I was at an NA meeting this morning with pot smokers who did literally all of those things for pot.
Your cart is before your horse, or in nerd terms, "correlation is not causation". If your profession is prostitution, you'll trick for pot... as well as anything else. If you're a beggar, you'll beg for anything you need. If you're a theif, you'll steal for pot as well as for anything else.
"Addiction" isn't a helpful term, and more importantly it's not a medical term
Before I ever smoked my first joint forty years ago, nerd that I am I researched. There was no internet then, so my research was done at the library and bookstore. I probably read about a dozen books on the subject, written by medical doctors. In those books, addiction was in fact strictly defined as I said in the original comment. Twenty or thirty years ago they rolled "addiction" and "habituation" into the single term "dependence", despite the fact that they are in fact two separate things.
Substance abuse and substance dependence are the definitions that matter, and there are a shitload of people who abuse or are dependent on marijuana
Yes, you can abuse marijuana. But only an idiot goes to work high or drives stoned.
I'm dependant on Naproxin Sodium, since I have arthritis. Should I go to an NA meeting to stop my Naproxin dependence? Should a heart patient attend NA meetings to stop his aspirin dependence?
The "drugs are bad, mkay?" mindset is moronic. Anything can be abused, even cars and computers. Should we outlaw cars and computers because idiots like you can abuse them?
BTW, Good luck with that crack habit, son. Hope you can stay clean.
I have friends that have been heavy users of marijuana and they've complained about various health issues when they've stopped
That's not surprising, considering that pot eases many physical ailmants. My neck an back hurt when I don't have any -- I have arthritis. But aspirin and Naproxin take care of it. If I stop taking aspirin, guess what? The pain returns. Does that mean aspirin is addictive?
There are very very few smokers of marijuana that will dare to admit that it could be an addictive drug
There are very few daily orange juice drinkers that will admit it could be addictive. Very few people admit that fire is cold, too.
No, I'm saying the 1% is waging war ion the 99% -- and they're winning. However, one of 1%er's battle strategies is racism. Its purpose is to keep the lower classes at each others throats so they won't notice who's really making their lives miserable.
The middle class isn't waging war against anybody -- yet. If things keep getting worse for the lower classes (both middle class and especially the impoverished classes) I fear it will get messy.
90% of everything is crap. There isn't anywhere else I know of where you'll see comments about astronomy, for instance, made by folks with PhDs in astronomy. Of course, you have to weed out the idiots, but/.'s moderation system does a better job of helping that than anyone's.
Besides, if you thing this bunch is stupid, go read a Yahoo News messageboard. If brains were dynamite those people wouldn't have enough to blow their noses.
If you're a caffeine addict like I am, you know good and damned well you DON'T feel normal until you've had your coffee. Also, unlike marijuana, there are physical withdrawal symptoms (mainly headaches).
There are no physical withdrawal symptoms. Withdrawal is the key to whether a substance is addictive or not.Alcohol, caffeine, opiates, tobacco, and many other drugs are addictive, because there are physical symptoms when the addict stops. Alcohol withdrawal can be deadly.
Unfortunately, the politicians and politically driven have attempted (maybe successfully) to redefine habituation as addiction, adding such nonsense as "sex addiction" or "food addiction" or "gambling addiction". The trouble is, anything can be habituating. Drink a glass of orange juice every morning at 7:00 for five years and I guarantee you'll miss it when you can't have it.
If by your definition of "addiction" marijuana is addictive, then orange juice is even more addictive.
Pot smokers don't steal, prostitute, or beg for it when they can't have it, unlike alcoholics, crackheads, and junkies. They don't spend the rent money on pot, they simply do without.
The "marijuana is addictive" is in fact a bald-faced lie propagated by the folks you voted for..
After-tax income for the top 1 per cent of US households almost tripled, up 275 per cent, from 1979 to 2007, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found. For people in the middle of the economic scale, after-tax income grew by just 40 per cent. Those at the bottom experienced an 18 per cent increase.
If you don't want to read about it, don't click the link. Simple. It may not be "news for nerds" but it's certainly "stuff that matters". Yeah, I could discuss the subject with the idiots on Yahoo News' messageboards, but I prefer conversing with intelligent people once in a while. If I want to talk politics with 2 digit IQ folks I'll go to the tavern.
Rather than bitching about what's posted, why not go to the firehose and vote?
I had to google to find out what "Industrial action" is. The links in TFS are incredibly vague -- what "damaging industrial action" did they ground the fleet for? According to wikipedia it could be
Strike
Occupation of factories
Work-to-rule
General strike
Slowdown (or Go-slow)
Overtime ban So which one(s) was it? It looks like union busting to me.
True that on cheap equipment an MP3 is indistinguishable from lossless, but convert your MP3 to a different lossy format and you lose even more. If FLAC files were as small as MP3 files, MP3 would have no advantage at all except for being entrenched. And many entrenched technologies have been superceded by superior tech. For example, Lotus was thoroughly entrenched and was THE spreadsheet, but Microsoft's superior Excel (and MS's underhanded tactics and Lotus' bad steps) pretty much killed Lotus.
Lossless makes (some) sense for your music collection on your PC - it makes no sense for your portable device whatsoever.
Rather, Lossy makes sense for your music collection on your portable device - it makes no sense for your PC whatsoever. Not with the storage we have these days.
I'm surprised that Apple didn't use bluetooth; Apple produces high quality easy to use devices, I've become enamored of bluetooth lately to get photos and movies from my phone to computers, even though the phone's implementation (Motorola) leaves much to be desired. One is a Win7 notebook, one is a Linux "desktop" (it's not on a desk and feeds a TV) and I may actually get those two OSes to communicate using it. Maybe I should install Samba..
I'm no networking expert, of course, or I'd already have the computers talking.
I think everyone is missing the point. There's shn and FLAC and TTA, and WavPack, another codec isn't really needed. FLAC is open source.
But part of open source's beauty is you can examine someone else's code and use what you've learned to improve your own. If someone were to create a lossless codec with file sizes comparable to MP3 (I really don't see how one could), MP3 would die.
The RIAA is meaningless to me; I stopped buying RIAA music long ago. I sample my old analog media, and all the new music I listen to is indie. The RIAA is evil and I wish you folks would stop shoveling money at them.
Well, I've known quite a few PhDs, and none were rich. But you don't get a PhD for the money, you get one because you're interested in the field. OTOH, it's damned near impossible (even though it does happen) to get a decent job without at least an AA degree and maybe even a BA.
I know quite a few carpenters as well; some are very well off, but those are the ones who start their own construction companies. These days most of them are lucky to work at all. And it's a lot more dangerous than research.
My uncle Dan got rich with only a HS diploma, but he started his business right after WWII, and it was several strokes of luck and a lot of hard work. He was in the navy and injured when his ship was attacked, and befriended a man in the hospital he was staying at afterwards who'd just lost his leg. Uncle Dan said "I can make a better leg than that," referring to the fellow's prosthetic, and did (intelligence, creativity, and eye-hand coordination run in the family). The two went into the medical apliance business. Dan's partner would walk up to an amputee with his sales pitch, and when the wounded GI said "WTF would YOU know about it," he'd just roll up his pant leg -- instant sale; you'd never guess he had a prosthetic.
If he hadn't been wounded, or hadn't met his future partner, hadn't been blessed with intelligence, creativity, and eye-hand coordination he likely would never become rich. My other uncle, his brother, was just as smart, creative, and hard working and was a businessman as well, but his businesses all failed; again, from luck. For example, his landscaping business went under because of a drought that caused the city to restrict watering.
Uncle Bob never went to college either, but one of his daughters is a professor at some university in Canada now. I'm sure she's making more money than her dad ever did.
It's true that not everyone can benefit from a college education; there are as many people with lower than average intelligence as thare are with higher intelligence.
Actually I was probably smarter AND more knowledgable when I was 12, that was the year I read the Encyclopedia Britannica, and there have been a lot of changes and discoveries since 1962. It isn't quite as easy to learn these days either, and a lot more knowledge to soak up, although I manage.
I think I'll take a few math classes after I graduate just to keep my mind from getting too much duller.
As to my original "the poor are poor because they're uneducated", that's not the only reason, and it's a catch 22. You need education to make much money, and you need money to get an education. I've known many very intelligent carpenters who could easily have been physicists had they been able to afford school, and I know one PhD who's dumber than a box of rocks (although he's the only stupid PhD I've known).
The Republicans generally have a problem with higher education because they see it as home for the left wing of the Democrat party.
I think they're against it because no sane, educated, middle class person would vote Republican, seeing as how everything they do hurts the middle class and helps the rich. Every time we get tax reform freom a Republican congress, my taxes go up. Notice how they were dead set against ending the tax breaks for the rich that Bush pushed through, but are for ending the middle class tax breaks on FICA that Obama pushed through that only help the middle class and poor?
Keep 'em semiliterate and they'll get their news from Faux news and Rush Limberger and all vote against their own interests.
Well, duh... of course they have to investigate before they go off willy-nilly arresting people. But if Anonymous can get this list, the cops should be able to as well.
Consider this. If there is a drug dealer in your town, the police could go arrest him, and put him out of business. Great, that's one drug dealer off the streets. Instead, they can watch him. They can see who he interacts with, where his money goes, and follow those lines of evidence up to bigger busts. Are they interested in the guy selling crack on the corner, or the guy responsible for importing it into the country?
From what I've seen, they watch the dealers to catch the dopers.
Slashdot Mirror
For me it is like computers or music: I can do without, but I'd rather not.
Excellent illustration of my point.
I was at an NA meeting this morning with pot smokers who did literally all of those things for pot.
Your cart is before your horse, or in nerd terms, "correlation is not causation". If your profession is prostitution, you'll trick for pot... as well as anything else. If you're a beggar, you'll beg for anything you need. If you're a theif, you'll steal for pot as well as for anything else.
"Addiction" isn't a helpful term, and more importantly it's not a medical term
Before I ever smoked my first joint forty years ago, nerd that I am I researched. There was no internet then, so my research was done at the library and bookstore. I probably read about a dozen books on the subject, written by medical doctors. In those books, addiction was in fact strictly defined as I said in the original comment. Twenty or thirty years ago they rolled "addiction" and "habituation" into the single term "dependence", despite the fact that they are in fact two separate things.
Substance abuse and substance dependence are the definitions that matter, and there are a shitload of people who abuse or are dependent on marijuana
Yes, you can abuse marijuana. But only an idiot goes to work high or drives stoned.
I'm dependant on Naproxin Sodium, since I have arthritis. Should I go to an NA meeting to stop my Naproxin dependence? Should a heart patient attend NA meetings to stop his aspirin dependence?
The "drugs are bad, mkay?" mindset is moronic. Anything can be abused, even cars and computers. Should we outlaw cars and computers because idiots like you can abuse them?
BTW, Good luck with that crack habit, son. Hope you can stay clean.
I have friends that have been heavy users of marijuana and they've complained about various health issues when they've stopped
That's not surprising, considering that pot eases many physical ailmants. My neck an back hurt when I don't have any -- I have arthritis. But aspirin and Naproxin take care of it. If I stop taking aspirin, guess what? The pain returns. Does that mean aspirin is addictive?
There are very very few smokers of marijuana that will dare to admit that it could be an addictive drug
There are very few daily orange juice drinkers that will admit it could be addictive. Very few people admit that fire is cold, too.
No, I'm saying the 1% is waging war ion the 99% -- and they're winning. However, one of 1%er's battle strategies is racism. Its purpose is to keep the lower classes at each others throats so they won't notice who's really making their lives miserable.
The middle class isn't waging war against anybody -- yet. If things keep getting worse for the lower classes (both middle class and especially the impoverished classes) I fear it will get messy.
Very true, glad you added that.
90% of everything is crap. There isn't anywhere else I know of where you'll see comments about astronomy, for instance, made by folks with PhDs in astronomy. Of course, you have to weed out the idiots, but /.'s moderation system does a better job of helping that than anyone's.
Besides, if you thing this bunch is stupid, go read a Yahoo News messageboard. If brains were dynamite those people wouldn't have enough to blow their noses.
If you're a caffeine addict like I am, you know good and damned well you DON'T feel normal until you've had your coffee. Also, unlike marijuana, there are physical withdrawal symptoms (mainly headaches).
There are no physical withdrawal symptoms. Withdrawal is the key to whether a substance is addictive or not.Alcohol, caffeine, opiates, tobacco, and many other drugs are addictive, because there are physical symptoms when the addict stops. Alcohol withdrawal can be deadly.
Unfortunately, the politicians and politically driven have attempted (maybe successfully) to redefine habituation as addiction, adding such nonsense as "sex addiction" or "food addiction" or "gambling addiction". The trouble is, anything can be habituating. Drink a glass of orange juice every morning at 7:00 for five years and I guarantee you'll miss it when you can't have it.
If by your definition of "addiction" marijuana is addictive, then orange juice is even more addictive.
Pot smokers don't steal, prostitute, or beg for it when they can't have it, unlike alcoholics, crackheads, and junkies. They don't spend the rent money on pot, they simply do without.
The "marijuana is addictive" is in fact a bald-faced lie propagated by the folks you voted for..
Start class warfare??? The 1% have been waging a silent war against the 99% for decades.
Where are the moderators? Your comment should be +5.
If you don't want to read about it, don't click the link. Simple. It may not be "news for nerds" but it's certainly "stuff that matters". Yeah, I could discuss the subject with the idiots on Yahoo News' messageboards, but I prefer conversing with intelligent people once in a while. If I want to talk politics with 2 digit IQ folks I'll go to the tavern.
Rather than bitching about what's posted, why not go to the firehose and vote?
Sheesh.
I had to google to find out what "Industrial action" is. The links in TFS are incredibly vague -- what "damaging industrial action" did they ground the fleet for? According to wikipedia it could be
Strike
Occupation of factories
Work-to-rule
General strike
Slowdown (or Go-slow)
Overtime ban
So which one(s) was it? It looks like union busting to me.
True that on cheap equipment an MP3 is indistinguishable from lossless, but convert your MP3 to a different lossy format and you lose even more. If FLAC files were as small as MP3 files, MP3 would have no advantage at all except for being entrenched. And many entrenched technologies have been superceded by superior tech. For example, Lotus was thoroughly entrenched and was THE spreadsheet, but Microsoft's superior Excel (and MS's underhanded tactics and Lotus' bad steps) pretty much killed Lotus.
Lossless makes (some) sense for your music collection on your PC - it makes no sense for your portable device whatsoever.
Rather, Lossy makes sense for your music collection on your portable device - it makes no sense for your PC whatsoever. Not with the storage we have these days.
I don't know any non-nerd who uses Vorbis or FLAC
I do.
Sure it will, after you convert it to a supported format. No more of a biggie than Amarok not being able to play MP3s.
I'm surprised that Apple didn't use bluetooth; Apple produces high quality easy to use devices, I've become enamored of bluetooth lately to get photos and movies from my phone to computers, even though the phone's implementation (Motorola) leaves much to be desired. One is a Win7 notebook, one is a Linux "desktop" (it's not on a desk and feeds a TV) and I may actually get those two OSes to communicate using it. Maybe I should install Samba..
I'm no networking expert, of course, or I'd already have the computers talking.
I think everyone is missing the point. There's shn and FLAC and TTA, and WavPack, another codec isn't really needed. FLAC is open source.
But part of open source's beauty is you can examine someone else's code and use what you've learned to improve your own. If someone were to create a lossless codec with file sizes comparable to MP3 (I really don't see how one could), MP3 would die.
The RIAA is meaningless to me; I stopped buying RIAA music long ago. I sample my old analog media, and all the new music I listen to is indie. The RIAA is evil and I wish you folks would stop shoveling money at them.
No, wikipedia is the HHGTG. Galactica is Britannica in both authors' universes, Adams was parodying Asimov.
Dr. Seldon? Is that you?
Well, I've known quite a few PhDs, and none were rich. But you don't get a PhD for the money, you get one because you're interested in the field. OTOH, it's damned near impossible (even though it does happen) to get a decent job without at least an AA degree and maybe even a BA.
I know quite a few carpenters as well; some are very well off, but those are the ones who start their own construction companies. These days most of them are lucky to work at all. And it's a lot more dangerous than research.
My uncle Dan got rich with only a HS diploma, but he started his business right after WWII, and it was several strokes of luck and a lot of hard work. He was in the navy and injured when his ship was attacked, and befriended a man in the hospital he was staying at afterwards who'd just lost his leg. Uncle Dan said "I can make a better leg than that," referring to the fellow's prosthetic, and did (intelligence, creativity, and eye-hand coordination run in the family). The two went into the medical apliance business. Dan's partner would walk up to an amputee with his sales pitch, and when the wounded GI said "WTF would YOU know about it," he'd just roll up his pant leg -- instant sale; you'd never guess he had a prosthetic.
If he hadn't been wounded, or hadn't met his future partner, hadn't been blessed with intelligence, creativity, and eye-hand coordination he likely would never become rich. My other uncle, his brother, was just as smart, creative, and hard working and was a businessman as well, but his businesses all failed; again, from luck. For example, his landscaping business went under because of a drought that caused the city to restrict watering.
Uncle Bob never went to college either, but one of his daughters is a professor at some university in Canada now. I'm sure she's making more money than her dad ever did.
It's true that not everyone can benefit from a college education; there are as many people with lower than average intelligence as thare are with higher intelligence.
Actually I was probably smarter AND more knowledgable when I was 12, that was the year I read the Encyclopedia Britannica, and there have been a lot of changes and discoveries since 1962. It isn't quite as easy to learn these days either, and a lot more knowledge to soak up, although I manage.
I think I'll take a few math classes after I graduate just to keep my mind from getting too much duller.
As to my original "the poor are poor because they're uneducated", that's not the only reason, and it's a catch 22. You need education to make much money, and you need money to get an education. I've known many very intelligent carpenters who could easily have been physicists had they been able to afford school, and I know one PhD who's dumber than a box of rocks (although he's the only stupid PhD I've known).
The Republicans generally have a problem with higher education because they see it as home for the left wing of the Democrat party.
I think they're against it because no sane, educated, middle class person would vote Republican, seeing as how everything they do hurts the middle class and helps the rich. Every time we get tax reform freom a Republican congress, my taxes go up. Notice how they were dead set against ending the tax breaks for the rich that Bush pushed through, but are for ending the middle class tax breaks on FICA that Obama pushed through that only help the middle class and poor?
Keep 'em semiliterate and they'll get their news from Faux news and Rush Limberger and all vote against their own interests.
Well, duh... of course they have to investigate before they go off willy-nilly arresting people. But if Anonymous can get this list, the cops should be able to as well.
Consider this. If there is a drug dealer in your town, the police could go arrest him, and put him out of business. Great, that's one drug dealer off the streets. Instead, they can watch him. They can see who he interacts with, where his money goes, and follow those lines of evidence up to bigger busts. Are they interested in the guy selling crack on the corner, or the guy responsible for importing it into the country?
From what I've seen, they watch the dealers to catch the dopers.