Comment Re:In fairness (Score 1) 421
No aliens. No spies.
Dude, it's a minor work.
No aliens. No spies.
Dude, it's a minor work.
Pretend you used unix from the start and the web comes along decades later and you have your stuff set up all nice and lo and behold all seventeen web pages work and nearly 700 people a year look them and next thing you know your buddy wants his bread clip collection to have it's own home page and your girlfriend's friends wants to put an anthology of lesbian vegan poetty online so you go fuckit and cut and paste their stuff up then that want to update it themselves so you show them vi wish them the best of luck and get back to fixing sendmail.
Fast forward years later and 300 people are using your stuff and you've written enough tools so you never have to talk to them again they can be busy little beavers updating merrily and rarely call. When they so you slip into root, fiddle with something and they're done.
Now, when you have root on a web server it's very different from having one user account on a machine and the later is really how you want to do this. It's convenient as hell to be logged in as root all the time, everything works. But it's really not a good idea. So in the past decade everybody I know has tried to do that. And it seems to work. With enough stuff in place you really don't need root in normal operation. In fact I'd go so far as to say other than catastrophic failure or radically new hardware there is never any reason to use root that can't be accomplished by the proper tool. I'm 99% sure this is true. Maybe 99.9.
So, I don't see why the android/root issue is any different from what happened with unix as we went from logging into a VT-100 as root to now where it's been years since I've had to.
So I think his point is very valid. Doesn't mean this doesn't bother me though; if I pay for it I get to decide what fucking code it will run and thank you very much, I'm not buying a service here.
I think in the end companies that make more sensible hardware will do better than ones that pull stupid stunts like this. One has to wonder where the real motivation behind it originates.
It worked really well up until the point corruption went wild, they had a massive real estate bubble, followed by one going on two lost decades where they've propped up their economy with massive public works projects and piles of debt. Of course lately they are printing money at a furious place to try to break the deflationary spiral they've been in for like 20 years.
They also have a demographic time bomb because young people have stopped having jobs, hope or babies so they can't support their rapidly exploding senior population.
Uh, I thought they all have, with the possible exception of Russia and China and a few smaller ones like Cuba, Venezuala and Ecuador?
Correct. If you read the Amazon one star review they point out how the test results were biased and could only prove vitamins didn't work. When your only test patients are only very sick guys that happens.
Ben Goldacre in his Ted Talk exposes how and why this happens.
Wikipedia lists the fines levied against the pharmaceutical companies. Go look at it. It's impressive.
Wiki will also point out, Iatrogenesis, death as a side effect of modern medicine is the third leading cause of death in the US.
Number of deaths from vitamin overdoses: 0. In over 100 years. Deaths from patent medicines: 30,000 a year in the US alone.
Article is an excerpt from a book written by a guy that sold vaccines for big pharma. I'm not against vaccines, they're a good thing (although there is still plenty of room to be nervous without believing in autism/mercury).
But you have to keep in mind the vaccine industry has been at war with Pauling since he showed a IV drop of C will cure Polio. If you actually look it up you can find where he did that, and unlike everybody else here will have verified something in the article.
Because every claim made by the author in that article is probably wrong.
Shame on The Atlantic for this puff piece. They usually have good science.
Please see "Nutrition in a nutshell" by Wiliams (1961) to learn about the biochemistry of enzyme absorption in the human diet and an explanation as to why large dosages are required.
If you've read this and have a specific fault with either his logic or premises I'd like to hear it.
Otherwise I'm guessing you literally don't actually know what you're talking about.
Pauling was way before Davis. Look it up.
Also look up the medical consensus on the "facts" claimed in the article.
Either he's unaware of them, or flat out lies. But he's clearly and verifiably wrong in nearly every paragraph he wrote.
A few evenings with Google scholar will verify that. The whole thing is misleading.
It makes it sound like Pauling died prematurely of cancer. He was 93 ffs.
In fact all the greats in the field Pauling invented died in their 90s.
Now go look at the ages of the people who claimed they're quacks died at. I think you might be a little surprised, that is, if nothing else, advocates of the sort of medicine Pauling espoused - which if, unlike the author of the hack article, is actually based on sound science if you care to research it, all die at a statistically significantly older age than average.
For I assert that when these proponents all die in their 90s while their critics mostly pass on before 60 then it might be worth taking the time to read their work more carefully.
And the interesting thing is if you do do that you'll read how they state how the drug companies deliberately improperly test these things to deliberately get false results.
For example the article mentions C and the cold a few times as if it did nothing. This is not true, if you look it up there is consensus that is limits the number of sick days and makes the symptoms less. That's in what Pauling would call a small dose, in higher doses the symptoms are even more diminished.
Yet the article pretends this isn't true. Why?
In each case the author makes a point about something nor working or being harmful it can be shown there is an other explanation than the one being offered; some of these are egregiously faulty test designs (See the one star reviews on Amazon to explore this further, they're well documented there). Lazy or lying? Which one?
The author implied that C is of no use in cancer. Currently, C has a higher cure rate than Chemo and radiation put together. He's unaware of this or is he lying?
Ignore this article. It's utter rubbish.
Look up some actual values then try that again. You're not even close.
You have no idea what you're talking about.
Go look up some numbers. Compare them to 10 and 100 years ago. Notice the nutritional density has gone down?
Now compare it with 100,000 and 1.5Mya.
When you can do that off the top of your head and can quote numbers I'd be inclined to agree. Otherwise it sounds like you're just making it up. Because what you said absolutely isn't true for a number of reasons. If you knew enough biochemistry to understand this you would never say a thing like that so it would be very difficult to explain this to you, or at least lengthy.
Hey NASA, you heard of this place called JPL out by Cal Tech. They've been landing rovers on Mars for a while now which is WAY harder than landing one on the moon. Why don't you give them a call and stop being clueless and pathetic.
P.S.
Elon, please launch Falcon Heavy so we can shut NASA down and put the money in to your actual space program instead of the empty shell that is NASA these days
I remember the BSD daemonette. I guess I don't mind having my balls grabbed as much as you do Bruce.
OK now you are dismissive AND arrogant. Good work, I am more concerned about you and your field of endeavor than I was when this started.
The fact that genomic research HAS enabled the ability to engineer organisms that can be extremely dangerous, and can potentially be dangerous to only targetted groups is intensely intertwined with all the beneficial advances in the field. You simply can't separate the two and pretend the dark side isn't there.
Genomics is simply a very dangeorus field. Its given an ethically challenged species the ability to play god and tamper with life itself. Its just a matter of time until someone will tamper with it and it wont end well.
"Yes, I singled out rednecks and skinheadsâ¦"
There wasn't even a tinge of humor in it, not sure why you are claiming there was.
You are engaging in the very kind of stereotyping and targeting of groups you've been preaching against and dismissing. And to pile on you just added a bunch more groups you hold in contempt and would probably just as soon seen wiped off the face of the earth.
Its the kind of bigotry a well educated, probably liberal, affluent person such as yourself would refuse to accept as bigotry. It doesn't really bother me that you are doing it. It bothers me you don't seem to even realize you are doing it.
" What do *you* think should be done to address the problem(s) that concerns you? What is your contribution?"
Not really sure there is anything that can be done. The genie is already out of the bottle. You can pass laws and try to suppress it which will slow beneficial use and do nothing to hamper malevolent use.
There are already people actively trying to alter organisms in their garage and on kickstarter. I assure you there are nation states like North Korea who have the capacity to do malevolent work. It is also well with in the range of well funded extremist groups.
Probably the best thing I can contribute is the thing I did contribute. Remind everyone that this technology is extremely powerful, if you are going to dwell on the upside you should at least remain aware of the downside. Since you seem to be actively involved in the field your dismissive attitude towards the dangers makes me more concerned, not less.
Your assertion that no one will ever try eugenics again is delusional. There are groups and people who are fully committed to it today, all they need is the power to implement it. Hungary for example is already drifting towards an anti semitic neo nazi state in the heart of Europe. As Greece plunges in to an economic abyss, a fascist state is a highly possible outcome. Genomics would have been a boon to the final solution and breeding a master race.
Claiming your commitment to "wisdom of civilization and culture" while you sling epithets like "redneck" and "skinhead" doesn't put you or your cause in a positive light. Labeling people as "rednecks" indicates you have a tendency to stereotype people the same way eugenicists do.
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. -- Jerome Klapka Jerome