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Comment Re:Lack of Faith in Humanity (Score 1) 1142

by clone53421 (#31086132) Attached to: If Everyone Had To Pass A Particular 101 Course, It Should Be About...

My friend is way into horoscopes, and I point out to her a lot that horoscopes are actually, quite bogus. That they have some 80% accuracy rates because they don't get specific, and then people are forgetting some 80% of it anyways. So you're presented with a person, who is mostly recreating memories when thinking back about it, reinterpreting the facts to be more important, more significant and more potent than it was before.

Ah. Yeah, I understand you now. Sort of like the old wives’ tricks for telling whether you’re going to have a boy or a girl... people will swear by them, but in fact they’re bound to be correct 50% of the time, and people don’t remember the times they were wrong.

Comment Re:Smartest workflow move ....ever! (Score 1) 401

by clone53421 (#31086088) Attached to: GIMP 2.8 Will Sport a Redesigned UI

Terrible ideas. Just terrible.

Why?

In any event, hiding the dialogs when GIMP loses focus makes a hell of a lot more sense than dialogs that won’t minimize or hide at all. When I want to see the desktop, I want to see it without any stupid unhideable dialogs in the way.

They have made a single window mode available, that's what we're talking about.

I don’t want a single window mode. I want the things I mentioned. Unless I maximize the window, and then perhaps yes a single-window mode would be better than letting the floating palettes overlap the image window.

Comment Re:Moronic commentary (Score 1) 50

by ottothecow (#31022466) Attached to: Brokers Get Strict Social Networking Rules
30 day holding periods eh? Damn seems a little harsh...what if something is really tanking and it makes sense to bail?

Last time I worked somewhere where my holdings were restricted, I couldn't touch the financials or anywhere there might be a conflict of interest, but if I was cleared to trade it, I could trade it whenever/however I wanted. Of course I didn't actually have to register my brokerage account with them either (just self-report holdings to keep from working on conflicts)...so once you have taken that step, it is probably easier to pile on the rules.

Comment Re:Lonsdaleite (Score 1) 250

by mdsolar (#31022398) Attached to: Harder-Than-Diamond Natural Carbon Crystals Found
How about trying to get quantitative? How many GPa of tensile strength would diamond need to be able to carry the same load as a steel I-beam of the same volume? Is that more or less than its actual tensile strength? Don't forget that most tensile strength is reported in MPa rather than GPa.

Comment Circular logic apply? (Score 1) 262

by miffo.swe (#31020718) Attached to: UK Government Crowd-Sourcing Censorship

Usama Bin Laden have proved that terrorism is infact a very succesful tool. This law alone proves that it works just as intended. If the goal is to tighten the screws on your opponents population and make their life living 1984 i cant think of a better way. I find it very amusing that someone crate a law that proves that terrorism works just dandy and at the same time forbid anyone to speak about it.

I dont condone terrorism but it sure seems to work very well for some tasks. The US has a public perception of being evil and we westerners are now monitored, searched, scanned, Without free speech and controlled in any way possible.

The best we could have done was to gotten to the core of the problem, why do terrorists exist, what do they want? How do we go about getting rid of them peacefully, take away their reasons to commit terrorist acts and thus support from the general population?

As of now we just wander straight into the trap waving a big sign against the terrorists "Do it again! It works!" while we all loose essential human rights one after another.
Education

Submission + - The Case for Working With Your Hands 1

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "At a time when the question of what a good job looks like is wide open, the NY Times says it's time to take a fresh look at the trades. High-school shop-class programs were dismantled in the '90s as educators prepared students to become 'knowledge workers' in a pure information economy. Was this was a huge mistake? A gifted young person who chooses to become a mechanic instead of accumulating academic credentials is now viewed as eccentric, if not self-destructive, complains Matthew Crawford, who took his U. of C. PhD and opened a motorcycle repair shop. Princeton economist Alan Blinder argues that the crucial distinction in the emerging labor market is not between those with more or less education, but between those whose services can be delivered over a wire and those who must do their work in person or on site. The latter will find their livelihoods more secure against outsourcing to distant countries. As Blinder puts it, 'You can't hammer a nail over the Internet' (never say never). Guess we all should have paid more attention to Nicholas Negroponte's landmark-in-retrospect Being Digital (ironically, no Kindle version)."
Businesses

How Do I Provide a Workstation To Last 15 Years? 655

Posted by timothy from the solid-state-prayer dept.
An anonymous reader writes "My father is a veterinarian with a small private practice. He runs all his patient/client/financial administration on two simple workstations, linked with a network cable. The administration application is a simple DOS application backed by a database. Now the current systems, a Pentium 66mhz and a 486, both with 8MB of RAM and 500MB of hard drive space, are getting a bit long in the tooth. The 500MB harddrives are filling up, the installed software (Windows 95) is getting a bit flakey at times. My father has asked me to think about replacing the current setup. I do know a lot about computers, but my father would really like the new setup to last 10-15 years, just like the current one has. I just dont know where to begin thinking about that kind of systems lifetime. Do I buy, or build myself? How many spare parts should I keep in reserve? What will fail first, and how many years down the line will that happen?"
Hardware Hacking

Maker Faire Storms Newcastle 43

Posted by kdawson from the robots-in-the-streets dept.
krou writes "The BBC is reporting on the first Maker Faire in the UK, in Newcastle. The event saw an incredible gathering of tech DIY enthusiasts showing off their robotic wares. Maker Faire is firmly established in the US; the 4th annual running in the Bay Area begins on May 30. The BBC video shows the fire-breathing horse, Rusty, and Titan, an eight-foot tall fully-animated robot that likes scaring kids. Elsewhere, the Faire also had Ian Sharp's physical realization of the Lunar Lander computer game, low-cost multi-touch displays, and one of the oldest-ever case mods, made by veteran computer enthusiast John Honnibal, who also showed off his old over-clocked kit computer. Pictures from the Faire are also on Flickr, and videos on YouTube."
Image

Dubai Is Building a Refrigerated Beach 249

Posted by samzenpus from the building-ice-castles dept.
dataxtream writes "The world's first refrigerated beach is to be built at a luxury hotel in Dubai, located along the southern coast of the Persian Gulf. The beach will include heat-absorbing pipes under the sand along with large wind blowers, which will keep tourists cool and guard their feet against the hot sand. Half of me says these guys need a reality check, the other half wants to go there." I believe I've just thought of a way we could solve this whole global warming thing I've been hearing about.
Medicine

Strategy Games Improve Cognitive Functions In Older Adults 64

Posted by Soulskill from the make-it-worse-in-everyone-else dept.
Researchers at the University of Illinois have completed a study about using video games to stimulate cognitive function in adults over 60 years old. The scientists selected a strategy game — because of its scope and the variety of different tasks involved — and trained a group of subjects on how to play. The gamers then scored better than a control group on a number of cognitive tests. Quoting: "The tests included measures of their ability to switch between tasks, their short-term visual memory, their reasoning skills and their working memory, which is the ability to hold two or more pieces of information in memory and use the information as needed. There were also tests of the subjects' verbal recall, their ability to inhibit certain responses and their ability to identify an object that had been rotated to a greater or lesser degree from its original position. The researchers found that training on the video game did improve the participants' performance on a number of these tests. As a group, the gamers became significantly better — and faster — at switching between tasks compared with the comparison group. Their working memory, as reflected in the tests, also was significantly improved. Their reasoning ability was enhanced. To a lesser extent, their short-term memory of visual cues was better than that of their peers, as was their ability to identify rotated objects."

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