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Comment Re:Time for men's liberation (Score 4, Insightful) 369

It would be awesome if this could be part of a men's liberation movement, like how women were liberated in the 60s when the pill became available.

Was it the pill that led to women's liberation? Or was it penicillin? The pill allows women to have sex without getting pregnant. Penicillin allowed people to have sex without getting diseases. AIDS has somewhat rolled that back.

Before HIV, there was still always Herpes, Hepatitis, HPV.... e.g. anything viral. People were just more ignorant of STDs 50 years ago, but that doesn't meant they still weren't getting them. You're still going to want a condom on the first date no matter how many new types of contraception get invented.

Comment Re:Is semver too simplistic for kernels? (Score 3, Informative) 199

Version Numbers in general are outdated for application. The line between a Major and Minor version is huge.
We have been on Mac OS X (10) for 14 years. with have been getting point updates over the time.
Microsoft during that time has had 4 Major updates (That is with the insane longevity of XP).

It depends on what you are talking about. The internal version number for Windows 7 is 6.1.x (Windows 8.1 is v6.3). So if we are going by marketing-driven release numbers, then there have been 6 or so major Windows NT release since 1996 (Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8). However, if you go by the engineering version number there have been just 2: Window 2000 was NT v5.0 and Windows Vista was NT v6.0.

Comment Re:Or do something to eliminate journeys? (Score 1) 481

How about putting in place policies that incentivize people to live near their workplaces, don't have to drive to go to a shopping mall, reduce the need for long-distance business travel, etc. Not only would that improve "traffic", but actually make people's lives easier and better as a bonus. Worth a thought, eh?

Except there is no long-term employment stability anymore. I am not going to uproot my family, sell my house, have my kids change schools, and spend thousands of dollars to move every time I change jobs just so I can live within a car-free commuting distance of my work place. I live very close to the T in Boston and I used to have a nice 30-minute commute downtown. That job evaporated and my new place in Cambridge, which is two trains and one bus transfer away by public transit. This is over 90 minutes each way. Or I could drive 30 minutes, which is what I do.

Comment Re:Mod parent up. (Score 4, Insightful) 958

Most GPs aren't scientists. They are basically "meat mechanics". They learn the best practices in their field when they go to school and if they are good they keep up with changes to practices. But they are people too and are still susceptible to falling prey to fads and superstition even if their education provides them some resistance.

Comment Re:For all of you USA haters out there: (Score 1) 378

I think the basic problem is that getting rid of them would require an act of Congress. That's a place filled with old guys who fondly remember using pennies to pay for bottled cokes back in the '50's.

Hey, as recently as the 80's when I was a kid, you could still buy penny candy in the literal sense (e.g. $0.01 = 1 Swedish Fish). I don't know if that's true anywhere anymore though.

Comment Re:m -rf "$STEAMROOT/"* ??? (Score 1) 329

And a little advice to Valve, next time have developers familiar with Linux working on your Linux client. That /* is how a Windows developer would write the command to delete a directory if they simply looked up the equivalent command for Linux.

A competent Windows developer would probably just write:
if exist "%STEAMROOT%" rmdir /Q /S "%STEAMROOT%"
no dangerous glob needed.

It kind of floors me that they aren't doing some kind of check that the directory tree they are about to delete actually looks like a Steam install before deleting it. e.g. check that ClientRegistry.blob file or SteamApps directory exists under $STEAMHOME.

Comment Re:This could be fun.... (Score 2) 164

How does the FDA draw the line between 'must be approved' and 'not our problem' for devices that connect to a greater or lesser degree to other equipment?

I can only speak to IT software since I am a software developer, but I worked for many years in the field writing both practice management (scheduling, claims processing, etc) and clinical (IHEs, patient records, RX) software. The way it worked at the time is that you basically told the FDA if you wanted to be regulated. i.e. it was up to the company to say: yes, this software constitutes a medical device and should be regulated.

Comment Re:How about ignoring it? (Score 2) 484

I can't believe anyone can be stupid enough to think cannabis is dangerous enough to merit criminalization.

What you can or cannot believe isn't important, the truth is that cannabis can have a devastating effect on the developing teenage mind. Even if you don't consider that enough to warrant criminalization, that does not justify insulting those of us who do.

By that measure, so is alcohol, or any number of other drugs that are sold over the counter. Yes it should be age restricted, but the point is that it is not any more dangerous than plenty of other substances that are legal. It's certainly less dangerous than cigarettes.

Comment Re:this is ridiculous (Score 1) 440

It is now cost effective for governments to micromanage EVERYONE'S life.

The cameras may be next-to-free, but the cost to review their video and type up laborious transcripts isn't...yet.

Yes, but if they have hundreds of hours of tape on everyone, then whenever a government official wants to compel you to do something, all they have to do is threaten to laboriously review your tapes.

Don't challenge this eminent domain taking, or else we'll review your tapes. Don't fight this speeding ticket, don't attend that protest, don't report that dirty cop, etc.

Comment Re:Knowledge is the solution (Score 4, Insightful) 1051

Government forcing medical procedures on anyone is really not something we want, especially since government won't take responsibility for the (admittedly unlikely) consequences of a bad result.

You mean take responsibility by compensating (the very few) people who are legitimately harmed by a vaccine reaction: National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program

Comment Hiding evidence (Score 4, Interesting) 192

If you are a US citizen, I don't think you could get out of producing a document the court ordered you to supply by airmailing it to a confederate in another country. Similarly, if the data in question are related to Microsoft's US operations, then MS, being a corporation incorporated in the US, should be required to produce them.

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