Texting while driving is obviously a serious killer.
Legislation might not be the answer: I favor a technical solution. Say, devices automatically disconnect at a certain speed from IM/ voice, except for 911, something like that.
But to suggest that texting while driving is not a problem, even if this SPECIFIC story might have unclear details, is ignorant and dangerous FUD. Yes, this specific story's details might not directly support the idea that texting kills, but texting obviously kills, and to suggest that, since this ONE story doesn't support the specifics, then therefore, let's not worry about texting... that is irresponsible and ignorant.
people do all sorts of desperate things when they are weak or stupid or poor
it is those who do things out of evil that still deserve and always did deserve your blame
shifting blame from the devil, in fact, is exactly how the devil works, and you fall for it
you blame the girl for being raped because of the dress she wore, not the rapist
you blame the poor for not having health insurance, rather than the rules about healthcare put in place by the rich corporations
you blame the musician for signing away things he didn't understand when he was a young dumb kid with a catchy tune and stars in his eyes
no: you should always blame the devil, you shouldn't blame the victim. or you fail at simple morality, and you fail at logical coherence. and the devil depends upon people like you to do that. meanness and cruelty defines a society when it is dominated by people would rather overlook the actions of evil, and point their hate at the weak
you oppose the idea that there can be sources of tyranny outside of the government. so you are a closed minded fool. a shame, we have enough useless braindead partisans in this world. please try thinking again at some point in your life, right now, you are a useless repeater
next time try thinking instead of dictating (ironically enough;-)
you didn't respond, you just performed the perfect kneejerk. i supposed that is as close as i will get to an admission from you that i've actually made a impression on your closed mind on the subject
human history did not start with the russian revolution in 1917. you seem to have only one reference point by which autocracy exists
small hint: the bolsheviks and the labor movements of the period were fighting SOMETHING. what was it they were fighting? of course, their ideology recreated the something they were fighting, but you don't seem to be aware of what that preceding something is. your understanding of history is lacking
this is what you get with a weak government and a predatory capitalist system:
Pinkerton's agents performed services ranging from security guarding to private military contracting work. At its height, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency employed more agents than there were members of the standing army of the United States of America, causing the state of Ohio to outlaw the agency due to fears it could be hired as a private army or militia.[citation needed] Pinkerton was the largest private law enforcement organization in the world at the height of its power.[1] During the labor unrest of the late 19th century and early 20th century, businessmen hired the Pinkerton Agency to provide agents that would infiltrate unions, to supply guards to keep strikers and suspected unionists out of factories, and sometimes to recruit goon squads to intimidate workers.
if you don't understand why issues like these, which arise out of a weak state and unfettered capitalism, are just as much a threat to liberty as the only point of reference you seem to understand, then please read up on some basic world history, and learn from it, before fools like you doom us to repeat it
the value of labor in the usa, and elsewhere in the world, is currently being subverted by capitalist interests, who are basically buying off the american government. this is the seed of the next autocracy. without a relevant means to control their own government, labor agitates via extrajudicial means, and we have the makings of the russian revolution or french revolution all over again. we need to keep corporate power in check: it is the source of the next autocracy. NOT communism. communism is totally dead. but you only see the threat of liberty from that one dead ideology, so you don't understand history. for you, history starts in 1917
No, he made a point, and you ignored him or you don't understand it.
Unfettered capitalism has just as much capacity for totalitarianism as communism. Capitalism, left to its own devices, naturally results in a few large players, who, if allowed to, will subvert and take over the government, simply buy it off. Plutocracy. This is why you need a strong government with strong regulatory powers to keep the marketplace fair by preventing the largest players from performing inevitable abuse, and breaking them up if necessary.
Your problem is that you only understand one narrative: the narrative of oppression from communism, where the government IS big business. That is not the only way oppression can form or function. The government can be the mafia, which you understand. But an uncontrolled corporate sphere can also function like a mafia, and it can simply turn a weak government into its puppet. This is what you see forming in the USA. You don't seem to understand that.
You NEED a strong central government, and you need a healthy marketplace of corporations kept in check. If you weaken the government, the power vacuum is simply filled by the largest corporations, who simply buy the government. Do you understand?
But I will assert that, unlike nicotine (highly addictive, but not inebriating: you can still carry on a job/ relationship), or alcohol, or other either mildy inebriating or mildly addictive drugs, the combination of high addictiveness and high inebriation means that some drugs destroy a person's ability to maintain their relationships/ job. Therefore, for cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin, the costs of prohibition may seem high, but the costs of higher levels of destroyed lives due to addiction to substances which render you unable to function are higher yet.
The "war on drugs" is ugly. Addiction to substances which render you unable to function in life is uglier. Some determined people will always be able to get these substances, but by making it difficulty and costly, you save lives by preventing exposure for some in the first place. Once addicted, healthcare based treatment rather than corporal punishment is of course superior, but there are certain people who will remain unsalvageable from the hell of addiction to personal freedom destroying substances. Therefore, it is superior to never let them fall down that rabbit hole in the first place.
Notice I said "personal freedom destroying substances." It always amuses me to hear certain people say they are championing free will when they propose people be able to take certain substances which are more potent destroyers of free will than the most authoritarian government you can imagine. That people should be denied the full range of their free will by a useless biochemical monkey on their back, just because they were young and stupid once, and lived in a society which allowed them easy access to free will destroying substances, is a form of willful ignorant hypocrisy on the subject of maximizing personal liberty.
The "war on drugs" is therefore a misnamed concept. It is simply a maintenance function of a civilization that values free will. No modern society can or will allow unchecked addiction to highly inebriating substances that rot at society and destroy human dignity, and, as I said before, personal free will.
If you don't understand how drug addiction is more an enemy of the concept of personal freedom than any totalitarian government you can imagine (unless of course, that authoritarian government forced people to take highly addictive substances as a form of control) then you simply don't even understand the subject matter you are commenting on. To have a pointless biochemical interrupt switch injected into your mind ("get high... get high... get high...") for the rest of your life (your willpower is now absolute, and weakens in times of depression and life setbacks), is, in the world history of mankind, the story of the most destruction of free will ever. More free will destroying, by orders of magnitude, by every government that ever existed added together. Understand that about drugs, or understand nothing.
I've read comment threads where name droppping Stephen Colbert makes you look like a genius compared to everyone else posting, and here we have a context where name dropping Stephen Colbert makes you look like an idiot.
you are making me so angry for opposing my ignorant ideology that i am forced to rant in reply to you using this microprocesser based computer which will transmit the information over fiber optics which will appear on your lcd screen. god gave us those things, you evil sorcerer
so you agreed with my message, you just have to mod me down because the messenger is ugly. i guess i'll never be a politician, people prefer placid lies over ugly truths
it can never do wrong. forever and ever. the slashdot bias has been cast. everything it does that is questionable must be rationalized away. it's not like google's actions should be evaluated impartially on these forums, right?
(now comes the posts defending google against all claims of impropriety. no! not our darling google!)
of some 60 year old clueless investors with money to burn but not much web savvy, some 30 year old wall street sharks eager to pump a price and cash in on their cluelessness, and a bunch of 20 year olds rolling their eyes and going to pick up their cheap cupcakes?
because the story can't possibly be "promising tech company not so promising". so nobody learned anything from the dotcom crash 10 years ago? is it 2001 or 2011?
this story arc is completely and utterly predictable. clearly i'm not some wall street genius: i'm certain most people posting on this site saw this whole story arc coming too
how far away is this detectable? this may be how you find other earth-like blue orbs
until of course, they find the liquid ammonia planet that schumann resonates like nobody's business, populated by little mr. cleans and scrubbing bubbles i suppose
some people trust too much. some people trust too little. how much you trust a government is often more a function of your own psychology than anything the government did, simply because you think you can judge the function of a government, any government, like you judge a ham sandwich
the simple point is that the us govt is a democracy, meaning it has a function whereby accountability flows back to the people. with such a function, the us govt is perfectly trustworthy, however hysterical YOU are
because, in the end, all govts screw up and make mistakes. just look at japan and their nuclear debacle. ACCOUNTABILITY is how trustworthiness is ultimately judged, and as long as the usa is the (imperfect) democracy it is, it is as trustworthy as such an entity can possibly be
right. so repair the institution that is suppose to represent your interests: remove corporate influence from government
except some morons want to weaken the institution that is their only possible chance to represent a power counterweight to corporate interests, thereby impoverishing themselves more and removing any chance they have at having their interests and rights represented and protected
because the real enemy is poor people freeloading, you see. not multibillion dollar multinationals freeloading. right?
it's fucking incredible how fucking clueless and easily propagandized some fools can be
you forgot to mention the part where the elected representatives spend all their time jockeying for coalition government positioning, and sublimating and abandoning all of their self-stated principles to do so
not to get you wrong, there are plenty of positives to more than two parties. but also still plenty of downsides. there are also positives to the two party system. the point is, contrasting european and american political systems shows positives and negatives to both, not simply only positives to the european system
Slashdot Mirror
I didnt write the entire 25 page technical spec in a throwaway comment on slashdot, numbnuts
Of course there would be exceptions, distance of phone from steering wheel for example
Texting while driving is obviously a serious killer.
Legislation might not be the answer: I favor a technical solution. Say, devices automatically disconnect at a certain speed from IM/ voice, except for 911, something like that.
But to suggest that texting while driving is not a problem, even if this SPECIFIC story might have unclear details, is ignorant and dangerous FUD. Yes, this specific story's details might not directly support the idea that texting kills, but texting obviously kills, and to suggest that, since this ONE story doesn't support the specifics, then therefore, let's not worry about texting... that is irresponsible and ignorant.
Horrible story summary.
people do all sorts of desperate things when they are weak or stupid or poor
it is those who do things out of evil that still deserve and always did deserve your blame
shifting blame from the devil, in fact, is exactly how the devil works, and you fall for it
you blame the girl for being raped because of the dress she wore, not the rapist
you blame the poor for not having health insurance, rather than the rules about healthcare put in place by the rich corporations
you blame the musician for signing away things he didn't understand when he was a young dumb kid with a catchy tune and stars in his eyes
no: you should always blame the devil, you shouldn't blame the victim. or you fail at simple morality, and you fail at logical coherence. and the devil depends upon people like you to do that. meanness and cruelty defines a society when it is dominated by people would rather overlook the actions of evil, and point their hate at the weak
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism#Malaysian_institutional_racism
its the reason Singapore exists (a Chinese dominated enclave that was not exactly going to submit to the concept)
Does it come with the Decepticon or Autobot logo?
Or, rather, will be Hasbro legal department be contacting Asus shortly?
Making your model of the soon to be renamed tablet product line a rare collector's item?
just as long as the government has a slightly better handle on where all the plutonium is (contemporaneous cold war artifact)
i'm not too concered about escape dusty basalt
Is the issue
Only any idiot would confuse that with censoring anything. EVERY govt will censor something. It is censoring political expression that is the problem
Everybody understands that right?
Right?
you oppose the idea that there can be sources of tyranny outside of the government. so you are a closed minded fool. a shame, we have enough useless braindead partisans in this world. please try thinking again at some point in your life, right now, you are a useless repeater
next time try thinking instead of dictating (ironically enough ;-)
you didn't respond, you just performed the perfect kneejerk. i supposed that is as close as i will get to an admission from you that i've actually made a impression on your closed mind on the subject
so be it
then you have no understanding of history
human history did not start with the russian revolution in 1917. you seem to have only one reference point by which autocracy exists
small hint: the bolsheviks and the labor movements of the period were fighting SOMETHING. what was it they were fighting? of course, their ideology recreated the something they were fighting, but you don't seem to be aware of what that preceding something is. your understanding of history is lacking
this is what you get with a weak government and a predatory capitalist system:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labour
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_National_Detective_Agency
for example:
if you don't understand why issues like these, which arise out of a weak state and unfettered capitalism, are just as much a threat to liberty as the only point of reference you seem to understand, then please read up on some basic world history, and learn from it, before fools like you doom us to repeat it
the value of labor in the usa, and elsewhere in the world, is currently being subverted by capitalist interests, who are basically buying off the american government. this is the seed of the next autocracy. without a relevant means to control their own government, labor agitates via extrajudicial means, and we have the makings of the russian revolution or french revolution all over again. we need to keep corporate power in check: it is the source of the next autocracy. NOT communism. communism is totally dead. but you only see the threat of liberty from that one dead ideology, so you don't understand history. for you, history starts in 1917
No, he made a point, and you ignored him or you don't understand it.
Unfettered capitalism has just as much capacity for totalitarianism as communism. Capitalism, left to its own devices, naturally results in a few large players, who, if allowed to, will subvert and take over the government, simply buy it off. Plutocracy. This is why you need a strong government with strong regulatory powers to keep the marketplace fair by preventing the largest players from performing inevitable abuse, and breaking them up if necessary.
Your problem is that you only understand one narrative: the narrative of oppression from communism, where the government IS big business. That is not the only way oppression can form or function. The government can be the mafia, which you understand. But an uncontrolled corporate sphere can also function like a mafia, and it can simply turn a weak government into its puppet. This is what you see forming in the USA. You don't seem to understand that.
You NEED a strong central government, and you need a healthy marketplace of corporations kept in check. If you weaken the government, the power vacuum is simply filled by the largest corporations, who simply buy the government. Do you understand?
But I will assert that, unlike nicotine (highly addictive, but not inebriating: you can still carry on a job/ relationship), or alcohol, or other either mildy inebriating or mildly addictive drugs, the combination of high addictiveness and high inebriation means that some drugs destroy a person's ability to maintain their relationships/ job. Therefore, for cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin, the costs of prohibition may seem high, but the costs of higher levels of destroyed lives due to addiction to substances which render you unable to function are higher yet.
The "war on drugs" is ugly. Addiction to substances which render you unable to function in life is uglier. Some determined people will always be able to get these substances, but by making it difficulty and costly, you save lives by preventing exposure for some in the first place. Once addicted, healthcare based treatment rather than corporal punishment is of course superior, but there are certain people who will remain unsalvageable from the hell of addiction to personal freedom destroying substances. Therefore, it is superior to never let them fall down that rabbit hole in the first place.
Notice I said "personal freedom destroying substances." It always amuses me to hear certain people say they are championing free will when they propose people be able to take certain substances which are more potent destroyers of free will than the most authoritarian government you can imagine. That people should be denied the full range of their free will by a useless biochemical monkey on their back, just because they were young and stupid once, and lived in a society which allowed them easy access to free will destroying substances, is a form of willful ignorant hypocrisy on the subject of maximizing personal liberty.
The "war on drugs" is therefore a misnamed concept. It is simply a maintenance function of a civilization that values free will. No modern society can or will allow unchecked addiction to highly inebriating substances that rot at society and destroy human dignity, and, as I said before, personal free will.
If you don't understand how drug addiction is more an enemy of the concept of personal freedom than any totalitarian government you can imagine (unless of course, that authoritarian government forced people to take highly addictive substances as a form of control) then you simply don't even understand the subject matter you are commenting on. To have a pointless biochemical interrupt switch injected into your mind ("get high... get high... get high...") for the rest of your life (your willpower is now absolute, and weakens in times of depression and life setbacks), is, in the world history of mankind, the story of the most destruction of free will ever. More free will destroying, by orders of magnitude, by every government that ever existed added together. Understand that about drugs, or understand nothing.
Strange.
I've read comment threads where name droppping Stephen Colbert makes you look like a genius compared to everyone else posting, and here we have a context where name dropping Stephen Colbert makes you look like an idiot.
you are making me so angry for opposing my ignorant ideology that i am forced to rant in reply to you using this microprocesser based computer which will transmit the information over fiber optics which will appear on your lcd screen. god gave us those things, you evil sorcerer
i'm not allowed to fuss over stupidity?
so you agreed with my message, you just have to mod me down because the messenger is ugly. i guess i'll never be a politician, people prefer placid lies over ugly truths
sorry for being ugly. and right
it can never do wrong. forever and ever. the slashdot bias has been cast. everything it does that is questionable must be rationalized away. it's not like google's actions should be evaluated impartially on these forums, right?
(now comes the posts defending google against all claims of impropriety. no! not our darling google!)
of some 60 year old clueless investors with money to burn but not much web savvy, some 30 year old wall street sharks eager to pump a price and cash in on their cluelessness, and a bunch of 20 year olds rolling their eyes and going to pick up their cheap cupcakes?
because the story can't possibly be "promising tech company not so promising". so nobody learned anything from the dotcom crash 10 years ago? is it 2001 or 2011?
this story arc is completely and utterly predictable. clearly i'm not some wall street genius: i'm certain most people posting on this site saw this whole story arc coming too
so why the bleep is it still happening?!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Schumann#Carnaval
how far away is this detectable? this may be how you find other earth-like blue orbs
until of course, they find the liquid ammonia planet that schumann resonates like nobody's business, populated by little mr. cleans and scrubbing bubbles i suppose
some people trust too much. some people trust too little. how much you trust a government is often more a function of your own psychology than anything the government did, simply because you think you can judge the function of a government, any government, like you judge a ham sandwich
the simple point is that the us govt is a democracy, meaning it has a function whereby accountability flows back to the people. with such a function, the us govt is perfectly trustworthy, however hysterical YOU are
because, in the end, all govts screw up and make mistakes. just look at japan and their nuclear debacle. ACCOUNTABILITY is how trustworthiness is ultimately judged, and as long as the usa is the (imperfect) democracy it is, it is as trustworthy as such an entity can possibly be
right. so repair the institution that is suppose to represent your interests: remove corporate influence from government
except some morons want to weaken the institution that is their only possible chance to represent a power counterweight to corporate interests, thereby impoverishing themselves more and removing any chance they have at having their interests and rights represented and protected
because the real enemy is poor people freeloading, you see. not multibillion dollar multinationals freeloading. right?
it's fucking incredible how fucking clueless and easily propagandized some fools can be
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/corporate-profit_b_1117741.html
you forgot to mention the part where the elected representatives spend all their time jockeying for coalition government positioning, and sublimating and abandoning all of their self-stated principles to do so
not to get you wrong, there are plenty of positives to more than two parties. but also still plenty of downsides. there are also positives to the two party system. the point is, contrasting european and american political systems shows positives and negatives to both, not simply only positives to the european system
to hear people talk about terrorists as if their actions are always perfectly reasonable
if their actions were always perfectly reasonable, the surprise killing of civilians wouldn't be on their todo lists
don't assume the motives and thought processes of people to whom mass murder makes sense is plausible and predictable
assume they'll do rash, unreasonable, and stupid things. because they already are