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User: BWJones

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Comments · 2,196

  1. Re:Argh on An Enlightened Look at an Over-Lighted World · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You joked about sleep disorders, but I used to run a sleep lab, and I can tell you this problem is a significant one. We have a direct path from our retinas to a subset of cells in a structure in the brain called the supra-chiasmatic nucleus. This pathway, the retino-hypothalamic pathway mediates light information to set our intrinsic sleep/wake rhythms that are normally set by light during the day. The advent of the lightbulb has transformed our society into a 24 hr/day affair that can cause problems with entrainment and now we have computer screens that we stare into until the wee hours of the night. Sleep disorders resulting from poor circadian entrainment can have influences on our lives that can be dangerous. Other than breathing or rem movement disorders, disorders of circadian entrainment can cause depression, failure to maintain alertness at important times (flying a plane or driving a car for instance), and recent evidence indicates that circadian period may also have an influence on the efficacy of pharmacologic treatments among other serious implications within our lives.

  2. Re:number one on US Navy buys Apple as Linux Platform · · Score: 4, Informative

    The Navy actually has a long history of using Apple computers for image processing on submarines going back to the closely held Cluster Knave project. I knew that there were efforts underway to port this application to the TAC-3 based platform running xwindows back in the early 90's but since I have lost contact with that program. Apparently, they are still using it but in a Linux based environment. Even so, the Xserves are ideal for this project in that they are compact, require very little energy to run comparatively and they have Altivec which can be very useful for vector based calculations.

  3. Re:Public Disgrace!! on The Economics Of Spamming · · Score: 1, Interesting

    There have got to be some laws these guys are breaking. Why does not the police or government get these guys? We know who they are, where they live, and which companies they are working for. These guys are costing government, businesses and consumers beaucoup $$'s in terms of increased hardware requirements to deal with SPAM load, not to mention the time involvement. What is the holdup?

  4. Re:Apple is giving people what they want on Apple Public Source License Now FSF Approved · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Now, I might actually buy a Mac laptop if they didn't cost so damn much!

    Actually, try pricing them out. Often they are cheaper than other Wintel products and when they are slightly more expensive, the price of admission is well worth it. For example, I'm getting emails here while folks on Slashdot are hitting my workstation server pretty frequently. At the same time, The Clash is cranking on iTunes while I am working on a manuscript in Word and creating figures for that manuscript in Photoshop and doing data analysis in IDL using *nix code originally created on an SGI. All of this at the same time with zero down time and a nice consistent GUI.

  5. Re:Why wasn't MS split? on EU Says Microsoft's Abuses Are Ongoing · · Score: 1

    Everything else is losing money by the bucketload

    Apparently, Microsofts Mac Business unit is making quite a bit of money and is one of the most profitable divisions in terms of sales. They are working from an independent code base, have a number of paying customers, have low rates of software piracy etc...etc...etc... So, to me, this would make for an ideal spin off.

  6. Re:Actually, Doubleplusgood. on Linking Dangerously · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Advocating change - good.
    Advocating change through violence - bad.


    Beyond advocating change through violence, this kid was also advocating hate and rasicm. Now while I am all for change and advocacy, this kid is a jerk and belongs in jail for a little while for being a script kiddie, being an advocate for violence and racism and hate, and being criminally stupid.

  7. Re:ugh on Representing Online Textbooks? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Tip #1: Ditch the background images. Solid colour backgrounds = better readability & faster loadtimes. Plus background images are SOOO 1997. :)

    This was the first thing that that is going away during the redesign. And I should mention, if I recall correctly, this sites origins go back to 1993 and it went online in shortly thereafter. :-)

    Tip #2: Hire a information architecture/usability/UI specialist or team. Worth the money, especially if you have tons of content.

    Well, here's the issue there, I am essentially running the site on the side with no real money for development. In fact, it is being hosted on a personally purchased old G3 iMac running OS X. Hows that for economy?

    Disclaimer: Yes, I'm a UI specialist.

    I would love to hear more input from you if you have the time.

  8. Re:books... on Science and Math For Adults? · · Score: 1

    I bought a couple of calculus text books as well as a physical chemistry book...

    Physical chemistry.......Aaaaaagh. You are bringing back bad memories of triple integrals.

  9. Re:comparable ramifications? on Find Out About the Future of Science · · Score: 2, Informative

    It didn't offer anything breathtakingly new (despite the hype to the contrary).

    I would post an addendum to this. "yet....." Genome sequencing is just the beginning of the process of understanding how systems work and how they pathologically fail. As you know, sequencing is simply finding out which genes are which. Finding out what they do and in which combinations is now going to be the hard work that could not be accomplished without the knowledge provided by genome analysis.

    Combinatorial analysis is now also becoming possible with an article in last weeks Science talking about colonies of mice being bred for multifactorial gene analysis of complex problems involving multiple genes. Finding out how to resolve problems such as cancer and blindness will require this level of work.

    I think the reason folks expect that nothing has come of genome sequencing is 1) lack of public science education 2) unreasonable investor expectation of fast profit.

  10. Re:Cheating in Exams? on New High-End HP Calculator? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Hmm... I doubt it'll be allowed in exams or tests if it's got infra-red capabilities.

    People might find it all to easy to chat and exchange answers on the sly if their calculators can communicate silently.


    While proctoring a physics exam, we used an IR camera to actually watch two guys cheating real-time with their HP48's. This was back in 1990 and the course directors were not pleased as they had no idea this was possible at that time.

  11. Re:Yeah but so does.... on Sluggish WiFi Connections Hurt Everyone · · Score: 1

    I'd also like to mention the word is spelled 'courier', both in French and English. One too many r in thar...

    Non. En Francais......it is courrier. With 2 r's

  12. Re:Yeah but so does.... on Sluggish WiFi Connections Hurt Everyone · · Score: 4, Informative

    I think this guy was trying to be funny, not offtopic. Mod em up.

    Thank you! The humor was playing off the French origins of the referenced article and was based upon the recent story of the French government banning the use of the term "email" in favor of "courriel". So....you...see......the humor...... references........Oh, if I have to explain it, I guess it's not that funny.

    By the way, this should in no way be considered Francophobic. Vive la France! (especially the cuisine and the wine). :-]

  13. Yeah but so does.... on Sluggish WiFi Connections Hurt Everyone · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sluggish WiFi Connections Hurt Everyone

    Typing le courrier electronique or "courrier" instead of email also slows everyone down.

  14. Re:Cheating myself? on MPAA Opens Anti-filesharing Website · · Score: 2, Funny

    I have some news for you: Don't make movies that suck

    I have some news for you. We are dealing with a common denominator here. The general American public will purchase just about anything and it does not matter the qualtiy. Lemme see if I can think of some examples: In the movies we have "Rob Schneider is (x)" People go to see that! And it must make a profit, because they keep making these Rob Schneider films. In the computer business we have Windows. And people continue to purchase Windows. Take your pick of any of this absolute tripe posted for sale in the inserts of your local Sunday paper. Today I saw a porcelain figuring of a teddy bear in desert cammo holding an AR-15. People must buy this stuff or we would not see this sort of crap. The other thing that amazes me is that people actually spend time out of their lives to make this stuff.

    All that said, I am solidly in support of making more quality movies and fewer movies that suck.

  15. Re:Leave us alone please. on Microsoft to do for Usenet what it did for Email & The Web? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Who the hell visits usenet for news anymore?

    Actually I've found that as the signal/noise ratio on sites such as Slashdot have decreased with all of the AC posting and such, usenet groups such as comp.lang. have become much more useful because the signal to noise ratio has increased significantly. On usenet, questions are answered by folks who typically know the answer rather than the pure drivel and conjecture that we are seeing more on Slashdot.

  16. Re:Why reboot systems at all? on In-Flight Reboot? · · Score: 1

    Sorry, I should have clarified, ACM = (Air Combat Maneuvers).

  17. Why reboot systems at all? on In-Flight Reboot? · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Jeez, one would think that there would be built in redundancy so that if one system went down, it could be rebooted while the other system automatically takes over. Perhaps this is the way things are working, but the thought of rebooting during ACM makes me really nervous.

  18. Compatibility? on Garmin iQue 3600 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well, one of the frustrating things about being on a Mac has been the almost total lack of GPS software available for OS X and GPS devices. What I can't seem to find out from the site is if downloading new maps requires Windows? If the maps are platform independent, Garmin has just made a sale.

  19. Audio engineering on Is Louder Better? · · Score: 1

    Often, the band will work with an audio engineer if they want to ensure quality and desired "loudness" of each track creating the whole of the album. If the artists do not insist on sitting in the studio with the audio engineer during the mastering, they are asking for trouble.

    All that said, one of the four loudest concerts I ever attended was a Rush show. The other three were Husker Du, Lou Reed and (I can't believe I am admitting this), Van Halen.

  20. Because it's science on Open Content and Value Creation · · Score: 4, Informative


    We try to make as much of our work available on our site to the public because 1) It's science and 2) We are funded through federal grants/taxpayer $$'s and 3) We hope that work we do will help us and others to better understand vision, pathological processes in vision and possibly to rescue vision loss. Another vision educational site can be found here.

  21. Re:Microsoft really did it this time.. on HomeSec Warns Again About Microsoft's Insecurity · · Score: 4, Interesting

    But there's another problem, a lot of people are starting to distrust microsoft and are turning off the automatic update / not getting service packs instead of switching to another operating system.

    Shoot, this was a problem years ago leading me to never enable automatic updates after more than one Windows machine was completely FUBAR'ed after an update. We fought with security issues on Windows for a while, then dealt with the expense and hassle of IRIX (although IRIX is impressively stable), went back to Windows due to the cost and then simply migrated our servers to Apache on OS X. Safe, simple, stable, affordable and secure.

  22. Re:This is Great! on Disposable Digital Cameras Have Arrived · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Always someone out there looking to steal I suppose. Would not life be easier for the society as a whole if people voted with their earned dollars rather than stealing? Seriously, it's sad that this is the first thing that some folks think of when a product like this comes out. "how can we steal this thing?".

  23. Re:It's not disposable... it's reusable. on Disposable Digital Cameras Have Arrived · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hmmm. I suppose that it could be cheaper than film alternatives, but I want more and in the long run, an investment in my Canon digital camera will be cheaper while giving me more control.

  24. Where's the time? on Last Chance for Slashdot T-Shirt Contest · · Score: 4, Funny

    Jeez, we're supposed to find time to perform our jobs, read Slashdot, post to Slashdot and now we are supposed to design T-shirts? Some folks have to work for a living ya know. :-)

  25. Re:A pattern emerging? on The RIAA Hit List - A Pattern Emerges? · · Score: 2, Informative

    Come on RIAA, dare you to pick on us Lou Reed fans!

    Yeah, but you guys spend all your cash on heroin and don't have any left over for music. :-) Seriously though, I am a Lou Reed fan and know what you are talking about, although there were a few bands on the linked .xls file that would appeal to those over 25. Try Bob Marley, Blue Oyster Cult, Duran Duran, Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Grand Funk Railroad, Marvin Gaye, Pearl Jam, Queen, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and The Clash.