Oh well. Not too different from self-driving cars. The first self-driving car that even injures someone will be a media circus. Yet I guess we're ok with human drivers: http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx.
That's probably why you don't see a lot of white collar people selling drugs.
Not to derail the topic too far, but I see white collar people selling addictive drugs that give the user a high all the time. It's just that when we're talking about drugs that are approved by big pharma/big government, the dealer is called a doctor. And believe me, doctors act just like drug dealers, too. I had one doctor start to tell me he would call a hit out on me if I couldn't make his alpha pager work when it was turned off. According to the board of directors at a local hospital, it may not be safe for me to be one of their patients because of a dispute they had about a bill. Doctors are drug dealers, little more, and once you figure that you, a lot of things start to make sense about the prohibition of substances such as marihuana. The medical establishment doesn't want competition from a substance that doesn't cost a dime to grow.
Maybe you have one of those medical conditions some doctors are recommending marihuana for due to its low side effect profile and high efficacy. Maybe using marihuana means the difference between being in constant pain and bedridden even with the drugs big pharma produces and being able to function.
Ok, this is what I have never understood about the poor. I've lived on ~12k per year before at a fast food job I WALKED TO, so I know what I'm talking about. Perhaps as long as they get their government check and government foodstamps they'll never understand.
All that you have to do to get a "credit card" is open an account at a credit union. You don't need credit for that. Just get a damned job, go to a credit union with your first paycheck, and open an account. Problem solved. It's not some magical thing that only rich white kids can do.
What the hell happened to personal responsibility?
Gentoo GNU/Linux is user-friendly to me. I decide what features my software has and what components make up my software stack. I run Ratpoison on my netbook and XFCE on my desktop. Windows 95 and Netscape 4 is user-friendly to my father. I haven't talked to him in years, but I wouldn't be surprised if he's still using that.
Lord help my employer when we need to finally start upgrading to Windows 7 (or 8 or whatever's current when it comes to pass) from Windows XP. The line-workers are going to have shit-fits.
User-friendly is a term that doesn't make any sense unless you know what users you're trying to cater to. Linux will never be user-friendly until the idea of installing binary-only software that interacts directly with the operating system goes away.
On the other hand when a friend is over and needs to quick look something up on the internet, I've found that even the most computer illiterate don't even flinch at the fact that I'm handing them a system that uses Ratpoison running under GNU/Linux. They're using Chromium, not the other stuff that makes Chromium go.
Just another data point in the debate of who/what the beast is
For me, this is what it all comes down to. I don't believe in the bogeyman because I've never found one in my closet. How do I even know that this beast exists?
Additionally, I fail to understand what the problem would be with a global payment system. How, precisely, is enabling two parties to exchange money efficiently going to bring about the end of the world? How does that lead to anyone controlling anything?
When I look at the question of "who wants to stop me from doing a thing I want to do" it always comes back to religious nutjobs who are trying to protect me from some bogeyman or curse that will be activated without any clear method of causality if I engage in activity x, y, or z.
Although sometimes there are also self-fulfilling prophecies. Humans seem very good at constructing those.
(And furthermore, it is a statement by a complete stranger who has no relationship with you and owes you jack shit.)
I know I'm going to get modded to hell for suggesting this, but why aren't governments in the business of issuing certs? Governments already issue DBAs and IDs, so why wouldn't it be ideal for them to issue the digital equivalent?
I keep trying to not do this, but then I have a tremendous difficulty ascertaining what, exactly, the religion is (or faith, whichever of your terms is supposed to be the good one), seeing as how I've yet to come upon an angel or miracle or hear this "voice of god" in my head that makes me want to do things.
When I remove everything that does not exist, all I'm left with is a group of people who go a very nicely decorated building once or twice per week to meet and figure out how to blame homosexuals for the bad economy via some sky wizard.
Perhaps if I had a mental disorder, religion (or faith, whichever is supposed to be a good term) would make more sense to me. As it stands, being who I was made to be in the womb, I'm not very welcome in those pretty buildings except when single and dressing as the gender the doctors assigned me (which turned out to be wrong), so I just choose not to go at all.
Could they quickly adapt that infrastructure and manufacturing to produce legal drugs? Especially in competition with food and pharmaceutical companies would also be capable of producing legal drugs.
The real elephant in the room is: how would either of those complexes compete with my backyard? Two substances I can think of that desperately need to be decriminalized are a weed and fungus, for crying out loud. Decriminalization doesn't even require legalization, as in over-the-counter sales. Why are two substances that require no chemical processing of the organism that produces them illegal? It's insane.
Without prohibition nothing prevents the Coca-Cola Company putting cocaine back in their soft drinks.
Uh, nothing would, that's the idea, except for the fact that this certain new "Original Kick" flavor of Coke for some reason requires me to show my ID to buy and has warnings that it contains an addictive substance known to cause harms x, y, and z and symptom w in pregnant women. Hmm..., I wonder what that could possibly mean?
Why is it that you folks can't seem to comprehend that legalizing or at least decriminalizing these substances doesn't mean that their sale is not going to become regulated? Why is it that you folks can't seem to draw the analogy with alcohol and tobacco, two substances that by all rational means should be schedule 1. What is it about alcohol and tobacco that makes them magically ok? Please enlighten me.
The older I get, the less I understand this drug hysteria.
I'm not sure about everyone else, or if you're older or younger than me, but you certainly are a fuckwit moron.
Alcohol and tobacco are legal, and does that mean we sell it in schools?
Good grief. Get a grip on reality. I could write on and on about the alcohol prohibition and rise of organized crime, but you need to learn how to deal with reality first.
Public opinion is changing, slowly. Most people are ignorant of history. That's a fact of life. Reactionary "fuckwit morons" like you will eventually go by the wayside in the amount of influence you have over public opinion.
So, I guess what I'm trying to say is, go ahead and keep posting more crap like this! Go ahead and make yourself look like a fuckwit moron! Be my guest!
I don't know if you've been keeping up with Merck and Pfizer but that's how it is NOW.
I'm not sure what you're talking about, but I believe two of their products could be replaced with marihuana.
First, let's take a look at a particularly deleterious substance marketed as Vicodin. This is an opiate drug that not only gets you high, but is addictive* and has withdrawal symptoms. From what I understand a local hospital is in the business of getting people addicted. One of my friends once showed up to get an asthma inhaler refill and walked out with a Vicodin prescription. Just like big tobacco, it pays for big pharma to have addicted "customers."
The second of which is the entire SSRI-class of drugs. I may be going out on a limb here, but I'm sure we're all familiar with the fact that big pharma has suppressed all evidence that these substances do better than placebo, sometimes worse. Basically, I'd like to read the evidence that shows marihuana is linked with depression, because I want to know if they determined causality or just correlation. How do we know that some marihuana users aren't self-medicating their depression?
Here's the real kicker which makes me question that. I've tried SSRIs twice in my life, and found that they're worthless. One literally did nothing other than give me a nice dream the first night I was doped up. The other made me feel like I was slightly high, sort of buzzed, 24/7. It got old. It didn't make me more social or happier. It made me want to drink, because of this high feeling that followed me everywhere. I only ran with that med for so long because the first few doses got me really high, laughing just like a pot head. Then, guess what? I developed tolerance to it, and never again did it elevate my mood at all.
* I starred the word addiction above. Let's be realistic here, people. Some substances are more addictive than others and for different reasons. Marihuana is no more addictive than cheesecake and for the same reasons, and there are no withdrawal symptoms other than wishing one had another slice. SSRI and opioid drugs have very real withdrawal symptoms that make the user feel physically sick upon withdrawal and thus seek the drug out again to make the withdrawal symptoms go away.
Also, one more kicker. Vicodin overdose can be fatal. Alcohol overdose can, too. SSRI overdose can, too. I dare anyone to name one person whose died of a marihuana overdose.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. You can't take revenge against a computer. A human being killed is a-ok with most people as long as you can take revenge.
Heh, I thought I'd relate an experience I had at a truckstop once. I used to be a trucker. I was walking back from the fuel desk after filling up my truck and earning a $250 shower, and this guy comes up to me. He was an older man, wizened. He approached me like a gentleman, sort of. He said something like, "I make a lot of money by the mile, do you want to see the inside of my Peterbilt?"
My answer was, "No."
I don't remember our exchange exactly, but he'd gendered me female and decided I was a lot lizard. I remember being flattered at being gendered female and also offended at his assumption that I was a lot lizard instead of a driver.
Well, I guess.NET isn't the ONLY solution to EVERY possible problem.
Interestingly I flirted with the system.net.mail namespace. He played footsie with me, and our first date was fantastic. I was absolutely thrilled, but when we met for our 2nd date, I asked him if he had a way of proving to one of my clients that he had actually sent an email I'd asked him to, for example, by providing the SMTP session upon request. He asked the waitress for another drink and said that no, he didn't.
I figured perhaps I could get my friend Eve to listen in on his communications with other mail servers, but Eve told me, "Girl, that dude's bad news. You don't want nothin' to do with him. Every time I tries to record his sessions, sister, he drops his socket at the first sign of a 200 response. My advice, girl, is if you's lookin' for something like that, you just best write your own emailer."
How is thing_do_stuff(the_thing, params) better than the_thing.do_stuff(params)? Why can't I call do_stuff on my things[] in a parallel manner?
I guess this is why I need to get my ass back to college to study for a career that doesn't involve hand-waving mumbo jumbo clouds and widget_factory_factory_factories. I just can't take the buzzword bullshit anymore.
You have no control over a person screaming out their window interrupting your sleep. Nor do you have control over whether some jackass yells "Fire" in a crowded theater.
Actually, yes I do.
You are no worse off by not downloading the app.
That's debatable. Read Prayers for Bobby. This sort of propaganda does lead to suicide. If a person is having trouble coming to terms with the way they were formed in the womb, they need professional help, and this app is at best a distraction and, in the worst case scenario, someone who can't accept that they are homosexual may be driven to suicide when this app fails to "cure" them.
That being said, there's a lot of shit in the world. However, Apple has put themselves in the position that they're going to keep that shit out of their app store, which is perfectly within their rights as a free market player. For example, I will no longer buy from Amazon because of their censorship, but this censorship on Apple's part has elevated their brand in my mind. We all have our biases and prejudices, and Apple is making a gamble that its customer base will respond positively to this event.
See, here's the whole thing.
Apple is free to do whatever they want with their product in a free market.
Apple has decided that they wish to be a moral authority on what's objectionable and what's not.
Apple has determined that an application that encourages discrimination against a group of people is morally objectionable.
If you don't like it, you don't need to own an iPhone. I do wonder, however, how Slashdot might feel about an iPhone app that attempts to convert Christians to Islam.
What I think would be interesting is if a blind person were to put forth the effort to create applications friendly to blind people.
I'm trans, you know, the minority of people who are so small and misunderstood that we're not even allowed to have sob stories the way most minorities have, much less sob stories that high school kids are indoctrinated with (not saying it's a good thing, just stating a fact). Somehow trans people find ways of navigating a cis gendered world, often at great expense to themselves. I'd give up my sight any day to be cis gendered (better be careful what I wish for lol), so I guess I really have no sympathy for blind people despite their enormous hardships.
When you're in my minority, the world looks at you and says, "Figure it out on your own damned time at your own damned expense." When you're blind, the world looks at you and says, "Damn, that sucks. (And it does, having interacted with blind people on the bus, again, not saying it's a cake-walk just stating facts.) Here, have a government check every month. Here, have free care. Here, ride the bus for free. Here, have a free education. And if you don't get a job, don't worry, we'll keep sending you a check so you can eat."
To be fair, blindness is a much more obvious handicap than being trans. In a perfect world, being trans wouldn't be a handicap at all, but I don't see that perfect world happening any time soon.
I guess what I'm trying to say is there's a difference between being handicapped and handi-capable, no matter how cheesy that sounds. We each have our own deficiencies to overcome, so I have a difficult time understand why I should bend over backwards for someone else's deficiency. If health insurance covered any of my expenses related to being trans, I might have a different attitude, but this is a harsh world populated by harsh people. I don't see why the blind or any other group should escape that harshness.
When Grandma down the street and that crazy guy whose kids won't talk to him anymore because of his batshit religious beliefs are the only ones who honestly believe in this superstitious delineation between "good" drugs (like celexa/paxil/prozac/caffeine/tobacco/alcohol) and "bad" bad drugs (like marihuana/cocaine (Freud used cocaine from what I understand)/psilocybin/salvia/exctacy (which was designed to be used in a clinical setting, only reason it's illegal is because it was being used on the street before FDA approval, so that ironically got it scheduled instead of approved, since anything that's used on the street can't possibly have any redeeming value))....
Anyway, it's a show of power, plain and simple. It's no different than the book burnings of old. It's a show of power. Big pharma would lose TONS if marihuana were accessible. We have medical marihuana here in Michigan, but from what I understand it's still a boondoggle, and the way the law is written, you have to find your own dealer and buy on the black market anyway, and law or no law, the feds can still go after you if they wanted.
Unfortunately, not enough voters in California got off their asses to legalize marihuana there (I know someone like that--wholeheartedly thinks marihuana should be legal, but couldn't get his ass to the polling station to vote, and if I could reach through the internet, he'd have black eye). So now we have to listen to shit from the right like, "See, the AMERICAN people don't want to legalize marihuana! See! See!"
This country isn't a fascism yet, but nothing will change if nobody votes for their principles.
A guy had an accident, so obviously, obviously he was hopped up on goof-balls. Because accidents don't happen on their own. And because all drug users are all stupid enough to get high 5 minutes before working. Oh, and while I'm at it, let's not forget that, you know, that stuff that gets you high (or used to when you first started taking it, but now you're so hopelessly addicted that you might suffer seizures or a psychopathic episode if you don't wean yourself off of it under a doctor's supervision) called celexa/paxil/prozac/etc, well, that's not a drug, it's medicine.
That being said, ok, so what if the guy was hopped up on goof-balls. If that's the case, let's give him a Darwin award and get on with life. If he wasn't, let's think of what the family must be going through while the media is implying that he was on "drugs" because they found some other guys coke.
I was originally going to argue against redelm's point, but I think he's just arguing a point I might agree with but a bit clumsily and using too much macho rugged-individualist puritan hyperbole.
The point is that it's great and all to have your own personal, public "wall" or news feed where you can chronicle your life and times for all to see. There needs to come a point where people realize that this is not the best idea.
The problem isn't Facebook or which actions a person is responsible for or not, the problem is the decision to publish it for all the world to see.
If I do a thing, which may or may not be legal or moral, etc, then I can only be responsible for it to the people who know I did that thing. If those people are the entire world and society at large, then I'm responsible to society for what I did. If those people are a few close friends, then what happens behind closed doors happens. As long as the door stays closed.
More people need to understand that. It works both ways, too. Why would I publicly embarrass a friend? People need to think before publishing.
The problem comes when other people start believing the things an asshat is saying about you, which is trwtf. Apparently most people haven't understood yet that others can lie, no matter how many times a day they say they're Christians and go to church every Sunday.
My roommate lost his fiancee recently because one of his ex's mothers started gossiping that he was a child molester. The fiancee had to choose between being excommunicated from her family for being engaged to a "child molester" and staying in the relationship. Apparently shitting out kids makes you an authoritative and infallible source of information and wisdom in certain circles, and anyone who disagrees with a Mother or has different information be damned.
I know, it's stupid, but it's how people work. No, the fiancee's family didn't like my roommate to begin with, but calling him a child molester gave them the excuse they needed to escalate the drama to force the fiancee to either give up her boyfriend or give up her family.
It really was an amazing situation to watch. I lost of a lot of faith in humanity while I was on the sidelines of that one. For some reason, a drug-addicted single Mother who didn't have the capacity to save herself for marriage has more credibility at Church than a lack of evidence.
In fact, for some people, if they find out which roommate I'm talking about, even though it should be obvious from this post that the accusation was completely baseless, will begin to suspect him of being a child molester simply because I mentioned that someone had accused him of it.
Now, if he'd lost his job because of that gossip, of course he should have legal recourse. Fortunately this gossiping whore^H^H^H^Hbaby-mamma^H^H^H^H^H Mother didn't call up his boss, probably because she knew that she'd be in hot water if she did so and the boss believed her.
Slashdot Mirror
Intriguing. Coal kills.
Oh well. Not too different from self-driving cars. The first self-driving car that even injures someone will be a media circus. Yet I guess we're ok with human drivers: http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx.
Go play Gran Turismo 4. That should answer all of your questions.
That's probably why you don't see a lot of white collar people selling drugs.
Not to derail the topic too far, but I see white collar people selling addictive drugs that give the user a high all the time. It's just that when we're talking about drugs that are approved by big pharma/big government, the dealer is called a doctor. And believe me, doctors act just like drug dealers, too. I had one doctor start to tell me he would call a hit out on me if I couldn't make his alpha pager work when it was turned off. According to the board of directors at a local hospital, it may not be safe for me to be one of their patients because of a dispute they had about a bill. Doctors are drug dealers, little more, and once you figure that you, a lot of things start to make sense about the prohibition of substances such as marihuana. The medical establishment doesn't want competition from a substance that doesn't cost a dime to grow.
Maybe you have one of those medical conditions some doctors are recommending marihuana for due to its low side effect profile and high efficacy. Maybe using marihuana means the difference between being in constant pain and bedridden even with the drugs big pharma produces and being able to function.
Maybe the risk is worth it to some people.
Just sayin'
Ok, this is what I have never understood about the poor. I've lived on ~12k per year before at a fast food job I WALKED TO, so I know what I'm talking about. Perhaps as long as they get their government check and government foodstamps they'll never understand.
All that you have to do to get a "credit card" is open an account at a credit union. You don't need credit for that. Just get a damned job, go to a credit union with your first paycheck, and open an account. Problem solved. It's not some magical thing that only rich white kids can do.
What the hell happened to personal responsibility?
I think this is an appropriate link: http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Gentoo GNU/Linux is user-friendly to me. I decide what features my software has and what components make up my software stack. I run Ratpoison on my netbook and XFCE on my desktop. Windows 95 and Netscape 4 is user-friendly to my father. I haven't talked to him in years, but I wouldn't be surprised if he's still using that.
Lord help my employer when we need to finally start upgrading to Windows 7 (or 8 or whatever's current when it comes to pass) from Windows XP. The line-workers are going to have shit-fits.
User-friendly is a term that doesn't make any sense unless you know what users you're trying to cater to. Linux will never be user-friendly until the idea of installing binary-only software that interacts directly with the operating system goes away.
On the other hand when a friend is over and needs to quick look something up on the internet, I've found that even the most computer illiterate don't even flinch at the fact that I'm handing them a system that uses Ratpoison running under GNU/Linux. They're using Chromium, not the other stuff that makes Chromium go.
Just another data point in the debate of who/what the beast is
For me, this is what it all comes down to. I don't believe in the bogeyman because I've never found one in my closet. How do I even know that this beast exists?
Additionally, I fail to understand what the problem would be with a global payment system. How, precisely, is enabling two parties to exchange money efficiently going to bring about the end of the world? How does that lead to anyone controlling anything?
When I look at the question of "who wants to stop me from doing a thing I want to do" it always comes back to religious nutjobs who are trying to protect me from some bogeyman or curse that will be activated without any clear method of causality if I engage in activity x, y, or z.
Although sometimes there are also self-fulfilling prophecies. Humans seem very good at constructing those.
(And furthermore, it is a statement by a complete stranger who has no relationship with you and owes you jack shit.)
I know I'm going to get modded to hell for suggesting this, but why aren't governments in the business of issuing certs? Governments already issue DBAs and IDs, so why wouldn't it be ideal for them to issue the digital equivalent?
Oompah-loompah...
I keep trying to not do this, but then I have a tremendous difficulty ascertaining what, exactly, the religion is (or faith, whichever of your terms is supposed to be the good one), seeing as how I've yet to come upon an angel or miracle or hear this "voice of god" in my head that makes me want to do things.
When I remove everything that does not exist, all I'm left with is a group of people who go a very nicely decorated building once or twice per week to meet and figure out how to blame homosexuals for the bad economy via some sky wizard.
Perhaps if I had a mental disorder, religion (or faith, whichever is supposed to be a good term) would make more sense to me. As it stands, being who I was made to be in the womb, I'm not very welcome in those pretty buildings except when single and dressing as the gender the doctors assigned me (which turned out to be wrong), so I just choose not to go at all.
Could they quickly adapt that infrastructure and manufacturing to produce legal drugs? Especially in competition with food and pharmaceutical companies would also be capable of producing legal drugs.
The real elephant in the room is: how would either of those complexes compete with my backyard? Two substances I can think of that desperately need to be decriminalized are a weed and fungus, for crying out loud. Decriminalization doesn't even require legalization, as in over-the-counter sales. Why are two substances that require no chemical processing of the organism that produces them illegal? It's insane.
Without prohibition nothing prevents the Coca-Cola Company putting cocaine back in their soft drinks.
Uh, nothing would, that's the idea, except for the fact that this certain new "Original Kick" flavor of Coke for some reason requires me to show my ID to buy and has warnings that it contains an addictive substance known to cause harms x, y, and z and symptom w in pregnant women. Hmm..., I wonder what that could possibly mean?
Why is it that you folks can't seem to comprehend that legalizing or at least decriminalizing these substances doesn't mean that their sale is not going to become regulated? Why is it that you folks can't seem to draw the analogy with alcohol and tobacco, two substances that by all rational means should be schedule 1. What is it about alcohol and tobacco that makes them magically ok? Please enlighten me.
The older I get, the less I understand this drug hysteria.
I'm not sure about everyone else, or if you're older or younger than me, but you certainly are a fuckwit moron.
Alcohol and tobacco are legal, and does that mean we sell it in schools?
Good grief. Get a grip on reality. I could write on and on about the alcohol prohibition and rise of organized crime, but you need to learn how to deal with reality first.
Public opinion is changing, slowly. Most people are ignorant of history. That's a fact of life. Reactionary "fuckwit morons" like you will eventually go by the wayside in the amount of influence you have over public opinion.
So, I guess what I'm trying to say is, go ahead and keep posting more crap like this! Go ahead and make yourself look like a fuckwit moron! Be my guest!
I don't know if you've been keeping up with Merck and Pfizer but that's how it is NOW.
I'm not sure what you're talking about, but I believe two of their products could be replaced with marihuana.
First, let's take a look at a particularly deleterious substance marketed as Vicodin. This is an opiate drug that not only gets you high, but is addictive* and has withdrawal symptoms. From what I understand a local hospital is in the business of getting people addicted. One of my friends once showed up to get an asthma inhaler refill and walked out with a Vicodin prescription. Just like big tobacco, it pays for big pharma to have addicted "customers."
The second of which is the entire SSRI-class of drugs. I may be going out on a limb here, but I'm sure we're all familiar with the fact that big pharma has suppressed all evidence that these substances do better than placebo, sometimes worse. Basically, I'd like to read the evidence that shows marihuana is linked with depression, because I want to know if they determined causality or just correlation. How do we know that some marihuana users aren't self-medicating their depression?
Here's the real kicker which makes me question that. I've tried SSRIs twice in my life, and found that they're worthless. One literally did nothing other than give me a nice dream the first night I was doped up. The other made me feel like I was slightly high, sort of buzzed, 24/7. It got old. It didn't make me more social or happier. It made me want to drink, because of this high feeling that followed me everywhere. I only ran with that med for so long because the first few doses got me really high, laughing just like a pot head. Then, guess what? I developed tolerance to it, and never again did it elevate my mood at all.
* I starred the word addiction above. Let's be realistic here, people. Some substances are more addictive than others and for different reasons. Marihuana is no more addictive than cheesecake and for the same reasons, and there are no withdrawal symptoms other than wishing one had another slice. SSRI and opioid drugs have very real withdrawal symptoms that make the user feel physically sick upon withdrawal and thus seek the drug out again to make the withdrawal symptoms go away.
Also, one more kicker. Vicodin overdose can be fatal. Alcohol overdose can, too. SSRI overdose can, too. I dare anyone to name one person whose died of a marihuana overdose.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. You can't take revenge against a computer. A human being killed is a-ok with most people as long as you can take revenge.
Heh, I thought I'd relate an experience I had at a truckstop once. I used to be a trucker. I was walking back from the fuel desk after filling up my truck and earning a $250 shower, and this guy comes up to me. He was an older man, wizened. He approached me like a gentleman, sort of. He said something like, "I make a lot of money by the mile, do you want to see the inside of my Peterbilt?"
My answer was, "No."
I don't remember our exchange exactly, but he'd gendered me female and decided I was a lot lizard. I remember being flattered at being gendered female and also offended at his assumption that I was a lot lizard instead of a driver.
Well, I guess .NET isn't the ONLY solution to EVERY possible problem.
Interestingly I flirted with the system.net.mail namespace. He played footsie with me, and our first date was fantastic. I was absolutely thrilled, but when we met for our 2nd date, I asked him if he had a way of proving to one of my clients that he had actually sent an email I'd asked him to, for example, by providing the SMTP session upon request. He asked the waitress for another drink and said that no, he didn't.
I figured perhaps I could get my friend Eve to listen in on his communications with other mail servers, but Eve told me, "Girl, that dude's bad news. You don't want nothin' to do with him. Every time I tries to record his sessions, sister, he drops his socket at the first sign of a 200 response. My advice, girl, is if you's lookin' for something like that, you just best write your own emailer."
And so I did.
I must be an idiot.
How is thing_do_stuff(the_thing, params) better than the_thing.do_stuff(params)? Why can't I call do_stuff on my things[] in a parallel manner?
I guess this is why I need to get my ass back to college to study for a career that doesn't involve hand-waving mumbo jumbo clouds and widget_factory_factory_factories. I just can't take the buzzword bullshit anymore.
I know what you mean.
You have no control over a person screaming out their window interrupting your sleep. Nor do you have control over whether some jackass yells "Fire" in a crowded theater.
Actually, yes I do.
You are no worse off by not downloading the app.
That's debatable. Read Prayers for Bobby. This sort of propaganda does lead to suicide. If a person is having trouble coming to terms with the way they were formed in the womb, they need professional help, and this app is at best a distraction and, in the worst case scenario, someone who can't accept that they are homosexual may be driven to suicide when this app fails to "cure" them.
That being said, there's a lot of shit in the world. However, Apple has put themselves in the position that they're going to keep that shit out of their app store, which is perfectly within their rights as a free market player. For example, I will no longer buy from Amazon because of their censorship, but this censorship on Apple's part has elevated their brand in my mind. We all have our biases and prejudices, and Apple is making a gamble that its customer base will respond positively to this event.
See, here's the whole thing.
If you don't like it, you don't need to own an iPhone. I do wonder, however, how Slashdot might feel about an iPhone app that attempts to convert Christians to Islam.
What I think would be interesting is if a blind person were to put forth the effort to create applications friendly to blind people.
I'm trans, you know, the minority of people who are so small and misunderstood that we're not even allowed to have sob stories the way most minorities have, much less sob stories that high school kids are indoctrinated with (not saying it's a good thing, just stating a fact). Somehow trans people find ways of navigating a cis gendered world, often at great expense to themselves. I'd give up my sight any day to be cis gendered (better be careful what I wish for lol), so I guess I really have no sympathy for blind people despite their enormous hardships.
When you're in my minority, the world looks at you and says, "Figure it out on your own damned time at your own damned expense." When you're blind, the world looks at you and says, "Damn, that sucks. (And it does, having interacted with blind people on the bus, again, not saying it's a cake-walk just stating facts.) Here, have a government check every month. Here, have free care. Here, ride the bus for free. Here, have a free education. And if you don't get a job, don't worry, we'll keep sending you a check so you can eat."
To be fair, blindness is a much more obvious handicap than being trans. In a perfect world, being trans wouldn't be a handicap at all, but I don't see that perfect world happening any time soon.
I guess what I'm trying to say is there's a difference between being handicapped and handi-capable, no matter how cheesy that sounds. We each have our own deficiencies to overcome, so I have a difficult time understand why I should bend over backwards for someone else's deficiency. If health insurance covered any of my expenses related to being trans, I might have a different attitude, but this is a harsh world populated by harsh people. I don't see why the blind or any other group should escape that harshness.
When Grandma down the street and that crazy guy whose kids won't talk to him anymore because of his batshit religious beliefs are the only ones who honestly believe in this superstitious delineation between "good" drugs (like celexa/paxil/prozac/caffeine/tobacco/alcohol) and "bad" bad drugs (like marihuana/cocaine (Freud used cocaine from what I understand)/psilocybin/salvia/exctacy (which was designed to be used in a clinical setting, only reason it's illegal is because it was being used on the street before FDA approval, so that ironically got it scheduled instead of approved, since anything that's used on the street can't possibly have any redeeming value))....
Anyway, it's a show of power, plain and simple. It's no different than the book burnings of old. It's a show of power. Big pharma would lose TONS if marihuana were accessible. We have medical marihuana here in Michigan, but from what I understand it's still a boondoggle, and the way the law is written, you have to find your own dealer and buy on the black market anyway, and law or no law, the feds can still go after you if they wanted.
Unfortunately, not enough voters in California got off their asses to legalize marihuana there (I know someone like that--wholeheartedly thinks marihuana should be legal, but couldn't get his ass to the polling station to vote, and if I could reach through the internet, he'd have black eye). So now we have to listen to shit from the right like, "See, the AMERICAN people don't want to legalize marihuana! See! See!"
This country isn't a fascism yet, but nothing will change if nobody votes for their principles.
A guy had an accident, so obviously, obviously he was hopped up on goof-balls. Because accidents don't happen on their own. And because all drug users are all stupid enough to get high 5 minutes before working. Oh, and while I'm at it, let's not forget that, you know, that stuff that gets you high (or used to when you first started taking it, but now you're so hopelessly addicted that you might suffer seizures or a psychopathic episode if you don't wean yourself off of it under a doctor's supervision) called celexa/paxil/prozac/etc, well, that's not a drug, it's medicine.
That being said, ok, so what if the guy was hopped up on goof-balls. If that's the case, let's give him a Darwin award and get on with life. If he wasn't, let's think of what the family must be going through while the media is implying that he was on "drugs" because they found some other guys coke.
I was originally going to argue against redelm's point, but I think he's just arguing a point I might agree with but a bit clumsily and using too much macho rugged-individualist puritan hyperbole.
The point is that it's great and all to have your own personal, public "wall" or news feed where you can chronicle your life and times for all to see. There needs to come a point where people realize that this is not the best idea.
The problem isn't Facebook or which actions a person is responsible for or not, the problem is the decision to publish it for all the world to see.
If I do a thing, which may or may not be legal or moral, etc, then I can only be responsible for it to the people who know I did that thing. If those people are the entire world and society at large, then I'm responsible to society for what I did. If those people are a few close friends, then what happens behind closed doors happens. As long as the door stays closed.
More people need to understand that. It works both ways, too. Why would I publicly embarrass a friend? People need to think before publishing.
The problem comes when other people start believing the things an asshat is saying about you, which is trwtf. Apparently most people haven't understood yet that others can lie, no matter how many times a day they say they're Christians and go to church every Sunday.
My roommate lost his fiancee recently because one of his ex's mothers started gossiping that he was a child molester. The fiancee had to choose between being excommunicated from her family for being engaged to a "child molester" and staying in the relationship. Apparently shitting out kids makes you an authoritative and infallible source of information and wisdom in certain circles, and anyone who disagrees with a Mother or has different information be damned.
I know, it's stupid, but it's how people work. No, the fiancee's family didn't like my roommate to begin with, but calling him a child molester gave them the excuse they needed to escalate the drama to force the fiancee to either give up her boyfriend or give up her family.
It really was an amazing situation to watch. I lost of a lot of faith in humanity while I was on the sidelines of that one. For some reason, a drug-addicted single Mother who didn't have the capacity to save herself for marriage has more credibility at Church than a lack of evidence.
In fact, for some people, if they find out which roommate I'm talking about, even though it should be obvious from this post that the accusation was completely baseless, will begin to suspect him of being a child molester simply because I mentioned that someone had accused him of it.
Now, if he'd lost his job because of that gossip, of course he should have legal recourse. Fortunately this gossiping whore^H^H^H^Hbaby-mamma^H^H^H^H^H Mother didn't call up his boss, probably because she knew that she'd be in hot water if she did so and the boss believed her.