And that's more or less what this whole thing boils down to.
IT is the other 9/10ths of the iceberg, when most of your end users want to play with floating bits of ice.
The licensing, the legal requirements, the auditing, the business need to never ever lose a byte, the cost of downtime, the cost of datacentres, and the overhead of admin staff, training, recruitment and retention that you may need when you implement a solution.
*shrug*.
So it goes. IT will always seem unreasonable to insist on a fully costed solution, because they know they'll end up in the firing line.
At my previous employer, we had no wi-fi network, because between hardware and a properly supported solution, it would have cost money that the business did not want to pay.
And one day, one of our users had the bright idea of grabbing a wireless router, and plugged it into the network.
We noticed pretty quickly, because his router DHCP server was issuing (invalid) IP addresses on our network.
But our corporate lan being broadcast without any form of protection whatsoever across the carpark was really not something we're overly appreciative of.
*shrug*.
IT isn't about yes/no nazism. It's about relative cost vs. relative utility. Anything you add to the IT portfolio costs money. Sometimes it's only a bit of admin time. Sometimes it's more heavyweight because there's legal or security constraints. Sometimes you can even hide some of these costs by getting a 'free' admin to do it.
But the costs are present, and the business has to pay for them. If the benefit outweighs the cost of doing it right, then it's something that gets implemented.
I'm sure you wouldn't be too suprised though, to find that the 'cost' associated with some things, include a rather large amount of hidden overheads that the end user never really considers. Something as simple as 'more disk space on a server' tots up:
Physical disk (high end disk costs more than the average SATA drive you get in a PC)
Raid overhead
Backup server capacity
Tape library capacity
Server capability
Network infrastructure (both primary usage, and backup)
Network Bandwidth
WAN Bandwidth
Monitoring and reporting
Additional power and heat consumption
Disaster Recovery site bandwidth
(And all this list again, for the DR site).
That adds up to quite a bit more than the £/Gb you get on your home PC SATA Drives.
Monitoring and reporting
Additional power and heat consumption
Disaster Recovery site bandwidth
(And all this list again, for the DR site).
That adds up to quite a bit more than the £/Gb you get on your home PC SATA Drives. Some of them you can 'hide' (I mean, when you have one box under a desk, you may not notice the power and aircon bill). Same's true of software, or other random hardware on your system to a greater or lesser extent.
I'm a pretty laid back IT guy, who does stuff like run servers at home, and fiddle around with raid arrays because 'it's a laugh'. I can do a pretty credible impression of supporting... more or less whatever.
But in the business place my time is a finite resource, and it costs money.
If you want to put your 'unsupported software' on there, then you cannot just do it, because that way leads chaos, insanity and mayhem. You have to make a business case for why the software you want on there is worth the additional effort, infrastructure, training, development time and licensing costs.
If you can, then great, we'll roll it out. We'll come up with a solution that's compliant, backed up, reliable, maintainable, and scalable. And possible for our support staff to diagnose and fix in sensible time frames, remotely.
But it all comes at a price - man hours are not free, backup tapes are not free, hard disks and servers are not free, and licenses are not free.
Even if it 'seems free' becuase you're not paying directly for the IT staff, 4 hours of support _does_ have a cost. It is the business that incurs this cost, and the business that therefore has to decide whether it's prepared to pay this cost.
MOST businesses decide that the additional cost of J Random User installing whatever he feels like, whenever he feels like is unsustainable.
In IT, almost anything is _possible_ but there's always a tradeoff of price vs. functionality.
One user who knows best is not on the radar. If they're truly right about a business need for a software or functionality, then great, let's roll it out to everyone. But lets do so whilst actually thinking about backups, compliance, maintainability, licensing and all the other ugly thing that end users rarely need to care about.
IT support costs money. It's a contended resource, and contention ratios can be very high indeed (my 6 man team supports infrastructure that has an impact on around 50k users for example). The BUSINESS gets to decide whether it's more important to standardize, and build for maintainability and rapid deployment, or whether it's more important to let your unique and special snowflakes... feel unique and special.
Most businesses feel that keeping IT costs down is more important than users feeling empowered.
Actually, boot time hard drive encryption, makes it pretty tough for them to mess around. Not impossible, no, but... hard enough.
Make it an effort, and then add a policy of 'mess around with this and you're fired' (Ideally with an explanation as to why it's important that the sensitive information on your laptop is protected, and how adware and trojans and just getting your laptop nicked are a really big deal when you have customer account information accessible to your system) and you have resilience against anything barring active malice.
Because IT departments very rarely run on a 1:1 admin to user ratio. IT support costs money. Most companies are interested in keeping that cost down.
The most effective way of doing this, is blanket standardisation. We've got around 50k users to support, in an environment that... well, let's just say data control is sensitive - there's Sarbanes Oxley to worry about, and then there's more generic 'we deal with other people's money' to worry about.
The only way this can realistically be done is by a very severe system lockdown. I mean NO unapproved software, no admin access, hell no pen drives, or external email access.
It's not because it's unsupportable - I can do a pretty good impression of 'best efforts' support on anything out there. It's because supporting several thousand 'unique and special snowflakes' who may or may not have a clue is just not viable.
Yes, there's users out there who 'do their own thing' and are not a problem. But I don't trust my users to think of the consequences of their actions, when it comes to installing 'free stuff', or 'reconfiguring it because it's better this way'. So I don't let them, because that way I KNOW I have all their data, when it inevitably comes crashing down and needs recovery.
IT lockdown isn't to piss the users off. It's because when you're scaling large infrastructures, the only way you can do this without it being a daily cluster-fuck is by standardizing, and preventing deviations from the standard without a really good business case, and money in place to cover the additional costs incurred as a result.
If you think MSN is really important, then great, make a case, and maybe we'll do a company wide rollout. But don't forget we have a LEGAL OBLIGATION from all manner of ugly laws about insider trading, and business stuff, to put in place stuff as part of it. I don't like the fact I have to record every damn email going through our systems, but I _really_ don't like getting millions in fines for not doing so.
My time isn't more important necessarily than an individual user. However my time _is_ a finite resource, that's contented. If one user has a knock on impact on 'a few thousand' by tying up me or my team with a problem, then THAT's when there's a problem.
I've seen many very good and well thought out reasons, as to why it's ok to pirate stuff. Personally I get really peeved at 'piracy is theft' advertising, and labelling. (It's not. Theft includes depriving the owner of the original.). I can understand how one might object to the marketing behind something, or how pirate software could be seen as an 'extended demo'. How one might not be able to afford the rather ludicrous pricing Microsoft loads on some of their software products, or how actually, paying that much for a CD is a bit of a killer.
But then I remember. These are all luxury items. They're hardly a requirement for life. There's nothing to justify. You're just being a freeloading crook. There's no shame in being greedy and selfish. Most of humanity is that way. But don't try and make up a reason why 'you're allowed'.
I agree entirely, that there's far too much stuff out there that is not worth the price. Quite a few of the recent blockbusters fall into this category, and there's a massive bin of 'really awful computer games' out there.
But you know what? There's a really very easy solution. Don't buy them.
Seriously. If something's worth spending your time watching/playing/listening to, then it's also worth paying money for. And if it isn't, then why the hell are you wasting your life?
Digital media is a luxury item. If you cannot afford it, then don't buy it, and use the time you'd saved not watching something substandard to get a job instead.
Anyone who's ever learned to drive will be able to tell you that you don't actually get to conciously think about what you're doing when driving, any more than you're thinking about lifting your leg, moving your knee, etc. when walking.
That doesn't imply free will, or any lack thereof, it just implies delegated processing - generate request, and hand it off to the subconcious to complete.
Ah, but if it's deterministic but unpredictable, then where does that leave us? If the universe is entirely set on it's course, from Event One, and given identical starting conditions would end the same way, why does this matter if we can't predict the pattern? I mean, you need something more complex to analyse a system, which means it's quite possible that we'll never be able to model the universe accurately, even if it was entirely deterministic.
It is entirely possible that a glass of wine can both prevent altzheimers, and cause high blood pressure. Just because some of the effects of something are beneficial, and some are negative doesn't mean that one precludes the other.
And what happens if you hit some pedestrian at 253mph, and leave them permanently crippled and in need of health care for the rest of their life?
Or are you suggesting we should have pedestrian insurance, and if you're not insured against someone commiting a criminal offense then *shrug* bad luck?
I mean, it's not like I could afford in any way shape or form to pay for treatment if that happened to someone as a result of my carelessness, and neither could the vast majority of drivers out there.
Similarly, there's a lot of people who cannot afford cars, don't drive, and insuring themselves against getting runover... well, what are you actually going to do if someone is on that kind of critical list? Charitable or government support, and that's expensive too
Therefore requiring me to pay an insurance premium (and in the UK it's ONLY the third party cover that's mandatory), which because of market forces will at least vaguely be skewed in approximate proportion to my danger to the public, is the only sensible way of avoiding placing that burden on the state.
Differentiating between a religion and a cult, may seem to be a matter of opinion.
However it remains the case that you can find out the basis of Christianity, by going and buying a copy of the Bible, for not many beer tokens. Or just wander into a church, and ask.
They'll tell you what the religion is about. If you attend worship, great. If you don't, then... well, ok.
Whatever your relative opinion of whether religion is bullshit or not, it remains the case that Scientology is very expensive bullshit. And is scarily fanatical in it's reaction to criticism.
No no. I'm fairly certain that the universe only exists because I will it so. And the bits I interact with are soley there for my own perverse and machiavellian amusement.
The world makes SO MUCH more sense when viewed in such a fashion.
I may or may not be that important, however if I treat as if it is so, it might as well be so.
Could probably start a religion based on that or something. Or would, if I thought it would serve my interests, by extorting money out of gullible fools. Or has that already been done?
Naah, clearly it can't have been, as I'm the sole arbiter of reality, and what I say, is. (Although imagining all this, means I'm probably about as messed up as the rest of the world)
Declaring a Crusade on Terror did amuse me backwhen.
But that aside... yes. Crusades were really rather unpleasant. There was a lot of nastiness committed, and backed up with 'but it's in the name of God, so it's ok'. Maybe this did lead more people into joining the crusade out of religious fervour, but I have absolutely no doubt that the instigators were _far_ more interested in other things.
But this dark patch of nastiness in the name of Christianity, in no way pardons or excuses similar nastiness in the name of other religions.
Religion... works fine for some, not so much for others. However it remains the case that it has been used as a tool for some of the most horrific forms of inhumanity throughout the ages, simply because the corrupt, can use it to justify evil to the average citizen.
Does this make the religion wrong? I don't think so. With knowledge comes power, be that technical, political, or religious. The power itself is neutral, the use it's put to is what's relevant. As long as there exists people who are prepared to use 'power' in such a way, such episodes will repeat themselves.
I've seen keygens of the most obscure, niche bits of software out there. Back when it was still new, there was a rather professional looking keygen for VMWare ESX doing the rounds. This is a software product that _only_ runs on a rather short hardware list, and most of it is 'server room spec'.
So I have this theory, that it was actually released by the software company itself, in a 'we didn't do that, honest' kind of way. Because it gets conslutants out there skilled, and able to 'test' and understand their product, without having to jump through the hoops of a corporate acquisition process.
They charged for support, and upgrades anyway, and we paid for support on our production servers, Couldn't justify the license cost on our 'test' server though.
The 'evaluation' code was fine for a business eval, but for someone who's doing it on their 'private time' it's not long enough. And I remain confident, they'd have never seen the rather large chunk of business we threw their way if we hadn't had people using it at home, and playing with it, and declaring it 'something we should check out'.
Why? Software maintainability is a virtue too, and probably more important than a programmer using exactly the right shiny new language that's _exactly right_ for solving the problem.
OK, so not all languages are well matched to solving all problems, but keeping it down to a managable number also serves to avoid some major grief in future.
Why shouldn't it be?
I mean, aside from the general concerns re: security and implementation.
We don't call a screwdriver manufacturer 'unethical' because people might build tanks with them. Open source software, much like closed source software is a tool for a job.
Securing a warhead is doable and achievable - because what you need to do there, is keep _everyone_ away, except for specific authorised individuals. You won't necessarily get perfect, but you'll get pretty near. I cannot steal your warhead, because I'm not allowed to see, touch, hold or otherwise sit on the warhead and scream yeeehaw!.
Securing media (digital or otherwise), you can do approximately the same thing. You can put in place security measures, that stop me reading your secure stuff. You put it in a locked box, you isolate the box, you can guard it, you can bury it, you can lock it, and alarm it, and you can stop me touching the thing inside the box. (Metaphorically speaking). Whilst we're used to the concept that no security is perfect, it _is_ possible to make an IT system 'as secure as makes no difference', although that does mean isolating it from the net, and physically securing access points.
DRM on the other hand, you're _letting_ me have access to the stuff. You're quite specifically decoding it, so I can play it out of my speakers, or read it on my screen, or watch it on my TV. So you're giving me a locked box, and the key to the locked box, and trying to tell me I'm only allowed to look in the box, not take the stuff out of it.
Which is why DRM is just fatally flawed - if you have to decode it to 'use' it, it IS IMPOSSIBLE to prevent me from then decoding it and 'misusing' it (e.g. putting a microphone next to my speaker, pointing a camcorder at my TV set, whatever.)
I don't have a problem with people consuming intoxicants to entertain themselves. Be it caffeine, alcohol, pot, or heroin.
As long as you're aware of risks, affects and constraints involved.
Dying as a result of beign careless with the above, I consider worthy of a Darwin award.
Doing something that requires any level of competence (and is safety critical - I don't care when you fail to build a house of cards), whilst mentally impaired due to intoxication, however, I consider to be criminally stupid.
The relative legality of the substance has nothing to do with it.
Slashdot Mirror
IT is the other 9/10ths of the iceberg, when most of your end users want to play with floating bits of ice.
The licensing, the legal requirements, the auditing, the business need to never ever lose a byte, the cost of downtime, the cost of datacentres, and the overhead of admin staff, training, recruitment and retention that you may need when you implement a solution.
*shrug*.
So it goes. IT will always seem unreasonable to insist on a fully costed solution, because they know they'll end up in the firing line.
And one day, one of our users had the bright idea of grabbing a wireless router, and plugged it into the network.
We noticed pretty quickly, because his router DHCP server was issuing (invalid) IP addresses on our network.
But our corporate lan being broadcast without any form of protection whatsoever across the carpark was really not something we're overly appreciative of.
*shrug*.
IT isn't about yes/no nazism. It's about relative cost vs. relative utility. Anything you add to the IT portfolio costs money. Sometimes it's only a bit of admin time. Sometimes it's more heavyweight because there's legal or security constraints. Sometimes you can even hide some of these costs by getting a 'free' admin to do it.
But the costs are present, and the business has to pay for them. If the benefit outweighs the cost of doing it right, then it's something that gets implemented.
I'm sure you wouldn't be too suprised though, to find that the 'cost' associated with some things, include a rather large amount of hidden overheads that the end user never really considers. Something as simple as 'more disk space on a server' tots up:
- Physical disk (high end disk costs more than the average SATA drive you get in a PC)
- Raid overhead
- Backup server capacity
- Tape library capacity
- Server capability
- Network infrastructure (both primary usage, and backup)
- Network Bandwidth
- WAN Bandwidth
- Monitoring and reporting
- Additional power and heat consumption
- Disaster Recovery site bandwidth
- (And all this list again, for the DR site).
That adds up to quite a bit more than the £/Gb you get on your home PC SATA Drives.Monitoring and reporting
Additional power and heat consumption
Disaster Recovery site bandwidth
(And all this list again, for the DR site). That adds up to quite a bit more than the £/Gb you get on your home PC SATA Drives. Some of them you can 'hide' (I mean, when you have one box under a desk, you may not notice the power and aircon bill). Same's true of software, or other random hardware on your system to a greater or lesser extent.
I'm a pretty laid back IT guy, who does stuff like run servers at home, and fiddle around with raid arrays because 'it's a laugh'. I can do a pretty credible impression of supporting ... more or less whatever.
But in the business place my time is a finite resource, and it costs money.
If you want to put your 'unsupported software' on there, then you cannot just do it, because that way leads chaos, insanity and mayhem. You have to make a business case for why the software you want on there is worth the additional effort, infrastructure, training, development time and licensing costs.
If you can, then great, we'll roll it out. We'll come up with a solution that's compliant, backed up, reliable, maintainable, and scalable. And possible for our support staff to diagnose and fix in sensible time frames, remotely.
But it all comes at a price - man hours are not free, backup tapes are not free, hard disks and servers are not free, and licenses are not free.
Even if it 'seems free' becuase you're not paying directly for the IT staff, 4 hours of support _does_ have a cost. It is the business that incurs this cost, and the business that therefore has to decide whether it's prepared to pay this cost.
MOST businesses decide that the additional cost of J Random User installing whatever he feels like, whenever he feels like is unsustainable.
In IT, almost anything is _possible_ but there's always a tradeoff of price vs. functionality.
One user who knows best is not on the radar. If they're truly right about a business need for a software or functionality, then great, let's roll it out to everyone. But lets do so whilst actually thinking about backups, compliance, maintainability, licensing and all the other ugly thing that end users rarely need to care about.
IT support costs money. It's a contended resource, and contention ratios can be very high indeed (my 6 man team supports infrastructure that has an impact on around 50k users for example). The BUSINESS gets to decide whether it's more important to standardize, and build for maintainability and rapid deployment, or whether it's more important to let your unique and special snowflakes ... feel unique and special.
Most businesses feel that keeping IT costs down is more important than users feeling empowered.
Make it an effort, and then add a policy of 'mess around with this and you're fired' (Ideally with an explanation as to why it's important that the sensitive information on your laptop is protected, and how adware and trojans and just getting your laptop nicked are a really big deal when you have customer account information accessible to your system) and you have resilience against anything barring active malice.
The most effective way of doing this, is blanket standardisation. We've got around 50k users to support, in an environment that ... well, let's just say data control is sensitive - there's Sarbanes Oxley to worry about, and then there's more generic 'we deal with other people's money' to worry about.
The only way this can realistically be done is by a very severe system lockdown. I mean NO unapproved software, no admin access, hell no pen drives, or external email access.
It's not because it's unsupportable - I can do a pretty good impression of 'best efforts' support on anything out there. It's because supporting several thousand 'unique and special snowflakes' who may or may not have a clue is just not viable.
Yes, there's users out there who 'do their own thing' and are not a problem. But I don't trust my users to think of the consequences of their actions, when it comes to installing 'free stuff', or 'reconfiguring it because it's better this way'. So I don't let them, because that way I KNOW I have all their data, when it inevitably comes crashing down and needs recovery.
IT lockdown isn't to piss the users off. It's because when you're scaling large infrastructures, the only way you can do this without it being a daily cluster-fuck is by standardizing, and preventing deviations from the standard without a really good business case, and money in place to cover the additional costs incurred as a result.
If you think MSN is really important, then great, make a case, and maybe we'll do a company wide rollout. But don't forget we have a LEGAL OBLIGATION from all manner of ugly laws about insider trading, and business stuff, to put in place stuff as part of it. I don't like the fact I have to record every damn email going through our systems, but I _really_ don't like getting millions in fines for not doing so.
My time isn't more important necessarily than an individual user. However my time _is_ a finite resource, that's contented. If one user has a knock on impact on 'a few thousand' by tying up me or my team with a problem, then THAT's when there's a problem.
But then I remember. These are all luxury items. They're hardly a requirement for life. There's nothing to justify. You're just being a freeloading crook. There's no shame in being greedy and selfish. Most of humanity is that way. But don't try and make up a reason why 'you're allowed'.
I agree entirely, that there's far too much stuff out there that is not worth the price. Quite a few of the recent blockbusters fall into this category, and there's a massive bin of 'really awful computer games' out there.
But you know what? There's a really very easy solution. Don't buy them.
Seriously. If something's worth spending your time watching/playing/listening to, then it's also worth paying money for. And if it isn't, then why the hell are you wasting your life?
Digital media is a luxury item. If you cannot afford it, then don't buy it, and use the time you'd saved not watching something substandard to get a job instead.
That doesn't imply free will, or any lack thereof, it just implies delegated processing - generate request, and hand it off to the subconcious to complete.
Most medicines, after all, include side effects.
This is not news.
Or are you suggesting we should have pedestrian insurance, and if you're not insured against someone commiting a criminal offense then *shrug* bad luck?
I mean, it's not like I could afford in any way shape or form to pay for treatment if that happened to someone as a result of my carelessness, and neither could the vast majority of drivers out there.
Similarly, there's a lot of people who cannot afford cars, don't drive, and insuring themselves against getting runover ... well, what are you actually going to do if someone is on that kind of critical list? Charitable or government support, and that's expensive too
Therefore requiring me to pay an insurance premium (and in the UK it's ONLY the third party cover that's mandatory), which because of market forces will at least vaguely be skewed in approximate proportion to my danger to the public, is the only sensible way of avoiding placing that burden on the state.
What, you don't use Uranium, to make paperclips? Shame on you. Think of the potential for if you need a nuke in a hurry.
It's not the military's job to prepare for peace. It's the military's job to prepare for war.
However it remains the case that you can find out the basis of Christianity, by going and buying a copy of the Bible, for not many beer tokens. Or just wander into a church, and ask.
They'll tell you what the religion is about. If you attend worship, great. If you don't, then ... well, ok.
Whatever your relative opinion of whether religion is bullshit or not, it remains the case that Scientology is very expensive bullshit. And is scarily fanatical in it's reaction to criticism.
The world makes SO MUCH more sense when viewed in such a fashion.
I may or may not be that important, however if I treat as if it is so, it might as well be so.
Could probably start a religion based on that or something. Or would, if I thought it would serve my interests, by extorting money out of gullible fools. Or has that already been done?
Naah, clearly it can't have been, as I'm the sole arbiter of reality, and what I say, is. (Although imagining all this, means I'm probably about as messed up as the rest of the world)
But that aside ... yes. Crusades were really rather unpleasant. There was a lot of nastiness committed, and backed up with 'but it's in the name of God, so it's ok'. Maybe this did lead more people into joining the crusade out of religious fervour, but I have absolutely no doubt that the instigators were _far_ more interested in other things.
But this dark patch of nastiness in the name of Christianity, in no way pardons or excuses similar nastiness in the name of other religions.
Religion... works fine for some, not so much for others. However it remains the case that it has been used as a tool for some of the most horrific forms of inhumanity throughout the ages, simply because the corrupt, can use it to justify evil to the average citizen.
Does this make the religion wrong? I don't think so. With knowledge comes power, be that technical, political, or religious. The power itself is neutral, the use it's put to is what's relevant. As long as there exists people who are prepared to use 'power' in such a way, such episodes will repeat themselves.
So I have this theory, that it was actually released by the software company itself, in a 'we didn't do that, honest' kind of way. Because it gets conslutants out there skilled, and able to 'test' and understand their product, without having to jump through the hoops of a corporate acquisition process.
They charged for support, and upgrades anyway, and we paid for support on our production servers, Couldn't justify the license cost on our 'test' server though.
The 'evaluation' code was fine for a business eval, but for someone who's doing it on their 'private time' it's not long enough. And I remain confident, they'd have never seen the rather large chunk of business we threw their way if we hadn't had people using it at home, and playing with it, and declaring it 'something we should check out'.
OK, so not all languages are well matched to solving all problems, but keeping it down to a managable number also serves to avoid some major grief in future.
Batman Begins is a really bad film to have that feeling after...
Paid Troll? Oooh, that's a job you'd just _have_ to love
Why shouldn't it be?
I mean, aside from the general concerns re: security and implementation.
We don't call a screwdriver manufacturer 'unethical' because people might build tanks with them. Open source software, much like closed source software is a tool for a job.
Securing a warhead is doable and achievable - because what you need to do there, is keep _everyone_ away, except for specific authorised individuals. You won't necessarily get perfect, but you'll get pretty near. I cannot steal your warhead, because I'm not allowed to see, touch, hold or otherwise sit on the warhead and scream yeeehaw!.
Securing media (digital or otherwise), you can do approximately the same thing. You can put in place security measures, that stop me reading your secure stuff. You put it in a locked box, you isolate the box, you can guard it, you can bury it, you can lock it, and alarm it, and you can stop me touching the thing inside the box. (Metaphorically speaking). Whilst we're used to the concept that no security is perfect, it _is_ possible to make an IT system 'as secure as makes no difference', although that does mean isolating it from the net, and physically securing access points.
DRM on the other hand, you're _letting_ me have access to the stuff. You're quite specifically decoding it, so I can play it out of my speakers, or read it on my screen, or watch it on my TV. So you're giving me a locked box, and the key to the locked box, and trying to tell me I'm only allowed to look in the box, not take the stuff out of it.
Which is why DRM is just fatally flawed - if you have to decode it to 'use' it, it IS IMPOSSIBLE to prevent me from then decoding it and 'misusing' it (e.g. putting a microphone next to my speaker, pointing a camcorder at my TV set, whatever.)
As long as you're aware of risks, affects and constraints involved.
Dying as a result of beign careless with the above, I consider worthy of a Darwin award.
Doing something that requires any level of competence (and is safety critical - I don't care when you fail to build a house of cards), whilst mentally impaired due to intoxication, however, I consider to be criminally stupid.
The relative legality of the substance has nothing to do with it.
Did you just use the words 'self respecting' and 'trekkie' in the same sentence?