Biblical example: Exodus 12:22 A fetus has value, but not the value of a living person.
Genetics example: An embryonic stem cell, or the initial fertilized 'egg' is an undifferentiated mass of stem cells, that can develop into any part of the human body, but it is not a person. It has the potential to become a person, but it also has the potential to just form say, a toenail. It can be divided into two, three or more to produce identical twins, triplets, or even more people - at what point is this one or more people? Even more interestingly - rarely, two separate eggs or masses of embryonic stem cells can fuse in the womb to form a single person, with two different genetic lines, even of different sexes (even less common, but causing some varieties of hermaphoditism). This is known as mosaicism, or sometimes even referred to human chimeras. Neither embryo 'died', and yet a mosaic person is not 'two' people, but one. Therefore, embryos are not people.
So, if we know embryos are not people, and are not people for awhile, and yet babies are - then, they become people as they develop at some point between these two points, and we're back to arguing exactly when.
For comparison, Judaic thought holds an embryo to be as 'mere water' for the first 40 days, and after that, of value but still essentially part of the mother (of her thigh) and not-a-person until birth (when the head, or most of the body has exited).
From a biological standpoint, over 50% of fertilized eggs are lost or rejected before the end of the first trimester, most in the first month or so. After that, you have the earliest point at which a fetus begins to be viable (ie, low survival rate, and likely to have disabilities), where the existing life (mother) should take priority, through to the likelihood of the birth of a healthy infant, and so similar priority.
All in all, even better would be more of a priority on efficient methods to prevent conception in the first place. Both making them available, and developing new ones. There's got to be a better way. The current ones, while probably the greatest social breakthrough of the last 100 years, do kind of suck.:P
> Quit teaching them as zygotes that math is nerdy and for boys.
True, I'm a female computer geek, and I know plenty of the girls I knew at highschool etc could have done Computer Science, but they *didn't*. In NZ at least, girls outperform boys in maths at a highschool level, and friends of mine spent all their time online, making personal websites, playing round with javascript to do cheesy little effects, and yeah that sounds basic, but at 15, that had a grasp of the basics, and could have continued, but none of them even *considered* it as a career option.
And I *know* why I turned out different, I was fairly socially isolated from the age of 7 or so at school (I figure it was more situational than anything I did, but still, I guess it was a little unusual, I've noticed girls tend to get less isolated than boys, people tend to be friendlier, and when they're teens, not view girl loners as quite as weird), spent a lot of my time by myself, reading books. Especially science fiction. So rather than taking my cultural conditioning from people around me, I took it from books, and of course I identified with the main characters rather than the generally non-existent female characters (golden age sci-fi generally).
The horrific irony being, that blue eyed people are more likely to have eyesight problems than brown eyed, and the general population distribution of Europeans indicating we should probably have *more* melanin (especially round the southern hemisphere), not less (except if we're living in Iceland or somesuch).
That's what I find interesting about 'intelligence' in different areas, it's really just an approach, but interestingly it often doesn't cross subject areas.
E.g. with a computer, if I don't know what to do (ie instruction manual), I'll pay attention, I'll take a look at the options available to me, choose the most likely, and experiment til I've got it working. After a while, standard behaviours and layout are familiar enough that it's even easier to figure out how new programs work. Someone who doesn't have that, will not be paying as much attention (it's not an interest to them), rather than experimenting, they freeze because they don't want to screw up, and they never get familiar enough with the underlying concepts to feel comfortable.
Now, I am so not a cooking geek. Some people just walk into a kitchen, and there's food, and different spices, and they just put it all together and it tastes fabulous, whereas I burn things, misread instructions even if I have them, and have 'the fear' when it comes to randomly adding things, because I don't want to stuff it up.
And yet... isn't it just the same? Yes, I could fuck up my computer just the same, and when I was a kid, I did several times, and I learned from that. Yes, I could just use the 'instruction manual' when it comes to cooking, but why do I stuff up even with it, when I don't need one with most computer software?
I've seen the same things when it comes to cars, sewing, art, math, chemistry, all sorts of things... Often, it's because people have a preconceived notion of what they'll find fun, and what they will be bad at, and then the 'Attitude' with which they approach these tasks kinda becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
And therefore, I try and be patient when I'm helping a non-computer geek, because I know there's probably another area in which they could way out-geek me, and if I can help them, maybe they'll get past 'the fear' and start to believe that they actually like computers, and get 'the attitude' necessary to be a computer geek, or at least proficient user.
You may permanently transfer ownership of the Game and all parts thereof
It seems pretty clear to my reading, there is one CD key, and one account and Blizzard gives you permission to sell that account along with everything else, but if you're not happy with that - too bad.
If you don't want someone else's stinky account or you don't trust them - too bad.
Ok, so it's not like some other games, and it would be preferable to have it like other games, but it's not that uncommon either...
1) The fact that it's the kernel *does* make a damn difference, most bugs are in the gui, graphical shit, and most definately not on the kernal which is actually *smaller* in Windows. Comparing bugs in the kernal to bugs in the desktop manager is like apples & oranges.
2) The article is a fanboy piece of journalism (imho as someone who actually uses & supports linux & open source). They are not even comparing it to the Windows operating system, but to the number of bugs you'd expect in a piece of 'commercial software' of that size. Great. Well even I'll accept that M$, however we may slag them, has a *much* higher standard of quality than your average 'commercial' operation.
So, surprise, surprise. Something as widely publicised as the linux kernel, using opensource, has many less bugs that your average piece of software. Whoopdee. Now, if they were to do the same to kde, the various x windows, or open office I'd be a mite more impressed. Since they don't have the prestige value of the linux kernel, they've got much further to go.
I am not an Architect etc, but the house actually collects all the water that runs down the sides, so if you build it on a slightly raised area, shouldn't that keep the underneath fairly dry?
You'd only need a certain amount as ballast, so you'd just have to design some way for waste-water to be disposed of - which appears to be 'the garden', with their plan for a composting toilet.
You're talking about accesibility - which while it is *usually* more Usable, Accesibility is not the *same* thing as Usability.
And someone else has already explained this: "Usability? How about accessibility?" by digitect (217483) http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1 29725&thre shold=-1&commentsort=0&tid=172&mode=thread&cid=108 21377 and the reply JavaRob
Sounds interesting... I Am Not A Crytography expert, so I was just wondering if you could explain further why *excluding* punctuation and numbers was harder to crack? If you didn't know *which* characters were letters, numbers, or punctuation, wouldn't that mean instead of just trying 26^10 combinations, you'd be doing (26+10+punctuation?)^10?
On the other hand, I do definately agree that having more memorable passwords (usually pronounceable), definately pays off, as while there's a higher probability of vowels or 'l33t' vowel-numbers, I figure that people not constantly forgetting them pays off security-wise.
Well, for starters, I call bullshit on your http://www.chicagoboyz.net/archives/002543.html link.
To quote them: " In fact, this suggest that violent deaths were not "widespread" as 18 of the 33 clusters reported zero deaths. if 54% of the clusters had no deaths then all the other deaths occurred in 46% of the clusters. If the deaths in those clusters followed a standard distribution most of the deaths would have occurred in less than 15% of the total clusters.
And bingo we see that:
"Two-thirds of all violent deaths were reported in one cluster in the city of Falluja" "
Had they not read the study? They say yes, in which case they're *deliberately* spinning it, because the Fallujah data was *excluded* from the sample. As The Economist http://economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?stor y_id=3352814 points out: " However, he raises the concern that because violence can be very localised, a sample of 33 clusters really might be too small to be representative.
This concern is highlighted by the case of one cluster which, as the luck of the draw had it, ended up being in the war-torn city of Fallujah. This cluster had many more deaths, and many more violent deaths, than any of the others. For this reason, the researchers omitted it from their analysis--the estimate of 98,000 was made without including the Fallujah data. If it had been included, that estimate would have been significantly higher. "
I do think that media outlets saying "at least 100,000 people have died", when 98,000 is the *central value*, is really quite dodgy to be spreading round, but not the reasearchers fault.
Still - the point is that the actual figure is just as likely to be *higher* than 98,00 as lower, and there's still a 90% certainty that at least 40,000 people have died.
Have you never lived in a city, or even crappy suburbs?
I thought everyone was familiar with boy racers (30 years ago it was 'boy revvies'), with 'fast' cars (or crappy cars with deliberate holes in the muffler), and stupidly loud sound systems with bass that shakes everything around them even if you can't hear a word of of what it's playing, and revving up and down the street doing skids at @#$%#@ 2 in the morning.
No?
I guess you're just lucky then.
Seeing as we have things like speed limits, and noise control, stupidly loud/fast cars aren't actually practical, but they're purchased by people who really just want to draw attention to themselves, go 'look at me', and get a nice little adrenaline boost at the expense of everyone else.
As self declared driver of a fast car, maybe you aren't part of the problem, but I'm sure you're at least *familiar* with the mentality of many drivers like this.
A female friend of mine, who had an American ex-partner, and daughter with a dual US/NZ citizenship (I'm in NZ by the way), so she has quite a few friends in the US - was in America for a extended trip to take her daughter round to visit all her daughters relatives etc. She was actually leaving the country, on her way to Canada, when she found out that her Visa, had expired two days beforehand. She'd miscounted the days in the month. She was taken to a detention centre, her daughter was taken away, she was told that she wouldn't be allowed to come back to NZ, that she'd be put in jail, and that her daughter would be put in foster care. She was made to wait for 3/4 hour when she said she needed to go toilet, she was harassed and interrogated for hours, there were people in there who'd been there for months, and she was terrified of becoming one of them. She ended up only being held for about a day, but was made to sign release forms saying that she agreed to any psychological or physical tests they wished until she left the country (which they wouldn't let her do for a week?!?) and she's been banned from the US for 10 years. She's just a normal person and a mother, and understandably, she's been really traumatised since she got back, as she'd never had any problems when she'd been to the US before, and she's now scared about sending her daughter over for visits. I've had people not think there's anything strange about that seeing as "she stuffed up her visa, so it's her fault", but personally, I think that's bloody awful treatment.
Another, is the brother of a former land-lady of mine. He's currently in a US prison, as far as I can tell, he was an idiot, but he shouldn't be serving the sentence he is, especially not in a US prison (sorry, but the US does have a horrific record). He was stupid enough to be drunk with the wrong people, but from there on, he was basically in the wrong place, at the wrong time. He got charged with robbery of a convenience store - which he didn't actually do. But he was in prison, in a foreign country, and he just wanted to go home - and the prosecutor made a deal that if he just pleaded guilty for that crime, right away, they'd extradite him to NZ to serve the sentence. He just wanted to get out of a US prison, and back home, even if that meant serving time in a NZ prison, rather than being stuck there while they had the trial - and the prosecutor was making noises that he'd definately be spending *some* time in jail, if he didn't go along with it. The prosecutor lied. He pled guilty, and he wasn't extradited. So, he was *definately* an idiot there for agreeing to that, but I can understand the motivation. And now he's serving time in a US prison, for something he was not guilty of.
I also know people who were in America for short-term IT work contracts, and when they told people who asked, that no, they *weren't* actually waiting for a green card, and they were going home afterwards, they had several people get angry and/or abuse them for "not thinking the US was good enough for them". Or just look them incredulously. That's kind of weird. Overall, they had a good time though.
Oh. And I know people who got in trouble for crossing the road (I thought they were joking at first). In NZ, you're allowed to cross the road if there's no cars, and you're not too close to a pedestrian crossing. I don't know what it is in the US, but it was night time, there were no cars, and they got hassled by cops, but that wasn't too serious.
The drivers license is probably a good idea. The last ones were additionally hassled because they didn't have their passports on them.
Anyway, I'm sure it's not that bad. Stuff has just been strange in the last few years, and from my perspective here in NZ, the US has just been getting weirder. I think I'm more paranoid just because I've been hearing succesively scarier stories over the past few years, but I am hoping things will get better for you all, and also the people visiting there, sometime soon (or at least stop getting worse - ie all the scary 'terrorist' laws you've had).
So yeah, I'm sure it's not that bad, but I'd still be ultra-paranoid if I was visiting the US.
I mean, he was a pathetic warez hacker, but I wouldn't want anyone to have to face the US 'justice' system.
I've had several friends who had utterly insane things happen to them in America, it's made me paranoid enough that I wouldn't even want to stop over there. I know there's plenty of places, people, and festivals I'd like to visit in America, so it can't be that bad - but it seems like foreigners, even english speaking, western world, acceptably 'caucasian' foreigners, often get treated like shit, especially by the authorities. Or maybe that's normal. I don't know. I don't want to find out.
It's not ok, for the very same reason it's not okay to have sex with a child, or many people who are severely mentally retarded. Especially if you are in a position of power over them - which most pet owners, and people interacting with animals are.
Regardless of whether they think or look like they are being harmed (It's not ok to sexually abuse a 3 year old even if they just think it's "funny tickles" and are happy because they get a lollipop afterwards, so same for animals), they do not have the judgement and maturity necessary to give informed consent.
As for the banana? Feel free. As long as you don't try and shove it down someone elses nose (who hasn't given informed consent), I'll defend your right to eat a banana anyway you like.
Re:Um...because using a computer is more complex?
on
Are You Annoying?
·
· Score: 1
As flaky as computers?
Actually, look at the maintenence tasks of your average computer. I.e. running anti-virus checkers regularly, updating system software regularly (i.e. Windows Update), and not installing spyware etc. How is this any different to having to check the water, brake fluid, power-steering fluid, gas, and who know's what other fiddly bits you have to deal with regularly on a car, not to mention paying attention at the gas station so that you put the right fuel in your car, rather than gasoline.
People have constant examples of how to use a car, and yet spend a long time and a lot of effort.
It's not simple, it's just something that 'everyone' does, so we think it's normal.
If we spent as much time learning to use a computer as a car, and regarded stuff like runninng anti-virus & update programs as 'standard maintenance' we wouldn't have any more trouble than we do with cars...:P
Which is still a lot of trouble, seeing as our car is @#$%%#@! at the moment.
Ah, maybe not 'bleeding edge' but it's still a teensy bit broken in places.
Not to mention stupid fiascos like CSS size keywords.:P
I still have a lingering urge to beat whoever decided it should start with xx-small, or did that pre-recommendation to go up in 150% increments, repeatedly over the head with a blunt object.
Isn't pretty much everything RMS says "religious"?
C'mon! He even dresses up as Jesus (or a Jesus-like-figure) because it's such a running joke that he's 'just a little bit' fanatical.
From what I've gathered from his writings, he would rather have an idealogically 'pure' and faithful few, than a greater mass of people who are 'mostly' in agreement. I.e. heretics.
What I find appalling is the lack of information on what happened to people who live/lived in areas of the Pacific where nuclear testing was conducted.
The biggest problems have been from Bikini Atoll, but there's also been a lot of cancer, birth defects etc round Mururoa Atoll (French testing) - which also gets next to no publicity.
Actually, I should start with what I know, for people who have no idea what I'm talking about - when the bombs were dropped on Bikini Atoll, no one evacuated a nearby atoll despite knowing the windpatterns would drop fallout (there was alot of ignorance about the effects though) nuclear 'snow' or fallout covered the island, in fact, locals, not knowing what it was, went out to 'play' in it. Not to mention, the original inhabitants of Bikini Atoll were relocated *back* to the atoll, where they remained for several years - unknown to them, part of a study on the effects of radiation.
Other than really high rates of cancer etc (among the whole region - 'strange' & deformed fish are found very far from the testing sites after tests), one of the most well known effects has been the so called "Jellyfish babies".
I'm sure you can guess by the name that the effects are quite horrific. It basically covers a range of deformities, but generally refers to the birth of well, I hesitate to use the word 'children' - with missing limbs and/or heads, often with weird skin colourings (I mean discolourations, but apparently they can be surreally vivid). Often they're born dead, sometimes they'll survive for a few minutes or hours. Midwives know not to let the mother see them. As far as I know, there very little official records being kept, and very little investigation.
Oh, great - and now I find a link!
This echo's a lot of what I've heard, with some more detail: http://www.antenna.nl/wise/374-5/3678.htm l
> As IE is so useless I can only imagine the MS fanboys on the site using IE unless it's forced on them at work.
Well... I'm not so sure that's true. Despite the zealotry, on my computer IE is still usually much faster and doesn't use as much memory.
Sometimes I feel like I'm just using Firefox to prove a point. Because while I go on about tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking, my ie geek friends are just using myie2, or googlebar (meanwhile, I'm not using googlebar, which drives me nuts, but the Firefox was using an insane amount of memory, and I think it was googlebar).
I support Firefox because I believe it has the potential to be a much better browser - but in the meantime, all Microsoft would have to do to crush Mozilla et al all over again, would be to implement tabs & popup-blocking. That would be enough for most people to not bother switching, or even go back.
(Sorry about the uncharacteristically depressive anti-geekness...)
Sorry, but just a second - who was this 'sales associate'?
If it was some who worked at Best Buy, why didn't you just say 'sales person'?
But, if it's an associate, i.e. from work or something - then despite the ways Best Buy may suck, they'd still be perfectly within their rights to deny you a refund.
Well, I know Wine has been achieving essential Windows functionality for at least 6months ago.
How so? Well, one of my flatmates workmates - he's a programmer, and they're all working on Linux - received an email attachment he couldn't open, so ran it under Wine...
This is the essential problem that Linux is going to have to face soon. Most of the reason's Windows is so virus ridden, isn't because of the system, it's because of the user's doing very stupid things. Actually, I'll correct that - most Windows users are not stupid, just ignorant - the workmate was stupid, he should have known better. But my point, changing to Linux won't make a user any less ignorant.
Slashdot Mirror
Biblical example:
:P
Exodus 12:22
A fetus has value, but not the value of a living person.
Genetics example:
An embryonic stem cell, or the initial fertilized 'egg' is an undifferentiated mass of stem cells, that can develop into any part of the human body, but it is not a person.
It has the potential to become a person, but it also has the potential to just form say, a toenail.
It can be divided into two, three or more to produce identical twins, triplets, or even more people - at what point is this one or more people?
Even more interestingly - rarely, two separate eggs or masses of embryonic stem cells can fuse in the womb to form a single person, with two different genetic lines, even of different sexes (even less common, but causing some varieties of hermaphoditism). This is known as mosaicism, or sometimes even referred to human chimeras.
Neither embryo 'died', and yet a mosaic person is not 'two' people, but one. Therefore, embryos are not people.
So, if we know embryos are not people, and are not people for awhile, and yet babies are - then, they become people as they develop at some point between these two points, and we're back to arguing exactly when.
For comparison, Judaic thought holds an embryo to be as 'mere water' for the first 40 days, and after that, of value but still essentially part of the mother (of her thigh) and not-a-person until birth (when the head, or most of the body has exited).
From a biological standpoint, over 50% of fertilized eggs are lost or rejected before the end of the first trimester, most in the first month or so. After that, you have the earliest point at which a fetus begins to be viable (ie, low survival rate, and likely to have disabilities), where the existing life (mother) should take priority, through to the likelihood of the birth of a healthy infant, and so similar priority.
All in all, even better would be more of a priority on efficient methods to prevent conception in the first place. Both making them available, and developing new ones. There's got to be a better way. The current ones, while probably the greatest social breakthrough of the last 100 years, do kind of suck.
Damn, :(
it should have been obvious earlier that this was a troll.
Playing dolls with a multitude of kids *because* you are too immature to able to master the complexity that is birth control, is pretty pathetic.
Looking ahead, and making choices, rather than being railroaded through lack of planning, *is* maturity.
> Quit teaching them as zygotes that math is nerdy and for boys.
True, I'm a female computer geek, and I know plenty of the girls I knew at highschool etc could have done Computer Science, but they *didn't*.
In NZ at least, girls outperform boys in maths at a highschool level, and friends of mine spent all their time online, making personal websites, playing round with javascript to do cheesy little effects, and yeah that sounds basic, but at 15, that had a grasp of the basics, and could have continued, but none of them even *considered* it as a career option.
And I *know* why I turned out different, I was fairly socially isolated from the age of 7 or so at school (I figure it was more situational than anything I did, but still, I guess it was a little unusual, I've noticed girls tend to get less isolated than boys, people tend to be friendlier, and when they're teens, not view girl loners as quite as weird), spent a lot of my time by myself, reading books. Especially science fiction.
So rather than taking my cultural conditioning from people around me, I took it from books, and of course I identified with the main characters rather than the generally non-existent female characters (golden age sci-fi generally).
super-intelligent super-fit blond blue-eyed products
The horrific irony being, that blue eyed people are more likely to have eyesight problems than brown eyed, and the general population distribution of Europeans indicating we should probably have *more* melanin (especially round the southern hemisphere), not less (except if we're living in Iceland or somesuch).
That's what I find interesting about 'intelligence' in different areas, it's really just an approach, but interestingly it often doesn't cross subject areas.
E.g. with a computer, if I don't know what to do (ie instruction manual), I'll pay attention, I'll take a look at the options available to me, choose the most likely, and experiment til I've got it working. After a while, standard behaviours and layout are familiar enough that it's even easier to figure out how new programs work.
Someone who doesn't have that, will not be paying as much attention (it's not an interest to them), rather than experimenting, they freeze because they don't want to screw up, and they never get familiar enough with the underlying concepts to feel comfortable.
Now, I am so not a cooking geek. Some people just walk into a kitchen, and there's food, and different spices, and they just put it all together and it tastes fabulous, whereas I burn things, misread instructions even if I have them, and have 'the fear' when it comes to randomly adding things, because I don't want to stuff it up.
And yet... isn't it just the same?
Yes, I could fuck up my computer just the same, and when I was a kid, I did several times, and I learned from that. Yes, I could just use the 'instruction manual' when it comes to cooking, but why do I stuff up even with it, when I don't need one with most computer software?
I've seen the same things when it comes to cars, sewing, art, math, chemistry, all sorts of things...
Often, it's because people have a preconceived notion of what they'll find fun, and what they will be bad at, and then the 'Attitude' with which they approach these tasks kinda becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
And therefore, I try and be patient when I'm helping a non-computer geek, because I know there's probably another area in which they could way out-geek me, and if I can help them, maybe they'll get past 'the fear' and start to believe that they actually like computers, and get 'the attitude' necessary to be a computer geek, or at least proficient user.
You may permanently transfer ownership of the Game and all parts thereof
It seems pretty clear to my reading, there is one CD key, and one account and Blizzard gives you permission to sell that account along with everything else, but if you're not happy with that - too bad.
If you don't want someone else's stinky account or you don't trust them - too bad.
Ok, so it's not like some other games, and it would be preferable to have it like other games, but it's not that uncommon either...
1) The fact that it's the kernel *does* make a damn difference, most bugs are in the gui, graphical shit, and most definately not on the kernal which is actually *smaller* in Windows. Comparing bugs in the kernal to bugs in the desktop manager is like apples & oranges.
2) The article is a fanboy piece of journalism (imho as someone who actually uses & supports linux & open source). They are not even comparing it to the Windows operating system, but to the number of bugs you'd expect in a piece of 'commercial software' of that size. Great.
Well even I'll accept that M$, however we may slag them, has a *much* higher standard of quality than your average 'commercial' operation.
So, surprise, surprise. Something as widely publicised as the linux kernel, using opensource, has many less bugs that your average piece of software. Whoopdee.
Now, if they were to do the same to kde, the various x windows, or open office I'd be a mite more impressed. Since they don't have the prestige value of the linux kernel, they've got much further to go.
I am not an Architect etc,
but the house actually collects all the water that runs down the sides, so if you build it on a slightly raised area, shouldn't that keep the underneath fairly dry?
You'd only need a certain amount as ballast, so you'd just have to design some way for waste-water to be disposed of - which appears to be 'the garden', with their plan for a composting toilet.
You're talking about accesibility - which while it is *usually* more Usable, Accesibility is not the *same* thing as Usability.
1 29725&thre shold=-1&commentsort=0&tid=172&mode=thread&cid=108 21377
And someone else has already explained this: "Usability? How about accessibility?" by digitect (217483)
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=
and the reply JavaRob
Sounds interesting...
I Am Not A Crytography expert, so I was just wondering if you could explain further why *excluding* punctuation and numbers was harder to crack?
If you didn't know *which* characters were letters, numbers, or punctuation, wouldn't that mean instead of just trying 26^10 combinations, you'd be doing (26+10+punctuation?)^10?
On the other hand, I do definately agree that having more memorable passwords (usually pronounceable), definately pays off, as while there's a higher probability of vowels or 'l33t' vowel-numbers, I figure that people not constantly forgetting them pays off security-wise.
Well, for starters, I call bullshit on your http://www.chicagoboyz.net/archives/002543.html link.
r y_id=3352814
To quote them:
"
In fact, this suggest that violent deaths were not "widespread" as 18 of the 33 clusters reported zero deaths. if 54% of the clusters had no deaths then all the other deaths occurred in 46% of the clusters. If the deaths in those clusters followed a standard distribution most of the deaths would have occurred in less than 15% of the total clusters.
And bingo we see that:
"Two-thirds of all violent deaths were reported in one cluster in the city of Falluja"
"
Had they not read the study? They say yes, in which case they're *deliberately* spinning it, because the Fallujah data was *excluded* from the sample. As The Economist http://economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?sto
points out:
"
However, he raises the concern that because violence can be very localised, a sample of 33 clusters really might be too small to be representative.
This concern is highlighted by the case of one cluster which, as the luck of the draw had it, ended up being in the war-torn city of Fallujah. This cluster had many more deaths, and many more violent deaths, than any of the others. For this reason, the researchers omitted it from their analysis--the estimate of 98,000 was made without including the Fallujah data. If it had been included, that estimate would have been significantly higher.
"
I do think that media outlets saying "at least 100,000 people have died", when 98,000 is the *central value*, is really quite dodgy to be spreading round, but not the reasearchers fault.
Still - the point is that the actual figure is just as likely to be *higher* than 98,00 as lower, and there's still a 90% certainty that at least 40,000 people have died.
Have you never lived in a city, or even crappy suburbs?
I thought everyone was familiar with boy racers (30 years ago it was 'boy revvies'), with 'fast' cars (or crappy cars with deliberate holes in the muffler), and stupidly loud sound systems with bass that shakes everything around them even if you can't hear a word of of what it's playing, and revving up and down the street doing skids at @#$%#@ 2 in the morning.
No?
I guess you're just lucky then.
Seeing as we have things like speed limits, and noise control, stupidly loud/fast cars aren't actually practical, but they're purchased by people who really just want to draw attention to themselves, go 'look at me', and get a nice little adrenaline boost at the expense of everyone else.
As self declared driver of a fast car, maybe you aren't part of the problem, but I'm sure you're at least *familiar* with the mentality of many drivers like this.
The sorts of things that happened were:
A female friend of mine, who had an American ex-partner, and daughter with a dual US/NZ citizenship (I'm in NZ by the way), so she has quite a few friends in the US - was in America for a extended trip to take her daughter round to visit all her daughters relatives etc.
She was actually leaving the country, on her way to Canada, when she found out that her Visa, had expired two days beforehand.
She'd miscounted the days in the month.
She was taken to a detention centre, her daughter was taken away, she was told that she wouldn't be allowed to come back to NZ, that she'd be put in jail, and that her daughter would be put in foster care. She was made to wait for 3/4 hour when she said she needed to go toilet, she was harassed and interrogated for hours, there were people in there who'd been there for months, and she was terrified of becoming one of them. She ended up only being held for about a day, but was made to sign release forms saying that she agreed to any psychological or physical tests they wished until she left the country (which they wouldn't let her do for a week?!?) and she's been banned from the US for 10 years.
She's just a normal person and a mother, and understandably, she's been really traumatised since she got back, as she'd never had any problems when she'd been to the US before, and she's now scared about sending her daughter over for visits.
I've had people not think there's anything strange about that seeing as "she stuffed up her visa, so it's her fault", but personally, I think that's bloody awful treatment.
Another, is the brother of a former land-lady of mine. He's currently in a US prison, as far as I can tell, he was an idiot, but he shouldn't be serving the sentence he is, especially not in a US prison (sorry, but the US does have a horrific record). He was stupid enough to be drunk with the wrong people, but from there on, he was basically in the wrong place, at the wrong time. He got charged with robbery of a convenience store - which he didn't actually do. But he was in prison, in a foreign country, and he just wanted to go home - and the prosecutor made a deal that if he just pleaded guilty for that crime, right away, they'd extradite him to NZ to serve the sentence. He just wanted to get out of a US prison, and back home, even if that meant serving time in a NZ prison, rather than being stuck there while they had the trial - and the prosecutor was making noises that he'd definately be spending *some* time in jail, if he didn't go along with it.
The prosecutor lied. He pled guilty, and he wasn't extradited.
So, he was *definately* an idiot there for agreeing to that, but I can understand the motivation.
And now he's serving time in a US prison, for something he was not guilty of.
I also know people who were in America for short-term IT work contracts, and when they told people who asked, that no, they *weren't* actually waiting for a green card, and they were going home afterwards, they had several people get angry and/or abuse them for "not thinking the US was good enough for them". Or just look them incredulously. That's kind of weird.
Overall, they had a good time though.
Oh.
And I know people who got in trouble for crossing the road (I thought they were joking at first). In NZ, you're allowed to cross the road if there's no cars, and you're not too close to a pedestrian crossing. I don't know what it is in the US, but it was night time, there were no cars, and they got hassled by cops, but that wasn't too serious.
The drivers license is probably a good idea. The last ones were additionally hassled because they didn't have their passports on them.
Anyway, I'm sure it's not that bad. Stuff has just been strange in the last few years, and from my perspective here in NZ, the US has just been getting weirder. I think I'm more paranoid just because I've been hearing succesively scarier stories over the past few years, but I am hoping things will get better for you all, and also the people visiting there, sometime soon (or at least stop getting worse - ie all the scary 'terrorist' laws you've had).
So yeah, I'm sure it's not that bad, but I'd still be ultra-paranoid if I was visiting the US.
Poor bastard.
I mean, he was a pathetic warez hacker, but I wouldn't want anyone to have to face the US 'justice' system.
I've had several friends who had utterly insane things happen to them in America, it's made me paranoid enough that I wouldn't even want to stop over there. I know there's plenty of places, people, and festivals I'd like to visit in America, so it can't be that bad - but it seems like foreigners, even english speaking, western world, acceptably 'caucasian' foreigners, often get treated like shit, especially by the authorities. Or maybe that's normal. I don't know.
I don't want to find out.
It's not ok, for the very same reason it's not okay to have sex with a child, or many people who are severely mentally retarded. Especially if you are in a position of power over them - which most pet owners, and people interacting with animals are.
Regardless of whether they think or look like they are being harmed (It's not ok to sexually abuse a 3 year old even if they just think it's "funny tickles" and are happy because they get a lollipop afterwards, so same for animals), they do not have the judgement and maturity necessary to give informed consent.
As for the banana?
Feel free.
As long as you don't try and shove it down someone elses nose (who hasn't given informed consent), I'll defend your right to eat a banana anyway you like.
Read The Friendly Article.
As flaky as computers?
:P
Actually, look at the maintenence tasks of your average computer.
I.e. running anti-virus checkers regularly, updating system software regularly (i.e. Windows Update), and not installing spyware etc.
How is this any different to having to check the water, brake fluid, power-steering fluid, gas, and who know's what other fiddly bits you have to deal with regularly on a car, not to mention paying attention at the gas station so that you put the right fuel in your car, rather than gasoline.
People have constant examples of how to use a car, and yet spend a long time and a lot of effort.
It's not simple, it's just something that 'everyone' does, so we think it's normal.
If we spent as much time learning to use a computer as a car, and regarded stuff like runninng anti-virus & update programs as 'standard maintenance' we wouldn't have any more trouble than we do with cars...
Which is still a lot of trouble, seeing as our car is @#$%%#@! at the moment.
Ah, maybe not 'bleeding edge' but it's still a teensy bit broken in places.
:P
Not to mention stupid fiascos like CSS size keywords.
I still have a lingering urge to beat whoever decided it should start with xx-small, or did that pre-recommendation to go up in 150% increments, repeatedly over the head with a blunt object.
(Consequences be damned...)
Isn't pretty much everything RMS says "religious"?
C'mon! He even dresses up as Jesus (or a Jesus-like-figure) because it's such a running joke that he's 'just a little bit' fanatical.
From what I've gathered from his writings, he would rather have an idealogically 'pure' and faithful few, than a greater mass of people who are 'mostly' in agreement. I.e. heretics.
*shrug*
*Trying... to... resist...*
Argh!!
That's so cuuuute!
Yes, I've been near retail stores recently, but they haven't been in the same country. :)
Yet another tick to the cultural differences column, but it still seems like a strange use of the word.
What I find appalling is the lack of information on what happened to people who live/lived in areas of the Pacific where nuclear testing was conducted.
m l
The biggest problems have been from Bikini Atoll, but there's also been a lot of cancer, birth defects etc round Mururoa Atoll (French testing) - which also gets next to no publicity.
Actually, I should start with what I know, for people who have no idea what I'm talking about -
when the bombs were dropped on Bikini Atoll, no one evacuated a nearby atoll despite knowing the windpatterns would drop fallout (there was alot of ignorance about the effects though) nuclear 'snow' or fallout covered the island, in fact, locals, not knowing what it was, went out to 'play' in it. Not to mention, the original inhabitants of Bikini Atoll were relocated *back* to the atoll, where they remained for several years - unknown to them, part of a study on the effects of radiation.
Other than really high rates of cancer etc (among the whole region - 'strange' & deformed fish are found very far from the testing sites after tests), one of the most well known effects has been the so called "Jellyfish babies".
I'm sure you can guess by the name that the effects are quite horrific.
It basically covers a range of deformities, but generally refers to the birth of well, I hesitate to use the word 'children' - with missing limbs and/or heads, often with weird skin colourings (I mean discolourations, but apparently they can be surreally vivid).
Often they're born dead, sometimes they'll survive for a few minutes or hours. Midwives know not to let the mother see them.
As far as I know, there very little official records being kept, and very little investigation.
Oh, great - and now I find a link!
This echo's a lot of what I've heard, with some more detail:
http://www.antenna.nl/wise/374-5/3678.ht
> As IE is so useless I can only imagine the MS fanboys on the site using IE unless it's forced on them at work.
Well... I'm not so sure that's true. Despite the zealotry, on my computer IE is still usually much faster and doesn't use as much memory.
Sometimes I feel like I'm just using Firefox to prove a point. Because while I go on about tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking, my ie geek friends are just using myie2, or googlebar (meanwhile, I'm not using googlebar, which drives me nuts, but the Firefox was using an insane amount of memory, and I think it was googlebar).
I support Firefox because I believe it has the potential to be a much better browser - but in the meantime, all Microsoft would have to do to crush Mozilla et al all over again, would be to implement tabs & popup-blocking. That would be enough for most people to not bother switching, or even go back.
(Sorry about the uncharacteristically depressive anti-geekness...)
If it was some who worked at Best Buy, why didn't you just say 'sales person'?
But, if it's an associate, i.e. from work or something - then despite the ways Best Buy may suck, they'd still be perfectly within their rights to deny you a refund.
Well, I know Wine has been achieving essential Windows functionality for at least 6months ago.
How so?
Well, one of my flatmates workmates - he's a programmer, and they're all working on Linux - received an email attachment he couldn't open, so ran it under Wine...
This is the essential problem that Linux is going to have to face soon. Most of the reason's Windows is so virus ridden, isn't because of the system, it's because of the user's doing very stupid things.
Actually, I'll correct that - most Windows users are not stupid, just ignorant - the workmate was stupid, he should have known better.
But my point, changing to Linux won't make a user any less ignorant.