Hey, if he could joke "Last Post" then we can too.
Karma-whoring article text: Tuesday, November 16, 2004, 10:43
"Last post?"
Hi folks. If you're reading this, I thank you. Perhaps you'll have a role
to play in bringing about the miracle that I desperately need. First, I'd
like to apologize for the lack of updates lately in Slackware -current and
stable... I know there are a few outstanding issues that need to be
addressed. However, I've been too sick to work for a couple of weeks and
now I am away from my computers and at my parents' house in Fargo, North
Dakota where my only online access is through an AOL dialup. I have told
only a select few people about what's going on thinking that I did not want
the internet at large to know about this, that I'd get it taken care of
and get back on track without a major problem. Now, I'm hoping that this
will get seen by a lot of people and that if it hits Slashdot that some
kind medical geek will help save my life.
I've generally been a pretty healthy guy. Nobody I know would characterize
me as a hypochondriac by any stretch, so when I raise an alarm it tends to
be for real. I'm going to give a timeline and run through all the
symptoms I've had (so if that sort of thing grosses you out, you can stop
reading right now). For the rest of you, here goes. This is going to be
long, but hopefully somebody who can help will read it...
This all began quite some time ago, perhaps as long ago as May of 2001.
I was preparing Slackware 8.0 for release and working really hard. A pain
developed in my shoulder, and (too busy to do anything about it right
away) I ignored it and continued to keep working. It got to be pretty
bad and one afternoon in early June I was rushed to the emergency room
at a hospital in Concord, California. I was sweating, feverish, with a
weak pulse of around 50, experiencing chills and seeming to be on the
verge of passing out. The doctor who saw me did a chest X-ray and didn't
think it was too unusual. I was told it was probably bronchitis and was
sent home with a presription for ciprofloxacin which mostly cleared up
the problem. Still the pain in my shoulder seemed to vaguely remain.
By mid October of 2001, I was in bad shape again. My parents asked me
what I wanted for my birthday and I told them some more Cipro. They
found someone who was able to help me out with a 60 day supply (no small
task as this was right after the infamous Anthrax mailings when all the
newspapers were running articles about Cipro and people were trying to
horde it). I finished the two month course of antibiotics and felt
better. Not perfect, but significantly improved. I chalked the events
of 2001 up to stress, but in retrospect I am not so sure. I had
similar problems in 2002 and 2003 that were also knocked back with some
antibiotics, but the pain in my left upper back (and some kind of
"presence" there) never did fully clear up. Tests for TB came back
negative.
Fast forward to May of this year. I found myself complaining about "my
usual pain", as I had started to call it, more and more. I was starting
to wonder if I was even going to be able to make my annual camping trip
out in western New York state at the beginning of July, but I did go.
I figured the sun and a little exercise would do me some good, and I
did feel a little less like I was "fixin' to die," but upon my return
to California things started to do downhill for me again. This whole
time I was coughing up some strange stuff. Some of it was white and
reminded me of dental plaque. In spite of being a dentist's son I've
never had the best oral hygiene so I'm familiar with plaque. The
"plaque" I was getting out of my lungs was some nasty stuff and
smelled just like dental floss used after a couple of days without
brushing. Yeah, I know I should be better about that, but tend to
stay up late and if my wife is already asleep don't always turn the
light on and wake her up so I can brush before bed. To help me avoid
more tooth decay my dad bought me
You and I disagree completely on moving out to find work. If you have to, you will. The problem here is that they don't have to. Wefare has turned a bad situation into a bad situation with superglue.
Well, I don't think welfare is the agent to blame here. Consider some of the people who move off the rez - a lot of them fail (we'll get to why in a moment), so where are they going to go? Like most people, back to their families (who happen to live on the rez). The people who stay and watch their friends or family leave see only very few "make it" (and some who do "make it" want to come back to the rez to try and help their tribe in multiple ways), and see a lot of them fail - what do they see and think? "Well, if they can't do it, then there is no hope for me."
From Another Post: The "poor baby" approach doesn't work. We know it doesn't work, there isn't a welfare ghetto in the country that has turned into a half-decent success story without "urban renewal", AKA "we're throwing all you lowlives outa here." And all that does is move the problem somewhere else.
So first you say that they should move off the rez to find jobs, then you say that moving the problem around doesn't work? Do you have a solution that doesn't contradict itself?
I think the better question is "Why do these people end up failing?" It has nothing to do with the desire to be on welfare 'cause it's easy. It has more to do with the lack of education, the lack of employment opportunities nearby, and the hopelessness of that situation. (I'd like to hear more about the educational "assistance" programs available to Indian students that you mention in another post - have some more info on that?) I think to say that "they want to be that way" is insulting to say the least, and that you're missing out on some of the larger social forces that prevent people from getting out of that cycle of poverty.
Let me ask you this then: What other options do people have? When unemployment on some reservations reaches past 30% to 75%, it's has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with whether they're on welfare - they're on welfare because they have no jobs and no jobs available for them.
Don't give me that "pull yourself up by your bootstraps, move away from the rez" stuff, because it doesn't work like that. You can't take care of your family, let alone get a better education to get a better job, because you have no money. More than 50% of all Americans live within 50 miles of their birthplace anyway. How much do you think that has to do with employment and educational opportunities?
If that's truly the case, then we should probably just toss the whole rez idea in the trash - because keeping their culture is too expensive for them.
Oh, of course, the original purpose of the reservation was to keep the culture intact (as you implied there) and not the government's attempt to starve them off and kill them all.
You're spot on with the Bobo doll study comments, but I'd like to add one thing about the catharsis: One of the big reasons that catharsis is not recommended any more in the treatment of people with anger problems (for example, something like: "if you get angry, instead of hitting your kids, go hit a pillow until you don't feel angry anymore") is that people become habituated to that stimulus - they require something a little more to have the same effect (so the pillow becomes something harder, or they hit the pillow more, and pretty soon they'll escalate up from there to stabbing someone to a knife. Maybe an exaggeration, but you get the idea).
So I guess that the lesson is to learn better ways to handle violence than with violence pointed in another direction.
Hey, speaking of solving problems, I know there have got to have been some other slashdotters who have commented on your sig - Dr. Spock was some sort of child psychologist in the 70's, and Mr. Spock was from Star Trek. Are you really quoting the Dr. in your sig, or are you quoting the Leonard Nimoy character?
I said it before in another thread, quoting another slashdotter:
Do I think most of my fellow citizens know what the hell's going on? No, actually, I think most of them are idiots. But experience teaches us that the various kinds of idiocy tend to cancel out, and democracy (or at least a reasonable facsimile -- US democratic republicanism, the UK parliamentary system, et al.) gives the genuinely good ideas the best chance of emerging from the muck and mire.
I'm going to cut and paste another statement about why it's important for EVERYONE TO VOTE. I think it's fairly insightful. (Bold emphasis in quote added.)
Do I think most of my fellow citizens know what the hell's going on? No, actually, I think most of them are idiots. But experience teaches us that the various kinds of idiocy tend to cancel out, and democracy (or at least a reasonable facsimile -- US democratic republicanism, the UK parliamentary system, et al.) gives the genuinely good ideas the best chance of emerging from the muck and mire.
Of course, now someone will mod you up for being insightful - just because they hadn't considered encypting their toaster crumbs for their privacy yet.:)
[sarcasm] Go RIAA! Way to sue some people who are unlikely to be able to defend themselves. You truly have a gigantic collective business mind. [/sarcasm]
Seriously, when will this business model of suing some of your most interested customers cease? When the weather report in Hell changes?
Well, why not go all out with the genetic modifiers? Forget just neutered/spayed, make it genetically impossible for them to breed. That'd push the difficulty bar for "illegal cat copying" (AKA "breeding") just that much higher.
Announcer: This is Boris, a hardworking Russian music pirate. Every day he is on the streets, twelve, fourteen, or even fifteen hours, hawking his burned CDs of the latest hit albums
now, all you have to do is change "Boris" to "Dave" and "Russian" to "American" and I think you might have a winner there.;)
Thanks for linking to the Mandrake builds, it seems like it has a lot of interesting potential - however, I'm having a terrible time finding documentation, particularly about starting it up with just a command line... any suggestions about where to look for more information (aside from google) would be appreciated.
On top of the other comments that tell you "Firefox won't stop users from downloading and installing other programs," one of the problems that the original poster mentioned was that he has to deploy it over a large network. last I heard, Firefox, while wonderful for most users, still is a bit more difficult to deploy across the whole network.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, if he could joke "Last Post" then we can too.
Karma-whoring article text:
Tuesday, November 16, 2004, 10:43
"Last post?"
Hi folks. If you're reading this, I thank you. Perhaps you'll have a role to play in bringing about the miracle that I desperately need. First, I'd like to apologize for the lack of updates lately in Slackware -current and stable... I know there are a few outstanding issues that need to be addressed. However, I've been too sick to work for a couple of weeks and now I am away from my computers and at my parents' house in Fargo, North Dakota where my only online access is through an AOL dialup. I have told only a select few people about what's going on thinking that I did not want the internet at large to know about this, that I'd get it taken care of and get back on track without a major problem. Now, I'm hoping that this will get seen by a lot of people and that if it hits Slashdot that some kind medical geek will help save my life.
I've generally been a pretty healthy guy. Nobody I know would characterize me as a hypochondriac by any stretch, so when I raise an alarm it tends to be for real. I'm going to give a timeline and run through all the symptoms I've had (so if that sort of thing grosses you out, you can stop reading right now). For the rest of you, here goes. This is going to be long, but hopefully somebody who can help will read it...
This all began quite some time ago, perhaps as long ago as May of 2001. I was preparing Slackware 8.0 for release and working really hard. A pain developed in my shoulder, and (too busy to do anything about it right away) I ignored it and continued to keep working. It got to be pretty bad and one afternoon in early June I was rushed to the emergency room at a hospital in Concord, California. I was sweating, feverish, with a weak pulse of around 50, experiencing chills and seeming to be on the verge of passing out. The doctor who saw me did a chest X-ray and didn't think it was too unusual. I was told it was probably bronchitis and was sent home with a presription for ciprofloxacin which mostly cleared up the problem. Still the pain in my shoulder seemed to vaguely remain. By mid October of 2001, I was in bad shape again. My parents asked me what I wanted for my birthday and I told them some more Cipro. They found someone who was able to help me out with a 60 day supply (no small task as this was right after the infamous Anthrax mailings when all the newspapers were running articles about Cipro and people were trying to horde it). I finished the two month course of antibiotics and felt better. Not perfect, but significantly improved. I chalked the events of 2001 up to stress, but in retrospect I am not so sure. I had similar problems in 2002 and 2003 that were also knocked back with some antibiotics, but the pain in my left upper back (and some kind of "presence" there) never did fully clear up. Tests for TB came back negative.
Fast forward to May of this year. I found myself complaining about "my usual pain", as I had started to call it, more and more. I was starting to wonder if I was even going to be able to make my annual camping trip out in western New York state at the beginning of July, but I did go. I figured the sun and a little exercise would do me some good, and I did feel a little less like I was "fixin' to die," but upon my return to California things started to do downhill for me again. This whole time I was coughing up some strange stuff. Some of it was white and reminded me of dental plaque. In spite of being a dentist's son I've never had the best oral hygiene so I'm familiar with plaque. The "plaque" I was getting out of my lungs was some nasty stuff and smelled just like dental floss used after a couple of days without brushing. Yeah, I know I should be better about that, but tend to stay up late and if my wife is already asleep don't always turn the light on and wake her up so I can brush before bed. To help me avoid more tooth decay my dad bought me
Reality is that which, when you ignore it, does not go away.
;)
Applying some slashdot logic here:
So if I'm playing Halo2 and ignoring my girlfiend, and she goes away, does that mean she's not real?
Oh wait, I'm posting on slashdot. I think I answered my own question.
Since when did CowboyNeal start getting all the sexy chicks?
You and I disagree completely on moving out to find work. If you have to, you will. The problem here is that they don't have to. Wefare has turned a bad situation into a bad situation with superglue.
Well, I don't think welfare is the agent to blame here. Consider some of the people who move off the rez - a lot of them fail (we'll get to why in a moment), so where are they going to go? Like most people, back to their families (who happen to live on the rez). The people who stay and watch their friends or family leave see only very few "make it" (and some who do "make it" want to come back to the rez to try and help their tribe in multiple ways), and see a lot of them fail - what do they see and think? "Well, if they can't do it, then there is no hope for me."
From Another Post: The "poor baby" approach doesn't work. We know it doesn't work, there isn't a welfare ghetto in the country that has turned into a half-decent success story without "urban renewal", AKA "we're throwing all you lowlives outa here." And all that does is move the problem somewhere else.
So first you say that they should move off the rez to find jobs, then you say that moving the problem around doesn't work? Do you have a solution that doesn't contradict itself?
I think the better question is "Why do these people end up failing?" It has nothing to do with the desire to be on welfare 'cause it's easy. It has more to do with the lack of education, the lack of employment opportunities nearby, and the hopelessness of that situation. (I'd like to hear more about the educational "assistance" programs available to Indian students that you mention in another post - have some more info on that?) I think to say that "they want to be that way" is insulting to say the least, and that you're missing out on some of the larger social forces that prevent people from getting out of that cycle of poverty.
Let me ask you this then: What other options do people have? When unemployment on some reservations reaches past 30% to 75%, it's has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with whether they're on welfare - they're on welfare because they have no jobs and no jobs available for them.
Don't give me that "pull yourself up by your bootstraps, move away from the rez" stuff, because it doesn't work like that. You can't take care of your family, let alone get a better education to get a better job, because you have no money. More than 50% of all Americans live within 50 miles of their birthplace anyway. How much do you think that has to do with employment and educational opportunities?
If that's truly the case, then we should probably just toss the whole rez idea in the trash - because keeping their culture is too expensive for them.
Oh, of course, the original purpose of the reservation was to keep the culture intact (as you implied there) and not the government's attempt to starve them off and kill them all.
Monopoly - since 1934, over 5 billion little green houses have been built!
I thought metric time already invented?
:)
Or at least it was at the time of this posting: 41.911 UMT.
Heh, the best thing about that letter, and most jokes, is that there is a little element of truth to it. Thanks for posting it up.
You're spot on with the Bobo doll study comments, but I'd like to add one thing about the catharsis: One of the big reasons that catharsis is not recommended any more in the treatment of people with anger problems (for example, something like: "if you get angry, instead of hitting your kids, go hit a pillow until you don't feel angry anymore") is that people become habituated to that stimulus - they require something a little more to have the same effect (so the pillow becomes something harder, or they hit the pillow more, and pretty soon they'll escalate up from there to stabbing someone to a knife. Maybe an exaggeration, but you get the idea).
So I guess that the lesson is to learn better ways to handle violence than with violence pointed in another direction.
I wonder then, is he just doing that to get slashdotter's attention and make their brains explode? ;) Good strategy.
Hey, speaking of solving problems, I know there have got to have been some other slashdotters who have commented on your sig - Dr. Spock was some sort of child psychologist in the 70's, and Mr. Spock was from Star Trek. Are you really quoting the Dr. in your sig, or are you quoting the Leonard Nimoy character?
I think this is an interesting point, and would mod it up myself if I had any points to give.
Particularly, I'd like to hear if other viewpoints about that fact....
I said it before in another thread, quoting another slashdotter:
Do I think most of my fellow citizens know what the hell's going on? No, actually, I think most of them are idiots. But experience teaches us that the various kinds of idiocy tend to cancel out, and democracy (or at least a reasonable facsimile -- US democratic republicanism, the UK parliamentary system, et al.) gives the genuinely good ideas the best chance of emerging from the muck and mire.
...so I continue for everyone to vote regardless.
I'm going to cut and paste another statement about why it's important for EVERYONE TO VOTE. I think it's fairly insightful. (Bold emphasis in quote added.)
Do I think most of my fellow citizens know what the hell's going on? No, actually, I think most of them are idiots. But experience teaches us that the various kinds of idiocy tend to cancel out, and democracy (or at least a reasonable facsimile -- US democratic republicanism, the UK parliamentary system, et al.) gives the genuinely good ideas the best chance of emerging from the muck and mire.
Remember that in the end, all politics are local.
;)
So can we have the rest of the world vote in this "local" election? Please?
Of course, now someone will mod you up for being insightful - just because they hadn't considered encypting their toaster crumbs for their privacy yet. :)
Slackware on a machine is usually 50% or more faster than the fedora,redhat,mandrake
Please report to the following website: Gentoo Is for Ricers and join their well-informed masses.
[sarcasm]
Go RIAA! Way to sue some people who are unlikely to be able to defend themselves. You truly have a gigantic collective business mind.
[/sarcasm]
Seriously, when will this business model of suing some of your most interested customers cease? When the weather report in Hell changes?
I got to say, I like the unintentional (or perhaps intentional) pun of the suject line. =P
Do you seriously think that Bush doesn't have support from the people of the US?
;) )
Oh, Bush certainly has support from the people of the United States.
Just not the majority. (Cue rant about the Electoral College, and their lack of a good football team.
Well, why not go all out with the genetic modifiers? Forget just neutered/spayed, make it genetically impossible for them to breed. That'd push the difficulty bar for "illegal cat copying" (AKA "breeding") just that much higher.
Announcer: This is Boris, a hardworking Russian music pirate. Every day he is on the streets, twelve, fourteen, or even fifteen hours, hawking his burned CDs of the latest hit albums
;)
now, all you have to do is change "Boris" to "Dave" and "Russian" to "American" and I think you might have a winner there.
Thanks for linking to the Mandrake builds, it seems like it has a lot of interesting potential - however, I'm having a terrible time finding documentation, particularly about starting it up with just a command line... any suggestions about where to look for more information (aside from google) would be appreciated.
On top of the other comments that tell you "Firefox won't stop users from downloading and installing other programs," one of the problems that the original poster mentioned was that he has to deploy it over a large network. last I heard, Firefox, while wonderful for most users, still is a bit more difficult to deploy across the whole network.