>Are most people's homes wired for gigabit ethernet (heck, are most businesses)?
YES BECAUSE GIG-E RUNS ON CAT-5. heh. Read the spec sometime, they pulled out all the stops to get that thing running on 8 strands of copper rated at 100Mhz. At a casual glance, that would seem impossible, but it turns out that was the major design goal, to not rewire anything.
Comparing Apple to Dell is like comparing oranges to oranges. Now that you can build your own Intel OSX machine, you're not locked into any vendor's prices anymore.
However, it is wise to note on the Apple site that all their machines come with 512M RAM and some without monitors, the same tricks they have been pulling for years. So that side of the discussion hasn't changed a bit.
Oddly enough, if you go into the typical suburban home, you will find a Panasonic plasma TV, a Bose surround sound system, a Sony receiver, a Dell PC (mail-order) or Hewlett-Packard PC (retail) and an HP inkjet. That's what families are shopping for. I've seen it.
Of course, Bose and Sony products are like scientology e-meters. Panasonic has a strong brand presence from selling EDTV's at reduced resolution. The Dell company is skating on razor-thin margins and HP...well, they make nice printers, but their PC's are turtles (reduced ram, K6 chips, etc).
What a wonderful picture of how consumers think. Call it consumer pro-grade? Something like that.
Opium really is the correct anti-anxiety medication when you do the analysis.
All recreational drugs, including stimulants, are "relaxing" or "relieve stress." What you want from an anti-anxiety drug in particular is a boost in dopamine levels. The problem is that most dopamine drugs, like alcohol and Xanax, tend to work by destroying neural connections. In fact, the dopamine boost from these drugs may be coincidental; certainly having your brain manually shut off can be regarded as anti-anxiety by itself.
In other words, all depressants I've ever seen work by causing brain damage. Opiates are not a depressant. They simply produce a great deal of dopamine, probably the only drug that does.
Even if they can find away not to trigger the physical craving response by some subtle manipulation of the molecules, how can they remove the powerful psychological urge?
If you take GHB, it removes the physical urge to drink alcohol. It also makes you happier. Overall, the psychological urge to drink is greatly diminished. In fact, US Patent 6,436,998 covers GHB as an alcoholism treatment.
For the sake of comparison, how badly did you want to get drunk the last time you exercised? If you've never felt GHB, it is like a five mile run in a bottle.
It's all just the balance of neurotransmitters acting on the scaffolding of your nervous system. When you take a drug you alter that balance, but its on the same scaffolding.
Some drugs *destroy* the scaffolding of your nervous system. Take those drugs out of the equation and I agree with you that an altered state can be relevant to waking life.
So it makes people more prone to say what they think.
It also makes people prone to say what they don't think. Ever had a blackout?
However, I disagree with the OP that all drugs distort personality. Just depressants, because of the way they work - they tear up neural connections, producing unpredictable results. Alcohol, ketamine, pcp, cough syrup...nasty stuff, all of it. At least with alcohol there is some genetic adaptation, which goes a long way towards making it safer.
Pot releases serotonin into the brain, and also relaxes muscles.
Alcohol releases dopamine into the brain, then begins shutting it down.
Serotonin and dopamine are complementary opposites, like males and females, work and play, yin and yang. In other words, pot and alcohol couldn't be more different.
PCP, Ketamine, and cough syrup are the worst in terms of personality (brain) damage. That old story about how "five doses of acid makes you insane" is probably true for PCP...I've never met anyone who took PCP in the past who is still lucid today. Benzos (xanax) and sleeping pills are also pretty bizarre.
The others you mentioned are pretty bad for the body. It's still not clear to me though how stimulants like coke and meth (synthetic, I know) produce that "crack addict" look. But Flavor of Love sure does speak for itself.
Actually opium and alcohol are the same type of high. They are both dopamine flushes. And they are basically the only safe options for a depressant effect. There are a lot of safe serotonin drugs in the world (and by safe i mean per-dose) like weed, ecstacy, cocaine, mushrooms, but very few safe depressants. Opium is extremely safe, which is why every hospital patient in America is on it. GHB would be even safer.
>We can also thank our anti-drug culture the practice of adding things such as acetaminophen to opiates (e.g., >vicodin and oxycodone) to make sure it destroys your liver if you become addicted (as a "deterrent")
In any case, tylenol can be removed from vicodin by dissolving the pill in water, filtering out the tylenol, then boiling off the water. A *must* if you plan to smoke/snort your Vicodins.
They were taught extremely specific skillsets, they knew exactly what they would be tested in in advance of tests and didn't study *anything* else. It was like a game of 'getting through Uni without learning *anything*' which outranked anything I've ever seen back home
That description sounds a lot like MIT. I felt bad for the Aero/Astro kids asking us for electrical help. Sure we all got B's on it, but...that was like a couple months ago.
> Obviously this isn't exactly a scientific ranking and is somewhat arbitrary.
It also doesn't take into consideration self-starting and ownership careers like landlord, contractor, salesman. Take a tour around the suburbs and see how your rich neighbors are making money. They own businesses. Putting Software Development at #1 with a picture of a fat kid with a game controller (the next article down) suggests to me that they are targeting a certain audience.
their comments at least recognize what the rest of the marketing business world seems to be in deep denial about: that timeshifting has/will annihilate the typical 'free broadcast' TV and radio models
Agreed. Once you get a DVR, live television becomes a bit of a joke. Live radio, I think, has at least some reasons to survive, one being cars, and the other is that live music has more of a visceral impact than, say, the season finale of "24".
1. Dropping out of MIT is a great idea. I did it twice.
2. You will not go to jail for non-payment of a civil debt. However, they may find a way to withdraw the funds from your assets (bank account, car, etc.)
> Has anyone stopped to ask why this is such a great idea? A robot is >just a computer with wheels (or legs). How exactly is this going to >help anyone anymore than a computer does already?
Oddly enough, a human being is just a computer with legs, except that a human runs on food while a robot runs on fossil fuels. I'll leave it to the reader to decide which one is more efficient.
Naw, not really. This is like saying, "Huge strip-mining operations are also a tool for us." Yeah, if you can afford 6 backhoes and 20 dumptrucks, you can tell your neighbors the mountain is gone. DRM is immediately useful for large companies that have these huge assets. Using DRM on a personal level is petty, and it won't lead to wider promotion or acceptance of the few assets you're putting out there.
Normally, you'd be right, DRM is "just a tool." But some tools are specially crafted to cause chaos, and those tools cannot be used for good by anyone.
>This is a spin from the lunatic fringe on a single line of a book >that almost ended up in the fireplace of history.
Yet I don't mind hearing the word "Christian" used in a positive context, as in, "Let's all be good Christians and resist being tagged by machines." It's a refreshing change from, "Let's pump Iraqi oil into our Hummers," or "Let's outbreed the Pope."
So the problems lie within the company's own inability to take a long-term profit view? Then maybe that company should die its own death.
Outsourcing is synonymous with capitalism...when you can't get something done yourself, hire someone who can. That much makes sense. The deviance comes when people assert that you can hire someone to do the job, at a profit, and this is still cheaper than doing it yourself. That doesn't really make sense, that distance=profit. Most of the lessons of 20th Century capitalism have been that reducing distances is the key to success.
It's probably not a stretch to say that the more you bring a project in-house, the more profit you stand to gain. The people benefitting most from the current world regime are the ones who have the most value owned, that is to say, maufacturing, labor costs, distribution all under their control. Oil, automation, media...what monopolist has ever argued that giving up control leads to profit? None of them ever have.
If you're a small businessman, the key to profit is enhancing ownership. If that's a supermarket, it means renting a bigger store. If you're a distributor, it means extending your route. Outsourcing is nothing more than a redux of 80's style corporate raiding - that is, selling off assets. If you have enough assets to sell, then fine. I'm not sure that a country 2/3 of its GDP ($12T) in debt ($8T) can afford to sell anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
>Are most people's homes wired for gigabit ethernet (heck, are most businesses)?
YES BECAUSE GIG-E RUNS ON CAT-5. heh. Read the spec sometime, they pulled out all the stops to get that thing running on 8 strands of copper rated at 100Mhz. At a casual glance, that would seem impossible, but it turns out that was the major design goal, to not rewire anything.
a difference of $324. That's hardly 66%
Comparing Apple to Dell is like comparing oranges to oranges. Now that you can build your own Intel OSX machine, you're not locked into any vendor's prices anymore.
However, it is wise to note on the Apple site that all their machines come with 512M RAM and some without monitors, the same tricks they have been pulling for years. So that side of the discussion hasn't changed a bit.
Motherboard, CPU, RAM, Video Card, and case only cost me $350. Can't do that with a Mac.
Thank you, that was my point. Just head over to Apple.com and you will see "iMac from $1299" and "Power Mac G5 from $1999."
I can't see spending $1300 on a computer anymore. Not without SCSI anyway.
It's a good thing I re-read your post because I almost wrote a long rant on fission reactors.
Bose, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Panasonic and Sony
Oddly enough, if you go into the typical suburban home, you will find a Panasonic plasma TV, a Bose surround sound system, a Sony receiver, a Dell PC (mail-order) or Hewlett-Packard PC (retail) and an HP inkjet. That's what families are shopping for. I've seen it.
Of course, Bose and Sony products are like scientology e-meters. Panasonic has a strong brand presence from selling EDTV's at reduced resolution. The Dell company is skating on razor-thin margins and HP...well, they make nice printers, but their PC's are turtles (reduced ram, K6 chips, etc).
What a wonderful picture of how consumers think. Call it consumer pro-grade? Something like that.
>Tell me where you can sell your 2 year old PC for nearly 60% of it's value and easily get it sold. Apple's usually get that premium.
That's good to know because Apples tend to be 60% overpriced anyway. I guess you can call it a deposit.
Opium really is the correct anti-anxiety medication when you do the analysis.
All recreational drugs, including stimulants, are "relaxing" or "relieve stress." What you want from an anti-anxiety drug in particular is a boost in dopamine levels. The problem is that most dopamine drugs, like alcohol and Xanax, tend to work by destroying neural connections. In fact, the dopamine boost from these drugs may be coincidental; certainly having your brain manually shut off can be regarded as anti-anxiety by itself.
In other words, all depressants I've ever seen work by causing brain damage. Opiates are not a depressant. They simply produce a great deal of dopamine, probably the only drug that does.
Even if they can find away not to trigger the physical craving response by some subtle manipulation of the molecules, how can they remove the powerful psychological urge?
If you take GHB, it removes the physical urge to drink alcohol. It also makes you happier. Overall, the psychological urge to drink is greatly diminished. In fact, US Patent 6,436,998 covers GHB as an alcoholism treatment.
For the sake of comparison, how badly did you want to get drunk the last time you exercised? If you've never felt GHB, it is like a five mile run in a bottle.
It's all just the balance of neurotransmitters acting on the scaffolding of your nervous system. When you take a drug you alter that balance, but its on the same scaffolding.
Some drugs *destroy* the scaffolding of your nervous system. Take those drugs out of the equation and I agree with you that an altered state can be relevant to waking life.
So it makes people more prone to say what they think.
It also makes people prone to say what they don't think. Ever had a blackout?
However, I disagree with the OP that all drugs distort personality. Just depressants, because of the way they work - they tear up neural connections, producing unpredictable results. Alcohol, ketamine, pcp, cough syrup...nasty stuff, all of it. At least with alcohol there is some genetic adaptation, which goes a long way towards making it safer.
Pot releases serotonin into the brain, and also relaxes muscles.
Alcohol releases dopamine into the brain, then begins shutting it down.
Serotonin and dopamine are complementary opposites, like males and females, work and play, yin and yang. In other words, pot and alcohol couldn't be more different.
PCP, Ketamine, and cough syrup are the worst in terms of personality (brain) damage. That old story about how "five doses of acid makes you insane" is probably true for PCP...I've never met anyone who took PCP in the past who is still lucid today. Benzos (xanax) and sleeping pills are also pretty bizarre.
The others you mentioned are pretty bad for the body. It's still not clear to me though how stimulants like coke and meth (synthetic, I know) produce that "crack addict" look. But Flavor of Love sure does speak for itself.
>Well ok, it's not at all the same type of high
Actually opium and alcohol are the same type of high. They are both dopamine flushes. And they are basically the only safe options for a depressant effect. There are a lot of safe serotonin drugs in the world (and by safe i mean per-dose) like weed, ecstacy, cocaine, mushrooms, but very few safe depressants. Opium is extremely safe, which is why every hospital patient in America is on it. GHB would be even safer.
>We can also thank our anti-drug culture the practice of adding things such as acetaminophen to opiates (e.g.,
>vicodin and oxycodone) to make sure it destroys your liver if you become addicted (as a "deterrent")
In any case, tylenol can be removed from vicodin by dissolving the pill in water, filtering out the tylenol, then boiling off the water. A *must* if you plan to smoke/snort your Vicodins.
And it hasn't been illegal for very long. Maybe 5 years now.
They were taught extremely specific skillsets, they knew exactly what they would be tested in in advance of tests and didn't study *anything* else. It was like a game of 'getting through Uni without learning *anything*' which outranked anything I've ever seen back home
That description sounds a lot like MIT. I felt bad for the Aero/Astro kids asking us for electrical help. Sure we all got B's on it, but...that was like a couple months ago.
>The only thing he disagrees with is whether this is caused by civilization.
So the earth is warming itself. Your solution is...?
> Obviously this isn't exactly a scientific ranking and is somewhat arbitrary.
It also doesn't take into consideration self-starting and ownership careers like landlord, contractor, salesman. Take a tour around the suburbs and see how your rich neighbors are making money. They own businesses. Putting Software Development at #1 with a picture of a fat kid with a game controller (the next article down) suggests to me that they are targeting a certain audience.
You made a better point than you even realized. I'm glad you were modded up.
their comments at least recognize what the rest of the marketing business world seems to be in deep denial about: that timeshifting has/will annihilate the typical 'free broadcast' TV and radio models
Agreed. Once you get a DVR, live television becomes a bit of a joke. Live radio, I think, has at least some reasons to survive, one being cars, and the other is that live music has more of a visceral impact than, say, the season finale of "24".
1. Dropping out of MIT is a great idea. I did it twice.
2. You will not go to jail for non-payment of a civil debt. However, they may find a way to withdraw the funds from your assets (bank account, car, etc.)
> Has anyone stopped to ask why this is such a great idea? A robot is
>just a computer with wheels (or legs). How exactly is this going to
>help anyone anymore than a computer does already?
Oddly enough, a human being is just a computer with legs, except that a human runs on food while a robot runs on fossil fuels. I'll leave it to the reader to decide which one is more efficient.
> DRM is also a tool for us.
Naw, not really. This is like saying, "Huge strip-mining operations are also a tool for us." Yeah, if you can afford 6 backhoes and 20 dumptrucks, you can tell your neighbors the mountain is gone. DRM is immediately useful for large companies that have these huge assets. Using DRM on a personal level is petty, and it won't lead to wider promotion or acceptance of the few assets you're putting out there.
Normally, you'd be right, DRM is "just a tool." But some tools are specially crafted to cause chaos, and those tools cannot be used for good by anyone.
>This is a spin from the lunatic fringe on a single line of a book
>that almost ended up in the fireplace of history.
Yet I don't mind hearing the word "Christian" used in a positive context, as in, "Let's all be good Christians and resist being tagged by machines." It's a refreshing change from, "Let's pump Iraqi oil into our Hummers," or "Let's outbreed the Pope."
So the problems lie within the company's own inability to take a long-term profit view? Then maybe that company should die its own death.
Outsourcing is synonymous with capitalism...when you can't get something done yourself, hire someone who can. That much makes sense. The deviance comes when people assert that you can hire someone to do the job, at a profit, and this is still cheaper than doing it yourself. That doesn't really make sense, that distance=profit. Most of the lessons of 20th Century capitalism have been that reducing distances is the key to success.
It's probably not a stretch to say that the more you bring a project in-house, the more profit you stand to gain. The people benefitting most from the current world regime are the ones who have the most value owned, that is to say, maufacturing, labor costs, distribution all under their control. Oil, automation, media...what monopolist has ever argued that giving up control leads to profit? None of them ever have.
If you're a small businessman, the key to profit is enhancing ownership. If that's a supermarket, it means renting a bigger store. If you're a distributor, it means extending your route. Outsourcing is nothing more than a redux of 80's style corporate raiding - that is, selling off assets. If you have enough assets to sell, then fine. I'm not sure that a country 2/3 of its GDP ($12T) in debt ($8T) can afford to sell anymore.