i haven't been to Erowid in a while, but i remember them having a lot of good primary & secondary sources, one of the more interesting of which was a study conducted by a doctor on the true health effects of opiate addiction/abuse. i believe it was an older study (perhaps late 40's early 50's?), and in it he was surprised to find that the common perception of gaunt, pallid, and generally anemic-looking, junkies with only half a mouthful of teeth had little to actually do with the opiate usage, but was rather the result of lifelong poverty and the consequent malnutrition and lack of dental hygiene & health care. another article that might be of interest is the background & history of opiate/methadone maintenance and how it was started.
are your arms that weak that moving a 4~5 ounce mouse poses physical strain on you? i mean, why would i use a clumsy 2-inch trackpad when i have plenty of free desk space for movement?
just because you prefer a certain setup doesn't mean it's suitable for everyone else. there's a reason why the mouse is so much more popular than trackpads and trackballs. mice are generally more accurate and have superior ergonomic design than trackpads--which are mainly used to conserve space. it's just more comfortable/natural to use a mouse than a trackpad in applications that rely heavily on movement-based inputs, such as 2D and 3D gaming, image editing, or even CAD programs.
this is how i'd rank various input devices in terms of accuracy/intuitiveness in motion-translation:
tablet/screen hybrids (such as the Wacom Cintiq or tablet PCs) / touchscreens - there's really minimal "translation" to be done here as you're just using your hand/arm as the input device. even though a digitizing tablet requires you to hold a stylus pen, your hand movements are still translated directly into pointer movement.
conventional digitizing tablets (such as Wacom Graphire, Intuos, etc.) - a handheld stylus is still pretty intuitive and natural, but there's a greater gap between the user's physical motions and the motion of the virtual pointer.
a conventional mouse - a mouse provides decent motion-translation for most applications, but it's too clunky for graphic design or other tasks which require accuracy and fine motor skills. also, software functions like motion thresholds and dynamic pointer acceleration (a.k.a. ballistics) can throw off the user's natural motor reflexes (compare drawing a circle with your eyes closed on paper and with a mouse), making the input device less intuitive.
trackball - i'm not particularly fond of trackballs. to be honest, they feel a little awkward to me. however, i know a lot of people swear by them. they're not quite as clumsy as a trackpad, but they still don't provide the same ease of movement as the mouse, and as a result trackballs also rely on more pronounced use of thresholds/ballistics.
trackpad - trackpads inherit all of the drawbacks of the trackball and then compounds them with a tiny input area. certainly the limited range of physical movement afforded by trackpads are largely compensated for in software, but this just leads to even more pronounced use of motion thresholds and ballistics. in fact, it's almost impossible to get a linear response in X + Y acceleration using a touchpad.
pointer stick/nubs - the mouse nipple is about the only thing worse than a trackpad.
my logitech mouse is pretty much the same setup. except mine comes with software letting you configure the various function keys on the keyboard and mouse.
and even though occasionally i'll hit the back button on accident (either on the mouse, or hitting backspace when the textbox is out of focus), it never causes any problems even with extremely long posts--because Firefox remembers form states and all i need to do is hit the forward button on the mouse and everything goes back to the way i left it.
that's why i design all my e-commerce sites to accept cash only. (always makes sure the bills are facing up before you feed them into the floppy drive!)
their nefarious plot is most transparent. by banning GPS the Egyptian government clearly means to induce a perpetually lost state in the population. this in turn would emasculate the entire civilian male population by forcing them to ask the military for directions, in essence surrendering every shred of their manhood to the Egyptian government in the ultimate act of sexual submission. the government, meanwhile, would have their throbbing virility cemented by their exclusive control of GPS technology--their GPS antennas standing fully erect, thrusting skyward as a potent symbol of their dominance over their now gelded population.
oh, such cruel tyranny. if only they'd gotten the G1 instead...
it's not quite the same situation, and that's also not what happened:
The Cogent-Sprint feud traces its roots back to 2002, when Cogent asked Sprint to exchange Internet traffic at no charge to either party, a common arrangement between similarly sized networks. At the time, Web traffic traveling between Cogent and Sprint was being sent through a third network, which Cogent found silly. A direct connection would be far more efficient.
Sprint said it would agree to a direct link--but only if Cogent paid for the privilege. No chance, retorted Cogent. A swap would benefit them both equally, Cogent argued, why should one side pay?
Finally, in 2006, the two companies broke the deadlock--or so it seemed. Sprint agreed to connect its network to Cogent's for a 90-day paid trial. If Internet traffic flowed back and forth between Sprint customers and Cogent customers in large volumes and in roughly equal proportions, then Sprint would agree to a permanent no-cost traffic swap. The companies signed a contract on Sept. 19, 2006, laying out the terms of the deal.
By June 2007, Cogent and Sprint had established high-capacity links in six cities in the U.S. and in four more around the globe. With the connections open, traffic that had been forced to use a third network to travel between Cogent and Sprint now flowed directly. It is just these sorts of connections that let the global Internet grow ever faster and more reliable.
A few days after the trial period ended in late September 2007, Sprint told Cogent it had failed the test. David Schaeffer, Cogent's pugnacious chief executive, says he was stunned. The two networks had transferred equal amounts of traffic back and forth, a standard precondition for no-cost traffic swapping. This time, however, Sprint's objection was that the direct links between the two giant networks hadn't carried enough traffic under the terms of the contract.
Schaeffer, who is no stranger to fights with other backbone companies, says he felt scammed. To get the deal done, Cogent had paid Sprint $478,000 for the connection during the 90-day trial. Now Sprint said that since test was a failure, Cogent would have to keep paying. Schaeffer refused, arguing that Sprint's objection about too-low volumes was bogus. (Was it? That gets technical.) Schaeffer quickly concluded Sprint never intended to establish a no-cost link to Cogent. (Sprint denies that charge.)
The two companies entered a cold war. Rather than disconnect its direct link to Cogent, Sprint instead began sending it bills: typically around $100,000 per month. Every month, Cogent refused to pay, saying it had earned a free connection under the contract. By the end of July 2008, a total of $1.2 million in unpaid bills had piled up. That's when Sprint decided to sue.
Sprint's lawyers alleged that Cogent had failed the trial and thus should be paying for the connection under the contract's terms. Cogent's counter-suit claimed that it had actually passed the trial and besides, if Sprint no longer felt it was getting value out of connecting to Cogent directly, it was free to do what any utility would do to a non-paying customer: disconnect them.
that depends on what you mean by "population." if by population you simply mean variation, then yes. that's required. but if by population you mean a set of concurrent genetic lineages and breeding individuals then, no, that isn't required. that may be required in biological evolution, but that's an incidental result.
at its core, all evolution really is is directed randomness. biological evolution requires large populations only because sexual selection necessitates it. but non-biological evolution (like the evolution of ideas, designs, language, etc.) do not entail sexual selection.
one good example of this, interestingly enough, is the design process used by an aeronautics engineer to design airfoils in a documentary i saw a while back. he basically described how he started with a rough wing shape and measured its flight characteristics (lift, drag, etc.) and then created a handful of random variations each with a slightly different shape/cambers and angle of attack. he'd then test each of the variations and pick the best one to repeat the process with. there's no crossover operation or horizontal gene transfer, but it still demonstrates the basic principles of evolution, such as evolutionary selection and cumulative/incremental changes.
it seems pretty random actually (i've run the program like 4-5 times). sometimes it starts off slow and then gets a little better. but sometimes it starts off with a really good design and then just gets worse. it seems pretty random overall.
the point of genetic evolution is for there to be progressive enhancements. it's not just randomly throwing the dice over and over again. you have to retain the positive enhancements of past iterations for it to "evolve." you could run this program all day long and it'll never get better than it was during the first 10 generations. that's because every time it mutates it throws out all the previous data. it's just non-directed randomness.
sorry, i didn't have time to look up all the sources when i made my post, but if you are indeed interested in this type of info i would highly recommend erowid.org and The Drug Policy Alliance. another great source for opiate-related information in particular can also be found at HeroinHelper.com. i hope that help.
well, the U.S. has always been the "sensitive bully" on the block. it's not just hypocritical, it's also getting really old. perhaps being a superpower for so long has spoiled us into thinking that everything has to always go exactly our way.
for instance, people always refer to the Attack on Pearl Harbor as "a date which will live in infamy." now, it was certainly a major defeat for the U.S., and while the loss of life should not be thought off lightly, it wasn't really as nefarious or underhanded as we often make it out to be. it was a military attack on a strategic military outpost, one that was meant to knock the U.S. out of the war before we even entered it. the vast majority of the casualties were thus military personnel. so how is that any worse than firebombing Hamburg and Tokyo and killing 40,000 and 88,000 people (the vast majority of which were civilians) in a single air raid each, respectively?
Pearl Harbor is also often considered an unprovoked attack, but that's only partly true. Japan never wanted to go to war with the U.S., they just wanted to become a first-rate superpower like us. in a way they were really just imitating the western powers and following in our footsteps. we need to remember that it was the West who invaded the East, not the other way around. the emperor of Japan had initially tried to shield Japan from outside influence, and it was the U.S. by way of Commodore Matthew Perry's gunship diplomacy that forced Japan to open relations with the West.
that in itself was a violation of Japanese autonomy, but the Japanese decided to embrace the West rather than to go to war. naturally, when the Western nations began industrializing, the Japanese followed suit, and by the 1920's Japan had already become a fully industrialized society. but lacking a domestic oil supply, Japan sought to tap the oil resources of Southeast Asia in order to sustain their industrial economy. and since by the 1930's the United States and all the European powers, particularly Britain, had already established huge empires with overseas colonies spanning the globe, Japan sought to do the very same. it was only when the Western powers denied Japan access to oil, the life blood of any industrial society, that Japan was put on an inevitable collision course with the U.S. today we have the technology to move away from a petroleum economy. yet, if any other nation were to deny the U.S. access to overseas oil supplies, we would probably still go to war with them--and we actually have a domestic oil reserve.
then there's the Cuban Missile Crisis... oh what a joke that was. unlike the actions by the West which resulted in WWII, which are much easier to criticize with the advantage of hindsight, the Cuban Missile Crisis should have appeared as ridiculous then as it does now. let's start with the completely lopsided division of nuclear capabilities between the U.S. and the Soviet union. by 1962 the U.S. had over 27,000 nuclear bombs and warheads while the USSR touted a mere ~3300 nuclear devices; that's an 8:1 ratio of U.S. nukes compared to Soviet nukes. the USAF and SAC also fielded a fleet of 2000+ B-47s and 740+ B-52s which were at one-third alert at all times, ready to strike the USSR (many from forward airbases in the UK, Morocco, Spain, Alaska, Greenland, and Guam). in comparison, the Soviets only ever had about 300 Tu-95 turboprops, which never posed a serious threat to us. but our real first-strike capabilities were the 147 Atlas and 62 Titan ICBMs that were active at the time of the crisis, in addition to the Polaris SLBMs which could be launched from submerged subs. the USSR in contrast had only 4 R-7s and 20 R-16s operational.
when someone points tens of thousands of nukes at you (from land, sea and air), places missile bases all along your borders, and even has their B-47 strategic bombers penetrate your airspace during training exercises, you don't expect them to have a hissy fit when you return in kind. the face of the matter is, the only reason the USSR set up their missile laun
you can't have it both ways. if you wanna be able to run your own unsigned code, then you can't expect the device to still be fully supported by Google.
i mean, why should Google be held responsible for any damage you might cause screwing around with the device? ever tried to modify/fix a video game console or other commodity electronics yourself and see a sticker that says "warranty voided if seal is broken"? it's the same basic principle. if you want to tinker with the product beyond what is considered normal usage, then the vendor can't be held responsible for any damage you might cause.
the dev phone obviously isn't meant for regular end-users. if you lose all your data or brick your G1 using the SDK, then that's on you, as it should be. if you want full support and warranty, then you shouldn't get a developer device.
meh... i haven't haven't had that hard of a time with CAPTCHAs. occasionally i might get one wrong and have to spend an extra 2-3 seconds to fill out another one, but i think properly implemented CAPTCHAs are still the most effective means of reducing spam submissions/sign-ups.
i don't think any kind of CAPTCHA will be completely fool-proof, and their effectiveness will inevitably drop over time. but even still they stop 99% of all attacks by blocking all but the smartest AI algorithms and spammers. and the reCAPTCHA method makes the most sense. they're taking problems that have already stumped machine AIs and using it to recover some public benefit from the hordes of botnets out there that would otherwise only be doing harm.
also, as more and more difficult machine AI problems are employed in common CAPTCHA systems, not only will it push AI development forward, but it will bring us ever closer to the point where spamming is no longer a logical career for the individuals actually smart enough to break such CAPTCHAs. if it takes a PhD in computer science & machine AI to break a standard CAPTCHA, then anyone with the ability to develop effective spambots would have much more interesting, or even lucrative, careers available to them.
short of this, the only way i see of attacking the spam problem is to go after the companies that hire spammers to advertise their products. the majority of the spam on the web is for products/services produced in the U.S., and these companies often have 800 numbers and accept payment by credit card. they operate out in the open and generally aren't fly by night companies. it's not like spam advertisements are selling black market goods like crystal meth or yellowcake uranium. they're all purportedly "legitimate" registered businesses with traceable bank accounts and public addresses & phone numbers. as long as businesses employing spammers are allowed to operate so brazenly without any legal repercussions, it will continue to be a mainstream practice. however, if you crack down on these scummy businesses then there'll be no money to be made by spammers, and hence no more spam.
but that's not the reason why communications networks are natural monopolies--at least not around here (Southern California).
the reason communications networks are natural monopolies is because that is the way they operate most efficiently--and i'm not talking about economies of scale here. i mean, what's more useful do you think--one telecommunication network that connected the entire nation, or 100 different telecommunication networks covering the same area? having 100 different small disjointed networks obviously won't facilitate communication quite as well as a single unified network, right? the same principle applies to cellular networks and ISPs.
i mean, just look at all the peering BS that's been happening between Cogent and the larger networks. even though peering facilitates more efficient transfer of information between networks, and is good for everyone, some of the larger networks still want to charge Cogent heavy peering fees, which will inevitably raise broadband costs for consumers. imagine if instead of just a handful of large networks having spats like this, you instead had 100 different networks, all trying to charge each other peering fees so that their customers can talk to one another.
on the other hand, there's countries like Japan which is under a single (partly government-owned) Tier-1 ISP, NTT Communications. though NTT is heavily regulated, that hasn't prevented them from bringing exceptional broadband speeds and prices to the Japanese public. in fact, i would even go as far as saying the strong involvement by a technology-oriented government has contributed greatly to this effect.
that was sort of my point. alcohol is much more societally detrimental than opiates, yet it is still widely available legally. opiates are not the same as alcohol. they don't have the same inherent detriments as alcohol. and the majority of the social problems typically associated with opiates are actually caused by prohibition.
it's well documented that alcohol causes belligerence, impairs judgment, and promotes intemperance (even amongst non-addicts). alcohol is also mildly neurotoxic and hepatotoxic. these aren't characteristics of opiate consumption. that's why people can be on opiate maintenance (meaning they're on methadone/morphine/heroin/suboxone 24 hrs. a day) and still lead healthy functional lives as productive members of society. if one were to be drunk 24/7, i think most people would be hard pressed to keep their jobs; not to mention their liver would probably quit after 6 months.
i'm not saying all drugs are the same or that they're harmless. i agree that drugs need to be regulated. but i think our drug policies need to be based on reason & reality, and that requires an objective assessment of the true effects of different substances rather than relying on stereotypes perpetuated by the media or prohibitionist propaganda. a lot of legal drugs aren't as safe as people think (OTC painkillers are a leading cause of liver-damage in many developed nations, and drunk driving is one of the leading causes of death of young people in the U.S.), and currently illicit drugs aren't as bad as they're perceived to be simply because they're illegal.
there's a reason that a lot of medical, and even law enforcement, professionals have been pushing for a reassessment of existing drug policies as well as reschedule/reclassify drugs based on objective studies and more accurate scientific & statistical data.
indeed. looking at this gallery, i don't see anything remotely pornographic or exploitative. all i see are some hauntingly beautiful images of both animate & inanimate subjects. it's rather sad that the photographer was attacked by uncultured reactionaries who focused solely on the incidental (and non-explicit) nudity rather than the artistic merits of his exhibit. that his photos were actually seized because of a few backwards individuals is what's truly disturbing here.
which is why useful (and accurate) information needs to be disseminated by drug education programs rather than scare-tactics. it's not just mixing heroin and alcohol that's bad. mixing alcohol with almost any kind of a downer is extremely dangerous. but when educators give young people false impressions of the health risks related to various behaviors, exaggerating certain dangers while playing down others, teenagers become more poorly equipped to make sound judgments regarding drug use.
and then there are things like "ecstasy overdoses" that should never happen. MDMA itself is a relatively safe drug. even the former director NIDA admits that MDMA is safer than a lot of prescription drugs. but each year teenagers die from ingesting PMA that's sold to them as ecstasy. if MDMA use were legal and regulated, this sort of thing would not be happening.
first off, i never said IV heroin use was the same as ingesting opium orally. however, since you've brought it up, it should be noted that whether you smoke, insufflate, or ingest orally, the pharmacological mechanism of an opioid is the same. certain opiates like morphine and diacetylmorphine (heroin) are not suited to oral ingestion as they have very low oral bioavailability (somewhere around 10%, i think), but others like oxycodone, hydrocodone, and codeine do have high oral bioavailability.
really, aside from the initial rush (which lasts for 2-3 minutes max), injecting morphine/heroin/oxycodone/fentanyl feels exactly the same as if you ate it. however, it's more economical to inject morphine and heroin. and in my personal experience, most of the pill poppers who think that they're being smart by avoiding needles but have $200/day habits are not any better off than the heroin addicts with $200/day habits. of course, with IV use there are certain hygienic precautions you need to take. re-using needles and sharing needles are always bad. but aside from that, a lot of doctors who are closet IV morphine addicts are no worse off than pill poppers.
in regards to Benjamin Franklin, i wasn't being disingenuous, but thanks for the accusation anyway. if you look up Poor Richard's Almanac (here's a digital copy) you'll find lots of references to laudanum (opium & alcohol tincture), including as an ingredient to all sorts of home-made remedies as well as, interestingly enough, a bill or invoice sent to the Franklin estate including charges for "opium pills" and laudanum--and quite a lot of it. so perhaps he did use it recreationally or perhaps he didn't. but it's clear that Franklin was a regular user of opium at least as early as 1769 (the date of that bill), and was a proponent of opium use.
and if you want more sources that support Benjamin Franklin being a regular opium user:
i'm claiming that, like alcohol prohibition, drug prohibition caused far more social problems than it solved.
yes, opiates are physiologically addicted, and there were no doubt people who abused opiates and were addicted to opiates even back then. but when it is cheap, legal, and widely available, opiate dependence does not cause major social problems. this is demonstrated by the success of opiate maintenance programs in turning individuals with formerly problematic drug problems into productive & healthy members of society.
and just because opiate use was associated with upper-class lifestyles doesn't mean it can't be relatively cheap. the point is, prior to the Harrison Act people didn't go broke trying to support their opiate habits. heck, if you wanted to you could just grow your own poppies and make poppy tea yourself.
in fact, many well known figures in history were opiate users. for instance Benjamin Franklin and Edgar Allen Poe are both known to have been (recreational) opium users. that's not to say that narcotics with high abuse-potential shouldn't be regulated. in fact, if it were legal and regulated like alcohol and tobacco are, it'd probably cut back on all those unfortunate chippers who accidentally OD because they didn't know how strong their new batch of heroin was.
don't forget those Chinese immigrants getting high in their opium dens--as opposed to upstanding white folks who only use opium & alcohol (always a smart combination) tinctures.
really, i have yet to see any empirical evidence to back up the idea that before drug prohibition we had more drug-caused social issues than today. in fact, all the studies i've read about seem to point to the exact opposite. consider these points:
opium was commonly sold in the streets of ancient Greece and prescribed as a panacea for assorted ailments, much as people today use (hepatotoxic/liver-damaging) OTC painkillers. by all accounts, this did not cause rampant crime or opiate addiction, and in fact Opium retained a very high reputation among the ancient Greeks.
prior to the Harrison Act of 1914, which effectively made opiate-dependence a crime, opiate use was not considered a serious social problem. for the most part it was considered an "upper-class" drug habit, and opiate addiction was perceived to be less of a moral vice or social nuisance than alcoholism, which in contrast caused intemperance, unemployment, poverty, belligerence/domestic violence, and assorted health problems.
it was only after drug prohibition went into effect that a prohibition-style crime wave swept the nation. so rather than preventing real social harm, drug criminalization became a self-fulfilling prophecy. whereas opiate users were once able to easily support their habits on pennies a day and purchase their opiates at any store (much like people can purchase alcohol or cigarettes pretty much anywhere today), after prohibition even doctors were forbidden from prescribing opiates to opiate-dependent patients. naturally this created a black market, making opiate users criminals and forcing them to associate and do business with less than aboveboard individuals.
today the most successful methods of directly mitigating the social problems we associate with illegal drugs is not drug enforcement or criminal prosecution/imprisonment. instead, harm-reductions programs like needle-exchanges, safe injection rooms, and opiate-maintenance programs, give the best results statistically. and it's repeatedly been shown that individuals with opiate-dependence can still be healthy functional members of society through methadone/heroin/suboxone-maintenance.
in a similar vein, military intervention (such as drug raids or using military helicopters to dust farm lands in other countries with herbicides that aren't even legal in the U.S.) has been shown by U.S. government analysts to be the most costly and simultaneously least effective means of combating drug abuse. meanwhile, preventative education and rehabilitation programs have been shown to be the single most cost-effective means of combating drug abuse.
you don't have to be a drug-users or even like drug users to be against drug prohibition. it serves everyone's best interest for the government to adopt a sane/rational drug policy.
which is why it pissed me off when Verizon used to redirect my browser to their crappy branded search-engine rather than just relaying the DNS error--which i have a Firefox plug-in specifically for handling (by adding convenient google cache and way-back-machine links to the DNS error page).
i know a lot of libertarians see the Free Market as a cure-all for all the world's problems, but critical societal infrastructure like public utilities are too important to just leave to private corporations to commercially exploit however they will. besides being a natural monopoly and a service with inelastic demand (both of which make communications networks particularly susceptible to corruption/exploitation), the public has a strongly vested interest in the fair management & proper upkeep of our societal communications infrastructure.
either we effect industry regulations to protect public interest (as opposed to only catering to corporate interests as things currently stand), or local communities need to petition their municipal governments to set up their own public ISP as many cities are already starting to do. then we can start catching up to South Korea and Japan in terms of FttH deployment and address the disparity in broadband speeds/costs. instead of paying $150/month for 50 Mbps asymmetric "wideband" service, we should be paying $38/month for 1 Gbps fibre connections; that's $3.00 per Mbps versus $0.037 per Mbps symmetric bandwidth.
as things stand, consumers have no influence on how their ISPs are run. that's because individuals have no legal say in corporate policy, and due to broadband networks being natural monopolies, there are no free market forces to pressure ISPs into serving consumer interests. but individuals do have a voice in local government, and thus they would be able to influence how their municipally-managed ISP is run.
this would also bring us a step closer to ubiquitous wireless internet access. once internet access is treated as just another public utility (and a basic part of public infrastructure), the natural next step would be to roll out municipal WiFi/WiMax networks. and when that happens we'll also be able to replace our carrier-crippled cellphones with wireless VoIP handsets that aren't tied to a single (closed) cellular network.
typosquatting is pretty scummy, but as long as they stay out of search engines and aren't distributing malware it's not that bad. what's really annoying to me is when people in China/Hong Kong or Japan squat/steal correctly spelled domains that they have absolutely no use for.
i work at an indie metal label. most of our bands are black metal, death metal, grindcore, (old school) punk rock, etc. our bands aren't at all mainstream (most of the music is just comprised of a lot of angry incoherent screaming), so you'd think we'd be pretty safe from squatters. but in the past 4 years we've had at least 2 domains stolen from us. and these are domain names like "vampiremooose.com" or "acidbath.com" which really nobody except our bands have any business registering.
i think the owner of acidbath.com used to have pictures of his dog up on the site (but now it's just spam, i think)--why he needs "acidbath.com" for that, i don't know. but the vampiremooose.com domain was stolen after the (not so smart) band members accidentally let the domain expire. it wouldn't be so upsetting if the site actually had something to do with Vampire Mooose, or heck, even just moose/vampires. but it was registered by a domain squatter who is managing it through some professional domain auctioning service specifically catering to domain speculation/squatting.
of course, it's all done overseas, so there's not much we can do about it. but the last thing we're going to do is to actually pay this jagoffs. but apparently enough people are buying domains from squatters to make it profitable for them to continue operating.
In February 2007, she caught him having sex with the online prostitute character and even hired an online private detective in the game to investigate what he was up to. There followed a reconciliation, but in April this year, she found his character cuddling another virtual female woman.
She said: "I caught him cuddling a woman on a sofa in the game. It looked really affectionate. [...] Ms Taylor said she now had a new man in her life - someone she met while playing the Internet fantasy role-playing game World of Warcraft.
i really don't have much experience with accounting software myself (i know that we use MyInvoice at work, but i'm pretty sure that it's a piece of crap, and it's also proprietary). but i just wanted to point out that the Wikipedia page on LedgerSMB also had a link to a very thorough comparison of accounting software (both proprietary and open source). it might be worth checking out--and who knows, maybe some slashdotters can help fill out a few of the question marks in the tables?
so because it's possible for a musician to use nude images of minors as a publicity stunt, all portrayals of nude minors are automatically publicity stunts? i'm sorry, that's not a logical conclusion. and it's hardly a good reason to completely toss out freedom of expression.
you may as well say that, because a parent could take nude photos of their child for the purpose of distributing it as child pornography, then society has a duty to stop all parents from taking photos of their children in the nude. or because an employee could use his paycheck to buy a sawed off shotgun and shoot his entire family, companies should not pay their employees.
Slashdot Mirror
i haven't been to Erowid in a while, but i remember them having a lot of good primary & secondary sources, one of the more interesting of which was a study conducted by a doctor on the true health effects of opiate addiction/abuse. i believe it was an older study (perhaps late 40's early 50's?), and in it he was surprised to find that the common perception of gaunt, pallid, and generally anemic-looking, junkies with only half a mouthful of teeth had little to actually do with the opiate usage, but was rather the result of lifelong poverty and the consequent malnutrition and lack of dental hygiene & health care. another article that might be of interest is the background & history of opiate/methadone maintenance and how it was started.
are your arms that weak that moving a 4~5 ounce mouse poses physical strain on you? i mean, why would i use a clumsy 2-inch trackpad when i have plenty of free desk space for movement?
just because you prefer a certain setup doesn't mean it's suitable for everyone else. there's a reason why the mouse is so much more popular than trackpads and trackballs. mice are generally more accurate and have superior ergonomic design than trackpads--which are mainly used to conserve space. it's just more comfortable/natural to use a mouse than a trackpad in applications that rely heavily on movement-based inputs, such as 2D and 3D gaming, image editing, or even CAD programs.
this is how i'd rank various input devices in terms of accuracy/intuitiveness in motion-translation:
my logitech mouse is pretty much the same setup. except mine comes with software letting you configure the various function keys on the keyboard and mouse.
and even though occasionally i'll hit the back button on accident (either on the mouse, or hitting backspace when the textbox is out of focus), it never causes any problems even with extremely long posts--because Firefox remembers form states and all i need to do is hit the forward button on the mouse and everything goes back to the way i left it.
that's why i design all my e-commerce sites to accept cash only. (always makes sure the bills are facing up before you feed them into the floppy drive!)
their nefarious plot is most transparent. by banning GPS the Egyptian government clearly means to induce a perpetually lost state in the population. this in turn would emasculate the entire civilian male population by forcing them to ask the military for directions, in essence surrendering every shred of their manhood to the Egyptian government in the ultimate act of sexual submission. the government, meanwhile, would have their throbbing virility cemented by their exclusive control of GPS technology--their GPS antennas standing fully erect, thrusting skyward as a potent symbol of their dominance over their now gelded population.
oh, such cruel tyranny. if only they'd gotten the G1 instead...
it's not quite the same situation, and that's also not what happened:
that depends on what you mean by "population." if by population you simply mean variation, then yes. that's required. but if by population you mean a set of concurrent genetic lineages and breeding individuals then, no, that isn't required. that may be required in biological evolution, but that's an incidental result.
at its core, all evolution really is is directed randomness. biological evolution requires large populations only because sexual selection necessitates it. but non-biological evolution (like the evolution of ideas, designs, language, etc.) do not entail sexual selection.
one good example of this, interestingly enough, is the design process used by an aeronautics engineer to design airfoils in a documentary i saw a while back. he basically described how he started with a rough wing shape and measured its flight characteristics (lift, drag, etc.) and then created a handful of random variations each with a slightly different shape/cambers and angle of attack. he'd then test each of the variations and pick the best one to repeat the process with. there's no crossover operation or horizontal gene transfer, but it still demonstrates the basic principles of evolution, such as evolutionary selection and cumulative/incremental changes.
it seems pretty random actually (i've run the program like 4-5 times). sometimes it starts off slow and then gets a little better. but sometimes it starts off with a really good design and then just gets worse. it seems pretty random overall.
the point of genetic evolution is for there to be progressive enhancements. it's not just randomly throwing the dice over and over again. you have to retain the positive enhancements of past iterations for it to "evolve." you could run this program all day long and it'll never get better than it was during the first 10 generations. that's because every time it mutates it throws out all the previous data. it's just non-directed randomness.
sorry, i didn't have time to look up all the sources when i made my post, but if you are indeed interested in this type of info i would highly recommend erowid.org and The Drug Policy Alliance. another great source for opiate-related information in particular can also be found at HeroinHelper.com. i hope that help.
well, the U.S. has always been the "sensitive bully" on the block. it's not just hypocritical, it's also getting really old. perhaps being a superpower for so long has spoiled us into thinking that everything has to always go exactly our way.
for instance, people always refer to the Attack on Pearl Harbor as "a date which will live in infamy." now, it was certainly a major defeat for the U.S., and while the loss of life should not be thought off lightly, it wasn't really as nefarious or underhanded as we often make it out to be. it was a military attack on a strategic military outpost, one that was meant to knock the U.S. out of the war before we even entered it. the vast majority of the casualties were thus military personnel. so how is that any worse than firebombing Hamburg and Tokyo and killing 40,000 and 88,000 people (the vast majority of which were civilians) in a single air raid each, respectively?
Pearl Harbor is also often considered an unprovoked attack, but that's only partly true. Japan never wanted to go to war with the U.S., they just wanted to become a first-rate superpower like us. in a way they were really just imitating the western powers and following in our footsteps. we need to remember that it was the West who invaded the East, not the other way around. the emperor of Japan had initially tried to shield Japan from outside influence, and it was the U.S. by way of Commodore Matthew Perry's gunship diplomacy that forced Japan to open relations with the West.
that in itself was a violation of Japanese autonomy, but the Japanese decided to embrace the West rather than to go to war. naturally, when the Western nations began industrializing, the Japanese followed suit, and by the 1920's Japan had already become a fully industrialized society. but lacking a domestic oil supply, Japan sought to tap the oil resources of Southeast Asia in order to sustain their industrial economy. and since by the 1930's the United States and all the European powers, particularly Britain, had already established huge empires with overseas colonies spanning the globe, Japan sought to do the very same. it was only when the Western powers denied Japan access to oil, the life blood of any industrial society, that Japan was put on an inevitable collision course with the U.S. today we have the technology to move away from a petroleum economy. yet, if any other nation were to deny the U.S. access to overseas oil supplies, we would probably still go to war with them--and we actually have a domestic oil reserve.
then there's the Cuban Missile Crisis... oh what a joke that was. unlike the actions by the West which resulted in WWII, which are much easier to criticize with the advantage of hindsight, the Cuban Missile Crisis should have appeared as ridiculous then as it does now. let's start with the completely lopsided division of nuclear capabilities between the U.S. and the Soviet union. by 1962 the U.S. had over 27,000 nuclear bombs and warheads while the USSR touted a mere ~3300 nuclear devices; that's an 8:1 ratio of U.S. nukes compared to Soviet nukes. the USAF and SAC also fielded a fleet of 2000+ B-47s and 740+ B-52s which were at one-third alert at all times, ready to strike the USSR (many from forward airbases in the UK, Morocco, Spain, Alaska, Greenland, and Guam). in comparison, the Soviets only ever had about 300 Tu-95 turboprops, which never posed a serious threat to us. but our real first-strike capabilities were the 147 Atlas and 62 Titan ICBMs that were active at the time of the crisis, in addition to the Polaris SLBMs which could be launched from submerged subs. the USSR in contrast had only 4 R-7s and 20 R-16s operational.
when someone points tens of thousands of nukes at you (from land, sea and air), places missile bases all along your borders, and even has their B-47 strategic bombers penetrate your airspace during training exercises, you don't expect them to have a hissy fit when you return in kind. the face of the matter is, the only reason the USSR set up their missile laun
you can't have it both ways. if you wanna be able to run your own unsigned code, then you can't expect the device to still be fully supported by Google.
i mean, why should Google be held responsible for any damage you might cause screwing around with the device? ever tried to modify/fix a video game console or other commodity electronics yourself and see a sticker that says "warranty voided if seal is broken"? it's the same basic principle. if you want to tinker with the product beyond what is considered normal usage, then the vendor can't be held responsible for any damage you might cause.
the dev phone obviously isn't meant for regular end-users. if you lose all your data or brick your G1 using the SDK, then that's on you, as it should be. if you want full support and warranty, then you shouldn't get a developer device.
meh... i haven't haven't had that hard of a time with CAPTCHAs. occasionally i might get one wrong and have to spend an extra 2-3 seconds to fill out another one, but i think properly implemented CAPTCHAs are still the most effective means of reducing spam submissions/sign-ups.
i don't think any kind of CAPTCHA will be completely fool-proof, and their effectiveness will inevitably drop over time. but even still they stop 99% of all attacks by blocking all but the smartest AI algorithms and spammers. and the reCAPTCHA method makes the most sense. they're taking problems that have already stumped machine AIs and using it to recover some public benefit from the hordes of botnets out there that would otherwise only be doing harm.
also, as more and more difficult machine AI problems are employed in common CAPTCHA systems, not only will it push AI development forward, but it will bring us ever closer to the point where spamming is no longer a logical career for the individuals actually smart enough to break such CAPTCHAs. if it takes a PhD in computer science & machine AI to break a standard CAPTCHA, then anyone with the ability to develop effective spambots would have much more interesting, or even lucrative, careers available to them.
short of this, the only way i see of attacking the spam problem is to go after the companies that hire spammers to advertise their products. the majority of the spam on the web is for products/services produced in the U.S., and these companies often have 800 numbers and accept payment by credit card. they operate out in the open and generally aren't fly by night companies. it's not like spam advertisements are selling black market goods like crystal meth or yellowcake uranium. they're all purportedly "legitimate" registered businesses with traceable bank accounts and public addresses & phone numbers. as long as businesses employing spammers are allowed to operate so brazenly without any legal repercussions, it will continue to be a mainstream practice. however, if you crack down on these scummy businesses then there'll be no money to be made by spammers, and hence no more spam.
but that's not the reason why communications networks are natural monopolies--at least not around here (Southern California).
the reason communications networks are natural monopolies is because that is the way they operate most efficiently--and i'm not talking about economies of scale here. i mean, what's more useful do you think--one telecommunication network that connected the entire nation, or 100 different telecommunication networks covering the same area? having 100 different small disjointed networks obviously won't facilitate communication quite as well as a single unified network, right? the same principle applies to cellular networks and ISPs.
i mean, just look at all the peering BS that's been happening between Cogent and the larger networks. even though peering facilitates more efficient transfer of information between networks, and is good for everyone, some of the larger networks still want to charge Cogent heavy peering fees, which will inevitably raise broadband costs for consumers. imagine if instead of just a handful of large networks having spats like this, you instead had 100 different networks, all trying to charge each other peering fees so that their customers can talk to one another.
on the other hand, there's countries like Japan which is under a single (partly government-owned) Tier-1 ISP, NTT Communications. though NTT is heavily regulated, that hasn't prevented them from bringing exceptional broadband speeds and prices to the Japanese public. in fact, i would even go as far as saying the strong involvement by a technology-oriented government has contributed greatly to this effect.
that was sort of my point. alcohol is much more societally detrimental than opiates, yet it is still widely available legally. opiates are not the same as alcohol. they don't have the same inherent detriments as alcohol. and the majority of the social problems typically associated with opiates are actually caused by prohibition.
it's well documented that alcohol causes belligerence, impairs judgment, and promotes intemperance (even amongst non-addicts). alcohol is also mildly neurotoxic and hepatotoxic. these aren't characteristics of opiate consumption. that's why people can be on opiate maintenance (meaning they're on methadone/morphine/heroin/suboxone 24 hrs. a day) and still lead healthy functional lives as productive members of society. if one were to be drunk 24/7, i think most people would be hard pressed to keep their jobs; not to mention their liver would probably quit after 6 months.
i'm not saying all drugs are the same or that they're harmless. i agree that drugs need to be regulated. but i think our drug policies need to be based on reason & reality, and that requires an objective assessment of the true effects of different substances rather than relying on stereotypes perpetuated by the media or prohibitionist propaganda. a lot of legal drugs aren't as safe as people think (OTC painkillers are a leading cause of liver-damage in many developed nations, and drunk driving is one of the leading causes of death of young people in the U.S.), and currently illicit drugs aren't as bad as they're perceived to be simply because they're illegal.
there's a reason that a lot of medical, and even law enforcement, professionals have been pushing for a reassessment of existing drug policies as well as reschedule/reclassify drugs based on objective studies and more accurate scientific & statistical data.
indeed. looking at this gallery, i don't see anything remotely pornographic or exploitative. all i see are some hauntingly beautiful images of both animate & inanimate subjects. it's rather sad that the photographer was attacked by uncultured reactionaries who focused solely on the incidental (and non-explicit) nudity rather than the artistic merits of his exhibit. that his photos were actually seized because of a few backwards individuals is what's truly disturbing here.
which is why useful (and accurate) information needs to be disseminated by drug education programs rather than scare-tactics. it's not just mixing heroin and alcohol that's bad. mixing alcohol with almost any kind of a downer is extremely dangerous. but when educators give young people false impressions of the health risks related to various behaviors, exaggerating certain dangers while playing down others, teenagers become more poorly equipped to make sound judgments regarding drug use.
and then there are things like "ecstasy overdoses" that should never happen. MDMA itself is a relatively safe drug. even the former director NIDA admits that MDMA is safer than a lot of prescription drugs. but each year teenagers die from ingesting PMA that's sold to them as ecstasy. if MDMA use were legal and regulated, this sort of thing would not be happening.
first off, i never said IV heroin use was the same as ingesting opium orally. however, since you've brought it up, it should be noted that whether you smoke, insufflate, or ingest orally, the pharmacological mechanism of an opioid is the same. certain opiates like morphine and diacetylmorphine (heroin) are not suited to oral ingestion as they have very low oral bioavailability (somewhere around 10%, i think), but others like oxycodone, hydrocodone, and codeine do have high oral bioavailability.
really, aside from the initial rush (which lasts for 2-3 minutes max), injecting morphine/heroin/oxycodone/fentanyl feels exactly the same as if you ate it. however, it's more economical to inject morphine and heroin. and in my personal experience, most of the pill poppers who think that they're being smart by avoiding needles but have $200/day habits are not any better off than the heroin addicts with $200/day habits. of course, with IV use there are certain hygienic precautions you need to take. re-using needles and sharing needles are always bad. but aside from that, a lot of doctors who are closet IV morphine addicts are no worse off than pill poppers.
in regards to Benjamin Franklin, i wasn't being disingenuous, but thanks for the accusation anyway. if you look up Poor Richard's Almanac (here's a digital copy) you'll find lots of references to laudanum (opium & alcohol tincture), including as an ingredient to all sorts of home-made remedies as well as, interestingly enough, a bill or invoice sent to the Franklin estate including charges for "opium pills" and laudanum--and quite a lot of it. so perhaps he did use it recreationally or perhaps he didn't. but it's clear that Franklin was a regular user of opium at least as early as 1769 (the date of that bill), and was a proponent of opium use.
and if you want more sources that support Benjamin Franklin being a regular opium user:
i'm claiming that, like alcohol prohibition, drug prohibition caused far more social problems than it solved.
yes, opiates are physiologically addicted, and there were no doubt people who abused opiates and were addicted to opiates even back then. but when it is cheap, legal, and widely available, opiate dependence does not cause major social problems. this is demonstrated by the success of opiate maintenance programs in turning individuals with formerly problematic drug problems into productive & healthy members of society.
and just because opiate use was associated with upper-class lifestyles doesn't mean it can't be relatively cheap. the point is, prior to the Harrison Act people didn't go broke trying to support their opiate habits. heck, if you wanted to you could just grow your own poppies and make poppy tea yourself.
in fact, many well known figures in history were opiate users. for instance Benjamin Franklin and Edgar Allen Poe are both known to have been (recreational) opium users. that's not to say that narcotics with high abuse-potential shouldn't be regulated. in fact, if it were legal and regulated like alcohol and tobacco are, it'd probably cut back on all those unfortunate chippers who accidentally OD because they didn't know how strong their new batch of heroin was.
don't forget those Chinese immigrants getting high in their opium dens--as opposed to upstanding white folks who only use opium & alcohol (always a smart combination) tinctures.
really, i have yet to see any empirical evidence to back up the idea that before drug prohibition we had more drug-caused social issues than today. in fact, all the studies i've read about seem to point to the exact opposite. consider these points:
you don't have to be a drug-users or even like drug users to be against drug prohibition. it serves everyone's best interest for the government to adopt a sane/rational drug policy.
which is why it pissed me off when Verizon used to redirect my browser to their crappy branded search-engine rather than just relaying the DNS error--which i have a Firefox plug-in specifically for handling (by adding convenient google cache and way-back-machine links to the DNS error page).
i know a lot of libertarians see the Free Market as a cure-all for all the world's problems, but critical societal infrastructure like public utilities are too important to just leave to private corporations to commercially exploit however they will. besides being a natural monopoly and a service with inelastic demand (both of which make communications networks particularly susceptible to corruption/exploitation), the public has a strongly vested interest in the fair management & proper upkeep of our societal communications infrastructure.
either we effect industry regulations to protect public interest (as opposed to only catering to corporate interests as things currently stand), or local communities need to petition their municipal governments to set up their own public ISP as many cities are already starting to do. then we can start catching up to South Korea and Japan in terms of FttH deployment and address the disparity in broadband speeds/costs. instead of paying $150/month for 50 Mbps asymmetric "wideband" service, we should be paying $38/month for 1 Gbps fibre connections; that's $3.00 per Mbps versus $0.037 per Mbps symmetric bandwidth.
as things stand, consumers have no influence on how their ISPs are run. that's because individuals have no legal say in corporate policy, and due to broadband networks being natural monopolies, there are no free market forces to pressure ISPs into serving consumer interests. but individuals do have a voice in local government, and thus they would be able to influence how their municipally-managed ISP is run.
this would also bring us a step closer to ubiquitous wireless internet access. once internet access is treated as just another public utility (and a basic part of public infrastructure), the natural next step would be to roll out municipal WiFi/WiMax networks. and when that happens we'll also be able to replace our carrier-crippled cellphones with wireless VoIP handsets that aren't tied to a single (closed) cellular network.
or even 22 years!
i think we can all use a little more breast milk in our diets.
typosquatting is pretty scummy, but as long as they stay out of search engines and aren't distributing malware it's not that bad. what's really annoying to me is when people in China/Hong Kong or Japan squat/steal correctly spelled domains that they have absolutely no use for.
i work at an indie metal label. most of our bands are black metal, death metal, grindcore, (old school) punk rock, etc. our bands aren't at all mainstream (most of the music is just comprised of a lot of angry incoherent screaming), so you'd think we'd be pretty safe from squatters. but in the past 4 years we've had at least 2 domains stolen from us. and these are domain names like "vampiremooose.com" or "acidbath.com" which really nobody except our bands have any business registering.
i think the owner of acidbath.com used to have pictures of his dog up on the site (but now it's just spam, i think)--why he needs "acidbath.com" for that, i don't know. but the vampiremooose.com domain was stolen after the (not so smart) band members accidentally let the domain expire. it wouldn't be so upsetting if the site actually had something to do with Vampire Mooose, or heck, even just moose/vampires. but it was registered by a domain squatter who is managing it through some professional domain auctioning service specifically catering to domain speculation/squatting.
of course, it's all done overseas, so there's not much we can do about it. but the last thing we're going to do is to actually pay this jagoffs. but apparently enough people are buying domains from squatters to make it profitable for them to continue operating.
you've got to be kidding me....
i really don't have much experience with accounting software myself (i know that we use MyInvoice at work, but i'm pretty sure that it's a piece of crap, and it's also proprietary). but i just wanted to point out that the Wikipedia page on LedgerSMB also had a link to a very thorough comparison of accounting software (both proprietary and open source). it might be worth checking out--and who knows, maybe some slashdotters can help fill out a few of the question marks in the tables?
so because it's possible for a musician to use nude images of minors as a publicity stunt, all portrayals of nude minors are automatically publicity stunts? i'm sorry, that's not a logical conclusion. and it's hardly a good reason to completely toss out freedom of expression.
you may as well say that, because a parent could take nude photos of their child for the purpose of distributing it as child pornography, then society has a duty to stop all parents from taking photos of their children in the nude. or because an employee could use his paycheck to buy a sawed off shotgun and shoot his entire family, companies should not pay their employees.