I don't know. We did get rid of prohibition. Granted, alcohol was a vastly more accepted drug at the time, but I think what is required is simply what is happening now: people waking up to the issue of the War on Drugs and taking action to get things decriminalized.

I'm not a big fan of drugs. Far from it. Still, these people need to be getting treatment and not jail time.

Drugs should be legal, controlled, and taxed. That tax money should go towards helping to eradicate dependence on drugs and not go to the General Fund. It is amazing that we have taken this long to even start to come around, but I think it will happen.

You had thousands of years of stability where upper classes could form which would make use of those sorts of metals. Gold is too soft to use for most applications, and really has more decorative uses. Silver is somewhat more useful as a practical matter, but is still beat out by metals like iron.

If you have an apocalyptic scenario, you're going to have a premium on things that people can't get easily which they actually need for survival. Gold will be worthless until an upper class is re-established that likes shiny metal.

I will say this... gold and silver are worth what people think it is worth. If enough people think it has value, then it will. Which means that it would have many characteristics of a fiat currency.

However, survival will tend to override anything that isn't actually practical. If you have people unwilling to turn over food or materials for some shiny metal that they are not certain they can use to exchange for things they need, precious metals will be useless. And depending on the scenario, it could remain useless for decades, even centuries until a basis for value was restored.

Well, Rambo "2" was actually "Rambo: First Blood, Part II", so there was a "2" in there, but it went through an odd title morph.

And to make it even more confusing, there was a Rambo IV, that was just "Rambo".

Agreed, but I think that some people become confused with how they ended up in a place where they didn't want to be, and they wonder how they got there.

That's sometimes due to short term thinking when some long term planning would have shown them exactly where they were going.

Time is probably the most valuable resource available. You don't waste it if you use it in the manner that makes you happy, but you can totally use it in a way that makes you less happy in the long run. Sometimes, you have no choice because life just hits you with an external problem you had no control over. Other times, though, you were almost fully in charge of what happened to you and you squandered your opportunity.

I'd hope not, because as a raid leader I used to most definitely set goals in-game. And I'm glad I achieved them.

There is a certain bias towards going outside and all, and I do suggest it, but it all comes down with what you want to do with your life. If you want to have been #1 to beat all end game content on your server and that is your goal, go for it.

There will be people who judge you for doing that, but then, there are people who judge others for having shitloads of money, and you usually wouldn't consider people who have shitloads of money to be failures.

Could going outside be a waste of time? Yes it could. If your goal was to kill that one boss, and you prepared and did the grinding for all the shit so you could beat it, and you set up the raid and everything. And then, you decided to take a walk and blow your opportunity....

And then you still kicked yourself for not getting that boss done and you went through all of the same stuff again to get it.

The operative phrase being "kicked yourself". If you did all that and didn't care? Then no time was wasted. You did what you wanted to do. You determined it was more important for you to take a walk and be outside. Good for you.

Oh, and you're off raid status. Because you just wasted *my* time, asshole. :)

That depends on what your actual goals are.

If you said, "I want to play WoW and have recreation time, and fuck everything else." then that could be true.

On the other hand, if you had goals for yourself that were impaired by the time or money spent on the game, and now you're wondering why you can't achieve those same goals, then you wasted your time.

You can play WoW in moderation and be fine. No question about it. And I am given to understand, it is much easier to be casual these days to boot.

However, if you look up many disorders, pathological behavior consists of actions done to such an extent or in such a manner as to interfere with the ability of someone to function normally in life, such as making a living, or even eating and sleeping properly. You certainly can play WoW too much, and you certainly can spend too much money on it, via paying for gold outside of the game.

If you're not measuring up to your own yardstick, you're wasting time, and not because someone else told you its wrong, but because you're objectively hurting yourself or preventing yourself from achieving your goals.

I used to be a guild and raid leader on endgame content. I remember more than one teen or college age student that was having problems and spent far too much time playing the game. Of course, I doubt the problem was solely the game, but they certainly used the time to do that, rather than addressing issues that they had.

As you'd expect, I used to play quite a bit myself, but eventually I realized that I simply didn't have enough time to play the game and still do what I wanted to do. It was time to quit. And looking back, I remember having a lot of fun. So, I don't regret it, but I also don't regret putting it down either.

Well, if they have "players" who have a financial interest in breaking the rules, I don't see a problem with a tax on them.

I remember playing, and honestly, when it was fun, it was pretty fun. When it got to be a real grind, I quit, I didn't pay someone else even more money to keep playing a game that I didn't actually want to actually play any more. And I do suspect gold dealers do affect the game balance decisions somewhat, which means they are actually are affecting the people who don't want to pay.

Of course, there are people out there who will pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars to pimp out a character in WoW or some of those terrible pay to win games, so there's no way that aspect of the economy is going away, unfortunately.

Electronics beep and buzz at you. I'd say that probably turning them off, and leaving them off is the best of all possible worlds in that regard.

Then seriously have the phone locked up at the front office or something. What they should be doing is making the ability to store the phone during school hours more equal, rather than just giving in and allowing them to be carried during the day.

Older than dirt is the idea of school uniforms. Which would effectively reduce the perception of inequality in a school.

You know, I don't think I would have minded a school uniform in my public school, if it was reasonably comfortable and didn't look heinous.

I don't think we should ban things due to "inequality", but being harassed about what you wear is something you get in places with a high degree of immaturity, such as high school and LA. And honestly, from the other side, there is envy from the have-nots for the people who have things. Due to social development of children and teens, it can be overly pronounced and highly distracting.

Of course, I am not sure how unbanning cell phones helps with "inequality". I'd think that telling Richie Rich with his iPhone 6 supersized to leave it at home would actually improve perceived equality, because the poor are less likely to have a phone, and much less likely to have a *good* one.

Confirmed. There are Parametric 3D CAD programs for OSX. There seems to be schematic capture as well. Didn't bother with Googling others.

Unclear if they are of the professional level needed to design actual commercial products, but I think we will call this myth: "Busted."

Amusing aside, I recall doing digital design in college... on a Mac (pre-OSX). It worked, although that fucking program crashed at least once a session. Forget what it was called.

Welcome to Decision 2016.

It may be smaller, but is it that much faster? C compilers have some pretty darn good optimizations these days.

I think its a cool project though. It's nice to see people coding tightly in a general atmosphere of prevalent bloatware. If only to show it can be done, and to demonstrate the advantages.

I'm curious. Did C or C++ have a release party? Or is that a value added feature of Rust?

The old Chinese Civil service used to be based on a meritocracy of people who used to take standardized exams to qualify for their civil service jobs.

Of course, those exams were on memorization of Confucian and other authoritative texts and things like calligraphy.

I understand that you want "good" software, but I'd point out that there is often a varied definition of such. Some people find one thing or another to their particular needs or tastes.

Of course no one wants meritocracy to be based on sales, but one should point out that you don't sell as much as MS did without having *something* to their software. Ultimately, for the people who bought it, it was "good enough". For others, they supported Apple or other businesses/groups who have other ideas.

The problem you run into when talking about merit is that merit is based on value and value varies based on who assigns the value. Clearly, you have a certain idea for what constitutes value, but those very same sales people and marketeers might well disagree with you.

Despite the bad rep, sales people and marketing people are often very interested in the field that they are in and want to support a product that has value. I can't tell you how often I have to do things for Sales with the goal of making them able to "believe" in the product. Many sales people are no more interested in selling crap than you are in using it. They're sometimes more personally invested because their commissions are based on selling that product, over and over.

Ultimately, money is where the rubber meets the road. If you can consistently sell a product over a course of years, there has to be something there. MS had to convince not only OEMs, but also a massive amount of developers to use their platform. While their size certainly made them the 800lbs gorilla in the room, they couldn't sell a product that doesn't do what most of their customers wanted.

So, I'd say perhaps you aren't looking for merit, you're looking for a government or market run by the "inspired". You can very easily attain merit in common work-a-day things that don't require you to do things "better".