"The mind is just the brain doing its job." is a quote from an American neuroscientist, S. Levy (i think). The brain is stupefyingly complex. It seems to be widely distributed in terms of nodes and massively parallel processed. For example, a well known experiment had subjects meet a potential significant other in two settings. In one setting the meeting took place in mundane surroundings. In another setting the meeting took place on a high suspension bridge. In the second instance the same potential significant other was seen as much more attractive. The conclusion was drawn that the brain layers experiences and stuff leaks from one layer to another. If your in an exciting circumstance it's likely someone you meet there will appear more interesting. Just from this one experiment and the known complexity of our brains it should be at least likely that attempts to quantify our existentialist experience is doomed, happily in my opinion. It's not unlikely that if you subscribe to such a method and submit to a data driven religious experience then, more likely in the company of others who share your methods and beliefs, you'll get a rewarding experience, but it'll be a belief driven quasi religious experience none the less.

no, i did not RTFA.

I'm currently trying to arrive at a rational, fairly large computer investment in terms of what an individual might pay out. My thinking runs along some blurred lines only because the issues seem to be essentially unclear. Overall, is an individual as a heavy, personal computer user better off making a major long term investment in general computing power in terms of 32 bit architecture and, more or less, disposable units like the dual core, system on a chip, intel Pineview units; or, better off staying with the curve and building 64 bit multi core towers and waiting on the software to catch up to the 64 bit platforms? Say the prospective purchaser is thinking of what a "Beowulf cluster of these" could do. :) I've made an earnest effort to understand PCs as a "power user" since the mid 80's and I think I understand the issues. In terms of software if, today, you were to make a decision to buy either system on a chip 32 bit stuff (or 64 bit SOC stuff running 32 bit software) then 32 bit stuff should be the way to go because of reams of time tested software. I run R and Octave, but like most geeks want to be able to start out with an electronic sketch of an idea and work it, hopefully, up to more abstract but rigorous and formal levels of thought.

More than 5 years ago I frequently said the tower was destined for the basement to share space with water heaters, freezers and furnaces. I still think that's the case. I think every home will have a server, maintained mostly by outside technicians and the house residents will use personal laptop/netbook units.

Take this on desert treks. You can stretch it over a much longer time.

If solutions are needed, then those in need, need only exercise the same degree of ingenuity /. editors exercise in bringing non tech stories to the front page via tortuous, tenuous, inventive ways.

as a canajen, i'd just like to say it's youse guys and your mafia strong arm ip laws that are bad, bad for business (yes, really), bad for mom & pop, and most of all bad for the children. think of the children.

when big government crawls in bed, drunk on power, with big business, and a big chunk of that big business is media, then the government has crossed a line that doesn't bear crossing. it has said to a big part of big business, "you control what gets out to the public and what the public sees and hears, and, so shape our culture; and we'll control the public with threats and prison terms if they don't pay for and restrict the use what you put to them as their own culture." and when you've crossed that line the consequences will be bloody.

Fuck it, I'll be at the beach. I'll have to think about coming back. I'm pretty sure sobriety isn't going to enter into that decision.

Nature went to a lot of trouble to isolate our brains. In terms of the skull, the Pia Mater and the blood-barrier. I don't know if I'm ready to go sticking stuff in there, especially in light of evolution's work to keep stuff out, and, our still insufficient knowledge of the brain.

Hi! Well, that truly was most arrogant. My name's Bob and I'll be your torturer today.

If repeated attempts to achieve an end is core to the definition of a game then art is a game an artist must win, and, to win, must play and play and play. If making art is a game then the end product is at least the outcome of game play, if not game play in the same vein, as much art, especially challenging art requires many attempts to understand the work. If art is defined as something sublime that requires no attempt at understanding and came whole and untainted to the artist's mind then that's not art, that's just bullshit.

Our big brains are deeply tied into our social matrix. Our value systems, our ethics and our morals, echo within our social system and inform our actions. Context informs values and actions. If disciplines like the hard sciences advertise their wares as facts and require students approach their studies with a "just the facts" attitude then that context will lend itself to a cut and past approach to homework that will more readily accommodate obvious borrowings from other students. If you're in an arts programme and your task is to display imagination and your core inner values in a medium and venue that accentuates individuality and creativeness then, ceteris paribus, it's more likely that context will not only encourage innovative output in homework but also encourage a more guarded attitude toward a peer borrowing your ideas. If you're a C.S. student and the world around you is rife with computer hacks and the news about those hacks inform you that you should be able to not only understand them but, possibly, be able to come up with something similar or better than to a considerable extent the ethics that inform your homework production will reflect the same ethics that inform the hacker culture.

If as educators you advertise your discipline as an empirical activity scrutinized by peer review then undergraduates just trying to fill out their curriculum with a few tasty bits for their upcoming resume are likely to think, well it's just facts, cut and paste. Let it wash out in the exams.

where did you hear that? is it an age thing? at what age should i be looking for that to kick in? is there an opt out? man that doesn't sound good.

I'm a lay person with an abiding interest in epistemology. My readings, including a recent canvassing of the mit, Berkeley and Yale online courses, would seem to broadly indicate brain plasticity is our forte. Some readings suggest our brain doesn't fully complete it's embryological programme until as late as 24 years of age. With such a slow development tied into our deep social embeddedment, it seems to speak directly to the most salient, primate characteristic of our brain being it's high degree of networking. One of the courses, (apologies for not recalling the class and time on the audio but the classes vary from year to year as much as from course to course), suggested that the most remarkable characteristic of our brain is the massive wiring especially to and from the frontal lobes, (excepting the alpha and omega thalamus). No more than a decade ago I recall being taught the relative size of our prefrontal cortex was our salient characteristic but now it's not thought to be so relatively large. So our brains appear to be widely distributed and massively parallel processed.

I defaulted to a 'what' and 'where' paradigm with a back pocket sketch of a triune, hemisphereically distinct, cartoon look at things. One of the little things that popped up was that the brain, i.e., all brains, evolved from a neural control network around the mouth. If the brain began as a "shut up or die", or, "get it well the gettings good" sensor then mapping out the evolutionary trail is going to be a bitch even with genetics. Although, the brain as initially a neural switch for feeding, appeals to my own epistemology.

There's a thread running through evolutionary biology that communication can be seen as a co-evolutionary trait driven by competition. I've only just noted the idea so my knowledge is minuscule, but if communication traits, making spoken language an instinct, can be seen to have in large part developed as a competitive trait enabled and augmented by our social characteristics, then the complexity of our speech, tied to our low seated vocal cords, at least comes into evolutionary view, much like colour vision and bipedal motion. From this point on my ideas sprout wildly and I'll save you the eye strain. Although, what's missing from a back of the envelope sketch of the working brain is the accelerating pace of the development/evolution of our social institutions. Aside from the brute economics of building modern cities it's not uninteresting to note our coming to populate large urban centres. Life in a city requires complex social feedback, one to many, many to one, inter alia, and, such feedback and interaction requires a high degree of social planning on the part of any one participant. So my own little cartoon of brain activity requires massive wiring of the frontal lobes to act as a feedback control in terms of executive planning. The only off the wall thing I'll leave you with is that I've postulated warfare as one of the main contributing factors to development of the executive planning and social feedback loops that allow us to co-habit large urban areas. It was to a considerable extent the planning necessary to never ending tribal wars that was instrumental in our developing the wiring allowing us to even think about living in peace.

thanx for taking the time to reply

cheers

i actually sat for a minute coming up with some smart ass answers, but, really, i've got no argument with that, altho, i'd be less than honest if i didn't say swimming is a far better way to go than running. just in terms of an overall fitness programme, especially if you are seriously overweight; or, if like me, you've suffered a compression break on a femur and have joint issues

thanks, but, really you didn't have to go to that much trouble. i know.