Damnit, yeah, that's my bad, diacetyl...the rest still stands though. I wish Slashdot had an edit button :/

Actually, methadone is not a synth-anything, its a damn potent mu-opiod agonist in its own right, the difference is it doesn't cross the blood-brain-barrier in one big rush like dimethylmorphine(heroin) does. The reason heroin is "special" is that unlike morphine, methadone, etc., it manages to find a carrier protein that will preferentially transfer it across the BBB. Dimethylmorphine itself isn't terribly active, but once it crosses the barrier, the methyl groups are rapidly cleaved off, leaving, you guessed it, a ton of morphine. The only other way to get this particular effect would be via trepannation (i.e. cutting a hole in your skull and injeting it into the brain). This is why there's nothing else out there quite like it. For the record, I have never tried it (though I have tried methadone, didn't find it all *that* compelling) and never will. Heroin is a drug you do when you are 100% finished with life, on your deathbed, because if you do it before that, you'll quickly find yourself on said deathbed. It is one of the few drug scares where the government propaganda isn't all *that* far off from the truth. Mind you, there are people who manage to quit, or even moderate their use, but these people are few and far between. It simply is not worth the risk, I am sure the high is indescribably amazing, but its just not worth it. I'll stick to ecstasy and raving, thanks.

I second this, I've seen a few presentations about the Orion technology, and its just so simple, I don't see why it can't be used, aside I mean from backwards fears of nuclear power. Of course there's danger involved, there's danger with everything, but that's what careful engineering is for. This is a massive ship you're talking about building, there's no excuse for it not to have the absolute best safety features, and if it does, and if our 60-70 years of applied nuclear research has been worth anything it should actually be rather safe.

These sorts of typos tend to happen because one hand gets "ahead" of the other in the output buffer, leading to migrating letters/punctuation. I'm not quite sure /why/ this particular glitch happens, but it seems the brain isn't quite capable of syncing the hands to the same clock 100% of the time when moving at high speed (it doesn't happen as much to slower typists I've noticed, it seems to be far more prevalent among people who type rather fast, perhaps its a glitch in sequencing the macro output, since the muscle movements actually have to be laid out and predicted beforehand to execute that fast, gliding into one another, rather than being execute-then-return-to-home for each individual key)

Err...why does any of that matter? I fail to see the issue here, she's a very smart and quite attractive woman.

Trance, Happy Hardcore, Psytrance, etc...EDM is *designed* to be listened to at levels you can *feel*, if you can't, there's no real point in the end, you're missing 99% of the experience if you turn it down. (Well ok the music itself is only a small fraction of the experience, don't let anyone kid you, its about leaving this plane of consciousness far behind)

Reminds me of how people argue for modern prohibition. "Drugs are bad because they're illegal!...Drugs are illegal because they're bad!"....yeah

A or E? (sorry, I had to...if you don't get the reference, go watch "Groove". PLUR!)

I think you can still get the IMEI locked out, though this would require the GSM providers to work together I think

Be sure to check their site, but pretty much all of the Sierra cards/chipsets work under linux, I have the AT&T branded 881U and it works quite well. It may take a little fiddling if they haven't fixed some of the bugs that were present half a year ago when I was last trying to use it with NetworkManager, but I imagine they've ironed those things out.

I hope you enjoy your cold mechanistic universe.

I, however, choose, however foolishly it may be, to believe in free will, the acausal side of the universe affecting the causal part we normally see by "choosing" how the "random" quantum events collapse (and in other methods, most likely. basically, I believe that the reality rules can be broken)

This same issue comes up when it comes to people talking about rectifying the laws with regard to drug prohibition, everyone* basically says "Well if you use drugs, you aren't allowed to talk, you're just making the problem worse". I agree, when a large portion of the population is already doing something anyway, its time to revisit the law.

*of course the 'everyone' I mention here doesn't actually represent everyone, they're just the loud voices against legalization/decriminalization who would rather people with actual experience in the relevant areas aren't allowed to speak because they would undermine the position of the prohibitionists.