I don't know if this is actually gonna happen, but I do agree with you that Season 3 has been a let down. Part of it is that I agree about the Daleks being overplayed. But mainly, I just don't like Martha. The character just seems so over the top. All the drama seems forced. And the Doctor seems like he's always pissed off now.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still watching, but man... Rose was twice the companion that Martha is. I was sad to see her go.
Not on a large scale, I think. This is likely to be a very polluting energy source. Hence it being described as "tactical." Good for emergency use - or for a desperately poor village that doesn't have any electricity to meet basic needs. But not to power your Plasma TV or Playstation.
Did you RTFA? What leads you to believe that this will be a "very polluting energy source"?
From TFA:
"Much of the fuel the system combusts is carbon-neutral... Carbon-neutral fuels like ethanol do not cause an appreciable net increase in atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. This is because the fuel releases carbon that has only recently been taken up by plants during photosynthesis, the process by which plants convert carbon dioxide to oxygen and sugars...
The machine produces a very small amount of its own waste, Warner said, mostly in the form of ash that the Environmental Protection Agency has designated as "benign," or non-hazardous. Any leftover materials from the bioreactor are put into the gasifier, which has to be emptied every two to three days.
"It's about enough to fill a regular sized trash bag, and it represents about a 30-to-1 volume reduction," Warner said."
So it burns clean AND it reduces the garbage that you put into it by a 30:1 ratio. Sounds pretty non-polluting to me. My only question is... why can't I have one of these things powering my house? I could dump my garbage into it every day and lower/eliminate my electric bill. Or maybe that's not practical. Maybe it requires an inordinately large amount of waste to run it. But still, they could build a bunch of these right next to a garbage dump and just start powering the city off of all our old garbage.
hrmm... I dunno.... that's not likely the reason he left. Like you said, he could just be subpoenaed.
It's more likely that he left because Bush recognized that the way the Iraq war was going was the major reason that his party lost the House (and possibly the Senate) and finally decided that he couldn't just stick with the same guys who'd been doing a crappy job this whole time. Like someone else said, Rummy tried to leave a couple of times before... it's just that now, Bush finally had the motivation to let the guy fall on his sword.
I also think that/. folks are assuming that the rest of the "non-nerd" world thinks like them. Unfortunately, they don't. Most people don't know what a browser "extension" is... They don't need a developer add-in and they won't ever use a feature any more advanced than "Favorites". They just want something that will display whatever webpage they might visit. And as much as us nerds hate to admit it, IE has the upper hand on that one. I can't remember the last time I went to a *real* site that had trouble displaying in IE (not some "hey, check out this IE flaw" demo page). But all too often, when I'm in Firefox or on my brother's Mac, I'll run across something that doesn't look quite right.
In fact, I've always wondered about the "ubercompliant" claims of Firefox. I can think of a few examples just off the top of my head where I was setting up a site and went to check it out in FF, only to find out that the tables didn't display correctly (especially when it comes to borders). I'd go back and try every way to force it to have the border I wanted, and in IE, it would display exactly how I designed the table, but not in Firefox. I still have this issue on my forum and my CMS... I just stopped carring that FF didn't display it (cosmetically) how I wanted it.
...more reasons why it's absurd to suggest that the Segway would be replacing cars (or even bikes/scooters) any time soon (or ever). This, of course, only applies to urban areas... there are other obvious reasons why it's useless outside of a large, dense metropolitan area.
1) You can only transport 1 person on it. Even in the $500 Civic, you'll still probably be able to take your wife/girlfriend and a buddy or two along. With the Segway, you'd have to shell out *another* $5000 for each person who wants to go with. So when you wanna go for a nice Sunday "stroll", or go grab some food a few blocks away, you better hope you like doing it alone.:o)
2) The transportation of even reasonably bulky items isn't possible. Planning on traveling with anything more then the clothes on your back...? Well, the $500 Civic wins that one by a landslide... heck, even the old fashioned scooter (and possibly even a bike) would probably win this one by a good margin.
3) It can't (or most likely "won't") be used to go very far. I think its limit is somewhere between 10 and 20 miles per charge. But more importantly, you're *standing* while you're traveling, so you won't want to go more than a few miles. (Remember, if you weren't interested in being lazy, then you wouldn't have bought a Segway in the first place.);o) People who want to exert themselves will walk or use a bike, people who want to relax while traveling will get the $500 Civic.
I honestly think that the Segway (as a whole) is the most impractical invention ever created. I think that the technology behind it is freaking amazing... but unfortunately, they took ground-breaking new tech, and put it in a completely impractical device. There isn't a single thing that a Segway can do that can't be done better and (usually much) cheaper by using other transportation methods that have been around for a hundred (or even thousands of) years. The only scenario I can think of where the practical *function* of a Segway supersedes other methods is for police officers doing day-long foot patrols. But then, the function is the only advantage... when you factor in the cost... it's outrageous. My tax dollars paying $5000 per-person just so cops don't have to walk (God forbid), while they patrol the city?
I think the benefit of a Segway exists only in novelty. It's cool as hell, but not much more can be said than that.
Acutally, what gets embedded in Office apps is VBA (Visual Basic for Applications).
It's not the same as VBScript... actually, it's much closer to VB6 (and since it allows you to add references to COM objects, VBA can do many of the things that VB6 can do).
But yes... either way, VBA (and VB6 and VBScript) is much different than VB.NET and is not completely convertable (from old VB to.NET)... although a good bit of VB6 can be converted using existing tools, you'd still have to know the language in order to complete the conversion. Not to mention the fact that Office apps can't run.NET apps internally.
And then there's the fact that VBA is kinda being "replaced" with VSTO......so basically... there is no easy path to converting internal Office programming to an ODF platform.:o)
The point is not whether surveillance equipment should be made, but whether we know enough about how it's made and used.
What does it matter how it's made?? And if the concern is how it's used, then why go to a conference put on by people who make it and not talk to anyone who's actually using it??
Do you know enough? If not, just shut up and stop whining about how little you've known from what others find. I truly don't know what you are trying to say here.
I'm trying to say exactly what I just said... that the article is a complete waste of space being passed off as some kind of "exposé". There's nothing informative in it... there's nothing well-sourced in it, or controversial, or pertinent. He went to the wrong place and talked to the wrong people and tried to present it as if he had just given us some amazing, eye-opening look at the world of illegal gov't spying. And to top it all off, he tries to pass it off (if you read the last sentence of the article) as some kind of noble piece of journalism that was done for the "greater good".
And as a result, it gets posted on/. and people post the usual, "That's right... I knew Bush was evil", and "Darn those conservatives who want to take away all my civil rights." bull crap (even though the author mostly focused on how third world regimes might use technology against their people), and it just perpetuates the ignorantly divided nation we already live in.
I don't recall seeing anything in that article that resembled real, investigative journalism. I don't think the drunken rant of a salesman constitutes "details on how our civil liberaties and the constution are essentially being used a toliet house by the people in Washington".
...find this article to be incredibly unimpressive and vacuous?
First off, there's nothing "dangerous" or "secretive" about this conference. If there was, this guy wouldn't have even known about it, let alone gotten into it. It's a marketing conference where manufacturers of this stuff try to pimp it off on anyone (from anywhere) who has an interest in surveillance. Even average cops can attend. Like someone else said, the most likely reason that they make it "closed" to the press is to give it a pompous air of secrecy that doesn't really exist. The reporter, once he gets his hands on one of the "secret" CDs, finds that there's nothing of any interest on it, and hastily concludes that it must be because of a "small-minded attitude of hostility toward the press"... but anyone with the slightest bit of business sense would also include that it may very well be because they're trying to hype up their conference and make it more attractive to wanna-be spooks so that they can sell more stuff, which is what all businesses are in business to do. (of course, that line of reasoning doesn't support his "they're all out to rob us of our civil liberties" bias, so I'm sure it never crossed his mind.:op)
Second... the quotes in this thing mean nothing. So he got a drunk, loudmouthed salesman to make (completely unsubstantiated) claims about what the US gov't does with this equipment, and how little concerned they are with the legalities of surveillance. Anyone here who's been to a tech conference knows that there are people who claim to know what's "really" going on, and everyone who's met those people knows that they're usually full of sh*t. Reporting a drunken rant as some kind of interesting "insight" is irresponsible at the least.
Then he talks to a Dutch cop, who (of course) says exactly what he wants to hear... "Secrecy is eeeevil... we're much better because we're open about how we catch criminals." (which, of course, allows them the information they need to avoid getting caught:op) Of course the guy's going to say that... everyone thinks that their way of doing things is better. But the most telling quote is, "Basically, we're three or four years ahead of all this", which just goes to show how irrelevant this show is. If the Dutch are four years ahead of it, it's a pretty safe bet that the Americans are five+ years ahead of it.
Throughout it all, he acts as if surveillance equipment (in and of itself) is some new threat, that's inherently evil, and which "poses a tremendous threat to human rights and dignity". Seriously... it's a product. There's a marker for it, so people make it and try to sell it. The one reasonable thing that the drunk guy did say was that he should stop harassing the people that make it. I don't think anyone would argue that surveillance equipment of all kinds should be banned, so basically, it's going to get made. Posing the "but it could get used for evil" argument is a waste of time, just like it is with every other man-made object that could get used improperly, but has a primary use that is beneficial.
Basically, this was a hyped-up opinion piece written by a journalist who's "trying to make a difference" by "informing" all the people who are already worked up about privacy issues about just how bad it "really" is. If there was some kind of substance to it, it might be remotely interesting, but at face value, it falls completely flat.
And before anyone goes on some presumptive tirade about how I'm a right-wing blah blah blah who's more concerned about your sex-life than I am about civil rights, save your breath. I'm not saying that unabashed gov't monitoring is good, or necessary or that I support it or any other nonsense like that... I'm only saying that this article is an insubstantial pile of dung written by someone with an obvious bias of the topic looking to paint himself as a champion of "truth".
I'm gonna disagree with that assessment. You can assume that vacation time is the root cause of this, but that's a pretty hard sell (not to mention a bit of a leap of logic).
I frankly wouldn't even know what to do with 4 months of vacation time, and I surely wouldn't have enough money to spend it traveling (especially if I only worked 8 months out of the year), and I definitely wouldn't expect the gov't to help me pay for my free time.
I know lots of people, and I only know one person who I consider "over-worked". It's not really that common... and oddly enough, that person is the least sick person I know. I, on the other hand, have a cake job with pretty much no stress at all, and I never work more than 40 hours, and yet I'm constantly sick.
If I had to guess, I'd say that the cause was the utterly unhealthy lifestyle that we as Americans commonly have. The combination of no consistent exercise and the constant intake of nutrient deficient food is the most likely factor in this equation.
I'm a very skinny person, and yet I'm routinely sick. Thinking that obesity is the only way to gauge "unhealthiness" is very shortsighted. There are plenty of people who are thin, or at least "not huge", who are just as sick (from poor diet/exercise) as those who are obese.
The fact of the matter is, it's very hard to find truly "healthy" food in America. You have to go to special grocery stores (which are more expensive and usually hard to find) just to get meats that aren't full of preservatives and hormones and tenderizers, and drinks that aren't mostly HFCS. And even our vegetables are full of chemicals.
P.S. The burden of healthcare *should* fall on the individual. It's my job to keep my body healthy, and to pay for its care. The more healthcare becomes "free" (in the mind of the individual, at least), the more people will just eat like crap and sit on their @sses, and then expect to be able to show up at the doc (for a small copay) to get a pill (or a bypass surgery) whenever they start to feel the effects of it. Unfortunately, our current system discourages the individual from taking on the responsibility where it matters most... their own body. Instead, we focus on using legislation to repair a system that's so screwed up, it's making people sick more than it's making them well.
...why did they have to go and remind me of how freaking old I am.:op
I remember beating Zelda within weeks of its release. I couldn't do anything but play it. I think it was my first experience with obsession. Other NES games were good, and you wanted to play them... but after a while, you'd get bored or distracted and wanna go play baseball or whatever... but with Zelda... it was like you got sucked into that little 8-bit world and couldn't get out.
And holy hell, that gold cartridge was cool as sh*t.:o)
WATYF
lol... yes... I've used a Mac plenty. I despise the interface (OS 9 and OS X). And I think Dells are overpriced as well, if that gives you any indication of what "market" I'm in. Obviously, I'm not what Apple is targeting. They're targeting ignorant consumers who don't know any better and need a restrictive hardware configuration and a limited software selection to protect them from their own stupidity (i.e. downloading spyware every five seconds).
I'm not sure where everyone gets this idea that, if you build your own machine, it will be a hobbled together kludge of a paperweight. My experience has shown the exact opposite in pretty much every instance. Pick the right components... know what you're doing... and you can have a system that's faster and cheaper than any (comparable) retail PC or Mac with less problems.
And I know that driver support wouldn't be there for OS X, but it would be "nice" to be able to do that. Then I would really be able to find out if OS X is all it's cracked up to be (performance and feature-wise). Obviously, support for that will never happen, because then both MS and Apple would lose their edge (MS, with its "our stuff runs on more machines with more software" edge, and Apple, with its "our OS is rock solid and only available on a Mac" edge)... but it's nice to dream.:o)
P.S. I haven't seen a BSOD on any of my personal machines in probably more than five years... some people still need to get over the Mac FUD that a BSOD is some kind of daily occurrence on a Windows machine... most of the time, when that does happen, it tends to be an issue of PEBKAC.:op
That's a pretty misrepresentative view. I don't know anyone who gets a "pieced together junk pile". You get high-performance components, put them in an attractive case, and you have a machine that's just as fast (if not faster) than the latest G5 for one third the price. I know of a couple hard-core Mac users who have asked me to do that very thing for them because they can't shell out the dough it would take to get a screaming fast Mac.
As for ports... I can see your point on the port of Windows to Intel Macs (I know some people who could use that as well), but I think there is an equal (maybe lesser) crowd out there who would really love to be able to port OS X to their PCs (I am one of them). This way I can try out Mac's OS without having to plunk down a disgusting amount of money on an over-priced Intel system (which is what the Intel Macs will be)....dual boot of Vista and OS X on a PC would be the bomb-diggity.:op
WATYF
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know if this is actually gonna happen, but I do agree with you that Season 3 has been a let down. Part of it is that I agree about the Daleks being overplayed. But mainly, I just don't like Martha. The character just seems so over the top. All the drama seems forced. And the Doctor seems like he's always pissed off now.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still watching, but man... Rose was twice the companion that Martha is. I was sad to see her go.
WATYF
"Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had." - Michael Crichton
Did you RTFA? What leads you to believe that this will be a "very polluting energy source"?
From TFA:
"Much of the fuel the system combusts is carbon-neutral... Carbon-neutral fuels like ethanol do not cause an appreciable net increase in atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. This is because the fuel releases carbon that has only recently been taken up by plants during photosynthesis, the process by which plants convert carbon dioxide to oxygen and sugars...
The machine produces a very small amount of its own waste, Warner said, mostly in the form of ash that the Environmental Protection Agency has designated as "benign," or non-hazardous. Any leftover materials from the bioreactor are put into the gasifier, which has to be emptied every two to three days.
"It's about enough to fill a regular sized trash bag, and it represents about a 30-to-1 volume reduction," Warner said."
So it burns clean AND it reduces the garbage that you put into it by a 30:1 ratio. Sounds pretty non-polluting to me. My only question is... why can't I have one of these things powering my house? I could dump my garbage into it every day and lower/eliminate my electric bill. Or maybe that's not practical. Maybe it requires an inordinately large amount of waste to run it. But still, they could build a bunch of these right next to a garbage dump and just start powering the city off of all our old garbage.
WATYF
Actually, you have no idea how true that is... it's already happened before. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4267238.st m
WATYF
hrmm... I dunno.... that's not likely the reason he left. Like you said, he could just be subpoenaed.
It's more likely that he left because Bush recognized that the way the Iraq war was going was the major reason that his party lost the House (and possibly the Senate) and finally decided that he couldn't just stick with the same guys who'd been doing a crappy job this whole time. Like someone else said, Rummy tried to leave a couple of times before... it's just that now, Bush finally had the motivation to let the guy fall on his sword.
WATYF
Based on just those criteria, I would pick IE.
/. folks are assuming that the rest of the "non-nerd" world thinks like them. Unfortunately, they don't. Most people don't know what a browser "extension" is... They don't need a developer add-in and they won't ever use a feature any more advanced than "Favorites". They just want something that will display whatever webpage they might visit. And as much as us nerds hate to admit it, IE has the upper hand on that one. I can't remember the last time I went to a *real* site that had trouble displaying in IE (not some "hey, check out this IE flaw" demo page). But all too often, when I'm in Firefox or on my brother's Mac, I'll run across something that doesn't look quite right.
1) Firefox or Opera
2) IE
3) IE
4) IE
I also think that
In fact, I've always wondered about the "ubercompliant" claims of Firefox. I can think of a few examples just off the top of my head where I was setting up a site and went to check it out in FF, only to find out that the tables didn't display correctly (especially when it comes to borders). I'd go back and try every way to force it to have the border I wanted, and in IE, it would display exactly how I designed the table, but not in Firefox. I still have this issue on my forum and my CMS... I just stopped carring that FF didn't display it (cosmetically) how I wanted it.
WATYF
...more reasons why it's absurd to suggest that the Segway would be replacing cars (or even bikes/scooters) any time soon (or ever). This, of course, only applies to urban areas... there are other obvious reasons why it's useless outside of a large, dense metropolitan area.
:o)
;o) People who want to exert themselves will walk or use a bike, people who want to relax while traveling will get the $500 Civic.
1) You can only transport 1 person on it. Even in the $500 Civic, you'll still probably be able to take your wife/girlfriend and a buddy or two along. With the Segway, you'd have to shell out *another* $5000 for each person who wants to go with. So when you wanna go for a nice Sunday "stroll", or go grab some food a few blocks away, you better hope you like doing it alone.
2) The transportation of even reasonably bulky items isn't possible. Planning on traveling with anything more then the clothes on your back...? Well, the $500 Civic wins that one by a landslide... heck, even the old fashioned scooter (and possibly even a bike) would probably win this one by a good margin.
3) It can't (or most likely "won't") be used to go very far. I think its limit is somewhere between 10 and 20 miles per charge. But more importantly, you're *standing* while you're traveling, so you won't want to go more than a few miles. (Remember, if you weren't interested in being lazy, then you wouldn't have bought a Segway in the first place.)
I honestly think that the Segway (as a whole) is the most impractical invention ever created. I think that the technology behind it is freaking amazing... but unfortunately, they took ground-breaking new tech, and put it in a completely impractical device. There isn't a single thing that a Segway can do that can't be done better and (usually much) cheaper by using other transportation methods that have been around for a hundred (or even thousands of) years. The only scenario I can think of where the practical *function* of a Segway supersedes other methods is for police officers doing day-long foot patrols. But then, the function is the only advantage... when you factor in the cost... it's outrageous. My tax dollars paying $5000 per-person just so cops don't have to walk (God forbid), while they patrol the city?
I think the benefit of a Segway exists only in novelty. It's cool as hell, but not much more can be said than that.
WATYF
Acutally, what gets embedded in Office apps is VBA (Visual Basic for Applications).
.NET)... although a good bit of VB6 can be converted using existing tools, you'd still have to know the language in order to complete the conversion. Not to mention the fact that Office apps can't run .NET apps internally.
...so basically... there is no easy path to converting internal Office programming to an ODF platform. :o)
It's not the same as VBScript... actually, it's much closer to VB6 (and since it allows you to add references to COM objects, VBA can do many of the things that VB6 can do).
But yes... either way, VBA (and VB6 and VBScript) is much different than VB.NET and is not completely convertable (from old VB to
And then there's the fact that VBA is kinda being "replaced" with VSTO...
WATYF
haha... no... but close. Canadian. :o)
WATYF
The point is not whether surveillance equipment should be made, but whether we know enough about how it's made and used.
/. and people post the usual, "That's right... I knew Bush was evil", and "Darn those conservatives who want to take away all my civil rights." bull crap (even though the author mostly focused on how third world regimes might use technology against their people), and it just perpetuates the ignorantly divided nation we already live in.
What does it matter how it's made?? And if the concern is how it's used, then why go to a conference put on by people who make it and not talk to anyone who's actually using it??
Do you know enough? If not, just shut up and stop whining about how little you've known from what others find. I truly don't know what you are trying to say here.
I'm trying to say exactly what I just said... that the article is a complete waste of space being passed off as some kind of "exposé". There's nothing informative in it... there's nothing well-sourced in it, or controversial, or pertinent. He went to the wrong place and talked to the wrong people and tried to present it as if he had just given us some amazing, eye-opening look at the world of illegal gov't spying. And to top it all off, he tries to pass it off (if you read the last sentence of the article) as some kind of noble piece of journalism that was done for the "greater good".
And as a result, it gets posted on
WATYF
I don't recall seeing anything in that article that resembled real, investigative journalism. I don't think the drunken rant of a salesman constitutes "details on how our civil liberaties and the constution are essentially being used a toliet house by the people in Washington".
This was an opinion piece, through and through.
WATYF
First off, there's nothing "dangerous" or "secretive" about this conference. If there was, this guy wouldn't have even known about it, let alone gotten into it. It's a marketing conference where manufacturers of this stuff try to pimp it off on anyone (from anywhere) who has an interest in surveillance. Even average cops can attend. Like someone else said, the most likely reason that they make it "closed" to the press is to give it a pompous air of secrecy that doesn't really exist. The reporter, once he gets his hands on one of the "secret" CDs, finds that there's nothing of any interest on it, and hastily concludes that it must be because of a "small-minded attitude of hostility toward the press"... but anyone with the slightest bit of business sense would also include that it may very well be because they're trying to hype up their conference and make it more attractive to wanna-be spooks so that they can sell more stuff, which is what all businesses are in business to do. (of course, that line of reasoning doesn't support his "they're all out to rob us of our civil liberties" bias, so I'm sure it never crossed his mind.
Second... the quotes in this thing mean nothing. So he got a drunk, loudmouthed salesman to make (completely unsubstantiated) claims about what the US gov't does with this equipment, and how little concerned they are with the legalities of surveillance. Anyone here who's been to a tech conference knows that there are people who claim to know what's "really" going on, and everyone who's met those people knows that they're usually full of sh*t. Reporting a drunken rant as some kind of interesting "insight" is irresponsible at the least.
Then he talks to a Dutch cop, who (of course) says exactly what he wants to hear... "Secrecy is eeeevil... we're much better because we're open about how we catch criminals." (which, of course, allows them the information they need to avoid getting caught
Throughout it all, he acts as if surveillance equipment (in and of itself) is some new threat, that's inherently evil, and which "poses a tremendous threat to human rights and dignity". Seriously... it's a product. There's a marker for it, so people make it and try to sell it. The one reasonable thing that the drunk guy did say was that he should stop harassing the people that make it. I don't think anyone would argue that surveillance equipment of all kinds should be banned, so basically, it's going to get made. Posing the "but it could get used for evil" argument is a waste of time, just like it is with every other man-made object that could get used improperly, but has a primary use that is beneficial.
Basically, this was a hyped-up opinion piece written by a journalist who's "trying to make a difference" by "informing" all the people who are already worked up about privacy issues about just how bad it "really" is. If there was some kind of substance to it, it might be remotely interesting, but at face value, it falls completely flat.
And before anyone goes on some presumptive tirade about how I'm a right-wing blah blah blah who's more concerned about your sex-life than I am about civil rights, save your breath. I'm not saying that unabashed gov't monitoring is good, or necessary or that I support it or any other nonsense like that... I'm only saying that this article is an insubstantial pile of dung written by someone with an obvious bias of the topic looking to paint himself as a champion of "truth".
WATYF
Nope... I just figured you were honest about your fanboy-ism. :o)
WATYF
Irony?? I think you mean "sarcasm". Either way, it was poorly conveyed. :op
WATYF
I don't know what planet you live on, but MS gets scads of bad press every day for a kinds of things (large and small).
WATYF
I'm gonna disagree with that assessment. You can assume that vacation time is the root cause of this, but that's a pretty hard sell (not to mention a bit of a leap of logic).
I frankly wouldn't even know what to do with 4 months of vacation time, and I surely wouldn't have enough money to spend it traveling (especially if I only worked 8 months out of the year), and I definitely wouldn't expect the gov't to help me pay for my free time.
I know lots of people, and I only know one person who I consider "over-worked". It's not really that common... and oddly enough, that person is the least sick person I know. I, on the other hand, have a cake job with pretty much no stress at all, and I never work more than 40 hours, and yet I'm constantly sick.
If I had to guess, I'd say that the cause was the utterly unhealthy lifestyle that we as Americans commonly have. The combination of no consistent exercise and the constant intake of nutrient deficient food is the most likely factor in this equation.
I'm a very skinny person, and yet I'm routinely sick. Thinking that obesity is the only way to gauge "unhealthiness" is very shortsighted. There are plenty of people who are thin, or at least "not huge", who are just as sick (from poor diet/exercise) as those who are obese.
The fact of the matter is, it's very hard to find truly "healthy" food in America. You have to go to special grocery stores (which are more expensive and usually hard to find) just to get meats that aren't full of preservatives and hormones and tenderizers, and drinks that aren't mostly HFCS. And even our vegetables are full of chemicals.
P.S. The burden of healthcare *should* fall on the individual. It's my job to keep my body healthy, and to pay for its care. The more healthcare becomes "free" (in the mind of the individual, at least), the more people will just eat like crap and sit on their @sses, and then expect to be able to show up at the doc (for a small copay) to get a pill (or a bypass surgery) whenever they start to feel the effects of it. Unfortunately, our current system discourages the individual from taking on the responsibility where it matters most... their own body. Instead, we focus on using legislation to repair a system that's so screwed up, it's making people sick more than it's making them well.
WATYF
...why did they have to go and remind me of how freaking old I am. :op
I remember beating Zelda within weeks of its release. I couldn't do anything but play it. I think it was my first experience with obsession. Other NES games were good, and you wanted to play them... but after a while, you'd get bored or distracted and wanna go play baseball or whatever... but with Zelda... it was like you got sucked into that little 8-bit world and couldn't get out.
And holy hell, that gold cartridge was cool as sh*t. :o)
WATYF
lol... yes... I've used a Mac plenty. I despise the interface (OS 9 and OS X). And I think Dells are overpriced as well, if that gives you any indication of what "market" I'm in. Obviously, I'm not what Apple is targeting. They're targeting ignorant consumers who don't know any better and need a restrictive hardware configuration and a limited software selection to protect them from their own stupidity (i.e. downloading spyware every five seconds).
:o)
:op
I'm not sure where everyone gets this idea that, if you build your own machine, it will be a hobbled together kludge of a paperweight. My experience has shown the exact opposite in pretty much every instance. Pick the right components... know what you're doing... and you can have a system that's faster and cheaper than any (comparable) retail PC or Mac with less problems.
And I know that driver support wouldn't be there for OS X, but it would be "nice" to be able to do that. Then I would really be able to find out if OS X is all it's cracked up to be (performance and feature-wise). Obviously, support for that will never happen, because then both MS and Apple would lose their edge (MS, with its "our stuff runs on more machines with more software" edge, and Apple, with its "our OS is rock solid and only available on a Mac" edge)... but it's nice to dream.
P.S. I haven't seen a BSOD on any of my personal machines in probably more than five years... some people still need to get over the Mac FUD that a BSOD is some kind of daily occurrence on a Windows machine... most of the time, when that does happen, it tends to be an issue of PEBKAC.
WATYF
That's a pretty misrepresentative view. I don't know anyone who gets a "pieced together junk pile". You get high-performance components, put them in an attractive case, and you have a machine that's just as fast (if not faster) than the latest G5 for one third the price. I know of a couple hard-core Mac users who have asked me to do that very thing for them because they can't shell out the dough it would take to get a screaming fast Mac. As for ports... I can see your point on the port of Windows to Intel Macs (I know some people who could use that as well), but I think there is an equal (maybe lesser) crowd out there who would really love to be able to port OS X to their PCs (I am one of them). This way I can try out Mac's OS without having to plunk down a disgusting amount of money on an over-priced Intel system (which is what the Intel Macs will be). ...dual boot of Vista and OS X on a PC would be the bomb-diggity. :op
WATYF