A very close friend was supposed to go through this treatment almost two years ago. Unfortunately for him, you need to be is pretty good shape before this is begun and his cancer was spreading to various places in his body and he was never quite to the point where the doctors felt he could tolerate a new form of treatment. All I could think of was that the oncologists were stuck in a deadly game of whackamole; hit that place where the cancer was discovered and it popped up somewhere else. When the cancer spread to his brain, it was all over. By then his estimated of survival was, maybe, six weeks and he lasted less than a week after the discovery of it having gotten into the brain. Maybe if the original "We got it in time, there's nothing in the lymph nodes"[*] had been followed up with this treatment he'd still be around. When it was discovered to have returned it was probably already too late.

[*] -- The cancer that was discovered a couple of years ago was found to be the same one that he'd had surgery/chemo for years earlier. My feeling is that `clean' lymph nodes are probably a false hope. What evidence is there that cancer always leaves a trace in the lymph nodes anyway?

``the underlying biochemistry of the "average adult" has changed as the result of food and activities during childhood''

Our food changed sometime in the '70s or '80s. When I was a kid, overweight people were rather rare. Has the "modern" diet gotten us addicted when we're kids -- and still very active -- to foods that we should be eating very sparingly which then cause huge weight gains when we continue to eat them after we reach our early twenties and our post education lifestyle has us sitting in cars, behind desks, with little time to get in a workout, and, also, at a time when our metabolisms are slowing down anyway? Something changed because my parents were not overweight when I was a kid even though they did the same amount of commuting and sitting behind a desk when they were in their 20s through 50s as I was doing. I point to the food as the difference. Also, it would not surprise me that the rise of fast food and major chain restaurants popping up on every corner that has made eating out (and the huge portions that are served) far, far more common nowadays -- at least for those that can afford it -- has had a major effect on our waistlines.

``before exhorting "good healthy ways to eat", let's talk about paying people enough so they can afford to do so''

Good point. It's expensive (and getting more expensive) to eat the way the experts tell you to. The outside of the grocery store -- where all the fresh food is sold and the stuff we're all told to eat -- is the most expensive part of the store. Putting together a family meal from those sections costs far more than the box of the heavily processed crap (probably with HFCS listed near the front of the list of ingredients) found on the shelves in the center of the store. The inner city poor don't even get the fresh food anyway; it's all the heavily processed crap. Is it any wonder the poorest people are the most obese?

That'll likely be far better than the service the phone company wants to provide to our neighborhood. I wonder how much the carriers will be dinging the residents for this service? (Didn't see anything about that in the article.)

``Now we have new judges that don't have that knowledge (presumably) and are thinking of reversing the decision. I'd like to know the grounds they'd be thinking of using for that reversal.''

Just wait until their decision is appealed and this winds up in the Supreme Court. That's where the real technical expertise of the Judicial branch resides.

``Lawyers for the Department of Justice told the court that she simply missed her plane, but she was able to provide documents from the airline explaining that the Department of Homeland Security was not allowing her to fly.''

What are they teaching lawyers these days? That it's OK to commit perjury? Who wants to see the lying lawyers spend some time in jail? Raise your hand.

Yep... Dodd also has a different definition of "works" than a lot of people would find to be appropriate. His definition appears to refer to "a mechanism that closes off content until rich folks' palms are greased with enough silver". When he says "works" he's not saying that it does anything for content creators after their initial legal contact with publishers.

``VMS was implemented in a variety of languages''

(Hmm... I thought the lion's share (if not all) of VMS was written in BLISS.)

You could definitely call, say, a VAX BASIC routine from a VAX FORTRAN program, VAX FORTRAN subroutines from VAX C programs, etc. And you didn't have to jump through a bunch of hoops to do it, either.

Why is it that people name their product the very opposite of what it is? Is it supposed to serve as some sort of rebuttal? Safe for who? The guy going 60mph? Anyone around him when he loses power steering and brakes?

Sending a neutrino beam through the earth will be faster than taking the great-circle route across the surface of the earth.

Of course, one would have to send a ridiculously large number of neutrinos to be sure to have them detected, but that's just an engineering problem.

I agree! What is it with all these people wanting sexual "relationships" with something that has no feelings?

Intercourse with a robot =/= sex. If your partner isn't feeling pleasure, sharing intimacy, and giving consent, then it's just masturbation. (Or rape.) And personally, if none of those things are happening for the other person, then it's no fun for me, either.

There's nothing wrong with a good wank. Just don't pretend you're having a sexual relationship with your toys.

I agree with you on the definition of 'robot,' but unfortunately, most of the public has a less concrete idea.

This is because 'robot' is one of those terms that has been diluted over the years as the result of marketing claims. Years ago, a robot was an autonomous, self contained, somewhat intelligent agent that could perform general duty service and could replace a human crewman, worker or slave - thus the origin of the word, from the Slavic root 'robota' which means serf or indentured servant. These days "robot" pretty much means anything a marketing or PR department wants it to.

Another notable example of diluted terminology is 'artificial intelligence...' but I've posted rants about that one previously.

``If anything I wouldn't trust someone who doesn't watch porn.''

If anything, I'd mistrust the people who make a big deal about never looking at internet porn. Just look at the frequent revelations involving vocal evangelists.

Trying to lean on people based on their internet browsing habits? It seems that someone's trying to quell any public dissent on NSA snooping on Americans. "Listen buddy... icksnay on the oopingsnay or we'll let everyone in your church know about those web sites you visited last Wednesday evening between the hours of 9:00PM and 10:30PM."

Heck... I never actually counted them but I'd bet the grocery stores around here were using 200 bags/month for my groceries before we went to reusable cloth bags. It was nuts the way they used them.

``Why pay for "30 years", when "5 years and can share some of that with others" will do the job?''

Maybe because often, the wisdom obtained from problems encountered and solved more than five years ago will be missed. Can't remember how many times I've seen people doing things in IT that were considered bad ideas a decade -- or more -- earlier.