interesting that these density improvements could both be applied to tape as well.

yeah, "tape yuck", but it makes a certain amount of sense for cool data. which we have lots of, always increasing. tape seeks are a minute or so, and if density is competitive, tape has a good chance to beat disks on price. certainly on power. the real problem is that the tape industry seems to be sort of demographically challenged...

Imagine the amount of mayhem being tacitly supported by makers of paper and pens.

Politicians think they are right to demand control of behavior because it is, theoretically possible. They don't seem to appreciate that their model for the online world is flawed: it's not like physical space, compact and easily policed. The net is a communication medium, which can no more be policed than paper, phones or *air* can be cleaned of mayhem...

In a just universe, whenever some knob uttered a platitude like that, they'd be struck by lightning or a meteor or turned into a pillar of salt.

yes, I definitely would prefer a potentially secure wireless protocol over an obviously insecure physical key. this is a no-brainer! even better: make it a public, *STANDARD* secure wireless protocol, preferably exactly the same one I use to authorize NFC payments from my phone.

how about dispense with passenger accommodations entirely? I'd rather be loaded into a shipping tube at the gate...

I don't understand why this silliness isn't being slapped down by the feds.

What kind of antisocial fiend would blame Apple for wanting to play a role in customer's lives? After all, isn't that sort of why Apple people buy Apple in the first place, the need to belong, to be involved in something bigger than themselves? You know: every sparrow, etc, etc.

docker is anti-Unix in significant ways, so should be a great match for Msft - maybe with some systemd to spice up their love-life.

The problem with corporate taxation is that it's based on profit, not income. Personal tax is always income based - imagine if you were only taxed on the income you didn't manage to spend each year! If corporate tax was based on income, it would be commensurable (and would presumably also be a much lower rate). Corporate INCOME tax would also make all these tax dodges irrelevant, since they work only because companies manipulate their profit.

"government of the people, by the people, for the people". our system seems to have lost track of the basic principles. just as the courts ignore portions of the constitution, such as "to promote the progress of science and useful arts", or "a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state".

OF COURSE China has people paid to troll slashdot. in the cyber-age, I suppose that's a compliment.

oh, nonsense. look at a map.

China's claim is absurd; no one else in the world considers these islands disputed. No amount of dredging is going to change that.

it's crazy to expose IPMI to the public net. yes, that might mean you need separate wiring for an internal subnet, and you might not be able to use all your ports for public access - just read the docs before you buy it.

First, recognize the need for empirical information on the state of your loved-on. It is of very little use to make subjective observations, since humans are incredibly good at finding patterns where none exist.

Second, recognize the difficulty of what you're undertaking. Humans are at the very beginning of understanding how our bodies work, and we have essentially no model to predict when patients will, or never will, recover from injury like this. What makes it hard is that this ignorance means that you will be trying to make decisions under extreme uncertainty - but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do so. For instance, there should probably be a time past which you withdraw life support when there are no signs of recovery. No one knows how long that should be, but the key thing is whether there are signs of hope.

What would be such signs? You've already read something about the locked-in phenomenon. First, CT cannot possibly provide any information about function: it measures x-ray density, and provides only structural information. At best, it might show which tissue has died - but unfortunately, we have very primitive knowledge of how that relates to function (or recovery). ERP (scalp electrodes) are MUCH more relevant: there is a huge literature describing the sorts of obligate responses made by sensory portions of the brain (our understanding of less sensory processes is rather spotty). PET can map metabolic activity, but that has a much less obvious relation to organized, functional brain activity. I think ERP monitoring should be your primary path forward. There is lots of research on this topic, and pretty much any university psychology/neuroscience/psychiatry department would have well-informed people you could talk to, often ones able to perform ERP tests for brain function. (The technology of ERP is very not hard, and designing effective tests is somewhat subtle. But if a test is supposed to guide a decision like continuation of life-support, it's not a casual trip-to-radioshack kind of project.)

In short, find a non-self-deluding way to gather empirical signs of functioning personhood; in the absence of such signs, figure out how long to wait.

this is NOT insightful.

we (medical or scientific communities) do not have the understanding to guide such a decision. we simply can't tell when a patient will never recover.

I personally would not want to be kept alive without prospects of a quite high quality-of-life. others certainly have different thresholds, and none of us can gainsay that preference. to do so is murder.