What "same thing"? That there are certain things that are inherent to the human condition? Sure, but what we surround ourselves with does affect that baseline. I prefer scientific studies to "history books" when it comes to analyzing human behavior in the present.
"Sure, but the parenting that is recommended by the 'experts' is the bad parenting. Even the recommendation that children should have screen time is caused by the 'experts' making conclusions and then looking for evidence to support it. The reason that you see a correlation between poorly developed kids and large screen times isn't due to the screens. It is due to the child being exposed to an extremely limited set of information."
You say that expert-recommended parenting is bad parenting, and you just leave that open, general statement to flap in the wind with nothing to hold it up. I certainly take issue with that assertion. Further, I think there's a dearth of evidence that these 'experts' you like to put in single quotes are simply looking for evidence to support their position. When doing research you do have to have a hypothesis, and that means testing a particular assertion. You have only the current research when doing evidence analysis. I certainly wouldn't want them trying to incorporate "common sense" into their results, because most analyses I've seen of "common sense" indicate that such stuff is usually anything but correct in most cases.
How do you know the cause of a correlation between poorly developed kids and screen time? Have you done research on the topic? That assertion requires evidence, not just gut feeling or common sense. It needs a citation or two to hold it up. It is a very specific claim and therefore needs some backing evidence.
I'm an American and I love food. I eat a wide variety of plants and animals and, yes, I do often have a problem with eating too much of it. But I do have taste buds, I do appreciate quality food, and I'm capable of both eating and differentiating between food at the top AND the bottom of the food quality scale.
Generalizations like this, especially in such heated terms, really do nothing for meaningful discussion. Then again, it's pretty clear from the tone of your comment that you're not interested in discussion. You're interested in being superior to everyone else. Good job. Work on your grammar and sentence structure a bit and maybe someday you'll actually impress upon someone that you are superior.
It is the fresh water issue that is the problem. Most of the earth's water is salt water, which isn't much good for growing crops, though I do largely agree with some of your other points.
Actually, while grass is water-hungry, cows can graze on a variety of plants, many of which are not water-hungry, and they can graze in areas which are unfit for crop production. Many of Africa's desertified and arid areas could be made green again by integrating native plants with smaller crop plots. This experiment has already been done in a couple areas and confirmed to work.
So yes, if you drag cows out onto a manicured lawn with modern, water-hungry grasses, it will prove to be less efficient than feeding them corn, but allowing them to graze plots of land sown with native plants which grow naturally in harmony with the local water table behavior you can feed cows more efficiently AND end up with healthier, if not more profitable, beef. Besides, I have yet to hear anyone griping about the effect free-range animals have on local water use compared to growing crops like corn which are known to be hard on the soil and water supply.
Either way, you're getting some benefit (i.e. viewing a website) without paying for it. How is that not stealing?
Well, let's get pedantic for a moment, shall we? Theft (or stealing) is about depriving people of physical property by taking it. Theft is defined rather clearly in most criminal codes because it is illegal. Strictly speaking, getting a benefit without paying for it isn't stealing unless it involved the illegal taking of physical property owned by someone else, thus depriving them of use of that property.
AdBlock isn't illegal, and it doesn't deprive owners of physical property by taking it from them. Therefore it is not theft and is thus not stealing.
You can make moral and ethical arguments about blocking ads without going to the "stealing" or "theft of service" stupidity, and I think this discussion is better if we avoid that particular line of thought, not the least because it is an improper argument.
Well, the WSJ article calls Muller a physicist, not a climatologist, so I'd like to think his handling of energy and radiation topics will be more spot-on than an unrelated field.
Well, I read the archived FAQ and TOS and I didn't see any disclaimers. Technically, a company that lists something like a lifetime guarantee or lifetime warranty can get away with only warrantying or guaranteeing the product or service for its market life. Meaning my frying pan with a lifetime warranty is good for what the company deems the lifetime of the frying pan, modified by federal and local laws on what constitutes an acceptable minimum lifetime period. On the other hand, the ad you linked via the Wayback Machine didn't say lifetime, but rather the life of the company. If they've been bought and changed hands they could be considered a new company. Either way, I'd say there certainly seems to be the possibility that they could be legally liable for breach of contract. Just make sure if you decide to take them to small claims court that there's no activity in your own history with their service that violates their TOS and Acceptable Use provisions, because they can use that against you.
Nathan Myhrvold is just a sock puppet for Wallace Breen.
"Well, we’ve had that name for a long time. I think we do a whole lot more good for the world than GigaOm does. How big is their malaria research project? How much effort do they put into polio? I’m quite curious! What on Earth have they done that is —"
vs
"Tell me, Dr. Freeman, if you can. You have destroyed so much. What is it, exactly, that you have created? Can you name even one thing? I thought not."
I have a pair of Sony PIIQ headphones. They are circumaural, superaural if you have large ears, and they are quite comfortable. The color scheme is a bit garish, but some are more acceptable than others. The bonus is that they sound great for their price. They are a Consumer Reports best buy from last year's Christmas gift season and now that I own a pair I know why. They have held up OK since Christmas for me. I don't have longer-term experience with them for that.
There is NOTHING less honest about not using the DMCA first. Honesty doesn't figure into this situation on the photographer's end in any way at all. And correct? Well, legally he's in the clear. I think your assessment of this situation is seriously warped.
Is has to do with the magnetism. I work in a library, and we have magnetic gates that detect active Tattle Tape strips in our books. If I'm wearing earphones when I pass through the gates they give off a high-pitched whine due to the magnetic influence on the speakers.
What's right is to rely on the US justice system, which requires that there be evidence of criminal activity prior to most searches and seizures. Further, judges need to be involved in adjudicating what constitutes probable cause. That is the way forward. Technology brings new challenges to law enforcement, but it also provides new tools. It is, as always, the job of the legal community to keep learning and stay abreast of technology, same as it is for everyone else. And when corporations or individuals want to pursue charges of copyright infringement, they must do so relying on the proper judicial structures as established. Copyright infringement is not some special crime which somehow doesn't require proper due process.
NPR had a story on the woman's lawsuit in small claims court over the mileage she got with her Hybrid Civic. The problem with her complaint is that Honda is required to report mileage numbers achieved by the EPA in their driving tests, driving tests which are actually a little more stringent now than they used to be. Honda is not allowed to report any numbers other than the EPA numbers.
Also avoid the comments on this article. There are a lot of politically motivated folks who don't understand what mileage numbers mean, how reporting those numbers works, and who believe global warming is a myth. These are not people who will get along well with science and factual data. They're more the 'truthy' types.
This thread on IGN is poor speculation. Developers often throw in nods to their seminal titles when creating new games. Besides, Bungie has already stated several times that Halo and Marathon are different universes and simply use some similar themes and ideas. And now that MS owns Halo, but not Bungie, Bungie would be hard pressed to position a new Marathon game as an actual Halo sequel. I wouldn't mind seeing them revive the Marathon universe, but it won't likely be by tying it explicitly to Halo.
Some techs enjoy it, but IT administrators hate the idea that they are 1) having to allow potentially insecure equipment on their precious network and 2) having to waste staff time to fix stuff which may not be in any way compatible with the various tools they've purchased or implemented to save time and money. These are the same administrators who lose sight of why they are there. Here's a hint: it has little to do with policy.
This probably happens at universities and colleges more than anywhere else.
Yes, it is irritating that older faculty won't migrate to Word from WordPerfect, but WordPerfect historically had the edge in editing large documents like book drafts, and the job of the faculty is to publish or perish AND to teach. That problem probably isn't as pronounced these days, and isn't as important as Expensive Equipment. If your chemistry lab bought a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer many years ago for $20000+ and that GC mass spec will only talk to a machine running Windows XP, your job is not to chastise them about how they need to go out and spend ANOTHER $20000 because you can't support Windows XP any longer. That GC mass spec is more expensive than any computer or number of computers the department will buy, so it needs to become a priority to support such things, even if it means making exceptions to policy.
It is all about getting work done, and if policy is making people needlessly spend redundant dollars and holding up the process of doing work, it means IT is broken.
Actually, I believe the reduced energy consumption of CFLs offsets the mercury contained in them. You see, coal contains mercury, and that mercury enters the environment as coal ash in the air and in material waste when the coal is burned for electricity. Did you know coal ash contains radioactive elements as well? Anyway, the CFLs reduce electricity consumption enough that the mercury prevented from entering the environment more than offsets the mercury in the bulb over the course of its life (this does not apply if you like to throw away perfectly good bulbs or smash them for no reason, however.)
Well, the greatest threat is when you are at greater than regular atmospheric pressure, but long-term exposure to over-oxygenation can cause many harmful effects on the body, many of which are reversible if symptoms are treated and oxygen levels brought down. There are cases, however, where you need much more available oxygen because your lungs are very bad at absorbing it. Wikipedia actually has a pretty nice article on the topic.
How do you conclude that their definition of chronic exposure is comparable to a yearly flu shot? Hey, too much oxygen or water is poisonous, even deadly. It's all about amounts. I have seen no credible research that suggests the amount of thimerosal in vaccines is sufficient to be of any risk to human health or development.
Further, while there may not be much cause to continue to use it in the US, low cost and ease of manufacture and distribution can be critical in poor nations which may already be struggling with preventable disease. In those nations the cheapest, quickest, easiest option which is "good enough" is often preferable, because otherwise they must simply do without.
Slashdot Mirror
What "same thing"? That there are certain things that are inherent to the human condition? Sure, but what we surround ourselves with does affect that baseline. I prefer scientific studies to "history books" when it comes to analyzing human behavior in the present.
Not at all. Let me quote you here:
"Sure, but the parenting that is recommended by the 'experts' is the bad parenting. Even the recommendation that children should have screen time is caused by the 'experts' making conclusions and then looking for evidence to support it. The reason that you see a correlation between poorly developed kids and large screen times isn't due to the screens. It is due to the child being exposed to an extremely limited set of information."
You say that expert-recommended parenting is bad parenting, and you just leave that open, general statement to flap in the wind with nothing to hold it up. I certainly take issue with that assertion. Further, I think there's a dearth of evidence that these 'experts' you like to put in single quotes are simply looking for evidence to support their position. When doing research you do have to have a hypothesis, and that means testing a particular assertion. You have only the current research when doing evidence analysis. I certainly wouldn't want them trying to incorporate "common sense" into their results, because most analyses I've seen of "common sense" indicate that such stuff is usually anything but correct in most cases.
How do you know the cause of a correlation between poorly developed kids and screen time? Have you done research on the topic? That assertion requires evidence, not just gut feeling or common sense. It needs a citation or two to hold it up. It is a very specific claim and therefore needs some backing evidence.
Yeah, I think I can speak for all other rational human beings in demanding to see some evidence of those assertions.
I'm an American and I love food. I eat a wide variety of plants and animals and, yes, I do often have a problem with eating too much of it. But I do have taste buds, I do appreciate quality food, and I'm capable of both eating and differentiating between food at the top AND the bottom of the food quality scale.
Generalizations like this, especially in such heated terms, really do nothing for meaningful discussion. Then again, it's pretty clear from the tone of your comment that you're not interested in discussion. You're interested in being superior to everyone else. Good job. Work on your grammar and sentence structure a bit and maybe someday you'll actually impress upon someone that you are superior.
It is the fresh water issue that is the problem. Most of the earth's water is salt water, which isn't much good for growing crops, though I do largely agree with some of your other points.
Actually, while grass is water-hungry, cows can graze on a variety of plants, many of which are not water-hungry, and they can graze in areas which are unfit for crop production. Many of Africa's desertified and arid areas could be made green again by integrating native plants with smaller crop plots. This experiment has already been done in a couple areas and confirmed to work.
So yes, if you drag cows out onto a manicured lawn with modern, water-hungry grasses, it will prove to be less efficient than feeding them corn, but allowing them to graze plots of land sown with native plants which grow naturally in harmony with the local water table behavior you can feed cows more efficiently AND end up with healthier, if not more profitable, beef. Besides, I have yet to hear anyone griping about the effect free-range animals have on local water use compared to growing crops like corn which are known to be hard on the soil and water supply.
Either way, you're getting some benefit (i.e. viewing a website) without paying for it. How is that not stealing?
Well, let's get pedantic for a moment, shall we? Theft (or stealing) is about depriving people of physical property by taking it. Theft is defined rather clearly in most criminal codes because it is illegal. Strictly speaking, getting a benefit without paying for it isn't stealing unless it involved the illegal taking of physical property owned by someone else, thus depriving them of use of that property.
AdBlock isn't illegal, and it doesn't deprive owners of physical property by taking it from them. Therefore it is not theft and is thus not stealing.
You can make moral and ethical arguments about blocking ads without going to the "stealing" or "theft of service" stupidity, and I think this discussion is better if we avoid that particular line of thought, not the least because it is an improper argument.
Well, the WSJ article calls Muller a physicist, not a climatologist, so I'd like to think his handling of energy and radiation topics will be more spot-on than an unrelated field.
L. L. Bean is the same way. I actually didn't return an item to them because I got years of use out of it and didn't feel like being a jackass.
Well, I read the archived FAQ and TOS and I didn't see any disclaimers. Technically, a company that lists something like a lifetime guarantee or lifetime warranty can get away with only warrantying or guaranteeing the product or service for its market life. Meaning my frying pan with a lifetime warranty is good for what the company deems the lifetime of the frying pan, modified by federal and local laws on what constitutes an acceptable minimum lifetime period. On the other hand, the ad you linked via the Wayback Machine didn't say lifetime, but rather the life of the company. If they've been bought and changed hands they could be considered a new company. Either way, I'd say there certainly seems to be the possibility that they could be legally liable for breach of contract. Just make sure if you decide to take them to small claims court that there's no activity in your own history with their service that violates their TOS and Acceptable Use provisions, because they can use that against you.
Nathan Myhrvold is just a sock puppet for Wallace Breen.
"Well, we’ve had that name for a long time. I think we do a whole lot more good for the world than GigaOm does. How big is their malaria research project? How much effort do they put into polio? I’m quite curious! What on Earth have they done that is —"
vs
"Tell me, Dr. Freeman, if you can. You have destroyed so much. What is it, exactly, that you have created? Can you name even one thing? I thought not."
I have a pair of Sony PIIQ headphones. They are circumaural, superaural if you have large ears, and they are quite comfortable. The color scheme is a bit garish, but some are more acceptable than others. The bonus is that they sound great for their price. They are a Consumer Reports best buy from last year's Christmas gift season and now that I own a pair I know why. They have held up OK since Christmas for me. I don't have longer-term experience with them for that.
There is NOTHING less honest about not using the DMCA first. Honesty doesn't figure into this situation on the photographer's end in any way at all. And correct? Well, legally he's in the clear. I think your assessment of this situation is seriously warped.
Is has to do with the magnetism. I work in a library, and we have magnetic gates that detect active Tattle Tape strips in our books. If I'm wearing earphones when I pass through the gates they give off a high-pitched whine due to the magnetic influence on the speakers.
WTF? How did my comment get appended to this topic? I thought I attached it to a different one. Sorry, folks.
Yes, that is exactly what the government is doing right now in regards to proper due process.
What's right is to rely on the US justice system, which requires that there be evidence of criminal activity prior to most searches and seizures. Further, judges need to be involved in adjudicating what constitutes probable cause. That is the way forward. Technology brings new challenges to law enforcement, but it also provides new tools. It is, as always, the job of the legal community to keep learning and stay abreast of technology, same as it is for everyone else. And when corporations or individuals want to pursue charges of copyright infringement, they must do so relying on the proper judicial structures as established. Copyright infringement is not some special crime which somehow doesn't require proper due process.
NPR had a story on the woman's lawsuit in small claims court over the mileage she got with her Hybrid Civic. The problem with her complaint is that Honda is required to report mileage numbers achieved by the EPA in their driving tests, driving tests which are actually a little more stringent now than they used to be. Honda is not allowed to report any numbers other than the EPA numbers.
Also avoid the comments on this article. There are a lot of politically motivated folks who don't understand what mileage numbers mean, how reporting those numbers works, and who believe global warming is a myth. These are not people who will get along well with science and factual data. They're more the 'truthy' types.
This thread on IGN is poor speculation. Developers often throw in nods to their seminal titles when creating new games. Besides, Bungie has already stated several times that Halo and Marathon are different universes and simply use some similar themes and ideas. And now that MS owns Halo, but not Bungie, Bungie would be hard pressed to position a new Marathon game as an actual Halo sequel. I wouldn't mind seeing them revive the Marathon universe, but it won't likely be by tying it explicitly to Halo.
Some techs enjoy it, but IT administrators hate the idea that they are 1) having to allow potentially insecure equipment on their precious network and 2) having to waste staff time to fix stuff which may not be in any way compatible with the various tools they've purchased or implemented to save time and money. These are the same administrators who lose sight of why they are there. Here's a hint: it has little to do with policy.
This probably happens at universities and colleges more than anywhere else.
Yes, it is irritating that older faculty won't migrate to Word from WordPerfect, but WordPerfect historically had the edge in editing large documents like book drafts, and the job of the faculty is to publish or perish AND to teach. That problem probably isn't as pronounced these days, and isn't as important as Expensive Equipment. If your chemistry lab bought a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer many years ago for $20000+ and that GC mass spec will only talk to a machine running Windows XP, your job is not to chastise them about how they need to go out and spend ANOTHER $20000 because you can't support Windows XP any longer. That GC mass spec is more expensive than any computer or number of computers the department will buy, so it needs to become a priority to support such things, even if it means making exceptions to policy.
It is all about getting work done, and if policy is making people needlessly spend redundant dollars and holding up the process of doing work, it means IT is broken.
Actually, I believe the reduced energy consumption of CFLs offsets the mercury contained in them. You see, coal contains mercury, and that mercury enters the environment as coal ash in the air and in material waste when the coal is burned for electricity. Did you know coal ash contains radioactive elements as well? Anyway, the CFLs reduce electricity consumption enough that the mercury prevented from entering the environment more than offsets the mercury in the bulb over the course of its life (this does not apply if you like to throw away perfectly good bulbs or smash them for no reason, however.)
Well, the greatest threat is when you are at greater than regular atmospheric pressure, but long-term exposure to over-oxygenation can cause many harmful effects on the body, many of which are reversible if symptoms are treated and oxygen levels brought down. There are cases, however, where you need much more available oxygen because your lungs are very bad at absorbing it. Wikipedia actually has a pretty nice article on the topic.
How do you conclude that their definition of chronic exposure is comparable to a yearly flu shot? Hey, too much oxygen or water is poisonous, even deadly. It's all about amounts. I have seen no credible research that suggests the amount of thimerosal in vaccines is sufficient to be of any risk to human health or development.
Further, while there may not be much cause to continue to use it in the US, low cost and ease of manufacture and distribution can be critical in poor nations which may already be struggling with preventable disease. In those nations the cheapest, quickest, easiest option which is "good enough" is often preferable, because otherwise they must simply do without.
That seems like an isolated result. Other studies have not found the same effect, to my knowledge.