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Comment: Re:Here's an idea. (Score 1) 252

by bombastinator (#37217014) Attached to: Social Media a Threat To Undercover Cops
If an undercover cop gets killed though it wouldn't be hard to sue facebook for wrongful death.

The thing about facebook is that what they do is sell identities. They sell information about you to people who can make money off that information. As such they want to gather as much information as possible and give you as little choice in the matter as they possibly can. It's wrong. But until companies get their noses rubbed in it they won't stop. They have the most hidden system they can legally get away with because they don't want people opting out, and they don;t care who gets hurt as long as it isn't them.

  I avoid facebook like the plague, but they probably have data on me anyway simply because people I know use it.

Comment: there is a video demonstration (Score 2, Informative) 673

by bombastinator (#31971334) Attached to: Was Flight Ban Over Ash an Overreaction?


Comment: interesting they would pick the dell mini 9... Arr (Score 4, Interesting) 389

by bombastinator (#30361342) Attached to: Linux Reaches 32% Netbook Market Share
Funny that their favorite computer is the Dell Mini 9. It's not a very advanced machine, to the point that it een got discontinued once.
They brought it back though because it is very popular for the single reason that it has a reputation as being the most hackintoshable netbook there is. This implies that a lot of these netbooks are running more MacOS than linux.

Comment: Re:It's all about the money. (Score 2, Interesting) 386

by bombastinator (#28082143) Attached to: The Case For Working With Your Hands
Schools in the US are funded almost entirely by local property taxes so quality can vary a lot by area. It is common for parents to choose where to live according to the quality of the local schools. Rich people can send their kids to private school, and often do. The education offered the is frequently (though not always) much better. I attended a high end private school for junior high and a public school for highschool. The difference was jaw dropping. I tested completely out of most of my freshman classes and probably some of my sophomore stuff too. I had taken algebra 1 through trigonometry by the 8th grade and there was simply no way to place me for math, so they just put me in the freshman class and I did algebra all over again. I basically took no math in high school.

Comment: Re:It's all about the money. (Score 1) 386

by bombastinator (#28076361) Attached to: The Case For Working With Your Hands
>"Most secondary schools have advanced networking equipment, multiple severs and hundreds of modern PCs, along with an IT services department."<
Sure. Much of the equipment is donated. Sometimes by the manufacturer. Apple has a huge educational program. A lot of companies will ditch machines after only 2 or 3 years. Schools also vary widely in funding. You ever attend an inner city public junior high?

>"I don't know of a computer in my college older than 5 years."<
Sure. And how much do you pay for college? Did you go to a private high school? If it's a tech school I bet they have trades equipment there too.

You're familiar with personal computer costs I'm sure. a CnC milling machine can easily cost 30k or more. The very very cheapest models still cost 3 times what a cheap computer would. Now insure it against a 16 year old. Remember it's got high speed spinning bits and if you get your hair caught it will pull your face right into the machine. Would you like to talk welding? Poisonous gas, temperatures that can make skin explode. Auto shop? Please bring an auto. Did you know it used to be common practice for there to be enough sports teams for everyone in the school to be on one? They didn't have gym at all. They had sports. Modern high school sports are a creepy last vestige of that practice. Why is it still around? Because it pays for itself. We used to pay for all of this in public schools. The US used to have one of the best public school programs in the world. We don't any more. Its getting worse every day, just as it has every day for 40 years.

Comment: It's all about the money. (Score 4, Insightful) 386

by bombastinator (#28074123) Attached to: The Case For Working With Your Hands

The trades weren't pushed out of high schools because they were "retooling" they were pushed out because there was no money to teach them. Teaching trades requires expensive equipment that must be kept up and insured against accidents. Teaching IT requires obsolete donation computers that cost nothing and have very little upkeep. If Moore's law slows the donation computers will probably dry up too and then there will be nothing at all.

Comment: Re:What? (Score 1, Offtopic) 229

by bombastinator (#28012707) Attached to: What OS and Software For a Mobile Documentary Crew?
I have to agree. This is critical. Video editing is an art. Artists HATE changing their tools. It used to be with film cameras that if a pro quality camera got discontinued the second hand value skyrocketed, frequently to above the original new retail price. An artist has to get used to the behavior of a media to the point that you don't have to think about it before you can really really start to get work done. Your editors and pixel pushers will know only about the software suite they have trained to use whether they think so or not. Getting them to become efficient on a different software suite can take months, and you start risking horrible footage destroying "oops" mistakes while they train up. If you don't know what they trained on you are going to have to go MAC. It's the only thing that runs everything.

Comment: Re:after a few minutes of internet searches.. (Score 1) 519

by bombastinator (#27846465) Attached to: Reliable Male Contraceptive In the Works
I did find one site The site won't load but their google cached page did. The page claims that the male test never took place and instead was a test of the wives of 20 soldiers for a neem based spermicidal cream. They have an annotation too, but of course that page doesn't work either. This one has a bit more credence in that there is now a neem based spermicidal cream that is now widely sold throughout India.

Comment: after a few minutes of internet searches.. (Score 2, Informative) 519

by bombastinator (#27845131) Attached to: Reliable Male Contraceptive In the Works

Your affusively swenstionalist article points to the existence of neem oil as a pesticide, and apparently a fairly good one (doesn't make me want to drink it btw) but does not mention at all any trials by the Indian military or it's effectiveness. The much less evangelical Neem wiki and the neem entry at mention many medical uses, mostly for skin diseases in traditional medicine, and food additives, but makes no mention of male contraception. Female contraception tests in animals are mentioned but not any clinical tests.

I was able to find for both male and female contraception at a new age herbal medicine site which seems to contain linked end notes but all the notes are missing. This is quite disturbing as false annotation has been a repetitive problem in the New Age movement, the most famous being the "Chalice and the Blade" scandal about 20 years ago. Google searching the two names mentioned in conjunction with neem did yield some results. Noel Vietmeyer has apparently written a book (not a paper, a book) extolling neem as a wonder plant, but he is not the one who performed the study. It is the only reference I can find. All other references seem to lead back to that one.

I can find no first hand evidence at all on the internet that the Indian military study took place at all.
