Comment Re:Why not? (Score 1) 261
Does someone risk employment discipline when commenting publicly about their employer - of course. Common sense. Worth firing? Not sure, there may be other history at play that we wouldn't know about.
What is hard to find is an explanation of why "always on" is good or bad (pros and cons) that triggered this issue. I watched the IGN video (a great example about what's bad about anyone being able to report news on-line; what a slog waiting for mostly-amatuers to get to the point), and I can't figure out what XBox owners don't like about this fixed-to-the-TV device being plugged into the wall. Seems it evens out content downloads and other software related patching. Is it just the hassle of some complicated reset process if its offline from a power outage?
By the way - thanks for the non-anonymous posting. This thread seems to be loaded with Acs and I can't filter them out.
Submission + - Zuckerberg Lobbies for Immigration Reform (guardian.co.uk)
An anonymous reader writes: Everyone's favorite Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, along with other notables such as Google's Eric Schmidt, Yahoo's Marissa Mayer and Reid Hoffman, co-founder of Linkedin. has launched a new immigration reform lobbying group called FWD.us. In an editorial in the Washington Post, Zuckerberg claims that immigrants are the key to a future knowledge-based economy in a United States which currently has "a strange immigration policy for a nation of immigrants."
As expected, they are calling for more of the controversial H-1B visas which reached their maximum limit in less than a week this year, but those aren't the only things they're looking to change.
As expected, they are calling for more of the controversial H-1B visas which reached their maximum limit in less than a week this year, but those aren't the only things they're looking to change.
Submission + - Magic trick transforms conservatives into liberals - and vice versa (nature.com)
ananyo writes: When US presidential candidate Mitt Romney said last year that he was not even going to try to reach 47% of the US electorate, and that he would focus on the 5–10% thought to be floating voters, he was articulating a commonly held opinion: that most voters are locked in to their ideological party loyalty. But Lars Hall, a cognitive scientist at Lund University in Sweden, knew better. When Hall and his colleagues tested the rigidity of people’s political attitudes and voting intentions during Sweden’s 2010 general election, they discovered that loyalty was malleable: nearly half of all voters were open to changing their minds.
Hall’s group polled 162 voters during the final weeks of the election campaign, asking them which of two opposing political coalitions — conservative or social democrat/green — they intended to vote for. The researchers also asked voters to rate where they stood on 12 key political issues, including tax rates and nuclear power. The person conducting the experiment secretly filled in an identical survey with the reverse of the voter's answers, and used sleight-of-hand to exchange the answer sheets, placing the voter in the opposite political camp. The researcher invited the voter to give reasons for their manipulated opinions, then summarized their score to give a probable political affiliation and asked again who they intended to vote for. On the basis of the manipulated score, 10% of the subjects switched their voting intentions, from right to left wing or vice versa. Another 19% changed from firm support of their preferred coalition to undecided. A further 18% had been undecided before the survey, indicating that as many as 47% of the electorate were open to changing their minds, in sharp contrast to the 10% of voters identified as undecided in Swedish polls at the time (research paper). Hall has used a similar sleight of hand before to show that our moral compass can often be easily reversed.
Hall’s group polled 162 voters during the final weeks of the election campaign, asking them which of two opposing political coalitions — conservative or social democrat/green — they intended to vote for. The researchers also asked voters to rate where they stood on 12 key political issues, including tax rates and nuclear power. The person conducting the experiment secretly filled in an identical survey with the reverse of the voter's answers, and used sleight-of-hand to exchange the answer sheets, placing the voter in the opposite political camp. The researcher invited the voter to give reasons for their manipulated opinions, then summarized their score to give a probable political affiliation and asked again who they intended to vote for. On the basis of the manipulated score, 10% of the subjects switched their voting intentions, from right to left wing or vice versa. Another 19% changed from firm support of their preferred coalition to undecided. A further 18% had been undecided before the survey, indicating that as many as 47% of the electorate were open to changing their minds, in sharp contrast to the 10% of voters identified as undecided in Swedish polls at the time (research paper). Hall has used a similar sleight of hand before to show that our moral compass can often be easily reversed.
Comment Missed but Not Missed (Score 1) 206
I didn't know it was still on, but that's mostly because I don't know what's on radio anymore except for the morning news station. I guess I'll just go out back and eat worms.
Comment Re:duh (Score 1) 415
Most of us don't buy enough hardware to have a good sense of manufacturing defects directly. We get this indirectly from media sources, and human nature amplifies dissatisfaction more than satisfaction. I'm a somewhat recent Apple convert (about 5 years now), and a long time purchaser of computers of all kinds. While there have been some well known issues (the 24 inch screens currently, and I personally had to deal with the "expanding capacitor" issue on my iMac G5), my opinion of Apple is much higher than all the other personal computer manufacturers for build quality, service, and design. Admittedly, Apple doesn't really bother with the low-end market, so comparing the engineering art in an iMac to a mass market Dell desktop isn't a fair fight. But, I think "urban myth" is really too strong a description. My one motherboard issue was superbly handled by Apple Care, and my Apple laptops have lasted much longer than comparable Dell or Sony products I have purchased. I don't think my experience as been atypical, and any other PC manufacturer would have a list of quality snafus to point to - in most cases many more.
It's also interesting to look at the trigger for your comment. Even if you buy into the argument that Apple's quality is the best, comparing it to the quality of Ford is funny. Even the best personal computers last on average three years? Cars sit outside for years and years, have long term warranties, and lots of legislation controlling defect repair. The smallest manufacturing defect (Toyota comes to mind) get magnified into horrible PR nightmares that cost millions and millions to resolve. I'm guessing Apple wouldn't hold up well in a real comparison to Ford, or any other car company.
PS: Great Twain quote.
Comment It's About _All_ Jacks (Score 1) 411
It has nothing to do with the line in jack. It has to do with the desire to eliminate all jacks except USB/FireWire. Simplifies manufacturing and design costs, maybe? But, lots have disappeared; parallel, serial, keyboard, etc. All replaced with one do-everything digital jack. As others have pointed out, an audio/USB is a $10 purchase and up, depending on your needs.
Comment Re:Like Simone (Score 1) 404
Which was somewhat similar to another movie which name escapes me. Late 70s? Early 80s? Scanned actors then killed so the studio could use their likenesses without having to pay them. Maybe it was a made for TV movie...
Comment Re:Wrong Question (Score 1) 505
This may change over time. Red Flag rules and other identity theft laws in the US are increasing the liability for whomever is the source of the leak. Holding on to personal identifiers for people you have no active business with is increasing your corporate risk. At some point, most likely after an embarrassing information leak, a bunch of lawsuits that crush a company will cause others to reconsider not purging old information from their databases.
Comment Re:Broken by design. (Score 2, Informative) 505
This is bad policy, since many potential hospital "customers" don't have an SSN. Hospitals have to service newborns, visitors, illegals, etc. Using SSN as the unique ID doesn't work, and they usually have work-arounds for this.
Comment Re:A good application (Score 1) 218
I agree with the other reply poster. I'm not sure how this is really any leap past the more traditional projection with a large screen and more common pointing devices. It's sure out of reach for people with mobility issues to stand up and wave their arms around, and leaning over a table obviously only lets a few people look down.
Comment Re:Whiskey Byproducts (Score 1) 170
I was thinking "vomit and pregnancy", but same joke I guess...
Comment Re:Whatever, it's a great service (Score 1) 244
I believe the problem with Payola (historically, although the "tuning out" may be a current issue) is that record labels essentially froze out smaller artists, since there's only so much air time. As a smaller artists (label or independent), you couldn't get your song on the radio without paying up, since the major promoter was already doing this. An extension of going after monopolistic practices, I guess.
Comment No Deadlines for EMRs (Score 1) 136
The executive order requires interoperable systems for healthcare data, but does not require EMR applications. It says any system the fed buys must be able to share data with other systems, but not that any particular system is purchased for any purpose.
Also, does not apply to the private sector, although there are obviously many political movements to provide incentives and mandates in this direction.
The OP is a little misleading. The standards are being developed by HITSP (www.hitsp.org), the money is coming from the proposed 20-25B$ Obama wants to spend on this little pork project (and other legislation on the fed and state level similarly).
Your tax dollars at work. Note that the market has largely rejected the current generation of vendor products, since they do little to help the physician in their workflow.
Comment Re:Obama (Score 1) 136
Check Bush's state of the union address from 4 or 5 years ago. A 12 year plan to move to nationwide EMR records for everyone. Established the office of the national coordinator for healthcare IT which is the administrative arm to make this happen. This launched the National Healthcare Infratructure Network project (currently in its second revision), the Healthcare IT Standards Body (to harmonize competing HIT standards and establish new ones), the Certification Commission for HIT (to certify products for operating on the national infrastructure) and a number of other projects.
Obama would be smart to not throw all this out, but the knee jerk reaction is anything Bush did is bad.
Slashdot Top Deals
I put up my thumb... and it blotted out the planet Earth. -- Neil Armstrong
