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Comment Sounds good! (Score 5, Insightful) 107

If North Korea wants to provide Japan with some awesome real-world testing of missile defense systems, then so be it. The data to be gleaned from both successful and unsuccessful missile intercepts is invaluable, and Kim Jong-un is extremely ignorant to give his "enemies" such wonderful opportunities to fine tune their defenses against his small variety of missile assets.

Comment Dangerous territory (Score 2, Interesting) 470

Any time you are trying to tell someone what not to think, or what not to believe, you are entering dangerous territory. This is even more important when state sponsored - aka the public educational system. If schools do their job right, then students will be able to make their own informed choices on what to believe or what not to believe, and even if a student does not adhere to what the school "wants" them to believe, that is okay - the school has done their job either way. Direct comparisons against things schools do not espouse is not necessary or appropriate in any shape or form.

To be perfectly clear, let me explain what I'm NOT talking about. Take cigarette smoking for example. There are hard scientific studies showing that smoking causes specific health problems, so it is appropriate for a school to teach that smoking is bad and then provide the evidence. Now on the other hand, suppose there are people in the world who believe smoking is beneficial (and certainly those people are out there). Is it the school's job to incorporate that into their anti-smoking teaching and attempt to specifically discredit or call out the opposite viewpoint? No. That isn't necessary or even feasible. What this story is talking about crosses far into this kind of territory.

Comment Lack of correlation is even worse (Score 2) 137

The other problem is lack of correlation for this hypothesis. There are large numbers of people whose work shifts that have them awakening at night to work during the night. If this study's conclusion is correct then the vast majority of these people should have a very high BMI, and the effects of working such shifts would have been noticed decades ago.

Then there are people at the high latitudes who have months of very reduced sunlight, and thus wake up in the dark for weeks on end. Again, do we see the same correlation there? This type of thing should be easy to study in places like the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, where those that stay over winter experience little sunlight for a few months non-stop.

Comment Re:And so this is Costco's fault? (Score 2) 440

Your logic is not sound. The profit margin to be lost over one shipment of peanut butter is small change. Even if they made a 50 cents profit per jar, we're only talking about $475,000 in profit to be lost. But let's look further. The peanut butter would be donated to food banks and the like, for people who can't afford enough food. Did you know that Costco, like Sam's club, requires membership to shop there? So are you suggesting that these people with such a low income that they cannot afford food actually have a Costco membership, and that's where they purchase their peanut butter, and so that's why Costco would not accept the peanut butter? In other words, giving the peanut butter away would have Costco's competitors (Walmart, grocery store chains, etc) far more than it would have hurt Costco. That $475,000 in potential profit would have come out of the pockets of regular grocery stores, and not Costco.

Although it's fun to always beat up on corporate America, the evil motive you suggest is laughable in this case.

Comment Form factor (Score 2) 97

I've said this in the past in regards to Glass, but I feel the watch is the ultimate form factor for wearable electronics. I feel that it should be the core of the mobile computing paradigm, once the technology has matured enough for that kind of miniaturization (mainly battery and WLAN). Then devices like Google Glass, and even the cell phone / tablet form factor, would all just be display and input / sensor peripherals for the core system (the watch). So in other words, I hope Apple gets it right (but most likely they won't - they'll probably go the same route as Samsung and make the device dependent upon an iPhone to do anything non-trivial).

Comment Frame rate (Score 0) 49

The rendering frame rate of their system leaves a lot to be desired. The VR hardware looks good for their needs and usage, but that frame rate totally kills the immersion. That's inexcusable in this day and age - people have better gaming rigs than that. My guess is they have a very poorly optimized modeling system that has to pull data from whatever CAD systems they use.

Comment Terrible article (Score 1) 135

What a terribly written article. What did the later deaths in the early 1900s have to do with the medieval plague? Did they find DNA on the victims from the 1900s or from the actual plague outbreak? What does DNA on the teeth have to do with and what does it indicate? Totally worthless crap article, through and through.

Comment Re:Helium (Score 2) 143

This system isn't designed for general or widespread use. The article specifically mentions industrial and construction use, and the artist's rendition shows them in use at a bridge construction site. So it would be in place of diesel generators and the like, and launched only when needed daily as weather permits to save money over using expensive diesel.

Comment News just in: 100% accidents tied to breathing (Score 2, Insightful) 367

This is a very stupid and misleading statistic. I've seen statements like this on Slashdot before, and in my local paper, so I did look up the numbers, and the accident and fatality rates have both been dropping steadily since before handheld cell phones even existed. Almost 100% of the population has cell phones, and they are being used in some manner or another off and on continuously throughout the day. So of course they are being used during a significant number of accidents, because they're being used during a significant number of miles driven.

If cell phones are a significant cause of accidents, the numbers would very clearly show it, yet they don't. So the best anyone can come up to throw at us is this kind of misleading garbage. 100% of all the accidents I have ever been in involved contacts to correct eye vision. Obviously my contacts are a major problem then?

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