When Pandora Plus was launched, the player stopped working on my primary device. My own library is large enough that I just don't care enough to figure out how to get it working again, so I dropped it entirely. It had previously introduced me to a few artists and songs I had never heard before, which is cool, but I have little patience for updates that break stuff.

Yes, glucose monitoring, that's something that still needs a lot of work considering the current options available. The tattoo idea seemed interesting when I first heard about it (changes color in response to glucose levels), but I reckon it would have much the same trouble as CGMs: too much lag. At least it's a clearly defined problem, and I think that's the greater half of the battle right there. There's a ton of issues/avenues to explore in T1D treatment that I think of a bit like space exploration: so many problems to solve that it's bound to lend solutions to other problems affecting people well outside the small population of T1s.

That includes efforts to find a cure. It's always been "5 years away", but the basic idea behind it is a bit more concrete than with many other diseases. Replace the islet cells and protect them from the immune response. Even if you can regrow your own, obviously that's an issue when it's an autoimmune condition. Solving this problem can point to solutions for many other problems, as well as prevention. I don't believe a cure will ever be available for me, but preventing others from ever having to experience this would be great.

This is, without doubt, the most intelligent and informative Slashdot conversation I have ever read. HAND.

Author, lot of Sci-Fi

I disliked this so much that I logged in, something I rarely do, just to say that slashface sucks.

Why hate what you don't pay? If you're a successful tax-dodger, why would you want reform?

I moved to my own cobbled together Compiz standalone shortly after Gentoo devs forced the issue with KDE4 (the second or third time). I was really ticked at the KDE devs -- and separately, the Gentoo devs -- at that point. Basically, I was used to the way I had things set up and I didn't want anyone compelling me to make changes I didn't want to make for reasons that ultimately had nothing to do with me. I didn't care what these people's vision of the future was, and didn't understand why they were "screw"ing the users who had supported KDE for so long.

I knew if I switched to Gnome, the same thing was going to happen, and soon. Of course, now the compiz packages I use are getting removed from portage, so I made them local packages. When the deps change again and break compatibility, I can look forward to a new round of hell. But either way, it's my responsibility--I can complain to myself about all the bugs that I've failed to address. Puts things in perspective. I understood, but didn't fully appreciate just how complicated this crap is, but now I just couldn't imagine any screwing involved. Screwing implies some satisfaction on at least one end!

Why have it go with the furniture when it can be the furniture?

Regular (and NPH) insulins have the advantage of being out of patent for over 10 years and not requiring prescription in most (all?) states. That's not the case with analogs, although I believe the patent on Humalog runs out next year.

And actually, yeast is used in the production of insulin, Novo Nordisk's Novolin insulin, for instance. Extraction is easier, but production is lower. However, research published in 2010 (open access) describes techniques for significantly boosting the production using a modified yeast Pichia pastoris.

This is great news. The cost-reduction ship has sailed, perhaps, at least in the US, but I still look forward to having more choices available.

IKEA is more comparable to desklets or plasmoids (or whatever the KDE applets are called these days), though. The basics are done already, so its appeal is accessibility and ease. The real DIY "open source" furniture is more like this stuff. Anyone can do it with simple tools and the right materials, but it still takes some effort. When it's easier to start a project, a steady increase in required effort builds a reluctance to let the initial investment go to waste. The trouble is biting off more than one can chew from the start. I think that is often the case with FOSS.

I kept a common starling many years ago that had an impressive vocabulary. If only he'd known he was supposed to have a "'bad recording' style", perhaps his cursing wouldn't have been so distinct. He even had a drawl: "Woll shee-ut!"

You claimed that most people can't be trusted, their judgment sucks, they suck. Fine. Any given "Nanny State" is composed of people--what sets them apart from the mass of suck that is the rest of us?

If people could be trusted to take recreational drugs responsibly (infrequent low doses, over 18 etc) then it'd be fine - problem is, most people suck at judging these things (hell, most people shouldn't be trusted with a cheque book or credit card) so the Nanny State has to make a blanket ruling to compensate for the suckage of the General Populace.

You seem to have a problem trusting people to make good decisions for themselves, but no problem trusting them to make decisions for others. This seems ... odd.