It would take about ten seconds to write an iPhone app that gives access to the raw data, and indeed a trivial search of the App Store reveals many such apps already there, several of which are free.
iPhone-style assisted GPS uses cell towers to help get a quicker fix but does not require anything besides the pure GPS signal from the satellites. It's just that the pure satellite signal will require ~30 seconds to get a fix instead of the 1 second you get when the cell network helps out.
Because of course any terrorist who's planning to build a GPS guided missile to blow up a market will suddenly change his mind and start growing flowers and raising puppies when he discovers that GPS receivers are banned by the government.
Typical Slashdot attitude: if it's not perfect, it's completely useless!
There is a lot of utility in catching this sort of thing after the fact. 36 hours is actually a very short amount of time. I don't really approve of these automatic biometric identifiers but objecting to it because it takes a day to discover a problem is just nonsensical.
It's not definitely wrong, there's just no reason to suspect otherwise.
What you described just isn't that unusual. When the Sun rises tomorrow morning you could say that it's due to some amazing supernatural occurrence, but it's much more reasonable to say that it's simply the Sun doing what the Sun does every day. When I sound so certain it's just because there's no real evidence otherwise. Certainly I believe that alternative explanations are possible, but there's just no reason to consider them here.
It depends on what schools you are talking about. There are some great public schools and really crappy private schools.
Yep, that's exactly it. "Public" doesn't automatically mean it's crap and "private" doesn't automatically mean it's great. There may be a better average for private schools, but that doesn't mean all public schools are terrible.
I actually had a decent private school, although I was ill-suited for school in general. My public school was terrible, but still gave me a lot anyway.
Ridiculous. You honestly think that every single person who went through the public school system is no better off than if they had received no education at all?
I went to a private elementary school, public high school, and public university. The public university was by far the most useful of the three. The other two are on roughly equal footing as "somewhat decent". They both wasted enormous amounts of time but they did provide some useful things in return.
The victims are supposedly the real children who get exploited in making real child porn. The theory is that these pornographic drawings contribute to an illicit market in child pornography and thereby encourage the creation of the real thing.
If you ask me it's utterly bogus reasoning. If anything these sorts of drawings are a good thing, as they will act as a substitute for borderline cases who are attracted to children but don't want to act on that. But in any case, that's the "reasoning" behind it.
The quantity of coca tea or poppy seeds you'd need to consume to begin to approximate the physiological and psychological effects of the smallest doses of the refined and superconcentrated drugs are equally astronomical.
So why isn't it legal? It's all cocaine, just being taken in different doses and at different concentrations. If the leaf or tea is safe because it's low dosage, that doesn't change the fact that it is still safe, and thereby an existence proof that cocaine can be consumed safely.
Well then, let's legalize the low-dosage stuff at least! If there are safe ways to take it then those ways ought to be legalized, rather than throwing out the entire drug just because certain forms are too concentrated to be used safely.
If chewing coca leaves were to catch on, well, maybe it should be legal. We were discussing cocaine though, which is very different.
I really don't understand how or why people keep making this distinction. "Cocaine" refers to a particular chemical. It does not refer to the specific white powdered form of that chemical which we associate with rock stars and rich white kids.
If you want to say that modern purified cocaine is too dangerous whereas getting it direct from the coca leaf is fine, then say that. But get your terms straight! Talking about cocaine as though it were somehow separate from coca leaves makes no sense.
That's pretty easy to disprove. Look at all the people on Medicare and Medicaid, does the government get to say what they can do with their health, more so than the rest of us? Not that I've seen. Look at Canada, most of Europe, and any other place that has socialized medicine. Does the government have more say is what they can do with their health than the US government has over its citizens? Not that I've seen.
That's preposterous. The effects become more pronounced when you consume more of it, which is much easier when it's refined. But if you take the same amount of sugar, or cocaine, in unrefined and refined form (taking much more of the unrefined "stuff" so that you get the same amount of active ingredient, of course) then the effect is the same.
Fine then. But why do you insist that cocaine can't be consumed in a non-harmful way? Just because it isn't done so now? That's a side effect of criminalization, not an inherent property of the drug.
Wikipedia and Snopes both disagree with you and say that cocaine, by way of coca leaf extract, was present in Coca-Cola.
Coca leaves contain cocaine. You put unprocessed extract in a drink, or you make a tea from it, there is cocaine in that drink. It doesn't matter if it's not "purified" or "isolated". Your body doesn't care if cocaine comes in the door with a bunch of friends or alone.
Your comparison with poppies is completely ridiculous. People consume poppy seeds, whereas opiates are made from other parts of the plant. With coca leaf, the cocaine is right there in the leaf itself. If you consume coca leaf you consume cocaine. If you consume poppy seeds you don't consume opiates.
Non sequitur. The major reason potato chips are so dangerous is because practically everybody eats them, whereas most people don't and won't do cocaine even if it becomes legal.
The exact contents of Coca-Cola changed throughout the years, obviously. But why would they "only keep it in at all" to keep a trademark if it was that way from the beginning? That simply makes no sense. It must have had more at some point for that reasoning to work!
Snopes agrees with your 1/400 of a grain for the formulation in 1902, but claims that there was significantly more in it earlier. It doesn't say how much (says it can't really be determined) but it's quite clear that the 1/400 of a grain figure is from after people started wondering whether taking cocaine might be a bad idea.
I'm trying to cloud the argument for legislation, that's the whole point, I'm anti-legislation and I'm illustrating it by reductio ad absurdum.
In any case, that our bodies need these things is no real argument. That just means that they should be carefully controlled rather than banned outright, just like the many prescription drugs that people require but can't get without a doctor's authorization.
You could very well be right. I never said it was proof of anything. But it is very strange.
Your Adams quote doesn't really apply, by the way. I never said that anything was built for me. However it assumes that self awareness is common. But there's no proof of this, it's just a cultural assumption. For all I know I'm the only self aware being in the entire universe. I'm surrounded by a bunch of other creatures which all act as though they were self aware, but that's no kind of proof.
I would never assume that the universe was "meant" for anything, much less me. But the fact that I'm self aware is really strange and goes beyond anything that's known. Whether I'm the only one or whether all of you are also self aware, it's a powerful suggestion that there's something going on beyond what's currently known.
Slashdot Mirror
It would take about ten seconds to write an iPhone app that gives access to the raw data, and indeed a trivial search of the App Store reveals many such apps already there, several of which are free.
iPhone-style assisted GPS uses cell towers to help get a quicker fix but does not require anything besides the pure GPS signal from the satellites. It's just that the pure satellite signal will require ~30 seconds to get a fix instead of the 1 second you get when the cell network helps out.
Because of course any terrorist who's planning to build a GPS guided missile to blow up a market will suddenly change his mind and start growing flowers and raising puppies when he discovers that GPS receivers are banned by the government.
If the past few years is any indication, it works much better on GPUs than on CPUs.
Typical Slashdot attitude: if it's not perfect, it's completely useless!
There is a lot of utility in catching this sort of thing after the fact. 36 hours is actually a very short amount of time. I don't really approve of these automatic biometric identifiers but objecting to it because it takes a day to discover a problem is just nonsensical.
They did for thousands of years, and what brought them down wasn't their drugs.
It's not definitely wrong, there's just no reason to suspect otherwise.
What you described just isn't that unusual. When the Sun rises tomorrow morning you could say that it's due to some amazing supernatural occurrence, but it's much more reasonable to say that it's simply the Sun doing what the Sun does every day. When I sound so certain it's just because there's no real evidence otherwise. Certainly I believe that alternative explanations are possible, but there's just no reason to consider them here.
No, correlation is never causation.
Sometimes correlation is due to causation, but they aren't ever the same thing.
It depends on what schools you are talking about. There are some great public schools and really crappy private schools.
Yep, that's exactly it. "Public" doesn't automatically mean it's crap and "private" doesn't automatically mean it's great. There may be a better average for private schools, but that doesn't mean all public schools are terrible.
I actually had a decent private school, although I was ill-suited for school in general. My public school was terrible, but still gave me a lot anyway.
That has nothing to do with it being public, and everything to do with it being a university.
I never said otherwise. I am not claiming that "public" is somehow magically good, merely that it is not automatically bad.
Do you think it was worth all the time and money you spent?
Yes, absolutely. I learned a great deal that I never would have on my own.
Public school never helped anybody.
Ridiculous. You honestly think that every single person who went through the public school system is no better off than if they had received no education at all?
I went to a private elementary school, public high school, and public university. The public university was by far the most useful of the three. The other two are on roughly equal footing as "somewhat decent". They both wasted enormous amounts of time but they did provide some useful things in return.
The victims are supposedly the real children who get exploited in making real child porn. The theory is that these pornographic drawings contribute to an illicit market in child pornography and thereby encourage the creation of the real thing.
If you ask me it's utterly bogus reasoning. If anything these sorts of drawings are a good thing, as they will act as a substitute for borderline cases who are attracted to children but don't want to act on that. But in any case, that's the "reasoning" behind it.
The quantity of coca tea or poppy seeds you'd need to consume to begin to approximate the physiological and psychological effects of the smallest doses of the refined and superconcentrated drugs are equally astronomical.
So why isn't it legal? It's all cocaine, just being taken in different doses and at different concentrations. If the leaf or tea is safe because it's low dosage, that doesn't change the fact that it is still safe, and thereby an existence proof that cocaine can be consumed safely.
Well then, let's legalize the low-dosage stuff at least! If there are safe ways to take it then those ways ought to be legalized, rather than throwing out the entire drug just because certain forms are too concentrated to be used safely.
If chewing coca leaves were to catch on, well, maybe it should be legal. We were discussing cocaine though, which is very different.
I really don't understand how or why people keep making this distinction. "Cocaine" refers to a particular chemical. It does not refer to the specific white powdered form of that chemical which we associate with rock stars and rich white kids.
If you want to say that modern purified cocaine is too dangerous whereas getting it direct from the coca leaf is fine, then say that. But get your terms straight! Talking about cocaine as though it were somehow separate from coca leaves makes no sense.
That's pretty easy to disprove. Look at all the people on Medicare and Medicaid, does the government get to say what they can do with their health, more so than the rest of us? Not that I've seen. Look at Canada, most of Europe, and any other place that has socialized medicine. Does the government have more say is what they can do with their health than the US government has over its citizens? Not that I've seen.
That's preposterous. The effects become more pronounced when you consume more of it, which is much easier when it's refined. But if you take the same amount of sugar, or cocaine, in unrefined and refined form (taking much more of the unrefined "stuff" so that you get the same amount of active ingredient, of course) then the effect is the same.
Replace "cocaine" with "alcohol" in your description and it remains pretty much valid. Perhaps removing the "energy" part, but the rest applies.
Fine then. But why do you insist that cocaine can't be consumed in a non-harmful way? Just because it isn't done so now? That's a side effect of criminalization, not an inherent property of the drug.
Wikipedia and Snopes both disagree with you and say that cocaine, by way of coca leaf extract, was present in Coca-Cola.
Coca leaves contain cocaine. You put unprocessed extract in a drink, or you make a tea from it, there is cocaine in that drink. It doesn't matter if it's not "purified" or "isolated". Your body doesn't care if cocaine comes in the door with a bunch of friends or alone.
Your comparison with poppies is completely ridiculous. People consume poppy seeds, whereas opiates are made from other parts of the plant. With coca leaf, the cocaine is right there in the leaf itself. If you consume coca leaf you consume cocaine. If you consume poppy seeds you don't consume opiates.
Non sequitur. The major reason potato chips are so dangerous is because practically everybody eats them, whereas most people don't and won't do cocaine even if it becomes legal.
You can, but how common is it?
The exact contents of Coca-Cola changed throughout the years, obviously. But why would they "only keep it in at all" to keep a trademark if it was that way from the beginning? That simply makes no sense. It must have had more at some point for that reasoning to work!
Snopes agrees with your 1/400 of a grain for the formulation in 1902, but claims that there was significantly more in it earlier. It doesn't say how much (says it can't really be determined) but it's quite clear that the 1/400 of a grain figure is from after people started wondering whether taking cocaine might be a bad idea.
I'm trying to cloud the argument for legislation, that's the whole point, I'm anti-legislation and I'm illustrating it by reductio ad absurdum.
In any case, that our bodies need these things is no real argument. That just means that they should be carefully controlled rather than banned outright, just like the many prescription drugs that people require but can't get without a doctor's authorization.
You could very well be right. I never said it was proof of anything. But it is very strange.
Your Adams quote doesn't really apply, by the way. I never said that anything was built for me. However it assumes that self awareness is common. But there's no proof of this, it's just a cultural assumption. For all I know I'm the only self aware being in the entire universe. I'm surrounded by a bunch of other creatures which all act as though they were self aware, but that's no kind of proof.
I would never assume that the universe was "meant" for anything, much less me. But the fact that I'm self aware is really strange and goes beyond anything that's known. Whether I'm the only one or whether all of you are also self aware, it's a powerful suggestion that there's something going on beyond what's currently known.