Over the past 15 years, studies examining a potential relationship between RF transmitters and cancer have been published. These studies have not provided evidence that RF exposure from the transmitters increases the risk of cancer. Likewise, long-term animal studies have not established an increased risk of cancer from exposure to RF fields, even at levels that are much higher than produced by base stations and wireless networks.
Not necessarily. As a trivial case, think of allowing children to reap the natural results of their actions. Removing the suffering in the short term can be extremely harmful to someone in the long term. So some context is needed. Often well-meaning removal of short-term suffering can make things much worse over the longer term. The last 20 years or so of child-rearing theories have resulted in a lot of self-centered brats and parents pandering to 3 year old tyrants. That is most certainly NOT going to serve those children as adults. They will have a hard time with their bosses not thinking that their egos are the center of the universe.
Addiction is another example. Trying to remove the suffering which is a natural result of the addict's poor choices early on may mean they continue in a manner which really destroys their life, and even kills them. The sooner they 'get' that their choices are causing their suffering, and are willing to accept help to address the real issue, the better. One can easily contribute to a life-time of suffering and a horrible death by removing an addict's suffering which is due to his/her own choices. (for example, providing money, food, etc. often means just more money available for drugs...)
Life is more complicated than simple rules can represent.
You can get usb, video out and CD card slot for an iPad, you just have to buy the adapters. People who want them pay a few bucks for them People who don't need them, don't have to pay for them in the base device.
Actually, "get over yourself" implies you are madly in love with your own self-image, which is by definition an illusion which exists only in your own head. So "it is unhealthy and you really need to give it up" is appropriate advise.
This is entirely different from healthy self-confidence, a sign of which would be the ability to laugh at oneself, and not worry about what some web developer for BBC thinks about someone he's never met.
One problem with Quackwatch is that they tend to pick a small portion of the available studies for their "proof." If you don't carefully do your own research, what they write looks like science. But it's not. Throwing out the results which don't match a pet theory is not science.
Never underestimate the capability for humans to deceive each other (and themselves) where there is a lot of money, power or sex at stake....
Thank you. I was dumbfounded at all the people here throwing around LE and BE and having no f'ing idea what the terms actually meant. You saved me from having to break it to them.
No, I'm not new here, but obviously I had underestimated the level of arrogant incompetence rampant here.... I thought that at least when it came to basic structure of bits and bytes that the./ posters should at least have a clue.
What remained of my innocence has been fully shattered now..
That said, you'll never break into a larger screen size using only a virtual keyboard. Anyone who'll buy the oversized phone will require the real keyboard for more computer like functionality, like writing emails.
Yeah, the iPad hasn't sold at all...
There seem to be two camps. One who is happy with the 95% of what the iPad can do. And the other who is all pissed off that it isn't a full laptop. Maybe this is a new device category? (and there are ways to use a keyboard with an iPad, when needed; and that should work for similar Android/otherOS tablets as well)
So in other words, Android is a commercial success, but is poorly designed?
I've been programming embedded devices (including Linux systems using OpenEmbedded, etc), desktop systems from PCI drivers to GUIs for 20 years, so I understand the issues, but I haven't studied the Android architecture yet.
So I don't understand why this is such an issue. Sounds worse than a standard Linux distribution. Which again makes me wonder if Meego has a better chance long term because a lot of the KDE/Qt developers are involved. KDE just works on various size monitors, right?
Just seems like Android is not so well designed, and rushed out by a server software company, assuming that Java is the answer to everything.
I say that partially tongue in cheek, as I know Google uses a lot of other languages. Though they are fundamentally a server software company, not an embedded software company; which is bound to affect their gut instincts on architecture.
Almost every developer I talk to says they would like to do Android development, as they are interested in the concept of programming for an open phone, but they aren't interested in using Java to do it. Pretty much the way I feel. I still might, but I'd rather just use Qt in C++, so I'm looking forward to seeing how Meego does in the future.
Which partly asks the question: Can Intel get back market share in the phone/tablet market from the ARM hordes? I suspect the answer is that they have a chance for tablets, though phones will be more challenging. Maybe impossible with an x86 architecture, given the small batteries. But who knows...
Quite likely the issue is that Google is a web company, and in that world new software is almost continuously rolled out.
So the decision makers don't have any person real-world experience with commercial devices containing firmware; which is very difficult to upgrade once it leaves the factory. (at least major version changes, for the reason you noted)
This actually makes me wonder if Meego will be a sleeper. Nokia IS a phone company, so they understand that world. Trolltech has been playing with real world customers in the embedded world for a long time.
Intel is in a different world, but I expect they are providing more funding than SW development. They will have decision making clout. But Intel is a hardware company, run by hardware engineers. And those guys think that once something goes out the door it's frozen forever. Very different then the Google web-based, "let's try this for a few hours in Ohio, and we can always roll it back if it doesn't work" way of thinking.
It's not so much about "thinking" but about one's own decades of personal experience, which affects how we see the world and what decisions we'll tend to make.
There are of course many factors which go into mass market acceptance, so I would not want to make any bets just yet about a dominant phone/tablet OS 5 years from now. But it will be interesting to watch.
Yeah, people made fun of me 30 years ago when I was a "health food freak" too. Being healthy simply wasn't considered "cool." Now most people in my age group have any number of medical issues because they drank the Big Pharma koolaid. But I'm still healthy, and never take any drugs. Not so much as aspirin. Neither does my 75 year old father, who has perfect health, while people his age are dropping like flies. (and yes, that includes our family; the difference being lifestyle habits, not genetics)
Not saying there aren't wackos in any field, and the non-mainstream health are is clearly full of them. But not being mainstream doesn't mean automatically wrong. When there are many billions at stake, the amount of misinformation is deafening. Much of it from people who mean well, but simply don't know any better. They are just repeating what "everyone knows."
There is actually now a whole lot of documented evidence for what many of us have said for decades about "natural healing" (ALL healing is natural; no man created the healing process, it is built-in to the system).
But you don't hear about them in the mainstream press. You also don't generally hear about the corruption in many studies by companies with a vested interest. FDA "experts" who are actually working for the drug companies, etc. If you dig there are tons of examples.
Just don't fall for sites like "quackwatch" which is nothing but a shill for the drug companies. They just want to take away your freedom to eat what you want, and manage your own health care. As if your own body doesn't belong to you.
The overall declining health of the U.S. population, including virtual epidemics of many chronic diseases, shows that the mainstream medicine, with the model of getting us all to be lifetime supporters of Big Pharma, is not working.
Or you could just learn something about how your body actually works, how to keep your immune system strong so you don't get sick. I'm over 50 and haven't had a serious cold in so long I really can't remember. Probably 20 years.
But I don't mean the mainstream "health" advice. The medical racket is severely biased. Probably most doctors mean well, but they have a serious unconscious paradigm problem. Be better to assume there are no drugs in existence, and never will be, then starting looking at the problem anew...
Life tries very hard to survive, and much of what is assumed to be "bad" (symptoms) are actually _information_. Pain means there is a problem. When the warning light starts blinking on your car dash, cutting the wire is not solving the problem. Likewise with most uses of pain killers or symptom treatments.
Well, not all of us engineers are like that, but I certainly agree that a great many websites are illegible, either because of the colors or some background pattern.
Personally, I think it's just being completely self-centered and not even registering that other people exist. At least not actual real people outside their own imagination. It is the complete absence of a "user-centered" viewpoint.
If a person took the user's perspective for a couple of seconds, such problems would be obvious. (unless of course all the people on the project have the particular type of color-blindness such that it looks fine... though that still doesn't explain the horrid patterned backgrounds on many sites)
And it's good practice to declare variables in the smallest possible scope, and init them at the same time.It sounds like you think it's inefficient, but any decent compiler will optimize away 'c'; it's only there for readability.
I'm more worried by the mention of "patterns". And by the C++-style comments, which prevents the code from being compiled as good old ANSI C. Hopefully they use the *useful* C99 features too.
Uh... declaring and initializing variables inside a while() statement is not compatible with "good old ANSI C." Can't have it both ways. Though it is 2010 now, maybe comments which work with C99 is okay now?
Better yet, just use C++. It's not a driver, or even a library, it's an app. Using proven STL libraries will clearly improve the code quality and security.
Actually, maybe it is C++, as if 's' is a string, then "s != send" indicates 's' is actually an instance of a string class, not a char pointer. (I didn't look at the full code, just the snippet posted)
Safe? In the USA? According to the media, everyone carries - law abiding, police, bankers and other criminals.
I see your media is about as accurate about the USA as the US media is about the rest of the world.
You might want to do some personal research, including talking to real people in the areas you intend to visit. Yes, there are some areas in certain cities which are not safe, regardless of the presence of guns. A gang can beat you to death in any country, without using any guns. (though a friend carrying might be able to save you...)
But living in Seattle, I'm not concerned about guns. Violence, in certain areas after dark. Guns are not necessary for violence. People have been finding ways to kill and maim each other since the the first jawbone of an ass. If I was really worried I would pack a gun and keep the odds more even, but it's a lot better idea to just avoid conflict entirely.
What removing guns from the responsible adult does is merely to make the balance of power completely in favor of the government.
Police state? Yes we had someone shot by them here once - Jean Charles De Menezes in 2005. He was unusual. Normally, you need to at least pretend or carry a chair leg or something. Your police are described as a little more trigger happy.
Hard to argue with our police tending toward the trigger happy, though they have some justification in that they may well be facing a real firearm.
I notice that even when shooting someone for carrying a table leg in a plastic bag the UK officers get off free. That "our police can do no wrong" attitude seems the same the world over...
On the other hand, the total number of shooting deaths from police in the US are something like one per day, in a country of over 300 million. (http://social.jrank.org/pages/1333/Law-Enforcement-Police-Shootings.html) It seems quite likely to me that one person out of more than 300 million might actually need to have deadly force used on them, and that the officers are truly facing imminent death themselves. (though I don't for a second believe that is always the case, or that police don't abuse their power, as they tend to do all over the world)
With our police it is quite likely that it is not a table leg, but a real shotgun... That might seem to argue for just getting rid of guns altogether, but we don't trust unlimited power in the hands of the few. History shows that has gone wrong many, many times.
A de-armed populace is a vulnerable populace, to a great many possible dangers, both from within and from without. You might be getting away with it now, but time will tell... The world may not always be as it is today, and someday you might wish a sizable portion of your populace could quickly get to firearms, and have the life long training in how to use them.
While I tend to agree that some people are seemingly incapable of creative thought, I also have had the "opportunity" to have some brain-dead jobs early in my life, and those jobs caused my brain to wither. I swear I lost 30 IQ points by being in brain-dead jobs.
I've talked to other people who have experienced the same thing. The brain is like a muscle, use it or it wastes away and gets flabby. But start exercising it again, even if "forced labor" and it gets back and in shape and become stronger and more efficient.
Putting people in jobs supposedly above them might cause them to complain for a while, but they might well start using their minds more. And that is good for everyone, as then they are better able to make intelligent decisions at the polls.
Very well said. Those that scream "conspiracy theorist" seem to miss the simple facts about how some (most?) human beings behave when they have a lot of power and get rewarded for a given behavior. Even more so in a large organization.
And some people ARE sociopaths! In fact, that may well be the case with high level executives, which set the tone for their companies and make key decisions:
Sleep, EEG and waking rCBF have been studied in relation to RF exposure for a decade now, and the majority of papers published to date have found some form of effect.
So there is SOME kind of an effect, and we don't understand it yet. Those that scoff at any biological effect at all are fools. Wise men don't scoff, they watch carefully and reserve final judgment. Take a close look at quantum physics if you don't think we live in a mysterious universe...
Since there IS some kind of biological effect, and it is not well understood, I would err on the side of caution. I would most especially not want to chance affecting the DNA of a women's eggs (which already exist her whole life) and/or conceiving children in that environment. Maybe the chance of problems is low because the signal "should" be low inside the building, but why take the chance when experts are disagreeing and the trend is toward more caution? (cue the inevitable joke about a real woman there... sigh...)
I've watched "alternative" medicine at close range for about 30 years, as well as main stream medicine. There are some ethically challenged companies/people in the alternative supplement field, and some who are simply deluded by what are essentially religious beliefs and/or a lack of critical thinking skills.
However, that doesn't not automatically mean "alternative" medicine is somehow suspect itself. Many states have full Naturopathic Medicine schools, and licenses. The time required to get a degree is exactly the same as a MD, including clinical internship. Still need to take the same pre-med. Just that the focus of the main training is different. Rather than a focus on crisis medicine, the focus is on keeping people well, and treating chronic disease. Working with the nature of the system, rather than trying to beat it into submission. When their skills are not appropriate, they will refer to a surgeon, etc.
These doctors are lucky to ever make as much money as an engineer. They are not in it for the money. And yes, I know a number of them personally. This is not made up.
Also, the ones I know are quite scientific, use standard medical testing, sending blood and urine samples to the same labs as MDs use. They check the results of the treatment based on both symptoms and further objective tests. They read every study published on the effects of the supplements they use, and have far far more training in how food and other factors affect our health than MDs. There is only so much time during training and one has to focus somewhere...
Despite what the propaganda says, there is an authentic and scientific medical paradigm, which is more suited for many of the chronic diseases affecting our society.
To lump them in with people selling snake oil is not fair, and doesn't help anyone. They are often effective with chronic disease when "conventional" (crisis) medicine fails. The reason the industry is growing is because people are realizing that, as you said, "the body is a horribly complex biochemical system" and the current mainstream medical paradigm simply can't cope. They make a lot of money trying and tell us all great stories. But really, they are in over their head. Micro-managing the body's systems works no better than micromanaging you and I.
But they have a very powerful propaganda machine, and MANY lobbyists to keep the laws on their side. Much of what "everyone knows" about medicine in today's society is simply not backed up with the facts. But all someone has to do it put on a white coat and appear on TV and the masses (often including the otherwise well educated masses) fall for it. Because to find the truth takes some digging, and an understanding of what many humans will do for large amounts of money, so as to even try to do the digging. Unfortunately, many well meaning slashdotters see a couple references to a study and assume the man in the white coat must be telling the full and complete truth.
Funny thing is, if you read the "alternative" journals, you'll also see many references to peer reviewed studies. And some alternative medicine bashing sites, like quackwatch, are extremely selective about the studies they choose, and write very well, thus giving the impression that what they say is beyond reproach and "scientifically proven." Yet, a little digging shows many conflicting studies. And from my own research I have found many studies which are paid for by the drug industry, and have bizzare conclusions given the actual results of the studies. So reading the summary can easily give the wrong impression.
All is not as it appears...
As for the money to buy a congressman...
You quoted $2 Billion in practitioner channel supplements. I happen to have been involved in that market to a degree years ago, and have been a patient purchasing those supplements. You may want to understand that those are high grade Food Supplements. They are not patented drugs, thus the profit on those supplements is limited by the competition among companies who are able
Other messages have pointed out that grass-fed beef brings a premium price, just as many organic vegetables and fruits do. So it's not entirely either/or when it comes to economics and grass-fed...
The other issue, which someone pointed out as well, is that there is a large difference in the fatty acid profile of the beef. Purely grass-fed beef has a ration similar to fish. (Corn feed makes the worse ratio, as it is almost entirely omega-6 oils.) Omega-6 oils out of balance with Omega-3s are now being clearly shown to create the inflammatory response at the root cause of arthritis, arteriosclerosis, and other common diseases. (at least a part of the issue, sugar being the other...)
So from a human health ethical standpoint, it is an advantage to people to eat grass-fed (and finished) beef. Not saying there it no additional cost, but healthcare costs are on a runaway spiral, and the effects of how we grow our food is rarely discussed.
From a total system perspective, we could well come out way ahead to focus on healthy food (and education). Exactly how to pull that off, especially when elections are financed by Big Pharma, Big Medicine, Big Agro, etc. is another matter altogether...
Still, your approach seems like a start, and I hope your small farm and others like it don't disappear...
Which 8-bit micro didn't need the crystal oscillator to stabilize first? Well, you can execute instructions, but for instance a serial port baud rate won't be accurate for at least a few milliseconds. Though something like a MSP430 runs off the 32KHz with a PLL, and can start up very quickly indeed.
Still, I agree that if you really want to start quick, you don't load a few hundred K of kernel code...
Intel Atom's are already getting quite down in power consumption, now that they have truly integrated everything in one chip. The additional chip took 3x the power of the processor before. The new N450 is quoted at 5 Watts at 1.6GHz, while a Cortext A8 based OMAP 3530 at 720 MHz at 2 Watts. Both with GPUs.
Also, Intel can push the edge on process technology and thus drive the power down further. All the while, the ARM chips are reaching into the GHz range, and so are using more power. Not that they are equivalent processor architectures, but Intel can push the power down quite a bit yet with the same or better performance.
Intel is late to the mobile market, and they are stuck with the x86/AMD64 instruction set, but there seems to be a niche for them to run Windows and off the shelf apps. Should be interesting...
Slashdot Mirror
Over the past 15 years, studies examining a potential relationship between RF transmitters and cancer have been published. These studies have not provided evidence that RF exposure from the transmitters increases the risk of cancer. Likewise, long-term animal studies have not established an increased risk of cancer from exposure to RF fields, even at levels that are much higher than produced by base stations and wireless networks.
http://www.who.int/peh-emf/pub...
How about something more recent? Is the NIH a good enough source?:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
Abolition of suffering is always moral.
Not necessarily. As a trivial case, think of allowing children to reap the natural results of their actions. Removing the suffering in the short term can be extremely harmful to someone in the long term. So some context is needed. Often well-meaning removal of short-term suffering can make things much worse over the longer term. The last 20 years or so of child-rearing theories have resulted in a lot of self-centered brats and parents pandering to 3 year old tyrants. That is most certainly NOT going to serve those children as adults. They will have a hard time with their bosses not thinking that their egos are the center of the universe.
Addiction is another example. Trying to remove the suffering which is a natural result of the addict's poor choices early on may mean they continue in a manner which really destroys their life, and even kills them. The sooner they 'get' that their choices are causing their suffering, and are willing to accept help to address the real issue, the better. One can easily contribute to a life-time of suffering and a horrible death by removing an addict's suffering which is due to his/her own choices. (for example, providing money, food, etc. often means just more money available for drugs...)
Life is more complicated than simple rules can represent.
You can get usb, video out and CD card slot for an iPad, you just have to buy the adapters. People who want them pay a few bucks for them People who don't need them, don't have to pay for them in the base device.
Actually, "get over yourself" implies you are madly in love with your own self-image, which is by definition an illusion which exists only in your own head. So "it is unhealthy and you really need to give it up" is appropriate advise.
This is entirely different from healthy self-confidence, a sign of which would be the ability to laugh at oneself, and not worry about what some web developer for BBC thinks about someone he's never met.
One problem with Quackwatch is that they tend to pick a small portion of the available studies for their "proof." If you don't carefully do your own research, what they write looks like science. But it's not. Throwing out the results which don't match a pet theory is not science.
Never underestimate the capability for humans to deceive each other (and themselves) where there is a lot of money, power or sex at stake....
Thank you. I was dumbfounded at all the people here throwing around LE and BE and having no f'ing idea what the terms actually meant. You saved me from having to break it to them.
No, I'm not new here, but obviously I had underestimated the level of arrogant incompetence rampant here.... I thought that at least when it came to basic structure of bits and bytes that the ./ posters should at least have a clue.
What remained of my innocence has been fully shattered now..
That said, you'll never break into a larger screen size using only a virtual keyboard. Anyone who'll buy the oversized phone will require the real keyboard for more computer like functionality, like writing emails.
Yeah, the iPad hasn't sold at all...
There seem to be two camps. One who is happy with the 95% of what the iPad can do. And the other who is all pissed off that it isn't a full laptop. Maybe this is a new device category? (and there are ways to use a keyboard with an iPad, when needed; and that should work for similar Android/otherOS tablets as well)
So in other words, Android is a commercial success, but is poorly designed?
I've been programming embedded devices (including Linux systems using OpenEmbedded, etc), desktop systems from PCI drivers to GUIs for 20 years, so I understand the issues, but I haven't studied the Android architecture yet.
So I don't understand why this is such an issue. Sounds worse than a standard Linux distribution. Which again makes me wonder if Meego has a better chance long term because a lot of the KDE/Qt developers are involved. KDE just works on various size monitors, right?
Just seems like Android is not so well designed, and rushed out by a server software company, assuming that Java is the answer to everything.
I say that partially tongue in cheek, as I know Google uses a lot of other languages. Though they are fundamentally a server software company, not an embedded software company; which is bound to affect their gut instincts on architecture.
Almost every developer I talk to says they would like to do Android development, as they are interested in the concept of programming for an open phone, but they aren't interested in using Java to do it. Pretty much the way I feel. I still might, but I'd rather just use Qt in C++, so I'm looking forward to seeing how Meego does in the future.
Which partly asks the question: Can Intel get back market share in the phone/tablet market from the ARM hordes? I suspect the answer is that they have a chance for tablets, though phones will be more challenging. Maybe impossible with an x86 architecture, given the small batteries. But who knows...
Very good summary.
Quite likely the issue is that Google is a web company, and in that world new software is almost continuously rolled out.
So the decision makers don't have any person real-world experience with commercial devices containing firmware; which is very difficult to upgrade once it leaves the factory. (at least major version changes, for the reason you noted)
This actually makes me wonder if Meego will be a sleeper. Nokia IS a phone company, so they understand that world. Trolltech has been playing with real world customers in the embedded world for a long time.
Intel is in a different world, but I expect they are providing more funding than SW development. They will have decision making clout. But Intel is a hardware company, run by hardware engineers. And those guys think that once something goes out the door it's frozen forever. Very different then the Google web-based, "let's try this for a few hours in Ohio, and we can always roll it back if it doesn't work" way of thinking.
It's not so much about "thinking" but about one's own decades of personal experience, which affects how we see the world and what decisions we'll tend to make.
There are of course many factors which go into mass market acceptance, so I would not want to make any bets just yet about a dominant phone/tablet OS 5 years from now. But it will be interesting to watch.
Yeah, people made fun of me 30 years ago when I was a "health food freak" too. Being healthy simply wasn't considered "cool." Now most people in my age group have any number of medical issues because they drank the Big Pharma koolaid. But I'm still healthy, and never take any drugs. Not so much as aspirin. Neither does my 75 year old father, who has perfect health, while people his age are dropping like flies. (and yes, that includes our family; the difference being lifestyle habits, not genetics)
Not saying there aren't wackos in any field, and the non-mainstream health are is clearly full of them. But not being mainstream doesn't mean automatically wrong. When there are many billions at stake, the amount of misinformation is deafening. Much of it from people who mean well, but simply don't know any better. They are just repeating what "everyone knows."
There is actually now a whole lot of documented evidence for what many of us have said for decades about "natural healing" (ALL healing is natural; no man created the healing process, it is built-in to the system).
But you don't hear about them in the mainstream press. You also don't generally hear about the corruption in many studies by companies with a vested interest. FDA "experts" who are actually working for the drug companies, etc. If you dig there are tons of examples.
Just don't fall for sites like "quackwatch" which is nothing but a shill for the drug companies. They just want to take away your freedom to eat what you want, and manage your own health care. As if your own body doesn't belong to you.
The overall declining health of the U.S. population, including virtual epidemics of many chronic diseases, shows that the mainstream medicine, with the model of getting us all to be lifetime supporters of Big Pharma, is not working.
Or you could just learn something about how your body actually works, how to keep your immune system strong so you don't get sick. I'm over 50 and haven't had a serious cold in so long I really can't remember. Probably 20 years.
But I don't mean the mainstream "health" advice. The medical racket is severely biased. Probably most doctors mean well, but they have a serious unconscious paradigm problem. Be better to assume there are no drugs in existence, and never will be, then starting looking at the problem anew...
Life tries very hard to survive, and much of what is assumed to be "bad" (symptoms) are actually _information_. Pain means there is a problem. When the warning light starts blinking on your car dash, cutting the wire is not solving the problem. Likewise with most uses of pain killers or symptom treatments.
I could go on for hours, but NZ has some good people:
http://www.naturopath.org.nz/nature.html
2 generations having kids by 24 isn't unusual. Oh wait, you're over 24 and still a virgin. That would explain a lot...
Well, not all of us engineers are like that, but I certainly agree that a great many websites are illegible, either because of the colors or some background pattern.
Personally, I think it's just being completely self-centered and not even registering that other people exist. At least not actual real people outside their own imagination. It is the complete absence of a "user-centered" viewpoint.
If a person took the user's perspective for a couple of seconds, such problems would be obvious. (unless of course all the people on the project have the particular type of color-blindness such that it looks fine... though that still doesn't explain the horrid patterned backgrounds on many sites)
When it comes to development jobs, the main difference between entry level and 20 years of experience is salary.
Only for those who are incapable of learning anything during those 20 years.
Did you know I'm psychic?Yep.. Wait... I'm getting something... yes.. yes,..
You are an entry level developer who resents more experienced people making more money than you.
Damn, I'm good!
And it's good practice to declare variables in the smallest possible scope, and init them at the same time.It sounds like you think it's inefficient, but any decent compiler will optimize away 'c'; it's only there for readability.
I'm more worried by the mention of "patterns". And by the C++-style comments,
which prevents the code from being compiled as good old ANSI C. Hopefully they
use the *useful* C99 features too.
Uh... declaring and initializing variables inside a while() statement is not compatible with "good old ANSI C." Can't have it both ways. Though it is 2010 now, maybe comments which work with C99 is okay now?
Better yet, just use C++. It's not a driver, or even a library, it's an app. Using proven STL libraries will clearly improve the code quality and security.
Actually, maybe it is C++, as if 's' is a string, then "s != send" indicates 's' is actually an instance of a string class, not a char pointer. (I didn't look at the full code, just the snippet posted)
There's therapy available for such issues...
Really? Have you used it? Do a lot of other people?
Yes there is.
Yes, I have. Jedi mind tricks no longer work on me.
No, they don't.
Safe? In the USA? According to the media, everyone carries - law abiding, police, bankers and other criminals.
I see your media is about as accurate about the USA as the US media is about the rest of the world.
You might want to do some personal research, including talking to real people in the areas you intend to visit. Yes, there are some areas in certain cities which are not safe, regardless of the presence of guns. A gang can beat you to death in any country, without using any guns. (though a friend carrying might be able to save you...)
But living in Seattle, I'm not concerned about guns. Violence, in certain areas after dark. Guns are not necessary for violence. People have been finding ways to kill and maim each other since the the first jawbone of an ass. If I was really worried I would pack a gun and keep the odds more even, but it's a lot better idea to just avoid conflict entirely.
What removing guns from the responsible adult does is merely to make the balance of power completely in favor of the government.
Police state? Yes we had someone shot by them here once - Jean Charles De Menezes in 2005. He was unusual. Normally, you need to at least pretend or carry a chair leg or something. Your police are described as a little more trigger happy.
Hard to argue with our police tending toward the trigger happy, though they have some justification in that they may well be facing a real firearm.
I notice that even when shooting someone for carrying a table leg in a plastic bag the UK officers get off free. That "our police can do no wrong" attitude seems the same the world over...
On the other hand, the total number of shooting deaths from police in the US are something like one per day, in a country of over 300 million. (http://social.jrank.org/pages/1333/Law-Enforcement-Police-Shootings.html) It seems quite likely to me that one person out of more than 300 million might actually need to have deadly force used on them, and that the officers are truly facing imminent death themselves. (though I don't for a second believe that is always the case, or that police don't abuse their power, as they tend to do all over the world)
With our police it is quite likely that it is not a table leg, but a real shotgun... That might seem to argue for just getting rid of guns altogether, but we don't trust unlimited power in the hands of the few. History shows that has gone wrong many, many times.
A de-armed populace is a vulnerable populace, to a great many possible dangers, both from within and from without. You might be getting away with it now, but time will tell... The world may not always be as it is today, and someday you might wish a sizable portion of your populace could quickly get to firearms, and have the life long training in how to use them.
While I tend to agree that some people are seemingly incapable of creative thought, I also have had the "opportunity" to have some brain-dead jobs early in my life, and those jobs caused my brain to wither. I swear I lost 30 IQ points by being in brain-dead jobs.
I've talked to other people who have experienced the same thing. The brain is like a muscle, use it or it wastes away and gets flabby. But start exercising it again, even if "forced labor" and it gets back and in shape and become stronger and more efficient.
Putting people in jobs supposedly above them might cause them to complain for a while, but they might well start using their minds more. And that is good for everyone, as then they are better able to make intelligent decisions at the polls.
Very well said. Those that scream "conspiracy theorist" seem to miss the simple facts about how some (most?) human beings behave when they have a lot of power and get rewarded for a given behavior. Even more so in a large organization.
And some people ARE sociopaths! In fact, that may well be the case with high level executives, which set the tone for their companies and make key decisions:
http://willblogforfood.typepad.com/will_blog_for_food/2009/07/are-ceos-sociopaths.html
http://electromagnetichealth.org/quotes-from-experts/
Also, worth carefully reading the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_radiation_and_health
From the Wikipedia article:
Sleep, EEG and waking rCBF have been studied in relation to RF exposure for a decade now, and the majority of papers published to date have found some form of effect.
So there is SOME kind of an effect, and we don't understand it yet. Those that scoff at any biological effect at all are fools. Wise men don't scoff, they watch carefully and reserve final judgment. Take a close look at quantum physics if you don't think we live in a mysterious universe...
Since there IS some kind of biological effect, and it is not well understood, I would err on the side of caution. I would most especially not want to chance affecting the DNA of a women's eggs (which already exist her whole life) and/or conceiving children in that environment. Maybe the chance of problems is low because the signal "should" be low inside the building, but why take the chance when experts are disagreeing and the trend is toward more caution? (cue the inevitable joke about a real woman there... sigh...)
I've watched "alternative" medicine at close range for about 30 years, as well as main stream medicine. There are some ethically challenged companies/people in the alternative supplement field, and some who are simply deluded by what are essentially religious beliefs and/or a lack of critical thinking skills.
However, that doesn't not automatically mean "alternative" medicine is somehow suspect itself. Many states have full Naturopathic Medicine schools, and licenses. The time required to get a degree is exactly the same as a MD, including clinical internship. Still need to take the same pre-med. Just that the focus of the main training is different. Rather than a focus on crisis medicine, the focus is on keeping people well, and treating chronic disease. Working with the nature of the system, rather than trying to beat it into submission. When their skills are not appropriate, they will refer to a surgeon, etc.
These doctors are lucky to ever make as much money as an engineer. They are not in it for the money. And yes, I know a number of them personally. This is not made up.
Also, the ones I know are quite scientific, use standard medical testing, sending blood and urine samples to the same labs as MDs use. They check the results of the treatment based on both symptoms and further objective tests. They read every study published on the effects of the supplements they use, and have far far more training in how food and other factors affect our health than MDs. There is only so much time during training and one has to focus somewhere...
Despite what the propaganda says, there is an authentic and scientific medical paradigm, which is more suited for many of the chronic diseases affecting our society.
To lump them in with people selling snake oil is not fair, and doesn't help anyone. They are often effective with chronic disease when "conventional" (crisis) medicine fails. The reason the industry is growing is because people are realizing that, as you said, "the body is a horribly complex biochemical system" and the current mainstream medical paradigm simply can't cope. They make a lot of money trying and tell us all great stories. But really, they are in over their head. Micro-managing the body's systems works no better than micromanaging you and I.
But they have a very powerful propaganda machine, and MANY lobbyists to keep the laws on their side. Much of what "everyone knows" about medicine in today's society is simply not backed up with the facts. But all someone has to do it put on a white coat and appear on TV and the masses (often including the otherwise well educated masses) fall for it. Because to find the truth takes some digging, and an understanding of what many humans will do for large amounts of money, so as to even try to do the digging. Unfortunately, many well meaning slashdotters see a couple references to a study and assume the man in the white coat must be telling the full and complete truth.
Funny thing is, if you read the "alternative" journals, you'll also see many references to peer reviewed studies. And some alternative medicine bashing sites, like quackwatch, are extremely selective about the studies they choose, and write very well, thus giving the impression that what they say is beyond reproach and "scientifically proven." Yet, a little digging shows many conflicting studies. And from my own research I have found many studies which are paid for by the drug industry, and have bizzare conclusions given the actual results of the studies. So reading the summary can easily give the wrong impression.
All is not as it appears...
As for the money to buy a congressman...
You quoted $2 Billion in practitioner channel supplements. I happen to have been involved in that market to a degree years ago, and have been a patient purchasing those supplements. You may want to understand that those are high grade Food Supplements. They are not patented drugs, thus the profit on those supplements is limited by the competition among companies who are able
Other messages have pointed out that grass-fed beef brings a premium price, just as many organic vegetables and fruits do. So it's not entirely either/or when it comes to economics and grass-fed...
The other issue, which someone pointed out as well, is that there is a large difference in the fatty acid profile of the beef. Purely grass-fed beef has a ration similar to fish. (Corn feed makes the worse ratio, as it is almost entirely omega-6 oils.) Omega-6 oils out of balance with Omega-3s are now being clearly shown to create the inflammatory response at the root cause of arthritis, arteriosclerosis, and other common diseases. (at least a part of the issue, sugar being the other...)
So from a human health ethical standpoint, it is an advantage to people to eat grass-fed (and finished) beef. Not saying there it no additional cost, but healthcare costs are on a runaway spiral, and the effects of how we grow our food is rarely discussed.
From a total system perspective, we could well come out way ahead to focus on healthy food (and education). Exactly how to pull that off, especially when elections are financed by Big Pharma, Big Medicine, Big Agro, etc. is another matter altogether...
Still, your approach seems like a start, and I hope your small farm and others like it don't disappear...
I would bet those are shotguns, which inherently don't travel far, and not rifles. I've never known anyone to hunt waterfowl with rifles.
Which 8-bit micro didn't need the crystal oscillator to stabilize first? Well, you can execute instructions, but for instance a serial port baud rate won't be accurate for at least a few milliseconds. Though something like a MSP430 runs off the 32KHz with a PLL, and can start up very quickly indeed.
Still, I agree that if you really want to start quick, you don't load a few hundred K of kernel code...
Intel Atom's are already getting quite down in power consumption, now that they have truly integrated everything in one chip. The additional chip took 3x the power of the processor before. The new N450 is quoted at 5 Watts at 1.6GHz, while a Cortext A8 based OMAP 3530 at 720 MHz at 2 Watts. Both with GPUs.
Also, Intel can push the edge on process technology and thus drive the power down further. All the while, the ARM chips are reaching into the GHz range, and so are using more power. Not that they are equivalent processor architectures, but Intel can push the power down quite a bit yet with the same or better performance.
Intel is late to the mobile market, and they are stuck with the x86/AMD64 instruction set, but there seems to be a niche for them to run Windows and off the shelf apps. Should be interesting...