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Orkut Linked To Drug Ring Bust
Dynamoo writes "Google's Orkut service has been allegedly used to sell drugs by a Brazilian outfit, according to a BBC news report. According to the report, the dealers offered pot and ecstasy for sale via the system to Brazil's large Orkut user community. Google is reported to be investigating. One interesting issue that springs to mind is: how can you monitor and moderate such a large, multilingual community such as Orkut? And what are the limits of criminal liability in a case like this?"
This has been refuted in recent times. In the 80s during the Reagan administration quite a few flawed and slanted studies were done on ecstasy that showed that it was dangerous. The reality of it is that long-term use of MDMA does not put "holes" in your brain or anything like it.
People who trust everything the government says are fools, particularly when there's an agenda involved, like the "Just say no to drugs" campaign.
What is humor if not pain tempered by time?
I'm brazilian and I canceled my Orkurt's account because criminals are using Orkut information to extort people.
It is a shame.
A bit OT, but there is an incredible deficiency of compassion in this country (America) if we don't even care enough to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes.
My mother suffers from a soft-tissue disease, with the net result being constant pain throughout her body. Marijuana is the only pain-killer that works for her without side-effects worse than the initial pain.
You know what the chances of her getting medical marijuana are now that the supreme court has passed its ruling? Consider that her doctor acknowledged that she should have a prescription, but refused out of fear of prosecution, *before* the ruling.
So I buy it for her (now you see why I'm posting AC). Whoever said it's illegal and therefore oughta be stopped can go to hell. Sometimes the law is incredibly irrational and harmful, and every citizen who caves to this crap out of ignorance, indifference or blind obeisance is part of the problem.
Actually, MDMA may not be all that bad. It is linked to brain damage in rats, but the same study also proved that you could prevent 100% of the damage by administering an SSRI (Prozac, Zoloft, St. John's Wort, etc.)
There are also substantial Iranian, Estonian, Pakistani communities... If you don't speak their languages, how is that their problem? Most of them have made the effort to learn yours. Here are Orkut's actual demographic statistics. It would be interesting to see statistics based on proportion-of-population. I think Estonia would be quite high on the list. Where else could you meet these guys if you don't travel?
you had me at #!