Comment Don't touch my packet! (Score 2, Funny) 125
I read the headline and assumed this would be another story about the TSA's screening procedures...
Comment "Web bugs"? (Score 5, Informative) 88
I hate to be the guy who complains about the headline of a story... but a "web bug" is an image in a web page or HTML email that allows the site owner to track who has visited the page or read the email. This story has absolutely nothing to do with "web bugs". How about "browser bug" instead?
Comment Re:Simple really... (Score 1) 489
Why would a corporation care about a grieving widow, unless there was some sort of bad publicity to arise out of... oh dear.
The better corporations realize that money isn't made from getting a customer, but maintaining good customer relationships with current customers. In this economy, no one can afford to provide poor customer service. I hope Verizon changes its policy to deal with the deaths of its current customers.
Women Dropping Out of IT 706
Women's eNews has an interesting look at women in tech, with numbers showing that women are bailing out of the IT field at a rapid pace. "Technology jobs are predicted to grow at a faster rate than all other jobs in the professional sector, up to 22% over the next decade, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Compensation is also good. In 2008, women in tech made an average salary of $70,370. ... But women's stake in that rosy outlook is questionable. For starters, men's pay during the same time period was $80,357. A study by the National Center for Women and Information Technology ... also finds that women are leaving computer careers in staggering numbers. 'Fifty-six percent of women in technology companies leave their organizations at the mid-level point, 10-20 years in their careers,' said Catherine Ashcraft, the senior research scientist who authored the report. In 2008, women held only 25% of all professional IT-related jobs, down from 36% in 1991, according to the group's report, 'Women in IT: The Facts.'"
Comment Re:also: more doctors, less pay, more compassion. (Score 1) 584
This will take science. It will take art. It will take innovation. It will take ambition.
It will also take the realization that the leading causes of death in the USA are all preventable:
- tobacco usage
- poor diet and physical inactivity
- alcohol consumption
Source: http://proxychi.baremetal.com/csdp.org/research/1238.pdf
There's only so much a doctor can do to stop the damage if the patient is already physically in poor health.
Comment This is actually a rather political issue. (Score 1) 311
The political issue at hand is this: Should the government allow people to make irrational decisions when the mistakes can be costly or deadly? There is a movement called "soft paternalism" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_paternalism) that basically argues that many people are making irrational decisions, so the government should gently nudge them into making rational ones. There are many books promoting this idea, including Nudge, The Paradox of Choice and Free Market Madness.
This sounds all nice and wonderful until you realize that it's ultimately politicians and bureaucrats that is deciding what is "rational" for a person to spend their money on -- like they're such great role models
Comment Re:Interesting... (Score 1) 584
I'll admit that my concept of our spending is probably skewed by intentionally misleading infographics and such, but this doesn't seem to jive with anything I've ever seen. Can someone explain how this is true, or point to something that does?
The cost of health care driving the US deficit and federal debt is actually old news:
http://www.iousa.com/ (30-minute version of the film film, highly engrossing)
http://www.pgpf.org/resources/PGPF_CitizensGuide_2009.pdf (Summary in PDF format)
Comment Re:Not the first and not the last (Score 4, Interesting) 315
I hate to interrupt a good old-fashioned witch-hunt, but AOL was instrumental in the creation of a little group called the Mozilla Foundation, transferring hardware and intellectual property to them and donating $2 million.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation#History
So maybe they're not all bad.
Submission + - New Air Conditioner Process cuts energy use 50-90% (nrel.gov) 2
necro81 writes: The U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory has announced that it has developed a new method for air conditioning that reduces energy use by 50-90%. The DEVap system cools air using evaporative cooling, which is not new, but combines the process with a liquid dessicant for pulling the water vapor out of the cooled air stream. The liquid dessicant, a very strong aqueous solution of lithium chloride or sodium chloride, is separated from the air stream by a permeable hydrophobic membrane. Heat is later used to evaporate water vapor back out — heat that can come from a variety of sources such as solar or natural gas. The dessicants are, compared to typical refrigerants like HCFCs, relatively safe for the environment.
Submission + - Why Being Wrong Makes Humans So Smart 1
Hugh Pickens writes: "Kathryn Schulz writes in the Boston Globe that the more scientists understand about cognitive functioning, the more it becomes clear that our capacity to make mistakes is utterly inextricable from what makes the human brain so swift, adaptable, and intelligent and that rather than treating errors like the bedbugs of the intellect — an appalling and embarrassing nuisance we try to pretend out of existence, we need to recognize that human fallibility is part and parcel of human brilliance. Neuroscientists increasingly think that inductive reasoning undergirds virtually all of human cognition. Humans use inductive reasoning to learn language, organize the world into meaningful categories, and grasp the relationship between cause and effect in the physical, biological, and psychological realms and thanks to inductive reasoning, we are able to form nearly instantaneous beliefs and take action accordingly. But our use of inductive reasoning comes with a price. "The distinctive thing about inductive reasoning is that it generates conclusions that aren’t necessarily true. They are, instead, probabilistically true — which means they are possibly false," writes Schulz. "Because we reason inductively, we will sometimes get things wrong." Schulz recommends that we respond to the mistakes (or putative mistakes) of those around us with empathy and generosity and demand that our business and political leaders acknowledge and redress their errors rather than ignoring or denying them. "Once we recognize that we do not err out of laziness, stupidity, or evil intent, we can liberate ourselves from the impossible burden of trying to be permanently right. We can take seriously the proposition that we could be in error, without deeming ourselves idiotic or unworthy.""
Submission + - EMI says Copyrights more valuable than Music (economist.com)
vampire_baozi writes: An article and the Economist notes that EMI is reshuffling its top management, and the new head honcho is coming with a new mission: "http://www.emimusic.com/news/2010/emi-to-reposition-itself-as-a-comprehensive-rights-management-company-serving-artists-and-songwriters-worldwide/reposition itself as a comprehensive rights-management company serving artists and songwriters worldwide. Rough translation: owning and exploiting the copyright to songs, rather than selling recordings of songs, is where the money’s going to be from now on." Guess this means the war is over, the lawyers won, and future battles will be very expensive.
Submission + - Geologists to be charged for not predicting quake? (earthmagazine.org)
mmmscience writes: In 2009, a series of small earthquakes shook the region of L'Aquila, Italy. Seismologists investigated the tremors, but concluded that there was no direct indication of a big 'quake on the horizon. Less than a month later, a magnitude-6.3 earthquake killed more than 300 people. Now, the chief prosecutor of L'Aquila is looking to charge the scientists with gross negligent manslaughter for not predicting the 'quake.
Neuromancer Movie In Your Future? 239
An anonymous reader pointed out a link talking about how Vincenzo Natali, writer/director of Splice, has written a screenplay for Neuromancer. The article says he even ran it by Gibson. No studio is attached to the project, but at least Natali promised "No Keanu."
Convert a SIM To a MicroSIM, With a Meat Cleaver 302
An anonymous reader writes "This morning, my shiny new iPad 3G 64GB arrived from the USA! The only problem was, it had an AT&T MicroSIM and as yet there is no such thing in the UK. So what's the solution? Get a chopping board, a meat cleaver, and a pair of scissors — simples!"
Comment that's an interesting bank statement, mr salesman (Score 2, Insightful) 204
My company recently bought a used copier/scanner/printer, which had supposedly been reconditioned and cleaned. It included a "document server" feature, whereby jobs could be scanned to its internal disk (or print jobs could be stored in the printer for later printing). The salesman who sold it to us had helpfully left scans of his current account statement in the document server, together with some placating letters to other customers. After thinking about what uses we'd actually have, I decided just to turn the document server feature off for everyone. I did leave the deferred-jobs part on (as it's useful when someone is printing on weird stock or printing something confidential) - thus ensuring that anything left on the copier (the company is now defunct, the copier presumably resold) is guaranteed to be juicy.
