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Comment Re:This silly person has no idea what will happen. (Score 1) 688

by penandpaper (#48619721) Attached to: Economists Say Newest AI Technology Destroys More Jobs Than It Creates
Talk to the people that build automated tests and build configurations for software. At the last place I worked, one specialized developer did the job of 3 testers and 1 developer that released software. That company was downsizing their development team because of automated tasks like that. That is currently happening in most IT shops where I have been.

Submission + - NASA Provides Details of Unique Method for 3d Printing on Other Planets (3dprint.com)

Submitted by ErnieKey
ErnieKey writes: A major application of 3d printing that could revolutionize space travel, is that of ultimately using 3d printers to create structures on non-terrestrial bodies like the moon, other planets, and even asteroids. Researchers from NASA's Kennedy Space Center have been working to develop solutions to materials issues, and recently presented initial findings on the potential for using in-situ materials like basalt for 3D printing. Their innovative method is based on only using in-situ supplies, and not materials that need to be brought into space.

Submission + - The Vanishing Male Worker

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: The NYT reports that the share of prime-age men, those 25 to 54 years old, who are not working has more than tripled since the late 1960s to 16 percent as many men have decided that low-wage work will not improve their lives, in part because deep changes in American society have made it easier for them to live without working. These changes include the availability of federal disability benefits; the decline of marriage, which means fewer men provide for children; and the rise of the Internet, which has reduced the isolation of unemployment. Technology has made unemployment less lonely says Tyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason University, who argues that the Internet allows men to entertain themselves and find friends and sexual partners at a much lower cost than did previous generations. Perhaps most important, it has become harder for men to find higher-paying jobs as foreign competition and technological advances have eliminated many of the jobs open to high school graduates. The trend was pushed to new heights by the last recession, with 20 percent of prime-age men not working in 2009 before partly receding. But the recovery is unlikely to be complete. "Like turtles flipped onto their backs, many people who stop working struggle to get back on their feet," writes Appelbaum. "Some people take years to return to the work force, and others never do "

A study published in October by scholars at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Family Studies estimated that 37 percent of the decline in male employment since 1979 can be explained by this retreat from marriage and fatherhood (PDF). “When the legal, entry-level economy isn’t providing a wage that allows someone a convincing and realistic option to become an adult — to go out and get married and form a household — it demoralizes them and shunts them into illegal economies,” says Philippe Bourgois, an anthropologist who has studied the lives of young men in urban areas. “It’s not a choice that has made them happy. They would much rather be adults in a respectful job that pays them and promises them benefits.”

Submission + - NASA's $349 Million Empty Tower (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In a scathing indictment of the NASA bureaucracy, the Washington Post documents a $349 million project to construct a laboratory tower that was closed as soon as it was finished. "[The tower was] designed to test a new rocket engine in a chamber that mimicked the vacuum of space. ... As soon as the work was done, it shut the tower down. The project was officially 'mothballed' — closed up and left empty — without ever being used. ... The reason for the shutdown: The new tower — called the A-3 test stand — was useless. Just as expected. The rocket program it was designed for had been canceled in 2010. ... The result was that NASA spent four more years building something it didn’t need. Now, the agency will spend about $700,000 a year to maintain it in disuse. ... Jerked from one mission to another, NASA lost its sense that any mission was truly urgent. It began to absorb the vices of less-glamorous bureaucracies: Officials tended to let projects run over time and budget. Its congressional overseers tended to view NASA first as a means to deliver pork back home, and second as a means to deliver Americans into space. In Mississippi, NASA built a monument to its own institutional drift."

Comment Re:No (Score 1) 1051

by penandpaper (#48585123) Attached to: Time To Remove 'Philosophical' Exemption From Vaccine Requirements?

Tell me more about how you can encounter smallpox in the wild. Clearly, enough people encountered smallpox in the wild and built an inoculation over time. The people that died just got the wrong pathogen of course. It had nothing to do with vaccines, right?

When your immune system cannot fight off such pathogens and you have to rely on herd immunity, will you have the same reservations against vaccines?

Comment Re:There is no vaccine for the worst diseases (Score 1) 1051

by penandpaper (#48584729) Attached to: Time To Remove 'Philosophical' Exemption From Vaccine Requirements?

Perhaps the risk due to reaction to vaccines should be equated to seat belts. In most crashes a seat belt will save your life (and having been through a few in my long life, I can attest to that), but in certain types of crashes it doesn't help at all (and I can't attest to this since dead people can't talk...other than Steve Jobs).

That is the point of the Vaccine courts, isn't it?. Measure the possibility of a manufacturing mistake and individual variation to vaccine reaction. FWIK, that court is very strict on what it will allow as evidence because it has to have scientific evidence to be a valid claim. Which is incredibly hard to do for something as well studied as vaccines.

The chances of adverse vaccine reactions is so low it's like the chance of getting in a car accident on the moon. There are a rover up there so an accident could happen if you jump the wrong way (if you also consider the rover a type of car).

Comment Re:There is no vaccine for the worst diseases (Score 2, Insightful) 1051

by penandpaper (#48583319) Attached to: Time To Remove 'Philosophical' Exemption From Vaccine Requirements?

A low percentage of people have adverse reactions to them

That is why there is the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act. That low percentage is much lower than what you make it sound.

Most people that I have seen that have "severe reactions" to vaccines are fear mongering idiots that blame vaccines for a broken arm in football. As demonstrated earlier ITT: cold gone in 5 days after homeopathic pill == homeopathic cure for the cold!

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