I hate reading about studies only in mass media outlets because of the lack of critical evaluation. Unfortunately the real study isn't showing up in the Circulation journal's past three issues and they never did give the complete title.
However, even the LA Times article states "researchers found a statistical relationship between long hours of TV viewing and a shortened life span, but the study did not go so far as to find a direct cause".
This means the results are interesting and the subject should be further evaluated in a controlled study, but are useless for practical purposes. We don't know if it was the sedentary behavior or something else, like the potato chips and soda that often go with watching TV. It may be that their conclusion is correct, but it's impossible to know from this type of study.
As I stated, fully half of people with heart disease have normal serum cholesterol levels. No one denies this. So it's a poor indicator - anyone with a good cholesterol test result still needs to be told that there's an equal chance they have heart disease anyway. There are better indicators such as C-reactive protein that are largely ignored. Even the recent, terminally biased JUPITER study gives that method of detection a backhanded compliment.
The data in the Framingham study does agree with me. And so does the data in every other study out there - there is not a single one that demonstrates causality.
The meta-analysis you link to does no better - it shows only a correlation (their word: "association") that is useless to any practitioner. Meta-analyses are always suspect because the input studies and parameters are cherry-picked to have the desired outcome.
Deaths have decreased because emergency treatment at the hospital has improved and people are less likely to ignore the warning signs of a heart attack. Heart disease rates have actually increased.
Please. Researchers ignore data that break their theories all the time.
It may be worst in the medical world. For example, why do you think that cholesterol is targeted as enemy number one for heart health? There is no study that has ever demonstrated causality; 50% of people with heart disease have "normal" cholesterol; nearly all studies on the subject show that all-cause mortality is higher with low cholesterol; much better working theories exist.
So why is that hypothesis still treated as correct? Because reputations and huge amounts of money would be lost. Prominent people and institutions may even be found liable. Good science goes out the window in the face of that.
Regarding the subject at hand, you might want to look at what an ad hoc hypothesis is.
Re:could someone do back-of-envelope calculation
on
Growing Insulin
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Like someone else said, diet sodas don't contain HFCS (though most create a whole different health issue by containing aspartame - exceptions that use sucralose include Diet RC, Diet Rite, Diet 7UP, and Pepsi One). Regular Coke is made with sucrose instead (not that it's much better for you). Remember New Coke? That was their attempt to switch to HFCS and it failed. Companies like to use HFCS because it's cheaper than sucrose. All non-diet Pepsi-brand sodas are made with it.
Microsoft's share was closer to Apache's in March of 2002 than it is now. There's no reason to believe it won't plateau or drop off again. There's not even a trend yet (like there was back then) that can lend itself to predictions.
You wouldn't have a problem with this if you didn't have anything to hide.
Sorry, but you're wrong. All the RIAA needs is for someone to tell them (maybe your own ISP, erroneously) that your IP address was associated with an illegal music download. Doesn't matter if they got it wrong. Only way you can prove it is to go to court, at which time the court will order your computer seized to be scoured for evidence, and you will incur thousands of dollars in legal bills even if you win (unless someone takes your case pro bono). Alternatively, you can shell out a few thousand to the RIAA and it will all go away.
Apple wants to maintain complete control of its hardware and software distribution. That's one of the reasons why OS X is more secure; it doesn't have to be compatible with a wide variety of hardware and software.
Think about what you're saying here. Consider Linux distributions and *BSD, which not only run on the same hardware as Windows, but a plethora of completely different architectures, and with plenty of legacy binaries. Several of them are arguably more secure and stable than OS X. In fact Linux is reported to run faster than OS X on the same PPC hardware due to subpar memory management in OS X.
Any linux admin worth their salt would have been running pre-release versions on test machines by now to evaluate whether it would benefit their application, determine if it's worth the risk, and if nothing else, familiarize themselves with the changes. Only noobs, lusers, and PHBs spout the tired "if it's.0 it's crap" line.
Unfortunately, JFS requires you to fsck an unclean filesystem and the process is quite slow, whereas XFS replays the journal automatically. Also JFS has no quota support.
I believe if you unset your DISPLAY variable it will start in ASCII mode. Or login through a virtual terminal instead of X. The Nethack home page is www.nethack.org.
This issue is not as new as many posters seem to believe. It started back in 1996, with the release of GNU/Emacs 19.31. Here is the entirety of the etc/LINUX-GNU file (dated May 19, 1996) from that distribution:
Linux and the GNU system
The GNU project started 12 years ago with the goal of developing a complete free Unix-like operating system. "Free" refers to freedom, not price; it means you are free to run, copy, distribute, study, change, and improve the software.
A Unix-like system consists of many different programs. We found some components already available as free software--for example, X Windows and TeX. We obtained other components by helping to convince their developers to make them free--for example, the Berkeley network utilities. Other components we wrote specifically for GNU--for example, GNU Emacs, the GNU C compiler, the GNU C library, Bash, and Ghostscript. The components in this last category are "GNU software". The GNU system consists of all three categories together.
The GNU project is not just about developing and distributing free software. The heart of the GNU project is an idea: that software should be free, and that the users' freedom is worth defending. For if people have freedom but do not value it, they will not keep it for long. In order to make freedom last, we have to teach people to value it.
The GNU project's method is that free software and the idea of users' freedom support each other. We develop GNU software, and as people encounter GNU programs or the GNU system and start to use them, they also think about the GNU idea. The software shows that the idea can work in practice. People who come to agree with the idea are likely to write additional free software. Thus, the software embodies the idea, spreads the idea, and grows from the idea.
This method was working well--until someone combined the Linux kernel with the GNU system (which still lacked a kernel), and called the combination a "Linux system."
The Linux kernel is a free Unix-compatible kernel written by Linus Torvalds. It was not written specifically for the GNU project, but the Linux kernel and the GNU system work together well. In fact, adding Linux to the GNU system brought the system to completion: it made a free Unix-compatible operating system available for use.
But ironically, the practice of calling it a "Linux system" undermines our method of communicating the GNU idea. At first impression, a "Linux system" sounds like something completely distinct from the "GNU system." And that is what most users think it is.
Most introductions to the "Linux system" acknowledge the role played by the GNU software components. But they don't say that the system as a whole is more or less the same GNU system that the GNU project has been compiling for a decade. They don't say that the idea of a free Unix-like system originates from the GNU project. So most users don't know these things.
This leads many of those users to identify themselves as a separate community of "Linux users", distinct from the GNU user community. They use all of the GNU software; in fact, they use almost all of the GNU system; but they don't think of themselves as GNU users, and they may not think about the GNU idea.
It leads to other problems as well--even hampering cooperation on software maintenance. Normally when users change a GNU program to make it work better on a particular system, they send the change to the maintainer of that program; then they work with the maintainer, explaining the change, arguing for it and sometimes rewriting it, to get it installed.
But people who think of themselves as "Linux users" are more likely to release a forked "Linux-only" version of the GNU program, and consider the job done. We want each and every GNU program to work "out of the box" on Linux-based systems; but if the users do not help, that goal becomes much harder to achieve.
So how should the GNU project respond? What should we do now to spread the idea that freedom for computer users is important?
We should continue to talk about the freedom to share and change software maintenance. Normally when users change a GNU program to make it work better on a particular system, they send the change to the maintainer of that program; then they work with the maintainer, explaining the change, arguing for it and sometimes rewriting it, to get it installed.
But people who think of themselves as "Linux users" are more likely to release a forked "Linux-only" version of the GNU program, and consider the job done. We want each and every GNU program to work "out of the box" on Linux-based systems; but if the users do not help, that goal becomes much harder to achieve.
So how should the GNU project respond? What should we do now to spread the idea that freedom for computer users is important?
We should continue to talk about the freedom to share and change software--and to teach other users to value these freedoms. If we enjoy having a free operating system, it makes sense for us to think about preserving those freedoms for the long term. If we enjoy having a variety of free software, it makes sense for to think about encouraging others to write additional free software, instead of additional proprietary software.
We should not accept the splitting of the community in two. Instead we should spread the word that "Linux systems" are variant GNU systems--that users of these systems are GNU users, and that they ought to consider the GNU philosophy which brought these systems into existence.
This article is one way of doing that. Another way is to use the terms "Linux-based GNU system" (or "GNU/Linux system" or "Lignux" for short) to refer to the combination of the Linux kernel and the GNU system.
Copyright 1996 Richard Stallman Verbatim copying and redistribution is permitted without royalty as long as this notice is preserved.
I've been using variable bit rate MP3's for awhile. They only use as many bits to encode a sample as are needed... one MP3 may contain samples from, say, 64 to 320 bits.
Some older players may not support them, but I haven't run into one yet. I'm surprised they aren't more popular and I haven't been able to find a reason why that is.
Okay, seriously, as someone who's injured their back in the past and been able to overcome it, here's some of what I learned as a result of my experience.
A lot of back pain is caused by tension in your leg muscles (hams, quads, even calves), not necessarily your erector spinae. Personally, when I've been sitting too much, my hamstrings get tight from being in a flexed position continuously. Your hamstrings don't just attach at the base of your ass, they come up over your hip - so pain that you're feeling in your lower back may be coming directly from your hamstrings.
When I injured my lower back, it was actually a pulled left hamstring, but the pain felt like I'd messed up my spine somehow. The doctor wasn't much help, he basically saw me for 30 seconds and wrote out a prescription for pain killers. Then he was out the door and I literally had to stop him to ask what he thought the problem was, and he turned back quickly and said "probably a pulled muscle."
The pain plagued me for a long time, and it wasn't until I returned to stretching and strength training that I was able to make it go away completely. Every time I work out, I stretch my legs thoroughly after warming up and cooling down. The exercise that has made the biggest difference is strengthening my hamstrings by doing stiff legged deadlifts. Plus, strengthening my abs has helped take some of the load from that region.
I guess basically what I'm trying to say is, a great way to prevent back [or other physical] problems is flexibility and strength training, especially in your legs. But don't just go out and make some stuff up on your own, do it right... here are some places to start looking for information:
I saw the movie not long after it first came out, before I read the book. I think its actually better if you hadn't read the book first, because you won't be distracted by the differences. Since then I've read and re-read the entire series of 6 books probably four times. Watching the movie nowadays, yeah, there are parts where I just groan and shake my head - the stupid sonic amplifiers (I forget what they're called in the movie, damn them, damn), the goofy sound of Voice, special effects circa 1984, etc.
But, I think compared to the mini-series, the movie was high quality. Like the review in this/. article says, the movie has excellent casting, strong (if melodramatic) acting, good music. The mini-series has none of it... it couldn't have been any worse if they grabbed some people off the street, dressed them up, and had them read lines. I appreciate the accuracy, but its just not enough to make it enjoyable for me, not by a longshot...
Congrats that you could get your girlfriend to read the book though... my wife raises an eyebrow and looks at me funny when I try to watch the movie with her, and she fell asleep in the first few minutes of the mini-series.
For Napster to work, the title of the music has to match up to the content. If I rename a Metallica song to slkjghslfhsdf.mp3, no one is going to download it because they don't know what to search for. If I take a Britney Spears song and rename it as a Metallica song, its not really doing anything but making the system fubar.
What I'm trying to say here is that they can effectively track titles based solely on filenames. If filenames don't reliably match up to content, the whole system is useless to anyone looking for a particular song (i.e. probably everyone). Someone can come up with a naming convention, like 1337-speak or something, but that has to be widely available for it to be useful - which means that its something the 'watchers' can easily discover and add into their filters.
As someone who has designed a few government web-sites in the past, probably the number one demanded feature is printer-friendliness. Usually the pages are full of detailed info of which many visitors will want a hard copy. If you have too many images (especially large ones), outlandish formatting, or even a black background, it won't come out right for a lot of people. If you absolutely need to put that kind of thing in there, consider making a second, plainer version with a 'Printer Friendly' link to it.
Do any of the authors participate in the comments, at least as themselves? I don't remember seeing any. Maybe there's a good reason, like they're too busy reading submissions. Checking around, it looks like they do post, but rarely... here's user info on the top 3 authors:
A politician couldn't use this as a justification to cut funding and not look ignorant. It just happens to be a high-profile mission. The [inter]national media usually ignores 98% of the wide variety of science that NASA does (like tons of aircraft research, some artificial organ research, and, oh, funding some linux development efforts).
Not that NASA's budget has been safe from cuts... just this year congress almost cut like $1.1 billion from it (total budget is around $14 billion. The polar lander mission cost $156 million). The budget hasn't been increased for years, despite the national surplus and all the cuts in defense spending awhile back.
Also, back on topic, I wanted to mention, the media keeps reporting 'The lander is still silent'... well, of course its still silent, it hasn't had an opportunity to communicate since last night! They might as well keep reporting 'its not Christmas yet!' for all the news that is...
Slashdot Mirror
I hate reading about studies only in mass media outlets because of the lack of critical evaluation. Unfortunately the real study isn't showing up in the Circulation journal's past three issues and they never did give the complete title.
However, even the LA Times article states "researchers found a statistical relationship between long hours of TV viewing and a shortened life span, but the study did not go so far as to find a direct cause".
This means the results are interesting and the subject should be further evaluated in a controlled study, but are useless for practical purposes. We don't know if it was the sedentary behavior or something else, like the potato chips and soda that often go with watching TV. It may be that their conclusion is correct, but it's impossible to know from this type of study.
Here's a discussion of a study that supports my point nicely.
As I stated, fully half of people with heart disease have normal serum cholesterol levels. No one denies this. So it's a poor indicator - anyone with a good cholesterol test result still needs to be told that there's an equal chance they have heart disease anyway. There are better indicators such as C-reactive protein that are largely ignored. Even the recent, terminally biased JUPITER study gives that method of detection a backhanded compliment.
The data in the Framingham study does agree with me. And so does the data in every other study out there - there is not a single one that demonstrates causality.
The meta-analysis you link to does no better - it shows only a correlation (their word: "association") that is useless to any practitioner. Meta-analyses are always suspect because the input studies and parameters are cherry-picked to have the desired outcome.
Deaths have decreased because emergency treatment at the hospital has improved and people are less likely to ignore the warning signs of a heart attack. Heart disease rates have actually increased.
Please. Researchers ignore data that break their theories all the time.
It may be worst in the medical world. For example, why do you think that cholesterol is targeted as enemy number one for heart health? There is no study that has ever demonstrated causality; 50% of people with heart disease have "normal" cholesterol; nearly all studies on the subject show that all-cause mortality is higher with low cholesterol; much better working theories exist.
So why is that hypothesis still treated as correct? Because reputations and huge amounts of money would be lost. Prominent people and institutions may even be found liable. Good science goes out the window in the face of that.
Regarding the subject at hand, you might want to look at what an ad hoc hypothesis is.
Like someone else said, diet sodas don't contain HFCS (though most create a whole different health issue by containing aspartame - exceptions that use sucralose include Diet RC, Diet Rite, Diet 7UP, and Pepsi One). Regular Coke is made with sucrose instead (not that it's much better for you). Remember New Coke? That was their attempt to switch to HFCS and it failed. Companies like to use HFCS because it's cheaper than sucrose. All non-diet Pepsi-brand sodas are made with it.
Microsoft's share was closer to Apache's in March of 2002 than it is now. There's no reason to believe it won't plateau or drop off again. There's not even a trend yet (like there was back then) that can lend itself to predictions.
You wouldn't have a problem with this if you didn't have anything to hide.
Sorry, but you're wrong. All the RIAA needs is for someone to tell them (maybe your own ISP, erroneously) that your IP address was associated with an illegal music download. Doesn't matter if they got it wrong. Only way you can prove it is to go to court, at which time the court will order your computer seized to be scoured for evidence, and you will incur thousands of dollars in legal bills even if you win (unless someone takes your case pro bono). Alternatively, you can shell out a few thousand to the RIAA and it will all go away.
When did you last check, 1995?
...
Linux Kernel v2.6.14.4 Configuration
[*] Symmetric multi-processing support
(8) Maximum number of CPUs (2-255) (NEW)
Just because a slot is 64-bit doesn't mean it's 66 MHz... e.g. I'm working with some Dell PowerEdge 600SC systems that have 64-bit, 33 MHz slots.
Apple wants to maintain complete control of its hardware and software distribution. That's one of the reasons why OS X is more secure; it doesn't have to be compatible with a wide variety of hardware and software.
Think about what you're saying here. Consider Linux distributions and *BSD, which not only run on the same hardware as Windows, but a plethora of completely different architectures, and with plenty of legacy binaries. Several of them are arguably more secure and stable than OS X. In fact Linux is reported to run faster than OS X on the same PPC hardware due to subpar memory management in OS X.
Any linux admin worth their salt would have been running pre-release versions on test machines by now to evaluate whether it would benefit their application, determine if it's worth the risk, and if nothing else, familiarize themselves with the changes. Only noobs, lusers, and PHBs spout the tired "if it's .0 it's crap" line.
Maybe on a small filesystem... on LBD's, the difference is quite noticable.
Unfortunately, JFS requires you to fsck an unclean filesystem and the process is quite slow, whereas XFS replays the journal automatically. Also JFS has no quota support.
I believe if you unset your DISPLAY variable it will start in ASCII mode. Or login through a virtual terminal instead of X. The Nethack home page is www.nethack.org.
They mostly come at night. Mostly...
I've been using variable bit rate MP3's for awhile. They only use as many bits to encode a sample as are needed... one MP3 may contain samples from, say, 64 to 320 bits.
Some older players may not support them, but I haven't run into one yet. I'm surprised they aren't more popular and I haven't been able to find a reason why that is.
The article says its very brightly backlit, with four brightness settings.
I'm not a doctor, but I've seen one on TV...
Okay, seriously, as someone who's injured their back in the past and been able to overcome it, here's some of what I learned as a result of my experience.
A lot of back pain is caused by tension in your leg muscles (hams, quads, even calves), not necessarily your erector spinae. Personally, when I've been sitting too much, my hamstrings get tight from being in a flexed position continuously. Your hamstrings don't just attach at the base of your ass, they come up over your hip - so pain that you're feeling in your lower back may be coming directly from your hamstrings.
When I injured my lower back, it was actually a pulled left hamstring, but the pain felt like I'd messed up my spine somehow. The doctor wasn't much help, he basically saw me for 30 seconds and wrote out a prescription for pain killers. Then he was out the door and I literally had to stop him to ask what he thought the problem was, and he turned back quickly and said "probably a pulled muscle."
The pain plagued me for a long time, and it wasn't until I returned to stretching and strength training that I was able to make it go away completely. Every time I work out, I stretch my legs thoroughly after warming up and cooling down. The exercise that has made the biggest difference is strengthening my hamstrings by doing stiff legged deadlifts. Plus, strengthening my abs has helped take some of the load from that region.
I guess basically what I'm trying to say is, a great way to prevent back [or other physical] problems is flexibility and strength training, especially in your legs. But don't just go out and make some stuff up on your own, do it right... here are some places to start looking for information:
Cyberpump: The Home of High Intensity Training
Women's Weightlifting tips (but most applies for men as well)
misc.fitness.weights
I saw the movie not long after it first came out, before I read the book. I think its actually better if you hadn't read the book first, because you won't be distracted by the differences. Since then I've read and re-read the entire series of 6 books probably four times. Watching the movie nowadays, yeah, there are parts where I just groan and shake my head - the stupid sonic amplifiers (I forget what they're called in the movie, damn them, damn), the goofy sound of Voice, special effects circa 1984, etc.
/. article says, the movie has excellent casting, strong (if melodramatic) acting, good music. The mini-series has none of it... it couldn't have been any worse if they grabbed some people off the street, dressed them up, and had them read lines. I appreciate the accuracy, but its just not enough to make it enjoyable for me, not by a longshot...
But, I think compared to the mini-series, the movie was high quality. Like the review in this
Congrats that you could get your girlfriend to read the book though... my wife raises an eyebrow and looks at me funny when I try to watch the movie with her, and she fell asleep in the first few minutes of the mini-series.
For Napster to work, the title of the music has to match up to the content. If I rename a Metallica song to slkjghslfhsdf.mp3, no one is going to download it because they don't know what to search for. If I take a Britney Spears song and rename it as a Metallica song, its not really doing anything but making the system fubar.
What I'm trying to say here is that they can effectively track titles based solely on filenames. If filenames don't reliably match up to content, the whole system is useless to anyone looking for a particular song (i.e. probably everyone). Someone can come up with a naming convention, like 1337-speak or something, but that has to be widely available for it to be useful - which means that its something the 'watchers' can easily discover and add into their filters.
As someone who has designed a few government web-sites in the past, probably the number one demanded feature is printer-friendliness. Usually the pages are full of detailed info of which many visitors will want a hard copy. If you have too many images (especially large ones), outlandish formatting, or even a black background, it won't come out right for a lot of people. If you absolutely need to put that kind of thing in there, consider making a second, plainer version with a 'Printer Friendly' link to it.
Do any of the authors participate in the comments, at least as themselves? I don't remember seeing any. Maybe there's a good reason, like they're too busy reading submissions. Checking around, it looks like they do post, but rarely... here's user info on the top 3 authors:
CmdrTaco User Info
Hemos User Info
Sengan User Info
A politician couldn't use this as a justification to cut funding and not look ignorant. It just happens to be a high-profile mission. The [inter]national media usually ignores 98% of the wide variety of science that NASA does (like tons of aircraft research, some artificial organ research, and, oh, funding some linux development efforts).
Not that NASA's budget has been safe from cuts... just this year congress almost cut like $1.1 billion from it (total budget is around $14 billion. The polar lander mission cost $156 million). The budget hasn't been increased for years, despite the national surplus and all the cuts in defense spending awhile back.
Also, back on topic, I wanted to mention, the media keeps reporting 'The lander is still silent'... well, of course its still silent, it hasn't had an opportunity to communicate since last night! They might as well keep reporting 'its not Christmas yet!' for all the news that is...