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Comment Re:fees (Score 2, Insightful) 391

I want Gigabit symmetrical with 1 TB of transfer for $50/mo.. This is absolutely 100% possible with current technology.

Then why don't you start a company that offers that service?

If you can do it profitably, you'll have investors falling all over themselves to give you money, since pretty much everyone will want your service....

Comment Re:You get used to it. (Score 3, Informative) 135

by CrimsonAvenger (#49149773) Attached to: Adjusting To a Martian Day More Difficult Than Expected

No you don't. Your watch rotates on an 18 hour cycle, but the boats 'day' (and overall schedule) remains on the standard 24 hour cycle. On top of that, you make the swap from Lima (local time) to Zulu (GMT) once when you leave port and again when you enter port (days, weeks, or months apart)

Irrelevant. You roll out of your rack, go to your watchstation for six hours. Then you do PMS/training/whatever for six hours. Then you sleep for six hours. Repeat till you get back in port.

In other words, you live on an 18-hour day for the period of your patrol.

As I recall, it took two to five days to adjust at each end of the patrol.
Medicine

Surgeon: First Human Head Transplant May Be Just Two Years Away 210

Posted by samzenpus from the brand-new-chassis dept.
HughPickens.com (3830033) writes "Michelle Star writes at C/net that Surgeon Sergio Canavero, director of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group in Italy, believes he has developed a technique to remove the head from a non-functioning body and transplant it onto the healthy body. According to Canavero's paper published in Surgical Neurology International, first, both the transplant head and the donor body need to be cooled in order to slow cell death. Then, the neck of both would be cut and the major blood vessels linked with tubes. Finally, the spinal cords would be severed, with as clean a cut as possible. Joining the spinal cords, with the tightly packed nerves inside, is key. The plan involves flushing the area with polyethylene glycol, followed by several hours of injections of the same, a chemical that encourages the fat in cell membranes to mesh. The blood vessels, muscles and skin would then be sutured and the patient would be induced into a coma for several weeks to keep them from moving around; meanwhile, electrodes would stimulate the spine with electricity in an attempt to strengthen the new nerve connections.

Head transplants has been tried before. In 1970, Robert White led a team at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, US, that tried to transplant the head of one monkey on to the body of another. The surgeons stopped short of a full spinal cord transfer, so the monkey could not move its body. Despite Canavero's enthusiasm, many surgeons and neuroscientists believe massive technical hurdles push full body transplants into the distant future. The starkest problem is that no one knows how to reconnect spinal nerves and make them work again. "This is such an overwhelming project, the possibility of it happening is very unlikely," says Harry Goldsmith."
Businesses

Teamsters Seek To Unionize More Tech Shuttle Bus Drivers In Silicon Valley 301

Posted by samzenpus from the shuttle-together dept.
An anonymous reader writes with news about the effort to unionize shuttle drivers in Silicon Valley. "Shuttle bus drivers for five prominent tech companies will decide whether to unionize on Friday in a vote that has the potential to dramatically expand organized labor's territory in Silicon Valley and embolden others in the tech industry's burgeoning class of service workers to demand better working conditions. Drivers who ferry Yahoo, Apple, Genentech, eBay and Zynga workers -- all employed by contractor Compass Transportation -- will decide whether to join the Teamsters union in an election overseen by the National Labor Relations Board. Union leaders say they want to bring the drivers into the fold so they can negotiate better pay and benefits -- as well as relief from a split shift that has the drivers working morning and evening shifts with no pay in between. A contract the Teamsters struck over the weekend for Facebook's shuttle bus drivers, who work for Loop Transportation, offers a glimpse of what may be possible: paid sick and vacation time, full health care coverage and wages of up to $27.50 an hour."
Patents

Patent Trolls On the Run But Not Vanquished Yet 56

Posted by samzenpus from the don't-forget-the-fire dept.
snydeq writes Strong legislation that will weaken the ability of the trolls to shake down innovators is likely to pass Congress, but more should be done, writes InfoWorld's Bill Snyder. "The Innovation Act isn't an ideal fix for the program patent system. But provisions in the proposed law, like one that will make trolls pay legal costs if their claims are rejected, will remove a good deal of the risk that smaller companies face when they decide to resist a spurious lawsuit," Snyder writes. That said, "You'd have to be wildly optimistic to think that software patents will be abolished. Although the EFF's proposals call for the idea to be studied, [EFF attorney Daniel] Nazer doesn't expect it to happen; he instead advocates several reforms not contained in the Innovation Act."
Facebook

Facebook Puts Users On Suicide Watch 187

Posted by samzenpus from the keeping-an-eye-on-things dept.
Mark Wilson writes A few months ago Twitter was criticized for teaming up with suicide prevention charity Samaritans to automatically monitor for key words and phrases that could indicate that someone was struggling to cope with life. Despite the privacy concerns that surrounded Samaritans Radar, Facebook has decided that it is going to launch a similar program in a bid to prevent suicides. Working with mental health organizations including Forefront, Now Matters Now, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, and Save.org, Facebook aims to provide greater help and support for anyone considering suicide or self-harm.
Hardware

Ask Slashdot: Old PC File Transfer Problem 466

Posted by samzenpus from the I'll-never-let-you-go dept.
An anonymous reader writes I have an old Compaq Contura Aero laptop from the nineties (20 Mhz, 12 Mb RAM, Windows 3.11, 16-bit, PCMCIA, COM, LPT, floppy) with 160 Mb drive that I would want to copy in full to a newer machine. The floppies are so unreliable — between Aero's PCMCIA floppy drive and USB floppy disk drive — that it is a total nightmare to try and do it; it just doesn't work. If that option is excluded, what else can I do? I have another old laptop with Windows XP (32-bit, PCMCIA, COM, LPT) that could be used; all other machines are too new and lack ports. Will be grateful for any ideas.
Biotech

Xeroxed Gene May Have Paved the Way For Large Human Brain 93

Posted by samzenpus from the look-at-the-big-brain-on-test-subject-35 dept.
sciencehabit writes Last week, researchers expanded the size of the mouse brain by giving rodents a piece of human DNA. Now another team has topped that feat, pinpointing a human gene that not only grows the mouse brain but also gives it the distinctive folds found in primate brains. The work suggests that scientists are finally beginning to unravel some of the evolutionary steps that boosted the cognitive powers of our species. "This study represents a major milestone in our understanding of the developmental emergence of human uniqueness," says Victor Borrell Franco, a neurobiologist at the Institute of Neurosciences in Alicante, Spain, who was not involved with the work.

Comment Re:He's being polite. (Score 2) 114

by CrimsonAvenger (#49139973) Attached to: Schneier: Everyone Wants You To Have Security, But Not From Them

What he means to say is what most of have known in our darkest heart of hearts since the first help ticket: The vast majority of users are technically illiterate idiots, and you can't fix stupid.

Note that there is a difference between "stupid" and "ignorant".

Note that being "technically illiterate" puts you into the "ignorant" category, but that claiming that "technically illiterate" is the same as "idiot" puts you well into the "stupid" category.

Now, arguably you can claim that the vast majority of users really don't care very much about the subject at hand, which might very well move them into the "stupid" group. But being technically illiterate, in and of itself, is not a sign of "stupid"....

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