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Comment Sounds like a perfect plan for a Eugenics program. (Score 0) 399

Clearly, we need to start a eugenics program that would create humans that have the following traits:
- Petite in stature
- Ultra efficient metabolism. Just increasing our intestines efficiency by 1 or 2 percent would save huge amounts of food.
- Highly intelligent.
- More efficient gas exchange (Humans in the Himalayans already have this trait) so they could function in lower pressure, lower O2 levels.

A human with those traits would be perfect.

Comment Re:I still don't see what's wrong with X (Score 4, Interesting) 226

Seriously, what's so broken about X? Is it just a pain in the ass for developers to work with?

I taught myself X from scratch last year. I didn't find it hard at all. In fact, I found it a whole lot easier than either of the fancy modern GUI toolkits that I looked at first and tried to use to implement the project I was working on.

Out of desperation born of lack of progress over an extended period, I thought I'd take a look at X. And suddenly it became easy to get the interface to behave *exactly* the way I wanted instead in somebody else's idea of what I should want.

And the documentation was complete, correct, and easy to follow. I didn't have to keep asking people for help (often, with no resolution). In a word, both the documentation and the code for X are mature. Which I submit beats bleeding edge every time if you're trying to build something robust.

Comment Re:So competition is bad? (Score 1) 232

My parents (who live in Auburn (a suburb of Worcester)) have Charter and even compared to Verizon they've had great service. They had an issue with one of their boxes and Charter came out same day, replaced it, a second box and then proceeded to replace the wiring in the house, all at no cost. As an ISP they're not world class, but their reliable and responsive when problems crop up.

Is Charter a panache? No. They're just a bit better than the average which oddly makes them pretty damn good.. which is really sad.

Comment Re:Just tell me (Score 3, Interesting) 463

No, it didn't. It was "some sort" of droplet transmission by monkeys in adjacent cages.

That is NOT -- repeat, NOT -- "airborne" transmission.

And no, it didn't go through the ventilation system; it was later learned that sick monkeys sneezing while they were being transported past well monkeys did indeed transmit the virus in this case.

It was also a completely different strain than the one we are talking about.

Airborne transmission occurs when an infectious agent is able to cling to particulates in the air and ride air currents for significant amounts of time, over significant distances, through ventilation systems, etc., long after the infected person who expelled the virus is no longer in the area.

Droplet transmission is NOT "airborne" transmission. It is projecting bodily fluids directly onto a well person in close quarters...usually less than 3 feet, but under optimal conditions, perhaps further. That is still not airborne transmission.

Furthermore, coughing/sneezing is probably one of the least effective ways to spread Ebola, even via droplets. Blood, feces, and vomit are the primary ways this will be spread. Yes, virus "could" be in saliva, mucous, semen, etc. But that's not the primary way Ebola spreads.

Airborne transmission would be very bad, but the Ebola virus is too large to spread this way. It would have to shed about 75% of its genome to be small enough for airborne transmission in sub-5um droplet nuclei that could ride on particulates. And if it did that, it wouldn't be "Ebola" anymore -- it would be something very different; perhaps still deadly, perhaps not, and so much different from what we are talking about right now that it is next to meaningless to discuss.

So, in closing: no, Ebola is not airborne.

Comment Re:Mars has no magnetosphere (Score 1) 549

I guess that's cool until the moment some crazy terrorist engineers some crazy strain of the spanish flu and kills half the population.
Or Yellow Stone erupts and the world is thrown into climatic chaos
Or an asteroid hits, etc...

Why don't we do both? Make Earth a paradise and build the technologies to go to mars and make it a paradise too.

Comment How about we blame everybody... (Score 1) 622

Firstly, There needs to be better education about what happens when you take a picture with your phone and where it ends up. I've had conversations where the person doesn't get that once the picture is on facebook if they delete it from their phone it's still on facebook. We don't have to go into the gory details, but there needs to be better understanding about the causality of posting a picture, even as a text.

Secondly, the person should clearly understand that if they post a nude picture to something like apples cloud what the permanent ramifications of that are.

Thirdly, (I know this is already happening) device manufacturers need to start implementing two factor authentication and key management systems.

Thus if [insert random person] wants to send a nude photograph to someone... a) the file is encrypted on the server use the persons private key and the recipient is using a separate revocable key to look at it. Thus in the future if things don't work out, the first person take that recipient off their allowed list and presto the pictures aren't viewable.

This doesn't prevent the recipient at the time from making copies or forwarding the pictures, but it would mitigate some of the danger of the persons phone getting hacked.

Nothing is perfect other than not taking pictures, but in the social age we're in, that behavior isn't going to suddenly change so technology should keep up to protect people as best as possible.

Comment What 20 years of research on pot has taught us (Score 1, Troll) 263

What twenty years of research on cannabis use has taught us

Read the full study in the journal Addiction

What twenty years of research on cannabis use has taught us

In the past 20 years recreational cannabis use has grown tremendously, becoming almost as common as tobacco use among adolescents and young adults, and so has the research evidence. A major new review in the scientific journal Addiction sets out the latest information on the effects of cannabis use on mental and physical health.

The key conclusions are:

Adverse effects of acute cannabis use
- Cannabis does not produce fatal overdoses.
- Driving while cannabis-intoxicated doubles the risk of a car crash; this risk increases substantially if users are also alcohol-intoxicated.
- Cannabis use during pregnancy slightly reduces birth weight of the baby.

Adverse effects of chronic cannabis use
- Regular cannabis users can develop a dependence syndrome, the risks of which are around 1 in 10 of all cannabis users and 1 in 6 among those who start in adolescence.
- Regular cannabis users double their risks of experiencing psychotic symptoms and disorders, especially if they have a personal or family history of psychotic disorders, and if they start using cannabis in their mid-teens.
- Regular adolescent cannabis users have lower educational attainment than non-using peers but we donâ(TM)t know whether the link is causal.
- Regular adolescent cannabis users are more likely to use other illicit drugs, but we donâ(TM)t know whether the link is causal.
- Regular cannabis use that begins in adolescence and continues throughout young adulthood appears to produce intellectual impairment, but the mechanism and reversibility of the impairment is unclear.
- Regular cannabis use in adolescence approximately doubles the risk of being diagnosed with schizophrenia or reporting psychotic symptoms in adulthood.
- Regular cannabis smokers have a higher risk of developing chronic bronchitis.
- Cannabis smoking by middle aged adults probably increases the risk of myocardial infarction.

Professor Hallâ(TM)s report is published online today in the scientific journal Addition.

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