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Comment Re:Mercury (Score 2) 383

Would he have gone nuts anyway because it was a party? Did he go nuts because he has been conditioned (even unconsciously) by adults that candy == go nuts? Did you control by giving artificially sweetened candy to other children at the party? (Even better would be a third group with no candy.)

I think you have failed to eliminate a vast array of confounding factors in your experiment. Not worthy of publication. :)

Comment Re:Nothing to see here.... (Score 5, Informative) 383

It is not "hard to find" mercury-free vaccines. Thimerosal has not been used in vaccines in Western nations in decades (with one or two rare exceptions) because better preservatives have been found. It is used in vaccines bought by developing and impoverished nations, because it's cheaper. And it has been proven repeatedly to be safe.

The Internet

Ask.com To Shut Down Bloglines 111

angry tapir writes "Bloglines, the venerable RSS reader, will cease to exist in a few weeks, according to its owner, Ask.com. Users should export their syndicated feeds to another RSS reader, as Bloglines will be shut down on Oct. 1, Ask.com said Friday in a blog post. Ask.com has posted instructions on the Bloglines home page for exporting feeds to another RSS management service."

Comment Re:Advertising (Score 1) 118

Lighten up, Francis.

One of my favorite classes in college was called Sci-Phi; it was all about philosophical and ethical issues in science fiction. We watched a few movies and some good Star Trek episodes, and also did a lot of reading (both science fiction and philosophers.) There was a lot of work (several essays plus a term paper) so it was not a Mickey-mouse course by any means. Courses like that, which are generally developed for fun by profs who really like their subjects, can be a lot more engaging and interesting than the same old generic "let's analyze The Merchant of Venice to death" courses that fill the majority of one's time as a student.

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How To Find Bad Programmers 359

AmberShah writes "The job post is your potential programmer's first impression of your company, so make it count with these offputting features. There are plenty of articles about recruiting great developers, but what if you are only interested in the crappy ones?" I think much of the industry is already following these guidelines.
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Food Activist's Life Becomes The Life of Brian 165

krou writes "After food activist and author Raj Patel appeared on The Colbert Report to promote his latest book, things seemed to be going well, until he began to get inundated with emails asking if he was 'the world teacher.' In events ripped straight from The Life of Brian, it would seem that Raj Patel's life story ticks all the boxes necessary to fulfill prophecies made by Benjamin Creme, founder of religious sect Share International. After the volume of emails and inquiries got worse, Patel eventually wrote a message on his website stating categorically that he was not the Messiah. Sure enough, 'his denial merely fanned the flames for some believers. In a twist ripped straight from the script of the comedy classic, they said that this disavowal, too, had been prophesied.'"

Comment Amazon S3 (Score 3, Informative) 411

It can get a little pricey for huge datasets, but Amazon S3 now has an option where you can ship your data on a big set of disks directly to them, they will import everything into S3, and it will live there forever. The nice thing about S3 is unlike physical disks, it can grow essentially forever, and comes with retention and redundancy guarantees. And once your stuff is in S3, you can recycle the same disks to mail them more data.

Comment Gamma (Score 0) 368

As a programmer who knows nothing about graphics algorithms, can somebody explain to me exactly what gamma is? I've been told I should by worrying about it for at least a couple decades, but thus far my lack of knowledge has not caused by any bodily injury. Use small words.

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