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Students, the Other Unprotected Lab Animals
theodp writes "Slate reports on the horrible — and preventable — death of a young UCLA biochemist in a t-butyl lithium incident, which led a Chemical Health and Safety columnist to the disheartening conclusion that most academic laboratories are unsafe venues for work or study. It's estimated that accidents and injuries occur hundreds of times more frequently in academic labs than in industrial ones. Why? For one thing, Slate says, occupational safety and health laws that protect workers in hazardous jobs apply only to employees, not to undergrads, grad students, or research fellows who receive stipends from outside funders."
Linux just isn't ready for the desktop yet. It may be ready for the web servers that you nerds use to distribute your TRON fanzines and personal Dungeons and Dragons web-sights across the world wide web, but the average computer user isn't going to spend months learning how to use a CLI and then hours compiling packages so that they can get a workable graphic interface to check their mail with, especially not when they already have a Windows machine that does its job perfectly well and is backed by a major corporation, as opposed to Linux which is only supported by a few unemployed nerds living in their mother's basement somewhere. The last thing I want is a level 5 dwarf (haha) providing me my OS.
But, if they make the labs safe, where will the great stories (like pouring liquid nitrogen down a drain, or projectile canisters) come from? C'mon, someone has to serve as an example to everyone else...
And what kind of workplace hazards did you experience as a computer scientist
The Skynet kind.
Ew. That's not very sanitary, you know.
If it tends to weed out the stupid. I'm for it.
Posting from the 70s? WTF
How dare you be so modest!! You conceited bastard!!
How ironic that this is the one time that "loose" is actually the correct spelling, yet "let[ting] undergrads lose" is still somehow appropriate to the topic.