Comment Re:Moot (Score 1) 398
We need tickets about it being broken to fix things.
Comment Re:Slashvertisement! (Score 4, Insightful) 82
It means the person who wrote this is sick of web "applications", and prefers desktop applications. Like most sane people.
Comment Re:Seriously? (Score 1) 276
To be honest, the space program hasn't been relevant for about 15 years. Money spent on them could be spent elsewhere for a bigger gain.
Smart Immigrants Going Home 770
olddotter writes "A 24-page paper on a reverse brain drain from the US back to home countries (PDF) is getting news coverage. Quoting: 'Our new paper, "America's Loss Is the World's Gain," finds that the vast majority of these returnees were relatively young. The average age was 30 for Indian returnees, and 33 for Chinese. They were highly educated, with degrees in management, technology, or science. Fifty-one percent of the Chinese held master's degrees and 41% had PhDs. Sixty-six percent of the Indians held a master's and 12.1% had PhDs. They were at very top of the educational distribution for these highly educated immigrant groups — precisely the kind of people who make the greatest contribution to the US economy and to business and job growth." Adding to the brain drain is a problem with slow US visa processing, since last November or so, that has been driving desirable students and scientists out of the country.
Comment Automate it (Score 1) 401
As you document, you should be automating. Then you can have a help desk tech even run your "fix user rights to porn websites.sh" script, if you will.
Comment Re:How much does a sub 1k Slashdot UID cost ? (Score 1) 139
Maybe I can buy myself a good UID and the girls will go crazy on me.
I believe you might have come up with the worst strategy for getting girls, ever.
No, the worst strategy is showing a girl how to use yggdrasil linux
Comment Don't take my cubes! (Score 1) 611
These sound like energon cubes. Delicious. Must watch out for flying jets.
Comment Switch to django and python for starters (Score 2, Informative) 171
I worked in a small shop that used rails, we found that rails is... constricting, just for the reasons you posted to slashdot for. We looked at our options and switched to django+python. Maintenance wasn't a problem after that. I'd suggest investigating a switch now while you have an opportunity.
Comment Nobody I know uses open office (Score 1) 336
Nobody I know uses open office, however a lot of people I know will can and do use google's applications. There is something to be said for simple/easy to use.
Plus, oo requires me to install something, why do I want to go through all of that headache?
This article reads like a fanboy post to be quite honest.
Comment What's up with slashdot lately (Score 4, Insightful) 429
I don't get it. About 2 years ago this post wouldn't have even been front page worthy, and now we have this? If I wanted to use slashdot as a howto forum, I wouldn't be looking here. I just don't get it, why would a post list this make it to front page? It's for nerds, but it doesn't matter except to a small minority, and it's not news.
Or am I missing something?
Submission + - Stem Cells Shown to Protect Dying Motor Neurons
Penguinshit writes: "Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal, progressive neurodegenerative disease characterized by rapid loss of muscle control and eventual paralysis due to the death of large motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord. Growth factors such as glial cell line derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) are known to protect motor neurons from damage in a range of models. Human cortical neural progenitor cells derived from fetal tissue (ie. stem cells) can be expanded in culture for long periods and survive transplantation into the central nervous system, in some cases making large numbers of GFAP positive astrocytes. They can also be genetically modified to release GDNF and thus act as long-term 'mini pumps' in specific regions of the brain. In this study a team at UW-Madison's Waisman Center genetically modified human neural stem cells to release GDNF and transplanted them into the spinal cord of rats with mutant SOD1. Following unilateral transplantation into the spinal cord of the rats there was robust cellular migration into degenerating areas, efficient delivery of GDNF and remarkable preservation of motor neurons at early and end stages of the disease within chimeric regions.
This work is especially important to me, as I have been living with ALS for almost three years."
This work is especially important to me, as I have been living with ALS for almost three years."
Submission + - New antibiotics for pathogenic attacks of bacteria (heraldbiz.com)
allengineering writes: "A team of research directed by the pr.
KIM
Kyung-Gyu of the Faculty of Medicine of
the University of Sungkyunkwan discovered the structure of the protein Rse B
playing an essential part in the transmission of the signals of stresses
resulting from the pathogenic attacks of bacteria. The article is been published
in the edition of May of the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences of the the USA (PNAS). This projection should
make it possible to develop new antibiotics."
Submission + - Hacker does a DIY Amiga in FPGA (hetnet.nl)
An anonymous reader writes: Developer Dennis van Weeren recently announced completion of his from-scratch completely re-engineered Amiga chipset. His PCB design is fully operational and compatible and his verilog code has been released under GPL. Will this finally give the Amiga community a new breath of life?
Sony Decides Against Blu-Ray Downsampling 261
Paul Slocum writes "According to Ars Technica, Sony is now saying they will not use the Image Constraint Token and so movies will play on analog HDTV sets at full resolution. If HD-DVD does implement the analog downsampling, it's going to give Blu-ray a nice market advantage." From the article: "Sony's decision to not use the Image Constraint Token for the time being is meant to encourage the adoption of Blu-ray players. Launching a new product that would leave the thousands of analog HDTV owners out in the standard-definition cold could have proven to be a nightmare for Sony and the Blu-ray spec in general. Reports that 'Blu-ray discs don't look right on my HDTV' could result in consumers' switching allegiances to the competing HD DVD standard or postponing purchases of next-generation optical players altogether."
