Seasons

OMG!!! what a shmo!

I mean, who in their right minds...

the entire cost of the mission, because of her own spiritual beliefs!!!!!

I think that's $piritual belief$... (Anyone know what the symbol for rubles is?)

I got an email about a physisist that invented a "duplicator" - it has a cartrage of particles and can arange them into a 3 dimensional object on demand - it is as big as a few tables, and costs $20,000 - the objects aren't finished products, but parts that need to be assembled. His goal is that in the near future, average consumers will have desktop "fabricators" that just as a printer can print out data on demand, it will be able to fabricate designs downloaded from the internet. these designs could be anything from mp3 players to remote control cars.

I recently heard someone quote humans as using 12% at best, but they were using it in a comparison of neural pathways vs. "unused matter"

On that "unused" topic. This may be an urban myth but I heard that there was a Woman in San Francisco that was trying to write a self modifying network security system. She set up two stations: the attacked with her program and the attacker which would send virus and faux hack attempts at an irregular rate. Supposidly the programs concept was a bunch of individual copies of the subroutine sets which the virus or hack would have more or less of an effect on. By comparing and adopting aspects that seemed to work (by what def.s I dont know) the master program and deleting from the subroutines those that didnt the thought was that the system would evolve. Where there were deletions random command string 'noise' would be injected into the space to allow for potential change.

After letting it run for a time she looked over the raw code to discover huge patches of blank space that when deleted caused the program to fail.

*rubs jaw*

Interesting, Rev. What "unused matter" did they say the brain contains? Are they referring to glial cells (cells that clean up after the neurons) or do they say there is something else in the brain taking up all the space? What exactly were they basing their statements on? Most of the brain is, in fact, made up of neurons. Each part of the brain has specific functions (although there is some pasticity when functions are not used or part of the brain is damaged). If any part of the brian is damaged, it effects how the whole brain works. I think the "12 % neural pathways" is just another variation of the myth.

I don't know how memory storage works in the brain, but I would think that we have unused storage capacity.

I think it mostly works by connecting neurons in new ways. So we learn something new, we make new connections in the brain between the neurons. The more we use those new pathways, the stronger they get. Unused pathways tend to deteriorate, which is why we tend to lose skills/knowledge if we don't apply them.

There's probably more to it... *shrugs*

I think you have the gist of it Ulrike.

In terms of memory "storage capacity", it's true we continue to learn and to have new memories, but that does not mean there are a lot of empty spots in the brain waiting to be filled. Memory is very complex. It is not like there is a little video of everything you experieinced for a cetain time frame stored in a given spot. Memory is too big a topic for me to really explain well here--but Ulrike has the right idea.

Bev:

Likely you are correct in saying its another variant. That said: I believe the referance was to "areas of low synaptic traffic" where there is little dynamic modulation going on w/ the neurochemical coatings. These areas are present in every lobe of the brain aside from the autonomic controlers in the med.oblong. to a greater or lesser degree. Biochemistry isnt my strong point though, so...

this all makes sense but can't we just get back to complimenting the forge?

ps:the forge rocks!!!!