Maybe you worked in a pharmacy awhile back...but I can tell you right now that Percocet is NOT a Class IV. In fact, it is a class II. I believe the only narcotic painkillers that aren't class II (or I) are Hydrocodone (Vicodin) and Codeine.
Here are some common drugs by class...
Class V: Cough Medicines such as Promethazine with a bit of Codeine
Class IV: Anti-Diarrheals, Benzodiazapines, Provigil
Class III: Hydrocodone, Suboxone, Marinol, and....Ketamine! (I know someone who was recently in a house that had Ketamine. He was charged, but cleared, of a schedule III charge).
Class II: Ritalin, Adderal, Morphine, Oxycodone (percocet), Oxycontin (time released percocet), Hydromorphone (dilaudid).
Class I: Heroin, 2C-B, Psylocybin (Shrooms), MDMA (Ecstacy), Peyote, LSD
I believe the classes are actually called Schedules. Here are the basic differences. Class V drugs nobody really cares about. some Pharmacists will even mix you up a batch of Promethazine with Codeine WITHOUT a prescription although that is not too common anymore. You can pretty much Import Schedule V without repurcussions. You can generally also import Schedule IV drugs in small quantities for personal use. I personally import Modafinil and customs goes through it and lets it go every time. Schedule IV drugs can be written out willy nilly by a doctors. Schedule III will generally get nabbed importing them. Doctors may write out scripts for Schedule III drugs pretty freely but if every single patient gets Vicodin...they probably will be looked at. Schedule III prescriptions can have refills and can be phoned in by the doctor. Schedule II drugs are a big leap. Doctors must write every script out in triplicate, can not assign refills, and cannot phone in a prescription. Needless to say these will not be passing customs. Schedule I drugs...well...I believe the terms they use are "High rate of abuse" and "No medically accepted purpose" meaning that no doctor may write out prescriptions for these chemicals. Production of said chemicals is under intense quota, requires some serious licensing, and can be used for research.
I don't know about the entire "Women are more emotional" thing....especially as it comes to the IT world. In my experience IT is half filled with males who are pretty emotional and don't know how to keep them in check. They rant, they rave, they threaten to quit/destroy systems/other insane thing, they are catty towards each other, they pout/throw tanrums when they don't get their way or don't get recognition, they constantly try to one up each other with their psychological disorders.....in short they act worse than any group of women ever could be. I don't buy the emotional thing one bit.
I can't tell you how much I hate the fact that I can't pay my rent online. In the first few months living at my new place I mailed a check 3 days before it was due. The office is about 2 miles away so I figured that was pretty safe. Fast forward two weeks and I get a letter in the mail...."NOTICE TO VACATE PREMISES OR BE EVICTED BY (2 days from now)." Oh, that put me into a panic. I called and apparently the check arrived the day before so the eviction notice so they passed each other in the mail. The postal service took 15 days to move my letter 2 miles. Nice.
Two months later, I watched and waited for my check to clear. It cleared about 22 days after I sent it. I don't balance my account anymore...I rely on checking my account and transactions online. Maybe that is foolish...but that is the way I do things. Seeing more money than I should have for that long annoyed me. I dumped the checkbook and the post office and grab a money order for $2 on my way to personally delivering my rent to the office every month.
The cheapest one, of course....which should do everything a home user wants to do. You could buy the most expensive one too, which will also do everything a home user wants to do.
This is assuming that the home user isn't setting up a domain, at which point I would say he isn't Joe Sixpack and should know the difference.
Even if I don't have anything to hide, my internet search habits could be construed by some as dangerous. Just because of things that have come up in real life or online discussions, I probably have some pretty strange things in my search history. "Child Porn Malware" (I think I also searched for "Child Porn Trojan" which can seriously be misconstrued) being a recent example. This search was obviously due to the recent "Surprise, you are a sex offender" malware but with how things work you never can tell how someone would react to that if they went digging through my information in the future.
I hate to admit it, but I know way too many people who buy and sell prescription drugs. That said, here is what I have seen as typical prices for various drugs. 30mg Adderal - $7-$8 each. 10mg Hydrocodone - $5-6 each. 1mg Xanax/10mg Valium/other Benzodiazepine equivalent - $1 each. Of course, your 80mg Oxycontin can probably score you $20-$60 each but those are a little harder to get a hold of. Basically, on a per tablet basis ADHD drugs have a pretty high street price. Benzos are relatively cheap.
Counseling may not be 100% effective but I do think any child being put on medication SHOULD be talking with a counselor. Some kids are probably just fucked up, but other kids developing a relationship with a therapist may begin to feel comfortable to confide in them...tell them things like "Uncle Bob touches me where I pee and then gives me ice cream" or "Me and mommy go to her friend T-Bone's house. T-Bone gives her shots of medication that make mom stop throwing up and start sleeping" or "I wish daddy would stop putting his cigarettes out on my back". That sort of thing.
If we limit the help of messed up kids to 10 minute drug checkups we may just be treating symptoms instead of the root cause. While I generally advocate medicinal approaches where appropriate I think it pays to find out if it IS appropriate.
Could it be because middle class parents are more likely to push back against drug recommendations?
I'll be talking in sweeping generalities that could be off base, but here are some thoughts on that...
Possibly...it would probably be hard to get any real numbers on this though. I would think that Middle Class parents are more likely to recognize behavior as a problem and take the kid to a doctor ("Little Billy is acting way out of control, we better do something about it") where poor parents might recognize the problem and not care enough, recognize the problem and not have the money, or not recognize the problem at all ("Yeah, little Jimmy likes to torture dead animals....but I just smack him around when he does that")
The most important "I'm taking this kid to the doctor" factor could also be societal pressure on the middle class. Middle class parents tend to want to appear outwardly as a good stable family. Having a really fucked up kid kind of ruins this image. I think a lot of them would do anything to prevent it, including medicating the hell out of the kid.
I don't even know if that is just a demographic problem. Booze and/or some drugs + young people with raging hormones is something that can seriously affect the judgment of all classes of people. Just because you are smart or well off doesn't mean you'll always stop to analyze the situation. The difference is that the well off usually can find some way to care for the children. I know a few more intelligent, successful people that messed things up and have children with women that they were not in a stable relationship with.
On the other hand, the biggest violator I know is a guy I went to high school with who choose to live of life of selling drugs and bouncing in and out of prison. He had six kids by four different women. No chance of supporting them now of course, he is dead.
A lot of the stories I've heard about younger people illegally using viagra usually involve crushing it up and snorting it along with cocaine. I don't think the Viagra prescription is going to help him very much with that.
I don't really know that I believe that. I mean no offense to those techies who do have actual psychological problems that they battle each and every day with what I say here. These problems do exist and can make life harder.
In my experience, younger techies seem to have this idea that they are really quirky or have some mental problem. It's almost a techie way of proving how cool you are. Heck, I'll even admit acted a little foolish in my early IT days to the point where I believed that I was all quirky and crazy.
As I got older I realized that I just have some slightly different preference. I don't sleep as much as most people I know, I like to stay up later and don't like to get up early, and I like to learn new things (not a very common trait in America these days, sadly).
A few Years ago I worked with two developers who were clearly OCD and had been diagnosed as such. They were the truly quirky ones...the guys walking around their cars every morning to check five times if their windows were up and doors were locked, washing their hands until the skin was raw...doing other truly bizarre things all the time. Seeing people who had actual psychological issues that they had to deal with daily made me think of some of my co workers who had declared themselves the "Craziest" or "Pretty OCD" or "Waaaay ADD" and I realized they rarely exhibited any symptoms and when they did so, it was when it seemed convienient to them...such as "It is really hard for me to get to work on time because of my OCD and ADD".
Perhaps the desire to be different or have people think you are stranger than you really are is a type of disease in itself but it seems more of a Prima Donna/Pay attention to me thing in many Techies.
it sounds like you work at a decent place but the reality is that most managers do not get to decide that it is ok for their people to be late. A lot of the companies that I have seen require both hourly AND salary people to punch the clock. All employees are treated equally as far as not being late. I worked at one such company and I couldn't stand it. I was salaried, but there was no comp time. I would work for hours at home on some nights and still get a warning for not clocking in by 8:05. My Manager was an awesome guy who tried to cover for most of his people but there wasn't much he could do when HR sent the report saying "You have to talk to your people and tell them that they have been 2 minutes late twice in the last month. Once more will result in suspension".
I really really hated that job. Ultimately they fired or drove out all the decent people in my department and I was left to work with people who were ALWAYS on time but did nothing but soak up a paycheck (And I mean NOTHING! Like not performing a single work related task for weeks at a time). Somehow I spent 4 years there and now that I have a reasonable job I can't for the life of me figure out why I stayed.
Hmmmm. I'm replying to a post modded redundant to agree with him....that probably isn't good. But, what the hell, I agree and have more to add.
I've been to about ten conferences in all ranging from things like iTech where there was no real focus but "IT" to pretty small conferences that were based on really specific pieces of software. To be honest, I can't with a clear conscience ever ask my employer to send me to one that is longer than 1 day and costs more than free. Simply put, I never felt that the things I heard or saw at the conference were worth my paltry daily salary to me my employers.
For the most part there are presentations and such that are usually pretty vague. General ideas on how to run an IT department from the point of view of a guy whose IT department is so very different than yours that it is completely irrelevant. Glorious presentations regarding company roadmaps which are laden with buzzwords and promises of glorious software/hardware that don't even make much sense. All the sort of stuff that is pretty much available on the internet. Always. For Free.
I've met tons of people at conferences. We talked about the tech we had worked on and tech we hoped to work on in the future, exchanged business cards, and never crossed paths again. For the most part you have two types of people there...the ones with booths trying to sell something and the ones who got sent by their company and are just trying to gather enough information that they can show their superiors that they did in fact go to the conference and it was not a complete waste of time.
I hate to say it but trying to put together a conference to boost the "Soft Skills" of IT workers sounds nice in theory but it is not something that will generate a lot of interest. It sounds boring as hell to the IT people. The people paying the Bills will want to know if there is any possibility of a return on investment. "Uhm, I might be a bit nicer in the future...." probably won't convince them. "I'm going to meet a bunch of people who have experience with this software package we are considering purchasing so I can see how it worked in their environment" or something of the sort seems much more likely to be approved.
The thing is, these roles worked because of what types of skills were mainly needed to feed, clothe, and a put a roof over the head of the family. The roles consisted first of hunting and killing and morphed into hard manual labor. Now, we are at a point in time where those manual labor jobs are decreasing and jobs where physical attributes like strength and speed are meaningless. An increasing number of jobs are "Mind (or mindless" work. There is no difference between a man and a woman in these positions. Mom going to work and making boatloads of money because she is brilliant while dad stays home and does housework isn't going to cause the downfall of civilization.
Intellegence has to have survival ramifications. In the early days there is no other explanation how relatively slow, weak men managed to not be eaten into extinction by a wilderness full of fast, strong predators.
Also, I'm guessing that "the single largest loss of life on US soil" thing is supposed to be read as "the single largest loss of civilian life." If not, then I agree the statue is ridiculous.
I was going to say the same thing and I was surprised that it took until the bottom of the page to see someone else suggesting it. I do this all the time. Ink Cartridge refills are a lot better than they were 10 years ago. I always take my cartridges to Walgreens and recommend it to others who ask me about finding cheaper cartridges. The only downside (might be an upside) is that a lot of the cartridges fail their "print head" test. I've seen people take their still printing but low on ink cartridges in to have them refilled before they run completely dry and end up getting rejected for a failed test. This seems most common with HP ink.
Walgreens also sells a decent selection of knockoff cartridges for a variety of printer brands. They are usually quite a bit cheaper than the genuine cartridges and last about as long. Those of course, may also be refilled.
The problem I have with the printers that have separate print heads is that if..er...when the print head gets clogged you pretty much have to buy a new printer as the replacement heads will be about 70-90% of the cost of the entire printer. Usually if the printer sits for a month the heads are going to clog.
At a company I worked for, we bought a good number of fairly expensive Epson printers (one of the techs there was a "Certified Epson Tech" so he made a big push to get them). Within 18 months about half of them were dead. I had a similar experience with some higher priced Canon inkjets as well. Of course, this was 5 years ago or so. Things may have changed.
While the $300 price tag has kept me from purchasing one myself, I'd like to present the cost in a different way.
I don't know how large your collection of books is, but when my wife and I first moved in together and merged our book collections we had some serious issues with space. Obviously we've added more books since then and they have sprawled out to almost every room in the apartment, our storage locker in the basement, and decent collections left behind at our parent's houses for lack of a place to put them.
Overall between our various bookshelves, more "Decorative" shelves that hang on the wall with fancy bookends to keep them up, plastic tubs to keep older books safe in storage, and a nice bookmark or two we have to have spent (or received as gifts) pretty close to $300 for the right to now have books laying all over the floor. At this point when I buy new books, old books either have to be taken down to storage, sold, or thrown away. Probably due to some psychological problem of mine I have a hard time parting with even the worst books in my collection. I've actually started purchasing some thicker books in Ebook format to read on my computer to save on space.
The big difference at this point for me is the fact that right this moment I can glance over at my copy of 1984 and know that the lady at the flea market booth that sold it to me isn't going to show up tomorrow while I am at work and take it away. With the DRM/Lock in on most of the Ebooks I can't say the same about a digital collection.
DRM for books bothers me more than it does for games and music. I can't see book piracy becoming as rampant, if only because you CAN get almost any book for free just by going to the library. Not to mention it is hard to feel ripped off buying a book. I usually get hard cover books new for $10-$15 (I just ordered Anathem for $9.99 plus $5 shipping) and get plenty of hours out of them. If the book isn't horrible it is way more bang for my entertainment dollar than anything else I can purchase.
I'm going to assume that you are not the owner of the company where you work. If my assumption is false....sorry about that. Now, just because you happen to be the guy that gives approval in the Tech Department I don't see how you can justify deciding that you can make the decision to install SETI on all of the computers. The policy is likely in place to give somebody (you) the power to ensure that whatever is being done with the computers is in the best interests of your company.
I assume you chose to run SETI because it is something you are interested in and a cause that you personally believe is worth supporting. I'm also going to assume that the company is not reaping any benefit from running SETI and indeed is probably paying a few dollars more on its electric bill (minimal, but that isn't the point) from computers using CPU cycles when they should have been idling. Do you allow others to install hobby/interest software on the company equipment?
I don't know the exact situation where you work (you may have some understanding with those in charge), but I know if I was your boss I would be a bit suspicious of you if I found this out. The person responsible for ensuring that the company computers were being used only for company business was....using the computers for something other than company business. It seems like an abuse of your power... You can say it is for science and the betterment of humanity but I'm guessing that isn't in the mission statement.
Please don't take this wrong. This post may have sounded harsh but I am trying to understand your position. I personally wouldn't mind throwing Folding @ Home on the network I am in charge of...but I wouldn't feel right using resources like that without consent of the company Executives.
Look, I'm not into the entire Christianity thing and I don't have any real source to back my stuff up right now...but I do recall reading somewhere that I felt was reasonably reliable that there is evidence of mass extinction during some time periods that could very well be attributed to floods.
If anything, I think the flood story could be very believable in a localized manner. Some area of the world floods. A bunch of shit dies, some dude survives because he has a fucking boat. He jams some small animals on the boat not to save them of course, but to eat them. He survives, writes it down. To him, it was the world...because it was water as far as he could imagine. The story gets some major embellishment over time until the boat is the titanic and dude wanted to save two of every type of animnal because he's just nice like that. Noah's arc is quite possibly one of the more realistic stories in the Bible.
How many users do you know of have heard of the registry? How many do you know of who have actually went into it? I have met a lot of "Techs" and "Network Admins" in my day who were terrified to see me go Start, Run, Regedit and proceed to remove things from HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Run or whatever the key is to yank stuff from startup. Granted they were pretty shitty techies but still....
The biggest problem is that Microsoft would pretty much have to bite the bullet and declare that their new system was not compatible with any old software. There is no way Microsoft would do this unless their ship was 90% sunk.
I kind of like that idea but I can see some problems arising....
Congratulations! You have successfully installed Microsoft Office 2007 and reached achievement level 2! You are now allowed to change your screen saver!!!!:):):)
Uh oh!:( It seems that you just installed a piece of Terror Ware known as Open (as in opening the very gates of hell) Office. Your achievement level has just dropped from 5 to 3. Your hosts file has been modified with the line mail.google.com 64.4.32.7. When you figure out how to wisely choose what programs and services to use, this will change. Oh, and by supporting Open Office or Google you support terrorists.
You have attempted to install a program named "Firefox" (which is made by a company known to set foxes and other cute furry animals such as baby kittens on fire. Then they kick them. Uhm, in the face. Repeatedly) but your achievement score is only 6. Thankfully this system has been put into place or your inadequate ability to make your own choices would have hurt you and a small puppy.
You have just performed on a search on Bing (+1 Achievement) for something called "Ubuntu". Your Internet Access has been disabled. To reenable your Intertubes, open Microsoft Word 2007 and type (Sorry, copy and paste is also disabled) "Ubuntu is a complete piece of crap that is used only by communist radicals who never emerge from their parents basement and are allergic to sunlight." 5000 times or until the Microsoft truth headband decides you really mean it, whichever comes second.
Ubuntu has a nice repository and the system works well. You will find no argument from me here. Granted, I do go outside the safe world of the repository to find software for my Linux boxes as well...just not terribly often.
That said, I can't even begin to imagine the public outcry (especially here on Slashdot) if Microsoft moved to that model. I'm pretty sure the general consensus would be "Microsoft is telling us what people can put on their machines! Micro$oft is the suXX0rz and the An+ichri+t!!!" even if the repository was indeed managed fairly and was as easy to use and as diverse as the ubuntu version. Another problem is scale. Yes, there is a lot of software out there for Linux but the amount of software written for Windows is mind boggling. It would take millions of man hours for this to be set up and inevitably many pieces of great software would see their death warrants signed by being excluded from the Microsoft Depot (I believe that most Linux users feel comfortable searching outside the Repos when needed, while an average Windows user would probably be pretty frightened to venture outside the safe sphere at all).
Not to mention the lawsuit implications of this. If they excluded some shaky third party calculator software or some obscure fourth rate browser for legitimate reasons (which I don't really trust them to do anyway...I'm sure they'd find a way to exclude Firefox) they would just be asking for that company to cry "monopoly" and file lawsuits against them. A small company couldn't really stand up to Microsoft's army of Lawyers, but 5,000 small companies sure would have Microsoft sinking a lot of money into litigation.
While it could be nice, I just don't see the same kind of setup that works for some Ubuntu and other distros working for Microsoft. At all.
I don't think this needs to violate thermodynamics. Think of it this way. Baby Cow comes out. He is not ready for slaughtering and eating and will not be for quite a few years. During that time, you are going to have to provide the raw materials and calories (via foods and other nutrients...which also require energy to grow) so that the Cow can grow up and do its thing. The bummer part here is that the cow is going to do things to make sure you do not get a 1:1 exchange for the energy put in. He'll walk around, he'll breathe, his body will produce heat so he doesn't die, he'll grow liver cells, kidney cells, bladder cells, muscle cells in areas that don't produce great cuts of meat (the tail, for example). He'll even waste some of that energy chewing the food. When it is time for your cow to make the final journey to your plate, there will be energy expended moving him and cutting him up in a way that is consistent with how we want to eat it.
With fake meat, you aren't going to lose energy through all those annoying processes like breathing, producing heat, and growing/maintaining vital organs. The big question comes in how much energy will need to be used to train the meat to have the toughness of actual muscle. Assuming that process uses roughly the same amount of energy as a live cow training his muscle, you are up at least the energy used to maintain the cow's life, which is probably a very significant amount.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe you worked in a pharmacy awhile back...but I can tell you right now that Percocet is NOT a Class IV. In fact, it is a class II. I believe the only narcotic painkillers that aren't class II (or I) are Hydrocodone (Vicodin) and Codeine.
Here are some common drugs by class...
Class V: Cough Medicines such as Promethazine with a bit of Codeine
Class IV: Anti-Diarrheals, Benzodiazapines, Provigil
Class III: Hydrocodone, Suboxone, Marinol, and....Ketamine! (I know someone who was recently in a house that had Ketamine. He was charged, but cleared, of a schedule III charge).
Class II: Ritalin, Adderal, Morphine, Oxycodone (percocet), Oxycontin (time released percocet), Hydromorphone (dilaudid).
Class I: Heroin, 2C-B, Psylocybin (Shrooms), MDMA (Ecstacy), Peyote, LSD
I believe the classes are actually called Schedules. Here are the basic differences. Class V drugs nobody really cares about. some Pharmacists will even mix you up a batch of Promethazine with Codeine WITHOUT a prescription although that is not too common anymore. You can pretty much Import Schedule V without repurcussions. You can generally also import Schedule IV drugs in small quantities for personal use. I personally import Modafinil and customs goes through it and lets it go every time. Schedule IV drugs can be written out willy nilly by a doctors. Schedule III will generally get nabbed importing them. Doctors may write out scripts for Schedule III drugs pretty freely but if every single patient gets Vicodin...they probably will be looked at. Schedule III prescriptions can have refills and can be phoned in by the doctor. Schedule II drugs are a big leap. Doctors must write every script out in triplicate, can not assign refills, and cannot phone in a prescription. Needless to say these will not be passing customs. Schedule I drugs...well...I believe the terms they use are "High rate of abuse" and "No medically accepted purpose" meaning that no doctor may write out prescriptions for these chemicals. Production of said chemicals is under intense quota, requires some serious licensing, and can be used for research.
I don't know about the entire "Women are more emotional" thing....especially as it comes to the IT world. In my experience IT is half filled with males who are pretty emotional and don't know how to keep them in check. They rant, they rave, they threaten to quit/destroy systems/other insane thing, they are catty towards each other, they pout/throw tanrums when they don't get their way or don't get recognition, they constantly try to one up each other with their psychological disorders.....in short they act worse than any group of women ever could be. I don't buy the emotional thing one bit.
I can't tell you how much I hate the fact that I can't pay my rent online. In the first few months living at my new place I mailed a check 3 days before it was due. The office is about 2 miles away so I figured that was pretty safe. Fast forward two weeks and I get a letter in the mail...."NOTICE TO VACATE PREMISES OR BE EVICTED BY (2 days from now)." Oh, that put me into a panic. I called and apparently the check arrived the day before so the eviction notice so they passed each other in the mail. The postal service took 15 days to move my letter 2 miles. Nice.
Two months later, I watched and waited for my check to clear. It cleared about 22 days after I sent it. I don't balance my account anymore...I rely on checking my account and transactions online. Maybe that is foolish...but that is the way I do things. Seeing more money than I should have for that long annoyed me. I dumped the checkbook and the post office and grab a money order for $2 on my way to personally delivering my rent to the office every month.
The cheapest one, of course....which should do everything a home user wants to do. You could buy the most expensive one too, which will also do everything a home user wants to do.
This is assuming that the home user isn't setting up a domain, at which point I would say he isn't Joe Sixpack and should know the difference.
Even if I don't have anything to hide, my internet search habits could be construed by some as dangerous. Just because of things that have come up in real life or online discussions, I probably have some pretty strange things in my search history. "Child Porn Malware" (I think I also searched for "Child Porn Trojan" which can seriously be misconstrued) being a recent example. This search was obviously due to the recent "Surprise, you are a sex offender" malware but with how things work you never can tell how someone would react to that if they went digging through my information in the future.
I hate to admit it, but I know way too many people who buy and sell prescription drugs. That said, here is what I have seen as typical prices for various drugs. 30mg Adderal - $7-$8 each. 10mg Hydrocodone - $5-6 each. 1mg Xanax/10mg Valium/other Benzodiazepine equivalent - $1 each. Of course, your 80mg Oxycontin can probably score you $20-$60 each but those are a little harder to get a hold of. Basically, on a per tablet basis ADHD drugs have a pretty high street price. Benzos are relatively cheap.
Counseling may not be 100% effective but I do think any child being put on medication SHOULD be talking with a counselor. Some kids are probably just fucked up, but other kids developing a relationship with a therapist may begin to feel comfortable to confide in them...tell them things like "Uncle Bob touches me where I pee and then gives me ice cream" or "Me and mommy go to her friend T-Bone's house. T-Bone gives her shots of medication that make mom stop throwing up and start sleeping" or "I wish daddy would stop putting his cigarettes out on my back". That sort of thing.
If we limit the help of messed up kids to 10 minute drug checkups we may just be treating symptoms instead of the root cause. While I generally advocate medicinal approaches where appropriate I think it pays to find out if it IS appropriate.
Could it be because middle class parents are more likely to push back against drug recommendations?
I'll be talking in sweeping generalities that could be off base, but here are some thoughts on that...
Possibly...it would probably be hard to get any real numbers on this though. I would think that Middle Class parents are more likely to recognize behavior as a problem and take the kid to a doctor ("Little Billy is acting way out of control, we better do something about it") where poor parents might recognize the problem and not care enough, recognize the problem and not have the money, or not recognize the problem at all ("Yeah, little Jimmy likes to torture dead animals....but I just smack him around when he does that")
The most important "I'm taking this kid to the doctor" factor could also be societal pressure on the middle class. Middle class parents tend to want to appear outwardly as a good stable family. Having a really fucked up kid kind of ruins this image. I think a lot of them would do anything to prevent it, including medicating the hell out of the kid.
I don't even know if that is just a demographic problem. Booze and/or some drugs + young people with raging hormones is something that can seriously affect the judgment of all classes of people. Just because you are smart or well off doesn't mean you'll always stop to analyze the situation. The difference is that the well off usually can find some way to care for the children. I know a few more intelligent, successful people that messed things up and have children with women that they were not in a stable relationship with.
On the other hand, the biggest violator I know is a guy I went to high school with who choose to live of life of selling drugs and bouncing in and out of prison. He had six kids by four different women. No chance of supporting them now of course, he is dead.
A lot of the stories I've heard about younger people illegally using viagra usually involve crushing it up and snorting it along with cocaine. I don't think the Viagra prescription is going to help him very much with that.
I don't really know that I believe that. I mean no offense to those techies who do have actual psychological problems that they battle each and every day with what I say here. These problems do exist and can make life harder.
In my experience, younger techies seem to have this idea that they are really quirky or have some mental problem. It's almost a techie way of proving how cool you are. Heck, I'll even admit acted a little foolish in my early IT days to the point where I believed that I was all quirky and crazy.
As I got older I realized that I just have some slightly different preference. I don't sleep as much as most people I know, I like to stay up later and don't like to get up early, and I like to learn new things (not a very common trait in America these days, sadly).
A few Years ago I worked with two developers who were clearly OCD and had been diagnosed as such. They were the truly quirky ones...the guys walking around their cars every morning to check five times if their windows were up and doors were locked, washing their hands until the skin was raw...doing other truly bizarre things all the time. Seeing people who had actual psychological issues that they had to deal with daily made me think of some of my co workers who had declared themselves the "Craziest" or "Pretty OCD" or "Waaaay ADD" and I realized they rarely exhibited any symptoms and when they did so, it was when it seemed convienient to them...such as "It is really hard for me to get to work on time because of my OCD and ADD".
Perhaps the desire to be different or have people think you are stranger than you really are is a type of disease in itself but it seems more of a Prima Donna/Pay attention to me thing in many Techies.
it sounds like you work at a decent place but the reality is that most managers do not get to decide that it is ok for their people to be late. A lot of the companies that I have seen require both hourly AND salary people to punch the clock. All employees are treated equally as far as not being late. I worked at one such company and I couldn't stand it. I was salaried, but there was no comp time. I would work for hours at home on some nights and still get a warning for not clocking in by 8:05. My Manager was an awesome guy who tried to cover for most of his people but there wasn't much he could do when HR sent the report saying "You have to talk to your people and tell them that they have been 2 minutes late twice in the last month. Once more will result in suspension".
I really really hated that job. Ultimately they fired or drove out all the decent people in my department and I was left to work with people who were ALWAYS on time but did nothing but soak up a paycheck (And I mean NOTHING! Like not performing a single work related task for weeks at a time). Somehow I spent 4 years there and now that I have a reasonable job I can't for the life of me figure out why I stayed.
Hmmmm. I'm replying to a post modded redundant to agree with him....that probably isn't good. But, what the hell, I agree and have more to add.
I've been to about ten conferences in all ranging from things like iTech where there was no real focus but "IT" to pretty small conferences that were based on really specific pieces of software. To be honest, I can't with a clear conscience ever ask my employer to send me to one that is longer than 1 day and costs more than free. Simply put, I never felt that the things I heard or saw at the conference were worth my paltry daily salary to me my employers.
For the most part there are presentations and such that are usually pretty vague. General ideas on how to run an IT department from the point of view of a guy whose IT department is so very different than yours that it is completely irrelevant. Glorious presentations regarding company roadmaps which are laden with buzzwords and promises of glorious software/hardware that don't even make much sense. All the sort of stuff that is pretty much available on the internet. Always. For Free.
I've met tons of people at conferences. We talked about the tech we had worked on and tech we hoped to work on in the future, exchanged business cards, and never crossed paths again. For the most part you have two types of people there...the ones with booths trying to sell something and the ones who got sent by their company and are just trying to gather enough information that they can show their superiors that they did in fact go to the conference and it was not a complete waste of time.
I hate to say it but trying to put together a conference to boost the "Soft Skills" of IT workers sounds nice in theory but it is not something that will generate a lot of interest. It sounds boring as hell to the IT people. The people paying the Bills will want to know if there is any possibility of a return on investment. "Uhm, I might be a bit nicer in the future...." probably won't convince them. "I'm going to meet a bunch of people who have experience with this software package we are considering purchasing so I can see how it worked in their environment" or something of the sort seems much more likely to be approved.
The thing is, these roles worked because of what types of skills were mainly needed to feed, clothe, and a put a roof over the head of the family. The roles consisted first of hunting and killing and morphed into hard manual labor. Now, we are at a point in time where those manual labor jobs are decreasing and jobs where physical attributes like strength and speed are meaningless. An increasing number of jobs are "Mind (or mindless" work. There is no difference between a man and a woman in these positions. Mom going to work and making boatloads of money because she is brilliant while dad stays home and does housework isn't going to cause the downfall of civilization.
Intellegence has to have survival ramifications. In the early days there is no other explanation how relatively slow, weak men managed to not be eaten into extinction by a wilderness full of fast, strong predators.
Also, I'm guessing that "the single largest loss of life on US soil" thing is supposed to be read as "the single largest loss of civilian life." If not, then I agree the statue is ridiculous.
I was going to say the same thing and I was surprised that it took until the bottom of the page to see someone else suggesting it. I do this all the time. Ink Cartridge refills are a lot better than they were 10 years ago. I always take my cartridges to Walgreens and recommend it to others who ask me about finding cheaper cartridges. The only downside (might be an upside) is that a lot of the cartridges fail their "print head" test. I've seen people take their still printing but low on ink cartridges in to have them refilled before they run completely dry and end up getting rejected for a failed test. This seems most common with HP ink.
Walgreens also sells a decent selection of knockoff cartridges for a variety of printer brands. They are usually quite a bit cheaper than the genuine cartridges and last about as long. Those of course, may also be refilled.
The problem I have with the printers that have separate print heads is that if..er...when the print head gets clogged you pretty much have to buy a new printer as the replacement heads will be about 70-90% of the cost of the entire printer. Usually if the printer sits for a month the heads are going to clog.
At a company I worked for, we bought a good number of fairly expensive Epson printers (one of the techs there was a "Certified Epson Tech" so he made a big push to get them). Within 18 months about half of them were dead. I had a similar experience with some higher priced Canon inkjets as well. Of course, this was 5 years ago or so. Things may have changed.
While the $300 price tag has kept me from purchasing one myself, I'd like to present the cost in a different way.
I don't know how large your collection of books is, but when my wife and I first moved in together and merged our book collections we had some serious issues with space. Obviously we've added more books since then and they have sprawled out to almost every room in the apartment, our storage locker in the basement, and decent collections left behind at our parent's houses for lack of a place to put them.
Overall between our various bookshelves, more "Decorative" shelves that hang on the wall with fancy bookends to keep them up, plastic tubs to keep older books safe in storage, and a nice bookmark or two we have to have spent (or received as gifts) pretty close to $300 for the right to now have books laying all over the floor. At this point when I buy new books, old books either have to be taken down to storage, sold, or thrown away. Probably due to some psychological problem of mine I have a hard time parting with even the worst books in my collection. I've actually started purchasing some thicker books in Ebook format to read on my computer to save on space.
The big difference at this point for me is the fact that right this moment I can glance over at my copy of 1984 and know that the lady at the flea market booth that sold it to me isn't going to show up tomorrow while I am at work and take it away. With the DRM/Lock in on most of the Ebooks I can't say the same about a digital collection.
DRM for books bothers me more than it does for games and music. I can't see book piracy becoming as rampant, if only because you CAN get almost any book for free just by going to the library. Not to mention it is hard to feel ripped off buying a book. I usually get hard cover books new for $10-$15 (I just ordered Anathem for $9.99 plus $5 shipping) and get plenty of hours out of them. If the book isn't horrible it is way more bang for my entertainment dollar than anything else I can purchase.
But Windows Online Help is awesome! Every time I use it, I end up with something like this...
Error 5423342: Your Exchange Connector Is busted. Please See the help Files for more information.
Help for Error 5423342 - This error Occurs when your Exchange Connector is Busted.
Troubleshooting: Make sure your Exchange Connector is not busted.
Was this Document Helpful 1.............10
I'm going to assume that you are not the owner of the company where you work. If my assumption is false....sorry about that. Now, just because you happen to be the guy that gives approval in the Tech Department I don't see how you can justify deciding that you can make the decision to install SETI on all of the computers. The policy is likely in place to give somebody (you) the power to ensure that whatever is being done with the computers is in the best interests of your company.
I assume you chose to run SETI because it is something you are interested in and a cause that you personally believe is worth supporting. I'm also going to assume that the company is not reaping any benefit from running SETI and indeed is probably paying a few dollars more on its electric bill (minimal, but that isn't the point) from computers using CPU cycles when they should have been idling. Do you allow others to install hobby/interest software on the company equipment?
I don't know the exact situation where you work (you may have some understanding with those in charge), but I know if I was your boss I would be a bit suspicious of you if I found this out. The person responsible for ensuring that the company computers were being used only for company business was....using the computers for something other than company business. It seems like an abuse of your power... You can say it is for science and the betterment of humanity but I'm guessing that isn't in the mission statement.
Please don't take this wrong. This post may have sounded harsh but I am trying to understand your position. I personally wouldn't mind throwing Folding @ Home on the network I am in charge of...but I wouldn't feel right using resources like that without consent of the company Executives.
Look, I'm not into the entire Christianity thing and I don't have any real source to back my stuff up right now...but I do recall reading somewhere that I felt was reasonably reliable that there is evidence of mass extinction during some time periods that could very well be attributed to floods.
If anything, I think the flood story could be very believable in a localized manner. Some area of the world floods. A bunch of shit dies, some dude survives because he has a fucking boat. He jams some small animals on the boat not to save them of course, but to eat them. He survives, writes it down. To him, it was the world...because it was water as far as he could imagine. The story gets some major embellishment over time until the boat is the titanic and dude wanted to save two of every type of animnal because he's just nice like that. Noah's arc is quite possibly one of the more realistic stories in the Bible.
How many users do you know of have heard of the registry? How many do you know of who have actually went into it? I have met a lot of "Techs" and "Network Admins" in my day who were terrified to see me go Start, Run, Regedit and proceed to remove things from HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Run or whatever the key is to yank stuff from startup. Granted they were pretty shitty techies but still....
The biggest problem is that Microsoft would pretty much have to bite the bullet and declare that their new system was not compatible with any old software. There is no way Microsoft would do this unless their ship was 90% sunk.
I kind of like that idea but I can see some problems arising....
Congratulations! You have successfully installed Microsoft Office 2007 and reached achievement level 2! You are now allowed to change your screen saver!!!! :) :) :)
Uh oh! :( It seems that you just installed a piece of Terror Ware known as Open (as in opening the very gates of hell) Office. Your achievement level has just dropped from 5 to 3. Your hosts file has been modified with the line mail.google.com 64.4.32.7. When you figure out how to wisely choose what programs and services to use, this will change. Oh, and by supporting Open Office or Google you support terrorists.
You have attempted to install a program named "Firefox" (which is made by a company known to set foxes and other cute furry animals such as baby kittens on fire. Then they kick them. Uhm, in the face. Repeatedly) but your achievement score is only 6. Thankfully this system has been put into place or your inadequate ability to make your own choices would have hurt you and a small puppy.
You have just performed on a search on Bing (+1 Achievement) for something called "Ubuntu". Your Internet Access has been disabled. To reenable your Intertubes, open Microsoft Word 2007 and type (Sorry, copy and paste is also disabled) "Ubuntu is a complete piece of crap that is used only by communist radicals who never emerge from their parents basement and are allergic to sunlight." 5000 times or until the Microsoft truth headband decides you really mean it, whichever comes second.
Ubuntu has a nice repository and the system works well. You will find no argument from me here. Granted, I do go outside the safe world of the repository to find software for my Linux boxes as well...just not terribly often.
That said, I can't even begin to imagine the public outcry (especially here on Slashdot) if Microsoft moved to that model. I'm pretty sure the general consensus would be "Microsoft is telling us what people can put on their machines! Micro$oft is the suXX0rz and the An+ichri+t!!!" even if the repository was indeed managed fairly and was as easy to use and as diverse as the ubuntu version. Another problem is scale. Yes, there is a lot of software out there for Linux but the amount of software written for Windows is mind boggling. It would take millions of man hours for this to be set up and inevitably many pieces of great software would see their death warrants signed by being excluded from the Microsoft Depot (I believe that most Linux users feel comfortable searching outside the Repos when needed, while an average Windows user would probably be pretty frightened to venture outside the safe sphere at all).
Not to mention the lawsuit implications of this. If they excluded some shaky third party calculator software or some obscure fourth rate browser for legitimate reasons (which I don't really trust them to do anyway...I'm sure they'd find a way to exclude Firefox) they would just be asking for that company to cry "monopoly" and file lawsuits against them. A small company couldn't really stand up to Microsoft's army of Lawyers, but 5,000 small companies sure would have Microsoft sinking a lot of money into litigation.
While it could be nice, I just don't see the same kind of setup that works for some Ubuntu and other distros working for Microsoft. At all.
I don't think this needs to violate thermodynamics. Think of it this way. Baby Cow comes out. He is not ready for slaughtering and eating and will not be for quite a few years. During that time, you are going to have to provide the raw materials and calories (via foods and other nutrients...which also require energy to grow) so that the Cow can grow up and do its thing. The bummer part here is that the cow is going to do things to make sure you do not get a 1:1 exchange for the energy put in. He'll walk around, he'll breathe, his body will produce heat so he doesn't die, he'll grow liver cells, kidney cells, bladder cells, muscle cells in areas that don't produce great cuts of meat (the tail, for example). He'll even waste some of that energy chewing the food. When it is time for your cow to make the final journey to your plate, there will be energy expended moving him and cutting him up in a way that is consistent with how we want to eat it.
With fake meat, you aren't going to lose energy through all those annoying processes like breathing, producing heat, and growing/maintaining vital organs. The big question comes in how much energy will need to be used to train the meat to have the toughness of actual muscle. Assuming that process uses roughly the same amount of energy as a live cow training his muscle, you are up at least the energy used to maintain the cow's life, which is probably a very significant amount.