baz00f - Slashdot User

Comment Re:There is no vaccine for the worst diseases (Score 1) 1051

by baz00f on Friday December 12, 2014 @02:51PM (#48584791) Attached to: Time To Remove 'Philosophical' Exemption From Vaccine Requirements?

The pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine nearly killed me when I was a child.

Take a look at vaccine adjuvants. Doctors are not scientists, they are business people, and use a lot of hocus-pocus for financial and other reasons. For a large part doctors and biologists have no clue what they are really doing.

No holistic/philosopical objections here, just pure science.

Likely you got the whole-cell pertussis vaccine which had about 10x higher rates of reactogenicity than the newer generation of acellular pertussis vaccines. The vast majority of reactions are redness, swelling, pain and not life-threatening.

The newer, "cleaner" acellular pertussis vaccine seems to be less immunogenic than the older "dirtier" vaccine. That may be contributing to the whooping cough outbreaks because it needs to be boosted more frequently than the current schedule.

Aluminum hydroxide ("Alum"), or aluminum hydroxy phosphate, work very well as adjuvants for many vaccines. They also adsorb the protein components of the vaccine and help stabilize them for a longer refrigerated shelf life.

Thimerosol ("mercury") hasn't been used in single dose vaccines since 2001. It was used as a bactericidal agent in multi-use vials to suppress the growth of bacteria if there was inadvertent contamination.

To say that vaccine developers "have no clue what they are doing" is pretty harsh. It now takes $300 million or more to develop a licensed vaccine today and the pre-clinical and clinical hurdles are steep.

Comment 10 ... : GOTO 10 is a loop (Score 5, Informative) 438

by Mneme on Saturday December 01, 2012 @01:52PM (#42155627) Attached to: How Does a Single Line of BASIC Make an Intricate Maze?

it manages to create a complicated maze with out the use of a loop, variables and without very complicate syntax

It's very cool the way this code draws a maze, but there's obviously a loop there.

(And it's “without” not “with out”, and “complicated” not “complicate”.)

How the Internet Didn't Fail As Predicted 259

Posted by samzenpus on Monday March 08, 2010 @11:22AM from the series-of-popular-tubes dept.

Lord Byron Eee PC writes "Newsweek is carrying a navel-gazing piece on how wrong they were when in 1995 they published a story about how the Internet would fail. The original article states, 'Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.' The article continues to say that online shopping will never happen, that airline tickets won't be purchased over the web, and that newspapers have nothing to fear. It's an interesting look back at a time when the Internet was still a novelty and not yet a necessity."

Comment Re:Problem? (Score 5, Insightful) 214

by Mneme on Tuesday September 08, 2009 @12:24PM (#29353595) Attached to: Snow Leopard Snubs Document Creator Codes

No, they were opening in QuickTime just because they were originally saved by QuickTime.

No one ever did Get Info.

It sounds like this previous behavior seems odd to you (since you misunderstood what happened), which supports the perspective that for most users, the behavior was odd and the change amounts to a bug fix.

Apple Quietly Recommends Antivirus Software For Macs 484

Posted by timothy on Tuesday December 02, 2008 @08:59AM from the wear-your-rubbers dept.

Barence writes "After years of boasting about the Mac's near invincibility, Apple is now advising its customers to install security software on their computers. Apple — which has continually played on Windows' vulnerability to viruses in its advertising campaigns — issued the advice in a low-key message on its support forums. 'Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult.' It goes on to recommend a handful of products." Reader wild_berry points out the BBC's story on the unexpected recommendation.

Looking For Earth-Like Exoplanets 73

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday October 11, 2008 @08:39AM from the dust-motes-orbiting-a-yottawatt-light-bulb dept.

Discover Magazine is running a story detailing the search for planets like Earth orbiting other stars. While we've been able to locate a few "super earths" so far, none of them really compare in size or the potential for habitability with our own world. Fortunately, advances in data analysis and new space-based telescopes — such as Kepler, the James Webb Space Telescope, and the already-launched CoRoT (PDF) — have some astronomers predicting we'll find such an exoplanet by 2010, and a habitable one by 2012. Earth-based telescopes are also in the hunt, though the article notes, "even if a habitable Earth-like world is found first from the ground, it will most likely take a space observatory to search for the chemical signals that tell us what we really want to know: Is anything living out there? If the planet is one that can be observed transiting, it just might be possible to provide a hint of an answer in the next few years."

Should IT Unionize? 1141

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday September 04, 2008 @09:19AM from the working-great-in-detroit dept.

snydeq writes "Sixty-hour work weeks with no overtime or comp time, a BlackBerry hitched to your belt 24/7, mandates from managers who have no clue what you actually do — all for a job that could be outsourced tomorrow. 'Is it finally time for technology workers to form a union and demand better working conditions?' InfoWorld's Dan Tynan asks. To some, the odds against IT unions are long, in large part because the 'lone gunman' culture is pervasive. Diversity of skills and job objectives is another hurdle for rallying around common goals. But that has not dissuaded several union-minded groups from cropping up across the industry as of late, Tynan reports. In the end, the best bet for IT may be a professional organization modeled after the American Bar Association or the American Medical Association, one that could give IT professionals a single voice for speaking out on issues that affect everyone — such as H-1B visa limits or tax incentives to keep IT jobs onshore."

Miguel De Icaza On Mono, Moonlight, and Gnome 328

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday August 04, 2008 @09:06AM from the people-who-need-to-invest-in-decaf dept.

Knuckles writes "Austrian newspaper Der Standard continues its recent series of in-depth interviews with free software developers. This time they sat down with Novell's Vice President of Developer Platform, Miguel de Icaza of Gnome and Mono fame. The interview was conducted at GUADEC (GNOME Users' And Developers' European Conference). Miguel talks mainly about Mono 2.0 and .Net 3.5 compatibility, enhancing the collaboration with Microsoft over Silverlight ('Moonlight' in Mono), and the larger political situation of Mono and Moonlight. When the interviewer asks whether Moonlight is only validating Silverlight on the web, Miguel gives a quite detailed answer that includes a possibly well-deserved swipe at Mozilla ..."

Ivy League Computer Science Curricula Exposed 312

Posted by timothy on Sunday July 27, 2008 @01:26PM from the so-you-don't-have-to dept.

Doug Treadwell writes "Many people have wondered what the difference is between the Computer Science education given in the average public university versus one given in an Ivy League university (or a top level public university). There have also been discussions here on Slashdot about whether any Computer Science curriculum gives students the knowledge they need for the working world. As a computer science student both questions are very important to me, so I decided to answer them for myself and build a website to share what I found. I was able to find the required reading for hundreds of courses at Stanford, Princeton, Carnegie Mellon, and Berkeley; along with some other institutions. This should also help answer some of those 'What should I read?' questions."

Boy Scouts Ask Open Source Community For Help 973

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday June 10, 2008 @01:18PM from the trustworthy-loyal-helpful-friendly dept.

Lucas123 writes "The Boy Scouts of America are looking to the open-source community for help in building software to use for fundraisers, special events, and other functions, for their more than 121,000 local scout troops. Some open source advocates, who are former Boy Scouts, support the idea, despite a few reservations. According to the article, there are no plans for a scout merit badge in open source — but there has been a merit badge in computers since 1967, 'and it is possible that if the program is successful, it could eventually be used by IT-savvy scouts themselves.'"

Brain Study Calls Free Will Into Question 733

Posted by kdawson on Sunday April 13, 2008 @08:49PM from the choose-wisely-young-jedi dept.

siddster notes an account up at Wired of research indicating that brain scanners can see your decisions before you make them. "In a study published Sunday in Nature Neuroscience, researchers using brain scanners could predict people's decisions seven seconds before the test subjects were even aware of making them... Caveats remain, holding open the door for free will... The experiment may not reflect the mental dynamics of other, more complicated decisions... Also, the predictions were not completely accurate. Maybe free will enters at the last moment, allowing a person to override an unpalatable subconscious decision."

Windows 7 Likely Going Modular, Subscription-based 603

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @09:45AM from the what's-not-to-love dept.

Microsoft CRM writes "When Windows 7 launches sometime after the start of 2010, the desktop OS will be Microsoft's most 'modular' operating system to date. That's not necessarily a good thing, of course; Windows Vista is a sprawling, complex OS. From Microsoft's perspective, though, there are many possible benefits. The OS's developers can add/remove functionality module by module. New modules could be sold post-launch, keeping revenue streams strong. A modular approach could also allow the company to make functionality available on a time-limited basis, potentially allowing users to 'rent' a feature if it's needed on a one-off basis. Microsoft is already testing 'pay as you go' consumer subscriptions in developing countries."

UK Reconsiders 1986 Decision To Ban Astronauts 279

Posted by Zonk on Monday March 17, 2008 @08:18PM from the brits-iiiinnnn-spaaaaccceee dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The British space agency, BNSC, is reconsidering its 1986 decision to reject all human space missions. The decision has dominated British space policy ever since, leaving Britain out of many American and European space projects. The UK is the only nation in the G8 group of leading economies that does not have a human space flight program. But space enthusiast groups like the British Interplanetary Society are trying to persuade the British government to participate in both manned and unmanned space activities."

The Universe Is 13.73 Billion Years Old 755

Posted by kdawson on Friday March 07, 2008 @01:05PM from the so-happy-birthday-already dept.

CaptainCarrot writes "Phil Plait, aka The Bad Astronomer has summarized for his readers the new results released by NASA from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), which has been surveying the 3K microwave radiation left over from the Big Bang. Some of the most interesting results: The age of the universe is now known to unprecedented accuracy: 13.73 billion years old, +/- 120 million. Spacetime is flat to within a 2% error margin. And ordinary matter and energy account for only 4.62% of the universe's total. Plait's comment on the age result: 'Some people might say it doesn't look a day over 6000 years. They're wrong.'"

Library of Congress's $3M Deal With Microsoft 297

Posted by kdawson on Sunday February 24, 2008 @03:03PM from the just-haggling-over-the-price dept.

Cory Doctorow sounds the alarm over a Library of Congress deal with Microsoft that will have collections locked up in Silverlight. I'll double the Microsoft deal and offer them $6M in perl scripts and an infinite value of free OS software if they let me (or Google or any other honest company) publish their collections in free formats. "This deal involves the donation of 'technology, services and funding' (e.g., mostly not money) with a purported value of $3M from Microsoft to the Library of Congress. The Library, in turn, agrees to put kiosks running Vista in the library and to use Microsoft Silverlight to 'help power the library's new Web site, www.myloc.gov.'"

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