It may have involved superconductors, but I think they were trying to do something with gravity at first. Hence measuring the change in weight of the object in the box, before they found the box's other properties.
It's only dishonest if both the test taker and the test giver use the same interpretation for the question. The fact that most questions (including that "lying" one) are highly subjective means it's not a useful indicator for an individual. Yes, you may be able to show that a population tends to have a certain response to that question, but that's not the same thing.
I am interested in your ability to live your life in a way where you are firmly committed to never telling a lie.
Why do you think it's so necessary to lie? I agree with the grandparent poster and don't lie, as it's much EASIER to go through life without lying. I have lied in the past, and it only caused problems. No, not even "little white lies" - those are the worst. I can never remember them, and they tend to just balloon a situation up to something even more annoying. I do find that some people, primarily from older generations, do see me as "excessively frank or honest", as I often don't give the "expected" little white lie in some situations, but really those situations are minor compared to the mess of having to remember lies. Are you certain it's not that you (and other people) are just used to making "little, trivial" lies, and don't notice the costs involved?
Maybe this explains why I have such a hard time communicating with my existing psychiatrists - they have this strange set of assumptions about people, and I don't fit some of them. The lying thing being one of them. It certainly seems to piss them off a LOT when I ask for them to interpret the vague parts of their funny tests...
If you think it's bad in the employment area, you should try dealing with psychiatrists.
Some years ago, I came to the unfortunate realization that I actually do need certain medications to stay sane, and therefor have to deal with psychs to get them. I recently was forced to change doctors for money/insurance reasons (long story), and the new one happens to think the MMPI test is the best thing ever. In further probing, she also fails several basic foundational ideas of both science and logic, but I digress.
It's one thing to not get a job because you "fail" one of these tests; it's a whole other world of pain when a doctor takes you off all the medications that work, and tries to put you on schizophrenia medications because "you are obviously just being paranoid about the tests". What did they consider "paranoia" and "aggressive refusal to cooperate"? Asking for clarification on a couple questions. Apparently you are just supposed to not think about the questions and answer them in a non-logical, emotionally based manner. The one test that I did finish? I, of course, never hear any results about it, nor am I given a chance to go over it, let alone an opportunity to refute their analysis.
Every piece of advice you give is very true. It's biased against thinking, they make old and questionable assumptions about culture, how personalities work, etc. The "guilty until proven innocence" here is deafening. After all this recent mess, I'm wondering if there's any possible way these tests can help somebody even in the best case - it's just too random.
And these doctors wonder why a lot of us don't consider the psychological studies "sciences"... *sigh*
no, these should not be legal. simply because the prohibition effects of fighting these drugs (supporting the mafia, giving the drugs a taboo cachet, etc) are still less costly than the direct life destruction these drugs create
How do you come to that insane conclusion? Seriously, I want to see numbers.
We are creating (out of thin air!) entire industries based in violence: pretty much the entire drug cartel, mafias, gangs, etc. If we regulated these drug sales, those institutions would lose their funding overnight.
Also, right now we have the worst of both worlds! We are paying the cost of the gangs/etc, and are still paying the cost of people using drugs! In fact, a good argument can be made that the tax revenue we would get from legal drug sales would fund things like rehab, education, healthcare, etc. Right now those costs just come out of our pocket. Wouldn't it be better for drug users to pay for it themselves through simple taxes?
Your entire economic analysis is based on some very incorrect assumptions.
Exactly. Which is why I usually advocate legalizing it all, taxing it with normal taxes like we do with all goods, and taking those profits and putting it to useful things like healthcare, education, etc.
Oh, and on a totally unrelated (to my argument) note: you can make meth safe. It's called Desoxyn. Not that I exactly recommend it or anything, but it's recognized that there are safe uses of it. Well, at least as safe as any of the other powerful pharmaceuticals we have.
I think you're wrong that banning things never work
I don't mean to imply that's globally true -- just that we have good evidence on the banning of drugs. The fact that it's still a problem after all these years (and billions of dollars, and thousands of lives ruined, etc) is solid data we should be using. It says what we have been doing has not worked, and we need to try something else.
Also, comparing victimless crimes to proper criminal/victim crimes like murder is pretty disingenuous.
close down the markets as much as possible
That's my point: you can't when DEMAND is still present. Economics tells us Supply will generally rise to meet Demand. We can only change the total market by reducing demand, and that has nothing to do with our current supply-side efforts.
If a drug is addictive enough that people will rob or murder to get it, it doesn't matter so much what kind of source they get it from
More to the point: if they will find a source no matter what, we should make sure that source does NOT involve violence. That means some form of legal distribution, as black markets seem to always lead to violence eventually. Why pay money to throw cops at the problem when all it does is start a war between cops and gangs?
That's a good point, and a strong reason to legalize it all. Street drug dealers don't ask for ID, but a well-regulated place like a liquor store does. It's far easier for a kid to get illegal drugs right now than it is for them to get liquor, and that really needs to change.
And you don't speak about the fact that banning drugs has not made them go away. All those problems you list are problems we have right now. How, exactly, has throwing people in jail, ruining their lives (even more), funded gangs (through drug-sale profits), and generally walking all over the constitution actually achieved your goal of reducing the harm drugs cause?
Legalizing would not change most of those things, except one important one: the drug cartels (a source of much violence) go out of business overnight.
"Hard" drugs like Cocaine should probably remain illegal
It's important to legalize it all, and the reason has nothing to do with how safe any given drug is.
Using things like cocaine "safely" may be possible, but it's certainly outside what I'd expect of most of the population. The idea when you ban something, though, is that it will have a desired effect. In this case: less people using the drug (and therefor a safer/etc society). The many decades of prohibition has shown us otherwise. Drug use still happens, and will likely always happen. Trying to ban something and hoping people will magically stop using it is not just logically wrong, there's now many years of empirical evidence that shows that it's the wrong approach.
The particulars of any given drug are not relevant - banning them has not reduced their use in any significant amount.
So the question comes down to this: "Who do you want meeting the supply, when the demand is fairly constant?" That's a simple econ question, and there are three major answers: Private Industry, Public (.gov) Programs, or Illegal (violent) Black Markets.
Right now, we, as a society, are choosing the black market supply. We are handing large profits to violent gangs, providing very profitable opportunities for corruption, etc. Is this really the answer we want to choose? As a free-market loving American, I usually advocate the Private Industry solution, but really, either public or private solutions are significantly better than handing that market to gangs.
As a pure economic side note: even with the worst drugs, it's much better to take the standard taxes involved with them and divert that to useful things like healthcare for people that want to get off drugs and such. We could trivially fund most of those programs with how much basic tax income we'd make off drugs, and that's just talking basic things like sales tax.
On a note specific to the cocaine/etc you mention: I'd rather the addict be able to buy inexpensive and clean drugs, in a way they could fund from a McJob, than have them turn to crime to try and fund their habit. The fact that you don't see large amounts of violent crime to fund tobacco habits is evidence of this./the only way to really stop drugs is to target demand, with tools like Good Education, not laws banning them
Only cost them $200k to inconvenience players to such a high degree....
Is that number correct?? If so... wow. I know DRM costs money, but... wow.
Not only that, but they have to have done an analysis that says: > 200_000 / 50.0 => 4000.0
They think this investment of $200k will bring them an additional 4000 customers, to justify the cost? And that's just to break even, and you have to subtract off the ones you lose from bad PR? This is insanity and wishful-thinking on a level I haven't seen in some time.
From there, it's but a small step to realizing that they can also walk away from Windows completely
No way. I'm as huge a unix and Free Software proponent as anyone here, but even I can see that statement is utterly idiotic. The motivation to stay with XP is the desire to not change. Change takes effort, which is generally not worth it if things are working fine at the moment. The "don't fix it if it's not broken" theory.
The simple fact is that most computers, both hardware and software, are generally "good enough" these days. This means that the most efficient thing for you to be using is often the one you are using at the moment. To suggest otherwise demands a substantial benefit, and Microsoft is (hopefully) figuring out that they are no longer offering such a benefit. Free alternatives may indeed offer substantial benefits, but it's generally in more obscure things like "not being tied to a single vendor" that are not a direct impact on most people's daily computer needs.
Now, it's still great that people seem to be finally jumping off the Microsoft upgrade-treadmill, but it's going to be a while yet before they decide other upgrades might be a viable option...
Ultrasonic Emitters? Didn't we find out that didn't work with the PowerGlove?
Not that I didn't love trying with that thing, well, it looked cool. But the spacial positioning from ultrasonics was way to inaccurate for most games.
So you're saying your job and company are dependent on a highly out-dated business model? Perhaps you should spend some time and money investing in something that will last into the future better...
If this law is hampering your campaign, why did you vote for it, McCain?!
I'd say you could potentially gain back some of your totally trampled credibility by suddenly proposing a repeal of the DMCA with your senate position, but I somehow doubt that such a miracle would occur...
Legalize and require that drug users to be bonded & insured, then let them go wild, because they'll be directly responsible for the costs of their actions. Can't afford to be bonded and insured, then don't take [drug].
Wow, that a stupid idea. If someone isn't following drug laws right now, why would they follow some "bonding and insuring" law? There's no incentive for anybody to move from the current (violent) black market.
The only way to remove the violence is to remove the financial incentive to the drug lords. The only way to do that is to make it easier for users to go to legitimate sources instead of the local gang.
There are several ways things could be accomplished, ranging from "everything at the corner 7/11" to "have some sort of 'drug-distribution clinic' where real doctors distribute everything". The latter has the advantage of at least having doctors involved, so those that do want help in stopping their habit can get it easily. It's dangerously close, though, to scaring people back to the black market, so something between those two extremes is probably better.
This entire problem seems to be based on two really idiotic 'theories':
1) That banning something with laws actually changes the rate of occurrence of something, in any significant society-changing scale.
2) That if someone cannot do something stupid with a particular thing, they will magically turn into an upstanding member of society.
These are such obvious bullshit that I put anyone who seriously believe in this idiocy into the "(mildly?) mentally handicapped" group. It's what psychs call "Magical Thinking" - that wishing something would happen makes it happen, and is a pretty significant delusion.
The example of suicide you bring up is a good one. If someone wants to kill themself and they can't get a gun, they'll use a rope. If they can't get a rope, they'll use pills. If they can't find pills, they will find a tall bridge. You cannot stop a determined person* simply by stopping one of the methods they might use. With drugs, it's the same. If they want to get messed up on drug "A", and they simply cannot get it, they'll use drug "B' instead. You actually see this behavior all the time: people that cannot use relatively safe drugs like marijuana end up moving to other, more dangerous things.
As a society, are we better off by spending money on a drug test that pushes a heavy user from marijuana to, say, cocaine? That one is a pretty obvious "no"...
* - Speaking of "determined persons", it's worth noting that the same reason banning razors to prevent suicide is a stupid idea makes "banning XYZ on an airplane to prevent terrorism" a really stupid idea. The big thing that 9/11 showed us is that terrorists can be innovative if they need to. Nobody had thought of box cutters in that manner before, and we aren't thinking of the weapon for the next terrorist attack for the same reason.
As to other things like the animal issues and Civil Forfeiture, don't think limit what I said to just copyright/drugs. There are a lot of other grabs for power going on as well, such as the ones you mention. They won't all get traction, but some will, and those that profit from the situation will keep trying.
Personally, I believe the "war on drugs" is encouraged and even partly funded by the drug lords, to keep prices artificially high.
"Follow the money!"
I have no doubt at all that those that are profiting the most from the war on drugs also have an interest in keeping the status quo.
I'm all for legalize/regulate/tax. It's relatively easy with hard goods like drugs.
No only is it easy, there are a lot of options available. If it was handed to the states, we could even have several different methods of legalization experimented with. Perhaps some states would try government ownership of the distribution process, like some already do with government-run liquor stores. Perhaps some could try a pure private-industry approach. All of these are far less expensive to society than the current situation.
How could we do that with content -- to legalize, regulate, and tax, so everyone gets their cut yet no one (short of "smugglers") can be hauled in for a "crime"??
That is a problem, as the entire premise of "content" is about controlling ideas. Before digital distribution, there was a significant overhead on the per-copy cost of distributing an idea. Digital distribution is has forced that cost to basically zero. This makes digital distribution inevitable. Note, I have not made a moral judgment on this distribution - just that it will happen. As an industry, the contend distributors and producers can adapt to this new situation or succumb to the basic forces of capitalism. This just means they have to get creative, and change their business to offer things that cannot be copied for zero cost. Creative packaging, or fancy (and expensive) pre-release concerts, to name a few examples.
The idea of "everyone gets their cut" is based on there being a gradient of cost between the producers and consumers. If that gradient has slope zero, your business is doomed from the start. All businesses need some form of arbitrage to function, and that doesn't exist with digital ideas.
As I have talked about before, why do you support violence in our streets by pushing for drugs to be illegal?
There are three options on how society can handle the drug market: private industry, public (government) programs, or illegal black markets. By saying you want to remove the options of the legitimate public or private industries that can be regulated. controlled, and taxed, you want to hand that entire profitable market to organized crime.
Note: I didn't say anything about the effects of any particular drug (which are largely exaggerated), nor did I say people should run out and start using such chemicals. I am simply commenting on pure Capitalism. Supply rises to meet demand, and the demand has said that being the supplier for drugs is going to be very profitable.
Help remove the violence in our streets by moving that market into legitimate business!...
And to stay on topic here about the copyright stuff, it's obvious that the powers that be want another method of social control now that the War On (some) Drugs is losing a bit of momentum. Controlling other forms of culture such as music/etc is the next obvious step.
$oldmsg = "It's not a War On Drugs, it's a War On Personal Freedom - keep that in mind at all times!" $oldmsg =~ s/Drugs/Music and Other Culture/
Thank you. I'm slowly refining the argument to be a bit clearer as time goes on. Maybe it's finally getting understandable now!
Welfare assistance now comes with a drug test.
The problem with the drug-test-for-welfare is that it assumes drug tests work. They have been shown over and over again to only test for marijuana for any significant period of time (as THC is the only non-water-soluble drug here). Most people assume that they work, because of the heavy propaganda, but they really cannot test for the use of any other drug, unless you were currently using the drug at the time. Most people don't use every day, and if you know there is a test coming up, it's trivial to abstain for a few days before hand.
Hell, with cocaine (and crack as that's the same thing) it takes some 6+ hours for it to make it past your liver/etc and into your urine. You could be high as a kite during the drug test and still test clean, as long as you stopped for a couple days before hand.
There's a serious "unintended side effect" of drug testing, though, that most people don't realize: it drives people to harder drugs. As marijuana is the only drug that tests for any length of time, drug tests will successfully discourage marijuana use. Unfortunately, that means some people will just move to different drugs, all of which are significantly "harder". I've seen it first-hand several times: "Nah man, I can't smoke up as may have a drug test soon. But hey, I can have all the speed I want! Lets do lines!"
I somehow think that effect is not what people intended when they said "drug test for welfare".
Whenever you see the word "drug test", it's a useful shorthand to replace that with "marijuana test", given this issue.
You want to fix this? I'll give you two options. Option One: Five years hard labor for possession of any amount, and TWENTY at hard labor for dealing of any amount. If you don't have the stomach for that, than you better go for Option Two: Legalize the whole damned mess, then tax the crap out of it.
Option 1 there is easily shown to not work: just look at various highly-repressive countries such as various middle-east states. Some carry the death penalty or other very harsh punishments for breaking drug laws. Yet it still happens. It's fighting against human nature, which is rarely going to win.
It's time to legalize it all so we can declare peace in the war in our streets.
1) You cannot force people to change. Fascist techniques like forced rehab are good at costing a lot of people a lot of money, but do not have good success rates at actually enacting change. The bald assumption that throwing someone into rehab will magically make them change their life is stark ignorance at best.
2) Forcing a huge taboo onto drug use most certainly has the effect of reducing the amount of people in any sort of rehab program. If you are worried about getting the book thrown at you and such, you are not likely to volunteer to get help even if you wanted to. It is of paramount importance to actively make people that actually do seek help feel comfortable in doing so - they are the ones that you have the best chance of changing.
3) Sudafed... you do realize that's mostly propaganda, right? Real drug chemists don't do nickel-and-dime stuff like boxes of sudafed. They go for much simpler bulk reagents, like any chemist.
4) You talk about "societal costs". But do you really think that people that want drugs have any difficulty in getting them now? Is the only think keeping you from going out and doing heroin the illegality of the chemical? Of course not. So the people that really want to are already getting all the drugs they want, just through unreliable and less safe means. So you are already paying any "societal costs". At worst, they would stat the same as they are now. At best, the reduction in taboo may allow some people to get help if the want it, and the safer supply will eliminate many of the supply-side problems associated with "drug use". This can only improve.
5) And this is the big one: Making drugs illegal hinges on a fatally false assumption - that making something illegal actually reduces it's occurrence. This was obviously not true with alcohol, and is obviously not true for any other drug out there. Given that basic economic forces will happen any time there is a demand for something, we, as society, have a very important choice to make: "Who do we want to produce the supply that will inevitably meet the ever-present demand". Here, we have three choices: Private Industry, Public (government) Production, or Organized Crime.
Personally, as a small-government loving citizen, I like the Private Industry option, but really... I'd gladly take either Public or Private production over handing all the profits over to organized crime like we are doing now! Are you seriously telling me that you want to hand the entire multi-billion-dollar industry of illegal drugs to the mafias of the world? So they can have the profit instead of legitimate organizations? Remember, you don't get to skip out on this question. By saying you want to keep drugs illegal, you are saying you want to hand profit to the mob.
Note: none of this says that we have to make drugs something you pick up at the corner 7-11. You can have legal business and still regulate the industries, much like we do now with tobacco and alcohol. There are many options we can explore there.
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It may have involved superconductors, but I think they were trying to do something with gravity at first. Hence measuring the change in weight of the object in the box, before they found the box's other properties.
It's only dishonest if both the test taker and the test giver use the same interpretation for the question. The fact that most questions (including that "lying" one) are highly subjective means it's not a useful indicator for an individual. Yes, you may be able to show that a population tends to have a certain response to that question, but that's not the same thing.
I am interested in your ability to live your life in a way where you are firmly committed to never telling a lie.
Why do you think it's so necessary to lie? I agree with the grandparent poster and don't lie, as it's much EASIER to go through life without lying. I have lied in the past, and it only caused problems. No, not even "little white lies" - those are the worst. I can never remember them, and they tend to just balloon a situation up to something even more annoying. I do find that some people, primarily from older generations, do see me as "excessively frank or honest", as I often don't give the "expected" little white lie in some situations, but really those situations are minor compared to the mess of having to remember lies. Are you certain it's not that you (and other people) are just used to making "little, trivial" lies, and don't notice the costs involved?
Maybe this explains why I have such a hard time communicating with my existing psychiatrists - they have this strange set of assumptions about people, and I don't fit some of them. The lying thing being one of them. It certainly seems to piss them off a LOT when I ask for them to interpret the vague parts of their funny tests...
If you think it's bad in the employment area, you should try dealing with psychiatrists.
Some years ago, I came to the unfortunate realization that I actually do need certain medications to stay sane, and therefor have to deal with psychs to get them. I recently was forced to change doctors for money/insurance reasons (long story), and the new one happens to think the MMPI test is the best thing ever. In further probing, she also fails several basic foundational ideas of both science and logic, but I digress.
It's one thing to not get a job because you "fail" one of these tests; it's a whole other world of pain when a doctor takes you off all the medications that work, and tries to put you on schizophrenia medications because "you are obviously just being paranoid about the tests". What did they consider "paranoia" and "aggressive refusal to cooperate"? Asking for clarification on a couple questions. Apparently you are just supposed to not think about the questions and answer them in a non-logical, emotionally based manner. The one test that I did finish? I, of course, never hear any results about it, nor am I given a chance to go over it, let alone an opportunity to refute their analysis.
Every piece of advice you give is very true. It's biased against thinking, they make old and questionable assumptions about culture, how personalities work, etc. The "guilty until proven innocence" here is deafening. After all this recent mess, I'm wondering if there's any possible way these tests can help somebody even in the best case - it's just too random.
And these doctors wonder why a lot of us don't consider the psychological studies "sciences"... *sigh*
no, these should not be legal. simply because the prohibition effects of fighting these drugs (supporting the mafia, giving the drugs a taboo cachet, etc) are still less costly than the direct life destruction these drugs create
How do you come to that insane conclusion? Seriously, I want to see numbers.
We are creating (out of thin air!) entire industries based in violence: pretty much the entire drug cartel, mafias, gangs, etc. If we regulated these drug sales, those institutions would lose their funding overnight.
Also, right now we have the worst of both worlds! We are paying the cost of the gangs/etc, and are still paying the cost of people using drugs! In fact, a good argument can be made that the tax revenue we would get from legal drug sales would fund things like rehab, education, healthcare, etc. Right now those costs just come out of our pocket. Wouldn't it be better for drug users to pay for it themselves through simple taxes?
Your entire economic analysis is based on some very incorrect assumptions.
Exactly. Which is why I usually advocate legalizing it all, taxing it with normal taxes like we do with all goods, and taking those profits and putting it to useful things like healthcare, education, etc.
Oh, and on a totally unrelated (to my argument) note: you can make meth safe. It's called Desoxyn. Not that I exactly recommend it or anything, but it's recognized that there are safe uses of it. Well, at least as safe as any of the other powerful pharmaceuticals we have.
I think you're wrong that banning things never work
I don't mean to imply that's globally true -- just that we have good evidence on the banning of drugs. The fact that it's still a problem after all these years (and billions of dollars, and thousands of lives ruined, etc) is solid data we should be using. It says what we have been doing has not worked, and we need to try something else.
Also, comparing victimless crimes to proper criminal/victim crimes like murder is pretty disingenuous.
close down the markets as much as possible
That's my point: you can't when DEMAND is still present. Economics tells us Supply will generally rise to meet Demand. We can only change the total market by reducing demand, and that has nothing to do with our current supply-side efforts.
If a drug is addictive enough that people will rob or murder to get it, it doesn't matter so much what kind of source they get it from
More to the point: if they will find a source no matter what, we should make sure that source does NOT involve violence. That means some form of legal distribution, as black markets seem to always lead to violence eventually. Why pay money to throw cops at the problem when all it does is start a war between cops and gangs?
anybody who sells ... to a minor.
That's a good point, and a strong reason to legalize it all. Street drug dealers don't ask for ID, but a well-regulated place like a liquor store does. It's far easier for a kid to get illegal drugs right now than it is for them to get liquor, and that really needs to change.
And you don't speak about the fact that banning drugs has not made them go away. All those problems you list are problems we have right now. How, exactly, has throwing people in jail, ruining their lives (even more), funded gangs (through drug-sale profits), and generally walking all over the constitution actually achieved your goal of reducing the harm drugs cause?
Legalizing would not change most of those things, except one important one: the drug cartels (a source of much violence) go out of business overnight.
"Hard" drugs like Cocaine should probably remain illegal
It's important to legalize it all, and the reason has nothing to do with how safe any given drug is.
Using things like cocaine "safely" may be possible, but it's certainly outside what I'd expect of most of the population. The idea when you ban something, though, is that it will have a desired effect. In this case: less people using the drug (and therefor a safer/etc society). The many decades of prohibition has shown us otherwise. Drug use still happens, and will likely always happen. Trying to ban something and hoping people will magically stop using it is not just logically wrong, there's now many years of empirical evidence that shows that it's the wrong approach.
The particulars of any given drug are not relevant - banning them has not reduced their use in any significant amount.
So the question comes down to this: "Who do you want meeting the supply, when the demand is fairly constant?" That's a simple econ question, and there are three major answers: Private Industry, Public (.gov) Programs, or Illegal (violent) Black Markets.
Right now, we, as a society, are choosing the black market supply. We are handing large profits to violent gangs, providing very profitable opportunities for corruption, etc. Is this really the answer we want to choose? As a free-market loving American, I usually advocate the Private Industry solution, but really, either public or private solutions are significantly better than handing that market to gangs.
As a pure economic side note: even with the worst drugs, it's much better to take the standard taxes involved with them and divert that to useful things like healthcare for people that want to get off drugs and such. We could trivially fund most of those programs with how much basic tax income we'd make off drugs, and that's just talking basic things like sales tax.
On a note specific to the cocaine/etc you mention: I'd rather the addict be able to buy inexpensive and clean drugs, in a way they could fund from a McJob, than have them turn to crime to try and fund their habit. The fact that you don't see large amounts of violent crime to fund tobacco habits is evidence of this. /the only way to really stop drugs is to target demand, with tools like Good Education, not laws banning them
I know that. 4k sales is a minimum figure.
Only cost them $200k to inconvenience players to such a high degree....
Is that number correct?? If so... wow. I know DRM costs money, but... wow.
Not only that, but they have to have done an analysis that says:
> 200_000 / 50.0
=> 4000.0
They think this investment of $200k will bring them an additional 4000 customers, to justify the cost? And that's just to break even, and you have to subtract off the ones you lose from bad PR? This is insanity and wishful-thinking on a level I haven't seen in some time.
Sure, there's some technical improvements, but most people don't care!
They just want to know if their web browser and Word/Powerpoint will work. And we passed the point where that was an issue a long time ago.
Remember, a vast majority of XP users are not playing HL2...
From there, it's but a small step to realizing that they can also walk away from Windows completely
No way. I'm as huge a unix and Free Software proponent as anyone here, but even I can see that statement is utterly idiotic. The motivation to stay with XP is the desire to not change. Change takes effort, which is generally not worth it if things are working fine at the moment. The "don't fix it if it's not broken" theory.
The simple fact is that most computers, both hardware and software, are generally "good enough" these days. This means that the most efficient thing for you to be using is often the one you are using at the moment. To suggest otherwise demands a substantial benefit, and Microsoft is (hopefully) figuring out that they are no longer offering such a benefit. Free alternatives may indeed offer substantial benefits, but it's generally in more obscure things like "not being tied to a single vendor" that are not a direct impact on most people's daily computer needs.
Now, it's still great that people seem to be finally jumping off the Microsoft upgrade-treadmill, but it's going to be a while yet before they decide other upgrades might be a viable option...
Ultrasonic Emitters? Didn't we find out that didn't work with the PowerGlove?
Not that I didn't love trying with that thing, well, it looked cool. But the spacial positioning from ultrasonics was way to inaccurate for most games.
I said he could gain some credibility back, not swing votes...
Changing votes will change a LOT more.
I'm just talking about a way he could maintain at least a SMALL bit of respect...
So you're saying your job and company are dependent on a highly out-dated business model? Perhaps you should spend some time and money investing in something that will last into the future better...
If this law is hampering your campaign, why did you vote for it, McCain?!
I'd say you could potentially gain back some of your totally trampled credibility by suddenly proposing a repeal of the DMCA with your senate position, but I somehow doubt that such a miracle would occur...
Ahh, good point...
Wow, that a stupid idea. If someone isn't following drug laws right now, why would they follow some "bonding and insuring" law? There's no incentive for anybody to move from the current (violent) black market.
The only way to remove the violence is to remove the financial incentive to the drug lords. The only way to do that is to make it easier for users to go to legitimate sources instead of the local gang.
There are several ways things could be accomplished, ranging from "everything at the corner 7/11" to "have some sort of 'drug-distribution clinic' where real doctors distribute everything". The latter has the advantage of at least having doctors involved, so those that do want help in stopping their habit can get it easily. It's dangerously close, though, to scaring people back to the black market, so something between those two extremes is probably better.
This entire problem seems to be based on two really idiotic 'theories':
1) That banning something with laws actually changes the rate of occurrence of something, in any significant society-changing scale.
2) That if someone cannot do something stupid with a particular thing, they will magically turn into an upstanding member of society.
These are such obvious bullshit that I put anyone who seriously believe in this idiocy into the "(mildly?) mentally handicapped" group. It's what psychs call "Magical Thinking" - that wishing something would happen makes it happen, and is a pretty significant delusion.
The example of suicide you bring up is a good one. If someone wants to kill themself and they can't get a gun, they'll use a rope. If they can't get a rope, they'll use pills. If they can't find pills, they will find a tall bridge. You cannot stop a determined person* simply by stopping one of the methods they might use. With drugs, it's the same. If they want to get messed up on drug "A", and they simply cannot get it, they'll use drug "B' instead. You actually see this behavior all the time: people that cannot use relatively safe drugs like marijuana end up moving to other, more dangerous things.
As a society, are we better off by spending money on a drug test that pushes a heavy user from marijuana to, say, cocaine? That one is a pretty obvious "no"...
* - Speaking of "determined persons", it's worth noting that the same reason banning razors to prevent suicide is a stupid idea makes "banning XYZ on an airplane to prevent terrorism" a really stupid idea. The big thing that 9/11 showed us is that terrorists can be innovative if they need to. Nobody had thought of box cutters in that manner before, and we aren't thinking of the weapon for the next terrorist attack for the same reason.
As to other things like the animal issues and Civil Forfeiture, don't think limit what I said to just copyright/drugs. There are a lot of other grabs for power going on as well, such as the ones you mention. They won't all get traction, but some will, and those that profit from the situation will keep trying.
"Follow the money!"
I have no doubt at all that those that are profiting the most from the war on drugs also have an interest in keeping the status quo.
No only is it easy, there are a lot of options available. If it was handed to the states, we could even have several different methods of legalization experimented with. Perhaps some states would try government ownership of the distribution process, like some already do with government-run liquor stores. Perhaps some could try a pure private-industry approach. All of these are far less expensive to society than the current situation.
That is a problem, as the entire premise of "content" is about controlling ideas. Before digital distribution, there was a significant overhead on the per-copy cost of distributing an idea. Digital distribution is has forced that cost to basically zero. This makes digital distribution inevitable. Note, I have not made a moral judgment on this distribution - just that it will happen. As an industry, the contend distributors and producers can adapt to this new situation or succumb to the basic forces of capitalism. This just means they have to get creative, and change their business to offer things that cannot be copied for zero cost. Creative packaging, or fancy (and expensive) pre-release concerts, to name a few examples.
The idea of "everyone gets their cut" is based on there being a gradient of cost between the producers and consumers. If that gradient has slope zero, your business is doomed from the start. All businesses need some form of arbitrage to function, and that doesn't exist with digital ideas.
As I have talked about before, why do you support violence in our streets by pushing for drugs to be illegal?
There are three options on how society can handle the drug market: private industry, public (government) programs, or illegal black markets. By saying you want to remove the options of the legitimate public or private industries that can be regulated. controlled, and taxed, you want to hand that entire profitable market to organized crime.
Note: I didn't say anything about the effects of any particular drug (which are largely exaggerated), nor did I say people should run out and start using such chemicals. I am simply commenting on pure Capitalism. Supply rises to meet demand, and the demand has said that being the supplier for drugs is going to be very profitable.
Help remove the violence in our streets by moving that market into legitimate business! ...
And to stay on topic here about the copyright stuff, it's obvious that the powers that be want another method of social control now that the War On (some) Drugs is losing a bit of momentum. Controlling other forms of culture such as music/etc is the next obvious step.
$oldmsg = "It's not a War On Drugs, it's a War On Personal Freedom - keep that in mind at all times!"
$oldmsg =~ s/Drugs/Music and Other Culture/
Thank you. I'm slowly refining the argument to be a bit clearer as time goes on. Maybe it's finally getting understandable now!
The problem with the drug-test-for-welfare is that it assumes drug tests work. They have been shown over and over again to only test for marijuana for any significant period of time (as THC is the only non-water-soluble drug here). Most people assume that they work, because of the heavy propaganda, but they really cannot test for the use of any other drug, unless you were currently using the drug at the time. Most people don't use every day, and if you know there is a test coming up, it's trivial to abstain for a few days before hand.
Hell, with cocaine (and crack as that's the same thing) it takes some 6+ hours for it to make it past your liver/etc and into your urine. You could be high as a kite during the drug test and still test clean, as long as you stopped for a couple days before hand.
There's a serious "unintended side effect" of drug testing, though, that most people don't realize: it drives people to harder drugs. As marijuana is the only drug that tests for any length of time, drug tests will successfully discourage marijuana use. Unfortunately, that means some people will just move to different drugs, all of which are significantly "harder". I've seen it first-hand several times: "Nah man, I can't smoke up as may have a drug test soon. But hey, I can have all the speed I want! Lets do lines!"
I somehow think that effect is not what people intended when they said "drug test for welfare".
Whenever you see the word "drug test", it's a useful shorthand to replace that with "marijuana test", given this issue.
You want to fix this? I'll give you two options. Option One: Five years hard labor for possession of any amount, and TWENTY at hard labor for dealing of any amount. If you don't have the stomach for that, than you better go for Option Two: Legalize the whole damned mess, then tax the crap out of it.
Option 1 there is easily shown to not work: just look at various highly-repressive countries such as various middle-east states. Some carry the death penalty or other very harsh punishments for breaking drug laws. Yet it still happens. It's fighting against human nature, which is rarely going to win.
It's time to legalize it all so we can declare peace in the war in our streets.
1) You cannot force people to change. Fascist techniques like forced rehab are good at costing a lot of people a lot of money, but do not have good success rates at actually enacting change. The bald assumption that throwing someone into rehab will magically make them change their life is stark ignorance at best.
2) Forcing a huge taboo onto drug use most certainly has the effect of reducing the amount of people in any sort of rehab program. If you are worried about getting the book thrown at you and such, you are not likely to volunteer to get help even if you wanted to. It is of paramount importance to actively make people that actually do seek help feel comfortable in doing so - they are the ones that you have the best chance of changing.
3) Sudafed... you do realize that's mostly propaganda, right? Real drug chemists don't do nickel-and-dime stuff like boxes of sudafed. They go for much simpler bulk reagents, like any chemist.
4) You talk about "societal costs". But do you really think that people that want drugs have any difficulty in getting them now? Is the only think keeping you from going out and doing heroin the illegality of the chemical? Of course not. So the people that really want to are already getting all the drugs they want, just through unreliable and less safe means. So you are already paying any "societal costs". At worst, they would stat the same as they are now. At best, the reduction in taboo may allow some people to get help if the want it, and the safer supply will eliminate many of the supply-side problems associated with "drug use". This can only improve.
5) And this is the big one: Making drugs illegal hinges on a fatally false assumption - that making something illegal actually reduces it's occurrence. This was obviously not true with alcohol, and is obviously not true for any other drug out there. Given that basic economic forces will happen any time there is a demand for something, we, as society, have a very important choice to make: "Who do we want to produce the supply that will inevitably meet the ever-present demand". Here, we have three choices: Private Industry, Public (government) Production, or Organized Crime.
Personally, as a small-government loving citizen, I like the Private Industry option, but really... I'd gladly take either Public or Private production over handing all the profits over to organized crime like we are doing now! Are you seriously telling me that you want to hand the entire multi-billion-dollar industry of illegal drugs to the mafias of the world? So they can have the profit instead of legitimate organizations? Remember, you don't get to skip out on this question. By saying you want to keep drugs illegal, you are saying you want to hand profit to the mob.
Note: none of this says that we have to make drugs something you pick up at the corner 7-11. You can have legal business and still regulate the industries, much like we do now with tobacco and alcohol. There are many options we can explore there.