Re:Smoking bans == infringement on property rights
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A business has no rights, full stop. It is not a human. Its actions can and should be arbitrarily restricted by government in the interests of real people.
And yes, pure democracy is the tyranny of the majority. But as Churchill famously observed, "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried." And as Huxley pointed out, "The survival of democracy depends on the ability of large numbers of people to make realistic choices in the light of adequate information."
In order to help balance the two wolves and a sheep scenario, we have therefore constructed the concept of legal rights, which apply to individuals and override general law. These are supposed to represent those freedoms that we consider everyone should have, and which may be set aside only against the fundamental rights and freedoms of others. The right to life is commonly considered worthy of such status, and in many places, things like freedom of expression, freedom of association, and the right to a private life also qualify.
Smoking, as far as I'm aware, has never been suggested for this status. You do not have a right to smoke. Neither do you have a right to do whatever you like, wherever you like, whenever you like, regardless of the adverse consequences for others. In the absence of these things, any claim by smokers that their "rights" are being trampled on is complete nonsense.
Re:Smoking bans: reducing freedom, or increasing i
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So: If you are an American, then you should be ashamed of yourself for supporting the state-mandated erosion of others' rights in favor of your own.
Most useful law-making is an exercise in balancing conflicting "rights". As I observed in my original post to this discussion, such things are rarely black and white. And inevitably, some rights are viewed as more important when such conflicts arise.
Do not advance the misconception that even as adults, we require a babysitter because we are too immature to work out equitable solutions to our problems on our own.
What misconception? Businesses have always needed regulating to ensure that they act in the public interest when profit-making would dictate otherwise.
Given the health and social implications of allowing smoking in public, some businesses clearly do require a babysitter who can teach them how to behave with respect for others. They are demonstrably not capable of working out a solution on their own; I have elaborated on the economic reasons why a small number of non-smoking bars in my city do very well but most businesses have not gone that way elsewhere in this discussion.
As for your personal freedom to smoke, I just don't see how you can complain without being hypocritical. Your entire argument is that it is unfair for others to restrict your freedom, yet you have been doing exactly the same thing, in all but name, to others for years, and moreover the damage to public health caused by your approach is demonstrably greater and more people have their freedom restricted by it. One could apply your argument just as well to say that we should allow violence in public places, or indeed repeal any law that restricts the freedom of a few in the interests of greater benefits for many.
And what if the people supported slavery, should it be allowed? Afterall that's what democracy is isn't it?
Straw man. As someone whose point of view opposes mine has already pointed out in this discussion, not everything is a right. Slavery contradicts fundamental freedoms. Banning smoking where it might adversely affect others does not.
Ah but businesses do have rights, so says some Supreme Court rulings.
Mercifully, the US is the only jurisdiction (as far as I know, at least) where the law is broken in this way. Such a situation demonstrates such a serious failure to understand what human rights are and why they are important that if the Supreme Court could honestly reach such a decision, then I suggest you need a new constitutional amendment to reverse it.
I disagree with this but a person should have the right to allow smoking on property they own, even if it's a business.
And this, fundamentally, is where we disagree. What you do as a private individual on your own private property is your business, and I agree that governments should be heavily against interfering in such matters. But when you open a business to the public, the rules change. In the catering trade, you are required to meet basic food hygiene standards, for example. You have certain health and safety obligations, certain concessions you must make to those with disabilities, restrictions on misleading advertising, and so on. These things are the price of doing business in a society that has decided the interests of the people outweight the interests of profit-makers. I fail to see why this law is any different in principle to the others, or any less justified.
My freedom trumps mob rule. And that includes allowing smoking in a business I own.
As a business owner, you have no legal rights and freedoms in most places. Get over it.
Ah, but it's to safegard everyone's health? In that case we should ban vehicles as they are a serious danger to not just people's health but their lives as well.
Another straw man. The cost to society of banning smoking is a little inconvenience to a minority of people, who will get over it, while the benefit is a much healthier society. The cost to society of banning road transport would be staggering, and not just in financial terms. The cases aren't even remotely comparable.
Re:Smoking bans: reducing freedom, or increasing i
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How come you can do somethings in your home that cause harm to some people and yet a restaurant owner cannot do what he pleases on his property?
For the same reason that you can (according to your post) kill someone entering your property, but not elsewhere: one is private, the other public.
uh... insurance is designed to cover that sort of stuff in case you didn't know.
Sure, that's great in theory, but in practice, does every single citizen of insurance-based cultures like the US (a) understand the insurance system and (b) pay into it regularly, even in times of financial hardship, to maintain their cover?
Perhaps I've misunderstood -- I don't live in the US -- but there seem to have been rather a lot of news stories in recent months along the lines of "3 million people not covered for this basic medical treatment" and the like.
Maybe you can explain something else to me as well: who pays for the medical care of the very poor, who literally can't afford the insurance premium?
Re:Smoking bans: reducing freedom, or increasing i
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I'm not sure you understand either my argument or my sig.
A smoking ban that is supported by the people, even at the expense of business, is exactly what state regulation of business should do. Businesses do not have individual rights, including the right to profit at the expense of citizens' health. The problem is when the powers of the state start trampling on individual rights, which is a whole different game.
As for places that ban smoking, there are a couple in my city, and they are generally very popular. The problem is that there is a vicious circle where any of the big businesses who moves first would lose a lot of money temporarily, and none of them is willing to bite the bullet and do it. This way they are forced to do what the majority of the public wants them to do anyway, something which is probably in their long-term financial interests anyway, and without any one business taking a big financial hit. It's probably a win for everyone, except the selfish people who think their smoking is more important than everyone else's health.
Re:Smoking bans: reducing freedom, or increasing i
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You think smoke stays locally over one table in a bar?
Which is fine, except that the average person probably can't afford to pay the real cost of healthcare for a serious condition at short notice when they'd need to. Since that reduces your options to (a) compelling everyone to contribute on an ongoing basis, or (b) turning non-rich people away in their time of need. If you're going to compel them to contribute, you can either have everyone take out private insurance (where there are commercial entities taking profit off the top) or do it on the basis of taxation with a central health service that suffers under bad management but gets good economy of scale if well-run.
Re:Smoking bans: reducing freedom, or increasing i
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Does your non-smoking, asthma-suffering friend have a right to go to any bar and find an environment that suits her?
According to the majority of the people in my country, yes, and the law now reflects that.
I really don't see a problem with this. My right not to be killed trumps your freedom to murder me with a broken glass at my table. My right not to be hurt trumps your freedom to punch me in the face in the queue. And now, my right not suffer health problems trumps your freedom to smoke next to me.
Re:Smoking bans: reducing freedom, or increasing i
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Fortunately, we don't all have to live in your America, and there is a world outside.
In any case, you're basically arguing that if people care enough, they will take action to change things. And they have. The majority of people don't want to suffer the smoking of an inconsiderate few, and the elected government have (for once) respected the will of the people and banned it.
This is far more effective than your free market approach, when the marketplace is dominated by a few established players who (for the most part) aren't willing to risk being the first to upset a highly profitable status quo. I'm not usually one to advocate government intervention, but in cases where an entire industry is going the wrong way, that's what government regulation is for.
Re:Smoking bans: reducing freedom, or increasing i
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Since the topic at hand is to eliminate harmful practices, is it not relevant to point out that alcohol related deaths and injuries are more proven than passive smoke?
Perhaps. I wouldn't have modded you off-topic, but if we're talking about smoking here, I don't see that confusing the issue with the independent question of whether drinking should also be banned is particularly constructive. I picked bars as a convenient example, but from 1 July 2007 the UK law is changing for all enclosed public places, regardless of whether they supply alcohol. My arguments apply equally to libraries or shops.
Re:Smoking bans: reducing freedom, or increasing i
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You took away their ability to exercise a legal habit so that some other group could go to bars and feel comfortable - people don't have the right to be comfortable.
Which is exactly what smokers have been doing to non-smokers for years. The only differences are that (a) passive smoking doesn't just make non-smokers uncomfortable, it actually damages their health, and (b) there are a hell of a lot more people who don't want smoking venues than do. By your own argument, banning smoking is exactly what we should do.
Fair point, but it's not how many hits you get that matters, it's what those hits say. And in this case, what they say is mostly informed, scientifically-conducted research that supports my position.:-)
Re:Smoking bans: reducing freedom, or increasing i
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Actually, you'd be wrong in your assumptions. However, one anecdote from me wouldn't really contribute much to the debate either way when so much formal and large-scale research is already available.
You do inadvertently make a useful point however. It can be difficult to identify specific causes of death in individual cases at the best of times, so most established hypotheses about the damage from smoking are based on widespread correlation between smokers and certain conditions. Since almost everyone has been a passive smoker at some point in their lives, to widely varying degrees, it's not particularly helpful to advance the equivalent hypotheses for the general population, since this would be almost impossible to test experimentally. Most of the passive smoking research is aimed at subgroups of the population: bar workers, children of smoking parents, and other well-defined categories. For these people, some of the results are clear; see the research I cited elsewhere in this discussion.
In any case, your mention of alcohol is just a straw man. I haven't expressed any views on the relative danger of alcohol and smoking, nor am I going to waste time defending hypotheticals out of context.
OK, I'll play. Where's the link on badscience.net that shows that passive smoking isn't really damaging at all, and it's all just a popular myth?
Failing that, how about one of the other well-respected urban legends pages, maybe snopes.com?
You know, it's ironic that a person who objects to a "scientifically illiterate population" being "so easily lead[sic]" makes a post in which he uses phrases like "as far as I know" and "My hunch is that", yet the one "proper scientific report" mentioned is not cited even though apparently the experiment is "easy enough to do". Please, do elaborate. I'm sure we're all curious, and if it's that easy, we can collectively put this question to rest once and for all.
Re:Smoking bans: reducing freedom, or increasing i
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And what if we don't call them bans? The asthmatic is no more able to go into a bar here now than if there were a legal ban or armed guards on the door. Any "freedom" here is a mere illusion.
If you really think that allowing large groups of people to go to large groups of places they previously couldn't -- even if it wasn't officially called a ban -- reduces their freedom, then I'm afraid you're missing this very important point. Freedoms are only worth anything if you can meaningfully exercise them.
I don't like to do this on open forums, but on this occasion I'm going to make a guess about you: from your perspective, I'd guess that you're not asthmatic, an ex-smoker, the child of chain-smoking parents, a health worker, or anyone else who deals with the very real consequences of smoking to the unlucky non-smokers. The reason I give this list is that I know people who are in each of those categories. Funnily enough, after the recent announcement of a smoking ban in the UK, none of them has expressed the view that non-smokers' freedoms are being restricted by the ban. Quite the contrary, in fact.
I'm yet to be convinced that second-hand smoke harms anybody
Have you even bothered looking at the evidence? Try this factsheet on passive smoking for example -- yours for the price of Googling "second hand smoking evidence" and reading the second hit. (For those who are curious but can't be bothered to follow the link: it's by an anti-smoking lobby group, but cites numerous scientific papers from diverse sources to back up its specific criticisms.) If you don't buy that one, go ahead and follow a few more links from the same Google search. There's no shortage of studies, and no shortage of campaign groups happy to highlight them for you.
In contrast, the only link I found among the first few hits that actually sided (somewhat) with the smoking lobby groups argued that one specific study (which wasn't really a new study, but rather an attempt to combine data from existing research in a new way -- a warning sign of something on dubious scientific/statistical ground anyway) could be interpreted at best to find a level of damage that was only slightly above noise. That same web page then suggests that we should ignore statistics, and that only a rise of 100% or more in the damage observed is significant enough to concern us because... well, because. Not exactly as compelling as "We conducted a formal study, and in households where both parents smoked, there was a >70% increase in childhood respiratory problems", is it? (That's one of the results in the factsheet I mentioned earlier.)
Seriously, this isn't rocket science: the often-devastating effects of smoking to the smoker are well-documented, and at best those around the smoker are still breathing in most of the same stuff after the smoker exhales it, just at a lower concentration (though possibly not much lower, depending on where you are). How can anyone with the slightest shred of understanding of basic science possibly assume that passive smoking is harmless?
Smoking bans: reducing freedom, or increasing it?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
In my country, the majority of people do not smoke. Smoking is known to cause many health problems, and we've long since debunked the myth that passive smoking is harmless. So is banning smoking in a public place -- something that directly prevents harm to the health of the majority, at the expense of some convenience for the minority -- really an infringement of freedom?
Hint #1: Will my non-smoking, asthma-suffering friend who will finally be able to go to a bar in the evening have her freedom restricted?
Hint #2: Will a family member who gave up smoking years ago and no longer has to suffer the smoky atmosphere he wanted to leave behind every time he goes out for a drink have his freedom restricted?
Hint #3: Will the many non-smokers who will now be able to take work in the hospitality trade without risking their own health to do it have their freedom restricted?
There are lots of rights and freedoms, and by default we should defend them all for everyone. But sometimes they come into conflict. Sometimes resolving that conflict is difficult, particularly when it involves an important principle (such as a right to privacy) clashing with a very practical need (such as the right to travel safely, even if it means your fellow passengers have to be searched/background checked/whatever).
But sometimes, the decision is very easy for most people. Should the freedom of movement of a tried and convicted murderer outweigh the right of his neighbours not to be killed, or should we throw him in prison until he's no longer a danger to others? I believe the decision in that case would be near unanimous anywhere.
There are no right answers on these ethical issues, no black and white, always shades of grey. But you're wrong that the argument can be used to ban anything, at least if you mean used effectively. Some things are worth spending money on, even though it means compelling everyone to contribute. If a strong majority really did not agree with this (rather than just whinging about paying taxes, while at the same time being happy to use facilities funded through taxation) then chances are that we would long since have reverted to a completely private, insurance-based, very multi-class society.
For an argument about cost-saving to be effective, there has to be a clear moral case that the consequences are justified. In the case of smokers, as long as they were genuinely aware of the consequences and capable of making a reasoned decision independently, I don't see that there's much moral argument for putting their interests ahead of others who are given no choice about the smoker's actions, yet who suffer in health and potentially financial terms as a consequence.
If you want a more difficult argument with smokers, try the case of an older person, who smoked in their youth before the dangers were fully understood, but who has long since given up and who now gets lung cancer. But for current smokers, it seems to me that banning them from doing so (at least when non-smokers are nearby) can be easily justified in health grounds, and the financial argument is compelling (given that the public money you aren't spending treating smokers can then be spent on helping others who may not have had any choice about their misfortune).
(Footnote: The financial argument here assumes, of course, that the net cost of smoking to the health service is positive. This may or may not be a valid assumption, given that smokers tend to die younger and therefore not need increasing amounts of more expensive treatment in their old age. I've seen good arguments, backed by real statistics, on both sides of this argument. I'm not going to get into it again here, since my point is that the financial argument cannot be used automatically to justify arbitrary bans as the parent claimed, and smoking merely serves as a convenient example for discussion.)
I'm well aware of that, as I believe I indicated in my previous post. That still doesn't make it a smart thing to do.
Windows is simply not designed to the quality standards that should be legally required of critical software on which lives may depend. And it does sometimes break, as the US Navy can tell you (now they've finished towing their crippled warship back to the docks).
To be honest, if you're running the kind of critical applications where people die if things go wrong, and you're running them on Windows, you're already beyond hope. Yes, I'm all too aware that a significant number of places do do this. That doesn't make it any smarter. Windows simply isn't designed for the kind of robustness that such applications require.
On the other hand, you make my point for me when you say "We do in fact have comprehensive test suites, but it took me 8 months to schedule an appointment to get my software tested. Testing took 2 days".
Be careful what you assume. I'm actually a professional software developer, so we pretty much rely on software for everything at the office, both the admin stuff everyone does and, oh, yes, our entire revenue stream. Moreover, we have extensive experience of testing new operating system installations and key components such as compilers, since we develop on a wide variety of platforms.
As for your single application that uses all those different technologies in one go, I question many things, not least the sanity of your software architects unless things are really a lot more independent than you're making out. And if the design is properly modular with only clean interfaces between the different components, I fail to see why you can't set up such a system on a new OS version and run your usual test suites to establish whether or not it's working. You do have proper, comprehensive test suites for that sort of system, right?
Assuming your set-up is remotely sane, I don't see why you'd need two years rather than say one year, or eighteen months, or six months here. What's magic about the two year mark?
Of course, if your system design is as insane as you suggest (which I rather doubt, but I can't read your mind) then you have much bigger problems than upgrading an OS.
Plus, under-resourced? What about opportunity cost? You do realize there may be many projects that are more useful to the company to complete before an update to an OS that doesn't solve any problems they currently have.
If Vista doesn't solve any problems for you, why are you even wasting time testing it?
Testing a new OS in a month may be optimistic for a large organisation, but seriously, if you take two years to evaluate software, you're absurdly under-resourced (or just incompetent). What did you think you were going to learn after the first couple of times you installed it on a trial network and checked that everything you needed was working? Whole businesses come and go in that time frame! Really, either it's worth the time and money to upgrade or it's not, and if you can't make that call within a few weeks, it's probably not (or at least not until a service pack is out that addresses the concerns raised during your trial process).
Because Microsoft has a monopoly on operating systems that gives it a privileged position in other markets, and it's using that monopoly leverage to its advantage in those markets. This is the same principle they were successfully prosecuted over, just with an extra level of indirection.
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A business has no rights, full stop. It is not a human. Its actions can and should be arbitrarily restricted by government in the interests of real people.
And yes, pure democracy is the tyranny of the majority. But as Churchill famously observed, "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried." And as Huxley pointed out, "The survival of democracy depends on the ability of large numbers of people to make realistic choices in the light of adequate information."
In order to help balance the two wolves and a sheep scenario, we have therefore constructed the concept of legal rights, which apply to individuals and override general law. These are supposed to represent those freedoms that we consider everyone should have, and which may be set aside only against the fundamental rights and freedoms of others. The right to life is commonly considered worthy of such status, and in many places, things like freedom of expression, freedom of association, and the right to a private life also qualify.
Smoking, as far as I'm aware, has never been suggested for this status. You do not have a right to smoke. Neither do you have a right to do whatever you like, wherever you like, whenever you like, regardless of the adverse consequences for others. In the absence of these things, any claim by smokers that their "rights" are being trampled on is complete nonsense.
Most useful law-making is an exercise in balancing conflicting "rights". As I observed in my original post to this discussion, such things are rarely black and white. And inevitably, some rights are viewed as more important when such conflicts arise.
What misconception? Businesses have always needed regulating to ensure that they act in the public interest when profit-making would dictate otherwise.
Given the health and social implications of allowing smoking in public, some businesses clearly do require a babysitter who can teach them how to behave with respect for others. They are demonstrably not capable of working out a solution on their own; I have elaborated on the economic reasons why a small number of non-smoking bars in my city do very well but most businesses have not gone that way elsewhere in this discussion.
As for your personal freedom to smoke, I just don't see how you can complain without being hypocritical. Your entire argument is that it is unfair for others to restrict your freedom, yet you have been doing exactly the same thing, in all but name, to others for years, and moreover the damage to public health caused by your approach is demonstrably greater and more people have their freedom restricted by it. One could apply your argument just as well to say that we should allow violence in public places, or indeed repeal any law that restricts the freedom of a few in the interests of greater benefits for many.
Straw man. As someone whose point of view opposes mine has already pointed out in this discussion, not everything is a right. Slavery contradicts fundamental freedoms. Banning smoking where it might adversely affect others does not.
Mercifully, the US is the only jurisdiction (as far as I know, at least) where the law is broken in this way. Such a situation demonstrates such a serious failure to understand what human rights are and why they are important that if the Supreme Court could honestly reach such a decision, then I suggest you need a new constitutional amendment to reverse it.
And this, fundamentally, is where we disagree. What you do as a private individual on your own private property is your business, and I agree that governments should be heavily against interfering in such matters. But when you open a business to the public, the rules change. In the catering trade, you are required to meet basic food hygiene standards, for example. You have certain health and safety obligations, certain concessions you must make to those with disabilities, restrictions on misleading advertising, and so on. These things are the price of doing business in a society that has decided the interests of the people outweight the interests of profit-makers. I fail to see why this law is any different in principle to the others, or any less justified.
As a business owner, you have no legal rights and freedoms in most places. Get over it.
Another straw man. The cost to society of banning smoking is a little inconvenience to a minority of people, who will get over it, while the benefit is a much healthier society. The cost to society of banning road transport would be staggering, and not just in financial terms. The cases aren't even remotely comparable.
For the same reason that you can (according to your post) kill someone entering your property, but not elsewhere: one is private, the other public.
Sure, that's great in theory, but in practice, does every single citizen of insurance-based cultures like the US (a) understand the insurance system and (b) pay into it regularly, even in times of financial hardship, to maintain their cover?
Perhaps I've misunderstood -- I don't live in the US -- but there seem to have been rather a lot of news stories in recent months along the lines of "3 million people not covered for this basic medical treatment" and the like.
Maybe you can explain something else to me as well: who pays for the medical care of the very poor, who literally can't afford the insurance premium?
I'm not sure you understand either my argument or my sig.
A smoking ban that is supported by the people, even at the expense of business, is exactly what state regulation of business should do. Businesses do not have individual rights, including the right to profit at the expense of citizens' health. The problem is when the powers of the state start trampling on individual rights, which is a whole different game.
As for places that ban smoking, there are a couple in my city, and they are generally very popular. The problem is that there is a vicious circle where any of the big businesses who moves first would lose a lot of money temporarily, and none of them is willing to bite the bullet and do it. This way they are forced to do what the majority of the public wants them to do anyway, something which is probably in their long-term financial interests anyway, and without any one business taking a big financial hit. It's probably a win for everyone, except the selfish people who think their smoking is more important than everyone else's health.
You think smoke stays locally over one table in a bar?
Which is fine, except that the average person probably can't afford to pay the real cost of healthcare for a serious condition at short notice when they'd need to. Since that reduces your options to (a) compelling everyone to contribute on an ongoing basis, or (b) turning non-rich people away in their time of need. If you're going to compel them to contribute, you can either have everyone take out private insurance (where there are commercial entities taking profit off the top) or do it on the basis of taxation with a central health service that suffers under bad management but gets good economy of scale if well-run.
According to the majority of the people in my country, yes, and the law now reflects that.
I really don't see a problem with this. My right not to be killed trumps your freedom to murder me with a broken glass at my table. My right not to be hurt trumps your freedom to punch me in the face in the queue. And now, my right not suffer health problems trumps your freedom to smoke next to me.
Fortunately, we don't all have to live in your America, and there is a world outside.
In any case, you're basically arguing that if people care enough, they will take action to change things. And they have. The majority of people don't want to suffer the smoking of an inconsiderate few, and the elected government have (for once) respected the will of the people and banned it.
This is far more effective than your free market approach, when the marketplace is dominated by a few established players who (for the most part) aren't willing to risk being the first to upset a highly profitable status quo. I'm not usually one to advocate government intervention, but in cases where an entire industry is going the wrong way, that's what government regulation is for.
Perhaps. I wouldn't have modded you off-topic, but if we're talking about smoking here, I don't see that confusing the issue with the independent question of whether drinking should also be banned is particularly constructive. I picked bars as a convenient example, but from 1 July 2007 the UK law is changing for all enclosed public places, regardless of whether they supply alcohol. My arguments apply equally to libraries or shops.
Which is exactly what smokers have been doing to non-smokers for years. The only differences are that (a) passive smoking doesn't just make non-smokers uncomfortable, it actually damages their health, and (b) there are a hell of a lot more people who don't want smoking venues than do. By your own argument, banning smoking is exactly what we should do.
Fair point, but it's not how many hits you get that matters, it's what those hits say. And in this case, what they say is mostly informed, scientifically-conducted research that supports my position. :-)
Actually, you'd be wrong in your assumptions. However, one anecdote from me wouldn't really contribute much to the debate either way when so much formal and large-scale research is already available.
You do inadvertently make a useful point however. It can be difficult to identify specific causes of death in individual cases at the best of times, so most established hypotheses about the damage from smoking are based on widespread correlation between smokers and certain conditions. Since almost everyone has been a passive smoker at some point in their lives, to widely varying degrees, it's not particularly helpful to advance the equivalent hypotheses for the general population, since this would be almost impossible to test experimentally. Most of the passive smoking research is aimed at subgroups of the population: bar workers, children of smoking parents, and other well-defined categories. For these people, some of the results are clear; see the research I cited elsewhere in this discussion.
In any case, your mention of alcohol is just a straw man. I haven't expressed any views on the relative danger of alcohol and smoking, nor am I going to waste time defending hypotheticals out of context.
OK, I'll play. Where's the link on badscience.net that shows that passive smoking isn't really damaging at all, and it's all just a popular myth?
Failing that, how about one of the other well-respected urban legends pages, maybe snopes.com?
You know, it's ironic that a person who objects to a "scientifically illiterate population" being "so easily lead[sic]" makes a post in which he uses phrases like "as far as I know" and "My hunch is that", yet the one "proper scientific report" mentioned is not cited even though apparently the experiment is "easy enough to do". Please, do elaborate. I'm sure we're all curious, and if it's that easy, we can collectively put this question to rest once and for all.
And what if we don't call them bans? The asthmatic is no more able to go into a bar here now than if there were a legal ban or armed guards on the door. Any "freedom" here is a mere illusion.
If you really think that allowing large groups of people to go to large groups of places they previously couldn't -- even if it wasn't officially called a ban -- reduces their freedom, then I'm afraid you're missing this very important point. Freedoms are only worth anything if you can meaningfully exercise them.
I don't like to do this on open forums, but on this occasion I'm going to make a guess about you: from your perspective, I'd guess that you're not asthmatic, an ex-smoker, the child of chain-smoking parents, a health worker, or anyone else who deals with the very real consequences of smoking to the unlucky non-smokers. The reason I give this list is that I know people who are in each of those categories. Funnily enough, after the recent announcement of a smoking ban in the UK, none of them has expressed the view that non-smokers' freedoms are being restricted by the ban. Quite the contrary, in fact.
Have you even bothered looking at the evidence? Try this factsheet on passive smoking for example -- yours for the price of Googling "second hand smoking evidence" and reading the second hit. (For those who are curious but can't be bothered to follow the link: it's by an anti-smoking lobby group, but cites numerous scientific papers from diverse sources to back up its specific criticisms.) If you don't buy that one, go ahead and follow a few more links from the same Google search. There's no shortage of studies, and no shortage of campaign groups happy to highlight them for you.
In contrast, the only link I found among the first few hits that actually sided (somewhat) with the smoking lobby groups argued that one specific study (which wasn't really a new study, but rather an attempt to combine data from existing research in a new way -- a warning sign of something on dubious scientific/statistical ground anyway) could be interpreted at best to find a level of damage that was only slightly above noise. That same web page then suggests that we should ignore statistics, and that only a rise of 100% or more in the damage observed is significant enough to concern us because... well, because. Not exactly as compelling as "We conducted a formal study, and in households where both parents smoked, there was a >70% increase in childhood respiratory problems", is it? (That's one of the results in the factsheet I mentioned earlier.)
Seriously, this isn't rocket science: the often-devastating effects of smoking to the smoker are well-documented, and at best those around the smoker are still breathing in most of the same stuff after the smoker exhales it, just at a lower concentration (though possibly not much lower, depending on where you are). How can anyone with the slightest shred of understanding of basic science possibly assume that passive smoking is harmless?
In my country, the majority of people do not smoke. Smoking is known to cause many health problems, and we've long since debunked the myth that passive smoking is harmless. So is banning smoking in a public place -- something that directly prevents harm to the health of the majority, at the expense of some convenience for the minority -- really an infringement of freedom?
Hint #1: Will my non-smoking, asthma-suffering friend who will finally be able to go to a bar in the evening have her freedom restricted?
Hint #2: Will a family member who gave up smoking years ago and no longer has to suffer the smoky atmosphere he wanted to leave behind every time he goes out for a drink have his freedom restricted?
Hint #3: Will the many non-smokers who will now be able to take work in the hospitality trade without risking their own health to do it have their freedom restricted?
There are lots of rights and freedoms, and by default we should defend them all for everyone. But sometimes they come into conflict. Sometimes resolving that conflict is difficult, particularly when it involves an important principle (such as a right to privacy) clashing with a very practical need (such as the right to travel safely, even if it means your fellow passengers have to be searched/background checked/whatever).
But sometimes, the decision is very easy for most people. Should the freedom of movement of a tried and convicted murderer outweigh the right of his neighbours not to be killed, or should we throw him in prison until he's no longer a danger to others? I believe the decision in that case would be near unanimous anywhere.
There are no right answers on these ethical issues, no black and white, always shades of grey. But you're wrong that the argument can be used to ban anything, at least if you mean used effectively. Some things are worth spending money on, even though it means compelling everyone to contribute. If a strong majority really did not agree with this (rather than just whinging about paying taxes, while at the same time being happy to use facilities funded through taxation) then chances are that we would long since have reverted to a completely private, insurance-based, very multi-class society.
For an argument about cost-saving to be effective, there has to be a clear moral case that the consequences are justified. In the case of smokers, as long as they were genuinely aware of the consequences and capable of making a reasoned decision independently, I don't see that there's much moral argument for putting their interests ahead of others who are given no choice about the smoker's actions, yet who suffer in health and potentially financial terms as a consequence.
If you want a more difficult argument with smokers, try the case of an older person, who smoked in their youth before the dangers were fully understood, but who has long since given up and who now gets lung cancer. But for current smokers, it seems to me that banning them from doing so (at least when non-smokers are nearby) can be easily justified in health grounds, and the financial argument is compelling (given that the public money you aren't spending treating smokers can then be spent on helping others who may not have had any choice about their misfortune).
(Footnote: The financial argument here assumes, of course, that the net cost of smoking to the health service is positive. This may or may not be a valid assumption, given that smokers tend to die younger and therefore not need increasing amounts of more expensive treatment in their old age. I've seen good arguments, backed by real statistics, on both sides of this argument. I'm not going to get into it again here, since my point is that the financial argument cannot be used automatically to justify arbitrary bans as the parent claimed, and smoking merely serves as a convenient example for discussion.)
Some of us would argue that this is not a problem, but a feature.
I'm well aware of that, as I believe I indicated in my previous post. That still doesn't make it a smart thing to do.
Windows is simply not designed to the quality standards that should be legally required of critical software on which lives may depend. And it does sometimes break, as the US Navy can tell you (now they've finished towing their crippled warship back to the docks).
To be honest, if you're running the kind of critical applications where people die if things go wrong, and you're running them on Windows, you're already beyond hope. Yes, I'm all too aware that a significant number of places do do this. That doesn't make it any smarter. Windows simply isn't designed for the kind of robustness that such applications require.
On the other hand, you make my point for me when you say "We do in fact have comprehensive test suites, but it took me 8 months to schedule an appointment to get my software tested. Testing took 2 days".
Be careful what you assume. I'm actually a professional software developer, so we pretty much rely on software for everything at the office, both the admin stuff everyone does and, oh, yes, our entire revenue stream. Moreover, we have extensive experience of testing new operating system installations and key components such as compilers, since we develop on a wide variety of platforms.
As for your single application that uses all those different technologies in one go, I question many things, not least the sanity of your software architects unless things are really a lot more independent than you're making out. And if the design is properly modular with only clean interfaces between the different components, I fail to see why you can't set up such a system on a new OS version and run your usual test suites to establish whether or not it's working. You do have proper, comprehensive test suites for that sort of system, right?
Assuming your set-up is remotely sane, I don't see why you'd need two years rather than say one year, or eighteen months, or six months here. What's magic about the two year mark?
Of course, if your system design is as insane as you suggest (which I rather doubt, but I can't read your mind) then you have much bigger problems than upgrading an OS.
If Vista doesn't solve any problems for you, why are you even wasting time testing it?
Testing a new OS in a month may be optimistic for a large organisation, but seriously, if you take two years to evaluate software, you're absurdly under-resourced (or just incompetent). What did you think you were going to learn after the first couple of times you installed it on a trial network and checked that everything you needed was working? Whole businesses come and go in that time frame! Really, either it's worth the time and money to upgrade or it's not, and if you can't make that call within a few weeks, it's probably not (or at least not until a service pack is out that addresses the concerns raised during your trial process).
Because Microsoft has a monopoly on operating systems that gives it a privileged position in other markets, and it's using that monopoly leverage to its advantage in those markets. This is the same principle they were successfully prosecuted over, just with an extra level of indirection.