most sweeteners of any type are now high-fructose corn syrup
Only in the US as far as I know... here in Europe, HFCS (better known as isoglucose here) is subject to a production quota (not illegal as many people seem to think, but definitely strongly regulated). The production quota is deliberately set at a very low level (just over 300000 tons per annum (which sounds a lot, but compared to the millions of tons of sugar we produce/consume, it's negligible)) so that using it as a sweetener in general would not be feasible for any mass-market product. For this reason, almost everything tends to be sweetened with either real sugar, or purely artificial sweeteners such as Aspartame.
But it's analog, which means it needs infinite resolution to process perfectly
And what exactly makes you think the universe is analogue? Can we really break it down ad infinitum, or is there a "smallest possible size"? Even if there isn't, it's almost certain there is a "smallest possible size that can be measured" (the Planck length) which is of course a fairly relevant point when you're talking about this hypothetical data capture of one's life.
Platitudes don't pay bills and they don't allow you to retire or buy a house
If you love what you're doing, why retire? And if you're happy without a house, why buy one? Sorry, but I agree with the GP, if you truly love what you're doing, then the money is secondary at best.
Perhaps you're thinking of a situation where someone LIKES what they're doing, but would still rather not be doing it. That is very different than truly loving what you do. If I had the option of either continuing what I'm doing now (programming) for the same pay for the rest of my life, or changing to something I'd hate (such as sales or marketing) for 10 times the money instantly, it's a no-brainer to me that I'd stay where I am. (I don't expect to be paid the same for the rest of my life though - I do intend to move upwards, but will probably never do any more management that a "lead programmer" position at most, since I'm totally uninterested in the concept)
The owner can no longer sell you your "first look" at the content when you have already had a first look. So what is "stolen" is not the content itself, but that first look.
By twisting it around it my mind a bit, I can agree that that makes logical sense, despite being ridiculous... (which from your tone, I'm sure you intended)
-- which must be the content owner's property.
I'd LOVE to see that one argued in court! Me looking at something belongs to someone other than me... hmmm... barrel of laughs all round there!
Anyways, stealing is not necessarily defined by depriving one person of an experience or possession, it's defined by obtaining said item without giving the original author or owner the compensation requested for your copy.
Are you sure? IANAL, but here's a few definitions I found from different legal texts around the world... (bold emphasis mine)
"A person is guilty of theft if: he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it.": UK Theft Act 1968, Section 1
"Unlawfully appropriating property with intent to deprive the owner of property" : Texas Penal Code, Title 7, Paragraph 31.03
"Every one commits theft who fraudulently and without colour of right takes, or fraudulently and without colour of right converts to his use or to the use of another person, anything, whether animate or inanimate, with intent to deprive, temporarily or absolutely, the owner of it, or a person who has a special property or interest in it, of the thing or of his property or interest in it;": Canada Criminal Code, Section 322
"A person is guilty of an offence if: the person dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of the property.": Australian Criminal Code Amendment (Theft, Fraud, Bribery and Related Offences) Act 2000, Part 7.2, Division 131.1
I certainly won't argue that piracy isn't a crime, but it definitely does NOT appear to be "theft"...
don't bother with Dutch...it's horrible, inconsistent, sounds awful and like you mentioned we all speak english to some degree anyway.
As a non-native Dutch speaker (English is my mother tongue), I'd have to disagree with that. I think Dutch is a wonderful language once you master some of the finer details of it. For example, I still have yet to find a language that you can swear at people with quite as much venom as is possible in that wonderful language!
Sadly, I live in Germany these days and other than the occasional visit, haven't spent much time in NL over the last 10 years, so my Dutch is getting pretty rusty and I keep thinking German words in the middle of Dutch sentences which totally ruins it.
Everybody keeps neglecting his use of derms to deliver drugs. Yet, the first "patch" I saw widely in use was the anti-smoking patches in the mid-90's.
Interestingly, I did recently come across it as a delivery mechanism for illegal psychedelic drugs also - definitely the first time I've seen that. The "sales pitch" for it was that it'd give you a longer trip, since it absorbs more slowly in to the system. Basically it's (purported to be) about 4 trips worth of LSD, but given at a rate of approximately 1 per 4 hours, so you'd come up at a pretty slow rate, but eventually reach the intensity of about one and a half trips, and then remain at that state for close to a day and a half before it finally wears off (unlike a traditional trip that might be gone in 6 to 8 hours or so). They physically appear to be based on a nicotine patch as far as I can tell.
Needless to say, I bought 3. They're still sitting in a drawer at home (appropriately protected from moisture of course), since I'm waiting for the right weekend to have it along with a couple of friends, and we haven't yet found a weekend where we're all free (too much work and other social life getting in the way!). (in case they turn out to be complete duds, I've got some regular tabs as well, so it'll only mean I'm out of pocket 90 euro for the three - no big loss)
I'll probably be posting my experience of it on Erowid or elsewhere at some point within the coming months.
I'll ignore for the moment that "Workbench" isn't an OS (I'm assuming you mean AmigaOS), but I do want to point out that Workbench has had a PDF reader since version 4.0 (6 years ago), and a nice frontend for GhostScript as well.
True story though - I was showing a member of the younger generation a floppy disk that I had lying around, and the first thing he said was, "ah, it looks like the 'save' icon!". To many of the younger generation, the icon is an abstract concept meaning "save", not a representation of a disk.
The problem there is you're now talking about "liking" rather than "believing". I have no problem with people who "like" a particular religion... but anyone who "believes" the stories is a loony, IMHO.
Since neither marijuana nor LSD are addictive, you might want to reconsider some of your wording Mr Troll.
All we here is the wonderful hippie wonderland where everybody gets high 24/7 and somehow that doesn't fuck everything up.
Almost no-one is advocating "getting high 24/7" - we advocate reasonable laws to allow people to make some personal choices and accept the responsibilities of those choices if they're badly made. If a guy buys cocaine and uses it, no problem from my point of view. If he buys cocaine and beats the crap out of someone since he's the type of person who gets violent on it, then he should be arrested for assault - no different to alcohol. If various drugs were legalised, then yes, there'd be people who abuse them, but I don't think it'd be a significantly different number to the number of people that abuse them now. Just as there are people that abuse alcohol currently, but the vast majority of us that do drink it are able to do so in moderation without being permanently drunk.
The vast majority of the problems are because they're illegal. The guy I get my LSD from is a pretty shady sort of character, and I wouldn't put it past him to do other criminal things such as theft and perhaps even physical violence. If I could avoid ever seeing that dickhead again, buy my acid from a pharmacy, and hear he's gone out of business, then I'd be a very happy man.
full disclosure: I don't use marijuana - don't like the feeling it gives. I also don't use cocaine, but mostly due to the price/performance factor (it's way too expensive for so little effect) as well as some concerns about the health risks. I do use LSD though on a fairly regular basis - up to around 6 times per year on average these days, but much more when I was younger. I love the things it does to me, and consider myself a much better person for having had it. Despite this, I'm in favour of the legalisation of all three (and more), not just my "preferred" substance(s).
While I agree the conclusion they reached was probably right, I disagree with their testing methods. They pressurised the plane to the correct pressure difference for its altitude, but they didn't take in to account the pressure difference for the speed of the plane moving through the air. They should have bumped the pressure difference up a bit more to account for this (I don't think it would've made any difference to the result, but it would've been a better test)
I lived in Germany for 3 years when I was in the Air Force and the bus and rail systems were wonderful. But thats what? 85 million people in a country not much bigger than Oregon?
That's not really looking at the big picture though... Public Transportation over most of Europe is equally as excellent as here in Germany (not QUITE in some places, but still far better than other parts of the world I've lived in). Taking in Europe as a whole, the size of the place isn't nearly as much of an argument anymore - if the US states ran public transportation like European countries do, it'd work much better.
People seemed to come in clumps making public transportation easier.
I'll definitely grant you that. Something I can never quite fathom when I visit the US is how hard it is to really be "in the middle of nowhere" (which, by my definition, means no people around). Here in Germany, there's people pretty much everywhere, but if you do go somewhere where there isn't anyone, you really are alone. In the US, it always sort of felt like there might be a house somewhere if you just walk over a hill or two. I've also lived in Australia, which has the mind boggling expanses of absolute nothing and some pretty serious "clumping" going on around the coasts.
Then there is the crime. I never, ever, felt unsafe on a bus or train in Germany.
Yep - that's something I definitely love here. "Random" violent crime is very low (muggings, street violence, etc - domestic violence is similar to other parts of the world though, so that's nothing special unfortunately).
On the actual topic though, even here in Germany, I'd pay more to take public transport to work than drive. Only because of my exact circumstances though - for most people it'd be the other way around. I live in the middle of a city, with an U-Bahn stop pretty much right outside my door, but to get to work I can either drive 8km, or take the U-Bahn, followed a bus. U-Bahn alone would be cheap, bus alone would be cheap, but U-Bahn plus bus would be slightly more than I pay for keeping my car running (especially since it's such a short drive). I do make heavy use of the U-Bahn for other journeys though like heading to friend's houses, coming home drunk late at night when I can't be bothered walking home, etc. For mid-distance journeys (within Germany) I generally take the train, and for long distance, I mostly fly, so other than the 8km trip between home and work, I don't use my car much at all in normal day-to-day life (I do like doing "road trips" though, so maybe a couple of times a year, I might do a several thousand km drive somewhere, so I definitely wouldn't give up the car even if my work circumstances were different... that's a matter of doing something I enjoy though, not convenience or cost (it'd be easier and cheaper to fly to most of the places that I go on these sorts of road trips))
Well, I'm not Dutch (legally speaking, but I am half-Dutch by blood). I speak enough to read that and also have pretty close ties to the Netherlands in general (including having lived there a while back, although I'm in Germany these days).
I consider that the problem isn't a failure of the liberal policies, but instead an erosion of them that caused some problems, and that gave those looking for a change to more restrictions to point the finger and say that the liberal policies themselves caused the problems. The EU itself a problem - the Netherlands NEEDS to be a part of it, so there's no way it could even consider backing out now, but the EU laws/policies/guidelines are just far too restrictive in some ways, and it's crushing some of the things that the Dutch used to hold so dear.
It wasn't that long ago that people were proud to be Dutch, and I'm still proud of my Dutch heritage. It seems these days though, it's getting harder and harder to find Dutch that actually are happy to be so. There's a negative view of the country that's been slowly creeping in for a long time, and is beginning to reach a critical point. Being "more like the rest of the EU" or even "more like the world" is NOT what needs to happen. What needs to happen is that the Dutch need to look at their history and realise that they were the creators, the inventors, and the explorers of the world. There were so many different rulers, alliances, and crappy politics going on all around them, but the Dutch people just "got on with it", did what they did, and founded one of the greatest nations on Earth.
Back closer to the topic at hand - I agree with the other posters that say the whole chain needs to be legalised, and controlled. Let the people controlling it be mierenneukers if that's what it takes to keep it under control, but just let it free.
Just as a side note: I don't smoke it myself - I hate the stuff and how it makes me feel. But I believe it should be the right of any adult to use it should they want to. As far as the "tourist" problem goes - that's always there in any place where there are extra freedoms - they all spend their time in the red light district of Amsterdam or the border towns anyway. I lived in De Pijp in Amsterdam, which I'm sure you know is pretty damn close to the centre, but hardly saw any tourists at all.
As a related topic, the new situation with mushrooms saddens me a bit... one more piece of real freedom gone.
Well, I would like to know, if a black hole comes by, does it actually pull a whole planet into its hole, do we know if this is possible...
If it has sufficient gravity, then yes, it is quite capable of "swallowing" a planet. Any black hole that formed in the "usual way" from a collapsing star, certainly has enough gravity (pretty much exactly the same as the star that it was before it collapsed) to suck in a nearby planet if the planet is unfortunate enough to be nearby. Of course, that's only really a problem with these "wandering" black holes - if our sun was mystically replaced with an equally massive black hole (which would be MUCH smaller in size), then the planets would continue to go around it exactly as they do now (although we'd all die from freezing since the hole isn't putting out heat like our sun does, but that's another matter entirely)
I mean at the core a small start implodes and turns into a black hole, but does it have enough strength to suck in another star, or even a whole solar system...
Again, depends on the size (gravity) of the hole, but generally yes - put two stars on a collision course and it'll be pretty nasty.
and what happens if you put 2 black holes side by side, do they cancel each other out...sort of like putting a bag of holding inside a bag of holding...?
Nope, they'd just "merge" in to one bigger one. So, two that had a mass of x, would become a single one with a mass of 2x.
Black holes are pretty weird and there's a lot of strange physics around them when you get deep in to it, but at the very basic level, they're not particularly odd at all - just think of them as objects with a REALLY large mass for their size (but still no larger than many other objects around, such as stars (of course, holes that used to be galactic centres are generally a bit bigger, since our best theories regarding black hole galactic centres involve a LOT of matter going in to creating them)).
Full Hungarian notation is a bit redundant, precisely because everyone (for reasonable values of 'everyone') DOES use some form of IDE to code, and any non-epic-fail IDE will at the least tell you variable types when you mouse over them, or pop up a member list for a class/struct when you go to type them.
I tend to use a "non strict, mostly my own style" form of Hungarian notation, precisely because I don't WANT to mouse over or pop up a member list or whatever - I want to be able to sit back and READ the code, not "figure it out". It's also handy for things like this (C#, because that's what I do at work mostly these days, but C++ is my background):
private void foo() { //At some point, get a string from somewhere called szMoney //Do stuff
int iMoney = int.Parse(szMoney); //Do more stuff
}
Now, at a glance, I know that "szMoney" is the string representation of the Money, and "iMoney" is the integer representation of it. I don't want to just call it "Money" as either, because I wouldn't know what it is without the IDE telling me (or remembering one extra thing), and, more importantly, what would I name the integer if the string was already called "Money"?
(note: the above example is of course fictional, but in the real world, it's not uncommon that I want the same variable as different representations, and I'll be reusing both of them, so there's no way I'll call int.Parse(x) or x.ToString() each time - that'd be a waste.
Street drugs may be recreational, but you don't know the dosage that you're buying. If it were legalized, and sold in stores at reasonable prices, blackmarket vendors would be out of business. You'd know if you're taking 50ug (nominal recreational dose) or 400ug (high dosage). If you just purchased what you thought was a light dosage of say 25ug (will induce light hallucinations), but were looking for a "heavier" trip, you could take a dozen hits. I've never heard of anyone doing it intentionally, but you could. If they were actually 400ug, you're already 25% of the way to a lethal dose (12,000ug).
All I want to say to this is: "thank you for being a voice of reason". If it were legalised, we could control it better. If it were controlled better, we would understand it better.
Voluntarily creating moments in your head that could be traumatic (i.e., bad acid trip) are a bad thing.
That's true, but if properly educated beforehand, "bad trips" are vanishingly rare. They tend to happen when people begin to freak out due to things they didn't expect and aren't prepared to deal with it.
hen again, drinking heavily and doing something bad could be just as traumatic. DUI involving fatality can be bad for your psyche.
Actually that's quite an apt remark. I consider "learning about LSD responsibly" to be no different than driving instructors being able to prepare someone for emergency situations in a vehicle whereas "learned from Mum and Dad" types are more likely to freak out and get in to horrible crashes more often (note: not saying all people that learned from their parents are bad drivers, but within the first couple of years, it's definitely a higher percentage than those who had a real driving instructor - after a couple of years experience behind the wheel, it tends to be not so much of a marked difference)
Hasn't there been more studies on the effects of drugs like LSD than most of the name-brand pharmaceuticals that have been released in the past 10 years?
While you're unlikely to find a stronger supporter of LSD on slashdot than myself, I think unfortunately the answer to that is "no". It's true that LSD has undergone many trials and studies, but very few recently, and I'd be pretty confident in saying that the big name brand pharmaceuticals have had more done (perhaps not as varied or wide, but nevertheless more, and also probably better handled since the state of medical trials back when they were being done on LSD actually looks fairly neolithic by today's standards)
I don't believe we know enough about drugs lke lsd for them to be used in the public like that.
That could be said of many things... are you really advocating a "it might be dangerous, so let's keep it illegal" approach? That's only a very short step away from the concept of a nanny state. Personally I think there has been enough research done in to it for it to be considered safe enough, but even if there hadn't I'd still be in favour of legalisation of it, and they could slap some kind of large warning label on it like they do with cigarettes (in most places) and alcohol (in some places).
Plus of course, if they were to legalise it, there'd be a lot more data to collect (including re-allowing controlled trials and studies - like the many that took place in the 60s (I can definitely vouch for one such study that basically said it's a wonderful way to break addictions - non addictive itself, but it totally messes with the part of your brain that says you want whatever it is you're addicted to (in some cases, you find yourself addicted to everything ("sensation whore" my friends like to call it), but the feelings are transient at best and are often gone in less than a second) - one of my friends used it to quit smoking, and another to help him get away from his crystal meth habit (hard to say if he was really addicted to meth, but he was definitely heading down that nasty nasty road))
Acid is not a toy. ... If any brand of crazy or a high degree of creativity runs in your family, you are well advised to avoid recreational usage of lysergic acid, mescaline, psylocybin, MDMA, and all other psychotropic/psychoactive substances.
Absolutely correct, which is why I didn't recommend it as a "way to have some fun" - I recommended it as a way to cure being a "focused accountant" type.
The music industry is littered with high-profile examples of people who ended up with permanently damaged psyches;
Citation needed. While I won't deny that there are people that have taken LSD that have gone off the deep end, can you really say it was the LSD that caused it and not other factors in their lifestyles (including a combination of stress and not being entirely mentally stable to begin with)? You've listed 3 examples of such people, but it wouldn't be hard to come up with a much longer list of musicians that HAVE taken it a lot and were/are absolutely fine (the Beatles spring to mind, but there are many other examples also)
Under the influence of repeated dosages, Kurt developed the idea that his mother was a robot and gutted her with a kitchen knife.
I have a VERY hard time believing this was caused by LSD - only severe mental instability could lead someone to do something like that (quite possibly exacerbated by LSD, but not caused by it... as I already said in my original post, if you're not the kind of person who can control his/her thoughts so well, be damn careful). Under even very large dosages, I've always been able to say to myself - "hey wow, that's cool, but I know it isn't real". Also, "believing ones mother to be a robot" just doesn't sound like an LSD experience to me. The "weirdest" I've had was noticing that some houses looked rather like faces, assigning genders and emotional states to them based on characteristics of the houses, and then pretending to have a conversation with them. This was under a very large dose and at no time did I believe the houses actually were alive or capable of conversation. Note that this isn't just my own experience either, but also my experience with others - I often introduce people to the substance, and have taken it with a very large number of different people, none of whom have ever had the slightest problem from it beyond some (rare) scary bad trips.
There are tens of thousands of people in mental hospitals because of the permanent psychological damage it can cause in certain individuals, most notably those who already walk the fine line between creative genius and insanity.
While another replier already pointed out that a citation really is needed for this (as in, "I don't believe you either"), again you're missing that I was absolutely NOT targeting "those who already walk the fine line between creative genius and insanity" - my post was quite clearly targeted at those who lack creativity (the "focused accountant" types).
What about those of us that are already "focused accountants" what do we get out of this "Neuro Revolution"?
I'd recommend another relatively well known substance that never seems to get enough credit these days - LSD. It's great for creativity and getting yourself out of "single directional thinking". It definitely helped my programming anyway... gave me a chance to reconsider some ideas I'd held as being "true" and instead come up with new ways of doing things. Some worse, but some better. Discard the worse ones, keep the better ones and it's a plus in the end.
Note: I wouldn't recommend it too regularly, but up to 12 times a year (once a month) is generally fine.
Second note: if you consider yourself the kind of person who can't control his/her own thoughts very well, then start with VERY low doses until you're comfortable with it and then increase slowly - a bad trip can be managed if you're strong willed AND know what to expect/look for, but if not, it gets nasty.
Hello, hello, this is your friendly neighbourhood English language Nazi! Achtung, etc. The word is digitise in the entire English speaking world except for the US - there's more countries that speak English than just the US and UK! Thank you so much:)
Until String Theory (which is definitely a catchy name) produces testable predictions, it will remain at the same level as religion, as it still requires a belief that it explains "everything".
Who says you have to "believe" it in order to study it? I think String Theory is quite interesting and enjoying studying some of the concepts around it (although freely admit that a lot of the maths is beyond me right now). It doesn't mean I believe that the universe actually works that way - it might, it might not. Maybe in the future we'll know for certain, maybe we won't. But regardless, it's still an interesting line of research that MIGHT yield results one day - belief is NOT required (as with any science).
Slashdot Mirror
most sweeteners of any type are now high-fructose corn syrup
Only in the US as far as I know... here in Europe, HFCS (better known as isoglucose here) is subject to a production quota (not illegal as many people seem to think, but definitely strongly regulated). The production quota is deliberately set at a very low level (just over 300000 tons per annum (which sounds a lot, but compared to the millions of tons of sugar we produce/consume, it's negligible)) so that using it as a sweetener in general would not be feasible for any mass-market product. For this reason, almost everything tends to be sweetened with either real sugar, or purely artificial sweeteners such as Aspartame.
But it's analog, which means it needs infinite resolution to process perfectly
And what exactly makes you think the universe is analogue? Can we really break it down ad infinitum, or is there a "smallest possible size"? Even if there isn't, it's almost certain there is a "smallest possible size that can be measured" (the Planck length) which is of course a fairly relevant point when you're talking about this hypothetical data capture of one's life.
Platitudes don't pay bills and they don't allow you to retire or buy a house
If you love what you're doing, why retire? And if you're happy without a house, why buy one? Sorry, but I agree with the GP, if you truly love what you're doing, then the money is secondary at best.
Perhaps you're thinking of a situation where someone LIKES what they're doing, but would still rather not be doing it. That is very different than truly loving what you do. If I had the option of either continuing what I'm doing now (programming) for the same pay for the rest of my life, or changing to something I'd hate (such as sales or marketing) for 10 times the money instantly, it's a no-brainer to me that I'd stay where I am. (I don't expect to be paid the same for the rest of my life though - I do intend to move upwards, but will probably never do any more management that a "lead programmer" position at most, since I'm totally uninterested in the concept)
The owner can no longer sell you your "first look" at the content when you have already had a first look. So what is "stolen" is not the content itself, but that first look.
By twisting it around it my mind a bit, I can agree that that makes logical sense, despite being ridiculous... (which from your tone, I'm sure you intended)
-- which must be the content owner's property.
I'd LOVE to see that one argued in court! Me looking at something belongs to someone other than me... hmmm... barrel of laughs all round there!
Anyways, stealing is not necessarily defined by depriving one person of an experience or possession, it's defined by obtaining said item without giving the original author or owner the compensation requested for your copy.
Are you sure? IANAL, but here's a few definitions I found from different legal texts around the world... (bold emphasis mine)
I certainly won't argue that piracy isn't a crime, but it definitely does NOT appear to be "theft"...
don't bother with Dutch...it's horrible, inconsistent, sounds awful and like you mentioned we all speak english to some degree anyway.
As a non-native Dutch speaker (English is my mother tongue), I'd have to disagree with that. I think Dutch is a wonderful language once you master some of the finer details of it. For example, I still have yet to find a language that you can swear at people with quite as much venom as is possible in that wonderful language!
Sadly, I live in Germany these days and other than the occasional visit, haven't spent much time in NL over the last 10 years, so my Dutch is getting pretty rusty and I keep thinking German words in the middle of Dutch sentences which totally ruins it.
Everybody keeps neglecting his use of derms to deliver drugs. Yet, the first "patch" I saw widely in use was the anti-smoking patches in the mid-90's.
Interestingly, I did recently come across it as a delivery mechanism for illegal psychedelic drugs also - definitely the first time I've seen that. The "sales pitch" for it was that it'd give you a longer trip, since it absorbs more slowly in to the system. Basically it's (purported to be) about 4 trips worth of LSD, but given at a rate of approximately 1 per 4 hours, so you'd come up at a pretty slow rate, but eventually reach the intensity of about one and a half trips, and then remain at that state for close to a day and a half before it finally wears off (unlike a traditional trip that might be gone in 6 to 8 hours or so). They physically appear to be based on a nicotine patch as far as I can tell.
Needless to say, I bought 3. They're still sitting in a drawer at home (appropriately protected from moisture of course), since I'm waiting for the right weekend to have it along with a couple of friends, and we haven't yet found a weekend where we're all free (too much work and other social life getting in the way!).
(in case they turn out to be complete duds, I've got some regular tabs as well, so it'll only mean I'm out of pocket 90 euro for the three - no big loss)
I'll probably be posting my experience of it on Erowid or elsewhere at some point within the coming months.
I'll ignore for the moment that "Workbench" isn't an OS (I'm assuming you mean AmigaOS), but I do want to point out that Workbench has had a PDF reader since version 4.0 (6 years ago), and a nice frontend for GhostScript as well.
True story though - I was showing a member of the younger generation a floppy disk that I had lying around, and the first thing he said was, "ah, it looks like the 'save' icon!". To many of the younger generation, the icon is an abstract concept meaning "save", not a representation of a disk.
The problem there is you're now talking about "liking" rather than "believing". I have no problem with people who "like" a particular religion... but anyone who "believes" the stories is a loony, IMHO.
Since neither marijuana nor LSD are addictive, you might want to reconsider some of your wording Mr Troll.
All we here is the wonderful hippie wonderland where everybody gets high 24/7 and somehow that doesn't fuck everything up.
Almost no-one is advocating "getting high 24/7" - we advocate reasonable laws to allow people to make some personal choices and accept the responsibilities of those choices if they're badly made. If a guy buys cocaine and uses it, no problem from my point of view. If he buys cocaine and beats the crap out of someone since he's the type of person who gets violent on it, then he should be arrested for assault - no different to alcohol. If various drugs were legalised, then yes, there'd be people who abuse them, but I don't think it'd be a significantly different number to the number of people that abuse them now. Just as there are people that abuse alcohol currently, but the vast majority of us that do drink it are able to do so in moderation without being permanently drunk.
The vast majority of the problems are because they're illegal. The guy I get my LSD from is a pretty shady sort of character, and I wouldn't put it past him to do other criminal things such as theft and perhaps even physical violence. If I could avoid ever seeing that dickhead again, buy my acid from a pharmacy, and hear he's gone out of business, then I'd be a very happy man.
full disclosure:
I don't use marijuana - don't like the feeling it gives.
I also don't use cocaine, but mostly due to the price/performance factor (it's way too expensive for so little effect) as well as some concerns about the health risks.
I do use LSD though on a fairly regular basis - up to around 6 times per year on average these days, but much more when I was younger. I love the things it does to me, and consider myself a much better person for having had it.
Despite this, I'm in favour of the legalisation of all three (and more), not just my "preferred" substance(s).
While I agree the conclusion they reached was probably right, I disagree with their testing methods. They pressurised the plane to the correct pressure difference for its altitude, but they didn't take in to account the pressure difference for the speed of the plane moving through the air. They should have bumped the pressure difference up a bit more to account for this (I don't think it would've made any difference to the result, but it would've been a better test)
I lived in Germany for 3 years when I was in the Air Force and the bus and rail systems were wonderful. But thats what? 85 million people in a country not much bigger than Oregon?
That's not really looking at the big picture though... Public Transportation over most of Europe is equally as excellent as here in Germany (not QUITE in some places, but still far better than other parts of the world I've lived in). Taking in Europe as a whole, the size of the place isn't nearly as much of an argument anymore - if the US states ran public transportation like European countries do, it'd work much better.
People seemed to come in clumps making public transportation easier.
I'll definitely grant you that. Something I can never quite fathom when I visit the US is how hard it is to really be "in the middle of nowhere" (which, by my definition, means no people around). Here in Germany, there's people pretty much everywhere, but if you do go somewhere where there isn't anyone, you really are alone. In the US, it always sort of felt like there might be a house somewhere if you just walk over a hill or two. I've also lived in Australia, which has the mind boggling expanses of absolute nothing and some pretty serious "clumping" going on around the coasts.
Then there is the crime. I never, ever, felt unsafe on a bus or train in Germany.
Yep - that's something I definitely love here. "Random" violent crime is very low (muggings, street violence, etc - domestic violence is similar to other parts of the world though, so that's nothing special unfortunately).
On the actual topic though, even here in Germany, I'd pay more to take public transport to work than drive. Only because of my exact circumstances though - for most people it'd be the other way around. I live in the middle of a city, with an U-Bahn stop pretty much right outside my door, but to get to work I can either drive 8km, or take the U-Bahn, followed a bus. U-Bahn alone would be cheap, bus alone would be cheap, but U-Bahn plus bus would be slightly more than I pay for keeping my car running (especially since it's such a short drive). I do make heavy use of the U-Bahn for other journeys though like heading to friend's houses, coming home drunk late at night when I can't be bothered walking home, etc. For mid-distance journeys (within Germany) I generally take the train, and for long distance, I mostly fly, so other than the 8km trip between home and work, I don't use my car much at all in normal day-to-day life (I do like doing "road trips" though, so maybe a couple of times a year, I might do a several thousand km drive somewhere, so I definitely wouldn't give up the car even if my work circumstances were different... that's a matter of doing something I enjoy though, not convenience or cost (it'd be easier and cheaper to fly to most of the places that I go on these sorts of road trips))
Well, I'm not Dutch (legally speaking, but I am half-Dutch by blood). I speak enough to read that and also have pretty close ties to the Netherlands in general (including having lived there a while back, although I'm in Germany these days).
I consider that the problem isn't a failure of the liberal policies, but instead an erosion of them that caused some problems, and that gave those looking for a change to more restrictions to point the finger and say that the liberal policies themselves caused the problems. The EU itself a problem - the Netherlands NEEDS to be a part of it, so there's no way it could even consider backing out now, but the EU laws/policies/guidelines are just far too restrictive in some ways, and it's crushing some of the things that the Dutch used to hold so dear.
It wasn't that long ago that people were proud to be Dutch, and I'm still proud of my Dutch heritage. It seems these days though, it's getting harder and harder to find Dutch that actually are happy to be so. There's a negative view of the country that's been slowly creeping in for a long time, and is beginning to reach a critical point. Being "more like the rest of the EU" or even "more like the world" is NOT what needs to happen. What needs to happen is that the Dutch need to look at their history and realise that they were the creators, the inventors, and the explorers of the world. There were so many different rulers, alliances, and crappy politics going on all around them, but the Dutch people just "got on with it", did what they did, and founded one of the greatest nations on Earth.
Back closer to the topic at hand - I agree with the other posters that say the whole chain needs to be legalised, and controlled. Let the people controlling it be mierenneukers if that's what it takes to keep it under control, but just let it free.
Just as a side note: I don't smoke it myself - I hate the stuff and how it makes me feel. But I believe it should be the right of any adult to use it should they want to. As far as the "tourist" problem goes - that's always there in any place where there are extra freedoms - they all spend their time in the red light district of Amsterdam or the border towns anyway. I lived in De Pijp in Amsterdam, which I'm sure you know is pretty damn close to the centre, but hardly saw any tourists at all.
As a related topic, the new situation with mushrooms saddens me a bit... one more piece of real freedom gone.
Well, I would like to know, if a black hole comes by, does it actually pull a whole planet into its hole, do we know if this is possible...
If it has sufficient gravity, then yes, it is quite capable of "swallowing" a planet. Any black hole that formed in the "usual way" from a collapsing star, certainly has enough gravity (pretty much exactly the same as the star that it was before it collapsed) to suck in a nearby planet if the planet is unfortunate enough to be nearby. Of course, that's only really a problem with these "wandering" black holes - if our sun was mystically replaced with an equally massive black hole (which would be MUCH smaller in size), then the planets would continue to go around it exactly as they do now (although we'd all die from freezing since the hole isn't putting out heat like our sun does, but that's another matter entirely)
I mean at the core a small start implodes and turns into a black hole, but does it have enough strength to suck in another star, or even a whole solar system...
Again, depends on the size (gravity) of the hole, but generally yes - put two stars on a collision course and it'll be pretty nasty.
and what happens if you put 2 black holes side by side, do they cancel each other out...sort of like putting a bag of holding inside a bag of holding...?
Nope, they'd just "merge" in to one bigger one. So, two that had a mass of x, would become a single one with a mass of 2x.
Black holes are pretty weird and there's a lot of strange physics around them when you get deep in to it, but at the very basic level, they're not particularly odd at all - just think of them as objects with a REALLY large mass for their size (but still no larger than many other objects around, such as stars (of course, holes that used to be galactic centres are generally a bit bigger, since our best theories regarding black hole galactic centres involve a LOT of matter going in to creating them)).
Full Hungarian notation is a bit redundant, precisely because everyone (for reasonable values of 'everyone') DOES use some form of IDE to code, and any non-epic-fail IDE will at the least tell you variable types when you mouse over them, or pop up a member list for a class/struct when you go to type them.
I tend to use a "non strict, mostly my own style" form of Hungarian notation, precisely because I don't WANT to mouse over or pop up a member list or whatever - I want to be able to sit back and READ the code, not "figure it out". It's also handy for things like this (C#, because that's what I do at work mostly these days, but C++ is my background):
private void foo() {
//At some point, get a string from somewhere called szMoney
//Do stuff
//Do more stuff
int iMoney = int.Parse(szMoney);
}
Now, at a glance, I know that "szMoney" is the string representation of the Money, and "iMoney" is the integer representation of it. I don't want to just call it "Money" as either, because I wouldn't know what it is without the IDE telling me (or remembering one extra thing), and, more importantly, what would I name the integer if the string was already called "Money"?
(note: the above example is of course fictional, but in the real world, it's not uncommon that I want the same variable as different representations, and I'll be reusing both of them, so there's no way I'll call int.Parse(x) or x.ToString() each time - that'd be a waste.
Street drugs may be recreational, but you don't know the dosage that you're buying. If it were legalized, and sold in stores at reasonable prices, blackmarket vendors would be out of business. You'd know if you're taking 50ug (nominal recreational dose) or 400ug (high dosage). If you just purchased what you thought was a light dosage of say 25ug (will induce light hallucinations), but were looking for a "heavier" trip, you could take a dozen hits. I've never heard of anyone doing it intentionally, but you could. If they were actually 400ug, you're already 25% of the way to a lethal dose (12,000ug).
All I want to say to this is: "thank you for being a voice of reason". If it were legalised, we could control it better. If it were controlled better, we would understand it better.
Voluntarily creating moments in your head that could be traumatic (i.e., bad acid trip) are a bad thing.
That's true, but if properly educated beforehand, "bad trips" are vanishingly rare. They tend to happen when people begin to freak out due to things they didn't expect and aren't prepared to deal with it.
hen again, drinking heavily and doing something bad could be just as traumatic. DUI involving fatality can be bad for your psyche.
Actually that's quite an apt remark. I consider "learning about LSD responsibly" to be no different than driving instructors being able to prepare someone for emergency situations in a vehicle whereas "learned from Mum and Dad" types are more likely to freak out and get in to horrible crashes more often (note: not saying all people that learned from their parents are bad drivers, but within the first couple of years, it's definitely a higher percentage than those who had a real driving instructor - after a couple of years experience behind the wheel, it tends to be not so much of a marked difference)
Hasn't there been more studies on the effects of drugs like LSD than most of the name-brand pharmaceuticals that have been released in the past 10 years?
While you're unlikely to find a stronger supporter of LSD on slashdot than myself, I think unfortunately the answer to that is "no". It's true that LSD has undergone many trials and studies, but very few recently, and I'd be pretty confident in saying that the big name brand pharmaceuticals have had more done (perhaps not as varied or wide, but nevertheless more, and also probably better handled since the state of medical trials back when they were being done on LSD actually looks fairly neolithic by today's standards)
I don't believe we know enough about drugs lke lsd for them to be used in the public like that.
That could be said of many things... are you really advocating a "it might be dangerous, so let's keep it illegal" approach? That's only a very short step away from the concept of a nanny state. Personally I think there has been enough research done in to it for it to be considered safe enough, but even if there hadn't I'd still be in favour of legalisation of it, and they could slap some kind of large warning label on it like they do with cigarettes (in most places) and alcohol (in some places).
Plus of course, if they were to legalise it, there'd be a lot more data to collect (including re-allowing controlled trials and studies - like the many that took place in the 60s (I can definitely vouch for one such study that basically said it's a wonderful way to break addictions - non addictive itself, but it totally messes with the part of your brain that says you want whatever it is you're addicted to (in some cases, you find yourself addicted to everything ("sensation whore" my friends like to call it), but the feelings are transient at best and are often gone in less than a second) - one of my friends used it to quit smoking, and another to help him get away from his crystal meth habit (hard to say if he was really addicted to meth, but he was definitely heading down that nasty nasty road))
Acid is not a toy.
...
If any brand of crazy or a high degree of creativity runs in your family, you are well advised to avoid recreational usage of lysergic acid, mescaline, psylocybin, MDMA, and all other psychotropic/psychoactive substances.
Absolutely correct, which is why I didn't recommend it as a "way to have some fun" - I recommended it as a way to cure being a "focused accountant" type.
The music industry is littered with high-profile examples of people who ended up with permanently damaged psyches;
Citation needed. While I won't deny that there are people that have taken LSD that have gone off the deep end, can you really say it was the LSD that caused it and not other factors in their lifestyles (including a combination of stress and not being entirely mentally stable to begin with)? You've listed 3 examples of such people, but it wouldn't be hard to come up with a much longer list of musicians that HAVE taken it a lot and were/are absolutely fine (the Beatles spring to mind, but there are many other examples also)
Under the influence of repeated dosages, Kurt developed the idea that his mother was a robot and gutted her with a kitchen knife.
I have a VERY hard time believing this was caused by LSD - only severe mental instability could lead someone to do something like that (quite possibly exacerbated by LSD, but not caused by it... as I already said in my original post, if you're not the kind of person who can control his/her thoughts so well, be damn careful). Under even very large dosages, I've always been able to say to myself - "hey wow, that's cool, but I know it isn't real". Also, "believing ones mother to be a robot" just doesn't sound like an LSD experience to me. The "weirdest" I've had was noticing that some houses looked rather like faces, assigning genders and emotional states to them based on characteristics of the houses, and then pretending to have a conversation with them. This was under a very large dose and at no time did I believe the houses actually were alive or capable of conversation. Note that this isn't just my own experience either, but also my experience with others - I often introduce people to the substance, and have taken it with a very large number of different people, none of whom have ever had the slightest problem from it beyond some (rare) scary bad trips.
There are tens of thousands of people in mental hospitals because of the permanent psychological damage it can cause in certain individuals, most notably those who already walk the fine line between creative genius and insanity.
While another replier already pointed out that a citation really is needed for this (as in, "I don't believe you either"), again you're missing that I was absolutely NOT targeting "those who already walk the fine line between creative genius and insanity" - my post was quite clearly targeted at those who lack creativity (the "focused accountant" types).
What about those of us that are already "focused accountants" what do we get out of this "Neuro Revolution"?
I'd recommend another relatively well known substance that never seems to get enough credit these days - LSD. It's great for creativity and getting yourself out of "single directional thinking". It definitely helped my programming anyway... gave me a chance to reconsider some ideas I'd held as being "true" and instead come up with new ways of doing things. Some worse, but some better. Discard the worse ones, keep the better ones and it's a plus in the end.
Note: I wouldn't recommend it too regularly, but up to 12 times a year (once a month) is generally fine.
Second note: if you consider yourself the kind of person who can't control his/her own thoughts very well, then start with VERY low doses until you're comfortable with it and then increase slowly - a bad trip can be managed if you're strong willed AND know what to expect/look for, but if not, it gets nasty.
Hello, hello, this is your friendly neighbourhood English language Nazi! Achtung, etc. The word is digitise in the entire English speaking world except for the US - there's more countries that speak English than just the US and UK! Thank you so much :)
Na und? It seem to me like a rather good name for an ISP...
Until String Theory (which is definitely a catchy name) produces testable predictions, it will remain at the same level as religion, as it still requires a belief that it explains "everything".
Who says you have to "believe" it in order to study it? I think String Theory is quite interesting and enjoying studying some of the concepts around it (although freely admit that a lot of the maths is beyond me right now). It doesn't mean I believe that the universe actually works that way - it might, it might not. Maybe in the future we'll know for certain, maybe we won't. But regardless, it's still an interesting line of research that MIGHT yield results one day - belief is NOT required (as with any science).
Ah, let's just stop arguing about symantecs, shall we?
You're right, we can all agree Symantec isn't worth arguing about.