Linux and dialup has been getting worse and worse though it probably depends on distribution. I have a Ubuntu install, it doesn't even come with a dialup client besides good old pon and poff and even pon is broken. I've setup dialup on various Linux dists since Slackware 2 so do know a bit. On Ubuntu, the dialup group is broken. Pon seems to work, the chat script runs correctly, papsecrets is correct but it doesn't connect to PPP except when first booted it does it automatically. Then of course there is the/dev hell. Not only does/dev frequently change but plug in the USB serial port and what device is it? (sttyUSB0). Plug in the USRRobotic USB modem and what device is it? I can't even remember though it was only last week when I used dmesg to figure it out. VXdial and the Gnome dialer also don't work worth a shit anymore. This is probably due to all the developers having long moved away from dial-up as well as the majority of users. Then as others mention, install a package and it wants to pull in a 100 MBs of dependencies. The system continuously complains about updates that need installing and such. The days of Linux and dial-up seem to be over so I'm typing this from OS/2 ver 4.5 where my USB modem works fine if I leave it plugged in, I have a developer trying to fix the unplugging breakage, I have a decent dialer that does NAT so I can be the gateway for the rest of the household. The only positive about Linux is it is better then Win7 at sharing.
Don't forget the respiratory depression (one accidental OD and it's permanent nap time) and tolerance-induced requirement for more and more.
There are a lot of drugs that have to be taken carefully. Hundreds of people die of aspirin a year, tylonel (sp?) is consistently in the top 10 causes of death to kids list, plus no simple respiratory depression, we're talking liver failure and a horrible week before death. Not very knowledgeable on the tolerance inducement of opiates but I know for my addictions such as coffee the tolerance thing plateaus.
the puritan attitude
Like that oh-so-Evil work ethic?
Taken to extreme the work ethic is evil. That's what this discussion is partially about. We live in a very rich society and with a little less work ethic everyone could be working a 30 hour week with low unemployment. Instead it seems we're going back to the days of the 80 hour work week for those who have a job and more and more people not having a job. Meanwhile a small segment of society skims all the productivity increases.
that drugs are bad and being addicted is really bad unless it's coffee or such.
From personal and familial experience, I can certainly attest that addiction is most certainly bad (if not socially, then physically: one or two missed doses, and "bad[1] things" start to happen).
[1] Where "badness" depends on the specific drug.
Most of my experience has been from working with people in chronic pain who take synthetic opiates. As long as they can get to the drug store regularly they seem to do fine.
Yet society accepts us caffeine addicts even if what you say about it altering the wiring of the brain and if you're worried about your kids getting exposed to caffeine I guess you keep them in a box.
Heroin is fairly harmless (causes constipation) so what would be the problem with having really cheap, clean heroin available? The main problem is the puritan attitude that drugs are bad and being addicted is really bad unless it's coffee or such.
Here in Canada we often get new parties, especially at the Provincial level. One big difference between the States and Canada is that the federal parties are mostly totally different then the provincial parties, even when sharing a name such as the BC Liberals and Canada Liberal Party they are actually totally unrelated with the BC Liberals being right wing and the federal party more centrist. Our current government started out as a tea party type party based in the western provinces. Thinking about it I think one of the big differences between Canada and the States is that elections are separated. Provinces have elections whenever, the federal government has elections whenever and municipal elections are separate as well. This is partially due to our Parliamentary system where a government can call an election whenever they want with a 5 year maximum and an election can be forced if Parliament (or Provincial Legislature) loses confidence in the government or the government can't pass a budget. The electorate does get pissed if elections are too often and usually punishes the party that can't keep their shit together. It's impossible to any length of time without a budget. Having separate elections allow different focuses and more of a variety of parties whereas in the States you guys vote for everyone at once and the option is there to vote along party lines and this encourages the parties being in every level of government. Sadly I don't think it would be easy to change that. Of course on the flip side having new parties only helps somewhat as the party that goes out of fashion often has a large scale movement to the new replacement party though with lots of retirements as well.
Isn't that the normal numbers? Democrats and Republicans keep winning the most important poll, namely the election even though one of the few things both parties agree on is the security BS.
Congress is still pretty well pure Democrats and Republicans. I believe all State governments are Democrats and Republican. America is supposed to be a democracy, voting for someone different would be a step in handling an out of control government.
It's not moral (or legal in most common law legal systems) as the prosecution can trap you into situations where any answer you give means you're guilty. The classic example is being asked "have you stopped beating your wife, answer yes or no". Now obviously you don't seem to mind the chance of being sent to jail as a wife beater but generally most people do not want to answer a loaded question like that and forcing a defendant to answer is considered wrong along with punishing a witness for answering that question.
I'm not in North America and I'm not using calling cards - these are my telco's rates.
You're lucky to live somewhere with competition.
The USA governement never owend the phone system in the first place, but they provide legalised monopolies for local service, which is what drives your insane pricing structures. I live in a country with a (mostly) deregulated environment where the incumbent telco is required to provide FRAND local loop - the line company is (imperfectly) separated from the rest of the telco to ensure there is a competitive market.
Actually the USA government did nationalize the phone service around the time of WWI for a while but that is besides the point as I'm not in the USA. Unluckily sometimes my government takes lessons from the USA government which is why when the phone service was privatized it was supposed to work the same way as it does for you and shortly changed into one of the few countries with worse service then the USA.
As a result I get unmetered 80/20Mb broadband, plus local loop, plus unlimited national calling, plus unlimited international calling as described for about $60/month - with $40 of that being the broadband (it can be had for $10/month with caps)
You can blame your government for the pricing - your state government - for protecting the monopoly of the incumbent LEC and regulating what prices they (and CLECs) can charge. It's amazing how you can justify high prices to the local regulators by fabricating charges all over the place insted of splitting off the incumbents into line company/"and the rest", then allowing true competition into the marketplace.
While you are partially right about the lack of competition being a problem, in my case it is as much due to being in a rural environment with large mountains all around and crappy copper that was laid a long time back. Until they get around to laying fiber out here or even putting in cell service there are not many choices. If I lived 10 kms down the road I would have more choice and while not getting the broadband numbers that you get, I would have much cheaper phone and faster internet with at least 3 choices. Unluckily being a large sparsely populated country, you only get good service in metropolitan areas or along the arteries connecting them., along with places the government has subsidized.
In much of America, if you're convicted under a bad law, your right to vote (amongst others) is permanently removed. Makes it that much harder to change bad laws. Most civilized countries removed the penalty of felon from the law books in the 19th century as feudal ideas such as punishing people (and their families) forever was considered feudal. America along with Nigeria still practice the feudal idea of stopping people from voting to elect people to change bad laws.
Anti-personal land mines are banned (with exceptions for a small number for training purposes) by all signatories to the Ottawa Treaty, 161 nations with only 35 UN members not having signed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Treaty. Syria didn't gain independence until 1946 so I don't know how relevant what the French signed for them in 1925 is. Hmm actually it appears that the Syrian Republic may have signed it but considering how quickly France crushed the revolt I don't think that it really counts. Anyways America attacking Syria would definitely be against international law, especially with the jury still out about who was responsible and America exaggerating the number of deaths (by apparently 3 fold) doesn't say much for the trustworthiness of America.
Most of the world has signed treaties banning land mines and cluster bombs as they kill and maim so many civilians, should a country that didn't sign into those treaties be attacked for deploying land mines? Syria and the United States of America are actually pretty similar in some ways and it's tiring listening to America bitching about countries doing exactly what they do, namely flouting international law.
With Yahoo groups (or google, etc), you have to use their web interface only and if they decide to change it you have to follow along.
The few Yahoo groups I use, I use via email as if they were another email list and if messages hadn't started showing up with no line breaks and other weird formatting along with a lot of bitching I'd never have known about the change.
Reread what I wrote, with most calling cards and such going through compression which screws up dial-up.. They work fine for voice but try using a modem and you're lucky to get better then 2400. Perhaps the telcos long distance suffers the same problem now but it used to work as well as a local call when it came to using a modem. For voice calls we use cards that are cheap but then we get hit with a $5 monthly charge for not using enough long distance. I'm sure glad the government gave away our phone system
All I know about the Colorado Potato Beetle I got from the wiki link that you posted. I have been certified for pesticide application though in forestry, not farming and have applied quite a few pesticides, mostly herbicides but occasionally insecticides and fungicides so I do know something about pesticides which seems to be more then you do. The wiki article itself says,
High fecundity usually allows Colorado potato beetle populations to withstand natural enemy pressure. Still, in the absence of insecticides natural enemies can sometimes reach densities capable of reducing Colorado potato beetle numbers below economically damaging levels. A ground beetle, Lebia grandis is a predator of the eggs and larvae and its larvae are parasitoids of the Colorado beetle's pupae. Beauveria bassiana (Hyphomycetes) is a pathogenic fungus that infects a wide range of insect species, including the Colorado potato beetle. It is probably the most widely used natural enemy of the Colorado potato beetle, with readily available commercial formulations that can be applied using a regular pesticide sprayer.
Which sounds like they are controllable through spraying fungus on them as well as encouraging their natural predators to flourish. As you say, they are native, which means there are native predators unlike foreign pests which usually flourish due to no natural predators. The trick is to help the natural predators especially as they seem to evolve insecticide tolerance quickly. I still don't understand what the bad decision was. DDT is fairly useless over time as resistance develops, the stronger organochlorides are like nuclear weapons in the sense of unintended consequences such as killing everything including people and having a long half-life. The organophosphates have similar problems when dealing with the stronger ones and still have to be changed regularly and are also broad-spectrum. Sometimes there isn't much that can be done except changing crops.
What is the point you are trying to make? That mono-culture encourages some pests? That indiscriminate use of insecticides encourage pests to evolve tolerance? That we need to use deadlier pesticides that wipe out many beneficial insects such as bees as well as negatively affecting people? Or perhaps that the Colorado potato beetle is a good example where organic methods are the best controls. Things like crop rotations, encouraging ground beetles that eat potato beetles but are perhaps more sensitive to insecticides or how using fungus is preferred to control the potato beetle and as a bonus is much more organic?
About the only thing that large numbers of countries have been able to cooperate on are thing that are of fairly immediate and mutual benefit.
We did manage to do something about the ozone layer eating chlorofluorocarbons.
Mostly due to the patents on chlorofluorocarbons running out so industry was motivated to switch to a new patented refrigerant which had the side affect of not eating ozone.
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I was thinking more of how it used to be in N. America when hours worked dropped down to 40 a week.
Leftist doesn't have to mean government involvement. Think of leftist ideals such as credit unions or co-ops.
Linux and dialup has been getting worse and worse though it probably depends on distribution. I have a Ubuntu install, it doesn't even come with a dialup client besides good old pon and poff and even pon is broken. I've setup dialup on various Linux dists since Slackware 2 so do know a bit. On Ubuntu, the dialup group is broken. Pon seems to work, the chat script runs correctly, papsecrets is correct but it doesn't connect to PPP except when first booted it does it automatically. Then of course there is the /dev hell. Not only does /dev frequently change but plug in the USB serial port and what device is it? (sttyUSB0). Plug in the USRRobotic USB modem and what device is it? I can't even remember though it was only last week when I used dmesg to figure it out.
VXdial and the Gnome dialer also don't work worth a shit anymore.
This is probably due to all the developers having long moved away from dial-up as well as the majority of users.
Then as others mention, install a package and it wants to pull in a 100 MBs of dependencies. The system continuously complains about updates that need installing and such.
The days of Linux and dial-up seem to be over so I'm typing this from OS/2 ver 4.5 where my USB modem works fine if I leave it plugged in, I have a developer trying to fix the unplugging breakage, I have a decent dialer that does NAT so I can be the gateway for the rest of the household. The only positive about Linux is it is better then Win7 at sharing.
You can find out what this is really like by downloading EcomStation.
There is a demo of the coming 2.2 release available at http://www.ecomstation.com/democd/ it's a beta so...
Heroin is fairly harmless (causes constipation)
Don't forget the respiratory depression (one accidental OD and it's permanent nap time) and tolerance-induced requirement for more and more.
There are a lot of drugs that have to be taken carefully. Hundreds of people die of aspirin a year, tylonel (sp?) is consistently in the top 10 causes of death to kids list, plus no simple respiratory depression, we're talking liver failure and a horrible week before death.
Not very knowledgeable on the tolerance inducement of opiates but I know for my addictions such as coffee the tolerance thing plateaus.
the puritan attitude
Like that oh-so-Evil work ethic?
Taken to extreme the work ethic is evil. That's what this discussion is partially about. We live in a very rich society and with a little less work ethic everyone could be working a 30 hour week with low unemployment. Instead it seems we're going back to the days of the 80 hour work week for those who have a job and more and more people not having a job. Meanwhile a small segment of society skims all the productivity increases.
that drugs are bad and being addicted is really bad unless it's coffee or such.
From personal and familial experience, I can certainly attest that addiction is most certainly bad (if not socially, then physically: one or two missed doses, and "bad[1] things" start to happen).
[1] Where "badness" depends on the specific drug.
Most of my experience has been from working with people in chronic pain who take synthetic opiates. As long as they can get to the drug store regularly they seem to do fine.
Yet society accepts us caffeine addicts even if what you say about it altering the wiring of the brain and if you're worried about your kids getting exposed to caffeine I guess you keep them in a box.
Heroin is fairly harmless (causes constipation) so what would be the problem with having really cheap, clean heroin available? The main problem is the puritan attitude that drugs are bad and being addicted is really bad unless it's coffee or such.
Here in Canada we often get new parties, especially at the Provincial level. One big difference between the States and Canada is that the federal parties are mostly totally different then the provincial parties, even when sharing a name such as the BC Liberals and Canada Liberal Party they are actually totally unrelated with the BC Liberals being right wing and the federal party more centrist. Our current government started out as a tea party type party based in the western provinces.
Thinking about it I think one of the big differences between Canada and the States is that elections are separated. Provinces have elections whenever, the federal government has elections whenever and municipal elections are separate as well. This is partially due to our Parliamentary system where a government can call an election whenever they want with a 5 year maximum and an election can be forced if Parliament (or Provincial Legislature) loses confidence in the government or the government can't pass a budget. The electorate does get pissed if elections are too often and usually punishes the party that can't keep their shit together. It's impossible to any length of time without a budget.
Having separate elections allow different focuses and more of a variety of parties whereas in the States you guys vote for everyone at once and the option is there to vote along party lines and this encourages the parties being in every level of government. Sadly I don't think it would be easy to change that.
Of course on the flip side having new parties only helps somewhat as the party that goes out of fashion often has a large scale movement to the new replacement party though with lots of retirements as well.
Isn't that the normal numbers? Democrats and Republicans keep winning the most important poll, namely the election even though one of the few things both parties agree on is the security BS.
Congress is still pretty well pure Democrats and Republicans. I believe all State governments are Democrats and Republican.
America is supposed to be a democracy, voting for someone different would be a step in handling an out of control government.
It's not moral (or legal in most common law legal systems) as the prosecution can trap you into situations where any answer you give means you're guilty. The classic example is being asked "have you stopped beating your wife, answer yes or no". Now obviously you don't seem to mind the chance of being sent to jail as a wife beater but generally most people do not want to answer a loaded question like that and forcing a defendant to answer is considered wrong along with punishing a witness for answering that question.
I'm not in North America and I'm not using calling cards - these are my telco's rates.
You're lucky to live somewhere with competition.
The USA governement never owend the phone system in the first place, but they provide legalised monopolies for local service, which is what drives your insane pricing structures. I live in a country with a (mostly) deregulated environment where the incumbent telco is required to provide FRAND local loop - the line company is (imperfectly) separated from the rest of the telco to ensure there is a competitive market.
Actually the USA government did nationalize the phone service around the time of WWI for a while but that is besides the point as I'm not in the USA. Unluckily sometimes my government takes lessons from the USA government which is why when the phone service was privatized it was supposed to work the same way as it does for you and shortly changed into one of the few countries with worse service then the USA.
As a result I get unmetered 80/20Mb broadband, plus local loop, plus unlimited national calling, plus unlimited international calling as described for about $60/month - with $40 of that being the broadband (it can be had for $10/month with caps)
You can blame your government for the pricing - your state government - for protecting the monopoly of the incumbent LEC and regulating what prices they (and CLECs) can charge. It's amazing how you can justify high prices to the local regulators by fabricating charges all over the place insted of splitting off the incumbents into line company/"and the rest", then allowing true competition into the marketplace.
While you are partially right about the lack of competition being a problem, in my case it is as much due to being in a rural environment with large mountains all around and crappy copper that was laid a long time back. Until they get around to laying fiber out here or even putting in cell service there are not many choices. If I lived 10 kms down the road I would have more choice and while not getting the broadband numbers that you get, I would have much cheaper phone and faster internet with at least 3 choices.
Unluckily being a large sparsely populated country, you only get good service in metropolitan areas or along the arteries connecting them., along with places the government has subsidized.
Be a long wait as the Conservatives have defunded Elections Canada quite a bit to make sure the wheels of justice don't turn.
Caffeine is pretty addicting and routinely targeted at kids and sold most everywhere in one form or another.
In much of America, if you're convicted under a bad law, your right to vote (amongst others) is permanently removed. Makes it that much harder to change bad laws. Most civilized countries removed the penalty of felon from the law books in the 19th century as feudal ideas such as punishing people (and their families) forever was considered feudal. America along with Nigeria still practice the feudal idea of stopping people from voting to elect people to change bad laws.
Anti-personal land mines are banned (with exceptions for a small number for training purposes) by all signatories to the Ottawa Treaty, 161 nations with only 35 UN members not having signed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Treaty.
Syria didn't gain independence until 1946 so I don't know how relevant what the French signed for them in 1925 is.
Hmm actually it appears that the Syrian Republic may have signed it but considering how quickly France crushed the revolt I don't think that it really counts.
Anyways America attacking Syria would definitely be against international law, especially with the jury still out about who was responsible and America exaggerating the number of deaths (by apparently 3 fold) doesn't say much for the trustworthiness of America.
Most of the world has signed treaties banning land mines and cluster bombs as they kill and maim so many civilians, should a country that didn't sign into those treaties be attacked for deploying land mines? Syria and the United States of America are actually pretty similar in some ways and it's tiring listening to America bitching about countries doing exactly what they do, namely flouting international law.
With Yahoo groups (or google, etc), you have to use their web interface only and if they decide to change it you have to follow along.
The few Yahoo groups I use, I use via email as if they were another email list and if messages hadn't started showing up with no line breaks and other weird formatting along with a lot of bitching I'd never have known about the change.
Reread what I wrote, with most calling cards and such going through compression which screws up dial-up.. They work fine for voice but try using a modem and you're lucky to get better then 2400. Perhaps the telcos long distance suffers the same problem now but it used to work as well as a local call when it came to using a modem. For voice calls we use cards that are cheap but then we get hit with a $5 monthly charge for not using enough long distance. I'm sure glad the government gave away our phone system
And yet the price of food seems to be increasing faster then most anything else.
You need to change your posting preferences to "Plain Old Text"
All I know about the Colorado Potato Beetle I got from the wiki link that you posted. I have been certified for pesticide application though in forestry, not farming and have applied quite a few pesticides, mostly herbicides but occasionally insecticides and fungicides so I do know something about pesticides which seems to be more then you do. The wiki article itself says,
High fecundity usually allows Colorado potato beetle populations to withstand natural enemy pressure. Still, in the absence of insecticides natural enemies can sometimes reach densities capable of reducing Colorado potato beetle numbers below economically damaging levels. A ground beetle, Lebia grandis is a predator of the eggs and larvae and its larvae are parasitoids of the Colorado beetle's pupae. Beauveria bassiana (Hyphomycetes) is a pathogenic fungus that infects a wide range of insect species, including the Colorado potato beetle. It is probably the most widely used natural enemy of the Colorado potato beetle, with readily available commercial formulations that can be applied using a regular pesticide sprayer.
Which sounds like they are controllable through spraying fungus on them as well as encouraging their natural predators to flourish. As you say, they are native, which means there are native predators unlike foreign pests which usually flourish due to no natural predators. The trick is to help the natural predators especially as they seem to evolve insecticide tolerance quickly.
I still don't understand what the bad decision was. DDT is fairly useless over time as resistance develops, the stronger organochlorides are like nuclear weapons in the sense of unintended consequences such as killing everything including people and having a long half-life. The organophosphates have similar problems when dealing with the stronger ones and still have to be changed regularly and are also broad-spectrum. Sometimes there isn't much that can be done except changing crops.
What is the point you are trying to make? That mono-culture encourages some pests? That indiscriminate use of insecticides encourage pests to evolve tolerance? That we need to use deadlier pesticides that wipe out many beneficial insects such as bees as well as negatively affecting people?
Or perhaps that the Colorado potato beetle is a good example where organic methods are the best controls. Things like crop rotations, encouraging ground beetles that eat potato beetles but are perhaps more sensitive to insecticides or how using fungus is preferred to control the potato beetle and as a bonus is much more organic?
Like the mountain pine beetle as well as many other pests that are controlled by freezing?
About the only thing that large numbers of countries have been able to cooperate on are thing that are of fairly immediate and mutual benefit.
We did manage to do something about the ozone layer eating chlorofluorocarbons.
Mostly due to the patents on chlorofluorocarbons running out so industry was motivated to switch to a new patented refrigerant which had the side affect of not eating ozone.