We should be glad that it's Microsoft, so it's someone with deep enough pockets to fight this as long as the courts allow. As you say, it would be a terrible precedent, and too easily extensible to anything a government wished to see (or seize) worldwide.
You can only judge by the samples you've got. I suspect they're pretty durn representative, and they seem to be reasonably consistent.
But if selective breeding works for other plants, why not for pot? Considering the variation known in marijuana, and that anyone can do a "smoke test" of their own crop, how difficult could it be to select toward higher THC content? Why wouldn't they, when it can be done rapidly and easily, and best of all increases your profits?
Let me guess: You have a large collection of "nerdy" t-shirts? Most of those are about as funny, insightful, and entertaining as XKCD. You know this already, as I'm sure when you're shopping on whatever website sells that stuff you like some and reject others. The difference between those and XKCD, of course, is that the t-shirt shop doesn't come with a personality for you to worship.
That's pretty insulting.
The "sudo make me a sandwich" one? Just not funny. I "get" the "joke", it's just not even a little bit funny. It's "Ha, ha! That's a thing that I know about! Familiarity for the win!"
The "Bobby Tables" strip also isn't funny. For the same reasons.
Wrong on both counts.
Somehow I'm reminded of how when the horseless carriage came along, in some towns they were required by law to be preceded by a man on foot, carrying a lantern or other form of warning to others.
Being able to prescribe a set dosage in a pill one gets from the pharmacy would do a lot to dispel the perception of OMG DRUGS.
(I don't use, but I'm all for legalization if only to kill the 'war on drugs'.)
I assume the medical pot folks have a clue, and they say it tests quite a lot stronger than in the past -- more than six times stronger on average:
http://medicalmarijuana.procon...
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The average potency of all marijuana in the US, according to the UMPMC's Dec. 2008 â" Mar. 2009 quarterly report, was 8.52% (5.62% domestic and 9.57% nondomestic).
The highest tested sample had 22.04% THC (domestic) and 27.30% THC (nondomestic). The highest tested sample ever tested between 1975 and 2009 had 33.12% THC (domestic) and 37.20% THC (nondomestic).
For comparison, the national average of marijuana's THC content in 1978 was 1.37%, in 1988 it was 3.59%, in 1998 4.43%, and in 2008 8.49%.
======
They also point out that today's joints are typically smaller, so the total dosage may be about the same, or at least not much higher. However, that also means it may be harder for a novice to determine his limits -- kinda like being handed a bottle of vodka for your first drink.
A great deal of a PC's heat exchange happens through the case. Plastic shells are therefore not a good idea. (If you don't believe me, wrap your machine in a towel, leaving the front and back open, and watch the temperature go up.) And this one has less surface area. My guess is it will actually run hotter than the same equipment in a standard case.
As to Dell's engineering for temperature mitigation -- a few years ago someone gift me a top-of-the-line Dell that had a chronic overheating issue. It had the hood-and-distant-fan arrangement that OEMs seem to like, but no CPU fan and only the most minimal heatsink, like we mighta used on a 486. I removed the hood and the crappy heatsink, added a standard CPU heatsink/fan (nothing special, just a cheap stock model) and the machine's operating temperature dropped by 40F degrees (yes, FORTY degrees Fahrenheit).
So much for all the engineering that's supposed to enhance cooling, eh? This was when I concluded that, given that excess heat kills a machine in about 3 years, these damn things are *designed to die*.
It was supposed to be 12 monkeys. Idiots!
A year or so ago an article on this very thing was discussed here on
BTW it's pretty much the same with dogs, if you have enough to observe pack behavior.
Right now Walmart has 16GB Sandisk flash drives for $9 (look in the School Supplies section, same damn thing as in Electronics but in a garish case for half the money). Last year they had 64GB Sandisk flash drives for $8. Costco has 64GB drives right now for $24. This sort of pricing is tempting me away from DVDs as my backup medium, because flash is more reliable in long-term storage and takes up a lot less space. Yeah, DVDs are cheaper and faster to make, but reliability in storage isn't the best.
If you want to buy in real quantity, go to alibaba.com and you'll see what they really cost at wholesale.
As to old tech, I still have a machine with a 5" floppy and a QIC-80 tape drive. It often goes years unused, but when I need it, I'm glad to have it.
Not only that, but modern Americans don't generally live in flea-infested houses anymore. Bubonic plague is endemic in the squirrel population in Los Angeles, yet everyone who goes to a park doesn't come down with it. We just don't have enough exposure to fleabites.
That too, tho some seem to overdo it after they revert and reach another level of, um, stability.
Purposely interfering with competing businesses isn't part of a free market. People who complain about "free markets" don't know what a free market actually is....
Yeah. I really don't get the nutjobs around here who run around bitching about how Taxis need less and less regulation. It's like they have no idea what it was like before the regulations were put in place. It's not like some politicians got together and conspired over the course of several decades to regulate an industry for the sole purpose of being dicks. Those regulations were instituted because taxi drivers and taxi companies were doing incredibly unethical things that were causing damage to both people and to the economy.
What I really don't get is the nutjobs (looking at you) who don't understand where Taxi regulation has ended up. It's easy to say how bad it used to be but now we have the end game of any regulatory regime where entrenched players totally control the "regulation" in order to tilt the playing field in their favor and erect barriers to entry that are all but impossible for a newcomer to overcome.
It's shameless. In NYC you have to buy a "medallion" in order to have a taxi. Hey, sounds easy, right? I mean, just go to the city and buy one, right?
Wrong.
They sold a very limited number of them and then quit. The secondary market has pushed the price of the medallion into the high 6 figures last I looked, possibly over a million dollars now. Note that's just to run one single cab. The medallions are owned by rich people who use them as an investment and rent them to taxi drivers on a monthly basis.
Now, you tell me: how does that "help" me, the taxi industry, or anybody else besides the people who own the medallions?
In Nashville they had new regulations a few years ago backed by Gaylord (owners of Opryland) to "regulate" the limousine/sedan industry here. Again, utterly shameless. Gaylord was specifically exempted *by name* from the "regulations". The whole point was to drive a company called "Metro Livery" out of service, and hurt others. The regulations force companies to have cars that are no more than 5 years old and prices could be no lower than $50/ride among other things. Yes, they specifically put a minimum price in the ordinance. I had used Metro Livery to get rides to the airport so I knew who they were targeting. Their cars were a few years older but I could get personal sedan service for less than the cost of a taxi.
The entire point was to put a lower cost competitor out of business. Again, how does that help anybody except the big players? Hint: It doesn't.
I agree that this industry needs to be lightly regulated - having a meter requirement for taxis is an example of useful regulation. What we have now is not the regulation that is needed and has nothing to do with helping consumers.
Saliva causes cancer, but only if swallowed in small amounts over a long period of time. -- George Carlin
