Terrorism is the act of attacking innocent or non-militant people in
an effort to effect a political change.
... thereby avoiding direct confrontation with the enemy. There is no difference. Wearing an armored vest doesn't make it unsportsmanlike to shoot you in the face. It just means your face is the obvious target to anyone without armor piercing rounds.
Well, maybe. If you wanted the US government to crack down on people at home, sending out anthrax letters appearing to be from a domestic criminal would cause Hysteria that might bring that about. The goverment would sew the seeds of dissent internally. The 9/11 airplane attacks provoking crackdown abroad, and the anthrax provoking it within. Or maybe the anthrax WAS just some domestic nutcase.
Of course, I didn't mention the UnaBomber. He was a terrorist that got away with attack after attack, but he was misunderstood and the attacks had no bearing or effect on his cause until he sent the 'ransom notes' to the papers asking for his Luddite tripe to be published 'or else'. I guess, living in a cabin all those years, he never thought of using some technology and posting it to the WWW for anyone that was interested to read... Nutcases mostly look to use the most "exciting" method to further their cause, not the most effective. They are just bored and looking for entertainment.
ammo box
Well, then you'll be a dead terrorist. You're not going to make an
armed resistance against the US Government and live.
No. You can get away with terrorism and live, it's just that so far all the terrorists have been either idiots ( McVeigh ), or only doing terrorism as a means to get their 70 virgins in paradise. ( idiots of another stripe ) They WANTED to die in the act.
In fact, getting away with terrorism and living over and over again is the basis for what is called guerilla warfare.
There is no moral reason not to use your individual soveriegnty and wage war against the state for good reason if you think you can win, but unless the general populace is likely to side with you, you have no chance of winning an out and out military victory. However, if everyone were armed with rifles, pistols, shotguns and homemade bombs and booby traps, and all decided not to obey a government - even one as militarily powerful as the US govenrment, then there would be no way for officials of that government to administer the towns and cities without having their heads sniped off. Sure, the government could nuke areas, but if the general populace wanted the government overthrown, nuking all the enemies of the state would leave nothing left to govern.
Of course there are wackos that die 'defending their compound'. Nobody sides with them because they are nuts. ( If you have a 'compound' you ARE nuts. ) But using the ammo box for real COMMON grievances is not stupid or futile.
If the US govenrnment were to do drastic things to remove the Soap Box, the Voting/Jury box, or the Ammo box, then that would be a wise time to revolt with whatever of the three means would be most EFFECTIVE. Individuals letting themselves be emasculated of their power is like them giving their lunch money to a bully. If you were a country and a bigger country demanded tribute or else they would attack, then paying it would only weaken you and make them more powerful making the inevitable invasion easier for the invader. It's always best to stand and fight at such a time and hope that others see that siding with the weaker party in a battle is in their own best interest. After all, letting the invasion stand leaves a more bloated potential future enemy ( nations failed to stop Hitler in WWII and his Reich grew to become a bigger problem than if it had been nipped in the bud. )
When there was a dispute between Kuwait and Saddam over the rights to pump oil from their shared reservoir, Kuwait correctly refused to buckle, and let itself be invaded. Because siding with the weaker party is in every countries best interest, Saddam was pushed back by those from outside, and eventually his entire regime obliterated. The Kuwaitis won in the end.
Siding with the weaker country leaves the 'rescued' country as a firm ally to the rescuer, and the beligerent country in the power of the allies. These time tested principles for being a sovereign are drawn from 'The Prince' by Machiavelli. Individuals, sovereigns of themselves should take it's lessons to heart.
The only way a few terrorists with interests counter to those of general populace could get their way would be to manipulate events subtly. A simple method that has been used the world over is to provoke the target regime to make enemies for itself within and abroad by attacking it. The attacks are like a mosquito bite, but the problems the giant creates for itself do it in. This strategy is so simple that it almost fails to qualify as being subtle. Influencing events in more clever ways would probably yeild even more bang for the terrorist buck. "Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum, and I will move the world" - Archemedes A butterfly in Hong Kong could very well cause a hurricane in the carribean.
The cleverest terrorists may already be fully in control of the world. Their 'attacks' may not be indentified as such. They may be so subtle that they are not even violent or even illegal.
The best science fiction doesn't care about predicting things. Look at 90% of the good science fiction out there: it's completely wrong about the future! The best science fiction, like any fiction, is about it's characters. The futuristic setting is merely props.
Just when I thought cyberbegging was dying out someone cyberpanhandles for a liver and gets it! HA!
But on a side note, wouldn't it be unbelieveable if you donated a kidney for your sibling on dialysis, and it ended up being stolen by 'the system' and implanted into someone else higher up on the list?
If the organ isn't available unless it goes to a specific person, then the list is shortened by letting the transaction take place. The organ COULD just be buried...
You know there are people that buy organs all the time. If you trust foreign doctors, you can fly to a third world country and pay someone 1000-3000 bucks to 'volunteer' to donate their spare kidney to you there. They have prospective donors just waiting for a rich foreigner with a matching HELA type.
If you have more dough, you can fly them to your own country and have your own doctors do it.
If there are X livers and Y people who need them, then Y - X people will die liverless. Who has the right to say that folks who are psuedo randomly selected to be at the top of a list are more deserving of cadaver parts than rich people who can plop down cash money?
If the livers out there are paid for, then the money will be able to support efforts to get more livers, and increase supply. Organ donors can be paid by organ harvester companies, a fixed up front ammount for an arrangement that in the event of a death that enables organs to be harvested, that company will get ownership and be able to sell them to those that can pay.
With the added money, supply is increased from X to X + M. Now only Y - X - M people die liverless.
Because organs are not allowed on the market, M more people die than would otherwise die.
However the poor would be completely excluded from organ transplants if cadaver parts traded as commodoties. So what? Are the lives of the few poor folks that would get livers under the moneyless system more important than the lives of the greater number of richer folks that recieve livers when they are bought and sold?
Excluding organs from the free market doens't make everyone equal. It says that the lives of those with money are worth LESS than the lives of those without. It is actually more unfair than letting the poor be excluded from organ transplants because they can not afford organs. It lets more people die than would otherwise. And it doesn't let poor people reap the monetary benefits of selling their organs.
If a organ harvester company would assume the obligation to pay for my burial expenses on the chance that they might get to harvest my organs, then I would consider it a 'free' life insurance policy and subscribe.
Having said that, it would be good to note that current organ donor lists factor in other things like degree of compatibility, and prognosis with transplant, as well as urgency of need when deciding who gets an organ. But some of this would still be factored in under an organ dutch auction system. A still relatively healthy rich person might decline to purchase a marginally compatible liver in the hopes that they would be able to wait till a better match was found, leaving that liver available for a poorer person for whom the liver matched perfectly. Also, people without much chance for survival even with a transplant might mostly choose to forego the operation and expense to their families. There would be a few so rich they might 'waste' a few organs, but that number would be very small since the number of 'filthy rich' people is neccessarily small relative to the whole population.
Dude, if they piss you off so much you should take a step back and look at why they make you mad. They are getting something for nothing, and you are working your ass off. Who is being stupid here?
X amount of work has to get done or bad things happen
But they don't neccessarily happen to those who did the least to get X done. In fact, those who do nothing outnumber those who do something. If the hard workers try to keep their share during a famine, the rest will come and eat them.
Also, who is to say that lazy folks AREN'T working hard in subtle ways that you can't see. Maybe they are not working on what they are told to work on by 'the man' but they are working, as any self respecting human being should, on furthering their own goals.
If you don't take responsibility for making sure you come out on top in life then YOU are the bum. You are cheating YOURSELF out of the benefits of your own energy.
You will always be used by other people. You use other people wether you know it or not. That's life.
If 'those who find it hard to concentrate at work' do find this helpful, then you will have to compete with them. If they become 'better than they have ever been' then you, and undrugged person may not be able to hold your own against people more tolerant of a droning environment. You, a healthy person may be faced with the choice of whether to wreak drugs on your brain, or quit, leaving your former niche to those who have 'sold their soul to the company store'.
With this natural economic pressure to become zombified, the company won't have to force anyone to do anything.
I think it would be hilareous to put up a site that LOOKS like Falwell's real site that has him encouraging his paritioners to have sex with donkeys or some such. Ridiculing public figures by stating unbelievable false information is OK. It's not defamation as long as it's so over the top as to be completely unbelievable. Only the 'intent to profit' opened that site to trademark law. I can register pepsee.com and have it point to a mouth full of rotten teeth as long as the site doesn't try to make money. I can even show a fictional Pepsee bottle with all the trademarked logos etc.
What profit? I seriously doubt that clicks to that amazon.com link even came close to paying for the bandwidth and hosting fees for the site. ( I could be wrong, but I doubt those amazon links amount to much at all. )
I believe that hosting an anti-Jerry-Falwell site identical to the one that was shut down on fallwell.org minus the amazon link would still be perfectly legal. Only those rich enough to pay for their bandwidth out of their own pocket get to speak loudly...
Glasses is a great idea. They are small and can go anywhere. I don't know about a data glove though. Glasses have the advantage of being able to do 3D, and of privacy, but showing stuff to other people would be harder... Maybe the glasses could just watch your hands move with a camera rather than making you wear a glove. If the camera could identify and track your index finger, then it could be your 'mouse'.
The following is my wishlist for future computerish hardware:
Reliable, hellafast, terabyte solid state memory that uses very little juice.
High bandwidth wireless internet access in every 'civilized' place on earth. At least 56k wireless even in the boonies, or out in the woods.
Functionality of today's laptops packed into extremely small cell phone. I want to have a 'cell phone like' item that I use every day for ALL my computing and communication needs. It can also be my TiVo as long as I can use it for other things at the same time I am watching TV with it. ( It would be nice to carry pre-recorded shows with you so you can watch them wherever you are )
The cell-phone/computer would project 21 inches or greater onto any surface useably. A special, optional 'silver screen' that could be rolled up and carried with you would make long term use 'easy on the eyes'. But I want to be able to read my email projected onto a wall, or whatever I have handy. If brightness in a well lit room makes this scheme impossible at times, light flat LCD screens that OPTIONALLY plug into the phone could be a solution, but full size screen on the go is a neccessity for maximal utility.
Full size keyboard projected on a desk or flat surface that you can type on. What ever happened to this great idea? Didn't it work?
I want to set my cell phone up on a tripod, the screen projected on the wall in front of me, and the keyboard, made of light, projected on the table, and type my email. I want to save it, and carry it with me in my pocket. I don't want to ever type numbers three times to make a letter, and I never want to deal with a 1 1/2" x 2" lcd screen for anything complicated. A black and white one is fine. If you need to put color on a tiny lcd screen, then you are using it for way too much. Really, a tiny screen on the phone itself is completely optional. The 21 inch bright, high resolution projection system and full sized projected keyboard are not optional.
Disclaimer: I don't own a cell phone, a PDA, a laptop, or a TiVo. But such a device as described above would bring me into 21st century if it were cheap cheap cheap.
It is pretty darn near impossible to win the lottery *by legitimate means*. But if you rig the game, then your chances get much better.
In fact, if you were on trial for a crime, and the chance of you NOT having committed it were the same as you winning the lottery by legitimate means, then that small chance wouldn't even qualify as 'reasonable doubt.'
Since the odds of guessing the pick six lottery numbers correctly, without having rigged the game are so negligably low, we can therefore safely use your winning ticket as proof sufficient to convict you of lottery tampering should you try to redeem one.
The fee is: A whole carload of money. Probably more than a carload, maybe a truckload, or even a trainload.
This means only Billionaire$ will be going on these excursions. They don't need life insurance since they are so gosh darn rich that their money makes their physical presence irrelevant.
I, for one am all for Billionaire$ shooting themselves to the moon because the odds of them dying in the process are high. Estate taxes are around 50%. If all the country's Billionaire$ popped off tomorrow, we'd have another budget surplus.
Then again Billionaire$ wield lawyers and offshore tax shelters well. I may be overstating things. But all in all, dead Billionaire$ are good for the country.
They do have the patch nowadays though, and recently they've come out with lozenges. I've never tried the lozenges. Most likely you aren't supposed to chew them. I chew any hard candy that gets into my mouth. With lozenges I'd probably end up swallowing a fatal dose of nicotine..
The patch probably would have worked for me when I tried it if I had really wanted to stop, but once I 'got used to it', it became innefective in my later attempts with it. But that first time I used the patch, it really did let me forget about nicotine completely. If I had been able to form the habit of not smoking, it might have worked that first time. But when I tried to quit that way again, I ended up smoking a ciggarette while wearing it during stressful situations, and then ripping it off before I poisoned myself to death.
It works great if you never notice it. Put it on in the morning before you even have a craving, and leave it on at night funky dreams be damned. But don't monkey with it because the added data points will let your body figure out how it affects you, and once you figure it out, it's just another way to take nicotine.
After failing with the patch, my body knew what it was like to be hopped up on nicotine all the time - even at work. Chewing broken up ciggarettes at work then became a temptation...
You mentioned 'the [coding] zone' so you must be a coder. Me too. That is a subtle mental state of the kind that drug trials may not detect a change in.
For me, 'the zone' is impossible to obtain with even half a beer in me. And I can not even detect half a beer in me. If you asked me if I felt anything, I'd say no. Nobody I talked to would know I had half a beer in me. I could do the 'funky chicken' for a cop with half a beer in me. But if I sat down at a computer and tried to code. I would have difficulty. I would still be able to do it, but no zone would happen. One beer would make faking it difficult to impossible. If I looked at the code later, I would definately find much fault. But I don't feel a single beer at all every time - only about half the time do I get a buzz from one.
How would you be able to do your job without 'the zone'? What else do you do in life that requires a certain subtle mental state? Would drug trial designers know enough to check for it? Is the mental state even known to science? I doubt there is a medical definition of 'coding zone' but it could probably be detected by a PET scan, or maybe even an EEG.
MRE heaters work similarly to hand warmers. Hand warmers are just iron filings with vermiculite, and charcoal powder which hold moisture with a bit of salt. The charcoal and vermiculite keep things fluffy enough to let oxygen in, the salt and moisture speed the reaction. The heat is generated by the iron filings rusting.
Hand warmers work by the rusting of iron. MRE heaters have iron, and magnesium which both 'rust' producing enough heat to heat food.
They are talking about going from 3.5 kg to 0.4 kg by being able to carry dehydrated food. That's 6.82 pounds saved. For less than one pound, they could carry a backpacker's water filtration system that could filter GALLONS of water much dirtier than a wimpy little cellulose membrane could handle. Maybe not urea, but then again, maybe urea too with the right chemicals added to the filter... Plus they could use the same thing for drinking water, and not have to carry as much of that around if they knew there'd be some muddy puddles along the way.
Slashdot Mirror
... thereby avoiding direct confrontation with the enemy. There is no difference. Wearing an armored vest doesn't make it unsportsmanlike to shoot you in the face. It just means your face is the obvious target to anyone without armor piercing rounds.
But if YOU call it a 'compound' with a straight face then...
Of course, I didn't mention the UnaBomber. He was a terrorist that got away with attack after attack, but he was misunderstood and the attacks had no bearing or effect on his cause until he sent the 'ransom notes' to the papers asking for his Luddite tripe to be published 'or else'. I guess, living in a cabin all those years, he never thought of using some technology and posting it to the WWW for anyone that was interested to read... Nutcases mostly look to use the most "exciting" method to further their cause, not the most effective. They are just bored and looking for entertainment.
No. You can get away with terrorism and live, it's just that so far all the terrorists have been either idiots ( McVeigh ), or only doing terrorism as a means to get their 70 virgins in paradise. ( idiots of another stripe ) They WANTED to die in the act.
In fact, getting away with terrorism and living over and over again is the basis for what is called guerilla warfare.
There is no moral reason not to use your individual soveriegnty and wage war against the state for good reason if you think you can win, but unless the general populace is likely to side with you, you have no chance of winning an out and out military victory. However, if everyone were armed with rifles, pistols, shotguns and homemade bombs and booby traps, and all decided not to obey a government - even one as militarily powerful as the US govenrment, then there would be no way for officials of that government to administer the towns and cities without having their heads sniped off. Sure, the government could nuke areas, but if the general populace wanted the government overthrown, nuking all the enemies of the state would leave nothing left to govern.
Of course there are wackos that die 'defending their compound'. Nobody sides with them because they are nuts. ( If you have a 'compound' you ARE nuts. ) But using the ammo box for real COMMON grievances is not stupid or futile.
If the US govenrnment were to do drastic things to remove the Soap Box, the Voting/Jury box, or the Ammo box, then that would be a wise time to revolt with whatever of the three means would be most EFFECTIVE. Individuals letting themselves be emasculated of their power is like them giving their lunch money to a bully. If you were a country and a bigger country demanded tribute or else they would attack, then paying it would only weaken you and make them more powerful making the inevitable invasion easier for the invader. It's always best to stand and fight at such a time and hope that others see that siding with the weaker party in a battle is in their own best interest. After all, letting the invasion stand leaves a more bloated potential future enemy ( nations failed to stop Hitler in WWII and his Reich grew to become a bigger problem than if it had been nipped in the bud. )
When there was a dispute between Kuwait and Saddam over the rights to pump oil from their shared reservoir, Kuwait correctly refused to buckle, and let itself be invaded. Because siding with the weaker party is in every countries best interest, Saddam was pushed back by those from outside, and eventually his entire regime obliterated. The Kuwaitis won in the end.
Siding with the weaker country leaves the 'rescued' country as a firm ally to the rescuer, and the beligerent country in the power of the allies. These time tested principles for being a sovereign are drawn from 'The Prince' by Machiavelli. Individuals, sovereigns of themselves should take it's lessons to heart.
The only way a few terrorists with interests counter to those of general populace could get their way would be to manipulate events subtly. A simple method that has been used the world over is to provoke the target regime to make enemies for itself within and abroad by attacking it. The attacks are like a mosquito bite, but the problems the giant creates for itself do it in. This strategy is so simple that it almost fails to qualify as being subtle. Influencing events in more clever ways would probably yeild even more bang for the terrorist buck. "Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum, and I will move the world" - Archemedes A butterfly in Hong Kong could very well cause a hurricane in the carribean.
The cleverest terrorists may already be fully in control of the world. Their 'attacks' may not be indentified as such. They may be so subtle that they are not even violent or even illegal.
I say we bomb the Stonecutters.
The best science fiction doesn't care about predicting things. Look at 90% of the good science fiction out there: it's completely wrong about the future! The best science fiction, like any fiction, is about it's characters. The futuristic setting is merely props.
You're a dumbass.
And every one was an Enery!.. Wouldn't have a Willy nor a Sam.
But on a side note, wouldn't it be unbelieveable if you donated a kidney for your sibling on dialysis, and it ended up being stolen by 'the system' and implanted into someone else higher up on the list?
If the organ isn't available unless it goes to a specific person, then the list is shortened by letting the transaction take place. The organ COULD just be buried...
You know there are people that buy organs all the time. If you trust foreign doctors, you can fly to a third world country and pay someone 1000-3000 bucks to 'volunteer' to donate their spare kidney to you there. They have prospective donors just waiting for a rich foreigner with a matching HELA type.
If you have more dough, you can fly them to your own country and have your own doctors do it.
If there are X livers and Y people who need them, then Y - X people will die liverless. Who has the right to say that folks who are psuedo randomly selected to be at the top of a list are more deserving of cadaver parts than rich people who can plop down cash money?
If the livers out there are paid for, then the money will be able to support efforts to get more livers, and increase supply. Organ donors can be paid by organ harvester companies, a fixed up front ammount for an arrangement that in the event of a death that enables organs to be harvested, that company will get ownership and be able to sell them to those that can pay.
With the added money, supply is increased from X to X + M. Now only Y - X - M people die liverless.
Because organs are not allowed on the market, M more people die than would otherwise die.
However the poor would be completely excluded from organ transplants if cadaver parts traded as commodoties. So what? Are the lives of the few poor folks that would get livers under the moneyless system more important than the lives of the greater number of richer folks that recieve livers when they are bought and sold?
Excluding organs from the free market doens't make everyone equal. It says that the lives of those with money are worth LESS than the lives of those without. It is actually more unfair than letting the poor be excluded from organ transplants because they can not afford organs. It lets more people die than would otherwise. And it doesn't let poor people reap the monetary benefits of selling their organs.
If a organ harvester company would assume the obligation to pay for my burial expenses on the chance that they might get to harvest my organs, then I would consider it a 'free' life insurance policy and subscribe.
Having said that, it would be good to note that current organ donor lists factor in other things like degree of compatibility, and prognosis with transplant, as well as urgency of need when deciding who gets an organ. But some of this would still be factored in under an organ dutch auction system. A still relatively healthy rich person might decline to purchase a marginally compatible liver in the hopes that they would be able to wait till a better match was found, leaving that liver available for a poorer person for whom the liver matched perfectly. Also, people without much chance for survival even with a transplant might mostly choose to forego the operation and expense to their families. There would be a few so rich they might 'waste' a few organs, but that number would be very small since the number of 'filthy rich' people is neccessarily small relative to the whole population.
But they don't neccessarily happen to those who did the least to get X done. In fact, those who do nothing outnumber those who do something. If the hard workers try to keep their share during a famine, the rest will come and eat them.
Also, who is to say that lazy folks AREN'T working hard in subtle ways that you can't see. Maybe they are not working on what they are told to work on by 'the man' but they are working, as any self respecting human being should, on furthering their own goals.
If you don't take responsibility for making sure you come out on top in life then YOU are the bum. You are cheating YOURSELF out of the benefits of your own energy.
You will always be used by other people. You use other people wether you know it or not. That's life.
With this natural economic pressure to become zombified, the company won't have to force anyone to do anything.
All ya need is drugs,
la la la la la
All ya need is drugs,
la la la la la
All ya need is drugs, drugs,
To be a cog in tha machine
Drugs are all ya need; Drugs are all ya need.
SOMA SOMA SOMA SOMA!
In the year 105105...
TAKE YOUR STINKING PAWS OFF ME - YOU DAMN DIRTY APE!!!
I think it would be hilareous to put up a site that LOOKS like Falwell's real site that has him encouraging his paritioners to have sex with donkeys or some such. Ridiculing public figures by stating unbelievable false information is OK. It's not defamation as long as it's so over the top as to be completely unbelievable. Only the 'intent to profit' opened that site to trademark law. I can register pepsee.com and have it point to a mouth full of rotten teeth as long as the site doesn't try to make money. I can even show a fictional Pepsee bottle with all the trademarked logos etc.
Hahahah! Great post!
I believe that hosting an anti-Jerry-Falwell site identical to the one that was shut down on fallwell.org minus the amazon link would still be perfectly legal. Only those rich enough to pay for their bandwidth out of their own pocket get to speak loudly...
Glasses is a great idea. They are small and can go anywhere. I don't know about a data glove though. Glasses have the advantage of being able to do 3D, and of privacy, but showing stuff to other people would be harder... Maybe the glasses could just watch your hands move with a camera rather than making you wear a glove. If the camera could identify and track your index finger, then it could be your 'mouse'.
Yeah, I know, it's asking for alot, but that would be the 'total package'. Maybe better batteries are in the cards someday....
I want to set my cell phone up on a tripod, the screen projected on the wall in front of me, and the keyboard, made of light, projected on the table, and type my email. I want to save it, and carry it with me in my pocket. I don't want to ever type numbers three times to make a letter, and I never want to deal with a 1 1/2" x 2" lcd screen for anything complicated. A black and white one is fine. If you need to put color on a tiny lcd screen, then you are using it for way too much. Really, a tiny screen on the phone itself is completely optional. The 21 inch bright, high resolution projection system and full sized projected keyboard are not optional.
Disclaimer: I don't own a cell phone, a PDA, a laptop, or a TiVo. But such a device as described above would bring me into 21st century if it were cheap cheap cheap.
In fact, if you were on trial for a crime, and the chance of you NOT having committed it were the same as you winning the lottery by legitimate means, then that small chance wouldn't even qualify as 'reasonable doubt.'
Since the odds of guessing the pick six lottery numbers correctly, without having rigged the game are so negligably low, we can therefore safely use your winning ticket as proof sufficient to convict you of lottery tampering should you try to redeem one.
Wink wink nudge nudge...
"This is a pill, for the world, to give [bone eating] worms, to ex-girlfriends." - Dain Bramage
This means only Billionaire$ will be going on these excursions. They don't need life insurance since they are so gosh darn rich that their money makes their physical presence irrelevant.
I, for one am all for Billionaire$ shooting themselves to the moon because the odds of them dying in the process are high. Estate taxes are around 50%. If all the country's Billionaire$ popped off tomorrow, we'd have another budget surplus.
Then again Billionaire$ wield lawyers and offshore tax shelters well. I may be overstating things. But all in all, dead Billionaire$ are good for the country.
Good luck.
They do have the patch nowadays though, and recently they've come out with lozenges. I've never tried the lozenges. Most likely you aren't supposed to chew them. I chew any hard candy that gets into my mouth. With lozenges I'd probably end up swallowing a fatal dose of nicotine..
The patch probably would have worked for me when I tried it if I had really wanted to stop, but once I 'got used to it', it became innefective in my later attempts with it. But that first time I used the patch, it really did let me forget about nicotine completely. If I had been able to form the habit of not smoking, it might have worked that first time. But when I tried to quit that way again, I ended up smoking a ciggarette while wearing it during stressful situations, and then ripping it off before I poisoned myself to death.
It works great if you never notice it. Put it on in the morning before you even have a craving, and leave it on at night funky dreams be damned. But don't monkey with it because the added data points will let your body figure out how it affects you, and once you figure it out, it's just another way to take nicotine.
After failing with the patch, my body knew what it was like to be hopped up on nicotine all the time - even at work. Chewing broken up ciggarettes at work then became a temptation...
You mentioned 'the [coding] zone' so you must be a coder. Me too. That is a subtle mental state of the kind that drug trials may not detect a change in.
For me, 'the zone' is impossible to obtain with even half a beer in me. And I can not even detect half a beer in me. If you asked me if I felt anything, I'd say no. Nobody I talked to would know I had half a beer in me. I could do the 'funky chicken' for a cop with half a beer in me. But if I sat down at a computer and tried to code. I would have difficulty. I would still be able to do it, but no zone would happen. One beer would make faking it difficult to impossible. If I looked at the code later, I would definately find much fault. But I don't feel a single beer at all every time - only about half the time do I get a buzz from one.
How would you be able to do your job without 'the zone'? What else do you do in life that requires a certain subtle mental state? Would drug trial designers know enough to check for it? Is the mental state even known to science? I doubt there is a medical definition of 'coding zone' but it could probably be detected by a PET scan, or maybe even an EEG.
Hand warmers work by the rusting of iron. MRE heaters have iron, and magnesium which both 'rust' producing enough heat to heat food.
They are talking about going from 3.5 kg to 0.4 kg by being able to carry dehydrated food. That's 6.82 pounds saved. For less than one pound, they could carry a backpacker's water filtration system that could filter GALLONS of water much dirtier than a wimpy little cellulose membrane could handle. Maybe not urea, but then again, maybe urea too with the right chemicals added to the filter... Plus they could use the same thing for drinking water, and not have to carry as much of that around if they knew there'd be some muddy puddles along the way.