1. For the Raspberry Pi, for thinking up the idea, for getting people and companies engaged to make it happen
2. For the community around the R-Pi that formed after the launch, dirven by both Eben and Liz Upton (she deserves credit for the Blog on the R-Pi Foundation website, which has been an inspiration to many)
3. For the metric fuck-ton of creativity that the R-Pi releases. Almost evrybody who plays with it gets a wild idea and goes off and implements it. God only knows what it is that makes that happen, but that flow of white-hot creativity is what drives the whole R-Pi phenomenon.

In my career, I have seen Microsoft try 4 times to get a subscription model for Office working. Failed miserably every time. No-one wants to buy software that locks you into paying forever.

So if Microsoft go down the subscription route for the operating system, they will kill themselves stone cold dead.

Me too. I have taken care to avoid buying any Sony product since then. And I have told plenty of people why not.

Couldn't happen to a "nicer" bunch.

Would I be right to believe the Sony Pictures, being part of the Sony conglomerate, are infected with the same high-handed corporate arrogance that we have seen at Sony Music? "cough" root kit "cough"

I shall be wearing the smile today, all day.

Raspberry Pi Foundation has loads of stuff - see under Resources, Teach and Learn and Make http://www.raspberrypi.org/ - all intended for young people (and its on Creative Commons licences). The "Teach" stuff is written by Carrie-Ann Philbin, who is a professional teacher - she has quite a few videos of good stuff on Youtube.

The Mag-Pi, a magazine free to download (28 issues already) , has tutorials for games in both Scratch and Python, and Minecraft - anfd there's plenty of stuff in there that might fire YOU up! http://www.themagpi.com/

Name those boards, or didn't happen.

Based on evidence of the effects of dissociative drugs, psychedelic drugs, and general anaesthetics, it seems likely that our 'singular, waking awareness' is primarily an effect of the information transfer between various brain regions through the posterior cingulate cortex.

Of course, knowing that doesn't make it any less of a head-fuck to contemplate how strange it is to be anything at all.

While you're not wrong, I do think that from the perspective of the article, it's also not really so relevant.

Basically from my understanding, he's saying here that if we handle the sub-systems in a more traditional manner - as in, existing edge detection and motion detection algorithms in standard computing systems - that with ~50 parallel threads, we could have something brain-like.

It's also worth considering though that this is far less cool than it sounds at first blush simply by fact that the sub-systems would not be brain-like in the slightest.

While it may seem analogue, I'd definitely call the brain digital from a functional perspective.

The amount of neurotransmitters, strength of electrical activity, and so on are definitely analogue inputs; but due to the way that action potentials fire in cells, you're either "firing them" or "not firing them" (analogy: magnetic data on a disc is also analogue, but we only really care about the on/off state of it). Most information appears to be transferred based on the rate of firing them, and is not encoded in any special aspect of the spikes themselves. Furthermore, you might then assume that the rate timing of the spikes may be considered analogue data - again though, it's not really. There is a refractory period that limits the maximal firing rate of a single neuron, and downstream effects of this basically mean that the firing rates themselves could also in theory be quantised in a digital manner (although it'd be a massively complex problem to actually figure that all out).

While the whole system is quite fundamentally different from our current digital computers, it is nevertheless something that could also be a digital system.

Three-and-half years of shift work (interesting, well-paid work for a good employer and decent working conditions) did me physical harm that did not wear off for many years after the experience. I felt listless, short on energy and intitative and thinking power, slightly better while on days, but very bad while on nights. That listlessness was still with me for years afterwards.

During those years, I experienced three different shift patterns. Rotating once a week (day, evening, night) was worst - pretty hellish. Rotating once a month was bearable. I once did 4 months straight on nights - to my surprise, that worked OK (physically). At the end, I was back on weekly rotation and couldn't wait to get out.

Shift work wrecks your social life. Your friends never know where you're at, so they don't include you in their plans, and you don't have the energy yourself to organize anything.

I authored the previous comment; I didn't realize that I was logged out when I did, so it showed up as AC. But it's me.

1. I'm too busy to sit around thinking up additional words to throw in so I can score "mod" points

2. The people I like on Slashdot are too busy to read a bunch of additional words I only threw in so I can score "mod" points

3. It's not in my nature to waste words, or to waste time

Actually this particular councilman represents an extremely high-rent district--Manhattan's upper east side. I doubt there are many wealthier neighborhoods in the world. He's not doing this to 'score points', he's doing it to do the right thing.

Well said

Let me fix that for you:

Time and again history has shown the way to have a healthy middle class is to alleviate poverty on a grand scale.