* Posts by Mark Shaffer

10 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jun 2007

Quid-a-day nosh challenge hack forms foraging party

Mark Shaffer

Old Nick?

Have you begun having visions yet? Has The Father of Lies popped round to offer you all the earthly kingdoms?

Also, I'd be interested in hearing about any observed digestive tract effects. Like if everything has seized up in response to this outrage. Or the reverse. Anything like that.

Outsourced space trucks battle for US middleweight lifting title

Mark Shaffer
Headmaster

"New" Wallops? Not.

There is nothing particularly "new" about the Wallops Flight Facility itself. Is has been there for decades, mostly quietly launching boring stuff like sounding rockets.

Imation takes $310.2m hit in hellish, wallet-draining 4th quarter

Mark Shaffer

Re: Secular Decline ?

I agree, but I think this is one of those cases where the "lazy and inaccurate usage of the phrase" is overtaking the original meaning, in practice. It was clear what he meant for exactly this reason.

Mark Shaffer

Re: Secular Decline ?

I'm not sure what you looked up, or where, but in economics, the term "secular" means simply "long-term", usually 10+ years. So a "secular decline" is a long-term decline. So why not just say that? Because it isn't sufficiently business jargonish, I guess.

Cash-strapped Sharp puts HQ, factories in hock

Mark Shaffer
Meh

"Junk" Stock?

"...which has already seen its stock downgraded to 'junk' status by Standard & Poor's..."

I assume this meant "debt" rather than "stock". S&P doesn't grade stocks in this fashion.

The Facebook test: Why social Big Data is important

Mark Shaffer
Happy

Why Stop There?

"...we should prepare for a wave of HR consultants pointing to this study and looking for automated tools designed to analyse every aspect of a person’s online identity in order to figure out whether they have what it takes to man the drive-up window next summer."

But why end with the mere initial decision to employ? You could set up to get notifications of any change to an employee's Facebook profile (full access required, or you can't work for us!), reanalyze in real time, and if the employee no longer measures up, send an automatic termination notice. So much more "efficient" than those labor-intensive performance reviews.

Tech! Tech! Teeeeech! Women want gadgets for Valentine's

Mark Shaffer

"Smaller Body Frames"

So these are not the same women I see at the WalMart. That seems right, because the latter seem more interested in giant containers of soft drinks and snacks.

iPhone doc will detect cancer, diabetes - boffins

Mark Shaffer
Meh

"Diagnose" Cancer?

Don't think so. Of course there are many different diseases covered by the term, but few if any of them can be diagnosed by means of a blood test alone; they require a tissue biopsy for an accurate diagnosis. So at best this could provide some sort of front-line screening. And then the issue of false positives leading to unnecessary biopsies would rear its ugly head. So: Needs more work.

Big guns turn sights on cancer-causing genes

Mark Shaffer
Meh

Ironic Position

... from my perspective at least. In my own case (multiple myeloma), there are people having the suspect mutations but not the disease itself. Evidently, the malignancy must be triggered by additional environmental factors (although admittedly no one can say exactly what these are). There is a strong suspicion that environmental degradation may account for the increasing incidence and declining diagnosis ages seen over the past couple of decades. Again I am speaking only about the one form of cancer that I happen to know something about.

Google beats chip and server makers to the future

Mark Shaffer

Flawed Reasoning

I forget the exact quote, or which famous economist said it, but the core idea is that if you are in a market with no competition, then there really is no such market. If there really is demand for this technology then competitors will arise to fill it.

Also, the analogy with oil is a false one. Oil is a non-renewable physical commodity with a relatively inflexible supply. Technological innovation is none of these things.