It’s a good thing that I decided it too, because it was in middle school that some of my friends started going that route. By that time, they knew my values (I was raised in a very religious home, and made it a point to live by those standards) and didn’t bother inviting me to participate with them. It made me sad to see, but those same friends that started using in middle school are still doing so. They haven’t gone all that far in life, and I don’t know what they plan on doing for their future.

For all those worried parents who don’t think they can keep up with the ever-increasing drug presence in America, I’m here to shed some light on it.

Let’s start with the most-used recreational drugs for last year.

Cocaine: Cocaine is a crystalline powder that is mainly used by snorting it up the nose (it can also be smoked in rock form). Once in the blood stream, it goes to the brain and affects the natural flow of dopamine in the brain. Cocaine use causes an excessive buildup of dopamine in the brain; thus the pleasurable affect.

If someone is using cocaine, they will start to have frequent mood swings, nose bleeds, rapid or irregular heartbeat, irritability, insomnia, bloodshot eyes, anxious anxiety attacks, dilated pupils, speech irregularities and rapid weight loss.

Cocaine is powerfully addictive. If you smoke crack (crack is cocaine in rock form), you can get very sharp chest pains, lung trauma and bleeding. Powder-based cocaine causes death by cardiac arrest, seizures and respiratory arrest.

Ecstasy: Ecstasy is known by many different names (MDMA, X, XTC, Rolls, Beans, Adams, etc). It comes in the form of a pill and can have lots of different things imprinted on top of it (brands, words, the Nike Swoosh, the playboy bunny insignia, etc.); thus the different names. When someone takes ecstasy, a number of things happen to them: there is an involuntary grinding of the teeth, temperature variations, blurred vision, nausea, increase in sights and sounds, liver failure, cardiovascular issues and kidney failure. Long-term affects are varied, but include the following: loss of memory, loss of appetite, loss of ability to feel, etc.

Marijuana: Marijuana, or cannabis, is the most popular drug in the world by a long shot. It is estimated that between 129 and 191 million people use marijuana. Marijuana has being legalized in areas like the Netherlands, and people in the United States are trying to legalize it as well. Because marijuana is the “softest” drug of the three, it’s easier to handle.

Therefore, it is more available.

Marijuana use can cause the following effects: impairment of memory, impairment of cognitive functions, difficulty breathing and bloodshot eyes. Use has also been linked to the development of anxiety, depression and schizophrenia.

There is hope, and there is early prevention. The best way to prevent those sorts of things is to talk to your kids now. Let them know that even experimenting with drugs is a bad idea. Make it clear that drugs aren’t to be messed with. My parents did that, and I’ve never touched the stuff. Talking works, make it a priority.

About the Author

Jordan Freis is a freelance writer for MyCollegesandCareers.com.
My Colleges and Careers helps people determine if an online education is right for them and helps them understand which online schools they can choose from to reach their goals and start top careers.

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Dangerous Drugs

What Parents Need To Know About Dangerous Drugs

Well, it might as well be said, some of you are thinking about it. The same applies to guns, guns are not dangerous, and the people who carelessly misuse guns are dangerous. Drugs are not dangerous until people misuse them. That is going to be the point of this discussion.

Probably the most dangerous drug our children will encounter is curiosity and listening to peers. The need for children to experiment or whether it be for financial gain, either way, it is a growing concern regarding the misuse of drugs. Read more

OSA Technorati Tags: Anxiety, Blood Stream, Bloodshot Eyes, Cocaine Cocaine, Cocaine Use, Crystalline Powder, Dopamine, Frequent Mood Swings, Insomnia, Irregular Heartbeat, Irregularities, Irritability, Marijuana, Natural Flow, Nose Bleeds, Pupils, Rapid Weight Loss, Recreational Drugs, Recreational Substances, Sharp Chest Pains, Sharp Chest Pains Lung

Players have noticed various subtle changes in the game over time. In the earliest months, through about November, 2006, you could see your partner’s guesses during play by mousing over the image. When the “congenita abuse” started (see below) you could see if your partner was using those terms, while the game was underway. The game was changed so that only at the end of the game could you click “see partner’s guesses” and learn what he or she had typed. “Congenita abuse” was finally stopped by changes in the structure of the game in Feb. 2007 (see below). During the first few months of 2007 regular players grew to recognize a group of images that signified a “robot” partner, always with the same labels in the same order. This appears to have changed as of about March 13, 2007. Suddenly most of the images seen are brand new, and the older images come with extensive off-limits lists.

As of May 4, 2007 there have been fundamental and substantial changes made to the game. Instead of 90 seconds, players now have 2 minutes. Instead of 100 points per image, the score is varied to reward higher specificity. “Man” might get 50 points whereas “Bill Gates” might get 140 points. On August 7, 2007 another change was made. Instead of simply showing the point values of each match as the match occurs, the value of each match is shown next to the matching word at the end of the game. This makes it much easier to see the exact value of specific versus general labeling. A further change was observed on October 15, 2007. The new version was put into place and then seems to have been withdrawn. In the new version you see only the image you are labelling, whereas in the old version the images are collected in the lower part of the screen as you play. Other changes are subtle, for example the score is in green letters in the new version and red in the old. The most significant change is that the clock freezes during the image change, and that time used to be essentially subtracted from the two minutes of play. The changes appear to have gone into full effect on October 18, 2007.

Rules

The user will be randomly paired with a partner who is online and using the feature. Users can be registered players who accumulate a total score over all games played, or guests who just play for one game at a time. Note that players come from around the world, some practicing their English, and both American and British English will be encountered (soccer vs. football). When an uneven number of players are online, a player will play against a prerecorded set of words.

The current rules follow. For changes in the rules, see the history section. Over a 2 minute period, the user and his/her partner will be shown the same set of images and asked to provide as many labels as possible to describe each image you see. When the user’s label matches the partner’s label, both will earn points and move on to the next image until time runs out. It is possible to pass on an image but both users must agree to do this. The score is variable from 50 to 150 depending on the specificity of the answer. The 150 score is rare but 140 points will be awarded for a name or specific word, even if the word is spelled out in the image. Terms with low specificity like “trees” or “man” earn only 50 points. There has never been any screening for correctness, so that if both players type “Jupiter” for an image of Saturn, they would presumably both get 140 points.

Labels that have been agreed on by previous users may show on an “off limits” list and cannot be used in that round. Some players think that the game staggers appearance of the images, and that sometimes it takes the first words typed by one player to form an “off limits” list for the other player. In other words, the off limits words may be unilateral, asymmetrical. This would explain the rather frequent circumstance when it seems a partner can’t think of words like “car,” “bird,” or “girl.” Very rarely, at the end of the match it becomes obvious that one image was different for the two players. Perhaps this is simply an error, or perhaps it is a test to see how quickly people will pass when their descriptions do not match, but it may also be a mechanism implemented to view cheaters, if the words for the different images are similar. At times, one user’s computer will fail to load a new image, or continue to display the previous image shown. Times likes these also call for a mutual “pass” on the part of both players.

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Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/e-learning-articles/google-images-1052685.html

OSA Technorati Tags: August 7, Bill Gates, Exact Value, Game 1, google, Google Image, Google Images, Labels, Luis Von Ahn, Match, Old Version, Point Values, Robot, Score, Specificity, Substantial Changes, Subtle Changes

Now that GMail is back online, I’m no longer sitting in a cold sweat. See, I’m convinced that if GMail had stopped working for, say, one day, I would miss a career-altering email, or perhaps some important family news, and become obsolete. The fear is irrational, but almost inevitable when you’re so used to having something like GMail functioning properly all the time.

GMail is just technology. So is Google. These are tools that we humans use. But we have a tendency to interpret them as extensions of ourselves. These silent, helpful, reliable mental partners become as automatic as breathing or blinking.

And when they go down, all hell breaks loose.

Last month, Google marked every webpage as spam. Being the responsive company that it is, Google soon fixed the problem. But for a short time, people were truly disoriented. Google’s malfunction led to emotional turmoil that temporarily froze people. We just don’t know what to do when our silent mental partner goes down.

We’re so reliant on Google, and Google alone, that we freeze right along with it. As humans, we are independent of it and able to function without it–for short periods of time. But we’re not trained to understand that. A Google catastrophe is a world catastrophe.

It follows that:

a) Humans are emotionally dependent on Google
b) When Google freezes, humans freeze–and that is a single-point catastrophe
c) We are not familiar with the courses of action we can take when Google does go down
d) Google has a direct effect on our well-being

When I worked at Google, there was a wonderful, satirical world domination plan sketched out on a whiteboard in one of the buildings. The idea was that Google would take over every aspect of daily life with products like Google Cola, Google gas stations, Google countries, etc.

Ironically, I think that Google has managed to rule the world, just not in the way the whiteboard illustrated. GMail’s problems today prove it.

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Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/e-learning-articles/google-gmail-problems-1052761.html

OSA Technorati Tags: Cold Sweat, Emotional Turmoil, Family News, Fear, Gmail, google, Hell, Led, Responsive Company, Short Periods, Short Time, Single Point, spam, technology, Tendency, Tools, Webpage, Whiteboard, World Catastrophe, World Domination

But we also know the limitations of GoogleGoogle in terms of options for offline capabilities with this current offering. ZimbraZimbra the web-based email option and a rival to Google Apps, is pointing out Google’s shortcomings, and proposes itself as an option that can be hosted, or deployed on your site. This grants the offline access that Google Apps Enterprise doesn’t yet have, as well as more flexibility for employees, with access across platforms. Zimbra had this to say in an email sent to Mashable

“Google’s deal with Cap Gemini today definitely raises visibility for the SaaS market. However, the pair face a challenge: since all Google Docs are stored on Google’s servers, public companies would face big Sarbanes-Oxley compliance issues if they deployed Google Apps. Zimbra’s Web 2.0 messaging and collaboration platform provides enterprise customers with freedoms that Google Apps just can’t provide, including the ability to archive for compliance purposes. They can use Zimbra as a hosted service or deploy it on-site. They can use it online or offline while retaining killer AJAX functionality. They can offer their employees access from any desktop, Web, or mobile client.”

Zimbra is trying to grab a slice of that Google hype for itself, and it’s not the only company to do so: Microsoft is also taking shots at Google Apps today.

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Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/e-learning-articles/google-apps-problems-1052770.html

OSA Technorati Tags: Administrative Tools, Article Source, Cap Gemini, Collaboration Platform, Compliance Issues, Compliance Purposes, Desktop Web, Enterprise Customers, Gmail, google, Google Apps Premier Edition, Google Docs, Google Web, Googlegoogle, Mobile Client, Sarbanes Oxley Compliance, Shortcomings, Spreadsheets, Web Based Email, Zimbra

As with most things modern, reading is inevitably trending towards being e-based. It starts with the shopping, ordering and then receiving (downloading) of the books. All this is accomplished in one go online in a matter of minutes. Even the reading proper is hi-tech. It is reading made easy by technology and if it could ‘change Oprah’s life’, it will change yours too.

There are several brands of electronic book readers to choose from in the market. Having that said, don’t bother to look beyond the top of the pack as many of the rest are still in beta. By far the two most proven brands are the Amazon Kindle and Sony PRS. Both have generated running series and are already into their latter models. The consensus though, is Amazon with its Kindle 2 is fast drawing away from competition with Sony’s flagship PRS – 700 a distant second.

To get hold of the Amazon eBook Reader, you have to act fast. Stock-outs especially during peak seasons are nothing new with the Amazon Kindle. For back-to-back Christmases, they sold out long before the holiday proper. Quoted delivery lead time continues to be volatile due to all the rage that it is now. EBay may be an alternative marketplace for the red hot e reader but price premium may be needed to circumvent the crunch.

Analysts estimate that the original Kindle sold in excess of half a million units. Going by the current rate, the Kindle 2 is poised to sell lots more. That means it’s not only good for readers, it’s great for the environment. Kindle Electronic Book Reader can substitute the need for books so the Kindle 2 can save quite a few trees from being turned into paper for them. Yes, the Kindle 2 is green.

Kindle ebooks save money too. Savvy readers would realize that Amazon subsidizes its Kindle book sales and provides free sampling of e-books so you are never mistaken about buying a book. That may be string attached to sell its electronic book reader but the bottom line makes sense at the end of the day. Even for occasional readers, this should be a no-brainer. That’s on top of all the other good stuff it brings.

You get to know What Is Kindle by visiting our site that offers reviews and other features of Kindle Electronic Book Reader.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/e-learning-articles/kindle-electronic-book-reader-for-elearning-1059016.html

OSA Technorati Tags: All The Rage, Amazon Kindle, Current Rate, E Reader, eBay, Electronic Book Reader, Electronic Book Readers, Half A Million, Kingpin, Largest Online Bookstore, Latter Models, Lead Time, Matter Of Minutes, Oprah, Peak Seasons, Perfect Union, Prs, Resurgence, Stock Outs, Top Of The Pack