Confirmation bias certainly exists throughout the political spectrum. However, it does seem that political partisanship has made it worst in the right end of the political spectrum than the left end.
First the ~100 dead a year only went down to ~60 dead a year, so you are talking about saving ~40 lives out of 300,000,000. Even if the vaccine had continued to work as advertised, that would be a highly questionable path. The thing is, the vaccine has already failed to work as advertised. The vaccine was advertised as giving permanent protection from the virus. Clinical trials were never performed to show that this was the case. In fact, in actual use, the vaccine has been show to only offer temporary protection. This means that huge numbers of adults, the most vulnerable to the disease, will end up with no immunity to the disease. All evidence points to a higher risk, and thus an expected higher death rate due to taking the vaccine than not.
Your stance that the default should be that clinical studies showing a drug will kill people before a vaccine is universally administered instead of requiring clinical studies to show that it is safe AND continue to universally use the vaccine when it has shown to not work correctly again, very nicely helps to make demachina's point about the pro vaccine crowd being completely blind to the risks.
I'm thinking Linux worked out for consumers pretty darn well given that it is WILDLY popular. True, most of the choices on how the Linux equipment would look and behave were made by the manufacturers, but that is neither here nor their when it comes to Linux.
If you think that structural engineering isn't just as bad as software engineering, you are horribly mistaken. When you go home, look at the texturing on the walls. Do you know why that is there? Because no one is willing to make a wall actually flat. So, what do we do? We splatter a whole bunch of mud on the wall and declare "It's supposed to be that way!". It isn't that stuctural engineering isn't bug free. It is just that we have become used to letting huge glaring problems slide.
Another glaring example would be aluminum wiring in houses. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminum_wire Few people went back and fixed this life threatening bug in household wiring.
The lack of gamepad for the PC is an easy fix. Just include the gamepad in the box or mail it on registration. At $2.50 a piece, it solves the problem.
Dramatically higher. GURT (known in the press at 'terminator seeds) is well within the capabilities of any company that creates GM crops. Even if the current CEO of Monsanto doesn't plan to produce sterile offspring seeds, what about the next one, or the one after that.
The likelihood of Monsanto eventually using the money making tactic of implementing GURT should be compared to the likelihood of Comcast implementing faster connections to web sites that pay them not to throttle their users. Not to a meteor strike.
Or better yet: Municipalities should build a conduit system. One that is about the size of the current storm drain system should do. They should then lease out the right to anyone that wants to pull cable. New players could wire up a city in no time if they didn't have to dig. Existing players could upgrade their networks at a fraction of the cost if they didn't have to re-dig. Municipalities could do the job that they have extensive experience with instead of trying to become experts in a new and ever changing industry.
The comment about monoculture is to show that we already know what happens when a countries major food crops become unavailable, not to point out that GM food is a monoculture. If monoculture can be serious, having a single company with a kill switch on our food supply is at least as serious. The answer of "Just use 20 year old seeds" is no more helpful to a farmer today than it was during the The Irish Potato Famine.
Your advice is good, but it also points out why environmentalists really are not. The single biggest problem facing the planet is over population. Sterilization is the second kindest way to accomplish large scale population reduction. Promoting homosexuality is kindest.
That isn't entirely true. No doubt that there are a LOT of people think as you describe. My problem with GM crops is that they are patentable, and it isn't a criminal offense to put a kill gene in the crops. We have seen huge problems with food monoculture where a single disease wipes out enough of a countries food staples that there is wide spread famine. The kill genes mean that the corporations with the patents of the food can artificially create these kinds of situations.
The situation with GM crops almost sounds like it is coming right out of a James Bond story. My problems with GM crops isn't that I believe they are inherently safe. Heck, I would love to be able to buy strawberries that were deliciously sweet, the size of a watermelon, and stayed fresh for a month without refrigeration. My problem with GM crops is that in our legal climate, I don't trust corporations not to manipulate food availability to increase profits. I also would not put it past them to engineer the food to induce greater consumption.
It isn't the scientific issues that worry me. It is the legal ones.
This article starts with completely the wrong premise. Platforms don't become popular because of DRM. DRM gets put on popular platforms because there is nothing the purchaser can do about it other than do without. The idea that EA would choose not to earn a million dollars on non-DRMed software because they could have gotten 2 million if DRM was in place is ridiculous.
I point to http://www.gog.com./ If an inexpensive console had just that DRM free library of games, it would be a viable platform. There is no question that DRM free software can make money.
Seriously. Wine is just another abstraction layer. Complaining about Wine makes no more sense than complaining about OpenGL, or even Linux itself. Either you are hitting bare metal, or you are using abstraction layers. The only thing that matters is whether the software works or not.
Because humans need more than one ingredient in their diet. Eating is not strictly about calories, which is why the current no-fat mentality is just as bad as eating a a bucket of lard.
Nope. Fat makes the food taste better, sates the appetite so over eating is less of a problem, and spread out the calorie availability so that the body has it when it needs it. Fat is good in your meat. VERY good.
That one is easy. Cows. As much as cats and dogs CAN be made into tasty meals, cows have been refined though generations of breeding into the best tasting meat.
The death toll from Chicken Pox pre-immunization was ~100 people a year. 55% of those were in adults who make up only 5% of the population. 45 deaths a year is a statistical anomaly. Children are more likely to die from playing high school football than they are from catching chicken pox. Cooking a home cooked meal is more dangerous than catching Chicken Pox. Yep. More people die every year from home cooked meals than from Chicken Pox.
Now, add to that that we have not yet seen the fall out from the Chicken Pox vaccine. The Chicken Pox vaccine is not permanent. It only offers temporary immunity. Since 55% of the deaths from Chicken Pox are in adults, and adults only make up 5% of the cases, adult Chicken Pox is an order of magnitude more dangerous than childhood Chicken Pox. So, by giving your child the vaccine as a toddler, you massively increase their risk of death from the disease.
Your comment very nicely helps to make demachina's point about the pro vaccine crowd being completely blind to the risks.
Slashdot Mirror
Confirmation bias certainly exists throughout the political spectrum. However, it does seem that political partisanship has made it worst in the right end of the political spectrum than the left end.
I see what you did there....
First the ~100 dead a year only went down to ~60 dead a year, so you are talking about saving ~40 lives out of 300,000,000. Even if the vaccine had continued to work as advertised, that would be a highly questionable path. The thing is, the vaccine has already failed to work as advertised. The vaccine was advertised as giving permanent protection from the virus. Clinical trials were never performed to show that this was the case. In fact, in actual use, the vaccine has been show to only offer temporary protection. This means that huge numbers of adults, the most vulnerable to the disease, will end up with no immunity to the disease. All evidence points to a higher risk, and thus an expected higher death rate due to taking the vaccine than not.
Your stance that the default should be that clinical studies showing a drug will kill people before a vaccine is universally administered instead of requiring clinical studies to show that it is safe AND continue to universally use the vaccine when it has shown to not work correctly again, very nicely helps to make demachina's point about the pro vaccine crowd being completely blind to the risks.
I'm thinking Linux worked out for consumers pretty darn well given that it is WILDLY popular. True, most of the choices on how the Linux equipment would look and behave were made by the manufacturers, but that is neither here nor their when it comes to Linux.
If you think that structural engineering isn't just as bad as software engineering, you are horribly mistaken. When you go home, look at the texturing on the walls. Do you know why that is there? Because no one is willing to make a wall actually flat. So, what do we do? We splatter a whole bunch of mud on the wall and declare "It's supposed to be that way!". It isn't that stuctural engineering isn't bug free. It is just that we have become used to letting huge glaring problems slide.
Another glaring example would be aluminum wiring in houses. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminum_wire Few people went back and fixed this life threatening bug in household wiring.
At $2.50 each, you are correct that bundling the controller in with the game is the correct answer.
http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/378595050/USB_Game_joystick_controller_for_PC.html
The lack of gamepad for the PC is an easy fix. Just include the gamepad in the box or mail it on registration. At $2.50 a piece, it solves the problem.
http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/378595050/USB_Game_joystick_controller_for_PC.html
Do they even make TVs and computers that don't plug into each other anymore? I haven't seen either of them for sale without HDMI in years.
So, you agree that it is a problem then. Check.
That question shows that you are not listening to the arguments against GM foods.
Dramatically higher. GURT (known in the press at 'terminator seeds) is well within the capabilities of any company that creates GM crops. Even if the current CEO of Monsanto doesn't plan to produce sterile offspring seeds, what about the next one, or the one after that.
The likelihood of Monsanto eventually using the money making tactic of implementing GURT should be compared to the likelihood of Comcast implementing faster connections to web sites that pay them not to throttle their users. Not to a meteor strike.
Or, you have no response to the very rational concern, so you just call it irrational.
Or better yet: Municipalities should build a conduit system. One that is about the size of the current storm drain system should do. They should then lease out the right to anyone that wants to pull cable. New players could wire up a city in no time if they didn't have to dig. Existing players could upgrade their networks at a fraction of the cost if they didn't have to re-dig. Municipalities could do the job that they have extensive experience with instead of trying to become experts in a new and ever changing industry.
Your what? Is that like Yelp! or like instagram?
Yes, that is half the point of Newspeak.
The comment about monoculture is to show that we already know what happens when a countries major food crops become unavailable, not to point out that GM food is a monoculture. If monoculture can be serious, having a single company with a kill switch on our food supply is at least as serious. The answer of "Just use 20 year old seeds" is no more helpful to a farmer today than it was during the The Irish Potato Famine.
Didn't you hear? Windows doesn't run on computers either. It runs on toys. "Real" computers run things like VMS.
Your advice is good, but it also points out why environmentalists really are not. The single biggest problem facing the planet is over population. Sterilization is the second kindest way to accomplish large scale population reduction. Promoting homosexuality is kindest.
That isn't entirely true. No doubt that there are a LOT of people think as you describe. My problem with GM crops is that they are patentable, and it isn't a criminal offense to put a kill gene in the crops. We have seen huge problems with food monoculture where a single disease wipes out enough of a countries food staples that there is wide spread famine. The kill genes mean that the corporations with the patents of the food can artificially create these kinds of situations.
The situation with GM crops almost sounds like it is coming right out of a James Bond story. My problems with GM crops isn't that I believe they are inherently safe. Heck, I would love to be able to buy strawberries that were deliciously sweet, the size of a watermelon, and stayed fresh for a month without refrigeration. My problem with GM crops is that in our legal climate, I don't trust corporations not to manipulate food availability to increase profits. I also would not put it past them to engineer the food to induce greater consumption.
It isn't the scientific issues that worry me. It is the legal ones.
This article starts with completely the wrong premise. Platforms don't become popular because of DRM. DRM gets put on popular platforms because there is nothing the purchaser can do about it other than do without. The idea that EA would choose not to earn a million dollars on non-DRMed software because they could have gotten 2 million if DRM was in place is ridiculous.
I point to http://www.gog.com./ If an inexpensive console had just that DRM free library of games, it would be a viable platform. There is no question that DRM free software can make money.
Seriously. Wine is just another abstraction layer. Complaining about Wine makes no more sense than complaining about OpenGL, or even Linux itself. Either you are hitting bare metal, or you are using abstraction layers. The only thing that matters is whether the software works or not.
Because humans need more than one ingredient in their diet. Eating is not strictly about calories, which is why the current no-fat mentality is just as bad as eating a a bucket of lard.
Nope. Fat makes the food taste better, sates the appetite so over eating is less of a problem, and spread out the calorie availability so that the body has it when it needs it. Fat is good in your meat. VERY good.
Bison is vastly inferior to cow. It doesn't have enough fat.
That one is easy. Cows. As much as cats and dogs CAN be made into tasty meals, cows have been refined though generations of breeding into the best tasting meat.
The death toll from Chicken Pox pre-immunization was ~100 people a year. 55% of those were in adults who make up only 5% of the population. 45 deaths a year is a statistical anomaly. Children are more likely to die from playing high school football than they are from catching chicken pox. Cooking a home cooked meal is more dangerous than catching Chicken Pox. Yep. More people die every year from home cooked meals than from Chicken Pox.
Now, add to that that we have not yet seen the fall out from the Chicken Pox vaccine. The Chicken Pox vaccine is not permanent. It only offers temporary immunity. Since 55% of the deaths from Chicken Pox are in adults, and adults only make up 5% of the cases, adult Chicken Pox is an order of magnitude more dangerous than childhood Chicken Pox. So, by giving your child the vaccine as a toddler, you massively increase their risk of death from the disease.
Your comment very nicely helps to make demachina's point about the pro vaccine crowd being completely blind to the risks.