For a disease to spread amongst a population (a herd) it needs to be able to find another vulnerable host (or several hosts) to jump to before the current host either dies or recovers. If most of the population are immune (either inherently, through previous exposure, or through vaccination) then a disease can't spread. That is herd immunity. If person X is not immune to a disease and person Y has the disease, if X never meets Y and nobody who is vulnerable meets Y and then X (and therefore acts as a carrier between them) and there is no chain of vulnerable people between Y and X, then X is protected by herd immunity.
Or just ignore it. It's background white noise and most people's brains are quite adept and filtering out background stimuli that aren't changing. I don't even notice my fans unless they stop!
...to break down what we call "herd immunity", which is also what we rely on to protect the small number of people in society who don't get vaccinations for "religious" reasons or because they have a demonstrable allergy to one of the vaccine components.
And also those for who get the vaccine, but it just plain doesn't work, for whatever reason.
They are not believable. Not by anybody outside the tin foil hat brigade. Anybody with half a brain can see the bad PR alone is enough to discourage the US from executing Assange - aside from the legal issues.
Sounds like the rantings of a paranoid schizophrenic. Reminds me of the SNL skits where Assange reminds people that no matter how he dies, even if it's decades from now and peacefully in his sleep, "it was murder!".
Yeah but going to the other extreme isn't any better. The most pragmatic solution lies somewhere in the middle. The difficulty is in finding exactly where it is.
People sign up for porn sites? I mean you actually create an account and give them an e-mail address? No, of course you don't, unless you really can't resist the temptation to comment on YouPorn, you just watch the videos (hopefully in a private session in your browser). on the other hand, if you go to your favorite news website and you want to comment on a story and you see "sign up for a free account" versus click on Facebook Connect and comment right away, which are you going to pick (assuming you already have a Facebook account)? And once 90% of your users are signing up through Facebook, are you, as a website operator, going to go to all the hassle of maintaining your own account system with all the security headaches involved?
Of course it'll never have 100% reach (hopefully it'll never reach Slashdot), but it's already got much greater reach than previous efforts.
Personally, I have no desire to use it because I don't necessarily want EVERY comment I made associated with every other comment I make. Nor do I necessarily want everybody I know to be aware of every discussion I'm involved in. Especially those that happen when I'm supposed to be working.....
There was an interesting piece on MIT's Technology Review site about how Facebook is doing something that VeriSign, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google have all tried and mostly fail at, which is providing a single id and single log in for the internet. There are, distressingly, a whole bunch of sites that have jumped on the Facebook Connect service as a way to sign in to their website for, for example, posting comments. And, of course, there's also all those annoying "Like" buttons that keep popping up everywhere. So long-term? I don't know, but I don't think we are getting rid of Facebook any time soon.
Fully disclosure: I briefly played around with Facebook a couple of years ago, but quit after a couple of months after getting sick of seeing spam about which Sex in the City character somebody I barely knew back in high-school is supposed to be. Or how they scored in a "know your one-hit wonders of the '80s" quiz.
Nonsense, it absolutely is DRM. Just read the other article linked in the summary that describes why it's not DRM:
Think of it as an armoured truck carrying the movie from the Internet to your display, it keeps the data safe from pirates, but still lets you enjoy your legally acquired movie in the best possible quality.
Sounds like DRM to me. He's only argument for why it's not DRM is that, in this words, "DRM is a piece of software, not hardware." which is just mind-blowingly stupid. So a (theoretical) piece of hardware that did the exact same function as DRM wouldn't be DRM only by virtue of the fact that it's not software. That's a stupid distinction.
You're fully of crap. The proportion of people who are diagnosed with autism has increased. That is absolutely, demonstrably true. That the increase might be entirely explained by an expanded definition and increased awareness (and I tend to think it probably is) is neither here nor there. It doesn't change the fact that the proportion of people, who have been clinically diagnosed and labeled as autistic, has increased. Whether or not those people are fairly labeled or are actually "sick" isn't the issue. My post was in reply to the clearly wrong assertion by parent that this was only an increase in absolute number of cases rather than proportion and the nonsensical idea that he was the only one to realize this.
I have no idea what the reason might be. AFAIK nothing has been convincingly proven so I don't know why you think that I do. Perhaps your reading comprehension is the problem along with your desire to pretend you know what I think. I won't tolerate somebody posting a clearly misleading falsehood just because it conforms to my personal world-view without challenging it.
If there were safe and served a purpose, sure. But you don't put stuff into a vaccine just for the fun of it. Thiomersal is added as a preservative to extend the shelf-life of the vaccine (i.e. make it safer for longer).
Hey, I'm not disagreeing either. I think the concept of an "epidemic" is over blown and I worry that a lot of kids that fit within the normal variation of humans are unnecessarily being labeled as autistic and therefore in need of treatment when they really don't. A lot of great scientists and engineers would probably be labeled as autistic by today's standards and it would be a shame if treatment robs us of some of the unique gifts some of these people have.
I'm suggesting that a compound that contains mercury, bound up in a molecule, isn't the same as elemental mercury. It's a basic principle of chemistry. Somebody else in this thread gave a good example in salt. Salt contains chlorine and sodium, and is mostly harmless (except in extreme amounts or too much over long periods of time), but elemental chlorine and elemental sodium would not be something I'd put in my mouth.
Elements != compounds and a compound containing a particular element may have no properties in common with the element by itself.
Another example, elemental phosphorus is nasty stuff. Very toxic, highly reactive. Match girls used to lose their jaws because of exposure to phosphorous while making matches. White phosphorus is used in incendiary weapons because of the horrible burns it causes people that don't heal. Yet, shocker! It's part of the back-bone of your DNA. It's part of the main energy carrying molecule in your metabolism (ATP). It's part of many biologically important molecules. There's phosphoric acid in your soda!
You do realize that the rate of autism, i.e. the number of cases per 1,000 people, is also increasing? In other words, when accounting for increasing in population, there is a rise in the rate of autism.
That is the question people are trying to answer. Personally, I think a large chunk of it is probably explained by higher rates of diagnosis. More kids who wouldn't have been label autistic back in the day are now being labeled. Whether it's really justified or not, is another question.
Slashdot Mirror
Google's primary business function is 'advertising',
FTFY
For a disease to spread amongst a population (a herd) it needs to be able to find another vulnerable host (or several hosts) to jump to before the current host either dies or recovers. If most of the population are immune (either inherently, through previous exposure, or through vaccination) then a disease can't spread. That is herd immunity. If person X is not immune to a disease and person Y has the disease, if X never meets Y and nobody who is vulnerable meets Y and then X (and therefore acts as a carrier between them) and there is no chain of vulnerable people between Y and X, then X is protected by herd immunity.
I've no idea what you're babbling on about.
Shouldn't that be output lag?
How often do video cards ever break? Especially modern ones that have sensors to detect heat (in case the fan breaks).
Mine broke a couple of months ago. It was about 2-3 years old.
Or just ignore it. It's background white noise and most people's brains are quite adept and filtering out background stimuli that aren't changing. I don't even notice my fans unless they stop!
...to break down what we call "herd immunity", which is also what we rely on to protect the small number of people in society who don't get vaccinations for "religious" reasons or because they have a demonstrable allergy to one of the vaccine components.
And also those for who get the vaccine, but it just plain doesn't work, for whatever reason.
They are not believable. Not by anybody outside the tin foil hat brigade. Anybody with half a brain can see the bad PR alone is enough to discourage the US from executing Assange - aside from the legal issues.
Sounds like the rantings of a paranoid schizophrenic. Reminds me of the SNL skits where Assange reminds people that no matter how he dies, even if it's decades from now and peacefully in his sleep, "it was murder!".
Personally, I thought "shit" was better.
And the middle between bad and bad?
+1 Insightful
Yeah but going to the other extreme isn't any better. The most pragmatic solution lies somewhere in the middle. The difficulty is in finding exactly where it is.
but second I hit "Ayn Rand" I just stopped reading.
Me too, well actually I rolled my eyes first, then stopped reading.
People sign up for porn sites? I mean you actually create an account and give them an e-mail address? No, of course you don't, unless you really can't resist the temptation to comment on YouPorn, you just watch the videos (hopefully in a private session in your browser). on the other hand, if you go to your favorite news website and you want to comment on a story and you see "sign up for a free account" versus click on Facebook Connect and comment right away, which are you going to pick (assuming you already have a Facebook account)? And once 90% of your users are signing up through Facebook, are you, as a website operator, going to go to all the hassle of maintaining your own account system with all the security headaches involved?
Of course it'll never have 100% reach (hopefully it'll never reach Slashdot), but it's already got much greater reach than previous efforts.
Personally, I have no desire to use it because I don't necessarily want EVERY comment I made associated with every other comment I make. Nor do I necessarily want everybody I know to be aware of every discussion I'm involved in. Especially those that happen when I'm supposed to be working.....
There was an interesting piece on MIT's Technology Review site about how Facebook is doing something that VeriSign, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google have all tried and mostly fail at, which is providing a single id and single log in for the internet. There are, distressingly, a whole bunch of sites that have jumped on the Facebook Connect service as a way to sign in to their website for, for example, posting comments. And, of course, there's also all those annoying "Like" buttons that keep popping up everywhere. So long-term? I don't know, but I don't think we are getting rid of Facebook any time soon.
Fully disclosure: I briefly played around with Facebook a couple of years ago, but quit after a couple of months after getting sick of seeing spam about which Sex in the City character somebody I barely knew back in high-school is supposed to be. Or how they scored in a "know your one-hit wonders of the '80s" quiz.
But you missed his most important distinction that convincingly proves that Intel Insider is not DRM:
Can't argue with that iron-clad, and not entirely arbitrary, logic.
Nonsense, it absolutely is DRM. Just read the other article linked in the summary that describes why it's not DRM:
Sounds like DRM to me. He's only argument for why it's not DRM is that, in this words, "DRM is a piece of software, not hardware." which is just mind-blowingly stupid. So a (theoretical) piece of hardware that did the exact same function as DRM wouldn't be DRM only by virtue of the fact that it's not software. That's a stupid distinction.
And besides, not all x86 processors are made my Intel.
You're fully of crap. The proportion of people who are diagnosed with autism has increased. That is absolutely, demonstrably true. That the increase might be entirely explained by an expanded definition and increased awareness (and I tend to think it probably is) is neither here nor there. It doesn't change the fact that the proportion of people, who have been clinically diagnosed and labeled as autistic, has increased. Whether or not those people are fairly labeled or are actually "sick" isn't the issue. My post was in reply to the clearly wrong assertion by parent that this was only an increase in absolute number of cases rather than proportion and the nonsensical idea that he was the only one to realize this.
I have no idea what the reason might be. AFAIK nothing has been convincingly proven so I don't know why you think that I do. Perhaps your reading comprehension is the problem along with your desire to pretend you know what I think. I won't tolerate somebody posting a clearly misleading falsehood just because it conforms to my personal world-view without challenging it.
Don't split hairs. It preserves the vaccine so the vaccine remains safe. Anyone with half a brain can see that's what I meant.
If there were safe and served a purpose, sure. But you don't put stuff into a vaccine just for the fun of it. Thiomersal is added as a preservative to extend the shelf-life of the vaccine (i.e. make it safer for longer).
Hey, I'm not disagreeing either. I think the concept of an "epidemic" is over blown and I worry that a lot of kids that fit within the normal variation of humans are unnecessarily being labeled as autistic and therefore in need of treatment when they really don't. A lot of great scientists and engineers would probably be labeled as autistic by today's standards and it would be a shame if treatment robs us of some of the unique gifts some of these people have.
I'm suggesting that a compound that contains mercury, bound up in a molecule, isn't the same as elemental mercury. It's a basic principle of chemistry. Somebody else in this thread gave a good example in salt. Salt contains chlorine and sodium, and is mostly harmless (except in extreme amounts or too much over long periods of time), but elemental chlorine and elemental sodium would not be something I'd put in my mouth.
Elements != compounds and a compound containing a particular element may have no properties in common with the element by itself.
Another example, elemental phosphorus is nasty stuff. Very toxic, highly reactive. Match girls used to lose their jaws because of exposure to phosphorous while making matches. White phosphorus is used in incendiary weapons because of the horrible burns it causes people that don't heal. Yet, shocker! It's part of the back-bone of your DNA. It's part of the main energy carrying molecule in your metabolism (ATP). It's part of many biologically important molecules. There's phosphoric acid in your soda!
You do realize that the rate of autism, i.e. the number of cases per 1,000 people, is also increasing? In other words, when accounting for increasing in population, there is a rise in the rate of autism.
That is the question people are trying to answer. Personally, I think a large chunk of it is probably explained by higher rates of diagnosis. More kids who wouldn't have been label autistic back in the day are now being labeled. Whether it's really justified or not, is another question.
Elemental mercury != mercury compounds. It's basic chemistry.