Being a parent is damn hard. Being a good parent is nigh on impossible (depends who is rating you - if its your kids, good luck).
This guy made a mistake and you're jumping on him. You dont know what he did in disciplining his daughter. But should he not try to get his money back if he felt it was the right thing to do (not saying it was)?
How many parents know that the iphone they bought for their child allows such a thing as in-app purchases? and that in many cases the child knows more about how to use the phone than their parent.
Sure you can set up parental controls but I know plenty of people who wouldn't know where to start.
And yes, ignorance is not an excuse, but that's where I say this was just a big mistake on the part of the parent and he learnt the hard way.
I would exercise a little bit of caution before jumping to conclusions and labelling this guy a "bad parent". Seriously, all parents are "bad" parents sometimes. Its part of being human.
How many iphone users even know what an in-app purchase is?
There are probably many parents out there who bought their kids an iphone and have no idea what is possible with it.
I know one such parent who bought their daughter an ipod touch, only to find that in order to use the app store you need to enter your credit card details. She was shocked, but that's the rules.
I can see how this could happen - I wonder if Apple could do a bit more to inform users of things like this? They may already do this - I'm not sure.
I definitely dont like the idea of apps featuring in-app purchases being targeted at children - that's wrong. I even hate ads in apps targeted at children. Or any ads targeted at children for that matter.
I'm self-taught, and my experience was not like this.
My code wasn't necessarily great - you're always learning and improving.
but the difference for me was that I dropped out of college after the first term (I was passing CS with near 100% but failing an unrelated subject - the university forced everyone to choose an elective subject that was not related to their primary field of study - the reason was simple - when people failed their primary course, they might choose to major in that other field - thus giving the university more money).
I did manage to get a job as a C++ programmer however, and learnt a lot in the 2 years I was there. Any amount of good commercial experience will teach you plenty - sometimes more than college ever could (and sometimes less).
Nothing wrong with being self-taught, so long as you're prepared to learn and adapt.
I haven't used debian but I'll bet its more difficult than just ticking the box next to nvidia-current in synaptic.
You said you were providing counter-anecdotal evidence but I see no such evidence of the above in what you wrote. Care to tell us how easy it is to install the nvidia driver in debian?
and has it progressed to the point where kernel updates no longer require the nvidia driver to be (manually) reinstalled?
in *buntu (and most other distros), the packages get updated together, so you install it once and then forget about it after that - it just keeps working new version after new version.
for the record, I started the harcombe diet last year and for a while I increased my calorie intake slightly and still lost weight. I was losing 1-2kg a week consistently for about 2 months - all while eating around 2000 calories a day.
I'm a lot more flexible with what I eat now (because I'm well in my healthy weight range) and my weight has stayed very constant. 6 months later I have still kept it off, and I dont starve myself (and I dont get hungry).
Even if that were true (and it probably is only true at the molecular level), how would you know how many calories you burn, and how do you know how many calories your body actually takes in? you can measure what goes in your mouth - but do you know what your body does with it? is the metabolic process 100% efficient? no - if it was, you wouldn't poo or wee. so how much do you burn when you exercise? well, that differs from person to person too. so how can you measure calories in vs calories out? its impossible - and if its impossible, its irrelevant.
The calorie theory you mentioned claims that you need to burn an additional 3500 calories in order to lose 1 pound (~0.5kg).
I weigh myself every morning.
I put on 1kg overnight once - do you really think I managed to consume 7000 calories EXTRA in 1 day? without knowing?
I also have lost 0.5kg 2 days in a row (1kg total) on several occasions - all without exercising. I eat ~2000 calories a day. sometimes more sometimes less.
I know people who have lost over 2-3 kg in a week without exercising and without a change in the number of calories consumed.
None of that supports the idea that exercise = weight loss or that just eating more on its own makes you fat.
What about the fact that sometimes my weight stays EXACTLY the same for a whole week or more, despite my calorie intake going up or down quite dramatically during the week?
If you cant get your head around it, here's how it works:
* The body regulates its own weight. If you feed it junk, that regulation cant keep up, and you'll put on weight. carbs provide quick energy - if you mix carbs and fats, your body will use the carbs for energy and store the fat (remember, it can only store fat if you eat carbs - otherwise there's no insulin and no fat is stored - you do produce some glucose and hence insulin from protein, but only as much as you actually need. with carbs you get whatever is in the food).
* What you put in your mouth doesn't necessarily get "used". If you eat proper food, your body will discard what it doesn't need. That really messes up your calories in vs calories out calculations now doesn't it. We dont have a way to measure that - making it a useless equation.
* A lot of it has to do with your metabolism. Your metabolism needs fuel to work. So if you eat less and try to do more, you'll fail. your body just gets hungry and tired, and slows down your metabolism so that you dont lose any more of your stored energy (fat). it does this to protect you - because if you kept going you could faint or even die from starvation in extreme cases.
* If you eat less and try to do more, your body slows down. you'll feel hungry - that's your body telling you to eat more because it needs more fuel. your body isn't trying to kill you - its actually trying to stop you from starving to death.
* if you eat more than you need, your body may do either of 2 things. If you're eating refined carbs (sugars, white bread) your body cant cope with the massive spike in energy, so the feeling of fullness arrives too late and you'll overeat. then there's flow on effects from the spike in blood sugar and then the over-production of insulin etc.
an example is fruit vs fruit juice. if you eat fruit - it has all the nutrients to tell your body how to process it. but if you have processed fruit juice - your body thinks you've eaten 20 items of fruit and starts pumping insulin around your body to deal with the big spike in blood sugar (yes most fruit is high in sugar - fructose). if you think the amount of insulin produced always matches the amount of blood sugar, you'd be wrong. its not that accurate - and that's why sugar often fools the body's mechanisms and results in over or under-production of insulin. the blood sugar rollercoaster wears the body out too, making it too tired to work properly.
if you're eating fats, then your body's "full" mechanism works as intended - its really difficult to overeat when you eat mostly fats and protein (and salads) b
If a reasonably capable user cant install it then its no longer just a problem with the user.
You can bask in the glow of your superiority but in the end the GP has moved on and is now just as productive as you for less effort - that must really suck. after all, you're smarter right?
I care about not running out of ram. I dont care about ram usage on its own. I'd rather it was used than sitting idle if it gives me better performance (and it does).
People have "saturated fat = heart disease" and also "saturated fat raises cholesterol" and "cholesterol is bad" burned into their brains so much that the growing research showing the opposite just isn't getting through.
There are many studies that try to prove any of the above but none can show causation, and even trying to show correlation is difficult if you include all known data.
The problem is that Ancel Keys started it off in the 1950's by carefully selecting results which supported his hypothesis, that fat (lipids) causes heart disease. Had he used all the data he had available, he wouldn't have been able to draw any such conclusion. He made headlines, and the rest is history. Very few studies have since been done on this, and no one has been able to prove anything (again, unless you carefully pick out only the results that support your theory).
Point 1: saturated fat does not cause cholesterol to increase. cholesterol is made by the body, you dont get it from food. In fact, most people who follow the atkins diet (I dont) dont have raised cholesterol levels. Point 2: cholesterol is vital for life, and performs a healing role within your system. Point 3: cholesterol is increased when more things in your body need repairing (eg. lesions in artery walls, caused by free radicals). Point 4: a build up of free radicals causes higher production of cholesterol (to repair your cells) - and it is this build up that can cause blockages (this is a vague explanation). Point 5: these free radicals typically come from carbs (in particular, refined carbs like sugar and white flour).
So what do we know now?
* Saturated fat is good for you (and aids in weight loss) - it doesn't raise your blood sugar level, meaning you dont produce insulin, meaning you dont store unused calories as fat. * fat keeps you feeling fuller for longer, and provides more energy per gram than protein or carbs (though protein is vital for health too). * your body can use fat for energy (muscles, brain etc) and can convert protein into glucose for the parts that need glucose (mostly the brain). * carbs are really only needed for intensive exercise or sport, when your body needs to burn up energy fast. * cholesterol is good for you (but more is not always better, neither is it better to have less) - its more important to limit sugars and other processed foods, than to think you can limit your cholesterol. the benefit from cholesterol-reducing drugs does not come from the cholesterol reduction. it comes from the anti-inflammatory properties (heart disease is caused by inflammation).
So no, nature isn't trying to kill you, nor is it making you fat. eat real food, not processed food, and you probably wont need to worry about counting calories, and if you only eat natural whole food, you'll lose weight regardless of how much you eat. this is why obesity is only a recent problem.
I think all of this supports the idea that one can be successful without a knowledge of computers so long as you have someone to do the computer stuff for you.
Ironically, the fact that these people need us in order to be successful, actually allows us to be successful too, so lets not criticize too heavily...
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You wanna know something?
Being a parent is damn hard. Being a good parent is nigh on impossible (depends who is rating you - if its your kids, good luck).
This guy made a mistake and you're jumping on him. You dont know what he did in disciplining his daughter. But should he not try to get his money back if he felt it was the right thing to do (not saying it was)?
How many parents know that the iphone they bought for their child allows such a thing as in-app purchases? and that in many cases the child knows more about how to use the phone than their parent.
Sure you can set up parental controls but I know plenty of people who wouldn't know where to start.
And yes, ignorance is not an excuse, but that's where I say this was just a big mistake on the part of the parent and he learnt the hard way.
I would exercise a little bit of caution before jumping to conclusions and labelling this guy a "bad parent". Seriously, all parents are "bad" parents sometimes. Its part of being human.
How many iphone users even know what an in-app purchase is?
There are probably many parents out there who bought their kids an iphone and have no idea what is possible with it.
I know one such parent who bought their daughter an ipod touch, only to find that in order to use the app store you need to enter your credit card details. She was shocked, but that's the rules.
I can see how this could happen - I wonder if Apple could do a bit more to inform users of things like this? They may already do this - I'm not sure.
I definitely dont like the idea of apps featuring in-app purchases being targeted at children - that's wrong. I even hate ads in apps targeted at children. Or any ads targeted at children for that matter.
I'm self-taught, and my experience was not like this.
My code wasn't necessarily great - you're always learning and improving.
but the difference for me was that I dropped out of college after the first term (I was passing CS with near 100% but failing an unrelated subject - the university forced everyone to choose an elective subject that was not related to their primary field of study - the reason was simple - when people failed their primary course, they might choose to major in that other field - thus giving the university more money).
I did manage to get a job as a C++ programmer however, and learnt a lot in the 2 years I was there. Any amount of good commercial experience will teach you plenty - sometimes more than college ever could (and sometimes less).
Nothing wrong with being self-taught, so long as you're prepared to learn and adapt.
btw I do know how to install the nvidia driver manually - I've done it many times. But these days one shouldn't need to do that.
I haven't used debian but I'll bet its more difficult than just ticking the box next to nvidia-current in synaptic.
You said you were providing counter-anecdotal evidence but I see no such evidence of the above in what you wrote. Care to tell us how easy it is to install the nvidia driver in debian?
and has it progressed to the point where kernel updates no longer require the nvidia driver to be (manually) reinstalled?
in *buntu (and most other distros), the packages get updated together, so you install it once and then forget about it after that - it just keeps working new version after new version.
my apologies - makes sense now. I was a bit on the attack that day lol :)
for the record, I started the harcombe diet last year and for a while I increased my calorie intake slightly and still lost weight.
I was losing 1-2kg a week consistently for about 2 months - all while eating around 2000 calories a day.
I'm a lot more flexible with what I eat now (because I'm well in my healthy weight range) and my weight has stayed very constant. 6 months later I have still kept it off, and I dont starve myself (and I dont get hungry).
Dont eat less, eat well. its as simple as that.
Even if that were true (and it probably is only true at the molecular level), how would you know how many calories you burn, and how do you know how many calories your body actually takes in? you can measure what goes in your mouth - but do you know what your body does with it? is the metabolic process 100% efficient? no - if it was, you wouldn't poo or wee. so how much do you burn when you exercise? well, that differs from person to person too. so how can you measure calories in vs calories out? its impossible - and if its impossible, its irrelevant.
The calorie theory you mentioned claims that you need to burn an additional 3500 calories in order to lose 1 pound (~0.5kg).
I weigh myself every morning.
I put on 1kg overnight once - do you really think I managed to consume 7000 calories EXTRA in 1 day? without knowing?
I also have lost 0.5kg 2 days in a row (1kg total) on several occasions - all without exercising. I eat ~2000 calories a day. sometimes more sometimes less.
I know people who have lost over 2-3 kg in a week without exercising and without a change in the number of calories consumed.
None of that supports the idea that exercise = weight loss or that just eating more on its own makes you fat.
What about the fact that sometimes my weight stays EXACTLY the same for a whole week or more, despite my calorie intake going up or down quite dramatically during the week?
If you cant get your head around it, here's how it works:
* The body regulates its own weight. If you feed it junk, that regulation cant keep up, and you'll put on weight. carbs provide quick energy - if you mix carbs and fats, your body will use the carbs for energy and store the fat (remember, it can only store fat if you eat carbs - otherwise there's no insulin and no fat is stored - you do produce some glucose and hence insulin from protein, but only as much as you actually need. with carbs you get whatever is in the food).
* What you put in your mouth doesn't necessarily get "used". If you eat proper food, your body will discard what it doesn't need. That really messes up your calories in vs calories out calculations now doesn't it. We dont have a way to measure that - making it a useless equation.
* A lot of it has to do with your metabolism. Your metabolism needs fuel to work. So if you eat less and try to do more, you'll fail. your body just gets hungry and tired, and slows down your metabolism so that you dont lose any more of your stored energy (fat). it does this to protect you - because if you kept going you could faint or even die from starvation in extreme cases.
* If you eat less and try to do more, your body slows down. you'll feel hungry - that's your body telling you to eat more because it needs more fuel. your body isn't trying to kill you - its actually trying to stop you from starving to death.
* if you eat more than you need, your body may do either of 2 things. If you're eating refined carbs (sugars, white bread) your body cant cope with the massive spike in energy, so the feeling of fullness arrives too late and you'll overeat. then there's flow on effects from the spike in blood sugar and then the over-production of insulin etc.
an example is fruit vs fruit juice. if you eat fruit - it has all the nutrients to tell your body how to process it. but if you have processed fruit juice - your body thinks you've eaten 20 items of fruit and starts pumping insulin around your body to deal with the big spike in blood sugar (yes most fruit is high in sugar - fructose). if you think the amount of insulin produced always matches the amount of blood sugar, you'd be wrong. its not that accurate - and that's why sugar often fools the body's mechanisms and results in over or under-production of insulin. the blood sugar rollercoaster wears the body out too, making it too tired to work properly.
if you're eating fats, then your body's "full" mechanism works as intended - its really difficult to overeat when you eat mostly fats and protein (and salads) b
Is that all you've got?
Were you going to offer some insight of your own?
Tell me - if you're not an expert either, how are you qualified to dispel the other guy's claims?
If a reasonably capable user cant install it then its no longer just a problem with the user.
You can bask in the glow of your superiority but in the end the GP has moved on and is now just as productive as you for less effort - that must really suck. after all, you're smarter right?
I assume that buying more ram isn't an option?
I care about not running out of ram. I dont care about ram usage on its own. I'd rather it was used than sitting idle if it gives me better performance (and it does).
huh? so I guess the pyramids that are still around are fake? you been watching too much "despicable me" lately?
android market already automatically scans all apps for known threats. its like running avg on the store, rather than on your phone.
my recommendation is to use avg etc only for alternative store downloads
I'm having difficulty with the apple equivalent of your analogy...
Google do run automated checks against every app that is submitted on android market.
It works much like antivirus I suppose, and is continually improving. This is since mid 2011.
Its not as "free for all" as you might expect.
Apple have gone for a more radical approach, but remember there are pros and cons with both.
Just owning an android phone does not mean you will have your data compromised.
Exactly!
People have "saturated fat = heart disease" and also "saturated fat raises cholesterol" and "cholesterol is bad" burned into their brains so much that the growing research showing the opposite just isn't getting through.
There are many studies that try to prove any of the above but none can show causation, and even trying to show correlation is difficult if you include all known data.
The problem is that Ancel Keys started it off in the 1950's by carefully selecting results which supported his hypothesis, that fat (lipids) causes heart disease. Had he used all the data he had available, he wouldn't have been able to draw any such conclusion. He made headlines, and the rest is history. Very few studies have since been done on this, and no one has been able to prove anything (again, unless you carefully pick out only the results that support your theory).
Point 1: saturated fat does not cause cholesterol to increase. cholesterol is made by the body, you dont get it from food. In fact, most people who follow the atkins diet (I dont) dont have raised cholesterol levels.
Point 2: cholesterol is vital for life, and performs a healing role within your system.
Point 3: cholesterol is increased when more things in your body need repairing (eg. lesions in artery walls, caused by free radicals).
Point 4: a build up of free radicals causes higher production of cholesterol (to repair your cells) - and it is this build up that can cause blockages (this is a vague explanation).
Point 5: these free radicals typically come from carbs (in particular, refined carbs like sugar and white flour).
So what do we know now?
* Saturated fat is good for you (and aids in weight loss) - it doesn't raise your blood sugar level, meaning you dont produce insulin, meaning you dont store unused calories as fat.
* fat keeps you feeling fuller for longer, and provides more energy per gram than protein or carbs (though protein is vital for health too).
* your body can use fat for energy (muscles, brain etc) and can convert protein into glucose for the parts that need glucose (mostly the brain).
* carbs are really only needed for intensive exercise or sport, when your body needs to burn up energy fast.
* cholesterol is good for you (but more is not always better, neither is it better to have less) - its more important to limit sugars and other processed foods, than to think you can limit your cholesterol. the benefit from cholesterol-reducing drugs does not come from the cholesterol reduction. it comes from the anti-inflammatory properties (heart disease is caused by inflammation).
So no, nature isn't trying to kill you, nor is it making you fat.
eat real food, not processed food, and you probably wont need to worry about counting calories, and if you only eat natural whole food, you'll lose weight regardless of how much you eat. this is why obesity is only a recent problem.
Yeah same for me too, I don't know about that "year of ..." stuff, but I do plan to keep running it until it stops being so useful and awesome.
Couldn't agree more. Just stick with what works, that matters a hell of a lot more than market share.
Since when did that stop them granting a patent?
Well, since most of the problem is incompatible APIs, it seems that the firefox team aren't good at supporting the third party developers.
A stable API should solve most of their problems. I'm not sure if they do this already - I use chrome and the rapid release works pretty well there.
swype (or any similar swiping keyboard) on a tablet isn't so great.
I also haven't found touch-typing on a tablet to be very good, although I haven't used every keyboard I must admit.
Depends on how you define technology I guess.
Certainly not ALL technology provides a better solution, and also a solution is not better purely because it uses technology.
Once upon a time the pencil and paper were both new technology.
I think the livescribe pens (as many have pointed out) are the closest thing to an improvement, but even then it probably wouldn't work for everyone.
so um, dont upgrade?
I dont understand how firefox's rapid updates are bad for consumers. Bad for plugin-writers/maintainers sure, but consumers no.
My argument is that consumers get features sooner, so thats good. Otherwise you'd have to wait until the next major release.
The other side to it is that if an update breaks for you, then just dont update. That's the same as waiting for the next major release.
Why do people feel the need to be on the latest version and then complain about it. If it isn't what you want, dont do it...
I think all of this supports the idea that one can be successful without a knowledge of computers so long as you have someone to do the computer stuff for you.
Ironically, the fact that these people need us in order to be successful, actually allows us to be successful too, so lets not criticize too heavily...
If you care about performance, why are you running nouveau?
Yes its the default, but use a recent video card in windows and see how you like the default.
Just because its linux doesn't mean you dont have to install the right drivers from the manufacturer sometimes.