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Comment Looks like it's Google's patent? (Score 2, Interesting) 163

by taskiss (#31599586) Attached to: Scary Smartphone Motion Control Patent Granted

From the patent application:
First: Note the question mark in the subject of this post. Then read the following;

Inventors: Uhlik; Christopher R. (Danville, CA), Orchard; John T. (Palo Alto, CA)
Appl. No.: 11/497,567
Filed: July 31, 2006

http://home.pacbell.net/cuhlik/cu_resume.html
Dr. Chris Uhlik
7/2002 to present, Engineering Director -- Google, Inc. Mountain View, CA

http://www.spoke.com/info/p2WHRbr/JohnOrchard
John Orchard, Dir Engineering, Vyyo Inc.

Comment Re:Sure. (Score 1) 2044

by taskiss (#31543334) Attached to: Health Care Reform

Ah, you feel an anonymous post on an internet forum with no citation is capable of rebutting a research paper from one of the most influential research organizations in the US.

Oh SNAP! You got me!

Comment Sure. (Score 2, Insightful) 2044

by taskiss (#31535370) Attached to: Health Care Reform

"Will this bill do what the administration claims to do"?

Yes it will. It claims to tax the households in the upper 5% much greater than it does today, it claims to increase insurance costs for a large percentage of folks, and it will re-distribute the wealth it collects into the medical industry to provide health care for the lowest percentage of folks who mostly don't have insurance because they would rather have multiple TV's, cars and luxury items rather than buy health insurance.
Image

NASA Tests Flying Airbag 118

Posted by samzenpus from the drop-the-cloud-anchor dept.
coondoggie writes "NASA is looking to reduce the deadly impact of helicopter crashes on their pilots and passengers with what the agency calls a high-tech honeycomb airbag known as a deployable energy absorber. So in order to test out its technology NASA dropped a small helicopter from a height of 35 feet to see whether its deployable energy absorber, made up of an expandable honeycomb cushion, could handle the stress. The test crash hit the ground at about 54MPH at a 33 degree angle, what NASA called a relatively severe helicopter crash."
Idle

Canadian Blood Services Promotes Pseudoscience 219

Posted by samzenpus from the type-A-negative-personality dept.
trianglecat writes "The not-for-profit agency Canadian Blood Services has a section of their website based on the Japanese cultural belief of ketsueki-gata, which claims that a person's blood group determines or predicts their personality type. Disappointing for a self-proclaimed 'science-based' organization. The Ottawa Skeptics, based in the nation's capital, appear to be taking some action."
Science

Programmable Quantum Computer Created 132

Posted by Soulskill from the four-out-of-five-ain't-bad dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A team at NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) used berylium ions, lasers and electrodes to develop a quantum system that performed 160 randomly chosen routines. Other quantum systems to date have only been able to perform single, prescribed tasks. Other researchers say the system could be scaled up. 'The researchers ran each program 900 times. On average, the quantum computer operated accurately 79 percent of the time, the team reported in their paper.'"
Games

Review Scores the "Least Important Factor" When Buying Games 169

Posted by Soulskill from the arbitrary-numbers-are-arbitrary dept.
A recent report from a games industry analyst suggests that among a number of factors leading to the purchase of a video game — such as price, graphics and word of mouth — the game's aggregated review score is the least important measure. Analyst Doug Creutz said, "We believe that while Metacritic scores may be correlated to game quality and word of mouth, and thus somewhat predictive of title performance, they are unlikely in and of themselves to drive or undermine the success of a game. We note this, in part, because of persistent rumors that some game developers have been jawboning game reviewers into giving their games higher critical review scores. We believe the publishers are better served by spending their time on the development process than by 'grade-grubbing' after the fact."
Image

Scientists Say a Dirty Child Is a Healthy Child 331

Posted by samzenpus from the snack-is-going-to-be-on-the-floor-today dept.
Researchers from the School of Medicine at the University of California have shown that the more germs a child is exposed to, the better their immune system in later life. Their study found that keeping a child's skin too clean impaired the skin's ability to heal itself. From the article: "'These germs are actually good for us,' said Professor Richard Gallo, who led the research. Common bacterial species, known as staphylococci, which can cause inflammation when under the skin, are 'good bacteria' when on the surface, where they can reduce inflammation."

Comment Re:As an UNIX admin... (Score 1) 316

by taskiss (#29968084) Attached to: An Inbox Is Not a Glove Compartment

Things break "in the ordinary course of business" and that's the reason UNIX shops need UNIX admins, even though it's my experience that UNIX breaks less often than other OS's.

As far as our obligation to not disclose the contents of mail we see doing our job, I don't believe that satisfies any privacy concerns...

Peeping through a peep-hole at someone taking a shower and promising not to tell is still a violation of their privacy.

Comment As an UNIX admin... (Score 1) 316

by taskiss (#29950590) Attached to: An Inbox Is Not a Glove Compartment

"Fortunately for everybody, this is not true — most ISPs do not allow their employees to read customer e-mails 'in the ordinary course of business' "

I disagree. When something starts filling /var/spool/mqueue it's common that customer e-mail get read.

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