Slashdot Mirror


User: Sockatume

Sockatume's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
5,843
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 5,843

  1. Re:Isn't the upshot the same? on FWD.us Wants More H-1B Visas, But 50% Go To Offshore Firms · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There are plenty of STEM workers to fill the available jobs; I think the last figures put a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio of workers to roles. There just aren't enough available at the prices these companies want to pay. Hence offshoring: find a cheaper supply of labour elsewhere.

  2. Re:UK perspective on Ask Slashdot: Experiences With Free To Air Satellite TV? · · Score: 1

    Most of the free-to-air satellite channels don't receive licence fee funding. A few are non-profits running on ad revenue and the rest are fully commercial; even Sky, that expensive subscription service that got half the country to install satellite dishes, has free-to-air stations.

  3. UK perspective on Ask Slashdot: Experiences With Free To Air Satellite TV? · · Score: 2

    Interestingly (perhaps) the UK has a lot of free-to-air content, and satellite in particular is popular because lots of people have mini-dishes on their houses from their own or a previous Sky TV installation. Freesat doesn't get as much coverage as Freeview but you can still walk into your local electronics retailer and find a big-brand satellite PVR next to the other TV hardware.

  4. Re:It's teh googlezzzz!!!! on The Inside Story of Gmail On Its Tenth Anniversary · · Score: 1

    I'm going to have to stop you there.

  5. Re:This'll put my flatmate out of work on Creating "Homo Minutus" — a Benchtop Human To Test Drugs · · Score: 1

    His job's probably safe; by all accounts this is going to be a superior alternative to animal and in-vitro studies. Given the simplicity of the model you'll still need to test drugs in actual people.

  6. Re:Self driving car on Department of Transportation Makes Rear View Cameras Mandatory · · Score: 1

    It's not for "high-end autos", it's a requirement for all cars.

  7. Re:Ok if the camera does not record on Department of Transportation Makes Rear View Cameras Mandatory · · Score: 1

    About half of all current-model-year cars in the US have them already, so I really doubt it's going to be an issue.

  8. Re:What society really needs to do on Department of Transportation Makes Rear View Cameras Mandatory · · Score: 2

    Without necessarily contradicting you, this requirement should ensure that people with neck and back injuries that make it difficult to check the blind spot can still drive safely.

    On the other hand, I would prefer a heads-up option. Situational awareness is everything in a manoeuvre.

  9. Re:Whaling bad, mass breeding cattle and pigs good on UN Court: Japanese Whaling "Not Scientific" · · Score: 2

    1) It all matters. The same people who oppose rainforest devastation for food oppose whaling for food. The same people who don't give a shit about the rainforest don't, generally speaking, give a shit about whales.

    2) They're a slow-breeding, unfarmed animal. Whaling has essentially been outlawed* because they can't sustain being hunted for food.

    *Countries can go cap-in-hand to the UN to ask for a quota, for example to preserve small-scale traditional hunting. It goes without saying that Japan's present whaling operation doesn't meet the cultural criteria.

  10. Re:How much poison do you eat? on Continued Rise In Autism Diagnoses Puzzles Researchers, Galvanizes Advocates · · Score: 1

    How in the hell does iodine help build up fluoride minerals in teeth? Nuclear fission?

  11. Re:Autism is Evolution on Continued Rise In Autism Diagnoses Puzzles Researchers, Galvanizes Advocates · · Score: 1

    1) Autism isn't known to be a set of mutations that are "favourable". It's currently only weakly shown what the genetic component is, much less the impact of those genes in other areas than autism. I don't think you'd call fragile X syndrome a beneficial trait for instance.

    2) Autism isn't shown to tend toward "advanced intellect and lower animalistic emotion-driven behavior". There is a body of evidence that autistic children show poor systematisation and problem solving, for instance, traits that are disadvantageous in technical activities. (In conflict with the widely-known but scientifically niche "hyper-systematisation" hypothesis of Baron-Cohen.)

    3) There's no real evidence that intellect and emotion are opposed traits

    4) There's no real evidence that emotion is an animalistic trait

    5) There's no evidence that animalistic traits are bad

    6) You do not get "an autist 70% of the time" when you "breed two intellectuals"

    7) Evolution is a process that happens to ensembles of traits and individuals, not particular changes. Talking about a change as evolutionary is like talking about an atom's motion as being "high temperature".

    8) Evolution is not a process from animal to man to better-than-man. It isn't even a process from worse to better in any anthromorphic sense.

  12. Re:Or endless 'vaccinations' on Continued Rise In Autism Diagnoses Puzzles Researchers, Galvanizes Advocates · · Score: 1

    My point is that I don't even see it as a silver lining, an upshot that you can take away and use. At best, it's an almost-zero-sum.

  13. Re: Clearly vaccination is to blame! on Continued Rise In Autism Diagnoses Puzzles Researchers, Galvanizes Advocates · · Score: 1

    That's the great tragedy of Wakefield's science by press release, of course.

  14. Re:Medicalizing Normality on Continued Rise In Autism Diagnoses Puzzles Researchers, Galvanizes Advocates · · Score: 1

    Evolution is what selection does to genetic variety, it isn't something that exists at the level of a difference in phenotype.

  15. Re:Two solutions (Encrypt or leave) on Dropbox's New Policy of Scanning Files For DMCA Issues · · Score: 1

    You make a compelling case for them to do so.

  16. Re: Clearly vaccination is to blame! on Continued Rise In Autism Diagnoses Puzzles Researchers, Galvanizes Advocates · · Score: 2

    1) They're very quick to play hero when the other doctor is wrong
    2) a) They weren't "quick to say" it, they produced an enormous body of evidence.
    2) b) The moon disappears. You're blamed. I'm pretty sure that you can show you're not responsible without knowing who the actual culprit is.

  17. Re:Two solutions (Encrypt or leave) on Dropbox's New Policy of Scanning Files For DMCA Issues · · Score: 4, Informative

    Isn't that so that you can send links to contacts? Android has no granular permissions support so if you ever want to be able to email a link from the app, you have to grant that permission.

  18. Re:not private on New Australian Privacy Laws Could Have Ramifications On Google Glass · · Score: 1

    Only when their memories can be uploaded to the internet.

  19. Recording on New Australian Privacy Laws Could Have Ramifications On Google Glass · · Score: 1

    The key word here is "recording". Something recorded is less private than something ephemerally witnessed by another person.

  20. Re:Huh? on Dropbox's New Policy of Scanning Files For DMCA Issues · · Score: 2

    The DMCA is concerned with whether Dropbox is hosting an infringing file, not who they may be hosting the file for or for what purpose. Unfortunately this approach is forced upon Dropbox by a US law passed in an era of dial-up modems.

  21. Re:Autism is Evolution on Continued Rise In Autism Diagnoses Puzzles Researchers, Galvanizes Advocates · · Score: 1

    You've managed to demonstrate a complete misunderstanding of evolution, autism, and intelligence all within the same post. Congratulations.

  22. Re:Putting the cart before the horse on Continued Rise In Autism Diagnoses Puzzles Researchers, Galvanizes Advocates · · Score: 1

    More to the point, diagnosis rates will fall when Risperdal is billable against whatever condition those kids actually have.

  23. Re:Or endless 'vaccinations' on Continued Rise In Autism Diagnoses Puzzles Researchers, Galvanizes Advocates · · Score: 1

    It's not a "useful purpose" to pursue a hypothesis soley on the basis of one fake study. That's money - enormous, mind-boggling amounts of money - that could have been spent on actual autism research.

    Thimerosal was out of most childhood vaccines long before the scare, wasn't it?

  24. Conflating on Continued Rise In Autism Diagnoses Puzzles Researchers, Galvanizes Advocates · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Beware of conflating autism with autism spectrum disorders and asperger's syndrome. Classical, pre-2000s autism isn't a faddish behavioural disorder, it's the kind of debilitating condition that can require life-long professional care.

  25. Re:Autism is the new ADD on Continued Rise In Autism Diagnoses Puzzles Researchers, Galvanizes Advocates · · Score: 1

    Autism is early onset, autism spectrum disorders are less clear. It's not obvious whether this is because they are early-onset but the symptoms are subtler and harder to identify, or because they're distinct syndromes.