And to prevent users messing with it, just keep the whole drive, floppy and all, completely *inside* the chassis. Hey its crude, but is easy and cheaper than the PCI card option you were thinking of. If your users do require a floppy drive for their own use, you could add a second one inside on the same cable. You'd have to physically write protect the floppy though- so "firmware upgrades";-) over the network are not an option.
If space is an issue, how about a cheap compact flash card hanging off your IDE cable? CF cards already have IDE electronics built in, and the interface to the ID connector is trivial (one pin needs to be shorted IIRC). Don't know if write-protection can be turned on and off by a network client though.
> Pricewatch Total for a > Althon 1.2 chip/Motherboard > 128 Megs Ram > 20 Gig HD...
Hey, it doesn't add up like that:-). What about the graphics card? IIRC, the XBox has an Nvidia NV25 chip that is slightly better than a GeForce 3. So...
NV25 $300 (?)
Also, IIRC the XBox used AMD's hypertransport (?) bus, and that speeds up graphics a fair bit too.
> I am not going to continue this argument as you > insistantly refuse to recognize the essential > nature of my claim is NOT drugs are good but > that the harm accrued from increased drug use > is SMALL next to the harm incurred from the > drug war.
Addressing this point then... you're plain wrong. Take a look at history -- there was widespread harm caused by opium addiction when it was widespread in China (prior to the Opium wars). Or do you think that historians just made up these stories?
> Certainly panic reactions sustained by LSD does not count as physical damage.
Eh? Panic attacks *are* a *physical* problem... And why gloss over the more troublesome aspects of LSD:...prolonged anxiety and psychotic reactions have been reported. The mental effects can cause psychotic crises and compound existing psychiatric problems....
Do you think the US DOJ made this up as well?
My main point is that drug addiction is akin to slavery... a slavery to the *habit*. All you do is come up with the ridiculous counter-claim that people sentenced to jail terms for selling and consuming illicit drugs are "slaves" of the government ("work gangs etc"). How absurd! To see how ridiculous your position is -- why not launch a civil war to liberate those "wrongly imprisoned" junkies and drug-dealers? Presumably, so that they can come out and continue on with their habit... sending many of them to their sure deaths. [ Prison *has* helped some drug addicts kick their habit... and live!. Others are still allowed to abuse drugs in prison due to faults in the prison system ]
Dude, people are being harmed by addictive drugs... whether they are kept legal or illegal. Don't you care about them?
> Do you live in berkeley too? I can't imagine any other place in the world that calling > someone a fake liberal is an considered a valid argument tactic.
I don't live in the States.
> For the record I am not a `liberal' I am a utilitarian.
OK, noted. I also note that this site talks about... "the large degree of altruism implied by utilitarianism - altruism not only in an abstract philosophical sense, but real and concrete altruism: actually going out and doing things to help others." Hmmm...
I said: > > Illicit drugs (including tobacco) damage you physically. Yes, there is enough research > > backing this. And you don't believe it - quote me the *peer-reviewed* research that > > says it *doesn't* harm.
but then you gave me this paper:
>For physical damage how about these peer reviewed studies.... > Opioid therapy for chronic nonmalignant pain: a review of the critical issues. > Portenoy RK. > From the last article we have the following wonderfull quote: > > "Long term opiod therapy has not been > associated with major organ toxicity in large > surveys of cancer patients and methadone- > maitened patients"
Here's the link to the paper. Read it. The opiates are carefully administered to patients suffering terrific pain by doctors who carry out an "ongoing assessment of aberrant drug-related behaviors". If the patient develops an addiction, "a specialist in addiction medicine" is called on to help the patient.
Dude, if you administer cyanide under careful medical supervision, there aren't be any ill effects either. That's not what I am talking about.
What I am talking about these drugs in the *wild* - on the street. What happens when you let people use opium as they wish to... what happens when a teenager is given opiates to experiment with... with no doctors or addiction counsellors 'carefully monitoring the situation'?
Many die. Many waste away. Remember the Chinese Opium wars ? when "during the early 1800's opium addiction reached epidemic proportions in China."
Are you so hard hearted that you think this an acceptable tradeoff so that a drug user can feel "legit"?
> In fact as you are the one claiming that all drugs cause physical harm you > are the one that should be required to provide evidence.
Sorry, but there are GOOD reasons that drugs were regulated. And you are the one advocating changing the locus standii. Hence the burden of proof is on you. I will still answer your points, though.
> That is a nice trick saying "there is enough research to back this up". How the fuck... First I'll remove the strawman argument you've put up - different drugs cause different degrees of harm, and different amounts of addiction.
> > Its about protecting those who would perish: the "one-trip" teenagers, > > the "irreversibly changed" innocents, the ones whose first puffs dragged > > them uncontrollaby down in a never-ending spiral towards death. > Did you pull this directly from refer madness or an anti-drug ad?
From the same paper that your initial "wonderful quote" comes from: "It has also been postulated that subtle abstinence syndrome phenomena could contribute to a "downhill spiral" in which pain is sustained or maladaptive behaviors are perpetuated as a result of opioid use. Some type of similar process has also been suggested to explain "rebound" headache, a syndrome of refractory pain ascribed to frequent use of short-acting analgesics. Although no systematic study has been done of this putative phenomenon, the problematic nature of opioid therapy in some patients is unquestionable, and, in these individuals, the impact of all possible outcomes related to treatment, including physical dependence, should be carefully assessed."
> > Do you condone slavery? Why do you oppose the government clamping down on extremely addictive drugs then?
> A two year old could see this is clearly a cheap emotional appeal and not actually an argument.
Really? I suggest you try it. I'm sure you'd be surprised how perceptive children can be. I guess you mean that no drug user is a slave to their habit ?
Try explaining that to the otherwise modest woman FORCED to whore to support her habit. Or the junkie caught up in spiral of crime to support a habit he WANTS OUT OF.
Sorry, perhaps none of your friends come from this category of people.
As for "physical damage", check this paper on ecstasy publised by Lancet.
Login to lancet.com (needs free registration, search for "LSD") __________________________________________ ________ ______ Congenital anomalies after prenatal ecstasy exposure P R McElhatton, D N Bateman, C Evans, K R Pughe, S H L Thomas Prospective follow-up of 136 babies exposed to ecstasy in utero indicated that the drug may be associated with a significantly increased risk of congenital defects. Cardiovascular anomalies
(26 per 1000 livebirths) and musculoskeletal anomalies (38 per 1000) were predominant.... Drug exposure Anomalies Ecstasy
4 weeks Left 4th toe underlying the 3rd toe
612 weeks Right-sided plagiocephaly
45 weeks Unilateral talipes
First trimester Unilateral talipes
6 and 9 weeks Bilateral talipes
First trimester Pyloric stenosis
First trimester Absent upper limbs, left scapula, clavicles, and hypoplasticity of the first rib pair; pregnancy terminated at 22 weeks. ________________________________________________ __ ______
The consequences of LSD use can be deleterious, not merely benign as is commonly perceived. Powerful hallucinations can lead to acute panic reactions when the mental effects cannot be controlled and when the user wishes to end the drug-induced state. While these panic reactions more often than not are resolved successfully over time, prolonged anxiety and psychotic reactions have been reported.
The mental effects can cause psychotic crises and compound existing psychiatric problems.
> Also as I am not a drug dealer I fail to see how you get to accuse me of > being a booze trading european.
It gets worse!
Since you see nothing wrong with consumption of drugs its a no-brainer that you'd see nothing with production either (for you can't have one without the other)
Given yet another century, you'd easily be a greedy English merchant helping prosecute the Opium war.
> It would however be a fair analogy to suggest > you would be in favor of going in with guns and draggin all the indians who buy liqour into jail.
Ha, of course not. You gotta *love* the weak... i.e. help them, talk to them, rehab them. As for the exploitative European booze pushers - warn them off, and if they don't listen, lock them up. Not that I object to liquor *in moderation*, but that societies that have not seen been exposed to it before must be helped to learn to handle it responsibly.
BTW, you don't much fit the profile of the utilitarian described at the top of the post.
> Do drugs deystroy lives. Certainly. However, > this is mostly a result of legal and economic > consequences of the drug war.
Do drugs destroy people? Yes, drugs *do* destroy people by making them *slaves*to*the*drug*habit*. Do you condone slavery? Why do you oppose the government clamping down on extremely addictive drugs then?
My point briefly is this:
Illicit drugs (including tobacco) damage you physically. Yes, there is enough research backing this. And you don't believe it - quote me the *peer-reviewed* research that says it *doesn't* harm. Not about previous studies being "flawed" (which many can be), but about drug habits NOT harming people. Hey, at the very least, even "just smoking hash" is "just *smoking* hash".
The more important justification for government supression of illicit drugs is the protection of the general public from a slavery that is just as physical as the real thing.
Hey, we *all* have our anecdotes of hash-smoking friends living "long, fulfilled lives" and who gave up quite it easily. Hey, the point is not about those who survived! Its about protecting those who would perish: the "one-trip" teenagers, the "irreversibly changed" innocents, the ones whose first puffs dragged them uncontrollaby down in a never-ending spiral towards death. They exist(ed) too. Did these people not count because they were't *your* friends. Should we legalize slavery because Jenny likes to play S&M games and it doesnt "harm *her*"!?
Hey, maybe you're a "liberal". Maybe you say that "Hands-off! People are solely responsible for what they do to their own bodies"
Hey, just maybe, a few centuries back, you'd be one of those unsavory Europeans making a fortune trading booze to native Americans.
A true liberal is kind and loving to people. You probably are a fake liberal - the type who puts his own desires first and assuages your own conscience by throwing money at problems... yours and other's tax dollars.
It's good to know this tablet can measure pressure -- but it would be nice if touch screens recognized multiple SIMULTANEOUS points of contact. All the touchscreens I've 'touched' only function as a type of mouse (i.e. use a single contact point to define single pointer location). If screens could measure touch points across the entire screen simultaneously, they could be used to select text quickly (think of a 'pick' action), recognize gestures ('twisting' an on-screen knob), or even recognize the *shape* of your hand (the coolest yet most insecure biometric authentication ever!:-). Seriously though, the age of the mouse seems to passing and touch screens should provide more than just a single 'mouse-point' reading.
PS: From what I gather, resistive touch screens look more promising than capacitive ones... This page explains why
Slashdot Mirror
And to prevent users messing with it, just keep the whole drive, floppy and all, completely *inside* the chassis. Hey its crude, but is easy and cheaper than the PCI card option you were thinking of. If your users do require a floppy drive for their own use, you could add a second one inside on the same cable. You'd have to physically write protect the floppy though- so "firmware upgrades" ;-) over the network are not an option.
If space is an issue, how about a cheap compact flash card hanging off your IDE cable? CF cards already have IDE electronics built in, and the interface to the ID connector is trivial (one pin needs to be shorted IIRC). Don't know if write-protection can be turned on and off by a network client though.
> Pricewatch Total for a ...
:-). What about the graphics card? IIRC, the XBox has an Nvidia NV25 chip that is slightly better than a GeForce 3. So...
> Althon 1.2 chip/Motherboard
> 128 Megs Ram
> 20 Gig HD
Hey, it doesn't add up like that
NV25 $300 (?)
Also, IIRC the XBox used AMD's hypertransport (?) bus, and that speeds up graphics a fair bit too.
> I am not going to continue this argument as you
...prolonged anxiety and psychotic reactions have been reported. The mental effects can cause psychotic crises and compound existing psychiatric problems....
> insistantly refuse to recognize the essential
> nature of my claim is NOT drugs are good but
> that the harm accrued from increased drug use
> is SMALL next to the harm incurred from the
> drug war.
Addressing this point then... you're plain wrong. Take a look at history -- there was widespread harm caused by opium addiction when it was widespread in China (prior to the Opium wars). Or do you think that historians just made up these stories?
> Certainly panic reactions sustained by LSD does not count as physical damage.
Eh? Panic attacks *are* a *physical* problem... And why gloss over the more troublesome aspects of LSD:
Do you think the US DOJ made this up as well?
My main point is that drug addiction is akin to slavery... a slavery to the *habit*. All you do is come up with the ridiculous counter-claim that people sentenced to jail terms for selling and consuming illicit drugs are "slaves" of the government ("work gangs etc"). How absurd! To see how ridiculous your position is -- why not launch a civil war to liberate those "wrongly imprisoned" junkies and drug-dealers? Presumably, so that they can come out and continue on with their habit... sending many of them to their sure deaths.
[ Prison *has* helped some drug addicts kick their habit... and live!. Others are still allowed to abuse drugs in prison due to faults in the prison system ]
Dude, people are being harmed by addictive drugs... whether they are kept legal or illegal. Don't you care about them?
> Do you live in berkeley too? I can't imagine any other place in the world that calling
...
...
_ ________ ______ ...
_ __ ______
> someone a fake liberal is an considered a valid argument tactic.
I don't live in the States.
> For the record I am not a `liberal' I am a utilitarian.
OK, noted. I also note that this site talks about...
"the large degree of altruism implied by utilitarianism - altruism not only in an
abstract philosophical sense, but real and concrete altruism: actually going out and
doing things to help others." Hmmm...
I said:
> > Illicit drugs (including tobacco) damage you physically. Yes, there is enough research
> > backing this. And you don't believe it - quote me the *peer-reviewed* research that
> > says it *doesn't* harm.
but then you gave me this paper:
>For physical damage how about these peer reviewed studies.
> Opioid therapy for chronic nonmalignant pain: a review of the critical issues.
> Portenoy RK.
> From the last article we have the following wonderfull quote:
>
> "Long term opiod therapy has not been
> associated with major organ toxicity in large
> surveys of cancer patients and methadone-
> maitened patients"
Here's the link to the paper. Read it.
The opiates are carefully administered to patients suffering terrific
pain by doctors who carry out an "ongoing assessment of aberrant drug-related behaviors".
If the patient develops an addiction, "a specialist in addiction medicine"
is called on to help the patient.
Dude, if you administer cyanide under careful medical supervision, there aren't be any
ill effects either. That's not what I am talking about.
What I am talking about these drugs in the *wild* - on the street. What happens
when you let people use opium as they wish to... what happens when a teenager
is given opiates to experiment with... with no doctors or
addiction counsellors 'carefully monitoring the situation'?
Many die. Many waste away. Remember the Chinese Opium wars ?
when "during the early 1800's opium addiction reached epidemic proportions in China."
Are you so hard hearted that you think this an acceptable tradeoff so that
a drug user can feel "legit"?
> In fact as you are the one claiming that all drugs cause physical harm you
> are the one that should be required to provide evidence.
Sorry, but there are GOOD reasons that drugs were regulated.
And you are the one advocating changing the locus standii.
Hence the burden of proof is on you. I will still answer your points, though.
> That is a nice trick saying "there is enough research to back this up". How the fuck
First I'll remove the strawman argument you've put up - different drugs cause
different degrees of harm, and different amounts of addiction.
> > Its about protecting those who would perish: the "one-trip" teenagers,
> > the "irreversibly changed" innocents, the ones whose first puffs dragged
> > them uncontrollaby down in a never-ending spiral towards death.
> Did you pull this directly from refer madness or an anti-drug ad?
From the same paper that your initial "wonderful quote" comes from:
"It has also been postulated that subtle abstinence syndrome phenomena could contribute
to a "downhill spiral" in which pain is sustained or maladaptive behaviors are perpetuated
as a result of opioid use. Some type of similar process has also been suggested to explain
"rebound" headache, a syndrome of refractory pain ascribed to frequent use of short-acting
analgesics. Although no systematic study has been done of this putative phenomenon,
the problematic nature of opioid therapy in some patients is unquestionable,
and, in these individuals, the impact of all possible outcomes related to treatment,
including physical dependence, should be carefully assessed."
> > Do you condone slavery? Why do you oppose the government clamping down on extremely addictive drugs then?
> A two year old could see this is clearly a cheap emotional appeal and not actually an argument.
Really? I suggest you try it. I'm sure you'd be surprised how perceptive children can be. I guess you mean that no drug user is a slave to their habit ?
Try explaining that to the otherwise modest woman FORCED to whore to support her habit.
Or the junkie caught up in spiral of crime to support a habit he WANTS OUT OF.
Sorry, perhaps none of your friends come from this category of people.
As for "physical damage", check this paper on ecstasy publised by Lancet.
Login to lancet.com (needs free registration, search for "LSD")
_________________________________________
Congenital anomalies after prenatal ecstasy exposure
P R McElhatton, D N Bateman, C Evans, K R Pughe, S H L Thomas
Prospective follow-up of 136 babies exposed to ecstasy in utero
indicated that the drug may be associated with a significantly
increased risk of congenital defects. Cardiovascular anomalies
(26 per 1000 livebirths) and musculoskeletal anomalies
(38 per 1000) were predominant.
Drug exposure Anomalies
Ecstasy
4 weeks Left 4th toe underlying the 3rd toe
612 weeks Right-sided plagiocephaly
45 weeks Unilateral talipes
First trimester Unilateral talipes
6 and 9 weeks Bilateral talipes
First trimester Pyloric stenosis
First trimester Absent upper limbs, left scapula, clavicles,
and hypoplasticity of the first rib pair; pregnancy terminated at 22 weeks.
_______________________________________________
You asked about LSD? From this page:
The consequences of LSD use can be deleterious, not merely benign as is commonly
perceived. Powerful hallucinations can lead to acute panic reactions when the mental
effects cannot be controlled and when the user wishes to end the drug-induced state.
While these panic reactions more often than not are resolved successfully over time,
prolonged anxiety and psychotic reactions have been reported.
The mental effects can cause psychotic crises and compound existing psychiatric problems.
> Also as I am not a drug dealer I fail to see how you get to accuse me of
> being a booze trading european.
It gets worse!
Since you see nothing wrong with consumption of drugs its a no-brainer that
you'd see nothing with production either (for you can't have one without the other)
Given yet another century, you'd easily be a greedy English merchant helping prosecute
the Opium war.
> It would however be a fair analogy to suggest
> you would be in favor of going in with guns and draggin all the indians who buy liqour into jail.
Ha, of course not. You gotta *love* the weak... i.e. help them, talk to them, rehab them.
As for the exploitative European booze pushers - warn them off, and if they don't listen, lock
them up. Not that I object to liquor *in moderation*, but that societies
that have not seen been exposed to it before must be helped to learn to handle it responsibly.
BTW, you don't much fit the profile of the utilitarian described at the top of the post.
> this is mostly a result of legal and economic
> consequences of the drug war.
Do drugs destroy people? Yes, drugs *do* destroy people by making them *slaves*to*the*drug*habit*. Do you condone slavery? Why do you oppose the government clamping down on extremely addictive drugs then?
My point briefly is this:
Hey, maybe you're a "liberal". Maybe you say that "Hands-off! People are solely responsible for what they do to their own bodies"
Hey, just maybe, a few centuries back, you'd be one of those unsavory Europeans making a fortune trading booze to native Americans.
A true liberal is kind and loving to people. You probably are a fake liberal - the type who puts his own desires first and assuages your own conscience by throwing money at problems... yours and other's tax dollars.
It's good to know this tablet can measure pressure -- but it would be nice if touch screens recognized multiple SIMULTANEOUS points of contact. All the touchscreens I've 'touched' only function as a type of mouse (i.e. use a single contact point to define single pointer location). If screens could measure touch points across the entire screen simultaneously, they could be used to select text quickly (think of a 'pick' action), recognize gestures ('twisting' an on-screen knob), or even recognize the *shape* of your hand (the coolest yet most insecure biometric authentication ever! :-). Seriously though, the age of the mouse seems to passing and touch screens should provide more than just a single 'mouse-point' reading.
PS: From what I gather, resistive touch screens look more promising than capacitive ones... This page explains why