HTML might not, but any modern site should be using XHTML (in my arrogant opinion - IMAO).
Using XHTML it's very simple to embed other markup in your primary markup. Here's an example right from the XHTML standard:
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
<title>A Math Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>The following is MathML markup:</p>
<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML">
<apply> <log/>
<logbase>
<cn> 3 </cn>
</logbase>
<ci> x </ci>
</apply>
</math>
</body> </html>
Lameness filter encountered. Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition. Comment aborted.
"When two gold nuclei collide head-on, the temperatures reached are so extreme (more than 300 million times the surface temperature of the sun) that the individual protons and neutrons inside the merged gold nuclei are expected to melt...
I'm going to name my band "Quark-Gluon Plasma". All my fans will call it "QGP" for short. It's much cooler than "Bose-Einstein Condensate".
On a slightly more serious note...
The article links to a helpful physics primer if you, like me, need a little help understanding subatomic physics. (I'm just have a lowly Math degree.)
A little googling turned up this awesome page on subatomic particles called The Particle Adventure. This is the most accessible physics lesson I've ever received. Awesome.
This is the most fun I've ever had with subatomic physics: Quark Dance!
I am still looking for a good, up to date tutorial on CSS (recommendations welcome).
I use two references for CSS.
The first is the book Cascading Style Sheets- 2nd ed: Designing for The Web by Hakon Wium Lie and Bert Bos. From what I understand, these two guys basically invented CSS. You can find it on Amazon and at the publisher, Addison-Wesley.
(BTW, I've never been disappointed by an AW book. They're up there with O'Reilly in my mind.)
The book has a couple minor shortcomings (you can read about them in Amazon's customer reviews). Those shortcomings are overwhelmed by 1) the authority of the authors, 2) the functional organization, and 3) the readability.
The authors know their stuff. They invented the technology for crying out loud.
The book is organized by function meaning typography control is one chapter, positioning is another, and so on regardless of which standard the property comes from or which browser supports it. This book is where you go when you can't remember, or need to learn, how to do something.
(There are notes for each property on browser support, but they are outdated. For that quickly changing information I recommend The Noodle Incident's CSS Panic Guide Browser Reference.)
The author's use a very readible voice. The examples are a bit simplistic but functional and they express the concept.
I like ZVON.org because it offers a no nonsencse reference. It's basically a clean cut dictionary of CSS. No other site I've seen is as quick to provide the answer for which you are looking. Use it when you need to refresh yourself on the exact order of values for shortcut properties (like background, font, etc.).
Only after widespread network and Internet adoption did personal computers realize the productivity gains that had been promised for three decades.
This question should have been answered fifteen years ago when the question "when will PCs fulfill there promise" was first asked. No one answered it then and I really doubt anyone will provide an insightful or informative answer now.
J. Bradford DeLong has an excellent article in the current issue of Wired discussing this very topic.
I used to wonder why Wired didn't have a "Comment on This Article" link after their postings. Then I realized that Slashdot provides that service for them.
I belive the answer is this: people who are pushing the boundaries pursue what is interesting to themselves. Many of these interests will be obscure and useful to only a few; that's human nature. But occasionally someone will come up with a brilliancy that affects all of humanity profoundly.
Electric and steam powered engines did that for the Industrial Revolution. The Internet and networking did that for the Personal Computing Revolution. What ever the next revolution is it will come faster and harder than any revolution in the past.
The general public could buy it just this spring. That's after two years of hype beyond hype.
In all that time it appears the product hasn't changed at all. Didn't they learn anything from their private trials in that time? It would appear that all of the original criticisms leveled against it are still valid.
Seems like another potentially brilliant idea torpedoed by corporate culture.
I consider math at this level to be more like art and less like engineering.
You do it because the problem is beautiful and the solution is likely to be beautiful. If you are lucky the solution will turn out to be not only beautiful but also make a statement about life (or some aspect of life).
With open source software do software patents really matter any more?
Take any software patent for example. Sure, it's patented, but some enterprising young college student (anyone for this matter) makes their own implementation of the patent and releases it on the web as Open Source (and/or Free) software anonymously. That implementation turns out to be really rather decent and becomes widespread, perhaps more widespread than the "official" implementation. Improvements and additions are added (anonymously) and the unofficial becomes the unofficial-official.
Are the users of the unofficial implementation liable for patent infringement? I'd say no, but I'm not a lawyer. Is the creator liable? Probably, but who'll ever know?
More pragmatically, would the patent holder go after users of the unofficial implementation? I'd say a more emphatic NO. Maybe if they're a Fortune 500, but in that case who really cares since that realm might as well be on Mars.
Most pragmatically, would most users of that implementation care that it was technically illegal. I'd say a most emphatic no.
People using software are mostly individuals and small to medium sized businesses. Without going through a detailed prisoners-dilemma analysis I'd say the odds are you won't get in trouble using a technically illegal implementation and so you shouldn't worry overmuch that you're small corporation will get sued out of existance. In fact, the potential profits will outweigh such potential risk making it a practical no-brainer.
I see web sites all the time with source that says copyright..., patent..., or patent pending..., but who really cares.
I'm going to get modded down by all the people who are of the mindset that copyright and patents are handed down by god for the benefit of the holder to the detriment of the user. But in reality the space for copyright and patent in the digital age is zero, nada, zip, nothing.
I view digital violation of copyrights and patents (especially of software) as the new "natural" order and civil disobedience at its most right. I think most other long-time 'net users do as well and are waiting impatiently for the rest of the world to catch up.
That means whatever policy the W3C comes up with is irrelevant before it goes into print and this whole discussion is moot.
Cars are more than a mode of transportation to Americans. Most people I know grow very attached to their car even if it's an ancient, rusting, piece of shit.
Especially in the midwest, where cities are sprawling, trying to take a person's car from them is like trying to take heroin from an addict. It's extremely painful, it's guaranteed to be a drawn-out affair, and without diligence they'll be going back to the beast they knew and loved/hated.
I'm definetly a techno-geek, but I'm also a pragmatist. Electronic voting isn't going to solve any more problems than it creates.
A bunch of my concerns that haven't been addressed in the media: * The hardware and software are proprietary and not open to public review. My paper has a full page copy of the ballots before every election so the public can review it.
* Not accessible. How do people missing vision or limbs use them?
* How are the results audited? Do the electronic logs go into the public domain?
* Is the incredible expense and TCO of these machines justified? Paper ballots are practically free by comparison.
* What about absentee voting? What wacky "voting method of the future" can we come for that?
Executive Summary:
on
The Law and P2P
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Napster was ruled against because it isn't really P2P; requests went through a central server.
Grokster and Morpheus were not ruled against because they are really P2P; if the backend companies shut down the users wouldn't be affected.
Previous attempts at online music services failed because they were too expensive and too restrictive.
Apple's online music service will not fail because it is not expensive and not restrictive.
The media industries should follow Apple's lead.
IMO, this article wasn't that interesting, nor that informative. It was yet another summation of the story thus far. At least it was a quick read.
- Single-page newspapers and books. Not only would you not have to worry about portability, but you wouldn't have to worry about bookmarks either.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I still haven't seen an ebook interface that is as intuitive as a real book or paper. It's pretty easy to see a paperclip (or whatever) in the top of a book. Having to press a few buttons to "mark" a place, then press a few more buttons to get back to that place is a PITA.
And the difficulty of moving around books and papers is greatly exaggerated.
- Billboards would be much easier to update. No more repainting or repapering them, just send a new graphic to them and they change automatically. They could even cycle the ads.
One, it's more difficult than "just" sending a new graphic to them. How do you get the graphic there? Two, keeping an e-paper sign lit up costs a lot more in electricity than paper-paper.
- Credit cards could show your balance available.
Whoopdy-freaking-do. If that's a problem, you have bigger problems.
Paper may grow on trees, but there are serious problems with it accumulating.
It's called "recycling". Which is much easier to do with paper than electronics.
The arguments for epaper are just not compelling in my opinion.
paper-paper is super cheap because of the abundance of renewable resources available for its manufacture. If you want to update what's on the paper, just make the changes in Word and print a new copy. Why is that so hard?
I'm all for technology and progress, but epaper is one of those solutions in search of a problem.
Whatever happened to print on demand publishing. It seemed to be a promising technology, much more promising than "epaper" but I can't find anyone using it anywhere.
It seems like it would be a sweet deal for publishers and book sellers by cutting out a major cost source: the distributor. You go to a bookstore, find a paperback you like and take it to the counter. While you are paying for it, your copy is being printed in the back room. It's spit out onto the counter and the copy you picked up from the shelf is put back. This would be great to keep from being overstocked in a pulp-fiction title or technology book past its useful life.
Digital copiers (even digital color copiers) are not expensive anymore, so I just don't get why we don't see this.
For the same reasons, I don't understand why retailers have stacks of CDs in bins. Just have a dupe machine in the back room with a digital color copier for the liner notes. While you are paying for your CD it's being created in the back room. Again, you cut a major expense by knocking out the distributor.
I thought the Internet was supposed to enable exactly these types of situations, but they are no where to be seen.
it's a weird enough idea that it might actually work...
Wait, let me get this straight: 1. Hook up some cameras to a network. 2. Hire people to monitor the output of the cameras. (People who may or may not have an understanding of the technology behind the cameras and the network.) 3. Security!
How is this weird? This is how security camera operations have worked for half a century. The only new things here are the use of an open, instead of closed network, and cheap, instead of expensive, cameras.
I'd like to point out the LFS and BLFS stuff works on PPC platforms as well.
You have to grab the PPC kernel and one of a couple other utilities to work with the Mac's ROM, but if you're doing LFS that shouldn't be a problem.
Lots of people are happy with OS X, but it runs poorly, if at all, on older PowerMacs. My 9600MP/200 (200MHz dual-proc Mac from back-in-the-day) would probably stand up and slap me for even putting the OS X 10.2 CD from my wife's iBook in its CD drive. But the LFS style system I built on it is happily hosting my DNS, Web, and Email. It is also pretty snappy when I'm building my (toy) programs in KDevelop, crunching my personal finances in OpenOffice.org Calc, and playing music.
All my geek friends are appropriately jealous of a dual-proc pre-G3 PowerMac running a hand-built Linux. (All my non-geek friends wonder what the hell I'm doing with an almost 10-year-old computer, of course.)
Smoking tobacco gives you a buzz. When a smoker comes back from having a cigarette they are high. Ever worked with a smoker?
When my coworkers come back from a break less stressed and better equiped to handle the afternoon's stress I appreciate it.
Caffeine is addictive and ingesting large quantities (such as the quantities soldiers take) has negative side-effects.
The reason drugs are illegal is because society has stigmatized them. What I do to my body should be my business and not the Government's.
My analogy (Not anecdote: I wasn't telling a story, I was making a comparison) has everything to do with genetically enhanced people and most certainly applies. Drugs -- used as I've mentioned -- temporarily change people, genetic modification is permanent.
We haven't seen a "Narcotics alternative sports" emerge after drug taking was banned, however the critical difference may be in how socially acceptable genetic enhancement is.
You are right: if mind- and body-altering drugs were not stigmatized and prohibition-ized in modern, western society we wouldn't see "clean" humans in any part of life, not to mention sports.
Why not take crystal meth to make a deadline at work? Why not smoke a joint at coffee-break to take the edge of an especially stressful day? There aren't any good, recent studies I'm aware of that show these actions negatively impact worker productivity. (Nor any that promote it, to be fair.) But these actions are so thouroughly stigmatized that not only would I be fired for them, I'd also probably be jailed as a criminal for altering my own body.
Now what if I take a course of action that permanently raises my stamina and stress-coping capabilities. Perhaps it's via medically induced genetic mutation or manipulation. It's not hard to draw a line from temporary personal manipulation to permanent personal manipulation and see that not only will the later be stigmatized, but that it will probably be more stigmatized.
I see it every day in my role as a systems administrator/analyst. People fear change. People don't want to think about change. People don't want to act on change. People tend to respond to change with confusion and anger. Changes of a quasi-magical nature, that is, most anything dealing with cutting-edge science, especially scare people and their brains shut down. People stop thinking rationally and call for the change to be crucified.
To get people to accept change, other people who can and do think about and act on change need to sell the positives and repeat their (sound-bite-ified) message over and over and over and over until a critical mass of people believe it, whether or not they understand it.
If the people at the top levels of Government decided to start a two-decade long marketing campaign selling the wonders of personal genetic modification, in two-decades you'd be hard pressed to find an unmodified human. In the same way, if our top leaders sell the fears of personal genetic modification, in two-decades our jails will be full of people who altered their bodies in society unapproved ways.
What ever happened to bluetooth in desktop peripherals?
I'm looking for new ones for a new computer I've built, and I want to get rid of as many cables as possible because it's going in a high-traffic part of my house.
The only keyboard/mouse set I've found with bluetooth is a Microsoft set. Looks nice, but I'm not keen on supporting them. Has anyone else done this search and had any luck finding anything?
BTW, I'm aware of other companies' proprietary wireless solutions. But if I'm getting bluetooth for my printer, PDA, etc., I'd like it for my keyboard and mouse as well. And with all the hype bluetooth has received I'd expect to see at least as many bluetooth sets as USB sets.
Slashdot Mirror
HTML might not, but any modern site should be using XHTML (in my arrogant opinion - IMAO).
Using XHTML it's very simple to embed other markup in your primary markup. Here's an example right from the XHTML standard:
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
<title>A Math Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>The following is MathML markup:</p>
<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML">
<apply> <log/>
<logbase>
<cn> 3 </cn>
</logbase>
<ci> x </ci>
</apply>
</math>
</body>
</html>
Lameness filter encountered.
Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition. Comment aborted.
Doesn't AMD hold a patent on this?
I'm going to name my band "Quark-Gluon Plasma". All my fans will call it "QGP" for short. It's much cooler than "Bose-Einstein Condensate".
On a slightly more serious note...
The article links to a helpful physics primer if you, like me, need a little help understanding subatomic physics. (I'm just have a lowly Math degree.)
A little googling turned up this awesome page on subatomic particles called The Particle Adventure. This is the most accessible physics lesson I've ever received. Awesome.
This is the most fun I've ever had with subatomic physics: Quark Dance!
I use two references for CSS.
The first is the book Cascading Style Sheets- 2nd ed: Designing for The Web by Hakon Wium Lie and Bert Bos. From what I understand, these two guys basically invented CSS. You can find it on Amazon and at the publisher, Addison-Wesley.
(BTW, I've never been disappointed by an AW book. They're up there with O'Reilly in my mind.)
The other resource is on the web, the ZVON.org CSS1 Reference and CSS2 Reference.
The book has a couple minor shortcomings (you can read about them in Amazon's customer reviews). Those shortcomings are overwhelmed by 1) the authority of the authors, 2) the functional organization, and 3) the readability.
The authors know their stuff. They invented the technology for crying out loud.
The book is organized by function meaning typography control is one chapter, positioning is another, and so on regardless of which standard the property comes from or which browser supports it. This book is where you go when you can't remember, or need to learn, how to do something.
(There are notes for each property on browser support, but they are outdated. For that quickly changing information I recommend The Noodle Incident's CSS Panic Guide Browser Reference.)
The author's use a very readible voice. The examples are a bit simplistic but functional and they express the concept.
I like ZVON.org because it offers a no nonsencse reference. It's basically a clean cut dictionary of CSS. No other site I've seen is as quick to provide the answer for which you are looking. Use it when you need to refresh yourself on the exact order of values for shortcut properties (like background , font , etc.).
Shut up. I know that. It was a typo. Get a life.
Only after widespread network and Internet adoption did personal computers realize the productivity gains that had been promised for three decades.
This question should have been answered fifteen years ago when the question "when will PCs fulfill there promise" was first asked. No one answered it then and I really doubt anyone will provide an insightful or informative answer now.
J. Bradford DeLong has an excellent article in the current issue of Wired discussing this very topic.
I used to wonder why Wired didn't have a "Comment on This Article" link after their postings. Then I realized that Slashdot provides that service for them.
I belive the answer is this: people who are pushing the boundaries pursue what is interesting to themselves. Many of these interests will be obscure and useful to only a few; that's human nature. But occasionally someone will come up with a brilliancy that affects all of humanity profoundly.
Electric and steam powered engines did that for the Industrial Revolution. The Internet and networking did that for the Personal Computing Revolution. What ever the next revolution is it will come faster and harder than any revolution in the past.
The general public could buy it just this spring. That's after two years of hype beyond hype.
In all that time it appears the product hasn't changed at all. Didn't they learn anything from their private trials in that time? It would appear that all of the original criticisms leveled against it are still valid.
Seems like another potentially brilliant idea torpedoed by corporate culture.
Talk about invading Streisand's privacy!
This isn't the first time she's tried to pull crap like this.
I consider math at this level to be more like art and less like engineering.
You do it because the problem is beautiful and the solution is likely to be beautiful. If you are lucky the solution will turn out to be not only beautiful but also make a statement about life (or some aspect of life).
If the next release is to be based on Firebird and Thunderbird, that is separate components instead of the suite, call the thing 2.0.
It's a huge change in the code base, it's a huge change in the user interface, just call a spade a spade and release it as 2.0.
What is the rational for calling it 1.5? That'd be more confusing, in my opinion, than letting everyone know "Hey, big changes here. Check it out."
Do everyone a favor and call the release after 1.4 2.0.
With open source software do software patents really matter any more?
..., patent ..., or patent pending..., but who really cares.
Take any software patent for example. Sure, it's patented, but some enterprising young college student (anyone for this matter) makes their own implementation of the patent and releases it on the web as Open Source (and/or Free) software anonymously. That implementation turns out to be really rather decent and becomes widespread, perhaps more widespread than the "official" implementation. Improvements and additions are added (anonymously) and the unofficial becomes the unofficial-official.
Are the users of the unofficial implementation liable for patent infringement? I'd say no, but I'm not a lawyer. Is the creator liable? Probably, but who'll ever know?
More pragmatically, would the patent holder go after users of the unofficial implementation? I'd say a more emphatic NO. Maybe if they're a Fortune 500, but in that case who really cares since that realm might as well be on Mars.
Most pragmatically, would most users of that implementation care that it was technically illegal. I'd say a most emphatic no.
People using software are mostly individuals and small to medium sized businesses. Without going through a detailed prisoners-dilemma analysis I'd say the odds are you won't get in trouble using a technically illegal implementation and so you shouldn't worry overmuch that you're small corporation will get sued out of existance. In fact, the potential profits will outweigh such potential risk making it a practical no-brainer.
I see web sites all the time with source that says copyright
I'm going to get modded down by all the people who are of the mindset that copyright and patents are handed down by god for the benefit of the holder to the detriment of the user. But in reality the space for copyright and patent in the digital age is zero, nada, zip, nothing.
I view digital violation of copyrights and patents (especially of software) as the new "natural" order and civil disobedience at its most right. I think most other long-time 'net users do as well and are waiting impatiently for the rest of the world to catch up.
That means whatever policy the W3C comes up with is irrelevant before it goes into print and this whole discussion is moot.
I'm still waiting for a FPWP.
(That's First Person Word Processor to the lay-person).
Cars are more than a mode of transportation to Americans. Most people I know grow very attached to their car even if it's an ancient, rusting, piece of shit.
Especially in the midwest, where cities are sprawling, trying to take a person's car from them is like trying to take heroin from an addict. It's extremely painful, it's guaranteed to be a drawn-out affair, and without diligence they'll be going back to the beast they knew and loved/hated.
I'm definetly a techno-geek, but I'm also a pragmatist. Electronic voting isn't going to solve any more problems than it creates.
A bunch of my concerns that haven't been addressed in the media:
* The hardware and software are proprietary and not open to public review. My paper has a full page copy of the ballots before every election so the public can review it.
* Not accessible. How do people missing vision or limbs use them?
* How are the results audited? Do the electronic logs go into the public domain?
* Is the incredible expense and TCO of these machines justified? Paper ballots are practically free by comparison.
* What about absentee voting? What wacky "voting method of the future" can we come for that?
Napster was ruled against because it isn't really P2P; requests went through a central server.
Grokster and Morpheus were not ruled against because they are really P2P; if the backend companies shut down the users wouldn't be affected.
Previous attempts at online music services failed because they were too expensive and too restrictive.
Apple's online music service will not fail because it is not expensive and not restrictive.
The media industries should follow Apple's lead.
IMO, this article wasn't that interesting, nor that informative. It was yet another summation of the story thus far. At least it was a quick read.
- Single-page newspapers and books. Not only would you not have to worry about portability, but you wouldn't have to worry about bookmarks either.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I still haven't seen an ebook interface that is as intuitive as a real book or paper. It's pretty easy to see a paperclip (or whatever) in the top of a book. Having to press a few buttons to "mark" a place, then press a few more buttons to get back to that place is a PITA.
And the difficulty of moving around books and papers is greatly exaggerated.
- Billboards would be much easier to update. No more repainting or repapering them, just send a new graphic to them and they change automatically. They could even cycle the ads.
One, it's more difficult than "just" sending a new graphic to them. How do you get the graphic there? Two, keeping an e-paper sign lit up costs a lot more in electricity than paper-paper.
- Credit cards could show your balance available.
Whoopdy-freaking-do. If that's a problem, you have bigger problems.
Paper may grow on trees, but there are serious problems with it accumulating.
It's called "recycling". Which is much easier to do with paper than electronics.
The arguments for epaper are just not compelling in my opinion.
e-paper doesn't make any sense to me.
paper-paper is super cheap because of the abundance of renewable resources available for its manufacture. If you want to update what's on the paper, just make the changes in Word and print a new copy. Why is that so hard?
I'm all for technology and progress, but epaper is one of those solutions in search of a problem.
Whatever happened to print on demand publishing. It seemed to be a promising technology, much more promising than "epaper" but I can't find anyone using it anywhere.
It seems like it would be a sweet deal for publishers and book sellers by cutting out a major cost source: the distributor. You go to a bookstore, find a paperback you like and take it to the counter. While you are paying for it, your copy is being printed in the back room. It's spit out onto the counter and the copy you picked up from the shelf is put back. This would be great to keep from being overstocked in a pulp-fiction title or technology book past its useful life.
Digital copiers (even digital color copiers) are not expensive anymore, so I just don't get why we don't see this.
For the same reasons, I don't understand why retailers have stacks of CDs in bins. Just have a dupe machine in the back room with a digital color copier for the liner notes. While you are paying for your CD it's being created in the back room. Again, you cut a major expense by knocking out the distributor.
I thought the Internet was supposed to enable exactly these types of situations, but they are no where to be seen.
What's up with that?
Wait, let me get this straight:
1. Hook up some cameras to a network.
2. Hire people to monitor the output of the cameras. (People who may or may not have an understanding of the technology behind the cameras and the network.)
3. Security!
How is this weird? This is how security camera operations have worked for half a century. The only new things here are the use of an open, instead of closed network, and cheap, instead of expensive, cameras.
Whoopdy-freaking-doo.
It's been years since I've been happy with a Creative Labs product. You have to go way back to their pre-Live! soundcards.
Since the Live!, Everything of their's I've purchased and/or used has been flakey: 3/4 of the way done, but never quite all the way.
I'm a person who doesn't like to settle for "good enough", and Creative's stuff is consistently a notch below "good enough" for me.
At this point I can't imagine anything coming close to the iPod in terms of usability, features, or aesthetics. Certainly not anything from Creative.
I'd like to point out the LFS and BLFS stuff works on PPC platforms as well.
You have to grab the PPC kernel and one of a couple other utilities to work with the Mac's ROM, but if you're doing LFS that shouldn't be a problem.
Lots of people are happy with OS X, but it runs poorly, if at all, on older PowerMacs. My 9600MP/200 (200MHz dual-proc Mac from back-in-the-day) would probably stand up and slap me for even putting the OS X 10.2 CD from my wife's iBook in its CD drive. But the LFS style system I built on it is happily hosting my DNS, Web, and Email. It is also pretty snappy when I'm building my (toy) programs in KDevelop, crunching my personal finances in OpenOffice.org Calc, and playing music.
All my geek friends are appropriately jealous of a dual-proc pre-G3 PowerMac running a hand-built Linux. (All my non-geek friends wonder what the hell I'm doing with an almost 10-year-old computer, of course.)
Smoking tobacco gives you a buzz. When a smoker comes back from having a cigarette they are high. Ever worked with a smoker?
When my coworkers come back from a break less stressed and better equiped to handle the afternoon's stress I appreciate it.
Caffeine is addictive and ingesting large quantities (such as the quantities soldiers take) has negative side-effects.
The reason drugs are illegal is because society has stigmatized them. What I do to my body should be my business and not the Government's.
My analogy (Not anecdote: I wasn't telling a story, I was making a comparison) has everything to do with genetically enhanced people and most certainly applies. Drugs -- used as I've mentioned -- temporarily change people, genetic modification is permanent.
We haven't seen a "Narcotics alternative sports" emerge after drug taking was banned, however the critical difference may be in how socially acceptable genetic enhancement is.
You are right: if mind- and body-altering drugs were not stigmatized and prohibition-ized in modern, western society we wouldn't see "clean" humans in any part of life, not to mention sports.
Why not take crystal meth to make a deadline at work? Why not smoke a joint at coffee-break to take the edge of an especially stressful day? There aren't any good, recent studies I'm aware of that show these actions negatively impact worker productivity. (Nor any that promote it, to be fair.) But these actions are so thouroughly stigmatized that not only would I be fired for them, I'd also probably be jailed as a criminal for altering my own body.
Now what if I take a course of action that permanently raises my stamina and stress-coping capabilities. Perhaps it's via medically induced genetic mutation or manipulation. It's not hard to draw a line from temporary personal manipulation to permanent personal manipulation and see that not only will the later be stigmatized, but that it will probably be more stigmatized.
I see it every day in my role as a systems administrator/analyst. People fear change. People don't want to think about change. People don't want to act on change. People tend to respond to change with confusion and anger. Changes of a quasi-magical nature, that is, most anything dealing with cutting-edge science, especially scare people and their brains shut down. People stop thinking rationally and call for the change to be crucified.
To get people to accept change, other people who can and do think about and act on change need to sell the positives and repeat their (sound-bite-ified) message over and over and over and over until a critical mass of people believe it, whether or not they understand it.
If the people at the top levels of Government decided to start a two-decade long marketing campaign selling the wonders of personal genetic modification, in two-decades you'd be hard pressed to find an unmodified human. In the same way, if our top leaders sell the fears of personal genetic modification, in two-decades our jails will be full of people who altered their bodies in society unapproved ways.
What ever happened to bluetooth in desktop peripherals?
I'm looking for new ones for a new computer I've built, and I want to get rid of as many cables as possible because it's going in a high-traffic part of my house.
The only keyboard/mouse set I've found with bluetooth is a Microsoft set. Looks nice, but I'm not keen on supporting them. Has anyone else done this search and had any luck finding anything?
BTW, I'm aware of other companies' proprietary wireless solutions. But if I'm getting bluetooth for my printer, PDA, etc., I'd like it for my keyboard and mouse as well. And with all the hype bluetooth has received I'd expect to see at least as many bluetooth sets as USB sets.
Holy shit, someone used the word "penultimate" properly! On