Show us. Serious request. I'm genuinely curious what Octave can do.

fellow slashdotters and moderators: Despite the insightful nature of the comment, GP was relatively obscure when I chimed in. It is clear, to me at least, that despite having no mod points of my own, my effort drew the appropriate attention and contributed positively to GP being moded up. My admonition to mod up may not be necessary after the fact, but my karma didn't need to chopped down just because someone too lazy to use mod points productively was feeling smug and judgmental. Look around - there may be others trying to draw attention to worthy thoughts and ideas deserving of up mods.

I'm an atheist vegetarian you insensitive clod!

nicely done. mod parent up.

I'll get to the copyright in a minute. But there is actually a huge bit of inaccuracy in the post. The videos at Microsoft research in *NOT* the Feynman lectures on physics. Those are actually a part of the Messenger Lectures recorded at Cornell in 1964 called "The Character of Physical Law" and preceded the Cal Tech undergraduate physics lectures which we now know as the Feynman Lectures on Physics.

Bill Gates has long been a fan of the lesser known Messenger Lectures. As part of the drive to popularize Silverlight, he actually acquired the rights to "The Character of Physical Law" in order to be able to present them to the public using the Silverlight platform at Project Tuva. Not a bad move for like minded Feynman fans like me.

In that case, a headline along something like "Technology continues to squeeze the survival of traditional news outlets" would have been a lot less misleading. Having now read the linked articles, however, that happens not to be the case. With headlines like "Red Sox owner in deal to purchase Globe" and prominent mentions of pension liabilities, I saw scant mentioning of technology's role in the constant march of progress. Your grandfather's story is cool and I'm glade this post provided an opportunity for you to share it. But Soulskill has been around a while and I wouldn't have expected such a veteran author to get sloppy and begin posting stories without any effort to make it relevant.

Education. Quit a common topic actually. are you new here?

I have not RTFA because with slashdot summary as written, I'm wondering why this is "news for nerds". Is there something about the Boston Globe that is of inherent interest to science, technology, or other things that have been the usual fare here? I don't mind reading about stuff that belongs in the business/economy section of a news portal. But I didn't expect that Slashdot would be morphing into one.

I find your interpretation rather racist. Plenty of delicious dark meat that are beloved among connoisseur. Some would argue those are the ones with actual meat. Just ask Sir Mix-a-Lot.

psst!
You're not supposed to find out what's in your bowl of brown.

I suddenly have this XKCDesque notion this is actually the start of a RubeGoldbergian scheme to write some esoteric Perl script.

I'm guessing the next big revolution in AI is the quest to figure out how to get digital problem solvers to teach us meat heads how they actually figured this stuff out.

I think you mean diagnosis, right? :-) Not picking a fight. I'm being corrected and I appreciate it from everyone who can teach me something new.

The point? How about early intervention? Trisomy 21 is easily detected via procedures such as amniocentesis which are trivial to perform today. If you can catch the condition early, much of the developmental abnormalities that would have progressed unchecked in a normal Downs Syndrome baby could be nipped in the bud during fetal development. I'm not sufficiently experienced in this area to make dramatic claims. But I would venture a guess the earlier you can address the problem in the womb, the less severe the symptoms would be in an affected individual.