In 1900, cocaine was mainly taken orally in a dilute liquid solution or by chewing coca leaves. Lye or potash would be added to the leaf to increase the absorption rate. Sometimes, a very dilute liquid solution would be injected a la Sherlock Holmes.
As the purity and quality of the cocaine increased, use by snorting became possible. The rush to the brain was much faster this way because of the added exchange surfaces of the mucous membranes. This rapid rewarding rush is one of the hallmarks of addictive drugs.
In the early 80s in the Bahamas, some coke user discovered that baking cocaine make it a different trip altogether. Smoking crack gives an even faster, higher, but shorter lasting rush. Plus, burning the coke produces all kinds of new chemicals.
Let's compare to Pong, Space Invaders, SMB, Quake, and EverCRACK. The users call it crack, for heaven's sake. Quake 13 is going to look like that visor game the chick spy gave to Riker in that episode of TNG where Wesley saves the Enterprise again. Game development involves the finest artists, programmers and applied psychologists money can buy to develop games you will want to play, play, play. Sony freely advertises that the Playstation 9 is going to involve inhaled chemicals. Since this is/., the prevailing attitude is "toughen up, only the strong survive, technology is good, nothing can stop the future." Typical.
The above poster seems to think that only packaged, labeled substances can be addicting. Ask some guy staring at the monitors at OTB or buying $50 worth of scratch-offs at 7-11 what kind of rush they get. Or some guy who looks at pron 8 hours a day and itches for his fix the rest of the time. Your body produces chemicals too. Your brain can't tell the source of dopamine or adrenaline, just that they're there and they feel good.
Other posters say the mother is greedy, etc. All she wanted at first was to look at the details of her son's account. (An account she probably owned as his heir.) Sony blocked her reasonable request, so she should just walk away? Some have said she failed him before the suicide. He was 21, living away from home with a job. She should have tried to get him forcibly committed over a video game? RTFA.
From everything2.com "Tiananmen Square Massacre" Subject: Quote of the day Date: 4/6/99 5:50 pm Received: 4/6/99 9:36 pm From: Quote of the day, qotd-request@ensu.ucalgary.ca To: Quote of the day mailing list, qotd@ensu.ucalgary.ca
Some protesters assumed the army was using rubber bullets. They held
up their jackets. Only after people fell, with gaping wounds, did they
comprehend that the soldiers were using live ammunition.
I screamed and cursed, in Chinese and English, until I realized I was
ruining my BBC colleague's tape. I bit my tongue and forced myself to
take notes, timing the volleys, recording the troops and tanks
entering from the south, then the west and finally the east. I counted
the ambulances. There weren't nearly enough. Cyclists flung limp
bodies across bike seats and wheeled them out. Others carried the
wounded away on their backs, like sacks of potatoes. Below our
balcony, a man was shot. I didn't notice until an ambulance stopped to
pick him up.
After each murderous volley, the crowds fled past the hotel. Then, to
my astonishment, they regrouped as if by unspoken agreement, and crept
slowly back, screaming and weeping with rage. By now, I was noting
down gunfire every six or seven minutes. It occurred to me that was as
much time as it took to run two blocks, calm down and creep back.
A bullet struck the base of the balcony above my head. My colleague
from The Times of London says she pointed it out at the time. I have
no memory of it.
What I do remember is feeling famished as dawn broke. We left our BBC
colleague covering for us on the balcony. Downstairs, in the hotel
dining room, I discovered that many other journalists seemed to have
the same surreal craving for scrambled eggs.
A CNN cameraman told us that we had just missed a fight. When the
waitresses said there was only coffee, no food, because the chef was
too upset to cook, a couple of reporters became unhinged. They started
yelling that they would cook their own breakfasts.
Suddenly, the chef appeared. He was crying. "I've seen too many people
killed last night," he said, his shaking hand resting on a
doorknob. Everyone stared at the ground in shame. Then everyone began
apologizing to everyone else. The chef pulled himself together, and
said he would feed the reporters because "you are telling the world
what happened."
As he said this, the CNN cameraman started to cry. As the waitresses
passed out plates of toast and fried eggs, I realized I hadn't shed a
single tear all night. No one could eat. I stared at the food, and
wept.
- journalist Jan Wong, recalling the Tiananmen Square massacre in
Beijing, June 4, 1989, in which the Chinese Army murdered hundreds
of students and pro-democracy protesters.
This sounds like the end of The Puppet Masters (the Heinlein book) where they defeat those slugs, but are not sure if they got them all.
The old man says everyone on earth is going to have to wear transparent clothes from then on (or for 75-100 years or something).
Re:X-Files Still One of the Best Out There, By Far
on
The End of The X-Files
·
· Score: 1
I agree with the parent here about both last week's episode and the Joe Morton episode (he's the black scientist from T2 if you don't remember). The X-Files has done time travel and alternate dimension stuff that is fabulous and also some that is horrible.
good- WWII ship mystery with the switching viewpoints.
bad- this season's ep with the dimension-sliding serial killer who wasted Reyes and bragged about it; just awful
good- the above Joe Morton ep
bad- the bank robbery time travel with Ed from northern exposure
best- "How the hell should I know?" with Alex Trebek and Jesse "The Mind" Ventura
Also, an earlier guy noted the homage to Traffic as a symbol of the good cinematography. The cin. is usually good in the one-shot eps. The conspiracy eps usually have awful cinematography. It's all contrast and fog, really shlocky.
This is informative. Mod it up. Meta-mod down the Mod'r.
Thank you.
Re:This raises some frightening questions
on
Battlefield Lasers
·
· Score: 1
There is a treaty banning armed unmanned aircraft. The U.S. signed it. That is why cruise missiles were always launched from a ship or plane.
We obeyed that treaty in Afghanistan, until Mullah Omar's pickup got away from an unmanned Predator aircraft armed with a Hellfire antitank missile. The CIA dude at the console said "well, my hands are tied." Cheney and Rummy had some major hissy fits. Now no one's hands are tied.
Bombs away! (and hope skynet doesn't become self-aware and view us as a target)
Re:More bias/social engineering from the hawks at
on
Battlefield Lasers
·
· Score: 1
If you live in NYC, you know that as shocking as FOX can be, it pales in comparison to the once respected NY Post. My jaw actually hangs open reading it. It can be amusing if you lose perspective and read it like a scientology or moonie pamphlet instead of being what passes for news. The news articles (what few of them are left) are encased in the rabid editorials surrounding and dwarfing them. Plus, they have Mallard Fillmore, a comic strip that is basically Rush as a duck. It is a matter of years before we get a topless page two girl like the Star in London.
Note: Murdoch bought the Post a bunch of years ago. His son (I think the bald one) took over around last yr., and it has gotten noticeably worse since then.
I liked Oregon Trail a lot back in "the day." But it fails the no violence requirement. Most of the game was cool stuff like choosing trails, fording streams, and fixing busted wagon wheels. Genuine fun.
But Oregon Trail had a darker side. You could choose to go a-hunting to get meat for your family. You would spend all day searching for game, then blasting it.
This was also cool, but way more educational than it sounds. The chance of finding game would depend on the weather. You could only haul 100 lbs of meat back, so a deer and a bear got you the same amount. Bullets cost quite a bit, so you had to decide whether or not it was worth it to take a shot at a rabbit for only 5 or 10 lbs of meat. Hunting was pretty hard, and you could feel what it was like to go back to those hungry mouths at camp empty-handed.
I liked this game a lot, but I doubt that the state would find the "glorification" of violence and "cruelty" to animals appropriate for the "rehabilitation" of "amoral superpredators" like those you find in juvie hall.
>>While telecom companies are barred from disclosing someone's identity without consent, Dempsey notes that up-starts like U.S. Wireless technically aren't telecom carriers, and so they aren't covered by such restrictions. The Cellular Communications Industry Association, a Washington, DC-based trade organization, recently proposed that the FCC develop privacy guidelines that include a provision for notifying customers of how their cell signals might be used.>>
I agree that card counters should not be punished for having a skill.
The card counting ban is based on the notion that black-jack or baccarat is a game of chance, not skill. They (the casinos) equate it with roulette and craps.
Keep in mind that modern casinos use 14 deck shoes for BJ and trade them for a shuffled one after 7 decks are gone. If you want to count cards, you may to wait an hour or more for a single situation where a counter has an advantage.
Want to make money at the casino? Find a video poker that has an assymetric payoff system. I read a NYT Magazine article re: this about a year back. These old ladies would find machines that valued the full house, then sit there and make $50 a day, with free shrimp and wine.
I saw an old lady on the train the other day playing Tetris on an old, original gray GB held together with fiber packing tape over the whole back and sides.
I bet she doesn't even know they have other games.
On the off-topic jury information thread, I remember hearing about (or maybe seeing on Law & Order) a case where a court interpreter mis-interpreted some Spanish. One of the jurors spoke Spanish and told the other jurors what was really said. This may have led to a mistrial.
The filename and EOF flags are vital to the algorithm. While these pieces of information won't show up as part of the "file size", they will take up disk space.
Reducing the memory footprint is the whole point of the comp.compression group.
MIT sez "Knowledge is Free..., like beer"
on
Open Courses at MIT
·
· Score: 1
This is my favorite quote from the article,
Prof. Abelson: "In the Middle Ages people built cathedrals, where the whole town would get together and make a thing that's greater than any individual person could do and the society would kind of revel in that. We don't do that as much anymore, but in a sense this is kind of like building a cathedral."
Or...
http://www.mae.cornell.edu/robocup/RoboCup.html ...for the Robocup Champions of the Solar System from Cornell University. Go Big Red!
These robots are super-cool!
The Cornell link has a bunch of other autonomous vehicle info too.
Re:In the tradition of Quincy and The Rockford Fil
on
C.S.I.
·
· Score: 1
Czech out Seven Days. It's best described as a cross between MacGyver and Quantum Leap with a touch of Moonlighting. It's generally pretty funny with some fine ladies. And the plots occasionally transcend the usual cliches.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's continue the cocaine analogy.
/., the prevailing attitude is "toughen up, only the strong survive, technology is good, nothing can stop the future." Typical.
In 1900, cocaine was mainly taken orally in a dilute liquid solution or by chewing coca leaves. Lye or potash would be added to the leaf to increase the absorption rate. Sometimes, a very dilute liquid solution would be injected a la Sherlock Holmes.
As the purity and quality of the cocaine increased, use by snorting became possible. The rush to the brain was much faster this way because of the added exchange surfaces of the mucous membranes. This rapid rewarding rush is one of the hallmarks of addictive drugs.
In the early 80s in the Bahamas, some coke user discovered that baking cocaine make it a different trip altogether. Smoking crack gives an even faster, higher, but shorter lasting rush. Plus, burning the coke produces all kinds of new chemicals.
Let's compare to Pong, Space Invaders, SMB, Quake, and EverCRACK. The users call it crack, for heaven's sake. Quake 13 is going to look like that visor game the chick spy gave to Riker in that episode of TNG where Wesley saves the Enterprise again. Game development involves the finest artists, programmers and applied psychologists money can buy to develop games you will want to play, play, play. Sony freely advertises that the Playstation 9 is going to involve inhaled chemicals. Since this is
The above poster seems to think that only packaged, labeled substances can be addicting. Ask some guy staring at the monitors at OTB or buying $50 worth of scratch-offs at 7-11 what kind of rush they get. Or some guy who looks at pron 8 hours a day and itches for his fix the rest of the time. Your body produces chemicals too. Your brain can't tell the source of dopamine or adrenaline, just that they're there and they feel good.
Other posters say the mother is greedy, etc. All she wanted at first was to look at the details of her son's account. (An account she probably owned as his heir.) Sony blocked her reasonable request, so she should just walk away? Some have said she failed him before the suicide. He was 21, living away from home with a job. She should have tried to get him forcibly committed over a video game? RTFA.
From everything2.com "Tiananmen Square Massacre"
Subject: Quote of the day
Date: 4/6/99 5:50 pm
Received: 4/6/99 9:36 pm
From: Quote of the day, qotd-request@ensu.ucalgary.ca
To: Quote of the day mailing list, qotd@ensu.ucalgary.ca
Some protesters assumed the army was using rubber bullets. They held
up their jackets. Only after people fell, with gaping wounds, did they
comprehend that the soldiers were using live ammunition.
I screamed and cursed, in Chinese and English, until I realized I was
ruining my BBC colleague's tape. I bit my tongue and forced myself to
take notes, timing the volleys, recording the troops and tanks
entering from the south, then the west and finally the east. I counted
the ambulances. There weren't nearly enough. Cyclists flung limp
bodies across bike seats and wheeled them out. Others carried the
wounded away on their backs, like sacks of potatoes. Below our
balcony, a man was shot. I didn't notice until an ambulance stopped to
pick him up.
After each murderous volley, the crowds fled past the hotel. Then, to
my astonishment, they regrouped as if by unspoken agreement, and crept
slowly back, screaming and weeping with rage. By now, I was noting
down gunfire every six or seven minutes. It occurred to me that was as
much time as it took to run two blocks, calm down and creep back.
A bullet struck the base of the balcony above my head. My colleague
from The Times of London says she pointed it out at the time. I have
no memory of it.
What I do remember is feeling famished as dawn broke. We left our BBC
colleague covering for us on the balcony. Downstairs, in the hotel
dining room, I discovered that many other journalists seemed to have
the same surreal craving for scrambled eggs.
A CNN cameraman told us that we had just missed a fight. When the
waitresses said there was only coffee, no food, because the chef was
too upset to cook, a couple of reporters became unhinged. They started
yelling that they would cook their own breakfasts.
Suddenly, the chef appeared. He was crying. "I've seen too many people
killed last night," he said, his shaking hand resting on a
doorknob. Everyone stared at the ground in shame. Then everyone began
apologizing to everyone else. The chef pulled himself together, and
said he would feed the reporters because "you are telling the world
what happened."
As he said this, the CNN cameraman started to cry. As the waitresses
passed out plates of toast and fried eggs, I realized I hadn't shed a
single tear all night. No one could eat. I stared at the food, and
wept.
- journalist Jan Wong, recalling the Tiananmen Square massacre in
Beijing, June 4, 1989, in which the Chinese Army murdered hundreds
of students and pro-democracy protesters.
Submitted by: Terry Labach
May 31, 1999
I wish you both the best of luck.
CT, I am jealous. She's real cute.
This sounds like the end of The Puppet Masters (the Heinlein book) where they defeat those slugs, but are not sure if they got them all.
The old man says everyone on earth is going to have to wear transparent clothes from then on (or for 75-100 years or something).
I agree with the parent here about both last week's episode and the Joe Morton episode (he's the black scientist from T2 if you don't remember). The X-Files has done time travel and alternate dimension stuff that is fabulous and also some that is horrible.
good- WWII ship mystery with the switching viewpoints.
bad- this season's ep with the dimension-sliding serial killer who wasted Reyes and bragged about it; just awful
good- the above Joe Morton ep
bad- the bank robbery time travel with Ed from northern exposure
best- "How the hell should I know?" with Alex Trebek and Jesse "The Mind" Ventura
Also, an earlier guy noted the homage to Traffic as a symbol of the good cinematography. The cin. is usually good in the one-shot eps. The conspiracy eps usually have awful cinematography. It's all contrast and fog, really shlocky.
From Tom Tomorrow's This Modern World:
9 .h tml
"Feminazis" would like women to have the same opportunities in life as men.
"Smoking Nazis" would rather breathe clean air than secondhand cigarette smoke.
The actual Nazis systematically slaughtered (12) million innocent men women and children.
http://www.salon.com/sept97/comics/comics197092
This is informative. Mod it up. Meta-mod down the Mod'r.
Thank you.
There is a treaty banning armed unmanned aircraft. The U.S. signed it. That is why cruise missiles were always launched from a ship or plane.
We obeyed that treaty in Afghanistan, until Mullah Omar's pickup got away from an unmanned Predator aircraft armed with a Hellfire antitank missile. The CIA dude at the console said "well, my hands are tied." Cheney and Rummy had some major hissy fits. Now no one's hands are tied.
Bombs away! (and hope skynet doesn't become self-aware and view us as a target)
If you live in NYC, you know that as shocking as FOX can be, it pales in comparison to the once respected NY Post. My jaw actually hangs open reading it. It can be amusing if you lose perspective and read it like a scientology or moonie pamphlet instead of being what passes for news. The news articles (what few of them are left) are encased in the rabid editorials surrounding and dwarfing them. Plus, they have Mallard Fillmore, a comic strip that is basically Rush as a duck. It is a matter of years before we get a topless page two girl like the Star in London.
Note: Murdoch bought the Post a bunch of years ago. His son (I think the bald one) took over around last yr., and it has gotten noticeably worse since then.
>>>If you don't consider propaganda and money equivalents, consider what a green piece of paper is really worth.
Or put on the glasses from "They Live"
THIS IS YOUR GOD
SLEEP
man, that always sounds cool, but I'm worried some psycho set a trap in some park and is collecting people one by one.
I liked Oregon Trail a lot back in "the day." But it fails the no violence requirement. Most of the game was cool stuff like choosing trails, fording streams, and fixing busted wagon wheels. Genuine fun.
But Oregon Trail had a darker side. You could choose to go a-hunting to get meat for your family. You would spend all day searching for game, then blasting it.
This was also cool, but way more educational than it sounds. The chance of finding game would depend on the weather. You could only haul 100 lbs of meat back, so a deer and a bear got you the same amount. Bullets cost quite a bit, so you had to decide whether or not it was worth it to take a shot at a rabbit for only 5 or 10 lbs of meat. Hunting was pretty hard, and you could feel what it was like to go back to those hungry mouths at camp empty-handed.
I liked this game a lot, but I doubt that the state would find the "glorification" of violence and "cruelty" to animals appropriate for the "rehabilitation" of "amoral superpredators" like those you find in juvie hall.
Not really ~50%
More realistic:
3% ultraconservative
10% conservative
30% moderate
7% liberal
2% ultraliberal
Rest apathetic sheep
If they're so conservative, why don't they vote?
It's also a good test because of the reputation of the "victims."
If anyone complains, "those punk kids always want something for nothing."
"They have to grow up and join the real world, where corporations have the legal rights of people, and it's a felony to slander beef in Texas."
Btw, Pennywise kicks ass. How is the album?
Yeah, I'm sure this has been said before, but how come we lose karma for trolling, while Mr. Katz gets paid cash on the barrel head for his trolls?
Did his last "essay" not get enough hit$, so he's got to go controversial by tanking FF?
Take your pick (Only one per customer, please):
* -1, Redundant
* -1, Flamebait
* -1, Troll
>>While telecom companies are barred from disclosing someone's identity without consent, Dempsey notes that up-starts like U.S. Wireless technically aren't telecom carriers, and so they aren't covered by such restrictions. The Cellular Communications Industry Association, a Washington, DC-based trade organization, recently proposed that the FCC develop privacy guidelines that include a provision for notifying customers of how their cell signals might be used.>>
What's up with that?
I agree that card counters should not be punished for having a skill.
The card counting ban is based on the notion that black-jack or baccarat is a game of chance, not skill. They (the casinos) equate it with roulette and craps.
Keep in mind that modern casinos use 14 deck shoes for BJ and trade them for a shuffled one after 7 decks are gone. If you want to count cards, you may to wait an hour or more for a single situation where a counter has an advantage.
Want to make money at the casino? Find a video poker that has an assymetric payoff system. I read a NYT Magazine article re: this about a year back. These old ladies would find machines that valued the full house, then sit there and make $50 a day, with free shrimp and wine.
Replay of Tetris is a huge point.
I saw an old lady on the train the other day playing Tetris on an old, original gray GB held together with fiber packing tape over the whole back and sides.
I bet she doesn't even know they have other games.
On the off-topic jury information thread, I remember hearing about (or maybe seeing on Law & Order) a case where a court interpreter mis-interpreted some Spanish. One of the jurors spoke Spanish and told the other jurors what was really said. This may have led to a mistrial.
I agree with ChadN.
The filename and EOF flags are vital to the algorithm. While these pieces of information won't show up as part of the "file size", they will take up disk space.
Reducing the memory footprint is the whole point of the comp.compression group.
This is my favorite quote from the article,
Prof. Abelson: "In the Middle Ages people built cathedrals, where the whole town would get together and make a thing that's greater than any individual person could do and the society would kind of revel in that. We don't do that as much anymore, but in a sense this is kind of like building a cathedral."
Try http://www.robocup.org
...for the Robocup Champions of the Solar System from Cornell University. Go Big Red!
Or...
http://www.mae.cornell.edu/robocup/RoboCup.html
These robots are super-cool!
The Cornell link has a bunch of other autonomous vehicle info too.
Czech out Seven Days. It's best described as a cross between MacGyver and Quantum Leap with a touch of Moonlighting. It's generally pretty funny with some fine ladies. And the plots occasionally transcend the usual cliches.