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Medicine

Congressional Committee Casts a Harsh Eye On Vaccination Science 858

The Bad Astronomer writes "A recent hearing of the Congressional Committee on Oversight and Government Reform became a bully pulpit for antivaccination rhetoric when Representatives Dan Burton (R-Ind.) and Dennis Kucinich (D-Oh.) made speeches connecting vaccines to autism — a connection that medical experts have shown does not exist. Although there were actual medical researchers there as witnesses, they were mostly berated by the Congressmen on the panel. Vaccines are one of the most successful medical advancements in human history, having saved hundreds of millions of lives, and after copious studies have been shown to have no connection with autism. Despite this, a vocal antivax lobby exists, including, clearly, members of Congress. In part this is why preventable and potentially fatal diseases like pertussis and measles are once again on the rise."
Businesses

Silicon Valley's Dirty Little Secret: Age Bias 375

MightyMait writes "With my 40th birthday coming up, seeing this article makes me happy I have a good job (and a little wary of having to find another). From the article: '[T]he start-up ethos extols fresh ideas and young programmers willing to toil through the night. Chief executives in their 20s, led by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, are lionized, in part because of their youth. Many investors state bluntly that they prefer to see people under 40 in charge. Yet the youth worship undercuts another of Silicon Valley's cherished ideals: that anyone smart and driven can get ahead in what the industry likes to think of as an egalitarian culture. To many, it looks like simple age discrimination - and it's affecting people who wouldn't fit any normal definition of old. "I don't think in the outside world, outside tech, anyone in their 40s would think age discrimination was happening to them," says Cliff Palefsky, a San Francisco employment attorney who has fielded age-discrimination inquiries from people in their early 40s. But they feel it in the Bay Area, he said, and it's "100 percent due to the new, young, tech startup mindset."'"

Comment Re:Run your own NTP if it matters (Score 1) 290

You don't want half of these devices on a network. Gross generalization time but... Most of them are very insecure and there are no such things as patches or updates from many vendors. They would be compromised as soon as they were discovered. I cringed every time the antivirus pop-up came up on the screen of the machine running the monitors used during my son's birth. At least they were running an antivirus to tell them the machine was compromised so they could be incompetent instead of ignorant.

Comment Maybe it's because we don't let them do science (Score 1) 580

Everyone is so worried about kids hurting themselves, physically or emotionally, that they aren't allowed to do actual science anymore. We assume that science is too hard so we dumb it down. Chemistry classes don't even have chemicals anymore. At this point, I think we need to expect more out of our students and let them prove how intelligent they can be if we don't hold them back or get in their way.

Comment Re:The real question is: (Score 1) 194

There are a bunch of services like that on the horizon. The issue isn't really providing a "next-gen" service so much as it is doing something useful with that data wherever it gets routed. Even with text messaging, its pretty simple to receive a message and route it to an answering point. The problem is whether the dispatcher on the receiving end can actually see that message and do something with it using whatever software/hardware is powering their workstation. 911 is an intentionally slow moving service because it has to work. When it doesn't work, lives can be lost. This sometimes means new tech, however useful, is held up while everyone slowly plans upgrades to their systems and then validates them and then validates them some more.
Cloud

Is It Time For NoSQL 2.0? 164

New submitter rescrv writes "Key-value stores (like Cassandra, Redis and DynamoDB) have been replacing traditional databases in many demanding web applications (e.g. Twitter, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and others). But for the most part, the differences between existing NoSQL systems come down to the choice of well-studied implementation techniques; in particular, they all provide a similar API that achieves high performance and scalability by limiting applications to simple operations like GET and PUT. HyperDex, a new key-value store developed at Cornell, stands out in the NoSQL spectrum with its unique design. HyperDex employs a unique multi-dimensional hash function to enable efficient search operations — that is, objects may be retrieved without using the key (PDF) under which they are stored. Other systems employ indexing techniques to enable search, or enumerate all objects in the system. In contrast, HyperDex's design enables applications to retrieve search results directly from servers in the system. The results are impressive. Preliminary benchmark results on the project website show that HyperDex provides significant performance improvements over Cassandra and MongoDB. With its unique design, and impressive performance, it seems fittng to ask: Is HyperDex the start of NoSQL 2.0?"

Comment Re:Comparison of technologies (Score 5, Interesting) 624

Even without the RFID, I've watched them deny kids onto flights because their passport wasn't signed. It was interesting to watch the mother explain that her kids could barely write their name let alone be expected to have a signature that would ever be useful for identification. They finally made her hold her kids' hands so that each of them could sign their names. The whole system is flawed and RFID is just another expensive layer on top of it. I would have hoped RFID was implemented more like magnetic strips on credit cards. When they work, it speeds things up. When they don't, every business has an imprint machine or a place to type in your credit card number in their computer so they can still take your money. I guess there is more incentive in the case of credit cards to actually get it right for the consumer though.

Comment Fire them (Score 1) 388

If you don't need access to the information, you shouldn't have it. If you have access to the information and don't have business need to look a it, you look at it until you have business need. If you can't handle this, you should be fired and perhaps prosecuted depending on how you used the information.
Games

Duke Nukem Forever Goes Gold 277

An anonymous reader writes with enthusiasm "Duke Nukem Forever has finally gone gold!" Looks like it'll be on shelves around June 10th with a demo available for Duke Nukem First Access Club members available June 3rd. Can it really be true?
Education

Univ. of Illinois Goes War-of-the-Worlds On Students 168

theodp writes "'Strange beings who landed in New Jersey tonight are the vanguard of an invading army from Mars.' (Orson Welles, 1938). 'Active shooter at BUILDING NAME/INTERSECTION. Escape area if safe to do so or shield/secure your location.' (Univ. of Illinois, 2011). An alert message sent out Thursday to 87,000 emails and cell phones warning recipients to escape from an 'active shooter' at the University of Illinois was an error, the Office of the Chief of Police confirmed. 'The alert sent today was caused by a person making a mistake,' explained an email. 'Rather than pushing the SAVE button to update the pre-scripted message, the person pushed the SUBMIT button. We are working with the provider of the Illini-Alert service to implement additional security features in the program to prevent this type of error.'"

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