The power of advertising: In blind side-by-side taste tests, Pepsi always overwhelmingly beats Coke -- but everyone keeps buying Coke anyway.
Source? Pepsi sponsored a series of taste tests, which they won hands down. But there were a huge number of problems with the tests, including opening the Coke before hand so it went nearly flat, exposing the brands to the consumer, etc.
If you read it that way, Firefox lost 7.3%, meaning either the GP can't do math or is just trying to cover his ass and make it sound like he knew what he was talking about.
It isn't illegal to use the term in the ad. It's illegal to trigger the ad based upon a search term if, and only if, the ad contains the trademarked term.
Yes, you can generally use tradmarked terms in an ad. However, according to this ruling, Google can't display your ad based on triggering from the trademarked term, even if the use of the term within the ad is legal. So Google can trigger your ad off the trademarked term, or you can use the trademarked term in your ad, but if you do both at the same time, it's illegal. Go figure.
This is one of the key factors in insurance. How can company A afford to be cheaper than everyone else? Usually, by paying out fewer claims. One way to pay out fewer claims is to only insure people who are less likely to file a claim. The other way is to deny more claims. Do a bit of research. Look at the companies that claim they're cheaper than everyone else and see what percentage of claims filed they actually pay. What do you want insurance for? To meet the legal requirements? Or to protect yourself against loss? If the latter, do you really want to do business with a company that's going to fight tooth and nail against paying your claim when you need them?
PS And I'm not just talking about Geico here. Do your own research on Geico and find out if they fit the profile I described, but do the same to the other insurance companies that brag about how cheap they are.
Google makes money off of ads which are supposed to be "related" to your search query. Misusing someone's trademark to link to other companies is not legal.
Wrong on two accounts. First, it's not a misuse. Other insurance companies are certainly related to a search on "Geico." Second, it is not illegal to display ads based on a trademarked term. It's only illegal to display an ad which uses the trademarked term inside the ad.
This is a reversal for Google based on an earlier story.
Don't be too sad. This isn't really a reversal of the earlier decision. It's actually two seperate but related issues. The first decision, which Google won, concerned using a trademarked term to trigger an ad. The second concerned using a trademarked term inside a competitor's ad. So if I pay Google to put up an ad which reads "B'Trey's Auto Insurance - best in the business!" whenever someone searches for Geico, I'm OK. But if I pay Google to put up an ad which reads "B'Trey's Auto Insurance - better than Geico!" then I run afoul of this ruling.
I'm not real happy with this ruling - unless the ad is fraudulent (ie makes untrue claims about the trademarked term), then I don't see where Geico (or any other trademark holder) has a legal right to protest. But it's nor a reversal of the earlier decision.
Mind you I don't recommend that you turn on SSID broadcast, or turn off mac addr. filtering, but, these options will diter only novice users from stumbling accidently on your WLAN.
Isn't that the point? If a knowledable and determined hacker wants to break into your network, chances are they're going to succeed unless you're a security expert yourself and highly vigilent.
I could write an article entitled "The six dumbest ways to secure your house." I'd start out with something like: "Locking your front door. People put strong locks on the door, when right next to it you have a windows made of fragile glass! Hello?!? Anyone with a brick can knock out the glass and walk right in!!!"
No, a MAC filter doesn't make your network impregnible. And locking your front door doesn't turn your house into Fort Knox. But if you're not Fort Knox, you don't need to have Fort Knox security. Make breaking into your network and effort and most people want bother. There's likely someone down the street that's broadcasting their SID and has no security at all. Why are they going to bother messing with you?
If this is a troll, it's a poor excuse for one. It's not written well enough to be a good troll. It's obvious the writer has no clue about Linux: "...In Linux, you have to recompile a kernel if you want to so much as change your modem..." If you can dismiss Windows's bugs with an airy "...a lot of things didn't work like they were supposed to (plug and play springs to mind) but it was a pioneering effort...", then surely Linux deserves the same latitude for its early user-unfriendliness.
And, of course, there's the glib dismissal of the anti-trust lawsuits as jealosy or attempts to siphon off some of MS's fairly won money. Either he doesn't understand the issues in volved or he's glossing over them in the hopes of convincing others that they were unmerited.
I have no idea if the author is a troll or truly clueless. Either way, however, he doesn't have much interesting to say.
My personal experience is that the vast majority of fundamentalist Christians are that way. I was born in South Carolina and now live and work in North Carolina. I was raised in a fundamentalist home. (My parents were followers of a man named David Terrell, a self described prophet in the tradition of Ezekiel and Isaiha, specifically called by God to prophecy the coming of the End Times. You can google him if you're interested.) I've spent my whole life around fundamentalists. And yes, as a group, they ARE that way.
There are many Christians who aren't that way, but the vast majority of them don't classify themselves as fundamentalists. Being that way is pretty much part of the definition of what makes a fundamentalist.
I have absolutely no problem with the teacher praying. I have a big problem with him praying IN HIS ROLE AS A TEACHER. Teachers teach. It's what they do. It's what they're there for. And when they're standing in front of a classroom, speaking aloud to the class, whatever it is that they're saying is officially sanctioned and supported.
Prayer is also free-speech and last time I checked we could still have free-speech in public.
Really? So if the teacher stood in front of the classroom and started reading to your child from "The Story of O," you'd be the first one to leap to his defense on free speech grounds?
I didn't think so. The teacher has free speech as an individual. He does not have free speech in his role as a representative of the government. He has to learn to seperate those two. So do you.
In part, that depends on what you mean by an "atheist." I generally consider myself an athiest. By that, I mean I place the existence of God in the same category that I place the existence of unicorns. It is certainly possible that there exists or once existed a breed of horse or horse-like creature that had a single, spiral horn on its head. Someone could discover one living in a remote mountain valley tomorrow. And if someone did discover a living unicorn, I'd start believing in the existence of unicorns. But right now, if you ask me if I believe in unicorns, my answer is a firm and unequivical "No." I don't hem and haw; I don't talk about how unlikely it is; I don't say that I don't really know but assume that they don't exist. I tell you flat out that I don't believe in unicorns. And yet no one describes my disbelief in unicorns as being a form of religion. No one tells me that my disbelief in unicorns is just as much an act of faith as is believing in them.
I can't prove that unicorns don't exist, and could change my mind tomorrow with additional evidence. But everything I know and have experienced up to this point leads me to assume with pretty near certainty that they don't exist. And that's the assumption that I operate under. To my thinking, God isn't much different. I can't prove He doesn't exist, and if a burning bush speaks to me tomorrow, I may very well re-evaluate my beliefs. But right now, there is absolutely no reason to believe He exists and plenty of reasons to assume he's just as much an invention of the human imaginatin as is a unicorn. I'd say that makes me an atheist, but I don't think it makes my atheism a religion.
I think that the majority of Christians are kind, decent, caring people who want a better world for their children. The problem is that their definition of a "better world" doesn't accord with mine. I don't think it's a better world if the teacher says a prayer before class. I don't think it's a better world if the science teacher talks about "Intelligent Design." I don't think it's a better world if my child pledges alegiance to "one nation, under God" or if the judge in the local courtroom has a plaque ourside his chambers which insists that "...thou shalt have no other God before me..."
There are many Christians who do not support some or all of these things, but the one's who do aren't a vocal minority. They're the silent and the not-so-silent majority, particularly in certain parts of the country. I don't hate them and I don't believe they're evil. But I do think they're wrong, and I do think they're a danger to me and to this country.
I had the misfortune to participate in what amounted to a controlled experiment to prove that. After Yahoo bought our startup I went to work for them. I was doing exactly the same work, except with bosses. And to my horror I started acting like a child: I became sullen and rebellious.
Next time you're in a moderately large city, drop by the main post office and watch the body language of the people working there. They have the same sullen resentment as children made to do something they don't want to. Their union has exacted pay increases and work restrictions that would have been the envy of previous generations of postal workers, and yet they don't seem any happier for it. It's demoralizing to be on the receiving end of a paternalistic relationship, no matter how cozy the terms. Just ask any teenager.
The first is that common sense isn't. There are lots of coders who seem not to have any.
Second, what seems clear and obvious when you're writing the code is anything but to someone else who's approaching the code fresh. That "someone else" may very well be you six months or a year down the road. Every function over one line (and most of those) should have a comment indicating what it does. Any variable that isn't a throwaway loop counter or similar should either be so clearly named that your grandmother could tell you what it's used for or be commented. Etc.
It takes seconds or minutes to write comments. One comment can save you hours of time and loads of frustration. Common sense says to write the comments, even if you don't think you'll need them. You only need to be wrong once or twice to come out ahead.
Exactly how should Cisco be "socially responsible?" By refusing to sell routers to anyone in China? If Cisco is specifically adding features to their routers at the request of the Chinese government or because it will help the Chinese government censor the internet for their citizens, then by all means someone post a pointer to the information. Everything I've seen indicates that the Chinese government is using the exact same capabilitities that I use to filter spam and viruses and other forms of malware. They're choosing to use the tool for censorship rather than protection.
Why is it that if someone uses Kazaa to download copyrighted material, everyone yells about the Betamax defense. If a script kiddie uses Metasploit to break into someone's network, we don't start yelling at the Metaploit crew about beings socially responsible. (And if others do, you can rely on the Slashdot crowd to leap to their defense.) I don't recall alot of condemnation of Michael Lynn for not being socially responsible when he decided to talk about vulnerabilities in Cisco products against the wishes of both Cisco and his employer. But if Cisco sells routers to someone who uses them for a nefarious purpose, suddenly Cisco needs to be socially responsible and is culpable for the actions of the Chinese government.
A router is a tool. It can be used for both good purposes and bad. The maker of a tool is not responsible for the use to which a tool is put. Leave Cisco alone on this one.
Every scientific discovery is first made by one person or by a few people. At the time of the discovery, they are the only ones aware of it. It follows logically that democratic votes, public opinion polls, majority views of scientists and scientific fads do not necessarily represent scientific truth. Only correct experimental results do.
Well, you're going to have to do a lot of convincing me that such fads are tremendously different from the bulk of ads from drug companies supposedly a part of that science community.
Why would I work to convince you of that? Drug company shills are a big part of what I was talking about.
And you may consider drug companies as part of the scientific community. I don't; not as a monolithic entity. The research divisions of some drug companies may be part of the scientific community but the marketing departments certainly aren't, and they often filter or constrain what's being publicly said from the research department.
Exactly what does the Food Pyramid have to do with medical science? As I said, don't confuse medical science with the medical establishment. They aren't the same thing at all. Science is a process; an approach to investigating and describing nature. The Food Pyramid had nothing to do with science. It was an effort made by a government organization to teach people good eating habits. It was influenced by many things, ranging from corporate propoganda to the arogance of the people in involved in creating it. It was many things but it was not medical science.
I don't really disagree with your overall point. I simply disagree with your terminology - you use the phrase "medical science" to include and indict a great many things which are not at all science.
Is this the same scientific evidence that said "Margarine is good", "Eggs are bad", and "We know about triglyceride problems, but we'll built the Food Pyramid this way because people are too stupid?" I'm sorry, all medical "science" does is stumble around in circles until they land on top of something remotely approaching the truth.
You have a valid point to some extent, but much of what you're talking about doesn't come from the scientific medical establishment - it comes from agenda-driven groups, corporate shills, and govenrment administrations who buy their propoganda. For example, actual medical science indicates that obesity isn't particularly unhealthy. Inactivity, which often accomponies obesity, IS quite unhealthy. But if you get a reasonable amount of exercise, your health isn't likely to suffer from carrying extra pounds until you reach extreme limits, well past what is specified as being obese. In fact, you're likely to suffer fewer problems from being overweight than you are from being underweight. So why is there so much talk about the "obesity epedemic" in America? Because there's a multi-billion dollar diet and diet food industry out there that wants to sustain itself, and it pours lots and lots of money into advertising and propoganda. There have been lots of studies which do not control for inactivity. Those studies show a corelation between being overweight and health problems, and assume a cause and effect, when the real cause is the underlying inactivity. But the flawed studies are still being used to support the "obesity will kill you" claim. There are lots of honest, well-meaning, but misinformed people who really believe that obesity will kill you (hell, everybody knows it, right?) and they're interested in helping save your life.
What does the science tell you about your health and your weight? If you're interested in your health, throw out the scale. DON'T go on a diet but do pay a bit of attention to what you eat. Try to get a few vegetables in your system in between the Big Macs and the beer brats. But most importantly, get your ass up off the couch and get a bit of exercise. If it trims you down a bit, great. If not, don't worry about it. It ain't that big a deal. But that's not what the nutritionist and the diet industry tell you, and their voice is much louder than the actual science.
So please don't confuse medical science with the medical establishment or with the various government guides. They aren't the same thing at all.
Slashdot Mirror
The power of advertising: In blind side-by-side taste tests, Pepsi always overwhelmingly beats Coke -- but everyone keeps buying Coke anyway.
Source? Pepsi sponsored a series of taste tests, which they won hands down. But there were a huge number of problems with the tests, including opening the Coke before hand so it went nearly flat, exposing the brands to the consumer, etc.
If you read it that way, Firefox lost 7.3%, meaning either the GP can't do math or is just trying to cover his ass and make it sound like he knew what he was talking about.
Sheesh, you don't even have to RTFA, just read the /. summary correctly. Firefox didn't lose 8%. It lost 0.64%. It went from 8.71% to 8.07%.
It isn't illegal to use the term in the ad. It's illegal to trigger the ad based upon a search term if, and only if, the ad contains the trademarked term.
Yes, you can generally use tradmarked terms in an ad. However, according to this ruling, Google can't display your ad based on triggering from the trademarked term, even if the use of the term within the ad is legal. So Google can trigger your ad off the trademarked term, or you can use the trademarked term in your ad, but if you do both at the same time, it's illegal. Go figure.
This is one of the key factors in insurance. How can company A afford to be cheaper than everyone else? Usually, by paying out fewer claims. One way to pay out fewer claims is to only insure people who are less likely to file a claim. The other way is to deny more claims. Do a bit of research. Look at the companies that claim they're cheaper than everyone else and see what percentage of claims filed they actually pay. What do you want insurance for? To meet the legal requirements? Or to protect yourself against loss? If the latter, do you really want to do business with a company that's going to fight tooth and nail against paying your claim when you need them?
PS And I'm not just talking about Geico here. Do your own research on Geico and find out if they fit the profile I described, but do the same to the other insurance companies that brag about how cheap they are.
Google makes money off of ads which are supposed to be "related" to your search query. Misusing someone's trademark to link to other companies is not legal.
Wrong on two accounts. First, it's not a misuse. Other insurance companies are certainly related to a search on "Geico." Second, it is not illegal to display ads based on a trademarked term. It's only illegal to display an ad which uses the trademarked term inside the ad.
It's not the same case. One concerned using a trademarked term to trigger an ad. This one concerned using a trademarked term inside a triggered ad.
This is a reversal for Google based on an earlier story.
Don't be too sad. This isn't really a reversal of the earlier decision. It's actually two seperate but related issues. The first decision, which Google won, concerned using a trademarked term to trigger an ad. The second concerned using a trademarked term inside a competitor's ad. So if I pay Google to put up an ad which reads "B'Trey's Auto Insurance - best in the business!" whenever someone searches for Geico, I'm OK. But if I pay Google to put up an ad which reads "B'Trey's Auto Insurance - better than Geico!" then I run afoul of this ruling.
I'm not real happy with this ruling - unless the ad is fraudulent (ie makes untrue claims about the trademarked term), then I don't see where Geico (or any other trademark holder) has a legal right to protest. But it's nor a reversal of the earlier decision.
I'm a developer - and I'm not in the habit of daily (or even weekly) patching of systems.
Why not?
For my server (Debian):
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
For my desktop (Gentoo):
emerge --sync
emerge --update world
Much of it can even be automated. I belive other distros have similar methods. (And the update and sync are actually done by cron.)
Mind you I don't recommend that you turn on SSID broadcast, or turn off mac addr. filtering, but, these options will diter only novice users from stumbling accidently on your WLAN.
Isn't that the point? If a knowledable and determined hacker wants to break into your network, chances are they're going to succeed unless you're a security expert yourself and highly vigilent.
I could write an article entitled "The six dumbest ways to secure your house." I'd start out with something like: "Locking your front door. People put strong locks on the door, when right next to it you have a windows made of fragile glass! Hello?!? Anyone with a brick can knock out the glass and walk right in!!!"
No, a MAC filter doesn't make your network impregnible. And locking your front door doesn't turn your house into Fort Knox. But if you're not Fort Knox, you don't need to have Fort Knox security. Make breaking into your network and effort and most people want bother. There's likely someone down the street that's broadcasting their SID and has no security at all. Why are they going to bother messing with you?
If this is a troll, it's a poor excuse for one. It's not written well enough to be a good troll. It's obvious the writer has no clue about Linux: "...In Linux, you have to recompile a kernel if you want to so much as change your modem..." If you can dismiss Windows's bugs with an airy "...a lot of things didn't work like they were supposed to (plug and play springs to mind) but it was a pioneering effort...", then surely Linux deserves the same latitude for its early user-unfriendliness.
And, of course, there's the glib dismissal of the anti-trust lawsuits as jealosy or attempts to siphon off some of MS's fairly won money. Either he doesn't understand the issues in volved or he's glossing over them in the hopes of convincing others that they were unmerited.
I have no idea if the author is a troll or truly clueless. Either way, however, he doesn't have much interesting to say.
My personal experience is that the vast majority of fundamentalist Christians are that way. I was born in South Carolina and now live and work in North Carolina. I was raised in a fundamentalist home. (My parents were followers of a man named David Terrell, a self described prophet in the tradition of Ezekiel and Isaiha, specifically called by God to prophecy the coming of the End Times. You can google him if you're interested.) I've spent my whole life around fundamentalists. And yes, as a group, they ARE that way.
There are many Christians who aren't that way, but the vast majority of them don't classify themselves as fundamentalists. Being that way is pretty much part of the definition of what makes a fundamentalist.
I have absolutely no problem with the teacher praying. I have a big problem with him praying IN HIS ROLE AS A TEACHER. Teachers teach. It's what they do. It's what they're there for. And when they're standing in front of a classroom, speaking aloud to the class, whatever it is that they're saying is officially sanctioned and supported.
Prayer is also free-speech and last time I checked we could still have free-speech in public.
Really? So if the teacher stood in front of the classroom and started reading to your child from "The Story of O," you'd be the first one to leap to his defense on free speech grounds?
I didn't think so. The teacher has free speech as an individual. He does not have free speech in his role as a representative of the government. He has to learn to seperate those two. So do you.
In part, that depends on what you mean by an "atheist." I generally consider myself an athiest. By that, I mean I place the existence of God in the same category that I place the existence of unicorns. It is certainly possible that there exists or once existed a breed of horse or horse-like creature that had a single, spiral horn on its head. Someone could discover one living in a remote mountain valley tomorrow. And if someone did discover a living unicorn, I'd start believing in the existence of unicorns. But right now, if you ask me if I believe in unicorns, my answer is a firm and unequivical "No." I don't hem and haw; I don't talk about how unlikely it is; I don't say that I don't really know but assume that they don't exist. I tell you flat out that I don't believe in unicorns. And yet no one describes my disbelief in unicorns as being a form of religion. No one tells me that my disbelief in unicorns is just as much an act of faith as is believing in them.
I can't prove that unicorns don't exist, and could change my mind tomorrow with additional evidence. But everything I know and have experienced up to this point leads me to assume with pretty near certainty that they don't exist. And that's the assumption that I operate under. To my thinking, God isn't much different. I can't prove He doesn't exist, and if a burning bush speaks to me tomorrow, I may very well re-evaluate my beliefs. But right now, there is absolutely no reason to believe He exists and plenty of reasons to assume he's just as much an invention of the human imaginatin as is a unicorn. I'd say that makes me an atheist, but I don't think it makes my atheism a religion.
I disagree.
I think that the majority of Christians are kind, decent, caring people who want a better world for their children. The problem is that their definition of a "better world" doesn't accord with mine. I don't think it's a better world if the teacher says a prayer before class. I don't think it's a better world if the science teacher talks about "Intelligent Design." I don't think it's a better world if my child pledges alegiance to "one nation, under God" or if the judge in the local courtroom has a plaque ourside his chambers which insists that "...thou shalt have no other God before me..."
There are many Christians who do not support some or all of these things, but the one's who do aren't a vocal minority. They're the silent and the not-so-silent majority, particularly in certain parts of the country. I don't hate them and I don't believe they're evil. But I do think they're wrong, and I do think they're a danger to me and to this country.
From the article:
I had the misfortune to participate in what amounted to a controlled experiment to prove that. After Yahoo bought our startup I went to work for them. I was doing exactly the same work, except with bosses. And to my horror I started acting like a child: I became sullen and rebellious.
From the article:
Next time you're in a moderately large city, drop by the main post office and watch the body language of the people working there. They have the same sullen resentment as children made to do something they don't want to. Their union has exacted pay increases and work restrictions that would have been the envy of previous generations of postal workers, and yet they don't seem any happier for it. It's demoralizing to be on the receiving end of a paternalistic relationship, no matter how cozy the terms. Just ask any teenager.
There are two problems with this.
The first is that common sense isn't. There are lots of coders who seem not to have any.
Second, what seems clear and obvious when you're writing the code is anything but to someone else who's approaching the code fresh. That "someone else" may very well be you six months or a year down the road. Every function over one line (and most of those) should have a comment indicating what it does. Any variable that isn't a throwaway loop counter or similar should either be so clearly named that your grandmother could tell you what it's used for or be commented. Etc.
It takes seconds or minutes to write comments. One comment can save you hours of time and loads of frustration. Common sense says to write the comments, even if you don't think you'll need them. You only need to be wrong once or twice to come out ahead.
Exactly how should Cisco be "socially responsible?" By refusing to sell routers to anyone in China? If Cisco is specifically adding features to their routers at the request of the Chinese government or because it will help the Chinese government censor the internet for their citizens, then by all means someone post a pointer to the information. Everything I've seen indicates that the Chinese government is using the exact same capabilitities that I use to filter spam and viruses and other forms of malware. They're choosing to use the tool for censorship rather than protection.
Why is it that if someone uses Kazaa to download copyrighted material, everyone yells about the Betamax defense. If a script kiddie uses Metasploit to break into someone's network, we don't start yelling at the Metaploit crew about beings socially responsible. (And if others do, you can rely on the Slashdot crowd to leap to their defense.) I don't recall alot of condemnation of Michael Lynn for not being socially responsible when he decided to talk about vulnerabilities in Cisco products against the wishes of both Cisco and his employer. But if Cisco sells routers to someone who uses them for a nefarious purpose, suddenly Cisco needs to be socially responsible and is culpable for the actions of the Chinese government.
A router is a tool. It can be used for both good purposes and bad. The maker of a tool is not responsible for the use to which a tool is put. Leave Cisco alone on this one.
He's arguing that the practices of Doctors are based on sound Medical Science. This is at best, misleading.
Agreed. But the fact that he erred is no reason for you to repeat his error.
Harari's Law of Scientific Fads and Bandwagons
Every scientific discovery is first made by one person or by a few people. At the time of the discovery, they are the only ones aware of it. It follows logically that democratic votes, public opinion polls, majority views of scientists and scientific fads do not necessarily represent scientific truth. Only correct experimental results do.
Well, you're going to have to do a lot of convincing me that such fads are tremendously different from the bulk of ads from drug companies supposedly a part of that science community.
Why would I work to convince you of that? Drug company shills are a big part of what I was talking about.
And you may consider drug companies as part of the scientific community. I don't; not as a monolithic entity. The research divisions of some drug companies may be part of the scientific community but the marketing departments certainly aren't, and they often filter or constrain what's being publicly said from the research department.
Exactly what does the Food Pyramid have to do with medical science? As I said, don't confuse medical science with the medical establishment. They aren't the same thing at all. Science is a process; an approach to investigating and describing nature. The Food Pyramid had nothing to do with science. It was an effort made by a government organization to teach people good eating habits. It was influenced by many things, ranging from corporate propoganda to the arogance of the people in involved in creating it. It was many things but it was not medical science.
I don't really disagree with your overall point. I simply disagree with your terminology - you use the phrase "medical science" to include and indict a great many things which are not at all science.
Is this the same scientific evidence that said "Margarine is good", "Eggs are bad", and "We know about triglyceride problems, but we'll built the Food Pyramid this way because people are too stupid?" I'm sorry, all medical "science" does is stumble around in circles until they land on top of something remotely approaching the truth.
You have a valid point to some extent, but much of what you're talking about doesn't come from the scientific medical establishment - it comes from agenda-driven groups, corporate shills, and govenrment administrations who buy their propoganda. For example, actual medical science indicates that obesity isn't particularly unhealthy. Inactivity, which often accomponies obesity, IS quite unhealthy. But if you get a reasonable amount of exercise, your health isn't likely to suffer from carrying extra pounds until you reach extreme limits, well past what is specified as being obese. In fact, you're likely to suffer fewer problems from being overweight than you are from being underweight. So why is there so much talk about the "obesity epedemic" in America? Because there's a multi-billion dollar diet and diet food industry out there that wants to sustain itself, and it pours lots and lots of money into advertising and propoganda. There have been lots of studies which do not control for inactivity. Those studies show a corelation between being overweight and health problems, and assume a cause and effect, when the real cause is the underlying inactivity. But the flawed studies are still being used to support the "obesity will kill you" claim. There are lots of honest, well-meaning, but misinformed people who really believe that obesity will kill you (hell, everybody knows it, right?) and they're interested in helping save your life.
What does the science tell you about your health and your weight? If you're interested in your health, throw out the scale. DON'T go on a diet but do pay a bit of attention to what you eat. Try to get a few vegetables in your system in between the Big Macs and the beer brats. But most importantly, get your ass up off the couch and get a bit of exercise. If it trims you down a bit, great. If not, don't worry about it. It ain't that big a deal. But that's not what the nutritionist and the diet industry tell you, and their voice is much louder than the actual science.
So please don't confuse medical science with the medical establishment or with the various government guides. They aren't the same thing at all.
I see. And throwing out the PC and buying a new one solves this problem exactly how?