I generally agree with your response. My only slight irritation is with how you wrote out the Python code. It looks a bit...uglier? and more verbose than it needs to be, especially compared to the others. This looks better to me:
from commands import getoutput
if getoutput('which bash') == '/bin/bash':
do_stuff()
Although if your goal is to determine if e.g. bash is located in /bin, then I would do:
bash:
if [ -e '/bin/bash' ];
then
do_stuff
fi
(I don't know Ruby.)
Python:
import os.path
if os.path.exists('/bin/bash'):
do_stuff()
I find your tone incredibly condescending. What average person has the time, energy, and expertise for all of this? What you propose doesn't sound practical to me at all. Take this statement:
> they spend 20+ years meeting with politicians, advocating their position, forming lobbying groups, and slowly winning politicians over.
This is exactly what I'm talking about - what average working person with a family can compete with an army of full time lobbyists whose job it is to meet with congress, take them out for meals, and do whatever else they do to get what they want?
Doing all this is a lobbyist's full time job. They're backed by various industries with seemingly unlimited wealth. Compared to the average person's net worth, their funding may as well be unlimited. What average person with a full time job and family could ever compete with this in his or her limited off time? How practical and useful is it for us to flood congress with letters, emails and faxes "all the time, every time"? I don't think this is a useful strategy at all!
And what's wrong with "complaining about it on an internet forum"? Sometimes it's nice to vent the frustration and hopelessness to people who understand. I certainly do. There's nothing wrong with this. Sometimes complaining is all we CAN do right now.
The only practical solution I have found is to fund those whose full time job it is to be watchdogs and to fight back, like the EFF. That's about the best I can do for now. I haven't been shown another reasonable action that I can take that would be truly useful.
It's quite fascinating really. The police officer he has come up to speak talks about some of the tricks they use to get people to confess and they talk about word tricks they use to get convictions even of innocent people. It's pretty terrifying.
What I find interesting is how many TV shows depict suspects running their mouths to the police like they're all buddies. You're NEVER supposed to do that. Even innocent people can very easily incriminate themselves, as they show in the above video.
Speaking of Texas and executions, have you ever read about Todd Willingham?
Willingham was convicted of "multiple infanticide" for burning his house down with his daughters still inside. He maintained his innocence until the end, and finally found a fire investigator to review the case shortly before he was scheduled to be executed. The investigator provided conclusive evidence that he DID NOT start the fire, but the Board of Pardons and Paroles apparently didn't even read it:
“The only reasonable conclusion is that the governor’s office and the Board of Pardons and Paroles ignored scientific evidence.”
And so, sadly, he was executed.
There are so many WTFs in this case, which is probably partly why the article is so long. One thing that stood out is how the witness testimony changed from "he was frantically trying to put the fire out" to "he didn't seem to be doing much of all" after he was charged with starting the fire (the witnesses became biased). And how the fire investigators could be high school drop outs with minimal training, and how they used gut feelings and super outdated science while investigating the case. Their investigation is really what caused him to be convicted. Pretty sad story, and it seems to happen a lot like this, especially in Texas.
We used the Ubiquiti wireless access points at my last job. Aside from being awesome for the price, the management software was a cinch to install on Ubuntu and seemed quite cool (what little I saw of it). They really seem to know what they're doing.
> His formula doesn't make any sense.
> It's pseudoscience.
This "formula" appears to be meant as a shortcut to remind people following his plan to eat higher micronutrient per calorie foods. I don't think it was ever meant to be a proper math equation or anything, and I'm surprised people are picking this one aspect out of context to ridicule it endlessly without truly understanding what Dr. Fuhrman means by it.
I agree with you on needing evidence, and as I said before, he references every claim in his books, in his newsletters, and even on his blog. As to whether they are solid references, I don't know. Most of them are from medical journals and studies I don't have access to.
But either way, who benefits? His entire plain consists of cutting out things like salt, sugar and added fats, and only eating vegetables, fruits, nuts, beans and seeds in some order (as a very basic summary). What does he have to gain aside from maybe selling a book? Once you know the plan most people need nothing else from him.
As to your lone voice claim, I haven't seen that. He works with several doctors, nutritionists, and researchers (NOT just Oz) and seems to have a thriving medical practice that has helped thousands of people.
As to the rest of your concerns:
1. What courses? I've never seen him sell any courses, unless you mean site membership, which is optional and for support only if you need it. Unless he has stock in all the major produce growers of the world, I'm not sure what he truly has to sell once a person buys the book and follows his plan. Everything else (like supplements) is optional and for support only if you need it.
2. $7 one time, not monthly. I'm puzzled why why these aren't free too. Like I said, he references every one of his claims, if you're into that. There are hundreds of references to various medical journals, papers, studies, etc. in his book Eat To Live, for example.
3. I think he uses H = N/C not as a true math equation, but as more of a shortcut to help people remember to get as many nutrients per calorie as they can (which is fundamental to his plan). I'm surprised you and others are getting hung up on this (and with such ridicule) without even bothering to understand it in context.
4. True, but what's his incentive? To sell more produce? He doesn't sell a miracle cure, and I can tell you right now that eating the way he wants you to eat is certainly not simple for me and many others. One thing I've noticed is that the bulk of people coming to him seem to be those (like me) who have spent years in pain due to "incurable" diseases, or people who have already had multiple bypass surgeries and everything else, and are sent home to prepare for death. It seems suffering provides extreme motivation.
5. I can't disagree with you on this one.
I can understand your skepticism a little, but it's not as if his website is a long form sales letter with javascript BUT WAIT popups when you try to exit it. Isn't one function of a website, I would say the primary function even, to market something? He markets his ideas and sells optional products for the benefit of his patients. What's shady about that? No miracle cure diets, pills, "free reports", etc. No long form sales letters.
I'd just hate for people to live a life of pain and suffering believing "inflammation in the colon has nothing to do with what is eaten" when it probably does, and when something can be done about it that doesn't necessarily involve their colon being removed and/or an early death.
While that may be the dominant theory it doesn't appear to be true. I follow a doctor out of NJ who uses dietary intervention to successfully treat a lot of diseases most doctors will say are "incurable", including ulcerative colitis, IBS, lupus, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, and diabetes (the adult onset type). He has an entire newsletter devoted to the following:
Inflammatory Bowel Disease – Aggresive dietary modifications hold key to relief and recovery.
He shows (with references to back every claim, as with all of his writing) that these diseases DEFINITELY have a LOT to do with what is eaten.
The newsletter is $7. I wish it were free for as important as I feel this issue is. I would hope that before you continue to make such definite, and possibly dangerous claims, that you would fork over the money to at least make sure you're not helping to send people down the path of needless pain and suffering.
I'm surprised nobody else on his blog or on HN has mentioned this. I didn't find this post heartwarming as much as I found it gut-wrenching, but only because I've been there myself to a lesser degree (which was still terribly exhausting and heartbreaking in so many ways).
This list is definitely more interesting to me. I discovered a few of these already this year and have been using them a lot (mtr, pv, curl for inspecting headers) and several others that I know I'm going to start messing with immediately (siege, multitail).
Another VERY useful tool I didn't see on this list is iperf. From the Debian package description:
Iperf is a modern alternative for measuring TCP and UDP bandwidth performance, allowing the tuning of various parameters and characteristics.
Features:
* Measure bandwidth, packet loss, delay jitter
* Report MSS/MTU size and observed read sizes.
* Support for TCP window size via socket buffers.
* Multi-threaded. Client and server can have multiple simultaneous connections.
* Client can create UDP streams of specified bandwidth.
* Multicast and IPv6 capable.
* Options can be specified with K (kilo-) and M (mega-) suffices.
* Can run for specified time, rather than a set amount of data to transfer.
* Picks the best units for the size of data being reported.
* Server handles multiple connections.
* Print periodic, intermediate bandwidth, jitter, and loss reports at specified intervals.
* Server can be run as a daemon.
* Use representative streams to test out how link layer compression affects your achievable bandwidth.
I use iperf initially when I'm troubleshooting poor file server transfer speeds, for example. There's a pretty Java GUI too if you want that.
Their marketing materials say this is much easier but it doesn't seem easier to me. Right now, we have a three node Enterprise Plus, six CPU cluster. This is six licenses period.
Now, I have to track vRAM usage and decide to purchase EP licenses for all available RAM or just go with usage + growth for the year...or something. I'm not sure how that's easier.
Yep - we just bought 54 x 8GB DDR3-1333 Registered DIMMs for about 10K, and we can sell the 54 x 4GB modules we are replacing for about 2-3K on eBay. But since this is a VMware cluster, now I have to scramble to see what this is going to cost me in additional licensing before I upgrade. :(
I've read books on this because I have had to deal with more than one of these people. One of the leading experts on Narcissism says that most therapists won't even deal with these people they are so difficult to treat.
Although if your goal is to determine if e.g. bash is located in /bin, then I would do:
bash:
(I don't know Ruby.)
Python:
I know I'm just splitting hairs. :)