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User: rsilvergun

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  1. Re:This is the same FDA on Viruses the New Condiment · · Score: 1

    Wow, nice post. I'm far too lazy to refute everything, and there's a few things I probably can't refute. But a few stike me as worthwhile. One is why ocean fish has less mercury than farm fish. Mercury in our fish comes from industrial run off, mostly mining (there's a really cheap way to mine gold that uses mercury, for instance). It gets in the air, and settles in the water, where it winds up in fish. Fish farms' lakes are open to the air (at least, all the fish farms I've seen are). Ocean fish are far enough out and away from mining opperations they get less mercury.

    Sodium Nitrate isn't in your food to prevent Botulism, it's there to keep the meat nice and pink. The botulism is a nice side effect, but there are other ways to achieve that. They just don't keep the meat the right color for it's 3 months shelf life.

    Moreover, if these food additives and what not are causing cancer to some degree, how do you explain the low cancer rates in Asian countries where they smoke like chimneys? And yeah, you'd never drink that much Worcestershire sauce, but what happens if you're getting the stuff from seven or 8 other things you eat?

    Expensive doesn't mean better. I'm poor, and with the economy tanking I don't see that changing much. I need cheap. And yes, I did run off on a tangent about HFCS and Hydronenated Oils. :). 4

    Oh, here's an article on the study showing higher mercury levels in imported tuna. If you search a little more you'll find the full studio, which points out that when the fda did it's testing it used tuna canned in the US. Naturally, the US, with it's more stringent industrial regulations, has less mercury in it's fish.

  2. That's a good thing on Are Plasma TVs the Next BetaMax? · · Score: 5, Interesting

    for the TV industry, sell a product that needs replacing every few years. Worked for bike racks. Yakima and Thule used to sell racks so durable they were only replaced when someone bought a new car and you couldn't buy compatible roof clips. Nowadays critical components are made of cheap plastic that'll wear out in a few years (and good luck buying just the components). I gather it works well for cars too. What's annoying is all the landfills full of busted consumer goods. I mean, would it really be that hard to design these things to be repairable? Probably no more so than making a refillable ink cartridge.

  3. You assume small quantities get ingested on Viruses the New Condiment · · Score: 1

    so you start your day, and you're poor. You eat 4 sasuage links with your eggs. You snack on a burrito before lunch and have cold cuts for lunch. For dinner you hit Micky D's. You've had 4 heapin' helpings of bacteria. Now lather, rinse and repeat. The FDA assumes you're not eating this stuff _every_single_day_. But for a lot of poor people, they are. They don't have time, or money, for the fresh fruit and vegetables studies assume they'll eat. So they're getting way more of this crap than they should.

  4. This is the same FDA on Viruses the New Condiment · · Score: 2, Insightful

    that cherry picked US canned tuna for it's studies to show low mercury levels, so I'm a little worried about this. The sheer number of known carcinogens in the American diet worries me. Aspertame, Sodium Nitrate, Potasium Bromate; the list goes on and on. The argument is always either a) you're not getting enough to harm you or b) it's all naturally occuring anyway. Neither idea takes into account that a) if you eat a lot of prepared foods (like most poor Americans) you get way more than most studies allow and b) is it really a good idea to add more of a naturally occuring carcinogen to a diet? Wouldn't that raise your intake above natural limits? I've been gradually trying to clean up my diet, but it's hard. Real hard. Try to buy bread without High Fructose Corn Syrup or Hydrongenated Vegetable oil for less than $4 dollars/loaf, for example. Cheap lunch meats all have Sodium Nitrate, cheap flavoring agents Potasium Bromate, cheap fish is high in Mercury. Fresh vegetables, chicken and ocean fish are _not_ cheap when eaten as much as the fda recommends. At .50 cents a serving, 6 searvings a day 30 days a month that's $180 dollars a month just on vegetables. The average American only gets $100 /month for his food budget in most families (average grocery bill for a family of 4 if $400/month). You can't really live off bread anymore either, over farming has taken a lot of the necessary nutrients out of the soil and then the wheat that made that possible. All and all, I'm appalled and frightened by my food supply, and things like this aren't encouraging.

  5. No on The Tale of Wal-Mart, Jack, and Bully · · Score: 1

    I'd pre-order every single copy myself.

  6. Can you use Keyboard/Mouse with the 360? on Xbox 360 HD-DVD Player Just for Movies · · Score: 1

    out of box? I remember hearing Microsoft made it a point of not makeing a Keyboard/Mouse combo for the original XBox to keep things fair on Xbox live. There's a 3rd party adapter, but it's not perfect ( I don't think you can invert the y axis for example ). Still, If you could use keyboard/mouse then I won't bother upgrading my PC ever again :)

  7. Re:Faster? on Super-fast Transistors On the Way · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's cheaper to pay a few top engineers to make faster hardware then to pay a mountain of top computer scientists to write stable, fast code. Corel learned that the hardway.

  8. Am I the only one on PS3 Predicted to Lead Market Through 2011 · · Score: 1

    who finds it uncomfortable, even painful, to hold his hand in the position you hold a remote for any lenght of time? A gamepad doesn't make me bend my wrist. Then again, maybe the wii-mote won't really, I haven't tried it yet. I remember as a kid seeing the 3 button Genesis gamepad and wondering how I'd push button's A and C at the same time, only to find out that games (wisely) didn't make me :).

  9. I've been wondering about that on PS3 Predicted to Lead Market Through 2011 · · Score: 1

    it seems to me Sony's biggest competitor will be the huge backlog of ps2 games. I mean, I've got nearly 50 ps2 games I'm dying to play, and they just keep making more (Valkyrie Profile 2, Rouge Galaxy, Flatout 2). I can't justify buying a ps3 until I get caught up on my ps2 games.

  10. Nintendo's living Sega's dream on PS3 Predicted to Lead Market Through 2011 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    to have an extremely profitable console platform that they release most of the A-List titles on. Sega tried this with the Saturn. They ignored developers (actually, they treated them like dirt) and pushed their first party titles to the detriment of 3rd party (in the States, this didn't happen in Japan). It killed the console. Nintendo pulled if off though. To be fair, they didn't do it by being jerks to their 3rd parties, they just can't get too many A-List 3rd parties since there's not enough room to manuever in the Gamecube's install base. Still, the Big N doesn't really care about raw market share, because they can be pretty damn sure that all or most of that 16 percent will buy their software. Sega wanted that, and I guess they got it, but the videogame market was smaller and their share closer to 2% or 3% by the time all was said and done.

  11. If you can afford it, why not? on Kids with Cell Phones, How Young is Too Young? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    it means being able to track them if they go missing, and it means they can call you when they do something dumb. Concentrate on raising good kids and you won't have a problem with them abusing it anyway.

  12. Or on Skin Sensing Table Saw · · Score: 1

    they can leverage the increaing supply of second and third world labor and the decreasing cost of moving plants to force people to take risky jobs. Back in the 1900's, 1700 dead a year in a mine was considered 'higher than industry average', these days 24 dead is a nation mourning, and those 1700 died earning subsistance wages. Has humanity evolved enough that this can't ever again be the way things are?

  13. This is cool and all.. on Sega Genesis Collection for PSP and PS2 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    now for God's sake, release ports of Radient Silvergun and Panzer Dragoon Saga so I don't have to blow $400+ dollars on ebay to play them.

  14. Industry rumer is on Too Human No Longer an Unreal 3 Title? · · Score: 4, Funny

    they're switching to the DNF engine.

  15. Image quality? on Intel Open Sources Graphics Drivers · · Score: 0, Troll

    I've noticed an entire industry of low end graphics cards has sprung up to replace the fuzzy pictures from integrated intel graphics.

  16. Obviously on AOL Releases Search Logs of 657,427 Users · · Score: 1

    you're not married.

  17. What I like about this post on More Massive Layoffs at AOL · · Score: 1

    is that it implies that Americans get to eat because they're capitalists, and because of their massive natural resources and the stablity of having weak countries at their boarders. Hell, they're not even capitalists. You've got socialism for the rich (subsidies, bank insurance, S&L buyouts, defense contracts, etc) and capitalism for the poor ( who just have to suck it up when their jobs get shuffled around ). Your problem is your assuming the game is still being played. The rich fucks of the world have already won it, so much for a middle class.

  18. Yawn... on Castlevania Retrospective, Xbox Live Bound · · Score: 1

    call me when we get a release of Dracula X. Seriously, what's taking so long? Maybe with the Wii...

  19. Makes sense on OSS Use Increasing in UK Education Institutions · · Score: 2, Insightful

    as the economy tanks and first world countries slip into the second world, mass education'll have to cut costs somehow.

  20. Um, no.... on Matt Damon as Kirk in Star Trek XI? · · Score: 1

    it was a cheesy sci-fi space opera. I like cheesy sci-fi space operas. I like them as a kid, I liked them as a teenager and I like them as an adult. I liked the Lensman books. I like the Gap Cycle books. I like the Uller Uprising books and H Beam Piper. Why the hell does everyone assume that my tastes change just because I'm older? They might get more sophisitcated, but they don't change. I still hate situational comedy and like puns and slapstick. Yeah, Sesame Street's Cookie Monster may not hold my interest anymore, but Groucho Marx does.

  21. Re:When was the last time you used real? on Mozilla Partners with Real Networks · · Score: 1
    at first, reading your post I thought you worked for real, but after reading this:

    "Personally, I don't use real..."
    I'm sure of it!
  22. They're not worried about support on Linus Speaks Out On GPLv3 · · Score: 1

    what they're worried about is that the general purpose computers they use are so powerful and flexible, the end user will unlock functionality on a low end platform that's meant for a high end platform. Take a $100 Linux compatible linksys router and some deft use of iptables and suddenly you've got a $300+ top of the line model.

  23. nobody's going to stop buying SUVs on The Hybrid Scooter · · Score: 4, Insightful

    because when it comes right down to it, they're safer. Sadly, the reason they're safer is they destroy anyone or anything not in an equivalent vehicle. So, you're a professional earning $40k+/year, why not spend the extra $200/month so that when your lousy driving causes and accident you walk away with a scratch and the other (poorer) guy bites it? Wish I could say I was trolling, but about once or twice a year I read a story on fark or rotten or even my local paper about some drunk SUV driver killing a family because he ran a red, and he doesn't even see a chiropracter. I'm one of the have-nots, and I'm driving an old station wagon, so I'm more than a little concerned.

  24. If you're in a developing economy on OS Router Challenges Proprietary Networking · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    like India or China, 24/7 cya support is much less important, because you're economy is growing fast enough that you can recover from a meltdown, if only by starting a new company.

  25. Re:Breaking Unions is priceless on Law of Unintended Consequences Strikes Grocers · · Score: 1

    My point is that's changing with the event of Self Service grocers. They're breaking the Unions, because the people who watch the self serve lanes are being hired as baggers, not checkers. That's a $6/hr job with small raises instead of a $17/hr job with good raises.