As for the topic...I've been on Modafinil for marathon 39-hour waking binges but the side effects (stomach problems) weren't necessarily worth it. This new drug sounds promising in combination if they can improve Modafinil or similar drugs to the point where the side-effects are minimal. If I could completely eliminate sleep with no ill-effects I'd do it in a heartbeat.
"Yeah eight computers is really quite the average."
It was an example. You told me I must not use computers much and I demonstrated that I do, in fact, use computers.
Almost everyone I know has at least two computers. They're cheap.
You also seem to be under the impression that I'm saying people shouldn't bother with other operating systems. That's not the case. What I asked is why people should choose a single one. You have completely failed to answer that question. I don't give a shit whether you can multitask if you have to reboot to get another OS, because if you are limited to only one OS in the first place, you aren't going to be multitasking with applications from the OS you don't have. I thought this was blindingly obvious, but apparently I have to clarify it for you.
I have eight computers up and running full time at home. There probably are people who use computers more than me, but not many. Multitasking is not that hard when you can run different operating systems on different computers (which are cheap these days too) or run vmware, which runs linux fast enough for most applications if you don't have multiple computers.
Rebooting's a pain in the ass? Even my windows box is ready to go in under 30 seconds.
I don't understand the mentality that forces people to choose one operating system over another. Use Windows for things Windows is good at and use Linux for things Linux is good at. What's the problem? Hard drives are cheap these days.
"There are laws of nature, and breaking them isn't particularly wise."
You've just won the prestigious "most ignorant statement on the internet" award.
The laws of science (and by extension, "nature") are just that--laws. There is no breaking them, because that would be a physical impossibility. We're not talking about speed limits here.
Also, any actions natural objects take are by definition natural. Don't go trying to impose morality on nature, because it won't fly.
I generally agree that things are better now (although I really do miss the sense of community I had with the BBS scene--Yahoo Groups and things like Orkut just don't feel the same at all), I have to point something out:
"I downloaded a game back in 1986 for the C64. It was 25K bytes in size and took 20 minutes to download. (It took almost that long to load from the Commodore 64 floppy disk drive.) Now I get downloads of old pop songs from Kazaa! in minutes."
You're forgetting about scale. That 25K game was some top-of-the-line 0day back then, and you were glad to have it. Yes, it took a long time to download, but it was also one of the largest things you would download anyway. And you had a floppy drive? Shit, I didn't have the $300 handy, so I had to make do with dubbing tapes of warez.
Now you can download Daikatana in 20 minutes and play it right away...but do you have as much fun with it as you did your C64 game?
They're also available on thepiratebay and pretty much anywhere else you want to look, but that's not the point. I bought the set because Jason released large portions of it under CC, said "fuck you" to any kind of lame copy protection (and by extension, gave the finger to Macrovision and the MPAA), and is all-around a nice guy who deserves the support. If you can't afford the $50 for the set but you watch it and like it, at least consider throwing him some money for the incredible amount of time and money he put into it (last time I asked, he still hadn't broken even). It beats giving money to George Lucas.
"Pirate" radio?
on
Podcasting
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Podcasting: Do-It-Yourself Pirate Radio for the Masses
Come on, now.
Re:I'll be podcasting soon
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Podcasting
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· Score: 1
Nevermind, slow brain. I always think of VMWare as an OS emulator when it isn't. So presumably these hacked OSX images run quite a bit faster than the PearPC emulation I'm doing.
Someone enlighten me. Why is this a big deal when I've been running Panther for months now (maybe close to a year--I don't know because I don't use it much) on PearPC? Granted it runs even slower than Windows, but still...
"I just don't get dyslexia. I mean, you're an engineer, you need to be able to see and recognise complex specifications and long strings of numbers with extreme accuracy. What is so different from normal language use?"
That's kind of like asking someone with Down's Syndrome why he doesn't talk like most people. Dyslexia is a genetic and neurobiological problem. I have it myself, which is lots of fun when I'm on IRC, because when I type "teh" it's not because I'm trying to be funny.
I've trained myself to proofread everything I write very carefully (but like the OP, some things still get through occasionally). Words that I know how to spell (like "occasionally," coincidentally enough) end up being misspelled half the time anyway because of the dyslexia.
As for how he can do well in engineering with dyslexia...google is your friend. Apparently engineers have a high rate of dyslexia relative to other professions.
Look at the bright side...you can get your call queues down in a jiffy: "You say you're having a problem using your $WHATEVER? Cry me a fucking river." *ding!*
This is from the textbook definition, and found on answers.com. Atheism is not a deistic "religion", but it is a "religion" nonetheless. Some "denominations" even have members that meet on a regular basis as a "congregation".
Uh...we weren't talking about atheism, but since you bring it up:
"A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion."
I fail to see how not believing in supernatural beings can possibly be considered "a cause, principle, or activity." If you want to redefine it as such, then add my lack of belief in Santa and the Easter Bunny to the list of religions as well. Maybe I can apply for tax-exemption and start a church where people don't believe in stupid things. What do you think?
And you're telling me atheists meet regularly to discuss something they don't believe in? I find that rather unlikely.
You have to keep in mind that the majority of atheists are atheists solely because they despise Christianity and love to meet in groups to talk about how to piss off Christians.
That's hilarious, because of the approximately 50 atheists I'm acquainted with, not one has ever mentioned anything of the sort. Contrary to popular "persecuted" Christian rhetoric, we just don't care.
Freedom of religion != Freedom from religion.
The founding fathers beg to differ. I suggest you read some of their writings on the subject, on which they were particularly prolific.
I won't even address the rest of what you stated, because it doesn't even come close to arguing the point I made.
The "rest of what I stated" was a direct response to allegations you made about "macroevolution." Did you read it?
Flamingos and grebes, two species that don't share the same feathers, color, features like long neck and long legs, or anything, are more closely related genetically than the flamingo is to any other bird, oh, like a swan for instance.
One anomaly in a decent record of evolution and evidence that evolution occurs constantly, that also argues more for another look at cladastics rather than evolutionary theory...yeah, good point.
Microsoft's stance is interesting. Not too long ago they were trying to discourage piracy by saying that pirated software was more likely to come with viruses and trojans. Now they're saying those people with pirated Windows software can't get patches that will keep their systems from becoming zombie spam houses (yes, I know critical updates will still be installed even if the system doesn't pass WGA, but reportedly even that functionality will be going away).
"XP is insanely slow (even on the simplest operations) compared to 2000, and is much less stable."
I've found just the opposite on two laptops and a desktop--XP Pro is even more stable than 2K (which was pretty stable as it was; a definite improvement over the shitstorm they called "Windows 98"), and certainly much faster.
Windows 2003 Server (fully patched), however, manages to make expensive production servers with dual 2.4GHz AMD processors, RAID-10 and 4 gigs of RAM run about as fast as my SparcStation 5. You haven't experienced true joy until you have to decide whether watching paint dry or watching the monitor for the system to come back up will take less time when you need to reboot.
Jesus fucking Christ, it's not the end of the world. The whole concept of Daylight Saving Time is irritating in the first place, but it's not that much work to remember to set your various devices manually. Or in the case of devices like (most) cell phones that pull time info from a central server, it's not that hard to adjust the difference centrally.
Scientists have known for a long time that early life on earth was anaerobic and that oxygen was a deadly poison, and that bacteria came along and changed the atmosphere. The real breakthrough in the paper might be the mechanism used by the bacteria to convert the atmosphere, but I haven't read it (and might not understand it if I did).
"The admendment however, in itself, does not state nor give 'a right to privacy' I'm curious why you wouldn't include it in your post, or did you not know where to find it?"
I see you have trouble reading.
The 9th amendment is the admission that since there was no way the founding fathers could possibly list every single right held by free men, then lawmakers could not legally deny rights commonly held by free men. There is no law forbidding privacy. It is not a great logical leap (for most of us) to conclude that the constitution does indeed protect the right to privacy via the 9th amendment. I know Rush Limbaugh has trouble concluding that from his statements regarding the right to privacy, but that didn't stop him from whining when his medical records were turned over to investigators looking into his problems with drug abuse.
Hell, in my day I didn't need no fancy new-fangled phosphorescent gizmos to pretend a fluorescent bulb was a lightsaber before breaking it across my brother's nose. Then he sprayed oven cleaner in my eyes.
And this was before we had been exposed to those dangerously violent video games like Frogger.
"There is no difference between micro- and macroevolution except that genes between species usually diverge, while genes within species usually combine."
The genes between species "usually diverge" because of the separation of groups of the original species over long periods of time, exactly as I said. It matters not one whit to me that the opponents of evolution disagree with "macroevolution" while accepting "microevolution," because they're wrong. There is no difference, other than time scale.
While we're at it, please give me your definition of "religion" since it differs from the one in the dictionary.
Slashdot Mirror
The whole series of novels is excellent.
As for the topic...I've been on Modafinil for marathon 39-hour waking binges but the side effects (stomach problems) weren't necessarily worth it. This new drug sounds promising in combination if they can improve Modafinil or similar drugs to the point where the side-effects are minimal. If I could completely eliminate sleep with no ill-effects I'd do it in a heartbeat.
"Yeah eight computers is really quite the average."
It was an example. You told me I must not use computers much and I demonstrated that I do, in fact, use computers.
Almost everyone I know has at least two computers. They're cheap.
You also seem to be under the impression that I'm saying people shouldn't bother with other operating systems. That's not the case. What I asked is why people should choose a single one. You have completely failed to answer that question. I don't give a shit whether you can multitask if you have to reboot to get another OS, because if you are limited to only one OS in the first place, you aren't going to be multitasking with applications from the OS you don't have. I thought this was blindingly obvious, but apparently I have to clarify it for you.
I have eight computers up and running full time at home. There probably are people who use computers more than me, but not many. Multitasking is not that hard when you can run different operating systems on different computers (which are cheap these days too) or run vmware, which runs linux fast enough for most applications if you don't have multiple computers.
Rebooting's a pain in the ass? Even my windows box is ready to go in under 30 seconds.
I don't understand the mentality that forces people to choose one operating system over another. Use Windows for things Windows is good at and use Linux for things Linux is good at. What's the problem? Hard drives are cheap these days.
"There are laws of nature, and breaking them isn't particularly wise."
You've just won the prestigious "most ignorant statement on the internet" award.
The laws of science (and by extension, "nature") are just that--laws. There is no breaking them, because that would be a physical impossibility. We're not talking about speed limits here.
Also, any actions natural objects take are by definition natural. Don't go trying to impose morality on nature, because it won't fly.
Along those lines, link to look at if you download the documentary:
http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/warez/
I generally agree that things are better now (although I really do miss the sense of community I had with the BBS scene--Yahoo Groups and things like Orkut just don't feel the same at all), I have to point something out:
"I downloaded a game back in 1986 for the C64. It was 25K bytes in size and took 20 minutes to download. (It took almost that long to load from the Commodore 64 floppy disk drive.) Now I get downloads of old pop songs from Kazaa! in minutes."
You're forgetting about scale. That 25K game was some top-of-the-line 0day back then, and you were glad to have it. Yes, it took a long time to download, but it was also one of the largest things you would download anyway. And you had a floppy drive? Shit, I didn't have the $300 handy, so I had to make do with dubbing tapes of warez.
Now you can download Daikatana in 20 minutes and play it right away...but do you have as much fun with it as you did your C64 game?
They're also available on thepiratebay and pretty much anywhere else you want to look, but that's not the point. I bought the set because Jason released large portions of it under CC, said "fuck you" to any kind of lame copy protection (and by extension, gave the finger to Macrovision and the MPAA), and is all-around a nice guy who deserves the support. If you can't afford the $50 for the set but you watch it and like it, at least consider throwing him some money for the incredible amount of time and money he put into it (last time I asked, he still hadn't broken even). It beats giving money to George Lucas.
Podcasting: Do-It-Yourself Pirate Radio for the Masses
Come on, now.
"Anyone know of some good emo music"
Nope.
Nevermind, slow brain. I always think of VMWare as an OS emulator when it isn't. So presumably these hacked OSX images run quite a bit faster than the PearPC emulation I'm doing.
Someone enlighten me. Why is this a big deal when I've been running Panther for months now (maybe close to a year--I don't know because I don't use it much) on PearPC? Granted it runs even slower than Windows, but still...
"I just don't get dyslexia. I mean, you're an engineer, you need to be able to see and recognise complex specifications and long strings of numbers with extreme accuracy. What is so different from normal language use?"
That's kind of like asking someone with Down's Syndrome why he doesn't talk like most people. Dyslexia is a genetic and neurobiological problem. I have it myself, which is lots of fun when I'm on IRC, because when I type "teh" it's not because I'm trying to be funny.
I've trained myself to proofread everything I write very carefully (but like the OP, some things still get through occasionally). Words that I know how to spell (like "occasionally," coincidentally enough) end up being misspelled half the time anyway because of the dyslexia.
As for how he can do well in engineering with dyslexia...google is your friend. Apparently engineers have a high rate of dyslexia relative to other professions.
Look at the bright side...you can get your call queues down in a jiffy: "You say you're having a problem using your $WHATEVER? Cry me a fucking river." *ding!*
"Wow, you're a smooth talker."
That's the last damn thing I want my phone telling me when I'm being polite to my mom.
Uh...we weren't talking about atheism, but since you bring it up:
"A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion."
I fail to see how not believing in supernatural beings can possibly be considered "a cause, principle, or activity." If you want to redefine it as such, then add my lack of belief in Santa and the Easter Bunny to the list of religions as well. Maybe I can apply for tax-exemption and start a church where people don't believe in stupid things. What do you think?
And you're telling me atheists meet regularly to discuss something they don't believe in? I find that rather unlikely.
You have to keep in mind that the majority of atheists are atheists solely because they despise Christianity and love to meet in groups to talk about how to piss off Christians.
That's hilarious, because of the approximately 50 atheists I'm acquainted with, not one has ever mentioned anything of the sort. Contrary to popular "persecuted" Christian rhetoric, we just don't care.
Freedom of religion != Freedom from religion.
The founding fathers beg to differ. I suggest you read some of their writings on the subject, on which they were particularly prolific.
I won't even address the rest of what you stated, because it doesn't even come close to arguing the point I made.
The "rest of what I stated" was a direct response to allegations you made about "macroevolution." Did you read it?
Flamingos and grebes, two species that don't share the same feathers, color, features like long neck and long legs, or anything, are more closely related genetically than the flamingo is to any other bird, oh, like a swan for instance.
One anomaly in a decent record of evolution and evidence that evolution occurs constantly, that also argues more for another look at cladastics rather than evolutionary theory...yeah, good point.
Microsoft's stance is interesting. Not too long ago they were trying to discourage piracy by saying that pirated software was more likely to come with viruses and trojans. Now they're saying those people with pirated Windows software can't get patches that will keep their systems from becoming zombie spam houses (yes, I know critical updates will still be installed even if the system doesn't pass WGA, but reportedly even that functionality will be going away).
"XP is insanely slow (even on the simplest operations) compared to 2000, and is much less stable."
I've found just the opposite on two laptops and a desktop--XP Pro is even more stable than 2K (which was pretty stable as it was; a definite improvement over the shitstorm they called "Windows 98"), and certainly much faster.
Windows 2003 Server (fully patched), however, manages to make expensive production servers with dual 2.4GHz AMD processors, RAID-10 and 4 gigs of RAM run about as fast as my SparcStation 5. You haven't experienced true joy until you have to decide whether watching paint dry or watching the monitor for the system to come back up will take less time when you need to reboot.
There are at least four other ways to bypass it that turn out to be a lot easier...
Jesus fucking Christ, it's not the end of the world. The whole concept of Daylight Saving Time is irritating in the first place, but it's not that much work to remember to set your various devices manually. Or in the case of devices like (most) cell phones that pull time info from a central server, it's not that hard to adjust the difference centrally.
Scientists have known for a long time that early life on earth was anaerobic and that oxygen was a deadly poison, and that bacteria came along and changed the atmosphere. The real breakthrough in the paper might be the mechanism used by the bacteria to convert the atmosphere, but I haven't read it (and might not understand it if I did).
"The admendment however, in itself, does not state nor give 'a right to privacy' I'm curious why you wouldn't include it in your post, or did you not know where to find it?"
I see you have trouble reading.
The 9th amendment is the admission that since there was no way the founding fathers could possibly list every single right held by free men, then lawmakers could not legally deny rights commonly held by free men. There is no law forbidding privacy. It is not a great logical leap (for most of us) to conclude that the constitution does indeed protect the right to privacy via the 9th amendment. I know Rush Limbaugh has trouble concluding that from his statements regarding the right to privacy, but that didn't stop him from whining when his medical records were turned over to investigators looking into his problems with drug abuse.
"right to privacy is an urban legend. Read the constitution if you don't believe me."
You first. You can start with the 9th amendment.
Hell, in my day I didn't need no fancy new-fangled phosphorescent gizmos to pretend a fluorescent bulb was a lightsaber before breaking it across my brother's nose. Then he sprayed oven cleaner in my eyes.
And this was before we had been exposed to those dangerously violent video games like Frogger.
Right. I'll even quote from your link:
"There is no difference between micro- and macroevolution except that genes between species usually diverge, while genes within species usually combine."
The genes between species "usually diverge" because of the separation of groups of the original species over long periods of time, exactly as I said. It matters not one whit to me that the opponents of evolution disagree with "macroevolution" while accepting "microevolution," because they're wrong. There is no difference, other than time scale.
While we're at it, please give me your definition of "religion" since it differs from the one in the dictionary.