The original claim was that aspartame was a problem for normal people, which is completely false. It's been shown to be safe, unless you have that specific problem you're talking about.
As the poster of the original claim, I have a nit to pick with that. SO FAR it has been shown to be false. THe clinical trials they did didnt pick anything up. Then again, for the first 100 years of smoking there was "nothing wrong with it". Same with alcohol. You just dont KNOW what it does over the long long term (20-30 years of continued ingestion.) You also dont know what it does in the huge doses some people use it in. You arent supposed to (or werent.. dont know if it has changed) use it in hot things.. said so right on the box, yet everyone I know who uses the stuff puts it in tea, coffee, etc.
Now, just about everyone in my family is allergic to the crap.. instant, splitting migraines from even the tiniest amount. This is not usually an issue, because it tastes HORRIBLE anyway. And no, this isnt "psychosomatic" because two of the people who noticed the problem had no idea whatsoever A) what they were drinking and B) the link. THey figured it out when they stopped drinking nutrasweet.
Granted.. it may _not_ be harmful. But the number of people who have had symptoms that mysteriously went away when they stopped drinking that crap makes me believe that even if its not toxic, there are certainly a large number of people with allergys to it, and that and that alone is enough to keep me and anyone I can sway away from it.
Right! It cause hyperkinetic activity, but that is just the fidgets. Wanna show me where I said ANYTHING about sugar and hyperactivity? In my case, its certain colors, most preservatives and flavors that cause it. Anything with FD&C red, or any store-brand bread is sure to set it off. And yes, I am 33 years old, and still suffer. The difference between me now and me in 7th grade, is I now recognize the symptoms (inability to concentrate, increased irritability, less impulse control, specificially in gross motor and verbal outbursts), and can A) control them to a much greater extent and B) watch what I eat if Im worried about it.
There are times when eating a red pixie stick really helps.. like right before I go play Laser Tag.. cause then being aware of EVERY SINGLE DAMN THING GOING ON AROUND ME helps. However, when I am sitting at work, the lack of difference between input priority scheduling (IE: the work I am doing on the PC in front of me is coming in at EXACTLY the same priority as everything else.. including the feeling of the hair on my leg against my pants, the sound of the rain outside, and the guy at the other end of the room who burps out loud.). It is really hard to explain to someone who doesnt have it, but that is the best explanation I can give.
But no, Sugar has nothign to do with it. Now.. one of my ex g/f's had it so bad that the "natural" red in apples would set her off.. she had to eat yellow and green apples, or peel them first in order to eat red ones.
Do you have any opinion as to what happens to splenda in the body?
Funny you should mention that. My wife is pregnant, but she _loves_ this "fruit2O" crap. That is made with splenda. We have been researching the crap out of it, and strangely enough, the pages that claim SPlenda is safe look surprisingly like the pages that say Nutrasweet is safe.. if you substitute "splenda" for "aspartame". Same "one of the most researched things ever" same old "the NEw ENgland Journal of Medicine says its safe!" (course, they have said EVERYTHING is safe.. so no surprise there.)
So far, I havent been able to find anything _bad_ about it, but it is relatively new.. I will ask the aforementioned chemist if he knows anything.
As far as "Formaldehyde and Methanol" being such a problem, let me remind you that an eating an apple releases much more methanol into your system than the equal in your tea.
Major difference being they release it into your stomach.. the bond in nutrasweet is specifically designed to go to the brain before it does that.
I work with a chemist, who is pretty high up here in chemistry. That was his take on it. I'll believe him over a PR study by a company that is trying to make money from me. Saccharin was "safe" too. So is TYlenol.. as long as you dont mind the odd coma and liver damage.
And actually for the most part I think ADD and ADHD are just names for normal kids who want to sedate for our instutitional learning facilities (I do believe there are some true cases, but the vast majority).
I can tell you for a fact that diet reactive ADD/ADHD exists. Hell.. I can prove it if you want me to hang out in your living room for about a week and you have a supply of pixie sticks around. I dont doubt that a hell of a lot of the current diagnoses are just kids that the system does not have time to deal with, but then again, I dont "believe" in the use of ritalin and other drugs to deal with a neruological disorder that can be effectively combated through proper diet and learning to deal with it.
Sorry to be insensitive, but until I see some better evidence for this being a real disorder, I'm going to assume that he's just another crackpot hypochondriac
Bear in mind, exactly the same things were said about ADD, ADHD, Fibro-Myalgia, and a myriad of other things until they actually proved them. These are the same people who tell you Nutrasweet is "safe".
Sorry.. anything that bonds into my bloodstream, goes straight to my brain, and there releases Formaldehyde and Methanol is _not safe_, and I dont care how much the AMA and the NEJM say "its okay! We tested it for three years before we gave it to you!".
Gypsum, plaster, brick, wood, steel are inert. If you can't handle these natural substances then too bad. Fate is not always kind. Life is not fair. Perhaps you have a psychological problem. Maybe a psychiatrist would be your best bet.
BZZT:! Wrong answer. Gypsum is bad for anyone who has respiratory issues, because it is such a fine dust, and anyone with any kind of silica allergy has serioius problems with it.
There are several woods that are downright toxic. Line a room with Cedar and make the house airtight and see how long you survive. The gas given off by it is not only toxic to Moths, it is toxic to people also. But the little blocks you keep in your closet dont release enough to sicken you, unless you are highly reactive to it.
Bricks are also not inert all the time. The JIRR had an article on a brick in Boston that was carrying syphillus. (yes, that was meant to be humorous, but its true).
Yeah.. I know i'm feeding a troll.. but your misinformation is staggering.
What is "Environmental Illness"? I've never heard it before in my life.
Basically, from what I have read, it is one step below bubble-boy on the allergen list. Instead of being suceptible to germs, these people are susceptible to gasses and chomicals that most of us tolerate fine.
What does "toxic home" mean in this context? I've never thought of lampshades as dangerous. I'm left guessing here.
It means that every piece of anything chemically processed that you have in your home slowly breaks down over time, and gives off noxious chemicals. Everything from formaldehyde to radon. Most of us dont notice, but it apparently makes some people _very_ sick. Couple this with todays "need" to make homes virtually air tight, and you have a place that makes reactive people really, really sick.
Obviously I can look these all up (and I will). But any other reporting source would've explained these concepts in some detail.
He kinda does on a another page.. but you have to dig a bit to find it. It apparently involves moose, alaska, and nOrthern Exposure.
What wood? Plywood (flooring substrate) and press board are all made with really nasty glues.. that give off formaldehyde, among other things, for years and years. Bricks are made of god knows what in some cases, bonding and strengthening agents are used in the formula, and these too can give off gasses or dusts that are toxic to people with allergies. Mortar has really nasty things in it.. which again people can be allergic too, and to seal it you need to use paint.. which also can cause reactions in people who cant deal with certain fumes.
The fact that the guy is leaning towards adobe makes me think he is allergic to something that is pretty commonly used as a "safe" bonding or strenghtening agent.
My mom just built a house. She has spent upwards of 20 years designing it to be mostly passive solar, and was very careful about what went into it. (She is, honestly, just this side of whacko when it comes to believing "industry safety" and pays much attention to the very non-publicized reports in things like science news, etc).
Helping with the house, I learned a _heck_ of a lot about what I dont want in my house. The stuff that you put in and never give a thought about is incredibly dangerous! From the formaldehyde released by everything from your insulation, plywood, and flooring to your couch and carpets, added to the fact that todays houses are usually wrapped in Tyvek or some other non-permeable barrier means you are breathing deadly gasses the entire time you are home.
This is scary stuff! I have to personally wonder how much of the "cancer rise rates" are directly related to things like this.. especially the huge jump in Lung Cancer in the last 20 years. It certainly is not only due to smoking, as smoking levels have been decreasing steadily.
It's kind of scary what "they" can get away with selling you as "safe". There are huge warnings on certain exotic hardwoods that the dust created by them is toxic, and some people can have allergic reactions to them, but CCM and CCA pressure treated wood is regularly used by people to build raised bed gardens. (Nothing like having chromium, arsenic, cadmium, and other fun things leaching into the soil around your tomatoes!) I honestly think if most people knew exactly how they make PT lumber, they would _never_ use it for their kids to play on or in their homes. But lots of people do. This stuff is going to be the Love Canal of the future.
*sigh*
People like me, however, when I bring it up, are just labeled "paranoid". The thing that REALLY annoys me is that things like Cedar and Redwood are naturally just as resistant to decay, and a fully renewable resource.
I love how WWII is suddenly an excuse to fight and a way to criticize diplomecy. A simple act of cracking open of a history book will show you that the UN was formed because of people with your "stike first" attitude. Isolationism and unilateral action has lead to two world wars. World leaders realized this and got together to keep war down to a minumum.
And what is the UN now? A bunch of people with dipolomatic immunity and no worldview. They are happy to sit and chat and veto and filibuster while innocent people die, and while countriest take over other countries, but god forbid we (the US) move on Iraq.. _then_ France has a problem.
Remember.. Iraq is now chair of the UN disarmament council, and Libya is chair of the UN human rights council.. no-one thought to use thier veto power then..
The UN is a frikkin joke.. its taking up expensive real-estate and allowing people from other countries to run up parking tickets and worse crimes that they dont have to pay for. Time to tell them to get real jobs and get the hell out of the US.
1. So can one truly notice the difference between say 45fps and 100fps?
Absolutely! YOu should see Quake3 on my old Rage Pro vs my new 9700Pro! You can definately see the difference.. or get ahold of 3dbenchmark and run it.. see the differences as it tells you waht the actual framerates are.
2. How many games will be out within the next six months to take advantage of this cutting edge technology?
Well, I think UT2K3 is pretty cutting edge.. it beats the heck out of my system as is, which is an Athlon XP 2200, and a radeon 9700pro and 512MB of ram. So the games are already here.. and the next big one will probably be Doom3 which, apparently, you will need godlike hardware to even touch.
So yeah.. the games are there.. and will be there.. I just bought the top I could find because I was tired of having to step upgrade each time I found a new game I liked.. the 9700 pro should be sufficient for quite a while.
All this trusted computing seems to be losing more than you're gaining. Email was never designed to be like telephones; the design and usage is completely different.
You know that. I know that. Most of us _here_ know that. But the company I contract for does not know that. To them, Email is the great solver, the thing that saves them tons and tons of money on printers and papers and memos. They treat it as if it were gold, to be savored, and not squandered, and they monitor the quantity of your inbox to make sure you do not use too much. And God forbid you get mail from outside *gasp*.
The problem is a lot of joe-sixpack views Emails as the new phone. They have no idea you can forge headers, fake senders, tap an open relay acct or forge your return address.
Sucks, but its the way of the world. And it is so ingrained now, it is not going anywhere fast.
Well, to get snide about it, we don't know what's up there (but we do know that a golf club can be used in a space suit, and that funny wheels make an effective lunar go-cart, and we collected enough rocks that I think a strong man would have a problem lifting them all at once-- but I'm not sure). We knew how to get there, but like Goldie Hawn frequently said at the time, "I used to know all that stuff." Now we don't have a clue as to how to get back. We threw all that technology away.
To be pretty exact, 842Lbs.. yeah.. I'd say a strong man would have a hard time with that. And they were moved in boxes carved out of solid aluminum. (I have a neat book on treasure chests that goes into the rock boxes).
Yes, I mean that. The Apollo program was based on technology that used (get ready for it) sliderules. The total amount of computer power that was used in the entire Apollo program is dwarfed by the desktop machine that you turn off without giving it a second thought, when your done with your evening's slashdot entertainment. You couldn't muster up enough people in the workforce today who know how to use a sliderule to repeat what was then done, or even understand the notes that were written about it. The technology of the Apollo program was never carried across into computers. To remake the heavy lift Saturn rockets or reconstruct the Apollo heat sheilds, we would have to redo everything from scratch. We orphaned the whole thing as we moved on to better technology.
Yes, mostly true. ANd also remember, a lot of the people involved with designing the project, (Especially Von Braun and his team of crack naz^h^h^hgerman scientists) are dead now. We still have a couple of SV's layign around, and the knowhow to _probably_ build new ones. But part of the issue is that almost none of that rocket was actually BUILT by Nasa. Boeing did one section, IBM did the telemetry/guidance ring, and I _think_ Morton Thiokol (but I am probably wrong) did the first stage.
There is a REALLY good DVD out.. Spacecraft Films "The Mighty Saturns" that follows the program nicely in a one hour Dolby program, and then contains all the footage of all the launches.
As to Christopher Columbus-- he made several repeat voyages to the New World. He stuck to his program, even though it failed in the long run. His program was designed to return spices and gold-- the keys of that age. Our space adventure had no pragmatic purpose, and so was shut down before it accomplished anything of lasting significance. It was truly just a "First Post" effort.
here is where I think you are mistaken. Our program met its goals perfectly. THose goals were A) put men on the moon, and return them.. we did it several times, safely, proving it was not just a fluke. B) get something BIG ENOUGH built to get them there and back. The SV weighed 6.5 million pounds, and only had 7.7 million pounds of thrust.. it was engineered right to the edge of that bell curve, and had just enough to do it.. which is why the next plan was orbital assembly of the vehicle. And C)we beat those damn commie ruskies, which was something this country needed at the time, a sense of good feeling and accomplishment to Joe SixPack.
These days, the moon could be viewed (as the CHinese obviously are) as a potential place for resources, outposts, etc. But I dont think NASA was thinking of that.. we didnt have the knowhow to even use what we found up there, and are STILL learning things from the stuff brought back 30 odd years ago.
From a Businessweek article [businessweek.com]: 'More important, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ ), which dominates both the printer and the $7 billion toner market, has no intention of following Lexmark's course. "We believe in customer choice," says Pradeep Jotwani, the senior vice-president who heads HP's lucrative imaging-supplies business. "If they want to buy from remanufacturers, that's fine. It's our job to make them not want to."'
I would suspect that HP has many patents re: cartridges, as they pretty much did it first and do it best. That being said, they probably hold plenty of money in liscencing to people who want to make carts that fit in their machines. They are getting their money either way.
Lexmark, however, most likely has the patents in the engine (now that they arent carbon copies of HP's anymore) and not in the cartridge, because the cartridge is pretty much the same across the board. Hasnt really changed from the original XeroX style machines.
Licensing would be the way for Lexmark to go.. I'm surprised they went this route instead.
Why does it say paper jam when there is no paper jam?
"Coating roll life warning" and "transfer belt warning" come up all the time, even right after fresh ones are installed
Duplexing option jams on every 100th sheet
Print often seems to stick to the transfer belt and gets "ghosted" onto subsequent pages
The printer just disappears from the network at least once per day and needs a hard reboot
1) cause the sheet sensing finger behind the fuser is stuck. Not uncommon.
2) Cause no-one reset the "life" setting on the parts when the replaced them, usually. The printer doesnt do it itself, you have to do it.
3) No clue.. I dont service any with Duplexers on them. We have big muckin Konica's for that.
4) you SURE you replaced the imaging transfer unit? That is usually a problem with the unit.. that or a bad toner cartridge that is not re-layering the transfer roller properly.
You are joking right? Have you looked at the prices of Epson or HP cartridges? They are horribly expensive just like the Lexmark supplies. Also, if companies like Lexmark are allowed to decide what manufacturers are allowed to sell supplies for thier printers what is to stop car manufacturers from forcing car buyers to purchase specific types of gasoline or oil? Sure it's not a perfect analogy but it's close enough. It should be the consumers right to use whatever supplies they want with thier printer. You did buy it after all. What's the next step? Only being allowed to you Lexmark approved paper in your printer? I'm sure it will only be 100-200% more than the bargain brand that you were using before.
Yeah! OHMIGOD! that would be like.. if Apple decided to produce machines that only one company could make replacement parts for, locking you into a price scheme.. oh.. nevermind.
The problem with your plan is that the bandwidth would have to be so oversold that you would be talking about a 100 MB daily download cap (with extra bandwidth purchaseable in, say, 100MB increments for $5/month extra). Check out all the capping stories for Slashdotters' opinion on that capping.
Im not so sure of that. What is the "limit"? Most of us are working with preconcieved notions of a "limit" to what bandwidth is available. But since the "limit" to the bandwidth is pretty much imposed by the phone companies anyway (dont they control the fiber that is the backbone?) they would simply be able to increase the amount to support the demand.
(Or am I completely off base here?)
Im wondering if the "scarcity" of bandwidth and "price" of bandwidth isnt kind of like gas prices right now.. the supply hasnt dropped.. but gouging is in mad effect.
I may just be shooting in the dark here, but I think it's likely that they don't charge $9.99 for broadband because it costs at least that much to provide it.
Doubtful. As was pointed out on TSS the other day, bandwidth is basically free. What you pay for are the fees charged by the companies providing the pipe, not the bandwidth. If you want a T-1 you either go to the local ISP which provides you the fiber pipe, or you go to the phone company who jacks you into their fiber trunk.
The cost is "value added" stuff.. the phone company charges X for the line, to which your local ISP adds the cost of its server procurement, maintenence, support staff, etc, and then dollops another chunk on cause "the market will bear it". As long as they all continue to follow just about the same pricing structure, they will. If you can get it 10 dollars cheaper from one place than all the others, you will, all other things being equal. So there is no incentive whatsoever for company Y to go any further cheaper than the others. So the phone company gives you a "discount" on X services on your phone bill if you also go with their DSL, and you are in. Much like insurance companies.. they charge higher rates for house and motorcycle insurance, but for the "convenience" of one-stop-shopping and multi-vehicle "discounts" you will pay the higher rates anyway.
What we really need is to find (build, whatever) nexus points that pipe to the backbone and then build relay wireless networks that go house to house in urban areas.. that is the start. Totally deregulated, because there is no-one to "sue" no one "owns" it.
The only way we are going to get broadband across the board is if the government mandates it, and takes it upon themselves to install and run it. As soon as it's left up to a corporation todo, they're going to not provide services to the customers that are expensive. Why? Because thats the point of a corporation. They want to make a profit. Period.
I think they can make a profit. Right now, locally, I can get Satellite broadband from DirecTV, I can get Cablemodem from the "local" cable company (who is the only co. I trust less than the phone company) or I can get (and have) DSL from a "local" ISP. (fairly local, anyway.. one of the small ones that got medium sized, but stayed here and did not get absorbed.)
I wont go Satellite, because I want two way broadband.. I like to run game servers.. I wont go cablemodem, cause, well, I already HAVE directv and am contracted into it.. so DSL is pretty much my only answer right now.
However.. I suspect if the phone company offered DSL locally, in this way "You buy the modem for 49.95 (making them a profit on the modem) and pay 9.95 a month for the DSL service" they would make a HELL of a lot more money than Covad is currently making in my area billing me 49.95 a month for my DSL.
Its a matter of how many * income. The thing now is that at 50 bucks, people dont want to shell out the cash, but at 9.95 that beats the hell out of AOL, and give REAL internet to people.
I know I would jump on it.. and I sure would encourage everyone I know to jump on it as well.
Having been an avid reader of the "chaos manor" site for a while now, I have to wonder. Are you as tech savvy as Jerry, and (more importantly) with you guys having done SO much together, do you find you "share a brain" occasionally, and is it difficult to write with/without him (and/or Steven) after so much work together? (pick any one or all to answer, as you choose!) Thanks for the great work!
Your credit card or debit card company knows what you bought? Funny, but mine don't. They see that I spent $107 at Fortinos and $89 at Walmart, but they DON'T see that I bought Lays BBQ chips and a big tub of jellybeans, and Walmart doesn't see what I bought at Fortinos and vice versa.
Sears and JC Penney specifically, give me an itemized list on my statement of what was purchased. (This can be QUITE handy for things like warranty issues, and also when the card gets used fraudulently).
Maeryk
Re:Hey, look on the bright side...
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NYT on RFID Tags
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· Score: 2, Informative
Never having to worry about losing things like remote controls, car keys, and pets (wearing a collar with an RFID of course).
Yesterdays "tech of tomorrow" (I think) had an interesting segment on how they are using "smart chips" in horses these days. Specifically, thoroughbred racing horses that can be easily confused for one another at sales. (they had two who were sold under the wrong names, and then proceeded to run under crossed names for at least five races before anyone figured it out).
This is kind of a neat technology, because if it is applied here as it is being applied in the UK, it makes it DAMN hard to steal horses. As of now, you have to wave the "reader" right over the chip to get the unique identifier from the horse, but I could see where this could be amplified to find, say, stolen horses.
Maeryk
Re:Sounds like Tinfoil Hat Time
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NYT on RFID Tags
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· Score: 1
Yes, all of this is worthless if you are convinced that the, easily removed, mylar strips in your US money is tagged too.
I dont know about the Mylar strip. (Though I did watch someone ruin a 100 dollar bill proving it could be "Removed" once.) But I suspect the "new money" that will be arriving relatively soon, (no.. not big face bills.. an entire retooling) will serve two purposes: 1 Enhanced Tracking 2) Get all those mattresses empty and get the money back into circulation.
Keep an eye on this one.. especially if you have old bills floating around. Rumor has it that there will be a cash-in period and after that, all "old" money (paper) will be devalued entirely.
(Not paranoid. this has been in the works for years)
How in the world can that be true? Sometimes I go into a Gap store just to use the bathroom. Other times I walk through it just to get to the other side of the mall. What if I'm with a group of friends, and only one of us makes a purchase? What about my poor boyfriends of yesteryear who were just there to hold my bags;-)?
I suspect "shoppers" specifically means people in the gap for the purpose of purchasing something. Walkthroughs and chain-gang shopping are probably not counted. It is meant, I suspect, to highlight the fact that they can FIND what you want. Even if your 36-34 pants are mixed into the womens jeans on the other side of the store, a single RFID query going "where the hell are you" would locate the one they _know_ they have in stock, but some jerk put on the wrong shelf.
RadioShack makes a small profit selling a wand to disable such devices, until a court order forces them to stop. Fortunatly, for businesses, RadioShack insists on always taking down personal information when you buy things, so the police easily acquire a complete list of criminals and arrest the lot of them.
Havent shopped at Ratshack lately have you? They no longer demand that info. (What I really love is they asked me taht crap every single time, and never ONCE did I get their catalog.. even when I asked for them to send them to me.)
Apparently, bitching and moaning from concerned masses like us have stopped them from asking for personal info when buying in cash.
Slashdot Mirror
The original claim was that aspartame was a problem for normal people, which is completely false. It's been shown to be safe, unless you have that specific problem you're talking about.
As the poster of the original claim, I have a nit to pick with that. SO FAR it has been shown to be false. THe clinical trials they did didnt pick anything up. Then again, for the first 100 years of smoking there was "nothing wrong with it". Same with alcohol. You just dont KNOW what it does over the long long term (20-30 years of continued ingestion.) You also dont know what it does in the huge doses some people use it in. You arent supposed to (or werent.. dont know if it has changed) use it in hot things.. said so right on the box, yet everyone I know who uses the stuff puts it in tea, coffee, etc.
Now, just about everyone in my family is allergic to the crap.. instant, splitting migraines from even the tiniest amount. This is not usually an issue, because it tastes HORRIBLE anyway. And no, this isnt "psychosomatic" because two of the people who noticed the problem had no idea whatsoever A) what they were drinking and B) the link. THey figured it out when they stopped drinking nutrasweet.
Granted.. it may _not_ be harmful. But the number of people who have had symptoms that mysteriously went away when they stopped drinking that crap makes me believe that even if its not toxic, there are certainly a large number of people with allergys to it, and that and that alone is enough to keep me and anyone I can sway away from it.
Sugar does not cause hyperactivity
Right! It cause hyperkinetic activity, but that is just the fidgets. Wanna show me where I said ANYTHING about sugar and hyperactivity? In my case, its certain colors, most preservatives and flavors that cause it. Anything with FD&C red, or any store-brand bread is sure to set it off. And yes, I am 33 years old, and still suffer. The difference between me now and me in 7th grade, is I now recognize the symptoms (inability to concentrate, increased irritability, less impulse control, specificially in gross motor and verbal outbursts), and can A) control them to a much greater extent and B) watch what I eat if Im worried about it.
There are times when eating a red pixie stick really helps.. like right before I go play Laser Tag.. cause then being aware of EVERY SINGLE DAMN THING GOING ON AROUND ME helps. However, when I am sitting at work, the lack of difference between input priority scheduling (IE: the work I am doing on the PC in front of me is coming in at EXACTLY the same priority as everything else.. including the feeling of the hair on my leg against my pants, the sound of the rain outside, and the guy at the other end of the room who burps out loud.). It is really hard to explain to someone who doesnt have it, but that is the best explanation I can give.
But no, Sugar has nothign to do with it. Now.. one of my ex g/f's had it so bad that the "natural" red in apples would set her off.. she had to eat yellow and green apples, or peel them first in order to eat red ones.
Maeryk
Do you have any opinion as to what happens to splenda in the body?
Funny you should mention that. My wife is pregnant, but she _loves_ this "fruit2O" crap.
That is made with splenda. We have been researching the crap out of it, and strangely enough, the pages that claim SPlenda is safe look surprisingly like the pages that say Nutrasweet is safe.. if you substitute "splenda" for "aspartame". Same "one of the most researched things ever" same old "the NEw ENgland Journal of Medicine says its safe!" (course, they have said EVERYTHING is safe.. so no surprise there.)
So far, I havent been able to find anything _bad_ about it, but it is relatively new.. I will ask the aforementioned chemist if he knows anything.
Maeryk
As far as "Formaldehyde and Methanol" being such a problem, let me remind you that an eating an apple releases much more methanol into your system than the equal in your tea.
Major difference being they release it into your stomach.. the bond in nutrasweet is specifically designed to go to the brain before it does that.
I work with a chemist, who is pretty high up here in chemistry. That was his take on it. I'll believe him over a PR study by a company that is trying to make money from me. Saccharin was "safe" too. So is TYlenol.. as long as you dont mind the odd coma and liver damage.
And actually for the most part I think ADD and ADHD are just names for normal kids who want to sedate for our instutitional learning facilities (I do believe there are some true cases, but the vast majority).
I can tell you for a fact that diet reactive ADD/ADHD exists. Hell.. I can prove it if you want me to hang out in your living room for about a week and you have a supply of pixie sticks around. I dont doubt that a hell of a lot of the current diagnoses are just kids that the system does not have time to deal with, but then again, I dont "believe" in the use of ritalin and other drugs to deal with a neruological disorder that can be effectively combated through proper diet and learning to deal with it.
Maeryk
Sorry to be insensitive, but until I see some better evidence for this being a real disorder, I'm going to assume that he's just another crackpot hypochondriac
Bear in mind, exactly the same things were said about ADD, ADHD, Fibro-Myalgia, and a myriad of other things until they actually proved them. These are the same people who tell you Nutrasweet is "safe".
Sorry.. anything that bonds into my bloodstream, goes straight to my brain, and there releases Formaldehyde and Methanol is _not safe_, and I dont care how much the AMA and the NEJM say "its okay! We tested it for three years before we gave it to you!".
Maeryk
Gypsum, plaster, brick, wood, steel are inert. If you can't handle these natural substances then too bad. Fate is not always kind. Life is not fair. Perhaps you have a psychological problem. Maybe a psychiatrist would be your best bet.
BZZT:! Wrong answer. Gypsum is bad for anyone who has respiratory issues, because it is such a fine dust, and anyone with any kind of silica allergy has serioius problems with it.
There are several woods that are downright toxic.
Line a room with Cedar and make the house airtight and see how long you survive. The gas given off by it is not only toxic to Moths, it is toxic to people also. But the little blocks you keep in your closet dont release enough to sicken you, unless you are highly reactive to it.
Bricks are also not inert all the time. The JIRR
had an article on a brick in Boston that was carrying syphillus. (yes, that was meant to be humorous, but its true).
Yeah.. I know i'm feeding a troll.. but your misinformation is staggering.
Maeryk
What is "Environmental Illness"? I've never heard it before in my life.
Basically, from what I have read, it is one step below bubble-boy on the allergen list. Instead of being suceptible to germs, these people are susceptible to gasses and chomicals that most of us tolerate fine.
What does "toxic home" mean in this context? I've never thought of lampshades as dangerous. I'm left guessing here.
It means that every piece of anything chemically processed that you have in your home slowly breaks down over time, and gives off noxious chemicals. Everything from formaldehyde to radon.
Most of us dont notice, but it apparently makes some people _very_ sick. Couple this with todays "need" to make homes virtually air tight, and you have a place that makes reactive people really, really sick.
Obviously I can look these all up (and I will). But any other reporting source would've explained these concepts in some detail.
He kinda does on a another page.. but you have to dig a bit to find it. It apparently involves moose, alaska, and nOrthern Exposure.
Maeryk
Erm, wood anyone? Bricks and mortar? Glass?
What wood? Plywood (flooring substrate) and press board are all made with really nasty glues.. that give off formaldehyde, among other things, for years and years. Bricks are made of god knows what in some cases, bonding and strengthening agents are used in the formula, and these too can give off gasses or dusts that are toxic to people with allergies. Mortar has really nasty things in it.. which again people can be allergic too, and to seal it you need to use paint.. which also can cause reactions in people who cant deal with certain fumes.
The fact that the guy is leaning towards adobe makes me think he is allergic to something that is pretty commonly used as a "safe" bonding or strenghtening agent.
Maeryk
My mom just built a house. She has spent upwards of 20 years designing it to be mostly passive solar, and was very careful about what went into it. (She is, honestly, just this side of whacko when it comes to believing "industry safety" and pays much attention to the very non-publicized reports in things like science news, etc).
Helping with the house, I learned a _heck_ of a lot about what I dont want in my house. The stuff that you put in and never give a thought about is incredibly dangerous! From the formaldehyde released by everything from your insulation, plywood, and flooring to your couch and carpets, added to the fact that todays houses are usually wrapped in Tyvek or some other non-permeable barrier means you are breathing deadly gasses the entire time you are home.
This is scary stuff! I have to personally wonder how much of the "cancer rise rates" are directly related to things like this.. especially the huge jump in Lung Cancer in the last 20 years. It certainly is not only due to smoking, as smoking levels have been decreasing steadily.
It's kind of scary what "they" can get away with selling you as "safe". There are huge warnings on certain exotic hardwoods that the dust created by them is toxic, and some people can have allergic reactions to them, but CCM and CCA pressure treated wood is regularly used by people to build raised bed gardens. (Nothing like having chromium, arsenic, cadmium, and other fun things leaching into the soil around your tomatoes!) I honestly think if most people knew exactly how they make PT lumber, they would _never_ use it for their kids to play on or in their homes. But lots of people do. This stuff is going to be the Love Canal of the future.
*sigh*
People like me, however, when I bring it up, are just labeled "paranoid". The thing that REALLY annoys me is that things like Cedar and Redwood are naturally just as resistant to decay, and a fully renewable resource.
Maeryk
I love how WWII is suddenly an excuse to fight and a way to criticize diplomecy. A simple act of cracking open of a history book will show you that the UN was formed because of people with your "stike first" attitude. Isolationism and unilateral action has lead to two world wars. World leaders realized this and got together to keep war down to a minumum.
And what is the UN now? A bunch of people with dipolomatic immunity and no worldview. They are happy to sit and chat and veto and filibuster while innocent people die, and while countriest take over other countries, but god forbid we (the US) move on Iraq.. _then_ France has a problem.
Remember.. Iraq is now chair of the UN disarmament council, and Libya is chair of the UN human rights council.. no-one thought to use thier veto power then..
The UN is a frikkin joke.. its taking up expensive real-estate and allowing people from other countries to run up parking tickets and worse crimes that they dont have to pay for. Time to tell them to get real jobs and get the hell out of the US.
maeryk
1. So can one truly notice the difference between say 45fps and 100fps?
Absolutely! YOu should see Quake3 on my old Rage Pro vs my new 9700Pro! You can definately see the difference.. or get ahold of 3dbenchmark and run it.. see the differences as it tells you waht the actual framerates are.
2. How many games will be out within the next six months to take advantage of this cutting edge technology?
Well, I think UT2K3 is pretty cutting edge.. it beats the heck out of my system as is, which is an Athlon XP 2200, and a radeon 9700pro and 512MB of ram. So the games are already here.. and the next big one will probably be Doom3 which, apparently, you will need godlike hardware to even touch.
So yeah.. the games are there.. and will be there.. I just bought the top I could find because I was tired of having to step upgrade each time I found a new game I liked.. the 9700 pro should be sufficient for quite a while.
Maeyrk
All this trusted computing seems to be losing more than you're gaining. Email was never designed to be like telephones; the design and usage is completely different.
You know that. I know that. Most of us _here_ know that. But the company I contract for does not know that. To them, Email is the great solver, the thing that saves them tons and tons of money on printers and papers and memos. They treat it as if it were gold, to be savored, and not squandered, and they monitor the quantity of your inbox to make sure you do not use too much. And God forbid you get mail from outside *gasp*.
The problem is a lot of joe-sixpack views Emails as the new phone. They have no idea you can forge headers, fake senders, tap an open relay acct or forge your return address.
Sucks, but its the way of the world. And it is so ingrained now, it is not going anywhere fast.
M
Well, to get snide about it, we don't know what's up there (but we do know that a golf club can be used in a space suit, and that funny wheels make an effective lunar go-cart, and we collected enough rocks that I think a strong man would have a problem lifting them all at once-- but I'm not sure). We knew how to get there, but like Goldie Hawn frequently said at the time, "I used to know all that stuff." Now we don't have a clue as to how to get back. We threw all that technology away.
To be pretty exact, 842Lbs.. yeah.. I'd say a strong man would have a hard time with that. And they were moved in boxes carved out of solid aluminum. (I have a neat book on treasure chests that goes into the rock boxes).
Yes, I mean that. The Apollo program was based on technology that used (get ready for it) sliderules. The total amount of computer power that was used in the entire Apollo program is dwarfed by the desktop machine that you turn off without giving it a second thought, when your done with your evening's slashdot entertainment. You couldn't muster up enough people in the workforce today who know how to use a sliderule to repeat what was then done, or even understand the notes that were written about it. The technology of the Apollo program was never carried across into computers. To remake the heavy lift Saturn rockets or reconstruct the Apollo heat sheilds, we would have to redo everything from scratch. We orphaned the whole thing as we moved on to better technology.
Yes, mostly true. ANd also remember, a lot of the people involved with designing the project, (Especially Von Braun and his team of crack naz^h^h^hgerman scientists) are dead now. We still have a couple of SV's layign around, and the knowhow to _probably_ build new ones. But part of the issue is that almost none of that rocket was actually BUILT by Nasa. Boeing did one section, IBM did the telemetry/guidance ring, and I _think_ Morton Thiokol (but I am probably wrong) did the first stage.
There is a REALLY good DVD out.. Spacecraft Films "The Mighty Saturns" that follows the program nicely in a one hour Dolby program, and then contains all the footage of all the launches.
As to Christopher Columbus-- he made several repeat voyages to the New World. He stuck to his program, even though it failed in the long run. His program was designed to return spices and gold-- the keys of that age. Our space adventure had no pragmatic purpose, and so was shut down before it accomplished anything of lasting significance. It was truly just a "First Post" effort.
here is where I think you are mistaken. Our program met its goals perfectly. THose goals were A) put men on the moon, and return them.. we did it several times, safely, proving it was not just a fluke. B) get something BIG ENOUGH built to get them there and back. The SV weighed 6.5 million pounds, and only had 7.7 million pounds of thrust.. it was engineered right to the edge of that bell curve, and had just enough to do it.. which is why the next plan was orbital assembly of the vehicle. And C)we beat those damn commie ruskies, which was something this country needed at the time, a sense of good feeling and accomplishment to Joe SixPack.
These days, the moon could be viewed (as the CHinese obviously are) as a potential place for resources, outposts, etc. But I dont think NASA was thinking of that.. we didnt have the knowhow to even use what we found up there, and are STILL learning things from the stuff brought back 30 odd years ago.
Maeryk
From a Businessweek article [businessweek.com]: 'More important, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ ), which dominates both the printer and the $7 billion toner market, has no intention of following Lexmark's course. "We believe in customer choice," says Pradeep Jotwani, the senior vice-president who heads HP's lucrative imaging-supplies business. "If they want to buy from remanufacturers, that's fine. It's our job to make them not want to."'
I would suspect that HP has many patents re: cartridges, as they pretty much did it first and do it best. That being said, they probably hold plenty of money in liscencing to people who want to make carts that fit in their machines. They are getting their money either way.
Lexmark, however, most likely has the patents in the engine (now that they arent carbon copies of HP's anymore) and not in the cartridge, because the cartridge is pretty much the same across the board. Hasnt really changed from the original XeroX style machines.
Licensing would be the way for Lexmark to go.. I'm surprised they went this route instead.
Maeryk
Why does it say paper jam when there is no paper jam?
"Coating roll life warning" and "transfer belt warning" come up all the time, even right after fresh ones are installed
Duplexing option jams on every 100th sheet
Print often seems to stick to the transfer belt and gets "ghosted" onto subsequent pages
The printer just disappears from the network at least once per day and needs a hard reboot
1) cause the sheet sensing finger behind the fuser is stuck. Not uncommon.
2) Cause no-one reset the "life" setting on the parts when the replaced them, usually. The printer doesnt do it itself, you have to do it.
3) No clue.. I dont service any with Duplexers on them. We have big muckin Konica's for that.
4) you SURE you replaced the imaging transfer unit? That is usually a problem with the unit.. that or a bad toner cartridge that is not re-layering the transfer roller properly.
5) hehe.. welcome to Lexmark!
Maeryk
You are joking right? Have you looked at the prices of Epson or HP cartridges? They are horribly expensive just like the Lexmark supplies. Also, if companies like Lexmark are allowed to decide what manufacturers are allowed to sell supplies for thier printers what is to stop car manufacturers from forcing car buyers to purchase specific types of gasoline or oil? Sure it's not a perfect analogy but it's close enough. It should be the consumers right to use whatever supplies they want with thier printer. You did buy it after all. What's the next step? Only being allowed to you Lexmark approved paper in your printer? I'm sure it will only be 100-200% more than the bargain brand that you were using before.
Yeah! OHMIGOD! that would be like.. if Apple decided to produce machines that only one company could make replacement parts for, locking you into a price scheme.. oh.. nevermind.
maeryk
The problem with your plan is that the bandwidth would have to be so oversold that you would be talking about a 100 MB daily download cap (with extra bandwidth purchaseable in, say, 100MB increments for $5/month extra). Check out all the capping stories for Slashdotters' opinion on that capping.
Im not so sure of that. What is the "limit"? Most of us are working with preconcieved notions of a "limit" to what bandwidth is available. But since the "limit" to the bandwidth is pretty much imposed by the phone companies anyway (dont they control the fiber that is the backbone?) they would simply be able to increase the amount to support the demand.
(Or am I completely off base here?)
Im wondering if the "scarcity" of bandwidth and "price" of bandwidth isnt kind of like gas prices right now.. the supply hasnt dropped.. but gouging is in mad effect.
Maeryk
I may just be shooting in the dark here, but I think it's likely that they don't charge $9.99 for broadband because it costs at least that much to provide it.
Doubtful. As was pointed out on TSS the other day, bandwidth is basically free. What you pay for are the fees charged by the companies providing the pipe, not the bandwidth. If you want a T-1 you either go to the local ISP which provides you the fiber pipe, or you go to the phone company who jacks you into their fiber trunk.
The cost is "value added" stuff.. the phone company charges X for the line, to which your local ISP adds the cost of its server procurement, maintenence, support staff, etc, and then dollops another chunk on cause "the market will bear it". As long as they all continue to follow just about the same pricing structure, they will. If you can get it 10 dollars cheaper from one place than all the others, you will, all other things being equal. So there is no incentive whatsoever for company Y to go any further cheaper than the others. So the phone company gives you a "discount" on X services on your phone bill if you also go with their DSL, and you are in. Much like insurance companies.. they charge higher rates for house and motorcycle insurance, but for the "convenience" of one-stop-shopping and multi-vehicle "discounts" you will pay the higher rates anyway.
What we really need is to find (build, whatever) nexus points that pipe to the backbone and then build relay wireless networks that go house to house in urban areas.. that is the start. Totally deregulated, because there is no-one to "sue" no one "owns" it.
maeryk
The only way we are going to get broadband across the board is if the government mandates
it, and takes it upon themselves to install and run it. As soon as it's left up to
a corporation todo, they're going to not provide services to the customers that are expensive.
Why? Because thats the point of a corporation. They want to make a profit. Period.
I think they can make a profit. Right now, locally, I can get Satellite broadband from DirecTV, I can get Cablemodem from the "local" cable company (who is the only co. I trust less than the phone company) or I can get (and have) DSL from a "local" ISP. (fairly local, anyway.. one of the small ones that got medium sized, but stayed here and did not get absorbed.)
I wont go Satellite, because I want two way broadband.. I like to run game servers.. I wont go cablemodem, cause, well, I already HAVE directv and am contracted into it.. so DSL is pretty much my only answer right now.
However.. I suspect if the phone company offered DSL locally, in this way "You buy the modem for 49.95 (making them a profit on the modem) and pay 9.95 a month for the DSL service" they would make a HELL of a lot more money than Covad is currently making in my area billing me 49.95 a month for my DSL.
Its a matter of how many * income. The thing now is that at 50 bucks, people dont want to shell out the cash, but at 9.95 that beats the hell out of AOL, and give REAL internet to people.
I know I would jump on it.. and I sure would encourage everyone I know to jump on it as well.
Maeryk
Having been an avid reader of the "chaos manor" site for a while now, I have to wonder. Are you as tech savvy as Jerry, and (more importantly) with you guys having done SO much together, do you find you "share a brain" occasionally, and is it difficult to write with/without him (and/or Steven) after so much work together?
(pick any one or all to answer, as you choose!)
Thanks for the great work!
Maeryk
Your credit card or debit card company knows what you bought? Funny, but mine don't. They see that I spent $107 at Fortinos and $89 at Walmart, but they DON'T see that I bought Lays BBQ chips and a big tub of jellybeans, and Walmart doesn't see what I bought at Fortinos and vice versa.
Sears and JC Penney specifically, give me an itemized list on my statement of what was purchased. (This can be QUITE handy for things like warranty issues, and also when the card gets used fraudulently).
Maeryk
Never having to worry about losing things like remote controls, car keys, and pets (wearing a collar with an RFID of course).
Yesterdays "tech of tomorrow" (I think) had an interesting segment on how they are using "smart chips" in horses these days. Specifically, thoroughbred racing horses that can be easily confused for one another at sales. (they had two who were sold under the wrong names, and then proceeded to run under crossed names for at least five races before anyone figured it out).
This is kind of a neat technology, because if it is applied here as it is being applied in the UK, it makes it DAMN hard to steal horses. As of now, you have to wave the "reader" right over the chip to get the unique identifier from the horse, but I could see where this could be amplified to find, say, stolen horses.
Maeryk
Yes, all of this is worthless if you are convinced that the, easily removed, mylar strips in your US money is tagged too.
I dont know about the Mylar strip. (Though I did watch someone ruin a 100 dollar bill proving it could be "Removed" once.) But I suspect the "new money" that will be arriving relatively soon, (no.. not big face bills.. an entire retooling) will serve two purposes: 1 Enhanced Tracking 2) Get all those mattresses empty and get the money back into circulation.
Keep an eye on this one.. especially if you have old bills floating around. Rumor has it that there will be a cash-in period and after that, all "old" money (paper) will be devalued entirely.
(Not paranoid. this has been in the works for years)
maeryk
How in the world can that be true? Sometimes I go into a Gap store just to use the bathroom. Other times I walk through it just to get to the other side of the mall. What if I'm with a group of friends, and only one of us makes a purchase? What about my poor boyfriends of yesteryear who were just there to hold my bags ;-)?
I suspect "shoppers" specifically means people in the gap for the purpose of purchasing something. Walkthroughs and chain-gang shopping are probably not counted. It is meant, I suspect, to highlight the fact that they can FIND what you want. Even if your 36-34 pants are mixed into the womens jeans on the other side of the store, a single RFID query going "where the hell are you" would locate the one they _know_ they have in stock, but some jerk put on the wrong shelf.
Maeryk
RadioShack makes a small profit selling a wand to disable such devices, until a court order forces them to stop. Fortunatly, for businesses, RadioShack insists on always taking down personal information when you buy things, so the police easily acquire a complete list of criminals and arrest the lot of them.
Havent shopped at Ratshack lately have you? They no longer demand that info. (What I really love is they asked me taht crap every single time, and never ONCE did I get their catalog.. even when I asked for them to send them to me.)
Apparently, bitching and moaning from concerned masses like us have stopped them from asking for personal info when buying in cash.
Maeryk