I always found it odd that "ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law", but the legal system is far too complex for anyone to understand exactly what laws they are governed under at any given time. One of these days I'm half expecting an officer to arrest me for carrying an ice cream cone in my back pocket on a Sunday or something.
Fair enough, although the study doesn't refute the statement: "Actually you'll find that if you omit suicides from the calculation people hardly ever shoot themselves or loved ones." Assuming it's valid the study means that if you're carrying a gun in Philadelphia you're four times more likely to be shot, though it doesn't verify causation. The fact that the authors erroneously imply it in their conclusion and because the study is designed to find the expected results makes me wonder about the author's academic integrity. Now, that statement is likely incorrect if you take domestic violence into account (and count that as shooting a loved one), but the study doesn't address that.
Focusing on one non-generalizable study is exactly the kind of supporting fact bias that one of the grandparents was talking about. It shouldn't be ignored, but in isolation it's nearly useless. I also find it odd that you're not interested in the debate, but would support bias in research. Because that's exactly what you propose at the end. Why should the gun lobby need to fund research rather than, you know, lobby politicians? That's not their purpose, and research shouldn't be thought of as something that can be bought (the sad fact is that it's terribly rare to see a study that doesn't contain several serious errors whether due to bias or a lack of thoroughness). The research and media coverage should address both sides, otherwise there's a bias.
You're doing exactly what the GGGP pointed out, selectively omitting facts (albeit possibly unintentionally). The study is true only for what was studied, and one needs to be cautious in extrapolating to the general population. E.g., how many gang members were in the non-gun carrying control group? Why are they implying causation at the end, when the data mentioned only suggests a correlation?
I'm a bit skeptical since I recently heard the local forensic pathologist speak about gun shot wounds. Apparently, most of them in my city are due to gang violence, domestic violence, and hunting accidents. The first two seem that they'd strongly influence the aforementioned study. Demographics also come into play, since something like 15-20% of Americans are uninsured compared to 90% of gun shot victims. That said, the pathologist was fairly anti-gun ownership (unsurprising given his job). His data made me lean in the opposite direction though.
But, since I don't want to get too caught up with trying to minimize a single piece of evidence, how does pointing to that single piece of evidence refute the GP's point about selection omission? If you want a decent demonstration of that effect, Google "Kennesaw, Georgia". It's a town that enacted a mandatory gun ownership law in the '80s and had crime rates drop. Surely this is a notable point in the gun debate, but seems to be rarely mentioned outside of conservatives preaching to the choir.
Like many things, if you don't see the reason then you're not someone who'd try. As for me, I've done it before for three reasons. The first is security, since IE/MSHTML have a history of flaws and malicious software can use it to evade software firewalls. Second is because I don't use it and would rather have a smaller installation size and (insignificant) performance increases. Third, I don't like applications to phone home or try to integrate the company's website and would prefer them crashing to working as designed. Others might do it since they love Firefox/Opera/Chrome/Safari/Lynx and hate IE.
Just removing the GUI causes the bulk of IE/MSHTML related problems in my experience. The reason is because some applications will directly launch IE pointed at some webpage rather than use the default webbrowser. Application crashes, though, are solely the fault of the developers of that application, and users should contact them if they occur. This behavior tends to result from assuming that everything on a default install of the Windows de jour is always there instead of actually checking. Such applications usually break when you upgrade Windows as well.
As far as I can tell, game loaders are about the only application that both interest me, and use MSHTML. Usually you can just launch the game directly, but I suppose you can't do that with Steam. Adware loves to use MSHTML so they can show ads from their website (see reason three of paragraph one). Windows Help, as I recall over my 14 years of Windows use, has never been able to help me solve a problem, so I don't miss it. Windows 7, or at least its troubleshooter, does seem vastly improved though, so YMMV.
If, however, you want to get rid of the MSHTML library, that's not going to happen. Thousands of third-party apps rely on it, the help system and various other Windows components rely on it, and removing it would completely break Windows and third-party applications in many, many ways.
You can do that with nLite or vLite and it isn't *that* destructive. You do lose help and a couple other things that I never noticed the absence of. While thousands of applications probably use it, there are easily millions of windows applications, so you're looking at maybe.1% that use MSHTML to render HTML. If they were willing, Microsoft could remove MSHTML with Internet Explorer in Windows 7, and warn the user if an application later requests it. Most of the people that uninstall IE would probably prefer that approach (it's not like they're doing it to save harddrive space), and novice users are unlikely to attempt it.
I agree. This measure is designed to stop someone who has physical access from accessing data on the machine (networked data obviously needs separate protections). You can just yank the harddrive if that's what you want. I used it half out of curiosity, and half because I lived in a dorm where I could expect that someone might see me type my password.
That said, my earlier post was speaking of the practicality of such a system, not the usefulness.
So, the scientific nobel peace prizes are given to people that work in relative obscurity for around a decade and discover something that has proven field-changing implications. The time between deciding to do something and getting the prize is usually several decades since it takes time to get results and then time to see if the results are especially important. Is the bar for political nobel prizes really that much lower? Or is it a lack of qualified candidates?
Several years ago I used a system that used keystroke timing to verify passwords. It worked fine, and was decently accurate, with maybe 5% false negatives and I didn't see any false positives (my experience, so no clue how it worked for other people). Using biometric info from typing can be annoying (you need to sit the same way every time when you type), but it works acceptably well and from the user's perspective it's all stored in motor memory so there's no way to "forget" it, short of hand trauma.
It's expressions like that that make me worry for society. If your target audience can't count past 1,000 then what hope is there for them to understand frequency shortage?
Sometimes I think a highschool diploma should have to be renewed every ten years. The recent British study on people's inability to locate their heart convinced me; ignorance is a pandemic now.
Hmm... if only there were a way to keep prisoners from congregating in large groups... Perhaps locking them in some kind of cellular compartment would work... (I'm not saying that's a better way or even ethical, just that it is possible.)
This does not make DNA for identification any easier. DNA sequencing would be faster, but nowhere near GATTACA speeds. There are probably limitations in that regard, not even cells can do it that quickly. Perhaps a DNA hashing function would work, but that's pretty much completely unrelated to this. To use this in an airport the TSA would need one machine per passenger and delay each passenger for a while for it to process. There also isn't a gene for "predisposition for alcohol", it's the summative effect of countless genes. One day we might understand how that works, but not anytime soon.
Beyond that, all better knowledge of one's DNA would allow would be a narrowing of probabilities. If a woman has a family history of breast cancer, then knowing it's BRCA2 and being genetically tested and found negative would allow her insurance company to lower her rates. Being found positive allows her to be more proactive in preventing breast cancer, so there's a very good chance she still won't get it. Either way she pays less (a. she doesn't have the defect, b. she manages it). OTOH, I think insurance companies using genetic information to determine rates is illegal anyway, as is genetic discrimination. Not to mention it'd be prohibitively expensive, ethically reprehensible, and scientifically unsound for employers to discriminate in this way.
Plus, there's a lot more to DNA than the base pair sequence. Certain parts of your DNA are inactivated for example (in part by cells that don't need to express those genes, in part due to what you inherit from your parents).
And that is why magnification and resolution are two separate terms. Magnification relates to the physical size at which things appear. Resolution is the amount of detail. Unfortunately, many programs assume that one pixel is around a certain physical size, rather than use DPI settings and SVG for widgets. For that reason, it's difficult to find LCD screens that differ much in pixel size.
This router has a 480 MHz processor, 8 MB flash, 64 MB RAM, gigabit ethernet, 802.11n and USB 2.0.
I'm currently using a WGT634U with OpenWRT and if it were cheaper I'd be very tempted to upgrade. The processor is fairly fast for a low wattage device, the flash is acceptable (IMHO 16 MB would be much better), RAM's OK, but beyond that it's compatible with higher speed networks.
Personally, I've been keeping an eye out for such a device since a) my current router is seriously bottlenecking with the CPU, and b) my school has a fiber connection with Internet 2 connectivity and just installed 802.11n access points within theoretical range of my apartment.
OTOH, $140 is a little much since you can get a number of open firmware compatible routers for much cheaper that have a lesser but comparable feature set. Buying it might be a good way to increase manufacturer incentive to keep hardware open though.
Also, it's important to remember that radiation poisoning was poorly understood before the bombs were dropped. The number of initial casualties was likely predicted with a fair amount of accuracy. Twice that number later fell to radiation sickness. Obviously the decision to drop the bomb didn't take those into account, thus making their deaths somewhat unintentional. I can't say whether knowing the true number of causalities beforehand would have changed anything though.
Ethically, studies are supposed to be conducted with the placebos being the best currently available treatment. Sugar pills and the like are only to be used if there is no known treatment. That said, a lot of researchers love sugar pills and such for some reason. I'm not quite sure how they manage to get published, since often they even lack a proper control group. Example: eat this experimental diet VS eat the same fattening foods that gave you heart disease... that one had to be stopped early due to high mortality in the "control" group. This was dubbed a great success, despite (the way I see it) having two experimental variables: the experimental diet and the act of changing/monitoring one's diet after a heart attack.
I wonder that as well. A quick glance at the site reveals mostly textual information, graphs, and maps. Since it's a government site, accessibility (e.g. by the handicapped and mobile devices) far, far, far outweighs aesthetics. It's not like government paperwork is very easy on the eyes. IMHO they would have been far better off with simple HTML such as lists and plain text, imagemap maps, and raw data below graphs. Have a decent web designer add a nice and unobtrusive stylesheet to spruce it up a bit, and throw the bulk of the resources into the back end. Faster loading, more accessible, doesn't require professional web designers to make minor changes, better results with search engines, and much cheaper. Is there a reason such an approach is rarely if ever seen in the wild? My only guess is that manager types think customers/citizens prefer flashiness over usability and web designers have a good sales pitch for more complicated sites.
It's a bit of an improper comparison, sure, but you also didn't specify during takeoff. But I couldn't find the figures for noise during cruising, so I just used a comparison that's actually useful. I.e. you're unlikely to ever be less than 300 m away from a jet that's taking off unless you're inside it. The mosquito, OTOH, you could walk right by/under it fairly easily. If you were that close to a jet engine during take off you'd be deafened, then probably killed by being sucked in. 108 dB is also a manufacturer claim that could very well have been tested with the detector they sale on their site and they don't specify the range (I'd guess they tested it after mounting).
Worrying about hearing loss from a loud noise emitter is as irrational as worrying about something that has essentially no known biological effect? I remain unconvinced. Doubly so since the manufacturer brags about almost being banned. Their safety testing also leaves a bit to be desired: "it doesn't seem to bother [dogs]" (emphasis added).
Here's the decibel chart that I'm getting figures from. Looks like a live rock concert is about the same as the mosquito (I misread it earlier). It's also suspiciously close to the human pain threshold. It's definitely in the damage-causing range.
I'd be curious to see how the reporter would report the "number of days spent visiting the restroom". Obviously if people are spending 331 days a year in the restroom then they need to see a doctor and you'd have to wonder what they're being paid for... Unless that's their office... OTOH, if the reporter is redefining time to make a decent story (so 1 day != 24 hours) then I'd like to see him try that with his boss, namely come in for one minute a day for 365 days and see if he gets paid the same salary.
Sorry for writing an essay, but you basically are demonstratively wrong in 3 of the 4 assertions you just made. Mobile phones are essentially innocuous and to liken the two raises questions about your understanding unless you can clarify. You're right that the mosquito isn't as loud as a rock concert (assuming you're very close to the speaker), although you're wrong about the jumbo jet part. I won't bother with the "repetitive" bit beyond stating that it's more just a loud noise.
It's 108 decibels, so it's actually over six times louder than a jet taking off 305 meters away (100 decibels). 100 decibels causes "serious hearing damage" after 8 hours, so, if damage is a linear function of power (it's not, this underestimates damage) then it causes that same "serious hearing damage" after only 75 minutes.
The reason this isn't obvious is because teenagers can hear it and get away. Infants can't, but the parents probably won't associate their child's hearing impairment to something they didn't even know was there. Most adults have lost most of the pili which would receive the highest level of damage, but it wouldn't surprise me if there's some damage to other pili with such an intense sound.
But hey, I'm just a random person on the internet with easily verifiable conversions of decibles to watts and simplified explainations of noise related hearing loss. You'd be wise to not take what I say at face value. So, take note that neither the UK nor Germany (check Wikipedia for links) were willing to define the safe exposure limits to these devices. It's known that it affects quite a bit more than high frequency hearing (e.g. vestibular system). Part of the problem likely lies in the fact that hearing damage is generally assessed in the lower frequencies that human voices use, so other types of damage are less conventional to assess.
Non-ionizing EM radiation and loud sound waves are quite different. It's unlikely (albeit possible given that there are biologically organized magnetite crystals in our brains) that we can even detect the former, and diamagnetic levitation of frogs and spiders seems to have no ill effects (not to mention MRI). The latter causes people to naturally want to escape it. If that weren't the case the device wouldn't be effective. How can you possibly compare the two as far as safety is concerned???
You may be right in that the mosquito isn't deadly but is still effective. OTOH, it's not a weapon and it can be ignored, thus making it useless for dazzler-type purposes. If you increase the volume it's no longer "safe" nor specific for younger folk (anyone can hear high frequency sound, just not at the same volume levels). And I'd argue that the device has too many false positives (i.e. older people that hear it or just get headaches) for it to even be effective at its intended purpose.
While the majority can't, lots of older folk can still hear high frequency noise. In face, age related hearing loss isn't really related to age at all, simply noise exposure (folks in really rural areas don't suffer from it nearly as badly if at all). For those who can't, it may very well still be damaging their hearing in small (but long term) ways, and will definitely kill high frequency hearing if you haven't lost it yet. Beyond that, there's also a point where you can't hear the noise, it just gives you a headache. Who knows how much business those establishments have lost simply because some patrons have subconsciously associated shopping there with pain.
The hunter-gatherer lifestyle wasn't nearly as harsh as most people think. Varied diets and short work weeks (20 hours/week gathering food) lead to a life expectancy far greater than their agriculturist neighbors. [Semi-]Modern hunter gatherers generally hit their 50-60s IIRC, and that's in rather harsh terrain, so Alzheimer's was probably something that was encountered. The only reasons (hypothetically) that agriculture took off is a) you can't gather enough hops to brew beer in significant quantities (seriously), and b) it supports a much larger, albeit malnourished, population size (so militarily you can guess who had the advantage).
I'm basing that assertion on observations of how my classmates use their laptops (technically competent, but not savvy). Personally, I use standby between lectures, and reboot back and forth at night since I triple boot.
My classmates rarely use standby. Perhaps they are unaware of it, but I don't think I've seen someone pull a laptop out of their bag and not wait for it to boot. OTOH, many will switch batteries, which does require a shutdown. Neither a standard nor extended battery will get through 8 hours of lecture with only an hour to charge during lunch, although I think the netbooks come close.
As for power costs, powertop is currently estimating my laptop's power usage at 20 W. If I kept it on for an extra twelve hours per day that would cost $7 per year, which is negligible. OTOH, a desktop can use between three and ten times that figure, which is significant.
I personally got into the habit of shutting my laptop down back when I had a desktop replacement with a P4. It would literally raise the temperature of my dorm room by a degree or two, and constantly made fan noise..
63% of the computers sold in 2009 were laptops. Most people turn laptops on and off several times per day. For students, a slow boot time could mean they have to arrive at class earlier if they take notes using their computer. For employers it's time that their employees aren't working.
Faster resume from hibernation would probably work, except that it tends to be unreliable. Dual booters shouldn't even consider it.
Although if it were ~100% pure life would have trouble with it as well. Cells burst if placed in pure water due to osmotic pressure. I suppose there could be an adaptation to prevent that, but it'd require a lot of cellular energy and make abiogenesis less likely. It could be non-cellular life but that would be completely unlike anything on Earth (with metabolism). The areas where the pure water mixes with other chemicals might be a possibility though, especially if there are geothermal vents.
Personally, I'd consider intuitiveness and documentation to be entirely separate components of a program. For example, a lot of command line programs are well documented, but not very intuitive. IMHO, a program is broken if a user can't use it without reading documentation, assuming they're familiar with what they are trying to do. Documentation is for when intuitiveness fails, which may be an inevitability since people think somewhat differently, but this should be rare in well designed programs.
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I always found it odd that "ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law", but the legal system is far too complex for anyone to understand exactly what laws they are governed under at any given time. One of these days I'm half expecting an officer to arrest me for carrying an ice cream cone in my back pocket on a Sunday or something.
Fair enough, although the study doesn't refute the statement: "Actually you'll find that if you omit suicides from the calculation people hardly ever shoot themselves or loved ones." Assuming it's valid the study means that if you're carrying a gun in Philadelphia you're four times more likely to be shot, though it doesn't verify causation. The fact that the authors erroneously imply it in their conclusion and because the study is designed to find the expected results makes me wonder about the author's academic integrity. Now, that statement is likely incorrect if you take domestic violence into account (and count that as shooting a loved one), but the study doesn't address that.
Focusing on one non-generalizable study is exactly the kind of supporting fact bias that one of the grandparents was talking about. It shouldn't be ignored, but in isolation it's nearly useless. I also find it odd that you're not interested in the debate, but would support bias in research. Because that's exactly what you propose at the end. Why should the gun lobby need to fund research rather than, you know, lobby politicians? That's not their purpose, and research shouldn't be thought of as something that can be bought (the sad fact is that it's terribly rare to see a study that doesn't contain several serious errors whether due to bias or a lack of thoroughness). The research and media coverage should address both sides, otherwise there's a bias.
You're doing exactly what the GGGP pointed out, selectively omitting facts (albeit possibly unintentionally). The study is true only for what was studied, and one needs to be cautious in extrapolating to the general population. E.g., how many gang members were in the non-gun carrying control group? Why are they implying causation at the end, when the data mentioned only suggests a correlation?
I'm a bit skeptical since I recently heard the local forensic pathologist speak about gun shot wounds. Apparently, most of them in my city are due to gang violence, domestic violence, and hunting accidents. The first two seem that they'd strongly influence the aforementioned study. Demographics also come into play, since something like 15-20% of Americans are uninsured compared to 90% of gun shot victims. That said, the pathologist was fairly anti-gun ownership (unsurprising given his job). His data made me lean in the opposite direction though.
But, since I don't want to get too caught up with trying to minimize a single piece of evidence, how does pointing to that single piece of evidence refute the GP's point about selection omission? If you want a decent demonstration of that effect, Google "Kennesaw, Georgia". It's a town that enacted a mandatory gun ownership law in the '80s and had crime rates drop. Surely this is a notable point in the gun debate, but seems to be rarely mentioned outside of conservatives preaching to the choir.
Like many things, if you don't see the reason then you're not someone who'd try. As for me, I've done it before for three reasons. The first is security, since IE/MSHTML have a history of flaws and malicious software can use it to evade software firewalls. Second is because I don't use it and would rather have a smaller installation size and (insignificant) performance increases. Third, I don't like applications to phone home or try to integrate the company's website and would prefer them crashing to working as designed. Others might do it since they love Firefox/Opera/Chrome/Safari/Lynx and hate IE.
Just removing the GUI causes the bulk of IE/MSHTML related problems in my experience. The reason is because some applications will directly launch IE pointed at some webpage rather than use the default webbrowser. Application crashes, though, are solely the fault of the developers of that application, and users should contact them if they occur. This behavior tends to result from assuming that everything on a default install of the Windows de jour is always there instead of actually checking. Such applications usually break when you upgrade Windows as well.
As far as I can tell, game loaders are about the only application that both interest me, and use MSHTML. Usually you can just launch the game directly, but I suppose you can't do that with Steam. Adware loves to use MSHTML so they can show ads from their website (see reason three of paragraph one). Windows Help, as I recall over my 14 years of Windows use, has never been able to help me solve a problem, so I don't miss it. Windows 7, or at least its troubleshooter, does seem vastly improved though, so YMMV.
If, however, you want to get rid of the MSHTML library, that's not going to happen. Thousands of third-party apps rely on it, the help system and various other Windows components rely on it, and removing it would completely break Windows and third-party applications in many, many ways.
You can do that with nLite or vLite and it isn't *that* destructive. You do lose help and a couple other things that I never noticed the absence of. While thousands of applications probably use it, there are easily millions of windows applications, so you're looking at maybe .1% that use MSHTML to render HTML. If they were willing, Microsoft could remove MSHTML with Internet Explorer in Windows 7, and warn the user if an application later requests it. Most of the people that uninstall IE would probably prefer that approach (it's not like they're doing it to save harddrive space), and novice users are unlikely to attempt it.
I agree. This measure is designed to stop someone who has physical access from accessing data on the machine (networked data obviously needs separate protections). You can just yank the harddrive if that's what you want. I used it half out of curiosity, and half because I lived in a dorm where I could expect that someone might see me type my password.
That said, my earlier post was speaking of the practicality of such a system, not the usefulness.
So, the scientific nobel peace prizes are given to people that work in relative obscurity for around a decade and discover something that has proven field-changing implications. The time between deciding to do something and getting the prize is usually several decades since it takes time to get results and then time to see if the results are especially important. Is the bar for political nobel prizes really that much lower? Or is it a lack of qualified candidates?
Several years ago I used a system that used keystroke timing to verify passwords. It worked fine, and was decently accurate, with maybe 5% false negatives and I didn't see any false positives (my experience, so no clue how it worked for other people). Using biometric info from typing can be annoying (you need to sit the same way every time when you type), but it works acceptably well and from the user's perspective it's all stored in motor memory so there's no way to "forget" it, short of hand trauma.
It's expressions like that that make me worry for society. If your target audience can't count past 1,000 then what hope is there for them to understand frequency shortage?
Sometimes I think a highschool diploma should have to be renewed every ten years. The recent British study on people's inability to locate their heart convinced me; ignorance is a pandemic now.
Hmm... if only there were a way to keep prisoners from congregating in large groups... Perhaps locking them in some kind of cellular compartment would work... (I'm not saying that's a better way or even ethical, just that it is possible.)
This does not make DNA for identification any easier. DNA sequencing would be faster, but nowhere near GATTACA speeds. There are probably limitations in that regard, not even cells can do it that quickly. Perhaps a DNA hashing function would work, but that's pretty much completely unrelated to this. To use this in an airport the TSA would need one machine per passenger and delay each passenger for a while for it to process. There also isn't a gene for "predisposition for alcohol", it's the summative effect of countless genes. One day we might understand how that works, but not anytime soon.
Beyond that, all better knowledge of one's DNA would allow would be a narrowing of probabilities. If a woman has a family history of breast cancer, then knowing it's BRCA2 and being genetically tested and found negative would allow her insurance company to lower her rates. Being found positive allows her to be more proactive in preventing breast cancer, so there's a very good chance she still won't get it. Either way she pays less (a. she doesn't have the defect, b. she manages it). OTOH, I think insurance companies using genetic information to determine rates is illegal anyway, as is genetic discrimination. Not to mention it'd be prohibitively expensive, ethically reprehensible, and scientifically unsound for employers to discriminate in this way.
Plus, there's a lot more to DNA than the base pair sequence. Certain parts of your DNA are inactivated for example (in part by cells that don't need to express those genes, in part due to what you inherit from your parents).
And that is why magnification and resolution are two separate terms. Magnification relates to the physical size at which things appear. Resolution is the amount of detail. Unfortunately, many programs assume that one pixel is around a certain physical size, rather than use DPI settings and SVG for widgets. For that reason, it's difficult to find LCD screens that differ much in pixel size.
This router has a 480 MHz processor, 8 MB flash, 64 MB RAM, gigabit ethernet, 802.11n and USB 2.0.
I'm currently using a WGT634U with OpenWRT and if it were cheaper I'd be very tempted to upgrade. The processor is fairly fast for a low wattage device, the flash is acceptable (IMHO 16 MB would be much better), RAM's OK, but beyond that it's compatible with higher speed networks.
Personally, I've been keeping an eye out for such a device since a) my current router is seriously bottlenecking with the CPU, and b) my school has a fiber connection with Internet 2 connectivity and just installed 802.11n access points within theoretical range of my apartment.
OTOH, $140 is a little much since you can get a number of open firmware compatible routers for much cheaper that have a lesser but comparable feature set. Buying it might be a good way to increase manufacturer incentive to keep hardware open though.
Also, it's important to remember that radiation poisoning was poorly understood before the bombs were dropped. The number of initial casualties was likely predicted with a fair amount of accuracy. Twice that number later fell to radiation sickness. Obviously the decision to drop the bomb didn't take those into account, thus making their deaths somewhat unintentional. I can't say whether knowing the true number of causalities beforehand would have changed anything though.
Ethically, studies are supposed to be conducted with the placebos being the best currently available treatment. Sugar pills and the like are only to be used if there is no known treatment. That said, a lot of researchers love sugar pills and such for some reason. I'm not quite sure how they manage to get published, since often they even lack a proper control group. Example: eat this experimental diet VS eat the same fattening foods that gave you heart disease... that one had to be stopped early due to high mortality in the "control" group. This was dubbed a great success, despite (the way I see it) having two experimental variables: the experimental diet and the act of changing/monitoring one's diet after a heart attack.
I wonder that as well. A quick glance at the site reveals mostly textual information, graphs, and maps. Since it's a government site, accessibility (e.g. by the handicapped and mobile devices) far, far, far outweighs aesthetics. It's not like government paperwork is very easy on the eyes. IMHO they would have been far better off with simple HTML such as lists and plain text, imagemap maps, and raw data below graphs. Have a decent web designer add a nice and unobtrusive stylesheet to spruce it up a bit, and throw the bulk of the resources into the back end. Faster loading, more accessible, doesn't require professional web designers to make minor changes, better results with search engines, and much cheaper. Is there a reason such an approach is rarely if ever seen in the wild? My only guess is that manager types think customers/citizens prefer flashiness over usability and web designers have a good sales pitch for more complicated sites.
It's a bit of an improper comparison, sure, but you also didn't specify during takeoff. But I couldn't find the figures for noise during cruising, so I just used a comparison that's actually useful. I.e. you're unlikely to ever be less than 300 m away from a jet that's taking off unless you're inside it. The mosquito, OTOH, you could walk right by/under it fairly easily. If you were that close to a jet engine during take off you'd be deafened, then probably killed by being sucked in. 108 dB is also a manufacturer claim that could very well have been tested with the detector they sale on their site and they don't specify the range (I'd guess they tested it after mounting).
Worrying about hearing loss from a loud noise emitter is as irrational as worrying about something that has essentially no known biological effect? I remain unconvinced. Doubly so since the manufacturer brags about almost being banned. Their safety testing also leaves a bit to be desired: "it doesn't seem to bother [dogs]" (emphasis added).
Here's the decibel chart that I'm getting figures from. Looks like a live rock concert is about the same as the mosquito (I misread it earlier). It's also suspiciously close to the human pain threshold. It's definitely in the damage-causing range.
I'd be curious to see how the reporter would report the "number of days spent visiting the restroom". Obviously if people are spending 331 days a year in the restroom then they need to see a doctor and you'd have to wonder what they're being paid for... Unless that's their office... OTOH, if the reporter is redefining time to make a decent story (so 1 day != 24 hours) then I'd like to see him try that with his boss, namely come in for one minute a day for 365 days and see if he gets paid the same salary.
Sorry for writing an essay, but you basically are demonstratively wrong in 3 of the 4 assertions you just made. Mobile phones are essentially innocuous and to liken the two raises questions about your understanding unless you can clarify. You're right that the mosquito isn't as loud as a rock concert (assuming you're very close to the speaker), although you're wrong about the jumbo jet part. I won't bother with the "repetitive" bit beyond stating that it's more just a loud noise.
It's 108 decibels, so it's actually over six times louder than a jet taking off 305 meters away (100 decibels). 100 decibels causes "serious hearing damage" after 8 hours, so, if damage is a linear function of power (it's not, this underestimates damage) then it causes that same "serious hearing damage" after only 75 minutes.
The reason this isn't obvious is because teenagers can hear it and get away. Infants can't, but the parents probably won't associate their child's hearing impairment to something they didn't even know was there. Most adults have lost most of the pili which would receive the highest level of damage, but it wouldn't surprise me if there's some damage to other pili with such an intense sound.
But hey, I'm just a random person on the internet with easily verifiable conversions of decibles to watts and simplified explainations of noise related hearing loss. You'd be wise to not take what I say at face value. So, take note that neither the UK nor Germany (check Wikipedia for links) were willing to define the safe exposure limits to these devices. It's known that it affects quite a bit more than high frequency hearing (e.g. vestibular system). Part of the problem likely lies in the fact that hearing damage is generally assessed in the lower frequencies that human voices use, so other types of damage are less conventional to assess.
Non-ionizing EM radiation and loud sound waves are quite different. It's unlikely (albeit possible given that there are biologically organized magnetite crystals in our brains) that we can even detect the former, and diamagnetic levitation of frogs and spiders seems to have no ill effects (not to mention MRI). The latter causes people to naturally want to escape it. If that weren't the case the device wouldn't be effective. How can you possibly compare the two as far as safety is concerned???
You may be right in that the mosquito isn't deadly but is still effective. OTOH, it's not a weapon and it can be ignored, thus making it useless for dazzler-type purposes. If you increase the volume it's no longer "safe" nor specific for younger folk (anyone can hear high frequency sound, just not at the same volume levels). And I'd argue that the device has too many false positives (i.e. older people that hear it or just get headaches) for it to even be effective at its intended purpose.
While the majority can't, lots of older folk can still hear high frequency noise. In face, age related hearing loss isn't really related to age at all, simply noise exposure (folks in really rural areas don't suffer from it nearly as badly if at all). For those who can't, it may very well still be damaging their hearing in small (but long term) ways, and will definitely kill high frequency hearing if you haven't lost it yet. Beyond that, there's also a point where you can't hear the noise, it just gives you a headache. Who knows how much business those establishments have lost simply because some patrons have subconsciously associated shopping there with pain.
The hunter-gatherer lifestyle wasn't nearly as harsh as most people think. Varied diets and short work weeks (20 hours/week gathering food) lead to a life expectancy far greater than their agriculturist neighbors. [Semi-]Modern hunter gatherers generally hit their 50-60s IIRC, and that's in rather harsh terrain, so Alzheimer's was probably something that was encountered. The only reasons (hypothetically) that agriculture took off is a) you can't gather enough hops to brew beer in significant quantities (seriously), and b) it supports a much larger, albeit malnourished, population size (so militarily you can guess who had the advantage).
I'm basing that assertion on observations of how my classmates use their laptops (technically competent, but not savvy). Personally, I use standby between lectures, and reboot back and forth at night since I triple boot.
My classmates rarely use standby. Perhaps they are unaware of it, but I don't think I've seen someone pull a laptop out of their bag and not wait for it to boot. OTOH, many will switch batteries, which does require a shutdown. Neither a standard nor extended battery will get through 8 hours of lecture with only an hour to charge during lunch, although I think the netbooks come close.
As for power costs, powertop is currently estimating my laptop's power usage at 20 W. If I kept it on for an extra twelve hours per day that would cost $7 per year, which is negligible. OTOH, a desktop can use between three and ten times that figure, which is significant.
I personally got into the habit of shutting my laptop down back when I had a desktop replacement with a P4. It would literally raise the temperature of my dorm room by a degree or two, and constantly made fan noise..
63% of the computers sold in 2009 were laptops. Most people turn laptops on and off several times per day. For students, a slow boot time could mean they have to arrive at class earlier if they take notes using their computer. For employers it's time that their employees aren't working.
Faster resume from hibernation would probably work, except that it tends to be unreliable. Dual booters shouldn't even consider it.
Although if it were ~100% pure life would have trouble with it as well. Cells burst if placed in pure water due to osmotic pressure. I suppose there could be an adaptation to prevent that, but it'd require a lot of cellular energy and make abiogenesis less likely. It could be non-cellular life but that would be completely unlike anything on Earth (with metabolism). The areas where the pure water mixes with other chemicals might be a possibility though, especially if there are geothermal vents.
Personally, I'd consider intuitiveness and documentation to be entirely separate components of a program. For example, a lot of command line programs are well documented, but not very intuitive. IMHO, a program is broken if a user can't use it without reading documentation, assuming they're familiar with what they are trying to do. Documentation is for when intuitiveness fails, which may be an inevitability since people think somewhat differently, but this should be rare in well designed programs.