I know many people who would dispute your implied definition of sanity. "Sexual perversion" is all around you, and all over the web too. How many "funny" comments are put up here about porn downloads? Well, there's more than an element of truth in those comments. Look around at your neighbours and friends - more than one of them is a "sexual pervert" and you just don't know it.
As for the 40-somethings who want to read/write about this stuff, well thats fine. Writing about sex with a 14 year old is a long way from actually doing it, and the large number of people who have written and read such fiction indicates that it is far from abnormal for the healthy imagination to wander in this respect. I would say that writing or reading about paedophilia/incest/bestiality etc no more makes you a pervert or a threat to society than playing Quake makes you a murderer.
After months of careful preparation and a dedicated training regime, the slashdot editors have today finally reached the summit of typographical errors - screwing up the world's most recognisable acronym at the beginning of the story headline. Well done guys - you should be proud.
> But the core is, don't exercise to lose weight, you will be disappointed.
If try to lose weight by any other means you'll be a hell of a lot more disappointed. Doesn't matter which way you look at it, if you want to lose weight you're going to have to burn it off. Or have it surgically removed. And assuming your maths is right, 45 mins running per day should see you lose 1 pound of fat per week, or 52 pounds of fat per year. I'd say that was a *very* discernible effect on weight loss. Especially if you couple it to a slight change in diet. And it would be a lot more effective than just starving yourself.
I agree completely with avoiding the calories in the first place, though.
Actually, yes - I think i'd also like to address the implicit assumption that everyone in the world lives in the US. It may come as a surprise to you, but a sedentary lifestyle is actually NOT "the average lifestyle of most people" in the majority of the world.
I'm afraid i don't find your earlier comment very "insightful", particularly in view of this latest addition. It seems that what you're actually saying is that you can feel better about your sedentary lifestyle if you drink aspartame based drinks rather than sugar based ones. And possibly improve your risk factors slightly too. But thats about as insightful as suggesting that walking down the middle of a freeway "with the flow of traffic" is safer than going "against the flow of traffic". Its true, but it wilfully ignores the real risk.
Oh, and this thread is not about marathon runners. Nor even about health freaks. Its about the benefits of a sensible lifestyle. And how in the context of such a lifestyle the choice "sugar or aspartame?" is about as important as "red tie or green tie?".
Sugar also doesn't cause obesity - eating more calories than you use causes obesity. You are scaremongering with your comments. Sugar is not the root of all evil. It may well be a statistical contributor to the illnesses you cite, but it definitely doesn't contribute anywhere near as much as "lifestyle" choice. Want to cut your risk of heart disease, strokes and diabetes? Get off your fat arse and do some exercise.
They've been selling Ribena for decades under the advertising that it was high in vitamin C. Hell, my grandma used to tell us to drink it. So unless this is a new zealand local recipe thats at fault, i'm sorry, but an inconsequential fine and an apology in a newspaper in a country of 4.1m people really isn't enough - they've been deceiving the purchasing public in several countries for a long time.
> A good teacher can do wonders even with the least motivated of kids.
And therein lies one of the problems. In the uk at least. Its a crappy job, with crappy work conditions and piles of crappy paperwork. And a lot of the "recognition" you get is the parents blaming YOU for their childs' laziness, lack of discipline and poor exam results. There is simply no attraction to teaching as a career, so if you can get a job somewhere else, you do so. The government is desperate for Ph.D educated scientists like me to become teachers, but few of my peers are any more interested than i am, and the two who actually did sign up are both looking to quit.
Agreed, but the rate of change facilated by the new technology is the worrying part. Conventional genetic engineering (i.e. cross cultivation etc) has been slow, and where it went wrong not so many people got affected (if any). Genetic engineering does for food production what nuclear weapons did for warfare - it revolutionises the area by introducing a step-change in technology. Suddenly you can make huge positive changes very quickly, but its a double edged sword - some of those changes might not be as positive as they seem. And making lots of changes in a short time inevitably means some risks get overlooked. So yes, its ignorant to suggest that traditional foodstuffs have evolved "naturally", but it would be equally inaccurate to suggest that GM is just "speeding up what we've always done".
I'm surprised there isn't prior art on large parts of this - we've been using sonar for decades for mapping, target acquisition and whole lot of areas related to range and direction finding.
"...any language that still requires typing shows the essential failure of the computer industry to pry programming out of the hands of geeks."
I couldn't agree more. I definitely remember the idea being bandied round a few years back of high level drag and drop programming for the masses. We have Labview which does that for automated instrumentation control and analysis, is it really so hard to make a high level programming language in the same mould?
I just ditched my dual opteron (linux) + shuttle (windows) setup and replaced it with a single Core Duo box with linux virtualized under WinXP. I'm running the VMware free server software (http://www.vmware.com/products/free_virtualizatio n.html) and i have to say i'm impressed.
The only negatives i've found so far (aside from the obvious ones related to two systems in one computer) are some slowdown in mouse responsiveness in the virtualized linux and the lack of hardware accelerated graphics (these might be the same thing, i don't know). You also have to turn off access of the virtualized OS to the DVDROM or everything gets confused.
The positives are that it was piss easy to set up and really "just works". The VMware'd linux talked to my network card without intervention and happily picked up a unique IP from my DHCPD. NIS/NFS to my fileserver "just worked". I can allocate the VMware OS 1 or 2 cores and vary the amount of RAM it sees. My main use for the linux V/OS is molecular dynamics simulations, the software running message passing via LAM/MPI and all compiled under Intel C and Fortran Compilers. Again, all of that "just worked".
In terms of performance, MD calcs done on 1 cpu seem to be at close to full speed for one core, but running them dual gives only an 80% scaling improvement. That slowdown is about as expected, given that there's another OS running. Another nice side benefit is that i can run an MD calc on 1 cpu and play games with the other. I don't notice any lag.
So to summarise - if i'd paid money for VMware i'd be seriously impressed, but for something to do exactly what i want for free is truly amazing.
> Much new info doesn't come from formal sources anymore.
> Flattened, bleached, dead trees are shrinking in influence.
I think (hope) you mean that electronic media is the primary means of information dissemination. However "paper" != "formal". Most new info does come from formal sources, just electronic ones.
Course, i might be wrong, and you might mean that the definitive source of all valuable information is "a guy i met down the pub". I hope not though.
I agree. I've been using linux since 2.2 (which makes me something of a newbie here), and in that time the most negative part of my experience has been "the community". I simply don't want to deal with the raging hordes of foul-mouthed zealots who seem to heavily populate the message boards and mailing lists which are supposed to be the "rapidly responding, helpful online community". It is getting better, but I understand why people who seek to migrate are so hugely disappointed in the Open Source Experience - its the overwhelming urge to track down the self important prick who replies to your question with "RTFM you stupid noob!!!!" and ram the FM down his throat.
In a nutshell - You want people to adopt linux? Don't improve the software, improve "the community". Preferably with a shotgun.
The danger has little to do with the presence of lithium - there is no lithium metal in lithium ion batteries. It has to do with the oxidation chemistry of the electrode materials.
>I am wondering if this is an inherent flaw in the battery type itself,
>or if it is just that both manufacturers use similar production methods?
It is a fundamental flaw - Li batteries contain a large amount of chemical energy in a very small volume, so when they go wrong theres a lot of energy which needs to go somewhere. Separating the fail mechanisms into two rough categories we have:
(1). Exposure to air (puncture of the casing) - The battery electrodes are inherently unstable with respect to air due to the oxidation/reduction chemistry which makes them work. Also, to make them charge/discharge faster the electrodes have very high surface area. So if the battery is exposed to air you have unstable materials with extremely high reactivity (from the surface area).
(2). Internal short circuit - The anode and cathode somehow become directly connected by an electronic conductor (note that the electrolyte is an electronic insulator and electrons should go via the external circuit. Li ions move internally), resulting in high current and thus high temperatures. The heat boils/evaporates/generally decomposes the electrolyte and (1) occurs. This can occur via a number of mechanisms including dropping/driving a nail etc through the battery/formation of Li metal internally.
The important step here is what happens in step (1) above, and this is where the lithium cobalt oxide (and other transition metal oxide) based cells have a problem. They explode and/or burn. Problem is, most of the high volumetric density batteries you can buy are based on this type of technology. There are alternatives based on phosphate systems (and others), which decompose much more safely, but they don't offer the high volumetric density that everyone is accustomed to.
A degree says absolutely nothing about your ability to do research in any context beyond reading a book and reciting its' contents. Understanding is optional. It is essentially a piece of paper which says that you were able to remember and recite a lot of information which your examiner already knew. In research terms a degree is the bottom step on the ladder, sorting out those with the necessary ability and (more importantly) the interest to go further. The ability to think for yourself, to understand what you see, to see between the lines, that is basically separate from your qualification.
I'm sure they also get sick of hearing you complain about your crappy boss, wonder whether your company is going to fold, whine about your stupid customers etc. The complaints are exactly the same, just the terminology is different. Fine, so academics "disgust you". Big deal. I'm pretty certain your ignorance and stupidity "disgusts" them.
Anyway, as your ignorance is so clearly entrenched, i shan't bother to debunk the idea that not-for-profit scientific research has no relationship to the success of a country, nor shall i challenge your assertion that "spending was negative for most, if not all". It is, after all, a complete fluke that the countries with highest research budgets also happen to be the wealthiest...
And please pay close attention to the 3.4bn value halfway down. This is not a "slash" in the budget, its simply the government calling back some of the buffer money thats left at the end of the year. It will have an effect, and some people may be out of funding as a result, but lets not blow it totally out of proportion. With luck some of that money that was previously "wasted" in Rover might make it into future science budgets...
Slashdot Mirror
As for the 40-somethings who want to read/write about this stuff, well thats fine. Writing about sex with a 14 year old is a long way from actually doing it, and the large number of people who have written and read such fiction indicates that it is far from abnormal for the healthy imagination to wander in this respect. I would say that writing or reading about paedophilia/incest/bestiality etc no more makes you a pervert or a threat to society than playing Quake makes you a murderer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazy_Gun
Maybe she's pissed off cos she caught a nasty virus from the encounter.
After months of careful preparation and a dedicated training regime, the slashdot editors have today finally reached the summit of typographical errors - screwing up the world's most recognisable acronym at the beginning of the story headline. Well done guys - you should be proud.
If try to lose weight by any other means you'll be a hell of a lot more disappointed. Doesn't matter which way you look at it, if you want to lose weight you're going to have to burn it off. Or have it surgically removed. And assuming your maths is right, 45 mins running per day should see you lose 1 pound of fat per week, or 52 pounds of fat per year. I'd say that was a *very* discernible effect on weight loss. Especially if you couple it to a slight change in diet. And it would be a lot more effective than just starving yourself.
I agree completely with avoiding the calories in the first place, though.
I'm afraid i don't find your earlier comment very "insightful", particularly in view of this latest addition. It seems that what you're actually saying is that you can feel better about your sedentary lifestyle if you drink aspartame based drinks rather than sugar based ones. And possibly improve your risk factors slightly too. But thats about as insightful as suggesting that walking down the middle of a freeway "with the flow of traffic" is safer than going "against the flow of traffic". Its true, but it wilfully ignores the real risk.
Oh, and this thread is not about marathon runners. Nor even about health freaks. Its about the benefits of a sensible lifestyle. And how in the context of such a lifestyle the choice "sugar or aspartame?" is about as important as "red tie or green tie?".
Sugar also doesn't cause obesity - eating more calories than you use causes obesity. You are scaremongering with your comments. Sugar is not the root of all evil. It may well be a statistical contributor to the illnesses you cite, but it definitely doesn't contribute anywhere near as much as "lifestyle" choice. Want to cut your risk of heart disease, strokes and diabetes? Get off your fat arse and do some exercise.
They've been selling Ribena for decades under the advertising that it was high in vitamin C. Hell, my grandma used to tell us to drink it. So unless this is a new zealand local recipe thats at fault, i'm sorry, but an inconsequential fine and an apology in a newspaper in a country of 4.1m people really isn't enough - they've been deceiving the purchasing public in several countries for a long time.
And therein lies one of the problems. In the uk at least. Its a crappy job, with crappy work conditions and piles of crappy paperwork. And a lot of the "recognition" you get is the parents blaming YOU for their childs' laziness, lack of discipline and poor exam results. There is simply no attraction to teaching as a career, so if you can get a job somewhere else, you do so. The government is desperate for Ph.D educated scientists like me to become teachers, but few of my peers are any more interested than i am, and the two who actually did sign up are both looking to quit.
Agreed, but the rate of change facilated by the new technology is the worrying part. Conventional genetic engineering (i.e. cross cultivation etc) has been slow, and where it went wrong not so many people got affected (if any). Genetic engineering does for food production what nuclear weapons did for warfare - it revolutionises the area by introducing a step-change in technology. Suddenly you can make huge positive changes very quickly, but its a double edged sword - some of those changes might not be as positive as they seem. And making lots of changes in a short time inevitably means some risks get overlooked. So yes, its ignorant to suggest that traditional foodstuffs have evolved "naturally", but it would be equally inaccurate to suggest that GM is just "speeding up what we've always done".
I'm surprised there isn't prior art on large parts of this - we've been using sonar for decades for mapping, target acquisition and whole lot of areas related to range and direction finding.
I couldn't agree more. I definitely remember the idea being bandied round a few years back of high level drag and drop programming for the masses. We have Labview which does that for automated instrumentation control and analysis, is it really so hard to make a high level programming language in the same mould?
They have. Significantly.
I just ditched my dual opteron (linux) + shuttle (windows) setup and replaced it with a single Core Duo box with linux virtualized under WinXP. I'm running the VMware free server software (http://www.vmware.com/products/free_virtualizatio n.html) and i have to say i'm impressed.
The only negatives i've found so far (aside from the obvious ones related to two systems in one computer) are some slowdown in mouse responsiveness in the virtualized linux and the lack of hardware accelerated graphics (these might be the same thing, i don't know). You also have to turn off access of the virtualized OS to the DVDROM or everything gets confused.
The positives are that it was piss easy to set up and really "just works". The VMware'd linux talked to my network card without intervention and happily picked up a unique IP from my DHCPD. NIS/NFS to my fileserver "just worked". I can allocate the VMware OS 1 or 2 cores and vary the amount of RAM it sees. My main use for the linux V/OS is molecular dynamics simulations, the software running message passing via LAM/MPI and all compiled under Intel C and Fortran Compilers. Again, all of that "just worked".
In terms of performance, MD calcs done on 1 cpu seem to be at close to full speed for one core, but running them dual gives only an 80% scaling improvement. That slowdown is about as expected, given that there's another OS running. Another nice side benefit is that i can run an MD calc on 1 cpu and play games with the other. I don't notice any lag.
So to summarise - if i'd paid money for VMware i'd be seriously impressed, but for something to do exactly what i want for free is truly amazing.
Which may explain a part of the popularity of Ubuntu. Course, i'm running Fedora...
> Flattened, bleached, dead trees are shrinking in influence.
I think (hope) you mean that electronic media is the primary means of information dissemination. However "paper" != "formal". Most new info does come from formal sources, just electronic ones.
Course, i might be wrong, and you might mean that the definitive source of all valuable information is "a guy i met down the pub". I hope not though.
And when those people can't agree, who's going to make the final decision?
In a nutshell - You want people to adopt linux? Don't improve the software, improve "the community". Preferably with a shotgun.
"Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those you can't teach, teach teachers"
How would this differ from actually hiring these unemployed people?
The danger has little to do with the presence of lithium - there is no lithium metal in lithium ion batteries. It has to do with the oxidation chemistry of the electrode materials.
>or if it is just that both manufacturers use similar production methods?
It is a fundamental flaw - Li batteries contain a large amount of chemical energy in a very small volume, so when they go wrong theres a lot of energy which needs to go somewhere. Separating the fail mechanisms into two rough categories we have:
(1). Exposure to air (puncture of the casing) - The battery electrodes are inherently unstable with respect to air due to the oxidation/reduction chemistry which makes them work. Also, to make them charge/discharge faster the electrodes have very high surface area. So if the battery is exposed to air you have unstable materials with extremely high reactivity (from the surface area).
(2). Internal short circuit - The anode and cathode somehow become directly connected by an electronic conductor (note that the electrolyte is an electronic insulator and electrons should go via the external circuit. Li ions move internally), resulting in high current and thus high temperatures. The heat boils/evaporates/generally decomposes the electrolyte and (1) occurs. This can occur via a number of mechanisms including dropping/driving a nail etc through the battery/formation of Li metal internally.
The important step here is what happens in step (1) above, and this is where the lithium cobalt oxide (and other transition metal oxide) based cells have a problem. They explode and/or burn. Problem is, most of the high volumetric density batteries you can buy are based on this type of technology. There are alternatives based on phosphate systems (and others), which decompose much more safely, but they don't offer the high volumetric density that everyone is accustomed to.
A degree says absolutely nothing about your ability to do research in any context beyond reading a book and reciting its' contents. Understanding is optional. It is essentially a piece of paper which says that you were able to remember and recite a lot of information which your examiner already knew. In research terms a degree is the bottom step on the ladder, sorting out those with the necessary ability and (more importantly) the interest to go further. The ability to think for yourself, to understand what you see, to see between the lines, that is basically separate from your qualification.
Anyway, as your ignorance is so clearly entrenched, i shan't bother to debunk the idea that not-for-profit scientific research has no relationship to the success of a country, nor shall i challenge your assertion that "spending was negative for most, if not all". It is, after all, a complete fluke that the countries with highest research budgets also happen to be the wealthiest...
And please pay close attention to the 3.4bn value halfway down. This is not a "slash" in the budget, its simply the government calling back some of the buffer money thats left at the end of the year. It will have an effect, and some people may be out of funding as a result, but lets not blow it totally out of proportion. With luck some of that money that was previously "wasted" in Rover might make it into future science budgets...