Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:DOD considers climate change a serious threat (Score 3, Insightful) 491

DOD, and the US Navy in particular, have considered climate change to be a major national security issue for several years.

Precisely why this lawsuit is teaching these kids a very bad lesson.

If these kids are concerned about the climate's future, shouldn't they be studying ways to better predict and manage the climate? Winning the argument in a courtroom matters about as much as winning a debate tournament. Doing research and finding ways to get results could save countless lives.

The Navy should be handing out research grants left and right (if it isn't doing so already) for research on climate management. If all the artic sea ice thawed, it would radically change the face of naval warfare for the US, and not for the better...

Comment Re:No huge chunks in Europe (Score 2) 270

Wow, that's roughly one text message every 5-6 minutes, assuming 8 hours' sleep per day, along with a 31-day month.

I'm in my early twenties and I feel like I'm getting old. I miss the '90s when people actually spoke to other people in the same room as them. It seems like everyone was more relaxed, or maybe that's just the economy these days, I don't know. But back in the day, if the conversation lulled, someone would change the subject instead of everyone folding their hands in iphone/android prayer until someone found a meme to share.

Comment Re:MBA might be a good choice. (Score 3, Insightful) 234

... so little true entrepeneurship in Germany. It's striking how many of the biggest tech companies around today (Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, Google, and I could go on) were founded by innovators who dropped out of college/university/whatever to pursue their ideas. Luckily there are enough people who are more impressed by ideas and hard work than your pile of Bologna.

All excellent points. I'd like to add a couple of my own that are from the same vein...

When I encounter people old enough to start facing age discrimination in their line of work (age 40+, seems like), I notice that all the ones with really successful and lucrative careers have one common trait: they don't need to look to other people for job openings; job openings look for THEM. If you are playing your career right, by the time you're getting old you'll have made as many casual friendships with former co-workers and bosses in as many different businesses/universities/whatever as humanly possible. Even if you're not looking for a new job, hopefully old co-workers from a few years back are calling you out of the blue and offering you interviews for positions. I mean, some of your favorite old co-workers are definitely managers now. When people are starting a new company or a new project and they're looking for people to add to the team, they're asking each other "Who's good? If we could pick anybody we wanted, who would it be?" Even if you're not the most brilliant person they've ever worked with, all people have a favorable bias for someone they've met, unless you were a total dick to them or something. But if they have an opening, I'm sure they would much rather interview you than a bunch of random strangers.

Notice that the words "diploma", "degree", and "title" are missing from the last paragraph? That's because smart, adaptive, practical people (the exact kind of people who will NOT be prejudiced against you if you are old) aren't interested in the "right" degree or the "right" certificate from the "right" institution, they're interested in people who get results, no more, no less. Considering that the entire American system of giant research universities with heavily layered bureaucracy and titles like "PhD" was imported straight from Germany in the early 20th century, I wouldn't be surprised at all if Germany suffers from the same cancer of worship for meaningless titles that you see in so many Fortune 500 and public sector workplaces.

TLDR: A nice diploma from a nice university is useful for gaining access to anti-meritocratic institutions like large corporations that cannot accurately judge employee worth. Practical knowledge, experience, and professional contacts are more valuable if you want to work in a place that doesn't resemble a Dilbert cartoon.

Comment Re:Will it work? (Score 0) 141

The problem is that those schemes tend to either rely on very expensive catalysts (like platinum ), or they are chemical processes which produce CO2 as a by-product ( steam reforming, in which hydrocarbons are reacted with water to form hydrogen and CO2 ).

(emphasis mine)

What is the problem with expensive catalysts? My chemistry knowledge is not the greatest, but I thought that catalysts were not used up during chemical reactions... meaning that even if you needed to buy an expensive chunk of platinum to get this electrolysis doohickey working, it wasn't a big deal because you could always salvage the platinum and liquidate it (in the financial sense) if you wanted to shut down the operation for whatever reason.

Comment Re:Extortion? (Score 1) 541

That said, I don't live in places like new york where it costs twice what I described above for rent alone, and I've even told people I know in new york that are in my situation that they're dumb for living there.

You see, there's this interesting concept that people with an IQ above 70 call "living within your means." Provided you do that, you can make a small income and still come out on top.

You're my hero.

Comment Re:Sad Day (Score 1) 1051

I've never seen it myself, but I've heard from a few people that many parts of the south, particularly rural Virginia, have replaced de jure segregation with the de facto variety.

Example: You are a white man and you want to get some lunch while you discuss forming a business partnership with your friend (he's black). Since it's the 21st century and jim crow laws are gone and neither you nor your friend are bigots, everything should go great! You go to a charming roadside restaurant and get a table. However, you lose your appetite after a few minutes once you both notice that the people at all the other tables have completely stopped talking and are just staring at the two of you. Replace the white man with a white woman and the situation gets uglier.

TLDR: Legislation does not erase centuries of social attitudes. I don't know what the best way to end racism is, but I'm pretty sure it looks more like what the Freedom Riders did than any law.

Comment Re:Why is this needed? (Score 1) 199

Go ahead, prove it to yourself. Buy a 2-liter bottle of Coca-Cola, then buy a bunch of bottles/cans of premium "cola" drinks (especially those made with cane sugar). Throw in a bottle of Pepsi while you're at it. Then do a blind taste test, and see which one you think tastes the best. I can almost *guarantee* that the winner WON'T be "Coca-Cola".

Been there, done that, and I must agree with your results. I don't drink much soda, but I think the worst soda with cane sugar tastes better than the best soda with HFCS.

However, if you think that coca-cola can't ever win a taste test, you might have just never had good coca-cola. A lot of american grocery stores carry coca-cola intended for the mexico market, presumably so mexican-americans can drink the familiar stuff they got back home. It is remarkably better than american coke in every way - it comes in a glass bottle (not plastic), the label is painted on (not glued on), it is a half-liter instead of 12 or 24 ounces (metric > imperial), and the wording is in spanish (being american, it is easy for me to forget other languages exist). But the best part is the taste - it doesn't have that slightly painful chemically tinge that american coke does, and it has cane sugar, not diabetes-in-can HFCS.

Comment Re:New treatment for resistant depression..that wo (Score 1) 237

Is scopalomine the only glutamate-enhancing treatment you've tried? Also are you dosing high enough to ever have hallucinations from it? I know that in high doses it is a deliriant (frank, often scary hallucinations in lieu of LSD-like technicolor laser beams) just like Benadryl. Does not sound like fun, especially for a severely depressed person. If all you've got is dry mouth, scopalomine sounds like a good deal.

I would be interested to hear about how doctors are administering ketamine to patients (are they IVing 80+ mg all at once to send people to the K-hole or just giving people a slow drip?). The DEA has ketamine in Schedule III and I don't hear about it being used much outside of veterinary hospitals, so I'm curious how they settled on a dosage plan.

I would be interested to know if these doctors can work up a ketamine treatment that offers long-term improvement, whether it's through something like indefinite semi-weekly treatments or a one-time treatment combined with psychiatric counseling to start a new chapter in the patient's life, so to speak. Users of dissociative anesthetics have known about the ketamine/pcp/dextromethorphan "afterglow" for a while now, but they've also known that it fades after a day or two and that paranoid ideation and emotional instability often settle in soon after.

Also, scopalomine occurs naturally in some plants. Have you looked into finding a cheaper source than some pharmaceutical patch? And finally, you should really submit this story to Slashdot. I mean, you're talking about a depression treatment that's not just some stupid SSRI, but something that actually works, right away? This is much more interesting and important than crab-based computing.

Comment Re:Prevention cheaper (Score 1) 234

Over the course of 18 months she embezzled over $200,000 from the company via hundreds of transactions. She had been around long enough to know that the individual small amounts would never trigger a review

How was she eventually caught?

Comment Old Hat (Score 1) 54

Unreal Engine 3 came out when? 2007? Does it even have true HDR or just that bloom stuff? Off the top of my head, the game engine from the PC version of Crysis 2 (especially with the DX11 patch that adds high-res textures and tessellation) looks WAY prettier. I'm sure the DoD could easily transform "prettier" into "more realistic".

Comment Re:Conflicted (Score 1) 410

If you think a state government would not go further than a federal government would, you are deluding yourself.

A state gov't has checks on its power. If you live in a state that is going from bad to worse (like, oh, I don't know, New Jersey), you can vote for a better solution without your vote being diluted by the hundreds of millions of people outside of your state. And if things become intolerable, despite your best efforts? You can leave. Contrast this with the current top-heavy American empire that imposes its laws all over the globe, creating a world where the only real escape can be found at the north/south poles and in some third-world countries.

It's no secret that "states rights" used to be an excuse for slavery, and later, racial segregation.

If you're referring to the "cause" of the American civil war, slavery was on its way out already. Wage slavery is much more profitable and is still around today. As for your point in general, even though states rights' has been used as an excuse by some bigoted people, it's not like it has no actual merits. Read basically anything Thomas Jefferson has written to see what I'm on about.

Slashdot Top Deals

With your bare hands?!?

Working...