Epidemiologically, about 1 in 500 measles cases result in death, 1 in 500 result in major brain damage, and so on. Young kids are the most susceptible. The rates of complications from the vaccine are on the order of one in millions, and do NOT include death, retardation, blindness. The math isn't that hard to do if you want to see what that means for unnecessary suffering due to reduced vaccination.
It's good that most children escaped the consequences of Wakefield's BS because enough were vaccinated to make it pretty hard for disease to spread. But the numbers are there showing that there were hundreds of excess deaths and life-changing disabilities, such as blindness or retardation, from kids not getting measles vaccines.
Seeding a minefield with indicator grass, I could see that working. Potted plants at airports catching passing terrorists? No.
I can hear them now: Ground crew to Terminal Control: "We need another delay on Flight 36983. The aspidistra at Gate 9 next to the guy with the briefcase may be kinda light green. We need more time!"
--Air travel is a horrible experience these days, before you're even off the ground.
--So let's add some doofus YELLING DRIVEL ON HIS PHONE THE WHOLE FLIGHT, in addition to the cramped seats, the bad air, the tiny bags of hamster kibble they hand out for some reason, the roar of the engines, the kid behind you kicking your seat, the person in front leaning a-l-l-l-l the way back, no way to bring your own thermos of coffee and no way in hell to get any from the flight attendants, but when you need to visit the bathroom the aisle is permanently plugged up with carts.
You know what? I don't care what excuse they use to keep people from talking on phones. Just keep doing it.
Anything silent: fine. Texting, MMOs, whatever. But the day I'm trapped with a self-important shouting jerk in a tin can is the day I go to jail for justifiable homicide.
I'm a biology prof and have been around universities all my life. (Really. My mother was a university prof too.) There are a lot of misconceptions about what goes in to good teaching. In computer science, a sophomore may well be a better teacher than a 40 year-old full professor.
Professors are not rewarded for good teaching. We're rewarded mainly for bringing in grant funds. So getting good teachers depends pretty much on the luck of the draw, unless you're up at Stanford or Harvard levels. Community colleges often have better teachers than 4-year schools because they have much more focus on teaching.
The main thing you're paying $20,000/yr for is the higher class union card. A better name school is a ticket to a better-paying job. Which means, in terms of bang for the buck, a student is best off going to community college for the first two years, and then transferring to as flagship a school as they can manage.
As for actually learning something, well, that's a different matter entirely...
Firefox is not slow, or any of the other BS, for ages now. Get a current version before you make outdated comments. Is Google doing a Microsoft these days, and telling employees to sprinkle PR on forums?
I run Chrome, Safari, Opera, and IE up to 8. (No Win7 to run IE9 on.) At times I run them all on the same websites during web design. IE is the champion dog. No question about that. The rest? In actual use? Indistinguishable.
Except that with Firefox I have Adblock and Noscript, so way less crap. Which means that my brain gets to load the information about ten times faster. Unless you don't use your brain, that's an important factor.
It sure seems that if they knew the specifics in advance, they could eschew the whole mindreading thing and just get on with stopping the attack. But maybe that's just me.
Yeah. The inefficiency is all the software's fault, obviously. The part between the keyboard and the chair always knows how to use anything unfamiliar perfectly the first time.
Exactly. Besides, if they didn't care about comparing technical apples and oranges, they could have kept the money constant. Compare the broadband speeds available for $20/mo, $50/mo, $75/mo. Plot those two parameters on a graph, and color code the points by how much competition there is in that market. Now that would have been interesting. Not surprising, but interesting.
Yeah. Honestly. And I'm boggling a bit at all the responses from apparent Google people. I have never, ever, had a response from one of them for any problem, no matter how serious. (To me, anyway. Obviously not to them.) Nice to know they do exist. As Mr. Spock would say, "Fascinating."
Next time I'll post my problem with a Google product to Slashdot.
I've often wondered: is there any technical reason why they couldn't have the speaker's voice piped back to the receiver? Why aren't they already doing this? Why don't we have a goddamn constitutional amendment forcing cell phone manufacturers to do this?
Scientists don't know yet which genes in which combinations cause Alzheimers or heart disease or cancer. (Trust me. This type of thing was my job.) All scientists know at this point is a few genes which are associated with chronic diseases.
You'd have a better chance of a true prediction of your fate using astrology. We don't know enough to make a yes/no test for those diseases. We do know enough to make a yes/no test for pregnancy or drugs. (Actually, not always on the latter. Don't eat any poppy seed buns the day before.)
The difference between a drugstore test and a doctor's is that there is some chance the doctor will be aware of the complexity, of what the testing cannot do, and of how much it really means for your future.
The drugstore test is just a way to take your money.
They conserve names in wide use, even if the names are no longer technically right. People do that all the time in ordinary language, without the benefit of a commission. That's why you're not calling "tea" a "camellia." (The valid name is Camellia sinensis, not Thea sinensis as it once was.)
For some reason, the zoologists have never figured out this obvious solution. There aren't that many names in wide use, and it's easier for the scientists to remember an occasional exception than for millions of people to learn a new word for nothing. It's meaningful to the scientists, but for most people it's just a label and swapping it when the underlying thing is the same is just make(mental)work.
(It frustrated the hell out of me when the astronomers couldn't figure that out either for Pluto. Just give it conserved status. It won't hurt astronomers to remember, "Oh, yes. The one Kuiper Belt Object we're calling a planet." "Planet" is an arbitrary, human-made category. We can do whatever we want with it.)
This wasn't an overseas licence. This was just me sending them checks in an envelope for doing an excellent job. And I was hoping the news would stay accessible. I hardly use their streaming media at all except for some of the nature / science programming (dance of the sea dragons, the spatule-tailed hummingbird... if you haven't seen those, look them up!) but it's the principle of the thing that makes me livid.
What a bunch of BLITHERING BOBBLEHEADS. Now I know what the "BB" in BBC stands for. I'm in the US and I actually sent them money over the years, because they're the best news organization out there. Not any more. And their goddamn web and streaming is built on goddamn open source, and then they do this. Their mission is to provide news and accessibility to all (well, all in GB), and they do this.
I'm adding what I would have sent them to my contribution to the Pirate Party.
Seconded! It's THEIR software leaving all the open doors. They're the ones who need to fix that. Not the users they've already victimized. (I can't believe somebody didn't point this out in the first comment!)
Enough already with corporations dumping all their cleanup on taxpayers.
That's all there is to it. Ubuntu is easy. You have to put all the proprietary multimedia stuff on yourself, but that's pretty much a matter of installing one package from synaptic: ubuntu-restricted-extras.
Brown is ugly, so change the wallpaper. Honestly. Why people act like this is a showstopper beats me.
Last and far from least, put the panel where they're used to it, with the trash over there and the Start over here. And you're all set.
I set up laptops recently for my brother-in-law and his niece, both of them Windows users of the type who don't know a browser from a desktop. I figured I'd have no end of support, but that would still be better than the even bigger infinity of sorting their machines out after their daily virus infections.
In over six months, they've had no problems. None. There was one question: how to make the panel transparent because they were using different wallpaper.
They're not the type to use forums for questions, but if they were, the ubuntu forums are the most informative and friendliest to noobs of the lot.
I can tell you why kids get bullied. Because kids who want to push somebody around think they can get away with it. Bullied kids are almost always the smallest / least athletic ones around. Teaching them all the social skills in the world isn't going to change that. Teaching the bullies a thing or two, now that might change something. But that would take some real conflict resolution skills on the part of psychologists and social workers, and that stuff's kinda hard....
but still keep a keen picture of everything that could hit me directly
Sure. Like all those other people on mobiles that the rest of us sidestep. I don't know what you call awareness, but I have to get within a foot of a cellphoner to raise even a flicker of it.
Then there's the pickpockets. They target people listening to music or on mobiles. No doubt that's because they realize those people are highly aware of their surroundings so picking their pockets will be more of an interesting challenge.
Slashdot Mirror
PHP users are both. Obviously.
(bwahaha. I'm not as nerdy as I thought I was. I hadn't even heard of lmgtfy before.)
If "Link, Please" would rather have a personal story of what happens when herd immunity is lost, here's a writer for The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/01/measles-mmr-vaccination.
Epidemiologically, about 1 in 500 measles cases result in death, 1 in 500 result in major brain damage, and so on. Young kids are the most susceptible. The rates of complications from the vaccine are on the order of one in millions, and do NOT include death, retardation, blindness. The math isn't that hard to do if you want to see what that means for unnecessary suffering due to reduced vaccination.
It's good that most children escaped the consequences of Wakefield's BS because enough were vaccinated to make it pretty hard for disease to spread. But the numbers are there showing that there were hundreds of excess deaths and life-changing disabilities, such as blindness or retardation, from kids not getting measles vaccines.
If it was Diaspora, I'd say, "Get a life." But I'm so sick of Zuckerberg's multi-billion smug mug, Facebook's lucky I'm not on that jury.
Seeding a minefield with indicator grass, I could see that working. Potted plants at airports catching passing terrorists? No.
I can hear them now: Ground crew to Terminal Control: "We need another delay on Flight 36983. The aspidistra at Gate 9 next to the guy with the briefcase may be kinda light green. We need more time!"
--Air travel is a horrible experience these days, before you're even off the ground.
--So let's add some doofus YELLING DRIVEL ON HIS PHONE THE WHOLE FLIGHT, in addition to the cramped seats, the bad air, the tiny bags of hamster kibble they hand out for some reason, the roar of the engines, the kid behind you kicking your seat, the person in front leaning a-l-l-l-l the way back, no way to bring your own thermos of coffee and no way in hell to get any from the flight attendants, but when you need to visit the bathroom the aisle is permanently plugged up with carts.
You know what? I don't care what excuse they use to keep people from talking on phones. Just keep doing it.
Anything silent: fine. Texting, MMOs, whatever. But the day I'm trapped with a self-important shouting jerk in a tin can is the day I go to jail for justifiable homicide.
I'm a biology prof and have been around universities all my life. (Really. My mother was a university prof too.) There are a lot of misconceptions about what goes in to good teaching. In computer science, a sophomore may well be a better teacher than a 40 year-old full professor.
Professors are not rewarded for good teaching. We're rewarded mainly for bringing in grant funds. So getting good teachers depends pretty much on the luck of the draw, unless you're up at Stanford or Harvard levels. Community colleges often have better teachers than 4-year schools because they have much more focus on teaching.
The main thing you're paying $20,000/yr for is the higher class union card. A better name school is a ticket to a better-paying job. Which means, in terms of bang for the buck, a student is best off going to community college for the first two years, and then transferring to as flagship a school as they can manage.
As for actually learning something, well, that's a different matter entirely...
Firefox is not slow, or any of the other BS, for ages now. Get a current version before you make outdated comments. Is Google doing a Microsoft these days, and telling employees to sprinkle PR on forums?
I run Chrome, Safari, Opera, and IE up to 8. (No Win7 to run IE9 on.) At times I run them all on the same websites during web design. IE is the champion dog. No question about that. The rest? In actual use? Indistinguishable.
Except that with Firefox I have Adblock and Noscript, so way less crap. Which means that my brain gets to load the information about ten times faster. Unless you don't use your brain, that's an important factor.
I need at least a three hour-long movie. Possibly days' worth. Go for it!
It sure seems that if they knew the specifics in advance, they could eschew the whole mindreading thing and just get on with stopping the attack. But maybe that's just me.
Yeah. The inefficiency is all the software's fault, obviously. The part between the keyboard and the chair always knows how to use anything unfamiliar perfectly the first time.
Exactly. Besides, if they didn't care about comparing technical apples and oranges, they could have kept the money constant. Compare the broadband speeds available for $20/mo, $50/mo, $75/mo. Plot those two parameters on a graph, and color code the points by how much competition there is in that market. Now that would have been interesting. Not surprising, but interesting.
(Hey! Mod parent hilarious! You guys asleep or something?)
Yeah. Honestly. And I'm boggling a bit at all the responses from apparent Google people. I have never, ever, had a response from one of them for any problem, no matter how serious. (To me, anyway. Obviously not to them.) Nice to know they do exist. As Mr. Spock would say, "Fascinating."
Next time I'll post my problem with a Google product to Slashdot.
I've often wondered: is there any technical reason why they couldn't have the speaker's voice piped back to the receiver? Why aren't they already doing this? Why don't we have a goddamn constitutional amendment forcing cell phone manufacturers to do this?
Scientists don't know yet which genes in which combinations cause Alzheimers or heart disease or cancer. (Trust me. This type of thing was my job.) All scientists know at this point is a few genes which are associated with chronic diseases.
You'd have a better chance of a true prediction of your fate using astrology. We don't know enough to make a yes/no test for those diseases. We do know enough to make a yes/no test for pregnancy or drugs. (Actually, not always on the latter. Don't eat any poppy seed buns the day before.)
The difference between a drugstore test and a doctor's is that there is some chance the doctor will be aware of the complexity, of what the testing cannot do, and of how much it really means for your future.
The drugstore test is just a way to take your money.
yes, yes, yes. Pre-www history. Not pre-internet. (Honestly. What do they teach them in these schools?)
Ooh, beer! That means they could have a state yeast too! Saccharomyces cerevisiae, here we come!
They conserve names in wide use, even if the names are no longer technically right. People do that all the time in ordinary language, without the benefit of a commission. That's why you're not calling "tea" a "camellia." (The valid name is Camellia sinensis, not Thea sinensis as it once was.)
For some reason, the zoologists have never figured out this obvious solution. There aren't that many names in wide use, and it's easier for the scientists to remember an occasional exception than for millions of people to learn a new word for nothing. It's meaningful to the scientists, but for most people it's just a label and swapping it when the underlying thing is the same is just make(mental)work.
(It frustrated the hell out of me when the astronomers couldn't figure that out either for Pluto. Just give it conserved status. It won't hurt astronomers to remember, "Oh, yes. The one Kuiper Belt Object we're calling a planet." "Planet" is an arbitrary, human-made category. We can do whatever we want with it.)
This wasn't an overseas licence. This was just me sending them checks in an envelope for doing an excellent job. And I was hoping the news would stay accessible. I hardly use their streaming media at all except for some of the nature / science programming (dance of the sea dragons, the spatule-tailed hummingbird... if you haven't seen those, look them up!) but it's the principle of the thing that makes me livid.
What a bunch of BLITHERING BOBBLEHEADS. Now I know what the "BB" in BBC stands for. I'm in the US and I actually sent them money over the years, because they're the best news organization out there. Not any more. And their goddamn web and streaming is built on goddamn open source, and then they do this. Their mission is to provide news and accessibility to all (well, all in GB), and they do this.
I'm adding what I would have sent them to my contribution to the Pirate Party.
Seconded! It's THEIR software leaving all the open doors. They're the ones who need to fix that. Not the users they've already victimized. (I can't believe somebody didn't point this out in the first comment!)
Enough already with corporations dumping all their cleanup on taxpayers.
That's all there is to it. Ubuntu is easy. You have to put all the proprietary multimedia stuff on yourself, but that's pretty much a matter of installing one package from synaptic: ubuntu-restricted-extras.
Brown is ugly, so change the wallpaper. Honestly. Why people act like this is a showstopper beats me.
Last and far from least, put the panel where they're used to it, with the trash over there and the Start over here. And you're all set.
I set up laptops recently for my brother-in-law and his niece, both of them Windows users of the type who don't know a browser from a desktop. I figured I'd have no end of support, but that would still be better than the even bigger infinity of sorting their machines out after their daily virus infections.
In over six months, they've had no problems. None. There was one question: how to make the panel transparent because they were using different wallpaper.
They're not the type to use forums for questions, but if they were, the ubuntu forums are the most informative and friendliest to noobs of the lot.
I can tell you why kids get bullied. Because kids who want to push somebody around think they can get away with it. Bullied kids are almost always the smallest / least athletic ones around. Teaching them all the social skills in the world isn't going to change that. Teaching the bullies a thing or two, now that might change something. But that would take some real conflict resolution skills on the part of psychologists and social workers, and that stuff's kinda hard....
but still keep a keen picture of everything that could hit me directly
Sure. Like all those other people on mobiles that the rest of us sidestep. I don't know what you call awareness, but I have to get within a foot of a cellphoner to raise even a flicker of it.
Then there's the pickpockets. They target people listening to music or on mobiles. No doubt that's because they realize those people are highly aware of their surroundings so picking their pockets will be more of an interesting challenge.