I think you've just described the argument for *legalizing* drugs -- by legalizing their production, you're not buying a substance grown or produced in a conflict area where the local insurgent militia takes a cut and provides protection.
Instead, it's grown/produced as part of the above-ground economy at non-risk inflated prices, eliminating the flow of cash to militias and terrorist groups.
I went low carb about 2 years ago and the transition was similar to what he reported. I remember feeling hungry with a slight upset stomach, but when I'd start eating I'd just feel kind of full and not want to eat. After a couple of weeks this went away and I seem to have adjusted.
I dropped about 20 pounds and basically kept up the diet, trying to stay as low carb as practical (like not sweating the 2g sugar in a couple of tablespoons of salsa for example).
Occasionally due to circumstances I have a run of carby food and I will notice that a couple of days of this and when I get back to low carb eating I have a kind of induction experience for a day or so where I have the same kind of icky, hungry-but-can't-really-eat sort of feeling.
Why do porn sites have more malware than other sites?
It stands to reason that porn on the internet shouldn't have any more to do with malware than sports on the internet. Both are popular with about the same demographic and both are providing an entertainment product.
By now, considering the money associated with porn and the relative competiton, porn sites should be like any other site selling entertainment, wanting to maintain a "safe" shopping experience for their customers lest they take their entertainment dollar to a competitor who will provide that experience.
Is it all tied to the shame of sex? You can rip someone off looking for erotica because it's dirty and they won't tell, but if you rip them off selling them something else they'll bitch to their friends but not be embarassed about watching sports, for example?
This kind of makes sense, but at the same time, it runs against the profit motive of a porn site operator who has more incentive to sell you a recurring subscription and keep you as a customer than earn 10 cents providing a malware download and chase you away.
I'm surprised big pharma hasn't done this already. I suspect that Western ideals of work ethic and morality are really the hindrance.
I would think it would be possible to develop a compound that has the criteria for the ideal recreational drug.
1) Short duration -- effect wears off after ~3 hours. 2) Self-limiting dosage -- rapid diminishing returns of repeated dosing. Perhaps a 10-20% increase in effect with a second dose, but little or no gain with subsequent or increased dosage, either in terms of increased psychoactive effect or duration of action. 3) This is the wrong term, but a long "half life" that makes repeated dosings ineffective within 18-24 hours of a previous dose. Combined with #2, this would make it difficult to abuse by taking it all the time and mitigate the habit forming nature of it by forcing a "down" period before the drug's psychoactive effect can be felt again. 4) A psychoactive effect that is more tranquilizing/calming/hypnotic than energizing or stimulating but without being too somnambulant. This should mitigate some of the social issues faced with stimulants like cocaine, amphetamines or even alcohol.
Obviously it shouldn't have a realistic overdose potential or synergistic effects with any CNS depressants like opioids, alcohol or benzo-type sedatives.
Strangely it seems like cannabis is a good starting point, since it has some of these properties already -- the more you use it, the less the high seems to be, it has almost no overdose potential, and its effect is more sedating than stimulating, and it doesn't have any CNS depressant synergies.
The cutting part makes less sense, since if you're building the parts up from the ground up you just wouldn't print where you needed it cut. Using multiple materials sounds interesting, though, and while there will always probably be a need to hone surface finishes I would imagine part of the engineering goal is making the sintering process produce as close as possible to a finished surface to minimize secondary finishing steps.
I think it requires your design to be something that can be milled externally and there's nothing simple about multi-axis CNC machine or the tooling required to mill the parts which is why a number of gun manufacturers make parts via metal injection molding versus machining.
Plus, a 3D printer can make a range of objects from a variety of alloys, including objects that would be impossible or difficult to make via milling or require mechanical assembly of pieces machined individually to get a part that could be 3D printed in a single piece.
I had lunch with Jeff Dean a couple of weeks ago and he told me the engineers were pretty pissed at the NSA stuff and were working to make it a lot more difficult for the NSA.
There was such an outcry when they started down that spin off path that it sure seemed like the company's response was like "oops, we misjudged this."
Plus, I wouldn't subscribe if it was streaming only. The library is so much smaller on streaming and it overlaps significantly with Amazon Prime streaming. Since I'm a prime customer anyway, Netflix as a streaming only service with the current streaming catalog would be a waste of money.
I don't doubt DVD will go away, but it really can't until the streaming library matches the DVD library.
The truly hard part with single payer would seem to be standardizing on the pricing for services, and this is an upfront process, not a computer system build.
What makes the current system so complex is that there are hundreds (thousands, maybe?) of insurance companies, most with many plans with overlapping but not identical features, and each plan has a "price" they will pay for services.
I think there would be so much streamlining when it came to single payer that it would greatly simplify the entire process. A single payer system is going to standardize pricing on everything related to health care. There'd be one price, one payer and many providers.
Arguably, single payer would be simpler. Part of the complexity of this system is that it has to interface with a ton of insurers and their plans and be able to make comparison shopping possible.
If there was a single payer solution there wouldn't be any of that complexity. You would simply sign up and be covered. No choices, no options, a single plan.
And although you can't remove the stock Apple apps, some are optional like Remote (for AppleTV) and they don't do something dumb like locking the apps to a specific screen or location. I have an app folder with a bunch of seldom used Apple apps on the last app screen.
Which is what surprises me, I thought that part of their appeal was the "long tail" argument where depth was more important than the old brick and mortal video store model of 1000 copies of a new release and a shallow catalog otherwise.
I've had a number of minor titles in my queue go to the "Saved" category with availability unknown, and ironically a couple that have done that but become available streaming.
I'm not sure what drives the discs that were available that became unavailable, especially considering the number of discs that appear to be custom duplications for Netflix. I can only assume a disc that goes unavailable is out of print and Netflix does not have the rights to do a custom rental pressing.
And if not, what features/functions of Android are the patents for? It strikes me that most things Android does that would be covered by a patent would also apply to Apple.
Now, Apple may have other cross-licensing/patent agreements for other stuff so they aren't making a cash payment to MS, but instead a payment in kind, but I'm still curious what Android does that MS holds patents on.
...has taken it over and going to run it as a profit center to support whatever off-the-books black ops they are running, as well as provide a long-term intelligence gathering center for transnational organized crime and drug dealing.
It's all about the "It runs linux and gives you root access" -- for a lot of Slashdot, that's either actually reason enough for them, or at least some kind of statement they think will gain them public credibility.
Hey, I'm not an RF guy and fortunately the equipment these days (controllers + radios) take away a lot of the low-level complexity in a way that mostly works. But even then the 2.4ghz band blows in high-density office spaces like office towers. There's just too much competition and you can't do much about the 20 other visible radios, all blasting out at maximum power to try to overcome each other.
That being said, it does still feel like a system designed for casual use (ie, a single AP allowing clients within a small radius to access a network) that has used all manner of gimcrackery on the back end to be a does-all standard for distances beyond what it was envisioned for (ie, LoS P2P links), municipal wifi (trying to blanket an entire city) or super high densities or mixed radio densities (office buildings).
The big problem with getting arrested and "go to jail" nowadays is that you stand a really good chance of having employment problems down the road.
It used to be that a municipal arrest record for something like this wasn't really that big of a deal, especially if your potential employer wasn't located in that municipality or it wasn't your home address. Records required manual search, the charges were almost always misdemeanor disturbing the peace-type charges and it was functionally invisible.
Nowadays, these records are trivial to search nationwide and in many cases even an arrest alone (regardless of reason and without a conviction) may get you rejected for employment. This comes up for criticism all the time in the media, but there are plenty of stories of people who get arrested and then released right away who find themselves unable to get jobs, rent apartments or sometimes even get a loan because of an arrest alone.
Sure, the protest is noble and taking risks for the cause is part of the ideal, but the risk isn't being shoved in a cell for 48 hours, the risks are being denied a lot of economic choices for years.
It's always remarkable what people do with 802.11, but a lot of it strikes me as a mediocre standard being (over)extended with gimmicks.
Out of the box it works well enough for simple use, but more complex use cases (distance, density, broader coverage) seem to involve a lot of complexity to make up for the overall weakness of the standard (limited channel selection, radio power, etc).
Are there any changes on the horizon to generate new standards that would fix this? Such as designs tailored to high-density environments (hundreds or thousands of clients off a single radio), greater channel selections, better distance capabilities, etc?
I realize that not all of these may be something that works in a single product and that there are RF constraints that limit this, but at the end of the day the current 802.11 environment reminds me of DOS. Sure, with the right shims and magic you can run games (Quake, for the era) or a GUI OS on top of them, but there's something inherently hokey about it.
And even worse, during an actual race they brake and accelerate a lot, which uses a lot more fuel than going a constant speed. Like the "City" versus "Highway" mileage ratings.
"...at whatever port the owner wants.." is kind of a small list of boats.
Just moving even a smallish yacht (75 feet or so) ocean distances is really expensive and/or really slow. Sport yachts capable of 20+ knots cruising speeds can eat double-digit quantities of fuel per hour. Moving from Miami to NYC could take days and tens of thousands of dollars in fuel and most don't have the fuel capacity for major blue ocean transits. Trawler styles use less fuel, but have cruising speeds in the single digits.
I think even most million-dollar class yachts that are crewed aren't crewed by permanent crews but are crewed as needed when the owner wants to use them, maybe with a preferred captain and generally don't move ports but may move to alternate berthings with the general vicinity, but even then you can't just show up with a big boat and expect to find a berthing for it.
Of course there are ocean-going ships permanently crewed, but this is a pretty small list because now you're talking really large boats that are ships with operating costs on par or exceeding large jets.
...or just spillover from outrage at domestic surveillance?
It strikes me that at first we had the outrage about NSA collecting information on Americans and conducting espionage that infringes on the privacy of Americans.
Then we had revelations of intensive surveillance of friendly governments with outrage at that. I get (but don't totally agree with) the outrage this may have had in Germany, but it seems a little bit misplaced domestically in the US and I don't completely understand why Americans would be particularly bothered with foreign surveillance, unless they're just bothered by surveillance generally.
Germany (as one example) as a state has a national agenda of their own and their diplomatic goals might be divergent from US interests in sensitive areas, whether it's relations with Russia or Middle East policy or even domestic political agendas. It's certainly possible to see Merkel cutting diplomatic deals with Russia which might undercut US diplomatic goals with Russia, for example. Knowing what deals Germany has made can very much aid US diplomacy.
States may voice moral or ideological aims, but in reality are far more Realpolitik oriented, and that means pursuing your goals without regard to ideology or morality within the limits of pragmatism. If you can spy to gain advantage, you will, and I think all states do within the limits of their resources. The US just has far greater leverage and capability.
I can see the risk aspect to this at a 'normal' company with the typical suit and tie CEO who rose up from sales or marketing. Somehow, though, Tesla probably has some things going for it it that other businesses don't.
For one, a CEO who has built an Internet software based business in an era where you built it yourself because there was nothing else to base it on. The entire company and product they are producing is unlike anything else out there and a lot of what they produce they have to produce themselves from scratch, so there's a culture of "do it yourself" already in place.
Given the nature of the product, I would doubt there are many employees at Tesla, especially in the technology side of the business, who are there solely because it is a paycheck and there's free coffee. Most of the employees are probably there at least partly because of some belief in the product itself or the (potentially) environmentally transformative nature of the product, which makes them likely to be more highly motivated to see the company succeed than the typical employee who is motivated more by a sense of career achievement, compensation, etc.
I would also bet the employees in any technology-oriented capacity at the company are smarter than the average bear. Given Musk's drive and background, the technology hiring standards and internal respect for IT are probably much higher at Tesla, than at a company that makes run of the mill widgets.
So while I agree that home-brew systems have a better-than-average chance of failure at a typical company because of tech-ignorant management, IT staffs of average ability and motivation, Tesla has a lot of things going for it that make it more likely they will succeed.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you've just described the argument for *legalizing* drugs -- by legalizing their production, you're not buying a substance grown or produced in a conflict area where the local insurgent militia takes a cut and provides protection.
Instead, it's grown/produced as part of the above-ground economy at non-risk inflated prices, eliminating the flow of cash to militias and terrorist groups.
CF, the end of alcohol prohibition.
This was my thinking.
I went low carb about 2 years ago and the transition was similar to what he reported. I remember feeling hungry with a slight upset stomach, but when I'd start eating I'd just feel kind of full and not want to eat. After a couple of weeks this went away and I seem to have adjusted.
I dropped about 20 pounds and basically kept up the diet, trying to stay as low carb as practical (like not sweating the 2g sugar in a couple of tablespoons of salsa for example).
Occasionally due to circumstances I have a run of carby food and I will notice that a couple of days of this and when I get back to low carb eating I have a kind of induction experience for a day or so where I have the same kind of icky, hungry-but-can't-really-eat sort of feeling.
Why do porn sites have more malware than other sites?
It stands to reason that porn on the internet shouldn't have any more to do with malware than sports on the internet. Both are popular with about the same demographic and both are providing an entertainment product.
By now, considering the money associated with porn and the relative competiton, porn sites should be like any other site selling entertainment, wanting to maintain a "safe" shopping experience for their customers lest they take their entertainment dollar to a competitor who will provide that experience.
Is it all tied to the shame of sex? You can rip someone off looking for erotica because it's dirty and they won't tell, but if you rip them off selling them something else they'll bitch to their friends but not be embarassed about watching sports, for example?
This kind of makes sense, but at the same time, it runs against the profit motive of a porn site operator who has more incentive to sell you a recurring subscription and keep you as a customer than earn 10 cents providing a malware download and chase you away.
If this was even a reasonable argument, we wouldn't have any alcoholics.
This is basically the morality argument for alcohol. Sin must be followed by repentance before redemption.
I'm surprised big pharma hasn't done this already. I suspect that Western ideals of work ethic and morality are really the hindrance.
I would think it would be possible to develop a compound that has the criteria for the ideal recreational drug.
1) Short duration -- effect wears off after ~3 hours.
2) Self-limiting dosage -- rapid diminishing returns of repeated dosing. Perhaps a 10-20% increase in effect with a second dose, but little or no gain with subsequent or increased dosage, either in terms of increased psychoactive effect or duration of action.
3) This is the wrong term, but a long "half life" that makes repeated dosings ineffective within 18-24 hours of a previous dose. Combined with #2, this would make it difficult to abuse by taking it all the time and mitigate the habit forming nature of it by forcing a "down" period before the drug's psychoactive effect can be felt again.
4) A psychoactive effect that is more tranquilizing/calming/hypnotic than energizing or stimulating but without being too somnambulant. This should mitigate some of the social issues faced with stimulants like cocaine, amphetamines or even alcohol.
Obviously it shouldn't have a realistic overdose potential or synergistic effects with any CNS depressants like opioids, alcohol or benzo-type sedatives.
Strangely it seems like cannabis is a good starting point, since it has some of these properties already -- the more you use it, the less the high seems to be, it has almost no overdose potential, and its effect is more sedating than stimulating, and it doesn't have any CNS depressant synergies.
The cutting part makes less sense, since if you're building the parts up from the ground up you just wouldn't print where you needed it cut. Using multiple materials sounds interesting, though, and while there will always probably be a need to hone surface finishes I would imagine part of the engineering goal is making the sintering process produce as close as possible to a finished surface to minimize secondary finishing steps.
I think it requires your design to be something that can be milled externally and there's nothing simple about multi-axis CNC machine or the tooling required to mill the parts which is why a number of gun manufacturers make parts via metal injection molding versus machining.
Plus, a 3D printer can make a range of objects from a variety of alloys, including objects that would be impossible or difficult to make via milling or require mechanical assembly of pieces machined individually to get a part that could be 3D printed in a single piece.
I had lunch with Jeff Dean a couple of weeks ago and he told me the engineers were pretty pissed at the NSA stuff and were working to make it a lot more difficult for the NSA.
There was such an outcry when they started down that spin off path that it sure seemed like the company's response was like "oops, we misjudged this."
Plus, I wouldn't subscribe if it was streaming only. The library is so much smaller on streaming and it overlaps significantly with Amazon Prime streaming. Since I'm a prime customer anyway, Netflix as a streaming only service with the current streaming catalog would be a waste of money.
I don't doubt DVD will go away, but it really can't until the streaming library matches the DVD library.
The truly hard part with single payer would seem to be standardizing on the pricing for services, and this is an upfront process, not a computer system build.
What makes the current system so complex is that there are hundreds (thousands, maybe?) of insurance companies, most with many plans with overlapping but not identical features, and each plan has a "price" they will pay for services.
I think there would be so much streamlining when it came to single payer that it would greatly simplify the entire process. A single payer system is going to standardize pricing on everything related to health care. There'd be one price, one payer and many providers.
Arguably, single payer would be simpler. Part of the complexity of this system is that it has to interface with a ton of insurers and their plans and be able to make comparison shopping possible.
If there was a single payer solution there wouldn't be any of that complexity. You would simply sign up and be covered. No choices, no options, a single plan.
And although you can't remove the stock Apple apps, some are optional like Remote (for AppleTV) and they don't do something dumb like locking the apps to a specific screen or location. I have an app folder with a bunch of seldom used Apple apps on the last app screen.
Which is what surprises me, I thought that part of their appeal was the "long tail" argument where depth was more important than the old brick and mortal video store model of 1000 copies of a new release and a shallow catalog otherwise.
I've had a number of minor titles in my queue go to the "Saved" category with availability unknown, and ironically a couple that have done that but become available streaming.
I'm not sure what drives the discs that were available that became unavailable, especially considering the number of discs that appear to be custom duplications for Netflix. I can only assume a disc that goes unavailable is out of print and Netflix does not have the rights to do a custom rental pressing.
And if not, what features/functions of Android are the patents for? It strikes me that most things Android does that would be covered by a patent would also apply to Apple.
Now, Apple may have other cross-licensing/patent agreements for other stuff so they aren't making a cash payment to MS, but instead a payment in kind, but I'm still curious what Android does that MS holds patents on.
...has taken it over and going to run it as a profit center to support whatever off-the-books black ops they are running, as well as provide a long-term intelligence gathering center for transnational organized crime and drug dealing.
It's all about the "It runs linux and gives you root access" -- for a lot of Slashdot, that's either actually reason enough for them, or at least some kind of statement they think will gain them public credibility.
Hey, I'm not an RF guy and fortunately the equipment these days (controllers + radios) take away a lot of the low-level complexity in a way that mostly works. But even then the 2.4ghz band blows in high-density office spaces like office towers. There's just too much competition and you can't do much about the 20 other visible radios, all blasting out at maximum power to try to overcome each other.
That being said, it does still feel like a system designed for casual use (ie, a single AP allowing clients within a small radius to access a network) that has used all manner of gimcrackery on the back end to be a does-all standard for distances beyond what it was envisioned for (ie, LoS P2P links), municipal wifi (trying to blanket an entire city) or super high densities or mixed radio densities (office buildings).
Jack of all trades, master of none.
The big problem with getting arrested and "go to jail" nowadays is that you stand a really good chance of having employment problems down the road.
It used to be that a municipal arrest record for something like this wasn't really that big of a deal, especially if your potential employer wasn't located in that municipality or it wasn't your home address. Records required manual search, the charges were almost always misdemeanor disturbing the peace-type charges and it was functionally invisible.
Nowadays, these records are trivial to search nationwide and in many cases even an arrest alone (regardless of reason and without a conviction) may get you rejected for employment. This comes up for criticism all the time in the media, but there are plenty of stories of people who get arrested and then released right away who find themselves unable to get jobs, rent apartments or sometimes even get a loan because of an arrest alone.
Sure, the protest is noble and taking risks for the cause is part of the ideal, but the risk isn't being shoved in a cell for 48 hours, the risks are being denied a lot of economic choices for years.
You can see it well in the movie "Medium Cool" which was filmed during these protests.
In Chicago, you obey the rules or you get your head split open.
It's always remarkable what people do with 802.11, but a lot of it strikes me as a mediocre standard being (over)extended with gimmicks.
Out of the box it works well enough for simple use, but more complex use cases (distance, density, broader coverage) seem to involve a lot of complexity to make up for the overall weakness of the standard (limited channel selection, radio power, etc).
Are there any changes on the horizon to generate new standards that would fix this? Such as designs tailored to high-density environments (hundreds or thousands of clients off a single radio), greater channel selections, better distance capabilities, etc?
I realize that not all of these may be something that works in a single product and that there are RF constraints that limit this, but at the end of the day the current 802.11 environment reminds me of DOS. Sure, with the right shims and magic you can run games (Quake, for the era) or a GUI OS on top of them, but there's something inherently hokey about it.
And even worse, during an actual race they brake and accelerate a lot, which uses a lot more fuel than going a constant speed. Like the "City" versus "Highway" mileage ratings.
"...at whatever port the owner wants.." is kind of a small list of boats.
Just moving even a smallish yacht (75 feet or so) ocean distances is really expensive and/or really slow. Sport yachts capable of 20+ knots cruising speeds can eat double-digit quantities of fuel per hour. Moving from Miami to NYC could take days and tens of thousands of dollars in fuel and most don't have the fuel capacity for major blue ocean transits. Trawler styles use less fuel, but have cruising speeds in the single digits.
I think even most million-dollar class yachts that are crewed aren't crewed by permanent crews but are crewed as needed when the owner wants to use them, maybe with a preferred captain and generally don't move ports but may move to alternate berthings with the general vicinity, but even then you can't just show up with a big boat and expect to find a berthing for it.
Of course there are ocean-going ships permanently crewed, but this is a pretty small list because now you're talking really large boats that are ships with operating costs on par or exceeding large jets.
...or just spillover from outrage at domestic surveillance?
It strikes me that at first we had the outrage about NSA collecting information on Americans and conducting espionage that infringes on the privacy of Americans.
Then we had revelations of intensive surveillance of friendly governments with outrage at that. I get (but don't totally agree with) the outrage this may have had in Germany, but it seems a little bit misplaced domestically in the US and I don't completely understand why Americans would be particularly bothered with foreign surveillance, unless they're just bothered by surveillance generally.
Germany (as one example) as a state has a national agenda of their own and their diplomatic goals might be divergent from US interests in sensitive areas, whether it's relations with Russia or Middle East policy or even domestic political agendas. It's certainly possible to see Merkel cutting diplomatic deals with Russia which might undercut US diplomatic goals with Russia, for example. Knowing what deals Germany has made can very much aid US diplomacy.
States may voice moral or ideological aims, but in reality are far more Realpolitik oriented, and that means pursuing your goals without regard to ideology or morality within the limits of pragmatism. If you can spy to gain advantage, you will, and I think all states do within the limits of their resources. The US just has far greater leverage and capability.
I can see the risk aspect to this at a 'normal' company with the typical suit and tie CEO who rose up from sales or marketing. Somehow, though, Tesla probably has some things going for it it that other businesses don't.
For one, a CEO who has built an Internet software based business in an era where you built it yourself because there was nothing else to base it on. The entire company and product they are producing is unlike anything else out there and a lot of what they produce they have to produce themselves from scratch, so there's a culture of "do it yourself" already in place.
Given the nature of the product, I would doubt there are many employees at Tesla, especially in the technology side of the business, who are there solely because it is a paycheck and there's free coffee. Most of the employees are probably there at least partly because of some belief in the product itself or the (potentially) environmentally transformative nature of the product, which makes them likely to be more highly motivated to see the company succeed than the typical employee who is motivated more by a sense of career achievement, compensation, etc.
I would also bet the employees in any technology-oriented capacity at the company are smarter than the average bear. Given Musk's drive and background, the technology hiring standards and internal respect for IT are probably much higher at Tesla, than at a company that makes run of the mill widgets.
So while I agree that home-brew systems have a better-than-average chance of failure at a typical company because of tech-ignorant management, IT staffs of average ability and motivation, Tesla has a lot of things going for it that make it more likely they will succeed.