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Comment Re:Actually, it is over already (Score 1) 542

Ah... and then there is Sweden. Way at the bottom. They had one death in the whole country yesterday. No one wants to talk about Sweden. Its uncomfortable. No shut downs in Sweden. School, bars stayed open. Economy is thriving. People took common sense measures.

Now we are going to hear all the excuses on why Sweden was the outlier. No, as a scientist, Sweden was the control. Well, the best we have.

The issue is this virus does not present like a naturally occurring pathogen. It has remarkable oddities in its genetic makeup. It impacts obese, elderly, diabetic, and the co-morbid much more severely than the young and healthy. This is not debatable. The numbers confirm this.

Sweden is a remarkably healthy country with a younger leaning population. They decided to seek herd immunity. Worked for them based on their population and density makeup.

Maybe we should be discussing why America, and more importantly those top states are so unhealthy. There seems to be a correlation between population density and health here. But no one wants to have that discussion.

Instead there is yelling and screaming about masks. Any scientist here knows that if this virus is indeed aerosolized then anything under N95 is just feelgood wishful thinking. Its damn near useless. It might slow the spread slightly, but will NOT impact the exponential spread.

And as far as Cuomo. The guy is a murderer. Plain and simple. He took the infected and placed them with the most high risk patients killing a substantial portion. This was not a mistake. We knew at that point what would happen. The data set was large enough to know the elderly and co-morbid were extremely high risk. It was done intentionally. Why? I have no clue. Maybe someone should sit down and ask him. Forcefully.

Comment Seriously?!? (Score 2) 445

I come here for tech articles. Not for more of the rampant idiotic political discourse that is going on elsewhere. Knock it off.

As far as the WHO: It failed. If I fail at my job my employer fires me. I don't see what its any different here. WHO can go get a job with another country or fix its policies and get rehired by the US. Its as simple as that and trying to politicize it either by the right or the left is disgusting and wont fix anything.

Graphics

NVIDIA Shows Off "Optimus" Switchable Graphics For Notebooks 102

Vigile writes "Transformers jokes aside, NVIDIA's newest technology offering hopes to radically change the way notebook computers are built and how customers use them. The promise of both extended battery life and high performance mobile computing has seemed like a pipe dream, and even the most recent updates to 'switchable graphics' left much to be desired in terms of the user experience. Having both an integrated and discrete graphics chip in your notebook does little good if you never switch between the two. Optimus allows the system to seamlessly and instantly change between IGP and discrete NVIDIA GPUs based on the task being run, including games, GPU encoding or Flash video playback. Using new software and hardware technology, notebooks using Optimus can power on and pass control to the GPU in a matter of 300ms and power both the GPU and PCIe lanes completely off when not in use. This can be done without being forced to reboot or even close out your applications, making it a hands-free solution for the customer."

Comment Re:No offense meant, but... (Score 1) 891

What happens to their income stream when you don't SPEND money on gas? With people switching to hybrids and plain old charge electricals, the gas tax doesn't work as well anymore. They aren't interested in you driving more efficient cars... they are interested in the revenue stream. Efficient cars threaten that. Thus, new taxes.

Oh and if they can track your every move, you know... to protect the kids, then more power to them! Think about all those child molesters out there driving around that must be monitored! Oh and all the soccer mom terrorists! Track those bastages!

Oh! and think of the revenue stream on all of the tickets that will be issued for speeding! Just had a thought... that puts a lot of police out of business. But wait, they are unionized! Can't really let those people go....

Comment There is more than one way.... (Score 1) 677

K-12 math is bad. I'm a product of that system. Until 5th grade my parents were told that I was "slow" when it came to math. In 5th grade I had a wonderful teacher that saw me nodding my head during math class one day while working on a problem. She asked me what I was doing. I said I was "matching" the pattern in my head. It turns out I don't work math like most western people.. I don't memorize. I visualize patterns of 5 and 10, the 5 looks like the 5 on a pair of dice, the 10 looks like two rows of 5's laid out. She, luckily, was learned enough to realize that I naturally mimicked the eastern way of solving lower level math problems. She gave my parents literature and pointed them in the correct direction, even though she will still bound to teach memorization type math in class which never made sense to me.

Well I ended up becoming an Engineer. I can solve most math problems in my head that make people cry just thinking about them. I can usually add the grocery bill up faster at the checkout than the machine can... and add in the tax. I add in my head left to right, I use the "close enough" principal, all the stuff that drives teachers here nuts because its "wrong". Never mind I was always better at the math and faster than the teachers themselves.

I have three daughters. The first one started struggling with math in first grade. She did not understand why teachers kept making her use a numberline to add objects. It was hell working with her night after night with the idiotic numberline. We had fights about it every night. One night I kicked myself when I realized she might have the same issue I had... and was pissed since I should be one of the first to recognize it. I grabbed a bowl of dry cheerios and asked her to use them to work the problem. I removed the numberline. Sure enough, she geometrically laid them out. It was a different layout than I use, but none the less It was the same pattern like solving that I use. I almost cried.

I looked around and attended a few learning centers to see if any of them would teach differently. All of them were the same idiotic system until I found Kumon. If there is one in your area I highly suggest you go check it out. Its not for everyone because the learning is based on eastern principals... and some people jsut don't think that way. My wife for instance just shakes her head at it.

I guess the moral here is that you can't shoehorn everyone into the same system. Mathematics in its truest form is more an extension of logic than it is about numbers. K-12 teachers keep pounding the number thing into kids heads over an over. Memorize Memorize! My daughter is now going into third grade next year and can add and subtract multiple digit numbers in her head. She is able to divide in her head and get "close enough" by spitting out fractions or remainders, even though she has no idea how to do long division by hand. Quite honestly I don't think *I* remember how to do long division by hand since it never made sense to me. Sure, I understand the principal of it, it just seemed like a backwards way of doing it. Thats the thing... why do it if it seems wrong when there is a perfectly good way of doing it another way?

The reason is, as was explained to me, that the way I do it doesn't work for standardized testing. Well it works for the right answer but since you are doing the bulk of it in your head there is no "work" to write down. And when there is written on say adding two large numbers the work doesn't make any sense to the grader. There is ALOT of money riding on those standardized tests. So in the end it all boils down to money :(

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