This comment is why this topic is so dangerous.

See my note elsewhere to get past the "there is no proof" type responses.

The meds *do* work, *both* normal and ADD people.

So then it's sometimes the tipping point between having a certain job or not. So then your salary is dependent on this choice. I do have ADD, and they DO help. When I don't take them, the results often show up in "irrational blunders", both technical and emotional. "No one cares" why you are "a substandard employee" - they're not going to get into high end ethics.

Science Fiction has been nervous about this for decades, (and a lot of other emerging topics!), so we'd better go back to the classics to see what other people thought before us.

"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beggars_in_Spain"

The real problem is not about skipping sleep - let's assume we all get sleep. But these meds for example let us perform more intricate work at a level that makes/breaks our job. So with all the forces of the 99%/etc making us need serious money to survive, even "the right to live" (aka food and rent!), then that's where the real sticking point comes, before it's all the Black Shakes.

"There are no controlled studies that show any productivity benefit to a normal person taking Adderall."

Sorry to hurt your Insightful rating, but looks like some new info just came in.

Link-Chain starting from Wikipedia:
(Best use of Wiki - start there, then follow the sources)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
Performance-enhancing section

"A 2015 meta-analysis of high quality clinical trials confirmed that therapeutic doses of amphetamine and methylphenidate result in modest improvements in performance on working memory, episodic memory, and inhibitory control tests in normal healthy adults.[32] Therapeutic doses of amphetamine also enhance cortical network efficiency, an effect which mediates improvements in working memory in all individuals.[21][33] Amphetamine and other ADHD stimulants also improve task saliency (motivation to perform a task) and increase arousal (wakefulness), in turn promoting goal-directed behavior.[21][34][35] Stimulants such as amphetamine can improve performance on difficult and boring tasks and are used by some students as a study and test-taking aid." [21][34][36]

Sources 21,32,33,34, 35 are:
21
Higher Cognitive Function and Behavioral Control". In Sydor A, Brown RY. Molecular Neuropharmacology: A Foundation for Clinical Neuroscience (2nd ed.). New York, USA: McGraw-Hill Medical. p. 318. ISBN 9780071481274.

32
  Ilieva IP, Hook CJ, Farah MJ (January 2015). "Prescription Stimulants' Effects on Healthy Inhibitory Control, Working Memory, and Episodic Memory: A Meta-analysis". J. Cogn. Neurosci.: 1â"21. doi:10.1162/jocn_a_00776. PMID 25591060.

33
Devous MD, Trivedi MH, Rush AJ (April 2001). "Regional cerebral blood flow response to oral amphetamine challenge in healthy volunteers". J. Nucl. Med. 42 (4): 535â"542. PMID 11337538.

34
Wood S, Sage JR, Shuman T, Anagnostaras SG (January 2014). "Psychostimulants and cognition: a continuum of behavioral and cognitive activation". Pharmacol. Rev. 66 (1): 193â"221. doi:10.1124/pr.112.007054. PMID 24344115.

35
Malenka RC, Nestler EJ, Hyman SE (2009). "Chapter 10: Neural and Neuroendocrine Control of the Internal Milieu". In Sydor A, Brown RY. Molecular Neuropharmacology: A Foundation for Clinical Neuroscience (2nd ed.). New York, USA: McGraw-Hill Medical. p. 266. ISBN 9780071481274. "Dopamine acts in the nucleus accumbens to attach motivational significance to stimuli associated with reward."

It is true there is a couple of spots where the worker tradeoff is closer to 1-1, such as how computers used to be the domain of "revenge of the nerds" (is there ever a movie that captures a changing mood better than that one!?) and now everyone wants "good computer skills", but I do agree you can't just replace workers at even 10-1 ratios forever like free lunch.

A big problem as I see it is that the entire science of economics (no snark jokes, please! It *is* a science, just one stuck with dealing with the trickiest phenomena to prove EVER!) often resembles Klein Bottles, so that even if we all agree you are right as a discussion item, then the powers that be can still drag us into a twisty mess of obfuscation long enough to take care of themselves in the "short term" of the next 10 years. After all, 2025's problems are ... "theirs".

I guess I am getting old - the relentless Slashdot decline is finally getting to me. Slashdot couldn't be bothered to report (much?) on *either* of the chess world championships (the Women's just finished), but they pick up the story about cheating ... and it's not filed under "Games ... Classic Games", but ... wait for it ... filed under iPhone. And then only 20% of the comments are intelligent, and the rest are silly snarks about what is basically the biggest issue facing chess today. You'd think with the brainpower this site commands when we're not exhausted fighting Beta, there could be a couple of cool chess discussions...

So I'll reply to you because your guesses are very close.

Unlike that Romanian guy from last year, this guy is not a putz. He is well into the high master range, leaving the first question "exactly how high without help". So let's just suppose at least low 2400's. As well as checking proposed moves, there is a huge component of "energy saving" where you just let the program "blundercheck" so that in a nightmare mess on the board, just tell the program "look five moves ahead and don't drop a piece or get crushed". So while your opponent is doing things to his hair trying to work out the interlocked chains of variations, the computer just says "hey, take a serious look at this other rook move - looks like it holds everything together for your requested five moves or more". So you play that, and a couple of the resulting forced followup moves, and then four moves later you're fresh and finally, out of exhaustion, your opponent blunders and you just mop up.

And it's getting so bad that AC's are wondering about bathroom rules ... just do the math on 175 bodies in a room for over four hours. You can't easily at all start a regulated tracking system on that!

It's actually worse!

Old stories were written with the story idea first, then data to back it up.

You can tell from this one that someone said "look! I have a bunch of data hanging around! Let's give it a driver's seat and make up a story to go with it!"

I'll go after this because it ties into a pet peeve of mine with too many tv scripts.

"...proving someone is the owner of a given bitcoin wallet is much harder to do than to prove a person is the owner of a bank account..."

Going down the "prove it" road with the police is just bad news. Too many times it screams "I'm guilty but haha". If you're innocent even though a conspiracy of 4 people framed you, do get that good lawyer but then claim your innocence and let the "episode" unfold.

If you get all "come and get me and try to prove it", then you make an error, you're hosed.

One of the cool things about some of the homicide shows is occasionally the interrogating detective will say "look, we've got you on x financial offense, but we need your help as a witness so we'll reduce that as much as we can, maybe to community service plus restitution." But if the suspect gets all smug, even when innocent, then the cops just get grumpy and go for the 5 years in prison max penalty.

In the same vein as another post I made, make your password ... that.

It could take strong nerves to get minor infractions and even an expulsion. The parent would need to be in on it, to deal with that.

"What's your password?"
"Fuck You"
"What did you say?"
"I said, Fuck you!"
"That's it, young man, you're in detention/expelled" (depending on how long it went on).

(Time passes)
Administrator discovers he was so angry, he somehow managed not to get the password. So he calls the parent.
"Hello, Parent. I need your son's password, because you know, for the children and stuff."
"Fuck you"

(More hilarity)

Rinse and repeat with new passwords.

: )

There's room here for a vicious satire by a really smart teacher in one of those experimental schools.

"Civics 101".
But the curriculum is written upside down, to list the rights with wry tones of voice, then in very well documented fashion, all the case examples are rights abuses.

Last I knew, there wasn't a severity test to invoke the constitution.

So what if your password was "IStoleAPepsi" ?

I'd love to see the tight-lipped response a savvy lawyer would use on that one!

Actually, you were just making a "level one" joke, but I'll take to level 2!

Actually make your password Alt&F4!!

Look at it - eight characters, two caps, a number, and three special characters!

And given the technological silliness of the people making this power grab, you get an epic Who's On First routine for the 21st century!

"What's your password?"
"Alt and F4 Bang Bang"
"BangBang"?
"Yeah, that Cher song. Wanna play it on Youtube?"
"No. I want your password."
"I told you. Alt&f4 Bang Bang"
(Principal does Alt-f4 - Window closes.)
"Hey! You closed my program!"
"I didn't do anything. I'm on the phone, you're at the computer."

(Repeat for fifteen minutes and maybe the school admin will give up! If they survived that one, change it!)

Runner up is this site!
"Okay, I changed it for you. www./..org

Yeah, and I'll remark people seem to be forgetting the word "prototype".

And this looks pretty classy for a prototype!

http://mybroadband.co.za/news/...

Looking over the criticisms: I see a lot of "edge case tweaks", but not thing fundamentally show-stopping. So if you give this all a bit of a forward-future roll, let's try a few ideas:

1. Keyboard vs Mouse.
Keyboards "tend to be wide". Sure, modern designers found some ways to use that bottom layer well. But computer mice *do* seem to have a fair amount of "dead space" while the thing "embiggens" itself to fit your hand ergonomics. So at least partially using that space cleverly is interesting.

2. "Gaming rage & throwing mouse to wall" and "how do you clean it". Just suppose the design has one layer with the comp "in a removable box" aka a square chunk of the hardware. Yes, it happens to sit in the mouse housing, and there's a few wires in there, but just make the super expensive core removable.

3. Keyboards.
To me it's less of a finicky point of mouse contour shape vs keyboard dynamics. So shove the comp stuff into the mouse, and then people can just buy their favorite keyboards. Notice this includes roll-up ones.

4. HDMI cable.
This is where I want to "roll the future forward". We're also pretty close to "monitor goggles", that look to the eye like a 20+ inch screen. Then have the mouse-comp communicate the signal wirelessly. Nothing stopping the goggles from having a co-processor, like they used to do for arcade machines. I've always wanted to do "computing in thin air". So with just a mouse, roll up keyboard, and goggles, your entire comp fits into a small backpack!

"Is there ANY way the community can fork off the Wayback Machine? Because AFAIK that is the only source for many web pages lost to time and it would truly be a crime to lose them forever because this yo-yo has decided to turn Internet Archive into another warez site."

It's got a couple of complicated twists I don't yet understand though.

Elsewhere we see stories that skies alive if someone torrents a Justin Bieber song, say a homeowner's sister in Kansas or something, they wind up with a multi thousand dollar lawsuit threat and a settlement offer of ten grand.

And this isn't War3z0074evar.mobi either.

It's Internet Archive. And it's not a faux-hidden little secret section you need a handshake and a passphase to get into. It's x thousand chunks of stuff at a time, with thundering Slashdot-and-media articles to proclaim it around the world.

One of the disturbing aspects of copyright law is how long rights holders can sit around before pulling a trigger to enforce something. (Where, isn't Trademark something you have to defend 'promptly' or lose?) So, it's months later since that last round with the other old games ... So 7000 works at that $300,000 clip ... why isn't one of those copyright troll jerk companies drooling at a billion dollar pot of gold?

To me that's the "hypocrisy" of copyright enforcement.

So it's like some strange card game where Internet Archive is holding a pair of aces in the open, and the other two we don't see, and they're going all in and we can't rationally figure out why someone isn't calling their bluff.

I'm sorry, but I would like to stand in friendly relations to you but ratchet up the rhetoric where it needs to go on this kind of stuff.

"...suspect he didn't even realize he was infringing". No. Just no. But before we get to the big ticket reason why, let's go to an extremely important edge case why.

Look at YouTube. Look at the multi millions of things posted by random accounts. (Who really identifies with handles like grap3fruuit77 anyway?!) Account posts a song, let's say it's Justin Bieber, because this is a Canadian story and I'm sure he has a fan up there. Up goes the song, and the comments say: "I don't own this song! I'm just posting it!"

We should get a slashdot researcher to get 10,000 of these people into a sports stadium on an off day and ask them all "Sure. You don't own it. So why did you post it?" ... Because we're in the middle of an unspoken civil revolution that is subconsciously trying to evolve the meaning of copyrights. It just feels different because it's Not A Cat Picture and/or Not On Facebook.

Now let's look at this guy. He's a "Managing Director, Operations" for a copyright attack dog. Of *course* he realizes he's infringing. He just believes he's above petty little laws for peons. And for a time, he might be.

We need a quiet little voice for the people with big bucks to take these specific kinds of cases, where the copyright guys break their own rules, and pound them into the ground. No settlements, and keep after them if they play shell-company-monte.

Sure, random mid execs in a grain and textile company, whatever. Managing Directors for Operations for copyright attack dogs, no.

"And this is why just 5 mod points aren't going to cut it."

Weird - this story?!

And there are over 130 of those spam posts... that's far more than I've seen in a *long* time!

They need to downmod those at the admin level with a script so you can save your legit mod points for good things!

Actually, they hid Aurora and went back to one of the older square layouts!

I had to use Classic Theme Restorer to add back a couple of minor buttons and colors though.