Well, speaking as an MD/PhD, I can tell you that even though useless treatments DO exist (for example cough medication), there is a lot of controversy for several other issues. Even guideline groups cannot always agree on a specific attitude.
For example, beta blockers are clearly indicated for myocardial infarction with evidence grade IA (the highest possible!) in the guidelines of the european society of cardiology (freely available in http://www.escardio.org/guidelines-surveys/esc-guidelines/GuidelinesDocuments/guidelines-AMI-FT.pdf). Anyone with half a brain and ten years of training knows that beta blockers (especially IV) should not be given to someone who is hemodynamically unstable, which is the conclusion of the cited study above (published in Lancet 2005) and the aforementioned guidelines. Saying that beta blockers should not be given is completely wrong.
Things are much less clear for low back pain surgery, even though recent reports have shown it to be more effective.
In conclusion, the original article incorrectly criticizes and mixes good treatments that should be avoided in specific subgroups (beta blockers) with useless treatments (cough mediciation) with controversial treatments (low back surgery). Such oversimplification is dangerous, especially if strongly motivated by cost concerns.
If they're too impatient to wait for a 20-second boot then let them wait themselves into oblivion.
Besides, it's not like Microsoft Office runs fast because it runs on Microsoft Windows or anything!
Before starting a long discussion on whether people should wait or not for loading times of free/open source software, let me just say that on my fairly average PC OpenOffice loads in 3-4 sec (I didn't use a stopwatch, just counted myself). Do note that I use OpenOffice QuickStart, but so does MS for office and, in the age of 24/7 computing, I don't reboot that often anyway to care for the N extra seconds of boot time...
I've had an ATI X1950 Pro for 3 years now and while the card works great, the newer games render it near obsolete. So yes, I can have a card forever but what good is that going to do me if I need to upgrade anyway?
The point is that if the expected life of the card is 5 years, a 5% will fail at 1 year, for example (this is a guess, assuming a certain variance between parts). If however, the expected life of the card is 50 years, only 0.0001 will fail at 1 year. And I think we can agree that failure at 1 year is quite pertinent and annoying, even for hardcore gamers.
Statistics work that way. And, by the way, I recently had my 8600GT fail and subsequently replaced (and then sold!), which makes me a bit skeptical.
Most integrated graphics already depend on system memory. Interestingly, the AMD solution does not forbid the addition of a graphics card but rather allows some level of cooperation between the two. It appears that you could get a sort of "crossfire" between the CPU-GPU and the standalone GPU if you added an extra card. That would also help when powering down the power-hungry standalone GPU, in the context of simple 2d or when in battery mode.
What most people don't seem to realize is that Larabee is not about winning the 3d performance crown. Rather, it is an attempt to change the playground: you aren't buying a 3d card for games. You are buying a "PC accelerator" that can do physics, video, 3d sound, dolby decoding/encoding etc. Instead of just having SSE/MMX on chip, you now get a complete separate chip. AMD and NVIDIA already try to do this with their respective efforts (CUDA etc), but Larabee will be much more programmable and will really pwn for massively parallel tasks. Furthermore, you can plug in as many Larabees as you want, no need for SLI/crossfire. You just add cores/chip like we now add memory.
Whoever wrote this article shows a gross misunderstanding about how genetics actually works. The central dogma of genetics applies here: DNA is transcribed into mRNA, and translated into proteins, which can then be post-translationally modified.,
Not exactly true. The main concept behind genome-wide microarray analysis is the fact that SNP markers are in linkage disequilibrium with disease-related alleles. Therefore, it is not the presence of a silent "mutation" (the one we detect) that matters. Rather, it is the fact that said mutation usually happens to be associated/correlated with another nearby "mutation" that does affect gene function.
Speaking as someone who has done a PhD on genome-wide microarray SNP analysis, I can tell you that we are not yet at a point of maturity where you can simply put a drop of blood in a machine and get reliable prognostic information or lifestyle and treatment recommendations.
The technology is actively researched, i.e. most often we're not looking at the results from a clinical standpoint but as an indicator of the performance of a certain method. Practically speaking, only research centers are interested at the stuff and you would be extremely hard pressed to convince practicing doctors to incorporate current results in their everyday work, even though some studies have appeared in famous medical journals (New England Journal of Medicine, Nature etc). Using software notation, the results are "alpha" grade at the moment.
That being said, there is no harm in knowing that you have an Adenine in position XXXX. Harm comes from acting upon that knowledge without sufficient clinical evidence.
I don't mean to throw stones, but books cost money, many people afford to be on the Internet, yet buying books has become old hat. When you can go on the Internet and get the latest information, books are... well, a waste of money for the most part. The delay between discovery and publishing and reading is no longer tolerable, not in this throw away society. Look at some science fiction ideals... such delays are always intolerable. I will cite an event that is not even related to show that delay is not right: junteenth. It took several years for emancipation news to reach Texas. Is that right? The point is that information and knowledge should be universal, and instant. The great promise of the Internet was just that. If you wish to spend your nights reading information from 2+ years ago, that is your problem. The rest of us want today's information, and now. Good luck with the personal library.
Well, you can access recent scientific articles for example on www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, read 10 (out of something like 1000++) and try to understand the subject that interests you. Or you can choose a reliable textbook and read that instead. It won't be 100% up to date, but it will often be easier to understand, probably more objective and will cover a bigger part of the literature than you could in a reasonable time frame.
So, if you're the kind of person that reads 100 scholarly articles just to implement something that has been in Knuth's 20-year TAOCP I admire your patience and perseverance. For the rest of us, textbooks are still extremely useful as a source of distilled knowledge. (No, wikipedia does not count as a textbook. I won't be choosing my patient's chemotherapy based on wikipedia any time soon.)
Then again, whether a textbook is online or on paper changes little. Many are available in both formats but the biggest part of the cost comes from the intellectual effort put in creating them and as a result they cannot be updated twice weekly. I would say that we're looking at a product that is at most 20% cheaper (often more expensive, too!) and probably reviewed a bit more frequently.
Is it just me or does the Singularity smack of dumb extrapolation to me? "Progress is accelerating by X, ergo it will always accelerate by X".
It's not just a matter of observing the rhythm of events. Rather, I would say it is a matter of believing that progress tends to facilitate progress. This is a reasonable proposition that gives rise to an obviously accelerating civilization.
It's too expensive for one thing. Take for example the medical field. How much of the body of knowledge is "Level 1 Evidence"? You'll find that only a small proportion of what is in a medical textbook meets this standard, because it requires a formal review panel of experts systematically analyzing properly undertaken studies with blinding and so forth, and even then you have to take it with a grain of salt most of the time. It's just so terribly labour intensive that the job has to be restricted to narrowly defined, very important areas of interest.
Then again, what you describe is just a way of doing things, meant to address key questions that are actively disputed. Being a scientist does not necessarily mean being pedantic. Furthermore, the level of detail that you propose is in reality pertinent only for real specialists directly involved with the related problem. For example, whether aspirin for myocardial infarction should be chewed or swallowed is a small detail that probably changes mortality by (say) 0.4%. This is trivial for the average reader, even for most doctors. It is true that many interventions are frequently helpful for 1 out of 100 patients treated (number needed to treat). There is a sig somewhere (paraphrasing) "If a topic is clear and in order then it is no longer worth researching".
The question is whether in fact wikipedia or similar sites address this need. I think not. By definition, the bleeding edge of science is quite messy, which is part of the point of actively researching it. The general public (which is me, for example, concerning computer science), is quite happy to learn things that are relatively well-established. Then again, I think that too frequently the problem is not purely a scientific one (wikipedia should not get the earth's distance from the sun wrong), but usually a moral/social one.
Ordinary people are much better than experts at offering real, useful knowledge with everyday applications. People are after coalface experience and are getting it for nothing. Hard to beat that.
Depends. The superiority of the scientific method is mostly a question of principle. The general public tends to have certain misconceptions, especially where counter-intuitive results are involved. That does not mean that everyday experience is worthless. Quite the contrary. However, it cannot be integrated into a system of coherent, formally validated propositions. It is, quite simply, incompatible and can range from pure genius to idiotic. You can never know which is which...
In my opinion, the whole Web 2.0 idea is based on the assumption that 60 million monkeys banging on typewriters will eventually produce Shakespeare's plays. Thanks to the internet we know this not to be the case. Certainly everyone can contribute in small niches, especially regarding some specialized interests (for example, obscure hobbies). On the other hand, the average usually beats 50% of the population (an astounding truth that we often fail to realize!) and the output of many people editing and authoring at the same time is usually not that bad but never pure genius, either.
We ARE talking about a computer game, here. There is no *real* harm done to anyone if their account is terminated.
To the extent that the people involved pay real money and to the extent that they feel genuinely frustrated about losing the account, the harm is very, very real. Using your logic, there is no harm in being publicly ridiculed or finding out that your girlfriend enjoyed a whole soccer team. An MMO can be an important social activity (in the sense that it involves people) and please realize that even if you (or me, for that matter) don't feel attached to their avatar or game "lives", other people do.
If your only contact with someone is through the internet then they are anonymous for all intents and purposes. Doubly so if all your contact is through a video game.
You obviously haven't spend enough time in MMO games. Getting the fame and popularity necessary to achieve such a goal (being elected by other players) requires a VERY significant investment in time and effort. Simply put, the person in question obviously cares and is attached to his online avatar so much that losing his status would be an immense loss.
I wouldn't be surprised if some of these players care more about the "eponymous" avatars and their in-game status than their work presence.
And yes, I understand that no matter what is done, some chance will remain as long as intercourse is still in the picture. I can just deal with killing one out of every million babies because it wasn't good enough as apposed to one out of every 1000 babies because someone didn't care.
I agree with you about the usefulness of birth control. There are problems with birth control methods (surgery is inherently dangerous, pills can have nasty side effects in some cases, latex can cause allergic reaction etc...) but a form of decent birth control can usually be found, even in extreme cases.
On the other hand, using the term "baby" for a 1st trimester pregnancy is somewhat misleading. I respect your moral and/or religious viewpoint on the matter, but using any objective scientific criterion you just can't call a 1st trimester embryo a "baby". The term is "abortion", so for the sake of precision and in order to avoid sentimentally excessive mental images, please don't call it "killing babies".
And when an informed adult makes the decision to have sex, we don't have unwanted pregnancies. Thats right, there is no such thing as accidents with pregnancies. You don't accidentally do something you know can cause pregnancy and then claim it was an accident. You don't dump a full glass of water upside down and claim the resulting spill was an accident. It is the same thing. Put a lid on the glass or don't dump it upside down.
Well, you haven't read much about birth control, have you? ALL birth control methods have a percentage of failure which can be attributed to genetic diversity (not all people respond the same), manufacturing error or human error. Even after surgery (neutered? sterile? not sure what is the proper term in English), there is a very, very small probability of an undesired pregnancy.
Considering the fact that people tend to get excited while having sex (even the responsible ones), it's understandable that the margin for error in all but the most radical and aggressive methods, is considerable. Even a contraception method that is perfect by design WILL fail.
I won't debate this any further because, frankly, I was mostly interested in what the ARTICLE in question has to say.
You should only try to satisfy his natural curiosity, to the extent that he is actually interested. I don't think you should force advanced knowledge on a child of his age. Even if he manages to learn he will only have developed "rote" learning and (quite propably) a strong dislike for science, due to the pressure involved. Let him be what he wants to be and gently encourage him.
The situation is not quite so rosy in the 3D graphics chipset arena, as the review of the Radeon HD 2900 XT a few days ago highlighted... The Tech Report had to upgrade their PC's PSU to 750W to achieve stability.
High end cards will always draw much power because pro gamerz will tolerate this sort of thing (remember Voodoo, with external power supplies?). Most consumers will want to stay in the mid to high-end and upgrade frequently. Today this suffices for decent game performance (OK, you don't really NEED 2560x @4xFSAA to enjoy the game, you may WANT it but you don't need it). I am an occasional gamer and I am more than happy with a 7600GS (passive cooled) with today's games.
What troubles me most is the lack of progress in the middle sector. Nvidia 6600GT was a great card, 7600GS/GT was good, but the new 8600 sux0rz, comparatively speaking. So, AMD may have a clear victory if they can produce something like the 1950PRO. A mid-range card that pwnz the 8600 for less than 200$. (I didn't buy the 1950PRO because I couldn't afford the extra 80$ during my AGP->PCIe/dual core transition. It would have been the sensible choice, otherwise).
This sounds like X terminals (ok, web terminals) connected to a powerful server. Not a new idea, and one that has been abandoned long ago. The performance hit is considerable and, most importantly, it does not make much sense unless you can save a LOT of money in the process. Considering the fact that the cheapest contemporary PC (say, the $700 laptop I'm using now) is able to run the toughest Office applications without breaking a sweat, I don't see why I should be tied to a provider for something that can be done locally. OK, I'll admit the fact that maintenance and backups will be remotely ensured, but this does not seem to me a sufficient reason to change the current paradigm. Maybe a different administration policy, maybe better user security, the same can be and should be achieved locally.
I have met someone who was a microsoft fanatic. The guy loved anything from Redmond, including ActiveX,.Net, Hotmail, you name it... I think he was
one of a kind. He also used to use Linux (!!).
So, by virtue of my counter-example, it appears that MS does have a (small) cult following. Never forget, though, that it takes a lot of marketing to make "mainstream" appear "cool". I mean, everyone uses Windows XP. How cool can that make you look? Then again, I don't know much about marketing, so...
I'm sorry to hear that. There's a difference between "fear" and "anxiety". Jobs that may be dangerous are not necessarily stressful, in the sense that they do not create an environment of hard competition, overtime work etc. I'm sure that any work can be difficult at times (especially if you want to do it well), but being an air traffic controller or a ER doctor or Wall str. broker is not the same as being a writer or a fitness instructor.
I read this story on kuro5hin about someone on IT who went on to become a bike messenger. I'm not sure it would fit you, but it is a physical job and it is clearly not stressful. I am not sure how much someone like you earns, but I guess you probably have a lot of savings, so you could try anything you like. Other lame possibilities include "writing" a book, becoming a critic for some obscure thing that you always loved (say, a cheese specialist). For what it's worth, I like cooking, but I've heard it's stressful.
If you're looking for a complete change, try a physical job (not necessarily manual labor as in "construction worker"), one that requires you to use your body.
Thats really what I dont understand about Europeans and their EU RA RA comments. You say your all for it and love it and want the feeling of superiority over the US it would likely provide, yet time and again for years now it has been showed you guys will never ever get your acts together and just AGREE.
It's not that simple. Not only are some member states fiercely independent (e.g. UK), others are being "gently coerced" by bigger forces (USA, big corporations, RIAA/MPAA etc) to take sides in several matters. There is a vast difference between France and Bulgaria, for example, yet Bulgaria gets an almost equal vote on most issues. My point is that the political games inside the EU are not just a matter of people liking their neighbors: many internal and external forces collide to create a very delicate political environment. Don't you think that in this case the military consequences of a powerful global positioning system are of particular concern to the USA/Russia/China etc (including the arms corporations)? Don't you think that *somehow* many forces are lobbying in the background and pressuring weaker member states or trying to buy some of the people in power? I'm sure the same thing happens in the US, to some extent, so why does it surprise you that it happens in a more "fragile" environment?
In the end, the process of unification is a formidable achievement. Just don't expect a "european" mentality to spring into existence immediately. Half a century ago half of Europe was bombing the other half back to the Stone Age and vice versa.
I agree, the definition of disease should not include alcoholism (as it's not so much biological problem as emotional/psychological addiction), but in fact it does qualify. Thanks to the convoluted English language, we have words like disease with definitions that are not similar.
Of course it IS a disease. It seems to me that you have a very narrow idea of what constitutes a disease. People with a drinking problem show all signs of serious addiction, which makes it very hard to stop. Have you ever heard of "delirium tremens"? Heavy drinkers can actually die if they stop alcohol abruptly. Check it out before speaking about "psychological" addiction. Also, emotional problems are true diseases (you know there are some chemicals in your brain called "neurotransmitters" etc, you can look that up, too).
No shit. In fact, they're not quite done with the transition to Intel just yet. Apple was lucky in that it had the foresight--or fortune--to maintain a secret Intel-native OS X build for years. I highly doubt they have another one for AMD. So, however long it's taken for the Intel switch, it's going to take much longer for AMD. That won't go over well with anyone involved.
It's called the x86-64 instruction set and it's common across most modern processors. Unless OS X depends on some esoteric lesser-known extension that only Intel processors have. It would be trivial to support a new motherboard and chipset (after all, drivers already exist!). As a matter of fact, I'm certain I can take my current Linux hard drive, connect it to a Core 2 Duo system with a NVidia card and boot succesfully to 90% of my current functionality, without even bothering to recompile. A proper operating system (like the "famous" Unix-based kernel of OS X) would be (should be) ported with very very little work.
Reasons for NOT going with AMD are purely financial and strategical. The software side of the matter is probably almost trivial.
Yeah, Europeans should be very worried. Their stores are getting flooded by cheap american imports that local companies can not compete with under a 50% premium. Their jobs are getting outsourced to US. They are losing their import market to US companies that are able to offer a much better price. European tourists go and spend money abroad rather than investing it back into local economy.
On the other hand, the buying power of the average American worker steadily decreases. Take gold, for example. And europeans are not
THAT eager to spend money on American products: cheap stuff comes from the east, not from the US. Also, consider the fact
that many European companies provide "luxury" products and services (e.g. Porsche cars or Italian clothes) which
compete in their own market segment.
I am not really an expert, but I have to assume that the guys at the central European bank have taken
all these factors into account and are not being total idiots (the same could be said, of course, about
the American federal bank, but the context is different).
Slashdot Mirror
Well, speaking as an MD/PhD, I can tell you that even though useless treatments DO exist (for example cough medication), there is a lot of controversy for several other issues. Even guideline groups cannot always agree on a specific attitude.
For example, beta blockers are clearly indicated for myocardial infarction with evidence grade IA (the highest possible!) in the guidelines of the european society of cardiology (freely available in http://www.escardio.org/guidelines-surveys/esc-guidelines/GuidelinesDocuments/guidelines-AMI-FT.pdf). Anyone with half a brain and ten years of training knows that beta blockers (especially IV) should not be given to someone who is hemodynamically unstable, which is the conclusion of the cited study above (published in Lancet 2005) and the aforementioned guidelines. Saying that beta blockers should not be given is completely wrong.
Things are much less clear for low back pain surgery, even though recent reports have shown it to be more effective.
In conclusion, the original article incorrectly criticizes and mixes good treatments that should be avoided in specific subgroups (beta blockers) with useless treatments (cough mediciation) with controversial treatments (low back surgery). Such oversimplification is dangerous, especially if strongly motivated by cost concerns.
P.
Before starting a long discussion on whether people should wait or not for loading times of free/open source software, let me just say that on my fairly average PC OpenOffice loads in 3-4 sec (I didn't use a stopwatch, just counted myself). Do note that I use OpenOffice QuickStart, but so does MS for office and, in the age of 24/7 computing, I don't reboot that often anyway to care for the N extra seconds of boot time...
P.
The point is that if the expected life of the card is 5 years, a 5% will fail at 1 year, for example (this is a guess, assuming a certain variance between parts). If however, the expected life of the card is 50 years, only 0.0001 will fail at 1 year. And I think we can agree that failure at 1 year is quite pertinent and annoying, even for hardcore gamers.
Statistics work that way. And, by the way, I recently had my 8600GT fail and subsequently replaced (and then sold!), which makes me a bit skeptical.
P.
Anyone has a link to the original research article? The newsweek story is quite vague for my hardcore scientific taste.
Most integrated graphics already depend on system memory. Interestingly, the AMD solution does not forbid the addition of a graphics card but rather allows some level of cooperation between the two. It appears that you could get a sort of "crossfire" between the CPU-GPU and the standalone GPU if you added an extra card. That would also help when powering down the power-hungry standalone GPU, in the context of simple 2d or when in battery mode.
What most people don't seem to realize is that Larabee is not about winning the 3d performance crown. Rather, it is an attempt to change the playground: you aren't buying a 3d card for games. You are buying a "PC accelerator" that can do physics, video, 3d sound, dolby decoding/encoding etc. Instead of just having SSE/MMX on chip, you now get a complete separate chip. AMD and NVIDIA already try to do this with their respective efforts (CUDA etc), but Larabee will be much more programmable and will really pwn for massively parallel tasks. Furthermore, you can plug in as many Larabees as you want, no need for SLI/crossfire. You just add cores/chip like we now add memory.
P.
Whoever wrote this article shows a gross misunderstanding about how genetics actually works. The central dogma of genetics applies here: DNA is transcribed into mRNA, and translated into proteins, which can then be post-translationally modified.,
Not exactly true. The main concept behind genome-wide microarray analysis is the fact that SNP markers are in linkage disequilibrium with disease-related alleles. Therefore, it is not the presence of a silent "mutation" (the one we detect) that matters. Rather, it is the fact that said mutation usually happens to be associated/correlated with another nearby "mutation" that does affect gene function.
P.
Speaking as someone who has done a PhD on genome-wide microarray SNP analysis, I can tell you that we are not yet at a point of maturity where you can simply put a drop of blood in a machine and get reliable prognostic information or lifestyle and treatment recommendations.
The technology is actively researched, i.e. most often we're not looking at the results from a clinical standpoint but as an indicator of the performance of a certain method. Practically speaking, only research centers are interested at the stuff and you would be extremely hard pressed to convince practicing doctors to incorporate current results in their everyday work, even though some studies have appeared in famous medical journals (New England Journal of Medicine, Nature etc). Using software notation, the results are "alpha" grade at the moment.
That being said, there is no harm in knowing that you have an Adenine in position XXXX. Harm comes from acting upon that knowledge without sufficient clinical evidence.
P.
I don't mean to throw stones, but books cost money, many people afford to be on the Internet, yet buying books has become old hat. When you can go on the Internet and get the latest information, books are ... well, a waste of money for the most part. The delay between discovery and publishing and reading is no longer tolerable, not in this throw away society. Look at some science fiction ideals... such delays are always intolerable. I will cite an event that is not even related to show that delay is not right: junteenth. It took several years for emancipation news to reach Texas. Is that right? The point is that information and knowledge should be universal, and instant. The great promise of the Internet was just that. If you wish to spend your nights reading information from 2+ years ago, that is your problem. The rest of us want today's information, and now. Good luck with the personal library.
Well, you can access recent scientific articles for example on www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, read 10 (out of something like 1000++) and try to understand the subject that interests you. Or you can choose a reliable textbook and read that instead. It won't be 100% up to date, but it will often be easier to understand, probably more objective and will cover a bigger part of the literature than you could in a reasonable time frame.
So, if you're the kind of person that reads 100 scholarly articles just to implement something that has been in Knuth's 20-year TAOCP I admire your patience and perseverance. For the rest of us, textbooks are still extremely useful as a source of distilled knowledge. (No, wikipedia does not count as a textbook. I won't be choosing my patient's chemotherapy based on wikipedia any time soon.)
Then again, whether a textbook is online or on paper changes little. Many are available in both formats but the biggest part of the cost comes from the intellectual effort put in creating them and as a result they cannot be updated twice weekly. I would say that we're looking at a product that is at most 20% cheaper (often more expensive, too!) and probably reviewed a bit more frequently.
P.
It's not just a matter of observing the rhythm of events. Rather, I would say it is a matter of believing that progress tends to facilitate progress. This is a reasonable proposition that gives rise to an obviously accelerating civilization.
P.
Then again, what you describe is just a way of doing things, meant to address key questions that are actively disputed. Being a scientist does not necessarily mean being pedantic. Furthermore, the level of detail that you propose is in reality pertinent only for real specialists directly involved with the related problem. For example, whether aspirin for myocardial infarction should be chewed or swallowed is a small detail that probably changes mortality by (say) 0.4%. This is trivial for the average reader, even for most doctors. It is true that many interventions are frequently helpful for 1 out of 100 patients treated (number needed to treat). There is a sig somewhere (paraphrasing) "If a topic is clear and in order then it is no longer worth researching".
The question is whether in fact wikipedia or similar sites address this need. I think not. By definition, the bleeding edge of science is quite messy, which is part of the point of actively researching it. The general public (which is me, for example, concerning computer science), is quite happy to learn things that are relatively well-established. Then again, I think that too frequently the problem is not purely a scientific one (wikipedia should not get the earth's distance from the sun wrong), but usually a moral/social one.
Depends. The superiority of the scientific method is mostly a question of principle. The general public tends to have certain misconceptions, especially where counter-intuitive results are involved. That does not mean that everyday experience is worthless. Quite the contrary. However, it cannot be integrated into a system of coherent, formally validated propositions. It is, quite simply, incompatible and can range from pure genius to idiotic. You can never know which is which...
In my opinion, the whole Web 2.0 idea is based on the assumption that 60 million monkeys banging on typewriters will eventually produce Shakespeare's plays. Thanks to the internet we know this not to be the case. Certainly everyone can contribute in small niches, especially regarding some specialized interests (for example, obscure hobbies). On the other hand, the average usually beats 50% of the population (an astounding truth that we often fail to realize!) and the output of many people editing and authoring at the same time is usually not that bad but never pure genius, either.
P.To the extent that the people involved pay real money and to the extent that they feel genuinely frustrated about losing the account, the harm is very, very real. Using your logic, there is no harm in being publicly ridiculed or finding out that your girlfriend enjoyed a whole soccer team. An MMO can be an important social activity (in the sense that it involves people) and please realize that even if you (or me, for that matter) don't feel attached to their avatar or game "lives", other people do.
P.You obviously haven't spend enough time in MMO games. Getting the fame and popularity necessary to achieve such a goal (being elected by other players) requires a VERY significant investment in time and effort. Simply put, the person in question obviously cares and is attached to his online avatar so much that losing his status would be an immense loss.
I wouldn't be surprised if some of these players care more about the "eponymous" avatars and their in-game status than their work presence.
P.I agree with you about the usefulness of birth control. There are problems with birth control methods (surgery is inherently dangerous, pills can have nasty side effects in some cases, latex can cause allergic reaction etc...) but a form of decent birth control can usually be found, even in extreme cases.
On the other hand, using the term "baby" for a 1st trimester pregnancy is somewhat misleading. I respect your moral and/or religious viewpoint on the matter, but using any objective scientific criterion you just can't call a 1st trimester embryo a "baby". The term is "abortion", so for the sake of precision and in order to avoid sentimentally excessive mental images, please don't call it "killing babies".
P.Well, you haven't read much about birth control, have you? ALL birth control methods have a percentage of failure which can be attributed to genetic diversity (not all people respond the same), manufacturing error or human error. Even after surgery (neutered? sterile? not sure what is the proper term in English), there is a very, very small probability of an undesired pregnancy.
Considering the fact that people tend to get excited while having sex (even the responsible ones), it's understandable that the margin for error in all but the most radical and aggressive methods, is considerable. Even a contraception method that is perfect by design WILL fail.
I won't debate this any further because, frankly, I was mostly interested in what the ARTICLE in question has to say.
P.You should only try to satisfy his natural curiosity, to the extent that he is actually interested. I don't think you should force advanced knowledge on a child of his age. Even if he manages to learn he will only have developed "rote" learning and (quite propably) a strong dislike for science, due to the pressure involved. Let him be what he wants to be and gently encourage him.
High end cards will always draw much power because pro gamerz will tolerate this sort of thing (remember Voodoo, with external power supplies?). Most consumers will want to stay in the mid to high-end and upgrade frequently. Today this suffices for decent game performance (OK, you don't really NEED 2560x @4xFSAA to enjoy the game, you may WANT it but you don't need it). I am an occasional gamer and I am more than happy with a 7600GS (passive cooled) with today's games.
What troubles me most is the lack of progress in the middle sector. Nvidia 6600GT was a great card, 7600GS/GT was good, but the new 8600 sux0rz, comparatively speaking. So, AMD may have a clear victory if they can produce something like the 1950PRO. A mid-range card that pwnz the 8600 for less than 200$. (I didn't buy the 1950PRO because I couldn't afford the extra 80$ during my AGP->PCIe/dual core transition. It would have been the sensible choice, otherwise).
P.This sounds like X terminals (ok, web terminals) connected to a powerful server. Not a new idea, and one that has been abandoned long ago. The performance hit is considerable and, most importantly, it does not make much sense unless you can save a LOT of money in the process. Considering the fact that the cheapest contemporary PC (say, the $700 laptop I'm using now) is able to run the toughest Office applications without breaking a sweat, I don't see why I should be tied to a provider for something that can be done locally. OK, I'll admit the fact that maintenance and backups will be remotely ensured, but this does not seem to me a sufficient reason to change the current paradigm. Maybe a different administration policy, maybe better user security, the same can be and should be achieved locally.
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I have met someone who was a microsoft fanatic. The guy loved anything from Redmond, including ActiveX, .Net, Hotmail, you name it... I think he was
one of a kind. He also used to use Linux (!!).
So, by virtue of my counter-example, it appears that MS does have a (small) cult following. Never forget, though, that it takes a lot of marketing to make "mainstream" appear "cool". I mean, everyone uses Windows XP. How cool can that make you look? Then again, I don't know much about marketing, so...
P.I'm sorry to hear that. There's a difference between "fear" and "anxiety". Jobs that may be dangerous are not necessarily stressful, in the sense that they do not create an environment of hard competition, overtime work etc. I'm sure that any work can be difficult at times (especially if you want to do it well), but being an air traffic controller or a ER doctor or Wall str. broker is not the same as being a writer or a fitness instructor.
P.I read this story on kuro5hin about someone on IT who went on to become a bike messenger. I'm not sure it would fit you, but it is a physical job and it is clearly not stressful. I am not sure how much someone like you earns, but I guess you probably have a lot of savings, so you could try anything you like. Other lame possibilities include "writing" a book, becoming a critic for some obscure thing that you always loved (say, a cheese specialist). For what it's worth, I like cooking, but I've heard it's stressful.
If you're looking for a complete change, try a physical job (not necessarily manual labor as in "construction worker"), one that requires you to use your body.
P.It's not that simple. Not only are some member states fiercely independent (e.g. UK), others are being "gently coerced" by bigger forces (USA, big corporations, RIAA/MPAA etc) to take sides in several matters. There is a vast difference between France and Bulgaria, for example, yet Bulgaria gets an almost equal vote on most issues. My point is that the political games inside the EU are not just a matter of people liking their neighbors: many internal and external forces collide to create a very delicate political environment. Don't you think that in this case the military consequences of a powerful global positioning system are of particular concern to the USA/Russia/China etc (including the arms corporations)? Don't you think that *somehow* many forces are lobbying in the background and pressuring weaker member states or trying to buy some of the people in power? I'm sure the same thing happens in the US, to some extent, so why does it surprise you that it happens in a more "fragile" environment?
In the end, the process of unification is a formidable achievement. Just don't expect a "european" mentality to spring into existence immediately. Half a century ago half of Europe was bombing the other half back to the Stone Age and vice versa.
P.Of course it IS a disease. It seems to me that you have a very narrow idea of what constitutes a disease. People with a drinking problem show all signs of serious addiction, which makes it very hard to stop. Have you ever heard of "delirium tremens"? Heavy drinkers can actually die if they stop alcohol abruptly. Check it out before speaking about "psychological" addiction. Also, emotional problems are true diseases (you know there are some chemicals in your brain called "neurotransmitters" etc, you can look that up, too).
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It's called the x86-64 instruction set and it's common across most modern processors. Unless OS X depends on some esoteric lesser-known extension that only Intel processors have. It would be trivial to support a new motherboard and chipset (after all, drivers already exist!). As a matter of fact, I'm certain I can take my current Linux hard drive, connect it to a Core 2 Duo system with a NVidia card and boot succesfully to 90% of my current functionality, without even bothering to recompile. A proper operating system (like the "famous" Unix-based kernel of OS X) would be (should be) ported with very very little work.
Reasons for NOT going with AMD are purely financial and strategical. The software side of the matter is probably almost trivial.
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On the other hand, the buying power of the average American worker steadily decreases. Take gold, for example. And europeans are not THAT eager to spend money on American products: cheap stuff comes from the east, not from the US. Also, consider the fact that many European companies provide "luxury" products and services (e.g. Porsche cars or Italian clothes) which compete in their own market segment.
I am not really an expert, but I have to assume that the guys at the central European bank have taken all these factors into account and are not being total idiots (the same could be said, of course, about the American federal bank, but the context is different).
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