Remember, this is the same company that last year had trouble telling the difference between dollars and cents. It may well be that they were simply confused.
Actually, if the question was "Is evolution well-supported by evidence and widely accepted within the scientific community?", then answering "no" isn't the same as "rejecting evolution". With any subject as complex as the origin and the development of life, there is going to be a lot of people who are simply uncertain. I imagine a lot of those people do not believe believe creationism over evolution, they are just undecided (hell a lot of them probably just don't care, as much as most/.ers love science, a lot of the population doesn't). Those people don't belong to the creationist movement, they are simply in the middle ground.
And then there are the fringe theories like that our ancestors flew here from an alien planet. They also don't belong to either side.
Unfortunately, he actually does support gay marriage, just not as a legal construct (and no, that is not hypocritical or a 'flip-flop', I support a person's right to declare another person their "Best Friend Forever", but I don't think thats something that should be regulated by the government).
Ironically the reason the "Control-Alt-Delete" sequence was chosen (I actually met the guy who invented it, btw) is that the keys are so far away from each other that it becomes difficult to accidentally hit them. It was initially supposed to be a hack to workaround locked up machines, not a key sequence that performed a common task...
That reasoning would require now to be a particularly good time for a lawsuit. But that simply is not the case. Right now its still somewhat new and vulnerable, and is going to have to deal with a range of upstarts. Furthermore, it is too early for them to have finished sealing the deal with the media companies to protect them from such lawsuits. There really isn't a good time to be sued (which is why I'm sure YouTube would have preferred to not be sued in the first place), but I assure you, now is a particularly bad time.
And actually, the precedent you speak of would probably be quite narrow. If Google wins, it will only be because they are taking some specific steps to attempt to prevent copyright infringement. If the media companies can make the argument that they have stopped doing that at some point in the future, they can sue again. And of course that all assumes the lawsuit ever goes to court, things like this are almost always settled out of court.
"As mentioned, that runs the risk that 'Tube cuts a sweetheart deal with the labels before Google can do it."
If You Tube cut a deal, that would in no way set a legal precedent that Google would then have to follow with its own video service. In fact, that would make it much easier for their own service, unrestricted by the terms of the deal, to overtake YouTube in popularity.
"As it stands, I'd have to imagine the spectre of a lawsuit was included in the YouTube purchase price"
I'd really hate to see the price before considering the potential lawsuit. But there is a big difference between a potential lawsuit that may possibly be filed and one that has actually been filed. The latter would have brought the price down much more.
I'm sure everyone at Google would have much preferred the media companies turn a blind eye to online video rather than file a lawsuit (which even if they lose, its still going to cost a lot of money). Well not everyone, the lawyers themselves might like the big fees they are now collecting...
Again, the point of an amicus curiae brief is that an outside party like Google could assist You Tube's defense without actually buying them out. The only way this 1.6 billion deal (or however much it was) affects Google's position in this lawsuit is that now if they lose, Google has to shell out even more money to the media companies. And if they really wanted to take an active role in all of this, buying You Tube after the lawsuit would have saved them a lot of money (though then again, its unlikely You Tube was worth that much to start with).
Thats why they have Amicus curiae briefs. If Google just wanted to help YouTube defend themselves, they could have filed such a brief for much less than the 1.6 billion (or whatever it was) they spent on YouTube. Or if they really wanted to take an active role in the lawsuit, they could have waited for it to be filed and then bail out YouTube for much less money. Though its questionable whether or not they would have ever been sued in the first place had YouTube not been bought by someone who could pay up.
No matter how you cut it, this would have been a silly strategy. Can we please stop pretending we are on Google's board of directors and posting all this speculative BS on what we think they are doing or will do in the future? Please?
First of all, you can buy a machine that will detect oxygen levels for you, so its really a moot point.
Second, while your higher level senses may not be able to give you a digital readout of O2 levels, your brain will detect that its running low on oxygen and increase your heart/breathing rates accordingly (just as it does when you are at a high altitude).
Third, all these devices work by removing oxygen from the air. They do not simply pump it full of nitrogen. As the percentage of oxygen goes down, nitrogen goes up, along with other gases (including CO2).
Fourth, CO is different from nitrogen in that it is actually toxic. It will replace the oxygen in your blood cells since it binds better than oxygen. Whereas nitrogen is perfectly fine to breath, the danger is simply low O2 levels.
Fifth, even with CO poisoning, there are side effects. Headaches, dizziness, nausea, etc., you will basically feel like you have the flu. You will not simply be walking around feeling normal and suddenly 'drop dead', unless the levels are extremely high.
Now if you will excuse me, I've been having a headache, feeling dizzy, and had a slight sense of nausea all day. So I'm going to go outside, even though I'm 99% sure its from reading up on all these symptoms (plus its nice out).
Yes, if you have a medical condition, situations that are normally safe can become deadly. Hell even a roller coaster can be deadly to someone with a heart problem. That doesn't mean we need to "make damn sure NO ONE can defeat the safeties to (get on that ride)". I never said its impossible to die in one of these, just that it doesn't rise to the level the previous poster said. The fact that employees were given access to the room (barring any preexisting medical problems) in your workplace illustrates that.
Well you certainly would hope your employer (or whoever sets up the rules) allows something of a buffer space between what you are allowed to enter and the very minimum amount needed to survive. And besides, you will start to feel other side effects (such as problems thinking clearly) above the fatal levels, so they probably want to guard against them as well.
No, it may not be a good idea to work all day inside this place. But its hardly the "walk in and instantly die" scenario the other guy was talking about.
As the oxygen concentration falls
below 16 percent, the brain sends
commands to the breathing control
center, causing the victim to breathe faster and deeper. As the
oxygen level continues to
decrease, full recovery is less
certain. An atmosphere of only 4
to 6 percent oxygen causes the
victim to fall into a coma in less
than 40 seconds.
Again, the effects you mention only happen when you get down to the single digits. Those are simply not the levels we are talking about. At 15-16%, not only will you be able to live, but your brain will detect it and will change your breathing to compensate. If they go further down the side effects will get worse (your paper even has a nifty chart showing these side effects on page 3), though you still have some time before immediate unconsciousness occurs. Although I'm not even sure that would be a possible scenario here as these devices just filter out oxygen, they do not actively pump the room full of nitrogen. There will be a limit to how low the oxygen levels can physically get.
Well we are talking about two different scenarios here. When you are at a high altitude, the air has the same percentage of oxygen as in a normal environment, its just thinner. But in a room like this, the air is just as dense, it just contains less oxygen relative to nitrogen. IANAC (chemist), but I would think the two scenarios would affect human breathing and open flames differently. It would make sense for the open flame to be more sensitive to the oxygen concentration, with your lungs more sensitive to the thinner air. In the context of the statement, its pretty clear they were talking about the effects on your body being similar to being at an altitude of 6,000 feet, not the flame.
"I was *trying* to point out that you don't want to get too carried away by 'inerting' areas because there are consequences- while you may become sleepy and tired from CO poisoning, or disoriented, hot, and suffocating from CO2 poisoning, people will not experience warning symptoms with N2 poisoning- they'll simply keel over."
You will only get the "simply keel over" effect if oxygen levels are 0 (or close to it), like if you suck on a hose spouting pure nitrogen. The same thing will happen if you start breathing pure CO2. If you are in an environment where your body cannot get the oxygen it needs, you will simply die. If on the other hand you get a more gradual fall in oxygen levels (which would be the most common failure scenario here, as well as in most everyday situations where CO2 levels rise), you will feel side effects first. And anyways, as long as you have reasonable safety precautions, its still not going to rise to the level of "They'd better make damn sure NO ONE can defeat the safeties to get into that room", like you said in your first post. I mean if you are going to keep people out of any enclosure where there may be a drop in oxygen levels, you would also have to keep them out of houses and apartments that are heated with natural gas (which may result in a methane leak).
"Just simple information that your average person might not have known about..."
I'm pretty sure the average person knows you need oxygen to breathe.
"Your body and brain do not need carbohydrates. In fact your brain actually runs more efficiently on ketones than on glucose."
Yes, I know its possible to live without carbohydrates. That doesn't mean its healthy. Virtually every real medical study shows carbohydrates are good for your brain.
"You also cannot cite any source for information saying that he was obese at the time of his fall; his family claims that fluid built up in his body during his coma. As we do not have access to his full medical records, this will be difficult to prove. If you can come up with a source that can positively confirm Dr. Atkins' weight at the time of his accident, then you will have something here. But you don't."
His company released a statement putting his weight at 196 pounds. Assume a height of 5'11 (I believe they also said he was nearly 6 feet tall), and that gives you a BMI of 27.3. That qualifies him as overweight.
"But muscle burns fat while you're just sitting around, because it requires more energy just for upkeep."
Not much. If you really want to loose weight, you need aerobic exercise (and in fact most aerobic exercise also build muscles, so you get that benefit anyways).
"If it were that simple, then everyone would do it. "
Most people I know with asthma are not overweight. Maybe they are all anorexic, but I suspect they have ways to work out despite their problem.
"If you actually have an objection to make about Atkins that is based in fact, I'm interested. But so far I haven't seen one not debunked by modern medical science."
If by "modern medical science" you mean fad nutritionists who sell low carb foods, then you may be right. But if you mean real doctors, there are plenty of studies showing the dangers of eliminating carbohydrates for weight loss. Talk to your medical provider for more details.
At 15 percent oxygen, it's safe for humans to enter. The lower oxygen content of the air is similar to being at an altitude of about 6,000 feet, Eickhorn said. He demonstrated with a lighter inside a sealed atrium Wagner has on display at Cebit. It won't light.
They are not talking about oxygen free rooms. Yes, as your article says, breathing pure nitrogen will kill you as humans don't run on nitrogen. But that does not mean a high nitrogen content would be dangerous. Otherwise you would die as soon as you breathed a breath of Earth's air which is, by a long measure, mostly nitrogen. So your article really has nothing to do with this subject. Its sort of like giving a story of how 900 degree temperatures inside a cremation furnace affect the human body and using that as an argument on why people shouldn't be allowed in houses with the heat turned on.
Or you could go on a real diet that involves cutting down on unhealthy fats instead of the carbohydrates your body (especially your brain) need in order to function. You know, a diet that has actually been recommended by actual medical professionals, not by some fat ass who died of a heart attack while morbidly obese (and yes, I know Atkins was in a coma before he died, but he still was overweight when he went in the coma).
Also weights won't help you loose that much weight, as you don't burn that many calories that way (according to this chart, it burns about as many calories as playing golf). Unfortunate as it may be for someone with asthma, you really need the aerobic workout. Though I would think a professional trainer at a gym or someplace might know how to work around the asthma.
Or you could do what I do and just get something you can work out on in the privacy of your own home. Then you can pant and wheeze all you want without worrying about other people giving you weird looks (though in your case you might want an inhaler within reach).
Yes, its possible the big bang theory is not correct. But then any theory on what happened before the big bang wouldn't exactly make any sense, would it? Any such theory is predicated on the fact that it itself is unprovable. Thus it cannot be considered a legitimate scientific theory.
Its not a limitation of technology or our knowledge, its a limit of physics. You can no more look ahead of the big bang than you could travel 10 times the speed of light. There is a difference between something being technically impossible and something being physically impossible.
"So if it's possible that the Big Bang theory and other theories about the universe's origins could be incorrect, isn't it a bit presumptuous to say that we'll never know what happened before the beginning of the universe?"
Thats why I said
Yes, its possible the big bang theory is wrong, but then any speculation on what the universe was like before then would have to be revised anyways to take in account the new creation theory.
If there was no big bang, then it might be possible to determine what happened earlier in the universe's history. However, you would not be able to know what happened prior to the big bang on account of it never existing in the first place.
There is a big difference between something being technically impossible to test (meaning our society does not have the technology required to test it) and being physically impossible to test (meaning it cannot be done regardless of what technology is available). Testing pre-big bang ideas is physically impossible, thus such ideas are simply not scientific theories.
Because according to our current leading theories, all information about the universe pre-big bang was completely destroyed, thus there is no way to find anything about it. Yes, its possible the big bang theory is wrong, but then any speculation on what the universe was like before then would have to be revised anyways to take in account the new creation theory.
Slashdot Mirror
Remember, this is the same company that last year had trouble telling the difference between dollars and cents. It may well be that they were simply confused.
Actually, if the question was "Is evolution well-supported by evidence and widely accepted within the scientific community?", then answering "no" isn't the same as "rejecting evolution". With any subject as complex as the origin and the development of life, there is going to be a lot of people who are simply uncertain. I imagine a lot of those people do not believe believe creationism over evolution, they are just undecided (hell a lot of them probably just don't care, as much as most /.ers love science, a lot of the population doesn't). Those people don't belong to the creationist movement, they are simply in the middle ground.
And then there are the fringe theories like that our ancestors flew here from an alien planet. They also don't belong to either side.
Unfortunately, he actually does support gay marriage, just not as a legal construct (and no, that is not hypocritical or a 'flip-flop', I support a person's right to declare another person their "Best Friend Forever", but I don't think thats something that should be regulated by the government).
Ironically the reason the "Control-Alt-Delete" sequence was chosen (I actually met the guy who invented it, btw) is that the keys are so far away from each other that it becomes difficult to accidentally hit them. It was initially supposed to be a hack to workaround locked up machines, not a key sequence that performed a common task...
Amazon sued Barnes and Noble. If you think that is a "small weak target", you need to read more books.
That reasoning would require now to be a particularly good time for a lawsuit. But that simply is not the case. Right now its still somewhat new and vulnerable, and is going to have to deal with a range of upstarts. Furthermore, it is too early for them to have finished sealing the deal with the media companies to protect them from such lawsuits. There really isn't a good time to be sued (which is why I'm sure YouTube would have preferred to not be sued in the first place), but I assure you, now is a particularly bad time.
And actually, the precedent you speak of would probably be quite narrow. If Google wins, it will only be because they are taking some specific steps to attempt to prevent copyright infringement. If the media companies can make the argument that they have stopped doing that at some point in the future, they can sue again. And of course that all assumes the lawsuit ever goes to court, things like this are almost always settled out of court.
"As mentioned, that runs the risk that 'Tube cuts a sweetheart deal with the labels before Google can do it."
If You Tube cut a deal, that would in no way set a legal precedent that Google would then have to follow with its own video service. In fact, that would make it much easier for their own service, unrestricted by the terms of the deal, to overtake YouTube in popularity.
"As it stands, I'd have to imagine the spectre of a lawsuit was included in the YouTube purchase price"
I'd really hate to see the price before considering the potential lawsuit. But there is a big difference between a potential lawsuit that may possibly be filed and one that has actually been filed. The latter would have brought the price down much more.
I'm sure everyone at Google would have much preferred the media companies turn a blind eye to online video rather than file a lawsuit (which even if they lose, its still going to cost a lot of money). Well not everyone, the lawyers themselves might like the big fees they are now collecting...
Again, the point of an amicus curiae brief is that an outside party like Google could assist You Tube's defense without actually buying them out. The only way this 1.6 billion deal (or however much it was) affects Google's position in this lawsuit is that now if they lose, Google has to shell out even more money to the media companies. And if they really wanted to take an active role in all of this, buying You Tube after the lawsuit would have saved them a lot of money (though then again, its unlikely You Tube was worth that much to start with).
Thats why they have Amicus curiae briefs. If Google just wanted to help YouTube defend themselves, they could have filed such a brief for much less than the 1.6 billion (or whatever it was) they spent on YouTube. Or if they really wanted to take an active role in the lawsuit, they could have waited for it to be filed and then bail out YouTube for much less money. Though its questionable whether or not they would have ever been sued in the first place had YouTube not been bought by someone who could pay up.
No matter how you cut it, this would have been a silly strategy. Can we please stop pretending we are on Google's board of directors and posting all this speculative BS on what we think they are doing or will do in the future? Please?
First of all, you can buy a machine that will detect oxygen levels for you, so its really a moot point.
Second, while your higher level senses may not be able to give you a digital readout of O2 levels, your brain will detect that its running low on oxygen and increase your heart/breathing rates accordingly (just as it does when you are at a high altitude).
Third, all these devices work by removing oxygen from the air. They do not simply pump it full of nitrogen. As the percentage of oxygen goes down, nitrogen goes up, along with other gases (including CO2).
Fourth, CO is different from nitrogen in that it is actually toxic. It will replace the oxygen in your blood cells since it binds better than oxygen. Whereas nitrogen is perfectly fine to breath, the danger is simply low O2 levels.
Fifth, even with CO poisoning, there are side effects. Headaches, dizziness, nausea, etc., you will basically feel like you have the flu. You will not simply be walking around feeling normal and suddenly 'drop dead', unless the levels are extremely high.
Now if you will excuse me, I've been having a headache, feeling dizzy, and had a slight sense of nausea all day. So I'm going to go outside, even though I'm 99% sure its from reading up on all these symptoms (plus its nice out).
Yes, if you have a medical condition, situations that are normally safe can become deadly. Hell even a roller coaster can be deadly to someone with a heart problem. That doesn't mean we need to "make damn sure NO ONE can defeat the safeties to (get on that ride)". I never said its impossible to die in one of these, just that it doesn't rise to the level the previous poster said. The fact that employees were given access to the room (barring any preexisting medical problems) in your workplace illustrates that.
Well you certainly would hope your employer (or whoever sets up the rules) allows something of a buffer space between what you are allowed to enter and the very minimum amount needed to survive. And besides, you will start to feel other side effects (such as problems thinking clearly) above the fatal levels, so they probably want to guard against them as well.
No, it may not be a good idea to work all day inside this place. But its hardly the "walk in and instantly die" scenario the other guy was talking about.
Again, the effects you mention only happen when you get down to the single digits. Those are simply not the levels we are talking about. At 15-16%, not only will you be able to live, but your brain will detect it and will change your breathing to compensate. If they go further down the side effects will get worse (your paper even has a nifty chart showing these side effects on page 3), though you still have some time before immediate unconsciousness occurs. Although I'm not even sure that would be a possible scenario here as these devices just filter out oxygen, they do not actively pump the room full of nitrogen. There will be a limit to how low the oxygen levels can physically get.
Well we are talking about two different scenarios here. When you are at a high altitude, the air has the same percentage of oxygen as in a normal environment, its just thinner. But in a room like this, the air is just as dense, it just contains less oxygen relative to nitrogen. IANAC (chemist), but I would think the two scenarios would affect human breathing and open flames differently. It would make sense for the open flame to be more sensitive to the oxygen concentration, with your lungs more sensitive to the thinner air. In the context of the statement, its pretty clear they were talking about the effects on your body being similar to being at an altitude of 6,000 feet, not the flame.
"I was *trying* to point out that you don't want to get too carried away by 'inerting' areas because there are consequences- while you may become sleepy and tired from CO poisoning, or disoriented, hot, and suffocating from CO2 poisoning, people will not experience warning symptoms with N2 poisoning- they'll simply keel over."
You will only get the "simply keel over" effect if oxygen levels are 0 (or close to it), like if you suck on a hose spouting pure nitrogen. The same thing will happen if you start breathing pure CO2. If you are in an environment where your body cannot get the oxygen it needs, you will simply die. If on the other hand you get a more gradual fall in oxygen levels (which would be the most common failure scenario here, as well as in most everyday situations where CO2 levels rise), you will feel side effects first. And anyways, as long as you have reasonable safety precautions, its still not going to rise to the level of "They'd better make damn sure NO ONE can defeat the safeties to get into that room", like you said in your first post. I mean if you are going to keep people out of any enclosure where there may be a drop in oxygen levels, you would also have to keep them out of houses and apartments that are heated with natural gas (which may result in a methane leak).
"Just simple information that your average person might not have known about..."
I'm pretty sure the average person knows you need oxygen to breathe.
"Your body and brain do not need carbohydrates. In fact your brain actually runs more efficiently on ketones than on glucose."
Yes, I know its possible to live without carbohydrates. That doesn't mean its healthy. Virtually every real medical study shows carbohydrates are good for your brain.
"You also cannot cite any source for information saying that he was obese at the time of his fall; his family claims that fluid built up in his body during his coma. As we do not have access to his full medical records, this will be difficult to prove. If you can come up with a source that can positively confirm Dr. Atkins' weight at the time of his accident, then you will have something here. But you don't."
His company released a statement putting his weight at 196 pounds. Assume a height of 5'11 (I believe they also said he was nearly 6 feet tall), and that gives you a BMI of 27.3. That qualifies him as overweight.
"But muscle burns fat while you're just sitting around, because it requires more energy just for upkeep."
Not much. If you really want to loose weight, you need aerobic exercise (and in fact most aerobic exercise also build muscles, so you get that benefit anyways).
"If it were that simple, then everyone would do it. "
Most people I know with asthma are not overweight. Maybe they are all anorexic, but I suspect they have ways to work out despite their problem.
"If you actually have an objection to make about Atkins that is based in fact, I'm interested. But so far I haven't seen one not debunked by modern medical science."
If by "modern medical science" you mean fad nutritionists who sell low carb foods, then you may be right. But if you mean real doctors, there are plenty of studies showing the dangers of eliminating carbohydrates for weight loss. Talk to your medical provider for more details.
From TFA:
They are not talking about oxygen free rooms. Yes, as your article says, breathing pure nitrogen will kill you as humans don't run on nitrogen. But that does not mean a high nitrogen content would be dangerous. Otherwise you would die as soon as you breathed a breath of Earth's air which is, by a long measure, mostly nitrogen. So your article really has nothing to do with this subject. Its sort of like giving a story of how 900 degree temperatures inside a cremation furnace affect the human body and using that as an argument on why people shouldn't be allowed in houses with the heat turned on.
Or you could go on a real diet that involves cutting down on unhealthy fats instead of the carbohydrates your body (especially your brain) need in order to function. You know, a diet that has actually been recommended by actual medical professionals, not by some fat ass who died of a heart attack while morbidly obese (and yes, I know Atkins was in a coma before he died, but he still was overweight when he went in the coma).
Also weights won't help you loose that much weight, as you don't burn that many calories that way (according to this chart, it burns about as many calories as playing golf). Unfortunate as it may be for someone with asthma, you really need the aerobic workout. Though I would think a professional trainer at a gym or someplace might know how to work around the asthma.
Or you could do what I do and just get something you can work out on in the privacy of your own home. Then you can pant and wheeze all you want without worrying about other people giving you weird looks (though in your case you might want an inhaler within reach).
Yes, its possible the big bang theory is not correct. But then any theory on what happened before the big bang wouldn't exactly make any sense, would it? Any such theory is predicated on the fact that it itself is unprovable. Thus it cannot be considered a legitimate scientific theory.
Its not a limitation of technology or our knowledge, its a limit of physics. You can no more look ahead of the big bang than you could travel 10 times the speed of light. There is a difference between something being technically impossible and something being physically impossible.
"So if it's possible that the Big Bang theory and other theories about the universe's origins could be incorrect, isn't it a bit presumptuous to say that we'll never know what happened before the beginning of the universe?"
Thats why I said
If there was no big bang, then it might be possible to determine what happened earlier in the universe's history. However, you would not be able to know what happened prior to the big bang on account of it never existing in the first place.
There is a big difference between something being technically impossible to test (meaning our society does not have the technology required to test it) and being physically impossible to test (meaning it cannot be done regardless of what technology is available). Testing pre-big bang ideas is physically impossible, thus such ideas are simply not scientific theories.
Because according to our current leading theories, all information about the universe pre-big bang was completely destroyed, thus there is no way to find anything about it. Yes, its possible the big bang theory is wrong, but then any speculation on what the universe was like before then would have to be revised anyways to take in account the new creation theory.