Graabein (96715) sez: "Anyone remember the USENET Death Penalty?...Let's get extreme and start dropping packets from entire/24s from which spam is originating."
Yes, I remember the UDPs well, particularly the UUNet action. I spent 48 straight hours talking to media people about it. I was the press contact. (Some stuff about it is archived at www.sputum.com).
You missed the point on how a UDP operated. Yes, there were massive cancel messages sent to control.cancel. But that would have accomplished very little. They didn;t care if their customers spammed as long as they got paid. They wouldn't have cared if their customers' spam didn't get seen as long as they got paid.
What got their attention was the media coverage. We made sure UUNet was made out to be the bad guy by providing ample evidence that they were not being a good net.neighbor and that we had made every reasonable attempt to get them to stop. They had something to lose that we could never have touched without the press being involved: their stock prices.
Spam is not just a technical problem, it's also a social problem. Therefore the solution will be both technical and social. An IDP would work, but only if it included the associated publicity. Black hole type efforts either only approach the technical end, or just fail to adequately make the necessary information public enough.
And yes, there was, and would be, collateral damage. Some innocent people were lost to usenet during the UDPs. The vast majority of email we received from those affected understood what was going on and why, and wrote to express support.
Note too that an IDP would be conducted with the same parameter of participation: 100% voluntary. Cancel messages to usenet are processed or not according to each newsadmin's choice; they control the switch on their own system. We could not, nor wanted to, force anyone's participation. The same with mailadmins who use filters or black hole lists. They choose to use them or not. They would have notice by the list's source that such an action was upcoming, as long as they paid attention to news updated coming from their filter source. If they failed to pay attention, then either they're operating irresponsibly, or they implicitly trust their filter source.
After years of weekly "fixing" of a cranky drive interface by power down/remove/reset/repower to clean the contacts, one day I forgot the power down part. I lost my favorite machine, my very first Apple II. I've never made that mistake again.
What isn't advertising on behalf of paying advertisers is advertising on behalf of RIAA member corporations. It sucks now, and increasing the dynamic range (compression being the major problem with FM music broadcast) will only make it suck with "CD-like quality".
This solves a problem I do not have. It does not solve the problems I do have. If I'm going to listen to radio, I'm going to stick with indie (read: non-RIAA affiliated) releases broadacst from a local college or public station, and those are SUPPOSED to sounds like that.
They're not really adjusting their body clocks. The human body clock is aready set to 25 hours on average, same as the Martian day. They're just not resetting their body clock to adjust to Earth time.
I'm telling you, if you buy into this evolution stuff, you have to conclude that humans originated on Mars. Why else would we be trying so hard to get back?
The more important question is, why were we sent here anyway? What'd we do wrong? Is Earth the Australia of the solar system?
hlygrail (700685) sez: "Most sleep researchers have concluded that the human body clock runs around 25 hours per cycle. The obvious conflict with our 24-hour terrestrial/lunar/solar-based clock is noticed by more than few folks who've replied already."
This is a very disturbing discrepency. The human diurnal cycle does not match the earth's rotation. If humans evolved here, you'd expect it to be 24 hours, or even less (the earth's rotation is slowing, from less than 24 hours).
Evolutionarily, we can only come to one conclusion: humans did not originate on earth. Furthermore, there is only one planet we know of that has a rotation that matches humans' 25 hour diurnal rhythm: Mars.
Don't blame ME if the facts make sense; I'm only a scientist.
Since this story was carried not very long ago, it was inevitable that someone should complain about dupes.
Complaints about dupes are probably the most duplicated thing carried by/.
Not only is this self-contradictory, but if the reader didn't see the previous story, it's not a dupe to them. And if the reader did see the previous story, and read down to the dupe complaints, they wanted to read more about it.
Now, I'm not saying my little rant about dupe complaints is in any way better in principle than the complaints themselves. But you gotta admit, it's got style.
CentrX sez: "As an aside, why is crack more addictive than powder cocaine? I was under the impression that insufflated powder cocaine would reach the brain faster than inhaled cocaine? Am I simply incorrect, or are there some other features of the respective substances?"
The common misconception is that it dissolves into the nasal membranes, and being close to the brain, it leaks in there and does its work. Not so. It has to get into the brain (that is, inside the blood/brain barrier) by being carried there by the blood, and it has to makes it way all the way to the capillaries around the brain cells.
If you snort it, it has to hit the membranes and melt, then soak in to the bloodstream, into the veins. The blood carries it to the heart, out to the lungs, back to the heart and out to the body. All the while it's mixing with other blood and getting diluted, and the concentration measured anywhere in the body goes up slower.
If it's smoked, it doesn't have to melt. It's absorbed right into the blood in the lungs, and has only one trip through the heart on its way to the body. Far less mixing, far faster delivery.
Cocaine, or any of the DA stimulants, cause a sudden out-pouring of dopamine. That's the high. But with that out-pouring, the cells doing the pouring detect the high concentration outside themselves, and shut down. They won't pump more out. The more that can get out in that first rush, before the cells shut down, the greater the effect, both in the high, and in the addictive potential.
If I recall the chemistry right, the cocaine from crack is essentially free base (it's carbonate as crack, but released with smoking), and is therefore more soluble (again, faster acting) than the typcical powdered form, the hydrochloride.
Anonymous Coward sez: "Here's hoping you never get into a position of authority. Drug prohibition is wrong, period. Prohibition is singly responsible for the mass devastation that drugs have caused in the lives of people the world over: it is prohibition that creates a black market in which thugs and thieves are allowed to murder and pillage at will... it is prohibition that deprives coca farmers of their rights... it is prohibition that leads to an addiction culture."
I agree with you in principle regarding drug prohibition. It has caused unnecessary devistation. Yet the drugs themselves also do much damage, so your "singly" is not accurate.
A.C. also sez: "It is wrong, of course, to dope your children, but, that issue is separate and needn't be enforced using clearly failed prohibition policies."
You can't have one set of laws for adults with children and another for adults without children. Eastern Virginia Medical School did a study where they found out that 67% of children that were a year or more young for their grade (i.e. had been advanced one or more grades beyond their age peers) were on speed. The only likely explanation was that their parents were dosing them so they could excell. THIS is what needs regulating. Furthermore, my concern is much more with the industry manufacturing and recommending harmful drugs when other options are safer, but less profit-making. They too need more regulation. Too many doctors are prescribing because parents ask for something, and the doctor knows that if he'she doesn't, the parents will just go elsewhere. Doctors that do so need closer regulation. Doctors should report parents who are prescription shopping on behalf of their kids, when it comes to these substances. IMO, that's child abuse.
I'm all for rational decisions by rational adults on their own behalf. But that implies they learn enough about what they're doing for the decision to be rational. I think these substances are far more harmful than the advertising says. Frankly I'd prefer they weren't manufactured at all. If they're going to be, they should be examined carefully, at ALL stages of the supply chain. And if the last stage is an adult, and they're aware what they're getting into, let them. If they get addicted, and many will, it's their own fault. In that way they will create their own freely chosen culture of addiction. And when it comes to it, plenty of people do just that now, and so prohibition itself is not solely responsible for a "culture of addiction".
jonbrewer sez: "So what do you think about Ephedrine (Metabolife)? Amphetamine (Adderall)? Should they be regulated/classified/banned? Why are they any worse than caffeine or nicotine?"
Ephedrine is rough on the body. The benefits are outweighed by the side effects. There's better ways to the same end.
IMO, amphetamines and methylphenidate (Ritalin) should be class A narcotics (yeah, I know they're not "narcotic"; it's a US goobermint category) and be heavily monitored and regulated. These things are "legal" cocaine. And even for those people who can benefit from them, there's going to be long term side effects no different from chronic use by those who don't need them. I'm afraid we're going to raise a nation of chronic depressives and possibly Parkinson's patients. I'd like to see them done away with completely. Even in the early seventies there were plenty of warnings from the drug culture itself, saying "Speed Kills". It's still true, and coming from a factory doesn't change that.
There's a new stimulant that has an entirely different mechanism and it's being used for ADHD. So far it looks to be much safer than speed.
Caffeine is one of 3 methylated xanthines, the others being theophylline and theobromine. Taking the others can serve to reduce withdrawal. Caffeine is the most addictive because it's the fastest acting of these, just as crack is the most addictive form of cocaine. You can find these chemicals in:
1. Chocolate. It has 10% of the caffiene of coffee, but contains these other also. It also contains PEA, "an endogenous neuroamine, increases attention and activity in animals" (http://www.chocolate.org/pea.htm). PEA may be the most neglected and useful of the brain amines. Chocolate makes many people just feel better; this may be why.
2. Guarana: An "herbal" (actually the inside bark of a tree) that contains all 3 of the chemicals, caffeine least. However, it can become a substitute addiction, and it costs more than chocolate. There was a soda that had guarana, but only as a flavoring, not a "suppliment". Some "power drinks" have guarana, but can also have ephedrine, which is not a good thing.
3. Foods: Caffeine acts by increasing norepinepherine (NE) levels in the brain. Take it away and NE drops. This is the mechanism of addiction. Any foods high in phenylalanine or tyrosine are good dietary precursors to replace the NE the body isn't getting now that caffeine isn't forcing its production. High phenylalanine or tyrosine foods are typically your high-protein foods, meats and fishes, dairy products, whole oats and wheat. Here's a picture of the metabolic pathway involved (http://www.life-enhancement.com/article_template. asp?ID=356). You'll notice it says "(nor)adrenalin" instead of (nor)epinepherine. Same chemicals, outside or inside the blood/brain barrier. Yeah, caffeine gives you adrenalin.
Caffeine truly is addicting. However, it is one of the weakest addictions. It's easy to break and the withdrawals are not bad. Also, it can typically be used safely by those previously addicted, without necessarily causing re-addiction.
I am not a physician. But then I'm not prescribing anything, and what I offer as suggestions are not controlled substances. I am, however, a professional neuroscientist with a fair amount of experience in psychopharmacology, and prior to getting my doctorate, worked for several years as a licensed substance abuse counselor.
Me, I'd go for the chocolate. Whether I need it or not.
Q: Why is there no twelve step group for caffeine addiction?
Glonoiha sez: "24 comments and nobody has offered up a way to overclock this thing yet?"
You don't want to overclock a telescope. They have to be perfectly clocked to work. And actually, as two different/. articles in 3 days have pointed out, the earth is running slow in its orbit, so he might actually need to underclock it for it to work right.
axolotl_farmer sez: "It's from 'Holiday in Wakiki' by the Kinks! So what's my Prize?:)"
Sorry, no cookie. The second line in the second verse is "Because a genuine hawaii ukulele cost me 30 guineas".
But at least that was an honest attempt. Sooner or later someone will Google it out as an instrument supposedly played by Brian May of Queen on "A Night At The Opera". For all I know he really did play one. But that's where the name's from.
pudge sez: "(Geek note: the Mac OS epoch is unsigned, which is why it can count over 100 years from 0 seconds, and 32-bit Unix can't, though it can count backward to 1901.)"
What a shame. Mac users obviously weren't able to participate in the net prior to 1904. Well, at least there's archives like Goggle Groups where they can read what they missed.
BTW, the Apple II has the same calendar scheme as the Mac. My GS's calendar is good through 2038.
My favorite BBS experience was a *nix based BBS in Norfolk, VA called "The Genuine Aloha Ukelele" (major trivia points to anyone who can name the source). It was networked (UUCP) with a few other similar hobbyist systems, the only one I recall being "Milo's Meadow". After being a good user for a while, I got shell access. I had no idea what that was. But I learned.
Also, I ran one of the very few Apple II based Fidonet nodes, "Radio Free Earth". I got to be a moderator for the Apple and Writing echoes (e.g. newsgroups). That was an excellent learning experience as far as learning to get people to get along with each other in a medium where flaming was so easy. Although I'd been on usenet before, it wasn't until we got our software to be usenet message format complaint that I started interacting with it much. Just as in many things, working hard to get this capability made me appreciate it more.
I've made a 6" reflector, and I've bought one. You don't make a telescope to have a telescope, you make it to make it. It's the process that's important. The fact that you end up with a telescope is almost secondary. It's sort of a spiritual thing, when you spend hours and hours grinding, and consider those who've done the same over the centuries.
Of course, the greatest consumer of it is the US, for which marketed concepts and culture are pretty much interchangeable. After all, they got the idea from us.
No way. Memories, as cohesive collections of recollection across time, are not stored. They are re-created as called for. What is stored are very primitive primary details. Just enough of these as are necessary to re-create a memory are called up and associations formed between them. The brain fills in anywhere from some to damn near all of the in-between. This function, called "gestalt" is even more important for memory re-creation that it is for perception, and even there it does a majority of the work. If this sounds error prone, it is. You've got one, and this is how it works. I'm sure you've noticed a few inaccuracies in your memories from time to time.
As for individual neurons, not just no, but hell no. That idea was lost when Donald O Hebb taught us in 1949 that its collections of neurons acting as a network that perform functions. He also taught us that the same neuron can participate in a large number of different networks, according to which sets of connections are held active and which are suppressed.
As obtuse (79208) wrote in "No Grandmother Cell":
> But the current view is that memory is > highly distributed. If you use a neural > net as a trivial model of how the brain > might work, you will realize that for a > large and complex neural net with diverse > purposes, there isn't a single cell devoted > to anything. All the information is contained > in the strength connections between cells....which outlines Hebbian dynamic neural assembly quite well.
> Karl Pribram used the phrase "holographic > brain." The image on a hologram is > distributed, so if you break it in two, > you have two complete images, although each > is less detailed. If you scratch a hologram, > you don't lose part of the image, you lose > detail overall.
Pribram later amended his theory and called the "holonomic". He was disturbed that people were claiming he said that memory was truly a hologram (and he got even more upset of extension of that mistake to consciousness and then the universe). What he did say (in his book Brain and Perception, 1991, Lawrence Erlbuam, ISBN: 0898599954) that Dennis Gabor's mathematics that he devised to describe holography (which won him the 1970 Nobel) could be used to describe the dynamic electrical field that builds up in the cortex and interacts with all local neurons, even those not directly connected, and affects their functioning as the field changes on very short orders of time.
However, the concept still has some explanatory merit. As Sherrington and then Lashley showed in those cortex ablation experiments referenced in most intro psych books, memories are any "place", but rather distributed across area, and even that area is not hard and fast. Removing large areas of cortex, up to as much as 90%, does not remove memories, but does make them less precise, i.e. they lose resolution. In this sense, the holographic metaphor works, although technically inaccurate.
A web site that presents his theory in a way I doubt he'd have much trouble with is at http://www.acsa2000.net/bcngroup/jponkp/ although this is by someone else, and not "sanctioned".
Anyone interested in the details of the theory are invited to examine the last quarter of his book, the appendices thereof. These were written with Basil Hiley (mathematical physicist and previously partner to David Bohm) and a couple of Japanese scientists, Mari Jibu and Kunio Yasue. Here you can see the application of Gabor's work as well as Schroedinger's in attempt to describe the cortical electric field.
To read and understand the entire book takes, in my opinion, a neuroscientist, a physicist and an engineer. And I had two years studying under Karl. I still get stuck in places, being only the first of those three. FWIW, my "scientific pedigree" is, in a direct line of descent of mentors to student, Sherrington, Lashley, Pribram and me.
It's bright red and has a silvery kind of screen. It has two knobs. It I turn one of them, a line moves up and down. If I turn the other, a line moves left and right. It also has a comletely variable refresh rate: any time I want to refresh it, I just turn it face down and shake it, and it's all blank again. Now I just need to get me a processor and some mass storage to round out my desktop system. I figure an abacus and a notebook & pencils will do nicely. Maybe some crayons for the graphics.
In the same package I got a remake of the old 1950's breakfast cereal surprise toy Rising And Diving Submarine, baking powder (NOT soda!) powered.
My 19 year old daughter understands me quite well.
because they quite often don't. A device in "power saving" mode can consume up 90% of the power as when it's fully operational. Even when a PC is switched "off" on the front panel, the power supply is charged (I've had them break down and burn up while turned "off"). A monitor in standby mode is still "hot". To really save power, shut off everything completely. Perhaps someone out there has the numbers as to how much power is used while a system sits there and does nothing as opposed to how much it takes to start it up, but my best SWAG is that even 10 minutes of powered up non-use takes more than shutting down and restarting 10 minutes later.
ljavelin sez: "OK folks, now let's be realistic - SCO isn't looking for billions of dollars from "licenses", or even from IBM.
No one would come up with such a poor plan for promoting their product, intellectual property, lawsuit, or anything else.
So what is SCO doing? I think the answer is "Bad Marketing is better than No Marketing". In other words, SCO has nothing to lose."
SCO isn't promoting their product(s), they're promoting their company. They're trying to get bought out.
It'd cost less to buy SCO than it would cost to pay them their "license fees". IBM could buy them for less than the settlement of the suit.
They have no intention of losing the case, because the deal with their lawyers allow for two contingencies: they win, or they get bought. If they don't win, they'll sell out as best as they can.
From the WIRED article: "In the 1950s, at a plant just outside of Toronto, the Avro-Canada company designed a jet-powered saucer it dubbed the Avrocar. Intrigued by the UFO-esque craft, the U.S. Air Force took over the project in 1955."
Had the designer allowed them to put an apron around the bottom and keeping it close to the ground, rather than insisting on trying to make it fly as it was, he would have been credited with inventing the hovercraft. The original design was too prone to rotary oscillation when it got too high (like 3 feet).
Also: "But despite piles of Pentagon cash, and years of testing, the Avrocar couldn't stay stable more than a few feet off the ground. The program was finally killed in 1965. An Avrocar test model can still be found in a National Air and Space Museum storage facility near Washington."
The other AVRO (of the two built for the US) is on display outside the US Army Transportation Museum at Ft. Eustis, Virginia, half an hour northwest of Norfolk/Virginia Beach. The visitors' center plays a 15 minute documentary about it including footage of flight (such as they were) tests.
Slashdot Mirror
Graabein (96715) sez: "Anyone remember the USENET Death Penalty?...Let's get extreme and start dropping packets from entire /24s from which spam is originating."
Yes, I remember the UDPs well, particularly the UUNet action. I spent 48 straight hours talking to media people about it. I was the press contact. (Some stuff about it is archived at www.sputum.com).
You missed the point on how a UDP operated. Yes, there were massive cancel messages sent to control.cancel. But that would have accomplished very little. They didn;t care if their customers spammed as long as they got paid. They wouldn't have cared if their customers' spam didn't get seen as long as they got paid.
What got their attention was the media coverage. We made sure UUNet was made out to be the bad guy by providing ample evidence that they were not being a good net.neighbor and that we had made every reasonable attempt to get them to stop. They had something to lose that we could never have touched without the press being involved: their stock prices.
Spam is not just a technical problem, it's also a social problem. Therefore the solution will be both technical and social. An IDP would work, but only if it included the associated publicity. Black hole type efforts either only approach the technical end, or just fail to adequately make the necessary information public enough.
And yes, there was, and would be, collateral damage. Some innocent people were lost to usenet during the UDPs. The vast majority of email we received from those affected understood what was going on and why, and wrote to express support.
Note too that an IDP would be conducted with the same parameter of participation: 100% voluntary. Cancel messages to usenet are processed or not according to each newsadmin's choice; they control the switch on their own system. We could not, nor wanted to, force anyone's participation. The same with mailadmins who use filters or black hole lists. They choose to use them or not. They would have notice by the list's source that such an action was upcoming, as long as they paid attention to news updated coming from their filter source. If they failed to pay attention, then either they're operating irresponsibly, or they implicitly trust their filter source.
After years of weekly "fixing" of a cranky drive interface by power down/remove/reset/repower to clean the contacts, one day I forgot the power down part. I lost my favorite machine, my very first Apple II. I've never made that mistake again.
Great! Another new technology for recycling crap.
What isn't advertising on behalf of paying advertisers is advertising on behalf of RIAA member corporations. It sucks now, and increasing the dynamic range (compression being the major problem with FM music broadcast) will only make it suck with "CD-like quality".
This solves a problem I do not have. It does not solve the problems I do have. If I'm going to listen to radio, I'm going to stick with indie (read: non-RIAA affiliated) releases broadacst from a local college or public station, and those are SUPPOSED to sounds like that.
specifically: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=91632& cid=7884415
They're not really adjusting their body clocks. The human body clock is aready set to 25 hours on average, same as the Martian day. They're just not resetting their body clock to adjust to Earth time.
I'm telling you, if you buy into this evolution stuff, you have to conclude that humans originated on Mars. Why else would we be trying so hard to get back?
The more important question is, why were we sent here anyway? What'd we do wrong? Is Earth the Australia of the solar system?
Other than what Uncle Bill pays them for these written to order screeds?
FWIW, IDC is the research branch of IDG, the people who put on innumberable conferences around the world. Insert conspiracy theory here.
hlygrail (700685) sez: "Most sleep researchers have concluded that the human body clock runs around 25 hours per cycle. The obvious conflict with our 24-hour terrestrial/lunar/solar-based clock is noticed by more than few folks who've replied already."
This is a very disturbing discrepency. The human diurnal cycle does not match the earth's rotation. If humans evolved here, you'd expect it to be 24 hours, or even less (the earth's rotation is slowing, from less than 24 hours).
Evolutionarily, we can only come to one conclusion: humans did not originate on earth. Furthermore, there is only one planet we know of that has a rotation that matches humans' 25 hour diurnal rhythm: Mars.
Don't blame ME if the facts make sense; I'm only a scientist.
Since this story was carried not very long ago, it was inevitable that someone should complain about dupes.
/.
Complaints about dupes are probably the most duplicated thing carried by
Not only is this self-contradictory, but if the reader didn't see the previous story, it's not a dupe to them. And if the reader did see the previous story, and read down to the dupe complaints, they wanted to read more about it.
Now, I'm not saying my little rant about dupe complaints is in any way better in principle than the complaints themselves. But you gotta admit, it's got style.
CentrX sez: "As an aside, why is crack more addictive than powder cocaine? I was under the impression that insufflated powder cocaine would reach the brain faster than inhaled cocaine? Am I simply incorrect, or are there some other features of the respective substances?"
The common misconception is that it dissolves into the nasal membranes, and being close to the brain, it leaks in there and does its work. Not so. It has to get into the brain (that is, inside the blood/brain barrier) by being carried there by the blood, and it has to makes it way all the way to the capillaries around the brain cells.
If you snort it, it has to hit the membranes and melt, then soak in to the bloodstream, into the veins. The blood carries it to the heart, out to the lungs, back to the heart and out to the body. All the while it's mixing with other blood and getting diluted, and the concentration measured anywhere in the body goes up slower.
If it's smoked, it doesn't have to melt. It's absorbed right into the blood in the lungs, and has only one trip through the heart on its way to the body. Far less mixing, far faster delivery.
Cocaine, or any of the DA stimulants, cause a sudden out-pouring of dopamine. That's the high. But with that out-pouring, the cells doing the pouring detect the high concentration outside themselves, and shut down. They won't pump more out. The more that can get out in that first rush, before the cells shut down, the greater the effect, both in the high, and in the addictive potential.
If I recall the chemistry right, the cocaine from crack is essentially free base (it's carbonate as crack, but released with smoking), and is therefore more soluble (again, faster acting) than the typcical powdered form, the hydrochloride.
Anonymous Coward sez: "Here's hoping you never get into a position of authority. Drug prohibition is wrong, period. Prohibition is singly responsible for the mass devastation that drugs have caused in the lives of people the world over: it is prohibition that creates a black market in which thugs and thieves are allowed to murder and pillage at will... it is prohibition that deprives coca farmers of their rights... it is prohibition that leads to an addiction culture."
I agree with you in principle regarding drug prohibition. It has caused unnecessary devistation. Yet the drugs themselves also do much damage, so your "singly" is not accurate.
A.C. also sez: "It is wrong, of course, to dope your children, but, that issue is separate and needn't be enforced using clearly failed prohibition policies."
You can't have one set of laws for adults with children and another for adults without children. Eastern Virginia Medical School did a study where they found out that 67% of children that were a year or more young for their grade (i.e. had been advanced one or more grades beyond their age peers) were on speed. The only likely explanation was that their parents were dosing them so they could excell. THIS is what needs regulating. Furthermore, my concern is much more with the industry manufacturing and recommending harmful drugs when other options are safer, but less profit-making. They too need more regulation. Too many doctors are prescribing because parents ask for something, and the doctor knows that if he'she doesn't, the parents will just go elsewhere. Doctors that do so need closer regulation. Doctors should report parents who are prescription shopping on behalf of their kids, when it comes to these substances. IMO, that's child abuse.
I'm all for rational decisions by rational adults on their own behalf. But that implies they learn enough about what they're doing for the decision to be rational. I think these substances are far more harmful than the advertising says. Frankly I'd prefer they weren't manufactured at all. If they're going to be, they should be examined carefully, at ALL stages of the supply chain. And if the last stage is an adult, and they're aware what they're getting into, let them. If they get addicted, and many will, it's their own fault. In that way they will create their own freely chosen culture of addiction. And when it comes to it, plenty of people do just that now, and so prohibition itself is not solely responsible for a "culture of addiction".
jonbrewer sez: "So what do you think about Ephedrine (Metabolife)? Amphetamine (Adderall)? Should they be regulated/classified/banned? Why are they any worse than caffeine or nicotine?"
Ephedrine is rough on the body. The benefits are outweighed by the side effects. There's better ways to the same end.
IMO, amphetamines and methylphenidate (Ritalin) should be class A narcotics (yeah, I know they're not "narcotic"; it's a US goobermint category) and be heavily monitored and regulated. These things are "legal" cocaine. And even for those people who can benefit from them, there's going to be long term side effects no different from chronic use by those who don't need them. I'm afraid we're going to raise a nation of chronic depressives and possibly Parkinson's patients. I'd like to see them done away with completely. Even in the early seventies there were plenty of warnings from the drug culture itself, saying "Speed Kills". It's still true, and coming from a factory doesn't change that.
There's a new stimulant that has an entirely different mechanism and it's being used for ADHD. So far it looks to be much safer than speed.
Caffeine is one of 3 methylated xanthines, the others being theophylline and theobromine. Taking the others can serve to reduce withdrawal. Caffeine is the most addictive because it's the fastest acting of these, just as crack is the most addictive form of cocaine. You can find these chemicals in:
. asp?ID=356). You'll notice it says "(nor)adrenalin" instead of (nor)epinepherine. Same chemicals, outside or inside the blood/brain barrier. Yeah, caffeine gives you adrenalin.
1. Chocolate. It has 10% of the caffiene of coffee, but contains these other also. It also contains PEA, "an endogenous neuroamine, increases attention and activity in animals" (http://www.chocolate.org/pea.htm). PEA may be the most neglected and useful of the brain amines. Chocolate makes many people just feel better; this may be why.
2. Guarana: An "herbal" (actually the inside bark of a tree) that contains all 3 of the chemicals, caffeine least. However, it can become a substitute addiction, and it costs more than chocolate. There was a soda that had guarana, but only as a flavoring, not a "suppliment". Some "power drinks" have guarana, but can also have ephedrine, which is not a good thing.
3. Foods: Caffeine acts by increasing norepinepherine (NE) levels in the brain. Take it away and NE drops. This is the mechanism of addiction. Any foods high in phenylalanine or tyrosine are good dietary precursors to replace the NE the body isn't getting now that caffeine isn't forcing its production. High phenylalanine or tyrosine foods are typically your high-protein foods, meats and fishes, dairy products, whole oats and wheat. Here's a picture of the metabolic pathway involved (http://www.life-enhancement.com/article_template
Caffeine truly is addicting. However, it is one of the weakest addictions. It's easy to break and the withdrawals are not bad. Also, it can typically be used safely by those previously addicted, without necessarily causing re-addiction.
I am not a physician. But then I'm not prescribing anything, and what I offer as suggestions are not controlled substances. I am, however, a professional neuroscientist with a fair amount of experience in psychopharmacology, and prior to getting my doctorate, worked for several years as a licensed substance abuse counselor.
Me, I'd go for the chocolate. Whether I need it or not.
Q: Why is there no twelve step group for caffeine addiction?
A: I DON'T HAVE TIME TO WAIT AROUND FOR THAT.
Glonoiha sez: "24 comments and nobody has offered up a way to overclock this thing yet?"
/. articles in 3 days have pointed out, the earth is running slow in its orbit, so he might actually need to underclock it for it to work right.
You don't want to overclock a telescope. They have to be perfectly clocked to work. And actually, as two different
axolotl_farmer sez: "It's from 'Holiday in Wakiki' by the Kinks! So what's my Prize? :)"
Sorry, no cookie. The second line in the second verse is "Because a genuine hawaii ukulele cost me 30 guineas".
But at least that was an honest attempt. Sooner or later someone will Google it out as an instrument supposedly played by Brian May of Queen on "A Night At The Opera". For all I know he really did play one. But that's where the name's from.
pudge sez: "(Geek note: the Mac OS epoch is unsigned, which is why it can count over 100 years from 0 seconds, and 32-bit Unix can't, though it can count backward to 1901.)"
What a shame. Mac users obviously weren't able to participate in the net prior to 1904. Well, at least there's archives like Goggle Groups where they can read what they missed.
BTW, the Apple II has the same calendar scheme as the Mac. My GS's calendar is good through 2038.
My favorite BBS experience was a *nix based BBS in Norfolk, VA called "The Genuine Aloha Ukelele" (major trivia points to anyone who can name the source). It was networked (UUCP) with a few other similar hobbyist systems, the only one I recall being "Milo's Meadow". After being a good user for a while, I got shell access. I had no idea what that was. But I learned.
Also, I ran one of the very few Apple II based Fidonet nodes, "Radio Free Earth". I got to be a moderator for the Apple and Writing echoes (e.g. newsgroups). That was an excellent learning experience as far as learning to get people to get along with each other in a medium where flaming was so easy. Although I'd been on usenet before, it wasn't until we got our software to be usenet message format complaint that I started interacting with it much. Just as in many things, working hard to get this capability made me appreciate it more.
I nominate OnStar vehicle GPS system for both best and worst.
Best because (among other uses) if your car gets ripped off, they can find it fast.
Worst because it can be used as vehicle-embedded spyware.
I've made a 6" reflector, and I've bought one. You don't make a telescope to have a telescope, you make it to make it. It's the process that's important. The fact that you end up with a telescope is almost secondary. It's sort of a spiritual thing, when you spend hours and hours grinding, and consider those who've done the same over the centuries.
Global dimming.
To slow down in its orbit, it has to get farther from the sun (otherwise it'd fall in closer to the sun, and it doesn't).
Light can exert pressure. That's the idea behind solar sails.
The sun has put out 3% less light per decade for the last 50 years. It may have been pushing the Earth farther out, and with less light now, it's not.
Spammers are stupid
+
Ralsky is a pammer
=
Ralsky is stupid
Ralsky is stupid
+
Ralsky says "it would be stupid to violate" [the law]
=
Ralsky will violate the law
But I'll bet you'd figured that out anyway.
... that's marketing.
Of course, the greatest consumer of it is the US, for which marketed concepts and culture are pretty much interchangeable. After all, they got the idea from us.
"by having individual neurons zapped"?
...which outlines Hebbian dynamic neural assembly quite well.
No way. Memories, as cohesive collections of recollection across time, are not stored. They are re-created as called for. What is stored are very primitive primary details. Just enough of these as are necessary to re-create a memory are called up and associations formed between them. The brain fills in anywhere from some to damn near all of the in-between. This function, called "gestalt" is even more important for memory re-creation that it is for perception, and even there it does a majority of the work. If this sounds error prone, it is. You've got one, and this is how it works. I'm sure you've noticed a few inaccuracies in your memories from time to time.
As for individual neurons, not just no, but hell no. That idea was lost when Donald O Hebb taught us in 1949 that its collections of neurons acting as a network that perform functions. He also taught us that the same neuron can participate in a large number of different networks, according to which sets of connections are held active and which are suppressed.
As obtuse (79208) wrote in "No Grandmother Cell":
> But the current view is that memory is
> highly distributed. If you use a neural
> net as a trivial model of how the brain
> might work, you will realize that for a
> large and complex neural net with diverse
> purposes, there isn't a single cell devoted
> to anything. All the information is contained
> in the strength connections between cells.
> Karl Pribram used the phrase "holographic
> brain." The image on a hologram is
> distributed, so if you break it in two,
> you have two complete images, although each
> is less detailed. If you scratch a hologram,
> you don't lose part of the image, you lose
> detail overall.
Pribram later amended his theory and called the "holonomic". He was disturbed that people were claiming he said that memory was truly a hologram (and he got even more upset of extension of that mistake to consciousness and then the universe). What he did say (in his book Brain and Perception, 1991, Lawrence Erlbuam, ISBN: 0898599954) that Dennis Gabor's mathematics that he devised to describe holography (which won him the 1970 Nobel) could be used to describe the dynamic electrical field that builds up in the cortex and interacts with all local neurons, even those not directly connected, and affects their functioning as the field changes on very short orders of time.
However, the concept still has some explanatory merit. As Sherrington and then Lashley showed in those cortex ablation experiments referenced in most intro psych books, memories are any "place", but rather distributed across area, and even that area is not hard and fast. Removing large areas of cortex, up to as much as 90%, does not remove memories, but does make them less precise, i.e. they lose resolution. In this sense, the holographic metaphor works, although technically inaccurate.
A web site that presents his theory in a way I doubt he'd have much trouble with is at http://www.acsa2000.net/bcngroup/jponkp/ although this is by someone else, and not "sanctioned".
Anyone interested in the details of the theory are invited to examine the last quarter of his book, the appendices thereof. These were written with Basil Hiley (mathematical physicist and previously partner to David Bohm) and a couple of Japanese scientists, Mari Jibu and Kunio Yasue. Here you can see the application of Gabor's work as well as Schroedinger's in attempt to describe the cortical electric field.
To read and understand the entire book takes, in my opinion, a neuroscientist, a physicist and an engineer. And I had two years studying under Karl. I still get stuck in places, being only the first of those three. FWIW, my "scientific pedigree" is, in a direct line of descent of mentors to student, Sherrington, Lashley, Pribram and me.
It's bright red and has a silvery kind of screen. It has two knobs. It I turn one of them, a line moves up and down. If I turn the other, a line moves left and right. It also has a comletely variable refresh rate: any time I want to refresh it, I just turn it face down and shake it, and it's all blank again. Now I just need to get me a processor and some mass storage to round out my desktop system. I figure an abacus and a notebook & pencils will do nicely. Maybe some crayons for the graphics.
In the same package I got a remake of the old 1950's breakfast cereal surprise toy Rising And Diving Submarine, baking powder (NOT soda!) powered.
My 19 year old daughter understands me quite well.
because they quite often don't. A device in "power saving" mode can consume up 90% of the power as when it's fully operational. Even when a PC is switched "off" on the front panel, the power supply is charged (I've had them break down and burn up while turned "off"). A monitor in standby mode is still "hot". To really save power, shut off everything completely. Perhaps someone out there has the numbers as to how much power is used while a system sits there and does nothing as opposed to how much it takes to start it up, but my best SWAG is that even 10 minutes of powered up non-use takes more than shutting down and restarting 10 minutes later.
ljavelin sez: "OK folks, now let's be realistic - SCO isn't looking for billions of dollars from "licenses", or even from IBM.
No one would come up with such a poor plan for promoting their product, intellectual property, lawsuit, or anything else.
So what is SCO doing? I think the answer is "Bad Marketing is better than No Marketing". In other words, SCO has nothing to lose."
SCO isn't promoting their product(s), they're promoting their company. They're trying to get bought out.
It'd cost less to buy SCO than it would cost to pay them their "license fees". IBM could buy them for less than the settlement of the suit.
They have no intention of losing the case, because the deal with their lawyers allow for two contingencies: they win, or they get bought. If they don't win, they'll sell out as best as they can.
They're trying to *make* someone buy them out.
From the WIRED article: "In the 1950s, at a plant just outside of Toronto, the Avro-Canada company designed a jet-powered saucer it dubbed the Avrocar. Intrigued by the UFO-esque craft, the U.S. Air Force took over the project in 1955."
Had the designer allowed them to put an apron around the bottom and keeping it close to the ground, rather than insisting on trying to make it fly as it was, he would have been credited with inventing the hovercraft. The original design was too prone to rotary oscillation when it got too high (like 3 feet).
Also: "But despite piles of Pentagon cash, and years of testing, the Avrocar couldn't stay stable more than a few feet off the ground. The program was finally killed in 1965. An Avrocar test model can still be found in a National Air and Space Museum storage facility near Washington."
The other AVRO (of the two built for the US) is on display outside the US Army Transportation Museum at Ft. Eustis, Virginia, half an hour northwest of Norfolk/Virginia Beach. The visitors' center plays a 15 minute documentary about it including footage of flight (such as they were) tests.