It's useful to look at longer time periods:
http://skepticalscience.com/still-going-down-the-up-escalator.html

You are arguing with a Paulian, someone who doesn't even understand the nature or import of currency.

I applaud your efforts, and appreciate your earlier summary. I think you've earned a stiff drink.

I have nothing to add, because this is all of it. Thank you.

It's difficult for people who have never smoked to understand how thoroughly, insidiously addicting smoking can be. That it's legal lends to the feeling that it's not that bad. I have a number of good, otherwise non-annoying friends that will ask on a semi regular basis if I'm still smoking. Like we don't know it's bad for us, or realize how much money is flushed down the toilet.

A very relevant sentence is that last one - "This neuronal brain alteration can persist for months after administration ceases.". That is the "physical addiction" that remains and does so for quite some time.

I've done a fair bit of reading on the addictiveness of smoking, but this surprised me. I quit cold-turkey once for six months, and the first cigarette I had after that long felt like eating for the first time in ages. Tasted nasty, but I was right back on them after that.

Congratulations on quitting - just did myself one month ago, with the aid of e-cigs. Haven't had a cigarette since the vapourizer arrived. I'd strongly recommend looking into them. Do some research, though. The ones you can buy at the corner store are crap. (A good starting point is the E-cigarette Forum or the /r/electronic_cigarette subreddit).

If the government was really serious about reducing smoking, they'd be pushing these things hard.

Also, fuck you and the horse you rode in on for making me, even obliquely, defend those assholes.

:) If you knew me, you'd know how funny that was - I really do apologize! For what it's worth, you put up a pretty left handed defense.

I tried to allude to the purely power oriented nature of all this:

The cynical among us might say that despite the Conservatives desire to repeal the Civil Marriage Act, they've seen that that's not the way the political winds are blowing, and aren't interested in threatening their position in power.

...but was perhaps too even handed. This all put me in mind of the abortion issue as well. They are doing a very good job of making it look like they're working for their social conservative base, without threatening the more moderate votes by actually having to do anything.

Every once in a while I hear what idiots Harper's Conservatives are; they are not. They are frighteningly politically savvy, and they are playing the game like no other party here is yet.

Oh NO! The government is trying to figure out the numbers in demographics, so it can help form policy.

'Twould be nice, but they killed the long form census.

This is more likely based on opinion polling.

What?! Where? I was too busy smoking banana peels to notice.

As a Canadian, I am glad that we don't have to deal with the same kind of nonsense on this issue as our neighbours to the south.

It should be noted, though, that this isn't out of any ethical conviction on the part of the Conservatives. After the last Liberal government passed the Civil Marriage Act in 2005, the Harper Conservatives campaigned on a promise to re-open the debate and hold a free vote (where members of parliament would be allowed to vote their conscience rather than along party lines). After they won a minority government, they introduced a motion to re-open the debate, which was defeated. Polls have been in favour of legalized same-sex marriage for some years. Harper has indicated he has no interest in revisiting the issue.

The cynical among us might say that despite the Conservatives desire to repeal the Civil Marriage Act, they've seen that that's not the way the political winds are blowing, and aren't interested in threatening their position in power.

I suppose one could see this as a victory for democracy, but it's not the kind of victory that gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling.

Nothing quantitative to back it up, but it feels like it's getting slower. I've been using it since the introduction, and while there were things I didn't like about it in 11.x, as of 12.04 I like it. Didn't quite realize how much I liked it until I switched to XFCE (which is good - not taking anything away from them). I miss the dash and the default way of accessing anything being through search. Forgot how much I hated digging through menus. I'm running underpowered hardware right now, but when I upgrade I'll switch back in a heartbeat.

Look, this is slashdot. Anyone here can be expected to know who Ashton Kucher is, and the meaning of common pop phrases like "punk'd". We don't need to clutter every summary with explanations for these. The occasional story that talks about kernel "headers", GCC (wtf is that?) or EFF (double wtf), yeah, those should be linked.

Honestly, I think you might be on the wrong site.

When you admin the server, this is great. I usually do these days, but do still occasionally deploy on shared servers, or servers that are severely locked down. Sure, it's kind of a bullshit restriction, but it's one of the reasons a poor, but ubiquitous, technology sometimes wins out.

As an aside, we were recently approached by a large organization to redevelop their website. One of the things they want is to move away from Ruby on Rails because they were having too hard a time finding qualified developers. I know - you can find them - but when you are a non-tech company making these kinds of decisions, you do want to make sure you can find qualified devs without *too* much fuss.

I guess just a point in the "not about the technology" department :/

This is exactly it. I write nearly all my code in PHP, and it is not for a love of the language. I switched to PHP from perl (after taking a good, long (and longing) look at python) for two simple reasons:

• * it was deployed everywhere
• * enough of the basics were included that I didn't need to worry about whether a database library would be on the server, or some form of image manipulation, etc. There is too much crap in PHP, but at least I don't have to spend weeks convincing some sysadmin that, yes, I really do need to query a db, and would you please compile the extension?

It pains me to no end that my bread and butter is made with a language I don't particularly care for, but in the end, I can at least get things done with it.

I would prefer that. My second favourite use of flashblock is to keep videos from playing until I'm ready for them.

You are supposed to report what jobs you are applying for. If you're not showing evidence of a productive job search, you'll be cut off. You could theoretically not report that one job you knew you were going to get but really didn't want, but if you get caught doing it, benefits will be terminated.

The new bill will mandate anything up to and including an hour's commute.

Gas alone will run you $600 - 800 a month, never mind extra wear and tear on your vehicle. So you could well be expected to take a job at 2/3 what you were making, and increase your expenses by as much as $1000 a month while doing it. Because if you're not willing to do that, you're a bum living off hard-working Canadians.