It depends. Examples like the above sometimes exist because a company has to support its products... if the web application is considered a product, they have 2 ways of doing things: Say "if it works it works, if it doesn't it doesn't", and deal with the support calls, or limit their range of supported platforms. If their support line isn't trained to know that, for all practical purpose (in this case), Linux == BSD, the web dev will have to do this, even if its kicking and screaming (assuming they want to keep their job anyway).
Of course, usually its just the web dev being dumb:) But not always.
Mac OS X? HAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahaha... Open Source? RIGHT. It is so open source, that I cannot legally install it on my custom built PC, even though with the correct hacks and drivers it WILL WORK.
Mac OS X makes Vista look like Stallman's wet dream.
It already does: XBAP applications. Windows only and all, thats why the.NET community pushed them hard to make Silverlight 2 (which was originally going to be much, much more limited than it is)
Re:MOD PARENT UP! Re:Errrm, folks, what's the big
on
The Future of XML
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· Score: 1
I'm not the person you replied to, but... One thing i've noticed from my personal experience: XML sucks hard without schema. XSD sucks hard to make schemas. XSD is the norm. Put everything together, and you get "XML SUCKS!"
There are XSD alternatives, and also nice tools and editors to handle XSDs: then you're fine.
Also, having taken a look at the mainstream C++ APIs for XML, that would make most anyone hate it. It isn't bad in Java or.NET really (I didn't do any XML in Java in a long time, but a few years back JDOM was pretty sweet...and for.NET, well, LINQ to XML is XQuery with.NET goodness, its great stuff).
For the SQL replacement, I personally saw a few... There are object databases of course. Won't do everything an SQL database will, but if it meets your need, it will make your life a lot easier... I've also seen prototypes for (insert non-SQL specialised datawarehousing system that I can't talk about here), which went with an XQuery based engine to query object graphs like if they were XML (even though they aren't). That looks promising.
Re:Errrm, folks, what's the big fat hairy deal?
on
The Future of XML
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· Score: 1
Completly agree with you, to the security comment, all the way to the "UTF-8 everywhere and be gone with SQL" thing.
Just out of curiosity, have you ever had to work with EDI? Because you sound like someone who probably got burnt by something like that in the past:)
The only thing to keep on the lookout for, is the freagin DRM crap. It is buggy: most people won't have issues with it, but in a certain set of rare conditions, it pops up and hog all your CPU (its a bug, that is, normally, even if you watch DRM content it won't do that, but sometimes if you watch NON-DRM stuff, it will, its a mess).
Look at your task manager for some process hugging everything. Especially if you used WMP sometime during the session. Its uncommon, and Ive only seen it happen once out of many, many machine, since launch...but when it does happen, the computer is as good as dead.
As for your question: because Vista is more stable than XP (yeah, I said it), and when it has issues, its a total joke to figure them out (the diagnostic facilities are GREAT). The caching subsystem makes even large heavy software such as Visual Studio pop very fast in later uses. It has.NET 3.0 preinstalled making the use of XBAP application on a large network less painful. The browser is virtually fully sandboxed. It has IIS7, and I can get Media Center without having to get an OEM or pay up the butt. I can still see my stuff on a second monitor while i'm playing game instead of said monitor go black (I know there are ways to do that in XP, but it didn't out of the box for me). UAC is actually quite great, if you don't use shitty software. Also a lot of nice shell extensions...minor things you could get on XP, but are built in Vista... (Open Console from current location, Copy file as Path, etc). Direct X10 without need to hack up my box.
I could go on. Win2k to WinXP was just painful. WinXP to Vista only has minor annoyances, and a decent bit of benefits.
Sweet, you just gave me a super cool idea. Its the "Explain a religion's roots!" game! Lemme take your quote...take out some words...blank them out...hmm....ok, let see!
_____, who 'borrowed' the _______ from ________ mythology and the idea of _________ from the _______ and sold the whole thing to the ignorant ______ who couldn't READ.
Fill the blank, and you can describe virtually all religions. Oh, aside Scientology, cuz their whole purpose is to sell books, so if you can't read they can't make money.
And people ARE flipping out when the christian right tries to do that. Example: christian groups trying to stop schools from talking about evolution. People wants them burnt on stakes when they do that, too, you know.
To be fair (and I'm heavily atheist and against organized religions), I beleive we're just seeing a vocal minority of idiot zealots. I have many muslims friends, and all of em think that all of the muslims that act this way (that is, the ones we keep seeing in news trying to bend the world to their whim) should be shot (figure of speech).
It gives them a bad name. Like catholic priests who rape little boys give catholics a bad name, and so on. Just worse because they're more vocal. They're a religious zealot minority, little more.
Actually no, its part of MSN and the built in mail softwares, and has little to do with UAC. (I've tested it on an UAC-disabled machine before posting this).
I'm not as much of a hardware buff as I used to be, but aren't Pentium Ms a bit special? That is, a 2 ghz Pentium M is much, MUCH faster than a 2 ghz Pentium 4?
No, it hasn't changed. You see it through a kind of "code browser". As far as I know, it is what they deliver, because usually the people who get access to it do pretty low level stuff (to even need to know about the code...its usually not pro-OSS dude who wants to look at it for shits and giggles who will), that if it was wrong, they'd notice pretty quick.
Will never know I guess, considering you need to sign off your first born in the NDA.
XP SP2 is almost as different an OS than different versions of MacOSX, when compared to the original XP or XP SP1... it simply doesn't have the same hardware requirement... It was "working" in its original version on my 366 mhz celeron of old... (though crawling). With SP2, it just got a lot beefier...that would be crazy, I think.
And you're correct about Vista's lag being cosmetic. It depends what you're looking at. browsing folders and stuff... yeah. Its actually not cosmetic, its the security sub systems. If you disable UAC, you remove the file indexing, etc, then its just barely slower, and its truly only cosmetic. When I said it was zippy though, I meant actually using it to do some work on it. The application caching system (don't know the real term) is pretty freagin good... I wouldn't be able to stand doing my job (using multiple instances of Visual Studio, SQL Management Studio, douzans of browser windows with tons of tabs each, Office all over the place, etc) on XP on that machine: doing the actual work would be the same, but just opening and closing application would get on my nerve real quick, but on Vista its fine.
We'll see how things evolve I guess. Or we may never know, I, too, will be trying out Server 2008...it looks sweet.
Try this for giggles. Have a Vista machine. Send them an email with an exe file. Try and get them to execute it. Good luck. If you manage that, try the same exercise by MSN Messenger. At that point, even I am not sure I can do it without googling, and even then its tricky. Vista is a b**** when it comes to running EXEs received by email or MSN.
The original WinXP ran like garbage on a 300 mhz CPU. 256 megs of RAM was ok-ish, but 500 mhz was needed to run it better than Vista-on-512megs-and-1.5ghz speed. With SP2, totally forget about running it on that kind of hardware.
Btw, the registry crash of Win2k was fixed a the second service pack, if I remember well (I know for a fact it was fixed, but I dont remember exactly which SP had the fix in it).
It happens everytime really. The amount of machines I had to downgrade from 2k/XP to Windows ME (ME!!!!!!!) back when I did that kind of work, was rediculous. Its just that there was such a large time period between XP and Vista, that people forgot. Its like how hell froze over when MS released IE7...it had been so long since an IE "upgrade" (I use the term loosely) that a lot of companies that had made web applications had actually STARTED -after- IE6 came out, and had no clue how to handle a transition like that...
I personally wouldn't run XP SP2 on 512 megs. Heck, a few years ago when I was Linux-only, I wouldn't have touched an average Linux distro (with Gnome or KDE though, its OK if you use a leaner environment) on those specs. Unbearable. (I realise Linux is faster now though, I just didn't use it enough to make an educated opinion, thus why I have to use an older experience).
I guess its what you're used to. On 1 gig of RAM and 2ghz, Vista with all the bells and whistles enabled is actually fairly zippy, thats all I can say.
If you have 20000 workstations, you can get Microsoft to cough up anything for you. I worked for a company that, while they were in the top of Fortune's list, had maybe half of that amount of workstations (not big in the office department for their side), and we could still get Microsoft to print us Windows ME (rofl) CDs if we wanted. They won't support it (then again, cough enough dough and they will. Actually, cough enough dough and they'll actually let you look at the source code, btw), but you can get it.
Ok, so I have 2 computers running Vista side by side. One of them is on Vista Ultimate, which is my own personal machine. The other one is my job's supplied computer, which is running the business version of Vista (telecommuting and all), both hooked with a KVM switch.
Now, let see. My computer, yes, Vista Ultimate, yes, Aero at on, yes. All good. Now, switch to the other machine, ok, now let see....no Aero, hmm....strange, since its mendatory as you say... Now now let see... oh yes, because my work machine isn't graphically powerful enough to run it, so I had to disable it...now now, how could that be....
No need to be sorry for your bluntness. On slashdot, being "blunt" would have been something more along the line of "F*** off noobz! go back to Windows!" or something:) Which was definately not the case with your replies. Can't have a good discussion or debate if people are holding their punches.
I understand your argument, and while I do not agree with it, I definately see where you're coming from...and I think the best possible answer will come in the years to come, its not available right now, so its just 2 sides of a coin that anyone needing these drugs should consider.
And I USUALLY do not condemn people for taking them, but I've seen too many people go with the drugs as the easy answer... as much the doctors, than the patients, or the parents of the patients, the third case being obviously the most common and the worse, though not the one I had in mind while typing my replies. But without hard evidence of what I've seen and had to live through, its a bit difficult to make a point, or to have anyone take what I say at face value (rightfully so), so I guess its just a matter of leaving it at that, especially considering your last line, which seems to indicate you understood might point quite well, which is already more than one usually expect from a web forum:)
I don't think its that. However, that being said, it is quite likely that some less stable CEOs will rethink their outsourcing plans anyway. There are already a lot of places that are "on edge" of switching back to in house, because outsourcing often doesn't deliver (for certain project types its gold though). So this could be just the straw to push them on the edge: even if it wasn't true at all. It would make them think. CEOs are often overly emotional people, so it doesn't take much.
Fine if that's your belief, but please don't try to push it on others
Yeah because I can seriously push my beleifs on people on Slashdot. If you're scared about me telling these things in real life, I never did to someone who needed to see a psychiatrist, at least beyond advising them to make their own mind about it.
For the rest, I don't think identity is some kind of magical ghost, on the contrary. I do think, and research are slowly validating this, that everything you are is biological... part of your brain, part of a gene or another, part of something... so aside in the cases of severe issues in that department (which I did make the exception for in my original post), the meds are little more than "peformance enhancers" with a different label. That is, they would have the same effects on ME, than they would have on someone with the so called illness.br>
That is: if i take Ritalin, I will have better focus, attention span, and will do better in a class room. So is the original person really sick, or do they simply have a different personality type that calls for a different environment?
My mistake, and what probably caused your reaction, is that I didn't separate the kinds of illnesses I was talking about. There are the ones that can be clearly defined as such (minority), including, but not limited to, the ones that can be diagnosed under a scanner, or with some objective test or another. Then there's the rest, where the definition basically go under the "if you have a hard time dealing with society's norm, your sick" category. (And that is literally the "by the book" line between sick and not sick for quite the majority of them). This is the part i have issues with... Someone who has OCD...are they sick? Or are they "different" (and could change)? Someone with ADD? Someone bipolar (hello Britney!)? A big chunk of these people need the meds. A lot of these people don't. Its troublesome.
The issue here, is where to draw the line. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if 20 years from now studies show that someone who's "good in school", is just as "sick" as someone with illnesses we currently treat with hardcore drugs (well, some of them at least). And if we go that way, anyone who's not doing well in the world, will be prescribed drugs. You suck in school? Drugs. You have issues at work? Drugs. You're married but can't help but bone the secretary? Drugs. Relationship issues? Drugs.
And it is where things are going. Basically, my entire point is: in general, (not all of them!), psychiatrists suck at drawing that line. They suck bad at it. I feel a particular attention should be given to fix that. Nothing more, nothing less.
As a sidenote, all but one person I know who had to take meds(who ironically I am fairly sure was misdiagnosed with ADD just for having discipline issues, it was the lightest "case" I had ever seen), though granted I don't know anyone with the more severe mental illnesses, are actually sick and tired of hearing that medications are the answer. If that wasn't the case, being a "healthy" person myself, I'd never get into such a discussion.
I did not say they didn't study drugs. I said they -overstudied- drugs. Total opposite. Thank you for reminding me of the last bit (about schools getting more money for special ed kids). That was one part of the point I wanted to make, but forgot.
I group psychiatrists based on the majority. This was a post in a discussion, I didn't write an article on the subject, and considering the attention span of the average forum dweller, and the type of discussions we find on these forums, I don't bother posting more than that.
Of course, that also means your reaction is fully justified, so I understand, no biggy.
That being said, its a bit like veterinarian and pet food: they're simply not trained (or have very little training in the matter), so they suggest things through the same kind of research you and I could do...they know the rest of the field amazingly well, so their opinion is still more informed than yours or mind (well, unless I'm replying to a vet right now:) ), but its still not their speciality, and you have to take it with a grain of salt.
Psychiatrists in general have extensive training in the discipline, INCLUDING in the parts not involving the chemical treatements. However, the later is their specialty and the part they are more used to. So they will systematically prescribe stuff even if its not required, because to the best of their training, its the way to go. Some of them definately elevate themselves above that generalisation: I know more a couple myself. But the majority will not. Its just another job.
Heck, in Slashdot speak: if you go up to an Oracle specialist and ask him about a data center performance problem you have, they'll tailor you an architecture revolving around the Oracle database, make you a quote, and be on their way. Only the best and most professional of them will have the knowledge and decency to say "Hmm...you know, Oracle is really overkill for what you're doing...ever thought about MySQL?"
Slashdot Mirror
It depends. Examples like the above sometimes exist because a company has to support its products... if the web application is considered a product, they have 2 ways of doing things: Say "if it works it works, if it doesn't it doesn't", and deal with the support calls, or limit their range of supported platforms. If their support line isn't trained to know that, for all practical purpose (in this case), Linux == BSD, the web dev will have to do this, even if its kicking and screaming (assuming they want to keep their job anyway).
:) But not always.
Of course, usually its just the web dev being dumb
Mac OS X makes Vista look like Stallman's wet dream.
It already does: XBAP applications. Windows only and all, thats why the .NET community pushed them hard to make Silverlight 2 (which was originally going to be much, much more limited than it is)
I'm not the person you replied to, but... One thing i've noticed from my personal experience: XML sucks hard without schema. XSD sucks hard to make schemas. XSD is the norm. Put everything together, and you get "XML SUCKS!"
.NET really (I didn't do any XML in Java in a long time, but a few years back JDOM was pretty sweet...and for .NET, well, LINQ to XML is XQuery with .NET goodness, its great stuff).
There are XSD alternatives, and also nice tools and editors to handle XSDs: then you're fine.
Also, having taken a look at the mainstream C++ APIs for XML, that would make most anyone hate it. It isn't bad in Java or
For the SQL replacement, I personally saw a few... There are object databases of course. Won't do everything an SQL database will, but if it meets your need, it will make your life a lot easier... I've also seen prototypes for (insert non-SQL specialised datawarehousing system that I can't talk about here), which went with an XQuery based engine to query object graphs like if they were XML (even though they aren't). That looks promising.
Completly agree with you, to the security comment, all the way to the "UTF-8 everywhere and be gone with SQL" thing.
:)
Just out of curiosity, have you ever had to work with EDI? Because you sound like someone who probably got burnt by something like that in the past
The only thing to keep on the lookout for, is the freagin DRM crap. It is buggy: most people won't have issues with it, but in a certain set of rare conditions, it pops up and hog all your CPU (its a bug, that is, normally, even if you watch DRM content it won't do that, but sometimes if you watch NON-DRM stuff, it will, its a mess).
.NET 3.0 preinstalled making the use of XBAP application on a large network less painful. The browser is virtually fully sandboxed. It has IIS7, and I can get Media Center without having to get an OEM or pay up the butt. I can still see my stuff on a second monitor while i'm playing game instead of said monitor go black (I know there are ways to do that in XP, but it didn't out of the box for me). UAC is actually quite great, if you don't use shitty software. Also a lot of nice shell extensions...minor things you could get on XP, but are built in Vista... (Open Console from current location, Copy file as Path, etc). Direct X10 without need to hack up my box.
Look at your task manager for some process hugging everything. Especially if you used WMP sometime during the session. Its uncommon, and Ive only seen it happen once out of many, many machine, since launch...but when it does happen, the computer is as good as dead.
As for your question: because Vista is more stable than XP (yeah, I said it), and when it has issues, its a total joke to figure them out (the diagnostic facilities are GREAT). The caching subsystem makes even large heavy software such as Visual Studio pop very fast in later uses. It has
I could go on. Win2k to WinXP was just painful. WinXP to Vista only has minor annoyances, and a decent bit of benefits.
Sweet, you just gave me a super cool idea. Its the "Explain a religion's roots!" game! Lemme take your quote...take out some words...blank them out...hmm....ok, let see!
_____, who 'borrowed' the _______ from ________ mythology and the idea of _________ from the _______ and sold the whole thing to the ignorant ______ who couldn't READ.
Fill the blank, and you can describe virtually all religions. Oh, aside Scientology, cuz their whole purpose is to sell books, so if you can't read they can't make money.
And people ARE flipping out when the christian right tries to do that. Example: christian groups trying to stop schools from talking about evolution. People wants them burnt on stakes when they do that, too, you know.
To be fair (and I'm heavily atheist and against organized religions), I beleive we're just seeing a vocal minority of idiot zealots. I have many muslims friends, and all of em think that all of the muslims that act this way (that is, the ones we keep seeing in news trying to bend the world to their whim) should be shot (figure of speech).
It gives them a bad name. Like catholic priests who rape little boys give catholics a bad name, and so on. Just worse because they're more vocal. They're a religious zealot minority, little more.
Makes sense. So then i guess its not surprising to have XP zooming on that...its faster than the machine I run Vista on! :)
Thanks for replying!
Actually no, its part of MSN and the built in mail softwares, and has little to do with UAC. (I've tested it on an UAC-disabled machine before posting this).
I'm not as much of a hardware buff as I used to be, but aren't Pentium Ms a bit special? That is, a 2 ghz Pentium M is much, MUCH faster than a 2 ghz Pentium 4?
No, it hasn't changed. You see it through a kind of "code browser". As far as I know, it is what they deliver, because usually the people who get access to it do pretty low level stuff (to even need to know about the code...its usually not pro-OSS dude who wants to look at it for shits and giggles who will), that if it was wrong, they'd notice pretty quick.
Will never know I guess, considering you need to sign off your first born in the NDA.
XP SP2 is almost as different an OS than different versions of MacOSX, when compared to the original XP or XP SP1... it simply doesn't have the same hardware requirement... It was "working" in its original version on my 366 mhz celeron of old... (though crawling). With SP2, it just got a lot beefier...that would be crazy, I think.
And you're correct about Vista's lag being cosmetic. It depends what you're looking at. browsing folders and stuff... yeah. Its actually not cosmetic, its the security sub systems. If you disable UAC, you remove the file indexing, etc, then its just barely slower, and its truly only cosmetic. When I said it was zippy though, I meant actually using it to do some work on it. The application caching system (don't know the real term) is pretty freagin good... I wouldn't be able to stand doing my job (using multiple instances of Visual Studio, SQL Management Studio, douzans of browser windows with tons of tabs each, Office all over the place, etc) on XP on that machine: doing the actual work would be the same, but just opening and closing application would get on my nerve real quick, but on Vista its fine.
We'll see how things evolve I guess. Or we may never know, I, too, will be trying out Server 2008...it looks sweet.
Try this for giggles. Have a Vista machine. Send them an email with an exe file. Try and get them to execute it. Good luck. If you manage that, try the same exercise by MSN Messenger. At that point, even I am not sure I can do it without googling, and even then its tricky. Vista is a b**** when it comes to running EXEs received by email or MSN.
The original WinXP ran like garbage on a 300 mhz CPU. 256 megs of RAM was ok-ish, but 500 mhz was needed to run it better than Vista-on-512megs-and-1.5ghz speed. With SP2, totally forget about running it on that kind of hardware.
Btw, the registry crash of Win2k was fixed a the second service pack, if I remember well (I know for a fact it was fixed, but I dont remember exactly which SP had the fix in it).
It happens everytime really. The amount of machines I had to downgrade from 2k/XP to Windows ME (ME!!!!!!!) back when I did that kind of work, was rediculous. Its just that there was such a large time period between XP and Vista, that people forgot. Its like how hell froze over when MS released IE7...it had been so long since an IE "upgrade" (I use the term loosely) that a lot of companies that had made web applications had actually STARTED -after- IE6 came out, and had no clue how to handle a transition like that...
Same old same old.
I personally wouldn't run XP SP2 on 512 megs. Heck, a few years ago when I was Linux-only, I wouldn't have touched an average Linux distro (with Gnome or KDE though, its OK if you use a leaner environment) on those specs. Unbearable. (I realise Linux is faster now though, I just didn't use it enough to make an educated opinion, thus why I have to use an older experience).
I guess its what you're used to. On 1 gig of RAM and 2ghz, Vista with all the bells and whistles enabled is actually fairly zippy, thats all I can say.
If you have 20000 workstations, you can get Microsoft to cough up anything for you. I worked for a company that, while they were in the top of Fortune's list, had maybe half of that amount of workstations (not big in the office department for their side), and we could still get Microsoft to print us Windows ME (rofl) CDs if we wanted. They won't support it (then again, cough enough dough and they will. Actually, cough enough dough and they'll actually let you look at the source code, btw), but you can get it.
Ok, so I have 2 computers running Vista side by side. One of them is on Vista Ultimate, which is my own personal machine. The other one is my job's supplied computer, which is running the business version of Vista (telecommuting and all), both hooked with a KVM switch.
Now, let see. My computer, yes, Vista Ultimate, yes, Aero at on, yes. All good. Now, switch to the other machine, ok, now let see....no Aero, hmm....strange, since its mendatory as you say... Now now let see... oh yes, because my work machine isn't graphically powerful enough to run it, so I had to disable it...now now, how could that be....
No need to be sorry for your bluntness. On slashdot, being "blunt" would have been something more along the line of "F*** off noobz! go back to Windows!" or something :) Which was definately not the case with your replies. Can't have a good discussion or debate if people are holding their punches.
:)
I understand your argument, and while I do not agree with it, I definately see where you're coming from...and I think the best possible answer will come in the years to come, its not available right now, so its just 2 sides of a coin that anyone needing these drugs should consider.
And I USUALLY do not condemn people for taking them, but I've seen too many people go with the drugs as the easy answer... as much the doctors, than the patients, or the parents of the patients, the third case being obviously the most common and the worse, though not the one I had in mind while typing my replies. But without hard evidence of what I've seen and had to live through, its a bit difficult to make a point, or to have anyone take what I say at face value (rightfully so), so I guess its just a matter of leaving it at that, especially considering your last line, which seems to indicate you understood might point quite well, which is already more than one usually expect from a web forum
I don't think its that. However, that being said, it is quite likely that some less stable CEOs will rethink their outsourcing plans anyway. There are already a lot of places that are "on edge" of switching back to in house, because outsourcing often doesn't deliver (for certain project types its gold though). So this could be just the straw to push them on the edge: even if it wasn't true at all. It would make them think. CEOs are often overly emotional people, so it doesn't take much.
Yeah because I can seriously push my beleifs on people on Slashdot. If you're scared about me telling these things in real life, I never did to someone who needed to see a psychiatrist, at least beyond advising them to make their own mind about it.
For the rest, I don't think identity is some kind of magical ghost, on the contrary. I do think, and research are slowly validating this, that everything you are is biological... part of your brain, part of a gene or another, part of something... so aside in the cases of severe issues in that department (which I did make the exception for in my original post), the meds are little more than "peformance enhancers" with a different label. That is, they would have the same effects on ME, than they would have on someone with the so called illness.br>
That is: if i take Ritalin, I will have better focus, attention span, and will do better in a class room. So is the original person really sick, or do they simply have a different personality type that calls for a different environment?
My mistake, and what probably caused your reaction, is that I didn't separate the kinds of illnesses I was talking about. There are the ones that can be clearly defined as such (minority), including, but not limited to, the ones that can be diagnosed under a scanner, or with some objective test or another. Then there's the rest, where the definition basically go under the "if you have a hard time dealing with society's norm, your sick" category. (And that is literally the "by the book" line between sick and not sick for quite the majority of them). This is the part i have issues with... Someone who has OCD...are they sick? Or are they "different" (and could change)? Someone with ADD? Someone bipolar (hello Britney!)? A big chunk of these people need the meds. A lot of these people don't. Its troublesome.
The issue here, is where to draw the line. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if 20 years from now studies show that someone who's "good in school", is just as "sick" as someone with illnesses we currently treat with hardcore drugs (well, some of them at least). And if we go that way, anyone who's not doing well in the world, will be prescribed drugs. You suck in school? Drugs. You have issues at work? Drugs. You're married but can't help but bone the secretary? Drugs. Relationship issues? Drugs.
And it is where things are going. Basically, my entire point is: in general, (not all of them!), psychiatrists suck at drawing that line. They suck bad at it. I feel a particular attention should be given to fix that. Nothing more, nothing less.
As a sidenote, all but one person I know who had to take meds(who ironically I am fairly sure was misdiagnosed with ADD just for having discipline issues, it was the lightest "case" I had ever seen), though granted I don't know anyone with the more severe mental illnesses, are actually sick and tired of hearing that medications are the answer. If that wasn't the case, being a "healthy" person myself, I'd never get into such a discussion.
I did not say they didn't study drugs. I said they -overstudied- drugs. Total opposite. Thank you for reminding me of the last bit (about schools getting more money for special ed kids). That was one part of the point I wanted to make, but forgot.
I group psychiatrists based on the majority. This was a post in a discussion, I didn't write an article on the subject, and considering the attention span of the average forum dweller, and the type of discussions we find on these forums, I don't bother posting more than that.
:) ), but its still not their speciality, and you have to take it with a grain of salt.
Of course, that also means your reaction is fully justified, so I understand, no biggy.
That being said, its a bit like veterinarian and pet food: they're simply not trained (or have very little training in the matter), so they suggest things through the same kind of research you and I could do...they know the rest of the field amazingly well, so their opinion is still more informed than yours or mind (well, unless I'm replying to a vet right now
Psychiatrists in general have extensive training in the discipline, INCLUDING in the parts not involving the chemical treatements. However, the later is their specialty and the part they are more used to. So they will systematically prescribe stuff even if its not required, because to the best of their training, its the way to go. Some of them definately elevate themselves above that generalisation: I know more a couple myself. But the majority will not. Its just another job.
Heck, in Slashdot speak: if you go up to an Oracle specialist and ask him about a data center performance problem you have, they'll tailor you an architecture revolving around the Oracle database, make you a quote, and be on their way. Only the best and most professional of them will have the knowledge and decency to say "Hmm...you know, Oracle is really overkill for what you're doing...ever thought about MySQL?"