Get pulled over for a burned out tail light. You're tired and look a bit under the weather. Cop presses your sweaty fingers to the reader. You go to jail for a joint you smoked 5 days ago.
Because it makes sense and keeps things organized. The dilemma is that on one hand you have the "Windows Way" of having C:\Program Files being the dumping ground for all software, which can become a mess but at least you know that's where the executables are going most of the time (excluding the odd program that likes to stick it self right in C:\ for some reason or another), and on the other you have the Unix way which keeps things separated by their purpose on the system, but if the rules aren't strictly adhered too it can create a huge mess. Personally I don't see much of a problem with the current layout and I will always keep it that way unless some major breakthrough arises that makes even more sense, but this Fedora solution is no different than the way Windows has been doing it for years. Sure it will make it easier for people migrating from Windows, but I think that most people who have been *nix users for years would like to keep it the familiar way that makes sense to them. There's nothing unintuitive or complicated about it;/bin for the core utilities,/sbin holds the utilities for administrative tasks,/usr/bin holds all of the userland software, and/usr/local/bin holds all of my locally build stuff. It's helpful to me because I know my package manager is going to take care of the stuff in/usr/bin and the third party repos will update the few things I have in/opt, and anything in/usr/local/bin I am responsible for. It allows me to see at a glance what is what, which I think is important for keeping my software up to date and maintained. The/bin and/sbin deal isn't too important to me, but it helps each directory to stay uncluttered and I know what's where by convention.
There is a hell of a lot more Linux is going to have to do before the mythical "Year of Desktop Linux" arrives. The more Window or Mac-like Linux tries to become, the more the individual strengths of Linux erode. It seems like these developers have all of these grand plans to improve usability which are unfortunately not in touch with what the users want and at the same time aren't attracting any new users because of them. If I want to use Windows, I'll use Windows. I guess Free Software is all about scratching an itch, and if this is what these guys want to do, so be it. I'll move somewhere else, as will many other people who see no reason to throw away something that works perfectly for them, and it's highly doubtful new users are going too flood in to take our places. The Linux community just seems to be confused right now, and hopefully they'll come to their senses and realize what the strengths of Linux are and focus on them rather than throwing out the old just for the sake of the new shiny.
I understand what BitZtream is saying and I believe it is true, marijuana is psychologically addictive, just like most other things. There are effects when one stops using any substance habitually, someone who smoke a joint every morning to start his day is probably going to be irritable for a few days, and they will probably have cravings for the drug. Why else would people scrape the nasty ass resin out of their pipes and smoke a ton of the crap in an attempt to get a buzz when they are out of weed? Marijuana users craving marijuana is nothing uncommon, and most people who are cut off from their supply, especially regular smokers will wish they had some, search around for some leftovers, call up friends looking for a smoke up, and if they don't get it they might be a bit irritable and uncomfortable since their body is accustomed to the marijuana high. It's just like anything else, anti-histamines aren't physically addictive, but someone who takes them for a few weeks straight to sleep is probably going to have a problem sleeping without them for a little while, same with somebody why drinks a sort of relaxing tea every single night. Hell, I know people who will get irritable if they don't get a certain drink or food on their break that they are accustomed to having. This is psychological addiction. Sometimes people can become so psychologically dependent on the effects of marijuana, that they feel incredibly shitty after quitting, but this is quite rare and these people probably have other underlying issues. The fact is that a person can become psychologically dependent on anything that feels good, how many people on here are a bit irritable if they haven't had their daily wank?
It seems that some people on here take "addiction" to mean "physical dependence", but they are two different concepts. For example, cocaine is a drug that tends to cause very high levels of psychological addiction, nobody would deny that cocaine can be addictive, but there is only limited evidence that it causes any physical changes in the body that cause a person to become dependent on it. Opiates on the other hand are also very psychologically addictive, but they also cause the body to stop producing it's own natural endorphins while at the same time making the brains receptors less sensitive to them, along with a host of other changes. So when a person who is dependent on heroin doesn't get his dose, his body will get physically sick because there is a chemical imbalance in the brain. It is impossible to be dependent on opiates, but not physically dependent. It takes a lot less time for someone to develop an addiction, before the physical dependency kicks in. Alcohol for example, causes compulsive use and cravings in some people very easily, however the onset of dependence is quite slow. A lot of daily drinkers quit no problem, maybe with slight "shakes", but they deal with nothing more than strong cravings. That is addiction, or psychological dependence to be exact. Once they become such heavy drinkers over such a long period that it begins to interfere with the body's GABA system and other chemical levels in their brain, they will get very physically sick along with their cravings. This is actute withdrawal, or more specifically physical dependence.
It works the other way too, sometimes in chronic pain patients high doses of opiates are required on a daily basis. These people usually do become physically dependent on their drug, but they don't become addicted in a classical psychological sense. Addiction is defined by seeking behaviors, where somebody repeatedly administers a substance due to its desirable effects, and the cessation of that causes them some kind of discomfort. It doesn't have to be delirium tremens, simple cravings are more than enough to define addiction.
So yes, marijuana is addictive, but no, there is no evidence that it causes any sort of physical dependence. There is a big difference, and marijuana evangelists need to look at their own behavior and realize this, otherwise they just come off sounding like zealots.
I totally agree with what you are saying here, but the problem is that I the burden on health care would be slightly less than it is currently under prohibition. Alcohol is currently legal, and if I show up in the hospital after smashing my car in to a tree or in acute alcohol withdrawal, they already have to treat me. It's the same with prohibited substances, if I'm withdrawing from benzos a doctor will treat me, if I come in with a heroin addiction they will treat me. A lot of times these people cannot pay and/or are uninsured, and they will either be referred to some government subsidized low income treatment center, or they'll be treated and sent home with bills that they will never pay. Shit, even some of our more humane jails in the US will give a opiate addict the mercy of a quick methadone taper, and they will treat a benzo/alcohol addict out of medical necessity to prevent seizures.
The problem with our current prohibition situation is that it promotes ignorance and desperation among users. Under some sort of system for the legalized use of drugs, maybe we wouldn't have so many people showing up to the hospital needing amputations because of nasty abscesses or infections because they had poor IV technique and had to reuse the same needles over and over because there was no nearby needle exchange and the pharmacies in their area won't sell them clean needles. Maybe we'll stop losing so many people because someone is scared to call an ambulance in the event of an overdose, or worse, believe in some bizarre old junkie wisdom that injecting an OD victim with milk will bring them back. Maybe people won't have to risk injecting some strange powder packed with who knows what that they purchased from a random person because they'll at least be able to get their supplies from trusted and safe sources. People might stop doing stupid and desperate things like injecting pills full of binders and fillers because it's the only way they can afford to get well enough to function. I don't think the amount of people admitted to hospitals would change that much, especially if their was a slight increase in users after legalization, but I would like to think the removal of the fear and stigma would save many lives and help us help people before their situations become so out of control they need extremely expensive medical procedures. Who knows, maybe the costs of medical will be completely offset by the amount of money we'll save after a few years of not imprisoning non-violent offenders. Maybe a lot of criminals will give up and contribute their ingenious minds to society and dedicate themselves to doing some worthwhile work once we pull the drug trade out from under them.
I'm sick and tired of seeing all of the talk about drug legalization focused on marijuana. Sure it's the most socially acceptable, and as far as medical use its ridiculous in a country that's supposedly free that a person dying of cancer can't have any substance that would possible increase their quality of life a little longer. My problem is that marijuana being illegal isn't something that is seriously harming the users that will use it no matter what. As long as you're smart and keep your usage private, the chances of getting busted for pot are extremely slim. The people who get caught are those who are smoking in the cars (who should be arrested IMHO), smoking in public, or committing other crimes with their stash on them. Those who do get caught with personal quantities don't even really get in that much trouble in most places any more, if anything it's a small inconvenience, a fine that probably won't break them, and will probably be most angry about the fact that they won't be able to smoke pot for a little while, if they even get any kind of extended supervision. The "legalize marijuana" crowd always likes to use phrases like, "if you made marijuana legal you could focus on the REAL drugs like heroin and cocaine", even though they're just getting high like everybody else, something mankind has been doing since the beginni
You're right, and this is one of the big risks of having the majority of our consumer electronics being manufactured overseas. In this case it's pretty obvious that HP did absolutely no quality control testing on the software on these specific Touchpads, they could have shipped with absolutely anything on them and nobody would have noticed until it got to the end user. Something designed to hide in the background might never be discovered. There's so many risks that go along with these kind of things that a lot of people never think about. Now I'm sure in most enterprise environments the workstations and servers are loaded with whatever image they use in house, but that doesn't even guard against modifications on lower levels than the OS. Hell, my USB mouse could be sending my hard drive contents to China right now, I have no idea. So many peripherals come loaded with closed source firmware, there's really no way we would be able to reverse engineer all of it and try to figure out what's going on.
I guess all we can do as consumers is hope for the best, and try not to worry seeing as most of us probably don't do anything important enough for anyone else to care about aside from cyber criminals out to steal CC info or whatever, but I hope corporations and governments are a hell of a lot more paranoid when it comes to vetting their kit.
Isn't the point of school to learn not to make those horrendous spelling mistakes or use Internet "shortcut" words? Using some sort of predictive spelling algorithm would only hinder, if not stop them from learning to spell properly all together. If a students essay reads like it was written by a mentally disabled lolcat, they need to be taught why this is wrong and downgraded appropriately (read: flunked). I'm no grammar or spelling Nazi, but it scares me to death that someday I might receive business correspondence along the lines of, "lol, ur chickin accnt is ovrdrwn, plz deposit sum jewgoldz fagt".
Thanks for letting me know about this, I've never heard of it before. Gotta love the Overview from the web page:
MATE Desktop Environment, a non-intuitive and unattractive desktop for users, using traditional computing desktop metaphor. Also known as the GNOME2 fork.
I was thinking about this last night, because I was planning on forking the GNOME 2 codebase myself. I love GNOME 2, and I've spent a ton of time tweaking my environment and I don't want to learn something new. I'm not incredibly knowledgealbe as to the inner workings of GNOME but I've worked on large codebases before, I'm familiar enough with GTK+ and GNOME libraries that I know I could break in to it. Then I thought about Trinity. Sure they have a few developers that are dedicated to working on it, but if it was so in demand, I would think that it would actually be used and supported somewhere. So many people are screaming "fork GNOME 2", but nobodies tried it yet and there has to be a reason for it. It's just one of those things that I think would be awesome if it worked out, but the chances of it being successful are close to nil. Obviously a lot of people like it, but if somebody wanted to and was capable of doing so, they would have scratched that itch a long time ago. It takes a lot of people to maintain a project the size of GNOME, if only 4 or 5 people maintain a codebase like that in their free time, it will go to hell very quick.
This is how I see this situation working out: Fork GNOME, a few people are initially interested and try to get involved, no major distro wants to get involved with a desktop environment with such and uncertain future so user and developer interest is low, the few coders that contribute to the project aren't that good so the codebase either goes to shit or stagnates, security bugs go unpatched, obscurity, failure, death. A ton of work goes in to a project like GNOME, even something as mature as GNOME 2. There's still bugs, there's still going to be security problems cropping up, and there's still unfinished work. I think the best bet is to stick with distros featuring GNOME 2 that are going to be supported for quite awhile yet, and then after that find a new home. GNOME 2 is probably done, and we'll see what happens with the GNOME project as a whole in the future. What I do know, is that if it really is a majority of users that are against GNOME 3, and they make themselves heard, developers and distro maintainers might just get the message. If few people use GNOME 3 distros, the distro maintainers will eventually have to find something else lest they fade in to irrelevancy. If enough distros aren't putting GNOME 3 in their work, just maybe those dense bastards at GNOME will get the message. My question is: Is it really a majority of people against GNOME 3, or is it just a very loud minority?
I've never used a full GNOME 3 distro as my computer has some serious show stopper power management problems with kernels after 2.6.35 and I don't really want to me with trying something else again anyway until my distro is no longer recieving security updates because I'm happy with what I have. However, I did pull GNOME Shell from the repos and give it a spin, and I was not very happy with it. Maybe I just needed to spend some more time with it, but time isn't something I have a lot of and I see no reason to throw away something that works perfectly for me and start all over from scratch. What I will say is that some of the things Jon McCann talks about in this interview sound really cool, and I like the ideas. For example, I think the stuff he is saying about replacing the file manager for ordinary browsing of media would be awesome for a computer I used primarily for entertainment. Instead of opening a folder, finding my song, opening it in the music player, and then listening to it, everything could be done all in one place. Sort of like current music players with library management features, but all integrated in to the desktop environment. Most of the stuff an average user does with his computer is much more simple in nature and it doesn't require the kind of complexity a lot of programs offer. Hell, I'm totally a power users and do all sorts of things with my computer from software development to music production and image editing, but most of what I d
You sir are a moron. I hope this guy is buying a new car every 2.5 years. What do you think he does with his old car when he buys a new one, puts it on the side of the road for garbage collection? No, he resells it, trades it in, or gives it to another family member, meaning theres more good quality used cars out there for people like me who can't afford to purchase a new one. Wasting money maybe? Perhaps in your opinion, but I bet all of the people employed by the auto business think differently.
I'm always suprised when I see reports like this because on my computer (4GB RAM, Ubuntu 10.04 or Windows 7 Home Premium), Firefox and Chrome are pretty comparable memory-wise and Chrome is slightly faster, but only by a little. I very rarely have more than 10 tabs open, mostly documentation type stuff, not to many images or flash, and I've never seen a browser take up more than a couple hundred megs of memory. I'm definitly not calling bullshit on anyone who says this, but what I am wondering is if Firefox is just holding on to the memory to speed itself up and will it give the memory back if another program needs it. It's like in Linux, where if you just look at a simple graph on the memory your system is using it will always be around 90%, but if you investigate a little deeper in to the issue you'll see that most of that is being used as cache. It's very possible Firefox could be doing something similar.
Even with only 4GB of memory, I find I really have to go out of my way to start hitting the swap. If you have 16GB of memory, and the amout Firefox is taking isn't really hurting anything else, why not just let it have it? All it's going to do is make for a faster experience. The real question is what happens when Firefox's allocated memory starts getting in the way of other programs, it would be interesting to see some experiments testing that out because according to Mozilla themselves say they have most of the major memory leaks fixed.
Other issues could be poorly written plug-ins and bulky websites. I know there are a few plug-ins that allow you to manually clear out the memory Firefox is using, and can provide some more data on what exactly is being used.
The whole thing just struck me as odd, especially after reading up a bit on the Secret Service and what their role in federal law enforcement is. As I thought, their primary duties are security for government officials/dignitaries/property, and treasury issues (ie. counterfeiting). If the facts that are presented in the story are all there is, then I don't know what the hell to think of this. WTF are the Secret Service doing the NYPD's job? Is this a part of this whole new "War on Hackers" thing we got going on? If anything, it just seems wasteful to have them out dealing in these kinds of things. It's like the FBI showing up to arrest me for shoplifting. Another thing that bothers me about this is the SS (used just for abbreviation purposes, not for any connotations it might bring with it) going outside of its main areas of responsibility. Separation of powers is important in any government organization, and I'm seeing more and more federal LE organizations going outside of their usually well defined boundaries. This is my problem with everything falling under the blanket of the DHS. It seems like it's a free-for-all out there with every organization trying to grab what it can, maybe in an attempt for publicity and in turn funding. Maybe this is the way they want it, with so many different federal divisions blurring the lines of responsibility, it becomes a hell of a lot harder for the public to single out a single org as being a bad apple. Maybe I'm just talking out of my ass.
I'm sure there has to be something more to this story, it just doesn't add up to me.
It's different with most electric instruments because they output an analogue signal. The argument here is that cable quality doesn't matter past a certain point when carrying a digital signal, which I tend to agree with. When it comes to my guitar though, I am definitely a fan of Monster cables, if for nothing else, the lifetime warranty. Any working musician can attest to the fact that your cables, especially frontline stuff, gets the living hell beaten out of it and definitely needs to replaced frequently. I've never had any trouble taking a busted Monster cable back to any license Monster retailer and getting a replacement, no questions asked. The cable has payed for itself several times over now, and by the time I trade in my guitar for a tombstone Monster might as well buy me a damn house.
As far as audio quality goes, Monster cables do make a difference over your standard issue guitar cable, but so does any other high end cable, especially over long cable runs. I've even found a couple higher end cable brands that sounded richer, but despite any guarantee or warranty they offer, I can't count on them being available at a local music store everywhere I go.
Back on the topic of HDMI cables, it seems pretty standard for them to feature lifetime warranties, after all, I doubt the average HDMI cable hooked in to a TV sees enough action that it's going to bankrupt anyone any time soon. Just like everything else in tech, it can pretty much be broken down to a simple car analogy. You're at the dealership looking at an $8000 Kia, which is probably going to get you back and forth to work fine, and I bet it'll survive to 200,000 miles with only 20 oil changes in it's lifetime, but the dealer is going to try to convince you that you're going to be way better off with that 60,000 Cadillac. Aside from a few minor benefits that you probably won't even car about on your way to work, there is fundamentally little value difference between a compact car and a luxury car. You're the signal, and the roads your cable, and you're going to arrive at your destination the same either way. That's where the analogy kind of breaks down, because while parts for your Cadillac are going to be a hell of a lot more expensive, it'll give you something to brag about and I'm sure someone will probably think you're cool because of your nice car. When I go to watch a football game and the guy starts going on about his HDMI cables, no high end luxury cable is going to make him cool. Then again, I do live in America, where a "keep up with the Joneses" mentality seems to exist in the upper and middle classes, so I'm sure all of those guys are going to go home anyway and tell their partners to keep the groceries cheap this week because their TV needs a new $150 HDMI cable to get the most out of it. And it will look better to them, because advertising is like a drug for the stupid, there's no better high for those kind of people than knowing their just as good as that happy family on the TV.
I don't mind Google data mining me as long as they keep my perverted searches private, so if someone sends me an invite I'll do my part to to make a MySpace out of Facebook and close my account.
My problem with this is that after reading the article I couldn't see anything stating that the Apple store was upset. I want to know if this was sanctioned by the store itself. All I can garner from the article is that he asked permission of a security guard, which probably isn't authorized to give permission to install software on the computers, but it also says that he was in the store during the project asking a few of the people being photographed their permission. You mean to tell me that not a single one of these people went up to a sales representative and said, "hey, there's some creepy guy telling me your computer took a picture of me and he wants to use it in an art project?" I just cannot believe that nobody in that store was aware this was going on, and then the guy goes and holds a little art exposition right in front of the store! I'd think at some point during this project someone would have called the police if they thought something was wrong, and I also think the local police department would most likely go out and arrest this guy themselves rather than be like, "holy shit Jim, we're going to have to call up the Secret Service on this one".
I really do agree with some of the above posters that there has to be something else going on her. I don't want to start going in to some of the crazy (and unlikely) scenarios that went through my mind after reading this, but there just has to be more to this story. Who hasn't opened up QBasic on a computer in K-Mart back in the '90s and made it print "fuck you" over and over. So now this is such a serious crime the Secret Service would be involved?
Shit, maybe we didn't get Osama and he's actually walking around New York and he was looking for a new Mac Book Pro and this guy got a picture of him and now the SS has to put Kyle away for good lest any of these photos leak.
Well said. The $3,800 per title average is probably a hell of a lot more than they would be getting through any other release channel, and pretty much the only official outlet for an independent developer to get their game out on a console platform. As you said, it also give them a chance to get their name out there, and just maybe, if they can produce a quality product, generate some sort of buzz around themselves so they can start to make some ACTUAL money with their talents. They still have a hell of a lot better chance of doing it there than they do with a PC game drifting in the gigantic shitstorm that is the Internet.
What's the next obvious article Slashdot? "FOSS Developers Not Raking in Millions, Study Says?"
And, while we're on the subject of 5 string bass tunings, the standard 5 string bass tuning starts out at "B" (30 Hz), not "A". I don't own one, but in 2 minutes of Googling, I can't find a 5 string tuning that starts out at A.
Standard tuning down a whole step would put the 5th string down at A. This and other even lower dropped tunings are very common in the modern metal world but are used across pretty much all genres of musics. I'm not a bassist myself, but I'm sure this is pretty commonly used as having an open A string on the low end is probably a lot more useful than an open B string simply because in the world of guitar music A is a lot more common key than B simply because of the way guitars are tuned.
Sorry for the OT post I just wanted to point this out.
I was just using Pokemon as an example of a game which I progressed through mindlessly seeking achievements rather than an standard for excellent game play I think all modern games should be judged by. I was born in 1987 so Pong, Asteroids, etc. are well before my time, you're right on that one. According to Wikipedia the Pokemon games came out in 1996, so I was like 9 or 10 at the time, so yes that was the cool game at the time for me.
I would love to see more games in the spirit of the classic arcade games with a modern touch released though. Briquolo (an 3-D Breakout style game for Linux) is a example of what I'm talking about here. What more "social" gaming concepts do we need outside of a high score table anyway?
It seems like the people making the games these days are focusing less on the actual game play and the "fun factor" and more on achievements and hooks too keep people coming back. It's the easy way out for them, they know a lot of people will keep forging on just to get that next achievement and post about it on their Facebook wall. I know it worked for me when I was younger with Pokemon! Even though the gameplay was incredibly boring and repetitive, I keep trudging through it just so I could get the next Pokemon. The only "social" factor of these games are all of the item requests and such that are posted to friends walls, making them feel like their left out if they're not playing, or even making them feel like they need to play because hey, "Tom needs to plant his seed and needs a hoe". These new social games are just a big scheme to get people to play so they can watch the ads, or spend extra money for in game purchases. Until people stop playing these games it's never going to change, they think we're eating their shit and loving it. I actually think a lot of people do. It's a casual kind of gaming for them, and it seems like the people who play a lot of these games don't get out much, so they stick with it because they're hanging with their buds too I guess.
Slashdot Mirror
Get pulled over for a burned out tail light. You're tired and look a bit under the weather. Cop presses your sweaty fingers to the reader. You go to jail for a joint you smoked 5 days ago.
Because it makes sense and keeps things organized. The dilemma is that on one hand you have the "Windows Way" of having C:\Program Files being the dumping ground for all software, which can become a mess but at least you know that's where the executables are going most of the time (excluding the odd program that likes to stick it self right in C:\ for some reason or another), and on the other you have the Unix way which keeps things separated by their purpose on the system, but if the rules aren't strictly adhered too it can create a huge mess. Personally I don't see much of a problem with the current layout and I will always keep it that way unless some major breakthrough arises that makes even more sense, but this Fedora solution is no different than the way Windows has been doing it for years. Sure it will make it easier for people migrating from Windows, but I think that most people who have been *nix users for years would like to keep it the familiar way that makes sense to them. There's nothing unintuitive or complicated about it; /bin for the core utilities, /sbin holds the utilities for administrative tasks, /usr/bin holds all of the userland software, and /usr/local/bin holds all of my locally build stuff. It's helpful to me because I know my package manager is going to take care of the stuff in /usr/bin and the third party repos will update the few things I have in /opt, and anything in /usr/local/bin I am responsible for. It allows me to see at a glance what is what, which I think is important for keeping my software up to date and maintained. The /bin and /sbin deal isn't too important to me, but it helps each directory to stay uncluttered and I know what's where by convention.
There is a hell of a lot more Linux is going to have to do before the mythical "Year of Desktop Linux" arrives. The more Window or Mac-like Linux tries to become, the more the individual strengths of Linux erode. It seems like these developers have all of these grand plans to improve usability which are unfortunately not in touch with what the users want and at the same time aren't attracting any new users because of them. If I want to use Windows, I'll use Windows. I guess Free Software is all about scratching an itch, and if this is what these guys want to do, so be it. I'll move somewhere else, as will many other people who see no reason to throw away something that works perfectly for them, and it's highly doubtful new users are going too flood in to take our places. The Linux community just seems to be confused right now, and hopefully they'll come to their senses and realize what the strengths of Linux are and focus on them rather than throwing out the old just for the sake of the new shiny.
I understand what BitZtream is saying and I believe it is true, marijuana is psychologically addictive, just like most other things. There are effects when one stops using any substance habitually, someone who smoke a joint every morning to start his day is probably going to be irritable for a few days, and they will probably have cravings for the drug. Why else would people scrape the nasty ass resin out of their pipes and smoke a ton of the crap in an attempt to get a buzz when they are out of weed? Marijuana users craving marijuana is nothing uncommon, and most people who are cut off from their supply, especially regular smokers will wish they had some, search around for some leftovers, call up friends looking for a smoke up, and if they don't get it they might be a bit irritable and uncomfortable since their body is accustomed to the marijuana high. It's just like anything else, anti-histamines aren't physically addictive, but someone who takes them for a few weeks straight to sleep is probably going to have a problem sleeping without them for a little while, same with somebody why drinks a sort of relaxing tea every single night. Hell, I know people who will get irritable if they don't get a certain drink or food on their break that they are accustomed to having. This is psychological addiction. Sometimes people can become so psychologically dependent on the effects of marijuana, that they feel incredibly shitty after quitting, but this is quite rare and these people probably have other underlying issues. The fact is that a person can become psychologically dependent on anything that feels good, how many people on here are a bit irritable if they haven't had their daily wank?
It seems that some people on here take "addiction" to mean "physical dependence", but they are two different concepts. For example, cocaine is a drug that tends to cause very high levels of psychological addiction, nobody would deny that cocaine can be addictive, but there is only limited evidence that it causes any physical changes in the body that cause a person to become dependent on it. Opiates on the other hand are also very psychologically addictive, but they also cause the body to stop producing it's own natural endorphins while at the same time making the brains receptors less sensitive to them, along with a host of other changes. So when a person who is dependent on heroin doesn't get his dose, his body will get physically sick because there is a chemical imbalance in the brain. It is impossible to be dependent on opiates, but not physically dependent. It takes a lot less time for someone to develop an addiction, before the physical dependency kicks in. Alcohol for example, causes compulsive use and cravings in some people very easily, however the onset of dependence is quite slow. A lot of daily drinkers quit no problem, maybe with slight "shakes", but they deal with nothing more than strong cravings. That is addiction, or psychological dependence to be exact. Once they become such heavy drinkers over such a long period that it begins to interfere with the body's GABA system and other chemical levels in their brain, they will get very physically sick along with their cravings. This is actute withdrawal, or more specifically physical dependence.
It works the other way too, sometimes in chronic pain patients high doses of opiates are required on a daily basis. These people usually do become physically dependent on their drug, but they don't become addicted in a classical psychological sense. Addiction is defined by seeking behaviors, where somebody repeatedly administers a substance due to its desirable effects, and the cessation of that causes them some kind of discomfort. It doesn't have to be delirium tremens, simple cravings are more than enough to define addiction.
So yes, marijuana is addictive, but no, there is no evidence that it causes any sort of physical dependence. There is a big difference, and marijuana evangelists need to look at their own behavior and realize this, otherwise they just come off sounding like zealots.
I totally agree with what you are saying here, but the problem is that I the burden on health care would be slightly less than it is currently under prohibition. Alcohol is currently legal, and if I show up in the hospital after smashing my car in to a tree or in acute alcohol withdrawal, they already have to treat me. It's the same with prohibited substances, if I'm withdrawing from benzos a doctor will treat me, if I come in with a heroin addiction they will treat me. A lot of times these people cannot pay and/or are uninsured, and they will either be referred to some government subsidized low income treatment center, or they'll be treated and sent home with bills that they will never pay. Shit, even some of our more humane jails in the US will give a opiate addict the mercy of a quick methadone taper, and they will treat a benzo/alcohol addict out of medical necessity to prevent seizures.
The problem with our current prohibition situation is that it promotes ignorance and desperation among users. Under some sort of system for the legalized use of drugs, maybe we wouldn't have so many people showing up to the hospital needing amputations because of nasty abscesses or infections because they had poor IV technique and had to reuse the same needles over and over because there was no nearby needle exchange and the pharmacies in their area won't sell them clean needles. Maybe we'll stop losing so many people because someone is scared to call an ambulance in the event of an overdose, or worse, believe in some bizarre old junkie wisdom that injecting an OD victim with milk will bring them back. Maybe people won't have to risk injecting some strange powder packed with who knows what that they purchased from a random person because they'll at least be able to get their supplies from trusted and safe sources. People might stop doing stupid and desperate things like injecting pills full of binders and fillers because it's the only way they can afford to get well enough to function. I don't think the amount of people admitted to hospitals would change that much, especially if their was a slight increase in users after legalization, but I would like to think the removal of the fear and stigma would save many lives and help us help people before their situations become so out of control they need extremely expensive medical procedures. Who knows, maybe the costs of medical will be completely offset by the amount of money we'll save after a few years of not imprisoning non-violent offenders. Maybe a lot of criminals will give up and contribute their ingenious minds to society and dedicate themselves to doing some worthwhile work once we pull the drug trade out from under them.
I'm sick and tired of seeing all of the talk about drug legalization focused on marijuana. Sure it's the most socially acceptable, and as far as medical use its ridiculous in a country that's supposedly free that a person dying of cancer can't have any substance that would possible increase their quality of life a little longer. My problem is that marijuana being illegal isn't something that is seriously harming the users that will use it no matter what. As long as you're smart and keep your usage private, the chances of getting busted for pot are extremely slim. The people who get caught are those who are smoking in the cars (who should be arrested IMHO), smoking in public, or committing other crimes with their stash on them. Those who do get caught with personal quantities don't even really get in that much trouble in most places any more, if anything it's a small inconvenience, a fine that probably won't break them, and will probably be most angry about the fact that they won't be able to smoke pot for a little while, if they even get any kind of extended supervision. The "legalize marijuana" crowd always likes to use phrases like, "if you made marijuana legal you could focus on the REAL drugs like heroin and cocaine", even though they're just getting high like everybody else, something mankind has been doing since the beginni
You're right, and this is one of the big risks of having the majority of our consumer electronics being manufactured overseas. In this case it's pretty obvious that HP did absolutely no quality control testing on the software on these specific Touchpads, they could have shipped with absolutely anything on them and nobody would have noticed until it got to the end user. Something designed to hide in the background might never be discovered. There's so many risks that go along with these kind of things that a lot of people never think about. Now I'm sure in most enterprise environments the workstations and servers are loaded with whatever image they use in house, but that doesn't even guard against modifications on lower levels than the OS. Hell, my USB mouse could be sending my hard drive contents to China right now, I have no idea. So many peripherals come loaded with closed source firmware, there's really no way we would be able to reverse engineer all of it and try to figure out what's going on.
I guess all we can do as consumers is hope for the best, and try not to worry seeing as most of us probably don't do anything important enough for anyone else to care about aside from cyber criminals out to steal CC info or whatever, but I hope corporations and governments are a hell of a lot more paranoid when it comes to vetting their kit.
Amiga Users = The only true Heterosexuals.
Isn't the point of school to learn not to make those horrendous spelling mistakes or use Internet "shortcut" words? Using some sort of predictive spelling algorithm would only hinder, if not stop them from learning to spell properly all together. If a students essay reads like it was written by a mentally disabled lolcat, they need to be taught why this is wrong and downgraded appropriately (read: flunked). I'm no grammar or spelling Nazi, but it scares me to death that someday I might receive business correspondence along the lines of, "lol, ur chickin accnt is ovrdrwn, plz deposit sum jewgoldz fagt".
Thanks for letting me know about this, I've never heard of it before. Gotta love the Overview from the web page:
MATE Desktop Environment, a non-intuitive and unattractive desktop for users, using traditional computing desktop metaphor. Also known as the GNOME2 fork.
I was thinking about this last night, because I was planning on forking the GNOME 2 codebase myself. I love GNOME 2, and I've spent a ton of time tweaking my environment and I don't want to learn something new. I'm not incredibly knowledgealbe as to the inner workings of GNOME but I've worked on large codebases before, I'm familiar enough with GTK+ and GNOME libraries that I know I could break in to it. Then I thought about Trinity. Sure they have a few developers that are dedicated to working on it, but if it was so in demand, I would think that it would actually be used and supported somewhere. So many people are screaming "fork GNOME 2", but nobodies tried it yet and there has to be a reason for it. It's just one of those things that I think would be awesome if it worked out, but the chances of it being successful are close to nil. Obviously a lot of people like it, but if somebody wanted to and was capable of doing so, they would have scratched that itch a long time ago. It takes a lot of people to maintain a project the size of GNOME, if only 4 or 5 people maintain a codebase like that in their free time, it will go to hell very quick.
This is how I see this situation working out: Fork GNOME, a few people are initially interested and try to get involved, no major distro wants to get involved with a desktop environment with such and uncertain future so user and developer interest is low, the few coders that contribute to the project aren't that good so the codebase either goes to shit or stagnates, security bugs go unpatched, obscurity, failure, death. A ton of work goes in to a project like GNOME, even something as mature as GNOME 2. There's still bugs, there's still going to be security problems cropping up, and there's still unfinished work. I think the best bet is to stick with distros featuring GNOME 2 that are going to be supported for quite awhile yet, and then after that find a new home. GNOME 2 is probably done, and we'll see what happens with the GNOME project as a whole in the future. What I do know, is that if it really is a majority of users that are against GNOME 3, and they make themselves heard, developers and distro maintainers might just get the message. If few people use GNOME 3 distros, the distro maintainers will eventually have to find something else lest they fade in to irrelevancy. If enough distros aren't putting GNOME 3 in their work, just maybe those dense bastards at GNOME will get the message. My question is: Is it really a majority of people against GNOME 3, or is it just a very loud minority?
I've never used a full GNOME 3 distro as my computer has some serious show stopper power management problems with kernels after 2.6.35 and I don't really want to me with trying something else again anyway until my distro is no longer recieving security updates because I'm happy with what I have. However, I did pull GNOME Shell from the repos and give it a spin, and I was not very happy with it. Maybe I just needed to spend some more time with it, but time isn't something I have a lot of and I see no reason to throw away something that works perfectly for me and start all over from scratch. What I will say is that some of the things Jon McCann talks about in this interview sound really cool, and I like the ideas. For example, I think the stuff he is saying about replacing the file manager for ordinary browsing of media would be awesome for a computer I used primarily for entertainment. Instead of opening a folder, finding my song, opening it in the music player, and then listening to it, everything could be done all in one place. Sort of like current music players with library management features, but all integrated in to the desktop environment. Most of the stuff an average user does with his computer is much more simple in nature and it doesn't require the kind of complexity a lot of programs offer. Hell, I'm totally a power users and do all sorts of things with my computer from software development to music production and image editing, but most of what I d
You sir are a moron. I hope this guy is buying a new car every 2.5 years. What do you think he does with his old car when he buys a new one, puts it on the side of the road for garbage collection? No, he resells it, trades it in, or gives it to another family member, meaning theres more good quality used cars out there for people like me who can't afford to purchase a new one. Wasting money maybe? Perhaps in your opinion, but I bet all of the people employed by the auto business think differently.
I'm always suprised when I see reports like this because on my computer (4GB RAM, Ubuntu 10.04 or Windows 7 Home Premium), Firefox and Chrome are pretty comparable memory-wise and Chrome is slightly faster, but only by a little. I very rarely have more than 10 tabs open, mostly documentation type stuff, not to many images or flash, and I've never seen a browser take up more than a couple hundred megs of memory. I'm definitly not calling bullshit on anyone who says this, but what I am wondering is if Firefox is just holding on to the memory to speed itself up and will it give the memory back if another program needs it. It's like in Linux, where if you just look at a simple graph on the memory your system is using it will always be around 90%, but if you investigate a little deeper in to the issue you'll see that most of that is being used as cache. It's very possible Firefox could be doing something similar.
Even with only 4GB of memory, I find I really have to go out of my way to start hitting the swap. If you have 16GB of memory, and the amout Firefox is taking isn't really hurting anything else, why not just let it have it? All it's going to do is make for a faster experience. The real question is what happens when Firefox's allocated memory starts getting in the way of other programs, it would be interesting to see some experiments testing that out because according to Mozilla themselves say they have most of the major memory leaks fixed.
Other issues could be poorly written plug-ins and bulky websites. I know there are a few plug-ins that allow you to manually clear out the memory Firefox is using, and can provide some more data on what exactly is being used.
Maybe Google wants to take a shot at their competition and have installed LOIC on their server farms.
I shoot car fuel costs in the ass!
The whole thing just struck me as odd, especially after reading up a bit on the Secret Service and what their role in federal law enforcement is. As I thought, their primary duties are security for government officials/dignitaries/property, and treasury issues (ie. counterfeiting). If the facts that are presented in the story are all there is, then I don't know what the hell to think of this. WTF are the Secret Service doing the NYPD's job? Is this a part of this whole new "War on Hackers" thing we got going on? If anything, it just seems wasteful to have them out dealing in these kinds of things. It's like the FBI showing up to arrest me for shoplifting. Another thing that bothers me about this is the SS (used just for abbreviation purposes, not for any connotations it might bring with it) going outside of its main areas of responsibility. Separation of powers is important in any government organization, and I'm seeing more and more federal LE organizations going outside of their usually well defined boundaries. This is my problem with everything falling under the blanket of the DHS. It seems like it's a free-for-all out there with every organization trying to grab what it can, maybe in an attempt for publicity and in turn funding. Maybe this is the way they want it, with so many different federal divisions blurring the lines of responsibility, it becomes a hell of a lot harder for the public to single out a single org as being a bad apple. Maybe I'm just talking out of my ass.
I'm sure there has to be something more to this story, it just doesn't add up to me.
Thank you very much kind sir!
It's different with most electric instruments because they output an analogue signal. The argument here is that cable quality doesn't matter past a certain point when carrying a digital signal, which I tend to agree with. When it comes to my guitar though, I am definitely a fan of Monster cables, if for nothing else, the lifetime warranty. Any working musician can attest to the fact that your cables, especially frontline stuff, gets the living hell beaten out of it and definitely needs to replaced frequently. I've never had any trouble taking a busted Monster cable back to any license Monster retailer and getting a replacement, no questions asked. The cable has payed for itself several times over now, and by the time I trade in my guitar for a tombstone Monster might as well buy me a damn house.
As far as audio quality goes, Monster cables do make a difference over your standard issue guitar cable, but so does any other high end cable, especially over long cable runs. I've even found a couple higher end cable brands that sounded richer, but despite any guarantee or warranty they offer, I can't count on them being available at a local music store everywhere I go.
Back on the topic of HDMI cables, it seems pretty standard for them to feature lifetime warranties, after all, I doubt the average HDMI cable hooked in to a TV sees enough action that it's going to bankrupt anyone any time soon. Just like everything else in tech, it can pretty much be broken down to a simple car analogy. You're at the dealership looking at an $8000 Kia, which is probably going to get you back and forth to work fine, and I bet it'll survive to 200,000 miles with only 20 oil changes in it's lifetime, but the dealer is going to try to convince you that you're going to be way better off with that 60,000 Cadillac. Aside from a few minor benefits that you probably won't even car about on your way to work, there is fundamentally little value difference between a compact car and a luxury car. You're the signal, and the roads your cable, and you're going to arrive at your destination the same either way. That's where the analogy kind of breaks down, because while parts for your Cadillac are going to be a hell of a lot more expensive, it'll give you something to brag about and I'm sure someone will probably think you're cool because of your nice car. When I go to watch a football game and the guy starts going on about his HDMI cables, no high end luxury cable is going to make him cool. Then again, I do live in America, where a "keep up with the Joneses" mentality seems to exist in the upper and middle classes, so I'm sure all of those guys are going to go home anyway and tell their partners to keep the groceries cheap this week because their TV needs a new $150 HDMI cable to get the most out of it. And it will look better to them, because advertising is like a drug for the stupid, there's no better high for those kind of people than knowing their just as good as that happy family on the TV.
Forgot to post my e-mail address. dmfnr1@gmail.com
I don't mind Google data mining me as long as they keep my perverted searches private, so if someone sends me an invite I'll do my part to to make a MySpace out of Facebook and close my account.
My problem with this is that after reading the article I couldn't see anything stating that the Apple store was upset. I want to know if this was sanctioned by the store itself. All I can garner from the article is that he asked permission of a security guard, which probably isn't authorized to give permission to install software on the computers, but it also says that he was in the store during the project asking a few of the people being photographed their permission. You mean to tell me that not a single one of these people went up to a sales representative and said, "hey, there's some creepy guy telling me your computer took a picture of me and he wants to use it in an art project?" I just cannot believe that nobody in that store was aware this was going on, and then the guy goes and holds a little art exposition right in front of the store! I'd think at some point during this project someone would have called the police if they thought something was wrong, and I also think the local police department would most likely go out and arrest this guy themselves rather than be like, "holy shit Jim, we're going to have to call up the Secret Service on this one".
I really do agree with some of the above posters that there has to be something else going on her. I don't want to start going in to some of the crazy (and unlikely) scenarios that went through my mind after reading this, but there just has to be more to this story. Who hasn't opened up QBasic on a computer in K-Mart back in the '90s and made it print "fuck you" over and over. So now this is such a serious crime the Secret Service would be involved?
Shit, maybe we didn't get Osama and he's actually walking around New York and he was looking for a new Mac Book Pro and this guy got a picture of him and now the SS has to put Kyle away for good lest any of these photos leak.
Well said. The $3,800 per title average is probably a hell of a lot more than they would be getting through any other release channel, and pretty much the only official outlet for an independent developer to get their game out on a console platform. As you said, it also give them a chance to get their name out there, and just maybe, if they can produce a quality product, generate some sort of buzz around themselves so they can start to make some ACTUAL money with their talents. They still have a hell of a lot better chance of doing it there than they do with a PC game drifting in the gigantic shitstorm that is the Internet.
What's the next obvious article Slashdot? "FOSS Developers Not Raking in Millions, Study Says?"
And, while we're on the subject of 5 string bass tunings, the standard 5 string bass tuning starts out at "B" (30 Hz), not "A". I don't own one, but in 2 minutes of Googling, I can't find a 5 string tuning that starts out at A.
Standard tuning down a whole step would put the 5th string down at A. This and other even lower dropped tunings are very common in the modern metal world but are used across pretty much all genres of musics. I'm not a bassist myself, but I'm sure this is pretty commonly used as having an open A string on the low end is probably a lot more useful than an open B string simply because in the world of guitar music A is a lot more common key than B simply because of the way guitars are tuned.
Sorry for the OT post I just wanted to point this out.
I was just using Pokemon as an example of a game which I progressed through mindlessly seeking achievements rather than an standard for excellent game play I think all modern games should be judged by. I was born in 1987 so Pong, Asteroids, etc. are well before my time, you're right on that one. According to Wikipedia the Pokemon games came out in 1996, so I was like 9 or 10 at the time, so yes that was the cool game at the time for me.
I would love to see more games in the spirit of the classic arcade games with a modern touch released though. Briquolo (an 3-D Breakout style game for Linux) is a example of what I'm talking about here. What more "social" gaming concepts do we need outside of a high score table anyway?
It seems like the people making the games these days are focusing less on the actual game play and the "fun factor" and more on achievements and hooks too keep people coming back. It's the easy way out for them, they know a lot of people will keep forging on just to get that next achievement and post about it on their Facebook wall. I know it worked for me when I was younger with Pokemon! Even though the gameplay was incredibly boring and repetitive, I keep trudging through it just so I could get the next Pokemon. The only "social" factor of these games are all of the item requests and such that are posted to friends walls, making them feel like their left out if they're not playing, or even making them feel like they need to play because hey, "Tom needs to plant his seed and needs a hoe". These new social games are just a big scheme to get people to play so they can watch the ads, or spend extra money for in game purchases. Until people stop playing these games it's never going to change, they think we're eating their shit and loving it. I actually think a lot of people do. It's a casual kind of gaming for them, and it seems like the people who play a lot of these games don't get out much, so they stick with it because they're hanging with their buds too I guess.
That, and he didn't actually have a gun.
Funny how they're so concerned about protecting their own privacy while violating that of others.