In other news: Congressman tried biking in college, but didn't exhale.

That is pretty much the point I was making; the paper shows quite nicely that their intervention does help, but they haven't enough data to say why it helps with any great certainty. If they know why then they can focus on that part and possibly make it even more effective, or incorporate that facet into other methods.

Yes, you can get paid for it, and look to your nearest university's psychology department. They tend to advertise current studies in posters around the campus and university job agencies (i.e. those aimed at getting students some part time work).

They won't always be playing computer games; from what I have seen there tends to be a range of topics, including things such as "watch this and press a button when", "eat this chocolate then do this" and a fair bit of "fill in this survey". Some of them include "and then let me MRI scan your brain" for flavour.

As they say in TFPaper, this can only be considered as a pilot study due to the limited size and make up of their particiant group and limits on their methodology. As such to say 'Play wii and become a better surgeon' is a bit premature. You could say "We've found a link between playing Wii and improvement in surgical scores, give us cash so we can find out precisely what it is".

An example of this is that they have no way of telling whether the improvement is due to the Wii training, or due to the possibilty that forcing people who are in high stress occupations to take an hours break a day might improve performance by lowering stress levels. (My thinking here being that doing these training simulations on the wii is sufficiently different to seem like a break to them). They could have done with a second control group who were just playing wii tennis, or reading a book or some such to account for that. Of course, that would require more participants, of which they had a limited number; hence this is only a pilot study.

Not a bad idea. It would depend on how accurately I could weight it though: it works out as about 3g per meter, and I would ideally like to know to the resolution of 10's of centimeters.

You should really be thinking of what your course teachers expect from this project. From their point of view they are likely after their students building a basic CRUD program (create, retrieve, update, delete) to show that they understand the basics of designing and implementing a system and have some basic database skills.

The thing is, CRUD programs are not really that interesting or really, that difficult to make. There will be dozens of them available open source, and these will likely cover all the high impact general cases. What you could contribute relatively easily is a a program for a specific case.

For example: I play around with 3D printing, and I have lots of various coloured filament in varying quantities. I want to know how much I have of each so that I can use up the scraps on little prints, and save the longer lengths of filament for bigger prints. At present this means a little guesswork and some time with a tape measure.

This problem could lead to a nice simple project: build a simple database backed system to monitor filament stock levels, which allows putting in info, saying "I have used x much of this spool to print" and asking "which is the shortest spool with enough for this print?". If you kept it to the assumption that it would be a light weight program not requiring an existing database environment that would make it easy to demo as well - jsut use one of those lightweight DBMSs that dumps it's stuff in a single file. Nice and simple, but extensible.

The extensible bit is important, since it means if you get the basics done you can add on some features for extra credit. I don't mean shiny to the user features, but rather shiny to the markers features.

For example: you could make it pseudo distributed, so that I could have it running on two machines independently and synch them at will; this would mean you could look into transaction systems where you store what was done on each and synch them by applying in time order (something that is useful in big commercial database setups such as retail management systems).

Another example: you could have it capable of generating QR code labels linked to the particular spools records, and have a mobile app. Scan the QR code and have the phone call a web service front end to the database and look up exactly how much is left, and offer the option to mark it as printed with.

Basicly: pick something which is simple, but lets you show off your technical skills. If you can help the OSS movement now that's just icing, but you're better off looking after yourself at the moment so that later you can help with less constrained projects.

I had been thinking "wouldn't it be cool if" for a while about something like this, but I would like to see it taken a few steps further. Though it would be rather difficult, wouldn't it be cool if there was a system like this which detected bad/underhanded debating tactics such as straw man, Ad hominem, cherry picking and so on.

While the evidence he discusses may be only anecdotal, the conclusion he reaches is logical.

There are certain lifestyle and behavioural patterns common among hackers which do leave us prone to depression and other mental health issues. We do tend to spend much of our time alone, engaged in solitary and sedentary pursuits of the mind which - while we may find incredibly rewarding and cool - those around us in meat-space just don't understand.

Now add in the consideration that we tend to find ourselves on the metaphorical wild frontier of the technological world we inhabit. In a place where we are carving out the basis for the new and interesting but always having to look over our shoulders in fear that some technologically inept idiot with a bunch of lawyers with come along and either crush what we have built or steal it from us.

Added to this we, due to our lifestyles, often lack the aspects of life which are typically used to de-stress and prevent depression: good diet to provide the required thinking fuel (no, caffeine and sugar aren't enough), exercise for endorphins to let us forget the shit of the world for a bit and physically present people for company so we can put things in perspective.

Finally, consider that we have both good reason to be down about things and due to our lifestyles tend to lack the things which help prevent depression... yeah, it's not a surprising conclusion.

So, what can we all do about it?

Regarding tsquar3d's question on FLOSS in research; I too have come across this in other fields of academia.

There are a lot of pro's to using FLOSS for research besides the ethical, and if you do need to justify your use of it then it is likely these you will need to rely on. So, off the top of my head, and with a more general not necessarily CS view:

Verifiability: you can trace the source code and know precisely what is being done in your analysis.

Reproducibility: you can distribute the exact version of the software you used for your analysis, to allow others to reproduce your results.

Longevity: proprietary products will stop being supported eventually and as such make it much harder to reproduce results at a later date.

Extensibility: it's quicker to make your awesome new twist on an existing analysis if you can just extend the existing software

Naturally this doesn't apply to all fields, or situations but these are all things I have come across while doing various things with applied machine learning.

On the other hand you will need to consider these points from the other side too. If you switch from the standard proprietary software your department uses then you have to prove that your new software provides the same results, or account for any discrepancies.

Similarly, if any extensions to the proprietary software have been made you may have to reproduce them yourself (and verify them, and so on).

In the end you have to weigh up the pro's and con's and see if the pro's of using FLOSS out weigh the con's, and in your case as a PhD student, also consider whether you actually have enough time to make the switch. (Unless you already have).

For a home user it is not all that much of an issue, if you are running a remotely recent OS then it is probably already IPv6 capable. At worst you may need to replace your modem/router box, and those who would have trouble with this are likely to be with an ISP that takes care of such matters for them.

When you are dealing with large scale infrastructure and corporate networks however, things become a little more difficult. At that scale the assumption of running a recent OS doesn't always hold, so you have software updates to worry about which incurs at least a time cost (and time is money). Also the possibly replacing your router becomes replacing racks worth of managed switches, routers, dchp servers and so on. That's not even beginning to take into account all of the legacy software that expects IPv4 and requires it in order to work.

So, yeah. Simple for home/small business users, but a major project for the IT guys who make things work behind the scenes. Fortunately said tech guys should have been working on getting ready for this for a while already; just like when they made sure that the world didn't fall over at the turn of the millenium.

Seriously, why do we even need a system which lets people charge arbitrary ammounts via SMS? It's insecure, ripe for abuse and open to fraud. I don't think I have ever seen it used for a beneficial purpose, except perhaps for charity donations which could just as easily be done via another system.

So, why not just shut the thing down? Or, heck just limit it to registered charities; it's not like anyone else uses it but those who prey on the weak (rip off custom ringtone companies, horoscope peddlers and malware)

Privacy isn't always about hiding wrong-doing; it's about hiding things that some people are too narrow minded or ignorant to understand and accept.

So I believe it would be more accurate would be to say that those who are concerned with the what if's and the maybe's are those who understand that not everyone does - or even should - conform to societies idea of normal. These are the sort of people who understand that in any system there are edge cases, things which are not quite as they seem on the surface and actively try to design around such flaws. These are the programmers, the designers, the engineers of our society.

These are the people who try to make sure that you can pick up your drunken college buddy from a gay bar at 0-dark-30, and not have it bite you in the ass should you later try to run for public office. These are the people who try to prevent you from being labelled a terrorist simply because your club happens to share a community building with an unpopular religion. These are the people who try to to prevent pediatricians from being lynched because some idiots can't tell the difference between a Doctor specializing in children and a pedophile.

So, in future when you are about to call someone paranoid over issues such as this, please consider: it may be that they have realized that what may seem to be a simple system, when applied on a national or international scale, becomes a system in which even relatively small errors can destroy lives.

Yet another reason why I don't trust Facebook, Google, or any other of these sorts of company with my mobile number.

If I want to buy something I'll take out my credit card tap in all the numbers and buy it. At least that way I *know* that I'm buying something, and I'm not nastily surprised when my mobile bill is huge after hitting the wrong button when my touchscreen plays up.

Well, yeah, but I am also taking into account meetings where that may not be practical, such as those involving lots of diagrams/mathematical equations or those which refer to a hard copy document (which could then also be scanned).

To get the obligatory Raspberry Pi out of the way: Hook up a microphone to a Raspberry Pi, and have that record/dump onto your local network fileshare.

On a more serious note though, it should be the job of someone in the meeting to take the minutes. It'll all well and good to have an automated system recording audio of the thing for future reference, but it is much better to have someone taking down the key points manually. Not only do you have a backup incase of failure of your system, but you also have a summary with the most important points which is much easier to skim over and extract information from.

If you combine handwritten notes with a document scanner in the room you can have a system to scan, archive and distribute a copy of the minutes almost instantly. Alternatively the minutes could be typed onto a netbook/small laptop and that document emailed round.

For that sort of application most of the prosthetic would/should be mass produced. As awesome as 3D printers are they are really for prototyping and customization rather than cheap manufacturing. I would see it more as using a 3D printer to print off some parts for customized fitting to the patient, and using off the shelf parts for the rest.

On the other hand, there are plenty of robotic hand projects which could be adapted to function as prosthetics. So, go take a look and see if you get inspired.