Simple physics. You can't get more energy out of a reaction than it takes to reverse it. The same reason why hydrogen cars that run on electrolyzed water don't work.
Hey? Cars that run on electrolysed water - hydrogen cars - are all about moving the energy usage, instead of burning fossil fuels in the middle of cities on a road in an inefficient motor, use hydrogen cracked from water by a very efficient fossil fuel/whatever generator somewhere away from the city.
Of course cars running on electrolysed water, that make it from the energy they produce by burning the hydrogen from said water won't work, at least until we manage to get a perpetual motion machine working.
The devices mentioned in the article are rather small machines, they fit on a desk.
Don't expect to have one powering your house soon though, they use far more power than they create. Most researchers use them as a source of fusion byproducts such as neutrinos.
Who are you quoting? Circumcision isn't significant surgury (in that it doesn't affect deep tissue, only skin), it doesn't involve general anaesthesia, it is highly unlikely to cause infection. And AIDS? It still can't be cured.
Difference between male circumcision (or mutilation if you wish) and female genital mutilation is the effect.
From a point of view ignoring sexually transmitted diseases, (male) circumcision makes a penis easier to clean, more visually attractive and I know of no good reason against circumcision. So called "female circumcision" is rightly described as genital mutilation. It removes useful, important tissue, usually the labia, often the clitoris. It often prevents the woman from achieving orgasm and it significantly reduces fertility.
To compare the two is wrong. An operation that is a reasonale male comparison to female genital mutilation would include signifant damage to the glans (that's the sensitive "head" of your penis), and probably scarring to the urethra.
You're completely right, condoms are far, far better protection.
Having said that, the study I referred to (which stated that circumcision provided some protection) is from South Africa where HIV rates are very high, use of condoms is very low and circumcision is quite common.
Where you or I wouldn't rely on circumcision for protection, a person in South Africa who for whatever reason doesn't use condoms would do well to be circumcised.
Aside from that, the link I provided provides the context to make what I wrote less foolish than you suggest.
As to people stupid enough to read something like what I wrote, on the 'net, not read the attached link and act on it in the way you suggest... I like to think of it as evolution in action.
The appendix has, as far as anyone can tell, no function anymore. It doesn't help digest grass, nor other plants - it hasn't done that for millions of years. It's a remanant of a second stomach from an ancestor that had two stage digestion, similar to what ruminants have.
I googled for that stuff you say about the dangers of circumcision, found several web sites with the exact same statement. What else did they all have in common? No references. They all say 209 baby boys die every year because of circumcision, but none add an "according to \insert name of reputable journal here\". In fact these sound very much like the class of information I describe as "internet truths" - that is things that are stated to be true across many web sites, but which actually are not.
I'll grant that it could be a dangerous operation in, say, sub-saharan africa where there is a danger of non-sterile medical instruments or poor sanitary conditions, but in first world nations such as the US? No.
Please provide a reference from a reputable medical journal backing up what you say.
I read the other comments in this thread before posting my own (who'd have thought that post would have so many replies).
Anyway, consider my earlier post as reworded as follows: The evidence that circumcision can protect against HIV is actually quite good. The study referenced controlled for social, religious, etc factors.
Any significant surgury is dangerous. General anaesthesia has about a 1 in 700000 chance of killing you. Abdominal surgury can cause adhesions and other problems. Appendicitis can be effectively treated now with antibiotics.
Pick any of the above reasons for avoiding appendectomies.
Tonsils are an important part of your immune system, it's a good idea to leave them in place.
Actually, this has nothing to do with improving regional service, or as we put it "service in the bush".
It only has to do with the current Australian Government's policy of selling off all public assets and giving the proceeds to the companies you've sold said assets to.
Yep, you read right. In an effort to convince people that they're going to improve service in the bush, our lovely Aussie government is talking about using the proceeds of the sale to pay Telstra (that's the telco in question) to provide a service to the bush. How's that for a deal!
Anyway, we Australians now have no say in this, Australia is no longer a democracy.
That doesn't sound neutral to me, it sounds more like: "We know that you, and everyone else on the planet, can see that Linux is cheaper so I'll try to convince you that you don't know enough to judge the TCO in the hope that you'll then take the easy option of sticking with M$"
I work as a software designer for an Australian government department. They use the same sort of excuses for sticking with MS. In that case at least, it's lies. They stick with MS because it's executives that make the decisions and they get information from only two sources: MS sales staff and noisy linux zealots from within their own staff.
The zealots come off as zealots and are thus dismissed as having nothing useful to say.
The MS sales staff have "consultant" in their job title and are thus deigned (by the senior execs) to be experts on all things computerish.
Of course to those of us who grok operating environments and who don't grok executives and consultants see said executives as fools and their reasons as invalid.
Broadband is any communication channel that is not "narrowband". They're radiocommunications words, narrowband signals are those that can't carry much data, say low quality voice radio, or 56k modem; broadband signals can carry lots of data, say fast-scan TV or DSL or fibre optic.
Were I a manufacturer of "broadband"/VOIP equipment I'd implement the ruling with an ethernet port on the device and a username/password pair for the FBI for that unit in my safe.
The original Palm Pilot wasn't a solution in search of a problem - did you see what assistants had to drag around before Palms? They were called "Organisers", they weighed about a kilogram (a couple of pounds) and they cost a hundred dollars a year in replacement fillers. The palm pilot weighed in at a few hundred grams (a gram is a thousandth of a kilogram), did everything an organisor did, fitted in the pocket and didn't need replacing every year.
Way too late to get in on the discussion - I came across this post while metamoderating.
Anyway, Meringuoid, replicators aren't necessary, but without them or something equivalent we need some way of rationing our limited resources and production capacity.
Money in its current capitalist form pretty much sucks at the job of rationing, but to make true socialism work you need either a way of distributing money in a way I'd call "fair", or another way of rationing, or another way of producing enough for the needs and wants of all people.
The questions are to verify users
Nope. The questions are there as weak security to allow you to view your secret picture. The process goes something like:
Type in your user ID
If you're on your usual computer (ie you have the right cookie) you can click the button and see the picture, if you're not you have to answer the three "secret" questions
Enter your password
So you're only presented with the secret questions if you don't have the cookie, the secret questions are there only to verify that you have the right to see your picture.
I prefer the system a bank here uses, you log in with user ID and password, but if you try to send money to any account that doesn't belong to you, you are presented with a block of nine pictures, you have to select the correct three in the correct order (you choose the pictures and order when you create the account) to proceed.
Err... Bonch, everything's a mutation. Fingers, thumbs, eyesight. Milk being fatty makes it an excellent food if you're living some time before the 20th century.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey? Cars that run on electrolysed water - hydrogen cars - are all about moving the energy usage, instead of burning fossil fuels in the middle of cities on a road in an inefficient motor, use hydrogen cracked from water by a very efficient fossil fuel/whatever generator somewhere away from the city.
Of course cars running on electrolysed water, that make it from the energy they produce by burning the hydrogen from said water won't work, at least until we manage to get a perpetual motion machine working.
But does any of that mean fusion is bound to fail? A lot of people who are a whole lot more knowledgable than I am don't think so.
The devices mentioned in the article are rather small machines, they fit on a desk.
Don't expect to have one powering your house soon though, they use far more power than they create. Most researchers use them as a source of fusion byproducts such as neutrinos.
Who are you quoting? Circumcision isn't significant surgury (in that it doesn't affect deep tissue, only skin), it doesn't involve general anaesthesia, it is highly unlikely to cause infection. And AIDS? It still can't be cured.
Difference between male circumcision (or mutilation if you wish) and female genital mutilation is the effect.
From a point of view ignoring sexually transmitted diseases, (male) circumcision makes a penis easier to clean, more visually attractive and I know of no good reason against circumcision.
So called "female circumcision" is rightly described as genital mutilation. It removes useful, important tissue, usually the labia, often the clitoris. It often prevents the woman from achieving orgasm and it significantly reduces fertility.
To compare the two is wrong. An operation that is a reasonale male comparison to female genital mutilation would include signifant damage to the glans (that's the sensitive "head" of your penis), and probably scarring to the urethra.
You're completely right, condoms are far, far better protection.
Having said that, the study I referred to (which stated that circumcision provided some protection) is from South Africa where HIV rates are very high, use of condoms is very low and circumcision is quite common.
Where you or I wouldn't rely on circumcision for protection, a person in South Africa who for whatever reason doesn't use condoms would do well to be circumcised.
Aside from that, the link I provided provides the context to make what I wrote less foolish than you suggest.
As to people stupid enough to read something like what I wrote, on the 'net, not read the attached link and act on it in the way you suggest... I like to think of it as evolution in action.
The appendix has, as far as anyone can tell, no function anymore. It doesn't help digest grass, nor other plants - it hasn't done that for millions of years. It's a remanant of a second stomach from an ancestor that had two stage digestion, similar to what ruminants have.
I googled for that stuff you say about the dangers of circumcision, found several web sites with the exact same statement. What else did they all have in common? No references. They all say 209 baby boys die every year because of circumcision, but none add an "according to \insert name of reputable journal here\". In fact these sound very much like the class of information I describe as "internet truths" - that is things that are stated to be true across many web sites, but which actually are not.
I'll grant that it could be a dangerous operation in, say, sub-saharan africa where there is a danger of non-sterile medical instruments or poor sanitary conditions, but in first world nations such as the US? No.
Please provide a reference from a reputable medical journal backing up what you say.
I read the other comments in this thread before posting my own (who'd have thought that post would have so many replies).
Anyway, consider my earlier post as reworded as follows: The evidence that circumcision can protect against HIV is actually quite good. The study referenced controlled for social, religious, etc factors.
Any significant surgury is dangerous. General anaesthesia has about a 1 in 700000 chance of killing you. Abdominal surgury can cause adhesions and other problems. Appendicitis can be effectively treated now with antibiotics.
Pick any of the above reasons for avoiding appendectomies.
Tonsils are an important part of your immune system, it's a good idea to leave them in place.
Circumcision can also protect against HIV.
As an Australian Wine Connisuer I must say that the last one should be "...San Wagga Wagga".
Just so you can Monty Python Troll properly next time.
Actually, this has nothing to do with improving regional service, or as we put it "service in the bush".
It only has to do with the current Australian Government's policy of selling off all public assets and giving the proceeds to the companies you've sold said assets to.
Yep, you read right. In an effort to convince people that they're going to improve service in the bush, our lovely Aussie government is talking about using the proceeds of the sale to pay Telstra (that's the telco in question) to provide a service to the bush. How's that for a deal!
Anyway, we Australians now have no say in this, Australia is no longer a democracy.
That doesn't sound neutral to me, it sounds more like:
"We know that you, and everyone else on the planet, can see that Linux is cheaper so I'll try to convince you that you don't know enough to judge the TCO in the hope that you'll then take the easy option of sticking with M$"
Think you mean "Calculating 1M decimal places of pi..."
Capital M means mega, which means millions,
Lower case m means milli, which means thousandths.
Nah, that wouldn't work.
(yes, I know)
Depends on who you buy the free software from.
I work as a software designer for an Australian government department. They use the same sort of excuses for sticking with MS. In that case at least, it's lies. They stick with MS because it's executives that make the decisions and they get information from only two sources: MS sales staff and noisy linux zealots from within their own staff.
The zealots come off as zealots and are thus dismissed as having nothing useful to say.
The MS sales staff have "consultant" in their job title and are thus deigned (by the senior execs) to be experts on all things computerish.
Of course to those of us who grok operating environments and who don't grok executives and consultants see said executives as fools and their reasons as invalid.
Oh well.
Er... T3 and 802.11g are broadband.
Broadband is any communication channel that is not "narrowband". They're radiocommunications words, narrowband signals are those that can't carry much data, say low quality voice radio, or 56k modem; broadband signals can carry lots of data, say fast-scan TV or DSL or fibre optic.
Were I a manufacturer of "broadband"/VOIP equipment I'd implement the ruling with an ethernet port on the device and a username/password pair for the FBI for that unit in my safe.
The original Palm Pilot wasn't a solution in search of a problem - did you see what assistants had to drag around before Palms? They were called "Organisers", they weighed about a kilogram (a couple of pounds) and they cost a hundred dollars a year in replacement fillers. The palm pilot weighed in at a few hundred grams (a gram is a thousandth of a kilogram), did everything an organisor did, fitted in the pocket and didn't need replacing every year.
Please, somebody mod this spammer down. He adds nothing to any discussion he posts to, just ads for that website.
To be a planet a body must orbit a star. The Moon is not a planet simply because it orbits a planet rather than a star.
Way too late to get in on the discussion - I came across this post while metamoderating.
Anyway, Meringuoid, replicators aren't necessary, but without them or something equivalent we need some way of rationing our limited resources and production capacity.
Money in its current capitalist form pretty much sucks at the job of rationing, but to make true socialism work you need either a way of distributing money in a way I'd call "fair", or another way of rationing, or another way of producing enough for the needs and wants of all people.
So you're only presented with the secret questions if you don't have the cookie, the secret questions are there only to verify that you have the right to see your picture.
I prefer the system a bank here uses, you log in with user ID and password, but if you try to send money to any account that doesn't belong to you, you are presented with a block of nine pictures, you have to select the correct three in the correct order (you choose the pictures and order when you create the account) to proceed.
Err... Bonch, everything's a mutation. Fingers, thumbs, eyesight. Milk being fatty makes it an excellent food if you're living some time before the 20th century.