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User: countach

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  1. Worldwide reach on California Passes Law Mandating Smartphone Kill Switch · · Score: 4, Interesting

    An interesting case of how one US state could change worldwide products.

  2. Re:Evolution... on The Evolution of Diet · · Score: 1

    How is the human race ever going to develop the genes needed to resist a modern diet unless we let fatty burgers, salty fries, and sugary drinks kill off the ones with weak wills?

  3. Re:Keyword: Believe on The Evolution of Diet · · Score: 1

    " If you're paying that much attention to the food you're eating, you're probably not throwing garbage down your throat like most fat people do."

    Yeah, but what is "garbage"?

    One might argue that garbage is anything not natural, exactly like the Paleo's say.

    The reality is italian bread and cold beer will tend to make you fat, if you don't carefully control quantities. We all know that many people don't control their input of beer and bread, and we see the results.

    But you probably won't get obese just eating steak or pork chops. It's just not feasible to eat that much steak and pork chops, because they make you full quickly and they keep you full for a long time. And the mozzarella cheese is ok too. As an animal fat its digested slowly.

  4. Re:put a label on it. on The Evolution of Diet · · Score: 2

    Most likely (or at least hopefully) the chemical makeup of Monsanto corn is the same as regular corn.

  5. Re:neo diet on The Evolution of Diet · · Score: 1

    The points you miss is firstly, the bad health conditions of the modern diet probably won't kill you until you are least 40... past peak reproductive age, so its not likely to affect evolution of humanity any time soon. Secondly, medical technology like pills can to some extent compensate and keep you alive when you would otherwise be dead. That means we also won't evolve to the new conditions.

  6. Re:Scientific American doesn't agree ... on The Evolution of Diet · · Score: 1

    Hmmm. Mummies were likely to be aristocracy and kings, not common people. They would have had access to very rich diets like we do today. I didn't read the study but it sounds very suspect

  7. Re:"Paleolithic diets" now vs then on The Evolution of Diet · · Score: 1

    The issue is not to get overly technical about exactly what fruit of veges they ate. The issue is whether our bodies can handle food with a similar makeup to "paleo times" compared to now. For example, our bodies simply are not built to withstand the amount of sugar and salt we put into them these days. That's a fact.

    Yes they might have died young in old times. BUT... they lived as long as evolution would allow GIVEN the diet and circumstances they were in. Their bodies were evolved to make the best use of that diet, not sugar and salt and carbs like today.

  8. Re:Correlation Does Not Imply Causation on The Evolution of Diet · · Score: 2

    Yes, sugar is treated by the brain a bit like cocaine. That's part of the issue, but its not the whole story. High GI foods give you the quick hit of cocaine which wears off quickly. Low GI foods give you a slow burn that keeps you satisfied longer.

    I very much disagree that baked potatoes are a weight loss food. You can eat anything if in moderation, but any kind of potatoes is not a great choice in the weight loss stakes.

  9. Re:Correlation Does Not Imply Causation on The Evolution of Diet · · Score: 1

    You can, but its extremely difficult. The point of low GI, and high protein meat diets is that its digested very slowly and you are not tempted as much. Think about it. How often does a cow eat? How often does a lion eat? Case closed.

  10. Re:ha! Inuit diet. Hazda diet. on The Evolution of Diet · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's not so much "the pinnacle of evolution" (whatever the heck that means), but rather the diet that we were evolved to eat. Many animals are evolved to eat all sorts of things that we are not. We would die quickly if we ate what they ate, and they would die quickly if they ate what we do. But the point is, we should eat what we're evolved to eat. That's probably not coca-cola and crisps.

  11. Re: Doing it wrong? on Is Dong Nguyen Trolling Gamers With "Swing Copters"? · · Score: 2

    Sometimes a clever but simple idea is brilliant. (Like Tetris).

    The problem with some kind of legal protection is that sometimes somebody has a neat idea that is badly implemented, or maybe its implemented ok, but somebody else can provide an implementation that really brings out its potential. Not always is the original the best. So it would be stagnating the category to bring the law into it.

  12. Re: I hope not on If Java Wasn't Cool 10 Years Ago, What About Now? · · Score: 1

    Why not just learn scheme, and everything else is a book exercise? Use it with a CLOS clone for OO. Most scheme courses probably dive into writing a VM also, so that takes care of the assembly side.

  13. Re: I hope not on If Java Wasn't Cool 10 Years Ago, What About Now? · · Score: 1

    Errm, Scheme has strong typing with NO static typing.

  14. Re:Please, don't tell them ... on South Carolina Student Arrested For "Killing Pet Dinosaur" · · Score: 1

    Maybe the gun was a water pistol. Maybe the "killing" was part of a game. It's quite possible this status report was actually true in its own context, not creepy at all, not weird at all. Don't you think asking a few questions might have been the first step, rather than calling in police, mental health people or whoever?

  15. He should have... on South Carolina Student Arrested For "Killing Pet Dinosaur" · · Score: 1

    If he'd said he'd shot Osama bin Laden, they probably would have made him Valedictorian, and nominated him for a medal.

  16. Re:Surprise? on Munich Reverses Course, May Ditch Linux For Microsoft · · Score: 1

    I've wasted countless hours trying to bend MS Word to my will. Just yesterday, for some unknown reason it wouldn't start from page 1, but rather page 2. No it wasn't in the "start from" insert page number dialog like you'd think. But an obscure page setup field had an option to always start on even numbers. I have no idea how my document suddenly had that option activated, nor why MS word's help couldn't tell me that, nor why the pagination settings have to be in two completely unrelated dialog boxes. It's hard to believe any program could be worse than Word at wasting your time.

  17. Re:Surprise? on Munich Reverses Course, May Ditch Linux For Microsoft · · Score: 1

    I don't doubt that you can make documents that don't render well, but in this day and age, when printing documents is somewhat quaint, should anybody care much? The city can print their own documents, and presumably anybody else can see them fine, even if they look slightly odd. If they cared so much, they could download open office for free. And shouldn't most stuff these days NOT be document based? Sometimes its hard to remember the last time I killed a tree to print something.

  18. Re:Balancing trademark enforcement with antitrust on Microsoft's Windows 8 App Store Is Full of Scamware · · Score: 1

    Possibly, but cutting out obvious spam-ware would hardly be criticised by anyone.

  19. Re:Unconstitutinal on Rightscorp's New Plan: Hijack Browsers Until Infingers Pay Up · · Score: 2

    Yes, the real problem is not so much presumption of innocence, but rather lack of due process.

  20. Re:Alternatives on Ask Slashdot: How Dead Is Antivirus, Exactly? · · Score: 1

    Your analysis seems to assume that there are apps, and that is it. But in reality there are apps that are virus hosts in themselves. VB within Excel. Javascript within browsers.

  21. Good design on Ask Slashdot: How Dead Is Antivirus, Exactly? · · Score: 1

    It seems to me that anti-virus would be a waste of time in a well designed system. Binaries should be protected from modification. Applications with built-in VMs (like browsers) should be secure and with separate memory protection (like Safari). If a vulnerability is discovered in one of these puzzle pieces then the correct solution is to patch the vulnerability. The patch should be provided with the same speed as any upgrade to anti-virus signatures. And if you don't patch a major vulnerability in time... well all bets are off anyway, you can't be sure the virus didn't disable your anti-virus anyway, so you're screwed in any case.

    I don't believe I've ever got a virus on my Mac. When I tried to help friends out with their malware on Windows, anti-malware software did a poor job. It didn't prevent infections, and couldn't repair them. My conclusion is you have to stop them at the border with good system design, not with band-aid anti-virus anti-malware.

  22. Re:I was under the impression that it *IS* one... on Why the Universe Didn't Become a Black Hole · · Score: 1

    Hmm, in a black hole a theoretical photon trying to escape is sucked back in because of gravity. But what will happen when a photon hits the hypothetical edge of the universe? Bounce back? I haven't heard of anyone theorising that.

  23. Re:Libraries are one thing Amazon is not on Why the Public Library Beats Amazon · · Score: 1

    But those secondary reasons might not be a sufficiently compelling argument for spending public money on it.

  24. Re:I want physical books and magazines on Why the Public Library Beats Amazon · · Score: 0

    Then buy them yourself. Your idiosyncrasies are not a reason to not push ahead with e-libraries.

  25. Re:Confusing the issue on Microsoft Surface Drowning? · · Score: 1

    Regardless of naming and marketing, the tablet space is too crowded for any company to have two entrants.