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Comment Re:Parents fault (Score 1) 355

by interkin3tic (#46772713) Attached to: Kids Can Swipe a Screen But Can't Use LEGOs
No no no! You're totally selling it wrong! You've got to say it's building up! Lemme give you an example:

"Studies show that the CRACK BABIES OF THE 80'S are now having crack babies of their own who are EVEN WORSE and UNABLE TO PLAY WITH LEGOS AND INSTEAD HAVE EVIL HACKING SKILLS!!!"

See? Three offers of employment in my inbox from Huffington Post already!

Comment Re:Information = Wealth = Power (Score 1) 98

by interkin3tic (#46767297) Attached to: Google Looked Into Space Elevator, Hoverboards, and Teleportation
I'm always hearing about google being the target of Steve Jobs' ego-driven "thermonuclear war" with patents. What are some examples of google patent trolling as you've suggested? I'm not saying I think google is actually behaving unlike a corporation, just that I don't know of any examples of them doing what you're saying they're doing.

Comment Re:Rewarding the bullies... (Score 2) 798

High profile murderers who make no attempt to conceal their crime usually do it more for attention. They might tell themselves it's for higher reasons, like they hate that politician or that race, but really it's that their egos aren't satisfied. Same with school shootings. They shoot up their schools because they want attention from their classmates. With columbine and other school shootings, we like to tell ourselves they're going rambo because they were bullied, and the shooters did too. We tell ourselves the lie because it's easier to think kids only do this when put under extreme pressure by bullying, we don't like to think that some kids are just psychopaths who are evil. They told themselves it was because of bullying because that sounds better than "We're bored and want attention."

Although early media reports attributed the shootings to a desire for revenge on the part of Harris and Klebold for bullying that they received, subsequent psychological analysis indicated Harris and Klebold harbored serious psychological problems. According to Dave Cullen, Harris, who conceived the attacks, was a "cold-blooded, predatory psychopath" and an intelligent, charming liar with "a preposterously grand superiority complex, a revulsion for authority and an excruciating need for control". In Cullen's assessment, Harris lacked remorse or empathy for others, and sought to punish them for their perceived inferiority.

wiki

Comment Re:Not even much money (Score 1) 423

To be fair, that number is probably a lot lower than it would be in sane political climates. Mention taxes and the voters go insane. Mention much of anything besides jobs and yay USA and they'll go insane. "They're trying to take away your refund!" will get a lot more traction than "death panels" did.

Comment Re:the 70's called (Score 1) 343

What are you saying? Surely you're not suggesting that any scary scientific predictions made in the 70's cannot as a rule come true.

I'd suggest some of those dire predictions were self-defeating predictions anyway. CFCs and the ozone hole for example lead to a reduction in CFC emissions. Politicians occasionally listen to scientists.

Comment Re:The problem is that too much of it is state bas (Score 1) 135

Okay, I think you need to take your own advice, I didn't think you were suggesting abolishing government funding. I'm suggesting that we keep the same amount of state funded research, but put it into higher risk grants and let the private sector take over more sure projects, which will get the benefits you're hoping for.

Comment That explains it (Score 1) 328

Yesterday netflix was looking great, yet when I tried to check my e-mail, nothing. Speedtest didn't even load. I assumed someone else in the building was torrenting. The whole building shares a comcast line of some type, included in rent, and at best it's exactly as bad as you'd expect. Now the internet is going to be unusable for anything OTHER than netflix.

I really have to hand it to comcast to finding ways to consistently make things worse than expected.

Comment Re:The problem is that too much of it is state bas (Score 1) 135

I disagree. One of the points of the article was that grants were too safe. Government grants are necessary to pay for research that is high-risk but high reward. If I want to do a multi-million dollar study that maybe has a 98% chance of leading nowhere but has a 2% chance of curing cancer, that's a probably a terrible risk for private sector, but should be funded by the government. Instead, with so much competition, grant comittees are playing it safe and boring. That type of research can be funded by the private sector maybe.

Comment Re:No shit, Sherlock (Score 1) 135

It sure took you some time to notice the bloody obvious, folks

What? No it didn't. The article pointed out that the problem was noticed, and commented on, including some of the authors, for the past few decades.

No one will ever need that many faculty. And for most jobs outside uni, that time spent in PhD comics land is not a good preparation. At all.

That's only part of the problem. The article pointed out that a lot of the problem was actually after PhD, the postdoc phase. Postdocs are paid peanuts becuase it's only supposed to be a temporary situation. The result is that permanent staff scientist jobs that one can live on long term don't really exist.

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