many things in your everyday life release dopamine and endorphins.. chocolate, chili peppers, cold showers and sex ALL are "gateway drugs" under this theory because they release chemicals in your brain that make you "feel good"
Very good insights. I won't include cold showers, but a hot bath might be one. My family, on my father's side (which my sister and I inherited, as did my son as well), have naturally high levels of endorphins, so we tend not to feel non-pinprick pain and have slightly higher resistance levels to these drugs, although my sister does smoke (started early, of course).
Think about it. Look around yourself, pay attention to who became druggies and who didn't. Chances are they were drinking or smoking at an early age.
Instead, we waste time targetting marijuana and demonizing it, spending more than 40 percent of our budgets (federal, state, county, municipal averaged) on arresting mostly harmless occassional marijuana and ecstasy users who never really cause problems, and thinking this will actually have an effect.
It won't.
Look, some members of my family made fortunes during prohibition. Drugs are drugs, heroin is stupid, cocaine/crack is also stupid, and meth is just plain dumb, but you can't stop people by lame programs that don't deal with the real gateway drugs, in a world where most underage teenagers have had a drink in the past month.
So, get real, take half the money we spend on crac king down on the drug supply and spend it on realistic prevention programs, and triage the enforcement process so we don't lock up soft drug users with hard time criminals and perpetuate the problem.
Let me get this straight - we should sew on another star and proclaim Planet X.11 as a State of the United States of America and Peurto Rico still isn't even a state yet?
I don't think so...
Hey, concept, let's GPL it! Or maybe we can patent it and grant the patent to Linus for a birthday present?
Seriously. Let's say you're in a solar system with twelve major planets, but two of them are airless, have less effect than asteroids and meteors, and pretty much are only found when you look really hard for them.
Are they planets? Or just statistical anomolies intended to distract us from sending extrasolar probes to avoid the inevitable destruction of this solar system? Because, if we don't get out of the solar system, human life is an historical footnote in the history of the universe, a leaf fluttering from a tree in a vast and empty forest, which falls and decomposes with noone ever seeing it.
Well, first off, Vermont uses proportional vote to determine delegates, so you can't vote Green without decreasing the Gore electoral college votes and also increasing the Bush electoral college votes.
Plus, it's a lot closer in the Leaning To states you mentioned, such as Washington and Oregon. Trust me on this.
However, the basic strategy is a sound one, as proposed at Greens For Gore, and would work fairly well to maximize vote counts for any party it's used for.
If you're Libertarian or Green, this might allow you to get over the 5 percent threshold, qualify for federal matching funds, acheive majority party status in the affected status, and still stick it to Bush.
Got me. It was submitted by 1pm P.S.T. and didn't show up within four hours of recording that it was accepted. They must have some kind of publication aging queue for stories.
[valid question - I submitted it and so know the answer to the time issue - Will]
You probably can't even open it up because the device was extruded and baked, not etched on circuit boards. And it's definitely not meant to be modified or upgraded, but just thrown away, because once these things can be mass produced they are going to be really damn cheap.
I think most will have interfaces, and probably will have modules to allow certain things to be upgraded by replacing or adding new modules.
This is a computer company's dream come true: disposable computers. It is also a boon to the consumer's pocketbook. Still, the hardware nerds will have to stay on their toes to keep the technology open-source.
These are the scary parts - if it's disposable will it biodegrade (maybe pulltabs with biodecompositive agents hidden inside) or choke our dumps forever? And if it's a single unit, will this mean monopolies will keep the bio code out of the open source movement's hands?
If patents continue to expand without checks, this could be the case.
Doesn't this title remind you of the classic film, and the time that inspired it, "The Graduate"? "Plastics, kid, that's where all the money is; I'm telling you!"
That was why I gave it that title.
And I think you've got a good point - plastics is the electronics of today in a lot of ways, especially now that design and form are becoming important.
Re:Suprised this is posted so late?!?!?!?
on
Watch Camera
·
· Score: 2
Newsweek (the one in print), had this watch shown last week. I Love Slashdot, but this is hardly breaking news.
Someone probably submitted it back then and it got rejected. Somehow the triage process of submissions seems to be broken recently.
Me, I'm waiting for a wristwatch/cellphone with PDA capabilities. For under $300.
It would be a good idea to allow someone to buy moderation, where:
1. the donor has more than 20 karma (e.g. is a good player);
2. the donor can push up a post only to a total max per post that levels it out at 2 points (e.g. nasty people mod down a good post to -5, nice donors can only spend it up to +2, cost of +7);
3. extra karma spent to buy moderation costs 10 karma for every karma given (e.g. +7 would cost +70 karma);
4. each donor could only spend 10 karma per story (e.g. you'd need to find 7 people to back you up in my example, and they would not be able to donate to any other post in that story);
5. a donor can only donate up to 10 karma once per day (to keep karma whores from abusing it).
I basically agree that the karma cap serves no useful purpose. Many is the time when I've posted something negative about a story that a popular author posted (e.g. Jon Katz) and burned through 10 karma, just because I dared to speak the truth about the emperor's new clothes. If I didn't tend to have 70-90 points of karma, I wouldn't dare do this. Most of these instances have been where I refuted major points in the story, based on directly observed facts (e.g. that Jon misstated certain author's opinions, when I happen to have talked with a few such people many times and knew this not to be the case).
That said, there should be no post bonus beyond the basic +1 (and +2 for slashdot superlogins).
I also agree with the comment that we should be able to rate stories, either +1 point, +0 points (no opinion, for silly people), or -1 point. However, ACs should never be able to rate stories.
But, I don't think our rating of stories should affect how they show up on slashdot, just provide a table which we can look at (10 most popular, 10 worst stories) and which might give some feedback to those who run slashdot.
Well, LordHunter, are you sure you didn't mean this is Internet hyperlinking?
Malformed HTML aside (hint, forget MSFT IE coding), the problem is a runaway patent system that serves only to stifle innovation and reward the megacorporations.
Like the ones I invest in. Why do you think Pharmaceutical companies and Tech companies reap such undeserved rewards - because they can get patents for incredibly obvious things, and extend copyright far beyond the grave.
One candidate will probably prosecute, the other will throw it out. Decide which one you want, and vote.
Far be it from me to actually dissuade people from voting (please do), but this is a false choice. It really doesn't matter which of the four presidential choices you make in the US this year - the end result is likely to be pretty much the same.
And suggesting to./ers that we vote based on our pocketbooks is really rich. Perhaps if you were talking about privacy, I might find the argument convincing, but the choice of president is not going to affect this case, regardless of what certain candidates have been implicitly promising.
Your choice of Congressional or Senatorial representatives is much more likely to have a direct impact.
Really, I know some people have been dissing Transmeta (TMTA in October, when they IPO) for:
1. running slower than Intel
2. doing PR prior to the IPO
But. It doesn't matter.
Yes, you read that correctly. Noone gives a frog's hind quarters about the speed anymore, it's HOW LONG IS THE BATTERY LIFE. And they can deliver substantial gains on battery life for laptops and webpads, so they are 5 years ahead.
And they're not that slow either, pretty close in speed and they are shipping in quantity to a large number of disparate vendors.
Besides, most of us just care about Bandwidth, Batteries, Butting Up Against Bill And Beating Him Silly. And on all three they win round one - better than the US Govt, that's for sure!
Set in Fremont, a neighborhood of Seattle, in the not-so-distant future, we have the tale of Luke Trollwalker, a fire user extraordinare, who travels under the name of Luke McGuff disguised as a member of the Cirque de Flambe'.
In this Episode, Luke uses a flaming sword to kill Jar-Jar, a mutant creature which bears a striking resemblance to Yoda before he shrank. Upon killing Jar-Jar, we see that Luke has been transformed into the Dark Sith Lord Bill Gates.
Bill G, before succumbing fully to the dark side of the Fire, marries his sweetheart, who happens to be one of his VPs. She has two kids and seems to be unaware of the encroaching overlay of the dark side on Bill G's once sunny personality, but wakes up when he sets Larry Ellison's mansion on fire. She escapes to Burning Man, where the dark side cannot see her, and raises the children.
for my telecommute while riding the space elevator..
We're much more likely to see space elevators on Mars before they show up on Earth. Too much chance of lawsuits and terrorists. Just ask Stan Robinson, he's written some interesting stuff on that.
Face it, when in variable G land (e.g. space), it's a really good idea to have too much velcro. And have suits with velcro-ended cables.
Plus, the lack of air motion is very critical - you want a laptop with good heat dissipation and good fans, plus you need to be sure the fan motors can take varying G forces. Overclocking is a big no-no. Extra RAM is highly recommended.
Then there's the CD. Remember, no gravity pulling down makes these very difficult to use. Best to have it in firmware or cartridge form. Spin effects can be very hard to clock right in low or zero-G, and it needs to survive the boost.
Now, when will we see a smart company like Transmeta donate some laptops with low power consumption to NASA, both to sell the chip and to make them hot geek items? Heck, I can see the ads now "As Used By NASA In Zero-G", "The Laptop That Went To Space".
What happens if you get the Blue Screen of Death - do you die?
While I was at Burning Man, someone dug up a nice meteorite that hit nearby, which was about the size of an SUV. This is after most of it burned up in the atmosphere.
Again, don't launch nukes or interceptors at Giant Asteroids - this only makes it worse as they fragment and still hit. Think of what happened to Jupiter when that comet fragmented into nine parts - it made it much worse. You're better off pushing it aside with an ion drive - you only have to nudge it a bit at a time so it misses earth.
Ever think what would happen if we pushed a big one so it missed the earth, but hit the moon, causing that to destabilize and impact (return to) earth? If that ever happens, you can forget about civilization...
Well, for one thing, their major revenue growth and projected area for most earnings is licensing. You get licensing revenues when you do an upgrade. This is where Bill G makes all the bucks. But, as compared to MSFT, Palm actually gives you new features (if you didn't buy a recent model) and it's a lot less buggy.
Secondly, remember that Palm is now separate from 3Com, and so they need to think about what works for them.
[caveat - I own Palm (at IPO) and some MSFT shares]
And if there are so many using AIM, it is obviously centered in America!
What you obviously have no idea of is that AOL is a major presence in Europe, with a very large market share, and is even gaining foothold in Russia. I should know, it's in my stockholder's annual and quarterly reports. Nice revenue growth, too.
But, as you correctly point out, this is not the case in Oz. Well, of course, all the Aussies are hackers and buy their tech stuff cheap from neighboring countries. So, Oz is the last place you want to be promoting secure communication methods, as they'll steal all your protocols or give them away.
I should know, a bunch of my friends from SF and Gaming days were in Oz and Kiwi land, and cheap and cracked software and hardware was and is cheap and plentiful.
And, since it's a Yank company, we can force them to do whatever we want to do, just as we can slap Bill G upside the face, when the Oz protesters aren't busy messing with him.
Basically, AOL (which I have shares in) has a choice: either use an open protocol or open up AIM. MSFT (which I also have shares in) chose the closed API route, and this caused a world of hurt, and a great buying opportunity for me.
If AOL has its thinking cap on, they'll choose the open protocol route, since they're also trying to get the FCC and Congress to yank open AT&T and Cox Cable (yes, I own thousands of shares in both of those) to allow AOL to be the ISP for all the people with Cable Modems.
If they choose to fight it, lots of lawyers will get rich, like my brother and my uncle. This is very typically American, so I'm going to bet on lots of lawyers raking in the billable hours.
Oh, you thought this had something to do with privacy and open standards? Guess again - it's money, politics, and power.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I was wondering how they got the frame relay to synch with the cameras and allow for replays and all.
Cool, can you get them to do some OS X next time?
many things in your everyday life release dopamine and endorphins.. chocolate, chili peppers, cold showers and sex ALL are "gateway drugs" under this theory because they release chemicals in your brain that make you "feel good"
Very good insights. I won't include cold showers, but a hot bath might be one. My family, on my father's side (which my sister and I inherited, as did my son as well), have naturally high levels of endorphins, so we tend not to feel non-pinprick pain and have slightly higher resistance levels to these drugs, although my sister does smoke (started early, of course).
Alcohol. Tobacco is the second gateway drug.
Think about it. Look around yourself, pay attention to who became druggies and who didn't. Chances are they were drinking or smoking at an early age.
Instead, we waste time targetting marijuana and demonizing it, spending more than 40 percent of our budgets (federal, state, county, municipal averaged) on arresting mostly harmless occassional marijuana and ecstasy users who never really cause problems, and thinking this will actually have an effect.
It won't.
Look, some members of my family made fortunes during prohibition. Drugs are drugs, heroin is stupid, cocaine/crack is also stupid, and meth is just plain dumb, but you can't stop people by lame programs that don't deal with the real gateway drugs, in a world where most underage teenagers have had a drink in the past month.
So, get real, take half the money we spend on crac king down on the drug supply and spend it on realistic prevention programs, and triage the enforcement process so we don't lock up soft drug users with hard time criminals and perpetuate the problem.
time to sew another star into the flag..
...
Let me get this straight - we should sew on another star and proclaim Planet X.11 as a State of the United States of America and Peurto Rico still isn't even a state yet?
I don't think so
Hey, concept, let's GPL it! Or maybe we can patent it and grant the patent to Linus for a birthday present?
Seriously. Let's say you're in a solar system with twelve major planets, but two of them are airless, have less effect than asteroids and meteors, and pretty much are only found when you look really hard for them.
Are they planets? Or just statistical anomolies intended to distract us from sending extrasolar probes to avoid the inevitable destruction of this solar system? Because, if we don't get out of the solar system, human life is an historical footnote in the history of the universe, a leaf fluttering from a tree in a vast and empty forest, which falls and decomposes with noone ever seeing it.
Well, first off, Vermont uses proportional vote to determine delegates, so you can't vote Green without decreasing the Gore electoral college votes and also increasing the Bush electoral college votes.
Plus, it's a lot closer in the Leaning To states you mentioned, such as Washington and Oregon. Trust me on this.
However, the basic strategy is a sound one, as proposed at Greens For Gore, and would work fairly well to maximize vote counts for any party it's used for.
If you're Libertarian or Green, this might allow you to get over the 5 percent threshold, qualify for federal matching funds, acheive majority party status in the affected status, and still stick it to Bush.
Got me. It was submitted by 1pm P.S.T. and didn't show up within four hours of recording that it was accepted. They must have some kind of publication aging queue for stories.
[valid question - I submitted it and so know the answer to the time issue - Will]
You probably can't even open it up because the device was extruded and baked, not etched on circuit boards. And it's definitely not meant to be modified or upgraded, but just thrown away, because once these things can be mass produced they are going to be really damn cheap.
I think most will have interfaces, and probably will have modules to allow certain things to be upgraded by replacing or adding new modules.
This is a computer company's dream come true: disposable computers. It is also a boon to the consumer's pocketbook. Still, the hardware nerds will have to stay on their toes to keep the technology open-source.
These are the scary parts - if it's disposable will it biodegrade (maybe pulltabs with biodecompositive agents hidden inside) or choke our dumps forever? And if it's a single unit, will this mean monopolies will keep the bio code out of the open source movement's hands?
If patents continue to expand without checks, this could be the case.
Doesn't this title remind you of the classic film, and the time that inspired it, "The Graduate"? "Plastics, kid, that's where all the money is; I'm telling you!"
That was why I gave it that title.
And I think you've got a good point - plastics is the electronics of today in a lot of ways, especially now that design and form are becoming important.
Newsweek (the one in print), had this watch shown last week. I Love Slashdot, but this is hardly breaking news.
Someone probably submitted it back then and it got rejected. Somehow the triage process of submissions seems to be broken recently.
Me, I'm waiting for a wristwatch/cellphone with PDA capabilities. For under $300.
It would be a good idea to allow someone to buy moderation, where:
1. the donor has more than 20 karma (e.g. is a good player);
2. the donor can push up a post only to a total max per post that levels it out at 2 points (e.g. nasty people mod down a good post to -5, nice donors can only spend it up to +2, cost of +7);
3. extra karma spent to buy moderation costs 10 karma for every karma given (e.g. +7 would cost +70 karma);
4. each donor could only spend 10 karma per story (e.g. you'd need to find 7 people to back you up in my example, and they would not be able to donate to any other post in that story);
5. a donor can only donate up to 10 karma once per day (to keep karma whores from abusing it).
Concept?
I basically agree that the karma cap serves no useful purpose. Many is the time when I've posted something negative about a story that a popular author posted (e.g. Jon Katz) and burned through 10 karma, just because I dared to speak the truth about the emperor's new clothes. If I didn't tend to have 70-90 points of karma, I wouldn't dare do this. Most of these instances have been where I refuted major points in the story, based on directly observed facts (e.g. that Jon misstated certain author's opinions, when I happen to have talked with a few such people many times and knew this not to be the case).
That said, there should be no post bonus beyond the basic +1 (and +2 for slashdot superlogins).
I also agree with the comment that we should be able to rate stories, either +1 point, +0 points (no opinion, for silly people), or -1 point. However, ACs should never be able to rate stories.
But, I don't think our rating of stories should affect how they show up on slashdot, just provide a table which we can look at (10 most popular, 10 worst stories) and which might give some feedback to those who run slashdot.
Well, LordHunter, are you sure you didn't mean this is Internet hyperlinking?
Malformed HTML aside (hint, forget MSFT IE coding), the problem is a runaway patent system that serves only to stifle innovation and reward the megacorporations.
Like the ones I invest in. Why do you think Pharmaceutical companies and Tech companies reap such undeserved rewards - because they can get patents for incredibly obvious things, and extend copyright far beyond the grave.
One candidate will probably prosecute, the other will throw it out. Decide which one you want, and vote.
./ers that we vote based on our pocketbooks is really rich. Perhaps if you were talking about privacy, I might find the argument convincing, but the choice of president is not going to affect this case, regardless of what certain candidates have been implicitly promising.
Far be it from me to actually dissuade people from voting (please do), but this is a false choice. It really doesn't matter which of the four presidential choices you make in the US this year - the end result is likely to be pretty much the same.
And suggesting to
Your choice of Congressional or Senatorial representatives is much more likely to have a direct impact.
Really, I know some people have been dissing Transmeta (TMTA in October, when they IPO) for:
1. running slower than Intel
2. doing PR prior to the IPO
But. It doesn't matter.
Yes, you read that correctly. Noone gives a frog's hind quarters about the speed anymore, it's HOW LONG IS THE BATTERY LIFE. And they can deliver substantial gains on battery life for laptops and webpads, so they are 5 years ahead.
And they're not that slow either, pretty close in speed and they are shipping in quantity to a large number of disparate vendors.
Besides, most of us just care about Bandwidth, Batteries, Butting Up Against Bill And Beating Him Silly. And on all three they win round one - better than the US Govt, that's for sure!
Check out some recent sections in the Fashion sections of the New York Times, Vanity Fair, etc.
Basically, we need pocketses and places for our doodads, especially in ways that we can show off.
It was inevitable.
Set in Fremont, a neighborhood of Seattle, in the not-so-distant future, we have the tale of Luke Trollwalker, a fire user extraordinare, who travels under the name of Luke McGuff disguised as a member of the Cirque de Flambe'.
In this Episode, Luke uses a flaming sword to kill Jar-Jar, a mutant creature which bears a striking resemblance to Yoda before he shrank. Upon killing Jar-Jar, we see that Luke has been transformed into the Dark Sith Lord Bill Gates.
Bill G, before succumbing fully to the dark side of the Fire, marries his sweetheart, who happens to be one of his VPs. She has two kids and seems to be unaware of the encroaching overlay of the dark side on Bill G's once sunny personality, but wakes up when he sets Larry Ellison's mansion on fire. She escapes to Burning Man, where the dark side cannot see her, and raises the children.
Coming soon to a multiplex near you.
for my telecommute while riding the space elevator..
We're much more likely to see space elevators on Mars before they show up on Earth. Too much chance of lawsuits and terrorists. Just ask Stan Robinson, he's written some interesting stuff on that.
Face it, when in variable G land (e.g. space), it's a really good idea to have too much velcro. And have suits with velcro-ended cables.
Plus, the lack of air motion is very critical - you want a laptop with good heat dissipation and good fans, plus you need to be sure the fan motors can take varying G forces. Overclocking is a big no-no. Extra RAM is highly recommended.
Then there's the CD. Remember, no gravity pulling down makes these very difficult to use. Best to have it in firmware or cartridge form. Spin effects can be very hard to clock right in low or zero-G, and it needs to survive the boost.
Now, when will we see a smart company like Transmeta donate some laptops with low power consumption to NASA, both to sell the chip and to make them hot geek items? Heck, I can see the ads now "As Used By NASA In Zero-G", "The Laptop That Went To Space".
What happens if you get the Blue Screen of Death - do you die?
If you look at this cNet article, you'll find that Forrester Research has announced that the DCMA is doomed in their attempts at blocking Free Music.
While I was at Burning Man, someone dug up a nice meteorite that hit nearby, which was about the size of an SUV. This is after most of it burned up in the atmosphere.
...
Again, don't launch nukes or interceptors at Giant Asteroids - this only makes it worse as they fragment and still hit. Think of what happened to Jupiter when that comet fragmented into nine parts - it made it much worse. You're better off pushing it aside with an ion drive - you only have to nudge it a bit at a time so it misses earth.
Ever think what would happen if we pushed a big one so it missed the earth, but hit the moon, causing that to destabilize and impact (return to) earth? If that ever happens, you can forget about civilization
Why would Palm alienate their consumer?
Well, for one thing, their major revenue growth and projected area for most earnings is licensing. You get licensing revenues when you do an upgrade. This is where Bill G makes all the bucks. But, as compared to MSFT, Palm actually gives you new features (if you didn't buy a recent model) and it's a lot less buggy.
Secondly, remember that Palm is now separate from 3Com, and so they need to think about what works for them.
[caveat - I own Palm (at IPO) and some MSFT shares]
I we start modding up posts just because they're funny, we'd have to admit that moderation works.
...
And if that happened, the world would cease to exist.
Every code you break, I'll be spamming you
And if there are so many using AIM, it is obviously centered in America!
What you obviously have no idea of is that AOL is a major presence in Europe, with a very large market share, and is even gaining foothold in Russia. I should know, it's in my stockholder's annual and quarterly reports. Nice revenue growth, too.
But, as you correctly point out, this is not the case in Oz. Well, of course, all the Aussies are hackers and buy their tech stuff cheap from neighboring countries. So, Oz is the last place you want to be promoting secure communication methods, as they'll steal all your protocols or give them away.
I should know, a bunch of my friends from SF and Gaming days were in Oz and Kiwi land, and cheap and cracked software and hardware was and is cheap and plentiful.
And, since it's a Yank company, we can force them to do whatever we want to do, just as we can slap Bill G upside the face, when the Oz protesters aren't busy messing with him.
Basically, AOL (which I have shares in) has a choice: either use an open protocol or open up AIM. MSFT (which I also have shares in) chose the closed API route, and this caused a world of hurt, and a great buying opportunity for me.
If AOL has its thinking cap on, they'll choose the open protocol route, since they're also trying to get the FCC and Congress to yank open AT&T and Cox Cable (yes, I own thousands of shares in both of those) to allow AOL to be the ISP for all the people with Cable Modems.
If they choose to fight it, lots of lawyers will get rich, like my brother and my uncle. This is very typically American, so I'm going to bet on lots of lawyers raking in the billable hours.
Oh, you thought this had something to do with privacy and open standards? Guess again - it's money, politics, and power.