Is it true that the whims and changes to the specifications up until late September have been a major impediment?

Seems like it was a nightmare from the start. That you guys even got anything live and semi functioning is amazing and commendable. People will complain, bitch and whine while adding heaps of political tribalism, but know that some of us understand the constraints and thank you for the hard work dealing with the beasts of burden.

Congratulations on it not being completely unusable and able to start the real hard work of a large and organic site.

Good luck to you guys. All my empathy and none of my envy to ya.

Wow. People will never see this because of the 0 AC, or laugh because it is pretty deep and they don't get your point, but I personally thank you for this. I know people suffering from exactly what you point out and worry about them all the time. Well done.

Exactly! It isn't like all the crack users died out and no more were made in nature. Hell, Nicole Kidman even married a former crack addict. The current Krokodil users won't just die in 3 years and the problem goes away. If it is cheaper and more addictive than heroin its use will become more widespread and destructive. Everyone has the "it won't happen to me" syndrome when they will first try it when they can't get their normal fix, then hop on the krokodil hamster wheel to rotten bits.

To think it's a phase or scourge that will take care of that segment of drug addiction? Might as well pray to Jesus to give you a pretty pony in 3 years, cuz you aren't going to get either outcome you are seeking.

This is the best drug deterrent and way to get rid of some losers? Bullshit. I can see a virulent and nasty antibiotic resistant TB coming out of this situation soon.

Lot of great AC posts sitting at 0 in this thread, mods.

This whole conversation has been one of the better ones on Slashdot recently, in my own biased memory. My faith in Slashdot has been restored to go along with the aggravation everyone always has with /. Learned and realized quite a few new things just by paying attention to this thread. So I agree with the notion "Slashdot is in no way pretty, but just take a look at the other guys."

This comment deserves much more than the 0 AC score it has now. Thanks for commenting and glad to hear you made it out.

America has quickly become like Germany in regards to small brewers with incredible brews only available at a local scale. I agree that the joke will apply for a long time and will always be funny, but it is completely untrue now.

And the company that bought all of our prohibition era mistake breweries resides on your own border. You can blame the Netherlands now, like I do.

Now the parts of our culture that still buys the InBev crap because that is all they know about slightly beer flavored water, you are still correct. I still feel that shame for them too.

Thanks for that info! I was wondering what a potato could add other than yeast food and flavorlessness, but I also thought that about the sugar beet wine that ended up tasting like a good vermouth. My thoughts were going to the colored potatoes and such, so you are right about the desire to experiment.

Banana wines are one of my absolute favorites and is quickly becoming a standard in my pipeline. Tokay yeast is perfect for it. If you've been out of the scene for awhile you may be interested that people are getting away from using golden raisins for body and using welch's white grape juice concentrate instead. Even Jack Keller has largely moved away from golden rasins in the last few years to concentrate to take the obvious raisin character they add along with the body they impart.

Good luck with the banana, you won't be disappointed!

I've consistently forgotton to make nettle wine every year and kick myself for it. Thanks for the reminder!

1 million, not a million million like my crap edit above implies, apologies. Citation below:

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/steps-authentic-happiness-positive-psychology/2013/sep/26/crocodile-new-twist-old-drug-deadly-animal/

You are spot on and I came to that conclusion above and below. The Krokodil problem is one of information and tools being restricted while the precursors are not. Absolutely agree.

Prohibition and lack of realistic rehabilitation/interventions is the clear problem in this worst case scenario. One of the rare cases where it appears to be a better solution to have their low levels of heroin abuse from before than a walking dead problem.

What kinds of opportunistic disease rise up out a segment of the population that is literally rotting to death? What happens when these shitty methods/recipes that are cheap hit the drug users of China and India? Nightmare scenarios.

+10

Isn't it grand, that a figure from history went around finding plots of land that were going to be future settlements to plant apple trees for hard cider production, is one of the US' children's most known citizens?

John Chapman didn't even care what the apple varieties were. Just apple trees from seed which mostly produced wildly variable size and quality. All for cider. Chapman was a shrewd business wanderer who became immortal in story. Fascinating.

Because there isn't a finite number of users who will just die out and then the problem goes away.

Not to mention that at a current estimated user base of 1,000,000 million users will impact whatever healthcare system they have in Russia negatively. What about all the opportunistic diseases that happens when you have a large base of severely compromised immune systems?

Not a simple case of let the druggies kill themselves and leave the gene pool. Not even close.

Apologies for the out of nowhere Cruz joke. Tuesday's possible train wreck has my inner political sportscaster drunk and mouthing off to random people in the bleachers on the way to his seat. Please disregard.

+1 thanks.