Why haven't the police already busted down the door of Heckler & Koch and taken all their machines away? Why aren't there tons of class action lawsuits against Heckler & Koch from people that got shot and killed?
Oh riiiight... They don't kill people. Their customers to kill people. Their major customers being governments. They are just a private company, providing a service for a friendly foreign government.
Swiss law does not allow for any form of class action. When the government proposed a new federal code of civil procedure in 2006, replacing the cantonal codes of civil procedure, it rejected the introduction of class actions, arguing that:
[It] is alien to European legal thought to allow somebody to exercise rights on the behalf of a large number of people if these do not participate as parties in the action.... Moreover, the class action is controversial even in its country of origin, the U.S., because it can result in significant procedural problems.... Finally, the class action can be openly or discretely abused. The sums sued for are usually enormous, so that the respondent can be forced to concede, if they do not want to face sudden huge indebtness and insolvency (so-called legal blackmail).
Those aren't metaphors. Those are facts. Analogies at best. HappyMeal IS a McDonald's product that is aimed at kids and uses the word "Happy" in its name. Friends IS the name Facebook uses for your "contacts" on Facebook.
Had I said something like... e.g. "Facebook is a McDonald's of social relationships..." - THAT would have been a metaphor.
The problem I am referring to lies not in user's faulty use of clearly labeled products (adults raving about kid's meals) and resulting dissatisfaction. If it says "HappyMeal" on the box and it has clowns, puppies, kittens and rainbows on it, and you get a toy inside - it is not restaurant's fault you are hungry after eating one of those while a "regular" hamburger with a same price contains more food and less toys. Nor is it Facebook's problem that you can't discern between a random stranger, an acquaintance and a friend. They are not in business of "dealing" or "ensuring" or "providing" friendship.
The problem is in semantic connotation those words contain. Happy, friend, love, good, nice, kind, positive, beautiful, best... All those words are "good" words. Positive words. They have inherent connotations and meanings that we react to on a subconscious level.
E.g. Imagine a situation where you open your inbox and among "messages", you find one titled "love letter", but when you've opened it, it turns out to be "hate mail". Same e-mail, but it goes from neutral, through positive to negative based on the labels I gave you for it (I gave no indication who is it from, or what is in it). The old "It's not WHAT you say, but HOW...".
Everyone and anyone on Facebook is "friendly". They all want to be your "friends". They are all "good". Now... Imagine facebook changing "friends" to "strangers". Uuuuh... the connotations. Just gives you the chills, right? You wouldn't let "strangers" look at your photos, would you? Where are those privacy settings? How about "colleagues"? Or "buddies"? Or "acquaintances"? Or "people"?
It doesn't have to come from Asia to be an anime, you racist clod.
Apparently you do.
Which is understandable, since obviously you are not getting any. Which explains all that pent up rage. So I guess that you have to give it then. Don't let the big boys treat you like a bitch just because you do, though. Remember. You are fulfilling a VERY important social role in your community. Just think of all those marriages that will be saved through YOUR... umm... "involvement".
And don't let anyone mock you just because you live under a bridge. That is your heritage and your RIGHT! You guys have fought for those places for centuries and no puny human is going to chase you out of there just like that. Volkswagens be damned.
People watching screenings. They got us the last Star Wars and Indy movies. And seemingly they will get us a love story about blue Jar Jar Binks.
Get the Attack of the Clones DVD. Rent it. Under special features on making the movie, there is a part about how they made the speeder-chase at the beginning of the movie. There is that part where Obi Wan is hanging from the probe, flying through traffic. Note the alien that goes "What da..!".
THAT is pure Lucas at his best. He talks for about a minute how he decided putting that line in cause that line is so "classic", "iconic" or some other shit, as it has been in so many movies. Thing is... you see him ordering that line in couple of seconds earlier - completely on impulse. "Hey! Let's make alien say WT...".
Audiences-schmaudiences! Jar Jar is George's baby and when he says that Greedo shot first, THAT is how it is going to be and THAT is final! HE is the visionary here. Not audiences! They are there to take what he gives them and then ask for more! NICELY!
Just like you don't get to rename Happy Meals at McDonald's. So just as 3-year-olds get to associate hamburgers with happiness, all users big and small get to subconsciously associate Facebook with friendship and think of other facebookers as friends. Isn't newspeak great?
To think that MSN's messenger is a positive example, calling other people "contacts".
It doesn't have to come from Asia to be an anime, you racist clod.
It doesn't have to come from Asia. It MUST come from Japan. And by "come from Japan" I don't mean "made in Japan". Simpsons are made in Korea, just like a great deal of anime nowadays, but that does not make them Korean.
That is, unless you are Japanese, from Japan, in Japan, speaking Japanese. Then it is OK to refer to any animation as anime, but it is kinda like calling any animation "toon" as short for cartoon.
Sorry about the rant but hey... It is not my fault you confuse you ignorance of genres with other people's racism.
I saw the trailer and the entire movie takes place in a candle lit room in a monastery somewhere, and there is this kid with a stick who puts out those candles while outside ships are slinging fireballs into the air.
OK... there is clearly some kind of symbolic shit going on there that I don't understand, but still I have a feeling that it is being made strictly for the Rabbits fans.
It is actually an action-based SF 3D movie. NOT a political/ecological diatribe about "how bad White Manifest Destiney was in the United States.".
Because you are such a fan of Google-based-deduction, try this search string: avatar after seeing IMAX preview. You know... opinions of the people who actually saw the 3D footage in 3D - and a little more of it than a chopped up teaser trailer.
Google gives you exactly that (Heaven's Gate (religious group)) as the first hit, and the first line describes it as a cult. The SECOND hit being the movie that TFA is referring to.
Incidentally, I did first thought that he was talking about the cult, for 0.68 seconds. Then I realized that something like that would not make much sense - yet.
I love that idea, but I don't think it would work in the US. You'd have to pay and maintain a force of a lot more attendants than are currently needed.
Replace humans with cameras... with cameras. Let software do all the hard work.
As a bonus, you get surveillance of the parking spaces.
Not that your information is in the hands of the facebook staff. That can be scary, but the facebook people, like google, have demonstrated a fairly reasonable approach to exploitation of personal information.
The problem is that it's in the hands of all of your "friends" and family. If there's any aspect of your life that should remain off the internet, never share it with a facebooker.
Facebook friends are often not even acquaintances. They are not your friends, no matter how Facebook refers to them.
Except that this is not a measure to reduce the quantity of drugs sold, nor the number of addicts, nor the cash flow for the producers and sellers.
They need more cops, judges and prisons - but on a same (or lower) budget. So, they reduce the number of criminals pouring into the system - by making something that was previously a criminal offense no longer criminal. As an added bonus, just as your anecdotal evidence points out, smuggled quantities will increase.
Making them easier to spot AND actually making each drug bust a much greater success - as the captured quantities will not only be bigger, but more valuable as well. So, the dealer that would have gotten arrested yesterday with a kilo, will have two, or five or ten kilos on him now - getting him a higher sentence. And, as that kilo is more expensive - each drug bust filters more money away from the drug dealers (not suppliers), as the focus shifts to the middle of the chain.
They are simply switching to catching slightly bigger fish, and fattening it up a little prior to the catch. They are not going to remove or even reduce much the quantity of the drugs on the street, but they will eventually weaken the dealers and shift the market from dealers who only deal (and tend to be well armed gangs, without a central source of drug production) to dealers who also produce (basement and attic gardeners - whose drug production is far more centralized).
It is not about "more freedom for the people". It is about more cops where they REALLY need them.
This will increase demand, while not allowing legal supply to increase. It WILL be filled by gangs.
Probably... BUT...
It will reduce the number of cases police and the courts have to deal with, reduce the load on the jails, and reduce the corruption among the police (when it is no longer a crime to posses a small personal quantity, drug user can't be blackmailed by a corrupt police officer when it is found on him/her).
In short... this will create a better police force and also provide better crime statistics. It is a small step, but a step in the right direction.
...news for medicine, sociology, political, economy and even military nerds.
You don't have to use drugs to be indirectly or even directly influenced by its use. Nor is there need for you to use drugs to be interested in the aspects of its influence on the society.
Switzerland's Heroin Experiment Nadelmann, Ethan, "Switzerland's Heroin Experiment." National Review. July 10, 1995: pp. 46-47.
The Swiss government is selling heroin to hard-core drug users. But in doing so the government isn't offhandedly facilitating drug abuse: it's conducting a national scientific experiment to determine whether prescribing heroin, morphine, and injectable methadone will save Switzerland both money and misery by reducing crime, disease, and death.
The Swiss deal with drug users much as the U.S. and other countries do--prisons, drug-free residential treatment programs, oral methadone, etc.--but they also know that these approaches are not enough. They first tried establishing a "Needle Park" in Zurich, an open drug scene where people could use drugs without being arrested. Most Zurichers, including the police, initially regarded the congregation of illicit drug injectors in one place as preferable to scattering them throughout the city. But the scene grew unmanageable, and city officials closed it down in February 1992. A second attempt faced similar problems and was shut down in March 1995.
So Needle Park wasn't the solution, but the heroin-prescription program might be. In it, 340 addicts receive a legal supply of heroin each day from one of the nine prescribing programs in eight different cities. In addition, 11 receive morphine, and 33 receive injectable methadone. The programs accept only "hard-core" junkies--people who have been injecting for years and who have attempted and failed to quit. Participants are not allowed to take the drug home with them. They have to inject on site and pay 15 francs at approximately $13 per day for their dose.
The idea of prescribing heroin to junkies in hopes of reducing both their criminal activity and their risk of spreading AIDS and other diseases took off in 1991. Expert scientific and ethical advisory bodies were established to consider the range of issues. The International Narcotics Control Board--a United Nations organization that oversees international antidrug treaties--had to be convinced that the Swiss innovation was an experiment, which is permitted under the treaty, rather than an official shift in policy. In Basel, opponents of the initiative demanded a city-wide referendum--in which 65 per cent of the electorate approved a local heroin-prescription program. The argument that swayed most people was remarkably straightforward: only a controlled scientific experiment could determine whether prescribing heroin to addicts is feasible and beneficial.
The experiment started in January 1994. The various programs differ in some respects, although most provide supplemental doses of oral methadone, psychological counseling, and other assistance. Some are located in cities like Zurich, others in towns like Thun, which sits at the foot of the Bernese Alps. Some provide just one drug, while others offer a choice. Some allow clients to vary their dose each day, while others work with clients to establish a stable dosage level. One of the programs in Zurich is primarily for women. The other Zurich program permits addicts to take home heroin-injected cigarettes known as reefers, or "sugarettes," (since heroin is called "sugar" by Swiss junkies). It also conducted a parallel experiment in which 12 clients were prescribed cocaine reefers for up to 12 weeks. The results were mixed, with many of the participants finding the reefers unsatisfying. However, since more than two-thirds of Swiss junkies use cocaine as well as heroin, the Swiss hope to refine the cocaine experiment in the future.
The national experiment is designed to answer a host of questions that also bubble up in debates over drug policy in the United States, but that our drug-war blinders force us to ignore. Can junkies stabilize their drug use if they are assured of a legal, safe, and stable source of heroin? Can they hold down
Slashdot Mirror
You can still go back in time and warn yourself not to watch the videos - the time wave has not yet rea...
Meant to say:
Their customers use their product to kill people.
Why haven't the police already busted down the door of Heckler & Koch and taken all their machines away? Why aren't there tons of class action lawsuits against Heckler & Koch from people that got shot and killed?
Oh riiiight... They don't kill people. Their customers to kill people. Their major customers being governments.
They are just a private company, providing a service for a friendly foreign government.
Oh and...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_action_lawsuit#Switzerland
Switzerland
Swiss law does not allow for any form of class action. When the government proposed a new federal code of civil procedure in 2006, replacing the cantonal codes of civil procedure, it rejected the introduction of class actions, arguing that:
[It] is alien to European legal thought to allow somebody to exercise rights on the behalf of a large number of people if these do not participate as parties in the action. ... Moreover, the class action is controversial even in its country of origin, the U.S., because it can result in significant procedural problems. ... Finally, the class action can be openly or discretely abused. The sums sued for are usually enormous, so that the respondent can be forced to concede, if they do not want to face sudden huge indebtness and insolvency (so-called legal blackmail).
BTW, is that Wolf 360 game out?
Wolf 359 game is out. Is that good enough?
...mongoloid, you insensitive clod!
Those aren't metaphors. Those are facts. Analogies at best.
HappyMeal IS a McDonald's product that is aimed at kids and uses the word "Happy" in its name.
Friends IS the name Facebook uses for your "contacts" on Facebook.
Had I said something like... e.g. "Facebook is a McDonald's of social relationships..." - THAT would have been a metaphor.
The problem I am referring to lies not in user's faulty use of clearly labeled products (adults raving about kid's meals) and resulting dissatisfaction.
If it says "HappyMeal" on the box and it has clowns, puppies, kittens and rainbows on it, and you get a toy inside - it is not restaurant's fault you are hungry after eating one of those while a "regular" hamburger with a same price contains more food and less toys.
Nor is it Facebook's problem that you can't discern between a random stranger, an acquaintance and a friend. They are not in business of "dealing" or "ensuring" or "providing" friendship.
The problem is in semantic connotation those words contain.
Happy, friend, love, good, nice, kind, positive, beautiful, best... All those words are "good" words. Positive words.
They have inherent connotations and meanings that we react to on a subconscious level.
E.g. Imagine a situation where you open your inbox and among "messages", you find one titled "love letter", but when you've opened it, it turns out to be "hate mail".
Same e-mail, but it goes from neutral, through positive to negative based on the labels I gave you for it (I gave no indication who is it from, or what is in it).
The old "It's not WHAT you say, but HOW...".
Everyone and anyone on Facebook is "friendly". They all want to be your "friends". They are all "good".
Now... Imagine facebook changing "friends" to "strangers". Uuuuh... the connotations.
Just gives you the chills, right? You wouldn't let "strangers" look at your photos, would you? Where are those privacy settings?
How about "colleagues"? Or "buddies"? Or "acquaintances"? Or "people"?
It doesn't have to come from Asia to be an anime, you racist clod.
Apparently you do.
Which is understandable, since obviously you are not getting any. Which explains all that pent up rage.
So I guess that you have to give it then. Don't let the big boys treat you like a bitch just because you do, though.
Remember. You are fulfilling a VERY important social role in your community. Just think of all those marriages that will be saved through YOUR... umm... "involvement".
And don't let anyone mock you just because you live under a bridge. That is your heritage and your RIGHT!
You guys have fought for those places for centuries and no puny human is going to chase you out of there just like that. Volkswagens be damned.
People watching screenings. They got us the last Star Wars and Indy movies. And seemingly they will get us a love story about blue Jar Jar Binks.
Get the Attack of the Clones DVD. Rent it.
Under special features on making the movie, there is a part about how they made the speeder-chase at the beginning of the movie.
There is that part where Obi Wan is hanging from the probe, flying through traffic.
Note the alien that goes "What da..!".
THAT is pure Lucas at his best.
He talks for about a minute how he decided putting that line in cause that line is so "classic", "iconic" or some other shit, as it has been in so many movies.
Thing is... you see him ordering that line in couple of seconds earlier - completely on impulse. "Hey! Let's make alien say WT...".
Audiences-schmaudiences!
Jar Jar is George's baby and when he says that Greedo shot first, THAT is how it is going to be and THAT is final!
HE is the visionary here. Not audiences!
They are there to take what he gives them and then ask for more! NICELY!
Not up to the user.
Just like you don't get to rename Happy Meals at McDonald's.
So just as 3-year-olds get to associate hamburgers with happiness, all users big and small get to subconsciously associate Facebook with friendship and think of other facebookers as friends.
Isn't newspeak great?
To think that MSN's messenger is a positive example, calling other people "contacts".
It doesn't have to come from Asia to be an anime, you racist clod.
It doesn't have to come from Asia. It MUST come from Japan.
And by "come from Japan" I don't mean "made in Japan".
Simpsons are made in Korea, just like a great deal of anime nowadays, but that does not make them Korean.
That is, unless you are Japanese, from Japan, in Japan, speaking Japanese.
Then it is OK to refer to any animation as anime, but it is kinda like calling any animation "toon" as short for cartoon.
Sorry about the rant but hey...
It is not my fault you confuse you ignorance of genres with other people's racism.
They made that one ages ago. Haven't you seen the trailer?
It is a completely american production. It just uses common Asian elements in the story.
You know... Like Hong Kong Phooey.
Overrated.
You have never heard of "action figures".
I saw the trailer and the entire movie takes place in a candle lit room in a monastery somewhere, and there is this kid with a stick who puts out those candles while outside ships are slinging fireballs into the air.
OK... there is clearly some kind of symbolic shit going on there that I don't understand, but still I have a feeling that it is being made strictly for the Rabbits fans.
It is actually an action-based SF 3D movie.
NOT a political/ecological diatribe about "how bad White Manifest Destiney was in the United States.".
Because you are such a fan of Google-based-deduction, try this search string: avatar after seeing IMAX preview.
You know... opinions of the people who actually saw the 3D footage in 3D - and a little more of it than a chopped up teaser trailer.
Google gives you exactly that (Heaven's Gate (religious group)) as the first hit, and the first line describes it as a cult.
The SECOND hit being the movie that TFA is referring to.
Incidentally, I did first thought that he was talking about the cult, for 0.68 seconds.
Then I realized that something like that would not make much sense - yet.
I love that idea, but I don't think it would work in the US. You'd have to pay and maintain a force of a lot more attendants than are currently needed.
Replace humans with cameras... with cameras. Let software do all the hard work.
As a bonus, you get surveillance of the parking spaces.
Not that your information is in the hands of the facebook staff. That can be scary, but the facebook people, like google, have demonstrated a fairly reasonable approach to exploitation of personal information.
The problem is that it's in the hands of all of your "friends" and family. If there's any aspect of your life that should remain off the internet, never share it with a facebooker.
Facebook friends are often not even acquaintances. They are not your friends, no matter how Facebook refers to them.
Except that this is not a measure to reduce the quantity of drugs sold, nor the number of addicts, nor the cash flow for the producers and sellers.
They need more cops, judges and prisons - but on a same (or lower) budget.
So, they reduce the number of criminals pouring into the system - by making something that was previously a criminal offense no longer criminal.
As an added bonus, just as your anecdotal evidence points out, smuggled quantities will increase.
Making them easier to spot AND actually making each drug bust a much greater success - as the captured quantities will not only be bigger, but more valuable as well.
So, the dealer that would have gotten arrested yesterday with a kilo, will have two, or five or ten kilos on him now - getting him a higher sentence.
And, as that kilo is more expensive - each drug bust filters more money away from the drug dealers (not suppliers), as the focus shifts to the middle of the chain.
They are simply switching to catching slightly bigger fish, and fattening it up a little prior to the catch.
They are not going to remove or even reduce much the quantity of the drugs on the street, but they will eventually weaken the dealers and shift the market from dealers who only deal (and tend to be well armed gangs, without a central source of drug production) to dealers who also produce (basement and attic gardeners - whose drug production is far more centralized).
It is not about "more freedom for the people". It is about more cops where they REALLY need them.
This will increase demand, while not allowing legal supply to increase. It WILL be filled by gangs.
Probably... BUT...
It will reduce the number of cases police and the courts have to deal with, reduce the load on the jails, and reduce the corruption among the police (when it is no longer a crime to posses a small personal quantity, drug user can't be blackmailed by a corrupt police officer when it is found on him/her).
In short... this will create a better police force and also provide better crime statistics.
It is a small step, but a step in the right direction.
So high that he read "nerds" as "Geeks".
You sir, are a hypocritical, and potentially illiterate, coward.
...news for medicine, sociology, political, economy and even military nerds.
You don't have to use drugs to be indirectly or even directly influenced by its use.
Nor is there need for you to use drugs to be interested in the aspects of its influence on the society.
http://www.drugpolicy.org/library%5Ctlcnr.cfm
Switzerland's Heroin Experiment
Nadelmann, Ethan, "Switzerland's Heroin Experiment." National Review. July 10, 1995: pp. 46-47.
The Swiss government is selling heroin to hard-core drug users. But in doing so the government isn't offhandedly facilitating drug abuse: it's conducting a national scientific experiment to determine whether prescribing heroin, morphine, and injectable methadone will save Switzerland both money and misery by reducing crime, disease, and death.
The Swiss deal with drug users much as the U.S. and other countries do--prisons, drug-free residential treatment programs, oral methadone, etc.--but they also know that these approaches are not enough. They first tried establishing a "Needle Park" in Zurich, an open drug scene where people could use drugs without being arrested. Most Zurichers, including the police, initially regarded the congregation of illicit drug injectors in one place as preferable to scattering them throughout the city. But the scene grew unmanageable, and city officials closed it down in February 1992. A second attempt faced similar problems and was shut down in March 1995.
So Needle Park wasn't the solution, but the heroin-prescription program might be. In it, 340 addicts receive a legal supply of heroin each day from one of the nine prescribing programs in eight different cities. In addition, 11 receive morphine, and 33 receive injectable methadone. The programs accept only "hard-core" junkies--people who have been injecting for years and who have attempted and failed to quit. Participants are not allowed to take the drug home with them. They have to inject on site and pay 15 francs at approximately $13 per day for their dose.
The idea of prescribing heroin to junkies in hopes of reducing both their criminal activity and their risk of spreading AIDS and other diseases took off in 1991. Expert scientific and ethical advisory bodies were established to consider the range of issues. The International Narcotics Control Board--a United Nations organization that oversees international antidrug treaties--had to be convinced that the Swiss innovation was an experiment, which is permitted under the treaty, rather than an official shift in policy. In Basel, opponents of the initiative demanded a city-wide referendum--in which 65 per cent of the electorate approved a local heroin-prescription program. The argument that swayed most people was remarkably straightforward: only a controlled scientific experiment could determine whether prescribing heroin to addicts is feasible and beneficial.
The experiment started in January 1994. The various programs differ in some respects, although most provide supplemental doses of oral methadone, psychological counseling, and other assistance. Some are located in cities like Zurich, others in towns like Thun, which sits at the foot of the Bernese Alps. Some provide just one drug, while others offer a choice. Some allow clients to vary their dose each day, while others work with clients to establish a stable dosage level. One of the programs in Zurich is primarily for women. The other Zurich program permits addicts to take home heroin-injected cigarettes known as reefers, or "sugarettes," (since heroin is called "sugar" by Swiss junkies). It also conducted a parallel experiment in which 12 clients were prescribed cocaine reefers for up to 12 weeks. The results were mixed, with many of the participants finding the reefers unsatisfying. However, since more than two-thirds of Swiss junkies use cocaine as well as heroin, the Swiss hope to refine the cocaine experiment in the future.
The national experiment is designed to answer a host of questions that also bubble up in debates over drug policy in the United States, but that our drug-war blinders force us to ignore. Can junkies stabilize their drug use if they are assured of a legal, safe, and stable source of heroin? Can they hold down
If ANY question needs to be answered in this interview - then it is the "LAN crippling issue".
Preferably, answer would be something along the lines of "We fucked up, LAN will not be crippled, we are sorry, it will never happen again."