I am a Caucasian male, with a bmi of about 25 (1m93, 93 kg). I do have a little bit of a belly I have to admit, and could lose a little weight.
However compared to all the Chinese around me, I live in Hong Kong, I am very big. Not just tall: big. Asians are thinner built than Caucasians. Especially the young women in HK try to be thin, no make that skinny. My previous assistant was one of those: female, about 42 kg, 1m62, BMI 16. And eating almost as much as me! Unbelievable.
A healthy BMI is considered to be 20-25. For Caucasians. For Asians however it should be 18-23 instead, simply because they have a more slender build.
The most interesting note about the summary's comparison is the minute difference between the average waistlines of males and females in the US. Female waists should be significantly smaller, due to their build, plus the fact that they are shorter than males.
In the USA where you probably are talking about considering this is/., about half, if not more these days, of health care cost is related to litigation. That is the actual law suits against health practitioners, the insurance those practitioners take against law suits and claims, and all the extra administration done by health practitioners and hospitals to cover themselves against those law suits. None of this improves health care (one can argue that it decreases it: time spent on frivolous administration is time not spent with patients), but it does increase cost.
Cigarettes are first and foremost a luxury product. There is no need for them to survive. Food, clothing, housing and the like however are a necessity. Energy and water: these are necessary, but only to a certain extent, so many countries have tiered pricing: free or low price for the first x units, higher cost for subsequent units.
Just like alcohol, the duties on cigarettes are partly luxury tax and partly coverage of the damage one does to the community. Health cost for drunks and smokers, etc.
It seems to me, at least superficially, that supercomputers these days do not use the fastest processors around. I'm sure there are processors faster than the Intels. They just use more of them.
Quite smart, as using commodity processors must save a lot of money compared to specialised processors. And I suppose it may make programming easier as the compilers for the architecture are there already, and are very mature in development.
But then what we now call an average desktop is what twenty years ago was a supercomputer. And what's now capable of running Vista that was ten years ago called a supercomputer. Or at the very least a very powerful and specialised workstation.
Better late than never... the article was posted 23:28 Hong Kong time, and now we're already almost an hour into the 18th of June. For Japanese readers it will have been even worse.
Evidence that it crashes less than all other phones? Anecdotal evidence, don't look at official specs as all manufacturers will state perfect stability if asked. I have not heard complaints of any iPhone user that it crashes. It may do - but my OS-X based iBook doesn't crash either, at least not after I had my Airport Express card attached properly again. The iPhone also runs a version of OS-X
Now ask a smartphone user using Windows Mobile or Symbian about how often they crash. Daily or twice daily are quite common answers. And that is plainly ridiculous.
In many other markets (Europe, Hong Kong to name the two that I am familiar with) it is also practice to heavily subsidise handsets. That is nothing new.
And to further undermine your argument: isn't the iPhone also WiFi enabled? It was when I checked last. And since when is WiFi really an issue? Only since a few years at most, so that can't be a big reason of stopping operators to carry Nokia phones. Before, mobile data (certainly in the mobile backwaters of the US) was not much of an issue. SMS may be but WiFi is not an alternative for SMS.
The iPhone is also not just popular in the USA, it is also in Hong Kong. The release of the 3G iPhone made front page(!!) of the main English language daily here! It's just a phone! Or at least I'd think so... Nokias are also widely available and popular here, so it's really not just the pricing model that does it.
That said, it makes me wonder really why Nokia is so poorly available in the USA.
Not just the touchscreen is notable about the iPhone, though it's of course the most prolific feature of the device.
What is truly making it success, includes:
It Just Works,
it doesn't crash (often),
it looks good,
it is easy to use,
and most of all: It Just Works.
With that I summed it up mostly. Like many Apple devices, there is not much really innovative about it. They took existing tech, integrated it, made it work out of the box, made it work easily, made it look beautiful, and that's about it. But that's not easy to do: if so, many other companies would have done it.
The iPod is a great example. It is tightly integrated with the iTunes application on the PC, and thus very very easy to copy music onto. It works very easily and intuitively: the scroll wheel that is not really turning but feeling your finger, a very intuitive way. Right turn moves up, left turn moves down, click to select. No more buttons needed. The beauty of simplicity.
Actually I'm using my typewriter maybe not on a daily basis, but certainly weekly. It is a great device to quickly get printed letters on a pre-printed form. Or when you have to fill in a multi-layer form, e.g. bank remittance forms or shipping documents. Everything becomes so much more readable compared to hand-written, and some organisations require printed letters.
Those multi-layer forms work with matrix printers fine (that's why they're still being made, in case you were wondering), but then only if you have to print dozens or hundreds of the same, for a single sheet it's not worth the effort of setting it up.
It may be a niche, but there is still a market for typewriters, and I think this niche will remain pretty much forever.
Unfortunately the scope and enforcement of these laws is very narrow as punishing a successful company for being successful is viewed as a bad thing. And so it should be. I don't see a problem with a company being very successful to branch out in different fields. And what is a cross field, really? How about a bus company starting to run trains - is that cross field? If so why should it be illegal? A computer company producing both hardware and software, branching out in digital music players and mobile phones? Nothing wrong with that.
Basically the only time the law will be enforced is if a monopoly power (e.g. Microsoft) in one area (e.g. operating systems) uses that power to get an unfair advantage in another area (e.g. web browsers).
In case of Microsoft that was clearly abuse of monopoly power: forcing a web browser, media player, whatnot on users by installing it directly on the computer, and making it very very hard to remove.
Though the area gets quite grey in case there was no such thing as a web browser, before it is integrated with the particular OS. Imagine Microsoft had invented the iPod and iTunes, and given everyone an iTunes application through Windows Update. Still monopoly abuse, especially if they were to be the first with such an application? It is quite easy to find arguments both ways in such a situation.
I think it would help greatly if BPI and the other record industry associations would stop talking about "consumers". We are their CUSTOMERS. Major difference. A consumer is an anonymous, generalised person that has the sole purpose of spending money. A customer however is someone you have a business relationship with.
In TFA, the BPI is talking about "consumers" when talking about people that are enjoying music and other recordings, but "customers" when they are talking about the ISP. BPI doesn't have customers, obviously. So no wonder they don't care about what the people want. And the people don't care about the record companies either: they are just consumers, supposed to just consume whatever is recorded.
Not that I fully agree with the original column, the reply by PBI is particularly sickening. The attitude they present is so high-hearted, as if they are God and the consumers exist only to serve them. I do understand the record companies have a big problem on their hand, but the last thing any reasonable business should do is sue their own customers. Oh well, they don't have customers, there are just consumers. And who cares about consumers, because they will consume anyway.
Eight grand is about what I make in a year. For a year's salary, I'd shoot a lawyer in the back of the head, cut them up, pour concrete over them, and toss them off a bridge. (Don't worry, I would never do that to an actual human being.) You were talking about lawyers, right? That that final statement is a bit obvious.
This makes sense, so the argument goes, because a party's costs for litigating a particular case become higher and higher as the case progresses. So, the settlement costs must increase concordantly. Your GF might be right if they were stating that they would ask for a higher settlement if the case was prolonged [...] They are probably saying something like "settle now, avoid a lawsuit, pay $3000". Then person refuses the offer, lets the law suit progress, and then the RIAA comes with a NEW offer. The first offer has by then simply expired.
Why should they state that they are going to ask xxx for settlement later? How can they give a number not knowing what defendant is going to do? There is afaik not even a legal requirement for plaintiff to offer settlement - nor for defendant to accept this.
Of course, if they go to court, and win, they have no reason to settle. If they go to court and lose, then they probably have to pay an excessively larger amount. If only you can afford to pay for a lawyer... no matter what you will get a bill from them. After winning the suit you may sue for lawyers fees and costs, but again that will only guarantee you another lawyer's bill.
It is a gold mine. You can basically sell snakeoil and people will kill each other to buy it from you. Are you sure that's a gold mine? It seems you're losing your customers pretty fast this way. Dead customers won't bring you much money.
I am a regular (at least daily)/. reader.
I have not ignored the iPhone, it's a really cool device I think, and my two minutes playing with it were very interesting.
Still I read the article and it had a lot to tell me, because I didn't follow iPhone that close.
For many years I'm using Linux on my desktop. I have now and then filed bug reports.
I have never felt the need to file a bug report on x.org or xfree86. It just works. The bugs that there undoubtedly are, never manifested themselves to me. Or I simply didn't notice it as it basically just works. I see X in Linux as a very mature piece of software really. Except for drivers there doesn't seem to be much to add.
And, on top of that, those license plates are so unique that it is absolutely, totally impossible to change them. Or cover them up. Or do anything with them to hide/change your car's identity. Totally impossible~
It is not that the prosecution can not demand proof to back-up a defendants claim. That would become ridiculous. If you as defendant were to claim "this is fake", then it is quite reasonable to give some proof of that. E.g. if it is self-made, the original photoshop or gimp format file where the edits are stored, instead of just the jpg. Or the source where the material is obtained, that at least they had good reason to believe it is a fake, such as someone selling it to them as "fake porn".
Finding actual victims is often hard to impossible as a lot of child abuse takes place in developing countries, particularly southern Asia. There children are cheap (in a monetary sense), enforcement is lax, and many parents are desperate enough to indeed rent out their kids for a little money.
A quite recent example of this is "The Swirl", that guy that had his face twisted beyond recognition. He was caught in Thailand. Another headline making case recently involving sex with children was in Vietnam, that UK guy Gary Glitter Many child abuse cases lead back to that part of the world.
So then you get the argument that not only is the producer or the person(s) depicted untraceable, the whole thing is made in a different jurisdiction, making prosecuting even harder. Thus mere possession is simply outlawed.
[T]o someone with tendencies already, this may push them over the edge whereas they may have lived a normal life without it. And the blob you quoted can be used just as well as an argument to legalise pornography:
child molesters [...] were significantly more likely [...] to employ pornography to relieve an impulse to act out. Sorry for the two cuts in this quote, but it's not changing the context. You argue pornography may push them over the edge, on the other hand the article you quote gives the argument that pornography can prevent just that.
Actually I believe it works indeed both ways. Porn can satisfy a need, stimulate a fantasy, without actually doing it. Porn in itself is fantasy. The making of it of course is not - and that's a problem when children or otherwise non-consenting people are involved in the act.
Porn on the other hand can also give ideas, and maybe the desire for more. It's certainly not an easy matter.
Whether a certain kind of porn is legal or not, should in my opinion only be determined by the process of making it.
I totally agree with your point. I bought this iBook G4 laptop because I want my laptop to just work - and that's what it did. It just worked. I have to say that this is in contrast to my desktop but I'm fiddling too much with that one. I don't fiddle much with my laptop, I enjoy just using it, no need to change things all the time.
My EEE PC I love also partly for the fact that it just works. It has quite some rough edges though, but for the most part it just works. It's fast enough, more than fast enough for what I'm doing with it: websurfing and e-mailing mostly. I was doing that on a 386DX40 with 16 MB memory already, so whatever hardware there is in a modern UMPC, it's for sure enough for that.
It even runs OpenOffice, very convenient for the odd document to view or to edit. It has some games, to kill the time. It connects easily to the 'Net over WiFi or my mobile phone (3G). I can stick the memory card of my camera in it and start e-mailing out the photos instantly. When connected to my office network, my printer is available automatically (CUPS server). It works, cheap, and portable, and that's all I'm asking for.
That it runs Linux is a nice extra, more nerd points. And it makes it easier for me to start fiddling. Oh no I'm not supposed to do that with my EEE. Ah well...
So? Name me one network admin who will use XP Home on an ultra-portable. For a network admin it doesn't matter what the UMPC comes with, first thing they do is format it and put on their OS of choice. They are not important in this.
I bet 99% or more of the buyers of the EEE doesn't do network administration, if they even know what the word means. And that's the market where Microsoft has a lot of mind share to lose: these people know Windows only, and exposure to the competition is dangerous. Microsoft doesn't want their core market to wisen up.
I predict that there will soon be a windows "light" based on XP or even NT, and the cycle starts all over again. And if that means a security enhanced, updated Windows 2000, I'd be at least tempted to try it out. After using Linux since OS/2 died.
Slashdot Mirror
Even then there are differences.
I am a Caucasian male, with a bmi of about 25 (1m93, 93 kg). I do have a little bit of a belly I have to admit, and could lose a little weight.
However compared to all the Chinese around me, I live in Hong Kong, I am very big. Not just tall: big. Asians are thinner built than Caucasians. Especially the young women in HK try to be thin, no make that skinny. My previous assistant was one of those: female, about 42 kg, 1m62, BMI 16. And eating almost as much as me! Unbelievable.
A healthy BMI is considered to be 20-25. For Caucasians. For Asians however it should be 18-23 instead, simply because they have a more slender build.
The most interesting note about the summary's comparison is the minute difference between the average waistlines of males and females in the US. Female waists should be significantly smaller, due to their build, plus the fact that they are shorter than males.
In the USA where you probably are talking about considering this is /., about half, if not more these days, of health care cost is related to litigation. That is the actual law suits against health practitioners, the insurance those practitioners take against law suits and claims, and all the extra administration done by health practitioners and hospitals to cover themselves against those law suits. None of this improves health care (one can argue that it decreases it: time spent on frivolous administration is time not spent with patients), but it does increase cost.
Cigarettes are first and foremost a luxury product. There is no need for them to survive. Food, clothing, housing and the like however are a necessity. Energy and water: these are necessary, but only to a certain extent, so many countries have tiered pricing: free or low price for the first x units, higher cost for subsequent units.
Just like alcohol, the duties on cigarettes are partly luxury tax and partly coverage of the damage one does to the community. Health cost for drunks and smokers, etc.
It seems to me, at least superficially, that supercomputers these days do not use the fastest processors around. I'm sure there are processors faster than the Intels. They just use more of them.
Quite smart, as using commodity processors must save a lot of money compared to specialised processors. And I suppose it may make programming easier as the compilers for the architecture are there already, and are very mature in development.
But then what we now call an average desktop is what twenty years ago was a supercomputer. And what's now capable of running Vista that was ten years ago called a supercomputer. Or at the very least a very powerful and specialised workstation.
Better late than never... the article was posted 23:28 Hong Kong time, and now we're already almost an hour into the 18th of June. For Japanese readers it will have been even worse.
Now ask a smartphone user using Windows Mobile or Symbian about how often they crash. Daily or twice daily are quite common answers. And that is plainly ridiculous.
In many other markets (Europe, Hong Kong to name the two that I am familiar with) it is also practice to heavily subsidise handsets. That is nothing new.
And to further undermine your argument: isn't the iPhone also WiFi enabled? It was when I checked last. And since when is WiFi really an issue? Only since a few years at most, so that can't be a big reason of stopping operators to carry Nokia phones. Before, mobile data (certainly in the mobile backwaters of the US) was not much of an issue. SMS may be but WiFi is not an alternative for SMS.
The iPhone is also not just popular in the USA, it is also in Hong Kong. The release of the 3G iPhone made front page(!!) of the main English language daily here! It's just a phone! Or at least I'd think so... Nokias are also widely available and popular here, so it's really not just the pricing model that does it.
That said, it makes me wonder really why Nokia is so poorly available in the USA.
What is truly making it success, includes:
- It Just Works,
- it doesn't crash (often),
- it looks good,
- it is easy to use,
- and most of all: It Just Works.
With that I summed it up mostly. Like many Apple devices, there is not much really innovative about it. They took existing tech, integrated it, made it work out of the box, made it work easily, made it look beautiful, and that's about it. But that's not easy to do: if so, many other companies would have done it.The iPod is a great example. It is tightly integrated with the iTunes application on the PC, and thus very very easy to copy music onto. It works very easily and intuitively: the scroll wheel that is not really turning but feeling your finger, a very intuitive way. Right turn moves up, left turn moves down, click to select. No more buttons needed. The beauty of simplicity.
Actually I'm using my typewriter maybe not on a daily basis, but certainly weekly. It is a great device to quickly get printed letters on a pre-printed form. Or when you have to fill in a multi-layer form, e.g. bank remittance forms or shipping documents. Everything becomes so much more readable compared to hand-written, and some organisations require printed letters.
Those multi-layer forms work with matrix printers fine (that's why they're still being made, in case you were wondering), but then only if you have to print dozens or hundreds of the same, for a single sheet it's not worth the effort of setting it up.
It may be a niche, but there is still a market for typewriters, and I think this niche will remain pretty much forever.
In case of Microsoft that was clearly abuse of monopoly power: forcing a web browser, media player, whatnot on users by installing it directly on the computer, and making it very very hard to remove.
Though the area gets quite grey in case there was no such thing as a web browser, before it is integrated with the particular OS. Imagine Microsoft had invented the iPod and iTunes, and given everyone an iTunes application through Windows Update. Still monopoly abuse, especially if they were to be the first with such an application? It is quite easy to find arguments both ways in such a situation.
Wouter.
I think it would help greatly if BPI and the other record industry associations would stop talking about "consumers". We are their CUSTOMERS. Major difference. A consumer is an anonymous, generalised person that has the sole purpose of spending money. A customer however is someone you have a business relationship with.
In TFA, the BPI is talking about "consumers" when talking about people that are enjoying music and other recordings, but "customers" when they are talking about the ISP. BPI doesn't have customers, obviously. So no wonder they don't care about what the people want. And the people don't care about the record companies either: they are just consumers, supposed to just consume whatever is recorded.
Not that I fully agree with the original column, the reply by PBI is particularly sickening. The attitude they present is so high-hearted, as if they are God and the consumers exist only to serve them. I do understand the record companies have a big problem on their hand, but the last thing any reasonable business should do is sue their own customers. Oh well, they don't have customers, there are just consumers. And who cares about consumers, because they will consume anyway.
Why should they state that they are going to ask xxx for settlement later? How can they give a number not knowing what defendant is going to do? There is afaik not even a legal requirement for plaintiff to offer settlement - nor for defendant to accept this.
I am a regular (at least daily) /. reader.
I have not ignored the iPhone, it's a really cool device I think, and my two minutes playing with it were very interesting.
Still I read the article and it had a lot to tell me, because I didn't follow iPhone that close.
For many years I'm using Linux on my desktop. I have now and then filed bug reports.
I have never felt the need to file a bug report on x.org or xfree86. It just works. The bugs that there undoubtedly are, never manifested themselves to me. Or I simply didn't notice it as it basically just works. I see X in Linux as a very mature piece of software really. Except for drivers there doesn't seem to be much to add.
And, on top of that, those license plates are so unique that it is absolutely, totally impossible to change them. Or cover them up. Or do anything with them to hide/change your car's identity. Totally impossible~
It is not that the prosecution can not demand proof to back-up a defendants claim. That would become ridiculous.
If you as defendant were to claim "this is fake", then it is quite reasonable to give some proof of that. E.g. if it is self-made, the original photoshop or gimp format file where the edits are stored, instead of just the jpg. Or the source where the material is obtained, that at least they had good reason to believe it is a fake, such as someone selling it to them as "fake porn".
Finding actual victims is often hard to impossible as a lot of child abuse takes place in developing countries, particularly southern Asia. There children are cheap (in a monetary sense), enforcement is lax, and many parents are desperate enough to indeed rent out their kids for a little money.
A quite recent example of this is "The Swirl", that guy that had his face twisted beyond recognition. He was caught in Thailand. Another headline making case recently involving sex with children was in Vietnam, that UK guy Gary Glitter Many child abuse cases lead back to that part of the world.
So then you get the argument that not only is the producer or the person(s) depicted untraceable, the whole thing is made in a different jurisdiction, making prosecuting even harder. Thus mere possession is simply outlawed.
Actually I believe it works indeed both ways. Porn can satisfy a need, stimulate a fantasy, without actually doing it. Porn in itself is fantasy. The making of it of course is not - and that's a problem when children or otherwise non-consenting people are involved in the act.
Porn on the other hand can also give ideas, and maybe the desire for more. It's certainly not an easy matter.
Whether a certain kind of porn is legal or not, should in my opinion only be determined by the process of making it.
Where is the mod-option "suddenoutbreakofcommonsense"?
I totally agree with your point. I bought this iBook G4 laptop because I want my laptop to just work - and that's what it did. It just worked. I have to say that this is in contrast to my desktop but I'm fiddling too much with that one. I don't fiddle much with my laptop, I enjoy just using it, no need to change things all the time.
My EEE PC I love also partly for the fact that it just works. It has quite some rough edges though, but for the most part it just works. It's fast enough, more than fast enough for what I'm doing with it: websurfing and e-mailing mostly. I was doing that on a 386DX40 with 16 MB memory already, so whatever hardware there is in a modern UMPC, it's for sure enough for that.
It even runs OpenOffice, very convenient for the odd document to view or to edit. It has some games, to kill the time. It connects easily to the 'Net over WiFi or my mobile phone (3G). I can stick the memory card of my camera in it and start e-mailing out the photos instantly. When connected to my office network, my printer is available automatically (CUPS server). It works, cheap, and portable, and that's all I'm asking for.
That it runs Linux is a nice extra, more nerd points. And it makes it easier for me to start fiddling. Oh no I'm not supposed to do that with my EEE. Ah well...
I bet 99% or more of the buyers of the EEE doesn't do network administration, if they even know what the word means. And that's the market where Microsoft has a lot of mind share to lose: these people know Windows only, and exposure to the competition is dangerous. Microsoft doesn't want their core market to wisen up.