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User: John.Banister

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  1. Science? on Registered Clinical Trials Make Positive Findings Vanish · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It appears the medical research field has forgotten this basic tenet of science:

    It's almost as if it isn't science at all, but rather advertising, where the target audience is a government agency that gives the company permission to transfer the product to their other advertising division who then advertise it to doctors and the public. What percentage of these clinical trials are trials of something not destined to produce wealth for an organization if the results of the trial are positive? When a wealth generating organization approves expenditure of the large amount of money to do a clinical trial, I'm sure it also adds extra management, or transfers management of the research so as to help the results of the trial be more profitable than just doing science ever could be. I'm thankful that this requirement to register these trials exists.

  2. Re:Why wait? on BitTorrent To RIAA: You're 'Barking Up the Wrong Tree' · · Score: 2

    When you respond with a deflection like this, I think you're actually supporting the notion that their letter merits deflection in the first place. This supports the theory that "the truth doesn't matter so long as we pay expensive lawyers to express our viewpoint forcefully," which is the apparent theory behind their "bullying people with lawyers" m.o. Personally, I think that bullying people with lawyers is the exact moral equivalent to bullying people with firearms, and from a practical standpoint, in either situation the person who has less firepower is almost always the one who loses in the immediate sense. Unfortunately, the society within which I live does little to punish those who use lawyers as a means to bully other people. The truth is, they have no grounds for complaint, and that truth should matter. This is why my comment regarding the letter was dismissive rather than deflective.

  3. Why wait? on BitTorrent To RIAA: You're 'Barking Up the Wrong Tree' · · Score: 1

    You could write a stupid pointless letter to Microsoft today.

  4. Re:Secondary Effects on Verizon Ends Smartphone Subsidies · · Score: 1

    Now that new expensive phones almost all have IMEI numbers, if there's a stolen phone blacklist shared among carriers, that list could also be used to enforce payment for phones bought with loans. If vendors can get this sort of cooperation from carriers to make lending money for phone purchases less risky, there's certainly a big difference in the interest rates for secured loans and the ones for credit cards. Maybe Best Buy could sell ~$700 phones for 15% down + $10 for the credit check + 6% interest (and use the extra loan processing time to upsell you insurance on your investment).

  5. Re:the wingspan of 737 is "slender"? on Facebook's Slender 'Aquila' Drone To Provide Internet In Remote Areas · · Score: 1

    You're right, I didn't. I was remembering a picture of this Facebook drone for internet. It probably has a different name.

  6. Re:the wingspan of 737 is "slender"? on Facebook's Slender 'Aquila' Drone To Provide Internet In Remote Areas · · Score: 1

    I think "slender" was in reference to the fuselage, not the wings.

  7. Re:quickly to be followed by self-driving cars on Are We Reaching the Electric Car Tipping Point? · · Score: 1

    Maybe it's my love of technology, but anyplace axes were a minimum requirement, I think I'd be carrying a chainsaw.

  8. Re:quickly to be followed by self-driving cars on Are We Reaching the Electric Car Tipping Point? · · Score: 1

    Anyplace where axes were the minimum requirement, I think I'd be carrying a chainsaw.

  9. Re:30 Times Faster? on Obama's New Executive Order Says the US Must Build an Exascale Supercomputer · · Score: 1

    For most specific problems thrown at supercomputers, you can go 30 times faster with a custom hardware architecture baked into silicon

    Perhaps that's what they should do. Make a robotic silicon wafer fabrication facility part of the computer. After being given a task requiring a new architecture, it creates the architecture it needs and augments itself. I'm sure for less than the cost of the F-35 program, a universally tasking self augmenting supercomputer could be made to happen.

  10. The problem with hacking a sniper rifle on Hacking a 'Smart' Sniper Rifle · · Score: 1

    is that you won't know it's there before you've been shot.

    I suppose if you see someone planning to shoot a third party you might manage to hack their rifle, but there's several ways to interfere with sniping if you can manage to be behind the sniper.

  11. Re:Most? on Open-Source Mesa 3D Library/Drivers Now Support OpenGL 4 · · Score: 1

    So, how developer intensive will the switch to Vulkan be?

  12. Perhaps a form factor change. on Lenovo ThinkPad W550s: Heavy, But a Battery That Lasts Nearly All Day · · Score: 1

    How about build that thing using the XPS 18 form factor with a 1.5 hour internal battery and put all the extra battery in a big power cover. When it's on the docking pedestal, it can be used as an all-in-one, and when it's being carried, users can make their own weight versus battery life trade off by their choice of which battery size in the power cover. With a hot swappable power cover, users who really want extra battery life could carry two or more of them. When I imagine this sort of thing, I think of the cover holding a removable wireless keyboard, swinging around about 285 degrees and connecting to a brace that hinges off the top of the back of the tablet, making a nice stable triangle.

  13. Re:Germany on Cashless Adoption Growing In Europe · · Score: 1

    You might want to visit first, and see if the interest in your move is mutual.

  14. Re:The. ignorance is strong in this one. on Cashless Adoption Growing In Europe · · Score: 2

    I have a feeling I might trust African phone companies more than AT&T or Verizon also. African phone companies are charging $0 transaction fees, as compared to $0.5 for debit, 2% for Visa & MasterCard, and (2.2% to 2.9%) + $0.3 for Paypal.

  15. Re:Still using my N900.... on Nokia Wants To Make Phones Again · · Score: 1

    Maybe Neo900 will be available then.

  16. Re:Alcatel-Lucent on Nokia Wants To Make Phones Again · · Score: 1

    Yeah, it does. Thanks for the thought.

  17. Re:Might as well be "Simon" on Nokia Wants To Make Phones Again · · Score: 1

    It might be, if they're switching to Asian manufacturing. If they sold all the employees they'd otherwise need to fire to Microsoft, then they don't get so much political backlash as they might by shutting down their own manufacturing and firing those people before outsourcing. I've read that one thing that made it hard for them to compete was that their in-house manufacturing couldn't produce phones as inexpensively as the 3rd parties making phone for their competitors.

  18. Re:Why hasn't anybody started breeding rhinos? on Help Save Endangered Rhinos by Making Artificial Horns (Video) · · Score: 1

    John Hume does this in South Africa. He's got 800 - 1000 rhinos that he's bred in captivity. They're all de-horned by a process that doesn't hurt the animals as the horns get large enough to harvest. He's got a huge stockpile of sustainably harvested rhino horn, and nobody will let him legally sell any of it. It's idiotic. Of course, if they let these people sell manufactured horn and they don't let him sell his farmed horn, that'll be even more idiotic.

  19. Should [scientists][writers of FOSS] be more responsible for [communicating their results][providing useful documentation] directly to the public? Or should this role be left to [science journalists][random wiki editors]?

    Seems like about the same question.

  20. Re: Wait a minute... on Microsoft To Cut 7,800 More Jobs, Take $7.6 Billion Writedown On Nokia · · Score: 1

    And, when Nokia's market leader with an anonymous CEO, you could franchise "the anonymous CEO" and make trillions!

  21. Re:Victory for common sense! on Judge Calls Malibu Media "Troll", Denies Subpoena · · Score: 1

    A million? I wonder how many of those have the Comcast router in a Faraday cage while a different router is broadcasting the Comcast BSSID as part of a home credit card harvesting scheme.

  22. Re:Why keep funding any of it? on Jolla Spins Off Hardware Business · · Score: 1

    Blackphone's PrivatOS runs lots of Android programs, but I don't think it loses its niche market because it also provides a level of security that Android phones don't. Sailfish could similarly maintain a niche group of users by providing them more direct control over the hardware than they can get from Android phones. Considering the size of the global population, the number of people who care can be a tiny percentage, but still be large enough to keep Jolla in business.

  23. Re:The future is coming. on New Manufacturing Technique Halves Cost of Lithium-Ion Batteries · · Score: 1

    I wonder if there's trouble further up the supply chain. It seems to me that shops and dealers already have a lot of inventory that is incompatible between models. For DC voltage, I wouldn't think 36V or even 54V would pose much of an electrocution hazard except maybe to someone with a pacemaker. It might make bigger sparks. I could see miniature circuit breakers instead of automotive fuses. Higher voltage also means less susceptibility to problems caused by the oxide layer that develops on mating surfaces at connection points.

  24. Re:The future is coming. on New Manufacturing Technique Halves Cost of Lithium-Ion Batteries · · Score: 1

    Sure, but when do we get 36V lithium batteries to replace the 12V lead batteries in the IC cars? Why do only EV's get the benefits of lighter weight, higher voltage batteries?

  25. Re:Unhealthy food is tasty. Healthy food is boring on High-Fat, High-Sugar Diet Can Lead To Cognitive Decline · · Score: 1

    Beckmann & Markner will sell you Dimpflmeier bread from Toronto. They ship bi-weekly to the USA. They used to have a 7 lb minimum order, but I don't see that restriction now.