oxide

I remember when Konami tried to silence Super Bunnyhop awhile back via DMCA abuse and Youtube stepped in, I'm glad to see that has in a way evolved into a proper policy, caveats be damned.

Part of me, the naive, idealistic part, wonders what might happen if hell froze over and the US and Russia quit playing proxy war and actually saw eye to eye on crushing ISIS instead of just pretending while they tug of war over Assad.

What wide a brush you paint with. Are blanket statements and bird shot opinions all you've got to contribute?

this is a great point.

I often think of the current research chemical market in regards to this: a poorly understood drug like MDPV makes the rounds on the internet, someone decides to take the risks for the rewards in the gray-area and makes it widely available, someone buys it at a gas station and ends up in the hospital after doing something dumb, a panic ends up getting it banned, and a short while later the cycle restarts with a new drug that is still in the gray-area of the law.

if you re-read the above comment imagining yourself as someone reading it many years in the future you can really appreciate it much more. thanks for putting me on that train of thought.

taking something called "protection money" sounds like extortion to me, but now we're splitting hairs.

possible sarcasm? tone always seems to get lost in translation.

thank you for the breakdown.

wait, insurance companies don't usually make an actual profit directly from premiums?

what a world we live in, that's an eye-opener for me.

weed is maybe a bad example. I think heroin would be more apt here, since that is usually grown and processed overseas before being imported.

where I'm from, growing and processing (curing and trimming) your own weed is very common.

this time of year is harvest season in fact.

plenty of odd jobs trimming marijuana pop up seasonally around here because of it.

an important distinction, too. I really do think that decriminalization is a logical path to legalization, but it offers many less benefits to society by direct comparison.

all the criminal infrastructure and the ills that go with it don't go away after decriminalization alone, but it does at least offer some protection to the end user.

ideally, it needs to eventually be properly legalized and regulated so it can be produced, transported and sold legally while (also ideally) being taxed along the way.

I think this is a systemic problem in Afghanistan.

I've heard that once a contract is put up for bidding by the government, someone buys it out, and sub-contracts it out a step down the ladder. The sub-contractor sub-contracts it out again another step, and so on.

until eventually a local is taking a picture of some other well as proof and everyone gets paid and nothing gets done.

I couldn't comment on whether this has any truth to it, I've fortunately never been to Afghanistan and also I don't know anyone who's been.

after hearing it, it's hard to imagine things working any other way, looking at the fruit of the time and money.

I disagree that it's half-baked, in fact this is a huge victory. A step in the right direction, indeed. Now, if only we can keep from going two steps back.

Am I naive for thinking the iPhone cost less than $600? I don't know what I thought it might have cost, I've never been interested enough to go looking. I...just might have expected it to be less than the PC upgrades I occasionally fantasize about.

I'm a bit happier with the price/performance ratio of my much, much too old smartphone after seeing that price tag.

the one I know for sure about involved visitation.

wives and girlfriends are asked to smuggle something in for a significant other inside of themselves. a toilet trip later it gets removed and passed off, and voila. even a small amount can curry quite a bit of favor and of course cash. because of the risk involved, the price is well marked up.

seems like the guards would have to be on the take, though, because I'm not sure how the inmate is supposed to get it from the visitation room back to his cell.

I'm sure they have something figured out, anyone who can light a cigarette with an outlet is bound to be a crafty cat.

Reading about how optimization is handled in games is extremely interesting.

It really makes me appreciate some of the more well optimized games, it sounds like solving a very difficult puzzle.

I found this extremely demystifying.

I imagine people looking to be disruptive will seek out a 'start9' equivalent. I don't know whether or not there is one.

Viacom's Comedy Central doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

I don't know about you, but if that's the only reason, it sounds an awful lot like a clear cut case of overreach.

the only thing I can imagine cracking the screen is trying to weigh a person.

is that really something Apple would have to pay for? seems like something like that would fall well in "your fault" territory from my perspective.

my first thought was drugs, might be handy to have a scale in my pocket sometimes.

this is huge! thanks for all the hard work to everyone involved.

Do you think you'll still be playing this game a few years from now? I can't imagine the player base is going to stick around for years of that.

Maybe some will, but the idea of a 10 year deal being signed for something like this as the end result is a bit of a jaw dropper for me.

so, they've decided to cannibalize the interesting story they cut out to begin with for the current DLC that everyone seems to enjoy?

I've only just heard of the "online-pass" used game style of putting the squeeze on the used textbook market yesterday, from that post you mentioned.

My jaw is a little agape about the whole thing. online passes died in games after awhile, but it almost seems like the college textbook racket could probably get away with doing it forever.

The biggest difference between this application of it and the way it worked in games seems to be that it's designed to force your hand a little more. With games, you just got screwed out of the online features. With this, it sounds like you can't even complete the course without the online pass.

This is 2015. The idea that we need to make sure a company is steeped in ill-gotten profit so that information can be disseminated is absolutely laughable.

The internet has brought a new method of information dissemination, a free method. not only are for-profit scientific journals outdated relics by now, but they're clearly aware of that fact and grasping for straws to stay relevant.

that's an adjective, not hate speech.

Good riddance.

>For that word to have any meaning at all, it needs to be a more direct reference to government and politics.

wait...what?

politics are everywhere: at home, at the office, in your local bowling league. it doesn't apply exclusively to government.

Oxycodone aka Eukodal is not a "preform" of heroin, period. Hydrocodone, aka Vicodin, has nothing to do with heroin either. This is seriously bad drug information. they're just opiates.

If you don't know, now you know. Nothing I dislike more than bad drug information being passed off as researched fact.