Well, a few weeks ago I found it was impossible to READ Google Groups Usenet interface unless I was logged in -- previously I could browse without being logged in and only needed to sign on if I wanted to post. So now because I've done that Google's search knows who I am too -- now my file lists all the Usenet messages I've read as well as all the searches I've made. Privacy? Get over it is the message.
Probably the fact that it makes the Chinese government look like inept morons. A lot of the disease transmission was due to incompetence by their health authorities in terms of blood transfusion techniques.
As it was in every other country. Including the USA. I remember Isaac Asimov, for one, was infected via a transfusion and died of AIDS. Of course, China should have learnt from the USA, but they were sure that it was just a disease of foreigners (as Americans used to think it was only gays and Haitians).
"Amnesty International is reporting an unusual case of censorship"
TFA doesn't use the word "unusual". And censorship like this isn't at all unusual. Aids activists have been censored, threatened and killed in many countries, not just China.
It doesn't make it unreasonable to purchase a lighter word processor with less features, but I for one would not want to support a word processor where you buy access to toolbar buttons.
You're talking about what you want to support, I'm talking about what the user wants. Which may be simplicity and speed; some people prefer that to 20 tool bars and the need for a 6-core processor to open a memo. Anyway, MS doesn't give you any such choice: you take the whole multi-gigabyte package, or nothing. So the original analogy is even more flawed. People buy MS Office for compatibility and inertia; hardly anyone knows what the new features are and fewer ever use them. I deal with documents all the time and hardly any users know how to enter a pagebreak or set the spellcheck language, let alone anything more complex. They just type and use the formatting buttons and hit ENTER a dozen times to start a new page.
People always bitch that they have to pay for Microsoft (or whatver) Office's features because they only use 5% of its functionality. But you buy all those features at once because you don't know which you will need in the future.
Bullshit. True only if you've never used a wordprocessor in your life before. If you have, you know what you use. And you can read the description of other features to decide if you want them.
And this is a pointless analogy because if in the future you decide you do need the 3D porn embedding, you can upgrade to get it. If you don't backup some of your data, you can never change your mind if you find you need it 10 years later.
Those millions of people in the United States are not exactly the healthiest group the world has known.
Of course, they're fat. They eat too much. And the US is the most litigous place on the planet, lawyers would be on this if there was a shred of proof that the food itself was toxic. (Well, more toxic than "ordinary" food. As all food is toxic in one way or another.)
I think it's a safe bet GM foodstuffs will eventually be shown to be part of the problem.
So you really do have nothing except unease to offer as proof.
"The GM industry assures us that their products are safe to eat. Yet there is very little evidence to confirm such statements. Clearly, the millions of people in the United States who are unknowingly eating GM food (there is no labelling and hence no choice) are not dying in droves. Nevertheless, it is possible that more subtle deterioration in health is taking place."
That's the best y0u got? No proof at all that it's dangerous. Just darkly hinting at unknown long term harm and asking for an impossible degree of certainty that it is safe -- a criterion that NO FOOD AT ALL would pass. We can't live on distilled water and sunshine.
Thanks, I am better informed; now I'm pretty sure that the anti-GM activists are superstitious scaremongerers, whereas before I gave them the benefit of the doubt.
"Genetic Roulette is Jeffrey Smiths second book in which he makes unsubstantiated claims against biotechnology. In it, he details 65 separate claims that the technology causes harm in a variety of ways. On these pages each of those claims addressed in the same eight sections that correspond directly with the book are stacked up against peer-reviewed science."
I merely intended to point out this particular sly propaganda method used to forward the onslaught of "Frankenfood."
The message you send with your "sly" style of fact-free innuendo and loaded terms like "Frankenfood" is that you're pretty good on the propaganda front yourself.
And again, I do see serious problems with the business practices of Monsanto. I'm no shill for them.
Because I believe the refutations to be common knowledge at this point. It is in no way obscure, and we're not covering any new ground here.
It's common knowledge that some people are afraid of GM foods. I haven't heard any sensible reason myself. Too bad you can't be bothered to explain your reasoning.
My post is aimed at the already (at least partially) informed regarding the known problems of GM foods,
So , if I don't agree with you, I'm just uninformed?
Point by point Jones regurgitates the same pro-GM arguments debunked numerous times all over the net for years, while serving up some stale half facts too.
I'm afraid that "debunked numerous times all over the net" isn't a persuasive argument. Any nutcase can claim to "debunk" anything, and many do. You can find many self-proclaimed "debunkers" of climate change, evolution, the Holocaust, Obama's nationality... anything. Having a bunch of bloggers attacking a topic doesn't have a damn thing to do with how scientifically accurate an idea is. Why didn't this guy actually cite some SCIENTIFIC refutations instead of a scaremongering blog?
Personally I think that Monsanto has some pretty evil business practices, but as for health effects to consumers, I have no problem. I don't believe Monsanto could cover up evidence of that if they tried. There are already a lot of unpleasant things in food -- pesticides, rat droppings, steroids, antibiotics, radioactives, etc, etc. As much in "organic" foods as anything else. Not to say these are fine, but that there are no perfectly pure and healthy foods if you examine them in microscopic detail. You have to measure and set a limit; but zero is just impossible. The real world is imperfect.
Why don't you try clay tablets? An egyptian friend highly recommends those!
Egyptians mostly used papyrus, it was the Sumerians who used clay tablets for documents. If baked, they are virtually indestructible (there are plenty 5 or 6 thousand years old) and museums now have millions of them slowly being collated and translated.
the.xxx domain would make it very easy to know where the porn is.
So you think people will search for porn by typing random domain names ending in.xxx?
I personally use Google to find porn the same as I find anything else. I don't really care what domain it's in Except that.xxx will be blocked on just about every access point except those who have decided to "opt out", and who in their right mind would put in writing that thy want access to porn domains? Fine if you're a single guy, not if you live with your parents, wife, children. Not if you know that the police will very likely have access to such a list. If you have kids, you'll feel obliged to block.xxx anyway. The end result is that any porn company that put their main site on.xxx would be broke in a very short time.
What you'll see there is a bunch of fake "free porn" sites that are full of malware and/or just bounce you to the real sites, probably on.com like always. So it's the last place I'll be looking for porn. It'll be as useful as all those stupid special use domains, like aero, biz, pro that are similarly only used by spammers and as placeholders for the real site.
Hognoxious apparently saw a criticism of the US and decided to prove that the Ugly American is alive and well.
And if you don't include the US when you say "the West", then what the fuck does the term mean? Also, as for "kum-ba-ya singing appeaseniks to be found in Europe": 1) I'm not a European, and 2) You may not have noticed that NATO was dragged into your little wars; along with countries like Australia who have all lost lives in the Middle East and Afghanistan and become targets of terrorist retaliation at home as a result.
That is because the West has become weak and thinks that the more meek it gets, the more everyone will suddenly love it.
Invading Iraq and Afghanistan is "more meek"? More meek than Joe Stalin and Adolf, perhaps. People hate the US for its aggression, not its meekness. (And note, I do not include myself in the "haters" group, more "disappointed".)
never set foot in a government-funded library my whole life, and I seem to have made out okay (engineer - two degrees). And now that we have the internet, such that I or anybody else can download literally millions of free books (or just read wikipedia), the government-funded libraries are even less necessary.
I'm not sure if you're an idiot or a troll... I simply do not believe you can have earned two degrees, in any subject, without entering a library. Or is there some catch, your university library is not "government funded"? And since when is Wikipedia a citeable source for any academic work?
Well, your book is wrong. Suppose the Pirate Party posts a paper positing that parliament pokes preteens and are thus purportedly pedophiles? Trying to take down a document says nothing about its veracity.
But the process would: if a court order was obtained on the grounds that it was false, defamatory, etc, then the government has stated it's false. If however they claim it's an official secret, privileged information, etc, that confirms the substance.
Australia does have courts and laws, the government can't just send the Gestapo around. They need to have some legal justification for their actions.
Murdochs media imperium is big enough that it will not fall in 5 years. He can suffer from 2-3 years of lower income,
"Lower income"? It's free now, so whatever income he gets is an increase. Maybe a decrease in income from web ads, but that is much less than what he might earn from subscribers.
But payola is not materially different than advertising. So, if payola is a crime, then why isn't advertising?
It is very different.
It's dishonest. Advertising is distinguished from editorial. "And now a word from our sponsor..." Payola is a subversion of editorial, when the broadcasters play music because they've been paid to, while lying that it's because of popularity. If they present the show as "New music from the Sony Corporation" that would be fine. When they call it "Top Hits" or something similar, it's not.
So Friel is submitting his book after peer-review? Of course not.
He's submitting his book as a peer review of Lomborg. Hel;s not making new arguments, rehashinhg the case for climate change, he's examining and critiquing Lombard's.
You could argue that the reason that U.S. consumers have a thriving market with tons of competition in free email providers is that companies can compete on features and performance, rather than government edict.
What incentive is there for another Iranian free email provider to develop a service that can be eliminated by the stroke of a pen from a twitchy mullah?
Actually, only a handful of email services account for almost all free email in the US: GMail, Yahoo, Hotmail. Anyway, you're missing the point. If I was an Iranian citizen, I probably would prefer an overseas service, as I wouldn't really care if the CIA spied on me, but I probably would rather the Iranian government didn't, as they are more likely to use it against me. But this decision is being made by the government, not the individuals.
The post I was replying to implied that this was simply so the Iranian govt could repress its people. Possibly true, but more importantly (to the Iranian government) it is making the nation vulnerable to having its internal communications spied on or disrupted by a frequently hostile foreign power.
As for "features", I personally just want reliability. Spam filtering is about the only server feature I make use of. Everything else I do in my client.
really, they should just set up their service and try to out-compete Google.
It isn't a matter of commercial competition. If I'm in a government that the US has called part of an "Axis of evil" and has tried to overthrow, then I really don't want our email to be passing through the USA where it certainly will be spied on. Or the US can simply block all email in a time of crisis.
Would Obama be happy if half of the US's email used a server in Tehran?
Slashdot Mirror
Well, a few weeks ago I found it was impossible to READ Google Groups Usenet interface unless I was logged in -- previously I could browse without being logged in and only needed to sign on if I wanted to post. So now because I've done that Google's search knows who I am too -- now my file lists all the Usenet messages I've read as well as all the searches I've made. Privacy? Get over it is the message.
As it was in every other country. Including the USA. I remember Isaac Asimov, for one, was infected via a transfusion and died of AIDS. Of course, China should have learnt from the USA, but they were sure that it was just a disease of foreigners (as Americans used to think it was only gays and Haitians).
TFA doesn't use the word "unusual". And censorship like this isn't at all unusual. Aids activists have been censored, threatened and killed in many countries, not just China.
You're talking about what you want to support, I'm talking about what the user wants. Which may be simplicity and speed; some people prefer that to 20 tool bars and the need for a 6-core processor to open a memo. Anyway, MS doesn't give you any such choice: you take the whole multi-gigabyte package, or nothing. So the original analogy is even more flawed. People buy MS Office for compatibility and inertia; hardly anyone knows what the new features are and fewer ever use them. I deal with documents all the time and hardly any users know how to enter a pagebreak or set the spellcheck language, let alone anything more complex. They just type and use the formatting buttons and hit ENTER a dozen times to start a new page.
Bullshit. True only if you've never used a wordprocessor in your life before. If you have, you know what you use. And you can read the description of other features to decide if you want them.
And this is a pointless analogy because if in the future you decide you do need the 3D porn embedding, you can upgrade to get it. If you don't backup some of your data, you can never change your mind if you find you need it 10 years later.
Of course, they're fat. They eat too much. And the US is the most litigous place on the planet, lawyers would be on this if there was a shred of proof that the food itself was toxic. (Well, more toxic than "ordinary" food. As all food is toxic in one way or another.)
I think it's a safe bet GM foodstuffs will eventually be shown to be part of the problem.
So you really do have nothing except unease to offer as proof.
Is the corn syrup from this GM corn more toxic then "natural" corn? If not, what is your point?
"The GM industry assures us that their products are safe to eat. Yet there is very little evidence to confirm such statements. Clearly, the millions of people in the United States who are unknowingly eating GM food (there is no labelling and hence no choice) are not dying in droves. Nevertheless, it is possible that more subtle deterioration in health is taking place."
That's the best y0u got? No proof at all that it's dangerous. Just darkly hinting at unknown long term harm and asking for an impossible degree of certainty that it is safe -- a criterion that NO FOOD AT ALL would pass. We can't live on distilled water and sunshine.
Thanks, I am better informed; now I'm pretty sure that the anti-GM activists are superstitious scaremongerers, whereas before I gave them the benefit of the doubt.
So? What has that to do with whether the corn is GM or not?
http://academicsreview.org/reviewed-content/genetic-roulette/
"Genetic Roulette is Jeffrey Smiths second book in which he makes unsubstantiated claims against biotechnology. In it, he details 65 separate claims that the technology causes harm in a variety of ways. On these pages each of those claims addressed in the same eight sections that correspond directly with the book are stacked up against peer-reviewed science."
Odd then that the FDA seems unaware of this. Maybe they need to learn how to use this "Google" to do their job.
The message you send with your "sly" style of fact-free innuendo and loaded terms like "Frankenfood" is that you're pretty good on the propaganda front yourself.
And again, I do see serious problems with the business practices of Monsanto. I'm no shill for them.
Because I believe the refutations to be common knowledge at this point. It is in no way obscure, and we're not covering any new ground here.
It's common knowledge that some people are afraid of GM foods. I haven't heard any sensible reason myself. Too bad you can't be bothered to explain your reasoning.
My post is aimed at the already (at least partially) informed regarding the known problems of GM foods,
So , if I don't agree with you, I'm just uninformed?
Screw you.
I'm afraid that "debunked numerous times all over the net" isn't a persuasive argument. Any nutcase can claim to "debunk" anything, and many do. You can find many self-proclaimed "debunkers" of climate change, evolution, the Holocaust, Obama's nationality ... anything. Having a bunch of bloggers attacking a topic doesn't have a damn thing to do with how scientifically accurate an idea is. Why didn't this guy actually cite some SCIENTIFIC refutations instead of a scaremongering blog?
Personally I think that Monsanto has some pretty evil business practices, but as for health effects to consumers, I have no problem. I don't believe Monsanto could cover up evidence of that if they tried. There are already a lot of unpleasant things in food -- pesticides, rat droppings, steroids, antibiotics, radioactives, etc, etc. As much in "organic" foods as anything else. Not to say these are fine, but that there are no perfectly pure and healthy foods if you examine them in microscopic detail. You have to measure and set a limit; but zero is just impossible. The real world is imperfect.
Egyptians mostly used papyrus, it was the Sumerians who used clay tablets for documents. If baked, they are virtually indestructible (there are plenty 5 or 6 thousand years old) and museums now have millions of them slowly being collated and translated.
So you think people will search for porn by typing random domain names ending in .xxx?
I personally use Google to find porn the same as I find anything else. I don't really care what domain it's in Except that .xxx will be blocked on just about every access point except those who have decided to "opt out", and who in their right mind would put in writing that thy want access to porn domains? Fine if you're a single guy, not if you live with your parents, wife, children. Not if you know that the police will very likely have access to such a list. If you have kids, you'll feel obliged to block .xxx anyway. The end result is that any porn company that put their main site on.xxx would be broke in a very short time.
What you'll see there is a bunch of fake "free porn" sites that are full of malware and/or just bounce you to the real sites, probably on .com like always. So it's the last place I'll be looking for porn. It'll be as useful as all those stupid special use domains, like aero, biz, pro that are similarly only used by spammers and as placeholders for the real site.
And if you don't include the US when you say "the West", then what the fuck does the term mean? Also, as for "kum-ba-ya singing appeaseniks to be found in Europe": 1) I'm not a European, and 2) You may not have noticed that NATO was dragged into your little wars; along with countries like Australia who have all lost lives in the Middle East and Afghanistan and become targets of terrorist retaliation at home as a result.
Invading Iraq and Afghanistan is "more meek"? More meek than Joe Stalin and Adolf, perhaps. People hate the US for its aggression, not its meekness. (And note, I do not include myself in the "haters" group, more "disappointed".)
The Deutsch Recording Association of Germany.
No, they may own the copyrights of recent recordings of performances, but not of the compositions. Anyone could perform them now without payment.
I'm not sure if you're an idiot or a troll ... I simply do not believe you can have earned two degrees, in any subject, without entering a library. Or is there some catch, your university library is not "government funded"? And since when is Wikipedia a citeable source for any academic work?
On reflection, I'm leaning more to "troll".
But the process would: if a court order was obtained on the grounds that it was false, defamatory, etc, then the government has stated it's false. If however they claim it's an official secret, privileged information, etc, that confirms the substance.
Australia does have courts and laws, the government can't just send the Gestapo around. They need to have some legal justification for their actions.
"Lower income"? It's free now, so whatever income he gets is an increase. Maybe a decrease in income from web ads, but that is much less than what he might earn from subscribers.
It is very different.
It's dishonest. Advertising is distinguished from editorial. "And now a word from our sponsor..." Payola is a subversion of editorial, when the broadcasters play music because they've been paid to, while lying that it's because of popularity. If they present the show as "New music from the Sony Corporation" that would be fine. When they call it "Top Hits" or something similar, it's not.
He's submitting his book as a peer review of Lomborg. Hel;s not making new arguments, rehashinhg the case for climate change, he's examining and critiquing Lombard's.
Actually, only a handful of email services account for almost all free email in the US: GMail, Yahoo, Hotmail. Anyway, you're missing the point. If I was an Iranian citizen, I probably would prefer an overseas service, as I wouldn't really care if the CIA spied on me, but I probably would rather the Iranian government didn't, as they are more likely to use it against me. But this decision is being made by the government, not the individuals.
The post I was replying to implied that this was simply so the Iranian govt could repress its people. Possibly true, but more importantly (to the Iranian government) it is making the nation vulnerable to having its internal communications spied on or disrupted by a frequently hostile foreign power.
As for "features", I personally just want reliability. Spam filtering is about the only server feature I make use of. Everything else I do in my client.
It isn't a matter of commercial competition. If I'm in a government that the US has called part of an "Axis of evil" and has tried to overthrow, then I really don't want our email to be passing through the USA where it certainly will be spied on. Or the US can simply block all email in a time of crisis.
Would Obama be happy if half of the US's email used a server in Tehran?