I've accidentally gone back while filling out a major form (that won't remember its state on a click of forward) enough times to want to simply remove the backspace key from my keyboard. I am happy to hear someone's getting rid of this asinine default. cmd/alt-left/right are fine. backspace has a specific meaning that has nothing to do with history navigation.
If anywhere, the USA is the one that stands at heavy risk, though I imagine there is some worldwide too. We have record numbers of people unemployed, something like 4 workers for every 1 open job. We are just a few years away from the return of hoovervilles I would imagine. There is serious risk someone could try to pull something given that so far the government has had so much trouble providing. The health care bill is a huge step in the right direction but I wonder if its too little too late. I really hope we pull through this, but I'm worried, as one of the tens of millions of unemployed US citizens living below the poverty line (and supporting two other people to boot, since they're both also unemployed and didn't have the wonderful luck to have had a tech startup job beforehand, and I love them both quite much - we're a poly family).
if we take your argument at face value, that this country is indeed overpopulated, then would it not make more sense to target the actual sources of major population increase? I mean, lets start with decent sex ed and access to family planning supplies for everyone, that right there helps a lot, lets people choose when to have children. Another thing to do is to work to actually give everyone a chance to take part in the economy, to do something about the frightening number of people living below the poverty line in a country where some people have enough money to own a number of multimillion-dollar homes that barely get used. It's just an atrocity that we should work against each other to the point where/anyone/ has to go without food or shelter or medical care in one of the wealthiest nations in the world. The reason I suggest this is twofold, first off we'd actually be encouraging the building of a skilled workforce in this country, instead of shipping all our jobs offshore and leaving there as of some recent statistics I've read (yeah I know, citation needed) that there are 4 unemployed americans for each 1 open job. Think about that for a second. Err...I think I just wandered off-topic, sorry, I'll just stop rambling now.
Well then, let me point the argument at a rather important shaping document in this country's history that I think a lot of people should do well to re-read the beginning of. Liberty is indeed one of our basic rights, but it was enumerated along with two others that are also oft ignored and plowed under, these being Life and the Pursuit of Happiness. (yeah, I know the original Locke was something like pursuit of property but the declaration was written as it was for a reason.) This idea of a Right to Life is one that the religious right actually likes to bring out when it supports their attempts to take women's liberty away or to stall important scientific progress, but of course when it comes down to something as simple as keeping our citizenry healthy through tax supported "free" access to health-care, they rail against this, crying that it removes some essential liberty, yet in fact giving the people this access actually goes to preserve liberty, to give people back the liberty to choose their employment rather than being slaves to large corporations to ensure they won't die of preventable or treatable conditions, a liberty that is sorely needed if this country is to ever become competitive again rather than simply owned by a few megacorps in some perverted form of neo-feudalism. The other right I mentioned, the Pursuit of Happiness is one that has been trampled on for at least 100 years in the name of prohibition, among other things, this pseudo-moralistic attempt to remove any sort of fun from life, especially things that are "too much fun" such as the various currently illegal psychoactive substances. Of course this can be traced back to a combination of puritannical belief (the same puritannical belief that has convinced us that sex is bad, that only one man and one woman can possibly form a loving relationship (something my family and I prove false every day I would say, the three of us girls are doing quite well here, and our relationships outside this home are going fairly well too), etc.) as well as a series of anti-immigrant propaganda used to convince us that whatever substance they were affiliated most with is somehow evil, and of course I can't mention this topic without talking of Hearst and his precious wood-pulp paper mills. We are denied the use of a very important medicine as well as the use of a very interesting and versatile plant (food, clothing, paper, etc. can all be manufactured from the cannabis plant) because some rich man decided he needed to stay ahead...of course he's long dead and his awful law lives on, internalized into a kind of circular logic morality that everyone seems to have on the subject of "drugs", namely "its bad because its illegal...its illegal because its bad...". Anyhow, I'm done rambling, I'll hit submit.
I would like to note that I myself and many friends of mine can finish a decent sized novel in one or two days, so I wouldn't say books inherently take all that long to get through, it depends a lot on the individual. I'm not sure how much this impacts the rental model, but I would say the model that seems to work far better for most is the used bookstore model, not a true rental, but essentially you can always resale any [decent] book you've bought for a reasonable sum to put toward new purchases, and you can also find books far cheaper than retail.
Yeah, all he said was, essentially, "I would be far more intrigued by the proposition of paying to see that story if it were portrayed in this manner rather than that one..." and what's so wrong with that? as long as you're not trying to use force to make one story rise above another, then isn't it simply the freedom of expression we've all come to? the freedom of the much-loved slashdot capitalistic marketplace? or even the marketplace of ideas, where if your concept can get enough approval from others, it can float up toward the top?
Take a look for a moment at game UIs, where part of the point of the product in question is to stand as a piece of art. These UIs also often stand (or fail miserably) at being a piece of art as well, because that's part of the function of the overall thing. They may even sacrifice function for form now and then, and if they get the tradeoff right, they sell more copies not less b/c it looks and *feels* cooler.
and amazingly, it took psychedelic experience to make me realize this. and facing down death. if you're ready to die, you're ready to live. as the klingons say, "today is a good day to die." -- if you're already ready to die, then anything else you do after this point, succeed or fail, pleasure or pain, is just gravy, another experience, so as long as you keep trying to make it whatever you want, what matters that you have to shove a few more quarters into the arcade machine? it'll be over when you say its over, not before, even if it hurts, and that's incredibly liberating. experience only has the value that we choose to attach to it. meaning lies entirely within our own heads. in the end, it applesauce pumpkin kumquat fiddlesticks lagoon double-loopback hockey quack. Or something like that. absurdity gives everyone a collective distraction to make the universe more interesting, less boring, and to give everyone who's ever had a bad day (or even a good day that could be better) an opportunity to go "was that just real? did that just happen?" and laugh about the impossible absurdity that is reality! If you look, reality will surprise you by just how god damned *weird* it can be, and if nothing else, you can make any experience interesting at the very least by this method. Therefore, life is actually pretty damn awesome. This is wisdom I've come to over the past few days in climbing out of 14 years of near-suicidal depression and shame after failing at my family's dream of being a supergenius kid in college, eventually getting my brain to calm down enough that whatever traumatic-stress-induced-injury happened at the microcellular/neural-net-wiring-pattern level to sort itself out, solder that last connection and flip the switch. Some physical therapy is ahead of me, and lots more psych meds and other drug-induced experiences, but I'm out of the woods and the rest of the recovery will just be more of the same with occasional backslides, but I'll always remember I can finally breathe again, metaphorically speaking, and I will never let that go again. Ever.
Perhaps not, but before I ever tried anything in the realm of illicit psychoactives, I'd been an avid reader of Erowid for years, and had put some study into the whole neurochemistry/psychopharmacology aspect of it, how things work, how they interact, etc., and in more recent times I've essentially been conducting personal research, always refining my understanding of these things, because *someone* has to, and this way I can hopefully help friends stay more informed in their choices too, as well as keeping myself out of trouble (physiologically/psychologically speaking).
I disagree completely. Both myself and many others I know find that through the use of various psychedelics and other substances, other realms can be contacted, and far more can be perceived. I was once mired in the static reality of "scientific rationalism" or "materialism", the view that I ultimately rejected because it leads to the idea that the universe is nothing but a vast predictable machine. I reject this. I choose the mystic path, and I invite all who can to join me, please...the world needs something more. The world needs to remember how to Dream. No, I do not mean this as to eschew technology, as is often popular, quite the opposite. Embrace potential, and free yourself. Cast off the false prison. There is so much more waiting in potential out there. Of course, I mean, I'm not even human (though I am stuck in this annoying human body) so what do I know of humanity? Maybe you lot can't wake up...but I doubt it...any sentient being can, given half a chance.
Actually, methadone is not a synth-anything, its a damn potent mu-opiod agonist in its own right, the difference is it doesn't cross the blood-brain-barrier in one big rush like dimethylmorphine(heroin) does. The reason heroin is "special" is that unlike morphine, methadone, etc., it manages to find a carrier protein that will preferentially transfer it across the BBB. Dimethylmorphine itself isn't terribly active, but once it crosses the barrier, the methyl groups are rapidly cleaved off, leaving, you guessed it, a ton of morphine. The only other way to get this particular effect would be via trepannation (i.e. cutting a hole in your skull and injeting it into the brain). This is why there's nothing else out there quite like it. For the record, I have never tried it (though I have tried methadone, didn't find it all *that* compelling) and never will. Heroin is a drug you do when you are 100% finished with life, on your deathbed, because if you do it before that, you'll quickly find yourself on said deathbed. It is one of the few drug scares where the government propaganda isn't all *that* far off from the truth. Mind you, there are people who manage to quit, or even moderate their use, but these people are few and far between. It simply is not worth the risk, I am sure the high is indescribably amazing, but its just not worth it. I'll stick to ecstasy and raving, thanks.
I second this, I've seen a few presentations about the Orion technology, and its just so simple, I don't see why it can't be used, aside I mean from backwards fears of nuclear power. Of course there's danger involved, there's danger with everything, but that's what careful engineering is for. This is a massive ship you're talking about building, there's no excuse for it not to have the absolute best safety features, and if it does, and if our 60-70 years of applied nuclear research has been worth anything it should actually be rather safe.
These sorts of typos tend to happen because one hand gets "ahead" of the other in the output buffer, leading to migrating letters/punctuation. I'm not quite sure/why/ this particular glitch happens, but it seems the brain isn't quite capable of syncing the hands to the same clock 100% of the time when moving at high speed (it doesn't happen as much to slower typists I've noticed, it seems to be far more prevalent among people who type rather fast, perhaps its a glitch in sequencing the macro output, since the muscle movements actually have to be laid out and predicted beforehand to execute that fast, gliding into one another, rather than being execute-then-return-to-home for each individual key)
Trance, Happy Hardcore, Psytrance, etc...EDM is *designed* to be listened to at levels you can *feel*, if you can't, there's no real point in the end, you're missing 99% of the experience if you turn it down. (Well ok the music itself is only a small fraction of the experience, don't let anyone kid you, its about leaving this plane of consciousness far behind)
Be sure to check their site, but pretty much all of the Sierra cards/chipsets work under linux, I have the AT&T branded 881U and it works quite well. It may take a little fiddling if they haven't fixed some of the bugs that were present half a year ago when I was last trying to use it with NetworkManager, but I imagine they've ironed those things out.
I, however, choose, however foolishly it may be, to believe in free will, the acausal side of the universe affecting the causal part we normally see by "choosing" how the "random" quantum events collapse (and in other methods, most likely. basically, I believe that the reality rules can be broken)
(I imagine this is actually some movie reference I'm missing entirely and I'll look dumb, but:)
This sounds like a great place for a little exploring of internal landscapes, delving into the deep reaches of mind and soul as it were
This same issue comes up when it comes to people talking about rectifying the laws with regard to drug prohibition, everyone* basically says "Well if you use drugs, you aren't allowed to talk, you're just making the problem worse". I agree, when a large portion of the population is already doing something anyway, its time to revisit the law.
*of course the 'everyone' I mention here doesn't actually represent everyone, they're just the loud voices against legalization/decriminalization who would rather people with actual experience in the relevant areas aren't allowed to speak because they would undermine the position of the prohibitionists.
*makes a note to herself this burn to take such pictures of herself for immediate web publication...gotta weed out the employers who can't stand such things*
Slashdot Mirror
I've accidentally gone back while filling out a major form (that won't remember its state on a click of forward) enough times to want to simply remove the backspace key from my keyboard. I am happy to hear someone's getting rid of this asinine default. cmd/alt-left/right are fine. backspace has a specific meaning that has nothing to do with history navigation.
If anywhere, the USA is the one that stands at heavy risk, though I imagine there is some worldwide too. We have record numbers of people unemployed, something like 4 workers for every 1 open job. We are just a few years away from the return of hoovervilles I would imagine. There is serious risk someone could try to pull something given that so far the government has had so much trouble providing. The health care bill is a huge step in the right direction but I wonder if its too little too late. I really hope we pull through this, but I'm worried, as one of the tens of millions of unemployed US citizens living below the poverty line (and supporting two other people to boot, since they're both also unemployed and didn't have the wonderful luck to have had a tech startup job beforehand, and I love them both quite much - we're a poly family).
if we take your argument at face value, that this country is indeed overpopulated, then would it not make more sense to target the actual sources of major population increase? I mean, lets start with decent sex ed and access to family planning supplies for everyone, that right there helps a lot, lets people choose when to have children. Another thing to do is to work to actually give everyone a chance to take part in the economy, to do something about the frightening number of people living below the poverty line in a country where some people have enough money to own a number of multimillion-dollar homes that barely get used. It's just an atrocity that we should work against each other to the point where /anyone/ has to go without food or shelter or medical care in one of the wealthiest nations in the world. The reason I suggest this is twofold, first off we'd actually be encouraging the building of a skilled workforce in this country, instead of shipping all our jobs offshore and leaving there as of some recent statistics I've read (yeah I know, citation needed) that there are 4 unemployed americans for each 1 open job. Think about that for a second. Err...I think I just wandered off-topic, sorry, I'll just stop rambling now.
Well then, let me point the argument at a rather important shaping document in this country's history that I think a lot of people should do well to re-read the beginning of. Liberty is indeed one of our basic rights, but it was enumerated along with two others that are also oft ignored and plowed under, these being Life and the Pursuit of Happiness. (yeah, I know the original Locke was something like pursuit of property but the declaration was written as it was for a reason.) This idea of a Right to Life is one that the religious right actually likes to bring out when it supports their attempts to take women's liberty away or to stall important scientific progress, but of course when it comes down to something as simple as keeping our citizenry healthy through tax supported "free" access to health-care, they rail against this, crying that it removes some essential liberty, yet in fact giving the people this access actually goes to preserve liberty, to give people back the liberty to choose their employment rather than being slaves to large corporations to ensure they won't die of preventable or treatable conditions, a liberty that is sorely needed if this country is to ever become competitive again rather than simply owned by a few megacorps in some perverted form of neo-feudalism. The other right I mentioned, the Pursuit of Happiness is one that has been trampled on for at least 100 years in the name of prohibition, among other things, this pseudo-moralistic attempt to remove any sort of fun from life, especially things that are "too much fun" such as the various currently illegal psychoactive substances. Of course this can be traced back to a combination of puritannical belief (the same puritannical belief that has convinced us that sex is bad, that only one man and one woman can possibly form a loving relationship (something my family and I prove false every day I would say, the three of us girls are doing quite well here, and our relationships outside this home are going fairly well too), etc.) as well as a series of anti-immigrant propaganda used to convince us that whatever substance they were affiliated most with is somehow evil, and of course I can't mention this topic without talking of Hearst and his precious wood-pulp paper mills. We are denied the use of a very important medicine as well as the use of a very interesting and versatile plant (food, clothing, paper, etc. can all be manufactured from the cannabis plant) because some rich man decided he needed to stay ahead...of course he's long dead and his awful law lives on, internalized into a kind of circular logic morality that everyone seems to have on the subject of "drugs", namely "its bad because its illegal...its illegal because its bad...". Anyhow, I'm done rambling, I'll hit submit.
I would like to note that I myself and many friends of mine can finish a decent sized novel in one or two days, so I wouldn't say books inherently take all that long to get through, it depends a lot on the individual. I'm not sure how much this impacts the rental model, but I would say the model that seems to work far better for most is the used bookstore model, not a true rental, but essentially you can always resale any [decent] book you've bought for a reasonable sum to put toward new purchases, and you can also find books far cheaper than retail.
Yeah, all he said was, essentially, "I would be far more intrigued by the proposition of paying to see that story if it were portrayed in this manner rather than that one..." and what's so wrong with that? as long as you're not trying to use force to make one story rise above another, then isn't it simply the freedom of expression we've all come to? the freedom of the much-loved slashdot capitalistic marketplace? or even the marketplace of ideas, where if your concept can get enough approval from others, it can float up toward the top?
Take a look for a moment at game UIs, where part of the point of the product in question is to stand as a piece of art. These UIs also often stand (or fail miserably) at being a piece of art as well, because that's part of the function of the overall thing. They may even sacrifice function for form now and then, and if they get the tradeoff right, they sell more copies not less b/c it looks and *feels* cooler.
...actually, yes.
and amazingly, it took psychedelic experience to make me realize this. and facing down death. if you're ready to die, you're ready to live. as the klingons say, "today is a good day to die." -- if you're already ready to die, then anything else you do after this point, succeed or fail, pleasure or pain, is just gravy, another experience, so as long as you keep trying to make it whatever you want, what matters that you have to shove a few more quarters into the arcade machine? it'll be over when you say its over, not before, even if it hurts, and that's incredibly liberating. experience only has the value that we choose to attach to it. meaning lies entirely within our own heads. in the end, it applesauce pumpkin kumquat fiddlesticks lagoon double-loopback hockey quack. Or something like that. absurdity gives everyone a collective distraction to make the universe more interesting, less boring, and to give everyone who's ever had a bad day (or even a good day that could be better) an opportunity to go "was that just real? did that just happen?" and laugh about the impossible absurdity that is reality! If you look, reality will surprise you by just how god damned *weird* it can be, and if nothing else, you can make any experience interesting at the very least by this method. Therefore, life is actually pretty damn awesome. This is wisdom I've come to over the past few days in climbing out of 14 years of near-suicidal depression and shame after failing at my family's dream of being a supergenius kid in college, eventually getting my brain to calm down enough that whatever traumatic-stress-induced-injury happened at the microcellular/neural-net-wiring-pattern level to sort itself out, solder that last connection and flip the switch. Some physical therapy is ahead of me, and lots more psych meds and other drug-induced experiences, but I'm out of the woods and the rest of the recovery will just be more of the same with occasional backslides, but I'll always remember I can finally breathe again, metaphorically speaking, and I will never let that go again. Ever.
Perhaps not, but before I ever tried anything in the realm of illicit psychoactives, I'd been an avid reader of Erowid for years, and had put some study into the whole neurochemistry/psychopharmacology aspect of it, how things work, how they interact, etc., and in more recent times I've essentially been conducting personal research, always refining my understanding of these things, because *someone* has to, and this way I can hopefully help friends stay more informed in their choices too, as well as keeping myself out of trouble (physiologically/psychologically speaking).
wow...$20/g? seriously?...you're being ripped off!
I disagree completely. Both myself and many others I know find that through the use of various psychedelics and other substances, other realms can be contacted, and far more can be perceived. I was once mired in the static reality of "scientific rationalism" or "materialism", the view that I ultimately rejected because it leads to the idea that the universe is nothing but a vast predictable machine. I reject this. I choose the mystic path, and I invite all who can to join me, please...the world needs something more. The world needs to remember how to Dream. No, I do not mean this as to eschew technology, as is often popular, quite the opposite. Embrace potential, and free yourself. Cast off the false prison. There is so much more waiting in potential out there. Of course, I mean, I'm not even human (though I am stuck in this annoying human body) so what do I know of humanity? Maybe you lot can't wake up...but I doubt it...any sentient being can, given half a chance.
Damnit, yeah, that's my bad, diacetyl...the rest still stands though. I wish Slashdot had an edit button :/
Actually, methadone is not a synth-anything, its a damn potent mu-opiod agonist in its own right, the difference is it doesn't cross the blood-brain-barrier in one big rush like dimethylmorphine(heroin) does. The reason heroin is "special" is that unlike morphine, methadone, etc., it manages to find a carrier protein that will preferentially transfer it across the BBB. Dimethylmorphine itself isn't terribly active, but once it crosses the barrier, the methyl groups are rapidly cleaved off, leaving, you guessed it, a ton of morphine. The only other way to get this particular effect would be via trepannation (i.e. cutting a hole in your skull and injeting it into the brain). This is why there's nothing else out there quite like it. For the record, I have never tried it (though I have tried methadone, didn't find it all *that* compelling) and never will. Heroin is a drug you do when you are 100% finished with life, on your deathbed, because if you do it before that, you'll quickly find yourself on said deathbed. It is one of the few drug scares where the government propaganda isn't all *that* far off from the truth. Mind you, there are people who manage to quit, or even moderate their use, but these people are few and far between. It simply is not worth the risk, I am sure the high is indescribably amazing, but its just not worth it. I'll stick to ecstasy and raving, thanks.
I second this, I've seen a few presentations about the Orion technology, and its just so simple, I don't see why it can't be used, aside I mean from backwards fears of nuclear power. Of course there's danger involved, there's danger with everything, but that's what careful engineering is for. This is a massive ship you're talking about building, there's no excuse for it not to have the absolute best safety features, and if it does, and if our 60-70 years of applied nuclear research has been worth anything it should actually be rather safe.
These sorts of typos tend to happen because one hand gets "ahead" of the other in the output buffer, leading to migrating letters/punctuation. I'm not quite sure /why/ this particular glitch happens, but it seems the brain isn't quite capable of syncing the hands to the same clock 100% of the time when moving at high speed (it doesn't happen as much to slower typists I've noticed, it seems to be far more prevalent among people who type rather fast, perhaps its a glitch in sequencing the macro output, since the muscle movements actually have to be laid out and predicted beforehand to execute that fast, gliding into one another, rather than being execute-then-return-to-home for each individual key)
Err...why does any of that matter? I fail to see the issue here, she's a very smart and quite attractive woman.
Trance, Happy Hardcore, Psytrance, etc...EDM is *designed* to be listened to at levels you can *feel*, if you can't, there's no real point in the end, you're missing 99% of the experience if you turn it down. (Well ok the music itself is only a small fraction of the experience, don't let anyone kid you, its about leaving this plane of consciousness far behind)
Reminds me of how people argue for modern prohibition. "Drugs are bad because they're illegal!...Drugs are illegal because they're bad!"....yeah
A or E? (sorry, I had to...if you don't get the reference, go watch "Groove". PLUR!)
I think you can still get the IMEI locked out, though this would require the GSM providers to work together I think
Be sure to check their site, but pretty much all of the Sierra cards/chipsets work under linux, I have the AT&T branded 881U and it works quite well. It may take a little fiddling if they haven't fixed some of the bugs that were present half a year ago when I was last trying to use it with NetworkManager, but I imagine they've ironed those things out.
I hope you enjoy your cold mechanistic universe.
I, however, choose, however foolishly it may be, to believe in free will, the acausal side of the universe affecting the causal part we normally see by "choosing" how the "random" quantum events collapse (and in other methods, most likely. basically, I believe that the reality rules can be broken)
(I imagine this is actually some movie reference I'm missing entirely and I'll look dumb, but:) This sounds like a great place for a little exploring of internal landscapes, delving into the deep reaches of mind and soul as it were
This same issue comes up when it comes to people talking about rectifying the laws with regard to drug prohibition, everyone* basically says "Well if you use drugs, you aren't allowed to talk, you're just making the problem worse". I agree, when a large portion of the population is already doing something anyway, its time to revisit the law.
*of course the 'everyone' I mention here doesn't actually represent everyone, they're just the loud voices against legalization/decriminalization who would rather people with actual experience in the relevant areas aren't allowed to speak because they would undermine the position of the prohibitionists.
*makes a note to herself this burn to take such pictures of herself for immediate web publication...gotta weed out the employers who can't stand such things*