"The Trusted Computing Group (TCG), successor to the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance (TCPA), is an initiative started by AMD, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Microsoft and Wave Systems Corp. to implement Trusted Computing."

Hope this helps clarify the situation for you.

Well, the typical answer is that fruit juice, if it hasn't been cooked to oblivion, has enzymes in it that may assist in processing the sugars. Of course, finding non-pasteurized juice is about a bitch any more unless you go someplace they make it in front of you and overcharge you for the privilege. Which is why we have a juicer... And why you should drink water and eat fruit if you're out and care about such things.

Personally, I had a Coca-Cola habit that led to an ulcer than went away when I stopped drinking it. Now I associate the taste of Coke with the taste of blood. Didn't they try that back in the eighties or something?

The problem with HFCS isn't so much the fact of eating HFCS as how it is actually used. The comment at the top of this thread really nailed it. In some recipes you can effectively replace oil with HFCS if you throw enough citric acid in to balance out the flavor. This has two immediate benefits to the processed food industry. First, HFCS is cheaper than even lousy vegetable oil. Second, oil goes off, but sugar and citric acid are both food preservatives. Not only does the substitution reduce the problem of spoilage of the oil, but it also actually helps preserve the other ingredients of the food. This, and not the chemical composition, is the reason why you should put a product back down if you see HFCS in the list of ingredients. It's technically food, but if you compared the recipe from something from (for example) The Joy of Cooking, all of the recipes would most closely match something from the dessert section except for the perplexing inclusion of a crapload of citric acid.

Beef takes more resources to produce than produce, but vegetables are more difficult to transport than ground beef, and they keep for a dramatically shorter period. Some parts of the country are completely unsuitable for production of some of the crops which we expect to see year-round in our supermarkets, so the real cost of putting certain vegetables on the shelf can be much higher than you might imagine. This is what the farm-to-table types are always on about; eliminating the transportation energy costs permits you to eat a higher quality of food without spending more money. It does require you to eat seasonally in most of the world, which is in turn a fun opportunity instead of a hardship if you have a few skills which used to be more or less universal and which will always serve you in hard times.

Just as it's ridiculous to suggest that fast food is the only driver of the obesity epidemic, I also believe that the numbers prove that it is one of the largest contributing factors. However, there's really no substantive difference between fast food and the processed foods located in the center of the supermarket. They're made of a bunch of crap and they've been cooked until they only superficially resemble food. Actual food has things like enzymes in it, and if it includes something like corn syrup it's not being used in place of vegetable oil and the flavor balanced with citric acid.

Also, you're glossing over the role that eating out in a typical restaurant in America plays, which has been discussed above in this thread. Most restaurants serve portions which are very large when compared to the actual caloric requirements of the average American; I'm not necessarily complaining, because I too prefer to have more food than I will eat than to go hungry at the end of the meal, especially when I'm paying any significant amount of money. The margins on food service have only become slimmer in recent years. Unfortunately, we have a tendency (whether learned or inherited) to clean our plates, so these two drives are somewhat problematic.

In summary, the argument was not solely about fast food, but it's clear that a large portion of the blame can be laid there.

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

Perhaps if we were interested in a meritocracy we would institute a system whereas people who are appreciated by others would be given nice places to live among other people who are appreciated, and we can drive the people who must make others' lives worse into the ghettos to do it to one another instead of to everyone.

I can dream, can't I?

I don't suppose those riots were actually a result of the actions which were leaked about? No, it's because of a leak, according to you, the person who also crafted a sentence which says that people were killed as a result of the leaks themselves.

Perhaps we should lay the blame at the feet of the people who actually did the things that we're finding out about now, and not the people telling us about them? I mean, if you actually care about improvement, and not just looking clever and feeling like you've done something when in fact you have done fuck all.

The TPM is going into the CPU. You will not be able to opt out. It's a fact. It will still be in there. Do you really believe there won't be a way to turn it on and use it against you? And if so, on what basis? By the very specification, you are not permitted to be in charge of your own hardware. That is unacceptable to say the least.

I am a bit unclear as to how you go from "everything the Germans wanted was ignored" to "sour grapes". Could you please explain your thought process there?

The privilege is speaking your own mind. The responsibility is to permit others to speak theirs, which is something a Real Names policy interferes with.

Electronic ID for use with government and only with government can reasonably be issued by government. For everything else, I'd rather generate my own key.

While the only way this will stop is if no one will work on it, believing that no one will work on it is ridiculous. The software to do this sort of thing will be developed whether the goal is secrecy or not; robots need to be able to do face recognition to be able to work with humans in a human way, which is a common goal. Complaining of people developing the technology is therefore nothing more or less than a waste of time and emotional involvement. You should instead complain about the trends in society which cause the technology to be misused.

You're not asking a lot, you're just asking a lot more than is necessary.

The safest behavior is to drop back to a known-good checkpoint on another node, something like a complete system shutdown and image. What vmware is doing is the best compromise between that best case and the case where you really need to continue performing work. But if you know that you have problems that demand that level of paranoia, you are free to process your workloads through a job-processing system on systems which will panic and explode rather than risk compromising output.

Those who understand Unix are doomed to reinvent it... functionally

And those who do not understand software development are doomed to try to compete with Linux.