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User: kurthr

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Comments · 78

  1. Astronauts lose 20/10 eyesight! on Eye Problems From Space Affect At Least 21 NASA Astronauts · · Score: 1

    Astronauts tend to be proud of their eyesight... like Chuck Yeager:
    http://www.achievement.org/aut...

    From the early days of test pilots and the original Right Stuff astronauts they've typically had much better than 20/20 eyesight.
    So it's probably easy to detect this sort of thing, and they might be a little ticked off to loose it :^O
    Of course a lot of people would go to space even if they went blind... most of us risked that in Junior High School anyway!

  2. Re: 350mm (18inch) wafer on Moore's Law Blowout Sale Is Ending, Says Broadcom CTO · · Score: 2

    Are you aware that 350mm is less than 14in, and that the actual wafers are 450mm (almost 18in)?
    Note also that the larger size doesn't inherently reduce cost or increase yield, much less improve performance (density or speed).
    It may however follow Rock's law that the price of a semi fab doubles every 4 years... (this set should hit $5B) .

  3. Re: One day must be the worst on Surgeries On Friday Are More Frequently Fatal · · Score: 1

    You obviously haven't read the article which contains the graph showing that the risk of death due to elective surgery grows monotonically approaching the weekend. By the weekend, scheduled elective surgeries are almost twice as likely to kill you.
    Two days are the worst, they are on the weekend, and the closer your surgery recovery is to the weekend the worse the expected outcome- 40%worse on Friday.

    Read the fine documentation...

  4. Re: but tee times are better! on Surgeries On Friday Are More Frequently Fatal · · Score: 1

    Autocorrect

  5. Re: Statistics can be misleading on Surgeries On Friday Are More Frequently Fatal · · Score: 3, Informative

    These are scheduled elective surgeries, not emergency admissions!

    Our analysis confirms our overall study hypothesis (with some heterogeneity) of a âoeweekday effectâ on mortality for patients undergoing elective surgeryâ"that is, a worse outcome in terms of 30 day mortality for patients who have procedures carried out closer to the end of the week and at the weekend itself. The reasons behind this remain unknown, but we know that serious complications are more likely to occur within the first 48 hours11 after an operation, and a failure to rescue the patient could be due to well known issues relating to reduced and/or locum staffing (expressed as number and level of experience) and poorer availability of services over a weekend.

  6. Re: Statistics can be misleading on Surgeries On Friday Are More Frequently Fatal · · Score: 1

    So can explanations of statistics... if the emergency staff available at the hospital is lacking, it won't matter that the surgeon is there. Also, it doesn't explain why those entering on Saturday are worse than those on Friday!
    Sounds bites from question time are, just that...

  7. but tee are better! on Surgeries On Friday Are More Frequently Fatal · · Score: 2

    Most hospitals have restrictions on non- emergency surgeries over the weekend, because they have very limited staff.
    However, surgeons are very powerful (especially those who do elective surgeries that bring in big $) and they often prefer to schedule surgeries around their own convenience rather than that of their patients or other hospital staff.

    Stanford hip replacements are a known example.

  8. Re:Responsibility and Punishment on IRS Spent $60,000 Producing Star Trek Parody · · Score: 0

    Oops I left off the other 000.
    They are raping us for 10,000,000x more than this. So just forget about it.
    Every single federal employee could throw a party like this and it would still be much cheaper than the bailouts.

  9. Responsibility and Punishment on IRS Spent $60,000 Producing Star Trek Parody · · Score: -1, Troll

    This was pretty obviously a waste of money and unjustifiable...
    Probably someone (junior) will be fired, hopefully someone senior will be prosecuted...
    None of them have the political backing to really be protected.

    Our banking overlords OTOH are only raping us for 10,000x more than this so it's hard to be too upset.

  10. Re:Cap and Trade solves everything! on Report Says Climate Change Already Evident, Emissions Gap Growing · · Score: 1

    No, hasn't.
    It was signed into law by Schwarzenegger, but it doesn't take effect until 2013...
    en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Warming_Solutions_Act_of_2006#section_5
    I don't like cap and trade, but you're just trolling... the rest of the comments on this thread are no better.

  11. Re:Remember the gorilla arm syndrome on Microsoft Buys Multi-Touch Pioneer Perceptive Pixel · · Score: 1

    Hmmm, but you don't work at the whiteboard/chalkboard to be individually productive. You do it in order to be seen from a distance without technological assistance.
    Would you choose to do the rest of your work on a vertical 200" workspace? I doubt it.

    Oh, and I am amazed that you have purchased non-tactile chalk... does it exude an anesthetic?
    Touchscreens are tactile... you touch them.

  12. ZOMG M$ might be like Apple :O on Locked-Down Tablets Endanger FLOSS For End Users · · Score: 2

    Speculation and fear mongering... Google could be more like FB. Slashdot could be more like reddit.

    In particular, M$ is touting their enormous number of programs that run on Win8 (even if not in the Metro tiles).

    There are enough bad things that might happen with some actual substance, why not worry about those.

  13. Never could have happened here... on Antivirus Pioneer John McAfee Arrested In Belize · · Score: 0

    That never would have happened to a rich white guy who lived in a nice neighborhood in the US... unless he was protesting the government, or beating his wife.

  14. Re:a clarification on Open-Source Qualcomm GPU Driver Published · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Since Slashdot previously reported that Qualcom has promised to "Kill all proprietary drivers for good", this seems like the right start :)
    http://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/03/29/1650208/qualcomm-calls-to-kill-all-proprietary-drivers-for-good

  15. Re:monkeys throwing darts... on 1981 Paper's Predictions for Global Temperatures Spot-On · · Score: 1

    They don't need to, because large corporations with $billions to lose don't fund "think tanks" and astroturf campaigns to instill "doubt" in scientific consensus.
    Doubt:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhDacrl1aSA

    Oh, and smoke up! Cigarets are good for you :)

  16. Re:Fact check on Ask Slashdot: Why Aren't Schools Connected? · · Score: 1

    Next time before spewing "facts", please check where they come from!
    When I try to google Mercatus, the first auto complete is Koch brothers...
    The idea that we spend on average ~$90k/yr/child is hilarious. We only spend that much money on prison inmates.
    The real number is ~$10k including the school lunch program, buses, and janitors.
    That's comparable to the overhead cost of a class A building for a relatively low paid employee... Ok seems about right.
    Oh you want to educate them too? Then throw in an "overpaid" teacher who makes 40-60k/year (gets summer off but grades at night/weekends).

    Simple check. There are 12 years between 18-6 ages. The average life expectation is 72 years. So very roughly 1/6th of the population is of public school age.
    There are over $300m us citizens and so there are ~50m school age students. If we were spending $100k/student/year on it would be $5T/year or half the GDP. FAIL!
    Oh wait, you mean they ballooned the number by adding up 10 years together and it's actually less than $10k/yr?
    You mean they only use 10 years so that they can make countries that stop education at 15 look better?

    http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66
    Ok 5% of GDP I'll accept that, but it's still well below what many other countries spend so no big surprise.

    How much do other countries actually spend?
    http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.XPD.PRIM.PC.ZS

    So we are ahead of Bhutan and Cameroon, but well behind Columbia. Congratulations!
    Hmm... actual data that hasn't been so twisted by insane ideology that it at least passes a smell test.
    Please learn to use the Internet.

  17. Santorum???!!!! on Facebook To Share Private Data With Politico · · Score: 1

    Does that mean that any time someone discusses that "byproduct" it will be linked to the presidential candidate? :O
    That would be awesome! Will the comments be more negative than positive... which social groups?

    Next president... Lincoln Free Beer!

  18. Re:Reading the early comments... on Programming Prodigy Arfa Karim Passes Away At 16 · · Score: 1

    It is really terrifying that you got modded for that, and it wasn't funny. :O

  19. Re:Define, please? on Ask Slashdot: Changing Career From OLTP To OLAP Dev · · Score: 4, Informative

    OLTP - Online Transaction Processing. An application/database designed for larger, equal, or nearly equal volumes of database inserts, updates, and deletes, as there are reads. The database is generally more (and often highly) normalized, meaning that there is less data duplication across tables and/or within tables.
    OLAP - Online Analytical Processing. Essentially a data warehouse designed for larger volumes of reads than there will be inserts, updates, or deletes (often relatively very, very few deletes). Less normalized meaning that there may be duplicated data across and/or within tables in order to increase query speed at the cost of possible consistency issues due to the data duplication.

    Mark this informative comment the hell up!
    And smash my Karma if you want to, but the (four letter) acronyms really didn't help the article much.

  20. Re:Bad call by a union, nothing more on World's Largest Passenger Plane May Be Unsafe, Some Say · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You are correct in the case of airplanes and other macro structures...

    But, interestingly the little mirrors in your TI based DMD/DLP movie projector use aluminum hinges.
    They bend ~1% strain @540Hz for ~20khr before failing and that's >10^10 cycles!

    Why? because the hinges are thinner than a grain size and so dislocations don't propagate.
    Cool :)

  21. Re:http://xkcd.com/936/ on Ask Slashdot: Changing Passwords For the New Year? · · Score: 4, Funny

    I only use correct_horse_battery_staple now that I know how hard it is to guess!

  22. Lightning is a DC not an AC Electric arc? on Huge Tesla Coils Will Recreate Natural Lightning · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Greg is a great guy, giant tesla coils are cool, and I'd love to know more about lightning, but it seems like lots of properties of air (especially when it has water or other polarizable droplets/particles) are frequency dependent. So I'm not sure how that this is really going to act like the natural lightning that we're used to... Science? Ok, but not Natural Lightning Science.

  23. Re:just obvious human logic on Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Google Chase 'Got Milk?' Patents · · Score: 1

    You are absolutely correct... the details of the patent claims (and supporting specification) are very important.
    However, the selection of the examiner is also extremely important.
    I won't be surprised if one of these patents is issued in a first action allowance, even if another (perhaps even narrower) receives a final rejection.

    Some companies even submit multiple applications with minor tweaks to the abstract so that they go into different branches of art.
    When the first examiner allows the patent, you abandon all of the others so that any prior art discovered by another examiner doesn't make it to the file folder.

    Multiple submission triples or quadruples the cost of filing, but you can dramatically improve the chance of allowance for highly suspect patents.

  24. Vote on it here... on NYPD Dismantling Occupy Wall Street Encampment · · Score: 2
  25. Re:Isotopes != elements on Pristine Big Bang Gas Found · · Score: 1

    Actually, finding a cloud containing only Radon gas would basically indicate alien intelligence or some completely new nuclear process since there isn't a process that would purify to only Radon... Even isotopes that decay into radon would need to be purified....

    Finding a giant isolated stellar gas cloud that contains no other elements again either implies that they were purified by some process, or that it has been there alone since before there were other gases (eg Oxygen, Nitrogen) to mix with. It would (thermodynamically) ove to form ammonia (NH3) and water (H2O) to get to a lower stable energy state).

    They have proposed the least unlikely answer (interstellar alien intelligence is a big leap).
    Please pursue further education.