Annoying Questions I'd Like Answered...

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu Nov 15, 2012 6:27 pm

i am thinking about doing that to a future car . . probably Rainbow Dash Cutie Mark. But on a black car.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Thu Nov 15, 2012 10:42 pm

You win, Ted.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Fri Nov 16, 2012 12:42 am

Random question... Are any of the studies done on tobacco and cancer done involving natural tobacco and not the totally frightening additives they put in cigarettes?

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Fri Nov 16, 2012 7:43 am

My understanding (and I'm often half right, give or take), is that the drying process on the tobacco leaf is what produces the most carcinogens, very high temperatures starved of oxygen makes some wicked interesting chemicals that your body can't handle well.

"Snus" is the least carcinogenic form, salted and steam-dried to suck on, but still likely causes some number mouth and throat cancers, and you lose the controlled release of nicotine you get with a cigarette.

It's not helpful what they add to the papers and all sorts, but you can't keep tobacco leaf without drying it, and that's the elephant in the room. Even the green plant contains all sorts of health problems. Hell, the nicotine patches will fuck you up if you don't stop using them.

Cigarettes are awesome anyway, anti-anxiety, anti-depressant, and an appetite suppressant, which are hugely addictive and only kills a third of people who use them. (Psst, they synthesise all the useful bits these days, get a proscription, it's safer.)

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Nov 16, 2012 8:04 am

The last pack I bought (I typically smoke one cigarette a day, at most, though sometimes I will smoke more, if I'm particularly stressed) was American Spirits, because they're supposedly All Natural, and my low frequency of smoking means I can afford another buck or two on a pack when I buy maybe once a month.

But my question is, how all natural are they? I've basically been going off the assumption that they're "paper, cotton, tobacco" and it's amazing how much less guilty you feel about the lack of an ash tray when you're basically throwing a few plant by-products on the ground...

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Fri Nov 16, 2012 2:12 pm

It should be pointed out that nicotine is a pesticide. That is literally why tobacco plants produce it. So it's probably not good news in any form.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Nov 16, 2012 8:26 pm

True, yeah, I know that nicotine itself is carcinogenic (I think), it's not like you're ever going to get cigarettes free of risk of cancer.

Ted the Flayer · Post by **Ted the Flayer** » Mon Nov 19, 2012 4:25 am

Another annoying question: What the fuck is the Cloud? i hear people talking about it, I see an option for cloud saves on my xbox, and I see cloud servers for sale, what the fuck is it?

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Nov 19, 2012 4:35 am

Cloud server technology. Basically, instead of storing stuff on your computer you store it on the Internet, and it's always there, ready for you to access it from any computer. This saves you hard drive space, though it obviously increases bandwidth usage, particularly if you use it a lot, and for companies that usually have stuff on their own servers, it can save them a lot of electricity (without just transferring that electricity usage on to the cloud host, so it's cheaper and greener).

It's more or less how gmail works, as opposed to using MS Outlook to download your emails onto your PC.

It isn't the ideal option for absolutely everything, but there are things (like saved game files, piracy and sharing work documents amongst a group) where it's really good.

Ted the Flayer · Post by **Ted the Flayer** » Mon Nov 19, 2012 4:45 am

So, if I bought a cloud server, i could access it from anywhere? Say, if I had my school assignments saved there I could get to them from class and home without having to carry a flash drive?

Also, how would that be different than, say, getting a portable hard drive and hooking it up to my network, and accessing that externally? Or is what I just described not actually a thing that can be done...

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Mon Nov 19, 2012 4:58 am

name_here wrote:It should be pointed out that nicotine is a pesticide. That is literally why tobacco plants produce it. So it's probably not good news in any form.

But so's the stuff that makes peppers spicy (and I imagine the same goes for onions).

Is there anything that shows consuming spicy food is carcinogenic?

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Mon Nov 19, 2012 7:37 am

@Ted - Lookup Dropbox. You get 2 GB of space free, and essentially it's a special folder on your PC (Windows) that connects to the great wide everywhere out there. You can access it from a smartphone, another computer - anything with an internet connection. It syncs between all devices and lets you send links to your files to anyone you want.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Mon Nov 19, 2012 7:43 am

Yes, a cloud server is basically a public FTP site (bla-bla differences), and you can make your own for the "free" price of leaving your PC on all the time with a live FTP port into your home PC accessible from everywhere with a password, which is fine if you use a real password and log access attempts in a way that won't crash anything.

correcthorsebatterystaple <= real password example, not for use. From xkcd, which is from

http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware.html

which is from a ancient usenet post on sci.crypt

Ted the Flayer · Post by **Ted the Flayer** » Mon Nov 19, 2012 3:02 pm

Maj wrote:@Ted - Lookup Dropbox. You get 2 GB of space free, and essentially it's a special folder on your PC (Windows) that connects to the great wide everywhere out there. You can access it from a smartphone, another computer - anything with an internet connection. It syncs between all devices and lets you send links to your files to anyone you want.

What I would want to use it for requires much, much more than 2 GB. Still, that's handy to know.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Nov 19, 2012 4:35 pm

You can get another gig free by doing a few things (liking on facebook kind of stuff), or you can subscribe for more, $10/mo (or $99/yr) for 100g, $19/mo ($199.00/yr) for 200g.

If you decide to check it out, go through here and we'll both get another 500mb.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Mon Nov 19, 2012 9:18 pm

@Ted: if you have reasonable Upload on both sides of the line(meaning at home and wherever you are otherwise), go for the home NAS approach.
If your Router can handle an HDD on an USB connector, it's a fast, cheap and dirty way for big remotely accessible storage . .
Use an FTP-Server probably built into the router and you are good.
Combine with dyndns or something similar like that and you are golden.
If your router can do that kind of stuff, set up a VPN and Samba-Share and you can even use it as a normal mounted windows drive on your laptop, as if you were at home too . .
If you don't need/want that, go for the USB-HDD and the FTP-Server from the Router if you can connect an USB HDD to the Router via USB.

Emerald · Post by **Emerald** » Tue Nov 20, 2012 5:49 am

Ted the Flayer wrote:So, if I bought a cloud server, i could access it from anywhere? Say, if I had my school assignments saved there I could get to them from class and home without having to carry a flash drive?

Also, how would that be different than, say, getting a portable hard drive and hooking it up to my network, and accessing that externally? Or is what I just described not actually a thing that can be done...

You don't really buy "a" cloud server, that's just a normal server. Cloud computing is really more like Gmail: there are a bunch of servers out there and you don't know where exactly your data is, but it doesn't really matter because when you ask for it you get it. You can add and subtract servers from the pool transparently (i.e. you don't notice or care if Google doubles or halves the number of servers, that just affects the maximum storage capacity of Gmail). The servers do all of the heavy lifting, and you can access your data with the same interface, capabilities, etc. on any internet-capable device.

So if all you want to do is access documents from multiple computers, then getting yourself a normal FTP server as already mentioned would be fine. Doing things the cloud way only really comes in handy if you want to run applications remotely, access things from lots of different locations at once, and/or will be expanding your storage a lot in the future.

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Sat Nov 24, 2012 4:44 pm

Not really an annoying question, as much as a request.

I have a crazy right-wing professor and on Wednesday he started lecturing on the Cold War, and described it as "good vs. evil" bullshit, and referred to all anti-Communist movements as "freedom fighters" that the U.S. was right to support (he referred to Ngo Dinh Diem as the "only real Vietnamese nationalist," which is kind of hilarious given that I'm taking a class on the Vietnam war that would disagree with that fairly heavily,)

I'm going to present a list of some of these "freedom fighters" who were worse than the Communists in every way (like Osama bin Laden or Augusto Pinochet, for example.)

Anyone care to toss me some more names?

EDIT:

The current names and/or organizations I have are:
Osama bin Laden/the Muhadjeen/the Taliban
Augusto Pinochet
The Shah of Iran
The Nicaraguan Contras
Col. Castillo in Guatemala

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Nov 24, 2012 5:41 pm

The Death Squads of El salvador.
State Peace and Development Council of Burma.
The Islamic Courts Union of Somalia.
Operation Searchlight in East Pakistan.

Those are among the worst people in the history of the world. And yet they have all been at times classified as "anti-communist freedom fighters".

-Username17

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Sat Nov 24, 2012 5:50 pm

Thanks, Frank, that nearly doubles my list.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Nov 24, 2012 10:51 pm

Hitler fought the soviet union, not sure if that's close enough.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Sun Nov 25, 2012 12:05 am

really have to stop and think for a minute, when hitler suddenly looks like the alternative to what ever you are up against . .

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Sun Nov 25, 2012 12:15 am

Prak_Anima wrote:Hitler fought the soviet union, not sure if that's close enough.

Indeed, Hitler was hardcore anti-Communist, and it was one of the major planks of the Nazi party platform, right after killing all the Jews. And he sent plenty of Communists to concentration camps.

Mussolini was also anti-Communist.

But World War II is distinct from the Cold War.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sun Nov 25, 2012 1:41 am

Where did your professor get his teaching degree, the Internet?

Also, on the "Cold War as Good vs Evil" thing, let's pretend it was as clear-cut as that. In the war between Communism and DemocracyCapitalism, which side actually did the most wrong? I mean, Communism gets a head-start here because we're including everyone Stalin killed (it wasn't a requirement of Communism, but it was something the Communists did in the Cold War - this exercise is not "Which is better as a way of running a country?" it's "Who were the baddies?"), and both Russia and China had millions of deaths through famine, which might or might not fall on their shoulders as "Doing evil". But I'm pretty sure Capitalism can catch up pretty easily with all of the crazy dictatorships it set up around the world.

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Sun Nov 25, 2012 2:51 am

Koumei wrote:Where did your professor get his teaching degree, the Internet?

My personal suspicion is that he was taught History by Bandit Keith, George Liquor (American,) and Liberty Prime.

He would probably also consider Team America: World Police to be a documentary about America's proper role in the world.

I think he gets his news from the Onion, too.