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Comment Re:Government in the U.S. is extremely corrupt. (Score 3, Insightful) 306

No. Some politicians. not all. There are plenty of states that are citizen friendly regarding solar, and that's because the politician did what there voters, BaL, wanted.

Are you sure the friendliness is towards the voters and not the solar companies? Just curious?

Note: I'm just playing devil's advocate on perceptions. While normally I'm against government subsides, I personally think solar/alternative energy is a great thing for the governments to subsidize; especially when you consider that the "loser" (if there truly is one) is another government sponsored monopoly.

Comment Re:Government in the U.S. is extremely corrupt. (Score 2) 306

Educate the voters. Let them know what's going on.

The problem would be separating education from propaganda. Who decides what the education content is? The current incumbents? The media? Unions? Corporations? You?

And then of course we have the subtle slant that can go into the education:
Sources said ...
The opposition claimed today ...
The opposition complained today ...

And of course for time -- just for time really -- we need to cut stories that are less relevant. You say it's censorship, I say good editing (or vice-versa, I don't care). We'll educate more on the possibility of impeachment (or more on Lois Lerner and the IRS scandal) depending on our point of view.

I suppose we could establish a bi-partisan commission -- one to designed to exclude third-parties from participation. After all, they aren't likely to win anyway.

Submission + - LASIK with current medical improvements - yay or nay? 1

Submitted by stonedead
stonedead writes: I have been contemplating getting a LASIK surgery done on both my eyes. I am 26 years old and code for a living. I am near sighted and optical power required to correct my left and right eyes are -5 and -6 dioptres respectively. Considering the article on Slashdot today about a guy getting LASIK to enjoy VR, I am more curious about this.
I could find an Ask-Slashdot about this 12 years ago: http://ask.slashdot.org/story/...
I would like to know how much has this technology progressed since then. I have found a couple of forums that advocate the LASIK while some sites are completely against it (lasikcomplications.com for example). What is the opinion of the Slashdot crowd?

Submission + - Propaganda disguised as science (huffingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Lew-the-nerd
Lew-the-nerd writes: An article on Huffington Post, purportedly about the data interactions, the ways in which either side and its supporters actually communicate with their supporters about the Israel-Gaza war,is actually a bit more subtle propaganda piece. The author shows his clear bias by quoting negative data examples from only one-side. examples: In regards an explosion near a school, the statements are unequivocable:"the attack killed at least 10, injuring many more' while 'The IDF claims ....' One side's statements are accepted as facts, the other side's is treated as a 'claim.'
In discussing cartoons used as propaganda, the example is a rather benign cartoon asserting that CNN portrays the Arab side as being without blood on their hands. Yet, cartoons portraying Israel in infinitely more vile circumstance are the bread and butter of Arab discourse.
Every single one of the several quoted examples use in the piece are accepted as truth, and not disinformation, and show Israel at fault and ignores any action by Hamas or the Arab community.
The height of irony is the following sentence in the piece. 'These very deliberate choices made by media outlets' affect our reality.
The article closes with a plea for funding for Ha-'aretz, a far left daily newspaper and 972, a set of journalists who freely admit that they concentrate only on what Israel does wrong.

Comment Re:Finally!! (Score 2) 409

So naturally I go price it out. 25-30k+ for most systems.

I assume that this is for solar. A friend who was a building contractor in a former life recently looked at solar and was rather peeved. Seems that the materials are about $5K (US) now and the installation takes a trained group of about 5 to 7 people one day to install. Someone is making a killing on these things.

My friend is now trying to convince local contractors to get into the installation business (most is done by "carpetbaggers") and lower the cost to 10K to 15K. (And the contractor still makes out).

Submission + - Experimental Drug Compound Found to Reverse Effects of Alzheimer's in Mice (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: While there has been progress made in the fight against Alzheimer's, our understanding of the dispiriting disease remains somewhat limited, with a definitive cure yet to be found. The latest development comes at the hands of researchers from Yale's School of Medicine, who have discovered a new drug compound shown to reverse the effects of Alzheimer's in mice.

Comment Re:Yeah! Why would anyone want it maintained? (Score 2) 132

by Dragon Bait (#47627149) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Best PDF Handling Library?

Because maybe it's not his first project? Fine, let me ask you: how many times did you get burned by totally unmaintainable third-party dependencies, before you vowed "NEVER AGAIN will I get so utterly fucked over?"

This. Wish I hadn't run out of mod points -- and frankly I'm tired of some bottom of the barrel programmer who's attitude is "we can just rewrite everything every 5 years" get promoted into management and then tie our code to whatever proprietary crap the next cute sales person brings.

Separate. Isolate. Defend. Treat every piece of third-party code that you don't have source for as an enemy whose only goal is to financially rape you. I don't care if that enemy goes by Oracle, Microsoft, or Joe's Discount Software.

Submission + - Ancient worms may have saved Earth (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: You can credit your existence to tiny wormlike creatures that lived 500 million years ago, a new study suggests. By tunneling through the sea floor, scientists say, these creatures kept oxygen concentrations at just the right level to allow animals and other complex life to evolve. The finding may help answer an enduring mystery of Earth’s past.

The idea is that as they dug and wiggled, these early multicellular creatures—some were likely worms as long as 40 cm—exposed new layers of seafloor sediment to the ocean’s water. Each new batch of sediment that settles onto the sea floor contains bacteria; as those bacteria were exposed to the oxygen in the water, they began storing a chemical called phosphate in their cells. So as the creatures churned up more sediment layers, more phosphate built up in ocean sediments and less was found in seawater. Because algae and other photosynthetic ocean life require phosphate to grow, removing phosphate from seawater reduced their growth. Less photosynthesis, in turn, meant less oxygen released into the ocean. In this way, the system formed a negative feedback loop that automatically slowed the rise in oxygen levels as the levels increased.

Submission + - Carnegie Mellon creates open source tool to 'extract' 3D obecjts from 2D images (themukt.com)

Submitted by sfcrazy
sfcrazy writes: It's not exactly 'extracting' in literal terms, but you can now pick an object in any image and manipulate it as if you are 'holding' it in your hands. Carnegie Mellon university has created tool which can add the ’3rd dimension’ to an object in a photo allowing the editors to turn or flip objects any way they want, even exposing surfaces not visible in the original photograph.

Submission + - Cringley: IBM not a viable company, propping itself up by trippling its debt (cringely.com)

Submitted by McGruber
McGruber writes: Robert X. Cringely has a new ebook out, titled "The Decline and Fall of IBM" (http://www.cringely.com/2014/06/04/decline-fall-ibm/). Cringely believes that IBM is in deep trouble and has been since before the Great Recession of 2008. He also says that the company has probably been doomed since 2010.

On Sunday, Cringley was interviewed on the nationally syndicated talkradio program Moneytalk. Program host Bob Brinker (http://bobbrinker.com/) pointed out that Warren Buffett bought almost $11 billion worth of IBM common stock, then asked Cringley "what did he miss?" Cringley answered that IBM is in a downward spiral because it is focused on maintaining and increasing earnings per share (EPS). IBM is borrowing money to buy back shares, propping up EPS but adding debt. IBM's debt has tripled in the last 5 years.

Cringley also told Brinker that IBM has gone from hardware sales to selling services but they have poor customer retention, having lost the state of Texas and The Walt Disney Company. Their sales culture tends to bid low to win the contract and then extract more dollars by selling extra services. IBM also lost a contract with the CIA to Amazon. A person who called-in to the program pointed out that IBM lost its leadership in product development, lost sales of its core products to Fortune 500 companies, and its software business is eroding because of open source applications. Cringely concurred with the caller and told him "you made my point."(http://honeysbobbrinkerbeehivebuzz3.blogspot.com/)

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