much.
You don't "need" it, since this treatment works like any other radiation treatment. The claimed advantage is that it reduces dosages received by other tissues, but they have not demonstrated that it makes a significant difference in outcomes, or that even if it does, it justifies the added expense. Furthermore, there are many far simpler ways of targeting radiation therapy that don't involve $300m particle accelerators.
Don't allow people to list credentials at all. Wikipedia content (like all content) should be just on its consistency and verifiability, not on some letters attached to someone's name.
No, sorry, that calculation doesn't work. There are plenty of similar cancer treatments available. The question is what number of patients per year have a meaningfully better outcome because of this treatment compared to existing, much cheaper treatments, and that number is likely to be small.
More importantly, the $300m that this costs is gone once it's spent: it treats a fixed number of patients, nothing more. In contrast, if you spend the same $300m on research, you generate knowledge and treatments that will benefit patients indefinitely.
Homeland security, TIA, etc. are programs put in place by the democratically elected government of the United States. If you think there's a problem with those programs and you are a US citizen, it's not just your choice, it is your duty to participate in the democratic process to change them. If you're a US citizen, you are personally responsible for what the US government does because the US government represents you and is done with your consent. That's what it means to live in a democracy.
In contrast, if you trash my car, that's a crime. I have already done what I need to do about it, namely elected a government and paid for a police force that catches and punishes criminals. I don't even complain about it, I just expect that the courts and the police catch you and punish you. And if they don't manage to do that, I get active in politics in order to make sure they get the funding they need to do their job to my satisfaction.
Radiation treatment for cancer is a desperate measure, something doctors do because they don't really know how to treat the actual cancer.
At $200-$300 million (!) per particle accelerator, capable of treating about 2000 patients per year, it seems doubtful to me that this is actually worth it.
Successes in non-radiation cancer treatments shows that through studying cancers and the underlying mechanisms, researchers can come up with targeted, rational treatments. Every single one of those particle accelerators translates into a cancer research lab. In the long run, far more patients are likely going to be cured if we spend money on cancer research and making it attractive for people to choose careers in biomedical research, rather than particle accelerators.
I'm guessing they hired developers from other countries just like MS does, they have no adversions to spying on the american people,
Actually, in order to work on such projects, you usually have to be a US citizen and pass plenty of US government tests of loyalty to US principles.
And you seem to forget that these projects were created by US governments elected by US citizens. This is what the majority of Americans want, either because they voted for it, or they didn't bother to vote and they didn't bother to participate in the political process otherwise.
What have you personally done to work against these kinds of programs? Unless you have gone through some extraordinary trouble, you have no justification to whine about it afterwards.
Microsoft claims that adjustments can be made to color balance and exposure settings that won't discard or truncate data that occurs with other bit-map formats.
It's trivial to do that: instead of changing the bits, you add a list of transformations to the image header. Trouble is: when such a format comes from Microsoft, they will have numerous patents on it and Microsoft will use those aggressively to maintain their monopoly. It doesn't matter that it's obvious how to do this. It doesn't matter that they weren't the first to invent it.
The world does need a better alternative to JPEG, but it must not come from Microsoft. The FOSS world should instead repeat what happened with PNG and Ogg: create an open, patent-unencumbered format.
Currently, the most common way to find the 3D shape of a particular molecule within a database is to superimpose a candidate over the query molecule and see how much of it overlaps. But this is time consuming, partly because it requires both molecules to be precisely aligned.
Yes, that's currently "the most common way" because at least you can tell what you're getting: when you get a match, you can actually say how close the different shapes are to one another.
The new technique uses a different approach. It analyses the position of the different atoms within a molecule to understand its shape. These relative positions can be mapped and stored a molecular database.
That's actually not a "new technique", it's an old technique. It's what people used to do before they tried to overlay 3D shapes accurately. They used to do that because computers used to be too slow to do the accurate comparison.
As the article points out, there is only limited 3D shape information available at all. Few people need to do 3D queries right now, and there is little data to do them on, so optimizing speed is the wrong thing to do; we need to optimize accuracy and scientific relevance.
Single Female Lawyer, Fighting for her clients, Wearing sexy mini skirts, And being self-reliant ...Single Female Lawyer Having lots of sex...
is apparently as dumb and non-innovative as ever.
How do I convey to the users that, in order to develop the software they want, I need detailed, accurate specs?
It's your task as a developer to get the specs you need and to communicate with users in a way that they can understand. Furthermore, it's never as simple as simply requesting specs from them; usually, you have to build prototypes, collect detailed feedback, and do many iterations of that. Throwing away most of your work over and over again because it doesn't do what users want is part of the job.
I'd say that 90% of software development is figuring out what needs to be done--getting the specs. So, do your job.
Whining and throwing tantrums is not a "blistering attack".
I call bs - you shouldn't have to buy a certain brand laptop or through a reseller that configures it
I call bs on you. You have to buy compatible hardware for Windows, you have to buy compatible hardware for OS X, and, of course, you have to buy compatible hardware for Linux.
Furthermore, if you don't buy Windows pre-installed, getting a system up and running from a Microsoft Windows distribution is often a harrowing experience because so many third party drivers and software need to be installed separately.
Finally, for the amount of money that Windows costs (not to mention all the proprietary third party Windows software), you can replace any piece of misbehaving/incompatible hardware, and you're still left with plenty of money to spare.
but sure as hell will make or break my moving to Ubuntu (or any other distro for that matter) and my sticking with Windows...
Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
All the greenies going around down here bleating about us having the world's highest per-capita emissions is just a load of horseshit when you stand back and look at the big picture - 20 million industrialised Aussies versus over a billion rapidly industrialising Chinese! But now I'm starting to ramble so best leave it at that.
Ah, and your big picture is that 20 million privileged Australians are entitled to huge per-capita emissions, while the Chinese should just stay poor? And how exactly do you justify that entitlement?
Sorry, that may be the way it works out in real life, but don't try to argue that it's fair.
Per-capita emissions is what counts, not membeship in some self-appointed elite club of people with a license to pollute.
Not that it'll make much of an impact, since Australia is by far the worlds largest exporter of coal - our output dwarfs the next largest exporter. What's more is that we're currently at capacity - ships are lining up for weeks to be filled with their load of coal - and work is being done to expand export capacity.
Well, so in addition to using too much energy per capita, Australians also profit from the pollution sins committed by other nations. It seems to me that the logical conclusion is that Australia should reduce, not expand, export capacity.
Now, what was your point again?
On many systems, the original Microsoft Windows (that is, not the version bundled by the hardware vendor) does not work unless you go through a lot of trouble manually downloading additional drivers and configuration software. That frequently fails because the drivers are hard to find, don't exist for the current version of Windows, they aren't certified, the configuration software doesn't install or doesn't work, and a host of other problems.
It's just a fact that for any given version of Windows, there is a lot of hardware that doesn't work with it, either because the hardware is "too old" or because it's "too new" or because the driver and support software is plain broken. Configuring a Windows PC from scratch is as tricky as configuring a Linux PC. The only reason Windows seems easier is because most people buy Windows pre-installed and throw away the machine when they need to upgrade.
I think there are many things I'd fault Microsoft for, but dropping Office for Macintosh isn't one of them. The problem with Office is its proprietary and closed formats, and those don't get fixed by having a Mac version.
While Apple fans like to talk about Apple vs. Microsoft, Apple's actions suggest that they would really simply like to be part of a cozy little duopoly with Microsoft.
The author has a HP Laserjet standing around? Nice. Good luck with a Canon "software" printer or other GDI printers though.
Linux can't support printers for which no technical documentation exists and never will. But the same is true for Vista: there are plenty of devices that don't work under Vista. In fact, Linux supports a huge number of devices, many out of the box and with fewer hassles than Windows. And Linux supports far more devices than that other consumer operating system, OS X.
If you want to use Linux, do what you do with any other OS: use hardware that works with it. You can do that by buying a computer with Linux pre-installed or by doing your homework.
In terms of money, for the price of a Vista license, you can replace your printer, your graphics card, and your Wifi card, and have money left over. And the Linux-compatible devices will generally be of higher quality than the Windows-only soft-printers and soft-modems.
so, my question is, is there any (easy) way i could be running the .net framework on ubuntu ?
Yes, there is. In fact, it's essentially pre-installed. You can even do ASP programming on it (either this release or the next one).
But, take my advice: just stick with Windows. If you're an ASP programmer and not willing to learn anything else, that platform is the best choice for you.
You can't expect Linux to run on some random piece of hardware; no other operating system does that either. In fact, genuine Microsoft Windows frequently doesn't even install on supposedly supported hardware--you need the vendor's preinstalled image. In comparison, Linux works like a charm.
If you want no-hassles installations, buy a laptop that's know to work with Linux. Even better, buy a Laptop with Linux preinstalled, and it will work out of the box.