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Comment Re:Shadow economies (Score 1) 387

Do I need to specify a specific child? Maybe if I were writing a scientific paper on the topic but it should be this simple. The people involved in shadow banking are controlling trillions of dollars assets. I ask you, who needs a trillion dollars worth of assets? Personally I mean. What individuals could possibly need so much wealth? The 'shadowbankers' for lack of a better term are indifferent to the deaths of the 100 million children in the world who are starving. If they were not indifferent, the children would not be starving. Money would be invested in helping developing areas. Evil actions are to be feared. But indifference is what we should fear the most. The indifference of the one's who carry this wealth is what's killing people. It is the non-action of the shadowbank that makes it an evil entity.

Comment Re:Shadow economies (Score 1) 387

And is anyone actually being harmed by this "shadow banking"? If so, I'd be interested in a concrete example.

Off the top of my head? How about the people who live in the year 2013 who are still living in poverty? How about the children who died this year from preventable and curable disease that couldn't get the treatment they needed because their area doesn't have money to afford things like clinics and hospitals that the developed world takes for granted.

Comment I did biofeedback as a child (Score 3, Informative) 68

When I was 13 ADD was causing significant problems in my academics and social life. We did the ritalin thing for a bit but my mother wanted to try something else to help since the drug didn't seem very effective.

The program involved me sitting in a dentists chair while I had electrodes on my head. I played a dumbed down version of pac-man with my mind.

The basic way it works is when your brain is creating the ideal waves for 'focus' the pacman moves through the maze. The idea is that the child will focus on the pacman moving and through practice will learn to move the pacman through the maze without stopping.

Eventually we ended the program because it just made me so tired I would fall asleep in the chair. Booooring as shit. I suspect something like this would probably work better for an adult who cares more and has the focus to do it. I think I was too young at the time to really care to put more effort into it.

Comment The same advice in every profession (Score 5, Interesting) 473

Do it better. Do it faster. Work longer hours. Bullshit. Kiss ass. Draw a firm line when everyone is so dependent on you that they can't survive without you. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Sabotage the competition. Don't ever settle. Sue. Keep your heart on your sleeve at home. Nail people to the cross in business. Cheat. Lie when you can get away with it. Bend the rules until they break.

Comment Rat Poison, Chemotherapy... Don't fix it amiright? (Score 1) 230

Warfarin, originally used as rat poison, is still the number one anti-coagulant. However it requires regular monitoring (blood tests) to ensure therapeutic levels are being taken or there is a risk of embolism or internal bleeding.

When Plavix came out ten or so years ago the major draw for a lot of patients was that it required no regular monitoring which is a pain in the ass for users of warfain. Unfortunately because Plavix works by a completely different method of action it can't be used as a universal anticoagulant like Warfarin (the method of action for Warfin has been well understood for a long time now.)

Conditions like Factor V Leiden mutation are still being treated with Warfarin with very low or no side effects where as with Plavix you run the risk of Severe Neutropenia and unlike Warfarin, who's effects can begin to be negated with a vitamin K injection, there is no antidote for Plavix.

It makes me wonder how much of an improvement in treatment was really made. Maybe it was worth it to some people to not have to get blood drawn every month. But for all that research to be done and have it not work for all conditions and have many more unpredictable side effects (even if they may be in low occurrence) tons of people have switched from paying $3 a month for warfarin to $60 for plavix, which, if you don't have health insurance, is about the same price if not more expensive than getting a simple blood test.

Geeze the more I talk about it the more I imagine a hamster running around in a wheel.

Even chemotherapy treatments these days haven't changed too much. Methotrexate and Vincristine are still among the number one chemo drugs used in leukemia and lymphoma treatment regimens after almost sixty years.

The difference these days is that we know what doses are better for treatment and we know what drugs to use in combination with them to ensure a better prognosis

Comment I hope this lasts. (Score 1) 97

I wonder how long it will take for this to be banned. Is this unregulated 3D printing or are projects approved by the owners of the device? Imagine a student printing out dorm keys to steal computers. One of them already tried to print a gun. This would only be preventable if the items to be printed are being approved by a human being or an insanely accurate 'safety' algorithm. But at what point does that become a privacy concern? Then the data on what we're 3d printing will be farmed out to the big corporations!

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: What is the future of old copper pair technology? (wikipedia.org) 5

p00kiethebear writes: My father works for a large corporation that licenses ISDN lines (among a plethora of other services) including T1 and T3 technology. Surprisingly there are still large companies that use fifty year old T1 technology to handle their voice and data use. My father's 30 year career has been almost exclusively in helpdesk / troubleshooting T1 / ISDN technology and both him and myself are worried about the future. Cable modems and DSL have replaced ISDN in most cases and it's now an archaic solution reserved for voice actors, tech support-terminal workers, large companies that need voice and video conferencing as well as data and private users too far from the loop for DSL or Cable. My dad is still 15 years from retirement. Is twisted copper going the way of the dodo or is it here to stay for the foreseeable future?

Comment Re:Sanitary. (Score 4, Insightful) 181

As a food service worker though, it' not my job to prime someone else' personal immune system. It's my responsibility to make sure my equipment is sanitary and that food is cooked and held at proper temperature.

People with compromised immune systems like to eat out too.

On a personal level I agree with you, I mean shit, I make sushi for a living and eat plenty of fun bacteria at the end of every shift and when I'm at home I'm happy to just wipe down the sink with soap and water once in a while but when I'm working it's not my job to strengthen people's immune systems, It's to serve them safe food, that's what they expect and that's what they are paying for.

Comment Re:Sanitary. (Score 2) 181

You clearly didn't read the post. They are cleaning serving spoons WHILE I am cleaning chicken. I am the one cleaning up the mess with soap and bleach. They could take their spoon to the sink that's actually meant for washing dishes but it's too far for them. I'm not worried about my coworkers succumbing to salmonella. I'm worried that they're serving salmonella to customers via contaminated spoons. People can take they're responsibility as a food service worker seriously or they can be lazy.

Comment Re:Sanitary. (Score 1) 181

The chicken is rinsed with cold water before it's bagged, this is done with a 'sprayer' that I grab while my gloved hands are covered in raw chicken. My coworkers know I've been grabbing this sprayer with my chicken covered hands but they will just grab it anyway. If they bothered to take 5 seconds to grab a bleach towel to sanitize the handle it wouldn't bother me but they ARE getting bacteria on their hands. Sorry I should have made it clear it was a sprayer / handle that I have to use while cleaning the chicken.

Comment Sanitary. (Score 3, Interesting) 181

At the new job I started I have been appalled by what appears to be a lack of understanding by my coworkers that whatever you touch spreads germs from that place on whatever else you might touch. Specifically the problem I see is chicken. I'll be cleaning chicken in the sink and someone will come over and turn on the faucet that's been around raw chicken, rinse off a spoon and then go right back to serving food with said spoon. Hello?! Are you fucking stupid? Do you not get that now not only have you contaminated your hand but also the spoon that your hand is holding on to! It drives me fucking crazy. My boss tells me I need to hurry up when cleaning up the sink after cleaning chicken because no one else thinks it's important to both scrub it down with soap AND bleach. It's like everyone else just picks one or the other. What the fuck. I swear some people have no concept of bacteria, as if germs are little people to them like in the fucking mucinex commercials or something. I wouldn't say I'm neat or messy. I'm just sanitary.

Comment Video demonstrating water as a 'battery' (Score 1) 426

Ordered pairs of molecules at the waters edge and regular 'bulk water' create a 'battery' that produces measurable current. I could try to explain it all here but my understanding of the concept isn't perfect and this UW Professor does a much better job explaining it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVBEwn6iWOo

People set up their cold energy producers in a fashion similar to this and get measurable current and then think they've found cold fusion. Other people cant reproduce the results because until recently it's been seriously misunderstood what's happening to create this measurable energy.

Comment Go Private (Score 1) 314

Find a real world problem you can solve. Program an arduino to wipe your ass or something. Just find that problem and then write your own software to fix it. You'll have to keep your current job for a while while you start but if you can write a piece of software that is well received you can start selling licenses for it. Write an app for android phones and price it at 99 cents. Keep writing apps and build up that passive income. It's an uphill battle but at your age why not move towards working for yourself on your own terms? Your retirement time isn't far off.

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