For crying out loud, call a crisis hotline or a friend next time you feel like harming yourself. You're no good to us unless you're here alive and well.
Obviously you've never been in a situation like this. There are times when depression can cloud rational thought and even though you may normally be the type of person that would never harm yourself or commit suicide, you do. It just takes a second or two, a bad snap judgment, and you do something you cannot take back.
Mr. Coward, you are correct. I had depression for a while. I learned quite a bit about what it is and how it works. First, you have so-called normal people. They may get sad and say they are depressed. These bouts may last days, for example, after a traumatic event such as the death of a spouse or parent. That is not real depression. Then there are people like me who were trapped in a bad situation for a long period of time and just couldn't deal with the pressure. That's just a worse case of the first scenario. Finally, there are the truly depressed people. They have a chemical or other imbalance in their brains that causes depression for no reason. Everything could be going well in life, and they just start crying, get into a funk, and can't get out of it. They may snap out of it and be okay for a while. Depression moves in cycles.
I read an article in one of the IEEE magazines about two months ago on exactly this topic. Essentially, physicians implant an electrode in the patients brain that stimulates the area responsible for depression, so it helps avoid those slumps. It has a similar function to SSRIs, aka Prozac and other drugs that mess around with serotonin, but with few if any side effects. Similar to a pacemaker, a surgeon can implant an electrode and small battery into the patient's head that requires infrequent maintenance (every few years). If this works long-term, I think it will be a very good thing. Many otherwise productive members of society are unable to function at times because of depression. If we can remove that depression, we are stronger as a society, an economy, and most importantly, as a family. I know what depression can do to a family. It isn't pretty.
Maybe Lincoln was depressed, maybe he was not. I am not an expert on that topic so I won't debate it. However, assuming he was, I think he would have been just as effective without the depression. Those same thoughts and tendancies in his brain would still be there, but he would have been clearer and more rational (not that he was or wasn't already, just more so). I know from experience that the times I was on the up part of my depression cycle I was clearer and more rational, but I still had the same thoughts. I just dealt with them better.
I think the "papers, please" line refers more to the Soviet Union, when people were locked down and travel between states was restricted. You needed official documentation to prove you had a reason to travel, even if just to visit family.
I don't see a national ID as being in the same category. While the proverbial papers showed authorization for a specific activity, a national ID just reduces redundancy from a system. It does not add restrictions on behavior. That being said, I think it does make it easier for a government to take the next step toward reducing freedoms, but it does not guarantee that it will do so.
I said nothing about shoving anything down your throat. I merely said how I want things for *myself*. If you don't like the same things I do, then vote with your dollar and spend it on something else.
Is premarital sex immoral? I did it, and I don't think it is. Maybe according to Christianity, since the Bible does say it is immoral, but I am atheist. Your morals don't apply to me.
I'll take my video games and movies with sex and violence, Christian fundamentalists can go to hell.
The Declaration of Independence is not a basis for law. Its sole purpose was to tell the King of Englad to go fuck himself. However, it does set the tone and spirit of the Constitution, and is part of the reason we say we have a "free country." As for revolution: federal law bans violent overthrow of the government. However, the Constitution provides peaceful means to accomplish the same thing. I think this is rather hypocritical, considering how the writers of the Constitution overthrew the previous government with much bloodshed.
I really do think we need a revolution. We need to keep the same Constitution but get rid of all the politicians and about 75% of the U.S. Code. There is too much pork and corruption. I've sent letters to my representatives both at the state and federal level. I make my opinions known to my peers. Still, no change. Eventually I hope we achieve a critical mass of dissent and force a peaceful revolution.
I currently live in the south and refuse to soak my clothes with sweat by the time I get to work. Even though the AC rarely gets cold enough on the drive, I spend less time and don't have direct sunlight to heat me up.
Hyperbole. Democrats love to tax and spend. I am not going to go research exact numbers when the point is they love to tax. The Republicans are bad too, but don't have that stigma.
Clinton had republican Congress to deal with at least part of the time, and in any event, I am talking party platforms, not what really happens. I used the word "want," not "does." If either party had 100% control over our legislature we'd have major problems.
As other posters mentioned there are ways around this, but still, it is focusing on the wrong area. There are much more productive ways to spend time increasing security than pissing and moaning about reusing a password several years old. 27 passwords at 3 months per password is almost 7 years. Who cares? Try dual authentication, better passwords to begin with, and better security over the network itself (e.g. encrypting traffic).
Since you brought up the topic of U.S. government: while we may not have the free and open republic that some claim we have, our government really does respond to pressure from citizens. Usually by jerking their knees, but they do respond. When Chinese citizens protested in Tieneman Square in 1989, what did the government do to change or even acknowledge problems? Nothing. What did the U.S. government do when tens of thousands of U.S. citizens protested over a draconian immigration bill? Our Congressmen stopped what they were doing and started drafting a compromise. While it is a bit of a circus and I doubt they'll implement a good solution, the important point is that they listened. Jintao's government does not.
Where I work currently, the network saves my last 27 passwords. New passwords cannot be in that list, and are checked for similarity to those passwords. A certain number of characters must be different, and not just switched around ("password" v. "apssowdr"). Users cannot just cycle through passwords, there is a minimum and a maxmimum age.
I think the key here is to separate Chinese citizens from the Chinese government. While the citizens and ex-citizens that I have met have been nothing less than friendly, intelligent, and generally good people, their government is corrupt to the bone and doesn't really care about their people.
The alleged actions the GP poster mentioned all are the responsibility of the government.
Chinese people elect their government the same way we elect circus clowns. They don't.
They had a revolution, and chose the bad choice over the really bad choice. Sure, some of them are content, but they know that they have no say about what goes on in their government. They know that the government hands out ultimatums such as this one (help us or go out of business) on a regulat basis.
The only way you can justify the Chinese people choosing their government is because they choose not to have another revolution. Given how difficult that is in a dictatorship with an iron fist, we really can't hold that against them.
The real question is what part the USA should play in helping them with their government. I say fuck'em. Let them do it themselves. We need to stop nation building and setting up puppet governments. If they never get a clue, too bad for them.
Whether the news reports it and people read it or not, crap like this will happen anyway. Would rape stop if the news stopped reporting it? Hell no. We would be ignorant from the truth. Stomping a cat to death is despicable, immoral (by my standards), and most importantly, illegal anywhere I know of.
What if this happened in the USA? That woman would stand trial for animal cruelty and probably go to jail. Certainly not for as long as murder, maybe only a few months, but she would see justice. The video would definitely continue around the Internet, though. We would be free to watch or not to watch as we see fit. We would know that it happened and be able to form our own conclusions about it. Some people such as myself despise animal cruelty (I am not an environmentalist or vegetarian. Kill my beef and poultry humanely and let me eat it). Some people think it is ok. The key is that we have that freedom of thought, and while our government officials certainly try to enforce their moral standards on us, for the most part, they fail.
We are free to see the information for ourselves and form our own conclusions. While stomping a cat may be illegal in the USA, possessing and viewing a video of the act is not.
Gonzales did make a statement about child pornography. While I consider that to be a separate issue from the normal kind, I could see him making the jump and calling all pornography bad. Anyway, in order for Bush to call news "unhealthy" he would have to read the news.
...and spend those hours waiting for a late train next to a guy who smells like the bathroom after my dad uses it. No thanks.
There's always that one guy on the train/subway that's creepy and smells bad. Come to think of it, I've been riding the train for years and never seen him.
My commute is 5 minutes, and most of that is spent between my house and car, and car and office. Then again, I live 1/4 mile from my office and have a single traffic light on the way. Every once in a while I'll have to stop for a school bus. Other than that, it's a very stress-free commute.
The main difference between the two is that the Democrats want to make sure my take home pay is less than half my gross salary and that if I don't like it I can just get free handouts from the government. The Republicans want to regulate what I do in my bedroom, then send me off to war to secure them more oil.
If you look at the financial freedom v. personal freedom aspects, they are different. However, they both want to restrict my freedoms. They both want power and control over me. How they achieve this is different, but the goal is the same. It's like having a mugger with a knife and a gun. How he achieves his goal is up for debate, but no matter what, he wants the same thing.
Go back and read the Constitution. Only a member of Congress may introduce legislation to Congress. However, the president (or anyone else) is free to write up a bill, give it to a Congressman, and have him introduce it for him. Presidents do this all the time. The "Patriot" Act was written by the Department of Justice to increase police state powers. When 9/11 came along they just did a search and replace to add "terrorism" to it, handed it to a Congressman, and the rest is history. There are plenty of other examples, such as the New Deal. Roosevelt wrote up all those spending bills but never introduced a single one.
Ideally this would be in a sandbox, similar to a virtual machine. That way all you have to do is kill the VM, and all that crud is gone. Since it's a VM, you can easily make backup copies of the file system -- similar to a restore partition on OEM machines. Set it up the way you want, and when ActiveX rips a hole in Windows or malware slows it to a crawl, it's easy. Kill the VM process, copy the backup partition over.
Of course some of us can run Windows without malware, viruses, and all that stereotypical garbage. Some of us do have a clue how to administer a Windows computer. I've worked with many operating systems -- DOS, DOS/Windows, Windows NT, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, HPUX, and even little Vax. In my experience, none are easier or more difficult to secure with the exception of DOS or DOS-based Windows (96/98/ME), which suck. All it takes is a little training on the security issues and the ability to be proactive with security.
That's another good point. I have DVDs advertising "coming soon!" movies that I bought last year on DVD, yet the producer of the DVD thinks I still need to sit through the advertisement. Way to piss me off! Yet they wonder why people like me rip and burn their legally purchased DVDs to remove all that offensive garbage. It takes time and blank DVDs, so I don't do it for all my movies, but I love being able to stick Toy Story into the DVD player and have it go straight to the movie -- no menu, no advertisements, no nothing. It's great because my son loves that movie and I don't want to fuck around with the remote, FBI warnings, menus, advertisements, I just want my damn movie and I want it now.
Of course, copyright infringement is illegal so I only exercise my fair use rights with DVDs I purchased legally. I don't advocate copyright infringement (I refuse to call it piracy or theft), I just want my fair use rights.
Slashdot Mirror
For crying out loud, call a crisis hotline or a friend next time you feel like harming yourself. You're no good to us unless you're here alive and well.
Obviously you've never been in a situation like this. There are times when depression can cloud rational thought and even though you may normally be the type of person that would never harm yourself or commit suicide, you do. It just takes a second or two, a bad snap judgment, and you do something you cannot take back.
Mr. Coward, you are correct. I had depression for a while. I learned quite a bit about what it is and how it works. First, you have so-called normal people. They may get sad and say they are depressed. These bouts may last days, for example, after a traumatic event such as the death of a spouse or parent. That is not real depression. Then there are people like me who were trapped in a bad situation for a long period of time and just couldn't deal with the pressure. That's just a worse case of the first scenario. Finally, there are the truly depressed people. They have a chemical or other imbalance in their brains that causes depression for no reason. Everything could be going well in life, and they just start crying, get into a funk, and can't get out of it. They may snap out of it and be okay for a while. Depression moves in cycles.
I read an article in one of the IEEE magazines about two months ago on exactly this topic. Essentially, physicians implant an electrode in the patients brain that stimulates the area responsible for depression, so it helps avoid those slumps. It has a similar function to SSRIs, aka Prozac and other drugs that mess around with serotonin, but with few if any side effects. Similar to a pacemaker, a surgeon can implant an electrode and small battery into the patient's head that requires infrequent maintenance (every few years). If this works long-term, I think it will be a very good thing. Many otherwise productive members of society are unable to function at times because of depression. If we can remove that depression, we are stronger as a society, an economy, and most importantly, as a family. I know what depression can do to a family. It isn't pretty.
Maybe Lincoln was depressed, maybe he was not. I am not an expert on that topic so I won't debate it. However, assuming he was, I think he would have been just as effective without the depression. Those same thoughts and tendancies in his brain would still be there, but he would have been clearer and more rational (not that he was or wasn't already, just more so). I know from experience that the times I was on the up part of my depression cycle I was clearer and more rational, but I still had the same thoughts. I just dealt with them better.
I think the "papers, please" line refers more to the Soviet Union, when people were locked down and travel between states was restricted. You needed official documentation to prove you had a reason to travel, even if just to visit family.
I don't see a national ID as being in the same category. While the proverbial papers showed authorization for a specific activity, a national ID just reduces redundancy from a system. It does not add restrictions on behavior. That being said, I think it does make it easier for a government to take the next step toward reducing freedoms, but it does not guarantee that it will do so.
I said nothing about shoving anything down your throat. I merely said how I want things for *myself*. If you don't like the same things I do, then vote with your dollar and spend it on something else.
Is premarital sex immoral? I did it, and I don't think it is. Maybe according to Christianity, since the Bible does say it is immoral, but I am atheist. Your morals don't apply to me.
I'll take my video games and movies with sex and violence, Christian fundamentalists can go to hell.
The Declaration of Independence is not a basis for law. Its sole purpose was to tell the King of Englad to go fuck himself. However, it does set the tone and spirit of the Constitution, and is part of the reason we say we have a "free country." As for revolution: federal law bans violent overthrow of the government. However, the Constitution provides peaceful means to accomplish the same thing. I think this is rather hypocritical, considering how the writers of the Constitution overthrew the previous government with much bloodshed.
I really do think we need a revolution. We need to keep the same Constitution but get rid of all the politicians and about 75% of the U.S. Code. There is too much pork and corruption. I've sent letters to my representatives both at the state and federal level. I make my opinions known to my peers. Still, no change. Eventually I hope we achieve a critical mass of dissent and force a peaceful revolution.
I currently live in the south and refuse to soak my clothes with sweat by the time I get to work. Even though the AC rarely gets cold enough on the drive, I spend less time and don't have direct sunlight to heat me up.
Nope, not respewing crap. I am speaking from experience considering I am in the military and am required to fire it.
Hyperbole. Democrats love to tax and spend. I am not going to go research exact numbers when the point is they love to tax. The Republicans are bad too, but don't have that stigma.
Clinton had republican Congress to deal with at least part of the time, and in any event, I am talking party platforms, not what really happens. I used the word "want," not "does." If either party had 100% control over our legislature we'd have major problems.
As other posters mentioned there are ways around this, but still, it is focusing on the wrong area. There are much more productive ways to spend time increasing security than pissing and moaning about reusing a password several years old. 27 passwords at 3 months per password is almost 7 years. Who cares? Try dual authentication, better passwords to begin with, and better security over the network itself (e.g. encrypting traffic).
Since you brought up the topic of U.S. government: while we may not have the free and open republic that some claim we have, our government really does respond to pressure from citizens. Usually by jerking their knees, but they do respond. When Chinese citizens protested in Tieneman Square in 1989, what did the government do to change or even acknowledge problems? Nothing. What did the U.S. government do when tens of thousands of U.S. citizens protested over a draconian immigration bill? Our Congressmen stopped what they were doing and started drafting a compromise. While it is a bit of a circus and I doubt they'll implement a good solution, the important point is that they listened. Jintao's government does not.
Where I work currently, the network saves my last 27 passwords. New passwords cannot be in that list, and are checked for similarity to those passwords. A certain number of characters must be different, and not just switched around ("password" v. "apssowdr"). Users cannot just cycle through passwords, there is a minimum and a maxmimum age.
I think the key here is to separate Chinese citizens from the Chinese government. While the citizens and ex-citizens that I have met have been nothing less than friendly, intelligent, and generally good people, their government is corrupt to the bone and doesn't really care about their people.
The alleged actions the GP poster mentioned all are the responsibility of the government.
Chinese people elect their government the same way we elect circus clowns. They don't.
They had a revolution, and chose the bad choice over the really bad choice. Sure, some of them are content, but they know that they have no say about what goes on in their government. They know that the government hands out ultimatums such as this one (help us or go out of business) on a regulat basis.
The only way you can justify the Chinese people choosing their government is because they choose not to have another revolution. Given how difficult that is in a dictatorship with an iron fist, we really can't hold that against them.
The real question is what part the USA should play in helping them with their government. I say fuck'em. Let them do it themselves. We need to stop nation building and setting up puppet governments. If they never get a clue, too bad for them.
Whether the news reports it and people read it or not, crap like this will happen anyway. Would rape stop if the news stopped reporting it? Hell no. We would be ignorant from the truth. Stomping a cat to death is despicable, immoral (by my standards), and most importantly, illegal anywhere I know of.
What if this happened in the USA? That woman would stand trial for animal cruelty and probably go to jail. Certainly not for as long as murder, maybe only a few months, but she would see justice. The video would definitely continue around the Internet, though. We would be free to watch or not to watch as we see fit. We would know that it happened and be able to form our own conclusions about it. Some people such as myself despise animal cruelty (I am not an environmentalist or vegetarian. Kill my beef and poultry humanely and let me eat it). Some people think it is ok. The key is that we have that freedom of thought, and while our government officials certainly try to enforce their moral standards on us, for the most part, they fail.
We are free to see the information for ourselves and form our own conclusions. While stomping a cat may be illegal in the USA, possessing and viewing a video of the act is not.
Gonzales did make a statement about child pornography. While I consider that to be a separate issue from the normal kind, I could see him making the jump and calling all pornography bad. Anyway, in order for Bush to call news "unhealthy" he would have to read the news.
Ever fired an M-16? Those things blow ass chunks. They jam up constantly, overheat easily, and are a pain in the ass overall.
There's always that one guy on the train/subway that's creepy and smells bad. Come to think of it, I've been riding the train for years and never seen him.
My commute is 5 minutes, and most of that is spent between my house and car, and car and office. Then again, I live 1/4 mile from my office and have a single traffic light on the way. Every once in a while I'll have to stop for a school bus. Other than that, it's a very stress-free commute.
The main difference between the two is that the Democrats want to make sure my take home pay is less than half my gross salary and that if I don't like it I can just get free handouts from the government. The Republicans want to regulate what I do in my bedroom, then send me off to war to secure them more oil.
If you look at the financial freedom v. personal freedom aspects, they are different. However, they both want to restrict my freedoms. They both want power and control over me. How they achieve this is different, but the goal is the same. It's like having a mugger with a knife and a gun. How he achieves his goal is up for debate, but no matter what, he wants the same thing.
It was introduced by a Congressman.
Go back and read the Constitution. Only a member of Congress may introduce legislation to Congress. However, the president (or anyone else) is free to write up a bill, give it to a Congressman, and have him introduce it for him. Presidents do this all the time. The "Patriot" Act was written by the Department of Justice to increase police state powers. When 9/11 came along they just did a search and replace to add "terrorism" to it, handed it to a Congressman, and the rest is history. There are plenty of other examples, such as the New Deal. Roosevelt wrote up all those spending bills but never introduced a single one.
It might not be as simple as what you need, but Crystal Space 3D might work.
Ideally this would be in a sandbox, similar to a virtual machine. That way all you have to do is kill the VM, and all that crud is gone. Since it's a VM, you can easily make backup copies of the file system -- similar to a restore partition on OEM machines. Set it up the way you want, and when ActiveX rips a hole in Windows or malware slows it to a crawl, it's easy. Kill the VM process, copy the backup partition over.
Of course some of us can run Windows without malware, viruses, and all that stereotypical garbage. Some of us do have a clue how to administer a Windows computer. I've worked with many operating systems -- DOS, DOS/Windows, Windows NT, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, HPUX, and even little Vax. In my experience, none are easier or more difficult to secure with the exception of DOS or DOS-based Windows (96/98/ME), which suck. All it takes is a little training on the security issues and the ability to be proactive with security.
That's another good point. I have DVDs advertising "coming soon!" movies that I bought last year on DVD, yet the producer of the DVD thinks I still need to sit through the advertisement. Way to piss me off! Yet they wonder why people like me rip and burn their legally purchased DVDs to remove all that offensive garbage. It takes time and blank DVDs, so I don't do it for all my movies, but I love being able to stick Toy Story into the DVD player and have it go straight to the movie -- no menu, no advertisements, no nothing. It's great because my son loves that movie and I don't want to fuck around with the remote, FBI warnings, menus, advertisements, I just want my damn movie and I want it now.
Of course, copyright infringement is illegal so I only exercise my fair use rights with DVDs I purchased legally. I don't advocate copyright infringement (I refuse to call it piracy or theft), I just want my fair use rights.