Except for the fact that "bittorrenting" doesn't actually cause any problems. That has been proven. Its been covered here. Check the archives.

Oh, and what about all that, "watch our program on our website" stuff. Or on-line games. Or youtube HD. Or...

The problem is that your view is extremely short sighted. While 60GB might be more than enough for grandma who just checks her email, I can easily rack up a couple GB just watching a bunch of HD Youtube vids, etc. Things that are normal for todays "young" internet user. So, what happens when all this becomes prevalent? We're all screwed with massive internet bills is what. And your prevalent Prole attitude is what's going to do it to us.

And if you recall, there were very good reasons for those limitations in the beginning. The main one being A LIMITED NUMBER OF LINES. So, of couse they HAD to limit the time and charge accordingly. We've gone beyond line limitations and as such, there is no technological reason for such limitations and as such, no reason to charge more.

But, you're right. Unlimited service isn't inherently a right. It's just something that's been provided to us for so long that it's essentially /become/ a right. It costs then sweet fuck all to provide unlimited service. So, I'm just going to call BS on this one. There also isn't any "slow down" or "bottleneck" issues as has been previously suggested (proven). So, again, this is BS. All this is, is a money grab.

What has happened is that these companies developed fast internet connections trying to out do each other being the "fastest." Now they are surprised that people are actually taking advantage of them. So, they cry about nonsensical things (see above) and when that fails, they try to monetize it. As long as there are still options, people with a brain will move to those. But, what happens when all the companies go to this model? What choice will there be then.

It's the North American way though. Provide as little as possible, charging as much as possible, while brainwashing us to think that we're getting a deal while they screw us.

Nat already did a humorous look this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIX9NjpRWMg

Um, it takes a fuck load more than SIX kids to /PROVE/ something. SIX isn't anywhere close to statistical significance, nor does it even remotely demonstrate safety. Proven/proof are VERY big words and shouldn't be thrown around lightly. These preliminary results may be encouraging, but are FAR from proof. Especially, in the medical field.

"""
to determine what type of job would be suitable. But in the next breath, the authors suggest folding away the values-list and taking a job (any job) that will pay the bills. I fail to understand this contradictory advice, and wish they would make up their mind.
"""

This is not contradictory advise. Rather it is telling people to swallow there pride and get a temporary job to pay the bills while continuing to look for one more suitable. This is very practical advise given the most people won't survive a couple months without any income and it takes time to even find one of these jobs. How else would one survive while finding a job if they end up on the street because they can't pay there mortgage/rent?

Actually, a better reason is that the general population doesn't know what the companies are doing. Sure, the information is out there. But, it's hardly wide spread and when told of it, the general pop. gives looks like you're crazy. In other words, the general population isn't educated enough (in all senses) to understand this issue and when it is put in front of them, they'll just think you're paranoid.

... Do the kids care? That's the real problem. If the kids don't care, then just after there exams, the knowledge gained is going to disappear. I saw this with just about everyone I went to University with (and I was in Physics and Maths!).

This is the real problem with "education research". Namely, they rely *way* too much on numbers and not even close to what they should be looking at such as, whether the kids actually understood the material (because lets be honest, tests today are memorize and regurgitate), and whether they are inspired to know more (or at least find it interesting) i.e. tests don't test what they should be testing.

I submitted a bug report. Computers work in powers of two. Deal with it.

"too-open platform of PCs."

Damn you're horribly misinformed. Security through obscurity never works and DRM is the gaming industry shooting themselves in the foot; they are bitting the hand that feeds. If the gaming industry wants money, all they have to do is make games that aren't shit. And lately, that has been an epic fail on there part. Just yet another reason why the industry is screwing up. There's nothing like spending millions on a piece of crap that no-one will want. Not to mention releasing so early, not only is the game itself crap, it's a buggy as all hell as well. So, a constantly freezing/weird shit going on, piece of crap.

But, hey. Why bother with facts. Let's just do what the gaming industry is doing and blame piracy.

You need to go back and learn what a democracy is. Because, you clearly don't understand that the ability to fork is not equal to the ability to vote.

*posted as is without editing, worts and all*

There is a difference between Medicine and Biology; they are NOT the same thing. Medicine is the biology of the human body. Period. End of story. Biology concerns itself will ALL life. In short, Medicine is the APPLICATION of Biology to humans. Different. But, if I'm wrong, go ahead and explain to me how those two domains are the same thing and the same size.

When it comes to Biology's contribution to Medicine, why don't you actually look up what the Engineers and Physicists have done compared to the Biologists before commenting. Biology has really only come into play recently.

Furthermore, the more you get away from Maths, obviously, the less will be known. However, if you've look at the modern Chemistry curriculum, and consider what needs to be known to understand the typical *required* Quantum Chemistry course... that's a fair bit of Maths. Btw, there's a reason why I mentioned Biology's relatively limited contribution to Science. It's because they've really only come into there own, as a Science, recently. Another couple decades or so, and they might be where Chemistry was a couple decades ago. Most of Chemistry today is actually quite good.

When it comes to the causation/correlation problem, yes it is a BIG problem. Just look through PubMed if you don't believe me. It is *very* common to have papers on there that calculate CIs with 20-30 patients (or less) like it means something. Sorry, but if they think that, they're clueless. It takes a statistically significant number of patients studied to make a CI meaningful. That's why I only really pay attention to survey studies (and view others with extreme scrutiny). They are the ones that have the highest possibility of being worth reading.

Finally, I have worked with Scientists. Physicists in particular. I also have payed attention to what the other disciplines have put out. Chemistry is meh, Biology is lesser (to one degree or another depending on the specific field within it) and Medicine is a joke. It might be politically incorrect to say such things. But, it is the honest truth. There's not really any shame in it as the more applied one goes, the more complicated things get. But, to ignore ones place is inviting disaster. That's really the point. To get them to know there place. Enough people have died due to there god complexes, overconfidence and not really understanding things (and not knowing it). They really need to acknowledge the limitations of what they do and who they are.

When it comes to the MDs that I get along with and respect. It's those that explicitly state what they are comfortable doing and what they aren't. It's those that are willing to work /with/ me not the ones who think its OK to tell me what to do when it's something that I care to be involved in. Etc. Guess which type is more rare and the average age of the ones that are more humble.

Not rhetoric, fact.

But, telling correlation from causation is an easy one. Pay attention to the details and learn a lot more Maths. That'll give them some actual critical thinking ability instead of following a checklist.

It really is a rarity to see a study that has been designed properly. The only one that I know of is one studying Recurrent Brief Depression. The study used an entire practice of patients and filtered out people with other disorders to get "pure" RBD people. Then they were paired with healthy controls that were the same age and gender. That's a good experiment. Of course, it's still limited as socio-economic differences between the controls and there RBD counter-parts would change things. Then there's the statistics problem because it really isn't a random sample because all the people involved would live in the same area of the city. I could go on.

But, that's the best one I've found. And I've looked at *lots* of studies.

Also, when it comes to applying "their fanciful theories to medicine", what do you call MRIs? How about X-Ray machines? How about medicines? These things are made, by and large, Physicists, Engineers and Chemists respectively. The Biologists come into play more on the "practicing Medicine" side of things because they are actually working directly with biological systems. So, if the Medicine people want to do any good, then they'll use that to start.

However, this is exactly what the Medicine people aren't doing. They are so concerned with the short game of finding out X for Y, that they ignore the long term benefits of having an overall theory of the human body. They'd be a long way beyond where they are if they would spend even a little time on that.

But, then again, they aren't Scientists. So, they don't think that way. They are practitioners and as such, only see what is directly in front of them. That might have benefits, but it also has some serious drawbacks. Some of which I have listed.

Don't shoot the messenger.

Ok, so the referenced fields that have problem with stats are both not Sciences. Medicine has no theories that govern the human body. All they do is memorize a bunch of crap and then poke some squishy bits and memorize how it looks and feels when healthy/normal v.s. unhealthy/abnormal. It's really the Engineers, Physicists, Chemists and to a lesser extent (though they are gaining market-share) Biologists, that make the true breakthroughs in Medicine.

And the social "sciences" are just plain an embarrassment when it compares to real Science. Seriously...

People in the real Sciences would have been forced to take enough Mathematics and/or Statistics to be able to properly interpret Statistics. And just as importantly, be able to do proper experiment design (Medicine, I'm looking at you). Then there's the whole not being able to tell the difference between causation and correlation. I could go on.

Hear hear!!!

How exact was this funny? RMS, even though he did do good things in the beginning, is a problem. Just check out the Subversion fiasco and the strawman thread on an OpenBSD mailing list (@misc I believe). The guy's nuts. He talks about stuff that he hasn't a clue on and completely avoids any point from another person that shows.

Unfortunately, he can't really be avoided. That is, assuming that your project gets any publicity and isn't GPL'd, he'll find you. And he's a hard guy to get rid of given that his only job seems to be stirring the shit.

* Waiting to get marked troll by Linux zealots as I have a poor view of there hero.