Comment Re:Original code (Score 3, Funny) 287
Didn't expect the British to already use Windows back then. Why they shared those serialz via carrier pigeon is beyond me, though...
Comment Stool transplant (Score 1) 252
Ever heard of this?
It's still in its testing stages, but it might explain this phenomenon. Even though it's been in literature for more than fifty years, now, Dutch physicians are conducting a mass study, right now. It seems to be highly effective against pseudomembranous colitis which is caused by an overflow of Clostridium difficile in the gut flora with the only therapy being a high dose of Metronidazol or Vancomycin orally. However, a stool transplant from a healthy donor has been suspected of being at least 80% successful compared to like 40% success rate of the antibiotic therapy. It might even work on Morbus Crohn or Ulcerative colitis.
Considering that the gut flora is responsible for synthesizing many different substances, most of which dispersing into the blood stream affecting bodily functions, it seems reasonable that a change in its natural composition (like administering antibiotics) might affect certain aspects of the human metabolism, probably leading to late-onset effects like obesity and metabolic defects.
Comment So, they invented BRCA1 and BRCA2... (Score 1) 255
Can we sue them now for that deadly invention that is the #1 source of cancer mutations in women killing tens of thousands per year?
Drug Company Disguised Advertising As Science 172
ananyo writes "A former pharmaceutical company employee has blown the whistle on drug promotion disguised as science. Drug companies occasionally conduct post-marketing studies to collect data on the safety and efficacy of drugs in the real world, after they've been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. 'However,' writes the anonymous author in an editorial in the British Medical Journal (subscription required), 'some of the [post-marketing] studies I worked on were not designed to determine the overall risk:benefit balance of the drug in the general population. They were designed to support and disseminate a marketing message.' According to the whistleblower, the results of these studies were often dubious. 'We occasionally resorted to "playing" with the data that had originally failed to show the expected result,' he says. 'This was done by altering the statistical method until any statistical significance was found.' He adds that the company sometimes omitted negative results and played down harmful side effects. Nature says it was unable to work out who the writer was but they likely worked on diabetes and the studies criticized were from the Denmark-based pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk."
Solar Power Is Booming — Why Do We Want To Kill It? 415
TaeKwonDood writes with a followup to the news we discussed over the weekend about tariffs being places on Chinese solar panels. He writes,
"According to Forbes, 'Solar power is booming. Imports from China were a tepid $21 million in 2005, but in 2011 installations totaled nearly $2.7 billion. That's a huge win. And just as advocates for solar power had hoped, a larger market drove down prices. Solar energy cost has declined by two-thirds in the last four years, meaning it will soon start to close in on fossil fuels.' There's just one problem: now the government wants to kill it. The article continues, 'As the market was flooded by both silicon (from silicon producers) and thin-film panels (by Chinese manufacturers), the price for thin-film panels came crashing down – along with Solyndra’s business model. ... Yet that isn’t the only instance of mismanagement. The whole clean energy program remains flawed, even at the consumer level. The people who are the most likely to be impacted by high energy prices, the poor, are the least likely to benefit from the solar rebate scheme because they lack the capital to pay for the installation.'"
NASA Boss Says Mars Colonization Will Be Corporate Only 299
99luftballon writes "The head of NASA Ames Research Center has said that he expects any colonization of Mars, the Moon or asteroids to be done by private companies rather than by NASA. There's some interesting parallels with the East India Company, although that was hardly a triumph of capitalism. From the article: 'Dr. Simon Worden, director at NASA Ames Research Center, told The Register that the agency was firmly enmeshing itself with the private sector, citing cooperation on the Dragon capsule being developed by Elon Musk's SpaceX team as a good example. NASA developed a heat shield material called PICA (Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator), capable of withstanding 1850 degrees Celsius (3360 degrees Fahrenheit), and gave it to SpaceX, who manufactured it.' The article also mentions Google's head of space projects, who has 'Intergalactic Federation King Almighty and Commander of the Universe' on her business cards."
Scientists Say People Aren't Smart Enough For Democracy To Flourish 1276
cold fjord writes "The inability of the incompetent to recognize their own limitations is a story that has been covered before on Slashdot. But, what happens when you apply that finding to politics? From the article: 'The democratic process relies on the assumption that citizens can recognize the best political candidate, or best policy idea. But a growing body of research has revealed an unfortunate aspect of the human psyche that would seem to disprove this notion, and imply instead that democratic elections produce mediocre leadership and policies. The research shows that incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people, or the quality of those people's ideas. If people lack expertise on tax reform, it is very difficult for them to identify the candidates who are actual experts. They simply lack the mental tools needed to make meaningful judgments...democracies rarely or never elect the best leaders. Their advantage over dictatorships or other forms of government is merely that they "effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders."'"
Comment Re:Hypocrites! (Score 1) 477
See, I guess that we're agreeing to something. Of course imposing a censoring infrastructure on others is worse by some orders of magnitude. I was never disputing that. Neverheless, he (the EU) who lives in a glass house shouldn't throw stones. Would you really believe in the honesty of someone who criticizes those bloody hooligans who go on a rampage after some ball game, if the very same person regularly beat up his own wife and kids? Probably not, I guess.
Comment Re:Hypocrites! (Score 1) 477
Yeah, citizens of those states censoring their web will certainly rejoice: “Phew, at least the US don't censor it!” Are you really just now trying to justify censorship, because there are worse ways to pull it off?
Comment Re:Hypocrites! (Score 1) 477
Are you familiar with the phrase “Principiis obsta”?
Comment Re:Hypocrites! (Score 1) 477
So, I gather that you are okay with internet censorship, as long as your government controls it, right?
Comment Re:Hypocrites! (Score 1) 477
By definition.
Comment Re:Hypocrites! (Score 1) 477
That's my point. The EU basically says that they have no problem with censorship as long as they decide which sites to censor. And yes, this is hypocrisy.
Comment Re:Hypocrites! (Score 1) 477
Yup. Tools that are used locally on the computer. Like this AOL thing. If they were to censor the net in order to protect children from seeing this imagery, shouldn't they be censoring ALL sorts of porn, instead? I don't understand your logic.
Comment Re:Hypocrites! (Score 1) 477
Spending money in order to develop a censoring infrastructure instead of spending it for things like rehab or prevention doesn't protect a single child. Google Cleanternet.
