I agree that there is a limit to how much information needs or should be on a label. But just like foods that contain, or may contain, nuts (whether as an ingredient or because of being processed on shared equipment) are marked as such on their labels, foods containing GMO-derived ingredients should be marked as such. Processed foods should mark all ingredients in this list that are GMO-derived. Additional information should be available on the web, or directly from the company upon request.
People need the opportunity to make informed choices, but I don't disagree that information overload isn't necessarily helpful.
"Why is this a problem? Why do you always assume that crops modified by nature are always safe to eat? They're usually subtly different with every generation.
Food that's been genetically modified by nature isn't labeled. You know, by radiation in the pistol or stamen. Or in the testes or ovaries. Or by all of a certain strain of food dying off because it was less resistant to disease."
I don't think you understand what puts most people off. The issue isn't against selective breeding or natural variance. Every organism that reproduces sexually (and yes, this does include plants) is going to show variance in the next generation. That is the nature of sexual reproduction (half of the chromosomes from one parent, half from the other). Creating a strain of plants that have higher yield from selective breeding is generally not considered a bad thing.
What freaks many people out about GMO food is when genes from different species (and not even closely related species either) are getting inserted into organisms. Like the insertion of a fish gene into a strawberry plant. It is situations like there where the possibility for unintended consequences increases, along with the difficulty in tracing the source of issues.
If I am not allergic to strawberries, and decide to purchase some the next time I go to the store, I would like to think that I can be reasonably sure that I will not suddenly break out in hives. If those strawberries are labeled a GMO food, then I can set that expectation aside, or choose not to eat them. If they are labeled in detail enough to explain what makes them a GMO (what genes did they add, change, or remove) then consumers can make an informed decision about whether eating that particular GMO food is a good idea. If something has a gene from a peanut added, someone who has an extreme sensitivity to nuts might choose to avoid that food, and therefore avoid possible unexplained death due to no one knowing that they inadvertently consumed a protein that their system rejects.
Labeling GMO foods allows for accountability and for consumers to make conscious, informed choices about their diets.
The segment has not actually evolved. What is being demonstrated is selection. Natural selection is the mechanism by which evolution is able to occur. And in response to evolution not being observable, that may be true, but natural selection (again, the mechanism that makes evolution possible) is readily observable. There have been many studies done on natural populations that demonstrate the principle. Evolution may take many thousands or millions of years, but we know enough about genetics, gene flow, and selection for beneficial (or selection out of detrimental) genes to see that evolution is more than probable.
Try to find as much data to support intelligent design.
"that's how it happens everywhere. traffic, like nature, abhors a vacuum. if there is empty space, someone will fill it.
in light of this fact, the traditional advice to leave 1 car-length per 10 MPH is utterly ludicrous. if there are 6 car lenghts of empty space in front of you, you can count on 6 cars trying to squeeze in there. then you have to slow down enough to let 6 more car lengths build, only to be filled again.
eventually you will be driving backwards in order to make enough room for the people filling your traffic vacuum."
I completely agree and have said the same thing many times! A (not so) funny tale regarding this "rule". Apparently it is not only a rule, but a law, in California. I learned this when I was pulled over in the middle of the night while following a friend's car on a road trip. We were on a state highway, had the road to ourselves, and were not speeding. I was about 2-3 car lengths behind my friend's car when I was pulled over by state police. His reason - I was "tailgating". He insisted that state law dictates that a driver MUST be a car length behind for ever 10 mph of speed. I seriously think he made that law up in order to have an excuse to search our car. I couldn't help but think of LA traffic and imagine that during a morning commute, the cops would have to have everyone by the side of the road in order to enforce that. I didn't get ticketed, either, which furthers my belief that he used it as an excuse, but I never got over the humorous attempt to convince me that it was LAW.
Most corporations aren't as secretive about their projects as Apple is for some reason. Intel publishes road maps of their upcoming technology years before it ever hits the consumer market, yet Apple keeps a lid on their "secrets" until the day the hardware is marketed in the Apple Stores or announced at a MacWorld event. Ridiculous.
It is true that Intel does put out road maps of upcoming tech, but they generally provide this information only to partners. We had a road map presentation from Intel and HP where I work the other day, and both were covered by an NDA. Staying in the room for the presentation was akin to accepting the agreement. Should that information have been leaked and traced back to our company, I can guarantee there would be some suing going on.
This also indicates that Nintendo simply CHOSE not to have more consoles available. Like many others have pointed out, production estimates were made many months ago. Nintendo isn't just sitting around saying "Oh well, we could make a billion more, but we don't feel like it." I'm sure they wish they had more units available for sale right now. They made a conservative projection earlier this year, now they are seeing the numbers in action. Not much they can do in the short term, other than save big bucks on mass advertising.
I'm sure other console manufacturers are actually losing quite a bit more green due to: the Wii's popularity and the fact that there are some consumers out there who will simply wait until they can get a Wii, weak sales of their products (whether due to competition from the Wii or other factors), and mass amounts of money spent on advertising in hopes of increasing sales.
The reason simple sugars make you fat easier then similar caloric intake of protein is that they breakdown more easily.
Simple sugars make you fat because fats and sugars chemically are very similar (hydrocarbons). Sugar molecules are easily converted to fats, which can be more densely stored, and are readily converted as such in the body. Proteins are long chains of various amino acids, and when digested are broken back into aminos for use in building new proteins.
I'd like to know if any industry professionals are using Gimp, just like professional programmers use open source development tools. I've never heard of such a thing...
I used to work for a small design firm. All the graphics and web folks (including myself) had Photoshop because it was central to our jobs, however, other groups like Marketing were switched to GIMP in order to reduce costs. It was decided by management that paying for under-utilized Photoshop licenses was a waste of money. Everyone would have swtiched to GIMP if it offered the needed capacity and features of Photoshop that were needed by the design groups.
You are very correct, HIPAA does not stipulate any such things as OS. We have plenty of Windows servers in our Data Center. It just means that we have to have people here who really know what they are doing in regards to security. No doubt that server you reference is sitting safely behind a firewall, etc. No one who is smart (in any industry) would trust only Windows security to protect them.
The tone of your post should answer your own question. Why do people want the opportunity to keep certain information about themselves private? Discrimination, that's why. The automatic judgements you make in your post lead me to believe that you would treat people differently based on such information. People keep irrelevant personal information private to protect themselves from people like you.
The purpose of HIPAA is to protect patient confidentiality. It not only limits who has access to the information, but also has provisions for how information can be transmitted (such as disallowing the sending of confidential information over email), what can be placed where (any paper from this hospital with even a name on it MUST be placed in secure shredding boxes to be destroyed), etc. Definitely not an open-door policy for government snooping.
A little thing called HIPAA does go a long way to ensuring that your data isn't bouncing around all over the internet. Hospitals are frequently and meticulously audited to ensure compliance with federal regulations. A lot of clinical information systems still run on mainframes. Our new application runs on Unix. The front-end for doctors and nurses runs on Windows, but the whole back-end is nothing but Unix goodness.
It depends upon sample size. If you had 20 dots "randomly" generated on a page, then yes you would probably see some clumping. But when 200 dots are generated, or 2000, etc. then you start seeing more even distribution. This is shown under the Law of Large Numbers.
If you flip a coin, initially you may see some bias towards heads or tails, but the more you flip, the closer to a 1:1 ratio you get.
I whole-heartedly believe that you should have your own beliefs. I am not stopping you from having them. The argument you used about abortion, though, was poorly worded. If, in month 8, someone aborted then I do agree that there is a serious wrongness (except under very, very special circumstances that I don't care to bring into this discussion). But if you have ever studied the human embryotic cycle, then you would know that aborting in week 3 is a very different thing - when the embryo is truly a "ball of cells". And again, I am not justifying anything, nor criticizing. Just making a simple point about that aspect of your argument.
As far as the rest of my comments, I was addressing the question of impact outside of oneself based on what they support. I agree that organically farmed foods and animals is a far more sustainable approach to an omnivorous diet. However, even many "organic" brands are not all that they seem, as the standards that must be met to be considered "organic" are not that high. This, of course, is not the case with all organic brands, but just because something says it, doesn't make it "impact-free". This is especially true in the case of pollution from animal farming. That, no matter how you slice it, impacts us all.
I am not against the use of animals for food, but there is a right way and a wrong way to go about it. Amongst a group of people here on Slashdot that love to wag the finger at big nasty software or music companies, its amazing how little attention goes towards the big nasty companies that produce huge quantities of the food available to us. And the same with those of us who choose not to support the big nasty companies, many choose to be selective about their brands of food they buy. As you do, according to your post. But far too many people are extremely unaware of where their food comes from, and the true impacts on the world around us as a result of current practices.
Everything we do has an impact somewhere. How big of an impact we choose to have is up to each person. Having a small impact is different from having a large impact, as others have also said. It isn't an all or nothing world. We live by degrees. The degree to which you choose to regard other living things is up to you. The degree to which you are willing to impact the environment is up to you. The degree to which you do anything.. yup, its up to you. No matter what it has an impact of some type, whether major or minor.
In a overly broad stroke, I'll point out that most vegans are probably supportive of a woman's "choice." You may or may not be covered in this generalization personally, but, in the main, how can anything they say about the sanctity of animals be taken seriously when they feel it's permissible to kill perfectly viable people just prior to being born?
Ok, a couple of things to point out that fail here. First of all, very few abortions occur just prior to being born. Second, I suggest that you spend a few minutes asking Google about 'factory farming'. This is where most of your precious meat comes from, and after taking a look at the lives and deaths of factory farmed animals, I want you to tell me that aborting a ball of cells is worse than a life of torture and horrific death. I'm not playing the justification game - all I'm asking is that you attempt to place these things in perspective (not something most slashdotters tend to have a good grip on).
On a further note, regarding "impacts" outside of yourself (who is consuming all the growth hormones, etc. that have been pumped into these animals in excess during their miserable lives), I imagine that you might agree that things like polluted air and tainted water affect us all, which are by-products of the factory farming industry.
Its amazing what you could learn with even a few minutes of research on the subject. If people took the time to know more about the world they live in, maybe there wouldn't be so much knee-jerking going on.
If I'm not mistaken, in order to register to vote, an address is required. I believe that our current system makes being a registered voter difficult for most homeless, unless they were registered before they became homeless.
I don't think the issue is so much about needing to "completely shield" children from what they will face as adults, but part of gaining maturity and the ability to naviagate society as an adult is understanding that there are consequences for our actions. I think that is more what the aim here is. Kids, like, adults, need to take responsibility for their actions and realize that there are real-world consequences for things like harrassment.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree that there is a limit to how much information needs or should be on a label. But just like foods that contain, or may contain, nuts (whether as an ingredient or because of being processed on shared equipment) are marked as such on their labels, foods containing GMO-derived ingredients should be marked as such. Processed foods should mark all ingredients in this list that are GMO-derived. Additional information should be available on the web, or directly from the company upon request.
People need the opportunity to make informed choices, but I don't disagree that information overload isn't necessarily helpful.
"Why is this a problem? Why do you always assume that crops modified by nature are always safe to eat? They're usually subtly different with every generation.
Food that's been genetically modified by nature isn't labeled. You know, by radiation in the pistol or stamen. Or in the testes or ovaries. Or by all of a certain strain of food dying off because it was less resistant to disease."
I don't think you understand what puts most people off. The issue isn't against selective breeding or natural variance. Every organism that reproduces sexually (and yes, this does include plants) is going to show variance in the next generation. That is the nature of sexual reproduction (half of the chromosomes from one parent, half from the other). Creating a strain of plants that have higher yield from selective breeding is generally not considered a bad thing.
What freaks many people out about GMO food is when genes from different species (and not even closely related species either) are getting inserted into organisms. Like the insertion of a fish gene into a strawberry plant. It is situations like there where the possibility for unintended consequences increases, along with the difficulty in tracing the source of issues.
If I am not allergic to strawberries, and decide to purchase some the next time I go to the store, I would like to think that I can be reasonably sure that I will not suddenly break out in hives. If those strawberries are labeled a GMO food, then I can set that expectation aside, or choose not to eat them. If they are labeled in detail enough to explain what makes them a GMO (what genes did they add, change, or remove) then consumers can make an informed decision about whether eating that particular GMO food is a good idea. If something has a gene from a peanut added, someone who has an extreme sensitivity to nuts might choose to avoid that food, and therefore avoid possible unexplained death due to no one knowing that they inadvertently consumed a protein that their system rejects.
Labeling GMO foods allows for accountability and for consumers to make conscious, informed choices about their diets.
And/or FF with IE tab installed. That was a lifesaver when I was working web design.
The segment has not actually evolved. What is being demonstrated is selection. Natural selection is the mechanism by which evolution is able to occur. And in response to evolution not being observable, that may be true, but natural selection (again, the mechanism that makes evolution possible) is readily observable. There have been many studies done on natural populations that demonstrate the principle. Evolution may take many thousands or millions of years, but we know enough about genetics, gene flow, and selection for beneficial (or selection out of detrimental) genes to see that evolution is more than probable.
Try to find as much data to support intelligent design.
"The only way the White House is going to get green with the current president is if they call the painters with lots of green paint."
But knowing this administration, the paint would no doubt be lead-based...
"that's how it happens everywhere. traffic, like nature, abhors a vacuum. if there is empty space, someone will fill it.
in light of this fact, the traditional advice to leave 1 car-length per 10 MPH is utterly ludicrous. if there are 6 car lenghts of empty space in front of you, you can count on 6 cars trying to squeeze in there. then you have to slow down enough to let 6 more car lengths build, only to be filled again.
eventually you will be driving backwards in order to make enough room for the people filling your traffic vacuum."
I completely agree and have said the same thing many times! A (not so) funny tale regarding this "rule". Apparently it is not only a rule, but a law, in California. I learned this when I was pulled over in the middle of the night while following a friend's car on a road trip. We were on a state highway, had the road to ourselves, and were not speeding. I was about 2-3 car lengths behind my friend's car when I was pulled over by state police. His reason - I was "tailgating". He insisted that state law dictates that a driver MUST be a car length behind for ever 10 mph of speed. I seriously think he made that law up in order to have an excuse to search our car. I couldn't help but think of LA traffic and imagine that during a morning commute, the cops would have to have everyone by the side of the road in order to enforce that. I didn't get ticketed, either, which furthers my belief that he used it as an excuse, but I never got over the humorous attempt to convince me that it was LAW.
Most corporations aren't as secretive about their projects as Apple is for some reason. Intel publishes road maps of their upcoming technology years before it ever hits the consumer market, yet Apple keeps a lid on their "secrets" until the day the hardware is marketed in the Apple Stores or announced at a MacWorld event. Ridiculous.
It is true that Intel does put out road maps of upcoming tech, but they generally provide this information only to partners. We had a road map presentation from Intel and HP where I work the other day, and both were covered by an NDA. Staying in the room for the presentation was akin to accepting the agreement. Should that information have been leaked and traced back to our company, I can guarantee there would be some suing going on.
This also indicates that Nintendo simply CHOSE not to have more consoles available. Like many others have pointed out, production estimates were made many months ago. Nintendo isn't just sitting around saying "Oh well, we could make a billion more, but we don't feel like it." I'm sure they wish they had more units available for sale right now. They made a conservative projection earlier this year, now they are seeing the numbers in action. Not much they can do in the short term, other than save big bucks on mass advertising.
I'm sure other console manufacturers are actually losing quite a bit more green due to: the Wii's popularity and the fact that there are some consumers out there who will simply wait until they can get a Wii, weak sales of their products (whether due to competition from the Wii or other factors), and mass amounts of money spent on advertising in hopes of increasing sales.
"...the potential for danger is real." And often, completely unexpected.
Simple sugars make you fat because fats and sugars chemically are very similar (hydrocarbons). Sugar molecules are easily converted to fats, which can be more densely stored, and are readily converted as such in the body. Proteins are long chains of various amino acids, and when digested are broken back into aminos for use in building new proteins.
You don't need to know how to spell to take a standardized test
And you could kill two birds with one stone during those highway pit stops! Quick, drink more coffee!!
I believe we are on the same page with this. And you make an excellent point about security being a process. A continually on-going process, no less.
You are very correct, HIPAA does not stipulate any such things as OS. We have plenty of Windows servers in our Data Center. It just means that we have to have people here who really know what they are doing in regards to security. No doubt that server you reference is sitting safely behind a firewall, etc. No one who is smart (in any industry) would trust only Windows security to protect them.
The tone of your post should answer your own question. Why do people want the opportunity to keep certain information about themselves private? Discrimination, that's why. The automatic judgements you make in your post lead me to believe that you would treat people differently based on such information. People keep irrelevant personal information private to protect themselves from people like you.
The purpose of HIPAA is to protect patient confidentiality. It not only limits who has access to the information, but also has provisions for how information can be transmitted (such as disallowing the sending of confidential information over email), what can be placed where (any paper from this hospital with even a name on it MUST be placed in secure shredding boxes to be destroyed), etc. Definitely not an open-door policy for government snooping.
A little thing called HIPAA does go a long way to ensuring that your data isn't bouncing around all over the internet. Hospitals are frequently and meticulously audited to ensure compliance with federal regulations. A lot of clinical information systems still run on mainframes. Our new application runs on Unix. The front-end for doctors and nurses runs on Windows, but the whole back-end is nothing but Unix goodness.
It depends upon sample size. If you had 20 dots "randomly" generated on a page, then yes you would probably see some clumping. But when 200 dots are generated, or 2000, etc. then you start seeing more even distribution. This is shown under the Law of Large Numbers.
If you flip a coin, initially you may see some bias towards heads or tails, but the more you flip, the closer to a 1:1 ratio you get.
I whole-heartedly believe that you should have your own beliefs. I am not stopping you from having them. The argument you used about abortion, though, was poorly worded. If, in month 8, someone aborted then I do agree that there is a serious wrongness (except under very, very special circumstances that I don't care to bring into this discussion). But if you have ever studied the human embryotic cycle, then you would know that aborting in week 3 is a very different thing - when the embryo is truly a "ball of cells". And again, I am not justifying anything, nor criticizing. Just making a simple point about that aspect of your argument.
As far as the rest of my comments, I was addressing the question of impact outside of oneself based on what they support. I agree that organically farmed foods and animals is a far more sustainable approach to an omnivorous diet. However, even many "organic" brands are not all that they seem, as the standards that must be met to be considered "organic" are not that high. This, of course, is not the case with all organic brands, but just because something says it, doesn't make it "impact-free". This is especially true in the case of pollution from animal farming. That, no matter how you slice it, impacts us all.
I am not against the use of animals for food, but there is a right way and a wrong way to go about it. Amongst a group of people here on Slashdot that love to wag the finger at big nasty software or music companies, its amazing how little attention goes towards the big nasty companies that produce huge quantities of the food available to us. And the same with those of us who choose not to support the big nasty companies, many choose to be selective about their brands of food they buy. As you do, according to your post. But far too many people are extremely unaware of where their food comes from, and the true impacts on the world around us as a result of current practices.
Everything we do has an impact somewhere. How big of an impact we choose to have is up to each person. Having a small impact is different from having a large impact, as others have also said. It isn't an all or nothing world. We live by degrees. The degree to which you choose to regard other living things is up to you. The degree to which you are willing to impact the environment is up to you. The degree to which you do anything.. yup, its up to you. No matter what it has an impact of some type, whether major or minor.
Ok, a couple of things to point out that fail here. First of all, very few abortions occur just prior to being born. Second, I suggest that you spend a few minutes asking Google about 'factory farming'. This is where most of your precious meat comes from, and after taking a look at the lives and deaths of factory farmed animals, I want you to tell me that aborting a ball of cells is worse than a life of torture and horrific death. I'm not playing the justification game - all I'm asking is that you attempt to place these things in perspective (not something most slashdotters tend to have a good grip on).
On a further note, regarding "impacts" outside of yourself (who is consuming all the growth hormones, etc. that have been pumped into these animals in excess during their miserable lives), I imagine that you might agree that things like polluted air and tainted water affect us all, which are by-products of the factory farming industry.
Its amazing what you could learn with even a few minutes of research on the subject. If people took the time to know more about the world they live in, maybe there wouldn't be so much knee-jerking going on.
A format richer.... with bugs!
AIM supports offline delivery. You may need an updated client to take advantage of it, but the network does now support it.
If I'm not mistaken, in order to register to vote, an address is required. I believe that our current system makes being a registered voter difficult for most homeless, unless they were registered before they became homeless.
I don't think the issue is so much about needing to "completely shield" children from what they will face as adults, but part of gaining maturity and the ability to naviagate society as an adult is understanding that there are consequences for our actions. I think that is more what the aim here is. Kids, like, adults, need to take responsibility for their actions and realize that there are real-world consequences for things like harrassment.