I dunno if smoking weed can really be considered a civil right though.
Civil rights are just a political construct anyway, one half of which concerns equality before the law. Which simply means that: treating everyone equally under the law.
Now you could claim that prohibition of "smoking weed" is not an infringement of this legal equality provided that it is equally prohibited for everyone. But then you could say the same thing about the prohibition of anal sex, which would have the side effect of effectively banning gay sexual relations. The other half of civil rights is the part that protects an individuals freedom from being unnecessarily trodden on by the state.
Now we just have to ask if it is necessary to prohibit cannabis, and I would argue that in the absence of a public health system it certainly isn't necessary, and with a public health system and appropriate Pigovian taxes it certainly isn't necessary.
Thus it is probably an infringement of civil rights to prohibit it.
I can 'run' Linux on 4 megs of ram, and much like GIMP on a N900, it would be effectively worthless.
But hey, were talking 1ghz dual core devices with programmable DSP's, graphics acceleration and a gigabyte of ram. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that a image editor can run on those resources.
Men are typically much larger and stronger than women. There is a reason there are weight classes in boxing and MMA. Besides, this was in a car, so Judo and TKD are sure out. Even grapplers can be overpowered if they are outweighed 2-1. Only an elite-level female jiu-jitsu practitioner is going to take out some 225-lbs guy in a car, and how many women have time to spend 5 days a week for 5 years in a dojo? And I'm sorry, but a petite 110lb woman is never going to take out an Ahnold-sized attacker. You've just been watching too many movies, brotha.
It would be much more effective for women to carry guns, the true equalizer. Stabbing weapons are good as well. And, of course, for them not to get so drunk they are out of control.
Oh, and death penalty for rapists would be nice, too.
You're right about the first part, but its hard to grab a gun from whatever secure receptacle you keep it in, load it, cock it, and aim it at a person who is much stronger than you and in close proximity to you. Unless you carry a loaded pistol on your hip at all times, in which case you probably wont be invited to many parties anyway.
Much like music before it, publishers can't decide if books are personal or intellectual property. If they are personal property, then you should be able to do with it what you want after you purchase it. Put it on any device. Share your ONE copy as you want. Sell it when you are done etc. If a book is intellectual property and you only have a license to the content, then the form of the content takes should be provided to the license holder at cost. Say I buy a license to Rush, 2112, a favorite album of mine. I should be able to get an MP3 version for the cost of transmitting it to me. I should be able to get a CD, LP, cassette, 8 track or whatever new format is available whenever and as often as I want one for the cost reproduction and delivery. If books are intellectual property, then I should be able to get a nook, kindle, mobi, pdf, word doc, and any other digital version for the pennies it would cost to deliver it to me and printed versions should be made available at printing cost + shipping once I've purchased a license. The caveat for IP is that I cannot share it with anyone ever.
As it is now, they want the best of both worlds. They sell me a license to the content and give me no credit for that license if I want to put that content on some other device I own. Buying a printed version in the IP world should essentially mean I get free digital versions of that product for life. Same with music. I promise you that if you sold Harper Collins a piece of software and they lost the hard drive it was on, they'd insist that you let them install it on another computer. Why are we not treated the same way?
A possessor of data has a right to withhold the data from you, and they can ask for money for providing you with the data. But once the data is in your hands, you also become a possessor and can redistribute it as you wish, end of story.
On the other hand, it's up to the possessor to decide what data to provide you with, if they want to they can DRM, SaS, stream it, their decision, but it's the possessors job to find ways to make money, not the states.
ISPs are in the business of providing internet access, but they don't own the internet; any attempts to eliminate net neutrality would violate our consumer rights and hurt the economy.
They own and control the access points. Many also own the higher level links. Some even own vast chunks of the content flowing across it.. So yes, in effect they do 'own the internet'.
But i do agree they need to be slapped down before things get more out of hand. In today's society the internet is more like a public utility, much like electricity became long ago, and should be treated as such. Not really 'required' for life, but modern life without it would be difficult at best.
Exactly, things that require vast infrastructure, like roads, water, gas, electricity, communications all require antitrust regulation (which imo net neutrality is a type of) because the barrier to entry is so vast. Regulation is justified and infringes no ones property rights, because these things are usually built on vast tracts of public land using public funds.
Historically women have been "persecuted" by not being allowed to enter a male dominated workforce, and have been expected to be housewives. This sounds terrible until you take into consideration the class gap of those times, sure the men of the upperclasses would enjoy freedoms not given to the women of the ruling classes, but the vast majority of men and boys would spend their days doing back breaking work for very little compensation. That's actually what I hate so much about the temperance movement, you send your man to work for eight or more hours a day in a mine, breathing coal dust and carbon monoxide, under constant hazard of collapse or explosion, and then you expect him to come home sober, tsk. tsk.
There are valid reasons not to want to get vaccinated, and people have the right to decide for themselves and their children. Am I saying it's the right decision not to vaccinate yourself or kids? No, not generally - but there are times where it may be, and people need to make that decision for themselves.
Vaccines have also been used to spread disease. Is it common - I doubt it, but it has been done and who knows.
Corporations lie, they do things to make money, not to save lives. They skimp on safety, they falsify data (the antivax people aren't the only ones), some of the vaccines given to soldiers may be the cause of or play a part in Gulf War sickness.
If people don't want to vaccinate, then leave them the fuck alone - this talk of laws and forcing people is ridiculous.
Bullshit,
Kids aren't property, and if you're tinfoil hat ignorance gets in the way of their health care, then someone needs to step in.
People eventually get OUT of jail, and "paying your debt to society" has NOTHING to do with "changing your behavior".
Idealistic bullshit is SO CUTE when it's spouted by folks who never ran a bar. Don't like the rules? Get the fuck out.
That's why so many bars are private clubs. Exclusivity is good.
Don't spend much time in bars do you?
It's the "exclusive" clubs that the agro little fucks like to hang around. I was attacked by three guys coming out of one, all I was doing was waiting for a friend outside a club that refused me entry. I defended myself, and then the fat idiot of a bouncer got the wrong end of the stick and tried to attack me.
My rule of thumb is that if the joint has a bouncer, they have scum for patrons, and it's probably best avoided.
Many parents allow or even encourage their kids to overeat, which we know can be damaging, but which we do not, as a society, consider justification for taking that child away..
That's abuse to me, their parents are entrenching habits in them that will harm them for the rest of their lives. This is precisely my point, we seem to consider kids to be a type of property, and give parents way to much discretion in their upbringing.
Then you would have to make the same argument against parent who allowed their children to play "cowboys and indians", or "cops and robbers", or just about any other conflict-simulation games.
Good luck trying to enforce that.
These children have probably been watching violent westerns, and to a social "scientist" this violent ideation is just about enough evidence to ban them:). I don't believe that violent media are much more harmful to children than pornography, and as you have mentioned in other posts, it has not been shown that violent video games produce violent behaviour.
It is however ilogical to believe both: (A) Violent media are harmful, (B) Parents should be allowed to provide their children with violent media, unless you think children are some kind of personal property.
And no, I'm not part of the "think of the children" group. I think parents should take care of their children, not the government. That doesn't mean parents shouldn't have all the relevant information at their disposal.
Why do you think that? I'm not illiberal but it seems to me that we need to enforce basic standards of parenting, and in fact we do, which is why there are laws against child neglect and abuse. So what I'm getting at is this; if these games are harmful to children, then parents who let their children play them clearly aren't doing their job.
It's ironic, though. It's indeed almost certain that header will never catch on, yet by doing so advertisers are just shooting themselves in the foot. They're giving AdBlock and NoScript traction. They're pissing off the geeks, who often have a sizable influence in the realm of technology within their circle of friends. Instead of having a header that would be normally disabled and would get turned on in specific cases (say, through private browsing options), they're getting people to use tools that are turned on by default and never get turned off.
It's their loss in the end.
Perhaps NoScript could be configured to detect whether the header is honoured (or just use a dictionary to blacklist sites that don't), and if it is, allow the script to run. If NoScript functionality was bundled with all FF, Opera and Chrome installs, that would give this header more weight also.
Dumb move. I kind of wanted one, but if they've nixed the crank, then what's the point. I know that they get really good battery life, but I thought a part of the point of it was not needing to plug them in.
I reckon a foot pedal would be more suitable, you have your hands free that way.
I recently submitted a story to/. that is related to this very topic. Chief of defence staff in the UK, General Sir David Richards, argued a little while ago that the UK should have a cyber command, and that the UK faces what he called a 'horse verses tank moment' in coping with modern warfare, saying the the rules of war had changed as a result of the success of insurgents in Iraq/Afghanistan, and the threat of non-state actors. In particular, he said that 'We must learn to defend, delay, attack and manoeuvre in cyberspace, just as we might on the land, sea or air and all together at the same time. Future war will always include a cyber dimension and it could become the dominant form. At the moment we don't have a cyber command and I'm very keen we have one. Whether we like it or not, cyber is going to be part of future warfare, just as tanks and aircraft are today. It's a cultural change. In the future I don't think state-to-state warfare will start in the way it did even 10 years ago. It will be cyber or banking attacks — that's how I'd conduct a war if I was running a belligerent state or a rebel movement. It's semi-anonymous, cheap and doesn't risk people.'"
I for one welcome our new bloodless cyber-war overlords. I think StarCraft 5 should be the medium mandated by the Seoul Conventions of 2025 and 2032.
I am afraid the data doesn't back you up on the claim that "many peoples psychosis is triggered solely by their [sic] use of drugs". Studies have shown that porlonged drug abuse may inflame psychotic outbreaks and other aperiodic abnormal events but causation is not highly correlated. Indeed, the correlation with respect to marijuana use is below that of other exogenous factors.
I don't know what your afraid of; reading your post is actually kind of a relief, I was going to check myself into Lake Alice.. preemptively;).
Always when pot is brought up, so to is this argument: "Decriminalise it..". . . "Alcohol is worse. . "
I work in public heathcare, and have had many dealing with mental institutions, the patients and the staff (many of which are indistinguishable - but that is another issue).
Take a look inside any mental hospital, now look at the "Mad" people in there - people not born with retardation but rather who went mad later. In my experience, the vast majority of them are in there because of Drug use and abuse. (I do not deny that this also includes alcohol abuse.) Many peoples psychosis is triggered solely by their use of Drugs. This does include people who "only smoke weed"
One of the key challenges faced bystaff members is trying to keep the grass out from visiting family members/Friends. People of the "it's harmless and besides, it should be legalised/decriminalised" mentailty believing they are doing the mental patient no harm by trying to smoke a joint with them.
Just because there are (only debatably) worse things out there, this does not make it a good idea. In reality, all you are doing is making a case for another round of alcohol prohibition.
PRC is currently the safest place to live, there are no legal civilian owned firearms, there is little drug abuse, and gambling is done in secret. I suggest you take a trip.
Slashdot Mirror
I dunno if smoking weed can really be considered a civil right though.
Civil rights are just a political construct anyway, one half of which concerns equality before the law. Which simply means that: treating everyone equally under the law.
Now you could claim that prohibition of "smoking weed" is not an infringement of this legal equality provided that it is equally prohibited for everyone. But then you could say the same thing about the prohibition of anal sex, which would have the side effect of effectively banning gay sexual relations. The other half of civil rights is the part that protects an individuals freedom from being unnecessarily trodden on by the state.
Now we just have to ask if it is necessary to prohibit cannabis, and I would argue that in the absence of a public health system it certainly isn't necessary, and with a public health system and appropriate Pigovian taxes it certainly isn't necessary.
Thus it is probably an infringement of civil rights to prohibit it.
http://www.cracked.com/video_18254_bill-oreilly-teaches-kids-about-science.html
Can and Should are two different words.
I can 'run' Linux on 4 megs of ram, and much like GIMP on a N900, it would be effectively worthless.
But hey, were talking 1ghz dual core devices with programmable DSP's, graphics acceleration and a gigabyte of ram. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that a image editor can run on those resources.
Men are typically much larger and stronger than women. There is a reason there are weight classes in boxing and MMA. Besides, this was in a car, so Judo and TKD are sure out. Even grapplers can be overpowered if they are outweighed 2-1. Only an elite-level female jiu-jitsu practitioner is going to take out some 225-lbs guy in a car, and how many women have time to spend 5 days a week for 5 years in a dojo? And I'm sorry, but a petite 110lb woman is never going to take out an Ahnold-sized attacker. You've just been watching too many movies, brotha.
It would be much more effective for women to carry guns, the true equalizer. Stabbing weapons are good as well. And, of course, for them not to get so drunk they are out of control.
Oh, and death penalty for rapists would be nice, too.
You're right about the first part, but its hard to grab a gun from whatever secure receptacle you keep it in, load it, cock it, and aim it at a person who is much stronger than you and in close proximity to you. Unless you carry a loaded pistol on your hip at all times, in which case you probably wont be invited to many parties anyway.
Much like music before it, publishers can't decide if books are personal or intellectual property. If they are personal property, then you should be able to do with it what you want after you purchase it. Put it on any device. Share your ONE copy as you want. Sell it when you are done etc. If a book is intellectual property and you only have a license to the content, then the form of the content takes should be provided to the license holder at cost. Say I buy a license to Rush, 2112, a favorite album of mine. I should be able to get an MP3 version for the cost of transmitting it to me. I should be able to get a CD, LP, cassette, 8 track or whatever new format is available whenever and as often as I want one for the cost reproduction and delivery. If books are intellectual property, then I should be able to get a nook, kindle, mobi, pdf, word doc, and any other digital version for the pennies it would cost to deliver it to me and printed versions should be made available at printing cost + shipping once I've purchased a license. The caveat for IP is that I cannot share it with anyone ever.
As it is now, they want the best of both worlds. They sell me a license to the content and give me no credit for that license if I want to put that content on some other device I own. Buying a printed version in the IP world should essentially mean I get free digital versions of that product for life. Same with music. I promise you that if you sold Harper Collins a piece of software and they lost the hard drive it was on, they'd insist that you let them install it on another computer. Why are we not treated the same way?
A possessor of data has a right to withhold the data from you, and they can ask for money for providing you with the data. But once the data is in your hands, you also become a possessor and can redistribute it as you wish, end of story.
On the other hand, it's up to the possessor to decide what data to provide you with, if they want to they can DRM, SaS, stream it, their decision, but it's the possessors job to find ways to make money, not the states.
Learn English Americans!
Yeah, those damn uneducated Anglo-Americans.
ISPs are in the business of providing internet access, but they don't own the internet; any attempts to eliminate net neutrality would violate our consumer rights and hurt the economy.
They own and control the access points. Many also own the higher level links. Some even own vast chunks of the content flowing across it.. So yes, in effect they do 'own the internet'.
But i do agree they need to be slapped down before things get more out of hand. In today's society the internet is more like a public utility, much like electricity became long ago, and should be treated as such. Not really 'required' for life, but modern life without it would be difficult at best.
Exactly, things that require vast infrastructure, like roads, water, gas, electricity, communications all require antitrust regulation (which imo net neutrality is a type of) because the barrier to entry is so vast. Regulation is justified and infringes no ones property rights, because these things are usually built on vast tracts of public land using public funds.
Damn, wish I hadn't spent all my mod-points.
Historically women have been "persecuted" by not being allowed to enter a male dominated workforce, and have been expected to be housewives. This sounds terrible until you take into consideration the class gap of those times, sure the men of the upperclasses would enjoy freedoms not given to the women of the ruling classes, but the vast majority of men and boys would spend their days doing back breaking work for very little compensation. That's actually what I hate so much about the temperance movement, you send your man to work for eight or more hours a day in a mine, breathing coal dust and carbon monoxide, under constant hazard of collapse or explosion, and then you expect him to come home sober, tsk. tsk.
There are valid reasons not to want to get vaccinated, and people have the right to decide for themselves and their children. Am I saying it's the right decision not to vaccinate yourself or kids? No, not generally - but there are times where it may be, and people need to make that decision for themselves.
Vaccines have also been used to spread disease. Is it common - I doubt it, but it has been done and who knows.
Corporations lie, they do things to make money, not to save lives. They skimp on safety, they falsify data (the antivax people aren't the only ones), some of the vaccines given to soldiers may be the cause of or play a part in Gulf War sickness.
If people don't want to vaccinate, then leave them the fuck alone - this talk of laws and forcing people is ridiculous.
Bullshit,
Kids aren't property, and if you're tinfoil hat ignorance gets in the way of their health care, then someone needs to step in.
How is that Insightful?
People eventually get OUT of jail, and "paying your debt to society" has NOTHING to do with "changing your behavior".
Idealistic bullshit is SO CUTE when it's spouted by folks who never ran a bar. Don't like the rules? Get the fuck out. That's why so many bars are private clubs. Exclusivity is good.
Don't spend much time in bars do you?
It's the "exclusive" clubs that the agro little fucks like to hang around. I was attacked by three guys coming out of one, all I was doing was waiting for a friend outside a club that refused me entry. I defended myself, and then the fat idiot of a bouncer got the wrong end of the stick and tried to attack me.
My rule of thumb is that if the joint has a bouncer, they have scum for patrons, and it's probably best avoided.
The Daily offers 'unthinkable innovations' to the world of publishing."
Well said Emperor Palpatine.
...to purchase an Android based tablet/phone
Or MeeGo, WebOS, Symbian ect. Even Windows Mobile is looking "open" by comparison.
Many parents allow or even encourage their kids to overeat, which we know can be damaging, but which we do not, as a society, consider justification for taking that child away..
That's abuse to me, their parents are entrenching habits in them that will harm them for the rest of their lives. This is precisely my point, we seem to consider kids to be a type of property, and give parents way to much discretion in their upbringing.
Then you would have to make the same argument against parent who allowed their children to play "cowboys and indians", or "cops and robbers", or just about any other conflict-simulation games. Good luck trying to enforce that.
These children have probably been watching violent westerns, and to a social "scientist" this violent ideation is just about enough evidence to ban them :). I don't believe that violent media are much more harmful to children than pornography, and as you have mentioned in other posts, it has not been shown that violent video games produce violent behaviour.
It is however ilogical to believe both: (A) Violent media are harmful, (B) Parents should be allowed to provide their children with violent media, unless you think children are some kind of personal property.
And no, I'm not part of the "think of the children" group. I think parents should take care of their children, not the government. That doesn't mean parents shouldn't have all the relevant information at their disposal.
Why do you think that? I'm not illiberal but it seems to me that we need to enforce basic standards of parenting, and in fact we do, which is why there are laws against child neglect and abuse. So what I'm getting at is this; if these games are harmful to children, then parents who let their children play them clearly aren't doing their job.
It's ironic, though. It's indeed almost certain that header will never catch on, yet by doing so advertisers are just shooting themselves in the foot. They're giving AdBlock and NoScript traction. They're pissing off the geeks, who often have a sizable influence in the realm of technology within their circle of friends. Instead of having a header that would be normally disabled and would get turned on in specific cases (say, through private browsing options), they're getting people to use tools that are turned on by default and never get turned off.
It's their loss in the end.
Perhaps NoScript could be configured to detect whether the header is honoured (or just use a dictionary to blacklist sites that don't), and if it is, allow the script to run. If NoScript functionality was bundled with all FF, Opera and Chrome installs, that would give this header more weight also.
whoosh
Dumb move. I kind of wanted one, but if they've nixed the crank, then what's the point. I know that they get really good battery life, but I thought a part of the point of it was not needing to plug them in.
I reckon a foot pedal would be more suitable, you have your hands free that way.
I recently submitted a story to /. that is related to this very topic. Chief of defence staff in the UK, General Sir David Richards, argued a little while ago that the UK should have a cyber command, and that the UK faces what he called a 'horse verses tank moment' in coping with modern warfare, saying the the rules of war had changed as a result of the success of insurgents in Iraq/Afghanistan, and the threat of non-state actors. In particular, he said that 'We must learn to defend, delay, attack and manoeuvre in cyberspace, just as we might on the land, sea or air and all together at the same time. Future war will always include a cyber dimension and it could become the dominant form. At the moment we don't have a cyber command and I'm very keen we have one. Whether we like it or not, cyber is going to be part of future warfare, just as tanks and aircraft are today. It's a cultural change. In the future I don't think state-to-state warfare will start in the way it did even 10 years ago. It will be cyber or banking attacks — that's how I'd conduct a war if I was running a belligerent state or a rebel movement. It's semi-anonymous, cheap and doesn't risk people.'"
I for one welcome our new bloodless cyber-war overlords. I think StarCraft 5 should be the medium mandated by the Seoul Conventions of 2025 and 2032.
Yeah, that's a great marketing strategy.
"Hey you! You're face looks like it could use a mask!"
You laugh because you have evidently never read a women's magazine.
If the first thing that enters your mind when reading "QT" is QuickTime, you're on the wrong website I'm afraid.
It's usually rendered as Q t not Q T .
And now, all of these years later, we discover that this seminal event was corrupted by the presence of hardcore pornography.
Probably more seminal than you'd like to imagine...
So what? If you don't like closed content, just don't use it!
That's exactly what he said he was going to do, so it seems you're the one who's babbling.
I am afraid the data doesn't back you up on the claim that "many peoples psychosis is triggered solely by their [sic] use of drugs". Studies have shown that porlonged drug abuse may inflame psychotic outbreaks and other aperiodic abnormal events but causation is not highly correlated. Indeed, the correlation with respect to marijuana use is below that of other exogenous factors.
I don't know what your afraid of; reading your post is actually kind of a relief, I was going to check myself into Lake Alice.. preemptively ;).
Always when pot is brought up, so to is this argument: "Decriminalise it. .". . . "Alcohol is worse. . "
I work in public heathcare, and have had many dealing with mental institutions, the patients and the staff (many of which are indistinguishable - but that is another issue).
Take a look inside any mental hospital, now look at the "Mad" people in there - people not born with retardation but rather who went mad later. In my experience, the vast majority of them are in there because of Drug use and abuse. (I do not deny that this also includes alcohol abuse.) Many peoples psychosis is triggered solely by their use of Drugs. This does include people who "only smoke weed"
One of the key challenges faced bystaff members is trying to keep the grass out from visiting family members/Friends. People of the "it's harmless and besides, it should be legalised/decriminalised" mentailty believing they are doing the mental patient no harm by trying to smoke a joint with them.
Just because there are (only debatably) worse things out there, this does not make it a good idea. In reality, all you are doing is making a case for another round of alcohol prohibition.
PRC is currently the safest place to live, there are no legal civilian owned firearms, there is little drug abuse, and gambling is done in secret. I suggest you take a trip.