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Comment There's opportunities (Score 1) 237

My PhD work required that I learn programming, I learned R. Now I'm starting to learn Python in addition to R.

There's plenty of opportunities for someone who is a programmer that is interested in science, where I'm sitting. I just hired an MS level employee who had experience modeling but not with programming. I'm looking to hire one programmer to do some R package work for me shortly and another to do some "big data" sort of work. However, it's not always easy to find someone to fill these positions who has enough science background or interest.

Depending on your interests and skills, there are jobs that would definitely suit you. A general programming skill with a general interest in science can net you some interesting positions.

Comment Re:Be careful what you wish for CA (Score 1) 105

I was just thinking the same thing. Open access is great! Who's paying for it? The costs of my last publication were nearly $3000 because I chose open access. I'm lucky to have the funds to do it at the moment.

I hope that this action is backed up with sufficient support to actually publish as open access. Somehow I suspect maybe not.

Comment Re:So much for that! (Score 1) 579

Soybean seeds, as in this article, are not hybrids, they're inbred varieties. Same thing with wheat. Still mostly the same with rice, though there is hybrid rice, but it's not nearly as common as inbred rice.

Corn is a hybrid because hybrid vigor offers so much better performance and it's easy to detassle so you have female-only plants to be pollenated by neighboring plants.

I won't address other plants, but as far as I'm aware, corn is the only major crop that is a hybrid.

Plants that reproduce the same year after year are likely to be inbreds that is not equal to heirloom. I can think of plenty of rice varieties that are modern mega-varieties that have displaced older landraces, neither one is a hybrid.

In the US it's not common to save seeds year after year because the quality offered by seed companies is better. To effectively save and clean seed can be done, but the time and equipment required usually means it's more efficient to buy new seed every year. This differs from crop to crop and by country/region. But in this case, I disagree with the assumption that farmers "regularly" propagate, sow, harvest and save seeds (in the US).

Comment Re:Missing Benefits and the Bigger Picture (Score 1) 689

At the graduate level...most of these international students get a full ride. At least that's how I've seen it done. Nothing wrong with that...let's just make sure we keep them here to make the USA stronger rather than give them the boot.

"A full ride", please define.

While I earned my PhD most of my fellow students in the department were foreign and they struggled as much or more than I did to pay tuition, rent, buy food, etc. on the stipend that we were given.

Most of them wished to stay in the US once they finished their work. I, as a US citizen chose to leave.

Comment Re:Google Police (Score 1) 200

Three Questions.

How can you loose a phone while showing it off to all your friends in a bar?

Its already been knocked off in China so whats the big deal?

Can I have one?

One question.

How do you loose a phone in a bar? It's an inanimate object, or so I'd suppose.

C'mon, this is /. We're supposed to be an educated crowd here.

Comment Re:yes it can (Score 1) 317

Are you sure you're using a Nokia phone?

That's one of the best features about my N9, off-line maps.

Hell, even my N97 Mini has this feature. There is no need to be connected at all, assuming you downloaded the maps prior to use.

Comment Long and winding road (Score 1) 867

Red Hat 7.3
Yoper
Mandrake
OpenSuSE
Slackware
Ubuntu
CrunchBang
Mint
Arch
Ubuntu

I flirted with other more obscure distros along the way, had one on a netbook and something else on my main workstation, etc. Lately I've taken to just using Ubuntu these days on my workstation. I can compile the stuff I really care about for optimization (R), everything else is easily available and it just works on my Dell workstation. At home I've gone over to Mac for my photography and just the whole ecosystem.

Comment Re:Jumping to conclusions... (Score 1) 209

The whole point of the Green Revolution was to make our crop plants more efficient at making food for us. Total biological output from the crops has not increased.

I'm puzzled by this comment. Isn't increased efficiency leading to higher biological output from plants?

Plant one hectare of inbred corn, and one hectare of hybrid corn. Fertilize and control pests in exactly the same way and you're telling me the biological output of hybrid corn isn't greater?

Comment Re:Didn't WebOS try this already (Score 4, Insightful) 114

Yes, Facebook did just retreat from HTML 5. However, the difference there is that they were attempting to support how many different hardwares, screen resolutions, browsers, etc.

Mozilla here can work with it because they are vertically integrated. They can optimize the apps for their phone alone, not worrying about other phones' screen sizes, resolutions, processors, etc. That's not to say it's not still risky. HTML5 is scarcely grown up, IMO.

Comment Re:there's always a bottom 5% (Score 2) 279

On the other hand: people that choose to live there, do they nééd fixed-line access?

Except we didn't have this attitude toward electricity and telephone. We made sure that everyone was brought up to par with everyone else in rural areas.

I'm sorry to see that we have this attitude toward Internet connections now. What has happened since the Rural Electrification Act that we find it acceptable to say "they chose to live there, therefore should go without"?

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