Messages

16

General Discussion / Re: Colorado's Supermax Prison

« on: November 05, 2013, 11:52:30 pm »

At the very least, use would likely remain the same as prior to legalization. However, with no barrier to use, it's hard to imagine that there wouldn't be even a slight increase in use.

I guess the real question is:
How many commit crimes under the influence versus simply being caught possessing drugs?

17

General Discussion / Re: Colorado's Supermax Prison

« on: November 05, 2013, 01:44:09 am »

Drug cartel leaders - much like the booze running from organized crime during the 1920s - are a product of prohibition. Prohibition creates insane demand, and look where that's gotten us.

As a first step, legalization and treatment instead of prohibition and punishment needs to be explored.

Yeah, but a lot of those drugs really should be illegal. You can just drop dead from cocaine or methamphetamine ... these drugs have some serious cardiovascular side effects. And you wouldn't need to try very hard to drop dead from these either (even a very small dose of amphetamine can make your heart flutter ... and that's just ADHD medication, not meth). Not to mention the CNS effects (psychosis being the scariest). That's not anything like alcohol, tobacco, coffee or over-the-counter drugs.

I'm really not sure how you deal with the drug issue. Legalizing it would reduce the number of prisoners, while exposing the public to very dangerous substances either directly or indirectly. If you thought DUI was bad, some of these drugs induce psychosis ... which is scarier than DUI. I would not want to be around someone disconnected from reality (far more removed than a drunkard).

EDIT:
It came to mind that if you legalized at least some of these drugs, the crime rate may actually increase (because someone detached from reality can do some really strange things). So it's not clear to me that there would be a decrease in prison populations.

18

General Discussion / Re: Green fuzzy monitor :(

« on: September 28, 2013, 11:04:15 am »

I've never had this problem, but it sounds like your power outlet has problems. Have you tried on any other power outlet known to work?

Scarier yet, your computer could be running with the same power problems (which could damage it).

Another possible cause is that the DVI cable is not tightly seated on one or both ends ...

19

General Discussion / Re: uh...hdmi card [update re android mini pcp]

« on: September 25, 2013, 02:09:27 pm »

bought this: http://www.amazon.com/SANOXY%C2%AE-MK808-Android-Rockchip-Cortex-A9/dp/B009OX22B4
+ a mini wireless keyboard

I can't believe you bought that piece of crap.  Just from the pictures, it looks like crap.

The review distribution seems promising.

Although, it runs Android ... That's pretty unfortunate. I guess there aren't too many alternatives for this kind of device.

20

General Discussion / Re: Oh shiiiittt..........

« on: September 13, 2013, 09:50:36 am »

How could I forget, Ramanujan is also a good example of a genius with little university experience. He also possessed abilities that almost no person has.  His abilities and use of these make him a genius (he's one of the handful per century).

21

General Discussion / Re: Oh shiiiittt..........

« on: September 13, 2013, 03:06:13 am »

My definition of genius is almost certainly than yours, then. Academic geniuses often fail to impress me more than Elon Musk.

I'm not comparing Elon Musk to Nikila Tesla. Tesla was probably a once-in-a-century kind of mind. Elon Musk is a brilliant visionary who has the courage to execute on crazy plans that no one else does.

Fair enough. Elon Musk is certainly a brilliant entrepreneur. However, had Zip2 failed, he may not be the visionary you know him to be.

Or, had Xerox PARC commercialized their desktop computing environment, you may not even know who Bill Gates or Steve Jobs are.

Where would these guys be if they were part of the 90% of start-ups that failed? What really differentiates Steve Jobs, Bill Gates or Elon Musk from anyone else? Maybe you (Sidoh) could build yourself up as a visionary with $22 million too.

Ah, but Tesla can speak 8 languages and memorize entire books and he put those abilities to good use to make some big discoveries in E&M. With a combination of a physiologically superior brain and good use of it, he is absolutely a genius. And you're right, there are unfortunately only a handful of these types of people per century ... I would expect geniuses to be exceedingly rare.

22

General Discussion / Re: Oh shiiiittt..........

« on: September 13, 2013, 12:48:12 am »

I'd still bet money on the C students being mostly just lackluster students.

Yes, I'd agree.  But on the other hand, it might also be a reasonable bet that most geniuses receive poor grades.   Certainly a surprising number do.

The most industrious geniuses probably don't waste time earning grades (good or bad) as soon as they see an opportunity. Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard, Elon Musk dropped out of a PhD program at Stanford two days after he started, and so on.

I don't think Bill Gates or Elon Musk are geniuses. But I do think Tesla would serve as a better example. He had no university education at all and made huge discoveries in E&M.  Tesla is indubitably a genius.

EDIT:
Oh apparently I'm wrong. He studied for at least two years.

23

General Discussion / Re: Oh shiiiittt..........

« on: September 10, 2013, 06:19:28 pm »

Indeed. One my school's biggest grads usually opens presentations (to us) with "I was a straight C student." Now, he is worth a few hundred million

In my own life I've often noticed a pattern of poor students, mostly drop-outs actually, sometimes even run-aways, later becoming wealthy business owners.  I've recently heard people say that this is an old model though -- part of an "American dream" that is not achievable like it used to be.  I'm not sure... I don't really have any reason to believe things have changed in this way.

Money and 'success' aside, I do think it's true that those who can make the greatest intellectual contributions will not always perform well in a conventional system.  Often they're too passionate and driven to form their own direction to care about what other people tell them is important.  And indeed many geniuses did not get particularly good grades.    But I wonder if there are many unrecognized geniuses for this very reason -- they aren't impressive by conventional standards -- and the geniuses we do know about (who did poorly in school, etc.) were just exceptionally lucky to be supported by some influential people.

rohitab.com's discussion board is filled with these kinds of people. Especially foreigners. They're your typical high school kid who can write an operating system, implement AES, etc... who either have no desire to attend university or even realize they can be paid to do that sort of work. Maybe not geniuses, but certainly very intelligent ...

24

General Discussion / Re: Oh shiiiittt..........

« on: September 09, 2013, 09:37:39 pm »

They done and let me an honest to God attorney. I found out today that I passed the New Mexico bar. Hells to the yeah.

 

Good job! We all know you worked very hard! Congratulations! I'd buy you a beer, only I'm not anywhere near NM ...

re: school.........sometimes yes and sometimes no. lol. Bar exam prep...I worked hard as fuck. I kinda wonder what my numbers are compared to the rest of the testers.

It doesn't matter. Only the threshold matters.

25

General Discussion / Re: Oh shiiiittt..........

« on: September 09, 2013, 09:22:11 pm »

They done and let me an honest to God attorney. I found out today that I passed the New Mexico bar. Hells to the yeah.

 

Good job! We all know you worked very hard! Congratulations! I'd buy you a beer, only I'm not anywhere near NM ...

26

Botdev / Re: Creating BNX clone for IRC

« on: September 08, 2013, 02:40:37 pm »

A distant plan for this project is a learning-based NLP response system. It's been my life long dream to create a bot that can talk with some amount of intelligence ... of course, this wouldn't really be BNX-like anymore (BNX-like IRCBNX is in the 1.0 branch).

It doesn't help that I work purely in computer vision. NLP is a subject I have to teach myself on my own time.

27

Botdev / Re: Creating BNX clone for IRC

« on: September 08, 2013, 02:35:02 pm »

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb762159(v=vs.85).aspx

I've been too busy to work on this lately. I did implement Daemonize() for Unix though, just not Windows. I'll try to tackle this today.

Any suggestions for a tray icon?

EDIT:
I'd like to use the CHAT icon from the old days. I'm just concerned about copyrights ... unless you can find this icon in a collection of Blizzard-released website fan kits?

28

General Discussion / Re: uh...hdmi card

« on: August 30, 2013, 07:03:01 pm »

desktop has dual dvi out. I guess I could do that and sound input into the receive/home-theater-in-a-box I have; computer's speaker's arent as nice. that said, I'd have  to find me a long-ass hdmi cable and get a keyboard w/legit wireless range.

Well you could go for Roku, Chromecast or similar. That's cheaper than a long cable. I have a Roku and it does its job well ... but the remote is a piece of junk.

Also, DVI apparently doesn't include sound.

29

General Discussion / Re: uh...hdmi card

« on: August 30, 2013, 02:38:04 am »

shit. I don't know jack about modern computer hardware. what's a decent card for hdmi out? I just want to watch netflix....nothing complicated.

I guess I should maybe figure out what I do have in my desktop before I really start looking. lol?

Do you have a DVI jack already? If so, you could just buy a DVI to HDMI converter (since they're practically the same signal).

Even better, if you you have a more recent laptop, you probably have dual mode display port ("DP++" logo would appear near it). Then you can buy a cheap passive DP to HDMI cable (since dual mode Display Port supports HDMI signals).

30

General Discussion / Re: uh...hdmi card

« on: August 30, 2013, 02:30:45 am »

Google is an advertising company.

A rather extreme analogy, but when's the last time you got some spam mail (snail mail) for loan X or gift reward Y and went totally bonkers over it and bought into it?

This is how I see Google, only Google is quite brilliant and makes genuinely awesome contributions to technology ... at the cost of our privacy (because most of what they give us is free). Just remember what you're giving ...

And Chromecast sounds like Google's clever way to know what we're watching (and it's a cool device from what I hear). I won't touch it with a 10 foot poll ... I'd rather go with a competitor (like Roku).

don't give a fuck. seriously. this is not a good reason for me to give two shits. advertising is the only reason that 80% of the awesome shit on the internet is free. i for one embrace internet advertising.

@Craz3d - pretty sure whatever article you read was wrong

Nobody said there was anything wrong with Internet advertising. But I did imply there might be something wrong with buying a device from an advertising company to provide them your viewing habits ... but this isn't advertising, is it?