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Comment Re:Elective surgery on a critical organ (Score 3, Interesting) 550

If you must, do the surgery that is reversible - they insert a small piece of plastic that corrects the lens shape.

Do you have a name, link or any other information on this? I'm seriously interested, because I would love to get rid of my glasses (haven't had them for very long, so I'm still getting used and I don't really want to), but even without medical advice I understand that irreversible surgery on an eye is not a good idea.

Comment Re:well (Score 1) 128

Rubbish! If you are starting from scratch you have to lay the foundation.

Which foundation? Boring people for half an hour with stuff they couldn't care less about? I've seen first hand that many employees consider those security trainings either a waste of their time or a coffee break.

therefor the amount of people with genuine concern will never increase.

For all I know, the only people who think that security awareness training increases the number of people who give a fuck are the marketing drones selling security awareness trainings. People who cared before the training will get information. People who didn't care before will not care after. Why should they?

It's hard to tell if you were attempting to be condescending with that first sentence.

Not at all. If you've managed to get your people to reliably report incidents, you've managed something that a lot of companies struggle with. The problem is that culture is pervasive, so if the culture is different, you cannot change it just for this one thing, you need to tackle the entire corporate culture, and as soon as you start you have enemies, namely everyone currently profiting from the existing culture.

Comment Presbyopia (Score 1) 550

I'm up around retirement age. My eyes don't chage focus much at all. So I have to swap lenses to go from distance to close-up vision. (Yes I could use some kind of bi/tri/progressive-focal lenses. But at the moment swapping is adequate for me.)

Until they find a way to correct presbyopia (and they don't see to be even researching it), I'd still have to don/remove glasses anyhow. With my extreme astigmatism, extreme nearsightedness, and substantial age, I'm not a good candidate for lasic and stand a substantial chance of visual artifacts from it. I'm also a target shooter, so my glasses double as eye protection.

Given all this, the potential benefits for me would be small and the risks and cost oughtweigh them.

But if they ever find a way to fix presbyopia the equation could change substantially.

Comment Re:Not everyone is train-able (Score 1) 128

As one who has thousands of people working in companies that I either own, co-own, or have invested in, I can tell you that not everyone is trainable

Not everyone can train people. Almost nobody can train all kinds of people, because they need to be trained differently.

More importantly, not everyone is acceptable as a trainer. Many, especially smart people, don't like being trained by someone they consider to be their inferior.

Comment Re:well (Score 1) 128

Now, take the average IT company in Silicon Valley which spends no time training on these issues (if your company has security awareness training I'm not referring to you, your company is not "average").

Security awareness training in companies is largely nonsense. Your scenario is different not because of your memo, but because your people realize that something more important than shareholder value is at stake. And I dare to say that your weekly reminders are the secret, not any awareness training. Reminders are incredibly powerful, there's now a decent amount of psychological research to back that up. It doesn't matter if people read it at all, what matters is that they consider it long enough to activate the desired memory of adequate behaviour, which means 2-3 seconds.

And from your one incident I gather you also have a reporting culture where people are not afraid to report problems. Many companies don't have that, people constantly sweep problems under the rug because they're afraid it would damage their career to report them.

Submission + - Letter to Congress: Ending U.S. Dependency on Russia for Access to Space 1

Bruce Perens writes: I've sent a letter to my district's senators and member of congress this evening, regarding how we should achieve a swifter end to U.S. dependency on the Russians for access to space. Please read my letter, below. If you like it, please join me and send something similar to your own representatives. Find them here and here. — Bruce

Dear Congressperson Lee,

The U.S. is dependent on the Russians for present and future access to space. Only Soyuz can bring astronauts to and from the Space Station. The space vehicles being built by United Launch Alliance are designed around a Russian engine. NASA's own design for a crewed rocket is in its infancy and will not be useful for a decade, if it ever flies.

Mr. Putin has become much too bold because of other nations dependence. The recent loss of Malaysia Air MH17 and all aboard is one consequence.

Ending our dependency on Russia for access to space, sooner than we previously planned, has become critical. SpaceX has announced the crewed version of their Dragon spaceship. They have had multiple successful flights and returns to Earth of the un-crewed Dragon and their Falcon 9 rocket, which are without unfortunate foreign dependencies. SpaceX is pursuing development using private funds. The U.S. should now support and accelerate that development.

SpaceX has, after only a decade of development, demonstrated many advances over existing and planned paths to space. Recently they have twice successfully brought the first stage of their Falcon 9 rocket back to the ocean surface at a speed that would allow safe landing on ground. They have demonstrated many times the safe takeoff, flight to significant altitude, ground landing and re-flight of two similar test rockets. In October they plan the touchdown of their rocket's first stage on a barge at sea, and its recovery and re-use after a full flight to space. Should their plan for a reusable first-stage, second, and crew vehicle be achieved, it could result in a reduction in the cost of access to space to perhaps 1/100 of the current "astronomical" price. This would open a new frontier to economical access in a way not witnessed by our nation since the transcontinental railroad. The U.S. should now support this effort and reap its tremendous economic rewards.

This plan is not without risk, and like all space research there will be failures, delays, and eventually lost life. However, the many successes of SpaceX argue for our increased support now, and the potential of tremendous benefit to our nation and the world.

Please write back to me.

Many Thanks

Bruce Perens

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