For 99.9% of all users a backup is simply that, a failsafe in case their main HD gets lost / damaged. So what if dropbox or skydrive suddenly were to go out of business (as unlikely as that is, youd know in advance)? You suddenly lose access to that safety copy of your data and will know right away because the client cannot connect anymore. But you still have your primary copy of everything, nothing was lost, you can just switch providers or change your backup strategy. The chances that something would happen right then in the time-frame that the cloud provider fails and you make another copy with another provider are incredibly low. If you can't take that risk then you'd have a third backup anyways.

Reductio ad absurdum, you are taking the argument to a nonsensical extreme. Distractions while driving are dangerous, however mostly on a statistical level. That's why it's so simple for people to argue against bans like these, because on a personal level your chances are hardly increased if you let yourself get distracted. However the number of fatalities and serious accidents is quite ridiculous given our modern times (accidents are the biggest killers for young people). We are simply discussing for which level of safety to settle until cars drive themselves.

You don't go to a fancy school for the classes, you go because of the research opportunities. If you are looking for a graduate education getting work done in a well-known lab (and get recommendations from the PI there) will be very useful.

As a matter of fact, medicine has been trying very hard to stop basing its beliefs in "individual experiences" but rather in statistical proof that meds work or don't work. I think people upvoted you because medicine is increasingly impersonal and that's unfortunate, but equating this to listening to personal experiences when discussing medications is ludicrous. Have we learnt nothing from the big vaccine scare? Some people deducted that it was vaccines that cause autism and were treated as equals by the media. This is actively leading to quite a few children needlessly dying. To make this more applicable to Slashdot readers: replace "doctors" with "IT specialists" or "programmers". Should we really treat everybody as equals when it comes to implementing new policies, what technologies to use or which devices to use? Of course not, expertise is needed, otherwise the new policy will be to install at least 4 toolbars for IE 6 on every Compaq computer.

Because they are not learning CS with this class but how a computer works. This class is meant for humanities students who never took a "computer" class and looks very good for that purpose. Did you really think that the Stanford CS curriculum will stop teaching recursion...?

To clarify, this class is a cursory overview of how computers work, a few basics on whats makes them tick and how to make them do fun things. This class is meant as a general education "learn about computers" effort, this is NOT their intro to CS class. Look at CS106X for programming, CS103X for discrete math, ... To repeat: Stanford is NOT teaching CS majors javascript, they are showing off what computer can do for humanities students with CS101. On a side note: I can see why most commenters would not catch this but how did the editors miss this obvious fact? Do a tiny bit of background research (aka click their link) and you will see how this summary is entirely misleading.

The FDA? The FDA is extremely aggressive and restrictive compared to European regulators for instance. This results in drugs reaching the U.S. market much later. One can argue that this delay causes more damage than by introducing drugs a bit earlier.

Only stupid people have social networking accounts? Everybody gets to control how much information you want to share with others and be available online. Some decide that easier communications between friends and acquaintances is worth posting a few facts about yourself online, it doesn't automatically make them stupid. I am certain that a good amount of slashdot users maintain social networking accounts and the majority of people don't post every detail of their lives on them either.

You know, many "this paper looks interesting" discoveries had a larger impact on your life through medicine etc than landing on the moon. Don't discredit something with potentially huge implications just because you can't "see" it, groundbreaking discoveries can be on any scale.

They have nuclear weapons. I'd say that's a pretty big threat.

Lacking in detail and lacking a real conclusion as studies tend to be? This really depends on your definition of a study. A "study" that leads to a newspaper article (like this) can't be held to the same standards as a study that appears in a peer-reviewed journal. Please don't let this little experiment color your image of actual research.

24 can be a statistically significant sample size, no problem. Remember that sample size AND effect size determine significance. (Just a warning to prevent people from thinking that sample size only is important or that 24 can never be a real study). Now in this specific study this didn't work out quite that well as they aren't statistically significant and therefore can be promptly ignored.

I seriously don't get this mentality where drinking and driving is acceptable. What people don't realize is that even without drinking we have WAY too many accidents as it is. Frankly it's one of the only areas where we as a society can make signifiant changes to everybody's safety without the need for more research or medical discoveries. I have to admit that my viewpoint is obviously skewed having seen way too many car-crashes as an EMT but once you realize that these crashes actually do happen (and not very infrequently compared to other medical issues we get called to) it makes you think of how to avoid them. We as a society shouldn't be so complacent with our current death-rates when traveling by car. Many of these deaths are avoidable (mostly through personal responsibility or more training) and I just can't see why anyone would increase everybody's risk further by drinking and driving (even if they are just a little impaired). Having seen the destruction accidents can bring to whole families it just doesn't make sense. (And before someone brings the "safety nut" argument, I am by no means a risk-averse person but I do like statistics and it looks like drunk driving just has too high a risk for the little benefit it offers)