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Comment Re: not a member != breaking ties (Score 1) 313

I think the point being made was that the World Health Organization was responding to the information they got from China. The reference to the President's statements is to show China weren't being honest with anyone and he was dealing with the same bad information the WHO were. Therefore blaming the WHO is a bit unfair.

Submission + - Millennials set to earn less than Generation X

AmiMoJo writes: Millennials are set to become the first generation to earn less than their predecessors, new research suggests. The Resolution Foundation found that under-35s earned £8,000 ($10,600) less in their twenties than Generation X workers. If wages for millennials follow the same path as Generation X, average career earnings will be about £825,000 ($1.1m). That would make them the first generation to earn less than their predecessors over the course of their working lives. Research found that some of the pay squeeze was due to under-35s entering the job market as the recession hit, but it also concluded that generational pay progress had ground to a halt even before the financial crisis struck in 2007/8.

Submission + - New Study Shows Why Big Pharma Hates Medical Marijuana

HughPickens.com writes: Christopher Ingraham writes in the Washington Post that a new study shows that painkiller abuse and overdose are significantly lower in states with medical marijuana laws and that when medical marijuana is available, pain patients are increasingly choosing pot over powerful and deadly prescription narcotics. The researchers found that, in the 17 states with a medical-marijuana law in place by 2013, prescriptions for painkillers and other classes of drugs fell sharply compared with states that did not have a medical-marijuana law. The drops were quite significant: In medical-marijuana states, the average doctor prescribed 265 fewer doses of antidepressants each year, 486 fewer doses of seizure medication, 541 fewer anti-nausea doses and 562 fewer doses of anti-anxiety medication. But most strikingly, the typical physician in a medical-marijuana state prescribed 1,826 fewer doses of painkillers in a given year. As a sanity check, the Bradfords ran a similar analysis on drug categories that pot typically is not recommended for — blood thinners, anti-viral drugs and antibiotics. And on those drugs, they found no changes in prescribing patterns after the passage of marijuana laws.

The tanking numbers for painkiller prescriptions in medical marijuana states are likely to cause some concern among pharmaceutical companies. These painkiller drug companies have long been at the forefront of opposition to marijuana reform, funding research by anti-pot academics and funneling dollars to groups, such as the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America, that oppose marijuana legalization. Cost-savings alone are not a sufficient justification for implementing a medical-marijuana program. The bottom line is better health, and the Bradfords' research shows promising evidence that medical-marijuana users are finding plant-based relief for conditions that otherwise would have required a pill to treat. "Our findings and existing clinical literature imply that patients respond to medical marijuana legislation as if there are clinical benefits to the drug, which adds to the growing body of evidence suggesting that the Schedule 1 status of marijuana is outdated."

Comment My Experience with these systems (Score 1) 451

I have a 2013 Ford with this system installed. There have been a few times where it helped and a couple times where it nearly scared me to death. First it has helped a few times... Once when I was in slow moving bumper to bumper traffic and was looking at the signs for my exit. The car in front braked suddenly from about 25kms/hr. The blinking lights and beeping got my attention before the car had to apply the brakes. The other time a car in front of me braked hard and the system in this case applied the brakes a second before I could. However there have been a couple experiences where it hasn't been as useful. The system obviously can't read minds so in some common cases it reacts when it shouldn't. When passing on rural roads and you start to accelerate before pulling out the car freaks out and starts the collision warning. This is the same as trying to get to speed to change lanes on the highway when it is moderately busy. You see the break in the traffic on the left and start to speed up to match traffic... The system sees a speed differential and closing with the car ahead and starts the warning. Of course the issues may be due to the terrible turbo lag in the Ford Ecoboost and the fact I needed to really plan ahead to get over into that left lane.

Comment Hey ISPs - I already pay for a fast lane (Score 1) 243

Since I pay your exorbitant gangster rates for 150Mb/s service don't I already pay for a fast lane? I don't care where those bits come from, just serve them to me at the speed I pay for.

And before you complain about congestion... Isn't that why you have me saddled with bandwidth caps?

Maybe ISPs should start looking at tiering service hours. I pay with 100% bandwidth for utilization during the day, 75% for utilization between 7p-11p. If I schedule a download for middle of the night I get charged 25% for each bit transiting at that time.

Comment Re:Fucking anti-social Millennials (Score 1) 120

You are absolutely right... We need to do a better job of utilizing the services offered or we will lose them.

People think, "oh the company is putting self checkout so that I have the option to check myself out, that is nice". No they are doing it because it is cheaper than having a cashier. I notice that people already are 'conditioned' that they are to bag their own.

I remember in the good old days... hehehe... In the good old days, not only would there be someone there to bag your groceries, they even had services where they would send it down a chute to a couple guys standing around in the cold winter and you would drive your car into the garage type thing and they would put the bags in your trunk.

This is inconceivable nowadays. Imagine the corporate profits that would be lost by actually hiring people to do jobs!

Comment Re:Could be a different route involved for the VPN (Score 1) 398

This is what irritates me so much about discussions like this. the ISP of the content requester is the one paying the ISP to transit this information. The ISP is doing nothing for free. Peering agreements were to help the ISP so they wouldn't scream so much. But in the end they need to remember that they aren't screwing Netflix. They are screwing their paying internet clients.

Comment Re:1 or 1 million (Score 1) 274

Funny about charging like a utility. They always love the idea for high users, but dislike the idea of refunding money for people that are way underutilized. If they charged like a utility - A small "being our customer fee" and true usage based billing, then either: A - They would have to charge enough per GB to maintin their current profit margin that people would scream at how expensive it is... or B - They would have to take a big hit in their profit because of all the internet users that aren't these super-heavy users and would have much smaller bills. In the end it points to the fact that they have under-provisioned for people to really use the service they were sold.

Comment Re:Yes it should ship! (Score 1) 112

Oh Samsung, why do we need another OS for people to develop for. What do we have now, 5 or 6 major OSes on mobile devices? Which are the 2 that have a deep ecosystem of applications? That doesn't come overnight and will kill your market share.

I actually wrote a letter to Samsung. I am a long time Samsung supporter and advocate (bought 3 top of the line phones, a Galaxy Gear, Gear 2 and multiple top of the line tablets. Also got family and friends to switch to Samsung/Android devices. But if they don't stay with Android, I will be dropping Samsung like a hot potato.

I HAAATTTEEE Tizen on my Gear 2.

Also, their S Voice application is crap, their email and text apps are substandard and the first thing I do on any phone i get is switch out the homescreen launcher because touchwiz is poop. I would have to say that while Smasung makes AMAZING hardware. They should leave software to other people.

Comment Re:"Bathroom" can easily be renamed.... (Score 1) 630

This is most likely why this code was instituted. Bathroom is something where management should not be interfering - when nature calls you need to answer. But smoke breaks, food breaks, etc should not be a reason to stop doing your job. Maybe management did this so that people wouldn't be penalized for so many personal breaks if they were using the bathroom instead of going for a smoke.
Space

Kepler Investigator Says 'Galaxy Is Rich In Earth-Like Planets' 206

astroengine writes "In a recent presentation, Kepler co-investigator Dimitar Sasselov unexpectedly announced news that the Kepler Space Telescope has discovered scores of candidate Earth-like exoplanets. Not waiting for the official NASA press release to announce the discovery, Sasselov went into some detail at the TEDGlobal talk in Oxford, UK earlier this month. This surprise announcement comes hot on the heels of controversy that erupted last month when the Kepler team said they were withholding data on 400 exoplanet candidates until February 2011. In light of this, Sasselov's unofficial announcement has already caused a stir. Keith Cowing, of NASAWatch.com, has commented on this surprise turn of events, saying it is really annoying 'that the Kepler folks were complaining about releasing information since they wanted more time to analyze it before making any announcements. And then the project's Co-I goes off and spills the beans before an exclusive audience — offshore. We only find out about it when the video gets quietly posted weeks later.' Although Sasselov could have handled the announcement better (and waited until NASA made the official announcement), this has the potential to be one of the biggest astronomical discoveries of our time — so long as these Earth-like 'candidates' are confirmed by further study."

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