Comment Hmmm... (Score 4, Informative) 463
...cutting those studies in which less than 60% of graduates fail for two consecutive years to find work.
I guess the headline should be "China to Cancel College Majors That Do Pay
Comment The McDonald Observatory (Score 2) 363
The McDonald Observatory is way out in the middle of nowhere by design, so it might not seem worth hitting, but you shouldn't miss it. Placed at the highest point on the Texas highway system in the clear desert air and in a black-out zone where they keep people from 20 miles around from having lights on at night, you'll reliably see the best stars in the continental US. Come to a star party, and they have half a dozen telescopes set up on major sky sites 3 nights a week. A few times a year, you can view through either the 107 inch, 82 inch, or 36 inch research telescopes. Come during the day to tour the 433 inch telescope, one of the largest in the world. If you can, stay at the inexpensive Astronomer's Lodge and hang out with the astronomers doing research there.
I heard about this through my mother (a former high-school English teacher) and took several days out of vacation (we live in Chicago) to travel there with my wife (an HR exec). Both of them thought it was fantastically worthwhile, so imagine how good it was for science geeks like us.
Comment Re:Did it "confirm" it was caused by man? (Score 1) 967
98% of all climate studies do not even attempt to address the cause, yet you somehow think otherwise and are pretending instead that 98% of all studies do attempt to address the cause.
We both pulled a figure out of our asses.. but my pull is actually approximately correct.
Actually, the 98% figure comes not from anyones ass but from the scientific literature. Both of the following two papers conclude that ~98% of active climatologists concur with the consensus around climate change (hence the term "consensus").
Doran, P. T. and M. K. Zimmerman (2009), Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change, Eos Trans. AGU, 90(3), 22, doi:10.1029/2009EO030002.
Anderegg WRL,; Prall JW,; Harold J,; Schneider SH. (2010) Expert credibility in climate change. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 107:12107–12109.
Why do you believe that your pull is more accurate than these studies?
Submission + - Better airplane boarding method (arxiv.org)
mpsmps writes: New research by Jason Steffen at Fermilab shows that boarding planes by rows is the worst possible ways and that big improvements in boarding time can be achieved with more optimized methods. The full paper is here. I'm glad to see that Fermilab is going to be doing something useful now that the tevatron is shutting down.
Comment Re:Contamination (Score 1) 154
The concern is that our microbes may be the "invasive species" that destroys the native life on Mars, which would literally be a genocide.
Comment The organizer has a good point (Score 1) 609
For those who didn't RTFA, after the organizer said that he respected RMS' right to cancel the talk and that happens, he did make good points about why RMS' decision is disappointing for his fans.
You chose the "Free beer" giving up the "Free of speech" and that disappoints me very much since it has to do with the genuinity implementation of your own presented ideas.
Elsewhere in the response he gives the details
Boycotting the Israeli Universities since you get funds from Palestinians means that you accepted the Palestinians proprietary license. Neither you nor them want to help their neighbor.
I agree, and my respect for RMS' idealism is lessened.
Submission + - Prisoners in China must play WoW (foxnews.com)
mpsmps writes: Apparently, Chinese prisoners ad being forced to gold farm World of Warcraft to make money for the guards. You'd think that would be punishment enough
Comment Re:Wow! (Score 2) 280
Seriously, is it common (in the states) to "own" your employees even when they are not at work?
You would be surprised, but yes it is very common for companies to claim IP over things created even when an employee is doing them on their own free time. Companies argue that exposure to their policies arguably enabled the person to create the product, service or technology... which is wrong in my opinion but it still happens. I think that if you work for a company and there aren't explicit agreements in place you are protected in most states but you should definitely check first before starting up something awesome.
This is bad for all of us because it slows down the invention of new things to the angular flow rate of cold molasses.
The important thing is to make things clear. If you approach your employer (ideally) before starting your own spare-time idea that is clearly distinct from their business, most reasonable companies will give you a letter saying that it is your own. This simple step can save a lot of problems.
Comment Maybe something from this NIST report? (Score 3, Informative) 312
The Economic Impacts of Inadequate Infrastructure for Software Testing finds an average ROI for software testing somewhere between about 100% and 1000%.
Comment What! This is fake? (Score 1) 240
There goes my Chanukah present
Comment A mathematician would look at a rigorous study (Score 1) 1153
Comment Re:Please correct me if I'm wrong.... (Score 1) 99
The question here is.... where is the pressure on Mars at 10 millibars? At the bottom of Hellas Basin and Valles Marineris it can certainly approach a couple hundred millibar of pressure.
At the bottom of Hellas Basin, air pressure is 11.5 millibars. You might want to consider the saying that "when you're in a hole (e.g., the Hellas Basin), you need to stop digging."
Comment Re:Please correct me if I'm wrong.... (Score 2, Informative) 99
As for Total Recall, I thought it was a fun diversion, but as for realism I thought it was absolutely stupid and highly inaccurate. "Scientifically accurate depiction of exposure to the Martian atmosphere".... hardly. It looked cool on film I suppose but it really didn't work very well. FYI, you can survive on Mars with mostly a pressure suit and an oxygen mask. Parts of the surface of Mars have the same atmospheric pressure as the top of Everest. Really, it isn't nearly as bad as depicted in the movie.
Your complaints about the movie's scientific accuracy would be more compelling if you were more accurate than the movie was. Air pressure on Mars is less than 10 millibars. Air pressure at the top of Mt. Everest is about 300 millibars. Not remotely "the same atmospheric pressure".
Comment Re:Why does linux get this? (Score 1) 240
On the plus side, there is now a 64-bit plug-in for Windows. On the minus side, I just installed it, and whenever I go to a page with flash using Shiretoko (64-bit firefox), the browser just crashes. Sounds like a pretty easy plug-in to write...
Comment It's slipping already (Score 1) 356
The summary quotes the last paragraph of the article as saying
The game is currently expected to ship in 2010 although given its history Pitchford is understandably reluctant to be more specific.
but now the article says
The game is currently expected to ship in 2011 although given its history Pitchford is understandably reluctant to be more specific.
