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The Worst Coders In Washington
spooky writes "The American Open Technology Consortium, 'a nonprofit organization of technologists who have joined together to educate lawmakers and regulators about technology -- especially in regards to The Internet' has compiled a list of the lawmakers responsible for eight bad internet laws. They say, 'These bad coders and their backers have done more damage to computing, the Internet and freedom than all the virus authors, spammers and crackers combined', Do you agree? Did they miss anyone?"
agree with the top, but i've never heard of a "Nasty gun control law"? lets face it, guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people. sure beats the hell out of a baseball bat for most people. what's etc.?????
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
This may be an urban legend, but I read that cops in a California city opposed Photo Radar. Why? Because it kept sending tickets to cops that were speeding off duty.
My cousin is a San Diego detective, and while he didn't say anything about his position on them, he told us as a joke that the captain was pissed at the cops because of that.
I'm opposed to them because they were run by a private company who shared in the profits from them. They decreased the yellow light time to boost profits, and accidents increased something crazy like 150% at just those intersections.
Studies showed that an even longer yellow time than was normal before the cameras would decrease accidents a pretty good percentage at the cost of ticket revenue.
I just don't think "whatever the market will bear" is an appropriate philosophy for my government to adopt.
But you forget the 2nd adm. You know the one that says we have a RIGHT to have guns.
In quite a few states if you work in a Union shop, you have to pay dues to that Union with no choice in the matter. Including having the union take your dues and use them to campaign against issues you agree with.
This isn't picking your pocket?
Human rights are absolute. And yes, they mean putting ourselves at risk sometimes. There may be shades of grey, but that doesn't mean we can't have a solid position on what is right and what is wrong. Shades of grey do not justify a legal system which impossible for the average person to understand, which is written by and for lawyers to make the best of. What justifies making some dying person suffer because of your morality? But that's my opinion, and I vote based on it. Realize it or not, everyone -- if you pin them down -- is an absolutist. They have a particular opinion on something and stick to that firmly until convinced otherwise.
And lets be frank, I'm not talking about some pie-in-the-sky ideology; I'm talking about things which would work easily. Its not fanatical to ask for clear laws, and to ask that the government respect our right to do with we will with our own bodies, so long as we don't harm others (refer to prostitution, stripping, abortion, euthanasia, gay-rights). What's fanatical is this Christian war against our right to our body on all fronts. Everywhere you turn, Christians are against our right to body. They don't want homosexuals to be able to carry out their relations. They don't want prostitutes and strippers to engage in their profession. They want to prevent dying people in constant pain from ending their misery. Some of them even want to prevent a man and a wife from having non-reproductive sex. They want to turn women into walking incubators by forcing them to give birth, which is the equivalent of rape, and no better than what's done in China, where some women are forced to have abortions. Everywhere you turn in matters of the body, Christians are the enemy of happiness and the friend of misery. Sufficed to say, the religious right is the reason I'm not a Republican. Also sufficed to say, the nutcases at PETA (among many other reasons) are enough to prevent me from being a democrat.
I never said that prostitution should be unregulated and you're criticisms of it in and of itself are absurd.
How many prostitutes have you met who chose to become prostitutes voluntarily.
I'm not speaking in terms of the desireability or lack-thereof of the profession. Ideally, everyone would like to make a living doing something like writing books as Crichton does, which offers lots of money and little stress.
How many people do you know who wanted to become strippers? or janitors? or trashmen? or waiters? or life-time employees of McDonalds saying "do you want fries with that?"? Prostitution is just one among many choices. It has advantages (i.e., much higher pay for the same amount of time) and disadvantages (i.e., social stigma by Christian zealots). You seem to be saying that it should be illegal because its undesireable. Firstly, its desireability is a matter of opinion -- some people might like it. Secondly, many professions are undesireable. Even if a prostitute is a prostitute because (s)he doesn't have much in the way of intelligence, so what? (S)he's making use of his or her gifts. If someone's pretty (or sexually talented) why shouldn't they use that to their advantage. I'm a researcher and not a star in the NBA. Why? Because I'm not particularly physical and I don't have a good aim.
Sure, some women are forced into prostitution by the external actions of others. That doesn't mean we illegalize prostitution. That means we illegalize the types of abuse that allow one person to force another into becoming a prostitute -- i.e., violence, assault, threat of violence, etc. More than a hundred years ago, women and children were put in sweatshops and treated cruelly to make garmets. Did that mean that the government should ban the making of garmets (clothes)? No, of course not, what a stupid idea. That meant the government should ban sweat shops.
The reason police can't control abusive spouses is because women refuse to step forward. Yes, when you allow yourself to be victomized and even protect your victimizer (as many battered wives do) its hard for the police to prosecute that person and protect you.
And if police can't control abusive spouses, how is banning prostitution going to help them? Its not. Its only going to hurt those who were forced into it, according to you, because now they'll be abused by their husbands and ran through by our legal system. Stop trying to say you're banning prostitution for the sake of the prostitutes. Putting someone in jail for an activity which doesn't hurt anyone is not helping them.
If you want to help prostitutes who are abused, raped, or forced into the profession, then you should be working to stop such instances of abuse, not trying to ban prostitution. An abused wife might be forced into stripping, waiting tables, or any other "undesireable" profession (in her view) by her spouse; that doesn't mean we should ban those professions. That means we should illegalize such spousal abuses and enforce these laws as best we can.
The arguments against legalized (and regulated -- obviously protection should be required, as should std-testing) prostitution just don't hold up. You're argument that we illegalize it to protect the women is flawed; we can protect the women by other means, and putting someone in jail for something which harms no one is not "protecting them". The feminist argument that it degrades women is hogwash: some women find it offensive, other's don't. In no case, does the actions and decisions of one woman reflect upon another. Nor is it logical to say that just because some women choose to be prostitutes, that degrades all women in the eyes of men. If you're a feminist and you have a problem with prostitution, then choose another profession; but don't violate other women's rights. The Christian arguments are so unworthy they're not even worth mentioning any further.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen