- "War on drugs" is very very profitable. - "War on drugs" gets every parent's vote. - Politicians are not interested in anything that will make them less electable, especially by moms and old ladies. - Decades-long framing of the idea of illegal drug use as criminal and bad. - Decades-long framing of the idea that if a politician changes their mind, they are/were stupid or unreliable, contrary to the fact that changing one's mind is usually a sign of evolving worldview. Politicians are terrified of "flip-flopping." - Politicians do not serve the people who elected them but money. - Often people who use mind altering substances have more open minds. Open minds see through the BS of political systems and oppression. It is very convenient to have a quick, easy way of condemning and removing open minds from the fabric of society and the Holy Inquisition is out of fashion.
I am sure you can add more.
Pro-choice and anti-choice battle is a great example of how politics works. We are given an issue that polarizes and divides us and focuses our energy on fighting each other and not the oppressive system that enslaves us. If you look at that issue you'll see that the reality is we can not stop women from attempting abortion in one way or another. It is not possible. This is not the real issue. A culture where money is more important than human beings, lack of support for and negative attitude towards single parents, the necessity to work endless hours and live disconnected from one's children, the monetization of human health and life, are all major contributers to the issue. Dealing with these would change the numbers but would require many, many of us to change the way we think and act, and namely to start actually caring for each other.
We have a few generations conditioned and brainwashed into truly believing that drugs and not the drug policy ruin lives. They believe that ruining the lives of users is actually "good for society"... in a doublespeak-y kind of way. Not logical, but deeply ingrained in the culture, a "common sense belief."
It will take time for these generations to naturally fall off governing everyone's lives and choices and hopefully be replaced by less corrupted, more educated and more aware individuals.
Given that "corrupt politician" is a redundant expression, I don't see this happening within our lifetimes. Corruption in politics is like a traffic wave, a self-perpetuating phenomenon.
1. If you use illegal drugs, you are a criminal. 2. Profit
There's no 3.
Governments have a pretty binary approach to the issue. If they can collect fines they'll do so. If it's more profitable to build more jails and put 10-30% of the population there, providing slave labor, they'll do it. Remove a law that criminalizes almost everyone and brings untold profits... why?
I am with you on "debt to society." You mentioned an agreement, however, and agreement presents both parties with an option to agree or not.
Laws are not an agreement as there's not a way to not agree. We are under the rule of many laws, most of which we are not aware of. Each of us can be busted for something, anytime.
Whatever the intentions behind such complex legislation are, the result is we are all criminals, and therefore easily eliminated.
people throw rocks through his windows or spray paint stuff like "RAPIST" on the front of his house
I wonder if a disclosure sign on his lawn would help. Something like "When I was 18, I had a girlfriend who was 16. Her parents caught us and put me in jail. I am now marked as a sex offender for life. " and show the 18 and 16 y.o. photos of both, together.
I hope with every fiber of my existence that my daughter is never harmed by some depraved rapist. However, with that same energy I also hope that the existing laws will be reformed dramatically (and soon) so that my son will never be labeled an outcast because he drank too much and peed on a tree.
Exactly. Harsh laws don't prevent rape of children, they punish it. A child being aware of her surroundings, of the possibility that someone who may seem friendly is actually not, of ways to act in such situations, may be preventive.
And, another issue is that the current system disperses punishment and not rehabilitation. "Real" sex offenders are more often than not victims of sex crime themselves. Punishment does not address these issues in any way.
It is insane to believe that inflicting pain, discomfort and torture will make someone better. It's a tactic introduced by child conditioning / broken parenting, aiming to control children with quick, efficient methods.
It applies to people who streak, people who are caught skinny-dipping, people who are caught having sex in public (including in their car), and even people who happened to urinate behind a tree in some places. Yet they have the same social stigma & registration entries in the database as people who raped children.
I guess Puritans see skinny dipping and child rape as equally horrific. I grew up in Europe (not England) and I can tell you skinny dipping is OK.
Issue is not with the name, bro. The crappy image is a reflection of the crappyness of the company's stores. You may call it Palace of Shacky Delights and the stores will still be useless. After leaving a niche business for a mainstream cheapo electronics store niche, RS has to compete with best buys of the worlds. Lost cause. What made RS was catering to enthusiasts. Going mainstream killed that, at least in my neighborhood RS which no longer carries specialty items, just high-margin crappy consumer electronics.
Where will we go to buy soldering irons and those RCA to headphone jack adapters now?
Funny that you asked that. Last time I went to RS to buy RCA to headphone cable for my car stereo/ipod connection, they didn'have any. Because they didn't carry them anymore.
The store had some crappy tvs, cell phones, overpriced memory cards and cheaply made electronic chochki. No soldering irons or anything useful to makers.
With all due respect for his dynamic writing etc., I have to call bullshit on Joel's article. He uses ad hominem to blame the users for how they feel when faced with bloatware and does not address the sloppy coding that creates bloatware.
The cost of hard disks is low but cost is not the only thing that contributes to the quality of life of a user. If Word takes ages to start on last year's top of the line pc, and takes it's time responding to input, then something's wrong. Knowing how software grows and knowing that word code has been "maintained" for over 10 years, I imagine that if rewritten from scratch, that software would end up much leaner and faster.
The main reason to use word is that everyone else is using it already. Oh, and its overcomplicated, obsolete-by-design "feature" of file format incompatibility.
And an anecdote about it: During a computer science course one of the tutors told us about his visit to the MS Word engineering team. There he saw a white board with bug numbers. The white board was titled "Not fixable."
MS has owned the market for this for a while, controlling it's market share via FUD and broken file formats, ultimately installing MS tax for business decision makers that are too scared to lose compatibility with their old documents and interoperability with other business.
It's working.
Yes, we don't really need it, but we can't kick the habit either.
True. People with money are very scared to lose what they think they have. So no risks.
Risk takers either have little to lose or have a strong vision and are seemingly not ruled by the money. So corporation find such people and give them an outlet. Like John Stewart for example.
Advertising money goes into exposing the public to a specific message. In this case, our attention, is the product. Media corporations have monetized on the attention of the public by buying the laws that allow them to reach us via the different mediums, including the physical space of our own living environments.
And, similarly, the banking and money-printing/regulation industry has it's hooks into every transaction. Movement of money costs so much it's turning generations into slaves, working and working and working in order to increase the numbers into someone's account. Money is virtual and can grow infinitely. We are busy converting our lives and our planet into virtual numbers.
"Monetizing" everything, growing the numbers in the accounts, depleting our relationships, our environment, our lives.
It's a big brush we're painting with. Some record labels whose vision is to truly support musicians and make a reasonable profit by offering that support, may be an instrument in the co-creation of art that they then turn into product. The big labels, however, have a big racket going on. Of course their profit will be going down. They started by being the only game in town and by setting the prices without competition.
We, the public, the ones that connect to and enjoy the art created by our communities, are sick and tired of having to work extra hard in order to feed the infinite greed of this monster of a middle men. We want our appreciation to go to the creators, not the ones that resell their creation. The resellers are just that, merchants, service providers.
In the example of music, merchants are asking for a very high price without offering the corresponding value, with the argument that if prices are going down compared to the time when the public had no other options, they are losing profit.
The way I see it all that time they were stealing from the artists and the musicians.
Show us you have the courage of your convictions, kill yourself. Oh, that's right, it's the others who are the too many, you'd be one of the chosen ones, correct?
Excellent argument. Logic is intact and no ad hominem.
If governments were mandated to live under their own rulership, laws would be different. It would be great if a trial run would be facilitated with the lawmakers' families being observed and recorded.
Oppression does not diminish violence nor crime. Prisons are a great example of that.
Oh, and also the irony of this being a book describing a society where history is constantly being rewritten to fit the current interests of the ruling party... and involving a misuse of technology that will allow corporations to do it wirelessly and cheaply. Just wonderful.
Just think how easy will it be when all textbooks and newspapers are presented on similar devices.
Slashdot Mirror
Waging a war on your customers is not the best way to retain them.
Advertising is the mainstream way to get paid for content but may not be the only way.
Creativity thrives in a restricted environment.
The internet as a medium brings unprecedented flexibility to the marketplace.
Attention + time = value, both from content creators' and content consumers' perspective.
Someone, somewhere, holds the answer in their imagination.
Stating the obvious reasons for criminalization.
- "War on drugs" is very very profitable.
- "War on drugs" gets every parent's vote.
- Politicians are not interested in anything that will make them less electable, especially by moms and old ladies.
- Decades-long framing of the idea of illegal drug use as criminal and bad.
- Decades-long framing of the idea that if a politician changes their mind, they are/were stupid or unreliable, contrary to the fact that changing one's mind is usually a sign of evolving worldview. Politicians are terrified of "flip-flopping."
- Politicians do not serve the people who elected them but money.
- Often people who use mind altering substances have more open minds. Open minds see through the BS of political systems and oppression. It is very convenient to have a quick, easy way of condemning and removing open minds from the fabric of society and the Holy Inquisition is out of fashion.
I am sure you can add more.
Pro-choice and anti-choice battle is a great example of how politics works. We are given an issue that polarizes and divides us and focuses our energy on fighting each other and not the oppressive system that enslaves us. If you look at that issue you'll see that the reality is we can not stop women from attempting abortion in one way or another. It is not possible. This is not the real issue. A culture where money is more important than human beings, lack of support for and negative attitude towards single parents, the necessity to work endless hours and live disconnected from one's children, the monetization of human health and life, are all major contributers to the issue. Dealing with these would change the numbers but would require many, many of us to change the way we think and act, and namely to start actually caring for each other.
Given the complexity and spread of the current legislation, everyone one of us commits a crime, at least a couple a times a week.
I guess we should focus on building more jails?
http://www.dumblaws.com/
We have a few generations conditioned and brainwashed into truly believing that drugs and not the drug policy ruin lives. They believe that ruining the lives of users is actually "good for society"... in a doublespeak-y kind of way. Not logical, but deeply ingrained in the culture, a "common sense belief."
It will take time for these generations to naturally fall off governing everyone's lives and choices and hopefully be replaced by less corrupted, more educated and more aware individuals.
Given that "corrupt politician" is a redundant expression, I don't see this happening within our lifetimes. Corruption in politics is like a traffic wave, a self-perpetuating phenomenon.
1. If you use illegal drugs, you are a criminal.
2. Profit
There's no 3.
Governments have a pretty binary approach to the issue. If they can collect fines they'll do so. If it's more profitable to build more jails and put 10-30% of the population there, providing slave labor, they'll do it. Remove a law that criminalizes almost everyone and brings untold profits... why?
Sorry for what happened to you. You know something most of us can only imagine. This could be a gift for many.
I am with you on "debt to society." You mentioned an agreement, however, and agreement presents both parties with an option to agree or not.
Laws are not an agreement as there's not a way to not agree. We are under the rule of many laws, most of which we are not aware of. Each of us can be busted for something, anytime.
Whatever the intentions behind such complex legislation are, the result is we are all criminals, and therefore easily eliminated.
people throw rocks through his windows or spray paint stuff like "RAPIST" on the front of his house
I wonder if a disclosure sign on his lawn would help. Something like "When I was 18, I had a girlfriend who was 16. Her parents caught us and put me in jail. I am now marked as a sex offender for life. " and show the 18 and 16 y.o. photos of both, together.
I hope with every fiber of my existence that my daughter is never harmed by some depraved rapist. However, with that same energy I also hope that the existing laws will be reformed dramatically (and soon) so that my son will never be labeled an outcast because he drank too much and peed on a tree.
Exactly. Harsh laws don't prevent rape of children, they punish it. A child being aware of her surroundings, of the possibility that someone who may seem friendly is actually not, of ways to act in such situations, may be preventive.
And, another issue is that the current system disperses punishment and not rehabilitation. "Real" sex offenders are more often than not victims of sex crime themselves. Punishment does not address these issues in any way.
It is insane to believe that inflicting pain, discomfort and torture will make someone better. It's a tactic introduced by child conditioning / broken parenting, aiming to control children with quick, efficient methods.
Horribly broken.
anyone caught up in the system should be summarily condemned to death, but without having the guts to carry out the decree
Which is the case with sexual violence + HIV in prisons.
It applies to people who streak, people who are caught skinny-dipping, people who are caught having sex in public (including in their car), and even people who happened to urinate behind a tree in some places. Yet they have the same social stigma & registration entries in the database as people who raped children.
I guess Puritans see skinny dipping and child rape as equally horrific. I grew up in Europe (not England) and I can tell you skinny dipping is OK.
Issue is not with the name, bro. The crappy image is a reflection of the crappyness of the company's stores. You may call it Palace of Shacky Delights and the stores will still be useless. After leaving a niche business for a mainstream cheapo electronics store niche, RS has to compete with best buys of the worlds. Lost cause. What made RS was catering to enthusiasts. Going mainstream killed that, at least in my neighborhood RS which no longer carries specialty items, just high-margin crappy consumer electronics.
Where will we go to buy soldering irons and those RCA to headphone jack adapters now?
Funny that you asked that. Last time I went to RS to buy RCA to headphone cable for my car stereo/ipod connection, they didn'have any. Because they didn't carry them anymore.
The store had some crappy tvs, cell phones, overpriced memory cards and cheaply made electronic chochki. No soldering irons or anything useful to makers.
Sad.
With all due respect for his dynamic writing etc., I have to call bullshit on Joel's article. He uses ad hominem to blame the users for how they feel when faced with bloatware and does not address the sloppy coding that creates bloatware.
The cost of hard disks is low but cost is not the only thing that contributes to the quality of life of a user. If Word takes ages to start on last year's top of the line pc, and takes it's time responding to input, then something's wrong. Knowing how software grows and knowing that word code has been "maintained" for over 10 years, I imagine that if rewritten from scratch, that software would end up much leaner and faster.
The main reason to use word is that everyone else is using it already. Oh, and its overcomplicated, obsolete-by-design "feature" of file format incompatibility.
And an anecdote about it: During a computer science course one of the tutors told us about his visit to the MS Word engineering team. There he saw a white board with bug numbers. The white board was titled "Not fixable."
MS has owned the market for this for a while, controlling it's market share via FUD and broken file formats, ultimately installing MS tax for business decision makers that are too scared to lose compatibility with their old documents and interoperability with other business.
It's working.
Yes, we don't really need it, but we can't kick the habit either.
True. People with money are very scared to lose what they think they have. So no risks.
Risk takers either have little to lose or have a strong vision and are seemingly not ruled by the money. So corporation find such people and give them an outlet. Like John Stewart for example.
Advertising money goes into exposing the public to a specific message. In this case, our attention, is the product. Media corporations have monetized on the attention of the public by buying the laws that allow them to reach us via the different mediums, including the physical space of our own living environments.
And, similarly, the banking and money-printing/regulation industry has it's hooks into every transaction. Movement of money costs so much it's turning generations into slaves, working and working and working in order to increase the numbers into someone's account. Money is virtual and can grow infinitely. We are busy converting our lives and our planet into virtual numbers.
"Monetizing" everything, growing the numbers in the accounts, depleting our relationships, our environment, our lives.
It's a big brush we're painting with. Some record labels whose vision is to truly support musicians and make a reasonable profit by offering that support, may be an instrument in the co-creation of art that they then turn into product. The big labels, however, have a big racket going on. Of course their profit will be going down. They started by being the only game in town and by setting the prices without competition.
We, the public, the ones that connect to and enjoy the art created by our communities, are sick and tired of having to work extra hard in order to feed the infinite greed of this monster of a middle men. We want our appreciation to go to the creators, not the ones that resell their creation. The resellers are just that, merchants, service providers.
In the example of music, merchants are asking for a very high price without offering the corresponding value, with the argument that if prices are going down compared to the time when the public had no other options, they are losing profit.
The way I see it all that time they were stealing from the artists and the musicians.
Why just border patrol. Why not a tax break for corporations who do it... or compliance requirement in the banking industry etc.
In a culture where money is god, everything has a price.
Just put the right incentives in place and watch the wheels turning :)
Maybe you're right. Look at the number of comments here at /.
In an attention economy, scandalous is gold.
Too many people on the planet as it is.
Show us you have the courage of your convictions, kill yourself. Oh, that's right, it's the others who are the too many, you'd be one of the chosen ones, correct?
Excellent argument. Logic is intact and no ad hominem.
If governments were mandated to live under their own rulership, laws would be different. It would be great if a trial run would be facilitated with the lawmakers' families being observed and recorded.
Oppression does not diminish violence nor crime. Prisons are a great example of that.
And, where did cities get revenue from before installing meters on most available spaces? Could this have anything with greed?
Applying monetary solutions to all problems seems a little too simplistic, no?
Making undesirable activities expensive is just one possibility.
Oh, and also the irony of this being a book describing a society where history is constantly being rewritten to fit the current interests of the ruling party... and involving a misuse of technology that will allow corporations to do it wirelessly and cheaply. Just wonderful.
Just think how easy will it be when all textbooks and newspapers are presented on similar devices.