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User: uglyduckling

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Comments · 1,479

  1. scary on 23-Year-Old X11 Server Security Vulnerability Discovered · · Score: 1

    Amazing how an automated tool can spot something like this after so many years.

  2. Re:Cancer cured! on Killing Cancer By Retraining the Patient's Immune System · · Score: 1

    Dude, that's already happened. Look at life expectancy increases in the West over the past 100 years. In the UK NHS, it's referred to as the 'population time bomb' as people think that we'll be unable to afford universal healthcare in 20 years' time. It hasn't stopped all of these life-prolonging treatments to become mainstream, and the UK government still spends millions every year educating people in health improvement that actually extends life and ultimately costs more (stop smoking, reduce saturated fat intake).

  3. Re:What about FAT32 on German Court Invalidates Microsoft FAT Patent · · Score: 1

    I don't think it's a useless file system. When I'm taking media to a conference, I have a small external hard drive with a small partition with exFAT drivers on, and a larger exFAT partition with all the media on it. That way, if there's an XP box being used for projection, I can move long video files around without the insanity of trying to use NTFS on removable media.

  4. Re:media library on Ask Slashdot: Best FLOSS iTunes Replacement In 2013? · · Score: 1

    Ah, OK. I'm not sure why anyone would want to do that anyway, but fair enough. I want to have all of our music on all of our computers (synced via Home Sharing over WiFi) and then sync my mobile device to my laptop and my wife's to hers. That's what we did until Apple brought out iTunes Match, now we use that service as it's cheap and convenient.

  5. Re:AIMP on Ask Slashdot: Best FLOSS iTunes Replacement In 2013? · · Score: 1

    "I can't believe that in 2013 she can only use an iPad properly with one computer" - what do you mean by that statement?

  6. Re:Never used iTunes on Ask Slashdot: Best FLOSS iTunes Replacement In 2013? · · Score: 1

    Yes, I suppose if you're organising your music on a 386SX25 with 10Mb RAM, the 'tons of hard drive space' used by a flat database would be a major concern.

  7. Re:technology shouldn't replace expertise on New Smart Glasses Allow Nurses To See Veins Through Skin · · Score: 2

    Sound like you've never worked in paediatrics. Palpation is almost useless for children under 8, just go for what you can see, transilluminate or in this case pick up with infra-red.

  8. Re:This is hardly new on New Smart Glasses Allow Nurses To See Veins Through Skin · · Score: 2

    I disagree. Certainly in paediatrics transilluminators work on all skin colours. To my knowledge, they don't use 'near-infrared' but use visible light, usually from red LEDs. This technology does use infra-red, and again skin pigmentation shouldn't matter. The projection-based devices I've used (e.g. Vein Viewer) worked fine on black african and asian skin pigments.

  9. Re:Brought to you by on New Smart Glasses Allow Nurses To See Veins Through Skin · · Score: 1
  10. Re:Sounds familiar on New Smart Glasses Allow Nurses To See Veins Through Skin · · Score: 1

    You don't know what you're talking about.

  11. Re:Hey, if this means... on New Smart Glasses Allow Nurses To See Veins Through Skin · · Score: 1

    Yep, and this will help with those patients in no way at all. In fact, it's likely to make you try for a tiny mobile vein that looks good through the glasses but isn't any good in practice. This would certainly be a helpful tool in the toolkit, but in now way a complete answer.

  12. Re:Hey, if this means... on New Smart Glasses Allow Nurses To See Veins Through Skin · · Score: 2

    Actually this sort of tech is available now, it uses a compact video projector rather than glasses. It works well, although it does have a tendency to make even tiny veins appear viable for cannulation. http://www.christiedigital.com/en-us/projection-solutions/medical-innovations/pages/default.aspx I can see the potential of using glasses, the good thing about the projection version is that other people can also see what you're doing, which is helpful for a difficult procedure (e.g. PICC lines) where a couple of people might be involved. I could also imagine it reducing litigation potential compared to a single person looking through glasses.

  13. Re:Does the glasses pose any danger to the eyes ? on New Smart Glasses Allow Nurses To See Veins Through Skin · · Score: 1

    No, it's not. You inject in a site where you're unlikely to hit a vein, and before pushing the plunger you withdraw a little to ensure there's no flashback (of blood) which would indicate you're in a vein. Not difficult.

  14. Re:This. on Ask Slashdot: Cheap Second Calculators For Tests? · · Score: 1

    That's because of the inexperience/inability of the person doing the marking. When I did maths coursework assignments at school, they gave my work to the only Cambridge graduate maths teacher who had a proper maths degree. At the time, I didn't realise the significance, but in retrospect I'm grateful as he could give me marks for using a legitimate method, whereas the other teachers would call it the "wrong" method. Really, all exams should cater for people to use any legitimate method and markers should have the experience to recognise that they need to pass the paper on to someone who understands it properly.

  15. Re:Why limit calculator choices for tests? on Ask Slashdot: Cheap Second Calculators For Tests? · · Score: 1

    I took maths exams before equation solving calculators were commonplace. I had the quadratic equation formula programmed into my graphing calculator permanently taking up one of its 10 memories. And, yes, I can still regurgitate the equation at will 20 years later.

  16. Re:Or... on Soylent: No Food For 30 Days · · Score: 2

    I'm not sure why they say these things are hard to understand as it seems like even an idiot could.

    They're hard to understand because there isn't a direct one-one relationship between intake and serum levels, and different substances have complex interactions that can take years of experience to properly understand. As a simple example, if you're low on sodium - take salt, right? Well if you eat table salt or inject sodium chloride your sodium will go up, but so will your chloride, which causes acidosis if it gets too high. The purest form of dietary management is parenteral (intravenous) nutrition, which is what people get in ICU/ITU when they can't eat or take gastric feeds. It's incredibly complex and very easy to get wrong.

  17. Re:Boring article - we already know the science on Physicist Unveils a 'Turing Test' For Free Will · · Score: 1

    You can oversimplify a situation to make the evidence mean whatever you want. A guitarist will talk about "muscle memory" and how their hands just do what they need to do. That doesn't mean they lack free will when playing a guitar solo. Our brains are complex, and behaviours become instinctive and responsive over time in order to react quickly; free will can then override the instinctive decision. For example, when driving your car you might find yourself braking because you've seen something out of the corner of your eye, you then decide that the car in the side road isn't about to pull out on you, so you make a conscious decision to put your foot on the gas. It doesn't mean you lack free will, it means you've trained your instincts to respond before higher reasoning kicks in, but your higher reasoning can still override that response - and it was your decision to train yourself that gave you the instinct in the first place.

  18. Re:Siri doesn't have free will on Physicist Unveils a 'Turing Test' For Free Will · · Score: 1

    I think you mean intuition.

  19. Re:Good. on UK Court Orders Two Sisters Must Receive MMR Vaccine · · Score: 1

    I was talking about vaccines. But irradiated or superheated food is sterile - e.g. freeze dried and some canned goods. They're not unsafe but they are sterile as they don't contain microorganisms.

  20. Re:Oh, I totally agree... on Nokia Design Guru Urges Apple To End Cable Chaos · · Score: 3, Informative

    So it didn't do video over Micro USB then.

  21. Re: Good. on UK Court Orders Two Sisters Must Receive MMR Vaccine · · Score: 1

    I would also like to point out that cases of SIDS rise around the same age as mandatory vaccination. --- there it is, your post immediately disqualified from proper discussion.

  22. Re:Good. on UK Court Orders Two Sisters Must Receive MMR Vaccine · · Score: 1

    Right... because there's nothing that could be done to the albumen between egg and needle that might make it safe and sterile? I think if you look too closely at the food chain from source to table or medicine from source to needle or pill, there will be plenty of things that will gross you out. The question is whether the end products are safe and sterile.

  23. Re:Damn Lies on Probe of Einstein's Brain Reveals Clues To His Genius · · Score: 1

    The median is a form of average, so presumably the GP was referring to average (median) not average (mean).

  24. Re:Love camera phones on The Difference Between Film and Digital Photography (Video) · · Score: 1

    I can take high-ISO handheld photos with my 6D in an only partially lit parking lot at night

    Dude, you can get arrested for doing things like that.

    Seriously, though, DSLRs are amazing, so long as you actually learn to use them. I almost laugh out loud on a regular basis when on holiday every time I see someone with an entry-level DSLR in full auto mode with a kit lens, shooting some artefact or monument with the built in flash. Those sorts would do better with an all in one bridge camera and spend the difference in the hotel bar.

  25. Re:OS X Upgrade Fear on Inside OS X Mavericks · · Score: 1

    Actually, I've wondered for a long time why it's not normal behaviour for a GUI-based OS to prioritise the foreground task. It drives me mad that, when my workstation is rendering some video (for example), I can't check my mail. Multicore and multiprocessor becoming the norm has done a lot to improve this, but it still seems to me that when I sit down at a computer and click on something with the mouse, the majority of the CPU time should be used to respond to that click since that's obviously what I'm concerned with at that moment in time.