Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:CCHR has made some valid points... (Score 5, Insightful) 186

This is precisely how crazies work. They take a perfectly reasonable statement - The practice of psychiatry has problems / Vaccines CAN cause harm, etc and then push their agenda far and beyond any rationale discussion. Yes, the practice of psychiatry is primitive and has been subject to considerable abuse in the past (lobotomies, insulin shocks to name a few). Yes, this country is overmedicated - but not just with psychoactive drugs - and this isn't just the 'fault' of psychiatrists but instead involves doctors, patients, drug companies, government and bog knows who else.

But the victrolic, angry and anti intellectual approach of CCHR and Scientology in general should continue to be exposed for what it is - a scam. They should be allowed to express their opinions and, if the IRS says they are a 501C3 corp and Google gives something extra to non profits, well then, let'em at it. But it's still a scam. Along with quite an number of other 'non profits'.

Comment Re:Credible Source? (Score 5, Interesting) 186

Yes, interesting. It's an unsourced statement from somebody's blog. But it has two of the Slashdot keywords - 'Google' and 'Scientology' so, as someone mentioned in the last thread about some other Slashdot keywords (Guns, 3D printing, drugs and The Feds), grab your popcorn and super size your Mountain Dew.

Comment Re:Getting attention at the expense of 3D printing (Score 1) 207

Look at the forums devoted to 3D printing. To print anything more complex than a spoon, you have to get a significant degree of expertise with the systems. Using a lathe and mill isn't all that hard - we have taught it to high school students for decades and the newer, computer controlled ones are even easier.

In any town large enough to have an auto mechanic, there is probably somebody familiar enough with standard metalworking tools to make a gun. And a far better one that the 3D printers are making.

Is there a future for 3D printing - sure, as an evolution to what we are doing, not a revolution.

Comment Re:Why? (Score 2) 127

You're describing Bokeh. And yes, it is one of those techniques that done well, can greatly enhance a picture. There are entire web sites and discussion groups devoted to the topic - which lens, camera, technique is best and who is a total poser. There have been numerous attempts to do this in software, all of which have yielded meh results. I suspect that Google's attempt will be another one of these, but who knows. Perhaps they will finally figure out how to let photographers match their $15,000 DLSR rigs with an $800 smartphone and a .99 app.

Comment Re:What poetry is this? (Score 1) 183

Or flip the view:
A towering bank undercut by a small church.

----------------------

In the intersection between religion and the modern world
Religion razes grandeur to the ground for 20 pieces of silver.
In the intersection between religion and the modern world
Religion refuses to budge from barren historical ground.
In the intersection between religion and the modern world
A towering bank undercut by a small church nearly kills us.

-

Comment Re:Pilots crash planes (Score 1) 75

Makes me wonder whether the engines shouldn't have pivot mountings so that they can be tilted up and down and even sideways.

Talk to the V-22 engineers about just exactly how easy it is to do that... It took them literally decades (the original V-22 was designed in the 1960's) to do that and the thing still crashes more than is desirable. Once you make the engine move, you change the aerodynamics of the entire aircraft. Continuously. Not a trivial problem and one that would likely create more problems than it solves.

Comment Re:OMG! (Score 1) 75

When things are going bad, they tend to go bad quickly. Not the time to punch up the videogame. Remember the pilots are trying to do lots of things.

The reason why you can reconstruct an incident like this is that you can spend literally years going over every little detail. That's an advantage that the pilots certainly don't have.

Comment Re:Slashdot = DARPA publicity agency? (Score 1) 75

While this is sort of true (you can turn off flight laws in a Airbus), it's not a bad thing. We don't know which approach is better - or if indeed either approach is always better or worse. It's a large scale experiment.

And since both Airbus and Boeing aircraft rarely plummet to the ground, a rather successful one. Yes, there can and should be improvements but the jury is out.

The turn of events that caused AirFrance 447 might well have been interrupted with a Boeing autopilot system. Conversely, the idiot junior pilot that crashed the 777 in San Francisco would probably have been unable to shut the engines down completely before actually landing.

Murphy's law. Remember it.

Slashdot Top Deals

We are each entitled to our own opinion, but no one is entitled to his own facts. -- Patrick Moynihan

Working...