Although I agree in practice with your answer on falling trees, I prefer to take the Schoedinger approach in principle: "If a tree falls in the woods and noone is there to observe it, does it fall?"
"Dual-use" as in "available under either an open source license or another one"? Then you may want to clarify that the restrictions on use and redistribution apply only to copies obtained under the non-FOSS license. If you say "this software is GPLed, but only for trial, non-commercial use and you can't redistribute it" (which is what your comment reads like it's claiming), then the software is neither Free Software (in the FSF sense) nor open source.
Yes, I'm fairly sure that at least some dictionaries take basic patterns into account, based on first-hand experience rebuilding a client's compromised mail server after someone brute-forced their root password, "qweasdzxc".
Well, let's say I'm driving along at the speed limit, staying in my lane, not doing anything obviously reckless, but closing my eyes intermittently...
That's actually a great example - to support my argument. Unless we're going to pass laws against every conceivable behaviour which might cause someone to drive dangerously, then there's no way other than observing how someone is driving to catch them doing that experiment. I also highly doubt that someone conducting this experiment would be able to do so without it visibly affecting their driving; I suspect the most likely case would be drifting within your lane while your eyes are closed, then reflexively snapping back to the center of the lane when you open them rather than making a smooth return.
What if it doesn't make any discernable difference in your driving until you need to notice and procees the fact that that's a bike lane crossing the right turn lane you are about to pull into, so you need to look over and see if there is a cyclist there that you are merging into at high speed? This is not hypothetical, it happens to me about once a week.
I don't doubt that it happens to you all too regularly, but I doubt that crossing your bike lane is going to be the only time that they do something dangerous. I also suspect that, while the overwhelming majority of people who almost hit you may be on the phone, the overwhelming majority of those who are on the phone don't almost hit you, but I don't have even anecdotal evidence to back that suspicion up.
Which is why we should not rely on drivers own opinions on whether they are safe, but on valid experimental studies.
Don't get me wrong - my views have nothing to do with my assessment of my own driving ability, on or off the phone. (For the record, I rarely talk on my cellphone even when I'm not driving and I avoid using it if at all possible while driving because my hand blocks a large chunk out of my peripheral vision when I'm holding the phone to my ear.) My reasoning is based on the belief that:
1) Laws should be passed against tangible dangers, not against things which could potentially cause a danger to arise (if there is a near-certainty of imminent danger or if someone is deliberately attempting to create a dangerous situation, prohibitions are reasonable, of course, but I doubt that driving while on the phone falls into the first of those categories and it's definitely not in the second)
2) Laws targeting potential hazards that may be caused by specific behaviours are likely to cause more harm than good by leading to more lenient handling of genuine hazards which do not arise from the targeted behaviour (e.g., the earlier replies on this article regarding drivers getting off with only a slap on the wrist, if that, for accidents where they were at fault, because they weren't drunk)
How universal does he believe this tendency to be? I know that I, personally, do not (consciously) imagine the location of people I'm remotely conversing with, nor do I "transport [myself] there psychologically", nor feel any need to "rationaliz[e] the conversation".
Also, I have never had a cell conversation in which the question of "where are you?" came up early unless the purpose of the call was solely to determine one party's location. (e.g., "Where are you? You were supposed to be here an hour ago!") The vast majority of the time, location doesn't come up at all.
I agree with him and it has nothing to do with thinking I'm not affected by the problem. (On the contrary, unless the approximations I was taught in high school for estimating BAC are wildly off in the wrong direction (i.e., causing me to estimate that my BAC is half or less of its actual level), I'm unwilling to drive at anything near the legal limit, much less above it, because I can sense that I'm affected by levels in the 0.02-0.03 range (or lower) and I don't drive if I can perceive any effects of alcohol.)
My reasoning is that driving violations should be based on - get this - how well or poorly you're driving. If drinking/cellphone/whatever has no observable effect on the quality of a specific person's driving, then I see no reason for that person to be legally censured for it. On the other hand, if they're driving in a dangerous manner, then the police should remove them from the road, even if they're perfectly sober/not on the phone/whatever. Note that this doesn't require anyone to be killed before it becomes a crime, it only requires that you drive recklessly (which, as a bonus, is already illegal, if rarely enforced).
If you really feel a need to penalize driving while drunk/on the phone/whatever, I believe that a much more just way to do so would be to make it an aggravating factor for any crimes committed while in that state. Get drunk and break no laws? No big deal. Get drunk and do something illegal? Increased penalties. Simple, no?
Why does it have to be absolutes? My version of what you call the "libertarian" principle is that we get rid of all the bans on "driving while X" and start enforcing reckless driving laws.
If you see someone going 90mph down the sidewalk with his eyes closed, I'm sure there are at least 3 or 4 things you can charge him with, even if there isn't a "no driving with your eyes closed" law. Similarly, if you see someone weaving in his lane, braking suddenly for no reason, etc., then bust him for reckless driving - you don't need a special "no driving while talking on the phone" law. And, that way, you nail the bad drivers regardless of the reason for their poor driving, whether it's being on the phone, being drunk, being too tired, not having eaten for three days, or just plain incompetence. (IMO, the ones who drive poorly simply because they're bad drivers are the most important to get off the roads anyhow. You'll probably be off your phone in 10 minutes or sober/rested/well-fed tomorrow and then you'll go back to being a decent driver, but the guy who's a hazard out of incompetence is likely to remain a hazard indefinitely.) Conversely, if there are a group of people who can drive safely while on the phone, they're allowed to do so, as long their driving does not exhibit any signs of presenting a hazard to others on (or near) the road.
Nail people for how they're driving, not for what's in their hands.
I probably wouldn't leave the US solely to avoid laws against writing OSS (unless they were exceptionally draconian), but... When I saw this article, one of the first thoughts through my head was "damn, I'm glad I'm already working on getting a residence permit so I can move to Sweden." (Followed shortly by, "If I'm living in Sweden, but doing freelance work for US clients, how vulnerable will I be to US software patent suits?")
Re:Wait... why does this make them evil?
on
Microsoft Sued Over WGA
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· Score: 2, Insightful
So you're saying that it's appropriate for software companies to introduce methods which inconvenience legitimate users (WGA's false positives, CD checks...) for the sake of briefly slowing down the ability of pirates to copy and use it? That forever inconveniencing people who purchase your product is an acceptable price to pay to slow down pirates for a month? Sorry, but I disagree.
When I buy a piece of software, I want to be able to use it without being hassled to repeatedly prove that I'm not a criminal or worrying that it may someday decide for opaque reasons that it's not really a legitimate copy after all and shut itself down. Whether it's from Microsoft or not has nothing to do with it.
(And, yes, I do buy my (non-FOSS) software, thankyouverymuch. However, I have also adopted a policy of not buying any game unless I can find a no-CD (or other applicable) crack for it because I refuse to put up with CD checks. If I can't just click the icon and start your software, I'm not buying it - enjoy your lost sales. This also significantly reduces my game buying, since I'll see something on the shelf, think it looks cool, but then never get around to looking for cracks instead of just impulse-buying it off the shelf. Once again, enjoy your lost sales.)
But then wouldn't you run into problems with distributors who fell for MS's "anyone buying a computer with no OS is just going to install a pirated copy of Windows on it" FUD campaign?
Seems a Catholic viewpoint to me... As I recall, the Eastern Orthodox church maintains that they are the original Christian church and the Roman Catholics split off from them.
Regarding Matt. 16:18, ISTR that, in the original language, two different words for "rock" are used: "thou art Peter (petros), and upon this rock (petra) I will build my Church." The Protestant reading of that verse is that the rock on which the Church would be built was the truth expressed by Peter in the previous verse, which is buried too deeply in my memory for me to retrieve it at this time.
(IANAChristian, neither Catholic nor Protestant nor otherwise, but I was a bit of a Bible-thumper in my youth, even if I have just been an amused bystander for the last decade or two.)
"Inside-out objects" can give you hard data hiding. Basically, instead of storing the object properties as keys of a blessed hash, you have a file-scoped (my) array for each property. Nothing outside of that file can access the data and the object becomes a blessed integer reference (used as an index into the property arrays) instead of the blessed hash reference that's normally taught. (This can also be implemented with hashes for each property and the blessed reference itself used as the hash key, but I tend to prefer the array version, since the lookups are a good deal faster.)
...you fear loosing... if you loose... I could die and loose my things... not only did you loose the weapons... if they loose they will be punished and loose whatever... not loosing your items... punishment for loosing... There must be some fear of loosing... punishment for loosing is too great... loosing over 15 hours worth...
Where is your fear of not knowing how to spell "lose"?
(Just to be on-topic for a moment, I completely disagree with you. Some gamers enjoy fear of "loosing" or being punished for doing so, but not all. I suspect not even close to all; neither I nor any of my friends are that competitive in our gaming.)
Basically, the problem isn't bundling. The problem is that Microsoft is using bundling as a way to turn its monopoly on operating systems into a monopoly on operating systems and browsers/media players/etc.
Apple, Red Hat, etc. don't have a monoply in the first place, so they are, by definition, incapable of using bundling as a means to improperly expand the scope of a monopoly.
The next hallmark was X-Com, Mass destruction of the battlefield which to this day still hasnt been duplicated.
Have you by chance looked at Silent Storm? Granted, it's a World War 2 (with a little out-of-place sci-fi tech thrown in towards the end) setting rather than X-Com's more modern/sci-fi, but the tactical combat system and highly-destructible environments are very similar. Definitely worth checking out.
My main gripe about X-Com (and the reason why I quit playing it) was equipping my team at the start of each fight. If I've manually stripped the gear off everyone in the last 20 battles and given it to different people, then it would really be nice if they came up with the equipment I gave them each time instead of always resetting to some braindead default.
If you're talking about participating in a single auction at a time, then I agree with your assessment of bidders who don't bid their limit from the start. It's not so cut-and-dried when multiple concurrent auctions are in progress. If there are currently five running auctions that interest me and I have $100 to spend, then bidding, say, $10 on each and holding the other $50 in reserve so I can increase my bids where needed seems a much more rational strategy than laying out the full $100 in a single wave of initial bids and hoping for the best.
Do we next arrest people for not having enough sleep?
Excellent point. It's one of the major reasons why I think we should just scrap all of the laws banning "driving while X" and start enforcing the laws against reckless driving. A revolutionary idea, I know - removing people from the road because they're driving poorly instead of because of what's in their hand or how much sleep/food/booze they've had - but it seems to me like it just might work...
And how do you drive with a cell in your hand? Turn signals are NOT optional despite popular opinion. When you are actually driving, do you take you "free hand" off the wheel to use it?
Slide hand to left side of wheel. Extend finger(s). Use extended finger(s) to push turn signal lever up or down. Easy.
(Note that I very, very rarely talk on my cellphone whether driving or not. I just drive one-handed the vast majority of the time.)
I can't speak for anyone else, but it's a combination of two factors for me:
1) One of my strongest core beliefs, perhaps even the strongest, is that people should have the freedom to do anything they wish, so long as it doesn't cause harm to anyone else without their consent. (I also believe there are limits on how much harm is reasonable even with consent, but I can't identify where those limits are beyond the "I know it when I see it" level.) The body of laws which has been built up in the US to protect and enforce the "traditional" sexual norms runs counter to that belief. I generally choose to live within those "traditional" norms, as I assume you do. (My two major exceptions to them are that I believe nudity to be harmless and that I am comfortable having sex within a mutually monogamous relationship without requiring marriage as a prerequisite.) But others choose differently and I don't see how we have any right to impose those norms on anyone else.
2) As I've mentioned in my two earlier posts in this subthread, I believe that the dominant cultural attitudes towards sexuality are not merely unjustified, but actually harmful. The tension between biological drives, societal censure of anything overtly sexual, and the ubiquity of sexually-themed material (ads, fashion, etc.) that just barely falls within cultural tolerances seems to set up unnecessary conflicts for many people. The drive for morally-correct (aka "abstinence-only") sexual education drives up teen pregnancy and STD rates by depriving the students of the actual information that they need to know about sex, including pregnancy/STD protection. (I've also read reports of abstinence-only programs contributing to STD rates by giving the impression that, as long as you don't "go all the way", you can't get STDs, which then leads to other creative, but unsafe, acts becoming more common.) And, worst of all, the damage caused to children who are exposed to nudity and then feel (or are even explicitly told) that they have to pretend it never happened because it's "bad" and "dirty", or even the children who aren't exposed to it, but still receive that same training and grow up ashamed of their bodies.
With all that said, I have absolutely no problems with teaching the "traditional" sexual norms as a good idea and promoting them for social or moral/religious reasons. But many who embrace them have gone on to attempt to enforce them, both through laws and by developing a repressive atmosphere which tries to make sex and anything related to it just go away. These attempts are what I am against.
Janet Jackson was just the first thing that came to mind. Any incident or law relating to "indecent exposure" would work equally well. Since you brought children into it ("flashing gradeschool playgrounds"), I'll also bring up the complete lack of evidence that growing up in a naturist/nudist setting causes any harm to children whatsoever[1]. Unfortunately, it's an almost completely unstudied area, due to the extreme cultural bias in the US against allowing children to be exposed to anything remotely sexual. The one actual study I've seen made repeated mention of the difficulty of conducting such research, both because it was hard to get data to work from and because of people assuming they must be perverts if they were even attempting to study such a thing. Their results, however, were quite clear that children who grew up in an environment where nudity was considered "normal" ended up with much better awareness and higher acceptance of their bodies.
On the cultural comparisons, yes, there are definitely other factors, but I wasn't comparing just the US vs. Sweden. The paper I mentioned was a comparison of five developed nations; the US and Sweden were just the extremes on the four factors that I mentioned. Do a google search for "international teen pregnancy rates" and the first page of hits will confirm, repeatedly, that the US has the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the developed world. While repressive attitudes towards sex are unlikely to be the sole reason for that difference, it's clear that there's something about US culture which leads to our high teen pregnancy and STD rates and it seems to me that those attitudes should be, at the very least, a prime suspect.
[1] Before you start bringing up cases of exposure to sex/nudity harming children in mainstream society as a counterexample, let me say that I'm aware of them and I agree that sort of thing often is harmful in mainstream society. I believe this discrepancy to be the direct result of the different attitudes in each setting. In a setting where the adults consider nudity/sex to be a normal, natural, healthy thing, children absorb those attitudes and don't make a big deal about it. In a setting where nudity/sex is treated as shameful, dirty, and something to be covered up as quickly as possible, then children learn that, too, and feel like they've done something wrong if they see too much exposed flesh. I believe it is this feeling of "doing something wrong", caused by mainstream society's repressive stance towards sexuality, which is harmful to children, not exposure to nudity/sex itself.
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Although I agree in practice with your answer on falling trees, I prefer to take the Schoedinger approach in principle: "If a tree falls in the woods and noone is there to observe it, does it fall?"
"Dual-use" as in "available under either an open source license or another one"? Then you may want to clarify that the restrictions on use and redistribution apply only to copies obtained under the non-FOSS license. If you say "this software is GPLed, but only for trial, non-commercial use and you can't redistribute it" (which is what your comment reads like it's claiming), then the software is neither Free Software (in the FSF sense) nor open source.
Yes, I'm fairly sure that at least some dictionaries take basic patterns into account, based on first-hand experience rebuilding a client's compromised mail server after someone brute-forced their root password, "qweasdzxc".
Well, let's say I'm driving along at the speed limit, staying in my lane, not doing anything obviously reckless, but closing my eyes intermittently...
That's actually a great example - to support my argument. Unless we're going to pass laws against every conceivable behaviour which might cause someone to drive dangerously, then there's no way other than observing how someone is driving to catch them doing that experiment. I also highly doubt that someone conducting this experiment would be able to do so without it visibly affecting their driving; I suspect the most likely case would be drifting within your lane while your eyes are closed, then reflexively snapping back to the center of the lane when you open them rather than making a smooth return.
What if it doesn't make any discernable difference in your driving until you need to notice and procees the fact that that's a bike lane crossing the right turn lane you are about to pull into, so you need to look over and see if there is a cyclist there that you are merging into at high speed? This is not hypothetical, it happens to me about once a week.
I don't doubt that it happens to you all too regularly, but I doubt that crossing your bike lane is going to be the only time that they do something dangerous. I also suspect that, while the overwhelming majority of people who almost hit you may be on the phone, the overwhelming majority of those who are on the phone don't almost hit you, but I don't have even anecdotal evidence to back that suspicion up.
Which is why we should not rely on drivers own opinions on whether they are safe, but on valid experimental studies.
Don't get me wrong - my views have nothing to do with my assessment of my own driving ability, on or off the phone. (For the record, I rarely talk on my cellphone even when I'm not driving and I avoid using it if at all possible while driving because my hand blocks a large chunk out of my peripheral vision when I'm holding the phone to my ear.) My reasoning is based on the belief that:
1) Laws should be passed against tangible dangers, not against things which could potentially cause a danger to arise (if there is a near-certainty of imminent danger or if someone is deliberately attempting to create a dangerous situation, prohibitions are reasonable, of course, but I doubt that driving while on the phone falls into the first of those categories and it's definitely not in the second)
2) Laws targeting potential hazards that may be caused by specific behaviours are likely to cause more harm than good by leading to more lenient handling of genuine hazards which do not arise from the targeted behaviour (e.g., the earlier replies on this article regarding drivers getting off with only a slap on the wrist, if that, for accidents where they were at fault, because they weren't drunk)
Damn straight!
How universal does he believe this tendency to be? I know that I, personally, do not (consciously) imagine the location of people I'm remotely conversing with, nor do I "transport [myself] there psychologically", nor feel any need to "rationaliz[e] the conversation".
Also, I have never had a cell conversation in which the question of "where are you?" came up early unless the purpose of the call was solely to determine one party's location. (e.g., "Where are you? You were supposed to be here an hour ago!") The vast majority of the time, location doesn't come up at all.
So, yeah... Color me skeptical.
I agree with him and it has nothing to do with thinking I'm not affected by the problem. (On the contrary, unless the approximations I was taught in high school for estimating BAC are wildly off in the wrong direction (i.e., causing me to estimate that my BAC is half or less of its actual level), I'm unwilling to drive at anything near the legal limit, much less above it, because I can sense that I'm affected by levels in the 0.02-0.03 range (or lower) and I don't drive if I can perceive any effects of alcohol.)
My reasoning is that driving violations should be based on - get this - how well or poorly you're driving. If drinking/cellphone/whatever has no observable effect on the quality of a specific person's driving, then I see no reason for that person to be legally censured for it. On the other hand, if they're driving in a dangerous manner, then the police should remove them from the road, even if they're perfectly sober/not on the phone/whatever. Note that this doesn't require anyone to be killed before it becomes a crime, it only requires that you drive recklessly (which, as a bonus, is already illegal, if rarely enforced).
If you really feel a need to penalize driving while drunk/on the phone/whatever, I believe that a much more just way to do so would be to make it an aggravating factor for any crimes committed while in that state. Get drunk and break no laws? No big deal. Get drunk and do something illegal? Increased penalties. Simple, no?
Why does it have to be absolutes? My version of what you call the "libertarian" principle is that we get rid of all the bans on "driving while X" and start enforcing reckless driving laws.
If you see someone going 90mph down the sidewalk with his eyes closed, I'm sure there are at least 3 or 4 things you can charge him with, even if there isn't a "no driving with your eyes closed" law. Similarly, if you see someone weaving in his lane, braking suddenly for no reason, etc., then bust him for reckless driving - you don't need a special "no driving while talking on the phone" law. And, that way, you nail the bad drivers regardless of the reason for their poor driving, whether it's being on the phone, being drunk, being too tired, not having eaten for three days, or just plain incompetence. (IMO, the ones who drive poorly simply because they're bad drivers are the most important to get off the roads anyhow. You'll probably be off your phone in 10 minutes or sober/rested/well-fed tomorrow and then you'll go back to being a decent driver, but the guy who's a hazard out of incompetence is likely to remain a hazard indefinitely.) Conversely, if there are a group of people who can drive safely while on the phone, they're allowed to do so, as long their driving does not exhibit any signs of presenting a hazard to others on (or near) the road.
Nail people for how they're driving, not for what's in their hands.
I probably wouldn't leave the US solely to avoid laws against writing OSS (unless they were exceptionally draconian), but... When I saw this article, one of the first thoughts through my head was "damn, I'm glad I'm already working on getting a residence permit so I can move to Sweden." (Followed shortly by, "If I'm living in Sweden, but doing freelance work for US clients, how vulnerable will I be to US software patent suits?")
So you're saying that it's appropriate for software companies to introduce methods which inconvenience legitimate users (WGA's false positives, CD checks...) for the sake of briefly slowing down the ability of pirates to copy and use it? That forever inconveniencing people who purchase your product is an acceptable price to pay to slow down pirates for a month? Sorry, but I disagree.
When I buy a piece of software, I want to be able to use it without being hassled to repeatedly prove that I'm not a criminal or worrying that it may someday decide for opaque reasons that it's not really a legitimate copy after all and shut itself down. Whether it's from Microsoft or not has nothing to do with it.
(And, yes, I do buy my (non-FOSS) software, thankyouverymuch. However, I have also adopted a policy of not buying any game unless I can find a no-CD (or other applicable) crack for it because I refuse to put up with CD checks. If I can't just click the icon and start your software, I'm not buying it - enjoy your lost sales. This also significantly reduces my game buying, since I'll see something on the shelf, think it looks cool, but then never get around to looking for cracks instead of just impulse-buying it off the shelf. Once again, enjoy your lost sales.)
But then wouldn't you run into problems with distributors who fell for MS's "anyone buying a computer with no OS is just going to install a pirated copy of Windows on it" FUD campaign?
Because they've read too many tech documents? ("It's three letters, therefore it must be a TLA...")
...but only if you pronounce it "OS ten" instead of "OS ecks".
Seems a Catholic viewpoint to me... As I recall, the Eastern Orthodox church maintains that they are the original Christian church and the Roman Catholics split off from them.
Regarding Matt. 16:18, ISTR that, in the original language, two different words for "rock" are used: "thou art Peter (petros), and upon this rock (petra) I will build my Church." The Protestant reading of that verse is that the rock on which the Church would be built was the truth expressed by Peter in the previous verse, which is buried too deeply in my memory for me to retrieve it at this time.
(IANAChristian, neither Catholic nor Protestant nor otherwise, but I was a bit of a Bible-thumper in my youth, even if I have just been an amused bystander for the last decade or two.)
"Inside-out objects" can give you hard data hiding. Basically, instead of storing the object properties as keys of a blessed hash, you have a file-scoped (my) array for each property. Nothing outside of that file can access the data and the object becomes a blessed integer reference (used as an index into the property arrays) instead of the blessed hash reference that's normally taught. (This can also be implemented with hashes for each property and the blessed reference itself used as the hash key, but I tend to prefer the array version, since the lookups are a good deal faster.)
...you fear loosing... if you loose... I could die and loose my things... not only did you loose the weapons... if they loose they will be punished and loose whatever... not loosing your items... punishment for loosing... There must be some fear of loosing... punishment for loosing is too great... loosing over 15 hours worth...
Where is your fear of not knowing how to spell "lose"?
(Just to be on-topic for a moment, I completely disagree with you. Some gamers enjoy fear of "loosing" or being punished for doing so, but not all. I suspect not even close to all; neither I nor any of my friends are that competitive in our gaming.)
Equating source code with documentation should be a criminal offense in its own right.
Well said! You deserve to be modded up for that statement alone.
Basically, the problem isn't bundling. The problem is that Microsoft is using bundling as a way to turn its monopoly on operating systems into a monopoly on operating systems and browsers/media players/etc.
Apple, Red Hat, etc. don't have a monoply in the first place, so they are, by definition, incapable of using bundling as a means to improperly expand the scope of a monopoly.
Castle Wolfenstein was released in 1981. Are you sure you're not thinking of Wolfenstein 3D?
The next hallmark was X-Com, Mass destruction of the battlefield which to this day still hasnt been duplicated.
Have you by chance looked at Silent Storm? Granted, it's a World War 2 (with a little out-of-place sci-fi tech thrown in towards the end) setting rather than X-Com's more modern/sci-fi, but the tactical combat system and highly-destructible environments are very similar. Definitely worth checking out.
My main gripe about X-Com (and the reason why I quit playing it) was equipping my team at the start of each fight. If I've manually stripped the gear off everyone in the last 20 battles and given it to different people, then it would really be nice if they came up with the equipment I gave them each time instead of always resetting to some braindead default.
If you're talking about participating in a single auction at a time, then I agree with your assessment of bidders who don't bid their limit from the start. It's not so cut-and-dried when multiple concurrent auctions are in progress. If there are currently five running auctions that interest me and I have $100 to spend, then bidding, say, $10 on each and holding the other $50 in reserve so I can increase my bids where needed seems a much more rational strategy than laying out the full $100 in a single wave of initial bids and hoping for the best.
Do we next arrest people for not having enough sleep?
Excellent point. It's one of the major reasons why I think we should just scrap all of the laws banning "driving while X" and start enforcing the laws against reckless driving. A revolutionary idea, I know - removing people from the road because they're driving poorly instead of because of what's in their hand or how much sleep/food/booze they've had - but it seems to me like it just might work...
And how do you drive with a cell in your hand? Turn signals are NOT optional despite popular opinion. When you are actually driving, do you take you "free hand" off the wheel to use it?
Slide hand to left side of wheel. Extend finger(s). Use extended finger(s) to push turn signal lever up or down. Easy.
(Note that I very, very rarely talk on my cellphone whether driving or not. I just drive one-handed the vast majority of the time.)
I can't speak for anyone else, but it's a combination of two factors for me:
1) One of my strongest core beliefs, perhaps even the strongest, is that people should have the freedom to do anything they wish, so long as it doesn't cause harm to anyone else without their consent. (I also believe there are limits on how much harm is reasonable even with consent, but I can't identify where those limits are beyond the "I know it when I see it" level.) The body of laws which has been built up in the US to protect and enforce the "traditional" sexual norms runs counter to that belief. I generally choose to live within those "traditional" norms, as I assume you do. (My two major exceptions to them are that I believe nudity to be harmless and that I am comfortable having sex within a mutually monogamous relationship without requiring marriage as a prerequisite.) But others choose differently and I don't see how we have any right to impose those norms on anyone else.
2) As I've mentioned in my two earlier posts in this subthread, I believe that the dominant cultural attitudes towards sexuality are not merely unjustified, but actually harmful. The tension between biological drives, societal censure of anything overtly sexual, and the ubiquity of sexually-themed material (ads, fashion, etc.) that just barely falls within cultural tolerances seems to set up unnecessary conflicts for many people. The drive for morally-correct (aka "abstinence-only") sexual education drives up teen pregnancy and STD rates by depriving the students of the actual information that they need to know about sex, including pregnancy/STD protection. (I've also read reports of abstinence-only programs contributing to STD rates by giving the impression that, as long as you don't "go all the way", you can't get STDs, which then leads to other creative, but unsafe, acts becoming more common.) And, worst of all, the damage caused to children who are exposed to nudity and then feel (or are even explicitly told) that they have to pretend it never happened because it's "bad" and "dirty", or even the children who aren't exposed to it, but still receive that same training and grow up ashamed of their bodies.
With all that said, I have absolutely no problems with teaching the "traditional" sexual norms as a good idea and promoting them for social or moral/religious reasons. But many who embrace them have gone on to attempt to enforce them, both through laws and by developing a repressive atmosphere which tries to make sex and anything related to it just go away. These attempts are what I am against.
Janet Jackson was just the first thing that came to mind. Any incident or law relating to "indecent exposure" would work equally well. Since you brought children into it ("flashing gradeschool playgrounds"), I'll also bring up the complete lack of evidence that growing up in a naturist/nudist setting causes any harm to children whatsoever[1]. Unfortunately, it's an almost completely unstudied area, due to the extreme cultural bias in the US against allowing children to be exposed to anything remotely sexual. The one actual study I've seen made repeated mention of the difficulty of conducting such research, both because it was hard to get data to work from and because of people assuming they must be perverts if they were even attempting to study such a thing. Their results, however, were quite clear that children who grew up in an environment where nudity was considered "normal" ended up with much better awareness and higher acceptance of their bodies.
On the cultural comparisons, yes, there are definitely other factors, but I wasn't comparing just the US vs. Sweden. The paper I mentioned was a comparison of five developed nations; the US and Sweden were just the extremes on the four factors that I mentioned. Do a google search for "international teen pregnancy rates" and the first page of hits will confirm, repeatedly, that the US has the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the developed world. While repressive attitudes towards sex are unlikely to be the sole reason for that difference, it's clear that there's something about US culture which leads to our high teen pregnancy and STD rates and it seems to me that those attitudes should be, at the very least, a prime suspect.
[1] Before you start bringing up cases of exposure to sex/nudity harming children in mainstream society as a counterexample, let me say that I'm aware of them and I agree that sort of thing often is harmful in mainstream society. I believe this discrepancy to be the direct result of the different attitudes in each setting. In a setting where the adults consider nudity/sex to be a normal, natural, healthy thing, children absorb those attitudes and don't make a big deal about it. In a setting where nudity/sex is treated as shameful, dirty, and something to be covered up as quickly as possible, then children learn that, too, and feel like they've done something wrong if they see too much exposed flesh. I believe it is this feeling of "doing something wrong", caused by mainstream society's repressive stance towards sexuality, which is harmful to children, not exposure to nudity/sex itself.