Comment Re: I thought (Score 1) 157
If you go to Amsterdam and speak Dutch (with an international accent), the Dutch will answer you in English, almost always. Trying to be helpful, but hard for people who genuinely want to learn Dutch.
Can You Get Covid-19 Again? It's Very Unlikely, Experts Say 55
An anonymous reader shares a report: The anecdotes are alarming. A woman in Los Angeles seemed to recover from Covid-19, but weeks later took a turn for the worse and tested positive again. A New Jersey doctor claimed several patients healed from one bout only to become reinfected with the coronavirus. And another doctor said a second round of illness was a reality for some people, and was much more severe. These recent accounts tap into people's deepest anxieties that they are destined to succumb to Covid-19 over and over, feeling progressively sicker, and will never emerge from this nightmarish pandemic. And these stories fuel fears that we won't be able to reach herd immunity -- the ultimate destination where the virus can no longer find enough victims to pose a deadly threat.
But the anecdotes are just that -- stories without evidence of reinfections, according to nearly a dozen experts who study viruses. "I haven't heard of a case where it's been truly unambiguously demonstrated," said Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Other experts were even more reassuring. While little is definitively known about the coronavirus, just seven months into the pandemic, the new virus is behaving like most others, they said, lending credence to the belief that herd immunity can be achieved with a vaccine. It may be possible for the coronavirus to strike the same person twice, but it's highly unlikely that it would do so in such a short window or to make people sicker the second time, they said. What's more likely is that some people have a drawn-out course of infection, with the virus taking a slow toll weeks to months after their initial exposure. People infected with the coronavirus typically produce immune molecules called antibodies. Several teams have recently reported that the levels of these antibodies decline in two to three months, causing some consternation. But a drop in antibodies is perfectly normal after an acute infection subsides, said Dr. Michael Mina, an immunologist at Harvard University.
But the anecdotes are just that -- stories without evidence of reinfections, according to nearly a dozen experts who study viruses. "I haven't heard of a case where it's been truly unambiguously demonstrated," said Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Other experts were even more reassuring. While little is definitively known about the coronavirus, just seven months into the pandemic, the new virus is behaving like most others, they said, lending credence to the belief that herd immunity can be achieved with a vaccine. It may be possible for the coronavirus to strike the same person twice, but it's highly unlikely that it would do so in such a short window or to make people sicker the second time, they said. What's more likely is that some people have a drawn-out course of infection, with the virus taking a slow toll weeks to months after their initial exposure. People infected with the coronavirus typically produce immune molecules called antibodies. Several teams have recently reported that the levels of these antibodies decline in two to three months, causing some consternation. But a drop in antibodies is perfectly normal after an acute infection subsides, said Dr. Michael Mina, an immunologist at Harvard University.
Comment Citation needed (Score 1) 311
Italian doctors are saying "strange flu" cases were reported in the Chinese immigrant population as early as October.
Citation needed. I'd really like to have a source for this.
-- MQR
Comment Re:RIP Roblimo (Score 1) 344
Yeah the early days of Slashot were great. I lurked on slashdot since the late 90's, it was many years before I made an account. But for the best part of a decade I read slashdot every day. In the early days it was THE site for Linux/open source news. I still look at it occasionally, and logged in to post this for the first time in a few years. I have nothing else to add beyond what has been said, but want to post anyway. RIP Roblimo.
Comment Re:Crony Commission (Score 1) 317
If Congress wanted Constellation, then they would have funded it. That was one of Obama's options. The status quo was ridiculous. The options were fund it, or kill it.
Comment Re:Why "I" shouldn't trust Geek Squad? (Score 1) 389
There have also been suggestions that they planted child porn in order to get the $500 bounty.
Comment Re:Proof of concept demo (Score 1) 112
And if someone flips the meaning of TRUE and FALSE, then you have much bigger problems on your hands. The whole basis of comparison operations in C is based around zero versus non-zero. The value '1' has no significance whatsoever.
Comment Re:Proof of concept demo (Score 1) 112
Argh, in C, comparisons against true (TRUE) or false (FALSE) are even worse style. Indeed, in C, defining TRUE == 1 is erroneous, because in C anything that is zero is false, anything that is non-zero is true. So in C, code such as
if (a == TRUE)
is a bug. Any non-zero value represents true, but this comparison only tests for a == 1.
Comparisons against FALSE are OK, but flawed logic. It is anyway a boolean, so why not just test directly?
if (a)
In C, you should *never* do a comparison against TRUE. If you really want to do a comparison against a boolean value (which is never necessary, but perhaps, in some cases, might be a useful form of documenting your intent), compare against FALSE. eg,
if (a == FALSE)
if (a != FALSE)
Comment Re:Proof of concept demo (Score 1) 112
That kind of code indicates some rather flawed logic. Why would you ever want to compare something against a boolean? Better to write simply If !Field.IsCleverlyHiddenByAPhisher
Comment Re:Do greenhouses create their own heat? (Score 2) 502
Sorry, the rate of natural oil production is actually about 10 barrels per day.
Comment Re: Who cares? (Score 2) 502
Comment Re:Do greenhouses create their own heat? (Score 1) 502
I was going to reply, but logging on half-way through writing the reply caused the edit box to clear and I lost it. But nevermind, the comment from haruchai sums up what I was going to say anyway. Trying to store biomass doesn't work, it decomposes and releases the CO2 anyway. Trying to 'plug' it is basically impossible, it amounts to basically artificially reproducing the same effect that happens in the production of coal or oil. The natural rate of fossil fuel production, across the entire planet, is something like 1 barrel of oil per day. (yes that fits - the rate of oil usage currently about 20 million barrels per day; it formed over the course of 300 million years).
Comment Re: Who cares? (Score 2, Informative) 502
Ignoring all other points but just focusing on one: The 'corrections' in this data set are, at most, 0.06 degrees C. That is only a couple of pixels on the XKCD comic. Do you know what a pixel is? Hint: it is really small. If you looked at the original comic, and the 'corrected' comic, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference, unless you looked very very closely.
Comment Like Bolivia, Bulgaria to get a million chickens.. (Score 1) 62
unless they chicken out, like Edgar Villaneuva in Venezuela etc.
Comment Windows 10 "IS" the cruft (Score 5, Insightful) 205
Stay with Windows7. You ain't losin' nothin'.
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