99 replies to this topic

[FutureQ]

Duh, apparently I do neeed sleep. I just noticed the button I was calling "calculate" is for plotting. Errgh. Nitey night.

james

[Da55id]

Kevin, Aaron - I do indeed intend for the Hasetine piece to go on the MM website asap.

dg

[Da55id]

Reason - re the new installer. Should I uninstall the current tote board first?

[Bruce Klein]

I didn't have to...

[Da55id]

Hi Kevin, the haseltine piece is great...just two things

in the second line of the headline, methuselah has a typo.

also, in the phrase "His contribution shows that he believes in the Methuselah Mouse Prize and is a very welcome endorsement from one of the most respected names in the biotech field..."

Can you make it read: "His generous contribution is a very welcome endorsement from one of the most respected names in the biotech field.

Aaron, can we give this it's own page including the background that's so nicely done - I don't think we need to worry about the layout/graphic "violating" the look of the other pages. Also, I would like Kevin to have the ability to update news oriented pages on the Methuselah Mouse website?

dg

[Da55id]

reason: I installed the new build, restarted my system, and got the identical bug symptom. So, I'm going to uninstall the current system and then download/install the new build so it will be from scratch.

thx
dg

[kevin]

updated Haseltine link.. Saved as HTML not ASP with corrections.. I've noticed the headlines are larger under the HTML format.. don't know why..
http://www.healthext...t/MouseNews.htm

[kevin]

The new version installs fine on my system.. one thing however.. for dummies like me trying to reinstall and who have the Tote Board running it gives an error message that it is unable to update files and keys...I imagine that the components its trying to update are the same in the new version as the old so it hasn't harmed the install but this might not always be the case..

Perhaps the installation might check to see if the Board is running prior to installing?

[ddhewitt]

Great job guys.

I had one suggestion for the life expectancy plot.

Could we stretch out the trend of increasing lifespan of 3 months per year instead of having the life expectancy plateau at 82?

This might be a slightly more encouraging visual and sends a subtle but powerful message about the continuing trend.

The MMP is designed to accelerate the trend but we will use the "conservative" 3 months per year in our plot.

Duane

[Da55id]

Hi duane - The current life expentency trend is based on the Social Security Administration's official current actuarail estimates - if you expand the chart to full screen, I think you'll see that it doesn't plateau if I understand you correctly. We use SSA Actuary because it's the trend the US Gov't is "betting on". I'm open to other estimates - could you give me your sources for the 3 months per year?

Thanks!
Dave

[ddhewitt]

Hi duane - The current life expentency trend is based on the Social Security Administration's official current actuarail estimates - if you expand the chart to full screen, I think you'll see that it doesn't plateau if I understand you correctly. We use SSA Actuary because it's the trend the US Gov't is "betting on". I'm open to other estimates - could you give me your sources for the 3 months per year?

Thanks!
Dave

Hi Dave.

The Social Security Administration has strong incentives to downplay trends in life extension. The situation for Social Security looks even more grim for their programs if even the current trends are factored in.

The 3 months per year figure comes from the work of the demographer James W. Vaupel. Abstract follows.

Link

DEMOGRAPHY:
Enhanced: Broken Limits to Life Expectancy
Jim Oeppen [HN8] and James W. Vaupel [HN9]*
Is life expectancy [HN1] approaching its limit? Many--including individuals planning their retirement and officials responsible for health and social policy--believe it is. The evidence suggests otherwise.

Consider first an astonishing fact. Female life expectancy in the record-holding country has risen for 160 years at a steady pace of almost 3 months per year [Fig. 1 and suppl. table 1 (1)]. In 1840 the record was held by Swedish women, who lived on average a little more than 45 years. Among nations today, the longest expectation of life--almost 85 years--is enjoyed by Japanese women [HN2]. The four-decade increase in life expectancy in 16 decades is so extraordinarily linear [r2 = 0.992; also see suppl. figs. 1 to 5 (1)] that it may be the most remarkable regularity of mass endeavor ever observed. Record life expectancy has also risen linearly for men (r2 = 0.980), albeit more slowly (slope = 0.222): the gap between female and male levels [HN3] has grown from 2 to 6 years (suppl. fig. 2).

[Da55id]

very interesting indeed - can you provide a line chart showing the slope in comparison with the one in the toteboard lifeline chart? It would be great to see it to see what it would look like in the toteboard. dg

[ddhewitt]

very interesting indeed - can you provide a line chart showing the slope in comparison with the one in the toteboard lifeline chart? It would be great to see it to see what it would look like in the toteboard. dg

I will e-mail you a figure. The slope maintains a steady increase instead of tapering off.

Duane

[reason]

Reason - re the new installer. Should I uninstall the current tote board first?

If you don't, you'll still have the startup shortcut there - the only way to get rid of that is to uninstall the first one. (Or go in and delete it yourself).

Reason
Founder, Longevity Meme
reason@longevitymeme.org
http://www.longevitymeme.org

[reason]

Perhaps the installation might check to see if the Board is running prior to installing?

That's a tough one with the current installer...

Reason
Founder, Longevity Meme
reason@longevitymeme.org
http://www.longevitymeme.org

[Jay the Avenger]

Thanks very much Jean.

Any other comments. We're especially looking for ideas that would make the toteboard something that folks would find continuously useful and thus want to keep it active all the time.

dg

If you want people to run it continously, I highly recommend that the program minimizes to the traybar instead of the taskbar (like WinAmp, GetRight, Realplayer, etc).

Lots of programs in my taskbar give me the feeling of information-overload. I cannot stand this. I have a tendency to close as much taskbar-minimized programs as possible. I do it with the toteboard too, even though I'd like to run it continuously because of the great news tab.

Traybar-minized programs, however, are allowed on my system. And I'm guessing there's plenty of other people who feel the same way.


Oh, and about that news-tab... shouldn't Kurzweilai.net be in there?

And while I'm talking about Kurzweil... shouldn't he donate a scandalous amount of money to the project? [lol]

[Da55id]

Jay - I agree completely. I too close the toteboard when in the taskbar but wouldn't if it were in the tray. We should do this asap. Aaron, Reason? Is this tough to do given our current code?

we should add kurzweilai.net if it's in rss form. thanks!

I used to be incensed that every rich person in the universe hadn't already given. Now I remember that it took me a while to get to my "conviction point"...only fair that we give folks time to draw their own conclusions. I'd rather folks like him give us a modest amount - say $5,000 so that we get more and more real people (thousands and hundreds of thousands - eventually millions of contributors from around the world) so that single contributor be able to try to bend the prize to its will. Each contributor is a brick in the "wall of will".

[Bruce Klein]

Dave, good philosophy.. and one that requires years of dedication. Good show.

[Jay the Avenger]

Jay - I agree completely. I too close the toteboard when in the taskbar but wouldn't if it were in the tray. We should do this asap. Aaron, Reason? Is this tough to do given our current code?

we should add kurzweilai.net if it's in rss form. thanks!

I used to be incensed that every rich person in the universe hadn't already given. Now I remember that it took me a while to get to my "conviction point"...only fair that we give folks time to draw their own conclusions. I'd rather folks like him give us a modest amount - say $5,000 so that we get more and more real people (thousands and hundreds of thousands - eventually millions of contributors from around the world) so that single contributor be able to try to bend the prize to its will. Each contributor is a brick in the "wall of will".

Right after posting my previous post, I looked up a code-example of how to do a systray-minimization. I have found a nice one on this link, that compiled and worked without probs in Visual C++: http://www.codeproje...imizetotray.asp


And about that donor tab: perhaps it would be a nice idea to have the user decide what it's sorted on. Right now, it's sorted from top to bottom on the donated amounts of money. This is probably so donors can compete, I figured.

But if you want people to be able to donate 50.000 without scaring other people away, you may want to set the default sorting to the dates instead. When people decide they want to see the donations in the order of donated amounts, they can always do this themselves by clicking the caption of the column (think of kazaa, in which downloads can be sorted in the same way).

I myself tried sorting by date instead, because I wanted to get an idea about whether or not the donations were coming in quicker or not. I was kind of disappointed when this didn't work.

Otherwise... great work! This initiative is totally cool.

[Jay the Avenger]

Also... why is the amount rising slowly with one cent at a time?

People aren't continuously donating 1 cent, are they?

[Da55id]

I agree about sorting by clicking the column headers. Thanks very much for the code example. rising slowly to simulate the effect of interest

[reason]

Jay - I agree completely. I too close the toteboard when in the taskbar but wouldn't if it were in the tray. We should do this asap. Aaron, Reason? Is this tough to do given our current code?

Needs some work, but the current installer is loaded with the necessaries to do that once the java code is in place. I'll be working on it.

Reason
Founder, Longevity Meme
reason@longevitymeme.org
http://ww.longevitymeme.org

[Da55id]

THANKS!

[Jay the Avenger]

Just thought of another improvement:

Right now, windows pop up in the top left corner of the screen. Every window does this: the progressbar on loadup, the application itself, and the summary windows from the newstab.

It is somewhat annoying to see windows crammed into a corner like that. I can't quite put my finger on why that is. But it just is.

I think you could easily modify the parameters of your window creation function to have windows pop up somewhere near the middle of the screen.

[Da55id]

Hi Gents,

I noticed that the version number jumped from b16 to b18. Can you tell us what got changed? I think I saw that the board now shows which prize got donations from a donor. Did I miss something else?

thanks

[Da55id]

very interesting indeed - can you provide a line chart showing the slope in comparison with the one in the toteboard lifeline chart? It would be great to see it to see what it would look like in the toteboard. dg

I will e-mail you a figure. The slope maintains a steady increase instead of tapering off.

Duane

Hi Duane - Were you able to send the figure? Also, does anyone have access to the science article?

thx
Dave

[reason]

We're working on b19 and b20 right now - Aaron got the systray problem fixed in b19 (which you should see if you start up with a recent Windows install - i.e. past few weeks), and the next version should hopefully flash alerts to make people notice new donations.

Footprint seems to be decreasing a bit too.

Reason
Founder, Longevity Meme
reason@longevitymeme.org
http://www.longevitymeme.org

[Jay the Avenger]

Now that it is possible to sort by date, you can see that there have been a lot more donations in november than in any other previous month. It seems the number of donations per month is rising quickly.

That's pretty cool.

[Da55id]

yeah Jay - it's true! we went from an avg $1,000 per week and since mid oct have been growing at $2k per week :-) I love the sorting! and the systray fix is grand...now, we only need to add the additional newsci, wired & etc newsfeeds, help tab & explanations for the lifeline equation etc... and we'll have rel. 1 done! Bravo - may acclaim and glory accrue to the heads of those who've brought this into being - ahem - uh - thanks Aaron and Reason and Kev :-)

dg

[Da55id]

and thanks to all who've given great suggestions, testing services and constructive criticism - especially on aesthetic issues