I've seen these and similar studies crop up recently. They really bother me because while they are technically right, I don't think their conclusions are helpful. One problem they point out is that once you've been diagnosed, so many times it is "too late". Their conclusion? Screening test are not as important as we thought. WRONG. If anything this points to MORE FREQUENT screening of assorted cancers. It's easy to be so dismissive of cancer when you are thinking about these things statistically...it's entirely different if you know anyone who has had cancer or if you yourself get it. I am starting to get "older" and am approaching an age where I personally believe I should start getting screened. When I start, I plan on doing this very often. To me, it is worth having a finger up my ass and some amount of money not to die a slow, painful death from something I could have caught and treated. If you want to take the gamble and bet with the statistics, then by all means do. I, however, plan on living as long and healthy as possible.

Contractors != Government employees. Completely different.

Ah thanks for pointing this out, you may be right. A quick skim through the local registry shows a bunch of 2 year gaps but no 1 year.

I've always hated the "sex offender" label and how they are all lumped together and put on display. I've read articles about guys in some states being labeled "sex offenders" because of indecent exposure charges against them due to peeing outside. I've looked at the sex offender maps around where I live and there are poor guys on there because they were 18 and had sex with a 17 year old, visible right next to the 50 year old man who raped a 1 year old baby. How can we pretend these are equivalent crimes that require public warnings?

An egg is not one giant cell. The actual cell, the ovum, is as tiny as your own (roughly speaking). What you see of the egg is the yolk and albumin which are there to feed the embryo as it goes.

In your opinion, what is more important during the next 50 years and why: sending humans or sending robots on 'exploration' type missions?

I'm surprised to see an IL politician involved, I currently live in IL and these guys are usually horrible.

This whole Apple V samsung debate really bothers me. Everyone here knows we need (proper) patent reform across the board. I hate trivial patents, patent trolling, and software patents....but there's just something about Apple being able to keep samsung from selling tablets because their tablet is, *gasp* a rectangular touch screen. Why aren't LCD monitor companies fighting each other in court? Many monitors look the same with trivial differences. All these tablets are are screens with a little computer on the back. I mean jesus christ, what a fucking waste of time and effort.

just to clarify, I know you can't just 'switch to classic' as mentioned in TFS, but installing a new window manager is almost as simple. If you can install anything on ubuntu, you know enough to install a new window manager. Also, you can always switch to kubuntu, lubuntu, xubuntu, etc, and have someone else do this step for you. (I'm a fan of xubuntu btw, xfce is snappy).

I love how more and more 'power users' start complaining about Unity and how ubuntu is becoming such a 'mainstream' OS, so they all switch to other distros. You DO know you can easily install a different window manager? Granted, I'm not a fan of Unity and I don't think it should be the Ubuntu default, but I'm not about to switch distros when I can switch to gnome in a minute and be done with it.

I need to make my girlfriend wear one of these made from my face. I'm VERY narcissistic .

no moon!

government wants the camera back because it has undeniable proof that the landings were a hoax. or maybe footage of our dealings with secret aliens to acquire microchip technology....

If this new job is on either the gov or contractor side of the DoD, this is more than normal (did my time in that setting, never want to go back). This sort of development setting is also commonly found in larger companies outside of DoD. I've only been out of school a few years, but I've already learned a valuable lesson: bad development environments are caused by lack of caring from the dev team which leads to a horrible working environment if you actually care about programming. Unfortunately these bad settings tend to pay the most, but I assure you that working in a company surrounded by people who know and stay current in their field who are also passionate about the work being done (professionally and personally) is worth more than any amount of hard currency.

I mostly use AWS, but have tried app engine a while back. I get the feeling that if you're trying to do something that app engine supports, it is easier to do it there instead of rolling everything together on your own from the various AWS offerings. Basically AWS = many more options, App Engine = better support/interfacing for a smaller subset of functions.