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User: Slim_Jack

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  1. Chinese Backdoor on ASUS Unveils $599 Home Robot 'Zenbo' (computerworld.com) · · Score: 0

    First Person to find the backdoor for the Chinese goverment to allow personalized moveable home spying gets a free mousepad!

  2. Caused by these Economic Realities on Medical Errors Are Number 3 Cause of US Deaths, Researchers Say (npr.org) · · Score: 0
    The poor medical environment in the U.S. is caused by these poitica and economic factors: 1) Extensive defensive medicine practiced means 90% of the time doctors send patients for improper, expensive testing that wastes time knowngly, because for the sake of their malpractice liability insurance, they test for the 1% probable scenario with a high lawsuit ouctome (death) rather than the 65% likely outcome with no expensive lawsuit outcome. When President Obama and the Republicans sat down at the table to discuss the upcoming healthcare law, he immediately declared efforts to reform that probem 'off the table' as it threatened the Trial Lawyers Association, a major Democrat party backer (see: Howard Dean's speech the next day).

    2) The wide usage of insurance shifts the bulk of the medical market into an insurance focused market, Rather than having an interest in having a patient with a positive and improved outcome, the physician has the two incentives of 1) not being sued (see above) and 2) placating the beancounters at the insurance company. The actual happiness of the patient ranks a distant third.

    The focus on the ACA and the nominal dollars being thrown around is one of the examples of mass naivete that harm most Americans medically. see: http://sti2.blogspot.com/

  3. Teachers, not Gatekeepers on The Case Against Algebra · · Score: 0

    The problem with Math classes like Algebra is not that they are useless, but that they are presented by Math Teachers as Gateways that the 'Less Smart' need to be kept behind; if Math, including Algebra and Calculus, and the prior Math Classes are properly taught, they are viewed as a useful tool and knowledge for all, and not just a mechanism for limiting access to higher studies to the lucky few who make the cut (and probably have the right parental resources to succeed).

  4. If Twitter were taken down where would all the people incapable of processing thoughts longer than 140 characters in length find their intellectual direction?

  5. Ironically, only a month earlier someone who had an unlicensed car murdered an innocent woman only a few miles away from the shooting: http://www.mlive.com/news/kala...

  6. Good for test animals on Sensors Slip Into the Brain, Then Dissolve When Their Job Is Done (ieee.org) · · Score: 0

    This should be good for test animals; when I worked in a lab that inserted electrodes in animal brains obviously after the experimental run was over there was no recuperation for the animal (implanted silver coated electrodes do not come out easily)... this could help those animal test subjects have a less unpleasant experience.

  7. Re:Go back to the Moon why? on Reusable SpaceX Rocket Has Implications For a Return To the Moon (examiner.com) · · Score: 0

    Those pesky 1%ers

  8. Pan dimensional transit on Comets Can't Explain Weird 'Alien Megastructure' Star After All (newscientist.com) · · Score: 0

    It is a pandimensional object transiting our 3d slice.

  9. Re:Ukraine is weak on Ukraine Power Station Outage -- Enabled By Malware, But Not Caused By Malware (sans.org) · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    It has a large evil neighbor in comparison to which it seems weak

  10. Blame "Target Inflation" on Why Do Americans Work So Much? · · Score: 1

    Target Inflation effectively keeps people workng. If our government did not artificially maintain a target inflation then people would be happy working fewer hours. Target inflation means that costs keep going up for things and the peons have to keep working. The economists could not look good unless people are working 40 hours a week.

  11. Buckets o water on Wealth Therapy Tackles Woes of the Rich · · Score: 1

    You should get off your couch, away from your online porn and put the chips aside, because half the world is shlepping around buckets of water to boil so they don't go thirsty; how can you hipster tools of the failed Soviet States possibly hope to fit in with those world masses? Give it up, grab a bucket, and shlep water like the rest;

  12. Re:Evidence of the Great Filter? on Advanced Civilizations Probably Don't Exist In Our Galactic Neighborhood · · Score: 1

    Try a relatively consistent environment -> life -> multicellular life -> macroscopic organisms -> pan-organism abstract communication -> humans -> the technology to resist or minimize inconsistent environment (fire, clothing) -> religion (abstract organization) -> abstract information transfer (writing) -> the development of the individual protecting institution (government) -> the development of the government protecting the indvidual rights of property (intellectual parallelism) -> technology revolution Metal refining, industrial revolution are not a function of discovery of coal seams, as otherwise North Korea would be curently reaching for the stars (has coal seams, nation state, farming, metal refining, and even factories and electronics), but would be invisible to us if in another solar system nearby.

  13. Re:I have always been curious.... -- serate on Massachusetts Boarding School Sued Over Wi-Fi Sickness · · Score: 1

    Steel is nice and soft ... until it is arranged in a serated pattern along an edge, then it becomes a knife that can slice through a tin can - the GINSU Knife! The arrangement of energy (digital or analog) has _no_ effect on the poor delicate organic systems, any more than a few piddly molecules of iron might...

  14. Re:How did these idiots catch anyone? - butter on FBI Informant: Ray Bradbury's Sci-fi Written To Induce Communistic Mass Hysteria · · Score: 1

    And when the government said 'butter is bad, margarine is good, because science says so' - the gullible masses argued? And now that the government says 'margarine is bad, butter is good, because science says so' - the gullible masses should argue? And when the government says things like 'income tax is good', 'the minimum wage is good', at what point are people supposed to throw on their blinders?

  15. Re:It's a good thing for people who aren't - calcs on Google Staffers Share Salary Info With Each Other; Management Freaks · · Score: 1

    I never said that the Big Mac Index was the be-all end-all of indices; however, it is obvious then that the metrics in the index are important, and assuming Big Brother (the government) knows or cares best is an example of passive gullibility. The Big Mac Index was much more conformant to the 'official' inflation index over five years prior -- only in the last five years has the Big Mac Index diverged so significantly; perhaps as you indicate the iPad 1 is an important part of their metric that helps them paint a rosey picture of inflation?

  16. Re:It's a good thing for people who aren't - calcs on Google Staffers Share Salary Info With Each Other; Management Freaks · · Score: 1

    I was curious about the 'official' inflation rate and put it (from the Fed) against the Big Mac Index; in my findings for the past 5 years the Big Mac Index indicates that the 'official inflation rate' is 20% lower than what the Big Mac Index (used to compare international currencies) indicates.

  17. Tchotchkes on Apple Watch Still Waiting On App Developers · · Score: 1

    I am waiting for my free coffee cup from Apple first..

  18. Re:Last Out Queue on Can New Chicago Taxes On Netflix, Apple, Spotify Withstand Legal Challenges? · · Score: 1

    That is more or less what happened in Detroit. In Detroit, everyone who lived bread and butter on welfare just maintained a post office box, and the mayor had an army of bureaucrats collecting good benefits. When the middle class fled, there was no local tax base and the whole thing collapsed like a house of cards. Only recently the governor of Michigan restructured their debt and appointed a manager to sort the whole mess out,but for a while there you could get houses for $1.

  19. Easy Solution on How the Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars For Haiti and Built 6 Homes · · Score: 1

    Take the Big Government solution to these problems - throw so much money at them that in their blindness from all the floating lucre they stumble in the right direction.

  20. Biological interaction on Researchers Power a Security Camera With Wi-Fi Signals · · Score: 0

    Has anyone studied the biological interactions with _digital_ wifi broadcast, especially in this case?

  21. The only real advantage of Common Core on Bill Gates Still Trying To Buy Some Common Core Testing Love · · Score: 1

    The only advantage of common core is that when your government throws money at a school, there is no way to determine whether the money was completely wasted or not so completely wasted. When you compare different schools in different districts with the same test you at least have some, however flawed and pointless, benchmark for comparison, so when you as a taxpayer and parent deal with the politicians you have something to complain about (if you care).

  22. Re:Not really. on Gamma-ray Bursts May Explain Fermi's Paradox · · Score: 1

    The Mayans had comparatively advanced mathematics (a positional number system at a time when the Romans had Roman numerals...) the Indians and Chinese had comparative advances at early zeniths also; but war, religious fervor, the fact that technology was siphoned to the very few extremely wealthy or powerful, meant that that technology sank with the ship carrying it (Antikythera) or was buried in the emperor's tomb. Democracy, freedom of private property and business and the printing press has meant mankind broke the bonds of control by the sword and allowed technology to spread. Without these 'non-technological' factors technology would continue to be a sporadic wonder like shepherds walking across an aqueduct.

  23. Re:No way! on Senator Who Calls STEM Shortage a Hoax Appointed To Head Immigration · · Score: 1

    A most blessed headline would be 'Muslim Terrorist attacks mall, shot and killed by shopping woman carrying concealed pistol".

  24. Re:Censorship? on Blogger Who Revealed GOP Leader's KKK Ties Had Home Internet Lines Cut · · Score: 1

    Do you believe in Snow White and Sleeping Beauty also? The Republicans and Democrats did not 'switch names' - what a fantasy world you live in- too bad you have a slick bunch of fantasists to vote up your deluded posts. What happened is the Democrats abandoned Christian values and embraced socialism, and the South, which no longer has slavery as an economic basis (when it did, it was Democrat), but it still has a large population of Christians, so they abandoned the Democrats when the Democrats abandoned Christian principles. Simple really, but your fantasy world doesn't admit it.

  25. How many roofs were ruined by Dish installations on Dish Network Violated Do-Not-Call 57 Million Times · · Score: 1

    Dish installations often put a number of holes through the roofs, and water damage often follows behind. How many of those installations now have messed up roofs?