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User: demonlapin

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  1. Re:OOH! SCARY STORY! on North Korea's High-Tech Counterfeit $100 Bills · · Score: 1

    Businesses don't send anyone to school; parents do. Local governments that provide all those services provide them to residential areas far more than they do to commercial zones. The ideal city, from the point of view of local government, is one that has almost no residential area and a large commercial zone.

  2. Re:Beyond the DRM dilemma on The Dark Side of Digital Distribution · · Score: 1

    No, leasing a car every three years is more expensive than buying a car, maintaining it properly, driving it for ten years, and selling it. Over the first three years? It's usually a lot cheaper. And if you like having a car that's always in warranty - which is another way of saying "it's always someone else's problem" - it is not necessarily foolish to pay for that.

  3. Re:Beyond the DRM dilemma on The Dark Side of Digital Distribution · · Score: 1

    I haven't yet figured this out on Android (I haven't had to try) but there is actually a very easy solution for iOS.

    Fairly often, you should check for updates for your apps in iTunes. Any apps that are replaced will have the old versions appear in the Recycle Bin on Windows. (Presumably in the Trash on OSX, don't have a Mac so can't tell.) Pull them out of it and store them in an "old apps" folder. If an "update" like this ever occurs, you can easily delete the app from iTunes and drop the old version in. It will work just fine.

  4. Re:Beyond the DRM dilemma on The Dark Side of Digital Distribution · · Score: 1

    A car lease is a long-term rental of a physical product, not a "license". Sometimes rental rather than purchase makes sense.

  5. Re:Serious addicts who "decide to use" it? on Vaccine Could Cut Heroin Addiction · · Score: 1

    to put in lay terms.

    Oh, don't do that on account of me. By all means, describe "overloads and fries the pleasure centers of the brain" professionally. I'll just go make some popcorn.

  6. Re:Serious addicts who "decide to use" it? on Vaccine Could Cut Heroin Addiction · · Score: 1

    Have you tried another nicotine delivery device? They're all safer than tobacco cigarettes. Emphysema, chronic back pain, heart disease, peripheral vascular disease... all much more common in smokers. People always act like lung cancer is the reason to quit. Chronic pain and air hunger are far, far better reasons.

    BTW, good luck whenever you decide to try to kick it.

  7. Re:Why not for everyone? on Vaccine Could Cut Heroin Addiction · · Score: 1

    Because in the case of a non-addict, it's swatting a fly with a hydrogen bomb?

  8. Re:other opiates? on Vaccine Could Cut Heroin Addiction · · Score: 4, Informative

    Since the active compound in Heroin, codeine, and morphine is morphine (the first two are converted into it in the brain), those are right out. Semisynthetics may or may not be affected.

  9. Re:This could be a bad thing on Vaccine Could Cut Heroin Addiction · · Score: 1

    I speculated earlier that this might take out the semisynthetics (hydromorphone, hydrocodone, oxycodone). That would leave only the pure synthetics, like the fentanyls. Those are much riskier drugs.

  10. Re:Serious addicts who "decide to use" it? on Vaccine Could Cut Heroin Addiction · · Score: 1

    Opioid withdrawal is highly unpleasant but not physically dangerous in itself. As for addictiveness, it's easier to quit heroin than nicotine.

  11. Re:Serious addicts who "decide to use" it? on Vaccine Could Cut Heroin Addiction · · Score: 1

    heroin, ecstacy or similar drugs

    Those drugs are so wildly different that I can only take your statement to mean that you think anyone who gets drunk expects "significant and lasting changes to their neural chemistry", since they have as much in common with alcohol as they do with each other.

  12. Re:Serious addicts who "decide to use" it? on Vaccine Could Cut Heroin Addiction · · Score: 1

    If it works against heroin (which is just fat-soluble morphine; it's deacetylated as soon as it enters the brain and the active ingredient is morphine that results), it also works against morphine and codeine. Which means that it may work against any semisynthetic opioid.

    If so, all you'll have left is fentanyl, which is a very, very dangerous recreational drug. Also, it would be a disaster for acute pain control.

  13. Re:Only when they don't already know? on US Appeals Court Upholds Suspect's Right To Refuse Decryption · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As I understand it, the primary distinction is that giving the government the key to a locked door in your home can be compelled, because it's a locked door in your home - it's entirely reasonable to expect you to have control of that door. But forcing you to give the government the combination to a safe is forcing your testimony, as it's only in your mind, not a physical object, and thus can't be required. (The law rapidly becomes murky as hell to me once you get beyond these statements, and IANAL, so I won't say more.)

  14. Re:DIY medicine started a lot earlier than smartph on Are Smartphones Starting a Boom In DIY Medicine? · · Score: 1

    The primary reason to use it is that it is blessed by the FDA, so if someone has a reaction at the site there's no question that you used a product that has been tested and certified safe for human use. A secondary reason is that it forms a cohesive mass, so that if you peel it off you don't have to worry about pieces coming off in the wound.

  15. Re:Taking a photo != Diagnosis.. on Are Smartphones Starting a Boom In DIY Medicine? · · Score: 1

    Having a photo of a rash that appeared and then went away is a handy thing to show your MD. Just like having a video of a seizure, or of a stroke (especially if the symptoms resolve, as with a TIA).

  16. Re:DIY medicine started a lot earlier than smartph on Are Smartphones Starting a Boom In DIY Medicine? · · Score: 1

    No, the medical stuff dries to a soft, smooth surface. Nothing wrong with the hardware store stuff, though, as long as you clean it really well first. It will hurt, though.

  17. Re:Self-Treatment =/= Doctor on Are Smartphones Starting a Boom In DIY Medicine? · · Score: 1

    your auto mechanic has more time per car by far!

    Your auto mechanic gets paid by the hour, at the time of service. Your doctor gets paid per patient, several months later.

  18. Re:Self-Treatment =/= Doctor on Are Smartphones Starting a Boom In DIY Medicine? · · Score: 1

    Oh, it's not that easy. I've seen plenty of people who screwed it up. I suggest that you use a shotgun, and that you bite the barrel - that will ensure you have it pointed in a direction that will kill you rather than just blow off your face.

  19. MMS is the only issue? on Ask Slashdot: Best Mobile Phone Solution With No Data Plan? · · Score: 5, Informative

    If MMS is your only issue, why not just get something like a RAZR? It's cheap, it can receive MMS, and it's not a smartphone so nobody is going to try to force a data plan on you.

  20. Re:Self-Treatment =/= Doctor on Are Smartphones Starting a Boom In DIY Medicine? · · Score: 1

    Sounds like pertussis. Lots of MD's haven't seen it, because it was going away before parents stopped vaccinating their kids. I had it as a third-year medical student, and didn't diagnose the likely cause until I was studying for a pediatrics test. Did you cough until you felt like you were about to vomit, then catch a deep breath and start all over again? For weeks on end?

  21. Re:No Fly Zone on State Legislatures Attempt To Limit TSA Searches · · Score: 1

    In theory, yes. In practice, I'm pretty sure they can't afford that level of taxation. We have a large welfare state, especially the parts called Medicare and Social Security. Paying for that twice - once at the state and once at the federal level - pushes you quickly toward the bad part of the Laffer curve. Especially if the feds decided to retaliate, in part, by eliminating deductibility of Texas taxes on your federal income taxes.

  22. Re:In a not so distant future... on Where Next-Generation Rare Earth Metals May Come From · · Score: 1

    You can always remind them that you can pay someone else...

  23. Re:No Fly Zone on State Legislatures Attempt To Limit TSA Searches · · Score: 1

    Well, you could go to South America... but you can't go north. Going the long way around the world to Asia would be a nightmare.

  24. Re:In a not so distant future... on Where Next-Generation Rare Earth Metals May Come From · · Score: 1

    Do what you do anywhere that's unstable: find out who's running the areas you need, and how much money they want to protect you against everyone else. Then run the numbers to see if the mine still pays.

  25. Re:Texas no fly zone.. would be national on State Legislatures Attempt To Limit TSA Searches · · Score: 1

    It's a bigger problem for Texans who need to go somewhere.