Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Should be legal, with caveat (Score 1) 961

by Score Whore (#45528709) Attached to: Why Scott Adams Wished Death On His Dad

His father may be at the point where he can no longer take advantage of those laws as they require multiple requests from the patient, verbal and written, multiple doctors providing diagnosis. If he's suffering dementia and is not lucid most of the time, it could be very difficult to meet the requirements. Also it's possible that the current providers may not release him if they know that the intent is to move the patient somewhere the patient can end their own life. Not sure about the legality around that.

Comment Re:Should be legal, with caveat (Score 5, Insightful) 961

by Score Whore (#45526729) Attached to: Why Scott Adams Wished Death On His Dad

It's not about comas. It's about terminal illnesses where there is no chance of recovery and the only thing for the patient and family to look forward to are pain, loss of dignity, loss of autonomy, and significant emotional, personal and financial burdens. Assisted, end of life suicide already legal in Washington and Oregon and some parts of Europe.

Comment Re:Just price? (Score 1) 499

by Score Whore (#45404451) Attached to: How 3 Young Coders Built a Better Portal To HealthCare.gov

Can you honestly say this website is an actual replacement for the failed Federal website? I know it's a bit of a fashion in the FOSS world to look at a screen shot of something and then recreate the product based on that screen shot while knowing very little of the actual workings of the product being copied. Then going out and touting how they've created a free replacement for the evil closed product. And more or less 99% of the time it's not only not a replacement but doesn't even have the advertised functionality.

So what I want to know is does this site really do what the Federal site is supposed to do and can it carry the load of the 300 million visitors and as people proceed through the site are they allowed to enroll in the plans? Etc.

Comment Re:Helium Leaks (Score 1) 297

by Score Whore (#45328291) Attached to: 6TB Helium-Filled Hard Drives Take Flight

I don't think I'm getting 5 drives for the price of 1. I think I'm buying five years worth of hard drive storage. If that means that they have to send me five (or ten) hard drives to deliver that amount, then that's their problem. If they have shitting engineering or shitty manufacturing, that's not my problem.

Comment Re:snapshots, but reverse from btrfs (Score 1) 285

by Score Whore (#45326887) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Simple Backups To a Neighbor?

I think you're confused as to the purpose of those checksums. They are to tell when the disk is corrupting your data. If I log into your server and write zeros over all of your files, when you read those zeros back BTRFS will be perfectly happy to tell you that it is reliably returning your zeros to you.

Comment Re:There are other applications (Score 4, Insightful) 291

by Score Whore (#45294961) Attached to: GPUs Keep Getting Faster, But Your Eyes Can't Tell

Not to mention that the world hasn't standardized on 1920x1080. I've got half a dozen computers / tablets and the only one that is 1080p is the Surface Pro. The MacBook Pro with Retina Display is 2880x1880. Both of my 27" monitors are 2560x1440. I don't have any idea what this dipshit is thinking, but his assumptions are completely wrong.
Education

Telegraph Contributor Says Coding Is For Exceptionally Dull Weirdos 453

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the more-like-exceptionally-exciting-weirdos dept.
mikejuk writes "The UK Government is trying to figure out how to teach children to code by changing what is taught in schools. The Telegraph, a leading UK newspaper, has put the other side of the case: Coding is for 'exceptionally dull weirdo(s).' The recent blog post by Willard Foxton is an amazing insight into the world of the non-programming mind. He goes on to say: 'Coding is a niche, mechanical skill, a bit like plumbing or car repair.' So coding is a mechanical skill — I guess he must be thinking of copy typing. 'As a subject, it only appeals to a limited set of people — the aforementioned dull weirdos. There's a reason most startup co-founders are "the charming ideas guy" paired with "the tech genius". It's because if you leave the tech genius on his own he'll start muttering to himself.' Why is it I feel a bout of muttering coming on? 'If a school subject is to be taught to everyone, it needs to have a vital application in everyday life — and that's just not true of coding.' Of course it all depends on what you mean by 'vital application.' The article is reactionary and designed to get people annoyed and posting comments — just over 600 at the moment — but what is worrying is that the viewpoint will ring true with anyone dumb enough not to be able to see the bigger picture. The same attitude extends to all STEM subjects. The next step in the argument is — why teach physics, chemistry, biology, and math (as distinct from arithmetic) to anyone but exceptionally dumb weirdos."
The Almighty Buck

Shutdown Cost the US Economy $24 Billion 767

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the congress-blames-lazy-workers dept.
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Time Magazine reports that according to an estimate from Standard & Poor's, the government shutdown, which ended with a deal late Wednesday night after 16 days, took $24 billion out of the U.S. economy and reduced projected fourth-quarter GDP growth from 3 percent to 2.4 percent. The breakdown includes about $3.1 billion in lost government services, $152 million per day in lost travel spending, $76 million per day lost because of National Parks being shut down, and $217 million per day in lost federal and contractor wages in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area alone. Hundreds of thousands of federal workers bore the economic brunt of the shutdown but small businesses also suffered from frozen government contracts and stalled business loans. With the deal only guaranteeing government funding through January 15, the situation could grow worse. 'This is a real corrosion on the economy,' says Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody's Analytics. 'If we have to go down a similar road in the near future, the costs are going to continue to add up.'"

Slashdot Top Deals

Understanding is always the understanding of a smaller problem in relation to a bigger problem. -- P.D. Ouspensky

Close