Question is, what are we going to do about it? Either through political means or revolutionary ones, we can't wait around for other's to solve this problem for us. It's time to make the change ourselves.
Seriously, if the potential for addiction is enough to ban something these days, we should have banned sex long, long ago, whether it involves another person or not.
While what you say is true in the way most people consume marijuana (smoking/vaping), THC does actually have a lethal dose. You could overdose on THC if you concentrated it into pill form, like Marinol, and took a bottle's worth...
Smoking, however, is far too inefficient a delivery mechanism to get that much THC into the body. The average human being would need to smoke 1000+ pounds of Marijuana in a single sitting in order to even come close to the LD50 of THC in the body, and as anyone that's actually used marijuana knows, the average human being wouldn't even be able to make it through an eighth of an ounce before they'd be asleep, let alone even a single pound.
So for all intents and purposes, Marijuana is completely non-lethal in it's current form. Compared to alcohol which kills thousands of people a day, Marijuana is about as harmful as chocolate.
Abso-fucking-lutely. I smoked copious amounts of marijuana through school and after, and while I still smoke socially at party's and such when the mood takes me, it wasn't that difficult to put it down when I decided to be done with it. Cigarettes, on the other hand, I tried to quit multiple times for years and I would turn into a raging asshole every single time. Even with the patch, with the gum, all that shit, didn't matter. I finally managed to stick with it (the physical craving went away after 3 or 4 days) but it was a miserable time for me and everyone around me, that's for sure.
Caffeine, forget it. I get physically ill if I don't get my daily fix; the headaches alone are enough to make me have to leave work early. Every time I've tried to even cut back I've gone berserk after a while. Meanwhile, I see 5 year olds drinking big gulps of Coke at McDonalds all the time and nobody says a thing.
It's funny (and sad) how arbitrary our drug laws really are.
I had the same problem in my apartment, there are between 30-50 networks (both residential and business) in range at all times crowding bandwidth, and to make matters even worse, it seems like a lot of them have that "smart switching" technology where they automatically go looking for the least crowded channel. The problem is that there are so many of those routers here that it's like they chase each other up and down the band all day long. I had no idea how bad the problem was until I downloaded a wifi app for my phone and watched it happening in real time; blocks of networks moving together because they all see the same "clean" channel...which they then immediately saturate so they all move to the next "clean" channel, totally unaware that the other networks are moving right along with them. It's maddening...
Going 5GHz 802.11N only was not a viable solution because so many of our devices require the 2.4 GHz band so I had to go out and buy 100' long cat6 cables and hard line every desktop in my apartment. It's hideous and I can't stand having cables run up walls and across the ceiling but it was either that, spend every waking moment of my day stuck in my living room, or not have internet.
I'd be perfectly happy if edits cleared moderation or something.
I agree completely, although I think there would have to be a limit of one edit per post, as well as a short window of time one would be able to edit a post, say 10-15 minutes or so.
Otherwise, you'd end up with the edit function being abused in order to reset any negative moderation a post may receive. I'm almost positive that is exactly what would happen, honestly...
Re:Change cannot be stopped
on
The Case For Piracy
·
· Score: 5, Informative
It is about protecting the public by keeping an incentive for the produces of works of art, to keep producing. That incentive is financial compensation.
Funny, art was created for thousands of years before it was turned into a commodity. The common theme of "no one will create if they don't receive compensation for it!" is simply not true: Look at all the free software that is all over the web. Look at all the self-produced music all over Youtube. Look at all the self-produced artwork on DeviantArt. Look at all the self-produced novels being printed via Amazon.
What we're seeing today is a bunch of huge corporations that wrested control of artistic works they didn't in themselves create and attempt to hold on to the rights to it forever, long after the death (and often against the wishes of) the person that actually created it. Piracy is helping destroy their monopoly on content dispersal through mainstreaming other methods of distribution.
So yes, while we can all shed a tear for the millions of Metallica songs that were stolen via Napster (I guess), I think we're missing the greater benefits to society as a whole that came out of it. Not so good for Big Media, and not so good for the lucky few content creators they allow to become wealthy in order to attract more content creators they can suck up into the machine, but good for consumers.
We've been making art since we first started scratching designs into rocks and painting on cave walls...and I am quite sure that the concept of paying for said art came much, much later.
If you think so, look at the last "local" election and see how much money or staff came from districts outside of yours.
Here in Wisconsin, during the 2010 midterm elections, $3.75 million was spent on all of the state senate races combined. During our recent recall elections, over $31 million dollars was spent in a 4 month period, the vast majority coming from out of state special interest groups. I can't even imagine how much is going to be spent on the Scott Walker recall; I wouldn't be surprised if it approached $100 million bucks...and this is in Wisconsin. I shudder to think what it costs to campaign in local elections in places like New York City or Los Angeles. It's got to be a ridiculously impenetrable barrier of entry, though.
Our entire political landscape is so screwed up, even down to a local level, there is so much dirty money and underhanded BS going on it's disgusting. I'm not worried about saving our government, because I honestly think it's beyond that point. Short of open revolution, there is no way that we can separate the disproportionate influence money is having on our elections.
Oppression is relative. In a country with freedom of speech, censorship would (and should) be considered oppressive. I guess what I don't understand about those comments is why it's okay to tell a bunch of protesters they should just be happy with what they have when things could be worse...but for some reason telling the wealthy they should be happy with less is just so wrong. Why can't the Koch's be happy with a couple million bucks a year, for instance? I bet you could literally halve their fortune right now and their lifestyle would barely be effected, if at all. Meanwhile, start axing middle class state worker pay and benefits left and right like they're doing here in Wisconsin, and when they balk, it's because of all the "entitlements" and how greedy they are?
Speaking of "entitlements": Do the ultrarich not feel they are entitled to their vast wealth? Do they not feel they are entitled to police protection, or access to a hospital, or clean drinking water, or any of the other things that we have? But a bunch of people saying they're entitled to job security and a living wage is just crazy talk from a bunch of "socialists"?
That's all well and good, but this isn't the National Science Foundation, it's NASA. NASA science is much MUCH more political than NSF science. It maybe not be the best way to do it, but it's the only way it's going to happen.
Only because it's taxpayer funded. Once upon a time, pure scientific research was something we embraced, even if there wasn't a way to necessarily monetize the discoveries. Nowadays it seems like the general public has been convinced that the pursuit of knowledge is, in itself, worthless unless we can capitalize on that knowledge.
NASA is having problems because everyone thinks sending people up into space is a waste of money. We need to explain to them why it's not, not come up with more creative ways to stretch the truth and make it seem like every space mission is like the movie Armageddon. Turning the Space Program into the Jersey Shore only gives those that would rather just roll that money into another tax cut for multimillionaires more fuel to turn around and convince people to do just that, like we see today.
The world is like a ride at an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it, you think that it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills, and it's very brightly coloured, and it's very loud and it's fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question - is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us. They say 'Hey! Don't worry, don't be afraid, ever, because, this is just a ride.' And we...kill those people. Ha ha ha. 'Shut him up! We have a lot invested in this ride. SHUT HIM UP! Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and family. This just has to be real.' It's just a ride.
But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. But it doesn't matter because: it's just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings, and money. A choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourselves off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one. Here's what you can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money that we spend on weapons and defence each year, and instead spend it feeding, clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, for ever, in peace.
- The late, great Bill Hicks. Gone much too soon...
I get what you are saying, but when it comes to matters of science, I don't think we should demean it by marketing it like a soft drink or brand of clothing.
I think we should instead focus our energies on educating people as to why these places make good choices, instead of trying to cash in on pop culture tropes that have no scientific basis.
I admit, though, that the latter method is usually more effective, at least here in the U.S., anyway...
Yes, but they hypothesize that the intense gravity from Jupiter causes tidal flexing, which in theory could create enough heat through eruptions and such to maintain a liquid water ocean under the frozen surface.
More people are more likely to know the name Mars as opposed to some moons orbiting Saturn ( and yes, I'll admit I had to look in the article to double check that they are in fact moons of Saturn).
You use dumb terminology like "iCrap" because you're afraid of change.
No, I'm afraid of a future where all of our tech goods are so locked down we can't even change the fucking battery without voiding a warranty. If you were able to see the forest for the trees you would be afraid, too.
I have a sneaking suspicion that this has a lot less to do with privacy, and a lot more to do with the sales tax fight. Guess they'd better add a few more zeros to their "lobbying" budget. Either that or they're not honoring the unwritten "matching donations" rule that requires Big Business to pay off both parties equally.
THIS was once the spirit of Apple Inc. Shame on you for losing your way.
Reminds me what Jason Newsted said, when asked for his response to people saying Metallica had sold out: "Yeah we sold out. We sold out every arena we played for the last five years."
Until the general public stops eating up every single thing they produce, it will never change. They make far too much money to give half a crap about the loyal customers that kept them viable before the iCrap era. They'd rather you just shut up and keep buying those iPhones/iPads. It's sad, but true.
Plus all the plugins you need to have installed to make sure they won't just track you anyway. I wouldn't mind so much if it was a permanent, once and for all opt-out, but it seems like more and more businesses just update something every few months and turn the shit right back on again, since the default for everything anymore is "PRIVACY IS ANTI-AMERICAN, WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO HIDE?"
Slashdot Mirror
Smedley Butler tried to warn us...
President Eisenhower tried to warn us...
Question is, what are we going to do about it? Either through political means or revolutionary ones, we can't wait around for other's to solve this problem for us. It's time to make the change ourselves.
Try giving up masturbation.
Seriously, if the potential for addiction is enough to ban something these days, we should have banned sex long, long ago, whether it involves another person or not.
While what you say is true in the way most people consume marijuana (smoking/vaping), THC does actually have a lethal dose. You could overdose on THC if you concentrated it into pill form, like Marinol, and took a bottle's worth...
Smoking, however, is far too inefficient a delivery mechanism to get that much THC into the body. The average human being would need to smoke 1000+ pounds of Marijuana in a single sitting in order to even come close to the LD50 of THC in the body, and as anyone that's actually used marijuana knows, the average human being wouldn't even be able to make it through an eighth of an ounce before they'd be asleep, let alone even a single pound.
So for all intents and purposes, Marijuana is completely non-lethal in it's current form. Compared to alcohol which kills thousands of people a day, Marijuana is about as harmful as chocolate.
Abso-fucking-lutely. I smoked copious amounts of marijuana through school and after, and while I still smoke socially at party's and such when the mood takes me, it wasn't that difficult to put it down when I decided to be done with it. Cigarettes, on the other hand, I tried to quit multiple times for years and I would turn into a raging asshole every single time. Even with the patch, with the gum, all that shit, didn't matter. I finally managed to stick with it (the physical craving went away after 3 or 4 days) but it was a miserable time for me and everyone around me, that's for sure.
Caffeine, forget it. I get physically ill if I don't get my daily fix; the headaches alone are enough to make me have to leave work early. Every time I've tried to even cut back I've gone berserk after a while. Meanwhile, I see 5 year olds drinking big gulps of Coke at McDonalds all the time and nobody says a thing.
It's funny (and sad) how arbitrary our drug laws really are.
I had the same problem in my apartment, there are between 30-50 networks (both residential and business) in range at all times crowding bandwidth, and to make matters even worse, it seems like a lot of them have that "smart switching" technology where they automatically go looking for the least crowded channel. The problem is that there are so many of those routers here that it's like they chase each other up and down the band all day long. I had no idea how bad the problem was until I downloaded a wifi app for my phone and watched it happening in real time; blocks of networks moving together because they all see the same "clean" channel...which they then immediately saturate so they all move to the next "clean" channel, totally unaware that the other networks are moving right along with them. It's maddening...
Going 5GHz 802.11N only was not a viable solution because so many of our devices require the 2.4 GHz band so I had to go out and buy 100' long cat6 cables and hard line every desktop in my apartment. It's hideous and I can't stand having cables run up walls and across the ceiling but it was either that, spend every waking moment of my day stuck in my living room, or not have internet.
There's got to be a better way.
That's a fucking 50 DKP minus!!!
But you are probably so branwashed
I branwashed my colon this morning, that's for sure...
I'd be perfectly happy if edits cleared moderation or something.
I agree completely, although I think there would have to be a limit of one edit per post, as well as a short window of time one would be able to edit a post, say 10-15 minutes or so.
Otherwise, you'd end up with the edit function being abused in order to reset any negative moderation a post may receive. I'm almost positive that is exactly what would happen, honestly...
It is about protecting the public by keeping an incentive for the produces of works of art, to keep producing. That incentive is financial compensation.
Funny, art was created for thousands of years before it was turned into a commodity. The common theme of "no one will create if they don't receive compensation for it!" is simply not true: Look at all the free software that is all over the web. Look at all the self-produced music all over Youtube. Look at all the self-produced artwork on DeviantArt. Look at all the self-produced novels being printed via Amazon.
What we're seeing today is a bunch of huge corporations that wrested control of artistic works they didn't in themselves create and attempt to hold on to the rights to it forever, long after the death (and often against the wishes of) the person that actually created it. Piracy is helping destroy their monopoly on content dispersal through mainstreaming other methods of distribution.
So yes, while we can all shed a tear for the millions of Metallica songs that were stolen via Napster (I guess), I think we're missing the greater benefits to society as a whole that came out of it. Not so good for Big Media, and not so good for the lucky few content creators they allow to become wealthy in order to attract more content creators they can suck up into the machine, but good for consumers.
We've been making art since we first started scratching designs into rocks and painting on cave walls...and I am quite sure that the concept of paying for said art came much, much later.
Or we could all become Gold farmers in WoW?
If you think so, look at the last "local" election and see how much money or staff came from districts outside of yours.
Here in Wisconsin, during the 2010 midterm elections, $3.75 million was spent on all of the state senate races combined. During our recent recall elections, over $31 million dollars was spent in a 4 month period, the vast majority coming from out of state special interest groups. I can't even imagine how much is going to be spent on the Scott Walker recall; I wouldn't be surprised if it approached $100 million bucks...and this is in Wisconsin. I shudder to think what it costs to campaign in local elections in places like New York City or Los Angeles. It's got to be a ridiculously impenetrable barrier of entry, though.
Our entire political landscape is so screwed up, even down to a local level, there is so much dirty money and underhanded BS going on it's disgusting. I'm not worried about saving our government, because I honestly think it's beyond that point. Short of open revolution, there is no way that we can separate the disproportionate influence money is having on our elections.
Oppression is relative. In a country with freedom of speech, censorship would (and should) be considered oppressive. I guess what I don't understand about those comments is why it's okay to tell a bunch of protesters they should just be happy with what they have when things could be worse...but for some reason telling the wealthy they should be happy with less is just so wrong. Why can't the Koch's be happy with a couple million bucks a year, for instance? I bet you could literally halve their fortune right now and their lifestyle would barely be effected, if at all. Meanwhile, start axing middle class state worker pay and benefits left and right like they're doing here in Wisconsin, and when they balk, it's because of all the "entitlements" and how greedy they are?
Speaking of "entitlements": Do the ultrarich not feel they are entitled to their vast wealth? Do they not feel they are entitled to police protection, or access to a hospital, or clean drinking water, or any of the other things that we have? But a bunch of people saying they're entitled to job security and a living wage is just crazy talk from a bunch of "socialists"?
That's all well and good, but this isn't the National Science Foundation, it's NASA. NASA science is much MUCH more political than NSF science. It maybe not be the best way to do it, but it's the only way it's going to happen.
Only because it's taxpayer funded. Once upon a time, pure scientific research was something we embraced, even if there wasn't a way to necessarily monetize the discoveries. Nowadays it seems like the general public has been convinced that the pursuit of knowledge is, in itself, worthless unless we can capitalize on that knowledge.
NASA is having problems because everyone thinks sending people up into space is a waste of money. We need to explain to them why it's not, not come up with more creative ways to stretch the truth and make it seem like every space mission is like the movie Armageddon. Turning the Space Program into the Jersey Shore only gives those that would rather just roll that money into another tax cut for multimillionaires more fuel to turn around and convince people to do just that, like we see today.
The world is like a ride at an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it, you think that it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills, and it's very brightly coloured, and it's very loud and it's fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question - is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us. They say 'Hey! Don't worry, don't be afraid, ever, because, this is just a ride.' And we...kill those people. Ha ha ha. 'Shut him up! We have a lot invested in this ride. SHUT HIM UP! Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and family. This just has to be real.' It's just a ride.
But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. But it doesn't matter because: it's just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings, and money. A choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourselves off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one. Here's what you can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money that we spend on weapons and defence each year, and instead spend it feeding, clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, for ever, in peace.
- The late, great Bill Hicks. Gone much too soon...
I get what you are saying, but when it comes to matters of science, I don't think we should demean it by marketing it like a soft drink or brand of clothing.
I think we should instead focus our energies on educating people as to why these places make good choices, instead of trying to cash in on pop culture tropes that have no scientific basis.
I admit, though, that the latter method is usually more effective, at least here in the U.S., anyway...
Yes, but they hypothesize that the intense gravity from Jupiter causes tidal flexing, which in theory could create enough heat through eruptions and such to maintain a liquid water ocean under the frozen surface.
More people are more likely to know the name Mars as opposed to some moons orbiting Saturn ( and yes, I'll admit I had to look in the article to double check that they are in fact moons of Saturn).
Should have looked more closely, Europa orbits Jupiter.
Arthur C. Clark would be rolling in his grave...
How about this?
I almost want to set something like this up...
Oh, I'm sure we'll find something to fight about. We always do...
is on Europa. I hope I live long enough to see whether I lose that bet.
Then this post is worth ten billion.
Oh yeah?! This post is worth eleventy billion! Take that!!
Shit, do I have to pay usage fees to quote your post????
You use dumb terminology like "iCrap" because you're afraid of change.
No, I'm afraid of a future where all of our tech goods are so locked down we can't even change the fucking battery without voiding a warranty. If you were able to see the forest for the trees you would be afraid, too.
I have a sneaking suspicion that this has a lot less to do with privacy, and a lot more to do with the sales tax fight. Guess they'd better add a few more zeros to their "lobbying" budget. Either that or they're not honoring the unwritten "matching donations" rule that requires Big Business to pay off both parties equally.
THIS was once the spirit of Apple Inc. Shame on you for losing your way.
Reminds me what Jason Newsted said, when asked for his response to people saying Metallica had sold out: "Yeah we sold out. We sold out every arena we played for the last five years."
Until the general public stops eating up every single thing they produce, it will never change. They make far too much money to give half a crap about the loyal customers that kept them viable before the iCrap era. They'd rather you just shut up and keep buying those iPhones/iPads. It's sad, but true.
Plus all the plugins you need to have installed to make sure they won't just track you anyway. I wouldn't mind so much if it was a permanent, once and for all opt-out, but it seems like more and more businesses just update something every few months and turn the shit right back on again, since the default for everything anymore is "PRIVACY IS ANTI-AMERICAN, WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO HIDE?"