DrLudicrous - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Doctors != Scientists (Score 1) 737

by DrLudicrous on Sunday December 07, 2008 @05:23PM (#26024029) Attached to: What the Papers Don't Say About Vaccines

Yes, and I am clear on their training. However, my opinion is that doctors come nowhere close to being scientists. Perhaps, yes, they are closer than a plumber, but that was hyperbole to lend to my point.

When I was in college, I had to take programming courses to demonstrate a basic competence in computer programming. I was tested repeatedly. That experience in no way qualifies me to say that I'm an expert at programming, or even that I am considerably more knowledgeable than a business person writing formulas in an Excel spreadsheet. In the same vein, IMO, doctors don't really qualify as scientists, or even being particularly knowledgeable about the subject. However, the belief among laypeople is that they are knowledgeable. This leads to false weighting of medical opinion versus scientific opinion. They are not one and the same, but many people do not distinguish between the two. I think they should do so.

Submission + - Eyeing Co-workers' E-mail? You Could Be Arrested (computerworld.com) 1

Submitted by

CWmike

on Friday August 01, 2008 @05:40PM

CWmike writes: "While it might seem like a practical joke or a harmless, e-mail snopping could land you in more hot water than you'd ever expect — you could be charged with a federal crime. The recent case of a Philadelphia TV news anchor charged with breaking into his co-anchor's e-mail accounts shines a light on the seriousness of such snooping. Scott Christie, a former federal prosecutor who headed up the computer hacking section at the U.S. Attorney's Office, said: "You look over someone's shoulder and read a personal letter and that's not a crime, so how can it be a crime to access someone's e-mail? It's not the same thing, of course... What you're dong when you're accessing e-mail is affirmatively exceeding your access to electronic documents and systems." He adds: "Usually, you're doing that by pretending to be that person to break into their account.""

Submission + - Robots Roaches Lead Real Thing, Robot Chicken Next

Submitted by DrLudicrous on Friday November 16, 2007 @03:53PM

DrLudicrous writes: European researchers have constructed robots in order to study the swarming phenomena of cockroaches, as reported in Science. The robots were only vaguely cockroach in form, but were doused with roach sex hormones to fool the real cockroaches to accept them. They found that by programming the robots to act in decidedly uncockroach-like ways, the real cockroaches would mimic their behaviors a sizable percentage of the time. The NYTimes has a short synopsis here, that is viewable by people without access to Science articles. It mentions that a future experiment could involve constructing a "Robotic Chicken". I wonder what Seth Green would think about that?

Intern Loses 800,000 Social Security Numbers 492

Posted by Zonk on Friday July 27, 2007 @09:41AM from the bad-day-bad-day dept.

destinyland writes "A 22-year-old intern said today he's the 'scapegoat' for the loss of over 800,000 social security numbers - or roughly 7.3% of the people in the entire state of Ohio. From the article: 'The extent of my instructions on what to do after I removed the tapes from the tape drive and took the tapes out of the building was, bring these back tomorrow.' Three months into his $10.50-an-hour internship, he left the tapes in his car overnight — unencrypted — and they were stolen. Interestingly, the intern reports to a $125-an-hour consultant — and was advised not to tell the police that sensitive information had been stolen, which initially resulted in his becoming the prime suspect for the theft. Ohio's Inspector General faults the lack of data encryption — and too many layers of consultants. But their investigation (pdf) revealed that Ohio's Office of Management and Budget had been using the exact same procedure for over eight years."

Submission + - The Life of a Chinese Gold Farmer

Submitted by DrLudicrous on Monday June 18, 2007 @09:08AM

DrLudicrous writes: The NYTimes (reg. required) is running an article about Chinese gold farmers. It is an interesting look at the economics and day-to-day reality of people who "play" MMO games for a living. Check it out here.

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