No, they're possible conditions. You can carry genes that increase your likelihood of having a disease, but not actually express them to the extent that you actually have a problem (or at all). For example, some gene is found to increase your chances of high cholesterol and therefore heart disease. You still may never have heart disease, and may not even actually have high cholesterol.
In this example, a simple blood test can confirm the high cholesterol condition either way, and is a much more fair way of determining the insurance company's risk.
In addition, some diseases wouldn't set in from childhood. In this case, a risk factor is pre-existing, but the disease itself is not.
What this tells you is what to watch out for, not what you have.
I don't think it's that so much a "civil rights" complaint as the fact that this bill seems so blatantly on the dole. When I read the summary, my first thought was that now we get to see the reactions of all the people who saw the Democrats as the Second Coming, Godsends and Saviors of the Free Lands. Welcome to the new boss, same as the old boss.
I wonder when people will learn that any sufficiently large and powerful party or organization will invariably be corrupted -- Democrats or Republicans, Church or State. The only way to fight it is to always vote against the incumbents in the primaries, but even that would only work if everyone did it.
Very sound advice, and I usually do try that approach. I've gotten several comments about my distinctive lack of a gringo accent, and have even been told that I sometimes have the accent from my wife's town.
What tends to kill me are the vocabulary and idioms. I'll be going along and suddenly have no idea how to say what I want to say. Then I wind up sort-of talking around it, explaining what I'm trying to say. Other than that, I don't use enough articles, but I think that's forgivable. I took 5-1/2 years of French in school, so this is really my second romantic language. I can say that knowing (er, "having known") French is really helping me, because many of the words are similar. Usually when she tells me the correct word, I remember that the French word was something close, and the association helps me to remember.
I really should take classes. I find that when I go to her country for a couple weeks, my Spanish vocabulary and my ability to understand other Spanish-speakers easily doubles in that time. I also lose 10-15 pounds because I'm not behind a desk all day. Hm. I think it's about time to go visit her family.:p
It's funny you say that. I'm married to a Spanish-speaking girl from South America, who has learned English in the past 7 years and speaks it very well. She's taken a few classes, but mostly she learns just by living in an English-speaking environment.
On the other hand, you've got me trying to learn Spanish. I've never taken a class, but have had my family trying to teach me for four years. I was apologizing one day for my bad Spanish, and remarked on how much better the kids seem to understand it. We got into a discussion about why that would be, and she brought up the subject of how kids can learn faster than adults. My explanation was exactly what I wrote in the GP, plus the immersion aspect.
Learning a language is the same as learning any other complex topic. There are jargon to learn and rules to be followed, as well as obtaining that finesse that only comes through practice. If the world was such that adults could dedicate the same time and attention as kids can, I don't think this myth would ever have existed to begin with.
When my son comes home from a full day dedicated to the learning of new things and shows me a test result that isn't up to par, two things happen.
First, I make it very clear that I am not happy with the test result, and that I expect better of him. (He tends to be the fool-around-in-class type, but is very bright. Usually he doesn't learn because he wasn't paying attention. As for the fooling around, well, we're working on that.)
Second, we sit down at the dinner table and go over the subject matter until he knows and understands it. He knows at this point that he must learn the material, and that I won't be satisfied until I can randomly quiz him on it a day or two later and get a good result. In other words, he knows he has little choice but to learn. Even if it wasn't for me, his teacher would push him into it to some degree, there's peer pressure, there's the pride of seeing good test results...
Along those lines, adults are constantly learning new things as well. As I mentioned in my original post, though, it doesn't tend to be random, gratuitous learning; it's stuff that they need to do their jobs and excel in their careers. The most common field around the/. is IT. I think most of us would attest to the fact that if you stop learning, you starve. That sounds to me like coercion of the most dire sort.:-)
I think you're right. I think adults tend to be reluctant to learn new things for a few reasons:
Fatigue. Most adults are overworked, and many tend to avoid taking on any extra effort beyond what's required to get to the next day. Gratuitous learning of a foreign subject matter tends to be difficult, so is about the last thing they want to do when they get home from a hard day at work.
Divided attention, or excessive multitasking. Again, a matter of not enough cycles to go around. I find that it's a sheer joy to me if I can spend an hour or two and really concentrate on something. Usually I can't do so without interruption or another obligation getting in the way.
Information layering. By the time people are adults, they've built a stack of information that suits them well. The last thing they want to do is start over from the bottom. To use an analogy: Each successive level of math builds on the principles established in previous levels. By the time you're a Physicist using Calculus, why in the hell would you want to go back and learn a new way to add numbers when the one you know works just fine?
Granted, most of this comes back to lack of effort, but in most cases, the decision to not put forth the effort is very understandable. It doesn't mean that adults can't learn. It just means they're too busy, have too many distractions and demands on their time, are happy with their current methods, or are simply too damn tired.
PulseAudio available for Ubuntu too
on
Fedora 8 Released
·
· Score: 1
After I read this article, I installed the pulseaudio packages on Ubuntu. It wasn't quite as easy or integrated as a default install would have been, but I got it working fairly well in about 15 minutes. Just Google for Ubuntu and PulseAudio for the forum articles.
The GNOME stuff (totem, rhythmbox, etc) works flawlessly with pulseaudio's gstreamer plugins. The only trouble I'm having now is with vlc, which doesn't seem to support it in any straightforward way. There are workarounds, but I haven't had a chance to really chase it yet. Overall, not bad for 15 minutes -- all but one program works great, and I didn't need to install Fedora to do it.
That said, I'm tempted to install FC8, since I haven't tried Fedora since FC3. It certainly sounds like it's got some nice features.
Nice troll. I assume you're a vegetarian? Otherwise I fail to see the difference between someone else killing your meat and killing it yourself. Frankly, the wild game is probably better for you, since you can be reasonably sure it was never shot up with steroids.
I guess it depends on how Freudian you want to be. I think he would have said that the id wants all things nasty, cruel, and base, but is suppressed by the higher reasoning functions. I don't buy that... much.
The fact is that people get impulses that, if voiced, would probably classify them as insane. Some people channel Hannibal Lecter, others channel Oedipus. Others are Mother Theresa. Maybe Mother Theresa had her Hannibal moments. Who knows? The point is that people suppress their impulses because those impulses are wildly out of line with proper behavior, and probably out of line with the character of the person experiencing the impulse. Who hasn't wanted to strangle their bratty kid once in a while, or punch the loudmouth on the cell phone?
The point is that all people yearn to do/something/ that isn't social behavior. In fact, I bet there are hundreds of things that you could say that, statistically, everyone deep down wants to do, barring a few outliers. I bet there are freaks who don't want their freedom, too. That doesn't mean those impulses and urges should be legal, since those impulses and urges are exactly what the law is trying to suppress.
Is the role of the criminal justice system to make people "pay" for their crimes? Or to provide the right amount of punishment necessary to give that individual a chance to change? I.e. do we want vengeance or do we want the ability to make former criminals able to become productive members of society. (Obviously the question is one of degree and focus, more than structure.)
I'd say a bit of both.
Consider the person who kills, but for circumstances that will not arise again - an argument that got unusually of of control or something. The assumption is that this murder was a one-time deal for whatever reason. So one could say that the person has changed, or was never really in need of change -- the murder was a one-time event. Does that mean the person should not need punishment, since the change has either already been enacted or was never really necessary, depending on how you look at it?
Criminal justice is intended to be punitive as well as rehabilitative. We want to provide a disincentive to commit the crime again, as well as return a functioning member of society. For people who are likely to re-offend, or have offended in many cases already, I think the death penalty is the only solution. You can't let them back out, so why keep them around? For people who kill for dubious reasons, but are not likely to do it again, I'd say a bit of retribution is required for the sake of additional deterrent, and then release them as marked members of society.
The other aspect to consider is the victim's family. Most people don't want to hear that Dad's murderer is free because he's learned his lesson and promises not to do it again. Again, I think circumstances play a big part in this -- the intention. Was it premeditated? Was it an accident? A bar fight that went too far? These things all play a role in how forgiving the family will be too. Knowing that the bad guy is being punished is a major part of the healing process.
Wasn't the Winchester 370 a single-shot shotgun? From the context I assumed you're talking about a rifle (.270, maybe?). I don't know, I never really thought about using anything other than my Mossberg for turkey. I haven't been hunting for ten years or so now, since I was a teenager, but if I decided to go back, I'd probably consider a medium caliber rifle, maybe my 6mm.
It probably depends on the range too. Shotguns lost their knockdown power very quickly, and I was always a little afraid to spook the damn things. Their eyes are so keen, it's amazing. What you say makes sense too, and I never really thought about it. I just know that I was amazed to see the thing go over, get back up, and fly away. I just seemed to me that most of those pellets couldn't possibly have gotten through. Either way, wow. Tough birds.
As someone who's had flocks of wild turkeys fly over his head, I can attest to their ability to fly first hand. I've also seen them fly away after being shot. That's why you always aim for the head; their feathers are too tough for shotgun pellets.
That wouldn't be for me to decide on two sentences worth of data. She should go through the judicial process like any other suspected murderer. At that point, circumstances, mitigating factors, and all sorts of other information can be taken into account. Every case is different, which is why we have judges and juries.
That said, my God, she murdered three of her own children? Granted, she's apparently not the generally-dangerous criminal type, but I think she needs to pay for that somehow. My post above was referring to hardened, incorrigible individuals, which this person apparently is not, given her behavior after the event. There are plenty of murderers that do time and are released because their circumstances say that they aren't a danger to society at large (crimes of passion, for example). Very clearly, I was talking about serial killers and unstable people who would be an ongoing danger to society.
There are some people who are incorrigible, and society is absolutely justified in giving up on them. Every reasonable effort should be made, but honestly, should society try to correct a murderer for the next 60 years, even if we never intend to release him from prison? What's the point?
I have no problem with appeals and giving every reasonable chance to a guy who claims innocence, but if there's no doubt the guy did it, give him his due process and fry him. To do otherwise denies the victim's family of closure. Additionally, as long as he's alive, he's an escape risk, as well as a continuing risk to the victim's family should he escape and decide to target them.
I'm having a lot of trouble relating what you're writing to what I wrote. I was responding to the link in the parent post, which you probably didn't bother reading.
We have our own share of domestic problems, to be sure, but I was on a totally different topic altogether. Do try to keep up.
Some said the get-out-of-jail-free law gives prisoners a chance to get even with an unfair justice system. Mexican prisons are clogged with petty criminals, while bankers and politicians accused of stealing millions stay free. Many said the escape law gives the common man one last shot at beating the system.
<sarcasm>I don't know. I think the acquisition of lots of money is inherent to the human condition, and so should not be punishable by law.</sarcasm>
The whole point of laws is to keep people from doing every damn fool thing that pops into their greedy, selfish, perverted heads with no regard to the expense and detriment to others. Of course people "yearn to be free", but they gave up the right to act on it when they willfully hurt other people for their own selfish desires. Some people might also "yearn" to rape children, murder their mothers, and barbecue the guy down the street, but that doesn't mean those things shouldn't be punishable by law.
Mexico is essentially saying that "our people are animals, and may act like animals at will", which is why their society is such a damn mess in most places. They have no expectation of higher standards.
The problem with Mexico is that they consider exporting their people to the US to be a reasonable solution to their societal problems. The government was even handing out border-crossing how-to books at one point, and is a routine and vehement opponent to the US government every time we want to do something about the thousands of illegal border crossing per day. Their desire is to simply relocate their problems, but they just keep making more because they refuse to fix the corruption and anarchy that's causing it to begin with.
If their jails are so flooded with petty criminals that's an indictment of the government's economic policies and criminal justice system, among others.
Slashdot Mirror
No, they're possible conditions. You can carry genes that increase your likelihood of having a disease, but not actually express them to the extent that you actually have a problem (or at all). For example, some gene is found to increase your chances of high cholesterol and therefore heart disease. You still may never have heart disease, and may not even actually have high cholesterol.
In this example, a simple blood test can confirm the high cholesterol condition either way, and is a much more fair way of determining the insurance company's risk.
In addition, some diseases wouldn't set in from childhood. In this case, a risk factor is pre-existing, but the disease itself is not.
What this tells you is what to watch out for, not what you have.
You can also see the video on the YouTubes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkBU3aYsf0Q
It's an odd sight to see an elephant start smoking and hit the ground that hard. Ouch.
Bernard?
129775, 80123133, 5580012. 6740091, 6558, 42?
Sounds like the combination an idiot would have on his luggage!
I don't think it's that so much a "civil rights" complaint as the fact that this bill seems so blatantly on the dole. When I read the summary, my first thought was that now we get to see the reactions of all the people who saw the Democrats as the Second Coming, Godsends and Saviors of the Free Lands. Welcome to the new boss, same as the old boss.
I wonder when people will learn that any sufficiently large and powerful party or organization will invariably be corrupted -- Democrats or Republicans, Church or State. The only way to fight it is to always vote against the incumbents in the primaries, but even that would only work if everyone did it.
Very sound advice, and I usually do try that approach. I've gotten several comments about my distinctive lack of a gringo accent, and have even been told that I sometimes have the accent from my wife's town.
:p
What tends to kill me are the vocabulary and idioms. I'll be going along and suddenly have no idea how to say what I want to say. Then I wind up sort-of talking around it, explaining what I'm trying to say. Other than that, I don't use enough articles, but I think that's forgivable. I took 5-1/2 years of French in school, so this is really my second romantic language. I can say that knowing (er, "having known") French is really helping me, because many of the words are similar. Usually when she tells me the correct word, I remember that the French word was something close, and the association helps me to remember.
I really should take classes. I find that when I go to her country for a couple weeks, my Spanish vocabulary and my ability to understand other Spanish-speakers easily doubles in that time. I also lose 10-15 pounds because I'm not behind a desk all day. Hm. I think it's about time to go visit her family.
It's funny you say that. I'm married to a Spanish-speaking girl from South America, who has learned English in the past 7 years and speaks it very well. She's taken a few classes, but mostly she learns just by living in an English-speaking environment.
On the other hand, you've got me trying to learn Spanish. I've never taken a class, but have had my family trying to teach me for four years. I was apologizing one day for my bad Spanish, and remarked on how much better the kids seem to understand it. We got into a discussion about why that would be, and she brought up the subject of how kids can learn faster than adults. My explanation was exactly what I wrote in the GP, plus the immersion aspect.
Learning a language is the same as learning any other complex topic. There are jargon to learn and rules to be followed, as well as obtaining that finesse that only comes through practice. If the world was such that adults could dedicate the same time and attention as kids can, I don't think this myth would ever have existed to begin with.
Very true. I'll even add one more: coercion.
/. is IT. I think most of us would attest to the fact that if you stop learning, you starve. That sounds to me like coercion of the most dire sort. :-)
When my son comes home from a full day dedicated to the learning of new things and shows me a test result that isn't up to par, two things happen.
First, I make it very clear that I am not happy with the test result, and that I expect better of him. (He tends to be the fool-around-in-class type, but is very bright. Usually he doesn't learn because he wasn't paying attention. As for the fooling around, well, we're working on that.)
Second, we sit down at the dinner table and go over the subject matter until he knows and understands it. He knows at this point that he must learn the material, and that I won't be satisfied until I can randomly quiz him on it a day or two later and get a good result. In other words, he knows he has little choice but to learn. Even if it wasn't for me, his teacher would push him into it to some degree, there's peer pressure, there's the pride of seeing good test results...
Along those lines, adults are constantly learning new things as well. As I mentioned in my original post, though, it doesn't tend to be random, gratuitous learning; it's stuff that they need to do their jobs and excel in their careers. The most common field around the
Woops. Speaking of "too damn tired", I meant to hit the preview button, not the submit button.
So... when are we getting the ability to edit posts?
Granted, most of this comes back to lack of effort, but in most cases, the decision to not put forth the effort is very understandable. It doesn't mean that adults can't learn. It just means they're too busy, have too many distractions and demands on their time, are happy with their current methods, or are simply too damn tired.
After I read this article, I installed the pulseaudio packages on Ubuntu. It wasn't quite as easy or integrated as a default install would have been, but I got it working fairly well in about 15 minutes. Just Google for Ubuntu and PulseAudio for the forum articles.
The GNOME stuff (totem, rhythmbox, etc) works flawlessly with pulseaudio's gstreamer plugins. The only trouble I'm having now is with vlc, which doesn't seem to support it in any straightforward way. There are workarounds, but I haven't had a chance to really chase it yet. Overall, not bad for 15 minutes -- all but one program works great, and I didn't need to install Fedora to do it.
That said, I'm tempted to install FC8, since I haven't tried Fedora since FC3. It certainly sounds like it's got some nice features.
Obviously not. The green taste sexier.
Nice troll. I assume you're a vegetarian? Otherwise I fail to see the difference between someone else killing your meat and killing it yourself. Frankly, the wild game is probably better for you, since you can be reasonably sure it was never shot up with steroids.
I guess it depends on how Freudian you want to be. I think he would have said that the id wants all things nasty, cruel, and base, but is suppressed by the higher reasoning functions. I don't buy that... much.
/something/ that isn't social behavior. In fact, I bet there are hundreds of things that you could say that, statistically, everyone deep down wants to do, barring a few outliers. I bet there are freaks who don't want their freedom, too. That doesn't mean those impulses and urges should be legal, since those impulses and urges are exactly what the law is trying to suppress.
The fact is that people get impulses that, if voiced, would probably classify them as insane. Some people channel Hannibal Lecter, others channel Oedipus. Others are Mother Theresa. Maybe Mother Theresa had her Hannibal moments. Who knows? The point is that people suppress their impulses because those impulses are wildly out of line with proper behavior, and probably out of line with the character of the person experiencing the impulse. Who hasn't wanted to strangle their bratty kid once in a while, or punch the loudmouth on the cell phone?
The point is that all people yearn to do
I'd say a bit of both.
Consider the person who kills, but for circumstances that will not arise again - an argument that got unusually of of control or something. The assumption is that this murder was a one-time deal for whatever reason. So one could say that the person has changed, or was never really in need of change -- the murder was a one-time event. Does that mean the person should not need punishment, since the change has either already been enacted or was never really necessary, depending on how you look at it?
Criminal justice is intended to be punitive as well as rehabilitative. We want to provide a disincentive to commit the crime again, as well as return a functioning member of society. For people who are likely to re-offend, or have offended in many cases already, I think the death penalty is the only solution. You can't let them back out, so why keep them around? For people who kill for dubious reasons, but are not likely to do it again, I'd say a bit of retribution is required for the sake of additional deterrent, and then release them as marked members of society.
The other aspect to consider is the victim's family. Most people don't want to hear that Dad's murderer is free because he's learned his lesson and promises not to do it again. Again, I think circumstances play a big part in this -- the intention. Was it premeditated? Was it an accident? A bar fight that went too far? These things all play a role in how forgiving the family will be too. Knowing that the bad guy is being punished is a major part of the healing process.
Hah! That was great. Thanks! I think I'm off to find more WKRP clips now. :)
Wasn't the Winchester 370 a single-shot shotgun? From the context I assumed you're talking about a rifle (.270, maybe?). I don't know, I never really thought about using anything other than my Mossberg for turkey. I haven't been hunting for ten years or so now, since I was a teenager, but if I decided to go back, I'd probably consider a medium caliber rifle, maybe my 6mm.
It probably depends on the range too. Shotguns lost their knockdown power very quickly, and I was always a little afraid to spook the damn things. Their eyes are so keen, it's amazing. What you say makes sense too, and I never really thought about it. I just know that I was amazed to see the thing go over, get back up, and fly away. I just seemed to me that most of those pellets couldn't possibly have gotten through. Either way, wow. Tough birds.
Mod me -3 Culturally Inept. I had no idea where this came from!
Wild turkeys can fly. Domestic turkeys are too fat.
http://www.kidzone.ws/animals/turkey.htm
(search for "unable to fly")
As someone who's had flocks of wild turkeys fly over his head, I can attest to their ability to fly first hand. I've also seen them fly away after being shot. That's why you always aim for the head; their feathers are too tough for shotgun pellets.
Thanks. Babelfish did a sufficient job of translating. It sounds like they're not even sure that she did it or that they're hers.
That wouldn't be for me to decide on two sentences worth of data. She should go through the judicial process like any other suspected murderer. At that point, circumstances, mitigating factors, and all sorts of other information can be taken into account. Every case is different, which is why we have judges and juries.
That said, my God, she murdered three of her own children? Granted, she's apparently not the generally-dangerous criminal type, but I think she needs to pay for that somehow. My post above was referring to hardened, incorrigible individuals, which this person apparently is not, given her behavior after the event. There are plenty of murderers that do time and are released because their circumstances say that they aren't a danger to society at large (crimes of passion, for example). Very clearly, I was talking about serial killers and unstable people who would be an ongoing danger to society.
You say that like it's unreasonable.
There are some people who are incorrigible, and society is absolutely justified in giving up on them. Every reasonable effort should be made, but honestly, should society try to correct a murderer for the next 60 years, even if we never intend to release him from prison? What's the point?
I have no problem with appeals and giving every reasonable chance to a guy who claims innocence, but if there's no doubt the guy did it, give him his due process and fry him. To do otherwise denies the victim's family of closure. Additionally, as long as he's alive, he's an escape risk, as well as a continuing risk to the victim's family should he escape and decide to target them.
I'm having a lot of trouble relating what you're writing to what I wrote. I was responding to the link in the parent post, which you probably didn't bother reading.
We have our own share of domestic problems, to be sure, but I was on a totally different topic altogether. Do try to keep up.
<sarcasm>I don't know. I think the acquisition of lots of money is inherent to the human condition, and so should not be punishable by law.</sarcasm>
The whole point of laws is to keep people from doing every damn fool thing that pops into their greedy, selfish, perverted heads with no regard to the expense and detriment to others. Of course people "yearn to be free", but they gave up the right to act on it when they willfully hurt other people for their own selfish desires. Some people might also "yearn" to rape children, murder their mothers, and barbecue the guy down the street, but that doesn't mean those things shouldn't be punishable by law.
Mexico is essentially saying that "our people are animals, and may act like animals at will", which is why their society is such a damn mess in most places. They have no expectation of higher standards.
The problem with Mexico is that they consider exporting their people to the US to be a reasonable solution to their societal problems. The government was even handing out border-crossing how-to books at one point, and is a routine and vehement opponent to the US government every time we want to do something about the thousands of illegal border crossing per day. Their desire is to simply relocate their problems, but they just keep making more because they refuse to fix the corruption and anarchy that's causing it to begin with.
If their jails are so flooded with petty criminals that's an indictment of the government's economic policies and criminal justice system, among others.