If I wanted something, I'd already have it. I don't go to feeding frenzies to compete with humanity just to save a few bucks. My time is worth more to me.

I also really dislike crowds and queues etc. I can control it (I'm not going to flip out) but I do get angry and something like (but not the same as) claustrophobic when in crowds.

You would have to be a "full time stoner" (regular user) to understand it. It affects people differently (that's where I will agree that there is some danger) but generally, a long time, experienced user is not intoxicated or significantly impaired by moderate cannabis use. It's more akin to having a cup of coffee than an intoxicant and that's the mindset of most chronic users.

I think observation (did the driver actually do anything wrong?) and field sobriety tests should be given more weight than drug testing for the presence of cannabis metabolites. This method would also catch people who are sleep deprived, or trying to function while ill when they should have stayed home. (Such people should be warned, not charged though. You have to draw the line somewhere. We can't possibly forbid driving for all conditions where people aren't at their best)

I've been smoking it several times a day, for 35+ years now and I have friends in their 70's who have been smoking it for 50+ years. However, a novice user tripping out on potent cannabis certainly would be impaired. Unlike alcohol (which lowers inhibitions) though, they would probably themselves be scared to drive. They would most likely FEEL inhibited and say "I'm not goin nowhere!" (an actual quote that I will always remember, from someone in that very situation. It was funny to me at the time). I have seen this many times. Go smoke someone up before we go somewhere and have them realize they are now too messed up. Some people won't even go out in public, let alone drive.

So no, I don't believe it is as dangerous as alcohol. It can't be ignored, but it also isn't appropriate to treat it the same way as alcohol "DUI".

I'm in Canada, by the way. It's a bit more tolerated by folks here (I don't mean government or law enforcement, it's illegal and criminal to possess or drive under the influence) and it's not so stigmatized. So users can lead perfectly normal lives.

Of course, anyone whose career depends on drugs being illegal is going to lobby against even one inch of compromise. It is disingenuous for that U.N. drug watchdog cocksucker to even comment on the issue.

That's why you never ask police their opinion on things like this either. (and yes, I know of L.E.A.P. but they are a very small minority). Their unions would forbid them, even if they wanted to be honest and objective. Anything that reduces the need for more policing would be against their interests.

The prison industry was one of the biggest lobbyists against legalization, during the California cannabis referendum.

They are conditioned to believe this shit at early ages... "If you want to be rich some day, you have to think this way and support Free Market Capitalism. Anything else is just bad, and you don't need to know any more about it. Let's just call it all Socialism. It kind of rhymes with Satan, well, it starts with the same letter, at least."

This is why you have stupid people, who haven't a pot to piss in, that lobby against things that are in their own interests, in favour of the corporate greed.

Ordinary workers, living from paycheck to paycheck, getting in debt, saying that at least under (Insert Republican candidate they've been conditioned to support) they get to "keep what they have". No sir, they don't want anything like subsidized health care, they'd rather go into mortal debt for an emergency appendectomy. At least they are living the American Dream and doing it on their own, because government handouts are Socialism, which is the same as Communism (See, the old U.S.S.R. had the word "Socialist" in the title)

Now these big companies, whose "freedom" they worship, are wanting to claw back their meager wages and benefits while execs get bonuses. Damn those unions for interfering with the God Given Rights of the corporations.

Of course not all Americans are this obtuse, it's just that they are also taught to be very vocal when others don't agree with their beliefs, or criticize their country.

No, I am saying that IE8 is erroneously putting up that message. I know what it means and yes, it's been around much earlier than IE6. I think I remember it in Netscape even.

I don't sign in to youtube. I don't sign in to Google. I opted out of all the social networking tripe. (I forget what they call it, but there's a central site you can use to opt out of Google Everything all at once, and only keep what you want.) I have a disposable Gmail account, with completely false information that I log in to maybe once every few months (or if I'm expecting correspondence) and then I log out of it.

So no, I really don't care to have my searches over SSL. It's just unnecessary overhead. I also don't care to read mailing list archives or download source code over SSL either.

In this case none of that content needs to be encrypted in the first place. This isn't your bank, it's just a video site.

I have noticed the problem only with IE8. I suppose that nobody else except you and it, have a clue?

It is probably erroneous.

Yes, I don't like the use of https where it's not needed. It's more overhead all around and YES it matters on busy servers and slow, high latency links. It can also meant he difference between accessing and not accessing the site with a misconfigured router (e.g. wrong MTU on a PPPoE connection can make SSL not work correctly. There's one ISP here that needs packets no larger than 1454 bytes or there's trouble signing into various services. The default on the routers is 1492 for PPPoE, which is supposed to be correct but gets people every time. The ISP doesn't "support" routers, unless they supply, configure and lock you out of them. So I get service calls over that all the time)

I do not need SSL on Google. Like I give a fuck if people snoop my search phrases. (I'll search for "kiss my ass" just in case the bogey man is listening) I would want SSL for signing in to, say, Gmail or something but I don't need it for all communications. Now that Google has carried the https over to Youtube, some silly browsers (e.g. IE8) prompt on the loading of every damned page because there's a mix of secure and non secure content. Really smart.

I certainly will not be brow beaten into sacrificing MY freedom and privacy for fishing expeditions to catch criminals. Being falsely accused or even just investigated by a bunch of overbearing cops is more harassment than I will tolerate. Call me all the names you want, at least "tool" won't be among them.

Even in the intended case of a relative being an alleged match... what then? Are they to be interrogated and harassed into providing their family tree? Only a complete and utter moron would submit to that in the first place. Yes, I know, the world is full of those people who think they are innocent and have nothing to fear from The Law. Wait until you're on the receiving end of a bunch of sociopathic assholes who think the end justifies the means.

I am very suspicious about this. Why would he submit a sample if he is the one who did it? This is probably all bollocks and the man is innocent.

I would never submit my DNA in that manner. If that made me the odd man out, implying guilt because I won't cooperate, so be it. If they go and take a sample by whatever means, it wouldn't be admissible anyway.

This is like a witch hunt.

It sounds like a shitty deal, alright.

What I hate are new versions of programs that become unfriendly to my dark GTK+ style. Input forms with unreadable text (I switched to Chromium from Firefox because of that rubbish), white text on white etc. Even VirtualBox is pissing me off... the same thing seems to be happening with my dark QT style. Fortunately it's only the one screen that's affected and it doesn't make the program unusable for me.

Gnome has used GTK+ for a very long time. It's not really just a "gimp library" anymore, but a "Graphical User Interface Toolkit"

Gimp 2.8 requires GTK+ 2.26 or something like that. You could simply remove the devel packages for atk/cairo/pango/glib/gtk+ (leaving the distro packages installed for dependencies at runtime) and put your new libraries in --prefix=/usr/local. I haven't ever used CentOS on a workstation, but I'd be surprised if I couldn't get Gimp 2.8 working with a little fiddling.

I hate Gnome 2 almost as much as I hate Gnome 3, so it doesn't really matter to me either way. I will never use a Gnome-centric distribution. (even if you don't use Gnome, all your GTK apps in the repos would be built with Gnome dependencies and you need to install half of it anyway)

The selection in Canada is terrible. I hooked up a Roku box for one of my customers who bought one, and there was not one movie or show on Netflix that they wanted to watch. (I saw a few things I could have watched, but to say I was underwhelmed is an understatement) I left them exploring some of the other (free) channels that the Roku could connect to, but I was not optimistic.

Seriously though, I wouldn't bother with Netflix when I can download most any movie or show that has ever existed and keep it forever.

It also needs mentioning that not all cannabis is the same. Different strains (and even different growing and handling conditions can change it) have varying combinations of cannabinols which result in different effects. The main two are THC ("Delta 9 Tetrahydrocannabinol" and its isomers which have varying psychoactive effects) and CBD (Cannabidiol, which has more sedating effects) but there are others, less studied, that also change the effects in combination. Again, different people may experience different effects due to their own brain chemistry.

In general, strains that are proportionally higher in THC and lower in CBD content have more positive effects. Uplifting, euphoric, mildly psychedelic but less debilitating. Strains proportionally high in CBD have mellower, or even useless sedating effects if there's not enough THC. Strains that have high amounts of both are generally more stupefying.

I agree, and I like that too. Impairment is impairment... I've always said that. It pisses me off that even relatively mild consumption of alcohol or (if they can prove it) drugs results in persecution, yet someone sick, tired and stupid is just expected to "be careful" while driving.

My fear is that those sobriety tests may not really reflect someone's ability to drive, operate machinery or whatever the activity is and some people might just have trouble performing some of the tests at the best of times. Take, for example, the one where they make you stretch your arms out, then touch the tip of your nose. I can do that once, twice, thrice but the more they make you do it, the greater the chances of deviation. At that point they say "aha! this guy is impaired!" even though you just did it a few times and passed previous tests like walking in a straight line and you didn't actually show any driving problems when you were stopped.

A judge in Saskatchewan ruled against a cannabis impairment case because of that. The woman was showing no signs of intoxication (admitted to smoking marijuana earlier when asked, which was her mistake), passed most of the sobriety tests except failing a few times on that one, yet they used it as justification to escalate to a urine test, which she of course failed. The judge ruled there was no evidence of impairment and he wondered whether or not, sober as a judge, he could pass that same sobriety test. Especially while under duress.

That's a good start: It's an example that may help to establish that the mere presence of cannabis metabolites in bodily fluids is not in itself evidence of impairment.

I would think that electronic tests that better simulate the activity (e.g. operating the ski lift) would fare better. No finger pointing, no accusations, just "you're not at your best today, so we'll put you on maintenance duties". I like that part especially. Of course, someone who repeatedly lacks the hand eye coordination could be told they are unsuitable for the position. Such people (especially if they've had no problems while operating the lift itself before they started doing such testing) might raise a ruckus about the test being unfair.

It sounds like that is based on very limited personal experience.

I have been smoking cannabis for more than 35 years and it is nothing but an enhancement to me (well... unless used excessively all day or something). To long time users, it's more like having a cup of coffee than an intoxicant. While it is and we have to be a bit discrete, we don't even think of it as an "illegal drug" when we use it either alone or in social settings, but then, this is Canada where we don't believe American propaganda.

Hippies didn't necessarily die young because of drugs (at least not marijuana and not likely LSD either). There are other common factors and lifestyle choices that come into play. I have friends in their 70's who still smoke cannabis several times a day, by the way.

Most all of the harm from cannabis comes from the drug laws, and extrajudicial mechanisms that serve only to ostracize people who defy those laws. For example it is absolutely disingenuous to test urine for cannabis and use the presence of non pharmacologically active metabolites that may persist for weeks or months, to discriminate against people for employment or any other purpose. Hair follicle testing is even more sinister. They are always testing for past use. Even blood tests, while more accurate, immediate and having the possibility to be quantitative, can detect it for up to 4 days.

Funny how the harm is directly related to society. In places where it's legal/ignored and tolerated, there is far less harm than in an authority driven place like America where the public is so brainwashed that they actively participate in the injustice. You've really got to see cannabis use without the stigmata, to understand this. It doesn't affect your family either, when it's tolerated. In fact it can be a "god send" (not my words) when chosen over alcohol abuse. When people aren't punished by society for it, they keep their jobs and/or businesses, they own homes, have families, raise bright kids who go on to higher education just like "normal" people etc.

The answer to the main question in the article "Do Recreational Drugs Help Programmers?" can only be that it depends on the individual, the drugs in question and the circumstances. It is my opinion that someone who doesn't use drugs would almost certainly be affected adversely if they suddenly got intoxicated or over stimulated and tried to code. Drugs don't affect all individuals the same, either. I know some people who just CAN'T use cannabis for example.