The rules are U.S. society are increasingly becoming anticompetitive though. And I think thats what many are railing against, and perhaps, rightly so.
I'm sorry for replying so after-the-fact. Yes, I nod my head vigorously regarding your last comment!
The opposite of competition is monopoly. It is ironic, because "big business" reviles socialism and communism because of the repressiveness of central planning, one entity (the government) controlling everything. Yet capitalism "run amok" has resulted in the same concentration of power, i.e. concentration of assets, control by one entity. The entity is a corporation rather than government in a monopoly situation, but it is as bad (or worse) than all control held by government.
I don't think this is the inevitable consequence of capitalism though. While it does seem to have happened that way in the USA, sorry, it HAS happened that way, there are other countries that have capitalist economic and governments that aren't as inequitable as we are now.
Psychiatry IS medicine. A psychiatrist is a medical doctor, must have an M.D. first, then specialize in psychiatry. Some (many?) so-called mental health conditions are caused by lifestyles vastly different than those under which we evolved, granted. Let's exclude them.
Chronic depression is terrible. I was less than 40 years old when my husband, my father, and my little baby died. I cried every day, for two years, no end in sight. I didn't remember to eat, comb my hair, brush my teeth, change clothes. I'd wander around my neighborhood in my nightgown, giving what little money I had to anyone who was homeless, because it was the only thing, their smiles, that relieved the sorrow for a tiny moment. Finally, I went to a psychiatrist. Treatment wasn't tranquilizers (Valium), anti-psychotics or stimulants. The very first anti-depressant the doctor prescribed started to help after about three weeks. No side effects, just that I had to take it at the same time each day, else I got a headache. We titrated the dose to the minimum level necessary to be effective. No brain biopsies or blood tests were necessary. Then I asked for the generic version, as it is a lot cheaper.
I still cry a lot, but I remember to eat and sleep. I got a used Toshiba Satellite laptop for $50, learned CSS and some Web 2.0 stuff, re-learned SAS, SPSS and some Fortran. I got a job (only part-time was available) working from home, which paid more than enough to cover rent and food for me and my mother. It was contract work, so I'm looking again, but I think I can find something. I doubt any of this would be possible without the psychiatrist and anti-depressant medication.
There are plenty of whiny, self-indulgent malingerer's in this world. Lots of attention-seekers too. One could certainly argue that they have problems! But they are not of the sort that require medication, or care of a psychiatrist. I will be happy when I don't need medication or care either.
... [on Slashdot] we love technology and advances EXCEPT WHEN IT COMES TO BIOLOGY. Then it's nothing but "whatcouldpossiblygowrong"... Yes, technology has downsides and dangers. All technology does. Always. Yes, you need to be aware of it...
It annoys me too, the fear reaction to some technology but not others. I don't know anything about biotechnology, but I worked as a statistician for a public health department, focusing on infectious AND non-infectious diseases. Yes, I realize that there are risks if one is sloppy. I also know that in biotech there are decent controls in place, which are observed by researchers to protect themselves as much as others.
Only a guess: More Slashdot readers are familiar with computing and engineering (of the non-biotech variety) than biology. Computing and consumer tech products are fun and friendly. Even after excluding network or personal computing security, there are big issues to fear from technology (not biotech). Privacy concerns, data mining and aggregation (think of CISPA or whatever the latest legislation acronym is), subtle societal effects that are difficult to anticipate, even physical harm due to non-ionizing radiation that we aren't aware of. Some of that is plausible, now, though a lot isn't. But everybody is excited, happy about Google Glass, Pebble and wearable electronics... at first.
Since someone else already responded to the second sentence, decisively, I'll do the first sentence:
In a world where people aren't encouraged from a young age to compete, but instead to cooperate, you'll have neither the warmongers who encourage relaliatory action, nor the sort of petty dictators who staff the TSA.
I'm not a libertarian, nor GOP, nor male. I can tell you this, though: It is contrary to human nature not to be competitive. Some competition, starting from a young age, is good! It increases self-esteem, pride in family, school and country. Yes, cooperation is necessary too, e.g. a group of people aligned to achieve a common goal, which (usually) can be accomplished only through competition with those whose goals are different. Regarding "warmongers who encourage relaliatory [retaliatory?] action": Retaliatory action doesn't mean you are a warmonger. There are many ways to retaliate such as tariffs, embargoes, intermarriage. The latter is even a form of cooperation!
The TSA is a pathological bureaucracy. We had security and screening prior to boarding flights at airports for 20 (30?) years before 9/11. Those people didn't behave like the TSA. They searched and screened, but not in the TSA's rude, distasteful manner. They weren't privatized, and they didn't cost $8 billion per year to fund.
I just had a quick glance at that rather link packed story. The FOE project on Google Code has no obvious surprises. I scanned that PDF of the FOIA request. Who/ what is the entity in the document header: Governmentattic dot org? Sorry, I probably misspelled that.
There's actually a tradition of this sort of thing, I think. E.g. like listening to the Voice of America on shortwave radio when outside the U.S.A. and starved for English-language news. Although that isn't quite the same as it is our one's own government getting news to citizens who are overseas. Might the signal transmissions be blocked so they won't be received in China? Or is that only in movies? Seems like it would work, for those who wanted to listen, and could do so without fear of reprisal....
I just returned to the story and noticed that it doesn't link to the pdf file of the actual Senate Bill. When I first viewed the story as it appeared, a few hours ago, it linked straight to the full draft Bill from the U.S. Senate. The link's source (for the pdf document) was Wired. It might not have been attributed perfectly, but it was attributed well enough that I was able to go to the Wired story without any question, so I didn't think that was the issue.
Just curious why Slashdot (or the story submitter, not necessarily Commander Taco's doing, that was a probably futile attempt at humor) edited the initial story link.
Confirmed by my best efforts in the first reply to this silly story way up top. Tried
HTML Entity (decimal) & # 8 4 8 2; HTML Entity (hex) & # x 2 1 2 2; HTML Entity (named) & trade;
and several others from the http://fileformat.info/...
page, but none are
I'd noticed that Chris Messina, the Open ID advocate and recent or current Google employee, had also trademarked his name recently. He displays it that way on internet profile pages. So far it has mostly been an inconvenience to me, in using the correct mark-up to designate TM whenever I quote him for some OAuth or OpenID article. I'd wondered why he possibly would want to trademark his name. He runs it all together as "chrismessina"
or the character decimal code:
chrismessina™
if I remembered the mark-up, of course!
You don't get to live in Phoenix, do you? Nothing is comparable to the awesomeness that is Phoenix...
Ahhh, but I DO get to live in Phoenix. Valley of the Sun. Land of the broken dams with burst Goodyear Tire rubber bladders, where the Mexican drug cartels have put a $1 mil price on the local sheriff's head... ah yes, welcome to my home.
Thank you, that's a really good reply. I'd also been wondering if Flash were a Visual Basic of the web, but without the shame, if you know what I mean. But I was sort of too shy to ask because it might've been a stupid question. And you all ARE a rough crowd at times!
This is actually one of slashdot's better threads.
I suppose it could've been something she ate. I can't imagine she'd be going through the litter box if she didn't have to. (Although I continue to be surprised at how many people don't do daily litter box cleanings.)
Really, really shouldn't say this but... do you think the Human Centipede was vulnerable to toxoplasmosis? Better question: Why haven't I seen any Slashdot posts on that abomination of a movie yet? Y'all must be way too mature of a crowd for such nonsense. I didn't see the movie myself, only heard Roger Ebert refusing to rate it!
I want to know what the incidence rate of infection amongst the players themselves actually is. Now the article did posit this, which is unlikely but possibly a behavioral influence, even if the actual players are not infected:
"it might be foolish to assume that the players have the same rate of infection as their countrymen... On the other hand, having more Toxo-infected people around you at a young age might help your development as a player. Second, some studies have shown that those infected with Toxo have slower reaction times on certain tests than matched controls"
The last part clinches it for me. Toxo infection does NOT confer enhanced motor skills or athletic ability. Quite the contrary. Perhaps the preceding sentence is an influence, but that isn't easy to determine. And toxoplasmosis is awful. My best friend cauaght it from her parakeet, or maybe the cat, when she was 11 years old, and she was yellow and jaundicy and sickly for years, even with treatment. The CDC http://www.cdc.gov/toxoplasmosis/ comments that it is the 3rd highest cause of food-related deaths in the US.
Hmm, you mean even ones like Tylenol that do basically nothing and run the risk of damaging the liver?
Uhh sorry, but NO, Tylenol is effective for fever and mild analgesia. It will wreak havoc on your liver if taken in excess, granted. But aspirin, ibuprofen (motrin and advil) will tear up your stomach lining if taken in excess. And analgesics like opiates have their own set of obvious drawbacks. Tradeoffs to all of them.
Don't knock Tylenol. It's a bit wimpy, but with occasional usage tempered by common sense, it is effective. And it is NOT a placebo drug. WRONG.
I'd much rather have a positive effect from a placebo than from a drug that usually has nasty side-effects.
All drugs do NOT have nasty side-effects. And despite my seeming post to the contrary above, about receiving acupuncture as pre-surgical anesthesia, I'd much rather receive traditional Western anesthesia for my next emergency appendectomy.
Actually many, or maybe all, drugs DO have nasty side effects, depending on circumstances, and at varying frequency rates. I'm ammending my prior comment. But often those rates are very, very low. I just don't take well to broad sweeping generalities. Spurious generalities? Or was that a Totse.darkbb-ism?
I'd much rather have a positive effect from a placebo than from a drug that usually has nasty side-effects.
All drugs do NOT have nasty side-effects. And despite my seeming post to the contrary above, about receiving acupuncture as pre-surgical anesthesia, I'd much rather receive traditional Western anesthesia for my next emergency appendectomy.
Ummm so how old is this revelation that "Acupuncture May Trigger a Natural Painkiller"? 20 years, 30 years? When Nixon went to China, a God-awful long time ago, one of the journalists that came along for the trip had an appendicitis. He had a successful appendectomy, with part of the anesthesia, I believe the initial part, done with acupuncture. I read that in Newsweek.
Why are we even discussing this on slashdot now in 2010?
It is confusing @Locke2005, re the legal defn of "sodomy". I learned a bit working in public health (I'm not an atty, but some policy training was req'd). "Sodomy" is legally equiv to oral AND anal, for same-gender as well as opposite-gender. Why is this relevant to the FL bestiality law?Because Justice Scalia AND Justice Clarence Thomas ruled to uphold the sodomy laws in 2003, but the rest of the court were in favor of repeal, which was the ruling. Scalia's concern was that if the sodomy law were overturned, then laws against incest, adultery, masturbation (yes, it was illegal!) and of course, bestiality might be weakened.
Even more confusing, the sodomy laws were explicit, but inconsistent at the state level. About 75% applied the law to same-gender activity only. Other states said it was punishable for "all gender couples".
I'll close by responding to your first point. @RockDoctor knows it's true, and so do I: some women LIKE anal. This is nothing new. If it were, the states of Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina wouldn't have included the M-F scenarios in their no-sodomy laws. Nor oral, nor anal....
Yes, it is kinda ludicrous that Florida lawmakers cannot overcome some relatively minor obstacles, and manage to pass a law that most everyone, regardless of political affiliation, would agree to. But remember, Florida was one of only 7 or 8 states that still had sodomy laws in place until Federal repeal in 2003. So if I wanted anal with my husband in our own home, we'd could be charged with a misdemeanor punishable by 6 months in jail and fined for as much as $5000, both of us, if apprehended! No, I didn't hear about a lot of arrests on heterosexual consensual sodomy charges, but efforts to repeal the law were unsuccessful until the Fed's changed everything, so there must've been enough support somewhere to keep the law in place.
That is such a charming animal picture included. The dogs are a bit hideous looking, but look so sweet together!
but am too paranoid to go with a wireless keyboard.
Should a wireless mouse be encrypted too? Sorry. But seriously, wireless keyboard is great, but the batteries go FAST. NiCd rechargables are expensive and stop holding a charge after awhile too!
Slashdot Mirror
The rules are U.S. society are increasingly becoming anticompetitive though. And I think thats what many are railing against, and perhaps, rightly so.
I'm sorry for replying so after-the-fact. Yes, I nod my head vigorously regarding your last comment!
The opposite of competition is monopoly. It is ironic, because "big business" reviles socialism and communism because of the repressiveness of central planning, one entity (the government) controlling everything. Yet capitalism "run amok" has resulted in the same concentration of power, i.e. concentration of assets, control by one entity. The entity is a corporation rather than government in a monopoly situation, but it is as bad (or worse) than all control held by government.
I don't think this is the inevitable consequence of capitalism though. While it does seem to have happened that way in the USA, sorry, it HAS happened that way, there are other countries that have capitalist economic and governments that aren't as inequitable as we are now.
Psychiatry IS medicine. A psychiatrist is a medical doctor, must have an M.D. first, then specialize in psychiatry. Some (many?) so-called mental health conditions are caused by lifestyles vastly different than those under which we evolved, granted. Let's exclude them.
Chronic depression is terrible. I was less than 40 years old when my husband, my father, and my little baby died. I cried every day, for two years, no end in sight. I didn't remember to eat, comb my hair, brush my teeth, change clothes. I'd wander around my neighborhood in my nightgown, giving what little money I had to anyone who was homeless, because it was the only thing, their smiles, that relieved the sorrow for a tiny moment. Finally, I went to a psychiatrist. Treatment wasn't tranquilizers (Valium), anti-psychotics or stimulants. The very first anti-depressant the doctor prescribed started to help after about three weeks. No side effects, just that I had to take it at the same time each day, else I got a headache. We titrated the dose to the minimum level necessary to be effective. No brain biopsies or blood tests were necessary. Then I asked for the generic version, as it is a lot cheaper.
I still cry a lot, but I remember to eat and sleep. I got a used Toshiba Satellite laptop for $50, learned CSS and some Web 2.0 stuff, re-learned SAS, SPSS and some Fortran. I got a job (only part-time was available) working from home, which paid more than enough to cover rent and food for me and my mother. It was contract work, so I'm looking again, but I think I can find something. I doubt any of this would be possible without the psychiatrist and anti-depressant medication.
There are plenty of whiny, self-indulgent malingerer's in this world. Lots of attention-seekers too. One could certainly argue that they have problems! But they are not of the sort that require medication, or care of a psychiatrist. I will be happy when I don't need medication or care either.
... [on Slashdot] we love technology and advances EXCEPT WHEN IT COMES TO BIOLOGY. Then it's nothing but "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" ... Yes, technology has downsides and dangers. All technology does. Always. Yes, you need to be aware of it...
It annoys me too, the fear reaction to some technology but not others. I don't know anything about biotechnology, but I worked as a statistician for a public health department, focusing on infectious AND non-infectious diseases. Yes, I realize that there are risks if one is sloppy. I also know that in biotech there are decent controls in place, which are observed by researchers to protect themselves as much as others.
Only a guess: More Slashdot readers are familiar with computing and engineering (of the non-biotech variety) than biology. Computing and consumer tech products are fun and friendly. Even after excluding network or personal computing security, there are big issues to fear from technology (not biotech). Privacy concerns, data mining and aggregation (think of CISPA or whatever the latest legislation acronym is), subtle societal effects that are difficult to anticipate, even physical harm due to non-ionizing radiation that we aren't aware of. Some of that is plausible, now, though a lot isn't. But everybody is excited, happy about Google Glass, Pebble and wearable electronics... at first.
Since someone else already responded to the second sentence, decisively, I'll do the first sentence:
In a world where people aren't encouraged from a young age to compete, but instead to cooperate, you'll have neither the warmongers who encourage relaliatory action, nor the sort of petty dictators who staff the TSA.
I'm not a libertarian, nor GOP, nor male. I can tell you this, though: It is contrary to human nature not to be competitive. Some competition, starting from a young age, is good! It increases self-esteem, pride in family, school and country. Yes, cooperation is necessary too, e.g. a group of people aligned to achieve a common goal, which (usually) can be accomplished only through competition with those whose goals are different. Regarding "warmongers who encourage relaliatory [retaliatory?] action": Retaliatory action doesn't mean you are a warmonger. There are many ways to retaliate such as tariffs, embargoes, intermarriage. The latter is even a form of cooperation!
The TSA is a pathological bureaucracy. We had security and screening prior to boarding flights at airports for 20 (30?) years before 9/11. Those people didn't behave like the TSA. They searched and screened, but not in the TSA's rude, distasteful manner. They weren't privatized, and they didn't cost $8 billion per year to fund.
I just had a quick glance at that rather link packed story. The FOE project on Google Code has no obvious surprises. I scanned that PDF of the FOIA request. Who/ what is the entity in the document header: Governmentattic dot org? Sorry, I probably misspelled that.
There's actually a tradition of this sort of thing, I think. E.g. like listening to the Voice of America on shortwave radio when outside the U.S.A. and starved for English-language news. Although that isn't quite the same as it is our one's own government getting news to citizens who are overseas. Might the signal transmissions be blocked so they won't be received in China? Or is that only in movies? Seems like it would work, for those who wanted to listen, and could do so without fear of reprisal....
I just returned to the story and noticed that it doesn't link to the pdf file of the actual Senate Bill. When I first viewed the story as it appeared, a few hours ago, it linked straight to the full draft Bill from the U.S. Senate. The link's source (for the pdf document) was Wired. It might not have been attributed perfectly, but it was attributed well enough that I was able to go to the Wired story without any question, so I didn't think that was the issue.
Just curious why Slashdot (or the story submitter, not necessarily Commander Taco's doing, that was a probably futile attempt at humor) edited the initial story link.
This code point is not in the subset of Unicode accepted by Slashdot's anti-crapflood filter.
Confirmed by my best efforts in the first reply to this silly story way up top. Tried
HTML Entity (decimal) & # 8 4 8 2;
HTML Entity (hex) & # x 2 1 2 2;
HTML Entity (named) & trade;
and several others from the http://fileformat.info/... page, but none are
per tepples.
I'd noticed that Chris Messina, the Open ID advocate and recent or current Google employee, had also trademarked his name recently. He displays it that way on internet profile pages. So far it has mostly been an inconvenience to me, in using the correct mark-up to designate TM whenever I quote him for some OAuth or OpenID article. I'd wondered why he possibly would want to trademark his name. He runs it all together as "chrismessina" or the character decimal code: chrismessina™ if I remembered the mark-up, of course!
You don't get to live in Phoenix, do you? Nothing is comparable to the awesomeness that is Phoenix...
Ahhh, but I DO get to live in Phoenix. Valley of the Sun. Land of the broken dams with burst Goodyear Tire rubber bladders, where the Mexican drug cartels have put a $1 mil price on the local sheriff's head... ah yes, welcome to my home.
I thought emacs was an editor? It went well with vi, no?
Thank you, that's a really good reply. I'd also been wondering if Flash were a Visual Basic of the web, but without the shame, if you know what I mean. But I was sort of too shy to ask because it might've been a stupid question. And you all ARE a rough crowd at times!
This is actually one of slashdot's better threads.
I suppose it could've been something she ate. I can't imagine she'd be going through the litter box if she didn't have to. (Although I continue to be surprised at how many people don't do daily litter box cleanings.)
Really, really shouldn't say this but... do you think the Human Centipede was vulnerable to toxoplasmosis? Better question: Why haven't I seen any Slashdot posts on that abomination of a movie yet? Y'all must be way too mature of a crowd for such nonsense. I didn't see the movie myself, only heard Roger Ebert refusing to rate it!
The last part clinches it for me. Toxo infection does NOT confer enhanced motor skills or athletic ability. Quite the contrary. Perhaps the preceding sentence is an influence, but that isn't easy to determine. And toxoplasmosis is awful. My best friend cauaght it from her parakeet, or maybe the cat, when she was 11 years old, and she was yellow and jaundicy and sickly for years, even with treatment. The CDC http://www.cdc.gov/toxoplasmosis/ comments that it is the 3rd highest cause of food-related deaths in the US.
Hmm, you mean even ones like Tylenol that do basically nothing and run the risk of damaging the liver?
Uhh sorry, but NO, Tylenol is effective for fever and mild analgesia. It will wreak havoc on your liver if taken in excess, granted. But aspirin, ibuprofen (motrin and advil) will tear up your stomach lining if taken in excess. And analgesics like opiates have their own set of obvious drawbacks. Tradeoffs to all of them. Don't knock Tylenol. It's a bit wimpy, but with occasional usage tempered by common sense, it is effective. And it is NOT a placebo drug. WRONG.
I'd much rather have a positive effect from a placebo than from a drug that usually has nasty side-effects.
All drugs do NOT have nasty side-effects. And despite my seeming post to the contrary above, about receiving acupuncture as pre-surgical anesthesia, I'd much rather receive traditional Western anesthesia for my next emergency appendectomy.
Actually many, or maybe all, drugs DO have nasty side effects, depending on circumstances, and at varying frequency rates. I'm ammending my prior comment. But often those rates are very, very low. I just don't take well to broad sweeping generalities. Spurious generalities? Or was that a Totse.darkbb-ism?
I'd much rather have a positive effect from a placebo than from a drug that usually has nasty side-effects.
All drugs do NOT have nasty side-effects. And despite my seeming post to the contrary above, about receiving acupuncture as pre-surgical anesthesia, I'd much rather receive traditional Western anesthesia for my next emergency appendectomy.
Ummm so how old is this revelation that "Acupuncture May Trigger a Natural Painkiller"? 20 years, 30 years? When Nixon went to China, a God-awful long time ago, one of the journalists that came along for the trip had an appendicitis. He had a successful appendectomy, with part of the anesthesia, I believe the initial part, done with acupuncture. I read that in Newsweek. Why are we even discussing this on slashdot now in 2010?
It is confusing @Locke2005, re the legal defn of "sodomy". I learned a bit working in public health (I'm not an atty, but some policy training was req'd). "Sodomy" is legally equiv to oral AND anal, for same-gender as well as opposite-gender. Why is this relevant to the FL bestiality law?Because Justice Scalia AND Justice Clarence Thomas ruled to uphold the sodomy laws in 2003, but the rest of the court were in favor of repeal, which was the ruling. Scalia's concern was that if the sodomy law were overturned, then laws against incest, adultery, masturbation (yes, it was illegal!) and of course, bestiality might be weakened.
Even more confusing, the sodomy laws were explicit, but inconsistent at the state level. About 75% applied the law to same-gender activity only. Other states said it was punishable for "all gender couples".
I'll close by responding to your first point. @RockDoctor knows it's true, and so do I: some women LIKE anal. This is nothing new. If it were, the states of Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina wouldn't have included the M-F scenarios in their no-sodomy laws. Nor oral, nor anal....
Yes, it is kinda ludicrous that Florida lawmakers cannot overcome some relatively minor obstacles, and manage to pass a law that most everyone, regardless of political affiliation, would agree to. But remember, Florida was one of only 7 or 8 states that still had sodomy laws in place until Federal repeal in 2003. So if I wanted anal with my husband in our own home, we'd could be charged with a misdemeanor punishable by 6 months in jail and fined for as much as $5000, both of us, if apprehended! No, I didn't hear about a lot of arrests on heterosexual consensual sodomy charges, but efforts to repeal the law were unsuccessful until the Fed's changed everything, so there must've been enough support somewhere to keep the law in place.
That is such a charming animal picture included. The dogs are a bit hideous looking, but look so sweet together!
but am too paranoid to go with a wireless keyboard.
Should a wireless mouse be encrypted too? Sorry. But seriously, wireless keyboard is great, but the batteries go FAST. NiCd rechargables are expensive and stop holding a charge after awhile too!