Indeed, good luck getting most companies to support Linux under non-x86 architectures with drivers that necessarily contain proprietary IP.
nVidia is certainly not perfect, and I'm not going to suggest that their Linux support is the result of some kind of saintly benevolence. But, IMO, releasing official drivers for Linux and continuing to develop them, even if only on x86, is a huge step above completely ignoring Linux users (which is what most companies seem to do).
I'm not a hacker, so no one would miss me if I stopped using Linux. But, speaking as someone who has been using Linux since RedHat 5.2, I have always been conscious about buying hardware from manufacturers that support Linux and (when possible) avoiding manufacturers that make their products Windows-only. Hence, my video card is from nVidia, and I am happy to use their drivers. nVidia is a rarity in that it actually recognizes Linux users as potential customers and makes a point of supporting their product on our OS. This is something that should be encouraged--hardware manufactuers that say "We need to make our drivers available in Linux too" are what we want! To snub them would be extremely counterproductive. While it's wonderful that hard-working OSS developers have gotten a lot of otherwise unsupported hardware working, it is unrealistic to expect them to keep up with everything out there, and it is equally unrealistic to expect that companies with licensed IP, like nVidia, can open source their drivers. Thus, having companies support their hardware in Linux with binary drivers just like how they support their hardware in Windows is the best outcome that is at all realistic.
I have no plans to abandon Linux over this issue (as I'm sure a counterpatch would be available right away anyway), but I'm very thankful for Linus being in his "benevolent dictator" position right now.
I'm not into Anime, but from what I've seen of it, the girls in Anime usually:
1. DO look very young 2. DON'T look anything like any Asian people I've met, young or adult (and one of my best friends is a Japanese female in her early 20's).
Now, I understand that the girls are generally meant to be adult in the storylines (well, admittedly I'm assuming that since I don't watch Hentai), and I'm not in favor of any sort of censorship in this area, but I don't buy your explanation for why the girls look pre-adult.
On top of that, not every Linux distro has the same versions of the same libraries at the same time with the same patches and compilation options.
It really isn't as much of a problem as you make it sound. The open source software you have with your distro tends to be dynamically linked--meaning, it is compiled against certain versions of certain libraries, and you need to have those libraries installed for it to function properly. If you have a different version of the library than the one it was compiled against, you can run into some problems (depending on how much has changed between versions).
However, the commercial games I've seen released for Linux have been statically compiled. That means the functions they use from various libraries are built into the game's executable; therefore, whether you have those libraries installed, or which versions of them you have, does not matter.
And that's why I can still pop in one of my old Loki games that I got back when I was using Mandrake 6.something and it will run fine in my up-to-date Gentoo system. That's why, in addition to those Loki games, I've been able to play the Linux versions of Neverwinter Nights and Uplink across several different distros, and countless updates of my Gentoo system, without any problems.
If you had clicked on the link and read the article (in this case, Scott Adams' blog from today), you might have noticed the part where Mr. Adams says this:
I asked my doctor - a specialist for this condition - how many people have ever gotten better. Answer: zero.
Newsflash: Browsers that are actually used by large numbers of people have larger numbers of bugs found and exploited than browsers that are mostly ignored.
Easy--getting in power gives you more, well, power to use crooked tactics to STAY in power. That would seem to imply that yes, both parties are crooked as hell everywhere, or at least have the potential to become crooked as soon as both the opportunity and the necessity arise.
And the fact that both parties are like that suggests that, perhaps, it has more to do with human nature than political parties.
Deceptive or hidden advertising seems to be becoming far more common. Consider http://www.noscruf.org/. "NOSCRUF" presents itself as an organization against men who don't shave, and results of their surveys have been quoted by mainstream media without any recognition of the fact that, in reality, it's a fake organization created as an ad compaign by Gillette.
Yeah, I guess ADHD is prevalent among the masses of WoW players who have full-time jobs (and even, god forbid, family obligations!) and would like to experience end-game content within a year after they start playing.
20/40 man raids (and especially the fact that you have to do them to get the best equipment, which ruins PvP for non-raiders) is what nudged me into giving up on WoW. With an inconsistent work schedule that prevents me from being able to commit to any particular day and time to raid, and most of my playing time being in the morning when no one is raiding anyway, raids were not an option for me. And, even if I could have raided, that simply isn't what I enjoy. I want to do PvP, solo content, and some small group stuff, but I hate being just one of 40 people.
I, too, wondered if certain types of benign software might be caught in the crossfire with this legislation. After reading through it, I'm not worried about that.
The bill is littered with words/phrases like "through intentionally deceptive means", "deceptively", "intentionally misrepresenting", "falsely representing", "without the authorization of an owner or an operator", etc.
In every section of the bill, it's rather clear that the target of the legislation is software that deceives the user and/or does things against the will of the user.
My biggest concern now isn't that benign software will be punished; rather, I suspect this bill will be useless because spyware companies will just embed "You give us permission to blah blah blah" clauses deep into those EULAs that no one really reads.
with none of virulent Linux zealot attitudes to go with it
Wow, I've heard all the crap about the GPL being a "virulent" license, but I didn't realize that now we Linux users are also considered virulent people!
(Okay, I admit that I do have a cold today, but I didn't think that had anything to do with my OS choice.)
You can play MP3s on the iPod JUST FINE. Don't sell WMA, and you'll be alright.
I didn't say you can't play MP3s on an iPod. I said you pretty much need an iPod if you want to use iTMS. (Maybe not necessarily, but at least for a casual user like my roommate, using other players with iTMS is not feasible.)
And don't say that the RIAA won't allow it, because emusic.com has been selling non-DRM plain vanilla MP3s for some time now.
Last time I checked emusic.com, which admittedly was a while ago, they were only selling music from non-RIAA labels.
You chose a player (iPod) that is designed to lock you in to a specific service (iTMS). Take some responsibility for your choice instead of blaming others for not bowing down to the almighty iPod.
That's quite an interesting way of putting it. I don't think I've ever heard of a format not supporting a player/program/whatever. I would have thought that it's the player that doesn't support the format, but maybe I'm just weird.
If Apple cares about their customers enough, they can release firmware updates to allow iPods to play WMA. (Well, assuming firmware updates are possible with iPods... maybe I've just been spoiled by my Neuros.)
On a side note, one of my roommates wants to buy an iPod soon. Knowing that he doesn't have a lot of money to spare, I started telling him about other mp3 players that would be a better deal for him. His response was, "Yeah, but I want to use iTunes."
How come we bash Microsoft's monopolizing tactics but praise Apple for doing pretty much the same thing with iPods and iTMS?
I read this book not too long ago, since I work with people who have developmental disabilities. It's a very good book, and it helped me communicate more effectively with one of the guys I work with.
As someone else mentioned, the character in the book actually has autism, not Asperger's--though most would consider Asperger's to basically be a very mild autism. And the character in the book is certainly near the milder end of the spectrum, so it's not surprising if those with Aspergers can relate.
You've posted this at least twice, and neither of the two posts you responded to said ANYTHING about "consistency".
Consistency and visual appeal are not necessarily the same thing. Personally (not talking specifically about Gnome, here), I like for apps to have a bit of a unique look. I like how xmms looks distinctly like xmms, and Firefox looks distinctly like Firefox.
I prefer KDE over Gnome myself (though I've been using plain ol' WindowMaker for the past year or so), but it bothers me how so many KDE apps look like clones of each other. It's not that they're ugly, but that "consistency" makes them feel like they all have this very bland generic appearance.
Wow, people complain about Gentoo users, while mindless (and blatantly incorrect) Gentoo-user-bashing gets an insightful mod.
Mandrake's reputation as a newbie distro goes back to when it was first created. Mandrake seems more of a moderate distro now, because now so many distros have graphical installs and preconfigured desktops, and there are now distros that take newbie-friendliness to greater extremes.
But back when Mandrake was first created, it was basically RedHat with a preconfigured KDE and user-friendly install. This was back when those were things RedHat didn't have. Back when the only Debian-based distro was Corel Linux (I could be wrong about that--I'm not sure exactly how far back Libranet goes).
Mandrake was _specifically targetted_ at new Linux users switching from Windows in much the way Lindows and Xandros are now. So it had a reputation as a newbie distro, and the reputation kind of stuck even though the aforementioned newer distros have gone to greater extremes to try to make things newbie-friendly.
I had my fun with Gentoo.. but I like to have an up and running system in 20 minutes. And, I DID install Gentoo completely - I was just forced to recompile my kernel 3 times until I finally got it right.
Mandrake = fun for the whole family.
Yeah, and I had my fun with Mandrake, but got tired of it after every version I installed had packages that just plain didn't work right. (Maybe it's better now, I haven't tried it in a little over a year.) Software compiled in Gentoo almost always works great for me, and any problems that do come up in an ebuild can be worked around by simply installing a different version until the newer one gets sorted out.
Gentoo = More fun for me.
But I don't care if you use it or not. Just because someone likes Gentoo doesn't mean they're trying to bully everyone else into using it.
I'm having to deal with that now too. One of the jobs I've applied for recently wanted me to upload my resume in.doc format. I don't have MS Office, so I had to have one of my roommates view my resume on his computer so we could fix the embarrassing formatting errors in the translation.
I don't blame OpenOffice for this, since the problem is Microsoft's crappy file formats and the pathological eagerness of many organizations to depend on them. However, it was still a rather irritating barrier I had to fight through to apply for a job. And most people, unfortunately, would perceive it as a problem with OpenOffice, and stick with MS instead of dealing with the hassle.
Heh, checking the links I just noticed the second one (on sucralose/Splenda) is currently censored because of legal actions in the U.K. Oh well, you can do a google search on something like "splenda dangers" and find plenty of stuff.
I'm not giving an opinion on the veracity of the linked articles, just showing that, at the very least, some people have acute negative reactions to the chemicals used as artificial sweeteners, and the long-term effects of using them regularly are pretty much unknown.
You're right that the weight-loss benefit of exercise isn't from the actual calories burned during the exercise. You're wrong to assume that means that exercise does not have weight loss benefits (or that the weight loss benefit is insignificant).
The importance of exercise for losing weight is in these effects:
1. It increases your metabolism for a long time after you finish exercising, so it keeps you burning more calories throughot the day. 2. It makes your body more efficient at burning fat, so that a greater percentage of calories you burn during normal activity will be from fat. 3. It helps prevent your body from losing muscle. If you just cut calories, your body burns muscle as well as fat, which slows your metabolism. 4. When you lose fat from dieting, your body thinks you're starving and slows down your metabolism to try to hold onto your fat. Exercise helps prevent (or at least reduce) this.
I'm not saying diet isn't important. I've had plenty of experience with losing weight in my life, and one thing I've noticed is that it's very easy to maintain a steady weight from either dieting or exercising alone, but difficult to lose weight from either. But intelligently combining them makes it fairly easy to lose weight.
#4 above is something I've experienced fairly acutely. When I reduce how much I eat, and don't exercise, it is not long before I notice my body temperature drop. I start to feel internally cold, even if the temperature around me is fairly warm. I notice the same thing in a lot of skinny girls who use the "just don't eat much" method of staying skinny (which seems to be the most popular weight loss method for women in the U.S.). I'll be in a room wearing a tee-shirt and thinking "Damn, it's hot in here", and the doesn't-eat-much skinny girl, wearing a sweat shirt, starts complaining about how cold it is.
Anyway, the other thing to note about exercise is that popular opinions about exercise are every bit as stupid and backwards as popular opinions about dieting. Long, slow, aerobic exercise is very inefficient and almost as unhelpful as you claim. (Except for people who are very out-of-shape--you need to start slow and easy and work your way up.)
Once you're fit enough to handle it, it's much more efficient and beneficial to use intense anaerobic exercise (not just weight-bearing exercises, but also anaerobic cardio like sprint intervals). That's the kind of exercise that really produces the benefits I listed above.
You're talking about young people. The health problems related to obesity are things that take a toll on your body over a period of time. They might make you easily short of breath, fatigued, etc. early on, but it's not until you reach your 50's and 60's that you're likely to die prematurely from obesity-related issues.
Also, just because someone is a health freak doesn't mean he knows what he's doing. Take your marathon runners, for example. Running marathons is absolutely NOT healthy. True, you have to get your cardiovascular system in good shape to be able to do it, but exercise is best in small, intense doses followed by adequate nutrition and rest.
Ever notice how marathon runners look like they have practically no muscle? Once their bodies use up their stored glycogen, to keep them going their bodies have to feed off the proteins that make up their muscle and immune system. It is extremely typical for runners to get sick after a marathon. I wouldn't be surprised if the frequently compromised immune systems of marathon runners increase their risk for things like cancer as well.
There's no contradiction in saying that someone prefers something for genetic reasons.
I might (hypothetically) be biologically inclined to despise the nasty taste of raw onions. That doesn't mean I can't tell the teenage slave at Wendy's "I'd prefer not to have onions on my burger, please."
I think this is where you have to make a distinction between what a person naturally feels and what a person does.
You can believe that the former is innate (controlled primarily biologically, or perhaps even by early childhood experiences that are out of the person's control), while accepting that people still have control over the latter. So no, believing homosexuality has a biological cause does not automatically mean believing that fate controls everything people do.
Personally, I've had several homosexual friends, and all of them feel as innately attracted to the same sex as I feel innately attracted to the opposite sex. I'm not saying there aren't exceptions. I'm guessing the exceptions are rather rare among men, while women (due to fewer inhibitions and societal taboos about having close physical contact with other women) are perhaps more likely to "experiment".
Yeah, innate homosexuals they still have a choice over how they react to their feelings. In my opinion, however, expecting that someone who feels homosexual should ignore their feelings and marry someone of the opposite sex, is every bit as ridiculous and disgusting as expecting that a heterosexual person should marry someone of the same sex.
It's also the same consumer market that legalised same-sex marriage in several states and a number of nations.
"Several" states? "Consumer market"???
There is a grand total of 1 U.S. State that allows same-sex marriages--Massachusetts. Until yesterday, Vermont was the only State allowing civil unions. The same-sex marriages in in Massachusetts and civil unions in Vermont were both the result of actions by the courts, not by any "consumer market".
Just yesterday, Connecticut became the second State to allow same-sex civil unions. CT is the first State in which allowing civil unions was initiated by the State legislature, rather than the courts. That's an improvement over having to be forced by the courts, but it's still not quite the "consumer market".
Now, by contrast, those previously mentioned 11 anti-gay marriage State constitutional amendments were voted on by "the people" during last year's presidential elections. More specifically, over 20 million people voted on the amendments, and those in favor of the amendments out-voted those against them by a 2-to-1 ratio. There's your "consumer market".
Unfortunately, people really are that closed-minded, and the U.S. really is becoming increasingly conservative. I fear that the notion that "a liberal can become a conservative in 30 years without changing a single opinion" might soon be reversed.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed, good luck getting most companies to support Linux under non-x86 architectures with drivers that necessarily contain proprietary IP.
nVidia is certainly not perfect, and I'm not going to suggest that their Linux support is the result of some kind of saintly benevolence. But, IMO, releasing official drivers for Linux and continuing to develop them, even if only on x86, is a huge step above completely ignoring Linux users (which is what most companies seem to do).
I'm not a hacker, so no one would miss me if I stopped using Linux. But, speaking as someone who has been using Linux since RedHat 5.2, I have always been conscious about buying hardware from manufacturers that support Linux and (when possible) avoiding manufacturers that make their products Windows-only. Hence, my video card is from nVidia, and I am happy to use their drivers. nVidia is a rarity in that it actually recognizes Linux users as potential customers and makes a point of supporting their product on our OS. This is something that should be encouraged--hardware manufactuers that say "We need to make our drivers available in Linux too" are what we want! To snub them would be extremely counterproductive. While it's wonderful that hard-working OSS developers have gotten a lot of otherwise unsupported hardware working, it is unrealistic to expect them to keep up with everything out there, and it is equally unrealistic to expect that companies with licensed IP, like nVidia, can open source their drivers. Thus, having companies support their hardware in Linux with binary drivers just like how they support their hardware in Windows is the best outcome that is at all realistic.
I have no plans to abandon Linux over this issue (as I'm sure a counterpatch would be available right away anyway), but I'm very thankful for Linus being in his "benevolent dictator" position right now.
I'm not into Anime, but from what I've seen of it, the girls in Anime usually:
1. DO look very young
2. DON'T look anything like any Asian people I've met, young or adult (and one of my best friends is a Japanese female in her early 20's).
Now, I understand that the girls are generally meant to be adult in the storylines (well, admittedly I'm assuming that since I don't watch Hentai), and I'm not in favor of any sort of censorship in this area, but I don't buy your explanation for why the girls look pre-adult.
On top of that, not every Linux distro has the same versions
of the same libraries at the same time with the same patches
and compilation options.
It really isn't as much of a problem as you make it sound. The open source software you have with your distro tends to be dynamically linked--meaning, it is compiled against certain versions of certain libraries, and you need to have those libraries installed for it to function properly. If you have a different version of the library than the one it was compiled against, you can run into some problems (depending on how much has changed between versions).
However, the commercial games I've seen released for Linux have been statically compiled. That means the functions they use from various libraries are built into the game's executable; therefore, whether you have those libraries installed, or which versions of them you have, does not matter.
And that's why I can still pop in one of my old Loki games that I got back when I was using Mandrake 6.something and it will run fine in my up-to-date Gentoo system. That's why, in addition to those Loki games, I've been able to play the Linux versions of Neverwinter Nights and Uplink across several different distros, and countless updates of my Gentoo system, without any problems.
If you had clicked on the link and read the article (in this case, Scott Adams' blog from today), you might have noticed the part where Mr. Adams says this:
I asked my doctor - a specialist for this condition - how many people have ever gotten better. Answer: zero.
Newsflash: Browsers that are actually used by large numbers of people have larger numbers of bugs found and exploited than browsers that are mostly ignored.
Easy--getting in power gives you more, well, power to use crooked tactics to STAY in power. That would seem to imply that yes, both parties are crooked as hell everywhere, or at least have the potential to become crooked as soon as both the opportunity and the necessity arise.
And the fact that both parties are like that suggests that, perhaps, it has more to do with human nature than political parties.
Deceptive or hidden advertising seems to be becoming far more common. Consider http://www.noscruf.org/. "NOSCRUF" presents itself as an organization against men who don't shave, and results of their surveys have been quoted by mainstream media without any recognition of the fact that, in reality, it's a fake organization created as an ad compaign by Gillette.
Yeah, I guess ADHD is prevalent among the masses of WoW players who have full-time jobs (and even, god forbid, family obligations!) and would like to experience end-game content within a year after they start playing.
20/40 man raids (and especially the fact that you have to do them to get the best equipment, which ruins PvP for non-raiders) is what nudged me into giving up on WoW. With an inconsistent work schedule that prevents me from being able to commit to any particular day and time to raid, and most of my playing time being in the morning when no one is raiding anyway, raids were not an option for me. And, even if I could have raided, that simply isn't what I enjoy. I want to do PvP, solo content, and some small group stuff, but I hate being just one of 40 people.
I, too, wondered if certain types of benign software might be caught in the crossfire with this legislation. After reading through it, I'm not worried about that.
The bill is littered with words/phrases like "through intentionally deceptive means", "deceptively", "intentionally misrepresenting", "falsely representing", "without the authorization of an owner or an operator", etc.
In every section of the bill, it's rather clear that the target of the legislation is software that deceives the user and/or does things against the will of the user.
My biggest concern now isn't that benign software will be punished; rather, I suspect this bill will be useless because spyware companies will just embed "You give us permission to blah blah blah" clauses deep into those EULAs that no one really reads.
with none of virulent Linux zealot attitudes to go with it
Wow, I've heard all the crap about the GPL being a "virulent" license, but I didn't realize that now we Linux users are also considered virulent people!
(Okay, I admit that I do have a cold today, but I didn't think that had anything to do with my OS choice.)
You can play MP3s on the iPod JUST FINE. Don't sell WMA, and you'll be alright.
I didn't say you can't play MP3s on an iPod. I said you pretty much need an iPod if you want to use iTMS. (Maybe not necessarily, but at least for a casual user like my roommate, using other players with iTMS is not feasible.)
And don't say that the RIAA won't allow it, because emusic.com has been selling non-DRM plain vanilla MP3s for some time now.
Last time I checked emusic.com, which admittedly was a while ago, they were only selling music from non-RIAA labels.
You chose a player (iPod) that is designed to lock you in to a specific service (iTMS). Take some responsibility for your choice instead of blaming others for not bowing down to the almighty iPod.
when its format doesn't support the player
That's quite an interesting way of putting it. I don't think I've ever heard of a format not supporting a player/program/whatever. I would have thought that it's the player that doesn't support the format, but maybe I'm just weird.
If Apple cares about their customers enough, they can release firmware updates to allow iPods to play WMA. (Well, assuming firmware updates are possible with iPods... maybe I've just been spoiled by my Neuros.)
On a side note, one of my roommates wants to buy an iPod soon. Knowing that he doesn't have a lot of money to spare, I started telling him about other mp3 players that would be a better deal for him. His response was, "Yeah, but I want to use iTunes."
How come we bash Microsoft's monopolizing tactics but praise Apple for doing pretty much the same thing with iPods and iTMS?
I read this book not too long ago, since I work with people who have developmental disabilities. It's a very good book, and it helped me communicate more effectively with one of the guys I work with.
As someone else mentioned, the character in the book actually has autism, not Asperger's--though most would consider Asperger's to basically be a very mild autism. And the character in the book is certainly near the milder end of the spectrum, so it's not surprising if those with Aspergers can relate.
You've posted this at least twice, and neither of the two posts you responded to said ANYTHING about "consistency".
Consistency and visual appeal are not necessarily the same thing. Personally (not talking specifically about Gnome, here), I like for apps to have a bit of a unique look. I like how xmms looks distinctly like xmms, and Firefox looks distinctly like Firefox.
I prefer KDE over Gnome myself (though I've been using plain ol' WindowMaker for the past year or so), but it bothers me how so many KDE apps look like clones of each other. It's not that they're ugly, but that "consistency" makes them feel like they all have this very bland generic appearance.
Wow, people complain about Gentoo users, while mindless (and blatantly incorrect) Gentoo-user-bashing gets an insightful mod.
Mandrake's reputation as a newbie distro goes back to when it was first created. Mandrake seems more of a moderate distro now, because now so many distros have graphical installs and preconfigured desktops, and there are now distros that take newbie-friendliness to greater extremes.
But back when Mandrake was first created, it was basically RedHat with a preconfigured KDE and user-friendly install. This was back when those were things RedHat didn't have. Back when the only Debian-based distro was Corel Linux (I could be wrong about that--I'm not sure exactly how far back Libranet goes).
Mandrake was _specifically targetted_ at new Linux users switching from Windows in much the way Lindows and Xandros are now. So it had a reputation as a newbie distro, and the reputation kind of stuck even though the aforementioned newer distros have gone to greater extremes to try to make things newbie-friendly.
I had my fun with Gentoo.. but I like to have an up and running system in 20 minutes. And, I DID install Gentoo completely - I was just forced to recompile my kernel 3 times until I finally got it right.
Mandrake = fun for the whole family.
Yeah, and I had my fun with Mandrake, but got tired of it after every version I installed had packages that just plain didn't work right. (Maybe it's better now, I haven't tried it in a little over a year.) Software compiled in Gentoo almost always works great for me, and any problems that do come up in an ebuild can be worked around by simply installing a different version until the newer one gets sorted out.
Gentoo = More fun for me.
But I don't care if you use it or not. Just because someone likes Gentoo doesn't mean they're trying to bully everyone else into using it.
I'm having to deal with that now too. One of the jobs I've applied for recently wanted me to upload my resume in .doc format. I don't have MS Office, so I had to have one of my roommates view my resume on his computer so we could fix the embarrassing formatting errors in the translation.
I don't blame OpenOffice for this, since the problem is Microsoft's crappy file formats and the pathological eagerness of many organizations to depend on them. However, it was still a rather irritating barrier I had to fight through to apply for a job. And most people, unfortunately, would perceive it as a problem with OpenOffice, and stick with MS instead of dealing with the hassle.
http://www.alkalizeforhealth.net/Lsweetdebate7.htm r s.htm
http://www.mercola.com/2000/dec/3/sucralose_dange
Heh, checking the links I just noticed the second one (on sucralose/Splenda) is currently censored because of legal actions in the U.K. Oh well, you can do a google search on something like "splenda dangers" and find plenty of stuff.
I'm not giving an opinion on the veracity of the linked articles, just showing that, at the very least, some people have acute negative reactions to the chemicals used as artificial sweeteners, and the long-term effects of using them regularly are pretty much unknown.
You're right that the weight-loss benefit of exercise isn't from the actual calories burned during the exercise. You're wrong to assume that means that exercise does not have weight loss benefits (or that the weight loss benefit is insignificant).
The importance of exercise for losing weight is in these effects:
1. It increases your metabolism for a long time after you finish exercising, so it keeps you burning more calories throughot the day.
2. It makes your body more efficient at burning fat, so that a greater percentage of calories you burn during normal activity will be from fat.
3. It helps prevent your body from losing muscle. If you just cut calories, your body burns muscle as well as fat, which slows your metabolism.
4. When you lose fat from dieting, your body thinks you're starving and slows down your metabolism to try to hold onto your fat. Exercise helps prevent (or at least reduce) this.
I'm not saying diet isn't important. I've had plenty of experience with losing weight in my life, and one thing I've noticed is that it's very easy to maintain a steady weight from either dieting or exercising alone, but difficult to lose weight from either. But intelligently combining them makes it fairly easy to lose weight.
#4 above is something I've experienced fairly acutely. When I reduce how much I eat, and don't exercise, it is not long before I notice my body temperature drop. I start to feel internally cold, even if the temperature around me is fairly warm. I notice the same thing in a lot of skinny girls who use the "just don't eat much" method of staying skinny (which seems to be the most popular weight loss method for women in the U.S.). I'll be in a room wearing a tee-shirt and thinking "Damn, it's hot in here", and the doesn't-eat-much skinny girl, wearing a sweat shirt, starts complaining about how cold it is.
Anyway, the other thing to note about exercise is that popular opinions about exercise are every bit as stupid and backwards as popular opinions about dieting. Long, slow, aerobic exercise is very inefficient and almost as unhelpful as you claim. (Except for people who are very out-of-shape--you need to start slow and easy and work your way up.)
Once you're fit enough to handle it, it's much more efficient and beneficial to use intense anaerobic exercise (not just weight-bearing exercises, but also anaerobic cardio like sprint intervals). That's the kind of exercise that really produces the benefits I listed above.
You're talking about young people. The health problems related to obesity are things that take a toll on your body over a period of time. They might make you easily short of breath, fatigued, etc. early on, but it's not until you reach your 50's and 60's that you're likely to die prematurely from obesity-related issues.
Also, just because someone is a health freak doesn't mean he knows what he's doing. Take your marathon runners, for example. Running marathons is absolutely NOT healthy. True, you have to get your cardiovascular system in good shape to be able to do it, but exercise is best in small, intense doses followed by adequate nutrition and rest.
Ever notice how marathon runners look like they have practically no muscle? Once their bodies use up their stored glycogen, to keep them going their bodies have to feed off the proteins that make up their muscle and immune system. It is extremely typical for runners to get sick after a marathon. I wouldn't be surprised if the frequently compromised immune systems of marathon runners increase their risk for things like cancer as well.
There's no contradiction in saying that someone prefers something for genetic reasons.
I might (hypothetically) be biologically inclined to despise the nasty taste of raw onions. That doesn't mean I can't tell the teenage slave at Wendy's "I'd prefer not to have onions on my burger, please."
I think this is where you have to make a distinction between what a person naturally feels and what a person does.
You can believe that the former is innate (controlled primarily biologically, or perhaps even by early childhood experiences that are out of the person's control), while accepting that people still have control over the latter. So no, believing homosexuality has a biological cause does not automatically mean believing that fate controls everything people do.
Personally, I've had several homosexual friends, and all of them feel as innately attracted to the same sex as I feel innately attracted to the opposite sex. I'm not saying there aren't exceptions. I'm guessing the exceptions are rather rare among men, while women (due to fewer inhibitions and societal taboos about having close physical contact with other women) are perhaps more likely to "experiment".
Yeah, innate homosexuals they still have a choice over how they react to their feelings. In my opinion, however, expecting that someone who feels homosexual should ignore their feelings and marry someone of the opposite sex, is every bit as ridiculous and disgusting as expecting that a heterosexual person should marry someone of the same sex.
It's also the same consumer market that legalised same-sex marriage in several states and a number of nations.
"Several" states? "Consumer market"???
There is a grand total of 1 U.S. State that allows same-sex marriages--Massachusetts. Until yesterday, Vermont was the only State allowing civil unions. The same-sex marriages in in Massachusetts and civil unions in Vermont were both the result of actions by the courts, not by any "consumer market".
Just yesterday, Connecticut became the second State to allow same-sex civil unions. CT is the first State in which allowing civil unions was initiated by the State legislature, rather than the courts. That's an improvement over having to be forced by the courts, but it's still not quite the "consumer market".
Now, by contrast, those previously mentioned 11 anti-gay marriage State constitutional amendments were voted on by "the people" during last year's presidential elections. More specifically, over 20 million people voted on the amendments, and those in favor of the amendments out-voted those against them by a 2-to-1 ratio. There's your "consumer market".
Unfortunately, people really are that closed-minded, and the U.S. really is becoming increasingly conservative. I fear that the notion that "a liberal can become a conservative in 30 years without changing a single opinion" might soon be reversed.