Comment No damage from the quake? (Score 5, Funny) 65
Even Canadian earthquakes are nice and overly polite.
Is Non-Prescription ADHD Medication Use Ever Ethical? 487
derekmead writes "College students' voracious appetite for study drugs like Adderall is widespread enough that it was one of the main topics of a marquee lecture on neuroethics at Society for Neuroscience's 2012 conference called 'The Impact of Neuroscience on Society: The Neuroethics of "Smart Drugs."' It was excellent stuff by Barbara Sahakian, faculty at Department of Psychicatry at the University of Cambridge. Her focus is on prescription drugs for diseases and conditions like Alzheimer's, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and depression, with the fundamental goal of understanding the neural basis of dysfunction to develop better drugs. Specifically, she wants to create drugs with no risk for substance abuse which means drugs that have no effect on dopamine. The true goal then of her research, fundamentally and briefly, is to repair the impaired. But doing so brings us to the discussion of how much repair is ethical when the repair can be disseminated to people who don't actually need it. Divisions abound on what is to be done. Some experts say that if people can boost their abilities to make up for what mother nature didn't give them, what's wrong with that? Others say that people shouldn't be using these drugs because they're designed for people with serious problems who really need help. So another question for the ethicists is whether cognitive enhancers will ultimately level the playing field or juice the opposing team."
Comment Re:Make it illegal (Score 1) 1199
Oh, if only I had mod points.
In fact, I started smoking because of the military. I did a lot of bitching of my own about my mother's smoking when I was a kid, then turned around and started doing it once I was an "adult." Anything to take the edge off that stress.
Comment Re:Don't try (Score 1) 726
I'm a bit late on this, but something he should keep in mind is that the Lucky Starr books are a bit dated in their science. I'm not sure if you're going for "fun read" or "get the kid into genuine science," but there are parts of some of them that are flat-out wrong.
"Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus" is the most obviously incorrect one, but I seem to recall that the original one ("Lucky Starr - Space Ranger") got some things wrong as well. Just something to keep in mind - a lot of Asimov's stuff has aged extremely well, but that particular series didn't.
Also, the pen name was Paul French - but the volume I have also has Asimov's name on it.
Comment This has been known for years... (Score 1) 307
... as a rumor, at least.
I worked with high-power RF in the military for 5 years, and it was "common knowledge" that the SHF curse was alive and well. Men who worked with the radios had the "curse" of only having female children when they had kids at all. As such, I'm totally unsurprised at reading this.
Microsoft Killing Silverlight? 324
SharkLaser writes "Silverlight 5 might be last version released by Microsoft. Several industry insiders and partners for the last few weeks have heard from their own Microsoft sources that there won't be new versions released after Silverlight 5. Status on service packs and support for Silverlight is unclear, as Microsoft haven't yet released lifecycle support end date even for the previous Silverlight 4. By their support page they will give full year head-up before ending support. With Adobe ending development of Flash for mobile browsers and Microsoft ending development of Silverlight, HTML5 video looks a lot more promising. But will content providers be able to give out their material without DRM and how does HTML5 perform with non-video side of Flash and Silverlight?"
Comment Re:Wouldn't that take a lot from the game? (Score 1) 141
I'm just imagining Lou Piniella shouting at a robot umpire, taking off his cap, throwing it on the ground at the robot's feet, picking up a base, throwing it down the right field line, picking up the robot ump, carrying it with him, throwing the base some more, and repeating.
US Intelligence Mining Your Social Network Data 240
bs0d3 writes "U.S. Intelligence has hired social scientists to mine the vast resources of the Internet — Web searches and Twitter messages, Facebook and blog posts, the digital location trails generated by billions of cellphones. They intend to use this info to track sociological laws of human behavior — enabling them to predict political crises, revolutions and other forms of social and economic instability. Privacy advocates are deeply skeptical of the project, saying it reminds them of Total Information Awareness, a 9/11 Pentagon program that proposed hunting for potential attackers by identifying patterns in vast collections of public and private data: telephone calling records, e-mail, travel data, visa and passport information, and credit card transactions. In a recent budget proposal, the defense agency argues that its analysis can expose terrorist cells and other groups by tracking their meetings, rehearsals and sharing of material and money transfers."
Submission + - Capcom announces unreplayable game (dvice.com) 3
Hatta writes: Resident Evil: Mercenaries 3D for the Nintendo 3DS will be an experience that can be completed once per customer. Using a single, unwipable save slot Capcom ensures that a second hand customer gets a second rate experience. If you buy this game used, you will be stuck with the previous owner's progress, unable to start the game fresh.
Submission + - Student suspended for posting on YouTube (theglobeandmail.com) 2
An anonymous reader writes: A Canadian student has been suspended from school and had the police called on him due to satirical animations that he posted to YouTube.
Jack Christie, a 12th-grade student at the Donald A. Wilson Secondary School in Whitby, Ontario, Canada, created the videos in his own time, off-campus.
Jack Christie, a 12th-grade student at the Donald A. Wilson Secondary School in Whitby, Ontario, Canada, created the videos in his own time, off-campus.
Comment Re:Anti-Slashdot Effect (Score 0) 568
I'm sure it'll be hard for you to overstate your satisfaction.
Comment What the hell is Thunderbolt? (Score 1, Insightful) 568
The first thought when I read that was "... is this a P-47 or something?"
Is it possible this thing's major failing is that few people have heard of it? (ignoring that if it comes from Apple, it's probably a proprietary standard with licensing fees to match...)
Comment And this is why... (Score 1) 288
... if you're going to do something dodgy, you put fake names into your software registration fields.
Comment Re:Everyone has skeletons. (Score 1) 610
Woosh!
Comment Oh noes! (Score 1) 323
Golly gee! This law being passed is going to screw EVERYTHING up for me!
Or not. I'll keep doing what I've done in the past - if I want to hear something, I'll listen to it on the radio or do without. Most of the movies coming out these days? I wouldn't spend money on those either.
Let's hope that they keep spending their money on bribes^H^H^H^H^H^Hcampaign contributions, and eventually go broke. Fuck 'em.
