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User: Uncle+Focker

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Comments · 284

  1. Re:Yikes on Getting Credit for Programming Accomplishments? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I agree. It's definitely better to have no job than one where you might not have your name yelled from the rooftops for every piece of work you've done. All the people who think they are so invaluable as they can pull off such a stunt are going to find almost universally that they are going to be jobless in no time flat. Programmers are a dime a dozen these days especially with all the outsourcing to India.

  2. Re:Question on Congress Slashes Funding for Peaceful Conflict Resolution Game · · Score: 2, Informative

    Section 8: The Congress shall have power

    To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the ... general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; Done.
  3. Re:Wow on Google Health Opens To the Public · · Score: 1

    There's numerous good clinical studies on substances like Echinacea that show that it boosts immune response to things like upper respiratory infections and other symptoms of a cold. Sure they might help to a degree, but in the end in cases such as the cold your immune system is carrying the load which was the point of my statement. This "herb" the person took didn't kill the cold virus load, their immune system did.

    but to just discount the possible effects of natural products simply on the basis that they're not made by a pharmaceutical company is absurd. Because that's what I clearly said. Oh wait... Why is it that whenever you point out the crockery of people like Bob Barefoot and Kevin Trudeau that you get lumped in as if you love everything the pharmaceutical companies do? The pharmaceutical companies are some of the slimiest fucks around but at least they have scientific research on their side. If these people want some credibility than maybe they should get some actual research to validate their claims rather than bleating on about how double blind studies are prejudiced against their placebo cures.
  4. Re:its time to take notice!! on Oil Billionaire Building World's Largest Wind Farm · · Score: 1

    Who said they were getting out of the oil business? He surely didn't.

  5. Re:Privacy on Google Health Opens To the Public · · Score: 0, Troll

    Google does not provide medical services, which is why they are not bound to the provisions of HIPAA. HIPPA is a regulation of privacy and portability for providers of medical services, not for companies that act as a storage medium for your personal health information. Yeah, we know this thanks for repeating this piece of information that has already been posted a dozen times or more by now. The point is the fact that some people aren't going to feel very safe having their records being stored with no HIPAA protections. I'm sorry but Google's privacy policy, which can be changed at their whim, doesn't cut it.

    If people use Excel to store their medical records, will Microsoft somehow be responsible for complying with HIPAA? Of course not. Because storing stuff in a local Excel file is definitely the same as having your personal records being sent over the Internet. Yep, clearly the same thing. Next thing you know we shouldn't have any protection on any data because you know, I could have that same data stored on a local file. Moron.
  6. Re:Wow on Google Health Opens To the Public · · Score: 1

    I never said that the pharmaceutical companies where the saints of the earth and they clearly aren't. But the difference between them and the Kevin Trudeaus of the world is they actually have to prove the effectiveness and safety of their drugs. On the other hand, the "herbalists" and "naturalists" get to sell millions of overpriced placebos in an unregulated market and rake in billions annually. If you want to line their pockets ever more, have fun with that. I'll stick to things that have a scientific foundation to them.

  7. Re:Wow on Google Health Opens To the Public · · Score: 1
    And to quote even more since I forgot to put this in:

    "Over 200 degenerative diseases are caused by calcium deficiency. That includes cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's, you name it." These diseases are caused by acidosis--acidification of the body--lack of minerals, especially calcium. When you start taking coral calcium, your body alkalizes and drives out the acid [5 ]. All of these statements are incorrect. Calcium deficiency can weaken bones (osteoporosis), but it does not make the body more acidic or cause a wide range of diseases. The idea that calcium supplements (or dietary strategies) can change the acidity of the body is nonsense. The only acid level that diet or supplements can modify is the degree of acidity (pH) of the urine [6]. Emphasis added to the last line by me. BTW enjoy paying a dollar a pill for 5 cents worth of calcium carbonate. I'm know Bob's bank account thanks you.
  8. Re:Wow on Google Health Opens To the Public · · Score: 1
    Oops I guess I was wrong on the pH thing. The body apparently keeps us at a 7.4 level. But in response to Bob's claim, which is still nonsense, I direct you to Quackwatch talking about Bob's claims about testing people and the relevance of calcium to one's body pH:

    Testing the pH level of the saliva is the most reliable test of calcium deficiency and can also tell the state of a person's health. Testing saliva has no practical value in evaluating general health. The level is usually similar to blood pH, which the body keeps within a narrow range. When the saliva flow is high, the pH is usually about 7.4 (7 is neutral, low numbers are acid, and higher numbers are alkaline). Calcium intake does not affect the pH of saliva. The most common cause of low (acid) salivary pH is the presence in the mouth of bacteria that cause cavities. In diseases (such as diabetic acidosis) in which blood pH is dangerously low, the level is determined by blood pH testing and calcium pills have no relevance to treatment. Bolded part is the part written by the author. http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/DSH/coral.html
  9. Re:Wow on Google Health Opens To the Public · · Score: 1

    BTW I suggest all the other worshipers of the charlatan known as Bob Barefoot to read this great article: http://www.time.com/time/columnist/jaroff/article/0,9565,433084,00.html

  10. Re:Wow on Google Health Opens To the Public · · Score: 1

    In my humble opinion, Kevin Trudeau is not a snake oil salesman right now. Then you clearly have no medical or scientific training.

    He has also spoken with Dr. Robert Barefoot, a good doctor who deals with calcium deficiencies and discovered a connection between acidic pH and bad health. Hahahaha. People still believe this nonsense? Your body needs to have an acidic pH for you to be healthy.

    Case in point: Barefoot ran the pH test on patients in a hospital. It was a sickly yellow color, and he believed the test failed. As it turns out, he was in the terminal cancer ward, so his test was right on the mark. Every human being has an acidic pH level. That's fucking normal. It's hilarious how easy people get duped by such nonsense.

    I don't know Trudeau personally, however, I doubt that Barefoot would be associating with him if he were even half the charlatan that the Big-Pharma-Ad-Dollar-Funded media makes him out to be. Except for the fact that Barefoot is an even bigger charlatan and as such has no qualms about working with Trudeau.
  11. Re:Wow on Google Health Opens To the Public · · Score: 4, Informative

    I had a cold, had some herbal medicine, a few days later my cold was gone. I had a cold, didn't take a placebo, a few days later my cold was also gone.

    Explain that! Your immune system did it's job. That's what it's there for.
  12. Words of wisdom from Fight Club on Getting Credit for Programming Accomplishments? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else.

  13. Re:Yes, it has advertising, through "affiliates". on Google Health Opens To the Public · · Score: 2, Funny

    but I'm used to Slashdot readers being somewhat more informed before having a fit. Since when did this ever happen? I think you're making stuff up.
  14. Re:Wow on Google Health Opens To the Public · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is especially true if Google doesn't just cave in to "Big Pharma" and allows you to see "alternative" or "herbal" remedies for prescriptions or OTC drugs you have entered. Ugh, I hope Google Health doesn't become such a nexus of snake oil salesmen. Hopefully they will have minimum requirements for the scientific accuracy of medical claims to weed out this nonsense. If you want to be peddled placebos, just stick to Kevin Trudeau and his ilk's infomercials. We don't need Google Health to be infected with such a taint.
  15. Re:Privacy on Google Health Opens To the Public · · Score: 1

    That's because... HIPAA doesn't apply to Google by nature of the law of HIPAA. That was... sort of the point.
  16. Re:Bet ten to one on Mac Cloner Psystar Ships First Service Pack · · Score: 1

    People keep saying this, and I don't understand the logic behind it. What's hard to comprehend? One cannot enforce illegal clauses of a EULA. If this clause has no force of law behind it, they can't stop this company or anyone else from violating that clause.

    This is not a case of the end user violating the EULA, this is a for-profit company violating the EULA to make money. That's a whole different ballgame. Can you cite any legal precedence to back up this claim that it makes any difference? An illegal contract is an illegal contract regardless of who the person is who agreed to it initially.
  17. Re:Bye bye books on 2nd Generation "$100 Laptop" Will Be an E-Book Reader · · Score: 1

    So, if the FEDERAL government were to mandate the kind of books you object to in Kansas, you'd be cool with it because it was the federal government that did so and ALL the schools in the country were using the same book? Well if they were getting their book recommendations from groups like the NSF, we wouldn't have that situation. :)

    Yes, I know your answer to that question is "no", but you are assuming the federal government will write books you agree with. What if they don't? Well then that'll be a situation to deal with just like what happens at the local level. I wasn't assuming any such thing, you're just trying to put words into my mouth.

    My point is that once you hand the power to the government to write the textbooks and mandate that all schools in the country will use them, you will have a very hard time taking it back if they choose to write books you don't like. And yet states do this all the time and in many cases this decisions have been reversed. Why suddenly if it's the federal government is this some how going to be different? Can you give an actual reason rather than scare tactics? You keep harping on about the federal government yet the state/local government do the exact thing right now that you are so scared about the federal government doing. Why is it okay for them to do it and yet if the federal government does it the sky is going to fall?

    Although I agree wholeheartedly that our current system is lightyears from optimal (or in some cases, functional) at least now you have the option of getting the heck out of Kansas if you don't like their textbooks. Yeah, because everyone has the money to just up and move at the whims of a school board election.

    It may be difficult, but there is no LAW stopping you from doing so. At least I don't think there is, but then I've never tried to leave Kansas (or enter Kansas for that matter). No, there is no LAW, but it would be cost prohibitive to almost any person who isn't somewhat wealthy. Besides, getting a job in your line of work you do isn't necessarily available everywhere.

    Your point about curricula is valid, but there is a big difference in mandating curricula and having official text books. How so? The two go hand in hand.
  18. Re:Bye bye books on 2nd Generation "$100 Laptop" Will Be an E-Book Reader · · Score: 1

    Well definitely it's a benefit to have different curricula for different students. Not what I was talking about. No one said anything about abolishing things like honors classes, etc.

    On the other hand, "conflicting" curricula, depending on the level of conflict, are not a good thing, and having half the students unable to do multivariable calc isn't a good idea either. Or when students in particular areas aren't getting proper science education because their school board is being used as a political tool.

    I like systems that have consistent minimum standards across all schools but still allow for flexibility. I don't disagree.

    The main difference between a system that does this well, such as IB, versus one that doesn't (arguably the current California public school system), is that IB sets the minimum standards much higher. Again, I'm all for that.
  19. Re:Cool: No fingerprints on IBM Patents Putting Handprints On Laptops · · Score: 1

    There's a summary? I thought we were just supposed to read the title and make up all our assumptions from that?

  20. Re:Bet ten to one on Mac Cloner Psystar Ships First Service Pack · · Score: 1

    But at some point the people at Psystar must have clicked "I Agree", so they agreed to comply. Doesn't matter. If the EULA isn't legally enforceable it doesn't matter whether the user agreed to it or not.

    This is the strongest contract in the entire software industry, even stronger than a "TOS" link at the bottom of a web-page Big whoop. You can't enforce illegal clauses in a EULA or in any contract. Such things get thrown out quite often by courts.
  21. Re:Not obvious? on IBM Patents Putting Handprints On Laptops · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is the USPTO we are talking about right? Since when has the obviousness of an invention stopped them from granting a patent?

  22. Re:It's a niche I'd like to scratch, sure... on Mac Cloner Psystar Ships First Service Pack · · Score: 1

    Oh, I agree, I want something in that slot too. I was just objecting to the way they mplied that this was really an equivalent machine to the Mac Pro. But they never made any such implication. You invented that up all on your own. All they said was:

    The system is priced at $804.99. A similar, Apple-branded computer could cost more than $2,000. No one in their right mind is going to claim that a dual core system is "similar" to the 8 core Mac Pro. You're just harping on this non-point in order to be contrary.
  23. Re:Slow News Day? on Mac Cloner Psystar Ships First Service Pack · · Score: 1

    It turns out that Apple and Dell have very similar prices. Not surprising since they both add on a hefty margin in their prices. The discussion was about the Mac premium versus the actual hardware costs not a comparison between two middleman markups.
  24. Re:Bye bye books on 2nd Generation "$100 Laptop" Will Be an E-Book Reader · · Score: 1

    While I agree that having the creationists polluting local school districts is a bad thing, this wouldn't solve it. The Kansas state government, in this case, would just write the textbooks in such a way that the creationists are still polluting the curriculum. I was talking about federal standards based on the recommendations of groups like the NSF.

    Well, actually, using an E-Book in this situation wouldn't be free. It would be free to distribute and publish, sure, but not to write. I'd be really surprised if you could find someone (especially a state employee) to write an entire textbook for free. I wasn't talking about e-books in the statement, I was talking about the current situation when it comes to buying books and this supposed "competition" the parent was mentioning. And the dollar figure was supposed to be $150 not $0, that's a typo.
  25. Re:Bye bye books on 2nd Generation "$100 Laptop" Will Be an E-Book Reader · · Score: 1

    There really are people out there like Karl Rove, whose main purpose in life is to rewrite history and twist it to suit his philosophy. Yeah, there the ones who in places like Kansas get themselves elected to school boards to do exactly that already and have been doing so for decades.

    We need to be careful that school textbooks are not political tools that are easily and quickly changed to suit the whims of any current administration. Too late. School textbooks have been political tools of state/local governments and school boards for many years now (aka teaching of Evolution). I'm failing to see why that's okay, but if the federal government got involved the sky would start falling.

    Having said that, it's still possible that some day when oversight of government is suitably restored, it's conceivable that government could subsidize textbook authoring without mandatating a single textbook to all schools. So instead we can get all sorts of conflicting curricula across the country. That's definitely the better alternative.