Which browser was? I say this honestly, which was the first widely available and useful browser to have tabs or something like it? From my dim memory, I was using FF as my default browser and sometime in 2005 or 2006 (I could be wrong with my years here) I downloaded Opera and it had tabs and ran better and was more useful to *me* (which is all I ever care about when it comes to software). I switched to Opera as my default browser with FF as the backup. Since my latest OS wipe and reinstall, I've been getting along fine with Opera as the default and Chrome as the backup browser, no FF on my system yet.
I continue to maintain that I like Opera more than any other web browser I have tried. Everyone else's opinions are free to differ.
Whoah, it does! For a browser known for its lack of features compared to other browsers (which is partly true and partly false) it hasn't ceased to surprise me with the features it does have and that I have continued to discover since I started using it back in 2006.
To be completely honest, taking you to slashdot when you type/. in the link bar isn't really a feature as much as a Whoah! Thats pretty nifty! type of a thing.
I take it back, this is new but related stuff. The old stuff was a hack to gain control of a NIC and then the host computer over the network (only affected 1 model of NIC that they knew of). There new stuff is firmware that would require them to first have root level access on the target system so that they could flash the attached network card. The upside to this is that they could remove all tools on the system itself and traces that they had been there, and be very very stealthy.
But still completely and utterly fascinating and relevant, especially since no one seemed to pay to much attention back at CANSECWEST (yet another computer security/tool/hacker/exploit research convention) this year in March when the same group shared their research and did a live demonstration of getting root (or system level, I forget if they hacked a windows or linux box) over the network by taking over the NIC, and not doing anything at all through the host OS.
I believe that it is an absolute requirement to have port forwarding on your landlord's NAT to your NATing router, as well as port forwarding on your own router to the box you are trying to access.
You do realize that when the term "settlers" is used in conjunction with the west bank and gaza, and the term "settlements" as well, its not in reference to Palestinians. It is in reference to Israelis moving in an establishing new settlements there. In places that Palestinians have been living in for a long time. So if you were to move out settlers, you would be removing the Israelis that are moving there.
Have you been playing SC2? I don't want to go online to get the full mutiplayer experience. I don't want it to be difficult to download a custom map outside of Battlenet, and for Blizzard to keep track of what maps I have. When I switch races I want to be in a league (There are 5 levels) that has players close to my skill level, so *I* don't get stomped. If I make a new account to "pick on people" it won't be good for long, because the matchmaking system promotes you very quickly if it notices that you are significantly better than the people in the league you are in.
Are you kidding? For like the last 5 or 6 years the only thing theyve produced is WoW. Which strikes me as the bastard offspring of a RPG and facebook. Its a disgusting game designed to force players to pay them monthly to continue playing.
I agree with your sentiments. Its also possibly the best game in the mmo genre, which is designed to force players to pay the mmo owner monthly to continue playing. I don't really play lots of mmo's, and didn't play wow for very long (in comparison to others), but thought it was the funnest and most well polished mmo I have tried (there might be better, I dont know). So they did good for themselves in the mmo genre. That it is a shitty genre that consumes the lives of those that really get into it is not blizz's fault.
You might call me a Blizzard fanboy. I don't consider myself a fanboy of anything, but I think Blizzard has produced nothing but excellent PC games. Not a single bad one. All 7 of the games they released have been fun, well polished, well supported, and ran decently on older hardware. SC2 is really good. I uninstalled it yesterday because the network-centricity of it is pissing me off. I have a fast computer. I should not have to sit and wait for things to load when I hit the custom maps folder icon (on single player), as the custom maps I have already paid and I assume downloaded, should be on my local machine. Instead I wait for it to do whatever network activity it does to monitor me playing a single player custom map. And then beyond that it just gets worse. This is the first time I personally think I agree with the argument that I would be getting a better product if I find a hacked/cracked version of the game that doesn't do all this network garbage when I just want to start the game from my OS, load a map, and play single player.
It would also be nice to be able to change my account name when on multiplayer. Or even better to just let me make up new account names and start with a 0-0 record, so that I can learn other races in the game without lowering my rating with my main race (as I would lose lots of games and get stomped playing zerg for the first time when I am say at the gold or platinum level with protoss.)
Jobs also criticized the Android Marketplace, pointing out that there are at least three other app stores being launched by vendors, causing confusion for users and work for developers. "This is gonna be a mess for both users and developers,"
Yes, because people have proven that having more than one drug store, supermarket, or fast food chain inevitably disorients them and fouls up their lives. Oh, wait.
Your analogy is not completely isomorphic. If a food or drug manufacturer makes a product, they can directly sell it to any drug store, supermarket or fast food chain. Because the process of eating is the same for all people. You put food in one end, some hours later poop comes out the other end, the details are hidden by the black box of the digestive system.
Computer software is different. Unless there is a 100% agreed upon and followed standard in a hardware/software ecosystem, then different versions of the software will have to exist to account for the various hardware/software configurations. Apple's phone ecosystem is a completely closed and controlled system. A developer has to decide which is the minimum hardware configuration he wants to support (the 1, 2, 3, 3gs or whatever, or the 4) and code from there, knowing it will work on ALL phones that use that version of the OS or higher. Or they can code a reduced feature/functionality/blingbling branch to hit the early version(s) of IOS that don't support all the stuff they want. That is the extent of it.
The situation with Android is a little different. There are many different hardware configurations to support, and many different modifications or branches or forks or implemented features or extensions of the base OS. Having multiple stores will be good for a consumer. I can go to APP store X which I know verifies that all apps work with my version of Android (hopefully). As a developer I know have to ensure that my app meets the quality/interoperability standards of APP store X. But...... I have to QA again and possibly change code to meet the requirements of APP store Y. And again for APP store Z. And so on. Its not good for me as a developer unless I only want to target APP store X, which cuts the market for my apps way down. Or I can use some sort of multiplatform development kit/framework which will do the work of making cross platform/hardware binaries of whatever I am developing, which has its own limitations and trade offs.
So in summary, Steve Jobs does have a point about this and is not spouting straight bullshit. This time.
Anybody with actual apple phone and android phone development under their belt have anything to chime in with, one way or another? Not geek fan-boys of either system, but nerds with useful knowledge and experience to share?
No, the assumption is not made. If someone is working at JPL at a position that does not require a security clearance, then they should be required to submit to a security clearance if and only if they are being moved to a position that actually requires one. They can take one voluntarily ahead of time if they see themselves moving into a sensitive area in the future (as these things can take as long a year to go through depending on how deep the background check has to go) but if they do not aspire to that, then why should they be forced to? Also, if they are go move to a different company/organization, it should be the responsibility of the new company/organization to ensure that they have a valid security clearance (if required for the new job). I believe that is what the lawsuit is about.
You make it sound like the economy is a simple entity that immediately responds to the actions of those in control of the purse strings, budgets, and most importantly, the fiscal policy. It is not that simple. The seeds for the recession that officially began in December 2007 (National Bureau of Economic Research) were laid in place well before the Congress shifted to a Democrat majority in January of 2007. It would have happened regardless of who was in Congress for the 11 months prior to the start.
How is zombies being especially popular as a meme sort of thing in the last few years a reflection of social change? (I know it can be, but please provide the outline of an answer that could take an entire semester of college to explore, otherwise an entire semester of class on it seems like a waste, to me).
I could be wrong, but I think only people majoring in English and related studies are required to take 300 level courses.
If I had to take a 300 level course in a field I wasn't very interested in, I would take the class that seemed most interesting to me. In English, it would probably not be a zombies course.
There is a big difference between The History of Rock and Roll and an English class where you watch movies and read comic books about something in popular culture that has really no impact on it. And by impact I don't mean sales of books movies stickers t-shirts or whatever, I mean an impact like Rock and Roll had of being both a catalyst of social change as well as a reflection of it, and it can be studied in that context and give a student a greater idea about society. It really walks a line between anthropology and music. Zombies movies and comics on the other hand are garbage. A class in the critical psychological deconstruction of the zombie archetype would be more educational and worth pursuing in my opinion (though also a lot more boring and difficult for most people). So yeah, zombies for the lowest common denominator. Brains. Brains. Seriously, where are the brains? Not in this class.
Grabage. If I wanted to watch 16 zombie movies, I would watch 16 zombies movies. If I wanted to write a screenplay about zombies, I would write a screenplay (and if it sucked, then hopefully I'd learn and the next one would be better). If I wanted to spend either my parent's money, or the taxpayer's money, or money own money in the form of student loans to hang out with the lame ass people that like zombies because its currently a popular meme and don't realize the only reason most people like zombies is because its a currently popular meme, then I would take this course.
Disclaimer. I like some zombie movies. I hate zombie-everything just to mention zombie which has zombie become popular nowadays zombie zombie zombie zombie. Zombie.
Please look at the summary again. The significant part is not that it found that people who drink in moderation live longer than people who abstain, (which is the type of result that you are linking to) it found that PEOPLE WHO ABSTAIN DO NOT LIVE AS LONG AS PEOPLE THAT DRINK HEAVILY. Sorry for the yelling, but I think many people might quickly skim over the summary and assume its the same sort of thing that has already been reported on, moderate drinking has health benefits vs. abstention. This is something else, in this study of some 2,000 people, the results showed that in order of decreasing lifespan it went like this:
Moderate drinkers > Heavy drinkers > Abstainers
So now the discussion here can be was the study flawed in some way or is this true and alcohol has some effect, physically, psychologically (because how one feels does have an effect on health) or both on humans that is beneficial to living a long life.
There is one slight error in your very good writeup on how binaural beats works. What you described, playing two notes on two different sound producers (in this case tuning forks), causes an actual, physical, "beat". The sound waves interfere or combine with one another in physical space, and a new sound wave (or a composite of the two, same difference) is created and propogated through air, the medium of sound.
The binaural beats mentioned here work a little differently, in that a recording is played, and it must be listened through headphones. One ear hears a certain pitch or frequency, the other ear hears a different pitch or frequency. The difference here is that neither ear "hears" a beat, the beat is created entirely in the brain of the listener. I am not a neurobiologist so I cannot explain the exact mechanism, but it appears it has something to do with how the brain processes sound and attempts to internally combine the two different sounds into a single perception/experience for the consciousness.
I checked out some binaural beat programs once. Basicly just sine wave (or fancier) generators that let you pick the frequency for the left output and right output. If I listed on one ear only using headphones, I hear a single frequency. If I listen to both ears, I hear the two frequencies, AND I perceive a beat in addition to that, that only exists in my brain. Its at the very least neat. At the very most I didn't notice any particular effects on myself, and didn't get addicted or anything to it.
The claim or assumption of the binaural beats people is that the low frequency beats can be used to simulate in the brain the delta waves or alpha waves or whatever waves are associated with deep sleep, or relaxation, or whatever. Again I am not a neurobiologist, so I can't say if this does anything.
Playing two tuning forks together or tuning a guitar is pretty neat to me too.
Yes. If you do a google search for CVE-1297 (going from memory here, the CVE number might be off (CVE's are the numbering scheme used by the Mitre organization. One of the things they do is publish details on exploits/vulnerabilities as they happen, and security people use them as a reference point)) zero day you will find some analysis that was done on a pdf found in the wild.
And I'm ultimately unimpressed. Here's Blizzard's history:
I honestly cannot tell if you are being sarcastic or not. In the event that you are not being sarcastic, allow me to elaborate on your points.
Warcraft -- First RTS
It was not. Usually Dune 2 by Westwood Studios gets credit for this. Warcraft 1 did have some innovations, but both of those games are really horrible if you try to play them now.
Warcraft 2 -- Added sea/air units, multiplayer
Thats innovation isn't it?
Starcraft -- Asymetric factions, battle.net
Ok, now here is one where the innovation, or at least the execution, cannot be overstated enough. There weren't just three factions each basically the same with slightly different units and maybe a faction specific unit and building or two. Starcraft had three entirely different factions, with almost entirely different build mechanics, and definitely with entirely different feels and strategies that work. They also managed to balance the factions fairly well, after many balance patches (they never quit making balance changes until it got to be just right). People are still playing it now, 10 years later. In Korea it has become something of a sport (leagues, teams, televised games, etc) and over here it is gaining momentum, and has been since I got into it two years ago. Oh, and the best players in the world don't play on the Battle.net server, they play on a server called ICUP
Warcraft 3 -- Hero units, 3D
Maybe not as much innovation. It took balls though to not just rehash SC or Warcraft 2. Blizzard's main competition was the Command and Conquer series of rts games, and those got rehashed and made into so many sequels that I didn't even know C&C 4 came out a week or a month or something ago, and didn't care either. Also, WC3's map editor is quite robust and has spawned many interesting games, including something called DoTA, which in itself is becoming a new genre of competitive multiplayer gaming
Starcraft 2 -- I can select 255 units at once now?
Is there anything I'm missing other than a conspicuous lack of risk or innovation?
Why do you automatically doubt that? There is a video that you can probably find on youtube if not somewhere else, it is actually quite well known. (I am at work and do not have access to youtube). You can see a wikipedia article on the man at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_%C4%90%E1%BB%A9c
It is apparently inconceivable to you that the mind can be conquered and made subservient to the **fill in the word for whatever would go here, common ones are soul, spirit, consciousness, "I"** and that a person could do that. Well, there are religious/spiritual practices and traditions that have been around for a very long time whose goal it is to bring people to states like this. Perhaps the followers become mindless zombies, perhaps they attain a sort of enlightenment, but to assume that the man was on serious drugs is an ignorant statement.
"If you have a scientific study from a neutral course that concluded that pot leads to physical dependence I'd love to see it."
I would like to note that the 4 articles you link are to studies that show connections to mental disorders, and have nothing to do with physical dependence.
Please, lets stay on the subject. The assertion is that Marijuana, Cannabis, THC, etc are not PHYSICALLY addictive, and that there is no scientific evidence to counter that assertion. In my own studies, it appears to be true, and peoples perceptions of marijuana are based less on fact and more on a subtle and not so subtle manipulation of the public opinion, by people that are basicly liars.
Marijuana. Marijuana caused health conditions have claimed the lives of zero people, ever.
It sounds like bullshit I know, but then I looked it up, and found no medical evidence that marijuana has ever been positively linked to health problems, as well as no record of a marijuana smoker dying from a condition caused by marijuana.
It does tend to make one fat and lazy though.
Slashdot Mirror
Which browser was? I say this honestly, which was the first widely available and useful browser to have tabs or something like it? From my dim memory, I was using FF as my default browser and sometime in 2005 or 2006 (I could be wrong with my years here) I downloaded Opera and it had tabs and ran better and was more useful to *me* (which is all I ever care about when it comes to software). I switched to Opera as my default browser with FF as the backup. Since my latest OS wipe and reinstall, I've been getting along fine with Opera as the default and Chrome as the backup browser, no FF on my system yet.
I continue to maintain that I like Opera more than any other web browser I have tried. Everyone else's opinions are free to differ.
Whoah, it does! For a browser known for its lack of features compared to other browsers (which is partly true and partly false) it hasn't ceased to surprise me with the features it does have and that I have continued to discover since I started using it back in 2006.
/. in the link bar isn't really a feature as much as a Whoah! Thats pretty nifty! type of a thing.
To be completely honest, taking you to slashdot when you type
I take it back, this is new but related stuff. The old stuff was a hack to gain control of a NIC and then the host computer over the network (only affected 1 model of NIC that they knew of). There new stuff is firmware that would require them to first have root level access on the target system so that they could flash the attached network card. The upside to this is that they could remove all tools on the system itself and traces that they had been there, and be very very stealthy.
But still completely and utterly fascinating and relevant, especially since no one seemed to pay to much attention back at CANSECWEST (yet another computer security/tool/hacker/exploit research convention) this year in March when the same group shared their research and did a live demonstration of getting root (or system level, I forget if they hacked a windows or linux box) over the network by taking over the NIC, and not doing anything at all through the host OS.
See their writeup here www.ssi.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/csw-trustnetworkcard.pdf or go to their company's website http://www.ssi.gouv.fr/site_article185.html
I believe that it is an absolute requirement to have port forwarding on your landlord's NAT to your NATing router, as well as port forwarding on your own router to the box you are trying to access.
You do realize that when the term "settlers" is used in conjunction with the west bank and gaza, and the term "settlements" as well, its not in reference to Palestinians. It is in reference to Israelis moving in an establishing new settlements there. In places that Palestinians have been living in for a long time. So if you were to move out settlers, you would be removing the Israelis that are moving there.
Have you been playing SC2? I don't want to go online to get the full mutiplayer experience. I don't want it to be difficult to download a custom map outside of Battlenet, and for Blizzard to keep track of what maps I have. When I switch races I want to be in a league (There are 5 levels) that has players close to my skill level, so *I* don't get stomped. If I make a new account to "pick on people" it won't be good for long, because the matchmaking system promotes you very quickly if it notices that you are significantly better than the people in the league you are in.
Are you kidding? For like the last 5 or 6 years the only thing theyve produced is WoW. Which strikes me as the bastard offspring of a RPG and facebook. Its a disgusting game designed to force players to pay them monthly to continue playing.
I agree with your sentiments. Its also possibly the best game in the mmo genre, which is designed to force players to pay the mmo owner monthly to continue playing. I don't really play lots of mmo's, and didn't play wow for very long (in comparison to others), but thought it was the funnest and most well polished mmo I have tried (there might be better, I dont know). So they did good for themselves in the mmo genre. That it is a shitty genre that consumes the lives of those that really get into it is not blizz's fault.
You might call me a Blizzard fanboy. I don't consider myself a fanboy of anything, but I think Blizzard has produced nothing but excellent PC games. Not a single bad one. All 7 of the games they released have been fun, well polished, well supported, and ran decently on older hardware. SC2 is really good. I uninstalled it yesterday because the network-centricity of it is pissing me off. I have a fast computer. I should not have to sit and wait for things to load when I hit the custom maps folder icon (on single player), as the custom maps I have already paid and I assume downloaded, should be on my local machine. Instead I wait for it to do whatever network activity it does to monitor me playing a single player custom map. And then beyond that it just gets worse. This is the first time I personally think I agree with the argument that I would be getting a better product if I find a hacked/cracked version of the game that doesn't do all this network garbage when I just want to start the game from my OS, load a map, and play single player.
It would also be nice to be able to change my account name when on multiplayer. Or even better to just let me make up new account names and start with a 0-0 record, so that I can learn other races in the game without lowering my rating with my main race (as I would lose lots of games and get stomped playing zerg for the first time when I am say at the gold or platinum level with protoss.)
Well....FreeBSD is not Linux. So what does your comment have to do with anything?
Yes, because people have proven that having more than one drug store, supermarket, or fast food chain inevitably disorients them and fouls up their lives. Oh, wait.
Your analogy is not completely isomorphic. If a food or drug manufacturer makes a product, they can directly sell it to any drug store, supermarket or fast food chain. Because the process of eating is the same for all people. You put food in one end, some hours later poop comes out the other end, the details are hidden by the black box of the digestive system.
Computer software is different. Unless there is a 100% agreed upon and followed standard in a hardware/software ecosystem, then different versions of the software will have to exist to account for the various hardware/software configurations. Apple's phone ecosystem is a completely closed and controlled system. A developer has to decide which is the minimum hardware configuration he wants to support (the 1, 2, 3, 3gs or whatever, or the 4) and code from there, knowing it will work on ALL phones that use that version of the OS or higher. Or they can code a reduced feature/functionality/blingbling branch to hit the early version(s) of IOS that don't support all the stuff they want. That is the extent of it.
The situation with Android is a little different. There are many different hardware configurations to support, and many different modifications or branches or forks or implemented features or extensions of the base OS. Having multiple stores will be good for a consumer. I can go to APP store X which I know verifies that all apps work with my version of Android (hopefully). As a developer I know have to ensure that my app meets the quality/interoperability standards of APP store X. But...... I have to QA again and possibly change code to meet the requirements of APP store Y. And again for APP store Z. And so on. Its not good for me as a developer unless I only want to target APP store X, which cuts the market for my apps way down. Or I can use some sort of multiplatform development kit/framework which will do the work of making cross platform/hardware binaries of whatever I am developing, which has its own limitations and trade offs.
So in summary, Steve Jobs does have a point about this and is not spouting straight bullshit. This time.
Anybody with actual apple phone and android phone development under their belt have anything to chime in with, one way or another? Not geek fan-boys of either system, but nerds with useful knowledge and experience to share?
No, the assumption is not made. If someone is working at JPL at a position that does not require a security clearance, then they should be required to submit to a security clearance if and only if they are being moved to a position that actually requires one. They can take one voluntarily ahead of time if they see themselves moving into a sensitive area in the future (as these things can take as long a year to go through depending on how deep the background check has to go) but if they do not aspire to that, then why should they be forced to? Also, if they are go move to a different company/organization, it should be the responsibility of the new company/organization to ensure that they have a valid security clearance (if required for the new job). I believe that is what the lawsuit is about.
You make it sound like the economy is a simple entity that immediately responds to the actions of those in control of the purse strings, budgets, and most importantly, the fiscal policy. It is not that simple. The seeds for the recession that officially began in December 2007 (National Bureau of Economic Research) were laid in place well before the Congress shifted to a Democrat majority in January of 2007. It would have happened regardless of who was in Congress for the 11 months prior to the start.
How is zombies being especially popular as a meme sort of thing in the last few years a reflection of social change? (I know it can be, but please provide the outline of an answer that could take an entire semester of college to explore, otherwise an entire semester of class on it seems like a waste, to me).
I could be wrong, but I think only people majoring in English and related studies are required to take 300 level courses.
If I had to take a 300 level course in a field I wasn't very interested in, I would take the class that seemed most interesting to me. In English, it would probably not be a zombies course.
There is a big difference between The History of Rock and Roll and an English class where you watch movies and read comic books about something in popular culture that has really no impact on it. And by impact I don't mean sales of books movies stickers t-shirts or whatever, I mean an impact like Rock and Roll had of being both a catalyst of social change as well as a reflection of it, and it can be studied in that context and give a student a greater idea about society. It really walks a line between anthropology and music. Zombies movies and comics on the other hand are garbage. A class in the critical psychological deconstruction of the zombie archetype would be more educational and worth pursuing in my opinion (though also a lot more boring and difficult for most people). So yeah, zombies for the lowest common denominator. Brains. Brains. Seriously, where are the brains? Not in this class.
Grabage. If I wanted to watch 16 zombie movies, I would watch 16 zombies movies. If I wanted to write a screenplay about zombies, I would write a screenplay (and if it sucked, then hopefully I'd learn and the next one would be better). If I wanted to spend either my parent's money, or the taxpayer's money, or money own money in the form of student loans to hang out with the lame ass people that like zombies because its currently a popular meme and don't realize the only reason most people like zombies is because its a currently popular meme, then I would take this course.
Disclaimer. I like some zombie movies. I hate zombie-everything just to mention zombie which has zombie become popular nowadays zombie zombie zombie zombie. Zombie.
Moderate drinkers > Heavy drinkers > Abstainers
So now the discussion here can be was the study flawed in some way or is this true and alcohol has some effect, physically, psychologically (because how one feels does have an effect on health) or both on humans that is beneficial to living a long life.
There is one slight error in your very good writeup on how binaural beats works. What you described, playing two notes on two different sound producers (in this case tuning forks), causes an actual, physical, "beat". The sound waves interfere or combine with one another in physical space, and a new sound wave (or a composite of the two, same difference) is created and propogated through air, the medium of sound.
The binaural beats mentioned here work a little differently, in that a recording is played, and it must be listened through headphones. One ear hears a certain pitch or frequency, the other ear hears a different pitch or frequency. The difference here is that neither ear "hears" a beat, the beat is created entirely in the brain of the listener. I am not a neurobiologist so I cannot explain the exact mechanism, but it appears it has something to do with how the brain processes sound and attempts to internally combine the two different sounds into a single perception/experience for the consciousness.
I checked out some binaural beat programs once. Basicly just sine wave (or fancier) generators that let you pick the frequency for the left output and right output. If I listed on one ear only using headphones, I hear a single frequency. If I listen to both ears, I hear the two frequencies, AND I perceive a beat in addition to that, that only exists in my brain. Its at the very least neat. At the very most I didn't notice any particular effects on myself, and didn't get addicted or anything to it.
The claim or assumption of the binaural beats people is that the low frequency beats can be used to simulate in the brain the delta waves or alpha waves or whatever waves are associated with deep sleep, or relaxation, or whatever. Again I am not a neurobiologist, so I can't say if this does anything.
Playing two tuning forks together or tuning a guitar is pretty neat to me too.
Yes. If you do a google search for CVE-1297 (going from memory here, the CVE number might be off (CVE's are the numbering scheme used by the Mitre organization. One of the things they do is publish details on exploits/vulnerabilities as they happen, and security people use them as a reference point)) zero day you will find some analysis that was done on a pdf found in the wild.
And I'm ultimately unimpressed. Here's Blizzard's history:
I honestly cannot tell if you are being sarcastic or not. In the event that you are not being sarcastic, allow me to elaborate on your points.
Warcraft -- First RTS
It was not. Usually Dune 2 by Westwood Studios gets credit for this. Warcraft 1 did have some innovations, but both of those games are really horrible if you try to play them now.
Warcraft 2 -- Added sea/air units, multiplayer
Thats innovation isn't it?
Starcraft -- Asymetric factions, battle.net
Ok, now here is one where the innovation, or at least the execution, cannot be overstated enough. There weren't just three factions each basically the same with slightly different units and maybe a faction specific unit and building or two. Starcraft had three entirely different factions, with almost entirely different build mechanics, and definitely with entirely different feels and strategies that work. They also managed to balance the factions fairly well, after many balance patches (they never quit making balance changes until it got to be just right). People are still playing it now, 10 years later. In Korea it has become something of a sport (leagues, teams, televised games, etc) and over here it is gaining momentum, and has been since I got into it two years ago. Oh, and the best players in the world don't play on the Battle.net server, they play on a server called ICUP
Warcraft 3 -- Hero units, 3D
Maybe not as much innovation. It took balls though to not just rehash SC or Warcraft 2. Blizzard's main competition was the Command and Conquer series of rts games, and those got rehashed and made into so many sequels that I didn't even know C&C 4 came out a week or a month or something ago, and didn't care either. Also, WC3's map editor is quite robust and has spawned many interesting games, including something called DoTA, which in itself is becoming a new genre of competitive multiplayer gaming
Starcraft 2 -- I can select 255 units at once now?
Is there anything I'm missing other than a conspicuous lack of risk or innovation?
Probably, yeah.
Yada, yada.. So, they ripped of FreeBSD and Linux..
...Which were totally original creations and didn't borrow and extend from anything that existed prior...
It is apparently inconceivable to you that the mind can be conquered and made subservient to the **fill in the word for whatever would go here, common ones are soul, spirit, consciousness, "I"** and that a person could do that. Well, there are religious/spiritual practices and traditions that have been around for a very long time whose goal it is to bring people to states like this. Perhaps the followers become mindless zombies, perhaps they attain a sort of enlightenment, but to assume that the man was on serious drugs is an ignorant statement.
I would like to note that the 4 articles you link are to studies that show connections to mental disorders, and have nothing to do with physical dependence.
Please, lets stay on the subject. The assertion is that Marijuana, Cannabis, THC, etc are not PHYSICALLY addictive, and that there is no scientific evidence to counter that assertion. In my own studies, it appears to be true, and peoples perceptions of marijuana are based less on fact and more on a subtle and not so subtle manipulation of the public opinion, by people that are basicly liars.
Marijuana. Marijuana caused health conditions have claimed the lives of zero people, ever. It sounds like bullshit I know, but then I looked it up, and found no medical evidence that marijuana has ever been positively linked to health problems, as well as no record of a marijuana smoker dying from a condition caused by marijuana. It does tend to make one fat and lazy though.