If people don't want their comments to be used in place x or place y or even place z, then let them add that line to their user preferences, where it can be appended with every.sig. That takes care of the issue and keeps from adding yet another bloated feature to slashdot (I'm not suggesting slashdot features are bloated -- most are cool.. but this one is redundant).
If you registered your domain before NSI claimed the rights which they currently are asserting, then you are only bound by the obligations of the contract at that time. If you renew your domain name with them, though -- you will be subject to the new contract.
I don't have a credit card unfortunately, but I'm going to see if I can get my webhost or someone else to transfer my domains as soon as possible. I'm fed-up with NSI and all the problems I've seen them cause people I know. It's rediculous that something so simple should be so complex.
NSI acts as if they're god's gift to the internet and hopefully they'll find themselves bending over to AOL as just another luser concept that only people with AOL accounts would bother to use. NSI and AOL deserve each other. --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
NSI applies the new contract to you only after you register for another year. Until then, you are bound by the contract in effect when you first signed up.
However, we all know how much trouble NSI can cause someone who just wants to transfer a domain name. --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
Okay, I've registered a couple domains a couple years ago... With NSI.
They claim they own the names now, right?
So if I try to transfer registration to a more legitimate registration service, they just say "nope, you can't do that -- we own it!".
What still confuses me is how they can say they own that domain? What if another domain name service had registered the domain for you instead of NSI? There is a serious logic-gap that I'm finding difficult to even explain here. Something akin to saying a phone company saying "every time someone makes a phone call, we own the rights to the conversation that took place on it" or a copy-shop saying "if you use our photocopiers to make copies of any material, we assume ownership to that material automatically!", regardless of the real author or originator of the material you're photocopying.
I don't think that I made very much sense there. Apologies. But it's difficult to explain something that is so absurd. --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
Here's a suggestion for this weeks Geeks In Space homework assignment:
- Create a new account on Napster. - Make an MP3 of yourself talking about how you feel about this whole Metallica issue. - Make multiple copies of the file. - Name each copy after Metallica songs, including one that just says 'Metallica.mp3'. - Start sharing your creations on Napster.
Now let's see how they justify banning an account because Metallica says you're pirating their music , when all you're doing is talking about Metallica?
Of course, they'd probably consider that a moot point. But it was just an interesting thought. --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
Why should you? The behavior of your market can't be blamed on you.
Well, my public education apparently should not be blamed on me either. *grin*.
Yes, I meant trite. That'll teach me to preview my post while I'm on the phone with three different people with downed servers!:P --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
I don't mean to sound contrite, but is this really surprising to anyone? Didn't anybody learn anything from 1929?
Granted, it was a different time and a different scenerio, but you don't need to be an economics major to realize that people choose their investments much the way they choose their dish at an ice-cream parlor.
The goal has never been to invest in a company for their goals or their achievements, but for the potential perception the market may eventually have for them.
The market brings to my mind the warm fuzzies of Richard Smalley and the I'm Okay, You're Okay skits from Saturday Night Live. The only thing that matters is that you keep telling yourself that you're a good person, a winner, a success and that, gosh darn it, people love you.
And, in a nutshell, that's how the market of the last decade (at least) and this next decade ebbs and flows. Through self-pride and reinforced self-delusion. --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
Just lastnight, during a conversation with a co-worker, I was educated on a Japanese term called Keiretsu. The basic definition is 'A corporate, cartel, or conglomerate..
Keiretsu is a business concept barrowed from Japan where a number of companies (who are not competitors) have a common interest and therefore form an association to leverage mutual business development and cross sales. These associations rarely have the formality of either a partnership or joint venture, and are often founded on bonds of family or traditional alliances from the past. Kiretsus can manifest themselves in a number of ways, including preferential rates, cross referrals, exchange of competitive and market intelligence.
I see this as the future (actually, the present if you look at their posessions and investments) of Microsoft, should it be forced to split.
There are a dozen definitions for Open Source, I suppose -- but what Microsoft is proposing doesn't sound anything like the 'open source' that I'm familiar with.
I do not have a robust understanding of much outside of the standard GPL model, so perhaps someone else could expand on the general applications of 'Open Source' to this issue? --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
The first thing that crept into my mind when I saw the article on Slashdot was that this article would either be a completely unfounded urban-legend (like the rise in domestic violence on Superbowl-Sunday which, only in the last year or two, has the media actually started to act responsibly for and even admit that it is a completely unfounded and made-up statistic) or that it would basically have the following point:
People who are violent tend to play violent video games.
Well, duh.
This is along the same line of "Most rapists view pornography, but most viewers of pornography are not rapists"
In other words, so what if there is a correlation between violent people and video-games? What does that have to do with the rest of us? Because some kid down the street goes berserk every time he watches Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or feels violent after playing ten-zillion hours of Quake3, the rest of the world should give it up or require that every other normal kid do without the videogame?
I mean, come on here -- most murderers have eaten at McDonald's, but most people who eat at McDonald's don't commit murder.
And that's about as strong as this article's argument is. --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
This is the first I've heard of his death and I have to say that it really makes me feel sad. I'm not aware of much that he's done outside of PKZIP, but I sure remember using ZIP for everything online (especially when a 2400 baud modem was considered fast and a zipped file could half your online time).
Huffman, Postel, Stevens . . . Now P.W. Katz. I feel guilty for not ever considering any of these people beyond what their program does or does not do for me -- or how I benefitted from their books, until after their death. To think that while we're all out there unzipping our latest copy of the Jargon file or stashing a bunch of porn in a password protected ZIP file, this guy was suffering a serious problem which eventually took his life at the age of *thirty-seven*.
I'm only 22. I spend all my time working at a desk. I haven't been in-shape for almost six years. I could be next. I could be next and I haven't offered a damn thing to the computer or internet community. These people -- and many others, have.
I hope that we'll remember these things in subsequent posts in reply to this article. The last thing we need is another disgustingly barbaric replay of the posts we saw when W. Richard Stevens died.
How is breaking Microsoft into a bunch of small companies supposed to change anything? Forgive my simplistic view, but for the last few months, I've been trying to figure out how that's any different than telling your average Joe Blow that he has too much money. So you tell him that he must divide it up into 10 savings accounts.
Doesn't he still have the same amount of money as before?
Doesn't cutting Microsoft into several smaller companies give them even more room for growth and maneuverability? And are we supposed to believe that the companies are not going to communicate with each other throughout operations? --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
What is the ratio of men to women that use it for their daily pr0n needs? Certainly there are some women who are using it for that role, but probably not enough. It's unfortunate that the Internet is being so grossly misused for this "business" stuff and this "life enchancement" stuff.
Sure, maybe Suzy Q can find out how to contact her congressman, where the local Red Cross is or what the gross national product of Madagascar is, but little Johnny can point and click his way to an abundance of naked flesh faster than you can say "grab your peripherals".
It really is a good thing that more ChickClickers as Jon so quaintly labeled then, are pouring onto the Net. Anything that improves the chances of Joe Six-Pac's IRC cybersex being with a real flesh and blood female is a good thing.
To say the least, I'm disapointed that so much is being thrown around about this guy as if he were some sleezy Hollywood star. I don't see what sexual indiscretions have to do with his departure from the company and the rampant speculation we've heard in the last twelve or so hours seems to impune him without reasonable cause -- just for a juicy tidbit here or there around the water-cooler or a little fodder for an online site.
This is also pure speculation on my part, but I'm starting to wonder who inside of LinuxCare suddenly turned into a shark and decided to pull all the punches to dump this Sarrat out on his rear-end. This smacks of foul play if you ask me and I doubt Sarrat truly deserves the bum wrap he's getting.
I hope this doesn't tarnish him in any way and his record stands on its own enough to enable him to do greater and grander things in the near future. --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
Hey, now there's an idea. Robin Williams cross-dressing as a woman to get into an over-crowded Federation Academy that doesn't have any male enrollments available.
Or Robin Williams as Patch Adams, replacing The Doctor.
Perhaps Robin Williams, military radio broadcaster on duty in Cardassia during a Federation war in Good Morning, Cardassia!?
Maybe they'll just go with a guy who's not far off from Robin Williams -- John Lithgow. They'll do StarTrek: 12th rock from the 3rd sun and the entire crew will masquarade as natives of some planet by meshing in with their society and living in an overcrowded house with some over-the-hill sit-com star -- or Tine Daily.
Or how about revising his role from What Dreams May Come, by playing a Federation captain who has met up with all the other dead StarTrek crews and cast members on the other side? It could be called StarTrek: The Afterlife. --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
First, I just wanna say that I'd rather see re-runs of Dr. Who on my local stations again. They used to be on PBS/OPB in Portland until about six years ago. Seems like it's only in a few markets these days. Ten times better than any of the StarTrek series, in my opinion.
Anyway . ..
I'm not a big StarTrek fan to begin with. I'll watch an episode every few months, but I don't even turn on the tube on a weekly basis, let alone to watch any of the various Star Trek versions.
The only StarTrek I really ever got into was The Next Generation. This seems to be a rather unpopular choice, but something about the characters and the interaction and the in-depth characters (but not too deep) made it compelling enough that I'll even watch an occasional re-run of it if it happens to be on late at night.
A lot of the success of each version of spin-off appears to sit with the cast of characters. It's a hit or miss operation and I don't think there's any way to really pre-define it. Everything since TNG has catered to a corny mix of some type of alien guy, some type of hot-but-not-human-female, some unemotional (or incapable of emotion, but attempting) form of life (such as Spock, Data, Otto), at least one minority (only a complaint because they seem to so painfully cater to the need for a minority character instead of really allowing them a full, rich, robust character of whatever race with a true purpose and utility to the show), a woman in power, a Klingon, a Vulcan and an overly intelligent kid.
I think the Federation idea is an interesting one. I've sort of grown tired of the tedious "ship out in space finding stuff" plot-lines and wouldn't mind seeing something sort of like "The West Wing" done StarTrek style.
By the way, you have to love 'The Doctor's pitches for potential series ideas in the end of the article.
All in all, you know that half of the known world is going to tune into the first episode, no matter what. Half of that will return for the next episode. Half of that will probably hang around for a year or two. And maybe, if the show is extremely well done, half of those people will stick around through the series.
I'll probably be one of the guys who catches a few episodes and then forgets what night the show is even on.
Heh. I like the Linux idea though. "Captain Tux, I have the Cardassian ship on hailing frequencies." --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
Right, but claiming and having are two different things. TriStrata made a claim but offered no substantial proof on which to rely. When was the last time you took Microsoft seriously when they claimed their NT Servers are "extremely secure"? Same thing here, more or less. --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
And even things that really are stupid aren't necessarily poor investments. Witness eBay and Amazon and any of another thousand sites that have IPO'd. --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
Yes, I understand the dilemma. But then how is saying "anyone who has waves of contradictory emotion should be considered a suicide or violence risk" any different than saying "anyone in this school who wears a black trench-coat and listens to KMFDM should be considered a risk"?
There are a lot of moody people -- people who are even capable of really making you feel weird by their mental station, who are no nearer to violence or suicide than your average Joe Schmoe.
Being an agnostic, it isn't exactly like I spend a lot of time in a church, but I know quite a few Christian's who are taking medications for mental illness and attend church regulary. If anything, I can see a lot more reason to be depressed and want to kill yourself precisely because of religion.
I've never quite understood the reasoning behind people who negate the reality of some diseases. They remind me of people who claim that a woman who is raped is just getting what she deserves for her revealing clothing or flirtatious attitude.
Are these people so dense that they actually believe everyone is just lying about the fact that they have true mental illnesses? Yes, I believe that there is a huge number of people who are misdiagnosed and welcome the label of whatever sickness they supposedly have with open arms, even though they're nothing more than people who maybe have a different range of emotion and things effect them differently. I would even argue that most severe bouts of depression are not worth treating with psychology and drugs (well, unless it's life threatening of course). But to suggest that everyone needs to "get over it" and "find god"? Whoa. --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
Ah, but misdiagnosed people with labels spat upon them from some coffee-table shrink may very well do both of those things, because they fall within the range of non-clinical insanity. Those who ride the wide spectrum of emotions and conditions without necessarily coming to a level of impending suicide or violence.
Hence the entire (apparently missed, but that's my fault) point of my post.
Just because you're happy at 3:30 and sad at 3:45 and happy again at 4:00 doesn't mean you're suddenly bipolar. Even if the emotions are to extremes. If they are routine, severe and are devistating your life -- then that's something to be concerned with and of course, medical treatment should be sought.
Now, one thing I do question is this: Where does the line lay which seperates one from experiencing a raw, painful bout of human emotional suffering and "sickness"? Is not even the most extreme flux of feelings still human? The only reason to treat it should seemingly be to save life (which perhaps could not be done before). And to this end, having such a bipolar capacity does not make one insane to begin with. Insane, in my mind, indicates something greater such as schizophrenic paranoia and halucination.
But such conditions draw away from emotion and move into percieved realities of one's mind. Talking to people who are not there and scrathing through your skin to your bare bone to satsify your need to keep clean is an illness. Clearly. But having frequent and contradictory emotional variations to the point of great sadness and elation are simple human emotions, to a magnified degree. I'm not certain (in most cases) that this qualifies as a disease or a true illness (I know that statement will possibly offend some people).
I'm also not yet convinced that the urge to commit suicide is an indication of an illness. A man who loses everything in the stock market and slits his wrist is not insane or sick. And if someone's entire family were murdered and they suddenly felt so depressed that they were near suicide, I would be hesitant to call that a disease or sickness. The compelling need in some situations to end your grief is obviously serving some underlying human function, just like blocking bad memories.
But now I'm rambling on and likely confusing everyone. But I'm not a professional psychiatrist or a professional mental patient. And I've also never written a book on mental health, had my book pimped on Oprah or had my quiz on "10 signs to tell if you need prozac" published in Redbook or the Ladies Home Journal. --- icq:2057699 seumas.com
Slashdot Mirror
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com
I don't have a credit card unfortunately, but I'm going to see if I can get my webhost or someone else to transfer my domains as soon as possible. I'm fed-up with NSI and all the problems I've seen them cause people I know. It's rediculous that something so simple should be so complex.
NSI acts as if they're god's gift to the internet and hopefully they'll find themselves bending over to AOL as just another luser concept that only people with AOL accounts would bother to use. NSI and AOL deserve each other.
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com
However, we all know how much trouble NSI can cause someone who just wants to transfer a domain name.
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com
They claim they own the names now, right?
So if I try to transfer registration to a more legitimate registration service, they just say "nope, you can't do that -- we own it!".
What still confuses me is how they can say they own that domain? What if another domain name service had registered the domain for you instead of NSI? There is a serious logic-gap that I'm finding difficult to even explain here. Something akin to saying a phone company saying "every time someone makes a phone call, we own the rights to the conversation that took place on it" or a copy-shop saying "if you use our photocopiers to make copies of any material, we assume ownership to that material automatically!", regardless of the real author or originator of the material you're photocopying.
I don't think that I made very much sense there. Apologies. But it's difficult to explain something that is so absurd.
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com
- Create a new account on Napster.
- Make an MP3 of yourself talking about how you feel about this whole Metallica issue.
- Make multiple copies of the file.
- Name each copy after Metallica songs, including one that just says 'Metallica.mp3'.
- Start sharing your creations on Napster.
Now let's see how they justify banning an account because Metallica says you're pirating their music , when all you're doing is talking about Metallica?
Of course, they'd probably consider that a moot point. But it was just an interesting thought.
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com
Okay. No I wasn't. ;)
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com
Well, my public education apparently should not be blamed on me either. *grin*.
Yes, I meant trite. That'll teach me to preview my post while I'm on the phone with three different people with downed servers! :P
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com
Granted, it was a different time and a different scenerio, but you don't need to be an economics major to realize that people choose their investments much the way they choose their dish at an ice-cream parlor.
The goal has never been to invest in a company for their goals or their achievements, but for the potential perception the market may eventually have for them.
The market brings to my mind the warm fuzzies of Richard Smalley and the I'm Okay, You're Okay skits from Saturday Night Live. The only thing that matters is that you keep telling yourself that you're a good person, a winner, a success and that, gosh darn it, people love you.
And, in a nutshell, that's how the market of the last decade (at least) and this next decade ebbs and flows. Through self-pride and reinforced self-delusion.
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com
Keiretsu is a business concept barrowed from Japan where a number of companies (who are not competitors) have a common interest and therefore form an association to leverage mutual business development and cross sales. These associations rarely have the formality of either a partnership or joint venture, and are often founded on bonds of family or traditional alliances from the past. Kiretsus can manifest themselves in a number of ways, including preferential rates, cross referrals, exchange of competitive and market intelligence.
I see this as the future (actually, the present if you look at their posessions and investments) of Microsoft, should it be forced to split.
Much more information on Keiretus is available at http://www.corpwatch.org/ trac/feature/planet/japan_k.html
Also see http://www.businessforum.com/keiretsu.ht ml
http://www.redherring.com/mag/i ssue51/american.html
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com
I do not have a robust understanding of much outside of the standard GPL model, so perhaps someone else could expand on the general applications of 'Open Source' to this issue?
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com
The first thing that crept into my mind when I saw the article on Slashdot was that this article would either be a completely unfounded urban-legend (like the rise in domestic violence on Superbowl-Sunday which, only in the last year or two, has the media actually started to act responsibly for and even admit that it is a completely unfounded and made-up statistic) or that it would basically have the following point:
People who are violent tend to play violent video games.
Well, duh.
This is along the same line of "Most rapists view pornography, but most viewers of pornography are not rapists"
In other words, so what if there is a correlation between violent people and video-games? What does that have to do with the rest of us? Because some kid down the street goes berserk every time he watches Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or feels violent after playing ten-zillion hours of Quake3, the rest of the world should give it up or require that every other normal kid do without the videogame?
I mean, come on here -- most murderers have eaten at McDonald's, but most people who eat at McDonald's don't commit murder.
And that's about as strong as this article's argument is.
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com
Huffman, Postel, Stevens . . . Now P.W. Katz. I feel guilty for not ever considering any of these people beyond what their program does or does not do for me -- or how I benefitted from their books, until after their death. To think that while we're all out there unzipping our latest copy of the Jargon file or stashing a bunch of porn in a password protected ZIP file, this guy was suffering a serious problem which eventually took his life at the age of *thirty-seven*.
I'm only 22. I spend all my time working at a desk. I haven't been in-shape for almost six years. I could be next. I could be next and I haven't offered a damn thing to the computer or internet community. These people -- and many others, have.
I hope that we'll remember these things in subsequent posts in reply to this article. The last thing we need is another disgustingly barbaric replay of the posts we saw when W. Richard Stevens died.
I hope you have peace, Phillip.
W. Richard Stevens Slashdot Article
W. Richard Stevens Home Page
David Huffman Slashdot Article
Jon Postel Slashdot Article
Jon Postel's Home Page
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com
Doesn't he still have the same amount of money as before?
Doesn't cutting Microsoft into several smaller companies give them even more room for growth and maneuverability? And are we supposed to believe that the companies are not going to communicate with each other throughout operations?
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com
Read the whole article before jumping to conclusions next time.
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com
They may use the Internet, but . . .
What is the ratio of men to women that use it for their daily pr0n needs? Certainly there are some women who are using it for that role, but probably not enough. It's unfortunate that the Internet is being so grossly misused for this "business" stuff and this "life enchancement" stuff.
Sure, maybe Suzy Q can find out how to contact her congressman, where the local Red Cross is or what the gross national product of Madagascar is, but little Johnny can point and click his way to an abundance of naked flesh faster than you can say "grab your peripherals".
It really is a good thing that more ChickClickers as Jon so quaintly labeled then, are pouring onto the Net. Anything that improves the chances of Joe Six-Pac's IRC cybersex being with a real flesh and blood female is a good thing.
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com
This is also pure speculation on my part, but I'm starting to wonder who inside of LinuxCare suddenly turned into a shark and decided to pull all the punches to dump this Sarrat out on his rear-end. This smacks of foul play if you ask me and I doubt Sarrat truly deserves the bum wrap he's getting.
I hope this doesn't tarnish him in any way and his record stands on its own enough to enable him to do greater and grander things in the near future.
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com
That's the whole point.
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com
Hey, now there's an idea. Robin Williams cross-dressing as a woman to get into an over-crowded Federation Academy that doesn't have any male enrollments available.
Or Robin Williams as Patch Adams, replacing The Doctor.
Perhaps Robin Williams, military radio broadcaster on duty in Cardassia during a Federation war in Good Morning, Cardassia!?
Maybe they'll just go with a guy who's not far off from Robin Williams -- John Lithgow. They'll do StarTrek: 12th rock from the 3rd sun and the entire crew will masquarade as natives of some planet by meshing in with their society and living in an overcrowded house with some over-the-hill sit-com star -- or Tine Daily.
Or how about revising his role from What Dreams May Come, by playing a Federation captain who has met up with all the other dead StarTrek crews and cast members on the other side? It could be called StarTrek: The Afterlife.
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com
Anyway . . .
I'm not a big StarTrek fan to begin with. I'll watch an episode every few months, but I don't even turn on the tube on a weekly basis, let alone to watch any of the various Star Trek versions.
The only StarTrek I really ever got into was The Next Generation. This seems to be a rather unpopular choice, but something about the characters and the interaction and the in-depth characters (but not too deep) made it compelling enough that I'll even watch an occasional re-run of it if it happens to be on late at night.
A lot of the success of each version of spin-off appears to sit with the cast of characters. It's a hit or miss operation and I don't think there's any way to really pre-define it. Everything since TNG has catered to a corny mix of some type of alien guy, some type of hot-but-not-human-female, some unemotional (or incapable of emotion, but attempting) form of life (such as Spock, Data, Otto), at least one minority (only a complaint because they seem to so painfully cater to the need for a minority character instead of really allowing them a full, rich, robust character of whatever race with a true purpose and utility to the show), a woman in power, a Klingon, a Vulcan and an overly intelligent kid.
I think the Federation idea is an interesting one. I've sort of grown tired of the tedious "ship out in space finding stuff" plot-lines and wouldn't mind seeing something sort of like "The West Wing" done StarTrek style.
By the way, you have to love 'The Doctor's pitches for potential series ideas in the end of the article.
All in all, you know that half of the known world is going to tune into the first episode, no matter what. Half of that will return for the next episode. Half of that will probably hang around for a year or two. And maybe, if the show is extremely well done, half of those people will stick around through the series.
I'll probably be one of the guys who catches a few episodes and then forgets what night the show is even on.
Heh. I like the Linux idea though. "Captain Tux, I have the Cardassian ship on hailing frequencies."
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com
Right, but claiming and having are two different things. TriStrata made a claim but offered no substantial proof on which to rely. When was the last time you took Microsoft seriously when they claimed their NT Servers are "extremely secure"? Same thing here, more or less.
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com
Now that deserves an IPO!
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com
And even things that really are stupid aren't necessarily poor investments. Witness eBay and Amazon and any of another thousand sites that have IPO'd.
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com
There are a lot of moody people -- people who are even capable of really making you feel weird by their mental station, who are no nearer to violence or suicide than your average Joe Schmoe.
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com
Being an agnostic, it isn't exactly like I spend a lot of time in a church, but I know quite a few Christian's who are taking medications for mental illness and attend church regulary. If anything, I can see a lot more reason to be depressed and want to kill yourself precisely because of religion.
I've never quite understood the reasoning behind people who negate the reality of some diseases. They remind me of people who claim that a woman who is raped is just getting what she deserves for her revealing clothing or flirtatious attitude.
Are these people so dense that they actually believe everyone is just lying about the fact that they have true mental illnesses? Yes, I believe that there is a huge number of people who are misdiagnosed and welcome the label of whatever sickness they supposedly have with open arms, even though they're nothing more than people who maybe have a different range of emotion and things effect them differently. I would even argue that most severe bouts of depression are not worth treating with psychology and drugs (well, unless it's life threatening of course). But to suggest that everyone needs to "get over it" and "find god"? Whoa.
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com
Hence the entire (apparently missed, but that's my fault) point of my post.
Just because you're happy at 3:30 and sad at 3:45 and happy again at 4:00 doesn't mean you're suddenly bipolar. Even if the emotions are to extremes. If they are routine, severe and are devistating your life -- then that's something to be concerned with and of course, medical treatment should be sought.
Now, one thing I do question is this: Where does the line lay which seperates one from experiencing a raw, painful bout of human emotional suffering and "sickness"? Is not even the most extreme flux of feelings still human? The only reason to treat it should seemingly be to save life (which perhaps could not be done before). And to this end, having such a bipolar capacity does not make one insane to begin with. Insane, in my mind, indicates something greater such as schizophrenic paranoia and halucination.
But such conditions draw away from emotion and move into percieved realities of one's mind. Talking to people who are not there and scrathing through your skin to your bare bone to satsify your need to keep clean is an illness. Clearly. But having frequent and contradictory emotional variations to the point of great sadness and elation are simple human emotions, to a magnified degree. I'm not certain (in most cases) that this qualifies as a disease or a true illness (I know that statement will possibly offend some people).
I'm also not yet convinced that the urge to commit suicide is an indication of an illness. A man who loses everything in the stock market and slits his wrist is not insane or sick. And if someone's entire family were murdered and they suddenly felt so depressed that they were near suicide, I would be hesitant to call that a disease or sickness. The compelling need in some situations to end your grief is obviously serving some underlying human function, just like blocking bad memories.
But now I'm rambling on and likely confusing everyone. But I'm not a professional psychiatrist or a professional mental patient. And I've also never written a book on mental health, had my book pimped on Oprah or had my quiz on "10 signs to tell if you need prozac" published in Redbook or the Ladies Home Journal.
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