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Comment Content not available on this device (Score 1) 211

I'm using a blackberry playbook to browse the intertubes this morning, and the video says content not available on this device. I suppose the summary is asking about real tablets though, I got this one for free and would never buy one.

Tablets are great for browsing and reading pdfs, but prefer a laptop to writing documents and productivity things,even if I was to use an eternal keyboard. It depends on the application.

Comment As usual, summary is inflammatory (Score 5, Informative) 183

Title copied from Boing Boing, and the article there is full of hyperbole. T3 is providing digitization to the over 1 million physical media, organize and catalog everything, and then will charge a fee for access (however access for authorized government personnel is FREE). T3 is NOT claiming copyright, they just have an exclusive license for 10 years.

Check this out:
300,000 physical videos (300,000 hours!)
37,000 films (11,000 hours)
40,000 audio clips (1.5 million minutes)
700,000 still images
1.2 million digital images.

Seems reasonable to me. HALF the library is not even accessible on the internet as they are physical only. This is a good way to preserve what has been accumulated, and a lot of it is very old.

A much better summary is here:
http://gcn.com/articles/2013/12/12/dod-library.aspx

Comment Re:What about contributers? (Score 1) 133

I thought people generally contributed to open source to help everyone out and get a better product, not to share potential revenue. Cyanogenmod is open source and must remain so. Now that the maintainers have raised funding to really get Cyanogenmod into the mainstream, you're backing off? Sounds a bit backwards to me. If you really want some cash, maybe see if you can get hired by them...

Comment Re:FDA is doing you a favor (Score 1) 371

While 23andme is a for-profit company, I think they will really accelerate genetic-based medicine. They will find many new insights into how people are predisposed to certain diseases, and ultimately open the door for better medical treatment. Once they've created their massive database, they can use their algorithms to find relations that regular academic researchers could not find due to time and cost constraints. I bet they're going to eventually become a very profitable company.

Take for instance certain genes that are known to cause cancer or other diseases with high probability -- I bet there are many more. They discuss specifically Parkinsons, who Sergey Brin has a 30-75% chance of getting according to stats (this will likely be narrowed down as they do more tests and find better correlations).

Comment Nanostation for wifi (Score 1) 285

For those who have a neighbour across the street or a few houses down, we use a Nanostation as a wifi link. Easily get 40-60 Mbps. We used to use WDS on DD-WRT but it would consistently drop packets and lose connection. Our connection is so solid now that I actually canceled my internet service and we share a better package with faster speeds.

Comment Re:I'm tellin ya... (Score 1) 189

I don't think you know how actual research works. There are many researchers working independently and even with drug companies to develop cures. A magic bullet that can cure a multitude of disease would make the people/company rich regardless of how much it actually costs.

Unbelievable you actually got modded to +5...

Comment Bounce flash? (Score 1) 182

The strong light coming from the left-area is consistent with a bounce flash. The left-most person has a high amount of directed light, while the rightmost does not. The rightmost is also shielded from the potential flash behind the person carrying the right-most child. If a bounce flash wasn't used, then perhaps a strong reflection from the sunlight from an object. Also, if a remote flash unit was used, it may not show on the metadata.

The picture looks processed, but mostly to bring out the shadows and highlights. Not sure what the rules of the photography contest are, but not submitting the original raw is a little suspicious and this whole mess could be cleared up easily by the photographer.

Comment I only block moving ads (Score 1) 282

I have no need to block static ads. I get annoyed at ads with motion though, but they're easy to block. Animated gifs, just hit ESC in Firefox, they stop.

Then I use flashblock which disables all flash-based content. I can selectively choose any content to view it, such as youtube videos and the rest of the flash ads are still blocked.

Ads still get through, and I'm not annoyed at all the flashing/blinking and bandwidth-hogging ads as they are blocked or stopped. Easy.

Comment Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score 1) 32

There's been a few cases of people being completely cured of cancer by programming their immune system. Of course, there have also been a few catastrophes, such as when the researchers didn't realize the same protein the cancer exhibited also appeared in another area of the body, so the immune system naturally attacked both good and bad. Patient dies.

Comment We need funding for general research as well (Score 3, Insightful) 147

These massive awards go to researchers who have made truly novel discoveries. They tend to be older researchers past their prime who have already reaped rewards of their research (fame and likely money).

Funding for general research in life sciences has dipped to an all time low, with success rates less than 10% (it was much higher before the economic crisis a few years ago). The top amazing research by big groups still gets funded, but there is still some excellent work that goes unfunded, particularly by young up and coming talented researchers. These young investigators don't yet have a name for themselves, and unfortunately that impedes their ability to get grants and thus do their research.

The Gates foundation is an excellent example of how this can be done -- In today's economy, I would prefer to see something similar than a massive pot going to a few amazing but well established researchers. Of course this wouldn't have made the news if it wasn't over the top...

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