In the 60s and 70s, various companies were developing high-availability software (process pairs, redundant storage, transactions, ACID, etc). Each of them thought they had developed something unique, and as a result tried to hide it from their competitors.
As a result, progress in the field went a lot slower than it had to, with plenty of reproduced effort. That was in the days before software was eligible for patent, so there is definitely a case to be made that (non-obvious) software patents can be helpful.
I'm sorry, but this argument is bogus. The software field did not develop slowly in that era because there were no patents, progress was slow going because of the state of the technology itself. Computers were slow and clunky, and advanced programming tools were unavailable. When something as basic as recompiling your code takes all day, which it often did, naturally progress is going to be slow. And the proof is seen a few years later during the PC revolution of the late '70s and early '80s. By that time computers and system software had become fast and small enough to really get things done, and indeed that era saw an absolute outpouring of creativity in software design. Nobody worried about patents, everybody got rich anyway, and progress happened in leaps and bounds. This was an era of unparallelled innovation and nonstop new ideas - and I guarantee you that many of the truly innovative ideas of that era wouldn't have been possible under a software patentable regime like we have now. There would be no such thing as the spreadsheet, to cite just one example, had software patents existed at the time. IMHO those days were proof positive that software patents are not only unneeded but downright detrimental to the advancement of the programming arts.
You would be right if modern patent licensing wasn't a legalized protection racket. The patent is invalid so there was never a product to begin with, only a bunch of men dressed in expensive suits telling you "that is a nice business you have there. It would be a shame if something happened to it, either pay up or face years of curt battles with sales bans mixed in". The nearest thing to a product is the promise not to loose your business to a violent death.
I wish that were true. Typically, lawyers don't do "curt".
Seriously? Are people really saying that it's too much work to read all that text in the summary? I mean, sure, it could be organized better, but it's not even what I would call an unusually long paragraph. Has twitter and its ilk finally reduced people to this, an entire generation rendered incapable of handling large blocks of information at once? Does this kind of stuff really have to be spoon-fed to you a little at a time before you'll deign to read it?
...because they're turning those children into Genetically Modified Organisms. And we've all read many times here on/. that all GMOs are bad.
But I hope this therapy works out. Progress against cancer is made one step at a time.
Which brings up an interesting point... If a company changes your genetic code as part of a cure they have patented, do they then own your cells which are now GMOs (more or less)? Will you get sued if you try to propagate the patented material via procreation?
then use your powers as a citizen to advance policy that would be different
may I remind you that fixing the government, way back then, was possible by regular people. the gov didn't control nukes and stuff, back then.
now, the armed forces and the local police (no diff anymore, sigh) will do all they can to 'follow orders' and won't let an uprising happen. each time we've tried, lately, the news media (owned by the government, for all practical purposes, even though not directly or literally) refuses to cover the events or makes the protesters look like 'bad guys' and they laugh it off. then they go to commercial.
you have the nsa keeping tabs on everyone and so you can't even gather in groups in private without them knowing (take your phone batteries out; if you even can, anymore). clear your gps in your car (oh right, you can't clear the obd2 blackbox that is mandated in every new car these days).
every thing that we could use to regain control has been thought of and 'worked around' by our oh-so-wonderful government. they realize that we are Pissed Off and they will do all they can to stop any revolt or even simple protest.
I don't see any peaceful solution and I shudder to think of the alternative.
I do fear that my memories of what was a free country will be all that's left for the next 1 or even TWO generations.
I see a single peaceful way to move forward, by embracing technology that even the NSA cannot subvert. We know that the cryptographic tools are already out there, as is the raw talent to use them, in theory it should be possible to build a genuinely unbreakable crypto system that would at the very least make the current mass siphoning and storage of online information impractical. Sure, if they really want to expend the resources the NSA will probably always be able to listen in on specific targets of interest, but we don't have to make it so damn easy for them to track everyone, all the time, with metadata and search terms plainly visible, the way it is now. It would of course mean that the average American citizen would have to buy into the idea and take the time to download and use encryption software, but I actually think that goal isn't quite as farfetched as it used to be. With every new disclosure more and more people are becoming totally fed up with how things currently stand, I think if there was a relatively simple way to insure that one's personal communications and all related metadata would stay private, quite a lot of folks would use it. The GPS/cellphone tracking thing is going to be much harder to fix, because the very nature of cell towers makes some tracking inherently possible, but there must be some technological solution to even that problem floating around out there. The thing is, we kind of HAVE to do something like this, because if we don't take back control the internet, or at least the part of the net that constitutes our personal data and metadata, things will just get worse and worse and worse and then we really will be looking at violent revolution as the only possible way forward. The problem is that when we finally do reach that point, the Government might have grown so all-powerful that any revolution will be doomed to failure. There seems to be a very narrow window for this country to change directions, but that window is closing fast. And the view from the bottom of the slippery slope is likely to be very ugly indeed.
Especially considering the government is already subverted from the will of the majority. They need to be weeding out the bad guys internally first. Ignoring the biased reported polls, from an informal survey of everyone each of you readers actually know, does anyone know, personally, someone who thinks the TSA is a good idea? Not even a majority, just a single person? I know that everyone I have ever talked to has said it is stupid, useless and completely against their wishes. And that's not to mention all of the other stupidity going on that no one seems to be in favor of. Also, it is across the board from my redneck, gun in the rack across their pickup window, co-workers to the very liberal pro-gay, pro-vegetarian librarian I chat with. I can't seem to find anyone, other than my congress critters that will defend any of the anti-terrorism, pro-spying actions our government is doing. And even the congress pukes are obviously sending out form responses that they don't even believe in and can't defend when questioned in person, other that more rote memorized parroting. It not even like Obamacare or immigration, where I can find a broad range of opinions, with some rational, well thought out arguments on both sides. The culture of fear we are being force fed seems to be universally despised.
My mod points just expired, but this is genuinely insightful. I, as well, cannot think of a single person I know who would say the TSA is anything but a monumental waste of taxpayer dollars. We're supposed to be a democracy of a sort, so why does idiocy like the TSA still exist, with powers that even seem to be constantly expanding? How does that happen??
How, indeed? It's just more proof, if any was needed, that the will of the American people no longer has anything at all to do with how our Government actually acts. How did it come to this? Not only have we lost, or are in the process of losing, most of the things that made this country great to begin with, but somehow along the way we've also managed to surrender the power to do anything about it. History shows that such power, once surrendered, is seldom if ever regained.
I guess this is just what the view looks like from the bottom of that slippery slope everyone was always talking about.
No, the article proves that having a car that reeks of marijuana and has a secret compartment is enough to get you arrested.
Strangely, they forgot to copy that line from the article that spawned the story.
Well, I found an article that says "Troopers noticed an overwhelming smell of raw marijuana which gave them probable cause to search the car", so it must be true, right? Trouble is, cops know full well they can search any car they want to just by claiming to smell some pot. The "I smelled marijuana" claim has been so abused over the years by law enforcement it's become a cliche. Just because a cop says he noticed an odor, doesn't mean there was one. Doesn't mean there wasn't one, either, there may well have been, it's just that on this particular issue cops have very little credibility.
And one of my favorite Arizona laws: You may not have more than two dildos in a house.
Wow, that's pretty weird. I mean, think a minute about what the rationale behind that one must have been. One dildo is perfectly OK to have and use, but merely possessing two of them makes you a pervert and a felon! Sure, that's perfectly logical. Who the heck came up with that idea, I wonder?
And then of course there's the obvious question, what happens if it's a two-headed dildo? Does that count as one or two?
What did the NSA know about Tamerlan Tsarnaev? That's what I want to know. If the mass surveillance is justified, how did they not know about his plot? How did they fail to prevent it?
I guess they were so busy tracking the various porn sites he visited they just missed all that other stuff. I mean, come on, you're a bored NSA analyst sitting at a desk sifting through reams of data, what's really gonna attract your interest the most, some obscure piece of paranoid Russian intel, or good old American porn? On the internet, pron is king, baby!
So remember this, the next time you visit your own favorite online purveyor of wank-ware: in doing so, you just might be making some poor old NSA spook's day!
If crime rates are going down, then why is my local police getting military grade equipment and gear?
Because scared voters like you are giving them as much money as they can spend. You're letting them keep any funds they seize from drug crimes or things they claim might be money from drug crimes. Our biggest fear is fear itself and the police and prison system profit off your fear. They're doing very well.
This. This exactly. Most of those fancy toys are paid for with seizure money, of which there will always be a steady supply as long as the War on Drugs continues and statutes like RICO are still on the books.
Damn mod points expired yesterday, it's like they only give them out when you don't need or want them... How does Slashdot do that?
No, there are drugs that do turn toxic after time. Acetaminophen-codeine (tylenol #3) causes liver damage after 3 months. The codeine reacts with the acetaminophen (APAP) and turns it toxic. This is not related to the liver damage that prolonged exposure to APAP causes.
I'm a health professional that deals with pain relief daily.
Interesting, if true. I have tried to verify your claim but a quick search doesn't yield anything beyond the usual formulaic warning language: e.g. "do not use this medication after expiration...", etc. Could you provide a link to an authoritative source with more information about this reaction? Acetaminophen is well known to cause liver toxicity, and I know codeine has some potentially very toxic molecularly similar analogs, but a specific time-related reaction between the two is news to me.
How is it possible that Congress can consistently have approval ratings in the 10-25% range (and even lower), yet incumbents generally keep getting reelected?
Look up Gerrymandering. Basically, it's become virtually impossible for some of these guys to lose. These days Congressional districts are drawn up specifically to insure a win for one side, regardless of the wishes of the majority of the population. That, along with the influence of corporate money, pretty much explains the continuing success of unpopular politicians.
Wow, that's really interesting, how the heck did I not hear about this?? I mean seriously, a decades old ban on government propaganda is lifted, and nobody (meaning most big US media outlets) bothers to frickin' mention it??? No, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, it's not really surprising anymore when something like this gets overlooked in the media, but damn... How far we have fallen. And still no end in sight. I no longer recognize my country, truly I don't. Thank you for posting that link.
Without analytics, low-risk 18 year olds pay a lot of money to cover high-risk 18 year olds. With analytics, low-risk 18 year olds pay less (though not nearly as low as they should be paying) and high-risk 18 year olds are uninsurable. Why? Because you're going to have to substantially raise the price on those high-risk 18 year olds now that low-risk ones aren't covering the bill.
Now extend this logic to health care. Why is it okay to preach universal health-care and group insurance where low-risk cover the bill for high-risk, but the same isn't true for auto insurance? It's a slippery slope!
Moderation by others usually doesn't bother me, but how is this insightful? The first part correctly states the problem with regard to this approach, in that it leads to a pool of uninsurable drivers, you have to have good drivers paying part of the cost of bad drivers, that's the insurance game in a nutshell, and it applies equally to driving or healthcare or whatever. But what slippery slope are you talking about? Nobody is arguing that this doesn't apply to auto insurance, it does, and the proof is that States that require all drivers to have valid insurance inevitably end up having to set up high-risk insurance pools for bottom tier "uninsurables". I should know, I used to be in one when I was a teen, and my rates were indeed outrageous. Those in the risk pool are analogous to those on medicaid, it's a natural outgrowth of requiring universal insurance for anything. You want to cover everyone, that's how it's done, and I don't see anybody arguing or "preaching" otherwise. Same rules apply for both, no slippery slope that I can see.
True enough, less of a needed drug can indeed be harmful, I will grant the point. But in reality I suspect even that is overwhelmingly unlikely to happen. There's an AC reply above that explains the real meaning of drug manufacturer's expiration dates rather well, in case you missed it. AFAIK some drugs degrade faster than others, but none are so fast that it becomes a real concern, unless we're talking decades or longer past expiration, and even then, who knows for sure? So yeah, technically possible in theory, but probably not an issue in practice. Personally, I never throw away expired drugs that I think I might need again in the future, not with drug prices the way they are and no Rx insurance coverage.
No, no, I think people are getting this all wrong. The DHS internet "kill switch" doesn't kill the internet, it kills the users! Either selectively, or in one big all-inclusive purge! And that's why they don't want anyone finding out about the details. I mean it's obvious, when you think about it... But don't worry, they're so incompetent they'll probably just blow themselves up if they ever try to actually use the technology. Come to think of it, that should be the new DHS motto: "Safety Through Incompetence". I feel safer already.
I can use medicine longer than is safe (expired) and kill myself and a lot of people. Do you propose to embed DRM on it? There is no need for remote capabilities for that, just add a timer and disable it after their secure time of life. The problem with this case is not only the remote capabilities, but that they don't sell you a battery, they rent it to you, not a problem they give you an option to buy one or others are able to provide the same rental service and by definition of DRM I am pretty sure this will be something like "only Renault can provide that service"
There is not a single drug that has been proven to become unsafe after it's passed the expiration date - or any other date, for that matter. After expiration a drug may become less effective, i.e. you may not be getting the full dose as labeled, but the medicine isn't going to suddenly start to have different pharmacological effects, dangerous or otherwise, just because of the passage of time. There was at one time a single known case where a drug was thought to possibly degrade into a potentially harmful substance, but it was subsequently proven that the drug in question, tetracycline, remains safe even after expiration, and in any event tetracycline is only sold for veterinary use these days. So no, you won't kill yourself or anybody with expired meds, that's basically an urban myth, although big pharma would no doubt love for everybody to continue to believe it.
Sorry, but you're wrong. Yes, in the '90s when those studies were done, it kinda looked that way. Since then, however, the percentage of single-parent homes has continued to skyrocket, only, funny thing, crime itself has gone way down. Read the above linked article, look at the graphs. Sure, some research says single-parent children may be more at risk for going to jail than those from two-parent households, but you can't explain the prison population that way, not without seriously cherry-picking your data.
Yeah, 35 billion is nothing. That's half the budget, annually, for California. If they have these reserves and pull them out then the country truly is at rock bottom. It will be heading there as the attack on Daka demonstrates only state owned stores will flourish and they likely won't have anything in stock because nobody wants to sell to Venezuela and be paid in toilet paper Bolivars. It'll be like the good old days in Soviet Russia - where you sell your neighbor for a pair of blue jeans.
Poor choice of words, or you haven't been paying attention. One of the biggest recent Venezuelan shortages was of toilet paper, so if they actually started printing Bolivars on real TP, it would probably serve to increase the value of the note!
Agreed, I don't understand the point of this patent at all. What are they going to do, sue any other company that tries to streamline interactions with law enforcement? Yeah, there's a winning business model. Still, the thought that this could actually happen makes for some potentially amusing possible scenarios. Just imagine the headlines:
"FB claims ownership of software facilitating NSA spying, seeks injunction on all non-FB wiretaps!
Meth addicts don't only do stupid things just to get to the next fix. What they do while on meth is pretty stupid too. That's where the comparison between "hard drugs" and alcohol fails. Is there such a thing as non-binge/moderate meth usage? There is such a thing as non-binge alcohol usage, where someone has one or two drinks with dinner and feels a little relaxed and isn't totally messed up. I would say that's the vast majority of alcohol usage. I've never heard of that with meth (or cocaine, or heroin, for example), but please show me some evidence otherwise if it exists. I think it's because the effect is stronger and more addictive than alcohol, so users pretty instantly start going for the totally-fucked-up feeling rather than the moderate feeling.
Don't have much time so out of the drugs you mention I will tackle only cocaine. Back in the disco era of the '70s, the casual use of cocaine had become so prevalent that the President of the United States commissioned a panel of experts to research the dangers of cocaine usage. The outcome of that research was eventually published as a so-called "White Paper" by the Carter administration, and I remember well the conclusion they came to, which was that cocaine is primarily, and I'm quoting pretty much exactly here, "a harmless recreational drug". And guess what, back then, before crack arrived, that's exactly what it was for the vast majority of users. I need hardly add that without prohibition the very idea of crack would probably never have occurred to anyone.
Isn't it more likely prosecution is difficult because there is frequently no evidence and no eyewitnesses, just one persons word against another? In those circumstances it *should* be hard to get a conviction.
I absolutely agree, it should be hard, but prosecutors all over the US have proven that with the right kind of defendant it's not that hard at all to get a conviction based on nothing but the word of a single other person. You'd be amazed at how many black men are doing hard time for murder and other crimes based solely on the testimony of a single, often extremely unreliable eyewitness. Reading about some of these cases is scary, how utterly easy it is to wind up behind bars once the state has decided that's where you belong, and this can be especially true for heinous crimes like murder or rape.
The lyrics sites in question have already consulted with their lawyers, and released the following statement which clarifies their positions on the issue:
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!
Motherfucker!
(fuck you slashdot junk text filter)
Oh man, dude, that's utter genius! Now what song are those the lyrics to, again?
Slashdot Mirror
In the 60s and 70s, various companies were developing high-availability software (process pairs, redundant storage, transactions, ACID, etc). Each of them thought they had developed something unique, and as a result tried to hide it from their competitors. As a result, progress in the field went a lot slower than it had to, with plenty of reproduced effort. That was in the days before software was eligible for patent, so there is definitely a case to be made that (non-obvious) software patents can be helpful.
I'm sorry, but this argument is bogus. The software field did not develop slowly in that era because there were no patents, progress was slow going because of the state of the technology itself. Computers were slow and clunky, and advanced programming tools were unavailable. When something as basic as recompiling your code takes all day, which it often did, naturally progress is going to be slow. And the proof is seen a few years later during the PC revolution of the late '70s and early '80s. By that time computers and system software had become fast and small enough to really get things done, and indeed that era saw an absolute outpouring of creativity in software design. Nobody worried about patents, everybody got rich anyway, and progress happened in leaps and bounds. This was an era of unparallelled innovation and nonstop new ideas - and I guarantee you that many of the truly innovative ideas of that era wouldn't have been possible under a software patentable regime like we have now. There would be no such thing as the spreadsheet, to cite just one example, had software patents existed at the time. IMHO those days were proof positive that software patents are not only unneeded but downright detrimental to the advancement of the programming arts.
You would be right if modern patent licensing wasn't a legalized protection racket. The patent is invalid so there was never a product to begin with, only a bunch of men dressed in expensive suits telling you "that is a nice business you have there. It would be a shame if something happened to it, either pay up or face years of curt battles with sales bans mixed in". The nearest thing to a product is the promise not to loose your business to a violent death.
I wish that were true. Typically, lawyers don't do "curt".
Seriously? Are people really saying that it's too much work to read all that text in the summary? I mean, sure, it could be organized better, but it's not even what I would call an unusually long paragraph. Has twitter and its ilk finally reduced people to this, an entire generation rendered incapable of handling large blocks of information at once? Does this kind of stuff really have to be spoon-fed to you a little at a time before you'll deign to read it?
...because they're turning those children into Genetically Modified Organisms. And we've all read many times here on /. that all GMOs are bad.
But I hope this therapy works out. Progress against cancer is made one step at a time.
Which brings up an interesting point... If a company changes your genetic code as part of a cure they have patented, do they then own your cells which are now GMOs (more or less)? Will you get sued if you try to propagate the patented material via procreation?
then use your powers as a citizen to advance policy that would be different
may I remind you that fixing the government, way back then, was possible by regular people. the gov didn't control nukes and stuff, back then.
now, the armed forces and the local police (no diff anymore, sigh) will do all they can to 'follow orders' and won't let an uprising happen. each time we've tried, lately, the news media (owned by the government, for all practical purposes, even though not directly or literally) refuses to cover the events or makes the protesters look like 'bad guys' and they laugh it off. then they go to commercial.
you have the nsa keeping tabs on everyone and so you can't even gather in groups in private without them knowing (take your phone batteries out; if you even can, anymore). clear your gps in your car (oh right, you can't clear the obd2 blackbox that is mandated in every new car these days).
every thing that we could use to regain control has been thought of and 'worked around' by our oh-so-wonderful government. they realize that we are Pissed Off and they will do all they can to stop any revolt or even simple protest.
I don't see any peaceful solution and I shudder to think of the alternative.
I do fear that my memories of what was a free country will be all that's left for the next 1 or even TWO generations.
I see a single peaceful way to move forward, by embracing technology that even the NSA cannot subvert. We know that the cryptographic tools are already out there, as is the raw talent to use them, in theory it should be possible to build a genuinely unbreakable crypto system that would at the very least make the current mass siphoning and storage of online information impractical. Sure, if they really want to expend the resources the NSA will probably always be able to listen in on specific targets of interest, but we don't have to make it so damn easy for them to track everyone, all the time, with metadata and search terms plainly visible, the way it is now. It would of course mean that the average American citizen would have to buy into the idea and take the time to download and use encryption software, but I actually think that goal isn't quite as farfetched as it used to be. With every new disclosure more and more people are becoming totally fed up with how things currently stand, I think if there was a relatively simple way to insure that one's personal communications and all related metadata would stay private, quite a lot of folks would use it. The GPS/cellphone tracking thing is going to be much harder to fix, because the very nature of cell towers makes some tracking inherently possible, but there must be some technological solution to even that problem floating around out there. The thing is, we kind of HAVE to do something like this, because if we don't take back control the internet, or at least the part of the net that constitutes our personal data and metadata, things will just get worse and worse and worse and then we really will be looking at violent revolution as the only possible way forward. The problem is that when we finally do reach that point, the Government might have grown so all-powerful that any revolution will be doomed to failure. There seems to be a very narrow window for this country to change directions, but that window is closing fast. And the view from the bottom of the slippery slope is likely to be very ugly indeed.
Ah, all is clear. Thanks for pointing out my mistake. Makes perfect sense now.
Especially considering the government is already subverted from the will of the majority. They need to be weeding out the bad guys internally first. Ignoring the biased reported polls, from an informal survey of everyone each of you readers actually know, does anyone know, personally, someone who thinks the TSA is a good idea? Not even a majority, just a single person? I know that everyone I have ever talked to has said it is stupid, useless and completely against their wishes. And that's not to mention all of the other stupidity going on that no one seems to be in favor of. Also, it is across the board from my redneck, gun in the rack across their pickup window, co-workers to the very liberal pro-gay, pro-vegetarian librarian I chat with. I can't seem to find anyone, other than my congress critters that will defend any of the anti-terrorism, pro-spying actions our government is doing. And even the congress pukes are obviously sending out form responses that they don't even believe in and can't defend when questioned in person, other that more rote memorized parroting. It not even like Obamacare or immigration, where I can find a broad range of opinions, with some rational, well thought out arguments on both sides. The culture of fear we are being force fed seems to be universally despised.
My mod points just expired, but this is genuinely insightful. I, as well, cannot think of a single person I know who would say the TSA is anything but a monumental waste of taxpayer dollars. We're supposed to be a democracy of a sort, so why does idiocy like the TSA still exist, with powers that even seem to be constantly expanding? How does that happen??
How, indeed? It's just more proof, if any was needed, that the will of the American people no longer has anything at all to do with how our Government actually acts. How did it come to this? Not only have we lost, or are in the process of losing, most of the things that made this country great to begin with, but somehow along the way we've also managed to surrender the power to do anything about it. History shows that such power, once surrendered, is seldom if ever regained.
I guess this is just what the view looks like from the bottom of that slippery slope everyone was always talking about.
No, the article proves that having a car that reeks of marijuana and has a secret compartment is enough to get you arrested.
Strangely, they forgot to copy that line from the article that spawned the story.
Well, I found an article that says "Troopers noticed an overwhelming smell of raw marijuana which gave them probable cause to search the car", so it must be true, right? Trouble is, cops know full well they can search any car they want to just by claiming to smell some pot. The "I smelled marijuana" claim has been so abused over the years by law enforcement it's become a cliche. Just because a cop says he noticed an odor, doesn't mean there was one. Doesn't mean there wasn't one, either, there may well have been, it's just that on this particular issue cops have very little credibility.
And one of my favorite Arizona laws: You may not have more than two dildos in a house.
Wow, that's pretty weird. I mean, think a minute about what the rationale behind that one must have been. One dildo is perfectly OK to have and use, but merely possessing two of them makes you a pervert and a felon! Sure, that's perfectly logical. Who the heck came up with that idea, I wonder?
And then of course there's the obvious question, what happens if it's a two-headed dildo? Does that count as one or two?
What did the NSA know about Tamerlan Tsarnaev? That's what I want to know. If the mass surveillance is justified, how did they not know about his plot? How did they fail to prevent it?
I guess they were so busy tracking the various porn sites he visited they just missed all that other stuff. I mean, come on, you're a bored NSA analyst sitting at a desk sifting through reams of data, what's really gonna attract your interest the most, some obscure piece of paranoid Russian intel, or good old American porn? On the internet, pron is king, baby!
So remember this, the next time you visit your own favorite online purveyor of wank-ware: in doing so, you just might be making some poor old NSA spook's day!
LittleOlMe 12:51 PM EST What actually killed it, and most every other good idea, is a lack of public funding for all federal elections.
If crime rates are going down, then why is my local police getting military grade equipment and gear?
Because scared voters like you are giving them as much money as they can spend. You're letting them keep any funds they seize from drug crimes or things they claim might be money from drug crimes. Our biggest fear is fear itself and the police and prison system profit off your fear. They're doing very well.
This. This exactly. Most of those fancy toys are paid for with seizure money, of which there will always be a steady supply as long as the War on Drugs continues and statutes like RICO are still on the books.
Damn mod points expired yesterday, it's like they only give them out when you don't need or want them... How does Slashdot do that?
No, there are drugs that do turn toxic after time. Acetaminophen-codeine (tylenol #3) causes liver damage after 3 months. The codeine reacts with the acetaminophen (APAP) and turns it toxic. This is not related to the liver damage that prolonged exposure to APAP causes. I'm a health professional that deals with pain relief daily.
Interesting, if true. I have tried to verify your claim but a quick search doesn't yield anything beyond the usual formulaic warning language: e.g. "do not use this medication after expiration...", etc. Could you provide a link to an authoritative source with more information about this reaction? Acetaminophen is well known to cause liver toxicity, and I know codeine has some potentially very toxic molecularly similar analogs, but a specific time-related reaction between the two is news to me.
How is it possible that Congress can consistently have approval ratings in the 10-25% range (and even lower), yet incumbents generally keep getting reelected?
Look up Gerrymandering. Basically, it's become virtually impossible for some of these guys to lose. These days Congressional districts are drawn up specifically to insure a win for one side, regardless of the wishes of the majority of the population. That, along with the influence of corporate money, pretty much explains the continuing success of unpopular politicians.
"'Anti-Propaganda' Ban Repealed... Direct Broadcasting at American Citizens"
Wow, that's really interesting, how the heck did I not hear about this?? I mean seriously, a decades old ban on government propaganda is lifted, and nobody (meaning most big US media outlets) bothers to frickin' mention it??? No, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, it's not really surprising anymore when something like this gets overlooked in the media, but damn... How far we have fallen. And still no end in sight. I no longer recognize my country, truly I don't. Thank you for posting that link.
Without analytics, low-risk 18 year olds pay a lot of money to cover high-risk 18 year olds. With analytics, low-risk 18 year olds pay less (though not nearly as low as they should be paying) and high-risk 18 year olds are uninsurable. Why? Because you're going to have to substantially raise the price on those high-risk 18 year olds now that low-risk ones aren't covering the bill.
Now extend this logic to health care. Why is it okay to preach universal health-care and group insurance where low-risk cover the bill for high-risk, but the same isn't true for auto insurance? It's a slippery slope!
Moderation by others usually doesn't bother me, but how is this insightful? The first part correctly states the problem with regard to this approach, in that it leads to a pool of uninsurable drivers, you have to have good drivers paying part of the cost of bad drivers, that's the insurance game in a nutshell, and it applies equally to driving or healthcare or whatever. But what slippery slope are you talking about? Nobody is arguing that this doesn't apply to auto insurance, it does, and the proof is that States that require all drivers to have valid insurance inevitably end up having to set up high-risk insurance pools for bottom tier "uninsurables". I should know, I used to be in one when I was a teen, and my rates were indeed outrageous. Those in the risk pool are analogous to those on medicaid, it's a natural outgrowth of requiring universal insurance for anything. You want to cover everyone, that's how it's done, and I don't see anybody arguing or "preaching" otherwise. Same rules apply for both, no slippery slope that I can see.
True enough, less of a needed drug can indeed be harmful, I will grant the point. But in reality I suspect even that is overwhelmingly unlikely to happen. There's an AC reply above that explains the real meaning of drug manufacturer's expiration dates rather well, in case you missed it. AFAIK some drugs degrade faster than others, but none are so fast that it becomes a real concern, unless we're talking decades or longer past expiration, and even then, who knows for sure? So yeah, technically possible in theory, but probably not an issue in practice. Personally, I never throw away expired drugs that I think I might need again in the future, not with drug prices the way they are and no Rx insurance coverage.
No, no, I think people are getting this all wrong. The DHS internet "kill switch" doesn't kill the internet, it kills the users! Either selectively, or in one big all-inclusive purge! And that's why they don't want anyone finding out about the details. I mean it's obvious, when you think about it... But don't worry, they're so incompetent they'll probably just blow themselves up if they ever try to actually use the technology. Come to think of it, that should be the new DHS motto: "Safety Through Incompetence". I feel safer already.
I can use medicine longer than is safe (expired) and kill myself and a lot of people. Do you propose to embed DRM on it? There is no need for remote capabilities for that, just add a timer and disable it after their secure time of life. The problem with this case is not only the remote capabilities, but that they don't sell you a battery, they rent it to you, not a problem they give you an option to buy one or others are able to provide the same rental service and by definition of DRM I am pretty sure this will be something like "only Renault can provide that service"
There is not a single drug that has been proven to become unsafe after it's passed the expiration date - or any other date, for that matter. After expiration a drug may become less effective, i.e. you may not be getting the full dose as labeled, but the medicine isn't going to suddenly start to have different pharmacological effects, dangerous or otherwise, just because of the passage of time. There was at one time a single known case where a drug was thought to possibly degrade into a potentially harmful substance, but it was subsequently proven that the drug in question, tetracycline, remains safe even after expiration, and in any event tetracycline is only sold for veterinary use these days. So no, you won't kill yourself or anybody with expired meds, that's basically an urban myth, although big pharma would no doubt love for everybody to continue to believe it.
Sorry, but you're wrong. Yes, in the '90s when those studies were done, it kinda looked that way. Since then, however, the percentage of single-parent homes has continued to skyrocket, only, funny thing, crime itself has gone way down. Read the above linked article, look at the graphs. Sure, some research says single-parent children may be more at risk for going to jail than those from two-parent households, but you can't explain the prison population that way, not without seriously cherry-picking your data.
Yeah, 35 billion is nothing. That's half the budget, annually, for California. If they have these reserves and pull them out then the country truly is at rock bottom. It will be heading there as the attack on Daka demonstrates only state owned stores will flourish and they likely won't have anything in stock because nobody wants to sell to Venezuela and be paid in toilet paper Bolivars. It'll be like the good old days in Soviet Russia - where you sell your neighbor for a pair of blue jeans.
Poor choice of words, or you haven't been paying attention. One of the biggest recent Venezuelan shortages was of toilet paper, so if they actually started printing Bolivars on real TP, it would probably serve to increase the value of the note!
"FB claims ownership of software facilitating NSA spying, seeks injunction on all non-FB wiretaps!
Meth addicts don't only do stupid things just to get to the next fix. What they do while on meth is pretty stupid too. That's where the comparison between "hard drugs" and alcohol fails. Is there such a thing as non-binge/moderate meth usage? There is such a thing as non-binge alcohol usage, where someone has one or two drinks with dinner and feels a little relaxed and isn't totally messed up. I would say that's the vast majority of alcohol usage. I've never heard of that with meth (or cocaine, or heroin, for example), but please show me some evidence otherwise if it exists. I think it's because the effect is stronger and more addictive than alcohol, so users pretty instantly start going for the totally-fucked-up feeling rather than the moderate feeling.
Don't have much time so out of the drugs you mention I will tackle only cocaine. Back in the disco era of the '70s, the casual use of cocaine had become so prevalent that the President of the United States commissioned a panel of experts to research the dangers of cocaine usage. The outcome of that research was eventually published as a so-called "White Paper" by the Carter administration, and I remember well the conclusion they came to, which was that cocaine is primarily, and I'm quoting pretty much exactly here, "a harmless recreational drug". And guess what, back then, before crack arrived, that's exactly what it was for the vast majority of users. I need hardly add that without prohibition the very idea of crack would probably never have occurred to anyone.
So there you have it. It's true, look it up.
Isn't it more likely prosecution is difficult because there is frequently no evidence and no eyewitnesses, just one persons word against another? In those circumstances it *should* be hard to get a conviction.
I absolutely agree, it should be hard, but prosecutors all over the US have proven that with the right kind of defendant it's not that hard at all to get a conviction based on nothing but the word of a single other person. You'd be amazed at how many black men are doing hard time for murder and other crimes based solely on the testimony of a single, often extremely unreliable eyewitness. Reading about some of these cases is scary, how utterly easy it is to wind up behind bars once the state has decided that's where you belong, and this can be especially true for heinous crimes like murder or rape.
The lyrics sites in question have already consulted with their lawyers, and released the following statement which clarifies their positions on the issue:
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me! Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me! Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me! Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me! Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me! Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me! Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me! Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me! Motherfucker!
(fuck you slashdot junk text filter)
Oh man, dude, that's utter genius! Now what song are those the lyrics to, again?